Faith, Reason, and Compassion

What is the relationship between faith and reason? How should faith and reason situate themselves in relation to each other? These are the chief questions that James Gilman seeks to address in Faith, Reason, and Compassion: A Philosophy of the Christian Faith. An innovative new book in philosophy of religion, it treats the problems typical of the discipline in an untypical way, with a methodology that presupposes a particular religious tradition, in this case Christianity, and that reenfranchises emotions (e.g., compassion) as crucial to shaping solutions to philosophical problems. Developing a methodology on the basis of three principles: the principle of symmetry, asymmetry, and supersymmetry, Gilman confiscates these three terms from physics and deploys them collectively as a metaphor in service to a method whereby the problems belonging to philosophy of religion can be critically and constructively treated. While ideal for courses in philosophy of religion, this book stretches across disciplines and is also ideal for use in Christian ethics and theology courses.