Any survey of contemporary philosophy of religion would need to take note of work by these and other analytical writers, and observe the fact that as well as bringing great skill to the subject, they re-animated it with new techniques and approaches, including the development of distinctive theories of knowledge and modality. In this connection Alvin Plantinga and Richard Swinburne deserve special mention. The first deployed possible world metaphysics on behalf of the ontological argument and in defence of theism against the problem of evil; and then fashioned accounts of basic belief and its warrant that brought comfort to theists and discomfort to atheists who presumed that religious belief was intrinsically irrational. Swinburne applied the philosophy of probability to inductive reasoning about the origins of the cosmos and the patterns of its operation; and next provided systematic defences of Christian theological concepts. Thanks to the efforts of these and others, the defensiveness, dreariness, dullness and near agnosticism characteristic of most philosophy of religion in the post-war years came steadily to be replaced by confident, imaginative and lively writings, typically authored by practising Christians (though with distinguished contributions from non-Christian theists, agnostics and atheists).
That was all to the good, but in view of the evidently bullish confidence of some analytical philosophers of religion it may be worth striking a cautionary note. Whereas it was once common for those entering higher education to have a reasonable level of religious knowledge, and often some religious formation, be it conventional and minimalist, that has changed considerably. In consequence, rising generations of able philosophers are now less likely to be engaged by religious questions. At the same time there is a general intellectual scepticism about the plausibility and even the intelligibility of large-scale, comprehensive conceptions or explanations of the human condition. In an age in which relativisms and special interests have fragmented intellectual culture producing a plurality of ‘micro-stories’, the very idea of the ‘meta-narrative’ has been ‘problematised’. In consequence of this and of the previous point, philosophy of religion may soon face something of a struggle. Cultural theory is happier to engage its nominal subject matter than it once was, but it does so in ways that are broadly sociological rather than analytical; being concerned with causes, conditions and contexts more than with rational content and argumentation.
(J. J. Haldane, "Further Reflections on Theism for the Second Edition," chap. 6 in Atheism and Theism, 2d ed., by J. J. C. Smart and J. J. Haldane, Great Debates in Philosophy, ed. Ernest Sosa [Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2003], 221-50, at 222-3)
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 