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In Reason and the Heart , William Wainwright defends a kind of religious evidentialism, one that takes int consideration the promptings of the heart, provided the heart is a virtuous one; and he claims that this view is able to avoid relativism. Here, Wainwright’s evidentialism is examined in relation to other views that have gone by that name. Wainwright’s position is briefly stated together with an expression of doubt about its ability to fend off relativism. Following this, an outline of the history of evidentialism is presented. It is concluded that Wainwright’s view is not really a form of evidentialism at all. Evidentialism may be weakened in two ways: (1) redefining “evidence” to include elements that are not recognized by objectifying inquiry; (2) allowing subjective factors, such as religious emotions, to govern the interpretation of the evidence. Wainwright describes his view as a form of evidentialism because it does not avail itself of (1); but it is only misleadingly called “evidentialism” because of (2). After making this case, several reasons are presented for rejecting evidentialism. It is argued that evidentialists focus attention of what the evidence is to determine whether beliefs are justified or rational, while how the evidence is treated is of no less importance when beliefs are supported by reasons. Furthermore, there are beliefs the justification of which is a practical matter of commitment to a more general framework rather than inference from some body of evidence. It is suggested that some religious beliefs may fall into this category.

This article first explains the classical version of the Divine command ethics in both Christian and Islamic traditions, and then by pointing out its coherency, at least in appearance, with Divine sovereignty and absolute power, it tries to show why this idea is not accepted by a significant number of the Christian and Muslim theologians. William Wainwright answers this question by using Ralph Cudworth’s objections to Divine command ethics. In total, he considers seven objections and criticisms as the main reasons for Christian theologians’ turning away from the theory. By presenting these seven objections, which are mainly taken from Ralph Cudworth’s book, we try to find similar examples in the Islamic tradition and compare them with Wainwrights’ arguments. Some of these objections can be seen in both Christian and Islamic traditions of moral rationalism. But some of them, despite the similarity in content, have different formulations. Also, some objections are specific to Christian or Islamic theology. Last but not least, there are intra-religious objections based on revelations in Islam and Christianity against the theory of Divine command, which is not the subject of my discussion in this article.