Saints as Divine Evidence

Robert MacSwain is Associate Professor of Theology at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. He is the author of Solved by Sacrifice: Austin Farrer, Fideism, and the Evidence of Faith (Peeters, 2013) and Essays Anglican and Analytic: Explorations in Critical Catholicism (Eerdmans, 2025). He has also edited or co-edited seven books, including The Cambridge Companion to C. S. Lewis (2010). An Anglican priest of the Oratory of the Good Shepherd, his research has been supported by the Episcopal Church Foundation, the Appalachian College Association, and the Templeton Religion Trust.

'This book asks afresh what are the 'evidences' for God's existence, and answers that question with painstaking attention to the often-neglected issue of the manifest holiness of the saints. Readers will find here not only an illuminating orientation to the current state of play in analytic philosophy of religion in general, but a creative stretching of its usual boundaries to include considerations of affective, moral, and spiritual efficacy. This is a book of unusual insight and suggestive theological discernment.' Sarah Coakley, FBA, Norris-Hulse Professor of Divinity, emerita, University of Cambridge

• Part I. Evidence: 1. Evidence, entitlement, and religious belief; 2. Aristocratic evidence?; Part II. Sainthood: 3. Defining saints-philosophy of religion, ethics, christian theology; 4. Defining saints-church history, comparative religion, cultural studies; Part III. The Hagiological Argument-Three Versions: 5. Propositional; 6. Perceptual; 7. Performative; Conclusion; Select bibliography; Index.