CHRISTIANITY

The present entry is restricted to Christian belief and scarcely touches on the origins of "Christianity" or its history and institutional forms. Among Christian beliefs only a few can be treated; certain others, such as the existence and attributes of God, are discussed in other entries.

Christian Belief

Perhaps the first thing that should be said about Christian belief is that it does not constitute a philosophy. That is to say, it is not a metaphysical system comparable, for example, to Platonism or the systems of Aristotle and Benedict de Spinoza. Although the body of Christian doctrine does consist largely of metaphysical beliefs, in the sense that they are beliefs whose scope transcends the empirical world, it differs from what are usually identified as philosophical systems by its essential relation to and dependence on particular historical events and experiences. Such systems as Platonism begin with philosophical concepts and principles and seek by means of these to construct a comprehensive mental picture of the universe. Christianity, on the other hand, begins with particular, nonrecurrent historical events that are regarded as revelatory and on the basis of which Christian faith makes certain limited statements about the ultimate nature and structure of reality.

The relationship between experience and discursive reflection in Christianity can be brought out by distinguishing two orders of Christian belief. There is a primary level, consisting of direct reports of experience, secular and religious, and a secondary level, consisting of theological theories constructed on the basis of these reports.

At the primary level Christian literature affirms a number of both publicly verifiable historical facts and "religious facts," or "facts of faith." The latter consist of incidents in the history of Israel as understood and participated in by the prophets and in the life of Jesus as he was responded to by the apostles, these events being seen by faith as revelatory of God. The resulting testimonies of the prophets and apostles are not formulations of theological doctrine but direct expressions of moments of intense religious experience. The four New Testament gospels are writings on this primary level, recording events that occurred either within the purview of secular history or within the religious experience of the early Christian community.

Within this primary stratum of Christian belief certain facts of faith have always stood out as being preeminently important. By means of these Christianity has defined itself in distinction to other religions. Among the total body of those who have called themselves Christians there is no universally agreed-on list of these defining facts of faith, except insofar as such lists have been adopted, locally or more widely, by particular Christian communions, sects, or movements. However, it is safe to say that the main streams of contemporary Christianity, claiming continuity of faith with the first Christian generation, affirm at least the following: the reality of God and the propriety of speaking of him in a threefold manner, as Father, Son, and Spirit; the divine creation of the universe; human sinfulness; divine incarnation in the person of Jesus, the Christ; his reconciliation of man to God; his founding of the Christian church and the continuing operation of his Spirit within it; and an eventual end to human history and the fulfillment of God's purpose for his creation. Stated in this general form these are facts of faith that cumulatively define Christianity. Many further tenets are regarded as essential by different subgroups within Christianity, but the above probably constitute the permanent core that is acknowledged by virtually the whole of Christendom, past and present.

The second order of Christian belief consists in theological theories or doctrines that seek to explain these facts of faith and to relate them to one another and/or to human knowledge in general. The formulation of doctrines is essentially a discursive and speculative activity, differing from theory construction in secular philosophy only in that the theologian includes in his data, and indeed accords a central and determinative importance to, the special facts of Christian faith.

This distinction can now be illustrated by reference to some of the central Christian themes, noting both the relevant facts of faith and the theological theories that have been developed about them.

creation

The doctrine of creation (which Christianity holds in common with Judaism) stands somewhat apart from the other doctrines to be described below. The others have arisen out of reflection on specific historical phenomena, but belief in the divine creation of the universe, although connected with the religious experience of absolute dependence on God, has presumably been arrived at primarily as an implicate of the monotheistic understanding of God as the sole ultimate reality.

The doctrine of the divine creation of the universe out of nothing stands in contrast to other conceptions of its origin. This doctrine denies that the universe is eternal, although the denial does not entail the belief that it was created at some moment in time—Augustine, for example, taught that time is itself an aspect of the created world. The doctrine also excludes the Platonic notion of a Demiurge fashioning the world out of a formless matter and the Neoplatonic notion of the physical universe's coming to be by emanation from the Absolute. In distinction to these ideas the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo asserts that the universe has been summoned into existence out of nothing (that is, not out of anything) by the creative will and purpose of God.

incarnation

Jesus was born about 5 BCE in Palestine and was executed by crucifixion at Jerusalem probably in 29 or 30 CE. There immediately arose a conviction among his disciples, reflected in all the New Testament documents, that he had been raised by God from the dead, and under the compulsion of this conviction the Christian church came into existence, witnessing to both the divine status and the saving power of Jesus, now proclaimed as the Christ.

