Rev. Prof. Marcin Tkaczyk
Vice-rector for Research and Development of KUL
Head of the Departament of Logic of KUL
Laudation
[Behold him] who repaired the Temple during his lifetime
and in his day fortified the sanctuary.
He laid the foundations of double depth,
the high buttresses of the Temple precincts.
In his day the pool was excavated, a reservoir as huge as the sea.
Anxious to save the people from ruin,
he fortified the city against siege (Sir 50:1-4).
Richard Swinburne, born in 1934, is an Emeritus Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford. Since his early days he has considered the Christian faith, as well as the reason, the core elements in his life. This is why he planned his university education to help him better both understand and serve the religion. He completed undergraduate studies in philosophy and theology at the University of Oxford, and proceeded to postgraduate courses in the sciences, the philosophy of science and the history of science at the University of Leeds.
Richard Swinburne recognises the possibility for providing proper scientific and philosophical basis for the choice of the Christian faith, so the act of faith gets justified. He devoted a considerable part of his lifetime, including the whole of his academic career, to pursuing this objective. His findings have inspired the utmost respect, not only among those who share his views, but also from those who categorically oppose them.
From 1985 until his retirement in 2002, Richard Swinburne was Nol- loth Professor of the Philosophy of the Christian Religion at Oriel College (King's College). In line with its statutes, the chair is „toprovide lectures and education in the philosophy of Christianity, including apologetics, that is, to present the rationality and strength of Christianity, as well as the general promotion of studies exploring such issues at the University" (§ 1). Earlier, from 1963 to 1972, he was a lecturer at the University of Hull, and from 1972 to 1985, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Keele in Staffordshire. Since 1992, Richard Swinburne has been a Member of the British Academy. He has been a renowned lecturer, frequently invited to different countries, including such as Gifford Lecturer at the University of Aberdeen (1982-1984) and Stanisław Kamiński Lecturer at the Catholic University of Lublin (2002/2003).
Richard Swinburne has authored about twenty books and a number of papers in the philosophy of religion and the philosophy of science. His major works include a trilogy on the rational foundations of theism:
- The Coherence of Theism(1977),
- The Existence of God(1979),
- Faith and Reason(1981)
a series of books on the detailed theological arguments advocated by Christianity:
- Miracles(1989),
- Revelation: From Metaphor to Analogy(1991),
- The Christian God(1994),
- Providence and the Problem of Evil(1998),
- The Resurrection of God Incarnate(2003),
a series of anthropological books which explored the issues of the human soul and free will:
- The Evolution of the Soul(1986),
- Free Will and Modern Science(2011),
- Mind, Brain and Free Will(2013),
and popularising publications for a wider audience:
- Is There a God?(1996),
- Was Jesus God?(2008).
Swinburne's popularising publications, and in particular Is There a God?, which has been translated into 22 languages, have enjoyed immense success. In many circles, these works play an apologetic role that can hardly be overestimated, just as those by C.S. Lewis used to play in the past.
Swinburne himself considers The Existence of God to be his magnum opus, as it presents an original, comprehensive, and probabilistic justification for the existence of God, currently known as the cumulative argument. By departing from the proven vs. the unfounded dichotomy, and by reference to Bayes' theorem, Swinburne proposed inductive foundations for theism and its postulates. This approach is further supported by the conclusions drawn as part of the enhanced traditional arguments for the existence of God. The cumulative argument concludes with a statement that the thesis assuming the existence of God is objectively more likely to be supported than the one assuming the reverse.
Prior to providing this argument, Swinburne proposed in The Coherence of Theism that the semiotic basis for theism be considered in comprehensive terms by putting forward a revised version of the analogy theory as the basis for the semantics of statements about God. Since the times of David Hume, metaphysical and theological statements have been criticised not only as false, but also as meaningless. This type of criticism has grown stronger with the development of neo-positivism and the 20th- century philosophy of science. As a result, the leading logicians of the 20th century refrained from criticising metaphysics or theology because they considered these as not being worthy of being spoken out on. This trend was largely overcome by the works of Richard Swinburne, who has substantially contributed to making natural theology and the philosophy of religion the most rapidly developing areas of philosophy of our time.
In a number of his works, Richard Swinburne has admirably defended the key theses of classical natural theology and the revealed Christian theology, without making any reference to the act of faith, on the reve- labilia basis, while making creative contributions to their development and enhancement in methodological aspect. In some of his works, such as the latest Mind, Brain and Free Will, Richard Swinburne provides creative arguments in favour of classical anthropology, in particular the reality of free will and the substantiation of the human soul, considered in a fashion similar to St. Augustine's, its immortality and the resurrection of the body.
In order to integrate his philosophical and theological synthesis into contemporary science, Richard Swinburne had to overcome one of the strongest cultural trends - the trend followed since the early Enlightenment, or even the early Renaissance, where the philosophy of science was deliberately developed to exclude metaphysics and theology from the scientific discourse. Paradoxically, the Age of Reason limited rationality to natural sciences defined in a more and more narrow way, leaving the most important areas of human spiritual activity to blind instinct. The bankruptcy of this version of rationalism leads to the questioning of the significance of the reason in general, which is typical of postmodernism. While laying the groundwork for his philosophical and theological synthesis, Richard Swinburne proposed, and admirably championed, an original approach to the philosophy of science that was rooted in the classical tradition but equipped with the modern theory of induction. In his works, such as Epistemic Justification and Choosing between Confirmation Theories, he showed that the induction method could be applied to metaphysics and theology just as much as it could to the natural sciences. This is perhaps the most important achievement of Richard Swinburne. Indeed, it is he who deserves the credit for bringing fields such as the philosophy of religion and the philosophy of God back to the forefront of science. Richard Swinburne elevated them from being neglected with embarrassment as remnants of the Dark Ages to being part of a lively debate that generated tremendous excitement among leading scholars and a host of young students.
Richard Swinburne is a brilliant teacher. Even after he retired, he has continued to enjoy immense popularity among young people, who want to study under his guidance.
Richard Swinburne is well-known as a great friend of young people from Central and Eastern Europe. His personal involvement and efforts have allowed many of them to study at the University of Oxford, and, as students, they have continued to receive his generous support. He is also a friend of the Catholic University of Lublin, where he has stayed twice as a visiting lecturer. He is a member of the Academic Board of Annals of Philosophy at KUL.
It is only fair to say that Richard Swinburne has followed in the footsteps of grand scholastics, and especially Thomas Aquinas, to establish anew the modern natural theology, to lay the purely rational, scientific groundwork for Christianity. Through his shorter works, he popularised his findings to benefit the general public with academic interests. As a scholar, a populariser, a tireless academic teacher, and a role model, throughout his lifetime Richard Swinburne has continued to follow a programme he developed in his early days to set up a purely rational basis for theism, and for Christianity in particular, that is as advanced as possible but rooted in well-established tradition. Richard Swinburne is to be noted for his adherence to traditional theology, which he defends without referring to acts of faith, as opposed to various forms of liberal theology or the so-called demythologisation of Christianity.
Without doubt, he is one of the greatest minds of our times, and, at the same time, one whose contributions to the Church have been of substantial importance. By all means, he deserves to be granted the degree of Doctor Honoris Causa of the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin.
