Philosophy of Religion: The Big Questions 0631206035, 0631206043, 9780631206030, 9780631206040

Citation preview

PHILOSOPHY:

THE BIG QUESTIONS

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION: The

Big

Questions

[=

7 J | CO a __

Digitized by the Internet Archive In 2022 with funding from Kahle/Austin Foundation

https://archive.org/details/philosophyofreli0000unse_a8gi9

if

if

; f= a

[

}

Philosophy of Religion: the Big Questions

Philosophy: The Big Questions Series Editor: James P. Sterba, University of Notre Dame, Indiana

Designed to elicit a philosophical response in the mind of the student, this distinctive series of anthologies provides essential classical and contemporary readings that serve to make the central questions of philosophy come alive for today’s students. It presents complete coverage of the Anglo-American tradition of philosophy as well as the kinds of questions and challenges that it confronts today, both from other cultural traditions and from theoretical movements such as feminism and postmodernism. Aesthetics: The Big Questions Edited by Carolyn Korsmeyer Epistemology: The Big Questions Edited by Linda Martin Alcoff

Ethics: The Big Questions Edited by James P. Sterba Metaphysics: The Big Questions Edited by Peter van Inwagen and Dean W. Zimmerman Philosophy of Language: The Big Questions Edited by Andrea Nye

Philosophy of Religion: The Big Questions Edited by Eleonore Stump and Michael J. Murray Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality: The Big Questions

Edited by Naomi Zack, Laurie Shrage, and Crispin Sartwell

Philosophy: The Big Questions Edited by Ruth J. Sample, Charles W. Mills, and James P. Sterba

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION: The

Big

Questions

EDITED BY ELEQNORE STUMP AND MICHAEL J. MURRAY

( g

Blackwell Publishing

© 1999 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd BLACKWELL

PUBLISHING

350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148-5020, USA 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK 550 Swanston Street, Carlton, Victoria 3053, Australia

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,

photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the’ UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher.

First published 1999 7

2006

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Philosophy of religion: the big questions / edited by Eleonore Stump and Michael J. Murray. p. cm. — (Philosophy, the big questions ; 6) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-631-20603-5 (alk. paper) — ISBN 0-631-20604-3 (pbk. : alk. paper.) 1, Religion—Philosophy.

I. Stump, Eleonore, 1947~ . II. Murray, Michael J.

III. Series.

BL51.P5453 210—dc21

1999 98-8586 CIP

ISBN-13: 978-0-631-20603-0 (alk. paper) — ISBN-13; 978-0-631-20604-0 (pbk. : alk. paper.)

A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

Set in 9% on 12 pt Galliard by Ace Filmsetting Ltd, Frome, Somerset

The publisher’s policy is to use permanent paper from mills that operate a sustainable forestry policy, and which has been manufactured from pulp processed using acid-free and elementary chlorine-free practices. Furthermore, the publisher ensures that the text paper and cover board used have met acceptable environmental accreditation standards. For further information on Blackwell Publishing, visit our website:

www.blackwellpublishing.com

CONTENTS

General Introduction

xi

Acknowledgments

PART ONE

‘

Xill

WHAT WOULD ANYTHING HAVE TO BE LIKE IN ORDER TOBE GOD?

Introduction

1] 5

Omnipotence 1 From Summa Contra Gentiles St THOMAS AQUINAS

yi

2 The Paradox of the Stone C. WADE SAVAGE

9

Omniscience

3 On Ockham’s Way Out

Ls

ALVIN PLANTINGA

Perfection 4 The Problem of Divine Perfection and Freedom WILLIAM ROWE

28

5 How an Unsurpassable Being Can Create a Surpassable World

BD

DANIEL AND FRANCES HOWARD-SNYDER

Eternity 6 Eternity ELEONORE STUMP AND NORMAN

42 KRETZMANN

7 From God, Time, and Knowledge WILLIAM HASKER

53

CONTENTS

PART TWO

CAN WE SHOW BY REASON THAT THERE IS A GOD?

Introduction

59 61

Ontological Argument 8 From Proslogion ST ANSELM OF CANTERBURY

9 From Reply to Anselm GAUNILON 10 Necessary Being: the Ontological Argument

65

66 69

PETER VAN INWAGEN

Cosmological Argument 11 The Cosmological Argument WILLIAM ROWE Teleological Argument 12 From Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion DaviD HUME 13 The Argument from Design R. G. SWINBURNE 14 God’s Utility Function RICHARD DAWKINS 15 From New Perspectives on Old-time Religion

84

94 100 109

114

GEORGE N. SCHLESINGER

The Evolutionary Anti-Naturalism Argument 16 Is Naturalism Irrational? ALVIN PLANTINGA

125

The Argument from Religious Experience 17 From The Autobiography of St Teresa of Avila ST TERESA OF AVILA 18 Perceiving God

139 142

WILLIAM ALSTON

PART THREE

DOESN'T ALL THE EVIL IN THE WORLD SHOW THAT THERE IS NO GOD?

Introduction

151 153

The Problem

19 The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism WILLIAM L. ROWE

ey

20 Pain and Pleasure: an Evidential Problem for Theists PAUL DRAPER

164

Vi

Defense

21 On Being Evidentially Challenged ALVIN PLANTINGA

176

Theodicies

22 From Theodicy in Islamic Thought AL-GHAZALI 23 From the Book of Doctrines and Beliefs SAADYA GAON 24 The Magnitude, Duration, and Distribution of Evil: a Theodicy PETER VAN INWAGEN 25 Natural Evil and the Possibility of Knowledge RICHARD SWINBURNE 26 An Irenaean Theodicy

190 192 iw

210 222

JOHN H. Hick

27 The Problem of Evil ELEONORE STUMP

22/7

Alternative Perspectives

28 Coercion and the Hiddenness of God MicHakL J. MURRAY 29 Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God MariLtyN McCorp ADAMS

241

30 The Theology of Liberation in Africa

Zor

250

BisHorp DESMOND TUTU

PART FOUR

WHAT IS THE RELATION OF REASON TO RELIGIOUS BELIEF?

Introduction

263 265

Evidentialism 31 The Ethics of Belief WILLIAM CLIFFORD 32 It is Wrong, Everywhere, Always, and for Anyone, to Believe Anything upon Insufficient Evidence PETER VAN INWAGEN

269

273

Religious Belief as Basic 33 Warranted Belief in God ALVIN PLANTINGA

285

Pascal’s Wager 34 From Pensées BLAISE PASCAL 35 The Recombinant DNA Debate: a Difficulty for Pascalian-Style Wagering STEPHEN P. STICH

298 300

vii

CONTENTS

36 A Central Theistic Argument

302

GerorGE N. SCHLESINGER

PART FIVE

CAN WE MAKE SENSE OF RELIGIOUS DOCTRINES AND PRACTICES?

313 315

Introduction

Miracles 37 Of Miracles Davin HuME 38 From A Dialogue Concerning Herestes THomas More 39 Miracles and (Christian) Theism J. A. COVER

320 330 334

Prayer 40 Petitionary Prayer ELEONORE STUMP

353

Soul 41 The Future of the Soul RICHARD SWINBURNE

367

42 From Neurophilosophy: Toward a Unified Science of the Mind-—Brain

es)

PATRICIA SMITH CHURCHLAND

43 Materialism and Survival DEAN W. ZIMMERMAN

379

Revelation 44 Are We Entitled? NICHOLAS WOLTERSTOREFE

387

PART SIX

399

CAN MORALITY HAVE A RELIGIOUS FOUNDATION?

Introduction 45 Morality: Religious and Secular Patrick NOWELL-SMITH 46 Divine Command Metaethics Modified Again RoBERT ADAMS 47 Abraham, Isaac, and Euthyphro: God and the Basis of Morality NorMAN KRETZMANN

PART SEVEN

HOW SHOULD RELIGIOUS, GENDER, AND ETHNIC DIVERSITY INFLUENCE OUR THINKING ABOUT RELIGION?

Introduction

48 On Non-Jewish Religions JUDAH HALEVI

Vill

401 403 412

417

429 431 435

49 Religious Diversity and the Epistemic Justification of Religious Belief JEROME GELLMAN 50 What’s the Difference? Knowledge and Gender in (Post)Modern Philosophy of Religion

44]

454

GRACE M. JANTZEN

51 Women’s Experience Revisited: the Challenge of the Darker Sister

467

JACQUELYN GRANT

52 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass FREDERICK DOUGLASS 53 The Value of African Religious Beliefs and Practices for Christian Theology Mercy AMBA ODUYOYE

472

Index

481

475

eee

*

wie “iret 4s on et bs sha i, ag ob

ce

wor.

or ee.

RL

ie

Niet ut neta 7

ese

ts

-

_—

ge

j

ar

¥a

>=

re

a

-

-

Pir —

“4

oe)

rT

>

7

ae

Sad Oe s0s

:

=

Pein,

-

Amv

ns

We

:

o AGUA

en in re

Riadigp. Ethan Digan SS

*

nd

=

pa

1 62 2aga> > 1016p us

T

Foe?

99 Yeaary’

Sate i, anae

oi

Oh.

pee ree

6

hh)

— ep

eS >

iowa

. goa < WAS”. PUESAS ee)

Wee

Bene

a

: He es

iti ProH :

4

pie

: ny ga

wet

bere

o_5

.—

|

—_ bok

wnat bath “it wor

eis eon cP

at

aan

—

a?

Ma

i

:

:

7

®

Lere

Nad

f

:

GENERAL

Reflection on religion and religious belief has been a significant part of the enterprise of philosophy. In the Western tradition, from its beginning in Greece until well into modern times, most philosophers have either been theists or have felt obliged to say a great deal about theism. Philosophical reflection on religion has consequently been central in the history of philosophy, and it continues to be an important part of contemporary philosophy as well. Although philosophy of religion was at an ebb in the first half of the twentieth century, the second half of the century has witnessed a great revival of interest in this area. As a resuit, there has been an explosion of work on philosophy of religion in recent decades. Of course, the questions that are of fundamental importance in any area of philosophy change, sometimes significantly, over time. Certain questions have been of perennial interest and importance: Does God exist? What is God like? How can God permit evil? and so on. Certain other questions come to the forefront in response to philosophical and cultural trends with which philosophers and society at large must grapple. In our own age, concerns over religious diversity and over the issues of gender and race provide a few examples. In this volume we have undertaken to explore seven central questions which reflect both the perennial issues of philosophy ofreligion and more contemporary concerns as well. We begin with the question: What would

INTRODUCTION

anything have to be like in order to be God? We begin here, rather than with arguments for and against the existence of God, because it is important to know what it is we are looking for, before we consider the debates over whether or not that being exists. Thus, in this section we look at a number of those attributes that have been held to be centrally important in the theistic traditions. The essays within each section treat two sorts of questions. First, is it possible for anything to have the particular attribute in question? Second, is it possible for anything to have the particular attribute in conjunction with the others. The first question focuses on the coherence of the attribute itself, the second on the compatibility of that attribute with the others. Once we have explored the issues regarding the nature of God, we turn to the question of the existence of God. We begin, in Part Two, by examining some of the arguments that have been offered in favor of the existence of God. Here we will look at some of the most recent work on both classical arguments (the ontological, cosmological, and teleological arguments), and more recent ones (the “fine-tuning” argument, the evolutionary argument against naturalism, and the argument from religious experience). In Part Three, we turn to the main argument which has been offered against the existence of God, namely, the argument from evil. After setting out the problem that evil seems to present for theistic belief, we pro-

xi

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

vide a number of readings which attempt to solve the problem. The first set of responses defends traditional theistic responses to the argument from evil. The three readings at the end discuss important facets of the problem raised by evil which are important for the discussion of the problem of evil generally, but which have only received scant attention so far. In the next section, Part Four, we explore

the reasonableness of belief in God. Does rational belief in God require valid and sound — philosophical demonstrations, or at least very powerful evidence in order to be rational? Some, as we will see, have argued that the answer is “yes.” But other essays in this section argue that religious belief, and belief generally, should not be held to this strict standard and thus that belief in God can be rational even in the absence of a compelling argument for God’s existence. Parts Five and Six turn from the issues concerning mere belief in God’s existence to a discussion of beliefs and practices within particular theistic traditions. Part Five contains essays which consider miracles, prayer, immortality, and revelation. Some of the readings raise worries that philosophers have expressed about these topics; others seek to provide responses to these worries. Part Six considers what connection, if any, there is between religion and morality. This section begins with a reading arguing that there is no such connection. After a critique of this claim, we provide two recent essays which mount very different defenses of the claim that any objective morality must be (and can be) grounded in the divine. The final question, Part Seven, contains readings that examine issues of diversity which have been widely discussed in recent years in our culture as a whole. To what extent does religious diversity undermine our confidence in the possibility (or the reasonableness of believing) that only one of the theistic positions is true? And to what extent have gender and racially influenced biases negatively influenced philosophical reflection about religion and religious belief in the West? To ignore

xii

questions of this sort is to risk falling into the sort of religious self-deception that receives the scathing moral denunciation Frederick Douglass heaps on it in his essay. Where feasible, we tried to select entries from

both classical and contemporary sources, so that both the history of philosophy of religion and recent work in the area are represented. Although we have been conscious of the need to include traditional readings, such as Hume’s argument against beliefin miracles, which have become classics and are standard fare in traditional philosophy of religion courses, we have also looked for opportunities to include authors or points of view sometimes left out of anthologies. So, for example, we have included readings by authors such as Saadya Gaon, Teresa of Avila, Frederick Douglass, and Desmond Tutu. In our view, authors such as these, whose work is not regularly read in philosophy of religion courses, can enrich and enliven the contemporary discussion. For the reader’s benefit we have included introductions to each of the Parts below. These introductions, authored by Michael Murray, furnish the reader with an overview of the issues that will be addressed in each Part and also provide brief and helpful sum-

maries of the arguments in each reading. In addition, we have also provided an extensive bibliography of “Further Readings” at the end of each introduction for those who would like to pursue certain topics further. We would like to express our gratitude to the many reviewers who gave us valuable advice that has helped to shape this work. These include: Peter van Inwagen, Philip Quinn, Alvin Plantinga, William Alston, Richard Swinburne, Daniel Howard-Snyder, Christoph Jager, Norman Kretzmann, Leonard Harris, and Grace Jantzen. We would also like to thank

the series editor, Jim Sterba, Steve Smith, the sponsoring editor, his assistant, Mary Riso, and Valery Rose for their help and guidance in the production of this volume.

E. S. M. J. M.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The publishers and editors wish to thank the following for permission to reprint copyright material in this book: 1. Doubléday: for chapter 25 from St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, Book II, translated by James F. Anderson (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975); © 1956 by Doubleday; reprinted by permission of Doubleday, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. 2.

The Philosophical Review: for C. Wade

Savage, “The Paradox of the Stone,” in The Philosophical Review, 76:1 (January, 1967), pp. 74-9; © 1967 Cornell University Press; reprinted by permission of the publisher.

3. Faith and Philosophy: for selections from Alvin Plantinga, “On Ockham’s Way Out,” in Faith and Philosophy, 3:3 (July, 1986), pp. 236-69; reprinted by permission of the publisher. 4. Cornell University Press: for William Rowe, “The Problem of Divine Perfection and Freedom,” in Eleonore Stump (ed.), Reasoned Faith (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1993); © 1993 by Cornell University Press, reprinted by permission of the publisher.

5. Faith and Philosophy: for Daniel and Frances Howard-Snyder, “How an

Unsurpassable able World,” (April, 1994), mission of the

Being Can Create a Surpassin Faith and Philosophy, 11:2 pp. 260-8; reprinted by perpublisher.

6. Eleonore Stump, Norman Kretzmann, and The Journal of Philosophy, Inc.: for selections from Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann, “Eternity,” in The Journal of Phtlosophy, 78:8 (August, 1981), pp. 429-47, 453-60; © 1981 The Journal of Philosophy, Inc., reprinted by permission of the authors and the publisher. 7. Cornell University Press: for extracts from William Hasker, God, Time, and Knowledge,

Cornell Studies in the Philosophy ofReligion (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989); reprinted by permission of the publisher. 8and9. Open Court Publishing Company: for selections from Anselm of Canterbury, St Anselm: Basic Writings, translated by S. W. Deane (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1962); reprinted by permission of Open Court Publishing Company, a division of Carus Publishing Company, Peru, Ill. 10. Westview Press and Oxford University Press: for selections from “Necessary Being: the Ontological Argument,” in Peter van Inwagen, Metaphysics (Boulder, Col.: Westview Press, 1993); reprinted by permis-

xiil

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

sity Press.

Image Books, 1960); reprinted by permission of Sheed and Ward.

11. Wadsworth Publishing Co.: for “The Cosmological Argument,” chapter 2 in William Rowe, Philosophy of Religion: An Introduction (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1978); reprinted by permission of the publisher.

losophy: for William Alston, “Perceiving God,” in The Journal of Philosophy, 83 (November, 1986), pp. 655-66; © The Journal of Philosophy, Inc., reprinted by permission of the author and publisher.

sion of Westview Press and Oxford Univer-

13. Royal Institute of Philosophy, R. G. Swinburne, and Cambridge University Press: for R. G. Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” in Philosophy, 43:4 (1968), pp. 199212; © Royal Institute of Philosophy 1968; reprinted by permission of the author and Cambridge University Press. 14. Richard Dawkins, Basic Books, and Weidenfeld and Nicolson Ltd: for extracts from “God’s Utility Function,” in Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden (New York: Basic Books, 1995); © 1995 by Richard Dawkins; reprinted by permission of the author, Basic Books (a subsidiary of Perseus Books Group, LLC), and Weidenfeld and Nicolson Ltd (an imprint of The Orion Publishing Group).

15. George N. Schlesinger and Clarendon Press: for selections from George N. Schlesinger, New Perspectives on Old-time Religion (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988); © George N. Schlesinger 1988; reprinted by permission of the author and the publisher. 16. Alvin Plantinga and Oxford University Press: for “Is Naturalism Irrational?” in Alvin Plantinga, Warrant and Proper Function (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); © 1993 by Alvin Plantinga, reprinted by permission of the author and Oxford University Press, Inc.

17. Sheed and Ward: for selections from St Teresa of Avila, The Life of Teresa ofJesus: The Autobiography of St Teresa ofAvila, translated and edited by E. Allison Peers (New York:

XIV

18.

William Alston and the Journal of Phi-

19. American Philosophical Quarterly: for William Rowe, “The Problem of Evil and ~ Some Varieties of Atheism,’ > in American Philosophical Quarterly, 16:4 (October, 1979); reprinted by permission of the publisher. 20. Blackwell Publishers, Inc.: for Paul Draper, “Pain and Pleasure: an Evidential Problem for Theists,” Nous, 23 (1989), pp. 12-29; reprinted by permission of Blackwell Publishers, Inc.

21. Indiana University Press: for selections from Alvin Plantinga, “On Being Evidentially Challenged,” in Daniel Howard Snyder (ed.), The Evidential Argument from Evil (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1996); reprinted by permission of the publisher. 22. Princeton University Press: for an extract by Al-Ghazali in Eric Ormsby (ed.), Theodicy in Islamic Thought: the Dispute over AlGhazali’s “Best of all Possible Worlds” (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984); © 1984 by Princeton University Press;

reprinted by permission of the publisher. 23. The Jewish Publication Society: for an extract from Saadya Gaon, Book of Doctrines and Beliefs, edited by Alexander Altmann, in Three Jewish Philosophers (New York: Meridian Books, 1960); reprinted by permission of the Jewish Publication Society. 24. Peter van Inwagen: for Peter van Inwagen, “The Magnitude, Duration, and Distribution of Evil: a Theodicy,” in Philo-

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

sophical Topics, 16:2 (1988), pp. 161-87; reprinted by permission of the author. 25. Oxford University Press: for “Natural Evil and the Possibility of Knowledge,” chapter 9 in Richard Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998); reprinted by permission of

Oxford University Press. 26.

Stephen T. Davis and Westminster John

Knox Press: for selections from John. H. Hick,

“An Irenaean Theodicy,” in Stephen T. Davis (ed.), Encountering Evil, Live Options in Theodicy (Atlanta, Ga.: John Knox Press, 1981); © 1981 by Stephen T. Davis; reprinted by permission of the author and Westminster John Knox Press.

27. American Philosophical Quarterly: for selections from Eleonore Stump, “The Problem of Evil,” in Faith and Philosophy, 2:4 (October, 1985); reprinted by permission of the publisher. 28.

American Philosophical Quarterly: for

32. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers: for selections from Peter van Inwagen, “It is Wrong, Everywhere, Always, and for Anyone, to, Believe Anything upon Insufficient Evidence,” in Jeff Jordan and Daniel HowardSnyder (eds), Faith, Freedom, and Rationality: Philosophy of Religion Today (London: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1996); reprinted by permission of the publisher. 33. Alvin Plantinga: for “Warranted Belief in God,” from Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief (1998); reprinted by permission of the author. 34. Oxford University Press: for an extract from Blaise Pascal, Pensées and Other Writ-

ings, translated by Honor Levi (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995); reprinted by permission of the publisher.

35.

Princeton University Press: for Stephen

P. Stich, “The Recombinant DNA Debate: a Difficulty for Pascalian-Style Wagering,” in Philosophy and Public Affairs, 7 (1978); © 1978 by Princeton University Press; reprinted

extracts from Michael J. Murray, “Coercion and the Hiddenness of God,” in American

by permission of the publisher.

Philosophical Quarterly, 30:1 (January, 1993), pp. 27-35; reprinted by permission of the publisher.

36. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers: for George N. Schlesinger, “A Central Theistic Argument,” in Jeff Jordan (ed.), Gambling on God: Essays on Pascal’s Wager (Lantham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1994); © 1994 by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.; reprinted by permission of the publisher.

29. The Editor of the Aristotelian Society: for Marilyn McCord Adams, “Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God,” in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 63 (1989), pp. 297-310; © The Aristotelian Society 1989; reprinted by permission of the Editor of the Aristotelian Society. 30. Bishop Desmond Tutu: for Bishop Desmond Tutu, “The Theology of Liberation in Africa,” in Kofi Appiah-Kubi and Sergio Torres (eds), African Theology en Route: Papers from the Pan-African Conference of Third World Theologians, December 17-23, 1977, Accra, Ghana (New York: Orbis Books, 1979); reprinted by permission of the author.

39.

J. A. Cover: for J. A. Cover, “Miracles

and (Christian) Theism” (unpublished essay); reprinted by permission of the author.

40. American Philosophical Quarterly: for Eleonore Stump, “Petitionary Prayer,” in American Philosophical Quarterly, 16:2 (April, 1979); reprinted by permission of the publisher.

41. Richard Swinburne and Oxford University Press: for “The Future of the Soul,” chap-

XV

a mies

ee 4

=

=

wry

Pe

,

3

whi

wi

aM

J

>

| ore

&

pits

ve

‘a4

ale

oe #

en

=

{ Pho, we &

i

i 4

Ss par

=

iF

am

Sh inet OO

aye

;

Ty)

ne

-

ae

cag

oe

ee

&

i

:

:

Gin

%

iexs)sain i

es |

nome

“4

2

dc ted mo ena SNGABLA bi VOLS a

.

H

;

4

‘

flies

Oye

Caine von

pe

Se

eo

|

;

SZAG IGS)

Can6a te

te

mie*

S

if (ta lvers

rc

=

iia ..

gaya

"a hdLY WA CF h vr i 9 ao &ere. oG.09 is ne

— Partin 1

x,

=

aes

ee

P46 cid

—

ar

Hs‘

- -

Ve

aii.

.

|fr shnnen Ei@. Seth eohp lahat Re

a

a

anil wae AR Winn a Thy At “ir 7

se

Les

©.

64 Re

ee

a

| oe

iAgeen

YY Pela

ye

- Sew

ed.

Tae

Oe a

Sa nse

ae Oebet acyA

5 ae

0 dt

«

coe Gah

1 ca”

7 a

a (lege

ft

=

tHe & Ce ant be qee sith

Be Mape e A ae

BAtm S (Gn @

tas

aed

*@3

AY Ttie HOTS? HHNG ju eee ae ¥

veENGA * t pt? 1a a3 gijail ott > kes 4

_v.

-

a

ee csaagliotd 3

a”

att 7

—-

a

i

(Ai

i

'

OO

a

Hae

ee

oni

apned ye Ra MidTaA Wages PENMea sel 4

:

$2 etm f

Vo

Introduction

In the Western theistic traditions, God is re-

garded as unique, unlike any other thing that exists. These traditions are guided by the shared belief that God is the supreme being who possesses all perfections. Divine perfection has traditionally been supposed to include certain attributes. So, a perfect God has been thought to be possessed of complete knowledge (omniscience), maximal power (omnipotence), perfect goodness, unchangeableness (immutability), and existence independent of both matter (immateriality or incorporeality) and time (eternity). In addition, the Western monotheisms have held that God freely created the universe and that he continues to exercise complete providential control over it. As philosophers and theologians (believers and skeptics) have reflected on these central divine attributes, they have noted a variety of difficulties. In some cases, the difficulties amount to apparent incompatibilities between one divine attribute and another. Thus some

have argued, for example, that God cannot be both morally perfect and omnipotent. For if, the argument continues, God is morally perfect there are a number of things he cannot choose to do (evils, for example), but if he is omnipotent, he should be able to do anything (or at least anything logically possible). In other cases, the difficulty raised for divine attributes is that they seem to be incompatible with certain evident facts about the universe. Thus many have argued that we cannot regard God as omniscient since omniscience, which includes complete and certain knowledge about the future, is incompatible with the evident fact that human beings are free. Finally, some have argued that certain attributes are simply self-inconsistent and, as a result, that nothing, God included, could have

such a property. They have argued, for exam-

ple, that the notion of omnipotence is incoherent since it leads to paradoxes such as those implicit in the question “Can God make a stone so large that he cannot lift it?” Whether one answers “yes” or “no” to such a question, it appears that there is something that a being who can “do everything” cannot do. And this is absurd. In thinking about the first question we will look at four divine attributes and some of the difficulties that have been raised concerning them. We begin with the attribute of omnipotence. Surely any being that has all perfections must be omnipotent. But what does being omnipotent require? Does it require (as, for example, Descartes seems to have held) that God can do anything at all, including things which require the violation of logical truths? Such an ability would entail that God can make a square without corners, make it true that 2 + 2 #4, and bring it about that he both exists and does not exist at the same time! Most philosophers have held that omnipotence does not require this radical conception of divine power. Instead they have, as St Thomas does in the reading here, argued that God’s power extends only to those things that are logically possible. Thus God cannot make a round square, but it is no failure of omnipotence that he cannot do so. However, even restricting omnipotence in this way does not, some have thought, solve all of the problems which arise concerning omnipotence. The paradox of the stone, mentioned above and explained by C. Wade Savage below, is one argument which attempts to show that even this more restricted notion of omnipotence is incoherent. The question “Can God make a stone so big that he cannot lift it?” seems to admit of only two answers: yes and no. Yet it appears that answering the question either way entails a limitation of divine power. What this paradox is

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION: THE BIG QUESTIONS

supposed to demonstrate is not so much that there are things that God cannot do, but that the notion of omnipotence itself is self inconsistent. Savage argues that in the end the paradox of the stone does not show what it claims to show. For, he claims, we can answer “no” to

the central question of the paradox without being forced to admit any limitations on the divine power. If God’s rock-lifting power is unlimited and God’s rock-making power is likewise unlimited, there is no possible rock that outstrips his power of making or lifting. Thus when one asserts that there is 2o rock that is so big that God cannot lift 1t, this does not entail any limitation in the relevant powers of God, or any incoherence in the notion of omnipotence. Instead, it simply reflects the fact that no task outstrips the divine powers. The second attribute treated under this question is omniscience. As noted above, critics have sometimes argued that God cannot be omniscient since human beings are free and these two claims are incompatible. Being free with respect to a particular action requires that I am able both to do the action and to refrain from the action. But if God knows, even prior to my birth, that I will perform a certain action, then it appears that I cannot possibly refrain from that action (since were I to do so I would have made God’s belief about that action of mine false, something that cannot happen in light of divine omniscience). And since I cannot refrain from the action, I can-

not thus be free with respect to that action. In the reading included here, Alvin Plantinga argues that this criticism of divine omniscience is based on a mistake. The power to refrain from performing an action that God knows I will perform does not require the power to bring it about that God believes something false. Instead, the power to refrain requires the power to bring it about that God would believe something other than what God actually believed. And since my having that power is not inconsistent with God’s omniscience, I

have it in my power to refrain from an action God foreknows I will undertake. In sections

3 and 4 ofhis essay, Plantinga goes on to explore some of the philosophical concepts needed to flesh out his solution in complete detail. The reader should note that sections | and 2 provide the basic outlines of the solution and thus can be read alone. We then turn to the attribute of divine perfection. In the reading presented here, William Rowe argues that there are significant and formerly unrecognized restrictions that maximal perfection places on divine freedom. In short, Rowe wants to imagine the infinite number of worlds that God could create arrayed in increasing order of goodness or perfection. Such an array will either form any infinite progression, such that any world we pick will have another world that is greater than it, ad infinitum, or else be such that there is one (ora set) of equally and maximally great (i.e., best) worlds. If the former, Rowe claims that a truly perfect being cannot exist. Why? Consider some being which creates a world which we will designate “W.” Whatever we think of this being, we know that it cannot be maximally perfect, since we can always imagine a being greater than it, simply by imagining a being who creates any of the worlds which are detter than W. Because of this, it

makes no more sense to try to think of a maximally perfect being than it does to try to think of, say, “the highest number.” But what if there is a uniquely best world or a set of equally and maximally good worlds? If there is just one such world then, Rowe claims, a truly perfect being would necessarily create this single best world, thus rendering this being entirely unfree in creating. And even if there are multiple maximally good worlds, a perfect being is still obliged to create one of them, though such a being might have freedom with respect to which world is chosen. As a result, if perfection is compatible with freedom at all, it is compatible with freedom of a narrowly limited sort. In response, Daniel and Frances HowardSnyder argue that Rowe is mistaken in one of his central assumptions, namely that if there were an infinite progression of increasingly

INTRODUCTION TO PART ONE

better worlds, any being, A, who creates a world superior to the world created by another being, B, is such that A is more perfect than B. Through a series of examples, the Howard-Snyders argue that though there may be many worlds which a perfectly good being could not create, there is nothing inconsistent in the notion that a perfect being creates a world which is surpassed in greatness by other creatable worlds. In the final pair of readings, the divine attribute at issue is eternity. All theists agree that God is “eternal.” But different theists have understood this attribute in different ways. Some have argued that eternity means “endless duration in time.” Thus, as long as God has always been, is, and always will be, God is eternal. Others have held that God’s eternity requires not that he exist at all times, but that God exist entirely outside of time. Recent discussions have adopted the convention ofcalling the former conception “timelessness” and the latter conception “eternity.” In their essay, Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann present a defense of the more vexing notion of eternity. The main problem for this conception is explaining how it can be that such a being is eternal while also being fully aware of and engaged with the created, temporal order. Stump and Kretzmann, adapting some insights on simultaneity from the General Theory of Relativity, develop a notion of simultaneity (“ET-simultaneity”) which provides a conception of how God can have knowledge of and power over each instant in the temporal order by existing “ET-simultaneously” with each such instant. In the final reading, William Hasker examines some of the main arguments which have been raised against the account offered by Stump and Kretzmann and argues that, in the end, none of them succeeds in undermining their account. While this does not show that God is in fact eternal, Hasker argues that there is nothing incoherent or unintelligible in the account that Stump and Kretzmann defend.

Further Reading A number of books have appeared in recent years which provide philosophical treatments of the divine attributes. Two of the more accessible texts for non-philosophers are: Davis, Stephen T., Logic and the Nature of God (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1983). Morris, Thomas V., Our Idea of God: an Introduction to Philosophical Theology (Downers Grove, IIl.: Inter-Varsity Press, 1991).

More detailed treatments can be found in the following: Gale, Richard, On the Nature and Existence of God (New York: Cambridge University Press. 19911'). Hartshorne, Charles, Omnipotence and Other

Theological Mistakes (Albany: SUNY Press, 1984). Swinburne, Richard, The Coherence of Theism

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979). Wierenga, Edward, The Nature of God: an Inquiry into Divine Attributes (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989). The following books and articles present treatments of particular divine attributes: Ommipotence Flint, Thomas, and Alfred Freddoso, “Maximal Power,” in The Existence and Nature

of God, ed. Alfred Freddoso (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993), pp. 81-113. Geach, Peter, Providence and Evil (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), ch. 1, pp. 3-28. Hoffman, J., and G. Rosenkrantz, “Omnipotence Redux,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 49 (1988), pp. 283-301. Pike, Nelson, “Omnipotence and God’s Ability to Sin,” The American Philosophical Quarterly (1969), pp. 208-16.

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION: THE BIG QUESTIONS

Urban, Linwood, and Douglas Walton (eds), The Power of God (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978). Omniscience

Craig, William Lane, The Only Wise God: the Compatibility ofDivine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 1987). Flint, Thomas, “Two Views of Divine Providence,” in Divine and Human Action, ed. Thomas V. Morris (Notre Dame, Ind.:

University of Notre Dame Press, 1988). Freddoso, Alfred J., Introduction to Luis de Molina, On Divine Foreknowledge, tr. Al-

fred Freddoso (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1988). Hasker, William, God, Time, and Knowledge (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989). Kvanvig, Jonathan L., The Possibility of an AllKnowing God (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1986). Zagzebski, Linda, The Dilemma of Freedom and Foreknowledge (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).

Divine Goodness Adams, Robert, “Must God Create the Best,”

Philosophical Review, 81 (1972), pp. 317Bos Quinn, Philip, “God, Moral Perfection, and Possible Worlds,” in God: the Contemporary Discussion, ed. Frederick Sontag and M. Darrol Bryant (New York: Rose of Sharon Press, 1982), pp. 199-215. Wainwright, William, “Jonathan

Edwards,

William Rowe, and the Necessity of Creation,” in Faith, Freedom, and Rationality:

Philosophy of Religion Today, ed. Jeff Jordan and Daniel Howard-Snyder (Lanham, Md.: Rowman

and Littlefield,

1996),

pp. 1d 9-36. Eternity Wolterstorff, Nicholas, “God Everlasting,” in God and the Good, ed. C. Orlebeke and L. Smedes (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans,

1975): Helm, Paul, Eternal God (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988). Leftow, Brian, Time and Eternity (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991). Padgett, Alan, God, Eternity and the Nature

of Time (New York: St Martin’s Press, LOOD 3

Omnipotence

1

From Summa

Contra Gentiles*

St Thomas Aquinas How the Omnipotent God is Said to be Incapable of Certain Things [1] Now, from what has been said already, we can see that, although God is omnipotent, He is nevertheless said to be incapable of some things.

[2] For we proved above that active power exists in God; that there is no passive potency in Him had already been demonstrated in Book I of this work.’ (We, however, are said to-be-able as regards both active and passive potentiality.) Hence, God is unable to do those things whose possibility entails passive potency. What such things are is, then, the subject of this inquiry. [3] Let us observe, first of all, that active potency relates to acting; passive potency, to existing. Hence, there is potency with respect to being only in those things which have matter subject to contrariety. But, since there is no passive potency in God, His power does not extend to any thing pertaining to His own being. Therefore, God cannot be a body or

anything of this kind. [4]

passive potency of which we are speaking. But, since there is no passive potency in God, He cannot be changed. It can be concluded further that He cannot be changed with respect to the various kinds of change: increase and diminution, or alteration, coming to be and passing away — all are foreign to Him. [5] Thirdly, since a deprivation is a certain loss of being, it follows that God can lack nothing. [6] Moreover, every failing follows upon some privation. But the subject of privation is the potency of matter. In no way, therefore,

can God fail. [7|

Then, too, since weariness results from

a defect of power, and forgetfulness from defect of knowledge, God cannot possibly be subject to either. [8] Nor can He be overcome or suffer violence, for these are found only in something having a movable nature. [9]

Likewise, God can neither repent, nor

be angry or sorrowful, because all these things bespeak passion and defect.

Furthermore, motion is the act of this

* From St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, tr. James F. Anderson (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975), Book II, ch. 25. Re-

printed with permission.

[10] An additional argument is this. The object and effect of an active power is a being made, and no power is operative if the nature of its object is lacking; sight is inoperative in the absence of the actually visible. It must

ST THOMAS AQUINAS

therefore be said that God is unable to do whatever is contrary to the nature of being as being, or of made being as made. We

as necessary for a thing to be while it is as to have been while it was.

must

now inquire what these things are. [11] First ofall, that which destroys the nature of being is contrary to it. Now, the nature of being is destroyed by its opposite, just as the nature of man is destroyed by things opposite in nature to him or to his parts. But the opposite of being is non-being, with respect to which God is therefore inoperative, so that He cannot make one and the same thing to be and not to be; He cannot make

[16] Also, there are things incompatible with the nature of thing made, as such. And these God cannot make, because whatever He does make must be something made. [17] And from this it is clear that God cannot make God. For it is of the essence of a thing made that its own being depends on another cause, and this is contrary to the nature of the being we call God, as is evident from things previously said.’

contradictories to exist simultaneously.

[12] Contradiction, moreover, is implied in contraries and privative opposites: to be white and black is to be white and not white; to be

seeing and blind is to be seeing and not seeing. For the same reason, God is unable to make opposites exist in the same subject at the same time and in the same respect. [13] Furthermore, to take away an essential principle of any thing is to take away the thing itself. Hence, if God cannot make a thing to be and not to be at the same time, neither can

He make a thing to lack any of its essential principles while the thing itself remains in being; God cannot make a man to be without a soul. [14] Again, since the principles of certain sciences — of logic, geometry, and arithmetic, for instance — are derived exclusively from the formal principles of things, upon which their essence depends, it follows that God cannot make the contraries of those principles; He cannot make the genus not to be predicable of the species, nor lines drawn from a circle’s center to its circumference not to be equal,

nor the three angles of a rectilinear triangle not to be equal to two right angles. [15] Itis obvious, moreover, that God cannot make the past not to have been, for this,

too, would entail a contradiction; it is equally

[18] For the same reason God cannot make a thing equal to Himself} for a thing whose being does not depend on another is superior in being, and in the other perfections, to that which depends on something else, such dependence pertaining to the nature of that which is made. [19] Likewise, God cannot make a thing to be preserved in being without Himself. For the preservation of each and every thing depends on its cause, so that, if the cause is taken away, the effect is necessarily removed also. Hence, if there can be a thing which is not kept in being by God, it would not be His effect.

[20] Moreover, since God is a voluntary agent, that which He cannot will He cannot do. Now, we can see what He cannot will if we consider how there can be necessity in the divine will; for that which necessarily is cannot not-be, and what cannot be necessarily is not.

[21] Itclearly follows that God cannot make Himself not to be, or not to be good or happy; because He necessarily wills Himselfto be, to be good and happy, as we have shown in Book I of this work.* [22] We proved also, in that same Book, that God cannot will any evil.* It is therefore evident that God cannot sin.

THE PARADOX OF THE STONE

[23] And it has already been demonstrated*® that the will of God cannot be mutable; so, what He wills He cannot cause to be not fulfilled.

[24] But observe that God is said to be unable to do this in a different sense than in the preceding instances, for in those cases God’s inability either to will or to make is absolute, whereas in this case God can either make or will if His will or His power be considered in themselves, though not if they be considered on the supposition of His having willed the opposite. For the divine will, as regards creatures, has only suppositional necessity, as was shown in Book I.° Thus, all such statements as that God cannot do the contrary of what He has designed to do are to be understood compositely for so understood they presuppose the divine will as regards the opposite. But, if such expressions be understood in a divided sense, they are false, because they then refer to God’s power and will absolutely.

2

[25] Now... just as God acts by will, so also does He act by intellect and knowledge. It follows that He cannot do what He has foreseen that He will not do, or abstain from do-

ing what He has foreseen that He will do, for the same reason that He cannot do what He wills not to do, or omit to do what He wills. That God is unable to do these things is both conceded and denied: conceded on a certain condition or supposition; denied with respect to His power or will considered absolutely. Notes

SCG, I, ch. SCG, I, ch. SCG, I, ch. SCG, I, ch. SCG, I, ch. WH Dok SCG, I, chs

16. 13, 134 80. 95. 82, 3, 7. 81-3

The Paradox of the Stone*

C. Wade Savage A. (1)

Either God can create a stone which

(4)

Therefore, God is not omnipotent.

He cannot lift, or He cannot create

(2)

(3)

a stone which He cannot lift. IfGod can create a stone which He cannot lift, then He is not omnipotent (since He cannot lift the stone in question). If God cannot create a stone which He cannot lift, then He is not omnipotent (since He cannot create the stone in question).

*From The Philosophical Review, pp. 74-9. Reprinted with permission.

76

(1967),

Mr Mavrodes has offered a solution to the familiar paradox above;’ but it is erroneous. Mavrodes states that he assumes the existence of God,’ and then reasons (in pseudo-dilemma

fashion) as follows. God is either omnipotent or He is not. If we assume that He is not omnipotent, the task of creating a stone which He cannot lift is not self-contradictory. And we can conclude that God is not omnipotent on the grounds that both His ability and His inability to perform this task imply that He is not omnipotent. But to prove His non-om-

C. WADE SAVAGE

nipotence in this way is trivial. “To be significant [the paradoxical argument] must derive this same conclusion from the assumption that God is omnipotent; that is, it must show that the assumption of the omnipotence of God leads to a reductio.” However, on the assumption that God is omnipotent, the task of creating a stone which God cannot lift is self-contradictory. Since inability to perform a self-contradictory task does not imply a limitation on the agent, one of the premises of the paradoxical argument — premise A(3) — is false. The argument is, in consequence, either insignificant or unsound. There are many objections to this solution. First, the paradoxical argument need not be represented as a reductio; in A it is a dilemma. Mavrodes’ reasoning implies that the paradoxical argument must either assume that God is omnipotent or assume that He is not omnipotent. This is simply false: neither assumption need be made, and neither is made in A. Second, “a stone which God cannot lift”

is self-contradictory — on the assumption that God is omnipotent — only if “God is omnipotent” is necessarily true. “Russell can lift any stone” is a contingent statement. Consequently, if we assume that Russell can lift any stone we are thereby committed only to saying that creating a stone which Russell cannot lift is a task which im fact cannot be performed by Russell or anyone else. Third, if “God is omnipotent” is necessarily true — as Mavrodes must claim for his solution to work — then his assumption that God exists begs the question of the paradoxical argument. For what the argument really tries to establish is that the existence of an omnipotent being is logically impossible. Fourth, the claim that inability to perform a self-contradictory task is no limitation on the agent is not entirely uncontroversial. Descartes suggested that an omnipotent God must be able to perform such self-contradictory tasks as making a mountain without a valley and arranging that the sum of one and two is not three.* No doubt Mavrodes and Descartes have different theories about the nature of 10

contradictions; but that is part of the controversy. Mavrodes has been led astray by version A of the paradox, which apparently seeks to prove that God is not omnipotent. Concentration on this version, together with the inclination to say that God is by definition omnipotent, leads straight to the conclusion that the paradox is specious. For if God is by definition omnipotent, then, obviously, creating a stone which God (an omnipotent being who can lift any stone) cannot lift is a task whose description is self-contradictory. What the paradox of the stone really seeks to prove is that the notion of an omnipotent being is logically inconsistent that is, that the existence of an omnipotent being, God or any other, ts logically impossible. It tries to do this by focusing on the perfectly consistent task of creating a stone which the creator cannot lift. The essence of the argument is that an omnipotent being must be able to perform this task and yet cannot perform the task. Stated in its clearest form, the paradoxical argument of the stone is as follows. Where x is any being:

B. (1)

(5)

Either x can create a stone which x cannot lift, or x cannot create a stone which ~ cannot lift. If x can create a stone which x cannot lift, then, necessarily, there is at least one task which x cannot perform (namely, lift the stone in question). If x cannot create a stone which x cannot lift, then, necessarily, there is at least one task which x cannot perform (namely, create the stone in question). Hence, there is at least one task which x cannot perform. If«is an omnipotent being, then x

(6)

can perform any task. Therefore, xis not omnipotent.

(2)

(3)

(4)

Since xis any being, this argument proves that

THE PARADOX OF THE STONE

the existence of an omnipotent being, God or any other, is logically impossible. It is immediately clear that Mavrodes’ solution will not apply to this version of the paradox. B is obviously a significant, nontrivial argument. But since it does not contain the word “God,” no critic can maintain that B assumes that God is omnipotent. For the same reason, the point that “a stone which God cannot lift” is self-contradictory is simply irrelevant. Notice also that B is neutral on the question of whether inability to perform a selfcontradictory task is a limitation on the agent’s power. We can, however, replace every occurrence of “task” with “task whose description is not self-contradictory” without damaging the argument in any way. The paradox does have a correct solution, though a different one from that offered by Mavrodes. The two solutions are similar in that both consist in arguing that an agent’s inability to create a stone which he cannot lift does not entail a limitation on his power. But here the similarity ends. For, as we shall see presently, the basis of the correct solution is not that creating a stone which the creator cannot lift is a self-contradictory task (which it is not). Consequently, the correct solution sidesteps the question of whether an agent’s inability to perform a self-contradictory task is a limitation on his power. The fallacy in the paradox of the stone lies in the falsity of the second horn — B (3) — of its dilemma: “x can create a stone which x cannot lift” does indeed entail that there is a task which x cannot perform and, consequently, does entail that «is not omnipotent. However, “x cannot create a stone which x

cannot lift” does not entail that there is a task which x cannot perform and, consequently, does not entail that xis not omnipotent. That the entailment seems to hold is explained by the misleading character of the statement “wx cannot create a stone which x cannot lift.” The phrase “cannot create a stone” seems to imply that there is a task which « cannot perform and, consequently, seems to imply that x is limited in power. But this illusion van-

ishes on analysis: “« cannot create a stone which x cannot lift” can only mean “If x can create a stone, then x can lift it.” It is obvious thatthe latter statement does not entail that «

is limited in power. A schematic representation of B(1)—B(3) will bring our point into sharper focus. Let S = stone, C = can create, and L = can lift; let x be any being; and let the universe of discourse be conceivable entities. Then we obtain:

C. (1)

(2)

(Ay) (Sy Cey. —Ley) v — (Ay) (Sy + Cry - —Lxy). (Ay)(Sy - Cay - —Lxy) > (Ay) (Sy + Lxy).

(3)

(Ay)(Sy + Cxy - —Lxy) > (Ay)(Sy - — Cxy).

That the second alternative in C(1) is equivalent to “(y)[(Sy + Cxy) D> Lxy]” schematically explains our interpretation of “x cannot create a stone which x cannot lift” as meaning “Tf «can create a stone, then x can lift it.” It is now quite clear where the fallacy in the paradoxical argument lies. Although C(2) is logically true, C(3) is not. “(ay)(Sy- Cxy .—Lxy)” logically implies “(Ay) (Sy - —Lxy).” But “(Ay)( Sy. Cxy-—Lxy)” does not logically imply “(dy) (Sy - -—Cxy)”; nor does it logically imply “(dy)( Sy -—Lxy).” In general, “x cannot create a stone which w cannot lift” does not logically imply. “There is a task which x cannot perform.” For some reason the above analysis does not completely remove the inclination to think that an agent’s inability to create a stone which he himself cannot lift does entail his inability to perform some task, does entail a limitation on his power. The reason becomes clear when we consider the task of creating a stone which someone other than the creator cannot lift. Suppose that y cannot lift any stone heavier than seventy pounds. Now if « cannot create a stone which y cannot lift, then x cannot create a stone heavier than seventy pounds, and is indeed limited in power. But suppose that y is omnipotent and can lift stones of any poundage. Then x’s inability to create a stone which 1]

C. WADE SAVAGE

y cannot lift does not necessarily constitute a limitation on x’s power. For x may be able to create stones of any poundage, although y can lift any stone which x creates. If ycan lift stones of any poundage, and x cannot create a stone heavier than seventy pounds, then x cannot create a stone which ycannot lift, and x is limited in power. But if x can create stones of any poundage, and ycan lift stones of any poundage, then x cannot create a stone which y cannot lift, and yet x is not thereby limited in power. Now it is easy to see that precisely parallel considerations obtain where x is both stone-creator and stone-lifter. The logical facts above may be summarized as follows. Whether x = y or x# y, x’s inability to create a stone which y cannot lift constitutes a limitation on x’s power only if (i) x is unable to create stones of any poundage, or (ii) yis unable to lift stones of any poundage. And, since either (i) or (ii) may be false, “x cannot create a stone which y cannot lift” does not entail “xis limited in power.” This logical point is obscured, however, by the normal context of our discussions of abilities and inabilities. Since such discussions are normally restricted to beings who are limited in their

“x cannot create a stone which x cannot lift” entails “x is limited in power” will normally cause no difficulty. But we must beware when the discussion turns to God — a being who is presumably unlimited in power. God’s inability to create a stone which He cannot lift is a limitation on His power only if (i) He is unable to create stones of any poundage, or (ii) He is unable to lift stones of any poundage — that is, only if He is limited in His power of stone-creating or His power of stone-lifting. But until it has been proved otherwise — and it is difficult to see how this could be done — we are free to suppose that God suffers neither of these limitations. On this supposition God’s inability to create a stone which He cannot lift is nothing more nor less than a necessary consequence of two facets of His omnipotence.* For if God is omnipotent, then He can create stones of any poundage and lift stones of any poundage. And “God can create stones of any poundage, and God can lift stones of any poundage” entails “God cannot create a stone which He cannot lift.”

stone-creating, stone-lifting, and other abili-

1 George I. Mavrodes, “Some Puzzles Concerning Omnipotence,” Philosophical Review, 72 (1963), pp. 221-3. The heart ofhis solution is contained in pars 6, 7, and 11. 2See ibid ni2. p22). 3 Harry G. Frankfurt, “The Logic of Omnipotence,” Philosophical Review, 73 (1964), 262— 3. The relevant passage from Descartes is quoted by Frankfurt in a long footnote. 4 Mavrodes apparently sees this point in the last three paragraphs of his article. But his insight is vitiated by his earlier mistaken attempt to solve the paradox.

ties, the inability of a being to create a stone which he himself or some other being cannot lift normally constitutes a limitation on his power. And this produces the illusion that a being’s inability to create a stone which he himself or some other being cannot lift mecessarily constitutes a limitation on his power, the illusion that “x cannot create a stone which y cannot lift” (where either x = y or x # 9) entails “x is limited in power.” Since our discussions normally concern beings oflimited power, the erroneous belief that

12

Notes

Omniscience

3.

On Ockham’s Way Out*

Alvin Plantinga Two essential teachings of Western theistic religions — Christianity, Judaism, and Islam — are that God is omniscient and that human beings are morally responsible for at least some of their actions. The first apparently implies that God has knowledge of the future and thus has foreknowledge of human actions; the second, that some human actions are free. But divine foreknowledge and human freedom, as every twelve-year-old Sunday school student knows, can seem to be incompatible; and at least since the fifth century AD philosophers and theologians have pondered the question whether these two doctrines really do conflict. There are, I think substantially two lines of argument for the imcompatibility thesis — the claim that these doctrines are indeed in conflict; one of these arguments is pretty clearly fallacious, but the other is much more impressive. In section 1 I state these two arguments...

1 Foreknowledge and the Necessity of the Past In De Libero Arbitrio Augustine puts the first line of argument in the mouth of Evodius: That being so, I have a deep desire to know how it can be that God knows all things beforehand and that, nevertheless, we do not sin

by necessity. Whoever says that anything can happen otherwise than as God has foreknown it, is attempting to destroy the divine foreknowledge with the most insensate impiety. .. . But this I say. Since God foreknew that man would sin, that which God foreknew must necessarily come to pass. How then is the will free when there is apparently this unavoidable necessity?!

(Replies Augustine: ‘You have knocked vigorously.”) Evodius’s statement of the argument illustrates one parameter of the problem: the conception of freedom in question is such that a person S is free with respect to an action A only if (1) it is within Ss power to perform A and within his power to refrain from performing A, and (2) no collection of necessary truths and causal laws — causal laws outside S's control — together with antecedent conditions outside S’s control entails that S performs A, and none entails that he refrains from doing so. (I believe that the first of these conditions entails the second, but shall not

argue that point here.) Of course, if these conditions are rejected, then the alleged problem dissolves. The essential portion of Evodius’s argument may perhaps be put as follows:

(1)

(2) * From Faith and Philosophy, 3: 3 (July 1986), pp. 235— 69. Reprinted by permission of the editors.

If God knows in advance that S$ will do A, then it must be the case that S will do

A; Ifit must be the case that S will do A, then it is not within the power of S to refrain from doing A.

ALVIN PLANTINGA

(3)

Ifit is not within the power of S to refrain from doing A, then S is not free with respect to A.

Hence

(4)

If God knows in advance that S will do A, then Sis not free with respect to A.

Augustine apparently found this argument perplexing. In some passages he seems to see its proper resolution; but elsewhere he reluctantly accepts it and half-heartedly endorses a compatibilist account of freedom according to which it is possible both that all of a person’s actions be determined and that some of them be free. Thomas Aquinas, however, saw the argument for the snare and delusion that it is:

pressing ‘the necessity of the consequence’; what it says, sensibly enough, is just that the consequent of (1)(c) follows with necessity from its antecedent. (1)(b), on the other hand, isan expression of the necessity of the consequent, what it says, implausibly, is that the necessity of the consequent of (1)(c) follows from its antecedent. Aquinas means to point out that (1)(a) is clearly true but of no use to the argument. (1)(b), on the other hand, is what the argument requires; but it seems flatly false — or, more modestly, there seems not the

slightest reason to endorse it. If the above argument is unconvincing, there is another, much more powerful, that is also considered by Aquinas.? The argument in question has been discussed by a host of philosophers both before and after Aquinas; it received a particularly perspicuous formulation at the hands of Jonathan Edwards:

If each thing is known by God as seen by Him in the present, what is known by God will then have to be. Thus, it is necessary that Socrates be seated from the fact that he is seen seated. But this is not absolutely necessary or, as some say, with the necessity of the consequent, it is necessary conditionally, or with the necessity of the consequence. For this is a necessary conditional proposition: if he is seen sitting, he ts sitting?

Aquinas’s point may perhaps be put more perspicuously as follows. (1) is ambiguous as between

(1)(a)

Necessarily, if God knows in advance that S will do A, then S will do A.

and

(1)(b)

If God knows in advance that S will do A, then it is necessary that S will do A.

Now consider

(1)(c)

If God knows in advance that S will

do A, then S$ will do A.

(1)(a), says Aquinas, is a true proposition ex14

1. I observed before, in explaining the nature of necessity, that in things which are past, their past existence is now necessary: having already made sure of existence, tis now impossible, that it should be otherwise than true, that that thing has existed. 2. Ifthere be any such thing as a divine foreknowledge of the volitions of free agents, that foreknowledge, by the supposition, is a thing which already has, and long ago had existence; and so, now its existence is necessary; it is now

utterly impossible to be otherwise, than that this foreknowledge should be, or should have been. 3. *Tis also very manifest, that those things which are indissolubly connected with other things that are necessary, are themselves necessary. As that proposition whose truth is necessarily connected with another proposition, which is necessarily true, is itself necessarily true. To say otherwise, would be a contradiction; it would be in effect to say, that the connection was indissoluble, and yet was not so, but might be broken. If that, whose existence is indissolubly connected with something whose existence is now necessary, is itself not necessary, then it may possibly not exist, notwithstanding that indissoluble connection of its existence. - Whether the absurdity ben’t glaring, let the reader judge. 4. °Tis no less evident, that if there be a full,

ON OCKHAM’S WAY OUT certain and infallible foreknowledge of the future existence of the volitions of moral agents, then there is a certain infallible and indissoluble connection between those events and that foreknowledge; and that therefore, by the preceding observations, those events are necessary events; being infallibly and indissolubly connected with that whose existence already is, and so is now necessary, and can’t but have been.*

Edwards concludes that since ‘God has a certain and infallible prescience of the acts and wills of moral agents’, it follows that ‘these events are necessary’ with the same sort of necessity enjoyed by what is now past. The argument essentially appeals to two intuitions. First, although the past is not necessary in the broadly logical sense (it is possible, in that sense, that Abraham should never have existed),it 7s necessary in some sense: it is fixed, unalterable, outside anyone’s control.

And second, whatever is ‘necessarily connected’ with what is necessary in some sense, is itself necessary in that sense; if a proposition A, necessary in the way in which the past is necessary, entails a proposition B, then B is necessary in that same way. If Edwards’s argument is a good one, what it shows is that if at some time in the past God knew that I will do A, then it is necessary that I will do A necessary in just the way in which the past is necessary. But then it is not within my power to refrain from doing A, so that I will not do A freely. So, says Edwards, suppose God knew, eighty years ago, that I would mow my lawn this afternoon. This foreknowledge is, as he says, a ‘thing that is past’. Such things, however, are now necessary; “’tis now impossible, that it should be otherwise than true, that that

thing has existed.’ So it is now necessary that God had that knowledge eighty years ago; but it is also /ogically necessary that, if God knew that I would mow my lawn today, then I will mow my lawn today. It is therefore now necessary that I will mow; it is thus not within my power to refrain from mowing; hence, though I will indeed mow, I will not mow freely. Edwards’s argument is for what we might

call ‘theological determinism’; the premise is that God has foreknowledge of the ‘acts and wills of moral agents’ and the conclusion is that these acts are necessary in just the way the past is. Clearly enough the argument can be transformed into an argument for logical determinism, which would run as follows. It was true, eighty years ago, that I would mow my lawn this afternoon. Since what is past is now necessary, it is now necessary that it was true eighty years ago that I would mow my lawn today. But it is logically necessary that, if it was true eighty years ago that I would mow my lawn today, then I will mow my lawn today. It is therefore necessary that I will mow my lawn — necessary in just the sense in which the past is necessary. But then it is not within my power not to mow; hence I will not mow freely. Here a Boethian bystander might object as follows. Edwards’s argument involves divine foreknowledge — God’s having known at some time in the past, for example, that Paul will mow his lawn in 1995. Many theists, however, hold that God is eternal,5 and that his eternity involves at least the following two properties. First, his being eternal means, as Boethius suggested, that everything is present for him; for him there is no past or future. But then God does not know any such propositions as ‘Paul wi// mow in 1995’; what he knows, since everything is present for him, is just that Paul mows in 1995. And secondly, God’s being eternal means that God is atemporal, ‘outside of time’ — outside of time in such a way that it is an error to say of him that he knew some proposition or other at a time. We thus cannot properly say that God now knows that Paul mows in 1995, or that at some time in the past God knew this; the truth, instead, is that he knows this proposition eternally. But then Edwards’s argument presupposes the falsehood ofa widely accepted thesis about the nature of God and time. I am inclined to believe that this thesis — the thesis that God is both atemporal and such that everything is present for him — is incoherent. If it zs coherent, however, Edwards’s

15

ALVIN PLANTINGA

argument can be restated in such a way as not to presuppose its falsehood. For suppose in fact Paul will mow his lawn in 1995. Then the proposition ‘God (eternally) knows that Paul mows in 1995’ is now true. That proposition, furthermore, was true eighty years ago; the proposition ‘God knows (eternally) that Paul mows in 1995’ not only zs true now, but was true then. Since what is past is necessary, it is now necessary that this proposition was true eighty years ago. But it is logically necessary that, if this proposition was true eighty years ago, then Paul mows in 1995. Hence his mowing then is necessary in just the way the past is. But, then it neither now is nor in the future will be within Paul’s power to refrain from mowing. Of course this argument depends upon the claim that a proposition can be true at a time — eighty years ago, for example. Some philosophers argue that it does not so much as make sense to suggest that a proposition A is or was or will be true at a time; a proposition is true or false stmpliciter and no more true at a time than, for example, true in a mail-box or a refrigerator.° (Even if there is no beer in the refrigerator, the proposition ‘there is no beer’ is not true in the refrigerator.) We need not share their scruples in order to accommodate them; the argument can be suitably modified. Concede for the moment that it makes no sense to say of a proposition that it was true at a time; it none the less makes good sense, obviously, to say of a sentence that it expressed a certain proposition at a time. But it also makes good sense to say of a sentence that it expressed a truth at a time. Now eighty years ago the sentence (5)

Good knows (eternally) that Paul mows in 1995

expressed the proposition that God knows eternally that Paul mows in 1995 (and for simplicity let us suppose that proposition was the only proposition it expressed then). But ifin fact Paul will mow in 1995, then (5) also expressed a truth eighty years ago. So eighty 16

years ago (5) expressed the proposition that Paul will mow in 1995 and expressed a truth; since what is past is now necessary, it is now necessary that eighty years ago (5) expressed that proposition and expressed a truth. But it is necessary in the broadly logical sense that if (5) then expressed that proposition (and only that proposition) and expressed a truth, then Paul will mow in 1995. It is therefore necessary that Paul will mow then; hence his mowing then is necessary in just the way the past is. Accordingly, the claim that God is outside of time is essentially irrelevant to Edwardsian arguments. In what follows I shall therefore assume, for the sake of expository simplicity, that God does indeed have foreknowledge, and that it is quite proper to speak of him both as holding a belief at a time and as having held beliefs in the past. What I shall say, however, can be restated so as to accommodate those who reject this assumption.

2 Ockham’s Way Out As Edwards sees things, then ‘in things which are past, their existence is now necessary. ... ’Tis too late for any possibility of alteration in that respect: ’tis now impossible that it should be otherwise than true, that that thing has existed.’ Nor is Edwards idiosyncratic in this intuition; we are all inclined to believe that the past, as opposed to the future, is fixed, stable, unalterable, closed. It is outside our control and outside the control even of an omnipotent being ... This asymmetry consists in part in the fact that the past is outside our controls in a way in which the future is not. Although I now have the power to raise my arm, I do not have the power to bring it about that I raised my arm five minutes ago. Although it is now within my power to think about Vienna, it is not now within my power to bring it about that five minutes ago I was thinking about Vienna. The past is fixed in a way in which the future is open. It is within my power to help determine how the future

ON OCKHAM’S WAY OUT shall be; it is too late to do the same with respect to the past.

Edwards, indeed, speaks in this connection of the unalterability of the past; and it is surely natural to do so. Strictly speaking, however, it is not alterability that is here relevant; for the future is no more alterable than the past. What after all, would it be to alter the past? To bring it about, obviously, that a temporally indexed proposition which is true and about the past before I act, is false thereafter. On 1 January 1982, I was not visiting New Guinea. For me to change the past with respect to that fact would be for me to perform an action A such that prior to my performing the action, it is true that on 1 January 1982 I was not in New Guinea, but after I perform the action, false that I was not in New Guinea then. But of course I can’t do anything like that, and neither can God, despite his omnipotence. But neither can we alter the future. We can imagine someone saying, ‘Paul will in fact walk out the door at 9.2] a.m.; hence ‘Paul will walk out at 9.2] a.m.’ is true; but Paul has

the power to refrain from walking out then; so Paul has the power to alter the future.’ But the conclusion displays confusion; Paul’s not walking out then, were it to occur, would effect no alteration at all in the future. To alter the future, Paul must do something like this: he must perform some action A at a time ¢ before 9.21 such that prior to fit is true that Paul will walk out at 9.21, but after ¢ (after he performs A) false that he will. Neither Paul nor anyone — not even God — can do something like that. So the future is no more alterable than the past. The interesting asymmetry between past and future, therefore, does not consist in the fact that the past is unalterable in a way in which the future is not; none the less, this asymmetry remains. Now, before 9.21, it is within Paul’s power to make it false that he walks out at 9.21; after he walks out at 9.21 he will no longer have that power. In the same way, in 1995 Bc God could have brought it about that Abraham did not exist in 1995 Bc;

now that is no longer within his power. As Edwards says, it’s too late for that. Recognizing this asymmetry, Ockham, like several other medieval philosophers, held that the past is indeed in some sense necessary: it is mecessary per accidens. I claim that every necessary proposition is per se

in either the first mode or the second mode. This is obvious, since I am talking about all propositions that are necessary stmpliciter. 1add this because of propositions that are necessary per accidens, as is the case with many past tense propositions. They are necessary per accidens, because it was contingent that they be necessary, and because they were not always necessary.’

Here Ockham directs our attention to propositions about the past: past-tense propositions together with temporally indexed propositions, such as: (8)

Columbus sails the ocean blue is true in 14928

whose index is prior to the present time. Such propositions, he says, are accidentally necessary if true; they are accidentally necessary because they become necessary. Past-tense propositions become necessary when they become true; temporally indexed propositions such as (8), on the other hand, do not be-

come true — (8) was always true — but they become necessary, being necessary after but not before the date oftheir index. And once a proposition acquires this status, says Ockham, not even God has the power to make it false. In Predestination, God’s Foreknowledge and Future Contingents, Ockham goes on to make an interesting distinction: Some propositions are about the present as regards both their wording and their subject matter (secundum vocem et secundum rem). Where such propositions are concerned, it is universally true that every true proposition about the present has (corresponding to it) a necessary one about the past: e.g. ‘Socrates is seated’, ‘Socrates is walking’, ‘Socrates is just’, and the like.

iy

ALVIN PLANTINGA Other propositions are about the present as regards their wording only and are equivalently about the future, since their truth depends on the truth of propositions about the future. Where such (propositions) are concerned, the rule that every true proposition about the present has corresponding to it a necessary proposition about the past is not true.’

Ockham means to draw the following contrast. Some propositions about the present ‘are about the present as regards both their wording and their subject matter’; for example, (9)

Socrates is seated.

Such propositions, we may say, are strictly about the present; and if such a proposition is now true, then a corresponding proposition about the past —

(10)

regards their wording only and are equivalently about the future; (12) for example, or (13) Eighty years ago, the proposition ‘Paul will mow his lawn’ in 1999 was true

or (to appease those who object to the idea that a proposition can be true at a time): (14)

Eighty years ago, the sentence ‘Paul will mow his lawn in 1999’ expressed the proposition ‘Paul will mow his lawn in 1999’ and expressed a truth.

These propositions are about the past, but they are also equivalently about the future. Purthermore, they are not necessary per accidens — not yet, at any rate. We might say that a true proposition like (12)—(14) is a soft fact about the past, whereas one like:

Socrates was seated —

(15) will be accidentally necessary from now on. Other propositions about the present, however, ‘are about the present as regards their wording only and are equivalently about the future’; for example,

Paul mowed in 1981

— one strictly about the past — is a hard fact about the past.!° Now of course the notion of aboutness, as

Nelson Goodman has reminded us?! is at best a frail reed; a fortiori, then, the same goes for

(11)

Paul correctly believes that the sun will rise on 1 January 2000.

Such a proposition is ‘equivalently about the future’, and it is not the case that if it is true, then the corresponding proposition about the past — (12)

Paul correctly believed that the sun will rise on 1 January 2000

in this case — will be accidentally necessary from now on. (Of course we hope that (12) will be accidentally necessary after 1 January 2000.) What Ockham says about the present, he would also say about the past. Just as some propositions about the present are ‘about the present as regards their wording only and are equivalently about the future’, so some propositions about the past are about the past as 18

the notion of being strictly about. But we do have something of a grasp of this notion, hesitant and infirm though perhaps it is. It may be difficult or even impossible to give a useful criterion for the distinction between hard and soft facts about the past, but we do have some grasp of it, and can apply it in many cases. The idea ofa hard fact about the past contains two important elements: genuineness and strictness. In the first place, a hard fact about the past is a genuine fact about the past. This cannot be said, perhaps, for (13). It is at least arguable that if (13) is a fact about the past at all, it is an ersatz fact about the past; it tells us nothing about the past except in a Pickwickian, Cantabrigian sort of way. What it really tells us is something about the future: that Paul will mow in 1999, (12) and (14), on the other hand, do genuinely tell us something about the past: (12) tells us that Paul believed something

ON OCKHAM’S WAY OUT

and (14) that a certain sentence expressed a certain proposition. But (12) and (14) aren’t strictly about the past; they also tell us something about what will happen in 1999. It may be difficult to give criteria, or (informative) necessary and sufficient conditions for either

are hard facts about the past. Clearly, however, (17) is not a hard fact about the past; for

genuineness or strictness; nevertheless, we do

and no proposition that entails (18) is a hard fact about the past. Let me be entirely clear here; I say that none of (13), (14), and (17) is a hard fact about the past, because each entails (18). In so saying, however, I am not endorsing a criterion for hard fact-hood; in particular I am not adopting an ‘entailment’ criterion, according to which a fact about the past is a hard fact about the past if and only if it entails no proposition about the future. No doubt every proposition about the past, hard fact or not, entails some proposition about the future; ‘Socrates was wise’, for example, entails ‘It will be true

have at least a partial grasp of these notions. Accordingly, let us provisionally join Ockham in holding that there is a viable distinction between hard and soft facts about the past. The importance of this distinction, for Ockham, is that it provides him with a way of disarming the arguments for logical and theological determinism from the necessity of the past. Each of those arguments, when made explicit, has as'a premise. (16)

If pis about the past, then p is necessary

or something similar. Ockham’s response is to deny (16): hard facts about the past are indeed accidentally necessary, but the same cannot be said for soft facts. Such propositions as (13) and (14) are not hard facts about the past; each entails that Paul will mow his lawn in 1999, and is therefore, as Ockham

says, ‘equivalently about the future’. Not all facts about the past, then, are hard facts about the past; and only the hard facts are plausibly thought to be accidentally necessary. (16), therefore, the general claim that all facts about the past are accidentally necessary, is seen to be false — or, at any rate, there seems to be no reason at all to believe it. And thus dissolves any argument for theological determinism which, like Edwards’s, accepts (16) in its full generality. I believe Ockham is correct here; furthermore, there is no easy way to refurbish Edwards’s argument. Given Ockham’s distinction between hard and soft facts, what Edwards’s argument needs is the premise that such propositions as

(17)

God knew eighty years ago that Paul will mow in 1999

(like (13) and (14)), it entails

(18)

Paul will mow his lawn in 1999;

from now on that Socrates was wise’, and ‘Paul played tennis yesterday’ entails ‘Paul will not play tennis for the first time tomorrow’. What I am saying is this: no proposition that entails (18) is a hard fact about the past, because no such proposition is strictly about the past. We may not be able to give a criterion for being

strictly about the past; but we do have at least a rough and intuitive grasp of this notion. Given our intuitive grasp of this notion, I think we can see two things. First, no conjunctive proposition that contains (18) as a conjunct is (now, in 1986) strictly about the past. Thus ‘Paul will mow his lawn in 1999 and Socrates was wise’, while indeed a proposition about the past, is not strictly about the past. And second, hard fact-hood is closed under logical equivalence: any proposition equivalent (in the broadly logical sense) to a proposition strictly about the past is itself strictly about the past.!? But any proposition that entails (18) is equivalent, in the broadly logical sense, to a conjunctive proposition one conjunct of which is (18); hence each such proposition is equivalent to a proposition that is not a hard fact about the past, and is therefore itself not a hard fact about the past. Thus the Edwardsian argument fails. 19

ALVIN PLANTINGA

3 On Ockham’s Way Out As we have seen, Ockham responds to the arguments for theological determinism by distinguishing hard facts about the past — facts that are genuinely and strictly about the past — from soft facts about the past; only the former, he says, are necessary per accidens. This response is intuitively plausible. It is extremely difficult, however, to say precisely what it is for a proposition to be strictly about the past, and equally difficult to say what it is for a proposition to be accidentally necessary. According to Ockham, a proposition is not strictly about the past if its ‘truth depends on the truth of propositions about the future’. This suggests that if a proposition about the past entails one about the future, then it isn’t strictly about the past; we might therefore think that a proposition is strictly about the past if and only if it does not entail a proposition about the future. We might then concur with Ockham in holding that a proposition about the past is accidentally necessary if it is true and strictly about the past. But as John Fischer points out, difficulties immediately rear their ugly heads.!* I shall mention only two. In the first place, suppose we take ‘about the future’ in a way that mirrors the way we took ‘about the past’; a proposition is then about the future if and only if it is either a futuretense proposition or a temporally indexed proposition whose index is a date later than the present. Then obviously any proposition about the past will entail one about the future; (24)

Abraham existed a long time ago

and (25)

Abraham exists in 1995 Bc

entail, respectively,

(26)

and

20

It will be the case from now on that Abraham existed a long time ago

(27)

It will always be true that Abraham exists in 1995 Be.

But then the distinction between propositions strictly about the past and propositions about the past simpliciter becomes nugatory. Perhaps you will reply that propositions like (26) and (27) are at best ersatz propositions about the future, despite their future tense or future index; on a less wooden characterization of ‘about the future’, they wouldn’t turn out to be about the future. Perhaps so; I won’t here dispute the point. But other and less tractable difficulties remain. First, (24) and (25) both entail that Abraham will not begin to exist (i.e. exist for the first time) in 1999;14 and that isn’t, or isn’t obviously, an ersatz fact about the future. Second, on that more ad-

equate characterization, whatever exactly it might be, it will no doubt be true that (28)

It was true eighty years ago either that God knew that Friesland will rule the world in 2000 ap or that Paul believed that Friesland will rule the world in 2000 ap!>

entails no non-ersatz future propositions and is thus strictly about the past. Now suppose, per tmposstbile, that Friesland will indeed rule the world in 2000 ap. Then (28) (given divine omniscience) will be true by virtue of the truth of the first disjunct; the second disjunct,

however, is false (by virtue of Paul’s youth). And then on the above account (28) is accidentally necessary; but is it really? Isn’t it still within someone’s power — God’s, let’s say — to act in such a way that (28) would have been false (Fischer, p. 74)?!° Necessity per accidensand being strictly about the past thus present difficulties when taken in tandem in the way Ockham takes them. The former, furthermore, is baffling and perplexing in its own right; and this is really the fundamental problem here. If, as its proponents claim, accidental necessity isn’t any sort of logical or metaphysical or causal necessity, what sort of necessity is it? How shall we understand

ON OCKHAM’S WAY OUT it? Ockham,

Edwards, and their colleagues

don’t tell us. Furthermore, even ifthey (or we) had a plausible account of being strictly about the past, we couldn’t sensibly define accidental necessity in terms of being strictly about the past; for the whole point of the argument for theological determinism is just that propositions about the future that are entailed by accidentally necessary propositions about the past will themselves be accidentally necessary. So how shall we understand accidental necessity? Perhaps we can make some progress as follows. In explaining accidental necessity, one adverts to facts about the power of agents — such facts, for example, as that not even God

can now bring it about that Abraham did not exist; it’s too’late for that. Furthermore, in the arguments for logical and theological determinism, accidental necessity functions as a sort of middie term. It is alleged that a proposition of some sort or other is about or strictly

(30)

y

Shas the power to bring it about that pis false if and only if there is an action it is within S’s power to perform such that if he were to perform it, p would have been false.

(30) is perhaps inadequate as a general account of what it is to have the power to bring it about that a proposition is false. For one thing, it seems to imply that I have the power with respect to necessarily false propositions (as well as other false propositions whose falsehood is counter-factually independent of my actions) to bring it about that they are false; and this is at best dubious. But here we aren’t interested, first of all, in giving an independent account of having the power to bring it about that pis false; even if (30) isn’t a satisfactory general account of that notion, it may serve acceptably in (29). Incorporating (30), therefore, (29) becomes

about the past; but then, so the claim goes,

that proposition is accidentally necessary — in which case, according to the argument, it is not now within the power of any agent, not even God, to bring it about that it is false. Why not eliminate the middleman and define accidental necessity in terms of the powers of agents? If aproposition p is accidentally necessary, then it is not possible — possible in the broadly logical sense — that there be an agent who has it within his power to bring it about that p is false; why not then define accidental necessity as follows? (29)

p is accidentally necessary at ¢ if and only if p is true at ¢ and it is not possible both that p is true at ¢and that there is a being that at for later has the power to bring it about that p is false?!”

(31)

Now, so far as I know, Ockham gave no explicit account or explanation of accidental necessity; nevertheless, it is not implausible to see him as embracing something like (31). On this definition, furthermore, (given commonsense assumptions) many soft facts about the past will not be accidentally necessary: for example (32)

But how shall we understand this ‘has the power to bring it about that p is false’? Pike speaks in this connection of ‘its being within Jones power to do something that would have brought it about that ~, and Fisher of ‘being able so to act that p would have been false’. This suggests

p is accidentally necessary at ¢ if and only if p is true at ¢and it is not possible both that pis true at ¢and that there exists an agent S and an action A such that (1) Shas the power at for later to perform A, and (2) if S were to perform A at for later, then p would have been false.!8

Eighty years ago it was true that Paul would not mow his lawn in 1999.

Even if true, (32) is not accidentally necessary: it is clearly possible that Paul have the power, in 1999, to mow his lawn; but if he

were to do so, then (32) would have been false. The same goes for 21

ALVIN PLANTINGA

(33)

God believed eighty years ago that Paul would mow his lawn in 1999

if God is essentially omniscient; for then it is a necessary truth that if Paul were to refrain from mowing his lawn during 1999, God would not have believed, eighty years ago, that he would mow then. (32) and (33), therefore, are not accidentally necessary. Since (32) and (33) are not hard facts about the past, Ockham would have welcomed this consequence. But our account of accidental necessity has other consequences — consequences Ockham might have found less to his liking. Let’s suppose that a colony of carpenter ants moved into Paul’s yard last Saturday. Since this colony hasn’t yet had a chance to get properly established, its new home is still a bit fragile. In particular, if the ants were to remain and Paul were to mow his lawn this afternoon, the colony would be destroyed. Although nothing remarkable about these ants is visible to the naked eye, God for reasons of his own, intends that the colony be preserved. Now as a matter of fact, Paul will not mow his lawn this afternoon. God, who is essentially omniscient, knew in advance, of course, that Paul will not mow his lawn this afternoon; but if he had foreknown instead that Paul would mow this afternoon, then he would have prevented the ants from moving in. The facts of the matter, therefore, are these: if Paul were to mow his lawn this afternoon, then God

would have foreknown that Paul would mow his lawn this afternoon; and if God had foreknown that Paul would mow this afternoon,

then God would have prevented the ants from moving in. So if Paul were to mow his lawn this afternoon, then the ants would not have moved in last Saturday. But it is within Paul’s

power to mow this afternoon. There is therefore an action he can perform such that if he were to perform it, then the proposition (34)

That colony of carpenter ants moved into Paul’s yard last Saturday

would have been false. But what I have called

ae

‘the facts of the matter’ certainly seem to be possible; it is therefore possible that there be an agent who has the power to perform an action which is such that, if he were to perform it, then (34) would have been false — in which case it is not accidentally necessary. But (34), obviously enough, is strictly about the past; in so far as we have any grasp at all of this notion, (34) is about as good a candidate for being an exemplification of it as any we can easily think of. So, contrary to what Ockham supposed, not all true propositions strictly about the past — not all hard facts — are accidentally necessary — not, at any rate, in the sense of(31).

It is possible (though no doubt unlikely) that there is something you can do such that if you were to do it, then Abraham would never have existed. For perhaps you will be confronted with a decision of great importance — so important that one of the alternatives is such that if you were to choose zt, then the course of human history would have been quite different from what in fact it is. Furthermore, it is possible that if God had foreseen that you would choose that alternative, he would have acted very differently. Perhaps he would have created different persons; perhaps, indeed, he would not have created Abraham. So it is possible that there is an action such that it is within your power to perform it and such that if you were to perform it, then God would not have created Abraham. But if indeed that 7s possible, then not even the proposition Abraham once existed is accidentally necessary in the sense of (31). By the same sort of reasoning we can see that it is possible (though no doubt monumentally unlikely) that there is something you can do such that if you were to do it, then Caesar would not have crossed the Rubicon and the Peloponnesian War would never have occurred. It follows, then, that even such hard facts about the past as that Abraham once existed, and that there was once a war between the Spartans and Athenians, are not accidentally necessary in the sense of (31). Indeed, it is

ON OCKHAM’'S WAY OUT

not easy to think of amy contingent facts about the past that are accidentally necessary in that sense. Of course, there are limits to the sorts of propositions such that it is possibly within

my power so to act that they would have been false. It is not possible, for example, for there to be an action I can perform such that, if I were to do so, then I would never have ex-

isted.!? But even if it is necessarily not within my power so to act that I would not have existed, the same does not go for you; perhaps there is an action you can take which is such that, if you were to take it, then I would not have existed. (I should therefore like to ask you to tread softly.) Neither of us (nor anyone else) could have the power so to act that there should never have been any (contingently existing) agents; clearly it is not possible that there be an action A some (contingently existing) person could perform such that ifhe were to do so, then there would never have been any contingent agents. So the proposition ‘There have been (contingent) agents’ is accidentally necessary; but it is hard indeed to find any stronger propositions that are both logically contingent and accidentally necessary.

4 Power Over the Past The notion of accidental necessity explained as in (31) is, I think, a relevant notion for the discussion of the arguments for theological determinism from the necessity of the past; for the question at issue is often, indeed ordinarily, put as the question which propositions about the past are such that their truth entails that it is not within anyone’s power so to act that they would have been false. Accidental necessity as thus explained, however, does little to illumine our deep intuitive beliefs about the asymmetry of past and future — the fact that the future is within our control in a way in which the past is not; for far too few propositions turn out to be accidentally necessary.”° What is the root of these beliefs, and what is the relevant asymmetry between past and fu-

ture? Is it just that the scope of our power with respect to the past is vastly more limited than that of our power with respect to the future? That is, is it just that there are far fewer propositions about the past than about the future which are such that I can so act that they would have been false? I doubt that this is an important part of the story, simply because we really know very little about how far our power with respect to either past or future extends. With few exceptions, I do not know which true propositions about the past are such that I can so act that they would have been false; and the same goes for true propositions about the future. So suppose we look in a different direction. Possibly there is something I can do such that, if Iwere to do it, then Abraham would not have existed; but it is not possible — is it? — that I now cause Abraham not to have existed. While it may be within Paul’s power so to act that the colony of ants would not have moved in last Saturday, surely it is not within his power now - or for that matter within God’s power now -— to cause it to be true that the colony did not move in. Perhaps we should revise our definition of accidental necessity to say that a proposition is (now) accidentally necessary if it is true, and also such that its truth entails that it is not (now) within anyone’s power (not even God’s) to cause it to be false. And perhaps we could then see the relevant asymmetry between past and future as the fact that true propositions strictly about the past — unlike their counterparts about the future — are accidentally necessary in this new sense. The right answer, I suspect, lies in this direction; but the suggestion involves a number of profound perplexities — about agent causation, the analysis of causation, whether backwards causation is possible, the relation between causation and counter factuals — that I cannot explore here. Let us instead briefly explore a related suggestion. In our first sense of accidental necessity, a proposition p is accidentally necessary if and only if p is true and such that it is not possible that p be true and 23

ALVIN PLANTINGA

there be an agent and an action such that (1) the agent is now or will in the future be able to perform the action and (2) if he were to do so, the p would have been false. Then such propositions as ‘Abraham existed in 1995 Bc’ turn out not to be accidentally necessary because of the possibility of divine foreknowledge and, so to speak, divine fore-cooperation. Perhaps, if Iwere to do A, then God would have foreseen that I would do A and would not have created Abraham. My doing A, however, is not by ztse/f sufficient for Abraham’s not existing; it requires God’s previous co-operation. So suppose we strengthen the counter-factual involved in the above definition; suppose we say:

about the past turn out to be accidentally necessary, but so do some contingent propositions about the future. And finally, Ockham’s claim that necessity per accidens is connected with what is strictly about the past seems to be vindicated on (39); barring a couple of complications, it looks as if a logically contingent proposition about the past is accidentally necessary in the sense of (39) if and only if it is true and strictly about the past. So, for example,

(39)

is true (let’s suppose), but not strictly about the past. Here there is indeed something someone can do that entails its falsehood: Paul can mow his lawn in 1985. But it is not possible that there be an action Paul (or anyone) can or will be able to perform such that his performing it entails that

p is accidentally necessary at ¢ if and only if pis true at ¢and it is not possible both that pis true at and that there exists an action A and an agent S such that (1) Shas the power at f or later to perform A, and (2) necessarily if Swere to perform A at for later, then p would have been false.

(40)

(41) While it may be within Paul’s power to do something — namely, mow his lawn — such that, if he were to do so, then that colony of ants would not have moved in, his performing that action does not entail the falsehood of the proposition that the ants did move in; and it looks as if there is nothing he or anyone can do that does entail its falsehood. Permit me a couple of comments on this definition. First, although it involves the idea of a proposition’s being true at a time, it is easily revised (as are (42) and (44) below) so as to accommodate our atemporalist friends. Second, I am thinking of the notion of an agent, as it enters into the definition, broadly, in such a way as to include agents of all sorts; in particular it is to include God. Third, propositions that are necessary in the broadly logical sense turn out accidentally necessary. Fourth, accidental necessity thus characterized is closed under entailment but not under conjunction. Fifth, many contingent propositions 24

Eighty years ago, the sentence ‘Paul will mow his lawn in 1995’ expressed the proposition ‘Paul will mow his lawn in 1995’ and expressed a truth

Paul didn’t mow his lawn in 1984

is false. We may thus say, with Ockham, that

propositions strictly about the past are accidentally necessary; and the relevant asymmetry between past and future is just that contingent propositions strictly about the past are accidentally necessary, while their colleagues about the future typically are not. Unfortunately, there is a residual perplexity. For what shall we count, here, as actions? Suppose it is in fact within Paul’s power so to act that the ants would not have moved in; isn’t

there such an action as bringing it about that the ants would not have moved in or so acting that the ants would not have moved in? If there is (and why not?) then it is both an action he can perform and one such that his performing it entails that the ants did not move in; but

then ‘The ants moved in’ is not accidentally necessary after all. Here what we need, clearly enough, is the idea of a basic action, what an agent can in some sense do directly. Moving

ON OCKHAM’S WAY OUT

my arm, perhaps, would be such an action; starting a world war, or so acting that the ants would not have moved in, would not. Let’s say that an action is one I can directly perform if it is one I can perform without having to perform some other action in order to perform it. Starting a war would not be an action I can directly perform; I cannot start a war without doing something like pushing a button, pulling a trigger, or making a declaration. According to Roderick Chisholm, the only actions I can directly perform are undertakings.” I can’t, for example, raise my arm without trying or endeavouring or undertaking to do so; more exactly (as Chisholm points out’), I can’t raise it without undertaking to do something scratch my ear, for example. I am inclined to think he is right: more generally, I can’t perform an action which is not itselfan undertaking, without undertaking some action or other. (What I say below, however, does not depend on this claim.) But he is also right in thinking that undertakings are not undertaken. If so, however, it will follow that the only actions I can directly perform are undertakings. Now some actions I can perform are such that my undertaking to perform them and my body’s being in normal conditions are together causally sufficient for my performing them; raising my hand and moving my feet would be an example. ‘Normal conditions’ here, includes, among other things, the absence ofpathological conditions, as well as the absence of such external hindrances as being locked in a steamer trunk or having my hands tied behind my back. Of course more should be said here, but this will have to suffice for now. Let us say, then, that an action A is a

basic action for a person Sif and only if there is an action A* that meets two conditions: first,

Scan directly perform A*, and secondly, S’s being in normal conditions and his directly performing A* is causally sufficient for his performing A. Then we may revise (39) by appropriately inserting ‘A is basic for 9’: (42)

p is accidentally necessary at ¢ if and only if p is true at ¢ and it is not possi-

ble both that pis true at ¢and that there exists an agent S and an action A such that (1) A is basic for S, (2) S has the power at for later to perform A, and (3) necessarily if S were to perform A at ¢ or later, then p would have been false.

There is one more complication.?* (43)

God foreknew that Smith and Jones will not freely co-operate in mowing the lawn

should not turn out to be accidentally necessary; but on (42) it does. The problem is that (42) does not properly accommodate co-operative ventures freely undertaken; it must be generalized to take account of multiple agency. This is easily enough accomplished:

(44)

p is accidentally necessary at ¢ if and only if p is true at ¢ and it is not possible both that pis true at ¢and that there exist agents S, ..., S, and actions A,, ..., A, such that (1) A; is basic for S,, (2) Shas the power at for later to perform A,, and (3) necessarily, if every S, were to perform A, at ¢ or later, then p would have been false.

And now we may say perhaps, that the way in which the future but not the past is within our control is that contingent propositions strictly about the past are accidentally necessary, while those about the future typically are

not. By way of summary and conclusion, then: the two main arguments for the incompatibility of divine foreknowledge with human freedom are both failures. The Ockhamite claim that not all propositions about the past are hard facts about the past seems correct; among those that are not hard facts would be propositions specifying God’s ((past) foreknowledge of future human actions, as well as propositions specifying God’s (past) foreknowledge of future human actions, as well

25

ALVIN PLANTINGA

as propositions specifying God’s) past beliefs about future human actions, if God is essentially omniscient. Only hard facts about the past, however, are plausibly thought to be accidentally necessary; hence neither God’s foreknowledge nor God’s forebelief poses a threat to human freedom. Accidental necessity is a difficult notion, but can be explained in terms of the power of agents. The initially plausible account of accidental necessity (31) is defective as an account of the intuitively obvious asymmetry between past and future; for far too few propositions turn out to be accidentally necessary on that account. (44), however, is more satisfying.

10

joinder’, Philosophical Review, 75 (1966), p. 370; and Marilyn Adams, ‘Is the Existence of God a “Hard” Fact?’, Philosophical Review, 76 (1966), pp. 493-4. ll

12

13 Notes 1

2 3

4

StAugustine, On Free Will, in Augustine: Earlier Writings tr. J. H.S. Burleigh, vol. 6 (Philadelphia, 1953), bk. 3, ii, 4. St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, Dike chy O7— pe 0) See Summa Contra Gentiles, bk. i, ch. 67, and Summa Theologiae, pt. i, q. 14, art. 13. Jonathon Edwards, Freedom of the Will (Bos-

14 15

16 17

ton, 1745), s. 12.

5

6

7 8

9

26

See E. Stump and N. Kretzmann, ‘Eternity’, Journal of Philosophy, 78 (8) (August 1981), pp. 429-58; reprinted in this volume (see Reading 6, pp. 42-53 below). See, for example, Peter van Inwagen, An Essay on Free on Free Will (Oxford, 1983), pp. 35 ff.; and Nelson Pike, God and Timelessness (New York, 1970), pp. 67 ff. (More exactly, Pike’s objection is not to temporally indexed propositions as such, but to alleged propositions of the sort ‘it is true at T, that S does A aie 1") William of Ockham, Ordinatio, vol. i, prologue, q. 6. I take it that (8) is equivalent to (8*) ‘Columbus sails the ocean blue’ is, was or will be true in 1492 I am here ignoring allegedly tenseless propositions, if indeed there are any such things. William Ockham, Predestination, God’s Foreknowledge, and Future Contingents, tr. with Introduction, Notes, and Appendices by Marilyn Adams and Norman Kretzmann

(Ithaca, 1969), pp. 46-7. See Nelson Pike, ‘Of God and Freedom: a Re-

Nelson Goodman, ‘About’, Mind 70 (1962), pp. 1-24. I think it is clear that hard fact-hood zs closed under broadly logical equivalence; this argument, however, does not require the full generality of that premise. All it requires is that no proposition strictly about the past is equivalent in the broadly logical sense to a conjunction one conjunct of which, like (18), is a contingent proposition paradigmatically about the future. John Fischer, ‘Freedom and Foreknowledge’, Philosophical Review, 92 (1983), pp. 73-5.

lioylesjh wD I leave it to the reader to restate (28) insucha way as to accommodate those who hold that propositions are not true at times.

Fischer, ‘Freedom and Foreknowledge’, p. 74. The appropriate atemporalist counterpart of (29) is (29*) pis accidentally necessary if and only if pis true and it is not possible both that p is true and that there is or will be a being that has or will have the power to bring it about that pis false of which (29) is a generalization. (31), (39), (42), and (44) below have similar

18

19

counterparts. Note that on (31) propositions that are necessary in the broadly logical sense turn out to be accidentally necessary. If this is considered a defect, it can be remedied by adding an appropriate condition to the definiens. Similar comments apply to (39), (42), and (44) below. Every action is necessarily such that, if Iwere to perform it, I would have existed; so if there were such an action, it would be such that, if I

20

were to perform it, then I would have both existed and not existed. We might be inclined to broaden (31) as follows: (31*) Pis accidentally necessary at tifand only if p is true at ¢and there is no action A and person S such that if § were to perform A, then p would have been false.

ON OCKHAM’S WAY OUT (31*) is indeed broader than (31). First, it is clearly necessary that any proposition satisfying the definiens of (31) also satisfies the definiens of (31*). Second, it seems possible that there be a true proposition p such that, while indeed it is possible that there be a person Sand an action A such that Scan perform A and such that if Swere to perform A, then p would have been true, as a matter of fact there is no such person and action. It is therefore possible that there be a proposition that is accidentally necessary in the sense of (31*) but not in the sense of (31). The problem with (31*), however, is a close relative of the problem with (31); under (31*) there will be far too few (contingent) propositions such that we have any reason to think them accidentally necessary.

21

Roderick Chisholm, Person and Object (LaSalle, 1976), p. 85. Chisholm’s powerful discussion of agency (pp. 53-88 and 159-74) should be required reading for anyone inter“ ested in that topic. (Chisholm does not use the term ‘directly perform’, and I am not here using the term ‘basic action’ in just the way he does.) 22 Ibid., p. 57. 23 Called to my attention by Edward Wierenga, to whom I am especially grateful for penetrating comments on an ancestor of this paper. I am grateful for similar favours to many others, including Lawrence Powers, Alfred Freddoso, Mark Heller, Peter van Inwagen, William Alston, David Vriend, the members of the Calvin College Tuesday Colloquium, and especially Nelson Pike.

a

Perfection

4

The Problem of Divine Perfection and Freedom*

William Rowe Though God is a most perfectly free agent, he cannot but do always what is best and wisest in the whole. Samuel Clarke

Many thinkers in the theistic tradition have held that in addition to omnipotence and omniscience God’s attributes must include perfect goodness and freedom. For the theistic God deserves unconditional gratitude, praise, and worship. But if a being were to fall short of perfect goodness, it would not be worthy of unreserved praise and worship. So, too, for

divine freedom. If God were not free in some of his significant actions, if he always lacked the freedom not to do what he in fact does, we could hardly thank him or praise him for anything that he does. He would not be deserving of our gratitude and praise for the simple reason that he would act of necessity and not freely. So, along with omnipotence and omniscience, perfect goodness and significant freedom are fundamental attributes of the theistic God. Some attributes are essential to an object. That object could not exist were it not to possess those attributes. Other attributes are such that the object could still exist were it to lack them. Ifthe theistic God does exist, to which

class do his attributes of omnipotence, omniscience, perfect goodness, and freedom be-

* From Reasoned Faith, ed. Eleonore Stump (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1993), pp. 223-33. Reprinted with permission.

28

long? Are they essential to that being? Does that being possess those attributes in every possible world in which he exists? Or are they not essential? Most thinkers in the theistic tradition have held the view that these attributes are constitutive of God’s nature; they are essential attributes of the being that has them. With this view in mind, my aim in this essay is to consider the question of whether God’s perfect goodness, specifically his moral perfection, is consistent with his being free in many significant actions. Throughout, we will suppose that if God exists he is essentially omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good, and free in many of his actions. What I want to determine is whether there is a serious difficulty in the endeavor to reconcile God’s essential goodness and moral perfection with any significant degree of divine freedom.! I begin the investigation with the question of whether God is ever free to do an evil (morally wrong) act. The answer, I believe, is no. Of course, being morally perfect, omnipotent, and omniscient, God will never in fact do an

evil act. No being who knowingly and willingly performs an evil act is morally perfect. Since being free to do an evil act is consistent with never in fact doing an evil act, it may seem initially plausible to think that God could be free to perform such an act. But if God is free to perform an evil act, then he has it in his power to perform that act. And, if God has it in his power to perform an evil act, then he has it in his power to deprive himself of one ofhis essential attributes (moral perfec-

DIVINE PERFECTION AND FREEDOM

tion). But no being has the power to deprive itself of one of its essential attributes.” Therefore, God does not have it in his power to perform an evil act. The reasoning in this argument proceeds as follows. (1)

(2) (3)

(4)

God has it in his power to bring it about that he performs an evil act. (Assumption to be refuted) From God’s performing an evil act it follows that God is not morally perfect. If Xhas it in its power to bring about p, 4 follows from p, and q does not obtain, then X has it in its power to bring about q. God hasit in his power to bring it about that he is not morally perfect. (From 1 torsi)et

(5)

Being morally perfect is an essential attribute of God.

Therefore,

(6)

God has it in his power to bring it about that he lacks one tributes.

of his essential at-

Because (6) is clearly false, we must deny the initial assumption that God has power to bring it about that he performs an evil act. But if God does not have it in his power to perform an evil act, then performing an evil act is not something God is free to do. It may seem that my argument to show that God is not free to do an evil act has already produced a serious difficulty in the theistic concept of God. For if God cannot do evil, what becomes of his omnipotence? After all, even we humans, with our quite limited power, are able to perform evil deeds. If God does not have the power to do what even we can do, how can we reasonably hold that he is essentially omnipotent? So long as we hold that omnipotence does not imply power to do what is not possible to be done, we need not conclude that God’s lacking power to bring it about that he do

something morally wrong renders him less than omnipotent.’ For, as we’ve seen, it is strictly impossible for a being who logically cannot be other than morally perfect to do something evil. If God is not free to do a morally wrong action, might he be free to do a morally right act? “Morally right act” may mean either what is morally obligatory or what is morally permissible. If we are willing to countenance refraining from performing a certain action as an “action,” then it is clear that God is not free with respect to performing any action that is morally obligatory for him to perform. For refraining from that action would be morally wrong, and, as we’ve seen, God is not free to do anything that is morally wrong for him to do. For God to be free in performing any action, it must be both in his power to perform it and in his power to refrain from performing it. But since refraining from doing what is morally obligatory is morally wrong, and being morally perfect is essential to God, he does not have the power to refrain from doing what is morally obligatory. In short, God does what is morally obligatory of necessity, not freely. The way [ve just put the point about God doing what is morally obligatory for him to do is not quite right. For it suggests that even though God does not freely do what he is morally obligated to do, he nevertheless does (of necessity) what he has a moral obligation to do. But the truth is that no action is such that God can have a moral obligation to perform it. For one cannot have a moral obligation to do what one cannot do freely. If a person freely does some act, then it was in the person’s power not to do it.* Since it would be morally wrong for God not to do what he is morally obligated to do, it follows from my previous argument that God cannot do freely what he is morally obligated to do. But, since one cannot be morally obligated to do what one is not free to do, there are no actions God has a moral obligation to perform. At best we can say that God does of necessity those acts he would be morally obligated to do were he

free to do them. 29

WILLIAM ROWE

We’ve seen that because he is essentially a morally perfect being, God is neither free to do a morally wrong action nor free in doing a morally obligatory action. We’ve also seen that no action can be such that God has a moral obligation to do it (or not to do it). It looks, then, as though my initial efforts have yielded the result that God’s absolute moral perfection places significant restraints on the scope of divine freedom. However, the fact that God is neither free to do what is wrong nor free in doing what is morally obligatory (what would

be morally obligatory were God free with respect to doing or not doing it) may still leave considerable scope for God’s freedom to be exercised.® For, so long as some of his important actions are morally permissible but not morally obligatory, we thus far have no reason to deny that God is free with respect to all such actions, that he has it in his power to do them and in his power not to do them. For example, it has long been held that God’s action in creating the world was a free action, that God was free to create a world and free not to create a world.° Creating the world is certainly a very significant act, involving, as it does, a vast number of divine acts in actualiz-

ing the contingent states of affairs that constitute our world. If God enjoys freedom with respect to the world he creates, then, although his freedom is constrained in ways that ours is not, there would not appear to be any insurmountable problem to reconciling perfection and freedom.’ To pursue the investigation of a possible conflict between God’s moral perfection and his freedom, therefore, it will be helpful to turn our attention to God’s action in creating the world. Specifically, we need to

consider whether God’s moral perfection leaves God free with respect to his creation of the world. It is important to distinguish two questions concerning God’s freedom in creating a world. There is the question of whether God is free to select among creatable worlds the one he will create. There is also the question of whether God is free not to create a world at all. That these are quite different questions 30

can be seen as follows. Suppose that among worlds creatable by an omnipotent being there is one that is morally better than all other worlds. On this supposition, one can imagine arguments for any of four positions. Someone might argue that although God is free not to create a world at all, if he chooses to create, he must create the best world he can.

Hence, although he is free not to create the morally best world, he is not free to create any world other than it. Alternatively, someone might argue that God’s perfect goodness absolutely necessitates that he create a good world. God is not free not to create a world. But God’s perfection does not necessitate that he create the best world he can. He is free to create among the class of creatable good worlds. Third, someone might argue that God enjoys both sorts of freedom. He is free not to create at all. He is also free to create some good world other than the best that he can create. Finally, one might argue that God’s being essentially perfect necessitates his creating that world which is superior to all others. God is not free to create some world other than the best, and he is not free not to create

any world at all. In what follows, I focus primarily on my first question (whether God is free to select among creatable worlds). In an important article, Robert Adams has argued that it need not be wrong for God to create a world that is ot as good as some other world he could create.? Adams supposes that the world God creates contains creatures each of whom is as happy as it is in any possible world in which it exists. Moreover, no crea-

ture in this world is so miserable that it would be better had it not existed. Let’s suppose there is some other possible world, with different creatures, that exceeds this world in its degree of happiness, a world that God could have created. So, God has created a world with a lesser degree of happiness than he could have. Has God wronged anyone in creating this world? Adams argues that God cannot have wronged the creatures in the other possible world, for merely possible beings don’t have rights. Nor can be have wronged the crea-

DIVINE PERFECTION AND FREEDOM

tures in the world he has created, for their lives could not be made more happy. Adams notes that God would have done something wrong in creating this world were the following principle true: “It is wrong to bring into existence, knowingly, a being less excellent than one could have brought into existence.”!° But this principle, Adams argues, is subject to counterexamples. Parents do no wrong when they refrain from taking drugs that would result in an abnormal gene structure in their children, even though taking the drugs would result in children who are superhuman both in intelligence and in prospects for happiness. Suppose we agree with Adams on these points. Suppose, that is, that we agree that God is not morally obligated to create the best

world that he can, that it would be morally permissible for God to create the best world he can, but also morally permissible for God to create any of anumber of other good worlds of the sort Adams describes. If so, can’t we

conclude that there is no unresolvable conflict between God’s being essentially morally perfect and his enjoying a significant degree of genuine freedom? For it now appears that God’s moral perfection does not require him to create the best world. In short, he is free to create (or not create) any of a number of good

worlds. As forceful and persuasive as Adams’s arguments are, I don’t think they yield the conclusion that God’s perfect goodness imposes no requirement on God to create the best world that he can create. What Adams’s arguments show, at best, is that God’s moral per-

fection imposes no moral obligation on God to create the best world he can. His arguments establish, at best, that God need not be doing anything morally wrong in creating some

world other than the best world. But this isn’t quite the same thing as showing that God’s perfect goodness does not render it necessary that he create the best world he can. For, even

conceding the points Adams tries to make, there still may be an inconsistency in a morally perfect being creating some world other than the best world he can create. My point

here is this. One being may be morally better than another even though it is not better by virtue of the performance of some obligation thatthe other failed to perform. It may be morally better by virtue of performing some supererogatory act that the other being could have but did not perform. Analogously, a being who creates a better world than another being may be morally better, even though the being who creates the morally inferior world does not thereby do anything wrong. Following Philip Quinn, I’m inclined to think that if an omnipotent being creates some world other than the best world it can create, then it is

possible there should exist a being morally better than it is.!! For it would be possible for there to be an omnipotent being who creates the best world that the first being could create but did not. I conclude then that if an essentially omnipotent, perfectly good being creates any world at all, it must create the best world it can. For although a being may do no wrong in creating less than the best it can create, a being whose nature is to be perfectly Jood is not such that it is possible for there to be a being morally better than it. If, however, a being were to create a world when there is a morally better world it could create, then it would be possible for there to be a being morally better than it. What we have seen is that a being who is morally perfect and creates a world must create the very best world it can create. But what if there is no best world among those it can create? This would be so in either of two cases. First, it might be that for any world it creates there is a morally better world it can create. Second, it might be that there is no unique best world. Perhaps, instead, there are many morally unsurpassable worlds among the worlds God can create. Let’s consider these two cases in turn. On the assumption that for any world God creates there is a morally better world he can create, it is clear that it is impossible for God to do the best that he can. Whatever he does, it will be the case that he could have done better. This being so, it would seem only rea31

WILLIAM ROWE

sonable that God’s perfect goodness is fully satisfied should he create a very good world. And we may safely assume that there are a large number of such worlds that he can create. So long as he creates one ofthese worlds, he will have satisfied the demands ofhis morally perfect nature. For the idea that he should create the best world he can is an idea that logically cannot be implemented. Hence, on the assumption of there being no morally unsurpassable world among the worlds God can create, it would seem that God’s absolute moral perfection is fully compatible with his freely creating any one of a number of good worlds that lie in his power to create. To complain that God cannot then be perfect because he could have created a better world is to raise a complaint that no creative action God took would have enabled him to avoid. As William Wainwright notes: The critic complains that God could have created a better order. But even if God had created a better order, He would be exposed to the possibility of a similar complaint. Indeed, no created order better than our own is such that God would not be exposed to the possibility of a complaint of this sort. The complaint is thus inappropriate. Even though there are an infinite number of created orders better than our own, God can’t be faulted simply because He created an order inferior to other orders that He might have created in their place.!”

There is something forceful and right about this reasoning. If, no matter what world an omnipotent being creates, there is a morally better world that being can create, then, pro-

vided that the omnipotent being creates a significantly good world, it cannot be morally at fault for not having created a morally better world. But our question is whether a being in such a situation can be an absolutely perfect being. And for reasons I have already uncovered, I think the answer is no. A being is necessarily an absolutely perfect moral being only if it is not possible for there to be a being morally better than it. Ifa being creates a world when there is some morally better world that 32

it could have created, then it is possible that there be a being morally better than it. Since our assumption implies that for any world an omnipotent being creates there is a morally better world it can create, it follows that any such being who creates even a very good world cannot be an absolutely perfect moral being. Although the omnipotent being in question could be a very good moral agent and enjoy a significant degree of freedom in creating among a number of very good worlds, it could not be an absolutely perfect moral being. The existence of the theistic God who creates a world is inconsistent with the supposition that among the worlds he can create there is no morally unsurpassable world. Let’s now consider the second way in which it could be true that no creatable world is better than all others. Suppose that among the worlds God can create there are a number of worlds that are morally unsurpassable. For reasons we’ve already considered, if God creates a world, he cannot create some world that

is morally inferior to some other that he can create. Therefore, if there are a number of morally unsurpassable worlds among the worlds he can create, then if he creates at all he must create one of these worlds. But unlike the case when there is exactly one morally unsurpassable world among the worlds he can create, here we do seem to have found a wedge to open up space for some degree of divine freedom to exist in harmony with God’s absolute moral perfection. For God would seem to be free to create any one of the morally unsurpassable worlds. In any case, God’s absolute moral perfection imposes no requirement on his creation among the set of morally unsurpassable worlds. Among the worlds creatable by an omnipotent being, either (1) there is exactly one morally unsurpassable world or (2) there is not. If there is not, then either (2a) there is no morally unsurpassable world or (2b) there are anumber of morally unsurpassable worlds. If (1) is the case, then God is not free to select among creatable worlds. If (2a) is the case, God’s being essentially morally perfect is in-

DIVINE PERFECTION AND FREEDOM

consistent with his act of creating a world. If (2b) is the case, God’s moral perfection leaves him free to select among morally unsurpassable worlds the one he will create. Earlier, I distinguished two questions concerning God’s freedom in creating a world. We have been discussing the question of God’s freedom to select among creatable worlds the one he will create. It is now time to consider the other question of whether God is free not to create a world at all. Here we may limit our inquiry to the possibility that there is exactly one morally unsurpassable world among the worlds creatable by an omnipotent being. As we've seen, in this case God is not free to select any other world to create. If God creates,

he must create the one world that is morally best. Our present question is whether in this situation God is free not to create at all. Some possible world must be actual. What possible world would be actual if God exists but does not create at all? Presumably, it would be a world in which no positive, contingent state of affairs obtains. By “a positive, contingent state of affairs” I mean any state of affairs such that from the fact that it obtains it follows that some contingent being (other than God, if he should be contingent) exists. Apart from God and whatever necessarily existing entities there are, in a world God inhabits but does not create no other being would exist. To answer our question of whether God is free not to create a world at all, we must compare the best world God can create with a world whose inhabitants are simply God and whatever necessarily existing entities there are. Assuming such a world would not be morally incommensurate with the morally unsurpassable world among worlds God can create, it is plausible to think that God is not free with respect to whether he will not create at all. For either the world he inhabits but does not create is better than the best world he can create or it is not. If it is better, then he is not free not to create a world

at all; he necessarily refrains from creating. If it is worse, then he is not free not to create a

world at all; he necessarily creates a world.

Might the world he inhabits but does not create be on a moral par with the best world among those an omnipotent being can create? If so, then, as in the case where there are a number of morally unsurpassable worlds omnipotence can create, we again have a wedge for creating space for some degree of divine freedom. But, in this scarcely possible situation, God’s freedom would be restricted to creating the morally unsurpassable world or not creating at all. I now can draw together the results of my study of the problem of divine perfection and freedom. The conclusions may be presented as follows.

(1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

(5)

God is not free to perform any evil act, nor is he free in doing what is morally obligatory. Ifthere is a world creatable by God that is morally better than any world he inhabits but does not create, God is not free not to create a world at all. If he exists, he is a creator of necessity. Iffor any world creatable by an omnipotent being there is another creatable world that is morally better, the theistic God cannot exist and be a creator of anything. If there is a single, morally best creatable world, God enjoys neither sort of freedom: he is not free not to create and he is not free to select among creatable worlds.'* If there are a number of morally unsurpassable, creatable worlds, then, al-

though God necessarily creates one or the other of them, he is free (so far as his moral perfection is concerned) to select among the morally unsurpassable worlds the one he will create.'® Traditional theists who hold that God is essentially perfect and yet possesses libertarian freedom of will and action have neglected, I believe, some of the implications that appear to follow from God’s perfect goodness.

33

WILLIAM ROWE

For all we know about possible worlds, it may well be that God’s perfect goodness is inconsistent with any degree of divine freedom in whether he creates or what world he creates. In any case, it would seem that his perfection places rather severe limitations on the scope of his freedom in creating a world. The problem we have been considering is rooted in two basic points: God’s perfect goodness is such as to preclude the possebility of a morally better being; God’s freedom is such that he acts and wills freely only if it is in ~ his power not to so act and will. Ifeither point is significantly qualified or given up, the conclusions I’ve drawn may no longer obtain. If, for example, we give up the libertarian idea of freedom, then, following Jonathan Edwards, we might hold that God’s actions are free even though necessitated by his perfect goodness.'° On the other hand, we might endeavor to qualify God’s perfect goodness so that it permits the possibility for God to have been better than he is.'” Neither of these alternatives has been addressed in this essay.

6

tion of the classical Judeo-Christian views on

God’s freedom with respect to creation see Norman Kretzmann, ‘A General Problem of

7

8

9

10” 11

Notes

1 2

3

4

5

34

I take God’s moral perfection to be logically implied by his perfect goodness. Itis understood here that a being has the power to deprive itself of aproperty only if it is possible for that being to lose that property and continue to exist. For a discussion

of this point see Joshua

Hoffman, “Can God Do Evil?” Southern Journal of Philosophy, 17 (1979), pp. 213-20. To avoid Frankfurt-type counterexamples, we should say that when an agent freely performs some action she caused her action and had the power not to cause that action. The power not to cause one’s action is ot the same as the power to prevent one’s action. I ignore this complication in the text. If we take significant freedom, as Alvin Plantinga does, to be the freedom to do or refrain from doing what is morally obligatory, it can be shown that God cannot be significantly free. See Wes Morriston, “Is God ‘Significantly Free’?” Faith and Philosophy, 2 (1983), pp. 257-63.

Foranexcellent discussion and critical evalua-

12

13

14

lS

Creation,” and “A Particular Problem of Creation,” in Being and Goodness, ed. Scott MacDonald (Ithaca, N.Y., and London: Cornell University Press, 1990). There is a problem of understanding what God’s moral perfection comes to, given that he can have no moral obligations. But this problem may not be unresolvable. See Thomas Morris, Anselmian Explorations (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1987), pp. 31-41. Since there may be possible worlds that an omnipotent being cannot create, we need to restrict our discussion to the class of worlds creatable by God. Robert Adams, “Must God Create the Best?” Philosophical Review, 81 (1972) pp. 317-32. *Ibids py 329. Philip L. Quinn, “God, Moral Perfection, and Possible Worlds,” in God: The Contemporary Discussion, ed. Frederick Sontag and M. Darrol Bryant (New York: Rose of Sharon Press, 1982), pp. 197-213. Quinn remarks: “An omnipotent moral agent can actualize any actualizable world. If he actualizes one than which there is a morally better, he does not do the best he can, morally speaking, and so it is possible that there is an agent morally better than he is, namely an omnipotent moral agent who actualizes one of those morally better worlds” (p. 213). William Wainwright, Philosophy of Religion (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth Publishing, 1988), p. 90. This point is a plausible extension of our earlier principle: If X creates a morally inferior world to one X can create, then it is possible that there be a being morally better than X. Extending this principle, it is plausible to hold that ifX can but does not create a world that is morally better than the one X inhabits, then it is possible that there be a being morally better than X. The plausible assumption here is that if there is a single, morally best creatable world, then that world is morally better than any world God inhabits but does not create. eeSeeanepliss

HOW AN UNSURPASSABLE 16

17

5

Jonathan Edwards, Freedom of the Will, ed. Paul Ramsey (New Haven: Yale University Rress L957.) See, for example, the suggestion by William

BEING CAN CREATE A SURPASSABLE WORLD Wainwright (drawn from Charles Hartshorne) that God’s perfection might require only that he be unsurpassable by some other being (Philosophy of Religion, p.9). J

How an Unsurpassable Being Can Create a Surpassable World*

Daniel and Frances Howard-Snyder 4

Imagine that there exists a good, essentially omniscient and omnipotent being named Jove, and that there exists nothing else. No possible being is more powerful or knowledgeable. Out of his goodness, Jove decides to create. Since he is all-powerful, there is nothing but the bounds of possibility to prevent him from getting what he wants. Unfortunately, as he holds before his mind the host of worlds, Jove sees that for each there is a better one. Although he can create any of them, he can’t create the best of them because there is no best. Faced with this predicament, Jove first sorts the worlds according to certain criteria. For example, he puts on his left worlds in which some inhabitants live lives that aren’t worth living and on his right worlds in which every inhabitant’s life is worth living; he puts on his left worlds in which some horrors fails to serve an outweighing good and on his right worlds in which no horror fails to serve an outweighing good. (We encourage the reader to use her own criteria.) Then he orders the right hand worlds according to their good-

ness and assigns to each a positive natural number, the worst of the lot receiving “1,” the second worst “2,” and so on. Next, he

creates a very intricate device that, at the push * From Faith and Philosophy, 11: 2 (1994), pp. 2608. Reported with permission.

of a button, will randomly select a number and produce the corresponding world. Jove pushes the button; the device hums and whirs and, finally, its digital display reads “777”: world no. 777 comes into being. We see no incoherence in this story. Now, consider the proposition that Jove is not only good but essentially unsurpassably good. Suppose we add this to our story. Does some glaring incoherence reveal itself? We can’t see one. If our story (so amended) is a logical possibility, then there is no contradiction in supposing that an essentially morally unsurpassable, essentially omnipotent and omniscient being

could create a world inferior to some other world he, or some other possible being, could have created. It is important to see that our (amended) story does not merely suggest that Jove is not at fault in creating a world less than the best he could have created. It suggests much more than that an essentially omnipotent and omniscient being does nothing wrong in creating a surpassable world. It suggests that his creating a world inferior to one he or some other possible being could have created does nothing to impugn his status as essentially morally unsurpassable 1m any respect whatsoever. And so we claim that if any philosophical story can illustrate a logical possibility, our story illustrates how it is possible for an essen36

DANIEL AND FRANCES HOWARD-SNYDER

tially morally unsurpassable, essentially omnipotent and omniscient being to create a surpassable world.! We expect some people to disagree with us. We expect they will say things like this: An omnipotent being can actualize any actualizable world. If he actualizes one than which there is a morally better, he does not do the best he can, morally speaking, and so it is possible that there is an agent morally better than he is, namely, an omnipotent moral agent who actualizes one of those morally better: worlds,”

or perhaps this: A being is necessarily an absolutely perfect moral being only if it is not possible for there to be a being morally better than it. Ifa being creates a world when there is some morally better world that it could have created, then it is possible that there be a being morally better than it. For it would be possible for there to be a omnipotent being who creates a better world that the first being could create but did not.?

Apparently, these people assume that, if it is possible for there to be an omnipotent being who when faced with Jove’s predicament cre-

ates a better world, then — so long as nothing else about him made him morally worse than Jove* —, he would be morally better than Jove.

If they don’t assume this, then even if it is possible for there to be such an omnipotent being, that would hardly suffice to show that Jove was morally surpassable. Therefore, the possibility of an omnipotent being creating a better world than Jove created shows that Jove

is morally surpassable only if his creating a better world shows he is, ceteris paribus, mor-

ally better than Jove. So, to judge whether the possibility in question shows that Jove is morally surpassable, we must reflect on the ways in which an omnipotent being could behave differently from Jove and ask regarding each, “All else being equal, would his behaving like that demonstrate he was morally better than Jove?”

36

We shall sketch three ways in which an omnipotent being could behave differently from Jove and argue that in each case the being in question is clearly no morally better.

I The first suggestion is the simplest: if an omnipotent being were faced with Jove’s choice and did not create at all, then, ceteris paribus, he would be morally better than Jove. Before we evaluate this alternative, two preliminaries are in order. First, we have been

speaking as if Jove created a possible world. This is not strictly true. Possible worlds are necessarily existing abstract entities that have their being independently of anyone’s creative activity. So Jove doesn’t create a possible world; he creates individuals and in so doing brings it about that one ofthe infinitely many existing possible worlds is the actual world. Secondly, Jove doesn’t have the option of making it the case that there is no actual world. There must be some actual world, and it is up to Jove which it is. If Jove lies back

and plays dead, if he refrains from using his creative powers, a world will nevertheless be actual and it will be his responsibility. That world will have no concrete being other than Jove in it. Call any world in which there is nothing other than its creator in it a virtually empty world. With these points in mind, consider the proposition that if an omnipotent being were faced with Jove’s predicament and refrained

from creating, he would be morally better. Is this true? Let an Adams world be a world in which every creature is at least as happy on the whole as it could be and in which no creature has a life so miserable on the whole that it would have been better had it never existed.* Nothing in our story about Jove rules out the possibility that all the worlds at Jove’s right hand are Adams worlds. So consider this question: would an omnipotent being faced with a choice between actualizing a virtually empty world and an Adams world demonstrate that

HOW AN UNSURPASSABLE he was morally better than Jove if he created

nothing? We believe not. For, first of all, while there is nothing to recommend a virtually empty world over an Adams world, there is much to

recommend an Adams world over a virtually empty world. Secondly, and perhaps a bit more contentiously, it is not possible for a morally unsurpassable creator to actualize the virtually empty world. Whatever else may characterize moral unsurpassability, love does, and it is not possible to exhibit the best sort of love if there is no one else around. Thus, since a morally unsurpassable being would surely prefer to exhibit his love rather than not, he would be constrained by his nature to create an Adams world over a virtually empty one. And so we conclude that if an omnipotent being faced with Jove’s predicament did not create, it’s false that he would be morally better than Jove.

II We imagined that Jove used the randomizer

and world no. 777 was the result. Now imagine a world in which an omnipotent being, call her Juno, constructs and uses an exact replica of Jove’s randomizer but, because it churns out number 999, a better world than

Jove’s is actualized. Ceteris paribus, does Juno’s using the device to produce world no. 999 show that she is morally better than Jove? Of course not. Factors outside of one’s control can make a difference to how much good one brings about without making a difference to how good one is. Jove has no control over

what number his randomizer will deliver. Thus, given his resolve to let the device do its thing, it is not up to him which ofthe worlds to his right is actualized. And precisely the same can be said about Juno. Thus, even if a better world results from Juno’s using the device, that’s no reason to infer that she is

morally better than Jove. Perhaps it will be objected that as a society we punish the drunk driver who hits and kills

BEING CAN CREATE A SURPASSABLE WORLD

a child more severely than we punish the drunk driver who gets home safely, even if we think that it was a matter of sheer luck that the second got home safely and the first did not. If this response is rational, one might infer that the first driver did greater wrong and, hence, is a worse person than the second driver. One might be tempted to generalize that if factors outside one’s control make a difference to how much good one brings about, then they make a difference to how good one is. In that case, the objection goes, we should infer that Jove is a worse person than Juno after all. Philosophers disagree over whether the first driver did something wrong that the second driver did not do. We shan’t get bogged down in that debate. But even granting that the first driver did do something wrong that the second driver did not, clearly it is a mistake to infer that, for this reason alone, the first is a worse person than the second. To think otherwise is like supposing that if Jeffrey Dahmer had been caught and brought to trial in 1985 and thus had slain fewer boys, he would have been a better person; it is like supposing that if Mother Teresa had been assassinated in 1990 and thus had cared for fewer destitute people, she would have been a worse person. A more plausible view is that while it is appropriate to punish the first driver more severely for the extra-wrong (we are supposing) he did, we oughtn’t infer that he is a worse person.

II Suppose we agree that, ceteris paribus, Jove and Juno are morally equivalent. “Nevertheless,” you might insist, “Jove is morally surpassable. For imagine Thor, a possible omnipotent being who faces Jove’s choice. Instead of constructing and using a randomizer to select which ofthe infinitely many progressively better worlds to actualize, Thor actualizes world no. 888 without using a randomizer. Surely, Thor in world no. 888 is morally better than Jove in world no. 777 and hence Jove is morally surpassable.” Sy)

DANIEL AND FRANCES HOWARD-SNYDER

But is it true that, if an omnipotent being in Jove’s predicament created a better world without using an indeterministic device, then,

ceteris paribus, he would be morally better than Jove? In what would that betterness consist?

Obviously it would not consist in the fact that Thor actualized a better world than Jove. For

given that Jove and Juno are morally equivalent, if Thor is better than Jove, then he’s better than Juno; but the world Thor actualizes is inferior to the world Juno actualizes. So if

Thor is better than Jove, it must be in virtue _ of some other difference between them. Perhaps the crucial difference is a difference in attitude. For example, one might urge that there is a significant moral difference between a creator who, faced with Jove’s choice, set-

tles for letting some random occurrence determine which world he creates and a creator who, faced with the same choice, deliberately picks a specific world for some reason. This line of thought seems quite plausible when we consider human analogies. Imagine a parent trying to decide what school to send her son to. We’d surely think better of her if she picked a particular school on the basis of its comparative merits rather then leaving the matter to chance, which seems uncaring at worst and insufficiently attentive at best. In a similar fashion, we might imagine Thor considering whether to create world no. 777, and then noticing out of the corner of his mind’s eye world no. 888 and, seeing that it is better, reasoning as follows: “World no. 888 is better than world no. 777 and, surely, it’s preferable to actualize a better world if I can.” And so Thor doesn’t settle for world no. 777 and actualizes world no. 888 instead. But this difference between Thor and Jove

does not show that Thor is morally better than Jove. To see why, suppose that prior to constructing the randomizer, Jove reasoned like

this: “World no. 888 is better than world no. 777 and, surely, it’s preferable to actualize a better world if Ican. And world no. 999 is better than world no. 888. Surely it’s preferable to actualize a better world if I can. And world no, 1099 is... hold on here! If Ikeep 38

this up, I’ll actualize a virtually empty world. Perhaps I should create an indeterministic device that...” The rest of the story has already been told. The important point to see here is that given a choice between infinitely many progressively better worlds to actualize, Jove wisely rejects Thor’s principle that if there’s a better world than w, don’t create », not because he is casual or uncaring or objectionably settling for less, but because that principle in that context would lead him (and Thor, were he rational) to do nothing, which

is far worse than using the randomizer. Perhaps there is some other relevant difference between Thor and Jove that would make

Thor morally better than Jove. For example, one might note that we have assumed that the only reason Thor might have for picking world no. 888 over another is that the former is better than the latter. But there are plenty of other considerations that might constitute Thor’s reason for picking no. 888. Thus, on this retelling of the story, Thor decides on his own for a reason to create some particular world whereas Jove allows something else to make the decision for him. In that case Jove,

unlike Thor, abdicates his status as rational agent in the creative process and is therefore

worse than Thor.® By way of reply, note that by creating the indeterministic device Jove does decide on his own for a reason to produce some world or other; he does not abdi-

cate his status as a rational agent. Perhaps the objector will say that Thor is more rational than Jove in virtue of narrowing down the options to one. But this is an illusion. Thor is not better qua rational agent than Jove since on this retelling of the story Thor selects world no. 888 not because of its goodness but because he simply prefers it, say, because it has simpler laws or lots of waterfalls and jagged peaks and he likes those things. But having and acting on such preferences is not enough to make Thor more rational than Jove.

HOW AN UNSURPASSABLE

IV We have considered three ways an omnipotent being might behave differently than Jove: (1) (2) (3)

Do nothing. Use Jove’s randomizing procedure to produce a better world. Use a non-randomizing procedure to produce a better world.

In each case we’ve seen that Jove is not mor-

BEING CAN CREATE A SURPASSABLE WORLD

device three times, he has enough reason to use it four times . . . and we’re off to the races. Far from guaranteeing that worse right hand worlds aren’t actualized, the recommended

reasoning leads to a virtually empty world. We'd like to consider one more objection.” Presumably there are many different randomizers which Jove might have used to pick a world to create. Let R1 stand for the device Jove actually used, and let R2 to Ru stand for the others. Now, one might argue that if Jove is omniscient, then he would know, for any of Rl to Ru, which world it would

ally worse. There are other ways in which an omnipotent being could behave in Jove’s predicament. But those we can think of are either just plain silly or subject to objections we’ve raised regarding (1), (2) and (3). An instance of the second sort is this: suppose an omnipotent being creates a better world using a randomizing procedure different than the one

to making R1, he knew that, if he made R1, it would select world no. 777. Now, suppose he also knew that one of the other randomizers, say, R2, would select a world better than no. 777, and that no randomizer would in fact select a world better than the one selected by R2. Wouldn’t we then have

Jove used. For example, imagine Jac, an om-

sufficient grounds to infer Jove was morally

nipotent being who believes that if he guarantees that some worse right hand worlds are not actualized, he would be morally better than one who could but didn’t guarantee this. Thus, instead of using Jove’s procedure, Jac might first “halve” the right hand worlds then use the randomizer to produce one of those worlds in the right haif. The problem with this procedure is that if Jac has enough reason to halve at all, he has enough reason to halve again, and again, and again, and a virtually empty world threatens. To avoid this result, one might recommend to Jac that he first use the randomizer to select a number of halvings, then, after reassigning integers to the remaining worlds, use it once more to pick which of the remainder to actualize. But this doesn’t help. If Jac has enough reason to use the device twice — first to halve the worlds on his right and second to select a particular world to actualize — then he has enough reason to use the device three times — first to halve the worlds on his right, second to multiply that number by another randomly selected number and third to select a particular world to actualize. And if he has enough reason to use the

surpassable? That all depends. Suppose there are no truths about which world a randomizer would

select if he were to create that device. So, prior

select were it created. Then Jove wouldn’t

know for any device which world it would select. So we would not on these grounds rightly infer Jove’s moral surpassability. But suppose Jove does have the knowledge in question. Still, we ought not to think less of Jove. After all, for all we know the randomizer Jove uses selects a better world than any other randomizer would select. Of course, for all we know, there is no best randomizer because

it could be that for any device he might create, there is another he could have created

which would have selected a better world than the first one would select. Should we think less of Jove for not creating the best randomizer in that case? No. But countenancing infinitely many randomizers raises a related worry. If Jove thinks that the best way to produce a world is to construct a randomizer, then surely he’d think that the best way to select a randomizer would be to construct a randomizer to pick one. An infinite regress looms. Of course, Jove 39

DANIEL AND FRANCES HOWARD-SNYDER

would have the same sort of reason for ending this infinite regress as he would for creating the device in the first place. Perhaps he would arbitrarily pick some device, for no reason at all, save that some device has to be cho-

sen in order to avoid a virtually empty world. We imagine our reader will ask: if Jove can do that, why can’t he just pick some world arbitrarily without creating a randomizer in the first place? That’s a good question. And here we remove our mask. The randomizer has served its purpose: had Jove just up and created world no. 777 in the scenario originally described, so doing would not have reflected badly on him in any way at all.

Vv Perhaps there are ways we haven’t thought of in which an omnipotent being could behave differently from Jove. There’s always that danger to beware of in drawing inferences over a territory whose boundaries are not clearly discernible. But our hunch is that they too will be like the cases we have considered. If our hunch is correct, then Jove nicely illustrates how an unsurpassable being can create a surpassable world. This consequence should be of some interest to those who, imbued with the spirit of Anselm, are tempted to believe propositions like these:

(Q)

Necessarily, for any w, w’and_x, if w is an actualizable world and w’ is an actualizable world and w is a morally better world than w’, then if x is an omnipotent moral agent and w actualizes w’, then xis such that there is some possible world in which there is a y such that y is a better moral agent in that world than x is in w’. (R) Ifa being creates a world when there is a morally better world that it could have created, then it is possible that there exists a morally better being than it.’ And it should be of special interest to those 40

who are further tempted to think that “on the supposition that for every creatable world there is another world that is better than it ... principle [R] leads to the conclusion that there is no essentially omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good being.”? Although what we have said may not be sufficient to reject Q and R outright, we certainly hope, by Jove, that it is enough to help those so tempted to resist believing them." Notes

1 Of course, we have represented Jove as being spatially located, as being both omniscient and coming to learn things, and as having a choice about whether to create worlds that an essentially morally unsurpassable being could not create, i.e. those on the left hand side. Moreover, we have assumed that the ranking Jove gives the right hand worlds does not permit ties and that there wouldn’t be so many worlds that they couldn’t be mapped one-to-one to the positive natural numbers. And we have left untold the inner workings of the randomizing device. We invite the fastidious reader to retell our story in such a way as to avoid these mundane infelicities. 2 See Philip Quinn, “God Moral Perfection, and

Possible Worlds,” in God: The Contemporary Discussion, ed. Frederick Sontag and M. Darrol Bryant (New York: Rose of Sharon Press, 1982), pezls. 3 This is, virtually, what William Rowe writes in

“The Problem of Divine Perfection and Freedom,” in Reasoned Faith (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, forthcoming), ed. Eleonore

Stump, p. 8 and pp. 10-11. 4 Hereafter, we shall either leave this qualification tacit or use “ceteris paribus” as a reminder. 5 See Robert M. Adams, “Must God Create the

Best?” in The Virtue of Faith and Other Essays in Philosophical Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 53. 6 We are grateful to Thomas Flint for this objection. 7 The discussion of the next three paragraphs is almost entirely due to comments we received from Flint. 8 See the previously cited essays by Quinn and Rowe.

HOW AN UNSURPASSABLE 9 We think here of William Rowe, in an amended later version of the previously cited essay. 10 We are grateful to five people: William Rowe, for his interest and invaluable input; Philip Quinn, for conversation, correspondence and encouragement; Jan A. Cover, for Sunday afternoon (and, no, we refuse to add that

BEING CAN CREATE A SURPASSABLE WORLD craziness about creating all the worlds); Peter van Inwagen: for the conceptual space provided by “The Place of Chance in a World Sustained by God”; and Thomas Flint, for comments Avhich in substance and spirit are an example par excellence of how refereeing should be done.

41

Eternity

6

Eternity*

Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann The concept of eternity makes a significant difference in the consideration of a variety of issues in the philosophy of religion, including, for instance, the apparent incompatibility of divine omniscience with human freedom, of divine immutability with the efficacy of petitionary prayer, and of divine omniscience with divine immutability; but, because it has been misunderstood or cursorily dismissed as incoherent, it has not received the attention it deserves from contemporary philosophers of religion. In this paper we expound the concept as it is presented by Boethius (whose definition of eternity was the locus classicus for medieval discussions of the concept), analyze implications of the concept, examine reasons for considering it incoherent, and sample the results of bringing it to bear on issues in the philosophy of religion. Eternality — the condition of having eternity as one’s mode of existence — is misunderstood most often in either of two ways. Sometimes it is confused with limitless duration in time — sempiternality — and sometimes it is construed simply as atemporality, eternity being understood in that case as roughly analogous to an isolated, static instant. The second misunderstanding of eternality is not so far off the mark as the first, but a consid-

eration of the views of the philosophers who contributed most to the development of the concept shows that atemporality alone does * From The Journal of Philosophy, 78: 8 (1981), pp. 429-47, 453-60. Reprinted with permission.

42

not exhaust eternality as they conceived of it, and that the picture of eternity as a frozen instant is a radical distortion of the classic concept.

