The papers contained in this volume were presented at a
conference entitled “Philosophical Theology and the Christian Tradition:
Russian and Western Perspectives” held at Moscow State University,
June 1-3, 2010. The conference was sponsored jointly by the Philosophy
Department of Moscow State University, the Institute of Philosophy of
the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Biblical-Theological Commission
of the Moscow Patriarchate, and the Society of Christian Philosophers,
with the generous support of a grant from the John Templeton
Foundation. It was the seventh in a series of joint Anglo-
American/Russian conferences on various topics organized by the
Society of Christian Philosophers. The proceedings have also been
published in Russian in Philosophy of Religion: An Almanac 2010-2011,
ed. Vladimir K. Shokhin (Moscow: Vostochnaya Literatura Publishers,
2011).
The papers have been arranged here in broadly chronological
order, beginning with methodological issues, continuing through the
Biblical, patristic, and medieval eras, and concluding with modern
thought. The opening paper is by Vladimir Shokhin, who offers a
probing examination of the boundaries of philosophy of religion in
relation to various forms of “rational theology” such as natural theology
and philosophical theology. Shokhin argues for the importance of
recognizing philosophy of religion as a discipline distinct from rational
theology in all of its forms, however important the latter may be. After
this methodological preface, the contribution by Richard Swinburne
provides a case study in the careful analytic assessment of a Biblical
concept, that of atonement. Swinburne argues that the atonement of
Christ consists in offering a perfect human life to God as reparation for
sin, a reparation that believers can appropriate and offer as their own
through prayer, baptism, and partaking of the Eucharist. Swinburne also
critiques several alternative ways of understanding the atonement, such
as that it is a restoration of human nature, a ransom offered to the devil,
or a form of penal substitution.