The beliefs of Jesus' disciples about him are reflected in the four memoirs, or gospels, which were produced in different centers of the apostolic church during the second half of the first century. On the one hand, these depict him as fully and authentically human, subject, like other men, to temptation, hunger, pain, fatigue, ignorance, and sorrow. But at the same time they affirm that he is Lord, Messiah (Christos ), the Son of God. This extremely exalted view reaches its highest expression in the Fourth Gospel, which claims in its prologue to Jesus' life that the Word (Logos), which was in the beginning with God, and was God, and through which all things were made, "became flesh, and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; and we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father" (John 1:14; the conception of the Logos in the Fourth Gospel derives both from the Word and the wisdom of God in the Old Testament and from the Logos as the universal principle of reason in Greek philosophy). The faith that Jesus was the Christ apparently arose out of a practical acceptance of his status as one who had authority to forgive sins, to declare God's mind toward man, to reveal the true meaning of the divine Law, to heal diseases, and to assume that men's eternal destiny and welfare was bound up with their responses to him. This practical acknowledgment of his unique authority probably crystallized into conscious conviction as to his deity under the impact of the resurrection events.

In the gospels these two beliefs, identifying Jesus both as a son of man and as the Son of God, occur together without any attempt to theorize about the relationship between them. Thus, this primary stratum of Christian literature contains, as data for theological reflection, reports of (a ) the publicly observable fact that Jesus was a man, and (b ) the fact of faith that he was divine, in that "in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell" (Colossians 1:19).

During its first four centuries of life these data provided the church with its chief intellectual task. The eventual outcome of the Christological debates, formalized by the Council of Chalcedon (451), was not to propound any definitive theory concerning the relationship between Jesus' humanity and his divinity but simply to reaffirm, in the philosophical language of that day, the original facts of faith. The various views that were from time to time branded as heretical came under this condemnation because directly or by implication they denied one or the other of the two fixed points of Christian thought in this field, the human and divine natures of Christ.

The first of the Christological heresies, the Docetism of some of the Gnostics in the first and second centuries, denied the real humanity of Christ, suggesting that he was a human being in appearance only. The motive behind this theory was to exalt his divine status, but the effect was to deny one of the foundation facts of Christianity as historically based faith. The next great heresy, Arianism, in the fourth century, went to the opposite extreme, denying continuity of being or nature between the Godhead and Christ and regarding him as a created being, so that "there was a time when he was not" (ἠ̑ν ὅτε οὐκ ἤν ). It was in the controversy with Arianism that the notion of substance (οὐσία, substantia ) became a key category in the Christological debates. Arius declared that the Son was ὁμοιούσιον τῳ̑ πατρί (of like substance with the Father), whereas the Council of Nicaea (325), excluding Arianism as a heresy, insisted that the Son was ὁμοούσιον τῳ̑ πατρί (of the same substance as the Father). It was made clear by Athanasius, the champion of orthodoxy, that the iota's difference between these formulations involved an immense religious difference, for only a savior who came from the Godward side of creation could offer man an ultimate salvation. This Homousian Christology was reaffirmed by the Council of Chalcedon and has ever since been the position of the main streams of historic Christianity.

Since the mid-nineteenth century a number of theologians (for example, the Ritschlian school and H. R. Mackintosh) who accept the Nicene and Chalcedonian affirmations of the full humanity and real deity of Christ have questioned the adequacy of the category of substance in terms of which that affirmation was made. They have pointed out that it belongs to the thought-worlds of Plato and Aristotle and that it is a static notion, contrasting in this respect with such characteristically dynamic biblical categories as purpose and action. Accordingly there is now a fairly widespread tendency to describe the incarnation as a complex event constituting God's self-revealing action in man's history. In the New Testament records we see God at work in and through a human life, dealing with human beings in a way that makes plain the divine nature in its relation to man. The acts and attitudes of Jesus toward the men and women with whom he had to do were God's acts and attitudes in relation to those particular individuals, expressed in the finitude of a human life. Along these and other lines Christological discussion continues.

the trinity

The Trinitarian doctrine is a second-order Christian belief. It was gradually developed within the church both to take account of certain data at the experiential level and to aid the development of the general system of Christian doctrine, some of the key points of which are related by the Trinitarian framework.