1

Boethius’s Definition

Boethius discusses eternity in two places: The Consolation of Philosophy, Book V, Prose 6, and De trinitate, chapter 4.' The immediately

relevant passages are these: CP

That God is eternal, then, is the common

judgment of all who live by reason. Let us therefore consider what eternity is, for this makes plain to us both the divine nature and knowledge. Eternity, then, is the complete possession all at once of illimitable life. This becomes clearer by comparison with temporal things. For whatever lives in time proceeds as something present from the past into the future, and there is nothing placed in time that can embrace the whole extent ofits life equally. Indeed, on the contrary, it does not yet grasp tomorrow but yesterday it has already lost; and even in the life of today you live no more fully than in a mobile, transitory moment... . Therefore, whatever includes

and possesses the whole fullness ofillimitable life at once and is such that nothing future is absent from it and nothing past has flowed away, this is rightly judged to be eternal, and of this it is necessary both that being in full possession of itself it be always present to itself and that it have the

ETERNITY infinity of mobile time present [to it]. (422.5-424.31) DT

What is said of God, [namely, that] he is always, indeed signifies a unity, as if he had been in all the past, is in all the present — however that might be — [and] will be in all the future. That can be said, according to the philosophers, of the heaven and of the imperishable bodies; but it cannot be said of God in the same way. For he is always in that for him always has to do with present time. And there is this great difference between the present of our affairs, which is now, and that of the divine: our now makes time and sempiternity, as if it were running along; but the divine now, remaining, and not moving, and standing still, makes eternity. If you add “semper” to “eternity,” you get sempiternity, the perpetual running resulting from the flowing, tireless now. (20.64— 22.77)

The definition Boethius presents and explains in CP and elucidates in the earlier DT is not original with him, nor does he argue for it in those passages. Similarly, we mean to do no more in this section of our paper than to present and explain a concept that has been important in Christian and pre-Christian theology and metaphysics. We will not argue here, for instance, that there is an eternal entity or even that God must be eternal if he exists. It is a matter of fact that many ancient and medieval philosophers and theologians were committed to the doctrine of God’s eternality in the form in which Boethius presents it, and our purpose in this section of the paper is simply to elucidate the doctrine they held. Boethius’s definition is this: Eternity is the complete possession all at once of tllimitable life. We want to call attention to four ingredients in this definition. It is clear, first of all, that anything that is eternal has life. In this sense of “eternal,” then, it will not do to say that a number, a truth, or the world is eternal, although one might want to say of the first two that they are atemporal and of the third that it is sempiternal — that it has

beginningless, endless temporal existence. The second and equally explicit element in the definition is illimitability: the life of an eternal being cannot be limited; it is impossible that there be a beginning or an end to it. The natural understanding of such a claim is that the existence in question is infinite duration, unlimited in either “direction.” But there is another interpretation that must be considered in this context despite its apparent unnaturalness. Conceivably the existence of an eternal entity is said to be illimitable in the way in which a point or an instant may be said to be illimitable: what cannot be extended cannot be limited in its extent. There are passages that can be read as suggesting that this second interpretation is what Boethius intends. In CP eternal existence is expressly contrasted with temporal existence described as extending from the past through the present into the future, and what is eternal is described contrastingly as possessing its entire life at once. Boethius’s insistence in DT that the eternal now is unlike the temporal now in being fixed and unchanging strengthens that hint with the suggestion that the eternal present is to be understood in terms of the present instant “standing still.” Nevertheless, there are good reasons, in these passages themselves and in the history of the concept of eternity before and after Boethius, for rejecting this less natural interpretation. In the first place, some of the terminology Boethius uses would be inappropriate to eternity if eternity were to be conceived as illimitable in virtue of being unextended. He speaks in CP more than once of the fullness of eternal life. In DT and in The Consolation of Philosophy immediately following our passage CP he speaks of the eternal present or an eternal entity as remaining and enduring. And he claims in DT that it is correct to say of God that he is always, explaining the use of “always” in reference to God in such a way that he can scarcely have had in mind a life illimitable in virtue of being essentially durationless. The more natural reading of “illimitable,” then, also provides the more natural reading of these texts. In the second 43

ELEONORE STUMP AND NORMAN KRETZMANN

place, the weight of tradition both before and after Boethius strongly favors interpreting illimitable life as involving infinite duration, beginningless as well as endless. Boethius throughout the Consolation and especially in passage CP is plainly working in the Platonic tradition, and both Plato and Plotinus understand eternal existence in that sense.” Medieval philosophers after Boethius, who depend on him for their conception of eternity, also clearly understand “illimitable” in this way.? So, for both these sets of reasons, we under-

stand this part of Boethius’s definition to mean that the life of an eternal entity is characterized by beginningless, endless, infinite duration. The concept of duration that emerges in the interpretation of “illimitable life” is the third ingredient we mean to call attention to. Illimitable life entails duration of a special sort, as we have just seen, but it would be reasonable to think that any mode of existence that could be called a life must involve duration, and so there may seem to be no point in explicitly listing duration as an ingredient in Boethius’s concept of eternality. We call at-

life. So whatever has the complete possession of all its life at once cannot be temporal. The life that is the mode of an eternal entity’s existence is thus characterized not only by duration but also by atemporality. With the possible exception of Parmenides, none of the ancients or medievals who accepted eternity as a real, atemporal mode of existence meant thereby to deny the reality of time or to suggest that all temporal experiences are illusory. In introducing the concept of eternity, such philosophers, and Boethius in particular, were proposing two separate modes of real existence. Eternity is a mode of existence that is, on Boethius’s view, neither reducible to time nor incompatible with the reality of time. In the next two sections of this paper, we will investigate the apparent incoherence of this concept of eternity. We will begin with a consideration of the meaning of atemporality in this connection, including an examination of the relationship between eternity and time; and we will go on to consider the apparent incoherence generated by combining atemporality with duration and with life.

tention to it here, however, because of its

importance as part of the background against which the fourth ingredient must be viewed. The fourth ingredient is presented in the only phrase of the definition still to be considered: “The complete possession all at once.” As Boethius’s explanation of the definition in CP makes clear, he conceives of an eternal entity as atemporal, and he thinks of its atemporality as conveyed by just that phrase in the definition. What he says shows that something like the following line of thought leads to his use of those words. A living temporal entity may be said to possess a life, but, since the events constituting the life of any temporal entity occur sequentially, some later than others, it cannot be said to possess all its life at once. And since everything in the life of a temporal entity that is not present is either past and so no longer in its possession, or future and so not yet in its possession, it cannot be said to have the complete possession of its 44

2 The Atemporality of an Eternal Entity: Presentness and Simultaneity Because an eternal entity is atemporal, there is no past or future, no earlier or later, within

its life; that is, the events constituting its life cannot be ordered sequentially from the standpoint of eternity. But, in addition, no temporal entity or event can be earlier or later than or past or future with respect to the whole life of an eternal entity, because otherwise such an eternal life or entity would itself be part of a temporal series. Here it should be evident that, although the stipulation that an eternal entity completely possesses its life all at once entails that it is not part of any sequence, it does not rule out the attribution of presentness or simultaneity to the life and relationships of such an entity, nor should it. In so far as an

ETERNITY

entity zs, or has life, completely or otherwise, it is appropriate to say that it has present existence in some sense of “present”; and unless its life consists in only one event or it is impossible to relate an event in its life to any temporal entity or event, we need to be able to consider an eternal entity or event as one of the ve/ata in a simultaneity relationship. We will consider briefly the applicability of presentness to something eternal and then consider in some detail the applicability of simultaneity. If anything exists eternally, it exists. But the existing of an eternal entity is a duration without succession, and, because eternity excludes succession, no eternal entity has existed or will exist; it owly exists. It is in this sense that an eternal entity is said to have present existence. But since that present is not flanked by past and future, it is obviously not the temporal present. And, furthermore, the eternal,

pastless, futureless present is not instantaneous but extended, because eternity entails duration. The temporal present is a durationless instant, a present that cannot be extended conceptually without falling apart entirely into past and future intervals. The eternal present, on the other hand, is by definition an infinitely extended, pastless, futureless duration. Simultaneity is of course generally and unreflectively taken to mean existence or occurrence at one and the same time. But to attribute to an eternal entity or event simultaneity with anything we need a coherent characterization of simultaneity that does not make it altogether temporal. It is easy to provide a coherent characterization of a simultaneity relationship that is not temporal in case both the relata are eternal entities or events. Suppose we designate the ordinary understanding of temporal simultaneity T-stmultanetty:

(T)

‘T-simultaneity = existence or occurrence at one and the same time.

Then we can easily enough construct a second species of simultaneity, a relationship

obtaining between two eternal entities or events: (E).

E-simultaneity = existence or occurrence at one and the same eternal present.

What really interests us among species of simultaneity, however, and what we need for our present purposes, is not E-simultaneity so much as a simultaneity relationship between two relata of which one is eternal and the other temporal. We have to be able to characterize such a relationship coherently if we are to be able to claim that there is any connection between an eternal and a temporal entity or event. An eternal entity or event cannot be earlier or later than, or past or future with respect to, any temporal entity or event. If there is to be any relationship between what is eternal and what is temporal, then, it must be some species of simultaneity. Now in forming the species T-simultaneity and E-simultaneity, we have in effect been taking the genus of those species to be something like this: (G)

Simultaneity = existence or occurrence at once (i.e. together).

And we have formed those two species by giving specific content to the broad expression “at once.” In each case, we have spelled out “at once” as meaning at one and the same something — time, in the case of T-simultaneity; eternal present, in the case of E-simultaneity. In other words, the relata for T-simultaneity occur together at the same time, and the re/ata for E-simultaneity occur together at the same eternal present. What we want now is a species of simultaneity — call it ET-simultaneity (for eternal-temporal simultaneity) — that can obtain between what is eternal and what is temporal. It is only natural to try to construct a definition for ET-simultaneity as we did for the two preceding species of simultaneity, by making the broad “at once” in (G) more precise. Doing so requires starting with the phrase “at one and the same——” 45

ELEONORE STUMP AND NORMAN KRETZMANN

and filling in the blank appropriately. To fill in that blank appropriately, however, would be to specify a single mode of existence in which the two re/ata exist or occur together, as the velata for 'T-simultaneity co-exist (or co-occur) in time and the re/ata for E-simultaneity co-exist (or co-occur) in eternity. But, on the view we are explaining and defending, it is theoretically impossible to specify a single mode ofexistence for two relata of which one is eternal and the other temporal. To do so would be to reduce what is temporal to what is eternal (thus making time illusory) or what is eternal to what is temporal (thus making eternity illusory) or both what is temporal and what is eternal to some third mode of exist-

the stage for our characterization of ET-s1multaneity, it will be helpful to look at a standard philosophical presentation of temporal simultaneity along Einsteinian lines. Imagine a train traveling very fast, at 6/10ths the speed of light. One observer (the “ground observer”) is stationed on the embankment beside the track; another observer (the “train observer”) is stationed on the train. Suppose that two lightning bolts strike the train, one at each end, and suppose that the ground observer sees those two lightning bolts simultaneously. The train observer also sees the two lightning bolts, but, since he is traveling toward the light ray emanating from the bolt

ence; and all three of these alternatives are

the bolt that strikes the rear of the train, he will see the lightning bolt strike the front of the train before he sees the other strike the

ruled out. The medieval adherents of the concept of eternity held that both time and eternity are real and that there is no mode of existence besides those two. Against this background, then, it is not conceptually possible to construct a definition for ET-simultaneity analogous to the definitions for the other two species of simultaneity, by spelling out “at once” as “at one and the same ——” and filling in the blank appropriately. What is temporal and what is eternal can coexist, on the view we are adopting and defending, but not within the same mode of existence; and there is no single mode of existence that can be referred to in filling in the blank in such a definition of ET-simultaneity. The significance of this difficulty and its implications for a working definition of ETsimultaneity can be better appreciated by returning to the definition of T-simultaneity for a closer look. Philosophers of physics, explaining the special theory of relativity, have taught us to be cautious even about the notion of temporal simultaneity; in fact, the claim that temporal simultaneity is relative rather than absolute is fundamental to the special theory of relativity. For all ordinary practical purposes and also for our theoretical purposes in this paper, time can be thought of as absolute, along Newtonian lines. But, simply in order to set 46

that strikes the front of the train and away from

rear of the train. “This, then, is the fundamental result: events occurring at different places which are simultaneous in one frame of reference will not be simultaneous in another frame of reference which is moving with respect to the first. This is known as the relativity of simultanetty” We want to leave to one side the philosophical issues raised by this example and simply accept it for our present purposes as a standard example illustrating Einstein’s notion of the relativity of temporal simultaneity. According to this example, the very same two lightning flashes are simultaneous (with respect to the reference frame of the ground observer) and not simultaneous (with respect to the reference frame of the train observer). If we interpret “simultaneous” here in accordance

with our definition of T-simultaneity, we will have to say that the same two lightning flashes occur at the same time and do not occur at the same time; that is, it will be both true and

false that these two lightning flashes occur at the same time. The incoherence of this result is generated by filling in the blank for the definition of T-simultaneity with a reference to one and the same time, where time is under-

stood as one single uniform mode of existence. The special theory of relativity takes time

ETERNITY

itselfto be relative and so calls for a more complicated definition of temporal simultaneity than the common, unreflective definition given in (T), such as this relativized version of

temporal simultaneity: (RT)

RT-simultaneity = existence or occurrence at the same time within the reference frame of a given observer.

This relativizing of time to the reference frame of a given observer resolves the apparent incoherence in saying that the same two lightning flashes occur and do not occur at one and the same time. They occur at the same time in the reference frame of one observer and do not occur at the same time in the reference frame of a different observer. Once this is understood, we can see that,

if we persist in asking whether or not the two lightning bolts are really simultaneous, we are asking an incoherent question, one that cannot be answered. The question is asked about what is assumed to be a feature of reality, although in fact there is no such feature of reality; such a question is on a par with “Is Uris Library really to the left of Morrill Hall?” There is no absolute state of being temporally simultaneous with, any more than there is an absolute state of being to the left of. We determine the obtaining of the one relationship as we determine the obtaining of the other, by reference to an observer and the observer’s point of view. The two lightning flashes, then, are RT-simulta-

neous in virtue of occurring at the same time within the reference frame of the ground observer and not RT-simultaneous in virtue of occurring at different times within the reference frame of the train observer. And, Einstein’s theory argues, there is no privileged observer (or reference frame) such that with respect to it we can determine whether the two events are really simultaneous; simultaneity is irreducibly relative to observers and their reference frames, and so is time itself. Consequently, it would be a mistake to think that there is one single uniform mode ofex-

istence that can be referred to in specifying “at once” in (G) in order to derive a definition of temporal simultaneity. These difficulties in spelling out even a very crude acceptable definition for temporal simultaneity in the light of relativity theory foreshadow and are analogous to the difficulties in spelling out an acceptable definition of ETsimultaneity. More significantly, they demonstrate that the difficulties defenders of the concept of eternity encounter in formulating such a definition are by no means unique to their undertaking and cannot be assumed to be difficulties in the concepts of ET-simultaneity or of eternity themselves. Finally, and most importantly, the way in which we cope with such difficulties in working out a definition for RT-simultaneity suggests the sort of definition needed for ET-simultaneity. Because one of the re/ata for ET-simultaneity is eternal, the definition for this relationship, like that for E-simultaneity, must refer to one and the same present rather than to one and the same time. And because in ET-simultaneity we are dealing with two equally real modes of existence, neither of which is reducible to any other mode of existence, the definition must be constructed in terms of to reference frames and two observers. So we can characterize ETsimultaneity in this way. Let “x” and “y” range over entities and events. Then:

(ET)

For every wand for every y, x and yare

ET-simultaneous iff (i) (ii)

(iii)

either w is eternal and y is temporal, or vice versa; and for some observer, A, in the unique eternal reference frame, x and y are both present — i.e. either x is eternally present and y is observed as temporally present, or vice versa; and for some observer, B, in one of the infinitely many temporal reference frames, x and y are both present — i.e. either xis observed as eternally present and yis temporally present, or vice versa.

47

ELEONORE STUMP AND NORMAN KRETZMANN

Given the concept of eternity, condition (11) provides that a temporal entity or event observed as temporally present by some eternal observer A is ET-simultaneous with every eternal entity or event; and condition (iii) provides that an eternal entity or event observed as eternally present (or simply as eternal) by some temporal observer B is ET-simultaneous with every temporal entity or event. On our definition, if «and y are ET-simultaneous, then xis neither earlier nor later than, neither past nor future with respect to, y—a feature essential to any relationship that can be considered a species of simultaneity. Further, if x and y are ET-simultaneous, « and y are not temporally simultaneous; since either x or y must be eternal, it cannot be the case that x and y both exist at one and the same time within a given observer’s reference frame. ET-simultaneity is symmetric, of course, but, since no temporal or eternal entity or event is ET-simultaneous with itself, the relationship is not reflexive; and the fact that there are different domains for its velata means that it is not transitive. The propositions (1)

xis ET-simultaneous with y.

and (2)

yis ET-simultaneous with z.

do not entail (3)

«and zare temporal.

(1), (2), and (4) together do not entail (5)

xand zare temporally simultaneous.

(RT) and the Einsteinian conception of time as relative have served the only purpose we have for them in this paper, now that they have provided an introductory analogue for 48

ogy.

xis ET-simultaneous with z.

And even if we conjoin with (1) and (2) (4)

our characterization of ET-simultaneity, and we can now revert to a Newtonian conception of time, which will simplify the discussion without involving any relevant loss of precision. In the first place, at least one of the theological issues we are going to be discussing — the problem of omniscience and immutability - depends on the concept of an absolute present, a concept that is often thought to be dependent on a Newtonian conception of absolute time. But the concept of an absolute present which is essential to our discussion is not discredited by relativity theory. Every conscious temporal observer has an undeniable, indispensable sense of the absolute present, 20, and that thoroughly pervasive feature of temporal consciousness is all we need. We do not need and we will not try to provide a philosophical justification for the concept of an absolute present; we will simply assume it for our present purposes. And if it must be said that the absolute present is absolute only within a given observer’s reference frame, that will not affect our use of the concept here. In the second place, in ordinary human circumstances, all human observers may be said — should be said — to share one and the same reference frame, and distinguishing individual reference frames for our discussion oftime in the rest of this paper would be as inappropriate as taking an Einsteinian view of time in a discussion of historical chronol-

3 Implications of ET-simultaneity If xand z are temporal entities, they co-exist if and only if there is some time during which both wand z exist. But if anything exists eternally, its existence, although infinitely extended, is fully realized, all present at once. Thus the entire life of any eternal entity is coexistent with any temporal entity at any time at which that temporal entity exists. From a temporal standpoint, the present is ET-simultaneous with the whole infinite extent of an

ETERNITY

eternal entity’s life. From the standpoint of eternity, every time is present, co-occurrent with the whole ofinfinite atemporal duration. We can show the implications of this account of ET-simultaneity by considering the relationship between an eternal entity and a future contingent event. Suppose that Richard Nixon will die at noon on August 9, 1990,

precisely sixteen years after he resigned the Presidency. Nixon’s death some years from now will be present to those who will be at his deathbed, but it zs present to an eternal entity. It cannot be that an eternal entity has a vision of Nixon’s death before it occurs; in

that case an eternal event would be earlier than a temporal event. Instead, the actual occasion of Nixon’s dyimg is present to an eternal entity. It is not that the future pre-exists somehow, so that it can be inspected by an entity that is outside time, but rather that an eternal entity that is wholly ET-simultaneous with August 9, 1974, and with today, is wholly ETsimultaneous with August 9, 1990, as well. It is mow true to say “The whole of eternity is ET-simultaneous with the present”; and of course it was true to say just the same at noon

of August 9, 1974, and it will be true to say it at noon of August 9, 1990. But since it is one and the same eternal present that is ET-simul-

An omniscient eternal entity knows that Nixon is now dead. Still worse, an omniscient eternal entity also knows that Nixon is now alive, and.so Nixon is apparently both alive and dead at once in the eternal present. These absurdities appear to be entailed partly because the full implications of the concept of eternity have not been taken into account. We have said enough to induce caution regarding “present” and “simultaneous,” but it is not difficult to overlook the concomitant ambiguity in such expressions as “now” and “at once.” To say that we know that Nixon is now alive although an eternal entity knows that Nixon is now dead does not mean that an eternal entity knows the opposite of what we know. What we know is that: (6)

Nixon is alive in the temporal present.

What an eternal entity knows is that (7)

Nixon is dead in the eternal present.

and (6) is not incompatible with (7). Still, this simple observation does nothing to dispel the appearance of incompatibility between (7) and

(8)

Nixon is alive in the eternal present.

taneous with each of those times, there is a

sense in which it is now true to say that Nixon at the hour of his death is present to an eternal entity; and in that same sense it is now true to say that Nixon’s resigning of the Presidency is present to an eternal entity. If we are considering an eternal entity that is omniscient, it is true to say that that entity is at once aware of Nixon resigning the Presidency and of Nixon on his deathbed (although of course an omniscient entity understands that those events occur sequentially and knows the sequence and the dating of them); and it is true to say also that for such an entity both those events are present at once. Such an account of ET-simultaneity suggests at least a radical epistemological or even metaphysical relativism, and perhaps plain incoherence. We know that Nixon is now alive.

and, on the basis of what has been said so far, both (7) and (8) are true. But Nixon is temporal, not eternal, and so are his life and death. The conjunction of (7) and (8), then, cannot be taken to mean that the temporal entity Nixon exists in eternity, where he is simulta-

neously alive and dead, but rather something more nearly like this. One and the same eternal present is ET-simultaneous with Nixon’s being alive and is also ET-simultaneous with Nixon’s dying; so Nixon’s life is ET-simultaneous with and hence present to an eternal entity, and Nixon’s death is ET-simultaneous with and hence present to an eternal entity, although Nixon’s life and Nixon’s death are themselves neither eternal nor simultaneous. These considerations also explain the appearance of metaphysical relativism inherent 49

ELEONORE STUMP AND NORMAN KRETZMANN

in the claim that Nixon’s death is really future for us and really present for an eternal entity. It is not that there are two objective realities, in one of which Nixon’s death is really future and in the other of which Nixon’s death and life are really present; that would be incoherent. What the concept of eternity implies instead is that there is one objective reality that contains two modes of real existence in which two different sorts of duration are measured by two irreducibly different sorts of measure: time and eternity. Given the relations between time and eternity spelled out in section 2 of this paper, Nixon’s death is really future or not depending on which sort of entity, temporal or eternal, it is being related to. An eternal entity’s mode of existence is such that its whole life is ET-simultaneous with each and every temporal entity or event, and so Nixon’s death, like every other event involving Nixon, is really ET-simultaneous with the life of an eternal entity. But when Nixon’s death is being related to us, on |today’s date |, then, given

our location in the temporal continuum Nixon’s death is not simultaneous (temporally or in any other way) with respect to us, but really future.

4 Atemporal Duration and Atemporal Life With this understanding of the atemporality of an eternal entity’s existence, we want to consider now the apparent incoherence generated by combining atemporality with duration and with life in the definition of eternity. The notion of atemporal duration is the heart of the concept of eternity and, in our view, the original motivation for its development. The most efficient way in which to dispel the apparent incoherence of the notion of atemporal duration is to consider, even if only very briefly, the development of the concept of eternity. The concept can be found in Parmenides, we think, but it finds its first detailed formulation in Plato, who makes use of it in working out the distinction between the 50

realms of being and becoming; and it receives its fullest exposition in pagan antiquity in the work of Plotinus. The thought that originally stimulated this Greek development of the concept of eternity was apparently something like this. Our experience of temporal duration gives us an impression of permanence and persistence which an analysis of time convinces us is an illusion or at least a distortion. Reflection shows us that contrary to our familiar but superficial impression, temporal duration is only apparent duration, just what one would expect to find in the realm of becoming. The existence of a typical existent temporal entity, such as a human being, is spread over years of the past, through the present, and into years of the future; but the past is not, the future is not, and the present must be understood as no time at all, a durationless instant, a mere

point at which the past is continuous with the future. Such radically evanescent existence cannot be the foundation ofexistence. Being, the persistent, permanent, utterly immutable actuality that seems required as the bedrock underlying the evanescence of becoming, must be characterized by genuine duration, of which temporal duration is only the flickering image. Genuine duration is fully realized duration — not only extended existence (even that is theoretically impossible in time) but also existence mone of which is already gone and none of which is yet to come — and such fully realized duration must be atemporal duration. Whatever has atemporal duration as its mode of existence is “such that nothing future is absent from it and nothing past has flowed away,” whereas of everything that has temporal duration it may be said that from it everything future is absent and everything past has flowed away. What has temporal duration “does not yet grasp tomorrow but yesterday it has already lost”; even today it exists only; “in a mobile, transitory moment,” the present instant. To say of something that it is future is to say that it is not (yet), and to say of something that it is past is to say that it is not (any longer). Atemporal duration is duration none of which is not — none of which is absent (and

ETERNITY

hence future) or flowed away (and hence past). Eternity, not time, is the mode of existence that admits of fully realized duration. The ancient Greek philosophers who developed the concept of eternity were using the word ation, which corresponds in its original sense to our word “duration,” in a way that departed from ordinary usage in order to introduce a notion which, however counter-in-

tuitive it may be, can reasonably be said to preserve and even to enhance the original sense of the word. It would not be out of keeping with the tradition that runs through Parmenides, Plato, and Plotinus into Augus-

tine, Boethius, and Aquinas to claim that it is only the discovery of eternity that enables us to make genuinely literal use of words for duration, words such as “permanence” and “persistence,” which in their ordinary, temporal application turn out to have been unintended metaphors. “Atemporal duration,” like the ancient technical use of azon itself, violates established usage; but an attempt to convey a new philosophical or scientific concept by adapting familiar expressions is not to be rejected on the basis of its violation of ordinary usage. The apparent incoherence in the concept is primarily a consequence of continuing to think of duration only as “persistence through time.” Since a life is a kind of duration, some of

the apparent incoherence in the notion of an atemporal life may be dispelled in rendering the notion of atemporal duration less readily dismissible. But life is in addition ordinarily associated with processes of various sorts, and processes are essentially temporal, and so the notion of an atemporal entity that has life seems incoherent. Now what Aquinas, for example, is thinking of when he attributes life to eternal God is the doctrine that God is a mind. (Obviously what is atemporal cannot consist of physical matter; we assume for the sake of the argument that there is nothing incoherent in the notion of a wholly immaterial, independently existent mind.) Since God is atemporal, the mind that is God must be different in important ways from a temporal, human mind.

Considered as an atemporal mind, God cannot deliberate, anticipate, remember, or plan ahead, for instance; all these mental activities

essentially involve time, either in taking time to be performed (like deliberation) or in requiring a temporal viewpoint as a prerequisite to performance (like remembering). But it is clear that there are other mental activities that do not require a temporal interval or viewpoint. Knowing seems to be the paradigm case; learning, reasoning, inferring take time, as knowing does not. In reply to the question “What have you been doing for the past two hours?” it makes sense to say “Studying logic” or “Proving theorems,” but not “Knowing logic.” Similarly, it makes sense to say “I’m learning logic,” but not “I’m knowing logic.” And knowing is not the only mental activity requiring neither a temporal interval nor a temporal viewpoint. Willing, for example, unlike wishing or desiring, seems to be another. Perceiving is impossible in any literal sense for a mind that is disembodied, but nothing in the nature of incorporeality or atemporality seems to rule out the possibility of awareness. And though feeling angry is impossible for an atemporal entity — if feelings of anger are essentially associated, as they seem to be, with bodily states - we do not see that anything prevents such an entity from being angry, a

state the components of which might be, for instance, being aware of an injustice, disapproving of it, and willing its punishment. It seems, then, that the notion of an atemporal mind is not incoherent, but that, on the con-

trary, it is possible that such a mind might have a variety of faculties or activities. Our informal, incomplete consideration of that possibility is not even the beginning ofan argument for such a conclusion, but it is enough for our purposes here to suggest the line along which such an argument might develop. The notion of an atemporal mind is not prima facie absurd, and so neither is the notion of an

atemporal life absurd; for any entity that has or is a mind must be considered to be ipso facto alive, whatever characteristics of other living beings it may lack. ... 51

ELEONORE STUMP AND NORMAN KRETZMANN

6 Omniscience and Immutability

whatever God does at Waterloo is over and done with as we see it. So God cannot alter

The doctrine that God is eternal is obviously of critical importance in the consideration of any issue involving the relationship of God to temporal entities or events. We will conclude our exploration of the concept of eternity by sampling its effect on three such issues concerning either God’s knowledge or God’s power in connection with the future, the past, and the present, respectively. First, the short answer to the question whether God can foreknow contingent events is no. It is impossible that any event occur later than an eternal entity’s present state of awareness, since every temporal event is ET-

the past, but he can alter the course of the battle of Waterloo.’

Notes 1

2

E.K. Rand, ed., in H. F. Stewart, E. K. Rand, and S. J. Tester, Boethius: The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy (London: Heinemann; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard, 1973). See Plato, Timaeus 37D-38C; Plotinus,

3

See, e.g., Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologine

Enneads Il 7. I, q. 10. Augustine, who is an earlier and in general an even more important source for medieval philosophy and theology than Boethius and who is even more clearly in the

simultaneous with that state, and so an eter-

nal entity cannot fore know anything. Instead, such an entity considered as omniscient knows — is aware of — all temporal events, including those which are future with respect to our current temporal viewpoint; but, because the times at which those future events will be present events are ET-simultaneous with the whole of eternity an omniscient eternal entity is aware of them as they are present.* Second, the short answer to the question whether God can change the past is no. But it is misleading to say, with Agathon, that not even God can change the past; God in particular cannot change the past. The impossibility of God’s changing the past is a consequence not of the fact that what is past is over and done with but rather of the fact that the past is solely a feature of the experience of temporal entities. It is just because no event can be past with respect to an eternal entity that an eternal entity cannot alter a past

Platonist tradition, understands and uses this

4

5

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics V1 2.

6

Although the concept of the past, dependent on the concept of the absolute temporal present, has no application for an eternal entity, for an omniscient eternal entity there is the awareness of your past, your present, your future as of January 1, 1970, and of your past, your present, your future as ofJanuary 1, 1980, and so on for every temporal entity as of any date in its duration. These observations regarding God’s relationship to the past might suggest further issues regarding petitionary prayer. It is obviously absurd to pray in 1980 that Napoleon win at Waterloo when one knows what God does not bring about at Waterloo, but it might not seem

event.° An omnipotent, omniscient, eternal

entity can affect temporal events, but it can affect events only as they are actually occurring. As for a past event, the time at which it was actually occurring is the time at which it is present to such an entity; and so the battle of Waterloo is present to God, and God can affect the battle. Suppose that he does so. God can bring it about that Napoleon wins, though we know that he does not do so, because

52

classic concept of eternity (see, e.g., Confesstons, book XI, ch. 11; The City of God, book XI, ch. 21); but his influence on the medieval discussion of eternity seems not to have been so direct or important as Boethius’s. What we present here is essentially Boethius’s line against the suggestion that divine omniscience and human freedom are incompatible, a line in which he was followed by many medievals, especially Aquinas. On Aquinas’s use of the Boethian solution, see Anthony Kenny, “Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom,” in Kenny (ed.), Aquinas: Collection of Critical Essays (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday-Anchor, 1969), pp. 255-70; 264.

7

FROM GOD, TIME, AND KNOWLEDGE absurd — at least not in the same way — to pray in 1980 that Napoleon lose at Waterloo. After all, your prayer and the battle are alike present to God; why should your prayer not be efficacious in bringing about Napoleon’s defeat? But, as a petition addressed to the will of God, a prayer is also an expression of the will of the one who prays it, and any temporal entity who prays in 1980, “Let Napoleon lose at Waterloo,” is to that extent pretending to have atemporal knowledge and an atemporal will. The only appropriate version of that prayer is “Let Napoleon have lost at Waterloo,” and for one who knows the outcome of the battle more than a hundred and fifty years ago, that prayer is pointless and in that sense absurd. But a prayer prayed in ignorance of the outcome of a past event is not pointless in that way. (We are thus disagreeing with Peter Geach, when he claims that “A prayer for something. to have happened is simply an absurdity, regardless of the utterer’s knowledge or ignorance of how things went” |God and the Soul (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul,

7

1969), p. 90]; but we find much else to admire in his chapter “Praying for Things to Happen.” On the hypothesis that there is an eternal, omniscient, omnipotent God, the “praying of such a prayer would indeed qualify as “the only instance of behavior, on the part of ordinary people whose mental processes we can understand, designed to affect the past and coming quite naturally to us” [Michael Dummett, “Bringing about the Past,” The Philosophical Review, 73; 3 (July 1964), pp. 338-59; p. 341]. We are grateful to members of the Sage School of Philosophy at Cornell for pointing out the relevance of Dummett’s discussion. Dummett does not draw on the concept ofdivine eternality, but, ifit is acceptable in its own right, its introduction would lead to a modification and strengthening of some of the claims he makes — e.g. “I am not asking God that, even if my son has drowned, He should now make him not to have drowned; I am asking that, at the time of the disaster, He should then have made my son not to drown at that time”(342).

From God, Time, and Knowledge*

William Hasker ... We turn now to a further problem for the doctrine of timelessness, one that I have come to regard as the most serious difficulty the

doctrine has to face: it may be termed the prodlem of the presence of time in eternity. This problem is suggested in various ways by Prior, by the early Kretzmann, and by Creel, but I will introduce it by way of Stump and Kretzmann and the notion of simultaneity. * From William Hasker, God, Time, and Knowledge (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989),

pp. 162-70. Reprinted with premission.

One of the characteristic affirmations of the doctrine of timelessness is that the whole of eternity is simultaneous with every moment of time. This claim, however, gives rise to one of the simpler objections to the doctrine, as stated for instance by Anthony Kenny: “On St Thomas’ view, my typing of this paper is simultaneous with the whole of eternity. Again, on this view, the great fire of Rome is simultaneous with the whole of eternity. Therefore, while I type these very words, Nero fiddles heartlessly on.”? It is to be hoped that by now the reader 53

WILLIAM HASKER

will not be overly impressed with this objection. Among other things that have been said, the assertion that God does mot exist at any moment of our time should sufficiently indicate that God cannot be “simultaneous” with temporal things in the flatly literal sense required for Kenny’s objection to go through. My own inclination would be to say that the statement about simultaneity is simply a metaphorical way of putting the point that all of time is “present” in the “now” of eternity. Stump and Kretzmann, however, think they

multaneity is neither reflexive nor transitive, so difficulties of the sort urged by Kenny cannot arise. And the notion has other advantages as well, for which the reader is referred to their article. Furthermore, “From atemporal standpoint, the present is ET-simultaneous with the whole infinite extent of an eternal entity’s life. From the standpoint of eternity, every time is present, co-occurrent with the whole ofinfinite atemporal duration.”® The notion of ET-simultaneity is an admirable theoretical achievement. As it is stated,

can do better than this in interpreting | however, it leaves unanswered two questions eternalist talk about simultaneity. Indeed, their notion of ET-simultaneity may fairly be called the theoretical centerpiece of their article. As a background for this notion they take the fact, familiar from the physics of relativity, that “simultaneity” must be defined relative to agiven reference-frame.’ But in speaking of the relation of simultaneity which holds between eternal things and temporal things, “we are dealing with two equally real modes of existence, neither of which is reducible to any other mode of existence, [so] the definition must be constructed in terms of to reference frames and two observers.”* In view of this, they set up their definition as follows: Let “x” and “y” range over entities and events. Then (ET) For every « and every y, x and y are ET-simultaneous iff (i) either x is eternal and y is tem(ii)

(iii)

poral, or vice versa; and For some observer, A, in the

unique eternal reference frame, x and y are both present — i.e. either » is eternally present and y is observed as temporally present, or vice versa; and for some observer B, in one of the infinitely many temporal reference frames, x and yare both present —1.e. either xis observed as eternally present and yis temporally present, or vice versa.*

Stump and Kretzmann point out that according to this definition the relation of ET-si54

that fairly leap out at one from the printed formula. Or perhaps it is the same question twice over: what are we to make of the clause “x and yare both present” when one of the relata is temporal and the other is eternal? For an entity to be temporal, after all, just zs for that entity’s existence to be spread out in a temporal sequence — but in eternity, nothing exists in temporal sequence, so how can a temporal “y” be present in eternity? Again, to be eternal meansto exist in a “total present” without temporal sequence, whereas time is precisely the medium of temporal succession, so how can an eternal “x” be present in time? If there are not good answers to these questions, the notion of ET-simultaneity will collapse. I believe that Stump and Kretzmann are not unaware of this difficulty, and that their formula contains at least a pointer — one can hardly say more — in the direction of a possible solution. For after each occurrence of the problematic phrase the phrase is glossed as follows: (ii)

(ili)

... wis eternally present and yis observed as temporally present... ... wis observed as eternally present and yis temporally present...

It cannot be accidental that we have in each case the contrast between “is present” and “is observed as present,” with the “observed as” locution attached to the entity that is “alien” to the reference-frame in question. So for the eternal observer the eternal entity is present

FROM GOD, TIME, AND KNOWLEDGE

whereas the temporal entity is observed as present; for the temporal observer, on the other hand, it is the eternal entity that is 0bserved as present and the temporal entity that simply zs present. And in view of the difficulty noted above, we cannot avoid the suggestion that “observed as” does mot mean “is observed as, and is in fact,” but rather “is observed as, but is #o¢ in literal fact.”° As an illustration of this sort of “observed but not actual” presence, one might think of the sorts of inter-

purposes. But to say the same thing about God’s knowledge of us is simply out of the question. And so the question is this: How is it possible that God, existing in eternity as a timeless being, has a full and accurate knowledge of temporal realities? It is at just this point that Richard Creel finds what he takes to be a conclusive refutation of timelessness: Isn’t it the case .. . that God must be affirmed as a privileged observer . . . that if he is aware of something as actual, then it is actual? ... Because that which is not actual cannot be known as actual, it follows that, if the future is known as actual by God, then because God cannot be mistaken our belief that the future lies before us must be false, and the occurrence of change must be an illusion. Time becomes the platonic peephole through which we observe things that God knows to have been always in existence... . In brief, either a thing is changing or it is not. If God does not know it as changing but we know it as changing, then one of us is mistaken, and it surely is not God.”

views that are often conducted on television,

where the person interviewed is “observed as” present in the television studio whereas she actually is speaking and being viewed at a remote location. If we follow this line, we are still left with a

double difficulty: How can an eternal entity be observed as present in time? How can a temporal entity be observed as present in eternity? For a variety of reasons, it seems to me that the second of these questions is the more pressing one. (That is why I refer to this as the problem of the presence of time in eternity, rather than vice versa.) Concerning our perception of the eternal God, the eternalist can say something like this: “We have known all along that God in his essence, in his true nature, is not present in time, so that comes

as no surprise. But God makes himself known to us through the temporal effects of his eternal Act. There is no reason to doubt that he is able to do this in a way that is sufficient to meet our spiritual needs and bring us into union with himself. God’s revelation may, indeed, fail to give us a fully adequate speculative grasp of God’s nature, but that is something we do not need and have no right to expect.” Given the other assumptions of the eternalist theory, such an answer seems to me to be reasonably adequate, at least as a first approximation. But a similar answer concerning God’s knowledge of temporal reality would be quite unacceptable. There should be no strong objection to saying that our knowledge of God, though it falls short of the full truth about God, is nevertheless adequate for practical

... The central point in all this is the one made in an earlier quotation from Creel: “That God knows things as they are is unnegotiable.”® This certainly seems to be true. But I now want to say that it is also ambiguous in a certain way, and for our present purpose the ambiguity is crucial. The quoted sentence, I suggest, can be given two possible meanings, as follows:

(A) (B)

The way God knows things to be is the way things really are. The way in which God knows things (i.e. his manner of knowing them) is the same as the way in which they exist.

(A) really is unquestionably, unnegotiably true: it simply does not bear thinking that God “knows” Jason to be a fine fellow, whereas he really is treacherous and deceitful. I suggest, on the other hand, that (B) must be rejected whether or not we affirm divine timelessness. One may ask, as Creel does, “If God cannot

55

WILLIAM HASKER

experience sequentiality, how can he know what it is like to undergo change?”’ But one may equally ask, “If God doesn’t have skin, how does he know what it is like to be hit in the face with a snowball?” The only possible answer, I think, is that we must simply reject the notion that God’s experience is somehow inadequate unless he experiences things in the same way we do. With this as preparation, we can now see what the doctrine of timeless divine knowledge amounts to. From the fact that God knows temporal entities timelessly, does it follow that these entities really are timeless rather than temporal? No, it does not. God timelessly knows that the temporal entities ave temporal; the mode of his knowing them is not the same as the mode of their existence, nor

need it be. Should we say, then, that temporal entities have a dual existence Joth in eternity and in time? Even if this could be made intelligible, it is an enormously extravagant metaphysical speculation, and also quite unnecessary. Once again, the mode in which God knows temporal entities need not be the same as the mode in which they exist. How, then,

can temporal entities be present in eternity so as to be known there by God? The answer is, that temporal entities are not literally present in eternity; since they are temporal, and not eternal, their literal presence in eternity is impossible. Temporal entities exist in eternity as represented in the mind of God. And so, according to Thomas Aquinas, “He sees himself through His essence; and He sees other things not in themselves, but in Himself, inasmuch as His essence contains the similitude of things other than Himself.” ... Now, the view of God’s knowledge as immediate awareness is undoubtedly highly attractive. But if we insist on construing God’s knowledge in this way, Creel’s argument, cited above, is going to succeed. One can be immediately aware only of what is present for one to be aware of; what else, after all, can “immediate” mean? If God is timeless, he can be immediately aware of (supposedly) temporal facts only if these facts really are timeless after 56

all. If, on the other hand, the world really is temporal, only a temporal God can be immediately aware of it —and then only of its present, not of its past or future. How then can a timeless God know temporal realities? The answer is, he knows them by knowing, in timeless representation, the content of each moment of temporal existence, as well as the order of the moments — an

order that he knows to represent temporal sequence, though it cannot be such for him. There is no doubt, however, that many contemporary philosophers will tend to find this inadequate as an account of God’s knowledge of temporal things. Some part of this difficulty, however, may be removed if we are careful to avoid wrong connotations for the word “representation.” The word seems to carry with it automatically associations with “abstract,” “schematic,” » oC “approximate,” and the like, and we have a strong sense that a representation inherently must have less content — must, so to speak, convey less information — than is contained in actual experience of the represented entity. And this is generally true for us, but ofcourse it cannot be true for God. His representations, his “similitudes” as Thomas would say, contain precisely a// of the information content of the actual concrete entity — which means, of course, a great deal

more content than could be contained in any human experience ofthe entity. If God knows by similitudes or representations, this in no way entails that he lacks information. Yet there is in most of us a resistance to this theory that will hardly yield to considerations such as these. Kenny puts it nicely: “The Psalmist asked, ‘Is the inventor of the ear un-

able to hear? The creator of the eye unable to see?’ These rhetorical questions have been answered by Christian theologians with a firm, ‘Yes, he is unable.’ ”!! Without doubt, modern sentiment here is with the Psalmist and against the theologians. Yet it must be remembered that for the medievals it was an excellence and a perfection on God’s part to be incapable of sense perception, and also to be timeless and thus incapable of sequential ex-

FROM GOD, TIME, AND KNOWLEDGE

perience. Kenny argues that the medievals have been helped, as regards sense experience, by the later philosophy of Wittgenstein, who showed that there is in perception no irreducible cognitive “core” that cannot be communicated conceptually.'* If in spite of this we are unable or unwilling to overcome our bias in favor of immediate experience, we shall remain at odds with some of the most fundamental intuitions that support the doctrine of divine timelessness. This, then, is the theory concerning God’s knowledge which goes with the doctrine of divine timelessness. I think it is reasonably clear that timelessness does require such a view of God’s knowledge, and also that the view itself is coherent and intelligible . . .

“Eternity,” pp. 436-7 [see Reading 6 above, p. 46]. Ibid., p. 439 [p. 47 above]. Ibid. ‘Tbid., p. 441 [pp. 48-9 above]. I wish to emphasize that Stump and WwW f Don Kretzmann do not say that this is what they mean; I make the interpretation without their authority. But if this is not what is implied, I think they offer no solution at all for the difficulty under discussion. Divine Impassibility (Cambridge: Cambridge iS)

University Press, 1986), p. 96.

Notes

1

The God of the Philosophers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), pp. 38-9. According to Kenny, the same objection was stated by Suarez.

ll 12

Divine Impassibthty, p. 88. Personal communication. Summa Theologiae, la, 14, 6 (emphasis added); cf. also, in the same Article, Reply Obj. 2: “Now those things which are other than God are understood by God, inasmuch as the essence of God contains their images as above explained” (emphasis added). The God of the Philosophers, p. 29. ibidieip sole

57

Festi

Gat Sy Gost

iS oN

self

Senay

| “ise Asa

Selmi

as

1

Ss Wade

a

al is

aera

Aig

We

ahh tahia ishinha uRbey ey

ay

im‘ate

ear)

areue, saliva anand iow

the. punetiene DMS eran

sie

lg

a

rae

ial nn

>

ade

es y wap

ee wed o t) P0h

ie

*

45 7

(Aaya St

* VO UAD) witvarorun ie mig Hid 2 ae STS Winey «Ce oe eataliccrecatitiasels: weenie AM, 2 AB bi abrel apsseinbtae “J Sy

NE yen Ades vt.ete

25 Bes aye"

ome

2

a! 2

We

*

at Bape fap Phe B= Shays

=

aur

i

visi sph

ih

-

heey

sre

fie avi wo Ue le a oe ia ae’ 39 wht is;

ants

what FS

metaagtatn

lies_

Win tsi ye nga

ow

Ub ge er yond hearer

a

Ss

‘tek

s we

tat ~ncesattne sania

meh BAR? ae Ca ORE ay SN See, "ary male te a Kt | Wate apettacheiae anal

gent

ee ee

AM

e

Hew, ° :

im bh

-

ey

i a ae wail, eV La aa abana HS arr eels (on?

Cal Oi)

'

he

nn

j

ies

10

rv

u

se

“es

ay

Sra

MA

6

«

7

7

J

6

=

pa

—

=

4

v/s

’

a)

7

7

az

n

x

ee

~

|

; of

en

Win PCTs

es ay

wot

6 VR

Demers 4 sence P

q

scHeaie:

= rr

és

?

i

ipl

7

eal)

Ge

wears

.

a

;

:

Whi

5

oe (Aerts

a

:

i coup S,6F ono

re

=

wr

ne ~ ofa,

oe)

ty

a

Garth. @ fae

PT 6

ae

i

—

e

=

th je

‘sae ted == _ -_

ah

;

ait wi tts os

sank

PART

TWO

CAN WE SHOW BY REASON ipla\dhesdh ln bedpelien home: 1680) (Dlg

Introduction

Ontological Argument 8

From Proslogion St ANSELM OF CANTERBURY From Reply to Anselm

10

GAUNILON Necessary Being: the Ontological Argument PETER VAN INWAGEN

Cosmological Argument 11

The Cosmological Argument WILLIAM ROWE

Teleological Argument

12 13. 14

15

From Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion DaviID HUME The Argument from Design R. G. SWINBURNE God’s Utility Function RicHARD DAWKINS From New Perspectives on Old-time Religion GEORGE N. SCHLESINGER

The Evolutionary Anti-Naturalism Argument 16

Is Naturalism Irrational? ALVIN PLANTINGA

The Argument from Religious Experience

17 18

From The Autobiography of St Teresa of Avila St TERESA OF AVILA Perceiving God WILLIAM ALSTON

Introduction

Assuming that the traditional conception of God is acceptable, one is led to wonder whether or not reason can prove, demonstrate, or at least supply evidence in favor of the claim that God exists. From the earliest periods of Western philosophy up through the present day, many philosophers have offered arguments which claim to provide just such proof, demonstration, or evidence.

Philosophical arguments such as those offered in support of the claim that God exists come in a variety of forms. Some attempt to demonstratively prove that God exists from a small number of reasonable or (some might say) indubitable premises. Others attempt to show instead that certain facts we know about the world are best explained by the existence and activity ofa being like God. Finally, some arguments attempt to make a case for God’s existence by showing that there is something unacceptable in believing that there is no God, i.e. in being an atheist. In thinking about the question ofthis section, we will look at arguments which fit into each of these categories. The ontological argument is arguably the

most famous attempt to demonstratively prove that God exists. The argument, first presented by St Anselm, the eleventh-century archbishop of Canterbury, is an attempt to show that reflection on the concept of God alone is sufficient to prove that God exists in fact. Anselm’s argument is set out in the form of a reductio ad absurdum, that is, it begins with an assumption which is then shown to be false by showing that something contradictory would follow if it were true. In this case, the assumption is that God, the greatest possible being, does not exist. Since, the argument supposes, it is surely better to have existence than to lack it, we cannot coherently conceive ofthe greatest possible being as non-existent. For if we tried, we would not be conceiving of the greatest possible being, but of a being that would be

greatest if only it had existence. Thus, the concept of the being which is truly greatest is the concept of a being which has all of the divine perfections and which also exists. Since it is thus incoherent to think of the greatest possible being as non-existent, we must hold that this being in fact exists. This argument has been criticized in a number of respects. One objection of recurrent interest was raised by Gaunilo, a monk who was one of Anselm’s contemporaries. Gaunilo’s criticism of Anselm is an attempt to show that arguments of the form that Anselm provides can be used to prove the existence of the greatest possible version of anything. Gaunilo focuses his criticism using the concept of the greatest possible island, called here the “Island of the Blest.” He argues that if we consider such a “greatest island,” then it will turn out that we must conclude that, as in the case of the greatest being, the greatest island must actually exist. And, of course, if he is right, the argument can be used to demonstrate the existence of the greatest possible what-have-you. Any argument form, however, which yields such conclusions is surely defective; thus, so is Anselm’s. In his lengthy analysis of Anselm’s argument and philosophical descendants of it, Peter van Inwagen discusses more sophisticated recent versions of the argument. The key premise in these contemporary versions is the claim that it is possible that God (the greatest possible being, having the property of necessary existence) exists. If this is right, then it turns out that such a being exists in fact. However, there has, as van Inwagen points out, been widespread controversy in the recent literature on whether or not we should accept that it zs possible that a greatest possible being (with necessary existence) exists. In particular, controversy has focused on whether or not it is possible that there be necessarily existing 61

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION: THE BIG QUESTIONS

individual things of any sort. Unless and until we can resolve this point, van Inwagen argues, we cannot know whether this argument is a successful demonstration or not. Cosmological arguments represent another attempt to construct a demonstrative proof for the existence of God. There have been a number ofversions of the cosmological argument presented and defended by philosophers through the ages. These arguments all attempt to show that there is some feature of the world that requires an explanation and that nothing other than God can count as a sufficient explanation. In the version of the argument discussed in the selection by Rowe, the fact to be explained is that there are “dependent beings.” Since no series of dependent beings can be self-explanatory, the argument continues, there must be some self-existent being which is the ultimate explainer of all the dependent beings. Rowe argues that the controversial claim in such arguments is the general claim that nonself-existent things (or collections thereof) must have explanations. If we deny such a “principle of sufficient reason,” then it appears that we can simply think of the universe as a “brute fact” which has no “ultimate explanation.” Unless the defender of the argument can show us that brute facts are impossible, we cannot be sure that this version of the cosmological argument succeeds. It is worth noting that the principle of sufficient reason used to rule out “brute facts” in this argument has come under serious critical scrutiny recently. Readers who are interested in recent work which has been critical of such a principle, or who are interested in attempts to construct versions of the cosmological argument which do not depend on the principle of sufficient reason are advised to consult the “Further Reading” section at the end of this Introduction. Teleological arguments attempt to provide evidence for the existence of acosmic designer based on evidence of cosmic design of one sort or another. Such arguments are generally of two varieties. The first consists of “argu62

ments from analogy.” Arguments of this sort hold that the universe is much like a machine which exhibits a certain sort of beneficial order. Since (nearly) all of the things which exhibit beneficial order (and for which we know the cause) are caused by an intelligent designer, we should believe, by analogy, that the universe has a designer. David Hume famously argues that such analogical arguments fail since the evidence that we have for cosmological “order” is far too limited (given the vast expanse of the universe), and since we can think of other equally good analogies for the universe that do not invoke a designer. Richard Swinburne argues that Hume’s criticisms succeed against some versions of the teleological argument, but not against those which focus on what he calls the “temporal orderedness” of the universe, the ordered succession which we find in a universe governed by natural laws. Swinburne argues that temporal order is always best explained by appeal to the activity of a rational designing agent. Thus the temporal order in the universe should be credited to a cosmic, rational designer, i.e. to God. The second sort of teleological argument argues for the existence of God not by way of analogy but through “inference to the best explanation.” We begin by examining a comprehensive body of data and then asking for potential explanations for the data. After weighing the relative merits of the competing explanations we conclude that one explanation is superior to the others. Richard Dawkins, in the selection here, argues that the

best explanation for any “order” that we find in nature is simply to be found within nature itself. Once we see how powerful the naturalistic /Darwinian explanation is, we will see that all of the necessary explanations for the order of nature can be found within the laws of nature themselves. George Schlesinger challenges Dawkins’s claim, however, by arguing that while Darwinian naturalism might explain the complexity and diversity of the biological order, it cannot explain the fact that we have a universe

INTRODUCTION TO PART TWO

which is capable of sustaining life in the first place. The possibility of life in the universe is dependent upon a wide variety of physical constants being fixed within a very narrow range. Should we suppose that the best explanation for all of these constants having the narrow life-permitting values that they do is simply a matter of chance, or is it more reasonable to think of this fact as best explained by design? Schlesinger here argues for the latter. Our next selection from Alvin Plantinga can be viewed as a response to Dawkins. Here Plantinga argues that there is something fundamentally incoherent about the belief that human knowers have come to exist as the result of Darwinian processes in a naturalistic universe. The incoherence arises from the fact that if we are the product of such a mechanism, the most we could expect is that our minds (that is, our “belief-producing mechanisms”) would produce beliefs that are adaptive (i.e. would help us to escape danger, to eat when hungry, etc.). But there is no reason to think that adaptive beliefs will also be true beliefs. Thus, we should think that while our belief-producing mechanisms are adaptive, they are unlikely to be truth-preserving. The trouble is, of course, that it is incoherent for anyone to believe that their own belief-producing mechanisms are unlikely to be reliable in this way. Thus, one should either deny the Darwinian story or hold that a cosmic designer has guided the evolutionary process to insure that we have both adaptive and reliable be-

lief-producing mechanisms. The last part of this section focuses on arguments from religious experience. When we consider most of the things which we believe exist, such as birds, buildings, and baseballs, we believe they exist because we have seen or touched them, that is, we have had experiences of them. If these experiences of ordinary objects provide rational grounds for believing in their existence, one might think that the believer in God might have similar grounds for this belief, that is, religious experience of some sort. It appears that St Teresa of

Avila, in the selection presented here, believed in God on just such grounds. It is her experience of God which seems to provide the grounds for her belief in God’s existence. In his essay, William Alston argues that such a practice is just as rational as the practice of forming beliefs in ordinary objects on the basis of our sensory experience. Critics have argued that this comparison of sensory experience and religious experience fails because of anumber of disanalogies between the two. Alston looks at these supposed disanalogies and argues that where disanalogies exist, they do not succeed in undermining the rationality of holding beliefs on the basis of religious experience. Further Reading There are a number ofbooks that treat a variety of the theistic arguments. Among the most important are: Gale, Richard, On the Existence and Nature

of God (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 199 1). Mackie, J. L., The Miracle of Theism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982). Rowe, William, The Philosophy of Religion: an Introduction (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1978). Swinburne, Richard, The Existence of God (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993). Van Inwagen, Peter, Metaphysics (Boulder, Col.: Westview Press, 1979). Wainwright, William, Philosophy of Religion (Belmont, Calif., Wadsworth, 1988).

For treatments of specific arguments discussed in the Readings ofthis section, you might wish to consult the following: Ontological Argument Plantinga, Alvin, The Ontological Argument (New York: Doubleday, 1965).

63

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION: THE BIG QUESTIONS Cosmological Argument Rowe, William, The Cosmological Argument (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University

Press/1975), Craig, William Lane, The Cosmological Argument from Plato to Leibniz (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1980). ——, The Kalam Comsological Argument (London: Macmillan, 1979). —, and Quentin Smith, Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993). Koons,

Robert,

“A

New

Look

at the

Cosmological Argument,” American Philosophical Quarterly, 34 (1997), pp. 193210. Teleological Argument Barrow, John D., and Frank Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986). Collins, Robin, “The Fine-Tuning Argument,” in Reason for the Hope Within, ed. Michael Murray (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1998). Corey, M. A., God and the New Cosmology (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield,

1993): Davies, Brian, The Cosmic Blueprint (London: Penguin, 1995).

64

Leslie, John, Universes (London: Routledge, 1989). Swinburne, Richard, “The Argument from Design — A Defense,” Religious Studies, 8

(1972), pp. 193-205. Religious Experience Alston, William, Perceiving God (Ithaca, N.Y.:

Cornell University Press, 1991). Davis, Caroline Franks, The Evidential Force

ofReligious Experience (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989). Geivett, R. Douglass, and Brendan Sweetman, Contemporary Perspectives on Religious Epistemology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990): Pike, Nelson, Mystic Union: an Essay in the Phenomenology of Mysticism (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1992). Proudfoot, Wayne, Religious Experience (Berkeley: University of California Press,

1985): Wainwright, William, Mysticism: a Study of Its Nature, Cognitive Value, and Moral Implications (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1981). Yandell, Keith, The Epistemology of Religious Experience (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).

Ontological Argument

8

From Proslogion*

St Anselm of Canterbury Chapter IT Truly there is a God, although the fool hath satd in his heart. There is no God.

And so, Lord, do thou, who dost give understanding to faith, give me, so far as thou knowest it to be profitable, to understand that thou art as we believe; and that thou art that which we believe. And, indeed, we believe that thou art a being than which nothing greater can be conceived. Or is there no such nature, since the fool hath said in his heart, there is no God? (Pslam 14: I). But, at any rate, this

very fool, when he hears ofthis being of which I speak — a being than which nothing greater can be conceived — understands what he hears, and what he understands is in his understand-

ing; although he does not understand it to exist. For, it is one thing for an object to be in the understanding, and another to understand that the object exists. When a painter first conceives of what he will afterwards perform, he has it in his understanding, but he does not yet understand it to be, because he has not yet performed it. But after he has made the painting, he both has it in his understanding, and he understands that it exists, because he has made it. Hence, even the fool is convinced that * From St Anselm: Basic Writings, tr. S. W. Deane (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1962), Proslogion, chs 2 and

3, pp. 7-9. Reprinted with permission.

something exists in the understanding, at least, than which nothing greater can be conceived. For, when he hears of this, he understands it. And whatever is understood exists in the understanding. And assuredly that, than which nothing greater can be conceived, cannot exist in the understanding alone. For, suppose it exists in the understanding alone: then it can be conceived to exist in reality; which is greater. Therefore, if that, than which nothing greater can be conceived, exists in the understanding alone, the very being, than which nothing greater can be conceived, is one, than which a greater can be conceived. But obviously this is impossible. Hence, there is no doubt that there exists a being, than which nothing greater can be conceived, and it exists both in the understanding and in reality.

Chapter III God cannot be conceived not to exist. — God 1s that,

than which nothing greater can be conceived. — That which can be conceived not to exist is not God.

And it assuredly exists so truly, that it cannot be conceived not to exist. For, it is possible to conceive of a being which cannot be conceived not to exist; and this is greater than one which can be conceived not to exist. Hence, ifthat, than which nothing greater can be conceived, can be conceived not to exist, it is not that, 65

GAUNILON

than which nothing greater can be conceived. But this is an irreconcilable contradiction. There is, then, so truly a being than which nothing greater can be conceived to exist, that it cannot even be conceived not to exist; and

this being thou art, O Lord, our God. So truly, therefore, dost thou exist, O Lord,

my God, that thou canst not be conceived not to exist; and rightly. for, ifa mind could conceive of a being better than thee, the creature would rise above the Creator; and this is most absurd. And, indeed, whatever else there is,

9

except thee alone, can be conceived not to exist. To thee alone, therefore, it belongs to exist more truly than all other beings, and hence in a higher degree than all others. For, whatever else exists does not exist so truly, and hence in a less degree it belongs to it to exist. Why, then, has the fool said in his heart, there is no God (Psalm 14: I), since it is so evident, to a rational mind, that thou dost exist

in the highest degree of all? Why, except that he is dull and a fool?

From Reply to Anselm*

Gaunilon In Behalf of the Fool: an Answer

to the Argument of Anselm in the Proslogium, by Gaunilon, a Monk of Marmoutier (1) Ifone doubts or denies the existence of a being of such a nature that nothing greater than it can be conceived, he receives this an-

swer: The existence of this being is proved, in the first place, by the fact that he himself, in his doubt or denial regarding this being, already has it in his understanding; for in hearing it spoken of he understands what is spoken of. It is proved, therefore, by the fact that what he understands must exist not only in his understanding, but in reality also. And the proof of this is as follows: it is a greater thing to exist both in the understanding and in reality than to be in the understanding alone. And if this being is in the * From St Anselm: Basic Writings, tr. S. W. Deane (La Salle, Ill: Open Court, 1962), pp. 145-52. Reprinted with permission.

66

understanding alone, whatever has even in the past existed in reality will be greater than this being. And so that which was greater than all beings will be less than some being, and will not be greater than all: which is a manifest contradiction. And hence, that which is greater than all, already proved to be in the understanding, must exist not only in the understanding, but also in reality: for otherwise it will not be greater than all other beings. (2) The fool might make this reply: This being is said to be in my understanding already, only because I understand what is said. Now could it not with equal justice be said that I have in my understanding all manner of unreal objects, having absolutely no existence in themselves, because I understand

these things if one speaks of them, whatever they may be? Unless indeed it is shown that this being is of such a character that it cannot be held in concept like all unreal objects, or objects whose existence is uncertain: and hence I am not able to conceive of it when I hear of it, or

FROM REPLY TO ANSELM

to hold it in concept; but I must understand it and have it in my understanding; because, it seems, I cannot conceive of it in any other way than by understanding it, that is, by comprehending in my knowledge its existence in reality. But ifthis is the case, in the first place there will be no distinction between what has precedence in time — namely, the having of an object in the understanding — and what is subsequent in time — namely, the understanding that an object exists; as in the example of the picture, which exists first in the mind of the painter, and afterwards in his work. Moreover, the following assertion can hardly be accepted: that this being, when it is spoken of and heard of, cannot be conceived not to exist in the way in which even God can be conceived not to exist. For ifthis is impossible, what was the object of this argument against one who doubts or denies the existence of such a being? Finally, that this being so exists that it cannot be perceived by an understanding con-

but the box which exists in his art is life. For the artificer’s soul lives, in which all these things are, before they are produced. Why, then, are these things life in the living soul of

the artificer, unless because they are nothing else than the knowledge or understanding of the soul itself? With the exception, however, of those facts which are known to pertain to the mental nature, whatever, on being heard and thought out by the understanding, is perceived to be real, undoubtedly that real object is one thing, and the understanding itself, by which the object is grasped, is another. Hence, even if it were true that there is a being than which a greater is inconceivable: yet to this being, when heard of and understood, the not yet created picture in the mind of the painter is not analogous. (4) Let us notice also the point touched

on above, with regard to this being which is greater than all which can be conceived, and which, it is said, can be none other than God himself. I, so far as actual knowledge of the

vinced of its own indubitable existence, unless

object, either from its specific or general char-

this being is afterwards conceived of — this should be proved to me by an indisputable argument, but not by that which you have advanced: namely, that what I understand, when I hear it, already is in my understanding. For thus in my understanding, as I still think, could be all sorts of things whose exist-

acter, is concerned, am as little able to conceive of this being when I hear of it, or to have it in my understanding, as I am to conceive of or understand God himself: whom, indeed, for this very reason I can conceive not to exist. For I do not know that reality itself which God is, nor can I form a conjecture of that reality from some other like reality. For you yourself assert that that reality is such that there can be nothing else like it. For, suppose that I should hear something said of a man absolutely unknown to me, of whose very existence I was unaware. Through that special or general knowledge by which I know what man is, or what men are, I could conceive of him also, according to the reality itself, which man is. And yet it would be possible, if the person who told me of him deceived me, that the man himself, of whom I conceived, did not exist; since that reality according to which I conceived of him, though a no less indisputable fact, was not that man, but any man.

ence is uncertain, or which do not exist at all,

if some one whose words I should understand mentioned them. And so much the more if I should be deceived, as often happens, and believe in them: though I do not yet believe in the being whose existence you would prove. (3) Hence, your example of the painter who already has in his understanding what he is to paint cannot agree with this argument. for the picture, before it is made, is contained in the artificer’s art itself} and any such thing, existing in the art of an artificer, is nothing but a part of his understanding itself. A joiner, St Augustine says, when he is about to make a box in fact, first has it in his art. The box which is made in fact is not life;

67

GAUNILON Hence, I am not able, in the way in which I should have this unreal being in concept or in understanding, to have that being of which you speak in concept or in understanding, when I hear the word God or the words, a being greater than all other beings. For I can conceive of the man according to a fact that is real and familiar to me: but of God, or a being greater than all others, I could not conceive at all, except merely according to the word. And an object can hardly or never be conceived according to the word alone. For when it is so conceived, it is not so much the word itself (which is, indeed, a real thing — that is, the sound of the letters and sylla-

bles) as the signification of the word, when heard, that is conceived. But it is not conceived as by one who knows what is generally signi-

fied by the word; by whom, that is, it is conceived according to a reality and in true conception alone. It is conceived as by a man who does not know the object, and conceives of it only in accordance with the movement of his mind produced by hearing the word, the mind attempting to image for itself the signification of the word that is heard. And it would be surprising if in the reality of fact it could ever attain to this. Thus, it appears, and in no other way, this being is also in my understanding, when I hear and understand a person who says that there is a being greater than all conceivable beings. So much for the assertion that this supreme nature already is in my understanding. (5) But that this being must exist, not only in the understanding but also in reality, is thus proved to me: If it did not so exist, whatever exists in reality would be greater than it. And so the being which has been already proved to exist in my understanding, will not be greater than all other beings. I still answer: if it should be said that a being which cannot be even conceived in terms of any fact, is in the understanding, I do not deny that this being is, accordingly, in my understanding. But since through this fact it can in no wise attain to real existence also, I 68

do not yet concede to it that existence at all,

until some certain proof of it shall be given. For he who says that this being exists, because otherwise the being which is greater than all will not be greater than all, does not attend strictly enough to what he is saying. For I do not yet say, no, I even deny or doubt that this being is greater than any real object. Nor do I concede to it any other existence than this (if it should be called existence) which it has when the mind, according to a word merely heard, tries to form the image of an object absolutely unknown to it. How, then, is the veritable existence of that being proved to me from the assumption, by hypothesis, that it is greater than all other beings? For I should still deny this, or doubt your demonstration of it, to this extent, that

I should not admit that this being is in my understanding and concept even in the way in which many objects whose real existence is uncertain and doubtful, are in my understanding and concept. For it should be proved first that this being itself really exists somewhere; and then, from the fact that it is greater than all, we shall not hesitate to infer that it also subsists in itself. (6) For example: it is said that somewhere in the ocean is an island, which, because of the difficulty, or rather the impossibility, of discovering what does not exist, is called the lost island. And they say that this island has an inestimable wealth of all manner of riches and delicacies in greater abundance than is told of the Islands of the Blest; and that having no owner or inhabitant, it is more excellent than

all other countries, which are inhabited by mankind, in the abundance with which it is

stored. Now if some one should tell me that there is such an island, I should easily understand his words, in which there is no difficulty. But suppose that he went on to say, as if by a logical inference: “You can no longer doubt that this island which is more excellent than all lands exists somewhere, since you have no doubt that it is in your understanding. And since it is more excellent not to be in the understanding alone,

NECESSARY BEING: THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT

but to exist both in the understanding and in reality, for this reason it must exist. For if it does not exist, any land which really exists will be more excellent than it; and so the island

already understood by you to be more excellent will not be more excellent.” Ifa man should try to prove to me by such reasoning that this island truly exists, and that its existence should no longer be doubted, either I should believe that he was jesting, or I know not which I ought to regard as the greater fool: myself, supposing that I should allow this proof; or him, if he should suppose that he had established with any certainty the existence of this island. For he ought to show first that the hypothetical excellence of this island exists as a real and indubitable fact, and

in no wise as any unreal object, or one whose existence is uncertain, in my understanding. (7) This, in the mean time, is the answer the fool could make to the arguments urged against him. When he is assured in the first place that this being is so great that its nonexistence is not even conceivable, and that this in turn is proved on no other ground than the fact that otherwise it will not be greater than all things, the fool may make the same answer, and say: When did I say that any such being exists in reality, that is, a being greater than all others? — that on this ground it should be proved

10

to me that it also exists in reality to such a degree that it cannot even be conceived not to exist? Whereas in the first place it should be in some way proved that a nature which is higher, that is, greater and better, than all other natures, exists; in order that from this

we may then be able to prove all attributes which necessarily the being that is greater and better than all possesses. Moreover, it is said that the non-existence

of this being is inconceivable. It might better be said, perhaps, that its non-existence, or the possibility of its non-existence, is unintelligible. For according to the true meaning of the word, unreal objects are unintelligible. Yet their existence is conceivable in the way in which the fool conceived of the non-existence of God. I am most certainly aware of my own existence; but I know, nevertheless, that my

non-existence is possible. As to that supreme being, moreover, which God is, I understand without any doubt both his existence, and the impossibility of his non-existence. Whether, however, so long as Iam most positively aware of my existence, I can conceive of my nonexistence, Iam not sure. But if Ican, why can

I not conceive of the non-existence of whatever else I know with the same certainty? If, however, I cannot, God will not be the only being of which it can be said, it is impossible to conceive of his non-existence... .

Necessary Being: the Ontological Argument*

Peter van Inwagen Late in the eleventh century, an archbishop of Canterbury named Anselm wrote a book * From Peter van Inwagen, Metaphysics (Boulder, Col.: Westview Press, 1993), pp. 75-93, 94, 96-8.

Reprinted with permission.

called the Proslogium, which was largely devoted to the exposition of a certain argument for the existence of God. The interesting thing about this argument was that it claimed to show that the non-existence of God was impossible, owing to the fact that any assertion 69

PETER VAN INWAGEN

of the non-existence of God must be self-contradictory. This is a very strong claim indeed. To see how strong it is, imagine an atheist named Athelred who is fond of proclaiming to all and sundry that there is no God. If Anselm is right, then every time Athelred issues this proclamation, he contradicts himself;

he contradicts himself in just as strong a sense as he would have if he had said, “There is no

God... and there is a God” or “My house is rectangular and has six sides.” Anselm did not, of course, contend that the contradiction involved in saying that there is no God is quite as blatant as the contradictions involved in these two statements. (If the contradiction were that easy to spot, no argument would be needed to show that it exists.) But he did contend that this contradiction, though hidden and requiring an argument for its exposure, was a contradiction in the same strong sense as the contradictions involved in these two statements. It should be obvious that if Anselm is right in his claims for his argument, then this argument provides an answer for the question, Why should there be anything at all? For if the thesis that there is no God is self-contradictory, then it cannot be true. And if there were nothing at all, then that thesis would be true. If Anselm’s argument shows that there has to be a God, then it shows that there can-

not be nothing at all. It is true that it does not show that there has to be a physical universe like the one we observe around us, and thus it

does not answer the question why there should be such a universe. But the question, Why should there be anything at all? is not the same question as, Why should there be a physical universe? The conclusion of Saint Anselm’s argument, moreover, is not irrelevant to the latter question, since, if there is a God, then

this God no doubt has a great deal to do with the fact that there is a physical universe. Anselm’s argument was almost immediately attacked by one Gaunilo, a Benedictine monk, and theologians and philosophers have been attacking it ever since. About two hundred years after Anselm’s time, in the late thirteenth 70

century, the argument was declared invalid by Saint Thomas Aquinas, and almost everyone has followed his lead in declaring it invalid. Indeed, philosophers and theologians have not only mostly regarded the argument as invalid but have also mostly regarded it as obviously, scandalously, and embarrassingly invalid. This judgment was nicely summed up by the nineteenth-century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, who called the argument a “charming joke.” And what is this notorious argument? Actually, rather than examine Anselm’s argument, we shall render our task considerably easier if we look at an argument devised about

five hundred years later — at roughly the time the Pilgrims were landing at Plymouth Rock — by Descartes. Descartes’s argument (which is much easier to state and to follow than Anselm’s) and Anselm’s argument are generally considered to be different “versions” of the same argument: each is customarily described as a version of “the ontological argument.” Descartes’s argument goes something like this: If we look within ourselves, we find that we

possess the concept of a perfect being. [Descartes identifies the concept of a perfect being with the concept of God and therefore regards his argument as a proof of the existence of God. But since the existence of God is not our primary concern at the moment -— our primary concern is the question why there is anything at all — let us ignore this aspect of Descartes’s argument. We shall simply avoid the word “God” and the question whether the concept of a perfect being is the same as the concept that we customarily associate with this word.] That is, we find the concept of a being that is perfect in every respect or, as we may say, possesses all perfections. But existence itself is a perfection, since a thing is better if it exists than if it does not exist. But then a perfect being has to exist; it simply wouldn’t be perfect if it didn’t. Existence is a part of the concept of a perfect being; anyone who denied that a perfect being had the property existence would be like someone who denied that a triangle had the property three-

NECESSARY BEING: THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT sidedness. Just as three-sidedness is a part of the concept of a triangle — the mind cannot conceive of triangularity without also conceiving of three-sidedness — existence is a part of the concept of a perfect being: the mind cannot conceive of perfection without also conceiving of existence.

Now if this argument of Descartes’s is correct, then it provides us with an answer to the question, Why is there anything at all? If Descartes is right, then it is impossible for there to be no perfect being, just as it is impossible for there to be a triangle that does not have three sides. And if it is impossible for there to be no perfect being, then it is impossible for there to be nothing at all, since the existence of a perfect being is the existence of something. The faults that have been ascribed to the ontological argument are many and various. One might, for example, raise the question why existence should be regarded as a “perfection.” What’s so wonderful about existence? one might wonder. After all, many people seem to think that they can improve their lot by suicide — that is, by electing nonexistence. But it is generally conceded, or was until rather recently, that one of the faults of the ontological argument is so grievous that it is the only one that the critic of the argument need mention. This fault, or alleged fault, is best known in the formulation of Immanuel Kant. Kant’s diagnosis of the argument’s chief fault can be stated as follows: Whatever else a perfection may be any perfection must be a property — or feature, attribute, or characteristic — of things. But existence is not a property ofthings. “Existence” is not one item in the list of the properties of (for example) the Taj Mahal, an item that occurs in addition to such items as “white,” “famous for its beauty,” “located in the city of Agra,” and so on. Rather, when we specify certain properties and say that something having those properties exzsts, all we are saying is that something has those properties. Suppose, for example, that the following are the properties that everyone agrees the poet Homer had if he existed: he was a blind, male

Ionian poet ofthe eighth century Bc who wrote all or most of the epic poems we know as the Iliad and the Odyssey. Call this collection of properties H. Now suppose that there are two classical scholars, one of whom thinks that Homer existed and one of whom thinks Homer was legendary (the two great epics that are supposedly his compositions having been pieced together over a long period from the work of many anonymous poets). It would be wrong — in fact, it would be absurd — to describe the disagreement of these two scholars by saying that the former thinks that someone had the collection of properties H and, in addition, the property of existence while the latter agrees that someone had the collection of properties H but goes on to assert that this person lacked the property of existence. No, it’s just that the

former scholar thinks that someone had all of (or at least most of) the properties in the set H and that the latter thinks that no one had all of (or even very many of) them. This case illustrates the sense in which existence is not a property. But if existence is not a property, it cannot be an ingredient in a concept. A concept is really no more than a list ofproperties, the properties that a thing must have to fall under that concept. For example, the concept of a dog is just the list of properties that a thing must have to count as a dog. (The list of properties enumerated a few sentences back spells out the concept associated with the description “the poet Homer.”) What Descartes has done is to treat existence as ifit were the kind of thing that could be an ingredient in a concept. If one does this, however, one opens the door to all sorts of evident absurdities. Here is an example of such an absurdity. Define an “egmount” as an existent mountain made entirely of gold: to be an egmount, a thing must (a) be a mountain, (b) be made entirely of gold, and (c) exist. It is obviously a part of the concept of an egmount that an egmount exists: it says so on the label, as it were. But, as everyone knows, there are no egmounts. The ontological argument is this same absurdity in a (thinly) disguised form.

Although this refutation of the ontological argument was “standard” for almost two hundred years, it cannot be regarded as satisfactory. The problem is not so much that Kant says anything that is definitely wrong. The 71

PETER VAN INWAGEN

difficulty is rather as follows. It is possible to construct an argument very similar to Descartes’s argument — an argument that just obviously ought to be invalid for the same reason as Descartes’s argument — that does not treat existence as a property. And it is possible to point to a rather obvious defect that is shared by the two arguments. It will be obvious when we have done this that the shared defect is what is really or fundamentally wrong with Descartes’s argument and that the Kantian refutation of the argument is at best a point about a peripheral fault in the argument. Let us consider the idea of mecessary existence. A thing has necessary existence if it would have existed no matter what, if it would have

existed under any possible circumstances. An equivalent definition is this: A thing has necessary existence if its non-existence would have been impossible. And by “impossible” we mean absolutely impossible: if « is a necessary being, then the non-existence of« is as impossible as a round square or a liquid wine bottle. It is obvious that you and I do not possess necessary existence: we should never have existed if our respective sets of parents happened never to have met, and that is certainly a “possible circumstance.” Moreover, it is clear that the same point applies to Julius Caesar and the Taj Mahal. As to the latter, it would not have existed if the beloved wife of a certain Mogul emperor had not died young. And even an object that has, by everyday standards, a really impressive grip on existence — Mount Everest, say — lacks necessary existence: Mount Everest would not have existed if the Indian subcontinent had not drifted into contact with Asia. The very sun would not have existed if certain random density distributions in the pre-stellar nebulae had not led to the gravitational contraction ofa particular grouping of hydrogen atoms into a radiating body. For all we know, even the physical universe might not have existed — either because whatever it was that caused the universe to come into existence ten or fifteen thousand million years ago failed to produce any uni72

verse at all or because this unknown factor produced some different universe. These reflections make it clear that necessary existence is a property, in just the sense that mere existence is not (if Kant is right) a property. It is true that it may not be a possible property. Perhaps it is a property like being both round and square or being a liquid wine bottle or being a prime number that 1s larger than all other prime numbers that nothing could possibly have. (It is certainly hard to think of an uncontroversial example of something that has necessary existence.) The important point for present purposes is that necessary existence cannot be said not to be a property at all or at least not because of considerations like those that Kant adduces to show that existence is not a property. It seems clear that whatever may be the case with mere existence, necessary existence can be an ingredient in a concept. In fact, many philosophers and theologians have held that necessary existence is a part of the concept of God — and other philosophers and theologians have denied that necessary existence is a part of the concept of God. Now let us consider an argument that is like Descartes’s ontological argument, except that “necessary existence” is substituted for “existence” throughout. The argument would look something like this: e A perfect being has all perfections. e Necessary existence is a perfection. Hence, A perfect being has necessary existence. e@ Whatever has necessary existence has existence. Hence, A perfect being has existence. e Whatever has existence exists. Hence, A perfect being exists. It is interesting to note that in one way, at least, this argument is more plausible than Descartes’s actual argument. We saw above that it is not quite clear why one should assume that existence is a perfection. But there seems to be no such problem about necessary existence. A being (like you and me and Cae-

NECESSARY BEING: THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT

sar and the Taj Mahal and the sun and perhaps even the physical universe) that lacks necessary existence will typically depend for its Own existence on the prior operations of other beings, and probably these operations will involve a large element of sheer chance. But a being that has necessary existence is not dependent on the vagaries of chance, for its existence is absolutely inevitable. Necessary existence is, therefore, a most impressive property — the same can hardly be said for existence: the lowliest worm and the most ephemeral subnuclear resonance exist — and anything that possesses it is a most impressive being. It is for this very reason that many philosophers and theologians have wanted to include necessaryexistence among the attributes of God. It therefore seems very plausible to hold that necessary existence should be an item in any list of “perfections.” Be that as it may, the new version of Descartes’s argument is obviously invalid, and it looks very much as if it were invalid for much the same reason as the original version. Recall the example of the egmount. We can easily construct a similar example that is addressed to the revised argument. Let us define a “negmount” as a necessarily existent golden mountain. If the revised version of the argument is valid, then (or so it would seem) so is the following argument. Let us call the three properties that occur in this definition (necessary existence, being made of gold, and being a mountain) the “negmontanic properties.” We may now argue:

But the conclusion of this argument is obviously false. There is no negmount. In fact, it can plausibly be argued that not only is the conclusion false but it couldn’t possibly be true. A mountain, whatever it may be made of, is a

physical object, and it is very hard to see how a physical object could possibly be necessarily existent. Even if necessary existence is possible for some sorts of things, a physical object is composed of parts, and it would not have existed if those parts had never come together. But there is no need to argue about this subtle point. The same conclusion can be reached in a way that allows no evasion. Let a “nousquare” be a necessarily existent round square. If the above argument is valid, then an exactly parallel argument proves the existence of a necessarily existent round square — and hence of a round square. It is clear, therefore, that the above argument is vot valid. But wherein does its invalidity lie? Not, apparently, where Kant says, for the argument does not assume that existence is a property, and Kant has provided no reason that should lead us to say that necessary existence cannot figure as an ingredient in a concept. (The concept of a negmount seems to me to be a perfectly good example of a concept, albeit it is not a very useful concept.) What is wrong with the negmount argument is very simple: its first premise — “A negmount has all negmontanic properties — is ambiguous. That is, it could have either of two meanings: e

e e@

Anegmount has all negmontanic properties. Necessary existence is anegmontanic prop-

e

Anything that isa negmount has all of the negmontanic properties. There is a negmount that has all of the negmontanic properties.

erty.

e

e@

Hence, A negmount has necessary existence. Whatever has necessary existence has existence. Hence, A negmount has existence. Whatever has existence exists. Hence, A negmount exists.

(The former of these statements is true whether or not there are negmounts. It simply says that a thing does not count as a negmount unless it has all of the negmontanic properties. The latter statement, of course, cannot be true unless there is a negmount.) The ambiguity is rooted in two quite different functions performed by the indefinite ar-

73

PETER VAN INWAGEN

adjustments, both to Descartes’s ontological

ticle. To say “A public official is sworn to uphold the law” is to say that anyone who is a public official is sworn to uphold the law, an assertion that, in principle, could be true even if there were no public officials. To say “A public official was arraigned in Superior Court today” is to say that there is a public official who was arraigned in Superior Court today. (Descartes’s original statement of his argu-

argument and to the revised version of his argument (the one that appeals to the notion of necessary existence rather than to simple existence). Let us consider the revised version. When the first premise of the argument is properly disambiguated, we have two arguments:

ment was in Latin, which has no word cor-

e

responding to “a” and “an.” But there is a corresponding ambiguity in Latin. ) Because the first premise of the negmount argument is ambiguous, “it” is not really one argument at all, but two arguments jumbled together. When we disentangle the jumble, we find that one of these arguments proceeds from the premise that anything that is a negmount has all of the negmontanic properties to the conclusion that anything that is a negmount exists; the other proceeds from the premise that there is a negmount having all of the negmontanic properties to the conclusion that there is a negmount that exists. Neither of these two arguments should convince anyone that there is a negmount. As to the first argument, its premise is clearly true, but its conclusion — anything that is a negmount exists — is true whether or not any negmounts exist (just as “Anything that is a unicorn has a single horn” is true whether or not there are any unicorns). As to the second argument, its conclusion obviously implies that there is a negmount (an existent negmount, if that adds anything to the assertion that there is a negmount), but this was asserted by the premise — there is a negmount that has all of the negmontanic properties — and it is no news that one can derive the conclusion that there is a negmount from the assumption that there is a negmount. Such plausibility as the original negmount argument had derived from the fact that because the two arguments were run together, it looked as if we had an argument that had the impressive conclusion of the second argument and the innocent premise of the first. All of these points apply, with very minor 74

e

Anything that is a perfect being has all perfections. Necessary existence is a perfection. Hence, Anything that is a perfect being has necessary existence.

e@

Whatever has necessary existence has ex-

istence. Hence, Anything that is a perfect being e@

e e

e@

e@

has existence. Whatever has existence exists. Hence, Anything that is a perfect being exists.

There is a perfect being that has all perfections. Necessary existence is a perfection. Hence, There is a perfect being that has necessary existence. Whatever has necessary existence has existence. Hence, There is a perfect being that has existence. Whatever has existence exists. Hence, There is a perfect being that exists.

The first of these two arguments proceeds from an obvious premise to a trivial conclusion. The second argument has a non-trivial conclusion, but this conclusion is, essentially, the first premise. Those who grant the first premise of the second argument hardly need the other premises; they can make do with a much simpler argument:

e@

There is a perfect being that has all perfections. Hence, There is a perfect being.

NECESSARY BEING: THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT

But this argument has — to say the least — little persuasive force. And it should by now be clear that neither Descartes’s ontological argument nor our revision of it is any better. Such persuasive force as these arguments have is due simply to the fact that each of them is a jumble of two arguments; in each case, one of the two has an obviously true premise and the other has an interesting conclusion. It would seem that Descartes’s attempt to prove that the non-existence of a perfect being is impossible is a failure and that it therefore cannot be of any help in our inquiry into why there should be anything at all. (Without going into the details of the matter, I will record my conviction that the earlier argument of Saint Anselm is also a failure.) This does not mean, however, that the ontological argument is of no relevance to our inquiry, for it may be that there are other versions of the ontological argument that are not guilty of the fallacy of ambiguity that was the downfall of Descartes’s argument. And recent researches in the philosophy of modality (the philosophy of necessity and possibility) do indeed seem to have produced an argument that it is reasonable to call a version of the ontological argument and which does not exploit a hidden ambiguity or commit any other logical fallacy. This argument, which is usually called the modal ontological argument, is best presented in terms of “possible worlds.” This notion may be explained as follows. We have said that “the World” is the totality of everything that there is. But it is obvious that the World might be different — indeed that it might always have been different — from the way it is. There might be fewer cats or more dogs. There might never have been any cats or dogs at all (if, say, evolution had taken a slightly different course). Napoleon might have lost the battle of Austerlitz or won the battle of Waterloo. As we saw in our discussion of the notion of a necessary being, the sun — perhaps even the physical universe — might never have existed. A list of the ways things might have been different (which is the same as a list of the ways

the World might have been different) could go on and on without any discernible limit. By a possible world, we mean simply a complete specification of away the World might have been, a specification that is so precise and definite that it settles every single detail, no matter how minor. If we assume that everything that there is or could be is subject to the flow of time — almost certainly not a wise assumption — we could say that a possible world is a complete history-and-future that the World might have (or might have had), one whose completeness extends to every detail. In order to make full use of the concept of a possible world, we need the idea of truth in a given possible world and we need the idea of existence in a given possible world. While

various technical accounts of these ideas are available, we shall be content with an intui-

tive or impressionistic account of them. A few examples should suffice. If in a given world x there are no dogs — if that is how ~ specifies things: that there are no dogs — then in x dogs do not exist, and it is true in x that there are

no dogs, and the proposition (assertion, statement, thesis) that there are no dogs is true in x. Ifin a given possible world y Napoleon won the battle of Waterloo, then it is true in y that Napoleon won the battle of Waterloo, and the proposition that Napoleon won the battle of Waterloo is true in y. And, of course, Napoleon must exist in y, for one cannot win a battle if one does not exist. But there are possible worlds in which Napoleon was never born (or even conceived) and in those possible worlds he does not exist. Once we have the notion of a proposition’s being true in a possible world, we can say what it is for a proposition to be possibly true and for a proposition to be necessarily true. A proposition is possibly true if it is true in at least one possible world, and necessarily true if it is true in a// possible worlds. The possible world that specifies the way the World really sis called the actual world. A more formal definition is this: a possible world w is the actual world just in the case that something is true in w if and only if it is — without 75

PETER VAN INWAGEN

qualification — true. It is important not to confuse the actual world with the World. The actual world is a mere specification, a description ofa way for things to be. It has only the kind of abstract reality that belongs to a story or a scenario or a computer program. The World, however, is not a description of a way for things to be: it is, so to speak, the things themselves. If it is an individual, it has you and me and every other individual as parts. If it is not an individual but a mere collection, it

is at least the collection of all of the individuals. It is the features of the World that make one of the possible worlds the one that is actual, just as it is the geographical features of the earth that make some maps accurate or correct and other maps inaccurate or incorrect. It is the features of the World that make one of the ways for things to be the way that things are. It is not necessary to make use of the concept of a possible world in presenting the “modal ontological argument,” but it is advisable, since the English grammatical constructions that are used in formulating modal reasoning are sources of much ambiguity, and this ambiguity can cause arguments that are logically invalid to look as if they were valid. The easiest and most elegant way to avoid these ambiguities is to carry on discussions that involve modal reasoning in terms of possible worlds. In order to state the modal ontological argument, we need two notions: the notion of a necessary being and the notion of something’s having a property (feature, attribute, characteristic) essentially. We have already met the notion of necessary existence in our discussion of Descartes’s ontological argument. A necessary being is simply a being that possesses necessary existence. But we may define this concept very simply in terms of the concept ofapossible world: a necessary being is a being that exists in all possible worlds (and necessary existence is the property of existing in all possible worlds). Beings that are not necessary are called contingent. That is, a contingent being is simply 76

a being that exists in some but not all possible worlds. You and I and every object of our experience are, no doubt, contingent beings. You, for example, do not exist in any possible world in which you were never conceived (and this would certainly seem to be a possible state of affairs). The concept of the essential possession of a property is this: a thing has a property essentially just in the case that that property is a part of the thing’s nature, so inextricably entwined with the thing’s being that it could not exist if it did not have that property. We may explain this notion in possible-worlds language as follows: for a thing x to have a given property essentially is for x to have that property in every possible world in which ~ exists. It should be emphasized that this is a definition, not a recipe. It tells us what the essential possession of a property is, but it does not give us a method for determining whether a particular property is in fact possessed essentially by a particular thing. Consider you, for example, and the property of humanity, or being human. Obviously you have this property — you ave human — but do you have it essentially? Is being human so “inextricably entwined with your being” that you could not exist without being human? Are you a human being in every possible world in which you so much as exist? This is a metaphysical question, and a very controversial one. Philosophers disagree about the answer to this question because they disagree about what you are, and, as a consequence, they disagree about what you could have been. But for our present purposes it will not be necessary to have any uncontroversial examples ofthe essential possession of a property (which is fortunate, for there are few if any examples that are uncontroversial); it is enough that we understand what is meant by the essential possession of a property. It will sometimes be useful to have a term to oppose to “essentially” in discussions of the possession ofaproperty by a thing. Ifathing has a property but does not have it essentially, we say that it has that property accidentally.

NECESSARY BEING: THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT

The ontological argument is, or claims to be, a proof that a perfect being exists. And what is a perfect being? A perfect being, Descartes tells us, is a being that possesses all perfections. But now let us raise a question that is not settled by this formula. When we say that a perfect being possesses all perfections, do we mean that a perfect being possesses all perfections essentially or could a being be a perfect being if, although it indeed had every perfection, it had some or all of its perfections only accidentally? In order to see more clearly what is at stake in this question, let us look at a particular perfection. We may not be sure exactly which properties are perfections, but it seems reasonable to suppose that wisdom is among them. If this is not right, however, it will make no difference to our argument, which — with one exception, as we shall see — does not make any assumptions about which properties are perfections. We choose wisdom only to have something to use as a reasonably plausible example of a perfection. Let us consider two (equally) wise beings, one of which has its wisdom essentially and the other of which has its wisdom only accidentally. This means that while one of the two beings would have been wise no matter what (as long as it managed to exist at all), the other might have been unwise. The nature of the former being is incompatible with unwisdom, and the nature of the latter is compatible both with wisdom and with unwisdom. Although it is a matter of necessity that the former is wise, given that it exists, it is, speaking metaphysically, an accident that the latter is wise. The latter’s wisdom is, so to speak, a gift of the circumstances in which that being happens to exist, and that gift would not have been conferred by other sets of circumstances, circumstances in which that being might have found itself. (This is certainly the way most of us look at the wisdom of human beings. If Alice is, as we all agree, wise, we do not suppose that it follows from the undisputed fact of her wisdom that she would have been wise if she had been raised among people who provided her with no examples of wisdom or if

she had been raised in grinding poverty that left her with no leisure for reflection. And we should probably agree that she would definitely mot have been wise if she had, as a small child, suffered brain damage that left her with severely diminished mental capacities.) Now — we continue to assume for the sake of the illustration that wisdom is a perfection — which of our two beings is a better candidate for the office of perfect being? The example seems to offer fairly strong support for the thesis that the essential possession of a perfection beings a being closer to the status of “perfect” than does the merely accidental possession of that same perfection. Let us therefore say that a perfect being is a being that possesses all perfections and, moreover, possesses those perfections essentially and not merely accidentally — of its own nature, and not merely as a gift of circumstance. And what properties are perfections? As we said, we shall make only one assumption about this. We shall assume that mecessary existence is a perfection. And this does not seem to be an implausible assumption. As we said in our discussion of Descartes’s ontological argument, a being that has necessary existence is not dependent on the vagaries of chance, for its existence is absolutely inevitable. Is not “just happening to exist” a disqualification for the office of “perfect being”? Must we not, therefore, count necessary existence as a perfection? That necessary existence is a perfection is one of the premises of the modal ontological argument. The argument has only one other premise: that a perfect being is possible — or, equivalently, that a perfect being is not impossible. And such a premise must in some sense be required by any argument for the existence of anything, since an impossible being — a round square, say, or a liquid wine bottle — by definition cannot exist. Here, then, is the modal ontological argument: e A perfect being (that is, a being that possesses all perfections essentially) is not impossible. ra)

PETER VAN INWAGEN

e

Necessary existence is a perfection. Hence, A perfect being exists.

Our first task will be to show that this argument is logically valid — that is, that its conclusion (that a perfect being exists) follows logically if its two premises are granted. Our next task will be to see whether the two premises should be granted. And this will come down to the task of seeing whether the first premise (that a perfect being is not impossible) should be granted, for we have already said about as much as there is to be said on the question whether necessary existence is a perfection. We proceed to show that this argument is valid. It will be easiest to display the reasoning behind the modal ontological argument diagrammatically. Let us suppose (just to keep the diagram manageable; our argument in no way depends on how many possible worlds there are) that there are exactly four possible worlds, which we shall call One, Two, Three,

and Four. We shall represent each possible world by a circle. And let us represent the assertion that, in a given possible world, there exists something that has a given property by placing inside the circle that represents that possible world a symbol that represents that property. For example, if “W” represents wisdom, then [figure 1] represents the assertion Four

@)

Figure 1

that in Possible World Four there exists something that is wise. And let us represent the assertion that a given possible world is actual by placing the symbol “ ! P(O3/Theism & OL & O2)? Well, why should we think so? Draper’s argument is twofold. In the first place, on theism and Ol and O2, he says, it is probable that sentient creatures in general would be happy; on HI & O1 & O2 this is not so; and in fact

they are not in general happy. Secondly, we have, antecedently, much more reason on

HI & O1 & O2 than on theism to believe that the fundamental role ofpain and pleasure in our world is a biological one and that the presence of biologically gratuitous pain and pleasure is epiphenomenal, a biological accident resulting from nature’s or an indifferent creator’s failure to “fine tune” organic systems;

and, he adds, “this is undeniably supported (though not entailed) by what O3 reports.” Turn to the second reason first. The claim is that with respect to the theist’s epistemic situation, it is very likely on HI & Ol & O2 that the fundamental role of pleasure and pain in our world is a biological one; on theism & Ol & O2 this is not particularly likely. Now it isn’t entirely easy to evaluate this suggestion. HI is in the neighborhood of a disjunction of naturalism with indifferent creationism, the proposition that we have been created by one or more morally indifferent beings. I believe that on naturalism & Ol & O2 it is likely that the fundamental role of pain and pleasure in our world is biological, but I can’t see that the same goes for indifferent creationism. And how are these — naturalism and indifferent creationism — to be weighted? How would they be weighted in an epistemic situation that contained the belief that HI but was otherwise as much as possible like mine? Which would be more probable, and how much more probable? I really haven’t the faintest idea how to answer those questions. But let’s suppose for purposes of argument that Draper is right: on HI and O1 and O2 but not on theism & O1 & O2 there is excellent reason to believe that the fundamental role of pleasure and pain, in our world, is bio-

184

logical. Now Draper thinks “this is undeniably supported (though not entailed) by what O3 reports.” But és it really supported? We must note the enormous diversity and variety of human pleasure and pain; much of it doesn’t seem to have any direct connection at all with such biological goals as survival and reproduction. Think again of the pleasure and pain, the suffering and joy that go with morality and religion, not to mention friendship, art, science, music, literature, play, humor, and the

like. How much of the pleasure and pain that I experience in a day is biologically useful or significant? Maybe I dribble hot water on my hand while trying to make tea: that pain is biologically useful, as is the pleasure of a good meal, sexual pleasure, the satisfied glow following vigorous exercise, and perhaps (but also perhaps not) the pain and sadness upon hearing of a friend’s serious and possibly fatal disease. But most of the pleasure and pain of my day isn’t like that. Take the pleasure first: there is enjoying the company of family and friends, amiable banter with genial colleagues, a good laugh with a friend, satisfaction in finishing a paper, delight in getting the first copies of a pair of books I’ve been working on for years, delight in some new accomplishment on the part of one of my children (or students or friends), delight in a glorious spring day, satisfaction in noting that (after about eight years) the lilacs have finally decided to bloom, a gleam of malicious pleasure in seeing just how bad some of the arguments against mind-body dualism really are, pleasure in hearing from someone on e-mail, in anticipating an upcoming rock-climbing trip (or remembering one of twenty years ago), exalting in a bit of Mozart, satisfaction at working out a philosophical problem, or in coming to new (for me, anyway) insight, or in learning something interesting and important, delight in the sight of someone or something beautiful, feeling, during morning devotions, just a glimmer (seldom more) of the Psalmist’s joy and delight in the Lord, feeling a wholly inadequate bit of gratitude for God’s presence in my life and

ON BEING EVIDENTIALLY CHALLENGED

for the splendid offer of grace to me and those I love and others, sometimes feeling just a bit of that ultimate safety, that knowledge that nothing can go really wrong, finally and irretrievably wrong, for God’s children in God’s world. On the other side, there is fear that I’ll once

more make an ass of myself in an upcoming sticky situation, embarrassment at some foolish or ill-conceived thing I’ve said, pique or disappointment or sorrow over something I’ve done wrong, something I’ve failed at, some-

thing where I should have known better (or worse (contrary to Socrates), where I knew better but did it anyway), a bit of sorrow for sins that seem to stick to me like glue decade after decade, sardonic disappointment when I come to see the devious and subtle way in which I have once more deceived myself (and others) trying to make myself look good, sorrow and disappointment that I don’t make more progress on the tough road of sanctification, worry that I’ll never get to finish the books and projects I have in mind, a pang of real fear when I think of old age and what it brings, anger and sorrow over my father’s more than half a century of suffering from manic depressive psychosis (why the hell should he have to suffer like that for so long? what can that possibly be good for?), pain when I think of my children’s sorrow and sadness because of the handicaps of their children, anger upon hearing of a fresh atrocity in former Yugoslavia, or Los Angeles, disgust that I can’t seem to control my appetite, incipient fury upon reading of yet another case of horrifying child abuse (I’d like to get a base-

ball bat and show that bastard what it feels like to be abused!), mixed sorrow and anger when J hear of another person whose important work in God’s kingdom has been destroyed or compromised by some sexual or other wrongdoing, a pang of envy when one of my friends does something terrific, something I wish I’d done, followed by a prick of conscience and a pang of guilt for being envious instead of delighted, frustration that I can’t get something properly figured out, dis-

tress at feeling stupid when I can’t understand something that I’m pretty sure makes good sense, and so on.

None ofthis seems at all directly connected with the satisfaction of those biological goals. In fact the vast bulk of pleasure and pain in my life seems to have little connection with those goals; and I suspect the same goes for others. Again, some people will argue that in fact the pleasure and pain that go with these things zs biologically useful; but again, most of these arguments seem at best doubtful and at worst plainly foolish. Perhaps we can say, with Draper, that it isn’t known that these don’t have a biological explanation; but of course it is also not known that they do. Furthermore, it is my epistemic situation that is at issue; I don’t in fact believe that these pleasures and pains do have a biological explanation, and think it rather unlikely that they do. So (contrary to Draper) I do not think that what O3 reports at all strongly supports (with respect to my epistemic situation) the claim that the fundamental role of pleasure and pain (at least in the lives of human beings) is biological. T/is reason for thinking P(O3/(HI & Ol & O2)) much greater than P(O3/(theism & Ol & O2)), therefore, seems to me mistaken. Suppose we turn now to Draper’s other reason for thinking P(O3/(HI & O1 & O2)) much greater than P(O3/(theism & O1 & O2)): this is the claim that sentient creatures are not in general happy, while on theism & Ol & O2, but not on HI & Ol & O2, we would expect them to be so. Now first, it isn’t easy to be at all sure whether or not sentient creatures are in general happy: how would we know a thing like that? We don’t know nearly enough about the inner lives of nonhuman creatures. (We do have such expressions as “Happy as a clam,” and “Snug as a bug in a rug,” but what do we really know here? How happy is your average housefly?) We do better with other human beings; but even here our knowledge of the interior lives of others is at best fragmentary and crude. What seems fairly clear is that most of us display a com185

ALVIN PLANTINGA

plex mixture of joy and sorrow; we are happy part of the time and unhappy part of the time; for many of us, sorrow predominates, but for others joy or contentment is uppermost; and most of us, I suppose, think our lives on balance happy enough so that we have little interest in terminating them. So I can’t rely at all heavily on the suggestion that sentient be-

ation. But aren’t these beliefs connected with theism in such a way that I wouldn’t hold them if |were not a theist? Perhaps; but exactly how is that relevant? Before turning to this very important congeries of questions, however, I want to consider a defeater for the prima facie reason Draper thinks he’s offered for rejecting theistic belief.

ings are mostly unhappy. But what is really interesting here is the claim that on theism & Ol & O2 (with respect to the theist’s epistemic situation) it is probable that most sentient creatures would

3

be happy. Is this really true? Perhaps this is so with respect to the epistemic situation of someone who is an austere theist: someone who is a theist, that is, but does not accept any ofthe additional beliefs that characterize Christians, Jews, Muslims, and most other theists. But of course the vast majority of theists are not austere theists. And many, perhaps most, theists take it as part of their background information that our world is a fallen world. Human beings, and perhaps others among God’s rational and moral creatures, have sinned; as a result our world is fallen, broken, in need of restoration; and human beings and perhaps other sentient creatures are in need of repentance, reconciliation, salvation. Given this, however, we shouldn’t really expect that human beings and other sentient creatures would be happy in their earthly lives. Part of my epistemic situation is the belief that the world is indeed fallen. Hence it isn’t true, so far as I can see, that relative to my epistemic situation, the probability of most sentient creatures’ being happy is high with respect to theism & O1 & O2; furthermore it is doubtful that it is higher on

theism & Ol & O2 than on HI& Ol & O2. But am I not somehow begging the question by bringing in these other religious beliefs, such as that God’s creatures have fallen into sin? Well, why so? Can’t I use all that I believe in this context? The question is how these probabilities stand with respect to my

epistemic situation; the belief that the world is fallen is certainly part of that epistemic situ186

Other Evidence

It is far from obvious, so I’ve argued, that

P(O/theism) is much higher, with respect to the theist’s epistemic situation, than P(O/HI). As a matter of fact, there is little difference,

particularly in view of the rest of what most theists believe. (I realize there is a promissory note to discharge here.) But I believe there is also other evidence here, other evidence of

the very sort Draper calls attention to. This evidence supports theism as opposed to HI (and indeed outweighs the evidence, if any, provided by Draper’s evidential challenge). The evidence in question consists of propositions I believe that are far more probable on theism than on HI (if we like, we could think of them as evidential challenges to HI). I mention just a couple of these, because I am out of space; there is of course vastly more to be said. First, what precisely is it that O reports? Well, it reports the distribution of pain and pleasure (with respect to all sentient beings) that I have myself observed, together with what I know or believe by testimony — what other people tell me, what I read in the newspapers or in textbooks in various areas of biology, etc. But of course what I learn in this way isn’t nearly all that I believe about the pattern of pain and pleasure. For I also believe in eternal life. The precise contours of this are certainly obscure, but it includes an eternity of bliss for enormous numbers of God’s creatures. If it also includes separation from God and accompanying sorrow and emptiness for others, that will be so only if it is in accord both with divine justice and with

ON BEING EVIDENTIALLY CHALLENGED

divine love. Call the whole pain-and-pleasure pattern I accept “O+”: O+ includes or entails O and a great deal more. Still further, O+ is

vastly more probable, epistemically speaking, on theism than on HI. That is, the whole pattern of pleasure and pain that I think the world displays is much more probable on theism than on HI. Furthermore, O+ isn’t just any old proposition; it is one that entails (and is not entailed by) O. This is important; what it means is that any evidence offered against theism by the fact (as for purposes of argument we are temporarily conceding) that O is more probable on HI than on theism is outweighed by the fact that O+ is more probable on theism than on HI. There is much else I believe that is vastly more probable on theism than on HI. I believe that human beings have fallen into sin but can achieve salvation and eternal life through Jesus Christ, who suffered and died as a propitiation for our sins. These things are not logically incompatible with HI, but they certainly seem vastly less probable with respect to it than with respect to theism. “But,” comes the rejoinder, “isn’t there something question-begging or dialectically deficient in appealing in this context to such beliefs as that ours is a fallen world, or O+, or to such specifically Christian beliefs as those of Incarnation and Atonement? This is circular; or if it isn’t circular, then at least it has the form of a closed curve in space (as Quine says in another connection). For surely you wouldn’t believe these things if you didn’t

believe theism.” Perhaps that is so; but how is it relevant? Well, perhaps as follows. The whole point of Draper’s argument is to try to show that the theist who doesn’t have other evidence — evidence that counterbalances or outweighs the evidence against theism provided by the fact (as we are assuming) that O is more likely on HI than on theism — holds irrational views or in some related way suffers from some epistemic deficiency. He therefore offers what he takes to be some evidence against theism. Now suppose I replied by deducing something from theism — something such that my only

evidence for it is theism or my evidence for theism — and then proposed that as counterevidence. That would be dialectically reprehensible, because this “evidence” would be relevant and usable only if it did not suffer from the same deficiency that Draper proposes to pin on my theistic belief. But if its only warrant just zs my theism, or my warrant for my theism, then if my theism suffers from that deficiency, so does this “evidence.” To procced in this way would be to ignore Draper’s claim, or assume that it is false. Of course I didn’t deduce these things from theism; the latter doesn’t entail these more specifically Christian beliefs. Still, let’s concede, for the moment, that the Christian beliefs are rational, for me, only if theism is.

4

Nonpropositional Evidence

What we have been thinking about so far, of course, is propositional evidence for and against theism, evidence from other things the theist believes. And so far as propositional evidence goes, it seems to me that theism, with respect

to my epistemic situation, does at least as well as HI — at any rate if the theist can properly appeal to such other things he believes as O+, the fall into sin of some of God’s rational creatures, the Atonement, and the like. Some of these things entail theism; others don’t, but are such that they would be epistemically probable for a person only if theism were probable for that person. But can the theist properly appeal to these beliefs in responding to Draper’s challenge? Well, why not? Take the ones that entail theism: Draper points out that they won’t be any more epistemically probable, for a theist, than theism itself; so a challenge to theism is also a challenge to them. This is correct; but of course it is also true that theism won’t be any /ess epistemically probable, for the theist, than they are; so any epistemic probability they have will be transferred to theism itself. The same is true for those Christian doctrines I’ve cited that do not entail theism: they can contribute to the epistemic probabil187

ALVIN PLANTINGA

ity of theism, as we have seen, by way of being such that they are much more probable, on theism, than on HI or other propositions incompatible with theism. Now all of this pertains to propositional evidence for and against theism; but the most important question here,

I think, concerns the nonpropositional evidence, if any, for and against both theism and those other Christian beliefs. Is there nonpropositional evidence for or against theism? And consider those other Christian beliefs: is there nonpropositional evidence for and against them? To translate this question into Draper’s framework: are there nonpropositional features of my epistemic situation that confer epistemic probability, for me, on theism and other Christian beliefs, or on their denials? I have run out of space and shall have to be ridiculously brief and dogmatic. I find myself with belief in God; I also hold such beliefs as

that human beings have fallen into sin, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, and that we can receive the benefit of

that reconciliation by faith. So far as I can see, I don’t believe these propositions on the evidential basis of other propositions I believe, although, of course, they form part of a connected and coherent network of beliefs. Now, are these beliefs epistemically rational relative to my epistemic situation? According to Draper’s conception of epistemic probability, that depends on whether a fully rational person in my epistemic situation would accept them. Well, would she?

Here I think there are at least two questions, an internal question and an external question. The first question is whether I am rational in holding my beliefs in the sense in which whether for all I can tell from the inside, so to speak, my beliefs meet the appropriate internal standards — whether I am within my intellectual rights in believing as I do, whether I have properly taken account of other things I know, whether I have paid proper attention to objections and to what others say ~— whether, in a word (or two), I have done my epistemic best, or at least as well as I can 188

be expected to do. I read the Bible; I find myself enthusiastically assenting to the good news of the Gospel; am I doing my epistemic best? This is a complicated question; my “epistemic best” depends among other things on the rest of what I believe. But, if I have carefully considered the objections to what I believe, and (finding them wanting) am still convinced, what more can I do? (I believe that I am a substance that endures, lasts through time; if I carefully consider Parfittian objections but am still convinced, what more can I

do?) I think about some of the great evils the world regularly displays: famine, flood, pestilence, starvation, warfare, the horrifying ways in which human beings sometimes treat each other; I may be moved to ask myself whether God really does love us. But then I think of the Incarnation and Atonement (I don’t know why God permits all this evil, but He is himself willing to suffer unthinkable agony to give us a way out); and the doubts may disappear. Am I not doing my epistemic best here? What more am I supposed to do? The other question is external. It is really the question of warrant: the question whether my beliefs have that quality or quantity enough of which is sufficient, along with truth, to guarantee knowledge. What is that quality? As I see the matter, one of my beliefs has warrant just if it is produced by cognitive faculties functioning properly in an appropriate cognitive environment according to a design plan successfully aimed at truth.° (There are of course other views as to what warrant is, but what follows will hold for most of them.) Now, does my belief, e.g. that Jesus Christ is the divine son of God who became incarnate,

suffered and died, and rose again to enable us to have life — does this belief have warrant? Well, it does, if there is such a thing as the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit, which enables Christians to grasp, understand, and believe what the Lord proposes to teach us in the Scriptures — and if the proposition in question is one of the ones the Holy Spirit thus enables us to know. And what about my belief that there is such a person as God? Does

ON BEING EVIDENTIALLY CHALLENGED

this have warrant, i.e. warrant it gets independently of being accepted on the evidential basis of other propositions I believe? Again, it does, if there is such a thing as the Sensus Divinitatis of which Calvin speaks, and ifthis belief of mine is a result of the working of that faculty (and not, as Freud suggests, a result of wishful thinking or some other source of neurotic belief). But zs there such a thing as the Internal Testimony of the Holy Spirit, and zsthere such a thing as the Sensus Divinitatis And do they teach us what Christians take them to teach? These are the important questions; but they take us well beyond epistemology into metaphysics, or religion, or theology, or all three. To determine whether there is nonpropositional warrant for Christian and theistic belief, we have to determine whether Christian and theistic beliefs are true; the question whether there is nonpropositional evidence for these propositions is not theologically or religiously neutral. By way of conclusion: I think we can see that the issues to which Draper directs our attention are fundamentally issues of coherence; they have to do with relationships among the propositions theists typically believe. Draper’s claim, from this perspective, is that the typical theist’s set of beliefs is in a certain way incoherent: there are probabilistic relations among them of such a sort as to make her beliefs unstable. Draper claims this gives her a reason for rejecting her belief in God. I’ve argued that Draper’s claims here are probably mistaken: if we take into account all that a typical theist believes, including (in the case of Christian theists) beliefs about sin, Incarnation, Atonement, eternal life, and the like, the alleged incoherence seems to disappear.

Of course a theist who concurred with Draper, agreeing that the alleged incoherence is real, has options. Draper says she has a reason to reject beliefin God; but she could also

extirpate the incoherence not by rejecting theism but by rejecting some ofthe other beliefs involved — O itself, for example. Here it may be protested that we know O, so that it is not a good candidate for rejection. This brings us to a wholly different set of topics and questions, questions and topics that take us beyond coherence into the neighborhood of warrant. I believe these are the more important questions here. The more important questions have to do not with whether my belief in God is coherent with my other beliefs but with whether my belief in God has warrant, warrant of its own, so to speak, warrant that it

doesn’t get by being appropriately related to the other propositions I believe. This question, however,

takes us well beyond our

present set of questions; it takes us from epistemology into metaphysics. Notes 1

2

3 4

5 6

Paul Draper, “Pain and Pleasure: An Evidential Problem for Theists” [see Reading 20, above]. For a fuller account of a closely related notion, that of epistemic conditional probability, see chs 8 and 9 of my Warrant and Proper Function (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993) Paul Draper, “Probabilistic Arguments from Evil,” Religious Studies (1993). This really isn’t exactly right. Special Relativity, for example, gets its warrant for me not from the fact that it properly accounts for those data but from the fact that I have been told and believe that it does; but trying to put the matter more accurately would take us too far afield. See my Warrant and Proper Function, ch. 4. See my “Is Theism Really a Miracle?” Faith and Philosophy, 3 (1986). For a development and explanation of this enigmatic pronouncement, see my Warrant and Proper Function, chs | and 2.

189

Theodicies

22

From Theodicy in Islamic Thought*

Al-Ghazali ... [One must] believe with utter certainty in which there is neither weakness nor doubt that if God had created all creatures with the intelligence of the most intelligent among them and the knowledge of the most learned among them; and (5) if He had created for them all the knowledge their souls could sustain and had poured out upon them wisdom ofindescribable extent; then, had He given each one of them the knowledge, wisdom, and intelligence of them all,and (10) revealed to them the consequences of things and taught them the mysteries of the transcendent world and acquainted them with the subtleties of divine favor and the mysteries of final punishments, until they were made well aware (15) of good and evil, benefit and harm; then, if He had ordered them to arrange this world and the transcendent world in terms of the knowledge and wisdom they had received, (even then) that act of arrangement on the part of all of (20) them, helping each other and working in concert, would not make it necessary to add to the way in which God has arranged creation in this world and the next by (so much as) a gnat’s wing, nor to subtract from it (by so much as) a gnat’s

wing;

(25)

nor would it raise a speck of dust or lower a speck of dust; (their arrangement) would not ward off sickness or fault or defect or poverty or injury from one so afflicted, and it would not remove health or perfection or wealth or advantage (30) from one so favored. But if people directed their gaze and considered steadfastly everything that God has created in heaven and earth, they would see neither discrepancy nor rift.

(35)

Everything which God apportions to man, such as sustenance, life-span, pleasure and pain, capacity and incapacity, belief and disbelief, obedience and sin, is all of it sheer justice, with no in-justice in it; and pure right, with no wronginit. (40)

Indeed, it is according to the necessarily right order, in accord with what must be and as it must be and in the measure in which it must be; and

there is not in possibility anything whatever more excellent, more perfect, and more complete

than it.

(45)

For if there were and He had withheld it, having power to create it but not deigning to do so, this would be miserliness contrary to the divine generosity and injustice contrary to the divine justice. But if He were not able, it would be

incapability

* From Theodicy in Islamic Thought: the Dispute over Al-Ghazali’s “Best of All Possible Worlds,” ed. Eric Ormsby (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,

contrary to divinity.

1984), pp. 38-41. Reprinted with permission.

Indeed, all poverty and loss in this world is a

190

(50)

FROM THEODICY IN ISLAMIC THOUGHT diminution in this world but an increase in the next. Every lack in the next world in relation to one individual is a boon in relation to someone (55) else. For were it not for night, the value of day would be unknown. Were it not for illness, the healthy would not enjoy health. Were it not for hell, the blessed in paradise would not know the extent of their blessedness. In the same way, the (60) lives of animals serve as ransom for human souls; and the power to kill them which is given to humans is no injustice. Indeed, giving precedence to the perfect over the imperfect is justice itself. So too is (65) heaping favors on the inhabitants of paradise by increasing the punishment of the inhabitants of hell. The ransom of the faithful by means of the unfaithful is justice itself. As long as the imperfect is not created, the (70) perfect will remain unknown. If beasts had not been created, the dignity of man would not be manifest. The perfect and the imperfect are correlated. Divine generosity and wisdom require the simultaneous creation of the perfect and (75) the imperfect.

Just as the amputation of a gangrenous hand in order to preserve life is justice, since it involves

ransoming the perfect through the imperfect, so too the matter of the discrepancy which exists (80) among people in their portion in this world and the next. That is all justice, without any wrong; and right in which there is no caprice. Now this is a vast and deep sea with wide shores and tossed by billows. In extent it is comparable (85) to the sea of God’s unity. Whole groups of the inept drown in it without realizing that it is an arcane matter which only the knowing comprehend. Behind this sea is the mystery of predestination where the many wander in perplexity and which (90) those who have been illuminated are forbidden to divulge. The gist is that good and evil are foreordained. What is foreordained comes necessarily to be after a prior act of divine volition. No one can rebel (95) against God’s judgement; no one can appeal His decree and command. Rather, everything small and large is written and comes to be in a known and expected measure. “What strikes you was not there to miss you; what misses you was not there to strike you.”

191

SAADYA GAON

23

From the Book of Doctrines and Beltefs*

Saadya Gaon 2

The Freedom of the Will

Having explained the way in which we should approach these questions relating to the Justice of God, I say this: It accords with the justice of the Creator and His mercy towards man that He should have granted him the power and ability to do what He commanded him to do, and to refrain from what He forbade

him to do. This is established by Reason and by Scripture. By Reason, because the Wise will not insist that a person should do a thing which lies beyond his ability and strength; by Scripture, as it says, ‘O My people, what have I done unto thee? and wherein have I wearied thee? Testify against Me’ (Micah 6: 3). Furthermore, it is said in Scripture, “They that wait for the Lord shall renew their strength’ (Isa. 40.31); moreover, ‘Keep silence before Me, O Islands, and let the

peoples renew their strength’ (Isaiah 41:1), and ‘... When the morning is light, they execute it, because it is in the power of their hand’ (Micah 2:1). I also found that the ability to act must necessarily exist before the act, so as to give man the free choice of either acting or abstaining from the act. For if the ability to act came into existence only at the moment of the act and were co-existent with it, the two would

be either mutually interdependent or neither of them would be the cause of the other. If, on the other hand, the ability to act were to * From Saadya Gaon, Book of Doctrines and Beliefs, ed. Alexander Altmann, in Three Jewish Philosophers (New York: Meridian Books, 1960), pp. 118-23. Reprinted with permission.

ie

arise only after the act, man would have the power to take back an act which he had already performed. This is absurd, and the other alternative which we mentioned before is likewise absurd. It, therefore, follows that man’s power to act must exist before his action so that, by his power, he may be able perfectly to fulfil the commandment of his Lord and God. I deem it important to make clear that in the same way as a man’s action is a positive act, his abstention from a certain action is like-

wise a positive act, for by abstaining from that action he does, in fact, the opposite of it. This is not the case with the Creator (be He exalted and glorified), whose abstention from creating things is not an act. For if He abstains from creating the substances and their qualities, it is something to which there exists no opposite, whereas man, whenever he abstains from doing one thing, actually chooses the opposite since his action concerns accidents only: if he does not love, he hates; if he

is not favourably disposed, he is angry; there is no intermediate position between these.! Thus Scripture says, “Therefore shall ye keep My charge, that ye do not any of these abominable customs, which were done before you’ (Leviticus 18:30), and furthermore, ‘Yea, they

do not unrighteousness; they walk in His ways (Psalm 119:3). I must further explain that man does not perform any action unless he chooses to do it, since it is impossible for one to act if he has no free will or fails to exercise his free will. The fact that the Law does not prescribe punishment for one who commits an illicit act unintentionally is not because he has no free

FROM THE BOOK OF DOCTRINES AND BELIEFS

will, but because of his ignorance of the cause and effect of his particular action. Thus, we say of one who killed a person unintentionally that, for instance, the hewing of the wood was done intentionally and with his free will, whereas his failure to prevent the accident was unintentional.* Or to quote the case of one who has desecrated the Sabbath,* the gathering of the sticks may have been intentional, but the person forgot that that particular day was the Sabbath. Having dealt with all these points, I maintain further that the Creator (be He exalted) does not allow His power to interfere in the least with the actions of men, nor does He compel them to be either obedient or disobedient. I have proofs for this doctrine founded on sense perception, Reason, Scripture and Tradition. In regard to sense perception, I have found that a man observes from his own experience that he has the power to speak and to be silent, the power to seize a thing and to abandon it; he does not notice any other force that would hinder him in any way from exercising his will-power. The simple truth is that he directs the impulses ofhis nature by his Reason, and if he follows the bidding of Reason, he is prudent, if he does not, he is a fool. As to the proof based on Reason, our previous arguments have already shown how untenable is the idea that one action can be attributed to two agents. Now one who thinks that the Creator (be He exalted and glorified) interferes with the actions of men, does in fact ascribe one single action to God and Man together. Furthermore, if God used compulsion against man, there would be no sense in His giving him commandments and prohibitions. Moreover, if He compelled him to do a certain action, it would be inadmissible to punish him for it. In addition, if men acted under compulsion, it would be necessary to mete out reward to believers and infidels alike, since each of them did only what he was ordered to do. If awise man employs two workmen, the one that he may build, and

the other that he may destroy, it is his duty to pay wages to both. Moreover, it is impossible to assume that man acts under compulsion, for if this were the case, he would have to be excused since one knows that man is unable to prevail against the power of God, and if theinfidel offered the excuse that it was not within his power to believe in God, it would be necessary to consider him as justified and to accept his excuse. As to the proofs based on Scripture, we have already mentioned the verse, ‘Therefore choose life’ (Deuteronomy 30:19). The sinners are told, “This has been of your doing; will He accept any of your persons?’ (Malachi 1:9). Moreover, the Creator explains clearly that He is innocent with regard to their sins, as He says, ‘Woe to the rebellious children, saith the Lord, that take counsel, but not of Me’ (Isaiah 30:1). He makes it clear that He

is innocent with regard to the doings of the false prophets, saying ‘I have not sent these prophets, yet they ran; I have not spoken to them, yet they prophesied’ (Jeremiah 23:21), and other similar pronouncements. As to the proofs based on Tradition, our ancient Teachers have told us, ‘Everything lies in the hands of God except the fear of God, as it says, “And now, Israel, what doth the Lord Thy God require of thee, but to fear the Lord Thy God” ’ (Deuteronomy 10:12).

3

Providence and Free Will

All this explanation brings me to the following question, which will no doubt be asked: ‘If what you have said is true, viz. that the will of God has no share in the disobedience of those who disobey Him, how is it possible that there should exist in His world anything which does not find His approval, or to which He does not give His consent?”* The answer to this is not far to seek. It is this: we regard it as strange that a wise man should tolerate within the realm of his power anything which is un-

193

SAADYA GAON

desirable from his point of view, and to which he cannot give his consent. This is intelligible in the case of ahuman being since he dreads those things which cause him harm, but our Lord does not dread disobedience on account of Himself, since it is impossible to assume that any sort of accident should affect Him. He abhors disobedience for our own sakes because it has a harmful effect on us. For if we sin against Him and fail to acknowledge His Truth, we act foolishly, and if we sin against each other, we endanger our lives and positions. Since this is quite clear and manifest it is not strange that there should exist in His world things which we consider to be strange. When He explains to us that He abhors certain things, He does so for our own sakes in His way of mercy, as He made it clear in Scripture by saying, ‘Do they provoke Me? saith the Lord; do they not provoke themselves, to the confusion of their own faces?’ (Jeremiah TAD). Perhaps, someone will ask further: ‘If God knows that which is going to be before it comes into being, He knows in advance if a certain person will disobey Him; now that person must by necessity disobey God, for otherwise God’s foreknowledge would not prove to be correct.’ The fallacy underlying this question is even more evident than that underlying the previous one. It is this: He who makes this assertion has no proof that the knowledge of the Creator concerning things is the cause of their existence. He merely imagines this to be so, or chooses to believe it. The fallacy of this assumption becomes quite clear when we consider that, if God’s knowl-

edge of things were the cause of their existence, they would have existed from eternity, since God’s knowledge of them is eternal. We do, however, believe that God knows things as they exist in reality, i.e. of those things which

person to be silent?? we answer quite simply that if that person was to keep silent instead of speaking we should have said in our original statement that God knew that this man would be silent, and we were not entitled to state that God knew that this person would speak. For God knows man’s ultimate action such as it will be whether sooner or later after all his planning; it is exactly the thing God knows, as is said, ‘The Lord knoweth the thoughts of man’ (Psalm 94:11), and furthermore, ‘For I know their inclination how they do even now’ (Deuteronomy 31:21). I found people who asked on this point: “How can it be reconciled with God’s wisdom that He gives commandments and prohibitions to the righteous knowing as He does that they will always obey Him? I found there are four ways of answering this question. (1) The commandments were given in order to inform man what God desired of him; (2) in order that man’s reward should be complete, for if he acted in conformity to God’s will without being commanded to do so, he would have no claim to reward; (3) if it were proper for God to bestow reward upon man for something concerning which He did not command him, it would be equally proper to punish him for something concerning which he issued no prohibition. This, however, would be unjust; (4) the commandments were given in order to enjoin, for a second time, through the prophet, the commandments which are already established by Reason so that man, being warned and well prepared, should be particularly careful to perform them, as it says, ‘If Thou warn the righteous man, that the righteous sin not, he shall surely live, because he took warning’ (Ezekiel 3:21)....

He creates, He knows in advance that He is

going to create them, and of those things which are subject to man’s free will He knows in advance that man is going to choose them. Should one object, ‘If God knows that a certain person will speak, is it possible for that 194

Notes

1

Saadya distinguishes between God’s and man’s actions: God acts by creating the substances, and when He does not create He does not act at all. Man, who is incapable of creative activ-

MAGNITUDE, DURATION, DISTRIBUTION OF EVIL ity, only acts by producing accidental conditions. He, therefore, is acting even if he abstains from an explicit act: if he fails to love, he hates, etc. Saadya introduced this distinction first in connection with the problem of Creation in chapter I. There he points out that before God created the world He did not act at all. In this chapter Saadya wishes to make clear (a) that man’s freedom of the will (‘his ability to act’) is present both in his ac-

2 w

4

interference with man’s freedom must not be understood as an act in analogy with man’s abstention from acting, but as absolute passivity. Thus, man’s freedom is completely assured. Cf. Deuteronomy 19:1-3. Cf. Numbers 15:32-6. Mu’tazilite theology formulates the above problem as follows: ‘whether God has power over the evil deeds and injustices’.

tion and abstention from action, since even

his passivity has the positive character of an act; (b) that, on the other hand, God’s non-

24

The Magnitude, Duration, and Distribution of Evil:.a Theodicy*

Peter van Inwagen In his work on the problem of evil, Alvin Plantinga has made a useful distinction between “giving a theodicy” and “giving a defense.” To give a theodicy is to “answer in some detail the question ‘What is the source of the evil we find, and why does God permit it?’ ”! To give a defense is to construct a story according to which both God and evil exist and to attempt to show that this story is “possible in the broadly logical sense.”* The purpose of giving a theodicy is “to justify the ways of God to men.” The purpose of giving a defense is, in the first instance, to show that the coexistence of God and evil is possible. (In the first instance. But one might have further projects in mind — such as the project of showing that the existence of God is not improbable on some body of evidence that includes a description of the amounts and kinds of evil that actually exist.) Plantinga is rather down on theodicies. I * From Philosophical Topics, 16:2 (1988), pp. 161-87. Reprinted with permission.

have heard him say that to give a theodicy is “presumptuous.” I propose, nevertheless, to offer a theodicy. I propose to explain God’s ways — or at least to offer a partial and speculative explanation of those ways. I am sufficiently sensitive to the merits of Plantinga’s charge of presumption, however, to wish to say something in response to it. I will make three points. (1)

Ido not claim that the theodicy I shall

offer is comprehensive. That is, while I shall ascribe to God certain reasons for allowing evil to exist, I do not claim to give all of His reasons, or even to claim that the reasons I shall give are His most important reasons. For all I know, God has reasons for allowing evil to exist that no human being could understand; perhaps, indeed, He has hundreds of perfectly good reasons that no possible creature could understand. What I claim for the theodicy presented in this essay is this: it alleges a reason, or an interconnected set of reasons, that God has for allowing evil — of the 195

PETER VAN INWAGEN

amounts and kinds we observe — to come to be and to continue; if these were the only reasons God had for permitting evil, they would by themselves justify this permission. (2) The theodicy I shall present is not in any large part my own invention. I do not claim to be the first human being in history to have fathomed God’s purposes. Nor do I claim to be the recipient of a special revelation from God: I do not claim to be a prophet whom God has charged with the task of disseminating an explanation of His ways. The method of this essay is simply philosophical reflection on the data of Christian revelation — or, more exactly, on what one tradition holds (in my view, correctly) to be the data of Christian revelation. (Those who do not share my allegiance to these data may wish to regard this essay as providing one more defense, in Plantinga’s sense.) (3) Inso far as anything in this essay is original, it is speculative. I do not claim that what is unique to this essay has any authority over those who accept the data of Christian revelation referred to above. But I claim more for these speculations than that they are “possible in the broadly logical sense.” I offer them as consonant with and a plausible elaboration of the data of Christian revelation. (This, by the way, could not be claimed for them if they contained any element that was improbable on the known facts of science and history. I therefore explicitly claim that no proposition contained in the theodicy presented in this essay is improbable on the whole set ofpropositions endorsed by the special sciences.) One might object that someone who offers a theodicy in such a tentative fashion as this is not really “giving a theodicy” in Plantinga’s sense. To “give a theodicy,” one might argue, is to represent oneself as knowing that every proposition one puts forward is true. Perhaps there is some justice in this protest. If so, however, there is certainly room for the kind of thing I propose to do. There seems to be no reason to require that everyone who 196

tells a story about God and evil must either claim to know this story to be true or else claim only that it is possible in the broadly logical sense. And I think that if one does put forward an admittedly speculative but (or so one believes) plausible account of God’s reasons for allowing the existence of evil, one is not abusing language if one describes one’s offering as a theodicy. These three points, it seems to me, are suf-

ficient to disarm the charge of presumption.

It is generally, but not universally, conceded by Christians that the existence of evil has something to do with free will. The theodicy I shall present is of the “free will” type. That is to say, it proceeds by extending and elaborating the following story: God made the world and it was very good. An important part of its goodness was that it contained creatures made in His own image — that is, created beings capable of understanding (to some degree) their own nature and their place in the scheme ofthings entire; creatures, moreover, that were fit to be loved by God and to love Him in return and to love one another. But love implies freedom: for A to love Bis for A freely to choose to be united to Bin a certain way. Now even an omnipotent being cannot ensure that some other being freely choose x over y. For God to create beings capable of loving Him, therefore, it was necessary for Him to take

a risk: to risk the possibility that the beings He created would freely choose to withhold their love from Him. To love God and to desire to submit to His will are very closely related — at least as closely as the love of one’s offspring and the desire to nurture and protect and raise them. God’s free creatures — or some of them — instead ofloving Him and submitting to His will, chose to turn away from Him and “to follow instead the devices and desires of their own hearts.” It was thus that evil entered the world. A husband and father who turns away from his wife and children and suppresses his natural desire to live with

MAGNITUDE, and to love and protect them, and chooses instead to indulge a desire for fame or sexual adventure or “self-realization,” turns himself into something unnatural and harmful. Likewise, a creature who turns away from God turns himself into something unnatural and harmful. Having turned away from God, His creatures laid violent hands on the created world. They snatched it out of His grasp and turned it to their own purposes. We are now living with the catastrophic consequences of that act.

This is the beginning of our theodicy. At its heart is what is a familiar “move” in discussions of the problem ofevil, the insistence that even an omnipotent being cannot ensure that someone freely do one thing rather than some contemplated alternative. Some philosophers have said that the proposition An omnipotent being cannot ensure that a creature who has a free choice between x and y choose x rather than y

is false — and, of course, necessarily false, for, owing to its modal character, this proposition is necessarily false if it is false at all. The issues raised by this contention have been extensively debated, and I have nothing new to say about them. I shall simply assume that this proposition is true. I proceed now to elaborate the above very sketchy narrative of the origin of evil. It is obvious that this must be done. As it stands, the narrative accounts for the existence of only, as we might say, “some evil or other.” It says nothing about evil of the kinds or in the amounts we actually observe, or anything about its duration — thousands upon thousands of years — or anything about the fact that its worst effects are distributed apparently at random and certainly without regard for

desert. I shall elaborate this narrative with certain propositions drawn from Christian theology. All Christian theologians who could lay any claim to the titles “orthodox,” “Catholic,” or “traditional” would accept the following theses:

DURATION, DISTRIBUTION OF EVIL

Allevil is the result of the primordial act of turning away from God; there is no source of evil other than creaturely rebellion. The creatures who committed the initial act of rebellion received sufficient warning that their act would lead to disaster. While they may have been unlike us in many ways, they were not children and were at least as intelligent as we; they fully understood the warning and the wisdom and authority ofits Source.

Among the creatures who rebelled were an entire generation of human beings, all of the human beings who were alive at some particular moment. [In my view, it was the first generation of human beings. But I shall not build this into our theodicy because (a) it is not neces-

sary, and (b) to argue that the proposition that there was a first generation of human beings is compatible with what we know about our evolutionary history would require a lengthy digression. The digression would involve the removal of two sorts of misunderstanding: misunderstandings about what it would be for there to be a first generation of human beings, and misunderstandings about what scientific study of the evolutionary history of our species has actually shown. ] Before this rebellion, there was no evil — or at any rate none that affected human beings. In turning away from God, our ancestors ruined themselves; they became unable to turn back to Him of their own power, as someone who ignores a warning not to go too near the edge ofa pit may fall into it, injure himself, and be unable to climb out. Thus, the act of rebellion, or its immediate consequences, may be

called “the Fall.” Their ruin was in some way inherited by all of their descendants. [This does not necessarily mean that their genes were altered by the Fall. I believe that it is possible to construct models of the Fall according to which its hereditary aspect is due to the effects of unaltered genes operating under conditions for which they were not “designed” — namely, conditions attendant upon separation from God. But I will not argue for this here. ]Thus, evil is a persisting and — by any natural means — unalterable fact of history.

197

PETER VAN INWAGEN

the Crucifixion, the Resurrection, the Ascen-

God has not left His creatures to their misery — not, at any rate, His human creatures. He has inaugurated a plan whose workings will one day eventuate in the Atonement (at-one-ment) of

sion, the Descent of the Holy Spirit, or the

His human creatures with Himself. (Or, at least,

the Atonement of some of His human creatures with Himself. It may be that some ofHis creatures will, by their own free choice, resist Atonement forever.) In order to achieve Atonement with God, a ruined creature must turn to God

and ask for His help and accept that help. The undoing of creaturely ruin must be a cooperative endeavor. The creature cannot accomplish it for himself, and even an omnipotent being cannot effect the required sort of regeneration of a creature ifthe creature refuses to be regenerate. Any aspect of the creatures’ environment that would tend to discourage them from turning to Him and asking for His help would therefore be an obstacle to the completion of His plan. Every human being has an eternal future (and, therefore, the human species has an eternal future). We are now living, and have been living, throughout the archaeologically accessible past, within a temporary aberration in human history, an aberration that is a finite part of an eternal whole. When God’s plan of Atonement comes to fruition, there will never again be undeserved suffering or any other sort of evil. The “age of evil” will eventually be remembered as a sort of transient “flicker” at the very beginning of human history.

