(Handbook of Contemporary Philosophy of Religion 3) James F. Harris (Auth.) - Analytic Philosophy of Religion-Springer Netherlands (2002)

ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION
HANDBOOK OF CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

Volume 3
Series Editor
EUGENE THOMAS LONG
A list of titles in this series can be found at the end of this volume.
JAMES F. HARRIS
The College of William and Mary in Virginia, U.S.A.
Analytic Philosophy of Religion
SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
ISBN 978-90-481-5983-3
ISBN 978-94-017-0719-0 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-0719-0
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2002 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 2002
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2002
No part of this publication may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means,
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Table of Contents
Handbook of Contemporary Philosophy of Religion: Series Outline
vi
Preface
vii
1 Introduction: The Rise of Analytic Philosophy of Religion
2 The Problem of Religious Language
28
3 The Nature of God and Arguments for the Existence of God
77
4 Religious Experience and Religious Epistemology
141
Religion and Science
194
Contemporary Challenges to Theism: Evil and Suffering
234
Contemporary Challenges to Theism: Humanism, Naturalism,

and Atheism
278
8 Religion and Ethics
330
9 The Problem of Religious Pluralism
374
10 Summary and Conclusion
413
427
Index
Handbook of Contemporary Philosophy of Religion

Series Outline
At mid-century western philosophy of religion appeared to be gasping for

breath. The logical positivists and the positivists of revelation cooperated in
challenging the legitimacy of natural theology and the philosophy of religion. Soon
after mid-century, however, new approaches to philosophy with roots in the early
twentieth century began to flourish leading to renewed interest in the philosophy of
religion. Neo-Thomists and process philosophers breathed new life into
metaphysics, and analytic and existential philosophers opened up new avenues for
philosophical reflection on the meaning and truth of God-talk. These discussions
often reflected an empirical and historical mindedness that was quietly calling into
question the classical foundations of western philosophy and philosophy of
religion. The last quarter of the century has seen the blossoming of this empirical
and historical mindedness leading to an enormous change of climate in
philosophical reflection on religion. This is an era characterized by pluralism in
human experience and diversity in philosophical method. It is an era in which
many of the traditional foundations and methods of philosophical reflection on
religion are being called into question. The Handbook of Contemporary
Philosophy of Religion explores developments in contemporary philosophy of
religion in its many forms. Volume one provides an historical map of twentieth
century western philosophy of religion and serves as an introduction to other
volumes in the Handbook. Among the early volumes will come studies of
contemporary Thomistic, analytic, comparative and process philosophy of religion.
Additional volumes are being planned covering other philosophical approaches and
selected issues. Each volume will introduce the subject in its recent and current
state and provide an analysis in light of contemporary debates and the author's own
position.
Eugene Thomas Long
Editor
VI
Preface
When Gene Long, editor of Kluwer's Handbook of Contemporary Philosophy of

Religion Series, first invited me to write the volume on Analytic Philosophy of
Religion, I accepted with great enthusiasm. My only explanation for that
enthusiasm now is that I was younger and more naive at the time. Soon after
starting work on the volume, my enthusiasm was dampened by the daunting
magnitude of the task. I began as a sprinter and quickly settled into the pace of a
long-distance runner. Although I considered myself well read in the subject, I soon
discovered that I had a great deal of research to do to be confident that I had
considered all of the major contributions to the various discussions, issues, and
problems found within analytic philosophy of religion. As I read more and more
books and articles, I realized that I had rushed into a territory already well trodden
by the angels. I am greatly impressed by the sophistication and subtlety of
philosophical argument that characterize the different debates in contemporary
analytic philosophy of religion.
This volume covers a vast amount of material. I have endeavored to provide the
fairest possible reading of different authors, and, in cases where I include my own
critical evaluations and develop my own positions, I have endeavored to provide
the strongest possible interpretations of the positions I criticize. I am greatly
indebted to several colleagues who have read different portions of the manuscript
and offered various suggestions and comments. Their influence has made this a
much better book than it would have been otherwise. My gratitude goes to Paul
Davies, Paul Draper, Laura Ekstrom, Antony Flew, Michael Gettings, Steven
Hales, George Harris, William Hasker, Earl McLane, D. Z. Phillips, Philip Quinn,
William Rowe, Charles Taliaferro, Hans von Bauer, and John Whitaker. I am
especially grateful to the advice and support of Gene Long. Of course, I remain
responsible for the final product and whatever mistakes or omissions it contains.
Finally, I must thank my secretary, Debra Wilson, without whose cheerful and able
assistance completing this book while balancing my responsibilities as a
department chair would have been impossible. My greatest fear is that I have
omitted or mis-characterized the work of some important contributor to one of the
many debates taking place within contemporary analytic philosophy of religion.
My greatest hope is that this volume will prove to be valuable to those interested in
vii
Vlll
analytic philosophy of religion in helping them to understand the sophistication

and subtlety of those debates and in helping to advance philosophical inquiry.
James Harris
College of William and Mary in Virginia
October, 2001
I. Introduction: The Rise of Analytic Philosophy of

Religion
There is little need to explain or defend the unique status which human language
has occupied and continues to occupy in most fields of human endeavor. Certainly
no other human device or invention has influenced the development of human
civilization more than human language. Language is doubly important for any
intellectual or philosophical pursuits - including, and perhaps especially,
philosophy and the philosophy of religion. Every major investigation into any of
the many areas of the philosophy of religion and everyone of the many disputes
among different schools of thought and different individual thinkers have depended
upon the sophistication and complexity as well as the subtleties and fine details
that human language allows. The same is true, of course, to a greater or lesser
extent, for all philosophical inquiry; however, the use of language to engage in any
intellectual pursuit poses unique and serious questions - both methodological and
substantive.
CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS AND LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS
Perhaps the most fundamental and significant role that language has in any area
of inquiry is the role that it plays in the process of conceptual analysis - the
analysis and clarification of the fundamental concepts, categories, and distinctions
used in any inquiry. Bracketing and avoiding for the moment any mentalistic or
ontological questions and concerns about the nature or existence of concepts or
ideas, it is unarguable that whatever the nature of such concepts and categories, our
only philosophical access to them is through language - through the names, terms,
words, or sentences in terms of which such concepts are formulated, expressed,
and communicated. Thus, any attempts at conceptual clarity and understanding, as
well as any attempts at understanding and resolving conceptual confusions and
disagreements, depend upon language and linguistic analysis.
Much of twentieth-century analytic philosophy has focused upon linguistic
analysis for the purpose of conceptual analysis. An investigation into the nature
and status of language and the theories of meaning and reference for the words,
phrases, and sentences of which language is composed is directed at a clarification
and better understanding of the "underlying" concepts. The same has also been true
of much of twentieth-century analytic philosophy of religion. Twentieth-century
1
Anglo-American analytic philosophy is characterized by a central and essential

dependence upon language and linguistic analysis; however, in comparison with
other periods in the history of philosophy, analytic philosophy's concern with
language is best explained as the result of an increase in emphasis upon and
recognition of the importance of language.
LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS AND THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY
Certainly other periods in the history of philosophy and major figures in earlier
periods in the history of philosophy have engaged in linguistic and conceptual
analysis. For example, when Aristotle undertakes what is perhaps the most
important and crucial part of his philosophical inquiry into the nature of substance
(ousia) at the beginning of Book Lambda of his Metaphysics, he engages in what
most contemporary analytic philosophers would recognize as straightforward
linguistic analysis, giving examples of how we talk and how we describe different
events and activities to clarify and drive home the distinction between substance
and predicates. Again, in On Interpretation, Aristotle develops a theory of meaning
for propositions in which he adopts the distinction between a sentence and a
proposition - a distinction that most people associate only with twentieth-century
positivism. A sentence is meaningful not by "natural means," Aristotle says, but by
"convention." And, he continues, "every sentence is not a proposition; only such
are propositions as have in them either truth or falsity. Thus a prayer is a sentence,
but is neither true nor false." (17a)
Similarly, most of the medieval scholastics were continually engaged in
conceptual analysis. As most scholars are well aware, the scholastics were
particularly concerned about language and its importance for any attempt to
describe God or to apply any of the traditional theistic predicates to God. For
example, in his Summa Theologica (l.13.5), Thomas Aquinas goes to great lengths
to develop a theory of analogy to explain how we can meaningfully attribute the
same predicates, such as "good" or "wise," to both men and God. Aquinas pays
careful attention to our use of language, and he uses the distinctions found in
language to clarify the ways in which we use language to talk about humans in
contrast with the ways in which we use language to talk about God. Again, most
contemporary analytic philosophers (while perhaps not agreeing with Aquinas'S
resulting doctrine of divine analogy) would recognize this line of inquiry as simple,
straightforward linguistic and conceptual analysis. Thus, it is easy to demonstrate
how various figures and periods in the history of philosophy and theology have
been concerned with and engaged in conceptual and linguistic analysis.
THE RISE OF LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS
In the twentieth century, the accompanying specific problems of meaning,
reference, proper names, descriptions, meaningfulness, and communication have
all become explicit parts of that general concern. There is no doubt, however, that
for much of the English-speaking world of philosophy, the first half of the
twentieth century saw the concern with problems associated with the
meaningfulness of language and with the clarification of concepts reach an
unprecedented height. The increased emphasis on linguistic and conceptual
analysis is one of those rare instances in the history of philosophy that can be
INTRODUCTION: THE RISE OF ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION
clearly and undisputedly traced both to its initial sources and to the continuing
influences that kept linguistic and conceptual analysis at the forefront of the
philosophy of religion for over a half a century. The rise of analytic philosophy
resulted from what Gilbert Ryle has called "The Revolution in Philosophy,,1 and
what Richard Rorty has called "the Linguistic Turn.,,2 The period is what has
become known as "the Age of Analysis.,,3
Although there are many similarities in methodology, interests, emphases, and
results among various philosophers who are commonly regarded as belonging
within the analytic tradition, analytic philosophy is not and has never been
monolithic. There are also widespread and significant differences among analytic
philosophers concerning their methodology, interests, emphases, and results. All in
all, analytic philosophy has been a very heterogenous "movement." Although there
are some common themes, there is also as much variety among analytic
philosophers in their fundamental philosophical commitments and positions as
there has been among idealists or realists or theologians; consequently, it is
misleading to talk about "analytic philosophy" as a single movement in philosophy
without recognizing the significant differences among analytic philosophers. This
variety has very important repercussions for the philosophy of religion - some of
which are more serious and threatening than others. As we shall see, some forms of
analytic philosophy have proven to be very sympathetic to the philosophy of
religion and have actually provided a philosophical mechanism for responding to
other more radical and hostile forms of analytic philosophy. The only way to
understand and appreciate the different ways in which the philosophy of religion
has been impacted by analytic philosophy is to examine some of the most
significant differences among some of the leading figures of what is commonly
called analytic philosophy to see how these differences impacted the philosophy of
religion.
THE LINGUISTIC TREES AND THE PHILOSOPHICAL FOREST
It is a common misunderstanding among the "uninitiated" - among those who
view analytic philosophy unsympathetically from "the outside" - that it is only

concerned with language. Some critics complain that analytic philosophy has
abandoned any semblance or pretext of "doing philosophy" in any traditional sense
by addressing the really important, traditional problems of philosophy that
determine how people live their lives. As we shall see, only in rare instances of
some few individual analytic philosophers is there some modicum of truth in this
accusation. The work of figures within the analytic tradition is representative of the
classic adage about the difference in perspective between seeing the trees and the
forest. Often, the very detailed and sometimes technical work of analytic
philosophers focuses upon specific and individual trees with little or no attention
given to the more general, sweeping, and admittedly more satisfying view of the
forest. However, in nearly every occasion, and certainly in the occasion of the
major figures in the analytic tradition, there is some interest in some philosophical
Gilbert Ryle, The Revolution in Philosophy (London: Macmillan, 1957).
Richard Rorty, The Linguistic Turn (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967).
3 Morton White, The Age of Analysis (New Yark: Mentor Books, 1955).
1
ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY OF REUGION
problem of larger scope, some aspect of which is approached by, or understood by,
or attacked by, or defended by the analysis of language and concepts. "Doing"
analytic philosophy takes both its name and its method from the sciences in which
analysis is understood as the process of understanding larger problems or
compounds in the world by dividing them into their smaller components. The idea
is to understand the whole by understanding the more manageable parts, and even
in those cases where the whole might be greater than the sum of its parts, such a
claim is recognized and understood only by a careful analysis of the parts. In
general then, analytic philosophy has little sympathy for the approach to
philosophy that is based upon a priori reasoning and that results in general
metaphysical theories that ignore the "dirty work" of careful attention to particular
details.
Generally, with only some possible rare exceptions, the concern among analytic
philosophers with linguistic and conceptual analysis has seldom been regarded as
"an end in itself'; rather, analytic philosophers have used the analysis of language
and concepts to try and "get at" philosophical issues and problems, which, in most
cases, are the same traditional philosophical problems with which philosophers
have been concerned since the time of Thales. It is true that, on the whole, certain
patterns emerge from the works of many analytic philosophers that are generally
unsympathetic to certain approaches to philosophy and to certain kinds of
philosophical theories. Such a pattern is particularly easy to identify in the case of
philosophy of religion. As a result of the influence of analytic philosophy in the
English-speaking philosophical world, philosophy of religion definitely changed its
character from what it had been in the nineteenth century. To understand this
change and how and why it took place, we need to understand a little about the
history of philosophy and how and why analytic philosophy itself developed. 4
ABSOLUTE IDEALISM AND THE RISE OF ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY
John Stuart Mill, a giant of a philosophical figure in England in the middle of
the nineteenth century, had continued in the tradition of "British empiricism."
However, following his death in 1873, English philosophy was quickly dominated
by Neo-Hegelianism, one of the leading proponents of which was F. H. Bradley at
Oxford. According to Bradley, since the only "real" thing that exists is the
Absolute and everything else is an illusion, what appear to be individual, discrete
objects in the world - for example, my truck and my fishing rods - are really
"internally" and "organically" related into a cosmic whole.
4 There are several detailed treatments of the rise of analytic philosophy and philosophical analysis,
inclnding A. J. Ayer, Philosophy in the Twentieth Century (New York: Vintage Books, 1984); John
Passmore, A Hundred Years of Philosophy (London: Duckworth, 1957); Gilbert Ryle, ibid.; G. J.
Warnock, English Philosophy since 1900 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958); Morris Weitz,
Twentieth-Century Philosophy: The Analytic Tradition (New York: Macmillan, 1966); and Morton
White, ibid. See also The Revolution in Philosophy, edited by D. F. Pears (New York: Macmillan,
1955), and J. O. Urmson, 'The History of Analysis," La Philosophie analytique (paris: Editions de
Minuit, 1962). Translated and reprinted in Rorty, ibid., pp. 294-301.
THE DOCTRINE OF INTERNAL RELATIONS

Bradley's speculative monistic and holistic view of things is built upon a theory
of internal relations according to which every genuine characteristic or predicate of
an object is "internal," that is, essential, to the nature of that object. The theory of
internal relations serves as an illustrative example and precursor of the kind of
philosophical inquiry that was to develop with the rise of linguistic analysis. Of
what does the identity of an object consist? What makes one object different from
or similar to another? From all appearances, a fishing rod is a different object from
a pickup truck, but, Bradley claims, that is just so much the worse for appearance.
In his famed major work, Appearance and Reality, Bradley insists that such
appearances are deceiving and that "underneath" and in "reality" everything is one.
The One is spiritual. The One can be known only through reason and not through
sense experience. The problem with our common understanding of the world,
according to Bradley and the other Neo-Hegelians, is that we do not understand
how everything is internally related, and what appear to us to be differences
between different objects are simply the result of our ignorance and our failure to
understand the Absolute. All predicates, characteristics, and relations are defining
of an object according to the doctrine of internal relations; so, for example, not
only what we normally regard as the individual, physical characteristics of an
object but also its location in space and time are all essential parts of what makes
an object what it is. A particularly illuminating metaphor that can be used to
explain the doctrine of internal relations is in the lines from Alfred Lord
Tennyson's poem "Flower in a Crannied Wall," in which the speaker says to the
flower,
Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower - but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.
The suggestion in the poem is that the flower is essentially related to everything
else in the universe - spatially and temporally and causally - to the most distant
stars and to the most ancient times. If one is to understand completely the flower,
then one must understand what is responsible for the flower being the flower, that
is, the flower's connectedness and relatedness to everything else. To understand
one thing is to understand the entire universe because of the organic monism which
makes everything One. Everything is what it is because of its relation to everything
else; so, everything is essentially the same thing - the organic Whole, the Absolute.
So far as the philosophy of religion is concerned, the rise of Neo-Hegelian,
absolute idealism in England and the United States at the end of the nineteenth
century was important for at least two reasons. First, the content or substance of the
theory of absolute idealism provided a philosophical counterbalance to the rise of
science and the accompanying materialism and mechanism that was beginning to
spread across Europe and the United States in the mid-nineteenth century.
Secondly, the completely a priori method and grand, general, sweeping
metaphysics provided a philosophical counterpoint to the rigorously empirical

method and limited theories of science. Idealism protected the notion that there is a
spiritual aspect to the universe and a "higher" meaning for all existence - which
provided succor for theologians, beleaguered as they were at the end of the
nineteenth century by mechanistic and atheistic accounts of the universe and
human existence.
G. E. MOORE AND EARLY PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS
The two major figures of early analytic philosophy, who reacted against
absolute idealism toward the end of the nineteenth century and who were most
responsible for starting the philosophical shift from absolute idealism to analytic
philosophy, were G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell. Ironically, both Russell and
Moore, while undergraduates at Cambridge, had originally been under the
influence of McTaggart; however, both Moore and Russell revolted against and
attacked every aspect of absolute idealism. Whereas absolute idealism insisted
upon a spiritual monism based upon internal relations that is known only through
Pure Reason, Moore and Russell defended a pluralistic realism based upon external
relations that is known through common sense. Russell gives Moore the credit for
first arousing him from what may be called his "idealistic slumber."
He [Moore] took the lead in rebellion [against idealism], and I followed with a
sense of emancipation. Bradley argued that everything common sense believes
in is mere appearance; we reverted to the opposite extreme, and thought that
everything is real that common sense, uninfluenced by philosophy or theology,
supposes real. With a sense of escaping from prison, we allowed ourselves to
think that grass is green, that the sun and stars would exist if no one was aware
of them, and also that there is a pluralistic timeless world of Platonic ideas. The
world, which had been thin and logical, suddenly became rich and varied and
solid. s
Moore's attack upon idealism and his defense of realism and common sense was
a prolonged attack spread over several decades. His major contributions include
"The Refutation of Idealism," "A Defence of Common Sense," "Proof of an
External World," and "External and Internal Relations.,,6 Simply the titles of these
articles put them in stark juxtaposition with the basic claims of absolute idealism.
Through this series of articles and in his Principia Ethica, Moore developed the
method of philosophical investigation that was to become known as philosophical
analysis. Moore proceeds by asking what the correct analysis is of the meaning of
5 Bertrand Russell, "My Mental Development," in The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell, edited by
Paul A. Schilpp (New York: Harper and Row, 1944), p. 12.
6 G. E. Moore, "A Refutation of Idealism," Mind, Vo1.12, 1903; "External and Internal Relations,"
Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 1919-20; "A Defence of Common Sense," in Contemporary
British Philosophy, Second Series, edited by J. H. Muirhead (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1925);
"Proof of an External World," Proceedings of the British Academy, Vol. 25, 1939. These articles are
reprinted in many locations. "A Refutation of Idealism" and "External and Internal Relations" are
included in Moore's Philosophical Studies (Totowa, N.J.: Little, Adams, and Co., 1922). "A Refutation
of Idealism," "A Defence of Common Sense," and "Proof of the External World" are in Contemporary
and Analytic Linguistic Philosophies, edited by E. D. Klemke (New York: Prometheus Books, 1983).
certain propositions? In his Principia Ethica, 8 for example, he develops a moral

theory by analyzing the moral predicates "good" and "bad" to carefully identify the
conditions for the situations and propositions in which we would normally use one
rather than the other. The actual substance of Moore's ethical theory in Principia
Ethica - his intuitionism, his treatment of moral good as a simple, unanalyzable
predicate, and his famed "naturalistic fallacy" - is not important here. However,
his philosophical method of careful analysis of predicates and propositions was
soon to sweep the English-speaking philosophical world.
In his earliest and most influential attack on idealism, "The Refutation of
Idealism, " he undermines the idealistic claim that reality is spiritual by analyzing
the meaning of the basic claim, "Esse is percipi." Moore argues that the idealistic
argument that reality is spiritual cannot be proven since "Esse is percipi" is, in any
sense not trivially tautological, either simply false or self-contradictory.9 There are
many detailed and subtle points to Moore's analysis of the meaning of "Esse is
percipi," but one of the most telling is his insistence upon a difference between an
experience (or act of consciousness) and the object of that act of consciousness.
The two are not, as the idealists had claimed, an inseparable "organic unity." For
example, since blue and the sensation of blue are different things, then anyone who
claims that to be blue is identical to being an act of consciousness of blue makes a
self-contradictory mistake.1O Although the debate between those defending
idealism and those defending the new philosophical analysis was to go on for many
years, Moore's attacks against idealism in "Refutation of Idealism" and "External
and Internal Relations" represent a watershed after which the tide began to turn in
the world of English-speaking philosophers in favor of what we now call analytic
philosophy.
BERTRAND RUSSELL AND EARLY PHILOSOPIDCAL ANALYSIS
Although Moore might have been the leading figure in the early development of
philosophical analysis at the turn of the twentieth century, Bertrand Russell
undoubtedly has proven to be the most influential figure of the earliest period of
analytic philosophy. Russell joined Moore in his defense of realism and common
sense, but Russell had come to philosophy through mathematics. Many of his early
writings are mathematical and very technical in nature, and access to them often
requires learning certain logical and mathematical notational schemes. I will here
simply sketch the broadest implications of his work for the philosophy of religion.
Philosophers drawn to linguistic analysis as a method of philosophical inquiry
still have disagreed strongly among themselves concerning the particular kind of
language that is important to analyze or investigate. In other words, linguistic
philosophers have had significant disagreements about exactly what "language" is,
and resolving this matter has proven to be extremely difficult. If linguistic analysis
is supposed to be a tool for philosophical inquiry, then, we might say, much time
and effort have been spent simply on designing and describing the tool itself. The
work of the early Russell, as well as his later work in logical atomism, places
Particularly illustrative is Part IV of "A Defence of Common Sense," in Klemke, ibid., pp. 178ff.
G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1903).
9 See Moore, 'The Refutation of Idealism," in Moore, ibid., pp. 5ff., and in Klemke, ibid., pp. 123ff.
10 Moore, ibid., p. 18, Klemke, ibid., p. 130.
7
8
Russell in the group of philosophers for whom the proper kind of language for use
in philosophical inquiry is the logical language of an artificially constructed,
formal, deductive system. Russell's most monumental work, and arguably one of
the most influential works of twentieth-century philosophy, is the massive, threevolume Principia Mathematica, which he co-authored with Alfred North
Whitehead, his former math tutor at Trinity College, Cambridge. ll
Taking variables to range over classes and using the logical connectives of class
inclusion and class membership, Russell and Whitehead constructed a formal,
deductive system within which they formally reduced mathematics to logic. By
doing so, Russell saw himself as extending the careful rigor and precision of
mathematics into areas of inquiry that had been characterized by philosophical
vagueness and speculative thought. He believed that Principia Mathematica
represented a formal refutation of Kant's treatment of mathematics and his use of
the synthetic a priori. 12 By defining cardinal and ordinal numbers and arithmetic
operations in terms of logical axioms and connectives, Russell and Whitehead
"demystified" mathematics and moved it from the realm of speculative
metaphysics to the realm of straightforward logic.
MATHEMATICS AND GOD
Many people have failed to recognize these broader and more general
implications of Russell's work in mathematics and particularly Russell and
Whitehead's work in Principia Mathematica because they become either too
absorbed in or too deterred by the technical and mathematical details of the work.
Russell's theory of descriptions and Russell and Whitehead's reduction of
mathematics to logic are classic examples of the importance of keeping both the
detailed, individual perspective of the linguistic trees and the more general
perspective of the larger philosophical forest. In a very broad sense, many of the
epistemological differences between rationalists and empiricists in the history of
philosophy have arisen from the different ways in which they have treated
mathematics and mathematical knowledge. From the point of view of the
rationalists, empiricism cannot account for the necessity of mathematics by any
appeal to empirical, a posteriori reasoning. From the point of view of empiricism,
rationalism can only account for the necessity of mathematics by suspect intuition
or a priori reasoning. Russell thought that the Hegelian version of mathematics incorporated into his dialectic and adopted by Bradley and McTaggart - was just a
bunch of "muddled-headed nonsense.,,13 Russell saw in his own work the
opportunity to rescue mathematics from the "metaphysical muddles,,14 infused into
it by the rationalists, particularly by Hegel and his followers, and to provide an
accounting for mathematics completely upon empiricist grounds. Russell says,
II Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell, Principia Mathematica (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1910-13). Second edition, 1923-27.
12 Bertrand Russell, "My Mental Development," in Schilpp, ibid.
13 Ibid., p. 11.
14 Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1945), p.
829.
One result of the work we have been considering is to dethrone mathematics

from the lofty place which it has occupied since Pythagoras and Plato, and to
destroy the presumption against empiricism which has been derived from it.
Mathematical knowledge, it is true, is not obtained by induction from
experience .... In this sense, mathematical knowledge is still not empirical. But
it is also not a priori knowledge about the world. It is, in fact, merely verbal
knowledge .... Thus mathematical knowledge ceases to be mysterious. 15
Even given the difficulties which were to be raised about Principia Matematica,
including Russell's own paradox and "Godel's Proof' of the incompleteness or
inconsistency of any logical system "rich" enough for the reduction of
mathematics, Russell and Whitehead still provided a major boost for empiricism by
developing a new avenue for accounting for the necessity of mathematics.
Indirectly, or perhaps even directly, this boost for the new empiricism was
important because it undermined rationalism and speculative metaphysics that
included, for many philosophers at the time, religion and theology. The close of the
nineteenth century was no different from many other periods in the history of
philosophy in that mathematics and God were thought to stand or fall on the same
a priori grounds. Principia Mathematica promised a new avenue for approaching
such issues.
RUSSELL'S THEORY OF DESCRIPTIONS
In a similar vein, Russell's famed theory of descriptions continued the push
toward a rigorous empiricism. Although at frrst glance Russell's theory of
descriptions is only a theory about language and how and when words refer, there
are other larger and very important philosophical issues at stake. At the turn of the
century, Meinong and his followers (which included Russell at one time)
postulated an ontologically rich world of different kinds of entities that were
thought to "subsist" to deal with the problem of determining how it is that we are
able to talk about things that do not exist. Even to say that the Absolute does not
exist, or that God does not exist, or that the golden mountain does not exist seems
to require that the Absolute, God, and the golden mountain "exist" in some fashion
in order for us to be able to even talk about those things. After all, if we say, "The
Absolute does not exist," on the one hand and, "The golden mountain does not
exist," on the other, then we are saying that two different "things" do not exist, are
we not? Russell's theory of descriptions is based upon a process of "expanding" or
"unpacking" proper names or descriptions into complex descriptions that exposes
and makes explicit the hidden assumptions concerning what exists in the universe.
If the assumption of existence is not met, then, Russell says, the original
proposition is false. To use Russell's famous example, if one says, "The present
king of France is bald," when there is not a present king of France, then we
apparently must face the problem of having to admit that there is something that
we are talking about when we say that it is bald even if there is no present king of
France. Russell's way of handling this problem is to analyze the original
proposition as meaning, "There exists an x, such that x is currently the King of
15
Ibid., pp. 831-32.
10
France, and x is bald, and given any y if Y is currently the King of France and is
bald, then x is identical to y." Paraphrased, this means that there exists one and
only one thing such that that thing is the present king of France and is bald.
Russell's theory of descriptions provides a way of analyzing propositions and
accounting for the reference or the failure of reference of their subject terms
without the need of postulating or inferring the existence of objects that exist in
some fashion that is different from the way in which ordinary physical objects
exist. Russell's oft-repeated aphorism, "Replace inferred entities with constructed
entities," represented the re-introduction of the Law of Parsimony or Ockham's
Razor into contemporary philosophy. There is no need to resort to ontological
extremes, Russell would say, when we can account for such propositions simply by
analyzing them into their implicit meanings.
Russell's theory of descriptions represents another major step in the rise of the
"new" empiricism and philosophical analysis. His theory of descriptions has been
used to analyze general metaphysical statements, including theological statements,
with the result that sweeping and "muddle-headed" claims of existence have given
way to careful, detailed analyses of meaning that are ontologically stingy. The
resurgence of the importance of Ockham's Razor and its incorporation into
theories of ontology created a climate that was decidedly unfriendly toward the
kind of metaphysics that supported theism. Neither Russell nor Moore was ever
opposed in principle to all kinds of metaphysics. In fact, both, at different times in
their careers, indicated that a general description of the entire universe in
metaphysical terms was a legitimate philosophical enterprise. However, they both
recognized a distinction between the completely speculative and dogmatic
metaphysics of absolute idealism, which went against both human experience and
common sense, and the sort of metaphysics that explains human experience and
that is supported by common sense and experience. Although Moore never
attempted to develop such a metaphysical theory, Russell did with his theory of
logical atomism that he regarded as a logically rigorous metaphysics based upon
the necessity of mathematics and logic.
AMERICAN PRAGMATISM
Although Charles Sanders Peirce should be credited with originating the
fundamental tenets of American pragmatism, many of his writings were published
only posthumously, and the ones that were published during his lifetime were not
known widely. Certainly William James is responsible for popularizing
pragmatism and creating of pragmatism what is arguably the only uniquely
American philosophical "movement." Largely as a result of James's influence,
pragmatism supplanted idealism as the dominant form of philosophy in America
following the beginning of the twentieth century. The pragmatism that James
developed from Peirce represents a return to empiricism and a particular form of
"practical empiricism." I will focus here upon James's use of philosophical
analysis to attack idealism since his role in the United States in attacking idealism
11
and supporting empiricism and realism was analogous to the roles of Moore and
Russell in England. 16
WILLIAM JAMES AND THE ATTACK UPON IDEALISM
James became a major figure in philosophy when his Lowell lectures from 1906
were published under the title of Pragmatism a year later. Perhaps because of both
the prominence of Pragmatism and the controversy that it generated, James was
invited to deliver the Hibbert Lectures at Oxford University in 1908. James had
already published several articles attacking idealism, but his most concentrated and
sustained attack came in these Hibbert Lectures when he visited England. 17 The
original title of the lectures was "The Present Situation in Philosophy"; however,
James's title for the published version of the lectures, A Pluralistic Universe,
reveals how deeply anti-idealistic the lectures were. James is clear from the outset
that he intends to defend a revised form of empiricism that "explains wholes by
parts" instead of "parts by wholes,,18 - a method that clearly parallels the general
approach that characterizes analytic philosophy. Informally, in a letter to his
brother Henry, James revealed more of his "flashy" style by declaring that he
intended to take "the scalp of the Absolute" and put the "wretched clerical
defenders" of the Absolute on the defensive in his lectures. 19
In James's arguments against idealism in A Pluralistic Universe, we get both an
understanding of the method of philosophical analysis and an understanding of the
important stake that traditional theism had in defending idealism. What is
important in philosophy, James claims, is not simply the truth of the particular
claim or theory that is advanced but the reasons and the arguments that are
advanced in support of the claim or theory and upon which the claim or theory is
based. Rigorous philosophical argumentation, not supposition or speculation or
revelation or guesswork, is what should distinguish the claims of the philosopher. 20
In his attack upon idealism, he relies upon linguistic analysis in a manner that is
as straightforward as anything found in the early Moore or Russell. For example,
James responds to a supposed reductio ad absurdum against pluralistic empiricism
with a detailed analysis of the language used in the argument. The objection is that
if there are many different finite objects, as pluralistic empiricism claims, that exist
separate and independent of one another, then how can we ever explain how one
finite object acts upon another? This is exactly the problem Hume raised about his
own brand of pluralistic empiricism. The idealistic answer to this problem is to say
that if the many different distinct finite objects are not regarded as really distinct
from one another but simply as all joined into a single Whole, then interaction
16 Some would maintain that James's radical empiricism was closer to phenomenology than it was to
traditional British empiricism. In what follows, I emphasize James's commitment to linguistic analysis
and his attack upon absolute idealism rather than his own brand of empiricism as important in preparing
the way for twentieth-century analytic philosophy.
17 The 1908 Hibbert Lectures at Oxford University were published as A Pluralistic Universe:
Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the Present Situation in Philosophy (London: Longmans,
Green, and Co., 1909).
18 Ibid., pp. 7-8.
19 See The Letters of William James, edited by Henry James (Boston: little, Brown, and Co., 1926),
Volume 2, p. 303.
20 James, A Pluralistic Universe, pp. 13-14.
12
between the different individual things does not have to be understood as being
"transferred" from one finite thing to another but simply as an "internal" operation
of the monistic One?! James's response to this objection is to claim that the idealist
has put forth a "purely verbal" argument. By analyzing the meanings of the words
in the argument, for example, "distinct," "separate," and 'joined," James claims
that the difficult metaphysical problem of interaction is simply a matter of a verbal
disagreement between the pluralist and the monist. 22
James's lectures in Oxford in 1908 and the publication of "The Thing and Its
Relations" in 1905 added the voice of one of the most prominent American
philosophers to the grounds well against idealism that had begun with Moore and
Russell. 23 At the beginning of the twentieth century, the philosophical landscape
was changing from one dominated by idealism and rationalistic a priori reasoning
to one dominated by empiricism and conceptual and linguistic analysis. At the
same time, the change also was from a general philosophical climate that was
friendly toward traditional theism in terms of methodology and, in some cases,
substantive content to one that was hostile toward it methodologically and
substanti vely.
Although James was very sympathetic toward what we might call "the religious
sentiment," he offered very little support for traditional theism or the approach to
the philosophy of religion that we would now call natural theology. He was
particularly opposed to the traditional arguments for the existence of God and to
rationales that provided for the traditional metaphysical attributes of the deity.z4
His Varieties of Religious Experience emphasizes the vast cultural diversity of
religious experiences found among different peoples of different cultures of the
world without offering any grounds for pre-eminence of or even preference for
traditional theism, and his pragmatism causes him to be more interested in the
"cash-value" of a religious belief than in its metaphysical truth.
THE VIENNA CIRCLE AND LOGICAL POSITIVISM
There is little doubt that the movement in twentieth century philosophy known
as logical positivism (or, less frequently, "empirical positivism") has had more
influence upon twentieth-century Anglo-American philosophy of religion than any
other single philosophical development. Logical positivism originated with the
group of philosophers, scientists, and mathematicians who formed themselves into
the famed Vienna Circle at the University of Vienna in the early 1920s. Led by
such notable figures in philosophy as Moritz Schlick, Rudolf Carnap, Herbert
Feigl, Friedrick Waismann, and others, the positivists were initially prompted by
their concerns over what they considered to be the then current deplorable state of
Ibid., pp. 54-57.
Ibid., p. 57-60. This is an argument that follows directly from James's treatment of monism and
pluralism in his Pragmatism (Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett, 1907), pp. 61ff.
23 Although one may argue that James himself still harbored some sympathy with religious belief,
James was no defender of traditional theism or organized religion. He rejected the traditional arguments
for the existence of God, theology, and religious institutions, and, true to his radical empiricism, he
insisted upon the philosophical significance of different religious experiences, which, of course, come
in many different varieties. His influential Varieties of Religious Experience is discussed in Chapter IX.
24 See William James, The Varieties of Religion Experience (New York: New American Library,
1958), pp. 329-31.
21
22
13
philosophical inquiry. From the mid-nineteenth century through the first quarter of
the twentieth century, science had made astounding progress. Correspondingly, the
nature of scientific inquiry had also made enormous progress toward becoming
much more rigorous and controlled. The notion of precise measurement (and hence
the importance of mathematics) and the resulting clarity, precision, and rigor had
become the cornerstone of modem science. By contrast, on the continent of
Europe, philosophy was still very heavily dominated by the influence of
nineteenth-century German idealism - primarily Neo-Hegelianism. The early
positivists were dismayed by the highly speculative and widely metaphysical
nature of philosophy and were intent upon modeling philosophical inquiry upon
scientific inquiry by incorporating the clarity of concepts and rigor of reasoning
found in scientific inquiry into philosophy.
MEANING AND TRUTH
At the very basic level of the positivists' approach to the restructuring of
philosophy was the adoption of the fundamental epistemology of scientific inquiry
according to which meaning is epistemologically fundamental and
epistemologically prior to truth. Before a scientist can perform any observations or
conduct any experiment in an attempt to confirm any hypothesis, the univocal
meaning of the hypothesis must be clear to the scientist. A hypothesis must be
understood as describing, corresponding, or otherwise "attaching to" the empirical
world in a single, univocal fashion before any attempts to investigate the scientific
accuracy of the hypothesis can begin. Any data resulting from observation or
experimentation will discriminate among competing hypotheses only if the data
that are confirming of one hypothesis are not confirming of the other. In order for
confirmation to proceed, then, hypotheses must be clearly distinguished from one
another, which means that the meaning of those hypotheses must be clear and
univocal. Indeed, before a scientist can decide how to design an experiment or
know what observations to perform or which data are particularly important to
collect to test the truth of a hypothesis, the meaning of the hypothesis must be
clearly understood.
Such an understanding of the underlying epistemological priorities of the
scientific method led the early positivists to adopt the epistemological prioritizing
of meaningfulness to truth. Meaningfulness is epistemologically more fundamental
than and logically prior to the notion of truth. There were many differences among
the early positivists, and, in a genuine sense, it is misleading to lump them all
together into a single, unified group or refer to them using a single label as the use
of the appellation "positivism" suggests. However, if there is a single unifying
factor among the different early positivists, it would be the epistemological ranking
of meaning as more basic and fundamental than truth. 25
25 For a thorough history of the Vienna Circle and early positivism, see G. 1. Warnock, ibid., pp. 3034; Victor Kraft, The Vienna Circle (New York: Philosophical Library, 1953); and A. 1. Ayer, ibid., pp.
12lff.
14
THE VERIFICATION CRITERION OF MEANING

The early targets of the "attack" of the positivists upon philosophy and their
attempts to restructure philosophy upon the bedrock of scientific inquiry were the
Neo-Hegelians of the early twentieth century who carried on - in one permutation
or another - what were, in the judgments of the positivists, the fanciful and
speculative metaphysical musings of Hegel. In an attempt to find some criterion or
standard by which such highly speculative claims could be identified and
distinguished from straightforward claims of science, the positivists developed
what was to become known as the verification criterion of meaning (or,
alternatively, the verification principle or the empirical criterion of meaning). Such
a criterion or principle was intended to provide the basis for determining which
utterances are empirically meaningful and which ones are not. Contrary to a
common misunderstanding of the verification criterion of meaning, there was
never a single version of the criterion that was agreed upon by all of the original
members of the Vienna Circle. The need for such a criterion and the
epistemological ordering of meaning and truth described above was undoubtedly
something upon which the positivists would have agreed, but no single version of
the criterion ever enjoyed the approval and support of all the early positivists.
Indeed, much of the writing of the early positivists was focused upon trying to
develop a "correct" version of the verification criterion of meaning that would
command widespread assent and agreement. Some versions were regarded as too
narrow, that is, they excluded too much (usually the universal laws of science that
need to be both universal and nomological to do their work in science and are thus
not empirical in any straightforward sense); others were considered to be too
broad, that is, they excluded too little (usually because in the effort to retain the
laws of science, metaphysical claims slipped by alsO).26
AYER AND THE ANGLICIZING OF POSITIVISM
Theology was a secondary target of positivism. It was not until positivism
became anglicized that its full impact was felt in theology and the philosophy of
religion. Positivism and its focus and concerns came to dominate much of AngloAmerican philosophy for more than a quarter of a century through one of those
sometimes underappreciated accidents of history through which political affairs
shape and determine intellectual movements. The early positivists fled Vienna and
Austria in the 1930s in advance of the development and spread of Nazism and
immigrated to universities in the United Sates or Great Britain. Their influence was
immediate and widespread, and thus postwar Anglo-American philosophy became
analytic Anglo-American philosophy.
The earliest and single most important work for spreading the influence of early
positivism and the significance of the verification criterion of meaning to the
English-speaking world was Language, Truth, and Logic by A. 1. Ayer. This book
set the tone for much of the philosophical inquiry in Great Britain and the United
States in the period immediately following World War II. Ayer, of course, was not
a member of the original Vienna Circle, but his book, more than any other by far,
26 See Carl Hempel, "Problems and Changes in the Empiricist Criterion of Meaning," in Semantics
and the Philosophy of Language, edited by Leonard Linsky (Urbana: University of lllinois Press, 1952).
15
was responsible for popularizing positivism. Ayer originally developed both a

"strong" and a "weak" sense of verification for consideration for the criterion. The
strong sense of verification captures the attempts by the early positivists to develop
an adequate version of the criterion. "A proposition is said to be verifiable in the
strong sense of the term," Ayer claims, "if, and only if, its truth could be
conclusively established in experience.,,27 Ayer recognized that such a formulation
is too narrow since, as we have indicated, the general, universal laws of science
that are thought to apply to an infinite number of cases, including cases in the
future, cannot be conclusively verified by experience and are thus in the same boat
as speculative, metaphysical claims. Ayer thus falls back upon the weak sense of
verification. A proposition is verifiable in the weak sense, Ayer says, "if it is
possible for experience to render it probable.,,28
By applying this criterion to the many areas of philosophical inquiry, Ayer
determines that most of the traditional problems of philosophy are not really
legitimate areas of inquiry. "The function of philosophy" is simply the clarification
of concepts and is not concerned with adding any information to our store of
knowledge at all. Philosophy, Ayer says, is simply a division of logic. 29 Philosophy
becomes completely absorbed with language. The only meaningful statements are
tautologies and observation statements, and philosophical inquiry does not simply
begin with or use linguistic analysis or conceptual analysis, philosophy is linguistic
or conceptual analysis.
Language, Truth, and Logic was also tremendously important because Ayer
devoted a separate and complete chapter to a critique of ethics and theology. 3D
Normative statements in ethics, Ayer claimed, are not really statements with truthvalue at all and are hence neither true nor false. They are expressions of emotion or
feelings or sometimes commands to others. We cannot legitimately dispute
normative values, Ayer claims; we can only dispute the empirical facts of different
situations about which we then develop certain feelings that are noncognitive. The
same is true of aesthetics for Ayer. Emotive and noncognitive theories of ethics
were prompted by this application of the verification criterion of meaning to ethics.
Much the same is true of theology. The traditional claims of the theist - that God
exists, God is loving, and humans have immortal souls - are not genuine
propositions at all, despite their declarative form. Such claims thus assert nothing
and are consequently meaningless. 31
The impact of Language, Truth, and Logic upon English-speaking philosophers
was enormous. Although mostly derivative from the work of the early positivists,
it, along with the dissolution of the original Vienna Circle and the spread of its
members to the United States and Great Britain, ensured the immediate and
widespread adoption of the fundamental tenets of positivism by much of the
English-speaking philosophical world.
A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth, and Logic (New York: Dover Publications, 1936), p. 37.
Ibid.
29 Ibid., p. 39.
30 See ibid., Chapter VI, "Critique of Ethics and Theology."
31 Ibid., p. 117.
27
28
16
THE DECLINE OF POSITIVISM

The failures and ultimate demise of logical positivism are well documented.
Logical positivism had held forth the promise of curing philosophy of all its ills
and constructing it along the lines of science, but it was never successful in
completing this program. The problems were many. Despite all of the efforts and
attention, no one ever successfully constructed the ideal version of the verification
criterion of meaning that would clearly demarcate along the desired lines by ruling
out as meaningless metaphysics and theology while maintaining the
meaningfulness of statements of scientific laws and simple statements about the
future and the past.
The logical status of the verification criterion itself became a significant issue
that was never resolved satisfactorily. Any particular version of the verification
principle is supposed to contain the criteria for determining empirical
meaningfulness. However, the principle obviously cannot be applied successfully
to itself, that is, if any version of the verification principle is judged by its own
standards, it will be judged empirically meaningless. A moment's reflection would
indicate immediately why this must be the case. The verification principle is
intended as a completely general thesis about the nature of language, and, as such,
it must be a second-order (or metalinguistic) claim about how language is related
to the world. It cannot then include itself in the general thesis that it describes or
judge itself by the criteria that it establishes.
The responses of the positivists to the recognition of the difficulty involving the
logical status of the verification principle and the question of its own
meaningfulness were that it is a rule or principle or definition and was never
intended to be regarded as empirically meaningful. For example, by the time of the
second edition of Language, Truth, and Logic, Ayer had adopted the position that
the verification principle is a definition. 32 But if the verification principle is simply
a definition, what recommends it over other definitions? By explicitly embracing
this position, Ayer recognizes that he opens the possibility of different competing
definitions with resulting different kinds of meanings. Although he does not want
the matter of deciding among different competing definitions to be completely
arbitrary, he does not offer a compelling argument for why anyone should prefer
the verification principle over any other definition of meaning. The answer, of
course, is that the choice of definition depends upon what one wants it to do and
how one wants the landscape of meaningfulness divided. In other words, it seems
that the positivists can defend their preference for the verification principle only
because of the initial commitment to preserving science and eliminating
metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics, and theology. As we shall later see, the recognition
of the apparently arbitrary status of the verification principle opened up the
possibility for others to embrace different kinds of meaning - including poetic
meaning, ethical meaning, aesthetic meaning, and, of course, religious meaning.
THE END OF POSITIVISM
Other problems contributed to the demise of positivism. Much of the general
program of the positivists had been built upon the many developments that had
32
Ibid., p. 16.
17
taken place in symbolic logic in the latter half of the nineteenth century and at the
beginning of the twentieth century. In particular, the apparent success of Alfred
North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell in Principia Mathematica in constructing a
system that was adequate for reducing mathematics to logic held the promise that a
single logical system could be adequate for constructing a system within which a
complete description of the world might be given containing every single
meaningful proposition. Rudolf Carnap, a member of the original Vienna Circle,
attempted to construct such a system in Der Logische Aujbau der Welt (The
Logical Structure of the World). Using the logic from Whitehead and Russell's
Principia Mathematica, Carnap attempted to construct a formal, metaphysical
system within which every single phenomenon in the world - including physical,
phenomenal, psychological, and societal - could be deduced from primitive terms
describing immediate experience (sense data). In the preface to the second edition
of the Aujbau, Carnap admits his failure in this monumentally ambitious effort.
Carnap's failure was the failure of a thorough and general program of logical
positivism.
Contributing to the inflationary number of claims about different kinds of
meanings was the additional doubt that was raised concerning the uniqueness of
the logic of Principia Mathematica. Kurt Godel developed his famous "proof'
(based upon an ingenious use of mapping), which demonstrated that any formal,
logical, axiomatic system that was rich enough to reduce mathematics had to be
either inconsistent or incomplete. Any such system must either be inconsistent by
allowing within itself the proof of a theorem and its formal negation or it must
exclude from itself as provable some theorem that is known to be a theorem of the
system. With Godel's proof, the logical foundation for logical positivism is
threatened. If the system upon which all logic and mathematics are built is suspect,
then there is no foundation upon which to base the general program of logical
positivism. Positivism was faced not only with the possibility of different kinds of
meanings but with the possibility of different kinds of languages and logics as well.
ORDINARY-LANGUAGE PHILOSOPHY
A common perception is that analytic philosophy in the twentieth century has
been completely dominated by logical positivism. There is little doubt that much of
Anglo-American analytic philosophy was dominated by positivism for more than
two decades. As a philosophical movement, however, logical positivism was shortlived, and by the early 1950s its influence had waned considerably. By 1955, for
example, in the preface to one of the earliest volumes of analytic philosophy of
religion of the postpositivism era, Anthony Flew and Alasdair MacIntyre indicated
that though the label of logical positivism persisted as a movement in philosophy it
was "now defunct.,,33
The other "school" of analytic philosophy, which began to rise to a position of
dominance in analytic philosophy in midcentury, was ordinary-language
philosophy. Ordinary-language philosophy finds its origin in the later works of G.
E. Moore and Ludwig Wittgenstein of Cambridge and the works of Gilbert Ryle of
33 Anthony Flew and Alasdair Macintyre, New Essays in Philosophical Theology (London: Student
Christian Movement [SCM] Press. 1955). p. vii.
18
Oxford. 34 Much of the variety among different analytic philosophers is accounted

for largely in terms of what sort of language they consider to be the legitimate
linguistic unit for philosophical use and analysis. The ordinary-language
philosophers were united by their belief that ordinary language is the appropriate
linguistic vehicle for conducting philosophical inquiry and, as such, is the
appropriate target of linguistic analysis. Interestingly, even different ordinarylanguage philosophers meant different things by "ordinary-language philosophy,,,35
but let us here take "ordinary language" just to mean nontechnical language - the
language that people might use in the "ordinary" course of the day in conversation
with others and in conducting their personal affairs. 36 Taking ordinary language in
this sense, we can say that the ordinary-language philosophers eschewed the idea
of an ideal, logically perfect language in favor of the use of ordinary language as
the proper medium for pursuing philosophical issues and for developing
philosophical theories. Furthermore, ordinary-language philosophers held that
many philosophical problems are really pseudoproblems because they have arisen
through mistakes that philosophers have made about ordinary language. Hence,
such problems can be "dissolved" through philosophical analysis by simply tracing
the pseudoproblem to its source in the misunderstanding or misinterpretation of
ordinary language.
A good example of the Oxford branch of ordinary-language analysis is Gilbert
Ryle's The Concept of Mind, in which Ryle develops a reductionist and
behavioristic theory of the nature of the mind that is based, in large part, upon the
way in which ordinary language is used to talk about the mind and behavior. In the
first chapter of this work, which has become a classic of ordinary-language
analysis, Ryle dismisses Cartesian dualism as "the Myth of the Ghost in the
Machine." According to Ryle, the Cartesians make the very fundamental logical
error of committing a "category mistake," that is, the mistake of applying concepts
or categories that meaningfully apply to one logical type to another logical type for
which the concepts or categories are logically inappropriate?7 Of course, Ryle's
attack upon Cartesian dualism is an indirect attack upon the assumed metaphysics
of much of Judaic-Christian theology since the time of Descartes. The Concept of
Mind pushes in the direction of reductionism and materialism and would be as
hostile toward theological talk of an immortal soul as it is toward metaphysical talk
of an immaterial mental substance.
With the move that occurs within ordinary-language philosophy away from the
notion of an ideal, logically perfect language, much of the philosophical
underpinning of the opposition of analytic philosophy to the philosophy of religion
begins to erode. The work of the later Wittgenstein further undermines much of the
34 For a detailed historical treatment of ordinary-language philosophy, see Passmore, ibid., Chapter
18, pp. 431-75.
35 See, for example, Gilbert Ryle, "Ordinary Language," The Philosophical Review, Vol. 62, 1953.
Reprinted in Philosophy and Ordinary Language, edited by Charles E. Caton (Urbana: University of
lllinois Press, 1963), pp. 108-127. Also included in Ordinary Language, edited by V. C. Chappell
(Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1964). Also, see Norman Malcolm, "Moore and Ordinary
Language," in The Philosophy of G. E. Moore, edited by Paul Arthur Schilpp (Evanston, lll.: Open
Court, 1942). Reprinted in Chappell, ibid., pp. 5-23.
36 See Caton, ibid., pp. vi-vii.
37 Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1949), pp. 16ff.
IN1RODUCTION: THE RISE OF ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION
19
basis for the hostility of analytic philosophy toward philosophy of religion.

Although Moore and Russell had been the dominant figures of the early stages of
the development of philosophical analysis, Russell's influence upon the direction
of the development of analytic philosophy was far greater than Moore's in the first
four decades of the century. Russell's interest in the development of a logically
perfect language for doing philosophy had dominated not only his own work but
the work of the early Wittgenstein and the attempt to develop a theory of logical
atomism as well. With the rise of ordinary-language philosophy, the influence of
Moore overtakes the early influence of Russell.
THE LATER WITTGENSTEIN
The later Wittgenstein begins his Philosophical Investigations with a thorough
critique and rejection of the view of language that he had inherited from Frege and
Russell 38 and the development of a new understanding of language. This earlier
view of language is characterized by the belief that words are names and take their
meaning by referring to objects; propositions were regarded as combinations of
names and were thought to take their meaning by referring to states of affairs. Such
beliefs lead to a referential theory of meaning and a correspondence theory of truth
and also tend to support a foundationalist view of language according to which
language "connects" with the world at its most basic, fundamental, and primitive
level. 39 This was the view of language upon which the entire enterprise of logical
atomism was based. Although Wittgenstein was not himself a positivist, this same
view of language was the view upon which the "reductive analysis" of the logical
positivists was based.40 The fundamental underlying metaphilosophical and
metalinguistic view of this kind of language and its philosophical importance was
that the world was a certain way with a certain logical construction, and in order
for language to be capable of describing the world and asserting true and false
claims about the world, it also had to have a certain logical construction. Because
of the underlying commitment to empiricism and to the correspondence theory of
truth, neither the meaningfulness nor the truth of general metaphysical statements
could be accounted for with this view of language. This view of the nature of
language led, as we have seen above, to the rejection of metaphysics by the logical
positivists using the verification criterion of meaning. It also led to the infamous
problem of self-reference of Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus,
according to which, if the theory he develops there is really the correct way to
describe how language is related to the world, then the theory cannot really be
consistently stated.
38 This treatment of Wittgenstein's changing views concerning the nature of language is very brief
and superficial. For a more thorough treatment of his rejection of his earlier view of language and his
later view in the Philosophical Investigations, see James F. Harris, "Language, Language Garnes, and
Ostensive Definition," Synthese, Vol. 69,1986, pp. 41-49.
39 See ibid., 43-44. In terms of the language, this means that the language is ''truth-functional,'' that
is, the truth values of complex statements in the language are functions of the truth values of the most
simple statements in the language.
40 See G. P. Baker and P. M. S. Hacker, Wittgenstein: Understanding and Meaning (Oxford: Basil
Blackwell, 1980), pp. 34ff.
20
ESSENTIALISM AND NONESSENTIALISM

For our consideration here, the most important feature of this view of language
that had dominated so much of Western philosophy from the time of Aristotle
onward is its essentialism. Much of earlier analytic philosophy - including
especially the logico-mathematics of Russell and the positivism of the Vienna
Circle - was based upon the understanding of language according to which each
assertive statement has a single, determinate meaning. According to different
analytic philosophers, each proposition's determinate meaning might be
determined by a unique set of truth conditions, or by the unique state of affairs in
the world that it described, or by the unique method of its verification, or by its
unique "ordinary meaning." In the Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein
abandons such essentialism in favor of a theory of "meaning as use," and language,
like tools, can be put to many different uses. "The function of words are as diverse
as the functions ofthese objects [tools]," he says.41 Wittgenstein also abandons the
understanding of language according to which asserting facts using declarative
sentences that are either true or false is the only philosophically important or
interesting use of language in favor of an understanding of language according to
which there are many different uses of language - all equally philosophically
important and interesting. He gives some examples that illustrate his changed
understanding of the richness of language and the myriad of uses to which it can be
put:
How many different kinds of sentence are there? ... There are countless kinds:
countless different kinds of use of what we call "symbols", "words",
"sentences" ....
Review the multiplicity of language-games in the following examples, and in
others:
Giving orders and obeying them Describing the appearance of an object, or giving its measurements Constructing an object from a description (a drawing) Reporting an event Speculating about an event Forming and testing a hypothesis Presenting the results of an experiment in tables and diagrams Making up a story; and reading it Play-acting Singing catches Guessing riddles Making a joke; telling it Solving a problem in practical arithmetic Translating from one language into another Asking, thanking, cursing, greeting, praying. 42
41 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, translated by G. E. M. Anscombe (New York:

Macmillan, 1953), Section 11.
42 Ibid., Section 23.
21
Each of these different uses of language involves a different context - with

different speakers with different intentions and purposes and different audiences.
Each of these different contexts, including the speakers, the language, and the
gestures, constitutes what Wittgenstein called a language-game. One of the most
important features of a language-game is that it is "rule governed," which means
that certain conventions operate within the language-game with the conventional
force to determine the meanings of the different uses of language by establishing
the correct and incorrect uses of language within the language-game. Participation
in different language-games constitutes what Wittgenstein calls a "form of life."
The differences between the early and the later Wittgenstein's views concerning
language are not always so sharp as I have made them here. Several Wittgenstein
commentators have argued that the later Wittgenstein's view regarding
nonessentialism is consistent with his earlier views. For example, Rush Rhees
claims that the view of language as a calculus is still exercising an influence on the
later Wittgenstein since when one uses a calculus for something, it has a function,
and it gets its meaning from that function. 43 Also, in understanding the importance
of how Wittgenstein's analogy of the different uses of tools illustrates the different
uses oflanguage, it is important to distinguish Wittgenstein's interests in the notion
of "the use of language" from those of J. L. Austin (discussed below). Austin's
concerns are directed toward actual, specific situations of "what to say when" and
involve paying close attention to the subtle differences among different things that
result in our calling those different things by different names or in our describing
those different things using different expressions. Wittgenstein's concerns with use
might be described as "deeper." His concerns are directed toward the more
fundamental presumptions about the nature of language that allow for the very
possibility of using language in different ways.44 Wittgenstein is thus concerned
with the "grammar" (the conceptual underpinning) that allows us to use language
in different ways for different purposes (in different "language-games"). The
importance of Wittgenstein's views regarding grammar and language-games are
discussed in detail in connection with the views of D. Z. Phillips in Chapter II and
ChapterIV.
Not only is meaning and the correct use of language relative to different
language-games with their different rules, but ontology also is relative to different
language-games. In the Tractatus, the view of language that Wittgenstein adopted
was a view that he had inherited from Frege and Russell. According to this
foundationalist view, language "connects" with the world ontologically only at its
most primitive, simple level. 45 The process of analysis was intended to be one
where complex, "higher-level" uses of language were analyzed into their most
simple component elements to determine the final ontological commitments of a
language. Such a procedure was behind Russell's attempt to replace inferred
entities with constructed ones and Russell and Wittgenstein's effort to explain the
43 Rush Rhees, Wittgenstein and the Possibility of Discourse (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1998).
44 The difference between Wittgenstein and Austin is discussed at length in Stanley Cavell, The
Claim of Reason (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), pp. 65ff. I am grateful to D. Z. Phillips for
bringing this point to my attention.
45 See Harris, ibid., pp. 43ff.
22
entire universe from the atomic propositions in logical atomism. It was this same
view of language upon which the "reductive analysis" of Gilbert Ryle's
"Systematically Misleading Expressions" was based. 46 When Wittgenstein
abandons this view of language in the Philosophical Investigations for the view
based upon language-games, he also abandons any sort of attempt to "connect"
language to the world ontologically in the same sort of foundationalist fashion.
What sort of things our language commits us to now depends entirely upon the
context, the language-game in which the question arises. For example,
Wittgenstein suggests that if we think of how a particular composite is to be
divided up into its simple parts, the process has no definite answer outside a
particular language-game. 47 Consequently, ontology as well as meaning becomes
relative to different language-games for the later Wittgenstein.
The development of the notion of language-games in the later Wittgenstein has
proven to offer a welcomed philosophical solace for some philosophers of religion.
Whereas the strictly empirical language of the logical positivists with its
verification criterion of meaning and its strict ontology of empirical facts left no
room for meaningful claims about the existence of God, Wittgenstein's
introduction of language-games appears to leave open both questions of meaning
and ontology. According to the later Wittgenstein, we must first examine the
particular language-game within which questions about the meaning of a particular
claim or the existence of a particular object are raised and then address the
questions within that language-game.
The development of language-games obviously provides a great deal more
flexibility for the traditional theist to defend claims about the existence and nature
of God. As I discuss in Chapter II and Chapter IV, several prominent philosophers
of religion, most notably D. Z. Phillips and Paul van Buren, have developed
positions that examine the meaningfulness of the claims of theism based upon
Wittgenstein's notion of a language-game.
SPEECH ACTS AND LINGUISTIC PHILOSOPHY
The last identifiable stage in the development of twentieth-century analytic
philosophy came in the period following World War II at Oxford University.
Sometimes called "Oxford Philosophy" or the "Oxford School of OrdinaryLanguage Philosophy," this form of analytic philosophy was dominated by the
figure of John L. Austin. Trained originally in the classics, Austin brought with
him to the study of philosophy what was perhaps a unique ability to notice and
appreciate the multifarious subtleties of language. It is sometimes said of Austin
that he was interested in the study of language for its own sake, because he never
constructed any general philosophical theories and seldom made explicit the
philosophical implications of his work on language. However, the truth is that
Austin thought that general theories and even the philosophical implications of
language could only come as the result of an extremely careful and thorough study
of language that might continue for generations through the work of several
46
See Gilbert Ryle, "Systematically Misleading Expressions." Reprinted in Klemke, ibid., pp. 287-
306.
47
See Wittgenstein, ibid., Sections 47 and 48.
IN1RODUCTION: THE RISE OF ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION
23
different people. In this sense, the methodology of his linguistic philosophy

approached that of a "science oflinguistics."
Although Austin has had a significant influence upon analytic philosophy in a
number of ways, unqoubtedly, his most significant influence upon the direction of
the philosophy of religion came as a result of his development of "speech-act
theory." Like the later Wittgenstein, Austin continually insisted that philosophers
ought to be more interested in the variety of different kinds of uses of language and
ought to avoid concentrating solely upon the assertive or descriptive uses of
language - a mistake that Austin called "the descriptive fallacy." Austin's speechact theory focuses upon the particular locutions of a speaker rather than upon
"language" or "sentences" or "words" and is based upon the tripartite distinction
between locutionary acts, illocutionary acts, and perlocutionary acts. Using one of
Austin's famous examples, a particular speaker may say to a particular audience A,
"I promise that I'll be home by ten o'clock." S then performs the locutionary act of
issuing the utterance (with a definite sense and reference), the illocutionary act of
promising to be home before a certain time, and the perlocutionary act of causing
A to believe that S will be home before that time. The locutionary act is the act of
saying something, the illocutionary act is the act performed in saying something,
and the perlocutionary act is the act performed by saying something. 48
The general effect of Austin's theory of speech-acts and his linguistic
philosophy is to provide even further flexibility and greater specificity at the same
time to our understanding of linguistic analysis. Again, like the later Wittgenstein,
Austin abandons the essentialism of the early Russell and the logical positivists and
its focus upon the abstract meaning of a proposition in favor of the concrete
situation in which a speaker says something to a particular audience. Similar to the
notion of language-games, Austin's theory of speech-acts shifts the focus of
philosophical analysis to a specific situation wherein a particular speaker says
something to a particular audience, with a particular intention, a particular force,
and a particular consequence.
Speech-act theory provides a rich avenue of development for understanding
certain kinds of religious utterances that is still being explored. We might say that
Austin further loosens the tight bonds of essentialism and provides still another
different way of analyzing and understanding religious utterances (discussed in
Chapter II). In general, speech-act analysis provides the framework within which it
becomes possible to talk about and analyze "religious utterances" on a par with
"scientific utterances" or any other kind of utterance. In order to use speech-act
analysis to understand religious language, we must specify a particular utterance
issued by a particular speaker on a particular occasion under particular
circumstances to a particular audience. The requirement for such detailed
specificity may seem daunting and discouraging, but certainly speech-act analysis
is more methodologically friendly to the philosophy of religion than were earlier
forms of analytic philosophy.
48 See John L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words, edited by J. O. Urmson (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1962), pp. 98ff.
24
POSTANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY?
In the last two or three decades of the twentieth century, several major figures
have raised serious objections against not only the possible success of an analytical
approach to philosophical problems based upon the analysis of language and
concepts but also against the very possibility and the very coherence of such an
approach. One of the more prominent of these critics is Richard Rorty. He
contends that there is no such thing as an objective method of inquiry, no such
thing as epistemology, and no such thing as objective reality. It is not simply that
logical positivism failed to produce on its grand program, as I have described
earlier, but the entire enterprise involving the logical analysis of concepts and
language is wrong-headed and nonsensical, according to Rorty. Analytic
philosophy burned itself out and showed itself to be a dead-end approach to
philosophy. "The notion of 'logical analysis' turned upon itself and committed
slow suicide," he claims. 49 The sources for the threat of self-destruction within
analytic philosophy are many, and I cannot examine those in detail here. However,
the most influential attacks upon the fundamental distinctions and commitments of
analytic philosophy that have arisen from within the analytic tradition itself are
worthy of brief mention. Perhaps chief among these attacks has been Willard Van
Orman Quine'S rejection of the analytic-synthetic distinction and his own holism
and Thomas Kuhn's analysis of the history of science and science method as
paradigm-based. 50 According to Quine, there is not a qualitative difference
between analytic and synthetic statements or between theory and content or
between logic and fact, only a difference in degree. All statements are parts of a
"web" or "network" and occupy different positions of relative pragmatic
importance to the web; however, "no statement is immune to revision," and,
conversely, any statement may be held onto, "come what may." The decision, for
Quine, is always a pragmatic one relative to the particular network. For Kuhn,
methodology, facts, and truth are relative to a paradigm that controls and regulates
the method of inquiry and what counts as an accurate and satisfactory result of the
inquiry, and the choice of paradigms cannot be a rational one based upon reason or
evidence or data since all of these are relative to paradigms. For followers of Kuhn,
classic Western science is simply the result of adopting one paradigm, and religion
is the result of adopting another paradigm. s1 These and other critiques of analytic
philosophy and, more generally, empiricism have eroded and blurred the
fundamental distinctions between method and substance, form and content, and
logic and fact. Many philosophers, following Quine and Kuhn, have rejected the
traditional understandings of epistemology and the scientific method. The result
49 Richard Rorty, Consequences of Prag11Ultism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982),

p. 227. Also see Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press, 1979), pp. 323ff.
50 Willard Van Orman Quine, "Two Dogmas of Empiricism," in From a Logical Point of View (New
York: Harper and Row, 1953), and Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Second
Edition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970). For a critical discussion, see James F. Hams,
Against Relativism: A Philosophical Defense of Method (LaSalle, Ill.: Open Court, 1992), Chapter 2 and
Chapter 4.
51 See, for example, Paul Feyerabend, "How to Defend Society against Science," in Scientific
Revolutions, edited by Tan Hacking (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981).
25
has been what many have characterized as a general and radical logical,
ontological, and epistemological relativism.
At the same time, Anglo-American analytic philosophy has been challenged by
European philosophy. Whereas analytic philosophy was identified with and the
heir to the historical tradition of British empiricism, the new, "postanalytic"
philosophy championed by Rorty and others is aligned with the post-Kantian,
European thought of Hans-Georg Gadamer, Jiirgen Habermas, and Jacques
Derrida.52 The influence of what is typically identified as "continental" philosophy
- including deconstructionism and postmodernism - has become so strong in the
last few decades of the twentieth century that the period might well be known to
future historians of intellectual thought as The Age of Relativism. 53
POSTANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION
The rise of postmodernist, postanalytic, and postempiricist approaches to
philosophy has had significant influence upon both the general philosophical
climate and the more practical aspects of academic departments of philosophy and
religion (particularly in the United States but in Great Britain as well). These
challenges to analytic philosophy have also had significant repercussions for the
philosophy of religion - both in terms of philosophical approaches to traditional
problems in the philosophy of religion and the actual constituents of academic
departments of philosophy and religion. These changes have been the object of
some interest and discussions among philosophers of religion and theologians
alike. 54 Natural theology, which has historically dominated analytic philosophy of
religion, has come under increasing attack and has been replaced by many thinkers,
who are generally regarded as belonging to the analytic tradition, by an approach to
the philosophy of religion that relies upon revelation, religious teachings or
doctrine, or religious epistemology - an approach that is more akin to theology.55
CONCLUSION
For a variety of different reasons, many people identify twentieth-century
analytic philosophy with logical positivism and its dismissive treatment of religion;
consequently, many people assume or infer that all twentieth-century analytic
philosophy has the same hostility to the philosophy of religion. I have indicated
here that twentieth-century Anglo-American analytic philosophy was not
monolithic or homogenous, and I have shown a definite evolution in the nature of
analytic philosophy. The consequences of the differences among different analytic
philosophers differ widely as far as the philosophy of religion is concerned - some
are very hostile to the philosophy of religion and some are very friendly toward it.
52 For a variety of different critical attacks upon analytic philosophy from diverse philosophical
perspectives, see After Philosophy: End or Transformation, edited by Kenneth Baynes, James Bohman,
and Thomas McCarthy (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1988), and Post-Analytic Philosophy, edited by John
Rajchman and Cornel West (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985).
53 See Harris, ibid., pp. Iff.
54 See, for example, God, Philosophy, and Academic Culture, edited by William J. Wainwright
(Atlanta, Ga.: Scholars Press, 1996).
55 Such approaches are discussed in Chapter IV. I have in mind here the work of Alvin Plantinga
involving reformed epistemology, the work of William Alston involving religious perception, and the
work of Marilyn Adams regarding evil and suffering.
26
The evolution of the philosophical climate within analytic philosophy has generally
been from one of hostility toward the philosophy of religion to one that is much
more favorable. Logical positivism, the form of contemporary analytic philosophy
most hostile toward the philosophy of religion, was relatively short-lived; however,
though strict positivism itself was soon rejected by the philosophical community,
much of the methodology and many of the problems of twentieth-century analytic
philosophy of religion - as evidenced in natural theology - are the result of the
"restructuring" of theology that took place as a result of "the Revolution in
Philosophy."
In the latter half of the nineteenth century, there was little to distinguish in terms
of the methodology (and some, as we have seen, would say in terms of the content)
between idealism, which dominated much of philosophy, and theology. The rise of
contemporary analytic philosophy in the first half of the twentieth century created a
gulf between philosophy and theology that was, in some cases, the result of overt
hostility and, in other cases, the result of aggressive indifference. During this
period, in the "new" philosophical climate, philosophers and theologians no longer
competed with different theories on a general, metaphysical scale. The result was
that analytic philosophy and theology became more distinct and autonomous in
their respective pursuits than perhaps they had been at any other time in the history
of Western intellectual thought. Philosophers writing in midcentury about the
impact of analytic philosophy upon theology routinely refer to the "old" and "new"
way of addressing religious problems philosophically. 56 The rise of the philosophy
of religion as a discipline distinct from theology is, at least partially, the result of
addressing religious questions that arose from analytic philosophy. 57
Following the watershed of the decline of logical positivism, the "new" way of
doing philosophy in English-speaking countries became much more friendly
toward the philosophy of religion, and, with the threat of postanalytic philosophy,
things have progressed even further in many quarters. Many analytic philosophers
now admit that there are legitimate philosophical issues arising out of religious
beliefs and practices that can be addressed in a manner using the general
techniques of analytic philosophy. Or, alternatively, following the various attacks
upon analytic philosophy, philosophers previously associated with the analytic
tradition are willing to admit the limitations of that tradition and use different and
more "theistic friendly" methods of inquiry.
It is useful to understanding the role of a contemporary philosopher of religion
to consider the analogy of a movie critic. A movie critic critiques the product of the
filmmaker by analyzing the plot, the characters, the dialogue, the direction, the set,
and the other important aspects (maybe comparing it with other similar movies) of
a movie to form judgments about the quality and value of a movie. Ideally, the
movie critic makes his or her judgments by appealing to some sort of general
56 See, for example, the Introduction to Faith and Logic, edited by Basil Mitchell (London: George
Allen and Unwin, 1957), pp. Iff. See also Austin Farrer, "A Starting-Point for the Philosophical
Examination of Theological Belief," in Mitchell, ibid. Compare also Willem F. Zuurdeeg, An Analytical
Philosophy of Religion (New York: Abingdon Press, 1958), pp. 15ff.
57 The case could also be made that the rejection of Hegelian idealism by such nineteenth-century
existentialist thinkers as Sliiren Kierkegaard and his existentialist approach to religious questions is also
a contributing factor in the rise of the philosophy of religion as distinct from theology.
27
principles or some methodology and gives some reasons or rationale for those
judgments that then allows an audience to understand the grounds upon which the
judgments were made. This analysis provides the basis for an understanding of
why one may agree or disagree with those judgments. The philosopher of religion
critiques the work (the body of claims) of the religious believer or religious
practitioner by analyzing the plot (the religious account of things), the characters
(God, humans, and perhaps angels), the dialogue (religious language), the set
(earth, the universe, and perhaps heaven and hell), and other important aspects
(maybe comparison with other religions or alternative nonreligious accounts). To
conduct such a "review," we would normally think that it would be preferable for a
critic to be neutral - neither an advocate nor a protagonist of the film or the
religion to be critiqued. We are not as likely to trust the review of a movie critic if
we know that the critic has invested money in the production of that particular
movie or in one of its rivals. If we know that the reviewer has a vested interest in
the product, then we are likely to demand a more explicit explanation of the
rationale for the judgments and a higher standard for the methods and the
principles that are the bases for those judgments. The ideal of the analytic
philosopher of religion is to commit to an objective and neutral methodology that
involves the analysis of language and concepts in a genuine attempt to understand
and elucidate the claims and practices of religion. When the inquiry is conducted
by theists and in defense of theism, we ought to be especially cautious to scrutinize
both the method of inquiry and the results. While some might dispute whether the
methodology is objective and neutral and others might dispute whether it is
profitable, analytic philosophers have pursued such a course of inquiry, which has
resulted in a body of challenging and compelling literature addressing a core of
fundamental problems and issues. The inquiry, debate, and criticism concerning
this body of literature and this core of problems and issues comprises
contemporary analytic philosophy of religion.
II. The Problem of Religious Language
With the rise of analytic philosophy in the early part of the twentieth century
and its emphasis upon linguistic analysis, it should not be surprising that a
significant crisis developed by midcentury among both philosophers and
theologians concerning religious language. That there was such a crisis is
evidenced both by the explicit recognition of the challenge in the writings of
several leading figures in both the philosophy of religion and in theology and by
the plethora of books and articles that appeared in print in the period from
approximately midcentury until ten years or so afterward. 1 There was much
disagreement among different analytic philosophers; however, the one underlying,
common tenet upon which nearly all of them would have agreed is that language is
the one continuous thread from which the entire fabric of religion and religious
belief is woven. Some of the problems with religious language are illustrated by
the more extreme positions, for example, A. J. Ayer's claim that the language of
theology is meaningless and nonsense and Paul van Buren's claim that "the word
'God' is dead.,,2 Other concerns were prompted by the repercussions of attention to
language by the more moderate analytic philosophers and the elevation of the
importance of the analysis of language for philosophical or theological pursuits.
RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE AND RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE
The way in which an understanding and analysis of religious language was
viewed as fundamental to all of religion is perhaps best illustrated by the
relationship between religious language and religious knowledge. A good way to
understand the inseparable and symbiotic relationship between religious language
and religious knowledge is to see the epistemic content of religious claims as
dependent upon and derivative from an analysis of the cognitive content of those
claims, that is, the content on the basis of which those claims might be regarded as
1 A casual inspection of the copyright dates of the references in this chapter will indicate how
concentrated the interest in religious language was from the late 1940s through 1960. Although the
publication of some additional original material continued beyond that date for some thinkers, the
1960s, for the most part, saw the appearance of secondary source material in the way of books,
anthologies, and articles responding to earlier works.
2 See A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth, and Lagic (New York: Dover Publications, 1956), Chapter 6, and
Paul van Buren, The Secular Meaning o/the Gospel (New York: Macmillan, 1965), p. 103.
28
THE PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE
29
true or false. Consequently, much of the attention during this period was focused
upon issues concerning "the cognitive meaningfulness" of religious language and
the impact of these issues upon claims concerning religious knowledge. It appears
that religious language has to be cognitively meaningful in order to have epistemic
content or value. The problem of religious language and the problem of religious
knowledge came to be regarded as inextricably interwoven,3 and a reprioritizing of
issues and problems within the philosophy of religion occurred - the result of
which was that the analysis of religious language came to be regarded as basic and
fundamental to the myriad of other issues and problems. In this view, approaching
questions about claims to religious knowledge philosophically begins with an
analysis of the language that is used to affIrm, describe, or communicate those
claims, and analyzing the religious language within which those claims are
couched invariably leads to epistemological questions.
The view that understanding and analyzing religious language is basic and
fundamental to the philosophy of religion leads directly to the need for resolving
the question of the logical status of religious language, and attempting to resolve
the question of the logical status of religious language requires pursuing several
different avenues of inquiry that, at different times, parallel and intersect each
other. Is religious language assertive? Are religious beliefs "cognitively
meaningful"? If so, are the statements of these beliefs "literally true or false" or
"symbolically or metaphorically true or false"? What is the criterion (or criteria)
for determining cognitive meaningfulness? Can language have epistemic content
and not be cognitively meaningful? Are there other kinds of meaningfulness
besides cognitive meaningfulness? If so, what about the criteria for "noncognitive
meaningfulness"? But what about these questions themselves? Do they presuppose
certain rigid ways of categorizing possible approaches to religious language? In
some Wittgensteinian-based views, these very distinctions between cognitive and
noncognitive meaningfulness and between literal and metaphorical truth and falsity
are regarded as arbitrary and restrictive. In pursuing answers to these questions, as
well as the others addressed in this chapter, it is a mistake to talk about and treat
religious language monolithically. From the most radical to the most conservative,
those who have dealt with problems of religious language have admitted that
different utterances are intended to be regarded and treated in different ways. Not
all utterances are intended as statements. Different utterances by theists may be
exaltations of praise, professions of beliefs, descriptions of religious practices,
reports of religious authority or history, or factual claims about the world.
The problem of religious language in the twentieth century was a complex one
of sorting through the multifarious kinds of religious utterances and establishing
and analyzing the different logical types of religious utterances, the logical status
of the different logical types of religious utterances, and the logical relationship
between the different logical types of religious utterances and other questions in
the philosophy of religion (such as the problem of religious knowledge). For most
who have addressed these issues, the question of whether certain kinds of religious
3 See, for example, William T. Blackstone, The Problem of Religious Knowledge: The Impact of
Contemporary Philosophical Analysis on the Question of Religious Knowledge (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.:
Prentice-Hall, 1963), and Religious Language and the Problem of Religious Knowledge, edited by
Ronald E. Santoni (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1968).
30
utterances are cognitively meaningful is at the very core of the problem of religious
language. Pursuing the issue of the cognitive meaningfulness of religious language
leads directly into the question of the proper criterion for assessing cognitive
meaningfulness. The earliest and most extreme forms of assessing cognitive
meaningfulness, advocated by the logical positivists, traded upon full or partial
direct verification and rejected all religious statements in toto and "out of hand."
Logical positivism flourished briefly and then faded (see Chapter I). However, the
spirit of positivism and the lingering, fundamental question about the cognitive
meaningfulness of religious statements did not fade away so quickly or easily.
About midcentury, several critics renewed the attack upon religious language in
more moderate guise. So far as the philosophy of religion is concerned, logical
positivism had been a wolf in wolf's clothing; the renewed attack came in the form
of a wolf in sheep's clothing.
POPPER AND FALSIFIABILITY
Since its ftrst introduction by Karl Popper, the notion of falsifiability has gained
and continued to enjoy significant currency in the philosophy of science.
Falsiftability was used by Popper as a criterion and a test for empirical and
scientific claims for settling what he calls "the problem of demarcation." Facing a
situation in which scientific theories were becoming more and more abstract primarily as a result of Einstein's introduction of the theory of relativity and
developments in quantum theory - Popper was faced with dealing with the
methodological signiftcance of scientific theories that did not lend themselves to
verification in any straightforward sense. The problem was one of distinguishing
between legitimate science and "pseudoscience." In contrast with the prevailing
view of the nature of science, which depended upon the notion of conftrmation,
Popper's answer to the problem of demarcation was that, to be empirically
signiftcant, statements of science must be falsifiable in principle. Also, in contrast
with the logical positivists' use of the verification criterion of meaning, Popper did
not develop a general theory of meaning. Through the process of attempting to
falsify a statement, we simply test individual statements "in a negative sense." The
empirical content of a statement is determined by its degree of falsifiability; thus,
the easier it is to falsify a statement (that is, the more evidence that is potentially
falisfying), the greater the degree of empirical content of the statement. 4 A
meaningful, legitimate scientific hypothesis is one on the basis of which a scientist
is able to deduce specific expectations concerning matters of fact. If, in certain,
specifiable circumstances, the predicted results are not obtained, then the
hypothesis is refuted or falsified. Any hypothesis or other claim that is theoretically
immune to any such falsification is not empirically significant, and whatever else it
might be or do, such a statement does not contain any factual information about the
world. Pseudoscientiftc claims such as those of astrology are not empirically
meaningful because they are not falsifiable.
4 For Popper's treatment of the problem of demarcation, see Karl Popper, The Logic of Scientific
Discovery (New York: Basic Books, 1959), pp. 34ff.
31
FLEW AND FALSIFICATION

Although the grand program of positivism proved to be a failed enterprise, its
influence was (and continues to be) significant. The positivists could never agree
on a formulation of the verification criterion of meaning that would do what they
wanted it to do;5 however, the notion of verification never completely faded away
and continued as an undercurrent of analytic philosophy. The continued dominance
of the scientific method and the glaring differences between the scientific method
and the many ways of forming and explaining religious belief invited the continued
comparison of the statements of science and religious language. One of the most
compelling variations upon the early positivists' emphasis on verification and
empirical meaning has proven to be the notion of falsification introduced by
Antony Flew. Flew's falsifiability criterion of meaning for religious statements is
an attempt to take Popper's falsifiability test for scientific claims and apply it
within the philosophy of religion. Flew's use of falsification also has proven to be
the most poignant and lasting formulation to capture and preserve the positivists'
original concern with empirical meaningfulness. Flew introduced his notion of
falsification as part of the famed "University Discussion" about religious language
in his article entitled "Theology and Falsification." This has become one of the
most commonly known, reprinted, and anthologized pieces ever produced in
analytic philosophy of religion. 6 Flew begins his discussion of falsification by
relating a parable first used by John Wisdom in his article "Gods."
Once upon a time two explorers came upon a clearing in the jungle. In the
clearing were growing many flowers and many weeds. One explorer says,
"Some gardener must tend this plot." The other disagrees, "There is no
gardener." So they pitch their tents and set a watch. No gardener is ever seen.
"But perhaps he is an invisible gardener." So they set up a barbed-wire fence.
They electrify it. They patrol with bloodhounds. (For they remember how H. G.
Wells's The Invisible Man could be both smelt and touched though he could not
be seen.) But no shrieks ever suggest that some intruder has received a shock.
No movements of the wire ever betray an invisible climber. The bloodhounds
never give cry. Yet still the Believer is not convinced. "But there is a gardener,
invisible, intangible, insensible to electric shocks, a gardener who has no scent
and makes no sound, a gardener who comes secretly to look after the garden
which he loves." At last the Skeptic despairs, "But what remains of your
original assertion? Just how does what you call an invisible, intangible, eternally
elusive gardener differ from an imaginary gardener or even from no gardener at
all?"?
5 See Carl Hempel, "Problems and Changes in the Empiricist Criterion of Meaning," in Semantics
and the Philosophy of Language, edited by Leonard linsky (Urbana: University of illinois Press, 1952).
6 Flew's paper prompted the "Discussion," which took place between Flew, R. M. Hare, and Basil
Mitchell.
7 'Theology and Falsification," in New Essays in Philosophical Theology, edited by Antony Flew
and Alasdair MacIntyre (London: SCM Press, 1955), p. 96. Cited by Flew as originally appearing in the
Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 1944-45. Also in Logic and Language, edited by A. G. N. Flew
(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1963), pp. 187- 206.
32
The application of the parable of the invisible gardener to the philosophy of

religion is immediate and direct by Flew. The theist and nontheist disagree about
the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, transcendent God
who "tends" his creation. What evidence can possibly resolve this dispute? We can
only look to evidence that would be compatible with one assertion but not the
other. In the parable, when the Believer and the Skeptic (the theist and the
nontheist) perform tests to attempt to discover evidence to support one claim or the
other, no evidence to support the theist's claim that there is a God is ever
discovered that is not equally supportive of the nontheist's claim, and no evidence
is regarded as possibly falsifying of the theist's claim. However, the Believer
continually accommodates the potentially falsifying results by qualifying the
original claim that there is a gardener by saying, "Well, there is a gardener, BUT
the gardener is invisible, intangible, etc." We can easily imagine that if more varied
and sophisticated tests were introduced with the same results, the Believer might
say, "Well, there is a gardener, BUT the gardener is completely and necessarily
undetectable by any possible means by human beings!" The original claim then
becomes meaningless, according to Flew, and indistinguishable from the
competing claim that there is no gardener at all. With the turn of what has become
an enduring phrase, Flew concluded that the original claim dies the "death by a
thousand qualifications."s
Flew's point concerning the claims of the theist is forceful and straightforward.
The theist makes such claims as "God has a plan," "God created the world," and
"God loves us as a father loves his children.,,9 If such claims are intended by the
theist as assertions - as propositions with truth value - then in order to assert
something the theist must thereby also be denying something - namely that the
negation of the original proposition is not true. A proposition that does not
preclude some state of affairs from being true, that is, a proposition that is not
falsifiable by some possible state of affairs, is thus cognitively meaningless or
cognitively empty regardless of its declarative syntactical form. According to
Flew's falsifiability criterion of meaning, for any assertion, "anything which would
count against the assertion, or which would induce the speaker to withdraw it and
to admit that it had been mistaken, must be part of (or the whole of) the meaning of
the negation of the assertion. And to know the meaning of the negation of an
assertion, is as near as makes no matter, to know the meaning of the assertion."l0
The conclusion of the application of the falsifiability criterion is obvious: if an
alleged assertion denies nothing, then it asserts nothing. As several critics have
pointed out, the state of affairs that a meaningful statement must deny must be an
empirical state of affairs (it is arguable that a standard use of "state of affairs"
designates only empirical states of affairs or empirical matters of fact).
Flew represents this position as a simple point of logic. In a footnote, he
suggests that his claim is the same, in fact, as acknowledging that to assert P is to
assert the denial of not-P (the law of double negation). However, things are surely
not so simple as this, and when the underlying complexity of Flew's position is
8 Ibid., p. 97.
Ibid.
10 Ibid., p. 98.
33
understood, a major difficulty arises. Given the impact that Flew's use of
falsification has had upon the ways in which religious language and religious
knowledge have been approached in the latter half of the twentieth century, this
matter deserves some lengthy and careful attention. Consider the rationale that
Flew provides to support the claim that if an alleged assertion is to assert
something, then it must also deny something:
Now to assert that such and such is the case is necessarily equivalent to denying
that such and such is not the case. Suppose then that we are in doubt as to what
someone who gives vent to an utterance is asserting, or suppose that, more
radically, we are skeptical as to whether he is really asserting anything at all,
one way of trying to understand (or perhaps it will be to expose) his utterance is
to attempt to find what he would regard as counting against, or as being
incompatible with its truth. For if the utterance is indeed an assertion, it will
necessarily be equivalent to a denial of the negation of that assertion. And
anything which would count against the assertion, or which would induce the
speaker to withdraw it and to admit that it had been mistaken, must be part of
(or the whole of) the meaning of the negation of that assertion. And to know the
meaning of the negation of an assertion, is as near as makes no matter, to know
the meaning of that assertion. And if there is nothing which a putative assertion
denies then there is nothing which it asserts either: so it is not really an
assertion. 11
One major criticism against Flew's use of falsification as a criterion of meaning
has been raised by Alvin Plantinga. 12 Plantinga understands Flew to be presenting
an argument for the claim that one way to understand an assertion is to understand
what is incompatible with that assertion. Part of the argument appears to be Flew's
claim that anything that would count against the assertion must be a part of the
meaning of the negation of that assertion. If, in fact, Flew intends this claim to be a
premise in an argument to prove his general claim that in order to assert something
a statement must deny something, then Plantinga has quite rightly raised objections
against this premise of the argument. The claim that anything that would count
against the original assertion must be a part of the meaning of the negation of that
assertion does, indeed, appear to lead to very bizarre consequences. 13 To illustrate
this point, consider the example of the assertion, "Flew exists," which Keith
Yandell uses to make Plantinga's point. 14 Given Flew's position, part of the
meaning of "Flew exists" would be the fact that "Flew was never devoured by a
dinosaur." "Flew was not executed by the Inquisition" would also count against
"Flew exists" and would thus be part of the meaning of the negation of the
negation, "Flew does not exist." Of course, the point is that there appears to be an
infinite number of different things that would count against Flew's existence and
Ibid.
See Alvin Plantinga, God and Other Minds (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1967), pp.
157ff.
13 Ibid., pp. 158-59.
14 Keith Yandell, Basic Issues in the Philosophy of Religion (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, Inc., 1971),
p.13.
11
12
34
that would thus be part of the meaning of the denial of the negation of the original
assertion. Thus, it seems that we could never completely understand "Flew does
not exist" and that Flew's suggestion, as a general theory of meaning, has the
unhappy consequence that we could never completely understand the meaning of
simple, straightforward claims. 15
However, things are not as difficult for Flew as they initially appear to be.
Yandell himself recognizes that Flew can respond to this criticism by maintaining
that the countless various events, states of affairs, and facts that count against his
existence should be disjoined and not conjoined. 16 This means that a person would
not have to enumerate every single possible disjunct that may count against the
original assertion in order to understand the meaning of the negation. It seems that
a person may simply select whatever particularly relevant and poignant disjuncts
seem best suited for the job. In addition, Plantinga admits that the conclusion of
Flew's supposed argument (that if there is nothing that a putative assertion denies
then there is nothing that it asserts either) is a "truism," so the concerns about
Flew's supposed argument do not seem to be very important. It appears that his
claim treating what would count against the original assertion as "part of the
meaning" of the negation of the original assertion is the result of the lingering
influence of the verification criterion of meaning. 17 Whether such a general theory
of meaning is plausible is separable from simply treating falsifiability as a test for
cognitive meaningfulness. If we treat the above passage from Flew as a rationale or
explanation for the claim that a way of understanding an assertion is by
understanding what would count against the assertion and not as a general theory
of meaning, then our attention is refocused simply upon the issue of falsifiability as
a test for meaningfulness.
Plantinga expresses frustration at understanding exactly what Flew's challenge
to religious language is; 18 however, others - theists and nontheists alike - have
taken up the challenge very readily. The plausibility of using falsification as a
criterion for understanding the meaning of an assertion can be demonstrated by
considering a case from ordinary experience. Suppose that a young child goes to
school, where her teacher sees that she is in ill health, poorly clothed and fed, and
suffering from what seem to be obvious signs of child abuse. When the child is
asked why her father does not provide the proper medical attention and clothes and
food for her and why she has bruises and scars from abuse by the father, the child
responds, "Because my father loves me." Perhaps, one might think, the child is
denied basic necessities because the family is poor, but it is determined that the
family is quite well off. As details emerge of the child's situation and as she is
questioned further about her father's behavior and his motive for his behavior, the
child continues to profess that her father loves her. At some point, if the
investigation continues, we can imagine our response to the child. "You poor
dear," we might say. "You just don't know what 'love' means."
Ibid.
Ibid.
17 This appears to be the case if, in fact, the only thing that can falsify the original assertion is an
observation statement(s). See Plantinga, God and Other Minds, p. 162.
18 Plantinga, God and Other Minds, p. 168.
15
16
35
Whatever the meaning of 'love' is, loving someone must mean something
different from not loving that person. Whatever the behavior might be that is
compatible with and evidence of one person loving another, there must be some
behavior that is not compatible with or evidence of that person loving the other;
otherwise, there would be no difference between loving and not loving. If a father
can neglect and abuse his child in any way imaginable but still be said to love her,
then what would constitute not loving her? This is the basic intuition captured by
the notion of falsification.
Of course, the application of this case to the one of a transcendent God who
loves his children is obvious. Why would an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God
allow his children to suffer? Because God loves us? What might it mean to say that
God loves us under such circumstances? And what would be the difference
between God's loving us and not loving us? Falsification provides the mechanism
for understanding such a claim. What might a theist allow as falsifying the claim
that God loves us? Or, if not falsifying, what might a theist allow as possibly
counting against the claim? Are there any conceivable circumstances, we might
ask, in which the theist would withdraw the claim or be cognitively tempted, on the
basis of certain evidence, to withdraw the claim? Suppose that, at some point in the
future, every single human child born was born suffering from some terrible
incurable aliment that caused excruciating pain for every single moment of every
person's life to the extent that nothing we now regard as constituting human
happiness or human fulfillment or human satisfaction or human success were
possible? Would such a circumstance be evidence against the claim that God loves
us? Can we respond to this challenge by qualifying love so that we are talking
about "divine" love? How much can we qualify the ordinary notion of love before
we run the risk of making the claim about divine love so different from claims
about human love that it loses all significance and dies "the death of a thousand
qualifications"? Is divine love so different from human love that it loses all
resemblance to human love? How then can we understand what we mean by divine
love? Why would we then still call it love? The different ways in which one might
respond to these challenges are indicative of the different theoretical responses to
the challenge of the meaningfulness and the nature of religious language.
There have been two general categories of responses to the challenge of the
meaningfulness of religious language based upon the notion of falsifiability. I will
call these two different kinds of responses the liberal response and the conservative
response. Liberal responses to the challenge of falsification admit to some degree
the impact of the challenge upon the empirical significance of religious language
and attempt to develop other accounts of significance for religious language.
Liberal responses thus abandon the claim that religious language is empirically
significant in favor of some other kind of account of how religious language is
significant. Conservative accounts seek to protect religious language as empirically
significant by responding to Flew and the challenge of falsification by providing
some account of how religious language satisfies the condition of falsification,
thereby preserving the factual, empirical content of religious language. 19
19 This classification is inspired by several different sources, including William T. Blackstone, The
Problem of Religious Knowledge (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1963); William Rowe,
36
LIBERAL RESPONSES TO THE CHALLENGE OF FALSIFICATION

Liberal responses to the challenge of falsification take the approach of
defending religious claims by first "giving the devil his due" by admitting that the
criterion of falsification does exactly what Flew claims, that is, the criterion of
falsification demonstrates that many religious claims are not empirically
significant. Since those who defend such a method of response do not wish to
abandon religious claims altogether, the problem then becomes one of explaining
exactly what kind of meaning and what kind of value religious claims do have if
they are not empirically significant. There are many different answers to this
problem, and we can here treat only some of the major figures. 20
R. M. HARE AND BLIKS
R. M. Hare responded to Flew in the same famous "University Discussion" in
which Flew introduced the notion of falsification. In his response to Flew and the
challenge of falsification, Hare admits that on Flew's own ground, he is
"completely victorious." Hare then proposes to defend religious claims and provide
an alternative account of their meaningfulness by "shifting ground." He begins by
relating his own parable:
A certain lunatic is convinced that all dons want to murder him. His friends
introduce him to all the mildest and most respectable dons that they can find,
and after each of them has retired, they say, "You see, he doesn't really want to
murder you; he spoke to you in a most cordial manner; surely you are convinced
now?" But the lunatic replies, "Yes, but that was only his diabolical cunning;
he's really plotting against me the whole time, like the rest of them; I know it I
tell you." However many kindly dons are produced, the reaction is still the
same. 21
The lunatic's claim about dons (perhaps one that many graduate students have
shared) is not an empirical claim, Hare agrees, since it is immune to falsification.
The lunatic will adjust his belief to accommodate any possible counterevidence
that may be presented against it, thereby preventing falsification. So, Hare admits,
the lunatic's claim is not an empirical assertion with a truth value. The lunatic has
what Hare calls a "blik." A blik is a general attitude toward the world or a
significant part of it that provides a basis for how an individual relates to the world.
A blik is not an empirical claim, and it is not held on the basis of evidence or as the
result of any argumentation or demonstration. Nor do bliks provide any
explanation of the world, but they do provide the most general framework within
which reason and explanation are recognized and operate. Without a particular blik
Philosophy of Religion: An Introduction (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth Pnblishing Co., 1978); and
Ronald E. Santoni, Religious Language and the Problem of Religious Knowledge.
20 In addition, see 1. J. C. Smart, "Metaphysics, Logic, and Theology," in New Essays in
Philosophical Theology, edited by Antony Flew and Alasdair MacIntyre, pp. 12-27; R. F. Holland,
"Religious Discourse and Theological Discourse," Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 34, no. 3,
1956; R. B. Braithwaite, An Empiricist's View of the Nature of Religious Belief (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1955).
21 R. M. Hare, '''Theology and Falsification," in New Essays in Philosophical Theology, edited by
Antony Flew and Alasdair MacIntyre, pp. 99-100.
THE PROBLEM OF REUGIOUS LANGUAGE
37
in place, a person would not share a reasonable person's concern with evidence and
justification. 22
Everyone has bliks about the world, according to Hare. We all believe that the
steering wheel of our car will continue to tum the wheels properly and allow us to
control the car, though we may not have the knowledge of the engineering of the
mechanisms or the tolerances of the metals and other materials involved to justify
such a belief. People similarly believe that the road will continue to support the car
properly and not suddenly open up to swallow it into some great abyss.23 Most
people believe that airplanes are safe while others do not. And, many times, those
who do not believe that airplanes are safe, people who have a "fear of flying," may
well know more about aerodynamics than those who do not have such a fear. Such
an attitude or general belief seems to be, in some sense, immune to the effect of
evidence and reason.
According to Hare, people care about the subject matter of their bliks. We do
not approach the world in the cool, detached way in which the explorers in
Wisdom's original parable seem to approach the question about the existence of
the gardener. 24 The lunatic is passionate about dons, and whether one's car
continues to operate properly is a matter of great personal concern to us. Anyone
with a fear of flying who has ever had to fly in an airplane or anyone who has ever
had to fly with a family member or friend with a fear of flying knows for certain
how passionately such people care about the matter of flying! For Hare, the same is
true of the religious person. A person who has a religious blik about the world uses
that blik to structure the world and organize the things in it about which he cares
deeply in a particular way. Although Hare does not elaborate a great deal about the
way in which religious bliks operate, it is easy to see a strong similarity with
William James's notion of the pragmatic value of religious belief and the effects of
the "will to believe." Religious people "see" the world differently - "address" the
world differently - from nonreligious people. And the different bliks that people
may have about dons make everything they do and say regarding dons dependent
upon those different bliks.
There is little doubt that, for Hare, some bliks are correct and some are
incorrect, and this distinction is the target of the most serious criticism of his
notion of bliks. A comparison of bliks with Hume's natural beliefs is illuminating.
Hume, at least, had a rationale for distinguishing natural beliefs and treating them
as special cases in his general epistemology. Natural beliefs are those that human
beings cannot help holding and without which they cannot survive in the natural
world. Belief in induction is one such belief. Belief in necessary connection is
another. Such natural beliefs might certainly be theoretically open to falsification
for Hume. We cannot properly claim to know natural beliefs either a priori or a
posteriori, but this does not mean that evidence or reason are irrelevant to such
beliefs. It is simply that the evidence never reaches the level where such beliefs are
justified by the evidence. We can certainly imagine a situation in which, if the
world changed dramatically enough, or if we were transported to a different distant
Ibid., p. 101.
Ibid., pp. 100-101.
24 Ibid., p. 103.
22
23
38
world where the regUlarity and causal connections in this world were lacking, our
natural beliefs may well change. The situation with bliks is supposedly entirely
different. Bliks are supposed to be completely separated from the facts and
completely immune to revision forced by the facts. How then are we to tell a good
blik from a bad one and distinguish a correct blik from an incorrect one? In the
case of the lunatic, Hare says that his blik is "insane" and "wrong" while ours is
"sane" and "right.,,25 But surely something is seriously amiss here. It would only be
because of our knowledge of the facts of the matter, that is, only because of the
content of the blik, and the relation of a particular blik to other information that we
have about the world, that we would come to be in a position to judge one blik
"sane" and the other "insane." The distinction between "sane" and "insane" and
between "right" and "wrong" seems to be simply a thinly veiled guise for the
distinction between true and false. The reason that "we" regard the blik of the
lunatic as insane is because we regard the facts as we know them to be falsifying of
the lunatic's blik. Hare's notion of a blik may well serve to help us better focus
upon some really thorny issues about the nature of evidence and epistemological
warrant and how different people may weigh and judge such evidence and warrant
differently, but bliks do not provide a safe haven for religious beliefs in the face of
the challenge of falsification.
IAN T. RAMSEY AND MODELS AND QUALIFIERS
Ian T. Ramsey joins the ranks of the liberal respondents to the challenge of
falsification by insisting that religious situations are unique and require their own
language and their own logic. Ramsey joins with those who defend religious
language by "shifting ground," by abandoning the claim that religious claims are
straightforward empirical assertions. They do, however, retain an empirical
"grounding."
Religious situations are characterized, according to Ramsey, by odd discernment
and total commitment. "Odd discernment" means that a person recognizes a
particular situation as being highly personal and invoking a realization on the part
of that person that the situation is logically odd and that it cannot be satisfactorily
described or otherwise captured by ordinary language or ordinary logic. Ramsey
illustrates the feature of religious situations that he labels "odd discernment" by the
following story about an English High Court:
Let us recall the setting of a High Court - all very impersonal, all very formal,
quite lacking in "depth" and "vision." The name of the judge is made as suitably
abstract as possible - Mr. Justice Brown. The wigs and scarlet are meant to
conceal the fact that Mr. Justice Brown is after all a human being. If he has
rushed to the Court from riding, or mending the car, he would never think of
appearing there in riding breeches or overalls. Whatever clothes he wore to play
with the children will at least be covered with scarlet and ermine. Nor is the
argument of the Court interested in persons. We have, instead, "the Crown,"
"the accused" and "the prosecution." Here is a situation as impersonal as may
be; a mere facade of human existence. Then, one morning Mr. Justice Brown
25
Ibid., p. 100.
TIIE PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE
39
enters the Court to see as the "accused" the closest friend of his undergraduate
days; or, if we may be more melodramatic, the long-lost wife. "Eye meets eye";
astonishment; an odd word is uttered. It may be from the undergraduate friend
"Sammy:"; from the wife "Penney!", and the result is (as the papers will tell us
the next day) that the Court is "electrified." An impersonal situation has "come
alive.,,26
In such situations, Ramsey says, a discernment is made. The ordinary situation
"comes alive," and "the light dawns" or "the ice breaks." Such situations require a
special language to distinguish them from the ordinary, and since religious
situations invoke such odd discernments, they require their own special language
and logic, which will be characteristically different from the language and logic of
science or any straightforward empirical statements. Thus, in the example of the
High Court, the use of personal first names, or nicknames, is appropriate to the
highly personal situation where a continued use of the standard or normal
descriptions of "the Judge" or "the accused" would not be.
Secondly, religious situations are characterized by total commitment. An
example of such commitment might be found in a person's commitment to a
school, a college, or a nation.27 However, religious commitment is total
commitment, which means that the commitment involves all of a person's
personality, that is, the commitment is held toward every aspect of a person's life
and not just some one person or one activity; it is a commitment "suited to the job
of living.,,28
Given that religious experience is distinct from "ordinary" experience by
invoking odd discernment and total commitment, Ramsey insists that we must use
a suitable language and a suitable logic for such situations. Ordinary language and
ordinary logic will not do. In Religious Language, Ramsey suggests several
different ways in which religious language needs to be appropriately different and
logically distinct from ordinary language to do its special job. As representative of
how religious language is supposed to function differently from ordinary language,
let us consider his treatment of models and qualijiers. 29
The use of models and qualifiers explains the subtitle of Ramsey's Religious
Language - "an empirical placing of theological phrases." We begin by selecting
appropriate models based upon our ordinary experience for which we normally use
ordinary language with empirical content and truth values. Such models might
include "cause," "wise," and "good." We use such words frequently in ordinary
and familiar situations; however, in religious uses, the situations are not ordinary
and familiar. Although we might begin by wanting to use such models to capture
the situation, our ordinary language, unless suitably qualified, is unequal to the
task. To capture "logically odd" situations, for example, talking about the nature of
God or describing one's discernment of an experience of the divine, we must
qualify the original model to make the model suitably removed from its ordinary
26 Ian T. Ramsey, Religious Language (New York: Macmillan, 1957), pp. 20-21. Also see Ramsey's
"Talking about God," in Myth and Symbol, edited by F. W. Dillistone (London: SPCK, 1966).
27 Ibid., p. 34.
28 Ibid., p. 39.
29 See ibid., pp. 69ff.
40
meaning and its ordinary application. To 'cause,' for example, we add the qualifier
'first' to get 'first cause.' A First Cause is so characteristically different from cause
that though we start with the empirical grounding or placing of the notion of cause,
we are led by the use of the qualifier to a new phrase that becomes "proper
currency" for the religious situation. People, books, movies, and wines may all be
good. But if we add the qualifier 'infinitely' to 'good' to get 'infinitely good,' then,
according to Ramsey, we wind up with a logically odd phrase that is "empirically
anchored" in its ordinary meaning but that is suited to talk about God because of
the work of the appropriate qualifier. 'Unity,' 'simplicity,' and 'perfection' are
qualifiers that serve a similar purpose. As in the example involving the High Court,
we begin with an ordinary situation and then qualify it until it becomes "odd."
When we add the condition of a total commitment, we have what Ramsey regards
as a religious situation.
Ramsey later insists that religious language must have "objective reference" by
appealing to empirical facts, to "what is the case.,,30 Objective reference is
determined by one's sense of being "confronted" and "acted upon.,,3! The objective
reference is thus given in the moment of discernment, and we then invoke the use
of models and qualifiers in order to try and construct ways of talking about the
objective reference of our experience.
RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE AND RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIES
The models are supposed to anchor religious language empirically to allow us to
talk meaningfully about the "objective reference" of our discernment experience,
but how are we to select the appropriate models and qualifiers to capture the
special features of the religious situation? Ramsey says that "any word may be a
'model' by means of which a characteristically religious situation can be evoked.
All words, if suitably qualified, can lead to such a situation.,,32 However, it does
not seem that the mechanism of models and qualifiers can adapt to the use of just
any word as a model. 33 Ramsey has chosen words to serve as examples of models
that are usually associated, by religious tradition, with talk of God, and it appears
that one would be dependent upon such traditions for choosing and understanding
the role of the models and the effect of the qualifiers. Ramsey's examples of
models, 'cause,' 'wise,' and 'good,' are steeped in theistic religious tradition,
practice, and church history. If we try to apply the method of models and qualifiers
to just any word, the importance of our selection of the appropriate words to serve
as models becomes clear. What about 'mud,' 'slime,' 'dung,' 'perissodactyl,' or
'forcipulata,?34 It is not clear that one could derive any religious currency from
'first dung,' 'eternal mud,' or 'infinite perissodactyl.' These phrases are certainly
"logically odd," but nothing seems to qualify them for capturing anything that is
uniquely religious in nature. We may get some currency out of 'primordial slime,'
but that would only be because of some preexisting usage. This illustrates an
Ian T. Ramsey, Models for Divine Activity (London: SCM, 1973), p. 58.
Ibid., p.61.
32 Ian T. Ramsey, Religious Language, p. 91.
33 See James F. Harris, "Models and Qualifiers," International Journal for Philosophy of Religion,
Vol. 3, no. 2, summer 1972, pp. 87ff.
34 This point and these examples follow ibid., pp. 88ff.
30
31
41
important point. In the example of the use of nicknames in the High Court,
ordinary experience provides the backdrop for the use of nicknames that makes
their use meaningful. There may well be something odd about the use of such
informal nicknames in a formal, courtroom setting; however, there is nothing
logically odd about the language itself. In the case of the use of models and
qualifiers to talk about God, ordinary usage does not provide us with the backdrop
to understand either the selection of the models or the effect of the qualification
that takes place. We need to first understand the religious tradition within which
certain models and qualifiers are used in order to make the proper selection.
Janet Soskice has made a similar point in a much more elaborate fashion.
Ramsey relies upon experience to provide the objective referent for the different
expressions in terms; however, no experience will justify his selection of the
models and qualifiers that he uses to capture those moments of discernment.
Soskice summarizes the point as follows:
Ramsey can elaborate his account in terms of models only by dispensing with
his empiricism, yet he can ground the disclosures in which the models
theoretically are based only by retaining it. Many of the inconsistencies of his
programme arise from this desire to incorporate metaphysical claims in an
empiricist framework. 35
According to Soskice, the only way to preserve a cognitive element for models
in religious language is by retaining some form of religious realism. The kind of
critical realism which Soskice advocates, which will allow the theist to use models
(and other nonliteral modes of speech) to talk about God, is characterized by
"experience, community and an interpretative tradition.,,36 Each religious believer
is a part of a religious community, some of whom have had religious experiences
to "ground" the references that are then made by other members of the community
within the same interpretative context. Since we are all members of different
linguistic communities - religious linguistic communities and scientific linguistic
communities alike - with different interpretative contexts, we are able to use
language to refer, not because of our own experience with the referent of whatever
referring expression we use, but because others in our linguistic community with
the same interpretative context have had experiences that "ground" the expression
with a referent and have used the same referring expression. 37 Experience of an
individual is still crucial for fixing the referent of a referring expression; however,
the real crux of Soskice's theory is social. Experience must always be interpreted
by "the categories used by a particular community of interest and within a
particular tradition of evaluation. ,,38
There is much to be said about Soskice's notions about reference. At times she
seems to be committing to a minimalist version of descriptivism, and at other
times, she seems to prefer a causal, historical view of reference. The causal theory
Janet Martin Soskice. Metaphor and Religious Language (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), p. 147.
Ibid., p. 147.
37 Ibid., p. 149.
38 Ibid., p. 151. Notice that though Soskice's theory is social, her commitment to realism separates
her from the Wittgensteinians and the use of language-games.
35
36
42
has some rather serious deficiencies when used within the context of religious
language. It does not seem that reference can be accounted for simply by the long
tradition of a linguistic community and an interpretative context. There is a real
tension between this claim and the realism which Soskice wants to preserve. As Ian
Barbour has pointed out, astrologers have been members of a linguistic community
with an interpretative context at least as long as theologians have, but most people
would wish to deny that the expressions that astrologers use actually refer to some
real causal connections between the positions of the planets and the stars and
human events. 39 On the causal theory of reference, when we now use a referring
expression (a proper name or a description) that someone long ago used to refer to
an individual in an "initial baptism," we have no way of identifying the referent or
even knowing whether or not the referent was an actual individual when the
referent was "fixed." To use a common example, if we account for the reference of
"God" in terms of a linguistic community within which someone long ago fixed
the reference for "God," we have no way of telling whether the referent was an
actual individual, some internalized, Freudian father figure, or some otherwise
nonexistent individual. Problems with the use of the causal theory of reference in
connection with the problem of reference in religious language are discussed at
length later in this chapter.
THE COGNITIVE STATUS OF MODELS
The need to have additional information in order to select the proper models and
the proper modes of qualification underscores an important point about the
cognitive status of models and qualifiers. The use of models and qualifiers in
religious language cannot perform a primary epistemological function, that is,
fundamental knowledge of God cannot be contained in models and qualifiers. As
we have seen, one must first know a great deal about the nature of the deity, which
is then captured by the selection of the appropriate models - a selection that is
determined (or guided) by religious tradition.
The epistemologically derivative status of models and qualifiers can further be
seen if we investigate what it means for a model to be what Ramsey calls "suitably
qualified.,,4o Not just any model can serve the purPose of capturing the religious
situation, and not just any qualification will serve that purpose either. Saying that
God is a "fake cause," for example, is not likely to capture successfully a situation
where "the light dawns" or "the ice breaks" in some characteristically religious
way. Similarly, describing God as "allegedly wise" or "formerly good" or
"fictional creator" does not develop the original models in an appropriate manner
to talk about God. We know this because of the ways in which God is described
within a particular religious tradition. Therefore, whatever value the use of models
and qualifiers might have, it seems to be subjective or social and dependent upon a
particular person's particular religious beliefs and traditions and prior information
that the person has that provides the basis for the selection of models and
qualifiers. Soskice suggests that "linguistic community and tradition" provide the
39 Ian Barbour, Religion in an Age of Science: The Gifford Lectures, 1989-91 (San Francisco, Calif.:
Harper and Row, 1990), p. 46.
40 Ramsey, Religious Language, p. 89.
mE PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE
43
context within which the cognitive value of religious language becomes possible.
Certain uses of language are initially suggested by different people in the
community, and some of these uses survive the test of time and become ingrained
while others do not. Thus, some uses of language become especially adequate for
religious experience while others do not. 41 However, even the survival of centuries
of use within a linguistic community does not preserve and guarantee the realism
which Soskice wishes to preserve. By understanding the context within which
religious language is used, we can certainly say that we understand better how the
members of that linguistic community intend to use the language, but this does
nothing to tie the language to reality as the example of astrology above
demonstrates.
ANALOGICAL AND METAPHORICAL LANGUAGE
By focusing attention upon "the logically odd" situations that are involved in the
use of religious language, Ramsey invites a careful and general evaluation of the
ability of human language to describe "religiously odd" situations in which
language is used to capture some aspect of the transcendent nature of God or some
other religious or mystical situation that is "beyond" normal human experience.
Several liberal responses to the challenge of falsification have adopted, in one form
or other, the Thomistic use of analogical language to talk about God since the
straightforward, literal uses of language seem inadequate for such purposes. While
associated historically with the period of scholasticism and since then, for the most
part, with Thomism, the use of analogical and metaphorical language found its way
into the mainstream of Protestant natural theology primarily as a result of attempts
to respond to the challenge to the meaningfulness of religious language. The
earliest, most thorough and influential accounts of analogical language during this
period and the most explicit adaptation of Thomistic thought for Protestant use are
found in the works of both A. M. Farrer and E. L. Mascall. 42 Mascall will provide
the basis of the treatment here. A complete treatment of the doctrine of analogy
with all of its theological ramifications is certainly beyond the scope of the present
investigation; so, focus here will be upon the very general use of analogy and its
implications for religious language.
Mascall explicitly laments the fact that the doctrine of analogy has found so
little use among Anglicans since he thinks that the use of analogy is fundamental
not just for natural theology but for religion in general. In order to think of or
describe the infinite in terms of the finite, human language must be qualified either
implicitly or explicitly. He claims that it is only through the use of analogy that
natural theology can avoid the extremes of a completely necessary and
unknowable, transcendent God or a completely immanent God which is
contingent. 43
Mascall's use of analogy consists in a straightforward adoption of Thomas
Aquinas's doctrine of analogy. While we can arrive at the belief in the existence of
Soskice, Metaphor and Religious Language, p. 153.
See primarily A. M. Farrer, Finite and Infinite (London, Dacre Press, 1959), and E. L. Mascall,
Existence and Analogy (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1949). Republished by Archon Books,
1967.
43 Mascall, ibid., pp. 92-94.
41
42
44
God without the use of analogy, according to Mascall, we can think of the divine
nature and attempt to describe it only through the combination of the notions of
analogy of proper proportionality and analogy of attribution. 44 Starting, as we do,
from a contingent, finite world, it is only through the use of analogy that we can
hope to capture anything meaningful about the nature of a necessary, infinite God.
Through the use of analogy of attribution, we are able to affirm that a particular
property that is found "relatively and derivatively" in finite beings belongs to God.
Properties belong to God "formerly and properly" because, since all finite creatures
are related to God as effects to a cause, then God must possess a particular attribute
in whatever way is necessary for God to produce finite creatures with that attribute.
For example, when we say that God and man are both good, since man is an effect
and God the cause, God must possess goodness in whatever capacity is necessary
in order to cause goodness in man. 45
The notion of analogy of (proper) proportionality is the result of the theological
doctrine according to which all beings - finite and infinite - possess both different
kinds of qualities and different degrees of those qualities, which are in "proper
proportionality" to their "mode of being." Borrowing vaguely upon Plotinus's
notion of a hierarchy of beings emanating from God, the notion of proper
proportionality maintains that the different beings posses different qualities with
degrees that are appropriate to their position in the hierarchy. God is perfect and
infinite so God will possess any qualities that he possesses with perfection and
infinitude. Man is imperfect and finite so man will possess any qualities that he
possess with imperfection and finitude. Using an analogy of proportionality, we
can affirm that different kinds of beings "formally" possess the same quality but in
different "modes" that are respective of their different "modes of being." Using an
analogy of proportionality, we might say of cabbages, elephants, man, and God
that they possess life in the following manner: 46
life of cabbage
life of elephant
life of man
life of God
essence of cabbage
essence of elephant
essence of man
essence of God
We would read or understand the above symbolic representation as follows: the

way in which the life of a cabbage is determined by the essence of cabbagehood as
proper to cabbages is analogous to the way in which the life of an elephant is
determined by the essence of elephanthood as proper to elephants is analogous to
the way in which the life of a man is determined by manhood as proper to men is
analogous to the way in which the life of God is determined by Godhood as proper
to God. Through this use of analogy, we can meaningfully attribute to God the
perfection of the quality that is possessed by creatures that he created. This in no
way means that finite man is able to understand anything about the essence of God.
Questions about the relationship between analogy of attribution and analogy of
proportionality and about their relative status in relation to one another have been
Ibid., 95.
Ibid., p. 102.
46 These examples come from MascalI, ibid., pp. 104ff.
44
45
45
of great concern to both the scholastics and to more recent Thomistic scholars. 47
The very lengthy and detailed disputes about the different kinds of analogy lead
into equally lengthy and detailed disputes about theology and just what it is that
man is able to know or affirm of a transcendent God. Taking his departure from E.
Gilson's commentary on Aquinas, Mascall attempts to "cut through" the tangled
theological knot that surrounds the use of analogy by emphasizing the fact that
God's essence and existence cannot be separated. Since all of our statements
affirming some quality of God also have existential import in a way in which none
of our affIrmations of qualities of fInite beings do, then analogical predication of
God is possible since it always involves (at least implicitly) claims about God's
existence. In other words, in order to protect the essence of God from being known
by fInite man, Mascall understands the different uses of analogy as always
involving claims about God's existence and not God's essence. 48 Thus, we are to
understand the above analogy of proportionality as demonstrating an analogous
relationship among different beings "in the existential order," that is, in the way in
which living things exist, and not simply a relationship among different concepts of
living things. It is the analogy of attribution that holds the two sides of the analogy
of proportionality together by affirming the dependence of the existence of fInite
beings as effects upon God as their cause. 49 Mascall uses the doctrine of analogy
not just to respond to what he sees as an artifIcial challenge to the meaningfulness
of religious language by logical positivism but as a way of explaining how
religious people have been able to talk intelligently about God through the ages. 50
Mascall's use of analogy is important historically perhaps as an example of the
introduction of Thomistic doctrine into Anglican thought in the twentieth century.
However, in terms of the fundamental issue about how human language can be
used to talk about God, it is important primarily for the problem that, for all of its
complexity and formal nature, it leaves unanswered or even unaddressed. Analogy
of proportionality is "tied together" by analogy of attribution. Analogical
predication supposedly allows us to talk meaningfully about "the existential mode"
of God, but the basic assumption of analogy of attribution is the supposed
relationship between man and other fInite, contingent creatures, who are the effects
of an infInite, necessary God, and God in the existential mode. In other words, in
order for analogical predication to work, we must assume or affIrm that the fInite
world was created by an infInite God. Once this fundamental claim is in place, we
can then use analogy to elaborate upon the ways in which God is related to features
of this fInite world. Such a use of analogy functions then within a religious or
theological context; it does not function to establish the fundamental claims that
constitute the religious or theological context.
THE EPISTEMIC STATUS OF ANALOGICAL LANGUAGE
Various critics have maintained that some sort of literal meaning or literal
knowledge is necessary for the use of analogy, but the reasons for the necessity of
47
For a brief summary of some of the disputes and the references see Mascall, ibid., pp. 113-15.
Ibid., pp. 117-19.

49 Ibid., p. 120.
50 Ibid., p. 121.
48
46
the literal statements is not always clear in these criticisms. 51 For example, Thomas
McPherson insists that in order to recognize analogical uses of language we must
understand some of the terms in the analogies in their literal senses and we must
understand some literal claims about whatever the analogy is used to describe. 52
But McPherson does not make clear the reason for making such claims, and the
problem for him seems to be one of using literal uses of language to recognize
analogical uses of language. To understand how analogical and literal uses of
language might be related, it is helpful to examine how analogical uses of language
presuppose and are based upon literal uses of language. Consider the analogy of
proper proportionality, "God is to man as a shepherd is to his sheep." How does
this analogy allow a person to better understand the nature of the deity and the
deity's relationship to human beings? Let us concern ourselves only with
understanding the meaning of this analogy. The first thing that we should notice is
that in the use of any analogy there will be intended similarities and dissimilarities
between the two pairs of terms. If we begin with what we understand about the
meaning of the relationship between the pair of terms "shepherd/sheep" and then
extrapolate from that to the relationship between the pair of terms "God/man,"
what meaning do we get? Well, the answer is it all depends upon what features we
choose to focus upon in the relationship between shepherds and sheep. Leading
sheep into pastures to eat grass, shearing sheep of their wool, and raising sheep for
food for the dinner table are intended dissimilarities of the analogy and are
extraneous and irrelevant, whereas protecting sheep and being concerned about
their safety and welfare are intended similarities and are highly pertinent and
relevant. 53 In order to understand the intended meaning of the analogy, one must be
able to sort through and distinguish between the intended similarities and
dissimilarities of the analogy. In order to do this, one must already know the
intended meaning of the analogy or assume that some statements about the
supposed relationship between God and man are intended to be literally true;
otherwise, one would not be in a position to distinguish between intended
similarities and intended dissimilarities. And one cannot "read this off' from the
analogy itself. The analogy itself does not give us any clue on how to interpret it
and how to distinguish among the possible different ways of understanding the
similarities and dissimilarities between the two pairs ofterms. 54
There is also the problem of choosing an appropriate analogy. In David Hume's
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Cleanthes suggests that an appropriate
analogy for capturing the relationship between God and the world is the
relationship between human beings and products of man's intelligence, such as a
51 See, for example, William T. Blackstone, "The Logical Status of God-Talk," in Religious
Language and Knowledge, edited by Robert H. Ayers and William T. Blackstone (Atbens: University of
Georgia Press, 1972), pp. 8-9, and Blackstone, The Problem of Religious Knowledge, pp. 66-67. Also
see William P. Alston, ''Tillich's Conception of Religious Symbol," in Religious Experience and Truth,
edited by Sidney Hook (New York: New York University Press, 1961), p. 17.
52 Thomas McPherson, "Assertion and Analogy," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Vol. 60,
1959-60, p. 164.
53 James F. Harris, ''The Epistemic Status of Analogical Language," International Journal for
Philosophy of Religion, Vol. 1, no. 4, winter 1970, p. 213.
54 See Jerry A. Fodor and Jerrold J. Katz, The Structure of Language (Englewood Cliffs: PrenticeHall, Inc., 1964), p. 13.
47
house or a ship. But what makes these particular analogies appropriate to use while
others are not appropriate? In Part VI, Cleanthes protests when Philo suggests that
the analogies between an animal and its offspring or between a seed and its plant
might be more appropriate analogies. What makes one analogy appropriate and
another inappropriate is the compelling weight (on balance) of the similarities
versus the dissimilarities of the analogies. It would be difficult, for example, for
most theists to use the relationships between the pairs of terms "Nazi/ Jew" or
"slave-owner/slave" as the basis for forming appropriate analogies for explaining
the relationship between God and man. What makes an analogy appropriate or
inappropriate between different pairs of terms is not just the number of
dissimilarities versus the similarities. It is the "cumulative weight" of the
dissimilarities that makes a pair of terms unsuitable for use in an appropriate
analogy. How does one know this before selecting the terms for the analogy? It is
here that the necessity of some literally meaningful uses of language becomes
apparent. In order to select the terms for an appropriate analogy, one must first
understand something of the literal basis of the relationship that is supposed to be
captured by the use of the analogy.
ANALOGY, METAPHOR, AND RELIGIOUS PLURALISM
Interestingly, the analogical use of religious language has been seized upon by
several contemporary writers and used in the debate concerning the pluralism of
religious beliefs. The point is that the more literal understanding one has of
religious language, the more narrow and exclusive the meaning of that language is.
The increased flexibility that results from the use of analogical language and the
increased role of interpretation in the use of such language "opens things up" to
what is supposed to be a more general and inclusive understanding of the meaning
of religious language. For example, Sallie McFague has cast an entirely different
slant on the question of the meaningfulness of religious language by claiming that
religious language based upon biblical language is meaningless and irrelevant to
most people today since its social and cultural presumptions and settings are so
different from our own. 55 The meaningful use of religious language in what
McFague calls "the interpretative context" is the result of a "wide range of factors"
such as the social, cultural, and historical conditions in which the religious
believers find themselves. 56 McFague claims that while orthodox religion has
narrowly circumscribed the limits of the interpretative context in the past, the more
recent emphasis upon the pluralistic aspects of religious beliefs has resulted in the
realization that we must broaden the interpretative context to recognize the variety
of different social and cultural perspectives that influence the different ways in
which different people use religious language.
According to McFague, the additional flexibility and openness of analogical and
metaphorical language makes such language more suitable for recognizing and
allowing room for different interpretations within Christianity (and presumably
other religions as well). She says, "It is not our time and place in history that
The point is made specifically abont Judaism and Christianity.
Sallie McFague, Metaphorical Theology (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982), p. 3. Also see David
Tracy, The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism (New York:
Crossroad Publishing Co., 1981).
55
56
48
ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY OF REDGION
influences our religious language, but also our class, race, and sex;
education, and family background; our interests, prejudices, and
order to accommodate the various social, cultural, political,
perspectives, we need to move, McFague claims, toward
"metaphorical theology" whose purpose is
our nationality,
concerns.,,57 In
and historical
a completely
to understand the centrality of models in religion and the particular models in

the Christian tradition; to criticize literalized, exclusive models; to chart the
relationships among metaphors, models, and concepts; and to investigate
possibilities for transformative, revolutionary models .... What must be done in a
metaphorical theology is to open up the relationships among metaphor, model,
and concept for the purpose both of justifying dominant founding metaphors as
true but not literal and of discovering other appropriate dominant metaphors
which for cultural, political, and social reasons have been suppressed.58
While issues involving the question of religious pluralism are addressed in detail
in Chapter IX, various issues involving pluralism impact directly upon McFague
claims concerning metaphorical and analogical religious language. If all of
religious language is metaphorical, then one must ask where the specifically
religious and specifically Christian content is to be found. As we have seen above,
some factual content and some literal meaning is necessary in order for a religious
believer to choose the appropriate metaphors or other nonliteral uses of language.
A commitment to some core "factual" claims allows one to choose a variety of
different analogies or metaphors that may "speak" more meaningfully to different
people at different times, in different social and political contexts, and in different
cultures. However, this is clearly not McFague's intent. Absent any recognition or
commitment to some core "factual" claims, the metaphorical theology that
McFague suggests is indistinguishable from a collection of fairy tales. Now
different fairy tales may well have a significant amount of meaning to different
peoples in different social, political, and cultural contexts; however, there
obviously need be nothing uniquely Christian or even religious about them.
Models, analogies, and metaphors can certainly be used to tell interesting,
illuminating, poignant, and entertaining stories, but there must be something about
such stories that makes them religious or theological. If a core of factual claims
with literal meaningfulness is abandoned, then it seems analogical uses of religious
language force theology in the direction of fiction. 59
MEANING AS USE
Other liberal responses to the challenge to religious language by falsification
make use of Wittgenstein's notion of meaning as use. In his later work,
Wittgenstein abandoned the essentialism of the Tractatus, according to which the
meaning of a word must provide a single, complete, essential set of necessary and
sufficient conditions for the word. In his Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein
57
58
Sallie McFague, ibid.
Ibid., p. 28.
59 There are many issues here about original meaning and interpretation that are discussed at length
in Chapter IX.
49
maintains that we should look instead to see how a word is used by the speakers
who use it. Meaning as use is one of several Wittgensteinian notions - including
particularly the notion of a language-game - that have found their way into
discussions of religious language. I will discuss the notion of a language-game in
great detail later in this chapter and focus here simply on the notion of meaning as
use. In the Tractatus, Wittgenstein had maintained that the world must be a certain
way and that language must have a certain structure in order to describe that world.
In order for us to use language to make true propositions about the world, words
must have single, essential, univocal meanings and propositions must describe or
label univocal states of affairs. When Wittgenstein abandons such essentialism in
the Philosophical Investigations, he adopts instead the view that words might have
different meanings in different contexts when they are used for different purposes
by different language speakers. Wittgenstein's shift to meaning as use sparked
significantly different developments in the philosophy of language and in the
treatments of religious language. Wittgenstein's notion of meaning as use becomes
a dominant influence and is adopted - either implicitly or explicitly - by several
major figures who defend religious language against the challenge of falsification
by "shifting" the meaning of religious language to the way in which religious
believers use that language. Indeed, such treatments have now come to dominate
religious language.
BRAITHWAITE'S "EMPIRICIST" VIEW OF RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE
R. B. Braithwaite was one of the earliest philosophers of religion to apply some
of the changes that occur in the later Wittgenstein to an analysis of religious

language. 6o Although Braithwaite does not explicitly incorporate Wittgenstein's
notion of language-games into his theory of religious language, he does explicitly
adopt Wittgenstein's notion of "meaning as use." Since Braithwaite characterizes
his view as an empiricist's view, we have still another indication of just how much
empiricism changed at midcentury from the strict empiricism of logical positivism.
Joining others who deny that religious language can be empirically meaningful
since it is not verifiable, Braithwaite insists that religious language is still
meaningful in a way that is analogous to the way in which moral claims are
meaningful. Like moral statements, religious statements are declarations of a
person's intentions to behave a certain way and to adopt or follow a certain kind of
life. A Christian believer, for example, might use a religious utterance like "Jesus
lives" or "Jesus is the Son of God" as a way of expressing the intention of living
what the person believes to be a Christian life. Religious assertions take their
meaning not by referring to some state of affairs in the world but by expressing the
conative intentions of the speaker. Thus, Braithwaite says, "the intention of a
Christian to follow a Christian way of life ... is the criterion for the meaningfulness
of his assertions.,,61
Religious beliefs and moral beliefs are both lacking in empirical significance.
The meaning of both moral language and religious language is to be found in the
60 R. B. Braithwaite, An Empiricist's View of the Nature of Religious Belief (Cambridge: Cambridge
61 Ibid., p. 16.
50
way in which people use such language. Braithwaite argues that people use such
language to express their intentions of committing themselves to a certain "way of
life" or "policy of behavior.,,62 Religious people use religious language to commit
themselves to a certain way of life and to declare their intentions of following a
certain set of religious teachings and practices. This use of religious expressions by
religious believers is the criterion by which the meaningfulness of such expressions
is judged. Thus, religious expressions are not assertions with truth values that are
determined in any way similar to the way in which the assertions of scientists are
verified. When religious people use religious language in ways that appear to make
what are explicit assertions - for example, in telling the creation story or in telling
the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden - Braithwaite maintains that the
meaning of the stories is psychological instead of empirical. Regardless of the
original intent, such stories (or myths or allegories) are not empirically meaningful,
but they simply make it psychologically easier for the religious person to commit
to and to maintain a particular course of action or way of life. 63 Regardless of
whether religious believers actually believe such stories to be factually true or not,
their only real importance, for Braithwaite, is to provide something of a
psychological aid to the religious person's resolution to act in a certain way.
Braithwaite thus eliminates the cognitive content of religious utterances
altogether in favor of their conative meaning. It is easy to identify a major
difficulty with this conative view of religious language. In order to "save" religious
utterances as meaningful, Braithwaite shifts ground so radically that one might
genuinely wonder what has been saved. Consider the importance of the story from
the New Testament when Jesus asked Peter, "Whom do you say that I am?" Peter's
response is, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God." Jesus says that he
will take Peter's confession as the "rock" upon which to build his church, and
centuries of Christian believers since then have taken that confession as the
foundation, the "rock" upon which the Christian faith is built. If we understand this
story as Braithwaite suggests, then Peter's confession was simply a psychological
aid to religious believers in their resolution or declaration to live a good life based
upon the teachings of Jesus. If this is true, then the foundations of both the church
and the Christian faith appear to be built upon shifting sands instead of upon a
rock. If there is no cognitive content to Peter's "confession," then it appears that it
could never have the special sense of importance that Christians have attributed to
it. Notice also that, in Braithwaite's view, the content of Peter's confession has no
bearing upon the kind of moral life to which the religious person is committed.
MACINTYRE AND ATTITUDES TOWARD LIFE
Alasdair MacIntyre adopts a tactic similar to that of Braithwaite in his defense
of the meaningfulness of religious language. MacIntyre also maintains that in order
to understand the nature of the meaningfulness and justification of religious
language, we must look to the ways in which people use such language to "accept a
certain way of living.,,64 According to MacIntyre, religious myths function
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 27.
64 Alasdair MacIntyre, "The Logical Status of Religious Belief," in Metaphysical Beliefs, edited by
Alasdair MacIntyre (London: SCM Press, 1957), p. 191.
62
63
51
prescriptively to provide a certain attitude toward life and to provide a framework

that will allow a religious person to commit to adopting and living by that attitude.
Religion then, for MacIntyre, does not function the way in which science does,
that is, religion does not provide us with explanatory hypotheses for why the world
exists that lend themselves to verification. In a vein that is reminiscent of Hare's
use of bliks, religious commitment on the part of the theist requires a complete,
"decisive adherence to religious beliefs" completely independent of any evidence
or reason. Religious beliefs are not held on the basis of reason or evidence but
rather on the basis of faith.65
The only ground upon which the theist holds a particular set of religious beliefs
is the "ultimate criterion of religious authority." Every process of reasoning and
justification must end at some point, and at that point, according to MacIntyre, an
appeal must be made to some authority or some fundamental criterion that is not
justified within that process of reasoning. For the religious person, that "ultimate
criterion" is religious authority based upon a person's acceptance of church history,
religious teachings, and sacred scriptures. This invulnerability of religious beliefs
to falsification is a position that MacIntyre continues to maintain, though he
recognizes that it comes with the high price tag of empirical emptiness. 66
WITTGENSTEINIAN LANGUAGE-GAMES
Neither Braithwaite nor MacIntyre mentions the notion of a language-game in
their responses to the challenge of falsification. However, the liberal responses,
which "shift ground" by resorting to the defense of a special sort of religious
meaning or a special sort of logic for religious language, implicitly rely upon a
very similar sort of philosophical insight. As I have indicated earlier, Wittgenstein
abandons the essentialism that characterized the Tractatus in favor of a theory of
meaning as use. The meaning of a word now becomes dependent upon the dynamic
and pragmatic interplay of language and language speakers. Words and sentences
might have many different meanings dependent upon the different uses to which
speakers put them. How many different uses and corresponding meanings of a
word might there be? To answer this question, Wittgenstein invites us to "think of
the tools in a tool-box: there is a hammer, pliers, a saw, a screw-driver, a rule, a
glue-pot, nails and screws. - The functions of words are as diverse as the functions
of these objects.,,67 The difference between Wittgenstein and Austin regarding
different functions of words, noted in Chapter I, is worth repeating here. Austin is
more concerned with specific situations of "what to say when" and with the subtle
differences among different actual things that cause us to call those things by
different names or to describe those things differently. Wittgenstein is more
interested in the fundamental presumptions about the nature of language that allow
for the very possibility of using language in different ways.68 Wittgenstein's
Ibid . pp. 208-09.
See his "Is Understanding Religion Compatible with Believing," in Faith and the Philosophers,
edited by John Hick (London: Macmillan. 1964). and in Rationality, edited by Brian Wilson (Oxford:
Basil Blackwell, 1970), to which the page numbers here refer, p. 75.
67 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, translated by G. E. M. Anscombe (New York:
Macmillan, 1953), Section 11. Also compare Section 12.
6" See fn. 44, p. 21.
65
66
52
"deeper" concerns are with the conceptual underpinning (the "grammar") that
allows us to use language in different ways in different "language-games."
When we imagine the different ways in which tools might be used by a person,
we focus upon the behavior or actions of the people using the tools. Similarly,
Wittgenstein insists that the language, the speakers of the language, and the actions
of the speakers of the language - all "woven" together - constitute a "languagegame.,,69 There are, according to Wittgenstein, "countless" different kinds of
sentences and countless different meanings for words because there are countless
different uses to which language speakers may put words and sentences.
Furthermore, language-games are dynamic and changing, with new ones coming
into existence and old ones dropping from existence continually.7o "Languagegames" then are a sophisticated form of human activity using language, and we
human beings are continually developing multifarious new ways of doing this. For
example, consider how computers and the Internet have created totally new
language-games with new expressions and their accompanying actions that were
unknown and unheard of just a few years ago. By contrast, old language-games
die. For example, consider the uses of language that were associated with the use
of typewriters. There were manual and electric typewriters - a distinction that has
no meaning within the language-game of computers - and there were such
expressions as "carriage-return" - expressions that future generations will not
understand unless they engage in a historical study of the language-games of
typewriters.
For a person to learn the meaning of a word, the person must learn its role in the
language-game. The use of a word or expression in a language-game is always rule
governed, which means, according to Wittgenstein, that the use will be ordered and
patterned by the rules. The rules ensure that there are correct and incorrect and
meaningful and meaningless uses of the word. A word that can be used in any way
whatsoever is not governed by any rule and is meaningless. The analogy of playing
a game carries over very strongly to the activity of "playing" a language-game. For
games to be meaningful, rules must prescribe behavior of players in such a way
that they can act rationally. For example, rules must delineate who the players are
and distinguish them from the nonplayers and indicate what forms of behavior
(moves) are permissible and not permissible within the game, how to score points
(if there are points in the game), and other details about the playing ofthe game. If
any possible activity by any person at all is permissible in the game, then the game
becomes absurd. Meaning then is determined by the rules that govern the use of
words and expressions within a language-game. A knight in chess is a piece that
can be moved in certain ways according to the rules of chess. A piece that looks
like a knight but moves 1-3 or 3-1 instead of 1-2 or 2-1 is not a knight, and any
game in which such moves are made is not what we mean by "chess." Of course,
different language-games have different rules and hence different uses for words
and expressions and hence different meanings for words and expressions. There are
no "justifications" for language-games beyond whatever benefits result from the
69
70
Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, Section 7.

