Last year saw the publication of the two-volume Bloomsbury series on Idealism and Christianity, for which I was chief editor. My co-editors (Steve Cowan, Joshua Farris and Mark Hamilton) on the two volumes happily discovered that there is no shortage of Christian scholars today who espouse the idealist perspective, which
affirms that the physical world is entirely dependent on a conscious Mind (also known as “God”) or, otherwise put, consciousness is most real and the physical world is essentially divine ideas made public (i.e., perceivable by finite minds).
So far, our volumes have created just the sorts of conversations we intended to stimulate. In fact, one of our colleagues—Chad Meister, Philosophy professor at Bethel University—recently informed us that he has “converted” to Berkeleyan idealism. And many others are intrigued and attracted to idealism for a variety of reasons.
So these are exciting days for idealism (also known as “immaterialism”). So much so that I was commissioned to write an article for Philosophy Compass on idealism and Christian philosophy. Last week the article was published, and you can access it here. As I note in the abstract, my essay “provides an overview of some of the ways Christian philosophers have deployed immaterialism to solve problems and generate insights in metaphysics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, philosophy of religion, and philosophical theology.” Indeed, the explanatory power of idealism is formidable and is its most convincing feature. That is, at least in my judgment. Perhaps my article will be of some help to you as you look into it yourself.
In the book—which is actually so short as to be more like a lengthy pamphlet—I review several of the major contributions that Christian philosophers (such as Alvin Plantinga, Richard Swinburne, Marilyn McCord Adams, William Alston, Linda Zagzebski, Robert Roberts, and William Lane Craig, to name just a few) have made to the field. These thinkers have profoundly impacted contemporary philosophy, not just in philosophy of religion but also in epistemology, ethics and other sub-fields of the discipline. Their work also powerfully demonstrates how real wisdom can be gleaned from careful, Christ-centered philosophical exploration into ultimate questions. So if you’ve never done much reading in philosophy or are curious about what it means to do “Christian philosophy,” I invite you to check it out. Just please don’t ask me why the publisher put Karl Marx on the cover. Some questions are beyond my pay grade even as an academic philosopher.