Jump to ContentJump to Main Navigation
Faith and Reason$
Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content.

Richard Swinburne

Print publication date: 1984

Print ISBN-13: 9780198247258

Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2003

DOI: 10.1093/0198247257.001.0001

The Purpose of Religion

Chapter:
(p. 125 ) 5 The Purpose of Religion
Source:
Faith and Reason
Author(s):

Richard Swinburne (Contributor Webpage)

Publisher:
Oxford University Press
DOI:10.1093/0198247257.003.0006

The purposes of the practice of a religion are to achieve the goals of salvation for oneself and others, and (if there is a God) to render due worship and obedience to God. Different religions have different understandings of salvation and God. It is rational for someone to pursue these goals by following a religious way (the practices commended by some religion), insofar as they judge that it would be greatly worthwhile to achieve those goals and insofar as they judge that it is to some degree probable that they will attain them by following the way of that religion. They will judge that insofar as they judge the creed of that religion to be to some degree probable (not necessarily more probable than not).

Keywords:   Aquinas, creed, God, Phillips, religion, religious way, salvation

Oxford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.

Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.

If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.

To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .