Quick follow-up to this post: After writing it, I realized that I only considered philosophers (defined as “people with philosophy degree, jobs in philosophy departments, and publications in philosophy journals) and totally ignored the theologians (defined analogously). I did so because I am totally unaware of any important work done by a living theologian on arguments for the existence of God. There are two possible reasons for that:
1) I have mainly been reading work by philosophers, and philosophers have unfairly ignored the contributions of theologians on the subject.
2) There is not, in fact, any important work done by a living theologian on the subject.
I think the correct answer is probably (2), but when I spell it out my gut reaction is, “That’s an awfully surprising claim. What’s the evidence for it?” Can anyone help me out here, and either confirm or disconfirm this? Maybe someone could grab the attention of Eric MacDonald and ask him about this for me?
I also think 2 is correct, from anecdotal personal experience. In my undergrad at a Catholic university, I double-majored in philosophy and theology. The only time in either major when arguments for the existence of god were discussed was in my Medieval philosophy class when we covered Aquinas.
Theologians assume the existence of god. Then they try to work out the implications of their particular views about Scripture and god. They don’t first try to prove (even to themselves) that god exists.
I second Dude’s latter half.
Troy Nunley, a theologian, has apparently done some work on the fine-tuning argument:
http://www.epsociety.org/userfiles/art-Nunley%20(Common%20Ancestry%20and%20the%20Fossil%20Record).pdf
Peter Kreeft, a Catholic theologian, reviews a list of 20 arguments for God on his website, though this is a very superficial introduction of classical arguments for God’s existence (this is not meant as a criticism, Kreeft wrote this for an introductory guide to apologetics and at the end he poses some questions for critical discussion, so these are really for educational purposes more than anything else, but someone like you will probably find that you learn nothing new from the discussion).
Most theologians offer passing support of the traditional arguments for God’s existence in systematic theologies. I just picked the first one that came up on Amazon, and there is a section on how we can know God exists: http://www.amazon.com/Systematic-Theology-Introduction-Biblical-Doctrine/dp/0310286700
I suspect you will find something similar under the Theology Proper section of any systematic theology.
Theologians are more interested in making Christianity make sense- like solving the confusion of the trinity, salvation, inspiration, literalism vs metaphors, etc. I guess someone has to do the hard part…