As an introduction to the philosophy of religion this book has four unique features: the first is that it is ‘historical, but not chronological’ (viii). By this Linda Zagzebski means to draw attention to ancient, mediaeval, and modern sources and contributions to current debates. Were it chronological, she might have had chapters on ancient Greek, Hellenistic, early Christian, medieval Christian, early modern, and contemporary philosophy of religion. Instead, for many of the problems she examines, she traces their history to early sources, explains what motivated the thoughts and arguments, and then follows the history through classical versions of those arguments up to recent versions. A second unique feature is that she gives attention to the role of emotions in addressing many of the problems she examines. A third is that she draws on previously published views and arguments of hers (for example, her work on freedom and foreknowledge, on virtue epistemology, and on divine motivation theory). A fourth is that she incorporates and develops some of her current work on self-trust and religious diversity.

In chapter 1 Zagzebski addresses three background issues. First, she describes what religion is, what philosophy is, and the early development of the philosophy of religion. Her account of religion: ‘a complex human practice involving distinctive emotions, acts, beliefs’ which serve to ‘express and foster a sense of the sacred’ (2). On her account, emotions seem to take primacy over acts (rituals, symbols, sacraments) and beliefs (both credal expressions and cognitive commitments). However, what typically have seemed to interest philosophers are beliefs and doctrines. On philosophy, she points out two obvious, important, but often neglected features of the rise of philosophy that are relevant to the philosophy of religion. The great minds of ancient India, Persia, China, Israel, were all religious thinkers but in Greece the great minds were philosophers. Also, Greek religion, unlike other ancient religions, was not concerned ‘to answer ultimate questions about the origin of the universe and human fate’ (10); it was left to the Greek philosophers to address those questions. Second, she discusses the concept of God, and the origins and development of monotheism. Here she claims it is ‘doubtful that philosophy of religion would exist were it not for the monotheistic religions’ (19). Third, she identifies potential conflicts and discomforts that can arise from the drive for truth motivated by philosophy and the drive for the sense of the sacred motivated by religion.

She begins chapter 2 by proposing the audience-types (atheists, agnostics, or believers) to whom theistic arguments might be aimed. The classic formulations were constructed for the believer seeking understanding. Too often, it seems to me, philosophers evaluate theistic arguments abstracted from a sense of audience, perhaps making theistic arguments easy targets for unfair or simplified critiques. Attentive to their audience, Zagzebski then discusses teleological, cosmological, and ontological arguments – both historical and contemporary versions. She concludes the chapter by examining various links among the arguments (Do all reduce to the ontological? Is there a cumulative case to be made?), wondering if an undue focus on theistic belief and argument tends to ignore the emotions. On her view of the structure of religious practice, beliefs are not more basic than emotions, and emotions may be paths to truth, especially ‘truths that can be expressed inadequately or in a distorted fashion by ordinary beliefs’ (54). This view makes an appearance in almost every chapter.

In chapter 3 she considers the merits and demerits of pragmatist and fideist approaches to justification of religious belief. Zagzebski points out that seventeenth-century Catholic theologians began using theistic arguments to try to convince atheist critics – without, one should note, much success. Both sides accepted three assumptions about justification: ‘(1) the justification for the practice of religion rests upon the justification of religious beliefs, (2) the justification of religious beliefs rests upon the justification of theism, (3) the justification of theism requires demonstration by argument whose premises are accessible to any normal, intelligent person, including the religious skeptic’ (56). Pragmatist and fideist approaches arose in response to these assumptions. Pascal rejected the first assumption, Kierkegaard the second, and Wittgenstein the third.

In chapter 4, Zagzebski examines various issues that arise concerning the nature and character of God. She addresses whether or not the divine essence might be completely unavailable to our comprehension. She explores a handful of the puzzles that arise out of reasoned examination of the traditional attributes of timelessness, perfect goodness, omnipotence, and omniscience. She considers various theories about what it means to say that God is a person (and the challenge of just what it is to say of any being that it is a person).

In chapter 5, Zagzebski considers puzzles of fate, freedom, and foreknowledge which arise from consideration of divine timelessness and omniscience. She begins with a short history of the concept of fate in ancient Greek and Jewish thought, and identifies two concepts of a fated event: (a) where an event will ‘happen no matter what anybody does beforehand’ (102); (b) where an event will ‘happen, given the events that precede it, but it is not possible that those events do not occur’ (104). This seems like a distinction without a difference. However, she argues that on the former notion of fate, ‘all causal paths lead to it’, while on the latter ‘only one (or a small number) of paths lead to it, but no paths that do not lead to it are possible paths’ (104). The latter sort of fate is compatible with free choice. Yet it is still a problem, as Zagzebski argues in the rest of the chapter: one's eternal destiny seems as much out of one's control whether one thinks matters are more like the former than the latter sort of fate. She examines the main solutions offered, historically, for theological fatalism. She concludes the chapter by considering a few recent arguments that seek to undermine acceptance of determinism.

