Richard Swinburne’s contribution to Christian philosophy has been immense. Swinburne studied at the University of Oxford, and spent around a decade each lecturing at the University of Hull and the University of Keele, before returning to Oxford to become Nolloth Professor of the Philosophy of the Christian Religion from 1985 to his retirement in 2002. During this time he produced a series of influential works, without doubt changing the face of the philosophy of religion.
His first three booksâ€”The Coherence of Theism, The Existence of God, and Faith and Reasonâ€”comprised a trilogy. The first installment argued for the possibility of God’s existence, the second for the probability of God’s existence, and the third applied this to the matter of religious faith. The pivotal second work he later reworked into the rather more accessible Is There a God?
Swinburne’s other works include a tetralogy on philosophical theology, consisting of Responsibility and Atonement, Revelation, The Christian God, and Providence and the Problem of Evil, and a study of the mind-body problem, The Evolution of the Soul. He has also worked outside the philosophy of religion, writing Personal Identity, and Epistemic Justification. More recently, in his The Resurrection of God Incarnate, he used Bayes‘ theorem to argue that the historicity of Jesus‘ resurrection can be established with 97% certainty.