I have said that I have drawn these points from Christian theology. But I have stated them so abstractly that, I think, at least some Jews and Muslims would agree with most of them. (The

major point of disagreement would probably be over my inclusion among them ofthe doctrine of Original Sin; that is, the doctrine of hereditary ruin.) Now the body of Christian theology deals with what we may call — from our present vantage point of lofty abstraction — the detazls of(what Christians believe to be) God’s plan of Atonement. But in the present essay I shall hardly mention such matters as God’s calling of Israel to be His people, the giving of the Law, the Incarnation, the ministry of Jesus, the institution of the Eucharist,

198

.

one, holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. It will be enough for my purposes to include in my theodicy the proposition that God has some plan of Atonement and that it will someday succeed in reuniting to Him all who choose to be reunited. I added the above flesh to the skeleton provided by the standard “free-will” account of the origin of evil because it was clear that that skeleton was no theodicy. The skeleton, however, will require more flesh than this. We have still not got a finished theodicy. If we claimed that we had, a skeptic might, quite properly, respond along the following lines. “God, you say, has set in motion a plan of Atonement. But why is it taking so long for His plan to work out? It’s all very well to tell a tale that represents ‘the age of evil’ as a ‘transient flicker at the very beginning of human history.’ But every finite period is a mere flicker in Eternity. Nothing has been said to challenge the obvious proposition that God would not allow ‘the age of evil’ to go on any longer than necessary. Why, then, is ‘this long’ necessary? “And why is there so much evil at any given time? Evil may be, as you say, the result of the creaturely abuse of free will. But the amount

of evil could have been far less. For example, God, without in any way diminishing Cain’s free will, could have warned Abel not to turn

his back on him. If the implied general policy had been put into effect, a vast amount of evil would have been avoided. “And why does God allow evil to be so unfairly distributed? Why is it so often the innocent — small children, for example — who suffer? Why is it so often the wicked who prosper?

“And what about ‘physical’ or ‘natural’ evil? How can the effects of the Bubonic Plague or the Lisbon earthquake be a result of creaturely free will? “To roll all of these questions into one, Why has it been for thousands and thousands of years that enormous numbers of uncompre-

MAGNITUDE, DURATION, DISTRIBUTION OF EVIL

hending children have died as a result of epidemic disease and famine and natural disaster — while many a tyrant has died in bed? How could evil of such types and quantity and duration and distribution be necessary to God’s plan of Atonement? Or, if all this evil is zot necessary to God’s plan, why does He not eliminate most of it and make do with that residue of evil that is really necessary?”

II I will continue to flesh out our skeletal theodicy by attending to the questions posed by our imaginary skeptic. I will address the

last of them first. The question presupposes that if there are evils that are not required by God’s plan of Atonement, then there is such a thing as “that residue of evil that is really necessary,” the minimum of evil that is required for God’s plan to succeed. But this is not a very plausible thesis. It is not very plausible to suppose that there is a way in which evil could be distributed such that (i) that distribution of evil would serve God’s purposes as well as any distribution could and (ii) God’s purposes would be less well served by any distribution involving less evil. (One might as well suppose that if God’s purposes require an impressively tall prophet to appear at a certain place and time, there is a minimum height such a prophet could have.) But if there is no minimum of evil that would serve God’s purposes, then one cannot argue that God is unjust or cruel for not “getting by with less evil” — any more than one can argue that a law that fines motorists $25.00 for illegal parking is unjust or cruel

owing to the fact that a fine of $24.99 would have an identical deterrent effect. The same point can be made in relation to time. If there is a purpose that is served by allowing “the age of evil” to have a certain duration, doubtless the same purpose would be served if the age of evil were cut short by a day ora year or even a century. But we would not call a judge unjust or cruel for imposing on a criminal a

sentence of ten years on the ground — doubtless true — that a sentence of ten years less a day would have served as well whatever end the sentence was designed to serve. It is obvious that if, for any amount of evil that would have served God’s purposes, slightly less evil would have served His purposes just as well — a very plausible assumption — then the principle that God should have got by with less evil, if less would have served, entails the (ex hypothest false) conclusion that God should have got by with no evil at all. It may be a difficult problem in philosophical logic correctly to diagnose the defect in illegitimate sorites arguments, but it is certainly evident that such a defect exists. The important things to recognize about these two points are, first, that they are valid and that to ignore them is to court confusion, and, secondly, that, valid though they be, they do not really meet the essence of the difficulty perceived by the skeptic, the difficulty that prompts him to ask, Why so much? Why so long? To revert to our legal and judicial analogy, there may be no minimum appropriate fine for illegal parking, but (most of us would agree) ifa fine of $25.00 would serve whatever purposes a fine for illegal parking is supposed to serve — deterrence, presumably — then it would be wrong to set the fine at five thousand dollars. Similarly, ifan “age of evil” of twenty years’ duration, an age during which there were a few dozen broken bones and a score or so of very bad cases of influenza, would have served God’s ends as well as the actual evil of human history serves them, then the enormity of His achieving these same ends by allowing the existence of “actual evil” passes all possibility of adequate description. What the theodicist must do, given the facts ofhistory, is to say what contribution — what essential contribution — to God’s plan of Atonement is made by the facts about the types, magnitude, duration, and distribution of evil that are made known to us by historians and journalists (not to mention our own experience). It will be useful to divide this problem fac199

PETER VAN INWAGEN

ing the theodicist — and why not call it simply the problem of evil? - into several subproblems. One division of the problem of evil is well known: the division of the problem into “the problem of moral evil” and “the problem of natural evil.” A second division, one that will be particularly useful in our project of fleshing out our skeletal theodicy so as to meet the questions of the imaginary skeptic, cuts across the first. It divides the problem into three: the problem of the magnitude of evil the problem of the duration of evil the probiem of the distribution of evil.

Ill I assume that we already have an adequate answer to the problem of moral evil. 1am not much interested in treating the problem of natural evil; my main interest in the present essay is the subproblems generated by the second division. I shall, accordingly, treat the problem of natural evil in a rather perfunctory way. I shall suggest the broadest outlines of a solution and leave the details for another time — or another writer. (But some of the things said in the course of our later discussion of the distribution problem will have some relevance to questions about the role in God’s plan of natural evil.) Natural evil is often cited as a special problem for those who say that evil entered the world through the creaturely abuse of free will, since tornadoes and earthquakes are obviously not caused by the acts — free or unfree — of human beings. The evil that results from tornadoes and earthquakes must nevertheless be treated in any theodicy of the “free will” type as somehow stemming from creaturely free will. One notorious way of doing this is to postulate that tornadoes and earthquakes are caused by malevolent nonhuman creatures. Another way (the way I shall take) proceeds from the observation that it is not earthquakes and tornadoes per se that are evil, but rather 200

the suffering and death that they cause. Consider the following tale. “Earthquakes all occur in one particular region called Earthquake Country, a region that was uninhabited (because everyone knew about the earthquakes and had no reason to go there) until twenty years ago. At that time, gold was discovered on the borders of Earthquake Country and the geological indications were that there was much more inside. Motivated solely by a desire to get rich, many people — people by no means in want — moved to Earthquake Country to prospect for gold. Many took their families with them. Some of them got rich, but many of them were killed or maimed by earthquakes.” This tale may not be true, but it demonstrates that earthquakes need not be caused by the actions of creatures for the suffering and death caused by earthquakes to be a result of the actions of those creatures. Our theodicy, as we have so far stated it,

entails that at one time — before the Fall — our ancestors lived in a world without evil. This, I

suppose, entails that they were not subject to the baleful effects of earthquakes and tornadoes. But why not? Well, for the purposes of a perfunctory treatment of the problem of natural evil, we need assume only that there was some reason for this, a reason that became inoperative when our ancestors separated

themselves from God. We might suppose, for example, that the old tradition (it is without biblical warrant) that Adam and Eve possessed “preternatural powers” is substantially correct, and that these powers included certain cognitive powers; we might suppose that our unfallen ancestors knew (and pretty far in advance) whether an earthquake or tornado would strike a particular spot — and when. And we might suppose that their being able to know such things depended on their union with God and was lost as a natural consequence of their separating themselves from God. We must remember that, according to Christianity, human beings were designed for union with God, in the same sense as that in

which they are designed to live in community

MAGNITUDE, DURATION, DISTRIBUTION OF EVIL

with one another and to use language. A “feral child” is a ruined human being — though he is no less our brother than is Homer or Leonardo — and his ruin entails a grave diminution of his cognitive powers. According to Christianity, we have all been ruined by our separation from God, just as the feral child has been ruined by his separation from the human community. (The feral child’s ruin is thus a ruin within a ruin, a second, individual ruin of an already ruined common human nature.) And the ruin of human nature consequent on our separation from God may have involved a grave diminution of our cognitive powers. According to the “just-so story” Iam telling,* we were designed by God to be able to protect ourselves from earthquakes and tornadoes — if you think that it would be possible to design a planet, and a universe to contain it, that was both capable of supporting human life and contained no earthquakes or tornadoes, I can only point out that you have never tried — and that the loss of this power is as natural a consequence of our ancestors’ separation from God as is the loss of the capacity to acquire language a natural consequence of the feral child’s separation from the human community. (Expansion of this justso story to cover tigers and droughts and epidemic disease and so on is left as an exercise for the reader.) Doubtless we could tell many tales of speculative theological fiction having the feature that our being subject to the destructive forces of nature is ultimately a consequence of the creaturely abuse of free will. For our purposes, as I have said, it will suffice to assume that one of the tales that fits this abstract description is true. This is all I have to say about natural evil, but I wish to remind the reader that if all human beings were wise and good, our sufferings would be vastly less than they are; and it is probably not true that we should be much better off for a complete elimination of natural evil. Doubtless there would be human beings more than willing to take up the slack. Our ancestral ruin is primarily a moral, as opposed to a cognitive, ruin. But ruins we are.

If two explorers — who have never seen such a thing —- come upon a ruined temple in the jungle, and if one of them thinks that it is a natural geological formation and the other that it is a building that is just as it was designed to be, neither will understand its shape. From the Christian point of view, it is impossible for one to understand humanity if one thinks of ahuman being as either a product of natural forces behind which there is no Mind or as the work that a Mind intended to produce. Both naturalism and deism (Christianity holds) go wrong about our nature right at the outset, and neither can yield an understanding of that nature. We thus have some basis for understanding both “moral” and “natural” evil. (In a sense, the theodicy I am proposing entails that there is no fundamental distinction between them: natural evil is a special category ofmoral evil.) That is, we have a basis for understanding why God would allow such things to come to be. (This is a very abstract statement. Remember, we have not yet said anything about the magnitude, duration, or distribution of either sort of evil.) We may, to sum up, add the following statement to our theodicy. Our unfallen ancestors were somehow able to

protect themselves from earthquakes and tornadoes and wild beasts and disease and so on.

This ability depended on their union with God, and was lost when they separated themselves from Him.

I now turn to my primary interests in offering a theodicy: The magnitude, duration, and distribution of evil.

IV “Our ancestors turned away from God and ruined themselves both morally and intellectually — and thus they began to harm one another and they lost their aboriginal power to protect themselves from the potentially destructive forces of nonhuman nature. This 201

PETER VAN INWAGEN

condition — their wickedness and helplessness — has persisted through all the generations, being somehow hereditary. But God has set a chain of events in motion that will eventually bring this state of affairs to an end.” The theodicist who wishes to add to this story elements that will account for evil as we actually find it must consider the questions

about the magnitude, duration, and distribution of evil that we have put into the mouth of our imaginary skeptic. It will aid my order of exposition — and not, I think, unfairly modify the skeptic’s case — if we recast the skeptic’s three questions as four questions. The first and third have to do with the duration of evil, the second with its magnitude, and the fourth with its distribution. Question 1

Question 2

Question 3

Question 4

Why didn’t God immediately restore His fallen creatures to their original union with Him? Why doesn’t God protect His fallen creatures from the worst effects of their separation from Him: the horrible pain and suffering? Why has God allowed “the age of evil” to persist for thousands and thousands of years? Why do the innocent suffer and the wicked prosper?

Question I What would doing that actually have involved? Suppose that two brothers quarrel. Suppose that the quarrel becomes violent and then bitter and that finally they come to hate each other. Suppose that their mother prays to God that He restore their mutual love — and not by any gradual process, but immediately, right on the spot. What is she asking God to do? I can think of only one thing: to grant her request, God would have to wipe away all memory of everything that had happened between them since just before the moment they quarreled. Any philosopher worth his salt will probably be able to think of several concep202

tual difficulties that would attend this plan, but (assuming they could be overcome by omnipotence) God would not do such a thing, because, as Descartes has pointed out, God is not a deceiver, and such an act would consti-

tute a grave deception about the facts of history. (I have no memory of a violent, bitter quarrel with Eleonore Stump, and thus my memory represents the past to me as containing no such quarrel. I have the best epistemic warrant for believing that no such quarrel has ever occurred. If she and I fave so quarreled and if God has “deleted” my memories of it — and has somehow rendered the resulting set of memories coherent — then He has deceived me about the past.) I cannot see how God could simply, by sheer fiat, immediately have restored fallen humanity other than by a similar grave deception. And, we may add, if He did, what would happen next? What would prevent the Fall from immediately recurring?

V Question 2 Consider the parable of the Prodigal Son. (Those whose memory of this story is dim will find it in the Gospel according to St Luke 15: 11-32.) Suppose the father of the Prodigal had foreseen the probable effects of his son’s rash use of his patrimony, and had hired actors to represent themselves as gamblers and deliberately to lose substantial sums to the Prodigal; and suppose that he had further arranged for his agents to bribe prostitutes to tell the Prodigal that they had fallen in love with him and wanted to give him all their earnings (following which declaration they are to pass on to him monies provided by his father); and suppose that the father’s agents, on his instructions, had followed the Prodigal about in secret to protect him from the dangers attendant on the night life of the ancient Middle East. What would have been the effects of this fatherly solicitude? Certainly the son could

MAGNITUDE, DURATION, DISTRIBUTION OF EVIL

have continued to squander his substance indefinitely and with impunity. But here the word impunity must be understood in a rather superficial sense: for the son will be living a life of illusion (and that is a misfortune), and it is hard to see what could ever induce him to consider returning to his father (and I am inclined to think that that would also be a misfortune). This modification of the story of the Prodigal Son suggests why it is that God does not simply “cancel” — by an almost continuous series of miracles — the pain and suffering that our separation of ourselves from Him has led to. First, if He did so, He would be, no less than in the case of the deleted memories, a deceiver. If He did so, we should be living in

a world of illusion. Our lives would be invisibly “propped up” by God, but we should — justifiably — think that we were living successfully simply by the exercise of our native powers. This, it seems to me, would reduce our existence to something worse than meaningless: we should be, every one ofus, comic figures. (If there were a novel whose plot was the “revised” life of the Prodigal Son sketched above, he could not be its hero or even a sympathetic character. The novel would be a low comedy and he would be the butt of the joke.) Now illusion of this sort is a bad thing in itself, but it would have consequences even worse than its intrinsic badness. If God did what is proposed, we should all be satisfied with our existence — or at least a lot closer to being satisfied than most of us are now. And if we are satisfied with our existence, why should we even consider turning to God and asking for His help? An essential and important component of God’s plan of Atonement — this constitutes an addition to our theodicy — is to make us dissatisfied with our state of separation from Him; and not by miraculously altering our values or by subjecting us to illusion or by causing us suffering that has no natural connection with our separation, but simply by allowing us to “live with” the natural consequences of this separation, and by making it as difficult as possible for us to de-

lude ourselves about the kind ofworld we live in: a hideous world, much of whose hideous-

ness is quite plainly traceable to the inability of human beings to govern themselves or to ordér their own lives. Let us expand our theodicy: As essential part of God’s plan of Atonement for separated humanity is fer human beings to perceive that a natural consequence of human beings’ attempting to order their own lives is a hideous world — a world that is hideous not only by His standards, but by the very standards they themselves accept.

Why is it important for human beings to perceive the hideousness of the world? Well, first,

because that’s how things are. That’s what “man on his own” means. Look at the world around you — the world of violence, starvation, hatred, the world of the death camps and

the Gulag and (quite possibly) thermonuclear or ecological catastrophe. (These are not the worst features of separated human life in the eyes of God, for these are all finite evils, and

He can see quite plainly that each of us daily risks an infinite evil, the loss of the end for which he was made. But they really are hideous and they are recognizable as hideous by almost everyone, no matter what his beliefs and values may be.) These are natural effects of our living to ourselves, just as a literally fe-

ral existence is a natural effect of an infant’s separation from the human community. People who do not believe in God do not, of course, see our living to ourselves as a re-

sult of a prehistoric separation from God. But they can be aware — and it is a part of God’s plan of Atonement that they should be aware — that something is pretty wrong and that this wrongness is a consequence of the intrinsic inability of human beings to devise a manner of life that is anything but hideous. (They can be aware. Few are. Part of the reason is that various myths* have been invented® for the purpose of obscuring the intrinsic incapacity of human beings to live successfully even by their own standards. The myths of Enlightenment, Progress, and the Revolution are the 203

PETER VAN INWAGEN

most prominent of these. Such myths in the end refute themselves by leading to ever deeper human misery; but, unfortunately, only in the end.) The broad psychological outlines of this feature of the plan that our theodicy ascribes to God are not hard to fathom. The realization that undirected human life is bound to be a failure even in secular terms may possibly set people to wondering whether there may not be some direction somewhere. But people who still think that the obvious hideousness of our worid is caused by some accidental feature of human life — superstition, technological backwardness, primitive economic organization — one that we shall presently get round to altering, are probably not going even to consider turning to God. It is a commonplace that religious belief is more prevalent in South America and the Middle East and Africa than in the English-speaking countries and Western Europe. One possible explanation of this fact is that miserable and uneducated people turn to religious institutions as a man with a painful and incurable illness turns to quacks (and he is all the more likely to fall prey to quacks if he is uneducated). Here is another possible explanation. In the relatively prosperous and well-ordered West, people — middle-class people, anyway — are subject to an illusion about human nature and the conditions of human life. Although the prosperity and order in their lives is due to a special, fragile, and transient set of circumstances, they foolishly regard the kind of life they lead as the sort of thing human nature can be trusted to produce. The “wretched of the earth,” on the other hand, see human nature as it really is. Many of them may be uneducated, in the sense of lacking the cognitive skills necessary to construct and operate a machine-based civilization, but they are far better educated than middle-class Europeans and Americans as regards the most general and important features of human nature. If an analogy involving medical quackery is wanted, we may say that a typical “post-religious” American or European is like a desperately sick man who has got his hands on 204

some temporary panacea and who, as a consequence, has decided that the doctors who attempted to impress upon him the gravity of his condition are all quacks. God’s refusal to “cancel” the suffering that isa natural consequence of the Fall by providing separated humanity with a vast set of miraculous and invisible props can (according to the theodicy I propose) be understood on the model of a doctor who refuses to prescribe a painkiller (say, for angina), on the ground that he knows that his patient will curtail some beloved but self-destructive activity — long-distance running, say — only if the patient continues to experience the pain that his condition signals. Now this sort of behavior on the part of a doctor may well be morally objectionable. The doctor is the patient’s fellow adult and fellow citizen, and, or so it can plausibly be argued, it would be presumptuous of him to act in such a paternalistic way. One might even say that in so acting the doctor would be “playing God.” But we can hardly accuse God of playing God. God is justifiably paternalistic because He is our Fa-

ther and because He is perfect in knowledge and wisdom and because, or so I would argue, He has certain rights over us. These rights, as I see it, derive from the following

facts: He made up the very idea of there being creatures like us out of the thought of His own mind, and He made us out of nothing to meet the specifications contained in that idea; everything we have — including the intellectual and moral faculties by means of which we make judgments about paternalism — we have received from Him; He made us for a certain purpose (to glorify Him and to enjoy Him forever) and we threaten to prevent that

purpose from being fulfilled. I have suggested that the initial stage of God’s plan of Atonement essentially involves His separated creatures’ being aware of the hideousness of their condition and of its being a natural result of their attempting to order their own lives. I would also suggest that the outcome of His plan of Atonement, the unending union ofcreatures with Himself, will

MAGNITUDE, DURATION, DISTRIBUTION OF EVIL

essentially involve the memory of that hideousness. A student of mine, a Christian, once told me ofa professor of philosophy who had questioned him somewhat as follows. “You Christians believe that in the beginning man was in Paradise, and that in the end man will be in Heaven. In each of these states, man is in perfect union with God. So what is the difference between Paradise and Heaven? By abusing his free will, you say, man lost Paradise. And, you say, Heaven will be forever. But how can you know that man, having attained Heaven, won’t proceed to lose it again by abuse ofhis free will?” There is a very simple answer to this question. The human beings in Heaven (that is, those whom God has rescued and restored to union with Himself; “Heaven” is not the name of a place but of a condition) will know what it’s like to be separated from God. They will remember the hideousness of their lives before the restoration of their union with God, and their continu-

ing in their restored state will be no more puzzling than the refusal of the restored Prodigal Son to leave his father’s house a second time. (Christian theologians have generally held that the inhabitants of Heaven — unlike the inhabitants of Paradise — are unable to sin. If the considerations of the present paragraph are combined with the theses on the nature of free will that I have argued in my essay “When Is the Will Free?”® it is easy to see why this should be so.) Theologians have also held that the happiness of those in Heaven will essentially involve, will perhaps be identical with, an immediate, intuitive knowledge of God, generally called the Beatific Vision. We might speculate that this Vision will have as a component an awareness of God’s opposite, an awareness best revealed in the memory of separation from Him. Reflection on reunited lovers or returned exiles suggests why this might be the case. Let us formally add these ideas to our theodicy: The perception by human beings of their incapacity to “live to themselves” is essential to

God’s plan of Atonement because, first, with-

out this perception few if any human beings would consider turning to God. (If, therefore, God were miraculously to “cancel” the natural consequences of separation from Himself, He would not only be a deceiver but would remove the only motivation fallen human beings have for turning to Him.) And because, secondly,

memory ofthe hideousness of separated human life will be an important, perhaps an essential, component ofthe final state of restored humanity. Among the natural consequences ofseparation from God is the vast quantity of pain and suffering that we observe.

VI Question 3 I am uncertain about what to say about the duration of the “age of evil.” I suggest some speculations that seem to me to be plausible. e@ Perhaps God wants the final community of those in union with Him to be rather /arge. (Couldn’t God allow an increase in the human population to occur after His plan of Atonement has been completed? Well, there is certainly the point to be considered that people born after the completion of God’s plan would not remember the “age of evil” and thus would be just as liable to sin as their remote ancestors in Paradise; and it might be,

as I have speculated, that memory of a world separated from God will be an essential part of the final condition of restored humanity.) e@ Perhaps God wants the final community of those in union with Him to be rather diverse. It seems plausible to suppose that if God had brought the age of evil to an end in, say, Ap 1000, the final human community would have been very unlike what it would be if He brought that age to an end tomorrow. In the latter case the final community would contain men and women whose cast of mind and world-view were radically unlike those of the members of any earlier age or culture. One might speculate that the members of acommunity composed of people born in diverse periods and cultures would be able to perceive 205

PETER VAN INWAGEN

and to communicate to one another aspects of the Divine Nature that the members of a community of less heterogeneous cultural origins would have been blind to. @ Various important stages in God’s plan of Atonement may require particular levels of social and cultural development. The unhappy first generation of separated human beings must have been in a truly miserable state, having lost the smoothly functioning behavioral instincts of their purely animal ancestors, but

course, the rapid and accurate spread of the news about Jesus (also an essential part of God’s plan, according to Christians) could hardly have happened except within the setting of a vast, cosmopolitan empire. e Creatures like ourselves, sunk deep in selfwill, take a long time to respond to any sort of guidance, particularly if it appeals to considerations higher than power and wealth. It may be hard to kick against the goad, but it is certainly done.

without the learned social organization, cus-

tom, and tradition by which human beings — as we know them — maintain themselves in an

Question 4

environment indifferent to their welfare. (Perhaps they were even without an actual language: a population of feral children, as it were. I suppose no one claims to know what would happen to a closed population of feral children over many generations?) Or even if they were never wholly without a culture and social organization, we can hardly suppose them to have had anything but a tribal culture. It

Let us not discuss cases of the suffering of the innocent that depend on human wickedness or folly or corrupt institutions. Let us instead examine cases in which there are no oppressors but only victims. These would seem to raise all of the difficulties for the theodicist that are raised by cases in which an oppressor is present, and to be amenable to a smaller class of solutions; they are not, for example, amenable to any solution that involves a concern for the ultimate spiritual welfare of the oppressor or respect for his free will or anything ofthat sort. A young mother dies of leukemia. A school bus full of children is crushed by a landslide. A child is born without limbs. A wise and good man in the prime of life suffers brain damage and spends the remaining thirty years of his life in a coma. I do not know of a good gen-

may well be that God’s plan of Atonement requires that at certain points in history some people belong to a more “advanced” culture than a tribal culture. If we consider the Christian account of God’s plan of Atonement, for example, we shall see that it is evident that the ministry of Jesus (an essential part of God’s plan) could not have taken place in a culture much different from that offirst-century Palestine; certainly it could not have taken place in a tribal culture, or in a “normal” culture of the ancient Mediterranean world, a pagan polytheism. A “specialized” culture like that of ancient Judaism cannot appear overnight. Even if one does not believe the biblical ac-

count of God’s long interaction with Israel, one must grant that the Hebrew culture of two thousand years ago embodied a long history. (God doubtless had the power to “raise up children for Abraham from these stones,” but if He had exercised that power He would have been a deceiver; vivid and detailed memo-

ries of the long history of their people were an essential part of the reaction of Jesus’ Hebrew audience to His preaching.) And, of 206

eral term for such events. Journalists often call

them tragedies. But this word is properly applied only to events that are in some sense meaningful, and I know of no reason to think that such events always have a “meaning.” I will call them horrors. Why do horrors happen? I want to suggest that horrors happen for no reason at all, that when, for example, a child is born without limbs, the only answer to the question, “Why did that happen?” is “There is no reason or explanation; it just happened.” Or, at any rate, I want to suggest that this is sometimes the case. (Whether some horrors are brought about by God for special purposes is a ques-

MAGNITUDE, DURATION, DISTRIBUTION OF EVIL

tion I shall not attempt to answer. If some horrors are brought about by God, and thus have a purpose and a meaning known to God but not to us, I have no opinion as to what proportion of the whole they might constitute.) But are not a// events ordered by God, and must not a// events therefore have some sort of meaning? Christians and other theists are, I believe, committed to the truth of the following proposition:

I will now take my own advice and present my solution to this problem. God’s reason for allowing His creatures to live in such a world is that their living in such a world is a natural consequence of their separation from Him. Consider again our earlier sketchy account of natural evil: in separating ourselves from God, we have somehow deprived ourselves of our primordial defenses against such potentially destructive things as tigers and landslides and

God is the maker ofall things, visible and invisible (other than Himself); He sustains all created things in existence from moment to moment, and continuously supplies them with their causal powers.

we have allowed the destructive potential of these things to become actual, how shall we expect the effects of that actuality to be dis-

tornadoes. But if, by our rebellion and folly,

In a previous essay, in which I presented an account of God’s action in the world, I argued that this proposition is consistent with the proposition that there are events having the following feature: If one asks concerning one of these events, “Why did that happen?” the only answer to one’s question is, “There is no reason or explanation for that event. God did not cause it to happen or intend it to happen. It is not a part of God’s plan for the world or anyone else’s plan for anything. It just happened, and that’s all there is to say about it.” (Let us say of such events that they are due to chance.) Now to say that there is no answer to the question, Why did X occur? is not to say there is no answer to such questions as Why did God allow X to occur? or Why did God not prevent X? I ended the earlier essay with these words: If what I have said is true, it yields a moral for students of the problem of evil: Do not attempt any solution to this problem that entails that every particular evil has a purpose, or that, with respect to every individual misfortune, or every devastating earthquake, or every disease, God has some special reason for allowing it. Concentrate rather on the problem of what sort of reasons a loving and providential God might have for allowing His creatures to live in a world in which many of the evils that happen to them happen to them for no reason at all.

tributed? At random, surely? That is, with no

correlation between these things and the innocence or wickedness of the people they impinge on — since the operations of these things in no way depend upon the moral qualities of the people they interact with? In fact, there is little correlation between the manner in which these things operate and amy factor under human control (although civilization does what it can to try to induce correlations of this type). Suppose that a certain man chooses, ofhis own free will, to stand at spot x at time ¢. His arrival at that place at that time converges with the arrival ofan avalanche. Let us suppose that God did not miraculously cause the avalanche, and that He did not “move” the man to be at that place at that time. And let us also suppose that neither the man’s arrival at x at ¢ nor the avalanche’s arrival at x at ¢ was determined by the laws of nature and the state of the world, say, one hundred years earlier. (This is a plausible assumption on scientific grounds. Quantum mechanics has the following astounding consequence: Imagine a billiard table, one not subject to external influence other than constant, uniform gravitation, on which there are rolling perfectly spherical and perfectly elastic balls that —- somehow — do not lose energy to the walls of the table in collision or to its surface in friction; the position of the balls a minute or so in the future is not even approximately determined by the laws of nature and the present physical state of the 207

PETER VAN INWAGEN

balls. This example strongly suggests that the precise moment at which an avalanche occurs is not determined a hundred years in advance. ) The man’s death in the avalanche would seem to be in every sense due to chance, even though (the theist must suppose) God knew in advance that he would be killed by the avalanche and could have prevented it. In fact, the theist must suppose that, during the course of that event, God held all of the particles that composed the man and the moving mass of snow and ice in existence and continuously decreed the operation of the laws of nature by which those particles interacted with one another. Why did God not miraculously save the man? We have seen the answer to this question already. He might very well have. Perhaps He sometimes does miraculously save people in such situations. But if He always did so, He would be a deceiver. If He always saved people about to be destroyed by a chance encounter with a violent phenomenon of nature, He would engender an illusion with the following propositional content: It is possible for human beings to live apart from God and not be subject to destruction by chance,

To live under this illusion would be a bad thing in itself, but, more importantly, it would have harmful effects. This illusion would be, as it

were, a tributary of illusion feeding into a great river of illusion whose content was, “Human

beings can live successfully in separation from God.” In our current state of separation from God, we are continually blundering into “lines of causation” (the descent of an avalanche; the evolution of the AIDS virus; the building up of tension along a geological fault) that perhaps have no purpose at all and certainly have no purpose in relation to us. (It is simply a part of the mechanics of nature that intrinsically harmless but potentially destructive things like avalanches or viruses or earthquakes should exist. As I remarked above, if you think 208

that you can design a world which does not contain such things and which can also serve as a home for human beings, you have never tried. Such things are a part of God’s design in the sense that the ticking sound made by a clock is a part of the watchmaker’s design: not intended, necessitated by what is intended, foreseen, and allowed for. What is not in any sense a part of God’s design is this avalanche, this virus, and this earthquake. These are — sometimes, at any rate — due to chance.) If we had never separated ourselves from God, we should have been able to avoid such blunders. No longer to be able to avoid them is a natural consequence ofthe Fall. It is as if God had had — for some purpose — to cover the earth with a certain number ofdeep pits. These pits (we may stipulate) were not dangerous, since they could easily be seen and avoided; but we frustrated God’s providence in this matter by deliberately making ourselves blind; and now we complain that some of us — quite often the good and wise and innocent — fall into the pits. God’s response to this complaint, according to the theodicy I propose, is this: “You are the ones who made yourselves blind. If you make yourselves blind, some of you will fall into the pits, and, moreover, w/o falls into

a pit and when will be wholly a matter of chance. Goodness and wisdom and innocence have no bearing on this matter. That’s part of what being blind means.” Or, rather, this is what we might imagine God’s response to be in our simple “world of pits.” In the real world, we should have to picture God as saying something more complex, something like the following. “Even I can’t make a world which is suitable for human beings but which contains no phenomena that would harm human beings if they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. The reasons for this are complicated, but they turn on the fact that the molecular bonds that hold you human beings together must be weaker by many orders of magnitude than the disruptive potential of the surges of energy that must happen here and there in a structurally and nomologically coherent world

MAGNITUDE, DURATION, DISTRIBUTION OF EVIL

complex enough to contain you. My providence dealt with this fact by endowing you with the power never to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, a power you lost when you ruined yourselves by turning away from Me. That is why horrors happen to some of you: you simply blunder into things. If I were to protect you from the consequences of your blindness by guiding you away from potentially destructive phenomena by an unending series of miracles — and I remind you that for all you know I sometimes do guide you out of harm’s way — I should be deceiving you about the meaning of your separation from Me and seriously weakening the only motivation you have for returning to Me.” We may add the following proposition to our theodicy:, Among the natural consequences of the Fall is the following evil state of affairs: Horrors happen to people without any relation to desert. They happen simply as a matter of chance. It is a part of God’s plan of Atonement that we realize that a natural consequence ofour living to ourselves is our living in a world that has that feature.

This completes my presentation of the theodicy I propose. I have fleshed out the wellknown story about how evil entered the world, through the abuse of the divine gift of free will; I have fleshed it out in such a way as to provide plausible — at any rate, I find them plausible — answers to four pointed questions about the magnitude, duration, and distribu-

tion of evil. But in a sense it is not possible effectively to present a theodicy in a single piece of work by one author. Various elements in any proposed theodicy are bound to be thought false or felt to be implausible by some people. An essential part of presenting a theodicy is meeting the objections of those who have difficulties with it, or perhaps refining it in the face of their objections. A theodicy is a dialectical enterprise. The present essay, therefore, is best regarded as the “opening move” in such an enterprise, rather than a finished product. In closing, I wish to answer

one objection to the theodicy I have presented, an objection that has been raised in conversation and correspondence by Eleonore Stump. Professor Stump objects that the theodicy I have presented represents God as allowing people to suffer misfortunes that do not (even in the long run) benefit them. An example may make the point ofthis objection clear. Suppose that God allows a horrible, disfiguring accident to happen to Alice (a true accident, an event due entirely to chance, but

one that God foresaw and could have prevented). And suppose that the only good that is brought out ofthis accident is embodied in the following state of affairs and certain of its remote consequences: The accident, together with an enormous number of similar horrors,

causes various people to realize that one feature of aworld in which human beings live to themselves is that in such a world horrors happen to people for no reason at all. But suppose that Alice herself did not need to realize this; suppose that she was already fully aware of this consequence of separation from God. And suppose that many of the people who do come to realize this partly as the result of Alice’s accident manage (owing mainly to luck) to get through life without anything very bad happening to them. According to Stump, these suppositions — and it is pretty certain that there ave cases like this if our theodicy is correct — represent God as violating the following moral principle: It is wrong to allow something bad to happen to X — without X’s permission — in order to secure some benefit for others (and no benefit for X).

I do not find this principle particularly appealing — not as a universal moral principle, one that is supposed to apply with equal rigor to all possible moral agents in all possible circumstances. The circumstances in which it seems most doubtful are these: The agent is in a position of lawful authority over both X and the “others” and is responsible for their welfare (consider, for example, a mother and 209

RICHARD SWINBURNE

her children or the state and its citizens); the good to be gained by the “others” is considerably greater than the evil suffered by X; there is no way in which the good for the “others”

can be achieved except by allowing the evil in question to happen to X or to someone else no more deserving of it than X; the agent knows these things to be true. By way of example, we might consider cases of quarantine or of the right of eminent domain. Is it not morally permissible for the state to restrict my freedom of movement and action if I am the carrier of acontagious disease, or to force me to move if my house stands in the way of a desperately needed irrigation canal (one that will not benefit me in any way)? It is not to the point to protest that these cases are not much like cases involving an omnipotent God, who can cure diseases or provide water by simple fiat. They are counterexamples to the above moral principle, and, therefore, that moral principle is false. What is required of anyone who alleges that the theodicy I have proposed represents God as violating some (correct) moral principle is a careful statement of that moral principle. When we have examined that carefully stated moral principle, and

25

have satisfied ourselves that it is without

counterexample, we can proceed with the argument. Notes 1

2

3

4 Ou

6

The characterization is Plantinga’s. See his “Self-Profile,” in Alvin Plantinga, ed. James E. Tomberlin and Peter van Inwagen (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1985), p. 42. The characterization is mine. The phrase “possible in the broadly logical sense,” however, is Plantinga’s. See, e.g., The Nature of Necessity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), p. 2. I have borrowed this use of “just-so story” from Daniel Dennett. (See his Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting {Cambridge, Mass. MIT Press: 1980], p. 38.) Dennett’s just-so stories are tales told to illustrate possibility, tales told against a background that may be described as the standard model of evolution. My just-so story is of a similar sort, but the “background” is provided by what I have described as “the data of Christian revelation.” Timothy 4: 3-4. Ephesians 6: 12. Philosophical Perspectives, 3 (1989), pp. 399422. I owe this point to Eleonore Stump.

Natural Evil and the Possibility of Knowledge*

Richard Swinburne [Note: In his book Providence and the Problem of Evil, Swinburne argues that the moral and natural evils serve different good purposes, some of them more than one good purpose. Reading 25 argues that natural evil makes available to humans the possibility of the knowledge which * This essay forms the basis of Richard Swinburne, Providence and the Problem ofEvil (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), ch. 10. Reprinted with permission.

210

they require in order to choose between good and evil. The final section claims that death is not as such an evil, but that it does serve many and varied good purposes. In these sections he argues only that certain evils are necessary for certain great goods. Elsewhere in the book he argues that God does not necessarily do wrong to one person if he makes that person suffer for the greater good of another. These extracts thus provide only a sample of his approach. ]

NATURAL EVIL AND THE POSSIBILITY OF KNOWLEDGE

The Need for Knowledge of Consequences For humans to have a choice between doing good and doing bad, we need to have true beliefs about the effects of our actions — for the goodness or badness of an action is so often a matter of it having good or bad consequences. It is bad to kick other people because it will hurt them, good to give the starving some food because that will enable them to stay alive. And so on. So if God is to give us the choice between good and bad, he must give us true beliefs about the consequences of our actions — beliefs in which we have enough confidence to make it matter how we choose. We need a whole sheaf ofbeliefs with respect to many different actions, about what conse-

quences will follow from them. How is God to give us these beliefs? The argument of this chapter is that God cannot give us true beliefs about the effects of our actions (good and bad) without providing natural processes (in which humans are not involved) whereby those effects (good and bad) are produced in a regular way — or rather he cannot do this without depriving us of considerable other benefits. Natural evil is needed to give us the true beliefs without which we could not have a free choice between good and bad. I distinguished earlier between the necessary truths of morality, and the contingent truths which follow therefrom when factual information about the consequences and circumstances of actions is added. It is (plausibly) a necessary moral truth that it is wrong to give money to beggars if they will spend it only on drugs which kill. It is factual matter that certain beggars will spend money only on drugs which kill. It follows that it is a contingent moral truth that it is wrong to give money to those beggars. Now I do not know of any satisfactory proof that experience is necessary either for the acquisition of concepts or for acquisition of knowledge of necessary truths of their interconnection. Someone has a concept to the extent to which he can conceive what it would be like for it to have ap-

plication, and to the extent to which he can recognize that it does apply. And someone can see what is involved in its application (i.e., know necessary truths which concern it) without ever having observed its application. Someone might be born with an ability to conceive what it would be like for something to be red or green and to recognize red and green objects, even if he has never observed such; and this ability will enable him to recognize as a necessary truth that nothing can be red and green all over. The same applies to the necessary truths of morality. Someone might know what wrong was when the world as yet contained none, and he might know which actions were wrong and which states of affairs were bad before ever they had occurred. Our moral knowledge is not acquired in this way but there is no reason why some human agent should not be. God could ensure that humans were given moral concepts and a deep imagination which would enable them to comprehend necessary truths about their application without their having any experience of harsh moral realities. We could know that it is good to feed anyone starving even if we knew of no one who was starving; that torturing in order to extort belief in a creed is wrong, even if no one had ever done it. However, I argued earlier that although humans could acquire moral knowledge without experience, there was nevertheless a certain value in their acquiring it through experience. My concern here is not with knowledge of necessary moral truths, but with the factual knowledge ofthe effects of our actions (described fairly narrowly) and so with the nature of our actions (described more fully) which we need in order to know the contingent moral truths by which our actions should be guided. Or rather my concern is initially with our need for true factual beliefs — that they need to amount to knowledge will be argued later. We need true beliefs that an action of describing a black man as a ‘nigger’ causes distress and so is an act of hurting; that an act of smoking increases the risk of early death. We need such true beliefs before we 211

RICHARD SWINBURNE

can see which of our actions are (in virtue of our moral knowledge such as that hurting is bad) good or bad. How is God to give us such true factual beliefs? He could just implant them is us. Wondering how to hurt someone, I could find myself believing that kicking him, or telling others about the misdemeanours ofhis youth would in different ways hurt him. I could find myself believing, for no reason at all, that giving money to Oxfam will relieve starvation, and spending it on buying books will not have this effect. But as we begin to spell out this suggestion, it begins to seem less and less coherent. How could one have a concept of something unless one had some idea of what would be evidence for the instantiation of that concept — if one could obtain it? I couldn’t have a concept of a desk unless I could recognize a certain visual or tactual shape, or a description of an object, as grounds for believing that there was a desk present. So to have any concept at all I must have the concept of grounds or evidence. And where the concept is of something beyond myself now (in the public world, or the mental life of someone else, or in the future or in the

past) the concept will be a concept of fallible evidence. To understand what a telephone is, I must understand an object looking like soand-so, or satisfying some description (‘object of such-and-such shape connected to a wire, with a mouthpiece through which people talk’) as (fallible) grounds for believing that here is a telephone. Beliefs are beliefs about concepts being instantiated. To believe that it will rain in London tomorrow is to believe that ‘being rainy’ will be instantiated in the London air tomorrow. And I couldn’t have that belief unless I had some idea of what would be some grounds for supposing that it is raining, or will rain, that one is in London, that it is the day

after I spoke. I must know what rain feels or looks like, what the name of London on a sign looksilike, ors. ..opR ths From all this it follows that I couldn’t just believe that giving money to Oxfam will relieve starvation, unless I had some idea of how

22

to check up on the belief, confirm it or refute it; and so could distinguish a belief which my evidence supports and one which has no such support — in other words the distinction between a justified and an unjustified belief. True, my beliefs about how to check up on the belief might be very simple ones. It might be that the only way of which I can think of checking up on whether it will rain tomorrow is to wait and see if it does. But in such a case Iam bound to recognize my belief as not having the kind of justification that a belief that it is raining here and now might have; and so as being capable of having its justification improved. I couldn’t have beliefs unless I had some idea of when they are well or ill justified. In case any reader thinks that I am unreasonably assuming that all believers must be as rational as philosophers, I should point out that the only animals to which we are willing to ascribe the notion of belief, are those which we can recognize as sometimes checking up on, or discarding their beliefs. We will only say that the cat believes that there is food in the cupboard, if we can recognize when she is investigating whether there is, or when she has come to realize that there is not. So God can only give us beliefs about the consequences ofour actions if he gives us some idea of how to confirm or refute them. And these inductive standards of confirmation and refutation must be correct standards — standards, the application of which really does show how things will (probably) be. If we think that it matters that our beliefs be as well justified as possible (and it is certainly a good thing that we should think this about the beliefs about our actions having bad or good consequences) confirming or refuting them is something we will rightly seek to do. And if the beliefs we have about the future consequences of our actions are simply hunches, and do not have any more justification than that (do not even have the justification that our hunches have proved right in the past), we will (because of having correct inductive standards) normally recognize this and realize that the consequences of our actions are very uncer-

NATURAL EVIL AND THE POSSIBILITY OF KNOWLEDGE

tain and so too are whether our actions are (objectively) good or bad. If God is to allow us to choose between actions which have consequences about which we have beliefs of enough strength to make the choice a serious one, he must provide those beliefs in the context of having the opportunity of looking for and coming to assess evidence in the present, about the future. The same holds, even more obviously, if God is to give us the opportunity to choose whether or not to learn more about the ef-

eral be justified. To have the concept ofa belief (about things outside ourselves) being justified is to have the concept of evidence supporting beliefs to different degrees. And God cannot give us a choice whether to extend the range of our beliefs about the consequences of our actions without giving us, not merely standards of evidence, but actual evi-

fects of our actions, to find out more and more

in particular, we need to know which of our actions will have bad consequences. Now an action of any embodied creature, such as a human, consists in bringing about some bodily movement and in causing some more remote state of affairs. So how is God to give me knowledge of what consequences the movement will have (either by enabling me to check out a hunch about this, or by investigating without having any initial hunch)?

differences which we can make to the world. Setting about increasing the range of our beliefs is a matter of finding evidence which supports new beliefs. But if this process is to take place we must have an understanding of what is evidence for what — for example, the fact that lions have killed humans is grounds for supposing that they will do so again; and the fact that there are marks in the shape of a lion’s paw is grounds for supposing that there are lions in the vicinity. And once we have standards for when present evidence supports a belief about the future, we will become more

strongly aware ofthe distinction between justified and unjustified beliefs about the future, and ofthe possibility of checking out the less justified ones. Although creatures could have instinctive responses where the notion of justification does not arise, they must see beliefs as more or less justified. Either my beliefs are supported or at any rate fit in with other beliefs, in which case they will be justified, or they will not fit in, and having correct standards of evidence, I will normally realize this — realize that the evidence renders them improbable. But I cannot believe something which everything I believe taken together shows to be improbable — I cannot believe of some belief both that probably it is false and that it is true. So I will not believe it. Having the power to investigate further inevitably involves sorting out one’s existing beliefs. The upshot of all this is that God cannot just give us true beliefs about the consequences of our actions; those true beliefs must in gen-

dence whose force we can assess. Justified true

beliefI shall call knowledge. We need knowledge of the consequences of our actions in order to choose between good and bad; and,

Hence: the Need for Natural Processes Producing Bad Consequences All knowledge of the future is knowledge of what natural processes will bring about or of what agents will bring about intentionally (or both, if intentions are moulded by natural processes; or if they mould those processes). Someone may infer to a future event either by regarding what will happen as to be produced by a natural process or as to be produced intentionally. So knowledge that my action A, which consists in bringing about some result C, will have a further consequence E, will be knowledge either that natural processes dictate that C brings about E, or knowledge that some other agent on observing C will bring about E intentionally. Knowledge that putting cyanide in a man’s drink will kill him is knowledge of a natural process — that cyanide kills; and knowledge that you will visit me today when you have promised to visit me is knowledge of intentional agency. 213

RICHARD SWINBURNE

If God is to give to humans a range of actions with consequences bad and good, he must ensure that human actions have these consequences — either as a result of a natural process which he implants in the world, or as a result of his direct intentional action. (Or

by making some other rational agent produce them. But I ignore that possibility, since the effect is then the same as if he produces them by his own direct intentional action.) And if the human agent is to have knowledge of those consequences, he must learn about them either by discerning the natural process or by discovering God’s intention. God could give | me knowledge of the consequences of my action by telling me in advance what he will bring about if I do the action. I might hear in my ear or see on the screen the English words ‘If you shoot him, he will die.’ But if I regard my actions as having the consequences they do in virtue of some other agent intentionally making the actions have those consequences, I must regard that agent as in control of my life, and not merely my life; but, since he determines the effect of my actions on others, as in control of their lives too. I must regard him as in control of the Universe, at least locally. And I must regard him as perfectly good. For his local freedom of operation to determine what happens is (to all appearances) absolute, and so therefore is his local knowledge of what will happen. And so, as the simplest hypothesis, I must regard him as knowledgeable also in other fields, including morality, and free in other fields; and so as knowing the good, and, not being distracted by temptation from pursuing it, as perfectly good. Under those circumstances I could indeed know the consequences of my actions, and know whether they are ones which I believe good or ones which I believe bad. But I would regard my every movement as overseen by an all-knowing and perfectly good being, i.e., a God. And this would be no mere balance-ofprobability belief. It would be a belief which guided every action of mine, and about which I could continually speculate without ceasing to act through doubting the consequences of 214

anything I did. That would make the choice between good and bad impossible — given our normal (good) system of desires. So, to preserve that benefit, God must implant in nature a system of natural processes. I understand by a natural process one in which a cause ofa given kind produces an effect of another kind in a regular way either with natural necessity or with natural probability. Natural processes are predictable processes; and if they are to be of any use to humans for production, the regularities must be of a simple recognizable kind. The a priori principles of what is evidence for what are centred on principles for recognizing what kinds of thing

cause what other kinds of thing. The simplest and most basic such principle is that if in the past, under varied conditions, As have (always/almost always) been followed by Bs, then (very probably /fairly probably), As cause Bs. If in the past mustard seeds being put in the ground and watered has always been followed by the appearance of mustard seedlings, then very probably the implanting and watering of mustard seeds causes the appearance of mustard seedlings. Of course, there are many sub-principles which need to be added to give an adequate account of our principles of inference to causes, which are not brought out by this simple example; but the example captures the most basic principle of such inference. (We shall need to refer to a few other principles in due course.) So the basic way in which God can provide us with knowledge of natural processes — that As cause Bs — is showing us many instances of the successions involved under different conditions — implanting in the world many instances of As being followed by Bs under different conditions. Once we have this knowledge, then we know that if we produce A as an immediate effect of a bodily movement, thereby we cause B. Observing many mustard seed — seedling successions, we come to know that the way to produce mustard seedlings is to sow mustard seeds. We can make this kind of inference without automatically needing to suppose that God causes the system of natu-

NATURAL EVIL AND THE POSSIBILITY OF KNOWLEDGE

ral processes (although, I believe and have argued elsewhere, the operation of natural processes does in fact provide an important part of a cumulative case for belief in God). And this of course is the way in which we do come to learn about the effects of our actions, and see any beliefs about this we already have as justified. We learn that eating toadstools causes stomach pain by seeing people eat toadstools and then suffering pain. We learn that alcohol makes people unsteady drivers by seeing people have many drinks and then driving unsteadily, and so on. These observations open up a range of possible actions, good and bad, which would not otherwise be available. Once we learn that eating toadstools causes stomach pain, we then have open to us the opportunity to causé others to suffer stomach pain (by feeding them with toadstools), to allow others (e.g. children) to be exposed to the risk of stomach pains (by allowing them to gather toadstools without warning them of the possible effects), or to prevent others from incurring this risk. These opportunities would not have been available without the knowledge; observation of natural processes producing pain provides that knowledge. We know that rabies causes a terrible death. With this knowledge we have the possibility of preventing such death (e.g. by controlling the entry of pet animals into Britain), or of negligently allowing it to occur or even ofdeliberately causing it. Only with the knowledge of the effects of rabies are such possibilities open to us. That knowledge is provided by observations of various people suffering subsequently to being bitten by dogs and other animals with rabies in various circumstances. Or, again, how are

humans to have the opportunity to stop future generations catching asbestosis, except through knowledge of what causes asbestosis? We obtain that knowledge through records which show that persons in contact with blue asbestos many years ago have died from asbestosis thirty years later. Our study of nature may reveal processes with which we cannot interfere, but whose

further consequences we may learn to avoid by learning where and when they will occur. We may come to learn when comets will appear, volcanoes erupt, or earthquakes quake, without (yet) being able to initiate or prevent these; but whose further consequences we may be able to influence. Knowledge of when and where earthquakes are likely to occur gives us the opportunity deliberately to cause, negligently to risk, or, alternatively, intentionally to prevent suffering and death caused by earthquakes; e.g., by taking the risk of building on areas subject to earthquake, or by making the effort to mobilize the human race to avoid in future the consequences of a major earthquake. The claim that a particular future A will cause B requires to be justified by past observations, paradigmatically of past As being followed by Bs. Our normal inductive criteria reveal that such a claim is better justified if it is based on many recent purported observations of As in many different circumstances being followed invariably by Bs. Observations remote in time may have been misrecorded or have occurred under circumstances different in some way from those holding in the present which affects the causal sequence in some crucial way. The more observations there are in different circumstances, the better the

evidence that the sequence of As being followed by Bs is a genuine causal sequence, not a mere occasional regularity. The observations might concern, not As and Bs, but many very different sequences which provide substantial but indirect evidence for a general scientific theory of which it is a remote consequence that an A will be followed by a B. But the less similar is the evidence to the kind of phenomena predicted, the greater the doubt must be whether the sophisticated scientific theory really works for the latter; and that will require to be checked out by looking at phenomena very similar to those predicted. Our knowledge of the future consequences of our actions is better justified in so far as it comes from many tests in similar circumstances. So the surest knowledge that if I take fre215

RICHARD SWINBURNE

quent large doses of heroin I shall die must come from observations of frequent heroin intake being followed by death. And many recent observations under different conditions provide the most sure knowledge possible. There could be a complicated scientific theory of which it was a remote consequence that heroin would have this effect. The theory would be confirmed by it being a simple theory which yielded true predictions of the consequences of taking other, chemically similar drugs, perhaps tested sometimes on animals rather than humans. The remoteness of the theory, and its never having been tested with respect to heroin on humans would, however, make its prediction about the effect of heroin on me much less well-evidenced. And that some drug causes pain is hardly likely to be even remotely evidenced, except via observation of other drugs causing pain or other unpleasant sensations (so different are sensations from other things). Pain there must be observed if we are to have knowledge of when our actions will cause pain. Most important, however, is the moral significance of actions which bring about mental events, i.e., experiences of sentient beings. Actions are paradigmatically good in so far as they promote pleasurable and knowledgedeepening and friendship-deepening experiences; bad in so far as they promote pain, ignorance and poverty of imagination and understanding. Most sure knowledge of the experience to be caused by some natural process is to be had through having experiences oneselfofwhat followed from past occurrences of the process. One knows best just what it feels like to be burnt by having been burnt oneselfin the past. But the public behaviour of others also produces strong evidence about their experiences. And if we have actually observed others being burnt, we shall know quite a lot about what it feels like to be burnt. Our knowledge is however less securely based if the observations which support our theory are not our own, but known only through the testimony ofothers; and that, of course, is the

most usual case. My justification for believing 216

that heroin causes death is that everyone says that observers report (via TV programmes and newspapers) that many who have taken large doses of heroin have died quickly thereafter. This evidence, though good evidence, is always open to the possibility of lying or exaggeration; or, where description of experiences is involved, lack of adequate vocabulary for the purpose. It is true that there would be less need for natural evil to provide knowledge of the consequences of our actions, if other humans intentionally produced more suffering than they do. But then God would have to have made other humans more naturally depraved than they are; and that would be bad. So I conclude this complicated discussion thus — if God is to bring about the practical knowledge which we need if we are to have free and efficacious choice between good and bad, there is no better way of doing it than by providing natural evils occurring in regular ways in consequence of scientific laws. Any other way of achieving this result would be equally bad, or not morally permissible at all.

Knowledge Provided by Animal Suffering The suffering which provides knowledge is not confined to humans. The higher animals acquire knowledge by normal induction and also knowledge ofthe causes ofpain, loss of health, and loss of life. Seeing the suffering, disease, and death of others in certain circumstances they learn to avoid those circumstances. Animals, and especially the lower animals, do, of course, avoid many situations and do many actions instinctively; but in those cases they cannot be said to be doing the action or avoiding the situation through knowledge of its consequence. It is a good thing that an agent seeks a goal in light of knowledge of what the goal is and how it is attained, even ifthe agent does not have free will. But then, it might be objected, given that animals have no choice how to act, there would be no disadvantage

NATURAL EVIL AND THE POSSIBILITY OF KNOWLEDGE

in their knowledge of the consequences of their actions being given directly by God himself; there is no advantage in our being at an “epistemic distance’ from God unless we have the free choice of ignoring him. But animals in direct verbal contact with God would be very different creatures from the animals of our world. They would still have no recipe for acquiring new beliefs; and they could tell us what God told them (for they would need a language in order to understand what he told them) and that would remove our epistemic distance from God. If animals had direct verbal contact with God, they would need to be in a separate world from us — but clearly there is good in their sharing a world with us. We can learn from them; they can learn from us; and, as we saw earlier, animals and humans can co-operate — often they work for us if we feed them; their simple life and affection gives us joy; we can care for them. And so on. But in that case animals have to learn in the way in which we do. It will inevitably seem to the reader that some pretty wild speculation has been going on in this chapter and especially in the last paragraph. The speculation has indeed been wild. But it is my imaginary opponents whom I am allowing to speculate wildly; and then I am pointing out that even if you allow a wildly speculative improvement in the world in some respect, it then turns out that there will be all sorts of unwelcome consequences which can only be avoided by further divine manipulation which will have yet further unwelcome consequences. The logical possibilities for worlds are more constrained than appears at first sight. It is a great good that animals are not mere digestion machines with pleasurable sensations attached to the process; but that they struggle to get food, save themselves and their off-

spring from predators and natural disasters, seek mates over days and so on. But they can only do these things with some knowledge of the consequences of their actions, and this is only to be had by experience thereof. Other animals must suffer if some animals are to learn

to avoid suffering for themselves and their offspring. If deer are to see how to help their offspring being caught in fires, some fawns have to be caught in fires for the deer to see what happens. If gazelle are to avoid being killed by tigers, they have at least to have been mauled themselves or seen others mauled. Otherwise it will all reasonably seem a game. There won’t be any difference between playing ‘tig’ with tigers and playing ‘tig? with other gazelles. And then animals will be deprived of the possibility of serious and heroic actions. The suffering of animals provides us, as well as themselves, with much knowledge — though since they are only somewhat, not totally like ourselves, the knowledge which the suffering provides is a less sure guide to what we would suffer in certain circumstances than would the suffering of humans; but still it is quite a good guide. Indeed, a great deal of our knowledge of the disasters for humans which would follow some actions come from study of the actual disasters which have befallen animals. For a long time it has been normal to discover the effects of drugs or surgery or unusual circumstances on humans by deliberately subjecting animals to those drugs or surgery or circumstances. Before putting men into space, we put animals into space and saw what happened to them. And the evils which have naturally befallen animals provide a huge reservoir of information for humans to acquire knowledge of the choices open to them, a reservoir which we have often tapped — seeing the fate of sheep, humans have learnt of the presence of dangerous tigers; seeing the cows sink into a bog, they have learnt not to cross that bog, and so on. And as regards very long-term consequences of changes of circumstances, environment or climate, the story of animal evolution provides our main information. Human history so far is too short to provide knowledge of the very long-term consequences of our actions; and yet knowingly we are doing things which may have a considerable effect on the constitution of the atmosphere (e.g. whether there is an 217

RICHARD SWINBURNE

ozone layer), on the balance of nature (whether there are many vertebrates on Earth other than humans), on the climate (by our energy consumption). And we may discover how to make some very big changes to the Earth and its surroundings — e.g. alter the Earth’s magnetic field, drive the Earth nearer to the sun or further away from it. And so on. We need information about the long-term effects of all these actions. There is a lot of information to be gleaned from pre-hominid history on all these matters — for climate, magnetic field, and balance of nature have changed often over the past 300 million years and if we learn more about its effects on animals we shall avoid many disasters ourselves. But those effects must include suffering, in the virtue of the similarities of animals to ourselves. If there were not these similarities, the information

would not show what would happen to us. To take but one more and very strong example — biologists are beginning to acquire the power to cause much good or ill by inducing various genetic mutations. Human history does not provide the data which will give them any knowledge of the consequences of their actions. Their surest knowledge of those consequences will come from a study of the evolutionary history of the consequences in animals of various naturally occurring mutations. In addition to these detailed bits of information, the story of pre-human nature ‘red in tooth and claw’ already provides one very general bit of information crucially relevant to our possible choices. For suppose that animals had come into existence at the same time as humans (e.g. 4004 Bc) always in situations where humans could save them from any suffering. Naturally it would then seem a well-confirmed theory that (either through act of God or nature) suffering never happens to animals except such as humans can prevent. So we would seem not to have the opportunity to do actions which would cause suffering to presentday animals let alone later generations of animals of asubsequently unpreventable kind, or the opportunity to prevent such suffering. 218

We simply would not (and rightly would not) seriously consider the possibility that some of our actions might have enormous and subsequently unpreventable long-term bad consequences. As evidence of this claim of mine, I point out that hardly anybody ever did consider such matters before the nineteenth century. It is difficult to get back into a pre-Darwinian way of thought, but if you do —you don’t (and rightly don’t) take seriously the possibility of our actions having long-term effects on nature. The story of evolution tells us that the causation or prevention of longterm suffering is indeed within our power; such suffering can happen because it has happened. The story of pre-human evolution reveals to humans just how much the subsequent fate of animals is in our hands — for it will depend on the environment which we cause for them and their genes which we may cause to mutate.

An Intermediate Possibility I have been arguing that God can give to humans knowledge of the consequences oftheir actions only by telling them what he will intentionally bring about, or by allowing them to infer what natural processes will bring about. The former route would inhibit enormously the ability of humans to make a free choice between good and evil. But if God is to give us knowledge by the latter route of which actions have bad consequences, natural processes must have operated in the past to bring about bad consequences. But, an objector will urge, could there not be quite a different source of knowledge of the processes at work in nature other than observation of their past operation, a source of knowledge less sure, perhaps, but adequate — a knowledge machine, say, which would answer all your questions about how nature worked? You type in the words ‘Will anyone suffer if I give him 10 g cyanide? And how will they suffer?’, and it replies ‘He will suffer physical pain and his wife will suffer bereavement.’ There need

NATURAL EVIL AND THE POSSIBILITY OF KNOWLEDGE

surely be no accidental suffering from cyanide in the past for me to know its effects in the future if there are plenty of knowledge machines around. We would know these machines to be knowledge machines by finding that they worked often. Ought not God to provide humans with knowledge machines to tell them the consequences of their actions, rather than require them to infer these from observations, including observations of pain and suffering? If there were such machines, the basic question to be asked about them is —are they themselves part of the natural order (i.e., do they themselves work as a result of the operation of natural processes), or not? If not, if they can answer questions about the future without that ability being dependent on their detailed construction and sensitivity to facts in the present, then, by previous arguments, we must regard them as the mouthpiece of an all-seeing God and so regard ourselves as swamped by him. But if they are part of the natural order, operating via natural processes, there might then be an easy Darwinian explanation of the existence of such machines in terms of evolutionary advantages conferred on a race which had such machines — an explanation which would satisfy those who are easily persuaded by Darwinian explanations. Yet if such machines were part of the natural order of the kind we are familiar with in our world, they would be subject to decay, and hence fallible, able to be misunderstood and generally capable of improvement (and, if thrown up by natural selection, they would work better in their original environment than in a new one). But checking up on and improving these machines would involve getting a more direct understanding of how nature worked by observing natural processes (including their production of suffering), and using it in the reconstruction of the machines (which, of course, is just what physiologists do in order to improve the machines produced by natural selection, which are human bodies). The less we check up on these machines, the less sure our knowledge of the consequences of our

actions. Yet if it is a good thing that we have knowledge of good and evil consequences which our actions can produce in order that thereby we may mould the world for good or ill, the surer our knowledge the better, for unsure knowledge gives us much less effective control. But, of course, the natural order might be

different from the kind with which we are familiar. It might not be subject to decay. In a world not subject to decay, very serious wrongdoing would have to be done actively; we couldn’t just allow people to suffer, we’d have to cause them to suffer. And if in consequence of the knowledge machines being part ofa natural order not subject to decay, knowledge was available on tap, we would no longer have choices between cloudy alternatives (actions which just on balance of probability might turn out to have certain consequences), about whose moral status we might then go on to deceive ourselves. If we had also, as well

as true factual beliefs (about the consequences of our actions, described in non-evaluative terms), true moral beliefs then we would have a stark choice between sharply defined goods and bads — which we could not avoid by mere negligence. And the choice would still be fairly sharp, even with a certain amount of cloudiness in our moral beliefs. Rational beings have, as I have stressed many times, a natural inclination to what they believe to be good. To have a temptation to overcome in this situation of clear alternatives requiring active agency to do bad, we should have to have some powerful bad desires. Mere weakness — laziness, partial ignorance, self-deception — would not suffice for wrongdoing. These latter are, of course, undesirable aspects of character, but not nearly as bad as greed, hatred, envy and pride. Humans would need to have some pretty bad aspects of character to be able to make serious choices in a world of knowledge machines. And the serious choices open to them would not include working to acquire knowledge; seeking to find out, individually and in cooperation — by doing experiments, conducting 2ug

RICHARD SWINBURNE

statistical studies, and founding research institutes — how nature works and so what would be the consequences oftheir various actions. With knowledge available on tap, humans would be deprived of a very significant kind of choice — of growing in knowledge or persisting in ignorance. Like so many other kinds of action intermediate between two others, each with their own advantages and disadvantages, the knowIedge-machine route to knowledge of consequences has some of the advantages and some of the disadvantages of each of the other routes by which God could give us knowledge of the consequences of our actions. The nearer the machines are to being infallible, the more difficult wrongdoing becomes — both because it is starkly evident that it is wrongdoing, and also because the evident presence of God powerfully deters from wrongdoing; unless we have very bad characters. The nearer the machines are to being parts of the natural order, the more we still need natural evil to provide us with knowledge of the consequences of our actions. The knowledge-machine route has no obvious overall advantage, for the purpose of providing us with knowledge of these consequences, over the route of providing us with evidence of past sufferings. The existence of natural processes producing varied good and bad consequences gives to humans who study them an enormous range of opportunities for moulding the future in the short or long term, by initiating, intervening in or avoiding these processes. The scope for long-term choice available to future generations must not be underestimated. We may have the choice not merely of whether to build cities so as to avoid earthquakes, but of whether to drive the earth nearer to the sun or further from it, to take air and water to Mars and live there instead, to extend the life-

span to produce new humanoid organisms in laboratories, and so on. But rational choices on these matters can only be made in the light

of knowledge of the consequences ofaiternative actions. And the choices will only be significant ones if there are alternatives, both 220

good and bad. Sure knowledge can come only from out experience or the records of the experiences of humans or animals who have experienced natural disasters or naturally caused changes of environment and constitution. If humans are knowingly to determine the fate of future generations through making such choices, they can do so most surely by having knowledge of the disasters and benefits which have befallen past generations. We may not know exactly when and where the past evils occurred, but the mere knowledge that suffering of a certain type occurred to certain kinds of creatures under certain conditions provides us with very good reason to avoid actions which may produce those conditions. Indeed, all past evils of which we know provide knowledge of past events, and — more strikingly — since all natural evils occur as a result of predictable natural processes (there are no kinds of natural evil which occur in a totally random way), all such knowledge helps to build up knowledge of the natural processes which we can utilise to produce or prevent future evils. All past and present human evils of which we know thus contribute to the widening of human choice... .

Death [This section forms the basis of Providence, pp. 212-15.] While I have considered all the bad states and the goods which they make possible, it would, I think be useful to say something about one particular phenomenon which is often thought of as a bad state, but really is not — it is the mere absence of a good. But it is the absence of agood which many consider that God in virtue of his perfect goodness would bring about. The phenomenon is death. It is, as such, simply the end oflife. It is therefore not a bad state but the end ofa good. It may however be a bad state under certain circumstances — e.g. if the creature dies in pain — and I have considered its role under these circumstances. But it is important to bear in mind that death as such is not a bad thing,

NATURAL EVIL AND THE POSSIBILITY OF KNOWLEDGE

and it does in fact serve several very important good purposes, to secure which a good God might well bring it about that life is normally mortal life. The first good purpose of mortality is to give agents a certain supreme power. If all agents were immortal, there would be a certain harm (of a qualitatively different kind to other harms) which agents could not do either to themselves or to others — they could not deprive of existence. However much I may hate you or myself, I would be stuck with you and me. And in this vital respect, human free agents would not share the creative power of God. In refusing them this power, a God would refuse to trust his creatures in a crucial respect. To let someone have a gun is, as I commented earlier, always a mark of profound trust. The second good purpose of mortality is to give us the possibility of supreme selfsacrifice and courage in the face of absolute disaster. The ultimate sacrifice is the sacrifice of oneself, and that would not be possible in a world without death. (‘Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends,’ said Christ.) Supreme generosity would be impossible. So, too, would cheerfulness and patience in the face of absolute disaster. For in a world without death the alternatives would always involve continuance of life and presumably, too, therefore the possibility that others would rescue one from one’s misfortunes. There would be no absolute disaster to be faced with cheerfulness and patience.

Thirdly, a world with natural death is a world in which an agent’s own contribution has a significance to it because it is irreversible by the agent. If I spend all my seventy years doing harm, there is no time left for me to undo it. But if I live for ever, then whatever harm I do, I can always undo it. It is good that what people do should matter, and their actions matter more if they have only a limited time in which to reverse them. Fourthly, a world with birth but without natural death would be a world in which the young would never have a free hand. And birth is an evi-

dent good. It is good that some should have the responsibility for the existence and growth to maturity of others. Yet without death those others would always be inhibited by the experience and influence of the aged — given the obvious goodness that if the aged do live forever, they continue to possess old knowledge, acquire new knowledge, and are respected for their knowledge. The greatest value ofdeath, however, seems to me to lie in a fifth consideration which is in a way Opposite to my second one. I wrote earlier of the great value which lies in agents having the power to harm each other. Only agents who can do this have real responsibility. Yet it may seem, despite the arguments which I gave earlier, unfair that creatures should be too much subject to other agents. Clearly for the sake of the potential sufferer, there must be a limit to the suffering which an agent can inflict on another. It would, I believe that we

would all judge, be morally wrong for a very powerful being to give limitless power to one agent to hurt another. Giving to agents the power to kill is giving vast power of a qualitatively different kind from other power: but it involves the end of experience. It is very different from a power to produce endless suffering. Clearly the parent analogy suggests that it would be morally wrong to give limitless power to cause suffering. A parent, believing that an elder son ought to have responsibility, may give him power for good or ill over the younger son. But a good parent will intervene eventually if the younger son suffers too much — for the sake of the younger son. A God who did not put a limit to the amount of suffering which a creature can suffer (for any good cause, including that of the responsibility of agents) would not be a good God. There need to be limits to the intensity of suffering and to the period of suffering. A natural death after a certain small finite number ofyears provides the limit to the period of suffering. It is a boundary to the power of an agent over another agent. For death removes agents from that society of interdependent agents in which it is good that they should play their part. 221

JOHN H. HICK

True, a God could make a temporal limit to the harm which agents could do to each other without removing them from each other’s society. But that would involve agents being in mutual relation with each other while being immunized from each other’s power for good or ill — and that arrangement has its own disadvantages in that the deep mutual interdependence ofcreatures would not hold there. So these are good reasons for God to give us a mortal life. In what ways does death involve the absence of good? That may seem obvious — persons capable of great enjoyment do not have it after they die. But suppose, as is the case, that others replace them. Then there is as much person-capacity-for-enjoyment as before. It seems to me in the case of animals (given that their death occurs without pain and without causing grief to others, and at the natural end of life), that it is equally good if one creature lives sixty years, ov the first creature lives thirty years and a second creature also lives thirty years (given that the average of good actions and experiences per year is the same). But humans are different in one crucial respect. They normally have longings for immortality, and are capable of having longings for the Beatific Vision of God (or something which involves equally an all-

26

absorbing experience of the deepest reality). Our knowledge of them suggests that animals do not have the concept of immortality, let alone the Beatific Vision. There is no evidence that the animal who dies of old age has any desire to go on living. But for most of us, and for any who have been stirred to great religious hopes, death, if it was really the end of existence, would inevitably be a deep non-satisfaction of desire (even if all this worldly desire were satisfied). So, for humans, death is

not merely the absence of a good, but a very bad state. The argument of the last few paragraphs shows that it is a very bad state which makes possible some great good states. Nevertheless, the badness of human death does

give God reason to intervene in this world’s natural order, to preserve in existence in some other part of this world agents who cease to exist in our part (and of course Christian theism claims that he has so intervened). But if any of the advantages of a world with death are to remain, the mutual interdependence in this world must cease after a finite period (to give a limit to the suffering allowed herein) and the future existence must in no way be foreknown for certain by agents (else there would be no opportunity in our part of the world for choices of great seriousness).

An Irenaean Theodicy*

John H. Hick ...I believe that we find the light that we need in the main alternative strand of Christian thinking, which goes back to important constructive suggestions by the early Hellen*From Encountering Evil: Live Options in Theodicy, ed. Stephen T. Davis (Atlanta Ga.: John Knox Bresse

1981), pp. 39-44, 46-8. Reprinted with permission.

222

istic Fathers of the Church, particularly St Irenaeus (AD 120-202). Irenaeus himself did not develop a theodicy, but he did — together with other Greek-speaking Christian writers of that period, such as Clement of Alexandria — build a framework of thought within which a theodicy became possible which does not depend upon the idea of the fall, and which is

AN IRENAEAN THEODICY

consonant with modern knowledge concerning the origins of the human race. This theodicy cannot, as such, be attributed to

Irenaeus. We should rather speak of a type of theodicy, presented in varying ways by different subsequent thinkers (the greatest of whom has been Friedrich Schleiermacher), of which Irenaeus can properly be regarded as the patron saint. The central theme out of which this Irenaean type of theodicy has arisen is the twostage conception of the creation of humankind, first in the “image” and then in the “likeness” of God. Re-expressing this in modern terms, the first stage was the gradual production of homo sapiens, through the long evolutionary process, as intelligent ethical and religious animals. The human being is an animal, one of the varied forms of earthly life and continuous as.such with the whole realm of animal existence. But the human being is uniquely intelligent, having evolved a large and immensely complex brain. Further, the human being is ethical — that is, a gregarious as well as an intelligent animal, able to realize

and respond to the complex demands of social life. And the human being is a religious animal, with an innate tendency to experience the world in terms of the presence and activity of supernatural beings and powers. This then is early homo sapiens, the intelligent social animal capable of awareness of the divine. But early homo sapiens is not the Adam and Eve of Augustinian theology, living in perfect harmony with self, with nature, and with God.

On the contrary, the life of this being must have been a constant struggle against a hostile environment, and capable of savage violence against one’s fellow human beings, particularly outside one’s own immediate group; and this being’s concepts of the divine were primitive and often bloodthirsty. Thus existence “in the image of God” was a potentiality for knowledge of and relationship with one’s Maker rather than such knowledge and relationship as a fully realized state. In other words, people were created as spiritually and morally immature creatures, at the beginning

of a long process of further growth and development, which constitutes the second stage of God’s creative work. In this second stage, of which we are a part, the intelligent, ethical,

andreligious animal is being brought through one’s own free responses into what Irenaeus called the divine “likeness.” The human animal is being created into a child of God. Irenaeus’ own terminology (ezkon, homotosis, imago, similitudo) has no particular merit, based as it is on a misunderstanding of the Hebrew parallelism in Genesis 1: 26; but his conception of a two-stage creation of the human, with perfection lying in the future rather than in the past, is of fundamental importance. The notion of the fall was not basic to this picture, although it was to become basic to the great drama of salvation depicted by St Augustine and accepted within western Christendom, including the churches stemming from the Reformation, until well into the nineteenth century. Irenaeus himself however could not, in the historical knowledge of his time, question the fact of the fall; though he treated it as a relatively minor lapse, a youthful error, rather than as the infinite crime and cosmic disaster which has ruined the whole creation. But today we can acknowledge that there is no evidence at all of a period in the distant past when humankind was in the ideal state of a fully realized “child of God.” We

can accept that, so far as actual events in time are concerned, there never was a fall from an

original righteousness and grace. If we want to continue to use the term fall, because of its hallowed place in the Christian tradition, we

must use it to refer to the immense gap between what we actually are and what in the divine intention is eventually to be. But we must not blur our awareness that the ideal state is not something already enjoyed and lost, but is a future and as yet unrealized goal. The reality is not a perfect creation which has gone tragically wrong, but a still continuing creative process whose completion lies in the eschaton. Let us now try to formulate a contemporary version of the Irenaean type of theodicy, 223

JOHN H. HICK

based on this suggestion of the initial creation of humankind, not as a finitely perfect, but as an immature creature at the beginning of a long process of further growth and development. We may begin by asking why one should have been created as an imperfect and developing creature rather than as the perfect being whom God is presumably intending to create? The answer, I think, consists in two

considerations which converge in their practical implications, one concerned with the human’s relationship to God and the other with the relationship to other human beings. As to the first, we could have the picture of God creating finite beings, whether angels or persons, directly in his own presence, so that in being conscious of that which is other than one’s self the creature is automatically conscious of God, the limitless divine reality and power, goodness and love, knowledge and wisdom, towering above one’s self. In such a situation the disproportion between Creator and creatures would be so great that the latter would have no freedom in relation to God; they would indeed not exist as independent autonomous persons. For what freedom could finite beings have in an immediate consciousness of the presence of the one who has created them, who knows them through and through, who is limitlessly powerful as well as limitlessly loving and good, and who claims their total obedience? In order to be a person, exercising some measure of genuine freedom, the creature must be brought into existence, not in the immediate divine presence, but at a “distance” from God. This “distance” cannot of course be spatial; for God is omnipresent. It must be an epistemic distance, a distance in the cognitive dimension. And the Irenaean hypothesis is that this “distance” consists, in the case of humans, in their existence within and as part of aworld which functions as an autonomous system and from within which God is not overwhelmingly evident. It is a world, in Bonhoeffer’s phrase, etsi deus non daretur, as if there were no God. Or rather, it is religiously ambiguous, capable both of being seen as a purely natural phe224

nomenon and of being seen as God’s creation and experienced as mediating his presence. In such a world one can exist as a person over against the Creator. One has space to exist as a finite being, a space created by the epistemic distance from God and protected by one’s basic cognitive freedom, one’s freedom to open or close oneself to the dawning awareness of God which is experienced naturally by a religious animal. This Irenaean picture corresponds, I suggest, to our actual human situation. Emerging within the evolutionary process as part of the continuum of animal life, in a universe which functions in accordance with its own laws and whose workings can be investigated and described without reference to a creator, the human being has a genuine, even awesome, freedom in relation to one’s Maker. The human being is free to acknowledge and worship God; and is free — particularly since the emergence of human individuality and the beginnings of critical consciousness during the first millennium Bc — to doubt the reality of God. Within such a situation there is the possibility of the human being coming freely to know and love one’s Maker. Indeed, if the end-state which God is seeking to bring about is one in which finite persons have come in their own freedom to know and love him, this requires creating them initially in a state which is not that of their already knowing and loving him. For it is logically impossible to create beings already in a state of having come into that state by their own free choices. The other consideration, which converges with this in pointing to something like the human situation as we experience it, concerns our human moral nature. We can approach it by asking why humans should not have been created at this epistemic distance from God, and yet at the same time as morally perfect beings? That persons could have been created morally perfect and yet free, so that they would always in fact choose rightly, has been argued by such critics of the free-will defense in theodicy as Antony Flew and J. L. Mackie, and argued against by Alvin Plantinga and

AN IRENAEAN THEODICY

other upholders of that form of theodicy. On the specific issue defined in the debate between them, it appears to me that the criticism of the freewill defense stands. It appears to me that a perfectly good being, although formally free to sin, would in fact never do so. If we

imagine such a being in a morally frictionless environment, involving no stresses or temptation, then we must assume that one would exemplify the ethical equivalent of Newton’s first law of motion, which states that a mov-

ing body will continue in uniform motion until interfered with by some outside force. By analogy, a perfectly good being would continue in the same moral course forever, there being nothing in the environment to throw one off it. But even if we suppose the morally perfect being to exist in an imperfect world, in which one is subject to temptations, it still follows that, in virtue of moral perfection, one will always overcome those temptations — as in the

judgment that a moral goodness which exists as the agent’s initial given nature, without ever having been chosen by him in the face of temptations to the contrary, is intrinsically less valuable than a moral goodness which has been built up through the agent’s own responsible choices through time in the face of alternative possibilities. If, then, God’s purpose was to create finite persons embodying the most valuable kind of moral goodness, he would have to create them, not as already perfect beings but rather as imperfect creatures who can then attain to the more valuable kind of goodness through their own free choices as in the course of their personal and social history new responses prompt new insights, opening up new moral possibilities, and providing a milieu in which the most valuable kind of moral nature can be developed.

case, according to orthodox Christian belief,

of Jesus Christ. It is, to be sure, logically possible, as Plantinga and others argue, that a free being, simply as such, may at any time contingently decide to sin. However, a responsible free being does not act randomly, but on the basis of moral nature. And a free being whose nature is wholly and unqualifiedly good will accordingly never in fact sin. But if God could, without logical contradiction, have created humans as wholly good free beings, why did he not do so? Why was humanity not initially created in possession of all the virtues, instead of having to acquire them through the long hard struggle of life as we know it? The answer, I suggest, appeals to the principle that virtues which have been formed within the agent as a hard won deposit of his own right decisions in situations of challenge and temptation, are intrinsically more valuable than virtues created within him ready made and without any effort on his own part. This principle expresses a basic value-judgment, which cannot be established by argument but which one can only present, in the hope that it will be as morally plausible, and indeed compelling, to others as to oneself. It is, to repeat, the

But one cannot discuss moral evil without at the same time discussing the non-moral evil of pain and suffering. (I propose to mean by “pain” physical pain, including the pains of hunger and thirst; and by “suffering” the mental and emotional pain of loneliness, anxiety, remorse, lack of love, fear, grief, envy, etc.). For what constitutes moral evil as evil is

the fact that it causes pain and suffering. It is impossible to conceive of an instance of moral evil, or sin, which is not productive ofpain or suffering to anyone at any time. But in addition to moral evil there is another source of pain and suffering in the structure of the physical world, which produces storms, earth-

quakes, and floods and which afflicts the human body with diseases — cholera, epilepsy, cancer, malaria, arthritis, rickets, meningitis,

etc. — as well as with broken bones and other outcomes ofphysical accident. It is true that a great deal both ofpain and ofsuffering is humanly caused, not only by the inhumanity of man to man but also by the stresses of our individual and corporate life-styles, causing many disorders — not only lung cancer and cirrhosis of the liver but many cases of heart 225

JOHN H. HICK disease, stomach and other ulcers, strokes, etc. —as well as accidents. But there remain nevertheless, in the natural world itself, permanent

causes of human pain and suffering. And we have to ask why an unlimitedly good and unlimitedly powerful God should have created so dangerous a world, both as regards its purely natural hazards of earthquake and flood, etc., and as regards the liability of the human body to so many ills, both psychosomatic and purely somatic. The answer offered by the Irenaean type of theodicy follows from and is indeed integrally bound up with its account of the origin of moral evil. We have the hypothesis of humankind being brought into being within the evolutionary process as a spiritually and morally immature creature, and then growing and developing through the exercise of freedom in this religiously ambiguous world. We can now ask what sort of a world would constitute an appropriate environment for this second stage of creation? The development of human personality — moral, spiritual, and intellectual — is a product of challenge and response. It does not occur in a static situation demanding no exertion and no choices. So far as intellectual development is concerned, this is a well-established principle which underlies the whole modern educational process, from pre-school nurseries designed to provide a rich and stimulating environment, to all forms of higher education designed to challenge the intellect. At a basic level the essential part played in learning by the learner’s own active response to environment was strikingly demonstrated by the Held and Heim experiment with kittens.! Of two litter-mate kittens in the same artificial environment one was free to exercise its own freedom and intelligence in exploring the environment, whilst the other was suspended in a kind of “gondola” which moved whenever and wherever the free kitten moved. Thus the second kitten had a similar succession of visual experiences as the first, but did not exert itself or make any choices in obtaining them. And whereas the first kitten learned in the normal way to 226

conduct itself safely within its environment, the second did not. With no interaction with a challenging environment there was no development in its behavioral patterns. And I think we can safely say that the intellectual development of humanity has been due to interaction with an objective environment functioning in accordance with its own laws, an environment which we have had actively to explore and to cooperate with in order to escape its perils and exploit its benefits. In a world devoid both of dangers to be avoided and rewards to be won we may assume that there would have been virtually no development of the human intellect and imagination, and hence of either the sciences or the arts,

and hence of human civilization or culture. The fact of an objective world within which one has to learn to live, on penalty of pain or death, is also basic to the development of one’s moral nature. For it is because the world is one in which men and women can suffer harm — by violence, disease, accident, starvation, etc.

— that our actions affecting one another have moral significance. A morally wrong act is, basically, one which harms some part of the human community; whilst a morally right action is, on the contrary, one which prevents or neutralizes harm or which preserves or increases human well-being. Now we can imagine a paradise in which no one can ever come to any harm. It could be a world which, instead of having its own fixed structure, would be plastic to human wishes. Or it could be a world with a fixed structure, and hence the possibility of damage and pain, but whose structure is suspended or adjusted by special divine action whenever necessary to avoid human pain. Thus, for example, in such a miraculously pain-free world one who falls accidentally offa high building would presumably float unharmed to the ground; bullets would become insubstantial when fired at a human body; poisons would cease to poison; water to drown, and so on. We can at least

begin to imagine such a world. And a good deal of the older discussion of the problem of evil — for example in Part XI of Hume’s Dia-

THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

logues Concerning Natural Religion — assumed that it must be the intention of a limitlessly good and powerful Creator to make for hu-

man creatures a pain-free environment: so that the very existence of pain is evidence against the existence of God. But such an assumption overlooks the fact that a world in which there can be no pain or suffering would also be one in which there can be no moral choices and hence no possibility of moral growth and development. For in a situation in which no one can ever suffer injury or be liable to pain or suffering there would be no distinction between right and wrong action. No action would be morally wrong, because no action could have harmful consequences; and likewise no action would be morally right in contrast to wrong. Whatever the values of such a world, it clearly could not serve a purpose of the development of its inhabitants from selfregarding animality to self-giving love. Thus the hypothesis of a divine purpose in which finite persons are created at an epistemic distance from God, in order that they may gradually become children of God through their own moral and spiritual choices, requires that their environment, instead of being a pain-free and stress-free paradise, be broadly the kind of world of which we find ourselves to be a part. It requires that it be such as to

27

provoke the theological problem of evil. For it requires that it be an environment which offers challenges to be met, problems to be solved, dangers to be faced, and which accordingly involves real possibilities of hardship, disaster, failure, defeat, and misery as well as of delight and happiness, success, triumph, and achievement. For it is by grappling with the

real problems of a real environment, in which a person is one form of life among many, and which is not designed to minister exclusively to one’s well-being, that one can develop in intelligence and in such qualities as courage and determination. And it is in the relationships of human beings with one another, in the context of this struggle to survive and flourish, that they can develop the higher values of mutual love and care, of self-sacrifice for others, and of commitment to a common

good.

fan Notes 1

R. Held and A. Hein, “Movement-produced stimulation in the development of visually guided behaviour,” Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology, 56 (1963), pp. 872-6.

The Problem of Evil*

Eleonore Stump Introduction The problem of evil traditionally has been understood as an apparent inconsistency in * Brom Faith and Philosophy, 2:4 (1985), pp. 392-5, 397-8, 406-15, 417-18. Reprinted with permission.

theistic beliefs.! Orthodox believers ofall three major monotheisms, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, are committed to the truth of the following claims about God:

(1) (2)

God is omnipotent; God is omniscient; as |

ELEONORE STUMP

(3)

God is perfectly good.

Reasonable people of all persuasions are also committed to this claim: (4)

lem of evil and then develop in detail a different solution of my own by presenting and defending a morally sufficient reason for God to allow instances of evil.

There is evil in the world;

I and many theists in particular are bound to maintain the truth of (4) in virtue of their various doctrines of the afterlife or the injunctions of their religion against evil. The view that (1)-(4) are logically incompatible has become associated with Hume in virtue of Philo’s position in the Dzalogues Concerning Natural Religion, though many other philosophers have maintained it,” including in recent years J. L. Mackie* and H. J. McCloskey.* As other philosophers have

Plantinga’s presentation ofthe free will defense is a landmark in contemporary discussions of the problem of evil. As Plantinga expounds it,° the free will defense rests on these two philosophical claims, which it adds to the theological assumptions (1)—(3): (6)

Human beings have free will;

and

pointed out, however, Philo’s view that there

is a logical inconsistency in (1)-(4) alone is mistaken.° To show such an inconsistency, one would need at least to demonstrate that this claim must be true:

(7)

(5)

Plantinga uses these assumptions to argue that a morally sufficient reason for God to permit evil is possible: the value of man’s possession and use of free will is a possible reason for God’s permitting moral evil, which is evil caused by man. The value of the fallen angel’s possession of free will is a possible reason for God’s permitting natural evil, evil which is not caused by human free choice but which (Plantinga suggests) could be attributed to the freely chosen actions of fallen angels. As long as it is possible that there be a morally sufficient reason for God to allow evil, regardless of whether or not that possibility is actualized, the existence of evil is not logically incompatible with the existence ofa good God. Plantinga’s work has generated considerable discussion, which cannot be effectively summarized here.? But for my purposes perhaps the most interesting criticism is the objection that even if we grant Plantinga’s free will defense everything it wants and needs, what results does not seem to be even a candidate for a morally sufficient reason justifying God’s

There is no morally sufficient reason for God to allow instances of evil.

Since Hume, there have been attempts to solve the problem of evil by attacking or reinterpreting one ofthe first four assumptions. Mill, for example, suggested a radical weakening of (1) and (2),° and according to Mill, Mansel reinterpreted (3) in such a way as almost to make (4) follow from it, by in effect claiming that God’s goodness might include attributes which we consider evil by human standards.” But for reasons which I think are obvious,

theists have generally been unwilling to avail themselves of such solutions; and most at-

tempts at solving the problem, especially recently, have concentrated on strategies for rejecting (5). Some of these attempted rejections of (5) make significant contributions to our understanding of the problem, but none of them, I think, ultimately constitutes a successful solution of the problem. In this paper, I will briefly review what seem to me three of the most promising discussions of the prob228

Possession of free will and use of it to do more good than evil is a good of such value that it outweighs all the evil in the world.

THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

permitting instances of evil. In “The Irrelevance of the Free Will Defense,”! Steven Boer has argued that nothing in the grant of free will to creatures entails that creatures always be able successfully to inflict the harm which they have willed. It is possible that God allow his creatures to be free with respect to their willing and yet prevent by natural or supernatural means the suffering which their evil will and actions aim at. Thus, for example, God could allow Smith to will to murder Jones

and to act on that will by hiring killers to shoot Jones, and at the same time God could warn Jones of Smith’s intentions in time for Jones

to run away and hide until Smith’s wrath had subsided. By warning Jones God would prevent the evil of Jones’ murder without inter-

fering with Smith’s exercise offree will. Many critics of Plantinga’s position are bothered by the fact that they cannot seriously entertain the notion that Plantinga’s possible sufficient reason for evil might actually obtain. The thought that all natural evil might be caused by fallen angels seems to many a particularly implausible view. This criticism does not especially worry Plantinga, however, because his purpose was to show not what God’s reason for allowing evil is but rather just that there could be such a reason; and this is all he needs

to show in order to refute those who think that the existence of God is logically incompatible with the existence of evil. Plantinga’s strategy is similar in his arguments against those who hold the weaker view that the existence of evil renders it zmprobable that God exist.!! He does not attempt a justification for God’s allowing evil which would diminish the critic’s sense of the improbability of God’s existence. Rather he argues that the critic has not made his case. Judgments of a claim’s probability are relative to a knower’s whole set of beliefs. But a theist’s set of beliefs includes the belief that God exists, so that atheists’ assessments of the probability of God’s existence given the existence of evil will not be the same as theists’. Therefore, the atheist critic’s argument that God’s existence is improbable is not telling against theism.

The problem with Plantinga’s general strategy for the defense of theism against arguments from evil is that it leaves the presence of evil in the actual world mysterious. Plantinga’s tendency is to show the weaknesses inherent in arguments from evil, not to provide a theodicy,

and so it yields no explanation for why we in this world suffer from evil if our world is governed by a good God. No doubt many people, including Plantinga, would not find this result problematic. In fact, in a recent paper Steven Wykstra has argued that given the limitlessness of God’s intellect and the finitude of ours, the mysteriousness ofevil in our world is just what we might expect;!* it is reasonable to suppose that we cannot understand why an omniscient and omnipotent entity does what he does. I think that there is some plausibility in Wykstra’s thesis; and ifall efforts at theodicy fail utterly, no doubt theists will be glad of arguments like Wykstra’s and content with strategies like Plantinga’s. The problem with such arguments and strategies, to put it crudely, is that they leave people on both sides of the issue unsatisfied. The atheist is inclined to claim, as William Rowe does in a recent

paper,!* that it is apparent there is 70 justifying or overriding good for some evils that occur in the world. To tell such an atheist that he hasn’t succeeded in undermining theists’ beliefs in the existence of such a good although they don’t know what it is, or that his inability to see such a good is just what theists would expect, is likely to strike him as less than a powerful response. As for the theist struggling with the problem of evil, even if he entertains no anxieties about the rationality of his theistic belief in consequence of the existence of evil, he may well still be weakened in his religious belief by the consideration that the deity in whom he is to place his trust seems to act in ways which are unintelligible to him at best and apparently evil at worst. So, if it is at all possible to do so, it seems worth trying to construct a more positive explanation for the compatibility of God and evil; and such an explanation is in fact what we find in the work of Swinburne and Hick.... 229

ELEONORE STUMP

int

account, persons in heaven are not perfected in virtue of their translation to heaven, as

... The problem of evil is generally presented as some sort of inconsistency in theistic beliefs, and (1)-(4) present the relevant theistic assumptions. And yet mere theists are relatively rare in the history of religion. Most people who accept (1)-(4) are Jews or Christians or Muslims. If we are going to claim that their beliefs are somehow inconsistent, we need to look at a more complete set of Jewish or Muslim or Christian beliefs concerning God’s goodness and evil in the world, not just at that limited subset of such beliefs which are common to all three religions, because what appears inconsistent if we take a partial sampling of beliefs may in fact look consistent when set in the context of a more complete set of beliefs. I do not of course mean to suggest that an inconsistent set of propositions could become consistent if we add more propositions to it. My point is simple and commonsensical: that the appearance of inconsistency in a set of beliefs may arise from our interpretation of those beliefs, and our reinterpretation of them in light of a larger system of beliefs to which they belong may dispel the appearance of inconsistency. A more promising foundation for a solution to the problem of evil, then, might be found if we consider a broader range of beliefs concerning the relations of God to evil in the world, which are specific to a particular monotheism. Furthermore, attempted solutions to the problem of evil based solely on a few theistic assumptions common to the major monotheisms are likely themselves to be incompatible with Jewish or Christian or Islamic beliefs. Swinburne’s attempted solution, for example, seems incompatible with traditional Christian beliefs about heaven. On Swinburne’s account, we are more like pets than humans unless we have significant exercise of our free will, and natural evil is neces-

sary for such a significant exercise. But there is no natural evil in heaven and so, according to Swinburne’s position, no significant exercise of free will either. Hence, on Swinburne’s 230

Christian doctrine has traditionally claimed, but rather diminished in status. Thoughtful Christians troubled by the problem of evil, then, are not likely to be reassured by Swinburne’s solution. For these reasons, in what follows I will focus on one particular monotheism, namely, Christianity; I do not know enough about Judaism or Islam to present a discussion of the problem of evil in the context of those religions. In fact, my account will not deal even with all varieties of Christian belief. Because my-account will depend on a number of assumptions, such as that man has free will, it will present a solution to the problem of evil applicable only to those versions of Christianity which accept those assumptions. Christians who reject a belief in free will, for example, will also reject my attempt at a solution to the problem of evil. Besides (1)-(4), there are three Christian beliefs that seem to me especially relevant to the problem of evil. They are these:

(8) (9) (10)

Adam fell. Natural evil entered the world as a result of Adam’s fall. After death, depending on their state at the time of their death, either (a) human beings go to heaven or (b) they go to hell.'*

II According to the Christian beliefs summarized as (8), (9), and (10), all human beings since Adam’s fall have been defective in their free wills, so that they have a powerful inclination to will what they ought not to will, to will their own power or pleasure in preference to greater goods. It is not possible for human beings in that condition to go to heaven, which consists in union with God; and hell understood in Dantean terms is arguably the best alternative to annihilation. A good God

THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

will want to fix such persons, to save them from hell and bring them to heaven; and as the creator of these persons, God surely bears some responsibility for fixing and saving them if he can. How is he to do so? It seems to me clear that he cannot fix the defect by using his omnipotence to remove it miraculously. The defect is a defect in free will, and it consists in a person’s generally failing to will what he ought to will. To remove this defect miraculously would be to force a person’s free will to be other than it is; it would consist in causing a person to will freely what he ought to will. But it is logically impossible for anyone to make a person freely will something, and therefore even God in his omnipotence cannot directly and miraculously remove the defect in free will, without destroying the very freedom of the will he wants to fix. Someone might object here that if the defect in the will is inheritable without prejudice to the freedom of the will, then it is also removable without detriment to the freedom of the will; and if it destroys freedom to have God remove the defect, then it also destroys freedom to have the defect inherited. This objection, I think, is based on a mistaken picture of the inheritance of the defect. If the traditional doctrine were that after the time of Adam’s fall, human beings whose wills were in a pre-fall state suddenly acquired fallen, defective wills, then this objection would be sound. And perhaps the use of the word “inheritance,” with its suggestions of one individual suddenly receiving something from another, invites such a picture. But in fact the doctrine of Adam’s fall makes it clear that in the transmission of the defect there is no change of will on the part of post-fallen men. What the doctrine specifies is that individuals conceived and born after Adam’s fall have defective wills from the very beginning oftheir existence. There is no change of will in this process; rather the process consists in the generation of persons whose free wills from birth are strongly inclined to certain sorts of evil actions. If God were to destroy such post-fall persons and generate new ones with non-de-

fective wills (as I have argued he should not), he would not be violating the free wills ofthe new persons by so creating them any more than he violated Adam’s free will when he created Adam in his pre-fall state. But if God intervenes to remove the defect in the wills of post-fall persons, he brings about a change in their wills; and this, I think, he cannot do if their wills are to remain free.® If God cannot by his omnipotence directly fix the defect in free will, it seems that human beings must fix it themselves. Self-repair is a common

feature of the natural world, but I

do not think self-repair is possible for a person with post-fall free will. People, of course, do sometimes reform their lives and change their habits; but one necessary condition for their doing so is that, for whatever purpose or motive, they will something different from what they previously willed. Analogously, to reform the will requires willing something different from what one previously willed; that is, it requires a change of will. But how to change the will is the problem in the first place. If we want to know whether a man himself can fix a defect in his will, whether he himself can somehow remove his tendency to will

what he ought not to will, it is no help to be told that of course he can if he just wills to change his will. We know that a man can change his will for the better; otherwise his will would not be free. The problem with a defect in the will is not that there is an inability to will what one ought to will because of some external restraint on the will, but that

one does not and will not will what one ought to will because the will itself is bent towards evil. Consequently, changing the will is the end for which we are seeking the means; if one were willing to change one’s will by willing what one ought to will, there would be no problem of a defect in the will.’® Self-repair, then, is no more a solution to the problem of a defective will than is God’s miraculous intervention.’” If God cannot and human beings will not fix the defect in their wills, what possible cure is there? Christianity suggests what seems to 231

ELEONORE STUMP

me the only remaining alternative. Let a person will that God fix his defective will. In that case, God’s alteration of the will is something the person has freely chosen, and God can then alter that person’s will without destroying its freedom. It is a fact well-attested in religious literature that people who find it next to impossible to will what (they believe) they ought to will may none the less find it in themselves to will that God alter their wills. Perhaps two of the most famous examples are the sonnet of John Donne in which he prays for God to overwhelm him so that he will be chaste’® and Augustine’s prayers that God give him continence.’? The traditional formulation of the crucial necessary condition for a person’s being a Christian (variously interpreted by Protestants and Catholics) is that he wills God to save him from his sin; and this condition is, I think, logically (and perhaps also psychologically) equivalent to a person’s willing that God fix his will. Willing to have God save one from one’s sin is willing to have God bring one to a state in which one is free from sin, and that state depends essentially on a will which wills what it ought to will. What role God plays in man’s coming to will that God fix his will is controversial in the history of Christian thought. Some Protestant theologians have argued that God bears sole responsibility for such willing; Pelagius apparently argued that all the responsibility belongs to man. The first of these positions seems to me to have difficulties roughly analogous to those raised above by the suggestion that God might miraculously fix man’s will, and the difficulties in the second are like those in the suggestion that a man himself might fix his own will. Perhaps the correct view here too consists in postulating a cooperative divine and human effort. Perhaps Socrates’s way with those he encountered can serve as a model. When Socrates pursued a man with wit and care and passion for the truth, that man sometimes converted to philosophy and became Socrates’s disciple. Such a man converted freely, so that it is false to say Socrates caused his conversion; and yet, on the other hand, it Zoe

would be ridiculous to say in consequence that the man bears sole responsibility for his conversion. The responsibility and the credit for the conversion belong to Socrates, whose effort and ingenuity were necessary conditions of the conversion. That they were not sufficient conditions, however, and that the man

none the less freely willed his conversion is clear from the cases of men such as Alcibiades,

whom Socrates sought but did not succeed in converting. Without rashly trying to adjudicate in a paragraph an old and complicated controversy, I think that something along those lines can also be said of the process by which a man comes to will God’s help. God’s effort on behalf of Augustine are the necessary condition of Augustine’s conversion, and the credit for his conversion belongs to God; but God’s efforts are not a sufficient condition, and so Augustine’s free will is not impugned. Or, as Anselm says with regard to the fall of the angels, “although the good angel received perseverance [in willing what he ought to will] because God gave it, it is not the case that the evil angel did not receive it because God did not give it. But rather, God did not give it because Satan did not receive it, and he did not receive it because he was unwilling to receive it.””° At any rate, ifa man does will that God fix his will or save him from his sins, then I think

that God can do so without detriment to free will, provided that he does so only to the extent to which the man freely wills that God do so. There is in principle no reason why a person could not will at once that God fix the whole defect of his will; but in general, perhaps because of the extent of the defect in the will, people seem to turn from their own evil in a series of small-scale reforms. In book VIII, chapter VII, of the Confessions, Augustine describes himselfas praying that God give him chastity and making the private reservation “but not yet.” If God were immediately to give Augustine chastity in such a case, he would in fact be doing so against Augustine’s will. And so, in general, God’s fixing the will seems to be a lengthy process, in which a lit-

THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

tle willing produces a little fixing, which in turn promotes more willing of more fixing. On Christian doctrine, this is the process of sanctification, which is not finally completed until after death when it culminates “in the twinkling ofan eye” in the last changes which unite the sanctified person with God.”! The fixing of a defective free will by a person’s freely willing that God fix his will is, I think, the foundation of a Christian solution

to the problem of evil. What sort of world is most conducive to bringing about both the initial human willing of help and also the subsequent process of sanctification? To answer that question, we need to consider the psychological state of a person who wills God’s help. Apart from the obvious theological beliefs, such a person must also hold that he tends to do what he ought not to do and does so because he himself wills what he ought not to will, and he must want not to be in such a condition. He must, in other words, have both a humbling recognition of himself as evil and a desire for a better state. So things that contribute to a person’s humbling, to his awareness of his own evil, and to his unhappiness with his present state contribute to his willing God’s help. I think that both moral and natural evil make such a contribution. The unprevented gross moral evils in the course of human history show us something about the nature of man, and our own successful carrying out of our no doubt smaller-scaled evil wills shows us that we are undeniably members of the species. Natural evil — the pain of disease, the intermittent and unpredictable destruction of natural disasters, the decay of old age, the imminence of death — takes away a person’s satisfaction with himself. It tends to humble him, show him his frailty, make him reflect on the transience of temporal goods, and turn his affections towards other-worldly things, away from the things of this world. No amount of moral or natural evil, of course, can guarantee that a man will seek God’s help. If it could, the willing it produced would not be free. But evil of this sort is the best hope, I

think, and maybe the only effective means, for bringing men to such a state. That natural evil and moral evil, the successful carrying out of evil human wills, serve to make men recognize their own evils, become dissatisfied with things of this world, and turn to God is a controversial claim; and it is clear that a compelling argument for or against it would be very difficult to construct. To produce such an argument we would need a representative sample, whatever that might be, of natural and moral evil. Then we would need to examine that sample case by case to determine the effect of the evil in each case on the human beings who suffered or perpetrated it. To determine the effect we would have to know the psychological and moral state of these people both before and after the evil at issue (since the effect would consist in some alteration of a previous state); and we would have to chart their state for the rest of their lives after that evil because, like the effect of carcinogens, the effect of the experience of evil may take many years to manifest itself. Even with the help of ateam ofpsychologists and sociologists, then, it would be hard to collect the data necessary to make a good argument for or against this claim. Hence, Iam unable to present a cogent argument for one of the main claims of this paper, not because of the improbability of the claim but because of the nature of the data an argument for the claim requires; and perhaps it should just be categorized as one more Christian belief and added as (11) to the list of(8), (9), and (10) as a traditionally held, not demonstrably false Christian belief.’ Still, there is some historical evidence for it in the fact that Christianity has tended to flourish among the oppressed and decline among the comfortable, and perhaps the best evidence comes from the raising of children. The phrase “spoiling a child” is ambiguous in current parlance between “turning a child into a unpleasant person” and “giving a child everything he wants,” and the ambiguity reflects a truth about human nature. The pains, the hardships, the struggles which children encounter tend to make them Zo

ELEONORE STUMP

better people. Of course, such experiences do not invariably make children better; children, like adults, are also sometimes made worse by their troubles. But that fact would be a counter-example to the general claim about the function of evil in the world only in case it maintained that evil was guaranteed to make people better; and that is something this claim could not include and still be compatible with Christianity as long as Christianity is committed to the view that human beings have free will. Someone may object here that the suffering of children is just what this attempted solution to the problem of evil cannot explain. In The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky provides the most eloquent presentation this objection is likely ever to get, concluding with Ivan’s passionate insistence (implicit in a question addressed to Alyosha) that even if the whole world could be saved for eternal bliss by the torture of one innocent child, allowing the torture of that child for that purpose would be horribly wrong. I am in sympathy with the attitude Dostoevsky has Ivan express and in agreement with Ivan’s conclusion. The suffering of children is in my view unquestionably the instance of evil most difficult for the problem of evil, and there is something almost indecent about any move resembling an attempt to explain it away. The suffering of children is a terrible thing, and to try to see it otherwise is to betray one’s humanity. Any attempt to solve the problem of evil must try to provide some understanding of the suffering of children, but it must not lessen our pain over that suffering if it is not to become something monstrous and inhumane. With considerable diffidence, then, I want to suggest that Christian doctrine is committed to the claim that a child’s suffering is outweighed by the good for the child which can result from that suffering. This is a brave (or foolhardy) thing to say, and the risk inherent in it is only sharpened when one applies it to cases in which infants suffer, for example, or in which children die in their suffering. Perhaps the decent thing to do here is simply to 234

sketch some considerations which may shed light on these hard cases. To begin with, it is important to remember that on Christian doctrine death is not the ultimate evil or even the ultimate end, but rather a transition between one form of life and another. From a Christian point of view, the thing to be avoided at all costs is not dying, but dying badly; what concerns the Christian about death is not that it occurs but that the timing and mode of death be such as to constitute the best means of ensuring that state of soul which will bring a person to eternal union with God. If children who die in their suffering thereby move from the precarious and frequently painful existence of this world to a permanently blissful existence in the other world and if their suffering was among part of the necessary means to effect that change, their suffering is justified. I am not trying to say here that the suffering which a child or any other person experiences is the only way in which that person could be brought to God. Rather, I am trying to avoid constructing the sort of explanation for evil which requires telling the sufferer that God lets him suffer just for the sake of some abstract general good for mankind. Perhaps it is true that such a general good — the significant freedom ofcreated persons, for example — is the ultimate end for the sake of which God permits evil. It seems to me none the less that a perfectly good entity who was also omniscient and omnipotent must govern the evil resulting from the misuse of that significant freedom in such a way that the sufferings of any particular person are outweighed by the good which the suffering produces for that person; otherwise, we might justifiably expect a good God somehow to prevent that particular suffering, either by intervening (in one way or another) to protect the victim, while still allowing the perpetrator his freedom, or by curtailing freedom in some select cases.?* And since on Christian doctrine the ultimate good for persons is union with God, the suffering of any person will be justified if it brings that person nearer to the ultimate good in a way he could not have been

THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

without the suffering. I think that Christianity must take some such approach to the suffering or death of children; and perhaps something analogous can be said in connection with the hardest case of all, the suffering of infants. Psychologists tell us that the first year of a child’s life is tremendously important in molding the personality and character. Kor some persons the molding of the personality produced by suffering in infancy may be the best means of insuring a character capable of coming to God.?4 In all these hard cases, the difficulty of formulating a Christian position which does not appear either implausible or inhuman will be diminished if we have clearly in mind the view of man Christianity starts with. On Christian doctrine, all human beings are suffering from the spiritual equivalent of a terminal disease; they have a defect in the will which if not corrected will cost them life in heaven and consign them to a living death in hell. Now suppose that we are the parents of a child with a terminal brain disease, which includes among its symptoms the child’s rejecting the notion that he is sick and refusing to cooperate in any treatments. The doctors tell us that there are treatments which may well cure the child completely, but they hurt and their success is not guaranteed. Would we not choose to subject the child to the treatments, even if they were very painful? The child’s suffering would be a terrible thing; we would and we should be grieved at it. But we would none the less be glad of the treatments and hope ofa cure. And yet this example is only a pale reflection of what Christianity claims to be the case for all human beings, where the loss inflicted by the disease and the benefits of its cure are infinitely greater. If moral and natural evil contain an essential ingredient of a possible cure, surely the cure is worth the suffering such evil entails. It might seem to some people that if this is God’s plan, it is a tragic failure because the amount of evil in the world produces so few cures. The vast majority of people in the world are not Christians or theists of any kind; and

even among those who are Christian many die in serious unrepented evil. But this complaint rests on an assumption for which we have no evidence, namely, that the majority of people end in hell. That even an evil-doer who dies a sudden, unexpected death may not die impenitent is shown vividly by Dante: Iam Buonconte . . wounded in the throat, flying on foot and bloodying the plain [I came]. There I lost my sight and speech. I ended on the name of Mary, and there I fell, and my flesh remained alone... The Angel of God took me, and he from Hell cried, “O you from Heaven, why do you rob me? You carry off with you the eternal part of him for one little tear which takes him from me.”?°

As for those who live and die without the religious knowledge necessary for redemption from evil, it is not incompatible with Christian doctrine to speculate that in the process of their dying God acquaints them with what they need to know and offers them a last chance to choose.”° Such a speculation might seem to vitiate the justification for evil which I have been developing in this paper, because if the whole process of redemption can be begun and completed in a person’s dying hour, why do we need evil in the world? But this is a mistaken objection, because surely in any sort of deathbed repentance the sufferings of the dying person will have had a significant effect on that person’s character and consequently on the choices he makes on his deathbed. So as long as some such speculation is not incompatible with Christian doctrine, it is not at all clear that the majority of people end in hell. And without that assumption the complaint that God’s plan for the use of evil is a failure is altogether unwarranted. Someone might also object here that this solution to the problem of evil prohibits us from any attempt to relieve human suffering and in fact suggests that we ought to promote it, as the means of man’s salvation. Such an objection is mistaken, I think, and rests on an

invalid inference. Because God can use suffering to cure an evil will, it does not follow 235

ELEONORE STUMP

that we can do so also. God can see into the minds and hearts of human beings and determine what sort and amount of suffering is likely to produce the best results; we cannot. (Our inability to do so is in fact one of the things which make it so difficult to discuss cases of infant suffering, for example.) Furthermore, God as parent creator has a right to, and a responsibility for, painful correction of his creatures, which we as sibling creatures do not have. Therefore, since all human suf-

fering is prima facie evil, and since we do not know with any high degree of probability how much (if any) of it is likely to result in good to any particular sufferer on any particular occasion, it is reasonable for us to eliminate the suffering as much as we can. At any rate, the

attempt to eliminate suffering is likely to be beneficial to our characters, and passivity in the face of others’ suffering will have no such good effects.”

IV The solution to the problem of evil I have been developing will be clarified further by being applied to an individual instance of evil. The instance I want to consider is the Old Testament story of Cain and Abel. For my purposes here, this biblical story of an instance of evil has several advantages over a description of an instance of evil drawn from such sources as the newspapers. The biblical story contains a description of God’s intervention or lack of intervention in human history, and it includes an account of the inner thoughts and motivations of the principal characters. To the extent to which Christians are committed to accepting the Bible as the revealed word of God, to that extent they are committed to accepting this story as veridical also; and that fact obviously contributes to the use I want to make ofthe story. Finally, although the story of Cain and Abel is regularly taken by Christians as a paradigmatically moral and religious story, suitable for the edification of children, the incidents related in the story are 236

such that a twentieth-century atheistic philosopher might have invented them as a showcase for the problem of evil. Cain and Abel are two brothers who bring offerings to God. Abel’s offering is accepted, but Cain’s is not — why, the story does not say. In consequence, Cain is very angry at Abel. The story suggests that acceptance or rejection of the offerings is an (at least temporary ) acceptance or rejection of the offerer; and Cain’s anger at Abel apparently stems from jealousy over God’s favoring Abel rather than Cain. Now there is something double-minded in Cain’s anger and jealousy. Either God is right to reject Cain’s offering — because there was something about it or about the person who brought it which made it objectively unacceptable — and in that case there are no grounds for anger; or God is wrong to reject Cain’s offering — because it was a perfectly good offering brought in an altogether appropriate spirit — and in that case God is not good. And although one might then still be afraid of the consequences of incurring God’s displeasure or resent those more favored by God, a single-minded belief that God’s standards for accepting offerings are bad precludes jealousy towards those who are accepted. That Cain is angry and jealous indicates that he is double-minded about whether God is right to reject his offering. Although he does reject Cain’s offering, God does not leave Cain to himself in his double-minded anger. He comes to him and talks to him, asking Cain Socratic questions designed to get him to recognize and resolve his double-mindedness: “Why are you angry?;” “If you do well, will you not be accepted?” And God goes on to give Cain a warning, that he is in danger of sin. So God apparently anticipates Cain’s attack on his brother, and he intervenes to warn Cain. But Cain attacks and kills his brother. Abel,

who has just been accepted by God and is evidently righteous, suffers violent and untimely death. When the killing is over, God speaks to Cain again, asking him more careful questions designed to lead him to confess his

THE PROBLEM OF EVIL deed: first, “Where is Abel?,” and then after the evasive response to that question, the stronger question “What have you done?” When Cain is obstinate in his evil, God punishes him by miraculously intervening in nature: the ground will be barren when Cain tulls it, and apparently only when Cain tills it. Finally, we have the last piece of God’s care for Cain in this story: Cain says his punishment is more than he can bear, and God comforts him by protecting him against being killed by other men, a danger Cain had understood to be part of his punishment. Now consider God’s actions in this story. In the first place, he punishes Cain for the murder of Abel, showing thereby that he regards the murder of Abel as bad and worthy of punishment. And yet he himself allowed the murder to take place, although obviously he could have prevented it. Any decent person who was present when Cain attacked his brother would have made some effort to rescue Abel; but God, who is always present everywhere and who even seems to anticipate Cain’s attack, does nothing for Abel. On the other hand, consider what God does to or for

Cain. He comes to him and warns him of the coming temptation. After the murder he returns to talk to Cain again, in a way designed to make Cain acknowledge his true state. When he imposes punishment, he does it in a way that seems to require a miracle. He banishes Cain from his land. And when Cain complains that his punishment is too much, God is merciful to him and guards him from being killed by other men. In short, God interferes in Cain’s affairs to warn him; he talks to him earnestly to get him to see his true situation; he performs a miracle on his behalf; he sends him away from his own place; and he protects him from being murdered. Clearly, any one of these things done on Abel’s behalf would have been enough to save him. But God does none of these things for Ade/, the innocent, the accepted of God; he does them instead for Cain, a man whose offering was rejected and who is murderously angry at his brother. When it comes to righteous Abel, God sim-

ply stands by and watches him be killed. Why has such a story been allowed to stand as part of the canonical Scriptures? On the solution to the problem ofevil which I have been developing in this paper, if God is good and has a care for his creatures, his overriding concern must be to insure not that they live as long as possible or that they suffer as little pain as possible in this life but rather that they live in such a way as ultimately to bring them to union with God. Abel presents God with no problems in this respect. He is apparently righteous at the time of his offering; and hence that is a safe, even a propitious, time for him to die, to make the transition from this life to the next. Given that he will die sometime, Abel’s death at this time is if anything in Abel’s interest; he dies at a time when he is accepted by God, and he enters into union with God. It is true that Abel dies prematurely and so is deprived of years of life. But on Christian doctrine, what he loses is years of a painful and spiritually perilous pilgrimage through this life, and what he gains is eternal bliss. Cain, on the other hand, is in trouble as regards both his current moral state and his prospects for the next life. If God were to rescue Abel by striking Cain with heart failure at the outset of Cain’s attack on Abel, for example, Cain would die in mortal sin and so would go to hell, while righteous Abel would continue the morally dangerous journey ofthis life only to die later, perhaps in some less virtuous state. There are, of course, many other ways in which God could have stopped Cain and rescued Abel without going so far as killing Cain. But perhaps stopping Cain even in those other ways would not have been good for Cain. Because God does not step in between Cain’s willing and the successful realization of that willing, Cain is brought as forcefully as possible to a recognition of the depth of the evil he willed. And that forceful recognition is, I think, the most powerful means of bringing Cain to an acknowledgment of his own evil and a desire for help, which is a necessary condition for his salvation. 230

ELEONORE STUMP

On the solution to the problem of evil which I have been developing here, then, God does not rescue Abel because contrary to appearances Abel is not in danger; and God’s failure to rescue Abel, as well as all the other care for

Cain recorded in the story, constitutes the best

shima. What I would like to believe I have done is to have shown that with good will and careful attention to the details ofthe doctrines specific to a particular monotheism there is hope of a successful solution to the problem of evil along the lines developed here.

hope of a rescue for Cain, who is in danger,

and not just of death but of a perpetual living death.

Notes

1

“Recent

Vv I think, then, that it is possible to produce a defensible solution to the problem of evil by relying both on the traditional theological and philosophical assumptions in (1)-(4) and (6), and on the specifically Christian doctrines in (8)-(10). Like other recent attempted solutions, this one also rests fundamentally on a revised version of (7), namely, this: (7’”) Because it is a necessary condition for union with God, the significant exercise offree will employed by human beings in the process which is essential for their being saved from their own evil is of such great value that it outweighs all the evil of the world.

(7””) constitutes a morally sufficient reason for evil and so is a counter-example to (5), the claim that there is no morally sufficient reason for God to permit instances of evil. In the brief exposition of this solution in this paper, I cannot hope to have given anything but a sketch and a preliminary defense of it; to do it justice and to consider carefully all the questions and objections it raises would require book-length treatment. For all its complexity, the story of Cain and Abel is the story of a simple instance of evil, which is easily dwarfed by any account of evil culled at random from today’s newspapers; and I am under no illusions that by providing an explanation for the simple evil in the story of Cain and Abel, I have given a sufficient and satisfying explanation of even the commonplace evils of ghetto violence, much less the almost unthinkable evils of Belsen or Hiro238

For a review of recent literature on the problem of evil, see Michael Peterson, Work

on

the

Problem

of Evil,”

American Philosophical Quarterly, 20 (1983) pp. 321-40. 2

3 4 5 6

7

Cf. Nelson Pike, “Hume on Evil,” The Philo-

- sophical Review, 72 (1963), pp. 180-1. See “Evil and Omnipotence,” Mind, 64 (1955), pp. 200-12. “God and Evil,” The Philosophical Quarterly, 10 (1960), pp. 97-114. Cf, e.g., Nelson Pike, “Hume on Evil.” Cf. John Stuart Mill, Three Essays on Religion (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1875), pp. 176-90, 194. John Stuart Mill, An Examination

of Sir

William Hamilton’s Philosophy (London: Longman’s Green and Co., 1865), ch. 7.

8

9

Cf. Alvin Plantinga, “The Free Will Defense,” in Philosophy in America, ed. Max Black (London: Allen and Unwin, 1965), pp. 204-20. A revised version of this paper is included in God and Other Minds (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1967) pp. 131-55. Cf. also “Which Worlds Could God Have Created?” Journal of Philosophy, 70 (1973), pp. 539-52. Among the most interesting criticisms of Plantinga are the following: Robert M. Adams, “Middle Knowledge and the Problem of Evil,” American Philosophical Quarterly, 14 (1977), pp. 109-17; George Botterill, “Falsification and the Existence of God. A Discussion of Plantinga’s Free Will Defense,” Philosophical Quarterly, 27 (1977), pp. 114-34; Robert Burch, “Plantinga and Leibniz’s Lapse,” Analysis, 39 (1979), pp. 24-9; Nelson Pike, “Plantinga on Free Will and Evil,” Religious Studies, 15 (1979), pp. 449-73; William Rowe, “God and Other Minds,” Nous, 3

(1969), pp. 271-7; William Wainwright, “Christian Theism and the Free Will Defense: a Problem,” International Journal for the Philosophy of Religion, 6 (1975), pp. 243-50;

THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

10 ll 12

14

16

William Wainwright, “Freedom and Omnipotence,” Nous, 2 (1968), pp. 293-301; and Peter Windt, “Plantinga’s Unfortunate God,” Philosophical Studies, 24 (1973), pp. 335-42. Analysis (1975), pp. 110-12. See “The Probabilistic Argument from Evil,” Philosophical Studies, 35 (1979), pp. 1-53. Steven Wykstra, “Ihe Humean Obstacle to Evidential Arguments from Suffering: On Avoiding the Evils of Appearance,” forthcoming in International Journal for the Philosophy of Religion. William Rowe, “The Empirical Argument from Evil,” in Rationality, Religious Belief, and Moral Commitment: New Essays in the Philosoply ofReligion, ed. KR. Audi and W. Wainwright (Cornell University Press, forthcoming). For an example of this view in prominent Catholic and Protestant theologians, see, e.g.,

Packer and A. R. Johnston (London: James

18

Clarke, 1957); and Erasmus, De Libero Arlitrio, Discourse on the Freedom of the Will, ed. and tr. Ernest F. Winter (New York, 1967). “Batter my heart, three-personed God; for You As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend; That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and

bend Your force to break, blow, burn, and make

me new. I, like an usurped town, to another due, Labor to admit You, but O, to no end;

Reason, Your viceroy in me, me should defend, But is captived, and proves weak or untrue. Yet dearly I love You, and would be loved fain, But am betrothed unto Your enemy. Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again;

Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, Ia—Iae,

Take me to You, imprison me, for I,

q. 87, g. 3, and John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, bk. II, ch. xxiv, esp. section 6. Someone might also object that if post-fall persons inherit a disordered will, they are not responsible for the evil they do and so should not be punished for it. But this objection misunderstands the nature of the defect post-fall persons inherit. It is not an external constraint on the will; it is a tendency within the will to will evil. A person with post-fall will can will only right actions, but tends not to want to do so. Such a person, who can will the right action in certain circumstances but who does not do so because he does not want to, is generally held to be responsible for what he does. I do not mean to suggest that changing one’s character is accomplished by a single act of will of any sort, only that a particular sort of act of will is a prerequisite for a change ofcharacter. This very sketchy discussion suggests a solution to the sort of quarrel engaged in by Luther and Erasmus. Even the defective will is free, in the sense that it cam will the good; and to this extent it seems to me that Erasmus was right. But if this ability is not exercised because, in virtue of a defect in the will, the will does not will the good, then for practical as distinct from theological purposes Luther was right. Of himself, man will not do what is right; to do so he must have external help. See Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will, tr. J. I.

Except You enthrall me, never shall be free, Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.” Augustine, Confessions, tr. Edward Pusey (New

19

York: Macmillan, 1961), bk. viii, pp. 125, 130:

“But I wretched, most wretched, in the very commencement of my early youth, had begged chastity of Thee, and said, “Give me chastity and continence, only not yet.” For I feared lest Thou shouldest hear me soon, and soon

cure me of the disease of concupiscence, which I wished to have satisfied, rather than extinguished ... [Now, however] I cast myself down I know not how, under a certain fig tree, giving full vent to my tears; and the floods of mine eyes gushed out an acceptable sacrifice to Thee ... I sent up these sorrowful words: how long, how long, “tomorrow, and tomor-

20

21

row?” Why not now? Why not is there this hour an end to my uncleanness?” Anselm, The Fall of Satan, tr. lasper Hopkins and Herbert Richardson (New York: Harper and Row, 1967), p. 157. See, for example, the articles on sanctification

in The Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, ed. James Hastings (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1962) and in A Theological Word Book of the Bible, ed. Alan Richardson (New York: Macmillan, 1950), and the article on grace in

22

The Catholic Encyclopedia, ed. Charles Herbermann et al. (New York: Robert Appleton Co., 1909). That this is a claim Christians are committed

239

ELEONORE STUMP

23

to is clear from even a brief perusal of the Old Testament. The Old Testament prophetic books abound with statements such as these: “In vain have I smitten your children; they received no correction” (Jeremiah 2: 30); “Oh Lord, . . . thou has stricken them, but they have not grieved; thou has consumed them, but they have refused to receive correction” (Jeremiah 5: 3); “The people turneth not unto him that smiteth them, neither do they seek the Lord ofhosts” (Isaiah 9: 13). Amos 4: 6— 11 isa particularly clear statement ofthis claim. The story of the blind man in John 9: 1-38, which culminates in the blind man’s expression of faith and worship, is an example of a New Testament story illustrating this claim. For a Biblical story showing God protecting the victim while allowing the perpetrator the

death of infants is hard to account for in large part because we have an inadequate understanding of the nature of infants and animals. Do infants have free will? Do some of the more intelligent species of animals other than man have free will? If they do, maybe some version of the solution I am developing here applies to them also. As for creatures to whom no one would want

of the nature of infants and animals, it will not

be clear what to say about the death of infants or the suffering of animals in connection with the problem of evil. For that reason, I leave both out of account here. 25. Dante, Purgatorio, V. 98-107, tr. Charles Singleton (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University

freedom to act on his evil will, cf., e.g., Daniel

24

240

3: 8-25; a clear-cut story showing God preventing suffering by curtailing the freedom of a human agent to act on his will is harder to find, but cf., e.g., Genesis 19: 1-11, Genesis 22: 11-12, and such stories of relief from oppression as Judges 6: 1 1ff. The death of infants has been variously handled in the history of Christian thought. It seems to me not so much a hard case as a borderline one. Like the suffering of animals, the

to attribute free will, such as

worms and snails, what sort of suffering do they undergo? Until we have a clearer account

Bresse 1973) pabile

26

For an interesting variation on such a speculation, see C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (New

27

York: Macmillan, 1946). I have made no attempt in this section to discuss the connection, crucial for Christianity, between salvation from one’s sins and the Incarnation and Resurrection of Christ. I intend to examine that connection in a forthcoming paper on the Atonement.

Alternative Perspectives

28

Coercion and the Hiddenness of God*

Michael J. Murray But if Lgo to the east, he 1s not there; if Igo to the west I do not find him. When he ts at work in the north, I do not see him; when he turns to the south, I catch no glimpse of him. Job 23: 8-9

if The sentiments expressed by Job in the above epigram are ones that have been expressed by the sophisticated atheist as well as the typical churchgoer. Most of us, in fact, have wondered at one time or another why it is that God does not reveal Himselfin some dramatic fashion if He actually exists. Yet, while this question is widely entertained, it has received surprisingly little attention in the philosophical literature. In addition to puzzling many theists, the fact of divine hiddenness

has

prompted some non-theists to challenge the theist to provide some explanation for God’s apparent silence. The problem they have raised can be roughly stated as follows: If, as most theists claim, beliefin God is essential to ulti-

mate human fulfillment, one would expect that God would provide us with unambiguous evidence for His existence. However, such

evidence is not forthcoming. Therefore, it is unlikely that the theist’s God exists. The atheist Norwood Russell Hanson makes this case against the theist as follows in his essay “What I Do Not Believe:”

* From American Philosophical Quarterly, 30:1 (1993), pp. 27-35. Reprinted with permission.

... “God exists” could in principle be established for all factually — it just happens not to be, certainly not for everyone! Suppose, however, that next Tuesday morning, just after breakfast, all of us in this one world are knocked to our knees by a percussive and ear-shattering thunderclap. Snow swirls; leaves drop from the trees; the earth heaves and buckles; buildings topple and towers tumble; the sky is ablaze with an eerie, sil-

very light. Just then, as all the people of this world look up, the heavens open — the clouds pull apart — revealing an unbelievably immense and radiant-like Zeus figure, towering above us like a hundred Everests. He frowns darkly as lightening plays across the features of his Michelangeloid face. He then points down — at me! — and explains, for every man and child to hear: “T have had quite enough of your too-clever logic-chopping and word-watching in matters of theology. Be assured, N. R. Hanson, that I

most certainly do exist.” ... Please do not dismiss this as a playful, irreverent Disney-old contrivance. The conceptual point here is that zfsuch a remarkable event were to occur, I for one should certainly be convinced that God does exist. That matter of fact would have been settled once and for all time ... That God exists would, through this encounter, have been confirmed for me and for everyone else in a manner every bit as direct as that involved in any non-controversial factual claim.!

Hanson’s point, of course, is that since God

has not produced such a theophany, we not only lack good evidence that such a God exists, but that this heavenly silence actually inveighs against God’s existence. . . . The chal241

MICHAEL J. MURRAY

lenge to the theist is to explain this heavenly silence.

II In order to understand the nature of the problem of divine hiddenness it is important to ask exactly what the objector to theism finds problematic here. The real problem, as I see it, is the fact that the hiddenness of God seems to be closely tied to disbelief. For most Christian theists, disbelief is a form of sin, possibly the most damaging form. Asa result, the problem appears to reduce to the fact that God’s self-imposed obscurity seems to be indirectly, or possibly directly, responsible for an important form of evil. The atheist’s challenge, then, amounts to this: why has God established conditions, or at least allowed conditions to prevail, which seem to lead to the occurrence of a significant amount of evil, especially evil of such a grave sort? Seen in this way, the problem is similar to a number of others which fall under the traditional problem of evil. One might thus be led to consider, first, whether or not the hiddenness of God might simply be treated as a species of the problem of evil and thus be resolved by appealing to certain traditional theodicies regarding this problem. What I intend to show here is that certain traditional theodicies do seem to provide some interesting resolutions to the problem of God’s hiddenness. I will begin in this section with a discussion of the traditional free will defense and show how it can be brought to bear on this vexing problem. Briefly, a free will theodicy claims that the existence of free will causes, allows, or presupposes the possibility of certain evils. However, there are two distinct species of free will theodicies, both of which I will make use of in the course of this discussion. The first type of free will theodicy argues that one of the consequences of endowing creatures with free will is that these beings have the option to choose evil over good. As a result, it is impossible that God actualize a world such that there 242

are both free beings and also no possibility of these beings undertaking evil actions. I call theodicies of this type consequent free will theodicies. They are “consequent” in the sense that evil is to be accounted for in terms of conditions that arise as a consequence of the existence of free will in our world. It is this sort of theodicy that is most often invoked by theists in order to account for the existence of moral evil in the world. However, the type of free will theodicy I am going to be concerned with first is somewhat different. The theodicy that is important here argues that there are certain antecedent conditions that must necessarily hold or fail to hold if beings endowed with freedom are to be able to exercise this freedom in a morally significant manner. For example, Swinburne, and others, have argued that any world which is such that free beings can exercise their freedom in a morally significant manner must also be a world in which there are stable natural regularities of some sort. If this were not the case, it is argued, free creatures could never come to understand that there are regular connections between their undertakings and the consequence of their undertakings. So, for example, if there were no stable natural regularities, firing a gun at another person’s head at point-blank range may, On one occasion, give them a haircut,

whereas on another occasion it may kill them. But it seems clear that one could not be said to be morally responsible for their actions if they had no way of knowing that their undertaking, in this case firing the gun, would have the undesirable consequence of taking another life. As a result, free creatures must be created in a world in which such stable connections between undertakings and the consequences of undertakings obtain. And it seems plausible to suppose that such a world requires a set of stable natural regularities to insure the stability of this very connection. It is only when we can be assured that, for example, gunfirings result in certain predictable consequences, that we can be responsible for the outcomes of such actions.

COERCION AND THE HIDDENNESS OF GOD However, the argument continues, the ex-

istence of stable natural laws may also lead to other events which result in natural evil, for example, hurricanes, earthquakes, and so on. Thus, if one can argue that there is some overriding reason why God should create a world with beings that are free and also able to exercise that freedom in a morally significant fashion, then the existence of these laws which give rise to natural evil are justified. This argument strategy thus contends that certain antecedent conditions must obtain if free creatures are to be able to exercise their freedom in the most robust sense. And since there is good reason for creating creatures who can exercise their freedom in this fashion, there

is good reason‘to create the necessary antecedent conditions which would aliow for such exercising of freedom. One can then argue that even though certain evil states of affairs might result from these antecedent conditions obtaining, such is necessary if God is going to be able to bring about the greater good of actualizing a world in which free creatures can exercise their freedom in a thoroughly robust manner. Clearly, theodicies of this sort differ from theodicies of the consequent type in that they argue that there are certain antecedent conditions which are requisite for free beings to be able to exercise their freedom and that such conditions may incidentally lead to certain other evil states of affairs. However, it is argued, the circumstances for which these antecedent conditions are necessary are sufficiently good to justify the evil which arises as a result of their obtaining. I will refer to this class of theodicies as antecedent free will theodictes. In addition to arguing that certain conditions must obtain for free creatures to be able to exercise their freedom, it can also be shown that certain conditions must fad to obtain if free beings are to be able to exercise their freedom in a morally significant manner. Specifically, it appears that one cannot act freely when one is in the condition of compulsion by another in the context of a threat. Under condi-

tions that I will specify below, it seems clear that fully robust and morally significant free will cannot be exercised by someone who is compelled by another in the context of a threat. Further, I will argue that if God does not remain “hidden” to a certain extent, at least some of the free creatures He creates

would be in the condition of being compelled in the context of a threat and, as a result, such creatures could not exercise their freedom in this robust, morally significant manner. It seems at least prima facie plausible to claim that morally significant freedom cannot

be exercised by an individual who is being told to perform a certain action in the context of a significant threat, say, hand over his money to one holding a gun to his head and threatening to shoot. The threatened individual is compelled by another in such a way that morally significant free will cannot be exercised. This claim, however, is certainly not uncontroversial. Adequately defending this position would require a separate treatment on the nature of coercion and its relation to freedom, a task too great given the limitations of this essay. However, a few things need to be said here about the relationship between a significant threat and freedom. First ofall, I am certainly not claiming that freely willed acts are metaphysically impossible in the context of a significant threat. There is even no physical impossibility involved in the case of one refusing to comply with the demands of the robber described above. But if this is so, what is going on in cases where we are threatened? There are at least three alternative answers. The first possibility is that we are free in such cases but that under the circumstances no rational person would choose to act contrary to the demands of the threatener. We might say, further, that as a result of the threat, our ability to rationally deliberate about alternatives is blocked because the threatener has brought it about that there can only be one rational choice. If we look at the matter in this way what is surrendered in such cases is the deliberative or reasoned exercise of freedom. On this account the external threat of an inten243

MICHAEL J. MURRAY

tional agent has limited the rational possibilities of action to just one. And in such circumstances, one may hold, we are not able to fully exercise our freedom. The second thing one might say is that we are not free at all. It is acommon view amongst libertarians that a free action requires that neither metaphysically necessary truths, the history of the world, nor the laws of nature prevent us from choosing between more than one option. One might hold, however, that there are cases in which certain operative psychological laws make only one alternative psychologically possible. When such laws are operative we are in a state where we cannot view physically possible alternative courses of action as legitimate possibilities for action for us at that time. In such cases, these psychological laws make it the case that one psychologically could not choose to fail to act in accordance with the threatener’s demands. As a result, in cases such as these the libertarian

might legitimately hold that we are not free in the most fundamental sense. Finally, one might argue that what is not possible in these threat contexts, is free actions that are morally significant. One adopting this approach might argue that freedom has not been lost here because the threatened can consider the alternatives and choose what, in that instance, is the most rational course of

action. What the threat does provide, however, are excuses for the behavior — excuses

which suffice to relieve the threatened of moral responsibility for the action committed. Traditional Christian theists often argue that it is not only freedom, but morally significant freedom which is desirable for free creatures. Plantinga argues, for example, that the moral significance of the free actions is important because God desires to increase the diversity and amount of good in His creation. One way to accomplish this is to create free beings who can exercise this freedom in a morally significant manner, thus creating a world containing moral good in addition to just, say, metaphysical goodness, the sort of goodness that attaches to a thing’s mere existence or 244

being. If this is correct, one might argue that praise and blame are not justified in the context of significant threats because such threats provide adequate moral excuses for the behavior performed. Suppose that the individual being robbed in the case described above, call him Barney, had been sent by his friend, Fred, to make a deposit to Fred’s savings account. On his way to drop off the deposit, Barney is stopped by our robber and promptly hands over the cash. In such a case it seems clear that we would not feel that Barney is morally culpable for giving up the money as we would ifhe were simply to hand it to some passerby. The fact that there was a significant threat provides an excuse which is sufficient to make Barney no longer morally culpable for an act he would have been responsible for had the significant threat not been present. Because praise or blame are not justifiably imputed in such cases of compulsion it would appear that although freedom stmpliciter is not eliminated, the moral significance of the action performed is. Whichever interpretation one wishes to place on such cases of compulsion, the fact remains that the prospect of being in such circumstances is quite unsavory. If one thinks that such threats make the threatened unable to act freely, then threatening destroys freedom. But even if one concludes that the threatened is still free, there is still something defective about the activity of the threatened in such a case. Whatever this defect might be explains why we legislate against such coercive behavior and do not allow robbers to excuse their action by claiming that they do nothing wrong since the victim “gave his money over freely.” For the purposes of this essay I will not argue for any of these three views about the relationship between threats and freedom. Instead I will simply note that such cases do put the threatened in an unsavory position, one which in some way interferes with their exercising morally significant freedom in a fully robust manner.