The New Testament basis for this doctrine was the Christian community's threefold awareness of God, first as the transcendent moral creator witnessed to in the prophetic tradition received from Judaism; second, as having been at work among them on earth in the person of Christ; and third, as the Holy Spirit, which was referred to apparently indiscriminately as the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ, inspiring and guiding both individuals and the Christian community.

The doctrine of the Trinity developed in close conjunction with Christology and made possible the completion of the church's thought concerning the person of Christ. For it had never been the accepted Christian conception that God, simply as such and in his totality, became man in the incarnation. The belief that "God was in Christ" (2 Corinthians 5:19) was held in conjunction with the belief that God was also and at the same time sustaining and governing the universe. The God who was incarnate in Christ was the God who had created heaven and earth. This was expressed by the affirmation that God is both Father and Son; and the reality of the Spirit, operating in the world both before and after the thirty or so years of the incarnation, required the further expansion into a Trinitarian formulation. Thus, the doctrine of the Trinity (a ) asserts the full deity of Christ as the second person of the Trinity; (b ) prohibits a too simple conception of incarnation (as one branch of the theological tradition has put it, Christ is totus deus, wholly God, but not totum dei, the whole of God); and (c ) recognizes the universal presence and activity of God in the world as the divine Spirit. This latter point is of great practical importance because it entails a Christian message not only about God's actions in the past but also about a divine activity in the present that can directly affect the individual today.

In the Trinitarian discussions that accompanied the Christological debates one of the main questions concerned the issue of equality versus subordination within the Trinity. Is the Son subordinate to the Father, or the Spirit to both? The answer that was eventually embodied in the Quicunque vult, or "Athanasian" Creed, of the sixth century was that the members of the Trinity are coeternal and have an equal divine status; the Son is eternally begotten by the Father, and the Spirit eternally proceeds from the Father and the Son. (The latter point was the occasion of the rift in the sixth century between the Eastern church, with its center at Constantinople, and the Western church, with its center at Rome. In its original form the Nicene Creed described the Spirit as proceeding (only) from the Father. Later the Western church added the famous filioque —"and the Son"—an insertion that Eastern Christianity rejected as an unwarrantable tampering with the creed.)

In the accepted Trinitarian language the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are spoken of as three "Persons," the Latin persona having been used to translate the Greek ύπόστασις (which had displaced πρόσωπον —literally, "face"—in this context). Persona is not, of course, the equivalent of "person" in the modern sense of an individual center of consciousness and purpose. Originally a persona was the mask worn by an actor, then his part in the play, and then by further extension any part a person might play in life. Thus, whereas τρει̑ς ύπόστασεις suggests three divine entities, tres personae suggests three roles or functions of the deity. These two different conceptions have each been developed in Christian thought, leading to what have been called respectively "immanent," or "ontological," and "economic" theories of the Trinity.

According to the ontological theories the doctrine of the Trinity is an affirmation about the transcendent metaphysical structure of the Godhead. It asserts that God in his inner being consists of three divine realities that are individually distinct and yet bound together in a mysterious unity—"three in one and one in three." The extreme form of this view is the "social" conception of the Trinity as comprising three consciousnesses. According to the economic theories, on the other hand, the doctrine is about God specifically in his relation to the world. It asserts that the one God has acted toward humankind in three distinguishable ways—in creation and providence, in redemption, and in inner guidance and sanctification. God must indeed, in his inner being, be such as to become related in these ways to his creation, but this does not necessarily require the postulation of three distinct and yet intimately related divine realities.

redemption

That human beings are sinful is a theological statement of the observable fact that men and women are persistently self-centered and that even their highest moral achievements are quickly corrupted by selfishness. Yet although we thus fail, exhibiting a chronic moral weakness and poverty, our failure is not inevitable; we are ourselves, at least in part, responsible for it. The biblical story of the fall of man depicts this situation by means of the myth that man was originally created perfect but fell by his own fault into his present state, in which he is divided both in himself and from his fellows and God.