Ibid., Section 23.
53
language-game itself. Engaging in the activity of a particular language-game is

simply something that we do - it is part of a "form of life."
THE EDGES OF LANGUAGE AND RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE
Paul van Buren and D. Z. Phillips have both developed treatments of religious
language that are based to a greater or lesser extent upon the later work of
Wittgenstein. Van Buren adapts Wittgenstein's emphasis upon meaning as use and
the conventional force of rules; Phillips constructs a full-blown adaptation of
Wittgenstein's notion of language-games. I discuss van Buren following and
Phillips in Chapter IV.
To understand van Buren's theory of religious language, we must first
understand something about his theory of language. To explain van Buren's idea of
the nature of language, it is useful to introduce a spatial metaphor and think of
language as a web that is com,}?osed of many different threads and sections that are
connected with one another. 1 Within this web, there are small sections within
which there are different uses of language - each with its own rules and its own
meanings. Following Wittgenstein, van Buren emphasizes the importance of the
limitations that exist upon our language. One limitation is set by the conventional
force of the rules that prescribe the ways in which words can be used properly;72
another limitation is the result of the fact that we cannot get "outside" language to
examine it or study it or to form theories about it. Language is like a squash court,
van Buren suggests: there is no "out.,m
Some uses of language are more centrally located within this total web than
others, and some uses of language occupy a larger space with more users than do
others. 74 The uses of language in which we engage most frequently and routinely
with our family and friends and the uses of language that we need in order to
survive and thrive in our environments occupy the central-most positions in the
giant web of human language; thus, we are most comfortable in the center of the
web and most familiar with the rules and uses of language that occur there.
To locate religious language within this "picture"of language, it is helpful to
consider what van Buren takes to be the main purpose of religious language for
religious people:
Religion, at its most serious level, I suggest, has always been marked by what
we call a sense of the mysterious. What I mean is that religious people have
spoken guardedly when they spoke of God. They have said that God is
ineffable; that he is beyond their understanding; that whatever they said of God
was not, strictly speaking, true; or that their words were inadequate to their
71 V an Buren himself suggests the analogy of a platform with planks that extend in different
directions. See Paul van Buren, The Edges afLanguage (New York: Macmillan, 1972), p. 82.
72 Ibid., p. 79.
73 Ibid., p. 82.
74 It would now seem very natural and easy to slip here into the use of Wittgenstein's notion of
language-game; however, for whatever reasons, van Buren failed to make use of this concept. He does
not make the move to regard the different uses of language as separate, autonomous language-games.
54
subject .... We associate this way of speaking with the sense of mystery, wonder,
and awe.?5
In order for religious language to function it must be located at the peripheries
of the web of human language, according to van Buren, because religious language
"pushes the envelope" of what we can do with language.?6 With religious language,
we go as far out to the edges of language as we can go without falling off into
nonsense. According to van Buren, a similar thing happens with the other uses of
language that occur at the edge of language - with jokes and puns, the language of
love, poetry, and metaphysics?? These uses of language "out on the edge"
(including religious language) push language beyond its normal, routine, everyday
uses that occur in the large, central area of the web of human language. Life "on
the edge" and language "at the edge" allow human beings to capture and express
an aspect of human nature that is not captured in the "ordinary" language of
science and common sense. Just like poetry allows us to "tweak" language and use
it in what others might call "logically odd" ways in comparison with the ordinary
prose, which we might use in a business letter, religious language allows religious
believers to stretch, bend, twist, and tweak the uses of language to express and
practice their religious belief and faith.
TILLICH AND THE GROUND OF BEING
Undoubtedly, one of the most prominent and influential religious thinkers of the
twentieth century was Paul Tillich, and although Tillich was much more of a
theologian than he was a philosopher, his treatment of religious language certainly
deserves some mention here. The analogical uses of language examined above and
the general approach of the liberal responses to the challenge of falsifiability
attempt to use analogical or metaphorical language in an attempt to reach some
understanding of the divine by comparison with more ordinary empirical matters.
As we have seen, such uses of language are not regarded as literally true but only
as analogically or metaphorically true. The main point is that the analogical,
metaphorical, nonliteral meaning is predicated upon and is a function of some
"underlying" literal meaning upon which the nonliteral use of language is based;
so, analogical or metaphorical uses of language attempt to make sense of the divine
or the transcendent nature of the holy by borrowing from and building upon
ordinary experience. The same is true of Tillich's use of symbolic language to talk
about God.
Tillich takes the nonliteral use of religious language a giant step further in his
theory of religious language as "symbolic language." Although Tillich's treatment
of religious language is much too complex and interwoven with his theology to
treat in any detail here, it is perhaps enough to point out that Tillich rejects the
basic approach, which uses analogical language to try to make sense of the
Ibid., p. 43.
Ibid.
77 Ibid., pp. 101-109.
75
76
55
transcendent in terms of the immanent. 78 Despite its appearance and common use,
Tillich insists that "God" is not a proper name, that is, "God" does not refer to a
unique individual. Rather, as is now well known, he identifies God as "the Ground
of Being" - being itself. Everything that is said about God is symbolic except the
one claim that "God is being itself.,,79 Thus, God cannot be understood in terms of
or by comparison with any ordinary experience or any part or aspect of the
empirical world. We cannot hope to use religious language to better understand or
explain God, according to Tillich. A religious symbol "stands for" or "points to" its
object, but it cannot, in any way, characterize or describe that object.
They [religious symbols] must express an object that by its very nature
transcends every object in the world .... A real symbol points to an object which
can never become an object. Religious symbols represent the transcendent but
do not make the transcendent immanent. They do not make God a part of the
empirical world. 80
The criticisms, critiques, and commentaries regarding the work of Tillich are far
too numerous and voluminous to be considered here. So far as Tillich's use of the
symbolic is concerned, we might simply say that if we have no literal knowledge
of and can make no literal assertions about God other than that God is being itself,
then, it seems, we are left with no grounds for choosing or assessing different
possibly competing or even conflicting symbolic uses of language. 81 If we can
make no reasonable choice about how we talk about God and what religious
symbols we use, then it appears that anything we might choose to say is just as
good as anything else we might choose to say. William Alston puts the point
nicely: "In order to furnish descriptions from which effective identifications can be
made, the component assertions in such a [religious] system must at some point
yield implications concerning experienceable states of affairs.,,82
Tillich is certainly aware of the difficulty here, but his attempts to address the
problem are woefully inadequate. In trying to explain what it is that "God" might
refer to, he says that "it points to the ultimate level of being, to ultimate reality, to
being itself, to meaning itself. That which is the ground of being is the object to
which the religious symbol points."s3 But this is of little help in providing some
content for "God." The phrases "being itself' and "the ground of all being" are
intended to describe a God that is completely limitless. No predicates or
78 See Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology (London: Nisbet and Company, 1953). For a more focused
treatment of religious language, see his 'The Religious Symbol," in Religious Experience and Truth,
edited by Sidney Hook.
79 Tillich, Systematic Theology, p. 264.
80 Tillich, "The Religious Symbol," p. 303.
81 Several critics have made this point, including William Alston, "Tillich' s Conception of a
Religious Symbol," in Religious Experience and Truth, edited by Sidney Hook, pp. 14 and 19. Also see
William T. Blackstone, "The Status of God-Talk," in Religious Language and Knowledge, edited by
Robert H. Ayers and William T. Blackstone.
82 Alston, ibid., p. 14.
83 Paul Tillich, "Theology and Symbolism," in Religious Symbolism, edited by F. Ernest John (New
York: Harper and Brothers, 1955), p. 110.
56
characterizations can be used of being itself since everything is what it is because it

participates in being itself.
Tillich's position does not admit of any of the conative attitudes or beliefs that
are the basis of Braithwaite's theory of religious language. If the ground of being
does not admit of any characterizations or predicates that allow a religious person
to understand some content for the expression, then it appears that we can have no
attitudes toward such a being at all - even, as Alston has noted, as the object of our
"ultimate concern.,,84 Tillich's characterization of God as the ground of all being
forces him into an extreme position regarding the symbolic use of religious
language, and while such a position protects religious language from the challenges
of empiricism and the test of falsification, it leaves practically nothing in the way
of content to which religious believers can attach their beliefs and by which
religious believers can identify and differentiate their beliefs. Treating religious
language as completely symbolic in Tillich's sense means that we can say nothing
that is literally or cognitively meaningful about God. Such a consequent is rather
serious for the ordinary religious believer "in the street" and for the practice of
religion. Bowman Clarke summarizes the situation as follows:
Tillich's theory of the symbolic in philosophical theology can lead him but to
two alternatives. The first admits that we cannot say in any literal sense what is
affirmed and what is denied in each symbolic assertion, and it maintains that
there are semantic depths to such assertions which we can never fathom. This
means that it is quite possible for two symbolic assertions about God to be
contradictory without our knowing it. Likewise, two people could assert the
same symbolic statement about God, meaning different things by it, and yet not
know wherein they differed, or even that they differed. This, of course is just to
admit that language is theologically useless. The other alternative recognizes
that all symbolic assertions about God ... assert but one thing, that God is beingitself, not a finite being. In either case we are left with one conclusion, that God
is the ineffable, and we would do well to retreat to holy silence. 85
There seems to be no meaningful use of 'God' left in religious language as a
result of Tillich's notion of the symbolic. If we think of the different liberal
responses that have been treated here as falling upon a continuum to the left of
center and away from the conservative defenses of the literal meaningfulness of
religious language, there appears to be very little room left on the continuum
beyond Tillich's notion of the symbolic. Only the retreat to "holy silence" falls
farther along the continuum.
THOMAS McPHERSON AND HOLY SILENCE
Thomas McPherson proposes another liberal response to the challenge of
falsifiability. Many religious beliefs are ostensibly nonsense, McPherson points
Alston, "Tillich's Conception of a Religious Symbol," p. 23.

Bowman L. Clarke, "God and the Symbolic in Tillich," Anglican Theological Review, July 1961,
pp.9-1O.
84
85
57
OUt. 86 For example, Christians believe that God is one person; yet he is three
persons. God is transcendent; yet God is immanent. Jesus was divine; yet he was
human. Christ dies; yet Christ lives. How are we to understand such apparently
nonsensical claims? Do they have literal meanings? Or some "deeper" - perhaps
analogical - meaning? Is there a special religious language or logic that will allow
us to make the case for a special form of religious meaning? All of these questions,
McPherson thinks, are misguided and raise illegitimate concerns about religious
beliefs; so, he offers a rather radical way out of these difficulties. Although he does
not explicitly endorse the program of the logical positivists, he does think that they
have provided a "serious contribution" to philosophy by focusing upon the fact that
when we try to say things that are unsayable, the result is nonsense. 87 McPherson
puts his point in the following manner:
There are some things that just cannot be said. As long as one tries to say them
there is trouble. But if anyone does try to say them he must take the
consequences. We ought not to try to express the inexpressible. The things that
theologians try to say (or some of them) belong to the class of things that just
cannot be said. The way out of the worry is to retreat into silence. 88
According to McPherson, if we seriously adopt the positivist way out of this
problem, it is a mistake for the theist to try and defend all religious claims as
meaningful. It would also be a mistake to resort to the elaborate (and sometimes
forced) mechanisms of "bliks" or "models and metaphors" to try and capture some
special religious meaning of religious language. Theists should just admit that
language is inadequate for saying some of the things that they want to say and then
"retreat" into a holy silence.
McPherson draws upon the work of Rudolf Otto and Ludwig Wittgenstein to
buttress his positivistic solution to the inexpressible. In The Idea of the Holy,
Rudolf Otto tries to develop Friedrich Schleiermacher's characterization of
religious experience. 89 Schleiermacher began his treatment of religious experience
by insisting that the fundamental element of religious experience is a person's
feeling of absolute dependence upon someone or something other than one's self.
This means that the self becomes metaphysically dependent, resulting in a form of
subjectivism. The existence of God, revealed in religious experience, is not known
immediately but can only be inferred on the basis of one's immediate subjective
experience. Otto insists that the fundamental element of a genuine religious
(mystical) experience (what Otto calls "the numinous experience") is a person's
immediate awareness of the holy as another - as something outside and
independent of oneself - an experience of the "Wholly Other." Such experiences
are filled with a sense of awe and mystery and cannot be adequately captured by
language because numinous experiences exceed our ability to conceptualize. This
86 Thomas McPherson, "Religion as the Inexpressible," in New Essays in Philosophical Theology,
pp.131-43.
87 Ibid., p. 142.
88 Ibid., pp. 132-33.
89 Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-Rational Factor in the Idea of the
Divine and Its Relation to the Rational (Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1958).
58
basic and fundamental element of religion is an example, McPherson thinks, of

what becomes nonsense if we try to put it into words. The theist might well
consider thanking the positivists for reminding theists of this fact. There are some
things in religion - perhaps the most essential and important things - that simply
cannot be said.
McPherson compares Otto's notion of the mystical with the brief and cryptic
remarks of Wittgenstein at the end of his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
concerning the mystical. McPherson focuses upon passages where Wittgenstein is
concerned about whether we can make sense of asking certain kinds of questions
about the world. In the Tractatus, Wittgenstein attempted to develop a framework
within which every conceivable meaningful proposition can be expressed. It is well
known that at the end of the Tractatus, Wittgenstein admits that, given the nature
of his theory, many of the things that he has had to say to develop the theory
cannot meaningfully be said within the theory. This is the problem of an
illegitimate totality expressed in his famous ladder metaphor. There are similarly
very general questions about why the world exists, which Wittgenstein calls
"mystical." Similarly, Wittgenstein says, "The feeling of the world as a limited
whole is the mystical feeling.,,9o
The comparison of Otto with Wittgenstein is a rather tenuous one except for the
point that each admits that there are certain kinds of things that cannot be put into
language. For Otto, such a claim is the result of a rather careful and detailed
treatment of religious experience. Wittgenstein, on the other hand, although he
does indeed use the term "mystical," did not have a developed theory of the
mystical. In this context, it is clear that what Wittgenstein had in mind concerned
questions about the totality that is this world. Within the context of the Tractatus,
we can reasonably ask questions about individual facts (particular concatenations
of objects) and even about groups of such facts, such as "Is the book on the table?"
and "Why is the book on the table?" Similarly, we can and do make claims about
the truth or falsity of propositions that "picture" or label or describe such facts.
However, we cannot reasonably ask why we have the particular totality of facts
that we have that constitute this world, nor can we even say that this is all there is
and there is no more to this world. Questions then, for Wittgenstein, about why the
world exists at all or why this particular world exists rather than some other world
are questions that cannot reasonably be asked because they have no reasonable
answers. So, in the very general sense in which there are some things that cannot
be put into language, Otto and Wittgenstein agree. If "the inexpressible" is an
essential or fundamental part of "true" or "real" religion, then positivism need not
be viewed as an enemy of religion or antireligious, McPherson believes. Given
such a view of the nonrational nature of religion, "the positivistic approach" might
encourage theists to recapture and focus upon this essential aspect of religion. 91
Some critics of McPherson have unfairly interpreted his suggestion about
retreating into holy silence as having extreme results that would prevent any
religious believer from ever talking with another believer about religious beliefs,
90 See Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, translated by D. F. Pears and B. F.
McGuinness (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1961). 6.44, 6.45, and 6.5.
91 McPherson, "Religion as the Inexpressible," p. 139.
59
which would eventually eliminate all religious organizations. 92 But such reactions
are extreme. McPherson, as well as Otto, recognizes that there are many different
kinds of religious beliefs and many different kinds of religious language. There are
many parts of religion that are highly "conceptualized," and these parts can
certainly be put into language and are the subject matter of books, sermons, hymns,
and even the Bible itself.93
McPherson does recognize a potential difficulty with his suggestion of "the
positivistic approach" and the resulting retreat into holy silence. Theists may, in the
end, be forced to give up too much by this approach. "[By] throwing out the water
of theology we may be also throwing out the baby of 'direct,' 'first-order' religious
assertions; and this we may well not want to do," McPherson warns his fellow
theists. Indeed, such a result seems inevitable. To the degree that the "higher"
level, more "conceptualized" parts of religion are based in some way upon a
certain kind of immediate religious experience that is nonrational and cannot be
captured by language, any sort of rational understanding, explanation, or
justification of religious belief seems to be threatened.
The distinction between "higher-order," highly conceptualized religious
language and direct, "first-order" assertions is developed by R. F. Holland into the
distinction between theology and religion. 94 Religious discourse, for Holland, is the
kind of discourse that takes place during an act of worship by the theist and is not
intended to describe God or make assertions about God. Such discourse is really
directed toward God and is more about the believer engaged in the act of worship
than it is about God. Theological discourse, in contrast, is, in McPherson's and
Otto's phrase, "highly conceptualized" and treats God as an "object of study."
Theologians are concerned with questions about the existence of God and about
what attributes God might have,95 and the discourse of theology must reflect these
concerns. Religious discourse may have some kind of meaning for the theist, but it
is not the intended cognitive, empirical (or aesthetic) meaning of theological
discourse. For Holland, the result of this distinction is that religious discourse turns
out to be so epistemologically distinct from theological discourse that it cannot
serve in any epistemological role to provide any epistemological warrant for
theological discourse. Consequently, theological discourse is left dangling by itself
- "ungrounded" in "first-order" religious experience - and religious discourse is
left as the noncognitive prayers or hymns of the worshiping theist. In Holland's
account, McPherson's fears of throwing the baby of religion out with the bathwater
of theology become realized. Perhaps reformed epistemology or a revised notion of
religious experience may provide some avenue for the theist to "ground" religious
beliefs in religious experience, but to whatever degree that might be possible, it
will not follow Otto's analysis of mystical experience.
See Blackstone, "The Status of God-Talk," p. 88.

McPherson, "Religion as the mexpressible," p. 135.
94 R. F. Holland, "Religious Discourse and Theological Discourse," The Australasian Journal of
Philosophy, Vol. 34, no. 3, 1956.
95 Ibid., p. 147.
92
93
60
THE CONSERVATIVE RESPONSE

We have seen that the liberal response involves admitting that Flew is victorious
in his use of the falsifiability criterion for cognitive meaningfulness if religious
statements are treated as having empirical or cognitive content. The liberal
responses "shift ground" by adopting a variety of different sorts of accounts of the
special logical status of religious language - ranging from the use of analogical
language and "bliks" to the use of "models and qualifiers" and symbolic language.
Whatever success such shifting ground techniques might have, it comes with what
many theists would consider is too high of a price tag. Those figures who wish to
defend religious statements by refusing to give up the claim that they are
cognitively meaningful refuse to admit that Flew's use of the falsifiability criterion
is successful. The conservative responses in defense of the meaningfulness of
religious language carry the fight to Flew on his own territory by accepting the
falsifiability criterion as a legitimate criterion for testing empirical significance and
then attempting to show how religious language meets this criterion. Various
figures have attempted to do this in various ways.
CROMBIE AND HICK AND ESCHATOLOGICAL VERIFICATION
Ian Crombie defends the cognitive meaningfulness of religious language by
introducing both the use of analogy and the use of a special kind of verification for
religious statements. I have discussed the use of analogy in some detail above, so I
will focus here upon the sense in which religious statements are verifiable for
Crombie. The use of the criterion of falsification as a test for cognitive
meaningfulness is a combination of two different kinds of demands, according to
Crombie. First, there is the "logical demand," which requires that all statements of
fact must be falsifiable unless there exists an understood and accepted "rule of
language" that logically precludes such testing by falsification (or verification).96
To understand this point, Crombie compares two different kinds of statements that
are not verifiable. If a person says, "Killing is wrong," then it will not do to put this
statement to the test of falsification by pointing to certain factual evidence to try
and disprove it. The logical status of this statement precludes any such attempts at
falsification, and if a person insists on falsification as a test for meaningfulness,
then we might say that the person has not understood the logical status of the
original claim. 97 In contrast, if a person says, "Caesar had mutton before he crossed
the Rubicon," then, even though we might say that this statement does not lend
itself to testing by falsification, there is no logical difficulty with insisting upon
such a test. Factually (or actually), such a test by falsification may simply be a
waste of time, but if a person insists upon or attempts such a test, we do not say
that the person has misunderstood the logical status of the original claim. Do
religious statements have a logical status that precludes their being put to the test of
falsification? Crombie answers this question by insisting that there is nothing
logically odd about religious statements that precludes their being tested by the
criterion of falsification for cognitive meaningfulness. 98 Thus, Crombie obviously
96 I. M. Crombie, "Theology and Falsification," in New Essays in Philosophical Theology, edited by
Antony Flew and Alasdair MacIntyre, p. 125.
97 I discuss the relationship between ethics and religion in detail in Chapter VIII.
98 'bid., pp. 125-26.
THE PROBlEM OF RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE
61
rejects the tactic of those who opt for the liberal response by shifting ground.
Religious statements are cognitive1y meaningful statements for Crombie since
there is no logical problem of their verification.
The second kind of demand that the criterion of falsification makes is what
Crombie calls a "communicational stipulation," which means that in order for a
speaker to understand fully a statement that he makes, the speaker must know what
a test of the statement would involve. If a person makes the statement above about
Caesar having mutton but has no idea what mutton is or how to go about testing for
whether Caesar had mutton before he crossed the Rubicon, then Crombie maintains
that the speaker does not understand his own statement, that is, the statement has
no "communication value" for the speaker. 99 The issue of the communication value
of religious statements is not a matter that concerns the logical status of such
statements but rather the speaker's ability to understand the claim. Crombie's
answer to the question of how religious statements fair in respect to this second
demand of falsification is a lengthy one and depends u~on whether the question is
raised within the "parable" of religion or outside of it. 10 However, for the purposes
here, the crucial point is that religious statements are not logically immune to the
test of falsification according to Crombie. If a person introduces certain evidence
that ostensibly counts against the existence of an omnipotent and omnibenevolent
God (such as sickness or death of a loved one), we do not say that the person has
misunderstood the logical status of the claims "God exists" or "God loves us,"
because the existence of pain and suffering and death is prima facie incompatible
with the existence of an all-powerful and all-loving GOd.10 1
So theists admit that the existence of some evidence might carry prima facie
weight against the existence of God, but they will not admit that such evidence
weighs conclusively against religious claims. Some critics of theism claim that the
existence of pain and suffering and death do count conclusively against the theist's
claims, but this disagreement is not presently resolvable, according to Crombie,
because we cannot get ourselves into the position to get the proper evidence to
resolve the dispute (see Chapter VI). The dispute is not unresolvable because there
is anything "logically odd" about the status of religious claims. The theist's claim
"God loves us" is comparable to the claim that Caesar had mutton before he
crossed the Rubicon. The question of verification or falsification rests upon
whether we can "get ourselves into position" to gather the proper evidence.102 The
kind of position that Crombie insists upon here is an epistemological position
where the necessary evidence to verify or falsify the claim would be available to a
possible observer. We can describe such situations by using counterfactual
hypotheticals. In the case of Caesar, we might say, "If I were to transport myself
through time so that I could observe what Caesar had for breakfast just before he
launched out across the Rubicon and into Gaul, then I would be able to tell whether
he had mutton or not." For the theist, the matter of getting oneself into the proper
epistemological position to gather the appropriate evidence to test the claim that
God loves us is a bit more complicated. First, a person must die! Then one would
Ibid., p. 125-26.
See ibid., pp. 126ff.
101 Ibid., p. 126.
102 Ibid.
99
100
62
be in a position to observe whether there is a God and if that God is loving and
forgiving. So, counterfactually, one might say something such as, "If I were dead
and experienced God then I could verify that God exists." By the use of such a test,
which has now become known as "eschatological verification," Crombie insists
that there is no logical difficulty in verifying or falsifying religious statements.
Religious statements are "verifiable in principle" (just as statements about the
distant past are); they simply are not verifiable in reality or in practice. Religious
statements are thus cognitively or empirically meaningful. 103
John Hick has joined forces with Crombie to use the notion of eschatological
verification to defend the cognitive meaningfulness of religious language. 104 Hick
acknowledges the fundamental point of using verification as a criterion for
cognitive meaningfulness. He provides a clear statement of what he understands by
the claim that a statement is empirically significant in a formulation that is
reminiscent of the early formulations of the verification criterion of meaning. Any
statement is a factual assertion and is cognitively meaningful, according to Hick,
"if and only if the state in which the universe would be if the putative assertion
could correctly be said to be true differs in some experienceable way from the state
in which the universe would be if the putative assertion could correctly be said to
be false, all aspects of the universe other than that referred to in the putative
statement being the same in either case.,,105 The question then becomes one of
whether religious statements are assertions under this definition. Hick's answer is
in the affirmative because he agrees with Crombie that the continued existence in
an afterlife would make religious claims verifiable in principle, though they would
not be falsifiable
Falsifiability and verification are commonly treated as if they are
"symmetrically related," Hick points out, that is, the empirical data that are
regarded as verifying of a particular proposition if those data are actual and
observed are also regarded as falsifying of the same proposition if those data are
not actual and are not observed. Such symmetry between verification and
falsification does hold in the cases of most propositions, but does it hold in every
case? Hick argues that it does not. Consider the following proposition: "There are
three successive sevens in the decimal determination of 1t.,,106 Determining the
decimal determination of 1t is, of course, an infinite process, and no matter how
much time is spent and no matter to what place the process is carried out, it will
always be possible to continue the process. To date, no three successive sevens
have ever turned up in the process, but at some point in the future, they might, and,
of course, if the claim that there are three successive sevens in the decimal
determination of 1t is really false, it might never be shown that it is. Therefore, this
proposition is an example of a proposition for which the symmetry of verification
Ibid.
See John Hick, Faith and Knowledge (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1957), pp. 150-62,
and "Theology and Verification," originally in Theology Today, Vol. 17, 1960. Reprinted in Religious
Language and the Problem of Religious Knowledge, edited by Ronald E. Santoni, to which the page
numbers here refer.
105 Hick, 'Theology and Verification," p. 381.
106 Ibid., p. 366.
103
104
63
and falsification does not hold. This claim is verifiable in principle, but it is not
falsifiable.
For Hick, "the hypothesis of continued conscious existence after bodily death"
is another example of a claim that is verifiable but not falsifiable. If one continues
to exist after one's death, then such a claim would be verified, but if one does not
continue to exist after one's death, then the claim of continued existence cannot be
falsified since there would then be no experiences or observations to falsify the
original claim. So the claim of continued existence may be false, but no one could
ever demonstrate that it is false. 107
Crombie and Hick's notion of eschatological verification has been severely
attacked by many critics. One obvious difficulty is that eschatological verification
depends essentially upon the "hypothesis of continued conscious existence after
bodily death," a hypothesis whose status appears to be as much in doubt as the
hypotheses "God exists" or "God loves us." Without some further explanation of
the nature and status of the "hypothesis of continued conscious existence," it seems
as if Hick is begging the question by appealing to one religious claim in order to
establish the empirical meaningfulness of others. Hick is aware of this difficulty
and has attempted to argue independently for the meaningfulness of the notion of
"continued personal existence," that is, independently of other religious claims.
The issue of continued personal existence is treated in Chapter VII; therefore, I
focus here only on the question of the empirical meaningfulness of such a claim in
a very brief, general manner. Much of the answer to the question about whether
claims about continued personal existence are meaningful depends to a great extent
upon what exactly it is that we mean by "continued personal existence." Flew (and
others) have argued that the notion of a continued, completely spiritual personal
existence, that is, a noncorporeal spirit, or a disembodied spirit, is nonsensical. 108
In order for the supposed continued existence to be a personal existence, the
continued existence of the same person after death who existed before death, it
seems as if it would be necessary for there to be a certain amount of continuity in
the person's experiences and memories (a condition that Hick recognizes and
incorporates into his account of continued personal existence). If, then, in this
continued, completely spiritual state of existence, a person is to have experiences
or memories of experiences that took place here on earth during the person's
lifetime as a human being, it seems that the only sense that one can make of such
claims about the possibility of such experiences or memories would require that
there be some sense organs through which such experiences are possible and a
brain through which memories are possible. Our only understanding of personal
identity seems to require some sort of body. We can temporarily bypass the issue
of whether there is a nonphysical component to personhood (for example, a soul or
a mind) by simply saying that whatever nonphysical component there may be to
personhood, a physical instantiation of whatever that might be (if anything) seems
necessary for any commonly understood notion of persons.
Ibid.
Antony Flew, "Death," in New Essays in Philosophical Theology, edited by Antony Flew and
Alasdair MacIntyre, pp. 267-72.
107
108
64
Hick is aware of and seems to accept many of these difficulties involving

completely spiritual continued personal existence, and, at least partially as a result
of these difficulties, Hick defends a Christian notion of a physical, bodily
resurrection as being cognitively meaningful. 109 Hick evokes no less of an
authority than Moritz Schlick, whom he quotes in support of his claim that
continued personal existence based upon some sort of physical, bodily resurrection
is empirically meaningful. Schlick says, "We must conclude that immortality, in
the sense defined ["survival after death" rather than "never-ending life"], should
not be regarded as a 'metaphysical problem,' but as an empirical hypothesis,
because it possesses logical verifiability. It could be verified by the following
prescription: 'Wait until you die!",llo
Others have questioned whether Hick's commitment to eschatological
verification is consistent with his commitment to religious pluralism. 111 The
commitment to eschatological verification is seen as problematic because at least
some of the many different views of the afterlife that occur in different world
religions would not allow for the kind of verification that Hick maintains is
possible. However, it appears to be plausible for Hick to accommodate his notion
of eschatological verification to his notion of religious pluralism. To do so, Hick
need only modify his parable to allow for many travelers on the spiritual path at the
same time with many different (and perhaps incompatible) views of what lies at the
end of the road. Some of those views, such as "metaphysical absolutism,"
according to which the continued existence after death is not a personal one but
one in which individuals merge and become an indistinguishable part of the One,112
would not be verifiable even in principle, but this does not mean that Hick's own
brand of continued personal existence dependent upon some sort of physical,
bodily resurrection would not be verifiable in principle. Even if metaphysical
absolutism should happen to be true, this would not falsify Hick's claim about his
version of continued personal existence since it would not result in any experiences
or observations; hence, if one accepts Hick's claim regarding the asymmetry of
verification and falsification, this would protect his claim against different possible
outcomes, based upon different religious views, regarding what happens after
death.
BASIL MITCHELL
Basil Mitchell responds to the challenge of falsification by admitting that the
theist will not allow anything to count conclusively or decisively against religious
beliefs; however, Mitchell does think that the theist is willing to allow that some
evidence does count as prima facie evidence against religious claims; otherwise,
the problem of evil would not be a problem. The existence of needless pain and
See Hick, "Theology and Verification," pp. 370ff.
Moritz Schlick, "Meaning and Verification," Philosophical Review, 1936. Also, see Hick,
"Theology and Verification," op. cit., p. 370. See also Antony Flew, "Can a Man Witness His Own
Funeral," in The Presumption of Atheism (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1976), and The Logic of
Immortality (Oxford: Backwell Publishing, 1987).
III See, for example, Michael Peterson, William Hasker, Bruce Reichenbach, and David Basinger,
Reason and Religious Belief' An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, Second Edition (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 277, fn. 21.
112 Ibid.
109
110
65
suffering surely counts against the belief in the existence of an omnipotent and
omnibenevolent God, for example, but it does not conclusively falsify such a
belief. The reason for this, Mitchell thinks, is the particular attitude of the believer
toward such claims. Mitchell suggests that in contrast to Flew's Parable of the
Invisible Gardener we consider the following story:
In time of war in an occupied country, a member of the resistance meets one
night a stranger who deeply impresses him. They spend the night together in
conversation. The Stranger tells the partisan that he himself is on the side of the
resistance - indeed that he is in command of it, and urges the partisan to have
faith in him no matter what happens. The partisan is utterly convinced at that
meeting of the Stranger's sincerity and constancy and undertakes to trust him.
They never meet in conditions of intimacy again. But sometimes the Stranger
is seen helping members of the resistance, and the partisan is grateful and says
to his friends, "He is on our side."
Sometimes he is seen in the uniform of the police handing over patriots to the
occupying power. On these occasions his friends murmur against him: but the
partisan still says, "He is on our side." He still believes that, in spite of
appearances, the Stranger did not deceive him. Sometimes he asks the Stranger
for help and receives it. He is then thankful. Sometimes he asks and does not
receive it. Then he says, "The Stranger knows best." Sometimes his friends in
exasperation say, "Well, what would he have to do for you to admit that you
were wrong and that he is not on our side?" But the partisan refuses to answer.
He will not consent to put the Stranger to the test. 113
Mitchell maintains that religious utterances must be assertions to be meaningful.
Unlike the lunatic who holds the "blik" concerning all dons, the partisan will admit
that some evidence does "count against" his claim that the Stranger is "on our
side." For Hare, of course, evidence is not a factor in determining why a person
holds or does not hold a particular blik. In contrast, Mitchell's partisan does intend
to be asserting something about the Stranger that is either true or false when he
says, "He is on our side." Likewise, the theist intends to assert something about
God when the theist says, "God loves us." According to Mitchell, the reason that
the partisan (or theist) will not allow any evidence to conclusively falsify his claim
is because of his faith in the Stranger.
Just how far the partisan might be willing to go and just how long he might be
willing to persist in denying that the ostensibly falsifying evidence does not
conclusively falsify the claim that the Stranger is on his side is not possible to
determine in advance, according to Mitchell, since it will all depend upon the
strength of the commitment that the partisan feels toward the Stranger. So, it is not
possible, according to Mitchell, to determine in advance how determinedly or how
long the theist will refuse to admit falsification of claims about God while allowing
that some evidence does count against those claims. 114
113 Basil, Mitchell, ''Theology and Falsification, " in New Essays in Philosophical Theology, edited
by Antony Flew and Alasdair MacIntyre, pp.103-104.
114 Ibid., pp. 104-105.
66
Whether Mitchell provides an adequate response to the challenge of falsification

depends upon exactly how we understand the reasons why a believer might accept
or reject evidence against the existence of God. If the point is that the personal
commitments and personal beliefs of an individual will affect the way in which the
individual assesses, processes, and eventually accepts or rejects evidence that may
count against some of those beliefs, then the point is obviously true. If someone
were to present me with evidence that my eldest son is a murderer and international
drug dealer connected with a Columbian cartel, my initial reaction would
obviously be based upon a prima facie disbelief of the evidence because I love my
son. There is nothing very unusual or unreasonable about such a reaction. This
simply means that there is a higher burden of proof that may exist in such
situations - a higher burden that may persist for quite some time. However, if I
take the general position that I will never accept any evidence whatsoever, no
matter what it may be, that would prove conclusively that my son is a murderer or
an evil person, then such a claim is unreasonable.
It also matters whether one's failing is epistemic or psychological. If Mitchell's
theist admits that, in principle, it is theoretically possible for some evidence to
count decisively against the existence of God, but that he personally simply cannot
bring himself psychologically to admit that such evidence ever really rises to such
a level on any particular occasion, then the theist simply admits to a psychological
failing resulting from a personal belief or faith. In such a situation, we may admit
that a religious utterance affirming the existence of God is an assertion, since it is
possible to imagine the theist going through some sort of philosophical therapy to
restore congruency to his psychological faculties. If, on the other hand, the theist's
faith leads to the epistemic decision to treat the existence of God as theoretically
immune to any possible decisive challenges of evidence, then, under such
circumstances, the claim that God exists seems to approach the level of being
tautologous and does not appear to be an assertion with cognitive content. In this
situation, the religious claim fails the test of falsification.
SPEAKING LITERALLY ABOUT GOD?
Many of those who have opted for a liberal, shifting-ground response to the
challenge posed to religious language by the notion of falsification were forced
into such an option because of the difficulty of explaining how one can use
language to make statements that are literally true or false about the transcendent
nature of God (or other transcendent aspects of religious belief). More recently in
this debate over literal versus nonliteral uses of religious language, William P.
Alston has taken on the task of attempting to remove one of the conceptual barriers
to applying certain predicates straightforwardly and literally to God.115 We have
1\5 William P. Alston, "Speaking Literally of God," in Is God GOD? edited by Axel D. Steuer and
James W. McClendon, Jf. (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1981). Reprinted in Michael Peterson, William
Hasker, Bruce Reichenbach, and David Basinger, Philosophy of Religion: Selected Readings (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1991), to which the page numbers here refer. Also see his "Functionalism and
Theological Language," American Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 22, 1985. Both "Speaking Literally of
God" and "Functionalism and Theological Language" are reprinted in Divine Nature and HUlrUln
Language: Essays in Philosophical Theology, edited by William P. Alston (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell
67
seen above that analogical, metaphorical, or other nonliteral uses of religious

language presuppose or rely upon some underlying literal use with cognitive
meaning at some point. Alston sets out to investigate this one crucial use of
religious language where a statement is made to advance a truth claim that is held
to be "literally true" of God. Specifically, Alston wishes to investigate how one
may maintain that some "intrinsic" predicates such as "made heaven and earth"
and "spoke to Moses" can be literally attributed to God in a true assertion. 116
Although there have been different reasons why others have thought that such
straightforward, literal predication is impossible, Alston correctly identifies God's
transcendency as a major reason why many have rejected the notion of such
predication. Among the several different attributes of God that are responsible for
God's transcendent nature is incorporeality. Alston initiates an inquiry to
determine whether God's incorporeality is a conceptual block against making truth
claims in which predicates are applied literally to God, that is, the question is
whether God's incorporeality makes it logically impossible to make certain truth
claims in which predicates literally apply to GOd. 117
Alston says that he follows P. F. Strawson in choosing "personalistic predicates"
(hereafter called "P-predicates") to investigate. liS P-predicates are those, Alston
claims, that can be asserted truly only of a "personal agent," and a personal agent is
"an agent that carries out intentions, plans, or purposes, in its actions, that acts in
the light of knowledge or belief; a being whose actions express attitudes and are
guided by standards and principles; a being capable of communicating with other
such agents and entering into other forms of personal relations with them.,,119
Taking human agents as our models, we can speak literally of God using Ppredicates, Alston says, "if we can form concepts of intrinsic divine properties,,,120
and whether we can form such concepts of such properties will "depend both on
what God is like and on the content of the predicates.,,121
Alston divides P-predicates into mental or psychological predicates (Mpredicates) and action predicates (A-predicates).122 He then seeks to establish that,
according to at least some forms of "logical connectionism" (according to which
mental states of an agent are defined in terms of some "logical connection" with
the agent's behavior, demeanor, or disposition), the attribution of M-predicates to
an incorporeal entity is possible since the behavior in terms of which the particular
M-predicates are defined does not have to be overt behavior. Alston bases his
claim here upon the distinction between basic actions and nonbasic actions. 123
Alston, "Speaking literally of God," p. 366-67.
See ibid., p. 371. Alston suggests that this issue is part of a much broader project in which one
would conduct a similar inquiry regarding the other metaphysical attributes, such as infinity,
omnipotence, and eternality, in a similar manner.
118 Ibid., p. 367. Also, see P. F. Strawson, Individuals (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1959) pp.
lOOff.
119 Alston, "Speaking Literally of God," pp. 367-68.
120 Ibid., p. 370.
121 Ibid., p. 371.
122 Ibid., p. 372. Alston's use of the designation "M-predicates" for mental predicates as a subclass
of P-predicates can easily be confusing for those familiar with Strawson's original treatment of Ppredicates in Individuals. There, M-predicates are bodily predicates.
123 Basic actions have been defmed in different ways by different people. See, for example, Arthur
Danto, "Basic Actions," American Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 2, 1965, and Terence Peneihum,
116
117
68
ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY OF REliGION
Basic actions are not performed by performing any other action, and other,
nonbasic actions are performed by performing a basic action. In the case of human
beings, basic actions are bodily actions; in the case of God, Alston claims, basic
actions could be mental actions or "other changes" that substitute for bodily
changes. Against critics who have rejected the claim that God, as a pure,
incorporeal spirit, could act as an agent,l24 Alston claims that since God does not
have a body, then all of God's actions may be basic actions either by being mental
actions or "other changes" in which "God could exercise direct voluntary control
over every change in the world which he influences by his activity.,,125 Hence,
Alston concludes, there is no conceptual barrier to applying M-predicates to an
incorporeal being, God. 126
In evaluating Alston's position, we must understand his intent. At one point, he
says that his purpose is to show that some forms of logical connectionism,
specifically functionalism, are compatible with the possibility of attributing Mpredicates to an incorporeal agent. But even if he is successful in doing this, it does
not make very much progress toward speaking literally about God. As Alston
himself says, being able to speak literally about God will depend both upon the
nature of God and the content of the predicates, and Alston does not provide much
help concerning possible content of predicates that may apply literally to God. If
we try and get more specific about the content of P-predicates that might be
applied literally to an incorporeal being and about how those predicates might be
literally true of such a being, several difficulties arise. The conceptual or logical
barrier against the true and literal application of P-predicates to an incorporeal
being are more difficult to remove than Alston supposes.
Alston claims to be making a modest claim and doing nothing out of the
ordinary when he suggests that P-predicates may be applied to God. Early in
building his case, he says,
I will restrict myself here to whether (some) P-predicates can be true of God in
(some of) the senses in which they are true of human beings. The only
qualification I make on that is that I shall consider a simple transformation of
certain human action predicates - "simple," in that the change does not involve
any radical conceptual innovation. 127
However, the result, that is, the claim that we can literally apply certain Ppredicates to God, is hardly a "simple transformation" of the predicates that we
normally use to describe human agents. Alston argues that the notion of a basic
action coincidentally involves bodily movement in the case of human beings since
it just happens to be a contingent fact about human beings that we can only bring
Survival and Disembodied Existence (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970), pp. 40ff. Alston
follows Penelhum in his account.
124 Including Paul Edwards, "Difficulties in the Idea of God," in The Idea of God, edited by Edward
H. Madden, Rollo Handy, and Marvin Faber (Springfield, Ill.: Charles C. Thomas, Pnblisher, 1968), p.
48, and Kai Nielsen, Contemporary Critiques of Religion (London: Macmillan, 1971), pp. 116-17.
125 Alston, "Speaking Literally of God," p. 383.
126 Ibid., p. 383-84.
127 Ibid., p. 371.
69
about other actions by the movements of parts of our bodies that are under our
voluntary control. Alston claims that we can conceive of agents other than human
agents that are such that other things besides their own bodies are under their
direct, voluntary control, and God may be one such agent. 128
Can we really conceive of such agents with such actions as Alston suggests? To
approach an answer to this question, we might begin by noting that Alston uses Ppredicates in a way that is crucially and fundamentally different from the way in
which Strawson originally intended them. 129 For Strawson, the concept of a person
is primitive. By saying that the concept of a person is primitive, Strawson means
that "the concept of a person is the concept of a type of entity such that both
predicates ascribing states of consciousness and predicates ascribing corporeal
characteristics ... are equally applicable to a single individual of that type.,,130
Strawson is very clear that "a necessary condition of states of consciousness [Ppredicates] being ascribed at all is that they should be ascribed to the very same
things as certain corporeal characteristics."l3l Persons, for Strawson, are
individuals of the same logical type to whom we are willing to ascribe both the
predicates ascribing states of consciousness or implying states of consciousness
(what Strawson calls "P-predicates") and the predicates ascribing corporeal
characteristics (what Strawson calls "M-predicates") 132 as we ascribe to ourselves.
There is certainly nothing wrong with Alston using the notion of "P-predicates"
in a very different way from the way in which Strawson used them. However,
Strawson has captured a very strong intuition by insisting that P-predicates and
predicates ascribing corporeal characteristics (his M-predicates) must be applied to
individuals of the same logical type. Alston suggests that we human beings can
stretch a particular concept to include features that were not present in the observed
cases from which we formed that concept, and this is certainly true. However, if
the notion of a person is stretched so far that P-predicates can reasonably be
applied to a noncorporeal entity (which would certainly be an individual of a
different logical type than ordinary persons), then a fortiori, it seems, P-predicates
could reasonably be applied to a variety of different kinds of corporeal bodies, such
as golden retrievers or trees or computers. It certainly seems more of a stretch to
apply such predicates to a noncorporeal entity than it does to apply them to
different kinds of corporeal entities. Strawson's original intuition then comes back
into play here. If we stretch the concept of a person too far, that is, beyond
individuals of the same logical type, what kind of an individual could not be a
person? What identifies individuals of the same logical type is the fact that we are
willing to ascribe both P-predicates and certain bodily predicates to those same
individuals.
If there are such things as incorporeal agents, then they certainly are of a
different logical type than human agents, and this just means that if we apply PIbid., p. 382-83.
Perhaps Alston means that he is ''following Strawson" just in naming or calling these predicates
"P-predicates"; however, the context suggests that he means that he is following Strawson in using Ppredicates as Strawson does.
130 Strawson, Individuals, pp. 97-98.
131 Ibid., p. 98.
132 Ibid., p. 100.
128
129
70
predicates to such entities it will not be in a literal manner. As Terence Penelhum

notes, even if we are willing to admit that incorporeal agents may admit of basic
actions by affecting changes in the physical world "directly," whatever the power
of agency is by which those basic actions would take place would be "positively
abnormal" compared to human agency.,,133 Even Alston admits that such a sense of
agency is "outside our ordinary experience.,,!34 Just how abnormal would such an
incorporeal agent be? Abnormal enough that most of the ways in which we
describe and treat P-predicates in the case of human beings could not be
maintained. 135 In particular, the notion that an incorporeal agent is one (which
Alston described early in his inquiry) "that carries out intentions, plans, or
purposes in its actions, that acts in the light of knowledge or belief; a being whose
actions express attitudes and are guided by standards and principles,,136 seems
impossible. For example, if all of God's actions are basic actions, and if "any
change whatsoever" can be a basic action, then we could no longer make sense of
acting upon an intention or a plan or a purpose since none of God's actions would
then be the result of some other action. If we understand every change that takes
place in the world as the result of a basic action of God, then nothing ever happens
as the result of an intention, plan, or purpose. In fact, the relevant M-predicates (in
Alston's sense of "M-predicates" - including intentions, plans, and purposes)
would not seem to apply in any literal way to God. Normally, an agent might
intend to do x without actually doing x, or an agent might intend to do x but not
intend to do x in a particular way, or an agent might intend to do x but then have to
choose which way to do x from a variety of different ways, or an agent might have
the purpose of doing x but might not yet have formulated a clear plan for a way of
doing X.137 However, if all of God's actions are basic actions, then we could make
none of these distinctions in the case of God's acting as an incorporeal agent. All
of this suggests that when we talk about incorporeal agency, such talk is not literal,
and the comparison of corporeal with incorporeal agency has not improved the
prospects for speaking literally about God.
THE PROBLEM OF REFERENCE
Certainly, for most contemporary philosophers of religion, the problem of
religious language has meant the problem of the meaningfulness of religious
language. However, there are also unique but related problems of the reference of
the proper names and definite descriptions, that is, referring expressions, used in
religious language that are separate and distinct from the question of the
meaningfulness of religious language. Several related questions concerning
reference in religious language indicate the kind of issues at stake. Do certain
religious referring expressions refer, and if they do refer, what sort of theory can
133 Terence Penelhum, Survival and Disembodied Existence, p. 42. Penelhum first suggested using
the distinction between basic and nonbasic actions to explore the possibility of a disembodied,
noncorporeal agency. See pp. 40ff.
134 Alston, "Speaking Literally of God," p. 383.
135 For a detailed treatment of the possibility of understanding God as a noncorporeal agent, see
Charles Taliaferro, Consciousness and the Mind of God (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1994).
136
137
Alston, "Speaking Literally of God," p. 367-68.

See Penelhum, Survival and Disembodied Existence, p. 38.
71
we use to explain how such reference is successful? Is it possible to distinguish

between successful reference and reference failure in the uses of religious referring
expressions?
DESCRIPTIVIST ACCOUNTS OF REFERENCE
Philosophers have provided both descriptivist accounts and causal accounts to
explain how reference generally takes place. 138 Each kind of theory of reference
has distinct advantages and disadvantages for use with referring expressions within
religious language. According to descriptivist theories of reference, proper names
and definite descriptions successfully refer because of certain predicates or
characteristics that a particular referent possesses that are truly contained in the
name or description. Descriptivist accounts of reference thus take their departure
from empiricism, realism, and the correspondence theory of truth. Things in the
world possess certain properties or characteristics, and referring expressions are
able to refer to those things in the world by providing the descriptions of their
referents. Different individuals possess different properties, so we must use
different referring expressions to refer to different individuals. Consider the case of
proper names. If a speaker uses the name "Moses," then according to a
descriptivist account of reference, this name refers to an individual who possesses
certain properties or about whom we would say that certain descriptions are true.
For example, if I used the name 'Moses' and someone asked me, "Whom are you
talking about?" or (if the inquisitor were a philosopher), "To whom are you
referring?" I might respond by providing one or several of the many descriptions
that I take to apply truly to Moses, for example, "the baby who was hidden in the
bulrushes," "the man to whom God appeared in the burning bush," "the man who
parted the Red Sea," "the man who led the people of Israel out of Egypt," or "the
man to whom God gave the Ten Commandments.,,139 Since different individuals
possess different properties, we can explain how different referring expressions
have different referents. Using what Keith Donnellan calls "the principle of
identifying propositions," we can determine the referent of a referring expression
by identifying the individual about whom (or which) the "essential descriptions" of
the proper name or definite description are most true. 140
THE CAUSAL THEORY OF REFERENCE
In contrast, the causal theory of reference does not rely upon any predicate,
characteristics, or descriptions to explain successful reference. The individual
referred to by a referring expression, according to the causal theory of reference, is
the individual that occupies the proper place in the historical account of how a
speaker uses a certain name or description to intend to refer to some individual. To
determine the referent of a referring expression using the causal theory of
reference, a story must be provided that details the causal connection between a
particular individual and the use of a particular name or description to refer to that
138 Much of the following is drawn from James F. Harris, "The Causal Theory of Reference and
Religious Language," International lournalfor Philosophy of Religion, Vol. 29,1991, pp. 75-86.
139 For a more complete treatment, see ibid., pp. 75-76.
140 See ibid., p. 76, and Keith Donnellan, "Proper Names and Identifying Descriptions," Synthese,
Vol. 21,1970, pp. 335-58.
72
individual. Causal accounts of reference thus reject the principle of identifying

propositions. In the causal theory, successful reference can take place completely
independently of any set of characteristics or properties of the referent since
successful reference depends solely upon tracing the use of the referring expression
back through its historical usage to the initial "baptism" when it was fIrst used to
refer to a specifIc individual. 141 According to Saul Kripke,
An initial "baptism" takes place. Here the object may be named by ostension, or
the reference of the name may be fIxed by a description. When the name is
"passed from link to link" the receiver of the name must, I think, intend when he
learns it to use it with the same reference as the man from whom he heard it. 142
The causal theory thus explains reference of a proper name, such as 'Moses,' by
tracing the use of the name back through its long history of use within a particular
community to an initial "baptism," when some speaker initially dubbed a particular
individual 'Moses.' When a speaker now uses the name 'Moses,' the same
individual who was the referent of the original use of the name, that is, the
individual who occupies the proper causal position in the chain of the use of the
name, is the referent - completely independently of any characteristic or property
that is commonly attributed to that individual. In the example of the proper name
'Moses,' suppose that we could somehow determine that none of the properties
that religious people commonly attribute to Moses are really true of him. 143 We
would than say such things as "Moses was never placed in the bulrushes" and "It
was not Moses to whom God appeared in the burning bush" and "Moses did not
lead the people of Israel out of Egypt" and "It was not Moses to whom God gave
the Ten Commandments." We would still be "talking about," that is, referring to,
the same individual when we said of that individual that the things we previously
thought to be true of him are not really true. The fact that a particular individual
possesses a particular property and even the fact that an individual possesses the
entire collection of properties commonly attributed to that individual are simply
contingent matters of fact.
.
To capture the intuition that underlies the causal theory of reference, we can
easily imagine a possible world very close to this one in which the same individual
whom we call "Moses" existed but in which that individual was never put in the
bulrushes. And we can imagine that in that other possible world, the individual
whom we call "Moses" was not really the person to whom God gave the Ten
Commandments, and we can do this mental experiment with the same results for
every single known attribute or property commonly attributed to Moses.
141 Such a connection is always established within a community in which other speakers recognize
and use the same referring expression. Thus, the causal theory of reference depends upon the placing of
an individual speaker within a community of speakers of the same language. See Harris, "The Causal
Theory of Reference and Religious Language," pp. 76-77, and Saul Kripke, Naming and Necessity
(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1972), pp. 94-98.
142 Kripke, ibid., p. 96.
143 Harris, "The Causal Theory of Reference and Religious Language," pp. 77-78.
73
REFERENCE AND RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE

Referring expressions within religious language that are supposed to refer to
God and other transcendent entities pose special difficulties since it is obviously
not easy to point to or identify the referents of those referring expressions within
ordinary experience. To address these special difficulties, Richard Miller has
maintained that the causal theory of reference offers some advantage for handling
problems of reference for referring expressions within religious language because
descriptivist theories tend to "undermine" historical religion whereas historical
accounts of reference reinforce the historical validity of religion. l44 Calling the
causal theory of reference "the historical theory" can be very misleading by
overemphasizing the role of "history" in the causal account. It is true that, in order
to fix the referent of a referring expression, a historical account must be given - a
story must be told - in order to arrive at the first link of the causal chain, the initial
"baptism" where the word or description was first used to refer to a specific
individual. So there is a minimal sense in which the causal theory of reference is
historical. However, the causal theory does not use or "validate" the content of any
particular historical account because none of the things said in a particular
historical tradition about a particular individual (the referent) have to be true. The
only important thing is that speakers in the community have used a certain
referring expression intending to refer to the same individual as the individual
referred to in the initial baptism when the referring expression was first used. 145 In
the example of our use of the proper name 'Moses,' according to the causal theory
of reference, the name refers to a particular individual and continues to refer to that
same individual even if none of the things traditionally and historically within the
Jewish and Christian religious communities are true. Kripke completely separates
the accuracy of any historical account used for fixing the referent of a particular
referring expression and the general, theoretical point that there must have been
some initial baptism. Kripke says, "[T]he Biblical story might have been a
complete legend, or it might have been a substantially false account of a real
person.,,146 Such a complete dismissal of the accuracy of the narrative used to fix
the referent would hardly seem to lend support to the historical validity of religion.
THE THEORY OF SPEECH-ACTS
Throughout this chapter, we have seen a continual progression and expansion in
the kind of problems and issues upon which philosophical analysis has been
brought to bear on religious language in the twentieth century. This progression
and expansion of problems and issues for religious language mirrors the changes
and developments (discussed in Chapter I) that took place within analytic
philosophy itself. The failure of logical positivism and the developments within
analytic philosophy that began with ordinary-language philosophy and the later
Wittgenstein have led to very different views about the nature of language, the
nature of religious language, and the nature of the problems that arise in religious
language. The move has been away from a very monolithic view of language and
144 Richard B. Miller, "The Reference of 'God,'" Faith and Philosophy, Vol. 3, no. 1. January 1986,
pp. 10-12.
145 Harris, "The Causal Theory of Reference and Religious Language," pp. 79-80.
146 Ibid., p. 80, and Kripke, Naming and Necessity, p. 66.
74
an essentialist view of meaning that pervaded the views of those in the early part of
the century - including Bertrand Russell, the members of the Vienna Circle, and
the early Wittgenstein - toward a much more flexible and open view of language
and a nonessentialist view of meaning. Early analytic philosophers focused solely
upon abstract propositions or assertions and the related questions about the
meaning and truth of those propositions or assertions. Given these underlying
views of the nature of language, questions were very narrowly circumscribed both
in the way in which they were raised and in the way in which they could be
addressed. The later Wittgenstein and ordinary-language philosophers broke from
this confining view of language in a way that has had a lasting effect upon both the
nature of philosophical analysis and the analysis of religious language. The result
has been a multifarious variety of approaches to analytic treatments of religious
language.
Another development in twentieth-century analytic philosophy, which occurred
contemporaneously with the later Wittgenstein and which shared many of the same
fundamental insights about the nature of language, was J. L. Austin's theory of
speech-acts. Austin also abandoned the essentialism and the emphasis upon
abstract propositions or assertions of the earlier views of language and, in fact,
abandoned as well the notion that "language" (in the abstract) can be the proper
object of philosophical analysis. Austin's theory of speech-acts replaces the
abstract, general, and monolithic notion of language with the concrete, specific,
and multifarious notion of speech-acts. A speech-act is an act wherein a speaker
issues an utterance on a particular occasion, with a particular intention, under
particular conditions, to a particular audience, with particular consequences. In
issuing an utterance, the speaker performs some act in addition to simply saying
something. For example, the speaker might make an announcement or issue a
warning or fulfill a promise. Speech-act analysis involves the analysis of speech
situations that will include the utterance itself, the status or authority of the
speaker, the intentions of the speaker, the specific conditions under which the
utterance is made, the linguistic and social conventions that govern the utterance
and the speaker, and the audience to whom the utterance is issued.
Within speech-act analysis, there is no longer the problem of religious language
to be analyzed and resolved; in fact, there will not really be religious language as
such. There will be many different religious speech-acts - utterances issued by
many different speakers with a variety of different intentions in a variety of
different circumstances to a variety of different audiences with a variety of
different consequences.
SPEECH-ACTS AND RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE
Speech-act theory has obvious applications within and implications for religious
language; however, unlike the theories of the later Wittgenstein, Austin's theory of
speech-acts has failed to have a widespread effect upon the way in which the
problems of religious language are now addressed. While the reasons for the
relative lack of influence of speech-act theory within the treatment of religious
language remain a matter of speculation, at least a contributing factor must be the
technicality and sometimes tedious detail that the analysis involves. Even given the
limited impact of Austin's notion of speech-acts, it is worth noting here some of
75
the attempts to apply a speech-act analysis to religious language and to suggest

some avenues for its further development. 147
The aspect of religious language to which the most obvious and immediate
application of speech-act analysis is possible involves rituals and sacraments. 148
Locutions that occur within the celebration of rituals and sacraments, such as "I
baptize this child ... " or "I absolve you ... " or "I pronounce you husband and
wife,"cannot properly be analyzed as assertions with cognitive content or truth
values. These locutions do not describe some state of affairs or take their meanings
by referring to some empirical fact. The locutions, the speech-acts, are themselves
a constitutive part of the ritual or sacrament itself. For example, part of what makes
baptism what it is requires the proper person with the proper authority in the proper
circumstances at the proper time and to the proper audience to say, "I baptize this
child .... " A similar analysis holds for other locutions that occur during rituals and
sacraments. To be absolved for one's sins simply means, in part at least, to have
the proper authority to say the words "I absolve you ... " in the proper
circumstances and at the proper time. With these examples, the importance of the
act aspect of speech-act analysis becomes apparent. In many circumstances, the
speech-acts are themselves an important, even indispensable, part of the ritual or
sacrament that is at least partially constituted by the appropriate speech-acts. 149
This analysis of the speech-acts of rituals and sacraments leaves untouched
locutions such as "God exists," which have been the focus of most of the attention
concerning questions about the meaning of religious language. Of what help might
speech-act analysis be with such locutions? Are there speech-acts in which the
speaker utters a locution with the illocutionary force of an assertion to make a
statement that is either true or false? Well, one of the acts that a speaker might
perform in issuing a speech-act is to make an assertion, and some of the instances
in which the locution "God exists" is uttered are undoubtedly instances where the
speaker intends to be issuing just such an assertion. However, also undoubtedly,
not all instances in which someone says, "God exists," will constitute an assertion.
Suppose, for example, that I am teaching my class in the philosophy of religion and
I ask the class this question: "What is the critical claim that theists make that
distinguishes theists from nontheists?,,15o A bright and promising student might
answer, "God exists." Now if we take the student's response and conduct a speechact analysis upon it, among the many things that we will conclude is that she is not
making an assertion by saying, "God exists." If there is an assertion at all, it is an
implicit one or an elliptical one that may be something such as "I assert that the
answer to your question is 'God exists"'; however, just the speech-act "God exists"
itself clearly does not have assertive force in this case of affirming the existence of
God.
147 For a detailed treatment of how speech-act analysis might be used in analyzing religious
language, see Donald D. Evans, The Logic of Self Involvement (London: SCM Press, 1963).
148 See James F. Harris, "Speech Acts and God Talk," International Journal for Philosophy of
Religion, Vol. 11, 1980, pp. 170ff.
149 Ibid., pp. 170-71.
150 We might suppose, for the sake of the example, that this is a remedial class in the philosophy of
religion.
76
There are other instances where "God exists" is obviously issued with the force
of an assertion. To analyze such speech-acts, according to speech-act theory, we
must examine not just the locution; we must also look at the circumstances in
which the locution is issued, the conventions by which the speaker is able to make
the utterance, the authority of the speaker, the speaker's intentions, the position of
the speaker, the audience to which the utterance is issued, and the ways in which
the audience understands the locution to determine the force of the utterance. 151 It
is not possible to conduct such an analysis here. The traditional problems of
meaning and reference are not avoided in speech-act analysis, but they are
significantly recast. The focus of the analysis is no longer assertions taken as
assertive, declarative sentences with truth values but rather the force with which an
utterance is issued by a speaker. Instead of analyzing religious language or the
abstract, general claim "God exists," speech-act analysis will focus attention upon
a single occasion (with all of the accompanying particularities) where a specific
speaker issues the utterance "God exists." Such a pursuit leads in the direction of
extreme attention to detail and analysis of individual instances of the specific uses
of different locutions and, except for the general methodology itself, away from
general theories or conclusions.
CONCLUSION
The original attack upon the meaningfulness of religious language by the logical
positivists and the more moderate objections to religious language that followed
prompted a plethora of responses by different contemporary philosophers of
religion. There was a significant burst of interest in and concern about religious
language that dominated much of analytic philosophy of religion for a period that
began roughly in mid-twentieth century and lasted for approximately twenty-five
years. The different responses to the challenge of verification and falsification are
spread across a continuum that ranges from the radically conservative, which
attempt to preserve the literal meaningfulness of religious language, to the radically
liberal, which abandon literal significance altogether. As we have seen, both camps
have their defenders and detractors. The fundamental positions and the
fundamental issues at stake appear to have been clearly sorted through, so the last
two decades before the close of the century saw few new attempts to construct
different accounts of religious language. The issue of verification obviously does
not occupy the center stage any longer in contemporary philosophy of religion, but
the developments that have occurred in the treatment of religious language because
of the challenge of verification are now commonly assumed as part of the context
in which other issues and problems in the philosophy of religion are addressed.
151
For a more detailed treatment, see Harris, "Speech Acts and God Talk," pp. 174-79.
III. The Nature of God and Arguments for the Existence

of God
Theism is characterized by belief in a God that possesses a unique set of

characteristics or attributes. The theistic conception of God that is formed by the
combination of these attributes has been troublesome through the centuries and has
given rise to many questions and criticisms - by theists and nontheists alike - both
of the individual attributes and the collective set of attributes. These problems
persisted throughout the twentieth century and intensified in the last few decades.
Some of the issues concerning the attributes are old ones revisited in light of our
changing knowledge of the natural world as a result of the development of science.
Others are logical issues that have been given new "twists" by contemporary
scholars, quite independently of contingent matters. The coherence of the attributes
that comprise the concept of God is fundamental to theism since the viability of
theism must begin with the viability of the concept of God. Sorting through the
difficulties surrounding the traditional attributes of the theistic deity is such a
fundamental problem that Richard Swinburne devotes approximately two-thirds of
what many consider his seminal work, The Coherence of Theism, to an explanation
and defense of the coherence of these attributes. Although there are many
disagreements among theists that need to be explored, I shall take Swinburne's
view as typical of the traditional theistic concept of God: namely, "that there exists
eternally an omnipresent spirit, free, creator of the universe, omnipotent,
omniscient, perfectly good, and a source of moral obligation."!
The purpose of the first part of this chapter is to examine critically both various
new difficulties that have been raised concerning these attributes as well as various
new interpretations of old difficulties that have existed for centuries. Analytic
philosophy, with its central emphasis on conceptual and linguistic analysis, has
resulted in the availability of much finer honed tools of analysis for use by
contemporary philosophers of religion in the process of examining the concept of
God. Although, in several instances, we may agree that the arguments have been
taken to a "higher level," in the end, there is still significant disagreement
concerning the various individual predicates as well as the set of predicates that
I Richard Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism, Revised Edition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993),
p.99.
77
78
comprise the concept of God. Since it is impossible to treat all of the controversies
associated with the different traditional attributes of God here, I shall focus instead
on the problems and issues that appear to have dominated the literature in the
second half of the twentieth century. These are the controversies arising from
traditional theistic claims concerning God's omnipotence, omniscience, eternality,
impassibility, and necessary existence. 2
OMNIPOTENCE
Careful, conceptual analysis of the notion of omnipotence has demonstrated the
powerful effects of analytic philosophy - frequently frustrating but often clarifying
as well. The literature resulting from various attempts to define omnipotence and
the criticisms directed at those attempts is extensive, and I can do nothing more
here than suggest some of the major sources. 3 Richard LaCroix has argued that a
general definition of omnipotence is not possible, and George Mavrodes has
responded by attempting to provide such a definition. Both Joshua Hoffman and
Bruce Reichenbach have agreed that Mavrodes's definition is inadequate. Few of
the contemporary discussants in the matter of God's omnipotence, including
Mavrodes, have followed Descartes in maintaining that God can do everything,
including the logically impossible. Most have followed Aquinas in maintaining
that God can do everything that is logically possible. Thus, theism does not require
God be able to create square circles or make the same person both married and a
bachelor at the same time. I shall assume here that logical possibility establishes
the range of discourse for all actions so that we can begin to understand better the
notion of omnipotence by saying that God can do everything that can be done.
Does this amount to a limitation upon what God can do? It does not appear so. We
can certainly say, "Well, God cannot create square circles." However, if we
understand possible actions as delimited by logical possibility, then creating square
circles is not a possible action and thus is not something that God cannot do. Other
difficulties in understanding the notion of omnipotence involve actions that seem
to be prohibited by God's nature. God cannot commit suicide or sadistically torture
young children just for the fun of it given his nature. So a further limitation that
can be placed on the range of possible actions for God is that God can do
everything that is not contrary to God's nature. There are other limitations that
must be added as well. Most have thought that God cannot change the past. God
2 I do not treat here the work of Charles Hartshorne, since his view of the divine attributes is so
intimately connected with his process philosophy. See his Man's Vision of God and the Logic of Theism
(New York: Harper and Row, 1941) and The Divine Relativity: A Social Conception of God (New
Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1948).
3 Several of the exchanges have taken place in Philosophical Studies. See Richard LaCroix, "The
Impossibility of Defining Omnipotence," Philosophical Studies, Vol. 32, 1977, pp. 181-90; George
Mavrodes, "Defining Omnipotence," Philosophical Studies, Vol. 32, 1977, pp. 191-202; Richard
LaCroix, "Failing to Define Omnipotence," Philosophical Studies, Vol. 35, 1979, pp. 219-22; Joshua
Hoffman, "Mavrodes on Defining Omnipotence," Philosophical Studies, Vol. 35, 1979, pp. 311-15; and
Bruce Reichenbach, "Mavrodes on Omnipotence," Philosophical Studies, Vol. 37, 1980, pp. 211-14.
Also see Anthony Kenny, The God of the Philosophers (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), Chapter VII;
Stephen T. Davis, Logic and the Nature of God (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1983), Chapter 5; and
Edward R. Wierenga, The Nature of God (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989), Chapter 1. For
Alvin Plantinga's notion of omnipotence, see the discussion of his modal version of the ontological
argument below.
THE NATURE OF GOD AND ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
79
may be able to affect metaphysically contingent states of affairs before and while
they are happening, but once an event has happened and is in the past, even God
cannot make it not happen or change the way in which it happened. While a certain
amount of agreement has developed concerning the need for most of these
qualifications, the exact wording is important and has been the source of frequent
disagreements. 4 The question becomes one of whether or not the notion of
omnipotence, suitably qualified, is a coherent one.
THE PARADOX OF THE STONE
Even when the "restrictions" or qualifications are added to the notion of
omnipotence, many difficult conceptual issues remain. Much of the current
discussion concerning God's omnipotence has been prompted by recently
developed paradoxes that are thought by some to arise from the notion of
omnipotence, even given that God's power is understood as the ability to do
everything that is logically possible and that is consistent with God's nature. One
such paradox is "the paradox of the stone," which poses the question of whether
God can create a stone so heavy that he cannot lift it. 5 Either God can or cannot.
So, if God can create such a stone, there is at least one thing that God cannot do lift it. If God cannot create such a stone, then there is at least one thing that God
cannot do - create it. In either case, it seems impossible for God to do something
that is not obviously logically impossible and that is not obviously inconsistent
with God's nature.
The paradox of the stone has prompted a number of responses that employ
different techniques in efforts to address the apparent paradox.6 One comes from
George Mavrodes, who argues that the supposed paradox is spurious since the
notion of a stone that is too heavy for God to lift is contradictory; hence, the lifting
of such a stone involves a logically impossible state of affairs. A person might
certainly make an object that is too heavy for that person to lift, but on the
assumption that God is omnipotent, the phrase "a stone too heavy for God to lift"
means "a stone that cannot be lifted by Him whose power is sufficient for lifting
anything.,,7 Mavrodes suggests that the contradictory nature of "a stone too heavy
for God to lift" can be seen by comparing the lifting power and the creating power
of God. If one takes the paradox seriously and thinks that it forces some limitation
on God's omnipotence, one might choose to maintain the full power of God's
infinite ability to lift things and restrict God's ability to create by admitting that
God cannot create such a stone. In such a case, has one given up anything?
4 Edward. R. Wierenga provides a summary and discussion of the different versions of the different
qualifications in The Nature oJ God, p. 14-18.
5 Wade C. Savage, "The Paradox of the Stone," Philosophical Review, VoL 76, 1967.
6 In addition to the responses discussed here, see Alvin Plantinga, God and Other Minds (Ithaca,
N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1967), pp. 168-73; Peter Geach, "Omnipotence," Philosophy, VoL 48,
1973, reprinted as Chapter 1 of Providence and Evil (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977);
and G. B. Keene, "A Simpler Solution to the Paradox of Omnipotence," Mind, VoL 69, 1960. For a
critical discussion of different responses to the paradox of the stone, see Stephen T. Davis, Logic and
the Nature oJ God (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1983), Chapter 5.
7 George Mavrodes, "Some Puzzles Concerning Omnipotence," Philosophical Review, 72, 1963, pp.
221-23. Reprinted in Philosophy oj Religion: Selected Readings, edited by Michael Peterson et aL
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), to which the page numbers here refer, p. 113.
80
Mavrodes thinks not. Since God's power to lift is infinite, then God's ability to
create is still infinite also since God can still create everything that it is possible to
lift; therefore, God is not limited in lifting or creating power. 8
The main difficulty with Mavrodes's solution to the paradox of the stone is that
it proceeds on the basis of the assumption that God is omnipotent; however, as
Richard Swinburne points out, the main thrust of Savage's paradox is to call into
question the coherence of the very notion of omnipotence. 9 Mavrodes's claim that
the phrase "a stone too heavy for God to lift" is self-contradictory hinges upon
God's being omnipotent, but one can hardly use the notion of omnipotence to
resolve the paradox until the paradox has been resolved.
Whereas Mavrodes' s response to the paradox of the stone assumes that God
cannot do logically impossible things, Harry Frankfurt takes a different line in
"The Logic of Omnipotence" by arguing that a response to the paradox does not
require such an assumption.1O If we reject the principle that God cannot do
logically impossible things, then, Frankfurt points out, a solution to the paradox
comes very easily. If God can do logically impossible things, then if God can
create the stone, he can just as easily lift it, that is, doing one logically impossible
thing, he can do another. II Frankfurt's response to the paradox of the stone, which
relies upon the principle that God can do logically impossible things, gives away
too much since it amounts to abandoning logic altogether. If the main force of the
paradox is to attack the notion of omnipotence as logically incoherent, then this
"response" seems to strengthen the paradox instead of solving it by apparently
admitting that the notion of omnipotence is fundamentally paradoxical and even
contradictory.
Richard Swinburne has also responded in length to the paradox of the stone.
After considering several different formulations of the notion of omnipotence,
Swinburne finally settles upon the following (which is [D] in his scheme):
[D]: a person P is omnipotent at a time t if and only if he is able to bring about
any logically contingent state of affairs after t, the description of which does not
entail that P did not bring it about at t. 12
Swinburne relies upon [D] to defuse the paradox. When one introduces temporal
operators into the definition of omnipotence, then one can no longer talk of
omnipotence simpliciter, but one must talk of omnipotence relative to a particular
time. [D] allows logically for a person to be omnipotent at one time and not at
another, and Swinburne maintains that "in the ordinary sense of 'person,'" a person
may choose to exercise his omnipotent ability in such a way to make himself cease
Ibid., p. 114.
Richard Swinburne, The Coherence o/Theism, p. 158.
10 Harry Frankfurt, "The Logic of Omnipotence," The Philosophical Review, Vol. 73, 1964, pp. 26263. Reprinted in Philosophy 0/ Religion: An Anthology, edited by Louis Pojman (Belmont, Calif.:
Wadsworth, 1998), to which the page numbers here refer.
11 Ibid., p. 282.
12 Richard Swinburne, The Coherence o/Theism, p. 156.
8
81
to be omnipotent at some future time.13 So, if God chooses to exercise his ability to
make the stone at t, he will cease to be omnipotent after t. While Swinburne sees
his temporal-referenced, modified account of omnipotence as nonrestrictive, it is
questionable that [D] retains a notion of omnipotence that would be acceptable to
traditional theists. In the first place, there is no "ordinary sense of 'person'"
according to which it makes sense to talk of a person being omnipotent at all. It is
only in an extraordinary sense and only in the unique case of God that
omnipotence is even associated with the notion of personhood, which suggests that
there must be something logically unique about the property.
Understood as a power to act, perhaps upon others or oneself, omnipotence is
either an internal relation or an external relation, and given that omnipotence is
predicated of persons only in the case of God, it appears that it must be an internal
relation. However, [D] makes omnipotence an external relation because, according
to [D], God can still be God and yet give up omnipotence. [D] also threatens to
turn all of God's attributes into external relations. If God can exercise omnipotence
at t to give up omnipotence, then presumably God could exercise omnipotence at t
to give up omniscience or goodness or any of his other attributes as well. If he
could not, then he would not be omnipotent at t. Would God still be God after t if
God exercised his omnipotence at t to give up omnipotence, omniscience, and
goodness? Undoubtedly not, and whatever understanding we have of God that
prevents God from remaining God if he gives up omniscience and goodness also
prevents God from remaining God if he gives up omnipotence. 14 The question of
whether God can at one time be omnipotent and at another time not be omnipotent
focuses attention upon another set of problems with the notion of omnipotence.
THE PARADOX OF OMNIPOTENCE
Other contemporary discussion of the notion of omnipotence has been prompted
by what is commonly called "the paradox of omnipotence.,,15 The paradox of
omnipotence arises in connection with the issue of free will and the problem of evil
(which is discussed at length in Chapter VI) and was first explicitly raised by J. L.
Mackie. The paradox is put in deceivingly simple terms: can God make things that
he cannot control?16 Either an affirmative or negative answer to this question
appears to result in serious problems for maintaining the coherence of the notion of
omnipotence. Mackie distinguishes between different levels of omnipotence specifically between first-order omnipotence, which is the unlimited power to act,
and second-order omnipotence, which is the power to determine that powers to act
exist. The paradox arises because if God has second-order omnipotence, then God
13 Ibid., p. 161. For a discussion of temporal considerations in the notion of omnipotence as well as a
distinction concerning different levels of omnipotence ("first-order" and "second-order" omnipotence),
see J. L. Mackie, "Evil and Omnipotence," Mind, Vol. 64,1955, pp. 200-12.
14 There are other considerations involved here as well. For example, powers are sometimes
distinguished from attributes that are distinguished from relations. I maintain that powers and attributes
can best be analyzed in terms of relations, though I have not argued for this position here.
15 The terminology is sometimes confusing here since some scholars refer to the paradox of the stone
as the paradox of omnipotence. I use the two different desiguations here to try and maintain the
distinction between the two problems.
16 Originally in J. L. Mackie, "Evil and Omnipotence," Mind, Vol. 64, 1955. Also in J. L. Mackie,
The Miracle o/Theism (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1982), pp. 160ff.
82
could determine to limit his own powers and to give powers to other creatures to
act in ways that he could not control. It may seem that it is logically impossible for
there to be beings that an omnipotent being cannot control, but it seems equally
logically impossible for an omnipotent being not to be able to create such beings
using his second-order omnipotence. I?
Mackie uses this paradox to argue that the free will defense is the only plausible
defense for the theist to account for the problem of evil. Otherwise, all evil and all
sin are traced back to God, but if the free will defense forces an affirmative answer
to the paradox of omnipotence, this means that there are creatures whom an
omnipotent God cannot control. I8 On the other hand, Anthony Kenny thinks that
the answer to Mackie's question must be in the negative. His treatment of the
paradox of omnipotence is similar to Mavrodes's treatment of the paradox of the
stone. Whether God's creating things that he cannot control is something that is
logically possible depends upon how the notion of omnipotence is defined. Kenny
apparently thinks that if omnipotence is defined suitably, then such an act on the
part of God will result in no limitation on God's omnipotence; if the act would
result in some limitation, then the act is logically impossible and senseless. 19
Kenny's own attempt at a definition of omnipotence is a reformulation of the one
given by Aquinas and can be developed into Plantinga's notion of maximal
greatness, discussed below: "A being is omnipotent if it has every power which it
is logically possible to possess.,,20 Such a treatment of omnipotence requires
quantifying powers and raises issues that can only be resolved within modal logic
(specifically, the use of contrary-to-fact subjunctive hypotheticals). However, the
advantage of treating omnipotence in terms of the sum of all logically possible
powers instead of the ability to perform all logically possible acts is significant
since it appears obvious that powers are not exhausted by the actual effects of
exercising those powers. Still, as Kenny recognizes, such a treatment must include
the claim that the powers that it is logically possible for God to possess must be
consistent with God's nature. 21 God still cannot possess the power to commit
suicide or to torture human beings just for the fun of it.
OMNISCIENCE
The claim that God is omniscient is traditionally taken to mean that God knows
everything - perfectly, and for all eternity. However, it is now widely agreed
among both theists and nontheists that this general claim requires some
qualification. For example, if we take the claim of omniscience to involve
propositional knowledge, then it appears obvious that God can only know true
17 There has been some discussion of whether this is a genuine paradox or simply a difficult issue
that forces a certain response from a theist depending upon whether or not God may have second-order
omnipotence without ever exercising it. See Mackie, The Miracle of Theism, p. 160.
18 Ibid., pp. 161-62. Alvin Plantinga's free will defense and Mackie's criticisms are discussed at
length in Chapter VI.
19 Anthony Kenny, The God of the Philosophers, pp. 94-95.
20 Ibid., p. 96.
21 Ibid., pp. 97-98. There are other difficulties that cause further qualifications as well. Although
God may possess the power to beget a son, he cannot possess the power to beget my son, and although
God might possess the power to write a book, he cannot possess the power to write the book that I
write.
83
propositions. This is simply part of what we mean by "knowing." Consider claims

about the past. Even God cannot know that Germany won the Second W orId War
or that George McGovern was elected president of the United States in 1972 or that
Maggie Thatcher is still the prime minister of England at the beginning of the
twenty-first century since these claims are not true. The past is what it is, and if it
is plausible to claim that God knows everything about the past, then this claim
must be taken to mean that God knows everything about the past as it is, that is,
that God knows every true thing about the past.
If it is granted that God's knowledge of propositions is restricted to true
propositions, as an obvious result of the present analysis of what it means to know,
then this may be seen as no real restriction at all since God still knows everything
that is knowable. Can we then characterize omniscience as knowing all true
propositions, or are there other possible restrictions on God's knowledge that may
be in order? Let us reserve momentarily considerations about God's knowledge
concerning propositions about the future, the truth of which may be still in doubt.
What about God's knowledge concerning true propositions about the present and
past that we already know to be true? Consider what we might call "tensed
propositions" or propositions with "tensed facts.'.22 Norman Kretzmann has
identified certain propositions that apparently can only be known to a single person
at a particular time, for example, the case of Jones who is in the hospital suffering
from amnesia. Other people might have identified Jones and know that Jones is in
the hospital while Jones who does not know that he is Jones still knows that he is
in the hospital. 23 And I can know that I finished writing the preceding section of
this chapter yesterday, but I can only know it for today. Some true indexical
propositions are apparently indexed to the knower while others are indexed to time
and cannot be known by just anyone or "for all eternity.',24
Given the foregoing considerations and others concerning different kinds of true
propositions that it seems implausible to claim that God knows "perfectly and for
all eternity," the commonly accepted position regarding omniscience has come to
parallel that concerning omnipotence: namely, that God knows perfectly and for all
eternity everything that it is logically possible for God to know. Such a
qualification need not be understood as a restriction on God's knowledge, and the
point can be put positively. If God knows everything that it is logically possible for
him to know, then there is nothing that it is logically possible for God to know that
he does not know.
OMNISCIENCE AND FREE WILL
More interesting and more perplexing problems develop from consideration of
God's possible knowledge of the future. If God knows everything about the future
- perfectly and for all eternity - then what are the ramifications of such divine
22 See Richard Swinburne, "Tensed Facts," American Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 27, 1990, pp.
117-30.
23 Nonnan Kretzmann, "Omniscience and Immutability," Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 63, 1966.
24 For responses to Kretzmann, see Nector-Neri Castaneda, "Omniscience and Indexical Reference,"
Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 64, 1967, pp. 203-210, and Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism, 167-72.
Castaneda argues that there is a propositional content to indexicals that can be known by other people,
but Swinburne denies this.
84
foreknowledge for human free will? Normal, contingent events are such that we
take them to be the kinds of events that may happen or may fail to happen. For
example, I am now writing this chapter of this book, but I might have failed to
write it had I been hit by a truck or contracted some terminal disease earlier.
However, if God knew from all eternity that I would be writing this chapter of this
book on this very day, and if God knows only true propositions, then it has been
true for all eternity that I would be doing what I am doing at this exact moment.
And if it has been true for all eternity that I would be doing what I am doing at this
exact moment, then it appears that I could not have done otherwise by choosing to
go fishing rather than writing this chapter in this book at this exact moment on this
exact day. Human free will thus appears to be inconsistent with perfect divine
foreknowledge.
PIKE'S ARGUMENT
This argument has been put very formally and convincingly by Nelson Pike, and
his way of formulating the matter has prompted a plethora of responses and created
the framework within which most of the critical discussion has taken place. It is
thus worthwhile to consider carefully Pike's argument:
1.
"God existed at t1" entails "If Jones did X at t2, God believed at t1 that Jones
would do X at t2."
2.
"God believes X" entails "X is true."
3. It is not within one's power at a given time to do something having a

description that is logically contradictory.
4. It is not within one's power at a given time to do something that would
bring it about that someone who held a certain belief at a time before the
time in question did not hold that belief before the time in question.
5. It is not within one's power at a given time to do something that would
bring it about that a person who existed at an earlier time did not exist at
that earlier time.
6. If God existed at t1 and if God believed at t1 that Jones would do X at t2,
then if it was within Jones's power at t2 to refrain from doing X, then (1) it
was within Jones's power at h to do something that would have brought it
about that God held a false belief at t], or (2) it was within Jones's power at
t2 to do something that would have brought it about that God did not hold
the belief he held at t], or (3) it was within Jones's power at t2 to do
something that would have brought it about that any person who believed at
t1 that Jones would do X at t2 (one of whom was, by hypothesis, God) held a
false belief and thus was not God - that is, that God (who by hypothesis
existed at t1) did not exist at t1.
7.
Alternative 1 in the consequent of item 6 is false (from 2 and 3).
8.
Alternative 2 in the consequent of item 6 is false (from 4).
9.
Alternative 3 in the consequent of item 6 is false (from 5).
85
10. Therefore, if God existed at t 1 and if God believed at t 1 that Jones would do
X at t2, then it was not within Jones's power at t2 to refrain from doing X
(from 6 through 9).
11. Therefore, if God existed at t" and if Jones did X at t2, it was not within
Jones's power at t2 to refrain from doing X (from 1 and 1O)?5
Several people have responded to this argument in various ways. This is a
dilemma in which human free will is as important an ingredient as is divine
foreknowledge; therefore, the dilemma may be dissolved depending upon the
position one takes regarding free will. One might choose to give up the notion of
human free will altogether, in which case the dilemma of God's foreknowledge is
obviously not a dilemma involving free will any longer; however, just as
obviously, such a denial raises severe difficulties involving other attributes of God
and other theistic beliefs about the purpose of human life and the possibility of an
eternal life based on reward or punishment. Similarly, one might take a
compatabilist position regarding free will and determinism, in which case the fact
that a person's action x is causally determined is compatible with that person being
free in respect to x and with that person being morally responsible for x. 26
Alternatively, one might place some limitations upon our understanding of
omniscience and simply deny that knowledge of the future is possible, as Richard
Swinburne does. 27 Swinburne maintains that while the future is under God's
control, God does not have knowledge concerning the future. He defines his more
limited account of omniscience as follows: "A person P is omniscient at a time t if
and only if he knows every true proposition about t or an earlier time and every
true proposition about a time later than t which is true of logical necessity or which
he has overriding reason to make true, which it is logically possible that he
entertains then.,,28 Swinburne's comments help to clarify this limitation. Since God
is omnipotent, he might choose to change the universe in radical ways (for
example, changing the natural laws of the universe) or even destroy it; however, if
God is free, then he will not know in advance all of the ways in which he might
affect the future. Thus, to paraphrase Swinburne, what God knows, he does not
control (that is, the past), and what God controls, he does not know (that is, the
future). Swinburne qualifies what God may know about the future in cases where
God has an "overriding reason" for determining or controlling a future event;
25 Nelson Pike, "Divine Omniscience and Voluntary Action," Philosophical Review, Vol. 74, 1965,
pp. 27-46. Reprinted in Philosophy of Religion: Selected Readings, edited by Michael Peterson, William
Hasker, Bruce Reichenbach, and David Bassinger (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996) to which the
page numbers here refer, pp.117 -18.
26 See Anthony Kenny, "Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom," in Aquinas: A Collection of
Critical Essays, edited by Anthony Kenny (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1969), pp. 255-270, as
well as The God of the Philosophers, Chapter V.
27 Richard Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism, pp. 179-83.
28 Ibid., pp. 180-81.
86
however, this loophole is certainly big enough to generate such a large number of
exceptions as to undermine the entire line of argument. Surely, one might think,
God has a really good reason for acting as he does anytime God acts. What is the
alternative? That God acts capriciously? God must always have good reasons for
acting as he does; the debate will then tum to how much of a good reason must a
good reason be to become an "overriding" reason. Any response then appears to
become arbitrary and ineffective.
The intractable form of the dilemma between divine foreknowledge and free
will assumes an incompatibilist position regarding free will and human actions,
that is, it requires the incompatibility of determinism and moral responsibility and
assumes that free will exists. Among free-willists, there has been near-universal
agreement that for a person S to exercise free will and to have moral responsibility
with respect to some action x at tJ, it must have been possible for S to do other than
x at tl' This principle - that a person is morally responsible for x only if that person
could have done other than x - has become known as the principle of alternative
possibilities (PAP). Though PAP has great intuitive appeal, and though it has been
a mainstay of incompatabilists since the time of Aristotle, PAP has recently been
assailed by Harry Frankfurt, and its status is now much more uncertain than it has
been in the past. 29 While the debate continues among moral philosophers and
metaphysicians concerning the status of PAP, most attempts to resolve the
dilemma of divine foreknowledge and human free will assume that PAP is
preserved. 3o
OCKHAMIST SOLUTIONS TO THE DILEMMA OF DIVINE
FOREKNOWLEDGE
Most of the responses to the dilemma of divine foreknowledge and most of the
critical discussion has centered on the possibility of a general Ockhamist solution
that denies that God's foreknowledge is a part of the "accidental necessity" of the
past. 31 Since it is impossible to treat all of the different responses to Pike in detail, I
will focus upon just the most important considerations here. 32 Further, detailed
treatment of these problems must involve an examination of time and particularly
29 See Harry Frankfurt, "Alternative Possibilities and Moral Responsibility," Journal of Philosophy,
Vol. 66, 1969, pp. 829-39. For a discussion of Frankfurt's attack on PAP and various responses as well
as a defense of PAP, see Laura Waddell Ekstrom, Free Will: A Philosophical Defense (Boulder, Colo.:
Westview Press, 1999).
30 See Linda Zagzebski, "Foreknowledge and Human Freedom," in A Companion to Philosophy of
Religion, edited by Philip L. Quinn and Charles Taliaferro (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1997), pp.
294-96. Zagzebski accepts Frankfurt's rejection of PAP but argues that PAP is not the important issue
for the problem of divine foreknowledge.
31 Marilyn Adams, "Is the Existence of God a Hard Fact?" Philosophical Review, Vol. 76, 1967;
Joshua Hoffman, "Pike on Possible Worlds, Divine Foreknowledge, and Human Freedom,"
Philosophical Review, Vol. 88, 1979; Anthony Kenny, The God of the Philosophers, pp. 51-87; John
Martin Fischer, "Freedom and Foreknowledge," Philosophical Review, Vol. 92, 1983; Joshua Hoffman
and Gary Rosenkrantz, "Hard and Soft Facts," Philosophical Review, Vol. 93, 1984; William P. Alston,
"Divine Foreknowledge and Alternative Conceptions of Human Freedom," International Journal for
Philosophy of Religion, Vol. 18, no. 1, 1985.
32 For a thorough discussion of William of Ockham and the contemporary Ockhamists, see Linda
Trinkaus Zagzebski, The Dilemma of Freedom and Foreknowledge (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1991), Chapter 3.
87
the past, analyses of various notions of necessity, and a theory for sUbjunctive
conditionals and counterfactuals.
William of Ockham attempted to resolve the dilemma of God's foreknowledge
by borrowing and adapting Aristotle's distinction between potency and actuality.
At whatever time a particular determinate truth x becomes true, until that moment
in time, there was some potency for not-x. Though the past is necessary and x is
determinedly true for any moment in time, since the past still allows for potency
for not-x until the moment that x becomes true, the past does not necessitate the
truth of x. Similarly, because there is potency for not-x until the moment that it
becomes true, there is also potency for God's divine foreknowledge of x to be false
- even though God has divine foreknowledge of x for all time and it is
deterrninately true that God foreknew x for all time. Thus, Ockham denies that the
past determinate truth of God's foreknowledge of future contingent events is part
of the "accidental necessity of the past" that exerts some kind of determination
upon those future events. 33 Linda Zagzebski summarizes the point: "So even
though the truth of a future contingent proposition cannot change and the state of
affairs expressed by the proposition will obtain, there is still potency for the
opposite until such time as it becomes actual, and necessity goes with actuality
[that is, the loss of potency results in necessity].,,34 So, for Ockham, God's divine
foreknowledge is compatible with the contingency of future events and with free
will.
HARD AND SOFT FACTS
Many of the attempts by contemporary Ockhamists to exclude God's divine
foreknowledge, one way or another, from the accidental necessity of the past make
use of the distinction between "hard" and "soft" facts that was first introduced by
Nelson Pike in his response to John Turk Saunders. The distinction was
popularized by Marilyn Adams and is now commonly associated with her work. 35
Adams maintains that the dilemma of divine foreknowledge is really a dilemma for
human free will only if God's knowledge of future contingencies is a "hard fact" in
the past, and she denies that this is the case. Some facts in the past extend into the
future (for example, the fact that exists now and has existed for some time in the
past that I will finish writing this book in December), other facts are completely
about the past. She defines a hard fact as follows: "Statement p expresses a 'hard'
fact about a time t =df. p is not at least in part about any time future relative to t ."
And "a Statement p is at least in part about some time t" is defined so that "the
happening or not happening, the actuality or nonactuality of something at t is a
necessary condition of the truth of p.,,36 Thus, facts that are at least partially about
some future time are "soft facts." Only hard facts are completely about the past and
genuinely in the past and thus a part of the accidental necessity of the past. So, for
33 This summary is a synthesis of the treatments found in Zagzebski, ibid., pp. 68-70, and Marilyn
Adams, William Ockham (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1987), Chapter 27.
34 Zagzebski, The Dilemma of Freedom and Foreknowledge, p. 18.
35 Nelson Pike, "Of God and Freedom: A Rejoinder," Philosophical Review, Vol. 75, 1966, pp. 36979; John Turk Saunders, "Of God and Freedom," Philosophical Review, Vol. 75, 1966, pp. 219-225;
and Marilyn Adams, "Is the Existence of God a Hard Fact?"
36 Marilyn Adams, ibid., pp. 493 and 494.
88
example, "I will finish writing this book in December" is obviously a proposition
about December - some months in the future at the moment - and therefore is a
soft fact, though the fact that I will finish writing the book in December exists now
and has also existed before this moment. The crucial point is that God's
foreknowledge is not considered as a hard fact by Adams, and thus, God's
knowledge is not a part of the accidental necessity of the past. If God foreknows at
t) that I will finish writing this book in December, then the truth of the proposition
that constitutes God's foreknowledge, "Harris will finish the book in December,"
obviously depends upon something that will happen some months in the future,
after tJ, and is a soft fact by her account.
Adams thus follows Ockham by arguing that since God's foreknowledge is a
soft and not a hard fact (in fact, God's existence is a soft fact for Adams since that
existence is eternal), God's knowledge is not a part of the accidental necessity of
the past. Since soft facts are not simply and completely about the past but "extend"
into the future, it is still possible to affect the outcome of such facts without raising
the controversial matter of "changing the past" (Pike's premise 4). William Rowe
gives a very illustrative and persuasive example which illustrates the difference
between hard and soft facts. Consider the difference between
fact, In 1941 Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.
fact2 In 1941 a war begins between Japan and the United States that lasts five
years. 37
As a reader considers these two facts sometime after the year 2000, both facts
are simply and completely about the past; however, what if we imagine
considering these facts during the year 1943? Considered in 1943, fact) will be
simply and completely about the past while fact2 will still be about the present and
the future until 1945. The importance of this distinction for the debate concerning
divine foreknowledge and human freedom is that, until 1945, it would still be
within the power of different individuals to do something to alter the fact - either
by extending the war or by ending it sooner. Perhaps decisions made by various
people on either side could have altered the outcomes of various battles, such as
the pivotal naval battle of Midway, in such a way to alter fact2. Likewise, though
God might have foreknown from all eternity that Harris will finish writing this
book by December, various things that I do might affect the outcome of that fact
without affecting something about the past.
While some have embraced the notion of hard facts,38 others have attacked and
ultimately denied the distinction between hard and soft facts. John Martin Fischer,
for example, has argued that Adams's way of treating the distinction collapses all
37 William L. Rowe, Philosophy of Religion: An Introduction (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1978),

p.l63. [Though the war between Japan and the United States ended in 1945 and lasted four years, I use
Rowe's original example to be true to his text.]
38 For example, Alvin Plantinga, "On Oekham's Way Out," Faith and Philosophy, Vol. 3, no. 3,
July 1986, pp. 235-69.
89
facts into soft facts,39 and Zagzebski has raised the objection that the distinction
between hard and soft facts is simply a nominal, artificial one rather than a
genuine, metaphysical one. 40 William Hasker has argued convincingly that the
crucial facts about God's prior beliefs are hard instead of soft facts. 41 1 cannot
examine these criticisms and responses in detail here, but 1 will briefly add an
additional criticism of Adams's treatment of the distinction between hard and soft
facts where it concerns God's beliefs and knowledge. Consider God's beliefs
concerning facti and fact2 at times before 1941. To describe such beliefs, we would
simply say, "God believed before 1941 that Japan would bomb Pearl Harbor in
1941," and, "God believed before 1941 that a war would begin between Japan and
the United States that would last for five years." Call these two facts about God's
knowledge facti and fact2. respectively, and notice that facti and fact 2 are facts
about facti and fact2. respectively. Following common usage, we can say that the
propositions expressing facti and fact2 are extensional, and the propositions
expressing face and fact2 are intensional. It is well known that the truth of a
proposition about an intensional claim is independent of the truth of whatever
constituent propositions it may contain; for example, the truth of "Mary believes
that p" is independent of the truth or falsity of p. Something of the same nature
appears to characterize hard and soft facts in an intensional context. There appear
to be no difficulties in regarding facti as a hard fact, but why is fact 2 not a hard fact
also by parallel reasoninf42 Even if fact2 is taken noncontroversially as a soft fact,
that does not make fact a soft fact. To reason otherwise turns not just all facts
about God into soft facts but all beliefs and claims to knowledge about the future
by human beings into soft facts as well. Consider a moral and legal defense that
takes the form "I can't be blamed for killing Jones at t2 because although 1 knew at
tl that pulling the trigger would fire the gun and kill Jones, at tl the gun had not
fired." Denying that beliefs of the type in fad and fact 2 are hard facts undermines
our common understanding of intensional states and human freedom and moral
responsibility. Therefore, claims regarding whether God's intensional states of
belief and knowledge are hard or soft facts seem to be independent of whether the
content of those intensional states are hard or soft facts. If God believed before
1941 that a war would begin between Japan and the United States that would last
for five years (fact2), then it seems that such a war had to occur (fact2) and that no
human action would prevent or alter the truth of fact2.
Other responses to the dilemma of divine foreknowledge that have attempted to
preserve both God's omnipotence and human free will (and PAP) have followed
Molina, using his suggestion of "middle knowledge," that is, God's perfect
knowledge of what every human free agent would freely choose in every possible
39 John Martin Fischer, "Introduction: God and Freedom," iu God, Foreknowledge, and Freedom,
edited by John Martin Fischer (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1989), pp. 35-36. Also see
Fischer's "Freedom and Foreknowledge" (Chapter 4) in the same volume, originally published in The
Philosophical Review, VoL 92, no. 1, 1983, pp. 67-79. For a response to Fischer, see Joshua Hoffman
and Gary Rosenkrantz, "Hard and Soft Facts," The Philosophical Review, VoL 93, no. 3, 1984, pp. 41934, which is reprinted also in God, Foreknowledge, and Freedom, Chapter 7.
40 Zabzebski, The Dilemma of Freedom and Foreknowledge, pp. 74-76.
41 William Hasker, God, Time, and Knowledge (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989),
pp.75-95.
42 I am here assuming that not all facts about God are soft simply because God is eternal.
90
situation. Middle knowledge is very special since it is contingent knowledge about

contingent states of affairs in the world, and God supposedly has middle
knowledge before creation and uses middle knowledge in his creation of the
universe. Alvin Plantinga and Alfred Freddoso have both defended a solution to
the dilemma of divine foreknowledge using Molina's notion of middle
knowledge. 43 Plantinga's lengthy response to Pike attacks Pike's premise 6 as
being nonexhaustive of the different ways in which a person may refrain from
doing an action. 44
Contemporary treatments of middle knowledge become involved in the analysis
of subjunctive conditionals, counterfactual conditionals, and possible worlds. A
defender of middle knowledge must defend "counterfactuals of freedom," where
presumably agents are free to make certain counterfactuals about their actions true.
(For example, if I were offered the opportunity to ride on the space shuttle, I would
go.) Criticisms of middle knowledge cover a wide spectrum. 45 Especially
noteworthy is William Hasker's detailed and convincing argument for the rejection
of middle knowledge. Hasker argues that there are no true counterfactuals of
freedom since no genuinely free human agent has it within his power to make a
counterfactual of freedom true. 46
Finally, others, trying to reconcile and preserve both divine foreknowledge and
human free will, have followed Boethius by denying the usual asymmetry between
the past and the future involving God's knowledge. For example, Eleonore Stump
and Norman Kretzmann maintain that God's knowledge is timeless - outside of
time altogether - and they deny that an eternal being can have foreknowledge at
al1. 47 On this account, an eternal God's knowledge of an event is simultaneous with
that event so that the way of constructing the dilemma of divine foreknowledge in
terms of God's knowing in the past some true proposition about the future would
not be permitted. 48 The relationship of God's knowledge to time leads to a
discussion of the attribute of eternality.
ETERNALITY
The transcendent otherness of God removes God in various ways from this
world and the natural laws and metaphysical features of this world. One of the
most perplexing issues involving God's transcendent nature is how God is related
to time. One of the difficulties involved in sorting through the different positions
43 See Alvin Plantinga, The Nature of Necessity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974), Chapter 9,
and Alfred Freddoso's Introduction in On Divine Foreknowledge: Part N of the Concordia, Luis de
Molina (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1988).
44 Alvin Plantinga, God, Freedom, and Evil (New York: Harper & Row, 1974), pp. 66-73.
45 For a critical discussion of these criticisms, see Zabzebski, The Dilemma of Freedom and
Foreknowledge, pp. 14lff.
46 William Hasker, God, Time, and Knowledge, pp. 39-52. For a lengthy response to Hasker and a
defense of Plantinga, see Edward R. Wierenga, The Nature of God, pp. 150-160. Anthony Kenny also
attacks Plantinga's notion of middle knowledge in The God of the Philosophers, pp. 67ff.
47 Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann, "Eternity," Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 78, 1981.
Reprinted in The Concept of God, edited by Thomas V. Morris (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1987), p. 247.
48 Others have rejected this way of resolving the dilemma. Kenny calls the timelessness of God
"incoherent" while Swinburne denies that timelessness is consistent with other theistic beliefs about
God.
91
on this issue is that different people have used terms such as "eternal," "timeless,"
and "everlasting" in different ways with different meanings. Considering the
different meanings for "eternal" is helpful for identifying and distinguishing the
way in which scholars have divided on the issue of God and time. According to the
Oxford English Dictionary, the word 'eternal' has two similar but different
meanings: "infinite in past and future duration; without beginning or end; that
which has always existed and always will exist" and "not conditioned by time; not
subject to time relations." Most medieval scholars - including Anselm, Augustine,
Aquinas, and especially Boethius - took God's relationship to time to be
characterized by the second definition given of "eternal," according to which God
is "not conditioned by time; not subject to time relations." God is regarded as thus
"outside" of time and "timeless," and, as such, God does not have a beginning or
end or a history or a biography.
ET-SlMULTANEITY
Two contemporary defenders of a view of God's timelessness, which is based
on Boethius, are Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann. Stump and Kretzmann
pay particular attention to the problem of simultaneity that has plagued the
Boethius view, according to which all time exists "all at once" for God. Several
critics have thought that if God is timeless and if all time exists at the same time,
then this raises the severe problem that all events in human history occur
simultaneously. The result, to paraphrase Anthony Kenny, is that Nero fiddles and
Rome burns while I am writing this book.49 Stump and Kretzmann attempt to
address such criticism by developing their notion of ET-simultaneity - a notion
that is derived from the lesson learned from Einstein's theory of relativity that
simultaneity must be specified relative to a frame of reference. Stump and
Kretzmann take the normal temporal order of things and God's divine, atemporal
order of things as requiring references to two distinct frames of reference for
specifying simultaneity. They define ET-simultaneity as follows:
Let "x" and "y" range over entities and events. Then:
(ET) for every x and every y, x and y are ET -simultaneous if
(i) either x is eternal and y is temporal, or vice versa; and
(ii) 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
(iii) for some observer, B, in one of the infinitely many temporal reference
frames, x and y are both present - i.e., either x is observed as eternally
present and y is temporally present, or vice versa. 50
Such an understanding of the nature of God seems the best way to protect the
integrity of God's other metaphysical attributes. If God is "unconditioned" by time,
49
39.
Anthony Kenny, The God of the Philosophers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), pp. 38-
50 Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann, "Eternity," Journal of Philosophy, VoL 78, 1981, pp.
429-58. The pages numbers here refer to the reprint in The Concept of God, edited by Thomas V.
Morris (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 231.
92
God does not change by growing old or weak; God's immutability, simplicity, and
omnipotence are thus preserved. 51 If God is timeless, then God's experience is also
unconditioned by time; so God does not deliberate before coming to know or
acting. Another significant advantage of viewing God as outside and independent
of time is that such a view is taken by many to resolve the dilemma between divine
foreknowledge and human free will that arises because of a linear understanding of
time and the asymmetry of the past to the present and the future, that is, God
supposedly knows in the past what one will do now or in the future. If God is
timeless and God's knowledge is timeless, then the dilemma between divine
foreknowledge and free will cannot be constructed in its usual way, that is., God's
past knowledge does not conflict with future actions by some agent. But these
advantages come at a significant price. As Stump and Kretzmann acknowledge,
God cannot really be said to foreknow anything. According to the definition of ETsimultaneity, no event occurs after God's awareness of that event relative to God's
frame of reference, and "future" events are future only relative to our temporal
frame of reference. 52
Several critics have raised different objections to the notion of ET-simultaneity,
including Zagzebski 53 and Hasker. In addition, others have objected that the very
notion of timelessness, which Stump and Kretzmann are trying to explain with
their definition of ET-simultaneity, is itself incoherent. Hasker, who defends his
own notion of timelessness, specifically asks,
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 is for that entity's existence to be spread out in a temporal sequence but in eternity, nothing exists in temporal sequence, how can a temporal "y" be
present in eternity? Again, to be eternal means to exist in a "total present"
without temporal sequence, so how can an eternal "x" be present in time ?54
It is possible to gain some conceptual purchase on the notion of timelessness
and ET -simultaneity by considering some of the physics and psychology that
underlie human experience. 55 The word "present," for example, is commonly
understood as the cutting "knife-edge" of the future as it becomes past, and it is
commonly agreed that human experience is only of the present - the "here and
now." Some events, which are yet to become actual, are "out there," in the future,
and we cannot experience them until they "get here," to the present. Such a view of
human experience is naive and misleading. There is no support for the notion of an
unextended, absolute present in empirical psychology; neither is it supported by
philosophical analysis. In attempting to explain the smooth "flow" of human
51 For a critical discussion of the relationship of timelessness to these attributes, see Nelson Pike,
God and Timelessness (New York: Schocken Books. 1970), Chapter 3, and Richard Swinburne, The
Coherence of Theism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), pp. 219ff.
52 Stump and Kretzmann. ibid., p. 247.
53 Zagzebski, The Dilemma of Freedom and Foreknowledge, p. 41ff.
54 Hasker, God, Time, and Knowledge, p. 164.
55 Much of the following is drawn from James F. Harris, "An Empirical Understanding of
Eternality," International Journalfor Philosophy of Religion, Vol. 22, 1987, pp. 165-83.
93
experience, William James used the notion of an extended present moment - the
specious present (a notion he borrowed from Charles Peirce). Human experience is
continuous and smoothly flowing because our experience is not of discrete instants
of time but of extended periods of time. Each experience involves what James
called "the echo of the objects just past" and "the foretaste of those just to
arrive.,,56 The specious present is not the unextended "knife edge" of the absolute
present moment but more like the gentle peak of an arc between future and past.
Consider, for example, how we experience a musical melody. We do not
experience each note separately and distinctly from the others but a "flow" of the
notes as they are related to one another. Exactly how far the specious present
moment is extended along the curve of the arc is a function of both human
anatomy and the different circumstances involving the particular experience.
Psychological experiments indicate that most people experience a specious present
in a range of from one half second to six to twelve seconds. Various drugs and
conditions such as fatigue and illness can affect one's experience of the specious
present (which may explain the reported mystical experiences of some ascetics).57
The important point is that there is no theoretical limitation on the specious
present, and if it is easy to imagine other species of animals or intelligent aliens
with greatly expanded specious present moments, then it is possible to imagine a
divine being with an infinitely extended specious present moment. Such an
understanding provides one way of providing some plausible conceptual
understanding of how temporal events might be eternally related. The specious
present also provided an empirical grounding for Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poetic
waxing about divine timelessness in his Omniania:
It is not impossible that to some infinitely superior being the whole universe
may be as one plain, the distant between planet and planet being only as the
pores in a grain of sand, and the spaces between system and system no greater
than the intervals between one grain and the grain adjacent.
If similarly long extended periods of time are thought of as compressed into one
eternally extended specious present, then all time may be understood as
experienced as "now" by God.
TIMELESSNESS, DIVINE PROVIDENCE, AND DIVINE PASSIBILITY

Even if it is possible to provide some conceptual explanation of the notion of
timelessness, what does such an understanding imply for other common theistic
beliefs about the nature of God? Several critics have objected that attributing
timelessness to God undermines the common belief that God can be and has been
involved in human affairs and human history. This objection has been put in
different forms. For example, Nelson Pike has objected that if God is timeless, then
God cannot be a person since the notion of a timeless person is incoherent. 58
William James, Principles of Psychology (New York: Henry Holt, 1893), Vol. IV, p. 606.
See Harris, "An Empirical Understanding of Eternality," for more detailed discussion of the limits
of the specious present, pp. 177ff.
58 Nelson Pike, God and Timelessness, Chapter 7.
56
57
94
Leaving aside for the moment the question of whether God is a person, let us
consider other objections raised against regarding God as timeless on the grounds
that divine providence and divine passibility are both undermined. For example,
Richard Swinburne claims that attributing timelessness to God "seems to contain
an inner incoherence and also to be incompatible with most things which theists
ever wish to say about God."s9 Perhaps foremost in those things that theists may
want to say about God is that God is both involved in and affected by human
affairs. If God is "outside" time, then it seems normal temporal predicates cannot
meaningfully be applied to God, and God's immutability must be understood in a
strong sense according to which God is unchanged by any temporal events. If God
is unchanged by any temporal events, then it becomes increasingly conceptually
difficult to make sense of divine agency (whatever form it might take) and of
divine passibility. Using the distinction between internal and external relations is
helpful in understanding the problem of the effect of timelessness on God and the
distinction between "real" change and "accidental" change. 6o Internal relations are
those that are essential to the actual nature of a thing while external relations are
those that are nonessential. For me simply to observe the flower in the crannied
wall, for example, does not change the essential nature of the flower, but for me to
cut the flower and kill it does; thus, observing the flower is an external relation
while killing it is an internal one. 61 Attributing timelessness to God appears to
make all of God's relations external ones.
If all of God's relations are external, how does one make sense of the act of
creation and specific accounts of such actions as appearing to Moses or Paul? And
what of God's reaction to the suffering of an innocent child? About God's actions,
one might say that since God is timeless and immutable in a strong sense that God
has always intended to do whatever it is that he does so he is unaffected by what it
is that he does (though human beings may obviously be affected). Whatever sense
we may then make of speaking of "reasons" for God's actions, they would be
independent of human beings and the affairs of human beings. Thus, when God
appeared to Moses or to Paul, God did not change, but Moses and Paul did. 62 Such
a view, though, raises serious questions about traditional theistic beliefs. For
example, it would mean that God had intended from all eternity to deliver the Jews
from captivity in Egypt, quite independently of anything that anyone - including
Moses and Pharaoh - did or said. For Christians, it seems impossible to make sense
of God's acting to redeem the world by sending Jesus Christ to earth if God had
intended to do so for all eter~ity re~'1ardless ?f w~at ~nyone said or did or w~at
happened throughout human hIstory. If God s bemg tImeless means that creatIOn
is not an internal relation of God for Muslims, and if the deliverance from Egypt is
c
Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism, p. 228.