COERCION AND THE HIDDENNESS OF GOD

Ill There is, however, an ambiguity regarding exactly what constitutes a “significant threat.” Not just any threat counts as a compelling one since, for example, one would not feel compelled to hand their money over to a robber who simply threatened to call them a dirty word. What would be helpful is a list of necessary and sufficient conditions which would suffice to clarify exactly what constitutes a threat significant enough to eliminate the possibility of morally significant, rational freedom. Unfortunately, the subject matter here does not allow for such precision. However, there are certain factors which jointly determine “threat significance.” Below I will discuss these factors in an effort to provide a clearer picture of how threats give rise to compulsion and how this compulsion affects the exercise of morally significant free will. The three factors that are important for my analysis are what I will call threat strength, threat imminence, and wantonness of the threatened. By threat strength I mean the degree to which the threatened person feels the consequences of the threat to be harmful to him. By threat imminence I mean the degree to which the threatened perceives that the threat will inevitably follow given that the conditions for the threatened consequences being enacted are met. The notion of “inevitably follows” is ambiguous here and intentionally so. Below I will explain that this notion must be carefully unpacked since the notion of threat imminence is multi-faceted. Finally, by wantonness of the threatened I have in mind a characteristic of the individual threatened to disregard personal well-being in the face of threats to his freedom. My claim is that the degree of compulsion is directly proportional to threat strength and imminence and inversely proportional to wantonness. I will now discuss these conditions in more careful detail. It should be obvious that the degree of compulsion is directly proportional to the degree of threat strength. The degree to which I feel compelled to do an act that I would not oth-

erwise do (say, to give all my money to a stranger) would be much greater if the threatener held a gun to my back than if he threatened to call me a dirty word if I failed to comply with his wish. It is more difficult to see exactly how threat imminence relates to compulsion simply because it is less easy to characterize. By examining a few cases I think it will become clear that the notion of the consequences ofa threat “inevitably following” when the threatened fails to satisfy the conditions of a threat must be cashed out in more than one way. There are, in fact, at least three distinct senses of threat imminence which must be distinguished for my purposes. The first type of threat imminence is what I will call probabilistic threat imminence. Consider the standard robber case above in which I am threatened with being shot if I fail to hand over my wallet to the thief. In this case I would consider it highly probable that the thief would shoot me if I failed to comply with the conditions of the threat. As a result, the

probabilistic threat imminence would be high in this case. However, consider another case

in which certain prisoners are allowed to spend recreation time in an enclosed prison yard. Surrounding the yard are high barbed-wire fences which are periodically punctuated by guard towers. The prisoners have been told that the guards have orders to shoot if any of the prisoners attempt to escape. As a result we have a case which, in important respects, is similar to the standard robber case. Most importantly, in both cases the threatened individuals are under a threat of the same strength, namely, being shot ifthe conditions of the threat are not satisfied. However, in the prison-yard case, a prisoner might be more tempted to attempt to escape because he might feel that there is some significant probability that the threat would not be successfully carried out because, for example, the guards might miss him at that distance, or because they may fail to see him since they are so busy watching the other prisoners. Thus, in this case the degree of compulsion is 245

MICHAEL J. MURRAY

somewhat lower than in the standard robber case because the probability that the threat will be carried out is somewhat less even though the threat strength is identical. The second type of threat imminence is what I call temporal threat imminence. With this type of threat imminence, compulsion is greater in those cases in which the threat will be carried out with more temporal immediacy, once the conditions of the threat have not been met. To show this consider the standard robber case once again. In such a case the temporal threat imminence is high since I know that if I fail to comply with the robber’s demands I will be shot on the spot. Compare this, however, to a case in which the robber tells me that he has a blow gun with darts

which he will shoot at me if I fail to hand over my money. Furthermore, the robber tells me that these darts contain a poison which has no antidote and will lead to my certain death in fifty years. In the former case, compulsion is higher because the temporal imminence of the threat is greater. Differing degrees of temporal threat imminence may also explain phenomena such as the fact that some individuals choose to eat high fat foods which they know, in the long run, are very likely to cause, say, fatal arteriosclerosis, while these same indi-

viduals would not ingest antifreeze, which although quite sweet-tasting, is very likely to be immediately fatal. Ingesting both types of substances makes death likely; but ingesting high fat foods makes death likely sometime in the future, whereas ingesting ethylene glycol makes death immediately likely. Finally, there is epistemic threat imminence. This type of imminence is also quite difficult to characterize but it is one with which I believe that we are all familiar. It is this third type of imminence that explains why we believe that massive advertising campaigns are effective in reducing the incidence of smoking or drinking and driving. In both of these cases it seems that few engaging in the behaviors really believe that it is not bad for them; they are usually quite well aware that they are so. Clearly, then, the purpose of such 246

advertising campaigns is not to inform the individuals engaging in these behaviors that they are bad for them. What then is their purpose? It can only be to make the fact that these behaviors are dangerous more epistemically forceful. Somehow, by repeating the message over and over we become more powerfully aware ofjust how harmful such behaviors potentially are. As a result, the more epistemically forceful the danger is, the more likely we are to not act in such a way. Likewise, when we are discussing compulsion, the more epistemically imminent a threat, the more compelled the threatened individual will feel. However, these two factors of strength and imminence alone are not sufficient to explain compulsion by another in the context of a threat completely. This is evident when we look again at our prison-yard case. Why, one might wonder, do certain prisoners try to escape, while others in similar circumstances do not, even though threat strength and imminence are the same for all prisoners? Assuming that none of them wishes to remain in prison, why do they not all try to escape? This question points to the need for a third factor, and this factor is the wantonness of the threatened. Again, this factor is difficult to define precisely. However, it does seem clear that different individuals under the same threat and with the same degree of threat imminence can feel compelled to different degrees depending On a certain internal character trait which can be described as incorrigibility or threat indifference. This trait can be roughly characterized as a feeling of indifference for one’s well-being in cases where that well-being is threatened should there be a refusal to submit to the terms of some restriction on one’s freedom. These, then, are the factors which must be

taken into account when we consider the degree to which a threat prevents the exercise of robust morally significant freedom. While it is surely impossible to quantify these characteristics in order to define exactly what constitutes a threat which overwhelms freedom, it can be said that the degree to which free-

COERCION AND THE HIDDENNESS OF GOD

dom is compromised is directly proportional to threat strength and imminence and inversely proportional to wantonness.

IV One feature of the major Western theistic traditions is that they seem to involve the issuing of both temporal and eternal threats for disobedience to the divine will. Passages from, for example, the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, such as the following, represent both aspects of this threatened punishment: A man who remains stiff-necked after many rebukes will suddenly be destroyed — without remedy (Proverbs 29: 1)

As a result, unless one of the other two fac-

and

But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath. (Romans 2: 5)

Asa

strength, the threat posed by the prospect of eternal damnation is equal to the strongest imaginable threat. One, of course, might wonder why God does not simply eliminate the threat of hell for disobedience and in doing so eliminate or severely limit the threat strength and thus the compulsion. This is an interesting question but not one I will address here. My goal here is to determine whether the traditional, orthodox Christian position can be reconciled with the fact that God does not reveal himself in the manner Hanson might wish. Since the existence of hell is, I take it, a presumption of the traditional Christian view, I will take it for granted at this point. By doing so, however, we also preclude the possibility of mitigating compulsion by attenuating threat strength.

result, those who are aware of such threats

and are convinced of their veracity are in a state where their freedom is at risk. What this creates, simply, is some degree of compulsion by another in the context of the threat. Specifically, it is compulsion by God in the context of a threat of both temporal and eternal punishment. Consequently, on the picture painted by these traditions, God has issued threats, both temporal and eternal, which will be carried out if one fails to submit to Him, in action or belief, in certain ways. Here I will focus particularly on the Christian tradition and the notion of a threat contained therein. Since these appear to be quite significant threats, the theist must provide some explanation for how this threat can be mitigated so as to prevent the compromising of human freedom. To do this, one of the three factors of compulsion must be mitigated in some way. I will now look at each one to see where the

force of compulsion could be averted. Certainly, with regard to the factor of threat

tors can be appropriately controlled, it would seem that morally significant exercise of human free will would be precluded. What about wantonness? It is unlikely that this factor will provide what is required to avoid the consequence of compulsion which eliminates free will. The reason for this is that it seems likely that the development and functioning of traits such as wantonness is something which falls within the domain ofthe freedom ofthe individual. To attempt to argue for this claim in any complete way would lead into the complex psychological question of whether such personality traits in general are acquired by heredity, environment or elements of individual free choice. Another area that would need to be addressed is how we develop character traits relating to wantonness. Aristotelian views on the development of virtues by the willful cultivation of habits of right-acting, for example, would support the view I hold above in my claim that wantonness is a factor that God cannot manipulate if He desires to preserve free will. As a result, my claim is that if God were to preserve human free will, manipulating this element of the picture would not be an option. This leaves us with the possibility of controlling the degree of threat imminence. Let’s 247

MICHAEL J. MURRAY

begin by looking at probabilistic threat imminence. This condition seems to provide little help since, on the Christian story, it is nothing less than certain that the threat will be carried out if the conditions of the threat are not met. What about temporal threat imminence? Clearly this condition has some relevance to our case since carrying out the threat does not follow immediately upon failure to obey the conditions of the threat. There is no trap door to hell that opens upon one’s first sin or willful failure to assent to the Christian plan of redemption. Yet merely reducing the temporal imminence of the threat does not appear to be sufficient guarantee that creature’s freedom is not compromised by divine compulsion. Given the strength of the threat involved it does not seem that merely delaying the carrying out of the threat temporally is sufficient to mitigate compulsion. If it were, it appears that we should be content to say that God could appear in the sky, @ /a Hanson, issuing the relevant temporal and eternal threats, and yet not have the actions of free creatures be compelled by the issuing of such threats. Yet, it seems that the actions of such free creatures clearly would be compelled if they were to be confronted by such obvious threats. We are left then with epistemic threat imminence as the final factor which can be attenuated if God desires to preserve the exercise of morally significant freedom by creatures. My claim is that the hiddenness of God is required in order for free beings to be able to exercise their freedom in a morally significant manner given the strength of the threat implied by knowledge of the threat implicit in the traditional Christian story. If God revealed his existence in a more perspicuous fashion we would be in a situation very much like the one in the standard robbery case, i.e. strong threat strength and strong threat imminence such that the level of wantonness of most, if

not all, individuals would not significantly diminish their feeling compelled to act in accordance with the demand of the threatener. However, if God desires that there be indi-

248

viduals with free will who can use it in morally significant ways, then He must decrease the threat imminence of eternal and temporal punishment and He, in fact, does so by making the existence of the threat epistemically ambiguous. It is this epistemic ambiguity that we call the problem of the hiddenness of God. This may make it clear why God does not, say, open the sky and give a world-wide, unambiguous proclamation of his existence. However, it does not seem to explain why there is the particular degree of divine hiddenness that there is. An objector may reply here that God may not be able to “open the sky” without the loss of morally significant

freedom on the part of humans; yet, must that also mean that merely one more unit of divine manifestation in the world would cause the fabric of significant moral freedom to collapse? The answer is no. What this argument is intended to provide is a response to the question of why God does not provide a grand, universal display of general revelation. But why then does God provide the fairly low general level of revelation that he does? Since God is concerned with preserving the freedom of each individual, the level of general revelation must be such as not to preclude the possibility of anyone’s exercising his or her free will in a morally significant fashion. Since threat strength is constant, God must tailor the degree of general revelation to the individual most likely to be compelled by a threat, namely, the least wanton individual. Ifthis is correct, the degree of threat imminence, and consequently the degree of divine manifestation in the world, must be appropriately moderated. And, the degree of moderation here is likely to be great, with the result that the amount of unambiguous general revelation that God can provide is likely to be fairly minimal.

Vv It will be helpful here to consolidate the ground that has been covered up to this point. What has been shown is that with respect to

COERCION AND THE HIDDENNESS OF GOD

the general revelation that God gives for his existence, there are tight constraints on the amount which can be provided, given God’s desire to preserve the morally significant exercise of human freedom. Showing this in itself would alone be of quite some interest, if indeed I have achieved it, simply because it answers a number of theistic critics who hold that God should “part the heavens and show Himself.”

However,

the solution

offered

above does not answer the whole question with respect to the hiddenness of God because it does not address the possibility that God could supplement his general revelation by individual revelation that would be such that each individual is maximally aware of God’s existence to the extent possible for that individual without such revelation impugning the possibility of the exercise of free will. If, for example, as Calvin taught, there is a sense of the divine, or sensus divinitatis, in each of us, making us aware of the divine presence, why is God not able to make up the lack of general revelation at an individual level and thereby avoid the difficulty of having to cater to the least common denominator with respect to wantonness? It is this question which emphasizes the limitations of the antecedent free will theodicy I have chosen and shows why it is unable to handle the entire problem of the hiddenness of God. What this theodicy lacks, however, can be supplemented by a consequence free will theodicy combined with a second theodicy, i.e. an Augustinian-style punishment theodicy. In what remains I will explain how such theodicies would apply in this case al-

though I will not develop them in any detail since others have reviewed such theodicies and their application in this context. Let us assume that it is correct that God does supplement general revelation through a sensus divinitatis which provides each individual with knowledge of God yielding a maximal threat imminence without thereby eliminating the possibility for the morally sig-

hiddenness of God? The consequence free will theodicy claims that part of the hiddenness of God can be accounted for as a result of some act which prevents the individual from interpreting this revelation properly or giving the properly interpreted evidence the appropriate epistemic weight. As a result, one might argue that one source of God’s hiddenness is that free individuals can turn away from the less ambiguous internal evidence that God has provided for his existence. These theories are sometimes characterized as “human-defectiveness” approaches to the hiddenness of God. Not only does the corruptness of human nature contribute to the hiddenness of God, but it also seems clear that the Jewish and

Christian traditions represent God, in some cases, as veiling His existence and “hardening” the epistemic capacity that is normally used to understand the revelation He gives. This hardening is usually a punishment which results from some form of moral disobedience. As such, this explanation for the hiddenness of God can be subsumed under the punishment theodicy which claims that some evil (in this case, some divine hiddenness) is the result of justified punishment for sin. The view that humans can orient themselves in such a way as to make divine revelation less readily understood, either by a direct act or as a result of cultivating a sinful character, as well as the claim that God sometimes withdraws revelation or the ability to properly interpret revelation, combine to give a potential solution to the problem of “individual” divine hiddenness. These supplement the earlier argument as to why God’s general revelation is as ambiguous as it is by showing that even if individual revelation were originally intended to be at its maximum, while still allowing morally significant employment offree will, it may still be the case that divine hardening as punishment for sin and/or a self-induced human blindness with regard to divine revelation may cause one to find divine exposure non-compelling.

nificant exercise of that individual’s free will. How could one then account for the 249

MARILYN McCORD ADAMS Note 1

Norwood

Russell Hanson,

What I Do Not

Believe and Other Essays (New York: Humanities Press, 1971), pp. 313=14-

29

Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God*

Marilyn McCord Adams 1

Introduction

Over the past thirty years, analytic philosophers of religion have defined ‘the problem of evil’ in terms of the prima-facie difficulty in consistently maintaining (1)

God exists, and is omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good

and

(2)er

Evil'exists.

In a crisp and classic article, ‘Evil and Omnipotence’,! J. L. Mackie emphasized that the problem is not that (1) and (2) are logically inconsistent by themselves, but that they together with quasi-logical rules formulating attribute-analyses — such as (P1)

A perfectly good being would always eliminate evil so far as it could,

(P2)

There are xo limitsto what an omnipotent being can do,

constitue an inconsistent premise-set. He added, of course, that the inconsistency might be removed by substituting alternative and perhaps more subtle analyses, but cautioned that such replacements of (P1) and (P2) would save ‘ordinary theism’ from his charge of positive irrationality, only if true to its ‘essential

requirements’.? In an earlier paper, ‘Problems of Evil: More Advice to Christian Philosophers’,* I underscored Mackie’s point and took it a step further. In debates about whether the argument from evil can establish the irrationality of religious belief, care must be taken, both by the atheologians who deploy it and by the believers who defend against it, to ensure that the operative attribute-analyses accurately reflect that religion’s understanding of divine power and goodness. It does the atheologian no good to argue for the falsity of Christianity on the ground that the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, pleasure-maximizer is incompossible with a world such as ours, because Christians never believed God was a pleasure-maximizer anyway. But equally, the truth of Christianity would be inadequately defended by the observation that an omnipotent, omniscient egoist could have created a world with suffering creatures, because Christians insist that God loves other (created) per-

* Originally published in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Soctety, supplementary vol. 63 (1989), pp. 297— 310. Reprinted with permission.

250

sons than Himself. The extension of ‘evil’ in (2) is likewise important. Since Mackie and his successors are out to show that ‘the sev-

HORRENDOUS EVILS AND THE GOODNESS OF GOD

eral parts of the essential theological doctrine are inconsistent with one another’ ,* they can accomplish their aim only if they circumscribe the extension of‘evil’ as their religious opponents do. By the same token, it is not enough for Christian philosophers to explain how the power, knowledge, and goodness of God could coexist with some evils or other; a full

account must exhibit the compossibility of divine perfection with evils in the amounts and of the kinds found in the actual world (and evaluated as such by Christian standards). The moral of my earlier story might be summarized thus: where the internal coherence of a system of religious beliefs is at stake, successful arguments for its inconsistency must draw on premises (explicitly or implicitly) internal to that system or obviously acceptable to its adherents; likewise for successful rebuttals or explanations of consistency. The thrust of my argument is to push both sides of the debate towards more detailed attention to and subtle understanding of the religious system in question. As a Christian philosopher, I want to focus in this paper on the problem for the truth of Christianity raised by what I shall call ‘horrendous’ evils. Although our world is riddled with them, the biblical record punctuated by them, and one of them — namely, the passion of Christ, according to Christian belief, the

judicial murder of God by the people of God — is memorialized by the Church on its most solemn holiday (Good Friday) and in its central sacrament (the Eucharist), the problem of horrendous evils is largely skirted by standard treatments for the good reason that they are intractable by them. After showing why, I will draw on other Christian materials to sketch ways of meeting this, the deepest of religious problems.

2

Defining the Category

For present purposes, I define ‘horrendous evils’ as ‘evils the participation in (the doing or suffering of) which gives one reason prima

facie to doubt whether one’s life could (given their inclusion in it) be a great good to one on the whole’. Such reasonable doubt arises because it is so difficult humanly to conceive how such evils could be overcome. Borrowing Chisholm’s contrast between balancing off (which occurs when the opposing values of mutually exclusive parts of a whole partially or totally cancel each other out) and defeat (which cannot occur by the mere addition to the whole of a new part of opposing value, but involves some ‘organic unity’ among the values of parts and wholes, as when the positive aesthetic value of a whole painting defeats the ugliness of a small colour patch),° horrendous evils seem prima facie, not only to balance off but to engulf the positive value of a participant’s life. Nevertheless, that very horrendous proportion, by which they threaten to rob a person’s life of positive meaning, cries out not only to be engulfed, but to be made meaningful through positive and decisive defeat. I understand this criterion to be objective, but relative to individuals. The example of habitual complainers, who know how to make the worst of a good situation, shows individuals not to be incorrigible experts on what ills would defeat the positive value of their lives. Nevertheless, nature and experience endow people with different strengths; one bears easily what crushes another. And a major consideration in determining whether an individual’s life is/has been a great good to him/her on the whole, is invariably and appropriately how it has seemed to him/her. I offer the following list of paradigmatic horrors: the rape of a woman and axing off of her arms, psychophysical torture whose ultimate goal is the disintegration of personality, betrayal of one’s deepest loyalties, cannibalizing one’s own offspring, child abuse of the sort described by Ivan Karamazov, child pornography, parental incest, slow death by starvation, participation in the Nazi death camps, the explosion of nuclear bombs over populated areas, having to choose which of one’s children shall live and which be executed by 251

MARILYN McCORD ADAMS

terrorists, being the accidental and/or unwitting agent of the disfigurement or death of those one loves best. I regard these as paradigmatic, because I believe most people would find in the doing or suffering of them primafacie reason to doubt the positive meaning of their lives. Christian belief counts the crucifixion of Christ another: on the one hand, death by crucifixion seemed to defeat Jesus’ Messianic vocation; for according to Jewish

law, death by hanging from a tree made its victim ritually accursed, definitively excluded from the compass of God’s people, @ fortiori disqualified from being the Messiah. On the other hand, it represented the defeat of its perpetrators’ leadership vocations, as those who were to prepare the people of God for the Messiah’s coming, killed and ritually accursed the true Messiah, according to later theological understanding, God Himself.

3 The Impotence of Standard Solutions For better and worse, the by now standard strategies for ‘solving’ the problem of evil are powerless in the face of horrendous evils.

3.1

Seeking the Reason-Why

In his model article ‘Hume on Evil’,® Pike takes up Mackie’s challenge, arguing that (P1) fails to reflect ordinary moral intuitions (more to the point, I would add, Christian beliefs), and traces the abiding sense of trouble to the hunch that an omnipotent, omniscient being could have no reason compatible with perfect goodness for permitting (bringing about) evils, because all legitimate excuses arise from ignorance or weakness. Solutions to the problem of evil have thus been sought in the form of counter-examples to this latter claim, i.e. logically possible reasons-why that would excuse even an omnipotent, omniscient God! The putative logically possible reasons offered have tended to be generic and global: generic in so far as some general reason is sought to

252

cover all sorts of evils; global in so far as they seize upon some feature of the world as a whole. For example, philosophers have alleged that the desire to make a world with one of the following properties — ‘the best of all possible worlds’, ‘a world a more perfect than which is impossible’, ‘a world exhibiting a perfect balance of retributive justice’, a world with as favourable a balance of (created) moral good over moral evil as God can weakly actualize’ — would constitute a reason compatible with perfect goodness for God’s creating a world with evils in the amounts and of the kinds found in the actual world. Moreover, such general reasons are presented as so powerful as to do away with any need to catalogue types of evils one by one, and examine God’s reason for permitting each in particular. Plantinga explicitly hopes that the problem of horrendous evils can thus be solved without being squarely confronted.”

3.2

The Insufficiency of Global

Defeat A pair of distinctions is in order here: (i) between-two dimensions of divine goodness in relation to creation — namely, ‘producer of global goods’ and ‘goodness to’ or ‘love of individual created persons’; and (ii) between the overbalance/defeat of evil by good on the global scale, and the overbalance/defeat ofevil by good within the context of an individual person’s life. Correspondingly, we may separate two problems of evil parallel to the two sorts of goodness mentioned in (i). In effect, generic and global approaches are directed to the first problem: they defend divine goodness along the first (global) dimension by suggesting logically possible strategies for the global defeat of evils. But establishing God’s excellence as a producer of global goods does not automatically solve the second problem, especially in a world containing horrendous evils. For God cannot be said to be good or loving to any created persons the positive meaning of whose lives He allows to be engulfed in and/or defeated by evils — that is,

HORRENDOUS

individuals within whose lives horrendous evils remain undefeated. Yet, the only way unsupplemented global and generic approaches could have to explain the latter, would be by applying their general reasonswhy to particular cases of horrendous suffering. Unfortunately, such an exercise fails to give satisfaction. Suppose for the sake of argument that horrendous evil could be included in maximally perfect world orders; its being partially constitutive of such an order would assign it that generic and global positive meaning. But would knowledge ofsuch a fact defeat for a mother the prima-facie reason provided by her cannibalism of her own in-

fant to wish that she had never been born? Again, the aim of perfect retributive balance confers meaning on evils imposed. But would knowledge that the torturer was being tortured give the victim who broke down and turned traitor under pressure any more reason to think his/her life worth while? Would it not merely multiply reasons for the torturer to doubt that his/her life could turn out to be a good to him/her on the whole? Could the truck-driver who accidentally runs over his beloved child find consolation in the idea that this middle-known but unintended side-effect was part of the price God accepted for a world with the best balance of moral good over moral evil he could get? Not only does the application to horrors of such generic and global reasons for divine permission of evils fail to solve the second problem of evil; it makes it worse by adding generic prima-facie reasons to doubt whether human life would be a great good to individual human beings in possible worlds where such divine motives were operative. For, taken in isolation and made to bear the weight of the whole explanation, such reasons-why draw a picture of divine indifference or even hostility to the human plight. Would the fact that God permitted horrors because they were constitutive means to His end of global perfection, or that He tolerated them because He

could obtain that global end anyway, make

EVILS AND THE GOODNESS OF GOD

the participant’s life more tolerable, more worth living for him/her? Given radical humanvulnerability to horrendous evils, the ease with which humans participate in them, whether as victim or perpetrator, would not the thought that God visits horrors on anyone who caused them, simply because he/she deserves it, provide one more reason to expect human life to be a nightmare? Those willing to split the two problems of evil apart might adopt a divide-and-conquer strategy, by simply denying divine goodness along the second dimension. For example, many Christians do not believe that God will ensure an overwhelmingly good life to each and every person He creates. Some say the decisive defeat of evil with good is promised only within the lives of the obedient, who enter by the narrow gate. Some speculate that the elect may be few. Many recognize that the sufferings of this present life are as nothing compared to the hell of eternal torment, designed to defeat goodness with horrors within the lives of the damned. Such a road can be consistently travelled only at the heavy toll of admitting that human life in worlds such as ours is a bad bet. Imagine (adapting Rawls’s device) persons in a pre-original position, considering possible worlds containing managers of differing power, wisdom, and character, and subjects

of varying fates. The question they are to answer about each world is whether they would willingly enter it as a human being, from behind a veil of ignorance as to which position they would occupy. Reason would, I submit, dictate a negative verdict for worlds whose omniscient and omnipotent manager permits ante-mortem horrors that remain undefeated within the context of the human participant’s life; a fortiori, for worlds in which some or most humans suffer eternal torment.

3.3

Inaccessible Reasons

So far, I have argued that generic and global solutions are at best incomplete: however well their account of divine motivating reasons 253

MARILYN McCORD ADAMS

deals with the first problem of evil, the attempt to extend it to the second fails by making it worse. This verdict might seem prima facie tolerable to standard generic and global approaches and indicative of only a minor modification in their strategy: let the abovementioned generic and global reasons cover divine permission of non-horrendous evils, and find other reasons compatible with perfect goodness why even an omnipotent, omniscient God would permit horrors. In my judgement, such an approach is hopeless. As Plantinga® points out, where horrendous evils are concerned, not only do we not know God’s actual reason for permitting them; we cannot even conceive of any plausible candidate sort of reason consistent with worthwhile lives for human participants in them.

4

The How of God’s Victory

Up to now, my discussion has given the reader cause to wonder whose side I am on anyway. For I have insisted, with rebels like Ivan

Karamazov and John Stuart Mill, on spotlighting the problem horrendous evils pose. Yet, I have signalled my preference for a version of Christianity that insists on both dimensions of divine goodness, and maintains not only (a) that God will be good enough to created persons to make human life a good bet, but also (4) that each created person will have a life that is a great good to him/her on the whole. My critique of standard approaches to the problem of evil thus seems to reinforce atheologian Mackie’s verdict of ‘positive irrationality’ for such a religious position.

4.1

Whys Versus Hows

The inaccessibility of reasons-why seems especially decisive. For surely an all-wise and allpowerful God, who loved each created person enough (a) to defeat any experienced horrors within the context of the participant’s life, and (0) to give each created person a life that is a 254

great good to him/her on the whole, would not permit such persons to suffer horrors for no reason. Does not our inability even to conceive of plausible candidate reasons suffice to make belief in such a God positively irrational in a world containing horrors? In my judgement, it does not.

To be sure, motivating reasons come in several varieties relative to our conceptual grasp: There are (i) reasons of the sort we can readily understand when we are informed of them (e.g. the mother who permits her child to undergo painful heart surgery because it is the only humanly possible way to save its life). Moreover, there are (ii) reasons we would be cognitively, emotionally, and spiritually equipped to grasp if only we had a larger memory or wider attention span (analogy: I may be able to memorize small town street plans; memorizing the road networks of the entire country is a task requiring more of the same, in the way that proving Gédel’s theorem is not). Some generic and global approaches insinuate that divine permission of evils has motivating reasons of this sort. Finally there are (iii) reasons that we are cognitively, emotionally, and/or spiritually too immature to fathom (the way a two-yearold child is incapable of understanding its mother’s reasons for permitting the surgery). I agree with Plantinga that our ignorance of divine reasons for permitting horrendous evils is not oftypes (i) or (ii), but of type (iii). Nevertheless, if there are varieties of ignorance, there are also varieties of reassurance.

The two-year-old heart patient is convinced of its mother’s love, not by her cognitively inaccessible reasons, but by her intimate care and presence through its painful experience. The story of Job suggests something similar is true with human participation in horrendous suffering: God does not give Job His reasons-why, and implies that Job isn’t smart enough to grasp them; rather Job is lectured on the extent of divine power, and sees God’s goodness face to face! Likewise, I suggest, to exhibit the logical compossibility of both dimensions of divine goodness with horrendous

HORRENDOUS EVILS AND THE GOODNESS OF GOD

suffering, it is not necessary to find logically possible reasons why God might permit them. It is enough to show sow God can be good enough to created persons despite their participation in horrors — by defeating them within the context of the individual’s life and by giving that individual a life that is a great good to him/her on the whole.

4.2

What Sort of Valuables?

In my opinion, the reasonableness of Christianity can be maintained in the face of horrendous evils only by drawing on resources of religious value theory. For one way for God to be good to created persons is by relating them appropriately to relevant and great goods. But philosophical and religious theories differ importantly on what valuables they admit into their ontology. Some maintain that ‘what you see is what you get’, but nevertheless admit a wide range of valuables, from sensory pleasures, the beauty of nature and cultural artefacts, the joys of creativity, to loving personal intimacy. Others posit a transcendent good (e.g. the Form of the Good in Platonism, or God, the Supremely Valuable Object, in Christianity). In the spirit of Ivan Karamazov, I am convinced that the depth of horrific evil cannot be accurately estimated without recognizing it to be incommensurate with any package of merely non-transcendent goods and so unable to be balanced off, much less defeated, thereby. Where the internal coherence of Christianity is the issue, however, it is fair to appeal to its own store of valuables. From a Christian point of view, God is a being a greater than which cannot be conceived, a good incommensurate with both created goods and temporal evils. Likewise, the good of beatific, face-to-face intimacy with God is simply incommensurate with any merely non-transcendent goods or ills a person might experience. Thus, the good of beatific faceto-face intimacy with God would engulf (in a sense analogous to Chisholmian balancing off) even the horrendous evils humans experience

in this present life here below, and overcome any prima-facie reasons the individual had to doubt whether his/her life would or could be worth living.

4.3

Personal Meaning, Horrors

Defeated Engulfing personal horrors within the context of the participant’s life would vouchsafe to that individual a life that was a great good to him/her on the whole. I am still inclined to think it would guarantee that immeasurable divine goodness to any person thus benefited. But there is good theological reason for Christians to believe that God would go further, beyond engulfment to defeat. For it is the nature of persons to look for meaning, both in their lives and in the world. Divine respect for and commitment to created personhood would drive God to make all those sufferings which threaten to destroy the positive meaning of a person’s life meaningful through positive defeat. How could God do it? So far as I can see, only by integrating participation in horrendous evils into a person’s relationship with God. Possible dimensions of integration are charted by Christian soteriology. I pause here to sketch three. (i) First, because God in Christ participated in horrendous evil through His passion and death, human experience ofhorrors can be a means of identifying with Christ, either through sympathetic identification (in which each person suffers his/her own pains, but their similarity enables each to know what it is like for the other) or through mystical identification (in which the created person is supposed literally to experience a share of Christ’s pain). (ii) Julian of Norwich’s description of heavenly welcome suggests the possible defeat of horrendous evil through divine gratitude. According to Julian, before the elect have a chance to thank God for all He has done for them, God will say, ‘Thank you for all your suffering, the suffering of your youth.’ She says that the creature’s experience of divine gratitude will bring such full and unend-

255

MARILYN McCORD ADAMS

ing joy as could not be merited by the whole sea of human pain and suffering throughout the ages. (iii) A third idea identifies temporal suffering itself with a vision into the inner life of God, and can be developed several ways. Perhaps, contrary to medieval theology, God is not impassible, but rather has matched capacities for joy and for suffering. Perhaps, as the Heidelberg catechism suggests, God responds to human sin and the sufferings of Christ with an agony beyond human conception. Alternatively, the inner life of God may be, strictly speaking and in and of itself, beyond both joy and sorrow. But, just as (according to Rudolf Otto) humans experience divine presence now as tremendum (with deep dread and anxiety), now as fascinans (with ineffable attraction), so perhaps our deepest suffering as much as our highest joys may themselves be direct visions into the inner life of God, imperfect but somehow less obscure in proportion to their intensity. And ifa faceto-face vision of God is a good for humans incommensurate with any non-transcendent goods or ills, so any vision of God (including horrendous suffering) would have a good aspect in so far as it is a vision of God (even if it has an evil aspect in so far as it is horrendous suffering). For the most part, horrors are not recognized as experiences of God (any more than the city slicker recognizes his visual image of a brown patch as a vision of Beulah the cow in the distance). But, Christian mysticism might claim, at least from the post-mortem perspective of the beatific vision, such sufferings will be seen for what they were, and retrospectively no one will wish away any intimate encounters with God from his/her lifehistory in this world. The created person’s experience ofthe beatific vision together with his/her knowledge that intimate divine presence stretched back over his/her ante-mortem life and reached down into the depths ofhis / her worst suffering, would provide retrospective comfort independent of comprehension of the reasons-why akin to the two-year-old’s assurance ofits mother’s love. Taking this third approach, Christians would not need to com256

mit themselves about what in any event we do not know: namely, whether we will (like the two-year-old) ever grow up enough to understand the reasons why God permits our participation in horrendous evils. For by contrast with the best of earthly mothers, such divine intimacy is an incommensurate good and would cancel out for the creature any need to know why.

5

Conclusion

The worst evils demand to be defeated by the best goods. Horrendous evils can be overcome only by the goodness of God. Relative to human nature, participation in horrendous evils and loving intimacy with God are alike disproportionate: for the former threatens to engulf the good in an individual human life with evil, while the latter guarantees the reverse engulfment of evil by good. Relative to one another, there is also disproportion, because the good that God #s, and intimate rela-

tionship with Him, is incommensurate with created goods and evils alike. Because intimacy with God so outscales relations (good or bad) with any creatures, integration into the human person’s relationship with God confers significant meaning and positive value even on horrendous suffering. This result coheres with basic Christian intuition: that the powers of darkness are stronger than humans, but they are no match for God! Standard generic and global solutions have for the most part tried to operate within the territory common to believer and unbeliever, within the confines of religion-neutral value theory. Many discussions reflect the hope that substitute attribute-analyses, candidate reasons-why, and/or defeaters could issue out of values shared by believers and unbelievers alike. And some virtually make this a requirement on an adequate solution. Mackie knew better how to distinguish the many charges that may be levelled against religion. Just as philosophers may or may not find the existence of God plausible, so they may be vari-

HORRENDOUS

ously attracted or repelled by Christian values of grace and redemptive sacrifice. But agreement on truth-value is not necessary to consensus on internal consistency. My contention has been that it is not only legitimate, but, given horrendous evils, necessary for Christians to dip into their richer store of valuables to exhibit the consistency of (1) and (2). I would go one step further: assuming the pragmatic and/or moral (I would prefer to say, broadly speaking, religious) importance of believing that (one’s own) human life is worth living, the ability of Christianity to exhibit how this could be so despite human vulnerability to horrendous evil, constitutes a pragmatic/ moral/religious consideration in its favour, relative to value schemes that do not.

Notes 1

J. L. Mackie, ‘Evil and Omnipotence’, Mind, /64 (1955): repr. in Nelson Pike (ed.), God and Evil (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1964). pp. 46-60. 2 Ibid., p. 47. 3 Marilyn McCord Adams. ‘Problems of Evil: More Advice to Christian Philosophers’, Fazth and Philosophy (April 1988), pp. 121-43. 4 Mackie, ‘Evil and Ommpotence’, pp. 46-7

5

30

(emphasis mine). Roderick Chisholm, ‘The Defeat of Good and

Evil,’ in The Problem of Evil, eds Marilyn

6

To me, the most troublesome weakness in

what I have said lies in the area of conceptual under-development. The contention that God suffered in Christ or that one person can experience another’s pain requires detailed analysis and articulation in metaphysics and philosophy of mind. I have shouldered some of this burden elsewhere, but its full discharge is well beyond the scope of this paper.

EVILS AND THE GOODNESS OF GOD

7

8

McCord Adams and Robert M. Adams (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 5368. ‘Hume on Evil’, Philosophical Review, 72 (1963), pp. 180-97; reprinted in Pike (ed.), God and Evil, p. 88. Alvin Plantinga, ‘Self-Profile’, in James E. Tomberlin and Peter van Inwagen (eds), Profiles: Alvin Plantinga (Dordrecht, Boston, Mass., and Lancaster, Pa.: Reidel, 1985), Door Alvin Plantinga. ‘Self-Profile’, pp. 34-5.

The Theology of Liberation in Africa*

Bishop Desmond Tutu The Genesis of Liberation

Theology in Africa I was asked toward the end oflast year to prepare a paper for this conference of Third World *From African Theology en Route: Papers from the Pan-African Conference of Third World Theologians, December 17-23, 1977, Accra, Ghana, ed. Kofi AppiahKubi and Sergio Torres (New York: Orbis Books,

1979), pp. 162-8. Reprinted with permission.

theologians. Had I done my paper at that time, I might have been able to write with reasonable detachment and the objectivity much loved by academics. But this I can no longer do with any integrity. Why? The reason is that I write toward the end of 1977 in Southern Africa, in the aftermath of the death of Steve Biko in detention. I write after the extraordinary finding of the Chief Magistrate of Pretoria at the inquest on Steve’s death that though he died of serious brain damage, no one was 257

BISHOP DESMOND TUTU

to blame for this death. I write in the wake of a massive security clampdown in the Republic of South Africa when several organizations, for example the Black People’s Convention, the Black Parents Association, and even the Christian Institute, have been banned and sev-

eral individuals have either been detained without trial or banned — and these were organizations and persons who were still working for a reasonably peaceful solution to the crisis in Southern Africa. I write after the major black newspaper in the Republic of South Africa, The World, has been banned. I write after the National Party, led by B.J. Vorster, has been returned to power with a considerably increased majority, and he has already declared that there will be no significant changes in the policies of his government. And I write too after the security forces of Ian Smith have recently killed over a thousand so-called terrorists (including women and children) in Mozambique. To write with an academic detachment and objectivity might please members of certain Senior Common Rooms, but it would be to discredit theology as the pastime of those who would fiddle while their Rome was burning. This is the Sztz-1m-Leben of this paper, and it gives us an opportunity to realize more clearly the genesis and nature of liberation theology. Liberation theology more than any other kind of theology issues out of the crucible of human suffering and anguish. It happens because people cry out, “Oh, God, how long?” “Oh, God, but why?” And so liberation theology is in a sense really a theodicy. It seeks to justify God and the ways of God to a downtrodden and perplexed people so that they can be inspired to do something about their lot. Those who suffer so grievously have not usually doubted that there is a God. They have not even doubted that such a God was a living God, a powerful God, and a God of righteousness and goodness. It is precisely because they have believed that their perplexity has arisen: if they had not believed, there would be no need of a theodicy. If they be-

lieved that God was neither good, nor loving, 258

nor powerful then there would be no problem. There would just be the brute fact of their suffering forming part of the givenness of a truly harsh reality. The cause of bewilderment is not the traditional form of the problem of evil, i.e. “Why is there suffering and evil in the universe of a good God?” No, the burning question is not “Why is there suffering?” but the more immediately pressing one of “Why do we suffer so?” “Why does suffering seem to single out us blacks to be the victims of a racism gone mad?” Another way of putting the same anguished cry is, “God, on whose side are you?” or even more disturbingly for some people, “God, are you black or white?” All liberation theology stems from trying to make sense of human suffering when those who suffer are the victims of organized oppression and exploitation, when they are emasculated and treated as less than what they are: human persons created in the image of the Triune God, redeemed by the one Savior Jesus Christ and sanctified by the Holy Paraclete. This is the genesis of all liberation theology and so also of black theology, which is a theology of liberation in Africa. Black theology has occurred mainly in Southern Africa, where blacks have had their noses rubbed in the dust by white racism, depersonalizing them to the extent that they have — blasphemy ofblasphemies — come to doubt the reality of their own personhood and humanity. They have often come to believe that the denigration of their humanity by those who oppress them is the truth about themselves. Black theology as a theology of liberation has become part of the struggle of a people for their liberation. For this reason it has usually been proscribed or, at least, regarded with suspicion by the powers that be. It has become part of the black consciousness movement, which is concerned with the evangelical aim of awakening in blacks a sense of their intrinsic worth as children of God. In Southern Africa, black theology was inspired by its North American counterpart, which existed for so long implicitly in the Negro spirituals

THE THEOLOGY OF LIBERATION IN AFRICA

that gave heart to black slaves in the heavy days of their bondage and which became more articulate and explicit during the civil rights campaign. It was inspired too by the knowledge that so much of Africa had thrown off the shackles of colonialism. Liberation theology takes very seriously the sociopolitical dimensions of reality as those which, to a large extent, determine the quality not only of secular but also of religious life. Liberation theology dismisses the dichotomy of the secular and the sacred as thoroughly unincarnational and irreligious.

The Nature and Style of Liberation Theology When the Jews were in exile in Babylon, most of them were depressed and dejected. They were disillusioned with their God who had proved to be less powerful than the Babylonian deities, since for a people to be defeated meant in the theology of those days that their God had been worsted by that of their foes. They saw around them in the ziggurats and other structures and statues impressive monuments to the triumphant gods of Babylonian religion. The Jews had been proved very small indeed. At such a ghastly hour in the history of Israel a group belonging to what is called the Priestly School produced a magnificent hymn to creation, a paean of praise to God the Creator, in the form of the “P” account of creation in Genesis 1-24. It is not to devalue this splendid piece of theologizing to describe it as a theological propaganda tract designed to awaken in the exiled Jews a renewed faith in

their God as so transcendent that his mere fiat was sufficient to bring the universe into being. In the Babylonian creation narrative, Emma

Elish, creation had to come

about

through the bloody battle between Marduk and Tiamat. But now the Jews could say, “Our God just speaks, and things happen, so there, ha! ha!” This is an outstanding example of how theology is done in the Bible: almost always in

response to the needs of a specific set of circumstances. We could multiply the examples. In the Bible theologizing never happens in a vacuum; much less is it the creation of someone who sits in splendid academic isolation and detachment. When the community was

forgetting the universalism implicit in the divine promise to Abraham (Genesis 12: 1-3) because of the zealous but necessary teachings of an Ezra or a Nehemiah or the Rechabites that Israel was a peculiar people, a “Ruth” or a “Jonah” was written to counter-

act this rigid particularism. When Christian Jews were agitated about whether they should still be circumcised, then Paul had to write “Galatians.” Most of the Bible is technically referred to as “occasional” because it is “occasioned” by particular circumstances and it addresses those circumstances. The theology we find in the Bible is thus an engaged, an involved theology which is also existential (for it is concerned with the existence of a specific, particular group of believers). This is the biblical paradigm that liberation theology has followed meticulously. It speaks out of and into a specific situation, in this case,

the situation of political oppression and injustice, of social and economic exploitation of a specific group of believers. It seeks to make sense of their suffering in relation to what God has done, is doing, and will do. The ultimate reference point is the man Jesus who is the Word of God par excellence. Liberation theology seeks to discover what sort of God we have to deal with and whether we can go on believing in him with any sort of integrity. More than most theologies, it accepts that there can be no final theology, that all theology is provisional and cannot lay claim to a universal validity, for any relevant theology must accept the scandal of its particularity, which, after all, is the price of its relevance. And no theology can easily transcend the limitations and conditioned-ness of those who theologize. Too many of the unseemly controversies that scar the history of the church have happened because one kind of theologizing has pretended to a finality that it could 259

BISHOP DESMOND TUTU

not have. There is no one true way of theologizing. Even in the Bible there is a rich diversity of theologies, all existing cheek by jowl, theologies that may complement one another, though they also may be quite incompatible. Liberation theology claims it is part of this rich diversity; it glories in its limitations and is prepared to leave the stage to its successors once it feels it has fulfilled its task. There are far too many theologies around that have outlived their usefulness, and we ought to be ruthless in getting rid of the accumulations of centuries in our attic. There must be different theologies since all of us apprehend God and the things of God differently; we express those apprehensions differently. Theology will change with the changing circumstances if it issues out of and addresses a particular set of circumstances, if it answers specific questions. Good answers for today will be useless tomorrow because tomorrow’s questions will be different. Of course, we will have to learn from yesterday’s questions and answers because in the theological enterprise it is futile and wasteful to try to start de novo. But we should not easily canonize the determinations of yesteryear and so make the awful mistake of identifying theology with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Theology is temporal, the Gospel is eternal. Our understanding of that Gospel, of that divine revelation, will change constantly; that is what theology is about.

The Context of Liberation

Theology By the token of particularity, certain parts of the biblical message will be more apt for certain situations than for others. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is many-splendored. Who would doubt that in hate-filled Ulster the aspect of the Gospel that is most apt is reconciliation for those estranged factions? For the victims of oppression and injustice it is important for them to hear that the God they worship is the liberator God of the Exodus who led a rabble 260

of slaves out of bondage into glorious freedom. Oppressed peoples must hear that, according to the Bible, this God is always on the side of the downtrodden. He is so graciously on their side not because they are more virtuous and better than their oppressors, but solely and simply because they are oppressed; he is that kind of aGod. So to the anguished cry, “God, on whose side are you?” we say emphatically, “God is on your side,” not as some jingoistic national deity who says “my people right or wrong,” but as one who saves and yet also judges those whom he saves. God is compassionate yet the holy one who demands that those whom he saves must also be holy. God saves froma death-dealing situation fora life-giving situation. Those whom God has saved must become the servants of others, for they are saved ultimately not for their self-aggrandizement or self-glorification, but so they may bring others to a saving knowledge of God. Ultimately God saves the oppressed for the sake of their oppressors. It has often sounded like so much sloganeering to say that oppression and injustice dehumanize both the victims and the perpetrators of the unjust system and that liberation theology is concerned as much for the liberation of the oppressors as of the oppressed. But who can doubt that this must be true when Jimmy Kruger, the South African Minister of Justice and of Police, could

say of the death of Steve Biko: “It cold.” What has happened to the of a person who can say something about the death of a fellow human

leaves me humanity so callous being?

God in Liberation Theology Liberation theology has underscored that God is concerned for the liberation of oppressed victims; hence its stress on the Exodus-libera-

tion biblical themes. But this is not the only aspect of the biblical and Christian teaching that is crucial in liberation theology. To the victims of a system of rampant in-

THE THEOLOGY OF LIBERATION IN AFRICA

justice it is equally important to realize that God is also the God of power, not only the God who will lead them to freedom. He is a God in charge in his universe. He is not impotent despite all appearances to the contrary, despite the fact that evil and injustice seem to be on the ascendant. He is Lord, the

all-ruler of the book of Daniel and the Revelation of St John the Divine. Nothing that happens can ever catch him off guard. He is not like the gods of the prophets of Baalwhom Elijah mocked so cruelly. He has not fallen asleep, or gone on a journey, or turned aside to relieve himselfso that our cries rise into an empty void; our cries do not fall on deaf or unheeding ears. No, our God has heard and seen our affliction and has come down to deliver us. And he is strong to save. Our people here in Southern Africa need to hear this. Yes, after the events I referred to at the beginning of this paper, our people were stunned into a despair and helplessness, and it is of the utmost importance for liberation theology to declare loud and clear that God is a God of hope. “Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to her.” Yes, the church must uphold the faith and hope of God’s people in these dark days when there seems to be little reason for hope. Liberation theology also depicts God as a God of compassion. Surely God can’t remain aloof and untouched by our suffering as some Aristotelian unmoved mover. The Bible assures us that God is really like a nursing mother in his tender concern for his people who suffer. He longs after us, even when we are wayward, waiting for our return like the father of the prodigal waits for the return of his son. He is like a mother hen who would collect her young under the shadow of her wings, and in Jesus Christ he weeps over a beloved city. Yes, God weeps with and for us, because our God suffers the exquisite pain of a dying God. Those who would scorn liberation theology often think that its adherents are naive in the extreme because they think that a change for the better in political and economic cir-

cumstances will necessarily usher in the golden age. This is a misreading of liberation theology. Liberation theologians have too much evidence that the removal of one oppressor often means replacement by another; yesterday’s victim quite rapidly becomes today’s dictator. Liberation theologians know only too well the recalcitrance of human nature and so accept the traditional doctrines of the fall and original sin, but they also know that God has provided the remedy in Jesus Christ.

The Challenge of Liberation Theology Liberation theology is no mere intellectual exercise, no mere cerebral enterprise, for it deals with matters of life and death for those on whose behalf it is being done. Liberation theology must enable the victims of oppression to assert their God-given personhood and humanity and must help exorcize from them the awful sense of self-hatred and self-disgust which are the ghastly consequences of oppression. Then these victims will not cry out for the flesh pots of their days of bondage when they stand face to face with the demanding responsibilities of their freedom. Liberation theology must help them enter into their glorious heritage as the children of God who made them free for freedom. Liberation theology challenges those whom it addresses not to be consumed by hatred, self-pity, and bitterness, for these are as dehumanizing as the oppression that caused them. While calling them to freedom, the Gospel of Jesus Christ also calls to limitless forgiveness, not as a spineless acceptance of suffering but as participation in the divine economy of salvation. This is when the oppressed turn the tables; it is when they make up what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ. Liberation theology exposes itself to critical scrutiny, but it must not be judged by some arbitrary, a priori criteria of an imagined intellectual respectability. Liberation theology would wish to be numbered among other the-

261

BISHOP DESMOND TUTU

ologies that have found acceptance in the rich Christian heritage. Yet we who do liberation theology believe we are engaged in something too urgent to have to wait for the approbation of the West or ofthose who would blindly follow western standards of acceptability and play western games using western rules. No, liberation theology must be judged by whether it is biblical, by whether it is consistent with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, by whether it is guilty of self-contradiction, and by whether it works. If it fails the test according to these criteria then it deserves to be condemned roundly for it will be offering God’s suffering people palliatives rather than effective remedies. Liberation theology becomes part of apeople’s struggle for liberation; it tries to help victims of oppression to assert their humanity and so look the other chap in the eye and speak face to face without shuffling their feet and apologizing for their black existence. Those who speak about justice and sharing the resources of the earth more equitably are often accused by certain “religious” persons of being political and exhorted to pray about these things. We who do liberation theology believe such exhortation to be arrogant in the extreme for it presumes that we have not first

262

prayed. We contend that we too have had a real encounter with Jesus Christ in prayer, meditation, Bible study, and the sacraments,

and that the imperatives of this encounter constrain us to speak and to act as we do. It is not our politics but our faith that inspires us. Liberation theology challenges other theologies to examine whether they are biblical in the sense in which liberation theology has been shown to be biblical. Other theologies are challenged to become more truly incarnational by being concerned for the whole person, body and soul. They are called upon to glory in their built-in obsolescence, not to cry out for a permanence and a universal validity that properly belong only to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Liberation theology challenges churches everywhere to be true to their calling to exercise a prophetic ministry in speaking up for the dumb, the voiceless, for those too weak to speak up for themselves, to oppose oppression, injustice, corruption, and evil wherever

these may be found. This could be a call to martyrdom, but if God be for us who can be against us? Let God arise and let his enemies be scattered.

PAKT

FOUR

EET Hye FocaFea Fel ed6astbg|) Olea SON ORE GOES Btjee elPleatet

Introduction

Evidentialism

31 32

The Ethics of Belief WILLIAM CLIFFORD Itis Wrong, Everywhere, Always, and for Anyone, to Believe Anything upon Insufficient Evidence PETER VAN INWAGEN

Religious Belief as Basic 33

Warranted Beliefin God ALVIN PLANTINGA

Pascal’s Wager

34 35

36

From Pensées BLAISE PASCAL The Recombinant DNA Debate: a Difficulty for PascalianStyle Wagering STEPHEN P. STICH A Central Theistic Argument GEORGE N. SCHLESINGER

oa ‘

7

nf

fous

on

ry

Te?

IPH -

ae

;

-

ei

we

hoes

Se

ee

er ey

Sed ty

« wtenezla eal Dt- tet = Py

ire

sie

mint |qmaae

™

een

of Lie

eeu

ihact o

-

i

rf iL

opined 7

hwetee sity leet deer tee,

fg

~P mains ‘2 al eee ee

gre! teed éarwent erie elvis

Caner)

ee

eae

iw

= DP

BAe

NOW

es

ash

po

ae

ry ee

TAI THe OP — SS eUOlass ernoem 439 »

Om

Cy

nite

Rs oe

Ties

k

etx ipo

Wren

fi cea 7 Ong,

nade ~—

im os

. ao

Dh

4

BRew ty sage

gh

peje

oyna

Ve ih iter

s-|

he £x@.. m6a> Ae

Tinea

an

@e@

ia

(hia

BD ORATD-y)

“Ai

» 7

=

Vote

le

Ciewasl

¥

we

Cees

fe | A

mur ae

ee

Lina

ad ah) ¥

ie

a

af

—=

oo Nai hoe

Shami aa ae

ia

OP

aime SPF ee

—

worl

rere 2

_

FE

Sgr A4

7

~

wage ahene’

enn rea 88

a

AT athtet 2 AviCt bra

yigaltset

a,

gonsye st. ene

.

sayyse

errs.

9a

sete

ae «

O(c? ahaa pston hd. 88 se

Ve

0.

wight.

pee

igs bt Tele bonisitW

Yay Aatt kod

Mu

Nika ee ernie “9 )aT

|

; ii tah

ee

es ié Py > tr 9 oneal

> anand vl

:

»

"ye

“Sig j adie rar

panies indy. pe chvwi yn dE

TPL

:

aw ph

ria ores

ne

pig ia myer reine

en, oe

goa,

SL

7

# a

cow gy

here, i i

~

We ‘qeap

eine Grane

ai

thigh oo 9

Abas Ji

are

* at

Geeitet how

Pe ewetges2e

S46 wider

no

og

Crys

gir ar i

a

Introduction

After having examined the arguments for and against God’s existence in the previous two Parts, many readers will find themselves in one of three epistemic positions: (1)

(2)

(3)

one will find the arguments (or at least one of the arguments) for God’s existence decisive (because it succeeds as a proofor provides evidence which overwhelms any contrary evidence); one will find the arguments (or at least one of the arguments) against God’s existence decisive (because it succeeds as a proof or provides evidence which overwhelms any contrary evidence); or one will find that the arguments do not give enough evidence to move us one way or the other (because they are all bad or because there are roughly equally strong arguments on both sides).

The Readings in this Part address the question of what one can reasonably believe in each of these three cases. For the most part, one might think that it is clear what those in each position should believe. Those in (1) should believe that God exists, those in (2) should disbelieve in God’s existence, and those in position (3) should simply withhold belief. On this view, the relationship of reason to religious belief might be described in the way William Clifford does in the first essay. Clifford defends a position known as “evidentialism.” According to the evidentalist, it is irrational to hold any belief unless we have “sufficient evidence” for it. Unless we govern our beliefs in this way, Clifford argues, we will

not only end up holding beliefs that might lead to others being harmed, we will also make ourselves into credulous people who hold beliefs indiscriminately and thus irrationally. Peter van Inwagen claims that if we accept the evidentialist requirement for rational be-

lief, then it seems that we will be required to reject any belief which does not have enough evidence in its favor to convince all reasonable, sound-minded people who consider that evidence. But if we were to adopt this requirement, we will render irrational all sorts of beliefs about which apparently reasonable and well-informed people disagree. So, for example, accepting this principle would, it appears, require that we give up at least all of our philosophical and political beliefs. But this seems to be a high price to pay. One could, on the other hand, argue that religious belief should be subject to a higher standard so that omly zt, and not philosophical and political beliefs, should be held to the evidentialist’s standard. But it is hard to see why it is not simply arbitrary to hold religious beliefs to such a uniquely high standard. As a result, we need to surrender the strong evidentialist position or admit that it places a heavy burden on our beliefs across the board. If van Inwagen’s essay convinces us that the evidentialist standard is an unreasonably high one, we might wonder whether the person described in position (3) above might still reasonably believe in God, even in the absence of compelling arguments in favor of God’s existence. But how, we might ask, could it be reasonable to hold beliefs, religious or otherwise, without compelling arguments for those beliefs? We might think of the next essay, by Alvin Plantinga, as providing an answer to this question. In other works, Plantinga has pointed out that we have two different kinds of justified beliefs: basic and non-basic. Basic beliefs are those which do not require arguments or evidence (as we normally understand those terms) in their favor in order for them to be rationally accepted. Other beliefs, however, are non-basic and these, as you might expect, do require evidence or argument if they are to be 265

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION: THE BIG QUESTIONS

rationally accepted. A juror’s belief that a defendant is guilty would count as a non-basic belief and would thus require evidence if the juror was to hold the belief justifiably. But many other beliefs, such as the belief that there is a computer in front of me, are not like this. My belief in the computer’s existence is not based on any argument (in fact, I can’t construct a good argument for the existence of the computer even when I am led to pause and seek for one). Instead, I simply find myself having an experience of a certain sort, an experience which immediately leads to my forming the belief “there is a computer in front of me.” Since most of us form a great many of our beliefs in just this way, and we think that doing so is rational and justified, we must admit that there are some beliefs we hold rationally, but for which we lack argument or evidence. Still, we have something which leads us to these beliefs, even if it is not evidence and argument. That is, something “grounds” my belief, and in the case of my believing that there is a computer in front of me, it is my sensory (in this case, visual) experience of the computer which grounds this belief. In the essay contained here, Plantinga argues that the religious believer can rationally and justifiably hold his or her religious belief as a basic belief. If there are “grounds” for religious belief, as Plantinga claims there are here (and as Alston claims there are in his essay at Reading 18 — though notice that Plantinga distinguishes his view from Alston’s), then it looks as if the religious believer can hold to religious belief justifiably, even if he or she is in position (3) above. It is worth noting two further points about the essay by Plantinga. First, if one adopts his view, it may be justifiable to hold religious beliefs even if one is in position (2). The reason is that one might take the grounds favoring the religious beliefs as having more epistemic weight than the argument or evidence against God’s existence. To see this, consider the following illustration. The police, let’s imagine, have overwhelming evidence that I committed a burglary (I was near the scene, I had

266

strong motive, maybe some of the stolen goods are found in my house, an eyewitness identifies me as the one leaving the house with the stolen items, etc.). This, we might think, counts as very powerful evidence for any reasonable person that I committed the crime. None the less, J might still justifiably believe that I did not commit it if I quite clearly remember being out of the city that day. In this case my basic belief, grounded in my memory, has sufficient weight for me to negate the force of the other “evidence.” The grounds of religious belief that Plantinga appeals to here might likewise be sufficiently powerful for the believer to overcome even powerful evidence against the existence of God (such as some think is provided by the existence of evil). Second, Plantinga’s position provides a framework for thinking about the relationship of “faith and reason” for the ordinary religious believer. Since most religious believers lack sophisticated arguments and evidence in favor of theistic belief, religious belief would be largely unjustified if, for example, evidentialism were true. If, however, Plantinga’s view is correct, even religious believers who are not aware of arguments or evidence in favor of religious belief might still be able to hold their beliefs justifiably, since it is these “grounds” which make their belief justified. In the final section we turn to examine a different strategy one might adopt in thinking about the relationship of reason to religious belief. The seventeenth-century French philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal had a number of friends who, like many Parisians of his time, spent a great deal of their recreational time in gambling parlors. Pascal sought to assist his friends in their betting endeavors by doing some seminal work in probability theory and game theory. One of the things Pascal realized in the course of this work was that it is reasonable to adopt certain beliefs even when the evidence against your beliefisstronger than the evidence in favor of it. For example, if I have the opportunity to buy two lottery tickets, each costing a dollar, one of which pays 1 million dollars but which

INTRODUCTION TO PART FOUR

has only a 1 in 100 chance of being a winner, the other of which pays 5 dollars but has a 1 in 5 chance of winning, the reasonable thing for me to do would be to purchase the potential million dollar winner. The reason is that,

even though my chances of winning are lower, laying my bets this way will maximize my gain in the long run. Thus, it is more reasonable for me to believe and act as if the potential million dollar ticket will win, even though there is greater evidence that another ticket will be the winner. In other words, Pascal argues that it is at least sometimes rational to consider “pragmatic” issues when deciding what to believe. Pascal, in his famous “wager,” attempts to argue that the same standards of rationality apply in the case of religious belief. Even if the probability of theism is no higher (and maybe even lower) than that of atheism, the “payoff” if theism is true is so vastly higher that the rational course of action is to believe in God. In a brief selection, Stephen Stich argues against this wager by arguing that adopting such pragmatic strategies would lead us, for example, to avoid doing any scientific experiments which had even the smallest chance of yielding catastrophic results. Even ifthese experiments present a vanishingly small chance of yielding such results, this would make many of these experiments irrational according to Pascal’s line of reasoning, and this is clearly an improper conclusion. We can apply this result more generally, and thus to Pascal’s wager, arguing that the reasoning employed in the wager likewise fails when the probabilities in favor of one of the alternatives, in this case theism, are very, very low. In the final selection, George Schlesinger provides a defense of Pascal’s wager against some of the most powerful criticisms raised against it. The first is that such an argument seems inappropriate, especially in a religious context, since the fundamental motivations involved are self-interested and self-serving. Second is the “many gods” objection which claims that since many contenders for our al-

legiance promise infinite rewards, the wager would recommend that we adopt a number of incompatible religious beliefs. The third objection is that since there is some small probability that I will come to believe in God without trying, and that such belief would still yield infinite reward, wager-style reasoning could be seen as recommending that I simply ignore religious beliefs and go about my business. Schlesinger argues that each of these criticisms can be defeated and that the wager is thus successful. Further Reading For further discussions of evidentialism and the relation of evidence to the rationality of religious belief, the following sources are especially worth consulting: Delaney, C. F. (ed.) Rationality and Religious Belief (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1978). Hoitenga, D., From Plato to Plantinga: an Introduction to Reformed Epistemology (Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1983). Plantinga, Alvin, Warranted Christian Belief

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming). ——,, and Nicholas Wolterstorff (eds), Faith and Rationality (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983). Swinburne, Richard, Faith and Reason (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981). Zagzebski, Linda, Rational Faith: Catholic Responses to Reformed Epistemology (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993). For further reading on Pascal’s wager, the following sources are especially worth consulting: Jordan, Jeff, Gambling on God: Essays on Pascal’s Wager (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1994). Lycan, William, and George Schlesinger, “You Bet Your Life: Pascal’s Wager Defended,” in Reason and Responsibility, 7th edn, ed. Joel Feinberg (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1989). 267

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION: THE BIG QUESTIONS

Morris, Thomas V., “Pascalian Wagering,”

time Religion (Oxford: Oxford University

Ind.: University of Notre Dame

Rress9SS).

1989).

268

Schlesinger, George, New Perspectives on Old-

Anselmian Explorations (Notre Dame, Press,

Evidentialism

31

The Ethics of Belief*

William Clifford The Duty of Inquiry A shipowner was about to send to sea an emigrant ship. He knew that she was old, and not over-well built at the first; that she had

when she went down in mid-ocean and told no tales. What shall we say of him? Surely this, that he was verily guilty ofthe death of those men. It is admitted that he did sincerely believe in the soundness ofhis ship; but the sincerity of his conviction can in no wise help him, because he had no right to believe on such evidence as was before him He had acquired his belief not by honestly earning it in patient investigation, but by stifling his doubts. And although in the end he may have felt so sure

seen many seas and climes, and often had needed repairs. Doubts had been suggested to him that possibly she was not seaworthy. These doubts preyed upon his mind and made him unhappy; he thought that perhaps he ought to have her thoroughly overhauled and refitted, even though this should put him to great expense. Before the ship sailed, however, he succeeded in overcoming these melancholy reflections. He said to himself that she had gone safely through so many voyages and weathered so many storms that it was idle to suppose she would not come safely home from this trip also. He would put his trust in Providence, which could hardly fail to protect all these unhappy families that were leaving their fatherland to seek for better times elsewhere. He would dismiss from his mind all ungenerous suspicions about the honesty of builders and contractors. In such ways he acquired a sincere and comfortable conviction that his vessel was thoroughly safe and seaworthy; he watched her departure with a light

about it that he could not think otherwise, yet inasmuch as he had knowingly and willingly worked himself into that frame of mind, he must be held responsible for it. Let us alter the case a little, and suppose that the ship was not unsound after all; that she made her voyage safely, and many others after it. Will that diminish the guilt of her owner? Not one jot. When an action is once done, it is right or wrong for ever; no accidental failure of its good or evil fruits can possibly alter that. The man would not have been innocent, he would only have been not found out. The question of right or wrong has to do with the origin ofhis belief, not the matter of it; not what it was, but how he got it; not

heart, and benevolent wishes for the success

whether it turned out to be true or false, but

of the exiles in their strange new home that was to be; and he got his insurance money

whether he had a right to believe on such evidence as was before him. There was once an island in which some of the inhabitants professed a religion teaching neither the doctrine oforiginal sin nor that of eternal punishment. A suspicion got abroad

* From William Kingdon Clifford, Lectures and Essays (New York: Macmillan, 1901), pp. 163-76.

269

WILLIAM CLIFFORD that the professors of this religion had made use of unfair means to get their doctrines taught to children. They were accused of wresting the laws of their country in such a way as to remove children from the care of their natural and legal guardians; and even of stealing them away and keeping them concealed from their friends and relations. A certain number of men formed themselves into a society for the purpose of agitating the public about this matter. They published grave accusations against individual citizens of the highest position and character, and did all in their power to injure these citizens in the exercise of their professions. So great was the noise they made that a Commission was appointed to investigate the facts; but after the Commission had carefully inquired into all the evidence that could be got, it appeared that the accused were innocent. Not only had they been accused on insufficient evidence, but the

evidence of their innocence was such as the agitators might easily have obtained, if they had attempted a fair inquiry. After these disclosures the inhabitants of that country looked upon the members of the agitating society, not only as persons whose judgement was to be distrusted, but also as no longer to be counted honourable men. For although they had sincerely and conscientiously believed in the charges they had made, yet they had no right to believe on such evidence as was before them. Their sincere convictions, instead of being honestly earned by patient inquiring, were stolen by listening to the voice of prejudice and passion. Let us vary this case also, and suppose, other things remaining as before, that a still more accurate investigation proved the accused to have been really guilty. Would this make any difference in the guilt of the accusers? Clearly not; the question is not whether their belief was true or false, but whether they entertained it on wrong grounds. They would no doubt say, ‘Now you see that we were right after all; next time perhaps you will believe us.’ And they might be believed, but they would not thereby become honourable men. They would

270

not be innocent, they would only be not found out. Every one of them, if he chose to examine himself in foro conscientiae, would know that he had acquired and nourished a belief, when he had no right to believe on such evidence as was before him; and therein he would

know that he had done a wrong thing. It may be said, however, that in both of

these supposed cases it is not the belief which is judged to be wrong, but the action following upon it. The shipowner might say, ‘I am perfectly certain that my ship is sound, but still I feel it my duty to have her examined, before trusting the lives of so many people to her.’ And it might be said to the agitator, ‘However convinced you were of the justice of your cause and the truth of your convictions, you ought not to have made a public

attack upon any man’s character until you had examined the evidence on both sides with the utmost patience and care.’ In the first place, let us admit that, so far as it goes, this view of the case is right and necessary; right, because even when a man’s belief is so fixed that he cannot think otherwise, he still has a choice in regard to the action suggested by it, and so cannot escape the duty of investigating on the ground of the strength of his convictions; and necessary, because those who are not yet capable of controlling their feelings and thoughts must have a plain rule dealing with overt acts. But this being premised as necessary, it becomes clear that it is not sufficient, and that our previous judgment is required to supplement it. For it is not possible so to sever the belief from the action it suggests as to condemn the one without condemning the other. No man holding a strong belief on one side of aquestion, or even wishing to hold a belief on one side, can investigate it with such fairness and completeness as if he were really in doubt and unbiased; so that the existence ofa belief not founded on fair inquiry unfits a man for the performance of this necessary duty. Nor is that truly a belief at all which has not some influence upon the actions of him who holds it. He who truly believes that which

THE ETHICS OF BELIEF

prompts him to an action has looked upon the action to lust after it, he has committed it

already in his heart. Ifa belief is not realized immediately in open deeds, it is stored up for the guidance ofthe future. It goes to make a part of that aggregate of beliefs which is the link between sensation and action at every

believer, is ever actually insignificant or without its effect on the fate of mankind we have no choice but to extend our judgement to all cases of belief whatever.

Belief, that sacred

faculty which prompts the decisions of our will, and knits into harmonious working all the compacted energies of our being, is ours

moment of all our lives, and which is so or-

not for ourselves, but for humanity. It is rightly

ganized and compacted together that no part of it can be isolated from the rest, but every new addition modifies the structure of the whole. No real belief, however trifling and fragmentary it may seem, is ever truly insignificant; it prepares us to receive more of its like, confirms those which resembled it before, and weakens others; and so gradually it lays a stealthy train in our inmost thoughts, which may some day explode into overt action, and leave its stamp upon our character for ever. And no one man’s belief is in any case a private matter which concerns himself alone. Our lives are guided by that general conception of the course of things which has been created by society for social purposes. Our words, our phrases, our forms and processes and modes of thought, are common property, fashioned and perfected from age to age; an heirloom which every succeeding generation inherits as a precious deposit and a sacred trust

used on truths which have been established by long experience and waiting toil, and which have stood in the fierce light of free and fearless questioning. Then it helps to bind men

to be handed on to the next one, not un-

changed but enlarged and purified, with some clear marks ofits proper handiwork. Into this, for good or ill, is woven every belief of every man who has speech of his fellows. An awful privilege, and an awful responsibility, that we should help to create the world in which posterity will live. In the two supposed cases which have been considered, it has been judged wrong to believe on insufficient evidence, or to nourish belief by suppressing doubts and avoiding investigation. The reason of this judgement is not far to seek: it is that in both these cases the belief held by one man was of great importance to other men. But forasmuch as no belief held by one man, however seemingly trivial the belief, and however obscure the

together, and to strengthen and direct their common action. It is desecrated when given to unproved and unquestioned statements, for the solace and private pleasure of the believer; to add a tinsel splendour to the plain straight road of our life and display a bright mirage beyond it; or even to drown the common sorrows of our kind by a self-deception which allows them not only to cast down, but also to degrade us. Whoso would deserve well of his fellows in this matter will guard the purity of his belief with a very fanaticism of jealous care, lest at any time it should rest on an unworthy object, and catch a stain which can never be wiped away. It is not only the leader of men, statesman, philosopher, or poet, that owes this bounden duty to mankind. Every rustic who delivers in the village alehouse his slow, infrequent sentences, may help to kill or keep alive the fatal superstitions which clog his race. Every hardworked wife of an artisan may transmit to her children beliefs which shall knit society together, or rend it in pieces. No simplicity of mind, no obscurity of station, can escape the universal duty of questioning all that we believe. It is true that this duty is a hard one, and

the doubt which comes out of it is often a very bitter thing. It leaves us bare and powerless where we thought that we were safe and strong. To know all about anything is to know how to deal with it under all circumstances. We feel much happier and more secure when we think we know precisely what to do, no matter what happens, than when we have lost 271

WILLIAM CLIFFORD

our way and do not know where to turn. And ifwehave supposed ourselves to know all about anything, and to be capable of doing what is fit in regard to it, we naturally do not like to find that we are really ignorant and powerless, that we have to begin again at the beginning, and try to learn what the thing is and how it is to be dealt with — if indeed anything can be learnt about it. It is the sense of power attached to a sense of knowledge that makes men desirous of believing, and afraid of doubting. This sense of power is the highest and best of pleasures when the belief on which it is founded is a true belief, and has been fairly earned by investigation. For then we may justly feel that it is common property, and holds good for others as well as for ourselves. Then we may be glad, not that J have learned secrets by which I am safer and stronger, but that we men have got mastery over more of the world; and we shall be strong, not for ourselves, but in the name of Man and in his strength. But if the belief has been accepted on insufficient evidence, the pleasure is a stolen one. Not only does it deceive ourselves by giving us a sense of power which we do not really possess, but it is sinful, because it is stolen in defiance of our duty to mankind. That duty is to guard ourselves from such beliefs as from a pestilence, which may shortly master our own body and then spread to the rest of the town. What would be thought of one who, for the sake of a sweet fruit, should deliberately run the risk of bringing a plague upon his family and his neighbours? And, as in other such cases, it is not the risk only which has to be considered; for a bad action is always bad at the time when it is done, no matter what happens afterwards. Every time we let ourselves believe for unworthy reasons, we weaken our powers of self-control, of doubting, ofjudicially and fairly weighing evidence. We all suffer severely enough from the maintenance and support of false beliefs and the fatally wrong actions which they lead to, and the evil born when one such belief is entertained is great and wide. But a greater and wider evil arises when the creduAYE

lous character is maintained and supported, when a habit of believing for unworthy reasons is fostered and made permanent. If I steal money from any person, there may be no harm done by the mere transfer of possession; he may not feel the loss, or it may prevent him from using the money badly. But I cannot help doing this great wrong towards Man, that I make myself dishonest. What hurts society is not that it should lose its property, but that it should become a den of thieves; for then it must cease to be society. This is why we ought not to do evil that good may come; for at any rate this great evil has come, that we have done evil and are made wicked thereby. In like manner, if Ilet myself believe anything on insufficient evidence, there may be no great harm done by the mere belief; it may be true after all, or I may never have occasion to exhibit it in outward acts. But I cannot help doing this great wrong towards Man, that I make myself credulous. The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things, though that is great enough; but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them; for then it must sink back into savagery. The harm which is done by credulity in a man is not confined to the fostering ofa credulous character in others, and consequent support of false beliefs. Habitual want of care about what I believe leads to habitual want of care in others about the truth of what is told to me. Men speak the truth to one another when each reveres the truth in his own mind and in the other’s mind; but how shall my friend revere the truth in my mind when I myself am careless about it, when I believe things because I want to believe them, and because they are comforting and pleasant? Will he not learn to cry, ‘Peace,’ to me, when there

is no peace? By such a course I shall surround myself with a thick atmosphere of falsehood and fraud, and in that I must live. It may matter little to me, in my cloud-castle of sweet illusions and darling lies; but it matters much to Man that I have made my neighbours ready to deceive. The credulous man is father to the

IT IS WRONG TO BELIEVE UPON INSUFFICIENT EVIDENCE liar and the cheat; he lives in the bosom of

this his family, and it is no marvel if he should become even as they are. So closely are our duties knit together, that whoso shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all. To sum up: it is wrong always, everywhere, and for any one, to believe anything upon in-

sufficient evidence. If a man, holding a belief which he was taught in childhood or persuaded of afterwards, keeps down and pushes away any doubts which arise about it in his mind, purposely avoids the reading of books and the company of men that call in question or discuss it, and regards as impious those questions which cannot easily be asked without disturbing it — the life of that man is one long sin against mankind. If this judgement seems harsh when applied to those simple souls who have never known better, who have been brought up from the cradle with a horror of doubt, and taught that their eternal welfare depends on what they believe, then it leads to the very serious question, Who hath made Israel to sin?

A man may be a heretic in the truth; and if he believe things only because his pastor says so, or the assembly so determine, without knowing other reason, though his belief be true, yet the very truth he holds becomes his heresy. (Areopagitica)

And with Coleridge:

this

famous

aphorism

of

He who begins by loving Christianity better than Truth, will proceed by loving his own sect or Church better than Christianity, and end in loying himself better than all. (Azds to Reflection)

Inquiry into the evidence of a doctrine is not to be made once for all, and then taken as

finally settled. It is never lawful to stifle a doubt; for either it can be honestly answered by means of the inquiry already made, or else it proves that the inquiry was not complete. ‘But,’ says one, ‘I am a busy man; I have no time for the long course of study which would be necessary to make me in any degree a competent judge of certain question, or even able to understand the nature of the arguments.’ Then he should have no time to believe.

It may be permitted me to fortify this judgement with the sentence of Milton:

32

It is Wrong, Everywhere, Always, and for Anyone, to Believe Anything upon Insufficient Evidence*

Peter van Inwagen My title is a famous sentence from W. K. Clifford’s celebrated lecture, “The Ethics of Belief.” What I want to do is not so much to * From Faith, Freedom, and Rationality: Philosophy of Religion Today, ed. Jeff Jordan and Daniel HowardSnyder (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996), pp. 137-53. Reprinted with permission.

challenge (or to vindicate) the principle this sentence expresses as to examine what the consequences of attempting consistently to apply it in our lives would be. Various philosophers have attempted something that might be described in these words, and have argued that a strict adherence to the terms of the principle would lead to a chain of requests 273

PETER VAN INWAGEN

for further evidence that would terminate only in such presumably unanswerable questions as “What evidence have you for supposing that your sensory apparatus is reliable?,” or “Yes, but what considerations can you adduce in support of the hypothesis that the future w7/l resemble the past?”; and they have drawn the conclusion that anyone who accepts such propositions as that one’s sensory apparatus is reliable or that the future will resemble the past must do so in defiance of the principle. You will be relieved to learn that an investigation along these lines is not on the program tonight. I am not going to raise the question whether a strict adherence to the principle would land us in the one of those very abstract sorts of epistemological predicaments exemplified by uncertainty about the reliability of sense perception or induction. I shall be looking at consequences of accepting the principle that are much more concrete much closer to our concerns as epistemically responsible citizens — citizens not only of the body politic but of the community of philosophers. I shall, as I say, be concerned with Clifford’s sentence and the lecture that it epitomizes. But I am going to make my way to this topic by a rather winding path. Please bear with me for a bit. I begin my indirect approach to Clifford’s sentence by stating a fact about philosophy. Philosophers do not agree about anything to speak of. That is, it is not very usual for agreement among philosophers on any important philosophical issue to be describable as being, in a quite unambiguous sense, common. Oh, this philosopher may agree with that philosopher on many philosophical points; for that matter, if this philosopher is a former student of that philosopher, they may even agree on all philosophical points. But you don’t find universal or near-universal agreement about very many important theses or arguments in philosophy. Indeed, it would be hard to find an important philosophical thesis that, say, 95 percent of, say, American analytical philosophers born between 1930 and 1950 agreed about in, say, 1987. 274

And why not? How can it be that equally intelligent and well-trained philosophers can disagree about the freedom of the will or nominalism or the covering-law model of scientific explanation when each is aware of all of the arguments and distinctions and other relevant considerations that the others are aware of? How — and now I will drop a broad hint about where I am going — how can we philosophers possibly regard ourselves as justified in believing much of anything of philosophical significance in this embarrassing circumstance? How can I believe (as I do) that free will is incompatible with determinism or that unrealized possibilities are not physical objects or that human beings are not fourdimensional things extended in time as well as in space, when David Lewis — a philosopher of truly formidable intelligence and insight and ability — rejects these things I believe and is already aware of and understands perfectly every argument that I could produce in their defense? Well, I do believe these things, and I believe that Iam justified in believing them. And I am confident that I am right. But how can I take these positions? I don’t know. That is itselfaphilosophical question, and I have no firm opinion about its correct answer. I suppose my best guess is that I enjoy some sort of philosophical insight (I mean in relation to these three particular theses) that, for all his merits, is somehow denied to Lewis. And this would have to be an insight that is incommunicable — at least J don’t know how to communicate it — for I have done all I can to communicate it to Lewis, and he has understood perfectly everything I have said, and he has not come to share my conclusions. But maybe my best guess is wrong. I’m confident about only one thing in this area: the question must have some good answer. For not only do my beliefs about these questions seem to me to be undeniably true, but (quite independent of any consideration of which theses it is that seem to me to be true), I don’t want to be forced into a position in which I can’t see my way clear to accepting any philosophi-

IT IS WRONG TO BELIEVE UPON INSUFFICIENT EVIDENCE

cal thesis of any consequence. Let us call this unattractive position “philosophical skepticism.” (Note that I am not using this phrase in its usual sense of “comprehensive and general skepticism based on philosophical argument.” Note also that philosophical skepticism is not a thesis — if it were, it’s hard to see how it could be accepted without pragmatic contradiction — but a state: philosophical skeptics are people who can’t see their way clear to being nominalists or realists, dualists or monists, ordinary-language philosophers or phenomenologists; people, in short, who are aware of many philosophical options but take none of them, people who have listened to many philosophical debates but have never once declared a winner.) I think that any philosopher who does not wish to be a philosophical skeptic — I know of no philosopher who is a philosophical skeptic — must agree with me that this question has some good answer: whatever the reason, it must be possible for one to be justified in accepting a philosophical thesis when there are philosophers who, by a// objective and external criteria, are at least equally well qualified to pronounce on that thesis and who reject it. Will someone say that philosophical theses are theses of a very special sort, and that philosophy is therefore a special case? That adequacy of evidential support is much more easily achieved in respect of philosophical propositions than in respect of geological or medical or historical propositions? Perhaps because nothing really hangs on philosophical questions, and a false or unjustified philosophical opinion is therefore harmless? Or because philosophy is in some sense not about matters of empirical fact? As to the first of these two suggestions, I think it is false that nothing hangs on philosophical questions. What people have believed about the philosophical theses advanced by — for example — Plato, Locke, and Marx has had profound effects on history. I don’t know what the world would be like if everyone who ever encountered philosophy immediately became, and thereafter remained, a philosophical skeptic, but I’m

willing to bet it would be a vastly different world. (In any case, I certainly hope this suggestion is false. I'd hate to have to defend my own field of study against a charge of adhering to loose epistemic standards by arguing that it’s all right to adopt loose epistemic standards in philosophy because philosophy is detached from life to such a degree that philosophical mistakes can’t do any harm.) In a more general, theoretical way, Clifford has argued, and with some plausibility, that it is in principle impossible to claim on behalf of any subject-matter whatever — on the ground that mistaken beliefs about the things of which that subject-matter treats are harmless — exemption from the strict epistemic standards to which, say, geological, medical, and historical beliefs are properly held. He argues, [That is not] truly a belief at all which has not some influence upon the actions of him who holds it. He who truly believes that which prompts him to an action has looked upon the action to lust after it, he has committed it al-

ready in his heart. Ifa beliefisnot realized immediately in open deeds, it is stored up for the guidance of the future. It goes to make a part of that aggregate of beliefs which is the link between sensation and action at every moment of all our lives, and which is so organized and compacted together that no part of it can be isolated from the rest, but every new addition modifies the structure of the whole. No real belief, however trifling and fragmentary it may seem, is ever truly insignificant; it prepares us to receive more of its like, confirms those which resembled it before, and weakens others; and so gradually it lays a stealthy train in our inmost thoughts, which may some day explode into overt action, and leave its stamp upon our character forever. . . And no one man’s beliefis in any case a private matter which concerns himself alone .. . no belief held by one man, however seemingly trivial the belief, and however obscure the believer, is actually insignificant or without its effect on the fate of mankind.

Whether or not you find this general, theoretical argument convincing, it does in any case seem quite impossible to maintain, given the 275

PETER VAN INWAGEN

actual history of the relation between philosophy and our social life, that it makes no real difference what people believe about philosophical questions. The second suggestion — that philosophy is “different” (and that philosophers may therefore properly, in their professional work, observe looser epistemic standards than geologists or physicians observe in theirs) because it’s not about matters of empirical fact — is trickier. Its premise is not that it doesn’t make any difference what people believe about philosophical questions; it’s rather that the world would look exactly the same whether any given philosophical thesis were true or false. I think that that’s a dubious assertion. If the declarative sentences that philosophers characteristically write and speak in their professional capacity are meaningful at all, then many of them express propositions that are necessary truths or necessary falsehoods, and it’s at least a very doubtful assertion that the world would look the same if some necessary truth were a falsehood or if some necessary falsehood were a truth. (Would anyone argue that mathematicians may properly hold themselves to looser epistemic standards than geologists because the world would look the same whether or not there was a greatest prime?) And even if it were true that philosophy was, in no sense of this versatile word, “about” matters of empirical fact, one might well raise the question why this should lend any support to the suggestion that philosophers were entitled to looser epistemic standards than geologists or physiologists, given that philosophical beliefs actually do have important effects on the behavior of those who hold them. Rather than address the issues that these speculations raise, however, I will sim-

ply change the subject. Let us consider politics. Almost everyone will admit that it makes a difference what people believe about politics ~— Iam using the word in its broadest possible sense — and it would be absurd to say that propositions like “Capital punishment is an ineffective deterrent” or “Nations that do not 276

maintain a strong military capability actually increase the risk of war” are not about matters of empirical fact. And yet people disagree about these propositions (and scores of others of equal importance), and their disagreements about them bear a disquieting resemblance to the disagreements of philosophers about nominalism and free will and the covering-law model. That is, their disagreements are matters of interminable debate, and impressive authorities can be found on both sides of many of the interminable debates. It is important to realize that this feature of philosophy and politics is not a universal feature of human discourse. It is clear, for exam-

ple, that someone who believes in astrology believes in something that is simply indefensible. It would be hard to find a philosopher — I hope this is true — who believed that every philosopher who disagreed with his or her position on nominalism held a position that was indefensible in the same way that a belief in astrology was indefensible. It might be easier to find someone who held the corresponding position about disputed and important political questions. I suspect there really are people who think that those who disagree with them about the deterrent effect of capital punishment or the probable consequences of unilateral disarmament are not only mistaken but hold beliefs that are indefensible in the way that a belief in astrology is indefensible. I can only say that I regard this attitude as ludicrous. On each side of many interminably debated political questions — it is not necessary to my argument to say a//— one can find well-informed (indeed, immensely learned) and highly intelligent men and women who adhere to the very highest intellectual standards. And this is simply not the case with debates about astrology. In fact, it is hardly possible to suppose that there could be a very interesting debate about the truthvalues of the claims made by astrologers. Everyone who is intellectually honest will admit this, will admit that there are intermi-

nable political debates with highly intelligent and well-informed people on both sides. And

IT IS WRONG TO BELIEVE UPON INSUFFICIENT EVIDENCE

yet few will react to this state of affairs by becoming political skeptics, by declining to have any political beliefs that are disputed by highly intelligent and well-informed people. But how can this rejection of political skepticism be defended? How can responsible political thinkers believe that the Syndicalist Party is the last, best hope for Ruritania when they know full well that there are well-informed (even immensely learned) and highly intelligent people who argue vehemently — all the while adhering to the highest intellectual standards — that a Syndicalist government would be the ruin of Ruritania? Do the friends of Syndicalism claim to see gaps in the arguments oftheir opponents, “faets” that they have cited that are not really facts, real facts that they have chosen not to mention, a hidden agenda behind their opposition to Syndicalism? No doubt they do. Nevertheless, if they are intelligent and intellectually honest, they will be aware that if these claims were made in public debate, the opponents of Syndicalism would probably be able to muster a very respectable rebuttal. The friends of Syndicalism will perhaps be confident that they could effectively meet the points raised in this rebuttal, but, if they are intelligent and intellectually honest, they will be aware . . . and so, for all practical purposes, ad infinitum. I ask again, what could it be that justifies us in rejecting political skepticism? How can I believe that my political beliefs are justified when these beliefs are rejected by people whose qualifications for engaging in political discourse are as impressive as David Lewis’s qualifications for engaging in philosophical discourse? These people are aware of (at least) all the evidence and all the arguments that I am aware of, and they are (at least) as good at evaluating evidence and arguments as I. How, then, can I maintain that the evidence and

arguments I can adduce in support of my beliefs actually justify these beliefs? If this evidence and these arguments are capable ofthat, then why aren’t they capable of convincing these other people that these beliefs are correct? Well, as with philosophy, I am inclined

to think that I must enjoy some sort of incommunicable insight that the others, for all their merits, lack. I am inclined to think that “the evidence and arguments I can adduce in support of my beliefs” do not constitute the totality of my justification for these beliefs. But all that I am willing to say for sure is that something justifies me in rejecting political skepticism, or at least that it is possible that something does: that it is not a necessary truth that one is not justified in holding a political belief that is controverted by intelligent and well-informed political thinkers. I have now accomplished one ofthe things I wanted to do in this chapter. I have raised the question how it is possible to avoid philosophical and political skepticism. In the remainder of this chapter, I am going to turn to questions about religious belief. My point in raising the questions I have raised about philosophy and politics was primarily to set the stage for comparing religious beliefs with philosophical and political beliefs. But I think that the questions I have so far raised are interesting in their own right. Even if everything I say in the remainder of the chapter is wrong, even if my comparisons of philosophical and political beliefs with religious beliefs turn out to be entirely wide of the mark, the interest of the questions I have raised so far will remain. How can we philosophers, when we consider the matter carefully, avoid the uncomfortable suspicion that the following words of Clifford might apply to us: “Every one of them, if he chose to examine himself

in foro conscientiae, would know that he had acquired and nourished a belief, when he had no right to believe on such evidence as was before him; and therein he would know that

he had done a wrong thing.”? Now as to religion: is religion different from philosophy and politics in the respects we have been discussing? Should religious beliefs perhaps be held to a stricter evidential standard than philosophical and political beliefs? Or, if they are to be held to the same standard, do typical religious beliefs fare worse under this standard than typical philosophical or politi277

PETER VAN INWAGEN

cal beliefs? It is an extremely popular position that religion is different. Or, at least, it must be that many antireligious philosophers and other writers hostile to religious belief hold this position, for it seems to be presupposed by almost every aspect of their approach to the subject of religious belief. And yet this position seems never to have been explicitly formulated, much less argued for. Let us call it the Difference Thesis. An explicit formulation of the Difference Thesis is a tricky matter. I tentatively suggest that it be formulated disjunctively: Either religious beliefs should be held to a stricter epistemic standard than beliefs of certain other types — ofwhich philosophical and political beliefs are the paradigms — or, if they are to be held to the same epistemic standard as other beliefs, they typically fare worse under this standard than typical beliefs of most other types, including philosophical and political beliefs. I use this disjunctive formulation because, while I think I see some sort of difference thesis at work in much of the hostile writing on the epistemic status of religious belief, the work of this thesis is generally accomplished at a subliminal jevel and it is hard to get a clear view of it. I suspect that some of the writers I have alluded to are thinking in terms of one of the disjuncts and some in terms of the other. A good example of the Difference Thesis at work is provided by Clifford’s lecture. One of the most interesting facts about “The Ethics of Belief” is that nowhere in it is religious belief explicitly discussed. There are, to be sure, a few glancing references to religion in the lecture, but the fact that they are references to religion, while it doubtless has its polemical function, is never essential to the point that Clifford professes to be making. Clifford’s shipowner, for example, comes to his dishonest belief partly because he puts his trust in Providence, but Clifford could have made the

same philosophical point if he had made the shipowner come to his dishonest belief because he had put his trust in his brother-inlaw. Clifford’s other main illustrative case is built round an actual Victorian scandal (de278

scribed in coyly abstract terms: “There was once a certain island in which . . .”) involving religious persecution. But he could have made the same philosophical point if he had described a case of purely secular persecution, such as those that attended the investigations of Senator McCarthy; his illustration turned simply on the unwillingness of zealous agitators, convinced that the right was on their side, to examine certain matters of public record and to obtain easily available testimony. In both of Clifford’s illustrative cases, there is a

proposition that is dishonestly accepted, accepted without sufficient attention to the available evidence. In neither case is it a religious or theological proposition. And at no point does Clifford come right out and say that his arguments have any special connection with religious beliefs. It would, however, be disingenuous in the extreme to say that “The Ethics ofBelief” is simply about the ethics of belief in general and is no more directed at religious belief than at any other kind of belief. “Everyone knows,” as the phrase goes, that Cliftord’s target is religious belief. (Certainly the editors of anthologies know this. “The Ethics of Belief” appears in just about every anthology devoted to the philosophy of religion. It has never appeared in an anthology devoted to epistemology. I know ofonly one case in which anyone writing on general epistemological questions has mentioned Clifford’s lecture, and that is a very brief footnote in Chisholm’s Perceiving, in the chapter entitled “The Ethics of Belief.” In that note,

Chisholm simply says that he holds a weaker thesis about the ethics of belief than Clifford’s. Given that he had borrowed Clifford’s title for his chapter-title, I suppose that that was the least he could have done.) The real thesis of Clifford’s lecture, its subtext as our friends

in the literature departments say, is that religious beliefs — belief in God, belief in an afterlife, belief in the central historical claims of Judaism or Christianity or Islam — are always

or almost always held in ways that violate the famous ethico-epistemic principle whose quotation-name is my title: It is wrong always,

IT IS WRONG TO BELIEVE UPON INSUFFICIENT EVIDENCE

everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence. If, moreover, he is of the opinion that beliefs in any other general category are always or almost always (or typically or rather often) held in ways that violate his principle, this is certainly not apparent. This conviction that Clifford’s specific target is religious belief is no knee-jerk reaction of overly sensitive religious believers or of antireligious polemicists eager to find yet another stick to beat churchgoers with. If the conviction is not supported by his argument, in the strictest sense of the word, it is well grounded in his rhetoric. For one thing, the lecture abounds in biblical quotations and

echoes, which is not a usual feature of Clifford’s prose. For another, there are the inessential religious elements in both of his illustrative examples. Much more importantly, however, there are two passing allusions to religious belief, which, although they go by rather quickly, are nevertheless writ in letters that he who runs may read. First, one of the dishonest comforts provided by certain beliefs that are not apportioned to evidence is said to be this: they “add a tinsel splendor to the plain straight road of our life and display a bright mirage beyond it.” Secondly, when Clifford raises the question whether it is fair to blame people for holding beliefs that are not supported by evidence if they hold these beliefs as a result of their having been trained from childhood not to raise questions of evidence in certain areas, he refers to these unfortunates as “those simple souls ... who have been brought up from the cradle with a horror of doubt, and taught that their eternal welfare depends on what they believe.” Let us call Clifford’s principle — “It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone ...” — Clifford’s Principle, which seems an appropriate enough name for it. I should note that there seems to be another principle that Clifford seems sometimes to be appealing to and which he neither articulates nor distinguishes clearly from Clifford’s Principle. Call it Clifford’s Other Principle. It is something

very much like this: “It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone to ignore evidence that is relevant to his beliefs, or to dismiss relevant evidence in a facile way.” Clifford’s Other Principle is obviously not Clifford’s Principle. It is very doubtful whether someone who satisfied the requirements of Clifford’s Principle would necessarily satisfy the requirements of Clifford’s Other Principle (it could be argued that it would be possible to have evidence that justified one’s accepting a certain proposition even though one had deliberately chosen not to examine certain other evidence that was relevant to the question whether to accept that proposition) and it is pretty certain that someone who satisfied the requirements of Clifford’s Other Principle would not necessarily satisfy the requirements of Clifford’s Principle. I suspect that Clifford tended to conflate the two principles because of a combination of his antireligious agenda with an underlying assumption that the evidence, such as it is, that people have for their religious beliefs is inadequate because it is incomplete, and incomplete because these believers have declined to examine certain evidence relevant to their beliefs, owing to a subconscious realization that examination of this evidence would deprive even them of the power to continue to hold their cherished beliefs. However this may be, having distinguished Clifford’s Other Principle from Clifford’s Principle, I am not going to discuss it further, beyond pointing out that there does not seem to be any reason to suppose, whatever Clifford may have thought, that those who hold religious beliefs are any more likely to be in violation of Clifford’s Other Principle than those who hold philosophical or political beliefs. We all know that there are a lot of people who have violated Clifford’s Other Principle at one point or another in the course of arriving at their political beliefs and a few who have not. As to philosophy, well, I’m sure that violations of Clifford’s Other Principle are quite rare among

professional philosophers. No doubt there are a few cases, however. One might cite, for

279

PETER VAN INWAGEN

example, a recent review of a book by John Searle, in which the author of the review (Dan Dennett) accuses Searle of gross violations of

Clifford’s Other Principle in his (Searle’s) descriptions of current theories in the philosophy of mind. If Dennett’s charge is not just, then it is plausible to suppose that /e is in violation of Clifford’s Other Principle. So it can happen, even among us. But let us, as the French say, return to our sheep, prominent among which is Clifford’s Principle — Clifford’s Principle proper, that is, and not Clifford’s Other Principle. It is interesting to note that Clifford’s Principle is almost never mentioned by writers subsequent to Clifford except in hostile examinations of religious belief, and that the antireligious writers who mention it never apply it to anything but religious beliefs. (With the exception of illustrative examples — like Clifford’s example of the irresponsible shipowner — that are introduced in the course of explaining its content and arguing for it.) It is this that provides the primary evidence for my contention that many antireligious philosophers and other writers against religion tacitly accept the Difference Thesis: the fact that they apply Clifford’s Principle only to religious beliefs is best explained by the assumption that they accept the Difference Thesis. The cases of Marxism and Freudianism are instructive examples of what I am talking about. It is easy to point to philosophers who believe that Marxism and Freudianism are nonsense: absurd parodies ofscientific theories that get the real world wildly wrong. Presumably these philosophers do not believe that Marxism and Freudianism were adequately supported by the evidence that was available to Marx and Freud — or that they are adequately supported by the evidence that is available to any of the latterday adherents of Marxism and Freudianism. But never once has any writer charged that Marx or Freud blotted his epistemic escutcheon by failing to apportion beliefto evidence. I challenge anyone to find me a passage (other than an illustrative passage of the type I have mentioned) in which any devotee ofClifford’s 280

Principle has applied it to anything but religious belief. And yet practically all philosophers — the literature will immediately demonstrate this to the most casual inquirer — subscribe to theses an obvious logical consequence of which is that the world abounds in gross violations of Clifford’s Principle that have nothing to do with religion. An explanation of the widespread tacit acceptance of the Difference Thesis among those who appeal to Clifford’s Principle in their attacks on religious belief is not far to seek. If Clifford’s Principle were generally applied in philosophy (or in politics or history or even insmany parts of the natural sciences), it would have to be applied practically everywhere. If its use became general, we'd all be constantly shoving it in one another’s faces. And there would be no comfortable reply open to most of the recipients of a charge of violating Clifford’s Principle. Use every man after his desert, and who shall scape whipping? If, for example, I am an archaeologist who believes that an artifact found in a neolithic tomb was a religious object used in a fertility rite, and if my rival, Professor Graves — a professor, according to the German aphorism, is someone who thinks otherwise — believes that it was used to wind flax, how can I suppose that my belief is supported by the evidence? If my evidence really supports my belief, why doesn’t it convert Professor Graves, who is as aware

of it as Iam, to my position? This example, of course, is made up. But let me mention a real and not entirely dissimilar example that I recently came across in a review (by Malcolm W. Browne) of several books about the Neanderthals in the New York Times Book Review (July 4, 1993, p. 1). The review includes the following quotation from the recent book The Neandertals by Erik Trinkhaus and Pat Shipman. The authors are discussing a debate between two people called Stringer and Wolpoff, who are leading experts on the Neanderthals. “What is uncanny — and disheartening — is the way in which each side can muster the fossil record into seemingly convincing and yet utterly different syntheses of

IT IS WRONG TO BELIEVE UPON INSUFFICIENT EVIDENCE

the course of human evolution. Reading their review papers side by side gives the reader a distinct feeling of having awakened in a Kafka novel.” Assuming that this description of the use Stringer and Wolpoff make of their evidence is accurate, can it really be that their beliefs are adequately supported by this evidence? Will someone say that Stringer and Woipoff are scientists, and that scientists do not really Jelzeve the theories they put forward, but rather bear to them some more tentative sort of doxastic relation? “Regard as the best hypothesis currently available,” or some such tentative attitude as that? Well, that is certainly not the way the author of the review sees the debate. Stringer, one ofthe parties in the debate, has written his own book, also discussed in the review, of which the reviewer says, “Jn

Search of the Neanderthals is built around Mr Stringer’s underlying (and highly controversial) belief that the Neanderthals were an evolutionary dead end, that they simply faded away after a long and unsuccessful competition with their contemporaries, the direct ancestors of modern man.” (That the Neanderthals were an evolutionary dead end is, by the way, the proposition that was at issue in the debate between Stringer and Wolpoff that was said to give the reader the feeling of having awakened in a novel by Kafka.) Later in the review, summarizing the book of another expert on human origins, the reviewer says, “Tn another section of the book, Mr Schwartz

defends his belief that modern human beings are more closely related to orangutans than to either chimpanzees or gorillas.” It is hard to see how to avoid the conclusion that it is very common for scientists gua scientists to have beliefs that are vehemently rejected by other equally intelligent scientists who possess the same scientific qualifications and the same evidence. Even in the more austere and abstract parts of science, even in high-energy physics, the current queen of the sciences, where there is some real plausibility in the thesis that investigators typically hold some more tentative attitude than belief toward the content of the controversial theories they

champion, it is possible to find clear examples of this. To find them, one need only direct one’s attention away from the content of the theories to the judgments that physicists make about the theories, their judgments about such matters as the usefulness of the theories, their

“physical interest,” and their prospects. A former colleague at Syracuse University, an internationally recognized quantum-gravity theorist, has told me, using a simple declarative sentence that contained no hedges whatever, that superstring theory would come to nothing. Many prominent physicists (Sheldon Glashow, for example) agree. They really delieve this. And many prominent physicists (such as Steven Weinberg and Edward Witten) vehemently disagree. They really believe that superstring theory has provided the framework within which the development of fundamental physics will take place for a century. But let us leave the sciences and return to our central examples, philosophy and politics. If we applied Clifford’s Principle generally, we’d all have to become skeptics or agnostics as regards most philosophical and political questions — or we’d have to find some reasonable answer to the challenge, “In what sense can the evidence you have adduced support or justify your belief when there are many authorities as competent as you who regard this evidence as unconvincing?” But no answer to this challenge is evident, and religion seems to be the only area of human life in which very many people are willing to be agnostics about the answers to very many questions. (When I say “very many people,” I mean very many people like us: people who write books. It is, of course, false that a very high proportion of the world population consists of people who are willing to be agnostics about religious questions. ) It might, however, be objected that what I have been representing as obvious considerations are obvious only on a certain conception of the nature of evidence. Perhaps the Difference Thesis is defensible because the evidence that some people have for their philosophical and political (and archaeological and 281

PETER VAN INWAGEN

historical ...) beliefs consists partly of the deliverances of that incommunicable “insight” that I speculated about earlier. This objection would seem to be consistent with everything said in “The Ethics of Belief,” for Clifford nowhere tells his readers what evidence is. If “evidence” is evidence in the courtroom or laboratory sense (photographs, transcripts of sworn statements, the pronouncements of expert witnesses, records of meter readings — even arguments, provided that an argument is understood as simply a publicly available piece of text, and that anyone who has read and understood the appropriate piece of text thereby “has” the evidence that the argument is said to constitute), then “the evidence” pretty clearly does not support our philosophical and political beliefs. Let such evidence be eked out with logical inference and private sense experience and the memory of sense experience (my private experience and my memories, as opposed to my testimony about my experience and memories, cannot be entered as evidence in a court of law or published in Physical Review Letters, but they can be part of my evidence for my beliefs — or so the epistemologists tell us) and it still seems to be true that “the evidence” does not support our philosophical and political beliefs. It is not that evidence in this sense is necessarily impotent: it can support — I hope — many lifeand-death courtroom judgments and such scientific theses as that the continents are in motion. But it does not seem to be sufficient to justify most of our philosophical and political beliefs, or our philosophical and political beliefs, surely, would be far more uniform than they are. (Socrates told Euthyphro that people do not dispute about matters that can be settled by measurement or calculation. This is certainly false, but there is nevertheless an important grain of truth in it. There is indisputably significantly greater uniformity of opinion about matters that can be settled by measurement and calculation than there is about the nature of justice and the other matters that interested Socrates.) If “evidence” must be of the courtroom-and-laboratory sort, 282

how can the Difference Thesis be defended? If, however, “evidence” can include “in-

sight” or some other incommunicable element —my private experience and my memories are not necessarily incommunicable — it may be that some of the philosophical and political beliefs of certain people are justified by the evidence available to them. (This, as I have said, is the view I find most attractive, or least unattractive.) But if evidence is understood in this way, how can anyone be confident that

some of the religious beliefs of some people are not justified by the evidence available to them? (I say some people; and that is probably all that anyone would be willing to grant in the cases of philosophy and politics. Is there anyone who believes that it makes sense to talk of philosophical beliefs being justified and who also thinks that the philosophical beliefs of both Carnap and Heidegger were justified? Is there anyone who holds the corresponding thesis about the political beliefs of both Henry Kissinger and the late Kim II-Sung?) If evidence can include incommunicable elements,

how can anyone be confident that all religious believers are in violation of Clifford’s Principle? If “evidence” can include the incommunicable, how can the Difference Thesis be defended? What I have said so far amounts to a polemic against what I perceive as a widespread double standard in writings about the relation of religious belief to evidence and argument. This double standard consists in setting religious beliefatest it could not possibly pass, and in studiously ignoring the fact that very few of our beliefs on any subject could possibly pass this test. Let me summarize this polemic by setting out some Socratic questions; a complex, in

fact, of alternative lines of Socratic questioning laid out in a sort of flowchart. Either you accept Clifford’s Principle or not. If not, game ends. If so, either you think that religious belief stands convicted of some epistemic impropriety under Clifford’s Principle or not. If not, game ends. If so, do you think that other important categories of be-

IT IS WRONG TO BELIEVE UPON INSUFFICIENT EVIDENCE

lief stand convicted of similar epistemic impropriety under Clifford’s Principle — preeminently philosophical and political belief? If you do, are you a skeptic as regards these categories of belief, a philosophical and political skeptic (and, in all probability, a skeptic in many other areas)? If not, why not? If you do think that the only important category of belief that stands convicted of epistemic impropriety under Clifford’s Principle is religious belief— that is, if you accept the Difference Thesis — how will you defend this position? Do you accept my disjunctive formulation of the Difference Thesis: “Either religious beliefs should be held to a stricter epistemic standard than beliefs of certain other types — of which philosophical and political beliefs are the paradigms — or, if they are to be held to the same epistemic standard as other beliefs, they typically fare worse under this standard than typical beliefs of most other types, including philosophical and political beliefs”? If not, how would you formulate the Difference Thesis (and how would you defend the thesis you have formulated)? If you do accept my disjunctive formulation of the Difference Thesis, which of the disjuncts do you accept? And what is your defense of that disjunct? In formulating your defense, be sure to explain how you understand evidence. Does “evidence” consist entirely of objects that can be publicly examined (photographs and pointer readings), or that can, at least for purposes of setting out descriptions of the evidence available for a certain thesis, be adequately described in public language (sensations and memories, perhaps)? Or may what is called “evidence” be, or be somehow contained in or accessible to the subject in the form of, incommunicable states of mind of the kind I have rather vaguely called “insight?” If the former, and if you have chosen to say that a single standard of evidence is appropriate to both religious beliefs (on the one hand) and philosophical and political beliefs (on the other), and if you have decided that religious beliefs fare worse under this one standard than philosophical and political beliefs — well, how

can you suppose that philosophical and political beliefs ave supported by that sort of evidence, public evidence, to any significant degree? If the evidence available to you provides adequate support for, say, your adherence to a certain brand of functionalism, and if it is evidence of this straightforward public sort, then it is no doubt readily available to most philosophers who have paid the same careful attention to questions in the philosophy of mind that you have. But then why aren’t most of these philosophers functionalists of your particular stripe? (Why, some respectable philosophers of mind aren’t even functionalists at all, shocking as that may seem to some of us.) Wouldn’t the possession and careful consideration of adequate, really adequate, evidence for a proposition induce belief in that proposition? Or, if evidence that provided adequate support for a philosophical proposition was readily available throughout a sizable population of careful, qualified philosophers, wouldn’t this fact at least induce a significant uniformity of opinion as regards that proposition among those philosophers? If you take the other option as to the nature of evidence, if you grant that evidence may include incommunicable insight, can you be sure, have you any particular reason to suppose, that it is false that there are religious believers who have “insight” that lends the same sort of support to their religious beliefs that the incommunicable insight that justifies your disagreement with Kripke or Quine or Davidson or Dummett or Putnam lends to your beliefs? This is the end of my Socratic flowchart. I will close with an attempt to forestall two possible misinterpretations. First, I have not challenged Clifford’s Principle, or not unless to point out that most of us would find it awkward to live by a certain principle is to chal-

lenge it. Clifford’s Principle could be correct as far as anything I have said goes. Secondly, I have not argued that religious beliefs — any religious beliefs of anyone’s — are justified or enjoy any particular warrant or positive epistemic status or whatever your own favorite 283

PETER VAN INWAGEN

jargon is. (For that matter, I have not argued that philosophical and political beliefs — any philosophical or political beliefs of anyone’s — are justified or enjoy any particular warrant or positive epistemic status. I have recorded my personal conviction that some philosophical and political beliefs are justified, but I have not argued for this conclusion. I do not mind — just for the sake of literary symmetry — recording my persona! conviction that some religious beliefs are justified, but that they are is not a part of my thesis.) There is one important question that bears on the epistemic propriety of religious belief that I have not even touched on: whether some or all religious beliefs may go clean contrary to the available evidence — as many would say the beliefin a loving and all-powerful deity goes clean contrary to the plain evidence

284

of everyone’s senses. To discuss this question was not my project. My project has been to raise certain points about the relevance of Clifford’s Principle to the problem of the epistemic propriety of religious belief. These are different questions: it suffices to point out that the philosopher who argues that some religious belief — or some belief of any sort — should be rejected because it goes contrary to some body of evidence is not appealing to Clifford’s Principle. If what I have said is correct, then philosophers who wish to mount some sort of evidential or epistemic attack on religious belief (or, more likely, not on religious belief in general, but on particular religious beliefs) should set Clifford’s Principle aside and argue that religious belief (or this or that religious belief) is refuted by the evidence they present.

Religious Belief as Basic

33

Warranted Belief in God*

Alvin Plantinga To know in a general and confused way that God exists 1s implanted in us by nature. . St Thomas Aquinas

... for since the creation of the world Gods invisible qualities — his eternal power and divine nature — have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made. St Paul

The de jure challenge to Christian (or theistic) belief... is the claim that such belief is, irrational or unreasonable or unjustifiable or in some other way properly subject to invidious epistemic criticism; it contrasts with the de facto challenge, according to which the beliefin question is false. Put just like that, the de jure rebuke is pretty vague and general; we can’t do much by way of evaluating the proposed complaint without achieving a clearer and more specific formulation of it... This complaint is really the claim that Christian and other theistic belief is tvrational in the sense that it originates in cognitive malfunction (Marx) or in cognitive proper function that is aimed at something other than the truth (Freud) — comfort, perhaps, or the ability to soldier on in this appalling world in which we find ourselves. To put it another way, the claim is that such belief doesn’t originate in the proper function of cognitive faculties successfully aimed at producing true * From Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief (forthcoming). Reprinted with permission.

beliefs. To put it in still another way, the charge is that theistic and Christian belief /acks warrant. By way of response, in this chapter I shall first offer a model — a model based on a claim made jointly by Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin — for a way in which theistic belief could have warrant... .

1

The A/C Model

A

Models

I say I propose in this chapter to give a model of theistic beliefs having warrant; but what sort of animal is a model, and what would it

be good for? There are models of many different kinds: model airplanes, artists’? models,

models in the sense of exemplars, models of a modern major general. There is also the logician’s sense of model in which, for example, any consistent first order theory has a model in the natural numbers. . . . My use of the term here is more abstract than the first and more concrete than the second. The rough idea is this: to give a model of a proposition or state of affairs Sis to show how it could be that S is indeed true or actual. The model itself will be another proposition (or state of affairs), one such that it is clear (1) that it is possible, and (2) that if it is tre, then so is the target proposition. From these two, of course, it follows that the target proposition is possible. In this chapter I shall give a model of theistic belief’s 285

ALVIN PLANTINGA

having warrant: the A/C. (“Aquinas/Calvin” ) model nc I claim four things for this model. First, it is possible, and thus shows that it is possible that theistic and Christian belief have warrant. But the sense of possibility here isn’t just broadly logical possibility — after all, such obvious falsehoods as the population of China ts less than 1,000 are possible in that sense — but something much stronger. I claim that this model is epistemically possible: it is consistent with what we know, where “what we know”

is what all (or most) of the participants in the discussion agree upon. Second, and related to the first assertion, I claim that there aren’t any cogent objections to the model. i.e. to the proposition that the model is in fact true or actual. More exactly, there are no cogent objections of a philosophic or scientific kind (or indeed any other kind) to the model that are not also cogent objections to theism or Christian belief. Another way to put it: any cogent objection to the model’s truth will also have to be a cogent objection to the truth of theistic or Christian belief. I shall go on to argue that if Christian beliefisindeed true, then the model in question or one very like it is also true. If Iam successful, therefore, the upshot will be that there is no viable de jure (as opposed to de facto) challenge either to theistic or Christian belief. There is no sensible challenge to the rationality or rational justification or warrant of Christian belief that is not also a challenge to its truth. That is, there is no de jure challenge that is independent of a de facto challenge. And that means that a particularly popular way of criticizing Christian belief — to be found in the evidentialist objection [and| in many versions of the argument from evil and in still other objections — is not viable. This is the sort of challenge that goes like this: “T don’t know whether Christian (or theistic) beliefistrue — how could I know a thing like that? But I do know that it is irrational, or

rationally unacceptable or unjustified or withOut warrant (or in some other way epistemically challenged).” If my argument is 286

right, no objection of this sort has any force. Third, I believe that the model I shall present is not just possible and beyond philosophical challenge, but also true, or at least verisimilitudinous, close to the truth. I don’t claim to show that it is true however. That is because the A/C model [presented here]

entails the truth of theism and the extended A/C [presented in later chapters] the truth of classical Christianity. To show that these models are in fact true, therefore, would also

be to show that theism and Christianity are true; and I don’t know how to do something one could sensibly call “showing” that either of these zs true. I believe there are a large number (at least a couple dozen) good arguments for the existence of God; none, how-

ever, can really be thought of as a showing or demonstration. As for classical Christianity, there is even less prospect of demonstrating its truth. . . Of course, this is nothing against either their truth or their warrant; very little of what we believe can be “demonstrated” or “shown.” Fourth, there is a whole range of models for the warrant of Christian belief, all different but similar to the A/C and extended A/ C model. (In claiming that the models I present are close to the truth, what I am claim-

ing is that they belong to that range.) Thus, if classical Christian belief is indeed true, then one of these models is very likely also true. Alternatively, for one who thinks Christian

belief true, one or more of these models (or their disjunction) is a good way in which to conceive the warrant of Christian belief.

B_

Presentation of the Model

Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin concur on

the claim that there is a kind of natural knowledge of God (and anything on which Calvin and Aquinas are in accord is something to which we had better pay careful attention). Here I want to propose a model based on Calvin’s version of the suggestion, not because I think Calvin should be the cynosure of all eyes theological, but because he presents an interesting

WARRANTED BELIEF IN GOD

development of the particular thought in question. (Here, as in several other areas, we can

usefully see Calvin’s suggestion as a kind of meditation on and development of a theme suggested by Aquinas.) According to the latter, “To know that God exists in a general and confused way is implanted in us by nature. . . .”! In the opening chapters of the Institutes of the Christian Religion? Calvin concurs: there is a sort of natural knowledge of God. Calvin expands this theme into a suggestion as to the way in which beliefs about God can have warrant; he has a suggestion as to the nature of the faculty or mech-anism whereby we acquire true beliefs about God. His idea here can also be seen as a development of what the apostle Paul says in Romans 1: For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of men who by their wickedness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. (Romans 1: 18-20)

For our purposes, Calvin’s basic claim is that there is a sort of instinct, a natural human ten-

dency, a disposition, a nisus to form beliefs about God under a variety of conditions and in a variety of situations. Thus in his commentary on the above passage:

... Since, therefore, men one and all perceive that there is a God and that he is their maker,

they are condemned by their own testimony because they have failed to honor him and to consecrate their lives to his will ... there is, as

the eminent pagan says, no nation so barbarous, no people so savage, that they have not a deep seated conviction that there isa God. . . Therefore, since from the beginning of the world there has been no region, no city, in short, no household, that could do without religion, there lies in this a tacit confession of a sense of deity inscribed in the hearts of all. (1, iii, 1, p. 44. The “eminent pagan” is Cicero.)

Calvin goes on to claim that many rejections of God, or attempts to do without him, are really further testimonies to this natural inclination: Men of sound judgment will always be sure that a sense ofdivinity which can never be effaced is engraved upon men’s minds. Indeed, the perversity of the impious, who though they struggle furiously are unable to extricate themselves from the fear of God, is abundant testimony that this conviction, namely that there is some God, is naturally inborn in all, and is fixed deep within, as it were in the very marrow ... From this we conclude that it is not a doctrine that must first be learned in school, but one of which each of us is master from his mother’s womb and which nature itself permits no one to forget, although many strive with every nerve to thisend. (1, iii, 3, p. 46)

Separated from the extravagance of expresBy saying, that God has made it manifest, he means, that man was created to be a spectator of this formed world, and that eyes were given him, that he might, by looking on so beautiful a picture, be led up to the Author himself.

In the Institutes he develops this thought: There is within the human mind, and indeed by natural instinct, an awareness of divinity. This we take to be beyond controversy. To prevent anyone from taking refuge in the pretense of ignorance, God himself has implanted in all men a certain understanding of his divine majesty.

sion that sometimes characterizes Calvin, the basic idea, I think, is that there is a kind of

faculty or a cognitive mechanism, what Calvin calls a “sensus divinitatis” or sense of divinity, which in a wide variety of circumstances produces in us beliefs about God. These circumstances, we might say, trigger the disposition to form the beliefs in question; they form the occasion on which those beliefs arise. Under these circumstances we develop or form theistic beliefs — or rather, these beliefs are formed

in us; in the typical case we don’t consciously choose to have those beliefs. Instead, we find

287

ALVIN PLANTINGA

ourselves with them, just as we find ourselves with perceptual and memory beliefs. (You don’t and can’t simply decide to have this belief, thereby acquiring it.) These passages suggest that awareness of God is natural, widespread, and not easy to forget, ignore, or destroy. Seventy years of determined but unsuccessful Marxist efforts to uproot Christianity in the former Soviet Union tend to confirm Calvin’s claim. Second, it also sounds as if Calvin thinks

knowledge of God is innate, and hence such that one has it from the time one is born,

“from his mother’s womb.” But I don’t think Calvin really means to endorse either of these suggestions. The capacity for such knowledge is indeed innate, just as is the capacity for arithmetical knowledge. But of course it doesn’t follow that we know elementary arithmetic from our mother’s womb; it takes a little maturity. And my guess is Calvin thinks the same with respect to this knowledge of God; what one has from one’s mother’s womb is not this knowledge of God, but a capacity for it. Whatever Calvin thinks, however, it’s our model; and according to the model the development of the sensus divinitatis requires a certain maturity (although it is indeed sometimes manifested by very young children). The sensus divinitatisis a disposition or set of dispositions to form theistic beliefs in various circumstances, in response to the sorts of conditions or stimuli that trigger the working of this sense of divinity. Calvin thinks in particular of some of nature’s grand spectacles. Like Kant, he was especially impressed, in this connection, by the marvelous compages of the starry heavens above: Even the common folk and the most untutored,

who have been taught only by the aid of the eyes, cannot be unaware of the excellence of divine art, for it reveals itself in this innumerable and yet distinct and well-ordered variety of the heavenly host. It is, accordingly, clear that there is no one to whom the Lord does not abundantly show his wisdom. (I, v, 2, p. 53)

You see the blazing glory of the heavens from 288

a mountain side at 13,000 feet; you think

about those unimaginable distances; you find yourself filled with awe and wonder, and you form the belief that God must indeed be great to have created this magnificent heavenly host. But it isn’t only the variety of the heavenly host that catches his eye here: Lest anyone, then, be excluded from access to

happiness, he not only sowed in men’s minds that seed of religion of which we have spoken, but revealed himself and daily discloses himself in the whole workmanship of the universe. As a consequence, men cannot open their eyes without being compelled to see him. ... But upon - his individual works he has engraved unmistakable marks of his glory ... wherever you cast your eyes, there is no spot in the universe wherein you cannot discern at least some sparks of his glory. (I, v, i, p. 52)

Calvin’s idea is that the working of the sensus divinitatis is triggered or occasioned by a wide variety of circumstances, including in particular some of the glories of nature: the marvelous, impressive beauty of the night sky; the timeless crash and roar of the surf that resonates deep within us; the majestic grandeur of the mountains (the North Cascades, say, as viewed from Whatcom Pass); the ancient, brooding presence of the Australian outback; the roar of a great waterfall. But it isn’t only grandeur and majesty that counts; he would say the same for the subtle play of sunlight on a field in spring, or the dainty, articulate beauty of a tiny flower, or aspen leaves shimmering and dancing in the breeze, or.... “There is no spot in the universe,” he says, “wherein you cannot discern at least some sparks of his glory.” Calvin could have added other sorts of circumstances: there is something like a awareness of divine disapproval upon having done what is wrong, or cheap, and something like a perception ofdivine forgiveness upon confession and repentance. People in grave danger instinctively turn to the Lord, asking for succor and support, having formed the belief that he can hear and help if he sees fit. (They say there are no athe-

WARRANTED BELIEF IN GOD

ists in foxholes.) On a beautiful spring morning (the birds singing, heaven and earth alight and alive with the glory, the air fresh and cool, the treetops gleaming in the sun) a spontaneous hymn of thanks to the Lord — thanks for your circumstances and your very existence — may arise in your soul. According to the model, therefore, there are many circumstances, and circumstances of many different kinds, that call forth or occasion theistic belief. Here the sensus divinitatis resembles other belief-producing faculties or mechanisms. If we wish to think in terms of the overworked functional analogy, we can think of the sensus divinitatis too as an input-output device: it takes the circumstances mentioned above as input and issues as output theistic beliefs, beliefs about God. ... (1) Basicality According to the A/C model, this natural knowledge of God is not arrived at by inference or argument (for example, the famous theistic proof of natural theology) but in a much more immediate way. The deliverances of the semsus divinitatis are not quick and sotto voce inferences from the circumstances that trigger its operation. It isn’t that one beholds the night sky, notes that it is grand, and concludes that there must be such a person as God: an argument like that would be ridiculously weak. It isn’t that one notes some feature of the Australian outback — that it is ancient and brooding, for example — and draws the conclusion that God exists. It is rather that upon the perception of the night sky or the mountain vista or the tiny flower these beliefs just arise within us. They are occasioned by the circumstances; they are not conclusions from them. The heavens declare the glory of God and the skies proclaim the work of his and but not by way of serving as premises for an argument. Awareness of guilt may lead me to God; but it is not that in this awareness I have the material for a quick theistic argument: I am guilty, so there must be a God. This argument isn’t nearly as silly as it looks; but when the operation of the sensus divinitatis is triggered by perception of my

guilt, it doesn’t work by way of an argument. I don’t take my guilt as evidence for the existence of God, or for the proposition that he is displeased with me. It is rather that in that circumstance — the circumstance of my clearly seeing my guilt — I simply find myself with the belief that God is disapproving or disappointed. In this regard the sensus divinitatis resembles perception, memory and a priori belief. Consider the first. I look out into the backyard; I see that the coral tiger lilies are in bloom. I don’t note that Iam being appeared to acertain complicated way (that my experience is of acertain complicated character) and then make an argument from my being appeared to in that way to the conclusion that in fact there are coral tiger lilies in bloom there. (The whole history of modern philosophy up to Hume and Reid shows that such an argument would be wholly inconclusive. ) It is rather that upon being appeared to in that way (and given my previous training), the belief that the coral tiger lilies are in bloom spontaneously arises in me. This belief will ordinarily be basic, in the sense that it is not accepted on the evidential basis of other propositions. The same goes for memory. You ask me what I had for breakfast; I think for a

moment and then remember: pancakes with blueberries. I don’t argue from the fact that it seems to me that I remember having pancakes for breakfast to the conclusion that in fact I did; rather, you ask me what I had for breakfast and the answer simply comes to mind. Or consider a priori belief. I don’t infer from other things that, e.g., modus ponens is a valid form of argument: I just see that it is so and in fact must be so. All of these, we might say, are starting points for thoughts. But (on the model) the same goes for the sense of divinity. It isn’t a matter of making a quick and dirty inference from the grandeur of the mountains or the beauty of the flower or the sun on the treetops to the existence of God; instead a belief about God spontaneously arises in those circumstances, the circumstances that trigger the operation of the 289

ALVIN PLANTINGA

sense ofdivinity. This beliefis another of those starting points for thought; it too is basic in the sense that the beliefs in question are not accepted on the evidential basis of other beliefs.

eal (5) Perceptual or Experiential Knowledge Suppose something like the A/C model is in fact correct: knowledge of God ordinarily comes not through inference from other things one believes, but from a sensus divinitatis, characterized as above. Would it follow that our knowledge of God comes by way of perception? That is, would it follow that the warrant enjoyed by theistic belief is perceptual warrant? Not necessarily. This is not because there is any real question about the possibility or indeed the actuality of perception of God. I believe William Alston has shown that if indeed there is such a person as God, there could certainly be perception of him, and indeed is perception of him. Alston’s powerful discussion shows that the usual objections to perception of God (no independent way of checking, disagreement as to what God is like, differences from sense perception, apparent relativity to the theological beliefs of the alleged perceiver, and so on) have very little to be said for them.+* Of course it isn’t wholly clear just what perception #s (there is as much dispute about that as about any other philosophical topic); conceivably the way to think of perception strictly so-called is such that it essentially involves specifically sensuous imagery. This imagery need not be of the sort that goes with our sense perception; other kinds are certainly possible. (Perhaps sensuous imagery goes with

the bat’s echolocation, a kind of imagery wholly foreign to us.) But sensuous imagery of some kind may be necessary for perception; and perhaps it is also required that this imagery plays a certain specific (and hard to specify) causal role in the genesis of the candidates for perceptual beliefin question. What Alston thinks of as putative percep290

tion of God, however, often appears not to

involve sensuous imagery. If so, then strictly speaking there wouldn’t be perception of God, but what Alston’s discussion would then show is that (given the existence of God) there could certainly be and probably is something very like perception of God (something that is epistemically on all fours with perception in that it, like the latter, can be a source of warrant). This something, therefore, can properly be called “perception” in an analogically extended sense of that term. To the believer, the presence of God is often palpable. A surprising number of people report that at one time or another, they fee/ the presence of God,

or at any rate it seems to them that they feel the presence of God — where the “feeling” also doesn’t seem to go by way of sensuous imagery. Many others report hearing God speak to them. And of course among these cases, cases where it seems right or nearly right to speak of perceiving God (feeling his presence, perhaps hearing his voice), there is great variation. There are the shattering, over-

whelming sorts of experiences had by Paul (then “Saul”) on the road to Damascus, and reported by mystics and other masters of the interior life. In these cases there may be vivid sensuous imagery of more than one kind. But there is also a sort of awareness of God where it seems right to say one feels his presence, but where there is little or none of the sort of sensuous imagery that typically goes with perception; it is more like a nonsensuous impression ofabrooding presence. And (apparently) there are all sorts of examples between these two extremes... . Well, even ifthis sort of knowledge of God isn’t perceptual, can we at any rate say that it is by way of religious experience? Can we say

that the warrant it gets comes from experience? The first thing to see is that this term “religious experience” is construed in a thousand different ways; it is used to cover a vast and confusing variety of cases; the question as it stands is multiply ambiguous; in fact we are probably better off boycotting the term.® But perhaps we can say at least the following.

WARRANTED BELIEF IN GOD

The operation of the sensus divinitatis will always involve the presence of experience of some kind or other, even if sensuous imagery isn’t always present. Sometimes there is sensuous imagery; sometimes there is something like feeling the presence of God, where there seems to be no sensuous imagery present, but perhaps something (necessarily hard to describe) /zke it; often there is also the sort of experience that goes with being frightened, feeling grateful, foolish, angry, pleased, and the like. A common component is a sort of awe, a sense of the numinous; a sense of being in the presence of a being of overwhelm-

ing majesty and greatness. None of these are inevitably connected with the operation of the sensus divinitatis, although perhaps no occasion of its operation fails to display one or another of these varieties of experience. But there is another sort of experience that is always present in the operation of the sensus divinitatis. ... This is the sort of experience one has when entertaining any proposition one believes. Entertaining, e.g., the proposition 3 +2 =5 or Mount Everest is higher than Mount Blanc feels different from entertaining one you think is clearly false - 3 + 2 = 6, for example, or Mount Blanc ts higher than Mount Everest. The first two feel natural, right, acceptable; the second two feel objectionable, wrong, eminently rejectable.. . . Isay, this experience is always connected with operations of the sensus divinitatis, because always connected with the formation or sustenance of any belief. So all of these varieties of experience can be found in the operation of the sensus divimitats, doxastic experience accompanies any beliefs

formed by its operation, as it does the formation of any other belief. But, back to our ques}tion: shall we therefore say that knowledge by way of the sensus divinitatis comes by way of religious experience, that it is experiential knowledge? Shall we say that (on the model) the warrant it has comes from experience? I don’t propose to answer the question. An answer would involve a long and essentially ‘irrelevant effort to answer another question: |“What does it mean to say that the warrant of

a belief comes from, or comes by way of experience, religious or otherwise?” This is an interesting question, and a tough question (doxastic experience always accompanies the formation of a priori belief and scraps of sensuous imagery typically accompany it; does the warrant of a priori belief therefore come from experience?).But we don’t need an answer to that question for our purposes. We can be satisfied with an account of how (on the model) the sensus divinitatis does in fact work; given that account, the answer to the question whether this is by way of experience is unimportant and optional. (6) Sin and natural knowledge of God Finally, according to the A/C model this natural knowledge of God has been compromised, weakened, reduced, smothered, overlaid, or impeded by sin and its consequences. . . . Due to one cause or another, the faculty itself may be diseased and thus partly or wholly disabled. There is such a thing as cognitive disease; there is blindness, deafness, inability to tell right from wrong, insanity; and there are analogues of these conditions with respect to the operation of the sensus divinitatis. According to Marx and Marxists, of course, it is belief in God that is a result of cognitive disease, of dysfunction. In an etymological sense, Marx thinks, the believer is insane. A milder, more conciliatory way to put it is that the believer, from those perspectives, is irrational; there is a failure of rational faculties to work as they should. But here the A/C model stands Freud and Marx on their heads; according to the model, it is really the unbeliever who displays epistemic malfunction; failing to believe in God is a result of some kind of dysfunction of the sensus divinitatis. And here we should note that the notion of warrant can be usefully generalized. So far we have thought of warrant as a property or characteristic of beliefs; the basic idea is that a belief enjoys warrant when it is formed by properly functioning cognitive faculties in a congenial epistemic environment according to a design plan successfully aimed at truth —

291

ALVIN PLANTINGA

which includes, we should note, the avoid-

ance of error. But withholdings, failures to believe, can also be dictated by a design plan successfully aimed at truth and the avoidance of error. You have conflicting evidence for the proposition that there is intelligent life in other parts of the universe: some of those you trust say yes, some say no, and some say there is little evidence either way. You therefore withhold that belief, believing neither that there is nor that there isn’t life elsewhere in the universe. Your friends with the rocky marriage tell you conflicting stories about the latest quarrel: by virtue of past experience in similar situations you have learned to believe neither story without further corroboration. Your young son asks you how high the highest mountain in Antarctica is; you have a dim impression of having heard that it is in the neighborhood at 16,000 feet, but don’t really know; you form no belief on the subject. In all of these cases withholding is what the design plan dictates. Thus withholding displays a sort of analogue of warrant: it, too, can in certain circumstances, be dictated by the proper function of cognitive faculties operating in a congenial epistemic environment according to a design plan successfully aimed at truth and the avoidance of error. On the other hand, if you call and ask what

I am doing at the moment and I don’t form the belief that I am sitting at my computer trying to work on my book, there is something wrong with my noetic establishment. I am introduced to someone at a party; although I have no reason to do so, I withhold the be-

lief that what I see before me is a person, motivated by nothing more than the broadly logical possibility that what I see is really an extraordinarily clever hologram with sound effects attached. I read Bertrand Russell and see that it is possible (in the broadly logical sense) and compatible with appearances that the world popped into existence just five minutes ago, complete with all those apparent memories, crumbling mountains, and dusty books; as a result I withhold the belief that I am more than five minutes old. In these cases, 292

my failure to believe is a sign, not of exemplary epistemic caution, but of cognitive malfunction; these withholdings /ack the analogue of warrant. Of course I might, in a frenzy due to philosophical error, come to the conclusion that in some way I ought not to believe in other people; I might come to the conclusion that such belief is unjustified, somehow; and I might try not to believe in other people. I might even succeed for brief periods in my study. But it is exceedingly hard to maintain this attitude, as is demonstrated by the famous lady who dropped Bertrand Russell a postcard in which she wrote something like “T agree entirely with you that solipsism is the correct and most reasonable position: so why aren’t there more of us solipsists?” As Hume notoriously noted, it is exceedingly hard to maintain this attitude for long, or outside your sway. The fact is that someone who consistently believes that she is the only person in the universe is suffering from a serious mental disorder, and the same is true for the person who is merely agnostic about the existence of other persons. We could put the same point by saying that some withholdings are rational and some irrational. An important sense of the term “rational, . . . is one in which a belief is rational if it is produced by rational faculties functioning properly. But of course the same can be said for withholdings: they can be produced by rational faculties functioning properly, as in the first three examples, above, but also by rational faculties functioning improperly, as in the next three examples. According to the model, the same thing can happen with respect to belief in God. Failure to believe can be due to a sort of blindness or deafness, to improper function of the sensus divinitatis. On the present model, such failure to believe in irrational and such withholdings lack the analogue if warrant. It doesn’t follow that it is unjustified — if it is due solely to cognitive malfunction, then there is no dereliction of epistemic duty — but it is none the less irrational. Contrary to a sort of ethos induced by classical foundationalism, it is not the case that

WARRANTED BELIEF IN GOD

the way to demonstrate rationality is to believe as little as possible; withholding, failure to believe, agnosticism, is not always, from the point ofview ofrationality, the safest and best path. In some contexts it is instead a sign of serious irrationality. According to the present model, then, the sensus divinitatis has been damaged and corrupted by sin. But further, ... the sensus

divinitatis is partly healed and restored to proper function by faith and the concomitant work ofthe Holy Spirit in one’s heart. So the model as so far outlined is incomplete... . But even if incomplete, the model as so far outlined will suffice for present purposes. For it shows us a sufficiently detailed way in which a properly functioning sensus divinitatis can produce theistic belief which is (1) taken in the basic way, and (2) so taken, can indeed have warrant, and warrant sufficient for knowledge.

