Philosophy of Religion

The Coherence of Theism

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Richard Swinburne

1977

The Coherence of Theism is the first volume of Richard Swinburne's trilogy on the rationality of theistic belief, and arguably the most philosophically rigorous defence of classical theism written in the twentieth century. Swinburne's aim is prior to any argument for God's existence: he sets out to show that the claim "God exists" is logically coherent — that the traditional divine attributes (omnipotence, omniscience, perfect freedom, perfect goodness, necessary existence, eternity, incorporeality) form a consistent and intelligible set. Working in the tradition of analytic philosophy of religion, he subjects each attribute to careful conceptual analysis: what does it really mean to say God is omnipotent? Can he do the logically impossible? What is the relationship between divine timelessness and divine knowledge of future free actions? Swinburne's answers are detailed, clear, and highly influential — he defends a broadly personalist theism in which God is a maximally perfect personal being, and lays the foundations for his subsequent arguments that such a being's existence is probable.