Using this distinction is more helpful, I think, than using "the Cambridge Criterion" introduced by
Peter Geach, "What Actually Exists," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplemental Volume,
Vol. 42,1968, pp. 7-16.
61 It should be noted that several have criticized and rejected this distinction.
62 For a discussion of the notion that God has eternal intentions, see Swinburne. The Coherence of
Theism, pp. 221-22.
63 Dun Scotus notwithstanding. Although Scotus held that the incarnation was intended by God from
all eternity and not as a result of original sin, this certainly has never been and is not now the dominant
view.
59
60
95
not an internal relation of God for Jews, and if the redemption of the world through
Jesus Christ is not an internal relation of God for Christians, then such a view of
God hardly seems to capture what theists have meant by "God."
GOD AS EVERLASTING
Such problems have led many scholars to reject the claim that God is timeless
and "outside" time in favor of an understanding of God as everlasting - an
understanding of God based upon the first definition of "eternal" from the OED,
given above. According to this view, God is everlasting - infinitely extended in
time without beginning or end - but definitely and essentially in time.
Considerations concerning ET -simultaneity and an infinite specious present
moment notwithstanding, making sense of divine providence and the more
fundamental notion of divine agency when God is regarded as timeless and outside
of time seems to be an intractable problem and a telling one against such a view.
Primarily for this reason, several contemporary thinkers have defended the claim
that God is eternal in the sense of being everlasting (infinitely extended in time),
including Richard Swinburne, Nicholas Wolterstorff, and Stephen Davis. 64
Swinburne and Davis argue that the notion of timelessness is incoherent, and
Wolterstorff and Davis argue that a timeless God cannot be the Christian God. In
making the latter point, W olterstorff focuses upon the role of God as Redeemer and
argues that God as Redeemer must change. 6s Davies focuses upon the role of God
as Creator. 66 In both roles, it appears that one must be able to apply temporal
predicates meaningfully to God, and, as I have argued above, if God is timeless,
such roles and such predicates cannot be internal predicates of God. Swinburne,
Wolterstorff, and Davis certainly seem correct so far as traditional Christian
theology is concerned. For God to be the Creator or the Redeemer requires certain
temporal predicates to be essential, internal predicates of God.67
DIVINE P ASSIBILITY AND IMPASSIBILITY
The question of whether God has both internal and external relations also serves
to focus the discussion of God's passibility or impassibility. Exactly how are we to
understand God's reaction to human suffering and animal suffering? Given God's
omniscience, God must be aware of human and animal suffering, but is God
affected in any way by this knowledge? Does God suffer as a result of human and
animal suffering? In terms of the history of Christian theology, the neo-Platonist
64 Richard Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism, pp. 217ff; Nicholas Wolterstorff, "God
Everlasting," God and the Good: Essays in Honor of Henry Stob, edited by C. Orlebeke and L. Smedes
(Grand Rapids. Mich.: Eerdmans. 1975), pp. 181-203. Reprinted in Philosophy of Religion: Selected
Readings, edited by Michael Peterson et aI., pp. 125-33; Stephen T. Davis, "Temporal Eternity," from
Logic and the Nature of God (Grand Rapids. Mich.: Eerdmans, 1983). Reprinted in Philosophy of
Religion: An Anthology, edited by Louis Pojman (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1998), pp. 235-42. Page
references to both Wolterstorff and Davis refer to the reprinted versions.
65 Wolterstorff, "God Everlasting," pp. 125-26.
66 Davis. "Temporal Eternity," pp. 237ff.
67 If this is true, one might wonder why Aquinas, Boethius, and others have taken God to be
timeless. To this question I have no definite answer, but Swinburne's suggestion that attributing
timelessness to God in Christian theology resulted from neo-Platonism seems very plausible. See
Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism, p. 225.
96
view that God does not change and is not affected by any contingent events or
circumstances, including events and circumstances that result in suffering, has been
the dominant and orthodox position. 68 Impassibility appears to be most compatible
with God's other metaphysical attributes - immutability, perfection, simplicity, and
eternality.69 The difficulty comes with the apparent incompatibility of impassibility
with divine love. For Christians specifically, the current view has certainly shifted
from neo-Platonism to a much more personal view of God. In order of priority, the
dominant current view regards divine love as outranking impassibility and the
other metaphysical attributes. As Richard Creel explains, "It is conceivable that
one could affirm that God is love and deny that God is impassible yet remain a
Christian, but it is inconceivable that one could affirm that God is impassible and
deny that God is love, yet remain a Christian.,,70 Jung Young Lee puts the matter in
terms of a conflict between God's nature and God's attributes: "The divine nature
governs the quality of divine attribute," he says; thus, "if Agape is the divine nature
and passibility is a divine attribute, the latter must conform to the former.,,71
Central then to the debate of whether God is passible or impassible must be an
understanding of Divine Love. I will return to a further consideration of this matter
momentarily.
It will be helpful to adopt some definition of impassibility. There have been
many different definitions provided; however, they are all variations on a common
theme.72 For sake of discussion, I will use the definition offered by Richard Creel,
which captures the most fundamental elements of impassibility:
To say that God is impassible is to say that God cannot [my emphasis] be
affected by anything .... Hence, it is not sufficient to say merely that God has
not been or never will be affected by anything. Impassibility means it is
logically impossible for God to be affected by anything. 73
Implicit in Creel's definition and Lee's characterization of impassibility is the
distinction that I have used earlier between internal and external relations.
Undoubtedly, God is related to human and animal suffering in some manner. The
question is what is the nature of that relationship. For defenders of God's
impassibility, including Creel, God cannot be related to human suffering as an
internal relation since God's essential nature would then change. If it is logically
impossible for God to be affected by suffering, then God's relation to suffering
68 For a critical discussion of the history of impassibility (which focuses on Augustine and the
Stoics) and its relation to the other divine attributes, see Nicholas Wolterstorff, "Suffering Love," in
Philosophy and the Christian Faith, edited by Thomas V. Morris (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of
Notre Dame Press, 1988), pp. 196-237.
69 See Richard Creel, "Immutability and Impassibility," in A Companion to Philosophy of Religion,
edited by Philip L. Quinn and Charles Taliaferro (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1997), pp. 313ff, for a
short discussion of impassibility and the other attributes of God. Also see, Nicholas Wolterstorff,
"Suffering Love," pp. 217ff.
70 Richard Creel, Divine Impassibility (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 2.
71 lung Young Lee, God Suffers for Us: A Systematic Inquiry into a Concept of Divine Passibility
(The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974), p. 7. Lee is also quoted by Creel, ibid.
72 For a detailed discussion of different definitions and a critical survey of the literature, see Richard
Creel, Divine Impassibility, pp. 3ff.
73 Richard Creel, "Immutability and Impassibility," p. 313.
97
must be an external relation. This represents the classical neo-Platonist, Stoical

view of God. Otherwise, human affairs and human actions would have the power
to causally produce changes in God's nature.
LAMENT FOR A SON AND REDEMPTIVE LOVE
On the other hand, Wolterstorff takes God's relation to suffering to be an
internal one. For him, the view that God is, by nature, impassible and that "God
remains blissfully unperturbed while humanity drowns in misery" is a "grotesque"
one. 74 Protecting the perfect, immutable, neo-Platonist and Stoical view of God
comes at too high a price for Wolterstorff. While he agrees that God does not
suffer pathos or the "negative" emotions, W olterstorff still maintains that God
should be understood as suffering, since he loves his creatures and delights in their
well-being but suffers in their suffering. 75 The view that God's benevolence is
simply God's eternal disposition to do good is thus unsatisfactory for Wolterstorff.
In such a view, God's redemptive love and the act of redemption is not seen as the
result of God's concern for and reaction to the human condition of sin and
suffering but simply as part of God's nature.
Redemptive love, Wolterstorff argues, must be the result of God's rejoicing and
suffering with his creatures. Drawing upon the very personal experience of the
death of his own son, he poignantly develops the image of a God who suffers even
as humans suffer when the "bonds of love" are severed. 76 Suffering the
catastrophic death of a child, any loving parent's greatest fear, gives one some
insight into Jesus' love for us and God's love for his Son. "Through our tears we
see the tears of God," he says, and "through the prism of my tears I have seen a
suffering God.'.77 God's act of redemption is thus understood as a result of his
being affected by human sin and suffering and not as a result of his perfect,
immutable, benevolent nature. W olterstorff s view of a suffering God thus
reinforces the claim that God must be regarded as both everlasting and changing in
order to be the Redeemer that is central to Christian theology. If God is unaffected
by either the sinful condition of man or the suffering and death of Jesus Christ,
then, for Wolterstorff, the notion of redemption is hardly coherent.
If God is affected by human suffering, there still remain difficult issues in
determining in just what respect God may be affected. As Richard Creel has
pointed out, it makes some significant difference whether it is God's nature, God's
will, God's actions, God's feelings, or God's knowledge that is being affected?8
The argument for God's passibility is most strong concerning God's feelings and
74 Nicholas Wolterstorff, "Suffering Love," p. 211. Charles Taliaferro also develops a theory of
passibility in Consciousness and the Mind of God (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp.
315-33. I do not discuss his theory of passibility here, but I do discuss his theory of integrated dualism
in some detail below.
75 Ibid., pp. 214-15 and pp. 224ff.
76 Nicholas Wolterstorff, "Suffering Love," in Philosophy and the Christian Faith, edited by
Thomas V. Morris, pp. 196-237, and Lament for a Son (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans Publishing Co.,
1987).
77 Wolterstorff, Lamentfora Son, pp. 80 and 81.
78 Richard Creel, Divine Impassibility, Chapters 2 and 7. Also see Kelly James Clark, "Hold Not
Thy Peace at My Tears," in Our Knowledge of God, edited by Kelly James Clark (Dordrecht,
Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1992), pp. 173ff.
98
God's actions. For Christians, if God is "unmoved" by the great calamities of the
human condition and if God is unfazed by a parent's lament at the soul-rending,
agonizing death of a child and if God's acts of redemption, including the act of
sending his son to die, are simply the result of God's perfect, preprogrammed
nature, then it seems implausible to retain any of the meaning in the claim that God
is Love. Such a treatment of God's passibility trades heavily, however, upon an
anthropomorphic attribution of human emotions and actions to God and leads to an
inquiry into the difficulties of understanding the notion of divine agency.
GOD AS PERSONAL AGENT
Although the attributes of omnipotence, omniscience, etemality, and necessary
existence have been more widely discussed in the literature - both historically and
recently - perhaps the greatest conundrum in understanding the nature of the deity
within theism is formed by the set of attributes that are associated with regarding
God as a personal agent. Even if the puzzles involving the other metaphysical
attributes normally attributed to God are resolved, it seems that the nature of God
must be explained in some way and in some terms that are at least similar to the
various characteristics that are commonly attributed to human agents. Thus, God is
said to be loving or caring and to have awareness and knowledge and reasons for
performing actions having relationships. These "personal" characteristics
distinguish the God of theism from the Prime Mover of Aristotle, the metaphysical
Absolute of Hegel, and the One of Hinduism. 79
The difficulties with unraveling the conundrum of personal agency involve the
attributes of incorporeality, omnipotence, consciousness, omnipresence, and
omnificence and are far too complex to be dealt with in anything but the most
summary fashion here. I will raise problems instead of offering solutions and will
simply recognize the efforts of others who have attempted to provide answers.
DIVINE AGENCY, INTENTIONS, AND PURPOSES
Richard Swinburne's treatment of divine agency is representative of a classical
theistic position. 80 In the role of creator and sustainer of the universe, God acts
upon the universe and carries out various intentions and purposes and has various
other states of consciousness. To explain how God acts, Swinburne adopts Arthur
Danto's notion of basic actions (discussed in Chapter II). Basic actions are actions
that an agent simply does but does not do in virtue of doing something else, and
mediated actions are actions that an agent does in virtue of performing some other
action. 8! Thus, for a human agent, moving one's arm is a basic action while, by
79 Many critics have objected that the claims about the personhood of God which have become so
thoroughly ingrained in traditional theism are the confused result of a complete misunderstanding of the
nature of persons originating in Cartesian dualism. Such criticism is found in Kai Nielsen, "God,
Disembodied Existence and Incoherence," Sophia, Vol. 26, no. 3, 1987, and Richard Rorty, "Mind as
Ineffable," in Mind in Nature, edited by Richard Q. Elvee (San Francisco: Macmillan, 1973). The most
thorough discussion of the matter of dualism and its effect upon the traditional theistic conception of
God is found in Charles Taliaferro, Consciousness and the Mind of God (Cambridge: Cambridge
80 Richard Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism, Chapter 8.
8t Ibid., pp. 104ff. and p. 135. Derived from Arthur Danto, ''Basic Actions," American Philosophical
Quarterly, Vol. 2, 1965, pp. 141-48.
99
moving my arm, I might send a signal to someone. For God, the creation of natural
laws may be understood as a basic action and the consequences or happenings that
follow from those laws may be understood as mediated actions through which God
sustains the universe.
There are many difficult issues involved in such a description of divine agency
that lead into metaphysical theory and the philosophy of mind and cannot be dealt
with in any detail here. I shall only suggest the direction in which the inquiry
should proceed and some of the problems that need to be resolved. Perhaps the
most fundamental issue is the question of the nature of the dependence of
consciousness and various conscious states, including intentions and purposes, on a
physical body and, specifically, a brain. The "dependence argument" - the
argument that consciousness and personal identity depend upon the physical body
- continues to be a major difficulty for the theist, both in terms of explaining God
as a noncorporeal, divine agent and in terms of explaining immortality in terms of
a continued disembodied existence of an individual (discussed in Chapter VII).
Swinburne dismisses this problem much too quickly and summarily, saying that we
are sometimes willing to attribute intentions and agency in circumstances where
we do not understand the physical. In the case of Uri Geller, the man who claimed
to have the power of telekinesis and who supposedly used it to bend spoons on
television shows, we may, Swinburne suggests, accept his power to bend the spoon
(at a distance, by a mental act) and his intention of doing so, although we cannot
supply an explanation of the physical forces involved, in order to accept his agency
as a possible explanation for the bent spoons. Since the correlation of the mind
with the brain is still an "unestablished scientific hypothesis," "we may," he
concludes, "explain a man's thoughts by his intentions without us having to believe
that certain brain states and natural laws have to hold in order for a man to think or
have intentions."s2 The dependence argument is discussed in some detail in
Chapter VII in conjunction with the issue of immortality, so I will make only a few
brief comments here concerning the impact of Swinburne's comments on the
notion of divine agency.
There are many questions about how consciousness and such mental states as
intentions and purposes can be meaningfully ascribed to a noncorporeal divine
spirit. First, it is very tenuous to pin nonphysical agency on an argument from
ignorance, that is, in effect saying we do not know that it does not work (as in the
case of Geller). In fact, very few serious-minded people believed that Geller's
mysterious powers were genuine, and his appearances had much more of the air of
a circus sideshow where the audience knows that it is being conned but just does
not know how. Perhaps it is meaningful to speak of intentions and purposes where
there is no brain, but it is a much greater stretch of credulity and understanding to
speak of purposes and intentions where there is nothing physical at all. s3
Philosophers of mind now debate whether computers can think and have intentions
and purposes, but, in this case, microchips have simply replaced brains in the
debate, and a functional analysis of the process of thinking may easily attribute
Swinburne. ibid. p. 141.
Swinburne argues that such a notion is meaningful. See ibid., pp. 106ff. This issue is discussed in
the context of the issue of immortality in Chapter VII.
H2
83
100
thought to a microchip. Since the commonly accepted mind-body dualism does not
work very well in this regard, some have struggled with alternative explanations
for the physical setting for embodiment of divine agency in order to make sense of
that notion (see the discussions of Grace Jantzen and Charles Taliaferro below).
The age-old problem of literal descriptions versus analogical uses of language and
the attempt to maintain something of the distinction between the transcendent and
immanent natures of God confound the issue of divine agency as much as any
other issue concerning God's nature. On one side of the razor-sharp edge of a
meaningful theistic notion of divine agency is pantheism, and on the other side is
atheism. Attempts to balance on this thin edge have resulted in some very strained
positions that seem to slide in one direction or the other. For example, Swinburne
says that although God has no body, we must understand God as embodied in the
world in such a manner that God has no particular perspective or "point of view"
but is "dispersed" throughout the world in such a manner that he is "able to move
any part of the world directly.,,84 All actions are thus basic actions for God, and
everything that transpires in the natural universe - everything from supernovas
exploding to planets orbiting the sun to rain falling to rivers flowing to people
writing books - can be understood as direct actions by God.
Many problems are generated by this view. Does this view make sense? Is it
meaningful to ascribe actions and intentions and purposes to God under such a
view? One obvious problem is that even if such a view of divine embodiment does
make sense, it cannot account for ascribing actions based on intentions and
purposes to God before such embodiment; therefore, it cannot account for the
actions of God as Creator, though creation is regarded as a basic action by
Swinbume. 85 This view thus provides no framework and no point of reference to
understand creation as a basic action. Understanding actions based on intentions
and purposes requires a context within which reasonable predications can be made
concerning regularities of events based upon logical and natural laws so that an
agent can choose a course of action that is judged likely to bring about the intended
result, but it hardly makes sense to talk in such a manner concerning the actions of
God if all of God's actions are basic actions.
Can God be reasonably said to have intentions given the other divine attributes
that make up the nature of God? If so, what does it mean to say that God has
intentions? William Alston holds that we should think of God as "literally a
personal agent," but then he is quick to add that God does not have intentions in
the same way that human beings do and that intentions in the case of God are
something "radically different" from what they are in the case of human beings. 86
The question is - given how "radically different" divine intentions are - whether
there is enough residual similarity remaining to the way in which we ascribe
human intentions to give cognitive content to the notion of divine intentions. Just
how different divine intentions are is illustrated by Alston's example: From "God
Ibid., p. 105.
Ibid., p. 106.
86 William P. Alston, "God's Action in the World," in Evolution and Creation, edited by Ernan
McMullin (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1986). Reprinted in William P. Alston,
Divine Nature and Human Language: Essays in Philosophical Theology (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell
University Press, 1989), to which the page numbers here refer, p. 198.
84
85
101
intends x" and "God is omnipotent," we can infer "x will come to be." However,
no such inference is possible with human agents: From "Jones intends x" and
"Jones is not omnipotent," we certainly cannot infer "x will come to be." For a
human agent to intend x means that x mayor may not come to be. In fact, it seems
an essential part of our understanding of human intentions that there are various
circumstances and various courses of actions available to the agent - some of
which are better or worse than others for bringing about the intention and some of
which will thwart the intention completely. A human agent must adjust her actions
to the circumstances in order to bring about the desired action or state of affairs.
Speaking this way about the actions of an omnipotent being hardly seems logically
appropriate. If God is perfect and omnipotent, whatever God does will bring about
his intention. Thus, since God could never fail to bring about an intention, the
following logical point is raised. What difference would it ever make whether God
had an intention or not? Similarly, what difference would it make whether God had
one intention rather than another? Also, human agents cannot intend things that are
not in their control. I cannot intend to fly to Mars, or for the sun to rise tomorrow,
or for another agent to perform some action. But presumably there are no natural
limitations on what God can intend. The lack of any such limitation leads Alston to
endorse a version of "omnidetermination" (or what is more generally called
omnificience), that is., that every single event in the universe is an action of God. 87
Alston considers this possibility on the basis of both causal determinism and
libertarianism. He concludes that omnificience follows logically and
straightforwardly from determinism. Libertarianism still allows for omnificience in
a qualified way, since God could control human free will and limit its scope in
order to bring about his intentions and prevent it from threatening things about the
world that he values by providing limitations and counterbalances to free will in
the natural world. 88
But what does this position mean for free will? If free will is understood as
requiring the principle of alternative possibilities (PAP), the intuitive principle that
a person is responsible for an action only if she could have done otherwise, then
Alston's modified version of omnificience makes the notion of free will based on
PAP vulnerable to the ultimate Frankfurt -type counterexample. Harry Frankfurt's
attack upon PAP is based upon the following kind of case: Suppose that Black is a
mad scientist who has devised a thought-and-will-control device that unerringly
makes another person think, will, desire, intend, decide, choose, and ultimately act
in a way in which he can control. Black wants Jones to perform a certain action x,
and he uses his device to monitor Jones's thought processes, which he can also do
unerringly. Black does nothing so long as Jones is thinking and deciding "on his
own" to do x; however, if Jones thinks, wills, desires, intends, or chooses anything
that leads him to other than x, Black will use his "little black box" to make Jones
do X. 89 Such cases have become known as "counterfactual intervener" cases, and
the metaphysical implications of such cases are very significant. Frankfurt claims
that this type of case demonstrates that PAP is false, since, although Jones is
Ibid., pp. 199-207. Also see J. L. Mackie, The Miracle of Theism, pp. 16lff.
Alston, "God's Action in the World," p. 207.
89 Harry Frankfurt, "Alternative Possibilities and Moral Responsibility," Journal of Philosophy, Vol.
66, 1969. pp. 829-39.
87
88
102
morally responsible for doing x since he did it on his own, we cannot reasonably
say that he could have done otherwise. 90 Omnificience, even modified or qualified
omnificience, turns the mad scientist into an omnipotent (if benevolent) agent
whose actions seem to make human free will and moral responsibility impossible
or, at least, questionable. It is at least as difficult to reconcile human freedom with
omnificience and middle knowledge as it is to reconcile it with divine
foreknowledge.
POST-THEISTIC TREATMENTS OF GOD
Problems with the traditional notion of divine agency have led some to abandon
the classical theistic view of God in favor of post-theistic conceptions of God.
Perhaps foremost among such figures is Charles Hartshorne, who abandons
traditional theistic notions of agency altogether through his process view of God
and his panpsychism, which is not a form of traditional theism at all. Others perhaps most notably Tillich - have abandoned the notion of person in favor of the
notion of Being. 91 Grace Jantzen has abandoned the classical view of God as
incorporeal, while trying to stay within the broad confines of theism, in favor of a
holistic pantheism where God and the world are an undivided whole and God is
regarded as "embodied" in the world in the same way in which people are
embodied in their bodies. 92 At the same time, she tries to avoid a straightforward
pantheism by arguing that God is also transcendent from the world in a similar way
that people "transcend" their bodies by not being simply identical with their
bodies, as reductive materialism maintains. Jantzen attempts to strike some middle
ground between Cartesian dualism and eliminative materialism; the result appears
to be some form of epiphenomenalism where whatever is incorporeal in God's
nature is the result of a function that is dependent upon the world. Such a view
counterbalances the pull of the transcendent nature of God away from the world
and into metaphysical abstraction and reinserts God into the world. The
immanence of God seems to be obviously necessary for God to be a personal,
caring, loving, and redemptive God, for which God needs to be understood as
somehow "in the world." Her view also helps with what we might call the
Christian "paradox of incarnation": if God is incorporeal, how can God be
incarnated in Jesus Christ; how can the incorporeal be corporeal? To attempt to
resolve such a paradox without simply abandoning it, as Luther did, as one of the
great mysteries of God, something must be given up, and Jantzen gives up the
incorporeality of God. 93 This, however, is a steep price to pay and hardly seems
90 Whether Frankfurt is right about the effect of this type of case on PAP and whether moral
responsibility depends upon PAP have been the subject of some debate in the literature on free will.
Peter van Inwagen, for example, agrees with Frankfurt that these cases show that PAP is false in An
Essay on Free Will (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), pp. 179-80, while Laura Ekstrom disagrees in
Free Will: A Philosophical Study (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1999), Chapter 6.
91 One fairly recent such example is Gary Legenhausen, "Is God a Person?" Religious Studies, VoL
22,1986,pp.307-23.
92 Grace Jantzen, God's World, God's Body (Philadelphia, Pa.: The Westminster Press, 1984),
Chapter 5.
93 For a critical (but ultimately negative) assessment of the different theological supports for
incorporeality, see Jantzen, God's World, God's Body, pp. 105-130. See also David Paulsen, "Must God
103
compatible with traditional theism, which is why I have identified this view, along
with Hartshorne's view, as post-theistic. 94
GOD'S AGENCY RECONSIDERED
Charles Taliaferro has formulated a general theory of divine agency in terms of
what he calls "integrated theism," which is intended to preserve much of the
traditional view of God by preserving both the immanent and transcendent aspects
of divine existence. 95 More than any other known figure, Taliaferro attempts to
explain God's agency by developing his own sophisticated theory of persons.
Based upon what he calls an "integrated dualism," Taliaferro's view of persons is a
holistic one that emphasizes the integral wholeness of the embodiment of the
mental in the physical. While metaphysically dualistic, integrated dualism denies
the extremes of that dualism, particularly the extreme privacy and metaphysical
independence of the mental. In the case of human beings, personhood involves an
embodiment that is a continuing process of varying degrees of attachment and
detachment with the physical world. For a healthy existence, the extreme and
artificial bifurcation that is often associated with dualism needs to be avoided.
Thus, one should not think of one's body as "merely" a physical object being
directed by a mental substance, a mind; rather, deliberative actions are "psychophysical" events in which the mind and the body are integrated together
holistically.96
In the case of God, Taliaferro's integrated dualism leads to a view of God as
embodied spirit in the world. The view of God that results from relying upon
Cartesian dualism emphasizes the metaphysically transcendent nature of God
where God is seen as an incorporeal substance directing things "from above" or
from "outside" the corporeal world. On the basis of integrated dualism, just as
persons are integrated wholes of mind and body, God is integrated with the world
in such a way that allows interaction between the two without introducing the same
metaphysical and theological problems that arise from Cartesian dualism.
Taliaferro's integrated dualism thus avoids the extreme identification of God
with the world embraced by Jantzen and provides a plausible conceptual model for
avoiding the age-old metaphysical issues about the interaction of mental and
physical substances. Integrated dualism, for example, offers a much more
promising way of understanding God's relation to the world, and particularly with
human beings, than a view of God, such as Richard Swinburne's, which treats God
as a completely noncorporeal person. 97 The result of a view such as Swinburne's is
that God becomes such a metaphysically distinct and disparate kind of
noncorporeal entity that it becomes increasingly more and more conceptually
difficult to imagine what it would be like for God to be "like" human persons at all.
This conceptual gulf gives rise to the kind of objection raised by Patrick Sherry,
Be Incorporeal?" Faith and Philosophy, Vol. 6, no. I, 1989, pp. 76-87. For a rebuttal to Jantzen and
Paulsen, see Charles Taliaferro, Consciousness and the Mind of God, pp. 256-71.
94 For criticism of Jantzen on this score, see Taliaferro, ibid., pp. 249ff., especially his note on p. 249
for further references.
95 Charles Taliaferro, Consciousness and the Mind of God.
96 Ibid., pp. 233-34.
97 Richard Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism, pp. IOIff.
104
who objects that such a view of God's nature turns God into some "superFrankenstein" freak that bears only a frightening and ghoulish resemblance to
human persons. 98 Taliaferro is in a better position to respond to this kind of
objection using his integrated dualism since the relationship between God and the
world is much more symbiotic, involving a psycho-physical "connection" where
the two are "profoundly interwoven.,,99
But many unanswered questions remain about how Taliaferro's treatment of
God's personhood affects our understanding of the nature of God and other theistic
beliefs. For example, as he admits, personal immortality seems to be best explained
by a theory of dualism, and there seems to be much more difficulty in
understanding how a continued spiritual, disembodied existence is possible on the
basis of integrated dualism than on Cartesian dualism. lOo And there is a pervasive
vagueness concerning exactly what the notion of integrated means. Consider the
following classical formula for understanding the relationship between God and the
world:
The world minus God = zero.
God minus the world = God.
Taliaferro agrees with John Macquarrie that the second part of this formula
would, if true, represents a complete devaluing of all creation. "The loss of the
world would involve an incalculable loss" for God, Taliaferro claims, since there is
an "affective identity of God and the world."lol But would God still be God if God
lost the world? Taliaferro's integrated dualism and his commitment to a strong
theory of passibility raises other questions about the status of the necessary
existence of God. Is the "integrated" relationship that God has with the world an
internal or external relation? If God's relationship with the world is internal to the
nature of God, even in terms of God's "affective identity," then traditional
understandings of God as necessarily existing and of God as creator must be
revised, since necessary existence as traditionally understood does not seem to
allow the kind of close, integrated, symbiotic relationship between God and the
world defended by Taliaferro. 102
NECESSARY EXISTENCE AND THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
Perhaps one of the most distinguishing features of the concept of God in
traditional theism is the claim that God exists necessarily, completely
independently of anything else in the universe. Contingently existing things depend
upon certain states of affairs or conditions or features of the universe holding true
or obtaining and thus exist or do not exist depending upon those states of affairs,
98 Patrick Sherry, "Spirits, Saints, and Immortality (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York
Press, 1984), p. 13. For a lengthy response to Sherry's objection, see Taliaferro, ibid., pp. 264ff.
99 Taliaferro, Consciousness and the Mind of God, p. 266.
100 This issue is discussed at length in Chapter VII. Using some kind of replica body theory might
help integrated dualism answer this question.
101 Taliaferro, Consciousness and the Mind of God, pp. 335-36.
102 Taliaferro's integrated dualism seems somewhat akin to Alfred North Whitehead's consequent
nature of God - a kinship that can only be noted here.
105
conditions, or features. On the other hand, God's necessary existence is understood

as conditional upon nothing else, and thus it is impossible for God not to exist if
God exists necessarily. Necessary existence is the only attribute of God that gives
rise, all by itself, both to its own a priori argument for the existence of God and to
its own disproof for the existence of God. The reason for this is that the ontological
argument maintains that, given a clear understanding of the concept of God (and
specifically God's necessary existence), God's existence cannot consistently be
denied. Necessary existence and the ontological argument are inextricably
interwoven, and, after almost two hundred years of disfavor and neglect, the
ontological argument enjoyed a significant revival of renewed interest on the part
of philosophers of religion in the second half of the twentieth century.
KANT'S CRITICISM OF THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
The primary reason for the earlier decline of interest in the ontological argument
and its loss of favor was Kant's famous attack upon the argument that has come to
be summarized as "existence is not a predicate." Anselm's version of the argument
is based implicitly upon the claim that existence is a part of perfection in his claim
that existing in the understanding and in reality is more perfect than existing
simply in the understanding alone. At the same time, Descartes's version in his
Meditations is based explicitly upon the claim that existence is a perfection and
that, in the case of God, existence cannot be separated from essence. Most
philosophers and theologians alike took Kant's criticism to be a devastating one,
and thus, for approximately two hundred years, the ontological argument fell into
relative obscurity.
The last few decades of the twentieth century saw a resurgence of interest in the
ontological argument on at least two different scores. First, some figures responded
to Kant's criticism in an effort to undermine his attack upon the argument, and
second, different versions of the ontological argument, the so-called "modal"
versions ofthe argument, which arguably avoid the part of Anselm's argument that
"treats existence as a predicate," began to emerge. The second of these forms of
defense of the ontological argument has been the most significant development;
thus, I will treat the debate concerning whether existence is a predicate more
summarily and focus most of the attention here upon the new, modal versions of
the ontological argument.
Alvin Plantinga's response to Kant's criticism of the ontological argument
serves as one of the more complete and effective retorts to the attack based upon
the claim that "existence is not a predicate."I03 As Plantinga observes, to refute
Anslem's argument, it will not do to simply quote Kant's maxim, "existence is not
a predicate." One must be able to show where the argument goes wrong by
identifying some premise in the argument that makes a mistake that can be clearly
described in Kant's terms.
Though suspicions may abound, to nail down the exact mistake, according to
Plantinga, is "profoundly difficult."I04 The part of Anselm's version of the
ontological argument in his Proslogion that most closely parallels Descartes's
103
104
Alvin Plantinga. God and Other Minds (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1967), pp. 29ff.
Ibid., p. 27.
106
claim that existence cannot be separated from essence is the part that makes use of
a reductio that takes the following form: Suppose that that most perfect being
exists in the understanding alone. Then that most perfect being can be thought of as
existing both in the understanding and in reality, and this would be more perfect.
Hence, there would then be something more perfect than that most perfect being,
and since this is absurd and impossible, then that most perfect being cannot exist in
the understanding alone. Since this part of the argument is based upon the claim
that a being which exists in reality as well as in the understanding is "greater" than
one that does not exist in reality, Kant objected that Anselm and Descartes make
the logical mistake of treating existence as a defining predicate of the concept of
God. But does Anselm's version of the ontological argument rest upon making
such a claim? And exactly what does it mean to say that existence cannot be a
predicate?105
One of the more difficult and important issues is whether Kant is claiming that
no propositions that ascribe existence are necessarily true or whether he is claiming
that no such propositions are analytic. Kant introduces the distinction between a
judgment being analytic and its being a priori, and this distinction is crucial to the
whole program of his Critique of Pure Reason since he wants to defend synthetic a
priori judgments; however, his claims about "God exists" seem to confuse the two
kinds of judgments. If the claim is that "God exists" cannot be analytic, then
arguably, this is a telling criticism of Descartes but not Anselm. As Plantinga
correctly points out, perhaps Anselm's proof requires that "God exists" be
necessarily true, but it does not require that it be analytically true. 106 As the two
distinctions have normally been understood since Kant introduced them, analytic
and synthetic are kinds of statements, and the differences are drawn in syntactical
and semantical terms; a priori and a posteriori are kinds of knowledge or ways of
verifying knowledge, and the differences are drawn in epistemological terms.
Putting Kant's criticism in terms of predication seems to lead in the direction of
interpreting his objection as having to do with treating "God exists" as analytic;
however, more sophisticated versions of the ontological argument clearly do not
trade upon treating "God exists" in such a manner. What then is the force of Kant's
objection if we understand the main thrust of his criticism to be that existential
claims cannot be necessarily true, that is, a priori?
CAN EXISTENCE BE A PREDICATE?
Kant's main reason for claiming that no existential proposItIOn can be
necessarily true is that in denying such a proposition we do not contradict
ourselves. Whereas Kant treats "God is omnipotent" as necessary, he thinks that
"God exists" is not necessary since, if we deny that God exists, "we reject the thing
itself with all its predicates.,,107 J. L. Mackie explains Kant's claim that "'Being' is
105 It should be noted that Kant raises a number of different objections to the ontological argument,
of which "existence is not a predicate" is just one. For a full discussion of Kant's different objections,
see Plantinga, ibid., pp. 29ff., and J. L. Mackie, The Miracle of Theism, pp. 43ff.
Plantinga, God and Other Minds, pp. 30-31.

hnmanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, translated by Norman Kemp Smith (London:
Macmillan, 1963).
106
107
107
obviously not a real predicate" in terms of the function of the existential quantifier.
While in "God exists," 'exists' is a grammatical predicate, as 'green' is in "This
tree is green," "exists" has a different logical function that is captured by the use of
the existential quantifier. Whereas "The tree is green" or "God is omnipotent"
describes a supposed tree or a supposed God to which the predicates 'green' and
'omnipotent' apply respectively, "God exists" offers no description of God,
according to Mackie, "but merely as it were puts the items [God] into the
picture.,,108 The function of the existential quantifier is to make the ontological
claim that the predicate or description is instantiated in some existing individual. If
we interpret existence as simply a value captured by the existential quantifier, then
existence is not something that belongs to the individual in question at all; and
Descartes' claim that God is the one case that is an exception to the normal logical
distinction between essence and existence can hardly be maintained. 109 The use of
the quantifier does serve to answer the objection of Plantinga's that Kant allowed
for existential propositions in mathematics that are necessarily true. "There is a
prime number between seventeen and twenty" and "The successor of six is greater
than five," for example, are both necessarily true existential statements that can be
accounted for in terms of the use of the existential quantifier. 110 Such an account,
following Quine, turns existence into "being the value of a variable" and separates
the question of ontology - the question of what "really" exists - from the question
of the ontological commitment of a particular language. 1ll Kant could easily say
that the language of mathematics commits one to the existence of prime numbers
without saying that prime numbers exist or subsist in some Meinongian fashion.
However, the treatment of existence as simply the instantiation of predicates
captured by the existential quantifier is highly controversial. Mackie himself
maintains that existing is something that individuals do (like "being green") and
admits that further discussion is needed to decide whether the notion of existence
that is at stake can be captured by the use of the existential quantifier. I 12 A more
thorough treatment of analyzing existence in terms of the existential quantifier is
offered by Graham Oppy.1l3
Kant's maxim at least serves to put us on notice that it is not possible simply to
define God into existence, a caution that is more appropriate for Descartes than for
Anselm. If the ontological argument boils down to saying simply that existence is
part of the definition of God and hence means that it is impossible for something
that is defined as existing not to exist, then surely it is fallacious since we could
then define all sorts of things into existence. Mackie's example involves defining a
Martian into existence by defining the term "Remartian" (short for "real Martian")
108 Mackie, The Miracle of Theism, p. 46. Mackie follows W. C. Kneale on this point. See W. C.
Kneale, "Is Existence a Predicate?" in Readings in Philosophical Analysis, edited by Herbert Feigl and
Wilfrid Sellars (New York: Appleton-Century-Croft, 1949).
1119 Mackie, ibid., pp. 46-47.
110 Plantinga, God and Other Minds, p. 32.
111 Some would say, following Quine, that the ontological question of what "really" exists is
nonsensical and is replaced by the question of the ontological commitment of a particular language.
112 Ibid., p. 47.
113 Graham Oppy, Ontological Arguments and Belief in God (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1995), pp. 33ff. This volume contains the most complete annotated bibliography on the
ontological argument available, pp. 200ff.
108
to include existence as part of its meaning; Remartians would then exist, and it
would be contradictory to deny that they doy4 Mackie objects on the basis of this
point that existence cannot be a perfection of God as Descartes claims.
Oppy's suggestion of adding a definitional operator is a useful one. He is
certainly right that the argument "By definition, God exists, therefore God exists"
is fallacious. But "By definition, God exists, therefore God exists according to this
definition" is trivially valid. ll5 If we apply such an operator to Descartes' claim
that God's existence cannot be separated from God's essence, then we get,
according to this essence of God, God exists. It is then left to the reader to agree or
disagree with Descartes's account of the essence of God.
Analyzing the meaning of the claim that existence is not a predicate and
exposing the definitional force of some versions of the ontological argument are
issues that have occurred frequently in the contemporary literature. However, such
concerns leave untouched Anselm's more interesting version of the argument that
arguably raises neither problem. Modern, modal versions of the ontological
argument are attempts to capture the fundamental insight of Anselm's original
argument in ways that explicitly avoid any question about predication or
definition. 116
HARTSHORNE'S MODAL ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
There are now several different versions of modern, modal ontological
arguments - too many to allow for careful treatment of them all here.l17 Charles
Hartshorne and Norman Malcolm are primarily responsible for renewing interest in
the ontological argument and for introducing modal versions of the argument into
the contemporary debate. 118 I will focus attention on their arguments and on Alvin
Platinga's somewhat later version because these are both the better known versions
of the modal argument and because they are the more interesting and challenging.
Both Hartshorne and Malcolm claim that Anselm actually presents two different
versions of the ontological argument. The version most frequently discussed
114 Mackie, The Miracle of Theism, pp. 42-43. This is a modem-day version of Gaunilo's objection
that a perfect island would necessarily have to exist.
1150ppy, Ontological Arguments and Belief in God, pp. 48-49.
116 For further discussion of the issue of whether existence can be a predicate, see the articles by
Bertrand Russell and Jerome Shaffer in The Many-Faced Argument, edited by John Hick and Arthur
McGill (London: Macmillan, 1968), pp. 219-45.
111 For example, a version of the ontological argument that is now receiving some attention is the
one that was found in the unpublished papers of Kurt GOdel. Giidel's original version appears in his
Collected Works, Volume 3, edited by S. Feferman et al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). For
critical comments, see C. Anthony Anderson, "Some Emendations of Giidel's Ontological Argument,"
Faith and Philosophy, Vol. 7, 1990, pp. 291-303; Graham Oppy, "Giidelian Ontological Arguments,"
Analysis, Vol. 56, 1996, pp. 226-30; and C. Anthony Anderson and Michael Gettings, "GOdel's
Ontological Proof Revisited," in Lecture Notes in Logic 6: Godel '96, edited by Petr Hajek (New York:
Springer-Verlag, 1996), pp. 167-72.
118 Charles Hartshorne, '''The Necessarily Existent," in Man's Vision of God (New York: Harper and
Row, 1941), pp. 229-341. Page numbers refer to reprint in The Ontological Argument, edited by Alvin
Plantinga (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1965); The Logic of Perfection (LaSalle, lll.: Open Court,
1962); and Anselm's Discovery (LaSalle, Ill.: Open Court, 1965). Norman Malcolm, "Anselm's
Ontological Arguments," Philosophical Review, Vol. 69, no. 1, January 1960. Reprinted in Malcolm's
Knowledge and Certainty (Englewood, Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1963), to which the page numbers
here refer.
109
appears in Chapter 2 of the Pros log ion while the second "modal" version, which
both Hartshorne and Malcolm take as their point of departure for their modal
arguments, appears in Chapter 3. 119 Here is Anselm's hitherto neglected modal
argument as quoted by Malcolm:
If it [that than which nothing greater can be conceived] can be conceived at all it
must exist. For no one who denies or doubts the existence of a being a greater
than which is inconceivable, denies or doubts that if it did exist its nonexistence, either in reality or in the understanding, would be impossible. For
otherwise it would not be a being a greater than which cannot be conceived. But
as to whatever can be conceived but does not exist: if it were to exist its nonexistence either in reality or in the understanding would be possible. Therefore,
if a being a greater than which cannot be conceived, can even be conceived, it
must exist.
Even though his version of the modal ontological argument is not so well known
among analytic philosophers because of his Whiteheadean orientation and his
abandonment of traditional theism in favor of process theism, Hartshorne perhaps
deserves more credit than Malcolm for resurrecting interest in the ontological
argument and developing modal versions of that argument. Early versions of
Hartshorne's modal argument appeared as early as 1941, but I shall focus here
upon the later, more mature versions. In this second version of his ontological
argument, Hartshorne insists that it is clear that Anselm's major insight, upon
which the ontological argument is based, is that necessary existence is a superior
manner of existence to ordinary, contingent existence and that ordinary, contingent
existence is a defect. Both Hume and Kant misunderstood the point by focusing
upon whether what exists is greater than what does not exist. According to
Hartshorne, however, Anselm's point is that what exists and cannot not exist is
greater than that which exists and can not exist. 120 This way of putting the issue
reveals just how irrelevant the claim that existence is not a predicate is to the
modal interpretation of the argument.
This way of putting the ontological argument makes clear that it is not simply
nonexistence that is incompatible with perfection but even the possibility of
nonexistence. What is critical for Anselm's argument is the claim that if perfection
is actualized, it is necessarily actualized. Contingent existence is as much an
imperfection as is nonexistence, and both are logically incompatible with
perfection. We thus arrive at what Hartshorne identifies as "Anselm's Principle": if
perfection exists, it exists necessarily. In terms of God's existence, this means if
God's existence is possible, God necessarily exists. Hartshorne's modal argument
thus proceeds on the assumption that the existence of God, that is, the existence of
a perfect being, is not logically impossible. If God does not exist, then there is no
119 Whether Anslem intended to present two different arguments in Chapter 3 or whether he intended
to be exploring the attributes of the being whose existence he had established in Chapter 2 is an
intriguing question of historical exegesis. However, the main substantive issue is not whether the modal
version of the argument can be attributed to Anselm but whether a sound modal version of the argument
can be fonnulated.
120 Hartshorne, The Logic of Peifection, p. 58.
110
possibility that God exists; if God does not exist, then the claim that God does exist
must be logically absurd. The "merely possible," contingent existence of God must
be inconceivable. The modal argument does not prove that God exists because it
does not and cannot exclude the possibility of the logically impossibility that God
exists. 121 Strictly speaking, then, Hartshorne's modal argument does not purport to
prove that God exists; it purports to prove that if it is possible for God to exist, then
God must necessarily exist. If it is possible for God to exist, then the concept of
God is conceivable, that is, not logically impossible. Thus, as Hartshorne
summarizes the modal proof, "if 'God' stands for something conceivable, it stands
for something actual.,,122
THE LOGICAL STRUCTURE OF HARTSHORNE'S MODAL ARGUMENT
Using the standard modal symbolism, Hartshorne's interpretation of Anselm's
ontological argument may be formalized in the following manner: 123
Where "N" stands for "it is necessary (logically true) that"
"(~x)Px" stands for "a perfect being exists"
"-" stands for "it is not true that"
"V" stands for "or"
and "p~ q" stands for "p strictly implies q" or "N -(p and -q)"
1. (~x)Px ~ N (~x)Px
2. N(~x) Px V - N(~x) Px
3. - N(~x) Px ~ N - N(~x) Px
4. N(~x) Px V N - N(~x) Px
5. N -N(~x) Px ~ N-(~x) Px
6. N(~x) Px V N-(~x) Px
7. -N-(~x)Px
8. N(~x) Px
9. N(~x) Px ~ (~x) Px
10. (~x) Px
Anselm's principle
Law of excluded middle
Necessity of modal status
From 2 and 3
Modal form of modus tollens from I
From 4 and 5
Assumption (perfection is not impossible)
From 6 and 7
Modal axiom
From 8 and 9
The conclusion is that a perfect being exists, the modal equivalent of Anselm's
"that than which nothing greater can be conceived" exists. Most of the steps in this
proof follow from standard S5 modal logic. This observation reveals a detail that is
sometimes ignored concerning the modal versions of the ontological argument. If
"necessary" is taken to mean "logically necessary," then every modal argument
must occur within or using some formal logical system or language within which
the modal operators are defined and within which formal derivations (inferences)
are justified. 124 Thus, "necessary" will always be defined relative to a particular
language, as will the conclusion, "a perfect being exists." If any of the standard
Hartshorne, "The Necessarily Existent," p. 124.
Ibid., p. 135.
123 See Hartshorne, The Logic of Perfection, pp. 50-51.
124 John Hick has objected that Anselm intended "necessary" to mean "ontological necessity" rather
than "logical necessity." See his "A Critique of the 'Second Argument,'" in John Hick and Arthus C.
McGill, The Many-Faced Argument (New York: Macmillan, 1967).
121
122
111
modal systems are used, T, S4, or S5, then one embraces those systems by
embracing the proof. Since those systems are provably consistent, additional care
must be taken to make sure that the additional assumptions (discussed below) do
not make those systems inconsistent. 125
Steps (1) and (7) must bear the greatest scrutiny and require the most
explanation and justification. It may be true that "the Devil is in the details," but, in
the case of the modal ontological argument, if God is in the argument, God is in the
details. We must therefore examine the details of steps (1) and (7) closely.
The assumptions in steps (1) and (7) occur in one form or another in the
different modal proofs. In Hartshorne's case, step (l) represents the recasting of the
nature of divine perfection in a way that is intended to avoid the issue of whether
existence is a predicate altogether. What step (1) asserts is that "merely possible"
existence, that is, contingent existence, is logically incompatible with the notion of
divine perfection. Hartshorne describes Anselm's insight as the realization that it is
impossible that divine perfection is capable of being actualized and also capable of
not being actualized. Step (1) embodies the claim that if perfection is actualized,
then it must necessarily be actualized, and if the notion of perfection is logically
possible, that is, if it involves no logical contradiction, then it is capable of being
actualized. 126
IS MODAL PERFECTION A PREDICATE?
Given the assumption in step I, the argument no longer turns on whether
nonexistence is a defect or on whether existence can legitimately be considered a
predicate. The modal argument turns on whether contingent existence is a defect whether the mere possibility of nonexistence is a defect - and whether the mere
possibility of nonexistence can legitimately be treated as a predicate. Is modality
with respect to existence a legitimate predicate? This question focuses upon the
modal counterpart to Kant's claim that existence is not a predicate. Hartshorne
thinks that even the critics of the argument recognize and treat modality of
existence as a predicate. His argument is that standard treatments of predication
that treat predicates as contingently satisfied, that is, as actualized or nonactualized,
are based upon the conceivability of both the existence of a thing to which the
predicate applies and the nonexistence of that thing. Hartshorne concludes that
contingency is thus regularly regarded as a predicate of predicates, and if
contingency is recognized as a predicate, so must be noncontingency.127
The way in which the rationale for the claim that necessary existence is a
legitimate predicate must be described - "the contingent existence of predicates is
a predicate" - suggests that there is a logical problem here. Indeed, Hartshorne
considers the objection that the argument is based upon a logical-type confusionone of the most serious objections to the argument. 128 If existence is of a different
logical type than any predicate, then any universal, abstracted form of a predicate
cannot logically imply that that universal is instantiated. Thus, the objection goes,
125 For an introduction to these modal systems, see G. E. Hughes and M. J. Creswell, An
Introduction to Modal Logic (London: Methuen and Company, 1968).
126 Hartshorne, The Logic of Perfection, p. 60.
127 Ibid., 52.
128 Ibid., p. 46.
112
just as "blueness" cannot imply that any particular blue thing exists, "perfection"
cannot imply that any particular perfect thing exists. The problem is this: If
modality of existence rather than existence per se is a predicate, as this modal
version of the ontological argument claims, then when the modality is necessary
instead of possible, the modality includes the actual existence and strictly implies
the actual existence as evidenced in step (9). If necessary existence includes actual
existence, how can a necessarily existent being still be perfect, that is, of a "higher"
logical type than merely contingently existent beings, if that necessary existence
implies existence per se? Is it not the case that perfection is "contaminated" if it
includes actual existence? And if necessary existence includes or implies actual
existence, even if the modality of existence is a legitimate predicate, how can
necessary existence be regarded as a "better" predicate appropriate for perfection
whereas contingent existence is not?
These questions point to powerful, telling criticisms on which the entire fate of
Hartshorne's modal version of the ontological argument rests. 129 He finds a
response only in his "neo-classical," process view of the nature of God, the details
of which are beyond the scope of this volume. The general direction of the
response involves distinguishing two different aspects or levels of existence, one of
which is more necessary and abstract and one of which is more contingent and
concrete. 130 As Hartshorne uses this distinction, that a person will exist tomorrow
is more abstract than that a person will exist with certain specific predicates at a
specific time, for example, wearing sandals and a blue shirt, walking down a road,
whistling a specific tune, and hearing a blue jay call. Thus, there is the more
abstract kind of existence, which involves no specified instances of predicates but
simply some instance of some predicate or some other instance of some other
predicate, and there is the more concrete kind of existence, which involves some
specific instance of some specific predicate. Hartshorne treats the former, more
abstract kind of existence as internal to perfection and the latter, more concrete
kind of existence as external to perfection. l3l This "process view of God," which
admits change and limitations into the nature of God, is viewed by traditional
theists as also admitting imperfections into the nature of God.
MALCOLM'S MODAL VERSION OF THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
Norman Malcolm also thinks that there are two different arguments to be found
in Anselm's Proslogion and that the second argument, found in Chapter 3 and
quoted above, is a modal argument. Malcolm's interpretation of the main part of
Anselm's "second" argument, which turns the argument into a modal argument, is
the same as Hartshorne's. In this proof, it is not existence that is a part of
perfection, but necessary existence. The proof does not tum upon whether God
would still be "that than which nothing greater can be conceived" if God did not
exist but rather whether God would still be "that than which nothing greater can be
conceived" if it were logically possible for God not to exist. Malcolm explains the
differences between Anselm's first and second proofs in the following way: "His
129
130
See ibid., p. 63.

Ibid., pp. 63ff.
131 Hartshorne thinks that admitting potentiality in God for future concrete states actually strengthens
the case for regarding God's existence as necessary. See ibid., pp. 63-68.
113
[Anselm's] first ontological proof uses the principle that a thing is greater if it
exists than if it does not exist. His second proof employs the different principle that
a thing is greater if it necessarily exists than if it does not necessarily exist.,,132 This
modal proof treats the modality of existence, necessary existence, as a predicate of
God and claims that it is logically necessary that God exists and that it is logically
impossible for God not to exist. If it is logically impossible for God not to exist,
then not only can nonexistence not be reasonably predicated of God (as the first
proof supposedly establishes), but contingent existence cannot be reasonably
predicated of God either (as the second proof supposedly establishes). 133 Here then
is Malcolm's summary of the modal proof:
If God, a being a greater than which cannot be conceived, does not exist then He
cannot come into existence. For if He did He would either have been caused to
come into existence or have happened to come into existence, and in either case
He would be a limited being, which by our conception of Him He is not. Since
He cannot come into existence, if He does not exist His existence is impossible.
If He does exist He cannot have come into existence (for the reasons given), nor
can He cease to exist, for nothing could cause Him to cease to exist nor could it
just happen that He ceased to exist. So if God exists His existence is necessary.
Thus God's existence is either impossible or necessary. It can be the former
only if the concept of such a being is self-contradictory or in some way logically
absurd. Assuming that this is not so, if follows that He necessarily exists. 134
Since Hartshorne provides a formalization of his modal version of the

ontological argument, and Malcolm does not, I will not formalize Malcolm's
argument here. The argument lends itself to varying formalizations. 135
IS NECESSARY EXISTENCE A PREDICATE?
In the above argument, Malcolm, like Hartshorne, treats necessary existence but
not contingent existence as a predicate. While "the notion of contingent existence
or of contingent nonexistence cannot have any application to God," he explains,
"necessary existence is a property of God in the same sense that necessary
omnipotence and necessary omniscience are His properties.,,136 Whereas
Hartshorne himself raised and attempted to respond to the logical-type objection to
treating necessary existence as a predicate, Malcolm's critics have done the job of
raising objections for him. One main issue centers upon whether necessary
existence and contingent existence are different kinds of existence or whether
Norman Malcolm, "Anselm's Ontological Arguments," p. 146.
As with Hartshorne, there is significant controversy over Malcolm's interpretation of Anselm.
See, for example, Clement Dore, Theism (Dordrecht, Netherlands: D. Reidel, 1984), pp. 144ff.
134 Ibid., pp. 149-50.
135 Richard Gale takes Malcolm to be offering two different versions of Anselm's "second" proof,
but it seems more likely that Malcolm intended his comments to be simply elaborations of a single
modal proof. At any rate, the differences are not great. For Gale's formalizations of Malcolm's modal
proof(s), see his On the Nature and Existence of God (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991),
pp. 209ff. Compare Keith E. Yandell, Basic Issues in the Philosophy of Religion (Boston: Allyn and
Bacon, Inc., 1971), pp. 10 Iff.
136 Norman Malcolm, "Anselm's Ontological Arguments," pp. 149 and 150.
132
133
114
necessary existence and contingent existence are simply two very different things.
In the first case, we have existence simpliciter, which is suitably qualified by
"necessary" and "contingent," and in this case, if necessary existence is a
predicate, then so must be existence simpliciter since if anything exists necessarily,
it necessarily exists simpliciter. But if necessary existence is a predicate, then so
must be contingent existence since anything that exists contingently also must exist
simpliciter. In the latter case, if necessary existence and contingent existence are
simply two completely different things, and if necessary existence is to be regarded
as a predicate but contingent existence is not, then it is difficult to see what the two
have in common. Necessary existence is explained by both Hartshorne and
Malcolm in comparison and contrast with contingent existence, but if necessary
existence is a predicate while contingent existence is not, then the two are so
different in nature that calling both "existences" seems inappropriate. 137
IS NECESSARY EXISTENCE REDUCIBLE TO EXISTENCE
SIMPLICITER?
Malcolm claims that for God to be God, God must be unlimited, and
unlimitedness must mean that God is not dependent upon anything else for
existence; hence, existence for God cannot be mere existence, that is, contingent
existence that God mayor may not have, but must be necessary existence. He
explains this claim by using a comparison with omnipotence. God is not simply
omnipotent, but God is necessarily omnipotent. For God to be necessarily
omnipotent means that omnipotence is somehow (borrowing a Kantian spacial
metaphor) "contained in" the concept of God. This view of the nature of the
designation 'God' means that 'God' cannot be a logically proper name in the
Russellian sense, picking out a bare particular, but must be a disguised description
or at least have a meaning that is captured in a "cluster" of core predicates in the
manner suggested by John Searle. Thus, for Malcolm, for x to be God means
necessarily for x to be omnipotent and to exist. Perhaps, in more familiar terms,
'God is omnipotent' is analytic, as is 'God exists,' in the same way as 'A bachelor
is male' and 'A bachelor is unmarried' are analytic. But if God possesses the
predicate 'omnipotence' necessarily, does this mean that there is a separate and
distinct predicate 'omnipotence' out there in the world to be predicated of
individuals? And if God possesses the predicate 'necessary existence,' does this
mean that there is a separate and distinct predicate 'necessary existence' out there
in the world to be predicated of individuals? If a bachelor is necessarily male, does
this mean that a bachelor has a different property of maleness than a married male
does? The answers to all of these questions must be in the negative. If God's
necessary existence is to be understood in such a manner as to make 'God exists'
logically true, then 'necessary' must be understood as the kind of necessity that
designates a mode of predication, a way in which a predicate is related to the
individual, and not a different kind of predicate. This mode of predication
137 For criticisms of Malcolm on this point, see W. Baumer, "Anselm, Truth, and Necessary Being,"
Philosophy, VoL 37, 1962, pp. 257-58, and Terrence Peneihum, "Some Recent Discussions of the
Traditional Proofs - The Ontological Argument," in Religion and Rationality (New York: Random
House, 1971), pp. 365-72. For discussion of other responses, see Oppy, Ontological Arguments and
Beliefin God, pp. 211-12.
115
described by 'necessary' is captured in modal logic by use of the modal operator.

By being necessarily male, a bachelor does not have a different kind of predicate
than do males that are not bachelors, the bachelor simply possesses the predicate
'male' in a different manner, in a different mode, than do other nonbachelor males.
The ascription of a predicate e by use of the particular mode of predication
captured by 'necessary' is thus parasitic upon the ascription of e simpliciter, that is,
for an individual to be necessarily e means for that individual to be e in a particular
manner. If this understanding of 'necessary' is correct, then 'necessary existence'
is not a separate and distinct property possessed by God but simply a mode in
which God possesses mere existence. In this sense, 'necessary existence' is not a
separate predicate at all of existent beings or objects, and if 'necessary' is
understood as a predicate at all, it is a second-order predicate of the proposition
'God exists.' Thus, Malcolm's reading of Anselm's second, modal ontological
argument reduces to the first, and we are once again back to the issue of whether
existence simplicter can be a predicate.
THE POSSIBILITY OF MODAL PERFECTION
The modal versions of the ontological argument considered above proceed from
the assumption that God's existence is possible. The arguments proceed on the
basis of the claim that if the existence of a being than which nothing greater can be
conceived is possible, then the existence of that being is necessary. In step (7) of
Hartshorne's proof, this assumption is described as it is not the case that the
existence of divine perfection is impossible. In both Hartshorne and Malcolm's
interpretations of Anselm, we should replace "that than which nothing greater can
be conceived" with "that than which nothing greater can be conceived and which
cannot be conceived not to exist." Let us call such a being a modally perfect being,
and let us call the possibility that such a being exists the possibility of modal
perfection (PMP).138 Granting PMP means that 'God exists' becomes logically
true; however, if PMP is denied, then 'God exists' becomes contradictory, and the
existence of God becomes logically impossible. Hartshorne thought that PMP is
established by the cosmological argument, that is, he thought that while the
cosmological argument does not establish the existence of God, it does establish
the possibility of God's existence. 139 Others, as we shall see, have disputed whether
divine perfection is possible.
As Clement Dore recognizes, the modal versions of the ontological argument
turn the fundamental question concerning God's existence from "Does God exist?"
to "Is God's existence logically possible?"l40 The only way in which there could be
a negative answer to this modal question and a rejection of PMP is for the concept
of a modally perfect being to be contradictory, and much of the debate concerning
the modal versions of the ontological argument focuses upon this issue. For his
part, although he does not think that a demonstration that the concept of a modally
138 While modality may apply to other attributes of God, I take "modally perfect being" as shorthand
for perfection solely in terms of existence.
139 For a detailed treatment of the relationship between the ontological and cosmological arguments
for Hartshorne, see H. G. Hubbeling, "Hartshorne and the Ontological Argument," in The Philosophy of
Charles Hartshorne, edited by Lewis Edwin Halrn (LaSalle, TIl.: Open Court, 1991), pp. 367ff.
140 Clement Dore, Theism, Chapter 6.
116
perfect being is not contradictory is possible, Malcolm does not feel that there is
any legitimate burden of proof for a defender of the modal argument to provide
such a demonstration of the consistency of the concept of a modally perfect
being.141 Others, however, have taken up the issue of the logical consistency of a
modally perfect being, which Malcolm avoids. Malcolm assumes that in the
absence of some demonstration that the concept of a modally perfect being is
contradictory, we can justifiably assume that it is logically consistent and thus
assume PMP; however, as Dore points out, in the absence of a demonstration that
the idea of a modally perfect being is consistent, it is equally epistemically
acceptable to conclude that the concept of a modally perfect being is contradictory.
Thus, if the defender of the modal versions of the ontological argument intends for
the modal permutation of the argument to be more persuasive than the original
nonmodal version, then some defense of PMP is in order. Otherwise, the
assumption of PMP will appear as nothing but question begging to nontheists. 142
Paul Henle resurrects a Gaunilo-type objection to PMP by proposing the
possibility of the existence of a being named Nee, which is a being that exists
necessarily but which is otherwise limited in various ways.143 Nee is neither
omniscient nor omnipotent, but if Nee exists necessarily, then such a being would
represent a limitation upon God's omnipotence since God could not destroy such a
being. It is easy to extend the argument for Nee to populate the world with a whole
host of modally perfectly existent but otherwise limited beings. The existence of
Nee seems to follow from the same assumption of PMP that Malcolm and
Hartshorne assume in their modal proofs. While the possibility of a modally
perfect but otherwise limited being might be acceptable (or even preferable for
Hartshorne), such a being is not acceptable to the traditional theist. As Anselm
claimed, God is the only modally perfect being, and thus, if PMP is granted, it
leads to the existence of one and only one necessarily existent being. What reason
may there be for thinking that God and only God exists necessarily? Henle argues
it is because 'God' is treated as a proper name. He claims that if the question of the
logical possibility of God and Nee is posed as a general question about the
possibility of the existence of any such beings in general without the use of proper
names, there would be no inclination to conclude that such beings exist. If
Malcolm reconstructed his modal argument in a general form to consider whether
necessarily existent beings exist, and if the assumption of the possibility of the
existence of such beings were put in a general form without naming a specific
being, then, Henle thinks, the modal argument would lose its appeal completely.
As he concludes, "If then there was any inclination to believe in the existence of
Nee [or God], it must have been merely because of the use of the proper name.
Since the use of proper names implies or presupposes existence, it is easy to slide
into the belief that what has been named exists, and this is particularly easy when
the entity is described in terms of existence."l44 Malcolm's modal version of the
Norman Malcolm, "Anselm's Ontological Arguments," p. 159.

Dore, Theism, pp. 70ff.
143 Paul Henle, "Uses of the Ontological Argument," Philosophical Review, Vol. 70, 1961, pp. 102ff.
144 Ibid., p. 106.
141
142
117
ontological argument thus prejudices the case in favor of a necessarily existing

being, according to Henle, by the use of the proper name "God." 145
The effect of Henle's argument is easily seen in Dore's defense of the logical
consistency of the notion of a modally perfectly existent being, which occurs in the
context of his consideration of the argument for the logical coherence of a modally
perfect being based upon religious experience: people have experienced God, and
experience of the lo~ically impossible is not possible, therefore God is not
logically impossible. I 6 In his defense of the claim that people have, in fact,
actually experienced God, Dore relies upon an appeal to the fact that a large
number of "sane and sober people" have reported such experiences (the reliability
of such reports is the subject of the next chapter). The main point here concerns
how Dore compares the putative reports of the experience of God with the putative
reports of other kinds of logically impossible things such as square circles. If a
person sincerely reports experiencing such a thing as a square circle, then we reject
such a report because such experiences are not possible since they would be
experiences of the logically impossible. But Dore does not treat experiences of
God as experiences of the logically impossible, as he does the reported experiences
of square circles. Why? In contrasting putative experiences of God with putative
experiences of square circles, Dore always uses the designation 'God' as a proper
name while, at the same time, he describes square circles as a class or by the use of
an indefinite description, 'a square circle.' The difference lends apparent substance
to a subtle form of begging the question, since the use of the proper name 'God'
inclines one to posit an individual named by the proper name, in this case a
modally perfect individual,147 while the use of an indefinite description does not.
THE MODAL DISPROOF OF THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
Perhaps the best known case of refusing to grant the PMP required by
Hartshorne and Malcolm's versions of the modal ontological argument results in J.
N. Findlay's notorious modal disproof of the existence of GOd. 148 Findlay begins
by arguing that to explain the nature of the object that is worthy of religious
worship and an "adequate object of religious attitudes" we must presume that God
has an unsurpassable superiority to human beings. He says,
The worthy object of our worship can never be a thing that merely happens to
exist, nor one on which all other objects merely happen to depend. The true
object of religious reverence must be one, merely, to which no actual
independent realities stand opposed; it must be one to which such opposition is
145 For monotheists, it is crucial then to argue that there is one and only one necessarily existent
being, a part of the argument that is frequently neglected. For a generalized version of Henle's point,
see R. Kane, "The Modal Ontological Argument," Mind, Vol. 93, 1984, pp. 336-50. Kane shows that it
is easy to use the modal argument to populate the universe with an infinite number of necessarily
existent but slightly less than perfect beings. See Oppy, Ontological Arguments and Belief in God, pp.
171ff., for discussion of this development.
146 Dore, Theism, p. 74.
147 Ibid., pp. 74-75.
148 J. N. Findlay, "Can God's Existence Be Disproved," in New Essays in Philosophical Theology,
edited by Antony Flew and Alasdair MacIntyre (London: SCM Press, 1955), pp. 47-75. This article is
widely reprinted in different anthologies.
118
totally inconceivable. God mustn't merely cover the territory of the actual, but
also, with equal comprehensiveness, the territory of the possible. And not only
must the existence of other things be unthinkable without him, but his own nonexistence must be wholly unthinkable in any circumstances. 149
Nor, we might add, can God possess any of the other attributes that make him
unsurpassably superior to human beings in an accidental or contingent manner. As
I have already noted in the above discussion of Hartshorne and Malcolm, their
modal arguments turn on the claim that 'God exists' must be necessarily (or
logically) true. The consequence of such a claim is that the existence of God, for
Findlay, becomes "either senseless or impossible.,,15o Based upon what he calls a
"contemporary outlook," necessary truths can only make claims about the possible
instance of different predicates, they can never make claims about the actual
instantiations of predicates. This means that the necessity of propositions is
explained in terms of the linguistic conventions of the language in which the
propositions occur. The result is that different formulations of the modal argument
turn out to be valid relative to different languages in which they are formulated.
From consideration of the assumption that God's existence cannot be contingent,
Findlay thus arrives at a formal denial of PMP because he treats the concept of an
existent being who exists necessarily as logically absurd or logically impossible.1 51
It is helpful to recognize in Findlay's argument both a theological claim and a
philosophical claim. The theological claim is that God must exist necessarily to be
a worthy object of religious attitudes, and the philosophical claim, the result of "the
contemporary outlook," is that no necessarily true proposition can be an existential
proposition. To reply to Findlay's modal disproof of the existence of God, the
theist must deny one or the other of these two claims. John Hick denies the
theological claim that the proposition "God exists" must be necessarily true for
God to be a worthy object of worship.152 Alvin Plantinga denies the philosophical
claim that no necessarily true statement can be an existential one. As he notes, even
Kant seemed to treat existential statements of mathematics (for example, there is
one prime number between one and five) as synthetic, a priori, and hence
necessary.153 Plantinga's appeal to Kant notwithstanding, his acceptance of the
theological claim and his rejection of the philosophical claim lead him in a new
Ibid., p. 52.
Ibid., p. 54.
151 For a detailed and formalized treatment of Findlay's disproof, see Bowman Clarke, "Modal
Disproofs and Proofs for God," Southern Journal of Philosophy, fall 1971, pp. 247-58. As Clarke notes,
Findlay's objection amounts to a modal extension of tbe Hume-Kant objection to Anselm's version of
tbe ontological argument.
152 See John Hick, "A Critique oftbe 'Second Argument,'" p. 343.
153 See Alvin Plantinga, God and Other Minds, p. 174. Plantinga is correct tbat statements of
matbematics are a priori for Kant, but tbey are not logically true in tbe sense that Malcolm and
Hartshorne claim tbat "God exists" is logically true. While Kant's distinction between analytic and
syntbetic statements does not map neatly onto contemporary uses of "necessarily true" and "logically
true," it seems tbat tbe modal versions of tbe ontological argument discussed so far would have us
understand "God exists" as analytic a priori in tbe sense of analytic tbat depends upon essential
predication. For further discussion, see Jerome Shaffer, "Existence, Predication, and tbe Ontological
Argument," in The Many-Faced Argument, edited by John Hick and Artbur McGill, pp. 244-45.
149
150
119
direction and to a significantly different version of the modal argument that does
not rely upon the claim that necessary existence is a predicate of God.
PLANTINGA'S VERSION OF THE MODAL ARGUMENT
Plantinga's modal argument relies upon a completely different interpretation of
PMP that does not treat necessary existence as a predicate and that is informed by
possible world theory. According to Plantinga, even if the versions of the modal
argument defended by Hartshorne and Malcolm are successful and necessary
existence is a perfection, their fatal flaw is that they can only establish that such a
perfect being exists in some possible world. But our particular, actual world may
not be the world in which that perfection exists. 154 Plantinga embraces the
theological claim made by Findlay by noting that the great-making qualities that
are relevant to making God a proper object of worship include not only those
actual properties that God has in this world but also those properties that God has
in other possible worlds. After all, a theist does not simply believe that God is the
most perfect being in this particular world and that possibly in some other world
God is less than perfect. 155 Plantinga thus begins his version of the modal proof by
a reexamination of the notion of perfection and by introducing the notions of
maximal excellence and maximal greatness. A being G has maximal excellence
entails that G has certain properties (the usual properties of omnipotence,
omniscience, and so forth) in a given world W. A being G has maximal greatness
entails that G has maximal excellence in every possible world. Plantinga's version
of PMP (PPMP) is the assumption that it is possible that maximal greatness is
exemplified, that is, it is possible that there is a being G in some possible world W
that has maximal excellence in every possible world. Assuming S5, if G has
maximal greatness in some world W, then 'G has maximal greatness in W would
be necessarily true in W; however, since necessary truth cannot vary from world to
world, then if 'G has maximal greatness in W is necessarily true in any possible
world, it is necessarily true in all possible worlds. Therefore, there must be a being
G that has maximal greatness (or, in another formulation, unsurpassable greatness)
in every possible world, including the actual world in which we live, and 'G has
maximal greatness' is necessarily true.
Plantinga's version of the modal argument depends upon the assumption that
PPMP is true. Plantinga himself thinks that this assumption is true and that his
modal version of the ontological argument is thus sound; however, he does not
think that it is possible to prove that PPMP is true. At the same time, since he does
not think that it is possible to prove that PPMP is false, he thinks that, minimally,
he has shown that it is rational for the theist to accept the modal ontological
argument since it is rational to accept PPMP. Plantinga thus maintains that his
modal proof establishes theism as a rational belief even if no conclusive proof can
154 Alvin Plantinga, The Nature of Necessity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), p. 213. This claim of
Plantinga's is ambiguous. What Hartshorne and Malcolm have shown is that a being necessarily exists
(exists in all possible worlds) and that this same being has perfection in at least one possible world. So
we should understand Plantinga's claim to mean that while a necessarily existing being exists in this
actual world, this world may not be the one in which it has perfection. The following description of
Plantinga's argument follows pp. 214-217.
155 Ibid., pp. 213-14.
120
be offered for the existence of God, a position that parallels his free will defense to
the problem of evil (discussed in Chapter VI). Whether one accepts Plantinga's
argument comes down to whether one accepts PPMP, and whether one thinks that
it is rational to accept his modal argument comes down to whether one thinks that
it is rational to accept PPMP. 156
IS MAXIMAL GREATNESS (UNSURPASSABLE GREATNESS)
POSSIBLE?
Plantinga's modal version of the ontological argument and his attempt to
reconstruct Hartshorne and Malcolm's version of the argument relies upon the
assumption that it is possible that maximal greatness is exemplified in some
possible world W, that is, PPMP. Several objections have been raised against the
property of maximal greatness that cast doubt on Plantinga's conclusion that it is at
least rational for a person to accept PPMP. I will consider here only two of the
more serious and telling kinds of objections to Plantinga's property of maximal
greatness and the resulting effects upon the rationality of the acceptance of PPMP.
Difficulty arises when, as Michael Tooley shows, Plantinga's treatment of the
predicate maximal greatness is generalized for all predicates as follows: for any
predicate P and for any individual x, x is maximally P if and only if x exists in all
possible worlds and P occurs in all possible worlds. Given that predicates other
than greatness can be exemplified to a maximal degree, then contradictory results
follow. For example, x can be a maximal universal solvent, capable of dissolving
everything in every possible world, while y can be maximally insoluble, incapable
of being dissolved by anything. It is possible to construct ontological arguments,
paralleling Plantinga's for both x and y, but of course x and y cannot both exist. 15?
Tooley argues further that Plantinga's argument can be used to establish the
exemplification of predicates in all possible worlds that are already known in this
world to be empirically false and hence incapable of being exemplified in all
possible worldS. 158 Without an effective retort to this criticism, it does not seem
rational to accept PPMP.
A final consideration, which amounts to an apparent reductio of PPMP and
Plantinga's version of the ontological argument, is that it is possible to use the
same technique used by Plantinga to establish that predicates are exemplified that
appear to be explicitly incompatible with the exemplification of maximal
greatness. For example, Tooley argues that it is possible to use Plantinga's
argument to establish the existence of the Devil, that is, the exemplification of
maximal evil, in which case we get the demonological argument. If objections are
raised by the theist to the possibility of the exemplification of such a predicate
(based upon claims about the logical compatibility of omnipotence and evil), there
are other troubling predicates that do not raise this issue. Perhaps most plausibly
and convincingly, Richard Gale argues that the property of being a morally
unjustified evil in any possible world is logically incompatible with the
156
157
424.
158
See ibid., pp. 220-21.

Michael Tooley, "Plantinga's Defence of the Ontological Argument," Mind, Vol. 90, 1981, p.
Ibid., p. 425-26.
121
exemplification of unsurpassable greatness in every possible world. 159 As Gale

notes, for those theists who accept PPMP and Plantinga's version of the modal
argument, the problem of evil becomes a modal problem of evil. The normal way
of addressing the evidential problem of evil is to consider the various claims made
concerning the existence of evil in the world and then construct a plausible
theodicy in response to those claims. But if the existence of a morally unjustified
evil is logically incompatible with the existence of unsurpassable greatness, then
morally unjustified evil cannot exist in any possible world, and the notion of a
morally unjustified evil must consequently be logically contradictory. The crucial
question changes from the empirical question of whether morally unjustified evil
actually exists in this world to the modal question of whether morally unjustified
evil is logically possible. 16o William Rowe's example of the fawn that dies a
horrible, excruciating death during a forest fire for no good reason (discussed in
detail in Chapter VI) thus must be logically impossible given the existence of
un surpassable greatness. The result for Plantinga's claim that it is epistemically
rational for the theist to believe PPMP is to pit the relative plausibility of PPMP
(the possible existence of maximal greatness) against the possibility of the
suffering fawn since, if this argument is correct, the possibility of the two
conjointly is not logically possible. While we must rely upon intuitions to assess
relative possibilities, the suffering fawn appears to be imminently more plausible
as evidenced by the attention given by nontheists and theists alike to discussion of
the case as a part of the long-lived evidential problem of evil.
Plantinga himself recognizes that there are other predicates whose possibility is
not compatible with maximal greatness, including near-maximality (exemplified in
any being if and only if it does not exist in every possible world but has a degree of
greatness not exceeded by any other being in any world in which it exists) and nomaximality (exemplified in any being which is such that there is no maximally
great being), but he thinks that maximal greatness is a more plausible predicate.
Plantinga does not claim that his modal version of the ontological argument is an
argument in natural theology that will appeal, on the basis of reason, to all rational
human beings. Sane and rational people, he claims, might consider PPMP and
reject it in favor of no-maximality. He seems to think that the choice between
PPMP and other predicates that are incompatible with maximal greatness is a "toss
up" and that it is hence rational for the theist to accept PPMP on the grounds that
he has shown that PPMP is not logically contradictory. However, if the arguments
offered here are sound, then maximal greatness is not as likely to be exemplified as
other predicates with which it is incompatible, and thus, if this is true, then the
belief in PPMP is not rationally justified.
One final objection to Plantinga's modal argument concerns the actual modal
logic of his argument. As J. L. Mackie notes,161 Plantinga is committed to a system
of modal logic that does not allow for iterated modalities, the "stacking" of
modalities where one may have such an expression as "It is possible that it is
necessary that it is possible that p." There are several modal systems that deny the
159
160
161
Richard Gale, On the Nature and Existence o/God, pp. 227-28.

Ibid., p. 229.
J. L. Mackie, The Miracle o/Theism. pp. 57ff.
122
legitimacy of iterated modalities, including S5, whose consistency is widely

accepted and not at issue here (more accurately, in other systems iterated
modalities reduce to noniterated ones in systems such as S5). However, Plantinga's
treatment of logical possibility raises issues that are quite different from those
found in the use of such systems as S5. His use of "world-indexed properties"
makes the properties that an individual x possesses in one possible world W
dependent upon the properties that x possesses in another possible world W.
Plantinga asks us to consider the property of being snub-nosed and to suppose that
it is true of Socrates in this world that he was snub-nosed. If we call this world W,
then, in some possible world w", in which Socrates does not have the property of
being snub-nosed, he still has the property of being snub-nosed in W. Thus, the
properties that Socrates has in w" depend upon the properties that he has in W. 162
The introduction of such world-indexed properties makes the features of a
particular possible world dependent upon the features of other possible worlds.
Mackie points out that such properties make it impossible for Plantinga to have the
same notion of logical possibility as is found in S5, the modal system that he
embraces. According to S5, in which possible worlds are independent of each
other, a noncontradiction is explained in terms of logical possibility that is, in turn,
explained in terms of at least one possible world in which that possibility is
actualized. However, if the features of different possible worlds are not logically
independent of one another, then the actualization of a noncontradictory property
in one possible world may well be logically incompatible with the actualization of
a different noncontradictory property in another possible world. 163 World-indexed
properties thus appear to undermine the kind of logical possibility that Plantinga
needs for the claim that maximal greatness is logically possible.
THE COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
As we have seen, the different modal versions of the ontological argument
depend upon some form of the assumption that the existence of a necessary being
is possible, either in the form of PMP (the existence of modal perfection is
possible) assumed by Hartshorne and Malcolm or in the from of PPMP (the
exemplification of maximal greatness is possible) assumed by Plantinga. While
Plantinga seems content with simply claiming that belief in this assumption is at
least as rational as belief in its denial, Hartshorne and others have maintained that
positive support for the assumption comes from the cosmological argument. 164 For
Hartshorne, the ontological cannot do the job of proving the existence of a
necessary being by itself since it needs the support from the cosmological
argument for legitimizing the assumption of PMP. This connection with the
ontological argument is a major reason (along with the developments in science
discussed below and in Chapter V) for the resurgence of interest in the
cosmological argument in the second half of the twentieth century. In the case of
the cosmological argument, the major scientific development influencing the
debate is the big bang theory of modern physics and astronomy.
162
For Plantinga's discussion of world-indexed properties, see The Nature of Necessity, pp. 62ff.
163
J. L. Mackie, The Miracle of Theism, p. 60.
164 Kant, of course, argued just the converse, namely, that the cosmological argument depends upon
the ontological argument.
123
The phrase "the cosmological argument" is something of a misnomer since the

cosmological argument is not a single argument; there are several distinct forms of
the cosmological argument. 165 The plurality of the different arguments is
recognized by most contemporary thinkers. Even Aquinas treated the first three of
his "Five Ways" as different arguments, though these are different versions of the
cosmological argument. William Rowe calls the cosmological argument "a family
of arguments," and Richard Gale and J. L. Mackie both examine the argument in
chapters entitled "Cosmological Arguments.,,166 I cannot examine all the different
versions of the cosmological arguments here, so I will take the cosmological
argument in the singular to be an abstraction from a family of arguments that share
the common characteristic of attempting to prove the existence of God by
appealing to the existence of certain facts, events, objects, or phenomena in the
world and then using some principle or law involving causality to establish an
original cause of those facts, events, objects, or phenomena.
Certain criticisms and limitations of the traditional forms of the cosmological
argument have now become commonplace. For example, many critics have
observed that the cosmological argument, even if it is sound, does not establish that
the first cause must have the traditional attributes of the God of theism. Separate
arguments or addenda to the main cosmological arguments are necessary to
establish that the first cause is a personal being with the attributes usually
attributed to God and to establish that the first cause - even if it did exist at some
point in the past - continues to exist now. Standard objections also include the way
in which the possibility of an infinite regress of causes is so summarily addressed
and dismissed in traditional versions of the argument. In the famed debate between
Bertrand Russell and Frederick Copleston, Russell raises what has now become a
rather standard objection that the cosmological argument commits a form of the
part-whole fallacy by arguing that it is a mistake to attribute a cause to the
universe, taken as a whole, on the grounds that causes are attributed to individual
events and objects in the universe. 167 The main thrust of Russell's point is a logical
one, an example of what we might now call, following Gilbert Ryle, a "category
mistake." It is as logically inappropriate, Russell claims, to argue that the universe
must have a cause from the claim that individual events must have causes as it is to
argue that the human race must have a mother because all individual human beings
have mothers. 168 Different versions both of these objections and various responses
to them are common in the contemporary literature. For example, William Rowe
responds to Russell that his objection is not a valid one because not all proponents
165 For various forms of the cosmological argument, see William L. Craig, The Cosmological
Argument from Plato to Liebniz (London: Macmillan, 1980).
166 William L. Rowe, The Cosmological Argument (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,
1975), p. 7; Richard Gale, On the Nature and Existence of God, Chapter 7; J. L. Mackie, The Miracle of
Theism, Chapter 5.
167 Bertrand Russell and F. C. Copleston, "The Existence of God - A Debate," a 1948 program of
the British Broadcasting Corporation, reprinted in A Modern Introduction to Philosophy, edited by Paul
Edwards and Arthur Pap (New York: The Free Press. 1957), p. 473. Edwards's introduction to this
section (pp. 372ff.) is particularly illuminating. The debate is also reprinted in The Existence of God,
edited by John Hick (New York: Macmillan, 1964).
168 This is essentially the same point made by Ronald W. Hepburn, Christianity and Paradox
(London: Watts Publishing, 1958), pp. 167-68.
124
of the cosmological argument argue to the existence of a single cause of the

universe on the basis of claims about individual causes. 169 Some defenders of the
argument (for example, Rowe cites Samuel Clarke) simply rely upon a strong form
of the principle of sufficient reason to do the job.
THE PRINCIPLE OF SUFFICIENT REASON
The "principle or law involving causality" upon which the cosmological
argument relies is generally described as some form of the principle of sufficient
reason (PSR), and much controversy has continued to surround the use of this
principle in the contemporary literature. Much of the current discussion of the
cosmological argument focuses upon the PSR since, if it is granted, the argument
appears to proceed deductively and be sound. There are different forms of the PSR,
and formulations of the cosmological argument differ depending upon which form
of PSR is used. 170 The form of the PSR that is most commonly incorporated into
newer formulations of the cosmological argument appears to be a "strong form"
that requires that everything that exists or occurs must have a causal explanation of
its existence or occurrence, and this explanation must include a sufficient reason
why that particular thing exists or why that particular event occurs rather than
something else or rather than nothing at all. 171 If this principle is applied to the
universe, and if everything in the universe exists contingently, then PSR requires
that there be some causal explanation of the existence of the universe that explains
why the universe exists as it does instead of nothing at all, and this causal
explanation must be noncontingent, that is, a necessarily existing being. Unless the
cause for the contingent universe or for an infinitely regressing contingent chain of
causal explanations is located in something "outside" the universe, then, it is
argued, a complete explanation is not provided. Hence, the necessity for the
existence of a necessarily existent being. 172
The basis of Russell's objection that the cosmological argument commits a partwhole fallacy is Hume's claim that if the causes of each of the members of a
collection are provided, then there is no need to give a further explanation of the
collection itself. So, Hume says in Part IX of his Dialogues Concerning Natural
Religion, if the particular cause of twenty particles is given, then it is unreasonable
to ask for the cause of the whole group of particles. Rowe, no true defender of the
cosmological argument or theism, defends the PSR against this objection by
arguing that this principle of Hume's is plausible enough for finite collections but
169 See William L. Rowe, ''Two Criticisms of the Cosmological Argument," The Monist, VoL 54, no.
3, 1970. Reprinted in Philosophy of Religion: Selected Readings, Third Edition, edited by William L.
Rowe and William J. Wainwright (Fort Worth, Tex.: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1973). Page
numbers refer to this reprint.
170 The most thorough discussion of PSR and examples of how different versions of the
cosmological argument rely upon different versions of PSR are found in William L. Rowe, "The
Cosmological Argument and the Principle of Sufficient Reason," Man and World, VoL 1, no. 2, 1968.
Reprinted in William L. Rowe, The Cosmological Argument, pp. 60-114.
171 Compare J. L. Mackie, The Miracle of Theism, p. 82, and Rowe, ibid., 145.
172 Bruce Reichenbach explicitly states the form of the PSR that he thinks the cosmological
argument requires as one that says that all contingent beings require a sufficient explanation for their
existence. See Bruce Reichenbach, The Cosmological Argument: A Reassessment (Springfield, ill.:
Charles C. Thomas, 1972), p. 68.
125
is false for any infinite collection in which the causal explanation for members of
the collection is given in terms of other members of that collection. 173 Rowe argues
that if we consider the collection of men, M, and if we assume that M has an
infinite number of members and if we explain the existence of each member of M
by saying that each member is begotten by some other member, then, even though
we have explained the existence of each member of M, we have not provided an
explanation for M itself. To do so, he claims, we must explain why M has any
members at all.174 To explain why a particular collection exists, following the PSR,
we need to explain why it has the particular members it has rather than none at all.
In the case of an infinite set in which the existence of the members of that set are
explained in terms of other members of that set, Rowe maintains that this cannot be
done. Thus, Rowe thinks, although there may be other problems with the
cosmological argument, the PSR is immune to this particular objection.
Ironically, Rowe himself has provided the framework within which a retort to
his defense of the PSR is possible. 175 The particular example used by Rowe of the
class of men and the explanation in terms of begetting is plausible enough since
begetting is a nonreflexive relation. Eventually, it seems, we need some further
explanation, "outside" the class of men, in terms of amino acids, genetics, and
perhaps complex conditions conducive to life to explain why the class of men has
any members at all. However, the limiting case for the cosmological argument is
the collection of all contingent things. If we consider the collection of all
contingent things, that is, the entire universe, then Rowe's defense of the PSR
becomes unconvincing. Even if we agree that to explain why this universe exists,
we must explain why we have this particular collection of contingent things
existing rather than no collection at all, it is not clear at all that we would be forced
to go "outside" the universe of contingent beings to provide such an explanation.
And a fortiori, it seems that it would be impossible to do so. Suppose we provide
an explanation in terms of the following cosmological principle:
CP: A necessary being, N, created the contingent universe, U.
CP describes the creation of a contingent universe, an infinite collection of
contingent things and events, by a necessarily existing being. If, on the one hand,
this act of creation is itself a contingent act, then it is a part of the infinite
collection of contingent events for which an explanation must be provided, and it
cannot itself be that explanation. If, on the other hand, this act of creation is a
necessary act, then it appears that the universe must exist necessarily, and, as
Leibniz claimed, there are no contingent things or events, an equally unattractive
alternative. 176
William L. Rowe, ''Two Criticisms of the Cosmological Argument," pp. 151ff.

Ibid., 152.
175 See William L. Rowe, The Cosmological Argument, pp. 100-101.
176 There are other difficulties as well with Rowe's defense of the PSR on this score. See Richard
Gale, On the Existence and Nature of God, pp. 259ff.
173
174
126
SWINBURNE'S INDUCTIVE COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT

Although traditional versions of the cosmological arguments are a posteriori
because they all depend upon some empirical claim about the universe, the
reasoning process in the arguments is deductive. The role of some version of the
PSR as a premise in such arguments is crucial. While some defenders of the
cosmological argument, such as Bruce Reichenbach, have claimed that the PSR is
synthetic a priori and "a basic and intuitive principle of human reasoning"
comparable to the law of noncontradiction, other critics of the argument, such as J.
L. Mackie, have objected that there are no grounds for supporting the PSR and no
reason to believe that its demand could ever be met, even in principle. 177 While
agreement on the deductive cosmological argument based upon the PSR as a
necessary truth might not be forthcoming, Richard Swinburne has argued that it is
possible to provide a probabilistic confirmation of the PSR and hence of theism.
The result is his inductive cosmological argument. 178
Swinburne explains that empirical data e may confirm a hypothesis h by making
that hypothesis more probable than it would be without e. In this case, Swinburne
says, the result is a good "C-inductive argument." Whatever judgment we may
make regarding the probability of h, that judgment may be changed in the face of
additional evidence not yet gathered or in the face of future experience. When we
consider the probability of h on the basis of certain background knowledge that we
already possess and then calculate the effect of considering e, the probability of a
hypothesis h is increased if e is more likely to occur on the basis of the background
knowledge and h than it is on the basis of the background knowledge alone. Thus,
where k stands for the background knowledge and P(x/y) stands for the probability
of x on the basis of y, P(elkandh) > P(elk). Swinburne admits that P(elkandh) is
not high, but he claims that, whatever the probability of P(elkandh), it is higher
than the probability of P( elk). 179 Thus, on this account, the probability of the
existence of the physical universe on the basis of h, the existence of a personal
creator, along with our store of scientific knowledge of the universe is greater than
the probability of the existence of the universe on the basis of our store of scientific
knowledge about the universe alone. According to Swinburne, the additional
probability of this "personal explanation" means that we have a good C-inductive
argument for the existence of God. 1SO There have been several objections raised to
this inductive version of the cosmological argument. 181 Here, I will simply take
Swinburne's account at face value and evaluate the claim that P(elkandh) > P(elk).
While talking about probability on such a grand, sweeping, general scale is
difficult, it is clear that we need a much clearer idea of what is involved when we
talk about the probability of P( elk), which leads into a consideration ofthe current
best scientific theories concerning the origin of the universe.
177 Bruce Reichenbach, The Cosmological Argument: A Reassessment, p. 69, and J. L. Mackie, The
Miracle of Theism, p. 85. Given Kant's attack on the ontological argument, it is ironic that Reichenbach
likens the PSR to the principle of causality and then gives a very Kantian defense of it.
178 Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), Chapter 7.
179 Ibid., p. 130.
180 Swinburne also develops an inductive version of the teleological argument for the existence of
God. These probabilistic arguments, along with miracles and religious experience, are parts of
Swinburne's "cumulative case" for the existence of God.
181 See, for example, J. L. Mackie, The Miracle of Theism, pp. 95ff.
THE NATURE OF GOD AND ARGUMENTS FOR TIlE EXISTENCE OF GOD
127
THE BIG BANG

Using Einstein's general theory of relativity, cosmologists now set the
beginning of the universe with the initial "big bang" at something close to fifteen
billion years ago. 182 The big bang theory came about as the result of the solutions
to the field equations in Einstein's general theory of relativity developed by the
Russian mathematician Alexander Friedman. When Einstein applied his field
equations to the universe with general relativity, the resulting prediction was either
an expanding or contracting universe (observations of the famed redshifts caused
by the Doppler effect confirmed an expanding universe). Since Einstein could not
bring himself to accept this conclusion, he introduced what he called "the
cosmological constant," which inserted a rather ad hoc force of repulsion into the
universe to balance the force of gravity and provide a static universe. 183 Friedman's
solutions to Einstein's field equations made the general theory of relativity
compatible with an expanding universe and led to the Friedman and Lemaitre
theory that such an expanding universe originated from a state of enormous
density. While there are still different models of the big bang, observations of the
relative velocities with which more distant galaxies compared with closer galaxies
are receding from us (described by Hubble's Law) confirm some form of an
expanding universe.
The version of the big bang theory that is now most widely accepted by
physicists is the one developed by the American physicist George Gamow, which
accounts for the initial explosion in terms of nuclear processes. The original big
bang took place in a unity of enormous temperatures and colossal density, which
contained all of the matter in the universe, which then exploded and expanded at a
tremendous velocity.184 From the initial explosion, the universe expanded and
cooled. 18s For the first several hundred thousand years, the universe was simply a
hot and opaque cloud of radiation and matter. As matter began to localize, the
182 There are many scientific descriptions available of the big bang. The description here is a
synthesis of the most commonly accepted current theories and draws primarily upon a popular college
textbook for astronomy and cosmology, George Abell, David Morrison, and Sidney Wolff, Exploring
the Universe, Fifth Edition, (Philadelphia, Pa.: Saunders College Publishing, 1987), Chapter 37, pp.
656-76. For a very lay-accessible account, see also James S. Trefil, The Moment of Creation (New
York: Macmillan, 1983), Chapter 1. For descriptions of the big bang employed by philosophers of
religion, see Quentin Smith, 'The Uncaused Beginning of the Universe," and "Atheism, Theism, and
Big Bang Cosmology," in Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology, William Lang Craig and Quentin
Smith (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), and Kenneth Nelson, "Evolution and the Argument from
Design," Religious Studies, Vol. 14, 1978, pp. 427-28.
183 There are many explanations of this development for the layperson. A very popular recent source
is Brain Greene, The Elegant Universe (New York: Vintage Books, 1999), pp. 82ff. Einstein later was
to say that introducing the ad hoc adjustment to relativity theory to ensure a static universe was the
biggest mistake of his life.
184 For a more detailed scientific description of the big bang, see Abell et al., Exploring the
Universe, pp. 665ff. The version discussed here is what physicists call the "standard model" of the big
bang.
185 An interesting point here involves the problem of the perspective of any theoretical observer that
epistemologists (but probably not physicists) will find interesting. The common conception of the big
bang where one imagines a bright flash of light in distant space will not work. Since all of the mass of
the universe was contained in the original singularity, there was no "outside" to the big bang. The big
bang occupied all of existing space and would have to be imagined more like a sudden bright flash of
the entire visual field.
128
universe became transparent. Gradually, the temperature dropped to a level where

stable atoms of hydrogen and helium formed, and a billion years or so after the big
bang, stars and galaxies began to stabilize as a result of the gravitational forces
pulling the atoms of helium and hydrogen together. In the interiors of the stars,
nuclear reactions reheated the cosmic particles, and the first heavy elements were
formed. The most widely accepted understanding of how our own solar system
began is based upon the theory first suggested by Immanuel Kant and Simon de
Laplace. The Kant-Laplace model is known to physicists as the nebular
hypothesis .186 According to this model, our solar system is considered to be the
result - some 4.7 billions years ago - of a giant solar nebular that rotated around a
central concentration of tremendously hot matter. The center of the nebula became
our sun, and the planets are the result of concentrations of matter that were "spun
off' by the nebula. The heat and ultraviolet rays from the sun acted upon the gases
present on earth to form amino acids, and from there life eventually evolved over
some billions of years to the form in which we now know it.
THE BIG BANG AND THE COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
The significant theological implications of the big bang arise from the period
immediately "prior to" and immediately "following" the big bang itself. Even
making sense of talking about any time prior to the big bang is troublesome since
physicists agree that time itself began with the big bang; however, the focus of
attention here will be the singularity within which the big bang occurred. The
rather direct and simple way in which theists might respond to the big bang is
simply to ask, "Well, what caused the big bang? Why cannot God be understood as
the first cause of the big bang?"
Although the initial singularity from which the big bang arose is described
differently by different models of the big bang theory, all agree that this singularity
was one in which the normal physical and cosmological laws and features
commonly attributed to the universe did not exist. Normally, scientific descriptions
of the big bang are thought to be unable to penetrate what is referred to as Planck
time (which is 10 -43 after the big bang).187 Before this point in time, normal
gravitation breaks down into quantum mechanics. At the turn of the twenty-first
century, scientists are still in search of the grand unified theory that will allow
them to understand and explain beyond Planck's time to the moment of the big
bang itself. Whether further penetration by scientific explanation is even
theoretically possible is very debatable. 188 Various scholars have described the
singularity from which the big bang occurred, as well as the initial moments, as
completely chaotic and lawless and thus impenetrable - even theoretically - by
scientific explanation. The limits of the ability of science and scientific theory to
penetrate to the exact moment of the big bang is embodied in Stephen Hawking's
Abell et a!., Exploring the Universe. p. 247.
Planck time is named after Max Planck, who is credited with a major role in developing quantum
theory.
188 Some physicists think that superstring theory is a candidate for a theory that will unify general
relativity and quantum theory by piercing the Planck limit on the snpermicroscopic level. However,
even superstring theory is not proffered as a way of piercing the Planck limit in regards to the big bang.
See Brian Greene, The Elegant Universe.
186
IS7
129
principle of ignorance. According to the principle of ignorance, the singularity

from which the big bang developed is a condition under which the normal,
classical concepts of space and time theoretically "break down," as do all of the
other laws of physics. 189 Such a breakdown in all known natural laws means that
the possibility of all scientific explanation as well as all scientific prediction breaks
down as well. In other words, no prediction could even theoretically be made about
what kind of universe the big bang would produce or even that it would produce a
universe rather than an infinite, chaotic nonuniverse. Such a situation is one that
"would thus emit all configurations of particles with equal probability."I90 Paul
Davies describes the singularity of the big bang as "the instantaneous suspension of
physical laws, the sudden abrupt flash of lawlessness that allowed something to
come out of nothing.,,191
GOD AND THE GAP IN THE BIG BANG
The inability of scientific explanations to penetrate the big bang singularity
appears to leave a great cosmic "gap," which, of course, the theist fills with God as
the creator. Davies's description of the big bang as allowing for something coming
from nothing without any possible scientific explanation sets the stage for a theistic
explanation to "fill the gap" with the use of a creator God as the cause of the big
bang. Both theists and physicists have seen the big bang theory as leaving open
such an opportunity for a theistic explanation. 192 Thus, so far as Richard
Swinburne's inductive cosmological argument discussed earlier in this chapter is
concerned, it seems that the existence of the explanatory gap for the universe in big
bang theory at least allows for the possibility of adding some additional hypothesis
involving the existence of God that would increase our ability to explain the
universe.
THE KALAM COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
Perhaps the best known and most clearly formulated version of the cosmological
argument that incorporates the fundamental concepts of big bang theory is found in
the work of William Lane Craig. Craig seizes upon the fact that before the big bang
nothing can be said to exist and that all matter and energy as well as space-time
itself began with the big bang to construct an updated version of what is called the
kaliim cosmological argument for the existence of GOd. 193 The kaliim cosmological
argument avoids questions about an infinite regress of causes by explicitly
189 Stephen Hawking, "Breakdown of Predictability in Gravitational Collapse," Physical Review,
Vol. D14, 1976, p. 2460. Quoted by Quentin Smith in "Atheism, Theism, and Big Bang Cosmology," in
Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology, p. 198.
190 Ibid.
191 Paul Davies, The Edge of Infinity (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1981), p. 161.
192 For example, Stephen Hawking thinks that his oscillating view of the universe is preferable to the
standard big bang model - in part, at least - because it has no beginning and thus, in contrast to the
standard big bang model, does not leave a gap for the beginning of space-time, which allows an appeal
to God. See Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time (New York, Bantam Books, 1988).
193 See William Lane Craig, The Kaliim Cosmological Argument (New York: Harper and Row,
1979), and "The Caused Beginning of the Universe," in Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology.
Craig borrows the name "kaIam" for his version of the cosmological from the movement in Islam
comparable to natural theology in the Western, Judeo-Christian tradition.
l30
claiming that the universe began to exist at some point in the past. An "actual
infinite" in time is impossible, and past time is thus explicitly regarded as finite.
Craig argues that if we grant the premises,
1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause,
and
2. The universe began to exist,
then we must conclude that
C. The universe has a cause.
This certainly is a valid argument, and Craig thinks that the cause in the
conclusion (C) can only be God. 194 A personal God is the only plausible solution to
a puzzle that he thinks exists in the big bang theory. He claims that if the cause of
the big bang is located in the singularity itself, then it must have existed "eternally"
without a beginning and with no change at all, and then, at some finite point,
approximately fifteen billion years ago, it caused the universe to come into
existence. Craig thinks that such a scenario is "exceedingly odd," since such a
cosmic cause, in his words,
cannot have any beginning of its existence nor any prior cause. Nor can there
have been any changes in this cause, either in its nature or operations, prior to
the beginning of the universe. It just exists changelessly without any beginning,
and a finite time ago it brought the universe into existence .... The cause is in
some sense eternal and yet the effect which it produced is not eternal, but began
to exist a finite time ago. How can this be? If the necessary and sufficient
conditions for the production of the effect are eternal, then why isn't the effect
eternal? How can all the causal conditions sufficient for the production of the
effect be changelessly existent and yet the effect not also be existent along with
the cause? How can the cause exist without the effect?195
The kind of cause that Craig attributes to the creator is "agent causation" and is
the result of free will, whereby God can introduce new conditions into the universe
that were not present earlier and thereby produce new effects. 196 Craig adds to this
argument support that he musters from the anthropic principle and claims that "the
incredibly complex and delicately balanced nexus of initial conditions [for the big
bang] necessary for intelligent life" can only be explained as the product of
intelligent design by a "personal Creator." The existence of God is thus, for Craig,
"confirmed by science."
OBJECTIONS TO THE KALAM COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
Paul Draper has objected rather convincingly that Craig's argument involves an
equivocation on what it means for a thing to begin to exist. 197 In one sense, a thing
begins to exist within time, and in a second sense, a thing begins to exist within or
194 William Lane Craig, "Scientific Confirmation of the Cosmological Argument," in Philosophy of
Religion: An Anthology, edited by Louis P. Pojman, pp. 38ff.
195 Ibid., p. 38.
196 Ibid., p. 39.
197 Paul Draper, "A Critique of the Kalam Cosmological Argument," in Louis P. Pojman, Philosophy
of Religion: An Anthology, edited by Louis P. Pojman, pp. 42-47.
131
with time. Craig claims in his first premise that everything that begins to exist has a
cause, and he offers empirical, scientific evidence to buttress this claim. However,
experience can only provide support for the claim that things that begin to exist
within time have a cause; so it seems that Craig must be using "begin to exist" in
the first sense in premise one. In premise two, however, if "begins to exist" means
"begins to exist within time," then all of the evidence to which Craig appeals
would serve to undermine the truth of this second premise and hence the soundness
of his argument since, as we have seen, according to big bang theory time began to
exist with the big bang. Since time did not exist before the big bang, the universe
did not come into existence within time. Quentin Smith has also objected that
rigorous scientific investigation on the subatomic level has provided us with
empirical evidence that quantum acausality does occur with the uncaused
emergence of energy or particles (virtual particles),198 which undermines the truth
of the first premise even if "begins to exist" is restricted to "begins to exist in
time."
In addition to these objections, Craig's version of the kaliim cosmological
argument faces problems that arise from his use of big bang theory to buttress his
argument. Once we use the big bang theory to trace the beginning of the universe
back to the big bang singularity, the most compelling and important point is that, at
that point, "all bets are off." No natural laws - no ordinary notions of space or time
or laws of physics - can be applied. The singularity is inherently chaotic and
unpredictable in the most fundamental sense, so Craig'S claim that he finds the
possibility of an "eternal" cause existing before the big bang without its effects
"exceedingly odd" has no force at all. Everything and nothing we might say about
the big bang singularity would be exceedingly odd; therefore, it should come as no
surprise and it should not seem odd that the classical notions of cause and effect
lead to odd consequences when applied to the big bang singularity. That is exactly
what we should expect. But what is true of the classical notions of space and time
and cause and effect must also be true of the most fundamental metaphysical
notions. Appealing to a kind of Kantian transcendental argument to make a priori,
metaphysical claims about the nature of the singularity will not work. There is
absolutely no reason that an ordered universe must arise from the big bang
singUlarity and especially no necessity that a universe ordered in the exact way in
which this particular universe is ordered must arise. Whatever speculation one may
be led to make about the source of the singularity or the source of the universe
developing from that singularity cannot extend beyond our understanding of cause
that is derived from the known universe. Since we cannot make sense of applying
any of the classical laws or notions of science or metaphysics to the big bang
singularity, then a fortiori we cannot make sense of applying such notions as
"agent causation," as Craig attempts, since any understanding we might have of
agent causation is dependent upon those known laws. Craig explains his notion of
agent causation with the following analogy:
198 Quentin Smith, "The Uncaused Beginning of the Universe," in Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang
Cosrrwlogy, p. 123. For a full discussion concerning the caused vs. uncaused - the theistic vs. the
atheistic - interpretations of the big bang theory, which space here does not permit, see the exchange
between Craig and Smith in Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology.
132
For example, a man sitting from eternity could will to stand up; thus a temporal
effect arises from an eternally existing agent. Similarly, a finite time ago a
Creator endowed with free will could have willed to bring the world into being
at that moment. 199
Of course whatever force there is to the analogy of a sitting man rising exists
only in this universe with our present understanding of its natural laws and the
classical notions of space and time. Certainly, applying the notion of agency
causation to the big bang is more exceedingly odd than simply adopting the notion
of an uncaused big bang. 2O If a theist embraces enough of the big bang theory to
reach the big bang singularity, then he cannot suddenly abandon everything that
science tells us about that singularity to introduce arbitrarily the notion of an agent
acting causally in a fashion that resembles anything like our ordinary
understanding of agent causation.
The same result applies to Richard Swinburne's inductive cosmological
argument discussed earlier in this chapter. Swinburne's claim is that the probability
of the evidence that we have about the universe on the basis of our scientific
knowledge plus the hypothesis of God is greater than the probability of that
evidence on the basis of our scientific knowledge alone, that is, P( e!kandh) >
P( elk)?OI For Swinburne, it is less unlikely that God would exist uncaused than it is
that a universe would exist uncaused. But what this somewhat lengthy
consideration of the best available scientific explanation of the universe reveals is
that talking about the ultimate cause of the universe is not possible in any
meaningful sense. If all our scientific laws and concepts break down in the original
singularity before the big bang, then, as I have claimed, a fortiori, our
understanding of personal agency breaks down as well. Swinburne's claim that a
"personal explanation"adds to the probability of the universe is false because it is
impossible to assess the probability of the existence of the known evidence about
our universe on the basis of our scientific knowledge plus the existence of a
personal creator. In fact, in a very circuitous way, and in a way he never intended,
we seem to have confirmed Bertrand Russell's point from his 1948 BBC debate
with Frederick Copleston - namely, that to apply the notion of cause to the entire
universe is a logical absurdity.
THE ATHEISTIC KALAM COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
In contrast with Craig's theistic interpretation of the big bang, Quentin Smith is
responsible for developing what is essentially an atheistic version of the kaIam
cosmological argument based upon big bang theory. Smith argues that
1. The big bang singularity is the earliest state of the universe.
Craig, "Scientific Confirmation of the Cosmological Argument," p. 39.

For a more detailed treatment of the notion of an uncaused big bang, see Quentin Smith, "The
Uncaused Beginning of the Universe," pp. I 25ff.
201 See above and Richard Swinburne, The Existence 01 God, pp. 130-32.
199
200
133
2. The big bang singularity must be inanimate given the extreme conditions of
infinite density and temperature.
3. The big bang singularity is fundamentally chaotic and lawless and does not
guarantee an animate universe will result (Hawking's principle of ignorance).
4. An animate universe is better than an inanimate universe (a theistic
theological principle).
5. If God exists, then God created the earliest state of the universe.
Therefore, God did not create the earliest state of the universe and God does not
exist.
Steps (1) through (3) are results of big bang cosmology embraced by both Craig
and Smith. Steps (4) and (5) are results of what Smith takes to be orthodox
Christian theology.
There appear to be several responses that a theist may make to this argument.
First, clearly this is not a "knock down" atheistic argument since it is based on big
bang cosmology, and there are other alternatives to the big bang as an explanation
for the beginning of the universe. A theist may reject the big bang theory altogether
and embrace some other view, such as Hawking's oscillating view, but whether
theism would fare any better under other cosmologies is doubtful. For example,
Hawking's oscillating universe has no beginning, and there is thus no role for God
as creator. Alternatively, the theist is best off attacking premise (4). Even if a theist
denies that there is a best possible world, there must be, as Smith notes, some
possible worlds that are "better" than others. Minimally, to be consistent with the
orthodox notion of God as a "personal" creator who values and loves human
beings, a universe with human beings (or some being very similar) must be
regarded as preferable to one without such beings. 202 Given that the original big
bang singularity provided no guarantee that an animate universe with human
beings would evolve, a theist might argue that God miraculously intervened along
the way to ensure that the universe would be animate. Now perhaps there is no
restriction that God create as efficiently as possible, but certainly the suggestion
that God intervened to ensure that the universe would be animate is forced,
artificial, and ad hoc. In any case, such a claim would be a completely theological
one and quite independent of big bang cosmology.
THE ANTHROPIC PRINCIPLE AND THE TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
Recent discussion of the classical teleological argument for the existence of God
is examined in some detail in Chapter VI in connection with the treatment of the
problem of evil. I will examine here only the recent, more novel developments that
have generated discussions of a different nature concerning the teleological
202 See Smith, "The Uncaused Beginning of the Universe," pp. 201-202. Compare Richard
Swinburne, The Existence of God, pp. 145-51.
134
argument and that have given rise to different kinds of issues. 203 Perhaps the most
significant such development has been the attention given to what is now called the
anthropic principle (AP). Although it is frequently regarded as a very recent
discovery by scientists,204 the general features of the universe that are captured in
AP have arguably been explicitly recognized by scientists for over a hundred years.
For example, Alfred Russel Wallace, who, along with Charles Darwin, developed
evolutionary theory, marveled at the way in which the vast and complex inorganic
universe had to be precisely arranged in minute detail in order for organic life to
develop.z5 Certainly, however, the recent developments in cosmology involving
big bang theory (examined above) have increased our scientific knowledge about
the initial conditions of the universe enormously and provided significant
additional evidence to support the anthropic principle. On the one hand, then,
modern science has seriously undermined traditional arguments for the existence of
God, as we have seen above in the case of the cosmological argument; however, on
the other hand, theists have seized upon AP as a way of reformulating the
teleological argument in the face of our increased scientific knowledge of the
umverse.
AP,WAP,SAP
AP was first explicitly formulated by Brandon Carter in 1974?06 As with the
cosmological argument, there is no single version of this principle. Following
Carter, it is now common to distinguish a weak version (W AP) and a strong
version (SAP) of AP, and WAP and SAP are also formulated differently by
different figures. The fundamental characteristic notion that is focused upon by AP
is the extremely low antecedent probability that sophisticated conscious life could
ever exist in the universe given what scientists now know about the initial
conditions that gave rise to the universe. Slight, even relatively minuscule,
variations in any number of different, seemingly unrelated conditions, features, or
properties of the universe would have presumably meant that conscious life would
never have existed and that furthermore, a fortiori, no conscious experience of any
part or aspect of the universe would ever have taken place. Thus, almost ironically,
even given the extremely low initial probability that intelligent, carbon-based life
would exist, W AP says that any features of the universe that we human beings may
observe or discover (no matter how extraordinary or improbable they may seem)
are exactly the features that the universe must have in order for observers to exist
203 Parallel issues involve the cosmological argument as welL See John D. Barrow and Frank J.
Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1986), especially section
2.9, pp. 103ff.
204 The coining of the phrase "the anthropic principle" is usually attributed to Brandon Carter in
1974.
205 Alfred Russel Wallace, Man's Place in the Universe (New York: McClure, Phillips and Co.,
1903).
206 See Brandon Carter, "The Anthropic Principle and Large Number Coincidences," in
Confrontation of Cosmological Theories with Observation, edited by M. S. Longair (Dordecht,
Netherlands: D. Reidel Publishers, 1974).
135
and to experience and discover anything,z07 According to W AP, given the wide
band of initial probabilities, the one set of conditions that allows for conscious life
and experience is regarded as infinitesimally small; therefore, the only explanation
for why the universe is as we observe it to be is that this is the only way it could be
in order for us to exist and for us to be able to observe it!208 But W AP offers no
explanation for why this extremely unlikely set of conditions came to exist. SAP
says that the eventual development of life in the universe is not simply a possible
development but that intelligent life had to develop at some point in the life of the
universe, and thus the universe must have the conditions, features, and properties
that allow intelligent, conscious life to develop.209
AP AND DESIGN
It is SAP that is of more interest and more significant consequence for the
teleological argument, and it is SAP that theists have used to buttress the
teleological argument. If the initial conditions of the universe were such that
eventually intelligent, carbon-based life had to develop, what is the best
explanation for this "fine-tuning" of the universe? Theists who base the
teleological argument upon the features of the universe identified by the anthropic
principle argue that the existence of God and the creation of the universe by God
provide a more reasonable and probable explanation of what is regarded as
"design" than explanations based upon simple scientific explanations or pure
chance. Such arguments are probabilistic arguments to the best explanation. M. A.
Corey's reasoning concerning the AP is typical of theists who defend the
teleological argument based on AP. Since we can never hope to establish the
original cause of the universe indubitably, the best we can do is to assess the
relative probability of different possible causes. Given the choice between the
plausibility of simply "stunning coincidences" on the one hand and creation by
God on the other to explain the existence of the very narrow band of initial
conditions of the universe that led to the existence of intelligent life identified in
AP, Corey maintains that the theistic account is the more reasonable and plausible
account. 210
Somewhat ironically, the probabilistic teleological argument based upon AP is
not structured in the same way as the classic form of the teleological argument
using analogy of proper proportionality. However, different theists still frequently
rely upon the use of analogy to justify the choice of the probability of creation over
2m John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Argument (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1986), pp. 16ff. This book provides the most complete account of the antbropic
principle available.
208 For example, it is claimed that if the rate of expansion of the universe had been reduced by one
part in a million million, the universe would have collapsed upon itself. For a discussion of this and
other such conditions, see John Leslie, "Anthropic Principle, World Ensemble, Design," American
Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 19, no. 2, 1982, pp. 141ff. See also Barrow and Tipler, ibid., pp. 288ff.
209 Barrow and Tipler, ibid., p. 2l.
210 M. A. Corey, God and the New Cosmology: The Anthropic Design Argument (Lanham, Md.:
Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 1993), pp. 205-15. Corey gives significant weight to the fact that
some scientists, such as Stephen Hawking and Paul Davies, allow for some notion of principle of design
to account for the initial conditions of the universe. Compare Corey's restrained comments about
scientists with the exaggerated comments of William Craig, '''Theism and Physical Cosmology," in A
Companion to Philosophy of Religion, edited by Philip L. Quinn and Charles Taliaferro, p. 422.
136
other nontheistic explanations of these initial conditions of the universe.

Representative of the kind of analogies used by theists to support creative design
over chance is the one proposed by Richard Swinburne:
Suppose that a madman kidnaps a victim and shuts him in a room with a cardshuffling machine. The machine shuffles ten packs of cards simultaneously and
then draws a card from each pack and exhibits simultaneously the ten cards. The
kidnapper tells the victim that he will shortly set the machine to work and it will
exhibit its first draw, but that unless the draw consists of an ace of hearts from
each pack, the machine will simultaneously set off an explosion which will kill
the victim, in consequence of which he will not see which cards the machine
drew. The machine is then set to work, and to the amazement and relief of the
victim the machine exhibits an ace of hearts drawn from each pack. The victim
thinks that this extraordinary fact needs an explanation in terms of the machine
having been rigged in some way .... There is indeed something extraordinary in
need of explanation in ten aces of hearts being drawn.211
While it is easy to agree with Swinburne that there is something extraordinary in
this example that needs explanation, it does not seem as if this is really an
appropriate analogy to use to illustrate the fundamental issue raised by AP. The
victim's experience of the ten aces of hearts being drawn and the resulting
amazement and incredulity are the result of other experiences that the victim has
had and other knowledge that the victim possesses about probability, decks of
cards, and so forth, such as the number of cards in the deck and the number of aces
of hearts. To make the analogy appropriate for illustrating the main point of AP,
we need to imagine a completely naive and virgin perceiver (but a rational one, I
suppose) who has no previous experience and no knowledge of cards or
probabilities. Exactly how to adjust Swinburne's example to make it appropriate to
illustrate AP is not clear, but perhaps if we imagine that the victim suffers amnesia
after he is kidnaped and before he is put in the room and if the victim remembers
nothing about the physical world - including probability, cards, rooms, machines,
bombs, or even other people - then when the kidnapper makes his threat and the
machine produces ten aces of hearts, the victim will not be surprised at all. The fact
that the victim perceives anything, including a machine producing ten aces of
hearts, would not be surprising at all. It simply is what is perceived. To the victim,
the fact that he experiences something would not seem to be extraordinary and in
need of explanation?12
There are many different naturalistic explanations that physicists use to explain
the existence of the initial conditions of the universe and how and why those
conditions came to be so friendly and conducive to intelligent life. The basic
approach involves an attempt to explain why this actual world came to be selected
from an infinite number of different possible worlds that might have become actual
but which did not. In these different possible but nonactual worlds, the initial
Richard Swinburne, The Existence a/God, p. 138.
For further discussion of the probability of the set of initial conditions of the universe, see John
Earrnan, "The SAP Also Rises: A Critical Examination of the Anthropic Principle," American
Philosophical Quarterly. Vol. 24, no. 4,1987, pp. 309.
211
212
137
conditions and the fundamental constants would be different, so the question

becomes why this particular actual universe came to be actual from a "world
ensemble" of different universes.213 World ensembles are explained in different
ways. Appealing to the indeterministic results of quantum theory and the
possibility of the "branching" of the universe into different possibilities as a result
of unstable and nonmechanistic subatomic particles is one popular way. Both
Brandon Carter and Paul Davies adopt such a position regarding world ensemble.
This view is the result of accepting what is called the Copenhagen interpretation of
quantum mechanics, according to which only this actual world really exists while
other possible worlds are worlds in what Wittgenstein once called "logical space"
that might have existed but never did. 214 Theists find such naturalistic explanations
implausible and point to a number of scientists who have claimed that the existence
of God and creation by a personal being are needed as a principle to explain why
this actual world came to be "selected" from the world ensemble. Otherwise, they
claim, human existence is simply the result of a coincidence or an "accident" of
staggering and literally cosmic proportions.
AP has been taken by some theists to reverse the effects of Copernican
astronomy and the resulting Copernican principle, which removed any reason for
regarding Earth or human beings as occupying any position of special privilege in
the universe. AP appears to place human beings back at the very center of things
and to reestablish man's special status with God. To such an interpretation, we
should add a couple of important cautionary notes: In the first place, the
appellation "anthropic principle" is something of a misnomer since this principle
does not attribute special status to homo sapiens per se. There is nothing in the
cosmological version of AP that requires the existence of human life in the
universe - just intelligent, carbon-based, living observers. Whether such life may
even be regarded as humanoid depends upon just how far one is willing to stretch
the notion of humanoid. Certainly, AP is compatible with the existence of what is
frequently called "lower forms of life" or of intelligent creatures that bear no
anatomical resemblance or similarity in terms of physical appearance at all to
human beings. 215 As Corey observes, the cosmological evidence for AP supports at
most a biocentric principle. The claim for the special status of human beings, as he
observes, "involves an anthropocentric generalization from the scientific evidence
... [based] on a variety of philosophical and theological intuitions about humanity's
importance in the overall universal order.,,216 So extending the biocentric principle
213 The notion of a world ensemble is now common and was first used by Brandon Carter, '"The
Anthropic Principle and Large Number Coincidences," and G. Steigman, "Confrontation of Antimatter
Cosmologies with Observational Data," also in Confrontation of Cosmological Theories with
Observational Data, edited by M. S. Longair.
2[4 There are many discussions of the competing interpretations of quantum mechanics. For a very
accessible account, see Paul Davies, Other Worlds (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1980), pp. 145ff.
Also see M. A. Corey, God and the New Cosmology, pp. 175ff. For a discussion of the less accepted
many-worlds interpretation of Hugh Everett, according to which observers select the actual world in
which they live by their presence from many actual worlds, see The Many-Worlds Interpretation of
Quantum Mechanics, edited by Bryce S. DeWitt and Neill Graham (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
215 Corey recognizes that intelligent observers might be whales or dolphins or "human-like"
creatures on other planets. M. A. Corey, God and the New Cosmology, p. 7.
216 Ibid.
138
to the anthropic principle is stretching the scientific evidence. And much of the
scientific evidence that supports AP would still be true even if carbon-based
intelligent life had never existed - for example, the delicate balance between the
mass of the universe and the force of the big bang that allowed for galaxies, stars,
and plants to form (though, of course, we would never have known this had life not
existed).
The second cautionary note that should be added is one concerning the status
and significance of AP. While theists are eager to seize upon AP and the scientific
evidence that is used to support it as evidence of intelligent design in the universe,
scientists and philosophers are certainly not all agreed about the formulation of or
the importance of the principle. John Earman calls W AP "nothing but a tautology"
and claims that different forms of AP are grounded more in philosophy than in
science.217 Other variations on AP stretch credulity far beyond what is
scientifically defensible. For example, the final anthropic principle (FAP) claims
that after carbon-based intelligent life has come into existence in the universe (as it
obviously has), it will never end, and the participatory anthropic principle (PAP)
claims that observers are necessary to bring the universe into existence. 218 Some
scientists regard AP as a metaphysical or cosmological principle rather than a
scientific one, and Earman calls PAP and FAP "empty teases" and "unbridled and
muddled speculation.,,219 In his review of Barrow and Tippler's book, Martin
Gardner called the FAP the CRAP (completely ridiculous anthropic principle)?20
What one should gather from all of this is that AP and all of its variations and
permutations are highly speculative and controversial in the scientific community,
as is the use of argument to the best explanation in this case. Does this mean that
appealing to a theistic explanation of the "fine-tuning" of the universe involving
design and personal creation is more probable and more rational than a completely
naturalistic explanation based upon the speculative and controversial versions of
AP, WAP, SAP, FAP, or PAP? Well, it is not clear that putting the question in this
way is really appropriate since scientists who appeal to AP do not use it in
anything like the normal sense of an explanation. In fact, scientific recognition of
AP (and its variations) is an admission that a normal scientific explanation is not
possible and should not be expected about the initial conditions of the universe. 221
Scientists who support AP may easily agree with Swinburne that the existence of
the universe and the particular order that we find in the universe are "too big" to be
217 John Eannan, "The SAP Also Rises: A Critical Examination of the Anthropic Principle," pp. 308
and 313.
218 FAP was first fonnulated by Barrow and Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, p. 23.
Their Ultimate Observer (p. 471) is reminiscent of Berkeley's use of God as the Eternal Perceiver in his
idealism. As a corollary to the effect of the observer in quantum physics, PAP was first suggested by
John Wheeler, "Genesis and Observership," in Foundational Problems in the Special Sciences, edited
by R. E. Butts and 1. Hintikka (Dordrecht, Netherlands: Reidel, 1977). For discussions ofFAP and PAP,
see Eannan, ibid., pp. 312ff., and Corey, ibid., pp. 3-4, 167-68, and 185-88. Ignored in much of the
discussion is Wheeler's disclaimer that PAP is "too frail" to withstand criticism and Barrow and
Tipler's disclaimer that FAP and SAP are "quite speculative."
219 John Eannan, ibid., p. 313.
220 Martin Gardner, "WAP, SAP, FAP, and PAP," New York Review of Books, Vol. 33, no. 8, 1986,
pp.22-25.
221 See Eannan, "The SAP Also Rises: A Critical Examination of the Anthropic Principle,"
pp.
309 and 3 13 ff. , for a discussion of anthropic explanation.
139
explained by science. 222 As we have seen earlier in the case of big bang theory,
scientific explanation does, in fact, come to an end, and further inquiry turns into
metaphysics and perhaps theology.z23 So concluding that a theistic explanation is
more rational and probable than AP seems to be an exaggeration and a
misstatement of the case. Rather, the theist may conclude that the theistic
explanation of the universe in terms of creation by a personal deity is more rational
and probable than no explanation or explanation in terms of simply chance, but
then this claim can be made quite independently of AP. The theist may thus take
the additional cosmological evidence that supports AP as simply additional
evidence of design. What this discussion does show is something similar to the
claim made by Alvin Plantinga regarding the free will defense to the problem of
evil (discussed in Chapter VI): the theistic position is, at least, a plausible one and
not unreasonable or irrational.
THE CUMULATIVE CASE ARGUMENT
What are we to conclude from this examination of the effect of new
developments during the twentieth century upon the traditional arguments for the
existence of God? On the one hand, various recent scientific developments have
been taken by some to undermine those traditional arguments; on the other hand,
those same various scientific developments have been taken by others to buttress
those arguments. In this critical discussion, I have tried to show that neither of
these conclusions is conclusively justified and that the force of the traditional
arguments supplemented with the recent developments in science is still a matter of
much controversy requiring further inquiry. There is still much work to be done
involving the traditional arguments by natural theologians. It does appear that the
theists can claim the modest victory that results from theism "holding its own" as a
viable alternative explanation of the existence of the universe to a completely
naturalistic, scientific explanation. As I have shown in the case of the big bang and
the cosmological argument and in the case of the anthropic principle and the
teleological argument, scientific explanations of the universe eventually become as
speculative and as metaphysical as theism. In this respect, Richard Swinburne is
correct that strictly scientific explanations of the universe come to an end, and it is
where science ends that theism finds a niche that has thus far withstood new
scientific discoveries and the development of new scientific theories about the
universe.
A second result of this consideration of recent developments involving the
traditional arguments for the existence of God is a reinforcement of the notion
made explicit by Kant and Hartshorne that the arguments are interrelated in rather
crucial ways. The ontological argument (even the modem modal versions)
proceeds only on the assumption in some form that the existence of God is
Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God, p. 138.
There is also the additional problem raised by Richard Gale of whether one can reasonably use
argument to the best explanation to make a prediction about the past based upon evidence from that
past's own future. But there is a goose and gander problem here. If the use of argument to the best
explanation is problematic for AP, then it is as well for a theistic explanation of the universe. See
Richard Gale, "The Anthropic Principle," Scientific American, Vol. 245, 1981, pp. 157. Also see, M. A.
Corey, God and the New Cosmology, pp. 209ff.
222
223
140
possible. The cosmological argument in light of big bang theory just might
demonstrate that even if this assumption cannot be proven to be true at least it is
not an unreasonable assumption for the theist to make since science cannot offer
any explanation of the original singularity from which the universe came. The
teleological argument with the anthropic considerations can then be taken to
demonstrate that some intelligent design by a personal creator is at least as
plausible an explanation of the "fine-tuning" of the universe for intelligent life as
cosmic coincidence. While this may appear to be a modest advance for theism, it is
still an advance that appears to give theism an equal "place at the table" with
science, and, in this respect, there is little modest about it at all.
This unified view of the arguments for the existence of God supports what
Richard Swinburne has called the cumulative case for the existence of God. No one
of the arguments for God is decisive, as we have seen, but gradually, bit by bit, the
case for the existence of God is strengthened, Swinburne claims, by each
consideration. Other factors not yet considered - particularly religious experience playa significant role in Swinburne's cumulative case argument. We now turn our
attention to the problems of religious experience and religious epistemology in the
next chapter.
IV. Religious Experience and Religious Epistemology
The twentieth century saw significant new developments in and significant new
directions for the treatments of religious experience and religious epistemology.
The philosophical discussions in these areas have now taken on significant new
dimensions. While natural theology, based upon evidentialism, dominated AngloAmerican analytic philosophy in the early part of the twentieth century, antievidentialism - either in the various forms of religious experience, Reformed
epistemology, or fideism - became very dominant in the last few decades of the
century.
THE JUSTIFIED TRUE BELIEF THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE AND
EVIDENTIALISM
In contemporary epistemology, an evidentialist view regarding knowledge is
reflected in the justified true belief theory of knowledge (JTB), which has
dominated Western epistemology. According to the JTB theory of knowledge, a
person S knows that p if and only if
i. P is true,
ii. S believes that p, and
iii. S is justified in believing that p.
Conditions (i) through (iii) are regarded as both necessary and sufficient for S's
knowing that p. Condition (iii) has been explained in different ways by different
people, but, perhaps most commonly, epistemic justification has been explicated in
terms of "adequate evidence."! That we must provide some explanation of (iii)
seems obvious if we are to rule out epistemic luck. If S believes p on certain
evidential grounds that turn out to be false, but then p turns out fortuitously and
coincidentally to be true for other reasons than the ones for which S believes p to
be true, then we are not willing to grant that S knows that p. This is the lesson of
Edmund
Gettier's
famed
counterexamples. 2
These
counterexamples
notwithstanding, probably no other feature has so thoroughly characterized or
1 See, for example, Roderick Chisholm, Perceiving: A Philosophical Study (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell
2 Edmund Gettier, "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?" Analysis, Vol. 23, 1963. Reprinted in The
Theory of Knowledge: Classical and Contemporary Readings, edited by Louis P. Pojman (New York:
Wadsworth, 1999), pp. 142-43.
141
142
dominated Western philosophical epistemology than the fundamental position that

underlies the justified true belief theory of knowledge: justified beliefs are
epistemically better than nonjustified ones, knowledge must be based upon
justified beliefs, and justification requires adequate evidence.
There appear to be two ways in which evidentialist theists might respond to the
general challenge of JTB theory in accounting for knowledge of God. First, the
theist may respond by confronting evidentialism directly and rejecting the
fundamental claim that beliefs must be justified on the basis of evidence. Such a
response amounts to either denying condition (iii) in the definition of the JTB
theory of knowledge or explicating (iii) in some terms and on some grounds other
than "adequate evidence." One obvious way of attempting to maintain the
epistemic value of a belief while denying that the belief is justified in terms of
adequate evidence is to maintain that the belief in question is a "foundational" or
"basic" belief. Foundationalist epistemologists, such as Alvin Plantinga, take this
approach (as I examine below). Secondly, a theist may respond by claiming that
the beliefs of the theist are justified in the same way and on the same grounds as
other beliefs. William Alston develops such a position with his theory of
perceiving God (also examined below). This sort of response amounts to retaining
(iii) in terms of "adequate evidence" and then attempting to demonstrate how
religious beliefs are justified along the same lines as are other kinds beliefs and
using the same kind of evidence as is used to justify other kinds of beliefs. 3
THE JAMES AND CLIFFORD DEBATE
The dispute between evidentialists and nonevidentialists is nicely framed by the
dispute between William Clifford and William James early in the twentieth
century. In his famed "The Ethics of Belief," Clifford argues that there is a
normative aspect to knowing and believing that prohibits belief in the face of
insufficient evidence. Clifford tells a story of what appears to be a compelling case
of a situation in which, he claims, we are inclined to invoke a normative standard
to prohibit a person from believing something in the absence of adequate evidence.
A shipowner sends a ship full of emigrants out to sea even though he knows that
the ship is old, was not well built originally, and is often in need of repairs. He
considers overhauling the ship before it sails but then convinces himself that it will
make the trip safely, so he sends the ship off, and it sinks with all aboard. The
shipbuilder saves the expense of overhauling the ship and collects the insurance
money. The shipowner refuses to investigate the doubts he initially entertained,
and even if we concede, for the sake of the argument, that the shipowner is honest
and that he comes to believe sincerely that the ship is seaworthy, Clifford insists
that the shipowner "had no right to believe on such evidence as was before him."4
According to Clifford, proper belief cannot be the result of inadequate evidence or
3 Most commentators usually include Alston in the camp of the Reformed epistemologists; however,
it often appears as if Alston is not rejecting the need for episternic justification of religious beliefs
entirely but is arguing rather that the perception of God provides such episternic justification. Reformed
epistemology, in contrast, takes the belief that God exists as basic and warranted though not inferred
from or based upon other beliefs.
4 William K. Clifford, ''The Ethics of Belief," from Lectures and Essays, 1879. Reprinted in The
Theory of Knowledge: Classical and Contemporary Readings, edited by Louis P. Pojman, p. 551.
RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE AND RELIGIOUS EPISTEMOLOGY
143
the result of "suppressing doubts and avoiding investigation." The net result, he
concludes in his famous dictum, is that "it is wrong, always, everywhere, and for
anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.',5
For Clifford, on occasions when the evidence is not adequate for belief, it is
better to suspend judgment than it is to believe on the basis of inadequate evidence
and risk error. But what constitutes "adequate evidence" for Clifford? In
contemporary terminology, his position is a strong form of naturalistic
evidentialism. We are not entitled to hold any belief in the absence of such
evidence and should suspend judgment concerning such a belief. Clifford
generalizes his view about the nature of beliefs on the grounds that the actions that
are predicated upon inadequately justified beliefs often affect other people. This is
certainly true in the example of the shipowner; however, Clifford easily and glibly
concludes that no belief "however seemingly trivial the belief' and no believer
"however obscure" is really "insignificant or without its effect on the fate of
mankind.',6 But surely some beliefs are more important than others, and some
believers are more important than others. Undeniably, Hitler's belief that the Jews
are an inferior race had a significant impact upon the fate of mankind. However, an
isolated hermit's belief that eating a banana for breakfast each morning will help
promote a long, healthy life certainly seems to be insignificant and lacking in any
consequences concerning the fate of mankind.
WILLIAM JAMES AND "THE WILL TO BELIEVE"
James concedes to Clifford that religious beliefs are not supported by adequate
evidence of the kind Clifford demands; however, at the same time, James does not
wish to relegate all religious beliefs to faith. He attempts to preserve some sort of
notion of epistemic justification for religious beliefs, so he sets for himself the task
of redefining condition (iii) of the JTB theory of knowledge. In his lectures on
Pragmatism, James makes the now well-known distinction between what he calls
"the tender-minded" and "the tough-minded" approaches to problems in
philosophy.7 The tender-minded, the rationalists, are regarded as sentimental, softheaded, and religious while the tough-minded, the empiricists, are regarded as
callous, brutal, and nonreligious. The naturalists, of course, are to be counted in the
camp of the empiricists. The rationalists offer a philosophical theory within which
religious beliefs are welcomed, but it is not empirical. The empiricists offer a
philosophical theory that is strictly empirical but within which religious beliefs are
not welcomed. James tries to stake out a "middle ground" by "stretching" the
narrow confines of the beliefs that are permitted on strictly naturalistic grounds.
James is an empiricist in his general philosophical method, but he cannot bring
himself to follow his empiricism wherever it may lead, that is, to a strict
naturalistic ontology that admits nothing beyond the natural world. In "The Will to
Believe," he maintains that a person can be justified by the passions and the will in
believing, in certain circumstances, where the evidence available on strictly
empirical grounds is inadequate to justify the belief. He says,
Ibid., p. 554.
Ibid.
7 William James, Pragmatism (New York: New American Library, 1907), pp. 22ff.
5
144
Our passional nature not only lawfully may, but must, decide an option between
propositions, whenever it is a genuine option that cannot by its nature be
decided on intellectual grounds; for to say, under such circumstances, "Do not
decide, but leave the question open," is itself a passional decision - just like
deciding yes or no - and is attended with the same risk of losing the truth. 8
The "genuine option" that James describes is a choice between two competing
hypotheses (in this case, the choice between the religious hypothesis and the
nonreligious hypothesis) that James further characterizes as forced, living, and
momentous. 9 A forced option is one in which the choice between the two
competing hypotheses is exhaustive. A person must choose one of the two, and the
possibility of a third hypothesis or of avoiding the choice altogether is not
available. A living option is a choice between two competing hypotheses when,
given the circumstances and the nature of the person making the choice, both of the
hypotheses are genuinely possible choices for the person to make. Finally, a
momentous option is a choice between two competing hypotheses where the
choice involves a matter of some vital importance with significant consequences.
While embracing a general empiricism, James thus seeks to avoid what he
regards as the restrictive implications of relying only upon empirical observations
and sense experience as the sources of the evidence for beliefs. Restricting the
notion of adequate evidence to empirical sense experience in condition (iii) of the
JTB leads to a thoroughgoing naturalism. Whereas Clifford exhorts a person to
avoid error above all else, James regards "the chase for truth as paramount."l0 A
general will never win any battles, James claims, if he advises his troops to avoid
the risk of being wounded above all else. To win battles - either military ones or
epistemic ones - requires taking some risks, according to James, and the fact that
we might make mistakes in holding certain beliefs is not that serious a problem. 11
According to James, only in situations involving "scientific questions" are we
justified in suspending judgment when we have inadequate evidence, since, in such
situations, we are simply "recorders" of an objective truth. Such scientific
questions are not forced upon us, nor, James claims, do they represent living or
momentous options. 12 For James, naturalism must be circumscribed to our
knowledge of the natural world.
James thinks that his understanding of how the roles of a person's "passional
nature" and the will may justify belief in certain situations represents a significant
improvement over the blatantly self-interested pragmatism of Pascal's wager.
Pascal argues that since the known evidence equally supports God's existence and
God's nonexistence, a reasonable person should choose to believe that God exists
since the benefits of the positive belief are much greater. There is much that may
be said about Pascal's wager, but here I will simply note that James denies that a
8 William James, '''The Will to Believe," in The Theory of Knowledge: Classical and Contemporary
Readings, edited by Louis Pojman, p. 558.
9 Ibid., p. 555.
10 Ibid., p. 558.
11
12
Ibid., p. 559.
Ibid., p. 559.
145
person can calculate such probabilities and the potential benefits and losses in the
artificial manner that Pascal suggests and then convince oneself to sincerely
believe, on such bases, that God exists.!3 James's point is similar to, and
undoubtedly drawn from, the point made by Charles Peirce in his attack upon the
general, methodological skepticism of Descartes. Peirce insisted that doubt must be
genuine and that a person just cannot bring himself to doubt the kinds of things that
Descartes claimed he can doubt. Similarly, James claims, belief must be genuine.
A person just cannot make himself sincerely believe something as the result of the
kind of artificial and selfish calculation that Pascal's wager requires.!4 The wager
thus is not a genuine option. With genuine options, the will and our passions justify
belief in the absence of adequate evidence, and the will to believe thus is James's
way of redefining condition (iii) above in the JTB theory of knowledge to extend
the notion of 'justification" to include nonepistemic considerations. IS
CONTEMPORARY RESPONSES TO THE CHALLENGE OF
EVIDENTIALISM
In terms of more recent responses to the JTB theory, contemporary evidentialist
positions rely upon natural theology and particularly the arguments for the
existence of God. 16 Much of this volume, as well as most of the problems and
issues discussed herein, are related in one way or another to the challenge of
evidentialism to various theistic beliefs - including the problem of trying to get
clear about the concept of God, the problem of the meaningfulness of claims made
about God, the problem of the epistemic force of arguments for the existence of
God, the problem of the counterevidential force of the problem of evil, questions
about the comparative reasonableness of religion and science, questions about the
comparative reasonableness of atheism and theism, questions about the source of
religious ethics, and questions about the comparative reasonableness of different
claims made by different religious believers.
The contemporary evidentialist approach that requires basing theistic beliefs on
reason and evidence is found amongst both theists and nontheists. For the most
part, this challenge can be seen as a continuation of the age-old debate concerning
the respective roles of faith and reason in religion and as a continuation of the
Clifford-James debate concerning the role of evidence in terms of religious beliefs.
The evidential challenge from nonbelievers - atheists and humanists - who reject
the various attempts to establish the reasonableness of belief in the existence of
13 Ibid., p. 556. There are many discussions that compare Pascal and James. For example, see J. L.
Mackie, The Miracle of Theism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), pp. 200-203.
14 Pascal may respond that if a person behaves religiously (for example, by praying or using holy
water), then religious belief will gradually and eventually follow, but such a response seems very
optimistic and belies what is known of human psychology. James maintains that there are, of course,
other difficulties with Pascal's wager. For example, obviously God may punish a person for believing
on such grounds. See James, ibid., 556.
15 It should be noted that James follows Peirce in holding that knowledge is essentially fallible.
Thus, any knowledge claims based upon religious beliefs must also be regarded as tentative and fallible.
16 However, Nicholas Wolterstorff disagrees that evidentialism is tied so closely to natural theology.
See his "The Migration of the Theistic Arguments: From Natural Theology to Evidential Apologetics,"
in Rationality, Religious Belief, and Moral Commitment, edited by Robert Audi and William J.
Wainwright (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1986), pp. 38ff. Wolterstorff attributes
evidentialism to the philosophical influence of the Enlightenment.
146
God based upon evidence and argumentation using reason is well represented by
Antony Flew. Here is how he puts the challenge:
If it is to be established that there is a God, then we have to have good grounds
for believing that this is indeed so. Until and unless some such grounds are
produced we have literally no reason at all for believing ... . It must be up to
them [theists] ... to bring forward sufficient reasons to warrant their claim that ...
there is a GOd. 17
There is little doubt that this kind of evidentialist challenge and attempts to
respond to it have dominated much of contemporary analytic philosophy of
religion. Specifically, the attempts to provide support for beliefs concerning the
existence of God by the use of arguments for God's existence are perhaps the most
obvious examples of theistic responses to this challenge. I have treated the novel
developments in these different arguments during the twentieth century in the
previous chapter.
RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE AND THE CUMULATIVE CASE ARGUMENT
Aside from the developments in the traditional arguments for the existence of
God and the accompanying kinds of concerns that are the purview of natural
theology, questions about the need for justification of religious beliefs have taken
on new dimensions and raised new issues and problems. In the second half of the
twentieth century, much of religious epistemology was dominated by different
attempts to respond to the challenge of evidentialism by circumventing the
challenge, defusing it, or treating it as a pseudoproblem. Instead of responding
directly to the evidentialist challenge, as natural theology does, these responses
deny its force against theistic beliefs, that is, they deny that we must have reasons
or evidence for theistic beliefs or that such beliefs are in need of epistemic
justification in the manner represented by the JTB theory of knowledge and
evidentialism. Currently, religious epistemology and concerns about the
reasonableness and rationality of religious belief have broadened far beyond the
traditional responses to the evidentialist challenge, using the arguments from
natural theology. I will discuss four such responses in this chapter - the inductive,
"cumulative case argument"; the perception of God; Reformed epistemology; and
fideism. These responses can be measured and positioned in respect to one another
in terms of the respective distances between them and the evidentialist approach of
natural theology. Thus, these current schools of thought in religious epistemology
might be understood as responses to the evidentialist challenge as it has been taken
up from within theism by theists who reject natural theology.
THE CUMULATIVE CASE ARGUMENT
While the inductive, cumulative case argument does not represent anything like
the departure from evidentialism that Reformed epistemology and fideism do, this
17 Antony Flew,"The Presumption of Atheism," in The Presumption of Atheism and Other
Philosophical Essays on God, Freedom, and Immortality, Antony Flew (New York: Barnes and Noble
Books, 1976), pp. 22-23.
147
approach does begin to weaken the demand made upon human reason as that
demand was previously represented by the arguments for the existence of God in
natural theology. The cumulative case argument does not defend any single one of
the arguments or any single kind of evidence as deductive proof or conclusive
evidence for the existence of God. The sharpest contrast here can be made with a
theist who defends one of the arguments for the existence of God as valid and
sound and thus as containing adequate conclusive evidence for the claim that God
exists. Defenders of the cumulative case argument do not rely upon a single
argument or a single source of evidence for support of the claim that God exists,
nor do they maintain that the existence of God is ever established completely
conclusively. Rather, the cumulative case for the existence of God builds
gradually, incrementally, and inductively in terms of probability until it becomes
more probable that theism is true than that it is not (to a reasonable person).
Though individual arguments and considerations for God's existence may
individually have flaws and be less than convincing, these arguments and
considerations are seen as collectively interfacing with one another in such a
fashion that they collectively support rational theistic belief whereas taken
individually they do not. The effect is something like a woven fabric rather than a
single thread of argument. 18 Although the cumulative case argument is not an antievidentialist approach (after all, it is still an argument), still it is a much weaker
form of evidentialism than is traditionally associated with the arguments in natural
theology. Basil Mitchell develops such a cumulative case; however, the position is
now most closely identified with the later work of Richard Swinburne, who
maintains that, in addition to the traditional arguments for the existence of God,
evidence to make belief in God's existence reasonable comes from a consideration
of religious experience and miracles. 19
Much of the recent literature has been devoted to efforts at defining religious
experience, distinguishing it from mystical experience, and drawing out the
similarities and dissimilarities between religious experience and sense
experience?O I cannot address all of these issues here. Since I take the major
18 Thus, the cumulative case argument is not simply an accumulation of different arguments. For a
helpful discussion that illustrates the point nicely, see Caroline Franks Davis, The Evidential Force of
Religious Experience (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), pp. 108ff.
19 Basil Mitchell, The Justification of Religious Belief(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), and
Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989).
20 The following are some of the primary contemporary sources that treat the distinction between
religious and mystical experiences and also address the comparison of religious experience with sense
experience: George Mavrodes, Belief in God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience (New York:
Random House, 1970); C. B. Martin, Religious Belief (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1959);
Michael Martin, Atheism: A Philosophical Study (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990); Rudolf
Otto, The Idea of the Holy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958); Wayne Proudfoot, Religious
Experience (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985); William Rowe, "Religious Experience and
the Principle of Credulity," International Journal for the Philosophy of Religion, Vol. 13, 1982, pp. 8592; Ninian Smart, The Religious Experience (London: Macmillan, 1991); T. Stace, Mysticism and
Philosophy (New York: Macmillan, 1960); William Wainwright, Mysticism (Madison, Wis.: University
of Wisconsin Press, 1981); William Wainwright, "Mysticism and Sense Perception," Religious Studies,
Vol. 9, 1973. Much of this article appears as Chapter 3 of his Mysticism and is reprinted in
Contemporary Philosophy of Religion, edited by Steven Cahn and David Shatz (Oxford: University of
Oxford Press, 1982), pp. 123-45; Keith Yandell, The Epistemology of Religious Experience
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). Also see the discussion of William Alston's
148
controversy in the last part of the twentieth century to revolve around the attempts
to explicate religious experience in terms that are analogous to sense experience, I
will focus mainly on this issue. Questions about the strength and justification of the
claim that there is an analogy between religious experience and sense experience
focus attention on one of the main areas of contention in the controversy between
those who defend religious experience as epistemically efficacious in supporting
the claim that God exists and those who do not.
THE CUMULATIVE CASE ARGUMENT AND RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
Swinburne offers the following definition of a religious experience: a religious
experience is "an experience which seems (epistemically) to the subject to be an
experience of God (either of his just being there, or doing or bringing about
something) or of some other supernatural thing.,,21 Two aspects of this definition
bear closer inspection: First, this definition focuses onlr upon what are usually
called numinous experiences, following Rudolf Otto,2 since it is only such
experiences that provide possible evidence of the existence of some supernatural
being external to the subject having the experience. In other words, the person
having the experience takes the experience to be of a supernatural being. Thus, this
definition leaves out such experiences as a person being simply overcome with
feelings of love and peace. It is now customary to classify such experiences as
mystical. Secondly, it is important to notice that this is a definition that is given in
terms of what we may call an "internal" description of a person's experience.
Swinburne does not describe a religious experience as one in which a person says,
"I saw God," but rather one in which a person says, "I seemed to have seen God."
In the first description, since the report cannot be true unless God exists, there is
less likely to be agreement about the truth of such descriptions; in the latter
description, there is likely to be considerably more generosity in accepting such an
"internal" report from a subject. If one insists upon a definition of religious
experiences simply in terms of reports of experiences that are descriptions of
externally existing entities, then there is not likely to be much fruitful discussion
concerning religious experience since a religious experience would then be defined
as veridical. By relying upon an internal account of what an experience "seems" or
"appears" to a person to be, we can start with some agreement that religious
experiences do occur and then pursue the argument to see what comes of such a
modest beginning. 23 At the same time, religious experiences have a noetic quality,
that is, they are experiences that seem to be experiences of an object or a being
(unlike, for example, the experience of pain).
Perceiving God below and references cited there. The source that provided the framework for much of
the discussion in the twentieth century was William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (New
York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1902).
21 Ibid., p. 246. This definition is followed closely by William Alston, discussed below, in his theory
of the perception of God.
22 See Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958).
23 Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God, p. 245-46. Alston uses the same theory of appearing
and follows a very similar tactic in his perception of God, discussed below. Interestingly, William
Rowe, who opposes claims concerning the cognitive content of religious experience, first suggests this
position in "Religious Experience and the Principle of Credulity," International Journal for the
Philosophy of Religion, Vol. 13, 1982, pp. 85-92.
149
Like others who have written about religious experiences, Swinburne