In chapter 6, she sorts out three distinct questions that an enquirer might have in mind when wondering about whether morality needs religion. Does morality need religion ‘(1) to provide the goal of the moral life, (2) to provide the motive to be moral, (3) to provide morality with its foundation and justification’ (122)? Having sorted the questions this way, she can address the issues and avoid talking at cross-purposes – all too common in popular discussions of whether morality needs religion.

In chapter 7, Zagzebski addresses the problem of evil. She distinguishes the logical and the evidential problems of evil from the experiential problem, but does not divorce the two. She shows how sensitivity to the experiential problem can inform and guide construction of responses to the philosophical problems of evil.

In chapter 8, she addresses four topics: whether or in what sense death is bad; respects in which various theories of personal identity impact what we could think about immortality; some arguments for life after death; and how a doctrine of the afterlife relates to the problem of evil. Regarding personal identity, Zagzebski proposes a modified Thomistic theory according to which each human is a form-matter composite, and the form (or soul) each individual has is a particular unique to that individual. My form (soul) can exist apart from my matter (body), but does so in a defective state since it needs my body (especially my sense organs) to have experience and acquire knowledge. Whatever collection of matter that my form informs is always my body. Thus a resurrected body, whatever matter composes it, would be my body so long as it is informed by my unique particular soul. Likely that body would look and act much like I do now, or did during my lifetime, just because it is informed by my soul. Pedagogically speaking, it seems to me a clearly expressed and accessible account for students.

In chapter 9, ‘The problem of religious diversity,’ she begins with a brief historical account, arguing that while diversity of religion has a very long history, its being a problem is quite young – a post-Enlightenment problem. She discusses and distinguishes various conceptions of exclusivism and inclusivism as they relate to religious diversity. She discusses and criticizes Hick's pluralist views. She develops some issues in epistemology and applies them to religious pluralism to address how one can maintain strong conviction about one's religious beliefs, emotions, and practices in the face of religious diversity. Here too, as in some other chapters, she places high value on emotions and their outputs. In particular, her newer work on self-trust is applied to considering how one can be justified in holding with conviction religious beliefs in the face of religious diversity.

In chapter 10, the final chapter, Zagzebski addresses faith and reason issues. She clarifies that the alleged conflict between faith and reason is the potential conflict between sources of belief, more specifically between revelation and reason (where ‘reason’ is broadly understood to include observation and inference). Such a conflict is not unique to religious believing, for often we consider conflicts between sources of belief: say between unaided observation and what physicists tell me about properties of tables, or between memory and testimony (when my sisters tell my children stories about me, which stories don't fit with my memory). In that regard, the conflict over sources of belief leads directly to concerns about the ethics of belief: believing rightly. She traces views on faith and reason from Philo of Alexandria to Hume. When she examines the ethics of belief, she shows how trust plays a central role in believing rightly, since so many of our beliefs are acquired by testimony, and to accept testimony requires trusting the testifier (while time, energy, or ability prevent us from evaluating the testifier). Believing rightly, on her view, is not so much the Cliffordian notion of sufficient evidence as it is of having intellectual virtues guide one's believing.

I find her thoughts on religious diversity interesting but problematic. In several of the other chapters, Zagzebski draws, where appropriate, on her previously published views and arguments (for examples, her work on freedom and foreknowledge, on virtue epistemology, on divine motivation theory). It is in chapter 9 that she does more new philosophical work than in other chapters. It is for this reason that I focus my criticisms here.

First, she gives the impression that the problem of religious diversity is a uniquely contemporary one. She says: ‘Before the modern era in the West, the multiplicity of religions was not perceived as a problem for participation in a particular religion’ (190). Our time is not the first time in history when various diverse religions have existed side by side in cities and cultures, raising problems for the cities and cultures. For example, in China at different times there were clearly identified Buddhist, Confucian, Taoist, Nestorian Christian, Manichean, and Muslim groups – all recognized as different religions by the average person and by the government. These groups probably understood more or less about each other's religious beliefs depending on their extent of interaction. There were some conversions across lines; but they were generally rare (similar to our own day). Even though we may not know how those religiously diverse Chinese addressed the problems that the diversity posed, I think that the claims that we now live in a global community and now have to face a problem of religious diversity is culturally and historically myopic, coming out of European Christendom notions. Even America has been less mono-religious than people often assume. If there is a difference in America (or Europe) now, it might be that a century or two ago Americans and Europeans were aware of different people and their religions, people they traded with and interacted with in other ways, having religious views very different from theirs. Now, we have better understanding, seeing how those other religions make sense of the world for their adherents. We also see that many other religious communities function well and civilly together. Thus there is a heightened sensitivity to diversity.

