Methodology

It seems natural to start by clarifying what is commonly meant by “faith” and “reason” since the two terms are so important themes in my thesis. At the very least, I must clarify what I here mean by these words. Both words are after all common and rather vague and

ambiguous in meaning.

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With “faith” I shall refer to the state and/or action of having great trust and confidence in something or someone, without sufficient evidence to talk about knowledge. In a religious setting, this naturally refers to having strong belief in something divine, like God. Yet I shall endeavour to keep God as much as possible out of this project, though I certainly cannot escape frequently mentioning the concept. However, it is those who believe in Him, while also in one way or another believing in the value of philosophy, that first and foremost interests me. Closely related, but less specific, than the concept of "faith" is the word

"belief". Simply put, belief means to deem it plausible that something exists or is true, without having iron-clad evidence that it is true. There is nothing specifically religious about belief, naturally, but there can be no religious faith or religion without a group of beliefs, that are supposed to be inherently coherent. In the case of (orthodox) Christianity, one is required to believe that Jesus was the Son of God, died for our sins, was resurrected and descended up into heaven, and that the rest of mankind may be saved by believing in him.

Each and one of these beliefs alone are quite a slim foundation for a faith, but together, they make it possible to establish a system of beliefs that together, when accepted as true, make it possible to form a religion, which is the basic requirement for having religious faith.

Since faith is built upon beliefs, not certainties, it follows that any faith also makes itself vulnerable to external scepticism and internal doubt. In the end, how to overcome these challenges is what this paper is about.

As for “reason”, we can define this as the cause of an event or situation or something which provides an explanation; though it is also the ability of a healthy mind to think and make judgements, especially based on testable facts. Closely connected to reason is the term

“rational”, that is, the ability to, and/or action of, showing clear thought and reason. For both terms, complete objectivity is the ideal when making decisions, we are to draw our conclusions from what logic and facts tells us, whether we like the eventual outcome or not.

Naturally, there is always a subjective agent that makes these supposedly objective

decisions, but the ideal is to suppress this as much as possible. However, we can also think it perfectly acceptable, perhaps even necessary, to make subjective rational choices to a subjective goal. Reason then becomes a means to an end, and this end may perfectly well be highly personal and idiosyncratic, or subjective. Any machine would do to illustrate this, putting them together is hopefully a rational endeavour, the goal of the construction is the

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highest possible level of efficiency, the purpose of the machine to create some sort of subjective pleasure for someone or something.

When planning this thesis, exploring Kierkegaard's religious beliefs was one of my first starting points. Kierkegaard was the father, or at least an extremely important precursor, of the philosophical theory/movement of existentialism, and his writings on the human

psyche, free will, despair and the finite versus infinity have ensured him a place amongst human history's greatest and most prominent philosophers. I have for a long time been fascinated with Kierkegaard's unique interpretation of the Christian faith, and his approach towards religious faith in particular. Kierkegaard is notable for dismissing and attacking the idea that true faith needs to be, should be, or even could be, defended by rational

argumentation. Faith is, in some sense at least, inherently different or separated from

reason and objective criteria.

In order to best explore and explain Kierkegaard's religious stance, I decided, in accordance with my mentor, to contrast Kierkegaard's view of faith with another Christian philosopher,

whose view and approach are distinctly different from Kierkegaard's.

The choice of Swinburne as Kierkegaard’s opponent in my projects is somewhat coincidental, as I do believe that there is a considerable number of present-day

theistic/Christian philosophers, like C.S. Lewis, Alvin Plantinga, William Lane Craig and John Lennox, that could also be used to argue for the same overall viewpoint: reason can and should play a role when we commit ourselves to faith. That is not to say that there are no philosophical and theological differences between these thinkers, there are and they are sometimes substantial. But I still feel confident in saying that they all heavily apply reason when defending and promulgating their versions of Christian faith. Nonetheless, I am confident that Richard Swinburne has also earned his place among them. And admittedly, his rather rigorous adherence to evidentialism and objective criteria makes him a clear-cut foil to Kierkegaard.

While Swinburne is a proud analytic philosopher, Kierkegaard is a philosopher of the more continental mould . It is notable that analytical philosophy seems popular with the famous Christian apologists of today, with some of the most prominent men in the field like William Lane Craig, John Lennox and Alvin Plantinga all being identified as a part of the discipline.

Analytic philosophy relies heavily on logic, and treats philosophical projects and themes as a

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collective undertaking, with a direct or indirect cooperation between philosophers that rely on each other's reasoning and ideas, sometimes agreeing with each other, sometimes

modifying and adapting ideas, and again sometimes rejecting ideas as logically unsound.

By contrast, it is undoubtedly so that Kierkegaard follows the continental, perhaps the more traditional, approach in treating philosophy as an individual project, worked out and done by men in solitude. And indeed, the ultimate isolation of the individual is an important element of Kierkegaard's thinking.

While Kierkegaard and Swinburne are my main focus, I have during this work also used/consulted other philosophers and their works where I have deemed that useful in understanding and expanding on relevant philosophical topics and terms. While Swinburne and Kierkegaard are my main focus, it is also true that they are representatives for larger discourses, in that the question of how to approach and treat religious faith in a

philosophical context is an old question, and one that is still fiercely debated. That is not to say that there is not a fundamental difference between them or their thinking, however.

Kierkegaard’s Christianity is an explicit rejection of objective truths as a guiding light

towards God, Swinburne sees objective truth as the essential tool we have in attempting to comprehend God. This means that their starting points are rather different, and we can categorize it as fideism, where we can find Kierkegaard, and epistemic heroism, where Richard Swinburne may be placed. We shall briefly consider the meaning and implications of said terms.