The Center for Philosophy of Religion was established in the fall of 1976 in order to promote, support and disseminate scholarly work in philosophy of religion and Christian philosophy. The Center hopes to promote work concerned with the traditional topics and questions that fall under the rubric of the philosophy of religion: the theistic proofs, the rationality of belief in God, the problem of evil, the nature of religious language, and the like. At least as important, however, is the Center's effort to promote and encourage the development and exploration of specifically Christian and theistic philosophy, the sort of philosophy which takes Christianity (or, more broadly, theism) for granted and then proceeds to work on philosophical questions and problems from that perspective. Christian philosophy, thus conceived, involves defending the theistic perspective against the various sorts of attacks brought against it. It also includes criticism of contemporary philosophical culture from a Christian perspective; it includes a self-conscious attempt to consider the main philosophical topics and problems from this perspective, in order to discern and develop the implications (if any) of that perspective for those problems and topics; and it includes the attempt to achieve deeper understanding of the main contours and lineaments of the Christian faith.
Activities and Programs of the Center
As one of the world's leading Catholic institutions, the University of Notre Dame provides an ideal home for work in Christian philosophy. A school whose Christian commitment is unquestioned, it also boasts one of the country's strongest and most active Departments of Philosophy. Much of that strength and activity is focused upon those issues which the Center seeks to address: many of the department's faculty members work on such topics, and a large percentage of its graduate students come to Notre Dame primarily because of its reputation as the premier academic center for work in the philosophy of religion.
Fellowships
Every year, the Center offers a number of fellowships which allow scholars from other colleges and universities to spend either a semester or a year at Notre Dame participating in the Center's activities and pursuing their work in philosophy of religion and Christian philosophy. These fellowships are of four types.
The Alvin Plantinga Fellowship is intended to provide time for reflection and writing to those whose work is in the forefront of current research in the philosophy of religion and Christian philosophy.
The Frederick J. Crosson Fellowship is given to scholars who might not qualify for one of the fellowships described above but who would benefit from a year at the Center--for example, foreign scholars or those outside the field of philosophy.
Postdoctoral Fellowships are offered to those whose tenure at the Center would allow them to grow and make progress in the Center's areas of interest and subsequently disseminate and expand such work through their own teaching and writing.
Visiting Graduate Fellowships are awarded to philosophy graduate students from other institutions who are working on dissertations in philosophy of religion or Christian philosophy.
Colloquia
Each week, the members of the Center - i.e., the Fellows along with interested faculty members and graduate students from the Department of Philosophy - meet to discuss a paper on which one of the members is currently working. Such meetings, frequently lead to extended, lively and wide-ranging discussions of the issues involved, and serve to keep the members informed of one another's interests and views.
Conferences
A conference on the philosophy of religion is organized approximately every other year. Seven or eight prominent figures in the philosophy of religion (such as Marilyn McCord Adams, William Alston, Elizabeth Anscombe, Alan Donagan, Michael Dummett, Norman Kretzmann, Nelson Pike, James Ross, Richard Swinburne, Peter van Inwagen and Merold Westphal, to name but a few of our past participants) are invited to present original papers related to a particular topic. Topics for conferences have included evolution and religion, the nature of Christian philosophy, the relationship between philosophy and Scriptural studies, and the connections between a scientifically adequate epistemology and a religiously adequate one. In March, 1998, the Varieties of Dualism and the Prospects for Physicalism conference was held. Most recently, the "Intellectual Virtue: Perspectives from Ethics and Epistemology" conference (organized by Mike DePaul and Linda Zagzebski) was held on September 21 - 23, 2000. Speakers included Julia Annas, Jorge Garcia, John Greco, Chris Hookway, Alasdair MacIntyre, Bob Roberts& Jay Wood, Nancy Sherman, David Solomon, Ernest Sosa, and Linda Zagzebski.
Publications
The Center tries to ensure that the papers presented at its conferences are made available to the general philosophical community. A number of conference proceedings have been published by Notre Dame Press as part of its Notre Dame Studies in the Philosophy of Religion series. Works published to date in this series are: Rationality and Religious Belief (1980; Cornelius Delaney, ed.); The Autonomy of Religious Belief (1981; Frederick J. Crosson, ed.); The Existence and Nature of God (1983; Alfred J. Freddoso, ed.); Evolution and Creation (1985; Ernan McMullin, ed.); Philosophy and the Christian Faith (1988; Thomas V. Morris, ed.); Christian Philosophy (1990; Thomas P. Flint, ed.); and Hermes and Athena: Biblical Exegesis and Philosophical Theology (1993; Eleonore Stump and Thomas P. Flint, eds.). The papers from the conference on Philosophy of Mind (organized by Robert Audi and William Hasker, 1994) were published in a special issue of Faith and Philosophy, Vol. 12, No. 4, Oct. 1995.