John De Rosa has just released a new episode of his excellent "Classical Theism Podcast", on which I had previously appeared to talk about my doctoral thesis on Catholicism and Reformed epistemology.
In this week's episode, John kindly interviewed me about a paper of mine which is forthcoming in Religious Studies: "Is Catholic faith worth having?". In the paper, I respond to some recent work by Jonathan Kvanvig (particularly his Faith and Humility (OUP, 2018)) which argues that Christians should not hold that salvific faith necessarily involves belief in God's existence or in revealed doctrine, because these latter beliefs are not especially morally valuable or otherwise obviously necessary for salvation.
In a nutshell, I try to show why -- on both Protestant and Catholic accounts -- Kvanvig's argument fails. I defend what I call the "Catholic Analysis of Faith": the claim, traditionally embraced by Christians of many denominations, that salvific faith partly consists in propositional assent to divine revelation (at least for those in a position to responsibly believe the latter).
My most novel claim is that in believing divine testimony responsibly -- and out of love for God -- Christians can honour God as a knowledgable and sincere testifier. Thus (responsible and well-intentioned) belief in divine testimony honours God as a testifier, exercising the virtue of testimonial justice towards Him.
As readers may know, I borrow this language of "testimonial justice" from the work of the feminist philosopher, Miranda Fricker. Of course, I don't always agree with what feminist philosophers write -- although I can't boast a great familiarity with their work! But I hope that, even if my paper's argument is unpersuasive, it might provide evidence that orthodox Christian philosophers and theologians might have benefit from engaging with feminist philosophy.
So, if you're interested in hearing me talk about the paper, do tune in to the episode here, or otherwise listen to some of the other (more!) interesting episodes which John has put together, such as last week's interview with Fr James Brent.
Comments