Kierkegaard scholar C. Stephen Evans has been awarded the C.S. Lewis Book Prize for his new book for Natural Signs and the Knowledge of God: A New Look at Theistic Arguments (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). The prize, made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation, is awarded by the St. Thomas University Philosophy of Religion Project.

“The C.S. Lewis Book Prize,” to quote the St. Thomas U. Department of Philosophy web page, “recognizes the best recent book in the philosophy of religion or philosophical theology written for a general audience.”

C. Stephen Evans, for those few of you who do not know, is one of the finest Kierkegaard scholars working today.  Evans, whose Ph.D. is from Yale, is currently University Professor of Philosophy and Humanities at Baylor University and is a past president of the Society of Christian Philosophers and of the Kierkegaard Society of North America.

Evans’ publications extend well beyond the confines of Kierkegaard scholarship. He’s published numerous books and articles on the philosophy of religion and on Kierkegaard and every single one of them is excellent. Among my favorites (though I’ll confess I haven’t read them all) are: Søren Kierkegaard’s Christian Psychology (Zondervan, 1990), Wisdom and Humanness in Psychology (Baker Books, 1989) and Preserving the Person: A Look at the Human Sciences (InterVarsity Press, 1977; Baker Reprint, 1982). His two books on Kierkegaard’s Philosophical Crumbs (or “Fragments” as it was known at the time) and Concluding Unscientific Postscript are far and away the best studies of these works. I’ll not give you the bibliographical info on those books because I want you to go to Evans’ page on the Baylor website to check out his entire bibliography. Anything that is out of print you can probably find on abebooks.com.

One would think that someone so prolific as Evans would have to spend all his time in his study. Nothing could be further from the truth. Every time I write him he replies from some remote corner of the globe where he’s been invited to give a lecture. Far from being a recluse, Evans and his beautiful wife Jan E. Evans, a professor of Spanish (also at Baylor) and scholar of both Unamuno and Kierkegaard, are bons vivants. Fortunate are their dinner companions at the various conferences they attend! (Actually, I’ve long suspected that Evans has an identical twin brother and that one of them is shut away cranking out those books and articles while the other trots the globe giving lectures and learning about the local wines and cheeses.)

No one is more deserving of the C.S. Lewis Prize than C. Stephen Evans. He’s and outstanding scholar and one of the finest human beings I have ever met!

And oh yeah, his new book, God and Moral Obligation, is forthcoming from Oxford University Press.

Congratulations Steve!