Religious Faith and Intellectual Virtue - Hardcover

This collection of essays gathers together diverse definitions of religious faith and intellectual virtue, as its contributors are both theists and atheists ... the questions this volume raises themselves cause the reader who is also an educator to reflect critically on the cultivation of intellectual virtues (or lack thereof) in his or her own classrooma humbling and fruitful form of self-examination in itself. (International Journal of Christianity & Education)

This collection of new philosophical essays explores the connections among the concepts of religious faith (in most cases, Christian faith), trust, testimony, knowledge, rationality, disagreement and virtue(s). The authors are well-known practitioners of philosophical epistemology or philosophy of religion. Some are highly sympathetic to Christianity and others are in varying degrees critical of religious faith. (Robert C. Roberts, Scottish Journal of Theology)

Is religious faith consistent with being an intellectually virtuous thinker?
In seeking to answer this question, one quickly finds others, each of which has been the focus of recent renewed attention by epistemologists: What is it to be an intellectually virtuous thinker? Must all reasonable belief be grounded in public evidence? Under what circumstances is a person rationally justified in believing something on trust, on the testimony of another, or because of the conclusions drawn by an intellectual authority? Can it be reasonable to hold a belief on a topic over which there is significant, entrenched disagreement among informed inquirers, or should such disagreement lead all parties to modify or suspend their own judgments? Is there anything about faith that exempts it from measurement against such epistemic norms? And if we would so evaluate it, how exactly should we understand the intellectual commitments faith requires?
The volume's introduction provides a roadmap of the central issues and controversies as currently discussed by philosophers. In fourteen new essays written to engage nonspecialists as well as philosophers working in religion and epistemology, a diverse and distinguished group of thinkers then consider the place of intellectual virtue in religious faith, exploring one or more of the specific issues noted above.