James K. Dew Jr.

James K. Dew Jr. is an American evangelical philosopher of religion and theologian who serves as president of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, having previously taught philosophy and history of ideas at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. His scholarship focuses on philosophical theology, epistemology, hermeneutics, and the problem of evil, written within a broadly Reformed and Baptist evangelical framework engaged with analytic philosophy of religion. Dew is known for editing and co-authoring accessible introductions that map debates on contested issues: he co-edited 'God and Evil: Four Views,' which presents and juxtaposes major theodicy positions (classical free-will defense, Molinist, open theist, and skeptical theist responses), and has co-written textbooks on philosophy and on epistemology aimed at seminary and undergraduate audiences. His apologetic stance defends the rationality of Christian theism, engaging interlocutors such as William Lane Craig, Alvin Plantinga, and critics of theistic responses to evil. As an administrator he has been a public voice within the Southern Baptist Convention. Dew's work is primarily synthetic and pedagogical rather than presenting a distinctive new metaphysical or epistemological theory, and he has received less attention from secular analytic philosophers than confessionally aligned readers. Critics from outside evangelical traditions question whether four-views volumes adequately represent atheist and process responses to the problem of evil.