distinguishes different kinds of religious experiences.24 I will follow Swinburne in
considering only those cases of religious experiences where the purported
experience is of God. If one begins, as Swinburne does, with an internal account of
religious experience, according to which it seems to a subject S that some x is
presented, then the problem becomes one of providing an account where such an
experience provides evidence for some claim beyond the claim to the experience
itself. Certainly, if S has an experience E wherein he is appeared to godly by x,
then (assuming that S is honest and serious in his report), we can say that E
occurred, but what can we say beyond this? What sort of evidence does E provide
for saying anything else about S or x?
THE PRINCIPLE OF CREDULITY
Swinburne proposes that it is normally rational to accept honest and sincere
reports from subjects about their experiences of certain objects. In other words, in
the absence of special considerations or known circumstances where we may
expect that something has gone wrong, it is rational to accept a subject S's report
when S reports that he has been appeared to by some object x. C. D. Broad first
explicitly formulated such a presumption in favor of accepting the credulity of a
person's report of his experience and applied that presumption to religious
experience to argue that reports of religious experiences should be given prima
facie acceptance in the absence of some reason or circumstance that would make
us doubt such reports. 25 Swinburne adopts Broad's approach for defending
religious experience and formulates what he calls the principle of credulity (POC):
In the absence of special considerations, all religious experiences ought to be
taken by their subjects as genuine, and hence as substantial grounds for belief in
the existence of their apparent object - God. 26
Like the cumulative case argument, POC is now most closely identified with
Swinburne. His defense of POC is based upon the comparison he draws between
the way in which POC is used in normal sense perception and the way in which it
is used in religious experience. 27 Swinburne gives attention to two ways in which
others have thought that the POC may be restricted. His account of these
restrictions and his replies are important for considerations raised later in this
chapter. One argument for restricting the use of POC derives from the claim that
the POC requires inductive justification and that such justification is not possible in
the case of religious experience. This argument claims that the fact that x appears
24 Ibid., pp. 249. Also, see Otto, ibid., and William Wainwright, Mysticism (Madison, Wis.:
University of Wisconsin Press, 1981).
25 C. D. Broad, "Arguments for the Existence of God, II," The Journal of Theological Studies, Vol.
40,1939.
26 Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God, p. 154.
21 William Wainwright has drawn the comparison between religious experience and sense
experience earlier in a similar fashion. See William Wainwright, Mysticism, Chapter 3. Much of this
chapter is drawn from his "Mysticism and Sense Perception," Religious Studies, Vol. 9, 1973, pp. 25778. The article is reprinted in Contemporary Philosophy of Religion, edited by Steven Cahn and David
Shatz.
150
to S is good prima facie grounds for taking x to exist only if x' s appearing to S has
proven to be good grounds for taking x to exist in the past, that is, x was actually
determined to exist in the past on the occasions when x appeared to S to exist. We
have such good inductive grounds in the case of using POC with sense perception
and the existence of physical objects; however, arguably, we do not have good
inductive grounds for using poe in the case of religious experience and the
existence of God. Swinburne's retort to this objection is that even in ordinary cases
of physical objects a subject does not remember all the previous cases of being
appeared to by those physical objects in a way that would be necessary to perform
an inductive argument; therefore, the use of POC must be "a basic principle not
further justifiable.,,28
The second objection to the POC attempts to restrict the use of POC to familiar
sensible qualities in ordinary cases. Thus, if we take ourselves as being appeared to
redly, we are justified in assuming that there is something red that is doing the
appearing since red is a common property of sensible objects. But if we take
ourselves as being appeared to in a more sophisticated and less usual sense, by
Russian caviar, Italian leather, or Scottish wool, then POC does not provide good
grounds for believing that Russian caviar, Italian leather, or Scottish wool exists
without the additional help of inductive justification. The recognition or
identification of such items requires some past experience with the items in
question and a developed ability to make fine discriminations to avoid mistakes.
Swinburne replies to this objection to the POC by claiming that it is dependent
upon drawing a distinction between what is given in "real"experience and what is
the result of an interpretation of experience. No such distinction, he maintains, can
legitimately be drawn. 29
Unless these two objections are met, they give rise to four "special
considerations" that would prohibit our granting credulity to the claim that x exists
when it seems to S that x is present in a religious experience. Anyone of these
special considerations can serve as a potential defeater of POe. I will simply state
these potential defeaters summarily:3o i) the conditions under which x seems to be
present to S have been unreliable in the past; ii) S's reports concerning x or other
experiences have been unreliable in the past; iii) other evidence makes it very
improbable that x is present; and iv) other evidence makes it highly probable that x
is not the cause of it seeming to S that x is present, whether x exists or not. In the
absence of any of these four defeaters, S is justified in assuming that things really
are as they appear to him to be. I shall return to consideration of these potential
defeaters of POC and the two objections to POC that give rise to them
momentarily.
THE PRINCIPLE OF TESTIMONY
Finally, to the POC Swinburne adds a further important principle of rationality,
the principle of testimony (POT): normally, in the absence of any special
circumstances to the contrary, we are justified in believing that what other people
Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God, pp. 255-56.
One person who raises such an objection is Roderick Chisholm. See ibid., pp. 257-58.
30 Ibid., pp. 260-64.
28
29
151
tell us about their experiences actually happened, or, alternatively, we are justified
in believing that what other people tell us they experienced as occurring probably
did occur as they claim. 3 !
With POC and POT in place, Swinburne's argument from religious experience
is simple and straightforward. Given the number of reports of different people of
religious experiences of God - some but certainly not all of which might be
defeated by (i) through ( iv) - it is more probable that God exists than that God
does not exist, that is, given the reports of God's seeming to appear to a number of
different subjects having religious experiences, it is more probable that things are
as they have been reported than it is that they are not; thus it is more probable that
God does exist and did appear in the way in which he seemed to appear than that
God does not exist.
THE PRINCIPLE OF INCREDULITY
The two objections considered by Swinburne directly address the issue of
whether the POC is justified in the case of religious experience. 32 Consider the first
objection against the POC - namely, that the POC requires inductive justification.
A special instance of this objection involves situations where a subject S is
appeared to by x but has no previous experience with x's although S does have
experience with the properties that define x. Swinburne's example involves the
appearance of a centaur to S: we may say that, although S has no experience with
centaurs, he does have experience with the properties that define a centaur (that is,
having the body and legs of a horse and having the head, torso, and arms of a man,
and so forth). Thus, one may seem to be appeared to by a centaur, even though one
has never experienced a centaur, by being appeared to by a concatenation of
properties that one normally associates with centaurs. The same kind of analysis
applies to experiences of God, according to Swinburne, since 'God' is also defined
in terms of familiar properties such as "'person' without a 'body' who is unlimited
in his 'power,' 'knowledge,' and 'freedom. ",33 One experiences God by
experiencing the concatenation of predicates or powers that one normally
associates with God.
Swinburne's treatment of this case is very pivotal in determining whether his
cumulative case argument using religious experience is viable and whether the
POC can withstand this challenge to its use with religious experience. There are
several reasons for doubting that Swinburne's defense is successful. The process of
concatenation of predicates is not so simple and straightforward as Swinburne
suggests. One may experience one thing as having the body and legs of a horse and
another thing having the head, torso, and arms of a man without being able to
combine the two sets of predicates for a single thing. For example, one may
experience one figure as having three and only three angles and another figure as
having four sides but be unable to project the two predicates for a single figure.
31 Ibid., pp. 271-72. Swinburne thinks that there are normally no special circumstances that would
legitimately make one doubt the veracity of a person's report of religious experiences.
32 It is the application of POC to religious experience rather than POC itself as a general
epistemological principle that is most at issue. Rowe emphasizes this point in "Religious Experience
and the Principle of Credulity," ibid., pp. 90-91.
11 Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God, p. 256.
152
There is at least one further difficulty that arises here. It is significant that
Swinburne, unlike Alston (discussed later in this chapter), is explicitly committed
to a descriptivist account of reference wherein the referent of a referring expression
(namely, 'God,' in this case) is determined in terms of the possession of certain
essential properties by the referent (see Chapter II). On such an account of
reference, successful reference is completed when a referent is found that does
indeed possess the properties in question. In the case of 'God,' this means for some
subject S to be appeared to godly, S must be appeared to through the exhibition of
certain properties or the exercise of certain powers in a godly fashion. But could
we reasonably expect that any S would ever be in a position to determine that it is
God exhibiting such properties or exercising such powers? Following Aquinas, let
us say that God exhibits each property and exercises each power to the maximal
degree possible. Could S recognize that the degree to which the property or the
power that is presented by x is being presented to the maximal degree possible for
that property or power? To do so, we must give S the uncanny ability to distinguish
between the exhibition of degrees of properties or powers that are far beyond
anything normally experienced by S or present in the world and that perhaps are
very near the maximal degree possible but still not the maximal degree possible.
While successful reference may still succeed in such circumstances, S would never
be in a position to determine when it succeeds and when it does not, which
seriously undermines the POCo
This seems to be the problem noted by J. L. Mackie when he says, "Nothing in
an experience as such could reveal a creator of the world, or omnipotence, or
omniscience, or perfect goodness, or eternity, or even that there is just one god.,,34
Siding with William James, Mackie concludes that the best that religious
experiences can reveal is "the existence of some greater friendly power, whose
precise identity and character are left wholly indeterminate.,,35 Imagine, for
example, that S is appeared to by some being that is very similar to Nee, suggested
by Paul Henle and discussed in the previous chapter. 36 The being that appears to S
is nearly Nee, that is, Nnee. Nnee possesses every power and exhibits every
property to the maximal degree minus one and, we could even add, exists in every
possible world except one. It is implausible to imagine that even an S who
presumably has a great deal of experience with such matters and who is steeped in
the tradition, scriptures, and the like could manage such a fine discrimination that
would enable S to distinguish between Nnee and Nee. This consideration also
mitigates decisively against the proposal made by William Wainwright and others
that agreement amongst subjects who are regarded as having experience with such
matters is an important test for evaluating religious perceptual claims. 37 The most
we can say is that when x appears to a subject S and exhibits a property or power to
a certain level or degree that is beyond S' s ability to understand or is beyond the
level or degree that the property or power has ever been experienced by S as
J. L. Mackie, The Miracle of Theism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), p. 182.
Ibid., p. 183. It may very well be that even granting that such experience can determine that the
power (being?) is friendly rather than unfriendly (God rather than Satan) is granting too much. See the
discussion of William Alston's appeal to direct reference later in this chapter.
36 Paul Henle, "Uses of the Ontological Argument," Philosophical Review, VoL 70,1961, pp. 102ff.
37 William Wainwright, Mysticism, pp. 88ff.
34
35
153
exhibited in this world, S is inclined to identify x as God. However, on the basis of

simply being appeared to by x through the exhibition of such properties or the
exercise of such powers, it is not reasonable to attribute to S the power of
determining that x is God who is seeming to appear rather than a near-god, an
intelligent alien from some distant galaxy, or Satan. Thus, though S might
successfully refer to God when being appeared to by x, S would never be in a
position to know whether the reference is successful, nor, when the reference is
successful, would S be in a position to know on the basis of which property or
power the reference was successful.
Swinburne's reply to this first objection to poe belies his reply to the second.
This objection claims that we can trust only a report of familiar sensible qualities
by a subject S while remaining skeptical of reports of S's being appeared to by
more unusual and sophisticated things. Surely God is the most unusual and
sophisticated thing in the universe, and for S to make the kind of identification that
Swinburne suggests that a subject can make in his reply to the first objection to the
poe on the basis of the experienced properties or powers, S must make an
inference from the experience of being appeared to by those properties or powers
to the claim that it is God doing the appearing. Even if we introduce a principle of
charity and allow S the ability to discriminate the exhibition of unusual properties
in a way that we have just seen is very questionable, the process would still require
that S provide some "interpretation" of the experience - an inference or conclusion
based upon the presumed association of the properties in question - as God. It
appears that something like this process must take place in order for the theist to
explain how it is that people such as Jim Jones and David Koresh make mistakes
(assuming that these are honest, sincere mistakes). They "take" their being
appeared to godly incorrectly.38
These considerations make it difficult to understand how one could even make
sense of the four potential defeaters of poe, (i) through (iv), that Swinburne
introduces. The way Swinburne discusses the potential defeaters, it is some third
party, some audience A, to whom S has reported his experience that makes the
judgment about the effect of the potential defeater. But for A to consider whether
any of the potential defeaters (i) through (iv) actually defeat S's claim, A must
assume that S has successfully managed to identify his seeming to be appeared to
by x as seeming to be appeared to by God. I have argued that Swinburne has not
argued convincingly that this is possible; the poe thus degenerates into the
principle of incredulity. The inviolate nature of seeming originated with sense data
theory, but in the case of sense data theory, the seemings were the contents of
immediate sense experience. "I seem to see red" is worlds apart from "I seem to
see God" in terms of its character as the report of an immediate and inviolate sense
experience. We have detailed accounts of the physiological and perceptual
mechanisms involved in seeing red. We have no such account of the mechanisms
involved in the process of seeing God.
38 It is worth noting that William Alston attempts to avoid this problem by adopting a direct realism
- a move that raises other problems in identifying God as the object of an experience. See the discussion
below.
154
It does not seem that any rational subject S could ever be in an epistemic
position to be confident of an internal justification of claiming to be appeared to by
God. Suppose, for example, Yahweh appears to Moses as x and parts the Red Sea,
and Moses then identifies his seeming to be appeared to by some x that parts the
Red Sea as being appeared to by Yahweh. Parting the Red Sea is not an act that
requires maximal power. It does not, for example, require as much power as
creating or destroying the universe; therefore, some lesser being might have parted
the Red Sea - a being that is less than omnipotent. Moses has managed a
successful identification of x as Yahweh, but completely unbeknownst to himself,
and if Moses does not have the internal justification relative to his own epistemic
situation to be confident that x is Yahweh, then no audience A would be justified,
using POC, in attributing veracity to Moses's claim that Yahweh appeared to him
as x. Indeed, it seems that any audience A should be suspicious of any such claim
and remain incredulous.
THE PRINCIPLE OF CREDULITY CONTINUED

Aside from questions about what experiences there are that would permit S to
determine whether an appearance of x to S is really the appearance of God, there is
the additional problem of specifying general criteria that would allow any subject S
to adjudicate between apparently veridical but delusive appearances of x and
apparently veridical and genuine appearances of x. Attributing cognitive content to
any religious experience requires such successful demarcation amongst different
experiences. This becomes the crucial issue for the POC and requires detailed
analysis. For example, William Rowe has challenged the POC on the grounds that
the POC requires that there be ways of distinguishing such experiences, but he
thinks that there is no way of specifying the conditions under which a particular
subject can be assured of experiencing God. Without the specification of such
conditions, Rowe argues, the POC is not justified and S's seeming to experience
God cannot be taken as prima facie evidence that God exists. 39 Rowe's point can
be put clearly in terms of other problems discussed in this volume. Given
naturalistic explanations of religion, such as those of Sigmund Freud and Emile
Durkheim discussed in Chapter VII, there must be some way to distinguish
between S' s seeming to be appeared to by God when, in fact, S is being appeared
to by God and S's seeming to be appeared to by God when, in fact, S is being
appeared to by his suppressed father figure or by society personified. In terms of
the discussion of Swinburne above, we can put the point in the following way:
when S uses the appellation 'God' to refer to the entity that seems to be appearing
through the exhibition of certain predicates or the exercise of certain powers, what
are the conditions under which S can determine that he "got it right" and that the
entity seeming to appear to him is indeed God ?40 In one case, S is being appeared
to by God, and, in the other case, S is not being appeared to by God. Unless Scan
determine which situation she is in, then surely the evidential efficacy of POC is
39 William Rowe, "Religious Experience and the Principle of Credulity." pp. 90ff. Also see David
Conway, "Mavrodes, Martin, and the Verification of Religious Experience," International Journal for
the Philosophy of Religion, Vol. 2, no. 3, 1971.
40 The problem of determining correctly the reference of "God" during a religious experience is
treated in detail below in the discussion of William Alston's Perceiving God.
155
reduced. Competing, possible explanations of religious experiences in terms of the

social sciences or in terms of neuroscience reduce the chances of supplying some
rationale to buttress the epistemic force of such experiences, and, as Rowe argues,
the existence of evil is a potentially rebutting condition since the existence of evil
is inconsistent, he thinks, with the existence of GOd. 41 The force of Rowe's
objections to POC is to propose that there is always reasonable doubt regarding
Swinburne's defeating conditions (i) and (ii) and whether or not those conditions
have been addressed in a way that justifies attributing cognitive status to a religious
experience.
Some theists have defended religious experience from such criticisms based
upon the impossibility of reducing religious experience to other kinds of
experience by claiming that an experience of the sacred or the holy is irreducible
and hence sui generis - not derived from or reducible to any other kind of
experience. S's report of seeming to be appeared to by God means that for S, his
experience is an experience of God, and no explanation of that experience in terms
of ordinary phenomena will be adequate to account for this aspect of S' s
experience. To be sure, a person's being appeared to by God is an intentional
experience with an object, and phenomenologically for S, that object is God; no
reduction of the object of that experience in terms of S's suppressed father figure
or in terms of society or in terms of any other object other than God will be
adequate for S. The separate issue, however, that determines how S's claim will be
treated in terms of its cognitive content or epistemic efficacy is the problem of
determining how an objective audience assesses S's claim. Wayne Proudfoot
explains the difference between S's first-person account of his experience and that
of an objective audience in terms of the difference between descriptive reduction
and explanatory reduction. 42 There is a first-person privilege with normative force
that we must recognize for a person describing his own immediate experience.
Thus, if Jones is in the forest alone and then later reports being frightened by a
bear, it will not do as an explanation of Jones's fear to later have someone reveal to
him that what he thought was a bear at the time was simply a fallen tree. Jones's
fear was fear of a bear - not of a tree. Jones would certainly not admit to being
frightened by a tree nor would an objective audience describe his experience this
way. A reductive description of Jones's fear will not do. However, when it comes
to an explanation of Jones's fear, someone could offer the reductive explanation
that Jones saw a tree, thought it was a bear, and was thus frightened, and for an
explanation of S's experience to be adequate, the explanation need not be one that
is acceptable to S.43 The entire force of Swinburne's POC as well as Rowe's
criticisms of that principle have to do with the issue of the explanation of S's
experience; thus, even if we admit that the phenomenological object of S's being
appeared to is God or the sacred or the holy, there is still the matter of determining
how an objective audience is to explain S's experience.
41
For a response to Rowe, see Keith Yandell, The Epistenwlogy of Religious Experience, pp. 229-
30.
42 Wayne Proudfoot, Religious Experience (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), pp.
196ff.
43 This analysis is based upon an example used by Proudfoot, ibid., pp. 192-93.
156
Others, such as C. B. Martin, have argued in a similar fashion that, in the case of
sense experience, there are "tests and independent procedures" for determining
whether a particular claim based upon that sense experience is true or not, but in
the case of religious experiences there are no such tests or procedures. 44 Therefore,
Martin concludes, the object of a religious experience must be subjective and
private, unlike the object of sense experience. Typical of responses to Martin's
claim that there are no tests or procedures for testing the veracity of a person's
claim to religious experience is the one made by Wainwright. He insists that
Martin is simply wrong that there are no tests and procedures for religious
experiences that are similar to the ones used for sense experiences. There are tests
and procedures in religious communities that can be used to assess any S' s claim to
a religious experience e, according to Wainwright. He identifies six criteria that are
used within the Christian community (particularly Catholicism). These include 1)
the consequences of e for S; 2) the consequences of e for others; 3) the "depth, the
profundity, and the sweetness" of S's report of e; 4) the agreement or disagreement
of S's report of e with orthodox beliefs; 5) the similarity of e with other accepted
accounts of other religious experiences within the religious community; and 6) the
pronouncement of the final authority in the religious community regarding e. 45
Wainwright argues that there are significant similarities in the way in which these
criteria are employed in the respective cases of sense experience and religious
experience. At the same time, he recognizes that there are significant dissimilarities
- the most significant of which is the fact that in the case of sense experience the
agreement or disagreement of others and the success or failure of predictions based
upon e are crucial while these considerations are not important in the case of
mystical (religious) experience. 46 Wainwright suggests that this difference may be
accounted for in terms of the differences between the kinds of objects involved in
the different cases. On the one hand, ordinary physical objects are publicly and
readily accessible given their nature, so it stands to reason that we would expect
others to experience them as we do given similar circumstances. On the other hand,
God is radically different from ordinary physical objects - not publicly or readily
accessible. It thus stands to reason that we would not necessarily expect others to
experience God as we do - especially if one of the conditions of one's experience
of God is God's grace, so that God may appear to some while not to others even in
very similar circumstances. 47 But with this response, Wainwright dismantles much
of the case for the similarity between religious experience and sense experience
that he has tried to build. Aside from the rather ad hoc nature of this response, that
is, God is just unique and so different from anything else that we cannot expect the
same rules to apply, Wainwright seems to undermine the other tests and procedures
that he has offered to validate religious experiences, since surely God's unique
nature would override any of the other conditions he has specified for the other
tests and procedures to take place. Thus, any disparity in the account of any failure
C. B. Martin, Religious Belief, Chapter 5.

William Wainwright, ibid., p. 86-87. It is worth noting that these criteria appear to be codified in
William Alston's notion of a Christian mystical doxastic practice (CMP), discussed below.
46 Ibid., pp. 93ff.
47 Ibid.
44
45
157
of an experience to meet any of the other tests and procedures could be accounted
for in terms of God's unique nature.
Numerous other challenges, which I cannot address here, have also been raised
against claims for the cognitive status of religious experience and the cumulative
case argument. 48 Theists who appeal to the use of religious experience in a
cumulative case argument must also acknowledge that the same cumulative case
strategy can also be used to oppose the theists' claims regarding religious
experience and the existence of God. In other words, no single objection to the
claims regarding religious experience and its use in the cumulative case argument
to support the existence of God need be regarded as decisive, but when all of the
objections are considered together - including those raised here and others in the
literature - with each compensating for the weaknesses of the others, it could be
argued that it becomes more probable than not that reported religious experiences
are not experiences of God. While I know of no such cumulative case argument
being used against religious experience per se, a similar strategy has been used
effectively by Paul Draper in his probability version of the argument from evil
against the existence of God (discussed in Chapter VI).
THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE
A different reaction to the various problems raised concerning the POC is
offered by John Hick. Hick recognizes and admits not only that the universe is
"religiously ambiguous" but that the universe generally is ambiguous. 49 The
various problems raised above concerning the criteria for distinguishing veridical
from delusory experiences leave us in an uncertain and ambiguous epistemic state;
however, taking his departure from William James's "The Will to Believe," Hick
insists that the religious person has the right to believe what he wants to believe in
the absence of defeating experiences or evidence. The world is an ambiguous place
that must be interpreted. It may be interpreted either religiously or naturalistically,
and there is no definite way of confirming which interpretation is correct. With
either interpretation, one runs the risk of being wrong, but this risk is unavoidable.
The religious person is as rationally justified in trusting the reports of the major
figures in a particular religious tradition and his own religious experience as those
who choose a naturalistic interpretation are in trusting their own sources of
authority and experience. There is always the theoretical possibility, according to
Hick, that all of religion and all of religious experience is illusory, but it would be
irrational for the religious person to give up his religious belief on the basis of what
he regards as such a thin theoretical possibility. The same is true of nontheistic
ways of "seeing" the universe. Thus, the religious person is as rational in choosing
to experience the universe religiously as is the nontheist. 5o
48 See Caroline Franks Davis, The Evidential Force of Religious Experience (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1989), Chapter 5.
49 John Hick, An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent (New Haven,
Conn.: Yale University Press, 1989). See the excerpt reprinted in Contemporary Perspectives on
Religious Epistemology, edited by R. Douglas Geivett and Brendan Sweetman (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1992), p. 316.
50 Ibid., pp. 316-17.
158
Hick rests his claim for the religious interpretation of the world upon the more
general epistemological claim that all experience is really a form of "experiencingas.,,51 Hick bases his notion of experiencing-as on Wittgenstein's notion of seeingas that is used to explain visually ambiguous situations such as the Necker cube,
lastrow's duck-rabbit, and Kohler's goblet-faces. 52 Since cases of visual perception
are sometimes ambiguous and can be "seen" in different ways, sometimes as a
duck and sometimes as a rabbit, for example, Hick concludes that the universe can
therefore be experienced in different ways, either religiously or nonreligiously.
According to Hick, in the case of familiar objects, such as a fork on a table, we still
experience such things as what they are, and we call such a process "identifying"
or "recognizing" the fork. Obviously, most members of modern Western European
or American society would easily recognize a fork as a fork whereas a Stone Age
savage would not. 53 All conscious experiencing is thus, for Hick, a form of
experiencing-as, and the religious person who experiences the world religiously is
simply interpreting his sense perception of the world in the same way that is done
with all experience. Sense perception itself involves a subjective element of
interpretation, so religious interpretation is no more subjective and no less
objective than ordinary sense experience.
Hick's notion of experiencing-as is another attempt to construct an account of
religious experience using the analogy of sense experience. However, as Hick
himself recognizes, the claim that one can sense the presence of God is "far
removed" from the claim that one can sense the presence of a fork or a rabbit. 54 It
is so far removed that it appears to be impossible to ever bridge the gap between
the two. It is one thing to claim, as Wittgenstein does, that sense experience
involves some element of interpretation or "seeing-as," and it is quite another thing
to claim that "religious seeing" is simply another element of "seeing-as." It is not
clear even that visual "seeing-as" has obvious counterparts with the other senses,
such as "smelling-as" and "touching-as." In such cases, the subjective,
interpretative element seems clearly less grounded in the sense experience itself. If
Hick's "experiencing-as" extends beyond sense experience to other forms of
experiencing, then the interpretative element will be even less grounded in or tied
to the sense experience. If one person sees a figure as a duck and another person
sees the same figure as a rabbit, it is possible to compare their two ways of seeing
the figure and to get each to see the other's way of seeing by pointing to various
sensible details of the figure. However, if one person sees a burning bush and
another person sees a supernatural presence, it will not be possible to compare their
two ways of seeing and to get each to see the other's way of seeing by pointing to
certain sensible features of the bush. In religious experiencing-as (as opposed to
sensible experiencing-as), the subjective element of the experiencing-as obviously
dominates. The comparison of religious experience to ordinary sense perception is
51 John Hick, "Religious Faith as Experiencing-As," in Classical arui Contemporary Readings in the
Philosophy of Religion, edited by John Hick (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1964, 1990), p.
409.
52 See Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, translated by G. E. M. Anscombe (New
York: Macmillan, 1953), Part II, Section xi.
53 John Hick, "Religious Faith as Experiencing-As," p. 409.
54 Ibid., p. 412
159
a problem that dominates several different accounts of religious experience. I turn

to a much fuller consideration of this comparison in the treatment of William
Alston's account of perceiving God.
PERCEIVING GOD
William Alston follows in the tradition of those who have defended religious
beliefs by basing them upon religious experience and by explicating religious
experience along lines that are closely analogous with sense perception. Alston
provides one of the most elaborate and detailed contemporary attempts to establish
the reliability of reports of religious experiences. We can understand his point of
contact with sense experience as an attack on attempts to explicate or restrict
condition (iii) of the JTB theory of knowledge to empirical knowledge gained
through sense experience, which he thinks is incapable of meeting any serious
challenge by skepticism without resorting to circularity. Evidentialism takes as its
benchmark our empirical knowledge of the physical world, which, in turn, is based
upon our perception of the physical world. Thus, the problem of our perception of
the physical world and epistemological questions about the reliability of the
knowledge that we claim to have about that world have occupied epistemologists
for centuries. Attempts to respond to skepticism and defend sense perception
simply on the grounds of sense experience itself and to certify it as providing the
"adequate evidence" required by condition (iii) of the JTB theory have all failed,
Alston claims, since all such defenses and apologies are circular. The only way in
which beliefs that are based directly upon sense perception can be defended or
justified at all is by appealing to their coherence with other "background" beliefs.
The justification of perceptual beliefs is then derived from the reliability of the
practice that generates them. The justification of the background beliefs, in turn, is
provided by the doxastic practices that provide the socially approved criteria for
assessing perceptual claims and for distinguishing well-formed, veridical
perceptual beliefs from noureliable ones.
To provide epistemic justification for our beliefs that are based upon a direct
experience of the external, physical world, we must rely upon what Alston calls a
"perceptual belief producing system" composed of the perceptual beliefs, the
background beliefs, and socially established doxastic practices that provide the
standards for forming beliefs in a normal, acceptable manner. 55 Beliefs that are
based upon direct sense experience cannot be justified on their own and by their
own bootstraps, that is, without the socially grounded doxastic elements introduced
by the perceptual belief-producing system that provide the criteria for determining
when and how and under what conditions it is reasonable to accept such beliefs.
While Alston sometimes is regarded as belonging in the camp of Reformed
epistemology, it seems more accurate to see him as attempting to occupy a
"middle" ground between evidentialism and Reformed epistemology. He does not
include himself in the Reformed group, although he does acknowledge some
sympathy with Alvin Plantinga's claim that belief in God is properly basic
55 William P. Alston, Perceiving God (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991), p. 100. For a
precis of this book, see William P. Alston, "Precis of Perceiving God," Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research, Vol. 54, no. 4,1994.
160
(discussed below). He distances himself from Plantinga, however, by criticizing

Plantinga's Reformed approach as too narrow because of its exclusive focus on an
"internal" defense of theism, that is, a defense from within the doxastic practices of
theism. Alston intends to provide some "external" defense of those doxastic
practices that will appeal to those outside the doxastic practices of theism. 56 He
also expresses some sympathy with the cumulative case argument since he thinks
that any particular basis for religious belief cannot, by itself, resolve the doubts that
are raised against it.57 He also appears to be ambivalent about natural theology and
arguments for the existence of God. He is not reluctant to appeal to such
arguments, in principle, to buttress his position regarding religious perception or to
allow a theist to appeal to such arguments to defend his beliefs;58 however, he
seems to think that the arguments are simply too abstract to do the job properly. 59
Like Swinburne, Alston also focuses upon the kind of experience during which
something is given or something appears to the person having the experience. It is
this presentational quality of the experience that causes Alston to call such
experiences perceptual. Thus, perceptions of God are experiences in which the
person having the experience perceives God as being of some nature or performing
some action. Examples of such experiences may include the experience of God
"comforting, strengthening, guiding, communicating a message, sustaining the
subject in being - or to the effect that God has some (allegedly) perceivable
property - goodness, power, lovingness." Such "perceptions" of God give rise to
and provide justification for what Alston calls "M-beliefs" (Manifestation
beliefs).60 According to the theory of appearing, which he relies upon for his
analysis of sense perception, the presentational quality of an experience - the
phenomenological experience of a subject being presented with or given an object
of experience - is fundamental, unanalyzable, and, most importantly, precognitive
(not dependent upon beliefs) and thus a mode ofperception. 61
Here is the crux of Alston's claim: The justification of beliefs about the external
physical world relying upon sense perception (SP) and M-beliefs about God
relying upon perception of God both require the help of doxastic structures and
practices. The Christian mystical perceptual practice (CMP) provides a justification
for M-beliefs about the existence of God in a way that is closely analogous to the
way in which SP provides us with a justification for beliefs about the external,
physical world. CMP provides the doxastic framework for regulating or
standardizing ways of forming M-beliefs based upon the direct perception of God
within what he calls "the main stream" of Christianity.62 M-beliefs that are based
upon reports of direct mystical acquaintance with some object of that experience
are reasonable to accept if they result from the direct perceptual experience and the
doxastic practices that exist in the community of religious believers.
"Normal"sense perceptions and perceptions of God are thus the results of different
William P. Alston, Perceiving God, p. 197.
Ibid., pp. 306-307.
58 Ibid., p. 270.
59 Ibid., p. 144.
60 Ibid., p. 1.
61 Ibid., p. 55. Swinburne treats a subject being appeared to similarly. See above.
62 Ibid., p. 193.
56
57
161
doxastic practices - each of which, according to Alston, must be accepted at face

value, given prima facie acceptance, unless there are reasons for disqualifying a
particular experience or a practice. 63 To grant such prima facie acceptance or
justification to beliefs based upon sense perception and its doxastic system, SP, but
not to M-beliefs and CMP amounts to evoking a double standard and requiring
more in the way of epistemic justification for M-beliefs than we do for beliefs
regarding the external world.
It is usual to point out that Alston has not made the case that M-beliefs are true
but only that they are prima facie justified, but such a disclaimer ignores the wolf
lurking under the sheep's clothing. If M-beliefs are prima facie justified for a
subject S holding the beliefs, this means nothing more than that S is justified in
regarding them to be true. And if an observer, K, regards S's M-beliefs to be
justified, then K is justified in regarding S's beliefs to be true, and so on until the
entire community of believers is justified in believing S' s M -beliefs to be justified;
the question of truth lurks close to the surface of prima facie justification. Thus, if
Alston is right, the perception of God that occurs in ways that are approved and
sanctioned by CMP provides prima facie justification for M-beliefs about the
existence and nature of God.
Like Swinburne, Alston recognizes possible defeaters for CMP. Specifically,
naturalistic explanations for the alleged perception of God, contradictions in the
output of CMP, and conflicts between the outputs of CMP with the outputs of
science and the integration of the outputs of CMP into a naturalistic metaphysics.
However, Alston thinks that none of these possible defeaters of CMP is successful.
In each case, he provides a possible way of reconciling the defeater with CMP. In
the case of naturalistic explanations, God may be lurking somewhere further in the
background than naturalistic accounts can reach; in the case of contradictions, each
doxastic practice, including those for sense experience, tolerate some degree of
contradiction; and in the case of conflicts with science, Alston thinks that theism is
basically consistent with science. 64
COMPETING DOXASTIC PRACTICES
Many of the same problems that have been identified earlier regarding
Swinburne's use of religious experience in his cumulative case argument can be
raised against Alston's account of perceiving God as well. However, I will not
reconsider how those same objections pertain to Alston's position but will
concentrate instead on what Alston regards as the most serious problem with his
account of religious experience and its grounding in CMP. The various religious
beliefs in the world and the different doxastic practices that give rise to those
beliefs appear to be in serious, logical conflict with one another, and different
attempts to resolve or dissipate this conflict have not been successful.
Alston considers John Hick's treatment of religious experience and Hick's way
of defusing the apparent differences between different religious beliefs by using
the Kantian distinction between the noumenal Real and its phenomenal
63
Ibid., p. 153.
64
See ibid., Chapter 6, pp. 226ff.
162
ANALYTIC PHU,oSOPHY OF REUGION
manifestations, but he eventually dismisses this approach. 65 Alston's conclusion is

that the conflicts between different and rival socially established doxastic practices
cannot be explained away or vitiated, and this unresolved, logical conflict is the
greatest challenge to his account of religious perception and CMP. Such conflict
amongst rival doxastic practices poses the possibility that it is impossible to give
an external justification of CMP (or any other religious doxastic practice), that is,
whatever justification there is must be internal to CMP. This challenge is a serious
threat to the rationality of accepting CMP since, if the challenge of religious
diversity is not met, it would only be from the epistemic viewpoint of the
practitioner within CMP that one could find good reasons for accepting CMP over
rival sets of doxastic practices for religious beliefs. However, within rival sets of
religious beliefs with different accounts of religious experiences, practitioners are
all in the same epistemic position, so practitioners of other religious practices
would have exactly the same epistemic justification as do members of CMP. 66 If an
irreducible religious pluralism forces the practitioner of CMP to turn inward to
CMP itself for whatever justification there might be, then Alston's enterprise of
providing some external justification for CMP is threatened. The alternative
emphasizes the most fundamental aspect of Alston's account. Alston's grounding
of religious belief based upon religious perception in socially established doxastic
practices means that whatever questions of justification concerning M-beliefs may
arise are removed to the level of those practices. 67 Here, according to Alston,
epistemic preference must be given to the long-standing, firmly established social
practices over what he calls "idiosyncratic" doxastic practices. Since both beliefs
about the physical world and rival M-beliefs are functions of their respective
socially established doxastic practices, the question becomes one of determining
which doxastic practices are reliable in producing beliefs that have prima facie
justification. Alston's answer to this question is given in terms of "practical
rationality." We are rationally justified (in a practical sense) in relying upon
doxastic practices that regulate and standardize the ways in which we form beliefs
when those ways of forming our beliefs "are established in our society and ...
firmly embedded in our psyches." Besides, he claims, "there are no alternatives
that commend themselves to rational reflection as superior," that is, the only way
in which we can form beliefs rationally is by relying upon the ways in which we
normally do exactly that. 68 Reliable doxastic practices must be "established," not
idiosyncratic, since it is reasonable to think that deeply rooted doxastic practices
that have persisted for some period of time would not have done so were they not
reliable. We can assume, therefore, that long-lived, well-established doxastic
practices deserve the benefit of the doubt by granting that the beliefs produced by
them are prima facie justified, but we do not grant the same benefit to beliefs
resulting from eccentric, idiosyncratic practices. "When a doxastic practice has
persisted over a number of generations, it has earned the right to be considered
seriously," he says. On the other hand, "newcomers will have to prove
Ibid., pp. 264-65. See Chapter IX for a discussion of Hick.
67 It should be noted that religious experience is one of several different sources of justification of
religious belief for Alston.
68 Ibid., p. 168.
65
66
163
themselves.,,69 Fulfilling desired social goals and satisfying the promises for a
richer spiritual life for individuals over a long period of time are marks in favor of
CMP. 70
This response to the challenge posed to CMP by religious diversity signals a
change in tenor of Alston's account of religious experience and CMP. His entire
enterprise is one that proceeds by comparing religious perception with sense
perception and M -beliefs with beliefs based upon sense perception. Alston then
admits that the kind and degree of evidence that it is possible to garner for religious
doxastic practices falls far short of the kind and degree of evidence that it is
possible to garner for sense experience and science. 71 In the face of what Alston
regards as the most serious problem for his account of religious experience, the
challenge to CMP posed by religious diversity, the Christian believer must make
judgments about the relative benefits of CMP over competing doxastic practices,
but such judgments involve results or goals that are decidedly subjective and
internal to CMP, such as a richer spiritual life. In the end, it seems that the believer
must trust his faith and what his faith tells him about the nature of God in order to
justify CMP over other competing accounts of religious experience; otherwise,
there seem to be no grounds for a believer preferring or valuing the benefits of
CMP over the benefits of other doxastic practices. 72
INTERNAL JUSTIFICATION OF CMP?
Several additional objections and criticisms have been raised against Alston's
account of religious experience as religious perception. 73 Many of these criticisms,
which I will not pursue here, are similar to those raised above against Swinburne's
use of religious experience. I will concentrate here instead upon the additional
problems raised by Alston's grounding of religious experience within socially
established doxastic practices. There is the initial issue of explaining the difference
between well-established and idiosyncratic practices in a way that is not ad hoc and
question-begging, and this must be done within a context where the ultimate
criteria for assessing the advantages and disadvantages of different kinds of
doxastic practices are internal to the different doxastic practices. Whereas the
practitioner of CMP may require that a well-established practice be one that has
endured many generations and attracted thousands of converts, practitioners in
other doxastic practices may have very different criteria for winnowing the good
from the bad doxastic practices. Indeed, one can easily imagine that one may
object, as for example a Marxist may, that a doxastic practice's being socially well
established and long-lived requires the political underpinning of oppressive
governments, such as those committed to capitalism, and that this actually counts
against the legitimacy of the beliefs produced by such systems. Instead of the
Ibid., p. 170.
Ibid., p. 276.
71 Ibid., p. 277.
72 Ibid. For further discussion of Alston and the problem of religious pluralism, see Chapter IX.
73 Several critical issues are raised by the respondents in the Alston Symposium in Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research, Vol. 54, no. 4, 1994, including Richard Gale, "Why Alston's Mystical
69
70
Doxastic Practice Is Subjective," George Pappas, "Perception and Mystical Experience," and Robert
Adams, "Religious Disagreements and Doxastic Practices." See also William Hasker, "On Justifying
the Christian Practice," The New Scholasticism, Vol. 60,1986.
164
criterion of spiritual enrichment of individuals in CMP to which Alston appeals,

Marxists might plausibly appeal to correcting the economic oppression of the
working class. Adherents to different doxastic practices - theistic and non-theistic
- will not only have different practices producing different beliefs but also
different criteria for assessing the efficacy of those practices and those beliefs.
Appealing to the specific criteria that favor CMP commits Alston to the kind of
religious chauvinism and religious imperialism that he wants to avoid. 74
There is the additional, independent matter of determining how CMP comes to
be regarded as well established. In the beginning, as with all new doxastic practices
one may suppose, Christianity was not socially well established. In fact, according
to even biblical accounts, it was regarded as rather idiosyncratic at the time - just
another "new-fangled" cult. Just how did Christianity become well established and
how did it accumulate the authority that present-day Christians now attribute to its
early claims about religious experiences? The answer cannot be because of the
success of the social goals or because of the fulfillment of the promises of a
spiritual life for its early converts. Consider the account of the appearance of Jesus
to the two men on the road to Emmaus on the very day of his resurrection, or his
appearance to his disciples a few days later, or the appearance of the Holy Spirit on
the Day of Pentecost. These different perceptions of the sacred were all
idiosyncratic at the time of their occurrence, but to explain how CMP came to be
socially well established and to survive for more than two millennia, it seems as if
one must give enormous weight to these early, idiosyncratic experiences that really
occurred outside the venue of a doxastic practice at all. Socially well established
doxastic practices thus must, to some degree, grow out of and be a function of
earlier idiosyncratic practices. 75 But, if this is true, then the problem created by
religious diversity is greatly magnified. In deciding the reliability of different
claims regarding religious experiences, Alston must consider not only the religious
beliefs of the different well-established doxastic practices but the individual,
idiosyncratic ones as well- many of whom are regarded as charlatans or kooks.
If the justification for what is regarded as socially well established CMP is
primarily internal, and if the early experiences that are now regarded as part of the
legitimizing force for CMP were originally idiosyncratic, then one way of
explaining how early, idiosyncratic CMP came to be socially well established CMP
is through the acceptance of some final religious authority, as specified in William
Wainwright's sixth criterion for assessing religious experience (see the above
discussion of Swinburne's cumulative case argument). The suggestion here is that
appeal to religious authority must be much more responsible for the codification
necessary for the doxastic practices of CMP to become socially well established
74 For a more constructive suggestion and optimistic outlook for Alston's defense of CMP, see the
following two articles by Philip L. Quinn: "And Thinner Theologies: Hick and Alston on Religious
Diversity," International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, Vol. 38, 1995, pp. 145-64. Reprinted in
The Philosophical Challenge of Religious Diversity, edited by Philip L. Qninn and Kevin Meeker
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), especially pp. 235ff; and "Religious Diversity and Religious
Toleration," International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, Vol. 49, 2001, pp. 1-24. Qninn's
treatment of Alston is discussed in Chapter IX.
75 Robert Adams suggests that more emphasis should be placed on the individual's belief rather than
the social nature of the doxastic practice, but he does not develop this point. See Robert Adams,
"Religious Disagreements and Doxastic Practices," p. 886.
165
than Alston recognizes. Consider just one such well-known example of religious
authority at work. Joan of Arc was burned at the stake as a heretic in 1431 at least
in part because she claimed that the voices she heard were from God. In 1920, Joan
was canonized by Pope Benedict XV and became Saint Joan. Arguably, politically,
in terms of how the French regarded Joan because of her attack on the English at
Orleans during the Hundred Years War, she was not in need of canonization.
However, in terms of her position within the Roman Catholic Church and in terms
of how her report of her idiosyncratic perceptions of God came to be regarded as
part of the socially well established CMP, the annulment of her sentence and her
canonization were crucial. 76 This case and the role of authority in the process of
turning idiosyncratic experiences and beliefs into accepted parts of the socially
well established CMP suggest that M-beliefs are not simply and directly justified,
as Alston claims. M-beliefs are supposed to be prima facie reliable, since they are
apparent, direct perceptions of something, but idiosyncratic M-beliefs do not wear
their legitimacy on their sleeves. M-beliefs must be sanctioned by CMP and await
further approval by and adoption into the tradition that comprises CMP. Whether
there is a comparable authority at work in the case of sense experience is not
obvious. At least there is no comparable explicit secular counterpart to
ecclesiastical authority.77 One way of describing the process whereby idiosyncratic
M-beliefs become beliefs accepted by CMP is that what begin as introspective and
subjective experiences then take on the same epistemic status as perceptual
experiences; however, surely this process would not affect the phenomenological
analysis of the experiences for the person having the experiences. 78
THE METAPHYSICAL REQUIREMENT
Part of Alston's answer to the problem of how S can be sure that x is God when
x appears to S as God involves abandoning a classical descriptivist account of
reference, such as the one that, as I have shown above, Swinburne embraces. For
Alston, for S to recognize an object x as x when it appears during a perception, it is
not necessary for S to perceive any essential properties of x. According to Alston,
it is sufficient for S to recognize x as x for x simply to present itself as possessing
properties that "are sufficiently indicative of (are a reliable guide to) the object's
being" what it is. 79 But this answer will not do as a general account of how S
comes to be able to identify x as God since it requires S to have a store of
knowledge of which properties are "sufficiently indicative" and "reliable" guides
for identifying God and which ones are not. For S to develop such an ability to
discriminate amongst different properties in terms of their success or lack thereof
in identifying God seems to require S to have repeated experiences in the past of
76 Arguably, equally for Roman Catholics and non-Catholic Christians alike since the legend of St.
Joan is now so thoroughly embedded in Western folklore, Other saints have reported not being so sure
of the source of their religious experiences at the time that they were having them. See St. Teresa,
Interior Castle (London: Thomas Baker Publishing, 1930).
77 For Alston's comparison of SP and CMP on this score, see Perceiving God, Chapter 3 and pp.
250ff.
78 For further criticism of Alston on the grounds that nonsensory perception of God is subjective, see
Richard Gale, "Why Alston's Mystical Doxastic Practice Is Subjective," pp. 869-75.
79 William Alston, Perceiving God, pp. 96-97.
166
successfully and unsuccessfully identifying x as God when x has appeared as

possessing certain properties. so
Modeled on sense perception, any religious experience must satisfy what
Richard Gale has called the "metaphysical requirement."Sl In the case of sense
experience, this requirement demands that any S's experience of an any object x
must take place within a spacial-temporal dimension D that allows S to individuate
the objects of experience and thus individuate x from other objects in D. The
existence of D is also necessary to specify the conditions under which x is able to
appear to S and the position that S occupies within D relative to x. Using D, we can
also specify S's position relative to other observers and the relationships between x
and other observers. In order not to beg the question against Alston, since Mexperiences are supposed to be nonsensory perceptual experiences, the
metaphysical requirement can be specified in a more general way to the effect that
the object x of S's experience must occupy some dimension MD (a "mystical
dimension," although not necessarily a spatial-temporal one). MD is necessary in
order for S to identify x and individuate x from other objects in MD. Using MD,
we can understand the conditions under which x is able to appear to S in MD, S's
position within MD, S's relationship to x within MD, as well as S's relationship to
other observers within MD and their relationship to x. It is easy to explain the
metaphysical requirement for M-experiences using the jargon of sense-data theory.
During a perceptual experience, whether sensory or non sensory, sense data must
appear to S within a wider, sensory field within which the sense data move or
change and are related to other sense data within the field and to S. If S's entire
sense field is filled with the same sense datum, such as a bright, glowing red, then
S can make no sensory or perceptual discriminations about the experience other
than, in the classic sense-data example, "red, here now." Clearly, however, during
M-experiences, S is supposed to have finer and more detailed powers of sensory
awareness, without which the experience would never be regarded as mystical or
religious or a case of being appeared to by God.
Alston's response to this objection does not adequately address the seriousness
of the problem. He simply repeats his claim that we do not have to reply upon
essential characteristics in identifying God and that we use "background
knowledge" to differentiate those characteristics that are reliable and sufficiently
indicative of God's presence from those that are not. The force of the objection,
however, is that the accumulation of such background knowledge is impossible
unless, during those earlier experiences in which some S develops the background
knowledge, it is possible to differentiate x from other objects that appear to S in
MD and to identify God as x instead of identifying God as y or z or some other
object that appears in a nonsensory fashion to S within MD. To do this
successfully, or even to judge whether he has done it successfully or not, S must
differentiate x from y and z and other objects that appear in a nonsensory fashion
80 While Alston distinguishes between S's being justified and S's knowing that he is justified in
believing that he is being appeared to by God, still unless there is some indication of what might be the
criterion for determining whether S is right or wrong in believing that the properties that x presents in
appearing to S are sufficient for identifying God, then there is no reason to maintain that it is reasonable
to believe that S is being appeared to by God.
81 Richard Gale, "Why Alston's Mystical Doxastic Practice Is Subjective," pp. 871ff.
167
to S within MD. Such differentiation can only take place within a mystical
dimension, according to which it becomes possible to describe the position of x
within that dimension, the relative positions of other objects within that dimension,
the position of S within that dimension, the relative position of S to x within that
dimension, the position of other observers within that dimension, and the relative
positions of other observers to x within that dimension. For example, suppose that
God appears with the heavenly hosts or simply with the archangel Gabriel, then S
must be able to distinguish God from the heavenly hosts and from Gabriel within
MD. M-experiences clearly do not satisfy the metaphysical requirement, and
Alston apparently does not conceptualize M-experiences taking place within a
mystical dimension in the same way in which sensory perceptions take place
within a spatial-temporal dimension. To understand nonsensory perception in the
model of ordinary sensory perception, we must understand how this metaphysical
requirement could be satisfied. If Alston denies that M-experiences require a
dimension in the same way that sense experiences do, then the proper response is
that he has insisted upon drawing the parallel and the comparison between Mexperiences and sense experiences as closely as possible; therefore, to abandon or
deny the parallel structure of such experiences at this point would seem to
undermine the entire enterprise.
DIRECT REFERENCE AND RELIGIOUS PERCEPTION
One plausible way of explaining how one is able to identify God during a
nonsensory experience of God is by abandoning the use of a descriptivisitic
account of reference during such times. Perhaps for this reason Alston has joined
forces with Richard Miller in claiming that the causal theory of reference,
championed by Saul Kripke and Keith Donnellan, offers some advantages in
explaining how reference takes place during religious experience. 82 This theory
emphasizes the fundamental nature of what Alston calls "direct reference," that is,
reference that takes place when a speaker uses a referring expression to refer to an
object x of immediate experience without using predicates or characteristics of x.
According to Alston, religious believers refer to God in a primary sense when they
used the name 'God' during worship and prayer to refer to the object of their direct
religious experience. Using the causal theory of reference "anchors" the referent
for 'God' in direct experience without the need for identifying or essential
predicates, and other people within the same religious community can then trace
their use of 'God' to the same initial baptism of the use of the word. 83
Alston recognizes that there are several controversial aspects to his claims
involving direct experience of God and direct reference to God as an object of such
experience. I will explore just the major ones of those difficulties. In the case of
direct reference, it is crucial that the speaker be able to successfully refer to a
particular individual without saying anything that is descriptively true of that
individual. The use of any referring expression in such a circumstance amounts to
what Keith Donnellan calls a referential use of a definite description (in contrast
Richard B. Miller, "The Reference of 'God,'" Faith and Philosophy, Vol. 3, no. 1, 1986.
William P. Alston, "Referring to God," International Journalfor Philosophy of Religion, Vol. 24,
no. 3, November 1988, pp. 10-12. Reprinted in Divine Nature and Human Language: Essays in
Philosophical Theology, William P. Alston (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989).
82
83
168
with an attributive use). 84 In the case of the referential use of a definite description,
a speaker's audience is able to identify the intended referent of the referring
expression even if what the speaker uses the referring expression to state about the
individual is not true. It is plausible to understand how such "direct reference" can
take place when the referent being referred to is an object of public experience.
Donnellan gives clear and convincing examples of the referential uses of definite
descriptions that have become well known. If a speaker sitting in a courtroom nods
at the accused and says to an audience, "Smith's murderer is insane," then the
speaker's audience is able to identify the individual about whom the person is
speaking even if it later turns out that Smith was not really murdered at all and the
accused is innocent. Such a situation requires that the referent be an object of
public experience where both speaker and audience can identify the same referent
for the referring expression; otherwise, one would never be in a position to
determine that the audience and the speaker were both identifying the same
individual, that is, referring to the same individual. 85 When a theist uses direct
reference to refer to God when the object of immediate experience is a public
object, such as a burning bush or a beautiful sunset, then the referent of 'God'
becomes tied too closely to the physical world. Given the transcendent nature of
God, if a person identifies the bush or the sunset with God, then a theist must say
that the person has gotten it wrong. The referent of 'God' is not the physical object
that is publicly observable.
If the referent of a referring expression used to refer to an object of direct
experience is not a publicly observable individual, then other problems arise. I will
summarize the main point by simply saying that there would then be no
Wittgensteinian criterion of correctness to determine correct and incorrect
reference for such a referent. 86 To use Alston's example, Satan may "represent"
himself to a person and give that person evil "messages." In such a situation, using
direct reference, the person could not identify the object of his direct experience as
Satan rather than God. In the first place, by using the causal theory of reference, no
description or content can be used to identify the referent, so the content of the
"evil" messages cannot be used to rule out the possibility that this may really be
God appearing to him. All the speaker is left with is the "bare" individual of his
experience, and if this is an essentially private object of experience, then the person
is left with no way of determining whether a particular judgment about that
individual would be correct or not. It may be possible to "fix" the referent for a
referring expression upon a single occasion of direct experience, but it would be
impossible ever to determine the referent or ever to determine that a future referent
of a later use of the referring expression was the same individual. Lacking any
criterion of correctness, there would thus be no way for the theist to determine
whether the object of an immediate experience is the same individual that he has
earlier referred to when he has used the name 'God' or whether the object of this
84 See Keith Donnellan, "Reference and Definite Descriptions," in Readings in the Philosophy of
Language, edited by Jay Rosenberg and Charles Travis (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall), p. 198,
and James F. Harris, 'The Causal Theory of Reference and Religious Language," International Journal
for Philosophy of Religion, Vol. 29, 1991, pp. 82-83.
85 Harris, ibid., p. 83.
86 Ibid., pp. 83-84.
169
immediate experience is the individual that he has earlier referred to when he used
the name 'Satan.' 87 Alston also claims special benefits for the causal theory of
reference that may contribute to and support ecumenism and perhaps address the
problem that religious pluralism poses for CMP. Such benefits seem initially
plausible since, as we have seen, fixing the referent for a referring expression is
completely independent of the accuracy of any content of the descriptions used to
refer to that individual. By abandoning any claim for the validity of a specific
historical content, the causal theory of reference creates the possibility of a single
referent for the many different and disparate referring expressions used by different
religious peoples in different religious traditions, but this is, at best, a very remote
possibility. This would be as far as the benefit of the causal theory would extend,
however, because there would be an enormous gap between any theoretical benefit
and any practical benefit. To gain any practical benefit, we would have to trace
each causal chain of different referring expressions used in each religious tradition
back to each one's initial "baptism" and then somehow demonstrate that the
individual referred to in each case is really the same individual! While there is the
remote theoretical possibility that a single referent for different referring
expressions was fixed at their initial uses, the practical possibility of identifying the
same referent for all of the many different religious referring expressions seems so
improbable that it is not clear how one would even go about attempting it. 88
Miller and Alston suggest that the causal theory may be a way of referring that
has some benefits for dealing with some of the special difficulties of treating
problems of reference within religious language. However, it seems that the theory
of reference that is preferable for use within the context of religious language is a
minimal descriptivist theory of reference that is called the cluster theory. Consider
Wittgenstein's treatment of how the name "Moses" might refer using the cluster
theory of reference compared to the earlier treatment by Kripke using the causal
theory of reference:
If one says "Moses did not exist," this may mean various things. It may mean:
the Israelites did not have a single leader when they withdrew from Egypt - or:
their leader was not called Moses - or: there cannot have been anyone who
accomplished all that the Bible relates of Moses - or: etc. etc. - We may say
following Russell: the name "Moses" can be defined by means of various
descriptions. For example, as "the man who led the Israelites through the
wilderness," "the man who lived at that time and place and was then called
'Moses,'" "the man who as a child was taken out of the Nile by Pharaoh's
daughter" and so on ....
But when I make a statement about Moses, - am I always ready to substitute
some one of those descriptions for "Moses"? I shall perhaps say: By "Moses" I
understand the man who did what the Bible relates of Moses, or at any rate a
good deal of it. 89
See Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, Section 79.

James Harris, "The Causal Theory of Reference and Religious Language," pp. 84-85.
89 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, Section 79.
87
88
170
This view ties the reference of the name 'Moses' in some minimal but necessary
way to the set of descriptions that are normally used to explain the meaning of the
name. It does not insist that it is necessary for anyone of those descriptions to be
true but rather relies upon some minimal (and unspecified) subset of those
descriptions being true. 90 This cluster theory of reference for proper names, which
depends to some extent upon the accuracy of the biblical account of Moses,
certainly offers a more plausible account for satisfying Miller's concern about the
"historical validity of religion" than does the causal theory of reference.
ANTI-EVIDENTIALISM AND REFORMED EPISTEMOLOGY
In the second part of the twentieth century, one of the strongest attacks on
classical evidentialism came from Alvin Plantinga, who explicitly addresses the
evidentialist objection to theistic belief raised by William Clifford (discussed
above) that theistic belief is uureasonable and unjustified since there is not
sufficient evidence to justify such a belief.91 In general, evidentialism maintains
that "the strength of one's belief ought always to be proportional to the strength of
the evidence for that belief.'.92 Nicholas Wolterstorff summarizes nicely how the
evidentialist challenge to religious belief has been made:
The challenge can be seen as consisting of two contentions: It was insisted, in
the first place, that it would be wrong for a person to accept Christianity, or any
other form of theism, unless it was rational for him to do so. And it was
insisted, secondly, that it is not rational for a person to do so unless he holds his
religious convictions on the basis of other beliefs of his which give to those
convictions adequate evidential support. No religion is acceptable unless
rational, and no religion is rational unless supported by evidence. 93
Plantinga aims his attack at classical epistemological foundationalism, perhaps
the dominant form of evidentialism since the Enlightenment, according to which
all knowledge is constructed upon basic beliefs that provide the epistemological
foundation for other beliefs that are justifiably inferred from those basic beliefs. He
introduces the notion of a noetic structure, which is the set of beliefs a person
holds and the relationships amongst those beliefs. One's noetic structure is divided
into those beliefs that are basic (those that are held on the basis of no evidence) and
those that are not (those that are held on the basis of evidence).94 While the
See John Searle, "Proper Names," Mind, Vol. 67,1958.
Plantinga has developed his position in a number of different writings, including the following:
"Is Belief in God Rational?" in Rationality and Religious Belief, edited by C. F. Delaney (Notre Dame,
Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979); "Is Belief in God Properly Basic," Nous, Vol. 15, 1981,
pp. 41-51; "Rationality and Religious Belief," in Contemporary Philosophy of Religion, edited by
Steven Cahn and David Shatz (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982). Parts of this article come from
two previous articles: "Reason and Belief in God," in Faith and Rationality, edited by Alvin Plantinga
and Nicholas Wolterstorff (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983); and "Episternic
Justification," Nous, Vol. 20, 1986, pp. 3-18. See especially "Rationality and Religious Belief," pp. 25562.
92 Alvin Plantinga, "Rationality and Religious Belief," p. 24.
93 Nicholas Wolterstorff, "Introduction," in Faith and Rationality, edited by Alvin Plantinga and
Nicholas Wolterstorff (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983), p. 6.
94 Alvin Plantinga, "Rationality and Religious Belief," pp. 48ff.
90
91
171
determination of what counts as properly basic beliefs has varied, in terms of

classical foundationalism, the standards are very high, and thus very few beliefs are
regarded as properly basic beliefs. For the classical foundationalists, including
Descartes, only those beliefs that are intuitively self-evident or incorrigible are
properly basic. Others have maintained, including radical empiricists of the early
twentieth century, that only the reports of the content of immediate sense-data
experience can constitute properly basic beliefs. In developing his position, which
has now become known as Reformed epistemology, Plantinga objects that the
restrictions placed upon properly basic beliefs by classical foundationalism are
arbitrary, self-serving, and too limited. Classical foundationalism is thus no more
than "a bit of intellectual imperialism.,,95 Plantinga wants to eliminate the
intellectual imperialism by abandoning the overly restrictive criterion of proper
basicality used by classical foundationalism and broadening the category of
properly basic beliefs.
Reformed epistemologists, who follow John Calvin in this regard, maintain that
natural theology has made the mistake of responding to the evidentialist objection
to theistic belief by trying to provide the evidence and arguments for theistic belief
demanded by the evidentialists. This is seen as a misguided and inappropriate
response to the evidentialist challenge. 96 Plantinga maintains that belief in God
does not have to be based upon evidence or argumentation, but that it is
nonetheless completely rational and reasonable to hold a theistic belief in the
existence of God since such a belief can be properly basic. Establishing a belief as
a properly basic belief does not mean that it is automatically true or that its truth is
independent of any evidence whatsoever, but it does mean that its reasonableness
or rationality is independent of propositional evidence or a process of reasoning
whereby the existence of God is inferred from some other belief. Proper basicality
establishes the epistemic status of a belief and not its truth or falsity. For Plantinga,
if a person does not have good reasons for the belief in the existence of God or the
belief in the existence of God is not supported by evidence or arguments, it does
not follow that the belief is therefore groundless or irrational or unreasonable.
Reformed epistemology thus derives from a Reformed account of foundationalism
and a broader version of foundationalism that includes belief in the existence of
God amongst the properly basic beliefs. This is the basic platform of Reformed
epistemology. For the Reformed platform to be plausible epistemologically, it must
not be simply arbitrary or established by fiat. In the case of classical
foundationalism, there are criteria or a set of conditions for determining properly
basic beliefs. What are the criteria or the conditions of proper basicality upon
which the Reformed platform rests?
Ibid., p. 270.
Alvin Plantinga, "The Reformed Objection to Natural Theology," Christian Sclwlar's Review,
Vol. 11, no. 3, 1982. Page numbers refer to reprint in Philosophy of Religion: Selected Readings, edited
by Michael Peterson, William Rasker, Bruce Reichenbach, and David Basinger (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1996); Nicholas Wolterstorff, "The Migration of the Theistic Arguments: From
Natural Theology to Evidentialist Apologetics," in Rationality, Religious Belief, and Moral
Commitment, edited by Robert Audi and William J. Wainwright (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press,
1986); and "The Reformed Tradition," in A Companion to the Philosophy of Religion, edited by Philip
L. Quinn and Charles Taliaferro (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1997), pp. 165-70.
95
96
172
Plantinga does not begin his rationale for Reformed epistemology by offering or
defending a criterion for or a set of criteria for determining the extended class of
properly basic beliefs. Plantinga insists that we must arrive at any such criteria
inductively by considering examples of possible candidates for properly basic
beliefs, deciding the proper basicality of those candidates, and then abstracting the
necessary and sufficient conditions that explain their basicality. The criteria must
be constructed "from below," that is, from the ground up rather than from the top
down, by considering different examples, and Christians are as free to choose their
examples as nontheists. There is no reason to insist that everyone agree on the
examples. "The Christian community is responsible to its set of examples" and not
to those of anyone else. 97
So Plantinga does not offer a criterion or criteria for properly basic beliefs;
instead, he defends the Reformed platform by making use of what Terence
Penelhum has dubbed the parity argument. 98 The parity argument is used to attempt
to minimize the epistemological difference between theistic beliefs based upon
faith and secular beliefs based upon science or common sense by claiming that
many of the latter beliefs cannot be justified solely on the basis of evidence or
human reason. In the present context, the parity argument proceeds by granting to
the classical foundationalist that some beliefs are properly basic and then
attempting to draw close parallels between those admitted properly basic beliefs
and the belief in the existence of God so that theistic belief becomes included in
that accepted group of properly basic beliefs. Support for the Reformed platform is
derived if these parallels can be drawn closely enough. Plantinga begins this
process by focusing upon such commonly held beliefs as the following: 99
i. I see a tree,
ii. I had breakfast this morning,
and
iii. That person is angry.
These are examples, Plantinga claims, of beliefs that are not considered
groundless even though they are properly basic. Having a certain experience, such
as seeing a tree or being appeared to treely, may be grounds for (i) and may justify
(i), but the experience is not adequate evidence for (i) that we then use to argue for
or from which we infer the truth of (i). With each of these properly basic beliefs,
"there is some circumstance or condition that confers justification; there is a
circumstance that serves as the ground of justification."lOo
Plantinga claims that the same sort of analysis holds for a theistic belief in God
and that thus, according to the parity argument, belief in God should be treated
Alvin Plantinga, "Rationality and Religious Belief," pp. 76-77.

Terence Penelhum, God and Skepticism (Dordrecht, Netherlands: D. Reidel, 1983), p. 30 and pp.
146-47. Penelhum groups Plantinga with Pascal and Kierkegaard as an evangelical fideist - a label that
Plantinga disavows (see his "Reason and Belief in God," p. 90). The question of fideism aside,
Penelhum's parity argument does capture Plantinga's general epistemological strategy of treating belief
in God in the same manner as secular, common-sense beliefs, so I will use this designation for
Plantinga's approach. I discuss the issue of fideism below.
99 Alvin Plantinga, "Rationality and Religious Belief," p. 271.
100 Ibid.
97
98
173
similarly as other properly basic beliefs. 101 Refonned epistemology thus regards
belief in God as a properly basic belief without admitting that it is groundless or
unjustified. With (i) through (iii), there are conditions under which each is regarded
as properly basic. What are the conditions under which belief in the existence of
God is properly basic? In answering this question, Plantinga is very Calvinistic.
God has created human beings with a special propensity to believe in his existence,
a sensus divinitatis, and a special disposition to fonn this belief when it is triggered
by various conditions that cause human beings to form the belief that God exists.
Although Plantinga disavows any attempt to provide a full treatment of these
different conditions, they may include such things as "guilt, gratitude, danger, a
sense of God's presence, a sense that he speaks, perceptions of various parts of the
universe.,,102 Under such conditions, the sensus divinitatis is stimulated, and the
person then is likely to form such beliefs as God is speaking to me, or God has
created all of this, or God disapproves of what I have done, or God forgives me, or
God is to be thanked and praised. All of which mean, loosely speaking, that the
person believes that God exists. 103 As I have noted earlier, saying that such beliefs
are properly basic does not mean that they are thereby determined to be true; it
simply means that it is rational for the person to hold the beliefs and to regard them
as true.
THE GREAT PUMPKIN OBJECTION
Perhaps the most obvious and serious set of objections to Refonned
epistemology and treating belief in God as properly basic is the result of what
Terence Penelhum calls the "deep unease" that it generates. Plantinga's approach
seems to leave the door wide open for different people to make different claims
about properly basic propositions so that "anything goes" in a way that leads to
"dogmatic assertions" and a "potential chaos of clashing convictions."I04 Plantinga
anticipates this objection by raising the possibility of a person believing in the
!O1 Some take the import of Reformed epistemology to be positive while others take it to be purely
negative, that is, some take Reformed epistemology to build a positive case for the Reformed platform
while others take it to simply shift the burden of proof to those who would oppose the Reformed
platform. See especially Richard Grigg, "Theism and Proper Basicality: A Response to Plantinga,"
International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, Vol. 14, 1983, pp. 123-27. My own reading of
Plantinga is that he attempts to build a positive case for the Reformed platform, but this reading is not
uncontroversial. See, for example, Mark McLeod, ''The Analogy Argument for the Proper Basicality of
Belief in God," International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, Vol. 21, 1987, pp. 3-20.
102 Alvin Plantinga, "Rationality and Religious Belief," ibid., p. 273.
!O3 Ibid., p. 273-74.
104 Terence Penelhum, Reason and Religious Faith (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1995), p. 95.
The fact that Plantinga himself anticipates this objection and tries to respond to it has not prevented his
critics from pressing the issue, and several have, including David Basinger, "Reformed Epistemology
and Hick's Religious Pluralism," in Philosophy of Religion, edited by Michael Peterson et al. (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 336-46; Jay M. Van Hook, "Knowledge, Belief, and Reformed
Epistemology," The Reformed Journal, Vol. 32, 1981, p. 16; and William Alston, "Plantinga's
Epistemology of Religious Belief," in Alvin Plantinga, edited by J. E. Tomberlin and Peter van Inwagen
(Dordrecht, Among: D. Reidel, 1985), pp. 300-301. For the effects of Plantinga's position on relativism
and religious pluralism, see William Lad Sessions, "Plantinga's Box," Faith and Philosophy, Vol. 8, no.
1,1991, pp. 51-66.
174
ANALYTle PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION
return of the Great Pumpkin on Halloween. 105 Since the Reformed epistemologist
maintains that belief in the existence of God is properly basic, then will he not be
forced to admit that belief in the Great Pumpkin as well as other "bizarre
aberrations" can be properly basic also, "thus throwing wide the gates to
irrationalism and superstition,,?l06
Plantinga's response to this objection is not very satisfying. He argues that,
simply because the Reformed epistemologist rejects the criterion of classical
foundationalism for proper basicality, he is not therefore committed to accepting
just any belief as properly basic. But the issue is not whether the Reformed
epistemologist himself would be forced to accept belief in the Great Pumpkin but
rather whether the Reformed epistemologist would be forced to admit that those
who accept such a belief are as entitled to it as a properly basic belief as theists
who accept belief in God as properly basic. Since rationality for Plantinga is a
combination of the logical, cohesive relationship among a person's beliefs along
with the process by which and the conditions under which they are formed, then it
is obviously possible that different people may develop logical, cohesive beliefs
about the Great Pumpkin, UFOs, space aliens, or other "bizarre aberrations."
To explain the difference between properly basic beliefs and other beliefs,
Plantinga relies upon his inductive, "from the ground up" approach, which starts
with the accumulation of a set of beliefs that are "obviously" properly basic and
then proceeds to an inferred or an extrapolated criterion for proper basicality from
that set of agreed-upon properly basic beliefs. In the case of the Christian's
identification of belief in the existence of God as properly basic, the difference is
to be accounted for in terms of the natural tendency implanted by God in all men to
believe in the existence of God, the sensus divinitatis. Presumably, there is no such
natural tendency implanted in us to believe in the Great Pumpkin or UFOs and so
forth. 107
Given this kind of response, it is difficult to see how Plantinga and other
Reformed epistemologists can avoid either relativism, subjectivism, irrationalism,
or superstition on the one hand or arbitrariness, question begging, or circularity on
the other hand. If the way out of this problem for the Reformed epistemologist
requires relying upon John Calvin's notion of a sensus divinitatis, a natural
tendency to "see God," then this seems to be a classic bootstrap method of building
the case for the Reformed platform. If the criterion for proper basicality is to be
developed inductively by examining a lot of different cases of properly basic
beliefs, then how are we to decide which beliefs are properly basic and whether
belief in God is to be counted among them? The answer to this question appears to
be that only those believers who are properly exercising their natural tendency to
see God can determine that belief in God is properly basic. Others - both
nonbelievers and believers whose sensus divinitatis is malfunctioning because of
sin - may not think that belief in God is properly basic, but that is just because they
are defective in some way because they are sinful.
105 An example taken from the cartoon strip "Peanuts" and, ironically, an example I've used in class
for over twenty years to illustrate Hume's point of how the evidence for the argument from design
underdetermines the appropriate analogy to be used.
106 Alvin Plantinga, "The Reformed Objection to Natural Theology," p. 318.
107 Ibid., pp. 319-20.
175
Plantinga is left without a criterion of proper basicality where any disagreement

about the examples can be dealt with in a very effective but nonarbitrary manner.
Plantinga says that the Christian community is free to choose and use its own set of
examples of what it takes to be properly basic beliefs. Now, leaving aside the
matter of the unlikelihood of ever being able to identify a single Christian
community, the issue of how one could ever arrive at an agreed-upon set of
properly basic beliefs is a troubling one. Not only would nonbelievers disagree
with believers, but obviously believers would disagree among themselves. The
significant feature of Plantinga's examples from common sense, (i) through (iii)
above, is that they are claims about which we would find near universal agreement
- lunatics and eccentric philosophers aside. lo8 It is such near universal agreement
that lends rationality (but not truth) to these beliefs. But there is no such near
universal agreement about the Reformed platform, that is, the expansion of
properly basic beliefs to include belief in the existence of God. In fact, as Gary
Gutting notes, there is the disagreement of substantial numbers of people who
would be regarded as epistemic peers of those who do hold such beliefs. 109 The
whole history of natural theology - from Aquinas to the present day - argues
against the Reformed platform, and to dismiss this history as completely
misguided, Reformed epistemologists must dismiss natural theologians as well as
epistemically defective and sinful.
Plantinga and fellow Reformed epistemologists must maintain that natural
theologians have not only been wrong about the epistemic status of belief in the
existence of God, but their mistake must be explained as the result of a defective
epistemic mechanism. If belief in the existence of God is properly basic, as the
Reformed platform claims, then failure to "see" or admit or accept the basicality of
this belief because of a defective sensus divinitatis corrupted by sin is not only
wrong but irrational as well. Dismissal of such a long-standing and dominant
tradition within Christianity on these grounds is arbitrary and question-begging.
Proper basicality turns out to be the epistemic high ground, since resolving
disagreement about the status of the belief that God exists depends upon
recognizing the correct set of beliefs as properly basic. However, an account of
how the proper set of properly basic beliefs is determined depends upon accepting
the theological claims regarding the sensus divinitatis and its import. But obviously
these claims themselves are not properly basic. Acceptance of such a controversial
theological claim must either be the result of an evidential-styled argument or
proof or the result of a religious doctrine that follows from accepting one particular
religious tradition or religious authority rather than another. We see at work here
something very similar to the need of a religious authority that we saw at work
above in William Alston's treatment of doxastic practices. Plantinga's "bottom up"
technique for establishing the criteria for proper basicality by inductively
examining certain selected examples of properly basic beliefs requires a similar
kind of authority to explain why some people just "see" that certain beliefs are
properly basic while others do not.
108 See Gary Gutting, Religious Belief and Skepticism (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame
Press, 1982), p. 83.
109 Ibid.
176
REASON WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF RELIGION

The charge that Reformed epistemology depends upon embracing fundamental
theological beliefs that provide the core of religious epistemology and eventually
determine what is rational or reasonable is not a charge that would greatly concern
Reformed epistemologists. In Reason within the Bounds of Religion, for example,
Nicholas Wolterstorff explicitly embraces the view that fundamental "control
beliefs" function to make Christians both reject certain kinds of theories because
they do not comport well with the Christian's control beliefs and also to devise
certain kinds of theories because they do comport well with those same control
beliefs. 110 W olterstorff cites several examples of how he thinks control beliefs
function in the natural sciences and social sciences, but his main aim is to make
explicit how he thinks control beliefs should function in the case of the philosophy
of religion and, in particular, in the case of Christian philosophers. He claims that
"the religious beliefs of the Christian scholar ought to function as control beliefs
within his devising and weighing of theories," and furthermore, having such
religious beliefs "functioning as control beliefs is absolutely central to the work of
the Christian scholar."lll Wolterstorff captures the theme that runs through much
of this chapter from Swinburne to Alston to Plantinga - the rejection of classical
natural theology (to one degree or other) and the acceptance of a more faith-based
religious epistemology. Whether there is any epistemology left in Reformed
epistemology given this explicit recognition of the fundamental role of faith or
whether Reformed epistemology simply resolves into theology are issues that need
to be addressed. If the epistemology in Reformed epistemology is derivative from
and dependent upon Reformed theological claims that, in turn, are derivative from
and dependent upon religious faith, then "Reformed" in "Reformed epistemology"
does not modify or characterize a kind of epistemology but rather vitiates the
substantive noun in the way that "counterfeit" vitiates the substantive noun in
"counterfeit currency."
EVANGELICAL FIDEISM?
It is perhaps because of these considerations that Terence Penelhum treats
Plantinga's Reformed epistemology as a form of evangelical fideism and groups
him with earlier figures such as Pascal and Kierkegaard. ll2 Fideism comes in
different forms and in different strengths, and there is a wide gap between
Plantinga and Kierkegaard, that is, since nothing in Reformed epistemology places
belief in God beyond the scope of reason, it is far removed from Kierkegaardian
fideism. As Penelhum characterizes evangelical fideism, it is a modest appellation
that depends upon simply divorcing belief in God from reason and evidence and
from attempts to prove the existence of God using the traditional arguments found
in natural theology. In other words, evangelical fideism sounds very much like the
anti-evidentialist stance and the rejection of natural theology that characterize
110 Nicholas Wolterstorff, Reason within the Bounds of Religion (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B.
Eerdmans, 1976), p. 64.
111 Ibid., p. 66. It should be noted that Wolterstorff intends that control beliefs should function
generally this way for the Christian scholar in his weighing of such scientific theories as Copernican
astronomy and Darwinian evolutionary theory. See ibid., p. 77.
112 Terence Penelhum, God and Skepticism, pp. 146ff.
177
Reformed epistemology. Still, Plantinga is intent upon denying that Reformed

epistemology is a form of fideism. He says,
The Reformed epistemologist is not a fideist at all with respect to belief in God.
He does not hold that there is any conflict between faith and reason here, and he
does not even hold that we cannot attain this fundamental truth by reason; he
holds, instead, that it is among the deliverances of reason .
... On the Reformed view ... the deliverances of reason include the existence
of God just as much as perceptual beliefs, self-evident truths, memory beliefs,
and the like. It is not that theist and nontheist agree as to what reason delivers,
the theist then going on to accept the existence of God by faith; there is, instead,
disagreement in the first place as to what are the deliverances of reason.J13
There may be additional religious beliefs for which the theist must reply upon
faith, according to Plantinga, but not the belief that God exists. 114 However, if the
expansion of properly basic beliefs to include the belief that God exists depends
upon acceptance of the Reformed belief that God has endowed human beings with
a natural tendency to believe in him under certain conditions, then this belief in the
sensus divinitatis must come from somewhere. From where does it come? The
answer must be that such beliefs come from a particular community of religious
believers and that, furthermore, different communities of believers disagree about
these beliefs. This is why Stephen Wykstra calls religious beliefs "evidenceessential," since he claims that they are dependent upon evidence that is assumed
or believed to be available to the community of believers (although the evidence
need not necessarily be available to each individual member of the community).115
This is the view incorporated into William Alston's requirement of a system of
doxastic practices, discussed above, for assessing the claims of individuals to
religious experience; however, this is clearly not the view of the Reformed
platform. Without an appeal to some assumed evidence from a community of
believers or from religious instruction or from holy scripture to support such
beliefs and some epistemological defense of the doxastic practices of such a
community, the Reformed platform does indeed seem to rest ultimately and simply
upon faith. ll6
This conclusion is confirmed by Plantinga's latest work, Warranted Christian
Belief, the last of his trilogy of books addressing the epistemology of religious
beliefs. 117 I must treat Plantinga's argument in this book in a summary fashion
here, but his argument itself is somewhat a culmination and summary of his earlier
Alvin Plantinga, "Reason and Belief in God," p. 90.
For further comparison of Penelhum and Plantinga on this point and discussion of different forms
of the parity argument, see Richard Askew, "On Fideism and Alvin Plantinga," International Journal
for Philosophy of Religion, Vol. 23, 1988, pp. 3-16.
115 Stephen Wykstra, "Review of Faith and Rationality," Faith and Philosophy, Vol. 3, 1986, p. 209.
116 For further discussion of this point, see Robert Pargetter, "Experience, Proper Basicality, and
Belief in God," in Contemporary Perspectives on Religious Epistemology, edited by R. Douglas Geivett
and Brendan Sweetman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 150-67.
117 Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). The earlier
volumes were Warrant and Proper Function (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993) and Warrant:
The Current Debate (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).
113
114
178
work. He focuses upon what he calls de jure objections to Christian belief, that is,
objections that Christian belief is "unjustifiable" or "rationally unjustified" or
"irrational." His main defense against such objections to the rationality of Christian
belief is to claim that they all rest upon, or assume at some point, that some de
facto objections, objections to the truth of Christian beliefs, are true. Plantinga
argues that there is no viable de jure objection that does not presuppose that
Christian beliefs are false. ll8 The most threatening de jure objection is that
Christian belief is unwarranted because it is false or very probably false. Therefore,
the main battle is to be waged over de facto objections, because if Christian belief
is false, then Plantinga agrees that it very probably has no warrant, but if Christian
belief is true, then, he claims, it very probably does have warrant. 119 While
Plantinga does not defend the truth of Christian belief, he thinks that establishing
its proper basicality is enough to ensure its warrant. He continues to rely upon a
properly functioning sensus divinitatis to produce theistic beliefs that are properly
basic and sufficiently warranted for knowledge. 120 The very low probability that
cognitive capacities arose completely naturalistically, without a divine origin and
plan, would not justify treating them as reliable. Thus, only if the origin of our
cognitive capacities is divine can we really trust them. Both the way in which we
make judgments about warrant and what we regard as properly basic are a part of
the "proper function" of our cognitive faculties, and the most probable account of
such proper function is one that rests upon divine origin and design. 12I As we have
seen, however, people obviously disagree about which beliefs are properly basic
and which ones are not. Thus, the cognitive faculties of human beings must
function properly at some times and improperly at others. Plantinga's whole case
thus depends upon identifying and explaining the proper function of a human
cognitive faculty that, in turn, produces properly basic beliefs. It is at this point that
Reformed epistemology turns into Reformed theology, because a properly
functioning cognitive faculty is explained in terms of the divinely orchestrated
sensus divinitatis that is not corrupted or damaged by sin. According to Plantinga,
an improperly functioning sensus divinitatis can be restored to its proper function
only by ''faith and the concomitant work of the Holy Spirit in one's heart.,,122 So, in
fact, Plantinga's Reformed epistemology ultimately rests upon faith and Reformed
theology and thus bears a close resemblance to earlier forms of fideism.
WITTGENSTEINIAN FIDEISM
In its most extreme form at least, fideism represents perhaps the most
exaggerated anti-evidentialist position for the theist. For example, in the case of
Sj:'Sren Kierkegaard, religious belief must be the result of faith that extends beyond
available evidence or rational argument. Compelling evidence or logically sound
arguments for the existence of God would make true religious faith impossible, so
the religious believer must make the "leap of faith" to believe in the face of the
lack of evidence or good reasons for doing so or even in the face of suspicions and
Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief, pp. viii-x.
Ibid., pp. 186-88.
120 Ibid., p. 186.
121 I take this to be one of the main points of Warrant and Proper Function.
122 Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief, p. 186. Also see Chapter 8.
118
119
179
doubts that would discourage one from believing.123 For the true believer, the
"proof' is an "inward proof' of faith.
In the second half of the twentieth century, fideism came to be identified with
the later work of Ludwig Wittgenstein, and thus the appellation "Wittgensteinian
Fideism" has come into common usage - a designation embraced by some
Wittgensteinians and rejected by others. Whereas Kierkegaardian fideism depends
upon the recognition of a conflict between religious faith and reason, "Wittgenstein
fideism" must be understood as a milder form of fideism where religious faith is
independent of reason - at least independent of some universal notion of reason
that is "outside" religious belief itself.124 It must also be said at the outset that
Wittgenstein himself did not explicitly develop a position of fideism, but then the
later Wittgenstein did not explicitly develop many positions that are now regarded
as Wittgensteinian. Thus, its has been left to his followers to construct the position
by extrapolating from various loosely connected Wittgensteinian themes regarding
language and language-games. 125 It must also be said that there is a rather wide
range of interpretations of Wittgenstein on this score by different Wittgensteinians.
It follows that there continues to be a fair amount of controversy about the different
interpretations of Wittgenstein and about just how much of what is taken as
constituting Wittgensteinian fideism can be appropriately attributed to Wittgenstein
himself.
Wittgenstenian fideism is developed from the following different theses based
upon different remarks made by Wittgenstein in his later writings: the purpose of
philosophy is simply to describe and understand language-games. "Philosophy may
in no way interfere with the actual use of language; it can in the end only describe
it .... It leaves everything as it is." Thus philosophy is not supposed to evaluate,
justify, or criticize language-games. This is true because "every sentence in our
language 'is in order as it is.,,,126 He emphasizes that "philosophy simply puts
everything before us, and neither explains nor deduces anything.,,]27 Thus, the most
fundamental and constitutive elements of religious belief and the religious form of
life cannot be justified and cannot reasonably be expected to be justified. What
philosophy puts before us and describes is the grammar of words - the pattern of
usage that words have within language-games; thus, the description of the grammar
of a word is a description of the way in which it is used in a language-game.
Whatever explanation there is occurs within a language-game and may amount to
something significantly different from language-game to language-game,
depending upon the language-game within which explanation takes place. There is
\23 There are different interpretations of Kierkegaard on this point. See, for example, C. Stephen
Evans, "Kierkegaard and Plantinga on Belief in God: Subjectivity as the Ground of Properly Basic
Religious Beliefs," Faith and Philosophy, Vol. 5, no. 1, 1988, pp. 25-39, and ''The Epistemological
Significance of Transformative Religious Experiences: A Kierkegaardian Exploration," Faith and
Philosophy, Vol. 8, no. 2, 1991, pp. 180-92; and Marilyn Gaye Piety, "Kierkegaard on Rationality,"
Faith and Philosophy, Vol. 10, no. 3, 1993, pp. 365-79.
\24 For a discussion of different forms of fideism, see Terence Penelhum, "Fideism," in A
Companion to Philosophy of Religion, edited by Philip L. Quinn and Charles Taliaferro (Oxford:
Blackwell Publishers, 1997), pp. 376-82.
125 Discussion ofWittgenstein's notion oflanguage-games can also be found in Chapter II.
126 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, Sections 98 and 124.
127 Ibid., Section 126.
180
no explanation of language-games themselves or the forms of life to which they

give rise. All explanation comes to an end, and wherever that end may be, the end
comes within and is determined by the limits of the language-game. 128 There is no
single or universal Archimedean point from which different languages-games can
be understood or evaluated since different languages games and the forms of life
that they constitute can only be understood and evaluated from within the
particular language-games. 129
THE GROUNDLESSNESS OF BELIEF
Two of the earliest followers of Wittgenstein to begin to piece these different
themes together into a thesis regarding religious belief were Peter Winch and
Norman Ma1colm.130 In the context of a reply to Kant's objection to the ontological
argument on the grounds that existence is not a predicate (see Chapter III),
Malcolm develops his form of language-game fideism by claiming that it is only
the religious person who has suffered a "storm in the soul" and experienced the
resulting "guilt that is beyond all measure" (presumably by having sinned) and
then enjoyed the "forgiveness that is beyond all measure" who can really
understand the Christian concept of God. From such experiences comes the
concept of "a forgiveness that is beyond all measure." Thus, one must understand
the concept of God from "inside" the language-game and not from "outside" it. 131
Nearly two decades later, Malcolm developed his language-game perspective on
religious beliefs further by relying more heavily upon Wittgenstein's On Certainty
after this volume was published. There are many fundamental beliefs, Wittgenstein
maintained, for which we do not have adequate evidence but which we accept
unconditionally in spite of their "groundlessness." Malcolm considers the common
belief that physical objects exist and continue to exist when no one is experiencing
them. When a physical object "goes missing," such as when a person cannot find
his car keys, we never assume that the keys just vanished, that is, suddenly just
ceased to exist. We assume that what Wittgenstein calls "the principle of the
128 Norman Malcolm develops this point regarding the limit of explanation more fully in
Wittgenstein: A Religious Point of View? (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1994), Chapter 6.
Also see Peter Winch's comments in the same volume in his discussion of Malcolm's essay, pp. 103ff.
Winch makes the important point that it was the particular kind of explanation that depends upon a
theory of meaning that Wittgenstein opposed (according to which the meaning of a word is given in
terms of necessary and sufficient conditions, that is, essentialism). The important thing is not simply
that explanation comes to an end but that confusions about the nature of language and meaning make
philosophers ignore or resist this fact.
129 For a more complete listing of additional tenets of Wittgensteinian fideism, see Kai Nielsen,
"Wittgensteinian Fideism," Philosophy, Vol. 42, no. 161, 1967, pp. 192-93.
130 Peter Winch, The Idea of a Social Science and Its Relation to Philosophy (London: Routledge
and Kegan Paul,1958), and "Understanding a Primitive Society," American Philosophical Quarterly,
Vol. 1, 1964, pp. 307-25. Page numbers refer to the reprint in Rationality, edited by Bryan R. Wilson
(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1970). Norman Malcolm, "Anselm's Ontological Arguments," Philosophical
Review, Vol. 69, no. 1, January 1960 (page numbers refer to the reprint in Malcolm's Knowledge and
Certainty [Englewood, Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1%3]), and 'The Groundlessness of Belief," in
Reason and Religion, edited by Stuart Brown (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1977), which is
reprinted in Contemporary Perspectives on Religious Epistemology, edited by R. Douglas Geivett and
Brendan Sweetman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 92-103, to which the page numbers
here refer.
131 Malcolm, "Anselm's Ontological Arguments," p. 160.
181
continuity of nature" holds, but what of some different society that does not make
this assumption? If people in a different society believe that items literally vanish,
cease to exist, when they "go missing" and then are instantly reconstituted when
they are found, do the people in this society have less evidence for their belief than
we do in our belief that such things do not happen? 132 The point of this story is that
inquiry that depends upon belief, reason, evidence, arguments, or justification
occurs with a "system" that provides the fundamental groundless beliefs according
to which inquiry takes place. "To be sure there is justification; but justification
comes to an end,,,133 Wittgenstein says. If we think of justification as a kind of
testing, then "whenever we test anything, we are already presupposing something
that is not tested." So, he asks rhetorically, "Doesn't testing come to an end?,,134 To
even question things, to have doubts and then attempt to resolve those doubts
through testing, requires that we believe that "some propositions are exempt from
doubt, are as it were the hinges on which those [doubts] turn.,,135
Asking for or expecting justification of everything, that is, in this context,
asking for or expecting justification of language-games, is part of what
Wittgenstein called the "general disease of thinking" and what Malcolm calls "the
pathology of philosophy.,,136 No rule, signpost, or directive can guide us
completely in our actions. There must come a point where the guidance and the
reasons and the justifications for our actions come to an end, and then we just go
on. In WiUgenstein's famed example, a signpost cannot tell us how to interpret the
signpost. Malcolm's conclusion from this is that "grounds come to an end.
Answers to How-do-we-know? questions come to an end. We must speak, act, live,
without evidence. This is so not just on the fringes of life and language, but at the
center of most regularized activities.,,13?
The claim that justification and explanation come to an end at some point is not
a particularly radical claim and has been commonly recognized throughout the
history of epistemology. However, Malcolm develops this claim into a much
stronger one. We cannot and should not, according to Malcolm, be expected to
justify our language-games since justification is a process that takes place within
language-games that are themselves unjustified or self-justified. Malcolm
summarizes his point very succinctly:
Within a language-game there is justification and lack of justification, evidence
and proof, mistakes and groundless opinions, good and bad reasoning, correct
measurements and incorrect ones. One cannot properly apply these terms to a
language-game itself. It may, however, be said to be "groundless" not in the
sense of a groundless opinion, but in the sense that we act it, we live it. We can
say, "This is what we do. This is how we are."J38
See Malcolm, "The Groundlessness of Belief," pp. 92-94.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty (New York: Harper and Row, 1969), 192.
134 Ibid., 163 and 164.
135 Ibid., 341.
136 Malcolm, "The Groundlessness of Belief," p. 96-98.
137 Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, Section 292, and Malcolm, ibid., p. 97.
138 Malcolm, "The Groundlessness of Belief," p. 98. Also see Norman Malcolm, Wittgenstein: A
Religious Point of View (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1994), Chapter 6.
132
133
182
This much stronger view of language-games embodies the more controversial

claims that language-games are autonomous in the sense that the criteria for
justification, evidence, reality, meaningfulness, rationality, and truth are all relative
to and internal to the individual language-games. 139 I will address these issues
momentarily, but first, I will examine the similar kind of positions developed by
Peter Winch and D. Z. Phillips.
RELIGION AND UNDERSTANDING A PRIMITIVE SOCIETY
The Idea of a Social Science and Its Relation to Philosophy, by Peter Winch,
has proven to be a work of major importance for several different reasons. 140
Although Winch's main focus in this short book is the nature of the social sciences
and the problem of understanding a society that is different from one's own, Winch
develops an interpretation of Wittgenstein's language-games that has major
implications not only for religious belief but, more generally, for epistemology as
well. Winch argues that the social sciences and the social institutions and practices
that are the objects of study in the social sciences are fundamentally different from
the natural sciences and the natural world. Social institutions are conventional,
rule-governed phenomena that must be grounded in and understood in terms of a
social context. Claims about human social life must be understood as relative to
and "filtered" through a subjective, social perspective - including religious belief
as well as such fundamental notions as human rationality. Winch argues his point
using the much-discussed example of the Africian Azande's use of magic, first
introduced by the research of E. E. Evans-Pritchard. 141 The Azande engage in a
common practice that Evans-Pritchard and Winch identify as a practice of
witchcraft - the belief that they can control the course of natural events by relying
upon religious oracles and various "magical" means. According to Winch, the
Azande rely upon the oracles and magic to regulate their everyday lives in much
the same way as those in modern, Western societies rely upon clocks or
mathematical calculations to regulate their lives. 142 The Azande thus have a view
of things that is apparently at serious odds with the modern scientific view of
things. When the question is raised about the intelligibility of the Azande' s view of
139 See Patrick Sherry. "Is Religion a 'POnTI of Life'?" American Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 9,
no. 2, 1972, especially pp. 164ff. Sherry distinguishes what he calls the relativist/conventionalist and the
pragmatic/empiricist interpretations of Wittgenstein. Winch and Phillips fall into the more radical
relativist!conventionalist group. Further criticism of the relativist/conventionalist interpretation of
Wittgenstein and defense of universal epistemological notions such as truth and reason are found in
Patrick Sherry, Religion, Truth and Language Games (London: Macmillan, 1977), and William P.
Alston, "The Christian Language-Game," in The Autonomy of Religious Belief (Notre Dame, Ind.:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), pp. 128-62. As I discuss below, the degree of autonomy
enjoyed by language-games and the nature of the relationships among different language-games are
complex and difficult issues. For further discussion of Malcolm's claims of the groundlessness of
religious belief, see the exchange from the 1975 symposium among Malcolm, Colin Lyas, and Basil
Mitchell in Reason and Religion, edited by Stuart C. Brown (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press,
1977).
140 Peter Winch, The Idea of a Social Science and Its Relation to Philosophy. The same ideas are
further developed in his "Understanding a Primitive Society," pp. 78-111.
141 E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic arrwng the Azande (Oxford: Oxford
142 Peter Winch, "Understanding a Primitive Society," pp. 10-11.
183
the world, Winch insists that we must specify the context and the framework in
which the question is being raised. Their view of the world makes perfectly good
sense to the Azande, and we must not characterize science as dealing with
"objective reality" or attribute a status to modem science so that it is understood as
"a paradigm against which to measure the intellectual respectability of other modes
of discourse.,,143 According to Winch, the notions of intelligibility and rationality
must be re1ativized to the language-game in which they occur. Thus, so far as
rationality is concerned, there are "our standards and theirs," and, in any discussion
of rationality, we must specify "whose concept of rationality is being alluded to"
since something is rational to a person "only in terms of his understanding of what
is and is not rational." 144
For Winch, what is true of the concept of rationality is true a fortiori of the
concept of God:
God's reality is certainly independent of what any [particular] man may care to
think, but what that reality amounts to can only be seen from the religious
tradition in which the concept of God is used .... The point is that it is within the
religious use of language that the conception of God's reality has its place. 145
Thus, questions concerning the intelligibility of the Azande's use of magic or
the intelligibility of theists' understanding of the reality of God must be addressed
within the context created by the respective language-games. To be fair to Winch,
it should be noted that he does not say that the reality of God is determined by the
language-game, but what is real is reflected in the language-game. One's
understanding of what is real as well as the difference between what is real and
what is not real are all functions of the language_game. 146 Reality as well as logic
are results of the way in which words are used in the language-game, the grammar
of the language-game, and thus are best understood as social constructs. 147 Winch
arrives at a position based upon his interpretation of Wittgenstein's use of
language-games where language-games are seen as logically and conceptually
autonomous.
Like Wittgenstein, Winch did not develop his positions into a full-blown theory
about religious belief, but others who have come after Winch have taken his claims
regarding the Azande and rationality as the fundamental insight upon which a
Wittgensteinian view of religion is to be constructed. Has Winch made his case
that there are different standards of rationality relative to different languagegames? Well, to submit to an irresistible pun, it just all depends upon what is
meant by "rationality." First of all, if beliefs are understood as the things upon
which we predicate our actions, then, on one level - from a modem, scientific
perspective - one would say that to rely upon oracles to predict the weather instead
of a meteorologist and weather satellites is "irrational." This sense of rationality is
one that appears to be obviously transcultural and arguable across language-games.
Ibid., pp. 80 and 81.
Ibid., p. 97.
145 Ibid., pp. 81-82.
146 Ibid., p. 82.
147 Compare Winch, The Idea of a Social Science, p. 100.
143
144
184
The deeper sense of irrational that Winch needs for his case is one in which,
according to him, the Azande tolerate contradictions in their beliefs in a way that is
inconsistent with a Western, European view. How might this happen if beliefs are
understood as what are necessary for directing rational, intentional behavior? An
Azande A wants to bring about a certain desired result k. A is given an oracle, and
the oracle says to A, "Do j in order to bring about k." A must then reason
something like the following: "I want k to happen. The oracle says in order to bring
about k, I must do j. I believe the oracle, therefore, I will do j." But this looks like
good, old-fashioned, Western European logic at work. If A reasoned, "I want k to
happen. The oracle says in order to bring about k, I must do j. I believe the oracle,
therefore, I will not do j but h instead," then that would be irrational, that is, bad
logic, but it would arguably be irrational for the Azande as well as Western
Europeans. 148 These difficulties with Winch's extrapolation of the grammar of
language-games to logic and rationality notwithstanding, his interpretation of
Wittgenstein that results in the conceptual and logical autonomy of languagegames has opened the door for those who defend a fideistic interpretation of
Wittgenstein.
THE GRAMMAR OF RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE
The division between conservatives and liberals used in Chapter II to structure
different responses to the challenge to the meaningfulness of religious language
raised by the verification criterion of meaning does not allow for a very
satisfactory way of accommodating those who would wish to deny that very way
of categorizing responses to the challenge. While most of those who give what I
have labeled "liberal" responses still worry about trying to secure a metaphysical
referent for God through the elaborate use of metaphorical or analogical language,
Wittgensteinians insist that the disputes between realists and nonrealists and
between cognitivists and noncognitivists are to be dissolved as illegitimate disputes
and as nonissues. Thus D. Z. Phillips (and, to a lesser extent, R. B. Braithwaite and
Paul van Buren, discussed in Chapter II) do not fit comfortably into the scheme
used there. 149 As Michael Coughlan notes,150 Wittgenstein himself had
comparatively little to say about religious belief, and, we might add, even less to
say about religious language. To develop a Wittgensteinian approach to religious
language, one must proceed based upon what Wittgenstein said about language and
language-games in general and upon what he said about religious belief and then
extrapolate to religious language. This is what Phillips has done, and he is most
responsible for developing a detailed application of Wittgenstein's notion of
language-games to religious language.
Along with other features that distinguish them, language-games are
distinguished by the fact that each has its own "grammar." As noted already, the
148 I have argued this point more fully in James F. Harris, Against Relativism (LaSalle, TIL: Open
Court, 1992), pp. 1OOff.
149 Phillips distinguishes his view from that of Braithwaite and calls Braithwaite's views "confused."
See his Religion without Explanation (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1976), pp. 140ff.
150 Michael J. Coughlan, "Wittgenstein, Language, and Religious Belief," in God in Language,
edited by Robert P. Schar1emann and Gilbert E. M. Ogutu (New York: Paragon House Publishers,
1987), p. 149.
185
uses of language that occur within a language-game are governed by the

conventions and rules within that language-game. These rules and conventions
determine the grammar of the language by determining the correct and incorrect
uses of words that can occur within the language-game. Each language-game is
autonomous in determining its own grammar, which means that the grammar of
religious language is unique, that is, it is used in ways that are determined simply
by the conventions of the language-game.
It is possible to synthesize a picture of Phillips's general view of the nature of
religious language by drawing upon a number of his writings. 151 To understand the
grammar of religious language, we must understand the nature of religious beliefs.
To understand religious beliefs, we must look to the language-game of religious
beliefs, where we find that the unique grammar of the language-game controls the
uses of language within the language-game. 152 Following Wittgenstein, Phillips
insists that it is not the purpose of the philosopher (or for present purposes, we may
say the philosopher of religion) to develop technical or new systems of language
for capturing or expressing religious beliefs and practices. Philosophers should not
try and impose preconceived or armchair notions of what language must be like or
should be like in order to be used in certain ways. We simply "leave everything as
it is" and look to see how the language is used in the language-game. 153
According to Phillips, when we look at the grammar of the language that is used
by a religious believer when that person affirms the existence of God or says that
God loves us, we find that the believer is not really advancing a factual
hypothesis. 154 Such expressions are ways of conveying a commitment to the way in
which one lives one's life or the way in which one intends to live one's life. For
Phillips, when the religious believer says that God exists, this does not amount to
saying that some additional entity exists in the universe. 15S Rather, it is a claim
151 For example, see D. Z. Phillips, The Concept of Prayer (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1965); Religion
without Explanation (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1976); and Faith and Philosophical Inquiry (London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970). Also see "Religious Beliefs and Language-Games," in The
Philosophy of Wittgenstein: Aesthetics, Ethics, and Religion, edited by John Canfield (New York:
Garland, 1986), and in Faith and Philosophical Inquiry as Chapter V.
152 Throughout this discussion of language-game fideism, I use the expressions "the religious
language-game" and "the theistic language-game." Determining the boundaries and varieties of
language-games is not an issue I can address here. W. D. Hudson uses the expression "the theistic
language-game" and calls Christianity a language-game in Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Bearing of His
Philosophy upon Religious Belief (Richmond, Va.: John Knox Press, 1968), pp. 69 and 70. As I have
noted above, Malcolm describes religion and science as two different language-games in "The
Groundlessness of Belief," ibid., p. 100, and specifically includes nontheistic Buddhism as part of the
religious language-game, ibid., p. 101. Phillips speaks of "religious language-games" (in the plural). For
further discussion of this point, see R. H. Bell, "Wittgenstein and Descriptive Theology," Religious
Studies, Oct. 1969, and Patrick Sherry, "Is Religion a Form of Life," American Philosophical
Quarterly, Vol. 9, no. 2, 1972. There is obviously not a single language-game of religion or a single
language-game of theism and, hence, no single granunar of religious language. It may be helpful to
think of a religion or theism as aggregates of different language-games. Religion and science would
then differ not by each being a different discrete language-game but by each being different aggregates
of different language-games, some of which may be common to the two different aggregates
153 D. Z. Phillips, Religion without Explanation, p. 41.
154 Ibid., pp. 102ff.
155 However, as Phillips has indicated in correspondence, ''no additional 'entity'" does not
necessarily mean "no addition at all." Certainly, when the theist affirms God's existence, he is affirming
186
about the way in which things in the universe exist. This is the source of
Wittgenstein's famed comment that when a religious person says that God exists
and an atheist says that God does not exist, they are not really contradicting each
other. 156 Two people can contradict each other, Wittgenstein claims, only if they
speak the same language and share the same logic and understanding. By this,
Wittgenstein means that two people can contradict each other only if they share a
common understanding of the criteria by which their disagreement may be
resolved. To use an example from Phillips, if one person says that handling the ball
is a foul and another person says that handling the ball is not a foul, do they
contradict one another?157 The answer is, of course, "it just all depends." If one
person happens to be talking about European football and the other about
American baseball, then they are talking "past one another," that is, what each says
seems to be completely umelated to what the other says. To contradict one another,
the two need to be within the context of the same game where the same rules
apply. The framework of the language-game and its conventions provide the
grammar of the language-game, within which agreement or disagreement becomes
possible. In the case of the existence of God, Phillips explains, the logic of the
word 'God' is unique since we ought not to take 'God' to be a proper name of an
individual. In the language-game of religious belief that Phillips plays, God is not
simply one more being among a whole universe of other beings, all of which can
be judged to exist or to not exist according to the same criteria. 158 God is the kind
of thing that, within the language-game, it is impossible to think of as not existing;
however, this is not a claim that can be generalized to the religious language-game
since, as we have seen, there is no single religious language-game.
Such a Wittgensteinian view of the nature of religious language also means that
the whole notion of verification, the discussion of which has occupied much of
Chapter II, is misplaced in the case of religious language. Wittgenstein might say
that those who suggest verification or falsifiability as a test for the meaningfulness
of religious language are using the criterion from one language-game (science) and
trying to impose it upon another language-game (religion) where it does not belong
and where it does not make sense. Michael Coughlan suggests an analogy to
explain how two different people may view the world differently as a result of
different language-games. 159 We may think of the different ways in which two
different people may view the universe and suggest that instead of seeing the
cosmos in black and white, the religious believer sees it in color. In this analysis,
the universe is the same for the believer and nonbeliever alike in an ontological
sense, but religious belief adds a certain dimension or quality to the way in which
the religious believer regards the universe and his place in it that gives both the
universe and the person's place in it a greater depth and meaning.
something "additional" about the world. Compare what Wittgenstein said about pain: it is not a
"something," but it is not a "nothing" either.
156 See Ludwig Wittgenstein, Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious
Belief, edited by Cyril Barrett (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1966), pp. 53-72.
157 D. Z. Phillips, "Religious Beliefs and Language-Games," p. 223.
158 See Phillips, ibid., and The Concept of Prayer, Chapter I.
159 Michael Coughlan, "Wittgenstein, Language, and Religious Beliefs," p. 159.
187
To understand a religious utterance, according to Phillips, we must look at its

place in the language-game and at its relationships with the other utterances made
by and the practices engaged in by the people who "play" that language-game. l60
We will find no explanation or justification for why people say what they do or
why the grammar of the language is what it is because "it makes no sense to ask
such questions," Phillips says.161 In a particular language- game, the grammar is
what it is, language is used the way in which it is used, and people talk the way that
they talk - "the language-game is played" simply because that is the way things
are. To paraphrase Wittgenstein and Harry Truman, justification must stop
somewhere, and it stops here.
IS RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE "JUST" A LANGUAGE-GAME?
There have been many objections to Wittgensteinian fideism and the view of
religious language developed by Phillips,162 and I will not attempt to address all or
even a large number of those objections here. I will however focus upon the major
difficulties that have been raised and the major issues generated by the treatment of
religious language as a language-game. A major issue for Phillips (as well as for
Braithwaite and van Buren, discussed in Chapter II) involves how his philosophical
account of religious language is related to how religious people actually use
religious language and what religious people actually intend to be doing when they
use religious language. According to Wittgenstein, we are supposed to look at the
language-game and leave everything as it is, but these Wittgensteinian approaches
to religious language have all the appearances of a revisionist account of religious
language. When Wittgenstein says that we are to look at the language-game, he
means that we are to look at the grammar of the language-game, the underlying
conceptual mapwork of the language-game that makes it possible to say the things
that are said and to do the things that are done in the language-game. The grammar
itself is independent of what the people who use the language-game actually say
and do, and the grammar cannot be examined empirically by watching people
using a language. As John Whittaker has observed, a Wittgensteinian examination
of the grammar of a language-game has nothing to do with popUlarity surveys or
the common understanding of the man in the street. 163 If, for example, some people
think that human rights are quasi-physical ingredients in the constitution of a
human being, their believing it does not make it so. They would be just wrong. The
"grammar" of human rights requires something quite different. The correct
grammar of a language-game is "laid down" (established) in tradition and
representative and authoritative literature and oral history. It is this underlying,
160
See D. Z. Phillips, "Religious Beliefs and Language-Games," p. 111.
161
Ibid., p. 119.
162 See, for example, R. W. Hepburn, "From World to God," Mind, Vol. 72, 1963; Kai Nielson,
"Wittgensteinian Fideism," Philosophy, July 1967, reprinted in John Canfield, The Philosophy of
Wittgenstein (New York: Garland, 1986), and Kai Nielsen, "A Critique of Wittgensteinian Fideism," in
The Autonomy of Religious Belief A Critical Inquiry, edited by Frederick Crosson (Notre Dame, Ind.:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1981). This last piece also appears in Philosophy of Religion: Selected
Readings, Third Edition, edited by William L. Rowe and William J. Wainwright (Fort Worth, Tex.:
Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1998).
163 In correspondence with the author. What this position ignores is that claims about the grammar of
a language-game must rely upon someone's intuitions.
188
"deep" grammar that is supposed to be "left as it is" and not the surface, popular
usage. The "surface grammar" can even easily obscure the "depth grammar"; thus,
the philosophical account of religious language may disagree with the reports of
ordinary theists. However, the distinction between surface and depth grammar
notwithstanding, a philosophical account of religious language ought to map onto
common religious practices. Claims about depth grammar seem to rely upon
something like conceptual intuitions, and conflicting claims about depth grammar
cannot all be equally compatible with the tradition and the authoritative literature
and oral history of a particular language-game.
In order for the philosopher to "leave things as they are" when he examines the
depth grammar of religious language, he must make sure that he is not imposing a
revisionist interpretation upon the conceptual map work. How does one insure this?
In one manner or another, Braithwaite, van Buren, and Phillips all talk about what
religious believers are really doing when they use religious language, but it is not
clear how they can guarantee that their accounts are not the result of imposing their
own interpretations and their own intuitions upon what the religious person is
doing.
WHO CONTRADICTS WHOM?
Consider the dispute, for example, between the creationists and the evolutionists
(discussed in Chapter V). Do their different accounts of the origin of life contradict
one another? Well, in good Wittgensteinian fashion, the answer may be "it just all
depends." A good Wittgensteinian may insist that in such cases, contradictions are
not there waiting to be discovered; a contradiction occurs "when it arises." Peter
Winch describes in some detail one possible scenario where we may analyze the
possible conflict between the language-game based in Genesis and the one based in
Darwin's Origin of Species. IM Winch asks us to imagine a devout religious man
before the rise of Darwinian evolutionary theory who was steeped in the story of
creation as told in Genesis with all of the associated religious beliefs and practices.
Such a person would simply have a very different approach to any question
concerning the origin of life from "a scientifically minded" person steeped in the
scientific method and Darwinian evolutionary theory. The "natural order" that
Darwin both assumed and described was understandable only within a context that
depended upon the scientific method and scientific practices. 165 So, in such a
situation, we may agree that the two were "talking past" one another and did not
really contradict one another. But what of the current dispute between creationists
and evolutionists? Imagine a different situation, at the beginning of the twenty-first
century, in which the devote religious believer is steeped not only in the creation
story as told in Genesis but in the scientific method as well. This person accepts
science's accounting of the natural order of things and the scientific method as
providing explanations for most natural phenomena. However, when it come to
providing an account of the origin of the human species, the religious person says
that he believes that God literally created Adam and Eve as described in Genesis
and that human beings did not evolve. It certainly seems that in this case the
164
165
Peter Winch, Trying to Make Sense (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987), pp. 134ff.
Ibid., pp. 135-36.
189
modern creationist is disagreeing with the evolutionists about facts concerning the
natural world. Suppose now that such a creationist is told that he is simply playing
a language-game with a particular grammar, according to which his claim amounts
to a commitment to a certain way of life or a poetic way of saying that he has an
optimistic view of life and of the place of human beings in the universe. At the
same time, he is told that science is the language-game that tells us how things
actually occur in the natural world, including the origin of human life. It certainly
sounds as if such a treatment amounts to forcing an interpretation and a particular
understanding of the nature of the grammar of the language on the religious
believer just as much as the verificationists have been accused of forcing a
particular interpretation upon religious language. And it is very plausible to
imagine the modern creationist responding, "No, I really mean that God created
human beings in our present form and that we did not evolve. Evolution is just
wrong!"
Phillips's claim that in the language-game of theism the claim "God exists" does
not amount to affirming the existence of an additional entity in the universe is
obviously at odds with the usual interpretations of the tradition and the
authoritative literature. Trying to restore something of a realist account to religious
belief, William Alston complains that, in Phillips's account, the things that a
particular group of theists, such as Christians, say about God are simply about the
attitudes and beliefs of those playing the religious language-game. However,
certainly many Christians intend to be making "realist" claims about the existence
of God and God's nature, that is, they intend to claim that God and God's nature
"are as they are independently of us and our religious activities, our religious
language-games, our religious form of life, or anything else having to do with the
ways we think, conceptually structure experience of the world, or react to
things.,,166 Phillips's language-game analysis of religious belief, whether it is called
"fideism" or not, does contrast starkly with more traditional theistic accounts, and
Alston appeals to a realist account of truth to draw the distinction between the two
as sharply as possible. 167 However, Phillips might respond here that the "facts" of a
realist's account are themselves suspect, open to interpretation, and simply another
function of the grammar of the language-game.
With his account of religious language-games, Phillips is perilously close to
slipping into a de facto atheism. According to his understanding of the grammar of
"God exists," this is not a claim about "the existence of an object," and neither are
questions about possible different meanings of the word 'God' questions about
whether different uses refer to the same individual. 168 He refers to Wittgenstein's
claim in On Certainty that the existence of God "plays an entirely different role to
166 William P. Alston, "Taking the Curse Off Language-Games: A Realist Account of Doxastic
Practices," in Philosophy and the Grammar of Religious Belief, edited by Timothy Tessin and Mario
von der Ruhr (London: St. Martin's Press, 1995), pp. 24-25.
167 Ibid., pp. 30ff. For discussion of the differences between Phillips and Alston. see M. Jamie
Ferreira, "Universal Criteria and the Autonomy of Religious Belief," International Journal for
Philosophy of Religion. Vol. 15, 1984. pp. 3-12.
168 D. Z. Phillips, Religion without Explanation, p.174. Phillips explicitly anticipates the charge of
defending a "disguised atheism" on pp. 149ff.
190
that of the existence of any person or object I ever heard of.,,169 But theologians
throughout the ages have maintained that God's existence is entirely different from
the existence of persons and other objects, though they have not denied that God is
a being of some sort.
Denying that religious believers use 'God' to refer to God or use 'God exists' to
affirm the existence of God makes it difficult to make sense of Phillips's
description of the behavior of religious people. He says, for example, that during
worship, "the praising and glorifying does not refer to some object called God.
Rather, the expression of such praise and glory is what we call the worship of
God."170 Presumably, the grammar of religious belief accounts for the unique ways
in which words and phrases from common usage are used with the religious
language-games. But, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the normal uses
of 'praise' and 'glory' as verbs are transitive uses that must take objects - unlike,
for example, 'rejoice.' Praising and glorifying are actions directed at some object
whereas rejoicing is an intransitive action. One can rejoice without rejoicing
anything, but one cannot praise or glorify without praising or glorifying something.
To praise God is thus "to attach value to," "to esteem," "to laud," or "to extol the
glorious attributes of' God. To glorify God is "to invest with glory," "to extol,
honor, magnify with praise," or "to advance the glory of' God. Is the object taken
by these verbs simply a "surface," grammatical object? Then how would one
understand the actions of praising and glorifying if there is no understood object to
which these actions are directed? If one's understanding of the grammar of
religious belief permits such an aberrant use of 'praise' and 'glorify,' then why use
these words at all? If 'praise' and 'glorify' do not retain something of their normal
meaning, use, and grammar - including taking an object - then, it seems, we could
easily replace 'praise' and 'glorify' with any other words, such as 'abhor' and
'loathe.' Then 'I abhor God' could just be what we mean by 'the worship of God,'
but clearly this locution is seriously infelicitous.
THE RIGHT PLACE TO STOP?
Many of the criticisms raised against Phillips's version of language-game
analysis of religious language revolve around the fundamental issue of how far to
go and where to stop in our analysis, interpretation, and explanation of religious
language and who is to conduct the analysis, interpretation, and explanation. On
Wittgensteinian grounds, the confusion resulting from "the bewitchment" of
language means that we cannot simply point to "the facts" in our analysis since
"the facts" are part of the confusion. For Wittgenstein, determining just how far
one goes and where one stops in the analysis of language-games is a fundamental
issue in combating the confusion since there is a natural or philosophic urge to go
beyond the proper stopping point. Overanalyzing just adds to the confusion. All
justification and explanation must come to an end, and language-games are
"complete" in such a manner that philosophical analysis is not going to improve
them in some way, nor is it appropriate to attempt to do so. Some critics have
169 Wittgenstein, Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief, p. 59.
Quoted by Phillips in Religion without Explanation, pp. 174-75.
170 Phillips, ibid., p. 149.
191
complained that when this "full stop" to the analysis of language-games is invoked
for religious language, an artificial limitation is placed on philosophical criticism
and debate. l7l Phillips's answer to this criticism is that language-games are not
immune to criticism, but the kind of criticism that is possible and important does
not rely upon detailed linguistic distinctions between language-games and practices
or rituals or modes of discourse. Rather, legitimate criticism takes the form of
examining how the language-game operates in human life. 172
Who is in the best position to conduct such an examination of how a particular
language-game operates in human life? Phillips claims that it is part of the logic of
'God' within ordinary theistic belief that it is impossible or inconceivable for God
not to exist and that the grammar of 'God' within the language-game makes it
meaningless to even suggest that God does not exist. This example serves to focus
attention on the difficulty of agreeing on who is to evaluate the grammar of 'God'
and how the evaluation is to take place. Surely not all practicing theists would
recognize this as a description of how the grammar of 'God' actually operates.
Theists regularly endure "trials of faith" (that is, circumstances that make a
believer question and doubt God's existence or God's goodness, such as the death
of a child). The agonizing doubt that frequently accompanies such experiences
suggests that not all believers would agree with Phillips's description of the
grammar of 'God.' Undoubtedly, many theists will insist that when they say, "God
exists," they do mean to affirm the existence of an individual, personal being.
When they weaken in their faith, they doubt the existence of such a being. 173 How
do we tell if such a reaction is confused or a result of the proper grammar of
'God'? The more general issue is how we are to resolve differences of opinion
about the grammar of 'God.'
Wittgenstein seems to suggest that the participants themselves are in the best
position to understand their language-game. However, as I have shown, there is
obvious disagreement even among the participants; of what would such an
understanding consist? Such understanding must consist, it seems, of the ability to
use the different words, expressions, and sentences properly according to the
grammar of the language-game - the ability to "carryon" - to make the next
"move" in the game. Can one have such an understanding and not be a practicing
participant? Former participants come to mind easily as a group that may be said to
understand the language-game as well as current participants. If former participants
can understand a language-game, what about astute observers? Certainly, there
may be some differences on the experiential level between the way in which a
participant and a nonparticipant experience the grammar of a language-game, but
does this mean that there must be a difference in the understanding of the
171 For a full discussion of such criticisms and Phillips's reply, see his Belief, Change and Forms of
Life (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press International, 1986), Chapter 2.
l72lbid., p. 33. See pp. 26-33 for Phillips's complete reply. Also see D. Z. Phillips, "Belief, Change
and Forms of Life: The Confusions of Externalism and Internalism" in The Autonomy of Religious
Belief, edited by Frederick J. Crossen (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), for
detailed textual references for his views regarding the possibility of criticizing religious beliefs,
especially pp. 85-90.
173 While Phillips admits that many theists regard their claims as true, the kind of truth the theist is
interested in is the kind, he insists, that means the claims are ones that the theist can "live by" and
"digest."
192
grammar? Given the obvious disagreements concerning conceptual intuitions about

the grammar of religious language, a language-game-based approach to religious
language must provide a better mechanism for determining when the confusion has
been unraveled and when we are on the path from error to truth.
The final point here concerns the nature of language-games themselves. It is
important to keep in mind that one should not think of any religious languagegame as completely separate and autonomous. Here, the analogy of a game is
misleading. The notion of a single, separate language-game hardly even makes
sense for Wittgenstein since the notion of language-game is itself the result of a
family resemblance. Language-games may be distinct from one another in some
ways but similar in other ways, and every person is a participant in a great number
of different language-games that intersect, overlap, and crisscross to constitute a
form of life. A form of life is not like a jigsaw puzzle, where different shaped
language-games are individual pieces of the puzzle that fit together, against one
another, to form the whole picture. To diagram a form of life properly, one would
need a three-dimensional overlay to show how language-games connect, intersect,
and overlap. Wittgenstein suggests the analogy of spinning a thread by twisting
many different individual fibers together to illustrate the "family resemblances" of
games; the only thing that runs the full length of the thread is the "continuous overlapping of those fibers.,,174 Such relationships among language-games indicate that
we cannot separate, identify, and describe a single language-game by itself; rather,
we must examine different language-games and how they are related within a
particular form of life.
However, if a form of life is analogous to the thread of woven fibers of
language-games, then the question arises, "What makes a religious language-game
(or religious language-games) so special?" As Wittgenstein notes, language-games
"come and go" and become "obsolete and forgotten." If language-games are
simply "given" instead of being based upon some empirical facts about human
nature or the natural world or some "deeper," metaphysical facts, then it seems that
there is nothing in particular to commend playing the religious-theistic-Ianguagegame. What commends the language-game(s) of theism over the language-game of
Santa Claus, or the language-game of witches, or the language-game of UFOs and
intelligent aliens, or simply the language-game of atheistic naturalism? If
philosophy simply leaves everything the way it is and describes the grammar of the
language-game, then there can be no claims for the importance of playing one
language-game rather than another (expect internal to the language-game itself).175
To account for the presumed special status of religious language-game(s), one must
appeal to some descriptive claims about human nature or make some sort of claim
about the consequences and benefits of the religious language-game(s) - claims
that are not a part of the religious language-game(s). Theists want to defend theism
by providing an answer to the question "Why ought one play this game?"
Presumably, Phillips would not admit that this is a legitimate question that
deserves or allows a legitimate response. However, if others wish to try and
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, Section 67.
This line of criticism has been urged by others: See W. D. Hudson. Ludwig Wittgenstein: The
Bearing of His Philosophy upon Religious Belief, pp. 68ff; Patrick Sherry, "Is Religion a 'Form of
Life'?" pp. 165; and Kai Nielsen, "Wittgensteinian Fidesim," p. 209.
174
115
193
explain why the language-game of theism is played, some appeal may be made to
anthropological evidence in an attempt to support the claim that there is a universal
religious urging or universal religious nature of man, but this is a long way from
establishing theism. If one does rely upon any sort of evidential claims about
human nature or about the benefits of theism to explain why "the language-game is
played," then this move would undermine the apparent autonomous nature of the
language-game. Without grounding the theistic language-game in some such
claims, however, the Wittgensteinian fideist is left in a position of being unable to
recommend or commend the language-game( s) of theism to himself or others. 176
176 Further discussions of Wittgensteinian language-games and religious beliefs are found in Richard
Bell, "Theology as Grammar: Is God an Object of Understanding," Religious Studies, Vol. II, 1975, pp.
307-17; Alan Brunton, "A Model for the Religious Philosophy of D. Z. Phillips," Analysis, Vol. 31,
1970-71, pp. 43-48; Dallas M. High, "Belief, Falsification, and Wittgenstein," International Journalfor
Philosophy of Religion, Vol. 3, 1972, pp. 240-50; James Kellenberger, 'The Language-Game View of
Religion and Religious Certainty," Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 2, no. 2, 1972, pp. 255-75;
and Fergus Kerr, Theology after Wittgenstein (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986).
V. Religion and Science!
Arguably, in the course of Western intellectual history, the rise of Christian

theology and the development of modem science stand alone as the most
influential and widespread among all the different ideas, theories, and
developments since the beginning of recorded history.2 When we think of the many
fundamental ways in which Christianity and science have been responsible for
shaping and molding and otherwise influencing the fundamental concepts, values,
and structure of modem Western societies, it is difficult to argue with such an
assessment. It is not surprising then that religion and science are frequently found
to have been in conflict for control of the hearts and minds of men and women. In
modem times, the scientific revolution stands alone in terms of both the breadth
and depth of the social changes that have accompanied it. It is not a matter of
simple hyperbole that the scientific revolution is called a revolution. Its changes
have proven to be global; in contrast, the Protestant Reformation, as revolutionary
as it might have proven to be, was a "domestic affair" among people in Western
European countries. 3
By examining two different historical "case studies" of major pivotal periods of
conflict between religion and science, we can better understand the current
relationship between religion and science. In the history of the relationship
between religion and science, there are two periods that are most significant: one is
the rise of modem science in the seventeenth century and the resulting conflict
between Copernicus's heliocentric astronomy and the Roman Catholic Church, and
the second is the development of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution in the late
nineteenth century and the resulting conflict between evolutionists and
fundamental Protestants. The conflict between Copernican astronomy and the
Roman Catholic Church is one whose general nature is known to most people who
have studied either the history of the development of Christianity or the history of
1 Attention in this volume to the relationship between religion and science is not confined to this
chapter. Readers should also examine Chapters III and VII for further discussion of the interplay
between religion and science in the twentieth century.
2 See, for example, Herbert Butterfield, The Origins of Modern Science, Second Edition (New York:
Macmillan, 1957), pp. 175-90. Also see Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (New
York: Free Press, 1925), p. 2.
3 See Whitehead, ibid., pp. 1-2.
194
RELIGION AND SCIENCE
195
the development of modern science. The story is worth retelling, however,