2 Is Belief in God WarrantBasic?

A

If False, Probably Not

... Freud doesn’t really argue that theistic belief has no warrant if taken in the basic way: he seems to assume that such belief is false, and then infers in rather quick and casual fashion that it is produced by wish fulfillment and hence doesn’t have warrant. But here (despite the appearance of carelessness) perhaps Freud’s instincts are right: I shall argue that if theistic belief is false, but taken in the basic way, then it probably has no warrant. First, as we saw above, no false belief has warrant suf-

ficient for knowledge; therefore if theistic belief is false, it doesn’t have that degree of warrant. But couldn’t it none the less have at least some warrant? There are at least two reasons for thinking not. First, when does a false belief have warrant? Typically, in a case where the faculty that produces the belief is working at the limit of its capability. You see a mountain goat on a distant crag, and think you see that it has horns; as a matter of fact it is just too far away for you to see clearly that it

doesn’t have horns. You are a particle physicist and mistakenly believe that a certain subatomic model is close to the truth: working as you are at the outer limits of the cognitive domain for which our faculties are designed, your belief is false but not without warrant. But ifthere is no such person as God, then of course there is no such thing as a sensus divinitatis; and what truth-aimed faculty would be such that it is working at the limit of its ability in producing the belief that there 7s such a person as God, if that latter belief is false? It is exceedingly hard to think of decent candidates. Further, if your faculties are functioning properly, and are not impeded by desire for fame, ambition, lust, and the like, then if they are working at the limit of their capability, you will ordinarily not believe the proposition in question with great firmness — you will not believe it with anything like the degree of firmness often displayed by theistic belief. Thus you won’t be sure that you see horns on that goat: you will instead think to yourself: “Well it /ooks as if it has horns, but it’s too far away to be sure.” You won’t insist that your physical model is correct; if you believe it is, it will be with a certain tentativeness. These considerations suggest that if theistic belief is false, it is not produced by cognitive processes successfully aimed at the truth, and hence does not have warrant. There is another and more important consideration. We can approach it indirectly as follows. A belief has warrant only if the cognitive process that produces it is successfully aimed at the truth; that is, only if there is a high objective probability that a belief produced by this process is true (given that the process is functioning properly in the sort of epistemic environment for which it is designed). Now from the fact that a beliefis false, it doesn’t follow that it is not produced by a process or faculty successfully aimed at truth. It could be that on a given occasion a process issues a false belief even though there is a substantial objective probability that any belief it produces will be true (given the satisfaction of the other conditions of warrant). For ex293

ALVIN PLANTINGA

ample, a reliable barometer may give a false reading, due to an unusual and improbable confluence of circumstances. Physicists tell us that it is possible (though extremely unlikely) that for just a moment, all the air molecules in the room should congregate in the upper northwest corner of the room. Suppose this happens; at that moment the air pressure in the vicinity of the barometer in the lower southeast corner of the room is zero; the barometer, however, still registers 29.72, because

there hasn’t been a long enough time for it to react to the change. The fact that it issues a false reading under these circumstances doesn’t mean it is not a reliable instrument. Similarly for a cognitive process: there might in fact be a high probability that a belief it produces is true, despite the fact that on a given occasion (even though the other conditions of warrant are satisfied) it issues a false belief. Couldn’t something similar hold for the processes that produce belief in God? Might it not be that belief in God is produced by cognitive processes successfully aimed at the truth, even if that belief is as a matter of

fact false? I think not. A proposition is objectively probable, with respect to some condition C, only if that proposition is true in most of the nearby possible worlds. But now consider the process that produces theistic belief: if it is successfully aimed at truth, then in most of the nearby possible worlds it produces a true belief. Assuming that in those nearby possible worlds it produces the same belief as it does in fact — i.e., belief in God — it follows that in most of the nearby possible worlds that belief is in fact true; in most of the nearby possible worlds there is such a person as God. But that can’t be, if the fact is there is no such

person as God. For if in fact (in the actual world) there is no such person as God, then a world in which there 7s such a person — an omniscient, omnipotent, wholly good person who has created the world — would be enormously, unimaginably different from the actual world, and enormously dissimilar from it. So if there is no such person as God, it is 294

probably not the case that the process that produces theistic belief produces a true belief in most of the nearby possible worlds. Therefore it is unlikely that belief in God is produced by a process that is functioning properly in a congenial epistemic environment according to a design plan successfully aimed at the production of true belief. So if theistic belief is false, it probably has no warrant. So Freud is right: if theistic belief is false then it is at the least very likely that it has little or no warrant.

B_

If True, Probably So

On the other hand, if theistic belief, is true, then it seems likely that it does have warrant. For if it is true, then there is indeed such a

person as God, a person who has created us in his image (so that we resemble him, among other things, in having the capacity for knowledge), who loves us, and who desires that we know and love him, and who is such that it is our end and good to know and love him. But

if these things are so, then he would of course intend that we be able to be aware of his presence, and to know something about him. And if that is so, the natural thing to think is that he created us in such a way that we would come to hold such true beliefs as that there is such a person as God, that he is our creator,

that we owe him obedience and worship, that he is worthy of worship, that he loves us, and so on. And if thatis so, then the natural thing to think is that the cognitive processes that do indeed produce belief in God, are aimed by their designer at producing that belief. But then the belief in question will be produced by cognitive faculties functioning properly according to a design plan successfully aimed at truth: it will therefore have warrant. Again, this isn’t certain; the argument is not deductively valid. It is abstractly possible, I suppose, that God has created us with a certain faculty f for knowing Him; for one reason or another, f always malfunctions, and some other faculty f’ created to produce some other beliefs, often malfunctions in such a way that 7t produces belief in God. Then our belief in God

WARRANTED BELIEF IN GOD

wouldn’t have warrant, despite the fact that it is true. (This would be something like a sort of complex and peculiar theological Gettier problem.) And the abstract character of this possibility is perhaps strengthened when we think of the fact that human beings, according to Christian belief, have fallen into sin, which has noetic effects as well as effects of other sorts. Nevertheless, the epistemically more probable thing, at least so far as I can see, is that ifin fact theism is true, then theis-

tic belief has warrant. Suppose we try to take a deeper look. How could we make sense of the idea that theism is true but belief in God doesn’t have warrant? We’d have to suppose (1) what there is such a person as God, who has created us in his image, and has created us in such a way that our chief end and good is knowledge of him, and (2) that beliefin God, i.e. our belief in God, human belief in God, has no warrant: is not produced by cognitive processes successfully aimed at giving us true beliefs about God, functioning properly in a congenial epistemic environment. That is, we’d have to think that

belief in God is produced by cognitive processes that either (1) are not functioning properly (due to disease or impedance) or (2) are not aimed at producing true beliefs about God, or (3) are so aimed, but not successfully aimed, or (4) the cognitive environment is uncongenial, not one for which our faculties are designed. But with respect to (4), we are supposing God has created us; there seems no reason at all to think our epistemic environment not the one for which he created us. (We have no reason, for example, to think that our ancestors originated on some other planet and made a long, hazardous journey to Earth.) With respect to (3), since, by hypothesis, theistic beliefistrue, it seems that if it zs aimed at the truth, it is successfully aimed at the truth. That leaves us with (1) and (2). Given that God would certainly want us to be able to know him, the chances are excellent that he would create us with faculties enabling us to do just that. So the natural thing to think is that those faculties that produce theistic be-

lief were indeed designed to produce that sort of belief, and are functioning properly in so doing. Of course it is possible, in the broadly logical’ sense, that the faculties designed to produce theistic belief don’t work for one reason or another, and some other faculties not

aimed at producing theistic belief malfunction, thus producing it. The same, I suppose, is abstractly possible with respect to perception: the original faculties whereby we knew our environment began to malfunction, and by some serendipitous happenstance other faculties, began to malfunction in just such a way as to produce our perceptual beliefs. Possible, but not likely. This is an abstract possibility, but not much more. And suppose, improbably, that something like this did happen with the original sensus divinitatis. it stopped working (perhaps as a result of sin) and some other faculty began to malfunction and leapt into the breach, by serendipitous happenstance producing the very sorts of beliefs the original sensus divimitatis did: then it would seem likely that God has adopted this other way of working as our design plan, so that theistic belief does indeed have warrant, but via a sort ofcircuitous route. The conclusion to draw, I

think, is that the epistemic probability of theistic beliefs being warranted, given that theism is true, is very high.°®

3

The De Jure Question is not

Independent of the De Facto Question And here, we see, are the ontological or meta-

physical or ultimately religious roots of the question as to the rationality or warrant or lack thereof for beliefin God. What you properly take to be rational, at least in the sense of warranted, depends upon what sort of metaphysical and religious stance you adopt. It depends upon what kind of beings you think human beings are, and what sorts of beliefs you think their noetic faculties will produce when they are functioning properly, and which of their faculties or cognitive mechanisms are 295

ALVIN PLANTINGA

aimed at the truth. Your view as to what sort of creature a human being is will determine or at any rate heavily influence your views as to whether theistic beliefiswarranted or not warranted, rational or irrational for human be-

the de jure question we finally found is not, after all, really independent of the de facto question; to answer the former we must answer the latter. This is important: what it shows is that a successful atheological objection will

ings. And so the dispute as to whether theistic beliefis rational (warranted) can’t be settled just by attending to epistemological considerations; it is at bottom not merely an epistemological dispute, but an ontological or theological dispute. You may think humankind is created by God in the image of God — and created both

have to be to the truth of theism, not to its

with a natural tendency to see God’s hand in the world about us, and with a natural tendency to recognize that we have indeed been created and are beholden to our creator, owing him worship and allegiance. Then of course you will not think of belief in God as in the typical case a manifestation of any kind of intellectual defect. Nor will you think it is a manifestation of a belief-producing power or

dence against theistic belief. She can’t any longer adopt the following stance: “Well, I certainly don’t know whether theistic belief is true — who could know a thing like that? but I do know this: it is irrational, or unjustified, or not rationally justified, or contrary to reason or intellectually irresponsible or. There really isn’t a sensible de jure question or criticism that is independent of the de facto question. There aren’t any de jure criticisms that are sensible when conjoined with the truth of theistic belief; all of them either fail right from the start (as with the claim that it is unjustified to accept theistic belief) or else really presuppose that theism is false. This fact by itself invalidates an enormous amount ofrecent and contemporary atheology; for much of that atheology is devoted to de jure complaints that are allegedly independent ofthe de facto question. But if my argument so far is right, there aren’t any sensible complaints of that sort. (More modestly, none have been so far proposed; it is always possible, I suppose, that someone will come up with one.)

mechanism that is not aimed at the truth. It is instead a cognitive mechanism whereby we are put in touch with part of reality — indeed by far the most important part of reality. It is in this regard like a deliverance of sense perception, or memory, or reason, the faculty responsible for a priori knowledge. On the other hand, you may think we human beings are the product of blind evolutionary forces; you may think there is no God, and that we are part of a Godless universe. Then perhaps you will be inclined to accept the sort of view according to which beliefin God is an illusion of some sort, properly traced to wishful thinking or some other cognitive mechanism not aimed at the truth (Freud) or to a sort of disease or dysfunction on the part of the individual or society (Marx). And this dependence of the question of warrant or rationality on the truth or falsehood of theism leads to a very interesting conclusion. If the warrant enjoyed by belief in God is related in this way to the truth of that belief, then the question whether theistic belief has warrantis not after all independent of the question whether theistic belief is true. So

296

rationality, or justification, or intellectual respectability, or rational justification, or whatever. The atheologian who wishes to attack theistic belief will have to restrict herself to objections like the argument from evil, or the claim that theism is incoherent, or the idea that in some other way there is strong evi-

Notes 1

2

Summa Theologiael.q.2a.1,ad 1. In Summa Contra Gentiles Aquinas adds that “There is a certain general and confused knowledge of God, which is in almost all men .. .’ (bk If ch. 38). Tr. Ford Lewis Battles and ed. John T. McNeill (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960). Page references to the Institutes are to this edition.

WARRANTED BELIEF IN GOD 3

Commentaries on the Epistle of Paul the Apos-

Press, 1991), ch.1, 2, 5, and 6. (Hereafter

tle to the Romans, volume x1x of Calvin’s Com-

SIRE)” Alston issues a similar warning (PG, p. 34). Here we must also suppose, in accord with the conclusion of part IV of this book, that it is not the case that those who believe in God for the most part have defeaters for that belief.

mentartes (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1979; originally printed for the Calvin Translation Society of Edinburgh, Scotland), p. 70. Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University

297

Pascal’s Wager

34

From Pensées*

Blaise Pascal But we know of his existence through faith. In glory we will know his nature. Now I have already shown that we can certainly know the existence of something without knowing its nature. Let us now speak according to natural lights. If there is a God, he is infinitely beyond our comprehension, since, having neither parts nor limits, he bears no relation to ourselves.

We are therefore incapable of knowing either what he is, or if he is. That being so, who will

dare to undertake a resolution of this question? It cannot be us, who bear no relationship to him. Who will then blame the Christians for being unable to provide a rational basis for their belief, they who profess a religion for which they cannot provide a rational basis? They declare that it is a folly, stultitiam (I Corinthians I: 18) in laying it before the world: and then you complain that they do not prove

it! Ifthey did prove it, they would not be keeping their word. It is by the lack of proof that they do not lack sense. ‘Yes, but although that excuses those who offer their religion as it is, and that takes away the blame from them of producing it without a rational basis, it does not excuse those who accept it.’ Let us therefore examine this point, and say: God is, or is not. But towards which side will we lean? Reason cannot decide anything. * From Blaise Pascal, Pensées and Other Writings, tr. Honor Levi (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 153-6. Reprinted with permission.

298

There is an infinite chaos separating us. At the far end of this infinite distance a game is being played and the coin will come down heads or tails. How will you wager? Reason cannot make you choose one way or the other, reason cannot make you defend either of the two choices. So do not accuse those who have made a choice of being wrong, for you know nothing about it! ‘No, but I will blame them not for having made this choice, but for having made any choice. For, though the one who chooses heads and the other one are equally wrong, they are both wrong. The right thing is not to wager at all.’ Yes, but you have to wager. It is not up to you, you are already committed. Which then will you choose? Let us see. Since you have to choose, let us see which interests you the least. You have two things to lose: the truth and the good, and two things to stake: your reason and will, your knowledge and beatitude; and your nature has two things to avoid: error and wretchedness. Your reason is not hurt more by choosing one rather than the other, since you do have to make the choice. That is one point disposed of. But your beatitude? Let us weigh up the gain and the loss by calling heads that God exists. Let us assess the two cases: if you win, you win everything; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager that he exists then, without hesitating! “This is wonderful. Yes, I must wager. But perhaps I am betting too much.’ Let us see. Since there is an equal chance of gain and loss, if you won

FROM PENSEES only two lives instead of one, you could still put on a bet. But if there were three lives to win, you would have to play (since you must necessarily play), and you would be unwise, once forced to play, not to chance your life to win three in a game where there is an equal chance oflosing and winning. But there is an eternity oflife and happiness. And that being so, even though there were an infinite number of chances of which only one were in your favour, you would still be right to wager one in order to win two, and you would be acting wrongly, since you are obliged to play, by refusing to stake one life against three in a game where out of an infinite number of chances there is one in your favour, if there were an infinitely happy infinity oflife to be won. But here there is an infinitely happy infinity of life to be won, one chance of winning against a finite number of chances of losing, and what you are staking is finite. That removes all choice: wherever there is infinity and where there is no infinity of chances of losing against one of winning, there is no scope for wavering, you have to chance everything. And thus, as you are forced to gamble, you have to have discarded reason if you cling on to your life, rather than risk it for the infinite prize which is just as likely to happen as the loss of nothingness. For it is no good saying that it is uncertain if you will win, that it is certain you are taking a risk, and that the infinite distance between the CERTAINTY of what you are risking and the UNCERTAINTY of whether you win makes the

finite good of what you are certainly risking equal to the uncertainty of the infinite. It does not work like that. Every gambler takes a certain risk for an uncertain gain; nevertheless he certainly risks the finite uncertainty in order to win a finite gain, without sinning against reason. There is no infinite distance between this certainty of what is being risked and the uncertainty of what might be gained: that is untrue. There is, indeed, an infinite distance

between the certainty of winning and the certainty of losing. But the uncertainty of winning is proportional to the certainty of the risk,

according to the chances of winning or losing. And hence, if there are as many chances on one side as on the other, the odds are even, and then the certainty of what you risk is equal to the uncertainty of winning. It is very far from being infinitely distant from it. So our argument is infinitely strong, when the finite is at stake in a game where there are equal chances of winning and losing, and the infinite is to be won. That is conclusive, and, if human beings are

capable of understanding any truth at all, this is the one. ‘I confess it, I admit it, but even so... Is there no way of seeing underneath the cards?’ ‘Yes, Scripture and the rest, etc.’ ‘Yes, but my

hands are tied and I cannot speak a word. I am being forced to wager and I am not free, they will not let me go. And I am made in such a way that I cannot believe. So what do you want me to do?’ “That is true. But at least realize that your inability to believe, since reason urges you to do so and yet you cannot, arises from your passions. So concentrate not on convincing yourself by increasing the number of proofs of God but on diminishing your passions. You want to find faith and you do not know the way? You want to cure yourself of unbelief and you ask for the remedies? Learn from those who have been bound like you, and who now wager all they have. They are people who know the road you want to follow and have been cured of the affliction of which you want to be cured. Follow the way by which they began: by behaving just as if they believed, taking holy water, having masses said, etc. That will make you believe quite naturally, and according to your animal reactions.’ ‘But that is what I am afraid of.’ ‘Why? What do you have to lose? In order to show you that this is where it leads, it is because it diminishes the passions, which are your great stumbling-blocks, etc. ‘How these words carry me away, send me into raptures,’ etc. If these words please you and seem worthwhile, you should know that they are spoken by a man who knelt both before and afterwards to beg this infinite and 299

STEPHEN P. STICH

indivisible Being, to whom he submits the whole of himself, that you should also submit yourself, for your own good and for his glory, and that strength might thereby be reconciled with this lowliness. End of this discourse. But what harm will come to you from taking this course? You will be faithful, honest,

humble, grateful, doing good, a sincere and true friend. It is, of course, true; you will not

35

take part in corrupt pleasure, in glory, in the pleasures of high living. But will you not have others? I tell you that you will win thereby in this life, and that at every step you take along this path, you will see so much certainty of winning and so negligible a risk, that you will realize in the end that you have wagered on something certain and infinite, for which you have paid nothing.

The Recombinant DNA Debate: a Difficulty for Pascalian-Style Wagering*

Stephen P. Stich In the argument I want to examine the particular moral judgment being defended is that there should be a total ban on recombinant DNA research. The argument beings with the observation that even in so-called low-risk recombinant DNA experiments there is at least a possibility of catastrophic consequences. We are, after all, dealing with a relatively new and unexplored technology. Thus it is at least possible that a bacterial culture whose genetic makeup has been altered in the course of a recombinant DNA experiment may exhibit completely unexpected pathogenic characteristics. Indeed, it is not impossible that we could find ourselves confronted with a killer strain of, say, E. cola and, worse, a strain against which humans can marshal no natural defense. Now if this is possible — if we cannot say with assurance that the probability of it happening is zero — then, the argument continues, all recombinant DNA research should be halted. For the negative utility of the imagined catas* From Stephen P. Stich, “The Recombinant DNA

Debate,” first published in Philosophy and Public Affairs, 7 (1978). Reprinted with permission.

300

trophe is so enormous, resulting as it would in the destruction of our society and perhaps even of our species, that no work which could possibly lead to this result would be worth the risk. The argument just sketched, which might be called the “doomsday scenario” argument, begins with a premise which no informed person would be inclined to deny. It is indeed possible that even a low-risk recombinant DNA experiment might lead to totally catastrophic results. No ironclad guarantee can be offered that this will not happen. And while the probability of such an unanticipated catastrophe is surely not large, there is no serious argument that the probability is zero. Still, I think the argument is a sophistry. To go from the undeniable premise that recombinant DNA research might possibly result in unthinkable catastrophe to the conclusion that such research should be banned requires a moral principle stating that a// endeavors that might possibly result in such a catastrophe should be prohibited. Once the principle has been stated, it is hard to believe that anyone would take it at all seriously. For the principle entails that, along with

THE RECOMBINANT DNA DEBATE recombinant DNA research, almost all scien-

tific research and many other commonplace activities having little to do with science should be prohibited. It is, after all, at least logically possible that the next new compound synthesized in an ongoing chemical research program will turn out to be an uncontainable carcinogen many orders of magnitude more dangerous than aerosol plutonium. And, to vary the example, there is a non-zero probability that experiments in artificial pollination will produce a weed that will, a decade from now, ruin the world’s food grain harvest.’ I cannot resist noting that the principle invoked in the doomsday scenario argument is not new. Pascal used an entirely parallel argument to show that it is in our own best interests to believe in God. For though the probability of God’s existence may be very low, if He none the less should happen to exist, the disutility that would accrue to the disbeliever would be catastrophic — an eternity in hell. But, as introductory philosophy students should al] know, Pascal’s argument only looks persuasive if we take our options to be just two: Christianity or atheism. A third possibility is beliefin a jealous non-Christian God who will see to our damnation ifand only if we are Christians. The probability of such a deity existing is again very small, but non-zero. So Pascal’s argument is of no help in deciding whether or not to accept Christianity. For we may be damned if

I mention Pascal’s difficulty because there is a direct parallel in the doomsday scenario argument against recombinant DNA research. Just asthere is a non-zero probability that unforeseen consequences of recombinant DNA research will lead to disaster, so there is a non-

zero probability that unforeseen consequences of failing to pursue the research will lead to disaster. There may, for example, come a time when, because of natural or man-induced cli-

matic change, the capacity to alter quickly the genetic constitution of agricultural plants will be necessary to forestall catastrophic famine. And if we fail to pursue recombinant DNA research now, our lack of knowledge in the future may have consequences as dire as any foreseen in the doomsday scenario argument... Note

1

Unfortunately, the doomsday scenario argument is mot a straw man conjured only by those who would refute it. Consider, for example, the remarks of Anthony Mazzocchi, spokesman for the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers International Union, reported in Sczence News, March 19, 1977, p. 181: “When scientists argue over safe or unsafe, we ought to be very prudent. . . . If critics are correct and the Andromeda scenario has even the smallest possibility of occurring, we must assume it will occur on the basis of our experience” (emphasis added).

we do and damned if we don’t.

301

GEORGE N. SCHLESINGER

——

a

36

A Central Theistic Argument*

a

George N. Schlesinger Introduction Pascal’s wager is as a rule more easily appreciated than any other argument in support of religious belief. After all, the locution (which represents the essential structure of the wager), “T have nothing to lose and everything to gain by doing such and such,” is a common one and readily understood by everybody. At the same time the wager has been the target of a number of objections. I propose here to deal with three of these; two are widely known, whereas the third is of very recent origin. Finaliy, I also point out that the gravest objection to the wager requires a reply that is based on an argument indispensable in the context of nearly all other theistic proofs. Hence, that argument (of which three different versions are considered in sections 6 and 7) may well be regarded as the most central theistic argument. The first objection has no great logical force but carries considerable psychological weight. It is unique in so far that it contends not so much that the wager violates the rules of sound thinking and is therefore invalid but rather that it is repugnant, and in a religious context, it is especially unseemly. The second objection contends that even if the argument were logically impeccable it would lead nowhere. The last one, surprisingly enough, claims that it is overly effective, so much so that it should not at all matter what an individual does or fails to do, because he or she is by virtue of the wager in a maximally *From Gambling on God: Essays on Pascal’s Wager, ed. Jeff Jordan (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1994), pp. 83-99, Reprinted with permission.

302

advantageous position anyway with regard to eternal salvation.

The Wager and Greed It is common knowledge that many wellintentioned individuals reject the wager for reasons that do not require much philosophical sophistication. They find it mercenary. They believe it appeals to the scheming, calculating self and are thus repelled by it. Without delving deep into theological issues, it has seemed to many that applying betting rules, relevant to moneymaking ventures, to a supposedly infinitely more exalted subject to lure skeptics by appealing to their grasping instincts offends religious proprieties. People have found absurd the very notion that there may be any comparison between the seeker of atranscendent goal in life and a patron ofagambling house. We need not assume that greed as such is held generally in our highly acquisitive society in intense contempt. In the present context, however, it appears to offend the very spirit of what one is supposed to pursue. The essence of religion is generally perceived as the conviction that all profane, self-seeking ambitions are incompatible with the quest for piety. The religious seeker is not one to be mired in self-indulgent pursuits but passionately devotes oneself to much nobler and more ultimate concerns. Now of course Pascal was quite explicit in saying that the skeptic’s wagering on God is no more than a first step, and those who take no further steps will have achieved nothing. However, his advice to the wagerer is to start behaving as one would if one actually believed,

A CENTRAL THEISTIC ARGUMENT

because Pascal believed that such conduct is likely to lead to a truly dedicated life in the service of God. By starting to observe the rituals of religion, associating with pious persons, and studying the sacred literature, individuals are likely to transform their sentiments and feelings and eventually acquire genuine belief. Yet Pascal’s reply has failed to satisfy many of his critics. If grasping is incompatible with the spirit of religion, then it is not to be used as a vehicle with which to reach any destination. Noble ends are debased when pursued by ignoble means. Pascal’s supporters at this stage are usually inclined to offer distinctions between means that do not and means that do justify their end. I believe a more important point should be made: we are free to assume that no objective is ever hallowed enough that it should be impermissible to reach it by anything but impeccable means. First, a relatively simple point about the offensiveness of greed. Suppose there is a person of an extraordinarily high income who gives away almost all his money to charity, retaining only what is necessary for bare existence. Furthermore, this individual does not

seek the gratitude of the beneficiaries of these donations nor the admiration of the community. In fact, this person always makes every possible effort to ensure that no one should be aware of these humanitarian activities. Despite all this, it is conceivable that he could be charged with selfishness and greed: he is surely aware of his almost unparalleled, heroic, moral accomplishments. Evidently therefore he is a highly greedy individual; what he apparently craves is not material possessions nor the prestige accorded for outstanding philanthropy but the ability to relish the knowledge that he has outdone practically everyone in his contempt for stinginess, in his indifference for fame and praise, and the ability to enjoy the deep satisfaction of having been able to reach the pinnacle of otherdirectedness and the heights of noble magnanimity free of the slightest taint of petty self-regard. Clearly, if we were to take this line, then

we would be forced to conclude that every act which fulfills some wish is greedy and selfish and no freely willed act would ever be free of sin. Thus, the sensible thing to say is that the pursuit of a quest is deplorable when it brings harm either to others or to oneself in the sense that it debases the questing individual (which Pascal calls “poisonous pleasures”) who could instead strive for more refined, higher order, life-enhancing pleasures. Now the pleasure that Pascal holds up before his “calculating clients” is of the most exalted kind, one that is simply inaccessible to an individual who has not spent life passionately serving the Master of the Universe and thereby developing and perfecting one’s soul, without which one lacks the capacity to partake in the transmundane bliss available to the select few. Only the suitably groomed soul, when released from its earthly fetters, will bask in the radiance of the Divine presence and delight in the adoring communion with a loving God. If craving for such an end is a manifestation of greed, then it is the manifestation ofa noble greed that is to be acclaimed. Therefore, only if one were to assume that the ultimate reward of the righteous is the satisfaction of some cruder yearnings could one charge a follower of Pascal with trying to enkindle our unseemly mercenary motives.

Practice and Belief However, a more important point needs to be made as well. The essence of true religion is not the intellectual assent to a set of propositions nor is it the verbal profession of certain beliefs. It is a full commitment and devotion, having one’s heart and soul virtually consumed by a deep reverence and love of God. Maimonides wrote: What is the proper love of God? It is the love of the Lord with a great and very strong love so that one’s soul shall be tied to the love of the Lord, and one should be continually enraptured by it, like a lovesick individual.!

303

GEORGE N. SCHLESINGER

The immediate question one is bound to ask is, how does one achieve such a state of mind?

Belief might be obtained through compelling arguments, or credible evidence, but surely exaltation or love is not an epistemic universal and cannot be planted into one’s heart by the methodological rules of knowledge acquisition. A very brief answer has been hinted at by the sagacious Hillel, who, as the famous story goes, was approached by someone demanding to be taught the whole Law while standing on one foot. Hillel agreed and informed the man that the single sentence, “Whatever is hateful to you do not do it to your fellowhuman,” contains the essence ofall there is to

be learned.” Hillel’s fascinating precis of the Law raises many problems. One of them is in Leviticus 19:18: it says, “You all love your fellow-human as yourself.” Why did he believe it necessary to change the wording of the Scriptures? This particular question may have

deep religious sentiments, then one has provided oneself with the proper grounds on which fervent love for the Divine may grow. The theory behind this view may be compared with what today is called “behavior modification.” This kind of therapy is based on the belief that it is possible to induce feelings of aversion to what is harmful and a natural desire for what is beneficial through adopting certain patterns of behavior. On the more extreme version of this view (as held by Halevi), it is not merely possible but essential to begin one’s journey toward authentic theism by looking on the practices mandated by religion as the proper first step toward genuine piety. On this view, the wagerer who starts out satisfying the demands of faith before having acquired actual belief is not merely doing what is calculating and mercenary nor even that which is merely commendable but is engaged in what is absolutely indispensable for reaching the noble objective that is sought.

a simple answer, namely, Hillel realized that

one cannot be commanded to have certain sentiments; I could be ordered to act or to

refrain from acting in a certain way but not to love someone I happen to dislike. Thus, to reach the stage that the Scripture prescribes where one actually loves other human beings, we have to begin with the kind of behavior that is always associated with such a sentiment, that is, our practical conduct toward our fellow humans should be like that toward our own self: never actually do anything injurious to their interests. Desirable behavior is assumed to generate eventually desirable feelings. Hillel’s insight should be applied in the context of one’s relation to God as well. The twelfth-century poet-philosopher Judah Halevi was quite explicit on this point, “Man can reach God only by doing His commands” (Cuzari, 2.46). Good thoughts, on their own, are too fleeting and insubstantial, and physical acts are concrete; when one has trained

oneself to act in accordance with the dictates of religion and actual behavior closely resembles the behavior of those who possess truly 304

Are There Infinitely Many Equally Viable Hypotheses? The second, oft-repeated objection is a relatively powerful, clearly articulated objection, known as the “many-gods objection.” Pascal has been charged with making the unwarranted assumption that the problem facing the agnostic is confined to the question of which of two options to choose. In reality, however, in addition to the God ofthe theist, there are

any number of other possible ones as well. How is the wagerer to assess the relative benefits associated with betting on Osiris, Baal, Dagon, Zeus, or Blodenwedd? Pascal provides

no argument to guide us to the right deity, worshiping whom one is most likely to secure oneself eternal salvation. Before attempting to advance any reply, I should point out that though the objection is, as already mentioned, a serious one, we find in the literature several versions, depicting a far more threatening portrayal ofthe difficulty than it is in reality. Richard Gale, for exam-

A CENTRAL THEISTIC ARGUMENT

ple, sees the following devastating consequences of the many-gods objection: ... from the fact that it is logically possible that God exists it does not follow that the product of the probability of his existence and an infinite number is infinite. In a fair lottery with a denumerable infinity of tickets, for each ticket it is true that it is logically possible that it will win, but the probability of its doing so is infinitesimal and the product of an infinitesimal and an infinite number is itself infinitesimal. Thus the expected gain of buying a ticket is not infinite but infinitesimal. There is at least a denumerable infinity of logically possible deities ... and thus betting on any one of them the expected gain is zero according to this argument.

The opponents of the wager have had the tendency to magnify the gravity of the problem by overcalculating the number of alternatives available for the religious seeker and hence depicting Pascal’s counsel as quite hopelessly arbitrary. For example, J. L. Mackie, who lists a number of possible deities that seem to have escaped Pascal’s notice, also mentions, ... that there might be a god who looked with more favor on honest doubters or atheists who,

in Hume’s words, proportioned their belief to the evidence, than on mercenary manipulators of their own understanding. Indeed, this would follow from the ascription to God of moral goodness in any sense we can understand.*

Also fairly often heard is the argument that among the infinitely many possible deities, we must not overlook one who grants eternal reward to those who firmly deny the existence of a theistic God and punishes all those who believe in him. Richard Gale goes even further, suggesting that there is the logically possible deity who rewards with infinite felicity all and only those who believe in him and step on only one sidewalk crack in the course of their life, as well as the twocrack deity, the three-crack deity, and so on ad infinitum.°

There are several lines one may adopt to meet this kind of objection. One may be based on the realization that Pascal is addressing individuals who, though they may be hardened in their disbelief, do have a notion of what

genuine religion is about. In other words, though they deny its truth, they acknowledge its meaningfulness and understand that it is based on a highly optimistic view of human potential and of the sublime possible level of existence it postulates. It is a necessary presupposition of the wager that one understands that the notion of “genuine religion” is conceptually associated with a number of other exalted notions, and those people whom Pascal addresses are to be assumed to have a basic grasp of the sublime concerns of its devout practitioners. Divine worship in an authentic sense (as distinct from a pagan sense, where one is trying to propitiate the supernatural powers on whose whims one’s fate depends) is in no way to be likened to a commercial transaction. Whatever the probability of the existence of an afterlife worth seeking with all one’s might is, it is certainly not to be viewed as a place to which one may be admitted after one has paid the amount demanded by its Divine Proprietor. “The service of God is not intended for God’s perfection; it is intended for our own perfection,” says Maimonides. On this view, an individual who has devoted his

or her life to Divine service has nurtured and refined his or her soul, rendering it capable of receiving and finding felicity in the celestial radiance available for those prepared to absorb it. In brief, the wagerer is supposed to appreciate that in the context of theism, highly involved systems of theologies have been developed over the centuries, theologies that have an internal coherence and consist of many propositions with an appeal to the intellect as well as to the nobler, human sentiments.

Nothing of this sort exists in the context of, say, the sidewalk deity. It is difficult to conceive a reason why one should come to love such a being or why one should desire to be in its proximity. Ofcourse, one might claim that without any rhyme or reason it capri305

GEORGE N. SCHLESINGER

ciously rewards those who obey its arbitrary demands. Still, a Pascalian would insist that because a good portion of theistic belief is in harmony with natural, noble aspirations and is embedded in highly developed theology, it has to be ascribed a considerably higher probability than those with little appeal to the human mind and heart. Thus, we are permitted to assert the following: if we were to agree that different deities have different probabilities, then even if there are infinitely many candidates for the office of the Master of the Universe, it does not follow that each has zero probability. One may, if one wants to, ascribe a finite value to the probability of the existence of each one of them and yet obtain a sum total of all these (which is the value of the probability of the infinite disjunction of “Zeus exists OR Baal exists OR etc.”), an amount that does not exceed one. This should be the case if the various finite probabilities are members of a convergent series, for instance, the sum of the series 4+ %4+ %+... never actually reaches one. This should be sufficient to lay to rest Gale’s fear that if “there is at least a denumerable infinity of logically possible deities ... [then] betting on any one of them the expected gain is zero.”

The Criterion for Betting When the Expected Utilities Are Infinite I submit a crucial point, one that is contrary to what numerous philosophers hold, namely, that when each possible outcome carries an infinite expected value, it is rational to bet on the outcome most probable to occur. Are there solid grounds for my hypothesis? Let me first point out that grounds are provided for this view by common sense (which in itself would not be sufficient to establish my point). Anyone wishing to verify this experimentally may consider the following two cases, A and B:

306

A = Of the billions of people alive at the present moment, one and only one is going to enjoy eternal salvation, whereas the rest vanish into

nothingness after completing their lives upon this earth. A truly randomizing device is going to determine the identity of the single lucky individual. B = Of the billions of people alive at the present moment, one and only one is going to vanish into nothingness after completing one’s existence upon this planet; the rest are going to enjoy eternal salvation. A truly randomizing device is going to determine the identity of the one unlucky individual.

Now, without offering preliminary explanations, ask any number of individuals (and you may include among them some mathematicians) which case they would prefer to obtain? If my experience is reliable to any degree, rarely if ever does anybody argue: although if B is true then I am a billion times more likely to be among the blessed, this is quite irrelevant; the expected utilities are equal and therefore it makes no difference which is true. Now let us look at a truly compelling argument. In cases where the mathematical expectations are infinite, the criterion for choosing the outcome to bet on is its probability. In all betting situations the sum I am charged to participate I am charged with certainty, whereas the prize I may receive is uncertain. Fairness demands that I be compensated through being charged less than the value of the prize and proportionately so, that is, the lower the probability of winning, the less I should be charged. Thus, it is obvious that the same set of rules cannot apply in case the prize is infinite, as in other cases. Justice can-

not demand that the cost for being permitted to bet should equal the expected utilities, because then the fair cost should be infinite. But that is absurd: why should I definitely pay an infinite amount for a less than certain chance of winning back the same amount? It is evident therefore that the situation demands that a different principle must be guiding a wagerer faced with the problem of which of the

A CENTRAL THEISTIC ARGUMENT

various outcomes — each associated with infinite utilities — to choose. Because neither expected utilities nor the magnitude ofthe prize can serve as one’s criterion, by elimination it should be reasonable to be guided by the value of the probability: wager on the outcome that is most likely to materialize.

Deities with Different Degrees of Plausibility Let us consider a number of possible solutions to the many-gods problem. First, it is reasonable that a scrupulously just deity who ensures that each person’s celestial reward is in direct proportion to the amount of energy and time invested throughout one’s earthly life to the refinement of one’s soul so as to increase its susceptibility to that reward, is considerably more probable than a fancy-bred capricious power whose awards are not in any obvious way related to earning, meriting, or the enhanced quality of the receptivity or atonement of the worshipper. Thus, we regard it at least fairly plausible that a deity may exist who does not hand out compensation or reimbursement for the trouble his adherents have gone through in serving him but who is so exalted that it seems reasonable to assume that the highest form of felicity is to center one’s life around him. The most important task is to do everything in one’s power to adjust and attune one’s soul so that it has the capacity of fully resonating with the celestial radiance in which it will be submerged. A mere century or two ago theists did not recoil from using such locutions and were unembarrassed by what today may strike some as inflated gran-

diloquence. Thus we find the eighteenthcentury poet and theologian M. H. Luzatto making (in his widely studied Mesilat Yesharim) the brief statement, because he regarded the matter too obvious to require elaboration, “Man came into the world only to achieve nearness to God.” Surely such a view is bound to permeate every act and every thought of its adherent; it is part of an inclu-

sive outlook on life and belongs to an extensive system of interconnected propositions. Furthermore, in the context of the sublime

god of the theist, many found it not unreasonable to view life’s many trials and tribulations as instruments of soul-making or in any case as Means to an end that may surpass our understanding. On the other hand, when referring to deities devoid of the various glorious Divine attributes, it seems more natural

to speak like Gloucester: “As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods/They kill us for their sport.” Thus, the hypothesis is that “a God of faithfulness and without iniquity [one who is] just and right ...” (Deuteronomy 31: 4), who therefore can be a source of emulation and inspiration and whose attributes altogether resonate with our nobler sentiments, makes a great deal of sense and it is therefore reasonable to ascribe a higher probability to his existence than to an unprincipled, arbitrarily acting, wanton god. And if this is conceded, then it should also seem sensible to hold that the greater those sublime properties, the greater the likelihood the one exemplifying them exists. Hence, the being greater than which is inconceivable, who possesses them to a maximum degree, is to be regarded more probable than any other deity.

Simplicity The Cambridge statistician H. Jeffreys has shown in the 1920s that whenever we have a finite set of experimental results there are indefinitely many hypotheses that satisfy each result. The only way to select the hypothesis to be adopted is by following the principle of simplicity: of all the equally well-confirmed hypotheses, select the one that is simpler than all the others. It is crucial to realize that Jeffreys

does not refer to the simplicity of structure of the systems involved or the simplicity of use and so on; he refers solely to descriptive simplicity and says that among the various expressions that represent the law, we are to adopt 307

GEORGE N. SCHLESINGER

the one consisting of the minimal number of terms. It is also worth noting that Jeffreys’ is not a prescriptive but a descriptive principle: scientists have followed it for hundreds of years without explicitly being aware of it, simply because it has never been articulated before that of the indefinitely many alternative hypotheses present in all cases. Many people willingly concede that the rules of rational reasoning are invariant with subject matter. Consequently, after Pascal has convinced us that we should wager on some supernatural power, we are confronted with the problem of which of the many possible such powers to adopt. In the absence of any facts to assist us, it stands to reason that we

should have to use Jeftreys’ principle. It is fairly easy to see that the theistic hypothesis is the simplest in the sense specified by Jeffreys. It is the simplest because it is the only hypothesis that may be expressed with the use of a single predicate: to describe the God of the theist all that is needed is that he is an absolutely perfect being. By contrast, a statement positing the existence of any deity less than absolutely perfect will be relatively complex. For example, though there is a large body of ancient Greek literature concerning Zeus, there are still many aspects of Zeus’s character that remain unknown to us. We know for instance that he was sometimes asleep, but we have no idea how many hours of sleep he needed and what effect sleeplessness had on him. We also know that he ate and drank, but

not how much or whether he occasionally overgorged himself or how long he could go without any food at all, and so on.

The Principle of Sufficient Reason Finally, I should advance an argument based on the principle of sufficient reason why the wagerer should go for the being greater than which is not conceivable. Before doing so, I believe it is necessary to defend the principle because many contemporary philosophers 308

deny its validity. J. L. Mackie was speaking for a large number of adherents of empiricism when he said, “There is no sufficient reason to regard the principle of sufficient reason to be valid.”° Levelheaded empiricists are not supposed to subscribe to a priori principles. For this reason, the majority of contemporary writers strongly object to ascribing equal probabilities on the basis of principle of indifference, which is no more than a variation on

the principle of sufficient reason (PSR). It seems to me that these objections are based on a serious misconception. They are mostly based on the refusal to acknowledge that “experience is mute” and that it is necessary to assume some unconfirmed principles before we are able to surmise what it tells us. As a matter of fact, no empirically confirmed statement can be found anywhere that did not rely on the PSR. The following illustrate the wide range of its application. (1) It is universally held that there is, for instance, overwhelming inductive evidence that the melting point of gold is 1,604 degrees Celsius. It is common knowledge, however, that it is illegitimate to argue inductively from biased sample classes. Thus, the question arises why do physicists feel entitled to maintain that 1,064 degrees Celsius is likely to remain the melting point of gold when all their evidence is based on a biased sample class: all the samples of gold hitherto melted occurred in a universe in which the density of matter (which keeps decreasing) was higher, the scaling factor (which is constantly increasing) was lower, and the velocity of the universe’s expansion (which according to some cosmologists keeps decreasing all the time) was higher than at this crucial moment. The answer is not that we have no grounds on which to assume that these changes are relevant to the melting point of any metal. In the past, serious biases turned out to be factors we never suspected before of having relevance: all swans were thought to be white, and the fact that the sample class on which this conclusion was based included only nonAustralian swans had not occurred to anyone

A CENTRAL THEISTIC ARGUMENT

to be of concern. The presumed law that matter cannot be destroyed was based on the failure of every conceivable attempt to do so; you may break, grind, melt, boil and evaporate, or burn to ashes any lump of matter without succeeding to alter the amount in which it continues to exist. The fact that no relevant observations have been made under exceedingly large pressures and temperatures, the kind of which prevail at the center of the sun where matter does diminish through part of it transforming into energy, did not seem to constitute a source of worry. Indeed, at the pre-twentieth-century knowledge of what processes take place on the subatomic level, there was no reason why one should suspect that pressure and temperature had relevance to the issue of the conservation of matter. Similarly, our knowledge of physics may be still too deficient for us to be able to see why the scaling factor of the universe should influence the melting point of anything. The correct answer has to be that we are aware of the possibility of having arrived at our conclusion through the use of a biased sample class, and consequently there are two lines of action available to us. One is to make no predictions at all. This, of course, would imply the complete paralysis of the scientific enterprise, which we should want to resist if at all possible. The alternative is to make use of the principle of sufficient reason. In the particular context of the melting point of gold, we then proceed in the following manner: in the past the melting point of gold has always been observed to be 1,064 degrees Celsius. In the future it may be different. However, there is no good reason to believe that the melting point will be higher than it will be lower or vice versa. Thus, as long as not proven otherwise, we make the unique prediction that it will be neither higher nor lower but will continue to remain the same as in the past. (2) It was mentioned before that whenever we have a finite set of experimental results there are indefinitely many hypotheses that satisfy each result and that the accepted practice is to select the hypothesis to be

adopted by following the principle of simplicity: of all the equally well-confirmed hypotheses, select the one that is simpler than all the others. What justification is there for this rule?

One isthe PSR. Should we suggest that some alternative hypotheses be adopted it will immediately be asked: what reason is there to make this particular choice? Why not select a simpler or a more complicated hypothesis? However, the simplest hypothesis has an edge over all others. It is unique. It is the only one in connection with which it is not possible to ask why not choose a simpler hypothesis. We thus justify our selection on the basis of the chosen hypothesis having a significant feature no other hypothesis has. The most complex hypothesis would also have such a feature except that it does not exist (just as the largest integer does not exist). (3) A strong illustration of how compelling the PSR is is the fact that even mathematicians have found it useful as a principle of plausible reasoning. L. C. Larson in his highly influential book poses the problem: of all the rectangles which can be inscribed in a given circle, which has greatest area? Larson suggests, The principle of insufficient reason leads to suspect the rectangle of maximum area that can be inscribed in a circle is a square.

He then goes on to give a rigorous proof of his conjecture without regarding it as necessary to elaborate how precisely the principle led him to it. It is reasonable to assume that what Larson had in mind was that if it were suggested that the sought-after rectangle was one with length x and width x + m then of course the rectangle with length « + m and width x must also have the maximum area. And if there are indeed two rectangles with maximum area, then, of course, there are in-

finitely many couples that might possibly be the ones we are after. There is, however, one rectangle that is unique in the sense that it has no counterpart: the rectangle with equal length and width. It “stands to reason” that this is the privileged figure we are after. 309

GEORGE N. SCHLESINGER

(4) Some 2,400 years ago Democritus argued, that there are infinite worlds, hypothesizing that the void is infinite; for why would this part of the void be filled by a world, but that part not? So, if there is a world in one part of the void, then also in all the void. So, since the void is infinite, the worlds will be infinite too.

Democritus’s hypothesis would warrant detailed study; here I can point out only first of all that his “worlds,” unlike what we mean when referring to various possible worlds, are not necessarily causally separated from one another and also that he thought of the actual world as having tiny size as compared with what we believe it to be. Yet his hypothesis may be said to have survived to this very day in the form of the far-reaching cosmological principle. It asserts that the universe is the same (i.e. the distribution of galaxies, stars, and planets) everywhere in space (apart from irregularities ofa local nature), or that the universe is homogeneous. The reasoning behind Democritus’s hypothesis is once more based on the PSR. Suppose it were suggested that there exist some finite number » worlds. We would be at loss to offer a reason why it was not a number less or greater than 7. However, if 7 is infinite then a unique reason can be given why it is not larger than m. This last example is of special significance as it shows that the PSR, which is customarily associated with the name of Leibniz, who indeed applied it to numerous issues, was known and made use of two thousand years before him. It provides therefore further evidence of the universal appeal of the PSR and its central role in all our conceptual schemes. Suppose someone subscribed to a religion that was based on the belief that the deity governing the universe was very benevolent but not absolutely so, possessing merely 95 percent of full benevolence. (It is not important for our purposes to describe how we compute the numerical degree of benevolence.) We might then ask an adherent of this reli310

gion: why not ascribe to your deity 96 percent or 94 percent benevolence? No reasonable answer seems available. On the other hand, the theist, when faced with a similar inquiry, might appeal to the PSR. If one settles for any number, like 95 percent, no sufhicient reason seems to be available: why not have more or why not have less. However, a reason may be offered for 100 percent benevolence: it is of aunique magnitude, as it is impossible to have more. Suppose someone were to ask: but by the same principle you might as well ascribe 0 percent benevolence and explain your doing so by saying that having less than it is impossible? To this, as mentioned before, the theist reply would be that such a being is not a fit deity to worship, and thus one is to ascribe considerably lower probability to its existence.

Why Wager at All? We are now in the position to reply to an ingenious objection raised by Antony Duff. Duff points out that the wager works regardless how small the probability, as long as its value is not zero, and that one is going to be the recipient of infinite salvation. If so, he argues, it is quite superfluous that I should follow Pascal’s advice and begin acting religiously and make every effort to acquire faith, because, . . suppose I take no steps to make it more likely that I will come to believe in God. There must be some probability, however small, that I will nonetheless come to believe in Him . . . and that probability is enough to generate an infinite expected value for my actions.’

Now we have at least two answers to Duff's objection. The briefer answer is to recall the idea advanced previously that it is untenable to maintain that because of the infinitude of the reward it makes no difference how probable is its acquisition. We are instead to assume that it is important to try and increase the probability of obtaining the prospective prize.

A CENTRAL THEISTIC ARGUMENT

The second answer would be based on the principle that a rational wagerer will always want to bet on the outcome associated with the highest expected utilities. But is it possible to gain anything more than infinite salvation? The answer is, in an appropriate sense, yes! An infinitely long string, for example, may be increased in width, or in mass per unit length, and so on. Similarly, eternal life, which

of course is infinitely long and cannot be increased in length, may vary in the degree of its depth, intensity, exquisiteness, and so on, during every moment for the eternal duration of that felicitous state. Once we are prepared to entertain the possibility of an afterlife, we are likely to find it reasonable to go along with the traditional view that the magnificence of posthumous reward varies directly with the quality and the portion of the time at one’s disposal as well as the magnitude of the exertion invested in acts of piety. It should also be recalled that as soon as an individual embarks on the road that offers the best chance to lead to the acquisition of genuine religious faith, one is already set on the path of the righteous and is already engaged in the service of God. Clearly, therefore, one who acts upon Pascal’s call at once, rather than waiting for the not entirely improbable inspiration to light unassisted upon him at some later time, places oneselfin a far more favorable position with respect to the amount of time spent on the purification of one’s soul. Thus, even if we conceded that in the context of eternal salvation the value of probability plays no role, the individual following Duffs advice would engage in a conduct associated with a prize of lower quality and thus with lower expected utilities.

A Common

Feature to Almost

All Theistic Argument One of the most commonly cited theistic proofs is the Argument from Design. It is based on the wonders of nature we see around us that are unlikely to be, or perhaps unthink-

able that they should be, the results of blind forces. Now even if we regard the argument absolutely compelling, it establishes at most — as was pointed out by Hume — that there exists a ereator who is many hundreds times more powerful and intelligent than ourselves. But such a creator’s power and intelligence may still fall infinitely short of Omnipotence and Omniscience. About benevolence the argument says even less, and the same goes for Omnipresence or Immutability. Another famous argument is the Cosmological Argument. It shares all the weaknesses just mentioned in connection with the Argument from Design. Indeed, it should be obvious that all other arguments in support of theism (with the exception of the Ontological Argument, of which only a few would claim to have achieved full clarity) face the many gods objection. Thus, an individual making use of any of numerous known arguments for the existence of God can get no further than to conclude that there exists some supernatural power and intelligence behind the material universe. That individual is thus facing the need to choose among the various candidates who may fulfill this function. It seems reasonable to conjecture that whatever is deemed the best justification for the theist’s choice in one context is also likely to be so in other contexts as well. Therefore, the

most acceptable reply to the many-gods objection may well be regarded as an argument of wide application and thus of central importance in the context of theistic arguments in general. One of the striking features ofPascal’s wager is surely the fact that the most often cited stumbling block it runs into has been the many-gods objection, whereas in the context of theistic arguments, I venture to suggest that this may be read as an indication of the unique strength of the wager. The reason why the many-gods objection has been raised less frequently in the context of the wager was because skeptics felt able to clip the wings of a putative argument at the very initial stages, cay)

GEORGE N. SCHLESINGER

before it could get off the ground and thus prevent even the conclusion that some supernatural being is to be assumed. Thus, the Argument from Design is nipped in the bud by insisting that the universe does not exhibit any signs of design; the Cosmological Argument has been cut short because of its alleged, unwarranted, basic assumption that there can be no uncaused contingent particulars. On the other hand, it seems that no serious defect could be discovered in Pascal’s wager before it reached the relatively advanced stage of establishing the reasonableness of assuming the existence of some transmundane force.

312

Notes 1

Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Teshuvah, x. Shabbat, 31b. On the Nature and Existence of God (Cam-

bridge, 1991), p. 350. The Miracle of Theism (Oxford, 1982), p. 203. Gale, On the Nature and Existence of God, p. 350. “Three Steps Toward Absolutism,” Space, Time and Causality, ed. R. Swinburne (Dordrecht, 1981), p. 6. “Pascal’s Wager and Infinite Utilities,” Analysts, 46 (1986), p. 107.

PART

FIVE

PAN WE MAKE SENS EOF ny et HEHMOMEES) IBSONG, Tn aN ees: NIB pA ClPlHG area

Introduction

Miracles

37 38 39

Of Miracles Davip HuME From A Dialogue Concerning Heresies THomas More Miracles and (Christian) Theism J. A. Cover

Prayer 40

Petitionary Prayer ELEONORE STUMP

Soul 41

42

The Future of the Soul RICHARD SWINBURNE

From Neurophilosophy: Toward a Unified Science ofthe Mind-Brain PATRICIA SMITH CHURCHLAND

43

Materialism and Survival DEAN W. ZIMMERMAN

Revelation 44

Are We Entitled? NICHOLAS WOLTERSTOREE

®

a

aN

is

a

a>

Grin

— LSA! nh; he!

apart ee

5

‘6 Paouene e

:

pi

;

—

2 &,

:

be

anpnep in”

1

ee

.

i

_

a

_

—

;

Pa.

as

a

5

:

*

a

/

ee

&

ActeRaAy Ad eal :

:

ae

ee hn,

:

a

wy

7-4

o

Pata

;

.

=

‘

E

:

TA TER AGLARE Here

SHigisinl

Seale

lane

[AT

tae?

bw lars

LIA)

oie

~

|

.

—

ats,

|i

:

=. ~~

=

'

:

lust

Se

=

ited te 0

ae

ET

Sw

OE

Diao -

ba Te:

7

sinew

Vo

wrod

el

hese.

a

inves

16

"

-

fae

oy

VAR -

oped trae

ONO ati

wert

CE

it,

ab vavnth- ty, a ‘BY,

Pe

Mil

molt)

Wee

toy iailanoisV,

ote

3 (TIGIAT

iy a

W

Xa

;

mat] -_

.

PRRORSI WN aan ea a

7 | _

~

ing

ch

‘dhol’ sth. =

°

a .

Spey

- _

Lk

-

HR

aYt

eae!

aoe a

fe

aa ha

: on :

¥ a

7

Introduction

In this Part we turn from considering the question oftheistic belief generally in order to examine specific religious beliefs and practices. Even if theistic belief generally is justifiable, one might think that belief in miracles or prayer is, for example, still not philosophically in order. The Readings in this Part will take up such issues. Traditional versions of theism have held without exception that God can and does occasionally intervene directly in the affairs of the universe. The miraculous interventions are usually regarded as entailing violations of natural laws. The reason is straightforward (though as we will see below, not obviously correct): if the event in question was determined to happen by some prior state of the world and the laws of nature, then is no reason to regard it as divine “intervention.” Thus, if an event occurs as a result of divine intervention, it must mean that the event’s occurrence cannot be explained in terms of the laws of nature, and that the event is thereby a violation of these laws. In the most famous essay on the topic of miracles, the eighteenth-century Scottish philosopher David Hume argues that even if miracles were to occur it would never be rational for us to believe that they did. To see why Hume thinks this, consider a case in which I witness (or am told by a witness) of an event which violates a law of nature. I must decide whether to believe that a miracle did occur and that a law was thus violated, or not. What evidence is there on either side? In favor of the law being (always, unexceptionably) true, I have the weight of all my experiences of nature following a uniform course. In favor of the claim that a violation occurred, I have at best one observation (or one bit of testimony). Which evidence is stronger? Clearly the weight of all my prior experience. Thus, since believing in miracles would always require rejecting

the weight of all my experience in order to favor one experience (or bit of testimony), it is always more rational to reject the claim that I (or someone else) actually witnesses a miracle. Thus, on Hume’s view, it is never rational

for me to believe that an event I witness (or about which I am told) is a violation ofa law of nature. Thus, it is never rational for me to

believe that a miracle has occurred. In the following selection from Thomas More, we see that the criticisms of Hume have been to some extent anticipated. More examines the question of whether or not it is, in fact, unreasonable to believe that some event we witness (or are told of) actually occurred when such as event runs contrary to the weight of our experience. He argues that it would not always be unreasonable to believe against “the weight of experience” since we would otherwise cut ourselves off from a vast array of new knowledge. So, to adapt one of his examples, someone raised in a remote part of Africa might come to believe that all human beings are dark-skinned. If this person were then told by a friend who has traveled abroad that not all human beings are dark-skinned, he would be obliged to dismiss the testimony simply because it ran contrary to his own (less extensive) experience. Likewise, if he himself were to come upon a light-skinned person he would, according to this policy, be obliged to believe that his own senses were, in that case, deceiving him. Any principle, however, which leads us to indiscriminately reject new information in this way is surely unacceptable. In the final essay on miracles, Jan Cover examines the challenges to belief in miracles raised by Hume and other recent critics. According to Cover’s initial characterization, a miracle is an event which violates a law of nature and which is caused by God either directly or through some divine agency. Thus to establish that an event is a genuine miracle slha)

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION: THE BIG QUESTIONS

one must show that the event (a) violates a law, and (b) is caused by God directly or through some divine agency. There are, however, principled reasons for thinking that we will never be able reasonably to affirm that an event ever satisfies conditions (a) or (b). With respect to condition (a), Cover raises

dence that an (at least apparent) violation has occurred, since such indirect evidence may lead us to conclude that a miracle having occurred is the best explanation for the whole range of data available to me (data which include, but are not exhausted by, my witnessing, or being told of, the purportedly

two difficulties. First, following Hume, one

miraculous event), and (2) (following More)

might think that the weight of our empirical evidence favoring the truth of a law should always lead us to reject the belief that some event has violated that law (whether we witness the event ourselves or are told about such an event by others). Cover calls this first objection, the “Human Objection.” Second, one might think that even if we can confidently hold that some event 7s a violation of something we believe to be a law of nature, the most reasonable conclusion to draw is not that the event is actually a miracle, but merely that we are mistaken about what the laws of nature actually ave. Thus apparent miracles are most reasonably understood the way scientists might understand any other event that does not seem to fit into the laws of nature as currently understood: not as miracles, but as evidence that our beliefs about the laws are in error. Cover calls this the “Wrong Laws Objection.” Further, even if these objections can be overcome, questions still arise concerning condition (b). The problem here is that even if we are entitled to believe that an event is a genuine violation of a law of nature, we still cannot straightforwardly conclude that the explanation for the “anomalous” event is supernatural. For all we know, such an event might be a brute event having no explanation at all. Cover calls this the “Non-Miraculous Anomaly Objection.” Cover’s responses to these three objections are careful and nuanced (and further rely on some of his discussion of the metaphysics of

the Humean principle of belief will lead us to deny (unreasonably) that any event occurs which we have not seen to occur in the past. Thus, the Humean Objection is to be rejected. Concerning the Wrong Laws Objection, Cover argues that (1) believers and skeptics alike must judge whether or not it is more

natural laws) and thus cannot be adequately

summarized in a paragraph. The basic outlines of his responses are as follows. Concerning the Humean Objection, Cover argues that (1) indirect evidence may bolster our confi316

reasonable, in a given case, to believe that an

event is explicable by the laws of nature, and that (2) assessing the alternatives may not lead to a uniquely rational conclusion. If an event cannot, after long scrutiny, be explained in terms of the laws of nature, it is always open to the skeptic to hold that our current knowledge of the laws of nature is deeply flawed, but that significant future revisions will successfully account for the event. Finally, Cover responds to the Non-Miraculous Anomaly Objection by holding that whether an anomaly is best regarded as having a supernatural cause will surely depend on how we assess the weight of indirect evidence. To take one example, the parting of the Red Sea might be an anomaly, but whether or not we should think the anomaly is to be explained by a supernatural cause depends on how one assesses the reasonableness of the two competing hypotheses: (1) that the anomalous event has a supernatural cause, and (ii) that the event is merely an anomalous coincidence. Cover thus draws two central conclusions. First, there is no good argument that the believer is irrational to believe in miracles. But, second, there is also no rationally compelling reason for a skeptic concerning miracles to believe that any purported miracle is incontrovertible evidence for the existence of a supernatural cause. In the next selection we turn to the topic of petitionary prayer. Many religious traditions

INTRODUCTION TO PART FIVE

believe that it is good (and even obligatory) that believers petition God for the things that they want and need. And these traditions also hold that God, at least sometimes, answers these prayers by providing the things which are requested. There is, however, something deeply puzzling about this for the theist. If God is really all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good, then God would want to provide us with whatever it is objectively good for us to have, and would want to keep from us whatever is objectively bad. This means, of course, that if the believer petitioned for something good, God would have already intended to give it. If the believer petitioned for something bad, God would not provide it anyway. Thus, it looks as if the practice of petitionary prayer is a farce; petitionary prayer does not and could not influence what God provides. Eleonore Stump argues that this line of reasoning is mistaken. Stump claims that simply providing creatures with the things that are good for them without petition on the creature’s part can have powerful negative effects. To prevent these effects, God institutes the practice of petitionary prayer. This practice is acceptable, even for a perfectly good being, as long as the goods that result from making provision depend on petition outweigh the goods that would have resulted from making provision unconditionally. What outweighing goods does Stump think arise from petitionary prayer? In short, she argues that it prevents God’s overwhelming or spoiling the creature, and thus damaging the relationship between God and that creature. The next section contains three essays on the topic of immortality. According to most theistic traditions, human beings consist of a physical body and an immaterial soul. According to this position, known as “dualism,” the soul, at death, is separated from the body and continues to enjoy conscious mental life. Given the dualist theory, there is nothing especially troubling about the concept of immortality. In this century, however, philosophers and scientists have become much more skeptical about dualism. Advances in neuro-

science and psychobiology have convinced many that if there is an immaterial soul at all, its ability to function is tied to the function of a corresponding brain. We can call this middle-of-the-road position “brain-essential dualism.” Adopting brain-essential dualism might seem to jeopardize any hope of immortality for the obvious reason that the brain dies and decomposes. In the first Reading in this section, Richard Swinburne

discusses the

possibility of immortality if brain-essential dualism is true. Can the brain later be “reconstructed” so that the soul can return to functioning? Swinburne argues that this is at least possible, though its actual occurrence would depend on whether or not souls are actually reincarnated or joined to resurrected bodies. Most philosophers these days, it is fair to say, reject dualism in any form. In the next brief selection, Patricia Churchland offers the

central reasons why many believe that human beings are merely physical (we might call those who think this way “physicalists”). First, physicalists point out, it is difficult to see how immaterial souls can even possibly interact with material bodies. Second, introducing souls seems to provide a radical break between human beings and animals which we cannot account for on standard evolutionary models of human development. Finally, there seems to be no explanatory advantage in dualism since facts which are puzzling for the materialist are no less mysterious when we shuttle them off to the equally mysterious soul. If the critique of dualism is successful, then even accounts such as Swinburne’s cannot provide us with a satisfactory model for immortality. One might wonder, then, if there is any hope of defending immortality if physicalism is true. Some philosophers have argued that this is possible, at least for religious traditions which include a belief in resurrection. In the final essay of this section, Dean Zimmerman defends a physicalist-resurrectionist account of immortality against the most powerful recent criticism against it. Many philosophers have held that for the same 317

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION: THE BIG QUESTIONS

physical body to exist through time, the state of the body at a given time must be (at least partially) caused by the state of that body at previous times. So, if abody dies and is completely destroyed (all of its atoms being scattered), it seems impossible for that very body to be resurrected since the required causal connection between earlier and later stages will have been severed. In response, Zimmerman argues that we can construct a model of resurrection according to which there isa causal connection between the body at the moment before death and the body at the moment of resurrection, though doing this would require a certain sort of miraculous intervention immediately before death. Finally, we turn to the topic of divine revelation. Nicholas Wolterstorffin the selection presented here focuses not on the question of whether or not the religious believer is entitled to hold that some particular religious writing or other is an authoritative divine revelation. Instead, Wolterstorff starts with what we might think of as the more fundamental question of whether or not someone is entitled to think that they have been the recipient ofa particular revelation from God. This question is more fundamental since many religious texts which claim to be authoritative began with writers who believed that they were recipients of particular divine revelations, revelations which they then recorded. Wolterstorff argues that question about whether or not we are justified in holding any belief, are always “situated,” that is, their answers depend on the kind of belief in question and the particular circumstances in which it was formed. He then turns to examine a case in which a certain Christian woman be-

lieves that she has been the recipient of a divine revelation. Was the woman entitled to this belief? Wolterstorff concludes that as long as (a) the woman is entitled to hold her “basic framework of Christian belief” and (b) the content of the purported revelation has “acceptable content,” then the woman is entitled to believe that she was the recipient ofa divine revelation. 318

Further Reading For further readings on the topics discussed in Part Five, the following sources are especially worth consulting. Miracles Basinger,

David, and Randall Basinger, Philosophy and Miracle: the Contemporary Debate (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 1986). Flew, Antony, “Miracles,” in Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Paul Edwards (New York: Macmillan, 1966). Lewis, C. S., Miracles (London: Fontana, 1960). Rowe, William, Philosophy of Religion (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1978), ch. 9. Swinburne, Richard, The Concept of a Miracle (London: Macmillan, 1970). Prayer Basinger, David, “Petitionary Prayer: a Response to Murray and Meyers,” Religious Studies, 31 (December 1995), pp. 475-84. ——, “God Does Not Respond to Prayer,” in Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Religion, ed. Michael Peterson (New York: Blackwell Publishers, 1999). Gellman, Jerome, “In Defense of Petitionary Prayer,” Midwest Studies in Philosophy (forthcoming). Hoffman, Joshua, “On Petitionary Prayer,” Faith and Philosophy, 2 (1985), pp. 21-42. Murray, Michael, and Kurt Meyers, “Ask and It will be Given to You,” Religious Studies,

30 (1994), pp. 311-30. Murray, Michael, “God Does Respond to Prayer,” in Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Religion, ed. Michael Peterson (New York: Blackwell Publishers, 1999), Terence Penelhum, Religion and Rationality (New York: Random House, 1971), ch. 20); Soul and Immortality

Badham, Paul, Christian Beliefs About Immortality (London: Macmillan, 1976).

INTRODUCTION TO PART FIVE

—., and Linda Badham, Immortality or Extinction? (London: Macmillan, 1982). Edwards, Paul (ed.), Immortality (New York: Macmillan, 1992). Geach, Peter, God and the Soul (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969).

Hick, John, Death and Eternal Life (New York: Harper and Row, 1976). Lamont, Corliss, The Illusion of Immortality (New York: Philosophical Library, 1965). Lewis, H. D., Persons and Life After Death (London: Macmillan, 1978). Penelhum, Terence, Immortality (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1973). ——., Survival and Disembodied Existence (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,

Revelation Abraham, William J., Divine Revelation and

the Limits of Historical Criticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982). Davis, Stephen T., The Debate About the Bible: Inerrancy v. Infallibility (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1977). Evans, C. Stephen, The Historical Christ and the Jesus of Faith (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996). Mavrodes, George, Revelation and Religious Belief (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988). Swinburne, Richard, Revelation: From Metaphor to Analogy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992).

1970). Philips, D. Z., Death and Immortality (New York: Macmillan, 1970).

319

Miracles

37

Of Miracles*

David Hume Part I

There is, in Dr Tillotson’s writings, an argument against the real presence,’ which is as concise, and elegant, and strong as any argument can possibly be supposed against a doctrine so little worthy of a serious refutation. It is acknowledged on all hands, says that learned prelate, that the authority, either of the scripture or of tradition, is founded merely in the testimony of the apostles, who were eye-witnesses to those miracles of our Saviour by which he proved his divine mission. Our evidence, then, for the truth of the Christian religion is less than the evidence for the truth of our senses; because, even in the first authors of our religion, it was no greater; and it is evident it must diminish in passing from them to their disciples; nor can any one rest such confidence in their testimony, as in the immediate object of his senses. But a weaker evidence can never destroy a stronger; and therefore, were the doctrine of the real presence ever so clearly revealed in scripture, it were directly contrary to the rules of just reasoning to give our assent to it. It contradicts sense, though both the scripture and tradition on which it is supposed to be built carry not such evidence with them as sense, when they are considered merely as external evidences, and are not brought home to every

* From David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Eric Steinberg, section 10 (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1977), pp. 72-90.

320

one’s breast by the immediate operation of the Holy Spirit. Nothing is so convenient as a decisive argument of this kind, which must at least silence the most arrogant bigotry and superstition, and free us from their impertinent solicitations. I flatter myself that I have discovered an argument of a like nature, which, if just, will, with the wise and learned, be an everlasting check to all kinds of superstitious delusion, and consequently will be useful as long as the world endures. For so long, I presume, will the accounts of miracles and prodigies be found in all history, sacred and profane. Though experience be our only guide in reasoning concerning matters of fact, it must be acknowledged that this guide is not altogether infallible, but in some cases is apt to lead us into errors. One who in our climate should expect better weather in any week of June than in one of December, would reason

justly, and conformably to experience; but it is certain that he may happen, in the event, to find himself mistaken. However, we may observe that, in such a case, he would have no cause to complain of experience, because it commonly informs us beforehand of the uncertainty, by that contrariety of events, which we may learn from a diligent observation. All effects follow not with like certainty from their supposed causes. Some events are found, in all countries and all ages, to have been constantly conjoined together. Other are found to have been more variable, and sometimes

to disappoint our expectations; so that, in our reasonings concerning matter offact, there are

OF MIRACLES

all imaginable degrees of assurance, from the highest certainty to the lowest species of moral evidence. A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence. In such conclusions as are founded on an infallible experience, he expects the event with the last degree of assurance, and regards his past experience as a full proofof the future existence of that event. In other cases, he proceeds with more caution: He weighs the opposite experiments; he considers which side is supported by the greater number of experiments; to that side he inclines, with doubt and hesitation; and

when at last he fixes his judgement, the evidence exceeds not what we properly call probability. All probability, then, supposes an opposition of experiments and observations, where the one side is found to overbalance the other, and to produce a degree of evidence, proportioned to the superiority. A hundred instances or experiments on one side, and fifty on another, afford a doubtful expectation of any event; though a hundred uniform experiments, with only one that is contradictory, reasonably beget a pretty strong degree ofassurance. In all cases, we must balance the opposite experiments, where they are opposite, and deduct the smaller number from the greater, in order to know the exact force of the superior evidence. To apply these principles to a particular instance; we may observe, that there is no species of reasoning more common, more useful, and even necessary to human life than that which is derived from the testimony of men, and the reports of eye-witnesses and spectators. This species of reasoning, perhaps, one may deny to be founded on the relation of cause and effect. I shall not dispute about a word. It will be sufficient to observe that our assurance in any argument of this kind is derived from no other principle than our observation of the veracity of human testimony, and of the usual conformity of facts to the reports of witnesses. It being a general maxim that no objects have any discoverable connexion together, and that all the inferences which we

can draw from one to another are founded merely on our experience of their constant and regular conjunction; it is evident, that we ought not to make an exception to this maxim in favour of human testimony, whose connexion with any event seems, in itself, as little

necessary as any other. Were not the memory tenacious to a certain degree; had not men commonly an inclination to truth and a principle of probity; were they not sensible to shame, when detected in a falsehood: were not these, I say, discovered by expertence to be qualities, inherent in human nature, we should never repose the least confidence in human testimony. A man delirious, or noted for falsehood and villainy, has no manner of authority with us. And as the evidence derived from witnesses and human testimony is founded on past experience, so it varies with the experience, and is regarded either as a proof or a probability, according as the conjunction between any particular kind of report and any kind of object has been found to be constant or variable. There are a number ofcircumstances to be taken into consideration in all judgements of this kind; and the ultimate standard, by which we determine all disputes that may arise concerning them, is always derived from experience and observation. Where this experience is not entirely uniform on any side, it is attended with an unavoidable contrariety in our judgements, and with the same opposition and mutual destruction of argument as in every other kind of evidence. We frequently hesitate concerning the reports of others. We balance the opposite circumstances, which cause any doubt or uncertainty; and when we discover a superiority on any side, we incline to it, but still with a diminution of assurance, in proportion to the force of its antagonist. This contrariety of evidence, in the present case, may be derived from several different causes; from the opposition of contrary testimony, from the character or number of the witnesses, from the manner of their delivering their testimony, or from the union of all these circumstances. We entertain a suspicion 321

DAVID HUME

concerning any matter of fact, when the witnesses contradict each other; when they are but few, or of a doubtful character; when they have an interest in what they affirm; when they deliver their testimony with hesitation, or on the contrary, with too violent asseverations. There are many other particulars of the same kind, which may diminish or destroy the force of any argument derived from human testimony. Suppose, for instance, that the fact, which

the testimony endeavours to establish, partakes of the extraordinary and the marvellous; in that case, the evidence resulting from the testimony admits of a diminution, greater or less, in proportion as the fact is more or less unusual. The reason why we place any credit in witnesses and historians is not derived from any connexion, which we perceive a priori, between testimony and reality, but because we are accustomed to find a conformity between them. But when the fact attested is such a one as has seldom fallen under our observation, here is a contest of two opposite experiences; of which the one destroys the other, as far as its force goes, and the superior can only operate on the mind by the force which remains. The very same principle of experience, which gives us a certain degree of assurance in the testimony of witnesses, gives us also, in this case, another degree of assurance against the fact which they endeavour to establish, from which contradiction there necessarily arises a counterpoise, and mutual destruction of belief and authority. I should not believe such a story were it told me by Cato was a proverbial saying in Rome, even during the lifetime of that philosophical patriot.’ The incredibility of a fact, it was allowed, might invalidate so great an authority. The Indian prince who refused to believe the first relations concerning the effects of frost, reasoned justly; and it naturally required very strong testimony to engage his assent to facts that arose from a state of nature with which he was unacquainted, and which bore

so little analogy to those events of which he had had constant and uniform experience. 322

Though they were not contrary to his experience, they were not conformable to it. But in order to increase the probability against the testimony ofwitnesses, let us suppose that the fact which they affirm, instead of being only marvellous, is really miraculous; and suppose also that the testimony, considered apart and in itself, amounts to an entire proof; in that case, there is proof against proof, of which the strongest must prevail, but still with a diminution of its force in proportion to that of its antagonist. A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature ofthe fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined. Why is it more than probable that all men must die; that lead cannot, of itself, remain suspended in the air; that fire consumes wood, and is extinguished by water; unless it be that these events are found agreeable to the laws of nature, and there is required a violation of these laws, or in other words a miracle to prevent them? Nothing is esteemed a miracle if it ever happen in the common course of nature. It is no miracle that a man, seemingly in good health, should die on a sudden: because such a kind of death, though more unusual than any other, has yet been frequently observed to happen. But it is a miracle that a dead man should come to life,

because that has never been observed, in any age or country. There must, therefore, be a uniform experience against every miraculous event, otherwise the event would not merit that appellation. And as an uniform experience amounts to a proof, there is here a direct and full proof; from the nature of the fact, against the existence of any miracle; nor can such a proof be destroyed, or the miracle rendered credible, but by an opposite proof, which is superior. The plain consequence is (and it is a general maxim worthy of our attention), ‘That no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous

OF MIRACLES

than the fact which it endeavours to establish: and even in that case there is a mutual destruction of arguments, and the superior only gives us an assurance suitable to that degree of force, which remains, after deducting the inferior.’ When any one tells me that he saw a dead man restored to life, I immediately consider with myself, whether it be more probable that this person should either deceive or be deceived, or that the fact which he relates should really have happened. I weigh the one miracle against the other; and according to the superiority which I discover, I pronounce my decision, and always reject the greater miracle. If the falsehood of his testimony would be more miraculous than the event which he relates; then, and not till then, can he pretend to command my belief or opin-

ion.

Part II In the foregoing reasoning we have supposed that the testimony, upon which a miracle is founded, may possibly amount to an entire proof, and that the falsehood of that testimony would be a real prodigy: But it is easy to show, that we have been a great deal too liberal in our concession, and that there never was a miraculous event established on so full an evidence. For first, there is not to be found, in all history, any miracle attested by a sufficient number of men, of such unquestioned goodsense, education, and learning as to secure us against all delusion in themselves; of such undoubted integrity as to place them beyond all suspicion of any design to deceive others; of such credit and reputation in the eyes of mankind as to have a great deal to lose in case of their being detected in any falsehood; and at the same time attesting facts, performed in such a public manner and in so celebrated a part of the world, as to render the detection unavoidable: All which circumstances are requisite to give us a full assurance in the testimony of men.

Secondly. We may observe in human nature a principle, which, ifstrictly examined, will be found to diminish extremely the assurance which we might, from human testimony, have in any kind of prodigy. The maxim, by which we commonly conduct ourselves in our seasonings, is that the objects of which we have no experience resemble those of which we have; that what we have found to be most usual is always most probable; and that where there is an opposition of arguments, we ought to give the preference to such as are founded on the greatest number of past observations. But though, in proceeding by this rule, we readily reject any fact which is unusual and incredible in an ordinary degree; yet in advancing farther, the mind observes not always the same rule; but when anything is affirmed utterly absurd and miraculous, it rather the more readily admits of such a fact, upon account of that very circumstance which ought to destroy all its authority. The passion of surprise and wonder arising from miracles, being an agreeable emotion, gives a sensible tendency towards the belief of those events from which it is derived. And this goes so far that even those who cannot enjoy this pleasure immediately, nor can believe those miraculous events of which they are informed, yet love to partake of the satisfaction at second-hand or by rebound, and place a pride and delight in exciting the admiration ofothers. With what greediness are the miraculous accounts of travellers received, their descriptions of sea and land monsters, their relations of wonderful adventures, strange men, and uncouth manners? But if the spirit of religion join itself to the love of wonder, there is an end of common sense; and human testimony, in these circumstances, loses all pretensions to authority. A religionist may be an enthusiast, and imagine he sees what has no reality. He may know his narrative to be false, and yet persevere in it, with the best intentions in the world, for the sake of promoting so holy a cause. Or even where this delusion has not place, vanity, excited by so strong a temptation, operates on him more powerfully than 323

DAVID HUME

on the rest of mankind in any other circumstances; and self-interest with equal force. His auditors may not have, and commonly have not, sufficient judgement to canvass his evidence: what judgement they have, they renounce by principle, in these sublime and mysterious subjects: or if they were ever so willing to employ it, passion and a heated imagination disturb the regularity of its operations. Their credulity increases his impudence: and his impudence overpowers their credulity. Eloquence, when at its highest pitch, leaves little room for reason or reflection; but addressing itself entirely to the fancy or the af-

fections, captivates the willing hearers, and subdues their understanding. Happily, this pitch it seldom attains. But what a Tully or a Demosthenes could scarcely effect over a Roman or Athenian audience, every Capuchin, every itinerant or stationary teacher can perform over the generality of mankind, and ina higher degree, by touching such gross and vulgar passions. The many instances of forged miracles, and prophecies, and supernatural events, which in all ages have either been detected by contrary evidence, or which detect themselves by their absurdity, prove sufficiently the strong propensity of mankind to the extraordinary and the marvellous, and ought reasonably to beget a suspicion against all relations of this kind. This is our natural way of thinking, even with regard to the most common and most credible events. For instance: There is no kind of report which rises so easily, and spreads so quickly, especially in country places and provincial towns, as those concerning marriages; insomuch that two young persons of equal condition never see each other twice, but the whole neighbourhood immediately join them together. The pleasure of telling a piece of news so interesting, of propagating it, and of being the first reporters of it, spreads the intelligence. And this is so well known that no man of sense gives attention to these reports till he find them confirmed by some greater evidence. Do not the same passions, and oth324

ers still stronger, incline the generality of mankind to believe and report, with the greatest vehemence and assurance, all religious miracles? Thirdly. It forms a strong presumption against all supernatural and miraculous relations, that they are observed chiefly to abound among ignorant and barbarous nations; or if a civilized people has ever given admission to any of them, that people will be found to have received them from ignorant and barbarous ancestors, who transmitted them with that inviolable sanction and authority, which always attend received opinions. When we peruse the first histories of all nations, we are apt to imagine ourselves transported into some new world, where the whole frame of nature

is disjointed, and every element performs its operations in a different manner from what it does at present. Battles, revolutions, pestilence, famine, and death are never the effect of those natural causes which we experience. Prodigies, omens, oracles, judgments quite obscure the few natural events that are intermingled with them. But as the former grow thinner every page, in proportion as we advance nearer the enlightened ages, we soon learn that there is nothing mysterious or supernatural in the case, but that all proceeds from the usual propensity of mankind towards the marvellous, and that, though this inclina-

tion may at intervals receive a check from sense and learning, it can never be thoroughly extirpated from human nature. It ts strange, a judicious reader is apt to say, upon the perusal of these wonderful historians, that such prodigious events never happen in our days. But it is nothing strange, I hope, that men should lie in all ages. You must surely have seen instances enough ofthat frailty. You have yourself heard many such marvellous relations started, which, being treated with scorn

by all the wise and judicious, have at last been abandoned even by the vulgar. Be assured that those renowned lies, which have spread and flourished to such a monstrous height, arose from like beginnings; but being sown in a more proper soil, shot up at last into prodi-

OF MIRACLES

gies almost equal to those which they relate. It was a wise policy in that false prophet, Alexander, who, though now forgotten, was once so famous, to lay the first scene of his impostures in Paphlagonia, where, as Lucian tell us,* the people were extremely ignorant and stupid, and ready to swallow even the grossest delusion. People at a distance, who are weak enough to think the matter at all worth enquiry, have no opportunity ofreceiving better information. The stories come magnified to them by a hundred circumstances. Fools are industrious in propagating the imposture; while the wise and learned are contented, in general, to deride its absurdity, without informing themselves of the particular facts by which it may be distinctly refuted. And thus the impostor-above-mentioned was enabled to proceed, from his ignorant Paphlagonians, to the enlisting of votaries, even among the Grecian philosophers and men of the most eminent rank and distinction in Rome. Nay, could engage the attention of that sage emperor Marcus Aurelius; so far as to make him trust the success of a military expedition to his delusive prophecies. The advantages are so great of starting an imposture among an ignorant people that, even though the delusion should be too gross to impose on the generality of them (which, though seldom, is sometimes the case), it has

a much better chance for succeeding in remote countries than if the first scene had been laid in a city renowned for arts and knowledge. The most ignorant and barbarous of these barbarians carry the report abroad. None of their countrymen have a large correspondence, or sufficient credit and authority to contradict and beat down the delusion. Men’s inclination to the marvellous has full opportunity to display itself. And thus a story which is universally exploded in the place where it was first started, shall pass for certain at a thousand miles distance. But had Alexander fixed his residence at Athens, the philosophers of that renowned mart of learning had immediately spread, throughout the whole Roman empire their sense of the matter; which, be-

ing supported by so great authority, and displayed by all the force of reason and eloquence, had entirely opened the eyes of mankind. It is true; Lucian, passing by chance through Paphlagonia, had an opportunity of performing this good office. But, though much to be wished, it does not always happen that every Alexander meets with a Lucian, ready to expose and detect his impostures. I may add as a fourth reason which diminishes the authority of prodigies, that there is no testimony for any, even those which have not been expressly detected, that is not opposed by an infinite number of witnesses; so that not only the miracle destroys the credit of testimony, but the testimony destroys itself. To make this the better understood, let us consider that, in matters of religion, what-

ever is different is contrary; and that it is impossible the religions of ancient Rome, of Turkey, of Siam, and of China should, all of

them, be established on any solid foundation. Every miracle, therefore, pretended to have been wrought in any of these religions (and all of them abound in miracles), as its direct scope is to establish the particular system to which it is attributed, so has it the same force,

though more indirectly, to overthrow every other system. In destroying a rival system, it likewise destroys the credit of those miracles on which that system was established; so that all the prodigies of different religions are to be regarded as contrary facts, and the evidences of these prodigies, whether weak or strong, as opposite to each other. According to this method of reasoning, when we believe any miracle of Mahomet or his successors, we have for our warrant the testimony of a few barbarous Arabians: And on the other hand,

we are to regard the authority of Titus Livius, Plutarch, Tacitus, and, in short, of all the authors and witnesses, Grecian, Chinese, and Roman Catholic, who have related any miracle in their particular religion; I say, we are to regard their testimony in the same light as if they had mentioned that Mahometan miracle, and had in express terms contradicted it with the same certainty as they have for the 325

DAVID HUME

miracle they relate. This argument may appear over subtile and refined; but is not in re-

ality different from the reasoning of a judge, who supposes that the credit of two witnesses, maintaining a crime against any one, is destroyed by the testimony of two others, who affirm him to have been two hundred leagues distant at the same instant when the crime is said to have been committed. One of the best attested miracles in all profane history is that which Tacitus reports of Vespasian, who cured a blind man in Alexandria by means of his spittle, and a lame man by the mere touch of his foot, in obedience to a vision of the god Serapis, who had enjoined them to have recourse to the Emperor for these miraculous cures. The story may be seen in that fine historian;* where every circumstance seems to add weight to the testimony, and might be displayed at large with all the force of argument and eloquence, if any one were now concerned to enforce the evidence of that exploded and idolatrous superstition. The gravity, solidity, age, and probity of so great an emperor who through the whole course ofhis life conversed in a familiar manner with his friends and courtiers, and

never affected those extraordinary airs of divinity assumed by Alexander and Demetrius. The historian, a contemporary writer, noted for candour and veracity, and withal the greatest and most penetrating genius, perhaps, of all antiquity; and so free from any tendency to credulity that he even lies under the contrary imputation of atheism and profaneness: the persons, from whose authority he related the miracle, of established character for judgement and veracity, as we may well presume, eye-witnesses of the fact, and confirming their testimony after the Flavian family was despoiled ofthe empire and could no longer give any reward as the price of a lie. Utrumaue, qui interfuere, nunc quoque memorant, postquam nullum mendacio pretium.> To which if we add the public nature of the facts as related, it will appear that no evidence can well be supposed stronger for so gross and so palpable a falsehood. 326

There is also a memorable story related by Cardinal de Retz,° which may well deserve our consideration. When that intriguing politician fled into Spain to avoid the persecution of his enemies, he passed through Saragossa, the capital of Arragon, where he was shown, in the cathedral, a man who had served seven years as a door-keeper, and was well known to every body in town, that had ever paid his devotions at that church. He had been seen, for so long a time, wanting a leg, but recovered that limb by the rubbing of holy oil upon the stump; and the cardinal assures us that he saw him with two legs. This miracle was vouched by all the canons of the church; and the whole company in town were appealed to for a confirmation of the fact; whom the car-

dinal found by their zealous devotion to be thorough believers of the miracle. Here the relater was also contemporary to the supposed prodigy, of an incredulous and libertine character, as well as of great genius; the miracle of so singular a nature as could scarcely admit of a counterfeit, and the witnesses very numerous and all of them, in a manner, spectators of the fact to which they gave their testimony. And what adds mightily to the force of the evidence, and may double our surprise on this occasion, is that the cardinal himself, who re-

lates the story, seems not to give any credit to it, and consequently cannot be suspected of any concurrence in the holy fraud. He considered justly that it was not requisite, in order to reject a fact of this nature, to be able accurately to disprove the testimony, and to trace its falsehood through all the circumstances of knavery and credulity which produced it. He knew that, as this was commonly altogether impossible at any small distance of time and place, so was it extremely difficult, even where one was immediately present, by reason ofthe bigotry, ignorance, cunning, and roguery ofa great part of mankind. He therefore concluded, like a just reasoner, that such an evidence carried falsehood upon the very face of it, and that a miracle, supported by any human testimony, was more properly a subject of derision than of argument.

OF MIRACLES

There surely never was a greater number of miracles ascribed to one person, than those which were lately said to have been wrought in France upon the tomb of Abbé Paris, the famous Jansenist, with whose sanctity the people were so long deluded. The curing of the sick, giving hearing to the deaf, and sight to the blind, were every where talked of as the usual effects of that holy sepulchre. But what is more extraordinary; many of the miracles were immediately proved upon the spot, before judges of unquestioned integrity, attested by witnesses of credit and distinction, in a learned age, and on the most eminent theatre that is now in the world. Nor is this all: a relation of them was published and dispersed every where; nor were the Jesuits, though a learned body, supported by the civil magistrate and determined enemies to those opinions, in whose favour the miracles were said to have been wrought, ever able distinctly to refute or detect them. Where shall we find such a number of circumstances agreeing to the corroboration of one fact? And what have we to oppose to such a cloud of witnesses, but the absolute impossibility or miraculous nature of the events which they relate? And this surely, in the eyes of all reasonable people, will alone be regarded as a sufficient refutation. Is the consequence just, because some human testimony has the utmost force and authority in some cases, when it relates the battle of Philippi or Pharsalia for instance; that therefore all kinds of testimony must in all cases have equal force and authority? Suppose that the Caesarean and Pompeian factions had, each of them, claimed the victory in these battles, and that the historians of each party had uniformly ascribed the advantage to their own side; how could mankind, at this distance,

have been able to determine between them? The contrariety is equally strong between the miracles related by Herodotus or Plutarch, and those delivered by Mariana, Bede, or any monkish historian. The wise lend a very academic faith to every report which favours the passion of the reporter; whether it magnifies his country, his

family, or himself, or in any other way strikes in with his natural inclinations and propensities. But what greater temptation than to appear a missionary, a prophet, an ambassador fronyheaven? Who would not encounter many dangers and difficulties in order to attain so sublime a character? Or if, by the help of vanity and a heated imagination, a man has first made a convert of himself, and entered seriously into the delusion; who ever scruples to make use of pious frauds in support of so holy and meritorious a cause? The smallest spark may here kindle into the greatest flame; because the materials are always prepared for it. The avidum genus auricularum, the gazing populace, receive greedily, without examination, whatever soothes superstition and promotes wonder. How many stories of this nature have, in all ages, been detected and exploded in their infancy? How many more have been celebrated for a time, and have afterwards sunk into neglect and oblivion? Where such reports, therefore, fly about, the solution of the phenomenon is obvious; and we judge in conformity to regular experience and observation when we account for it by the known and natural principles of credulity and delusion. And shall we, rather than have a recourse to so natural a solution, allow of a miraculous violation of the most established laws of nature? I need not mention the difficulty of detecting a falsehood in any private or even public history, at the place where it is said to happen; much more when the scene is removed to ever so small a distance. Even a court of judicature, with all the authority, accuracy, and judgement which they can employ, find themselves often at a loss to distinguish between truth and falsehood in the most recent actions. But the matter never comes to any issue if trusted to the common method of altercation and debate and flying rumours, especially when men’s passions have taken part on either side. In the infancy of new religions, the wise and learned commonly esteem the matter too in327

DAVID HUME

considerable to deserve their attention or regard. And when afterwards they would willingly detect the cheat, in order to undeceive the deluded multitude, the season is now past, and the records and witnesses which might clear up the matter have perished beyond re-

covery. No means of detection remain but those which must be drawn from the very testimony itself of the reporters: and these, though always sufficient with the judicious and knowing, are commonly too fine to fall under the comprehension of the vulgar. Upon the whole, then, it appears that no testimony for any kind of miracle has ever amounted to a probability, much less to a proof; and that, even supposing it amounted to a proof, it would be opposed by another proof, derived from the very nature ofthe fact which it would endeavour to establish. It is experience only which gives authority to human testimony; and it is the same experience which assures us of the laws of nature. When, therefore, these two kinds of experience are contrary, we have nothing to do but subtract the one from the other, and embrace an opinion, either on one side or the other, with that assurance which arises from the reminder. But according to the principle here explained, this substraction, with regard to all popular religions, amounts to an entire annihilation; and therefore we may establish it as a maxim that no human testimony can have such force as to prove a miracle, and make it a just foundation for any such system of religion. I beg the limitations here made may be remarked, when I say that a miracle can never be proved, so as to be the foundation of a system of religion. For I own that otherwise there may possibly be miracles, or violations of the usual course of nature, of such a kind as to admit of proof from human testimony; though perhaps it will be impossible to find any such in all the records of history. Thus, suppose, all authors, in all languages agree that from the first of January 1600 there was a total darkness over the whole earth for eight days: Suppose that the tradition of this ex328

traordinary event is still strong and lively among the people: That all travellers, who return from foreign countries, bring us accounts of the same tradition, without the least

variation or contradiction. It is evident that our present philosophers, instead of doubting the fact, ought to receive it as certain, and ought to search for the causes whence it might be derived. The decay, corruption, and dissolution of nature, is an event rendered

probable by so many analogies, that any phenomenon which seems to have a tendency towards that catastrophe comes within the reach of human testimony, if that testimony be very extensive and uniform. But suppose that all the historians who treat of England should agree that, on the first of January 1600, Queen Elizabeth died; that

both before and after her death she was seen by her physicians and the whole court, as is usual with persons of her rank; that her successor was acknowledged and proclaimed by the parliament; and that, after being interred a month, she again appeared, resumed the throne, and governed England for three years. I must confess that I should be surprised at the concurrence of so many odd circumstances, but should not have the least inclination to believe so miraculous an event. I should not doubt of her pretended death, and of those other public circumstances that followed it: I should only assert it to have been pretended, and that it neither was, nor possibly could be real. You would in vain object to me the difficulty, and almost impossibility of deceiving the world in an affair of such consequence; the wisdom and solid judgement of that renowned queen; with the little or no advantage which she could reap from so poor an artifice: all this might astonish me; but I would still reply that the knavery and folly of men are such common phenomena, that I should rather believe the most extraordinary events to arise from their concurrence, than admit of so signal a violation of the laws of nature. But should this miracle be ascribed to any new system of religion; men in all ages have been so much imposed on by ridiculous sto-

OF MIRACLES

ries of that kind, that this very circumstance would be a full proof of a cheat, and sufficient, with all men ofsense, not only to make them reject the fact, but even reject it without farther examination. Though the Being to whom the miracle is ascribed be, in this case, Almighty, it does not upon that account become a whit more probable; since it is impossible for us to know the attributes or actions of such a Being, otherwise than from the experience which we have of his productions in the usual course of nature. This still reduces us to past observation, and obliges us to compare the instances of the violation of truth in the testimony of men, with those of the violation of the laws of nature by miracles, in order to judge which of them is most likely and probable. As the violations of truth are more common in the testimony concerning religious miracles than in that concerning any other matter of fact, this must diminish very much the authority of the former testimony, and make us form a general resolution never to lend any attention to it, with whatever specious pretence it may be covered. Lord Bacon seems to have embraced the same principles of reasoning. “We ought,’ says he, ‘to make a collection or particular history of all monsters and prodigious births or productions, and in a word of every thing new, rare, and extraordinary in nature. But this must be done with the most severe scrutiny, lest we depart from truth. Above all, every relation must be considered as suspicious which depends in any degree upon religion, as the prodigies of Livy: And no less so, every thing that is to be found in the writers of natural magic or alchimy, or such authors who seem, all of them, to have an unconquerable appetite for falsehood and fable.’* I am the better pleased with the method of reasoning here delivered, as I think it may serve to confound those dangerous friends or disguised enemies to the Christian Religion, who

have undertaken to defend it by the principles of human reason. Our most holy religion is founded on Faith, not on reason; and it is a

sure method of exposing it to put it to such a

trial as it is by no means fitted to endure. To make this more evident, let us examine those miracles related in scripture; and not to lose ourselves in too wide a field, let us confine ourselves to such as we find in the Pentateuch,

which we shall examine according to the principles of these pretended Christians, not as the word or testimony of God himself, but as the production of amere human writer and historian. Here then we are first to consider a book, presented to us by a barbarous and ignorant people, written in an age when they were still more barbarous, and in all probability long after the facts which it relates, corroborated by no concurring testimony, and resembling those fabulous accounts which every nation gives ofits origin. Upon reading this book, we find it full of prodigies and miracles. It gives an account ofa state of the world and of human nature entirely different from the present: of our fall from that state: of the age of man, extended to near a thousand years: of the destruction of the world by a deluge: of the arbitrary choice of one people, as the favourites of heaven, and that people the countrymen of the author: of their deliverance from bondage by prodigies the most astonishing imaginable. I desire any one to lay his hand upon his heart, and after a serious consideration declare whether he thinks that the falsehood of such a book, supported by such a testimony, would be more extraordinary and miraculous

than all the miracles it relates;

which is, however, necessary to make it be received, according to the measures of probability above established. What we have said of miracles may be applied, without any variation, to prophecies; and indeed all prophecies are real miracles, and as such only can be admitted as proofs of any revelation. If it did not exceed the capacity of human nature to foretell future events, it would be absurd to employ any prophecy as an argument for a divine mission or authority from heaven. So that, upon the whole, we may

conclude, that the Christian Religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reason-

329

THOMAS MORE

able person without one. Mere reason is insufficient to convince us of its veracity: and whoever is moved by Faith to assent to it is conscious of a continued miracle in his own person, which subverts all the principles of his understanding, and gives him a determination to believe what is most contrary to custom and experience.

4 5.

6 Notes

1 2 3

[The presence of the body and blood of Christ in the bread and wine of the Eucharist. | Plutarch, in vita Catonis Min. 19 [Life of Calo (the Younger)J. [In Alexander, the False Prophet, the Greek author Lucian (born c. 120) relates how Alexander of Abonoteichos was hailed as an oracle

38

7

8

because of a hoax perpetrated on the people of Paphlagonia, whereby he made it appear that the god Asclepius was being born in the form of a serpent from a goose’s egg.] Hist. Bk. IV, chap 81 Suetonius gives nearly the same account im vita Vesp. [Of each event, those who were present, even

now keep speaking, though they get no reward for lying.| [Cardinal de Retz (1613-79), a French political leader. His Mémoires (1717) provide insight into the court life of his time.] [Literally, ‘a gossip hungry race’; this is an adaptation or misquotation of Humanum genus est avidum nimus auricularum: ‘the human race is too gossip-hungry’ (Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, iv. 594).] Nov. Org. lib, ii. aph. 29.

From A Dialogue Concerning Herestes*

Thomas More ... Well, I said, ... when they [the heretics] say that they never saw any of these miracles themselves and therefore the miracles are no proofto them, since they never saw them and hence are not bound to believe them, they seem to be either: (1) very negligent if they do not make any inquiries at all when they are in doubt about the truth of such a weighty matter, or (2) if they have made diligent inquiries, then they will necessarily have heard so many miracles recounted in speech and writing by very good and credible persons that they seem to be unreasonably suspicious if they take to be sheer lies what so many trustworthy or probably trustworthy men report. If these men [i.e., the heretics |were judges, few *From

Thomas

More, A Dialogue Concerning

Heresies, ch. 6, tr. Clarence Miller.

330

matters would be settled by their deliberations, or at the very least the plaintiff would have a very hard time if they would believe nothing except what was proved, and consider nothing proved unless they saw it themselves. Thus everyone may consider himself uncertain of his own father if he will not believe anyone, since the entire proof about it relies upon one woman, and upon a person who, though she knows the truth best, has the best reason to lie if the paternity is wrong. Let us then relegate certainty about the identifies of fathers to our wives’ mysteries. And if we believe nothing except what we ourselves see, who can consider himself sure of his own mother, for it is possible that he was exchanged in the cradle, and a rich man’s nurse might exchange her own child for her master’s, and keep her master’s for herself, in order to make

FROM A DIALOGUE CONCERNING HERESIES

her own child a gentleman at little expense. And this would not be a difficult matter, if the mother has no earmark of her own child. Sir, said your friend, [the young man], if I

should answer them [the heretics] in this way and by these examples prove to them that reason binds them to believe such miracles as were reported because many credible men recount

wrong opinion, if they would try to win the argument by laying bets, their confidence in nature and reason would cause them to lose everything they bet on them. If there were a man in India who had never been outside his own country and had never seen any white man or woman in his whole life, since he sees

ing except what we see ourselves and then the whole world would be full of confusion and no judgments could be made except about things done in the judge’s sight, I am afraid I would give them very little satisfaction. For they would soon reply that the examples are not relevant. But just as it is reasonable for me to believe honorable men in all such matters as can be true and about which I see no

innumerable people are black, he might think that it is against the nature of man to be white. Now if nature seems to show him that this is so and if he should therefore believe that the whole world is lying if they tell him the contrary, who would be in the wrong, the one who believes in his reason and nature or those who, against his notion of reason and nature, tell him what is actually the truth? Your friend [the young man] answered that reason and nature did not tell the Indian that

reason for them to lie, so too it would be un-

all men are black, but the Indian believed so

reasonable to believe men, however many they may be and no matter how credible they seem, in cases where reason and nature (either of which is more credible by itself than all of them) show me clearly that their story is untrue, as it must be if the matter is impossible, as it is in all these miracles. And in such cases, even though I cannot see what they can gain by doing so, yet, since I see well enough that their story could not be true, I must see very well that it is not true. And therefore I must necessarily know that if they can gain nothing by lying, they are not lying our of greed but simply because they find pleasure in doing so. Certainly, I said, this is a very witty reply. And to tell the truth, at the stage we have reached in the discussion of miracles, it is not far off the mark. But since this matter is important and a great many things depend on it, we will not dismiss it so briefly but will take one or two more steps in resolving it. And first I will say to them [the heretics] that it would be difficult for them, and not a very sure method, to believe that every man is lying who tells them a story as true that nature and reason seem to show them is false and impossible. For in this way they will err and clearly deceive themselves in many matters; and sometimes, while they are certain of the

against reason and nature because nothing induced him to believe it except that he saw no white person, which was no good reason. And if he had any learning he might perceive by nature that heat makes his country black, and for the same reason the cold of other countries must make the people white.

them, since otherwise we should believe noth-

Well, I said, and yet the Indian reaches his

conclusion by a syllogism and by reasoning almost technically identical to the argument by which you prove that man is reasonable by nature. What other evidence did you collect that led you first to perceive it except that this man is reasonable, and this man, and this man,

and this man, and so forth for everyone you see. Using the examples of those whom you know and presuming from them that no person is otherwise, you conclude that every man is endowed with reason. And the Indian thinks that his argument is more certain than yours. For he never saw anyone except black people, whereas you see that many men are fools. As for the fact that he hears from others that there are white men elsewhere, this does not serve your purpose if you believe no witness against what your reason and experience show you. And whereas you say that if the Indian had learning, he should perceive that it is not against nature but rather consonant with na331

THOMAS MORE

ture that some other men in other countries should be white, even though his countrymen are black, so too perhaps if those whose side you support had some learning (as they do not), they would perceive quite well that reason demands they should give credence to credible persons who tell them about things that seem very distinctly against reason because they are distinctly above reason — and about this we have more to perceive in our later discussion before we finish with the matter in hand. But in the meantime, to show you further what necessity there is to believe other men about things not only unknown but also seemingly impossible, the Indian that we speak of cannot know by any learning the course of the sun which enables him to perceive the cause of his blackness, unless he does so through astronomy, and who can learn that science if he will not believe anything that seems to him impossible? Or who would not think it impossible, if experience had not proved it, that the whole earth hangs in the air and men walk foot facing foot and ships sail bottom facing bottom — a thing so strange and seemingly so far against nature and reason that Lactantius, a very wise and learned man, in the work he wrote entitled Divine Institutes considers it impossible and never ceased laughing at the philosophers for affirming that point, which nevertheless has now been found to be true by the experience of those who have sailed around the world in less than two years. Who would have thought it possible that glass is made of fern roots? Now if those who think that according to reason such a thing is impossible and who have never seen it done do not believe anyone who tells them about it, though that does not put their souls in any danger, still their knowledge is much diminished and they persist unreasonably in their error by refusing to believe the truth. It is not yet fifty years ago since the first man (as far as men have heard) came to London who ever parted the gilt from the silver, reducing the silver to dust with a very clear liquid. It went to such lengths that when the refiners and goldsmiths of London first heard SIV

about it, they were not at all amazed at it but rather laughed at it as an impossible lie. And if they had continued to persist in that belief, they would still to this day have lacked the whole technique. Yet I will not deny that a man may be too credulous in his beliefs and be led by such examples to believe too much. A good fellow and friend of mine, talking recently about this matter of marvels and miracles and intending as a joke to make me believe as true something that could never be, first brought up what great force fire has when it makes it possible for two pieces of iron to be joined and stick together, and with the help of the hammer makes both of them one — which no hammering could do without the fire. Since I daily see this process I assented. They he went on to say something even more marvelous, that fire will make iron run like silver or lead and be molded. I told him that I had never seen this but that I thought it to be true because he said he had seen it. Soon after this he wanted me to believe that he had seen a piece of silver two or three inches in circumference and less than a foot long drawn by hand through small holes drilled in an iron slab until it was reduced to a circumference of no more than half an inch and drawn out to I don’t know how many yards. And when I heard him say that he saw this himself, then I knew very well that he was joking. Indeed, sir, said your friend [the young man|, it was high time to part ways with him when he came to that. Well, I said, what if I should tell you now that I have seen the same thing? Honestly, he said jokingly, I would have plenty of time to believe it when I had seen it, and in the meantime I could not prevent you from saying whatever you please in your own house, but I would think that you were humorously inclined to make a fool of me. Well, I said, what if besides me there were ten or twenty honorable men who told you the same story and said they had all seen it done themselves? Honestly, he said, since I have been sent

FROM A DIALOGUE CONCERNING HERESIES

here to believe you, I would on that point believe you alone as much as all of them. Well, I said, you mean you would believe us all alike. But then what would you say if one or two of them would say even more? Indeed, he said, then I would believe them

all the less. What if they should show you, I said, that they have seen that the piece of silver was gilded over and that when the same piece was continuously drawn through the holes, the gilding was not rubbed off but extended in length together with the silver so that the whole length of many yards was gilded from the gilding of the first piece, which was not a foot long? Surely, sir, I would say that those two who wanted to tell me so much more were not so clever in upholding.a lie as was the pilgrim’s companion, when the pilgrim told at York that he had recently seen in London a bird that covered all of Paul’s Churchyard with its wings. When the companion got to York on the next day he said that he didn’t see that bird, though he heard much talk about it, but he saw in Paul’s Churchyard an egg so large that ten men could hardly move it with levers. This fellow could keep up the game with a proper extension. But it is no proper way to uphold a lie to diminish your credence by affirming the first lie and adding a more outrageous lie to it. Well, I said then, I have perceived that if ten should tell you so, you would not believe them. No, he said, not if twenty should. What if ahundred men who seemed good and credible should tell you? I said.

you have silenced me so that I dare not be bold enough to tell you that I have seen it myself. But surely, if witnesses would have served me, I think I might have brought you a great many good men who would say and also swear that they have seen it themselves. But, as it is, tomorrow I will perhaps get me a couple of witnesses, neither of whom (I know very well) you will not mistrust. Who are they? he said, for it would be hard to find anyone whom I could trust more than yourself; whatever I have said in jest, I honestly could not help believing you about whatever you should tell me in good earnest from your own knowledge. But .. . master you ordinarily look so serious when you are joking that many times men suspect you are joking when you intend to be serious. Honestly, I said, I intend to be serious now,

and yet, however much you dare trust me, if you will go with me I shall, as I said, provide a couple of witnesses, any one of which you will believe better than two of me, for they are close friends of yours and you have been better acquainted with them and they are such, as I dare say for them, as are not often accustomed to lying. I beg you, he said, who are they? Indeed, I said, your own two eyes, for if you agree, I will bring you where you shall see it, no further away than right here in London. And as for drawing out iron and brass to such lengths, you will see it done in almost twenty shops in one street. Indeed, sir, these witnesses will surely not

lie, as the poor man said about the priest, if I may be so familiar as to tell you a merry tale in passing.

If they were ten thousand, he said, they

A merry tale, I said, comes never amiss to

would have used up all their credibility with me if they should tell me that they saw something that I myself know is impossible accord-

me. A poor man, he said, had found a priest overly familiar with his wife, and because the poorman spread it abroad and could not prove it, the priest sued him for defamation before the bishop’s official. There the poor man, upon pain of excommunication, was commanded [by the bishop] that on Sunday at high mass in his parish church he should stand

ing to nature and reason. For when could not be done, I know very well are all lying, no matter how many who say they saw it done. Well, I said, since I see very well

I know it that they there are

that you would not believe a whole town on this point,

333

J. A. COVER

up and say “Mouth, you are a liar.” Whereupon, to fulfill his penance, he was set up ina pew so that the people might gape at him and hear what he said. And there, having recounted what he had reported about the priest, he set his hands on his mouth and said “Mouth, mouth, you are a liar.” And right

after that he set his hand upon his eyes and said “But eyes, eyes, by heaven, you are not liars at all.” And so, sir, indeed, if you bring me those witnesses, they will tell no lies at all. However, sir, even if this is true, as I honestly believe and am sure that it is, still I am not any more bound by reason to believe those who want to tell me about a miracle. For though this thing is incredible to anyone who hears it and strange and marvelous to anyone who sees it, still it is something that can be done. But whoever tells me about a miracle,

tells me something that cannot be done. I showed you this example, [rejoins More | to remind you that in being too reluctant to believe things that seem and appear impossible according to reason and nature when they are reported by credible witnesses who have no reason to lie, there is as much danger of error as in being too willing to believe. And, furthermore, I have proved to you that if you believe no one about such things as cannot

39

be, then it must follow that you ought to believe no one about many things that can be, for it is all one to you whether they can be or cannot be if it seems to you that they cannot be. And, truly, you cannot tell whether they can be or cannot be, unless they are two such things as imply contradiction, such as for one and the same thing in one and the same part to be both black and white at the same time. For otherwise many things will seem to you such as all reason will resist and nature will by no means admit. And yet they will be done well enough and will be common and ordinary enough in some other place. But now, since your whole recourse consists in this, that if you are told about a miracle you may with reason believe that all men lie because reason and nature, which are more to be believed than

all of them, tell you that what they say is wrong because what they describe as a miracle cannot be done, I have showed you that nature and reason show you that many things cannot be done which are in fact done — so much so that when you see them done you may quite well take them to be miracles, for reason and nature cannot show you by what natural order and cause it could be done but rather you will still see reason stand quite against it, as in

the drawing of silver or iron.

Miracles and (Christian) Theism

J. A. Cover 1

Introduction

Many theists — perhaps most traditional theists who approach the Sacred texts in anything like an orthodox way — find “believing in miracles” a fairly natural thing to do.! Christians, for example, regard belief in miracles to be part and parcel of embracing the Christian 334

Faith, echoing St Paul’s judgment that the bodily resurrection of Christ is an unnegotiable part ofit(I Corinthians 15: 17). But while Christians may find believing in miracles a pretty natural thing to do, many others will express a good deal more skepticism about them. Leaving aside issues about the historical reliability of the biblical record, many have

MIRACLES AND (CHRISTIAN) THEISM

claimed that belief in miracles is simply irrational, or more severely that miracles are impossible. Here the believer may well confess to being at a loss to understand such an attitude: what exactly is the source of such skeptical doubts about miracles, and what could motivate the claim that “believing in miracles is irrational” or that “miracles are impossible?” Indeed, by the reckoning of some believers, miracles look to offer a veritable

argument for God’s existence, or at very least serve as good evidence for it: miracles (they might say) point to God in just the way that any effect points to its cause. The argument ofcourse can’t run so quickly as all that. Miracles point to God only if there are miracles. While the existence of miracles is pretty much what is to be expected by someone believing in the God of traditional theism or the divinity of Christ more specifically, the atheist or agnostic — who does not believe there exists any such God or divine person — can scarcely be supposed to share that expectation. If any “argument from miracles” is to earn its way into a proper dialogue between the believer and the skeptic, the grounds upon which particular events may be judged to be miracles must, it seems, be independent of the

belief that God exists. Both the believer and skeptic alike, then — should any dialogue be forthcoming — will know what conditions would be met if one were to be rationally justified in believing that some event is a miracle. But one cannot evaluate the justification for believing that some event is a miracle unless one knows what a miracle 7s—what conditions an event must satisfy if it is to count as miraculous. The believer and skeptic alike, then, will know what a miracle is (or would be, were there any). Historically, the potential role of miracles in discussing Christian evidences — a secondary concern ofthis paper — has served as a useful context in which believers and skeptics of intellectual good will have joined the dialogue on miracles. Indeed, the question of miracles has found a place in the philosophical reflections of thinking Christians and skeptics from

St Augustine down to the present day. The foundation for all such reflections rests on the two central philosophical questions about miracles just encountered. What are miracles? (That is the metaphysical question.) On what grounds would one be rationally warranted in believing that there are miracles? (That is the epistemological question.) These questions are our main concern in what follows, along with important subsidiary ones.

2 Violations of Law and Evidence for Miracles Christians have long believed that, among the set of all events that occur is a special subset of events that are miraculous. What distinguishes these special, miraculous events — if any there be — from the preponderance of others?

A What ts a Miracle? Getting Started on the Metaphysical Question The deployment of “miracle” in common usage has come to permit such expressions as “her recovery was a miracle” or “it was a miracle that he wasn’t seriously injured.” Descriptions of this sort typically highlight the remarkable, unexpected nature of the event. Unbelievers and Christians alike admit that in a universe as complex and complicated as ours, there will arise remarkable and unexpected occurrences: those with welcome consequences may invite this loose description of “miracle” without any implication ofreligious significance or divine intervention. Where for many believers such usage will underscore the providential character of an event, serving perhaps to confirm one’s faith, the event in question (the astounding recovery or amazing lack of injury) might still be viewed as admitting of some explanation in terms of natural causes — however complicated, however elusive. Such welcome but remarkable events, no less than an unexpected tragedy or unfortunate freak of nature, may have their S30

J. A. COVER

place in a divine economy, an economy that God in His wisdom and power could have woven into the fabric of nature itself. So not all providential events are miracles. Consider what would seem to be a clear case. A man of seeming good health suddenly takes seriously ill. Despite the prayers of his sisters, he soon thereafter ceases breathing, his heart stops, and he dies. He is buried in an earthen grave. Four days later, as the body begins to manifest signs of decay, a religious figure of devoted following arrives at the graveside. He weeps, but then declares with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come forth.” The man emerges

whole and living from the earthen grave. Supposing (as believers do) that such an event occurs, what sort ofspecial event is this? On the standard conception, an event is a miracle only if it is contrary to the natural order. To say that an event is “contrary to the natural order” is simply to say that it is an exception to the regular order of natural occurrences. Dead people do not, in the natural course of events, come back to life. In the words of David Hume, the eighteenth-century skeptic and outspoken opponent of miracles, “a miracle is a violation of the laws of

nature.”? On this standard conception, the notion of a miracle (and any evidential weight believers might view them as having) implies a contrast with that to which the miraculous is said to be an exception. Were the course of nature altogether random and lawless — were the world such that sometimes dead people remained dead, sometimes they did not, and it was anybody’s guess how any particular case would turn out — we should have no concept ofan exception or violation at all, and no event could serve as evidence ofdivine intervention. If being a violation of at least one law of nature is a necessary condition for an event’s being a miracle, it is scarcely sufficient. An event is a miracle, presumably, only if it is caused directly by God. Perhaps this is too strong, if it leaves no room for allowing (say) that Peter’s healing the lame man (Acts 3: 19) counts as the performance ofa miracle. And yet there may be risks in the direction of weak336

ening this second condition too much; for if we say that an event is a miracle only if it has a supernatural cause, shall we allow that Satan can perform miracles? Let us say that an event is a miracle only if it is caused by God either directly or through some divine agency, leaving others to settle the more finely-sliced details of theological propriety. So we have at least two conditions that must be met in order for an event to count as a miracle, on the standard conception. An event eis a miracle only if (1) é violates at least one law of nature, and (2) é is caused by God either directly or through some divine agency.’

B_ Problems for Miracles: Getting Started on the Epistemological Question Conditions (1) and (2) serve as our working definition

of “miracle,”

on the standard

construal. Of course defining something — e.g. “dog,” “extra-terrestrial” — doesn’t get the thing (or things) into existence. The skeptic doubts that there ave any miracles, any events satisfying our defining conditions (1) and (2). Believers think otherwise. Suppose, then, that the believer is confronted with (or is otherwise considering, perhaps in the form of historical testimony or an eyewitness report) some event which she takes to be a miracle. Two questions clearly need answering: (a) Is the event a violation of a law ofnature (i.e. is it what we'll call an anomalous event)?* and (b) Is the event caused by God? That is, with our standard conception ofa miraculous event in hand, a miracle will have to meet the Anomalous Event condition (AE) and the Divine Cause condition (DC). An event eis a miracle only if

(AE) (DC)

€ is an anomalous event, and

e is caused by God either directly or through some divine agency.

In the Introduction we encountered a concern of many theists to better understand the skeptical attitude of unbelievers. Let’s set aside

MIRACLES AND (CHRISTIAN) THEISM

for now the most severe skeptical attitude, according to which miracles are impossible. And let’s hang on to our context of dialogue between the believer and the skeptic — our secondary concern to evaluate the prospects for any “argument from miracles” to the existence of God. Even ifthe skeptic grants that miracles are metaphysically possible, there may yet be epistemological challenges to believing rationally that miracles are actual. To begin, notice that according to the divine cause condition (DC), there can be no miracles unless God exists. Thus we can imagine one objecting that “there cannot be miracles which are evidence for God’s existence, because accepting a description of an event as a miracle commits a man to acceptiing] the existence of God.”> Our definition itself looks to beg the question against the unbelieving skeptic about miracles. But surely we can define “miracle” in a way that — should any occur — entails the existence of God, without begging the question in favor of theism generally or Christianity in particular. What is at issue between the believer and unbelieving skeptic, presumably, isn’t whether miracles are good evidence for theism or Christianity, but whether there is good evidence for miracles. And traditionally, it is precisely (AE) — the existence of what we are calling an

anomalous event — that is offered as evidence for (DC) — the existence of a divine cause. What the above objection teaches us, if it teaches us anything, is a lesson already encountered: if the believer should like to argue from miracles to the existence ofa divine being, then it must be possible for the skeptic to recog-

skeptic. The challenge is twofold, directed at the roles (AE) plays in two distinct tasks for the believer in dialogue with the skeptic. One task is giving reasons for judging that an anomalous event has indeed occurred; another

taskis showing that such an anomalous event points to a divine cause, and so is genuinely miraculous. That is, given some candidateevent ¢, we confront two questions: first, Is (AE) indeed true? and second, Does the truth of (AE) establish the truth of (DC)? More

carefully: (1)

(II):

Are there theistically neutral grounds on which to justify the belief that (AE) is true? Does the truth of (AE) serve as theistically neutral evidence for believing that (DC) is true?

If the dialogue with the skeptic is to progress ina direction favoring the believer, then these central questions must each receive the answer “yes.” From the vast literature on miracles, one can

distill three basic objections that skeptics might raise in attempting to explain why we are not (ever) able to answer “yes” to our two central questions above. The first two argue that we can never expect an affirmative answer to the first question. The latter argues that we cannot get an affirmative answer for the second question. In the remainder ofthis section, we’ll present the objections themselves. Evaluating them is the task of sections 3 and 4, wherein the metaphysics and epistemology of miracles can be taken up in more detail.

nize evidence for, and form a warranted be-

lief about, the truth of (AE) without requiring prior evidence for, or warranted belief about, (DC). The skeptic will need unbiased — we might say “theistically neutral” — grounds for claiming that some event is anomalous. If there is no special problem with adopting the divine cause condition (DC) in our working definition, the deployment of the anomalous event condition (AE) confronts a more serious challenge from the moderate

(1) The Humean Objection In his famous essay “Of Miracles,” David Hume argues that it is never reasonable to believe that a miraculous violation of law has occurred.°® His argument begins with a reminder of how we do in fact seem to justify our belief that something counts as a law of nature: observing that two kinds of objects or events repeatedly and regularly occur together (unsuspended objects and falling, say, or deaths and irreversible decay) 337

J. A. COVER

counts as very strong evidence that “All Fs are Gs” is a genuine law (of gravity, or of irreversible biological decay). Indeed the constant and repeated concurrence of such events amounts to what Hume would call a “proof” of the law: there being no a priori method of discovering laws of nature, the observed uniform and regular behavior of objects and events provides the strongest evidence one could possibly have for judging some generalization of the form “All Fs are Gs” to be a law of nature. What, then, should the rational person believe if confronted with testimony for an alleged miraculous rising from the dead (say) — an eyewitness report of even the strongest credentials amounting to its own “proof?” We must weigh evidence against evidence, proof against proof. And here the evidence for it being true that all Fs are Gs must inevitably outweigh the evidence for it being true that there is an F that is mot a G; for against the testimony of our witness stands the entire host of repeated experiences to the contrary, of regular and constant conjunction of Fs and Gs. Since “the wise man always proportions his belief to the evidence,” and since the testimonial evidence for a miracle can never outweigh the repeated observational evidence for a law of nature, no evidence will ever command rational assent to the truth of a reported miracle. In short, one is never justified in believing that (AE) is true for some event. The answer to our Question (I) is “no.” That is Hume’s Objection.

(2) The Wrong Laws Objection Suppose that — on grounds as yet forthcoming — Hume’s argument is rejected, and that one could be rationally warranted in judging a law of nature to be violated. And suppose now that a candidate for such a case is in fact offered, i.e. that we are justified in believing some distinctive and unexpected event ¢ to have occurred. Shall we claim that the anomalous event condition (AE) is true and that some law of nature L is violated? Well, even if we are confronted with such evidence that e¢violates some accepted law of nature, the skeptic will 338

encourage us to see that the most plausible conclusion to draw — or anyway, an equally good conclusion to draw from the evidence — is mot that a law of nature is violated, but rather that the generalization L thought to be a law of nature is nota law of nature after all. Again, there is no a priori mechanism for identifying the correct laws of nature; hence there is no a

priori route to the conclusion that some event e has violated a law of nature. And since the mechanism scientists do employ in proposing certain generalizations as laws is a broadly empirical one, it must remain open to theoreticians and practitioners of science to recognize evidence against proposed laws when it arises, evidence of the need for some new, alternative law (or laws) L*. Just as science itself works in part by rejecting supposed laws when the evidence no longer fits them, so the skeptic will argue that this unexpected event e — the supposed miracle — is simply good evidence that we have not correctly understood the relevant laws of nature. Indeed, if we had properly latched on to the true laws of nature, we should no longer judge the actual event e¢ as contrary to them. Nothing that actually happens is contrary to the truth. So if the man was really dead and did in fact come to life, then surely there is something about the remarkable and complex biology of human organisms we have yet to learn. Of course, one who is antecedently disposed to anticipate supernatural intrusions into the natural order — one already inclined to see remarkable events like ¢ as divine interventions — will more readily judge events of that remarkable kind to be genuinely anomalous violations of law. But the conditions for judging an event as genuinely anomalous must (recall) be independent of such dispositions, such inclinations: the evidence is to be theistically neutral. So the skeptic is under no epistemic obligation to do otherwise than regard an unexpected, heretofore unobserved event precisely as any empirical scientist would: ¢ is at best evidence for the need to reconsider our present understanding of the powers in nature and the laws governing them. Once

MIRACLES AND (CHRISTIAN) THEISM

again, we cannot conclude that (AE) is true; as before, the answer to our central Question (I) is “no.” That is the Wrong Laws Objection. (3) The Non-Miraculous Anomaly Objection Suppose that — on grounds yet unspecified — the anomalous event condition (AE) zsacknowledged to be true. That is, suppose we are justified in believing ¢ to violate some law of nature L, and so may answer “yes” to Question (I). From the existence of such an anomalous event, can we infer the existence of a divine cause? Not at all straightaway. From the truth of (AE) we can infer the truth of (DC) omly if there could be no anomalous events lacking a divine cause. But since, for all we know, some events are anomalous precisely because they are radically spontaneous or otherwise uncaused events, there may be anomalous events that are not miracles.” Such events would be non-miraculous anomalies. Clearly an event’s lacking a natural cause does not entail its having a supernatural cause. If non-miraculous anomalous events are thus possible, and ifthere is no theistically neutral reason for saying “it’s more likely that ¢ has a supernatural cause than that ¢is radically spontaneous (random) or otherwise uncaused,” then the evidential value of ¢ emerges to be practically nil. A man rose from the dead. So? So it scarcely follows that God did it. Here again, if one already believed that God exists and took oneself to have some knowledge of the nature and plans of God, then one might well have grounds for believing that ¢ is due to God. But independently of such theisticallymotivated dispositions for belief, the skeptic is without good reasons for judging the anomalous event ¢ to be evidence for the existence and activity of a divine being. Since (DC) cannot be thereby reckoned true, the answer to our Question (II) is “no.” That is the Non-Miraculous Anomaly Objection.

Here then are three significant challenges — to the rationality of believing in miracles generally, and in particular to the believer who would engage skeptics in arguing that mir-

acles have evidential value for theistic belief. In turning now to assess these objections, let’s begin with the Humean Objection. Doing so will lead us pretty quickly to rethinking the metaphysical question about what miracles are. / 3

Miracles and Laws: the

Metaphysical Question Reconsidered

A

Hume’s Oljection

There are three things to point out about Hume’s challenge: the last of them will offer us a chance to think more clearly about the nature of miracles and laws. First, Hume’s objection looks to suppose that the only evidence one might have for a miracle is the testimony of someone’s claim to direct observation. But there may be — indeed, typically will be — evidence of another, indirect sort; and such indirect evidence may well be strong enough to warrant positing the existence of a genuinely anomalous event as its best explanation. Consider first a simple case by way of illustration. Imagine that a good friend and family man, Jones (as he is inevitably called), is found dead on his bedroom floor. Here is a surprising event that we ache to have explained. Suppose someone tells us and the authorities that they saw Jones commit suicide. No detective worth his salt would stop with evidence of that sort, and call it a day. After all, the witness might be lying, or deluded, or have poor eyesight. Rather, the detective will seek out indirect evidence — Jones’s own fingerprints on a gun lying nearby, a suicide note on the table, a host of antidepressant drugs in the medicine cabinet, and so on. Where the direct testimony of our witness might prove insufficient, further indirect evidence might prove overwhelming: indeed, the hypothesis that Jones committed suicide might well explain all the other, indirect evidence much better than any alternative hypothesis (murder in a bungled robbery attempt, say). Now consider the case 339

J. A. COVER

of putative miracles. Here too, quite apart from the direct testimony of a witness, there may well be many other such bits of indirect evidence that are best explained by the hypothesis that an anomalous event did indeed occur,

and which might well be far stronger than the direct evidence. Thus, in addition to direct test-

imony for the claim that Christ arose (“I saw him in the Garden and he spoke to me!”) would be the empty tomb itselfand the burial clothes, the despondency of the Christ’s followers suddenly giving way to great cheer and deep faith, and so on. Surely these things need explaining; and it may emerge that such bits of indirect evidence are much better explained by Christ’s actual resurrection than by any competing hypothesis, and that such evidence is even stronger than the testimony of our witness. Hume’s objection is one about the weight of evidence, and he has said nothing whatsoever about adding the weight of indirect evidence for a genuinely anomalous event. Second, Hume’s Objection appears on reflection to be much too strong. The evidence of past experience for some regularity of nature (all Fs are Gs) will, on his account, always be weightier than new contrary evidence for a violation. But if that were true as a general principle, it would entail that it is never rational to believe — on the basis of direct testimony or any other evidence — that an event having never before occurred, or having a very low likelihood of occurring based on past experience, has in fact occurred. Yet surely it és possible to have good evidence for believing that something highly improbable (relative to past experience) has in fact occurred. Otherwise, it should be impossible to have good evidence that (say) our best current estimation for some law of nature now has new good evidence counting against it. Indeed, were Hume’s Objection against miracles taken seriously, its partner objection — the Wrong Laws Objection — could never even arise: one could never have good reasons for saying (as scientists clearly sometimes must) that supposed scientific laws need to be revised on the basis of new, contrary evidence. Hume seems 340

to think that the invariable experience of past occurrences must always win out, and that one could never have good grounds to revise laws in the way scientists actually do. And that, clearly, is much too strong. Hume has vastly overestimated the weight of past experience. Third, some philosophers have worried that, in the context of arguing that the weight of “uniform experience” for some law always trumps the weight of testimony for its violation, Hume has begged the question — 1.e. has helped himself to something (namely the uniformity of experience) that can be known only if it were already known that no anomalous event to the contrary has ever been experienced.’ The force of this charge against Hume rests on reading him as claiming not simply that an individual’s experience of past occurrences is uniform and regular, but rather that all past occurrences have been uniform and regular, in accordance with laws. Although this is not the most charitable reading of Hume, it does point to what seems clearly beneath the surface of what Hume says about miracles and their relation to laws of nature — namely, an extreme skepticism about the possibility of miracles. Miracles, on the standard conception, are violations of at least one law of nature. But for Hume, laws of nature are

simply true statements of the uniform and regular behavior of natural objects and events. Were there no such uniform and regular behavior ofthe natural objects and events, we should have no grounds for calling those statements /awsat all. Hence, our grounds for calling them laws are precisely our grounds for denying any event is miraculous. Thus arises a more severe (we might still reckon it Humean) challenge to miracles: given the standard definition that miracles violate a law of nature, there are no miracles, because they are impossible. More explicitly: A law of nature is a true universal generalization of the form “All Fs are Gs” or “All soand-sos do such-and-such.” This is the standard account of a law of nature. Hence, anything that is a genuine law ofnature has no exceptions,

MIRACLES AND (CHRISTIAN) THEISM no counterinstances: if it really zs a law of nature that all Fs are Gs, then there cannot be an F that is not a G. Buta miracle is by definition a violation of a law of nature. Thus: if(i) nothing could be a law of nature unless it is unviolated, and (ii) no event could be a miracle unless it violates a law of nature, then no event could be a miracle. Miracles are impossible.’

This argument — we might call it the “impossibility argument” — is valid. What should the believer make of it?

B_ Re-evaluating the Standard Construal of Miracles as Violations of Law An unnegotiable part of orthodox theistic belief is that miracles are actual, hence possible. The believer thus has two options for responding to the impossibility argument, corresponding to its two main premises — that (i) nothing could be a law ofnature unless it is unviolated, and that (ii) no event could be a miracle unless it violates a law of nature. That is, the believer must judge the impossibility argument to be unsound, claiming either that laws of nature can be violated, or that mira-

cles are not violations of the laws of nature but are in some other way anomalous. Let’s examine briefly the first of these options. Among the most central considerations recommending that miracles be construed as violations of laws of nature is the following pair of intuitions, shared by many believers and unbelievers alike: (a) miracles, if any there be, are fundamentally divine interventions into the causal order of nature; and (b) the concept of causation is fundamentally a concept of lawlike regularity. Together, these recommend what we’ve been calling the standard conception of a miracle. Suppose now that one believed miracles are possible and yet wished to retain the standard conception of a miracle, insisting that a miraculous event, if it occurred,

would violate some law of nature L. In this case one shall have to deny premise (i) of the impossibility argument, and say that something could be a law of nature even if it had

exceptions. While such laws would of course admit of no natural exception — it being the job of laws to mark off such exceptions as (let us say) physically impossible — the laws may yet admit of supernatural exception. Supposing as we do that the laws of nature are not logically necessary, it is within precisely this gap between what is physically possible and what is logically possible that miracles would be expected to fall. This being so, the believer may suggest that whatever lawful order God at creation set into place, the resulting physical impossibility of a man’s rising from the dead tells not at all against such an event remaining logically possible for God to bring about by direct causal intervention in nature. Such an intervention, yielding a singular anomalous event, would not amount to any new regularity of nature — no new, conflicting law serving to replace those set in place at creation. Such natural laws as there are, including any that a divine intervention may have violated, remain in place as laws by which the natural order is governed. Were there any, miracles would be — rather as one should expect — events about which the predictions based on natural laws are simply in error.!° This account of miracles is not without its difficulties. Most obvious among them, surely, is the strain of having to say that something could be a law of nature despite being false. All else being equal, one would like an account of miracles and their relation to natural laws that avoids speaking of false laws of nature. Other difficulties arise as consequences of the requirement that miracles are nonrepeatable singularities. The requirement is apparently crucial: were there any recurring connection in the world between Fs and nonGs — between dead men and revived men — we should no longer have grounds for judging Lto bea law of nature at all, to which ¢ is a miraculous counterinstance. In order to preserve L as a genuine law and ¢ as genuinely anomalous, many philosophers (Smart and Swinburne notably among them) have thus insisted that miracles must be non-repeatable. Here we clearly have an additional, newly-

341

J. A. COVER

proposed necessary condition for an event’s counting as a miracle; and just as clearly it is not something either the believer or unbeliever need accept. First, it is quite obscure how exactly we are to understand this notion of an unrepeatable singularity. If an event is regarded as a spatio-temporal particular — an individual thing’s having a certain property at a particular place at a particular time — then no event is repeatable. The event of Lazarus’s coming to life at place p at time ¢ cannot be repeated. If on the other hand an event is regarded as an instance of some general description, then most events (including, say, the rising of a person every time Christ says

“Arise”) are repeatable. But suppose the desired notion of non-repeatability can be rendered intelligible. We should nevertheless ask (second): What is to prevent an all-powerful lawgiver from performing a certain sort of miracle with some regularity, or at least with some frequency? Whether God intervenes in a certain way with regularity or frequency is, surely, His own business.!? C An Alternative Construal: Causal Laws and Miracles as NonViolations One cannot help but wonder if there isn’t a more satisfactory account of miracles and laws of nature that will avoid the impossibility argument. A second option for rescuing the possibility of miracles, noted earlier, would part company from the standard construal of miracles by denying premise (ii) of the argument, that miracles are violations of law. What

are the prospects for taking this route? Recall again the two basic intuitions, shared by many believers and unbelievers alike, that motivate the standard picture of miracles and their relation to natural laws: (a) miracles, if any there be, are fundamentally divine interventions into the causal order of nature; and (b) the concept of causation is fundamentally a concept of lawlike regularity among events, expressed in generalizations of the form “All Fs are Gs.” Those might have seemed innocu342

ous enough. Especially the first: for purposes of dialogue, the believer and the skeptic can surely agree that item (a) forms part of the definition of a miracle — that miracles are or would be brought about by God in a supernatural way, from outside of nature. The rub comes in accepting (b), and with it the idea that something could be a genuine law of the form “All Fs are Gs” even if it is falsified by some miraculous F that isw’t a G. And it is important to see that accepting (a) doesn’t in any way require one to accept (b) — doesn’t commit one to accepting the Humean view that causality is fundamentally a matter of lawlike regularity among events. The theistic proponent of the standard construal has encouraged us to see that the natural order established at creation does nothing to exclude God’s power of bringing it about that some F is not-G. Fair enough. Why not view this as an invitation to grant that the causal powers enjoyed by God permit His bringing about occurrences that cannot be caused by the natural forces operative in created objects left to themselves? That is — now following two Christian philosophers of a bygone era — we can say with St Thomas Aquinas and G. W. Leibniz that miracles are occurrences which are beyond the natural causal powers of any created thing to bring about:!* the natural forces operative in a human body dead for four days cannot cause that body to rise anew in living health. What God can cause is something the powers operative in the body itself cannot cause. This non-Humean view of causation as fundamentally an intrinsic power to bring about or make happen — powers that objects possess or lack in virtue of the kinds of objects they are — isn’t merely an alternative to Hume’s intuition (b) above. It highlights an important weakness in granting too quickly the simple Humean picture of laws themselves. According to intuition (b), causation is fundamentally a concept of regularity or lawlike universal generalization. But clearly not all universal generalizations are laws of nature. It may well be that as a matter of empirical ob-

MIRACLES AND (CHRISTIAN) THEISM

servation of fact, all dogs born at sea are labradors; but this accidentally true generalization hardly supports the predictive and explanatory status that we believe genuine laws to possess — one licensing an inference to (say) “if my beagle were to have pups at sea, they would be labrador retrievers.” Some generalizations are weak, expressing that all Fs are Gs and nothing more than that; but the genuinely lawful generalizations are stronger, expressing something closer to “All Fs have to be Gs.” Crucially, then: how is the original Humean account to secure this character of laws as expressing a kind of necessity that mere accidental regularities lack? Perhaps it can be captured by regarding laws of nature as having some sort of prescriptive necessity, rather like that of legal statutes: in this way, perhaps we’d be able to construe laws as having the form “Necessarily, all Fs are Gs,” while nevertheless allowing them (like legal statutes) to be violated and to not entail that all Fs are Gs.'* Perhaps. But it isn’t at all clear how recognizing some kind of necessity in the generalization can weaken the generalization itself, so that it permits Fs that aren’t Gs. Moreover, it is unclear how the prescriptive force of an imperative or command (“No driving over 55 mph”) can have the descriptive content that we take laws of nature to in fact have: laws not only prescribe how the natural world must go but describe how the natural world is (“All metals are conductors”). We might hope to retain this intuition that laws of nature are rather like divine injunctions, but still think of laws as both descriptive and prescriptive — by construing them as “expressions of a faithful God’s free governance of the world,” i.e. as stipulations of how God does and would act (bring about a G) in this or that particular circumstance (when there’s an F).!* But this threatens to make God the immediate

causal source

of all occurrences,

“natural” and “unnatural” (miraculous) alike. If we should like to regard miracles as genuine interventions by God into the natural causal order, don’t we do better to recognize, as we did above, a natural causal efficacy within cre-

ated objects? On this non-Humean proposal, we would be well-placed to insist that what distinguishes some regularity as a genuine law of nature is that it be one expressing what occurrences the natural causal powers of objects must and cannot give rise to. In the course of nature, dead human

bodies must

suffer decay, and beagles cannot have labrador pups. The “must” and “cannot” here express what we earlier described as physically necessary and physically impossible — a “must” and “cannot” that, however strong, isn’t so strong as to threaten the causal powers of God should He will to intervene. By a stroke of good luck, this brief excursion into the metaphysics of causality and laws has welcome payoffs. First, if not all regularities are laws of nature, then the believer faces no special threat from repeated or regular miracles: laws of nature, expressing causally necessary connections between kinds of events, may not exhaust all the regularities there are. Moreover, if (on our non-Humean construal) laws are those generalizations expressing what occurrences the natural causal powers in objects must and cannot give rise

to, then we now have very plausible motivation for viewing the scope of laws of nature to be implicitly restricted in just this way — restricted, that is, to occurrences in which only natural causal powers are operative. Laws of nature are about the natural causal goings on in the created world. This being so, it remains open to claim that events not caused by the operation of natural powers in created objects do nothing to threaten the truth of natural causal laws. That threat, recall, was the difficulty with accepting (b) above. We now see that believing in events having supernatural causes needn’t saddle one with believing that there are false laws of nature, laws having exceptions. Miracles are so to speak “gaps” in nature, occurrences having causes on which laws of nature are simply silent. The laws are true, and simply don’t speak to events caused by divine intervention. (Laws of nature are, after all, laws of nature, not supernature: miracles can be supra natura without being

343

J. A. COVER contra natura.) In short, then, miracles are

anomalous ~ i.e. non-nomological or nonlawlike — not because they violate laws of nature, but rather because the laws of nature

don’t speak to their causal origins at all. Laws can be silent without being false.

proposition that must be acknowledged as true by any rational person reflecting on it, the objection from Naturalism against this new construal of miracles would seem to be little more than special pleading. One can imagine the following rejoinder from the naturalist: “Well, what’s sauce for

D>

Naturalism and Miracles

The Christian theist, hoping to defend the rationality of believing in miracles and inquire into their evidential status for theistic belief generally, can avoid the impossibility argument by denying its Humean assumptions. That is genuine progress in the dialogue with the skeptic. A final bit of progress can be made by turning to the following important objection, which represents the most common misgiving about miracles from the contemporary world-view of non-believers. “Whatever else they are (or would be), miracles are (would be) occurrences in the natural world having a supernatural cause. But surely, whatever causally explains an occurrence in the natural world must itself be part of the natural world. Indeed, to causally explain the occurrence of some event ¢ in the natural world is just to show that ¢ is in accordance with some causal law of nature. Thus every event in the natural world has a natural causal explanation. Statements of natural law are universal generalizations applying to all events, and so any commitment to the truth of laws of nature (as above) entails that miracles cannot occur.” The weakness of this challenge — call it the challenge of Naturalism, after the prevalent world-view from which it emerges — is the assertion of Naturalism itself. Need one believe it? Unless one were already committed to the impossibility of supernatural causes, there seems to be little reason for insisting that the natural world must be a “closed system,” that every event in nature is necessarily such that there is some prior natural event that, together with the laws of nature, causally explains its occurrence. For all the naturalist’s devotion to it, Naturalism is a philosophical hypothesis, not an argument. Far from leaning on a 344

the goose is sauce for the gander. Unless the believer were already committed to the existence of supernatural causes, there seems little reason for denying the Naturalist thesis — the thesis that every event in nature is necessarily such that there is some prior natural event which, together with the laws of nature, causally explains its occurrence. Let us remain theistically neutral, and set putative actions of

God aside. Why think there are any ‘gaps’ in nature, any events on which the causal laws of nature get no grip via prior natural events?” Notice first that this reply misses its target. The believer is aiming here to articulate a coherent account of miracles as possible, in reply to the severe skeptical argument for their impossibility. So the central question isn’t whether we have good reasons for claiming that Naturalism is false, but rather whether there are good reasons for claiming that Naturalism is true. The believer’s point is that Naturalism isn’t something any rational person is constrained to believe, and conclude that miracles are possible. In urging the nonviolation construal of miracles as possible, the believer needn’t at this stage provide good reasons for believing that Naturalism is false (and conclude that miracles are actual).'* Sull, it would be nice to have something positive from the believer by way of rejecting the naturalist position. Shy of rejecting it merely to safeguard their belief in miracles, are there any plausible reasons for denying that every event in nature is such that some prior natural event, together with the laws of nature, causally explains its occurrence? Perhaps so. Consider those events we call free actions of human creatures (agents), actions for which we are morally responsible

because we could have done otherwise than perform them. Many philosophers have rea-

MIRACLES AND (CHRISTIAN) THEISM

soned as follows. Laws of nature do express necessary connections between kinds of events. But if a// events in the natural world are subject to these laws, then every event — human actions among them - is causally necessitated by past events together with the laws of nature. Since we are not in control of the past or the laws of nature, it would not be within our power to do otherwise than we do. (Should it turn out that the laws of nature are irreducibly probabilistic and some or all events are by nature unavoidably chancy or random, then here too it would not be genuinely up to us what action was performed). But since we are free agents — since it sometimes 7s up to us what action we perform — it must follow that not all human actions are causally necessitated by past events together with the laws of nature. Notice, then: in performing a free action, we do not violate any law of nature. Rather, free actions represent “gaps,” events on which the laws ofnature get no grip in the sense just described. For in the case of some particular volition (willing or deciding to raise one’s hand, say), it is not a prior event causing the volition in accordance with laws of nature, but rather the person herself, a free agent exercising a power to bring that decision about (rather than some other). That is what we mean when we say that “she decided to perform the action,” and what we imply when claiming that “she is morally responsible for doing it.” So once again, while it remains the case that laws of nature are true, and express causally necessary connections between events, the occurrence of events hav-

ing free agents as their cause must, on this agent-causal theory of freedom, recommend against the claim that every event in nature is necessarily such that some prior natural event plus the laws of nature causally explains its occurrence. Having earlier denied that all regularities express causal connections, we can here deny as well that all causal connections instantiate a regularity — deny, that is, that (b) the concept of causation is at bottom a concept of lawlike regularity. Many philosophers have reasoned in that

way.!° If this agent-causal theory of freedom is coherent, then miracles on the non-standard, non-violation construal of them are thus possible. Indeed, one might see in agent-causal freedom a useful model for the nature of

miraculous divine intervention. Just as we as free agents are causally responsible for some events whose occurrence cannot be predicted by a complete description of the past together with the true laws of nature, so God is agentcausally responsible for miraculous events meeting the same description.

4

Miracles and Evidence: the

Epistemological Question Reconsidered Or so the believer in miracles might well claim. But a coherent story about the world needn’t be a true story: wide is the gate to coherence, and narrow the way to truth. If the severe skeptical challenge to the possibility of miracles is, at long last, well enough behind us, there remain skeptical challenges to the actuality of miracles. Two such challenges are still on board. According to the Wrong Laws Objection, any candidate e for an anomalous event — one which the laws of nature together with prior natural events cannot explain — is at best evidence that we’ve gotten the laws of nature wrong. According to the Non-Miraculous Anomaly Objection, even if that remarkable event zsanomalous and falls outside the scope of the true laws of nature, it can succeed in pointing to divine cause only if non-miraculous anomalies are impossible. Both of these objections are directed at the truth of the miracle claims of theism generally and Christianity in particular. How deeply do these objections cut against the rationality of believing in miracles, and against the historically influential project of many believers to offer the moderate skeptic an “argument from miracles” in defense of theism?

345

J. A. COVER

A

Wrong Laws, Non-Miraculous

Anomalies, and Theistic Evidences The second of these questions provides a useful point of entry for answering the first. In approaching this second question, it will help to reflect briefly on how difficult it is to show that some theory is true. Recall again our working “definition” of a miracle: ¢ is a miracle only if

(AE) (DC)

eis an anomalous event, and e is caused by God either directly or through some divine agency.

And recall again our two central questions: given some remarkable event e, (I)

(II)...

Are there theistically neutral grounds on which to justify the belief that (AE) is true? Does: the-truth,of (AE) serve as theistically neutral evidence for believing that (DC) is true?

The obstacles confronting anyone aiming to show that there are events having divine causes are no different in kind from those confronting any other effort to establish the truth of some philosophical theory — say, that there are events having free human creatures as causes. A skeptic about agent-causation may grant the coherence of such a theory without cowering in the face of so-called “evidence from free actions,” opting instead for some alternative theory about the relation of human action to natural laws. No human action all on its own counts as (we might say) freedom-theoretically neutral evidence for the truth of agent-causation. Likewise the unbelieving skeptic can, while granting the logical posstbility of genuinely anomalous events, fairly persist in a view of the physical world according to which all events are causally explained in terms of prior events together with the laws of nature. Such a person, far from recoiling in the face of “evidence from unexpected events,” will have open to him alternatives 346

entailing that miracles are not actual. The naturalist will recommend what many see as the hallmark ofaproper scientific methodology — expanding and revising our account of nature and the laws governing occurrences within it, in the face of new and contrary observations. The point is that putative “evidence” will always be evaluated relative to prior beliefs or background theory.’” And so whatever “evidence from remarkable events” one might offer in favor of ebeing a genuine gap in nature on which the laws get no grip, the skeptic’s commitment to a thoroughgoing Naturalism will permit an alternative construal on which such an event counts not at allas evidence for the existence of genuine anomalies — for events lacking causal explanation in terms of prior events plus the laws of nature. Since no event all of its own counts as purely neutral grounds for believing that it falsifies a law of nature, what we earlier called the Wrong Laws Objection is always available: in that case, our central question (I) will be answered “no.” Moreover, even ifthe skeptic were, for whatever reasons, to become con-

vinced that some remarkable event in fact has no cause in prior natural events, it remains a further option to insist that whatever is caused to occur is caused by prior natural events. The anomalous event in question, having no cause in prior events, would thus be intrinsically spontaneous or uncaused, and such a skeptic would conclude that, however it may seem to us to be, miracles are not something our world enjoys (seeming to be a miracle scarcely entailing 15a miracle). Since events having no cause in prior events don’t by themselves serve as theistically neutral evidence for believing that some event is the upshot of a divine cause,

what we earlier called the Non-Miraculous Anomaly Objection is always available. In that case, our central question (II) will be answered snos In short, there is no forcing one to accept the occurrence of miracles. But of course, there is no forcing anyone to

believe anything. The real question is what it is most reasonable to believe. How reason-

MIRACLES AND (CHRISTIAN) THEISM

able is the Wrong Laws Objection? That will depend upon the details — different cases of putative anomalies bringing with them different details. Avoiding too many details, suppose that we grant the familiar demand for theistically neutral evidence. It may yet emerge in the case of some putative anomaly that our remarkable event ¢ proves so stubbornly recalcitrant to explanation by any remotely plausible gerrymandering of existing scientific laws, that one goes further in preserving the unity of science by admiting ¢ as miraculous than one could possibly go by revamping the wellearned claims ofnatural science to rescue ¢ as a lawfully-caused event. W. V. O. Quine has likened theories or world-views to coherent “webs of belief,” which we confirm to the extent that its predictable consequences are in fact observed,and refute to the extent that we observe phenomena contrary to its predictions. Disconfirming evidence isn’t a wholesale

refutation

of the entire lot, of

course: it refutes only those bits of our theory or world-view contributing to the false prediction, and it is those bits that need adjusting. And not all adjustments are created equal. Says Quine, we rescind what seems “least crucial to our overall theory. We heed a maximum of minimal mutilation. . . . The ultimate objective is so to choose the revision as to maximize future success in prediction. .. .”'8 In the case of genuinely recalcitrant evidence such as a genuine anomaly, it may emerge that one minimizes mutilation, and maximizes future success in prediction, by preserving the larger bulk of one’s theory and its laws while jettisoning the peripheral assumption of Naturalism. (Theists can do science. Newton did, like many theists before and after him.) The naturalist does of course believe that every event must be causally explainable in terms ofprior natural events together with the laws of nature; but is it reasonable that this article of faith should trump the successful laws of biological science? That question is not easily answered. For a thoroughgoing naturalist, the anomaly may shake their confidence in the established laws of science, but not their be-

lief that every event has natural cause. Yet to many, it would — all things considered — seem far more reasonable to retain the existing canons ofbiology, and to infer that the phenomenon is genuinely anomalous and that Naturalism is false. One can’t help but wish for a clearer way of deciding, on purely neutral grounds, when one stance is more reasonable than another. Which of the two stances, prior to any other considerations or details, is 7” its own right objectively more reasonable, more likely to be true — the idea of Naturalism, or the idea of events having no natural causes?

It is far from clear that there is a good answer to this question, a “right” answer that anyone who is rational would be obliged to accept. Something similar arises in connection with the Non-Miraculous Anomaly Objection. Here too the believer might make progress without arriving at anything like a proof —and then, despite the progress, still confront residual worries about what is most reasonable to believe. Suppose it were granted that some remarkable event ¢ is genuinely anomalous. Such an anomalous event points to God (i.e. is genuinely miraculous) only if it has a divine cause. But as the Non-Miraculous Anomaly Objection is keen to remind us, one can prove that our anomalous event ¢ has a divine cause only if one can provide some proof against ¢’s having no cause at all. And this simply cannot be proven. The event could be anomalous precisely because it is a spontaneous, uncaused event. Lacking any route from anomalousevent premise (AE) to divine-cause conclusion (DC), the believer is unable to answer “ves” to our central question (II). The initial progress comes in noting this weakness of the objection: it presumes that the only available argumentative route to a conclusion — the only way of supporting some claim as reasonable to believe — is a deductive one, in the form of a genuine proof. The believer will remind us that, even if there is 2o deductive route from (AE) to (DC), it hardly follows that there is 0 route whatever from 347

J. A. COVER

(AE) to (DC) - no way at all in which an anomaly can serve as rational grounds or good evidence for believing that it has a divine cause. Much of legal and scientific reasoning takes the form of an abductive (non-deductive) “inference to the best explanation.” When astronomers came to realize that the orbit of Uranus exhibited unexpected deviations from their best calculations of what it should be, their best explanation — the only reasonable explanation, given everything else known about the solar system — was that there must exist a gravitational force exerted by some theretofore unknown (and as yet undiscovered) heavenly body, affecting the orbit of Uranus. That reasonable belief led to the search for, and eventual discovery of, the planet we call Neptune. In this case, as in a vast range of others like it, while one lacks anything like a deductive proof, one nevertheless has good evidence grounding the inference to what best explains it. It is of course possible that (unlike all other planets) there is simply no gravitational explanation for the orbit of Uranus. But surely it is far and away more reasonable, given the evidence, to believe that some other gravitational body exists. In the same way, while a positive “argument from miracles” may not be available to enlist some remarkable event ¢ as proof of the existence of God, it may nevertheless be more reasonable to claim that é has a divine cause than to claim that ¢is spontaneous, inexplicable, uncaused. The occurrence of some remarkable event that is inexplicable in terms of past events and the laws of nature is perhaps good evidence that it was caused by something outside nature. Indeed many people would claim that the idea of an event being altogether uncaused, having no causal explanation whatsoever, is simply unreasonable. Fair enough. Many people would claim that. Would they be right? The residual worry concerns how one could show, or plausibly defend, this claim that the idea of an uncaused event is an unreasonable one. Indeed, how would one go about showing or defending even the weaker claim — that uncaused events 348

are less reasonable than divinely caused events? While many do find themselves quite naturally believing this weaker claim, the skeptic may find himself quite naturally believing otherwise: to the skeptic, it seems more reasonable to accept the existence of an uncaused event than to accept the existence of an invisible divine cause. Which view, i” its own right,

all on its own, is objectively more rational, more likely to be true? Once again, it is far from clear that there is a good answer to this question, a “right” answer that anyone who is rational would be obliged to accept.

B_ The Rationality of Belvef in Miracles Yet perhaps this residual challenge from NonMiraculous Anomalies isn’t so worrisome as all that. As before, different cases bring with them different details. Mightn’t there be cases presenting us with evidence — quite beyond the anomalous event itself — for its having a divine cause? You can have evidence for my causing some occurrence if you see me bring it about. That sort of evidence won’t be available in the case of an invisible God. But suppose that you know me and my inner character well—well enough to know that if you call me

on the phone and ask that I send you $50, then you will receive the money from me. Should you ask me for money, receiving it is evidence that I sent it. Had you not asked, you almost certainly wouldn’t have found an envelope with money taped to your front door: surely the best explanation for the money’s appearing on your door is that I put it there. Elijah knew the inner character of the God of Abraham and Isaac well enough: he asked God to consume the bullock and stones and wood and water on Mount Carmel, and

fire came down from a cloudless sky to consume the altar. That, surely, is evidence of God’s causing the fire. In this case at least, isn’t it more reasonable to suppose that fire from a cloudless sky was caused by God, and less reasonable to suppose it was uncaused?

MIRACLES AND (CHRISTIAN) THEISM

It certainly seems so. The skeptic will of course wonder if the story of Elijah is even true. For better or worse, one has rather fewer examples of candidate miracles, nowadays,

earning a spot in the respectable broadcasts of CNN, to present the skeptic. It 7s worth remembering that the believer in miracles, hoping to offer the skeptic an “argument from miracles” in defense of theism, needs an event to offer up for discussion that the skeptic will accept as a candidate. Moreover, the skeptic will remind us that 4e doesn’t know the inner character of any God well enough to call putative cases of asking and receiving evidence of a divine cause. The evidence, recall, was to be unbiased, theistically neutral. What about this demand for theistically neutral evidence, and its relevance to the rationality of believing in miracles? Approached frony the historical dialogue in which believers have sought to deploy miracles in support of theism, the project of Christian evidences is best conceived as defending the rationality of the Christian faith, not as proving it. There is no convincing proof for Naturalism, but it is not thereby irrational to believe; there is no argument for theism that every rational person must accept, but it isn’t thereby irrational to believe. If the challenges from Wrong Laws and Non-Miraculous Anomalies to some extent diminish one’s confidence that questions (I) and (II) can readily earn the affirmative answers required by a positive “argument from miracles” to divine agency, they tell rather little against the rationality of believing in miracles. Some final reflections on this point will allow us to reconsider the two worries most recently encountered — about the difficulty of judging one view to be objectively more reasonable or likely than another, and about the demand for theistically neutral evidence. The believer needn’t suppose that the rationality of the Christian faith stands or falls with the success or failure of positive arguments proving the existence of God. Likewise, the theist needn’t suppose that the rationality of believing in miracles stands or falls with the

success or failure of an argument showing that some event is indeed anomalous and has a divine cause. Consider the first of these analogous claims. The central task of the historical project of “giving evidences” is one of defending the rationality of the Christian faith against the charge that (in the first instance) believing in God is unwarranted or somehow illegitimate — that in light of the evidence, accepting theism is irrational or otherwise epistemically deficient. But now what evidence is that, and what exactly makes believing theism in light of it irrational? Many skeptics will say that theistic belief is not rational simply because it is not very likely true, because it does not command a suitably high degree of rational assent — in short because it is not very highly probable or likely given other beliefs. Yet surely a good deal rides on (i) what those other beliefs are, and (ii) the prior likelihood or probability one assigns to them. Consider first item (ii): relative to what assignments of prior probability to these other beliefs are we assessing the likelihood of theism? If our recent reflections (and the history of intellectual thought) have taught us anything, they have taught us that few if any beliefs of deep consequence wear an obvious and intrinsic probability on their sleeves. Considered on their own, which view is intrinsically more reasonable, more likely, more probable — that all events are caused, or that some are uncaused? Naturalism, or theism? There is no

good answer to these questions, no reason to think there are any such intrinsic probabilities attaching to such beliefs. This returns us immediately to (i): what are these other beliefs relative to which theism is said to enjoy only a low probability? No doubt theism is highly improbable relative to naturalism, but the believer is scarcely obliged to judge the rationality of theism against the “evidence” of naturalism. Is the believer rational in accepting theism? Well, the likelihood of theism will depend on the antecedent probabilities assigned to other of his or her beliefs. Among these may be — why not? — the deliverances of religious 349

J. A. COVER

experience, and/or a traditional argument for the existence of God, and/or an acquired faith via general revelation. If the believer is in possession of no outweighing reason for doubting the deliverances of one or another of these

sources of belief, their prior probabilities for that person will be sufficiently high to count for them as evidence for believing in theism. Theism may for all that (for all one can show) turn out to be false, but the believer will not be irrational in accepting it. So then, back to miracles. If the rationality of holding theistic beliefs does not stand or

fall with the success or failure of positive arguments for the existence of an all-powerful, all-knowing and perfectly benevolent personal being, neither does the rationality of believing in miracles stand or fall with positive arguments for the existence of causal “gaps” due to divine intervention. Imagine a renewed Humean Objection, directed against our nonstandard conception of a miracle. “Vast stretches of experience have shown that natural events can be explained in terms of laws of nature. The weight of evidence for it being true that all events are causally explainable in terms of laws of nature, is invariably greater than the weight of evidence for it being true that some event has no lawful explanation. The rational person, weighing evidence against evidence, likelihood against likelihood,

must always withhold assent to the truth of a reported miracle. The improbability that laws of nature have gaps is always extremely high, and so the probability that there are miracles is always extremely low.” Now we’ve learned already that past experience cannot show that laws of nature have no gaps. So the real question is this: must the believer agree that the improbability of a law of nature being silent (getting no grip, having a gap) is always extremely high? There is no obvious and intrinsic probability attaching to the naturalist claim that laws of nature have no gaps, that nature never encounters outside intervention. Is the believer irrational in accepting the occurrence of miracles? Well here too, the likelihood of gaps in nature, of instances where laws are 350

silent, will for the believer depend on the antecedent probabilities assigned to other of his or her beliefs. Among these may be — why not? — the deliverances of religious experience, and/or arguments for the existence of God, and/or an acquired faith via general revelation. If the believer is in possession of good reasons for accepting (no outweighing reasons for rejecting) the deliverances of one or another of these sources of belief, their prior probabilities for that person may be sufficiently high to count as grounds for believing that gaps in nature — cases of laws being silent — are not particularly improbable at all. Indeed, the contents of these prior beliefs may be rich enough to invite the expectation of divine intervention.!? True enough: if what is counted as grounds for a person’s believing

some claim is to be assessed relative to likelihoods enjoyed by prior beliefs or background theory, then an unbeliever — sharing no such beliefs as those deliverances of religious experience and natural theology and faith might provide — may well lack sufficient grounds for believing that violations of law are not improbable. But the believer needn’t be in that position. And the believer who isn’t in that position, who aims to defend the rationality of believing in miracles, needn’t assume the posture of “adopting” it by obliging the familiar demand for “theistically neutral evidence.”?°

Notes

1

2

Where now “believing in miracles” is believing that miracles actually have occurred, as the Sacred texts on a traditional reading of them would imply — not necessarily that miracles are commonplace and identifiable occurrences, nowadays or ever. Our narrowed focus on Christian theism in what follows is pretty much arbitrary: we might have narrowed our sights toward any of the Judeo-Christian religions. David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 3rd edn, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge and P. H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), p. 114. From the same paragraph: “It is no miracle that a man, seemingly in

MIRACLES AND (CHRISTIAN) THEISM good health, should die on a sudden... . But itis a miracle that a dead man should come to life. ...” We’ll encounter presently Hume’s reason for claiming that one should never believe such accounts as the Lazarus story. Thus David Hume’s “accurate definition” includes both conditions: a miracle is “a transgression ofa law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity, or by the interposition of some invisible agent” (Enguiry(1975), p. 115, n.l). “Anomalous” literally means “non-lawful.” The most obvious way for an event to be anomalous is for it to violate a law of nature. Whether it is the oly way shall be taken up in Section 3(C). Apparently one needn’t imagine this objection: the quoted misgiving is offered in ch. 1 of Richard Swinburne’s The Concept of Miracles (London: Macmillan, 1970), as grounds for taking seriously the claim that such a definition of “miracle” “.. . seems to place a restriction on the use of the term not justified in general by practice.” The essay “Of Miracles” comprises section X

9

10

wise intact as genuine laws, see Ninian Smart,

Philosophers and Religious Truth (London: SCM

ll

therefore, be a uniform experience against every miraculous event, otherwise the event would not merit that appellation. And as a uniform experience amounts to a proof, there is here a direct and full proof, from the nature of the fact, against the existence of any miracley. se (David Hume [1975)5'p. lls), ins passage, and the worry just noted, are discussed by Antony Flew (who is otherwise sympathetic with Hume) in his Hume's Theory of Belief (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1961), pp. 217ff.

Press, 1964), ch. 2 and Richard Swinburne, The Concept of Miracle, ch. 3. G. W. Leibniz writes in a letter of 1687 to Antoine Arnauld that “[I]t seems to me that the concept of a miracle does not consist of rarity. ... I believe that God can make general rules for himself in respect even of miracles; for example, if God decided to bestow

12

of Hume’s Enquiry (1975, pp. 109-31); see

Reading 36 in this present volume. While Hume’s argument against miracles in the Enquiry of 1748, sketched here, became famous even in Hume’s day and remains so, its main thrust seems to have been anticipated in a much less well-known text of Thomas More (1478-1535), “A Dialogue Concerning Heresies” (see Reading 37 in this volume). Alternatively, for all we know the event was caused — but by Satan, say. That (recall) is an issue we’ve set aside. “ ..it is a miracle, that a dead man should come to life; because that has never been observed in any age or country. There must,

Representatives of this line of argument can be found in Nicholas Everitt, “The Impossibility of Miracles,” Religious Studies, 23 (1987), pp. 347-9 and in Alastair McKinnon, ““Miracle’ and ‘Paradox’,” American Philosophical Quarterly, 4 (1967), pp. 308-14. On this notion that miracles are singular (nonregular) violations of laws of nature left other-

Is

14

15

16

his grace immediately or to carry out another action of that kind every time a certain circumstance occurred, this action would nevertheless be a miracle, albeit an ordinary one.” See Aquinas’s Summa Contra Gentiles III, 102, and Leibniz’s claim (in his Fifth Letter of the Correspondence with Clarke) that miracles are events that “exceed the powers of creatures” (§ 118) and are “inexplicable by the powers of creatures” (§ 122). This proposal is offered by George Mavrodes in his “Miracles and the Laws of Nature,” Faith and Philosophy, 2 (1985), pp. 333-46. The misgiving to follow is due to Joshua Hoffman’s “Comments on ‘Miracles and the Laws of Nature’,” at pp. 347-52. This proposal is offered by Del Ratzsch in his “Nomo(theo)logical Necessity,” Fazth and Philosophy, 4 (1987), pp. 383-401. The misgiving to follow (with “all occurrences” being qualified by “except human free actions”) is acknowledged by Ratzsch (p. 400). Nor is it clear that the believer will at any stage need antecedently good arguments against Naturalism in order to be warranted in believing that miracles are actual. That will emerge in section 4 below. Many, but by no means all. On what might be called the “causal indeterminist” view of freedom, a person’s reasons cause their volitional choices, but indeterministically (see Robert Kane, The Significance of Free Will (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996)). On what might be called a “simple indeterminist

I

J. A. COVER view,” there need be no cause at all of an

17

352

agent’s volitions: a free action nevertheless admits of non-causal reasons explanation, in terms of the contents of an agent’s intentions to perform it (see Carl Ginet, “Reasons Explanation of Actions: an Incompatibilist Account,” in James E. Tomberlin (ed.), Philosophical Perspectives 3: Philosophy of Mind and Action Theory (Atascadero, Calif.: Ridgeview, 1989)). Caution: the point isn’t to deny that there is a fact of the matter, for any propositions P and Q, as to whether probability of Q alone is higher or lower than the probability of Q given (on the evidence of) P. The point is rather that if the rational credibility of some belief for a person, or strength of that person’s warrant for believing, comes in degrees, then we may speak of aproposition’s raising or lowering the degree of rational credibility or warrant for a person relative to other beliefs the person has (alternatively, is warranted in having). Call the intended relation of “raising the degree of credibility or warrant” R. P could then stand in R to Q for Jones, given other beliefs A and B that Jones holds, yet fail to stand in R to Q

18

19

20

for Smith, given other beliefs C and D that Smith holds. W. V. O. Quine, Pursuit of Truth (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990), pp. 14-15. Suppose an eyewitness reports the occurrence ofaputative miracle ¢. On any reasonable understanding of probability, the conditional probability P(e/7) that e occurs given the report 7 is bound to be higher than the bare unconditional probability P(e) of e alone. The Humean objector might be claiming that, however much the report 7 will inevitably raise the probability of it’s being true that e occurred, 7 can never raise it sufficiently high to warrant belief, given that the prior probability P(e) of e’s having occurred is so very low to begin with. But by whose reckoningis that prior probability so very low to begin with? I am grateful to Eleonore Stump and especially Michael Murray, for comments on an earlier, shorter paper from which this is drawn. I am also indebted to my colleagues Mike Bergmann (a believer) and Martin Curd (a skeptic) for talking with me at length about miracles: both are, I’m sure, perfectly rational.

Prayer

40

Petitionary Prayer*

Eleonore Stump Ordinary Christian believers of every period have in general taken prayer to be fundamentally a request made of God for something specific believed to be good by the one praying. The technical name for such prayer is “impetration;” L am going to refer to it by the more familiar designation “petitionary prayer.” There are, of course, many important kinds of prayer which are not requests; for example, most of what is sometimes called “the higher sort of prayer” — praise, adoration, thanksgiving — does not consist in requests and is not included under petitionary prayer. But basic, common petitionary prayer poses problems that do not arise in connection with the more contemplative varieties of prayer, and it is petitionary prayer with its special problems that I want to examine in this paper. Of those problems, the one that has perhaps been most discussed in the recent literature is the connection between petitionary prayer and miracles. For instance, if one believes in divine response to petitionary prayer, is one thereby committed to a beliefin miracles? But as much as possible I want to avoid this issue (and several others involving petitionary prayer’) in order to concentrate on just one problem. It is, I think, the problem stemming from petitionary prayer which has most often occurred to ordinary Christian believers from the Patristic period to the present. *From American Philosophical Quarterly, 16:2 (1979), pp. 81-91. Reprinted with permission.

Discussion of it can be found, for example, in Origen’s third-century treatise on prayer,’ in various writings of Aquinas,* and, very recently, in a book by Keith Ward.* Put roughly and succinctly, the problem comes to this: is a belief in the efficacy and usefulness of petitionary prayer consistent with a belief in an omniscient, omnipotent, perfectly good God? It is, therefore, a problem only on certain assumptions drawn from an ordinary, orthodox, traditional view of God and of petitionary prayer. If one thinks, for example, as D. Z. Philipps does,* that all “real” petitionary prayer is reducible to the petition “Thy will be done,” then the problem I want to discuss evaporates. And ifone thinks of God as the unknowable, non-denumerable, ultimate reality, which is not an entity at all, as

Keith Ward does,® the problem I am interested in does not even arise. The cases which concern me in this paper are those in which someone praying a petitionary prayer makes a specific request freely (at least in his own view) of an omniscient, omnipotent, perfectly good God, conceived of in the traditional orthodox way. I am specifying that the prayers are made freely because I want to discuss this

problem on the assumption that man has free will and that not everything is predetermined. I am making this assumption, first because I want to examine the problem on the assumption that man has free will and Christian believers, and I think their understanding ofthe problem typically includes the assumption that man has free will, and secondly because adoptsos

ELEONORE STUMP

ing the opposite view enormously complicates the attempt to understand and justify petitionary prayer. If all things are predetermined — and worse, if they are all predetermined by the omnipotent and omniscient God to whom one is praying — it is much harder to conceive of a satisfactory justification for petitionary prayer. One consequence of my making this assumption is that I will not be drawing on important traditional Protestant accounts of prayer such as those given by Calvin and Luther, for instance, since while they may be thoughtful, interesting accounts, they assume God’s complete determination of everything. I think that I can most effectively and plausibly show the problem which interests me by presenting a sketchy analysis of the Lord’s Prayer. It is a prayer attributed to Christ himself, who is supposed to have produced it just for the purpose of teaching his disciples how they ought to pray. So it is an example of prayer which orthodox Christians accept as a paradigm, and it is, furthermore, a clear instance of petitionary prayer. Consequently, it

is a particulariy good example for my purposes. In what follows, I want to make clear, I am

not concerned either to take account of contemporary Biblical exegesis or to contribute to it. Iwant simply to have a look at the prayer —in fact, at only half the prayer — as it is heard and prayed by ordinary twentieth-century Christians. As the prayer is given in Luke 11, it contains seven requests. The last four have to do with the personal needs of those praying, but the first three are requests of a broader sort. The first, “Hallowed be thy name,” is commonly taken as a request that God’s name be regarded as holy.” Iam not sure what it means to regard God’s name as holy, and I want to avoid worries about the notion ofhaving atti-

which one reacts to any other name — and that could happen because it seems specially precious or also (for example) because it seems specially feared. On this understanding of the request, it would be fulfilled if everyone (or almost everyone) took a strongly emotional and respectful attitude towards God’s name. But it may be that this is too complicated as an interpretation of the request, and that to regard God’s name as holy is simply to love and revere it. In that case, the request is fulfilled if everyone or almost everyone regards God’s name very reverentially. And there are New Testament passages which foretell states of affairs fulfilling both these interpretations of the request — prophesying a time at or near the end of the world when all men fear or love God’s name, and a time when the inhab-

itants of earth are all dedicated followers of God.? The second request in the Lord’s Prayer is that God’s kingdom come. Now according to orthodox Judaeo-Christian beliefs, God is

and always has been ruler of the world. What then does it mean to ask for the advent of his kingdom? Plainly, there is at least some sense in which the kingdom of heaven has not yet been established on earth and can be waited and hoped for. And this request seems to be for those millennial times when everything on earth goes as it ought to go, when men beat their swords into plowshares (Isaiah 2: 4) and the wolf dwells at peace with the lamb (Isaiah 11: 6, 65: 25). This too, then, is a request for

a certain state of affairs involving all or most men, the state of affairs at the end of the world prophesied under one or another description in Old and New Testament passages (cf., e.g., Revelation 21: 1-4).

And it seems closely related to the object of the third request, “Thy will be done on

tudes towards God’s name. All the same, I

earth as it is in heaven.” There is, of course, a

think something of the following sort is a sensible interpretation of the request. The common Biblical notion ofholiness has at its root a sense of strong separateness.® And it may be that to regard God’s name as holy is only to react to it very differently from the way in

sense in which, according to Christian doctrine, God’s will is always done on earth. But that is the sense in which God allows things

354

to happen as they do (God’s so-called “permissive will”). God permits certain people to have evil intentions, he permits certain peo-

PETITIONARY PRAYER

ple to commit crimes, and so on, so that he wills to let happen what does happen; and in this sense his will is always done. But in heaven, according to Christian doctrine, it is not that God permits what occurs to occur, and so wills in accordance with what happens, but rather that what happens happens in accordance with his will. So only the perfect good willed unconditionally by God is ever done in heaven. For God’s will to be done on earth in such a way, everyone on earth would always have to do only good. This request, then, seems to be another way ofasking for the establishment of God’s kingdom on earth; and it also seems linked with certain New Testament prophecies — there will be a “new earth,” and the righteous meek will inherit it (cf., e.g., Matthew 5: 5 and Revelation 5: 10 and 21: 1-4). What I think is most worth noticing in this context about all three of these first requests of the Lord’s Prayer is that it seems absolutely pointless, futile, and absurd to make them. All three seem to be requests for the millennium or for God’s full reign on earth. But it appears from New Testament prophecies that God has already determined to bring about such a state ofaffairs in the future. And if God has predetermined that there will be such a time, then what is asked for in those three requests is already sure to come. But, then, what is the point of making the prayer? Why ask for something that is certain to come whether you beg for it or flee from it? It is no answer to these questions to say, as some theologians have done,’ that one prays in this way just because Jesus prescribed such a prayer. That attempt at an answer simply transfers responsibility for the futile action from the one praying to the one being prayed to; it says nothing about what sense there is in the prayer itself. On the other hand, if, contrary to theological appearances, the things prayed for are not predetermined and their occurrence or nonoccurrence is still in doubt, could the issue possibly be resolved by someone’s asking for one or another outcome? IfJimmy Carter, say, (or some other Christian) does not ask for God’s kingdom to come, will God therefore

fail to establish it? Or will he establish it just because Jimmy Carter asked for it, though he would not have done so otherwise? Even Carter’s staunchest supporters might well find it frightening to think so; and yet if we do not answer these questions in the affirmative, the prayer seems futile and pointless. So either an omniscient, omnipotent, perfectly good God has predetermined this state of affairs or he hasn’t; and either way, asking for it seems to

make no sense. This conclusion is applicable to other cases of petitionary prayer as well. To take just one example, suppose that Jimmy Carter prays the altruistic and Christian prayer that a particular atheistic friend of his be converted and so saved from everlasting damnation. If it is in God’s power to save that man, won’t

he do so without

Jimmy

Carter’s

prayers? Won’t a perfectly good God do all the good he can no matter what anyone prays for or does not pray for? Consequently, either God of his goodness will save the man in any case, so that the prayer is pointless, or there is some point in the prayer but God’s goodness appears impugned. We can, I think, generalize these arguments to all petitionary prayer by means of a variation on the argument from evil against God’s existence.'! (The argument that follows does not seem to me to be an acceptable one, but it is the sort of argument that underlies the objections to petitionary prayer which I have been presenting. I will say something about what I think are the flaws in this argument later in the paper.) (1)

Aperfectly good being never makes the world worse than it would otherwise be if he can avoid doing so.

The phrase “than it would otherwise be” here should be construed as “than the world would have been had he not brought about or omitted to bring about some state of affairs.” In other words, a perfectly good being never makes the world, in virtue of what he himself does or omits to do, worse than it would have been had he not done or omitted to do someo00

ELEONORE STUMP

be absolutely perfect (i.e. there is and always will be evil in the world) —

thing or other. Mulatis mutandis, the same remarks apply to “than it would otherwise be” in (4) and (7) below. (2)

(3)

An omniscient and omnipotent being can avoid doing anything which it is not logically necessary for him to do. .«. An omniscient, omnipotent, perfectly good being never makes the world worse than it would otherwise be unless it is logically necessary for him to do so. (1,

2) (4)

(5)

(6)

Aperfectly good being always makes the world better than it would otherwise be if he can do so. An omniscient and omnipotent being can do anything which it is not logically impossible for him to do. .. An omniscient, omnipotent, perfectly good being always makes the world better than it would otherwise be unless it is logically impossible for him to do so.

(4, 5)

(7)

(8)

Itis never logically necessary for an omniscient, omnipotent, perfectly good being to make the world worse than it would otherwise be; it is never logically impossible for an omniscient, omnipotent, perfectly good being to make the world better than it would otherwise be. .. An omniscient, omnipotent, perfectly good being never makes the world worse than it would otherwise be and always makes the world better than it would otherwise be. (3, 6, 7)

This subconclusion implies that unless the world is infinitely improvable, either the world is or will be absolutely perfect or there is no omniscient, omnipotent, perfectly good being. In other words, (8) with the addition of a pair of premises —

(1)

The world is not infinitely improvable

and

(1) 356

Itis not the case that the world is or will

implies the conclusion of the argument from evil. That is not a surprising result since this argument is dependent on the argument from evil.!? (9)

What is requested in every petitionary prayer is or results in a state of affairs the realization of which would make the world either worse or better than it would otherwise be (that is, than it would have been had that state of affairs not been realized).

It is not always clear whether a petitionary prayer is requesting just an earthly state of affairs, or God’s bringing about that earthly state of affairs. So, for example, when a mother prays for the health of her sick son, it is not always clear whether she is requesting simply the health of her son or God’s restoration of the health of her son. If we can determine the nature of the request on the basis of what the one praying desires and hopes to get by means of prayer, then at least in most cases the request will be just for some earthly state of affairs. What is important to the mother is simply her son’s getting well. For a case in which the request is for God’s bringing about some earthly state of affairs, we might consider Gideon’s prayer concerning the fleece, discussed below. In any event, I intend “state of affairs” in this argument to range broadly enough to cover both sorts ofcases. (10)... If what is requested in a petitionary prayer is or results in a state of affairs the realization of which would make the world worse than it would otherwise be, an omniscient, omnipotent,

perfectly good being will not fulfill that request. (8) (11). If what is requested in a petitionary prayer is or results in a state of affairs the realization of which would make the world better than it would other-

PETITIONARY PRAYER wise be, an omniscient, omnipotent,

perfectly good being will bring about that state of affairs even if no prayer for its realization has been made. (8) It might occur to someone here that what is requested in at least some petitionary prayers is that God bring about a certain state of affairs im response to the particular petitionary prayer being made. In such cases, of course, it is logically impossible that God bring about what is requested in the petitionary prayer in the absence of that petitionary prayer. It is not clear to me that there are such cases. The familiar entreaties such as “Hear the voice of my supplications” (Psalm 28: 2) in the Psalms seem to me not to be cases of the relevant sort, because they seem to be an elaborate “Please” rather than anything influencing the nature of what is requested in the prayer. Perhaps one of the best candidates for such a case is Gideon’s prayer about the fleece: “If you will save Israel by my hand, as you have said, I will put a fleece of wool on the floor and if the dew is on the fleece only and it is dry on all the earth, then I will know that you will save Israel by my hand, as you have said” (Judges 6: 36-7; cf. also 6: 39). Gideon here is requesting that God give him a sign by means of the fleece of wool. Does his prayer amount to a request that God produce dew only on the fleece and not on the surrounding ground, or does it come to a request that God do so in response to Gideon’s prayer? If there are cases in which the request implicitly or explicitly includes reference to the prayer itself, then in those cases the inference from

(8) to (11) is not valid; and such cases ought simply to be excluded from consideration in this argument. (12)... Petitionary prayer effects no change. (9108 Lib)

(12) ought to be understood as saying that no prayer is itself efficacious in causing a change of the sort it was designed to cause. An argument which might be thought to apply here, invalidating the inference to the conclusion (13), is that prayer need not effect any change in order to be considered efficacious, provided the offering of the prayer itself is a sufficient reason in God’s view for God’s fulfillment of the prayer.'* In other words, if, for certain reasons apart from consideration of a prayer for a state of affairs S, God has determined to bring about S, a prayer for S may still be considered to be efficacious if and only if God would have brought about Sjust in response to the prayer for S. But I think that even if this view is correct, it does not in fact invalidate the inference to (13). There is a difference between being efficacious and having a point. This argument about the efficacy of prayer seems to assume that not all answers to prayer will be of the overdetermined type. And as long as a believer is not in a position to know which states of affairs are divinely determined to occur regardless of prayers, there is some point in petitionary prayer — any given case may be one in which God would not have brought about the desired state of affairs without prayer for it. But if it is the case for every fulfilled prayer that God would have brought about the desired state of affairs without the prayer, it does seem that there is no point in petitionary prayer, except for those cases (which I think must at best form a very small minority) in which the real object of the one praying a petitionary prayer is not so much to see the realization ofthe state ofaffairs he is requesting as to have some influence on or contact with the Deity by means ofpetitionary prayer; and such cases may then simply be excepted from the conclusion of the argument. (13)

.. Petitionary prayer is pointless. (12)

There is, of course, a sense in which the offer-

ing of a prayer is itself a new state of affairs and accompanies or results in natural, psychological changes in the one praying, but step

The basic strategy of this argument is an attempt to show that there is an inconsistency between God’s goodness and the efficacy of 357

ELEONORE STUMP

petitionary prayer; but it is possible to begin with other divine attributes and make a case for a similar inconsistency, so that we can have other, very different arguments to the same conclusion, namely, that petitionary prayer is pointless. Perhaps the most formidable of such alternative arguments is the one based on God’s immutability, an argument the strategy of which can be roughly summarized in this way. Before a certain petitionary prayer is made, it is the case either that God will bring about the state of affairs requested in the prayer or that he will not bring it about. He cannot have left the matter open since doing so would imply a subsequent change in him and he is immutable. Either way, since he is immutable, the prayer itself can effect no change in the state of affairs and hence is pointless. Even leaving aside problems of foreknowledge and free will to which this argument (or attempted objections to it) may give rise, I think that orthodox theology will find no real threat in the argument because of the doctrine of God’s eternality. However problematic that doctrine may be in itself, it undercuts arguments such as this one because it maintains God’s atemporality.!* My thirteen-step argument against petitionary prayer is, then, not the only argument rejecting petitionary prayer on theistic principles, but it (or some argument along the same lines) does, I think, make the strongest case against petitionary prayer, given Christian doctrine. The premise that is most likely to appear false in the argument, at first reading, is (9) because one is inclined to think that there are many petitionary prayers which, if they are granted, would not make the world either better or worse than it would otherwise be. Such a view might be accommodated without damaging the argument simply by weakening (9) and the conclusion: many petitionary prayers, and surely the most important ones, are such that if fulfilled they make the world either a better or a worse place. But I think it is possible to argue plausibly for (9) in the strong form I have given it. Take, for instance, the case of a little boy who prays for a jack358

knife. Here, we might think we have an example of a petitionary prayer the fulfillment of which makes the world neither better nor worse. But, on the one hand, if the little boy has prayed for a jackknife, surely he will be happier if he gets it, either because he very much wants a jackknife or because God has honored his request. Consequently, one could argue that fulfilling the request makes the world better in virtue of making the one praying happier. Or, on the other hand, if we think of the little boy’s prayer for a jackknife from God’s point of view, then we see that fulfillment of the prayer involves not just the little boy’s acquiring a jackknife but also God’s bringing it about in answer to prayer that the little boy acquire a jackknife. Fulfilling the prayer, then, will have an influence on at least the little boy’s religious beliefs and perhaps also on those of his parents and even on those of the people in his parents’ community. One might argue that the influence in this case would be deleterious (since it is conducive to wrong views of the purpose of prayer and of relationship with God), and consequently that fulfilling this prayer would make the world a worse place than it would otherwise be. So I think it is possible to argue plausibly that the fulfillment of even such a prayer would make the world either a worse or a better place. Christian literature contains a number of discussions of the problem with petitionary prayer and various attempts to solve it. For the sake of brevity, I want to look just at the proposed solution Aquinas gives. It is the most philosophically sophisticated of the solutions I know; and in the wake of the twentieth-century revival of Thomism, it is the solution adopted by many theologians and theistic philosophers today.'® Thomas discusses problems of petitionary prayer in his Sentence commentary and in the Summa contra gentiles,'® but the clearest exposition of his views is in the question on prayer in the Summa theologiae, where he devotes an entire article to showing that there is sense and usefulness in petitionary prayer.'” The basic argument he relies on to rebut various objections against

PETITIONARY PRAYER

the usefulness of prayer is this. Divine Providence determines not only what effects there will be in the world, but also what causes will give rise to those effects and in what order they will do so. Now human actions, too, are causes. “For,” Thomas says, “we pray not in order to change the divine disposition but for the sake of acquiring by petitionary prayer what God has disposed to be achieved by prayer!” Perhaps the first worry which this argument occasions stems from the appearance of theological determinism in it: God determines not only what effects there will be but also what the causes of those effects will be and in what order the effects will be produced. It is hard to see how such a belief is compatible with freedom of the will. In the preamble to this argument, however, Thomas says he is concerned not to deny free will but, on the contrary, to give an account of prayer which preserves free will. So I want simply to assume that he has in mind some distinction or some theory which shows that, despite appearances, his argument is not committed to a thoroughgoing determinism, and I am going to ignore any troubles in the argument having to do with the compatibility of predestination or foreknowledge and free will. For present purposes, what is more troublesome about this argument is that it does not provide any real help with the problem it means to solve. According to Thomas, there is nothing absurd or futile about praying to God, given God’s nature, because God has

by his providence arranged things so that free human actions and human prayers will form part of the chain of cause and effect leading to the state of the world ordained in God’s plan. And so, on Thomas’s view, prayer should not be thought of as an attempt to get God to do something which he would not otherwise do but rather as an effort to produce an appropriate and preordained cause which will result in certain effects since God in his providence has determined things to be so. Now surely there can be no doubt that, according to Christian doctrine, God wants men to pray

and answers prayers; and consequently it is plain that God’s plan for the world includes human prayers as causes ofcertain effects. The difficulty lies in explaining how such a doctrine makes sense. Why should prayers be included in God’s plan as causes of certain effects? And what sense is there in the notion that a perfect and unchangeable God, who disposes and plans everything, fulfills men’s prayers asking him to do one thing or another? Thomas’s argument, I think, gives no help with these questions and so gives no help with this problem of petitionary prayer. This argument of Thomas’s is roughly similar in basic strategy to other traditional arguments for prayer!’ and is furthermore among the most fully developed and sophisticated arguments for prayer, but it seems to me inadequate to make sense ofpetitionary prayer. I think, then, that it is worthwhile exploring a sort of argument different from those that stress the connection between God’s omniscience or providence and men’s prayers. In what follows I want to offer a tentative and preliminary sketch of the way in which such an argument might go. Judaeo-Christian concepts of God commonly represent God as loving mankind and wanting to be loved by men in return. Such anthropomorphic talk is in sharp contrast to the more sophisticated-sounding language of the Hellenized and scholastic arguments considered so far. But a certain sort of anthropomorphism is as much a part ofChristianity as is Thomas’s “perfect being theology,”*° and it, too, builds on intricate philosophical analysis, beginning perhaps with Boethius’s attempt in Contra Eutychen et Nestorium to explain what it means to say of something that it is a person. So to say that God loves men and wants to be loved in return is to say something that has a place in philosophical theology and is indispensable to Christian doctrine. Throughout the Old and New Testaments, the type of loving relationship wanted between man and God is represented by various images, for example, sometimes as the relationship between husband and wife, sometimes 359

ELEONORE

STUMP

as that between father and child. And sometimes (in the Gospel of John, for instance) it is also represented as the relationship between true friends.?! But if the relationship between God and human beings is to be one which at least sometimes can be accurately represented as the love of true friendship, then there is a problem for both parties to the relationship, because plainly it will not be easy for there to be friendship between an omniscient, omnipotent, perfectly good person and a fallible, finite, imperfect person. The troubles of generating and maintaining friendship in such a case are surely the perfect paradigms of which the troubles of friendship between: a Rockefeller child and a slum child are just pale copies. Whatever other troubles there are for friendship in these cases, there are at least two dangers for the disadvantaged or inferior member of the pair. First, he can be so overcome by the advantages or superiority of his “friend” that he becomes simply a shadowy reflection of the other’s personality, a slavish follower who slowly loses all sense of his own tastes and desires and will. Some people, of course, believe that just this sort of attitude

towards God is what Christianity wants and gets from the best of its adherents; but I think that such a belief goes counter to the spirit of the Gospels, for example, and I don’t think that it can be found even in such intense mystics as St Teresa and St John of the Cross.

Secondly, in addition to the danger of becoming completely dominated, there is the danger of becoming spoiled in the way that members of a royal family in a ruling house are subject to. Because of the power at their disposal in virtue of their connections, they often become tyrannical, willful, indolent, selfindulgent, and the like. The greater the discrepancy in status and condition between the two friends, the greater the danger of even inadvertently overwhelming and oppressing or overwhelming and spoiling the lesser member of the pair, and if he is overwhelmed in either of these ways, the result will be replacement of whatever kind of friendship there might have been with one or another sort of 360

using. Either the superior member of the pair will use the lesser as his lackey, or the lesser will use the superior as his personal power source. To put it succinctly, then, if God wants some kind of true friendship with men, he will have to find a way of guarding against both kinds of overwhelming. It might occur to someone to think that even if we assume the view that God wants friendship between himself and human beings, it does not follow that he will have any of the problems just sketched, because he is omnipotent.” Ifhe wants friendship of this sort with men, one might suppose, let him just will it and it will be his. I do not want to stop here to argue against this view in detail, but I do want just to suggest that there is reason for thinking it to be incoherent, at least on the assumption of free will adopted at the beginning of this paper, because it is hard to see how God could bring about such a friendship magically, by means of his omnipotence, and yet permit the people involved to have free will. If he could do so, he could make a person freely love him in the right sort of way, and it does not seem reasonable to think he could do so.” On the face of it, then, omnipotence alone does not do away with the two dangers for friendship that I sketched above. But the institution of petitionary prayer, I think, can be understood as a safeguard against these dangers. It is easiest to argue that petitionary prayer serves such a function in the case of a man who prays for himself. In praying for himself, he makes an explicit request for help, and he thereby acknowledges a need or a desire and his dependence on God for satisfying that need or desire. If he gets what he prayed for, he will be in a position to attribute his good fortune to God’s doing and to be grateful to God for what God has given him. If we add the undeniable uncertainty of his getting what he prays for, then we will have safeguards against what I will call (for lack of a better phrase) overwhelming spoiling. These conditions make the act of asking a safeguard against tyrannical and self-indulgent pride, even if the

PETITIONARY PRAYER

one praying thinks of himself grandly as having God on his side. We can see how the asking guards against the second danger, of oppressive overwhelming, if we look for a moment at the function of roughly similar asking for help when both the one asking and the one asked are human beings. Suppose a teacher sees that one ofhis students is avoiding writing a paper and is thereby storing up trouble for himself at the end of the term. And suppose that the student asks the teacher for extra help in organizing working time and scheduling the various parts of the work. In that case I think the teacher can without any problem give the student what he needs, provided, of course, that

the teacher is willing to do as much for any other student, and so on. But suppose, on the other hand, that the student does not ask the teacher for help and that the teacher instead calls the student at home and simply presents him with the help he needs in scheduling and discipline. The teacher’s proposals in that case are more than likely to strike the student as meddling interference, and he is likely to respond with more or less polite variations on “Who asked you?” and “Mind your own business.” Those responses, I think, are healthy and just. If the student were having ordinary difficulties getting his work done and yet docilely and submissively accepted the teacher’s unrequested scheduling of his time, he would have taken the first step in the direction of unhealthy passivity towards his teacher. And if he and his teacher developed that sort of relationship, he could end by becoming a lackey-like reflection of his teacher. Bestowing at least some benefits only in response to requests for them is a safeguard against such an outcome when the members of the relationship are not equally balanced. It becomes much harder to argue for this defense of prayer as soon as the complexity of the case is increased even just a little. Take, for example, Monica’s praying for her son Augustine. There is nothing in Monica’s praying for Augustine which shows that Augustine recognizes that he has a need for God’s

help or that 4e will be grateful if God gives him what Monica prays for. Nor is it plain that Monica’s asking shields Augustine from oppressive overwhelming by God. So it seems as if the previous arguments fail in this case. But consider again the case in which a teacher sees that a’student of his could use help but does not feel that he can legitimately volunteer his help unasked. Suppose that John, a friend of that student, comes to see the teacher and says, “T don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Jim is having trouble getting to his term paper. And unless he gets help, I think he won’t do it at all and will be in danger of flunking the course.” If the teacher now goes to help Jim and is rudely or politely asked “What right have you got to interfere?,” he’ll say, “Well, in fact, your friend came to me and asked me to help.” And if John is asked the same question, he will probably reply, “But I’m your friend; I had to do something.” I think, then, that because John asks the teacher, the teacher

is in a position to help with less risk of oppressive meddling than before. Obviously, he cannot go very far without incurring that risk as fully as before; and perhaps the most he can do if he wants to avoid oppressive meddling is to try to elicit from Jim in genuinely uncoercive ways a request for help. And, of course, I chose Monica and Augustine to introduce this case because, as Augustine tells it in the Confessions, God responded to Monica’s fervent and continued prayers for Augustine’s salvation by arranging the circumstances of, Augustine’s life in such a way that finally Augustine himself freely asked God for salvation. One might perhaps think that there is something superfluous and absurd in God’s working through the intermediary of prayer in this way. If Jim’s friend can justify his interference on the grounds that he is Jim’s friend and has

to do something, God can dispense with this sort of petitionary prayer, too. He can give aid unasked on the grounds that he is the creator and has to do something. But suppose that Jim and John are only acquaintances who have discussed nothing more than their schoolwork; and suppose that John, by overhearing 361

ELEONORE STUMP

Jim’s phone conversations, has come to believe that all Jim’s academic troubles are just symptoms of problems he is having with his parents. If John asks the teacher to help Jim with his personal problems, and if the teacher begins even a delicate attempt to do so by saying that John asked him to do so, he and John

could both properly be told to mind their own business. It is not the status of his relationship or even the depth of his care and compassion for Jim which puts John in a position to defend himself by saying “But I’m your friend.” What protects John against the charge of oppressive meddling is rather the degree to which Jim has freely, willingly, shared his life and thoughts and feelings with John. So John’s line of defense against the charge of oppressive meddling can be attributed to God only if the person God is to aid has willingly shared his thoughts and feelings and the like with God. But it is hard to imagine anyone putting himself in such a relation to a person he believes to be omnipotent and good without his also asking for whatever help he needs. Even if the argument can be made out so far, one might be inclined to think that it will not be sufficient to show the compatibility of God’s goodness with the practice of petitionary prayer. If one supposes that God brought Augustine to Christianity in response to Monica’s prayers, what is one to say about Augustine’s fate if Monica had not prayed for him? And what does this view commit one to maintain about people who neither pray for themselves nor are prayed for? It looks as ifan orthodox Christian who accepts the argument about petitionary prayer so far will be committed to a picture of this sort. God is analogous to a human father with two very different children. Both Old and New Testaments depict God as doing many good things for men without being asked to do so, and this human father, too, does unrequested good things for both his children. But one child, who is healthy and normal, with healthy, normal relations to his father, makes frequent requests of the father which the father responds to and in virtue of which he bestows benefits 362

on the child. The other child is selectively blind, deaf, dumb, and suffering from whatever other maladies are necessary to make it plausible that he does not even know he has a father. Now either there are some benefits that the father will never bestow unless and until he is asked; and in that case he will do less for his defective child, who surely has more need of his help than does the healthy child. Or, on the other hand, he will bestow all his benefits unasked on the defective child, and then he seems to make a mockery of his practice with the normal child of bestowing some benefits only in response to requests — he is, after all, willing to bestow the same benefits without being asked. So it seems that we are still left with the problem we started with: either God is not perfectly good or the practice of petitionary prayer is pointless. But suppose the father always meets the defective child’s needs and desires even though the child never comes to know of the existence of his father. The child knows only that he is always taken care of, and when he needs something, he gets what he needs. It seems to me intuitively clear that such a practice runs a great risk, at least, of making the defective child willful and tyrannical. But even if the defective child is not in danger of being made worse in some respects in this situation, still it seems plain that he would be better off ifthe father could manage to put the child in a position to know his father and to frame a request for what he wants. So I think a good father will fulfill the child’s needs unasked; but I think that he can

do so without making a mockery of his practice of bestowing benefits in response to requests only if putting the child in a position to make requests is among his first concerns. And as for the question whether God would have saved Augustine without Monica’s prayers, I think that there is intermediate ground between the assertion that Monica’s prayers are necessary to Augustine’s salvation, which seems to impugn God’s goodness, and the claim that they are altogether without effect, which undercuts petitionary prayer. It is possible, for example, to argue that God

PETITIONARY PRAYER

would have saved Augustine without Monica’s prayers but not in the same amount of time or not by the same process or not with the same effect. Augustine, for instance, might have been converted to Christianity but not in such a way as to become one of its most powerful authorities for centuries.”* With all this, I have still looked only at cases that are easy for my position; when we turn to something like a prayer for Guatemala after the earthquake — which begins to come closer to the sort of petitions in the first half of the Lord’s Prayer — it is much harder to know what to say. And perhaps it is simply too hard to come up with a reasonable solution here because we need more work on the problem of evil. Why would a good God permit the occurrence of earthquakes in the first place? Do the reasons for his permitting the earthquake affect his afterwards helping the country involved? Our inclination is surely to say that a good God must im any case help the earthquake victims, so that in this instance at any rate it is pointless to pray. But plainly we also have strong inclinations to say that a good God must in any case prevent earthquakes in populated areas. And since orthodox Christianity is committed to distrusting these latter inclinations, it is at least at sea about the former

ones. Without more work on the problem of evil, it is hard to know what to say about the difference prayer might make in this sort of case. I think it is worth noticing, though, that the first three requests of the Lord’s prayer do not run into the same difficulties. Those requests seem generally equivalent to a request for the kingdom of God on earth, that state of affairs in which, of their own free will, all men on earth are dedicated, righteous lovers of God. Now suppose it is true that God would bring about his kingdom on earth even if an individual Christian such as Jimmy Carter did not pray for it. It does not follow in this case, however, that the prayer in question is pointless and makes no difference. Suppose no one prayed for the advent of God’s kingdom on earth or felt a need or desire for those

millennial times strongly enough to pray for them. It seems unreasonable to think that God could bring about his earthly kingdom under those conditions, or if he could, that it would

be the state of affairs just described, in which earth is populated by people who freely love God.** And ifso, then making the requests in the first half of the Lord’s Prayer resembles other, more ordinary activities in which only the effort of a whole group is sufficient to achieve the desired result. One man can’t put out a forest fire, but if everyone in the vicinity of a forest fire realized that fact and on that basis decided not to try, the fire would rage out of control. So in the case of the opening petitions of the Lord’s Prayer, too, it seems possible to justify petitionary prayer without impugning God’s goodness. Obviously, the account I have given is just a preliminary sketch for the full development of this solution, and a good deal more work needs to be done on the problem. None the less, I think that this account is on the right track and that there is a workable solution to the problem of petitionary prayer which can be summarized in this way. God must work through the intermediary of prayer, rather than doing everything on his own initiative, for man’s sake. Prayer acts as a kind of buffer between man and God. By safeguarding the weaker member ofthe relation from the dangers of overwhelming domination and overwhelming spoiling, it helps to promote and preserve a close relationship between an omniscient, omnipotent, perfectly good person and a fallible, finite, imperfect person. There is, of course, something counter-intuitive in

this notion that prayer acts as a buffer; prayer of all sorts is commonly and I think correctly said to have as one of its main functions the production of closeness between man and God. But not just any sort of closeness will result in friendship, and promoting the appropriate sort of closeness will require inhibiting or preventing inappropriate sorts of closeness, so that a relationship of friendship depends on the maintenance of both closeness and distance between the two friends. 363

ELEONORE STUMP

And while I do not mean to denigrate the importance of prayer in producing and preserving the appropriate sort of closeness, I think the problem of petitionary prayer at issue here is best solved by focusing on the distance necessary for friendship and the function of petitionary prayer in maintaining that distance. As for the argument against prayer which I laid out at the start of the paper, it seems to me that the flaw lies in step (7), that it is never logically necessary for God to make the world worse than it would otherwise be and never logically impossibie for him to make the world better than it would otherwise be. To take a specific example from among those discussed so far, orthodox Christianity is committed to claiming that the advent of God’s kingdom on earth, in which all people freely love God, would make the world better than it would otherwise be. But I think that it is not possible for God to make the world better in this way, because I think it is not possible for him to make men freely do anything.*° And in general, if it is arguable that God’s doing good things just in virtue of men’s requests protects men from the dangers described and preserves them in the right relationship to God, then it is not the case that it is always logically possible for God to make the world better and never logically necessary for him to make the world worse than it would otherwise be. If men do not always pray for all the good things they might and ought to pray for, then in some cases either God will not bring about some good thing or he will do so but at the expense of the good wrought and preserved by petitionary prayer. It should be plain that there is nothing in this analysis of prayer which requires that God fulfill every prayer; asking God for something is not in itselfa sufficient condition for God’s doing what he is asked. Christian writings are full of examples of prayers which are not answered, and there are painful cases of unanswered prayer in which the one praying must be tempted more to the belief that God is his implacable enemy than to the sentimental364

seeming belief that God is his friend. This paper proposes no answer for these difficulties. They require a long, hard, careful look at the problem ofevil, and that falls just outside the scope of this paper. And, finally, it may occur to someone

to

wonder whether the picture of God presented in this analysis is at all faithful to the God of the Old or New Testaments. Is this understanding of God and prayer anything that Christianity ought to accept or even find congenial? It seems to me that one could point to many stories in either the Old or New Testament in support of an affirmative answer — for example, Elijah’s performance on Mount Carmel (1 Kings 18), or the apostles’ prayer for a successor to Judas (Acts 1: 24-6). But for a small and particularly nice piece of evidence, we can turn to the story in the Gospel of Luke which describes Jesus making the Lord’s Prayer and giving a lecture on how one is to pray. According to the Gospel, Jesus is praying and in such a way that his disciples see him and know that he is praying. One of them makes a request of him which has just a touch of rebuke in it: teach us to pray, as John taught /zs disciples to pray (Luke 11: 1). If there is a note of rebuke there, it seems just. A religious master should teach his disciples to pray, and a good teacher does not wait until he is asked to teach his students important lessons. But Jesus is portrayed as a good teacher ofjust this sort in the Gospel ofLuke.?7 Does the Gospel, then, mean its readers to

understand that Jesus would not have taught his disciples how to pray if they had not requested it? And if it does not, why is Jesus portrayed as waiting until he is asked? Perhaps the Gospel means us to understand?s that Jesus does so just in order to teach by experience as well as by sermon what is implicit throughout the Lord’s Prayer: that asking makes a difference.”°

Notes

1

For a good recent account of the problem of petitionary prayer and miracles, see Robert

PETITIONARY PRAYER Young, “Petitioning God,” American Philosophical Quarterly, 11 (1974), pp. 193-201. Other issues I intend to avoid include Peter Geach’s worries about prayer for events in the past in God and the Soul (London, 1969), pp. 89ff., and about “certain tensed propositions about the divine will ... in connexion with prayer” (God and the Soul, p. 97). Eric George Jay, Origen’s Treatise on Prayer (London, 1954), vols V-VI, pp. 92-103. Most notably, Summa theologiae, 2a—2ae, 83,

J

12

13

1-17; Summa contra gentiles, 1.111. 95-6; In

IV. Sent., dist. XV, q. 4, a. I.

14

The Concept of God (New York, 1974), pp. 221-2. Ward introduces the problem only as an embarrassment for what he calls ‘Thomistic” theology. Cf. my review in The Philosophical Review, 86 (1977), pp. 398-404. The Concept of Prayer (New York, 1966), pp. 112¢f. Cf. The Concept of God, pp. 62, 101, 111, and

185.

‘

Cf., for example, the similar understanding of this petition in two very different theologians: Augustine, Homzlies on the Gospels, Serm. 6;

and Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, III. xx. 41. The most common Old Testament word for “holy” and its correlates is some form of “kadash,” the basic, literal meaning of which is separation, withdrawal, or state of being set apart; cf. Gesenius, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament. In the New Testament, the most frequently used word is “hagiazod” and its correlates, the basic meaning of which also includes the notion of being separate and being set apart; cf. Thayer, A Greek—English Lexicon of the New Testament, and Arndt and Gringich, A Greek—English Lextcon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature.

15

16

17 18

WS, 20

21 22

Cf., e.g., Isaiah 2: 2-21, 45: 23, and 65: 23; Matthew 24; Mark 13; Luke 21; and

Revalation 6: 15-17. 10

See, for example, Martin Luther, Large Cat-

echism, pt. III. 169. Luther’s argument for prayer has more force in the context of the catechism than it does in the context of a philosophical discussion, because Luther’s purpose there is the practical one of blocking what he understands as believers’ excuses for not praying.

23

My approach to the argument from evil, which underlies the following argument, owes a good deal to Carl Ginet and Norman Kretzmann. There is a noteworthy difference between (ii) and the premise ordinarily supplied in its stead in arguments from evil, namely, (ii’) “There is evil in the world.” The difference suggests a way to develop an alternative or at least an addition to the standard free will defense against the argument from evil. See Terence Penelhum, Religion and Rationality (New York, 1971), pp. 287-92. Norman Kretzmann and I examine the concept of eternity in ancient and medieval metaphysics and theology in our forthcoming book on that subject, attending particularly to the usefulness of the concept in resolving certain problems in rational theology. See, for example, the articles on prayer in the Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique and The New Catholic Encyclopedia. See In IV. Sent., dist. XV, q.4, a.1, and Summa contra gentiles, I. II1. 95-6. See 2a—2ae, q. 83, a.2. See reply, a.2. “Non enim propter hoc oramus ut divinam dispositionem immutemus: sed ut id impetremus quod Deus disposutt per orationes sanctorium implendum.” Cf., e.g., Origen, op. cit., and Augustine, Czty of God, Bk V, ix. Plainly, a good deal of skillful work is needed to weave such anthropomorphism and scholastic theology into one harmonious whole. The problem is, ofcourse, given lengthy, detailed treatment in various scholastic writings, including Thomas’s Summa theologiae. See especially John 15: 12-15. I want to avoid detailed discussion ofthe various controversies over omnipotence. For present purposes, I will take this as a rough definition of omnipotence: a being is omnipotent if and only if he can do anything which it is not logically impossible for him to do and if he can avoid doing anything which it is not logically necessary for him to do. Controversy over this point is related to the more general controversy over whether or not it is possible for an omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good God to create men who would on every occasion freely do what is right. For a discussion of that general controversy and arguments that it is not possible for God to

365

ELEONORE STUMP

24

366

do so, see Alvin Plantinga’s God and Other Minds (Ithaca, 1967), pp. 132-48; I am in agreement with the general tenor of Plantinga’s remarks in that section of his book. I have presented the case of Monica and Augustine in a simplified form in order to have an uncomplicated hard case for the view Iam arguing. As far as the historical figures themselves are concerned, it is plain that Monica’s overt, explicit, passionate concern for her son’s conversion greatly influenced the course ofhis life and shaped his character from boyhood on. It is not clear whether Augustine would have been anything like the man he was if his mother had not been as zealous on behalf of his soul as she was, if she had not prayed continually and fervently for his salvation and let him know she was doing so. Augustine’s character and personality were what they were in large part as a result ofher fierce desire for his espousal of Christianity; and just his knowledge that his beloved mother prayed so earnestly for his conversion must have been a powerful natural force helping to effect that conversion. In this context the question whether God could have saved Augustine without Monica’s prayers takes on different

25 26 27 28

meaning, and an affirmative answer is much harder to give with reasoned confidence. See n. 23 above. See n. 23 above. See, for example, the lessons taught in the two incidents described in Luke 21: 1-6. I have used awkward circumlocutions in this paragraph in order to make plain that it is not my intention here to make any claims about the historical Jesus or the intentions of the

Gospel writer. Iam not concerned in this paper to do or to take account of contemporary theories of Biblical exegesis. My point is only that the story in the Gospel, as it has been part of ordinary Christian tradition, lends itself to the interpretation I suggest. 29 In writing this paper, I have benefited from the comments and criticisms of John Boler, Norman Care, and Bill Rowe. I am particu. larly indebted to my friend Norman Kretzmann for his thorough reading and very helpful criticism of the paper. And I am grateful to John Crossett, from whom I have learned

a great deal and whose understanding of philosophical problems in Christian theology is much better than my own.

Soul

41

The Future of the Soul*

Richard Swinburne Four thousand million years of evolution produced man, a body and soul in continuing interaction. A human soul is more dependent for its development on its own states than is an animal soul, for it has complex beliefs and desires kept in place and changing in accord with other beliefs and desires. Other animals having only much simpler beliefs and desires are much more dependent for their continuing beliefs and desires directly on their bodily states. Can this complex evolved human soul survive on its own apart from the body which sustains it? I contend that the functioning of the human soul (i.e. its having conscious episodes) is guaranteed by the functioning of the brain currently connected with it (connected, in that the soul’s acquisition of beliefs about its surroundings and action upon those surroundings is mediated by that brain)... . When the body dies and the brain ceases to function, the evidence of the kind considered earlier suggests that the soul will cease to function also. For that evidence suggests that the soul functions only when the brain has rhythms of certain kinds, and at death the brain ceases to function altogether. Ifthe soul does not function before there is a functioning brain, or during deep sleep, when the brain is not functioning at a certain level, surely it will not function after there ceases to be a functioning brain? However, there are arguments * From Richard Swinburne, The Evolution of the Soul (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), ch. 15, pp. 298-312. Reprinted with permission.

and evidence of less usual kinds which purport to show that things are different after death from what they are before birth. Before we face the question of whether the soul can function without the functioning of the brain currently connected with it, we must consider the question of whether, after death, the brain which ceases to function at death can be made to function again and whether thereby the soul can be revived.

Can the Brain be Reactivated? A crucial problem is that we do not know how much of the brain that was yours has to be reassembled and within what time interval in order that we may have your brain and so your soul function again. We saw this earlier in the split brain cases. If both half-brains are transplanted into empty skulls and the transplants take, both subsequent persons will satisfy to some extent the criterion of apparent memory (as well as the brain criterion) for being the original person. One subsequent person might satisfy the criterion better than the other, and that would be evidence that he was the original person; but the evidence could be misleading. The situation is equally unclear with possible developments at death. Suppose you die of a brain haemorrhage which today’s doctors cannot cure, but your relatives take your corpse and put it straight into a very deep freeze in California. Fifty years later your descendants take it out of the freeze; 367

RICHARD SWINBURNE

medical technology has improved and the doctors are able quickly to mend your brain, and your body is then warmed up. The body becomes what is clearly the body of a living person, and one with your apparent memory and character. Is it you? Although we might be mistaken, the satisfaction of the criterion

of apparent memory (together with the — at any rate partial — satisfaction of the criterion of brain continuity) would suggest that we ought to say ‘Yes’. So long as the same brain is revived, the same functioning soul would be connected with it —- whatever the time interval. But what if the brain is cut up into a million pieces and then frozen? Does the same hold? Why should there be any difference? Suppose that the brain is reduced to its component atoms; and then these are reasembled either by chance or because they have been labelled radioactively. Again, if the subsequent person makes your memory claims, surely we ought to say that it is you. But how many of the original atoms do we need in the original locations? That we do not know. So long as the subsequent person had many similar atoms in similar locations in his brain, he would claim to have been you. So, the criterion of apparent memory will be satisfied. Total nonsatisfaction of the brain criterion would defeat the claims of apparent memory (in the absence of any general failure of coincidence in results between these criteria). But it remains unclear and indeed insoluble exactly how much of the original brain is needed to provide satisfaction of the brain criterion. This problem of how much of the original body is physically necessary when other matter is added to it so as to make a fully functioning body, in order that the original soul may be present and function, is a problem which concerned the thinkers of the early Christian centuries and of the Middle Ages. They considered the imaginary case of the cannibal who eats nothing but human flesh. Given that both the cannibal and his victims are to be brought to life in the General Resurrection, to whom will the flesh of the cannibal belong? Aquinas’ begins his answer by 368

saying that ‘if something was materially present in many men, it will rise in him to whose perfection it belonged’, i.e. that that part of the body which is necessary for a man being the person he is will belong to him in the General Resurrection. But what part is that, and what guarantee is there that the matter of that part cannot come to form the essential part of a different man who cannot therefore be reconstituted at the same time as the original man (given the operation of normal processes)? Aquinas goes on to produce an argument that the ‘radical seed’ (i.e. the sperm, which according to Aristotle formed the original matter of the embryo) forms the minimum essential bodily core around which a man could be rebuilt. But we know now, as Aquinas did not, that the sperm does not remain as a unit within the organism, and there seems to me no reason why all the atoms which originally formed it should not be lost from the body, and indeed come to form parts of original cells of many subsequent men. The atoms of the original cell are not therefore the most plausible candidate for being the part of the body physically necessary for human personal identity. Aquinas’s problem remains without modern solution. Nevertheless, although neurophysiology cannot tell us which part of his brain is physically necessary for the embodiment of a given man, it does tell us, as I argued earlier, that

some of the brain is thus necessary. For the functioning of a given human soul, there has to be a man whose brain contains certain of the matter of his original brain (but which matter we do not know), similarly arranged.

A certain amount of the original brain matter has to be reassembled in a similar arrangement and reactivated by being joined to other brain matter and a body if the soul is to function again. And how likely is it that physical processes will bring about such a reassembly? As the time since death increases, and brain cells and then brain molecules are broken up, burnt by fire, or eaten by worms — it becomes very, very unlikely indeed that chance will reassemble them; or even that human agents can do

THE FUTURE OF THE SOUL

so for they will not be able to re-identify the atoms involved. (One must, however, be careful here about the possibilities for technology in the twenty-second century. Maybe a brain map could be constructed and a process of labelling constitutent atoms devised, which would make possible a reassembly after many years. But the possible development of such a technology seems to me very unlikely.) When the original atoms are reduced to packets of energy, then since these perhaps cannot be individuated, reassembly finally becomes not merely physically very, very improbable, but totally impossible physically. (But the word is ‘perhaps’; it is a difficult question in the philosophy of physics whether bursts of energy can be individuated.) I conclude that it is very, very unlikely (and with increasing time virtually impossible) that after death souls will again have reassembled the brain basis which we know makes them function. Is there any good reason to suppose that the soul continues to function without the brain functioning? Arguments to show that the soul continues to function without the brain functioning may be divided into three groups, involving different amounts of theoretical structure, to reach their conclusions.

First, we may consider arguments which purport to show that certain men have survived death, in the sense that their souls have func-

tioned without their brains functioning, directly — i.e. without needing first to establish anything about the nature of the soul or any more systematic metaphysical structure. Arguments of this kind may be called parapsychological arguments.

learnt by what they were told or had read.’ Now, it is of course open to serious question whether perhaps those Indian children had read or were told or learnt in some other perfectly normal way the details of those past lives. But even if for a few Indian children there was this coincidence between their memory claims and the events of a certain past person’s life, without there being any normal cause of the accuracy of their memory claims, that would not be enough evidence to show their identity with those persons. For. . . given the general coincidence of sameness of memory with continuity of brain, we must take continuity of brain as a criterion of identity; and the non-satisfaction of that in the case of the few Indian children (who do not have the same brain matter as the cited past persons), must remain substantial evidence against the supposition that they are those persons. Next, there is the alleged evidence of spiritualism, that souls function without bodiesor with new bodies and brains in another world. Mediums purport to have telepathic communication with dead persons. The evidence that they do is allegedly provided by the knowledge of the details of the dead person’s life on Earth (not obtainable by the medium by normal means) which the medium’s reports of the telepathic communications reveal. In the reincarnation case there is no doubt that there exists in the present a living conscious person; the debatable question concerns his identity with the past person. In the spiritualism case the crucial issue concerns whether there is a conscious person with whom the medium is in communication. A serious issue in medium

Arguments from Parapsychology First, there is the alleged evidence of reincarnation, that souls function in new bodies with

new brains on Earth. There are Indian children who claim to remember having lived a certain past life, and whose memory claims coincide with the events of some real past life about which — allegedly — they could not have

cases, like the

similar issue in the supposed reincarnation cases, concerns the source of the mysterious knowledge. Perhaps the medium gets her knowledge from some spy who has done research on the dead person’s life. But even if investigation showed clearly that the mediums had gained their knowledge of the past lives of dead person by no normal route, the evidence would still, I suggest, not support the hypothesis of telepathic communication with 369

RICHARD SWINBURNE

the dead. For also compatible with the evidence would be the hypothesis that the mediums have clairvoyance — they see directly into the past and acquire their knowledge thus. (Adopting the latter hypothesis would involve supposing either that the mediums were deceiving us about the kind of experiences they were having (apparent two-way traffic with a living person), or that they were deceiving themselves, or that their experiences were illusory.) On the choice between the two hypotheses there seem to me to be two important reasons for preferring the clairvoyance hypothesis. First, there are no crosschecks between mediums about the alleged present experiences of the dead in the afterlife. Mediums never give independently verifiable reports on this. Secondly, their reports about the present alleged experiences of the dead are themselves very banal. Yet one would expect because of the total lack of dependence of the dead on their past bodies, that they would live in a very different world, and that this would emerge in their reports on that world. Finally, there is the interesting and recently published alleged evidence that souls function while their bodies are out of action. There has been careful analysis of the experiences of those who clinically were as good as dead and then recovered. Such experiences are often called ‘near-death experiences’.* Fifteen per cent of subjects resuscitated after being in such a condition report strange experiences of one of two kinds. Many of them report the following ‘transcendental experiences’: an initial period of distress followed by profound calm and joy; out-of-the-body experiences with the sense of watching resuscitation events from a distance; the sensation of moving rapidly down a tunnel or along a road, accompanied by a loud buzzing or ringing noise or hearing beautiful music; recognising friends and relatives who have died previously; a rapid review of pleasant incidents from throughout the life as a panoramic playback (in perhaps twelve per cent of cases); a sense of approaching a border or frontier and being sent back; and being annoyed or

370

disappointed at having to return from such a pleasant experience — ‘I tried not to come back’, in one patient’s words. Some describe frank transcendent experiences and many state that they will never fear death again. Similar stories have been reported from the victims of accidents, falls, drowning, anaphylaxis, and cardiac or respiratory arrest.°

Resuscitated patients other than those who had transcendental experiences have undergone ‘a wide variety of vivid dreams, hallucinations, nightmares and delusions’, but some of those who had transcendental experiences also experienced these and sharply distinguished between the two kinds of experience. The ‘dreams’ were regarded as dreams, and were quickly forgotten; the ‘supposed glimpses of a future life’ were regarded as real and permanently remembered. These glimpses were reported as having occurred at moments when ‘breathing had ceased, the heart had stopped beating, and the patients showed no visible signs oflife’. The principle of credulity might suggest that we ought to take such apparent memories seriously, especially in view of the considerable coincidences between them, as evidence that what subjects thought they experienced, they really did. But although the subjects referred these experiences to moments at which the heart had stopped beating, etc., I do not know of any evidence that

at these moments their brains had ceased to function. And if the brain was still functioning then, what the evidence would show is not that the soul may function when the brain does not, but only that its perceptual experiences (i.e. sensations and acquisitions of belief about far away places) are not dependent on normal sensory input. The same conclusion will follow with respect to the considerable but not overwhelming evidence of those resuscitated patients who had experiences of the other strange kind, ‘out-of-body-experiences’, i.e. being able to view their own bodies and events in the operating theatre from a distance, obtaining thereby information which they would not have been able to obtain by normal means

THE FUTURE OF THE SOUL

(e.g. having visual experiences of events which they would not have got from use oftheir eyes, such as views of parts of the theatre hidden from their eyes).° This again suggests that the subject’s acquisition of information is dependent on some factor quite other than normal sensory input to the brain. But again I know of no evidence that these experiences occurred while the brain was not functioning; and so the available evidence does not support the suggestion that the soul can function without the brain functioning. My conclusion on parapsychology is that it provides no good evidence that the soul continues to function without the brain to which it is currently connected functioning.

immaterial thing is unextended, and so does not have parts; but the destruction of a thing consists in separating from each other its parts; whence it follows that souls cannot be destroyed and must continue to exist forever. Now certainly the normal way by which most material objects cease to exist is that they are broken up into parts. The normal end of a table is to be broken up; likewise for chairs, houses, and pens. But this need not be the way in which a material object ceases to exist. Things cease to exist when they lose their essential properties. The essential properties of a table include being solid. Ifa table was suddenly liquified, then, even if its constituent molecules remained arranged in the shape of a table by being contained in a table-shaped

Arguments for Natural Survival

So if even material objects can cease to exist without being broken up into parts, souls surely can cease to exist by some other route than by being broken up into parts. Nor are the more empirically based arguments oftraditional dualists any more successful at showing that the soul has a nature such as to survive death. In The Analogy of Religion, Joseph Butler pointed out that many men die of disease, when in full possession of powers of thought; and this, he considered, suggested that weakening of powers of body has no effect at all on many powers of soul:

mould, the table would have ceased to exist.

The second class of arguments purporting to show that the soul survives death purport to show from a consideration of what the soul is like when it functions normally that its nature is such that the failure of the brain to function would make no difference to the operation of the soul. Such arguments verge from very general arguments of what the soul must be like to be conscious at all to arguments which appeal to particular empirical data. Dualist philosophers of the past have usually affirmed the natural immortality of the soul — that the soul has such a nature, or the laws of nature are such, that (barring suspension of natural laws) it will continue to function forever. There have been a variety of general

arguments for the natural immortality of the soul. Each argument has, in my view, its own fallacies; and the fallacies being fairly evident today, there is no need for any extensive discussion of such arguments. (Expositions of the arguments do, incidentally, usually suffer from confusing the existence of the soul with its functioning; wrongly supposing that when it exists, necessarily it will function.) To illustrate the fallacies of such arguments, I take just one famous argument, put forward by Plato.” Plato argues that the soul being an

as it is evident our present powers and capacities of reason, memory, and affection do not depend upon our gross body in the manner in which perception by our organs of sense does; so they do not appear to depend upon it at all in any such manner as to give ground to think that the dissolution of this body will be the destruction of these our present powers of reflection, as it will of our powers of sensation; or to give ground to conclude, even that it will be so much as a suspension of the former.’

But, although it is true that weakening of certain bodily faculties does not affect powers of thought, the evidence is manifest that other bodily damage or disease or mere sleep does affect powers of thought. Drugs and alcohol ua

RICHARD SWINBURNE

affect clarity of thought, and ... there is no reason to suppose that any conscious events occur during periods of deep sleep. The failure of the above arguments is, I suggest, typical of the failure ofdualist arguments to show that the soul has an immortal nature or at any rate a nature such that it is able to go on functioning ‘under its own steam’. We need a form of dualism which brings out that the soul does not have a nature so as to function on its own.

Is the Soul Naturally Embodied? If it cannot be shown that the soul has a nature so as to survive death without its connected brain functioning, can it be shown that the soul has a nature such that its functioning is dependent on that of the brain with which it is connected? Can we show that there is a natural law which (i) connects consciousness of a soul with the functioning of some material system, and (ii) connects the consciousness of each soul with the functioning of a particular material system; so that of natural necessity a soul can only function if the brain or other complex system with which it is at some time connected continues to function? ... It has not been shown and probably never can be shown that there is any naturally necessary connection of these kinds between soul and body. All we are ever likely to get is correlations — between this kind of brain-event and that kind of mental event. And in the absence ofatheory which explains why a material system of this kind is needed to produce a soul, how this sort of physical change will produce this kind of mental state, how just so much of the brain and no more is needed for the continuity ofa certain soul (as opposed to the mere functioning of a soul with similar apparent memories), we have no grounds for saying that souls cannot survive the death of their brains. We do not know and are not likely to find out what if any natural necessity governs the functioning ofsouls. The situation is simply that the fairly direct 372

kinds of evidence considered so far give no grounds for supposing that anyone has survived death, but we know of no reason to suppose that it is not possible for anyone to survive death. The situation is thus similar to that in many areas of enquiry when no one has yet found a so-and-so but no one has shown that so-and-sos do not exist. Maybe there are living persons on other planets, naturally occurring elements with atomic numbers of over 1,000, or magnetic monopoles; but as yet no one has found them. Someone may argue that failure to find something when you have looked for it is evidence that it does not exist. But that is so only if you would recognize the object when you found it, and if there is a limited region within which the object can exist and you have explored quite a lot of the region. Failure to find oil in the English Channel after you have drilled in most parts of it, or to find the Abominable Snowman if you have explored most of the Himalayas, is indeed evidence that the thing does not exist. But that is hardly the case with souls whose brains have ceased to function. Maybe they are reincarnate in new bodies and brains on Earth but, as they have lost their memories, the evidence of their identity has gone. Or maybe they are where we cannot at present look. They may still function without being embodied . . . and so there be no place which they occupy. Or if they are re-embodied in another body with another brain, they may be anywhere in this universe or some other. Failure to find souls who have survived death shows no more than that if they do exist, they are not in the very few places where we have looked for them or that if they are, the marks of their identity (e.g. apparent memories of past lives) have been removed. In the absence of any further evidence as to whether souls do survive death we can only remain agnostic and wait until further evidence does turn up.

THE FUTURE OF THE SOUL

Evidence of Survival via

Metaphysical Theory There is however a third kind of evidence about whether men survive death which we have not yet considered. This is evidence of a wide-ranging character which is most simply explained by a very general metaphysical theory of the world, which has as its consequence that human souls survive death as a result of their nature or as a result of the predictable action of some agent who has the power to bring them to life. One such theory is the Hindu-Buddhist metaphysic of karma, a deep law of retribution in nature whereby an agent who lives a life thereafter lives another in which he gets the deserts (reward or punishment) for the previous life. (The establishment of such a system would have the consequence that, despite [a] lack ofevidence for this . . . souls exist before birth; in order to be reborn they must then normally lose much of the character which, I have argued, comes to characterize the soul by the time of death.) Another such theory is of course Christian theism. The theist has first to argue for the existence of God, a person (in a wide sense) of infinite power, wisdom, goodness, and free-

dom. He may argue that the existence of God provides the simplest explanation of the existence of the universe, the virtual total regularity of its behaviour in its conformity to natural laws, and various more particular phenomena within the universe. It would then follow that God, being omnipotent, would have the power to give to souls life after death (and if there is no natural law which ties the functioning of a soul to the operation of a brain, God would not need to suspend natural laws in order to do this). The Christian theist will need further to show that God intends to bring souls to function after death. He could show this either by showing that it was an obligation on an omnipotent being to do such a thing, and so that, being good, God would do it; or by showing that God had announced his intention of doing this (e.g. by

doing something which God alone could do such as suspending a law of nature, in connection with the work of a prophet as a sign that the prophet who had said that God so intended was to be trusted.) It will be evident that any argument via metaphysical theory to the survival of death by hurhan souls will have a lengthy and complicated structure. But of course those who produce such arguments are equally concerned about most ofthe other things which need to be proved on the way. Few people are interested in the existence of God solely for its value in proving life after death. And ifI am right in my claim that we cannot show that the soul has a nature such that it survives ‘under its own steam’, and that we cannot show that it

has a nature such that it cannot survive withOut its sustaining brain, the only kind of argument that can be given is an argument which goes beyond nature, i.e. that shows there is something beyond the natural order embodied in laws of nature, and that the operation of that something is to some extent predictable. If God did give to souls life after death in a new body or without a body, he would not in any way be violating natural laws — for, if 1am right, there are no natural laws which dictate what will happen to the soul after death. The soul doesn’t have a nature which has consequences for what will happen to it subsequent to the dissolution of its links to the body. I [contend] that the human soul at death has a structure, a system of beliefs and desires which might be expected to be there to some degree in the soul if that soul were to be revived. Ifa man does survive death, he will take his most central desires and beliefs with him, which is the kind ofsurvival for which, I suspect, most men hope. In hoping to survive death, a man hopes not only that subsequent to his death, he will have experiences and perform actions. He hopes also to take with him a certain attitude to the world. That attitude certainly does not always include all aspects of aman’s present character. Much, no doubt, many a man would be happy to dispense with.

373

RICHARD SWINBURNE But it does include some ofhis character, and

that part just because it is the part which he desires should continue, is the most central

part.

one involving no contradiction and an omnipotent God could achieve it; or maybe there

are other processes which will do so. And just as light bulbs do not have to be plugged into

Note that if there does occur a general resurrection of souls with new bodies in some other world, yet with apparent memories of their past lives (or a general reincarnation on Earth with such memories), they would have grounds for re-identifying each other correctly. For then the general failure of the results of the criterion of bodily continuity to coincide with those of apparent memory would .. . justifiably lead us to abandon the former criterion and rely entirely on the latter. Not merely is a general resurrection logically possible but it would be known by the subjects to have occurred.

sockets in order to shine (loose wires can be attached to them), maybe there are other ways of getting souls to function than by plugging them into brains. But investigation into the nature of the soul does not reveal those ways. And humans cannot discover what else is needed to get souls to function again, unless they can discover the ultimate force behind nature itself.

Conclusion

Testament hold that a man is a thing of flesh and bone. (Because the Jews believed — see Genesis ] — that all material things were good, they could set a high value on man without denying his materiality.) When in the last century BC many Jews came to believe in life after death, and when the Christian religion arose within Judaism affirming life after death, the life which they affirmed was not a natural immortality, but a resurrection — God intervening in history to give to Christ or to all men new bodies and thereby new life. The Nicene Creed affirms beliefin ‘the resurrection of the body’. Christian theology has always affirmed that the reunion of a soul with a body in the General Resurrection required a divine act. But early in Christian thought there arose the view that the dead exist in an intermediate state of purgatory (or in the case of some souls, heaven or hell) as souls without bodies. This view combined with Plato’s view that there was a natural immortality of the soul to yield the view that souls existed in purgatory or elsewhere without bodies under their own natural powers. That view seems to me to be out of line with the Christian emphasis on the embodiedness of men as their normal and divinely intended state, and also to fall foul of

Appendix The theory of the evolved human soul which I have been advocating in this book is, I believe, that of the Bible. Both Old and New

The view of the evolved human soul which I have been advocating may be elucidated by the following analogy. The soul is like a light bulb and the brain is like an electric light socket. If you plug the bulb into the socket and turn the current on, the light will shine. If the socket is damaged or the current turned off, the light will not shine. So, too, the soul

will function (have a mental life) ifit is plugged into a functioning brain. Destroy the brain or cut off the nutriment supplied by the blood, and the soul will cease to function, remaining inert. But it can be revived and made to function again by repairing or reassembling the brain — just as the light can be made to shine again by repairing the socket or turning on the current. But now, my analogy breaks down slightly (as all analogies do — else they would not be analogies). Humans can repair light sockets. But there is a practical limit to the ability of humans to repair brains; the bits get lost. Humans can move light bulbs and put them into entirely different sockets. But no human knows how to move a soul from one body and plug it into another; nor does any known natural force do this. Yet the task is 374

NEUROPHILOSOPHY

the arguments of this chapter. If souls exist in purgatory or elsewhere without their bodies or with totally new bodies, they do so by spe-

this evidence in Paul and Linda Badham, Im-

cial divine act, not under their own natural

powers.

Notes 1

2

3 4

42

5

Summa

Contra Gentiles, 4.81.12

and 13.

(Book IV, translated under the title On the Truth of the Catholic Faith, book IV, by C. J. O’Neill (New York: Image Books 1957).) For references to the literature, see John Hick, Death and Eternal Life (London: Collins, 1976), pp. 373-8. On the alleged evidence of spiritualism, see John Hick, Death and Eternal Life, ch. 7. ‘There is a brief and well-balanced survey of

6 7

8

mortality or Extinction? (London: Macmillan, 1982), ch. 5. My summary ofthe evidence is based on this chapter, but I also make use ofa very careful and balanced account of a new programme of investigations by Michael B. Sabom, Recollections of Death (New York: Harper and Row, 1982). Lancet, 24 June 1978, quoted in Badham, Immortality or Extinction. On this, see Sabom, Recollections of Death, chs 3, 6, 7 and 8. Phaedo, 78 b-80e. See also, for example, Berkeley: ‘We have shown that the soul is indivisible, incorporeal, unextended, and it is consequently incorruptible’ — G. Berkeley, Principles ofHuman Knowledge, § 141. The Analogy of Religion, 1.1.3.

From Neurophilosophy: Toward a Unified Science of the Mind-Brain

Patricia Smith Churchland 8.2

Substance Dualism

One line of resistance to a program aimed at reducing psychological theory to neuroscience is taken by those who deny that the mind is identical with the brain and who conceive of the mind instead as a nonphysical substance. Their hypothesis is that mental states such as perceptions, thoughts, feelings, and sensations are states, not of the brain, but of a different substance altogether. This substance is characterized as independent of the body inasmuch as it allegedly survives the brain’s disintegra* From Patricia Smith Churchland, Neuwrophilosophy: Toward a Unified Science of the Mind—Brain (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1986), pp. 317-23. Reprinted with permission.

tion, though it is considered to interact causally with the brain when the latter is intact. On this hypothesis, no reduction of psychological theory to neuroscientific theory is forthcoming because the former is a theory about the states and processes of mind-substance, whereas the latter is a theory about the states and processes of amaterial substance, the brain. Each substance is thought to have its own laws and its own range of properties, hence research on the brain is not going to yield knowledge of the mind and its dynamics, nor, by parity of reasoning, will research on the mind tell us anything much about how the brain works. What is the evidence for the hypothesis that minds are nonphysical substances in which mental states such as beliefs, desires, and 375

PATRICIA SMITH CHURCHLAND

sensations inhere? Descartes was particularly impressed by the human capacity for reasoning and for language, and though he was a keen mechanist, he simply could not imagine how a mechanical device could be designed so as to follow rules of reasoning and to use language creatively. What sort of mechanical devices were the paradigm that inspired Descartes’s imagination? Clockwork machines and fountains. And though some were intricate indeed, by our standards even the most elaborate clockwork devices of the seventeenth century do not have a patch on modern symbol-manipulating machines that can perform such tasks as guiding the flight path ofa cruise missile or regulating the activities of a spacecraft on Mars. The advent of the modern computer has stolen much of the thunder of Descartes’s argument that reasoning betokens a nonphysical substance. Nevertheless, . . . the theme that reasoning, the meaningfulness of sentences in reasoning, and the /ogical relations between sentences used in reasoning eludes an explanation in physicalist terms is taken up by contemporary philosophers as the basis for antireductionist arguments. The outward form of the contemporary arguments is new and clever, but the motivating intuitions are discernibly Cartesian. An intractable problem confronting substance dualism concerns the nature of the interaction between the two radically different kinds of substance. Soul-stuff allegedly has none of the properties of material-stuff and is not spatially extended, and the question therefore concerns how and where the two substances interact. This problem stymied Descartes, and his completely inadequate solution was to suggest that the “animal spirits” functioned to mediate between the two types of substance and that the subtle interaction took place in the pineal gland. But his animal spirits were composed of material stuff, albeit very fine material stuff, so the problem stood its ground. Can the mind be affected by, say, electrical or magnetic fields? For Descartes, apparently not, for then it would have properties in common

376

with matter, and its status

as a radically different substance would be imperiled. On the classical picture, essentially two types of items were exchanged at the station where mind and brain interacted, wherever it was,

and these were sensations and volitions. The brain was thought to send sensations to the mind, which could then use them in perception. The mind, on the other hand, was thought to send volitions to the brain, which

could then translate the volitions into motor effects. The higher functions of the mind, including reasoning, consciousness, moral feelings, and the emotions, were assumed to function independently of the brain, save for the extent to which perceptions might figure in these functions. Perceptions were excepted because they were to some extent dependent on sensations. This independence of the higher mental operations from the physical business of the brain was really the raison d’étre of the substance dualist hypothesis, for it was these mental functions that seemed utterly inexplicable in material terms. Given a life of their own in the nonphysical mind, reasoning and consciousness and their kind should be amenable to nonmaterial explanations, and getting these seemed far easier than getting brain-based explanations. We shall see this theme concerning reasoning and consciousness reappear in assorted guises in virtually every antireductionist argument, including those most recently minted. The hypothesized independence of reasoning and consciousness that makes substance dualism attractive is at the same time a chronic and aggravating problem that costs it credibility. The difficulty is straightforward: reasoning,

Consciousness,

moral

feelings,

religious feelings, political convictions, aesthetic judgments, moods, even one’s deepseated personality traits — all can be affected if the brain is affected by drugs or by lesions, for example. The more we know about neurology and about neuropharmacology, the more evident it is that the functions in question are not remotely as independent as the classical hypothesis asserts. On the materialist

FROM NEUROPHILOSOPHY

hypothesis, the observed interdependence is precisely what would be expected, but it is distinctly embarrassing to the dualist hypothesis. Recent hypotheses meant to explain the nature of the interaction between the nonphysical mind and the physical brain are not significant improvements upon Descartes’s proposal. Although Eccles has energetically addressed the problem, his theory of the interaction remains metaphorical. His explanatory flow diagram consists essentially of many arrows connecting the “mind” box to the box for the language areas of the human brain. The question that persists after study of the array of arrows is this: what is the manner of interaction, and how does the nonphysical mind bring about changes ofstate in the brain, and vice versa? The inescapable conclusion is that the arrow-array is after all as much an explanatory surd as the notion of Descartes’s animal spirits finely but mysteriously “affecting” the nonmaterial substance in the confines of the pineal gland. The unavailability of a solution to the manner ofinteraction between two radically different substances does not entail that substance dualism is false. For all we know now, further research may yet discover a solution. But with no leads at all and not even any serious plans for finding a solution, it does mean that the hypothesis has diminished appeal. This failure invites the conjecture that the problems the hypothesis was designed to solve might in fact be pseudoproblems, and in this respect they might be similar to the nowdiscarded problems of how the heart concocts vital spirits or how the tiny homunculi in sperm can themselves contain tinier homunculi containing even tinier sperm containing yet more tiny homunculi. The phenomena, as we now know for these cases, were radically misdescribed, and the corresponding problems, therefore, did not exist to be solved. Additional difficulties further diminish the plausibility of substance dualism, and one such problem is drawn from evolutionary biology. Assuming that humans evolved from earlier

mammalian species, that we and the chimpanzees share a common

ancestor, and that we

can trace our lineage back ganisms, then a question the ‘soul-stuff came from. have it? If some organisms

to single-celled orarises about where Do all organisms do not have such a

substance, how did the others come to have

it? Could it have evolved from physical stuf? If humans alone have minds, where did these

substances come from? A theologically based answer is that nonphysical minds, unlike physical brains, are not an evolutionary product but were for the first time placed in contact with brains by divine intervention some 80,000 years (or in some calculations merely 6,000 years) ago. Since then, apparently, there has been continual intervention by a supernatural being to invest each human brain with its own nonphysical mind. The price of espousing substance dualism begins to look too high, for among other things it entails arbitrary and unmotivated exceptions to the plausible and unified story of the development of intelligence provided by modern evolutionary biology. On the other side of the ledger, the compensatory explanatory payoff from the hypothesis seems meager. If chimpanzees or monkeys do not have minds, then presumably their learning, perception, feeling, and problem solving are explained in terms ofbrain function. But if theirs, then why not ours? In the absence of solid evidence for the separate existence of the mind, the appeal of substance dualism fades. The hypothesis ofsubstance dualism is also supposed to explain the unity of consciousness (the unity of the self), and it is alleged that such unity cannot be explained on a materialist hypothesis. The reasoning here is less than convincing, both because it is far from clear what the phenomenon is that the hypothesis is meant to explain and because it is far from clear how the hypothesis succeeds in explaining this ill-specified phenomenon. Consider first the phenomenon. Certain questions immediately arise: How do nonconscious mental states comport with alleged unity of consciousness? How does all 377

PATRICIA SMITH CHURCHLAND

that nonconscious processing postulated in cognitive science fit into the picture? How do the split-brain results fit? Or the blindsight results? Or the cases ofsplit personality? What about when the brain is in slow-wave sleep or in REM sleep? The questions are far too numerous for unity of consciousness to be a phenomenon in clear and unproblematic focus. In a previous publication I argued that consciousness, as it is circumscribed in folk psychology, probably is not a natural kind, in much the way that impetus is not a natural kind. Nor, for example, do the categories “gems” or “dirt” delimit a natural kind. That is to say, something is going on all right, but it is doubtful that the generalizations and categories of folk psychology either do justice to that phenomenon or carve Nature at her joints. The evidence already indicates that consciousness is not a single type of brain process, and that if we think of consciousness as a

kind of light that is either on or off, and that when on illuminates the contents of mental life, we are hopelessly mistaken. We already know that so-called subliminal experiences can affect “conscious” problem solving. We know that one can engage in a number of highly complex activities at once, even though not “paying attention” to them all. We know that brain activity as measured on the EEG during some REM sleep looks more like brain activity during fully awake periods than during other sleep periods. We know that some subjects who are in fact blind apparently fail to be aware that they are blind. We know that some patients with temporal lobe damage can learn complex cognitive skills and yet be completely unaware that they have done so — even while engaged in one of those very skills. And so on and on. The brain undoubtedly has a number of mechanisms for monitoring brain processes, and the folk psychological categories of “awareness” and “consciousness” indifferently lump together an assortment ofthe mechanisms. As neurobiology and neuropsychology probe the mechanisms and functions of the brain, a reconfiguring of categories can be predicted. 378

The second question to be asked of the substance dualist concerns how his hypothesis explains the phenomenon, whatever that phenomenon is. How is it that the nonphysical mind yields unity of consciousness? How does it unify experiences occurring at different times? If the answer is that the nonphysical mind unifies because the experiences are experiences of one substance, then that answer is also available to the materialist, who can say that the experiences are experiences of one brain. If the answer is that it is simply in the nature of the nonphysical mind to be unified and to provide unity, then the sense that an explanation has been provided loses its hold. It is like saying, “It just does.” Moreover, the materialist is entitled to make the same futile move: it is simply in the nature of the brain to provide unity to experiences. This is a standoff, and neither hypothesis advances our understanding. Therefore, the dualist cannot claim that his case is supported by his being able, and the materialist’s being unable, to explain the unity of consciousness. A parallel discussion can be constructed concerning nonphysical minds and free will. Here the dualist credits his hypothesis with the ability to explain how humans have free will. In this instance too, it is far from clear

what the phenomenon is or how dualism explains anything about it. A dualist hypothesis claiming that the nonphysical mind acts freely because it is the nature of the mind to do so leaves us without explanatory nuts and boits. And as before, for every move the dualist makes here, the physicalist has a counterpart move. Again the result is a standoff, and the dualist can claim no advantage .. . The two primary foci for the dualist’s conviction are the logical-meaningful dimension of cognition and the qualities of consciousness. The importance of these matters has struck dualist philosophers in different ways, with the consequence that some have gravitated to one focus and some to the other. One group has taken the nature of felt experience as the difficulty of paramount importance and hence has tended to side with materialists on

MATERIALISM AND SURVIVAL

the other question. That is, they expect that eventually the logical-meaningful dimension will ultimately have a causal neurobiological explanation. For these philosophers reasoning is not the stumbling block, partly because the idea that the logical-meaningful dimension of cognition is fundamentally noncausal is found objectionable. The second group has just the converse set of intuitions. Like reductionists, they think that ultimately consciousness and the qualities of felt experience will be explained in neurobiological terms. But for them, the difficulty of paramount importance lies in the logical-meaningful dimension of cognition. Here, they argue, are insurmountable problems for a reductionist strategy. The reductionist has been useful to both camps by providing reductionist arguments for each to use against the other.

43

These dualist intuitions can be respectably sustained despite the hopeless problems of substance dualism in finding a coherent fit for the mind-substance in modern physics and biology. The general strategy in support of these intuitions has been to abandon the albatross idea of a distinct substance but to retain the idea of irreducibility. Thus, philosophers concerned with subjective experience have argued that subjective experience is an irreducible property, and philosophers concerned with the logical-meaningful dimension have argued for the irreducibility of cognitive theory. It is among these two, albeit inharmonious, groups that the most sophisticated antireductionist arguments are to be found, and characteristically they are not to be removed by a few casual rejoinders.

Materialism and Survival*

Dean W. Zimmerman 1 A Dilemma for Materialist Survival A materialist would say that I am nothing other than the six-foot tall living organism I call “my body” (or some part of it, for example, its brain). Iam not an unextended immaterial substance, or an extended

but thin

ectoplasmic substance of a kind unknown to physicists. Nor am I a composite made out of any such substance and this body (or some part of it). I am, instead, an entirely material being, made entirely of material parts — the

* An expanded version of this essay will appear in a forthcoming volume of Faith and Philosophy under the title “The Compatibility of Materialism and Survival.”

atoms, molecules, and so forth of which all material things are made. Or so the materialist says. I, for one, have my doubts. On even-numbered days of the month, I find myself wondering, with Descartes, where exactly my soul interacts with this brain — the brain which I use to think,

much as I use my eyes to see or my ears to hear. And on odd-numbered days I wake up in Berkeley’s world, a world in which the only substances are spirits like you and me and God; and the material objects are just “bundles of perceptions.” But that’s just me. I’m a philosopher, and

philosophers have been known to dream of more things than there are in heaven and earth —and also to dream that there are fewer things than there are in heaven and earth, which may SHS)

DEAN W. ZIMMERMAN

have been Berkeley’s problem. Let us suppose that the materialist is right about me, that I just am this physical object, my body. And let us further consider the fact that my body would appear to be doomed. It will suffer decay, cease to exist, its parts probably ending up spread all around the world. Do not these two suppositions together imply that I am doomed? That J will suffer decay and cease to exist? If Iand this body are not two things but one, then whatever fate awaits my body awaits me. The Christian — at least the Christian who affirms, say, the Nicene creed — is one who “looks for the resurrection of the dead, and

the life of the world to one be a materialist? Can clusion of the preceding that she will suffer decay

come.” Can such a she accept the conargument, judging and cease to exist —

for a time, until “the life of the world to come” begins?

Well, why not? Why couldn’t I cease to exist for a time and then come back into existence again? At the general resurrection, God collects all the parts of me that are left, or some portion of them if a few have found their way into other people’s bodies to be resurrected with them, and reconstitutes me more or less as I was at my death. Isn’t that enough to bring me back on to the scene? The problem with this scenario is not that it is impossible for something to have a “gappy existence” — I see no reason to deny that something could cease to be for a time and then pop back into existence again. The problem is that it is hard to see how a living body could come back into existence after this sort of gap. For the gap described is one over which there are no causal connections — or at least no very direct ones — passing from the body as it was at death to the body as it will be in the world to come. For God to create a “new me” at that time — even if He uses mostly old parts salvaged from the wreck of my body — is not for Him to bring me back, but to create a mere replica of me, a doppelganger. The lack of appropriate causal connections between the body that dies and the one res380

urrected is the primary obstacle Peter van Inwagen sees to a materialistic account of surviving death. The atoms of which I am composed occupy at each instant the positions they do because of the operations of certain processes within me (those processes that, taken collectively, constitute my being alive). ... [I]f.a man does not simply die but is totally destroyed (as in the case of cremation) then /e can never be reconstituted, for the causal chain has been irrevocably broken. If God collects the atoms that used to constitute that man and “reassembles” them, they will occupy the positions relative to one another they occupy because of God’s miracle and not because of the operation of the natural processes that, taken collectively, were the life ofthat man.!

I find van Inwagen’s claim here extremely plausible. In order that a given material object — or any other individual thing, for that matter — persist throughout a period of time, there must be appropriate causal relations between the object as it is at earlier times and the object as it is at later times. This sort of causation has been called “immanent causality,” causation that passes from earlier states of an object to later states of that very same object. To say that immanent causal connections are required for the persistence of abody is to say that later states of the body must be causally dependent, at least in part, upon its earlier states. But not just any sort of causal dependence seems sufficient to give us the kind of immanent causation that is crucial to the persistence of a body. It is not enough, says van Inwagen, that the way my body was at death serve as a blueprint for God’s creating anew one at the general resurrection. That is causal contribution of a sort; but here the

causal chain passes through God’s mind; it doesn’t remain “immanent” with respect to processes going on within a living human body. The case is analogous to that of van Inwagen’s monks who claim that God “recreated” an original manuscript in Augustine’s own hand.’ If the original was destroyed in a

MATERIALISM AND SURVIVAL

fire, no document brought into existence later on, by God or anyone else, could literally be the original — no matter how precisely similar the two might be. Does the Christian materialist have any options left? Is she forced either to deny van Inwagen’s thesis about the necessity of immanent causation for her persistence, or to deny that she is identical with her body? I think there are options left — as does van Inwagen.* Abstractly, the only other way out is to deny the second, empirical premise in the problem with which I began: namely, the premise stating that this body is doomed. Perhaps my body’s future is really not so grim; perhaps, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, my upcoming death is not, strictly speaking, the complete and utter destruction of my body after all. My goal today is to tell a “just so” story in which God ensures that this very body escapes the deadly powers that would otherwise destroy it utterly. The escape is by a hair’s breadth, at the last moment. It is effected by a miraculous last minute jump that takes me out of harm’s way. So I am tempted to call this little fiction “the falling elevator model” of survival — for you’ll recall that, according to the physics of cartoons, it is possible to avoid death in a plummeting elevator simply by jumping out in the split second before the elevator hits the basement floor. I argue that it is at least logically possible for our bodies to do something like that when we die. Although I tell the story under the supposition of materialism, its relevance for Christian dualists (such as myself) should be clear. According to venerable theological traditions, Christ, like all of us, was a spirit united to a normal human body. After his body was killed, he (i.e. his spirit, since his body was still in the tomb) descended into hell to “preach to the spirits in prison” and “lead forth captives.” On “the third day,” his body was raised to life again — that very same body that lay in the tomb was reanimated by his spirit and subtly transformed. Identity of the dying and resurrected body is necessary to make sense of the empty tomb. And ifChrist’s death and resur-

rection provide the model for our own, it would be a great theological advantage to be able to say that we, too, get numerically the same body back — transformed and improved, no doubt, but not a body newly cut from wholly different cloth. The Christian dualist moved by these theological considerations can put the theory that follows into service as an account of one way in which our resurrected bodies could be the same as the bodies we had in this life, in much the same sense in which Christ’s resurrected body was the same as the one laid in the tomb.

2 Van Inwagen’s Metaphysics of Material Beings I shall take Peter van Inwagen’s own views about the persistence conditions of living things as the context in which to develop the falling elevator model of entry into the next life. 1am confident that my strategy could be deployed within other theories of persistence, as long as they give pride of place to immanent causation. In particular, those who, un-

like van Inwagen, accept the thesis that a human being persists by having a different “temporal part” for each time at which she exists will have a somewhat easier time of it. But I choose van Inwagen’s own metaphysics because he has set the problem for us, and because his theory of persisting living things is probably one ofthe hardest to square with survival. Van Inwagen’s account of the nature and persistence conditions of physical objects is found in his impressive book, Material Beings.* Here’s the Reader’s Digest condensed version: At bottom, the universe is filled with material simples — tiny particles that have no proper

parts. Some of them are arranged table-wise in the center of my study; many more are arranged house-wise around me. However, contrary to what one might initially have thought, the simples arranged in a table shape here do not in fact compose anything, nor do the ceiling-shaped simples hanging over me. Simply 381

DEAN W. ZIMMERMAN

heaping simples together is not sufficient to produce an object having them for its parts. Some simples, however, are caught up into a very special kind of event: namely, a Life. A set of objects are caught up in a Life when they are organized in such a way that they work toward ensuring the continued existence of successor sets of simples organized in roughly the way they are — they possess a conatus sese conservandt, a knack for self-main-

tenance. The only events in our world that really exhibit this sort of self-sustaining activity are biological (although a particularly stable weather pattern, like a hurricane, is at least a pale imitation of a Life). When a set of objects is caught up in a Life, then there exists an object that is composed of these parts —a living organism. This organism lasts just so long as the event which is its Life continues. And, since there is no other way of organizing a collection of objects so that they compose an object, the world contains nothing but living things and the simples from which they are made. How does van Inwagen handle the familiar problems of fission and fusion? What is to be said, for instance, about a Life that splits when a human organism divides in two by means of some fancy brain-splitting surgery? Here I think van Inwagen, like everyone but certain temporal parts theorists, must give up what is sometimes called the “only x and y” principle: roughly, the thesis that facts about events outside the spatio-temporal path swept out by an object could not have made any difference to the question of whether or not a single object passed along that path. Van Inwagen must allow for at least the abstract possibility of cases of organic fission which break the “only x and y” principle. We know that it is possible for a person to survive the removal of an entire brain hemisphere. And it seems plausible to suppose that “brain transplants” are at least possible in principle, and that in such a case the person goes where her brain goes. Now if my brain were only a little bit different,° then it would seem that I could survive not just the loss of an entire hemi382

sphere, but the destruction of an entire half of my brain; and, given the possibility of brain transplants, the subsequent transplantation of my half-a-brain into a different body. But this raises a more troublesome question: what would happen were my symmetrical brain split in two, each of the halves being transplanted into a separate body? Each of the resulting organisms would have an equally good claim to be continuing my Life — that is, to be me. But they cannot both be me; one thing cannot become two, on pain of contradiction. Now the believer in souls can say that I went wherever my soul went — either with the one half-brain or the other or neither.® But what should the materialist say? Those who believe in temporal parts can maintain that there were two people all along; they simply shared their earlier stages, much as two roads may share a certain stretch of pavement in common. But the opponents of temporal parts, like van Inwagen, must say something else — namely, that, at least in cases of perfectly symmetrical fission, the original organism ceases to be and is replaced by two new ones. And indeed that is what van Inwagen does say.’ But (for rather complicated reasons I give elsewhere®) this response leads inevitably to a “closest continuer” theory of personal identity: the view that whether a given process is a single Life will sometimes depend upon events that are not part of that process — which is, roughly, the denial of the “only x and y” principle. If there are two simultaneously existing and equally good candidates for being involved in the same Life as some earlier person, then the person ceases to exist; the Life ends; and two new Lives begin. But if one of the two candidates had been completely absent (destroyed at the point of fission instead of being preserved alive), then the original Life would have continued and the original person would have persisted through the loss of half her brain. I shall shortly need a little more information about how to trace Lives through branchings. The principle I will appeal to is this: if you are looking for the next event in a

MATERIALISM AND SURVIVAL

given Life, and the present event is immanentcausally connected to two nonsimultaneous later events in the appropriate way, but one is earlier than the other, go to the earlier of the two — it is the earlier one that represents the continuation of this Life, and the subsequent appearance of the later one does not turn this into a case of fission. I shall be assuming, then, something like a “temporally-closest continuer” theory of persistence conditions. Now it at least appears that every Life ends. My parts eventually lose their special self-sustaining structure, the homeodynamism of my life peters out, and immanent-causal paths end. The lights go off, and no one is home. Ifthis really happens, then setting up some batch of simples later on in such a way that they are alive and constitute an organism resembling me at my death would just be starting up a new Life, and hence a new organism. At one time, these considerations led van Inwagen to the conclusion that the only way (consistent with empirical facts) for God to secure my survival would be for him to remove my corpse — or at least my brain and central nervous system — and replace it with a simulacrum at the time of my (seeming) death.’ The materialist who believes in survival is bound to be unhappy with this conclusion. I once helped a friend with some of the more laborious steps in the process of taking a human corpse apart.'? Opening a human skull and finding a dead brain is sort oflike opening the ground and finding a dinosaur skeleton. Of course it is in some sense possible that God takes our brains when we die and replaces them with stuff that looks for all the world like dead brains, just as it is possible that God created the world 6,000 years ago and put dinosaur bones in the ground to test our faith in a slavishly literal reading of Genesis. But neither is particularly satisfying as a picture of how God actually does business. And that provides my motivation for trying to tell a better story.

3

Lives with Spatio-temporal

Gaps Suppose that van Inwagen’s notion of a (nonbranching) Life does constitute the proper way to trace the careers of human beings. I propose that we can still make sense of an afterlife without making God a secret bodysnatcher — someone who invisibly removes bodies or body-parts at death, replacing them with lookalikes. Here’s one way: Everyone should agree that, if something has persisted into the present, then its existence in the immediate past must not be causally irrelevant to its having lasted until now. For instance, the fact that Iam presently standing here must be at least partly causally explicable in terms ofthe fact that I was standing here a moment ago; for if the body standing here then had no causal connections with the body here now, then the latter is not a continuation of the old one but a replacement that just happens to resemble the old one a good deal. This falls out as a consequence of van Inwagen’s view, since lives are continuous self-sustaining events — but it should fall out of everyone’s view. As noted earlier, the sort of causal relations that must hold between different stages of the same person are often called relations of immanent causality. .. .! (Note that talk about the “stages” ofa person need not presuppose that persons can be divided up into temporal parts; for the stages in question may simply be events that are parts of the total history of the person — the lifelong process of intrinsic change which that person undergoes.) Most metaphysicians seem to agree that... immanent-causal relations among stages are much more important than relations of spatiotemporal contiguity among stages.!? Furthermore, the notion that spatio-temporal continuity is not even necessary for persistence is a quite natural view, at least for those of us who grew up watching Star Trek and reading science fiction. Why suppose that things cannot jump discontinuously from one place to another, or flicker out of exist383

DEAN W. ZIMMERMAN

ence for a while only to re-emerge elsewhere and elsewhen? Armstrong sums up the relationship between spatio-temporal continuity and immanent causation succinctly: “Spatio-temporal continuity of phases of things appears to be a mere result of, an observable sign of, the existence of a certain sort of causal relation between the phases.”'4 On the face of it, immanent-causal relatedness among stages of a thing would seem to be compatible with its making discontinuous spatiotemporal jumps, or even being “temporally gappy.” If it is possible for an object to persist through temporal gaps during which it has no stages, then there must be suitable immanent-causal relations which cross the temporal gap between earlier and later stages. But, given that the kind of immanentcausal connections that normally preserve a Life could cross spatial and temporal gaps, there’s no reason to think that one and the same Life could not contain spatial jumps or temporal gaps. As long as the causal processes from earlier stages to later stages are of the right sort, preserving the self-sustaining structure peculiar to the living thing in question, one has the same Life. Of course the supposition that causal processes can be spatiotemporally gappy in this way is contentious. Philosophical theories of causation as different as Hume’s and Ducasse’s have been in agreement on the necessity of spatio-temporal contiguity of cause and effect. But I do not see the inevitability of this assumption. Russell addresses the question in his discussion of “mnemic causation” — “that kind of causation .. . in which the proximate cause consists not merely of a present event, but of this together with a past event.”!* He concludes that there is “no a priori objection to a causal law in which part of the cause has ceased to exist.”!5 But Russell’s regularity theory of causation is so weak that we should not be too surprised at his having no special trouble with mnemic causation. Ofcourse one who believes in the Christian God cannot hold a simple regularity theory of causation in general. God made the heavens and the earth; all

384

contingent things are dependent upon him; and although the making and upholding God does is very different from anything his creatures are capable of, these activities on his part should qualify as the exercise of causal power — albeit causal power on the highest order. So causation is not analysable in terms of more regularities of succession, as Russell thought. A more robust theory is needed; but I see no reason to expect that the truth about causation will require the spatio-temporal contiguity of cause and effect.'° If we can in some way make sense of immanent-causal connections over spatio-temporal gaps, then we are well on our way to an account of survival without body-snatching. Suppose my body were to undergo an extraordinary and discontinuous case offission: every particle in my body at a certain time ¢ is immanent-causally connected with two resulting particle-stages after that time. The two sets of resulting particles appear at some later time * in disjoint spatial regions, and each is arranged just as the set of “parent” particles that produced it. My body, in this case, replicates itself over a temporal gap. Given the solution to fission cases defended above, we must say that this event brings my life to an end. But now suppose that the same sort of fissioning of each particle occurs, but that only one set constitutes at ¢* a living human body structured just like mine — the other set appears at ¢* as an unstructured pile of dead matter. Then, thanks to the failure of one body to “take,” my life is continued by the successful candidate that appears after a temporal interval. Now we have a model for how God may resurrect this very body: He does so by, just before it completely loses its living form, enabling each particle to divide — or at least to be immanent-causally responsible for two resulting particle-stages. One ofthe resulting particle-stages is right here, where the old one was; another is either in heaven now (for immediate resurrectionists), or somewhere in the far future. But in any case, since the set of particle-stages immanent-causally connected with

MATERIALISM AND SURVIVAL

my dying body which stay here do not participate in a life, they do not constitute any object, and there is absolutely no danger of my fissioning out of existence due to competition with “my corpse” — there being no such object! Furthermore, if the ultimate simples are the kinds of things that can last through time, it could even turn out that each simple which God “zaps” to give it this replicating power in fact does not ttself divide, but simply remains right here — as a part of my crumpled corpse. Each particle «is immanentcausally connected to two streams of later particle-stages; one of them — the one in the here and now — includes stages of x itself; the other, the one in the hereafter, may be a particle stage ofavery different particle (its identity with x need not matter for the question whether the body of which it is a part is my body — all that matters for that question is whether the right kind of life-sustaining causal continuity obtains between person-stages). Unlike a case of fission in which the fissionproducts co-exist, the case of the future-replicating individual particle involves only one resultant particle now; so, in the present there is no other candidate to threaten the continued existence of the original particle — there is only one “temporally closest continuer” for each particle. Thus we have everything we want: the heap of dead matter I leave behind is made of stuff which really was a part of my body (it’s not a simulacrum; God is not a body-snatcher), and the resurrected body is really identical with this present one — it is causally continuous with it in just the way adjoining stages of my present body are causally continuous, except that in this case there is a spatial or spatio-temporal gap which my poor body was given the power to cross by means of God’s intervention. But what if God had given my particles this replicating power back at the end of my twentieth year, so that at that time they were immanent-causally connected both with a living duplicate in the hereafter as well as with succeeding spatio-temporally continuous 21year-old body-stages in the here-and-now? I

answer just as in the particle case: since there is no rival candidate for me in existence 7mmediately after the last 20-year-old particlestage, my life continues in the ordinary way — the ostensibly 20-year-old “resurrected” replica ofme is just that, a replica of “the me that used to be.” One only faces fission when a life divides into two co-existing (and therefore competing) streams...

Notes

1

2 3

Peter Van Inwagen, “The Possibility of Resurrection” reprinted in Immortality, ed. Paul Edwards (New York: Macmillan, 1992), pp. 242-6. Cf. van Inwagen, ibid, p. 243. Cf. van Inwagen, “Dualism and Materialism: Athens and Jerusalem?” Faith and Philosophy,

4 5

6

7 8

9

10

11

12 (1995), pp. 475-88; and the author’s note to “The Possibility of Resurrection,” p. 246. Material Begs (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1990). That is, if it were more like that of van Inwagen’s Neocerberus; cf. Material Beings, pp. 202-3. Richard Swinburne turns the fact that the believer in souls can say this into an argument against materialism; cf. “Personal Identity: The Dualist Theory,” a chapter from Personal Identity, by Richard Swinburne and Sydney Shoemaker (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984), reprinted in Metaphysics: the Big Questions, ed. by Peter van Inwagen and Dean W. Zimmerman (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998). Cf. Material Beings, pp. 205-7. See my “The Compatibility of Materialism and Survival,” forthcoming in Faith and Philosophy. “Immanent Causation,” Philosophical Perspectives, vol. 11: Mind, Causation and World, pp. 4335-71. The friend was not a mobster, but a student of anatomy. Saddled with a lazy lab partner, she recruited my wife and me to assist. The /ocus classicus on immanent causation is W. E. Johnson, Logic, part III (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1924), chs 7-9. For a more recent discussion, cf. my “Immanent Causation,” Philosophical Perspectives, vol. 11: Mind, Causation, and World (1997).

385

DEAN W. ZIMMERMAN 12

386

Cf. the discussions in D. M. Armstrong, “Identity Through Time,” in Peter van Inwagen (ed.), Time and Cause (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1980), pp. 67-78, esp. pp. 74-6; Sydney Shoemaker, “Identity, Properties, and Causality,” in his Identity, Cause, and Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 234-60; and Chris Swoyer, “Causation and Identity,” Midwest Studies in Philosophy, vol. 9: Causation and Causal Theories, ed. by Peter A. French. Theodore E. Uehling, Jr, and Howard K. Wettstein (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), pp. 593-622.

13 14 15 16

Armstrong, “Identity Through Time,” in van Inwagen (ed.), Time and Cause, p. 76. The Analysis of Mind (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1921), p. 85. The Analysis of Mind, p. 89. Furthermore, as I show in “The Compatibility of Materialism and Survival,” there is a way for God to create a person long after my death whose later stages depend “quasi-causally” upon my earlier stages, without the introduction of full-fledged mnemic causation. The quasi-causal “glue” I describe is strong enough by itself, I think, to hold my stages together over the gap.

Revelation

44

Are We Entitled?*

Nicholas Wolterstorff .. . does God speak? Our situation is not that we and a few others have recently begun to entertain the proposition that God speaks, and are now wondering whether to accept or reject that proposition. Countless human beings, down through the ages, and on into our own time and place, have in fact believed that God speaks. Let us, then, pose our question in full recognition of that fact; let us ask how such beliefs are to be appraised.

Locke on Entitlement to Religious Belief ...1 propose setting the stage for this issue of appraisal by recalling a fateful conversation which took place . . . in the spring of 1671 in an apartment in Exeter House in London. The participants were John Locke and some five or six of his friends; the topic was various matters of morality and revealed religion — we don’t know which. The participants, Locke tells us, were scarcely into their conversation before they felt themselves stymied “by the difficulties that arose on every side.” They plowed ahead and kept on talking, but they were getting nowhere. After they had thrashed about in this fashion for some hours, the * From Nicholas Wolterstorff, Divine Discourse: Philo-

sophical Reflections on the Claim that God Speaks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), ch. 15, pp. 261-80. Reprinted with permission.

thought occurred to Locke that perhaps their whole procedure was misguided. Perhaps to advance one had first to retreat: instead of continuing to worry the issues at hand in the hope that answers would turn up if they just kept at it, perhaps they ought to turn inward for a while to examine the cognitive abilities of human beings, with the aim of determining which objects the human understanding is fit to deal with, and how; and then, with illumination on those matters in hand, return to the topic. It was this thought, says Locke, that led eventually to his Essay concerning Human Understanding. The general epistemology which Locke developed there has been profoundly influential in the modern West; even more influential has been Locke’s application of that general epistemology to the regional epistemology of religious belief. An indispensable

preparation for thinking through for ourselves how we ought to appraise beliefs that God speaks is bringing to the level of conscious self-awareness this part of our cultural inheritance.