At its primary level of belief Christianity claims that by responding to God's free forgiveness, offered by Christ, men are released from the guilt of their moral failure (justification) and are drawn into a realm of grace in which they are gradually re-created in character (sanctification). The basis of this claim is the Christian experience of reconciliation with God and, as a consequence, with other human beings, with life's circumstances and demands, and with oneself. The "justification by faith" of which Paul spoke, and which represented the main religious emphasis of the Reformation of the sixteenth century, means that men are freely accepted by God's gracious love, which they have only to receive in faith. In Paul Tillich's contemporary restatement, a man has only to accept the fact that although unacceptable even to himself, he is accepted by God.

In this case, work at the secondary level of theological reflection did not begin seriously until the church had been preaching the fact of divine reconciliation and atonement for about a thousand years. Anselm, in the eleventh century, taught that the death of Christ constituted a satisfaction to the divine honor for the stain cast upon it by man's disobedience, and this remains the core of Catholic atonement doctrine. Martin Luther and John Calvin, in the sixteenth century, spoke of Christ's death as a substitutionary sacrifice by which Christ suffered in his own person the punishment that was justly due humankind, and this remains the core of official Protestant atonement doctrine. In the nineteenth century, however, the thought was developed (going back to Anselm's contemporary Peter Abelard) that God's forgiveness does not need to be purchased by Christ's death, but that this brings home to the human heart both man's need for divine forgiveness and the reality of that forgiveness. There were in the twentieth century and on into the twenty-first century continuing efforts to understand Christ's redeeming work in a way that would bring together the valid insights in these and other traditional views, each of which by itself has seemed one-sided.

heaven, hell, and judgment

Jesus impressed upon his hearers in the strongest possible terms the absolute importance of decisions made and deeds performed in this present life. He regarded men and women as free and responsible persons on whose daily choices depended their own final good and happiness or irretrievable loss and failure. In doing this he used the traditional language of heaven and hell, which were understood until comparatively recently in terms of a prescientific cosmology, with heaven located in the sky above our heads and hell in the ground beneath our feet. Heaven is now generally conceived of as the enjoyment of the full consciousness of God's presence and participation in the divine "kingdom," which represents the final fulfillment of God's purpose for his creation; and hell is viewed as self-exclusion from this.

There are many perennially debated questions in this area. Are men divinely predestined, some to eternal salvation and others to eternal damnation ("double predestination"), as Augustine and Calvin taught? Does "hell" signify an eternal state, or is it a temporally bounded purgatorial experience that might lead to eventual salvation? (The adjective αἰώνιος, which is used in the New Testament, can mean either "eternal" or "for the aeon, or age"). Or does "hell" perhaps signify sheer annihilation? Can the final frustration of God's purpose by the loss of part of his human creation be reconciled with his ultimate sovereignty, and does the idea of never-ending torment, as a form of suffering out of which no good is finally brought, rule out the possibility of a Christian theodicy? Are all men to be finally saved ("universalism"), or only some?

In relation to such questions it is perhaps useful to distinguish between two standpoints from which eschatological statements may be made. There is the existential standpoint of "real life," in which we exercise a fateful responsibility in our moral choices and are confronted with the tremendous alternatives of spiritual life and death, symbolized by heaven and hell. There is also the detached standpoint of theological reflection, in which it seems possible to deduce from the two premises of the sovereignty and the love of God that although damnation is abstractly conceivable and is known in existential experience as a dread possibility, God's saving purpose in relation to his creatures will nevertheless in the end be triumphant, and eternal loss will remain an unrealized possibility.

the church

Although Christianity as historically institutionalized lies outside the narrow scope of this entry, it must be added that Christian faith has always drawn people together into a community of faith, or church. The largest Christian institution, the Roman Catholic Church, holds that the authentic Christian community is defined by its visible continuity, manifested in a succession of bishops and popes, with the earliest church. Protestantism holds that the Christian community is defined by a different continuity, that of faith, and affirms that the external institutions associated with Christian faith are continually in need of reformation in the light of the original Christian data embodied in the scriptures.