because, as the saying goes, the devil is in the details, or in this case, the science is
in the details. These brief excursions into the history of the conflict between
religion and science will provide the basis for understanding the relationship
between religion and science in the twentieth century.
GALILEO GALILEI AND COPERNICAN ASTRONOMY
Contrary to popular belief, Galileo Galilei did not have a hand in actually
formulating Copernican astronomy. He was, however, its most influential
supporter and popularizer, and he did provide the first experimental evidence to
support the new heliocentric view of the solar system. At the time, the new
heliocentric cosmology was in direct conflict with the accepted and dominant
Ptolemaic geocentric astronomy. In terms of explaining and predicting
astronomical phenomena, such as the position of the planets, Copernican theory
was immediately and imminently more successful than Ptolemaic theory.
Committed to the Aristotelian notions of the "perfect" circular motion of heavenly
bodies and their uniform speed, Ptolemaic astronomers had to appeal to the
introduction of increasingly ad hoc and more complicated notions such as
epicycles and deferents to explain the irregular motions of the planets. Of course,
Copernican astronomy also struck at the heart of accepted and dominant Christian
theology and its anthropocentric view of the unique importance of human beings.
Several scholastics, including William of Ockham in the fourteenth century (most
remembered now for wielding "Ockham's Razor," the law of parsimony), had
maintained that it must be possible for God to create many different worlds and
perhaps even many better worlds than this one given that God is omnipotent. 4
However, by the early seventeenth century, Christian theology was dominated by
the anthropocentrism according to which this world and human beings were seen
as occupying a unique and central part of God's perfect creation.
GALILEO AND THE CHURCH
The conflict between Galileo and the Roman Catholic Church covered a wide
range of issues and occurred on several different levels. Most obvious perhaps is
the matter of the content of the Ptolemaic theory versus the content of the
Copernican theories. 5 One theory says that the sun moves around the earth, and the
other says that the earth moves around the sun. This difference was certainly an
important issue, but it was not the most important or fundamental one. In the spirit
of trying to avoid a confrontation, the Church had taken the stand that the new
Copernican theory could be used as an "instrumental aid" for making calculations
easier in astronomy if it was not represented as being actually true about the world.
Andreas Osiander had written an introduction to Copernicus's On the Revolutions
of the Celestial Spheres in which he had maintained that the heliocentric theory
made the calculations of the astronomers easier as they predicted the position of
the planets (after all, they would not have to deal with the epicycles and deferents
4 See John Hedley Brooke, Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 62.
5 See James F. Harris, Against Relativism: A Philosophical Defense of Method (LaSalle, TIL: Open
Court, 1992), pp. 16ff.
196
in their calculations). The Church was willing to allow Galileo and others to use
the Copernican theory and even to teach it to others so long as they did not
represent it as being the correct and true account of the real world, but Galileo
refused this "compromise."
The main source of the dispute was focused upon three fundamental and closely
related issues. 6 The first issue, which was more fundamental and important than the
content of the two different theories, was the matter of the status of scientific
theories. Galileo was not willing to allow the difference between the two theories
to be captured by simply calling the Copernican theory a "supposition" or a
convenient "instrumental aid" for purposes of calculations. Galileo thought that
scientific theories have observable consequences that can be deduced from the
theories, and scientific theories thus tell us something about the world or predict
something about actual, natural phenomena. Scientific theories are not "loose,"
"floating" theories that are unattached or unrelated to the "real" world of our sense
experiences.
This view of the status of scientific theories follows from the second source of
dispute between Galileo and the Roman Catholic Church. A scientific view of the
universe includes the view that there are general laws and principles in terms of
which individual and particular natural phenomena can be understood, explained,
classified, and predicted. Furthermore, this view of the relationship between
general laws and principles on the one hand and facts or states of affairs on the
other is a universal and general view about the nature of the universe. Science does
not provide us with a sporadic or episodic view of the nature of things. Alfred
North Whitehead has described this modern, scientific point of view by claiming
that it involves "a vehement and passionate interest in the relation of general
principles to irreducible and stubborn facts.,,7 These general principles were
understood as mathematical in nature. In the seventeenth century - beginning with
Copernicus through Galileo to Newton - mathematics was no longer viewed as a
system of quaint games that mathematicians played just among themselves with no
relevant consequences for the real world. In the seventeenth century, Copernicus,
Galileo, and Newton used mathematics to formulate the abstract and universal laws
and principles of science to demonstrate through precise formal reasoning how
observable consequences would follow from these abstract, general laws and
principles. 8
The third area of major dispute between Galileo and the Roman Catholic
Church, and perhaps the most fundamental and important, involved the importance
of and the attention paid to those "irreducible and stubborn facts." The "scientific
method" requires that theories be confirmed by data resulting from carefully
controlled, regulated, documented, and repeated scientific experiments and
observations. Galileo arrived at his commitment to the Copernican theory over the
Ptolemaic theory not just because of the simpler mathematics involved. His many
different observations with his improved version of the telescope provided the
Ibid., pp.17-22.
Whitehead, Science and the Modern World, p. 3.
8 Ibid., pp. 54-55.
197
"irreducible and stubborn facts" as the bedrock for his claim that the Copernican
theory was the correct one to be used to describe our solar system.
THE CHURCH VERSUS SCIENCE
This fundamental and irreconcilable difference about the proper method for
arriving at claims about the natural world and the proper kind of epistemic warrant
for such claims lies at the very heart of the difference between Galileo and the
Roman Catholic Church. As I have described this difference elsewhere,
On the one hand, there were the appeals to papal authority, church history, and
Biblical accounts of cosmology, the authority of the history of philosophy and
the evidence from "common sense." On the other hand, there were his own
"scientific" observations and his use of scientific reasoning. 9
Galileo took the observations that he made with his telescope to be confirming
evidence of the Copernican theory. 10 It is on the basis of such scientific evidence
rather than papal or biblical authority that scientific theories about the natural
world should be judged, he insisted, and in 1610, he published Sidereus Nunicus
(The Starry Messenger), in which he reported his astronomical observations.
Galileo made his position about the relative importance of the Bible and science
for attending to understanding and explaining matters of natural phenomena quite
clear. II In such matters, the scientist is held to the higher standard of the
"inexorable and immutable" laws of nature and, of course, the "irreducible and
stubborn" facts. Such reasoning is what lies behind the often quoted remark of
Galileo's that "the Bible tells us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go."
GALILEO AND THE INQUISITION
Following the publication of The Starry Messenger, the conflict between Galileo
and the Church intensified. In 1616, the Roman Catholic Church branded
Copernican heliocentric astronomy as "false and altogether contrary to the Holy
Scripture," On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres was placed on the Index of
banned books, and the teaching of Copernican theory in any form was prohibited. 12
In 1624, Galileo received a license from the Church to write a book comparing
Ptolemaic and Copernican theories on the condition that he not take a position
favoring one or the other in the book. When Galileo published his Dialogue on the
Two World Systems in 1632, the book clearly made a strong, convincing case on
Harris, Against Relativism, p. 19.
Galileo observed that the surface of the moon was rough with mountains, much like the surface of
the earth, and not a "perfect sphere" as Aristotle (and Ptolemy) had claimed. He also discovered the
"stars" of Jupiter, the smaller, orbiting bodies of Jupiter that proved to be the moons of Jupiter, and he
correctly predicted their orbits and positioning. He was the first to observe sunspots and, perhaps most
importantly, the phases of Venus caused by the sun's reflected light as the planet orbits the sun - a
direct piece of evidence that was predicted by the Copernican theory.
11 See Galileo Galilei, "Letter to Madame Christine of Lorraine, Grand Duchess of Tuscany,
Concerning the Use of Biblical Quotation in Matters of Science," in Men of Physics: GaZileo GaliZei,
His Life and His Works, translated by Raymond 1. Seeger (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1966), p. 271.
Also, see Harris, Against Relativism, p. 20.
12 See Jerome Langford, Galileo, Science, and the Church (New York: Desclee, 1966), pp. 97-98.
9
10
198
the basis of scientific evidence for the Copernican heliocentric theory. Galileo was
put on trial for heresy by the Inquisition in 1633, made to sign a "confession" for
his sins, and, finally, sentenced to house arrest in his home near Florence, where he
remained until his death in 1642, the same year in which Isaac Newton was born.
GALILEO AND SCIENCE
For understanding the contemporary, twentieth-century relationship between
science and religion, the most interesting and important aspect of the conflict
between Galileo and the Roman Catholic Church is the struggle for authority over
matters having to do with the physical world and natural phenomena. Galileo
insisted that the Bible and the Church have no authority over such matters and
should not seek to assert authority over such matters. The Church, of course, took
the position that theology trumps science.
A very significant element for analyzing and evaluating the lessons to be
learned from this conflict for the twentieth century is the fact that we now know
that the "best scientific evidence" that Galileo presented in support of the
Copernican theory in his Dialogue on the Two World Systems in 1632 was either
very weak, misinterpreted, or just plain wrong.13 Scientists now know that the
connections Galileo drew between sunspots and the earth's tides and the
Copernican theory were not justified. In a sense, by today's standards, Galileo was
a champion of bad science.
The important point, however, is that bad science is still science because of the
method of investigation and the method used for arriving at certain claims about
the nature of the physical world. The scientific method does not guarantee that its
use will not result in mistakes; on the contrary, there are opportunities for various
kinds of mistakes at every stage of a scientific inquiry. However, the scientific
method is the only method that includes as a part of the method itself a mechanism
for identifying and correcting its mistakes. 14 Since science is an ongoing, public
method conducted by members of a scientific community, any individual's
mistakes are always open to the scrutiny of the entire community over an indefinite
period of time. Indeed, the only reason that we now know about the mistakes that
Galileo made is because of the work of other scientists.
We should therefore remember Galileo as a champion of the scientific method
and of science generally rather than simply as a defender of Copernican astronomy.
Galileo saw, perhaps even more clearly than Copernicus, the importance of
accounting for individual, particular natural phenomena in terms of a general
theory based upon abstract mathematical laws and principles. He destroyed the old
"two world view," according to which the heavens were separate and distinct from
the causal and natural explanations that apply to natural phenomena on earth. In
this sense, he paved the way for Newtonian mechanics and for the possibility of a
truly general cosmology. Galileo insisted - upon the pain and threat of possible
excommunication, torture, and even death - that in matters pertaining to the natural
world, there is no higher authority than science based upon careful empirical
13 See William R. Shea, Galileo's Intellectual Revolution (New York: Science History Publications,
1972), pp. 174ff.; William Wallace, Galileo and His Sources (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1984), pp. 308ff.; and Harris,Against Relativism, pp. 20ff.
14 See Harris, Against Relativism, Chapter VII.
199
observation and the application of abstract, general laws and principles. Gali1eo's
stance in defense of science and the scientific method marked a pivotal point in the
new direction that was to come in the separation of religious authority and
scientific authority in matters having to do with the physical world and natural
phenomena. Galileo earned the distinction of becoming perhaps the first martyr of
science, and given the developments in astronomy since the seventeenth century,
his prosecution by the Church for his scientific beliefs and teachings has since
served as a symbol of the folly that can result when religion and science conflict.
DARWIN AND THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION
Charles Darwin's publication of the Origin of Species in 1859 created an
equally confrontational situation between religion and science. Because of the
many different changes that had taken place in organized religion since the
seventeenth century, the conflict generated by Darwin's theory of evolution by
natural selection pitted science against Protestantism - the Church of England in
Great Britain and fundamentalist Protestantism in the United States. Although it
was easy to ignore the differences between the biblical accounts and science
theories about abstract matters such as astronomy and mechanics, biology brought
the differences too close to home to ignore. Darwin's theory of evolution, if true,
seemed to explicitly undercut any literal interpretation of the Bible account of the
creation story in Genesis, and the notion that the guiding and determining factor in
evolution is natural selection undercut any literal interpretation of a divine
presence or divine involvement in human history. Because evolutionary theory
based on natural selection was so revolutionary and challenged the fundamental
understanding of human nature and human history, it created more furor and
provoked more of a confrontation with religion than any other development in
science since the time of Galileo.
Darwin's voyage around the world on the H. M. S. Beagle provided him with
the empirical data that were to provide the basis for his work. He observed and
documented the geographical isolation of different species of animals. For
example, in the Galapagos Islands, completely different species of life existed on
different islands that were only a few miles apart. Upon his return to England,
Darwin and other experts were able to study the fossils and the anatomies of the
specimens he had collected. According to the theory of speciation, supported by
both Aristotelianism and Christian theology, different natural kinds with different
essences should be suited to different natural environments, so one should expect
that very similar species would be found in very similar environments and very
different species would be found in very different environments. The results of
Darwin's research conclusively confirmed the general and sweeping reality that the
overwhelming explanation for the locations of relatively similar and different
species has to do with the relative geographical proximity or isolation among the
different species rather than the environmental similarities or differences of the
locations in which they are found.
DARWIN AND NATURAL SELECTION
The dominant and received biological view of the immutability and
unchangeability of the species (defended by Christian theology at the time) could
200
not be made to accommodate or explain the wealth of empirical data that Darwin
had collected. Once again, it was evident how the commitment to the "irreducible
and stubborn facts," the bedrock of scientific investigation, is fundamental to the
scientific process. Darwin began to try and explain the natural data he had recorded
and the natural phenomena he had observed by searching for the applicable general
abstract laws and principles. The revolutionary aspect of Darwin's answer was not
just the theory of evolution but evolution by natural selection. Others had
suggested the idea of evolution earlier, primarily the French biologist Jean
Lamarck in his Zoological Philosophy in 1809, but Lamarck never abandoned the
notion of a hierarchy of beings embedded in Christian theology, and he did not
provide an explanation for a mechanism to explain how and why changes might
take place in species over time except in terms of some divinely created plan
according to which different species became more and more organically "perfect"
over long periods of time.
Whatever foreshadowing of Darwin's theory of evolution there might have
been, it caused no great stir and no direct conflict between science and religion.
Darwin's explanation of the changes in terms of adaptations that were beneficial
for the survival of the organism being selected by nature was revolutionary and
changed everything that was to follow. IS Most commentators agree that it was
Darwin's notion of natural selection rather than the bare notion of evolution that
was so revolutionary. Nothing in the life sciences has been the same since Darwin,
and much in philosophy and theology has changed also as a result of the joint
notions of evolution and natural selection. Darwin's theory of evolution (which one
should always understand as including natural selection) has unified all of biology
- from genetics and DNA to comparative anatomy and speciation to fossils and the
history of life on this planet. Probably more controversy has surrounded Darwinian
evolutionary theory - both in science and religion - than any other scientific theory
that has ever been developed simply because Darwinian evolutionary theory, more
than any other scientific theory, offers some answer to the question of why there is
life and why human beings exist as we do. So perhaps more than any other
scientific theory, evolution pitches its tent in the camp of religion.
Because of the broad and general implications of evolution, it had more
philosophical and theological import than any other single scientific theory ever
developed. Darwin's notion is so powerful that Daniel Dennett has said if there
were a prize for the single best idea that anyone has ever had, he would give it to
Darwin. 16 The notion of evolution itself became threatening to both organized
religion and theology because it abandoned the notion of the immutability of the
species based upon divinely established essentialism to account for the unique
nature of each species. However, it was the notion of natural selection, according
to which it is nature and not God that is responsible for shaping and determining
the nature of the different species, that threatened any common understanding of
how God might have a hand in the workings of nature. It is evolution by natural
15 Actually, others (including Patrick Matthew, a Scottish naturalist in the early nineteenth century)
had suggested the notion of natural selection as a bare idea, but no one had developed any sort of
general, cohesive theory incorporating the notion of natural selection.
16 Daniel Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life (New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1995), pp. 20-21.
201
selection, and not just the notion of evolution per se, that is mainly responsible for
the twentieth-century conflict between religion and the biological sciences. 17
EVOLUTION, NATURAL SELECTION, AND RELIGION
One of the most extensive and detailed treatments of the controversy created in
religion in the twentieth century by the development of Darwin's evolutionary
theory is Ian Barbour's Issues in Science and Religion. 18 Barbour indicates four
areas of conflict between Darwinian evolutionary theory and religion: 19 1) The
challenge to the argument from design, 2) The challenge to human dignity, 3) The
challenge of evolutionary ethics, and 4) The challenge to holy scripture. Of these
different areas of conflict, the first two are, by far, the most significant. By the late
nineteenth century, the literal interpretation of the Bible did not occupy the central
position in mainstream, organized religion that it had in the seventeenth century.
The Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England had both abandoned literal
interpretations of the Bible because of the continued development of science and
the parallel development of "higher criticism," scholarly interpretations and
analyses of the scriptures, and the recognition of different "levels of truth" allowed
for nonliteral interpretations of biblical texts that might conflict with accepted
scientific claims. 2o For example, the Copernican heliocentric astronomy that had
caused such a furor in the seventeenth century was, by the mid-nineteenth century,
commonly accepted and accommodated by nearly all recognized forms of
organized religion.
Given that the immutability (and the essentialism) of the species is undermined
by evolution, the avenue of addressing moral issues by appealing to a uniquely
human moral sense or moral capacity was no longer available, so the unique
position of human beings in the universe (Barbour's "human dignity") was
undermined. While Darwin himself thought that evolutionary theory could
accommodate normative ethics, others (for example, Thomas Huxley) did not.
Issues about the foundation and justification and the general problem of the
relationship between normative moral theory and religious belief and the appeal to
divine authority are addressed in Chapter VIII.
EVOLUTION AND DESIGN
What Barbour calls the challenge to religion in terms of claims about the design
of the universe and the challenge in terms of how to understand human dignity
serve to illustrate the revolutionary aspects of evolutionary theory. These areas of
conflict also serve to illustrate how the relationship between science and religion
changed from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. In the case of the conflict
between Galileo and the Roman Catholic Church, the main conflict was over the
epistemological status of Copernican theory and the nature of the scientific
method. In the case of Darwin and evolutionary theory, the conflict between
17 See Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (London: Murray,
1859), p. 127. Quoted in Dennett, ibid., pp. 41-42.
18 Ian Barbour, Issues in Science and Religion (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1966), pp. 80114.
19 Ibid., pp. 89-98.
20 Ibid., p. 100.
202
science and religion arose because of the specific content of the theory - not
because of the scientific method. Indeed, one source of opposition to evolutionary
theory has been that it is not based upon good scientific method and evidence. 21
Religious belief in design in the universe and the teleological argument based
upon such claims have proven to be remarkably resilient to philosophical attack.
For example, in his attack on the argument from design in his Dialogues
Concerning Natural Religion,22 Hume raises many interesting and difficult
problems for the argument from design (see Chapter III), including the problem of
evil (see Chapter VI); however, one of the most puzzling and difficult issues in
Hume's treatment of the argument from design is that at the conclusion of the
Dialogues (Part XII), after Philo's scathing attack upon Cleanthes's use of the
argument from design, Philo concludes by suddenly agreeing with Cleanthes and
accepting the notion of a divine intelligence that is responsible for the design in the
universe!
It is significant to compare in a certain respect the ways in which Philo reacts to
the cosmological and teleological arguments. When Hume has Philo, Cleanthes,
and Demea examine the cosmological argument (Part IX), he has Cleanthes
explicitly suggest that the cause for a particular "system" may very well originate
within that system in order to undermine the necessity of a "First Cause." If we
trace a succession of causes and effects and explain each single "link" in the causal
"chain," then there is nothing more to be said about the cause of the chain as a
whole rather than simply the combination of the individual causes that are a part of
the chain. 23 Thus, we do not have to "go outside" the system to a First Cause to
explain the cause of the system itself. The interesting and important point of
comparison with the argument from design is that Hume cannot bring himself to
entertain seriously the possibility that the design of a system might originate
completely within a system. 24
In Part VIII, Hume does have Philo suggest that the design and order in the
world are necessary to preserve the world. This suggestion is contrary to the notion
of design used in most forms of the argument from design, in which design is
regarded as an additional lUXury that the world enjoys. This change in view sees
design as a necessity for the world's existence. Without the detailed and precise
adjustments of "means to ends" in an animal, it soon perishes, and so too the world
would perish without the regularity and order we observe in it. 25 Here, Hume is
perhaps closer to recognizing what is the revolutionary aspect of Darwin's notion
of natural selection than at any other place. For Darwin, design is not a luxury; it is
a necessity. Instead of rhapsodizing in awe about the design in nature, we should
expect it. Such design is a natural part of the world that we now experience, since
it has evolved by natural selection.
For example, see Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea, Part n, pp. 149-331.
David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, edited with an introduction by Richard
Popkin (Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett, 1980).
23 Ibid., Part IX, p. 56. This point is discussed more thoroughly in Chapter Ill.
24 Dennett calls this Hume's "close encounter" with the notion of evolution. See Dennett, Darwin's
Dangerous Idea, pp. 28ff.
25 Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Part Vll, pp. 51-52.
21
22
203
Most of Hume's attacks are aimed at the inference by the use of analogy from
observed, mechanical design to the existence of an intelligent designer, but if this
sort of inference is not justified and yet the design is still there, how is it to be
explained? Hume could not bring himself to admit that the apparent design in the
uni verse is the result of mere chance, but he had no other explanation without
using God. Darwin provides an alternative explanation to mere chance for the
existence of design in the natural world. Chance operates within the general,
universal laws of evolution and natural selection that provide the order and
regUlarity. Design in the natural world can thus be explained as arising from within
the natural order of things without the necessity of appealing to some divine
intelligence outside the system. Some of Hume' s strongest attacks are aimed at the
evidential part of the argument from design, particularly the existence of evil.
Darwin reinstates and strengthens the evidential claims of design in nature, but he
then completely undermines the argument part of the argument from design, that
is, the inference to the existence of a theistic or deistic divine designer, by
providing a scientific explanation for design that occurs completely within the
system of nature. 26 The account of the existence of design by appealing to
Darwinian evolutionary theory is an argument to the best, most rational
explanation that parallels Hume's argument concerning miracles. Given that this
apparent design exists, what is the best, most plausible explanation for it? Maybe
sheer chance does not fair very well in comparison with God, but evolutionary
theory does.
At the time of Darwin, perhaps the most popular and well-known version of the
argument from design was traced to the argument originated by William Paley at
the very beginning of the nineteenth century in his Natural Theology. In an
example that has now become famous and that is included in most discussions of
the argument from design, Paley appeals to our intuitions to have us recognize an
intrinsic difference between a rock, which one might find in an open field, and a
watch one might find in a drawer. The evidence of design in the organic world,
among living organisms, is far greater, Paley claims, than the design of the watch.
With his famous example of the human eye, he argues that the world of living
creatures is rich with an infinite variety of different mechanisms that are so highly
designed and specialized for the various purposes of the different organisms that
we cannot help but admit the existence of a designer who, according to the
principle of proper proportionality, must be divine and infinite to account for the
infinitude of design in the natural world. The only plausible explanation for such
obvious, overwhelming design seemed to be something outside the natural world
itself. Thus, the explanation of design in the universe has traditionally been the
exclusive purview of philosophers and theologians, and naturalists (or natural
philosophers) had taken their only clue for explaining such design from those
philosophers and theologians.
After Darwin, it was no longer necessary to "go outside the system," to go
beyond the natural world itself, to explain such design, and design in the natural
26 This way of putting the contrast between Hume and Darwin has evolved through discussions with
several colleagues and through much reading. Credit to a particular source that is now lost to both
memory and my notes may well be in order.
204
world can be understood as a natural and expected part of the way in which things
operate in the natural world rather than as a lUxury or the result of the providential
influence of a beneficent divine creator. The way was thus cleared in the second
part of the nineteenth century for the rise of deism and the view of God as the
absent watchmaker.
EVOLUTION, NATURAL SELECTION, AND ANTHROPOCENTRlCITY
Darwin's rejection of the immutability of the species and the essentialism upon
which claims about such immutability were based was a second aspect of Darwin's
theory of evolution that resulted in direct conflict with accepted religious belief.
Christian theology in the mid-nineteenth century was completely compatible with
the attempt by natural science to find the hidden essences in nature. To this extent,
Christian theology, which emphasized the uniqueness of human beings by
appealing to an eternal soul, a divine spark, or a special moral sense, was
compatible in spirit with Aristotle, who accounted for the uniqueness of human
beings by appealing to a particular intellectual ability or a particular telos. The
classification of natural kinds by naturalists in the nineteenth century was based
upon the notion of scala naturae, or "the great chain of being," derived from
Christian theology. According to this classification, human beings, of course,
occupy the highest position in the hierarchy of beings and objects in the physical
world because human beings were thought to be the only creatures in the natural
world that are "made in God's image" and capable of some sort of interaction with
God and a "personal" relationship with God.
In the great chain of being's hierarchical account of natural kinds, human beings
are placed at the very top with the rest of the natural world stretching out
metaphorically in a long continuous chain through the other living organisms
(animals and plants) to inorganic material objects (rocks and the like). Human
beings were thought "to have dominion over nature" because of our special status,
and the rest of nature was thought to exist for the benefit and use of human beings.
Humans then have intrinsic value to God whereas every other part of nature has
utilitarian value depending upon its value for human beings and the use to which
humans can put it. The basic claim of speciation, that individual species are distinct
natural kinds resulting from certain essential characteristics or traits, was thus the
dominant view in both secular philosophy and natural theology in the midnineteenth century.
This anthropocentric view of the position of human beings in nature is undercut
in one fell swoop by Darwin. In evolutionary theory, human beings are simply one
species among many, and the explanation for how human beings exist as we do
with the particular attributes that we have is the same kind of explanation that is
given for each species in turn. Whatever special and unique properties or attributes
that human beings may have are the result of favorable properties on the basis of
which our ancestors interacted with their environment. Such properties (traits)
were then selected for by natural selection and passed on to us through countless
generations. The view of human beings embraced by twentieth-century biology,
which religion had to accommodate, is a view according to which there is no
"essence" to human beings (or any other species, for that matter). Instead of being
creatures that are placed in nature by God, human beings (and all other creatures)
205
are creatures that are made by nature. Human beings are thus knocked from their
lofty pedestal and wind up (literally, if one goes back far enough) in the mud and
slime with all the other species.
Darwin's theory of evolution also undercut anthropomorphism based upon a
Cartesian denial of sensations and feelings in animals. The long-standing solution
to the question of why animals suffer (since their suffering can be neither the result
of Original Sin nor redemptive) was simply to deny that they do suffer. Such a
view of the nature of animals and the resulting special status of human beings is
impossible given evolutionary theory. We human beings have inherited both our
physiological characteristics and our physical behaviors from animals. Animals are
responsible for the kind of creatures that we human beings are, so it becomes
wildly implausible, without some ad hoc intervention, to claim that human beings
are qualitatively different from other animals because we have a mind and
sensations and feelings while other animals do not. As James Rachels says,
Once we see the other animals as our kin, we have little choice but to see their
condition as analogous to our own. Darwin stressed that, in an important sense,
their nervous systems, their behaviors, their cries are our nervous systems, our
behaviors, and our cries, with only a little modification. They are our common
property because we inherited them from the same ancestors. 27
Much controversy has been generated by Darwin's treatment of the place of
human beings in his theory of evolution, and there have been several attempts to
preserve the special status of human beings by both scientists and theologians
alike. 28 Pursuing the differences between Darwin and other biologists and
theologians would be an interesting and valuable exercise in the history of the
conflict between religion and science, but it would take us too far afield from our
present concerns. These somewhat cursory examinations of the conflicts generated
by Galileo' s defense of Copernican astronomy and Darwin's development of the
theory of evolution are valuable because they demonstrate a significant change in
the nature of the conflicts between science and religion over a period of
approximately three hundred years.
In the case of Gali1eo, at a time early in the history of modem science, the
conflict between religion and science was one generated mainly by a conflict
concerning the competing authority of the methods of religion and science. Galileo
adopted an objective method based upon careful, empirical observations. Papal
authorities refused to look through Galileo' s telescope and consider his empirical
evidence since they regarded the telescope as an "instrument of the devil" that
confused and distorted the senses instead of enhancing them. The main conflict
between religion and Darwin's theory of evolution did not involve a comparable
27 James Rachels, Created from Animals: The Moral Implications of Darwinism (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1990), p. 131. Rachels focuses upon the result of the loss of man's special place in the
universe upon our understanding of moral theory.
28 For example, A. RWailace tried to preserve a special place for human beings because of our
"high faculties." See Barbour, Issues in Science and Religion, pp. 92-93, and Dennett, Darwin's
Dangerous Idea, pp. 66-67. For a detailed and lengthy account of the differences between Darwin and
Wallace, see Adrian Desmond and James Moore, Darwin (London: Michael Joseph Publishing, 1991).
206
and direct challenge to the method of science itself. There were (and still are)
claims that evolution itself is not good science, but the most significant and
dramatic conflicts arose because of the content of Darwin's theory - not because of
his method of searching for general and universal natural laws to explain empirical
facts.
By the end of the nineteenth century, the use of the scientific method and the
development of modem science had become so highly developed and so firmly
ensconced in human attempts to understand and explain natural phenomena that
very little conflict between religion and science continued to be generated by
disputes concerning the method of scientific inquiry - except in the case of extreme
fundamentalists. Later in this chapter, I will show how both the method of religion
and the method of science have undergone intense scrutiny and significant changes
in the twentieth century. Much the same can also be said for the content of both
science and religion. Because of these changes in both method and content, the
earlier, internecine conflict between religion and science, illustrated by the cases of
Galileo and Darwin, has been significantly vitiated. In some cases, philosophers of
science would say that religion has become more like science; in other cases,
theologians would say that science has become more like religion.
CONFLICT OF METHOD: SCIENTIFIC CREATIONISM
Except for the remaining Protestant fundamentalists, who still cling to a literal
interpretation of the Bible, conflicts between religion and science in the twentieth
century have not been generated by disagreements about method so much as by
disagreements about the relative domains of authority of religion and science and
the purposes to which each is put. Fundamentalist opposition to evolution in the
United States resulted in the Scopes Trial of 1925, which pitted the renowned
Presbyterian William Jennings Bryan for the prosecution against equally renowned
trial lawyer Clarence Darrow for the defense. The now famous "monkey trial"
involved the case of John T. Scopes, a high school science teacher in Dayton,
Tennessee, who was accused of violating a state statute against teaching evolution
in public schools. This case, celebrated though it was, did not prove to be
philosophically interesting at all. The highly visible and public trial did not provide
a venue for a discussion of the merits of either evolution or the literal interpretation
of the Bible. The trial did serve to illustrate the considerable political influence of
Protestant fundamentalism in the southern United States in the early part of the
twentieth century, but underlying the political aspect of the trial was the
fundamentalist opposition, based upon a literal interpretation of the Bible, to
evolution.
The conflict between fundamentalism and evolutionary theory parallels the
dispute between Galileo and the Roman Catholic Church in that the main source of
the dispute stems from claims about competing methods of inquiry. The authority
of the Bible, which is still regarded by fundamentalists as the literal Word of God,
is pitted against "monkey science.,,29
29 An interesting issue that is seldom brought to light is that there are two different and conflicting
stories of creation in Genesis.
207
SCIENTIFIC CREATIONISM AND EVOLUTION

Far more interesting and challenging than the opposition to evolution based
explicitly upon a literal interpretation of the Bible is the response of many
conservative religious groups based upon "scientific creationism" or simply
"creationism." Among the dozens of different writers who have defended scientific
creationism is Henry Morris?O Morris and other scientific creationists claim that
their attack upon evolution does not rely solely upon a literal interpretation of the
Bible or the attempt to undermine the scientific method. On the contrary, the
scientific creationists claim that their attack upon evolution is because it is bad
science, that is, the creationists use their understanding of the scientific method to
claim that creationism is better science than evolution! This represents a significant
change in tactic on the part of the religious believers in opposition to science and
specific scientific theories. It is a tactic based upon the "if you can't beat them, join
them" mentality. Given the predominantly scientific age of the twentieth century,
opposition to evolution based explicitly upon literal readings of the Genesis stories
of creation lacks much of the persuasive force it might have had in the nineteenth
century. Scientific creationists ostensibly adopt the scientific method and then try
and show that evolution is hoisted on its own petard when judged as a scientific
theory and that "real" science or "good" science bears out the Biblical account of
creation.
IS SCIENTIFIC CREATIONISM SCIENTIFIC?
There are many issues to be explored in the examination of evolution theory
itself and in the comparison between evolution and creationism, and I cannot
attempt to address all of those issues here?! A very brief examination of the basic
contentions of the creationists reveals the basic grounds for the dispute about
creation and how the theory of evolution has affected the current relationship
between science and religion. Ironically, so far as the history of conflict between
religion and science is concerned, when evolution is disparaged as bad science by
the scientific creationists and compared with other models of "good" science, it is
sometimes Galileo's defense of Copernican astronomy with which evolution is
compared. For example, creationist David Watson says,
So here is the difference between Darwin and Galileo: Galileo set a
demonstrable fact against a few words of Bible poetry which the Church at that
time had understood in an obviously naive way; Darwin set an unprovable
30 See Henry Morris, The Twilight of Evolution (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1963);
The Remarkable Birth of Planet Earth (San Diego: Creation-Life Publishers, 1972); and The Troubled
Waters of Evolution (San Diego: Creation-Life Publishers, 1974). Also see Scientific Creationism,
edited by Henry Morris (San Diego: Creation-Life Publishers, 1974). and D. C. C. Watson, The Great
Brain Robbery (Chicago: Moody Press, 1976).
31 Douglas Futuyma, Science on Trial: The Case for Evolution (New York: Pantheon Books, 1982);
Langdon Gilkey, Creationism on Trial: Evolution and God at Little Rock (San Francisco: Harper &
Row, 1985); Phillip Kitcher, Abusing Science (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1982); and Michael Ruse,
Darwinism Defended (London: Addison-Wesley, 1982).
208
theory against eleven chapters of straightforward history which cannot be

reinterpreted in any satisfactory way.32
There are several things about this passage from Watson that are important.
First, he significantly minimizes the conflict between Galileo and the Roman
Catholic Church and seriously distorts the significance of that disagreement. As we
have seen, Copernican astronomy undermined not just a few words of "poetry" in
the Bible but a fundamental theological view of the design of the universe, the
nature of human beings, and the place of human beings in the natural universe.
Copernican theory also undermined the prevailing cosmology, which incorporated
the "two world" view of the universe and was the result of the Thomistic
combination of Aristotelian metaphysics and Christian theology.
The claim that Galileo was defending a simple, "demonstrable fact" while
Darwin was defending an "unprovable theory" is an oversimplified and equally
distorting way of characterizing the difference between Galileo and Darwin. The
"fact" that the earth revolves around the sun is demonstrable only by assuming a
rather sophisticated sense of demonstration. To the unaided "naked eye" (and
hence to common sense), it is obvious that the sun is the one that does the moving,
and so far as the "facts" go, when Galileo produced what he took to be the most
dependable, compelling facts to support Copernican theory, he got many of them
wrong! As we have seen, the dispute between Galileo and the Roman Catholic
Church was not simply over a single "demonstrable fact." The dispute cut very
deeply and hinged upon Galileo's use of the scientific method and his insistence
upon its general authority in matters having to do with the natural world. So,
Galileo was defending a scientific theory and the scientific method as much as
Darwin was.
The "eleven chapters of straightforward history" upon which Watson relies in
his attack upon Darwin is good, old-fashioned biblical literalism again. Once we
begin to examine closely the scientific part of "scientific creationism," the facade
of anything resembling science begins to crumble. Creationists claim to defend
creation over evolution because of the "scientific facts," but the only source of
such "facts" turns out to be the Bible. For example, Henry Morris argues that the
facts support the claim that the universe is really very young (so young that
evolution could never have taken place as Darwin describes), but it turns out,
according to Morris, that "the only proper method" for ascertaining the age of the
universe is by relying upon "biblical data alone.,,33
A good example of how science is abused (to borrow Phillip Kitcher's phrase) is
the way in which the "scientific creationists" play fast and loose with their use of
scientific laws and principles in putting them to quasi-scientific uses. For example,
creationists have borrowed the second law of thermodynamics, the law of entropy,
in their attack upon evolution. The law of entropy says that any closed system
tends to break down over time and lose energy, that is, any closed system moves
from a state of greater order to one of lesser order and from one of more energy to
one of less energy. Creationists use this scientific law to argue that the universe
32
33
D. C. C.Watson, The Great Brain Robbery, p. 46. Cited in Kitcher, Abusing Science, p. 31.
Henry Morris, The Twilight of Evolution, p.77.
209
must be wearing down and not, as evolution claims, evolving to a condition of

greater order. But, of course, as several critics have pointed out, the law of entropy
applies only to closed systems. Life on earth is not a closed system (since we
receive new energy from the sun), so the law of entropy has nothing to do with the
question of whether evolution is "true" or not. 34
Several critics have done a very thorough and effective job of debunkinf the
myth of the claim that creationists have made that creationism is scientific. 3 The
clash between evolutionists and fundamentalists in the nineteenth century was an
explicit clash between science and religion - between a scientific explanation for
the origin of life and human beings and a theological explanation. Scientific
creationism appears to move the disagreement to one about what the proper
scientific explanation is, that is, the clash appears to be within science about
whether evolution or creationism is the best scientific account of the origin of life
and human beings. However, this description of the conflict is distorting since, as
we have seen, there is a great deal of creationism in scientific creationism and not
much in the way of science. What little science there is in creationism is bad
science filled with half-truths, misapplications of scientific laws and principles, and
misrepresentation of scientific facts and theories. As Phillip Kitcher says, "The
road to Creationism is paved with bad philosophy. However, the engines that
transport us down that road are fueled by bits of science, variously chopped,
twisted, crushed, mangled, and blended.,,36 The pretenses of scientific creationism
to be scientific create the appearance of moving religion and science closer
together, at least in terms of methodology, when, in reality, we are left with the
same conflict between religion and science that is explicit in the clash between
evolutionists and fundamentalists. The major source of the conflict still concerns
the proper method for investigating and describing nature and natural phenomena,
and, in this sense, the current conflict between creationists and evolutionists, initial
appearances aside, is the same conflict as the one between Galileo and the Roman
Catholic Church.
DARWINIAN EVOLUTION AS SCIENCE
One of the many ways in which different theories differ is in their respective
scopes, and it is here that there is a small kernel of truth in Watson's comparison
between Galileo and Darwin (although Watson does not make the comparison on
this basis). The enormous magnitude of Darwin's theory of evolution based upon
natural selection was hinted at earlier. Darwinian evolution has proven to be an
extremely broad, "unifying" theory for the biological sciences and for some of the
physical sciences such as geology and astronomy as well. In order to evaluate the
criticism of evolution raised by the creationists, we must make some careful
distinctions about just what form of evolutionary theory is under consideration.
34 See Scientific Creationism, edited by Henry Morris, Chapter 3, "Uphill or Downhill"; Ted S.
Clements, Science vs. Religion (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1990), pp. 159-60; and Michael
Ruse, Darwinism Defended, p. 296.
35 See Ted S. Clements, ibid., pp. 158-67; Michael Ruse, ibid., pp. 285-302 and Chapter 14; and
Phillip Kitcher, Abusing Science, Chapter 4.
36 Phillip Kitcher, ibid., p. 82.
210
Taken very broadly as a general theory of the slow, incremental development in

the natural world, evolution has been adopted by both geology and astronomy to
explain the gradual development of the universe. Geologists now commonly
identify "older" and "younger" geological formations, and astrophysicists
commonly use the notion of evolution to describe the development of the universe
itself. Astronomers now identify the relative ages of various heavenly bodies,
including stars and galaxies, and stars are described as "evolving" through different
stages - from interstellar matter to the "main sequence" stage of stars to red giants
to red dwarfs to black dwarfs. In the life cycles of stars, which span hundreds of
millions of years, we find an evolutionary explanation of the origin and evolution
of the universe itself. Our solar system, for example, is said to have evolved from a
rapidly rotating solar nebula that contained relatively small aggregates of matter
that then grew by attracting solar debris by gravitation, through a process called
"accretion," to form the planets.
Similar evolutionary explanations are given by geologists for both the
geological and chemical composition of Earth itself. These gradual, incremental
evolutionary processes are quite different from, and, on any literal level, ostensibly
incompatible with, the account of creation given in Genesis. Since it is impossible
to address all of the many issues that arise with treating evolution as a general
theory and the various conflicts that arise with religion, I will concentrate here
upon the status of the more narrow form of Darwinian biological evolution based
upon natural selection for natural species and examine the different points of
dispute between biological evolution and religion.
IS EVOLUTIONARY THEORY BAD SCIENCE?
One of the first things that we should note is that original Darwinism based
upon natural selection is incomplete. Some creationists have objected that
Darwin's theory of natural selection was 'just" another theory since it was not
based upon any factual knowledge about how traits were inherited. Darwin never
managed to determine a mechanism for the way in which the desired traits favored
by natural selection are preserved and passed on to succeeding generations of a
species. The only operative model to explain the inheritance of different traits from
the parents by the offspring that Darwin had available at the time was one that
adopted the notion that the inherited trait was a result of a "blending" (an
averaging) of the traits of the two respective parents. As Darwin's critics pointed
out, such a notion of inheritance seems to actually work against the notion of
natural selection, since any particular trait that may offer some distinct advantage
for the organism in terms of survival will be reduced in strength, diluted, or vitiated
by a factor of one-half each time that it is passed on to a member of the next
generation.
It remained for Gregor Mendel to provide the explanation of the kind of
inheritance in which a particular trait may be passed on in undiluted and
uncompromised form from the parent to an offspring. What has now developed
into modern genetics supplies the missing explanation for Darwinian evolution
whereby the inheritance of different traits is explained in terms of the result of
211
dominant and recessive genes?? The addition of Mendelian genetics to the original
Darwinian notion of evolution constitutes what is usually referred to as "NeoDarwinism."
It is difficult to understand how it can be taken as a serious criticism of
Darwin's evolution based on natural selection that it is not really scientific since he
had no adequate theory of trait inheritance when he formulated the theory of
evolution by natural selection. It may be true that Darwin's original theory was
incomplete, but exactly how much can one reasonably expect of one man in one
lifetime?
Instead of a criticism of original Darwinian theory, it should be seen as a
strength of the general theory that Mendel's theory of genetics, which provides the
story of how traits get inherited, was developed independently, and it should be
taken as a sign of Darwin's genius that he was able to formulate the theory of
evolution based upon natural selection without a clear notion of how the traits were
passed from one generation to the next.. Mendelian genetics yields specific
empirical predictions that have been verified countless times over the past hundred
years by countless students of biology. So modern genetics is definitely falsifiable
as a scientific theory, but the point that is missed by critics of evolution is that the
particular theory of genetics developed by Mendel was, in fact, predicted by the
theory of evolution based upon natural selection. In order for Darwin's account of
the development of the different species to be correct, the traits selected for by
natural selection must be passed on to the offspring in an unadulterated and
undiluted form. The dependence of evolution by natural selection upon such an
understanding of genetics provides a simple and straightforward mechanism for
falsifying the theory. If fifty or a hundred years into the future, geneticists decide,
on the basis of empirical data from experiments, that they have been mistaken all
of this time about the nature of trait inheritance, and if they come up with a
significantly different theory of genetics from the current theory of genetics based
upon Mendelian genetics (according to which traits are passed from parents to
offspring in an undiluted form as the result of a dominant gene), then that would be
falisifying evidence against evolution by natural selection. This is just one example
of how evolution through natural selection has direct empirical consequences that
may be used to test the theory and that make the theory falsifiable, meaningful, and
scientific. 38
THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD: REVOLUTIONS IN SCIENCE
Undoubtedly, the most significant and influential development in the philosophy
of science in the second half of the twentieth century is the view of the history and
nature of science developed by Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific
37 For details of the importance of the shift from a "blending" theory of inheritance to Mendel's
theory of genetics, see ibid., pp. 9ff.
38 For other objections to evolution by natural selection and their resolution, see Michael Ruse,
Darwinism Defended, pp. SSand Another major challenge to Darwin's theory of evolution by natural
selection comes from Michael J. Behe, who maintains that evolution by natural selection cannot explain
the irreducible complexity of the biochemical processes that take place on the cellular and molecular
levels of living organisms. His major work, Darwin's Black Box (New York: The Free Press, 1996), is
discussed in Chapter VII.
212
Revolutions. 39 Kuhn's account of the nature of science has not only given rise to its
own body of literature in the philosophy of science, but it has also prompted a
number of responses that have traced the importance and the impact of his view of
science upon the relationship between science and religion.
The classical view of science claims that science uses an objective methodology
based upon a careful empirical observation of facts or collection of data and
general or universal natural laws to explain and predict natural phenomena. The
key characterizations of such a classical view of science is that science is objective
and the facts and the data are real. As we saw earlier in this chapter with the case
of Galileo, the basic commitment is to the "irreducible and stubborn facts." Kuhn's
view of the nature of science challenges both of these claims made by the classical
view. Science, Kuhn claims, is paradigm based. 40 Within different fields of
science, according to Kuhn, a certain model for conducting scientific inquiry
gradually begins to dominate the field until it finally wins wide or near-universal
acceptance by the scientists practicing in that particular field. This "paradigm"
prescribes the way in which scientific inquiry is conducted in that field of science,
including the methods that are acceptable, the kinds of questions and answers that
are legitimate, the kind of instrumentation that is used, and even the kind of facts
that are said to exist.
Once such a paradigm becomes established within a particular field of scientific
study, what Kuhn calls "normal" science is conducted by scientists to show how
the paradigm that is in place is successful. The period of "normal science" is
characterized by Kuhn as a period of "puzzle-solving" and is characterized by the
efforts of the practicing scientists in the field, who are committed to the same
paradigm, to continually refine and articulate the prevailing paradigm in greater
and greater detail. 41 For example, in modern medicine one paradigm about diseases
is the view that attributes the cause of diseases to bacteria and viruses, and many
scientists are engaged in research pursuing in greater and greater variety and detail
how different diseases and different bacteria and viruses are causally related.
Another paradigm within modern medicine is based upon the connection between
heredity and disease and the way in which a person's genes may trigger certain
diseases, and other scientists are similarly engaged in research pursuing how
certain diseases and genes may be causally related. According to Kuhn's view of
the nature of science, with each paradigm the theories, research techniques,
methods, instruments, and so forth used by the different scientists will be
determined by the different paradigms to which they are committed. Even what the
scientists take to be "objective" facts are relative to the paradigm that is being
used.
Perhaps the most controversial aspect of Kuhn's view of science is his claim
that paradigms are "incommensurable.,,42 Since the vocabulary, techniques, facts,
and even the criteria for the analysis and evaluation of paradigms are all internal to
the paradigms themselves, one cannot compare paradigms or objectively evaluate
39 Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1970).
40 Ibid., p. 79.
41 Ibid., pp. lOff.
42 Ibid., pp. 103.
REUGION AND SCIENCE
213
different paradigms on the basis of facts or data. For Kuhn, the process of replacing
one paradigm with another is a "revolutionary shift" that takes place by a sudden
and complete switch from one way of looking at things to a different way of
looking at things. Thus, for Kuhn, a paradigm change is like a Gestalt shift in
perception. 43 The process of adopting a paradigm is not one in which a person
weighs the evidence, compares different paradigms, and then chooses the one that
best fits the data. Kuhn describes the change as an event that is not based upon
reason or evidence but that is very much like a "conversion experience" that "can
only be made on faith.,,44 Such a change of paradigms is a revolution in science.
There has been significant controversy within the philosophy of science over these
claims of Kuhn's and even controversy over what Kuhn himself meant by such
claims. I cannot pursue here the controversies within the philosophy of science
generated by Kuhn's theory of paradigm-based science, so I will focus here simply
upon the impact that this view has had on the relationship between science and
religion. 45
THE SOCIOLOGY OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION
According to the traditional view of science, science inquiry is an intrinsically
rational method whereby theories are tested and confirmed or disconfirmed by the
"hard," "irreducible and stubborn" facts of reality. According to Kuhn's paradigmbased theory of science, facts are no longer completely objective and neutral;
rather, they are shaped by theories that are themselves shaped by paradigms. Since
the process by which paradigms become paradigms is not a matter of science or
even reasoning, according to followers of Kuhn, more attention must be given to
ways in which historical, cultural, and sociological influences have shaped both the
history and methodology of science. To understand science, some critics have
claimed, we need to shift our attention from "science" in the abstract to the
scientific community and to scientists, that is, we need to understand scientists
better and the broader cultural influences that affect the way scientists conduct
science. Claims about the magnitude and importance of such influences are spread
across a broad spectrum, and the more extreme claims that have been made, which
have grown out of a Kuhnian framework regarding the cultural and historical
relativism of science, far exceed anything Kuhn himself ever suggested. The
"postmodern," radical relativists claim that all knowledge is really sociology and
"socially constructed" while more moderate critics defend a core of rationality and
epistemic notions such as truth and reason. 46 The core issues center around the
Ibid., p. 120.
Ibid., p. 151. Some philosophers of science have interpreted this claim very radically, maintaining
that the commitment to a new paradigm must be "irrational" since it is made independently of
confirming evidence and in opposition to the evidence that supports the existing paradigm. Such a
radical view gives rise to what has become known as "the irrationality thesis." See Larry Laudan,
Progress and Its Problems (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), pp. 3ff. Other critics have
responded that such extreme interpretations are "gross distortions." See Richard Bernstein, Beyond
Objectivism and Relativism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985), p. 24.
45 For further discussion of Kuhn's notion of paradigm-based science, see James F. Harris, Against
Relativism, pp. 79-85.
46 Since the focus in this volume is upon the analytic tradition, I will not pursue the details of the
postmodernists' attack upon science because of considerations of space. For more details of
43
44
214
fundamental question of to what extent sociological, cultural, and historical biases

have influenced the way in which scientists have constructed scientific theories and
performed scientific research. It is one thing to suggest that culture influences the
way the priorities of science are determined, and it is quite another thing to suggest
that the methodology of science is culturally determined or culturally biased. 47 If
science is "totally"socially constructed, then we ought to expect such social
features as race, sex, age, class, and culture to influence the way in which it gets
constructed. Classical descriptions of the methods of science and religion treat
science as "objective" and religion as "subjective." In the eyes of many critics, the
effect of the attacks upon the objectivity of the scientific method from both the
neo-Kuhnians and the postmodernists has been to move science and religion
toward one another in terms of method.
Critiques of religion have progressed along lines that are very similar to those
that have been used to critique science. For example, both liberation theology and
feminist theology are based upon critiques of traditional Judeo-Christian theology
that claim both mainstream science and theology are the products of a white, male,
privileged class. Critics object that both Western science and the dominant,
traditional Judeo-Christian theology were "constructed" by white males who were
socially, politically, and economically privileged and that the structure and content
of both scientific theories and theological theories reflect the racial, sexual, class,
and cultural biases of those white males. 48 Liberation critiques of science and
religion alike insist that both Western science and Christian theology have both
oppressed and suppressed the poor and minorities. Feminist critiques of both
Western science and Christian theology alike insist that both are patriarchal and
have oppressed women.
The different issues related to the nature of science and scientific reasoning are
much too complex to address here. There is still a great deal of dispute and
disagreement among philosophers of science concerning the extent and importance
of such issues for science, and practicing scientists have certainly not "converted"
to Kuhn's paradigm-based view en masse. The primary intent here has been to
suggest how this attempt to undercut the traditional view of the intrinsic rationality
of science (and the corresponding notion of a critical realism and its claims for an
postmodernism and science, see David Hull, Science as a Process: An Evolutionary Account of the
Social and Conceptual Development of Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988); Barry
Barnes, Interests and the Growth of Knowledge (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977); David
Bloor, Knowledge and Social Imagery (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966); Helen E. Longino,
Science as Social Knowledge: Values and Objectivity in Scientific Inquiry (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
47 See Harris, ibid., pp.l75ff.
48 See, for example, James H. Cone, God of the Oppressed (New York: Seabury Press, 1975);
Gustavo Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1973); Evelyn Fox Keller,
Reflections on Gender and Science (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1985); Sandra Harding,
The Science Question in Feminism (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1986); Letty Russell,
Feminist Interpretations of the Bible (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1985); and Rosemary Radford
Ruether, New WomanINew Earth (New York: Seabury Press, 1975).
215
objectively and independently existing reality) has narrowed the gap between
science and religion in the eyes of many theologians and even some scientists. 49
PAUL FEYERABEND AND THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE
Before Thomas Kuhn came along with his theory of "scientific revolutions,"
when conflicts between science and religion arose the most common responses
from religion were either to rely upon the literal interpretation of the Bible, to
attack the scientific claims as disputed or "bad" science, or to suggest that science
and religion simply have different domains of authority. However, on the basis of
the more radical interpretations of Kuhn, some critics have completely rejected the
scientific method as the privileged method for investigating natural phenomena.
These critics have claimed that science has become "just another religion" and has
no special cognitive or epistemological status. Paul Feyerabend, for example, is a
radical neo-Kuhnian who thinks that Kuhn was too vague and tentative and did not
go far enough in undermining the traditional notion of science. Feyerabend
explicitly draws the implications of this view for the relationship between science
and religion, and he attacks the hitherto sacrosanct scientific method and its claim
to an objective and rational investigation of reality:
The idea of a fixed method, or of a fixed theory of rationality, rests on too naive
a view of man and his social surroundings. To those who look at the rich
material provided by history, and who are not intent on impoverishing it in order
to please their lower instincts, their craving for intellectual security in the form
of clarity, precision, "objectivity," "truth," it will become clear that there is only
one principle that can be defended under all circumstances and in all stages of
human development. It is the principle of anything goes. 50
Feyerabend's radical relativism means that there is no real difference in terms of
the methodology or the intrinsic rationality between science and religion. He
explicitly endorses the view that science is "just another ideology," and he insists
that society must be protected against science since science is given a number of
unfair advantages (such as government protection and funding) in its influence
upon modern society. Ideologies are like "fairytales" for Feyerabend without any
sort of objective or rational grounding, and, like other ideologies before it,
according to Feyerabend, science has now become oppressive and dogmatic. 51
Science and religion should be viewed as competing ideologies for the minds of
human beings, and they should be placed on the same footing for that competition
by imposing a separation of science and the state just as we have imposed a
separation of religion and the state. 52
49 For a Kuhnian approach and a detailed comparison to the different ways in which paradigms
function in science and religion, see Ian Barbour, Religion in an Age of Science: The Gifford Lectures,
1989-91 (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1990), pp. 51-58.
50 Paul Feyerabend, Against Method (New York: Verso, 1975), p. 19.
" See Paul Feyerabend, "How to Defend Society against Science," in Scientific Revolutions, edited
by Ian Hacking (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), pp. 156ff.
52 Ibid., p. 162.
216
In many ways, Feyerabend's critique of science and the results that follow are
similar to the claims made about the relationship between religion and science by
some theists. "Religion is just another way of looking at the world," they may say,
or "religion and science are just different ways of interpreting experience"
(compare the discussion of John Hick in Chapter IV). Such a view is also similar to
that of those philosophers who adopt the later Wittgenstein's notion of languagegames. According to this view, science and religion are just different languagegames with different players and different rules. Some people choose to play one
language-game while others choose to play the other, and there is no good
epistemological reason to prefer playing one game to the other. The
Wittgensteinian approaches of Peter Winch and D. Z. Phillips (see Chapter IV) to
religious language and religious belief, based upon the notion of a language-game,
encourages the view that religion and science are different language-games with
different grammars, which means that the different people engaged in the different
language-games are engaged in completely different pursuits with using different
language with different conventions. 53
Feyerabend's position may be very appealing initially to religious thinkers who
see the relationship between religion and science in modem society as one of
conflict since it appears to "level the playing field" by putting religion and science
on an equal footing. However, Feyerabend's "solution" to the conflict between
science and religion is a double-edged sword since it cuts against religion as much
as it does against science. Feyerabend's criticisms are aimed against science and
the scientific method, but his conclusions apply to religion as well as science since
religion would become "just another ideology" - a fairy tale - with no basis in fact.
Once the nose of the camel of radical relativism gets under the tent, there is no
keeping the rest of the animal out! Scientists, priests, astrologers, and magicians
would be all cut from the same cloth, and none would be grounded in reality any
more than any other. No religious believer would be able to argue against
competing views. The distinction between science and pseudoscience would be
lost as well as the distinction between religion and pseudoreligion. In a world of
such intellectual anarchism where "all bets are off' and "anything goes," might
makes right, and we are back to the Inquisition and the conflict between Galileo
and the Roman Catholic Church where the side with the political, social, and
military power decides what is right.
MUST WE DESTROY RELIGION IN ORDER TO SAVE IT?
The complete separation of science and religion based upon the characterization
of each as simply different ideologies (or different language-games) is not a
position that will hold much appeal to many theists. On the one hand, such a
position seems to elevate religion to equal status with science. On the other hand,
the status of both religion and science turns out to be one that is not very appealing.
Kai Nielsen issues a serious warning to theists:
53
See R. H. Bell, "Wittgenstein and Descriptive Theology," Religious Studies, Vol. 5, 1969, pp. Sff.
217
Conceptual relativism, if indeed it is a correct account of what it makes sense to

say and of how in the end we settle ultimate questions, may save religion from
empiricists and "scientific realist" attacks, through establishing that religious
discourses are conceptually autonomous and have their own distinctive order
and rationales with their own distinctive conceptions of reality, rationality,
knowledge, evidence intelligibility and the like. But such a "salvation" may
pave the way for its [religion's] ultimate destruction or utter transformation. 54
Nielsen's warning about "saving" religion by appealing to the extreme
relativism of conceptual relativism is reminiscent of the infamous quote that came
out of the Vietnam War: "We had to destroy the town in order to save it," an
officer was reported to have said. Many theists may well feel similarly about
"saving" religion from science by destroying what they take to be fundamental and
essential to their religious belief. In Feyerabend's world, not only is it impossible
to make any epistemological distinction between religion and science, it is also
impossible to make any such distinction between religion and astrology or between
religion and witchcraft. Such an assessment is not very likely to have much appeal
to either scientists or theists. As A. R. Peacocke notes, scientists could not carryon
in their daily work of scientific research unless they maintained some view such as
a critical or skeptical realism. Neither, it seems, could most religious believers
carryon with the regular routines and religious practices of their "life of faith"
unless they too maintained that their religious beliefs have something to do with an
objective reality. 55 These warnings and reservations are repeated in Chapter II with
the discussion of Wittgensteinian language-games and again in Chapter IX with the
discussion of the notion of religious pluralism.
There is also the additional problem, which we cannot pursue in any detail here,
that Feyerabend's position is helplessly inconsistent and self-refuting, as are the
claims of all radical relativists. 56 He claims, for example, that his radical
"deconstruction" of science is rooted in history and a proper understanding of the
human situation. He thinks that the view that science has developed a fixed method
of inquiry and achieved some special epistemological status is the result of a view
of human beings that is "too naive" and that we can understand this by studying
human history. But, of course, any understanding of human nature and the human
situation must be the result of some sort of scientific study unless that view is
simply completely arbitrary. How would we ever determine that the view of human
beings and the human situation offered by the social sciences is "too naive"except
by doing more social science? Similarly, it is true that any historical study of the
human situation may be "impoverished" by those conducting the study for selfserving reasons, but such a study may also be "embellished" by others conducing
the study for other self-serving reasons. How would we ever determine any of this
except by doing more careful and rigorous historical studies'? To the extent that
Kai Nielsen, Contemporary Critiques of Religion (New York: Macmillan, 1971), p. 103.
A. R. Peacocke, The Sciences and Theology in the Twentieth Century (Notre Dame, Ind.:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), pp. xi-xii. Also see the discussion of Wittgensteinian languagegames in Chapter IV.
56 For a more detailed and lengthy attack on the notion of radical relativism, see James F. Harris,
Against Relativism.
54
55
218
Feyerabend is able to offer a reasoned and considered view about why we should
abandon any traditional understanding of human rationality and science, he
undermines the very intellectual anarchism that he advocates. Since he bases his
view upon arbitrary and unfounded claims about the proper way to engage in any
serious study of the human situation, he begs the question.
THE SAPIR-WHORF HYPOTHESIS AND LINGUISTIC RELATIVITY
Claims about the differences between religion and science have also focused
upon the different languages of each.s7 As I have shown in Chapters I and II in
some detail, in the twentieth century, analytic philosophy focused a great deal of
attention upon the importance of language for addressing philosophical problems.
One source of such emphasis upon language comes from linguistics and the social
sciences. Additional doubt about the existence of a single, objective, independent
reality and science's ability to formulate theories to describe and predict
phenomena in such a reality comes from the work of the linguist Edward Sapir and
the anthropologist Benjamin Whorf. One source of some of the radical claims now
made about epistemological relativity involving such basic epistemological notions
as truth and reason and evidence and warrant are based upon linguistic relativity. If
there is a single reality that different human beings in different cultures experience
and then describe in their different languages, then we should expect some rough
agreement among those different languages in terms of the content and substance
of what they say about the world after we have made whatever translations are
necessary and after we have come to whatever understandings are necessary to be
able to compare the different languages.
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis maintains that language is not simply a vehicle or a
conduit through which experience of reality gets expressed. Rather, Whorf thinks
that human language actually shapes and molds and, to a significant degree,
actually formulates and constitutes what people experience in their different
perceptions of reality. Whorf based his "hypothesis" upon his many years of
studying the languages of different Native Americans - particularly Hopi - in the
second quarter of the twentieth century. He concluded that language is a
"background" upon which experience is built. Through the empirical results of
cross-cultural, anthropological linguistic studies, Whorf claimed, we can determine
that "the background linguistic system (in other words, the grammar) of each
language is not merely a reproducing instrument for voicing ideas, but rather is
itself the shaper of ideas, the program and guide for the individual's mental
activity, for his analysis of impressions, for his synthesis of his mental stock in
trade."s8
It follows from the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis that the influence of language
causes different peoples who speak different kinds of natural languages to organize
and divide the world differently. "We cut nature up," Whorf contends, "organize it
57 See, for example, Ted S. Clements, Science vs. Religion, Chapter 4; Ian Barbour, Religion in an
Age of Science: The Gifford Lectures, 1989-91, pp. 13ff; and Ian Barbour, Issues in Science and
Religion, pp. 121ff.
58 Benjamin Whorf, "Science and Linguistics," Technological Review, Vol. 42, no. 6, 1940.
Reprinted in Language, Thought,and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Whorf, edited by John B.
Carroll (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1956), to which the page numbers here refer, p. 212.
219
into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, largely because we are parties to
an agreement to organize it in this way - an agreement that holds throughout our
speech community and is codified in the patterns of our language."s9 While many
might not deny the claim regarding the influence of language upon human thought
in some areas, the claim that modern science is neither objective nor impartial but
is simply the particularized result of the unique structures of Western modes of
thought resulting from the unique grammar of Indo-European languages has
proven to be both the most significant and the most contentious of results of the
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. 60 This claim suggests that even the most fundamental
concepts of science, such as time and matter, are not universal but are conceived in
very different ways by people who speak non-Indo-European languages. The Hopi
language, for example, does not have tenses of verbs for expressing anything
resembling the future, present, and past. 61 Thus, according to the Sapir-Whorf
hypothesis, the Hopi's view of the universe is very different from the one with
which "Western" science is concerned. And according to the linguistic relativity
that supposedly follows from the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, since we are all
determined by the grammar of our native language, "Western" science is simply a
certain way of regarding the world, which is the result of the way in which the
grammar of Indo-European languages filters and organizes experience.
According to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, the special, privileged position that
has been accorded science is not justified because the empirical observations upon
which science is based are never completely objective and independent of the
influence of the cognitive and linguistic categories, which, in turn, are never
independent of cultural and societal influences. Such a result of the Sapir-Whorf
hypothesis seems to place science on much more of an equal footing with religion.
However, the other difficulties of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis notwithstanding,
embracing the hypothesis proves to be another double-edged sword for the theist.
If Whorf is correct, it is not just science that is influenced by the cultural
differences reflected in the different grammars of different natural languages. All
of a person's experiences and cognitions would be similarly influenced including, of course, and perhaps especially, a person's claim to religious
experiences and knowledge concerning religious matters. In other words, the SapirWhorf hypothesis cuts against not only any special, universal, objective,
epistemological status for science, it also cuts against any such claims for religion.
Thus, the hypothesis, if it is sustained and confirmed by the empirical data, would
seem to lead to a radical religious pluralism and would seem to preclude any sort
of comparison or evaluation of different religions. Religious beliefs would thus
become relative to and dependent upon the different culturally determined
grammars of different languages. Different peoples would have different religious
experiences just as people supposedly have different experiences of the world, and,
arguably, it would be impossible to establish any universal or objective viewpoint
Ibid., p. 213.
See ibid., pp. 214 and 216. Also see "Language, Mind, and Reality," in Language, Thought, and
Reality, edited by John B. Carroll, p. 246.
61 Within the Hopi language, the notion of time is infused with the metaphysical distinction between
manifested and manifesting. See Whorf, "An American Indian Model of the Universe," in Language,
Thought, and Reality, p. 59.
59
60
220
that would not be influenced by language in order to compare or evaluate any such
claims. No religious believer could claim any underpinning or support "in reality"
for any particular set of religious beliefs. Whatever support there may be would
simply be the fact that the grammar of one's language provided the categories that
then determined the nature of the religious claims. 62
There are many areas of dispute concerning the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, but I
will mention only two here very briefly. First, there is much dispute over the
empirical evidence that Whorf and other linguists have offered in support of the
hypothesis. The conflicts among the different natural languages seem to be much
less significant than Whorf claimed. A single example will suffice here: In what
has now become a famous (or infamous) example, Whorf identified the Eskimo
language and what he claimed was the variety of different words the Eskimos use
for snow to illustrate how different languages used by different peoples lead to
different peoples experiencing the world differently and "cutting up" the world
differently by imposing different linguistic categories upon the world. 63 The
exaggerated claims that have been made regarding the different words that the
Eskimos mayor may not use for snow have now become a matter of such notoriety
that the incident is now commonly referred to as the "Great Eskimo Vocabulary
Hoax.,,64
Within linguistics, another major source of criticism concerning the SapirWhorf hypothesis is the work that has been done in generative linguistics or
transformational linguistics by Norm Chomsky. Chomsky has argued for a
distinction between what he calls surface and "deep" grammar and has further
maintained that though different natural languages differ in terms of their
superficial surface grammars, they share a common and universal "deep structure."
This notion of "Cartesian linguistics," as it has come to be known, maintains that
there is an innate linguistic ability that is universal among all humans beings and
that is reflected in the shared deep structures of different natural languages.
Currently, different varieties of Cartesian linguistics are very popular in structural
linguistics. It is beyond the scope of the present project to investigate Cartesian
linguistics here, but if Chomsky and the other structural linguistics are correct, then
Whorf's claims regarding linguistic relativity are undermined at the deep level of
language. Although Chomsky's Cartesian linguistics is still hotly debated,
linguistics does not now give nearly as much credence to the Sapir-Whorf
hypothesis as it did initially; however, the effects of the hypothesis are still widely
felt even if it is not now held in as high regard by linguists as it once was.
THE CHANGING CONTENT OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION
Although it is always dangerous to make such sweeping generalizations, it is
still fairly safe to say that the actual descriptive content of the theories of different
branches of science, that is, the different ways in which scientists actually describe
the world, have changed more in the twentieth century than in any other period in
62
Although, as I discuss in Chapter IX, John Hick argues that there is a single, underlying noumenal
Real.
Benjamin Whorf, "Science and Linguistics," in wnguage, Thought, and Reality, p. 216.
See The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax and Other Irreverent Essays on the Study of wnguage,
edited by Geoffrey K. Pullum (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).
63
64
221
the history of science. Certainly, as we have seen earlier in this chapter, the
seventeenth century with Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton was responsible for
initiating the scientific age; however, except for Copernican astronomy, the
developments of early science, by and large, did not challenge common sense. In
fact, we may say about Newtonian mechanics that it is a formal, scientifically
encapsulated form of a common-sense view of the world. In the twentieth century,
major developments and changes in the way in which the universe is described by
physics - from subatomic physics to astrophysics - challenged both older, classical
scientific views of the universe and common sense. 65 These changes have also had
a significant impact upon the relationship between science and religion. It is
impossible to treat here all, or even a significant number, of the important
developments in physics in the twentieth century, so I will focus upon only
quantum theory and the changes in the ways in which we regard the nature of
things for which quantum theory is responsible. 66 The resulting view of the
subatomic world is one that has proven to be another source of new areas of
conflict between science and religion.
First the science: One aspect of quantum theory that is basic and fundamental
and that is responsible for the rejection of much of classical Newtonian mechanics
is the "dual aspect" that seems necessary to explain phenomena exhibited by
electrons. At the turn of the twentieth century, physicists were divided over
whether electrons were particles or waves with different experimental results
supporting each kind of theory. However, the work of Niels Bohr demonstrated
that there is a reducible duality of electrons according to which electrons are both
particles and waves. 67 In addition, the location of electrons can be determined only
within a particular range determined by a statistical probability. The resulting view
of the subatomic world is literally "mind-boggling." Given quantum theory, we can
no longer diagram or otherwise depict in any univocal fashion what the inside of an
atom is like, and at its most elementary levels, matter is not material. As Ian
Barbour summarizes the impact of quantum theory on our understanding of the
most fundamental "building blocks" of the world,
The atom is inaccessible to direct observation and unimaginable in terms of
sensory qualities; it cannot even be described coherently in terms of classical
concepts such as space, time, and causality. The behavior of the very small is
radically different than that of everyday objects. We can describe by statistical
equations what happens in experiments, but we cannot ascribe familiar classical
attributes consistently to the inhabitants of the atomic world. 68
65 For a detailed treatment of the impact of these changes in physics upon religion, see Ian Barbour,
Religion in an Age of Science: The Gifford Lectures. 1989-91, Chapters 4 and 5.
66 For very insightful and illuminating treatments of relativity theory and "the big bang theory," see
Ian Barbour, ibid., pp. 108ff. and pp. l25ff. I discuss big bang theory and the anthropic principle in
Chapter III in the treatments of the cosmological and teleological arguments for the existence of God.
67 One experiment that yields such results is the well-known "split-screen electron interference test,"
in which a stream of electrons is passed through a screen with two slits in it. The results of this
experiment support both a particle and a wave theory of electrons. For a full description of this
experiment, see Ian Barbour, ibid., pp. 96-97, and James F. Harris, Against Relativism, pp. 30-3 L
68 Ian Barbour, Religion in an Age of Science: The Gifford Lectures. 1989-91, p. 97.
222
In addition to the wave-particle duality of electrons, Werner Heisenberg

determined that there is a theoretical limitation about what we can know about
electrons. Specifically, we can determine the position of an electron, we can
determine the momentum of an electron, but we cannot determine both the location
and momentum of an electron at the same time because by measuring the one we
influence the other. 69 Heisenberg devised his famous principle of uncertainty to
explain this theoretical limitation upon the information that we can expect to ever
have about the subatomic world.
THE PRINCIPLE OF COMPLEMENT ARlTY
There are several different ways in which the very different world of quantum
theory has impacted upon classical scientific views with the net result of
undermining the classical view of matter as basically materialistic and
deterministic. Just as examples, I will concentrate here upon only those that are
illustrated by the principle of complementarity and the principle of indeterminacy.
The principle of complementarity: When Bohr first began to try and understand
the consequences of his own quantum theory, along with Heisenberg's notion of
uncertainty, the only way in which he could make sense of it was by suggesting
that the subatomic phenomena are actually partially constituted by the method used
to detect and measure them. The measuring devices and the experimental
arrangement under which the measurement takes place actually affect the "reality"
that is being measured. This view means that on the subatomic level the actions of
the scientists are not simply ones of observing an objective reality but are actually
part of making that reality what it is. Bohr introduced the principle of
complementarity, which says that a subatomic system has no condition or features
independently of a particular experimental arrangement or a particular mode of
measurement. The old, classical distinction between subjective, observing subjects
and objective, observed facts cannot be maintained on the subatomic level. In a
very real sense, scientists influence the observed "facts" of subatomic particles
simply by observing them?O It turns out that the irreducible and stubborn facts are
neither irreducible nor stubborn on the subatomic level. Different things are what
they are as a result of the interaction of the experiencing subject and the
experienced object. According to the principle of complementarity, a thing on the
subatomic level must always be defined in relation to the mode of investigation
according to which it is observed and described. Neither the particle description
nor the wave description is a "true" description of the subatomic world, but
together, the two different descriptions complement each other to give us a
complete description.
Obviously, the principle of complementarity may hold great appeal to the
religious believer if it is applied more generally beyond the subatomic level, and
both scientists and religious believers alike have suggested that such a wider
60 For a very clear and simple explanation of how and why this is true, see John Hedley Brooke,
Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1991), p.
328.
70 There are many accounts of this phenomenon. For a particularly accessible account in a
fascinating book about superstring theory, see Brian Greene, The Elegant Universe (New York: Vintage
Books, 1999), pp. I 12ff.
223
application of the notion of complementarity is possible.71 One may suggest, to

borrow from one of the examples discussed at length earlier in this chapter, that
one may give both an evolutionary account and a creationist's account of the origin
of man and that both would be equally legitimate since there would then be two
different phenomena, each of which would be relative to its own account.
TAOISM AND PHYSICS

The principle of complementarity seems to lie behind the comparisons that
Fritjof Capra draws between quantum theory and Taoism.72 Capra draws several
parallels between both quantum theory and relativity theory and the various
religious traditions of the East. One such comparison involves "the unity of all
things." One of the essential characteristics of Eastern thought, Capra emphasizes,
is a form of metaphysical monism according to which everything is One and
everything is connected and interdependent as "inseparable parts of the cosmic
whole.,,73 This "unity" of all things is also a recurring theme, Capra claims, of the
"new" physics, that is, quantum theory and relativity theory, since the new science
has revealed "that the constituents of matter and the basic phenomena involving
them are all interconnected, interrelated and interdependent; that they cannot be
understood as isolated entities, but only as integrated parts of the whole.,,74 A
second major point of comparison between modem physics and Eastern thought
for Capra is the role that human beings play in the construction of reality. The new
physics reveals that all of our concepts are fundamentally limited and do not really
capture "features of reality" but are simply "constructs of the mind" that then are
projected onto reality.75
Critics have objected that Capra emphasizes the similarities between modern
physics and Eastern religions by focusing upon a few key concepts or phrases that
are used very differently within their respective contexts. It is true, for example,
that Bohr had insisted upon a "holistic" approach where quantum phenomena are
treated as part of a system that includes the experimental design. However, exactly
how this claim would "translate" out of the context of physics is not clear at all.
The landscape in which Capra maps modern physics onto Eastern thought is
painted with a very broad brush. For example, as Ian Barbour has observed, the
phrase "the unity of things" has very different meanings in physics and Eastern
religions. In the latter case, the unity is a metaphysical, undifferentiated unity
whereas, in the case of modem physics, the unity is highly structured and
differentiated by various principles and laws. 76 There are also significant
differences in the ways in which space and time are viewed by modern physics and
Eastern religions. Barbour is certainly correct to point out that although the notion
71 See ibid., pp. 331ff., and Ian Barbour, Religion in an Age of Science: The Gifford
Lectures,
1989-91, pp. 114ff.
72 Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics (Boulder, Colo.: Shambhala Publications, 1975).
73 Ibid., p. 130. This characterization is very similar to the absolute monism that dominated much of
the English-speaking philosophical world in the late nineteenth century (see Chapter I).
74 Ibid., p. 131.
75 Ibid., pp. 161-63.
76 Ian Barbour, Religion in an Age of Science, p. 119.
224
of space within modern physics is no longer the same notion as the absolute space
of Newtonian mechanics, it is not illusory, as much of Eastern thought maintains. 77
The principle of complementarity was intended to allow competing and
mutually exclusive descriptions of the same phenomena within the same
experimental context and "on the same level." Two different descriptions from the
two different sources could easily be experimentally tied to the same phenomena,
and then the results could collectively "complement" each other to give a complete
picture of the phenomena. It is impossible to determine in the comparisons of
modern physics with Eastern religions if the two are really even trying to describe
the same phenomena. Also, how could we come to regard two such disparate
"methods" as providing complementary information about the same phenomena
when one claim is based on a theory supported by highly controlled and
circumscribed scientific experiments while the other is a highly speculative and
noncircumscribed metaphysics based on a mystical form of meditation?
An even more fundamental and serious problem results from extrapolating from
the way in which an observer influences the observed phenomena on the subatomic
level to the way in which an observer may influence the observed phenomena on
the level of room-sized objects. The "weirdness" that results from quantum
mechanics is a weirdness that emerges when we try and understand subatomic
level phenomena, that is, it is only beyond a certain supermicroscopic level that
quantum effects occur. And that level is unimaginably small. Planck's constant,
which governs the limits of quantum effects, sets the Planck limit of such effects at
10-33 centimeter (or a millionth of a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a
centimeter).78 There is then no reasonable way to extrapolate from the quantum
eflects of electrons to the way in which events occur in the physical world in which
human beings live.
THE HEISENBERG PRINCIPLE OF UNCERTAINTY
According to the Heisenberg principle of uncertainty (also known as the
Heisenberg indeterminacy thesis), there are serious theoretical limitations upon
what we can ever hope to know about the subatomic world. Since it is impossible
to ever determine both the momentum and the location of an electron at any given
moment, the complete description of any given quantum state must be made in
terms of probabilities. On the basis of any description of any quantum state, the
best we can do is to make a probabilistic prediction about some description of
some future quantum state, for example, if we measure and determine the location
of an electron, then we can only predict with some statistical probability where the
electron will be when we are able to locate it. In other words, since the description
of any quantum state is necessarily given in terms of statistical probabilities, then
any existing quantum state must be just one of many different possible quantum
77 For a more detailed comparison of modem physics and Eastern religions on space and time, see
Ian Barbour, ibid., pp. 119ff.
78 This figure comes from Brian Greene, The Elegant Universe, p. 130. Pay attention to his footnote
7. A great advantage of Greene's book is the analogies he uses to help lay readers conceptualize the
extremes of quantum mechanics, relativity. and string theory. In this case, he suggests that if an atom is
magnified to the size of the known universe, the Planck length (within the atom) would grow to the size
of a tree.
225
states that might have existed given the past states that preceded it. Heisenberg
thought, at least late in his life, that this uncertainty was objective and
metaphysical. It is not simply that certain matters are uncertain because of human
ignorance or because of the present limitations of scientific inquiry, but nature
itself is "open" and the future is undetermined. 79 Heisenberg thought that this
metaphysical indeterminacy meant that potentiality and chance and novelty
actually exist in nature. Some theists have seized upon this opening for a way of
explaining how God can be understood as active in the world. For example,
Willard Pollard maintains that the indeterminacy that exists on the subatomic level
provides the opportunity for God to influence the world in a "natural way" without violating any natural laws. He suggests that Providence can be understood
as God being active in the selection of one quantum state over another possible
one. 80
Other theists have also attempted to incorporate the fundamental aspects of
quantum theory into a theistic understanding of the world by extrapolating from the
indeterminacy of the subatomic world to the macro world of human beings. For
example, Christopher Mooney claims that since the world is a unity and since God
would not allow one set of laws and principles to operate on the microscopic,
subatomic world and a different set on the macrolevel of human beings, then we
have to assume that the same sort of uncertainty exists for human beings as does
for quanta. 81
The macroworld is also dominated by "irregular behavior," Mooney declares,
and regular behavior such as planetary motion is the exception instead of the rule.
In support of this claim, Mooney cites the effect of chaos theory, which, he says,
has "placed complex systems beyond the grip of any mechanistic determinism.,,82
The indeterminacy in the macro world and the inherent potentiality in nature
reaches "full flower" with human freedom with which human beings can
"determine future goals" and "initiate responsible moral choice." In other words,
"there would be a certain degree of indeterminacy in human freedom that is not
unlike that of the quantum world.,,83
Mooney's move from the indeterminacy of the subatomic level of quantum
theory to the level of human freedom represents an extension of scientific
principles beyond the limits of their reasonable application. In the first place, the
effects of quantum theory, including indeterminacy, are confined to the
supermicroscopic world by Planck's limit. Also, indeterminacy on the quantum
level is sheer chance. It is simply the lack of determinism. The chance is explained
in terms of random statistical probability. Whatever the human freedom is that
allows human beings to "determine future goals" and "initiate responsible moral
79 For a thorough discussion of uncertainty and religion, see Ian Barbour, Religion in an Age of
Science: The Gifford Lectures, 1989-91, pp. lO1f.
80 See Willard Pollard, Chance and Providence (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1958).
81 Christopher F. Mooney, Jr., Theology and Scientific Knowledge (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of
Notre Dame Press, 1996), pp. 99-100.
82 Ibid., pp. 100-01.
83 Ibid., p. 102.
226
choice," it must be understood as involving something more than just sheer

randomness. 84
Others have made the rather implausible leap from the indeterminacy of
quantum theory on the subatomic level to chaos theory on the macrolevel. Perhaps
there is indeterminacy in the macro world, but quantum theory cannot justify such a
claim, and chaos theory certainly does not "place complex systems beyond the grip
of any mechanistic determinism." On the contrary, properly understood, chaos
theory is based completely on the overdeterminism of complex systems. It is only
because of the intricacy and complexity of the causal connections of "nonlinear"
systems, such as those found in weather patterns and the flow of liquids, that we
are unable to predict their future states. It is not that the weather is undetermined so
that it becomes metaphysically irregular; it is rather that the weather is so
completely determined in such intricate ways that we can never hope to decipher
all of the variables and all of the countless permutations that may result. The only
indeterminacy that results from chaos theory is epistemological indeterminacy.85
While the changing content of modem science may offer opportunities for
"closing the gap" between science and religion, theists should avoid highly
speculative interpretations and widely divergent extrapolations. Undoubtedly, the
scientific view of the universe has changed significantly in the twentieth century.
In terms of the very broad metaphysical differences that may translate into
different theological views of the universe and man, we can say that the world is no
longer materialistic. Energy and process have replaced matter as the fundamental
metaphysical "stuff' of the universe. There is inherent randomness and chance in
the world on the subatomic level, and the world is now regarded as an integrated
and interrelated whole rather than simply a collection of discrete, individual
objects. The world of modem physics is, in some ways, a more friendly world for
religion, and the ways of addressing the nature of God, human nature, and the
nature of the relationship between God and human beings have changed. All of this
suggests that if we are not to put new wine in old wine skins, we need to provide
some new theological wine skins for the new scientific wine.
THE INTEGRATION OF RELIGION AND SCIENCE
Among the different ways in which scientists and theologians have regarded the
relationship between science and religion, the attempt at the "integration" of the
two is one of the more interesting and promising. I will follow Ian Barbour here by
distinguishing three different ways in which the integration of science and religion
has been envisioned and attempted by different thinkers. 86 First, natural theology,
which is responsible for the arguments for the existence of God, borrows from
84 Ian Barbour makes a similar point by claiming that human freedom emerges at a certain level of
complexity. See Ian Barbour, Religion in an Age of Science: The Gifford Lectures, 1989-91, p. 117.
85 One may argue, as does William Alston, that there may be additional, nonnaturalistic causes that
must also be counted, but this seems like an argument from ignorance to the effect that there may be
other things about the universe that we do not know and that we cannot understand but for which we
must make allowance. For an interdisciplinary approach to many of the issues raised by chaos theory for
the philosophy of religion, see Chaos and Complexity: Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action, edited
by Robert John Russell, Nancey Murphy, and Arthur R. Peacocke (Vatican City State: Vatican
Observatory Publications, 1995).
86 Ian Barbour, Religion in an Age of Science: The Gifford Lectures, 1989-91, pp.23-24.
227
science the results of scientific inquiry for use in its arguments and theories. For
example, contemporary versions of both the teleological argument from design and
the cosmological argument from causality are considerably more sophisticated than
earlier versions because of the evidence that science has supplied about the nature
of the universe, such as the use of the anthropic principle (see Chapter III).
Secondly, a theology of nature is constructed from traditional sources for theology
such as sacred scriptures, church history, and religious experiences; however, the
resulting theology is a dynamic one that is constantly being changed, adjusted, and
reinterpreted by being "brought up against" and applied to the world as revealed by
scientific inquiry. Thirdly, integration has been attempted by a few thinkers on a
much more fundamental level through a "systematic synthesis" through which both
modern science and religion are reinterpreted in terms of a more general
metaphysics. I turn now to an examination of the attempts at integration of science
and religion by those who have attempted to construct a theology and a general
metaphysics that are based upon the findings of modern science.
A THEOLOGY OF NATURE
Arthur Peacocke has attempted to integrate religion and science by treating the
two as simply two different but "interacting approaches to the same reality.,,87 In
order to consider such an integration, Peacocke rejects the radical, "strong"
program of sociology that would reduce all knowledge to socially constructed
knowledge in favor of a form of critical realism. As I have indicated earlier in this
chapter, the relativism that results from radical relativism leaves science and
religion as two competing and unrelated ideologies. Peacocke also rejects the "neoorthodoxy" of Karl Barth, who insisted that theology is a completely separate
enterprise from science. For Barth, theology is completely autonomous and
depends upon the revelation of God through Jesus Christ rather than any empirical
knowledge based upon this world. In fact, for neo-orthodoxy, empirical
knowledge, based upon scientific inquiry, actually impedes one's search for
knowledge of God, which must thus come from a personal encounter with God. In
contrast, by developing a "theology of nature," Peacocke maintains that traditional
theology can be made more meaningful and theology can be shown to be related to
the world in which we human beings live by incorporating the information about
human beings and the world in which we live that is the result of the investigations
by the natural sciences. 88 Peacocke describes his theology of nature as follows:
Since the aim of the critical-realist theology is to articulate intellectually and to
formulate, by means of metaphor and model, experiences of God, then it
behooves such a theology to take seriously the critical-realist perspective of the
sciences on the natural, including the human, world. For on that theology's own
presuppositions, God himself has given the world the kind of being it has and it
must be in some respects, to be ascertained, revelatory of God's nature and
87 A. R. Peacocke, The Sciences and Theology in the Twentieth Century (Notre Dame, Ind.:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), p. xiv. Peacocke argues for his rejection of the sociology of
knowledge and his adoption of a form of critical realism in his Imitations of Reality (Notre Dame, Ind.:
University of Notre Dame, 1984), pp. 19ff.
88 A. R. Peacocke, The Sciences and Theology in the Twentieth Century, p. xiii.
228
ANALYTlC PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION
purposes. So theology should seek to be at least consonant with scientific

perspecti ves on the natural world. 89
Because of the changes that took place in science in the twentieth century,
science and religion now find themselves, according to Peacocke, "inextricably
interlocked with each other" in what is really an enterprise that is common to both
science and religion - the attempt to provide an explanation for the intelligibility of
the universe and its meaning (including the nature and meaning of human
existence).9o In the end, he thinks both science and religion as well as humanity in
general will all be the better for the integration of science and religion. 91
Peacocke carries out the program for his theology of nature across a wide
spectrum of different theological issues, and it is only possible here to sketch the
very general outline of how he tries to reinterpret the various themes of Christian
theology within a scientific view of the world. In order for theology to be
meaningful in a scientific age to people for whom the scientific point of view is
basically and thoroughly ingrained, Peacocke maintains that theology must take
place in the world described by science and speak to the world described by
science.92 For example, in order to understand the "classical" theory of creation,
the notion that God created the universe at a particular moment of time must be
abandoned. In order to accommodate the understanding of the universe that
modern science has provided as one that is continually producing "new emergent
forms of matter,,,93 any understanding of God's relationship with the world that is
"static" must be abandoned. Peacocke thinks that modem science has demonstrated
that the universe is dynamic and that things in the universe are still being "worked
out." Thus, God's relationship with the world must be understood as a complex
relation where God sustains and maintains the world through a continuing activity
and interaction with the world. Such a view moves our understanding of God away
from the transcendent and toward the immanent nature of God. 94 God must create
and sustain the universe through the universe and as a part of the universe - not as
a distinct, separate, transcendent being. "There is no room for any deus ex machina
or 'God of the gaps,'" Peacocke concludes. 95
Any theological account of human nature must also take into consideration what
modern science has revealed about human beings. Human beings are a part of the
physical world, but we are also products of an evolutionary process that has
produced new "levels" of organization with emergent properties that are not
reducible to strictly physical-chemical processes. Thus, on the one hand, a human
being is a physical creature "describable in terms of the physics and chemistry of
his constituent atoms and molecules," but on the other hand, human beings have
Ibid., p. 21.
Ibid., p. 5-6. Peacocke explains that he is really concerned with the natural sciences as opposed to
the social sciences and with theology as opposed to religion.
91 Philip Clayton urges a similar approach. See his God and Contemporary Science (Grand Rapids,
Mich.: William B. Eerdman's, 1997).
92 One should keep in mind here that since Peacocke is a critical realist, the description of the world
provided by science cannot be taken strictly literally.
93 Peacocke, Science and the Christian Experiment (London: Oxford University Press, 1971), p. 123.
94 Ibid., Chapter 5.
95 Ibid., p. 169.
89
90
229
features that have been emphasized by theology, including self-consciousness,

intelligence, and the capacity for a relationship with God. These features are
explained as the emergent properties that are produced at a certain level of
complexity in man's evolutionary development.% So the theological view of man
can be interpreted as an understanding of the product of the slow, continuing
process of evolutionary creation. Even the diVinity of Christ, Jesus as God
Incarnate, according to Peacocke, takes on new meaning if Christ, God as man, is
understood as the end point, the ultimate end, of the process of "cosmic evolution"
that is the expression of God's will for human kind. 97 The example of Christ, the
divine become human, serves as an example of what we all may become - the
human become divine - as the result of the continuing evolution of mankind.
Peacocke's theology of nature may well prove to be the next step in a natural
progression for natural theology in the future. In fact, the difference between the
two is already blurring. Traditionally, natural theology has borrowed from the
empirical sciences, in terms of both method and content, to gather the evidence
upon which to construct rational arguments for the existence of God. As I have
shown in Chapter III, newer forms of those arguments have borrowed heavily upon
developments in the sciences. For example, the anthropic principle has
significantly influenced recent versions of the teleological argument. In the next
chapter, I will show how the incorporation of probability theory has been
responsible for a different form of the evidential problem of evil. The key to the
difference between natural theology and a theology of nature is the extent to which
theists are willing to reformulate the content of theological claims on the basis of
new scientific discoveries and theories. The impact of evolution by natural
selection is a good place to see where scientific theory has caused changes in the
nature of the claim about creation and design in the universe. For Peacocke and
other theists who are willing to adjust their theology in the face of the
developments in modern science, it is now common to explain God's responsibility
for design in terms of the very general natural laws through which evolution takes
place instead of through the immutable essences of different species created in an
initial, single act of creation by God. A theology of nature holds the promise of
"the best of both worlds" of religion and science - resulting in a theology that is
both more relevant and more applicable in a scientific age. 98
As Alfred North Whitehead points out, the content of theology has changed
gradually over the centuries just as the content of science has. 99 For the most part,
the changes within science have been brought about as the result of the new
discoveries and new theories developed within science, and the changes within
theology have been brought about similarly as the result of the new positions,
"discoveries," and developments in our understanding of human nature, religious
experience, and God's relationship with the world. The issue is to what extent
theology should be sensitive in terms of its theological content to what science has
to say about the universe. As Whitehead urged, much earlier than Peacocke, we
Ibid., pp. 140ff.
Ibid., p. 170.
98 Ian Barbour has expressed his basic agreement with the theology of nature approach in Religion in
an Age of Science, p. 30.
99 Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modem World (New York: Macmillan, 1925), p. 183.
96
97
230
ought to expect that the claims of religion will have to be expanded or "entirely
restated" as a result of what we learn from science. All of this should be viewed as
a gain for religion since the resulting religious claims will gain in both relevance
and significance. lOo For Whitehead, the final progression in this interplay between
religion and science is the synthesis of religion and science. The conflicts and
differences in modes of expression that have existed between religion and science
are evidence, Whitehead claims, of "wider truths and finer perspectives within
which a reconciliation of a deeper religion and a more subtle science will be
found." 101
INTEGRATION THROUGH METAPHYSICS
The final and most elaborate and thorough form of integration of religion and
science is the systematic synthesis by which both religion and science are reduced
and reinterpreted in terms of a general, systematic theory of metaphysics. 102 In the
twentieth century, only process philosophy emerged as a possible metaphysics in
terms of which both science and religion can be reinterpreted in a radical and
significant way. Any detailed treatment of process philosophy is beyond the scope
of this volume; however, I will briefly summarize the very general nature of
process philosophy in order to indicate how it redefines both religion and science.
Alfred North Whitehead takes as his point of departure the significant changes
(discussed earlier in this chapter) that took place in physics and biology in the early
part of the twentieth century. In Process and Reality, he attempts to construct a
general metaphysical scheme in order to "frame a coherent, logical, necessary
system of general ideas in terms of which every element of our experience can be
interpreted.,,103 In constructing such a system, Whitehead rejects the materialism
and the determinism of Newtonian mechanics and the notion of simple location
that so thoroughly characterized empiricism. 104 With the traditional view of the
world, it becomes very problematic to explain change, or, as is well known in the
case of David Hume, causality. Whitehead thought that understanding the universe
as being composed of tiny bits of matter that are metaphysically independent of
each other being controlled by Newton's laws of mechanics was rendered obsolete
by the developments of relativity theory, quantum theory, and evolution.
Whitehead's process philosophy (also called "the philosophy of organism") takes
as fundamental metaphysical units what he calls "actual entities" or "actual
occasions." Actual entities are "drops of experience" or "events of
consciousness.,,105 Whereas Hume's basic materialistic bits of matter were
unrelated and Leibniz's monads, though not materialistic, were still "windowless,"
actual entities are fundamentally related to other actual entities through what
Whitehead calls "prehensions." In Leibnizian terms, actual entities are nothing but
windows, that is, they are what they are because of how they "prehend" other
Ibid., p. 189.
Ibid., p. 185.
102 See Ian Barhour, Religion in an Age of Science, pp. 28ff.
103 Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality (New York: Harper and Row, 1929), p. 4.
104 Simple location is the metaphysical view of things according to which particulars can be located
individually and independently on spatial/temporal axes. See Whitehead, ibid., p. 208.
105 Ibid., p. 28.
100
101
231
actual entities - how they are related to other actual entities. Actual entities are
organized into nexus, and everything that exists in the universe, from inanimate
objects to the "lowest" forms of organic life to human beings to God, are all
abstractions of actual entities. The universe of actual entities is also a dynamic
universe in which actual entities and nexus of actual entities are always in a stage
of concrescence, that is, becoming.
The general metaphysical scheme of process philosophy provides the
framework for the reduction and resolution of many of the distinctions and disputes
between religion and science. Within process philosophy, the troublesome dualism
of the transcendent and immanent aspects of God in traditional Judeo-Christian
theism are replaced by an understanding of God as an actual entity with a
primordial nature and a consequent nature. The primordial nature of God is a view
of God that contains "the unlimited conceptual realization of the absolute wealth of
potentiality,,,I06 that is, God is everything that the world can possibly be. The
consequent nature of God is the view of God interacting with the world by being
affected by the continual changes and processes taking place in the world. 107
This very brief summary of Whitehead's process philosophy is only intended to
give a flavor of the way in which the broad, sweeping, and fundamental
metaphysical reconceptualization of the universe dramatically changes the way in
which religion and science are regarded. The old distinctions between physical and
mental, materialism and spiritualism, science and religion, and even the distinction
between the physical sciences and the life sciences do not survive within
Whitehead's process philosophy. Scientists, theologians, and philosophers all
become metaphysicians.
Others have attempted the synthesis of science and religion in terms of a general
metaphysics, although no other attempt has approached the grand scale of
Whitehead's process philosophy. Mention should at least be made here of Pierre
Teilhard de Chardin's Phenomenon of Man, in which a similar synthesis of mind
and matter is conducted. He adopts a thoroughgoing evolutionary approach in
terms of which all natural phenomena - including the phenomenon of man - are
explained in terms of evolutionary processes. This approach leads him to talk about
developing a "cosmogenesis" instead of a cosmology in terms of which the
"noogenesis" of man is explained. The noogenesis of man is the gradual evolution
of thought and the mental capacities of human beings that marked a major
development, not just for human beings, but for the entire biosphere.108 The
gradual process of the evolution of man through noogenesis is, Teilhard de Chardin
maintained, a matter of the convergence in the evolutionary processes through
which human beings gradually, and over a very long period, resisted fragmentation
and differentiation by centrifugal processes in order to develop a single, unified
result - the species of man. Human beings have actually interacted with the
processes of cosmogenesis to influence their own development. Man, along with
the rest of the biosphere, is progressing toward an Omega point, he claimed, which
results when human beings achieve a "hyperpersonal" form of the
Ibid., p. 521.
Ibid., pp. 523ff.
108 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man (New York: Harper and Row, 1959). First
published in the French, 1955. See pp. 180ff.
106
107
232
"complexification of the noosphere" by incorporating self-reflective knowledge

about our place in the biosphere and our influence upon our own continued
evolution. 109
Teilhard de Chardin preserves a place for the effects of a personal and loving
God in the world by viewing the biosphere as "spiritually converging" and
insisting that man can only discover God in the complexities of an evolving
universe. Christianity should willingly and gladly embrace evolution, he concludes,
in order to explain everything from Christian love to the incarnation of Christ. 110
Teilhard de Chardin completely recasts Christian theology within a metaphysics
constructed by taking dynamic, evolutionary processes as fundamental.
While reactions to Teilhard de Chardin have been limited to commentaries upon
his work, the process philosophy of Whitehead has led to the development of an
entirely new branch of philosophy that continues the grand synthesis in terms of a
general metaphysics. Process philosophy is much more sophisticated and technical
than the brief treatment here would indicate, and it is impossible to evaluate
process philosophy adequately here on the basis of such a brief sketch. Other
process philosophers, including Charles Hartshorne, Charles Birch, and John Cobb,
have developed Whitehead's thought in ways that are more directed toward issues
of traditional theology. I II Although process philosophy resolves many of the
classic dilemmas within theism and the tensions between religion and science, it
does so at the expense of changes in God's nature and in the nature of the
relationship between God and man that many theists will find unpalatable and too
high a price to pay for whatever benefits are to be found in process philosophy.
CONCLUSION
This discussion of the relationship between religion and science in the twentieth
century has revealed a full range of reactions by theists. Some religious believers
still regard religion and science as being in conflict because of perceived
differences in the respective methods of each. Various developments in the
philosophy of science in the twentieth century have had a direct bearing upon how
the method of science is understood. The influences of the Kuhnian paradigmbased view of science and the "strong program" that reduces all knowledge and
method to sociology have been strongly felt in both science and religion. On the
one hand, such influences provide religion with an increased autonomy and
separate existence from science, but on the other hand, they raise the specter of
relativism and antirealism for religion as well as for science.
The changing content of scientific theories has had the opposite influence of
reducing the "gap" between religion and science by providing a view of the
universe that is neither materialistic nor deterministic. Darwin's evolution by
Ibid., pp. 257ff.

Ibid., pp. 292ff.
III See Charles Hartshorne, The Divine Relativity (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1948);
Charles Birch and John Cobb, The Liberation of Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981);
Charles Birch, Nature and God (London: SCM Press, 1965); Also, for a critical treatment of process
philosophy and, in particular, its relation to theology, see Ian Barbour, Religion in an Age of Science:
The Gifford Lectures, 1989-91, Chapter 8.
109
110
233
natural selection, the content of which was a major source of conflict with religion
at the beginning of the twentieth century, was, at the end of the century,
accommodated by and, in some cases, integrated into theology. Not only has
natural theology incorporated the results of scientific research into its arguments
for the existence of God, but theologies of nature and scientific metaphysical
theories have seized upon the scientific view of the universe to reinterpret and
recast the content of theology.
The continued debate over the epistemological status and the method of science
and the influences of Kuhn, postmodemism, and Wittgensteinian language-games
all exert pressure in the direction of separating religion and science into distinct
spheres of discourse and influence. At the same time, both the scale and the content
of the scientific description of the universe as a dynamic, nonmaterial, and
nondetermined expanding cosmos exert pressure in the direction of drawing
religion and science closer together, making their understandings of man and
nature more similar.
VI. Contemporary Challenges to Theism: Evil and

Suffering
There has been perhaps no greater challenge to theism than the perceived
existence of evil and suffering in the world. The challenge is an ancient one and
has persevered through many centuries of analysis and response because the
problem of reconciling the existence of evil in this world with the existence of an
all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving God seems to be so utterly basic and
intractable. In Judaism and Christianity, the problem can be traced back at least as
far as the book of Job, where the ancient writer tries to address the profound human
bewilderment at the sometimes overwhelming effect of the existence of evil and
suffering in this world when God has seemingly "hidden his face" from human
beings. The response provided by the book of Job is one that takes refuge in the
total mysteriousness and transcendency of God and God's nature. In the dialogue
between Job and God when God finally responds to Job's questioning, we find one
of the classic representations of mysticism, which emphasizes the finite limitations
and worthlessness of human beings and their inability to understand God, God's
nature, or God's ways. The biblical passages from this exchange between Job and
God have become cornerstones of a certain kind of response even by contemporary
theists. In apparently angry and defiant words, God overwhelms Job as a
whirlwind: "Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me if
you have understanding. Who determined its measurements - surely you know. Or
who stretched the line upon it? On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its
cornerstone, when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted
for joy?" (Job 38:4-7). God concludes the response to Job by asking (rhetorically
and angrily), "Shall a faultfinder contend with the Almighty? He who argues with
God, let him answer it" (Job 40:1-2). Leaving the problem of the existence of evil
and human and animal suffering simply as an unresolved matter that human reason
cannot fathom because of the incomprehensible nature of the deity does not
address the problem adequately. The inadequacy of such a response is evidenced
by the fact that, in the history of the philosophy of religion, more attention has
been devoted to what is now called "the problem of evil" than to any other single
aspect of modern theism, and the same certainly continued throughout the
twentieth century.
234
CONTEMPORARY CHALLENGES TO THEISM: EVIL AND SUFFERING
235
THE CLASSICAL PROBLEM OF EVIL

Perhaps the best known and most frequently cited way of developing the
problem of evil is traced to Epicurus through several notable sources, including
David Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. Hume has Philo cite
Epicurus's way of developing the dilemma for the theist: "Is he [God] willing to
prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then is
he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?"! This classic
representation of the problem clearly exposes why the problem of evil is such a
particularly intractable problem for traditional forms of theism - including
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - by making explicit the apparent conflict
between the existence of evil and the existence of a deity with the characteristics
normally attributed to the deity within theism. In particular, the attributes of the
deity (examined in detail in Chapter III) that describe the nature of the deity as
omnipotent, omniscient, perfect, and omnibenevolent circumscribe a deity whose
nature appears to be incompatible with the human pain and suffering (as well as the
animal pain and suffering) that exist in our world.
CONTEMPORARY TREATMENTS OF THE PROBLEM OF EVIL
Since there is such an enormous volume of contemporary literature on the
problem of evil, I cannot address the classical or traditional treatments of the
problem. I will include consideration here only of a representative sample of those
major developments in contemporary Anglo-American analytic tradition that
represent some significantly different or modem way of interpreting the problem or
of providing some new contributions to the attempts to provide some response to
the problem. In the following discussion, I will assume what has come to be
routinely regarded as the standard distinction between moral and natural evils.
Moral evils will be treated as evils that result from the actions of one or more
moral agents and that involve the physical or psychological pain or suffering of
living organisms. Moral evils are those that result from actions for which we hold
people to be morally responsible. Natural evils will be treated as evils that occur
"naturally," - evils that arise from the occurrence of events, phenomena, and
conditions in the world and that result in the physical or psychological pain or
suffering of living organisms. Natural evils are those for which no moral agent is
held morally responsible.
Although the problem of evil and suffering is an ancient one, and although the
problem has been addressed in every age by religious scholars and thinkers, the
contemporary literature in the philosophy of religion contains a plethora of
different formulations and treatments of the ancient problem as the result of the
influence of analytic philosophy and its emphasis upon linguistic and conceptual
analysis and clarification. In contemporary discussions of the problem of evil, it
has become customary to distinguish between the logical problem of evil and the
evidential problem of evil. The logical problem of evil is one that focuses upon the
apparent logical inconsistency between the theistic claim of the existence of an
omnipotent and omnibenevolent deity and the existence of evil in any form and to
1
David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett Publishing,
1980).
236
any degree. The logical problem of evil is thus a problem concerning the logical
compatibility of the most basic, fundamental theistic claims and the existence of
evil anywhere, under any conditions. Empirical questions about the amount,
degree, and variety of evil are thus not relevant to treatments of the logical problem
of evil. In contrast, the evidential problem of evil focuses upon the apparent
conflict between the basic, fundamental theistic belief in the existence of an
omnipotent and omnibenevolent God and the existence of evil as we find it in this
world - the particular varieties, amounts, and degrees of human and animal pain
and suffering that actually occur in this world. I will examine both the logical and
evidential problems of evil, some of the different challenges that have been raised
against theism, and some of the various attempts by theists to provide defenses and
theodicies for reconciling the existence of evil and the existence of God. 2
THE LOGICAL PROBLEM OF EVIL
There are many different formulations of the logical problem of evil, but one of
the clearest, most thorough, and most frequently referenced treatments of the
logical problem of evil is the one developed by J. L. Mackie. 3 The questions and
difficulties generated by the logical problem of evil have led many theists either to
proffer some theodicy or to maintain that the existence of God is not based upon
reason but upon faith or upon some mystical or non-rationalistic way of knowing
God. However, the stakes are extremely high in the logical problem of evil for
theists, Mackie claims, since the logical difficulties raised for the theist by the
existence of evil in any way, shape, or form make the continued belief in the
existence of God "positively irrational," since "the several parts of the essential
theological doctrine are inconsistent with one another. The theologian must
therefore resort to "an extreme rejection of reason.,,4 If Mackie is right in this
claim, then no theodicy can ever be satisfactory for reconciling the existence of
evil with God, and even theism based upon faith would be an irrational faith.
In its most simple form, the apparent contradiction is between
1. God is omnipotent.
2. God is wholly good.
and
3. Evil exists. 5
2 The distinction between the logical problem of evil and the evidential problem of evil is drawn
differently by different people. The way in which I have drawn the distinction here is one common way.
3 J. L. Mackie, "Evil and Omnipotence," Mind, Vol 64, no. 254, 1955. This article has been
anthologized many times including in The Philosophy of Religion, edited by Basil Mitchell (London:
Oxford University Press, 1971); God and Evil, edited by Nelson Pike (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: PrenticeHall, 1964); and in The Problem of Evil, edited by Michael Peterson (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of
Notre Dame Press, 1992). The page numbers here refer to the reprint in the Peterson volume.
4 Ibid., p. 89.
5 Ibid.
237
Premises (1) and (2) are undeniably fundamental theistic claims, and (3) seems
to be an incontrovertible empirical fact. Premises (1) through (3) appear to be
mutually inconsistent, and on this basis, the theist's position becomes "positively
irrational" and is maintained only by an "extreme rejection of reason." But, of
course, things are not so simple as they initially appear to be. As many critics have
pointed out, and as Mackie admits, (1) through (3) are not explicitly contradictory.6
Mackie admits that these claims need to be analyzed to reveal the explicit
contradiction. When we do analyze these claims, we discover that in order to make
the contradiction explicit, we need to add some additional premises (or as Mackie
calls them, "quasi-logical rules"). Mackie claims that we must add
4. Good is opposed to evil in such a way that a good thing always eliminates
evil as far as it can.
and
5. There are no limits to what an omnipotent thing can do.
From these additional premises, it follows, Mackie claims, that the following claim
is true:
6. A good omnipotent thing eliminates evil completely.

However, since (3) is true, and evil exists, then, Mackie concludes,
7. A wholly good, omnipotent God cannot exist.7
This more detailed development of the original logical problem appears to make
the theistic position illogical. Mackie claims that the only adequate way out is for
the theist to either give up or to modify one of the original claims concerning
God's omnipotence and omnibenevolence so that some limitations are somehow
placed upon these attributes.
THEISTIC RESPONSES TO THE LOGICAL PROBLEM OF EVIL
This version of the logical version of the problem of evil has prompted a
number of responses from both defenders and critics of theism. It is instructive to
examine some of these responses, since one direction the responses take leads to
Alvin Plantinga's version of the free-will defense, which many scholars now
6 See, for example, H. J. McClosky, God and Evil (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1974) pp. 5-8; Alvin
Plantinga, God, Freedom, and Evil (New York: Harper and Row, 1974). Portions of Plantinga's short
book are reprinted in several different volumes. The page numbers here refer to the portion entitled
"The Free Will Defense" and reprinted in Philosophy of Religion: Selected Readings, third edition,
edited by William L. Rowe and William J. Wainwright (Fort Worth, Tex.: Harcourt Brace, 1973) pp.
259-84; also see Bruce Reichenbach, Evil and a Good God (New York: Fordham University Press,
1982) pp. 3-6; and William Rowe, Philosophy of Religion (Belmont, Calif.: n.p., 1978) pp. 81-85.
7 J. L. Mackie, "Evil and Omnipotence," p. 90.
238
consider to be one of the most promising theistic responses to the logical problem
of evil.
The issue at stake is whether Mackie's version of the contradiction is sound. It
is, of course, trivially possible to construct a valid argument whose conclusion is
that God does not exist. What is at stake is the truth of the premises of the
argument. The main targets for philosophical analysis, therefore, have been the
truth of premises (4) and (5) above, since these two premises contain the
"expanded," explanatory content necessary to make the contradiction explicit. In
order for this to be a sound argument, (4) and (5) must not only be true, but (4) and
(5) must each be necessarily true in order to generate the logical force of a
contradiction, since the claim is that the theist cannot avoid commitment to (4) and
(5). But are premises (4) and (5) necessarily true? There are some obvious and not
so obvious aspects to the answer to this question. There are several difficulties with
(4) and (5) that must be considered. Premise (4) says that a good thing eliminates
evil "as far as it can," which explicitly allows for the possibility that there may well
be some limitation upon the way in which a good thing can eliminate evil. It is
certainly a matter of fact that good people in this world are limited in their ability
to eliminate evil; so, we must consider the details of how it might be the case that
good beings are limited in their ability to bring about the elimination of evil.
KNOWLEDGE AND THE ELIMINATION OF EVIL
As several critics have suggested, (4) is true only if the good thing knows about
the evil that it is supposed to eliminate. Certainly, there may be many evils in the
world that a good person would attempt to eliminate if the person knew of those
evils; however, in fact, frequently good people do not know of certain evils until it
is too late to attempt to eliminate them. Indeed, a common expression in such
circumstances is something to the effect, "If only I had known," the suggestion
being that if one had known, then one would have been able to do something to
prevent the evil from occurring. Thus, instead of (4), we apparently need
something such as
4a. Good is opposed to evil in such a way so that a good thing always
eliminates every evil it knows about and can eliminate. 8
Initially, it seems that (4a) should not be objectionable to the theist since one of
the traditional attributes of the deity is omniscience. But is (4a) necessarily true?
Does (4a) do the job oftuming (1) through (3) into an explicit contradiction? Well,
not only does (4a) appear not to be necessarily true, but it appears to be false,
simply because there are many circumstances where limited beings must choose
among different evils to eliminate. Suppose a promising medical researcher with
great potential for discovering cures devotes his or her life, at great personal
sacrifice, to discovering a cure for cancer. If the researcher succeeds and finds a
cure for cancer that provides enormous benefits for all human beings and other
animals and eliminates one of the greatest known sources of evil in the world, is it
a justifiable criticism of the researcher's "goodness" to say that he or she did
8
See, for example, Alvin Plantinga, ''The Free Will Defense," p. 264.
239
absolutely nothing to eliminate "the heartbreak of psoriasis?" The researcher might

certainly have known about the heartbreak of psoriasis and the suffering that it
causes and might certainly have been able to eliminate it (perhaps even more easily
than he or she eliminated cancer), but the researcher could not eliminate both
cancer and psoriasis. The researcher's failure to eliminate every evil known to him
or her that it was possible to eliminate certainly does not mean that the researcher
was not a good person. It is a reality of this world that can be demonstrated with
many different examples that choosing to eliminate one evil might well preclude
the possibility of attempting to eliminate some other evil. Perhaps (4a) needs to be
something such as
4b. Good is opposed to evil in such a way that a good thing always eliminates
the greater evil it knows about and can eliminate.
But (4b) will not do either, since eliminating some evil state of affairs A that is
admittedly greater than some other state of affairs B might produce some third
state of affairs C that is a greater evil than either A or B or even greater than A and
B combined.
CAN GOD ELIMINATE ALL EVIL?
The main requirement of (4) is to provide a premise of the argument that

requires good to eliminate evil without at the same time eliminating some equal or
greater good and without producing some equal or greater evil.
Plantinga suggests that the best candidate for interpreting (4) is
4c. A good being eliminates every evil that it can properly eliminate. 9
The phrase "properly eliminate" in (4c) is a technical term for Plantinga defined
as follows: "a being properly eliminates an evil state of affairs if it eliminates that
evil without either eliminating an outweighing good or bringing about a greater
evil.,,10 Other versions of (4c) simply incorporate Plantinga's definition of
"properly eliminate" into the condition itself. For example, Bruce Reichenbach's
version of (4c) says
4c'. A good thing eliminates every evil that it knows about and can eliminate
without bringing about a greater evil or a lesser good instead. II
Premises (4c) and (4c') are substantively identical, so I will simply refer to this
condition as (4c). What (4c) demonstrates is that Mackie's original supposed
contradiction is not so straightforward as it initially appears to be. Mackie's
original premises (1) and (2), along with (4c), do not yield his intended conclusion
(7) that God does not exist because, given (4c), we must revise (6). It is obvious
that if (4c) is universally true and applies even to an omnipotent and
Ibid., p, 266.
Ibid., p. 265.
11 Ibid., p, 266.
10
240
omnibenevolent being, then even that being might not eliminate evil completely.
Instead of Mackie's premise (6), it is now apparent that the argument needs
something such as
6a. A good omnipotent thing eliminates every evil it knows about and can
eliminate without, at the same time, either eliminating some greater good or
bringing about some lesser good or some greater evil. 12
Whereas (4c) appears to be an acceptable development or analysis of (4), it is
obvious that (6a) is not simply an analysis of (6). God might well satisfy (6a) but
still not eliminate evil completely, so (6a) might be true although (6) is not true.
What is needed to preserve Mackie's original, apparent contradiction is something
such as
6b. A good omnipotent thing eliminates all evil completely that it knows about
without eliminating some greater good, or bringing about some lesser good,
or bringing about some greater evil.
Several people have suggested similar formulations of (6b).I3 The version that I
adopt here is the most inclusive and the most clear since it separates the
possibilities of eliminating some greater good from bringing about some lesser
good. The next step is to raise the question of whether (6b) (or any similar version
of it) is necessarily true. The evolution of (6) into (6b) shows the initially hidden
relationship between (5) and (6), since an examination into whether (6b) is true
must involve some consideration of the question of whether there are limitations
upon what an omnipotent being can do. Premise (6b) does not contain the strong
intuitive appeal of (6).
WHAT GOD CAN AND CANNOT DO
The initial force of the logical problem of evil is generated by the fact that it
seems to capture some of the ancient principle that evil cannot originate from a
perfectly good source. This principle was annunciated by Plato (Republic, Book
III, 1. 380), and adopted by many of the scholastics. Whereas the principles "only
perfection comes from perfection" and "only good comes from perfect goodness"
give a general, blanket commendation to any action of God, (6b) explicitly
suggests the possibility of some sort of limitation that would require some
evaluation of God's actions based upon some antecedent set of conditions under
which God must act. It is this principle, which is the source of Leibniz' s claim that
this is the best of all possible worlds since a perfectly good creator could create
nothing less or nothing more. H. J. McCloskey puts this issue very clearly:
12 There are different versions of this condition. See, for example, Alvin Plantinga, 'The Free Will
Defense," p. 266; and Bruce Reichenbach, Evil and the Good God, p. 5.
13 See, for example, William Rowe,.'philosophy of Religion, p. 84; Alvin Plantinga, Ibid., p. 265; and
Bruce Reichenbach, Ibid., p. 6.
CONTEMPORARY CHALLENGES TO TIIEISM: EVIL AND SUFFERING
241
Unless it is argued that God's creative powers are limited and that a Leibnizian
notion of the best possible world is a coherent one and such that such a world
must contain evil [which McCloskey denies] then it would seem analytically to
follow from God's omnipotence and goodness that he can make a world which
is wholly good and which is better than a world containing any evil.14
These considerations focus the attention upon (5), which says that there are no
limits upon what an omnipotent being can do (for further discussion of God's
attributes, see Chapter III). Let us simply say that several different restrictions
upon the naive and unqualified claim "God can do anything" seem to be in order
and are agreed to by most major theologians and philosophers. For example, most
contemporary thinkers maintain that our understanding of the claim that God is
omnipotent should contain the disclaimer that God cannot do the logically
impossible, the earlier protestations of Descartes and Martin Luther
notwithstanding. There may be other reasonable limitations that should be placed
on the notion of omnipotence. For example, it does not seem that God can commit
suicide or sadistically torture innocent babies for no other reason than just for sheer
fun. However, let us focus here upon what limitations, if any, might prohibit God
from creating a world significantly different from this one or one that contains no
evil at all. In Mackie's original challenge to the theist, he maintains that an
"adequate solution" to the logical problem of evil can be arrived at only if the
theist is willing to make some adjustments to one of the original claims. As
Epicurus's early way of putting the problem makes clear, if the theist is willing to
"give up" either the claim that God is wholly good or that God is omnipotent, then
the apparent contradiction goes away.
One way for the theist to address the logical problem of evil is by trying to
determine whether the notion of omnipotence can properly be understood so as to
preserve it in such a way that God is not limited but also in such a way that God
cannot create a world with no evil. Are there reasonable and acceptable limitations
that can be placed upon God's omnipotence that might prohibit God from creating
a world with no evil whatsoever? Several defenders of the theistic position have
suggested that there are or that there might possibly be. For example, Plantinga has
argued that one such circumstance might be one in which some evil e is included in
some good state of affairs G so that in order to eliminate e, God would have to
eliminate the greater good G. IS In other words, there might be some greater good G
for which e is a necessary condition, so that if e does not occur or take place, then
neither could G.
Plantinga continues by claiming that examples of such cases "abound." In a
theme reminiscent of John Hick's "soul-making theodicy" (that is treated at some
length later in this chapter), Plantinga claims that suffering and adversity
frequently result in "a sort of creative moral heroism" and provide occasions for
people "bearing pain magnificently.,,16 Examples such as these, Plantinga claims,
H. J. McCloskey, God and Evil, p. 8.

Alvin Plantinga, ''The Free Will Defense," p. 267.
16 Ibid.
14
15
242
demonstrate that (6b) cannot be true since the "overall" state of affairs which
incorporates "the big picture" is good while the pain and suffering remain evil.
For H. J. McCloskey, Plantinga's suggestion amounts to the advocation of using
evil as a means to achieve a good end. Finite beings frequently use means that
involve the infliction of pain upon someone as a means of producing some greater
good. A commonly used example involves the actions of a surgeon or dentist who
must inflict pain upon a patient in order to produce a resulting state of health. 17
Yet, McCloskey objects, there are many instances in which the use of an evil
means (one which produces pain and suffering) is not justified. Therefore, we must
consider such claims on a case-by-case basis, and the general guiding principle will
be that we do not resort to such methods for attaining a given result if another
nonevil method is just as effective in producing the intended and desired result.
McCloskey makes a very strong case here against Plantinga and the theist. It is
difficult to argue against McCloskey's claim that "to use an intrinsically evil means
to achieve an end when the end could be achieved without the evil means is to act
evilly, given that no loss of goods and no new evils occur as a result of bringing
about the end directly.,,18 The suggested conclusion is that, since God is
omnipotent and omniscient, there must be other none vii ways for God to achieve
the desired results (such as producing heroism and nobility) without using evil
means (which would mean that the evil cannot be a necessary condition for the
good that follows from it). Surely we would expect as much of finite limited
beings. In situations where there are non-evil means of producing a good end, we
would expect or demand that a good person choose the non-evil over the evil
means for producing the particular good end in question.
McCloskey's rejection of Plantinga's claims that there might be some
circumstances in which God cannot eliminate an evil without eliminating a greater
good is obviously based upon the implicit assumption that it is possible for an
omnipotent God to achieve all of the intended ends directly. But what kind of
possibility is at stake in this claim? In McCloskey's examples of the surgeon and
the dentist, the different means used to bring about certain ends are simply
empirically necessary to bring about those ends. In some other world - indeed, in
our very own world in the not-too-distant future - it may very well be possible for
surgeons and dentists to bring about their intended results using completely painfree methods and hence, for the purposes here, non-evil means. However, as
Reichenbach correctly points out,19 if a particular means is logically or
metaphysically necessary to produce a particular end, then it is not at all clear that
even an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God can be held in any way responsible
for not bringing about the end in question directly if it is logically or
metaphysically impossible to do so. As we shall see below, other theists, such as
Richard Swinburne, maintain that inductive experience of the harmful effects of
certain actions upon other people is the only rational way in which human beings
can come to understand the consequences of their actions and thus develop moral
See H. 1. McCloskey, God and Evil, pp. 71-72.

Ibid., p. 72.
19 Bruce Reichenbach, Evil and a Good God, p.8.
17
18
243
beliefs and the ability to choose between evil and non-evil means to achieve certain
desired ends.z
THE FREE-WILL DEFENSE
The burden of proof is upon those who think that the logical problem of evil
does demonstrate a logical contradiction between claims for the existence of God
and the existence of evil. Since the contradiction, if there is one, is not explicit, the
burden is to come up with a necessarily true statement that commands assent of
theists and nontheists alike and that serves to make the contradiction explicit. To
date, the attempt to specify such a necessarily true proposition has not been
successful, and many scholars, even severe critics of theism, have indicated
skepticism at the possibility of providing such a statement. 21 Therefore, though the
logical problem of evil may not pose a significant threat to theism, the possibility
remains that someone will find a more viable candidate for the missing, necessarily
true premise that might prompt a continuing succession of responses from the
theist. Is it possible for the theist to put the matter of the logical problem of evil to
rest? The theist could respond to the general challenge represented by the logical
problem of evil and forestall consideration of future candidates for the missing
proposition in the argument if the theist could simply show that (1) through (3) are
logically consistent - that it is logically possible that (1) through (3) can be
simultaneously true. This is a rather low burden of proof, but the difficulty that
theists have had in responding convincingly demonstrates just how challenging the
problem is.
On the one hand, the protagonist who wishes to use the logical problem of evil
against the theist must provide the necessarily true premise that will make the
presumed, implicit contradiction explicit. On the other hand, to foreclose the
efforts of the protagonists to use the logical problem of evil against theism, theists
must provide the claim that will demonstrate that it is at least plausible to believe
that (1) through (3) can all be true while doing as little damage to the traditional
attributes of omnipotence and omnibenevolence as possible. In this regard, perhaps
no other response to the logical problem of evil has been more successful than
Alvin Plantinga's version of the "free-will defense." It is important to note at the
beginning that the free-will defense is not the same as the free-will theodicy.
Plantinga's free-will defense is a modest response to the logical problem of evil
aimed at showing simply that it is logically possible that an omnipotent and
omnibenevolent deity and evil both exist. Thus, the free-will defense does not
attempt to provide a positive, systematic accounting of how God and evil can be
reconciled, but simply an account that makes it plausible (or reasonable) to believe
that both God and evil exist. 22
Plantinga's strategy involves the attempt to demonstrate that there may be good
states of affairs G that do not include evil or entail evil but that God can still not
20 See below and Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1979), pp. 204ff.
21 See, for example, William Rowe, Philosophy of Religion, pp. 84-86.
22 For a response to Mackie within the context of an attempted theodicy, see Bruce Reichenbach,
Evil and a Good God, Chapters 4 and 5.
244
bring about without permitting evil. 23 What is needed for the free-will defense is
some description of such states of affairs that makes such states of affairs plausible,
and the descriptions must be consistent with the existence of God. Having free
will, Plantinga claims, means "being free with respect to some action," which
means that a person is free to perform the action or to refrain from performing the
action without having the matter determined by the combination of antecedent
causal laws and conditions present and operating upon the person at the moment. 24
Thus, since creatures with free will sometimes choose evil, evil must be permitted
in any world in which creatures with free will (and transworld depravity) exist.
Plantinga thus clearly adopts some version of incompatibilism. While the debate
between compatibilists and incompatibilists about the metaphysical nature of
human free will is certainly relevant here, any detailed examination of this dispute
is beyond the scope of this volume. 25 For our purposes, it is enough to point out
that Plantinga's free-will defense rests, as one might suspect from its title, upon a
particular understanding of free will. His complete account of the free-will defense
is more detailed and sophisticated than I can provide here; however, the basic
notion is that God cannot both create creatures with free will and also determine
how those creatures will act, since to be free and to act freely is simply to be and to
act without being determined by prior events or states of affairs. Furthermore, the
free-will defense maintains that it is plausible to believe that a world containing
creatures with free will is better than a world without such creatures. 26
However, a difficult problem still remains for Plantinga and for others who
might use the free-will defense. Even if God cannot cause free agents to always
choose the good, it is an empirical fact that free agents do sometimes choose the
good in this actual world; therefore, it seems that there could be some possible
world in which all the free agents do, in fact, always choose the good. As Mackie
again puts the challenge, "If God has made men such that in their free choices they
sometimes prefer what is good and sometimes what is evil, why could he not have
[made] men such that they always freely choose the good?,,27 It appears there
would be no evil resulting from the use of free will in that possible world;
therefore, if such a world is possible, why did God not choose to actualize that
possible world instead of this actual one, since God is omnipotent and
omnibenevolent? The force of this suggestion is provided by Leibniz's claim that
since God is omnipotent God could create any possible world at all. Leibniz, of
course, maintained that this is the best of all possible worlds, the existence of evil
notwithstanding. This objection to Plantinga's defense is based upon the claim that,
ifthere is a possible world in which creatures with free will would all choose freely
only good acts and God did not instantiate that possible world, then it appears that
God is either not omnipotent or not omnibenevolent.
Alvin Plantinga, ''The Free Will Defense," p. 271.

