Religious Epistemology

Religious epistemology is the study of how subjects' religious beliefs might have, or fail to have, some form of positive epistemic status (such as knowledge, justification, warrant, rationality, etc.). The current debate is focused upon the kind of basis upon which a religious believer might rationally hold certain beliefs about God (whether God exists, what attributes God has, what God is doing, etc.). Engaging this issue are three groups of people who call themselves "fideists," "reformed epistemologists," and "evidentialists." Each group has a position, but the positions are not mutually exclusive in every case, and in the debate, the names better describe the groups' emphases rather than mutually exclusive positions in the debate. In this article, we will first give a brief historical survey of evidentialism, fideism, and reformed epistemology. Second, we will give the fideist's position. Third, we will give the evidentialist's position. Fourth, we will give the reformed epistemologist's position, and last, we will include some comments on the current state of the debate, where we will show that the groups' positions are not mutually exclusive.