Second, she holds that in order for diversity of religions to become a problem, religion has to be seen just as a set of beliefs that one can choose over other sets of beliefs (190). Such, I say, is an impoverished notion of religion. Surely religious diversity was a problem at other times and in other places even when others did not reduce the religions to their doctrinal features. Surely then, as now, few people approach the diversity of religions as if in a supermarket having to make a decision; the vast majority then were and now are enculturated toward certain sets of belief or non-belief. Rather, the way I think she should be put is that in the modern West, we face a distinct sort of problem of religious diversity. Namely, when religion ceased to be seen as ‘a complex human practice involving distinctive emotions, acts, beliefs’ which serve to ‘express and foster a sense of the sacred’ (2), but instead come came to be seen as sets of beliefs an autonomous individual freely chooses and adopts – or not – and when particular religions are promoted as a set of beliefs to which one can convert, then diversity of religions becomes a distinct sort of problem. This is close to what Zagzebski is arguing, but not exactly. And the difference is important.

It seems to me that one popular solution to the problem of religious diversity that arises out of the notion of religion as simply belief-sets is to remain Pyrrhoically sceptical – to withhold assent to beliefs about religious matters. Withholding belief likely prevents you from ever being wrong. In some respects, refusing to have beliefs about important issues can exhibit a kind of intellectual shallowness. But there is another kind of shallowness. It is not hard to imagine us moderns, when challenged about our religion, to respond ‘these are my beliefs’, as if our beliefs are a private matter that have no public consequences. (I wish I could recall the distinct case, but I recall a politician being asked about her or his religious beliefs, and part of the response was along the lines ‘but I won't let them guide my public decisions’.) Religious beliefs for us moderns are like novelties we collect, put on a shelf, and show our friends to entertain them after dinner. So suppose that in order to avoid intellectual lassitude, we hold with some conviction various religious beliefs which inform and are informed by emotions in such a way as to guide our actions. That, in itself, will not motivate for us a problem of religious diversity. It arises when we are confronted with people we care about who – conscientiously, with conviction and integrated into a seemingly coherent practice – have religious beliefs, emotions, and actions, but ones much different from ours. Now we have a problem to be addressed. And on that problem, I think that Zagzebski's thoughts about the role of self-trust are helpful and interesting.

Third, it seems to me that she should have addressed this problem by arguing that such a view of religion, reduced to doctrinal content, is woefully impoverished in addition to being just plain wrong. That is to say, she should have drawn upon her resources from the book's first chapter. On an impoverished view of religion, the contemporary problem of religious diversity arises. Namely, faced with religion as a choice, one now has to reflect upon the grounds of choice and deliberate about whether this or that religion is the right one (or to be current, right for me). And when multiple religions have competing doctrines about the nature of the deity, or proper practices, or the summum bonum, or how to acquire the summum bonum, one is now confronted with a distinct problem of religious diversity. Instead of thinking that it is unusual people who are thousands of miles away who have unusual religious views, we find our neighbours, friendly and apparently quite normal, holding very different religious beliefs from our own. And we can begin to wonder what makes our religious beliefs special or superior? Should I consider myself epistemically privileged? Or am I epistemically biased or myopic? However, I claim, this is a problem that can be avoided with a less impoverished notion of what religion is, the richer notion she identified at the beginning of the book. That richer notion may lead to some problems of religious diversity, but I think Zagzebski's explorations of the role of self-trust, toward the end of chapter 9, can be developed to address those problems.

As a textbook: (A) I am not confident that this could serve as the sole textbook for a philosophy of religion course. Most teachers of philosophy of religion want students working over the primary texts. Zagzebski refers to the primary sources, and provides limited quotes from them. The book could serve as a supplement to the primary readings. (B) I'm not sure this could be used in a beginners' course. But two of my friends who teach introductory philosophy of religion have told me that they are considering it. (C) Still, I think it can be a good book for teachers, especially those who have developed their interests in philosophy of religion out of philosophical interests in epistemology or metaphysics or mind. (D) For those who have developed their interests in philosophy of religion from an historical perspective, the book is a thoughtful and philosophically interesting reminder of some of those matters. (E) It is well suited for teachers of philosophy of religion, graduate students, and strongly interested amateurs (including divinity school students and faculty, and ministers).