Ibid.
25 For responses to objections based upon the compatibilist view of free will, see Alvin Plantinga,
God and Other Minds, pp. 132-35.
26 See Alvin Plantinga, ''The Free Will Defense," pp. 271ff.
27 J. L. Mackie, "Evil and Omnipotence," p. 97.
23
24
245
LEIBNIZ'S LAPSE
There has been much contemporary debate concerning whether or not an

omnipotent, omnibenevolent, omniscient, and morally perfect God must create the
best possible world. Following Leibniz, some critics have answered this query in
the affirmative and insisted that such a God must create the best possible world.
Others have answered in the negative either by claiming that the notion of the best
possible world is meaningless or by accepting the notion of the best possible world
as meaningful but then denying that God is somehow metaphysically or morally
compelled to create such a world. 28 In Plantinga's version of the free-will defense,
he makes the dramatic move of departing from Leibniz by arguing that it is
possible that it is not within God's power to create a possible world in which there
is moral goodness but not moral evil. As Plantinga develops his claim, it becomes
clear that he intends this to be understood as a logical limitation upon God - the
kind of limitation Leibniz should have recognized. His failure to recognize the
possibility that God might not be able to instantiate every possible world is the
source of what Plantinga dubs "Leibniz' s Lapse. ,,29
It is difficult to provide a brief account of Plantinga's position here since there
are several rather central technical distinctions and definitions the explanation of
which would be quite lengthy.30 However, it is possible to capture the main thrust
of Plantinga's argument. Remember that, according to Plantinga, in order for a
person to act freely in respect to some action A, that person must act in such a way
that "no antecedent conditions and/or causal laws determine that he will perform
the action, or that he won't.,,3] If the action A is a morally significant action, then
moral consequences result from the person either performing or not performing A.
We must now imagine "a specific set of conditions" (the state of affairs S) which
contains all of the factors and circumstances under which the person P is able to
make a free choice in respect to the morally significant action A. Under these
conditions, if S obtains, P would perform A, or P would not perform A; so that P is
free with respect to performing A. If, in any possible world WI, where S obtains, P
freely chooses to perform A, then, Plantinga maintains, it would not be possible for
God to actualize a different possible world, W2, where S obtains and P freely
chooses not to perform A. The reason for this is that in order for God to actualize
such a world, the set of conditions necessary for P to act freely with respect to A
must be present, but, by hypothesis, when those conditions are present, P freely
28 See, for example, Robert M. Adams, "Must God Create the Best?" The Philosophical Review,
Vol. 99, 1990; Michael Quinn, "Mustn't God Create the Best?" The Journal of Critical Analysis, Vol. 5,
no. 1, 1973; Philip L. Quinn, "God, Moral Perfection, and Possible Worlds," in God: The
Contemporary Discussion, edited by Frederick Sontag and M. Darrol Bryant (New York: Rose of
Sharon Press, 1982); Bruce Reichenbach, "Must God Create the Best Possible World," International
Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 19, 1979; also as Chapter 6 of his Evil and a Good God (New York:
Fordham University Press, 1982); Richard Swinburne, "The Problem of Evil," in Reason and Religion,
edited by Stuart C. Brown (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1977); and Keith E. Yandell, Basic
Issues in the Philosophy ofReligion (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, Inc., 1971), p. 5Off.
29 Alvin Plantinga, '''The Free Will Defense," p. 282. Plantinga is not the only twentieth-century
writer to suggest that God could not create the best of all possible worlds. See Robert M. Adams, Ibid.,
pp. 131-55. For a reply to Adams, see Philip L. Quinn, Ibid., pp. 199-215. Both articles are reprinted in
The Problem of Evil, edited by Michael Peterson.
30 See Alvin Plantinga, "Free Will Defense," pp. 274-84.
31 Ibid., p. 271.
246
chooses to perform A. If God were to bring it about that P did not perform A in
W2, then P would not have acted freely, and S would not obtain in W2.32
Since A is a morally significant action with moral consequences, then
potentially we have an explanation for why it is possible that God must allow some
evil in some possible world. Hence, Leibniz's lapse. To complete the argument,
Plantinga suggests that it is possible that each person who performs morally
significant actions with moral consequences suffers from what he calls "trans world
depravity." The explicit definition of transworld depravity is a very technical one;33
however, the main idea behind the notion of transworld depravity is this: For any
person P that exists in this actual world W, where S obtains and P "goes wrong" in
respect to some morally significant action A in such a way that evil results, then in
some possible world W' in which P and S' exist, P would also "go wrong" in W' in
respect to A. Thus, in every possible world in which P exists and acts freely, P
goes wrong with respect to at least one morally significant action, and God cannot
actualize a world in which P exists and acts freely but only does good.
Furthermore, it is possible that every person suffers from trans world depravity, and
if this possibility were actual, then God could not actualize a possible world in
which the conditions for our choosing freely obtain and in which there is no moral
evil. Therefore, the free-will defense concludes, it is possible that God cannot
actualize a world in which there is some moral good (i.e., a world in which persons
are free to act in respect to morally significant actions that result in good) and no
moral evil. If this defense is successful, then it will have established that it is at
least reasonable to believe that (1) through (3) are logically consistent and the
logical problem of evil will be defeated. 34
Plantinga's version of the free-will defense has won wide acceptance to the
point that many contemporary theologians and philosophers maintain that this
response to the logical problem of evil has finally put the matter of this particular
challenge to theism to rest. However, Plantinga does have his detractors. For
example, Steven Boer has objected that Plantinga's free-will defense leaves
untouched the matter of natural evil. If God is omnipotent, Boer maintains, then
God could act to thwart the evilly intended actions of evil people to prevent any
evil actions from actually resulting in pain or suffering. So, he concludes, moral
evil really reduces to natural evil since it occurs because of the way in which God
chose to construct and maintain the natural universe. 35 Since some attempts by evil
people to act evilly fail in this actual world for various reasons (miscalculation,
luck, happenstance, or the like), it is easy to imagine that in some possible world
all such attempts to act evilly in respect to some action A might be unsuccessful
but the person acting would still act freely in respect to A. If Boer's suggestion of a
possible world in which evilly intended actions never actually result in evil (human
or animal pain or suffering) is an actualizable possible world, then this would be a
Ibid .. p. 279.
See Ibid., p. 283.
34 This version of Plantinga's free-will defense is applicable only to moral evil. Plantinga later
suggests that it is possible that natural evil might be explained by the evil deeds of Satan and other
demons. See Plantinga, Ibid., p. 58. Also see his The Nature of Necessity (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1974) pp. 191ff.
35 Steven Boer, "Is the Free Will Defense Irrelevant?" Analysis, Vol. 38, no.2, 1978, pp. 110-12
32
33
247
world, contra Plantinga's claim, in which there are moral agents who produce
moral goodness but do not produce any moral evil. 36
CONTEMPORARY MORAL THEORY AND EVIL
Can the world suggested by Boer be actualized? Lost in the debate surrounding
the free-will defense is any careful, detailed analysis of the contemporary
discussions of the nature of persons and free will. Some considerations from
contemporary moral theory about the nature of persons acting as moral agents
indicate that Boer's suggested world is not really a possible world in which persons
might exist and act freely.37 Surprisingly, very little attention has been devoted to
analyzing or developing the repercussions of contemporary moral theory upon the
free-will defense.
A consideration of several of the important distinctions and considerations that
Harry Frankfurt is responsible for introducing into contemporary moral theory will
help clarify the role and nature of human agency and thereby help illuminate what
is necessary in any possible world for human agents to make free choices. 38 Much
of Frankfurt's analysis of human agency and free will is based upon his very useful
distinction between first-order desires (which are simply things that we want or
desire) and second-order desires (which are the desires which we have concerning
our first order desires). First-order desires take as their objects actions that a moral
agent might want or desire (such as eating a piece of chocolate pie or a taking a
nap in the hammock). Second-order desires are the wants and desires that take as
their objects first-order desires. So an agent uses second-order desires to control,
rank, and prioritize first-order desires. For example, I may want to take a nap in the
hammock, but because I want to finish writing this book, I form a second-order
desire that "overrides" the simple first-order desire to take a nap in the hammock.
Thus, because of the desire to finish this book, though I wish to take a nap in the
hammock, I do not.
To understand how human free will operates, it is crucial to take note that it is
through second-order desires that an agent can will which desires are to be
efficacious and which ones are not to be efficacious. In other words, we all have
desires, some of which we act upon and some of which we do not act upon; thus,
the subset of desires that an agent wills into action are that person's second-order
volitions. It is the presence of and the efficacious force of second-order volitions
that, according to Frankfurt, allow human agents to act freely.39 The volitions that
motivate us to action are developed gradually over some period of time by noticing
the effects of our own actions as well as the actions of others. We critically reflect
upon our desires, observe the effects of past actions, and make judgments about the
possible effects of our future actions. On these bases, we will particular first-order
desires rather than other first-order desires to be motivating of our actions as
36 It is arguable whether immorality would exist in a world where people intended evil but never
produced it.
37 See James F. Harris and Margaret A. Watkins, "Persons, Freedom, and Evil" (unpublished
manuscript).
38 Harry Frankfurt, The Importance of What We Care About (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1988).
39 Ibid., pp. 18-19.
248
human agents. 40 For a rational person to develop and then freely use second-order
volitions to control his actions, the agent must have a set of experiences upon
which to reflect in order to develop an understanding of how different moral
actions produce different moral consequences. This explanation provides the best
rationale for how human agents come to understand rationally the consequences of
their actions. Consequently, if human beings are to be "significantly free" (in
Plantinga's terminology) and act so as to produce evil or good, then human beings
must be able to project inductively the consequences of their actions based upon
similar actions in their experience and human history. While this argument seems
to establish that the existence of some sort of evil is necessary for human agents to
act as rational moral agents, there is nothing in the present argument that speaks to
the necessity of the exact amount and variety of evil that actually exist in this
world.
MORAL AGENTS AND A WORLD WITH NO EVIL
Frankfurt's model of human agency is simply one model, but it is a very
appealing and defensible model that has gained wide acceptance among
contemporary moral philosophers. When Frankfurt's model is imposed upon the
free-will debate and, in particular, when it is imposed upon Boer's suggestion that
moral agents could will evil actions that never come into fruition or never produce
evil consequences because of divine intervention, we see that Boer's world is not a
possible world in which human agents, in the sense in which Frankfurt defines
them, could exist and act freely.
In Boer's world, in which there are never any evil consequences of any desires
whatsoever that an agent acts upon, no matter which second-order volitions the
agent develops, human agents could never be in a position to rationally develop
second-order desires, and human free will would be lost. 41 Boer maintains that
there could be a possible world in which there are morally good and morally bad
people exercising free will, but God simply intervenes in such a world in certain
miraculous ways to prevent the actions of the morally bad from ever resulting in
pain, or harm, or suffering. One response to Boer is to claim that in order for there
to be morally good and morally bad people, these people must rationally develop
second-order volitions that they freely use to motivate and control their behavior.
But arguably, if no volitions ever resulted in evil consequences and moral agents
never had a single experience of any behavior ever resulting in evil, then agents in
that world could not develop second-order volitions since they would then lack any
rational basis for reflective judgments to form those second-order desires and
volitions.
The possibilities, in such a world, that God could "zap" the requisite secondorder volitions into the minds of people directly or cleverly construct divinely
orchestrated miracles to preserve the illusion that it would make no difference
whether one formed good or evil second-order desires are clearly not compatible
40
41
Ibid., p. 17.
James F. Harris and Margaret A. Watkins, "Persons, Freedom, and Evil."
249
with a reasonable notion of free Will.42 Even if it were still possible for agents to
develop second-order volitions, it would not take very long for any reasonable
agent to figure out that it would not be rational to develop any second-order
volitions regarding evil desires, since such volitions would be universally thwarted
and frustrated. Under such conditions, a rational person would eventually give up
any volitions regarding evil desires, and if reason is to be the guide for developing
second-order volitions, people would then give up all evil desires. It is impossible
to see how the agents in Boer's world could be regarded as human moral agents
exercising free will; therefore, it appears that if the present analysis of human
agency and free will is at least a plausible one, then Plantinga is correct in
theorizing that it is possible that God could not create a world in which there are
human agents who act to produce moral good but no moral evil.
CARING AND NATURAL EVIL
Focusing upon the kinds of things that we human beings care about will provide
a possible way of extending Plantinga's free-will defense to natural evil as well.
Frankfurt is also responsible for focusing philosophical attention upon the
importance of the things that we care about as persons and the way in which the
things about which a person cares over a prolonged period of time - the things to
which a person devotes a significant amount of time and energy and resources become defining of that person. 43 The things about which a person cares deeply
and in which one invests oneself and to which one is devoted become a part of one
and one's self-identity. Human beings are human beings, at least in part, because
we freely choose to care about certain kinds of things, and, most importantly for
our considerations here, the kinds of things about which human beings care in this
world are things that are characterized by a certain amount of risk and uncertainty
that makes the caring person vulnerable to disappointment or loss if the object
about which the person cares is lost or damaged in some way. Pursuing a detailed
treatment of human caring is not possible here; however, the crucial relevance for
the free-will defense is the fact that the living things, inanimate objects, and
activities about which people care are all things that are vulnerable to loss, damage,
injury, disease, or death. Caring about things - living things, inanimate objects, and
activities alike - means that we invest time and energy and resources into proper
care and careful attention to promote or protect the thing's well-being.
In a world such as the one that Boer suggests, it appears that the things about
which we care mostly deeply in this world and which are defining of human beings
in this world would become not worth caring about. Our children, as well as others
about whom we care deeply, would never suffer any harm or other evil - either
moral or natural - of any kind regardless of whether we cared about them or not.
Similarly, if the kinds of inanimate objects about which we care in this world were
never lost, stolen, damaged, destroyed, or otherwise threatened in Boer's world, it
is difficult to understand how we would continue to care about such objects. In
such a world, it is impossible to understand how objects could retain any special
42 This provides some explanation for Frank Dilley's claim that Boer's world is incompatible with
"cognitive freedom." See Frank Dilley, "Is the Free Will Defense Irrelevant?" Religious Studies, Vol.
18, p.55.
43 Harry Frankfurt, The Importance of What We Care About, pp. 80-81.
250
significance to us. The same is true of the activities in which we engage. Natural
evils of some description seem to be necessary in any possible world in which
human beings are free to choose to care about things, and for human beings to care
about the particular kinds of things that we actually do care about in this actual
world, natural evils at least akin to those of this world seem to be necessary. For
example, the other people about whom we care must be vulnerable to some sort of
threat of harms that could result in some sort of failure, disappointment, injury, or
death. Otherwise, it is difficult to see in what our caring would consist. This
appears to be a much more reasonable way of extending the free-will defense to
natural evils than introducing the possibility of actions of Satan and other demons
as Plantinga does. As human agents, we form second-order volitions about the
things that we care about, and sometimes we freely choose to do good and
sometimes freely choose to do harm to those things about which we care. If the
present analysis is at least plausible, then it provides another avenue of support for
Plantinga's claim that it is possible that God could not create a world in which
there is moral good but not moral evil. For things to be of the nature such that we
care about them, they must be of a nature such that we care for them, and this
means that it is possible for harm to come to them as well as good.
Plantinga's development of the free-will defense has prompted a number of
different responses and raised a number of different considerations that cannot be
treated further here,44 and many of the issues are still heavily debated. However,
Plantinga's version of the free-will defense has gained wider acceptance than
previous attempts by theists to respond to the logical problem of evil. The defense
is obviously more directly applicable to moral evils, and the extension of the
defense to natural evils is more tenuous (since, for Plantinga, the extension to
natural evil involves the introduction of the possibility of theological claims);
however, I have suggested here what is perhaps a more plausible way of
accounting for the logical problem of why there are natural evils as well. If this
account is plausible, then it is logically possible that God could not have created a
world in which there are human moral agents who act freely to produce moral good
but in which there is no natural evil.
THE EVIDENTIAL PROBLEM OF EVIL
The far more challenging and intractable form of the problem of evil is what is
now commonly referred to as the evidential problem of evil, the contemporary
version of the traditional problem of evil. The evidential problem of evil, unlike the
logical problem, derives its force from the particular quantity, degree, and variety
of actual evils found in this world. Upon a thorough and careful examination of the
specific characteristics of evil in this world, the proponents of the evidential
44 See, for example, Michael Coughlan, "The Free Will Defense and Natural Evil," International
Journal for Philosophy of Religion, Vol. 20, 1986; Frank B. Dilley, "Is the Free will Defense
Irrelevant?" Religious Studies, Vol. 18; Robert McKim, "Worlds without Evil," International Journal
for Philosophy of Religion, Vol. 15, 1984; George Mavrodes, "Religion and the Queerness of Morality,"
in Rationality, Religious Belief and Moral Commitment: New Essays in the Philosophy of Religion,"
edited by Robert Audi and William Wainwright (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1986); and
Paul Moser, "Natural Evil and the Free Will Defense," International Journal for the Philosophy of
Religion, Vol. 15, 1984
251
problem of evil conclude that the existence of the particular quantity, degree, and
variety of evils in this actual world is evidence that constitutes reasonable grounds
for denying the existence of an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God. Thus, the
evidential problem of evil supposedly provides reasonable evidence whose
cumulative force is rationally to support the denial of the existence of God.
A complete presentation of the evidential problem of evil and an examination
and evaluation of its challenge to theism require a detailed examination of the
different claims that have been advanced concerning the existence of evil in this
world. The literature is replete with various detailed examples of horrific human
and animal pain and suffering, and I will certainly not attempt to be exhaustive in
the consideration of such examples. The treatment here must begin with some
mention of the treatment of the evidential problem of evil that Hume gives in the
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. Whereas A. N. Whitehead's claim that all
of Western philosophy is but a footnote to Plato might be suspect, it is certainly
very plausible to claim that the treatment of the evidential problem of evil in the
twentieth century is but a footnote to Hume. Even if this claim is disputed, it is
undeniable that Hume's way of casting the evidential problem of evil in Part X and
Part XI of his Dialogues has continued to provide the framework that structured
the discussion in the twentieth century. Hume's character, Philo, narrates a long
and varied list of the different ways in which "the curious artifices of nature" seem
peculiarly designed to torment and make miserable the life of "every living
creature.,,45 Philo insists that man is the source of many of the greatest evils and
even convinces Demea, who then enumerates his own list of calamities in this
world, including "a hospital full of diseases, a prison crowded with malefactors and
debtors, a field of battle strewed with carcasses, a fleet floundering in the ocean, a
nation languishing under tyranny, famine, or pestilence." 46
Another of the frequently cited examples of historic, horrific atrocities
frequently cited in the contemporary literature comes from Fyodor Dostoevsky's
The Brothers Karamazov, when Ivan is recounting to Alyosha the details of the
horrendous crimes committed by the Turks and the Circassians against the Slavs in
Bulgaria during the uprising in the nineteenth century:
They burn villages, murder, outrage women and children, they nail their
prisoners by the ears to the fences, leave them to morning, and in the morning
they hang them - all sorts of things you can't imagine .... These Turks took a
pleasure in torturing children, too; cutting the unborn child from the mother's
womb, and tossing babies up in the air and catching them on the points of their
bayonets before their mother's eyes. Doing it before the mother's eyes was what
gave zest to the amusement. Here is another scene that I thought very
interesting. Imagine a trembling mother with her baby in her arms, a circle of
invading Turks around her. They've planned a diversion; they pet the baby,
laugh to make it laugh. They succeed, the baby laughs. At that moment a Turk
points a pistol four inches from the baby's face. The baby laughs with glee,
45
46
Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, p. 59.

Ibid., p. 61.
252
holds out its little hands to the pistol, and he pulls the trigger in the baby's face
and blows out its brains. Artistic, wasn't it?47
A complete cataloging of all the different moral and natural evils that have been
cited by proponents of the evidential problem of evil is neither possible nor
necessary here. This brief sampling of such evils will serve to focus upon the issue
of the nature of the evidence included in the evidential problem of evil. This form
of the problem of evil insists that occurrences of the particular variety, quantity,
and degree of evils in this world create a strong prima facie case against the
existence of the omnipotent and ornnibenevolent deity of traditional theism and
constitute reasonable grounds for a rational person to reject the claim of the
existence of such a God.
The evidential problem of evil involves an argument that must contain some
factual description of the exact kind of evil that exists in this world. Much of the
dispute between atheists who use the evidential argument to attack the claim that
God exists and theists who defend the claim that God exists revolves around the
precise way in which the factual description of evil in the world is made. As we
shall see below, when the evidential problem of evil is formulated, much of the
dispute between theists and non-theists centers upon the crucial matter of whether
gratuitous or "extra" evil exists in this world that cannot be explained away or
reconciled with the existence of God by one of the many theodicies that are
designed to explain how the existence of evil serves some particular good purpose.
THE EVIDENTIAL ARGUMENT AND PROBABILITY THEORY
One of the developments that the evidential argument from evil has taken in the
twentieth century is the result of the use of the modern techniques of probability
theory. Wesley Salmon has constructed a disproof of the existence of God using
probability theory by reconstructing a version of the teleological argument from
design that includes omnibenevolence along with the usual metaphysical attributes
of God. When we consider the existence of excessive, gratuitous evil in the world
and compare the probability (in the sense of relative frequency) that such a world
resulted from the creative act of an omnibenevolent God with the probability that
the world resulted instead from completely naturalistic, mechanistic causes, belief
in God becomes unreasonable. So, on the basis of the design of this world with its
particular evils, a reasonable person must infer, Salmon concludes, that God does
not exist. 48
In response to Salmon, Bruce Reichenbach has constructed a detailed and
lengthy competing form of the evidential argument based upon the same use of
probability theory.49 The basis of Reichenbach's main response to Salmon is what
47 From the excerpt reprinted in Philosophy of Religion, edited by William L. Rowe and William J.
Wainwright, pp. 235-36.
48 See Wesley Salmon, "Religion and Science: A New Look at Hume's Dialogues," Philosophical
Studies, Vol. 33, 1978, pp. 143-76. For a theistic response, see Alvin Plantinga, "The Probabilistic
Argument from Evil," Philosophical Studies, Vol. 35, 1979, pp. 1-53. William Rowe has also
constructed a probabilistic version of the evideutial argument that is based upon Bayes's theorem. See
William Rowe, "The Evidential Problem of Evil: A Second Look," in The Evidential Argument from
Evil, edited by Daniel Howard-Snyder (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1996).
49 Bruce Reichenbach, Evil and a Good God, Chapter 2.
253
he claims is Salmon's narrow selection of data or evidence upon which to calculate

the probability of God's existence. Reichenbach claims that Salmon fails to
consider the evidence provided in the theistic defenses and theodicies, and that
Salmon fails to consider other possibilities that might exist for God's allowing evil.
Reichenbach concludes: ''That something is improbable on some evidence does not
entail that it is improbable on the total evidence.,,5o Also in response to Salmon,
Alvin Plantinga has attacked the lack of an objective standard for assigning
probabilities to statements and what he takes to be the effect of Salmon's atheistic
bias in assigning such probability. 51 Exploring more of the details of the use of
probability theory with the evidential argument from evil involves an examination
of the detailed technicalities of mathematical probability, relative frequency, and
Bayes's theorem (which are beyond the scope of this volume). Less technical
formulations of the evidential problem of evil serve to focus attention on the same
broad, general issues and the same challenge to theism.
THE PROBABILITY ARGUMENT
Paul Draper is responsible for developing a version of the evidential argument
that he traces back to Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (Part XI).
This version of the evidential argument differs significantly from other versions in
that it does not rely upon a premise according to which there are instances of evil
that God could have prevented but did not. Rather, Draper argues that as a
hypothesis to explain the existence of evil, theism does not fare as well as other
hypotheses. Specifically, Draper introduces what he calls the hypothesis of
indifference (HI):
HI. Neither the nature nor the condition of sentient beings on earth is the result
of benevolent or malevolent actions performed by nonhuman persons. 52
Following Draper's argument, if we let 0 stand for any observation of sentient
beings experiencing pain or pleasure and T stand for the hypothesis of theism that
the existence of God is the explanation for the experience of pain or pleasure, then
the probability that HI explains 0 is higher than the probability that T does. 53
Draper argues that given the biologically useful roles that pain and pleasure play in
the natural world in prompting "organic systems" toward certain goals, 0 would be
natural and expected on the basis of HI. However, given the claims of T, 0 would
appear to be unnatural and surprising. The explanation of 0 on the basis of T
requires extensive and sometimes contorted additional premises and ad hoc
adjustments to T. Thus, he concludes, HI is more probable than T, all other
evidence being equal, and is hence more reasonable for a person to believe.54
Ibid., p. 40.
Alvin Plantinga, 'The Probabilistic Argument from Evil," Philosophical Studies, Vol. 35, 1979.
52 Paul Draper, "Pain and Pleasure: An Evidential Problem for Theists," Nous, Vol. 23, 1989,
reprinted in The Evidential Argument from Evil, edited by Daniel Howard-Snyder, p. 13.
53 Ibid., pp. 13-19.
54 For a rather lengthy and detailed critique of Draper that challenges his assignment of probability
to HI and T, see Peter van Inwagen, "Reflections on the Chapters by Draper, Russell, and Gale," in The
Evidential Argumentfrom Evil, edited by Daniel Howard-Snyder, pp. 219-34. Van Inwagen argues that
since we cannot know the antecedent probabilities of HI and T, then Draper's argument fails; however,
50
51
254
Draper is properly skeptical that it will be possible to show that T is more

probable than HI, since T is a much more specific claim than is HI, particularly in
that T has a very specific supernatural and ontological commitment. 55 However,
the probability that we are to assign to HI or T and the kind of probability
according to which HI has a greater probability than T is epistemic probability,
Draper tells US. 56 And, as Draper is aware, epistemic probability may vary from
person to person according to the epistemic position of different persons. Draper
assumes that theists and non-theists alike are in a kind of naive, epistemic position
in regards to HI and T where we have not committed epistemically to either one. If
such a position is possible and if we can imagine ourselves in such a position, then
Draper is right that on the sheer force of the considerations of HI and T and 0, HI
would deserve a higher probability than T and be more reasonable. However, there
will always be additional knowledge that influences the epistemic position from
which a person is making a judgment concerning the relative probability of HI and
T. The success of showing that 0 is more probable on the basis of HI than it is on
T and that we thus have a prima facie reason for rejecting T, since HI and T are
inconsistent, will always appeal to those in a certain epistemic situation. Theists
might well rely upon other "knowledge claims" or beliefs about the status of their
epistemic position to override the attempt to show that 0 is more probable on the
basis of HI than it is on T. The theist might continue to resort to what appear to be
more and more tenuous and more and more ad hoc additional claims to T, but since
the probability in question is epistemic probability, there is little the nontheist
might do to dissuade the theist from this process or persuade the theist of the
greater epistemic probability of HI.
ROWE AND THE EVIDENTIAL PROBLEM OF EVIL
One of the best-known formulations of the evidential problem of evil is the one
developed by William Rowe who, takes the abundance of human and animal
suffering as paradigmatic of the kind of evil that provides prima facie reasonable
evidence against the existence of the God of theism. Rowe formulates the
argument as follows:
1. There exist instances of intense suffering that an omnipotent, omniscient
being could have prevented without thereby losing some greater good or
permitting some evil equally bad or worse.
2. An omniscient, wholly good being would prevent the occurrence of any
intense suffering it could unless it could not do so without thereby losing
some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse.
Therefore,
if we agree that the antecedent probability of HI is very high, then it is reasonable to believe that the
probability of HI is greater that the probability of T, whatever those probabilities might be.
55 Paul Draper, "Pain and Pleasure: An Evidential Problem for Theists," p. 25.
56 Ibid., p. 14.
255
3. There does not exist an omnipotent, omniscient, wholly good being. 57

The second premise of the evidential argument has proven rather
noncontroversial. There might be a few quibbles about the exact wording of the
premise; however, few theists would want to deny some version of premise two,
although much does depend upon exactly how it is interpreted. Certainly, theists
would not want to admit the existence of a deity who would create or permit
abundant and intense human and animal pain and suffering "for no good reason" or
'~ust for the fun of it." On the other hand, certain conditions of the world (e.g.,
general laws of nature) might result in the existence of "extra" evil in the world in
such a way so that a particular evil might not result in some particular greater good
but might be necessary or allowable because of some general feature of the
universe which makes the universe, in general, a better one. 58 Premise (2) seems to
impose upon God the necessity to bring about whatever purposes he might have for
the world with the minimal amount of evil consistent with those purposes. We
would expect any limited, finite human moral agent to prevent any evil within his
or her power to prevent if doing so would not result in some greater evil or prohibit
some greater good. If we expect as much of human agents, then surely we would
expect at least as much from an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God.
GRATUITOUS EVIL AND GOD
Because (2) has proven to be noncontroversial, the dispute surrounding the
evidential problem of evil has centered mainly upon the first premise, and there has
been much disagreement concerning this premise. The critical issue surrounding
the truth of the first premise is the factual claim that it makes about this world:
namely, that there is an excessive amount or degree of evil - extra, gratuitous, or
meaningless evil - evil which cannot be morally '~ustified." This claim is
represented as a factual claim about the world, but we must begin by recognizing
that there is a significant level of abstraction contained in the claim. I will leave
aside here any questions that might arise from the philosophy of mind involving
the mindlbody problem and the epistemological issues about how and with what
degree of certainty we can be aware of another person's pain or suffering. Let us
grant, for the sake of argument, that there are indisputable cases of human and
animal pain and suffering.
The first premise says that there exist instances of pain and suffering that are
preventable by an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God in such a way so as not to
reduce or prevent some other greater good, but surely we do not observe that there
are such evils and that there is such a God and that God could have prevented those
evils. Since the conclusion of the evidential argument is that such a God does not
exist, then of course we cannot observe such a God failing to prevent evils that he
57 William Rowe, "The Problem of Evil and some Varieties of Atheism," American Philosophical
Quarterly, Vol. 16, no. 4, 1979. Reprinted in Philosophy of Religion: Selected Readings, edited by
William Rowe and William Wainwright, p. 243. An earlier version of this argument appears in Rowe,
Ibid., p. 87.
58 See, for example, William Hasker, "The Necessity of Gratuitous Evil," Faith and Philosophy,
Vol. 9, no. 1, 1992.
256
should have prevented. If we do not observe the fIrst premise to be true, then in
what sense is it a factual claim about the world?
There are many claims about the world that we regard as factual but which are
not the result of direct observation. Science is full of such claims. The fIrst premise
of the evidential argument is intended as descriptive of the world, but it is inferred
on the basis of direct observation. The proponents of the evidential argument claim
that we have reasonable and convincing evidence to support the fIrst premise in
much the same way as we might accumulate reasonable and convincing evidence
to support scientifIc laws that are inductively inferred on the basis of the data from
direct observations. Since the first premise is not the report of an immediate
observation, then some judgment must be involved in order to make the claim.
Even if that judgment is supported by what the proponents of the evidential
argument take to be very strong evidence, the fact that some judgment is involved
leaves open the opportunity for disagreement and interpretation. It is this part of
the argument that theists consider to be its weakest point.
THE PROBLEM OF DISTINGUISHING NECESSARY AND GRATUITOUS
EVIL
One objection to the fIrst premise of the evidential argument comes from Peter
van Inwagen, who argues that the use of this premise trades upon the unwarranted,
implicit assumption that there is an exact amount of evil that is necessary for each
greater good resulting from God's permitting that amount of evil. Van Inwagen
claims that it is impossible to specify the amount of evil necessary for a certain
greater good beyond which any additional evil would be gratuitous. Suppose, van
Inwagen suggests, God wished to create an impressively tall prophet (who would
presumably command respect from other people because of his height).59 How tall
would such a prophet have to be? Would there be an absolute minimum height
such a prophet would have to attain in order to command the attention and respect
that he would need in order to carry out God's wishes? Van Inwagen claims that
there would be no such specifIc minimum height just as there would be no specifIc
minimum fIne to be a deterrent to illegal parking; $24.99 might serve just as
effectively as a deterrent as $25.00. 60 Thus, he claims, since there is no specifIc
point at which necessary evil can be separated and distinguished from gratuitous
evil, "one cannot argue that God is unjust or cruel for not 'getting by with less
evil. ",61
Admittedly we human beings are not in a position to specify exactly how much
evil might be necessary in order for a certain greater good to occur, but van
Inwagen also claims that there is a metaphysical vagueness about such matters so
that even God is not in a position to know this. The kind of vagueness that van
Inwagen suggests seems to be the result more of the complexity of this world than
anything else. If we imagined a much more simple world in which only a very
limited number of sentient beings exist and in which only a small number of evils
and goods exist and in which evils and goods were experienced only within a very
59 Peter van Inwagen, "The Magnitude, Duration, and Distribution of Evil," in Peter van Inwagen,
God, Knowledge, and Mystery (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1995).
60 Ibid.
61 Ibid.
257
narrow range, then our ability to specify the exact amount of evil necessary for
each greater good would increase significantly. God apparently should be able to
bring about his purposes in such a world with "a minimum amount of evil" and
without admitting the "massive irregularity" about which van Inwagen is
concerned. Since God is omnipotent, God should have the knowledge of this world
- no matter how complex it is and no matter how many people and how many evils
and goods there may be - to make the distinction between necessary evil and
gratuitous evil easily.
Also, even if there is some inherent logical vagueness in the greater goods for
which evil is necessary, that might prevent even God from drawing the line
between necessary and gratuitous evil, such vagueness would then simply mean
that neither we nor God could draw the distinction between necessary and
gratuitous evil exactly and precisely. Such vagueness would surely not mean that
the distinction could not be made at all - even at the extremes. Van Inwagen
recognizes as much. 62 While we may not be able to say that a fine of $25.00 for
illegal parking is unjust when a fine of $24.99 would do just as well as a deterrent,
we could certainly say that a law prescribing beheading for illegal parking was
unjust when a fine of $24.99 would do just as well as a deterrent. The evidential
argument does not require us to draw the distinction between necessary and
gratuitous evil at the precise point of difference in each case. It simply requires us
to be able to make a reasonable judgment about the distinction in some cases, and
we can certainly resort to the extreme cases in order to do that. The dispute
between the proponents of the evidential argument and theists is not over the fine
distinction between necessary and gratuitous evil that hinges upon minute
differences in pain and suffering for a significantly small number of people. 63
Admittedly, in this world, some evil is sometimes obviously and directly
necessary for a greater good. Perhaps the dentist's drill, the surgeon's knife, and
the inoculation needle are uncontroversial examples. What are the best cases that
can be made for "observed," factual cases of gratuitous evil? We might point to
prolonged, intense suffering of children from fatal diseases or similar suffering
brought about by natural disasters of one kind or another. Traditional theistic
responses to these examples of evil might involve appealing to the doctrine of
original sin, according to which no human beings are completely innocent, or the
theory of fallen angels whereby natural evils are God's punishment for their
sinfulness. Now these doctrines are clearly theistic doctrines, and if the basic claim
of theism - the existence of God - is in doubt, then a fortiori, these other doctrines
will be as well. Appealing to such "higher order" theistic doctrines is a classic
example of the "bootstrap" method of begging the question and cannot work within
natural theology. Still, if one of the purposes of the evidential argument is to
demonstrate the non-existence of God, is it possible to elaborate upon the argument
in such a way as to make even the suggested expanded versions of theism
untenable?
Ibid., p. 104.
Van Inwagen's own theodicy for the enonnity of pain and suffering of this world is that it is
God's purpose to have human beings realize what a hideous mess we have made of the world by our
own standards by being separated from God. See van Inwagen, Ibid., pp. 109ff.
62
63
258
ANIMAL SUFFERING AND GOD

As implausible as the doctrines of original sin and fallen angels might be to
nontheists, such doctrines do serve to provide plausible avenues for making theism
consistent for believers, even if it is at the expense of adding additional ad hoc
hypotheses. But what about animal suffering? Animals do not have souls,
according to traditional theism, and are thus not deserving of punishment for some
original sin; nor are they likely candidates for the soul-making improvements
suggested by John Hick (discussed later in this chapter). William Rowe has
constructed a story of animal suffering, that has become so well known and so
much discussed that it deserves to be told in its entirety here:
Suppose in some distant forest lightning strikes a dead tree, resulting in a forest
fire. In the fire a fawn is trapped, horribly burned, and lies in terrible agony for
several days before death relieves its suffering. So far as we can see, the fawn's
intense suffering is pointless. For there does not appear to be any greater good
such that the prevention of the fawn's suffering would require either the loss of
that good or the occurrence of an evil equally bad or worse. Nor does there seem
to be any equally bad or worse evil so connected to the fawn's suffering that it
would have had to occur had the fawn's suffering been prevented.64
This account of the suffering fawn appears to be an example of pointless,
gratuitous evil. Now it is important to add some qualifier, such as the fawn's
suffering "appears" to be gratuitous, because as Rowe himself admits, there might
be some greater good of which we humans are unaware and will forever remain
unaware for which the fawn's suffering is necessary.65
If the first premise of the evidential problem of evil is understood as requiring a
demonstration of the universal and definitive claim that there is no present or
future greater good for which the suffering of the fawn is necessary, then, of
course, no one can prove conclusively that such a general, metaphysical claim is
true. The only way in which Rowe and the other proponents of the evidential
argument can demonstrate that premise one is true is to consider different
instantiations of the general claim and then demonstrate that each of those
instantiations is true. The story of the suffering fawn is constructed as a particularly
convincing and troublesome instantiation of the first premise of the evidential
argument.
WHAT CAN HUMAN BEINGS KNOW?
While it is clear that we are not in a position to determine that (l)is true as a
general metaphysical claim, the assumption is that we are in a position to
determine that particular instantiations of premise one are true or false. However,
one might reasonably raise the question of whether we are in a position to make
such determinations for individual cases. Indeed, some theists have seized upon
this exact point to argue that, as limited, finite human beings, we can never really
64 William Rowe, "The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism," American Philosophical
Quarterly, Vol. 16, no. 4, 1979. Reprinted in Philosophy of Religion: Selected Readings, edited by
William Rowe and William Wainwright, p. 245.
65 Ibid.
259
be sure that we understand very much at all about how and why God might make
or allow things to happen as they do. For example, Stephen Wykstra has objected
that there is a major epistemological gap between what we human beings know and
what an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God might know about the "grand plan"
of the universe. 66 If God had some reason for permitting the suffering of the fawn
for some greater good, Wykstra contends, it is not reasonable to think that humans
would know what that reason might be; therefore, the mere fact that something
"appears" to us human beings to be a case of needless suffering carries no
evidential weight. William Alston echoes Wykstra with a similar claim. Alston
emphasizes that the first premise of the evidential argument is a negative
existential claim; it denies that there are any legitimate reasons God might have for
permitting certain instances of evil to exist. 67 For the first premise to be true, it
must exclude all possible "live options" that God might have for causing or
permitting evil to exist, and according to Alston, there may be a wide range of such
live options that might vary from case to case. We must consider not just a single
theodicy and the particular reason or reasons that it might claim God has for evil,
but we must consider the whole range of theodicies and the whole range of reasons
God might have in particular cases of eviL 68 When we undertake such an inquiry,
we find ourselves in too much of a disadvantaged and limited epistemic position
ever to be able to say with confidence what God's reasons might or might not be in
particular circumstances. 69
One might rely upon deep theological convictions about the perfect goodness of
God to maintain that there must always be some greater good for which the
suffering of the fawn was necessary even if we humans can never hope to know or
understand that greater good. Such a response seems to hinge either upon the
religious belief that God must be of a different nature from human beings and we
can never hope to understand that nature or upon the belief that, though God's
nature is similar to that of human beings, his reasons for allowing suffering can
never be known. In either case, as the claim goes, any possible understanding of
why evil exists is precluded by the "hiddenness" of God. 7o
The point of the fawn story is not intended to prove that the first premise of the
evidential argument is true. In fact, if we add to Rowe's fawn story the fact that, in
order to be assured of being completely gratuitous, the fawn's suffering must be
unobserved or unknown to human beings, then, of course, we can never say for
66 Stephen Wykstra, ''The Human Obstacle to Evidential Arguments from Suffering: On Avoiding
the Evils of Appearance," International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, VoL 16, 1984. For Rowe's
response, see his "Evil and the Theistic Hypothesis: A Response to Wykstra," in the same volume.
67 William P. Alston, "The Inductive Problem from Evil and the Human Cognitive Condition," in
Philosophical Perspectives, edited by James E. Tomberlin (Atascadero, CA: Ridgeview Publishing
Company, 1991). Reprinted in The Evidential Argumentfrom Evil, edited by Daniel Howard-Snyder,
pp.102-03.
68 Ibid., pp. 104-119.
69 Notice that such a response is not appropriate to a formulation of the evidential argument from
evil such as Paul Draper's, which does not rely upon a premise to the effect that there are occurrences of
evil that are inconsistent with the existence of God. See above and Paul Draper, ''The Skeptical Theist,"
in The Evidential Argument from Evil, edited by Daniel Howard-Snyder, pp. 178ff.
70 For a detailed argument that the "hiddenness" of God is actually evidence against theism, see J. L.
Schellenberg, Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1993).
260
certain that such an event as the fawn's suffering actually has ever taken place. 71
The point of the evidential argument is that it is reasonable to believe that such
instances of gratuitous suffering have taken place and do take place in the world,
and it is reasonable to believe that an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God could
have prevented these instances of gratuitous suffering without losing some greater
good or preventing some greater evil. 72 Therefore, it is a mistake to impose upon
the proponents of the evidential argument the burden of proving that the argument
is demonstrably sound - that the two premises are demonstrably true. It is enough
if the proponents of the argument can demonstrate that it is more reasonable to
believe the premises are true than it is to believe they are not true. The argument is
arguably sound if it is more reasonable to believe the premises than it is not to
believe them. Since the second premise is noncontroversial, the matter then comes
down to whether it is more reasonable to believe the first premise is true or
whether it is more reasonable to believe the first premise is not true.
RESPONSES TO THE EVIDENTIAL PROBLEM
There have been two avenues of response that theists have taken to the
evidential problem of evil in the twentieth century. First, some theists, most
prominently perhaps Alvin Plantinga, have responded by rejecting the entire
enterprise of natural theology from which the evidential problem of evil arises. In
developing his theory of "Reformed epistemology," Plantinga maintains that the
approach of natural theology that bases religious beliefs solely upon "evidence"
and "logical arguments" is misguided. Some religious beliefs, according to
Plantinga and other reformed epistemologists, are "properly basic"; beliefs that are
epistemologically basic are in no need of justification based upon evidence or
argumentation at all. As such, religious beliefs might be comparable, Reformed
epistemologists claim, to our belief in the existence of the external world or our
belief in the past. The result of the strategy of the Reformed epistemologist is to
avoid completely any sort of response to the evidential problem of evil since, if
religious belief in the existence of the God of traditional theism is properly basic,
then it is epistemologically independent of any arguments or propositional
evidence that might support that belief or count as evidence against it (see the
discussion in Chapter IV).
The second, more traditional avenue of response to the challenge of the
evidential problem of evil involves attempting to provide some convincing
explanation for the existence of evil in the world. Given the abundance of apparent
gratuitous evil in human and animal history, the theist is faced with the task of
providing a convincing and plausible general rationale that will account for every
single apparent instance of gratuitous evil. Thus, the burden of proof for theists
responding to the evidential problem of evil is significantly higher than for
responding to the logical problem of evil. To successfully defray the force of the
deductive, logical problem and its claim for a logical contradiction, the theist need
not develop a positive account of evil, but rather, as we have seen with the case of
71 If the fawn's suffering is observed or later made known to some human being, then it is easy to
imagine a situation in which some greater good might conceivably be a result of the suffering.
72 See William Rowe, 'The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism" in Rowe and
Wainwright, Philosophy of Religion: Selected Readings, op. cit., pp. 245-46.
261
Plantinga's free-will defense, simply provide an account of a possible reason that

explains why the logical argument does not go through. Against the evidential
problem of evil the theist must provide some positive account that is consistent
with traditional theism to explain the presence of the exact amount, scope, variety,
and degree of evil that we find in this world. This is the task undertaken by those
theists who have attempted to develop and defend a particular theodicy, and there
have been some notable attempts by twentieth-century philosophers of religion to
introduce some new variations upon older theodicies in an attempt to respond to
the evidential problem of evil.
There have been many different attempts to provide theodicies in defense of
theism, and I will not attempt to discuss all of those here. 73 I will focus here only
upon those theodicies that attracted the most attention in the contemporary
literature in ways that have resulted in either some significantly new developments
in the theodicy or some significantly new and different interpretation or changes of
emphasis in traditional theodicies.
GREATER GOODS AND EVIL
The most common way in which theists have attempted to respond to the
evidential problem of evil has been in terms of giving accounts that explain or
justify evil as necessary for producing some "greater good." Whatever the greater
good is identified to be, it is claimed that evil is necessary in order for that good to
exist and that the good is of such a nature that it "outweighs" the evil necessary for
that good to obtain. Such theodicies have thus become generally known as "greater
good theodicies." Human free will is considered by some to be one such greater
good for which some argue evil is necessary; thus, the free-will theodicy is a
greater good theodicy. I will begin by treating the greater good theodicy that
proffers as the greater good the benefits that are to be gained in terms of character
development. Let us begin with examples of ordinary, "everyday," garden-variety
evils such as toothaches or indigestion. Surely we might treat these "evils" as
simply useful symptoms of greater evils or warnings that cause us to change our
behavior to avoid greater evils. Even if a person suffers some very serious,
debilitating, or fatal disease or injury, the person might be, in some sense, made the
better for it. In fact, there are regular public reports of people who serve as
courageous and heart-warming role models who face such adversities with great
equanimity. So both the individual who suffers and others who become aware of
that person's suffering might be made the better for the suffering.
Such claims about the benefits of pain and suffering are sometimes based upon
the distinction between first- and second-order goods and evils. Certain character
traits, such as patience and courage, and acts of patience and courage seem to be
possible only because there are evils that occur on a "lower level." Only by
suffering in some fashion, the argument goes, can one manage to suffer patiently or
73 Traditional responses to the evidential problem of evil and contemporary variations upon those
traditional responses are chronicled in many places including Charles Taliaferro. Contemporary
Philosophy of Religion (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1998) pp. 305-49; Michael Peterson, William
Hasker, Bruce Reichenbach. and David Basinger, Reason and Religious Belief~: An Introduction to the
Philosophy of Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 131-41. Also see John Hick, Evil
and the God of Love (New York: Harper and Row, 1966).
262
heroically. Only if others suffer can a person develop compassion for their
suffering, and only if one is wronged can one forgive. So these higher character
traits, or virtues, require some pain and suffering in the world - even pain and
suffering for innocent people.
WHO SUFFERS FOR WHOM?
Can this response address the unspeakable evils visited upon the Slavs by the
Turks described by Dostoevsky in the passage above? Surely the bayoneted fetus
and its murdered mother and the baby whose brains are blown out are not
somehow made to be better persons by what happens to them. How could an
omnipotent and omnibenevolent God permit such evils to be perpetrated upon such
apparent innocents? And how could such atrocious evils be necessary for some
greater goods? Maybe, a theist might suggest, one of the Turk soldiers, maybe even
the exact one who bayoneted the fetus, will have a "change of heart" because of
this incident and become a better person who then does great good for all of
humankind. Although the suffering and death of the fetus and the mother were
undoubtedly evil, perhaps such evil was necessary to bring about the change in the
Turk's character that later resulted in much greater good for a much larger number
of people. A similar sort of response might occur concerning the suffering and
death of innocent children brought about by natural disasters. By their suffering,
others who witness or otherwise learn of this evil might be brought to do great
service to the needy. A similar response might be offered as an explanation of the
millions of Jews and gypsies tortured and murdered by the Nazis in Europe
preceding and during World War II. After all, even the motto "Never again"
receives its moral and political force from the fact that the Holocaust did, in fact,
happen.
It is one thing to suggest that a person's own suffering might be necessary as a
significant factor in that individual's moral development, but it is quite a different
thing to suggest that the suffering of other people might be necessary for that
individual's development. The bayoneted baby was certainly not made better by its
death, nor were the millions of innocent Jews and gypsies murdered by the Nazis
made better by their own deaths. The matter of who suffers for whose possible gain
is a crucial one. Richard Swinburne has maintained that God has the "right to
inflict harm" on innocent people. 74 Since God, as creator, was responsible for
deciding what kind of agents to make of human beings, he could not consult
humans at the time or gain our consent. Since God is "the author of our being," he
has special rights over human beings that other human beings do not have?5
Swinburne argues that God's right to inflict suffering upon innocent people is
somewhat analogous to the right that a parent might have to allow one child to
suffer "somewhat" for the spiritual benefit of another child. 76 However, the
quantity and degree of pain and suffering and the death of innocents in this world
are strongly disanalogous to the suggestion in Swinburne's analogy. Can a theist
consistently explain the bayoneted fetus and the baby whose brains are blown out
Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), p. 216.
Tbid., p. 217. Swinburne claims that God has similar "rights" to inflict harm upon nonhuman
animals.
74
75
76
Tbid.
CONTEMPORARY CHALLENGES TO TIIEISM: EVIL AND SUFFERING
263
in such a fashion? How can such unspeakable incidents be reasonably understood

as the result of the "right" that an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God has to
inflict harm on human beings? Since God is also supposed to be a personal God,
each individual is supposed to be equally valuable to God. The issue which the
theist must address (and which is frequently avoided) is whether it is consistent for
an omnibenevolent and omnipotent and personal God to use one person's suffering
in a completely crass, utilitarian fashion in order to promote good for another
person or even a large group of other people. Does this mean that God must be the
ultimate utilitarian? Such a suggestion seems inconsistent with God's nature as a
personal God who loves not simply the species, homo sapiens, but individual
human beings.
THE VALE OF SOUL-MAKING THEODICY
An ancient theodicy that has been revived and revitalized in contemporary times
is the Irenaean theodicy of Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons (c. 130-202). Genesis 1:26
reports that God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness," and
Irenaeus seized upon the difference between "the image of God" and "the likeness
of God." He interpreted the process of being made in the image of God as the
process of man's creation by God with a physical body and with certain cognitive,
emotional, and moral abilities that make us capable of a relationship with God. The
process of being made in the likeness of God was understood as an ongoing
process of developing spiritual perfection, the goal of the divinely created telos of
our species.77
John Hick adopts and adapts Irenaeus's notion of continuous creation whereby
creation is understood not as a single act that was completed at some point, but
rather as a continuing process whereby human beings become more and more
"godlike" - more and more "in the likeness of God" - by becoming more and more
spiritually perfect. According to Hick, the first stage of human creation was the
stage described in Genesis when God gave man a physical body, free will, and a
rational and morally responsible nature. The second stage is the moral development
of the character given to man in the first stage of creation. God cannot simply make
men spiritually perfect but must slowly and gradually lead them as "free and selfdirecting" creatures to become spiritually perfect "children of God.,,78 For Hick,
"becoming" children of God through our own "self-directed" efforts and responses
to various trials and tribulations is "richer and more valuable" than simply being
created by God in such a perfect spiritual state ab initio. 79 If we assume "a
Christian conception" for the creation of the world, then, Hick suggests, "the
problem of evil" should be cast in a different manner:
... the question that we have to ask is not, Is this the kind of world that an allpowerful and infinitely loving being would create as an environment for his
human pets? or, Is the architecture of the world the most pleasant and
convenient possible? The question that we have to ask is rather, Is this the kind
77 See Against Heresies, V., vi. I and John Hick, Evil and the God of Love (New York: Harper and
Row, 1966)pp. 217 ff.
78 John Hick, Ibid., p. 29l.
79 Ibid.
264
of world that God might make as an environment in which moral beings may be
fashioned, through their own free insights and responses into 'children. of
God,?80
According to the soul-making theodicy, when philosophers and theologians
investigate and try to understand the existence of human suffering in the world, we
should understand that this world is not intended by God to be a paradise where
nothing ever goes wrong but is a spiritual "proving ground" where our immortal
souls are perfected for union with God. Again, Hick says,
... we have to recognize that the presence of pleasure and pain cannot be the
supreme and overriding end for which the world exists. Rather, this world must
be a place of soul-making. And its value is to be judged, not primarily by the
quantity of pleasure and pain occurring in it at any particular moment, but by its
fitness for its primary purpose, the purpose of soul-making. 81
Moral evil, as well as pain and suffering resulting from the assortment of moral
and natural evils of this world, is an occasion for human beings to grow spiritually
and to become more godlike, according to this theodicy. In the afterlife, God will
redeem all who have suffered by providing a "common good" enjoyed by all and
viewed by all as justifying their suffering. 82
RESPONSES TO THE SOUL-MAKING THEODICY
Hick's development ofthe Irenaean theodicy into the notion of soul-making has
enjoyed a fair amount of currency with contemporary philosophers of religion, but
there are several insurmountable problems for this attempt at a general theodicy.
First of all, it must be pointed out that Hick's notion of soul-making requires an
agreement to assumptions that expand the initial commitments of "basic theism."
One must not only agree to the existence of an omnipotent and omnibenevolent
creator but also to the existence of immortal souls, the existence of an afterlife, and
the existence of a continued state of existence qualified by a system of reward and
punishment that is conditioned by events in this lifetime. These added assumptions
represent a significant expansion of the basic disagreement between the theist and
the atheist concerning the existence of God and evil. Without any additional
arguments or empirical support for such claims, Hick's "soul-making" must be
seen as a speculative, theological response that presumably must be accepted solely
on grounds of faith. Such a theodicy will have little appeal to anyone who does not
already share Hick's particular version of the Christian faith.
However, even within the expanded theistic tradition that Hick assumes, there
are serious difficulties with the soul-making theodicy. First, there is the matter of
animal suffering. Non-human animals have no immortal souls and are not moral
agents, according to traditional theism, so their suffering cannot be to develop their
souls or to make them more perfect spiritually. Hick indicates that he is aware of
Ibid., p. 293.
Ibid., p. 295.
82 Ibid., p. 377.
80
8t
265
this problem, but he fails to provide an adequate solution to it. Appealing to an

outdated anthropocentric view of the place of human beings in nature, Hick
maintains that the rest of the animal kingdom as well as all of nature are simply a
backdrop of a "stream of organic life" that exists for the sake of human beings.
Other animal life provides the opportunity for human beings freely to overcome the
"epistemic distance" between themselves and God and freely choose to try to be
more perfect, spiritual creatures. 83 In other words, having other animals around
who suffer is supposed to make human beings realize that they too are ungodly and
are simply beings in the natural world as well. This realization re-enforces the
"epistemic distance" between human beings and God and creates the situation
where human beings can then freely choose to "close the gap" between themselves
and God by attempting to be more perfectly developed spiritual souls. 84 Thus,
according to Hick, animal suffering is justified because it contributes indirectly to
the situation within which soul-making can take place. But this straightforward
utilitarian treatment of animals surely will not do. First of all, it would require a
gross insensitivity to animal suffering on the part of an omnipotent and
omnibenevolent creator to choose this way of encouraging soul-making. This
response does not address at all the enormous amount of animal suffering which
took place in the animal world before human beings existed, and if we think back
to William Rowe's story of the death of the fawn in the forest fire, this response
does not address the apparent excessive amount of suffering in the animal world
that appears to have no purpose and bear no relation to human beings at all.
There is also the matter of dysteleological suffering. It is simply a matter of
well-established empirical fact that many individuals suffer in horrific ways and
then die deaths of great agony with no suggestion of any redemptive spiritual
consequences at all. Hick recognizes several such kinds of cases involving birth
defects, childhood diseases, and degenerative diseases that slowly rob a person of
whatever noble and spiritual nature he or she might once have had. In such
situations, there is arguably no improvement to anyone's spiritual soul but only "a
ruthlessly destructive process that is utterly inimical to human values.,,8s
THE SUFFERING OF INNOCENTS
We are back to the question of why there is such an abundance of what appears
from a reasonable perspective to be gratuitous, excessive evil in the world that
serves no good purpose of preserving a greater good or preventing a greater evil.
Some of the best-known and most difficult cases of excessive suffering by
innocents are suggested by Roland Puccetti: the case of the trapped rabbit, the case
of the infant toddler, the case of the cancer patient, and the case of the brilliant
pianist. 86 In each of these cases, completely innocent creatures suffer in ways
83 According to Hick, the existence of pain and suffering in the world - including animal pain and
suffering - contributes to an epistemologically uncertain situation in which human beings must rely
upon faith to be assured of God's existence, since the world does not provide the kind of evidence that
would allow us to know that God exists by the exercise of human reason.
84 Ibid., pp. 351-52.
85 Ibid., p. 366.
86 See Roland Puccetti, "The Loving God: Some Observations on Hick's Theodicy," Religious
Studies, VoL 2, 1967. Reprinted in The Problem of Evil, edited by Michael L. Peterson, to which the
page numbers here refer, pp. 232-33.
266
which appear to be either extremely disproportionate or completely unnecessary

for Hick's soul-making. The point of such cases is not to claim that God must
eliminate all evil and serve as a guardian protector over each of us individually to
provide a utopian world that is a hedonistic paradise where we all become "human
pets." Such a response is based on a false dilemma and what Puccetti calls the "allor-nothing gambit.,,87 The challenge to Hick is whether this world could well serve
the same purposes Hick has suggested with far less pain and suffering than
presently exist.
Even if we grant Hick's basic approach that experiencing a certain amount of
pain and suffering "builds character," or makes better persons out of us, or even
improves our immortal souls, the improvement seems to come at a very high price.
Hick's soul-making theodicy recasts, but leaves unanswered, many of the original,
nagging questions concerning evil: Must there be so much evil to improve our
souls? Must the suffering be of such intensity and such duration to so many
innocent people? Could not the epistemic distance that Hick claims is necessary for
a free choice to become God-like be maintained at a much reduced level of pain
and suffering? Can a personal, omnibenevolent God use one person's suffering as a
means to improve another person's soul? If human beings are more godlike by
resisting or overcoming evil, must there be evil in heaven?
EVIL AND EPISTEMIC DISTANCE
It certainly appears that the world could be of the nature to discourage one from
believing in God (and thus maintain Hick's epistemic distance) and still contain
much less moral and natural evil than the present world does. 88 Even if we grant
that evil must extend to the "essentially demonic" and that "all shall be well" in the
end,89 we are still left with the unanswered question of whether the same purposes
might have been served by less evil. In the twentieth century, did human beings
really have to suffer the evils perpetrated by Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, ldi Arnin,
and Pol Pot in order for others to have the proper "episternic distance" for
developing their souls? Could we not have episternic distance and soul-making in
this world but still have fewer people to have died at Belsen, Auschwitz, or
Buchenwald?90 As we have seen above, Hick responds to the suggestion that we
could have less evil in this world by creating a false dilemma between the present
world and a world of a "luxuriously dreamy kind" where God intervenes in crude
ways to prevent all evil.91 The objection to Hick is not that we should live in a
paradise like "human pets" with no evil at all, but simply that we could satisfy all
of the suggested demands for soul-making in a world with less evil than we have in
this world.
Hick's answer to the conundrum of why there is so much evil in this world
reveals his affinity to the nineteenth-century theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher
and his use of the Irenean theodicy. Hick claims that the only "solution" to the
Ibid., p. 297.
See G. Stanley Kane, "The Failure of Soul-Making Theodicy," InternatioTUlI Journal for
Philosophy of Religion, Vol. 6, 1975, pp. 1-22.
89 John Hick, Evil and the God of Love, p. 325.
90 Ibid., p. 324.
91 Ibid., pp. 341-43.
87
88
267
problem of excessive suffering by innocents in this world "is a frank appeal to the
positive value of mystery.',92 This great impenetrable mystery can actually itself
become a part of the natural setting within which soul-making can miraculously
take place, Hick claims. In other words, that evil in the world seems so excessive
and that apparent gratuitous suffering does not make any apparent sense or have
any reasonable answer within the theistic framework can be understood as a part of
the "natural setting" in which human beings are so greatly epistemically distanced
from God (where God is epistemically hidden). Such a setting is necessary for
human beings to choose freely to change by becoming more godlike. Hick gives
something of the same sort of reply to the problem about whether there is evil in
heaven. 93 This suggestion begins to sound very Kierkegaardian in nature; the more
irrational and epistemically untenable a belief is, the more reason there is to believe
it. Hick's response seems to suggest that the epistemic distance the theist needs in
order to believe in a God who can provide redemption is one that is significant
enough to make such a belief not just uncertain or not obvious but even irrational.
While such a claim might hold some sway in a situation where one is attempting to
provide an explanation of radical religious belief or theological commitment, it is
out of place in natural theology or the philosophy of religion where the enterprise
is one based upon the use of human reason and the careful, deliberative
consideration of reasons and evidence. 94
THE FREE-WILL THEODICY
As we have seen, if Alvin Plantinga's free-will defense is successful, then it
establishes that the existence of evil in the world is not logically inconsistent with
the existence of God. It thus serves as a response to the logical problem of evil.
There is, however, a considerably higher burden for turning the free-will defense
into a theodicy. To develop an effective response to the evidential problem of evil,
the theist must provide a positive and compelling case using free will that will
counterbalance or outweigh the prima facie evidence against the existence of God
that is generated by the evidential argument of evil. In tracing the free-will defense
and the free-will theodicy through the contemporary literature, one must exercise
care, since many writers are not careful to observe the distinction between a
defense and a theodicy.
The use of human free-will as a theodicy can be traced to St. Augustine, who
used free will to explain the "defection" of both the fallen angels and man from the
perfection of God. Many contemporary writers, including Richard Swinburne and
Bruce Reichenbach, have added their own embellishments to the traditional freewill theodicy.95 Although the free-will theodicy is most directly aimed as a
response to the existence of moral evil, some have argued that it can be extended to
natural evils as well. Since many of the same issues that arise in connection with
Ibid., p. 37l.
Ibid., pp. 387ff.
94 For a detailed, book-length treatment of Hick's theodicy, see R. Douglas Geivett, Evil and the
Existence for God (Philadelphia, Pa.: Temple University Press, 1995).
95 See Bruce Reichenbach, Evil and a Good God, Chapter 4; and Richard Swinburne, The Existence
of God, Chapter 11, and Is There a God? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), Chapter 6.
Swinburne continues to call his free will theodicy a free-will defense.
92
93
268
the free-will theodicy also arise in connection with the free-will defense and have
been discussed at length above, the treatment of the free-will theodicy here will be
relatively brief.
Swinburne maintains that it is a positive good for there to be beings who are
able to worship God and to effect the development of God's creation and make a
difference through the exercise of free will. 96, According to Swinburne, the
existence of free will means that human beings are able to "make a difference" in
the world by affecting the way in which the world develops. Most importantly,
human beings can make a difference in the way in which other human beings live
and grow and develop, and upon occasion, the difference can be for the better, and
upon other occasions, it can be for the worse. It is a good thing that God created
the world in this way, Swinburne claims, since by having the power to affect the
lives of other people in significant ways, we inherit a "deep sense of responsibility"
for other people, and a world in which there is evil and in which we are deeply
responsible for others is better than some other possible world in which there is no
evil and in which we develop no such sense of deep responsibility. Swinburne
summarizes his free-will theodicy as follows:
It is good that the free choices of humans between good and evil should include
choices which make a difference to other humans for good or ill. A world where
agents can benefit but not harm each other is a world where they have only very
limited responsibility for each other. But the good of responsibility for each
other is a very great good ... . But if my responsibility for you is limited to
whether or not to give you some quite unexpected new piece of photographic
equipment, but I cannot make you unhappy, stunt your growth, or limit your
education, then I do not have a great deal of responsibility for you. If God gave
agents only such limited responsibility for their fellows, He would not have
given very much .... In order to allow creatures a share in creation, he has
reason to allow them the choice of hurting and maiming, of frustrating the
divine plan. Given that human choices are free ones ... , then our world is one
where humans have deep responsibility for each other. 97
In order for human beings to be deeply responsible for one another and in order for
human beings to be able to make a significant difference to the continuing
development of the world, free will must exist to allow significant choices between
actions that result in good and evil for other people. Also, the good or evil must be
significant good or evil. The "bottom line" for Swinburne's version of the free-will
theodicy is that deep responsibility is such a good thing that it justifies all of the
evils that human agents cause themselves and others to suffer. 98
The existence not only of moral evils but also of natural evils may be explained
in the same manner, according to Swinburne, because the nonexistence or
elimination of natural evils would inhibit or limit the possibility of our being
responsible for each other. Restricting or eliminating natural evils would not work,
Richard Swinburne, The Existence a/God, pp. 155-160.
Richard Swinburne, "Some Major Strands in Theodicy," in The Evidential Argument from Evil,
edited by Daniel Howard-Snyder, pp. 38-39.
98 Ibid., p. 39.
%
97
269
he thinks, since "the fewer natural evils a God provides, the less opportunity he
provides for man to exercise responsibility.,,99 Natural evils are necessary in order
for human agents to gain knowledge of how to produce or avoid goods and evils
and in order to give human agents the opportunity to develop the "higher virtues,"
100
e.g., compassiOn.
Many of the same issues that arose earlier in this chapter in connection with the
free-will defense and the greater good theodicies also occur concerning the use of
free will as a theodicy, and I will not revisit those issues. I will focus here simply
on the main claim of the free-will theodicy, namely, that a world with human
agents with free will is better than a world without such agents. To evaluate this
claim, it important that we understand what it means. Let us ignore, at the moment,
the metaphysical nature of the question of free will that has proven to be as thorny
and as intractable as the issue of God's existence has proven to be.
THE VALUE OF FREE WILL
There appear to be at least two different ways in which we can understand the
claim made about free will by the free-will theodicists. One way of understanding
this claim is as a general metaphysical claim about the value of free will in the
abstract - as a claim about the superlative value of free will in itself independent
both of how it is exercised by human agents and of the results of its use. The
second way of interpreting this claim concerning the value of free will is as a claim
about the value of the effects of exercising free will - as a claim about the
superlative value of a world with human beings exercising free will in a way that
has some consequences that are more valuable in the sight of God than a world
without such beings.
Consider the first interpretation: If we can make sense of such a general
metaphysical claim, the point would be that it is free will itself which is valuable
instead of the particular way in which that free will might be exercised. Such a
claim might be based on the theistic belief that we all are sinners and will make
mistakes, but it is simply the fact that we are free, "self-determining" beings that
makes us more valuable to God and capable of communication with God and a
closer relationship with God even when we use our free will to cause evil and
suffering for others. 101 This view of free will makes of free will a summum bonum
unchallenged and unsurpassed by any other good, and this status of free will would
be quite independent of the particular circumstances in which free agents live and
make their decisions. But it appears to be easy to describe circumstances where
such a valuing of free will would seem to be absurd. It is easy to imagine a possible
world in which a small number of people completely control all others in that
world. This small number of free agents (say, for example, .1%) use their free will
evilly for their amusement to bring about intense pain and suffering on the
remaining 99.9% of the free agents of the world. Everyone has free will, though
nearly all are prisoners or controlled in one way or another by a very few. No one
Richard Swinburne, The Existence o/God, p. 219.
Ibid.
101 This would presumably exclude fools and children and mentally incapacitated adults and leave a
relatively fewer number of people for whom free will would be a good. For other problems with the
notion of self-determination, see H. J. McCloskey, God and Evil (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974).
99
100
270
is made a better person. No one's character is improved. Life is short and painful
for all but a few, but this is still supposed to be a world that would be presumably
more valued by God, since it is a possible world in which free agents exist. It
would not help here for the theist to protest that such a world is unlikely, since the
main point is that, if such a condition were to exist in some possible world, then the
world would still allegedly be a better place simply because it contained free will if
the existence of free will in the abstract is more valuable than the absence of free
will.
Consider the second interpretation: this way of understanding the free-will
theodicists' claim about free will values free will because of the consequences of
exercising free will: maybe human beings can thus better communicate with God,
or, as Swinburne claims, human beings develop "deep responsibility" for each
other or develop the higher virtues. 102 Let us simply imagine here the same
possible state which I have just described. It certainly seems that if such a set of
conditions were to ever exist, then the free-will theodicist, using this explanation of
the value of free will, would have to admit that free will would no longer be
regarded as having the same value. It would really strain credulity to claim that
such a world is a better one because an extremely small number of free individuals
are "deeply responsible" for the suffering of an extremely large number of others.
If such a world of extreme pain and suffering by large numbers of innocents would
not be permitted to ''justify'' free will, then the matter concerning the relative value
of free will becomes arguable. The important and relevant issue then becomes, of
course, what is said about the present world. There are two primary burdens upon
the free-will theodicist. First, he must prove that it is reasonable to believe that the
price paid in terms of the pain and suffering of innocents in this world is the
minimal price that must be paid for whatever the benefits of free will are
determined to be, and secondly, he must prove that it is reasonable to believe that
those benefits are worth the price that is paid by the pain and suffering of
innocents.
Reichenbach's version of the free-will theodicy implicitly recognizes these
difficulties. He presents his version of the free-will theodicy, which he uses only as
an explanation of moral evil, in an outline form that makes identifying the
necessary presuppositions for the claim rather straightforward. His first
presupposition is the heart of his version of the free-will theodicy:
PI. A world containing significantly free persons making choices between
moral good and evil and choosing a significant amount of moral good is
superior to a world lacking significantly free persons and moral good and
evil. 103
Notice that Reichenbach has included in his PI the condition that in a world in
which free will exists, people must use that free will to choose "a significant
amount of moral good." The addition of this condition seems to be an admission
that it is important for his version of the free-will theodicy that the existence of free
will actually results in a certain amount of good in the world. Just how much good
102
103
This is true for Swinburne, even if a person "misuses" free will.

Bruce Reichenbach, Evil and a Good God, p. 47.
CONTEMPORARY CHAlLENGES TO THEISM: EVIL AND SUFFERING
271
is necessary in order to justify the existence of free will? If not verifiable or

falsifiable on the basis of empirical fact, such a claim must at least be arguable on
the basis of empirical fact. It is apparent that there must be a balance of good over
evil as a result of free will being exercised by free agents. Exactly how we could
ever determine that such a balance exists and how we can compare and measure
and balance the different pains and suffering of various people to come to such a
conclusion about this world is a matter of great controversy. Such comparisons and
judgments would seem to require one to make some rather complicated (and
inevitably speculative and controversial) calculations using the hedonic calcuIUS. I04
How "deep responsibility" might factor into the calculations is not clear at all. Just
how much "deep responsibility" in how many people is necessary to outweigh the
unspeakable evils of the Holocaust? Such considerations take us back to the
problem raised by Philo in Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion and
the matter of trying to assess the balance of goods and evils of this world.
THE EXISTENTIAL DEFENSE
Both Robert Adams and William Hasker have developed responses to the
problem of evil based upon the assessment ofthe quality of an individual's state of
existence. Whether an individual's life is good or not is the result of a judgment of
whether or not, on balance, the person is better off existing or not existing. 105
Although Adams indicates some sympathy with those who deny that the best of all
possible worlds is a meaningful concept since it requires an application of the
accompanying standard of "maximum degree of perfection" across possible
worlds, he assumes, for the sake of argument, that there is a best of all possible
worldS. 106 Adams attempts to develop a position that would explain how the denial
that God created the best possible world that God might have created is consistent
with traditional theistic views of the nature of God. His argument is twofold: First,
Adams argues that since the moral community consists only of "actual beings," but
not possible beings, God has no obligation to the logically possible beings, which
might have existed in the best of all possible worlds, to create them. No one has
been morally wronged or metaphysically slighted, he claims, by not having been
created, since no such beings exist to be wronged or slighted. 107 So, Adams
concludes, if God does not create the best possible world, God has not wronged
beings that might have existed in that world but which do not exist in the actual
world. Richard Swinburne makes a similar claim. Even if the concept of the best of
all possible worlds makes sense (and Swinburne thinks that it does not), still God
would not be obligated to create such a world since no one would exist at the time
(before creation) to whom God would be doing an injustice if he did not create the
best of all possible worlds. 108
104 Richard Swinburne makes just such an attempt to show that everything that is regarded as evil in
the world makes certain goods possible. See his Providence and the Problem of Evil (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1998), Part III.
105 See Robert M. Adams, "Must God Create the Best?" and William Hasker, "On Regretting the
Evils of This World," Southern Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 19, 1981, pp. 425-37. Reprinted in The
Problem of Evil, edited by Michael Peterson, to which the page numbers here refer.
106 Robert Adams, ibid., p. 275.
107 Ibid., p. 277.
108 Richard Swinburne, 'The Problem of Evil," p. 84.
272
The second part of Adams's argument focuses upon creatures in this

actual world and is a bit more complicated. Adams maintains that, assuming God
might have created a variety of different possible worlds, it is plausible that God
might have created a possible world W with the following three characteristics: 109
1. None of the individual creatures in W would exist in the best of all possible
worlds.
2. None of the creatures in W has a life that is so miserable on the whole that it
would be better for that creature if it had never existed.
3. Every individual in W is at least as happy on the whole as it would have been
in any other possible world in which it could have existed.
Adams claims that it is possible that God might create W with conditions (1)
through (3), which for the sake of argument is a good, but not the best, possible
world. If God created W, he would still maintain all of the traditional attributes of
omnipotence, omniscience, omnibenevolence, and moral perfection.
Now there are many questions to be raised concerning Adams's argument. l1O
One might quarrel with Adams's denial of moral obligations to non-existent
beings. Concerns about future generations and unborn children weigh heavily here,
and many contemporary moral theorists would include future, but presently
nonexisting, beings in the moral community. For example, an improved variation
upon a counterexample proposed by Adams raises serious questions about his lack
of concern for nonexistent individuals: III Suppose that a man and woman, both of
whom are crack-cocaine drug addicts decide to have a child, but are warned by the
doctors that the child will surely be born an addict, suffer horribly, have a short
life, and die. Suppose also that the couple is offered a large sum of money by
unscrupulous medical researchers to have the child anyway so that medical tests
can be conducted upon it. The couple has the child. The medical researchers
conduct their tests. The child suffers and is continuously sedated and occasionally
given pleasurable stimuli so that it is not so miserable that it would have been
better from just an assessment of the child's total balance of pleasure and pain if it
had never been born. The child dies. In such a situation, our moral intuitions would
certainly tell us that the parents have done something wrong. We would also say, I
believe, contra Adams, that the parents have done something wrong to the child;
they have wronged the child even though the child, for the sake of argument, is not
so miserable that it would have been better from its point of view that it had never
existed. 112
Ibid., pp. 277-78.
For a detailed response, see Philip Quinn, "God, Moral Perfection, and Possible Worlds," in
Reason and Religion, edited by Stuart C. Brown (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1977).
III This example is suggested by the one discussed by Adams, "Must God Create the Best?" pp. 28283.
ll2 According to the "asymmetry problem," it seems intuitively that we are obligated not to bring
into existence beings that would be harmed by their existence but that we are not obligated to bring into
existence beings who would be benefited by their existence. Adams, it seems, must deny this
asymmetry.
109
llO
273
This example focuses our attention on the Kantian principle that prevents us
from using other people simply as a means to some end. If the child is used simply
as a means by the parents and researchers, is stupefied with sedatives much of its
life, and is artificially stimulated with electrodes to produce pleasurable
experiences, then the child has been wronged. If we conclude that the parents were
morally obligated not to bring the child into such an existence, then is this not an
obligation to the child? And if we expect as much of human moral agents, we
surely would expect as much of a perfect moral agent. In response to some theists'
lack of concern about God's moral obligations prior to creation, D. Z. Phillips has
rightly observed that God should not need finite beings to exist in order to have
moral obligations that he has by his nature. ll3 The suggestion that God's moral
nature stems only from his relationship with a created world and obligations to
existent beings after creation is a very bizarre notion that ignores the central
theistic contention that God's goodness is a part of his nature.
Greater difficulty arises from focusing attention upon Adams's characterization
of Wand the creatures that exist in W. We might first note that if the argument is
left on its present level, it has little or no bearing on the problem of evil. Unless W
contains some evil or less good than some other possible world W', even if W is
created instead of W', it is not necessary that either W or W' be more evil than the
other. It is obviously possible that more than one possible world would satisfy
Adams's conditions (1) through (3);therefore, Wand W' might be identical
possible worlds except that they contain different individuals. Indeed, there appear
to be an infinite number of different possible worlds (W....... Wth) which would
satisfy (1) through (3) with different sets of individual inhabitants. 114 The
interesting issue, of course, is whether this actual world might satisfy (1) through
(3) and be counted among W .......Wth When we consider this possibility, the most
immediately obvious questions that might be raised concern (3). Although serious
questions might be raised about (2), it appears, for the sake of argument, that we
might easily grant Adams (1) and (2), since the objections against (3) appear to be
the strongest.
Adams addresses the issue about a person who might feel that he or she lives in
a world in which (3) has been violated. "I might have been happier in some other
possible world W' in which I might have existed," one might complain, "so why
didn't God create W' instead ofW?" Curiously, Adams dismisses this complaint as
one where the complaining individual insists upon having the best possible world,
in which case the complaining individual would not exist at all, according to (1).115
Instead, we might interpret the complaint as one that is simply asking for another
possible world in which the individual exists that is marginally better than W - one
in which the balance of happiness over unhappiness for the individual is simply
significantly greater for some individual S than it is in W - but not the best of all
possible worlds. I might not have existed in the best of all possible worlds, but
surely I might have existed in another possible world that is very much like this
D. Z. Phillips, "The Problem of Evil," in Reason and Religion, edited by Stuart C. Brown, p.106.
Whether an infinite number of such worlds, or even more than one, might contain human beings
is a genuine problem for the theist.
115 Robert Adams, "Must God Create the Best?" p. 277-78.
113
114
274
actual world but is a world in which I do not have to contend with chronic sinusitis
and tinnitus .
Whether the notion of the best of all possible worlds makes sense and whether
God might have created such a world are both interesting and perplexing problems.
However, these problems need not be solved or presupposed for addressing the
evidential problem of evil. We can "bracket" those problems and set them aside
and put the problem instead as whether God might have created a world that is
different from this actual one. Is this the only possible world that God might have
created? Adams's argument is aimed at showing that God might have created some
world other than the best possible one and still be perfectly good. 116 So the problem
should not be set up as a false dilemma between the existence of this world and the
existence of the best possible world. If (3) appears not to be true of this world, as
many have claimed, then we do not need to ask, as Adams does, why did God not
create the best possible world. The question is why did God not create a world
which is significantly, or even marginally, better than this one? If the matter is
framed in this way, then the question can still be raised of why a person's lot in this
world W could not be improved in some other possible world W' without raising
the specter of the best possible world and the problem generated by (1).
However the question is framed concerning the relative merit of different
possible worlds, the assumption must be that it is possible to compare possible
worlds. Adams's (2) and (3) suggest that it is possible to compare moral goodness
across different possible worlds. It appears as if some possible world must
obviously be morally better than others, and we must be in the position to make
such judgments about the relative moral goodness of different possible worlds.
Philip Quinn, in a response to Adams, goes to some lengths to argue that a morally
perfect agent must create a world that is morally unsurpassable - a world that,
given all possible worlds, is morally better than any other possible world.1l7 If God
is a superlatively good moral agent (a moral agent which is surpassed by no other
possible moral agent), then, it seems, God must create a superlatively good moral
world (one which is surpassed in moral goodness by no other possible world).1l8 If
this is true, then either this world is a world of unsurpassable moral goodness or it
was not created by a God who is a superlatively good moral agent. If one
concludes, on the basis of the argument from evil, that this is not a world of
unsurpassable moral goodness, then one is justified in concluding that God is not
perfectly good.
BE GLAD YOU'RE ALIVE

Hasker's version of the existential defense is based upon a much more personal
assessment of this world. Hasker first attempts to solicit a positive answer from his
readers to the question "Am I glad that I exist?,,119 This is a question that is
intended to reveal and reaffirm a commitment to one's own personal existence "all
things considered" and "on balance" after a careful consideration of all of the good
and bad things that might have happened to one in one's life. By way of
Ibid., p. 275.
m Philip Quinn, "God, Moral Perfection, and Possible Worlds," p. 296.
118 Ibid., pp. 295-300.
119 William Hasker, "On Regretting the Evils of This World," p. 154.
116
275
establishing some notion of personal identity, Hasker next makes the fairly
noncontroversial claim that the coming into existence of a person S's body is a
necessary condition for the coming into existence of the person S. He then
emphasizes what an "extremely improbable event" the coming into existence of a
particular person is and how each individual person's coming into existence
depends upon a "multitude of highly improbable events." He concludes from this
analysis that if the major events in human history had been different, he probably
would not have existed. 120 The application of this brief treatment of personal
identity to the problem of evil comes through what Hasker describes as the
development of the "logic of regret," which is the result of adopting several
"principles" governing the way in which we properly reason about being glad or
regretting. 121 While it is impossible to completely reconstruct Hasker's argument
here, it is easy to identity the particularly salient features. Let us focus our attention
on Hasker's principles:
F. If I am glad on the whole that P, and I know that if Q did not obtain neither
would P, then I rationally must be glad that Q.
and
G. If I am glad on the whole about my own existence and that of those whom I
love, then I must be glad that the history of the world, in its major aspects,
has been as it has.
It follows from these principles that if I am glad that I exist, then I must be glad
that things have transpired in human history as they have - no matter how morally
objectionable those events might be. Thus, if I am glad that those events took
place, then I cannot fault God for allowing those events to take place. 122
Hasker is appropriately modest about the significance of his position. He admits
that it does not amount to a positive theodicy, but he does suggest that his
argument reveals that the problem of evil ought not to be considered from the very
general and impersonal perspective necessary for developing a general theodicy.
Rather, he claims, we should consider the problem of evil from a very personal,
existential point of view. When we do so, given that we are happy that we exist, we
find that we cannot blame God for past events in the history of humankind no
matter how much pain or suffering those events might have produced.
Taking Hasker's "defense" on the personal, existential level on which it is
intended, we might still wonder about the truth of (G). Given that my family is
Scotch-Irish, my granddaughter's birth might somehow be causally connected in
some way with the great potato famine in Ireland, but it is very doubtful that it is
connected in any way with the Inquisition in Spain. According to his "logic of
regret," if I am glad that I exist, then I must be glad that the major events in human
history prior to my birth took place as they did, because if those events had not
Ibid., pp. 155-56.
Ibid., pp. 156ff.
122 Ibid., pp. 159-64.
120
121
276
taken place, given the high improbability of my own existence, I might not have
existed. Now what makes an individual's existence unlikely is the peculiar genetic
makeup of that individual; however, it stretches both credulity and one's
understanding of causality to think that every major event in the history of the
universe is somehow causally connected to one's individual genetic makeup. Such
a position seems to lead to the necessity of my being glad that the Black Plague,
the Spanish Inquisition, and the Holocaust all took place. Establishing such causal
connections seems implausible. Also, arguably, such a result seems to be a reductio
ad absurdum of Hasker's position - particularly for a Christian for whom Christian
love, brotherly love for one's fellow human beings, is an overriding concern and
commitment. It hardly seems consistent with fundamental Christian principles of
self-denial and brotherly love for a Christian to say, "I am glad that millions and
millions of people suffered terribly and died so that I might live!" So a person
might conclude that all that has happened has been good/or me, but this is a long
way from providing a justification for all that has happened. So whether one holds
God responsible for evil or not is highly subjective. One person might not hold
God responsible or blame God for major events in human history such as the Black
Plague, the Spanish Inquisition, or the Holocaust. However, others - theists and
non-theists alike - might indeed be glad that they exist but still regret such events
and blame God for them. Hasker's existential "defense" might work on a highly
individualistic basis for some evils of this world for some theists who are more
sanguine than others about the assessment of their lives and the events in the
world. However, even upon these occasions, it is difficult to see how such a
position can be reconciled with the traditional notion of Christian love. In any case,
the existential defense is not a general justification of the existence of evil but
rather a plausible account of how and why some people value their lives.
CONCLUSION
This discussion of the problem of evil has demonstrated how fundamental and
central the problem of evil is to theism. We have seen how the questions and issues
surrounding the problem of evil touch upon nearly every other aspect of the
philosophy of religion. The problem of evil generates questions concerning the
attributes of God, particularly the attributes of omnipotence, omniscience, and
omnibenevolence. The discussion about evil and possible worlds leads into
consideration about what kinds of limitations there might be on possible worlds
and on what God can and cannot do. Similarly, consideration of the notion of
gratuitous evil leads to both empirical and metaphysical considerations about
human nature, free will, and God's omnipotence. Considerations related to both the
logical problem of evil and the evidential problem of evil raise issues about the
nature of moral agency and what is required for a moral agent to act freely and
with moral responsibility.
The free-will defense has significantly reduced the threat to theism from the
logical problem of evil; however, the evidential form of the argument from evil and
the different theodicies that have been offered in response to the evidential problem
are still hotly debated.
When the free-will defense is turned into a theodicy, it has failed to command
the same wide approval and assent enjoyed by the free-will defense. Neither has
277
anyone of the greater good theodicies managed to gain widespread acceptance.

The problem of evil that has plagued theism for centuries will obviously continue
to do so in the twenty-first century as well.
VII. Contemporary Challenges to Theism: Humanism,

Naturalism, and Atheism
There are many questions that must be raised, problems that must be resolved,
and consequences that must be traced as results of the claims that William James
makes in his "The Will to Believe." I have discussed some of those questions and
problems in Chapter IV; therefore, I will simply draw out here some of the
presuppositions and consequences of James's introduction of psychology into
religion. The dispute between James and William Clifford serves to illustrate the
fundamental epistemological difference, as it is usually drawn, that underlies the
difference between theism and naturalism. Clifford and naturalists generally think
that we are limited in terms of what can justify any belief in terms of adequate
evidence based upon our sense experience of natural phenomena. Such evidence,
naturalists claim, limits our beliefs to the natural world and the natural phenomena
in that world. The restriction that naturalists place upon what is considered to be
adequate evidence for beliefs leads to a naturalism that will not allow justification
of beliefs that extend beyond the natural world. The evidence must be empirical
evidence of natural phenomena, and the scope of our theories is determined by the
limits of sense experience. Although he regarded himself as a strict empiricist,
James clearly held that beliefs based upon and limited simply to natural
phenomena do not exhaust all there is to the world or all that we are justified in
claiming to know about the world. According to James, "tough-minded" naturalism
only goes so far, and then we must admit that there is more to the world than
simply that for which our sense experience provides evidence. Alternatively, one
can understand James as broadening the field of naturalistic data by the
introduction of psychological data, and one should keep in mind that James's
understanding of psychology was not nearly so empirical or scientific as is the
contemporary understanding. In The Varieties of Religious Experience, James
replies upon an "armchair" style of doing what is now called "humanistic
psychology," which would hardly pass as rigorous social science today. His "data"
concerning religion, which he subjects to philosophical and psychological analysis,
are the result of literary accounts, biographical reports, or second-hand
information. It was James's student, Edwin Starbuck, who was to become known
for introducing more empirical and more scientific methods into the study of
religious experience and religious phenomena that rely upon the now
278
CONTEMPORARY CHALLENGES: HUMANISM, NATURALISM, AND ATHEISM
279
commonplace, controlled field studies. James, however, opened the door for the
study of the psychology of religion and provided the clear juxtaposition of
naturalism and theism for the social sciences.
For the present discussion, it would be difficult to improve upon the definition
of naturalism offered by St. Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologica:
It is superfluous to suppose that what can be accounted for by fewer principles
has been produced by many. But it seems that everything we see in the world
can be accounted for by other principles, supposing that God did not exist. For
all natural things can be reduced to one principle, which is human reason, or
will. Therefore, there is no need to suppose God's existence. I
Thus understood, naturalism maintains that the universe can be explained solely
in terms of the objects, events, and processes that occur in nature, along with the
scientific principles and theories that explain the "natural order" of the universe. In
particular, naturalists deny that there is a supernatural reality to which one can
justifiably appeal to explain any aspect of the universe. Following the suggestion
of Aquinas, if everything in the universe can be explained with the assumption of
the non-existence of God or any other supernatural power or being that is "outside"
the natural realm, then following the law of parsimony, such an assumption is
superfluous and should be rejected.
Of course, the rejection of theism on the grounds of naturalism is not a
twentieth-century development. The pre-Socratic Greek atomists, Leucippus and
Democritus, were naturalists of a sort. In his Dialogues Concerning Natural
Religion, Hume has Cleanthes suggest naturalism as an alternative explanation for
the first cause in the cosmological argument and for the design in the teleological
argument for the existence of God (see below and also Chapter III). Not only the
ancient Greek atomists and Hume, but also the materialists and deists of the
nineteenth century were working with a very limited understanding of naturalism.
Technically, reductive materialism is a form of naturalism, since it appeals to no
principles outside natural ones to explain the universe; however, because of its
reductive nature and its limited explanatory power concerning the organic features
of the universe, it is best to simply treat reductive materialism as completely
separate from naturalism - especially twentieth-century naturalism.
NATURALISM, PSYCHOLOGY, AND RELIGION
In Chapter V, I explored the way in which recent developments in the natural
sciences have impacted upon the philosophy of religion, but at the beginning of the
twentieth century, the dramatic rise to prominence of the social sciences particularly, anthropology, psychology, and sociology - offered the promise of
providing a completely social account of religion. Attempts to provide completely
naturalistic accounts of religion and religious belief became subjects of primary
interest for several major figures in the social sciences. Sigmund Freud and
psychoanalytical theory provide what has proven to be one of the more lasting and
I Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Question 2, Article 3, Objection 2. From Introduction to St.
TholYUls Aquinas, edited by Anton C. Pegis (New York: Modem Library, 1945), pp. 24-25.
280
influential attempts to provide a completely naturalistic and psychological account

of religious belief. Freud first made his claims tying religious beliefs to underlying
psychological needs in Totem and Taboo and then fully developed them in The
Future of an Illusion? According to Freud, there are two different, completely
naturalistic sources that account for theistic beliefs. To fully understand these two
sources of religious beliefs, we must first briefly survey Freud's understanding of
man's place in the world. He begins by adopting a view of the place of man in
nature that is usually identified with Thomas Hobbes. Man exists in a difficult,
even hostile, natural environment with "elements which seem to mock all human
control" - storms, earthquakes, floods, and diseases. 3 Against such "cruel" and
"inexorable" and overwhelming forces of nature, man is weak and helpless. Man
attempts to escape this vulnerable and helpless position through civilization.
Civilization is the result of man's need both to curtail his passions and to allay his
fears of a precarious existence in a hostile world. Civilization provides the store of
knowledge and capacities that men have accumulated through the ages for
controlling the forces of nature and allowing man to rise about the level of the
beast.4
But, alas, although civilization provides man a much better life than he would
find alone in trying to deal with a hostile natural world and even though
civilization exists for the good of mutual human interests, eventually, "every
human individual is virtually an enemy of civilization."s Civilizations must thus
control man and make him work to produce and distribute wealth, and this control
is pitted against human instincts, which are destructive, anti-social, and anticultural. These instincts arise from resentment of the sacrifice required of the
individual by civilization and of the control exerted upon the individual by
civilization. 6 To protect itself against the hostility it creates in man, civilization
attempts to have man adopt its goals for himself and internalize both the ideals and
the control of the civilization.
THE FUTURE OF AN ILLUSION
Religion is the case in point. Freud thinks that as long as the forces of nature
that threaten man's existence are regarded as impersonal and completely natural,
they are regarded as beyond any control or influence that man might have upon
them. With such a view of nature, man is the helpless victim of uncontrollable
storms, diseases, and the like. However, if the forces of nature are personified, then
those forces are no longer completely alien to us. If we understand the forces of
nature as some kind of beings or under the control of some kind of beings that are,
in some degree, similar to man, then the possibility is opened of our exerting some
kind of influence on those beings to better our lot or to protect ourselves. The result
is what Freud calls "the humanization of nature." He puts the matter this way:
2 Sigmund Freud, Totem and Taboo (New York: Norton Press, 1950) and The Future of an Illusion
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday and Company, 1961).
3 Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion, p. 21.
4 Ibid., p. 2.
5 Ibid., p. 3.
6 Ibid., p. 5.
281
Impersonal forces and destinies cannot be approached; they remain eternally

remote. But if the elements have passions that rage as they do in our own souls,
if death itself is not something spontaneous but the violent act of an evil Will, if
everywhere in nature there are Beings around us of a kind that we know in our
own society, then we can breathe freely, can feel at home in the uncanny and
can deal by psychical means with our senseless anxiety. We are still
defenceless, perhaps, but we are no longer helplessly paralysed; we can at least
react. Perhaps, indeed, we are not even defenceless. We can apply the same
methods against these violent supermen outside that we employ in our own
society; we can try to adjure them, to appease them, to bribe them, and, by so
influencing them, we may rob them of a part of their power. A replacement like
this of natural science by psychology not only provides immediate relief, but
also points the way to a further mastering of the situation. 7
This process of personifying and humanizing whatever the forces of nature
might be thus serves two purposes. First, it offers man some relief and some hope
of defending himself "against the crushingly superior force of nature." If such
forces are impersonal, man has little chance of affecting them; however, if such
forces are personal, then man can attempt to influence such terrible forces through
various means to gain their favor and to placate them. Secondly, personalizing the
forces of nature provides a way of protecting civilization and rectifying its
shortcomings in dealing with man. Religious beliefs and ideas and the details of the
various ways of dealing successfully with the forces that control the natural world
come to be regarded as one of the most valuable things that civilization has to offer
the individual. Thus, the individual is drawn to civilization and is indebted to
civilization in a continuing way for his own well-being. 8
This humanization of nature happens easily and naturally. In providing a
psychological identity for man, civilization is simply building upon a natural
inclination that results from an infantile projection. Freud's explanation of how the
desire to protect oneself is manifested in such a natural and almost instinctual
humanizing of nature represents the distinctive element of his psychoanalytical
theory. As infants and children, when we are faced with an imposing and
threatening world against which we are weak and helpless, we reply upon our
fathers for strength and protection. We need and reply upon our fathers, and we
also respect and fear them. As adults, when we must acknowledge the fear of still
being threatened by both a hostile natural environment and the resentment of being
controlled by civilization, we once again long for a strong and protective champion
to defend us. We invent that champion by the projection of the infantile father
figure to create religion with a god who possesses the same power and strength and
who serves the same purpose as our own father.
Freud summarizes this process in the following passage:
When the growing individual finds that he is destined to remain a child forever,
that he can never do without protection against strange superior powers, he
7
8
Ibid., pp. 22-23.

See Ibid., pp. 28-30, in passim.
282
lends those powers the features belonging to the figure of his father; he creates
for himself the gods whom he dreads, whom he seeks to propitiate, and whom
he nevertheless entrusts with his own protection ... . The defence against
childish helplessness is what lends its characteristic features to the adult's
reaction to the helplessness which he has to acknowledge - a reaction which is
precisely the formation of religion. 9
Religious beliefs are thus understood by Freud as illusions - the "fulfilments
[sic] of the oldest, strongest and most urgent wishes of mankind" - the wish to be
safe and protected by a kind and loving but strong and fearful Father. 10 By calling
religious beliefs illusions, Freud means that they are projections of man's most
fundamental wishes and needs. Because of our vulnerability and helplessness, a
condition further aggravated by the frustration of having our desires curtailed by
civilization, we unconsciously project the father figure from our childhood on God
as our feared protector. According to Freud, whereas delusions are false beliefs
about the world, illusions mayor may not actually be true. Thus, God mayor may
not exist; however, illusions are not based upon good evidence or upon rational
grounds, and what natural theologians proffer as rational grounds are full of
contradictions and are simply rationalizations. II
Although religion has brought some benefit to mankind, in the end, according to
Freud, it has not succeeded in making people secure and confident and happy either with their place in nature or with civilization. What little success the illusion
of religion has had has been at the expense of human reason. Freud advocates
eliminating the illusion not by force but by a thoroughgoing "education to reality"
(what he calls the sole purpose of The Future of an Illusion) to make mankind
realize and accept the full extent of its helplessness and to instruct people in the
need for the acceptance of and obedience to the controls of civilization. 12 In the
most general terms, he recommends the elimination of theism and a return to a
completely naturalistic understanding of nature, but this is not a pessimistic or
fatalistic turn for Freud as others have interpreted it to be. He thinks that some
"redemption" is possible (indeed, the only redemption that is possible) through the
process of education to reality; so Freud's elimination of theology actually has a
soteriological component to it. 13
The theist should take little solace in Freud's disclaimer regarding the truthvalues of religious beliefs. It is clear that Freud not only devalues religious beliefs
but proposes a straightforward reduction of theology to psychology. Even if he
professes to be neutral concerning the truth-values of religious beliefs, in fact,
since religious beliefs are inconsistent with and contradictory to reason and
experience, they must be abandoned. Only what appears to be a kind of religious
Ibid., p. 35.
Ibid., p. 47.
11 Ibid., p. 40. Freud says that the question of assessing the truth-value of the illusion of religion is
not a part of his inquiry. He intends, he says, simply to explain their psychological origin and nature.
See ibid., p. 52.
12 Ibid., pp. 80-82.
13 Compare the treatment of secularization later in this chapter.
9
10
283
mysticism, without any content at all concerning God's nature or relationship to

man, escapes this fate. 14
THE FUTURE OF THE FUTURE OF AN ILLUSION
There are many difficulties with Freud's psychoanalytical theory, and this is not
the place to rehearse all of them; so I will concentrate here only on those problems
having to do with his claims concerning religion beliefs. Of course, one might
object, as many have, that Freud's entire theory is not naturalistic or scientific in
any strict sense since it posits a general and universal human nature with
unconscious infantile desires that persist into adulthood as well as the unconscious
projection of those desires. It all makes for a nice story, but the scientific evidence
for such an account of human nature is thin to nonexistent. A theist might well
maintain that there is as much empirical evidence for the existence of God as there
is for an unconscious projection of an unconscious desire (or even for the existence
of the unconscious itself, for that matter) and that one claim is just as much a part
of the natural world as the other.
This general kind of reaction to Freud's The Future of an Illusion serves to
focus attention upon what is perhaps the most telling criticism Freud makes of
religious beliefs as well as the most telling response to that criticism. The most
important aspect of Freud's account of religious beliefs, his general psychoanalytic
theory notwithstanding, is that since religious beliefs are the result of a neurosis,
they are not rational beliefs and are inconsistent with "reason and experience."
Exactly what he means by this claim is not easy to determine, but it would seem to
rule out all of natural theology and the attempts to prove the existence of God by
appealing to reason and demonstration. Now this amounts to an additional claim
that is quite independent of Freud's accounts of human nature and the historical
origin of religious beliefs. He seems to maintain that once people are made aware
of the origin of religious beliefs, they will see that there is nothing reasonable in
such beliefs. This process seems to follow the general process of psychological
therapy: Once a person comes to recognize his neurosis and realize that his beliefs
are unreasonable, he will give them up. But why should this be so in the case of
religious beliefs? Unless we grant the additional assumption that all projections of
deeply seated desires are irrational and contrary to reason, the projections might
simply be taken as the way in which we come to hold certain beliefs and to
recognize certain fundamental truths about the world.
Although to my knowledge Freud never discusses the arguments for the
existence of God found in natural theology, it is interesting to speculate about what
he might say about those arguments, especially the recent developments in those
arguments (discussed in Chapter III). Freud's simple assertion that religious beliefs
and, by implication, theism are contradictory to reason and experience seems both
dated and naive. Our understanding of both human reason and experience has been
greatly expanded since the beginning of the twentieth century. For example, as I
argued in the case of the cosmological argument, the result of the consideration of
the big bang theory seems to make a theistic account of the ultimate origin of the
universe as reasonable as a completely naturalistic, scientific account. Arguably, a
14
Ibid., pp. 88-89.
284
theistic account of creation does no more violation to human reason than

attempting to apply scientific or natural laws beyond Planck's limit. Considerations
introduced by consideration of the anthropic principle in the case of the argument
from design and the different modals versions of the ontological argument pose a
similar problem for Freud as does Alvin Plantinga's free will defense (discussed in
Chapter VI) - all of which are intended to show simply that belief in the existence
of God is a rational belief that is as reasonable to hold as naturalistic, nontheistic
beliefs.
Perhaps the mere belief in the existence of God does not have enough content in
itself to rise to the level of contradiction with reason and evidence that Freud
emphasizes. He seems to be thinking of more specific claims made by theists about
how God is a protector of the righteous and how the virtuous ones are rewarded by
God. There is no further guidance from Freud's writings on this point. However, if
a Freudian, psychoanalytical theory cannot convincingly maintain that belief in the
existence of God is contradictory to reason and experience, then it fails as a general
account of religious beliefs, and clearly, many theists (as well as many non-theistic
philosophers of religion) regard such beliefs as reasonable. It will not do for Freud
to simply assert that such beliefs are the result of neurotic projections of infantile
wishes and to declare that such beliefs are thus contrary to reason. 15
THE MYTH OF AN ILLUSION
D. Z. Phillips defends the reasonableness of religious beliefs in a different
manner. While Freud undoubtedly thought of himself as a scientist and saw
himself as offering an explanation of religious belief that is deeply seated in
psychology, Phillips insists that Freud's account of religious beliefs never rises
above the level of an interesting story. As I have noted, Freud's psychoanalytical
theory is based upon a general, universal theory of human nature for which
empirical evidence is sorely lacking. In fact, as critics have pointed out, it is
difficult to imagine just what kind of empirical evidence could be found to support
his theory. Freud's theory thus amounts to what Phillips describes as "an aspect on
life, a way of looking at things.,,16 Such a grand (and some may say grandiose)
scheme does not amount to "an explanation of religious belief or an account of its
meaning," Phillips continues, but it is simply a "competing way of looking at
things."!? Phillips turns to Wittgenstein as an authority on this point:
Freud refers to various ancient myths in these connexions [in the connection of
explaining the origins of religious beliefs], and claims that his researchers have
now explained how it came about that anybody should think or propound a myth
of that sort.
Whereas in fact Freud has done something different. He has not given a
scientific explanation of the ancient myth. What he has done is to propound a
15 For a detailed and lengthy theistic response to Freudian psychoanalytical theory, see William P.
Alston, "Psychoanalytical Theory and Theistic Belief," in Faith and the Philosophers, edited by John
Hick (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1964), pp. 63-102.
16 D. Z. Phillips, Religion without Explanation (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1976), p. 71.
17 Ibid., p. 72. Phillips means that it is a way of looking at things that is not grounded in empirical
fact.
285
new myth .... "It is all the outcome of something that happened a long time
ago." Almost like referring to a totem. IS
The grounding of Freud's myth of an illusion in his general theory of human
nature results in his treatment of all of the various differing social practices and
institutions in different cultures as simply manifestations of the same universal,
fundamental desires. This view of human nature, which Phillips calls "static and
anti-historical," and which others might call a priori, reduces the diversity of social
practices to the universal sameness of fundamental, individual desire. The result is
not only a reduction of the social to individual unconsciousness but also a
reduction of diversity of practices to a single, hidden human nature with hidden
desires.
Freud's reduction of the social to the individual and his myth of an illusion thus
creates an artificial division between what is normal and what is not normal - a
division that provides the basis for his labeling religious belief as a neurosis and
results in the devaluing of such belief. Such an approach ignores the multifarious
social practices that exist in the world and the different ways in which what counts
as normal or not normal within these different practices is determined. In some
cases, it is easy to imagine that Freud's "education to reality" might easily result in
the return to or the acquisition of certain religious beliefs. Consider, for example,
the case of an Orthodox Jew who begins to dabble in voodoo. Members of his
community might very well regard his voodoo behavior as neurotic, and one might
well expect that his education to reality and psychoanalytical therapy would result
in his holding "normal," Orthodox Jewish beliefs. 19 The resulting views and beliefs
would then be regarded as reasonable in contrast with the unreasonable views and
beliefs based on voodoo. What is reasonable and what is not and what is neurotic
and what is not in terms of religious beliefs must involve, at least in part, some
recognition of the social aspect of those beliefs. 20
Freud unsuccessfully attempts the reduction of the diverse forms of social life
(including religious social life) to a single, fundamental human nature, but the
social resists such a reduction. Still, what of the social itself? Can religion and
religious belief be accounted for merely in terms of a completely naturalistic
account of society and social institutions and practices? Pursuing answers to such
questions turns our attention to sociology .
NATURALISM, SOCIOLOGY, AND RELIGION
An alternative, competing, but in many ways complimentary, account of the
origin of religion and religious beliefs and practices comes from the work of the
French sociologist Emile Durkheim. Durkheim's mature work spanned several
18 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief
(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1966), p. 50-51.
19 See D. Z. Phillips, Religion Without Explanation, pp. 63-64. I should add that Phillips main
position is based upon his Wittgensteinian view of language-games and of the autonomy of languagegames of religious beliefs. One consequence of this view is that it makes no sense to call religious
beliefs mistakes. See the discussions of Wittgenstein and Phillips in Chapters III and N.
20 This is not to deny, as I have argued elsewhere, that there is some universal element to human
rationality.
286
decades, and like many other major thinkers, his thought went through several
stages of development. I present only a brief summary and synthesis of his main
theory concerning religion, which can easily lead to oversimplification. 21 Many
social scientists focus attention upon the relationship between the individual and
society - a particularly social manifestation of the perennial part-whole
relationship found throughout philosophy, the natural sciences, and mathematics as
well. In the case of religion and religious beliefs, as we have seen, Freud's
treatment of this relationship gives priority to the individual and the individual's
suppressed, infantile needs and desires. The projection of those needs and desires
gives rise to the public and social aspect of religion and to beliefs concerning the
existence of God. Durkheim's understanding of the part-whole relationship that
gives rise to religion and to religious belief is just the converse. It is society that
gives rise to religion and to individual religious beliefs. Social facts, he insists,
cannot be understood when detached from or abstracted from particular social
systems. Since religion is a social phenomenon, to understand it we must
understand the social conditions - the social institutions and practices - that give
rise to it.
The empirical basis for Durkheim's claims regarding the sociological origin of
religion is grounded in his noted work on totemism in primitive cultures in
Australia, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. 22 Durkheim claims that
totemism was the earliest and most primitive form of religion, and thus in the study
of totemism, he finds a perfect case study of the origin of the beliefs and practices
regarding society, the individual, nature, and the sacred. Through the process of
"collective representation," the clan, the most primitive social unit, identifies itself
with the totem, some animal in nature that is regarded as possessing the same
features and characteristics as the clan. The clan thus identifies itself with its sacred
totem. Here is the way in which Durkheim describes the process of collective
representation in totemism:
it [the totem] is the outward and visible form of ... the totemic principle or god.
But it is also the symbol of the determined society called the clan. It is its flag; it
is the sign by which each clan distinguishes itself from the others, the visible
mark of its personality, a mark borne by everything which is a part of the clan
under any title whatsoever, men, beasts, or things. So if it is at once the symbol
of the god and of the society is that not because the god and society are only
one? ... The god of the clan, the totemic principle, can therefore be nothing else
21 For a thorough and detailed treatment of Durkheim's theory of the sociology of religion, see W. S.
F. Pickering, Durkheim's Sociology of Religion (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984).
22 Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (New York: Free Press, 1915). This
work is regarded as providing a scientific grounding of Durkheim' s sociological account of the origin of
religion; however, there must be several disclaimers entered regarding this work. Durkheim did no field
work himself and thus relied completely on the studies of other social scientists. This work came at the
end of his career, long after his developed theory concerning the sociological nature of religion, and his
generalized claims about the universality of totemism are generally thought to be unwarranted. He
claims that the question of whether totemism is universal or not is secondary and that the quality of
facts is more important that their number, a position that allows him to impose quality and value on the
facts he chooses. See pp. 114-15.
287
than the clan itself, personified and represented to the imagination under the
visible form of the animal or vegetable which serves as totem?3
Durkheim's account of the origin of religion is thus in sharp contrast with
Freud's, which locates the origin of religion and religious beliefs in human
weakness and fear. According to Freud, the overwhelming forces of nature are
personified so they might be regarded as lending themselves to placation, and the
projection of a hidden desire for a fearful protector creates a God who will
intervene on our behalf. Durkbeim sees the origin of religion in the collective
representation of the totem through which a clan identifies itself with a part of
nature. Neither nature nor the sacred are alien, unfriendly, threatening, or in need
of placation, according to this account. The roots of totemism, Durkbeim
maintains, "are those of happy confidence rather than terror and compression.,,24
"The totem is the clan personified" is also translated as "the totem is the clan
hypostasized," which captures better Durkheim's claim that through the totem the
clan is made something "real," given substance, reified. The totem is the
representation of the clan by embodying and giving substance to the identifying
characteristics of the clan; therefore, by promoting identification with the totem,
the clan promotes solidarity with itself among its members. 25 It is this same general
totemic principle that Durkheim uses to explain the existence of God. For
Durkheim, God is society hypostasized and reified. Many have taken Durkheim to
mean that God is society, that God and society are ontologically and intentionally
identical. In fact, this aphorism is often used to describe Durkbeim's sociology of
religion. However, it is doubtful that Durkheim ever intended the relationship to be
understood as one of identity. Society is both more fundamental and more
inclusive than religion, and religion is dependent upon society for existence, since
the existence of the totems results from the reification of the fundamental features
of society?6 It is not correct to describe religion as the worship of society
personified, as Phillips does. 27 If worship is understood as an intentional act, then
we are not to think of the members of the primitive Australian clans described by
Durkheim as consciously taking society as the intentional object of their worship.
Rather, it is society that gives power and substance to the totem that then allows
the totem to elicit fear and respect from people who then engage in worship.28
The most crucial aspect of Durkbeim's account of the rise of religion for the
philosophy of religion is that it is a completely naturalistic account that locates the
origin and the meaning of religion completely within the social phenomena that is
the subject of social sciences. Thus, whereas in Freud's account theology is
reduced to psychology, in Durkbeim's account, theology is reduced to sociology.
Perhaps the most stark theistic contrast to these accounts of religion in terms of the
Ibid., p. 236.
Ibid., p. 256.
25 For further discussion of this point, see Pickering, Durkheim' s Sociology of Religion, pp. 231ff.
26 The exact relationship between God and society is both complicated and controversial. See
Pickering, ibid., pp. 232ff.
27 See D. Z. Pbillips, Religion Without Explanation, p. 90.
28 See Wayne Proudfoot, Religious Experience (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), pp.
200-01.
23
24
288
social sciences is Judaism (a poignant irony given Durkheim's Jewish heritage), in

which the origin of religion, as well as the substance of religions beliefs, are
accounted for in terms of the personal intervention by God in human history at
specific times. Although it would be a form of the genetic fallacy to simply
maintain that the origin of a position or argument or theory determines their
substance or validity or value, still, in the case of the world's theistic traditions,
their origin is a part of their substance. In the case of Judaism, for example, if none
of the accounts of God's interaction with man is true but is simply the
hypostatization of Jewish society, then arguably the very substance of Judaism
itself is undermined.
SOCIETY AND GOD
The crux of the matter is the process whereby society gets personified or
hypostatized as God, but this process, like Freud's unconscious projection of the
infantile father-figure, is not a scientific hypothesis based upon or substantiated by
empirical data. Again, one wonders just what kind of empirical data might
conceivably confirm such a hypothesis. Durkheim's fundamental claim that
religion is society hypostasized appears to be an example of function determining
meaning and substance, and in this sense, Durkheim is very close to Freud. And
the function is simply specified. The essential function of religion - all religion, he
claims - is to promote solidarity within society; therefore, the efficacy of religion
to impact society is the only "real" aspect of religion. Religion's substance is thus
determined by its function. There are just two considerations that I will raise about
this position. First, it does not appear that Durkheim can account for the social
reality of a number of different and apparently conflicting systems of religious
beliefs within a society, such as pluralistic modem American society. His position
denies that there are substantive differences among different religions - all
appearances and protestations of believers notwithstanding. What believers of
different religions take to be substantive differences amongst themselves is
deceptive, since underneath the apparent differences, the common essential feature
is the promotion of solidarity of society. Although such a position might have some
appeal to John Hick and others who support some form of religious pluralism
(discussed in Chapter IX), it fails to account for the social reality of diverse
religions within a single society and arbitrarily denies substance to apparent
differences. Second, there appears to be a significant cart and horse problem with
this claim. Where and how does the notion of social solidarity emerge as a social
reality? For Durkheim, society and solidarity with society seem to spring into
existence sui generis. But, as Phillips observes, social solidarity must be
understood in a context where there are shared beliefs and values, and society must
be understood in a context where there are several social institutions and practices,
including political, social, and religious institutions and practices. 29 It is not then
possible for religion to be understood as society personified when religious
institutions and practices, like other social and political institutions and practices,
partially give rise to society itself.
29
D. Z. Phillips, Religion Witlwut Explanation, p. 94.
289
Although Durkheimian sociology has not endured in dominant fashion in

modern-day sociology, there are still important and lingering consequences of his
work. Aside from being considered by some as the father of sociology itself,
Durkheim provided what many regarded at the time as the frrst legitimate
explanation of religion as a product of human society. 3D In terms of influential
naturalistic accounts of religion in the early part of the twentieth century, Marx
provided an explanation of religion in terms of economics, Freud in terms of
psychology, and Durkheim in terms of sociology. Each attempts to develop a
naturalistic account of religion by carrying out a reduction of sorts - an attempt to
reduce the sacred to the profane or human. Durkheim's reduction of religion to
society at least captures the social element in religion that Freud ignores, and it is
free of the obvious political bias of Marx. Arguably, only Max Weber in Germany
rivals Durkheim for influencing the early study of religion by the social sciences.
As far as the sociology of religion is concerned, Weber is best known for his
contention that the rise of capitalism is the result of Calvinistic Protestantism.
Since according to Calvin's notion of predestination no one knows who is saved
and who is not, Weber reasoned that if one was successful in denying carnal
desires and in devoting oneself to one's labor and the accumulation of capital, then
one could get an indication of God's Will.31 Until well into the 1950s, the study of
the sociology of religion was the study of the sociology of religion of either Emile
Durkheim or Max Weber. More recently, the work of Robert Bellah in the
sociology of religion carries on in the Durkheimian tradition. Given the traditional
role of religion and the emerging role of the social sciences in interpreting our
world, Bellah claims, the two provide new and novel opportunities for
understanding and interpreting man's place in the world. 32 Bellah thus preserves
one of Durkheim' s fundamental claims that there is a general, social phenomenon
that is religion that lends itself to sociological study; however, the more radical
claim that religion is a function of and a product of society is not presently
dominant in the sociological study of religion.
NATURALISM, BIOLOGY, AND RELIGION
So far in this chapter, I have considered significant naturalistic accounts of the
origin of religion and religious beliefs. In the remaining part of the chapter, I will
consider the relative explanatory power of theistic versus. naturalistic accounts of
different fundamental and important facts in the universe. In the twentieth century,
naturalism came to be understood as more than simply reductive materialism. The
significant difference between late-twentieth-century naturalism and earlier forms
of naturalism is largely the result of the development of Darwinian evolutionary
theory. The theory of evolution has given naturalism an extraordinary boost in
explanatory power and turned naturalism into a much more appealing alternative to
30 Pickering suggests that sociological theory has developed very little since the time of Durkheim
and Max Weber. See N. S. F. Pickering, Durkheim's Sociology of Religion, p. 503.
3l Weber's major work was The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Although Weber
offered nothing resembling Durkheim's reduction of religion to the social, his work kept religion at the
forefront of the interests of social scientists.
32 Robert Bellah, Beyond Belief' Essays on Religion in a Post Traditional World (New York: Harper
and Row, 1970).
290
theism than were earlier forms of naturalism. It is worthy of note that taken as a
general theory, not simply focusing narrowly on biological evolution by natural
selection, evolution provides a theoretical framework within which it becomes
possible to explain how more complex organization and new traits and features
emerge in the natural world. Such an explanation takes place in terms of slow and
gradual development and random variation and appeals to neither a transcendent
supernatural force nor a materialistic reductive analysis.
With the continual refinement of evolutionary theory during the twentieth
century, naturalism has come to provide a continually more refined and more
compelling alternative explanatory framework to theism. Just how well does
naturalism compete with theism and just how might we determine how the two
compare? Gary Gutting has provided the answer to these questions in a very clear
manner that makes it possible to investigate the comparative explanatory
satisfactoriness of each explanatory framework. Gutting proposes that we need to
proceed by asking the question "Does naturalism provide at least as good an
account as theism of the cosmological, religious, moral, and personal facts on
which the cumulative case for theism is based?,,33 While the comparison between
naturalism and theism will proceed here along different lines than those pursued by
Gutting, a somewhat systematic comparison of how the two different approaches
attempt to explain the fundamental facts of the universe seems the best way of
assessing their relative merits. Let us consider some specific features of the
cosmological, religious, moral, and personal facts concerning the universe and
compare the explanatory power of theism verses naturalism.
THEISM, NATURALISM AND "THE GOD OF THE GAPS"
As many scholars have noted, in ancient times the various attributions of
supernatural powers and accounts of events appear to be the result of attempts by
people to explain phenomena which were to them extraordinary, such as events for
which commonly accepted "natural" explanations were not readily available. The
way in which God as a transcendent, supernatural power is introduced to account
for some aspect of nature or some event in nature for which "natural," scientific
explanations are not forthcoming on any commonly accepted scientific view has
given rise to the concept of God as "a God of the gaps.,,3 It is not necessary that
theism rely upon such gap explanations for the introduction of a transcendent,
supernatural power, but in fact, such an appeal has been rather commonplace. Such
an approach seems to be what is the obvious intent of Aquinas's attempt in the
selection from his Summa Theologica quoted above to use his Five Ways as
responses to the naturalistic claim that "everything we see in the world can be
accounted for by other principles, supposing that God did not exist." The major
33 Gary Gutting, Religious Belief and Skepticism (Notre Dame, lnd.: University of Notre Dame
Press, 1982), p. 131. Gutting adopts four criteria for assessing explanatory adequacy - scope, accuracy,
fruitfulness, and simplicity - all of which are fairly standard, objective criteria for determining the
explanatory efficacy of a theory; however, as he himself notes, not all are applicable for comparing
theism and naturalism. Ibid., pp. 131-37.
34 The phrase "God of the gaps" originated with Dietrich Bonhoeffer. For one discussion of the
pitfalls of this approach, see Antony Flew, God and Philosophy (London: Hutchinson and Co., 1966),
pp.60ff.
291
difficulty with such an approach is obvious. Over the years, science and our
common understanding of the natural world based upon a scientific point of view
has progressed in such a manner so that we are now able to explain more and more
phenomena in very common and "natural" terms that were extraordinary to earlier
peoples. Ifthe theists' rationale for God is based upon an appeal to God as simply
"a God of the gaps," then natural theology is in the position of trying to explain
ever moving targets as more and more gaps are closed by science. A good way to
understand the different arguments for the existence of God - in particular, the
teleological argument, the cosmological argument, and the argument from religious
experience - is in terms of whether or not there are certain features of the universe
that by their very nature are theoretically immune to explanation by scientific,
naturalistic means. For example, certainly particular events and features of the
universe such as solar eclipses and rain are now easily understood on strictly
scientific, naturalistic terms. However, the important question is whether there are
more abstract, cosmological features of the universe or whether there are religious,
moral or personal facts for which no scientific, naturalistic explanation is now
available nor will ever be available because of the intrinsic nature of those abstract,
cosmological features.
THEISM AND DESIGN
The apparent design in the universe is perhaps the most salient cosmological
feature of the universe for which theists have claimed that theism provides a
satisfactory explanation and for which naturalism can provide no explanation.
Certainly, with earlier reductive materialistic forms of naturalism, the explanation
of the apparent design in the universe in terms of increasing complexity of inert,
inorganic bits of matter required something of a stretch of one's credulity. The
problem of explaining such design within materialism is exactly what led to the
rise of deism in the nineteenth century. God provided the design and order for the
universe, as the commonly used analogy illustrates, by designing the watch,
winding it up, and then leaving it to run on its own like other machines. God thus
became the arbitrary deus ex machina to explain the order and design in a
materialistic universe when it proved to be implausible to explain such design
solely on materialistic and mechanistic grounds; the deus ex machina became a
particular form of "the God of the gaps."
Contemporary naturalism, with the advantage of being able to appeal to
evolution by natural selection, can provide a much more sophisticated and much
less arbitrary account of the apparent design in the universe. To structure the
discussion here, let us consider two of the well-known and often discussed
descriptions by theists of the type of design that is allegedly found in nature (see
Chapter III). The first comes from Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
as represented by Cleanthes:
Look round the world: Contemplate the whole and every part of it: You will
find it to be nothing but one great machine, subdivided into an infinite number
of lesser machines, which again admit of subdivisions to a degree beyond what
human senses and faculties can trace and explain. All these various machines,
and even their most minute parts, are adjusted to each other with an accuracy
292
which ravishes into admiration all men who have ever contemplated them. The
curious adapting of means to ends, throughout all nature, resembles exactly,
though it much exceeds, the productions of human contrivance; of human
design, thought, wisdom, and intelligence. 35
Cleanthes goes on to conclude, of course, that since the effects resemble each
other, the causes must also resemble each other, and that an intelligent creator must
then exist. Perhaps the best-known and most often repeated description of the
alleged design in the universe comes from William Paley. Paley gives a very
detailed description of a watch and how it works and compares the watch to the
universe; he also gives a similarly detailed description of the eye and how it works
and compares the eye to a telescope. 36 The similarities between the two and the
proof of design in the eye when it is compared to the telescope is the "plainest and
clearest of all propositions," Paley claims. And when we compare different eyes
found in different species of animals, we find even greater evidence of design. For
example, the eyes found in fish and those found in terrestrial animals are designed
differently to accommodate the different ways in which light is refracted in water
and in air. "What plainer manifestation of design can there be," Paley asks
rhetorically, "than these differences?,,37 The source of such design in the universe,
Paley concludes, must be a creator.
Can such design in the universe be denied or explained without appealing to a
divine creator without absurdity? When Paley asks a similar question, he clearly
intends it to be a rhetorical one with the obvious negative answer supporting
theism. And perhaps an affirmative answer within reductive materialism seems
rather implausible; however, an affirmative answer within contemporary, nonreductive naturalism using evolutionary theory is considerably more plausible and
a significantly greater threat to theism.
NATURALISM AND DESIGN
In just one of many indications of his true genius, Hume anticipates the general
line of argument which contemporary naturalism would take following Darwin:
Suppose ... that matter were thrown into any position by a blind, unguided force;
it is evident that this first position must, in all probability be the most confused
and most disorderly imaginable, without any resemblance to those works of
human contrivance which, along with a symmetry of parts, discover an
adjustment of means to ends and a tendency to self-preservation .... Suppose
that the actuating force ... continues in matter ... [and] gives a perpetual
restlessness to matter.
35 David Hume. Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, edited by Richard H. Popkin (Indianapolis,
Ind.: Hackett Publishing, 1980), p. IS.
36 See William Paley, Natural Theology: or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity
(London: Longman and Co., 1813), p. iff. and p. 18ff. Though most present anthologies in the
philosophy of religion include Paley's description of the details of the design of the watch,
unfortunately his description of the eye and its design are often omitted.
37 Tbid.,pp. 75-77.
CONTEMPORARY CHALLENGES: HUMANISM, NATURALISM, AND ATIIEISM
293
... Is it not possible that it [the universe] may settle at last ... so as to preserve a
uniformity of appearance, amidst the continual motion and fluctuation of its
parts? This we find to be the case with the universe at the present ... and may
this not account for all the appearing wisdom and contrivance which is in the
universe? ... This adjustment if attained by matter of a seeming stability in the
forms, with a real and perpetual revolution or motion of its parts, affords a
plausible, if not a true, solution of the difficulty. 38
Although Hume could seriously consider the possibility that the origin of the
apparent design is to be found within the natural universe, he had no theoretical
framework within which he could consider any possible source of the apparent
design except pure chance. Darwinian evolutionary theory provides just such an
explanatory framework within which some other explanation is possible rather than
Hume's supposition of pure possibility.
In the twentieth century, naturalism has received a significant boost in its
explanatory powers. Many contemporary philosophers of religion think that the
apparent design in the universe (whose origin Hume could locate in nature only by
attributing it to chance) can now be explained within the theoretical framework of
evolution by natural selection. For example, 1. L. Mackie notes that "we can now
offer the evolutionary one [explanation] toward which Hume could only make
rather fumbling gestures. Evolution by natural selection mimics purposiveness and
so can thoroughly explain what Cleanthes calls 'the curious adapting of means to
ends, throughout all nature' .,,39 Robert Hurlbutt agrees that evolution by natural
selection has done more to "undermine the design argument" and render
"unnecessary" the hypothesis "that the order discernible in the world was due to,
and necessitated, an orderer" than any other single factor. 40
Exactly how evolution by natural selection undermines the argument from
design is not so clear; the reasons usually given by many contemporary
philosophers of religion are very general and vague; science now fills "the gap"
regarding design that was earlier filled by God. It is interesting that Darwin himself
also thought that his theory of evolution by natural selection provided the kind of
reasonable explanation for the apparent design for which theists insist only the
existence of God can explain. Darwin says:
The old argument of design in nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed
to me to be conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been
discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a
bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a
door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic
David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, p. 51.