See also Abelard, Peter; Anselm, St.; Arius and Arianism; Aristotle; Calvin, John; Gnosticism; God, Concepts of; Heaven and Hell, Doctrines of; Luther Martin; Neoplatonism; Platonism and the Platonic Tradition; Ritschl, Albrecht Benjamin; Spinoza, Benedict (Baruch) de.

Bibliography

the bible

Old Testament. 7th ed. Edited by R. Kittel. Stuttgart, 1951. Hebrew text.

New Testament. 2nd ed. Edited by G. D. Kilpatrick. London, 1958. Greek text.

American Revised Standard Version. New York, 1952–1957. Old and New Testaments and Apocrypha in translation.

New English Bible. Vol. 1: New Testament. London, 1961. Translation.

collections of christian literature

Baillie, John, John T. McNeill, and Henry P. Van Dusen, eds. Library of Christian Classics, 26 vols. London and Philadelphia, 1954–.

Migne, J. P., ed. Patrologia Graeca. 162 vols. Paris, 1857–1866.

Migne, J. P., ed. Patrologia Latina. 221 vols. Paris, 1844–1864.

Roberts, Alexander, and James Donaldson, eds. The Ante-Nicene Fathers. 10 vols. Grand Rapids, MI, 1951.

Schaff, Philip et al., eds. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church. Grand Rapids, MI, 1952–1956. Two series, each in 14 vols.

encyclopedias

Campenhausen, H. F. von et al., eds. Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart. 3rd ed. 7 vols. Tübingen: Mohr, 1957–1965.

Hastings, James, ed. Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, 13 vols. Edinburgh, 1908–1926.

Vacant, A. et al., eds. Dictionnaire de Théologie catholique. 3rd ed. 15 vols. Paris, 1923–1950.

history of christianity

Latourette, K. S. A History of the Expansion of Christianity. 7 vols. New York and London: Harper, 1937–1945.

history of christian thought

Harnack, Adolf von. Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte. 4th ed. 3 vols. Tübingen, 1909–1910. Third ed. translated by Neil Buchanan as History of Dogma. 7 vols. London, 1894–1899; New York: Russell and Russell, 1958.

Kelly, J. N. D. Early Christian Doctrines. London: A. and C. Black, 1958.

Seeberg, Reinhold. Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte. 4th ed. 4 vols. Basel, 1953–1954. Translated by C. E. Hay as Textbook of the History of Doctrines. Grand Rapids, MI, 1952.

Wolfson, H. A. The Philosophy of the Church Fathers. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1956–.

roman catholicism

Denzinger, H. J. D. Enchiridion Symbolorum Definitionum et Declarationum de Rebus Fidei et Morum, 29th ed. Freiburg, Germany, 1952. Translated by R. J. Defarrari as The Sources of Catholic Dogma. St. Louis, MO: Herder, 1957.

Schmaus, Michael. Katholische Dogmatik. 5 vols. Munich, 1948–1958.

Smith, G. D., ed. The Teaching of the Catholic Church. 2 vols. London: Burns, Oates and Washburne, 1948; New York: Macmillan, 1949.

Thomas Aquinas. Summa Contra Gentiles. Editio Leonina Manualis. Rome, 1934. Translated by A. C. Pegis, J. F. Anderson, V. J. Bourke, and C. J. O'Neil as On the Truth of the Catholic Faith. 4 vols. New York, 1955–1957.

Thomas Aquinas. Summa Theologiae. 6 vols. Editio altera Romana. Rome, 1894. Translated by the English Dominican Fathers. London, 1911–1922; New York, 1947–1948.

protestantism

Barth, Karl. Kirchliche Dogmatik. Munich: Kaiser, 1932–. Translated as Church Dogmatics, edited by G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance. Edinburgh: Clark, 1936–.

Calvin, John. Institutio Christianae Religionis. Basel, 1536. Critical ed. by P. Barth and W. Niesel. Munich, 1926. Translated by F. L. Battles as Institutes of the Christian Religion, edited by J. T. McNeill. 2 vols. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1961.

Luther, Martin. A Commentary on St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians. Edited and translated by Philip Watson. London, 1953.

Luther, Martin. Lectures on Romans. Translated by W. Pauck. London and Philadelphia, 1961.

Luther, Martin. Werke. 58 vols. Weimar, 1883–1948.

Schleiermacher, Friedrich. Der Christliche Glaube. Critical ed. by M. Redeker. Berlin, 1960. Translated as The Christian Faith, edited by H. R. Mackintosh and J. S. Stewart. Edinburgh, 1928; New York: Harper and Row, 1963.

Tillich, Paul. Systematic Theology. 3 vols. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951–1964.

eastern orthodoxy

Bulgakov, Sergei N. L'Orthodoxie. Paris, 1932. Translated by E. S. Cram as The Orthodox Church. London: Centenary Press, 1935.

Tsankov, Stefan. Das orthodoxe Christentum des Ostens. Berlin, 1928. Translated by D. A. Lowrie as The Eastern Orthodox Church. London, 1929.

Zernov, Nicholas. Eastern Christendom. New York: Putnam, 1961.

contemporary ecumenical movement

Bell, G. K. A., ed. Documents on Christian Unity. 4 vols. London, 1924–1958.

Neill, Stephen C., and R. Rouse, eds. A History of the Ecumenical Movement, 1517–1948. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1954.

creation

Gilkey, Langdon B. Maker of Heaven and Earth. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1959.

the person of christ

Baillie, D. M. God Was in Christ. London and New York: Scribners, 1948.

Hendry, G. S. The Gospel of the Incarnation. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1958.

Knox, John. Jesus: Lord and Christ. New York: Harper, 1958.

Mackintosh, H. R. The Doctrine of the Person of Jesus Christ. London and New York: Scribners, 1912.

Pittenger, W. Norman. The Word Incarnate. New York: Harper, 1959.

atonement

Anselm. Cur Deus Homo?, edited by F. S. Schmitt. Bonn, 1929. Also in Opera Omnia, edited by F. S. Schmitt, Vol. II. Anonymous translation in Ancient and Modern Library of Theological Literature. London, 1889. "Satisfaction" theory.

Aulen, Gustaf. Christus Victor. Translated by A. G. Hebert. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1931. "Christus Victor" theory.

Denney, James. The Christian Doctrine of Reconciliation. London: George H. Doran, 1918. "Penal-substitutionary" theory.

Mozley, J. K. The Doctrine of the Atonement. New York: Scribners, 1916. Historical.

Rashdall, Hastings. The Idea of Atonement in Christian Theology. London: Macmillan, 1919. "Moral influence" theory.

trinity

Franks, R. S. The Doctrine of the Trinity. London: Duckworth, 1953. Historical.

Hodgson, Leonard. The Doctrine of the Trinity. London: Nisbet, 1943.

Welch, Claude. In His Name. New York, 1952. Welch and Hodgson represent the two types of theory described in this entry.

eschatology

Althaus, Paul. Die letzten Dinge. 4th ed. Gütersloh, 1933.

Cullmann, Oscar. Christus und die Zeit. Zürich, 1946. Translated by F. V. Filson as Christ and Time. Philadelphia, 1950; rev. ed., London, 1962.

Hügel, F. von. Eternal Life. Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1912.

christianity and other religions

Farmer, H. H. Revelation and Religion. London: Nisbet, 1954.

Kraemer, H. Religion and the Christian Faith. London: Lutterworth Press, 1956.

other recommended titles

Beaty, Michael, ed. Christian Theism and the Problems of Philosophy. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990.

Feenstra, Ronald, and Cornelius Plantinga Jr., eds. Trinity, Incarnation, and Atonement. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989.

Flint, Thomas, ed. Christian Philosophy. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990.

Morris, Thomas. The Logic of God Incarnate. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986.

Murray, Michael, ed. Reason for the Hope Within. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999.

Padgett, Alan, ed. Reason and the Christian Religion: Essays in Honour of Richard Swinburne. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994.

Plantinga, Alvin. Warranted Christian Belief. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Swinburne, Richard. The Christian God. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994.

Swinburne, Richard. Responsibility and Atonement. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989.

Swinburne, Richard. The Resurrection of God Incarnate. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003.

Van Inwagen, Peter. God, Knowledge and Mystery: Essays in Philosophical Theology. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995.

Vesey, Godfrey, ed. The Philosophy in Christianity. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

White, Vernon. Atonement and Incarnation: An Essay in Universalism and Particularity. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

John Hick (1967)

Bibliography updated by Christian B. Miller (2005)