Naturalism and Christian Philosophy: Identifying Some Common Ground

Fiona Ellis

doi:10.21697/spch.2025.61.A.10

Published: 2025-12-31

Vol. 61 No. 2 (2025)

Naturalism and Christian Philosophy: Identifying Some Common Ground

Fiona Ellis

Studia Philosophiae Christianae

Section: Papers

https://doi.org/10.21697/spch.2025.61.A.10

Abstract

The prospects for finding common ground between naturalists and Christian philosophers seems to be bleak. The typical naturalist is an anti-supernaturalist, the Christian philosopher would appear to be a supernaturalist par excellence, and we are told that these positions are mutually exclusive. An expansive naturalist framework calls into question this way of dividing up the philosophical territory and my initial task in this paper is to spell out the shape of this expansive naturalism, using Iris Murdoch as a key interlocuter. I examine her relation to the Christian theologian Paul Tillich and consider the implications for an assessment of her commitment to atheism. I argue that there is a knife-edge between their respective positions and that this has important implications for an understanding of the limits of expansive naturalism as well as the prospects for finding common ground
between naturalists and Christian philosophers.

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Received: 13/09/2025. Reviewed: 15/10/2025. Accepted: 18/11/2025.

Keywords:

naturalism, supernaturalism, expansive naturalism, theism, Christian philosophy, transcendence, immanence, Iris Murdoch, Paul Tillich

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Ellis, F. (2025). Naturalism and Christian Philosophy: Identifying Some Common Ground. Studia Philosophiae Christianae, 61(2), 39–55. https://doi.org/10.21697/spch.2025.61.A.10

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