There are things deeply amiss, Locke, concluded, in the practices that his fellow countrymen — and humanity in general — typically use for arriving at beliefs, especially beliefs on matters of religion and morality. One of the worst features of those practices is their use of tradition as a basis of belief. People believe without question what others tell them; they take them at their word. Since most of what people believe on say-so is false, there is 387

NICHOLAS WOLTERSTORFF

scarcely a worse basis for belief than this. Admittedly believing on say-so cannot be eliminated from our lives; no one could possibly look into everything for herself. None the less, for everyone there are certain questions whose answers one is obligated to try one’s best to discover — matters of maximal “concernment,”

Locke calls them. What constitutes doing one’s best? Locke assumed, without question, that for every person and for every topic, the structure of doing one’s best is the same. For every person, there are certain facts of which that person is directly aware. Typically such awareness produces a corresponding belief; when it does, that belief has maximal certitude. One can’t do better in one’s believings than this. The scope of such directly perceptible facts is extremely limited, however: each of us can be directly aware only of those facts consisting of relationships among the ideas and acts of one’s own mind, and the relationship of those to one’s mind itself. So what about all the other facts; what constitutes doing one’s best to get in touch with those? Well, it may be that one can construct a demonstrative argument for some of them, starting from propositions one knows because one is directly aware of the corresponding mental fact. But if that doesn’t work, then, for any proposition concerning some such fact, doing one’s best consists of doing the following: first, from among the facts of which one is directly aware, assembling a satisfactory body of evidence concerning the truth or falsehood of that proposition. Second, calculating the probability of that proposition on that body of evidence. And third, believing or disbelieving the proposition with a firmness proportioned to its probability on that evidence... . ... What about propositions to the effect that God says so-and-so? Will doing our best ever yield belief in such propositions? Locke himself never addresses this precise question; the traditional notion of God speaking has all but disappeared from his thought, its place taken up by the notion of God revealing. But we can get a good indication of what he would 388

say on the topic by looking at what he says about believing that God has revealed so-andso, and then extrapolating from that. Locke draws the customary distinction between original and traditional revelation in the following way: original revelation is “that first impression, which is made immediately by God, on the mind of any man, to which we cannot set any bounds;” traditional revelation is “those impressions delivered over to others in words, and the ordinary ways of conveying our conceptions one to another” (Essay rv, xviii, 3). The word “impression” here is vague. When Locke speaks of “an impression made immediately by God on the mind,” he means, as I understand him, a Jelief, revelation occurs when God directly brings about a belief in someone’s mind. It will already be clear from the foregoing that, on Locke’s view, the mere fact that God

has planted a belief in one’s mind does not entitle one to believe it. His language is vivid and emphatic: He ... that will not give himself up to all the extravagancies of delusion and error must bring this guide of his light within to the trial. God when he makes the prophet does not unmake the man. He leaves all his faculties in their natural state, to enable him to judge of his inspirations, whether they be ofdivine original or not. When he illuminates the mind with supernatural light, he does not extinguish that which is natural. If he would have us assent to the truth of any proposition, he either evidences that truth by the usual methods of natural reason, or else makes it known to be a truth, which he would

have us assent to, by his authority, and convinces us that it is from him, by some marks which reason cannot be mistaken in. Reason must be our last judge and guide in every thing. (Essay IV, xix, 14)

So suppose God has originally revealed something to someone. How is that person to proceed? Well, somehow the thought comes to mind that God revealed this. What brings that about, Locke does not say; perhaps when God directly plants a beliefin someone’s mind, God also directly plants the

ARE WE ENTITLED?

second-level thought (though not necessarily the belief) that that first-level belief is a case of revelation. Be that as it may, the thought does come to mind; and the recipient of original revelation is obligated to set about doing his best concerning the proposition that God has revealed so-and-so to him. Doing his best requires looking around for a miracle which will confirm that it was a case of revelation. “The holy men ofold,” says Locke, “who had revelations from God, had something else besides that internal light of assurance in their own minds, to testify to them, that it was from God. [They] had outward signs to convince them of the author of those revelations. Moses saw the bush burn without being con-

sumed, and heard a voice out of it. This was something besides finding an impulse upon his mind to go to Pharaoh,” and also something beyond the impulse to believe that that first impulse was planted in his mind by God (ibid., Iv, xix, 15). Locke conceded that original revelation might still be occurring; none the less, he was profoundly skeptical of anyone’s claim to have experienced a contemporary episode thereof. The only episodes oforiginal revelation he was himself willing to acknowledge were those ancient episodes recorded and reported in the Christian scriptures. His own attention was focused entirely on the books of the New Testament, which he regarded as divinely inspired, infallible records of original revelation by God to the writers — these infallible records in turn including a good many reports oforiginal revelation received by someone other than

the writer, in particular, by Jesus. Thus the Bible was for him an instrument of traditional revelation, not oforiginal revelation. Our task in reading scripture is to do our best to figure out what God revealed back in antiquity, to the writers of the biblical books and to those other ancient persons that the writers report as having been recipients of revelation. And what does doing our best look like in this case? If one wanted to do one’s best to find out whether, say, God revealed so-and-

so to the apostle Peter, how would one pro-

ceed? Well, one starts with the narration by a gospel writer, Luke, perhaps, of a claim of Peter’s that God revealed so-and-so to him,

and of Peter’s claim that he experienced suchand-such miraculous event confirming that it really was a revelation he had received. One first determines the probability on satisfactory evidence that Luke has accurately narrated what Peter reported on these two matters. If that probability proves high, one believes with an appropriate firmness that Luke accurately narrated what Peter reported. Now one is ready to deal with the accuracy of Peter’s reports. First one assesses the probability on satisfactory evidence that Peter really did have the experience which he claimed to have identified as receiving a revelation from God, and the probability on satisfactory evidence that he really did experience the event which he claimed to have identified as a miracle. If the probability of both of these turns out rather high, then one believes with an appropriate firmness that Peter really did have those two experiences which he thus identified. Now one is ready to consider the likelihood that Peter’s claimed identification of those experiences was correct. First one determines the probability on satisfactory evidence that that event, which Peter identified as a miracle, really was a miracle. If that probability proves rather high, one believes with an appropriate firmness that if it occurred, it was a miracle. Then one moves on to consider the probability on satisfactory evidence that that miracle, if it was that, really does confirm that Peter’s experience was an experience of receiving a revelation from God. Ifthe probability of that proves rather high, one believes with an appropriate firmness that if that was a miracle, then Peter did receive a revelation from God. Lastly, one considers the probability on satisfactory evidence that if God did indeed reveal something to Peter, then it was so-and-so that God revealed, not something else. If the probability of that proves rather high, then one believes, quite infirmly by now, that so-andso. One needn’t, before believing the content of the purported revelation, take the additional 389

NICHOLAS WOLTERSTORFF

step of assessing the probability on satisfactory evidence that the revealer is veracious and reliable; for it is a necessary truth, self-evident to us, that if God reveals something, it’s true.

Practice and Entitlement The topic before us is how we are to appraise that enormous number of humanity’s believings which consist of believing that God

said so-and-so. What must first be noted is. that there is a wide variety of distinct merits (and corresponding defects) which believings are capable of possessing; and that for each of these merits one can attempt to determine, for a given believing, whether that believing has it or lacks it — or to what extent it has it or lacks it. We have all been schooled to consider which believings possess the merit of being cases of knowing, and which possess the merit of having true propositional content. But those merits represent only a small selection from the totality. In his recent book Warrant, Alvin Plantinga has introduced the concept of warrant — by which he means, that which must be added to a belief whose propositional content is true to make it a case of knowledge. One might consider whether a given believing has that merit. William Alston, in his recent book Perceiving God, carves out a concept of justified belief according to which, to quote him, “being justified in believing that p is for that belief to be based on an objectively adequate ground, one that is (fairly) strongly indicative of the truth of the belief” (p. 99). One might consider whether a given believing has that merit. Closely related, and much discussed in recent years, is the concept of being formed by a reliable belief-forming process. One might consider whether a given belief has that merit. And prominent in the philosophical tradition for many centuries have been disputes over which beliefs have the merit of belonging to good science. The merit which occupied the center of Locke’s attention is different from any of those I have mentioned. It is that of a belief being 390

such that the person is entitled to that belief. The assumption is that deontic concepts, concepts of obligation, apply to believings. Some believings of aperson are ones that he ought not to have, some, are ones that he ought to have, and some — the ones for which it is mot the case that he ought not to have them — are ones that he is permitted to have, entitled to have. Perhaps there are also some he doesn’t have that he ought to have. Epistemology is that branch of philosophy in which we attempt to develop accounts of truth-relevant merits in believings. What makes the field so extraordinarily difficult and confusing is the combination of, on the one hand, this plethora of distinct merits, with,

on the other hand, competing theories, for each such merit, as to the conditions under which a believing has it or lacks it. Despair is a natural response. But this whole array of believings, that God said or is saying so-and-

so, cries out for appraisal. Some are so bizarre as to lack whatever merit one can think of. Many have proved utterly appalling in their consequences: human blood has been shed, oppression imposed, suffering experienced, as the consequence of one and another person believing that God had spoken to him. We can’t let despair get the better of us and just walk away. So which, from this dizzying array, shall we focus on? We can’t deal with them all. I propose focusing on that one which was at the center of Locke’s attention and which,

from the seventeenth century until recently, was probably at the center of most discussions of these matters — the merit of entitlement. All of us would dearly love to know which, if any of these believings are true. But one can see why Locke focused on entitlement. The facts which make the propositions we are considering, and those we believe, true or false,

are mainly not even in principle available to us for our awareness, certainly not for our direct awareness; by contrast, whether or not one has fulfilled one’s (subjective) obligations is something that one can discern, at least in principle, by reflection. So we aim at fulfilling

ARE WE ENTITLED?

our duties in our believings; and hope and trust that in believing as we ought and may, we are getting truth in hand. Furthermore, fulfilling one’s duties in one’s believings takes precedence over aiming at their exhibiting one and another merely admirable feature. Locke puts the point nicely in a well-known passage from the Essay. Ignore, on this occasion, the

allusions to his own views concerning the grounds of obligations and the criterion for entitlement in belief: He that believes, without having any reason for believing, may be in love with his own fancies; but neither seeks truth as he ought, nor pays the obedience due his maker, who would have him use those discerning faculties he has given him, to keep him out of mistake and errour... . He that does not this to the best of his power however he sometimes lights on truth, is in the right but by chance; and I know not whether the luckiness of the accident will excuse the irregularity of his proceeding. This at least is certain, that he must be accountable for whatever mistakes he runs into: whereas he that makes use of the light and faculties God has given him, and seeks sincerely to discover truth, by those helps and abilities he has, may have this satisfaction in doing his duty as a rational creature, that though he should miss truth, he will not miss the reward of it. (Essay Iv, xvii, 24).

I said that from the seventeenth century onwards the merit of entitlement has been at the center of these discussions — until recently. Recently many epistemologists have concluded that there is no such merit in believings as entitlement. Members of the family of deontic concepts — ought, ought not, duty, may, permitted, entitled — simply do not.apply to believings. The main reason offered is that our believings and non-believings are not the outcome of acts of will on our part, but of dispositions. One can’t bring about one’s believing or not believing some proposition by deciding to believe or not believe it; one’s disposition to believe so-and-so is activated by some event, and the belief just emerges, like it or not. Possibly it’s true that, with the aim in mind of believing so-and-so, one can form

and act on a long range action plan which has some chance of success; Pascal remarked that if one wants to become a Catholic believer,

one might try attending Catholic mass. Evidence about belief-formation from contemporary experimental psychology gives some credence to Pascal’s claim. But it seems clear that the phenomenon doesn’t come to much —not enough to build a whole theory around. I judge these points about belief-formation to be both true and of fundamental importance for the epistemologist. But they do not establish that deontic concepts have, at most marginal application to our believings. A glance back at Locke can help us see why. For though it may have been characteristic of those later “Lockeans” who embraced a so-called “ethics of belief” to make naive assumptions about the power of the will over belief, Locke himself was not at all naive on the matter. He held that only rarely if ever can one come to believe something by deciding to believe it; there’s little in the current near-consensus among epistemologists about belief and the will that Locke would disagree with. Yet, for all that, Locke’s discussion is resonant with the language of duty. I have interpreted Locke as outlining a certain practice which, in his judgment, ought to be used by each of us in all cases of maximal “concernment.” The clue to the applicability of deontic concepts to our believings lies in the notion of adoxastic practice, as I shall call it, of which the practice Locke recommends is one example. To explain what I have in mind by such a practice, we must start at ground level. All of us, as we go about our ways of being and doing, find beliefs emerging in ourselves; and all of us find that some of these get stored in memory for retrieval. Often though not al-

ways we can identify the event which activated the disposition that produced the belief — though it must at once be added that one must be in a certain state for the event to activate the disposition: must possess such-and-such concepts, have or lack such-and-such beliefs,

attend with a certain intensity, and so forth. Among the believings that emerge, are 391

NICHOLAS WOLTERSTORFF

believings about our believings — beliefs about our beliefs. The second-order beliefs that we have about our first-order beliefs often make us unhappy with the flow of our first-order beliefs, and lead us to anticipate unhappiness. That unhappiness is grounded in part in the emotional impact on us of various of our beliefs. But it’s also grounded in two other features of our flow of beliefs. We find our flow of belief lacking beliefs on certain matters that we want it to include beliefs on. And we find our flow of beliefs throwing up false beliefs here and there; we want both to get rid of, and forestall, such.

How do we come to believe that our flow of beliefs throws up false beliefs? In a variety ofways — prominent among them, in my view, being that of finding oneself directly acquainted with a fact which contradicts some proposition that one believes. On this occasion, however, I don’t propose exploring all the issues and controversies surrounding that claim. Suffice it to note that all of us do, rather often, find ourselves in the situation of be-

lieving, about a certain pair of our beliefs, that they aren’t both true — maybe even believing that they couldn’t both be true. That is to say, we find ourselves with belief-triples of this sort: the belief that p, the belief that g, and the belief that and garen’t both true (or the belief that necessarily p and garen’t both true). But then, typically, another feature of our believings enters the picture to which I haven’t yet called attention; it is with varying degrees of firmness that we believe propositions. Thus it regularly happens, after taking note of one of those troubling triples, that right away, or after a while, one no longer believes the propositional content of one member of the triple — perhaps even one believes that it’s false. Perhaps the firm belief that p, and the firm belief that p and gare not both true, together oust the somewhat infirm belief that g from one’s belief repertoire. The fittest survive. So once again: we come to believe that the flow ofbeliefs that spills into us as we go about our being and doing has these two grand deficiencies: it’s not producing certain beliefs and oY2

sorts of beliefs that we would like it to be producing; and it’s producing more false beliefs on certain matters than we would like it to produce. So we take steps. The flow of beliefs itself becomes a matter of concern on our part. We don’t just let it occur as we go about our other concerns. What do we do? We implement ways of using our belief-dispositional constitution so as to diminish these deficiencies, in so far as

in us lies. We implement what I shall call doxastic practices. We implement ways offinding out about new things. We implement ways of ousting false beliefs. And we implement ways of forestalling the emergence of false beliefs, or rather, of diminishing the frequency of their emergence, so that various components of the flow become more reliable. Some of these ways we learn on our own, from experience. But massively it’s the case that we learn them from others. For many are established in our society; they are social practices, in Alasdair MacIntyre’s sense; and we are inducted into them, by modeling and by explicit instruction. We learn from our parents how to determine more reliably the colors of things, from our art teachers how to look at paintings, and so forth. But if beliefs are formed in us by the activation of our belief-dispositions rather than by acts of will, what can such “ways of using” our belief-dispositional nature possibly come to? Fundamentally they consist of doing things which we have learned will activate, or will probably or possibly activate, our dispositions.

We listen attentively for certain formal features in musical compositions; that’s something we can decide to do. There emerges the belief that the movement we are listening to is a rondo. We rehearse all the places we stopped during the last hour; that’s something we can decide to do. There emerges the belief that we left our umbrella on the counter in the butcher shop. A doxastic practice is a way of steering one’s doxastic constitution. The constitution itself also changes across the course of one’s lifetime. As Hume emphasized in his account of induction, new dispositions of

ARE WE ENTITLED?

belief-formation emerge in the form of habits. But mostly we do and must accept our constitution, as we slowly come to know it, and then steer it — just as most of us pretty much accept how the cars we purchase are built, and content ourselves with steering them. Locke outlined for us a certain doxastic practice, a way ofsteering one’s doxastic constitution. His claim for this practice was that, for any proposition, if you want to do your best to bring it about that you believe it ifand only if it is true, then this is the practice to use. There is, so he claims, no practice more reliable than this one. Though nothing has yet been said about entitlement, the phenomenon is now right at hand. These doxastic practices, these ways of using our belief-dispositional nature, these ways of steering our doxastic constitution,

many is not a member of the UN Security Council;” thereby we express our judgment that the addressee has failed to carry out the obligation to take steps to find out, or recall, the proposition in question. And we say, “You know you shouldn’t have believed what he told you about his divorce without first check-

ing it out with people who know him,” thereby expressing our judgment that the addressee has failed, and knows that he has failed, to carry out his obligation to acquire a par-

ticular basis for his belief. The idea in this latter sort of case is not that he knows he shouldn’t have decided to believe p without doing X; because he didn’t, and couldn’t, de-

cide to believe p. The idea is rather that he knows that he had the obligation to do X, given that he believed p. Had he done X, he might now not believe p. Then again, he still

recommend themselves to us; otherwise we

might; but if so, he would believe it on a dif-

wouldn’t participate in them. They recommend themselves to us as ways of finding out about this and that sort of thing, as ways of ousting false beliefs about certain sorts of things from the body of beliefs we already have, and as ways of forming beliefs about certain sorts of things more reliably. We come to believe, about the doxastic practices of which we know, that they hold out one or the other of those three kinds of promise. This is part and parcel of our induction into them, in case they are social practices, or of our decision to adopt them, in case they emerge from our own experience. And now for the final link in the chain: given such beliefs about the various doxastic practices of which one knows, it is often the case that one is obligated to try to use one of them to find out about so-andso, or obligated to try to use one of them so as to sort through one’s present beliefs with the aim of detecting and ousting false ones, or obligated to try to use one of them so as to form beliefs on a more reliable basis. Thus it is that our conversations about belief are filled with the language of “You should have known” and “You know you shouldn’t have believed that without doing so-and-so.” We say, “You should have known that Ger-

ferent and more reliable basis, or in the light of more of the relevant evidence. A great deal more begs to be said on all these matters; I hope, on another occasion, to say some of that more. But I judge that, for our purposes here, enough has been said for me to be able to explain being entitled to a belief thus: a person S is entitled to his belief that p just in case S believes p, and there’s no doxastic practice D pertaining to p such that S ought to have implemented D and S did not, or S ought to have implemented D better than S did. (Notice that a person may be entitled at one time to believe p without having implemented D, and at a later time no longer be entitled to believe p without having implemented D.) What sort of obligations are these? Are they, in the last resort, all moral obligations? Or is there perhaps a distinct set of doxastic obligations within the totality of one’s obligations? In addition to our duties to each other, do we perhaps have a “duty to the truth?” A wellargued answer to this question would require detailed analysis of a rather wide range ofcases; and nothing at all in what I say subsequently hangs on what the right answer proves to be. Enough for my purposes here that it be She

NICHOLAS WOLTERSTORFF

acknowledged that, whatever be their type, we do have such obligations as I have been pointing to. Whatever be their nature, it’s important to realize that the obligations in questions are situated obligations, in that which obligations of this sort actually apply to a given person is a function of various aspects of the particular situation of the person in question. To pose the abstract question, for some proposition P, “Is one entitled to believe that P?” is to

pose a question void for vagueness. Which obligations of this sort apply to a given person depend, for one thing, on the doxastic practices available to that person, and what he entitledly believes and doesn’t believe about them. We have ways now offinding out about the distance of the moon from the earth which simply were not available to persons of antiquity. Secondly, it depends on the abilities of the person. There may be some excellent doxastic practices available in a society which certain members ofthe society lack the ability to utilize, as there may be excellent doxastic practices available in one society which members of another society lack the ability to utilize. That cluster of extremely subtle practices which native Americans utilized for finding their way and tracking game in the forests of North America is beyond the abilities of most of us to utilize. Some of us might be able to acquire the requisite abilities; none of us has them now. Thirdly, which obligations of this sort apply to a given person depends on the totality ofthat person’s other obligations. One may know about a more reliable way of forming beliefs on some matter; but using that way might take time away from other, more pressing, obligations. It might be irresponsible to take the time to utilize that more reliable practice.

Was Virginia Entitled? The application, to the main issue at hand, of this last point about the situatedness of entitlement, is obvious. That main issue is which, 394

if any, of humanity’s beliefs that God said something is an entitled belief. The question can only be answered in the concrete, not in the abstract. On which concrete examples, then, shall we focus? On those we most care about. Whether Antony and Augustine were entitled to believe that God had spoken to them is, for us, little more than a matter of curiosity. What we really want to know is whether we — intelligent, educated, citizens of the modern West —are ever entitled to believe that God speaks. Let’s pick an example in which extraneous considerations are minimized — in particular, considerations pertaining to the epistemology of testimony. That leads us to look for a recent case, and one close to home.

Let me present part of the narration of some experiences which recently befell an acquaintance of mine who is a well-established member of the faculty of one of the old, Eastern seaboard universities of the United States. I shall call her “Virginia;” that’s not her real name; I’ll also change the name of the pastor named in the narration and call him “Byron.” Perhaps I should add that though Virginia is, and was at the time, a Christian, she neither is nor was what anyone would classify as an Evangelical. It’s worth saying that because Evangelicals have the reputation of believing that God speaks to them rather more often, and rather more trivially, than most of us think God would bother with; hence we quite easily dismiss their claims that God is on speaking terms with them. It’s probably important to know that there was a great deal of conflict in the parish of which Virginia speaks; that comes out in parts of the narration which I won’t quote. Here’s Virginia’s narration, or part ofit. I think all of us will have the sense of entering a strange and unsettling world: On February 12, 1987, while folding laundry I suddenly knew with certain knowledge that Byron was supposed to leave St Paul’s Church. There was no external voice, but there was a brightening in the room at the moment of rev-

ARE WE ENTITLED? elation. The experience was so overwhelming that I called my husband and invited him to come home for lunch. I did not discuss what had happened, but I needed to reassure myself of reality. Later that afternoon ... I found myself sobbing. I knew the knowledge that I had been given was not me, and I knew that it was correct. As the day progressed, it became clear to me that there were seven, insistent statements that I needed to tell Byron. Nothing like this had ever happened to me before or to anyone I knew. I was awe-struck and terrified. Passing on the message accurately and with a preface that would allow him to hear it clearly became my goal.... The next morning, when I went to see Byron, I was very agitated. Byron told me to take a deep breath or I would hyperventilate. We

discussed God, and belief in God, and then I prayed out loud that I would be rendered speechless if what I was about to say was not indeed God’s will. I told him the seven statements: “Your work is done here. You have accomplished what you were sent to do. You are still young. There are great things in store for you. Do not be afraid. God will take care of you. I will help with the transition.” This message was not a surprise to Byron. He had already come to that conclusion prior to our conversation. There had been a call committee at the church that past Sunday, about which I had known nothing.... Byron did not get that call... I began to doubt my message. As I drove home from staff meeting one day in March, I said to God that if He wanted me to believe that the message had been divine, God would either have to give Byron a call or give me a message for someone else. Both came true.... [A few weeks later, on a] Saturday night, there was a fierce thunderstorm which shook the screen next to our bedroom window. From 12:30 to 4 a.m. I struggled with God. There was another message. God was patient and kept repeating each sentence until I could not possibly forget it. It was only about a paragraph long. I knew it was for the Tuesday night meeting. But I did not know when to say it or how to preface it. I kept seeing the hall clock at church pointing to 8:45....

The narration continues with her telling about

delivering the message from God at 8:45 on Tuesday evening, and the response from the other participants in the meeting. “I was surprised,” she says, “at how perfectly everybody seemed to think what I had said fit in. There was a feeling of jubilation.” Still she had her doubts. She went to see a priest who was recommended to her as a spiritual director. Let me continue with her own words: He was extremely helpful in his affirmation of my experiences. I began to see how I could use my renewed spirituality in all aspects of what I was already doing. I felt stronger but still wanted to go to see a psychologist to be sure that I was mentally fit. I met with a psychologist at Harvard Community Health Plan and told her everything that had happened. After listening to my story, she said that these kinds of things happen all the time, and why was I surprised. She suggested a book that I might read, and thanked me profusely for sharing my experience with her. She did not feel that I required any further sesSOUS sear:

Before we set out, a small bit of taxonomy may be helpful. Reading and interpreting sacred Scripture for the divine voice consists of taking an enduring object, a text, and reading to find out what God said. Virginia’s case was very different. She wasn’t trying to find out what God said — she wasn’t on the lookout for divine discourse. A non-sensory, quasi-mystical, experience befell her, totally unexpected, which seems to have had the phenomenological character of God appearing to her as talking to her; and this immediately evoked in her the conviction that God was saying something to her — discoursing with her. The Augustine case was somewhat different. The phenomenology was not that ofa non-sensory, quasi-mystical experience of God, appearing to him as talking to him. Its core was the sensory experience of a child’s sounding out certain words — though one gets the impression that that did not exhaust the phenomenology, that there was in addition some strange sort of aura; and rather than this

395

NICHOLAS WOLTERSTORFF

entire phenomenology immediately evoking in Augustine the conviction that by way of the child talking, God was discoursing with him, it seems to have triggered a rapid “best explanation” inference. Augustine rapidly inferred that the best explanation of his being confronted with the sounding out loud of exactly those words at exactly that time in his life was that God was bringing about that confrontation so as thereby to speak to him, to discourse with him. There have been other cases like Augustine’s except that the person only very slowly came to the conclusion that the best explanation of the events he had experienced is that God brought about those events so as thereby to speak. Various writers testify to the fact that sometimes when reading and interpreting Scripture to find out what God said thereby, they have had an experience rather like Augustine’s, which they explain as God speaking to them by way of the passage before them. In that case we have a coincidence of the two phenomena between which I have drawn my major divide. When reading to find out, they had an experience which befell them. Let’s assume that Virginia was entitled to her framework of basic Christian belief. I know, of course, that some will contest that assumption. But in considering issues of entitlement, one always has to take for granted that a great many — indeed, most — ofthe person’s beliefs are entitled beliefs; otherwise one cam’t even get going on determinations of entitlement. It appears to me that Virginia, without having thought much (if at all) about the matter, believed that it was possible for God to speak. I doubt that she had worked through the arguments of any of the philosophers and theologians who have cast doubt on the very possibility of God speaking. I doubt that she had even heard of them. She probably just took for granted the biblical picture of God as speaking. Should she have known about the skeptical discussions ofphilosophers and theologians? I don’t myself see

why. But if you think ’m wrong about this, imagine that Virginia had once looked into 396

these discussions and concluded that the skepticism was not well-grounded. I’m composing this chapter in a flat on the High Street in Oxford. There’s always noise coming into the flat — the rumble of traffic going past. Now and then I happen to take note of the rumble; I often take note when a

vehicle goes by with siren blaring. But mostly, I pay no attention. So if my wife wants to say something to me, and wants me to take note that she is doing so, she can’t just make noises which blend into the noise of the traffic going by — even though it is in principle possible to say things by making exactly such noises. So it is for God as well. If God is going to say things to us, say them in such a way that there’s a chance of our taking note, God has to do something which stands out from the rumble of ordinary existence. Must it be a miraculous intervention in the workings of a law of nature? That depends, in part, on what one takes Jaws of nature to be, and how much of what transpires in the world and human experience one takes to fall under their sway; and those are complicated questions. But even if we conclude that it must be a miraculous intervention, that by itselfisn’t enough. There may be all sorts of miraculous interventions in the workings of laws of nature of which we know nothing. If God is to speak to us, the discourse-generating event must somehow stand out from what I called “the rumble of ordinary existence.” Something uncanny — I don’t know of a better word — something uncanny must take place in one’s experience. That uncanniness may take many forms: the uncanniness of Virginia’s quasi-mystical experience, the uncanniness of the coincidence of Augustine’s just happening to hear words so appropriate to his spiritual condition, and so forth. But we in the modern world know that the experiences of people in a state of mental disorder also sometimes have an uncanny quality; in particular, it’s not at all uncommon for people in such states to “hear voices.” So Virginia did exactly what I, at least, think she ought to have done: she seriously entertained

ARE WE ENTITLED?

the possibility that her experience was a symptom of mental disorder rather than a case of God inwardly appearing to her as speaking, and took steps to check it out. She immediately called her husband and urged him to come home for lunch; “I needed to reassure myself of reality,” she says. She is reassured.

But the possibility, that the uncanny experience was a symptom of mental disorder, continued to prey on her mind for a long time, until she tells all to a professional psychologist, who in response says ... “You’re OK.” In short, Virginia explored the possibility that there is another and better explanation of her uncanny experience than the one which just overwhelmed her at the time, viz., that God was speaking to her; but she doesn’t come up with a better one. No doubt Virginia’s background understanding of God was such that one can imagine a whole range of purported experiences, of God speaking to her in this quasi-mystical fashion, which she would and should have dismissed at once on the ground that the content wasn’t something that God would say to her. If, for example, the voice had told her to call her husband to come home for lunch and then to stab him as he was drinking his coffee. (Though it’s likely that if she had in fact “heard” a voice saying that, she would have been so disordered that she wouldn’t have drawn the conclusion that it wasn’t God speaking.) However, this test, call it the acceptability of content test, was not a test she applied — unless she just neglected to narrate it. Apparently nothing about the content triggered any suspicion on her part. Instead, the narration focuses on whether

or not the experiences, and her accepting that the experiences are veridical, have the consequences that one would expect if the experiences were indeed of God speaking. After some initial hesitations about the first message, she concludes that they do have those consequences. Her hesitation was induced by the fact that what God told her to tell Byron didn’t come true when she had assumed it would. Eventually, though, it did. As to the

message that she delivered to the whole group, that produced jubilation; people remarked about how well her remarks fitted in. Sometime later she noticed that her experiences had produced in her a “renewed spirituality.” I have been assuming that the narration is an honest one; I have no reason at all to think

otherwise. So my own conclusion is that, at least by the time she wrote this narration, Virginia was entitled to believe that God had spoken to her. So far as I can see, everything she should have done to make her entitled to this belief, she had done. It will be noted that she didn’t try to implement the Lockean practice. Should she have tried to do so? Should she have tried to establish that, on evidence consisting of mental and conceptual facts of which she was directly aware, it was more probable than not that God had spoken to her? Well, one thing Locke says does, I think, point to an important truth. Often, when we know of a more reliable practice for the formation of some belief of ours than the one we actually used, we remain more or less content with not applying that purportedly more reliable practice; we judge the practice we did use reliable enough for our purposes, and we have more pressing things to do than worry the matter further. But if there’s something about some experience of mine which makes me think there’s a live possibility that God was speaking to me by way of that experience, then I think it would seldom ifever be appropriate to rush on to other things on the ground that they are more important. Even ifthe experience produced in me the conviction that God was speaking to me by way ofthat experience, I would seldom want to rush on to other things, since I would know that lots of times when people believed that God was speaking to them, they were mistaken, often with calamitous consequences. One will want to do one’s reasonable best, and probably should do one’s reasonable best, to determine whether God was or was not speaking to one. The question, though, is whether doing one’s best always consists of implementing the 397

NICHOLAS WOLTERSTORFF

Lockean practice. It seems to me clear that, for a vast array of facts, the Lockean practice is not in fact the best. Modern philosophy has witnessed a long and elaborate series of attempts to prove, along Lockean lines, the existence of the external world. It’s the consensus of most philosophers — myself included — that all those attempts have failed. Faithful application of the Lockean practice will not yield the belief that this and that external object exists; one can’t get to there starting solely from mental and conceptual facts. None the less, we do have available to us very good ways of getting in touch with a great deal of the external world. Those ways are the various perceptual practices that have emerged among us and which we all use: for many facts of the external world, the best way of bringing it about that one believes the corresponding propositions if and only if they are true is to apply not the Lockean practice but one and another of our common perceptual practices. So far forth, this leaves open the possibility that the Lockean practice is the best for finding out the truth of the matter when it comes to God speaking. But once we see that it is not in general the best practice available to us human beings, we would need some special argument for the thesis that it is the most reliable for such facts. And I, at least, fail to see what such a reason might look like. I dare say that some of my readers remain convinced that, be all this as it may, Virginia

was suffering from delusions and that she herself should have realized that. But here we must once again remind ourselves of how beliefs get formed in us, and of the role of doxastic practices in our lives. We don’t decide to believe or not believe things; it was

398

not in Virginia’s power to decide to believe that it was a delusion. Beliefs are formed in us by the activation of our belief-dispositions. What we can do is steer our belief-dispositional nature: go out and acquire additional experiences, attend more carefully and in different ways to the experiences we are having, reflect more carefully on the things we already know and believe and how they fit together, and so forth. Beyond that, there’s nothing we can do, nothing at all. Virginia did everything, so far as I can see, that one could ask of her; applied all the doxastic practices that she ought to have applied. Some there are who will remain convinced that she didn’t get it right; God didn’t speak to her, she was suffering from delusions. But it’s just a fundamental feature of our human existence that often two of us look at the same evidence and consider the same arguments and come out with different conclusions. We can’t get past that. When that happens, the outcome is symmetrical: each party believes the other is mistaken. The skeptic believes that Virginia was suffering from delusions and mistaken in her belief that God had spoken to her; but Virginia, having done everything one could ask of her, believes that the person who thinks she was suffering from delusions is mistaken. Though the situation, as between Virginia and her skeptical critics, isn’t quite symmetrical: Virginia had the experience, the skeptic didn’t. And that counts for something. So, yes; it is possible for an intelligent adult of the modern Western world to be entitled to believe that God has spoken to him or her. I draw that conclusion because the possibility seems to me to have been actualized in the case of Virginia.

PART

SIX

|

CAN MORALITY HAVE A eee GOO S 0 UN DAT ON:

Introduction

45

Morality: Religious and Secular PATRICK NOWELL-SMITH

46

Divine Command Metaethics Modified Again RoBeRT ADAMS

47

Abraham, Isaac, and Euthyphro: God and the Basis of

Morality NORMAN KRETZMANN

rah ——

a V

4 OV

Te

tat

gio

TARE

TAHA Fee Sarees “m8 |

paitonts mal i Vibes

a. ey

ae

pike LS Paes a Ne etsbOLyinamnens a aha iam i PAs 8) SA

ie

oe

Beta ahaa th 5

ae

J

4

Re: ek.

i

aa

\ ids

Aé¢ee

t son ee

Ve a

=F

7

ee

Introduction

The claim that moral truths must be grounded in a divine reality is one that has been widely endorsed by religious believers. Yet this belief has been subject to powerful criticism from at least the time of Plato. This Part includes essays which discuss the arguments that have been raised for and against the claim that morality can have a religious foundation. In the first essay, Patrick Nowell-Smith argues that the most common argument for a religious-based morality is mistaken and that, further, religious-based moralities seem to be the result of something like stunted moral development. Religious believers often hold that for moral claims to be true, they must be grounded in some authority who has the power to make them true (often reflected in slogans such as “every law needs a law-giver’”’). Seen this way, moral claims are likened to mandates ofcivil law. A prescription does not count as a “civil law” until someone invested with the proper authority says that it does. The analogy, however, is faulty (argues Nowell-Smith) because while morality may need some foundation, there is no reason to think that it is a command or dictate of some “moral authority.” Furthermore, the fact that religious people ground moral beliefs in mere divine commands shows a moral immaturity on their part. Early in life we adopt moral standards because they are commanded by our elders. But it is a sign of maturity that we begin to understand what underlies those commands and thus come to realize the moral subtleties that sometimes require that we make exceptions to the moral generalizations which might still be good rules of thumb. Since basing morality on the whims of another being makes it impossible to come to know the principles that “underlie” the commands (since there are none; it is not that God bases his decrees con-

cerning right and wrong on more fundamen-

tal facts — the principles of goodness are defined by God’s issuing the corresponding command), religious believers are perpetually stuck at this immature stage, basing their behaviors on moral prescriptions for which no reasons can be given. Robert Adams, in the following essay, offers a first defense of a religious-based morality. In his essay, Adams revises a divine command theory of morality which he originally defended in an earlier, widely republished essay. Adams claims that ethical wrongness is to be defined as contrariety to a divine command, whereas Nowell-Smith assumes that the religious believer exhibits a sort of moral immaturity because she fails to get to the deeper reasons underlying moral claims. But if Adams is right, the charge fails since there simply is nothing deeper to come to know. Failure to uncover the “deeper reasons” would not then be a sign of immaturity but simply of a clear understanding of what wrongness is. But what of the objection, noted by Nowell-Smith, that

on the divine command theory it seems that just anything could turn out to be morally permissible (since a practice’s being morally permissible depends only on God’s commanding it)? Adams argues that this criticism can be deflected by defining wrongness more narrowly as “contrariety to the commands of a loving God.” Thus, any moral prescription that is inconsistent with divine love is such that it is not possible for God to command it. One might wonder, however, what we are to make of Adams’s appeal to a “loving God” when defining moral rightness and wrongness. Does this imply that there is some further standard of “lovingness” to which God is bound? And ifso, does this constitute the real grounds for the divine moral commands? In the final essay, Norman Kretzmann offers a version of the divine command theory which is significantly different from Adams’s. 401

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION: THE BIG QUESTIONS

Kretzmann begins by setting out the classic dilemma for divine command theories raised by Plato, The dilemma is this; it is either the case that moral truths are true because God commands them, or that God commands the things that he does because they are moral truths, Ifthe former, then it appears that what is moral depends on divine whim, The result is that we are compelled to say that whatever God might command (indiscriminate torture, for example) would be moral, if God commanded it. If the latter, then it appears that there is a moral standard independent of God’s commands which fixes moral truth, But if this is so then God is, strictly speaking, irrelevant to morality. Kretzmann appeals to the doctrine of divine simplicity as a way of escaping the dilemma. According to this doctrine, God is not composed of parts, nor is God distinct from his properties. The doctrine of divine simplicity entails a number of (sometimes strangesounding) claims, among them that God is “identical to” his attributes, This means that God is, in this respect, quite different from the ordinary objects of our experience. I, for example, am unlike God in this respect since I am “distinct trom” my properties. Thus, while I have the property of being two-legged, I could lack this property (if, say, I had one leg amputated) and still be me. Kretzmann argues that once we bring the doctrine of simplicity to bear on the Platonic dilemma described above, the dilemma col-

402

lapses. The reason for the collapse is that it is no longer possible for us to separate out the notion of “perfect goodness” and “that which God commands.” On this view, right actions are right because God, i.e. perfect goodness, “approves” them, and God “approves” them because “perfect goodness,” i.e. God, dictates that they are right. Further Reading Adams,

Robert, “A Modified

Divine Com-

mand Theory of Ethical Wrongness,” from Religion and Morality: a Collection of Essays, ed. Gene

Outka and John Reeder

(New York: Doubleday, 1973). Helm, Paul, The Divine Command Theory of Ethics (Oxtord: Oxford University Press, 1979),

Idziak, J. M., Divine Command Morality: Historical and Contemporary Readings (New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1980). Mouw, Richard, The Gea Whe Commands (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990). Neilson, Kai, Eevies Witheut God (New York: Pemberton Books, 1973), ch. 2. Quinn, Philip, Divine Commands and Moral Requirements (Oxtord:

Clarendon

Press,

1978). , “The Recent Revival of Divine Command Ethics,” Philesepky and Phenomenological Research, 50 (suppl.) (1990), pp. 345-65.

MORALITY: RELIGIOUS AND SECULAR

45

Morality: Religious and Secular*

Patrick Nowell-Smith The central thesis of this paper is that religious morality is infantile. I am well aware that this will sound absurd. To suggest that Aquinas and Kant - to say nothing of millions of Christians oflesser genius — never grew up is surely to put oneself out of court as a philosopher to be taken seriously. My thesis is not so crude as that; I shall try to show that, in the moralities of adult Christians, there are

elements which can be set apart from the rest and are, indeed, inconsistent with them, that these elements can properly be called “religious” and that just these elements are infantile. I shall start by making some assumptions that I take to be common ground between Christians and secular humanists. I propose to say almost nothing about the content of morality; that love, sympathy, loyalty, and consideration are virtues, and that their opposites, malice, cruelty, treachery, and callousness, are vices, are propositions that I shall assume without proof. One can’t do everything at the same time, and my job now is not to refute Thrasymachus. Secondly, I propose to occupy, as common ground, some much more debatable territory; I shall assume in broad outline the metaphysical view of the nature of man that we have inherited from Plato and Aristotle. The basis of this tradition is that there is something called “Eudaimonia” or “The Good Life,” that this consists in fulfilling to the highest possible degree the nature of Man, and that the nature of Man is to be a rational, social animal. Love, I shall assume, is the supreme virtue because the life of * From The Rationalist Annual (London: Pemberton Publishing, 1961). Reprinted by permission.

love is, in the end, the only life that is fully

rational and fully social. My concern will be, not with the content of morality, but with its form or structure, with the ways in which the manifold concepts and affirmations of which a moral system is composed hang together; not with rival views of what conduct is moral and what is immoral, but with rival views of what morality 2s. This contrast between form and content is not difficult to grasp, but experience has taught me that it is often ignored. When they discover that I have moral views but no religious beliefs, people often ask me this question: “Where do you get your moral ideas from?” Faced with this question, my habit is to take it literally and to answer it truthfully. “From my father and mother,” I say, “from the companions of my boyhood and manhood, from teachers and from books, from my own reflections on the experience I have had of the sayings and doings of myself and others, an experience similar in countless ways to that of other people born of middle-class English parents some forty-five years ago, but in its totality unique.” This boring and autobiographical answer never satisfies the questioner; for, though it is the right answer to the question he actually asked, it is not, as I very well knew, the answer to the question he really had in mind. He did not want to know from whom I learnt my moral views; he wanted to know what authority I have for holding them. But why, if this is what he wanted to know, did he not ask me? He has confused

two different questions; and it is natural enough that he should have confused them, since it is often the case that to point to the source of an opinion or claim is to show the 403

PATRICK NOWELL-SMITH

authority on which it is based. We appeal to the dictionary to vindicate an assertion about the spelling of aword, and the policeman’s production of a warrant signed by a magistrate is a necessary and sufficient condition of his authority to enter my house. But even a dictionary can make mistakes, and one may doubt whether one ought to admit the policeman even after his legal title to enter has been satisfactorily made out. “He certainly has a legal right,” one might say, “but even so, things being as they are, ought I to admit him?” Those who put this question to me have made an assumption that they have not examined because they have not reflected sufficiently on the form of morality. They have simply assumed that just as the legal propriety of an action is established by showing it to emanate from an authoritative source, so also the moral propriety of an action must be established in the same way; that legal rightness has the same form as moral rightness, and may therefore be used to shed light on it. This assumption made, they naturally suppose that, even when I agree with them — for example, about the immorality of murder — I have no right to hold this impeccable view unless I can show that I have received it from an authoritative source. My autobiographical answer clearly fails to do this. My parents may have had a right to my obedience, but no right to make the moral law. Morality, on this view, is an affair of being commanded to behave in certain ways by some person who has a right to issue such commands; and, once this premise is granted, it is said with some reason that only God has such a right. Morality must be based on religion, and a morality not so based, or one based on the wrong religion, lacks all validity. It is this premise, that being moral consists in obedience to commands, that I deny. There is an argument, familiar to philosophers but of which the force is not always appreciated, which shows that this premise cannot be right. Suppose that I have satisfied myself that God has commanded me to do this or that thing — 404

in itself a large supposition, but I will waive objections on this score in order to come quickly to the main point — it still makes sense for me to ask whether or not I ought to do it. God, let us say, is an omnipotent, omniscient creator of the universe. Such a creator might have evil intentions and might command me to do wrong; and if that were the case though it would be imprudent to disobey, it would not be wrong. There is nothing in the idea of an omnipotent, omniscient creator which, by itself, entails his goodness or his right to command, unless we are prepared to assent to Hobbes’s phrase, “God, who by right, that is by irresistible power, commandeth all things.” Unless we accept Hobbes’s consistent but repugnant equation of God’s right with his might, we must be persuaded independently of his goodness before we admit his right to command. We must judge for ourselves whether the Bible is the inspired word of a just and benevolent God or a curious amalgam of profound wisdom and gross superstition. To judge this is to make a moral decision, so that in the end, so far from morality being based on religion, religion is based on morality. Before passing to my main theme, I must add two cautions about what this argument does not prove. It does not prove that we should in no case take authority as a guide. Suppose that a man’s aim is to make money on the Stock Exchange. He decides that it would be most profitable to invest his money in company A; but his broker prefers company B. He will usually be well advised to accept the verdict of his broker, even if the broker is, as they often are, inarticulate in giving his reasons. He might decide to put all his financial affairs in the hands ofa broker, and to do nothing but what the broker tells him to do. But this decision, even if it is the only financial decision he ever makes in his life, is still his own. In much the same way, a man might decide to put his conscience wholly into the hands ofa priest or a Church, to make no moral decisions of his own but always to do what the priest tells him. Even he, though he

MORALITY: RELIGIOUS AND SECULAR makes but one moral decision in his life, must make and continually renew that one. Those

who accept the authority of a priest or a Church on what to do are, in accepting that authority, deciding for themselves. They may not fully comprehend that this is so; but that is another matter. Secondly, to deny that morality need or can have an external nonmoral basis on which to stand is by no means to deny that it can have an internal basis, in the sense of one or a few

moral beliefs that are fundamental to the other beliefs of the system. A man’s views on gambling or sex or business ethics may (though they need not) form a coherent system in which some views are held because certain other views are held. Utilitarianism is an example of such a system in which all moral rules are to be judged by their tendency to promote human happiness. A moral system ofthis kind is like a system of geometry in which some propositions appear as axioms, others as theorems owing their place in the system to their derivability from the axioms. Few ofus are so rationalistic as to hold all our moral beliefs in this way, but to move towards this goal is to begin to think seriously about morals. (2)

Inany system of morality we can distin-

guish between its content and its form. By its “content” I mean the actual commands and prohibitions it contains, the characteristics it lists as virtues and as vices; by its “form” I mean the sort ofpropositions it contains and the ways in which these are thought of as connected with each other. The basic distinction here is between a teleological morality in which moral rules are considered to be subordinate to ends, to be rules for achieving ends and consequently to be judged by their tendency to promote those ends, and a deontological system in which moral rules are thought of as absolute, as categorical imperatives in no way depending for their validity on the good or bad consequences of obedience, and in which moral goodness is thought to lie in conformity to these rules for their own sake. The first of these ways of looking

at morality as a whole derives from the Greeks, so I shall call it the Greek view of morality; it can be summed up in the slogan “the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” The second, deriving from Jewish sources, I shall call the Hebrew view. This in-

volves a serious oversimplification, since we find deontological elements in the Greek New Testament and teleological elements in the Hebrew Old Testament; but, taken broadly, the contrast between the deontological character of the Old and the teleological character of the New Testaments is as striking as the difference of language. I shall also indulge in another serious oversimplification in speaking of Christianity as a morality of the Hebrew type while it is, of course, an amalgam of both with different elements predominating in different versions. This oversimplification would be quite unjustifiable if my task were to give an account of Christian morality; but it is legitimate here because my task is to contrast those elements in the Christian tradition which secular humanists accept with those which they reject, and these are broadly coterminous with the Greek and the Hebrew elements in Christianity respectively. How there can be these two radically different ways of looking at morality, one which sees it as a set of recipes to be followed for the achievement of ends, the other which sees it

as a set of commands to be obeyed, can best be understood if we consider the way in which we learn what it is to be moral. For a man’s morality is a set of habits of choice, of characteristic responses to his environment, in particular to his social environment, the people among whom he lives; and habits are learnt in childhood. Growing up morally is learning to cope with the world into which we find ourselves pitched, and especially to cope with our relations with other human beings. In the course of living we learn to reflect on our responses, to find in some of them sources of satisfaction, in others of regret, and “coping with the world” means coping with it in a manner ultimately satisfactory to ourselves. Philosophers such as Aristotle and Hobbes 405

PATRICK NOWELL-SMITH

who boldly and crudely identified “good” with “object of desire” may have made a technical mistake; but they were certainly on the right lines. If men had no desires and aversions, if

they felt no joy and no remorse, if they were totally indifferent to everything in the universe, there would be no such thing as choice and we should have no concept of morality, of good and evil. The baby is born with some desires, not many; others it acquires as time goes on. Learning to cope with the world is learning how to satisfy and to modify these desires in a world that is partly propitious and partly hos- — tile. For the world does not leap to gratify my desires like an assiduous flunkey; I do not get fed by being hungry. My desires are incompatible with each other and they come into conflict with those of other people. We have to learn both to bend the world to our wills and to bend our wills to the world. A man’s morality is the way in which, in important matters, he does this.

Men are by nature rational and social animals, but only potentially so; they become actually rational and social only in a suitable environment, an environment in which they learn to speak a language. Learning how to cope with one’s environment goes on side by side with learning to talk. The child’s concepts, the meanings which, at every stage, words have for him, change as his horizon becomes wider, as he learns to grasp ideas that are more and more complicated, more and more remote from the primitive actions and passions that initially constitute his entire conscious life. It is not therefore surprising that the form of his morality, the meanings which moral words have and the ways in which they hang together, reflect at each stage the kind of experience he has. To babies who cannot yet talk we cannot, without serious error, attribute any thoughts at all; but though they cannot think, they can certainly feel, experience pleasure and pain, satisfaction and frustration. It is in these preverbal experiences that the origin of the ideas of “good” and “bad,” even of “right” and “wrong,” must be found;

406

for their later development I turn to Piaget. My case for saying that religious morality is infantile cannot be conclusively made out without a much more detailed study of Piaget’s researches than I have space for; I shall concentrate on a few points that seem to me to bear directly on the issue between the religious morality of law and the secular morality

of purpose. Piaget made a detailed study of the attitudes of children of different ages to the game of marbles, and he found three distinct stages. A very small child handles the marbles and throws them about as his humor takes him;

he is playing, but not playing a game; for there are no rules governing his actions, no question of anything being done right or wrong. Towards the end of this stage he will, to some extent, be playing according to rules; for he will imitate older children who are playing a rule-governed game. But the child himself is not conscious of obeying rules; he has not yet grasped the concept ofa “rule,” of what a rule is. We may call this the premoral attitude to rules. The second type of attitude is exhibited by children from five to nine. During this stage, says Piaget, “the rules are regarded as sacred and inviolable, emanating from adults and lasting for ever. Every suggested alteration in the rules strikes the child as a transgression.” Piaget calls this attitude to rules “heteronomous” to mark the fact that the children regard the rules as coming, as indeed they do, from the outside, as being imposed on them by others. We might also call this the “deontological stage,” to mark the fact that the rules are not questioned; they just are the rules of marbles, and that’s that. At this stage the child has the concept of a rule, he knows what a rule is; but he has not yet asked what a rule is for. This deontological character is obviously connected with the unchangeability of the rules. Like laws in a primitive society, they are thought of as having been handed down from time immemorial, as much a part of the natural order of things as sunrise and sunset. The child may chafe at obedience and may

MORALITY: RELIGIOUS AND SECULAR

sometimes disobey; but he does not question the authority of the rules. Finally, at the third stage, the child begins to learn what the rules are for, what the point of having any rules is, and why it is better to have this rule rather than that. “The rule,” says Piaget, “is now looked upon as a law due to mutual consent, which you must respect if you want to be loyal, but which it is permissible to alter on condition ofenlisting the general opinion on your side.” He calls this type of attitude “autonomous” to mark the fact that the children now regard themselves, collectively, as the authors of the rules. This is not to say that they falsely suppose themselves to have invented them; they know well enough that they received them from older children. But they are the authors in the sense of being the final authorities; what tradition gave them they can change; from “this is how we learnt to play” they no longer pass unquestioningly to “this is how we ought to play.” We might also call this stage “teleological” to mark the fact that the rules are no longer regarded as sacred, as worthy of obedience simply because they are what they are, but as serving a purpose, as rules for playing a game that they want to play. Rules-there must certainly be; and in one sense they are sacred enough. Every player must abide by them; he cannot pick and choose. But in another sense there is nothing sacred about them; they are, and are known to be, a mere device, to be molded and adapted in the light of the purpose which they are understood by all the players to serve. To illustrate the transition between the second and the third stages I should like to refer to a case from my own experience. Last summer I was with one other adult and four children on a picnic, and the children wanted to play rounders. We had to play according to the rules they had learnt at school because those just were the rules of rounders. This involved having two teams, and you can well imagine that, with only three players in each team, the game quickly ran on the rocks. When I suggested adapting the rules to our circumstances all the children were scandalized at

first. But the two older children soon came round to the idea that, situated as we were, we should have to change the rules or not play

at all and to the idea that it would not be wicked to change the rules. The two younger children were troubled, one might say, in their consciences about the idea of changing the rules. In Piaget’s words, they thought of an alteration of rules as a transgression against them, having as yet no grasp of the distinction between an alteration of the rules by common consent to achieve a common purpose and the unilateral breach or defiance of them. In the eyes of these younger children we were not proposing to play a slightly different game, one better adapted to our situation; we were proposing to play the old game, but to play it wrong, almost dishonestly. In another of Piaget’s researches, this time directly concerned with moral attitudes, he told the children pairs of stories in each of which a child does something in some sense “bad” and asked which of the children was naughtier, which deserved most punishment. In one such story a child accidentally breaks fifteen cups while opening a door, and in the companion story breaks one cup while stealing jam. The replies of the very young children are mixed, some saying that the first child was naughtier; older children are unanimous in calling the second child naughtier. They have got beyond the primitive level of assessing moral guilt by the extent of the damage done. Some of the youngest children do not recognize an act as wrong unless it is actually found out and punished, and we may call these last two points taken together “moral realism,” because they display an attitude of mind that makes questions of morality questions of external fact. The inner state of the culprit — his motives and intentions — have nothing to do with it. To break crockery is wrong; therefore to break more crockery is more wrong. Moral laws are like laws of Nature, and Nature gives no marks for good or bad intentions and accepts no excuses. The fire will burn you if you touch it, however careful you were to avoid 407

PATRICK NOWELL-SMITH it. But if you are careless and, by good luck, avoid it, you will not be burnt; for Nature gives no bad marks for carelessness either. In the

same way, if you lie and are punished, that is bad; but if you lie and are not punished, that is not bad at all. The fact that retribution did not follow shows that the lie was not, in this

case, wrong. (3) Iwant now to compare the religious with the secular attitude towards the moral system which, in its content, both Christians and Humanists accept. I shall try to show that the religious attitude retains these characteristics of deontology, heteronomy and realism which are proper and indeed necessary in the development ofa child, but not proper to an adult: But I must repeat the caution with which I began. The views which I called “moral realism,” which make intentions irrelevant, were expressed by very young children. No doubt many of these children were Christians and I do not wish to suggest that they never grew up, that they never adopted a more mature and enlightened attitude. This would be absurd. My thesis is rather that these childish attitudes survive in the moral attitudes of adult Christians — and of some secular moralists — as an alien element, like an outcrop of igneous rock in an alluvial plain. When Freud says of someone that he is fixated at the oral stage of sexuality he does not mean that he still sucks his thumb; he means rather that some of his

characteristic attitudes and behavior patterns can be seen as an adult substitute for thumb sucking. In the same way, I suggest that some elements characteristic of Christian morality are substitutes for childish attitudes. In the course of this comparison I shall try to show how these infantile attitudes belong to a stage that is a necessary stage on the way to the fully adult, a stage which we must have passed through in order to reach maturity. It needs little reflection to see that deontology and heteronomy are strongly marked features of all religious moralities. First for deontology. For some Christians the fundamental sin, the fount and origin of all sin, is 408

disobedience to God. It is not the nature of the act of murder or of perjury that makes it wrong; it is the fact that such acts are transgressions of God’s commands. On the other hand, good acts are not good in themselves, good in their own nature, but good only as acts of obedience to God. “I give no alms only to satisfy the hunger of my brother, but to accomplish the will and command of my God; I draw not my purse for his sake that demands it, but his that enjoined it” (Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici I, 2). Here charity itselfisheld to be good only because God has told us to be charitable. It is difficult not to see in this a reflection of the small child’s attitude towards his parents and the other authorities from whom he learns what it is right to do. In the first instance little Tommy learns that it is wrong to pull his sister’s hair, not because it hurts her, but because Mummy forbids it. The idea of heteronomy is also strongly marked in Christian morality. “Not as I will, but as thou wilt.” The demand made by Christianity is that of surrendering self, not in the ordinary sense of being unselfish, of loving our neighbor and even our enemy. It is the total surrender of the wall that is required; Abraham must be prepared to sacrifice Isaac at God’s command, and I take this to mean

that we must be prepared to sacrifice our most deeply felt moral concerns if God should require us to do so. If we dare to ask why, the only answer is “Have faith”; and faith is an essentially heteronomous idea; for it is not a reasoned trust in someone in whom we have good grounds for reposing trust; it is blind faith, utter submission of our own reason and

will. Now, to the small child morality is necessarily deontological and heteronomous in form; he must learn that certain actions are

right and others wrong before he can begin to ask why they are, and he learns this from other people. The child has his own spontaneous springs of action; there are things he wants to do off his own bat; morality is a curb, at first nothing but a curb on his own voli-

MORALITY: RELIGIOUS AND SECULAR

tion. He comes up against parental discipline, even ifonly in the form ofthe giving and withdrawing oflove, long before he can have any compassion, long before he has any conception of others as sentient beings. When he begins to learn language, words like “bad” must mean simply “what hurts me; what I don’t like”; through the mechanism ofparental discipline they come to mean “what adults forbid and punish me for.” It is only because actions which cause suffering to others figure so largely among parental prohibitions that the child learns to connect the word “bad” with them at all. If we consider the foundations of Christian ethics in more detail we shall find in them moral realism as well. Christianity makes much of charity and the love of our neighbor; but it does not say, as the Greeks did, that this is good because it is what befits the social animal, Man. We ought to be charitable because this is laid on us as a duty and because this state of the soul is the proper state for it during its transient mortal life. We must be charitable because (we are told) only so can we arrive at the soul’s goal, the right relation to God. This fundamental isolation of the individual soul with God seems clearly to reflect what one supposes must be the state of mind of the small baby for whom, at the dawn of consciousness, there is only himself on the one side and the collective world of adults, represented largely by his parents, on the other, for whom the idea of others as individuals, as beings like himself, does not yet exist. This impression is increased when we consider some accounts of what this right relationship between the soul and God is. Granted that to achieve this is the object of right living, just what relationship is it that we are to try to achieve? The terms of the relation are an omnipotent creator and his impotent creature, and between such terms the only relation possible is one of utter one-sided dependence, in which the only attitude proper to the creature must be one of adoration, a

blend of love and fear. Surely this is just how the world must appear to the young child; for

he really zs impotent, wholly dependent on beings whose ways he cannot understand, beings sometimes loving, sometimes angry, but always omnipotent, always capricious — in short, gods. “As for Dr Wulicke himself personally, he had all the awful mystery, duplicity, obstinacy, and jealousy of the Old Testament God. He was as frightful in his smiles as in his anger.” Consider in this connection the ideas of original sin and grace. Every son of Adam is, of his own nature, utterly corrupt, redeemable only by divine grace. Once more, the conditions in which the child learns morality provide an obvious source for this remarkable conception. Parents are not only omniscient and omnipotent; they are also necessarily and always morally in the right. This must be so, since they are, as the child sees it, the authors

of the moral law. Morality, the idea of something being right or wrong, enters the horizon of the child only at those points at which he has, so to speak, a dispute with authority,

only on those occasions on which he is told or made to do something that he does not spontaneously want to do. From these premises that, at the time when the meanings of “right” and “wrong” are being learnt, the child must disagree with its parents and that they must be right he naturally passes to the conclusion that he must always be wrong. To have the sense of actual sin is to have the sense that one has, on this occasion, done wrong; to have the sense of original sin is simply to feel that one must be always and inevitably wrong. This sense ofsin has often been deliberately and cruelly fostered; John Bunyan is not the only man to have left on record the agony of his childhood; but the point I wish to make is that the infantile counterpart of the sense of sin is a necessity at a certain stage of moral development, the stage at which moral words are being learnt and moral rules accepted as necessarily what parents say they are. On the other side of the picture there is the doctrine of grace. Each individual soul is either saved or damned; but its fate, at least 409

PATRICK NOWELL-SMITH

according to some versions, is wholly out of

will come to him, like grace, in a manner that

its own control. In these extreme versions,

both seems and is wholly unconnected with any inwardly felt guilt. The mystery of God’s ways to Man is the mystery of a father’s ways to his children. This characterization of religious morality as essentially infantile may seem to be unnecessary; for do not Christians themselves liken their relationship to God as that of child to father? In so doing they do not seem to me always to realize how incompatible this father — child relationship is with the Greek conception of the good life which they recognize as one of the sources of their moral doctrine. Aristotle says that children, like animals, have no share in the good life (a remark which always sounds so odd when people translate it as “children have no share in happiness”), and the reason he gives is that children do not act. This is a deep furrow to begin to plough at this stage — what is meant by “action”; but briefly it is motion that is self-initiated and responsible. The prime difference between the adult and the child is that the adult has freedom to choose for himself and has, what goes with freedom, responsibility for his actions. In the life ofa child there is always, in the last resort, the parent or some substitute for a parent to turn to. The father is responsible at law

grace is absolutely necessary and wholly sufficient for salvation; and grace is the free gift of God. As far as the creature is concerned, there is absolutely nothing that he can do or even try to do either to merit or to obtain it. From his point of view the giving or withholding of the means of salvation must be wholly capricious. Once more, this is how parental discipline must seem to the child who cannot yet understand its aims and motives. Consider, for

example, how even the most careful and consistent parents react towards what they call the clumsiness of a child. He knocks things over; he fumbles with his buttons. Though most parents do not think of themselves as punishing a child for such things, their behavior is, from the child’s point of view, indistinguishable from punishment. They display more irritation when the child knocks over a valuable vase than when he knocks over a cheap cup, when the button-fumbling happens to occur at a moment when they are in a hurry than when it does not. Ifa father takes from a small child something that is dangerous to play with or stops him hurting himself by a movement necessarily rough, that to the child is indistinguishable from punishment; it is a thwarting of his inclination for no reason that he can see. Children often say things that they know to be untrue; sometimes they are reprimanded for lying, sometimes complimented on their imagination. How can the child know under which heading, the good or the bad, a piece of invention will come, except by observing whether it is punished or rewarded? The child, by this time, is beginning to make efforts to try to please his parents, to do what, in his childish mind, he thinks right. The parents, not being expert child psychologists, will often fail to notice this; more often they will disregard it. To the child, therefore, there is little correlation between his own intentions and the reactions he evokes from the adult world. Salvation in the form of parental smiles and damnation in the form ofparental frowns 410

for the actions of his child; he will undo what

harm the child has done; he will put things right, will save the child from the consequences of his mistakes. To pass from childhood into adulthood is essentially to pass from dependence into freedom, and the price we pay is responsibility. As adults we make our own choices and must accept their consequences; the shield that in our childish petulance we once thought so irksome is no longer there to protect us. To many of us this is a matter of life-long regret, and we search endlessly for a father substitute. Surely “they” will get us out of the mess; there ought to be a law; why doesn’t somebody. These, in this godless age, are the common secular substitutes; religion, when it is not a patent substitute, is only a more profound, a more insinuating one.

MORALITY: RELIGIOUS AND SECULAR

(4) The postulation of a god as the author of the moral law solves no more problems in ethics than the postulation ofa god as first cause solves problems in metaphysics. Nor need we base morality, as I have done, on the metaphysical conception of Man as a rational, social animal, though we shall do so if we care to maintain the link with the old meaning of the word “humanist.” To me, as a philosopher, some systematic view of the whole of my experience, some metaphysic, is essential, and this conception of the nature of Man makes more sense of my experience than any other I know. But I certainly should not argue that because the species Man has such and such a nature, therefore each and every man ought to act in such and such ways. In trying to sketch a humanist morality I shall start simply with the idea that a morality is a set of habits of choice ultimately determined by the question “What life is most satisfactory to me as a whole?” and I start with this because I simply do not understand the suggestion that I ought to do anything that does not fit into this conception. Outside this context the word “ought” has for me no meaning; and here at least I should expect Christians to agree with me. If we start in this way, inquiries into my own nature and into the nature of Man at once become relevant. For my nature is such that there are some things that are impossible for me to do. Some hopes must be illusory, and nothing but frustration could come ofindulging them. I could not, for example, become an operatic tenor or a test cricketer. Inquiries into the nature of Man are relevant in two ways; first, because I have to live as a man

among men, secondly, because all men are to some degree alike and some of my limitations are common to us all. None of us can fly or witness past events. It is only in so far as men are alike that we can even begin to lay down rules as to how they should (all) behave; for it is only in so far as they are alike that they will find satisfaction and frustration in the same things. Prominent among the similarities among men are the animal appetites, the desire for the love and companionship of their

own species, and the ability to think; and it is these three similarities that make us all “moral” beings. Morality consists largely, if not quite wholly, in the attempt to realize these common elements in our nature in a coherent way, and we have found that this cannot be done without adopting moral rules and codes of law. Humanism does not imply the rejection ofall moral rules, but it does imply the rejection of a deontological attitude towards them. Even Piaget’s older children could not have played marbles without rules; but they treated them as adaptable, as subservient to the purpose of playing a game, which is what they wanted to do. They treated the rules as a wise man treats his motor car, not as an object of veneration but as a convenience. This, I suggest, is how we, as adults, should regard moral rules. They are necessary, in the first place, because one man’s aim in life often conflicts with the aims of others and because most of our aims involve the cooperation of others, so that, even for purely selfish reasons, we must conform to rules to which others also conform. Most moral rules, from that prohibiting murder to that enjoining punctuality, exist for this purpose. But morality is not wholly an affair ofregulating our dealings with others; each man has within himself desires of

many different kinds which cannot all be fully satisfied; he must establish an order of priorities. Here I think almost all moralists, from Plato to D. H. Lawrence, have gone astray;

for they have overemphasized the extent to which men are like each other and consequently been led to embrace the illusory concept of a “best life” that is the same for all of us. Plato thought this was a life dominated by the pursuit of knowledge, Lawrence one dominated by the pursuit of sensual experience and animal activity. I do not happen to enjoy lying naked on the grass; but I should not wish to force my preference for intellectual endeavor on anyone who did. Why should we not, within the framework of uniformity required for any life to be satisfactory to anyone at all, seek satisfaction in our own different ways? ... 411

ROBERT ADAMS

46

Divine Command Metaethics Modified Again*

Robert Adams 1

My Old Position

My modified divine command theory was proposed as a partial analysis of the meaning of “(ethically) wrong.” Recognizing that it would be most implausible as an analysis of the sense in which the expression is used by many speakers (for instance, by atheists), I proposed the theory only as an analysis of the meaning of “wrong” in the discourse of some Jewish and Christian believers. In the theory

he commanded it.) I cannot summon up the relevant sort of opposition or negative attitude toward disobedience to such a command,

and I will not say that it would be wrong to disobey it. Such conflicts within the religious ethical belief system are prevented by various background beliefs, which are presupposed by (1). Particularly important is the belief that (3)

that I now prefer, as we shall see, the identifi-

cation of wrongness with contrariety to God’s commands is neither presented as a meaning analysis nor relativized to a group of believers. According to the old theory, however, it is part of the meaning of “(ethically) wrong” for at least some believers that (1)

(for any action X) X is ethically wrong if and only if X is contrary to God’s commands,

God is loving, and therefore does not and will not command such things as (e.g.) the practice of cruelty for its own sake.

But (3) is contingent. It is allowed by the theory to be logically possible for God to command cruelty for its own sake, although the believer is confident he will not do such a thing. Were the believer to come to think (3) false, however, I suggested that his concept of ethical wrongness would “break down.” It would not function as it now does, because

but also that

(2)

“Xis wrong” normally expresses opposition or certain other negative attitudes toward X.

The meaning of “wrong” seems to be overdetermined by (1) and (2). Conflicts could arise. Suppose God commanded me to practice cruelty for its own sake. (More precisely, suppose he commanded me to make it my chief end in life to inflict suffering on other human beings, for no other reason than that * From The Journal of Religious Ethics, 7:1 (1979), pp. 66-79. Reprinted with permission.

412

he would not be prepared to use it to say that any action is wrong (Adams, 1973: 100-102). Because of the interplay and tension of the various considerations involved in it, this picture of the meaning of “(ethically) wrong” is (as I acknowledged) somewhat “untidy.” But its untidiness should not obscure the fact that I meant it quite definitely to follow from the theory that the following are necessary truths: (4)

(5) (6)

If Xis wrong, then X is contrary to the commands of God. If Xis obligatory, then X is required by the commands of God. IfXis ethically permitted, then X is permitted by the commands of God.

DIVINE COMMAND

(7)

Ifthere is not a loving God, then nothing is ethically wrong or obligatory or permitted.

These four theses are still taken to be necessary truths in my present divine command theory.

4 The Nature of Wrongness and the Meaning of “Wrong” I do not think that every competent user of “wrong” in its ethical sense must know what the nature of wrongness is. The word is used — with the same meaning, I would now say — by people who have different views, or none at all, about the nature of wrongness. As I remarked in my earlier paper, “There is probably much less agreement about the most basic issues in moral theory than there is about many ethical issues of less generality” (Adams, 1973: 118). That people can use an expression to signify an ethical property, knowing it is a property they seek (or shun, as the case may be), but not knowing what its nature is, was realized by Plato when he characterized the good as That which every soul pursues, doing everything for the sake ofit, divining that it is something, but perplexed and unable to grasp adequately what it is or to have such a stable beliefas about other things. (Republic 505D-E)

What every competent user of “wrong” must know about wrongness is, first of all, that wrongness is a property of actions (perhaps also of intentions and ofvarious attitudes, but certainly of actions), and second, that people are generally opposed to actions they regard as wrong, and count wrongness as a reason (often a conclusive reason) for opposing an action. In addition I think the competent user must have some opinions about what actions have this property, and some fairly settled dispositions as to what he will count as reasons

METAETHICS MODIFIED AGAIN

for and against regarding an action as wrong. There is an important measure of agreement among competent users in these opinions and dispositions — not complete agreement, nor universal agreement on some points and disagreement on others, but overlapping agreements of one person with another on some points and with still others on other points. “To call an action ‘wrong’ is, among other things, to classify it with certain other actions,” as having a common property, “and there is considerable agreement . . . as to what actions those are” (Adams, 1973: 119). Torturing children for fun is one of them, in virtually everyone’s opinion. Analysis of the concept or understanding with which the word “wrong” is used is not sufficient to determine what wrongness is. What it can tell us about the nature of wrongness, I think, is that wrongness will be the property of actions (if there is one) that best fills the role assigned to wrongness by the concept. My theory is that contrariety to the commands of a loving God is that property; but we will come to that in section 5. Meanwhile I will try to say something about what is involved in being the property that est fills the relevant role, though I do not claim to be giving an adequate set of individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions. (1) We normally speak of actions being right and wrong as of facts that obtain objectively, independently of whether we think they do. “Wrong” has the syntax of an ordinary predicate, and we worry that we may be mistaken in our ethical judgments. This feature of ethical concepts gives emotivism and prescriptivism in metaethics much oftheir initial implausibility. If possible, therefore, the property to be identified with ethical wrongness should be one that actions have or lack objectively. (ii) The property that is wrongness should belong to those types of action that are thought to be wrong — or at least it should belong to an important central group of them. It would be unreasonable to expect a theory of the nature of wrongness to yield results that 413

ROBERT ADAMS

agree perfectly with pretheoretical opinion. One of the purposes a metaethical theory may serve is to give guidance in revising one’s particular ethical opinions. But there is a limit to how far those opinions may be revised without changing the subject entirely, and we are bound to take it as a major test of the acceptability of a theory of the nature of wrongness that it should in some sense account for the wrongness of a major portion of the types of action we have believed to be wrong. (iii) Wrongness should be a property that not only belongs to the most important types of action that are thought to be wrong, but ° also plays a casual role (or a role as object of perception) in their coming to be regarded as wrong. It should not be connected in a merely fortuitous way with our classification of actions as wrong and not wrong. (iv) Understanding the nature of wrongness should give one more rather than less reason to oppose wrong actions as such. Even if it were discovered (as it surely will not be) that there is a certain sensory pleasure produced by all and only wrong actions, it would be absurd to say that wrongness is the property of producing that pleasure. For the property of producing such a pleasure, in itself, gives us no reason whatever to oppose an action that has the property. (v) The best theory about the nature of wrongness should satisfy other intuitions about wrongness as far as possible. One intuition that is rather widely held and is relevant to theological metaethics is that rightness and wrongness are determined by a law or standard that has a sanctity that is greater than that of any merely human will or institution. We are left, on this view, with a concept of wrongness that has both objective and subjective aspects. The best theory of the nature of wrongness, I think, will be one that identifies wrongness with some property that actions have or lack objectively. But we do not have a fully objective procedure for determining which theory of the nature of wrongness is the best, and therefore which property is wrongness. 414

For example, the property that is wrongness should belong to the most important types of action that are believed to be wrong. But the concept possessed by every competent user of “wrong” does not dictate exactly which types of action those are. A sufficiently eccentric classification of types of actions as right or wrong would not fit the concept. But there is still room for much difference of opinion. In testing theories of the nature of wrongness by their implications about what types of action are wrong, I will be guided by my own classification of types of action as right and wrong, and by my own sense of which parts of the classification are most important. Similarly, in considering whether identifying wrongness with a given property, P, makes wrongness more or less of a reason for opposing an action, I will decide partly on the basis of how P weighs with me. And in general I think that this much is right about prescriptivist intuitions in metaethics: To identify a property with ethical wrongness is in part to assign it a certain complex role in my life (and, for my part, in the life of society); in deciding to do that I will (quite reasonably) be influenced by what attracts and repels me personally. But it does not follow that the theory I should choose is not one that identifies wrongness with a property that actions would have or lack regardless of how I felt about them.

5

A New Divine Command

Theory The account I have given of the concept of wrongness that every competent user of “wrong” must have is consistent with many different theories about the nature of wrongness — for example, with the view that wrongness is the property of failing to maximize human happiness, and with a Marxist theory that wrongness is the property of being contrary to the objective interests of the progressive class or classes. But given typical Christian beliefs about God, it seems to me most plausible to identify wrongness with the

DIVINE COMMAND

property of being contrary to the commands of a loving God. (i) This is a property that actions have or lack objectively, regardless of whether we think they do. (I assume the theory can be filled out with a satisfactory account of what love consists in here.) (ii) The property of being contrary to the commands of a loving God is certainly believed by Christians to belong to all and only wrong actions. (iii) It also plays a causal role in our classification of actions as wrong, in so far as God has created our moral faculties to reflect his commands. (iv) Because of what is believed about God’s actions, purposes, character, and

power, he inspires such devotion and/or fear that contrariness to his commands is seen as a supremely weighty reason for opposing an action. Indeed, (v) God’s commands constitute a law or standard that seems to believers to have a sanctity that is not possessed by any merely human will or institution. My new divine command theory of the nature of ethical wrongness, then, is that ethical wrongness 7s (i.e. is identical with) the property of being contrary to the commands of a loving God. I regard this as a metaphysically necessary, but not an analytic or a priori truth. Because it is not a conceptual analysis, this claim is not relative to a religious subcommunity of the larger linguistic community. It purports to be the correct theory of the nature of the ethical wrongness that everybody (or almost everybody) is talking about. Further explanation is in order, first about the notion of a divine command, and second about the ecessity that is claimed here. On the first point I can only indicate here the character of the explanation that is needed, for it amounts to nothing less than a theory of revelation. Theists sometimes speak of wrong action as action contrary to the “will” of God, but that way of speaking ignores some important distinctions. One is the distinction between the absolute will of God (his “good pleasure”) and his revealed will. Any Christian theology will grant that God in his good pleasure sometimes decides, for reasons that

METAETHICS MODIFIED AGAIN

may be mysterious to us, not to do everything he could to prevent a wrong action. According to some theologies nothing at all can happen contrary to God’s good pleasure. It is difficult, therefore, to suppose that all wrong

actions are unqualifiedly contrary to God’s will in the sense of his good pleasure. It is God’s revealed will — not what he wants or plans to have happen, but what he has told us to do — that is thought to determine the rightness and wrongness of human actions. Roman Catholic theology has made a further distinction, within God’s revealed will, between his commands, which it would be wrong not to fol-

low, and “counsels (of perfection),” which it would be better to follow but not wrong not to follow. It is best, therefore, in our metaethical theory, to say that wrongness is con-

trariety to God’s commands, and commands must have been issued, promulgated, or somehow revealed. The notion ofthe issuance of a divine command requires a theory of revelation for its adequate development. The first such theory that comes to mind may be a biblical literalism that takes divine commands to be just what is written in the Bible as commanded by God. But there will also be Roman Catholic theories involving the magisterium of the Church, a Quaker theory about “the inner light,” theories about “general revelation” through the moral feelings and intuitions of unbelievers as well as believers, and other theories as well.

To develop these theories and choose among them is far too large a task for the present essay. The thesis that wrongness is (identical with) contrariety to a loving God’s commands must be metaphysically necessary if it is true. That is, it cannot be false in any possible world ifit is true in the actual world. For if it were false in some possible world, then wrongness would be nonidentical with contrariety to God’s commands in the actual world as well, by the transitivity of identity, just as Matthew and Levi must be nonidentical in all worlds if they are nonidentical in any. This argument establishes the metaphysi415

ROBERT ADAMS

cal necessity of property identities in general; and that leads me to identify wrongness with contrariety to the commands ofa loving God, rather than simply with contrariety to the commands of God. Most theists believe that both of those properties are in fact possessed by all and only wrong actions. But if wrongness is simply contrariety to the commands of God, it is necessarily so, which implies that it would be wrong to disobey God even if he were so unloving as to command the practice of cruelty for its own sake. That consequence is unacceptable. I am not prepared to adopt the negative attitude toward possible disobedience in that situation that would be involved in identifying wrongness simply with contrariety to God’s commands. The loving character of the God who issues them seems to me therefore to be a metaethically relevant feature of divine commands. (I assume that in deciding what property is wrongness, and therefore would be wrongness in all possible worlds, we are to rely on our own actual moral feelings and convictions, rather than on those that we or others would have in other possible worlds.) If it is necessary that ethical wrongness is contrariety to a loving God’s commands, it follows that no actions would be ethically wrong if there were not a loving God. This consequence will seem (at least initially) implausible to many, but I will try to dispel as much as I can of the air of paradox. It should be emphasized, first ofall, that my theory does not imply what would ordinarily be meant by saying that no actions are ethically wrong if there zs no loving God. If there is no loving God, then the theological part of my theory is false; but the more general part presented in section 4 implies that in that case ethical

416

wrongness is the property with which it is identified by the best remaining alternative theory. Similarly, if there is in fact a loving God, and if ethical wrongness is the property of being contrary to the commands of a loving God, there is still, I suppose, a possible world,

w,, in which there would not be a loving God but there would be people to whom w, would seem much as the actual world seems to us,

and who would use the word “wrong” much as we use it. We may say that they would associate it with the same concept as we do, although the property it would signify in their mouths is not wrongness. The actions they call “wrong” would not be wrong; that is, they would not have the property that actually is wrongness (the property of being contrary to the commands of a loving God). But that is not to say that they would be mistaken whenever they predicted “is wrong” of an action. For “wrong” in their speech would signify the property (if any) that is assigned to it by the metaethical theory that would be the best in relation to an accurate knowledge of their situation in w,. We can even say that they would believe, as we do, that cruelty is wrong, if by

that we mean, not that the property they would ascribe to cruelty by calling it “wrong” is the same as the property that we so ascribe, but that the subjective psychological state that they would express by the ascription is that same that we express... . Reference Adams,

Robert Merrihew,

“A Modified

Divine

Command Theory of Ethical Wrongness,” in Religion and Morality, ed. Gene Outka and John P. Reeder, Jr. (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor,

1973), pp. 318-47.

ABRAHAM, ISAAC, AND EUTHYPHRO

47

Abraham, Isaac, and Euthyphro: God and the Basis of Morality*

Norman Kretzmann Hamartia in its New Testament sense of moral fault retains the flavor of its older sense of missing the mark. And if we ask against that biblical background, “who sets up the moral mark that hamartia is the missing of?” the question answers itself. My main concern in this paper grows naturally out of that question and its obvious answer, for I want to consider just what is involved in God’s establishing of moral principles. Every reply to this question is at least the beginning of a theory of religious morality, and at least three such theories will be examined in this paper. The relationship I want to explore between God and morality is especially well-endowed with concrete examples in the world’s great literature, and the story of Abraham and Isaac is surely the most familiar of them. But because I will want to refer to one or two ofits details, I will refresh the reader’s memory by presenting the whole story here: The time came when God put Abraham to the test. “Abraham,” he called, and Abraham replied, “Here I am.” God said, “Take your son Isaac, your only son, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah. There you shall offer him as a sacrifice on one of the hills which I will show you.” So Abraham rose early in the morning and saddled his ass, and he took with him two

place of which God had spoken. On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. He said to his men, “Stay here with the ass while I and the boy go over there; and when we have worshipped we will come back to you.” So Abraham took the wood for the sacrifice and laid it on his son Isaac’s shoulder; he himself carried the fire and the knife, and the

two of them went on together. Isaac said to Abraham, “Father,” and he answered, “What is it, my son?” Isaac said, “Here are the fire and

the wood, but where is the young beast for the sacrifice?” Abraham answered, “God will provide himself with a young beast for a sacrifice, my son.” And the two of them went on together and came to the place of which God had spoken. There Abraham built an altar and arranged the wood. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar on top of the wood. Then he stretched out his hand and took the knife to kill his son; but the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven, “Abraham, Abraham.”

He an-

swered, “Here I am.” The Angel of the Lord said, “Do not raise your hand against the boy; do not touch him. Now I know that you are a God-fearing man. You have not withheld from me your son, your only son.” Abraham looked up, and there he saw a ram caught by its horns in a thicket. So he went and took the ram and offered it as a sacrifice instead of his son. Abraham named that place Jehovah-jireh [that is, the Lord will provide ]."

of his men and his son Isaac; and he split the firewood for the sacrifice, and set out for the

* From Hamartia: The Concept of Error in the Western Tradition. Essays in Honor ofJohn M. Crossett, ed. Donald V. Stump, James A. Arieti, Lloyd Gerson, and Eleonore Stump (New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1983), pp. 27-40, 41-50. Reprinted with permission.

It is clear that Abraham loved his son — not only from God’s reference to Isaac as “your only son, whom you love,” but also, I think, from Abraham’s answer to Isaac’s question, an answer that seems intended to shield Isaac as long as possible. But it is equally clear that Abraham was prepared to carry out God’s command: “he stretched out his hand and 417

NORMAN KRETZMANN

took the knife to kill his son.” How are those two facts to be reconciled? I want to consider just three answers that might be drawn from the story. One of them fits the story best, but neither of the others is wildly implausible at first glance. The first of these answers is that Abraham was prepared to kill his only son, whom he loved, because he was afraid of what God would do to him if he disobeyed or hopeful of some reward for his obedience. And in fact the story goes on to tell that Abraham was rewarded, gloriously. There are good philosophical reasons to deny that even God could know ahead of time what Abraham would freely decide to do, and it should be noted that in the story God says, “ Now I know... .”” But there is no reason to suppose that God would not know what Abraham was thinking simultaneously with Abraham’s thinking it. And so if this first answer is to be taken seriously, God is showering Abraham with incomparable blessings for obeying him while thinking along these lines: “I know that what I’m about to do is horrible, but who knows what awful thing might happen to me if I don’t do it, or what marvelous things God might do for me if Igo through with it?” God need not even be particularly good to be repelled by such a character, and it is strictly incredible that Abraham should be singled out for such a blessing on the basis of obedience rendered in such a spirit. Behavior of the sort attributed to Abraham in this first answer is prudent, and there are of course many circumstances in which prudent behavior is just what’s wanted. But prudent behavior is not to be confused with moral behavior, and when a moral issue as stark as the one in this story is overridden by considerations of prudence, prudent behavior is immoral behavior. It seems clear to me, then, that the very fact that the story ends with God’s rewarding Abraham as he does is powerful evidence against taking this first answer seriously. And, anyway, since obeying commands, even divine commands, out of fear of punishment or hope of reward cannot count as moral behavior, the

418

first answer would make the story of Abraham and Isaac irrelevant to our investigation of the relationship between God and morality. A second initially plausible answer to the question why Abraham was prepared to kill his beloved son at God’s command is that he believed that the horrible act had been made morally right simply by the fact that God had commanded it. This answer is relevant to our purposes as the first one is not, and I will have a good deal more to say about it and about the theory of religious morality it represents. It is also harder to reject as an interpretation of the story; there is, for instance, nothing in

the fact that God blesses Abraham that is obviously at variance with this answer. It will be easiér to say what I think is wrong with this answer in the light ofa consideration ofa third answer, which I think is the right one. The third answer is that Abraham was prepared to kill Isaac because, throughout his ordeal, Abraham firmly held all four of these beliefs: God has commanded me to kill my son; God is good and altogether worthy of my obedience; for me to kill my son, even asa sacrifice to God, would be horribly wrong; God is good and will not allow me to do something horribly wrong in obedience to his commands. Those four beliefs certainly strain against one another, but they are not incompatible. Abraham could hold them all without being inconsistent, and if he did hold them all, his trust in God was unconditional. That

it was indeed unconditional can be seen in the line “he stretched out his hand and took the knife to kill his son.” Obviously Abraham’s state of mind was not that of an ordinary decent God-fearing father, who on finding himself in such harrowing circumstances might think “Surely God won’t let me actually do this horrible thing; so V’ll go along with his command, at least until the last minute. But

if there’s no divine reprieve by then, I’Il know God wasn’t good after all, and T’ll save Isaac myself.” A conditional trust of that sort would have been sensible as well as decent, but it would have fallen far short of the religious heroism with which Abraham was credited by

ABRAHAM, ISAAC, AND EUTHYPHRO St Paul and St James.* So if Abraham trusted

God’s goodness, he trusted unconditionally: he took the knife to kill his son, not merely to raise his arm as if to kill his son. But where is the evidence that he did, in fact, trust God to save Isaac (and thereby to save Isaac’s father from wrongdoing)? When it was all over, Abraham named the hilltop with a name that means “the Lord will provide”; I think that that name was intended to blazon out in triumph what he had been steadfastly, silently saying to himself for three whole days: “The Lord will provide.” And for further evidence of his trust in God’s goodness, look again at the exchange between the boy and his father:

tered in the second and third interpretations of the story) can be evaluated, they need to be more fully presented and more clearly distinguished. Happily, the classic clarification and differentiation of views like these takes place in the setting of another good story, the one told in Plato’s dialogue Euthyphro. Socrates meets Euthyphro outside one of the Athenian courts of law and learns that Euthyphro is there to prosecute his own father on a charge of murder. Socrates is shocked: “most men,” he says, “would not know how they could do this and be right.”* And so he supposes that the explanation for Euthyphro’s otherwise bizarre behavior must lie in the fact that the victim, too, was a

Isaac said to Abraham, “Father,” and he answered, “What is it, my son?” Isaac said, “Here are the fire and the wood, but where is the young beast for the sacrifice?” Abraham answered, “God will provide himself with a young beast for a sacrifice, my son.”

The writer of the story leaves it to us to understand the emotions in this scene, and surely all of us can do so. But when this scene is viewed against the background of the second answer, according to which Abraham thinks that he will in fact be sacrificing his son quite soon, the father’s reply is not only intended to shield the boy for a few more minutes, it is also a little joke — a joke the point of which will be the last thing Isaac ever sees. Cruel irony at the boy’s expense is incompatible with Abraham’s love for him, however, and so Abraham’s reply must be no joke but rather the straightforward expression of his trust. Only the third answer provides an interpretation that fits the story, one that also provides

a basis for Paul’s assessment of Abraham as “the father of all who have faith.” More important for my purposes is the fact that this third answer provides us with an instance of a second theory of religious morality — the view that Gods goodness (together with his knowledge) entatls that the actions he approves of are morally right and the actions he disapproves of are morally wrong. Before these competing theories (encoun-

member of Euthyphro’s Euthyphro’s reply:

family.

Here

is

It is ridiculous, Socrates, for you to think that it makes any difference whether the victim is a stranger or a relative. One should only watch whether the killer acted justly or not; if he acted justly, let him go, but if not, one should prosecute, even if the killer shares your hearth and table. The pollution is the same if you knowingly keep company with such a man and do not cleanse yourself and him by bringing him to justice. The victim was a dependent of mine, and when we were farming in Naxos he was a servant of ours. He killed one of our household slaves in drunken anger, so my father bound him hand and foot and threw him in a ditch, then sent a man here to enquire from the priest what should be done. During that time he gave no thought or care to the bound man, as being a killer, and it was no matter if he died, which he did. Hunger and cold and his bonds caused his death before the messenger came back from the seer. Both my father and my other relatives are angry that Iam prosecuting my father for murder on behalf of amurderer, as he did not even kill him. They say that such a victim does not deserve a thought and that it is impious for a son to prosecute his father for murder. But their ideas of the divine attitude to piety and impiety are wrong, Socrates. (58—-E)

Without suggesting that I know anything about Athenian law or even much about law

419

NORMAN

KRETZMANN

generally, I think Euthyphro’s charge of murder would be dismissed, and I think Euthyphro thought so, too. What matters to Euthyphro is not that his father should be convicted, or even that he should be tried;

what matters is that Euthyphro should, by bringing the case to the judges, publicly acknowledge that an injustice has been perpetrated by his father (and that much is obviously true). And although he is indignant that Socrates should think that the relationship of the victim to Euthyphro might motivate his prosecuting his father, the perpetrator’s relationship to Euthyphro clearly does motivate him. He says that if the killer acts unjustly “one should prosecute, even if the killer shares your hearth and table,” but he has no doubt fallen

into the habit of putting it that way because of the flaming row he’s having with his family, who plainly cling to the ancient Greek principle of filial piety. The way Euthyphro the moral innovator sees it, one should prosecute especially if the killer shares one’s hearth and table; for what worries Euthyphro most is not the violation of the criminal code or even the injustice, but “the pollution” to which you are subjected “if you knowingly keep company with such a man and do not cleanse yourself and him dy bringing him to justice.” What drives Euthyphro, then, is the ideal of moral or spiritual purity, and he undertakes the legal case against his father in the service of that ideal and with a care for his father’s purification as well as his own. Poor Euthyphro! People who have heard what he’s up to think he’s crazy, as he himself reports to Socrates (4A), but it is the attitude of his own father and family that is especially hard to bear. “They say ... that it is zmpious for a son to prosecute his father for murder,” thereby revealing that they have completely missed the special, even radical, filial piety underlying Euthyphro’s admittedly bizarre behavior as well as failing utterly to understand the nature of religious piety: “But their ideas of the divine attitude toward piety and impiety are wrong, Socrates.” Socrates picks up the implication: “Whereas ... you think that your knowledge of the di420

vine, and of piety and impiety, is so accurate that... you have vo fear of having acted impiously in bringing your father to trial?” (5E) And Euthyphro responds in the expected way, in the way that invites a Socratic examination: “I should be of no use, Socrates, and Euthyphro would not be superior to the majority of men, ifIdid not have accurate knowledge of all such things” (4E-5A). “Tell me then,” says Socrates, “what zsthe pious... ?”

(SD) Like most of Socrates’ interlocutors in similar circumstances, Euthyphro finds it very hard to say what he thought he knew perfectly well, and he makes a couple of false starts along the way to expressing his view in a definition that Socrates takes to be worth examining as at least the beginning of a theory of piety. But throughout Euthyphro’s trial by dialectic all his attempts to say what he thought he knew stay close to the idea already suggested in his repudiation of his family’s attitude: the knowledge of what is pious and what is impious rests on a knowledge of “the divine attitude.” Thus, his third answer, the one that receives Socra-

tes’ most detailed philosophical analysis, is that “the pious is what all the gods love” (9E) — an answer which might as well be expressed monotheistically, for purposes of the discussion in the dialogue as well as for our purposes: Piety 1s what God approves of. Piety is one of the virtues regularly recognized by Socrates and the people with whom he talks, the others being justice, wisdom, courage, and moderation (or temperance). And since piety is the virtue specifically appropriate to a human being’s relationship to God, it is neither surprising nor illuminating to be told that piety is what God approves of. But Socrates draws a distinction regarding this definition which 7s illuminating, as well as perfectly general in its applicability to definitions of that sort. Socrates introduces his distinction in the form of a question (10A), which I can paraphrase in this way: Does God approve of what is pious because it 1s pious, or is it pious because God approves of it? The eftect of that question on Euthyphro’s definition of piety is marvelous

ABRAHAM, ISAAC, AND EUTHYPHRO

to see (as long as you happen not to be Euthyphro), but we are not going to look at it now. The drama of the stories, even the dialectical drama of the dialogue, must now be left behind so that we can get down to work. I can make Socrates’ distinction more directly relevant to our consideration of God’s role in the basis of morality by applying it to Euthyphro’s answer generalized from a single virtue to morality in general: Moral gooaness 1s what God approves of. I will call this claim the general thesis of religious morality. It is taken for granted in the stories of Abraham and his son and of Euthyphro and his father: in both stories God approves or disapproves of certain human actions, and human beings have ways of knowing which ones he approves of and which ones he disapproves of. And we are, of course, not talking about just those two stories; the general thesis of religious morality has been incorporated into the doctrine of most — perhaps all — of the world’s theistic religions. I want to apply Socrates’ distinction to the general thesis in order to extract clarified versions of the two theories of religious morality we have encountered in our discussion of the story of Abraham. (They are present also in Plato’s dialogue, but not noticeably in Euthyphro’s story, the only part of the dialogue presented in detail here.) It will be convenient to work with a fuller version of the general thesis applied to actions alone: Right actions are all and only those God approves of, and wrong actions are all and only those God disapproves of: Applying Socrates’ distinction to that general thesis of religious morality, we can extract from it two theories of religious morality. For either

(TO)

God approves of right actions just because they are right and disapproves of wrong actions just because they are wrong; or

(TS)

Right actions are right just because God approves of them and wrong actions are wrong just because God disapproves of them.

I call these two theories theological objectivism (TO) and theological subjectivism (TS), for reasons that will emerge if they are not already obvious. We have seen an instance of (TS) in the second possible explanation we considered of the fact that Abraham was prepared to kill Isaac, whom he loved: Abraham might have believed that the horrible deed was made morally right just because God commanded it. And if this Abraham was a thoroughgoing adherent of (TS), he would have believed three days later that that same deed was then made morally wrong just because then, at the last possible moment, God prohibited it. For reasons I have already given, I think that taking Abraham to have been an adherent of (TS) doesn’t fit the story. But to reject (TS) as an interpretation of Abraham’s state of mind is not (yet) to reject (TS) as a theory of religious morality, and so I want now to consider the theory itself. There are good philosophical reasons for rejecting (TS) as a basis for morality, two of which I will be mentioning shortly. But it would be a shame to permit (TS) to perish peacefully of refutation alone when it richly deserves execration. For taking (TS) seriously means taking seriously the possibility that absolutely any action could be made morally right simply in virtue of God’s commanding or approving ofit. Ifa father’s killing his innocent son, whom he loves, is not an exam-

ple horrible enough for you, you may be left to your darkest imaginings. But do not suppose that the adherent of (TS) can extricate himself from this terminal embarrassment with the pious rejoinder that God is good and so can be relied on not to approve of moral evil. The only standard of moral goodness supplied by (TS) is God’s approval; and so to say within the context of (TS) that God is good comes to nothing more than that God approves of himself — which is easy to grant but impossible to derive any reassurance from. The execration (TS) deserves was never more forcefully delivered than by John Stuart Mill, who, happily for philosophical polemic and English prose but unhappily for Mr 42]

NORMAN KRETZMANN Mansel, encountered in that Mr Mansel an

adherent of a version of (TS). Here is part of what Mill has to say about Mr Mansel and his theory of religious morality: If in ascribing goodness to God I do not mean what I mean by goodness; if Ido not mean the goodness of which I have some knowledge, but an incomprehensible attribute of an incomprehensible substance, which for aught I know may be a totally different quality from that which I love and venerate — and even must, if Mr Mansel is to be believed, be in some important particulars opposed to this — what do I mean by calling _ it goodness? and what reason have I for venerating it? If Iknow nothing about what the attribute is, I cannot tell that it is a proper object of veneration. To say that God’s goodness may be different in kind from man’s goodness, what is it but saying, with a slight change of phraseology, that God may possibly not be good? To assert in words what we do not think in meaning, is as suitable a definition as can be given of a moral falsehood. Besides, suppose that certain unknown attributes are ascribed to the Deity in a religion the external evidences of which are so conclusive to my mind as effectually to convince me that it comes from God. Unless I believe God to possess the same moral attributes which I find, in however inferior a degree, in a good man, what ground of assurance have I of God’s veracity? All trust in a Revelation presupposes a conviction that God’s attributes are the same, in all but degree, with the best human attributes. If, instead of the “glad tidings” that there exists a Being in whom all the excellences which the highest human mind can conceive, exist in a degree inconceivable to us, I am informed that the world is ruled by a being whose attributes are infinite, but what they are we cannot learn, nor what are the principles of his government, except that “the highest human morality which we are capable of conceiving” does not sanction them; convince me ofit, and

I will bear my fate as Imay. But when I am told that I must believe this, and at the same time call this being by the names which express and affirm the highest human morality, I say in plain terms that I will not. Whatever power such a being may have over me, there is one thing which he shall not do: he shall not compel me to worship him. I will call no being good, who

422

is not what I mean when I apply that epithet to my fellow-creatures; and if such a being can sentence me to hell for not so calling him, to hell I will go.*

There is good argumentation in this passage along with the denunciation, but Mill’s vehemence in the second half of it strikes me as altogether warranted. Although he was not a theist himself, the passionate tones of his condemnation of (TS) ought to resonate in the heart of every self-respecting theist. Submitting to the moral authority of God as envisaged in (TS) would be inadequately ridiculed as a case of buying a pig in a poke, for it amounts to selling yourself to a pig in a poke. It is not only for the damage it does to the concept of God that (TS) is to be rejected, but also for its destruction of the basis of morality. For present purposes I will have to content myself with simply mentioning two of the more important, more obvious failings of (TS) as a putative basis for morality. In the first place, and most importantly, morality rests on objectivity. Part of what that means is that if an individual action is really right at some time or other, then it always was and will be right. But (TS) does not preserve objectivity, as can be seen from the (TS)-interpretation of the Abraham story. In my view, this consideration alone is enough to disqualify (TS) as a theory of religious morality. In the second place, if (TS) is conjoined with a doctrine of divine rewards and punishments, as theories of religious morality usually are, it will be difficult or impossible to distinguish morality from prudence in the context of (TS). If God’s command is all that makes the action right and I believe that God will punish me for disobedience, how can I convince myself that I perform the action because it is right rather than simply out of fear? By this point (TS) should look disintegrated in disgrace, and the keenness of the reader’s anticipation of (TO) must be almost painful; so I will delay the consideration of (TO) no longer than it takes to announce that, incredible as it seems, (TS) will rise again.

ABRAHAM, ISAAC, AND EUTHYPHRO

(TO) the theory which did seem to fit the story of Abraham, obviously has the strengths corresponding to the shortcomings of (TS): (TO) does provide the objectivity necessary for morality, and it does preserve the possibility of drawing a clear distinction between morality and prudence. Furthermore, in Mill’s attack on Mr Mansel’s version of (TS), the theory of religious morality that is clearly (if implicitly) advocated by Mill is (TO). According to (TO), God disapproves of treachery just because it is really wrong to betray someone who trusts you. According to (TS), on the other hand, fit is wrong to betray someone who trusts you, it is so only because and only as long as God disapproves of treachery; and if we should learn tomorrow that it is approved of by God, then tomorrow it will have become rightto betray someone who trusts you. And so it looks as if every self-respecting theist should, with a clear mind and an easy heart, repudiate (TS) and embrace (TO) with the sense that a danger to religious morality has been averted and a firm foundation for it has been secured. But now consider (TS) and (TO) in the light of our main question: What does God have to do with morality? These two theories offer two radically different answers to that question, and those answers are “Nothing essential” and “Absolutely everything.” But “Absolutely everything” is the answer provided by the just-repudiated (TS), and “Nothing essential” is the answer entailed by (TO), which has been looking like the theory that would explain how morality could be based on religion. Think of the story of Moses and the Ten Commandments. Moses is often called the law-giver, but since the story has him receiving the Commandments from God, that epithet is misleading; Moses was only the law- transmitter. God is the one who is properly described as the law-giver. But is he? According to (TS) he is, but according to (TO) God himself is really only a law-transmitter. For according to (TO) certain actions are really wrong and God knows which they are;

and so, when he tells Moses to tell the people not to steal, he’s not legislating, he’s teaching. Of course such teaching on the basis of divinely expert authority may well have been invaluable at an early stage in the moral development of mankind, but if (TO) is right, there is every reason to suppose that the objective truth about morality is there to be discovered in more and more depth and detail by human beings using their reason, without the aid of further revelation. If (TO) is right, God’s “giving” the Ten Commandments to the people through Moses is just what it would have been for God to have “given” them the principles of arithmetic — not to disclose to them his sovereign will, but to provide them with a starter-kit for the discovery of great truths. And so, if (TO) is right, the answer to the question “What does God have to do with morality?” is “Nothing essential.” Of course, nothing essential need not be nothing at all. The person who first taught you arithmetic certainly has something to do with arithmetic, but nothing essential; there would be arithmetic even if that person had never existed. And, even more obviously, your first arithmetic teacher has something to do with your knowing arithmetic but, again, nothing essential; you could have learned arithmetic from someone else, and you could even have figured out quite a lot of it by yourself as you grew older and discovered the need for it. And so, if (TO) is right, it is just as absurd to consider God to be even a part of the basis for morality as it would be for you to expect to find a discussion ofyour first arithmetic teacher in a book entitled Foundations of Mathematwes. (TO), which made its entrance into this discussion looking like the overwhelmingly preferable theory of religious morality, turns out to be not really a theory of religious morality at all, evidently cutting off any need morality might have been thought to have for a foundation in religion. And (TS), its only rival on the scene, has already proved not to be a theory of morality at all. At this stage of our investigation reasonable people might be 423

NORMAN KRETZMANN

excused for thinking that, since the one theory of religious morality gives God everything to do with what turns out not to be morality, while the other theory preserves the essence of morality at the cost of giving God a walkon part that could easily be written out of the play, religious morality has been shown to be, at best, not worth any further serious thought. But even such reasonable people ought to be at least vaguely worried by the fact that the concept of God, which I began by describing as an essential ingredient in this discussion, has so far been given no attention. Of course, I have said quite a lot about God, but God as I have been talking about him is God as he appears in the stories we have been looking at and in the bit of religious-cultural background we all share. It is time now to consider the concept of God.... That concept of God, the one in which I am interested, is the concept of an absolutely perfect being. Among the attributes included in that concept are some that everyone has at

seems to be false. Even when (TO) was looking its best, it was likely to have given theists the uneasy feeling that it impugned God’s majesty; but what corresponds to God’s majesty in perfect-being theology is absolute independence, and absolute independence cannot be merely impugned. Like everything else about an absolutely perfect being, it’s all or nothing. And so, on the basis of everything we’ve seen so far, no theist who conceives of

God as an absolutely perfect being. . . can take refuge in the apparent safety and sanity of (TO). Perfect-being theology is incompatible with (TO) as we have been reading it. It is not incompatible with (TS), but (TS) has been shown to be so bad on other grounds that no selfrespecting theist can have recourse to it at this stage of our investigation. It may look as if the emerging conclusion is that perfect-being theology is just incompatible with morality altogether. .. . But there is one more attribute I want to introduce, one

that I think will save the day. It is the hardest

least heard of: omniscience, omnipotence, and

of all the attributes to understand, and it is

eternality, for instance. Perfect goodness is another familiar attribute of an absolutely perfect being, and one that will obviously be important if the concept is to have an essential role in a theory of religious morality. But the attributes that will concern us to begin with are less familiar and less obviously relevant to our main topic, and the first of these is absolute independence. It is easy to see that nothing that could count as absolutely perfect could be dependent on anything else for anything. So anything absolutely perfect is absolutely independent; and if God is conceived of as an absolutely perfect being, then God is conceived of as absolutely independent. That line of thought, short and simple as it is, has a devastating effect on theists who might have been willing to accept (TO) after all, abandoning the project ofa religious morality and settling for a religion that simply coexists with morality. For if God is an absolutely perfect being, then (TO), with its implication of moral principles on which God depends for his knowledge of good and evil,

called simplicity. To say that an absolutely perfect being is absolutely simple is to say that it is altogether without components of any kind, and so simplicity can be derived from independence. For whatever has components is dependent on those components for being what it is, and so perfection entails independence, which entails simplicity. As Anselm puts it, “everything composite needs the things it is composed of in

424

order to exist. Moreover, what it is it owes to them, since whatever tis it is in virtue of them,

while they are not what they are in virtue of 7¢. And so [whatever is composite] is not completely supreme [or absolutely perfect]” (Monologion, XV11). Obviously an absolutely simple being cannot be a physical object, and there are other interesting implications of simplicity that are not hard to see. But the one that concerns us now might easily be overlooked in a first consideration of the concept of absolute perfection; to see it is to see how drastic a simplicity absolute simplicity has to beat

ABRAHAM, ISAAC, AND EUTHYPHRO

To say that God is absolutely simple is not merely to say that God cannot have any parts in the ordinary sense; it is also to say that God cannot be thought of as distinguishable from any ofhis attributes. And if God and each of his attributes are identical, then all of God’s attributes are identical with one another. Before we can make use of this notion of simplicity, we have to make sense ofit. Attribution is, of course, ordinarily expressed in subject-predicate sentences, even when the subject is God. So we would ordinarily attribute goodness and power to God by saying “God is good” and “God is powerful.” According to this notion of simplicity, however, such sentences are imprecise. If God is conceived of as an absolutely perfect being and thus as absolutely simple, then the precise versions of such sentences will be either “God is identical with his goodness” and “God is identical with his power” or, even more simply, “God is identical with goodness” and “God is identical with power.” Let’s say that the first of these pairs of more precise sentences presents cautious simplicity and the second pair bold simplicity. Since it follows from the cautious pair that God’s goodness is identical with God’s power and from the bold pair that goodness is identical with power, it seems fair to say that absolute simplicity presents us with a more or less dire identity crisis, one that must be resolved before we try to apply the notion to the problems of religious morality. Because cautious simplicity presents the less dire identity crisis, it is only sensible to try to make do with it as an interpretation of the notion of simplicity. As Frege has taught us, there are two kinds ofidentity claims, uninformative, as in 9 = 9, and informative, as in 9 = 3. The identity crisis in the notion of simplicity (whether cautious or bold) obviously has to do with informative identity claims. There are plenty of non-mathematical examples of such claims, but we may as well stay with Frege’s classic example involving the morning star, the evening star, and the planet Venus. Since the morning star is identical with Venus and the

evening star is identical with Venus, it is true and informative to say that the morning star is identical with the evening star. At the same time we want not to ignore the fact that they are also different — two different ways of seeing one and the same thing. If we focus on their designations rather than on the phenomena themselves, we say that the designations “the morning star” and “the evening star” differ in sense although they are identical in reference. And whenever we have a true informative identity claim, we will have two expressions with one and the same referent and two different senses. What happens when these basic distinctions are applied to cautious simplicity? As analogues to the morning star, the evening star, and Venus, we have God’s goodness, God’s power, and God, respectively. And so we should be able to say correctly that the designations “God’s goodness” and “God’s power” have one and the same referent — God —and differ only in sense. Putting it that way certainly satisfies the notion of cautious simplicity, but can we make sense of putting it that way? If we bear in mind the analogy with Frege’s paradigm, it is not hard to make sense of cautious simplicity. It might be said that, because of differing circumstances that apply only to us and not at all to that being itself, the absolutely simple being that is God is perceived by us sometimes in a way that leads us to perceive divine goodness, sometimes in a way that leads us to perceive divine power. Divine goodness and divine power are no more really distinguished from each other or from God than the morning star, the evening star, and Venus are three in reality rather than one. Obviously there is more to explain and more to worry about in connection with even cautious simplicity, but there is no point in our considering cautious simplicity any further as a possible route to a third theory of religious morality. The reason for abandoning it we have already seen in dealing with (TS) and in considering Mill’s attack on Mr Mansel: as long as we are focusing on God’s goodness, the question will and should always 425

NORMAN KRETZMANN

arise whether God’s goodness is really goodness. And so, despite the fact that it is easier to make sense ofcautious simplicity initially, we have to consider bold simplicity if the doctrine of simplicity is to provide a preferable theory of religious morality. According to the small portion of perfectbeing theology I am presenting in this paper, perfect goodness must be an attribute of an absolutely perfect being; and in the light of the notion of simplicity in its bold form, God conceived of as an absolutely perfect being zs perfect goodness itself. If we momentarily ignore the question whether the consequences » of bold simplicity are tolerable, we can see that applying it to the difficulties in religious morality has a dramatic effect. When God is conceived of as identical with perfect goodness, the kind of distinction that was crucial as between (TO) and (TS) becomes a mere stylistic variation. Here are the bold-simplicity counterparts of (TO) and (TS): (PBO)

(PBS)

God conceived of as perfect goodness itself sanctions certain actions just because they are right and rules out certain actions just because they are wrong. Certain actions are right just because God conceived of as perfect goodness itself sanctions them, and cer-

tain actions are wrong just because God conceived of as perfect goodness itself rules them out. If there is goodness itself, as there is if there is an absolutely perfect being, then obviously it is and must be the sole criterion of moral rightness and wrongness. And so (PBS) involves no subjectivity, as did our original (TS), nor does (PBO) involve principles independent of and criterial for God, as did our original (TO). (PBO) and (PBS) are just two ways ofsaying the same thing: actions are right if and only if goodness certifies them as such, and goodness certifies actions as right if and only if they are so. 426

It may look as if this third theory of religious morality transforms God from the ultimate judge of morality into no more than the abstract ultimate criterion; but, of course, God

conceived of as an absolutely simple being is conceived of as the ultimate judge who is zdentical with the objective ultimate criterion itself. And so, once the crucial contribution

made by bold simplicity to this third theory is taken into account, the theory could safely revert to the judgmental verbs “approve” and “disapprove” found in (TO) and (TS) and could even be expressed in new versions of (TO) and (TS) in which slight linguistic revisions would mark fundamental changes in interpretation. We can designate these new versions (TO’) and (TS’): (TO’)

God conceived of as a moral judge identical with perfect goodness itself approves ofright actions just because they are right and disapproves of wrong actions just because they are

wrong. (TS’)

Right actions are right just because God conceived of as a moral judge identical with perfect goodness itself approves of them and wrong actions are wrong just because God conceived of as a moral judge identical

with perfect goodness itself disapproves of them. When God in the story of Abraham swears a solemn oath, he swears by himself (what else?); when the God of perfect-being theology makes a moral judgment, he judges by the objective criterion ofperfect goodness which is himself. And so (TO’) and (TS’), unlike (TO) and (TS) but like (PBO) and (PBS), are just two ways of saying the same thing. So far so good; but what about the fact that bold simplicity apparently requires us to say that goodness is identical with power, which means that wherever there is power there is goodness, which is blatantly false? Well, taking bold simplicity seriously requires us to rec-

ABRAHAM, ISAAC, AND EUTHYPHRO

ognize that the identity claim at issue is, strictly speaking, not “Goodness is identical with power” but “Perfect goodness is identical with perfect power,” which means that wherever there is perfect power there is perfect goodness, which is not blatantly false and may very well be true. Such a glancing inspection is by no means enough to certify bold simplicity as free from paradox, much less to show that bold simplicity and the rest of perfect-being theology provides a basis for a theory of religious morality preferable to those ordinarily encountered. But I hope it is enough to suggest that even bold simplicity might be made sense of, with dramatic results for the association between morality and theology. God knows it

Notes

1

2

Genesis 22: 1-14, New English Bible. Subsequent quotations from Scripture are from this translation, with italics added for emphasis. See Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann, “Eternity,” The Journal ofPhilosophy, 78 (1981), pp. 429-58, especially the discussion of ETsimultaneity beginning on p. 434.

3

Romans 4 and Galatians 3: 6; James 2: 21-3.

4

Euthyphro, 4A, in The Trial and Death of Socrates, tr. G. M. A. Grube (Indianapolis, 1975).

Subsequent citations of the dialogue are from this translation, with italics added for emphasis. 5 An Examination of Sir William Hamuilton-s Philosophy, 4th edn (London, 1872), ch. VI: “The Philosophy of the Conditioned, as Applied by Mr Mansel to the Limits of Religious Thought,” pp. 128-9.

needs work, but it’s worth it.

427

Rais,

Wwe Sao) jain Sa

|

a

7

if iF ie Cae 7

—_

cata

’

Mi

eS

b:

eeuyyt! ©

Be

ice

funy;

Wy iga: ho

Pir map tee o\c

os a

va

ey. tee AIS VA Ory RH en {Men

ri

ae Acres

é hain

oT

aos pier

oes

—

¢ ie ees oe

Z

:

ie Ooo Ges OES a a iloury |~ ger ork dassy oS 444.0ies wills, !

PAE

le dee Ween rélay.As sels, el. eeerretlgnts AP a) 0 ss Bay

=

va

oi i>.)

"Tt

hae

:

tte

ST" A0c0!

abo al oii gh | Gas pa

Va aer Fag

a, es

|

WH

:

a \

bee

ate

E: 2

PART

SEVEN

PHO SH MOU UME DS Mpele tkeME Oiuhs) 6) dh Deleeggee/SNPIB el bain Hl .G: DAPteneroyd odBeecel Nea sO ING a OnUR THINKING ABOUT RELIGION? Introduction

48

On Non-Jewish Religions JUDAH HALEVI

49

Religious Diversity and the Epistemic Justification of Religious Belief JEROME GELLMAN

50

What’s the Difference? Knowledge and Gender in (Post)Modern Philosophy of Religion Grace M. JANTZEN

51

Women’s Experience Revisited: the Challenge of the Darker Sister JACQUELYN GRANT

52 53

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass FREDERICK DOUGLASS The Value of African Religious Beliefs and Practices for Christian Theology Mercy AmMBA ODUYOYE

_S a Ny

eUOtts3a cugoHes 7 ~OIWHT 3.GVA’ Perr: AUO JOMSU TIMI Tea ayp tVid eta ve

nig

TUOCEA

a ms

OUDIMI

inkeabonny

ie.

unoybR sldov

7

iD.

BR

canted

%

aN tialtmay

te Hong Nell camsiaeyS

90

tat ail

atfnld ere gpasl

=

_ =

-

7 i

ix. 1we) maaaal

(i) Tabi) bre onthe joarnraIniT atty 2'sei Papa te Mlee Hole ino “ite

WHY

aprile) xD

ote

|

UT

7

id «@ ee)

cl Ba veh

fe

we? Sanat

re

IM DALS-OY PO

nEuetl stato SUL Aveta aA,” OFT

CH #5517920

OF

pelt

° Dod Raldodl asQliod race ty wile Y 9: i spalonfY

cing

Ee :

~

&e :

mined snl mM) © ~

=

oF

Introduction

The history of philosophical and theological reflection in the theistic traditions has been dominated largely by males of European and Middle Eastern descent who have worked within the Judeo-Christian and Muslim tra-

ditions. At various times throughout history, and most notably in contemporary philosophy, it has been argued that this dominance has led these traditions to think about God and more specific religious doctrines in an unjustifiably restricted way. Some have argued, then, that philosophers of religion need to reflect carefully on the often unreflective biases that they bring to their philosophical work. In doing so, they might come to realize that abandoning those unreflective biases can lead to equally fruitful ways of thinking about God and religious belief, ways which lead down quite different paths. In this section we will explore the claims of those who want to argue that there are legitimate alternative perspectives, informed by different initial starting assumptions, to those defended by traditionalists. The first two essays in this section focus specifically on the notion of religious diversity. Everyone is well aware of the fact that there are a wide variety of religious beliefs endorsed around the globe. And most are well aware of the fact that the major world religions are in disagreement about a number of fundamental claims concerning the nature of ultimate reality. Each religious tradition also cites evidence in its favor, evidence which

comes sometimes from philosophical argument and sometimes from various sorts of religious experiences. What should we think about this variety of religious beliefs? Since they make claims that are inconsistent with one another, we might be inclined to think that at most one of them is true. Let us call this view “exclusivism.” According to exclusivism, at most one religious tradition is

correct, the remainder, though they may get some things right, are ultimately mistaken. Recently thinkers from a wide variety of disciplines have begun to regard exclusivism with suspicion. Some think that even if exclusivism zs true, the evidence that is avail-

able to us is insufficient to decide which of the various religions is in fact correct. Thus, anyone who claims that their own religious tradition is exclusively true is irrational, arrogant, mean-spirited, or some combination of these. The readings included here focus on this claim. Can the exclusivist continue to endorse exclusivism in the face of the fact that other religions claim to have the same types and degrees of support enjoyed by the exclusivist’s own? The first response to this position comes from the medieval Jewish philosopher Judah Halevi (ca. 1085-ca. 1141). We might think

of this piece as Halevi’s attempt to undermine the pluralists’ claim that the evidence available to us is insufficient to decide among the major world religions. Here, Halevi argues that the views of the Christian and Muslim are fundamentally (and evidently) mistaken and that, further, the fact of God’s miracu-

lous revelation and preservation of the Jewish people is decisive evidence in favor of the claims of Judaism. Thus critics of exclusivism

are, on this view, simply mistaken in thinking that the burden ofthe evidence does not support one tradition over the others. But what if, as seems to be the case, the

adherents of the various religious traditions examine one another’s evidence and are still convinced that their own religion is well supported and the others are not? Shouldn’t this at least make us skeptical about our ability to draw objective conclusions from the evidence? And shouldn’t this further lead us to be agnostic, and thus to reject exclusivism, about religious beliefs generally? Jerome Gellman 43]

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION: THE BIG QUESTIONS

thinks that the answer is “no” on both counts. First, as a general principle, Gellman claims, we do not think that it is irrational to hold views that other equally well-informed and fair-minded people disagree on. Our political beliefs provide a good example, as do the beliefs of various opposing camps within philosophy and other academic disciplines as well. Gellman then examines two specific arguments which aim to show that evidential parity among religions makes belief in the exclusive truth of one’s own religion irrational. Both of these arguments fail, he claims, since, among other things, they fail to recognize that the process ofjustification of beliefs cannot go on indefinitely. Some beliefs of ours must act as “rock-bottom justifying propositions.” And even among such rock-bottom beliefs, we hold some with greater tenacity than others (a feature of the beliefs Gellman dubs “epistemic priority”).But if this is right, then there seems to be nothing unacceptable about the religious believer holding certain religious beliefs (e.g. that the theistic God exists) as rock-bottom beliefs with strong epistemic priority. If the theist’s belief in God is regarded in this way, then religious diversity does not pose a challenge to belief since, for the theist, this belief

becomes one of the rock-bottom beliefs on the basis of which all others are assessed. The next selection, by Grace Jantzen, dis-

cusses the issues that divide Anglo-American (Anglophone) philosophy of religion from Continental philosophy of religion, and the impact of these differences in thinking about religion and gender. As the reader will note, the essays in this volume are written largely by American and British figures. In significant measure, the practice of philosophy in these two countries shares many similarities. And this way of engaging in philosophical inquiry differs significantly from the way philosophy is practiced in Continental Europe. As Jantzen points out, the Anglophone tradition assumes that our perceptual capacities and our language allow us to know and communicate objective truths about the external (and internal) world(s). As a result, the task of phi432

losophy is to begin with these “truths” that we know, embedded in the language that we use, and construct arguments and counterarguments with them. The Continental tradition, on the other hand, is suspicious of these Anglophone starting points. Since Continentalists hold that our way of conceptualizing the world is deeply influenced by unconscious beliefs and desires, beliefs and desires that thereby escape our reasoned reflection, we are wrong to assume the Anglophone philosophers’ starting points. It

is more fruitful instead to consider how these unconscious structures and processes have given rise to a variety of social institutions, including our language structures and religious practices, and then ask to what extent these institutions have unfairly disadvantaged various parties. Jantzen argues that the Anglophone tradition needs to take seriously the claims advanced by the Continentalist figures (even if in the end they do not agree) and to consider how the influences of these unconscious structures have led to a uniquely male-oriented and female-oppressing way of conceptualizing God and the religious life. Adopting the sorts of insights that Jantzen suggests, Jacquelyn Grant argues that those in her tradition, namely, Christianity, must go one step further. While it is true that we must take seriously the way in which women generally have been affected by the oppressive origins and subsequent roles of certain theological structures and symbols, Grant argues that these same structures and symbols have favored the oppression of Black women in a way not uncovered by the critiques of White feminists. Thus Grant holds that there is a compelling need to cultivate a conception of the divine, specifically of Christ in her tradition, that identifies with Christ “the stranger, the outcast, the hungry, the weak, and the poor.”

In a brief but penetrating selection, the nineteenth-century slave and later journalist and abolitionist Frederick Douglass (181795) seeks to separate out “Christianity proper” from the form of Christianity which he saw

INTRODUCTION TO PART SEVEN

practiced in slave-owning communities. This sort of Christianity was, like that described by Grant, infected by elements which were motivated (even if unreflectively) by greed and cruelty, and which perpetuated the institutions of slavery. Embedded in this selection is, we might conclude, an implicit call to do what Jantzen and Grant advocate, namely, to be reflective about those parts of one’s theological tradition which spring from unconscious and/or socially conditioned beliefs and desires, to appreciate their force and pervasiveness, and to subject them to critical scrutiny.

ralism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986). Griffiths, Paul, Aw Apology for Apologetics: a Study in the Logic ofInterreligious Dialogue (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1991). Hick, John, and Brian Hebblethwaite (eds), Christianity and Other Religions (Glasgow: Collins, 1980). Hick, John, An Interpretation of Religion (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1989). Kellenberger, J. (ed.), Imter-Religious Models and Criteria (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1993).

If, in fact, religious structures, beliefs, and

Netland, Harold, Dissonant Voices: Religious

practices, are informed by unconscious beliefs and desires and their resulting structures in one’s culture, one might think that they can also be positively informed by institutionalizing certain indigenous cultural emphases. In the final selection, Mercy Oduyoye argues that this very thing can and should be done within Christianity, for example, by appropriating key African cultural emphases. For example, African Christianity can avail itself of the indigenous beliefs of human beings as stewards of their physical environment, and of the practice oftreating past, present, and future generations as constituting a single community. Both of these traditions are part of the Christian tradition, but these features can be strengthened and reinforced by incorporating native African cultural ritualizations of them. In this way, cultural beliefs and practices which may have unconsciously formed part of the African cultural infrastructure can be used to positively inform the theological symbolism and religious practice in contemporary African Christianity.

Pluralism and the Question of Truth (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans, 199.1% O’Connor, Timothy, “Religious Pluralism,” in Reason for the Hope Within, ed. Michael Murray (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans, 1998). Senor, Thomas D. (ed.), The Rationality of Belief and the Plurality of Faith (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1995).

The following pair of articles also treat certain central issues relevant to this topic: Kaufman, Gordon, “ ‘Evidentialism’: a Theologian’s Response,” Faith and Philosophy, 6 (1989), pp 35-46. Stump, Eleonore, and Norman

Finally, one might also consult the following two issues of Faith and Philosophy which were devoted to this topic:

Further Reading

(1)

For further readings on the relation of religious, gender, and racial diversity on topics in philosophy of religion, the following sources are worthy of special attention.

(2)

Religious Diversity D’Costa, Gavin, Theology and Religious Plu-

Kretzmann,

“Theologically Unfashionable Philosophy,” Faith and Philosophy, 7 (1990), pp. 329-39.

volume 5, no. 4 (1988), John Hick (guest editor). volume 14, no. 3 (1997).

Gender Diversity Grimshaw, J., Feminist Philosophers: Women’s

Perspectives on Philosophical Traditions (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1986).

433

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION: THE BIG QUESTIONS

Hampson, D., Swallowing a Fishbone? Feminist Theologians Debate Christianity (London: SPCK, 1996). Jantzen, Grace, “Feminists, Philosophers, and Mystics,” Hypatia, 9 (1994), pp. 186-206. Johnson,

Patricia Altenbernd,

“Feminist

Christian Philosophy,” Faith and Philosophy, 9 (1992), pp. 320-34. Suchocki, Marjorie Hewitt, “The Idea of God in Feminist Philosophy,” Hypatia, 9

(1994), pp. 56-67.

434

Racial Diversity Cone, Cecil Wayne, Identity Crisis in Black

Theology (Nashville, Tenn.: African Methodist Episcopal Church, 1975). Wilmore, Gayraud, and James Cone (eds), Black Theology: a Documentary History (New York: Orbis, 1979). West, Cornel, Prophesy Deliverance! An AfroAmerican Revolutionary Christianity (Philadelphia, Penn.: Westminster Press, 1982).

NON-JEWISH RELIGIONS

48

On Non-Jewish Religions*

Judah Halevi 1. I was asked to state what arguments I could bring to bear against the attacks of philosophers and followers of other religions which differ from ours and against the sectaries who differ from the majority of Israel. And I remembered the arguments I had heard of a Rabbi who sojourned with the King of the Khazars, who, as we know from historical records, became a convert to Judaism about

four hundred years ago: to him there appeared repeatedly a dream, in which it seemed as if an angel addressed him saying: “Thy (intention) is indeed pleasing to the Creator, but thy way of acting is not pleasing.’ Yet he was so zealous in the performance of the Khazar religion, that he devoted himself with a perfect heart to the service of the temple and the sacrifices. Notwithstanding this devotion, the angel came again at night and repeated: ‘thy intention, is indeed pleasing, but thy way of acting is not pleasing.’ This induced him to ponder over the different beliefs and religions, and finally he became a convert to Judaism together with many other Khazars. As I found among the arguments of the Rabbi many which appealed to me and were in harmony with my opinions, I resolved to write them down as they had been spoken. The intelligent will understand me. It is related: when the King of Khazar dreamt that his intention was pleasing to God, but his way of acting was not pleasing, and was commanded in the same dream to seek the work that would please God, he inquired * From Judah Halevi, Kuzari: A Book of Proof and Argument: An Apology for a Despised Religion, Book I, ed. Isaak Heinemann, in Three Jewish Philosophers (New York: Meridian

Books,

Reprinted with permission.

1960), pp. 27-37.

ofaphilosopher concerning his persuasion. THE PHILOSOPHER replied: There is no favour or dislike in God, be-

cause He is above desire and intention. For an intention intimates a desire in the intending person: by the fulfilment of this desire he becomes complete; as long as it remains unfulfilled, he is incomplete. In a similar way God is, in the opinion of the philosophers, above the knowledge of individuals, because they change with the times and there is no change in God’s knowledge. He does not know thee, much less thy intentions and actions, nor does He listen to thy prayers or see they movements. Even if philosophers say that He created thee, they only speak in metaphor, because He is the cause of causes in the creation of all creatures, but not because this was

His intention from the beginning. He never created man, for the world is without beginning, and no man arose other than through one who came into existence before him; in every man we find united physical and intellectual qualities deriving from his parents and other relations not discounting the influence of winds, countries, foods and water, spheres, stars and constellations. Everything is reduced to the Prime Cause — not to a Will proceeding from it, but to an Emanation, from which emanated a second, a third, and a fourth cause. The causes and the things caused are, as thou seest, intimately connected with one another;

their connection is as eternal as the Prime Cause and has no beginning. Therefore, every individual on earth has its completing causes; consequently an individual with perfect causes becomes perfect and another with imperfect causes remains imperfect, e.g. the negro is fit to receive nothing more than human shape

435

JUDAH HALEV!|

and speech in its least developed form; the philosopher, however, who is equipped with the highest capacity, derives therefrom moral, intellectual and active advantages, so that he wants nothing to make him perfect. But these perfections exist only in the form of latent powers which require instruction and training to become active, bringing to light this capacity, in all its completeness or with its deficiencies and innumerable grades. To the perfect person there adheres a light of Divine nature, called Active Intellect; his Passive In-

tellect cleaves so closely to it that it considers itself to be one with the Active Intellect. His organs — I mean the limbs of such a person — only serve the most perfect purposes, at the most appropriate time, and in the best condition, as though they were organs of the Active Intellect, not of the potential and Passive Intellect, which made use of them at an earlier period, sometimes well, but more often improperly. This degree is the ultimate and most longed-for goal for the perfect man, whose soul, purified of doubts, grasps the inward truth of science. The soul becomes the equal of an angel, and finds a place on the nethermost step of seraphic beings. This is what is called, allusively and approximately, God’s pleasure. Endeavour to reach it and to reach the true knowledge of things, in order that thy intellect may become active. Keep to the just way, as regards character and action, because this will help thee to effect truth, to gain instruction, and to become like this Active Intellect. The consequence of this will be contentment, humility, meekness and every other praiseworthy inclination, accompanied by the veneration of the Prime Cause, not in order to receive favour from it or to divert its wrath, but solely to become like the Active Intellect. If thou hast reached such disposition of belief, be not concerned about the

forms of thy humility, worship and benediction — nor fashion thy religion according to the laws of reason set up by philosophers, but strive after purity of the soul. Then thou wilt reach thy goal, viz. union with the Active Intellect. Maybe he will communicate with thee 436

or teach thee the knowledge of what is hidden through true dreams and positive visions. 2. Tue Knazarr: Thy speech is convincing, yet it does not correspond to what I desire to find. I know already that my soul is pure and that my actions are directed to gain the favour of God. To all this I recieved the answer that this way of acting does not find favour, though the intention does. There must no doubt be a way of acting, pleasing in itself, and not through the medium of intention. If this be not so, why then do Christian and Muslim, who divided the inhabited world

between them, fight with one another, each of them serving his God with pure intention, living either as monks or hermits, fasting and praying? It is, however, impossible to agree with both.

3. THE PHrLosopHER: The philosopher’s creed knows no manslaughter, cultivating only the intellect. 4. THe Kuazarr: And what could be more erroneous, in the opinion ofthe philosophers, than the belief that the world was created, and

that in six days; or that the Prime Cause spoke with mortals — in view of the philosophical doctrine, which declares God to be above

knowing details. Moreover, one might expect the gift of prophecy to be quite common among philosophers, considering their deeds, their knowledge, their researches after truth, their exertions and their close connection with all things spiritual; one might also expect that wonders, miracles, and extraordinary things would be reported of them. Yet we find that true visions are granted to persons who do not devote themselves to study or the purification of their souls. This proves that between the Divine power and the soul there are secret relations which are not identical with those thou mentionedst, O Philosopher! After this the Khazari said to himself: I will ask the Christians and the Muslims, since one of these ways of acting is, no doubt, the Godpleasing one. But as regards the Jews, I am

NON-JEWISH RELIGIONS

satisfied that they are of low station, few in number, and generally hated. He then invited a Christian scholar and questioned him about his doctrine and his practice. THE CHRISTIAN SCHOLAR: I believe that all things are created, whilst the Creator is eternal; that He created the whole world in six days; that all mankind sprang from Adam, and after him from Noah; that God takes care of the created beings, and keeps in touch with man; that He is wrathful, takes delight, and is merciful; that He speaks, appears and reveals Himself to His prophets and favoured ones; that He dwells among those who please Him. In short: I believe in all that is written in the Torah and the other books of the Israelites, which are undisputed, because they are generally accepted as everlasting and have been

revealed before a vast multitude. Subsequently the Divinity became embodied in the womb ofa noble Israelite virgin; she bore Him having the semblance of a human being, which concealed nevertheless a divinity, seemingly a prophet, but in reality a God sent forth. He is the Messiah, whom we call the Son of God, and He is the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost. We believe in His unity, although the Trinity appears on our tongues. We believe in Him and in His abode among the Israelites; this was granted to them as a distinction, because the Divine influence never ceased to be attached to them — until their masses rebelled against this Messiah, and they crucified Him. Then Divine wrath burdened them everlastingly, whilst the favour was confined to a few who followed the Messiah, and to those nations which followed these few. We belong to their number. Although we are not of Israelitish descent, we are well deserving of being called Israelites, because we follow the Messiah and his twelve Israelite companions, who took the place of the tribes. Our laws and regulations are derived from the apostle Simon (Petrus) and from ordinations taken from the Torah, which we study, for its truth and Divine origin are indisputable. It is also stated in the Gospel by the Messiah: I came

not to destroy one ofthe laws of Moses, but I came to confirm and corroborate them. 5. ‘THE Kwazari: Here is no logical conclusion; nay, logical thought rejects most of what thou sayest. It is only when both appearance and experience are so palpable that they grip the whole heart, which sees no way of contesting, that it will agree to the difficult, and the remote will become near. This is how naturalists deal with strange powers which come upon them unawares; they would not believe if they only heard of them without seeing them; but when they see them, they discuss them, and ascribe them to the influence of

stars or spirits, because they cannot disprove ocular evidence. As for me, I cannot accept these things, because they come upon me suddenly, seeing that I have not grown up in them. My duty is, therefore, to investigate further. He then invited one of the scholars of Islam and questioned him about his doctrine and his practice. THe Musuim ScHo.ar: We acknowledge the Unity and Eternity of God and that all men are derived from Adam and Noah. We absolutely reject embodiment (of God), and if any element of this appears in the Writ, we explain it as metaphoric, serving to make the doctrine acceptable to our comprehension. At the same time we maintain that our Book is the Speech of God, being itselfa miracle which we are bound to accept for its own sake, since no one is able to produce anything comparable to it, or to one ofits verses. Our prophet is the Seal of the prophets, who abrogated every previous law, and invited all nations to embrace Islam. The reward of the pious consists in the return of his spirit to his body in Paradise and bliss, where he never ceases to enjoy eating, drinking, women’s love, and anything he may desire. The requital of the disobedient consists in being condemned to fire, and his punishment knows no end.

6.

THE Kuazari: If anyone is to be guided

in matters divine, and to be convinced that

437

JUDAH HALEVI

God speaks to man, whilst he considers it improbable, he must be convinced by facts which are generally known and which allow of no refutation. And if your book is a miracle — a non-Arab, as Iam, cannot perceive its miraculous character, because it is written in Arabic.

7. THE Musum ScHorar: Yet miracles are performed by the Prophet, but they are not used as evidence for the acceptance of his Law. 8.

THe Kuazanri: Yes, the human mind does

not incline to believe that God has intercourse

with man, except by a miracle which changes" the nature of things, so that man may recognize that God alone is able to do so, who cre-

ated him from nought. Such a miracle must also have taken place in the presence of great multitudes, who saw it distinctly. Then it is possible for the mind to grasp this extraordinary matter, viz. that the Creator of this world and the next, of the heavens and lights, should hold intercourse with this contemptible subject, I mean man, speaking to him, and fulfilling his wishes and desires.

9. THe MusLim ScHo.ar: Is not our Book full of stories of Moses and the Israelites? No one denies what He did to Pharaoh, how He divided the sea, saved those who enjoyed His favour, but drowned those who aroused His wrath, that he granted them manna and the quails during forty years, that He spoke to Moses on the mount (Sinai), that He made the sun stand still for Joshua, and assisted him against the giants; nor do they deny what hap-

pened previously, viz. the Flood and the destruction of the fellow-citizens of Lot. Is this not so well known that no suspicion of deceit and imagination is possible?

The Basis of Jewish Faith 11.

THe Rasst: I believe in the God of

Abraham, Isaac and Israel, who led the Israel-

ites out of Egypt with signs and miracles; who fed them in the desert and gave them the (Holy) Land, after having made them traverse the sea and the Jordan in a miraculous way; who sent Moses with His Law, and subse-

quently thousands of prophets, who confirmed His law by promises to those who observed, and threats to the disobedient. We believe in what is contained in the Torah —a very large domain. 12. Tue Kuazarr: I had intended from the very beginning not to ask any Jew, because I am aware of the destruction of their books and of their narrow-minded views, their misfortunes having deprived them of all commendable qualities. Shouldst thou, O Jew, not have said that thou believest in the Creator of the world, its Governor and Guide, who created and keeps thee, and such attributes which serve as evidence for every believer, and for the sake of which he pursues justice in order to resemble the Creator in His wisdom and justice?

13. Tse Rassr: That which thou dost express is speculative and political religion, to which inquiry leads; but this is open to many doubts. Now ask the philosophers, and thou wilt find that they do not agree on one action or on one principle, since they rely on theories; some of these can be established by arguments, some of them are only plausible, some even less capable of being proved. 14. THe Kuazari: That which thou sayest now, O Jew, seems to me better than the be-

10. THe Kuazarr: Indeed I see myself compelled to ask the Jews, because they are the

ginning, and I should like to hear more.

descendants of the Israelites. For I see that they constitute in themselves the evidence for

15. Tue Razsi: But the beginning of my speech was the very proof, yea, the evidence, which makes every argument superfluous.

a divine law on earth. He then invited a Rabbi and asked him about his belief.

438

16.

THe Kwazarr: How so?

NON-JEWISH RELIGIONS

17. ‘THe Rassi: Allow me to make a few preliminary remarks; for I see thee disregarding and depreciating my words. 18.

THe Kaazari: Let me hear thy remarks.