J. L. Mackie, The Miracle of Theism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), pp. 139-40.
40 Robert H. Hurlbutt Ill, Hume, Newton, and the Design Argument (Lincoln: University of
38
39
Nebraska Press, 1965), p. 180.
294
beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind
blows. Everything in nature is the result of fixed laws. 41
Although it is clear from these words that Darwin thought he had provided a
better explanation for certain features of nature based upon natural selection than
had Paley based upon "the old argument of design in nature," his words are
ambiguous concerning exactly how evolution with natural selection provides such
a better explanation. Scholars are divided about not only whether evolution by
natural selection undermines the argument based upon design, but they are also
divided concerning exactly how the supposed undermining takes place.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF BIOLOGY AND THE THEORY OF FUNCTIONS
In the philosophy of biology, contemporary scholars are divided into two camps
concerning exactly how evolution by natural selection might explain the kind of
phenomena in the universe that theists explain by appealing to the existence of
God. One camp explains what the argument from design describes as "apparent
design" or "object design" but insists that there is no design in a sense that requires
an intelligent designer. The actual phenomena exhibit an internal complexity of
order and regUlarity that is not design per se but that gives the appearance of
design. The second camp continues to embrace the notion of design but broadens
the notion of a designer in such a manner that the "purpose" or "end" of the design
can be attributed reasonably to nature itself instead of an intelligent agent that is
"above" or "outside" nature.
Let us first consider the more controversial second camp that retains the notion
of design but gives it a completely naturalistic interpretation. Perhaps the most
prominent figure in the philosophy of biology who has defended such a view is
Ruth Millikan. Millikan developed a theory of biological traits and characteristics
in terms of what she calls "proper functions." Her theory is based upon the notion
that it is possible to ascribe functions to things - both "man-made" things and
natural, biological organs - that are not, in fact, capable of performing the
functions which are ascribed to them. Taking as her point of departure
Wittgenstein's comparison in his Philosophical Investigations between the
functions of words and the functions of tools (Section 11), Millikan extends
Wittgenstein's analogy to the functions of biological organs. For example, a heart
has to do with the pumping of blood and the circulation of nutrients; however, a
heart does not have to be actually pumping blood in order to be a heart. Some
hearts are diseased or malformed so that they do not pump blood properly, but they
are still hearts, Millikan thinks. Pumping blood is the "proper function" of a heart;
pumping blood is what a heart has been "designed to" do or what it is "supposed
to" do. 42 In a move which is reminiscent of Paley's use of analogy, Millikan claims
that a heart is analogous to a can opener that is designed to open cans and that has
the "purpose" of opening cans though it might be broken and unable to open
41 Charles Darwin, The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, edited by N. Barlow (London: Collins,
1958), p. 87.
42 Ruth Millikan, Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories Cambridge, Mass.: MIT
Press, 1984), p. 1 and p. 18.
295
cans. 43 Her theory of proper functions is designed to explain what she readily
embraces as the designs and purposes of natural organs (compare, for example,
Paley's example of an eye) in terms of the history of the organ; that is, in terms of
its survival and adaptiveness based upon natural selection. The theory of proper
functions clearly is based upon the introduction of teleological explanations into
natural phenomena. Millikan's theory of proper functions might be understood in
terms of an analogue of what Aristotle did with Plato's theory of the forms.
Aristotle took Plato's abstract, ethereal, transcendent, other-worldly forms and
placed them in particular objects as the particular formal cause of that object.
Millikan takes Paley's transcendent source of design in the universe and places it
in particular natural objects as their proper functions.
One important question for Millikan's theory of proper functions (also
sometimes called a "historical theory of functions") becomes whether the
teleological and normative notions of "purpose" or "design" can be understood in
completely naturalistic terms. 44 Phillip Kitcher, who shares Millikan's general view
of the nature of design and teleological purpose in nature, attempts to explain how
we might understand design and purpose in completely naturalistic terms by
providing the following example: 45 Imagine that you are designing a machine to
perform a particular function and the performance of the machine is dependent
upon the function of a specific small part of the machine, x. Imagine also that you
do not understand completely all the mechanical details that are responsible for
making your machine or the specific part of your machine, x, function in the way
in which you intend. Completely unbeknownst to you, a small screw falls into your
machine and lodges against x and another part of the machine in such a manner
that x and the rest of the machine function exactly in the way in which you
originally intended; however, neither x nor the machine would have functioned in
the way in which you intended without the presence of the screw. Kitcher claims
that the screw has a function and a purpose and that the function and purpose of the
screw cannot be grounded in any intention on your part in originally designing the
machine because you are not even aware of the presence of the screw. Similarly,
evolutionary biologists can explain "the structure, traits, and behaviors" of
biological organisms on the basis of natural selection "without assuming that the
Creator explicitly intended that those structures, traits, and behaviors perform just
those tasks.,,46 Kitcher feels that his theory of biological functions provides a
unifying account of different versions of biological functions that are distinguished
by the different ways in which they account for the design of the function - either
on the basis of intention or natural selection. 47
43 Ruth Millikan. "In Defense of Proper Functions," in White Queen Psychology and Other Essays
for Alice, edited by Ruth Millikan (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1993), p. 21.
44 There is disagreement about just how to interpret Millikan on this point.
45 See Philip Kitcher, "Function and Design," Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Vol. 18, 1993, pp.
380-81.
46 Ibid., p. 381.
47 Ibid., p. 391 and pp. 395-96.
296
ORDER VERSUS DESIGN

Now let us consider the fIrst camp that "explains away" design in the universe
in terms of complexity of order. Antony Flew makes the distinction between
design and order a very clear and substantive one. "Whereas design does
presuppose a designer, order does not similarly, as a matter of logic, require an
Orderer.,,48 Flew argues that to attribute order to the universe but deny that there is
an Orderer is not contradictory, and thus, the argument from design (as it is
normally called) is not really an argument from design but rather it is an argument
"to design but from order.,,49 If we start with the assumption that what is "evident
to our senses" is order rather than design, then the issue becomes one of whether
the move from order to design can be justifIed and, if so, how. We should note that
Aquinas notes very explicitly that the explanation for such order cannot be found
in nature. He says:
When diverse things are coordinated the scheme depends upon their directed
unifIcation .... The arrangement of diverse things cannot be directed by their
own private and divergent natures; of themselves they are diverse and exhibit no
tendency to form a pattern. It follows that the order of many among themselves
is either a matter of chance or must be attributed to one fIrst planner who has a
purpose in mind. What comes about always, or in the great majority of cases, is
not the result of accident. 50
Aquinas thus presents the choices for explaining the order in the universe as
limited to chance or a designer. What Darwinian evolution has proven is that this is
a false dilemma, since it provides us with a third choice for explaining the complex
order observed in natural phenomena. Darwinian evolution by natural selection
explicitly undercuts Aquinas's rather arbitrary claim that diverse things themselves
"exhibit no tendency to form a pattern.,,51
In contrast with Ruth Millikan's theory of proper functions, Robert Cummins
provides a "functional analysis" of design that has different implications for
theistic accounts of design. Cummings explains his notion of functions in terms of
the contributions that parts of a complex system make to the functioning of the
system. For example, we can understand the function of a heart and attribute a
function to a heart only in terms of its contribution to the functioning of a living
organism, and that contribution is the function of pumping blood. 52 The major
difference between Cummings and Millikan, for our purposes here, is that Millikan
appears to make an appeal to teleology in nature in her theory of proper functions,
while Cummings makes no such appeal in his theory of functional analysis.
Millikan thus appears to leave room for a theistic interpretation of the origin of
teleology in nature, while Cummins does not.
Antony Flew, God and Philosophy, p. 69.
Ibid.
50 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles (I) 142. Quoted by Flew, ibid., p.70.
51 Flew attacks this claim of Aquinas very strongly, calling it an argument from a "perverse premise"
to a "gratuitous conclusion." Aquinas's claim amounts to a denial that things can do what we observe
them to be naturally doing. See Antony Flew, God and Philosophy, p. 72.
52 See Robert Cummins, "Functional Analysis," Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 72,1975, pp. 741-764.
48
49
297
THE BLIND WATCHMAKER

In a similar vein, Richard Dawkins is responsible for one of the best-known and
most thorough and systematic interpretations of Darwinian evolutionary theory that
"explains away" design in the universe in favor of "apparent design" - complexity
and order. With an obvious appeal to Paley's example involving the design of a
watch and the comparison of the watch to the universe, Dawkins mixes his
metaphors very effectively in The Blind Watchmaker:
Natural selection is the blind watchmaker, blind because it does not see ahead,
does not plan consequences, has no purpose in view. Yet the living results of
natural selection overwhelmingly impress us with the illusion of design and
planning. 53
Paley's specific example of the argument to design that compares the telescope
and the eye is particularly vulnerable to Dawkins' explanation based upon natural
selection as the blind watchmaker. The intuitive force of Paley's example of the
eye is that if we try to imagine the eye simply appearing - full-blown, fully
developed as if from the head of Medusa - then it seems to be impossible to
explain such an appearance simply by natural means or by chance. The odds of
"blindly rushing" atoms simply colliding in such a precise manner as to produce
the human eye are so high as to be incalculable - a figure billions of times greater,
Dawkins suggests, than all of the atoms in the universe. 54 So such an explanation is
not a reasonable one, and if the only alternative explanation is a transcendent God,
then the theist argument might work after all. But, Dawkins argues, there is
something fundamentally wrong with this way of approaching things. What if we
ask the fundamentally different question of whether there might be a reasonable
natural explanation for the appearance of the human eyes from something which is
not an eye but is very similar to an eye and that is missing only a minor detail or
two of becoming an eye. 55 Imagine then that we have a protoeye (which is not an
eye) and an eye and further imagine that the difference between them is so small
that we can plausibly understand that difference solely in terms of a natural
explanation. The explanation of the apparent design in terms of natural selection
then consists of a series of such explanations. What if we ask the same question
about the protoeye? And provide the same kind of explanation? We eventually
arrive at a completely natural explanation of the "design" of the eye based upon a
very long series of very gradual changes resulting from natural selection. At one
end of the series is the human eye. At the other end is something that does not
resemble an eye at all! Each minute change in the series is reasonable given
evolution based upon natural selection, and we thus arrive at an alternative, natural
explanation for the human eye. 56 The lesson to be learned from this example is
Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1987), p. 21.
Ibid., p. 77.
55 This is Dawkins's example. See ibid., pp. 77ff.
56 Ibid., pp. 77-79. It may be thought that the crucial issue is whether there can be a completely
naturalistic explanation for the development of organic life from inorganic materials. Though perhaps at
one time this crucial step was controversial, the second half of the twentieth century has seen a series of
53
54
298
clear. If the gaps in the explanation are large enough, then God appears to be the
only plausible answer. If the gaps are small enough, then nature becomes a
plausible answer. The overlapping histories of the "God of the gaps" approach in
the philosophy of religion and scientific explanation (particularly scientific
explanation based upon evolution by natural selection) appear to result in a
consistently developing pattern in which the big gaps become smaller gaps. Thus,
it again appears that God has given way to science for filling the gap of design in
nature.
DARWIN'S BLACK BOX
Is Dawkins's explanation of the slow, incremental development of the design of
the eye plausible enough to make a completely naturalistic explanation of such
design reasonable? Michael Behe, a biochemist, argues that the kind of slow
incremental changes described by Dawkins as necessary for evolution by natural
selection cannot work to explain the development of the irreducibly complex
biochemical processes on the cellular and molecular levels of living organisms. 57
Behe claims that he does not challenge evolution per se or even the notion of a
common ancestor for all forms of life; his challenge is to evolution by natural
selection since natural selection is a process that produces change very slowly and
incrementally. The fundamental level on which life must be explained, Behe
insists, is the molecular level - the level that is the proper study of biochemistry. It
is the molecules that make up the cells and tissues of the body and the unique
chemical reactions that occur on the cellular level that account for the fundamental
processes of life such as vision, digestion, photosynthesis, or immunity. 58 Darwin
and other nineteenth-century scientists knew little or nothing about cells; indeed, it
was only in the second half of the twentieth century that biochemistry came into its
own. The cell for Darwin was thus a "black box," a mechanism that was
impenetrable by known scientific theory at the time (although cells were known to
do something). Thus, the development of Darwinian evolutionary theory focuses
upon the anatomical structure of organisms and their organs, as does Dawkins,
because cells and molecules have only recently begun to be understood by
biochemists. Earlier, since these were levels that could not be penetrated by
scientists or scientific theories, the assumption was that what happened on the
cellular or molecular level was simple. We now know that what happens on the
cellular and molecular levels involves "staggeringly complicated biochemical
experiments (known as the Miller experiments) where electrical charges have been introduced into a
"primitive" atmosphere containing hydrogen, nitrogen, and simple carbon compounds in such a way so
as to produce organic molecules and amino acids. These experiments have been reproduced many
times. See S. L. Miller, "Production of Amino Acids under Possible Primitive Earth Conditions,
Science. Vol. 117, 1953; and "The Formation of Organic Compounds on Earth," New York Academy of
Science, Vol. 69, 1957. For a very detailed discussion of the Miller experiments and of the origin of
order in the processes of self-organization and natural selection, see Stuart A. Kaufman, The Origins of
Order (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 288ff.
57 Michael J. Behe, Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (New York: Free
Press, 1996).
58 Ibid., p. 3.
299
processes," the development of which, Behe claims, cannot be explained on the

basis of evolution by natural selection. 59
The reason that the biochemical processes on the molecular level cannot be
explained as the result of evolution by natural selection is not simply because the
processes are "staggeringly complicated." According to Behe, it is, rather, because
biochemical processes are examples of what Behe call irreducible complexities. An
irreducible complexity occurs when the function of a system is the result of several
interdependent parts that are related in such a manner that if anyone of the parts is
changed even slightly, the function of the mechanism is lost. Such systems cannot
be produced gradually, Behe maintains, by the kind of slow and small incremental
changes resulting from natural selection. Here is the way that Behe describes such
systems:
By irreducibly complex I mean a single system composed of several wellmatched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the
removal of anyone of the parts causes the system to effectively cease
functioning. An irreducibly complex system cannot be produced directly (that
is, by continuously improving the initial function, which continues to work by
the same mechanism) by slight, successive modifications of a precursor system,
because any precursor to an irreducibly complex system that is missing a part is
by definition nonfunctiona1. 60
Behe explains that the molecular and cellular systems responsible for
fundamental processes in living organisms - ciliary locomotion, blood clotting, and
the immune system - are examples of irreducibly complex systems. Since
Darwinian evolution by natural selection cannot account for the fundamental
molecular processes that are the basis of life, Behe thinks that the only plausible
explanation for the origin of such systems must be given in terms of intelligent
design. The actions or events that produced such systems must have been quick, or
"even sudden," since all the different interrelated parts had to be added at the same
time. 61
If Behe is right, then irreducibly complex systems on the molecular and cellular
levels of living organisms make a naturalistic explanation for design implausible
and the need for a theistic explanation for intelligent design necessary. Is this a
"knock-down argument" against evolution by natural selection? Is the existence of
irreducibly complex systems scientific disproof of the slow, incremental change
required by natural selection? Well, no, because when one examines Behe's
arguments closely and the science upon which those arguments are based, many
questions remain unanswered and other questions receive different answers from
those that Behe gives.
One would think that the possibility of scientific disproof of evolution by
natural selection would attract a great deal of attention from scientists and
theologians alike; however, the response to Behe's claims has been tepid. There is,
59
60
61
Ibid., p. 22.
Ibid., p. 39.
See ibid., Chapter 9. Behe does not identify the source of intelligent design that he thinks is
necessary, but the tone of his remarks suggests that he intends it to be a theistic source.
300
first of all, the response that the science in Darwin's Black Box is bad science. 62
Although there are many issues here that become very complex very quickly, two
or three main points can be made. Behe suggests that there should be evidence of
the evolution of biochemical systems in the same way that there is evidence of
morphological evolution, and he even decries the lack of such evidence. However,
obviously the evolution of biochemical processes cannot be traced through fossils
the way in which morphological changes in anatomy can. Any evolutionary
explanation of the development of such processes must be given by examining
highly evolved living organisms, and such an examination undercuts Behe's claim
that biochemical systems are irreducibly complex in the sense that they come from
pathways that become functional only in the last instant. Such systems are made up
of pieces that are the result of pathways that borrow pieces from other pathways "duplicated genes and early multifunctional enzymes." One of the key parts in the
process of blood clotting, one of Behe's favorite examples, is thrombin, a protein
that is also involved in cell division and related to trypsin, a digestive enzyme. 63
Clearly there are some relationships here that one would expect on an evolutionary
explanation of the biochemical process of blood clotting but that one would not
expect on the explanation of intelligent design.
While Behe does not deny or explicitly argue against the fossil evidence for the
evolution of morphology and anatomy, the slow, incremental, evolutionary
changes in terms of the design and structure of anatomical and skeletal features of
living creatures must be based upon and the result of similar biochemical changes.
In addition, as Jerry Coyne emphasizes, there is direct evidence of the evolution of
molecules. There is, for example, "the remarkable congruence between
phylogenies based on anatomy and those based on DNA or protein sequence ... , the
relatedness of genes through gene duplication (in,cluding those involved in the
immune system and blood-clotting), and the existence of vestigial 'pseudogenes'
that were useful in ancestors.,,64 Although Behe is correct that Darwin did not
know or understand the workings of cells in living organisms, neo-Darwinians
have successfully afplied the basic process of evolution by natural selection to
cells and molecules. To be sure, such research in still in its infancy, since as Behe
himself points out, biochemistry is a new science; still, to argue from what science
still does not know about the development of biochemical processes on the
molecular level to intelligent design is an example, as Neil W. Blackstone points
out, of argumentum ad ignorantiam. 66
In the twentieth century, contemporary philosophers of science and philosophers
of biology, evolutionary biology, and the theory of functions have provided
contemporary philosophers of religion with natural explanations other than chance,
62 Much of the following is drawn from two book reviews of Darwin's Black Box by scientists: Jerry
A Coyne, "God in the Details," Nature, Vol. 383, September 1996, pp. 227-28; and Neil W. Blackstone,
"Argumentum ad Ignorantiam," The Quarterly Review a/Biology, Vol. 72, no. 4,1997, pp. 445-47.
63 Jerry A. Coyne, ibid., p. 227.
64 Ibid.
65 Neil W. Blackstone, "Argumentum ad Ignorantiam," p. 445. Also see R. C. Lewontin, "The Units
of Selection," Annual Review a/Ecology and Systematics, Vol. I, pp. 1-18.
66 Ibid. Also see David B. Myers, "New Design Arguments: Old Millian Objections," Religious
Studies, Vol. 36, no. 2, 2000, pp. 141-62. Myers argues that even if biochemistry does support an
intelligent designer, it does not support the God of theism.
CONTEMPORARY CHAlLENGES: HUMANISM, NATURALISM, AND ATHEISM
301
which evaded Hume. In terms of explaining the apparent design in the universe,
something of a continuum of theoretical explanations has developed. Theism is still
on one end of the continuum with its commitment to the transcendent, supernatural
power to explain design, and this need for a source of intelligent design receives
additional support from Behe. Somewhere in between the two extremes of the
continuum are Millikan and Kitcher and other philosophers of biology who hold a
theory of proper functions based upon a history of natural selection with the notion
of a completely natural teleological "purpose" explained without an appeal to any
intelligent agency. Cummins and Dawkins are on the other end of the continuum
with their theories which "explain away" the teleological aspects of design whether from an intelligent or nonintelligent source - in terms of complexity,
order, and adaptability of the organism. The net result of the development of
naturalism regarding the apparent design in the universe is that a completely
naturalistic explanation has become at least as plausible as a theistic one.
EVOLUTION AND THE COSMOS
However, the "gap" of explaining higher living organisms is only one area of
apparent design in the universe. What. about explanations for the apparent design
involving inorganic matter? Are there natural phenomena still remaining that
display apparent design whose explanations contain big enough gaps so that God is
necessary for filling those gaps? While Peter van Inwagen concedes that Darwinian
evolutionary theory might provide a successful alternative to the theistic account of
design if the scope of the investigation is limited to living organisms, he suggests
that if we consider "the bigger picture," - the cosmos "as a whole" - then theism
might well provide a better explanation than naturalism. The gap that van Inwagen
considers is the biggest gap possible: Why does this universe exist at all in the
exact manner in which it does?67 He says:
But what of the cosmos as a whole? If the cosmos is a very special cosmos
among all possible cosmoi, and if it has every appearance of being a cosmos that
has been designed to be an abode for life, might not the most obvious
explanation of this appearance be that the appearance is reality? Might not the
most obvious explanation of the fine-tuning of the cosmos be that it has been
fine-tuned? That its large-scale features (if no others) have been carefully
chosen and put into place by a conscious, purposive being who wanted to make
an abode for living things?68
Can Darwinian evolutionary theory be expanded and adapted to account for the
appearance of design on the level of the cosmos as a whole? Within Darwin's
account of evolution, chance results in features, characteristics, traits, and functions
in organisms that give the appearance of the intentional work of a designer. What if
this kind of explanation is applied on the scale of the cosmos "as a whole?" Is it
possible for an expanded version of evolution to account for the appearance of the
67 See Peter van Inwagen, Metaphysics (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1993), p. 131. Also see
Chapter III.
68 Ibid.
302
design of the entire cosmos? Van Inwagen decides, in the end, that it can. He gives
the following example: Imagine a town in which all of the inhabitants have alarm
clocks that go off at just the right time every day for each person to get to work on
time. Consider two possible explanations for this situation. We might suspect that
each inhabitant has set his or her alarm intentionally; that is, the order is the
intentional result of a rational agent. But there is another plausible explanation.
Suppose that there were, many, many years ago, many times the number of people
in this town than there now are and that they were each given alarms clocks that
were randomly set (in ways which could not be changed) at different times over a
twenty-four-hour period. Gradually, over a long period of time, the people whose
alarm clocks were set at the wrong times (which was by far the largest group) lost
their jobs and moved or died because their clocks did not regulate their lives in the
proper way. The present inhabitants of this town are the people who "just
happenelf' (by chance) to get clocks that were set right - with settings that
optimized their lives. This story, van Inwagen says, "is a model for the sort of
circumstance in which the action of chance can mimic the productions of a rational
being.,,69
To make this expanded version of evolution work on the level of the cosmos, we
need only appeal to chance and to what van Inwagen calls an "observational
selection effect" that is, in effect, a biased or limited set of data. There may be
many ways in which our observations of the cosmos are limited; therefore, if there
are other cosmoi, we cannot observe them because of the features of our own
cosmos. We are "locked into" and can only observe the insides of our own cosmos,
and such limited observations support the expanded version of evolutionary
theory.7o We are left in a position, according to van Inwagen, where we are unable
to decide between the two hypotheses: on the one hand, theism claims that this
cosmos is unique and fine tuned by an intelligent designer (the clocks have been
set by a rational agent) and on the other hand, expanded evolution claims that this
cosmos is one of many possible cosmoi and that it has evolved because it had the
right initial, random settings.71
In the end, van Inwagen thinks, one must make one's choice between theism
and naturalism on the grounds of whether we think the original beginnings of the
cosmos in which we human beings exist were grounded in Chaos or Logos. If the
original beginnings of the cosmos were Chaos, then we human beings have no
purpose, and there is no meaning to life. However, if the beginnings were Logos,
then human beings exist for a purpose and life has meaning. Such a conclusion
moves the comparison of theism and naturalism into a consideration of human
nature and what Gutting calls "personal facts," which are explored later in this
chapter.
On strictly metaphysical grounds, van Inwagen concludes that the choice cannot
be made between theism and naturalism for an explanation of apparent design in
the universe. If theism and naturalism tie on the criterion of their scope, then it
seems the tie must go to naturalism, since on metaphysical grounds, it is the more
69
70
71
Ibid., pp. 139-40.

Ibid., 144.
Ibid., p. 145.
303
simple theory without the need of a supernatural power or being or deus ex

machina.72 However, the entire issue of the choice between naturalism and theism
does not rest with the criterion of simplicity.
THEISM, NATURALISM, AND EVIL
Even if one concedes, as van Inwagen does, that naturalism and theism tie in
their explanations of natural phenomena, it seems that a theist would still have
difficulties admitting that evolution by natural selection is an equally plausible
explanation to intelligent design. Consider the matter of the nature of the
mechanism by which design or the appearance of design (complexity of order and
adaptiveness) are introduced into the world on the grounds of evolution by natural
selection. Kenneth Nelson argues that evolution by natural design is not the kind of
mechanism that we would expect an intelligent creator to choose, and in response,
William Wainwright similarly focuses on the question of the "efficiency" of the
mechanism. 73 Now evolution by natural selection is a notoriously inefficient
mechanism,74 but it is also important to note and to continue to emphasize the
crucial role of natural selection in evolution. As Nelson notes, one can certainly
imagine evolution by other possible means that would be quite different and more
efficient.75 For example, a possible mechanism that produced the evolutionary
changes more quickly and more consistently, with just the right mutations, with
fewer dead ends and less waste (measured in terms of the loss of both individual
organisms and species), would be much more akin to what one might expect from
an intelligent creator than the actual mechanism that operates in this actual world.
Wainwright rather cavalierly dismisses efficiency as an "inappropriate criterion"
for assessing the mechanism in nature that produces design on the grounds that
efficiency is a value only in a situation where power and resources are limited,
which is not the situation in the case of creation by an omnipotent God. 76 However,
there is, of course, the additional point that the inefficiency of the actual
mechanism of evolution is inefficient not just in terms of the mere numbers of
individual organisms and species necessary but also in terms of the violence with
which organisms must interact with their environments. Evolution by natural
72 Kenneth Nelson claims that naturalism does not undermine the argument from design simply
because it is more simple, since science might discover at some point that the world was produced
instantaneously, with design, just as some theists claim. He maintains that the theistic explanation
would then be more reasonable, even though the naturalistic explanation is more simple. But Nelson
describes a situation in which the respective adequacy and scope of the two explanations would also
change, and this may happen in some possible (or future) world, but it is not the case in this actual
world. The point here is not that simplicity overrides other criteria for assessing explanations but that,
everything else being equal, simplicity favors naturalism. This is exactly why the process has been to
compare the respective scope of theism and naturalism by asking whether there are some features of the
universe - some gap - which is not explained by naturalism. See Kenneth Nelson, "Evolution and the
Argument from Design," Religious Studies, Vol. 14, 1978, p. 429.
73 Ibid., p. 432ff.; and William Wainwright, Philosophy of Religion (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth
Publishing, 1988), pp. 50ff.
74 Natural selection is so inefficient that the length of time necessary for the process of selection to
take place was originally a major criticism of Darwin's theory, given what was considered at the time to
be the age of the universe.
75 Kenneth Nelson, "Evolution and the Argument from Design," p. 437.
76 William Wainwright, Philosophy of Religion, p. 51.
304
selection is a scientific confirmation of the philosophical assessment by Thomas

Hobbes that "the life of man [is] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.,,77 A
consideration of the inefficiency of natural selection in terms of the pain and
suffering of living organisms leads directly into questions concerning the problem
of evil (see Chapter VI).
A good way of resolving the issue about whether the mechanism of natural
selection is the kind of mechanism which one might reasonably expect from an
intelligent agent is to turn the question around. It is rather obvious how (and many
people have made suggestions about how) this world might be different to make it
more obviously the handiwork of an intelligent creator, but exactly how - in what
particular respects - might the world be different to make it more obviously the
result of an unintelligent, completely natural process? The obvious answer seems
to be that one would expect things to be pretty much as they are in this world. If
the particular mechanism of evolution by natural selection is not paradigmatic of a
nonintelligent mechanism, then we might feel like asking the theist just what sort
of mechanism would count as an unintelligent one. 78 The present mechanism in
this actual world takes a long, LONG, time, requires the "brutish" pain and
suffering of millions upon millions of organisms, and has numerous blind alleys
and dead ends. There seems to be very little that naturalism might change about the
current understanding of biological evolution by natural selection to make it more
obviously a completely natural, nonintelligent process, and this is an indication of
just how different late-twentieth-century naturalism is from nineteenth-century
naturalism. Whereas the explanation of design in terms of nineteenth-century
reductive materialism still left obvious room for deism and the apparent need to
explain the "watchmaker" who had wound up the mechanistic universe and set it in
motion, late-twentieth-century naturalism based upon evolution by natural
selection closes that particular gap and has no such need for (and indeed, seems
incompatible with) the introduction of such an intelligent source of design in the
natural world.
THEISM, ATHEISM, AND DESIGN
In "The Presumption of Atheism," Antony Flew distinguishes between negative
and positive atheism in the following manner: a negative atheist is simply one who
is not a theist, while a positive atheist is one who "positively" denies the existence
of God or one who "positively" disbelieves in the existence of God. 79 In order to
deny the existence of God, the positive theist must admit and endorse to some
degree his understanding of the concept of God, and following the attack on the
meaningfulness of religious language by the logical positivists and other more
moderate analytic philosophers (detailed in Chapter II), Flew thinks that the
positive atheist assumes too great a burden of proof. Negative atheism, however, is
another matter. In the history of the debate between theism and atheism, each has
been regarded as having an equal burden of proof. Flew maintains that, in contrast
with negative atheism, it is theism that has something to prove. "The presumption
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), Chapter 13, p. 89.
See Kenneth Nelson, "Evolution and the Argument from Design," pp. 437-38.
79 'The Presumption of Atheism," in The Presumption of Atheism and other Philosophical Essays on
God, Freedom, and Immortality, Antony Flew (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1976), pp. 14ff.
77
78
305
of atheism" reconstructs the nature of the debate so that the "onus of proof' is on
the theist. The negative atheist insists, according to Flew, that his is the
epistemologically neutral point of view and that the theist must take the initiative
and assume the responsibility for providing the arguments, the evidence, or the
reasons for moving from nonbelief to belief. The job of the theist is twofold: fIrst,
to introduce and to defend his proposed concept of God; and second, to provide
suffIcient reason for believing that this concept of his does in fact have an
application. 8o
The current debate concerns how, and to what extent, twentieth-century
developments concerning the notion of design in nature and the implications of
those developments have affected the debate between theism and atheism. Using
Flew's distinction between negative and positive atheism, we must say, on balance,
that the considerations from modem science, and particularly evolutionary theory,
have given even greater epistemological clout to negative atheism. If the burden of
proof is assumed by the theist, then the net effect of the implications of
evolutionary theory upon the notion of design has been to "raise the bar" and make
the burden of proof even greater. 81 Certainly, there is a greater burden of providing
some sort of epistemic warrant for a person who maintains a belief than for one
who does not - whatever that source of epistemic warrant might be. 82 As Flew
concludes,
if it is to be established that there is a God, then we have to have good grounds
for believing that this is indeed so. Until and unless some such grounds are
produced we have literally no reason at all for believing; and in that situation the
only reasonable posture must be that of either the negative atheist or the
agnostic. 83
Donald Evans has objected to Flew's presumption that atheism does not, in fact,
establish an epistemologically neutral beginning point for the inquiry; rather, it
actually skews the debate in favor of atheism. 84 Kai Nielsen has taken up the
challenge to Flew as well. He sides with Evans by claiming that Flew is remiss in
not developing or defending a general theory of meaning or the positivists'
verifIcation principle to support his otherwise unwarranted assumptions. 8S The
burden is actually upon Flew, Nielsen insists, to show how the theistic belief in
God is different from a host of other beliefs that are equally epistemologically
Ibid., p. 15. Attempts to respond to these tasks by theists are discussed in Chapters ill and IV.
Anthony Kenny claims that a comparable claim of presumption can be made for theism if negative
theism is defined, mutatis mutandis, as a person who is not an atheist and who does not disbelieve in
God. Although the parallel is syntactical, it is not epistemological. Anthony Kenny, Faith and Reason
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), pp. 85ff.
82 For a lengthy and detailed defense of negative atheism, see Michael Martin, Atheism: A
Philosophical Defense (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990), Part I.
83 Ibid., p. 22. The word "agnostic" has been used with different meanings. It is only in a very
restricted sense that it is synonymous with "negative atheist." In other uses it is closer in meaning to
"positive atheist."
84 Donald Evans, "A Reply to Flew's The Presumption of Atheism," Canadian Journal of
Philosophy, September 1972, pp. 48ff.
85 Kai Nielsen, Philosophy and Atheism (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1985), pp. 129ff.
80
81
306
groundless but are regarded as reasonable beliefs. Nielsen adopts a position, which
he attributes to both Wittgenstein and Peirce, according to which many of our
everyday beliefs that we regard as reasonable are really groundless - such as our
belief in the external world, or that germs cause disease, or that subatomic particles
exist. 86 In some cases, actual evidence for such beliefs might be available, while in
other cases, it might not be, and even in the cases where evidence is available, one
must accept certain beliefs in order to scrutinize others. This rather oblique appeal
to an epistemological holism results in Nielsen's claim that many of our everyday
beliefs are "groundless" and are simply the result of socialization rather than any
sort of epistemological inquiry.
There are many intriguing and difficult epistemological issues raised by this
exchange, many of which are addressed in detail in Chapter IV. I will simply make
two brief points here: First, Evans and Nielsen's critique of Flew suggests that we
must have some general theory of meaning or general theory of knowledge by
which we can assess theological claims in comparison with "everyday" beliefs.
Such a pursuit is undoubtedly valuable, but it is not clear that Flew is committed to
such a pursuit. Certainly, Flew's challenge should be understood as a challenge
within natural theology to those theists for whom knowledge of the existence of
God is available through a consideration of evidence and with the use of human
reason. Flew could well be content with the simple admission that belief in God is
really groundless. Second, regardless of the kind of knowledge claim that is made,
does not the simple fact remain that the burden of proof rests upon the person who
advances or maintains the claim? This is certainly true of claims about the external
world, such as claims about bacteria or subatomic particles. Compare, for example,
those who believe that there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe and those
who do not. Or to take another example that received much public notice in the last
half of the twentieth century, compare those who believe that there were ancient
astronauts and those who do not. Or what of those who believe that there are angels
watching over us? Or, to take another very simple example, what of a person who
makes the very straightforward perceptual claim that there is a bear in the woods?
In each of these cases, we correctly expect the person making the positive claim to
provide and explain the basis for the claim. The simple rule in epistemology is that
the greater the content of the epistemic claim, the greater the burden for epistemic
warrant. There remain the issues of what counts as evidence and what the criteria
are for epistemic warrant (see the consideration of religious epistemology in
Chapter IV).
THE ATHEISTIC ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN
Recently, the argument from design has been interpreted in ways that actually
support positive atheism. For example, Wesley Salmon has turned the teleological
argument against theism by developing an atheistic argument from design. 87
Salmon applies Bayes's theorem from the probability calculus to argue that the
86 Ibid., pp. 140-41. This position sounds similar to Alvin Plantinga's theory of properly basic
beliefs discussed in Chapter IV.
87 Wesley Salmon, "Religion and Science: A New Look at Hume's Dialogues," Philosophical
Studies, Vol. 33, 1978, pp. 143-76. For a lengthy discussion of Salmon's argument, see Michael Martin,
Atheism: A Philosophical Defense, pp. 317ff.
307
traditional argument from design supports the nonexistence of a theistic God with a
higher degree of probability than it does the existence of such a God. On the basis
of the best evidence available to us from cosmology, Salmon claims, such things as
snowflakes, diamonds, galaxies, solar systems, molecules, and atoms are all
explained by straightforward, mechanical causation. 88 Thus, there is a large number
of entities in the universe that demonstrate apparent design, which on our best
available scientific knowledge, have not been created by an omnipotent, intelligent
designer - that is, the theistic God. While in our experience, there are entities that
do come into being with apparent design that are the result of intelligence, the
relative frequency with which such entities do come into existence compared with
the enormously large class of entities that come into being not as the result of
intelligence is very small. Hence, Salmon concludes, the probability that the
uni verse came into being as the result of intelligent design is very low, and the
consideration of design in the universe thus supports the atheist rather than the
theist.
Michael Martin develops an expanded version of Salmon's atheistic design
argument and applies it to the many criticisms that Philo raises against the
argument from design in Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. Martin
examines Salmon's class of entities in the universe that do come into being as the
result of intelligent design (such as watches and the like) and determines that all
such entities come into being as the result of intelligence that possesses a certain
property P (such that P might be embodiedness, multiple designers, fallibility, or
finiteness).89 According to Martin, we are able to establish, on the basis of our
experience of entities that come into being as the result of an intelligent designer,
that it is highly probable that, if the universe was created, then it was created by a
designer with property P. If a theistic God exists, then on the basis of the observed
evidence regarding designed entities and designers, the universe could not have
been created by such a designer with property P. Therefore, God does not exist. 90
In response, the theist must attack Martin's premise that it is highly probable
that the universe was created by a being with the property P - whatever P is - if P
is a property that is incompatible with the existence of God. Martin's expanded
argument amounts to emphasizing the dissimilarities between the observed entities
that come into existence as the result of human intelligence and the universe. The
debate then must be rejoined concerning whether the dissimilarities "outweigh" the
similarities or the similarities "outweigh" the dissimilarities between intelligent
human agency and intelligent divine agency. The theist must make sense of the
claim that the universe was created by a divine intelligence that acted in a way that
is in some way analogous to human agency but that is unembodied, unitary,
infallible, and infinite. All of the developments concerning the argument from
design in the twentieth century seem to make the job of the theist more difficult
and the theistic conclusion less plausible than at the beginning of the century.91
Wesley Salmon, pp. 150-51.

Michael Martin, Atheism: A Philosophical Defense, pp. 321-333.
90 Ibid., 321.
91 See Chapter III for discussion of the impact of the anthropic principle upon the argument from
design.
88
89
308
For the purposes of assessing the developments and the impact of evolutionary
biology upon the argument from design, it is important to note that the argument
from design is intended by the theist to demonstrate not just that the apparent
design in the universe is compatible with the existence of God but rather that it is
positive evidence for God's existence. To undermine the effectiveness of the
argument from design for theism, it is enough for atheistic naturalism to provide
compelling evidence and arguments that this intended positive use of apparent
design in the universe is not justified. The net result of modern attacks upon the
argument from design has been that the force of the argument, as a single
argument, has been greatly diminished in natural theology. The consequence is the
decline in the force of the argument in the face of modern, alternatively naturalistic
explanations.
THEISTIC RESPONSES TO ATTACKS ON DESIGN
There have been two significant kinds of responses by theists. First, the
resulting weakening of the argument from design has been an important factor in
the abandonment of natural theology by some philosophers of religion in the later
part of the twentieth century; if the linchpin of natural theology falls to modem
science, then the rest of natural theology is surely seriously threatened. Thus, Alvin
Plantinga and William Alston have attempted to place knowledge of God on the
same level as knowledge of the physical world - either (in the case of Plantinga) as
properly basic knowledge or (in the case of Alston) as the result of religious
perception (see Chapter IV). Second, other philosophers of religion have not
completely abandoned the argument from design or natural theology, but they now
count the argument from design as part of a "cumulative case" for theism rather
than as an argument upon which the entire case of theism is based. For example,
Richard Swinburne counts the apparent design in the universe as part of the general
case for theism and on the same level as other apparent evidence for God's
existence, such as miracles and religious experience.92 It is a significant measure of
the impact of naturalistic accounts of design developed in the twentieth century
that the main burden of evidentialist claims for theism has been shifted away from
the argument from design to other arguments (such as the cosmological argument)
and other considerations (such as religious experience).
As we have seen, in the case of the argument from design, the major scientific
development in the twentieth century was Darwinian evolutionary theory based
upon natural selection. In the case of the cosmological argument, the major
scientific development influencing the debate was the big bang theory of modem
physics (see Chapter III).
THEISM, HUMANISM, AND HUMAN NATURE
Thus far in this chapter, I have focused on the attempts of naturalism and theism
to explain what are taken to be cosmological facts about the world. It is now time
to turn our attention to the attempts to explain certain personal facts about human
beings. Humanist accounts of human nature in the twentieth century has been
boosted by the same advances in modem science that have strengthened naturalism
92
Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), p. 277.
309
generally as an alternative to theism. Humanism takes as the focus of its

naturalistic explanation the unique nature and position of human beings in the
universe. Traditionally, theism, of course, has relied upon a "built in" explanation
for the unique status of human beings. Human beings are supposed to be made in
God's image and infused with an immortal soul. They are supposedly the only
creatures in the universe with whom God enters into a special "personal"
relationship that culminates in reward or punishment in life after death.
Philosophically, such a view of the nature of man is in the same tradition as the
ancient Stoics and Immanuel Kant. Theologically, this view of human nature has a
long and continuous history dating from Paul and Augustine and Aquinas into the
twentieth century. The crucial aspect of such a view considered here for the
purposes of comparing theism and humanism is the explanation of the source of
value in the lives of human beings. On theistic grounds, the source of such value is
supernatural. Though there may be other sources of value, the ultimate source of
all value, either directly or indirectly, is God, and the "highest," most important
values are "spiritual" values upon which "human" values are based and from which
they are derived. Human relationships are understood as modeled after divine ones;
that is, marriage is understood on the model of Christ and the Church, and such
matters as material possessions and even bodily health are insignificant when
compared to spiritual health and immortality. The dominant theistic position
(which persists even now) is that human goods and values are simply derivative
and reflective of spiritual goods and values. This view of modern theism
(particularly Christianity) is the result of the continuing influence of NeoPlatonism and Hellenistic philosophy. Humanism seeks to provide satisfactory
explanations for human nature and human values without the appeal to any
supernatural source or justification.
In the early part of the twentieth century, John Dewey was responsible for
explicitly "turning the tables" on theism by arguing that, instead of understanding
human values and relationships as approximations of divine ones, we should
actually understand theism's divine and supernatural explanation of human nature
and values as an idealization of completely natural and human values and
relationships.93 Dewey argues that such idealization by religion of human goods
and the resulting denigration of natural, human values and goods has actually
prohibited the full development of our human relationships and human values,
since natural and human values have been traditionally viewed as "dangerous
rivals" to the higher, spiritual values of theism. 94 The result of Dewey's claim is an
inversion of the order and importance of human and spiritual values. Other leading
humanists followed Dewey's lead, and the Humanist Manifesto was published by a
group of thirty-four leading humanists in 1934. They identified fifteen affirmations
of modern humanism. 95 Although the influence of humanism continued to
strengthen gradually and continually - in the United States, at least-twentiethcentury humanism reached its zenith in the 1960s and the early 1970s with the
increased emphasis on secularization.
93
94
95
John Dewey. A Common Faith (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1934), pp. 70ff.
Ibid., p. 71.
Humanist Manifestos I and If (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books 1933-1973).
3lO
THEISM AND THE SECULAR WORLD

As we have seen, it has been common practice for theism (particularly
Christianity) to contrast human or secular values with the spiritual and the divine.
Whatever value or significance human or secular things might have is derived from
the divine and the spiritual. The second half of the twentieth century saw the
development of the humanism of John Dewey into what became known as
Secularization. Secularization attributes intrinsic value to things human and secular
by cutting the tether between the secular and the divine and removing the need for
a divine source or explanation for value in the human, secular world. Although
Donald Hudson argues that logical positivism provided the philosophical
grounding for the secularization of religion that took place in the 1960s and
1970s,96 the much more important factor was simply the gradual rise to dominance
of a general scientific, secular worldview. Religion has come to be seen by many
as having lost its significance and ability to address the complications of "modem
living" in a postindustrial world. Man's better understanding of the natural world
through science has put him in a position to address the major moral and social
problems of the world in a qualitatively different way than at any previous time in
human history.97
A unique feature of the secularization of religion that took place during this
period is that so much of the debate between the secularists and traditional theists
took place in the forum of quasi-popular books and magazine articles (and even
newspaper articles) rather than in more scholarly journal articles or books. The
secular protagonists also resorted to rather extreme language, proclaiming that
"God is dead" and avowing "atheistic religion" and "atheistic Christianity." Books
such as Bishop John A. T. Robinson's Honest to God and Harvey Cox's The
Secular City became near best sellers, and the debate appeared on the cover of
Time Magazine in a feature story that asked rhetorically, "Is God Dead?,,98
SECULARIZATION
The debate concerning secularization has been a wide ranging one that includes
the social sciences as well as philosophy and religion. Although "the secular
world" has always existed in contradistinction with the spiritual, divine world, the
word secularization came to take the special meaning of the process in human
society whereby the dominant political, social, and cultural features and symbols of
that society are determined and maintained completely independently of religion. 99
The nature of the debate concerning the place of God and religion within a
completely secularized society was framed in philosophy and religion, in large
part, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who took the closing of the cosmological gaps by
science and naturalism as a given. He therefore devoted most of his attention to
addressing only "personal facts" of human existence - that is, morals and politics.
In every case - in the sciences, in philosophy and religion, and in morals and
96 W. Donald Hudson, A Philosophical Approach to Religion (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1974),
pp. 116-119.
97 See Humanist Manifesto I, pp. 7-8.
98 John A. T. Robinson, Honest to God (Philadelphia, Pa.: Westminster Press, 1963); Harvey Cox,
The Secular City (New York: Macmillan, 1965); Time Magazine, August 8, 1966.
99 For comparison, see Harvey Cox, Ibid., pp., 18ff.
311
politics - he claims "there is no longer any need for God as a working

hypothesis."JOo Modem man, Bonhoeffer, claims has "come of age" - human
beings have "grown up" - and "the autonomy of the world" forces modem man to
be secular, to live without God. WI Taking as his point of departure Nietzsche's
claim that God is dead and that we have killed him, Bonhoeffer insists that God has
been "driven out of the world"J02 (or alternatively, that God "allows himself to be
edged out of the world.,,).103 As a result of God's absence, man is forced to "grow
up" and live without God. The net result is that things seem to have continued
along without God rather well since "man has learned to cope with all questions of
importance without recourse to God as a working hypothesis."I04 Bonhoeffer takes
it to be obvious that over the past two hundred years or so things have not only
continued along but actually flourished without the need of God. Human beings
have learned to manage their own affairs by developing completely secular moral
and political theories. Even with regards to perennial religious questions such as
the meaning of life and death, completely secular and humanistic accounts have
replaced supernatural, theological ones for a large number of people. The analogies
of a parent forcing a child to grow up and become responsible and autonomous or
the image of a mother bird pushing a young fledgling from the nest capture
Bonhoeffer's claim that man has "come of age". God helps man only by putting
man in a world in which God is "weak and powerless" and in which man must
learn to become responsible for his own affairs and for solving his own
problems. lo5 Thus, Bonhoeffer claims, "We are proceeding toward a time of no
religion at all: [modem] men as they are now simply cannot be religious anymore."
The "religious premise" concerning human nature just does not work any more,
and the "linchpin" is thus removed from Christian theology. 106
In a completely secularized society, the "religious premise" which Bonhoeffer
saw as the "linchpin" of Christianity is no longer available for men to rely upon to
explain or provide meaning for their lives, either individually or collectively.
Without the religious premise with its emphasis upon the spiritual nature of man
and the importance of the spiritual life and the continued existence of the spiritual
soul after death, what meaning is there to human existence and what authority is
there for human values? Existentialism despairs at the possibility of there being
any answers to these questions and thus dissolves into meaningless alienation and
dread at the prospect of human existence. Humanism embraces the prospect of
providing answers to these questions and maintains that humanistic answers
actually provide a better understanding of human nature and a more positive view
of human values and human existence. Under the religious premise, modem
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison (New York: Macmillan, 1953), p. 218.
Ibid., pp. 217 and 218.
102 Ibid., p. 211.
103 Ibid., p. 219. There was disagreement among the "atheistic Christian" theologians (or the "GodIs-Dead theologians" concerning the exact meaning of the claim "God is dead." For different views, see
The Meaning of the Death of God, edited by Bernard Murchland (New York: Vintage Books, 1967);
and The Death of God, Gabriel Vahanian (New York: George Braziller, 1957); and John A. T.
Robinson's Honest to God.
104 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, p. 195.
105 Ibid., pp. 219-220.
106 Ibid., pp. 162-63.
100
101
312
humanists would say, human beings are dependent upon God as an explanation for
everything that is good about human achievement; while, at the same time, at least
in the case of original sin, things that are "merely human" are base and corrupt. In
a completely secularized society, human beings are on their own. Human beings
have "come of age," and our accomplishments as well as our destiny are our own
responsibility and ours alone. The major problems of the world, such as war,
poverty, hunger, and bigotry, are our problems to be addressed, for better or worse,
with all the human resources we can muster: human reason, human compassion,
human values, human energy, and human theories of morals and politics.
According to modern humanism, human existence in a completely secularized
world is characterized not by a hopeless alienation but by an awesome
responsibility.
This view of the superficiality and the negative impact of relying upon the
"religious premise" to account for human existence and human values is found
throughout the writings of twentieth century humanists. Early in the century,
Dewey claimed that "appeal for supernatural intervention in the improvement of
social matters ... is the acknowledgment of the desperate situation into which we
are driven by the idea of the irrelevance and futility of human intervention in social
events and interests.,,107 And Robinson echoes the same sentiment. We must
replace the picture of God from traditional theology, Robinson says, the picture "of
an all-powerful Being out there beyond us, who can do everything, who knows
everything, and who watches all with un sleeping eyes - a sort of celestial Big
Brother."lo8 Exactly what modern secular man might replace this old picture of
God with is not very clear, but borrowing from Tillich, Robinson maintains that we
must think in terms of the "depth" of our being, our "ultimate concern," and "what
we take seriously without reservation."I09 Robinson thus embraces what he
describes as Tillich's "great contribution to theology," - detaching the meaning of
God from its transcendence and it supernaturalism and preserving that meaning by
locating it in the depths of human existence and human experience. 110
THEISM, HUMANISM, AND IMMORTALITY
If abandoning "the religious premise" results in a thoroughgoing humanism that
secularizes our understanding of both human nature and God, then what happens to
orthodox theistic views concerning the spirituality of human beings? Theological
claims concerning immortality came under increasing attack by humanists in the
twentieth century. Much of the recent debate between theists and nontheists
concerning the possibility of immortality has been carried out against the
background of the developments in neurophysiology and the philosophy of mind in
the late twentieth century. Since humanism and theism offer competing stories
about the nature of persons and the possibility of survival after death, theistic
accounts of immortality must take into account these recent developments that
provide an increasingly better understanding of the complexity of the nature of
human persons.
John Dewey, A Common Faith, pp. 78-79.
John A. T. Robinson, Honest to God, p. 57.
109 Ibid., p. 46.
110 Ibid., p. 56 and 49.
107
108
313
I will concentrate upon the influence of developments in contemporary

philosophy of mind upon the notion of personal immortality that has dominated
traditional Judeo-Christian theology. By personal immortality, I mean a view
according to which an individual person survives death in a way that preserves
individual, personal identity or, alternatively, the person is resurrected and
"reconstituted" in some way which preserves individual personal identity. In
general, theistic beliefs concerning personal immortality have been inseparably
intertwined with a particular set of beliefs concerning the existence of spiritual
souls. In particular, following Descartes, the view of the soul upon which theists
have relied is a substance theory (or ego theory) that treats the soul as a spiritual
substance that is the subject of a person's experiences and the source of a person's
personal identity. Experiences require an experiencer, the argument goes, and the
self is the subject that "has" experiences. Belief in personal immortality has simply
been the belief that a person's "immortal," spiritual substance - the soul- survives
death in a manner which guarantees the survival of personal identity and the
continued existence of the individual person.
THE SUBSTANCE THEORY OF SELF
John Hick provides a good description of the substance theory of self to which
the Christian understanding of soul has been traditionally wedded:
Weare using "self' as the name for ... the consciousness which is now
composing these sentences, or which is now reading them, and which is the
source of volitions and a subject of perceptions and emotions. The christian [sic 1
concept of soul undoubtedly includes this conscious self, which earns rewards
and deserves penalties, which becomes or fails to become aware of God by
faith, and which is to enjoy hereafter the blissful life of heaven or to suffer
eternal loss of heaven. For it is clear from Jesus' parables that the self which
faces judgment after death is the same self that has lived on earth in the body. I II
In a more critical vein, Anthony Quinton embraces what he calls an "empirical"
concept of the soul "as a series of mental states connected by continuity of
character and memory.,,112 It is essential that, whatever the criterion of identity is
for guaranteeing that it is the same individual who exists after death as existed
before death, the criterion must ensure that the individual in question is able to
recognize himself or herself as continuing to be the same individual. In other
words, whatever criterion is used to explain the continuity of persons, it must allow
not just an abstract, metaphysical explanation of that continuity or an explanation
from an objective (or even a divine) point of view but it must allow for an
individual's phenomenological identity of his current self with earlier states of
himself. Hick is surely correct that if someone is going to be rewarded or punished
in an afterlife for things that I have done (or not done) in this life, then it must be I
who is rewarded or punished. Additionally, I must somehow realize at the time that
John Hick, Death and Eternal Life (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1976), p. 38.
Anthony Quinton, "The Soul," The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 59. no. 15, 1962. Reprinted in
Philosophy of Religion, edited by William L. Rowe and William J. Wainwright (Forth Worth, Tex.:
Harcourt Brace and Company, 1998, p. 518.
III
112
314
I am the same person (being?) who both acted in certain ways earlier and who is
now being rewarded or punished for those actions. Providing such a criterion has
proven to be very difficult, and thus, what has become known as "the problem of
the criterion" has come into much sharper focus and moved much more to the
center of the debate concerning the possibility of the continued existence of
persons after their deaths.
THE CRITERION OF PERSONAL IDENTITY
There has been much debate concerning the possibility that memory provides
such a criterion of personal identity; 113 however, given the revelations from
neurophysiology and the philosophy of mind, the role of the human body has
increasingly come to be at the center of the debate concerning the possibility of
using memory as a criterion for identifying individuals. After all, we now know
that memory requires a functioning brain, and moreover, there is a physical
requirement that must be met if we are ever to grant that successful memory has
taken place between a person and an earlier stage of that person. In the case of an
embodied person, whenever a person claims to remember something about his or
her past, we assume that there are physical features that exist (even if those
features are unknown to us at the time) that could be supplied to establish physical
continuity between the person having the memory and the earlier experiences of
that same person. In the case of a disembodied person, since the features that might
establish physical continuity are missing, the criterion of memory becomes, in the
words of Terrance Penelhum, "chronically incomplete" and the possibility of
identifying disembodied persons becomes impossible.11 4 In terms of personal
identity and the continuity of a person, the net result is that the psychological
criterion involving the preservation of character and memory and the like and the
physical criterion involving the preservation of the body seem to be inextricably
connected.
The body is regarded as so essential to personal identity by some humanists that
proposing the disembodied existence of persons is treated as self-contradictory. For
example, Anthony Flew has argued that the ways in which we normally use the
words "death" and "survival' make it absurd and logically impossible - a
"philosophical fool's mate" - to claim that a person survives his or her death.115
"People are what you meet," Flew says emphatically.1l6 But there must be more to
the argument than simply the use of ordinary language. What is needed is an
examination of the philosophical explanation of the common understandings that
underlie the meanings of our ordinary language. Although attacks upon the theistic
doctrine of personal immortality came from several different sources in the second
half of the twentieth century, I will concentrate on the attacks that have been
113 For a discussion of Locke's use of memory for personal identity, see Antony Hew, 'The Identity
of Incorporeal Persons," in The Presumption of Atheism, pp. 132ff.
114 Terrence Penelhum, Survival and Disembodied Existence (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,
1970), pp.70-71. For discussions of various views concerning the importance of the physical criterion of
the body on the continued existence of a person, see Hywel D. Lewis, The Self and Immortality (New
York: Macmillan, 1973), Chapter 7; and Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Oxford, Clarendon Press,
1984), pp. 202ff.
115 Antony Hew, "Can a Man Witness His Own Funeral?" in The Presumption of Atheism, p. 121.
116 Antony Hew, Body, Mind. and Death (New York: Macmillan, 1964), p. 12.
315
brought to bear from contemporary philosophy of mind upon the substance theory
of the self and that have brought the role of the body in the problem of specifying
the criterion for personal identity more sharply into focus.
THE BUNDLE THEORY OF SELF
The dominant philosophical theories regarding the nature of a person and the
self have changed dramatically in the course of the twentieth century. The view of
the self that is now dominant among philosophers of mind is now something much
more similar to Hume's "bundle theory of the self' or William James's notion of a
"stream of consciousness" than it is to the substance theories of self of Descartes or
Kant. According to the bundle understanding of the self, the self is not a substance
or ego but a loosely bundled collection of experiences with a "flow" or continuity
or unity to them. Much of modern neurophysiology and contemporary philosophy
of mind is accounted for in terms of attempts to uncover and explain exactly how
these different experiences are tied together and what accounts for the "flow" and
continuity of experience. With "relational" views of the self, personal identity is
accounted for in terms of the relations that hold among our experiences. For some
philosophers of mind, these relations are explained in terms of features that are
intrinsic to the person, while for others these relations are explained in terms that
are extrinsic to the person. Relational views of the self (whether intrinsic or
extrinsic) are direct challenges to the theistic notion of personal immortality since
they reject the substance, ego theory of the self. 117
One early-twentieth-century form of an intrinsic view of the self was the result
of a strict reductionist stance and claimed that what Cartesians called mental
processes are simply nothing more than brain processes. For example, J. J. C.
Smart defends "the identity theory" (also called "central state materialism"),
according to which the mind is reduced to and is identical with the brain and
mental events are reduced to and are identical with brain processes. tt8 In this view,
what some might refer to as states of consciousness are simply very complex
arrangements of physical particles in a person's brain. 1l9 A particular person's
experiences are his or hers simply because certain brain processes are occurring in
his or her brain. Such a view obviously completely eliminates any spiritual
substance that might survive death and provide the basis for personal immortality.
In this view, when the brain dies, the person dies. The critiques of the identity
theory are legion and cannot be included here. The identity theory was primarily a
function of a view of the world that took logical positivism as its point of
departure, and such a strict reductionism did not long survive the demise of logical
positivism as a philosophical movement. However, the identity theory did focus
philosophical attention upon the brain and the central nervous system as the crucial
elements of the physical body where the possible location for any criterion for
personal identity might be located.
ll7 For a discussion of different intrinsic and extrinsic views of personal identity, see Self and
Identity, edited by Daniel Kolak and Raymond Martin (New York: Macmillan, 1991), pp. l68ff.
llS J. J. C. Smart, "Sensations and Brain Processes," The Philosophical Review, Vol. 68, 1959.
Reprinted in A Modem Introduction to Philosophy, edited by Paul Edwards and Edward Pap (New
York: Free Press, 1957).

ll9 Ibid., p. 230.
316
Identity theory was largely the result of the increased information from
neurophysiology about the brain and how it works, and although philosophers of
mind have, by and large, rejected identity theory and strict, materialistic
reductionism, that same information has served to establish more firmly the
dependancy of the person and states of consciousness upon the brain in some
crucial respect. Thus, for example, P. F. Strawson denies strict reductionism but
still insists that we can only ascribe the same kind of states of consciousness that
we ourselves possess to other things of the "same logical type.,,120 What this means
is that only certain kinds of things qualify as persons. Adopting Strawson's
nomenclature, if we call the predicates that we normally ascribe to material things
M-predicates, and if we call the predicates that we normally ascribe to persons Ppredicates, then the logical type of entity that Strawson claims qualifies as a person
is the type of thing to which both M-predicates and P-predicates are equally
applicable. 121 The concept of a person is a basic concept for Strawson that cannot
be further divided into the mental and the physical. In this way, Strawson captures
the intuition of the necessity of ownership from the substance, ego theory of the
self without committing to the notion of a spiritual substance. Persons do such
things as smile, cry, talk, and walk; or get born, married, sick, well, and confirmed;
or write books, sing songs, make speeches, and confessions; or think, doubt,
believe, and know; or see, hear, taste, and touch; or feel happy, sad, tired, or
confused. In this view, in every case, the states of consciousness that are ascribed
to a person must be ascribed to the same kind of individual to which the material
predicates are ascribed. Minimally, it seems, having a functioning brain is one of
the M-predicates that a person must have. More recently, Bernard Williams and
Peter Unger have also both accounted for the continuity of a person in terms of a
function of both physical and psychological features. 122
BISECTED BRAINS AND MULTIPLE PERSONS
Extrinsic views of personal identity focus upon features of how a particular
individual is related to other individuals and features of those other individuals in
order to explain personal identity. Such views draw upon various kinds of evidence
from neurophysiology to determine exactly what kind of logical type of thing a
person is: the absolute minimal material, physical description that must accompany
the claim that a particular entity is a person and the same person over time. One
such kind of evidence that has been widely discussed involves what have become
known as divided brain phenomena. In trying to reduce or eliminate seizures in
severe epileptics, neurosurgeons have sometimes severed the two upper
hemispheres of the brain. The surprising result was that the surgeons divided not
only the brain, but on most accounts, they also divided the stream of consciousness
into two different streams of consciousness. 123 In various experiments, persons
P. F. Strawson, Individuals (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1959), p. 100.
See Ibid., pp. 100-10 1.
122 See Self and Identity, edited by Daniel Kolak and Raymond Martin, pp. 181-192 and pp. 192226.
123 These experiments and tbeir results are widely discussed and debated in tbe literature. Early
reports of tbe experiments were made in M. S. Gazzaniga, J. E. Bogen, and R. W. Sperry, "Some
Functional Effects of Sectioning tbe Cerebral Commissures in Man," Proceedings of the National
120
121
317
with bisected brains give surprising and conflicting reports when they are
presented with certain visual stimuli. When presented with pictures of objects or
words describing objects on a screen, the subjects can orally speak but not write
the names of objects on the right side of the screen (since the left hemisphere
controls speech) and could write but not speak the names of the objects on the left
side of the screen. 124 The results of this and similar experiments lead both
neurosurgeons and philosophers of mind to conclude that, in such cases, two
completely different streams of consciousness are present. For example, Sperry
says that "things seen through the right half of the visual field ... are registered in
mental experience and remembered quite separately from things seen in the other
half of the field. Each half of the field of vision ... has its own train of visual
images and memories.,,125 And in conclusion, "these patients [with bisected brains]
behave in many ways as if they have two independent streams of conscious
awareness, one in each hemisphere, each of which is cut off from and out of
contact with the mental experiences of the other.,,126 Derek Parfit agrees that these
are cases where a single stream of consciousness has apparently become two
different streams of consciousness. 127 The lesson seems to be that dividing the
brain doubles the streams of consciousness.
These cases of bisected brains present serious difficulties that challenge the
most fundamental assumptions for traditional theistic notions of personal
immortality. Most directly impacted are the replica views of resurrection and
immortality, as well as Quinton's claims about "the continuity of character and
memory." The questions become whose character and memory and how many
characters and memories are preserved?128 First of all, reconciling such cases with
the notion of the self as a spiritual substance, which is the subject of one's
experiences, is very problematic, whereas reconciling these cases with the bundle
theory of the self is obviously less problematic. 129 If the spiritual substance - the
soul that is to survive death - is the subject of one's experiences, then a person
with a bisected brain appears to have two different souls, and the theist must
account for what happens in such cases after the death of the person (or persons). If
Academy of Science, Vol. 48, 1962, p. 1765-69. Also see M. S. Gazzaniga, The Bisected Brain (New
York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1970); Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons; and Todd E. Feinberg,
Altered Egos (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). Numerous articles address the issues of the
divided brain phenomena, including R. W. Sperry, "Hemisphere Deconnection and Unity in Conscious
Awareness"; Thomas Nagel, "Brain Bisection and the Unity of Consciousness"; and Derek Parfit,
"Divided Minds and the Nature of Persons," in Self and Identity, edited by Daniel Kolak and Raymond
Martin; Donald McKay, "Divided Brains - Divided Minds?" and Derek Parfit, "Divided Minds and the
Nature of Persons," in Mindwaves, edited by Colin Blackmore and Susan Greenfield (Oxford: Basil
Blackwell, 1987); Georges Rey, "Survival," in The Identity of Persons, edited by Amelie Rorty.
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976).
124 Donald MacKay, Ibid., pp. 6-8, and R. W. Sperry, Ibid., pp. 57ff.
125 R. W. Sperry, Ibid., p. 58.
126 Ibid., p. 57.
127 Parfit, "Divided Minds and the Nature of Persons," in Kolak and Martin, Self and Identity, p. 83.
128 Antony Flew discusses these issues from a strictly philosophical point of view without explicit
attention to the divided brain phenomena by in "The Identity of Incorporeal Persons," in The
Presumption of Atheism, pp. 135ff.
129 Richard Swinburne has continued to defend the spiritual substance theory of self and has raised
objections to the consequences of using the bundle theory to explain such cases. See his "Personal
Identity," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Vol. 74,1973-74, pp. 231-48.
318
the soul is not the subject of one's experiences, then what is it? In such cases, souls
appear to be, as Parfit says, "idle cogs" that do no explanatory work in the
substance theory of the self.
There is yet another complication of the divided brains phenomena. What if a
person with a bisected brain has each of the hemispheres removed and implanted
into different bodies, each of which then leads a completely separate and different
life? What do we say about such a case? Whether such a brain transfer is medically
possible is not the important issue, since the fundamental question is one about the
correct philosophical theory about the nature of persons and the criteria for
personal identity. IT persons are to survive death in some kind of replica body, then
it becomes crucial for the theist who defends such a theory to deal with such a
possibility, since presumably, different replicas could be used for each hemisphere
of the brain.
THE REPLICA THEORY
In the light of the evidence from bisected brains and the resulting divided
consciousness, it is illuminating to investigate John Hick's proposal of "the replica
theory" for understanding how resurrection, survival after death, and personal
immortality might be possible. 13o Hick suggests that there is nothing implausible in
imagining that a person who might cease to exist in one part of the world might
begin, in the very same instant, to exist in another part of the world. One might
imagine that Sam simply disappears while attending a concert in New York, for
example, and then instantaneously appears at a lecture in Oxford. IT there is a
complete continuity of detailed physical and psychological characteristics
(including continuity of memory), then, Hick thinks, such a change is logically
possible and provides a "bridgehead" for understanding how a replica body in a
life after death might preserve the identity of persons. 131 It seems at least plausible
to say that Sam who is in Oxford is the same Sam as the Sam who was in New
York. In a second scenario, we are then to imagine, given this bridgehead, that the
Sam in New York dies instead of disappearing, and with Sam's corpse in New
York, Sam still "reappears" in Oxford for the lecture. This is obviously a more
difficult case and requires more of a conceptual "stretch," but Hick thinks that the
first case provides the conceptual breakthrough necessary to make the second case,
where the same person reappears in a replica body, plausible. The final step is to
imagine that the replication takes places after death in heaven instead of Oxford.
Whatever plausibility Hick's suggestions might appear to have initially is a
function of the underlying view of the self as a spiritual substance. He maintains
that the replica self is the same self as the new Sam in Oxford in his first example
except that it is impossible for us to trace any physical, causal path from the first
location of the person to the second location. However, this means that presumably
then we could not establish that the replica body has any physical or mental
continuity with the original physical body of Sam in New York, though there might
be significant physical and mental similarity. Whatever the criteria of continuity of
identity in these cases are determined to be, it is obvious that they will trade
130
131
John Hick, Death and Eternal Life (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1976), pp., 279ff.
Ibid., pp. 280-81.
319
heavily upon a substance theory of the self and the preservation of a spiritual
substance after death.
The divided brain cases indicate that Hick's proposed imaginary case is too
simple and that the problem of specifying the criteria for continuity will not be
resolved by Hick's proposed examples. What happens to Hick's case if we are
forced to abandon a substance theory of the self in favor of the bundle theory? On
the one hand, if it is the brain or a hemisphere of the brain that ties the bundle
together and the replica body must preserve physical continuity with the original
body, then all sorts of difficulties arise. How many replica bodies will there need to
be for those persons who now have divided brains? Will two different physical,
causal paths need to be traced from the two different hemispheres to two different
replica bodies? Or can two different streams of consciousness survive in one
replica body? If one stream is to be punished and the other stream is to be rewarded
in the afterlife, how exactly will that take place? Also, there are additional
complications that arise on the basis of what we now know about the human body
from modem science. For example, since we now know that the human body loses
cells continuously over the period of its life's span, then would God have to collect
all the atoms that composed all of the cells, that at different times composed my
body in order to compose a replica body that has physical continuity with me?
Similarly, many of those atoms that compose many of those cells that at different
times composed my body might very well have, at other times, composed different
cells that composed the bodies of other people. So, on the physical criterion, we
have not only the problem of scattered persons but the problem of mixed persons
as well. Exactly how many replica bodies will there be, and whose will they be?
All ofthese problems and questions simply magnify Antony Flew's objection that
when a physical object has been destroyed, IT, the one and the same identical
object, cannot be recreated. 132
On the other hand, immortality couched in terms of some sort of replica theory
might become more plausible if the particular bundle theory stresses psychological
rather than physical continuity (as Parfit does). What if the brain is crucial to
personal identity not because of the particular physical matter that composes it but
rather because of the functions that the brain performs? It might just so happen that
in the particular bodies that we now have, the brain is the only organ that can
function to preserve our psychological continuity. The divided brain cases illustrate
that we do not even need the entire brain to do that, and since we also know that
different parts of the brain are highly adaptable, conceivably anyone part of the
brain might take over the job now performed by the entire brain. It is even
conceivable that some other organ in the body (perhaps the pituitary gland) or even
a computer might come to function in the same way in which the brain now
functions. In such a view, Hick's replica theory of immortality begins to sound
much more plausible.
132 Antony Flew, "Is There a Case for Disembodied Survival?" The Journal of the American Society
for Psychical Research. Vol. 66, no. 2, April, 1972, p. 133.
320
REPLICAS AND TELETRANSPORTERS

To test and sharpen our intuitions concerning persons and self-identity, Parfit
proposes a story that amounts to a variation on Hick's proposal involving the
possibility of a person disappearing and reappearing in a different place. Parfit
suggests that we imagine the existence of a "teletransporter" that is used for space
travel at the speed of light from Earth to Mars. As one enters the teletransporter, a
scanner records the exact states of every single cell in a person's body and, at the
speed of light, sends the information to a "replicator" body on Mars. Every single
feature of a person's physical and psychological features are preserved, but the
original body is then destroyed. The new brains in the new replica bodies exactly
duplicate the same functions of the original brains, thus guaranteeing the continuity
of a person's psychology even when there is a "gap" in physical continuity. 133
Parfit's suggestion of a teletransporter provides a much better bridgehead than
does Hick's example for beginning to get some conceptual purchase on the notion
of personal immortality. If such a possibility is conceivable on strictly scientific
fiction or biotechnological grounds, then similar possibilities should be
conceivable on theistic grounds. There would appear to be little, if any, restrictions
on the nature of Parfit's notion of a replica body except that some part of it be
functionally adequate for preserving a person's psychology. Replicator bodies
might be considerably younger that original bodies, and the process of
teletransporting might be repeated many times - each time to a younger body as
replicator bodies grow old. The part of a replica body that provides the function of
preserving a person's psychology might be different for different replica bodies
and hence different each time a person is teletransported. The bundle that is the
person's psychology is still bundled together each time but simply by different
mechanisms. Such suggestions, if plausible, begin to establish a plausible concept
of how a person might continue to exist forever.
However, such persons would still have bodies, but the replica bodies would not
be their original bodies. Does this mean that Flew's claim that the notion of
disembodied persons is contradictory is incorrect? To develop an answer to this
question, let us consider some simple variations upon and raise some simple
questions concerning Parfit's teletransporting example and the highly developed
biotechnology upon which the case is based. Imagine that at some time in the
future it becomes possible for neurophysiologists to scan and then temporarily
store all of the information in a person's brain in another brain or computer. Some
other brain or computer that is functionally equivalent might be used during brain
surgery to temporarily perform all of the functions of a person's brain in a way in
which heart pumps or dialysis machines are now used to temporarily perform the
functions of the heart or the kidneys. After the surgery, during which the patient's
brain is nonfunctioning, the information is "reprogrammed" into the person's
original brain. The patient awakens from the anesthesia with the same sort of
memories and continuity that we normally attribute to any patient recovering from
a general anesthetic. What do we say about such a person? If the person continued
133 Derek Parfit, ''What We Believe Ourselves to Be," in Reasons and Persons, p. 199ff. Reprinted
as 'The Psychological View," in Self and Identity, edited by Daniel Kolak and Raymond Martin, pp.,
227ff.
321
to exist, then the person was temporarily disembodied from the present body and
was, for some period of time at least, nothing but a series of electrical impulses in
the cables encoding the information into and from the "brain pump.,,134
In Parfit's original example, even though the teletransporting is at the speed of
light, it is not instantaneous, so we might wonder where and how the psychology of
the person being transported exists between the time of being instantiated in the
original body and the time of being instantiated in the replica body. The answer
must be that the information from the scanner is translated into some sort of binary
code and then sent through cyberspace from Earth to Mars, so it seems most
natural to say that the person was "disembodied" during this time.135 It appears as
if it is certainly reasonable to describe such a situation as one in which the person's
entire psychology exists in an original body, then exists in cyberspace with no
body, and then is "reembodied" in the replica body. Flew may be right that present
ordinary language and our present conceptualization does not allow for the
felicitous use of "disembodied" person; however, both ordinary language and our
concepts are functions of our ordinary experience. There was a time when jet
airplanes were first invented that neither our ordinary language nor our concepts
allowed for an airplane to be an airplane without a propeller. Our muddled thinking
regarded the strange, new things as "jet planes," "rocket planes," or simply 'jets."
It took some time and much familiarity with jets for the phrase and the concept of
'jet airplane" to become commonplace, and now the use of the qualifier 'jet" is no
longer necessary. Admittedly, we generally have very limited genuine experience
with disembodied persons, but after centuries in which teletransporting was a
common practice, we could easily imagine the phrase "disembodied person" or
perhaps "cyberspace person" or "cyberperson" to be used commonly to describe
the state of a person while being teletransported. For example, it might become
necessary to enact laws protecting cyperpersons from being kidnapped or pirated
while in cyberspace.
Cases depending upon fictional or future uses of biotechnology trade very
heavily upon our intuitions, and those intuitions seems to differ significantly
among both theists and nontheists. Physical continuity is so important to Peter van
Inwagen that the difficulties raised by such cases prove to be completely
intractable. He agrees with Flew that once a physical body has been destroyed, the
same, identical body cannot be recreated, even by an omnipotent God. He suggests
that we are possibly systematically deceived by God about what we take to be facts
in this world. He says, "It is absolutely impossible, even as an accomplishment of
God, that a man who has been burned to ashes or eaten by worms should ever live
again.,,136 Van Inwagen suggests that although it appears to us that corpses cease to
exist (by cremation or decay), in fact, God might - instantaneously with the
moment of death - remove a person's corpse (to another place for later use for the
replica) and replace it with a simulacrum that is indistinguishable to us from the
134 Hearts pump while brains do not, but there is no commonly agreed upon descriptive term for the
function that brains perform.
J35 There is some controversy concerning whether the "same person" in fact continues to exist. Parfit
thinks that personal identity is not preserved in such cases. This issue is addressed below.
136 Peter van Inwagen, "The Possibility of Resurrection," in Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology,
edited by Louis P. Pojman (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth Publishing, 1998), p. 370.
322
original corpse.137 This suggestion by van Inwagen appears to be much more

extreme and implausible than the notion of temporarily disembodied, cyberpersons
who are then reconstituted in replica bodies that are the result of biological cloning,
biotechnological computing, or divine action. If we accept a functional analysis of
the body, then other bodies might function in whatever capacities are needed in
order for whatever processes are necessary for a person's identity to continue, even
if those processes are not taking place in the same body.
Although recent developments in the bundle theory of the self might provide
new opportunities for theists to make the doctrine of personal immortality more
intelligible, there are still many problems to be resolved. For example, it is not at
all clear that personal identity is what is preserved in Parfit's teletransporting case.
If I am teletransported, it is quite possible that more than one replica body will be
created, both of which are programmed perfectly with my psychology. Certainly
both of the replica bodies cannot be me. Or what if my original body is not
destroyed? I cannot be both on Earth and on Mars simultaneously.138 However,
both criteria for determining personal identity with which this discussion began
seem to be satisfied - there is a metaphysical basis for the claim that the two
replicas are both I, and phenomenologically it will seem to each replica that it is I.
Parfit's answer to this dilemma is that different replicas do not guarantee
personal identity. Rather, it is psychological continuity, and not personal identity,
that is really important when a psychology "branches." But in the cases of bisected
brains, both replicas might experience the phenomenon of psychological
continuity, so that it might seem to each replicated person that he/she is the original
person. What does all of this mean for theism and the possibility of personal
immortality? Minimally, it seems that theists must pay more attention to
contemporary philosophy and develop a consistent notion of person that is
consistent with the latest developments in neurophysiology and biotechnology.
Developing or interpreting theistic claims concerning immortality using the bundle
theory rather than the substance, ego theory certainly seems to be promising;
however, as this discussion illustrates, new difficulties then arise concerning how
personal immortality can guarantee the survival of the same person and only one
of the same person.
NEUROTHEOLOGY
In addition to the aforementioned importance of neurophysiology for developing
a sophisticated philosophical theory of the nature of persons, neurobiology is also
now studying the brain to determine the underlying neurological bases for religious
and spiritual experiences. The result is what has become known as
neurotheology.139 It is now known that certain areas of the brain are inactive while
137 Ibid. This extreme and unusual suggestion does not account for the problems of scattered or
mixed persons. It also raises questions about the possibility of God's systematically deceiving human
beings - a possibility dismissed by theists in connection with the suggestion that God could create
human beings with free will but without the ability to actually do eviL
138 See Parfit, "What We Believe Ourselves to Be," in Reasons and Persons, pp. 20Off.
139 Neurotheology is now in its infancy. One of the earliest attempts to explore the
neurophysiological bases for spiritual experiences is James Austin, Zen and the Brain (Cambridge: MIT
Press, 1998).
323
others are very active during what people report as religious or spiritual
experiences. The prefrontal cortex becomes overactive, while the amygdala, as
well as the parietal lobe, the frontal lobe, and the temporal lobes, shuts down
during such an experience. The result is that the parts of the brain that are
responsible for one's awareness of the physical separation of one's body from
one's physical environment and for one's awareness of spatial and temporal
orientation become inactive while the area that is responsible for consciousness
and conscious attention becomes very active. The result is that both the self and
whatever sensory inputs there might be during the experience are not oriented by
the brain as they usually are, while at the same time one's attention is focused more
intently on those sensory inputs. The disruption of normal orientation might easily
explain common reports that people have given during spiritual experiences to the
effect that they lose their notion of self-identity and separation from the world and
merge with or become one with the entire universe. The "buzzing confusion" of
sensory stimuli that is usually sorted out and organized by the brain is no longer
sorted out and organized, so stimuli become difficult to recognize and their sources
become difficult to identify. Thus, during what is regarded as a spiritual
experience, one might have very strong and even overwhelming experiences of
something or other or of some kind without later being able to describe the
experience.
Perhaps the initial response of some people to such findings is to think that
neurobiologists have finally revealed the neurophysiological sources of religious
and spiritual experience; however, the discovery that there is a neurological basis
for such experiences does not mean that the brain creates such experiences or that
the experiences are not of something real. Presumably, all of one's experiences are
the result of some kind of brain activity, including what we regard as normal
sensory experiences of the physical world. Thus, if a person sees a burning bush,
there will be certain neurological processes that take place; if that person sees God
in a burning bush, different neurological processes will take place. So
neurotheology has not succeeded in providing a completely naturalistic explanation
for religious or spiritual experiences, but this is an area of inquiry about which we
are likely to hear a great deal in the coming few decades. When neurobiologists
come to understand better the neurological bases for religious experience, the
ability to control or influence such experiences - through the use of drugs or
electrical stimulation - will not be far behind. Then, the issue of distinguishing
veridical religious experiences from insincere or mistaken ones (discussed in
Chapter IV) can easily take on aspects resembling what is now scientific fiction.
One can imagine brain scans, for example, that will show whether one is having a
"normal" experience, a drug-induced experience, or an experience of God, and
arguments are then likely to develop over what chemical and neurological features
of the brain represent what kind of experience. In the end, however, such
considerations will not resolve the issue of whether the brain states are creating an
experience of God or whether an experience of God is creating the brain states.
LIFE AFTER LIFE AND NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCES
People have reported various sorts of alleged mystical and religious experiences
through the ages that have produced a challenge to a completely naturalistic
324
understanding of human nature. However, in the last few decades, following the
reports of what have become known as "near death experiences" in Raymond
Moody's book, Life After Life,140 significantly increased attention has been given to
the unusual phenomena that apparently sometimes occur when people are close to
death or even "technically" dead for brief periods before being revived. Might
these experiences be regarded as evidence for the existence of a spiritual substance
that is the self as opposed to the bundle theory that has challenged the substance
theory, and might such experiences provide the theist with some plausible evidence
for the continued existence of the soul after death?
Over several years, Moody, who was trained as both a philosopher and a
medical doctor, collected stories from various people. Some accounts of the "near
death experiences" (NDEs) came from people who had been pronounced clinically
dead by doctors and then resuscitated; others came from people who had simply
been near death from an injury or illness, while still others came from people who
had been told accounts of the experiences by others as they were dying. The major
aspect of such experiences that commands serious attention is the great similarity
of the reports of people who are widely separated and who are widely
heterogeneous in terms of geographical, social, religious, and educational
background. While one might argue that reports of such experiences are tainted
since the publication of Moody's book and the wide public attention it has received
and the public attention that has been directed to NDEs, there were arguably
numerous well-documented reports of such experiences before the book drew such
attention to them. Moody claims to have personally interviewed one hundred fifty
such cases. 141 Although serious questions have been raised concerning Moody's
descriptions of NDEs, as well as claims advanced by others, for the sake of
discussion let us simply assume that some legitimate, documented cases of NDEs
exist. 142 Moody claims that the theoretically "ideal," "model," "composite" case of
a NDE claim contains certain common elements. I summarize Moody's
summarization: A man might hear himself pronounced dead, and then begin to
hear a loud ringing or buzzing. He feels himself moving through a long dark tunnel
and then finds himself outside his own physical body. He sees his old body from a
distance, as others would. He now has a very different kind of body. Others come
to meet him, including a loving, warm, spirit, a being of light. He feels joy, and
love, and peace and wants to stay but ultimately feels that he must return to his
physical body. He tries to tell others of his experience but finds that human
language is inadequate to describe his experience. 143
Let us assume that such experiences are sincere and let us grant the general
uniformity of the accounts, which include being "outside" of one's physical body
and experiencing bright light. Are NDEs genuine, hard, "empirical" evidence of
another realm of existence and thus evidence against a strictly naturalistic account
of human nature? Are NDEs evidence of some sort of spiritual aspect to human
nature? Or are there plausible, completely naturalistic accounts of NDEs? If NDEs
Raymond Moody, Life After Life (Carmel, N.Y.: Guideposts, 1975).
Ibid., p. 12.
142 For a summary of such criticisms, see Paul and linda Badham, Immortality or Extinction?
(Totowa, N.J.: Barnes and Noble, 1982), p. 87-88.
143 Ibid., pp. 15-16.
140
141
325
do occur as they are described, then they would seem to be evidence against a
functional, bundle theory of the self, which is favored by contemporary
philosophers of mind and supported by much of modern neuroscience. Many
theists have taken NDEs as evidence of the possibility of the separation of the soul
from the body and of the continued existence of the soul after death. For example,
Paul and Linda Badham claim that "the evidential features in the reports made by
resuscitated persons about their supposed observations [NDEs] provide some of the
strongest grounds for supposing that the separation of the self from the body is
possible.,,[44
NATURALISTIC EXPLANATIONS FOR NDEs
If we begin by assuming that NDEs provide plausible prima facie evidence of
the existence of some spiritual aspect of human nature which can be separated
from the physical body, we can then proceed by examining the possible naturalistic
accounts of NDEs to see if those accounts undermine such prima facie evidence. If
there are such plausible accounts of NDEs that are completely naturalistic ~ in this
case physiological, neurochemical processes in the brain or other parts of the body
~ then the prima facie support for the spiritual aspect of human nature from NDEs
obviously disappears.
In considering the possibility of completely naturalistic accounts for NDEs, it is
first significant to note that the very same or very similar experiences occur in
other situations besides those in which a person is near death or in which a person
has been resuscitated. Most notably, similar experiences have been regularly
reported by people who are under the effects of hallucinatory drugs such as
hashish, mescaline, or LSD. Psychologists and medical researchers report that drug
experiences, like NDEs, involve surprisingly similar regular patterns. The patterns
involve the experience of bright and vivid colors that occur in regular patterns of
gratings, lattices, honeycombs, spirals, and tunnels. The mandala pattern, involving
variations on concentric circles, is one of the patterns recurrent with hallucinations.
It occurs in ancient cultures of various traditions, including Buddhist and Hindu
religious teachings, as well as in the theories of Carl Jung. 145 Tunnels are one of the
most common forms of images that occur during hallucinations.
If the experience of tunnels is common in drug-induced hallucinations, then we
might begin to suspect that such experiences are somehow tied to various
neurochemical processes in the brain, since the effect of hallucinatory drugs upon
those processes is now fairly well-understood. In fact, such explanations are easily
available, and similar explanations are available for other commonly recurring
aspects of NDEs, such as the experience of bright light and the feelings of peace
and love and harmony. I will simply sketch the general outlines of different
plausible, naturalistic accounts of some of the main, recurring features of NDEs by
focusing upon the appearance of a tunnel and bright light; the feeling of ascending,
144
Paul and Linda Badham, Immortality or Extinction? (Totowa, N.J.: Barnes and Noble, 1982), p.
78.
145 This summary is taken from Susan Blackmore, Dying to Live (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books,
1993), p. 68. There have been many studies of the hallucinatory effects of various drugs. For a good
summary of the literature, see pp. 67ff.
326
hovering, and floating in space; and the feelings of peace, harmony, and wellbeing.
TUNNELS OF LIGHT
The appearance of a tunnel and bright light and the accompanying feeling that
one is entering the tunnel or that the light is approaching and then enveloping the
person are commonly reported features of NDEs. They are also commonly reported
features of people under the influence of certain drugs, severe stress, or dreams. An
increasingly accepted explanation for such experiences is a result of what happens
in the dying brain and the claim that what happens in the dying brain is very
similar to what happens in the brain under certain other conditions. One of the
most significant things that happens to the dying brain at some point is the lack of
oxygen. When the heart stops circulating blood to the brain, cerebral anoxia
occurs. Now there are many different ways in which anoxia might occur, and
detailed explanations of these are important for distinguishing the varying effects
which differently occurring incidents of anoxia might have upon the brain. 146
While it is not possible here to enter into such a detailed medical treatment of the
various kinds of anoxia and their differing effects upon the body and the differing
accompanying experiences, we can at least point to the example presented by
Susan Blackmore of how the differing effects and differing experiences seem
linked to the rate at which oxygen is denied to the brain. If the loss is sudden and
complete, as with some drug and alcohol poisoning, then sudden blackouts, nausea,
vomiting, or convulsions occur most commonly. With a very slow rate of oxygen
deprivation, confusion and lassitude occur; however, with a moderate rate of
oxygen loss to the brain, strong pleasant feelings of peace, happiness, and wellbeing result. To heighten such feelings is the reason some people engage in the
extreme practice of partial strangulation during sex, and according to Blackmore, is
a plausible explanation of why such feelings occur so commonly in NDEs. Michael
Sabom reports of at least one case of a NDE that occurred during a cardiac arrest
where the doctors actually withdrew blood during the NDE with no indications of a
lowered oxygen level or raised level of carbon dioxide,147 and Sabom takes this
case to be documented, counterevidence to the attribution of NDEs to anoxia.
However, the blood sample was taken from the femoral artery in the groin, and as
several have noted, testing arterial blood from another location in the body is not a
reliable indication of the oxygen level in the brain. 148
The experience of "seeing" tunnels seems to be tied to the "disinhibition" which
occurs in the nerve cells of the visual cortex during certain drug experiences and
NDEs. Normally, the neurons of the visual cortex stimulate or inhibit other neurons
across the synapses separating them by a chemical process. Inhibition or the
"quieting" of one neuron by another regulates and stabilizes normal brain activity.
146 For a detailed and objective description of the different kinds of anoxia and their potential
differing effects, see Blackmore, Ibid., pp. 49-53.
147 Michael Sabom, Recollections of Death: A Medical Investigation (New York: Harper and Row,
Publishers, 1982), pp. 105-11.
148 See Susan Blackmore, Dying to Live, pp. 51-52 and M. P. H. Gliksman and A. Kellehear, "Neardeath Experiences and the Measurement of Blood Gases," Journal of NearDeath Studies, Vol. 9, 1990,
pp.41-43.
327
Disinhibition means that the normal patterns of inhibition are disrupted and general
excitation exists in large areas of the visual cortex with many neurons firing that
would normally be inhibited. 149 Research has indicated that one effect of such
disinhibited neural fmngs in the visual cortex is the experience of tunnel-like
bright lights. Since there are more neural cells in the middle of the visual field, as
they begin their increased, disinhibited fmng, the area in the center will appear
brighter, and as the area expands toward the periphery of the visual field, the bright
area will grow in a circle, giving the person the experience of entering a tunnel of
light. Eventually, if the process continues, the person will seem to be completely
surrounded by the bright light if all the neurons in the visual field are excited. This
phenomenon might provide a completely neurochemical explanation of the
descriptions by many who have experienced NDEs that they gradually approach a
bright tunnel into which they enter and by which they are eventually completely
absorbed. ISO
OUT-OF-BODY EXPERIENCES
"Out-of-body experiences," where a person reports "floating" or "hovering" and
"seeing" one's own physical body from outside the body, also occur during drug
experiences and during periods of extreme stress. Such experiences are called
"autoscopic" experiences by Michael Sabom.!51 There are many difficult and
intriguing issues involving such claims. People claim to see and hear events when
they are "out of their bodies," and there are many perplexing questions about how
to make sense of such claims to having sense experiences in the absence of a
physical body or sense organs. Some people report something that seems akin to
telepathy, where events are experienced "mentally." But even in these reported
cases, there are the problems of individuation and perspective. Just how can my
experiences be mine unless they occur here and from here?
While it is impossible to pursue all these issues in detail here, I will briefly
explore possible naturalistic explanations for out-of-body experiences. IS2 First, it is
important to note that like the experience of tunnels and lights, out-of-body
experiences occur in other situations beside NDEs, including the use of the drugs
LSD, mescaline, and the anesthetic ketamine. There are several different possible
and plausible physiological explanations for such experiences. For example, Cyril
Burt has suggested that a sudden change in the blood pressure in the middle ear
(which would normally occur during cardiac arrest and some accidents) can cause
the sensation of floating upwards. IS3 Such a change might explain why reported
Much of the forgoing is drawn from Susan Blackmore, Dying to Live, pp. 64-65.
This description is based upon the research of Tom Troscianko. See Susan Blackmore, Ibid., pp.
84-86 and Susan Blackmore and Tom Troscianko, ''The Physiology of the Tunnel," Journal of NearDeath Studies, Vol. 8, 1988, pp. 15-28.
151 Michael Sabom, Recollections of Death: A Scientific Investigation, p. 27.
152 For detailed discussions of the various difficulties with claims involving out-of-body experiences
during NDEs, see the following: Raymond Moody, Life After Life, p. 25ff. Moody maintains that there
is some sort of spiritual body that is occupied during out-of-body experiences. C. E. Green, Out-of -theBody Experiences (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1968). Green claims that such experiences are
"asomatic" - without any sort of second, spiritual body.
153 See Cyril Burt, Psychology and Psychical Research (Society for Psychical Research, 1968), pp.
79-80. Discussed in Paul and Linda Badham, Immortality or Extinction?, pp. 73-74.
149
150
328
autoscopic experiences during NDEs always involve the person's experience of

floating upwards and never downwards.
Extreme stress can also produce such experiences. Years ago, during a period of
extreme emotional stress, I remember quite clearly having the experience of
"watching myself' in conversations and even during a classroom lecture
wondering what I was going to say next and how I was going to finish the sentence
I heard myself speaking. It seemed quite clear at the time that someone else was
controlling my speech. Clinicians explained that during times of extreme stress, the
conscious mind sometimes simply "takes a holiday" and withdraws. Other
situations, involving "highway hypnosis" or feats of heroism during times of
extreme danger, have similar explanations, where the mind continues to control
bodily movement though the person is not conscious of it at the time and many
times afterwards cannot remember what happened.
Susan Blackmore argues that extreme conditions break down our "normal
model of reality" by interrupting or distorting the sensory information and mental
operations necessary to maintain that model. 154 Under such conditions, when our
normal model of reality breaks down, we become confused about our body sense
because the normal inputs and outputs are not working. Blackmore argues that our
memory and imagination take over in such situations to try and maintain a sense of
personal identity. When we remember or imagine certain situations in which we
are involved, we do "picture ourselves" as if we were watching ourselves. For
example, she suggests, when we remember our last trip to the beach, we are likely
to remember the scene from "a bird's eye view" - seeing ourselves walking down
the beach - rather than from the point of view that we would have had at the time
from our visual perspective. 155
PEACE, LOVE AND HARMONY
Very strong feelings of peace and well-being are not unique to NDEs but occur
in various other situations as well and can plausibly be explained in terms of
certain neurochemical changes that take place in the brain. The brain produces
endorphins in the fluid that surrounds the neural transmitters in the brain, and the
elimination of pain, as well as feelings of extreme peace, joy, euphoria, and wellbeing, have been traced to the effects of endorphins during such experiences as sex
and childbirth. Arguably, the extremely pleasurable effects of such drugs as
morphine and heroin are explained as replacing and accentuating the brain's
normal reaction to endorphins. 156
Medical research supports the theory that endorphins are released when a person
is near death,157 so the completely physiological effects of endorphins provide a
plausible and completely naturalistic explanation for the feelings of peace, joy, and
well-being described as accompanying NDEs. The currently popular illegal drug
ecstasy, as well as the antidepressant Prozac, produce the same kind of effects by
triggering the brain to release major dosages of serotonin. Thus, there are several
Susan Blackmore, Dying to Live, pp. 173-177.

Ibid., p. 177.
156 See Ibid., pp. 106-07.
157 See D. Carr, "Endorphins and the Approach of Death," The Lancet, Vol. 14, February 1981.
154
155
329
physiological and chemical explanations for the feelings of peace, love, and
harmony that people might experience during situations of extreme stress.
CONCLUSION
In this chapter, I have shown how naturalism, humanism, and atheism have
made continuing progress during the twentieth century in extending and defending
their claims to explanatory prowess. Gradually, natural science has replaced "the
God of the gaps" in a plausible, reasonable fashion with completely naturalistic
explanations for natural phenomena that hitherto seemed to require supernatural
explanations. Of particular importance is the plausibility that Darwinian
evolutionary theory by natural design provides of a naturalistic explanation of
design (or "apparent design" or order) in the universe. More detailed knowledge
and more sophisticated theories about human nature and how that nature is related
to human neurophysiology have posed new obstacles to traditional theistic
doctrines concerning immortality that are based upon a substance theory of the
self. At the same time, religion and religious beliefs have resisted explanation in
terms of a reduction to either psychology or sociology, and the cumulative case
approach seems to make belief in the existence of God at least a plausible and
reasonable alternative for the theist. In the continuing ebb and flow of the
competition between naturalism and theism, it appears that naturalism has made
the most significant gains during the twentieth century - so much so, in fact, that
there has been a significant turning away from natural theology among
philosophers of religion during recent decades (see Chapter IV). There are other
important fronts on which the battle between naturalism and theism is waged. In
Chapter III, I examined the competing explanatory powers of the big bang theory
and the cosmological argument for the existence of God. In the next chapter, I
examine the competing secular and theistic accounts of value and moral theory.
VIII. Religion and Ethics
The philosophical dispute concerning the relationship between religion and

ethics is an ancient one. Perhaps the most often used text to introduce the issue is
the part of Plato's dialogue, Euthyphro, in which Socrates and Euthyphro debate
whether the gods love piety because it is pious or whether piety is pious because
the gods love it. In the first case, of course, there is some pious-making quality that
is independent of and prior to the gods' loving of piety. In the second case, the
gods' loving of piety is the pious-making quality, and the nature of piety thus
derives from that loving. The fundamental question is whether ethics and ethical
obligations and responsibilities are independent of God or whether they are
dependent upon God. Within a traditional theistic framework, the first alternative
establishes an independent moral order according to which moral obligations and
moral responsibilities are derived from some source other than God and thus
acquire whatever moral force they might have independently of God.!
On the one hand, such an alternative is problematic because it appears to limit
God's omnipotence, since presumably even God could then be subject to such
independent moral obligations and responsibilities or at least not the standard of
what is morally right and wrong for human beings. 2 On the other hand, a secular
moral theory that is independent of God seems to buttress the integrity and
autonomy of moral agency. As another famous Greek story illustrates, when
Achilles is warned by his goddess mother, Thetis, not to avenge the death of his
friend, Patroclus, who was killed by Hector during the Trojan War, he disobeyed
his goddess mother and did so anyway, thereby abandoning his claim to
immortality (and presumably eternal happiness) because it was "the right thing to
do." Secular moral theory thus places a human moral agent in the position of acting
on one's own as the result of an autonomous, deliberative moral judgment perhaps, as the case may be, even in defiance of the gods.
GOD AS A NECESSARY POSTULATE FOR ETHICS
I Although they have been used differently at different times in the history of Western moral theory,
the terms "moral," "ethical," "moral theory," and "ethics" are now used interchangeably by most
contemporary moral philosophers; therefore, I use them interchangeably throughout this chapter.
2 It should be noted that not all theists have regarded an independent source of ethics as a threat to
God. See, for example, Louis Pojman, Ethics: Discovering Right and Wrong (Belmont, Calif.:
Wadsworth Publishing, 1990), p. 188.
330
RELIGION AND ETHICS
331
Theists who defend some version of the divine command theory of ethics argue
that no adequate account of the moral order is possible outside a framework that
acknowledges God's existence and God's divine authority for moral prescriptions
and prohibitions. Secular moral philosophers deny that the authority for such
prescriptions and prohibitions requires any such theistic foundation.
Theists who base morality upon religious belief maintain that God provides an
ontological and logical basis for morality without which moral theory and all of the
moral obligations, prohibitions, and appraisals that follow from such a theory
would be meaningless and without any moral force. God is thus viewed as the
necessary anchor or the "Archimedean point" for moral theory that provides a
framework within which the questions of how we are to live our lives and which
moral laws we are to follow have meaningful answers. Without God to provide
what is regarded as the necessary grounding, secular moral theory is viewed by
some theists as nihilistic and skeptical, or at best, limited and conventional. 3
THE QUEERNESS OF ETHICS
Contemporary theistic philosophers who espouse the need for a similar
metaphysical grounding of moral theory have argued that something is drastically
missing from and deficient in purely secular ethical theory that makes it shallow
and even meaningless. For example, George Mavrodes has argued that secular
ethics has a distinct "queerness" about it because it places moral obligations upon
people (frequently whether the individuals agree that they have such obligations or
not) in circumstances in which the person performing the obligation stands to
suffer a net loss of good (presumably where others might benefit). Mavrodes thinks
that any system of secular ethics that places such obligations upon a person is
absurd. 4 In his view, the oddity stems from the fact that, according to secular moral
theory, a person S might be under a moral obligation to perform some action x
even though by performing x, S stands to suffer a significant loss in some way.
Under such circumstances, S might reasonably ask, "Why should I be moral?" and
unless there is some significant benefit or reward in store for S (such as going to
heaven), Mavrodes (and others who ground ethics in religion) thinks that there is
no compelling affirmative answer for this question. s Thus, secular ethics fails to be
a general theory, since it does not provide a theoretical explanation for morality in
all circumstances.
Mavrodes manages to focus attention upon the problem that will serve as the
focus of this chapter on the relationship between moral theory and religion: Is a
religious ethics that bases moral theory upon the existence of God a more
theoretically general and complete theory than a completely secular moral theory?
In examining whether a religious moral theory based upon the existence of God
is more theoretically general and complete than a secular moral theory, we must
consider the various theoretical and logical difficulties in constructing such a
See Kai Nielsen, Ethics without God (London: Prometheus Books, 1973), p. 48.
George, Mavrodes, "Religion and the Queerness of Morality," in Rationality, Religious Belief, and
Moral Commitment, edited by Robert Audi and William Wainwright (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University
Press, 1986). Reprinted in Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology, edited by Louis Pojrnan (Belmont,
Calif.: Wadsworth Publishing, 1998), p. 577.
5 Ibid.
3
332
theory. We must also consider exactly how the metaphysical "grounding" of moral
theory in a nonnatural, spiritual being can be explained. While Mavrodes thinks
that there is something queer about secular moral theory, others have objected, as
we shall see later in this chapter, that there is something queer or logically odd
about a moral theory that is based upon religious belief. In particular, several
critics have raised logical objections concerning whether a moral theory based
upon religious belief can be constructed in a logically consistent manner.
THE DIVINE COMMAND THEORY
Divine command theory defines objective moral value in terms of the will
and/or commands of God. According to most versions of divine command theory,
to be morally good is to be commanded by God, and to be morally wrong is to be
prohibited by God. 6 Divine command theory makes God's will and/or commands
ontologically prior to moral value. Such versions of divine command theory thus
raise two significant philosophical issues about the relationship between moral
theory and religious belief: First, there is the issue of the nature of the relationship
between ethics and God, and second, there is the epistemological issue about how
one gains knowledge of moral values and how one gains knowledge of the divine
will and divine commands.
The history of divine command theory is long and circuitous and cannot be dealt
with here/ however, in the second half of the twentieth century divine command
theory experienced a revival of interest on the part of philosophers and theologians
alike. I will concentrate here on the most significant figures and the most
significant issues found in the vast, wide-ranging literature that has appeared in the
recent, contemporary literature.
RENEWED INTEREST IN DIVINE COMMAND THEORY
Much of the recent interest in divine command theory stems, directly or
indirectly, from reactions to Elizabeth Anscombe's article "Modem Moral
Philosophy."g Anscombe attacks the way in which recent moral philosophy has
been conducted in the twentieth century on the grounds that our understandings of
the notions of moral obligation and moral duty are parasitic upon an earlier
conception of the nature of ethics that can be traced to the Stoics and Christianity
and that was based originally upon the conception that human ethics involves
following the moral law. Within such a theory, the question of the origin of the law
becomes paramount, and according to Anscombe, the view that has come to
dominate Western culture is that the moral law originated with divine law and thus
the meanings of and the understandings of the fundamental moral notions are
rooted in a theistic framework. However, since no adequate theory exists that
explains how human, moral law is based upon divine law, contemporary moral
6 I discuss exceptions to and variations upon this general approach to divine command theory later in
this chapter.
7 For a thorough treatment of the history of divine command theory, see Janine Marie Idziak,
"Divine Command Morality: A Guide to the Literature," in Divine Command Morality: Historical and
Contemporary Readings (New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1979), pp. 1-38. Idziak's article also contains
references to many of the major articles and books published prior to 1979.
8 G. E. M. Anscombe, "Modern Moral Philosophy," Philosophy, Vol. 33, no. 124, 1958, pp. 1-19.
RELIGION AND ETHICS
333
philosophers, she maintains, are working with moral concepts that have been cut
off from their roots. Consequently, philosophers should abandon doing moral
philosophy until an adequate understanding of moral psychology is developed in
which moral theory can be grounded. 9 Her own suggestion is that we must return
to an Aristotelian account of the virtues to provide such a grounding. Much of the
work concerning divine command theory can be seen as attempts to provide the
kind of grounding of the law-centered conception of moral theories in divine law,
which Anscombe thinks has been absent in contemporary moral philosophy. 10
Another of the more influential works in contemporary moral philosophy,
Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue, can similarly be understood as an attempt to
provide an explanation for the need of a different sort of "grounding" of moral
philosophy in the virtues instead of in moral law. 11 MacIntyre develops the point
concerning the perceived need for a divine law to ground moral law within a
theistic framework more explicitly than does Anscombe. The basic understanding
of the nature of moral theory that has dominated Western philosophy stems from
Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle maintained that the purpose of ethics
was to allow man to realize his true end, his telos, which is happiness. By the use
of reason, human beings are able to tell both what their true end is and how to go
about pursuing it. Such an understanding involves a particular instantiation of
Aristotle's notions of potentiality and actuality. As MacIntyre says of Aristotle's
ethical theory, "there is a fundamental contrast between man-as-he-happens-to-be
and man-as-he-could-be-if-he-realized-his-essential-nature." For Aristotle, ethical
theory, developed by the use of our reason, is what enables us "to understand how
to make the transition from the former state to the latter.,,12 All of this worked well
enough for Aristotle; however, when Aristotelianism was adopted within Protestant
Christian theology, at least two fundamental difficulties arose. First, the true end of
man is no longer viewed as realizable within this lifetime and within this world,
and more importantly for present purposes, human reason is no longer considered
as autonomous and capable of providing us with the ethical concepts, principles,
and understanding to enable us to realize our true telos without God's help. The
original distinction between man-as-he-is and man-as-he-ought-to-be remains, but
now following the divine law is seen as necessary for allowing man to move
toward his true end.13 Since human reason is inadequate for devising a rational,
moral plan for man to achieve his true end, divine command theory situates the
locus for such a plan in God and the means to achieve it in God's grace. 14
See Anscombe, pp. 5-6 and p. 1.
For a critical reaction to Anscombe, see Kai Nielsen, "Some Remarks on the Independence of
Morality from Religion," in Christian Ethics and Contemporary Philosophy, edited by Ian T. Ramsey
(New York: Macmillan, 1966), pp. 149ff.
11 Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981).
Although MacIntyre's position differs significantly from that of Anscombe in several respects, he
explicitly credits the article by Anscombe as very influential upon his thinking, p. 53.
12 Ibid., p. 52.
13 For a discussion of how divine law replaced reason in Christian theology, see Ibid., pp. 53-54.
14 There is also the separate dispute about what the proper end of man is, assuming that it can be
detennined. Some theists, following in the Augnstinian tradition, have maintained that only God can be
the proper end of all of man's activities and thus only in God can man fmd true happiness. See John
Hick, "Belief and Life: The Fundamental Nature of the Christian Ethic," in Encounter, Vol. 20, no. 4,
1959; and Alasdair MacIntyre, Difficulties in Christian BeliefC London: SCM, 1959). MacIntyre later
9
10
334
THE NATURALISTIC FALLACY

There are other logical difficulties that result from defining moral goodness in
terms of what is commanded by God. Moral philosophers have struggled through
the centuries to try and provide an account of how moral theory and moral
obligation can be constructed from descriptive accounts of various phenomena in
the natural world. This problem is frequently described as the "is-ought problem,"
or the problem of how to derive an 'ought' from an 'is.' 15 Different moral
philosophers have attempted to address this problem in various ways. Naturalistic
accounts of moral theory have attempted to define moral concepts or reduce moral
concepts to natural properties. In one of the major developments in twentiethcentury moral philosophy, G. E. Moore attacks such attempts by naturalist means
by exposing what he called "the naturalistic fallacy.,,16 Moore argues that any
attempt to define moral good in terms of some natural property is doomed to
failure because, even assuming that such a definition is in place, the natural
property will always fail to account for what it means for something to be good.
Moore proposes what he calls "the open question test" to determine whether a
definition is an adequate one or not. One might, for example, attempt to define
moral good and moral obligation in terms of the consequences and benefits of an
action (as the utilitarians do). Here, it seems, we have surely managed to bridge the
gap between 'ought' and 'is.' If an action a produces the greatest good for the
greatest number of people and if 'good' is defined in terms of producing the
greatest happiness for the greatest number of people, then surely a must be good,
and one would be morally obligated to perform a. But is this definition an adequate
one? Moore's open question test would have us ask the following question: Action
a produces the greatest good for the greatest number of people, but is a good and
are we morally obligated to perform a? Whether one answers this question in the
affirmative or the negative is not important. What is important is whether this is a
serious question whose answer is not immediately obvious and about which a
person can seriously deliberate and for which one can ponder an answer. Unless
the question is a "closed" one - a nonserious question whose answer is
immediately and trivially obvious - then the definition of moral good and moral
obligation in terms of the greatest good for the greatest number of people is not an
adequate one, since it "leaves open" the question of the connection between the
two. Attempts to define or reduce moral good and moral obligation to naturally
occurring and observable predicates thus commit, according to Moore, the
naturalistic fallacy. 17
abandoned this position. For a critical discussion, see Kai Nielsen, Ethics without God (New York:
Prometheus Books, 1973), Chapter 2.
15 For a full discussion of the is-ought problem from differing points of view, see the collection of
papers entitled The Is-Ought Question, edited by W. D. Hudson (London: Macmillan, 1969).
16 G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1903).
17 This exact formulation of the problem is controversial and was eventually revised and elaborated
upon by Moore; however, the fundamental issue is the same. See Moore's "A Reply to My Critics" in
The Philosophy of G. E. Moore, edited by P. A. Schilpp (LaSalle, Ill.: Open Court Publishing, 1942),
pp.581-92.
RELIGION AND ETIllCS
335
THE SUPERNATURALISTIC FALLACY

It is easy to construct a supernaturalistic version of the naturalistic fallacy. IS
Assuming a divine command theory, suppose we ask: Action a is commanded by

God, but is a good and ought we to perform a? Is this an "open" or "closed"
question? Being commanded by God is presumably a supernatural predicate that
action a possesses, and we can assume, for the sake of argument, that we have
somehow managed to determine to everyone's satisfaction that action a is indeed
commanded by God. Are there plausible circumstances in which a reasonable
person could then engage in deliberation and seriously ponder whether he should
perform a? Contemporary treatments of the story of Abraham, commanded by God
to kill his son, Isaac, confirm that when Moore's open question test is applied in
this case, the result for many people - theists and nontheists alike - is an open
question confirming the supernaturalistic fallacy. Obviously, for many people,
even assuming that they are completely convinced that it is God who has
commanded them to kill their son, it would still be a reasonable question of
whether to obey the command or not, and it would remain an "open" issue
involving perhaps agonizing and soul-searching deliberation of whether to obey or
not. 19
Nor need one resort to such dramatic cases to illustrate the point. Religious
believers have routinely reported resisting what they have perceived to be God's
will for their lives. For example, a religious believer might experience what is for
him the clear, divine, "call" to become a missionary in some foreign land but
refuse to obey or find different rationalizations for not obeying the divine call. It is
important to notice that one need not disagree with God's command in order for
the open question test to work and in order for one "to pass independent
judgement" on God's command to perform a. So long as one seriously debates the
outcome (even if one finally agrees to perform a), one is exercising one's moral
autonomy and making an independent moral judgment. The argument is that
supernatural properties appear to lend themselves logically to the same kind of
treatment as natural properties, and moral good and moral obligation can be
reduced to neither. 20
BRIAN DAVIES AND DIVINE COMMANDS
Brian Davies argues that the only way a person might come to the conclusion
that it is possible that God might will some morally repugnant command is by
rejecting the fundamental moral position of the defender of divine command
theory.21 His suggestion is that one person might, for example, accept the
18 William Paley and others spoke of the divine command theory as a form of "theological
naturalism"; however, as the terms are now used. such a phrase seems to be an oxymoron.
19 This matter (as well as the matter of whether there are any limitations upon what God can
command) is discussed in greater detail below. Some theists have denied that it is possible within a
Judeo-Christian context to admit that God commands me to do a but to then doubt whether I ought to do
a. See D. A. Rhees, ''The Ethics of Divine Commands," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society,
December 1956, pp. 85-86; and the discussion of D. Z. Phillips below.
20 One possible response for the theist is to concede that moral obligation cannot be defined in terms
of divine commands but still insist that such obligation depends ontologically upon divine commands.
21 Brian Davies, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1993), pp. 180-81.
336
prohibition against torturing and killing innocent babies as morally fundamental,

whereas another person might accept obeying God's commands as morally
fundamental. In such a case, he claims, we are down to the level of primitive moral
premises, where it is difficult to argue against either position and we cannot say
that either position is wrong. 22 The choice becomes a matter, evidently, of "pay
your money and take your choice." Now surely there may be people whose moral
judgments are so different from one's own that dialogue and philosophical debate
are not possible. Homicidal maniacs may be one such group. There are those
infamous cases involving claims by Charles Manson and Jim Jones to commit what
are regarded by most observers, theists and nontheists alike, as morally horrendous
acts. Does Davis really mean that there is nothing that one can say about such
cases? As we have already seen in this chapter, disputants on different sides of
divine command theory have managed to engage one another very meaningfully.
Utilitarian kinds of issues might be raised to examine an absolute prohibition
against torturing and killing innocent babies, and considerations of fairness, justice,
and mercy might be raised against the belief in the identification of moral
obligation with divine command. Whether such factors will be telling or not, there
is still ample opportunity for further philosophical analysis and argumentation.
Davies also maintains that it is possible to derive "S ought to a" from "God
commands S to perform a" by the following argument:
a. God commands that S perform a.
b. One is morally obligated to do whatever God commands.
c. Therefore, S is morally obligated to perform a. 23
This is undoubtedly, as Davies claims, a valid argument, but (b) obviously begs the
question. Statement (b) is simply the generalized form of the conclusion, and this is
the very issue that is at stake in the argument. Davies maintains that it is
permissible for a person to infer reasonably that one is morally obligated to
perform an action a when a is some action commanded by God unless there is
some defeating argument against (b). However, (b) is a normative claim and is
exactly what an argument for deriving "S ought to perform a" from "God
commands S to perform a" needs to establish, not assume. Furthermore, as I show
below, not all defenders of divine command theory agree that (b) is true. Davies
does not supply any argument for (b); thus, his demonstration does not count as a
case of deriving 'ought' from 'is,' since one of its premises, (b), implicitly contains
an 'ought.'
THE AUTONOMY OF ETHICS
The failure of attempts to reduce moral concepts and moral obligation to natural
properties accounts for what Kant and others have regarded as the autonomy of
ethics?4 But the autonomy of ethics precludes attempts to reduce moral concepts or
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 183. I have changed the notation slightly for consistency within this chapter, but the
substance remains unaffected.
24 See A. C. Ewing, 'The Autonomy of Ethics," in Prospects for Metaphysics, edited by Ian T.
Ramsey (New York: The Philosophical Library, 1961). Reprinted in Divine ComllUlnd Morality:
Historical and Contemporary Readings, edited by Janine Marie Idziak, pp., 224-230. Also see Kai
22
23
RELIGION AND ETHICS
337
moral obligation to supernaturalistic properties as well; in this sense, then, divine

command theory is in no better position than naturalism. A. C. Ewing should be
recognized as one who has made this point very forcibly. As he says, "Good, right,
obligation are not at all like non-ethical concepts, and if we try to reduce them to
the latter there is always an essential element left out, whether the concepts are
scientific or metaphysical, unless indeed it is smuggled in indirectly so that the
concepts in terms of which ethics is analyzed are after all not really non-ethical.,,25
Ewing makes two crucial points here. First, moral acts involve some essential
element that determines the moral character of that act, and this element is not
reducible to any particular factual situation or natural property. This separation of
the moral element from the factual one is the basis for the famed "ought-is" gap.
Like attempts at naturalistic accounts of ethics, attempts to reduce ethical concepts
to God's will or commands are then saddled with the same sort of problem of
explaining how we can deduce claims about what one ought to do or what actions
one ought to perform from factual claims (or metaphysical or theological claims)
about what is the case concerning what God commands. However, secondly,
Ewing is correct in noting that in the case of attempts to ground moral theory in
theistic claims about the existence and nature of God, there is more opportunity to
surreptitiously introduce moral concepts into the metaphysical description of God.
Such a move ostensibly and temporarily avoids the supernaturalistic fallacy.
However, when it is recognized that in order to establish the moral efficacy of
God's commands, we must include perfect goodness in God's nature, then the full
force of the objection is felt. Ewing summarizes the situation and the dilemma of
explaining ethics in terms of divine commands very nicely:
The theological view is more ethical than the naturalistic only in so far as it
covertly reintroduces ethical concepts which it had verbally tried to explain
away by analyzing them in terms of commands. Except in so far as it smuggles
such concepts in again, it makes the fulfillment of duty consist just in obeying
the stronger, for if you once exclude the specifically ethical element from the
concept of the deity God has no claim on us except of mere power, and if you
include it ethics is needed to define the fundamental concepts of theology and
not theology to define the fundamental concepts of ethics. 26
Alasdair MacIntyre agrees with Ewing concerning the fundamental nature of
ethics over religion. He argues that "theism itself requires and presupposes both a
moral vocabulary which can be understood independently of theistic beliefs and
moral practices which can be justified independently of theistic beliefs.,,27 In others
words, MacIntyre maintains, similarly to Ewing, that if a theist is to count God as
good and obedience to God's commands as good or the kind of thing that one
Neilsen, "Some Remarks on the Independence of Morality from Religion," in Christian Ethics and
Contemporary Philosophy, edited by Ian T. Ramsey (New York: Macmillan, 1966), pp. 140-151 and
Ethics Without God (New York: Prometheus Books, 1973), pp. 10-11.
25 A. C. Ewing, "The Autonomy of Ethics," p. 224.
26 Ibid., pp. 227-28.
27 Alasdair Macintyre, "Atheism and Morals," in The Religious Significance of Atheism, edited by
Alasdair Macintyre and Paul Ricceur (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969), p. 32.
338
ought to do, then such terms as 'good' and 'ought' and 'virtue' must be defined
independently of the theist's religious beliefs and, in particular, independently of
the theist's beliefs about the will of God?S In order to distinguish the true God
from false gods, one must define and understand the fundamental, normative,
evaluative concepts "independently of God or of His commands.,,29
PATTERSON BROWN AND RELIGIOUS MORALITY
In the resurgence of interest in divine command theory in the last half of the
twentieth century, three main figures stand out within the analytic, philosophical
tradition - Patterson Brown, Philip Quinn, and Robert Adams. Of the three, Brown
has the most extreme theory.
For Brown, God is "the ultimate Christian criterion of goodness," and saying
"'God is the ultimate standard of the good' is true by definition.,,30 Whether Brown
is deliberately trying to avoid what I have called the supernaturalistic fallacy or not
by using God's commands as the ultimate standard or criterion of good rather than
as the definition or meaning of good is difficult to determine; however, the
application of Moore's open-question test to Brown's version of divine command
theory raises the same difficulties. It still follows from Brown's adoption of God's
will, actions, and commands as the definitive criteria of good that we are
unconditionally obligated to do whatever it is that God commands us to do simply
because God commands us to do it. Brown claims that, according to the logic of
Christian morality, "Things, actions, persons, and so on are good or evil, right or
wrong, according to whether God approbates or condemns them" so "to be moral is
to adhere to the will of God.,,3l Thus, Brown concludes, "one of the prerequisites
for being a Christian is that one accept God's decrees as taking moral precedence
over whatsoever conflicting considerations" there might be?2 Brown's deontic
conclusions are based on his analysis of the claim that God is good. He claims that
"God is good" is a "truth of logic" rather than a substantive description, since
Ibid., p. 33.
Alasdair MacIntyre, "Which God Ought We to Obey and Why?" Faith and Philosophy, Vol. 3,
no. 4,1986, p. 369. MacIntyre is quick to add that this does not mean that we can then use a humanly
derived normative standard to judge God and God's actions since, as we progress toward a fuller
understanding of God, we discover that the standard we have arrived at itself comes from God (although
we could not have realized this earlier). See p. 370. MacIntyre does not explain exactly how this
epistemological progression takes place and how one would ever come to be in a position to determine
that it has taken place so that one could determine that the normative standard one is using is the one
derived from God.
30 Patterson Brown, "Religious Morality," Mind, Vol. 72, 1963. Reprinted in Divine Command
Morality: Historical and Contemporary Readings, edited by Janine Marie Idziak, p. 248. Although
Brown frequently talks of a "Christian criterion" and a "Christian standard," it is clear from his
argument that he intends that God be understood as the standard of goodness.
31 Ibid., p. 250.
32 Patterson Brown, "Religious Morality: A Reply to Flew and Campbell," Mind, Vol. 77,1968, pp.
57780. Reprinted in Divine Command Morality: Historical and Contemporary Readings, edited by
Janine Marie Idziak, p. 256. For critical responses to Brown's treatment of religious morality, see A. G.
N. Flew, "The 'Religious Morality' of Mr. Patterson Brown," pp. 578-81; and Keith Campbell,
"Patterson Brown on God and Evil," pp. 582-84; both in Mind, Vol. 74, 1965. Also see John P. Reeder,
Jr., "Patterson Brown on God's Will as the Criterion of Morality," Religious Studies, Vol. 5, 1969, pp.
235-42. Reprinted in Divine Command Morality: Historical and Contemporary Readings, edited by
Janine Marie Tdziak, pp. 259-268.
28
29
RELIGION AND ETHICS
339
being perfectly good is part of what it means for God to be God. "God is good" is
thus trivially true in such a manner that to doubt that a particular being is good is to
doubt, ipso facto, that that being is God. 33 Brown actually regards his analysis as
providing an answer to the problem of evil in that the existence of evil in the world
could be evidence against the existence of God "only if the goodness of God could
be judged in terms of some ulterior ethical standard, stating that good agents do not
willingly permit evils to exist.,,34 However, since God is the ultimate standard of
good, we could never judge God by some other independent standard to determine
whether God allows evil to exist. Whatever God does or whatever God allows is
good.
IS GOD GOOD?
One of the unforeseen consequences of Brown's version of a divine command
theory involves the status of the claim that God is good. The religious person
means something different by the claim "God is good" than does the nonreligious
person, Brown claims. Since "God is good" is a ''truth of logic" and "analytically
true" according to Brown, then it must also be substantively meaningless. In other
words, since "God is good" does not meaningfully ascribe any predicate to God,
then it cannot be descriptive of or informative about God. Surely, however, theists
mean something substantive when they say "God is good," and they understand
themselves to be saying something meaningful about the nature of God. Typical
circumstances in which a theist might say "God is good" are those in which one
needs reassurance of the goodness of God's nature. Now it might be the case that
theists are simply mistaken about how this locution is to be understood properly,
but in that case, many of the assurances and comforts for theists which have been
thought to follow from God's ornnibenevolence (as well as the other moral
attributes of God) will be lost.
Brown anticipates a somewhat similar objection by noting that God cannot be
thought of as being a moral agent in a manner which is analogous to the way in
which human beings are moral agents, since God cannot make a decision to do
things because they are good. Still, he thinks, the expression "'God is good' is
trivially true ... since the standard is being applied to itself, but it is not less true for
that.,,35 If Brown is right about the status of "God is good," then there would be no
good reason for a theist who already believes in the existence of God ever to utter
"God is good" or ever to remind another believer that God is good since the claim
would be uninformative and trivially true.
Furthermore, if God's will and God's commands are the sole criteria for all
goodness, then those commands and acts of willing are simply illustrations or
samples of goodness. "God is good" cannot be a description of God nor an
ascription of goodness to God, trivially or otherwise. The point is similar to the one
See Brown, "Religious Morality," pp. 247-48.

Ibid., p. 251. Brown actually claims that Christian theology requires the existence of evil, since
without evil in the world there would be no need for man's redemption by God. Also see Patterson
Brown, "God and the Good," Religious Studies, Vol. 2,1966-67, pp.269-76.
35 Ibid., p. 252.
33
34
340
made by Wittgenstein concerning the standard meter stick. 36 The standard meter
stick is a platinum-iridium rod preserved in the Bureau of Standards and
Measurements in Paris, and it is regarded as the ultimate standard for determining
the length of a meter. But if the standard meter stick is the final, standard for
determining the length of a meter, then what are we to say of the length of the
standard meter stick? One might think that one might say that it is trivially true that
it is one meter long, but Wittgenstein maintains that we cannot legitimately say
either that it is one meter long or that it is not. To attempt to apply the standard of
the length of a meter to itself is a logical mistake that is the result of the confusion
concerning the role of the rule or the sample in the "language-game" of measuring.
Thus, if God's will and commands are the sole criteria of goodness, "God is good"
should be understood not as trivially true but rather as meaningless. 37
Robert Adams thinks that any adequate treatment of divine command theory
must allow for a meaningful ascription of "God is good.,,38 His suggestion for
allowing such a claim for a theist involves recognizing both the multifunctional
nature of the claim and its limitations. When a theist says "God is good," he might
be doing many things, including expressing a favorable "emotional attitude"
toward God as well as recognizing very specific ways in which he thinks that God
has been "good" (kind or generous) to him personally and individually. But such
an assessment surely requires an independent judgment of what is good by the
individual. Finally, Adams thinks that the speaker might well intend to ascribe to
God certain character traits that we normally associate with being a good human
being, though God cannot, of course, be reasonably thought of as possessing all the
different character traits which we attribute to good people. Thus, God can be
reasonably thought of as being kind and faithful but not temperate or courageous or
dutiful. 39
GOD AND AUTONOMOUS MORAL AGENTS
James Rachels thinks there is something queer about the kind of divine
command theory espoused by Brown for reasons other than those considered thus
far. Although Rachels' point is in the context of what is represented as a disproof
of God's existence, the logic of the argument is revealing about the relation of God
to moral beliefs. He constructs an interesting and perplexing argument concerning
36 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, translated by G. E. M. Anscombe, third
edition (New York: Macmillan, 1953), Section 50. Ironically, Brown uses Wittgenstein's example of
the standard meter stick in drawing his distinction between the meaning of a term and the criteria for the
application of a term; however, he ignores the main implication of this example for the case of God. If it
is meaningless to say either that the standard meter stick is one meter long or that it is not, then it is
meaningless to say either that God is good or that God is not good if God's will, actions, commands,
etc., are the sole criteria for applying "good." Thus, it cannot be trivially true that God is good; it cannot
be true at all that God is good.
37 Although the standard meter stick is no longer used as the standard for determining a meter, the
logical point remains the same.
38 Robert M. Adams, "A Modified Command Theory of Ethical Wrongness," in Religion and
Morality, edited by Gene Outka and John P. Reeder (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Press, 1973).
Reprinted in Philosophy of Religion: Selected Readings, edited by Michael Peterson, et al. (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 533. See below for a treatment of Adams's modified divine
command theory.
39 Ibid., p. 534.
341
the logical incompatibility of the existence of any God that is worthy of worship
with the existence of autonomous moral agents. His main point is that the existence
of a God that is worthy of worship is incompatible with the existence of
autonomous human moral agents, and since autonomous human moral agents do
obviously exist, then God cannot exist. Here is Rachels's argument with two
straightforward premises and a conclusion:
a. If any being is God, he must be a fitting object of worship.
b. No being could possibly be a fitting object of worship, since worship requires
the abandonment of one's role as an autonomous moral agent.
c. Therefore, there cannot be any being who is God. 40
This argument might well be called Rachels's moral disproof of the existence of
God, since according to Rachels, if God exists, then being worthy of worship is a
characteristic that cannot be separated from God's essence; that is, God is
necessarily a proper object of worship.41 However, if no being is a proper object of
worship, then God does not exist.
To evaluate the soundness of this argument and to develop its implications for
any divine command theory of ethics, we must develop Rachels's point in some
detail. First, we must explicate the notions of 'God' and 'autonomous moral agent'
and explain the modalities involved in the argument. Rachels explains that,
according to a dominant and long-standing school of moral thought, an
autonomous moral agent is one who is "self-directed" and who "acts according to
the precepts which he can, on reflection, conscientiously approve in his own
heart.,,42 In principle, an autonomous moral agent acts in accordance with moral
principles or laws with which he concurs as a result of deliberate reflection. In this
sense, we might say that an autonomous moral agent gives himself the moral law,
not in the sense that the moral law originates within the agent, but in the sense that
the agent embraces the law upon reflection and "makes it his own." For God to be
worthy of worship is part of what it means for God to be God; that is, it is
necessarily true that God is worthy of worship so that "[any] being who is not
worthy of worship cannot be God.'.43
Given the different characteristics of God (discussed in Chapter III), Rachels
thinks that the differences between God and human beings are exaggerated to the
point that human beings are mere children on a significantly lower level than God,
so that showing obedience to God and worshiping God become the only
appropriate ways in which human beings can relate to God. Worship is an
asymmetrical relationship44 that undermines the notion of autonomous moral
James Rachels, "God and Human Attitudes," Religious Studies, Vol. 7,1971, p. 335.
Ibid., p. 325.
42 This school of thought is most obviously and commonly identified with Kant.
43 Ibid., p. 335.
44 Ibid., p. 331.
40
41
342
agency by committing one to "total subservience" to God; worship thus requires

one "to abandon one's role as a moral agent.,,45
Rachels's argument rests upon the recognition that there is undoubtedly a
unique way in which human beings are thought to be related to God within
traditional theism. Compare, for example, the nature of the relationship between
human beings and the gods in ancient Greece with modem theism. With their very
different understanding of the gods, the Greeks (and, in particular, the Homeric
Greeks), saw themselves as frequently pitted against the gods, and though, in the
end, humans were perhaps destined to fail in their struggle against the gods
because of the superiority of the gods, still the dignity and the honor and the
heroics were in the struggle. Odysseus, for example, struggles against the gods in
Homer's Odyssey - fighting and resisting the gods and pitting himself against them
- sometimes with severe and tragic consequences for himself and his men. Indeed,
it is this struggle of the noble, courageous, and autonomous individual against
overwhelming strength and superiority that makes Odysseus the hero that he was
for the Greeks. But compare Odysseus with Job or Abraham. Odysseus stands
before the gods bloodied but unbowed, defiant and unyielding, while humbled and
sullied by the costs to himself and his men of his mistakes and obstinance. Job
stands before God obedient and subservient, an innocent man who has done no
wrong but has suffered greatly in the service of God. Job is a broken man who is
righteous before God because he refuses to question or blame God for his many
misfortunes. Abraham stands before God as a man who is willing to defer to God's
commands even to the extent of killing his own son without questioning God or
even asking for an explanation or good reason for God's command. What if Zeus
had commanded Odysseus to kill his son, Telernachus? It is easy to imagine
Odysseus's response. He would have resisted Zeus and refused him and even
fought him to protect his son, even with the knowledge that in the end he would
lose. The pride and arrogance and independent autonomy of Odysseus became the
model for Satan within Christianity, as illustrated by the arrogant gall of Satan in
Milton's Paradise Lost when he says, "Better to reign in hell than serve in heav'n."
The crucial and fundamental importance of obedience to God is continued in the
New Testament by the example set by Jesus when he prays, "Not my will but thine
be done," and Christians now say in the Lord's Prayer, "Thy will be done." Such
complete obedience to God's will seems clearly to be what Patterson Brown thinks
is required of the religious believer. "If we are not unconditionally obliged to do
whatever x commands, then x is by definition not God," he says, and furthermore,
part of what is involved in becoming a Christian is subordinating one's own will to
the will of God. 46
QUINN'S RESPONSE TO RACHELS
Rachels's argument concludes that there can be no place for autonomous moral
agency within a framework such as the one Brown and other defenders of divine
command theory describe and that therefore, such a God cannot exist. Is this a
45
46
Ibid., p. 334.
Patterson Brown, "Religious Morality," p. 248.
343
sound argument? Philip Quinn rejects Rachels's argument. He first Erovides a

recasting of Rachels's argument in standard form in simple modal logic: 7
4. Necessarily, if some being is God, then that being is worthy of worship.
5. It is not possible that some being is worthy of worship.
6. [Therefore,] it is not possible that some being is God. 48
Obviously, the crucial issue is whether (5) is true, and exploring the different
possible grounds for (5) provides a much better understanding of the full force of
Rachels's argument. As we have seen, Rachels attempts to establish (5) by arguing
that within mainstream theism the worship of God requires the abandonment of
one's role as an autonomous moral agent; however, if this is to be understood as
Rachels's reason for (5), then his argument will turn on the a posteriori claim that
autonomous moral agents of a certain sort actually exist, and his argument would
not be the a priori argument against the existence of God that he claims it to be. 49
Establishing the basis for this claim would lead us not only into the rather
controversial area of Kantian moral theory but also into the even more
controversial and complex area of moral psychology.
To retain the intended a priori character of the argument and to appreciate its
full force, Rachels's argument must be interpreted in terms of modalities. Quinn
suggests the following modal version of the argument:
7. It is not possible that (a) some being is worthy of worship and also (b) that it
is possible that there are some human moral agents.
8. Necessarily, it is possible there are human moral agents.
9. It is not possible some being is worthy of worship. 50
If we add
10.
Necessarily, if God exists, then God is a being worthy of worship,
we then get
11.
Necessarily, God does not exist.
In this modal recasting of the argument, Quinn denies that (7) is true. 51
Rachels's argument that (a) and (b) in (7) above are not copossible is based on his
47 For a detailed analysis of Rachels's argument, see Philip Quinn, Divine Commands and Moral
Requirements (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), pp. Iff.
48 Ibid., p. 2.
49 James Rachels, "God and Human Attitudes," p. 325.
50 Philip Quinn, Divine Commands and Moral Requirements, p. 4.
51 In this text, (7) corresponds to (10), p. 4, in Quinn.
344
claim that any being worthy of being a proper object of worship must have "an
unqualified claim on our obedience" and thus the "role of worshiper" (which
involves "total subservience to God") and the "role of moral agent" (which
involves autonomous moral choice by the moral agent) are incompatible. 52 The
incompatibility between being a worshiper and being a moral agent still exists for
Rachels even if none of God's commands ever happens actually to conflict with
one's own moral choices, since theoretically, the worshiper would be committed to
obeying God and abandoning his own autonomy if such a conflict did ever arise.
The fact that a moral agent would never disobey God and choose his own moral
judgment over God's command is not, it should be made clear, just a matter of
prudence; given God's omniscience and omnipotence, one would not be able to
escape God's wrath. Rather, it is a matter of logic for the believer; given that one
recognizes God as God, one commits oneself to obeying God always, in all
circumstances. 53
Quinn responds to Rachels that being a worshipper and being an autonomous
moral agent might easily be compatible if an autonomous moral agent simply
refuses to admit that any putative command that supposedly comes from God and
conflicts with his own autonomous moral judgments really does come from God. 54
Thus, for Quinn, an autonomous moral agent might admit that God exists and also
admit that all of God's commands ought to obeyed as long as the moral agent still
relies upon his own autonomous moral judgments for assessing putative divine
commands and for denying that those that conflict with his own judgments are
really from God. As moral agents, we are committed to doing what is right, and
since God is perfectly good, God commands only what is right; therefore, as moral
agents, we are committed unconditionally to obeying whatever God commands. If
we receive a command that conflicts with our own moral beliefs, then we simply
do not recognize such a command as one that legitimately comes from God. If, in
this response by Quinn, it turns out just as a matter of fact, that an autonomous
moral agent never admits that a putative command from God conflicts with his
own moral judgments, then it seems that Quinn is right, and the agent can still
exercise his autonomy in making moral judgments. If, on the other hand, it turns
out that it is not considered even possible for the putative divine commands to
conflict with the judgments of the agent, then it is not clear that the agent would
still be exercising his autonomy in making moral judgments.
Certainly Quinn is right that Rachels has overstated his case by calling his
argument an a priori disproof for the existence of God. His argument obviously
turns on whether, as a matter of fact, autonomous moral agents, as he has defined
them, exist and on the further recognition of the nature of God (as described by
Rachels) by the autonomous moral agent; therefore, it is rather difficult to see how
the argument can ever be reformulated as a completely a priori argument. 55
James Rachels, "God and Human Attitudes." p. 334.
Ibid., p. 333.
54 Philip Quinn. Divine Commands and Moral Requirements, p. 6.
55 Rachels speaks routinely of the need of the worshipper to recognize that God is worthy of
worship. See Rachels, "God and Human Attitudes," pp. 333 and 334. One might reformulate the
argument for any possible world in which autonomous moral agents exist since there are obviously
possible worlds in which no such agents exist.
52
53
RELIGION AND ETHICS
345
In fact, the importance of Rachels's insight does not rest in treating the
argument as a disproof of the existence of God at all. Even taken as an a posteriori
argument, various retorts are available to the theist. Specifically, one might attack
his understanding of autonomy that relies so heavily on Kant. 56 It is questionable
that, as moral agents, we are ever as autonomous and completely independent of
such influences as parental and societal influences as Rachels's argument seems to
require. Such disputes would lead deeply into contemporary moral theory and
moral psychology and cannot be resolved here. 57
HOW DO WE KNOW IF GOD IS GOOD?
The real importance of Rachels's argument is the concession that it forces from
Quinn and the crucial issue that it raises for any theory of ethics based upon
religious belief. Even if Rachels is wrong about the ontological claims he makes
for his argument, as Robert Oakes has claimed,58 the epistemological issue he
raises remains a crucial one. Rachels maintains that God must be obeyed in any
circumstance because of the nature of God and not because we just happen to agree
with God. This is because, as Rachels claims, it is necessarily true that God is
good. 59 So, in any disputed case, to identify any being as God, we must identify
that same being as good. But how is a person to do this? Rachels says,
We cannot determine whether some being is God without first checking on
whether he is perfectly good; and we cannot decide whether he is perfectly good
without knowing (among other things) whether his commands to us are right.
Thus our judgment that some actions are right, and others wrong, is logically
prior to our recognition of any being as God. 60
To say that one's own moral judgments are "logically prior" to one's
recognition of God means that one's moral judgments are epistemically prior to
one's recognition of God, and Quinn admits as much. 61 But this admission comes
too quickly. Certainly, one can imagine situations where a person might easily
admit that a being is God without having to resort to a judgment regarding God's
goodness. Consider, for example, some of the dire predictions from the book of
56 For a treatment of Kantian autonomy. see Thomas E. Hill Jr., "The Kantian Conception of
Autonomy," in The Inner Citadel: Essays on Individual Autonomy, edited by John Christman (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1989).
57 As Elizabeth Anscombe claims in "Modern Moral Philosophy." Also see George W. Harris,
Agent-Centered Morality: An Aristotelian Alternative to Kantian Internalism (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1999), Chapters 13 and 14.
58 Robert A. Oakes, "Reply to Professor Rachels," Religious Studies, Vol. 8, 1972, pp. 165-67.
59 While most theists would probably agree that it is necessarily true that God is good, this is neither
an easy claim to make nor a noncontroversial one. As T explore below, the kind of necessary truth that
would be most attractive to a divine command theory is a statement of identity. However, as Kai
Neilsen has argued convincingly, "God is good" cannot reasonably be taken as a statement of identity.
It is more reasonable to understand "God is good" as an intended analytic statement comparable to
"Bachelors are unmarried" or "Puppies are young." Whether such an analytic understanding of "God is
good" can do the necessarily philosophical work needed by a divine command theory is very
questionable. See Kai Neilsen, Ethics without God (New York: Prometheus Books, 1973), pp. 5-11.
60 Rachels, "God and Human Attitudes," pp. 335-36.
61 Philip Quinn. Divine Commands and Moral Requirements, p. 9.
346
Revelation. The firmament is split, the moon is turned to dripping blood, a trumpet
sounds 'round the world, graves are opened, and the dead begin to rise, and a being
and a voice sounds from the heavens (which is heard simultaneously around the
world), saying, "I am the Lord your God." It does not appear to be reasonable to
suppose that a person S would be required to withhold a judgment concerning
whether such a being is really God in such circumstances. In some circumstances
at least, it seems clear that a person S might be in a position to identify a being as
God and successfully refer to that being as 'God' without the question of that
being's goodness arising. It hardly seems problematic to claim that theists could
easily admit that such identifications and references could be correct, successful
ones. However, until one establishes that the being identified as God is perfectly
good, it would not be the case that God would be worthy of worship; therefore, if
that voice continues and commands S to torture and kill innocent babies, then the
judgment concerning the goodness of the being would come into play. Thus, we
might say that in any moral situation or in any situation involving the recognition
of a being as God in which a putative moral command is involved, a person's own
moral judgments are epistemologically prior to the legitimization of any such
command and consequently epistemologically prior to the recognition of any such
being as God. 62 In this respect, Rachels's argument is not new; however, it does
serve to focus attention clearly on the importance of the epistemological issue in
any attempt to construct a reasonable account of what is required for moral agents
who believe in God to make autonomous moral decisions.
It is reasonable to imagine that an autonomous moral agent might, on particular
occasions or regarding particular topics, defer to the moral judgments of another
moral agent. However, it does not seem plausible that an autonomous moral agent
could grant a general, blanket denunciation of his moral autonomy and reassign
that autonomy to another moral agent and give that moral agent carte blanche to
make his moral decisions for him or to give him rigid and explicit rules or
directions for making moral decisions. Standing up for oneself and preserving
one's own autonomy is, as Thomas Hill has convincingly argued, an essential
aspect of self-respect. 63 Self-deprecation is not consistent with moral autonomy. A
moral agent who abandons his own considered judgments in deference to another
person invites not only exploitation and humiliation by others but the loss of
autonomy and self-respect as well. 64 To a great extent then, making moral
judgments is, like dying and paying taxes, something that one must do for one's
self. Thus, given our normal understanding of what is required for a moral agent to
make a deliberative and considered moral judgment and be responsible for the
consequences of that judgment, such a moral agent cannot set aside his own moral
autonomy in deference to God's commands even if he voluntarily agrees to do so.
62 In an attempt to avoid this problem, some theists, such as William Alston and Richard Miller,
have adopted a causal theory of reference. I have argued that such a move is unsuccessful in Chapter IT
and in "The Causal Theory of Reference and Religious Language," InternoJiolUll Journal for
Philosophy of Religion, Vol. 29, 1991, pp. 75-86; and "Individuating Gods," InternatiolUll Journal for
Philosophy of Religion, Vol. 40,1996, pp. 1-18.
63 Thomas Hill, "Servility and Self-respect," Monist, Vol. 57. No.1., 1973. Reprinted in Vice &
Virtue in Everyday Life, edited by Christina Sommers and Fred Sommers (New York: Harcourt Brace
College Publishers, 1997), pp. 536-548.
64 Ibid., p. 536.
RELIGION AND ETHICS
347
WHICH COMES FIRST? GOD OR GOOD?

