10 Thoughtful Religious Philosophy Books

Lawrence Durrell’s unique upbringing, born in India to British parents before living in France and Greece, allowed him to absorb different cultures, traditions, spirituality, and philosophy from both the East and West. This meeting of ideals across hemispheres was further developed with Durrell’s friendship with Jolan Chang, a Taoist philosopher and expert on Eastern sexuality. Although Durrell was primarily known for his novels, this memoir details his philosophical and spiritual journey, coming to understand Taoism through everything from cooking to Yoga to Tibetan temple visits.

The Mind That is Catholic is a collection of over 50 years of thought from James V. Schall, an author and essayist who speaks on topics from war to philosophy to politics to everyday life. The collection focuses on the “Catholic mind” at its best: recognizing the relation of the solidity of reason to the “definite facts” of revelation, of seeing the whole and leaving nothing out. Reason and revelation belong together in a symbiotic relationship: they both profit from the other. This contemplative book comes from the mind of a political philosophy professor and Renaissance man to investigate the “Catholic mind” on a variety of topics, not just limited to the theological.

Albert Schweitzer was a famous theologian and philosopher, known for his medical missionary work in West Africa that led to a Nobel Peace Prize. The Essence of Faith sees Schweitzer using the ideas of Emmanuel Kant as a background to explorations on ideas of religion and metaphysics. The result is a meditation on God, faith, and the limits of human understanding, serving as a great entry point into Schweitzer’s theology and philosophy while also demonstrating an original approach to Kant’s writing, all within a brisk 128 pages.

Philosopher and professor Jude P. Dougherty looks at religion from the perspective of philosophy by studying authors and thinkers from different eras of history. Beginning with the greatest minds of Antiquity such as Socrates and Cicero, Dougherty then focuses on Middle Ages philosophers such as Thomas Aquinas, examining the logic of religion before and after the development of Christianity.

The book then continues its journey through history by discussing the works of Hume, Kant, and Hegel, as well as taking a look at Freud’s negative assessments of religion. The result is an examination of centuries of thought on belief, worship, theology, and community.

This book tackles a long-asked philosophical question: does the existence of evil refute God? If evil and God are compatible, is it reasonable to believe in God? Howard-Snyder lays out five classic statements from theologians and philosophers, along with 11 essays in dialogue with these thoughts. Howard-Snyder focuses on two versions of the argument: that God has no reason to permit horrors and suffering both specific and general, and that pleasure and pain’s explanations rely on biology rather than theism.

Erlewine takes the work of five Jewish philosophers and brings them into dialogue, emphasizing the place of Jews in German and European culture and contextualizing Jewish philosophy as part of Western culture. By clarifying the cultural meaning of Judaism when others seek to expel its influence, Erlewine offers insight into how Jewish philosophers used their religion to assert their individuality and modernity.

Mathematician Amir Aczel seeks to refute atheist claims by providing an explanation of how science still leaves room for divine beings, and how beliefs in God and empirical science do not have to be mutually exclusive. Aczel challenges contemporary philosophers and thinkers who claim that modern science refutes the existence of God, along with theories on the universe’s creation and evolution not being a suitable explanation for the complexities of life. Aczel further argues that the scientific breakthroughs of Einstein and Darwin not only leave the possibility of a God open, but make it a strong likelihood.

Science is something deeply human and essential to our species, argues Polanyi in his book that was initially controversial when it debuted in 1946. He says that science is a community of thinkers bound by the same faith, a self-imposed discipline in the search of absolute truth. The existence of an objective, impersonal truth, and its ability to be unearthed by man, is the core tenet of this “faith” of science.

This book examines the relationship between law and the divine that goes well beyond images of Moses and the Commandments. In fact, the connection goes beyond Judeo-Christianity, as Brague goes back three millennia to look at the source of divine law in prehistoric religions, and following that thread until modernity. The Law of God seeks to address modern separation of law and divinity and what this disconnection means for today’s world.

How can the seemingly separate roles of philosopher, worshiper, and feminist merge? By committing to one of these ideals, does it exclude the other two? Philosophy seems antagonistic to religious faith; religious faith tends to stand against feminism; feminism seems at odds with the male-dominated fields of philosophy and religion. Groenhout and Bower manage to balance the three, and write about their lives as well as the lives of other women across a variety of beliefs, detailing their struggles and successes in being faithful, philosophical feminists.