19. Tue Rassi: If thou wert told that the King of India was an excellent man, commanding admiration, and deserving reputation, only because his actions were reflected in the justice which rules his country and the virtuous ways of his subjects, would this compel you to revere him? 20. THE KuHazart: How could this compel me, whilst I am not sure if the justice of the Indian people is natural and not dependent on their king, or due to the king, or both? 21. Tue Rast: But if his messenger came to thee bringing presents which thou knowest to be only procurable in India, and in the royal palace, accompanied by a letter in which it is distinctly stated from whom it comes, and to which are added drugs to cure thy diseases, to preserve thy health, poisons for thine enemies, and other means to fight and kill them without battle, would this make thee beholden to him?

22. THe Kxazari: Certainly. For this would remove my former doubt that the Indians have a king. I should also acknowledge that his dominion and his word had touched me. 23. THe Razer: How wouldst thou then, if asked, describe him?

24. THE Kuazart: In such terms as were quite clear to me; and I would add such as were at first rather doubtful, but which were

their life was well known to the nations, who also knew that the Divine power was in contact with the Patriarchs, caring for them and performing miracles for them. He did not say: “The God ofheaven and earth’ nor ‘my Creator and thine sent me’. In the same way God commenced His speech to the assembled people of Israel: ‘I am the God whom you worship, who hath led you out of the land of Egypt’; He did not say ‘I am the Creator of the world and your Creator.’ In the same style I spoke to thee, O Prince of the Khazars, when thou didst ask me about my creed. I made mention to thee of what is convincing for me and for the whole ofIsrael, who knew these things, first through personal experience, and afterward through an uninterrupted tradition, which is equal to experience.

26. THE Kuazart: Then your belief is confined to yourselves? 27. ‘THE Rassi: Yes. Any Gentile who joins us sincerely shares our good fortune, but he is not equal to us. If the Torah were binding on us because God created us, the white and

the black man would be equal since He created them all. But the Torah (is binding) because He led us out of Egypt and remained attached to us. For we are the pick of mankind. 28. THE Kuazarr: I see thee quite altered, O Jew, and thy words are poor after having been so rich.

29. Tue Rassi: The poorest ones will become the richest, if thou givest me thy attention, until I have expressed myself more fully. 30.

THe Kuazarr: Say what thou wilt.

later affirmed by the former. 25. THE Rapti: In this way I answered thy question. In the same strain Moses spoke to Pharaoh, when he told him ‘The God ofthe

Hebrews sent me to thee’— viz. the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. For the story of

31. THE Raps: The (realm of) the organic power comprises nurture, growth, and propagation with their powers and all conditions attached thereto. To this belong plants and animals, to the exclusion of earth, stones, metals, and elements. 439

JUDAH HALEVI

32. ‘THE Knazart: This is a maxim which requires explanation, but it is true. 33. THE Rass: Likewise, the realm of the soul’s power, expressed in movement, willed action, external and internal senses and such like, is limited to all animated beings. 34. THE Kuazari: This, too, cannot be contradicted. 35.

THe Kuazarr: The degree of great schol-

39. THe Rast: I only mean a degree which distinguishes those who occupy it essentially, as the plant is distinguished from inorganic things, a man from animals. The difference in quantity, however, are innumerable, but are

purely accidental, and do not constitute a degree in the true scense. 40. THe Kuazarr: Ifthis be so, then there is no degree above man among tangible things.

440

walks into the fire without hurt, or abstains

from food for some time without starving, on whose face a light shines which the eye cannot bear, who is never ill, nor ages — and when

he reaches his life’s end, dies spontaneously just as a man retires to his couch to sleep on an appointed day and hour, equipped with the knowledge of what is hidden as to past and future: is such a degree not essentially distinguished from the human degree? 42. Tue Kuazart: This degree would be divine and seraphic, if it existed. It would belong to the province of Divine power, not to that of the intellectual, spiritual (soulful) or natural one.

THe Knazart: This is also true.

37. THe Rassi: And which would be the degree higher than this? 38. ars.

Tue Rapsr: And if we find a man who

THE Rapsi: Likewise, the intellectual

power distinguishes man above all living beings, it leads to the ennobling of his character, to the administration of his home and his country, to government and legislation. 36.

41.

43. Tuer Rast: These are some ofthe characteristics of the undoubted prophet. Through him God made manifest to the people that He is in connection with them, that there is a Lord who guides them as He wishes, according to their obedience or disobedience. He revealed that which was hidden and taught how the world was created, how the generations prior to the Flood followed each other and how man descended from Adam. He described the Flood and the origin of the Seventy nations from Shem, Ham and Japhet, the sons of Noah; how the languages were split up, and where men sought their habitations; how arts arose and how cities were built — and the chronology from Adam up to this day.

RELIGIOUS DIVERSITY AND EPISTEMIC JUSTIFICATION

49

Religious Diversity and the Epistemic Justification of Religious Belief*

Jerome Gellman Humankind knows a diversity of “religions” or “religious traditions,” by which I shall mean sets of religious beliefs with associated religious practices. We shall assume that no devotees of a religion R can show, by means which do not already make assumptions peculiar to R, that R is true or “more true” than other religions. Accordingly, let us call the religious beliefs in R evidence-free relative to other reliZions (or simply, evidence-free), in the sense that either they are not based on evidence at all, or if based on evidence, one could not show that the evidence was adequate without making some of the assumptions of R itself. Let us call the state ofaffairs so far described,

religious diversity. 1 wish to discuss whether religious diversity renders religious belief epistemically defective or unacceptable within the family of human doxastic practices. Ifit does, and ifa religious devotee became aware of the defectiveness of his belief on that account, his belief would be irrational.

Now it may be that the believer cannot help but believe. But there may be steps he could take in an attempt to dislodge adherence to religious belief. He could at least adopt an attitude toward religion that reflects an acknowledgment of its irrationality. And this would surely have an impact on the manner in which he applied his religion to daily life, and on his relations with adherents of other religions.

* Brom Faith and Philosophy, 10:3 (1993), pp. 34564. Reprinted with permission.

In what follows I wish to focus on one feature of religious diversity: the fact that many beliefs, including the most central ones, of one

religious tradition are inconsistent with those, including the most central ones, ofother religious traditions. For example, S believes in the existence of an infinite God, creator of heaven and earth,

while S1 believes in a God who is subject to eternal laws of reality. Or, S believes the Messiah has already come, whereas S1 believes the Messiah is yet to come, or denies, in the name of S1’s tradition, that there is an earthly Messiah. Or: S believes that what survives this life to a next life is an essential self, or Atman, identical to Brahman, whereas S1 believes that

what survives “this life” is only a nexus of “conditioning” that causally gives rise to a new constellation of body and mind, structurally similar to, while numerically distinct from, one in a previous existence. There seem to be two possible ways in which contradictions between traditions may generate an epistemic problem for the religious devotee: Because: (1)

Any instance of contradictions between evidence-free beliefs epistemically delegitimizes those beliefs.

(2)

In the religious case in particular contradictions between evidence-free beliefs delegitimize those beliefs.

Let us consider (1) and (2) in turn.

44]

JEROME GELLMAN

That (1) has little force is shown by examples of some of our most cherished beliefs that are evidence-free and contradict beliefs in other doxastic traditions, while being, surely, epistemically adequate. Take our widely shared belief that democratic government is superior to other extant forms of government, past and present. And consider the contradictory belief, still held at least in China, that communist dictatorship surpasses democracy as a superior form of government. Now perhaps an argument could be mounted for democracy that would not beg any relevant questions in its favor. Perhaps we could agree with our opponents on certain values or goods that we all want to see exhibited in society, and then convince them that our democratic position would best enhance the realization of those values or goods. But suppose our belief in democracy expressed for us a cluster of fundamental political and ethical values, and that the other

side’s communism expressed for them a most basic cluster of values. Or, supposing agreement on some values, imagine that these different traditions disagreed fundamentally on the relative weights to be given to each value. We could argue, let us imagine, that democracy enhanced individual freedoms and protection from arbitrary arrest, much better than does communism, but find that the values we were building on were not recognized by the other side, or were recognized as values of a lesser sort. In either case, we would

find no way to argue without begging the question at issue in favor of the values, and their weights, which are peculiarly part of the democratic tradition. If such were the case, our belief in democracy would be evidence-free, in the above defined sense. But it seems quite obvious that we would be perfectly entitled to believe in democracy, even if evidence-free, and even if contradicted by the beliefs of others. The fact is that many of our most cherished beliefs are shared only by those who share our cultural, geographical, ethnic or educational background. And often these beliefs are both 442

evidence-free as well as contradicted by other orientations. Cherished beliefs of this sort are not limited to morals and politics, and religion. Consider an example involving an existence claim, that is an evidence-free belief, and which we recognize as epistemically proper. Some mathematicians think of sets as mere constructs useful for the mathematical life. They do not posit their existence. Other mathematicians believe that sets exist, and their whole way of doing mathematics is accordingly affected. They do so without a non-question-begging argument that shows them to be right and their opponents wrong, although they can give themselves various reasons for their belief. It

would appear that their belief is not irrational in the least. Hence, if there is a problem from religious diversity on account of contradictions between the beliefs of one tradition and another, it does not come from being an instance of doxastic diversity in general. Let us now consider: (2)

In the religious case in particular contradictions between evidence-free beliefs delegitimize those beliefs.

A most serious challenge to the epistemic acceptability of religious belief on account of features of religious diversity, in particular, has been made by Stephen J. Wykstra,! A similar argument has been put forward by David Basinger, and is intimated in the writings of John Hick.’ Here we will concentrate on the

arguments of Wykstra and Basinger, respectively. Wykstra argues that religious belief is what the calls “evidence essential,” meaning that unless evidence for the belief is available to the community of believers, the belief is epistemically defective.* In so saying, Wykstra does not mean that each believer must know or be aware of the evidence, but that the evidence must be known within the believer’s community. This is a “communitarian” sense of “having evidence.” For example, each of

RELIGIOUS DIVERSITY AND EPISTEMIC JUSTIFICATION

us needn’t know or even be capable of understanding the scientific evidence for the belief that electrons exist in order for the latter to be epistemically acceptable for each of us. It is enough that the experts have that evidence. If it should turn out, however, that even for the scientists there was no evidence for our belief in electrons, our belief would be epistemically defective, whether we knew it

or not. Were we to become aware of the lack of evidence, and were then to continue be-

lieving in electrons, we would be irrational in doing so. The belief in electrons is thus evidence-essential, for Wykstra. And he argues that so is religious belief. Wykstra’s argument for the latter conclusion begins by following Thomas Reid, in maintaining that we are endowed with what Wykstra calls ‘basic faculties,” such as the senses, memory, credulity, and logical intui-

tion, through whose use we form beliefs.* Beliefs formed via these natural faculties are not inferentially accessed. Rather, we naturally and unreflectively accept them in the course of employing these faculties. For example, I do not accept a law of logic because of an inference to the effect that it seems logically intuitive and what seems logically intuitive is most likely true. Instead I simply believe the law, via the faculty oflogical intuition. Reid and Wykstra insist we are perfectly within our epistemic rights to rely on our basic faculties. We need not imfer that there is a tree in front of us, or that 2 + 2 = 4, or that we were once in Paris. We are epistemically justified in believing these things straightaway, upon the functioning of the appropriate faculty. When our basic faculties present conflicting results, however, we face what Wykstra calls “ostensible epistemic parity.”* In ostensible epistemic parity we become obligated according to Wykstra to find evidence of an inferential type which will allow us to discriminate between the belief, formed by our natural faculties, that’s to be trusted, and that belief formed by our natural faculties that’s to be rejected. Epistemic parity “blocks the flow,”

in Wykstra’s words, of our natural disposition to accept what we believe via our faculties. Discriminational evidence frees up that blockage, by either confirming one side, or disconfirming one side. In either case, the result is an unblocking of the natural flow of credulity toward the remaining belief-candidate. To illustrate, consider our disposition to trust the testimony of others, a basic faculty for Reid and Wykstra. Suppose my father tells me one thing, and my mother something in-

consistent with that. This creates ostensible epistemic parity, blocking the natural disposition and the epistemic right to trust the testimonies of my mother and father. What is needed to restore the epistemic right to believe one or another of the testimonies is ev7dence for or against one of the parental assertions. Initially, testimony could be believed in the absence of evidence, because of the basic faculty of forming beliefs based on the testimony ofothers. But now without evidence I would remain in ostensible epistemic parity. To summarize, epistemic parity makes evidence essentially a condition of epistemic propriety.

Wykstra embraces the view that religious belief initially requires no evidence of the derivational kind to be epistemically upright. That is because human beings have a basic faculty for belief-formation, we might call the “religious faculty.” In appropriate circumstances, this faculty gives non-derivational religious beliefs in an epistemically acceptable way. One need not derive, say, the existence of God from an experience of Him, any more than one derives the existence of the tree from seeing it. In both cases one simply believes on having the appropriate experiences. When we consider religious diversity, however, the situation changes. According to Wykstra, religious diversity epistemically resembles conflict in testimony, demanding discriminational evidence for the favoring of one religion over others, so as to eliminate blockage of the natural reliance upon the religious 443

JEROME GELLMAN

faculty.° Wykstra concludes that “insofar as such parity problems are pervasive, there is reason to regard experiential religious beliefs as needing evidence of (at least) the discriminational kind.”’ So, because of religious diversity religious belief is evidence-essential, meaning that (discriminational) evidence for that belief must be available to the community of believers. Hence, on our assumption that religious beliefs are evidence-free, religious beliefs are epistemically defective. An argument somewhat similar to Wykstra’s has been put forward by David Basinger. Basinger attacks what he calls the “General Reliability Argument” (GRA), in light of religious diversity. GRA is characterized as follows: We as humans are naturally endowed with a considerable number of belief-forming faculties ... The assumed reliability of such faculties serves as the basis for some of our most noncontroversial examples of “knowledge.” So our basic stance toward such faculties — including our religious faculties — should be to assume they are “innocent until proven guilty.”®

Basinger wishes to disallow the GRA when it comes to the faculty of forming religious beliefs: Pervasive religious diversity brings into serious question whether we ought consider religious faculties to be analogous to other belief-forming faculties in the way GRA suggests . . . since the reason we do not question the reliability of most of our faculties is that such faculties consistently generate similar beliefs in most individuals, the fact that religious faculties do not,

in general, produce similar beliefs in similar contexts does make it much more difficult to assume they possess the same sort of reliability

status.’

Basinger calls into question the very reliability of the religious faculty, whereas Wykstra focused on the epistemic obligation to determine by evidence which of the contradictory religious beliefs deserves credence. The more local and uncommon the phenomenon of 444

epistemic parity for a particular faculty, the more is the problem one of selecting one of the contradictory beliefs for credence. The more pervasive and unresisting cases of epistemic parity for a particular faculty, the more reason we would have to doubt its very reliability. Religious epistemic parity might well display a pervasiveness and entrenchment which would qualify it as a candidate for the second type of problem. Basinger believes that religious diversity also defeats a principle he calls the Negative Apologetical Thesis (NAT), which goes as follows: For a theist to be in a position to maintain jus‘tifiably that her basic formed beliefs are true even though she has no “positive reason” to think they are true, she is only obligated to defend herself against the claim that her religious faculties are not functioning properly.'®

Basinger, in opposition to NAT, claims that “religious diversity does challenge the assumption that a theist need only defend her formed beliefs and the reliability of the faculties which have produced them,” in order to continue to believe without positive evidence.'! He writes: The knowledgeable theist is obligated to attempt to resolve the pluralistic conflict — enter the arena of positive apologetics — before any “final” decision concerning the epistemic status of her formed religious belief can be made.

For both Wykstra and Basinger, therefore, it is religious diversity that would make religious belief epistemically defective if evidence-free. I now want to argue that the position of Wykstra, and of Basinger, is unacceptable, for three major reasons: (1)

(2) (3)

Their position has unwanted epistemo-

logical consequences. The religious faculty does not generally function in the way they suppose. Their conception of epistemology is too narrow.

RELIGIOUS DIVERSITY AND EPISTEMIC JUSTIFICATION

(1) If we accept that there are faculties for forming religious beliefs, beliefs of logic, and sense beliefs, we should acknowledge a faculty, as well, by means of which we form moral and value beliefs. After all, we form moral and value beliefs just as naturally and unreflectively as some form religious beliefs. And we are just as familiar with the notion of a “moral intuition” as we are with the notion of a religious experience or a logical intuition. I conclude that we ought to recognize a faculty for forming moral or value beliefs, if we recognize other natural faculties. Consider now, our belief in democracy. Most of us who hold this belief do so noninferentially, via the natural faculty for forming value beliefs. Similarly, those who believe in a non-democratic system may plausibly be said to be exercising the very same faculty. Conceding this, and noting the pervasiveness and entrenched nature of the contradiction between champions of democracy and their opponents. Basinger ought to call into question the reliability of the faculty for forming value beliefs. At the least we should get epistemic parity with regard to our value faculty. And then our belief in democracy should be judged epistemically defective, unless there were available to the community ofbelievers in democracy non-question-begging discriminational evidence in their favor. This consequence seems deeply counterintuitive. If true, then if it should turn out

that no one, not even our best political theorists, had any evidence (in the sense appropriate to value inquiry) favoring democracy, that did not draw exclusively from the cluster of values that only a believer in democracy would recognize or give similar weight to in the first place, then our beliefindemocracy would be epistemically defective. And knowing this, we would be epistemically irrational to continue believing in democracy. That this is not true seems to me obvious. Our belief in democracy would not be evidence-essential, even if evidence-free under conditions of epistemic parity.

Similar implausible conclusions follow from considering any number of beliefs which figure in debate over public policy. On the view we are considering, no one would be epistemically entitled to endorse a pro- or conabortion point ofview, or a belief for or against capital punishment. Presumably, sophisticated holders of any of these positions could justify it with a whole cluster of beliefs about humanity, justice, and the value oflife. But their

opponents could invoke against them an equally ramified cluster of values. Neither side, it seems, can produce a non-question-begging argument. These beliefs are thus evidence-free relative to the opposition, and thus allegedly epistemically defective. An additional problem with the approach of Wykstra and Basinger regards the nature of the religious faculty. If 1understand Wykstra and Basinger correctly, one who formed an atheistic or an agnostic belief in a natural, unreflective way, would not be considered to have employed a religious faculty in so doing. This is indicated by the fact that in their discussions ofthe beliefs formed via the religious faculty, both Wykstra and Basinger confine themselves exclusively to conflicts between religious beliefs. This suggests that in their view the forming of an atheistic or agnostic belief is not the product of the religious faculty. Why should a belief that God exists be the product of one faculty, and the belief that God does not exist a product of a different faculty? Perhaps the idea is that the formation of beliefs via a religious faculty is the result of religious experience, and not merely an intuition or conviction formed via an appropriate belief-forming mechanism. The formation of atheistic and agnostic beliefs is not based on religious experiences at all. So different faculties must be acknowledged. However, the difference between a Christian experience of God, for example, and a Buddhist experience of nothingness, is not impressively less than the difference between the Christian experience and an experience, say, of looking at the starry heavens and, im445

JEROME GELLMAN

pressed by the sheer meaninglessness of it all, declaring there is no God. It is arbitrary to assign the Christian and Buddhist experiences to one faculty, and the above atheistic experience to another. More plausibly, all three experiences are varying forms of a single faculty for forming beliefs on spiritual matters, on the basis of our experiences of the world. It might be objected, though, that atheistic (and agnostic) beliefs are rarely the result of experiences of the sort described above. They are mostly the result of other belief-forming faculties or are the result of inferences, correct or not, from other beliefs.

This objection would be completed by the claim that normally, religious belief zs the result of religious experience, and not of some other belief-forming mechanism, nor the result of an inference from other beliefs. And that is why a distinct religious faculty must be recognized. This claim about the manner in which religious belief is normally formed will be rejected below. It should be noted now, however, that atheistic and agnostic belief can issue from some natural faculty or other, even if not the same faculty for religious belief. Beliefs of this kind are at least sometimes formed in that unreflective and immediate way which indicates that a basic faculty is at work. But once this is acknowledged, the arguments of Wykstra and Basinger would have the quite implausible consequence that because of religious/agnostic/atheistic diversity, 2o belief about the existence or non-existence of God could be held in an epistemically justified way. And that would be because of epistemic parity between the results of different faculties, and the ensuing threat to the reliability of each of the faculties involved. After all, parity between faculties should be a no less potent epistemic threat than parity that arises within the confines of the employment of a single faculty. If our sense of sight and sense of touch were seriously and regularly at odds in their testimony to us, the problems raised by Wykstra and Basinger would surely arise there, if they arose anywhere. 446

If the line of argument being scrutinized were correct, no one could form any epistemically justified beliefs about any religious matter about which there existed a diversity of belief, without running afoul of the prohibition upon relying on a faculty, when faced with epistemic parity. Furthermore, neither could judgment be suspended, for the reason that a faculty is involved in judging that belief should be suspended. This would be the faculty of forming epistemic judgments or perhaps the faculty of reasoning. And this faculty must be weighed against the faculty that says that God exists, and against the faculty that says God does not exist. So the very faculty employed to decide that judgment should be suspended, would itself be a party to epistemic parity (Wykstra) or be threatened by the loss of its reliability (Basinger).

To my mind, these results count strongly against the epistemological assumptions of Wykstra and Basinger. (2) The religious faculty does not widely function in the way implied by Wykstra and Basinger. We should here distinguish between: (A) the initial formulation of religious belief in a believer, and (B) the ongoing creation of religious beliefs in the life of a believer. (A) pertains to the way in which a believer comes to have religious beliefs in the first place (early on in life, say). These may be beliefs held by a general population, such as that God has revealed His Law to His people. Or they may be of a more personal and specific nature, held solely by a single believer or together with those close to her, such as that God loved

Uncle Randolph, or that God “wants me to go to sleep now.” (B) pertains to the ongoing creation of religious beliefs as the religious life is lived, and may include the adding on of generally held beliefs, but more typically will pertain to the personal type of belief, such as that God “wants me now to act in a certain way.” With regard to (A), it seems quite apparent that the vast majority of religious believers in the world’s religious traditions do not come

RELIGIOUS DIVERSITY AND EPISTEMIC JUSTIFICATION

to their beliefs via a religious faculty. Rather, they are born and raised within a religious tradition with which they simply go along. They are led by their elders and teachers to act and speak in certain ways, and they just go along with it. This is also the way they get their beliefs about geography, history, literature, music, science,

and much

else. They then

continue along with their beliefs once they have them. If anything, a faculty of credulity in testimony of others lies at the beginning of their religiosity. At that beginning, in any case, often lies an intricate network of dogma and doctrine which it is quite implausible to suppose believers come to via a religious faculty. They believe what they are taught by their elders. With regard_to (B), later beliefs, again it seems quite apparent that these religious beliefs are not generally formed in a fashion suggesting the operation of a religious faculty. Rather, believers typically are drawing conclusions from the religious framework they have been taught, applying it to the circumstances in which they find themselves. This procedure is quite unlike the formation of sense-beliefs. For while individuals do see objects with the obvious aid of an acculturated practice, yet in doing so they normally do not draw any conclusions from previously acquired sense-beliefs. Their formation of sense-beliefs when confronted by physical objects is direct and spontaneous. With religion, however, it seems that after the initial period of acculturation, believers are typically only drawing upon the beliefs within their tradition to form inferences concerning their present life situations. There may be exceptions to this in some religious traditions, but these are not typical of the way the world’s religions work for their adherents in general. In particular, talk of a religious faculty as the source of religious beliefs, rather than the faculties of credulity in testimony and of reasoning, seems largely inappropriate to contemporary Jewish religious belief. Religious belief has much more to do with living within a tradition and drawing in-

ferences within it, than with forming unreflective beliefs via a uniquely religious faculty. (3) My major objection to Wykstra and Basinger is that their epistemology is too narrow to correctly reflect the epistemology of religion. The implicit conception of epistemology shared by these two thinkers is that one’s epistemology consists exclusively in the discovery and accurate formulation of rules governing beliefs. That is to say, on this view epistemology is solely a matter of finding the right rules and applying them correctly to specific beliefs. By a rule Imean a(n implicitly or explicitly) universally quantified proposition which states under what conditions one is justified in taking a proposition as true, or in believing it, or in taking it to be rational to believe it; or which sets out one’s epistemic obligations with regard to one’s given epistemic situation. To illustrate, Wykstra and Basinger employ the following epistemic rules in their discussions: (1)

(2)

(3)

One is justified in believing the testimony of one’s natural faculties unless one has reason not to. When there is epistemic parity one is obligated to find discriminational evidence for one side or the other. It is not rational to believe without evidence or without relying on one’s natural faculties.

The history of epistemology has largely been the history of such rules. Here are some favorites of various philosophers, past and present:

(4)

(5) (6)

(7)

Ifa proposition appears to one to be selfevident, then one is justified in believing it. It is irrational to believe in a contradiction. One has an obligation never to believe without evidence. One has an obligation to form one’s 447

JEROME GELLMAN

judgments on the basis of one’s total evidence. These rules (and others like them) are offered as rock-bottom governors ofour epistemic lives: they determine the acceptability of belief candidates, while themselves not subject to deeper epistemic justification. In the event that an epistemic rule is derived, and not itself rockbottom, typically what appears at the rock-bottom level of the derivation is only other rules. Let us call any epistemology which recognizes only rules as ultimate in judging propositions a “rule-epistemology.” : By a “religious epistemology,” I shall mean an epistemological point of view used to govern one’s religious beliefs. And what I want to claim is that typically a religious epistemology is not a rule-epistemology. However one has formed a religious belief, at some point along the way it acquires epistemic unconditionality. One’s religious beliefs become the very rock-bottom of one’s epistemological apparatus. The epistemic acceptability of other beliefs is then judged by their lights. The grounds ofreligious belief, if any, fall away, leaving a religious belief whose epistemic acceptability is underived for the believer. It is in the nature ofthe religious life, I contend, that religious belief typically serves the believer not as what is justified, but only as justifying. Consider the belief that God exists. Whether belief-candidates are acceptable or not is judged, in part, in light of whether they are consistent with God’s existence. And this is done not because one is or means to be following a rule, about, say, relying on beliefs for which one has evidence, or because one is or means to be following a rule about, say, being justified in relying on natural faculties which deliver beliefs. Rather, belief in God, being rock-bottom, plays the role for the believer of a test for other beliefs, in precisely the way purported for (1)-(7). Generally, (1)-(7) are accepted as starting points of one’s epistemology. And so, typically, I contend, belief in God belongs with

448

the starting points of the epistemology of the religious believer, at the same level of epistemological significance for her as any of the rock-bottom rules of philosophers for them. Now one may object that religious belief as I understand it can be given the form of a rule. For example, “God exists” as a rock-bottom justifying proposition, can be cast as follows: (G)

Any proposition which contradicts God’s existence is to be rejected.

But if so, the epistemology of religious belief has not been shown to diverge in any way from rule-epistemology. But this objection is easily answered. For the proposed rule, (G) is not itself rock-bottom in the believer’s epistemology. For (G) derives from the non-rule belief that God exists. What is significant about the religious case is that the specific proposition that God exists (as well as other specific religious propositions) plays an exclusively grounding or judging role in one’s epistemology. Whether or not one originally grounded one’s belief in God, subsequently that belief does not function as a grounded belief but only as a grounding one. Traditional epistemology has reserved this role for rules alone. Alternatively, we may concede that (G) functions for the believer in the rock-bottom way that rules (1)-(7) do for epistemologists. Then I need only revise my position by saying that rule (G) is to be found in the rock-bottom ofthe typical believer’s epistemology. My point would then be that in the believer’s epistemology are to be found rules not found in the epistemology of non-believers, for example (G). In what follows I will prefer the first reply though: that (G) is not rock-bottom, but derived from the belief that God exists, which is rock-bottom. A second point about a typical believer’s epistemology depends on the notion of a /ierarchy of rock-bottom propositions. Propositions are epistemically rock-bottom in virtue of not being derived from any other proposi-

RELIGIOUS DIVERSITY AND EPISTEMIC JUSTIFICATION

tion. There can still be a hierarchy of such propositions in one’s epistemology, though. A rock-bottom proposition, p, will be said to be Mierarchically higher in a hierarchy, H, than is rock-bottom qin H, when pis allowed more weight than gin one’s epistemic deliberations. And 7 is allowed more weight than g when the results of applying p are preferred to the results of applying q. Finally let us say that p is hierarchically prior to qin H, when the result of applying p is accepted irregardless of what the results are of applying gq, that is, when the application of gis not allowed to change the result yielded by the application of p. Generally, the rule that tells us to trust our senses, (S), is hierarchically higher than the rule that tells us to trust the testimony of others, (T); but (S) isnot prior to (T). The rule that we not believe in an explicit contradiction is prior to both (S) and (T). For most of us, (S) is both higher and prior in our hierarchy of epistemic rock-bottom propositions than the rule that we are justified in believing what seems true as the conclusion of asound logical deduction. For that reason, we do not allow Zeno-like arguments to influence in the least the degree to which we believe in motion. Typically, I wish to maintain, religious belief, or at least some substantial core thereof, which is rock-bottom, is przor in the believer’s epistemic hierarchy to many of the rules favored by epistemologists. In particular religious beliefisprior to consideration of rules of rationality. Let us say, then, that religious belief is possessed of strong priority in a religious epistemology. Issues ofrationality, I wish to claim, against Wykstra’s and Basinger’s approach, find a place in a religious epistemology, if at all, posterior to the acceptance of religious belief. Only already armed with rock-bottom religious beliefs as judging-propositions does the believer ever raise questions ofthe rationality ofother beliefs. In particular, the believer’s rules of rationality are not applied to her rock-bottom religious beliefs. The latter are prior to the former for her, in the way that our belief in

motion is prior for us to our acceptance of the conclusions of Zeno’s arguments. It should be noted that a religious epistemology which includes rock-bottom religious beliefs with strong epistemic priority is not a fideism, for the following reasons: First, fideism asserts that one may believe “on faith,” without support from “reason.” So fideism involves an epistemological rule. However, a believer for whom beliefin God is rock-bottom and possessed ofstrong hierarchical priority is simply a Christian, or a Shaivite, with no epistemological rule justifying her belief, and with no rule that states the conditions of justification of religious beliefs in general (whether hers or someone else’s). She simply believes her religion straightaway, evaluating other beliefs directly in terms of the specific religious beliefs she holds. That’s it. Secondly, fideism includes a view about how believers come to hold their religious beliefs. They do so on faith. The thesis I am presenting recognizes that believers come to their beliefs in various ways, though I have claimed that most are simply raised in a religious atmosphere and go along with it. My claim is that as religious belief typically functions, the grounds, if any, for belief fall away, as it were, and religious beliefs become rock-bottom epistemic propositions, no longer vulnerable to assessment, but instead the starting points of assessment. Likewise, we should not conclude that an

epistemology of rock-bottom strongly-prior religious beliefs requires a unique conception of “rationality” on the part of the believer. For the believer may not have any conception of rationality whatsoever. In particular, if my description of a typical religious epistemology is correct, the believer does not accept his religious beliefs because he thinks they are rational. They are epistemically proper for him not because ofsatisfying a rule of rationality for him. They are acceptable for him on account of being the propositions that they are. I conclude that typical religious epistemology differs markedly from the picture

449

JEROME GELLMAN

presented in the arguments of Wykstra and Basinger.

Il I have argued that a typical religious epistemology regards religious beliefs, or at least a core thereof, as epistemically rock-bottom and strongly prior in the hierarchy of epistemically rock-bottom propositions. In this section I argue that such an epistemology is quite proper, and that no epistemic problem need arise for the believer on account of religious diversity. I begin by considering two objections to the position given in section I. Then I consider the status of such an epistemology when faced with opposing epistemological viewpoints. The first objection is that a religious epistemology of the sort described violates the notion of “epistemic justification.” The second objection is that if such an epistemology were approved, then “anyone could believe anything they wanted.” The first objection begins by asserting an intrinsic connection between “epistemic justification” and “truth.” Laurence Bonjour has put the point about the connection in the following way: The distinguishing characteristic of epistemic justification is thus its essential or internal relation to the cognitive role of truth. It follows that one’s cognitive endeavors are epistemically justified only if and to the extent that they are aimed at this goal, which means very roughly that one accepts all and only those beliefs which one has good reason to think are true. To accept a belief in the absence of such a reason... is to neglect the pursuit of truth; such acceptance is, one might say, epistemically irresponsible. [So] any degree of epistemic justification, however small, must increase to a commensurate degree the chances that the belief in question is true. . . for otherwise it cannot qualify as epistemic justification at all.’

Bonjour seems to be endorsing the following principle: 450

(B)

Sis epistemically justified in believing a proposition, p, if and only if S has good reason to think that p is true.

Contrary to (B), however, there are beliefs epistemically justified in the absence of reasons for thinking the belief true. It seems most rational, everything else being equal, to continue believing what one already believes, until one has a reason to abandon that belief, even if presently there is no reason for thinking the belief true.'* This is true even when the belief in question is challenged by counter-beliefs. This is sometimes called the principle of “methodological conservatism.” So we see that epistemic justification does not depend on having reasons to think that p is true. It may be argued, though, that even so methodological conservatism is epistemically justified in reference to truth, even if not indicative of the truth of propositions, because the pursuit of truth is best served in the long run by adoption of the principle. If people were to follow the rule of methodological conservatism, they would be more motivated to attempt to find evidence for the propositions they held than they would if they merely entertained those propositions without believing them. The increased effort to try to establish the truth of propositions serves the cause of truth in the long run.!° And so, the argument concludes, the principle of methodological conservatism is justified, at least, with “respect” to truth: while it may not serve to indicate truth, it helps yeld truth, in the long run. Allowing this reply to stand, let us change (B) accordingly: (Bl)

Sis epistemically justified in believing a proposition, /, if and only if either S$ has good reason to think that p is true, or Shas good reason to think that believing p will serve the pursuit of truth in the long run.

Accepting (B1), however, does not require rejecting a non-rule religious epistemology.

RELIGIOUS DIVERSITY AND EPISTEMIC JUSTIFICATION

To see this, consider that (B1) will entail this only if read as:

(B2)

Sis epistemically justified in believing a proposition, p, if and only if either S$ has good reason to think that p is true in virtue of having tested p in accordance with epistemically valid rules, or $ has good reason independent of thinking that p 1s true to think that believing p will serve the pursuit of truth in the long run.

insist that he holds it because it is true. Ifasked what his reason is for thinking that it is true, he could well answer that the reason he thinks it is true is just because it zs true. He neither derives this belief from any other belief of his nor recognizes an epistemic duty to justify the truth of this belief by means of rules which pass upon its acceptability. The situation of the believer would thus not be dissimilar to that of the epistemologist who accepts the rule listed earlier: (4)

But one can accept (B1), with its disjunctive

link between epistemic justification and truth, without endorsing (B2), by adopting a nonrule epistemology. In a non-rule epistemology, S’s having good reason to think that p is true, is not equivalent to S’s having a good reason to think that p is true 7 virtue of having tested p by epistemically valid rules. And in a non-rule-epistemology that S has good reason to think that believing p serves truth in the long run, is not equivalent to S having good reason independent of thinking that p ts true to think that believing p serves truth in the long run. A non-rule-epistemology does require the rejection of (B2), but not the rejection of (B1). A non-rule-epistemologist can embrace (B1) with enthusiasm. If there zs a link between epistemic justification and truth it is purely formal, and does not entail a substantive claim about what ave good reasons for thinking that p is true or for thinking that believing p will serve truth in the long run. The non-rule-epistemologist is free, as far as (B1) is concerned, to think of the veasons for thinking p true or for thinking the belief in p as conducive to truth, as internal to the act of accepting p. Let me illustrate the point with the belief that God exists, as rock-bottom and possessed of strong priority. As for the link between epistemic justification and having a good reason for thinking that God exists is true, the believer who believes

that God exists and who holds this belief in a rock-bottom way might well be prepared to

Ifa proposition appears to one to be self-evident, then one is justified in believing it.

The epistemologist would no doubt claim that his reason for thinking that (4) true is that it seems true. But suppose we wished him to make explicit his reason for thinking that if (4) seems true, then it zs true. Plausibly, our epistemologist would answer that:

(4a)

Ifa proposition seems true, that’s a good reason to think it és true.

But then if we ask what reason he has for thinking (4a) true, he cannot reply that he thinks that zt is true because it seems to be true, without begging the question at issue. The only real recourse the epistemologist seems to have is to say that the reason he thinks (4a) true is just that it zs true. His reason for accepting the truth of (4a) is thus internal to his acceptance of (4a). He is none the less epistemically justified in accepting (4a). The belief that God exists would be similar for the believer to the belief in (4) or (4a) for the epistemologist. The reason for thinking that each is true belongs internally to the acceptance of the proposition in question. Next, regarding epistemic justification and the serving of truth in the long run, a believer can readily proclaim that the holding of his belief furthers the cause of truth in the long run. This will be because he attests that God exists is true, so judging other beliefs by whether they contradict that belief will serve 451

JEROME GELLMAN

the cause of truth in the long run. To suppose that such a procedure violates (B1) is to smuggle into (B1) substantive epistemological doctrines not justified on the mere grounds of a conceptual link between epistemic justification and truth. The point is that accepting (B1) does not require that the veason for thinking that what one believes is true or serves the cause of truth must be decided independently of and prior to the acceptance of the belief itself. (B1) does not entail (B2). It follows that ceding the disjunctive link between epistemic justification and truth does not disqualify a religious epistemology which is not a rule-epistemology. The second objection to religious epistemology as I have presented it that I wish to consider is this: If religious belief, epistemically rock-bottom and strongly prior, were recognized as epistemically proper, then couldn’t just any belief claim the same right? Wouldn’t the door be open for out and out irrationality? This objection parallels an objection considered by Alvin Plantinga to his thesis that religious belief is properly basic.'° I paraphrase Plantinga’s voicing of the objection, substituting “rock-bottom and has strong epistemic priority” for each occurrence of “properly basic”. If belief in God is rock-bottom and has strong epistemic priority, why cannot just any belief be rock-bottom and have strong epistemic priority? Could we not say the same for any bizarre aberration we can think of? What about voodoo or astrology? What about the belief that the Great Pumpkin returns every Halloween? Could I properly take that as rock-bottom and as having strong epistemic priority?!”

The first thing to be said in response is that this issue need not arise for a religious epistemology. And that is because a religious epistemology need not have any rule to the effect that any belief can be rock-bottom and strongly prior. A religious epistemology may explicitly reject such a rule, recognizing only particular religious beliefs as rock-bottom and 452

strongly prior. Neither, from the point of view of such an epistemology, is a rule required to distinguish the favored religious beliefs from other possible candidates for proper rock-bottom strong priority. And that is because the religious beliefs are rock-bottom and strongly prior epistemically, thus not dependent upon passing the test of any rule. The religious beliefs may securely be in place before, as it were, the rationality of voodoo and astrology are ever considered. So from the point of view of a religious epistemology there need be no problem created by the asking of the above questions. The above questions only arise from the point of view of a rule-epistemology, which grants epistemic respectability only to beliefs that pass the test of epistemic rules. And the question asked from that point of view is: by what rule are rock-bottom strongly prior religious beliefs to be epistemically justified? The rule that any belief of that sort can be epistemically justified is obviously unacceptable. But what could distinguish the religious case from others? A possible suggestion emerges from considering Plantinga’s choice of belief in the “Great Pumpkin,” as an example of a paradigmatically unacceptable belief. Now the fact is that a belief in the Great Pumpkin who returns every Halloween bears a striking similarity to beliefs current in the world’s great religions. In some sects of Buddhism, for example, Buddha figures are said to appear and reappear to the inner eye of the devotee. Devout Jews believe that the prophet Elijah returns to their homes every Passover, and attends every Jewish circumcision. And Christianity has taught that a man who died and was buried long ago reappears regularly in substance upon the partaking of wine and wafer under proper circumstances. Of course each of these beliefs is embedded within a larger theological context. But couldn’t we imagine the same for beliefin the Great Pumpkin? I don’t see why not. So what, indeed, makes the Great Pumpkin, but not

Transubstantiation or Elijah’s annual visits, a

RELIGIOUS DIVERSITY AND EPISTEMIC JUSTIFICATION

fine example of an obviously unacceptable belief? I suggest that a felt difference between the religious cases and the Great Pumpkin example is that the former and not the latter are accepted and lived by within a wide community of believers. That is why, aside from questions of politeness, the Great Pumpkin is felt to be a good example of an absurd belief, while the others are not. And the reason why community embedding is felt to make an epistemic difference is that it is in our communities that we discover our epistemic frames of reference, and live our doxastic lives. So I suggest that the belief that a man long ago dead regularly returns in substance is epistemically permissible because embedded in a wide community of believers, while the Great Pumpkin has no such following. For the same reason belief in democracy is epistemically justified, even if evidence-free. There are no precise rules to determine how widely a belief must be believed in and lived by in order to be epistemically proper, when rock-bottom. I dare suggest that epistemological rules regarding what is epistemically acceptable are themselves community-embedded, most typically in communities of philosophers. And the community’s own sense of itself, and its purposes, shapes its attitude on these matters. Thus variations will be expected on views as to the extent to which a belief must be widely held in order to be considered epistemically acceptable. Well, then, what of voodoo and astrology. Are they not widely held and lived by? Certainly. So are they too epistemically respectable? The predilection to answer in the negative lies in the fact, I believe, that what we object to in these practices is their making empirical predictions contradicted by the senses and science. Given the epistemologies of most of us, this makes them unacceptable. And it is this feature which makes them so readily available as obvious examples of improper beliefs. And the same may be said of belief in the Great Pumpkin if taken as out and out empirical. Of course the same may be

said of religious teachings with empirical import at odds with the senses and science, from the point of view, at least, of anon-religious epistemology. The fact is, though, that neither the Buddha’s appearances, nor Elijah’s visits, nor the transubstantiation are empirical in nature. Hence, our rejection of voodoo and astrology does not count as a counterexample to the epistemic respectability of widely held beliefs. We merely need require that widely held beliefs not be admitted if they contradict the evidence of the senses or scientific truths. Thus I see no reason to think that if religious epistemology were recognized as acceptable, then just amy belief could be acceptable, no matter how little believed and no matter how much it went against our sense judgments and well established scientific truths. We have now considered, and attempted to turn back, two reasons why a religious epistemology, as I have described it, might be rejected as epistemically defective. The first was from considerations of a link between truth and epistemic justification, and the second was from the fear that if religious epistemology were granted epistemic respectability, just any belief would have to be similarly regarded. But suppose, despite my best efforts, the epistemic respectability of religious epistemology, as here presented, was rejected in the name of a rule-epistemology. What would then be the epistemic situation for one who embraced a religious epistemology? Anyone holding a rule-epistemology would be perfectly within his rights to require religious belief to answer to the requirements of /is epistemology. What needs to be stressed, though, is that the holding of arock-bottom religious belief takes place on the same epistemological level as the holding of a rule-epistemology. To put the point differently, just as the rule-epistemologist may think that ruleepistemology has the right to judge religion, the religious believer may equally believe that religion has the right to judge rule-epistemology. What is impermissible, I suggest, is for the 453

GRACE M. JANTZEN

rule-epistemologist to assume that her epistemological stance is somehow of a more fundamental order than is another’s religious stance. In fact, the situation between a religious epistemology and a rule-epistemology is exactly analogous to the situation that obtains between one religion and another within religious diversity. Thus a rule-epistemologist could not very well cling to her own epistemological orientation, discounting all others, while denying the same right of one religious orientation to discount all the others. She couldn’t very well do that, that is, unless she preferred her own rule-epistemology without having made it pass any rule. And so, to conclude the argument of this study, while I have not established that rockbottom strongly prior religious belief is epistemically justified, I hope to have said enough to show that there is no good reason to think it is not.

2

3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ll 12 13

14 Notes

1

50

Stephen J. Wykstra, “Toward a Sensible Evidentialism: on the Notion of ‘Needing Evidence,’” in William L. Rowe and William J. Wainwright, eds, Philosophy of Religion, Selected Readings, 2nd edn (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1989), pp. 426-37.

15 16

17

See David Basinger, “Plantinga, Pluralism, and Justified Religious Belief,” Faith and Philosophy, 8 (1991), pp. 67-80. References in the text will be to this article. See also, Basinger, “Hick’s Religious Pluralism and ‘Reformed Epistemology,’” Faith and Philosophy, 5 (1988), pp. 421-32. Sec John Hick, An Interpretation of Religion (London: Macmillan, 1989), and, “Religious Pluralism and Salvation,” Faith and Philosophy, 5 (1988), pp. 365HI Wykstra, pp. 430-1. Wykstra, pp. 434¢f. Wykstra, p. 435. Wykstra, p. 436. Wykstra, p. 437. Basinger, p. 70. Basinger, p. 71. Basinger, p. 69, abridged. Basinger, p. 75. Basinger, p. 75. Laurence Bonjour, The Structure of Empirical Knowledge (Boston: Harvard University Press, 1985), p. 8. See Gary Gutting, Religious Belief and Religious Skepticism (Notre Dame, Ind.: Notre Dame University Press, 1985), p. 100. See Gutting, pp. 101-2. See Alvin Plantinga, “Is Belief in God Properly Basic?” Nous, 15 (1981). Reprinted in Rowe and Wainwright, pp. 417-26. Rowe and Wainwright, p. 423.

What’s the Difference? Knowledge and Gender in (Post)Modern Philosophy of Religion*

Grace M. Jantzen Donna Haraway, in her ‘Manifesto for Cyborgs’, issues a warning that in the postmodern world where grand narratives increas* From Religious Studies, 32:4 (1996), pp. 431-48.

Reprinted with permission.

454

ingly fail and subjects are seen to be irremediably fragmented, ‘we risk lapsing into boundless difference and giving up on the confusing task of making a partial, real connection. Some differences are playful; some are poles of world historical systems of domination. Epistemol-

WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE? KNOWLEDGE AND GENDER

ogy is about knowing the difference.”! Such an account of epistemology, which sees its central task to be a knowledge of the significance of difference and a capacity to discern between innocent and oppressive forms of difference, is perhaps not one that would most readily occur to British philosophers of religion. It is, however, an account which has resonances both with many contemporary Continental thinkers and with feminist epistemologists. Notwithstanding the many areas of divergence between and among these groups, on two points at least they converge: that the recognition and discernment of difference has become inescapable for epistemology; and that of the differences which must be dealt with, gender difference has a paradigmatic status, Contemporary Continental thought, particularly that deriving from France, is often referred to by the terms ‘postmodern’ or ‘poststructural’ and their variants, in a doubtful if convenient derivation from Lyotard’s account of The Postmodern Condition.’ Yet as soon as one begins to read the thinkers lumped together under these labels, the vast differences among them become apparent. Indeed, many of the thinkers unhappily joined together under the term ‘postmodern’ explicitly reject the label. It is therefore important to ask, as Judith Butler does, Is there, after all, something called postmodernism? Is it an historical characterization, a certain kind of theoretical position, and what does it mean for a term that has described a certain aesthetic practice now to apply to social theory ... ? Who are these postmodernists? Is this a name that one takes on for oneself, or is it more often a name that one is called. . . ??

Butler suggests, I believe correctly, that the term is far too frequently used as a refusal to take the writers in question seriously, whether as an excuse to jump on some sort of ‘postmodern bandwagon’ or, more often, as a technique of dismissal, as when Ernest Gellner says that postmodernists and feminists, between them, have manufactured a “pseudo-

crisis’ of reason which actually amounts to nothing more than ‘sturm und drang und tenure.’* Such blanketing techniques, used by either side, labelling each other as trendy and reactionary respectively, are not going to be very helpful: in any case, there are plenty of them already, without my adding to them. What is needed is a much more piecemeal approach, looking carefully at particular aspects of Continental thought on difference and gender and the ways in which they challenge British philosophy of religion. In one paper, I can do no more than make a very modest start in this task; but I hope that it will be of interest in itself, and also serve as an invitation to further reading and critical study of the richly varied primary texts. This is all the more important because whereas Continental thought is being taken up by British thinkers in linguistics and cultural studies and in its implications for Biblical studies and hermeneutics, few philosophers of religion have so far taken it seriously. One reason for this is the deep channel that separates England from France when it comes to conceptualizing what religion is, and therefore what constitutes philosophy of religion and how it should be conducted. In this paper I would like to sketch something ofthat divide, in order that we may approach contemporary Continental thought, particularly its emphasis on difference and gender, with fewer misconceptions and greater chance of appreciation and understanding. In the following sketch, I shall use ‘British’ as shorthand for the Anglo-American analytic tradition in philosophy of religion with its heavy investment in the philosophical theology of Christianity, and ‘French’ as shorthand for the strands of thought associated with structuralism and its aftermath, and recognize in advance that I am lumping together, under each label, thinkers who are in fact quite disparate and who in important ways disagree with one another. Also, of course, there are a few British philosophers ofreligion who have been deeply influenced by contemporary Continental thinking (Don Cupitt comes to mind) 455

GRACE M. JANTZEN

and a few Continental thinkers, such as Vincent Briimmer, whose methodology is not differentiable from what I am labelling ‘British’. I am using ‘British’ and ‘French’ as shorthand for divergent methodologies, rather than as adjectives describing where people live, though there is considerable correspondence between the two.

1 Constructing the Discipline of Philosophy of Religion A central preoccupation of many British philosophers of religion, as well as of American strands such as those influenced by Alvin Plantinga, is with the nature and existence of God, where ‘God’ is understood along the lines of traditional Christian doctrine: a being other than the world or anything in it who is its creator, omnipotent, omniscient, and be-

nevolent. In what has become known as the ‘realist’—‘antirealist’ debate, the contested question is whether belief in God signifies belief that such a transcendent being objectively exists, or whether expression of belief in God is something more like a subject’s positioning of herself over against whatever might happen, whether or not there is a transcendent referent for the term ‘God’. The latter position is, as we shall see, rather closer to Continental thought forms than the former. Among those who take the realist position, the question of the existence of this God, then, is seen as a question of objective fact. Though the existence of such a being might be the most important of all facts, and indeed their cause, in terms of its status asa fact it is not different from other facts. If it is true, it is one more fact within the world offacts; ifit is false, the rest of the world of facts stays just the same, since it is after all from that world of facts that the evidential debate is conducted. The difference between a theist and an atheist, on

this account, is that the theist accepts as a fact one item which the atheist denies, namely the existence of God. Hence one can pass from atheism to theism or vice versa by the addi456

tion or subtraction of one fact, while the rest

of the facts remain untouched. This is of course vot to say that the addition or subtraction of that fact is without profound implication for how the individual’s life is conducted, and in that sense has a bearing on other facts.

But believers and atheists can share in scientific theories, laboratory experiments, economic strategies, and social policies: their disagreement regarding God’s existence is an additional fact, external to the class of facts

about the world, and best left to the private realm ofreligion. This is true even in the moral realm: for example, in Responsibility and Atonement Richard Swinburne separates his inquiry into two parts: first the development of a moral theory which rests largely on critical intuition and is not specifically Christian, and second, an analysis of what follows if we add to this the premises of traditional Christian doctrine. Although he holds that such addition does make a moral difference especially in such things as making worship a duty, the moral theory developed in the first part of the book functions in what Philip Quinn has described as an ‘Archimedean fixed point’,° a basis for theological evaluation precisely because it holds for theists and nontheists alike. One of the tasks of philosophy of religion, then, is to consider whether it is rational to

believe in God. This task can be approached in various ways: with Richard Swinburne in a quasi-calculation of the probabilities of the existence of God, for example, or, quite dif-

ferently, with the idea that the existence of God is a properly basic belief, as Alvin Plantinga holds, perhaps grounded, as William Alston argues, in mystical perception, a concept modelled on the sensory perception of empirical objects. Although I do not want to minimize the differences between these philosophers, I suppose that form a Continental perspective they all look very much alike, in their preoccupation with a putative transcendent being and how beliefin such a being could be justified. Moreover, they all proceed, not only as though the central question of philosophical

WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE? KNOWLEDGE AND GENDER

theism is the question of whether or not God exists (as an objective fact), but also as though the philosopher who weighs the evidence or perhaps ponders basicality or mystical perception is, unproblematically, a rational subject. This subject has experiences, whether sensory or mystical, and is capable of weighing up those experiences (perhaps with a little help from philosophical experts) and deciding on the basis of them whether or not it is rational to believe that God exists. Exactly the same assumption of the rationality of the subject obtains, moreover in relation to what some philosophers of religion consider to be the logically prior issue of the coherence of theism, the conceptual investigation of the simultaneous attribution of the traditional predicates of the divine. Such issues as the embodiedness and cultural embeddedness of the knowing subject, differences between subjects whether in terms of power, gender, or social status, or the effects of the unconscious or of ideology on claims to knowledge are not taken as central to the debate. All of this presupposes, moreover, that it is possible to speak of these subjects of rationality and their experiences, and indeed of God, in ordinary human language. Granted, the question of how finite human language can refer to the infinite is a question which many British philosophers of religion grapple with, recognizing that an appeal to analogy or metaphor at least requires explication. It is no accident, either, that those English-speaking philosophers of religion like D. Z. Phillips, who take seriously Wittgenstein’s remarks on language games which have close affinities to Continental semiotics, are seen to destabilize a good deal of traditional philosophy of religion. With the exception of such Wittgensteinians, however, and in spite of some recognition of the problem ofreference, a great deal of contemporary philosophy of religion proceeds as though the difficulties in speaking of or referring to God can be overcome, and that, at least at a rough and ready level, we can adequately understand what is meant by such putative divine attributes as

omnipotence, omniscience, and goodness. In much Continental thought, each ofthese terms — God/religion, the subject, and language — are held self-evidently to be vastly more problematic and complicated than they are’taken to be in British philosophy of religion. Contemporary Continental thinkers such as Derrida, Irigaray and Kristeva, for all their differences, take as inescapable the conceptual terrain mapped out by the ‘masters of suspicion’ Nietzsche, Marx and Freud, and the

complications of this terrain by Saussure, Lacan and Althusser — to let these names stand for many. This is not to say that they suppose that the positions adopted by these thinkers are beyond dispute, but rather that they cannot be ignored. To ignore is to be ignorant. The importance of the unconscious, and therefore of longing, projection and repression in any significant human relation and therefore certainly in religion; the inescapability of ideology and social construction and therefore the dynamics of power and dominance in religion; the continuous play of signifiers in an ever-shifting constellation of meaning, and therefore the problem ofreference or relation to the signified; the interweaving of violence and the sacred and the all-pervasiveness of sexual dynamics of masculinity and femininity; the inescapable responsibility of intellectuals for the ethical and political uses that will be made of our words and our silences: all these themes are in their view fundamental for any non-naive philosophy of religion. Moreover, all of these are, in their view, always already implicated in anything that could count as ‘empirical evidence’ or as ‘logical coherence’ — and implicated even more obviously in who gets to do the counting. Such assumptions are quite literally foreign to many British philosophers of religion, and I do not wish to suggest that they are beyond challenge. Indeed, the French thinkers I have mentioned are themselves often sharply critical of the ‘masters of suspicion’ and their followers. The differences in what is at stake in their critiques and how they are pursued, however, are revealing. In British writing, what 457

GRACE M. JANTZEN

often happens is that specific arguments about religion in Freud or Marx or Nietzsche are challenged by a combination of appeal to empirical evidence and logic. Thus, for example, John Hick in his book An Interpretation of Religion, devotes a few pages to criticisms of some particular arguments about the nature of religion offered by Durkheim and Freud. Having dispensed with these arguments to his satisfaction, Hick then proceeds to an account of religion which treats human subjectivity, experience and _ language relatively unproblematically.”? From the perspective of current French philosophers, who are also, like’ Hick, deeply concerned about the nature of religion, such an approach would appear simplistic. This is not to say that they would defend Freud or Marx or Durkheim at the points where Hick attacks them: as already said, they also develop searching critiques of these thinkers.® But in French thinking, the force of the ‘masters of suspicion’ is not so much in their detailed arguments, which may often fall into mistakes, but rather in the ways in which they show Enlightenment assumptions about the rational subject, language and religion to be radically destabilized by the combined factors of the unconscious and socially constructed ideology. Unless we recognize the extent to which assumptions of such destabilization forms the background to the philosophy of religion of Kristeva (or Irigaray, or Derrida, or Foucault, for all their differences), that philosophy will remain as incomprehensible to us as British realism and empiricism seem astonishing to them. In the interests of promoting understanding, I shall make some highly schematic remarks about the ways in which this destabilization is related to issues of difference and of gender, and is seen to affect the three areas highlighted in my comments about British philosophy of religion: the subject, language and God /religion.

2

Decentring the Subject

The work of Freud and Lacan has shown that

458

subtending the ‘rational’ and ‘autonomous’ ego beloved of Kant and his followers is the unconscious, built out of the repression of unacceptable desires from early childhood onwards, and always returning to reveal itself in jokes, slips of the tongue, and above all dreams. The desires of the unconscious are desires of and for the body, focused initially on the body of the mother, and subsequently on all the others who stand in for the (m)other. But since the conscious, rational ego was built upon the repression and mastery of those desires, that mastery will extend to all those who stand for the mother, all the (m)others who at an unconscious level suggest to the subject the desires that have been repressed. In Lacanian psychoanalytic theory, moreover, the subject qua subject is always masculine, since it is individualized out of its primordial unity with the mother by means of identification with the Law of the Father in the Oedipal phase of childhood development. In so far as women become subjects — which is only imperfectly and against the grain — it is by becoming masculinized, speaking men’s language, playing male roles by male rules, or by accepting female roles of motherhood and service designed for them by males. Hence, the subject’s efforts at mastery are directed toward the feminine, all that is identified with the (m)other: actual women, otherness in race or sexuality, and, dramatically, ‘Mother Nature’ whose domination is taken up as a sacred task. The mastery of all these is a necessary corollary to the repression of the desire for the mother by which the subject constitutes itself'as a separate and rational ego. Furthermore, in this effort toward mastery the ego will bond with and project itself into any structures of kinship or institutions of society which will facilitate such repression: thus are the structures of civilization built up. Difference, of which gender difference is the paradigm, is perceived as a challenge to mastery. Hence the Continental view is that any understanding of religion and the concept of God must take seriously the extent to which conceptualizations of the divine are male pro-

WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE? KNOWLEDGE AND GENDER

jections serving the interests of repression of desires and the mastery of (m)others. Although any specific allegation of projection, notoriously those found in Freud’s Totem and Taboo,’ can be usefully explored and perhaps challenged, Continental thinkers take it for granted that once we have admitted the existence of the unconscious, as we must, then

we can no longer philosophize as though we are uncomplicated rational subjects. Our very existence is built upon difference, as we define our conscious selves over against others. Nor can we suppose that God is an uncomplicated divine subject, our mirror image writ large. The idea that we can tabulate characteristics of human personhood, and then ask to what extent such characteristics might apply to God and how they would have to be modified in the divine case, even granted a quite complicated doctrine of analogy, would seem to French thinkers quite impossible. All the same, to say that the concept of God of western Christianity carries huge loads of projection is not necessarily to say that it is false: Luce Irigaray, for instance, urges that women should engage in conscious and deliberate projection of a female divine as an antidote to a relentlessly male deity, and in an effort to reach toward the horizon of our gendered becoming.!® It is, however, to say that any account of God must be treated with a hermeneutic of suspicion both in terms of its provenance and in terms of the strategic purposes it serves. They would perhaps not be surprised at reading, as I did in the Church Times a year or two ago, a bishop explaining that ‘in the Christian tradition God is a relatively genderless male deity’. The insistent question for Continental thinkers, then, is how at a conscious level to relate to the unconscious. It is possible to repress it, to deny its importance for the philosophy of religion. But a basic theme of psychoanalysis is the ‘return of the repressed’, the intrusion of that which was meant to be silenced into speech and behaviour. One of the techniques of Continental writers like Derrida and Irigaray is to demonstrate what really was on an author’s mind, at an uncon-

scious level, as that is revealed in the metaphors, turns of phrase, or lacunae in the text. This ‘reading the margins’ can be infuriating to British philosophers of religion, since it is not engaging with the argument of the text

but ‘rather ferreting out the desires of the subtext, engaging, therefore, at a level of unacknowledged and perhaps unacknowledgeable motivation rather than at a level of acknowledged argument. On the other hand, the relation to the unconscious need not be one of repression or denial. It can instead be openness and vulnerability to difference, so that the conscious and the unconscious can be integrated. In this way that which erupts from unconscious depths is a creative wellspring rather than a threatening volcano, and desire and rationality can be strongly connected rather than struggling against each other. But for this to be the case, it is necessary to be in touch with emotion, bodiliness, and sexuality, in short with that which psychoanalytic theory has labelled the feminine. Moreover, for this to have integrity, it is necessary also to become aware of the manifestations of both repression and vulnerability in social and global contexts and the ways in which difference is implicated with power: such issues as emerge in awareness of gender, race and colonialism. The effort toward integration has led to some highly creative work in the philosophy of religion, which connects it to issues of ethics and politics: some examples are Irigaray’s ‘Divine Women’," and Kristeva’s development of‘herethics’ in ‘Stabat Mater’.!? It can, however, have bizarre results as well. So, for example, we find Derrida in Spurs trying to ‘write like a woman’! —a gesture simultaneously radical and hugely problematic. (What is a man doing trying to write like a woman while women themselves — Irigaray, Kristeva, Cixous — are still being silenced, even in his own work? Why doesn’t he rather try to write like a man — not a universal sexless subject but an embodied male human being in a specific, not universal, context, who takes actual women and their work seriously? ) 459

GRACE M. JANTZEN

One of the points of contention around the theme of the decentring of the subject is the status of the self in relation to agency and moral responsibility. The phrase ‘the death of the subject’ is sometimes bandied about as though any recognition of the discursively constructed nature ofthe subject carries with it the loss of possibility of agency or accountability, since there is no pre-given ‘I’ who acts and who can be held accountable for my action. This, however, is to misunderstand what is going on. The point of rejecting a pre-given ‘I’, a self which is not constructed in the matrix of power constituted by discourses of gender, race, class and sexuality within a particular historical context, is not to say that there are

no ‘subjects’ and certainly not to deny them agency and accountability. It is, rather, negatively, to ask what purposes of power are being served by insisting on a pre-given self rather than to have one’s eyes opened to the extent to which our privileged subjecthood may be bought at the expense ofthe abjection of others; and positively, it is to say that subjects, complete with agency and accountability, are constituted within and by a context, a context which importantly involves exclusion, since one constitutes oneself by distinguishing oneself from the other — initially from the mother. Selfhood is premised on difference, and cannot occur in a vacuum. The important question, then, is how that difference will

be construed: will it be in terms of mastery or respect, belittling or celebration?

3

‘Structured Like a Language’

The Continental emphasis on the unconscious is coupled with an emphasis on historical and social locatedness which shapes and frames the subject. This emphasis is heavily indebted to linguistic theory, especially the structuralist semiotics of Saussure! and Jakobson,! as well

as to theories of ideology derived from Marx via Althusser and others. Very broadly speaking, the difference from British philosophy of religion in this respect is the recognition that 460

all experience, indeed all conceptualization and speech, is always already constructed with the concrete cultural and material frame. There can be no such thing as neat experience, uncontaminated by perspective and assumption, whether that is sensory experience or religious experience. Just as the words I use must be selected from the vocabulary of the language in which I speak for them to count as words at all rather than unintelligible babble, so also any experience I claim as evidence for a belief can only be identified as such within a cultural repertoire, and is, along with the beliefs themselves, in large measure socially constructed. The words ‘structure’ and ‘construction’ keép appearing; and indicate the great debt that current Continental thought owes to structuralism, an approach especially associated with Saussure and Lévi-Strauss.’® Structuralism can be summarized as the theory that every social practice is structured like a language. What this means is that social practices are not spontaneous eruptions out of nowhere: they are determined by rules of procedure — what we might call the ‘grammar’ of the practice. It means also that the practice signifies something of importance within the culture, and that the particular rules of the practice stand in arbitrary relation to that which is signified. Thus for example the practice of religious sacrifice serves in many societies both as a method of bonding among those who participate in the ritual and perhaps eat the food of the sacrificial victim, and as a way of excluding others by not permitting them to partake. There are very precise rules about what must and must not be done, and by whom, in sacrifices ranging from animal slaughter in primitive religions to the Catholic mass. Yet these rules are arbitrary in relation to the symbolic function they serve: in one society only the most revered men are permitted to eat the brains of the victim and the liver is given to those of low esteem, while in another society exactly the reverse occurs, yet with the same social meaning. Similarly, the sounds of one

WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE? KNOWLEDGE AND GENDER

language differ from those of another and are arbitrary in their designation. This arbitrariness, however, does not mean that in any given language one can use sounds to mean whatever one likes and expect to be understood; just as the social rules and practices of a society, though arbitrary in the sense that they could be different in some other society, are not open to individualistic reinterpretation. One cannot just decide to feed the consecrated host to one’s dog in a Catholic mass and expect observers to take that action as having no particular meaning. The assumption of structuralist linguistics is coupled with broad acceptance of Lacanian psychoanalytic theory which, as sketched above, accepts that the Symbolic, including language, civilization, religion, at least in their western manifestations, are identified with the

masculine. The example of sacrifice graphically illustrates this: in a vast range ofsocieties sacrifice can only be performed by a man, and if women can partake at all, they can do so only in conditions strictly controlled by men. Thus one ofthe social functions ofsacrifice is to bond the men of power together and to exclude or control slaves, foreigners, and women, whose blood is often seen as a pollutant. So prevalent is this structure across divergent cultures that Nancy Jay has described sacrifice as a ‘remedy for having been born of a woman’.”” Sacrifice is thus taken as an extreme example of the masculinist construction of the Symbolic in which difference, paradigmatically gender difference, is crucial. But if this were all that could be said, then there would be no way of breaking out of it. A structuralist account of language (where language stands for the Symbolic in general) is profoundly conservative, seeing language as homogeneous and therefore paralysed when it comes to any confrontation with the other. The only thing the ego can do is attempt mastery. Contemporary Continental thinkers are deeply concerned with the ways in which the dominant groups, whether political, ecclesiastical, intellectual, or racial have sought to master the various ‘others’, often with great

brutality, to their own impoverishment, and the ways in which religion has been part of those structures of domination. Yet such attitudes of oppression enacted by the mastering ego are indicative ofa failure to encounter and be enriched by the alterities within ourselves: we remain ‘strangers to ourselves’, as Kristeva entitles one of her recent books,!® and rather

than celebrating the elements ofdifference and foreignness, we are threatened by them, seek to repress and master them, and hence to repress anyone — the other race, sex, sexuality — that serves to remind us of our own alterities. The poststructuralist move is to recognize that social practices, including language, though structured according to rules which imply attitudes of mastery, nevertheless also carry within themselves the resources necessary to transgress the boundaries of the dominating establishment and to begin to develop alternative ways of thinking and being.’? I see this as the shorthand way of distinguishing contemporary poststructuralism from the structuralist thought preceding and to a large extent shaping it: poststructuralists seek ways, from within the structures of the Symbolic, to disrupt or transgress those structures, thus destabilizing them in the interests of justice: a brilliant and outrageous example is Derrida’s Dissemination, where he disrupts Lacanian gender structures and their compulsory heterosexuality by showing what happens when the autonomy of the male self is taken literally.”° This interest in destabilizing from within is why poststructuralists are so interested in excess, transgression, free play, even madness. They draw upon Surrealists, the avant garde, the Marquis de Sade. They look at prisons and at mental hospitals; they explore bodiliness and sexuality in many forms, not just as an aspect oftheir ‘private lives’ but as part of their philosophical enterprise of seeking ways to destabilize the dominant ego and its structural manifestations, and thus make room for the celebration of alterities. This can and sometimes does tip over into nihilism, as in Baudrillard,”! or into an amoral and relativistic free-play, as in Mark Taylor’s (mis)approp461

GRACE M. JANTZEN

riation of Derrida for a ‘transgressive’ philosophy ofreligion which is so busy smashing icons that it has not one word to say about issues of injustice. But in the work of many poststructuralist writers the exploration of the excessive or transgressive serves a very serious moral purpose indeed. I am personally particularly interested in the (different) ways in which Irigaray and Kristeva explore women’s mystical experience as excessive, disruptive of the stable and oppressive structures of religious language, doctrine and practice, and thereby opening new horizons of the imminent divine that will be able to celebrate rather than repress alterities of sex, race and sexuality.?# The effort toward ways of dealing with oppressive structures is also one of the reasons why French thinkers adopt writing styles which we in Britain may well find opaque and exasperating. Rather than writing in straightforward prose, developing arguments with clearly defined premises and conclusions, French writers tend to use allusive, often poetic style, sometimes allowing themselves to free-associate on a theme to see what comes up, almost as one would in a therapy session where one was allowing the unconscious to emerge. Since British philosophers are for the most part given to a philosophical methodology whereby arguments are presented, attacked, defended, and counterattacked, clarity

and precision of presentation is of great importance. French thinkers, however, see this

as already buying into the structuring of rationality which they are seeking to destabilize by their insistence on the unconscious and the structures of ideology. At best, as in Irigaray’s Speculum or Kristeva’s Powers of Horror, the allusive method is wonderfully illuminating of possibilities, though it must be granted that at the hands of less competent or less morally committed writers the line between brilliance and self-indulgence is easily crossed.?* Even at its best, however, British philosophers can find this writing extremely heavy going, partly because of the difference of style of argument, and partly also because the multiple allusions tend to assume a thorough knowledge of 462

French literature and philosophy of the past five hundred years (and sometimes, also that of Russia, Italy and former Eastern Bloc countries): it is like trying to read Milton without benefit of the Bible or Shakespeare. Partly, this just means that one has to do a great deal of very pleasant homework reading history and novels and poetry (and looking at paintings and sculpture) in order to understand what they are getting at. The difficulty I have with it is that it sometimes seems to be addressed only to those who have the leisure and educational privilege to engage in such cultural pursuits, and in this sense can be elitist — though as compared with the use of Bayes’s theorem to assess the probability of the existence of God, I should think it is accessible to far more people. Coupled with the issues raised by structuralism, Continental thinkers are acutely aware that the framing of experience, and therefore the development of any discipline or body of knowledge, is intertwined with issues of power and authority. On what grounds are people considered to be experts in any field? The straightforward answer is that people are experts if they know a great deal about it. But as soon as it is recognized that the ‘experts’ are also the ones who develop, define and police the field, the connection between knowledge and power which Foucault so tellingly explored becomes obvious.”* At this point there is also a connection back to the unconscious, since the exercise of authority will reflect the desires, quite probably repressed and unacknowledged, of those in power. If those desires include a strong need to deny the relevance of the body, to repress sexuality and the (m)other, in short to refuse differences, then the structures of civilization as they are defended and upheld by those in authority are bound to be bad news for women, blacks, and gays, and poor people of all countries. Broadly speaking, and with many variations, French thinkers have taken it as given that this applies to the history of Christendom, not only in ecclesiastical structures but also in theology and philosophy of religion. Where Brit-

WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE? KNOWLEDGE AND GENDER

ish thinkers prefer to deal in terms of developing and defending arguments for or against specific religious beliefs, French thinkers are acutely conscious of the ideology and social construction of those beliefs, and insist on asking who benefits and who loses out, not only from the beliefs themselves, but even from conducting the conversation in this way. Many British thinkers are worried about the relativist consequences of French procedure, and what may be perceived as continual sidestepping of the substantive issues of theology and the philosophy ofreligion. French thinkers ask how it comes about that these particular issues are the ones that are construed as ‘substantive’ issues in the first place, while others such as those having to do with gender and other forms of difference are marginalized. Such questioning disrupts the whole idea of a quest for religious (or any other) realities by means of the employment of Enlightenment rationality, with its unproblematic and implicitly masculine subject and the philosophical methods it employs. Both method and goal French thinkers would see as prime examples of socially constructed projection of repressed masculinist desires. Given such utterly different starting points between British and French thinkers, it is hardly surprising that without very great good will and considerable effort, everyone winds up with a headache. Although a complete discussion of the question of relativism would take me far beyond the bounds of this paper, it is important to note that in this regard French thinkers have not always been well served by their AngloAmerican admirers: Richard Rorty, for example, and Mark Taylor espouse a relativism which they consider derivative from Derrida, but which is arguably very far from Derrida’s own thought.*® Derrida’s emphasis on deconstruction, in fact, is one which British

philosophers of religion might find congenial. In his ‘Force of Law: the “Mystical Foundation of Authority”’”” Derrida shows how it is necessary to investigate the ways in which justice has been construed in different histori-

cal contexts, and in particular how what has counted as ‘justice’ has all too often served the interests of those who were doing the counting. But such a deconstruction of justice is necessary precisely in the mame of justice and for its sake: and this is so even though we can be quite clear that we are never going to arrive at a neutral or uncontextual transcendent account of justice. Whatever account of justice we propose will itself always need deconstruction, and so on, ad infinitum; but

although we can never say that we have arrived, or are already perfect, this is not the same as to say that any account we develop is unusable, let alone that one account of Justice is as good as another. Though Derrida does not make the comparison, this is not far from Eckhart’s comment, ‘For God’s sake, rid me of God,’ at least if that is interpreted to mean that whatever concepts of God we may develop, we must always also recognize that they are provisional and partial and if viewed as final they become idolatry: in the name of God it is necessary to deconstruct God.

4

God and Religion

But if the subject of religious belief is destabilized by the unconscious, and the language of religion is socially and ideologically framed, what about God? What, according to Continental thinkers, is religion itself? Again, there are many variations, but some common themes emerge. First, it is taken as obvious that ‘good old God’, as Lacan calls him, is a masculinist projection subtending the phallocentric structures of civilization; there

are arguments about detail here, but the central point is hardly disputed among current French thinkers.”* But that is by no means to dismiss the divine, or religion. On the contrary, thinkers like Irigaray and Kristeva and (I think) Derrida would see the ‘British style’ beliefin God and discussions about that God’s existence and nature not just as simplistic but as profoundly irreligious. This is not merely because British philosophers ofreligion do not 463

GRACE M. JANTZEN

engage with the psychoanalytic and political issues already raised, which Continental thinkers consider essential to any intellectually responsible stance. It is also because they would hold that to think of the existence of God as a fact among other facts, even if the most important one, is to trivialize it right out of religious significance. Continental thought would thus see British philosophy of religion as largely secular and empiricist in its treatment of the question of God’s existence as one more fact about a world which is otherwise the same for theists and atheists. Their approach, instead, is to shift the understanding of religion to the idea that the basic values, myths and rituals of any civilization are in fact its religion. Religion in some form, thus, is a necessary basis for any civilization. In some ways we can see religion and the unconscious as parallel in their thought: we could say that in their view as the unconscious subtends the rational subject, so religion subtends civilization. The question, therefore, is not whether we as a society will be religious, but ow, just as the question is not whether we as individuals have an unconscious, but how we relate to it. This accounts

for a comment such as the following by Luce Irigaray: It seems we are unable to eliminate or suppress the phenomenon of religion. It reemerges in

many forms, some of them perverse: sectarianism, theoretical or political dogmatism, religiosity... . Therefore, it is crucial that we rethink religion, and especially religious structures, categories, rules, and utopias, all of which have been masculine for centuries. Keeping in mind that today these religious structures often appear under the name of science and technology.”

Such an attitude explains the prominence of religious themes in Continental thought, even among thinkers who would look with suspicion on the very idea of a ‘specialty’ in philosophy of religion. The writings of Lacan are peppered with Biblical quotations and religious allusions, not often commented upon by his English expositors who, while discuss-

464

ing his psychoanalytic and philosophical ideas, seem largely to have assumed the AngloAmerican secularist stance which I think French writers hold to be impossible. From a certain perspective, also, Derrida’s work can arguably be seen as an exercise in apophatic theology. Some British and American feminist writers are alive to the importance of religion for Irigaray and Kristeva.*° With these exceptions, however, the religious ideas of Continental thinkers are largely unexplored or marginalized by English-speaking writers who discuss their ideas, probably because many of the English writers who do engage with French thought are sociologists or linguists, and are not particularly interested in religion, while philosophers of religion have for their part left them severely alone. Thus what may be one of the most creative aspects of their work is ignored. One of the reasons for this may be that British philosophers of religion do not see why that which subtends civilization should necessarily be called religious: why should we not rather reserve the term for that which has to do with God and God’s relations to the world? In part this is a question of stipulation, though once again it is obvious that stipulation carries a great weight of power and ideology: think for instance of the way Smart or Hick speaks of ‘major world religions’ — meaning primarily Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism

and Hinduism

— and

thereby marginalize tribal and aboriginal religions, though historically and perhaps even now these would have more adherents than those systems which are labelled ‘major’. One does not have to be unduly cynical to suppose that the history of this country as a ‘Christian’ colonial power has something to do with how easily we find these stipulations ‘normal’. Be that as it may, Continental thinkers might point out that, whatever name is given to it, the ultimate values and myths that subtend a civilization are of enormous significance, and that ifsocieties or subgroups within them are worshipping money or science or football, then it is far more intellectually re-

WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE? KNOWLEDGE AND GENDER

sponsible for thinkers to notice and interpret this than to shrug it off as not really about religion and therefore not our specialist concern. Whether one thinks that such things as ongoing sexism and racism, the wars in Bosnia and Chechnya or the tenuous peace in Northern Ireland, are manifestations of genuine religion or an aberration of it, even on a most generous reading, Christendom has lent itself to incalculable injustice over the centuries. Is it not urgent that an account ofthe nature of religion take this on board? Once again, British philosophers are likely to see Continental thinkers as lacking in rigour and discipline, and lapsing into sociology and politics, while French thinkers might see British philosophers of religion as much too narrow in approach, refusing to engage with the real religious issues of our time while frittering away energy discussing things that don’t have much bearing on people’s lives, and thereby in effect supporting the status quo. It should not be forgotten that most of the French thinkers I have mentioned inherited the ideals, though not the precise content, of the political commitment of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de

Beauvoir. Many of them were on the barricades in 1968, and have worked hard for political and social projects such as the welfare of Algerian immigrants, the lifting of the USSR’s heavy hand in Poland and Czechoslovakia, the right of French women to contraception and abortion, and the humanizing of conditions in mental hospitals and prisons. This political engagement, and the ways in

which the institutions of church and university enabled them or failed them in their ef-

French philosophers, exceptions could easily be found. Furthermore, even to give such a sketch, with rather simplistic pigeon holes, already places me very firmly on English-speaking terrain: I cannot imagine any French thinker making such a survey or even having much sympathy with it. They would surely want to know what desires and whose interests are being served by an attempt to button down, however provisionally, the shifting signifiers in the way that I have done. My excuse is that I believe that we (i.e. English-speaking philosophers of religion) have a great deal to learn from them, but that differences of style and basic assumptions and starting positions often make their work inaccessible to us. Unless we recognize and allow for some ofthese differences, we won’t begin to see what they are on about. And whether in the end we agree or disagree, I believe that we are greatly impoverished if we refuse to engage at all. Epistemology, especially in the philosophy of religion, is inescapably about ‘knowing the difference’. Notes

1

in the 1980s’, in Linda J. Nicholson

2

3

forts, informs all their thinking; indeed, they would consider it part of an intellectual’s duty to be engaged at a practical, not only at a theoretical level.

I am aware of how sketchy is this summary of some of the differences of approach of British and French thinkers on the themes of the subject, language, and God/religion. Everything I have said requires deepening; and for almost every generalization about both British and

Donna Haraway, ‘A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology and Socialist Feminism

4

5 6

(ed.),

Feminism/Postmodernism (London and New York: Routledge, 1990), pp. 202-3 (first published in 1985 in Socialist Review, no. 8). Jean Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: a Report on Knowledge, trs. G. Bennington and Brian Maaumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984). Judith Butler, ‘Contingent Foundations: Feminism and the Question of “Postmodernism” ’, in Feminist Contentions, ed. Seyla Benhabib, Judith Butler, Drucilla Cornéll and Nancy Fraser (London and New York: Routledge, WIDE). Ernest Gellner, Postmodernism, Reason and Religion (London and New York: Routledge, 1992). Richard Swinburne, Responsibility and Atonement (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989). Philip L. Quinn, ‘Swinburne on Guilt, Atonement, and Christian Redemption’, in Alan G.

465

GRACE M. JANTZEN Padgett (ed.), Reason and the Christian Relgion: Essays in Honour of Richard Swinburne (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994). John Hick, An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent (London: Macmillan, 1989), ch. 7. See, for example, Luce Irigaray, Speculum of the Other Woman (Ithaca, N.Y., and London: Cornell University Press, 1985) for a sustained critique of Freud; and Jacques Derrida, Spectres of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International, tr. Peggy Kamuf (London: Routledge, 1994) for reflections on Marxist thought in the aftermath of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc. Sigmund Freud, Totem and Taboo, in his The Origins of Religion, tr. James Strachey (Penguin Freud Library, vol. 13; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985). 10

ll 12

13

Julia Kristeva, Strangers to Ourselves, tr. Leon

19

S. Roudiez (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993). See, for example, Julia Kristeva, Revolution in Poetic Language, tr. Leon S. Roudiez (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993).

20

21

Genealogies, tr. Gillian C. Gill (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993). Luce Irigaray, ‘Divine Women’, in her Sexes and Genealogies.

22

Kristeva, Tales of Love. 24

Love, tr. Leon S. Roudiez (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987); reprinted in Toril Moi (ed.), The Kristeva Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986). Jacques Derrida, Spurs: Nietszche’s Styles, tr. Barbara Harlow (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1978).

26

15

(The Hague: Mouton, 1956).

Erring. As for example in his essays in Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977, ed. Colin Gordon (New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1980). Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony and Soltdarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); and Mark Taylor, Evring. For a discussion of Rorty, see Richard J. Bernstein,

‘Rorty’s Liberal Utopia’ in his The New Constellation: The Ethical-Political Horizons of Modernity/Postmodernity (Cambridge: Polity Press, LOS);

27

Jacques Derrida, ‘Force of Law: the “Mystical Foundation of Authority”’, in Drucilla Cornell

Saussure, General Course in Linguistics, and

et al. (eds), Deconstruction and the Possibility

ofJustice (New York: Routledge, 1992).

28

For Lacan’s

view, see his ‘God

Jouissance of The Woman’,

and

the

in Juliet Mitchel

Jonathan Culler, Saussure (London: Collins, Fontana Modern Masters, 1976); John

and Jacqueline Rose (eds), Feminine Sexual-

Sturrock, Structuralism, 2nd edn (London:

(Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1982). The idea de-

Fontana,

rives broadly from Freud, of course, especially his The Future of an Illusion. Luce Irigaray, ‘Women, the Sacred, Money’, in her Sexes and Genealogies, p. 75. See for example David Crownfield (ed.), Body?

HarperCollins,

ity: Jacques Lacan and the Ecole Freudienne

1993); Eve Tavor

Bannet, Structuralism and the Logic ofDissent:

466

As I think it does, for example, in Mark Taylor,

The primary texts here are Ferdinand de Claude Lévi-Strauss, The Savage Mind (English tr.; London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1966). For useful secondary literature see

ay,

Luce Irigaray, Speculum of the Other Woman, tr. Gillian C. Gill (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985), pp. 191-240; and Julia

25

guistics, tr. Roy Harris (London: Duckworth, 1983). Roman Jakobson, Fundamentals of Language

1993). Mark Taylor, Erring: A Postmodern A/theolagy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

1984). 23

Julia Kristeva, ‘Stabat Mater’, in her Tales of

Ferdinand de Saussure, General Course in Lin-

Jacques Derrida, Dissemination, tr. Barbara

Johnson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981). See among others, Jean Baudrillard, Fatal Strategies, tr. Philip Beitchman and W. G. J. Niesluchowski (London: Pluto, 1990); The Transparency of Evil: Essays on Extreme Phenomena, tr. James Benedict (London: Verso,

Luce Irigaray, ‘Divine Woman’, in Sexes and

14

16

18

Barthes, Derrida, Foucault, Lacan (London: Macmillan, 1989).

29

Nancy Jay, Throughout Your Generations Forever: Sacrifice, Religion, and Paternity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), p. xxiii.

30

Text in Julia Kristeva: Religion, Women, and

Psychoanalysis (Albany: State University of New

WOMEN’S EXPERIENCE REVISITED York Press, 1993); Kathryn Bond Stockton, God Between Their Lips: Desire Between Women tn Irigaray, Bronte, and Eliot (Stanford, Cal.: Stanford University Press, 1994); C.W.

51

Maggie Kim et al. (eds), Transfigurations: Theology and the French Feminists (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1993).

Women’s Experience Revisited: the Challenge of the Darker Sister*

Jacquelyn Grant Although feminist theology has made an important critique of the sexist limitations of the dominant theologies of Europe and North America, it is not without serious limitations,

especially when evaluated in the light of Black women’s experience. What are these limitations and how serious are they, especially as they are related to Christology? In this chapter, I will discuss these limitations and, in my concluding remarks, point the way towards a theology that is grounded in Black women’s experiences.

A

Limitations of Feminist

Theology Feminist theology is inadequate for two reasons: it is White and racist.

ist, though the behavior of Whites makes the distinction difficult. Nevertheless, my claim that feminist theology is racist is best supported by a definition of racism. Racism, according to Joel Kovel, “. . . is the

tendency of a society to degrade and do violence to people on the basis of race, and by whatever mediations may exist for this purpose.” These mediations are manifested in different forms, and are carried on through various media: the psychology, sociology, history, economics and symbolism of the dominant (White) group. Racism is the domination of a people which is justified by the dominant group on the basis of racial distinctions. It is not only individual acts but a collective, institutionalized activity. As C. Eric Lincoln observed, [flor racism to flourish with the vigor it enjoys in America, there must be an extensive climate

—

—

2

Feminist Theology as Racist

It would be inaccurate to assert that because feminist theology is White, it is also racist. To be White does not necessarily mean to be rac* Prom

White Women’s Christ and Black Women’s

Jesus: Feminist Christology and Womamnist Response (Atlanta, Ga.: Scholars Press, 1989), pp. 195, 199201, 209-10, 218-20. Reprinted with permission.

of acceptance and participation by large numbers of people who constitute its power base. It is the consensus of private persons that gives racism its derivative power. The power of racism is the power conceded by those respectable citizens who by their actions or inaction communicate the consensus which directs and empowers the overt bigot to act on their behalf. Even if some individual feminists are not racists, the movement has been so structured, and therefore takes on a racist character. In a

467

JACQUELYN GRANT

racist society, the oppressor assumes the power of definition and control while the oppressed is objectified and perceived as a thing.’ As such, White women have defined the movement and presumed to do so not only for themselves but also for non-White women. They have misnamed themselves by calling themselves feminists when in fact they are White feminists, and by appealing to women’s experience when in fact they appeal almost exclusively to their own experience. To misname themselves as “feminists” who appeal to “women’s experience” is to do what oppressors always do: it is to define the rules and then solicit others to play the game. It is to presume a commonality with oppressed women that oppressed women themselves do not share. If White women’s analysis were adequate, they would be more precise in naming their own movement and would not presume to name or define the experiences of others. They have simply accepted and participated in the racism of the larger American society when they have done so. This partially accounts for the negative response which Black women have had with respect to feminism. Brenda Eichelberger identifies five categories of reasons that lead to Black women’s rejection of White feminism. (1) Class differences mean that while Black women are dealing with “survival” issues, White women are dealing with “fulfillment” issues. (2) Negative imagery of Black women derived from physical and cultural stereotypes has resulted in the debased treatment of Black women. (3) The naivety, or basic lack of knowledge of Black women about the women’s movement results in their inability to see the relationship between feminist issues and the Black struggle. (4) Black women perceive White feminists to be racists who are interested in them only in order to accomplish the White women’s agenda. (5) There is a concern that an alliance of Black women with White women in a feminist agenda may be “detrimental to Black men” and therefore divisive of the Black community.* The hostility towards the feminist move468

ment elaborated by some critics focuses on its implications for family life. Many view feminism as a direct threat to Black family life. Sociologist Iva Carruthers refers to feminism as “one of the most serious assaults on African familyhood.”® This feminist movement, she maintains, is a “White-family affair” and is therefore totally irrelevant “to the real needs of Black women.”° Deborah Hines distinguishes between Black women’s reality and White women’s reality. Black women find it extremely difficult to ally themselves with those who say, “We have all suffered the same,” when we know it isn’t so.

We are being told that apples and oranges are the same, when we can see that they are not. You cannot easily substitute one for the other in a recipe. Their odors are different. They appeal to people differently. Even a blind person can tell them apart. Yet, a steady stream of rhetoric is aimed at convincing Black women how much alike their lives, experiences, wishes and

decisions are to those of our stepsisters.”

To say that many Black women are suspicious of the feminist movement, then, is to speak mildly about their responses to it. Put succinctly, women of the dominant culture are perceived as the enemy. Like their social, sexual and political White male partners, they have as their primary goal the suppression, if

not oppression, of the Black race and the advancement of the dominant culture. Because of this perception, many believe that Black feminism is a contradiction in terms.

B Towards a New Black Women’s Consciousness

2 The Starting Point for Womanist Theology Because it is important to distinguish Black and White women’s experiences, it is also important to note these differences in theologi-

WOMEN’S EXPERIENCE REVISITED

cal and Christological reflection. To accent the difference between Black and White women’s perspective in theology, I maintain that Black women scholars should follow Alice Walker by describing our theological activity as “womanist theology.” The term “womanist” refers to Black women’s experiences. It accents, as Walker says, our being responsible, in charge, outrageous, courageous and audacious enough to demand the right to think theologically and to do it independently of both White and Black men and White women. Black women must do theology out oftheir tridimensional experience of racism /sexism/ classism. To ignore any aspect of this experience is to deny the holistic and integrated reality of Black womanhood. When Black women say that God is on the side of the oppressed, we mean that God is in solidarity with the struggles of those on the under side of humanity.

In a chapter entitled “Black Women: Shaping Feminist Theory,” bell hooks elaborates the interrelationship of the threefold oppressive reality of Black women and shows some of the weaknesses of White feminist theory. Challenging the racist and classist assumption of White feminism, hooks writes: Racism abounds in the writings of white feminists, reinforcing white supremacy and negating the possibility that women will bond politically across ethnic and racial boundaries. Past feminist refusal to draw attention to and attack racial hierarchy suppressed the link between race and class. Yet class structure in Amenican society has been shaped by the racial politics of white supremacy.®

This means that Black women, because of oppression determined by race and their subjugation as women, make up a disproportionately high percentage of the poor and working classes. However, the fact that Black women

are a subjugated group even within the Black community and the White women’s community does not mean that they are alone in their oppression within those communities. In the women’s community poor White women are

marginalized, and in the Black community, poor Black men are also discriminated against. This suggests that classism, as well as racism and sexism, has a life of its own. Consequently,

simply addressing racism and sexism is inadequate to bring about total liberation. Even though there are dimensions of class which are not directly related to race or sex, classism impacts Black women in a peculiar way which results in the fact that they are most often on the bottom of the social and economic ladder. For Black women doing theology, to ignore classism would mean that their theology is no different from any other bourgeois theology. It would be meaningless to the majority of Black women, who are themselves poor. This means that addressing only issues relevant to middle class women or Blacks will simply not do: the daily struggles of poor Black women must serve as the gauge for the verification of the claims of womanist theology.

a 6 Challenges for Womanist Christology Although I have argued that the White feminist analysis of theology and Christology is inadequate for salvific efficacy with respect to Black women, I do contend that it is not totally irrelevant to Black women’s needs. I believe that Black women should take seriously the feminist analysis, but they should not al-

low themselves to be coopted on behalf of the agendas of White women, for as I have argued, they are often racist unintentionally or by intention. The first challenge, therefore, is to Black women. Feminists have identified some problems associated with language and symbolism of the church, theology, and Christology. They have been able to show that exclusive masculine language and imagery are contributing factors undergirding the oppression of women. In addressing the present day, womanists must investigate the relationship between the 469

JACQUELYN GRANT

oppression of women and theological symbolism. Even though Black women have been able to transcend some of the oppressive tendencies of White male (and Black male) articulated theologies, careful study reveals that some traditional symbols are inadequate for us today. The Christ understood as the stranger, the outcast, the hungry, the weak, the poor, makes the traditional male Christ (Black and White) less significant. Even our sisters, the womanists of the past, though they exemplified no problems with the symbols themselves, they had some suspicions about the effects of a male image of the divine, for they did challenge the oppressive and distorted use of it in the church’s theology. In so doing, they were able to move from a traditional oppressive Christology, with respect to women, to an egalitarian Christology. This kind of equalitarian Christology was operative in Jarena Lee’s argument for the right of women to preach. She argued “the Saviour died for the woman as well as for the man.”? The crucifixion was for universal salvation, not

just for male salvation or, as we may extend the argument to include, not just for White salvation. Because of this Christ came and died, no less for the woman as for the man, no less for Blacks as for Whites. Ifthe man may preach, because the Saviour died for him, why not the woman? Seeing he died for her also. Is he not a whole Saviour, instead

of half one? as those who hold it wrong for a woman to preach, would seem to make it appeateny

Lee correctly perceives that there is an ontological issue at stake. If Jesus Christ were a

Savior of men then it is true the maleness of Christ would be paramount. But if Christ is a Saviour of all, then it is the humanity — the wholeness — of Christ which is significant. Sojourner was aware of the same tendency of some scholars and church leaders to link the maleness of Jesus and the sin of Eve with the

status of women and she challenged this notion in her famed speech “Ain’t Ia Woman?” 470

Then that little man in black there, he says women can’t have as much rights as men, ‘cause Christ wasn’t a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman. Man had nothing to do with Him. If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them."

I would argue, as suggested by both Lee and Sojourner, that the significance of Christ is not his maleness, but his humanity. The most significant events of Jesus Christ were the life and ministry, the crucifixion, and the resurrection. The significance of these events, in one sense, is that in them the absolute becomes concrete. God becomes concrete not only in the man Jesus, for he was crucified, but in the lives of those who will accept the challenges of the risen Savior the Christ. For Lee, this meant that women could preach; for Sojourner, it meant that women could possibly save the world; for me, it means today, this Christ, found in the experiences of Black women, is a Black woman. The commitment that to struggle not only with symptoms (church structures, structures ofsociety), as Black women have done, but with causes (those beliefs which produce and reinforce structures) yield deeper theological and christological questions having to do with images and symbolism. Christ challenges us to ask new questions demanded by the context in which we find ourselves. The second challenge for Black women is that we must explore more deeply the question of what Christ means in a society in which class distinctions are increasing. If Christ is among “the least” then who are they? Because our foreparents were essentially poor by virtue of their race, there was no real need for

them to address classism as a separate reality. Today, in light of the emerging Black middle class we must ask what is the impact of class upon our lives and the lives of other poor Black and Third World women and men.

WOMEN’S EXPERIENCE REVISITED

Another way of addressing the class issue in the church is to recognize the fact that although our race/sex analyses may force us to realize that Blacks and women should share in the leadership of the church, the style of leadership and basic structures of the church virtually insure the continuation ofa privileged class. Contemporary Black women in taking seriously the Christ mandate to be among the least must insist that we address all three aspects of Black women’s reality in our analyses. The challenge here for contemporary Black women is to begin to construct a serious analysis which addresses the structural nature of poverty. Black women must recognize that racism, sexism, and classism each have lives of their own, and that no one form of oppression is eliminated with the destruction

of any other. Though they are interrelated, they must all be addressed. The third and final challenge for Black women is to do constructive Christology. This Christology must be a liberating one, for both the Black women’s community and the larger Black community. A Christology which negates Black male humanity is still destructive to the Black community. We must, therefore, take seriously only the usable aspects of the past. To be sure, as Black women

receive these

challenges, their very embodiment represents a challenge to White women. This embodiment (of racism, sexism, and classism) says to White women that a wholistic analysis is a minimal requirement for wholistic theology. The task of Black women, then, is constructive. As we organize in this constructive task, we are also challenged to adopt the critical stance of Sojourner with respect to the feminist analysis as reflected in her comment:

I know that it feel a kind o’ hissin’ and ticklin’ like to see a colored woman get up and tell you about things, and woman’s rights. We have all been thrown down so low that nobody thought we’ ever get up again, but we have been long enough trodden now; we will come up again,

and now I am here.... ...T wanted to tell you a mite about Woman’s Rights, and so I came out and said so. [am sittin’ among you to watch; and every once ina while I will come out and tell you what time of night it is.’

Notes 1 2

3 4

5

Joel Kovel, White Racism: a Psychohistory (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984), p. x. C. Eric Lincoln, Race Religion and the Continuing American Dilemma (New York: Hill and Wang, 1984), pp. 11-12. Kovel, White Racism, passim. Brenda Eichelberger, “Voices of Black Feminism,” Quest: A Feminist Quarterly, II1 (Spring), pp. 16-23. Iva Carruthers, “War in African Familyhood,” in Sturdy Black Bridges: Visions of Black Women in Literature, eds. Roseann P. Bell, Bettye J.

Parker and Beverly Guy-Sheftall (New York: Anchor Books, Doubleday, 1979), p. 9. Omibideips9} 7 Deborah Hines, “Racism Breeds Stereotypes,” The Witness, 65 (February 1982), p. 7. 8 bell hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to

9

10 11

12

Center (Boston, MA: South End Press, 1981), js hs Jarena Lee, Religious Experiences and Journal of Mrs Jarena Lee (Philadelphia, 1849), pp. 15-16. Ibid., p. 16. Sojourner Truth, “Ain’t la Woman,” in Feminism, ed. Schneir, p. 94. Ibid., pp. 96-8.

47]

FREDERICK DOUGLASS

52

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass*

Frederick Douglass Appendix I find, since reading over the foregoing Narrative that I have, in several instances, spoken in such a tone and manner, respecting religion, as may possibly lead those unacquainted with my religious views to suppose me an opponent of all religion. To remove the liability of such misapprehension, I deem it proper to append the following brief explanation. What I have said respecting and against religion, I mean strictly to apply to the slaveholding religion of this land, and with no possible reference to Christianity proper; for, between the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference — so wide, that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked. To be the friend of the one, is of ne-

cessity to be the enemy of the other. I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling the religion of this land Christianity. I look upon it as the climax of all misnomers, the boldest of all

frauds, and the grossest of all libels. Never was there a clearer case of “stealing the livery of the court of heaven to serve the devil in.” I am filled with unutterable loathing when I contemplate the religious pomp and show, together with the horrible inconsistencies, * From The Classic Slave Narratives, ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (New York: Mentor Books, 1987), pp. 326-

ilk

472

which every where surround me. We have menstealers for ministers, women-whippers for missionaries, and cradle-plunderers for church members. The man who wields the bloodclotted cowskin during the week fills the pulpit on Sunday, and claims to be a minister of the meek and lowly Jesus. The man who robs me of my earnings at the end of each week meets me as a class-leader on Sunday morning, to show me the way oflife, and the path of salvation. He who sells my sister, for purposes of prostitution, stands forth as the pious advocate ofpurity. He who proclaims it a religious duty to read the Bible denies me the right of learning to read the name of the God who made me. He who is the religious advocate of marriage robs whole millions of its sacred influence, and leaves them to the ravages of wholesale pollution. The warm defender of the sacredness of the family relation is the same that scatters whole families — sundering husbands and wives, parents and children,

sisters and brothers — leaving the hut vacant, and the hearth desolate. We see the thief preaching against theft, and the adulterer against adultery. We have men sold to build churches, women sold to support the gospel, and babes sold to purchase Bibles for the poor heathen! all for the glory of God and the good of souls! The slave auctioneer’s bell and the church-going bell chime in with each other, and the bitter cries of the heart-broken slave are drowned in the religious shouts of his pious master. Revivals of religion and revivals in the slave-trade go hand in hand together. The slave prison and the church stand near each other. The clanking of fetters and the rattling of chains in the prison, and the pious psalm and solemn prayer in the church, may

NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS

be heard at the same time. The dealers in the bodies and souls of men erect their stand in the presence of the pulpit, and they mutually help each other. The dealer gives his bloodstained gold to support the pulpit, and the pulpit, in return, covers his infernal business with the garb of Christianity. Here we have religion and robbery the allies of each other — devils dressed in angels’ robes, and hell presenting the semblance ofparadise. Just God! and these are they,

Who minister at thine altar, God ofright! Men who their hands, with prayer and blessing, lay On Israel’s ark oflight.

Ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him two-

fold more the child of hell than yourselves. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint, and anise, and cumin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith;

these ought yet to have done, and not to leave the other undone. Ye blind guides! which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter; but within, they are full of extortion and excess. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s

What! preach, and kidnap men? Give thanks, and rob thy own afflicted poor? Talk of thy glorious liberty, and then Bolt hard the captive’s door? What! servants of thy own Merciful Son, who came to seek and save The homeless and the outcast, fettering down The tasked and plundered slave!

Pilate and Herod friends! Chief priests and rulers, as of old, combine! Just God and holy! is that church which lends Strength to the spoiler thine?

The Christianity of America is a Christianity, of whose votaries it may be as truly said, as it was of the ancient scribes and Pharisees,

“They bind heavy burdens, and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men’s shoulders,

but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers. All their works they do for to be seen of men — They love the uppermost rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in the synagogues, .. . and to be called of men, Rabbi, Rabbi. But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men; for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in. Ye devour widows’ houses, and for a pretence make long prayers; therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation.

bones, and of all uncleanness. Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.” Dark and terrible as is this picture, I hold it to be strictly true of the overwhelming mass of professed Christians in America. They strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel. Could any thing be more true of our churches? They would be shocked at the proposition of fellowshipping a sheep-stealer; and at the same time they hug to their communion a manstealer, and brand me with being an infidel, if I find fault with them for it. They attend with Pharisaical strictness to the outward forms of religion, and at the same time neglect the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy,

and faith. They are always ready to sacrifice, but seldom to show mercy. They are they who are represented as professing to love God whom they have not seen, whilst they hate their brother whom they have seen. They love the heathen on the other side of the globe. They can pray for him, pay money to have the Bible put into his hand, and missionaries to instruct him; while they despise and totally neglect the heathen at their own doors. Such is, very briefly, my view of the religion of this land; and to avoid any misunderstanding, growing out of the use of general terms, I mean, by the religion of this land, that which is revealed in the words, deeds, and 473

FREDERICK DOUGLASS actions, of those bodies, north and south, call-

ing themselves Christian churches, and yet in union with slaveholders. It is against religion, as presented by these bodies, that I have felt it my duty to testify. I conclude these remarks by copying the following portrait of the religion of the south (which is, by communion and fellowship, the religion of the north), which I soberly affirm is “true to the life,” and without caricature or

the slightest exaggeration. It is said to have been drawn, several years before the present anti-slavery agitation began, by a northern Methodist preacher, who, while residing at the © south, had an opportunity to see slaveholding morals, manners, and piety, with his own eyes. “Shall I not visit for these things? saith the Lord. Shall not my soul be avenged on sucha nation as this?”

A Parody Come, saints and sinners, hear me tell How pious priests whip Jack and Nell, And women buy and children sell, And preach all sinners down to hell, And sing of heavenly union.

They’ll bleat and baa, dona like goats, Gorge down black sheep, and strain at motes, Array their backs in fine black coats, Then seize their negroes by their throats, And choke, for heavenly union. They’ll church you if you sip a dram, And damn you if you steal a lamb; Yet rob old Tony, Doll, and Sam, Of human rights, and bread and ham;

Kidnapper’s heavenly union. They'll loudly talk of Christ’s reward, And bind his image with a cord, And scold, and swing the lash abhorred,

And sell their brother in the Lord To handcuffed heavenly union. They’ll read and sing a sacred song, And make a prayer both loud and long, And teach the right and do the wrong,

474

Hailing the brother, sister throng, With words of heavenly union. We wonder how such saints can sing, Or praise the Lord upon the wing, Who roar, and scold, and whip, and sting, And to their slaves and mammon cling, In guilty conscience union. They’ll raise tobacco, corn, and rye, And drive, and thieve, and cheat, and lie, And lay up treasures in the sky, By making switch and cowskin fly, In hope of heavenly union.

They’ll crack old Tony on the skull, And preach and roar like Bashan bull, Or braying ass, of mischief full, Then seize old Jacob by the wool, And pull for heavenly union. A roaring, ranting, sleek man-thief, Who lived on mutton, veal, and beef, Yet never would afford relief

To needy, sable sons of grief, Was big with heavenly union. “Love not the world,” the preacher said, And winked his eye, and shook his head; He seized on Tom, and Dick, and Ned, Cut short their meat, and clothes, and bread, Yet still loved heavenly union.

Another preacher whining spoke Of One whose heart for sinners broke: He tied old Nanny to an oak, And drew the blood at every stroke, And prayed for heavenly union. Two others oped their iron jaws, And waved their children-stealing paws; There sat their children in gewgaws; By stinting negroes’ backs and maws, They kept up heavenly union. All good from Jack another takes, And Who And And

entertains their flirts and rakes,

dress as sleek as glossy snakes, cram their mouths with sweetened cakes;

this goes down for union.

THE VALUE OF AFRICAN BELIEFS AND PRACTICES

Sincerely and earnestly hoping that this little book may do something toward throwing light on the American slave system, and hastening the glad day of deliverance to the millions of my brethren in bonds — faithfully relying upon the power of truth, love, and jus-

53

tice, for success in my humble efforts — and soemnly pledging my self anew to the sacred cause — I subscribe myself, Frederick Douglass Lynn, Mass., April 28, 1845

The Value of African Religious Beliefs and Practices for Christian Theology*

Mercy Amba Oduyoye The “African” religious beliefs and practices referred to in this paper are specifically those of black Africa, that is Africa south of the Sahara, excluding the racist white minorities of the south and other immigrant groups. I am also excluding the beliefs and practices of Islam and non-indigenous religions like Hinduism and the Bahai faith. This is not to say that I am unaware of what Mbiti calls “contact religion.” Most Africans, says Mbiti, do not see any contradiction in holding a mixture of beliefs and practices. Indeed it is this mixture that makes this paper possible. Religious pluralism is found in Africa as elsewhere on the globe. The popular description of Africans as “notoriously” or “incurably” religious is belied by Africans who call themselves atheists or humanists. Secularization is a factor on the African scene. There are those who are to a greater or lesser degree Islamized or Christianized. There is also a group that we may refer to as “traditionalists.” Some of these are simply theorists, but there are masses of people in * From African Theology en Route: Papers from the PanAfrican Conference of Third World Theologians,

Africa who hold to the traditional religious beliefs and practices of their forebears to the exclusion of the missionary religions. Their religious customs blend with their social life and are at the base of all their institutions and festive celebrations. It is the traditionalists who will form the subject of this study. It is their religious beliefs and practices that we designate as “African.” Modernization has had a disruptive and weakening effect on African life and thus on African religion. At the same time it is evident that the missionary religions together with modern technology have proved inadequate to our needs. Since the old appears unable to stand on its own and the new by itself is proving inadequate, we should expect some creative syncretism to develop in Africa. A living Christian faith in Africa cannot but interact with African culture. In fact there is being developed an interpretation of Christianity and specifically of Christian theology that one may describe as African. The intention of this paper is to draw attention to the fact that the process needs to be accelerated if African Christianity is to escape being a fossilized form of nineteenth-century European Christianity.

December 17-23, 1977, Accra, Ghana (New York: Orbis Books, 1979), ch. 10, pp. 109-16. Reprinted

with permission.

475

MERCY AMBA ODUYOYE

African Religious Beliefs and Practices It is now accepted by most African Christians that it is time to study the religion of our forebears. This has arisen out of the recognition of the poverty of the liturgy and theology emanating from European and American Christianity. They do not touch the African soul at its depths. Here we will consider various African traditional beliefs and practices, giving particular attention to those relevant to African Christian theology. (a) African belief in the divine origin of the universe is shared by Christianity. In African religion, as in Christianity, God leaves humankind in charge of the world, as a steward. In both African and Christian myths of origins, humankind becomes the center of the universe. But human beings wantonly exploit the world’s physical and human resources to an extent that even God cannot tolerate. The African recognition of the divine spirit in nature and of the community of spirit between human beings, other living creatures, and natural phenomena could reinforce the Christian doctrine of creation as well as contribute to Christian reflection on ecological problems. (0) Related to the belief that humankind is the custodian ofthe earth is Africa’s conviction that the past, present, and future generations form one community. Africans therefore try to hold in tension the demands of the traditions of the elders and the necessity to build for the future. This communal sense has farreaching implications, for example, in attitudes toward land rights. In Africa there is nothing so difficult to alienate as land; it has to be preserved for the coming generations. “I conceive that land belongs to a vast family of which many are dead, few are living, and countless members are unborn.”? Ifimmigrant European exploiters of Africa had understood and respected this we would not today have the horrible Bantustans in South Africa. If Africans themselves had remembered that land is the gift of God to the people, and thus in modern times to the nation, development 476

projects involving land use would have had a better chance of success. Africans recognize life as life-in-community. We can truly know ourselves if we remain true to our community, past and present. The concept of individual success or failure is secondary. The ethnic group, the village, the locality, are crucial in one’s estimation of oneself. Our nature as beings-in-relation is a two-way relation: with God and with our fellow human beings. Expand the communal ideology of clans and ethnic groups to nations and you have a societal system in which none is left in want of basic needs. It is an extension of this belief that has led some African politicians to declare that the independence of their own countries means nothing as long as there remains on African soil one state that is still under colonial rule. This is one of the underlying principles of Pan-Africanism. We prosper or perish together as a people. Nkrumah, in concluding his autobiography, said, “Our task is not done and our own safety is not assured until the last vestige of colonialism has been swept from Africa.”? The world is in need of religious tolerance, based on a recognition of one God from whom all movements of the spirit take their origin. A belief in one God who is the source of one human race renders all racism and other types of ethnocentricity and exploitation of persons heretical and blasphemous. With its mythology based on African traditional beliefs, African Christianity may be in the vanguard of this movement. Can African Christians contribute new symbols and myths for promoting justice and reconciliation? Can covenant meals, symbols of sharing and of the acceptance of communal responsibility, begin to happen more meaningfully in the church? Can more people “break bread” together not only on their knees but in their homes, sharing in the utilization of national resources? The role of ancestors in the life of Africans becomes important in enabling them to remember their source and history. To deny history is to deny one’s roots and source of self-identity. It is also to deny the fact that we

THE VALUE OF AFRICAN BELIEFS AND PRACTICES

embody in ourselves both the past and the future. Ancestral cults serve the purpose of keeping people from becoming rootless and purposeless, blown about by every fickle fashion and ideology. The ancestral cults have been the custodians of the African spirit, personality, and vivid sense of community demonstrated in socio-religious festivals. The teaching that God is the Originator of all humanity and, as a corollary, that there is one human family, is held by Christianity, but it stands in dire need of reinforcement. The movement from nationalism toward universalism will be promoted by making available to the world Africa’s vision of the unity of the individual person and of humanity. Africa’s contribution can enable us to utilize creatively the tension between the universal and the particular and to develop the theology of the unity of humankind. (c) A sense of wholeness of the person is manifested in the African attitude to life. Just

as there is no separation between the sacred and the secular in communal

life, neither is

there a separation between the soul and the body in a person. Spiritual needs are as important for the body as bodily needs are for the soul. This is basic to African medicine and psychiatry. Moreover, for a wholesome life people not only have to be at peace with themselves, but also must be fully integrated into the community. The African contribution can help purge the Christian religion of the separation of the human being into body, soul, and spirit. (d) The International Women’s Year stimulated a lot of discussion which to me was basically an inquiry into whether women are an integral part of humanity or merely appendages to the male. The present freedom of African women to express dissatisfaction with their secondary roles and often non-roles is said to have been brought by Christianity and westernization. I agree that there has been some progress in economic activity and politics. But as far as the cultic aspect of religion goes, women now as before are relegated to the background. The cultic events in which

women take complete charge are few and far between. The fact that women do the dancing and cooking for festivals does not, to my mind, compensate for their exclusion from the “holy of holies” in the festivals. The limitations placed on women’s participation in religious practices is further aggravated by the irrational fear of blood. It is an area wide open for study. Further work on women in African religion will be a great contribution to global women’s issues. African women have a traditional belief in the benefit of sacrifice for the community. Sacrifice, taken seriously, can lead to social reforms and to lifestyles that are less wasteful and more mindful of humanity’s stewardship of life and ultimate dependence on the SourceBeing. But I have difficulty in understanding why it is the prerogative of only one sex to sacrifice for the well-being of the community. (e) Christianity will have to take seriously the African belief that God delegates authority to intermediary beings. In Africa there is a widespread beliefin the “divine right of kings,” which is often sanctioned by African religions. The ruler is almost invariably a cultic person, and his or her person is considered sacred. Against this background, certain modern political leaders have instituted what have come to be known as “benevolent dictatorships.” Without the sanctions that provided the checks and balances in the traditional system, these have always ended in chaos. African organization had its own constitutional processes for removing rulers who abused tradition. The divine rights of rulers worked in traditional Africa when belief in the Supreme Being was taken seriously and decision by consensus was actively pursued. The people’s role in their own development is slowly being recognized by current African politicians. The days when the ruler took a unilateral decision to declare what the people needed are slowly passing — one must say rather too slowly. (f) Covenant-making isa characteristic of African life. A ruler, for example, is always a covenanted or constitutional monarch. There is always a reciprocal oath-taking between the 477

MERCY AMBA ODUYOYE

ruler and the ruled, who are often represented in the associated ceremonies by the elders of the community.* There are also oaths and covenants between friends and others that bind members of exclusive clubs within the community. When these oaths are taken seriously they are more binding than any signature made on legal documents. A person who flouts Nsamansew (the last will and testament of a person) is sure to be called quickly to the spirit world to render an explanation. The process of oath-taking always contains a religious element; one always swears by a divinity who thus © becomes the chief witness to the transaction. Covenant meals seal reconciliation and purification ceremonies, since one cannot conceiv-

ably work to the disadvantage of another with whom a kolanut has been shared. We should investigate what makes African traditional oaths and covenants more binding than the Lord’s Supper. (g) Africa has a realistic attitude toward the power of evil. If we recognize that the collective evil produced by humanity is strong enough to “materialize” into a force to reckon with, then we shall see racism and other kinds of exploitation for what they are and be able to develop the appropriate weapons to fight them. Certain humanistic claims that humanity may be educated into eschewing evil leads us down a very long road to the humanization of our societies. What is evil is to be exorcized. Here again is a possible meeting point of Christian theology and African belief. (h) Reconciliation has a central role in African religion and practice. Broken relations are never allowed to go unhealed. Sacrifices are performed and communal meals held to restore normalcy. In both African religion and Christianity, when life is sacrificed, when it is given back to God, it is made sacred and harmony is restored. This belief is embodied in the Christian doctrine of atonement. A fresh statement of this belief, which makes use of African ideas of sacrifice and covenants, will enable African religion to make another con-

tribution to the religious development of hu478

mankind. Here again, by analyzing the theological elements of Christianity and of African religion, one can indicate areas where African religion will be supportive of Christian theology and contribute to its restatement in terms relevant to the African context. (i) Most rites of passage performed by Christians in Africa have been enriched by African culture. Marriage, naming ceremonies, and burials are good examples. Yearly festivals involving cleansing and the driving away of misfortune are current in Africa. There are sacrifices to cleanse or to bless the individual or group after a trauma — birth, death, disease, plague, accident, etc. These have been

woven into liturgies of Christians in the form of thanksgiving services for almost any situation. On the other hand, Christians have shied away from puberty rites and other rites ofinitiation into adulthood because they have misgivings as to whether a Christian’s allegiance to the church (and Christ) does not conflict with age-group allegiance and membership in secret societies. Initiation to adulthood, how-

ever, is initiation into full responsibility in one’s community; it is the culmination of a long process of socio-political education. There should be further discussion about the relationship of these initiation rites to Confirmation and recognition rites prevalent in some Christian denominations. (7) Other traditional African liturgical practices are most apparent among the African Independent churches. These are the churches that have been founded by African Christians and that, not being bound by the stately liturgies and theological sensitivities of the West, have developed lively liturgies with music and prayer forms that are authentically African. Some of the older Christian congregations, both Roman Catholic and Protestant, have awakened to this and are fast renewing their liturgies along the lines that are relevant to African religiosity. Drumming, dancing, extemporaneous prayer, dramatic methods of conveying the word of God, and stunning cultic robes are being observed among Aftican Christian congregations. More use is be-

THE VALUE OF AFRICAN BELIEFS AND PRACTICES

ing made of symbols and of spiritual healing and exorcism. There is a strong sense of community among members of the Independent churches, and in the urban situation they become the new “extended family.” The songs that western Christians developed in their nationalistic spirit and racial pride are dropping out of the repertoire of African Christians as they become aware of the songs’ non-Christian character. For example: Can we, whose souls are lighted with wisdom from on high: Can we to the benighted the Lamp oflife deny?

Such hymns are rarely heard in African congregations today; they are being replaced by African tunes with words that come out of the depths of the African soul or from the common source of Christianity — the Bible.

The African Theological Task: Soteriology The word “syncretism” has become a bogey word, used to frighten all who would venture to do Christian theology in the context of other worldviews and religions. But is syncretism not in fact a positive and unavoidable process? Christian theology and practice have always interacted with the religious and philosophical presuppositions of the various periods. Practices like the observance of Sunday, distribution of Easter eggs, and the festival of the Nile in the medieval Coptic church are instances of the acculturation of Christianity. Evidence of this process is increasing in Africa. Since the theme of salvation features so prominently in African religion, I would like to offer some reflections on the question of salvation for African Christianity. Both in the New Testament and in the early church, the way people interpreted the significance of Christ was closely related to what they saw as their greatest need. Christ was all things to all men, to quote Paul. The names given to Je-

sus of Nazareth in the Bible were all titles that held significant salvific content. He was the Son of Man who came to take up the elect of God. He was the Son of God, the Logos who was at God’s right hand in bringing order out ofchaos. He was Lord but, unlike our Caesars, he was the suffering servant. To some he was a Zealot, a nationalist, but one who forgave

his enemies and prayed for them. To the sick he was a doctor and to the sinful he spoke as God. These and other titles were the responses of those who had faith in his uniqueness or at least in his significance for the development of human history. He attracted a wide variety of people, from simple manual workers to the intellectuals of the Jewish world. It was from soteriology that Christology developed. I believe that for theology to be relevant to African culture it has to speak of salvation. Our salvation theology has to feature the questions of racism and liberation from material need. It has to emphasize the need for communal decisions as against totalitarianism. Above all, salvation is to be seen as salvation from evil, both individual and structural. At

several points our Christian theology can be aided by African religious beliefs and practices.

The African Contribution Africa’s approach to the basic religious problems facing humankind — creation, survival, human relations, the existence ofaspirit world, etc. — was as meaningful and relevant to the pre-scientific age in Africa as were similar approaches all over the world. These approaches, which we designate primal worldviews, are at the base of all religions and effectively continue to influence the ordering of society and of individual life. African religious beliefs and practices have provided, and continue to provide, Africa with a philosophical fountainhead for the individual’s life and for the ordering of society. African traditional religion emphasizes the common origin of all humanity. It is 479

MERCY AMBA ODUYOYE

the source from which a person’s sense ofdignity and responsibility flow. The search for security invariably begins here and for many it is also the last resort. Far from being redundant or anachronistic, African religious beliefs and practices have shown such a remarkable ability for staying relevant that Africans have a responsibility to share their basic tenets with the rest of humanity. This will be a task of recalling the peoples of the whole world to basic principles of human community and the religious basis of life even though some think these principles have become outmoded or are a hindrance to the advancement of humanity. We must note that since “traditional” life was permeated in all its aspects by religion, any appeal we make to traditional values and practices is ultimately religious. Also we must bear in mind that the basic element in religion does not consist of practices of cultic places and persons but the beliefs that are manifested through them. So that even when modernization has modified ceremonies and other cultic practices, human beings will continue to depend on the beliefs as a rock on which to build. So, for example, the belief in the living-dead, in the existence of spirits, and

480

in magic and witchcraft are a part of the Africans’ recognition that life is not entirely materialistic. These beliefs are an expression of the yearning for life after life. Since the Supreme Being is believed to be the Source of Life, the search after the life-force is itself a

groping for a closer and more personal relationship with Being Itself. To contribute more effectively to the religious development of people, African Christian theologians have a duty to theologize from this context and incorporate the authentic African idiom into Christian theology. Utilizing African religious beliefs in Christian theology is not an attempt to assist Christianity to capture and domesticate the African spifit; rather it is an attempt to ensure that the African spirit revolutionizes Christianity to the benefit of all who adhere to it. Notes 1

Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana (Edinburgh: Nelson and Sons, 1959), p. 10.

2 3

Ibid., p. 240. R.S. Rattray, Ashanti Law and Constitution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1929), p. 82.

INDEX

Adams, Marilyn, 156, 250 Adams, Robert, 30-1, 401, 412

African culture and religion, 433, 475-80 Al-Ghazali, 154, 190 Allen, Woody, 124 Alston William, 63, 142, 266, 290, 390, 456 analogy, argument by, 104 animal suffering, 216-18 Anscombe, Elizabeth, 133 Anselm of Canterbury, St, 61-2, 65, 69-70,

75, 85-6, 123, 232 anthropic principle, 118-19 Aquinas, St Thomas, 3, 7, 14-15, 51, 53, 56-7, 70, 84-5, 102, 110, 285-7, 358, 358-9, 368, 403 argument from evil, 153-6 animal suffering and the, 216-18 chance and the, 211-15 death and the, 221-2 divine hiddenness and the, 246-50 “evidential” version, 153-4, 157-89 the “Fall” and the, 222-3, 230-2 “G.E. Moore shift”, 161-2 “logical” version, 153 natural evil and, see natural evil original sin and the, 198 replies to, see theodicies and theodicies, see theodicies Aristotle, 84, 368, 405 Armstrong, David, 127, 384 atheistic arguments argument from evil, see argument from evil divine hiddenness, see divine hiddenness Atkins, Peter, 110 Augustine, St, 13-14, 51, 232, 361-4, 394, 395-6 Ayer, A.J., 126

basic belief, 265-6, 285-97, 452 religious experience and, 290-1 Basinger, David, 442-50 Baudrillard, Jean, 461 Beauvoir, Simone de, 465 Berkeley, George, 380 best possible world and divine freedom, 30-41 Biko, Steve, 260 Boer, Steven, 229 Boethius, 15, 42-4, 51 Bonjour, Laurence, 450 Browne, Malcolm W., 280 Browne, Sir Thomas, 408 brute fact, 62, 89, 91 Butler, Judith, 455 Calvin, John, 285-8, 354 Carruthers; Iva, 468 Carter, Brandon, 118 causation immanent, 380, 387-98 mnemic, 384-5 chance, 207-9 Chisholm, Roderick, 25 Churchland, Patricia, 126-8, 317, 375 Clarke, Samuel, 85-6 Clement of Alexandria, 222

Clifford, W.K., 265, 269, 273-84 Continental philosophy of religion, 432, 455-67 cosmological argument, 62, 84-93 Pascal’s wager and, 311-12 the principle of sufficient reason and, 86-94 Cover, Jan, 315-16, 334 Creel, Richard, 55-6 Cupitt, Don, 455

481]

INDEX

Darwin, Charles, 102, 109, 110, 126-7, 174 Darwin, Emma, 109 Darwinism, 62, 63; see also evolution, theory of Davies, Paul, 118 Dawkins, Richard, 62-3, 109, 126-7 death, as an evil, 220-2 Democritus, 310 Dennett, Daniel, 110-11 Derrida, Jacques, 457-8, 461, 462, 463, 464 IWescartesmNcne tomo/5/ Omone Design argument, see teleological argument divine command ethics, 401-2, 412-27; see also ethics; God: ethics and, Euthyphro problem, 421-7 divine hiddenness, 156, 246-50

divine simplicity, see God: attributes of: simplicity Doore, Gary, 120-1 Douglass, Frederick, 472 Draper, Paul, 153-4, 164, 176-89 dualism, 317 and immortality, 367-86 arguments for and against, 375-9 Duff, Antony, 310-11 Dummett, Michael, 53 Edwards, Jonathan, 14-15, 34

Eichelberger, Brenda, 468 Einstein, Albert, 116-17 Estling, Ralph, 119-20 eternity, 5, 42-53, 53-7 and foreknowledge, 48-50 definitions of, 42-4 ethics, see God: ethics and

Euthyphro problem, 421-7 Euthyphro problem, 421-7 evidentialism, 265, 269-73, 273-84

evil, see argument from evil; natural evil; theodicies evolution theory of, 102, 114, 126-38 and cognitive reliability, 126-38 existence as a perfection, 71 as a property, 71-2 necessary, see necessary existence fact brute, 62, 98, 91 hard, 18-26 soft, 18-26 faith and reason, 265-312; see also

482

evidentialism; basic belief “Fall”, the the argument from evil and, 222-3, 230-2

feminist theology, 467-71; see also gender and religion fine-tuning argument, 62-3, 114-24; see also teleological argument: fine-tuning version Fischer, John Martin, 20 Flew, Antony, 224 Fodor, Jerry, 128, 134 foreknowledge, 13-28 Foucault, Michel, 458 free will defense, see theodicies: free will defense freedom creation and, 30-41; divine, 32-4; evil and,

28-35; praiseworthiness and, 28 foreknowledge and, 13-27 human compatibility with foreknowledge, 13-27; evil and, 155, 170-3 Frege, Gottlob, 425 Freud, Sigmund, 280, 285, 291, 296, 457-8 Gale, Richard, 304-6 Galileo, 116 Gaon, Saadya, 154, 192 Gaunilo, 61, 66, 70 Geach, Peter, 53 Gellman, Jerome, 431-2, 441 Gellner, Judith, 455 “G. E. Moore shift”, 161-2 gender and religion, 432 God arguments for the existence of, see theistic arguments attributes of, 3-5: eternity, 5, 15-16, 44-53, 53-7; existence, 71-2; freedom, 32-4, see also freedom: divine; goodness, 4-5, 28-41; necessary existence, 61; omnipotence, 3-4, 7-12; omniscience, 4, 13-27; simplicity, 402, 424, 424-7 ethics and, 401-27: Euthyphro problem, 421-7 foreknowledge, 13-28 Goodman, Nelson, 18 goodness, divine, 28-41 Grandy, Richard, 130 Grant, Jacquelyn, 432-3, 467

Halevi, Judah, 304, 431, 435 Hanson, N.R., 241

INDEX Haraway, Donna, 454 hard fact, 18-26 Hasker, William, 5, 53 Hick, John, 155, 222, 229, 442, 458, 464 Hillel, 304 Hines, Deborah, 468 Hobbes, Thomas, 404, 405 hooks, bell, 469 Housman, A.E., 113 Howard-Snyder, Daniel, 4-5, 35 Howard-Snyder, Frances, 4-5, 35

Hoyle, Fred, 118-19 Hume, David, 62, 85, 88, 94, 100-1, 105-24, 120-1, 134, 161, 165, 176, 228, 315, 320, 337-8, 339-41, 392 immanent causation, 380, 383-5 immortality, 317 arguments for, 371-2

near-death experiences and, 370-1 parapsychological arguments for, 369-71 and physicalism, 317-18, 379-86 resurrection and, 380-6 soul and, 317 Irenaeus, 155, 222-3 Irigaray, Luce, 457, 458, 462, 463, 464 Jakobson, Roman, 460 James, William 92 Jantzen, Grace, 432, 454 Jay, Nancy, 461

Jeffreys, H., 307-8 John of the Cross, St, 360 Julian of Norwich, 257 Kant, Immanuel, 71-2, 288, 403, 458 karma, 373

Kenny, Anthony, 53-7 Kepler, Johannes, 117 Kovel, Joel, 467 Kretzmann, Norman, 5, 44, 54, 401-2, 417 Kristeva, Julia, 457-8, 461, 462, 463, 464 Kruger, Jimmy, 260 Lacan, Jacques, 457-8, 463, 464 Warson, Cx; 309 Lawrence, D.H., 411 Lee, Jarena, 470 Lehrer, Keith, 122-5 Leibniz, Gottfried, 85, 86, 310 Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 460 Lewis, David, 132, 274

liberation theology, 156, 258-62 Lincoln, C. Eric, 467 Locke, John, 275, 387-91 Luther, Martin, 354 Luzatto, M.H., 307 Lyotard, Jean F., 455

MacIntyre, Alisdair, 392 Mackie, J.L., 224, 228, 250; 255;,256,-305, 308 Maimonides, Moses, 303, 305 Marx, Karl, 275, 280, 285, 291, 296, 457, 458 Mavrodes, George, 9-12 McCloskey, H.J., 228 Medawar, Peter, 126 Mill, John Stuart, 228, 255, 421-2, 425 miracles, 315-16, 320-52 as evidence for theism, 345-50

Hume’s objection to, 339-45 as non-violations of natural laws, 342—5 as violations of natural laws, 338-9 mnemic causation, 384-5 Monod, Jacques, 119-20 Moore, G. E., 161-2 morality, see ethics More, Thomas, 315, 330 Moser, Paul, 172 Murray, Michael, 156, 241 natural evil, 155, 200-1, 210-22, 225-7, 233-6 naturalism, 125-38 arguments against, 63 and explanations of order, 62 and miracles, 344—5 near-death experiences, 370-1 necessary existence, 72-83 as a perfection, 77 necessity, accidental, 17-28 Newton, Isaac, 116 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 457, 458 Nowell-Smith, Patrick, 401, 403 Ockham, William of, 17-28 Oduyoye, Mercy Amba, 433, 475 omnipotence, 3-4, 7-12 omniscience, 4, 13-27 ontological argument, 61-2, 65-83, 123

and necessary existence, 61-2 Descartes’ version, 70—7 modal version, 75-84

483

INDEX Origen, 358 original sin, 198 Otto, Rudolf, 256 Paley, William, 101, 110 paradox of the stone, 3-4, 9-13 Parmenides, 50-1 Pascal, Blaise, 266-7, 298, 391 Pascal’s wager, 266-7, 298-312 and the cosmological argument, 311-12 infinite utilities and, 306-7

many-gods objection, 304-6 and the teleological argument, 311-12 Pelagius, 232 pertect being, possibility of, 80-1 perfection, divine, 28-41 Phillipps, D.Z., 358, 457 physicalism, and immortality, 317-18 Piaget, Jean, 406-8 Pike, Nelson, 252 Plantinga, Alvin, 4, 13, 63, 120, 125, 175,

176, 195-6, 224, 228-9, 254, 265, 285, 287, 390, 452, 456 Plato, 50-1, 84, 275, 374, 401-2, 403, 411, 419 Plotinus, 50, 51

pluralism, see religious pluralism Pollock, John, 133 Popper, Karl, 127-9 possible worlds, 75-9 best, 30-41 prayer, 316-17, 353-66 God’s goodness and the efficacy of, 357 Priest, Graham, 121-2 principle of sufficient reason, 62, 86-94, 308-10 as a presupposition of reason, 92—4 problem of evil, see argument from evil Quine, W.V.O., 127-9, 187 Quinn, Philip, 31 race and religion, 432-3, 467-75

Reid, Thomas, 134, 137 religious diversity, see religious pluralism religious experience and basic belief, 266, 290 compared with sense experience, 63, 142-9 as grounds for theistic belief, 63, 139-49 intersubjectivity and, 145-7 naturalistic explanations of, 144-5

484

and religious pluralism, 445-54 religious pluralism, 431-2, 441-54 and religious experience, 445-50 resurrection, 317-18, 380-6 revelation, 318, 387-98 Rorty, Richard, 463

Rowe, William, 4, 28, 62, 84, 153, 157, 229 Russell, Bertrand, 88, 114, 127, 384

Santayana, George, 134 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 465

Saussure, Ferdinand de, 457

Savage, C. Wade, 3-4, 9 Schlesinger, George, 62-3, 114, 267, 302 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 70 sensus divimitatis, 189, 249, 287-97 Shipman, Pat, 280 Smart, J.J.C., 464 Smith, Ian, 258 Socrates, 232, 421-2 soft fact, 18-26 soul, see also dualism and immortality, 367-86 Stich, Stephen, 128-9, 267, 300 Stump, Eleonore, 5, 44, 54, 155, 172, 227, 317, 358 Swinburne, Richard, 62, 100, 155, 171-3, 210, 229-30, 317, 367, 456

Taylor, Mark, 461, 463 teleological argument, 62-3, 94-124 analogical, 104-9 evolution and the, 102 fine-tuning version, 114-24: physical constants and the, 116-18 Pascal’s wager and, 311-12 Teresa of Avila, St, 63, 139, 360

theistic arguments, 61-3 cosmological argument, 62, 84-93; see also cosmological argument from miracles, 345-50 ontological argument, 61-2, 65-83; see also ontological argument Pascal’s wager, see Pascal’s wager religious experience, see religious experience: as grounds for belief in God teleological argument, 62-3 theodicies, 190-240

animal suffering, 216-18 death and, 221-2 the “Fall”, 222-3

INDEX free will defense, 170-3, 192-5, 228-9 Irenaean theodicy, 155 liberation theology and, 258-62 natural evil, 200-1, 225-7, 233-6 Tillich, Paul, 157 timelessness, see eternity Trinkhaus, Erik, 280 truth, 470 Tutu, Desmond, 156, 257 Updike, John, 120

van Inwagen, Peter, 61-2, 69, 154-5, 195, 265, 273, 380-5 Vorster, B.J., 258 Wainwright, William, 32 Walker, Alice, 469 Ward, Keith, 358

Wolsterstorff, Nicholas, 318, 387 Wykstra, Steven, 229, 442-50 Zimmerman, Dean, 317-18, 379

485

7 da)

=

Parga t noe

eT

ec,

BHD

\

oS =)

AT

LA ote¥) gpomniie

:alge es :

Ph

het

aah on

BY

e

ef

ee

HAS

So

Piencagh get

ACE i1D

Bie V0 vaepee 6

Es)

ae ta nei

peawht

©

8

q

=

An

'

4

Se

=

'

=

Cliqitge,(leemw

-

ee

4

-

eects:

from

@

°

vas

DR:

Ct =: RS)

ore)

tame

FD

bs4

on

=—ail

Se

A

D>

Ca

.

Peg 7

fs

m

ee

ee

2a

Stzly

nit

(~*

6

reper . 0, er

;

ei

§)*

te

1s

+ is

SO

Hae

oo) =

ay,

Gas

tit

:

Aj, Ou8

@eensry) (54,%> ee

nay

=»

|

=

a

-

wy

WJ

i ¢ -wegehiaa —_od y PMR

asud oe

MBBDeo

Te

Beat

54

ee |

ae °

ans Varwesr roy

web 7

=

PA

2%)

:>

BS’

a)

ipa

A ‘>

tee)

i

a

Ade

eae

DAs

leet,

1th

>

b/

me Deweong

D2

7

i)

ay

|

rosBa oy tyonBBM

m/s

=

dea

—*4

tts,-

9

a

(= §04)4

ee

=.

>3

i

‘to

Tt

§ 7S

Pet

tle Oy

i

a oe

Raves. a>

»

e

J

a

ee

-eparit,

‘

~~

x

4 °

ne ‘.

oe

Snare

py ay

-

4h

ae

“ge

ag

ess SS

@ ao”

RAS

i) wereanaed

Ores

Fud< =

iva

(ee

gs ha gle