Does the epistemological priority of an individual's own moral judgments
undermine divine command theory? This question deserves some significant
attention. The quick and easy answer is that it depends upon what sort of divine
command theory one adopts. It is clear that the epistemological priority of a moral
agent's own moral judgments creates a very serious and apparently defeating
objection to the kind of divine command theory defended by Brown. On the other
hand, Philip Quinn denies that knowledge of God's will and God's commands
must be epistemologically prior to knowledge of moral value - moral right and
wrong. 65 Even if 'God is good' is taken as analytic, as Brown claims it should be,
one must understand the concept of 'good' in order to understand the claim "God is
good." Kai Nielsen makes this point clearly and emphatically. Consider the
analytically true statement 'This puppy is young.' Now suppose that a person has
no prior knowledge or understanding or experience of the notion of being young
and that this person's complete understanding of and criterion for applying the
concept of being young is the one case of this particular puppy. The suggestion is
that one is to gain one's understanding of and criteria for correctly applying the
concept 'young' from this single case, but in such a situation, it is clear that a
person could gain no understanding of the concept 'young' nor could a person have
an understanding of the statement 'This puppy is young' simply from this single
statement. 66 We learn the meanings of concepts and how to apply them as part of a
complex and complicated public process of using the concepts in various situations
and watching others use them and learning from the successful and the
unsuccessful applications of those concepts. So we must understand the meaning of
'young' in order to understand the meaning of This puppy is young.' As Nielsen
explains, when we apply this lesson to 'God is good,' the outcome is clear:
... if we had no understanding of the use of the word 'good,' and if we did not
know the criteria for deciding whether a being (or if you will, a power or a
force) was good, we could not know how correctly to apply the word 'God.'
Without such a prior understanding of goodness, we could not understand the
sentence "God is good.,,67
If the claim that there must be a prior understanding of the concept of goodness
in order to understand the claim "God is good" is correct, then this is further
evidence for the autonomy of ethics and the independence of ethics from religion.
Indeed, as Nielsen concludes, "without a prior and logically independent
understanding of good and without some non-religious criterion for judging
something to be good, the religious person could have no knowledge of God, for he
could not know whether that powerful being who spoke out of the whirlwind and
65 See Philip L. Quinn, "Divine Command Theory," in The Blackwell Guide to Ethical Theory,
edited by Hugh LaFollette (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2000), pp. 53-73.
66 This example is adapted from one used by Nielsen in Ethics without God, p. 10.
67 Kai Nielsen. Ethics without God, p. 10. I have added quotes for the words 'good' and 'God.'
348
laid the foundations of the earth was in fact worthy of worship and perfectly
good.,,68
These considerations bear heavily upon Brown's claim that God's will and
commands are the sole criteria for goodness. The price that Brown pays for
protecting God from any standard of moral right or wrong that is independent of
God by making God's will and commands the sole criteria for moral goodness is a
conceptual gulf between whatever it is that 'good' means in "God is good" and
whatever it is that 'good' means when it is used in the normal, everyday discourse
of moral agents about their own affairs. 69 It is not clear at all that one can make
sense of attributing any ofthe normal human virtues to God given Brown's version
of divine command theory.7o If "to be good" means simply to follow God's
commands, then for God to be good is to follow his own commands, which is
nonsensical. Thus, God's perfect goodness cannot be the superlative form of
anything resembling human goodness, and God cannot "do good" in anything
resembling the way in which a human does good since "doing good' is normally
understood as acting on the basis or in accordance with certain moral principles. 71
Some of these difficulties might be avoided by distinguishing, as Robert
Merrihew Adams does, between the meaning of 'good' and the metaphysical
grounding of goodness. Drawing upon the work of Hilary Putnam, Adams
maintains that we can separate questions about the nature of goodness from
questions about how the word 'good' is commonly used and understood. To use
Putnam's now famous example, to be water is to be composed of H20; it is the
nature of water to be composed of two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen.
However, most people do not use the word 'water' with this meaning, and one does
not have to even know the nature of water to use the word properly (after all, it is
only relatively recently that scientists have known the real nature of water).72
Adams puts this distinction to use by insisting that we should distinguish between
the semantics of ethical discourse and the metaphysics of ethical discourse. For
theists, God is the supreme good, supreme excellence, good without qualification;
thus, the good is metaphysically grounded in God. The nature of finite goods is
explained in terms of their resemblance to God?3 By separating the metaphysical
grounding of good from the meaning of 'good,' Adams avoids the kind of
epistemological questions that I have raised above. However, by doing so, he also
redirects the nature of the philosophical inquiry and limits its effectiveness. There
are certain questions that are raised by Adams's theory, such as making sense of
68 Ibid. As I have indicated in an earlier note, Alasdair MacIntyre agrees that such an independently
derived understanding of the fundamental nonnative concepts is necessary but then maintains that the
theist might then discover that those concepts really do come from God when more progress is made
toward becoming godlike. See his ''Which God Ought We to Obey and Why?" p. 370.
69 Another critic of Brown's, Keith Campbell, makes a somewhat similar point by saying that
religious people nonnally understand God as the exemplar of our own understanding of moral standards
in his article, "Patterson Brown on God and Evil," Mind, Vol. 74, 1965, p. 582-84.
70 See Philip Quinn, Divine Commands and Moral Requirements, Chapter6, for a full discussion of
this problem.
71 Ibid., pp. 131ff.
72 See Robert Merrihew Adams, Finite and Infinite Goods (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999),
pp. 15ff. Also see Hilary Putnam, Mind, Language, and Reality: Philosophical Papers, Vol. 2
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), referenced in Adams, Ibid., p. 15.
73 Robert Merrihew Adams, Ibid., pp. 28ff.
349
the notion of resemblance in a coherent and consistent manner, but these questions
become internal to the enterprise of Christian theology and further and further
removed from analytic philosophy of religion. Adams even compares his
theological grounding of the nature of good in God to Plato's theory of the forms,
but the obvious result is that this similarity has both advantages and
disadvantages. 74 The disadvantage, from a philosophical point of view, is that
Adams's grounding of moral deontology in God moves the discussion away from
the philosophy of religion and into speculative metaphysics and theology (see
below for discussion of Adams's modified divine command theory).
MORAL DEONTOLOGY AND THE WILL OF GOD
Brown focuses his version of divine command theory on the commands of God;
it is through issuing divine commands that God imposes moral requirements and
obligations upon moral agents. In contrast, Quinn locates the source of moral
requirements and obligations in the divine Will.7S To pursue the details of exactly
how the divine will establishes moral deontology, it is necessary to introduce the
distinction between God's antecedent will and God's consequent will. God's
antecedent will with respect to some matter x is God's will regarding x narrowly, in
and of itself, "others things being equal." God's consequent will with respect to x
is God's will regarding x, "all things considered.,,76 Since God is perfectly good
and omnipotent, nothing can happen that is contrary to God's consequent will, but
obviously things do happen that theists maintain are contrary to God's will. Thus,
if God's will is to be the source of moral obligations and prohibitions, it must be
located in God's antecedent will, and Quinn maintains that it is possible to provide
a grounding of moral deontology in God's will given "a sufficiently rich account of
God's antecedent will." Consequently, to be morally permissible, x must be in
accordance with God's antecedent will; to be morally obligatory, x must be
required by God's antecedent will; and to be morally prohibited, x must be
prohibited by God's antecedent will.77
Adams raises two major objections against accounting for moral deontology in
terms of God's antecedent will.78 The first objection sterns from the fact that we are
sometimes forced to "make the best of a bad situation" by performing some action,
that is contrary to what God would have preferred antecedently, other things being
See Ibid., pp. 14ff.
Philip Quinn, "Divine Command Theory," p. 55. For Quinn's explanation of how God's will
"brings about" moral deontology, see pp. 54-55.
76 Ibid. Also see Robert Merrihew Adams, "The Concept of a Divine Command," in Religion and
Morality, edited by D. Z. Phillips (London: Macmillan, 1996), pp. 60-61.
77 Quinn does not attempt a deductive proof of his version of divine command theory but argues that
it is supported by a cumulative case argument so that it becomes more likely than not to be true. He is
led to prefer God's will over God's commands as the basis for moral deontology because he thinks that
"being morally wrong and being contrary to the commands of a loving God are distinct properties."
Thus, although being wrong and being contrary to the commands of a loving God might be coextensive,
the latter is not the basis for the former. See Philip Quinn, "Divine Command Theory," p. 54 and pp.
56-63 for the basic principles of Quinn's position and his cumulative case argument for those principles.
78 See Robert Merrihew Adams, "The Concept of a Divine Command." Quinn's responses are taken
from Philip Quinn, Ibid., pp. 55-57. Also see Robert Merrihew Adams, Finite and Infinite Goods, pp.
258-262 for further discussion of divine will and Adams's reasons for locating moral deontology in
divine commands instead of divine will.
74
75
350
equal. Quinn responds to this objection by resorting to his "sufficiently rich"

notion of God's antecedent will, which includes divine intentions. Thus, to use
Quinn's example, if we assume that God antecedently intends for S to keep a
promise, then it becomes obligatory upon S to keep the promise. If S then breaks
the promise and has to then "make the best of a bad situation," then we can explain
S's obligation to apologize for breaking the promise by assuming that God
antecedently intends for S to apologize. By including such intentions in God's
antecedent will, Quinn thinks that it is possible to use the divine will to account for
the ground of moral obligation. Adams's second objection to relying upon God's
will as the basis for moral deontology is that the divine will is not completely
revealed to human beings (see the discussion of God's "hiddenness" in Chapter
IV). Adams maintains that if God's antecedent will is taken as the source of moral
obligations, then God can impose obligations upon us without revealing or
communicating what those obligations are. 79 Quinn responds to this objection by
maintaining that we can trust that a good God will reveal as much of the antecedent
will as is necessary through divine commands, and that God will leave it to us to
infer the remaining part of God's antecedent will from the explicit divine
commands. 80
What are we to say of Quinn's divine will theory and his responses to Adams's
objections? Quinn is right, I think, that being morally obligatory and being
commanded by God are distinct properties; they have different meanings. For a
theist, using the divine will as the basis for moral obligation should be more
intuitively appealing, since it avoids a significant number of the various kinds of
objections, considered earlier and following, that arise from using divine
commands as the basis for moral deontology. However, Quinn's theory does not
eliminate those objections altogether since, by locating the source of moral
deontology in God's will, he makes the basis for moral deontology one step further
removed from human cognizance. What good is a standard of moral deontology if
we can never discern that standard? This is the force of Adams's second objection.
To get to God's antecedent will, we must still rely upon divine commands and
upon even more tenuous inferences about the nature of God's antecedent will from
those divine commands. Quinn is very sanguine that we can rest assured that a
good God will reveal what we need to know about his will and that we can infer
the rest; however, as I note below, theists disagree strongly about not only what the
commands of God are but also what can be inferred from those commands. The
results are deeply seated and strongly held disagreements among theists about what
God commands and what God wills. For example, some theists allow for and even
promote abortion, while others resort to murder of doctors who perform abortions
on the grounds that they are doing God's will. Quinn's divine will theory provides
no decision procedure for deontological ethics, a failing that he recognizes and
admits. He maintains that it would still be theoretically interesting to find that the
source of moral deontology is the divine will, even if this knowledge does not
prove to be of any practical use for moral agents. He also claims that other moral
79 Robert Merrihew Adams, "The Concept of a Divine Command," pp. 60-61. This objection leads
to several other undesirable consequences as well, according to Adams.
80 Philip Quinn, "Divine Command Theory," p. 56.
RELIGION AND ETHICS
351
theories are lacking in a definitive decision procedure; for example, utilitarianism's

use of the hedonic calculus cannot calculate all of the values in terms of pain and
pleasure of all the different courses of action that open to a moral agent on each
.
81
occaSIOn.
It is true, of course, that utilitarians, as well as Kantians and Aristotelians,
disagree about how to apply their different decision procedures, and one might
even admit that some of these procedures - the hedonic calculus, in particular - are
tedious and difficult. However, a tedious and difficult procedure is still a
procedure, and even if there are situations in which it does not yield definite
results, one can still apply the procedure and others can argue about how the
procedure is applied. Consider, for example, the attention paid by Aristotelians to
determining the complexities and intricacies of how practical rationality operates.
By making the source of moral deontology metaphysical, Quinn blocks the very
possibility of developing a decision procedure. While knowledge that the divine
will is the source of moral obligation might still be theologically or philosophically
interesting, it is implausible that a good and loving God would hold human beings
responsible for moral obligations when there is no reliable procedure in which a
rational agent can have a high degree of confidence in determining what those
moral obligations are.
THE IDEAL OBSERVER
Charles Taliaferro suggests that ideal observer theory might hold promise for
resolving many of the aforementioned difficulties with divine command theory.s2
As Taliaferro explains, ideal observer theory (as defended earlier by Hume and,
more recently, by R. M. Hare) relies upon the judgments of a hypothetical,
theoretical construct of an ideal observer who has a "God's eye view" to explain
and justify our moral values. The judgments of an ideal observer, gifted with
omniscience of all the facts, omni-appreciation of the feelings and emotions of all
involved, and complete impartiality, are taken as the bases for the meanings of
fundamental moral concepts. However, such a theory is generally couched within a
general, enlightenment view of the nature of moral theory, according to which the
ideal observer is represented embodying perfect rationality, which involves
considering all of the facts, relying upon fundamental principles, and making
perfect moral judgments. Taliaferro suggests that theists might attach such a view
to divine command theory so that our moral judgments might be viewed as
attempts to mirror God's.83 Presumably, God's commands could be viewed as
God's guidance for allowing us to make moral judgments and develop moral
values of which he approves.
However, combining an ideal observer theory with divine command theory
raises at least as many problems as it answers. In secular ideal observer theory, the
ideal observer is a theoretical construct that represents the superlative form of
human knowledge and reason, and the incongruity of treating God in the same
manner as we normally do moral agents seriously undermines the possibility of
Ibid., p. 68.
Charles Taliaferro, Contemporary Philosophy of Religion (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1998),
pp.206.
83 Ibid., p. 210.
81
82
352
incorporating ideal observer theory into divine command theory. When ideal
observer theory is combined with divine command theory, God, as the ideal
observer, obviously does not represent the superlative form of human knowledge
and reason. Such a view seems to exacerbate the difficulty of talking about human
beings as moral agents and God as a moral agent in the same manner. Unless the
problems of sensibly talking about God using moral terms and treating God as
acting in a fashion that is anything like the way in which human agents act, ideal
observer theory will not represent any improvement on divine command theory.
DIVINE COMMAND THEORY AND DISAGREEMENTS
Another issue that remains unresolved for divine command theory is the matter
of the enormous diversity and serious disagreements that exist in the world
regarding moral values. There are disagreements between theists and nontheists,
and there are disagreements among theists, and these disagreements occur in such a
manner that they cannot be explained simply on the grounds of whether a person
holds or does not hold theistic beliefs. For example, consider the controversial
issue of abortion. Some nontheists oppose abortion, while others support it. The
same is true of theists. Some theists opposed to abortion, the so-called "right to
lifers," base their beliefs regarding the sanctity of human life upon religious
beliefs. At the same time, other theists, who support abortion, base their opposition
upon a theory of human rights, including the rights of the mother. While perhaps
some of these disagreements can be explained in other ways, undoubtedly some of
the disagreements involve disagreements concerning basic, fundamental moral
principles. 84 Most troubling for proponents of divine command theory are the kind
of disagreements which occur among theists who apparently agree both on the
factual descriptions of the moral situations and upon their fundamental theistic
beliefs.
One possible reply by a divine command theorist to the existence of
fundamental moral disagreements is to maintain that such disagreements do not
affect the basic claim that God's commands are the source of objective moral
values. 85 In other words, as in the case of Quinn, divine command theory might be
understood (or, in Quinn's case, divine will theory) as simply a theoretical,
metaethical explanation of what it means to say that something is morally
obligatory or morally praiseworthy. In this view, we might come to know God and
what God is like by coming to know objective moral values. For example, if we
know what it means to be just, and if justice is morally good because it derives
from God's nature, then we know something of the nature of God. However, if we
are to discover objective moral truths and then use our knowledge of those truths to
discover something about the nature of God, which is what makes those objective
moral truths what they are, one might legitimately wonder just what philosophical
reason there might then be for supposing that it is God's nature that makes those
moral truths what they are.
84 See Michael Peterson, et al., Reason & Religious Belief, p. 288ff. for a discussion of the possible
different sources of ethical diversity.
85 See Charles Taliaferro, Contemporary Philosophy of Religion, p. 206.
RELIGION AND E1HICS
353
In fact, this rather Platonic sounding suggestion seems to make God

pragmatically extraneous to the whole process of making moral judgments and
theoretically superfluous to the process of justifying those judgments. In particular,
given the kind of diversity and disagreement that exists among theists and
nontheists alike concerning moral values, divine command theory is not likely to
be of any help at all in resolving those disagreements and moving toward more
unanimity of agreement unless the epistemological issue which has been raised
here is resolved. With different individuals and groups claiming special knowledge
of and access to God's will- with no apparent way of resolving who is right and
who is wrong - appealing to normative or philosophical ways of adjudicating those
competing claims is not likely to be very effective. Thus, such disputes have been
resolved pragmatically, politically, and, unfortunately, militarily. Secular ethics, to
be sure, is faced with the same diversity and disagreements, but in the case of
secular ethics, one can appeal to philosophical argumentation in an attempt to
resolve those disputes, and philosophers, at least historically, have not resorted to
holy wars with other philosophers in attempts to resolve their differences about
moral values.
There is significant dispute concerning whether philosophy, and specifically the
philosophy of religion, could ever manage to make progress in resolving such
differences and disagreements. For example, Peter Munz argues that by assessing
different claims to religious beliefs, the philosophy of religion might promote
genuine dialogue with "real" understanding among different theistic traditions. 86
But such optimism seems misplaced. Even if we ignore the wide diversity between
theistic and nontheistic religions, the differences between different theistic claims
seem so wide and so entrenched in history and politics that they appear to be
intractable and immune to philosophical analysis or argumentation. For example,
the differences between Jews and Muslims in the Middle East and the differences
between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland seem to be as extreme and
entrenched as those during the Crusades. Whatever progress and accommodations
have been made are more the result of political negotiation and forced political or
economic compromise than philosophical analysis of the different religious claims.
ADAMS'S MODIFIED DIVINE COMMAND THEORY
Adams has attempted to respond to many of the difficulties raised above
concerning the divine command theory by offering what he calls a modified divine
command theory of ethics. 87 Adams rejects the kind of divine command theory that
has been considered thus far because he thinks that it is imaginable that there could
be possible circumstances in which it would not be wrong not to do what God
commands simply because God commands it. Specifically, Adams considers the
hypothetical case in which God commands a person to inflict as much suffering
upon other people as possible and to do so solely on the basis of God's command. 88
Peter Muuz, Problems of Religious Knowledge (London: SCM Press, 1959), p. 11.
Robert M. Adams, "A Modified Command Theory of Ethical Wrongness," in Religion and
Morality, edited by Gene Outka and John P. Reeder (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Press, 1973).
Reprinted in Philosophy of Religion: Selected Readings, edited by Michael Peterson, et al. (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1996, pp. 527-536.
88 Ibid., p. 528.
86
87
354
Adams thinks that it is logically possible that God might give such a command
and, unlike the unmodified versions of divine command theory, he thinks that it
would not be wrong for a person not to obey such a command. Adams's modified
version of the divine command theory claims that the framework within which
such a case might be considered is one in which it is presupposed that other
background claims or conditions hold. Such presumptions are necessary to make
sense of a person's having the proper command of moral concepts. The main
ingredient in the context that must be assumed, according to Adams, is that "God
loves his human creatures.,,89 Although it might be logically possible for God to
command cruelty for its own sake, if such were the case, the religious person could
not really make sense of the normal meanings of moral right and wrong. Theists'
understandings of fundamental moral concepts have been developed within a
context that is framed not only by belief in the existence of God but also by an
unchallenged belief that God loves human beings. Adams contends that in the
hypothetically possible situation where God commands cruelty for its own sake,
the theist's "concepts of ethical rightness and wrongness would break down."
Whether the theist says that it would be right or wrong to obey God in this case
would have little meaning, since the terms 'right' and 'wrong' would not have their
normal meanings. The normal uses of these terms occur within a context that
assumes, among other things and perhaps most importantly, that God loves human
beings. 90
The framework that provides for the normal use of moral concepts for Adams's
modified divine command theory is an "idealized version" of what he calls "the
social requirement theory," which accounts for moral obligation in terms of the
social practices in which various social institutions and authorities provide the
basis for understanding, promising, commanding, and obeying. 91 Adams stresses
that one of the major reasons why we are obligated to obey God's commands and
one of the major reasons why we ought to comply willingly with those commands
is God's love for us. God's love leads to a gratitude that becomes a motive for a
religious person complying with divine commands. 92 Adams acknowledges that
moral agents can have their own autonomous judgments about what sort of things
to value independently of God's commands since, in this case, it is clear that the
religious believer believes that it is a great positive value that God loves human
beings. So, for example, a person might value peace and happiness and kindness
Ibid., p. 529.
Ibid., p. 530.
91 Robert Merrihew Adams, Finite and Infinite Goods, p. 249. Adams's account of divine command
theory given here differs in some ways from his earlier account; however, the restriction of using divine
command theory to account for only the notion of moral obligation remains and is reemphasized. See
his footnote on p. 250.
92 Ibid., pp. 252-53. Adams give other reasons as well for complying with God's commands. See pp.
252-258. Adams' emphasis upon love as a reason for obeying divine commands is reminiscent of what
is called "situation ethics." See Joseph Fletcher, Situation Ethics: The New Morality (Philadelphia:
Westminster Press, 1966); and George Woods, "Situational Ethics," in Christian Ethics and
Contemporary Philosophy, edited by Ian T. Ramsey (New York: Macmillan, 1966), pp. 329-339. For
general discussion of these issues, also see Gene Outka, "Agapeistic Ethics," in A Companion to
Philosophy of Religion, edited by Philip Quinn and Charles Taliaferro (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers,
1997), pp. 481-488. Philip Quinn also regards love as foundational and defining of Christian ethics. See
Philip Quinn, "Divine Command Theory," p. 59.
89
90
RELIGION AND ETHICS
355
and hate cruelty and suffering quite independently of God's commands. Adams
thinks that these values are not the sorts of values that are necessary for making
moral judgments; however, it seems that such values are exactly the kinds of
values, comparable to love and gratitude, that are fundamental in making moral
judgments. 93
Similarly, Peter Geach thinks that our fundamental moral principles are based
upon God, but he suggests at the same time that human beings can have moral
knowledge in the sense of knowing that certain things are morally evil
independently of God. Human beings just cannot have the kind of moral
knowledge that requires knowledge of the good independently of God. This is
because, he claims, we can know that an action is bad if anything about it is bad,
but we can only know that an action is good if everything about it is good. 94 But, in
order to make such evaluations, Geach admits that we human beings must have
some moral knowledge independently of God. Thus, the modified divine command
theory, which bases the reason for obeying God's command not solely in the
commands themselves but also in other things that a person might value
independently, seems to require that, among other things a person might value
independently are moral things. Unless there is some way for the theists to avoid
appealing to independently held moral beliefs, Adams's modified divine command
theory does not seem to be a significant improvement over earlier forms of divine
command theory.
MORAL DUTIES AND NON-MORAL DUTIES
The consideration of kinds of value other than moral value leads to a further
consideration of other kinds of duties other than moral duties and other senses of
"ought" other than the moral sense. Aristotle divided the virtues into the
intellectual virtues and the moral virtues and thought that a virtuous person was not
only what is now regarded as a "morally good" person but one who also
manifested various kinds of virtues having to do with intellectual pursuits. Quinn
explicitly incorporates the recognition of different kinds of values and different
kinds of duties to broaden his understanding of divine command theory. Quinn
originally defended a divine command theory to account for moral theory;
however, the kinds of difficulties that have been considered here, which arise from
such a theory, compelled Quinn to consider abandoning a divine command theory
in any strict sense. Specifically, the kind of situation in which an intractable and
recalcitrant conflict between a person's own sense of moral right and wrong and a
possible divine command convinced Quinn to suggest a distinction between a
person's moral duty and a person's religious duty.95
Ibid., p. 531.
See Peter Geach, God and the Soul (New York: Schocken Books, 1969), pp. 119-20. The one
thing that we need God for, according to Geach, is to know that we cannot do evil in order to produce
good. Such a claim has obvious implications for various theodices theists have proffered to explain evil.
God could not then allow evil then to build character, make souls, or allow for redemption.
95 As I have discussed above, Quinn was led to locate moral deontology in God's will instead of
God's commands.
93
94
356
Quinn proposes that it is possible that the demand placed upon a person by a
divine command is separate and distinct from the demand placed upon that person
by a moral duty, and trying to explain all religious duty in terms of moral duty is
responsible for much of the confusion that has surrounded divine command
theory.96 Conflicts arise when a person has a religious duty that conflicts with a
moral duty; specifically, such a conflict arises when a given agent is under a pair of
duties arising from a pair of states-of-affairs. One of the states-of-affairs requires
the agent to perform one action, while the other state-of-affairs requires that the
person perform the other action, and it is impossible for the agent to perform both
actions. Moral philosophers have long recognized such situations involving moral
conflicts where both of the duties and both of the actions involve moral
considerations and moral duties; however, the version of the conflict that Quinn
develops is one in which one of the duties and one of the actions being imposed
upon the agent involves a divine command. For ease of recognition and reference, I
shall call Quinn's theory the divine duty theory. The resulting conflict is one that
involves, for the religious person, an indefeasible religious duty and an
indefeasible moral duty.97 If we apply Quinn's divine duty theory and its
recognition of conflicts that arise from different kinds of duties to the familiar case
of God's command to Abraham to kill Isaac, then Abraham is under an
indefeasible religious duty to obey a divine command, and he is under an
indefeasible moral duty to refrain from killing an innocent child. By recognizing
each duty as indefeasible, Abraham is caught in a genuine Kierkegaardian conflict
that is intractable and nonresolvable. Quinn analyzes Abraham's situation by
arguing that moral values are not the only source of ultimate human values. Unlike
the divine command theories considered earlier in this chapter, Quinn's divine duty
theory does not attempt to resolve the conflict by taking refuge in God's perfect
moral goodness, a move that, as we have seen, has not proven to be satisfactory. In
fact, according to the divine duty theory, it is a mistake to try to account for all of
one's duty to obey a divine command in terms of a moral duty. Quinn says that
"because the requirements imposed by divine command spring from a realm of
value not wholly coincident with the moral realm, they are not necessarily moral
requirements so stringent that they would override all other moral requirements, so
they do not necessarily override conflicting moral requirements.,,98
DIVINE DUTY AND CONFLICTING DUTIES
Recognizing that there are other sources of ultimate value other than moral
values provides much greater flexibility for the divine duty theory than is present
in ordinary divine command theory. However, at the same time, divine duty theory
does not address one of the main motivations for divine command theory since it
allows for sources of value that are external to and independent of God.
96 Philip Quinn, "Moral Obligation, Religious Demand, and Practical Conflict," in Rationality,
Religious Belief, and Moral Commitment. edited by Robert Audi and William J. Wainwright (Ithaca,
N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1986), p. 196. It should be noted that Quinn represents this position as
tentative and inconclusive.
97 See Ibid., pp. 201-02.
98 Ibid., p. 204.
RELIGION AND ETIDCS
357
It seems obvious that there are other sources of value that are equally as
compelling as moral or religious duties. Consider, for example, aesthetic value or
the values that are incorporated into what is generally called "the Protestant work
ethic." Suppose, for the sake of argument, a person owned a priceless work of art
such as the Mona Lisa and that there are no moral or legal questions about the
rightful ownership of this painting, and suppose then that the person decided to
destroy it or to use it in the bottom of a birdcage. There is certainly a very
legitimate sense in which we might say to such a person "you ought not to do that."
Although there are no obvious moral values involved, there is a clear duty not to
abuse the painting. To explain or reduce the 'ought' in this case to a moral 'ought'
would require a protracted and extended argument, the success of which is very
doubtful. To make the case of the possible conflict between different kinds of value
explicit, suppose that the Mona Lisa legally belongs to a person who intends to
destroy it, but the painting is in the possession of another person who can save the
painting by refusing to return it to its rightful owner. Here, we might say that one is
morally obligated to return the painting but that one ought not to do it, and one
ought not to return the painting not because of some hidden moral obligation to
future generations or the like but rather, one might say, because of an obligation to
the painting itself. Clearly, not everyone would feel obligated by an aesthetic duty
to the Mona Lisa, and clearly, for a person who does feel such an obligation, it is
rather implausible to think that the source of such a duty is God.
Consider the values involved in what is generally called "the Protestant work
ethic" that are captured in well-known, aphoristic phrases such as "whatever is
worth doing is worth doing well," "leave no job undone," and "finish your work
before play." Now there are obvious serious and fundamental values incorporated
into such an attitude; however, these are not obviously moral values, and despite
the appellation of the Protestant work ethic, the ultimate source of these values is
arguably not religious. Such values are simply a part of what Wittgenstein would
call a "form of life," - they are simply what one does.
The recognition of varied and competing values provides one way of accounting
for Mavrodes' query, with which this chapter began, about the apparent
"queerness" of being moral without recognition of God as the ultimate guarantor of
moral value. Consider one possible circumstance, borrowed from current popular
culture, in which Mavrodes' question "Why should I be moral if God does not
exist and if I stand to suffer by being moral?" would seem to be particularly
poignant. Suppose the earth is to be struck in the near future by a massive asteroid.
All the scientists agree that there is no possibility of avoiding complete disaster and
the complete destruction of life on earth. In such a circumstance, surely one might
reasonably wonder why one should not indulge one's desires to whatever extent
possible, and, indeed, in fictional representations of such scenarios, civil unrest and
crowd control are always major concerns. But is the existence of God or the
founding of moral beliefs in religious beliefs necessary for moral values to still
have efficacy in such circumstances? Consider again aesthetic values. Suppose that
one owns the Mona Lisa and decides that since the world is going to end in two
days, he might as well spray paint over the canvas. Surely, there are people who
would have a prohibitive and negative reaction to such a suggestion based solely
upon an aesthetic appreciation for the painting. "You just can't do that," the
358
response might be. Or, consider the commitment to excellence and doing a good
job at whatever it is that one does. Suppose that one is in the middle of a project
such as writing a book. Now one can imagine a person trying desperately to finish
the book before the end of the world, but it would be a very different matter to
imagine someone writing anything that comes to mind just to fill the pages so that
the book would be finished. "What would it matter," one might think, "since no
one will ever read it anyway?" However, if the author is committed to excellence
and to doing the best job possible in writing the book, he or she will be unable to
resort to just any means and doing sloppy work just to finish the book. Why? Well,
this question might be answered in various ways: Aristotelians might claim that the
moral and intellectual virtues are habits of action that a person cultivates gradually
until they are internalized to the point that they control a person's actions and
become constitutive of who a person is and what allows a person to fulfill his telos.
In a certain situation, for example, a courageous person does not decide reflectively
to be courageous; he just acts courageously because he is a courageous person.
Stoics might answer that virtue and duty to one's self demand that one acts in
certain ways, and Kantians might answer that duty to the supreme moral law and a
good will demand that we act in certain ways.
It is easy to make sense out of the notion that different kinds of duties arise from
different kinds of values. One might have a duty to finish one's book, and one
might have a duty to protect or preserve a work of art. Following Quinn's
suggestion, one might also have a religious duty to obey a divine command, and
one might have moral duties, and as I have shown, one might have other duties as
well. It is also easy to imagine conflicts arising among these different duties. In
fact, that is exactly what happens in most of our lives. The philosophical issue
becomes one of sorting out the strength of the different duties and different values
in order to resolve the conflicts. Unfortunately, Quinn's tentative and suggestive
theory does not take us far in that direction. 99
WHY OUGHT ONE OBEY GOD?
There is an additional logical difficulty that arises when we ask, "Why ought
one to obey God's commands?" If the ultimate definition or criterion for whether
one ought to do a is that God commands a, then the only answer to the question of
why one ought to obey God's commands is that God commands a and that one
should obey his commands. An infinite regress is easy to generate, and if this is the
only answer to why one should obey God, then it is no answer at all. 100
Much has been made of the various hypothetical situations in which obedience
to divine commands might conflict with a person's own moral judgment, and as we
have seen earlier in this chapter, there are significant problems that remain
unresolved for the divine command theory in this regard. However, what of the
situations in which divine commands do not raise serious conflicts with a person's
own moral judgments? What are we to say about the reasons why a person ought to
obey God's commands generally (even assuming that the person is a theist and that
the person's judgments do not conflict with God's)? Or in other words, what are
99
In the end, perhaps some conflicts cannot be resolved and result in tragic dilemmas.
See A. C. Ewing, ''The Autonomy of Ethics," p. 226.
100
RELIGION AND ETHICS
359
we to say about divine command theory as a metaethical view about the way in
which normative claims are justified?
There is, first of all, the matter of the power of God. Given the omnipotence and
omniscience of God, some have thought that the question of why a person should
obey God is nonsensical. Peter Geach, for example, claims that to defy God "is like
trying to cheat a man to whom your whole business is mortgaged and who you
know is well aware of your attempts to cheat him."lOJ For Geach, the sheer power
of God makes it unthinkable for a person to defy God. To worship God is to
worship power, he admits, but since God's power is so qualitatively different from
any other power on earth, one's obedience to God is qualitatively different from
obedience to any earthly power. I02 Such fear of God makes it impossible, Geach
thinks, for a believer to even contemplate disobeying God or to contemplate
substituting one's own best judgment for God's command. He says:
That fear [the fear of God] is an ultimate suasion. We cannot balance against our
obedience to God some good to be gained, or evil to be avoided, by
disobedience. For such good or evil could in fact come to us only in the order of
God's Providence; we cannot secure good or avoid evil, either for ourselves or
for others, in God's despite and by disobedience. And neither reason nor
revelation warrants the idea that God is at all likely to be lenient with those who
presumptuously disobey his law because of the way they have worked out the
respective consequence of obedience and disobedience. 103
Now while fear of some ultimate power might induce obedience - even willing
obedience - such fear can hardly be the basis of a proper explanation for why one
should obey God. "Just following orders" cannot be an adequate explanation for
why one is justified in performing a moral action. As several critics have observed,
sheer power cannot make an action moral nor can obedience to sheer power justify
a moral choice. W. D. Falk observes, for example, moral choices must flow from
an autonomous moral decision on the part of the agent, and such a decision must
result from a consideration of the merits of the particular case and the conviction
that the moral decision is the right one. God's commands, even backed by a
supreme, divine power, cannot substitute for this process. I04 As Ewing concludes,
"Even if there is some affinity between command and obligation, a mere
command, however powerful the being who issues it, cannot of itself create
obligation." 105 Just as the naturalistic fallacy exposed the lack of any necessary
connection between any natural property and good, there is "no necessary
connection between being commanded or willed by God and being obligatory or
good, unless we already assume the goodness of God.,,106 Nielsen echoes the same
sentiment and bases his claim about the independence of moral value from
commands on the ordinary meanings of moral terms. Normally, he says, the "moral
Peter Geach, God and the Soul, p.126.
Ibid . p. 127.
103 Ibid., p. 129.
104 See W. D. Falk. "Moral Perplexity," Ethics, Vol. 66, January, 1956, p. 128.
105 Ewing, "The Autonomy of Ethics," p. 226.
106 Ibid., p. 227.
101
102
360
concepts 'should,' 'good,' and 'ought,' are, in their actual usage, not identified
with the willing of something, the commanding of something, or the proclaiming
of something, or even with simply telling someone to do something.,,!07 Indeed,
telling someone to do something that involves a moral action must be the kind of
thing for which it is always reasonable to ask for reasons. !Os
At best, obedience on the basis of fear or because of God's unlimited power, can
provide a prudential or self-interested reason for obeying God, but not a
justification for the moral content of the divine command. I09 Doing what God
commands because we are in awe or fear of God cannot justify obeying God or
justify the particular act committed as a result of obeying God because, as Nielsen
concludes, the ethical egoist notwithstanding, pure self-interest cannot provide a
proper basis for morality.11O
Something must give moral efficacy to God's commands, and the only plausible
candidate to explain the origin of such efficacy is God's perfect goodness. l11 If a
moral agent recognized that God is perfectly good, then one might make sense of
that agent deferring to God's commands - if not blindly and on every occasion, at
least thoughtfully and on some occasions. However, given the problems already
considered above in connection with claims involving God's goodness, there has
been little progress in avoiding the apparent circularity involved in the necessity of
using ethical concepts to explain and recognize God's goodness. The condition
requiring that we know God's nature is perfectly good in order to treat his
commands as imposing moral obligations requires that there be a standard for
moral value independent of and prior to our recognition and understanding of God
as perfectly good. Giving an account of that standard is exactly what secular moral
philosophers attempt to do and what divine commands theorists attempt to avoid.
OBEY YOUR FATHER
D. Z. Phillips also explicitly recognizes the Kierkegaardian conflict between
religious and moral duty as a fundamental and intractable one. Relying heavily
upon the analogy of the duty which a child owes to his father, Phillips argues that
human beings owe their duty and obedience to God because, just as the father
begat the child and is responsible for the very existence of the child, God created
human beings and is responsible for our very existence. 112 Attempting to separate
the descriptive from the evaluative assessments of the father/child relationship
(such as "x is y's father" and "y ought to obey x") is confusing, since it is only
within the institution of the family that 'father' takes on the meaning that imposes
certain expectations, restrictions, and obligations upon the relationship between
Kai Nielsen, Philosophy and Atheism (New York: Promethens Books, 1985), p, 176.
Ibid,
109 Bernard Williams argues that the disjunction between the prudential and the moral is not an
exhaustive one, See his "God, Morality, and Prudence," in Divine Commands and Morality, edited by
Paul Helm (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), pp. 135-40,
110 Kai Nielsen, Ethics without God, p. 4.
111 See the lengthy discussion above. Also see Alasdair MacIntyre, "Which God Ought We Obey
and Why?" Faith and Philosophy, Vol. 3., no. 4, 1986, pp. 359-371.
112 D. Z. Phillips, "God and Ought," in Christian Ethics and Contemporary Philosophy, edited by
Ian T. Ramsey (New York: Macmillan, 1966), p. 135. Reprinted in D. Z. Phillips, Faith and
Philosophical Enquiry (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970), pp. 223-232.
107
108
RELIGION AND ETHICS
361
father and child. For Phillips, instead of starting with the descriptive facts and then
trying to infer an 'ought' from them, the descriptive and the evaluative are fused
together within the social institution of the family in such a way that the father is
defined as deserving special considerations from his children. Thus, part of what it
means to be a father and part of our understanding of the nature of fatherhood
involves deserving special kinds of considerations from one's children. Likewise,
part of what it means to be God involves deserving special kinds of considerations
from human beings, and one of those special considerations is obedience. 113
Just as one's understanding of the nature of fatherhood and the relationship
between father and child is rooted in the social institution of the family and the
social practices involving the family, so one's understanding of the nature of God
as Father and the relationship involving the obedience of human beings to God
must be rooted in the institution of religion and the practices involving religion.
For Phillips, one must abandon the philosophical approach of trying to get to some
objective reality that is somehow, metaphorically, "beyond" or "beneath" religious
discourse. "Reality" is given by and occurs within an area of discourse, so the
"reality" of religious claims concerning such matters as the existence of God
occurs within the Wittgensteinian "language-game" of religious belief (see
Chapters II and IV). For example, Paul could say that he worshiped the same God
as Abraham because he was in the same religious tradition. Criteria for the truth
and meaningfulness of claims made about God "are to be found within the
religious tradition," and conversely, "the criteria of meaningfulness cannot be
found outside religion, since they are given by religious discourse itself." 114 For the
religious believer, questions concerning moral value are thus questions that are
internal to religious discourse. One cannot use criteria that are external to religious
discourse, whether those criteria are one's own judgments concerning moral right
and wrong or philosophical or theological theory to explain or assess religious
discourse. "Theology cannot impose criteria of meaningfulness on religion from
without," Phillips says, "Neither can philosophy.,,115 For the specific religious
tradition of Christianity, a believer's religious duty is determined by, and the very
meaning of that duty is given in terms of, the particular discourse of the religious
tradition of which he is a member. Within that discourse, a believer simply cannot
question or judge the will of God. Part of what it means for the Christian believer
to recognize God as God is to recognize him as one who must be obeyed without
question or reservation.
Like Quinn, Phillips has no difficulty in recognizing possible conflicts between
moral duty and religious duty. Moral demands that arise in the moral languagegame and religious demands that arise in the religious language-game might
sometimes compete for satisfaction from an individual. Normally, a religious
believer does not question whether the will of God is good, but one might be
prompted to do so on specific occasions, such as the death of a child. When this
happens, Phillips says, "morality has invaded the realm of religion and the fight is
Ibid., pp. 135-36.

D. Z. Phillips, "Philosophy, Theology, and the Reality of God," The Philosophical Quarterly,
Vol. 13, 1963. Reprinted in D. Z. Phillips, Faith and Philosophical Enquiry, p. 4.
115 Ibid., p. 7.
113
114
362
on.,,116 In such circumstances, the religious believer is faced with an unresolved

Kierkegaardian conflict in which it is one's sense of one's moral duty that stands in
the way of doing one's duty to God. Unlike the analogy involving the relationship
between a human father and child, a Christian's obligations to God, the Father,
allow for no possible exceptions, since in rejecting God's will one would be
rejecting the entire institution of Christianity, the entire way of life. I 17
ALASDAIR MACINTYRE AND VIRTUE ETHICS
During the latter part of the twentieth century, most of the time, attention, and
energy of philosophers of religion interested in the relationship between ethics and
religion has been devoted to addressing the various forms of divine command
theory and the problems associated with such a theory. Thus, most of this chapter
has been devoted to divine command theory and related issues. However, changes
in the latter part of the twentieth century in the focus of secular moral theory are
beginning to make their influence felt in the philosophy of religion and may very
well offer opportunities for new approaches for dealing with the matter of the
relation of ethics and religion. In particular, the rise in interest in what is now
generally known as "virtue ethics" has marked a significant change of direction
and emphasis in secular moral theory. Credit has already been given to Elizabeth
Anscombe's very influential article, "Modem Moral Philosophy.,,118 To repeat and
summarize the point made early in this chapter, Anscombe claims that the
fundamental moral concepts used in contemporary moral theory are meaningless
since they are derived from a Stoic, Christian, Kantian view that emphasizes duty
to the moral law. Since there has been no creditable account of how the moral law
is based upon divine law, we should abandon a law, rule, and duty approach to
moral theory and instead ground moral theory in moral psychology and a
philosophical account of the virtues, taking Aristotle as the starting point.
In a similar vein, but perhaps better known and more influential, has been the
much more thorough and systematic treatment of virtue theory by Alasdair
MacIntyre in After Virtue. 119 MacIntyre argues, as does Anscombe, that
contemporary moral theory has been misdirected and misguided and that the
fundamental moral terms and concepts we now use are meaningless fragments and
empty shells inherited from earlier times and contexts. Since we lack any
understanding of, or appreciation for, the context within which these terms
developed their meanings, they have no substance. He says:
What we possess ... are the fragments of a conceptual scheme, parts which now
lack those contexts from which their significance derived. We possess indeed
simulacra of morality, we continue to use many of the key expressions. But we
D. Z. Phillips, "God and Ought," p. 137.

Ibid., p. 139.
118 G. E. M. Anscombe, "Modem Moral Philosophy," Philosophy, Vol. 33, no. 124, 1958, pp. 1-19
119 Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981).
Also discussed earlier in this chapter. Other contemporary virtue ethicists who are not treated here
include Martha Nussbaum and Bernard Williams.
116
RELIGION AND ETHICS
363
have - very largely, if not entirely - lost our comprehension, both theoretical
and practical, [of] morality.120
Because of the influence of the Enlightenment, and particularly because of the
influence of Kant, the fundamental ethical considerations that have dominated
Western secular moral theory for the past two hundred years have been ones that
involve following moral laws or performing moral duties. MacIntyre criticizes
such an approach as relying too heavily upon human reason and for being too
legalistic. Using such an approach, to be a moral person one is supposed to use his
reason to figure out what the morallaw(s) requires and then that same reason to
figure out what kind of actions will satisfy those requirements. MacIntyre argues
that what has been lost in all of this is any understanding of the context in which
our fundamental concepts of a person, the self, character, and the notion of a
morally good person are grounded. He claims that such concepts are derived from
the ancient Greeks and the role that the virtues played in their society. While there
were certainly different understandings of the virtues among the Greeks, MacIntyre
argues that it is Aristotle's treatment of the virtues that was the most
philosophically adequate and to which we should return. 121
Crucial to developing a general theory of the virtues, according to MacIntyre, is
understanding their role in what he calls a "practice," which is a "complex form of
socially established cooperative human activity." Practices have benefits, "goods,"
some of which are internal to the practice and some of which are external to the
practice. 122 In the social practice of playing the violin in a symphony orchestra, for
example, one might experience the internal goods that result from hours of
discipline and practice and cooperative effort with others and the external goods of
an audience's applause, public recognition, or even remuneration. We can easily
understand the notion of excellence, for example, in such a practice. Generally, for
MacIntyre, "A virtue is an acquired human quality the possession and exercise of
which tends to enable us to achieve those goods which are internal to practices
and the lack of which effectively prevents us from achieving any such goods.,,123 It
is in the exercise of such virtues in which ethics is grounded and in which ethical
behavior should be understood. Thus, for MacIntyre, the morally good person is
the virtuous person, the person of good moral character.
There are many significant questions raised by MacIntyre's urging of the return
to virtue ethics and his position, developed in After Virtue, that cannot be pursued
here. Reactions and criticisms have been voluminous. l24 There are competing
accounts of the virtues, and there are questions about how the virtues are related to
Ibid., p. 2.
MacIntyre gives lengthy analyses of the Homeric account of the virtues, as well as the Platonic
account, the Stoic account, and the Medieval account. For comparison, see MacIntyre, Ibid., Chapters
10, 11, and 12. This very brief and inadequate summary of MacIntyre's treatment of the virtues should
be informed by consnlting Chapter 14 of After Virtue.
122 Ibid., pp. 187-88.
123 Ibid., p. 191.
124 For reviews that raise criticisms of MacIntyre concerning some issues particularly relevant to the
philosophy of religion, see book reviews by Samuel Sheffler, The Philosophical Review, VoL 42, no. 3,
1983; and Robert Wachbroit, Yale Law Journal, VoL 92, no. 3, 1983. Also see D. Z. Phillips, "After
Virtue?" in his Interventions in Ethics (Albany: SUNY Press, 1992), pp. 42-60.
120
121
364
each other. For present purposes, perhaps the issues of how and to what extent the
virtues are relative to different social, historical, and cultural contexts is most
important. If virtues are tied to practices for MacIntyre, then the matter of which
particular practices one engages in will have to be sorted out, and different people
in different cultures and at different times obviously have engaged in different
practices. MacIntyre's general answer to this question is that particular practices
are situated in different narratives, and the practices in which a person engages is a
reflection of the story of which one finds oneself a part. Both the notion of the
unity of an individual life and the notion of the virtuous life are tied to the position
that a person occupies within a particular narrative. A narrative allows the
individual to satisfy a telos or quest that ultimately involves "increasing self
knowledge and increasing knowledge ofthe good.,,125
VIRTUE ETHICS AND RELIGION
Aquinas's attempt in the Summa Theologica to give a systematic treatment of
the classic, cardinal virtues (prudence, justice, temperance, and courage) that was
compatible with the theological virtues (faith, hope, and charity) provides the
departure point for contemporary work on relating virtue ethics to religious ethics.
It should not be surprising, then, that much of the current writing on virtue ethics
and religious ethics is being done by Thomists; however, virtue theory still
occupies a minor place of importance when compared with divine command
theory, even among Catholic thinkers.
Romanus Cessario is one contemporary figure who attempts to defend a version
of Christian virtue theory, and he follows the lead of MacIntyre by insisting that
such a theory requires a context that provides an explanation for the telos toward
which the virtues are directed. 126 Cessario does not attempt an analysis of the
individual virtues but concentrates on the general conditions necessary for
constructing a Christian virtue theory. 127 Any attempt to provide such an account of
human nature and the end toward which it is properly directed must be normative,
Cessario thinks. As Augustine affIrmed, the telos of man is to seek "the faithaffIrmation" of ''the beatific vision" of God and the "beatific fellowship or union
with the blessed Trinity." This view of the proper end of man, based upon a
"theological anthropology,,,128 deserves at least equal consideration with other
candidates. Of course, Cessario' s claim that any theory of human nature that allows
for moral value must be normative is arguable. Aristotle based his view about the
telos of man upon his cosmology and, particularly, his biology, which, even though
it turned out to be mistaken, was still regarded by Aristotle as scientific.
Contemporary secular moral philosophers support claims about the moral life on
theories about human moral psychology in ways that at least approximate doing
social science. However, Cessario does not argue for his beatific vision for man or
See AlasdairMacIntyre,After Virtue, pp. 211-219.
Romanus Cessario, The Moral Virtues and Theological Ethics (Notre Dame, Ind.: Notre Dame
Press, 1991).
[27 For contemporary accounts of specific Christian virtues, see Peter Geach, The Virtues
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977) and Josef Pieper, Four Cardinal Virtues (Notre Dame,
Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1965).
[28 Ibid., p. 17.
[25
[26
RELIGION AND ETIDCS
365
present any sort of evidence for this claim; he simply takes that VISIOn as a
theological starting point, based upon religious faith or revelation, for constructing
a Christian account of the virtues.
The same kind of problem arises with other attempts to construct a Christian
theory of virtue ethics, since all such attempts follow Augustine in assigning a
theological tetas to human beings. The result is an ironic combination of a
theological foundation for virtue ethics, which by its nature is antifoundational and
even antitheoretical. For example, Caleb Miller maintains that the tetas of man is
to live in "conformity to the love of God and others," and the specific role of the
virtues in attaining this end is redemptive in nature by rectifying "human
fallenness" - the moral incapacity and deformity caused by sin. !29 In Miller's
account, as in Cessario's, it is the theological claim and not the account of the
virtues that does all of the work. To account for why the courageous thief is not
virtuous, for example, Miller explains that combining courage with stealing is not a
redemptive combination, and virtues can be relative to individuals or communities
so long as they serve the fundamental redemptive function of bringing sinners back
toward their God-given telas. 130
Linda Zagzebski gives an explicit theological foundation to virtue ethics. She
develops a version of virtue theory that she calls "motivation-based," since she
thinks that the motivations of a moral agent, which initiate and direct actions
toward desired ends, should be taken as the primary element to which moral
properties are attributed.!3! In this theory, all moral concepts are based upon a good
motive, which Zagzebski takes to be the most fundamental element of a virtue. 132
Since the notion of a good motive is taken as fundamental by Zagzebski, it
becomes necessary to explain what makes a good motive good. She explains a
good motive by attributing motivations to God, and the result is what she calls
Divine Motivation Theory. God's motives are perfectly good and account for such
divine virtues as "justice, benevolence, mercy, forgiveness, kindness, love,
compassion, loyalty, generosity, trustworthiness, integrity, and wisdom.,,133 All
virtues and all moral properties are thus derived from God's motives, which are
perfectly good.
There are many issues raised by Zagzebski's Divine Motivation Theory that
cannot be addressed here. !34 The only point I wish to make here is that Zagzebski
explicitly endorses the kind of theological foundation for virtue theory that is
implicit in Cessario and Miller. Arguably, such a foundation is simply antithetical
129 Caleb Miller, "Creation, Redemption, and Virtue," Faith and Philosophy, Vol. 16, no. 3, 1999,
pp.369ff.
130 Ibid., pp. 374ff.
131 Linda Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind: An Inquiry into the Nature of Virtue and the Ethical
Foundations of Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). Also see her "The Virtues
of God and the Foundation of Ethics," Faith and Philosophy, Vol. 15, no. 4, 1998, pp. 538-553. This is
a special issue of Faith and Philosophy, edited by Linda Zagzebski, containing several articles devoted
to the special topic "Virtues and Virtue Theories from a Christian Perspective."
132 Linda Zagzebski, ''The Virtues of God and the Foundation of Ethics," p. 539.
133 Ibid., p. 548. God does not have some of the virtues that humans have, such as chastity and
humility, but Zagzebski explains the origin of these virtues in terms of the trinity. Christ was chaste and
humble; thus there is a divine source for all virtues.
134 For a comparison of Divine Motivation Theory with Divine Command Theory, see Ibid., pp. 549552.
366
to what contemporary moral philosophers mean by virtue ethics. Aristotelian

virtues were based upon an understanding of what he took to be the proper end of
human beings that was based, in turn, upon a particular understanding of human
nature. In their attempts to incorporate virtue theory into Christianity, Cessario and
Miller turn to Christian theology to determine what they take to be the proper end
of human beings, but the virtues are still good because they contribute to attaining
that end. Zagzebski abandons the notion of a proper end of human beings
altogether or a valuing of the virtues in relation to attaining some proper end.
Instead, virtues are good because they are divine, and in human beings, the virtues
are good because they approximate those of the divine. Divine Motivation Theory
is thus far removed from what contemporary, secular moral philosophers mean by
virtue theory and cannot really be appropriately considered as a form of, or a
variation upon, virtue theory ethics.
NARRATIVE ETHICS AND RELIGIOUS ETHICS
The influence of the increased interest in secular virtue ethics upon religious
ethics is just beginning to be felt. Stanley Hauerwas develops one explicit example
of the use of MacIntyre's notion of a narrative in The Peaceable Kingdom: A
Primer in Christian Ethics. 135 Hauerwas relies heavily upon MacIntyre's analysis
of the current fragmented and disconnected state of contemporary secular ethics in
constructing his narrative account of Christian ethics. It should be recognized at the
outset that developing a Christian version of virtue ethics or the use of a narrative
requires some rather drastic departures from traditional views that have influenced
divine command theory as well as some rather drastic departures from views that
characterize secular virtue theory. For example, by emphasizing the narrative, the
historical context, which gives identity to the particularly Christian aspect of
Christian virtue theory, Hauerwas abandons any attempt to make Christian ethics
general or universal and embraces instead the "particularistic convictions" of
Christians that are embedded in their own, unique narrative. 136 It is only within
such a narrative that we find the source of the identity of individuals as Christians
as well as the pattern for what kind of moral persons Christians are supposed to be.
Secondly, as virtue ethicists insist, Hauerwas denies the notion that being a good
person should consist simply in following rules or laws - even God's commands or
God's moral laws. Even God's commands and laws must be mediated by the
context in which they were given and the narrative of which they are a part. 13?
"Christian ethics does not begin by emphasizing rules or principles," Hauerwas
contends, "but by calling our attention to a narrative that tells of God's dealing
with creation.,,138 Such a position is sure to set Hauerwas at odds with divine
command theorists.
135 Stanley Hauerwas, The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics (Notre Dame, Ind.:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1983). For a general discussion of virtue ethics and narrative accounts
in religious ethics, see Jean Porter, "Virtue Ethics," and Robert C. Roberts, "Narrative Ethics," in A
Companion to Philosophy of Religion, edited by Philip Quinn and Charles Taliaferro (Oxford:
Blackwell Publishing, 1997), pp. 466-472 and pp. 473-480 respectively. Also see Michael Goldberg,
Theology and Narrative: A Critical Introduction (Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon Press, 1981).
136 Stanley Hauerwas, Ibid., pp. 6 and 59-63.
137 Ibid., p. 23-24.
138 Ibid., pp. 24-25.
367
For Hauerwas, the crucial part of the particular Christian narrative for Christian
ethics is the moral life of the historical Jesus, but not the Christology, the divine
aspect of Jesus. When we examine this part of the narrative, we find that the life of
Jesus provides us with a model ofthe kind of person that a religious believer ought
to be in order to be a morally good person. Such a person is one whose life is
controlled and dominated by peace.139 The particular kind of peace which
Hauerwas takes to be normatively dominant is one which he thinks follows from
the assurance that God is in control of the universe and "our lives are in God's
hands.,,14o We must peaceably not resist evil with evil, and we must peaceably see
to the care and protection of all life and creation. The special tetos or quest of the
Christian's life (maybe what some might call the "religious pilgrimage") is to be a
part of bringing about a universal, "eschatological peace" that will redeem the
world. 141
RIVAL RELIGIOUS NARRATIVES AND VIRTUE THEORY
Now there is little doubt that religious people have histories and stories to tell
and that a person's identity with his or her own particular story is influential in that
person's religious identity. The Jews are arguably the most historically oriented of
the large theistic religions. Certainly, the unique history of the Jewish people and
the tradition that has grown out of that history are identifying of Jewish religious
belief. The continuity is found not just with the historical narrative but with the
religious beliefs within the narrative. It is axiomatic within modem Judaism that
the God who is worshiped today is the God of Abraham and the God of Moses. But
this example illustrates an important point: When it comes to the religious
narrative, there is not a single one. There are many narratives of many different
peoples. Some of these narratives are theistic, and some are not. Some of the
theistic narratives are Jewish. Some are Christian. Some are Muslim. And there are
different Jewish narratives, as there are different Christian and Muslim narratives.
Unless the defender of religious ethics is able to develop a case for the values from
his narrative taking on objective and universal characteristics, the result will be a
world with pluralistic values with little opportunity to adjudicate among them
except by appeals to different narratives. This difficulty explains why Hauerwas
abandons the search for an objective and universal moral theory. While this result
might be agreeable to, or even welcomed by, some secular moral philosophers, it is
hardly a result that most who wish to base moral theory in theistic religion will
gladly embrace. To take an example that is currently one of great concern for some
theists, Hauerwas's narrative account of moral value would mean that abortion is
not really, objectively right or wrong but is only right or wrong depending upon
whose particular narrative is consulted.
The example of the Jews also illustrates a second important point. For
MacIntyre, the significance of the virtues to the good life is dependent upon a
rather close-knit cultural unity among the people who share the narrative as
occurred in the small city-states in ancient Greece. In fact, one of the major
Ibid., pp. 72-73 and p. 87ff.
Ibid., p. 87.
1'1 Ibid., p. 87.
139
140
368
criticisms of MacIntyre has been that such a closeness is not possible in modem,
urban, postindustrial societies. The heroic virtues from the Homeric age of Greece
are thus different from the virtues of Aristotle, which are different from those of
the major thinkers of the medieval period. The suggestion that a narrative can be
told that spans thousands of years and a vast geographical area and dozens of
different nationalities and ethnic groups, as Hauerwas' s use of the notion of a
Christian narrative requires, is a considerable extension of the notion of narrative
as it is used by MacIntyre. On this score, Orthodox Jews, who have maintained
most of the same cultural and social practices from their narrative, have a much
better claim to a narrative-based theory of value than does any identifiable
Christian group. Various Christian groups disagree not only about their values but
about their narratives as well, and Cessario's claim that his theory illustrates the
kind of moral life that would have been taught by Augustine to his parishioners
does not bode well in this regard. 142 On the model of virtue theory, agreement
needs to come about by agreeing on the tetos of an individual person, and on
Aristotle's and MacIntyre's account at least, this agreement can come about only if
there is a more general, social agreement in the community about what constitutes
the good life. Among theists, there seems to be as little hope of resolving disputes
about what constitutes the fundamental purpose of a good, moral life (for example,
Hauerwas's "peaceable" life) by appealing to notion of a shared narrative than
there has been by appealing to God's commands and God's wilL Given the strong
attachment that religious people have to religious history, sacred scriptures, and
creeds, appealing to the "shared narrative" to gain agreement among Jews,
Muslims, and Christians seems at least as problematic as simply gaining agreement
about God's commands.
MacIntyre has attempted to resolve some of these difficulties by comparing the
narrative histories of different traditions and by investigating how the differences
among those traditions might be resolved or at least addressed. 143 He adds a
significant amount of clarity to the nature of the problems and the conflicts as
understood from within his theory of narration; however, in the end, he makes little
progress toward resolving those problems and conflicts. It is important to note that
different traditions differ from each other about very fundamental and crucial
elements in their narratives, including "their contending accounts of practical
rationality and justice ... their catalogs of the virtues, ... their conceptions of
selfhood, ... their metaphysical cosmologies ... [and] the way in which ... their
accounts of practical rationality and of justice were arrived at. l44 In attempting to
understand and resolve these differences, MacIntyre insists that there is no "neutral
standing ground," - no tradition-independent, rational vantage point - for
intellectual and philosophical enquiry concerning such matters. One cannot
conduct enquiry "outside" all traditions; indeed, to be "outside" all traditions is to
Romanus Cessario, The Moral Virtues and Theological Ethics, p. 3.

Alasdair MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre
Dame Press, 1988). The traditions examined by MacIntyre are the classic Greek, the Christian, the
Enlightenment, and liberalism. It should be noted that MacIntyre does not explicitly address different
religious beliefs but focuses upon different understandings of justice and practical rationality.
144 Ibid., p. 349.
142
143
RELIGION AND ETHICS
369
be in "a state of intellectual and moral destitution.,,145 We can therefore confront

and address questions that arise from rival traditions only in and through those
traditions. 146
Using MacIntyre's narrative account of rival religious traditions leads to two
conclusions that are of importance to theists: First, he insists that members of a
particular tradition must admit that other, competing traditions might well turn out,
in the end, to be superior to one's own tradition. He says, for example,
the only rational way for the adherents of any tradition to approach
intellectually, culturally, and linguistically alien rivals is one that allows for the
possibility that in one or more areas the other may be rationally superior to it. 147
This admission by MacIntyre raises various questions about relativism and
religious pluralism that are particularly difficult to reconcile with divine command
theory. MacIntyre also concludes that the process of comparing rival traditions
with one's own and assessing the relative merits of each tradition is an individual
matter. How each person responds to the differing beliefs of rival traditions is a
function of who that person is and how each person's own tradition has affected
him, so how the problems posed by rival traditions are addressed "will vary not
only with the historical, social, and cultural situation of those persons whose
problems these are but also with the history of belief and attitude of each particular
person up to the point at which he or she finds these problems inescapable.,,148
Since there are no objective, impersonal standards by which this process is to take
place, there are and can be no right or wrong answers; we therefore cannot abstract
from individual cases or generalize to any sort of general thesis or prescription for
settling differences among rival traditions. One simply becomes engaged in the
"conversation" among different traditions in what is hopefully a dialectical
fashion. 149 The net result is that we are left in a situation with competing and
conflicting traditions with no way of resolving those differences; one can simply
engage in a "conversation" with (among) the different traditions.
There are many issues raised by MacIntyre's narrative account of traditions that
cannot be addressed here. In terms of the consequences for the possibility of
developing virtue theory within divine command theory or as an extension of
divine command theory, it is clear that there is little hope of developing such a
religious-based form of virtue theory without general agreement about what
constitutes the good life toward which the virtues are supposed to lead a person.
According to narration theory, an understanding of the good life can come about or
be agreed upon only given a more general, social agreement in the community
about what constitutes the proper end or telos of human beings. Both Cessario and
Miller follow Augustine in assigning a Christian understanding of that telos in
Ibid., p. 367.
Ibid., p. 369.
147 Ibid., p. 388. MacIntyre is talking here about different understandings of rationality; however, the
same point can be extrapolated, mutatis mutandis, for religious beliefs.
14R Ibid., p. 393.
149 Ibid., p. 398.
145
146
370
terms of a redemptive and beatific union with God; however, such an

understanding is obviously based upon Christian theology and is not likely to be
shared among all theists, to say nothing of nontheists. Without some agreement
about what the ultimate purpose of human life is and what constitutes the good life
and without some way of resolving disagreements about what the ultimate purpose
of human life is and what constitutes the good life, virtue theory cannot represent
any significant advancement upon or make any significant contribution to divine
command theory.
CARDINAL VIRTUES AND MORAL VIRTUES
When a virtue ethics approach is extended from secular moral theory to
religious ethics, another difficulty involves trying to reconcile what are regarded as
the usual moral virtues with what are regarded as the usual theological values into
a single, unified theory. Accounts must be given for such cardinal virtues as
courage and justice, as well as the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity. 150
As MacIntyre observes, these different virtues seem at odds with one another since
love (or charity or humility) seems to require very different kinds of behavior than
courage or justice might (as in the Christian prescription to "turn the other
cheek"). 151 Most of what we know about the virtues in ancient Greece is at odds
with current understandings of Christianity. As MacIntyre says, "Aristotle would
certainly not have admired Jesus Christ and he would have been horrified by St.
Paul.,,152
Another major difficulty in attempting to incorporate virtue ethics into theism is
that theism must retain the notion of sin. Sin must eventually involve some
disobedience to God's commands or God's will; however, if moral values are
explicated in terms of a virtue theory that involves a rejection of the notion that
right actions are to be explained in terms of following the rules or the laws (even
the divine laws), then violations of moral requirements, even egregious ones such
as murder, are not obviously sins. Some account must be given to reconnect the
good life with God's will in a less formal and less legalistic way; however,
obviously such a connection will be more tenuous and more arguable or more
dependent upon faith and revelation as in the case of Cessario and Miller.
There is also the problem that results from Aristotle's insistence that the virtues
are controlled by choice and the exercise of one's judgment for the sake of virtue
itself. Phronesis is the intellectual virtue of exercising good judgment in a moral
sense, and it is the virtue without which none of the other virtues can be realized. If
there is to be a Christian theory of the virtues that accounts for anything like
Aristotle's theory, then an account must be given that accounts for the autonomous,
willful judgment of an individual to act in certain situations to pursue virtue for its
150 One well-known treatment of the moral and theological virtues is that by Peter Geach, The
Virtues (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977). However, while Geach gives detailed
treatment of the individual virtues, he ignores the issue of how the different virtues can all be combined
consistently, and he relies heavily upon faith and revelation for his treatment of the theological virtues.
151 Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, p. 182. For MacIntyre's analysis of what he regards as
Aquinas's unsuccessful attempt to incorporate an Aristotelian account of the virtues into Christianity,
see Chapter 13.
152 Ibid., p. 184.
RELIGION AND ETIIICS
371
own sake quite independent of God's commands, guidance, care, and intervention
in human affairs. It is not clear at all what the Christian analog of phronesis would
be or even that it can allow for one. Within virtue theory, whatever the social
dimensions that practicing the virtues might require and whatever the public aspect
of instruction in practical reasoning there might be, being virtuous is, classically,
still something that the lone individual does.
Given that the telos of human beings is taken by Christian virtue theory to be
something like the beatific vision of God with the expectation of eternal life (or
redemption), then it is difficult to understand how an account can be given that
separates the exercise of the virtues for the religious person from the rather blatant
utilitarian desire to enjoy blessed eternal life. Here, the tension between virtue
theory and the will and commands of an omnipotent God comes into play again.
There must be some way to guarantee that a particular virtue will legitimately
allow for human flourishing in the proper manner (that is, that a particular moral
claim is really true and not just thought to be true by human beings). Following
Aquinas, Cessario insists that "only conformity to God's eternal plan for the world
and for each individual person" and "conformity to Christ in the Church of faith"
can ensure that one can achieve one's proper telos as a Christian and live a virtuous
life. ls3 In this regard, Christian virtue theory has the same problem of accounting
for (or allowing for) autonomous human moral reasoning as occurs in divine
command theory. Obviously, for a person to follow God's or anyone else's plan
blindly or unquestioningly to become a virtuous person would be completely
antithetical to classical virtue theory.IS4
FEMINIST ETHICS AND RELIGIOUS ETHICS
The last few decades of the twentieth century saw an increasing number of
feminist critics who have raised a number of criticisms against philosophy,
theology, and moral theory. There is now a significant range of philosophical
interests and positions that are labeled "feminist," and there is hardly anything like
a consensus among these different critics. There are, however, some common
themes, the most dominant of which is the claim that Western thought has been
male-dominated and that the substantial content of Western thought is the
reflection of male experience and values and is biased against women's
experiences and values. Different feminist critics have aimed their criticisms at
Western science, epistemology, moral theory, and theology. I will focus here only
on a very limited set of feminist criticisms raised against moral theory to examine
the possible repercussions for religious ethics. 15s
Much of current feminist criticism of secular moral theory can be traced to
Carol Gilligan's In a Different Voice. 156 Gilligan, a psychologist, argues that the
Romanus Cessairo, The Moral Virtues and Theological Ethics, p. 21.
Several other objections have been raised against divine command theory. For discussion of those
objections and responses to them, see Robert Merrihew Adams, "A Modified Divine Command Theory
of Ethical Wrongness"; and Philip Quinn, Divine Commands and Moral Requirements, and "Divine
Command Theory."
155 See, for example, Women's Voices: Essays in Contemporary Feminist Theology, edited by Teresa
Elwes (London: Marshall Pickering, 1992).
156 Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychology Theory and Women's Development (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982).
153
154
372
dominant psychological theories have been constructed solely upon male

experience and that women's experiences have been ignored and devalued. While
the scientific value of her research has been controversial, the general claim
Gilligan makes has been adopted and incorporated into the work of other feminists.
According to Gilligan, men develop their understandings of moral values and
obligations to others by valuing the following of rules, while women develop their
understandings of moral values and their obligations to others by valuing personal
relationships. For example, in certain situations where there is a moral problem of
whether to tell the truth or not, boys are allegedly guided by some rule or moral
principle regarding truth-telling, while girls are allegedly guided by a consideration
of the feelings of the people involved.
Now there is little doubt that most world religions have been male-dominated.
Jesus' selection of his twelve disciples was not politically correct and would win
no awards for gender, racial, or ethnic diversity. However, it is the substantive
matter of the nature of religious ethics that is the main issue. Divine command
theory, which has dominated the history of theistic attempts to ground moral theory
in religious belief, is paradigmatic of a rule-governed, law-following view of the
nature of the moral life. Is this view characteristically male? Feminist critics think
so. For example, Linda Woodward maintains that the most important aspect of
Christian ethics is that it focuses on the importance of personal relationships rather
than on justice. 157 Woodward focuses upon Jesus' account of the two great
commandments: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with
all your soul, and with all your mind." and "You shall love your neighbor as
yourself' (Matthew 22:37 & 39). Woodward interprets these commandments of
Jesus as the distinguishing factor in Christian ethics, since they focus attention and
moral value upon one's relationship with God and with one's neighbor rather than
upon rules or principles or laws, which, she thinks, emphasize justice and the
problem of competing rights that different people might claim to have. 158 A truly
feminist religious ethic would then focus on love and the personal relationships we
have rather than upon specific commands, as the divine command theory does.
Can these two commandments to love God and one's neighbor do all the work
that Woodward thinks they do? She wants to shift Christian ethics away from the
more law-governed understanding of the Old Testament and distinguish Christian
ethics from other forms of moral theory by basing it on Christian love. On the one
hand, it is not clear that Christianity is unique is this regard. Nontheistic moral
theories have done the same thing. Confucianism is primarily a sophisticated moral
theory that focuses very heavily upon the relationships one has with other
people. 159 One might say the same of Aristotle's theory of ethics. On the other
hand, it is not clear at all that Jesus' two great commandments focus attention on
personal relationships at the expense of moral or divine law. This raises some
difficult and complicated issues about the relationship between the Old and New
Testaments, but on any account, Jesus is not supposed to have destroyed the old
157 Helen Woodward,
"Feminism and Christian Ethics," in Women's Voices: Essays in
Contemporary Feminist Theology, p. 60.
158 Ibid.
159 See Lee H. Yearly, Menicus and Aquinas: Theories and Conceptions of Courage (Albany, N.Y.:
SUNY Press, 1990) for a comparison of Christian and Confucian notions of virtue.
RELIGION AND ETHICS
373
law but to have fulfilled it. As MacIntyre observes while pondering how any
account of the virtues could be constructed within Christianity, the Council of
Trent codified that Jesus is to be regarded as law-giver as well as Messiah. 160 And,
even if we get beyond the question of how to understand the relationship between
the Old and the New Testaments, there is the obvious irony that Jesus' two
commandments to love God and to love one's neighbor are commandments. Why
are Christians supposed to love God and their neighbors? Only because Jesus and
God command them to do SO.161 Even if we take Gilligan's account, which prompts
the feminist approach, as noncontroversial, the concern with personal relationships
is supposed to be the result of gender differences in personality development and
not laws, principles, or commandments. The recognition of obedience to an
inviolate and supreme divine law creates a theoretical obstacle that virtue ethics,
narrative accounts, and feminist ethics have not yet managed to circumvent. The
normative efficacy of the recognition of such a divine law is, of course, why divine
command theory has dominated theistic religious ethics.
Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, p. 170.

Whether one can sensibly be commanded to love another person or God is an interesting
problem. For discussion of this issue, see D. Z. Phillips, "On the Christian Concept of Love," in his
Faith and Philosophical Enquiry, pp. 233ff.
160
161
IX. The Problem of Religious Pluralism
Much of the current discussion in the philosophy of religion concerning

religious pluralism has resulted from the continuing revelations by the social
sciences of the tremendous diversity among the belief systems of different peoples
of the world. The development of the social sciences in the early part of the
twentieth century and the ever increasing expanse and variety of data from the
study of other cultures have resulted from technological innovations in both
communication and transportation. The study of cultures that were once remote,
unknown, or inaccessible is now commonplace, and the results are available,
through television, video, and the print media, on a scale that has certainly been
unequaled before in human history. The diversity of different peoples takes many
forms, both ethnic and cultural, and the plethora of different religious practices and
beliefs now known to exist among peoples of the world has naturally given rise to
many questions about if and how such diverse beliefs systems might be related.
Cross-cultural, comparative philosophy of religion is, for the most part, a
twentieth- century discipline. Rather than being a definitive study, William James's
The Varieties of Religious Experience was simply a portent of the explosion of
cultural and religious diversity that was to be revealed by the work of social
scientists in the first few decades of the twentieth century. During this period, the
scholarly disciplines of comparative religion and the history of religion were
provided with an enormous wealth of empirical data by social scientists over a
relatively short period. We are now aware of a greater variety of religious
diversity, and we are aware of this diversity in greater detail than scholars have
ever been in any other period of human history.
By midcentury, some scholars began to recognize the importance of the
increased knowledge of different cultures and of different religions provided by the
social sciences for the issues normally regarded within the purview of the
philosophy of religion. The impetus for the development of comparative
philosophy of religion or cross-cultural philosophy of religion first came from the
side of those who were historians of religion or those who were in the field of
comparative religions. One of the earliest and most influential books was Ninian
Smart's Reasons and Faiths, in which he urges, for the first time, that the
philosophy of religion should incorporate the perspective from the comparative
374
THE PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS PLURALISM
375
study of religions.! Adopting a quasi-Wittgensteinian, language-game approach,

Smart analyzes key, fundamental epistemological concepts such as revelation,
belief, faith, conversion, and knowledge by comparing the roles of these concepts
in the Brahman-Atman doctrine in Hinduism and the incarnation in Christianity.2
Smart "pushed the envelope" of the philosophy of religion by focusing upon data
from the history of religion and the comparative study of non-Western religions,
while at the same time abandoning the straightforward descriptive approach of a
simple historical or comparative study. Smart later describes the new approach as a
"more integrated conception of the study of religion in which various religions and
worldviews, Christianity included, are dealt with together.,,3
Wilfred Cantwell Smith followed Smart in advocating the importance of our
increased knowledge of religious diversity based upon the careful studies of the
social sciences for the philosophy of religion. 4 Smith also generated a far ranging
debate about the problem of defining the word 'religion' and the appropriateness of
using this word. Smith contends that the notion of a religion is a linguistic creation
of Western scholars and gives a false sense of permanence and substance to what
are really very dynamic, fluid, and loosely associated patterns of religious beliefs,
experiences, and practices.5 According to Smith, Westerns scholars have thus
projected a definite and definitive substance upon Eastern "religions," where only
something resembling a loosely related system of Wittgensteinian "family
resemblances" is appropriate. 6 The use of the term 'religion' is thus distorting and
should be abandoned, according to Smith.? The current preferred replacement for
'religion' among several scholars is now 'worldviews.' However, the term
'religion' and the phrase 'philosophy of religion' are so thoroughly ingrained in
academic scholars that they are not likely to be changed, no matter what the
purpose. Peter Byrne is correct, I think, in maintaining that while we should be
sensitive to Smith's concerns about the possibility of oversimplification and/or
distortion, the use of 'religion' is a linguistic convenience and giving it up is a
remedy that is too drastic. s Thus, I will continue using 'religion' and 'the
philosophy of religion' as I have throughout this volume.
1 Ninian Smart, Reasons and Faiths: An Investigation of Religious Discourse, Christian and NonChristian (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1958), p. 6.
2 Ibid., p. 160ff.
3 Ninian Smart, Worldviews: Cross-Cultural Explorations of Human Beliefs (New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons, 1983), p. 18.
4 Wilfred Cantwell Smith, The Meaning and End of Religion (London: S.P.C.K., 1978).
5 Ibid., pp. 21ff.
6 Part of Smith's reasoning here involves what he claims was the confusion among early Christian
theologians and the attempt to provide a unique identity for Christianity by codifying Christian
theology.
7 Several other scholars have joined Smith in this regard, while others have disagreed. See, for
example, Ninian Smart, Worldviews: Cross-Cultural Explorations of Human Beliefs, and his 'The
Philosophy of Worldviews, or the Philosophy of Religion Transformed," in Religious Pluralism and
Truth: Essays on Cross-Cultural Philosophy of Religion, edited by Thomas Dean (Albany, N.Y.: SUNY
Press, 1995). Also see Peter Byrne, Natural Religion and the Nature of Religion (London: Routledge,
1989), pp. 222-226; as well as his Prolegomena to Religious Pluralism (London: Macmillan, 1995), p.
x.
8 Peter Byrne, Prolegomena to Religious Pluralism, p. x.
376
The effect of the increased information from the social sciences concerning
different religions and different cultures upon the philosophy of religion has been
dramatic. Major disputes have arisen concerning the importance of religious
diversity for the philosophy of religion and the correct response to it. In discussing
the different approaches to the problem of religious diversity, I follow what is now
the standard practice of using the categories of exclusivism, pluralism, and
inclusivism suggested by John Hick.9 This tripartite division represents a
convenient way of categorizing the different responses to religious diversity.
EXCLUSIVISM
Within theism, exclusivism consists of the belief that the true word of God is
contained in a single religious tradition, which is based upon a particular divine
revelation, and that this revelation and this tradition represent the exclusive means
to salvation. Exclusivism is almost exclusively a Christian reaction to religious
diversity, although it is also found among fundamentalist Muslims and Orthodox
Jews. For Christians, the "particular divine revelation" is the revelation of God in
Jesus as the Christ, "the Son of the Living God." Long an official position of the
Roman Catholic Church, exclusivism is now most commonly associated with the
fundamentalist, evangelical, Protestant groups within Christianity. Roman
Catholicism, in the twentieth century, has become more ecumenical. 10 Throughout
the history of Christianity, both Catholicism and Protestantism, exclusivism has
certainly been the dominant view regarding other religions. There was little in the
way of substantively new developments concerning exclusivism in the twentieth
century. Only the degree of evangelical zeal with which many fundamentalist
Protestant groups now defend their versions of Christianity and attack other
religions might be regarded as a new development. However, when one considers
the religious zeal of the countless Christians and Muslims in the Crusades who saw
themselves as defending the one true faith and earning their salvation by killing
infidels, the zeal of even fundamentalist evangelicals pales. Also, there is little
about exclusivism that is particularly unique to the Anglo-American analytic
tradition in philosophy. The earliest, and perhaps the most recognized and
frequently cited, representatives of exclusivism are European; however, more
recently exclusivism has come to be identified with some analytic philosophers.
Since exclusivism serves as a foil for pluralism, it is important to understand the
position against which John Hick and others who champion religious pluralism
react.
HENDRIK KRAEMER
The challenge to an exclusivist view of religious belief that resulted from the
rise of the social sciences and the comparative philosophy of religion in the early
part of the twentieth century was first recognized and appreciated by the Dutch
theologian Hendrik Kraemer, who wrote The Christian Message in a NonChristian World. Kraemer says in the preface of this book that it was written for
the 1938 meeting of the World Missionary Conference in order to "state the
9
See John Hick, Problems o/Religious Pluralism (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1985), pp. 31-39.
See Paul Knitter, No Other Name? (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1985), Chapter 5.
10
377
fundamental position of the Christian Church ... towards other faiths."l1 Kraemer is
still recognized as one of the earliest and one of the most influential representatives
of exc1usivism in the twentieth century.12 Among twentieth-century theologians,
Karl Barth was perhaps the most prominent (and perhaps the most extreme)
exc1usivist. Barth maintains that the Christian revelation of God in Jesus actually
abolished the practice of religions that arose from man's own efforts to understand
the universe and his place in it by exposing them as erroneous and sinful. 13
One of the major differences between Kraemer and Barth is a difference that is
often reflected in the general difference between the philosophy of religion and
theology. Whereas Barth bases his exc1usivist commitment to Christianity and his
condemnation of other religions upon what he takes to be the divine revelation of
God, Kraemer takes very seriously the study of other religions and the role of
natural theology.14 Kraemer thus welcomes what he calls "the science of
comparative religion" as "a means to unveil the stupendous richness of the
religious life of mankind.,,15 He takes the information from the social sciences
about the diversity of religions in the world as revealing the presence of "a
universal religious consciousness in man" and seriously pursues the inquiry of
whether and how and to what extent God reveals himself in non-Christian
religions. 16
Kraemer's method of investigation is phenomenological and dialectical and
owes little to the analytic tradition. However, Kraemer is an important
representative of the kind of exc1usivism that provides the background for
pluralism, and a brief summary of his investigation of the "universal religious
consciousness of man" will serve to provide an understanding of the dominant and
received position against which religious pluralism is cast. In the non-Christian
world, according to Kraemer, people have tried to be "God-like" and obey the
moral laws of various ethical systems in order to realize the most ambitious
potentials for themselves, and in some cases at least, people have made significant
progress in this regard. At the same time, however, whatever progress might have
been made is accompanied by "barbarous and monstrous" sins so that "[t]he world
of development and progress is at the same time the world of degeneration, decay
and destruction.,,17 The consequence is a "horrid disharmony" in man, a
"dialectical condition" wherein man both affIrms and denies his relationship with
the eternal. 18 This is the condition of man that Christianity identifies as sin, and,
Kraemer maintains, the revelation of God in Jesus as Christ is the only solution to
this dialectical disharmony in man. Christianity supposedly shows the limitations
11 Hendrik Kraemer, The Christian Message in a Non-Christian World (Grand Rapids, Mich.:
Kregel Publications, 1938).
12 See Paul Knittner, No Other Name?, p. 82; Gavin D'Costa, Theology and Religious Pluralism
(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), Chapter 3; and Alan Race, Christians and Religious Pluralism
(Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1982), Chapter 2.
\3 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1956). Also see Alan Race, ibid., pp.
I1ff.
i4 See Hendrik Kraemer, The Christian Message in a Non-Christian World, Chapters 4, 5 and 6.
15 Ibid., p. 108.
i6 Ibid., pp. 111-12.
17 Ibid., p. 113.
iSIbid.
378
of the attempts of other world religions to understand and resolve this fundamental
tension in man's nature.
In his investigations of different religions, Kraemer shows at least some
sympathy for what was then the emerging methodologies of the social sciences by
insisting that, since different religions are attempts by men to understand the
totality of their existence, "every religion is an indivisible, and not to be divided,
unity of existential apprehension." "Every religion is a living, indivisible unity," he
insists, and in the investigation of whether, how, and to what extent God is
revealed in non-Christian religions, we must remember that we cannot really
understand a different religion by artificially dissecting it and selecting individual
concepts for analysis or comparison. We can gain real insight into another religion
only by a "totalitarian approach" that considers the religion as a whole. 19
Kraemer's exclusivism initially seems very enlightened when compared to
Barth's, since he embraces a "scientific" study of other religions and eschews
Barth's "a priori" dismissal of other religions. Still, in the end Kraemer's
exclusivism is very limiting, since he was basically an apologist for the uniqueness
of Christian theology. Gavin D' Costa claims that Kraemer apparently neglected the
"dynamic nature" of different world religions and the ways in which the increased
"creative interaction" among different religious traditions might result in
significant changes to those belief systems. 20 Kraemer's study of non-Christian
religions focuses upon the historical roots of those religions and ignores how
religious changes might result in greater areas of similarity through contact with
Christianity. Most fundamentally, one must wonder just how reliable Kraemer's
phenomenological investigation into other religions could be. He certainly gives
"lip service" to what he calls the importance of the "totalitarian" nature of
religions, which requires that any study of a religion take the body of religious
beliefs and practices as a whole, but such an investigation would also contain a
prohibition against introducing any principles or beliefs that are alien to the
religion under investigation. However, Kraemer clearly never abandons the
Barthian principle according to which Christianity is unique because it represents
the unique revelation of God. Barth was not willing even to consider the nature of
other religions, given his commitment to the uniqueness of God's revelation in
Jesus as the Christ. Kraemer goes through the motions of conducting a careful,
phenomenological study of other religions, but he does so through the lens of a
Christology that predetermines the outcome.
RELIGIOUS DIVERSITY AND RELIGIOUS PLURALISM
Although the "problem" or "challenge" of other religious faiths is nothing new
for Christianity, and although earlier religious thinkers such as Ernst Troeltsch
addressed the issue directly, certainly the issue of religious diversity reached a new
level of importance in the last quarter of the twentieth century. The most
significant recent development in the philosophy of religion for dealing with
religious diversity has been the rise to prominence of religious pluralism. Religious
diversity should not be confused with religious pluralism, as it has been by some
19
20
Ibid., pp. 135-36.

Gavin D'Costa, Theology and Religious Pluralism. p. 61.
379
scholars. It is very helpful to the discussion to use the phrase 'religious diversity'
to describe the actual, factual varieties of different religious beliefs and practices
revealed by the social sciences and to reserve the phrase 'religious pluralism' for a
particular form of philosophical response to that religious diversity. The rise of
"religious pluralism" - the origin of which is usually attributed to John Hick - is
the most compelling development to come from recent considerations of religious
diversity, and religious pluralism has certainly received more serious critical
consideration and generated more critical literature than other responses to
religious diversity. Hence, this chapter is entitled "The Problem of Religious
Pluralism" instead of "The Problem of Religious Exclusivism" or "The Problem of
Religious Inclusivism."
UNIVERSAL DIVINE SALVIFIC WILL
In accounting for Hick's development of his version of religious pluralism, it is
difficult to separate his theological motivations from his philosophical motivations.
By his own account, it appears that the fundamental initial motivation for religious
pluralism was theological. It appears that one of the most obvious and natural
consequences of religious exclusivism is that a significant percentage of the
world's population will not be redeemable but will be "lost" and will suffer
whatever particular form of punishment is reserved for nonbelievers. If we begin
within a Christian context, for example, and take seriously the admonition from
Jesus that "No one comes to the Father but by me," then, it appears, a significant
number of people will be denied eternal salvation and will be subject to some form
of eternal punishment. As Hick notes, both Roman Catholics and Protestants have
held to some form of such a belief. The Roman Catholic Church has made it
explicit in the dogma "extra ecclesiam nulla salus" (outside the Church, no
salvation), while Protestants have included the same restriction in various
confessionals such as "outside Christianity there is no salvation.,,21
Hick, however, thinks that the obvious consequence of such a claim would be
that "the large majority of the human race" would be doomed and that salvation
would be reserved for" a small minority." Such a situation is not compatible, Hick
claims, with the existence of an omnipotent and omni-benevolent God who "wills
the ultimate good and salvation of all men.,,22 The fundamental theological
principle at work here is the principle of the universal salvific will of God. While,
for the most part, I will attempt to leave the theological disputes to others,23 it is
significant to recognize at the outset that one of Hick's major motivations in
developing the position of religious pluralism is to provide a framework within
which a plausible theological explanation can be developed for reconciling
religious diversity with this particular view of the nature of God.
There have been various attempts by the Roman Catholic Church (including
"ignorance of the faith," "implicit faith," and "baptism by desire") to vitiate the full
effect of the doctrine of no salvation outside the church. However, for Hick, these
are all simply stopgap measures akin to the Ptolemaic epicycles, which are
John Hick, God and the Universe of Faiths, (London: Macmillan, 1973), pp. 120-21.
Ibid., p. 122.
23 See Paul Knitter, No Other Name?, p. 140ff.; and Gavin D'Costa, Theology and Religious
Pluralism, pp. 24ff.
21
22
380
"artificial and burdensome" attempts to preserve the general theological theory or

picture while continually making small, ad hoc adjustments. Hick finds both the
consequence of denying the principle of universal divine salvific will and the ad
hoc attempts to accommodate a traditional Christian theology to a world of
religious diversity unacceptable. His response is based upon the notion of religious
pluralism that takes as its point of departure the results of the cross-cultural studies
of religion discussed at the beginning of this chapter.
ULTIMATE DIVINE REALITY
Hick traces the development of the "world religions" from the early, natural,
primitive religions and claims that the rise of Judaism, Confucianism, Buddhism,
Christianity, and Islam were all different "moments" of divine revelation by the
same God. 24 Since the "ultimate divine reality" is infinite and perfect and thus
"transcends the grasp of the human mind,,,25 the different world religions "might"
simply be understood as different ways in which God has chosen to reveal himself
and might be thus simply different expressions of and different understandings of
the same underlying "ultimate divine reality." Hick illustrates his claim by
borrowing the ancient Buddhist parable of the blind men and the elephant:
... there is the parable of the blind men and the elephant, said to have been told
by the Buddha. An elephant was brought to a group of blind men who had never
encountered such an animal before. One felt a leg and reported that an elephant
is the great living pillar. Another felt the trunk and reported that an elephant is a
great snake. Another felt a tusk and reported that an elephant is like a sharp
ploughshare. And so on. And then they all quarreled together, each claiming that
his own account was the truth and therefore all the others false. In fact of course
they were all true, but each referring only to one aspect of the total reality and
all expressed in very imperfect analogies. 26
The application of this parable to Hick's version of religious pluralism is very
straightforward. It is certainly possible, even probable, he maintains, that, like the
blind men in the parable, different world religions have developed different
understandings of the ultimate, divine reality based upon their different
experiences of that reality. Hick thus distinguishes between "the Real in itself' and
"the Real as humanly experienced" and claims that the different religious claims
about the nature of God are different "personae" that have arisen within different
cultural and religious traditions. 27 Hick's pluralistic hypothesis thus invokes a
distinction between the different phenomenological manifestations of God and the
single, underlying noumenal divine reality.28
John Hick, God and the Universe of Faiths, pp. 135-36.

Ibid., p. 139.
26 Ibid., p. 140. Hick also uses the patable of the elephant and the blind men in Problems of
Religious Pluralism, p. 37.
27 John Hick, Problems of Religious Pluralism, pp. 39-42.
28 Originally in Ibid., pp. 41-42. For a later and more detailed treatment, see Hick's An
Interpretation of Religion (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1989), pp. 233-249.
24
25
381
Hick thinks that we should drop talk about God altogether and prefers instead to
use the phrase, "the Real," as a way of referring to the underlying noumenal divine
reality.29 He explicitly attempts to model his distinction between the different
phenomenal religious experiences of the Real and the underlying noumenal "Real
in itself' upon the metaphysical distinction made by Kant and postulates the Real
in itself as a presupposition of religious experience and the religious life?O Hick
explains his religious "extension" of Kant by saying that
... one can say that the Real is experienced by human beings, but is experienced
in a manner analogous to that in which, according to Kant, we experience the
world: namely by informational input from external reality being interpreted by
the mind in terms of its own categorical scheme and thus coming to
consciousness as meaningful phenomenal experience. All that we are entitled to
say about the noumenal source of this information is that it is the reality whose
influence produces, in collaboration with the human mind, the phenomenal
world of our experience. This takes place through the medium of certain
concepts which Kant call the categories of the understanding. 31
Hick thus appropriates Kant's distinction between the phenomenal world and
the noumenal world and constructs a "religious extension" of the distinction so that
through the different major religious traditions we get different phenomenal
experiences of the same underlying noumenal, divine Real.
A COPERNICAN REVOLUTION IN THEOLOGY
Hick employs an analogy from astronomy to illustrate the shift in thinking about
religion that he thinks must result from considerations of religious pluralism with
more than just a hint of the way in which Thomas Kuhn uses astronomy to
illustrate the paradigm shifts that he maintains have characterized the history of
science. 32 The Copernican revolution in astronomy consisted of a "shift" from the
Ptolemaic view, which placed the earth at the center with the rest of the universe
revolving around the earth, to the view that places the sun at the center of a solar
system with the earth and the rest of the planets revolving around the sun. What is
needed, Hick thinks, is a comparable Copernican revolution in theology. The
Ptolemaic view of religion is one in which the religious believer believes his own
religious system to be the only true one while other systems are "more or less true"
depending upon how closely they approximate the one true system. 33 Given the
increasing amount of information now available about different peoples in different
cultures and their different religious systems, the Ptolemaic religious believer is in
the position of having continually to readjust his or her beliefs, just as the
Ptolemaic astronomers did, by the use of ad hoc epicycles such as continual
John Hick, An Interpretation of Religion, pp. 10-11.
Ibid., p. 243.
31 Ibid.
32 Indeed, in the preface to The Myth of Christian Uniqueness, edited by John Hick and Paul F.
Knitter (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1987), p. vii, Hick and Knitter call religious pluralism a
"paradigm sbift."
33 John Hick, God and the Universe of Faiths, p. 132.
29
30
382
arbitrary adjustments to the general theory to accommodate problems as they arise.

The Copernican view of religion is one that embraces Hick's religious pluralism,
which recognizes a single divine reality at its center with many different culturally
conditioned interpretations of that single divine reality.
While it is not clear exactly how the proposed "Copernican shift" would affect
every world religion, in the case of Christianity, with which Hick is particularly
concerned, the shift would clearly mean moving from a Christ-centered to a Godcentered understanding of religion. He says:
... the needed Copernican revolution in theology involves an equally radical
transformation in our conception of the universe of faiths and the place of our
own religion within it. It involves a shift from the dogma that Christianity is at
the centre to the realisation that it is God who is at the centre, and that all the
religions of mankind, including our own, serve and revolve around him. 34
The Copernican shift offers a significant advantage over the old Ptolemaic view,
Hick thinks, since the Ptolemaic view is grounded in the accidental fact of where a
believer was born. A person has the particular Ptolemaic religious belief that he or
she happens to have because that person happens to have been born in a certain
place and to certain parents. Such "accidents of cultural geography" do not provide
any legitimate grounds, Hick maintains, for claims to the only "religious truth.,,35
THE MYTH OF GOD INCARNATE
Hick does not shrink from confronting the central and fundamental theological
issue of Christology. How should Christians understand the claim that Jesus was
the Christ, the Son of the Living God? The essence of Christianity is based, Hick
recognizes, upon "the Christ-event" - the birth, life, death, and resurrection of
Jesus - in which God is understood as having become incarnate in and through
Jesus. But exactly how are we to understand this claim? Hick's answer is that this
claim is a myth that requires interpretation?6 According to Hick's interpretation,
the Christ-event was "not an event in public history, but an event experienced in
faith.,,37 In contrast, some have refused to accept Jesus and regarded him as a
charlatan or false prophet. Christianity, however, has developed from those
followers of Jesus who saw not simply the historical Jesus but who also saw Jesus
the Messiah, Jesus the Christ, as "mediating the presence and claim of the
transcendent God" through the vision of faith. 38 According to Hick, for those who
knew Jesus and followed him, calling Jesus "the Christ" was an "accepted
shorthand description" for his position as someone "mediating God's challenging
call to repentance and new life in preparation for the imminent coming of the
Kingdom.,,39 After some generations of early Christians had lived and died, Jesus
Ibid., p. 131.
Ibid., p. 132.
36 For a detailed treatment of Hick's treatment of myth, see his God and the Universe of Faiths,
Chapter 12; and An Interpretation of Religion, Chapter 19.
38 Ibid.
39 John Hick, An Interpretation of Religion, p. 156.
34
35
THE PROBlEM OF RELIGIOUS PLURALISM
383
came to be regarded as literally God incarnate, which explains, Hick thinks, why
the dominant view among Christians today is one that treats the claim concerning
the divinity of Jesus as a literal one. 40
Hick maintains that confusion of mythological language with the language of
hypothesis or theory about the empirical world leads to confusion the nature of
religious claims. Unlike theories or hypotheses about the world that attempt to
explain puzzling phenomena, myths provide a response to puzzling phenomena
without trying to explain them. Myths, according to Hick, are stories that are not
literally true or even capable of confirmation but that provoke a particular attitude
in an audience regarding the puzzling phenomena. 41 Thus, myths have what Hick
calls a "practical truth" that is assessed in terms of the "appropriateness" of the
attitude that is evoked in the audience toward the phenomena in question. In the
case of religious myths, truthfulness is determined by assessing whether "the
dispositional responses which they tend to evoke are appropriate to our existence in
relation to the Real.,,42
Specifically, in the case of the incarnation of God in Jesus, Hick maintains that
the claim regarding the incarnation cannot properly be regarded as a theory or as
literally true; rather, if the incarnation is properly understood as a myth, then we
can explain its significance in terms of the "appropriate response of faith in Jesus
... as savior.,,43 The myth of Jesus as God provides a mythical framework within
which Christians are able to "encounter God" as the ultimate reality and to develop
a religious attitude toward life with God at the center of that life. 44 Hick terms such
an experience a "transformation" experience that involves transforming human
existence from being "self-centered" to being "Reality-centered." He concludes
that the different phenomenal manifestations of the Real, the different "religiocultural 'lenses' through which the Real is humanly perceived," all offer "a more
or less equally effective" context and opportunity for such saving, transformation
experiences. 45 Hick's demythologizing of Christian theology obviously results in
what we might call a "thinner" theology with substantially reduced theological
content. 46
THE TRUTH OF GOD INCARNATE
Hick's mythical interpretation of the incarnation of God in Jesus has provoked a
number of responses, some supportive and some critica1. 47 There are major
40 Ibid., p. 113. Hick later claims that the view that Jesus was divine was taken as the single-most
important element that gave authority and impetus to the establishment and continuation of the church.
The current debate about Christo1ogy is colored by the vested interest theologians have in providing a
divine basis for the church. See John Hick, The Metaphor of God Incarnate ( Louisville, Ky.:
Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993), pp. 151ff.
41 John Hick, God and the Universe of Faiths, pp. 166-67.
44 Ibid.
46 See Philip Quinn, ''Towards Thinner Theologies: Hick and Alston on Religious Diversity," in The
Philosophical Challenge of Religious Diversity, edited by Philip L. Quinn and Kevin Meeker (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 226-243.
47 See, for example, Paul Knitter, No Other Name?, pp. 146ff.; The Myth of God Incarnate, edited
by John Hick (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1977); The Truth of God Incarnate, edited by Michael
384
theological and philosophical issues that deserve attention, and I will simply
mention here the major theological objections to Hick's mythical treatment of
claims about Jesus' divinity and then explore in depth some of the major,
significant philosophical issues involved with his claims about religious pluralism.
In the case of Christianity, abandoning the claim to religious truth means
abandoning claims about the special status of Jesus as Christ-for example,
abandoning the claim that Jesus was the divine Son of God, a claim that more
conservative Christians would clearly regard as the fundamental belief of
Christianity. Giving up the claim that the man Jesus was the divine Christ amounts
to turning Christianity from a Christ-centered religion into a God-centered, a
"theos-centered," religion. More conservative and more traditional Christians,
defending an exclusivist position, might ask rhetorically, "What is left of the
Christian faith when the idea of God incarnate in Jesus is jettisoned?,,48 The
theological objection from this quarter to Hick's treatment of the claim of the
divinity of Jesus as a myth is obvious. The argument would go something like this:
There is arguably no more important, fundamental, or unique claim to Christian
theology than Peter's "confession" to Jesus: "You are the Christ, the Son of the
Living God" (Matthew 16:16). Jesus' response to Peter, when he calls Peter's
confession the "rock" upon which he will build his church, has been interpreted for
centuries as establishing the importance of Peter's claim (Matthew 16:18). Hick's
mythical treatment of Jesus as Christ completely undercuts this fundamental
theological claim of Christianity and represents what is perhaps the single most
theologically contentious aspect of his religious pluralism.
Reactions and responses in defense of a more traditional interpretation of the
divinity of Jesus have taken many forms. For example, in direct response to The
Myth of God Incarnate, Michael Green has attacked Hick's claim that the
attribution of divinity to Jesus was slow in developing over several generations of
early Christians by arguing on the basis of texts from the New Testament that the
early Christians who were contemporaneous with Jesus viewed him as divine. 49
Although he defends an inclusivist approach to the diversity of religions, Gavin
d'Costa argues, in direct response to Hick, that religious pluralism misconstrues
Christian theology by ignoring the doctrine of the trinity. so D'Costa maintains that
proper understanding of the doctrine of the trinity will preserve the divinity of
Jesus as God incarnate but, at the same time, allow for the continual disclosure of
God in history in different forms through the Holy Spirit. S!
Of course, the different competing and conflicting theories of Christology,
spread across a wide spectrum, have created an uneasy tension within Christianity
for centuries. Part of what makes it difficult for Christian Protestants to respond to
Green (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans, 1977); The Myth of Christian Uniqueness, edited
by John Hick and Paul Knitter (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1987); Christian Uniqueness
Reconsidered, edited by Gavin D'Costa (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1990); and Gavin D'Costa,
Theology and Religious Pluralism (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), pp. 26ff.
48 See "Publisher's Note to the American Reader," in The Truth of God Incarnate, edited by Michael
Green.
49 Michael Green, "Jesus in the New Testament," in The Truth of God Incarnate, pp. 17-57.
50 Gavin D'Costa, "Christ, the Trinity and Religious Plurality," in Christian Uniqueness
Reconsidered, edited by Gavin D'Costa, pp. 16-29.
51 Ibid., p. 17.
385
Hick's "myth of God Incarnate" is the lack of any single dominant understanding
of the exact meaning of the claim that Jesus was "the Son of God." For example,
the virgin birth theory competes with the adoption theory. On the spectrum of
different theories about the nature of Jesus, however, the "myth" of Jesus as God
Incarnate is certainly on one extreme end. 52 The interest in pluralism has
undoubtedly prompted. renewed interest in and concern with theories of
Christology.
THE PHENOMENAL WORLD AND THE NOUMENAL WORLD
Of more interest for this volume is the philosophical basis that Hick provides for
developing his religious pluralism. He relies explicitly upon Immanuel Kant to
draw what is a fundamental distinction between the phenomenal world and the
noumenal world. Hick attributes this distinction to Kant; however, aside from
using the same terminology, there is little about the way in which Hick draws and
uses the distinction that is Kantian. As we have seen above, Hick uses the
distinction between the phenomenal and the noumenal to introduce the distinction
between the phenomenal "Real as humanly experienced" according to different
culturally conditioned religious traditions and the noumenal "Real in itself." Hick
explains that he intends to incorporate what he understands to be a basic Kantian
epistemological principle he describes as establishing "that we are always aware of
reality beyond ourselves in terms of the sets of concepts which structure our own
cognitive consciousness.,,53 Hick's "religious extension" of Kant's distinction is
the basis for his claim that "the different religious traditions, with their different
conceptual systems, methods of worship or meditation, and life-styles, nourished
as they are by different scriptures and supported by their respective communal
matrices, constitute the 'lenses' through which different human faith-communities
variously perceive the divine Reality.,,54 So Hick explicitly establishes an
epistemological distinction between first -order and second-order claims made by
religious believers based upon the distinction between the Real in itself and the
Real as experienced by human beings. First-order, noumenal Real in itself is
supposed to be manifested through the second-order, phenomenal experiences of
different religious traditions. Hick claims that "the noumenal world exists
independently of our perception of it and the phenomenal world is that same world
as it appears to our consciousness.,,55
Philip Quinn has suggested two models for understanding Hick's claim that the
Real is manifested in different phenomenal experiences within different religious
traditions. These are the disguise model and the construct mode1. 56 According to
the disguise model, we are to understand the noumenal Real as disguised by
whatever phenomenal appearance it makes, as a prince might be disguised as a
52 For a detailed treatment of the reactions of Hick's suggested move from a Christ-centered to a
theos-centered religion, see Paul Knitter, No Other Name?, Chapter 9. For a detailed treatment of the
development of early Christology, see C. F. D. Moule, Origin of Christology (Cambridge: Cambridge
53 John Hick, Problems of Religious Pluralism, p. 92.
54 Ibid.
56 Philip Quinn, "Towards Thinner Theologies," pp. 229-30.
386
pauper. According to the construct model, the noumenal Real might be

experienced as a landscape is experienced through a painting. However, as Quinn
correctly points out, Hick must assume that in neither case can noumenal Real, the
Real an sich, be experienced - through the disguise or the construct - as it is in
itself. 57 If none of the phenomenal manifestations of the Real are privileged in the
sense of accurately or truly representing the Real, then all of the phenomenal Reals
experienced in different religious traditions are equally efficacious. This
assumption is what separates Hick from the exclusivists, and his only basis for
making this assumption is his use of the Kantian noumenal-phenomenal
distinction.
A KANTIAN DISTINCTION?
Hick represents his distinction between phenomenal experience of the Real and
the underlying noumenal Real, the Real an sich, as one that is based upon and
borrowed from the Kantian distinction between noumena and phenomena. Hick
claims that he simply modifies Kant's distinction slightly and extends it to
religious experience. However, the way in which Hick draws the distinction is
hardly the result of simply a slight modification of Kant, and the resulting
distinction and the application to which Hick puts it are thus not Kantian at all.
Hick is certainly correct that Kant's epistemology, which is built around the
categories of the pure understanding, is both complex and controversial,58 but it is
not so complex and controversial that it lends itself to the kind of interpretation and
use that Hick wishes to impose upon it. Hick's distinction between the phenomenal
and the noumenal is a distortion of the way in which Kant drew the original
distinction. For Kant, the noumenal world is one whose "existence" is established
completely by a transcendental argument based solely upon reason. Sense
experience is delimited by the categories of the understanding, so sense experience
can never tell us anything about things in themselves, the noumena, not even that
they exist. Noumena can only be defined negatively for Kant. Noumena are simply
things that are never objects of sensuous intuitions (sense experience); they are not
in any way positive. 59
WHAT WE CAN AND CANNOT KNOW AND SAY ABOUT THE REAL
Hick introduces a distinction between formal and concrete statements and
maintains that it is possible to make purely formal statements that provide no
information about or description of the noumenal Real. However, the supposedly
formal statements that Hick considers do wind up saying a great deal about the
noumenal Real. On Kantian grounds, for example, one could not legitimately
claim, as Hick does, that in our experience we are "always aware of reality beyond
ourselves in terms of the sets of concepts which structure our own cognitive
consciousness." Nor could one legitimately claim, as Hick does, that the different
cultural and religious "lenses" allow us to "perceive the divine Reality." On the
contrary, none of the a priori categories of the understanding can be applied to the
Ibid., p. 230.
John Hick, An Interpretation of Religion, p. 240.
59 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, translated by Norman Kemp Smith (New York:
Macmillan, 1963), B 307 and A 252.
57
58
387
noumenal world at all, according to Kant, and the objects to which we attribute our
sensible experiences can never be noumenal objects. We never perceive anything
about the noumenal world, according to Kant; nor do we perceive the noumenal
world "indirectly" by perceiving the phenomenal world.
Treating the salvific power of the different religious traditions as equally
efficacious seems to require treating the noumenal Real as if it were a single,
noumenal reality, even though Hick recognizes that it is possible the noumenal
Real is a multiplicity. Hick defends his presumption that the Real an sich is
singular by appealing to simplicity. He claims that a singular noumenal Real is
simply the most simple hypothesis to explain religious pluralism. 60 But this
proposal runs into difficulty for several different reasons. As Quinn notes,
philosophers of science take simplicity to be simply a pragmatic virtue and no
guarantor of truth, but secondly, the claim that the noumenal Real is singular is
obviously a substantive claim. If Hick is willing to appeal to theoretical
considerations to justify this claim, then what is to prevent the use of different
theoretical considerations to justify other substantive claims?61 The claim that the
noumenal Real is singular is also obviously a substantive claim that relies upon the
use of Kant's categories of the understanding, but these categories apply only to
the mind's operations involving sensuous intuitions (sense experiences). Thus, we
cannot properly think of the noumena as individual objects (and hence the Real an
sich as a singularity), since that would involve the use of the category of unity.62
This circumvention of the limitations and restrictions that Kant places upon the
proper use of his categories is what enables Hick to make the significant move of
describing the underlying divine reality as "the Real" (in the singular). This is the
fundamental thesis of Hick's treatment of religious pluralism: treating different
religious traditions as incorporating different phenomenal experiences of the same,
underlying noumenal Reality and thereby providing alternative, but equal, salvific
opportunities.
Furthermore, using the Kantian distinction between phenomena and noumena,
we would never be permitted to say, as Hick does, that the noumenal, divine
Reality "manifests" itself in phenomenal experience. "Manifesting" would
apparently be most closely related to causality, another of Kant's a priori
categories of the understanding. Attempting to apply the a priori categories of the
understanding outside the realm of sensuous intuitions is, for Kant, one of the most
fundamental philosophical mistakes one can make. When Hick departs from Kant
in very fundamental ways, he simply says that "we do not need to follow Kant at
this point.,,63 But, as Hick surely recognizes, the Kantian categories are part of an
elaborate system for which Kant provides an elaborate series of arguments. When
one plucks at the thread of the categories of the pure understanding and stretches
them beyond the scope of sense experience, Kant's entire epistemological fabric
begins to umavel.
John Hick, An interpretation of Religion, p. 248.

Philip Qninn, "Towards Thinner Theologies," pp. 232-33.
62 See Kant's Table of Categories, B 106, in his Critique of Pure Reason.
63 John Hick, An interpretation of Religion, p. 242.
60
61
388
FURTHER DIFFERENCES BETWEEN HICK AND KANT

Given the kinds of claims that Hick wishes to make about the divine Reality, he
would be well advised not to appeal to Kant at all, and although Hick
acknowledges some of the differences between Kant and himself, he does not
appear to understand or appreciate the full impact of those differences. 64 For
example, Hick suggests that he is making the case for the role of the noumenal
within religious experience in a way that is simply an extension or an analogy to
the way in which Kant makes the case for the role of the noumenal within sense
experience. However, as J. William Forgie has correctly noted, the categories of
the understanding, for Kant, are a priori and universal and structure all sense
experience for all human beings, while the categories of religious experience are
culturally and historically relative. 65 This is certainly a significant and fundamental
difference between the way in which Kant draws the distinction and the way in
which Hick draws it. The difference between Kant's a priori and universal
categories and Hick's culturally conditioned "lenses" has been lost for at least
some of Hick's supporters. For example, in describing religious pluralism, Joseph
Runzo says that it is characterized by
the Kantian epistemic notion that all experience, and so all religious experience,
is structured by the (culturally and historically conditioned) worldview of the
percipient. 66
But of course, such a view - that our perception is "culturally and historically
conditioned" - is not a Kantian view at all and is, in fact, completely antithetical to
Kant. This is a seriously mistaken representation of Kant. Hick's commitment to
the importance of the role of these culturally and historically conditioned "lenses"
of religious experience creates such a gulf between the noumenal world and the
phenomenal world that it is doubtful it can ever be bridged. As Forgie correctly
notes, the Kantian categories are the basis for the judgments that we make about
our phenomenal experience. The Kantian categories do not, as Hick suggests,
affect the actual phenomenal experience itself;67 however, Hick's cultural and
historical lenses filter the ways in which people actually experience phenomena.
There are additional differences between Kant's view and Hick's. Hick's
extension of Kant's epistemology based upon the categories of the understanding
and the distinction between phenomena and noumena is not neo-Kantian or hyperKantian or even non-Kantian, but rather, seems to be anti-Kantian. Hick claims
there is no problem in "seeing religious and sense experience as continuous in
kind, thereby extending Kant's analysis of the one, in an appropriately adapted
form, to the other.,,68 But religious experience is either perceptual or
See ibid., pp. 242ff.
Ibid., pp. 243-44; J. William Forgie, "Hyper-Kantianism in Recent Discussions of Mystical
Experience," Religious Studies, Vol. 21, no. 2, 1985, pp. 205-18.
66 Joseph Runzo, "God, Commitment, and Other Faiths: Pluralism Versus Relativism," Faith and
Philosophy, Vol. 5:4, October 1988. Reprinted in Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology, edited by
Louis P. Pojman (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1998), p. 552.
68 Ibid., p. 244.
64
65
389
nonperceptual. On the one hand, if religious experience is perceptual, resulting

from ordinary sense experience, then, in a Kantian view, the a priori and universal
categories of the understanding are in place and are the bases upon which we make
judgments about our phenomenal experiences. On the other hand, if religious
experience is nonperceptual, resulting from some divine revelation or immediate
contact with the divine by the use of some special religious intuition that provides
an awareness of the underlying noumenal, divine Reality, then the a priori
categories cannot even come into play, but this kind of possibility is certainly not
Kantian. We could then not make any judgments at all about such "non-perceptual
experience." In fact, Kant explicitly denies such a view, and his reason for doing so
is the fundamental meaning behind his choice of the title Religion within the Limits
of Reason Alone. So, in neither case can the Kantian view be extended to ground
religious experience. Hick has consistently relied upon religious experience as his
basis for his claims about the existence of the noumenal, divine Reality; however,
to the extent that religious experience is different in any way from just plain,
ordinary sense experience, the view is not Kantian. 69
HICK'S RESPONSES TO CRITICISMS
Hick is certainly aware of the difficulties involved in affirming anything about
the noumenal world. He says:
Thus it [the noumenal, divine Real] cannot be said to be one or many, person or
thing, substance or process, good or evil, purposive or non-purposive. None of
the concrete descriptions that apply within the realm of human experience can
apply literally to the unexperienceable ground of that realm. For whereas the
phenomenal world is structured by our own conceptual frameworks, its
noumenal ground is not. 70
Having recognized the self-imposed limitations upon what we can properly say
or claim to know about the noumenal Real, Hick immediately violates those
limitations. Whereas Kant attempts to be careful and consistent about severely
restricting what can be claimed for the noumenal world, Hick eventually attributes
a great deal of information to the noumenal Real. He uses his distinction between
"concrete" and "formal" descriptions to maintain that Anselm's description of God
as "that than which no greater can be conceived" can be properly applied to the
noumenal Real. 71 But if such a description is apodeictic, then it relies upon the
Kantian category of necessity and cannot be applied to noumena. Hick also claims
that the Real manifests itself in human consciousness and is experienced by human
beings as a range of both theistic and nontheistic phenomena. 72 Although Hick
admits that the usual divine attributes cannot be applied literally to the noumenal
Real, he maintains that the Real is "reflected and refracted within human thought
and experience" in ways which are analogically captured by the divine attributes.
69 One possible way of avoiding these criticisms is resorting to William Alston's notion of
nonsensory perception. For a discussion of Alston, see Chapter N.
70 Ibid., p. 246.
71 Ibid.
72 For this claim and the following, see Hick, ibid., pp. 246-49.
390
The value of analogical or mythological language to talk about the noumenal,

divine Real is to be found, according to Hick, in its "practical truthfulness." The
truth of a myth or an analogy is determined by whether it relates human beings to
the noumenal Real properly by capturing "an authentic manifestation" of the
Real. 73 In his later work, Hick qualifies his earlier claims about what can
legitimately be said or known about the Real. In The Rainbow of Faiths, apparently
in order to avoid objections about attributing too much information to the Real,
Hick replaces "that than which nothing greater can be conceived" with the
following description of the Real: "that which there must be if religious
experience, in its diversity of forms, is not purely imaginative projection, but is
also a response to a transcendent reality.,,74 But in order to have this property, even
if it is purely a formal property, the Real must have other substantial properties, as
William Rowe has pointed OUt. 75 Furthermore, we can raise the same objection
concerning this description as we raised concerning Anselm's, because if this
property is an apodeictic one, then, again, it involves applying one of the categories
of the pure understanding, the a priori category of necessity, to the Real.
It is clear that, in order to make such claims, Hick must exceed not only Kant's
limitations upon what can be properly said about noumena but his own limitations
as well. One could never maintain that there could be a sensible distinction
between authentic and inauthentic manifestations of the Real without attributing to
the Real some properties in terms of which such a distinction could be drawn.
Finally, there is a significant irony when we reconsider the theological
motivation that led Hick to religious pluralism - the universal salvific will of God.
In light of the phenomenaVnoumenal distinction, it is clear that such a claim about
God's beneficence must be on the phenomenal level of what certain religious
believers believe about God. There can be no grounds for maintaining that such a
universal salvific will characterizes the noumenal, divine Reality. Since in terms of
any content or descriptions of the Real we must remain on the level of the
phenomenal religious experience, such a claim about the universal salvific will of
God must be one of those characteristics of the divine that are conditioned by
cultural lenses. It is difficult to see how Hick can avoid a situation in which
everything that is said about the Real is true or accurate only within the religious
traditions that are constructed on the phenomenological level and that are also
culturally and historically conditioned. Consequently, there will be a universal
salvific will according to some phenomenal accounts and no such universal salvific
will according to others. Unless the universal salvific will can somehow be
attributed to the noumenal Real and understood as manifested through the different
phenomenal accounts of the Real, there is no reason to regard the various
phenomenal accounts as equally salvifically efficacious. Thus, one of the major
theological motivations for Hick's development of religious pluralism appears to
be undermined by the theory itself.
Ibid., p. 248.
John Hick, The Rainbow of Faiths (London: SCM Press, 1995), pp. 59-60.
75 For further discussion of the problem of applying predicates to Hick's notion of the Real, see
William L. Rowe, "Religious Pluralism," in Religious Studies, Vol. 35, 1999, pp. 144-50.
73
74
391
THE PROBLEM OF REFERENCE

Why does Hick evoke the Kantian distinction between phenomena and noumena
if he ultimately characterizes the noumenal, divine Real in ways that are not
permitted on Kantian grounds? The answer is that Hick must attempt to make his
basic assumption of the existence of the divine Real as plausible as possible, and
he must try to keep the assumption from appearing to be completely arbitrary. Hick
is very clear about the importance of this assumption for his religious pluralism
when he says that "the divine noumenon is a necessary postulate of the pluralistic
religious life of humanity.,,76 Without the "postulate" of the divine noumenon, it
would not be possible to account for the variety of different religious experiences
from different religious traditions as being experiences of the same Reality. But
this is hardly a "necessary" postulate; that is, the postulate of the divine noumenon
is not logically forced upon us by the variety of different religious traditions. One
could deny, as the atheist does, that any such reality exists; or one could maintain,
as the exclusivist does, that only certain religious experiences from a single
religious tradition are really "authentic" experiences of God. 77 Therefore, we
should view Hick's use of the Kantian distinction as an attempt to provide some
philosophical legitimacy to his "postulate" of the divine noumenon; however, in
the end, by grounding his claim about the divine Reality in the Kantian distinction,
more problems are created than are solved.
A major philosophical difficulty created by Hick's distinction between the
phenomenal religious traditions and the noumenal divine Reality is the problem of
explaining how we are to account for the reference of the many different referring
expressions that occur in the diversity of religious traditions in terms of a single
referent, the Real. And, as I have argued above, such a claim would not be
permitted on Kantian grounds. "The noumenal, divine Real" in Hick's postulate is
singular, so some account must be provided to explain how we are to understand
the claim that the multifarious referring expressions all refer to the same entity or
object. 78 Unless some adequate philosophical account can be given to account for
how it is that different religious traditions all refer to the same individual referent
by the use of different referring expressions, then religious pluralism would seem
to have very little claim to being a philosophically grounded position. The theory
of reference is thus crucial to the theory of religious pluralism.
REFERENCE AND THE REAL
Unfortunately, the theory of reference has a long history of very difficult
problems of its own - quite independent of any connection with religious pluralism
or the philosophy of religion. Also, unfortunately for the advocates of Hick's
particular brand of religious pluralism, Hick's adoption of the
phenomenainoumena distinction results in even more problems by creating an even
greater chasm between the referring expression in the language of the phenomenal
"manifestations"of the Real and the noumenal, divine Real itself.
John Hick, An Interpretation ojReligion, p. 249.

See ibid., p. 249.
78 See ibid., p. 248.
76
77
392
In the different religious traditions upon which Hick focuses, there are many
different referring expressions that Hick takes to refer to the same underlying,
noumenal, divine Reality - for example, "God," "the Holy Trinity," "the God of
Israel," "Allah," "Shiva," "Vishnu," and so forth. Even within a single religious
tradition, God is referred to in a number of different ways using a number of
different referring expressions such as 'the Creator,' 'the God of Abraham,' and
'God the Father.' Also, as Hick recognizes, in different religious traditions God is
sometimes referred to in personal or impersonal ways.79 The various descriptions
and characteristics upon which all of these different referring expressions are based
are numerous, varied, and in some cases, obviously conflicting. However, no
matter how varied and conflicting all of these different referring expressions are,
they all, according to Hick's version of religious pluralism, refer to the same,
identical, divine Real.
Hick's use of the story of the blind men and the elephant cited above iJIustrates
this point nicely. Each blind man, though using a different description from the
others, still supposedly refers to the "real" elephant. 80 I will call Hick's claim that
the different referring expressions found in the world's different religious traditions
all refer to the same underlying noumenal, divine Reality "the single referent
hypothesis.,,81 What theory of reference might make the single referent hypothesis
plausible? I will consider both the descriptivist and causal theories of reference to
determine whether the single referent hypothesis is tenable. 82
THE DESCRIPTIVIST THEORY OF REFERENCE AND THE REAL
According to the descriptivist theory of reference, which has dominated the
philosophy of language since the time of Frege and Russell, successful reference
takes place when there is some individual that satisfies certain minimal
descriptions, characteristics, or predicates contained in or associated with the
referring expression. 83 Thus, in the proposition 'The coffee cup is on my desk,'
whether or not the expression 'the coffee cup' refers depends upon whether a
referent exists that satisfies certain characteristics of being of a certain size, design,
and material. In order for a referring expression to refer successfully to a referent
on a descriptivist account of reference, at least some of the crucial descriptions of
the referent must be true, and in order for us to identify different referents for
different referring expressions, certain descriptions must be true of some
individuals but not true of others. To use an example with some biblical
See ibid., p. 245.
See above and John Hick, Problems of Religious Pluralism, p. 37.
<I See James F. Harris, "Individuating Gods," International Journalfor Philosophy of Religion, Vol.
40, 1996,p. 15.
82 For a treatment of the problem of reference in a more general context of religious experience, see
ibid., pp. 1-18; and Peter Byrne, Prolegomena to Religious Pluralism (New York: St. Martin's Press,
1995), Chapter 2. Also see the discussion of reference in the context of William P. Alston's theory of
religious experience based upon direct reference in Chapter lV.
83 There are, of course, significant difficulties that arise in theories of reference concerning the ways
in which proper names and descriptions differ, and there is a long history and a great volume of
literature about the ways in which these differences have been treated. I will simply use the more
generic expression "referring expressions," sinee for the purposes here, it docs not matter whether the
expressions in question are regarded as proper names or descriptions.
79
80
THE PROBLEM OF REUGIOUS PLURALISM
393
significance, the referring expression 'the brother of Moses,' refers to Aaron, and
the referring expression, 'the brother of Aaron' refers to Moses. According to the
descriptivist account of reference, we can identify the different referents for
different proper names or different descriptions because of "the principle of
identifying propositions" that allows us to determine the referent by determining
which ofthe essential descriptions apply to which individual. 84
So if 'God' refers to some individual, it must be, on descriptivist grounds,
because some of the descriptions associated with the name 'God,' such as being the
Creator, are true of that individual. It is difficult to see how a descriptivist theory of
reference could ever provide a theoretical framework within which the single
referent hypothesis could be satisfied for religious pluralism. Peter Byrne claims
that successful reference to the underlying, noumenal, divine Real on descriptivist
grounds would "rely upon finding a description of the alleged, common focus to
the religions which was both rich enough to be clearly identifying and yet shared
by all the [different religious] traditions.,,85 If Byrne means that we must find a
single such description currently in use among religious traditions, then finding
such a description seems definitely out of the question. Since the different
descriptions found in various religious traditions vary so widely, it is unlikely that
Hick will ever identify a single referring expression that will be acceptable to all
religious traditions. But this is expecting too much of Hick. Since his hypothesis
regarding religious pluralism is deeply revisionary, he does not have to determine
that actual referring expressions, currently in use in different religious traditions,
do the referring to a single Real. He might construct a referring expression or
several referring expressions to do the job if he is able to develop a plausible case
that such referring expressions capture the intended meaning and reference of the
different expressions from the various religious traditions.
There is also a more fundamental reason why a descriptivist account of
reference cannot work with the single reference hypothesis, even if we consider
this hypothesis in the context of providing a revisionary account of religious
reference. The underlying, noumenal, divine Real, as described by Hick, is both
unknown and unknowable. Admittedly, Hick is not consistent in the way in which
he treats the noumenal, divine Reality, but, theoretically at least, this is the status of
the noumenal. With Hick's story of the blind men and the elephant, the reader is in
the position of being able to see (or imagine) the complete, "real" elephant and
thus understand that the different descriptions the blind men give are all
descriptions of the same individual and that consequentially they are all referring to
the same object. Also, theoretically, the different blind men can move around the
elephant and feel different parts of it, so eventually, they could each gather
evidence to support the single referent hypothesis so far as the elephant is
concerned. In contrast, no one is ever in the position (comparable to the position
enjoyed by the reader in the story of the elephant and the blind men) to determine
that the different descriptions of God, the noumenal, divine Real are true, and a
fortiori, no one is ever in a position to move around and observe different parts of
84
85
See Keith Donnellan, "Speaking of Nothing," Philosophical Review, 1974, no. 83, pp. 14ff.
Peter Byrne, Prolegomena to Religious Pluralism, p. 35.
394
the noumenal, divine Real to determine that different descriptions of it are true of
the same individual.
Admittedly, the Real is a postulate for Hick, but if the postulate is to be
coherent, then we must at least be able to explain how the single referent
hypothesis is to be understood. While comparing different religious traditions to
address the question of whether anyone tradition is better than others, Hick
attempts to address the problems generated by the single referent hypothesis. He
first suggests that it is commonplace for us to have different referring expressions
with the same referent, as illustrated by Frege's famous example of "the morning
star" and "the evening star" (both of which refer to Venus) and by Russell's
equally famous example of "Scott" and "the author of Waverly" (both of which
refer to Sir Walter Scott).86 However, this proposed "solution" has the same major
difficulty as I noted with the example of the divine elephant. While we are in a
position to see Venus and Scott to determine that the different referring expressions
are, indeed, referring to the same individual in each case, no one is in such a
position in respect to the noumenal, divine Reality. There is also the additional
problem, which Hick recognizes, that, in the case of the descriptions of the
noumenal, divine Real from the different religious traditions of the world, we are
faced not simply with different descriptions but with mutually incompatible
descriptions. 87
The possibility that a descriptivist account of reference can ever provide a
framework that will support the single referent hypothesis is extremely unlikely.
We might narrow the gap between referring expressions and their referents by
focusing upon the experienced phenomena. However, if the different referring
expressions that occur in the different phenomenal accounts of the Real in the
different world religions refer to the experienced phenomena, then we are left with
no reference to the underlying noumenal, divine Reality. On the other hand, if the
references are to the noumenal, divine Reality, then we could never determine that
successful reference has taken place given the restrictions upon what we can know
about the noumenal Real and Hick's claim that the descriptions of experienced
phenomena do not truly characterize the noumenal Real.
THE CAUSAL THEORY OF REFERENCE AND THE REAL
The causal account of reference (also known as the historical account) denies
the fundamental claim of the descriptivist account that reference is determined by
some description, characteristic, predicate, or other content of the referring
expression. Instead, successful reference, according to the causallhistorical account
of reference, is determined by whether there is an individual at the end of a
historical, causal account of the use of a particular referring expression. The causal
theory denies the principle of identifying propositions and denies that successful
reference is determined by the referent satisfying any description or possessing any
86 John Hick. Disputed Questions in Theology and the Philosophy of Religion (New Haven, Conn.:
Yale University Press, 1993), pp. 152-53.
87 Ibid., p. 153. See especially footnote 2. Neither will Keith Donnellan's distinction between the
attributive and referential uses of definite descriptions permit successful reference to the noumenal,
divine Reality. See James Harris, "Individuating Gods," pp. 9ff.; and Peter Byrne, Prolegomena to
Religious Pluralism, pp. 4Off.
395
property or characteristic. Rather, on the causal theory of reference, successful

reference is determined by the history of how a particular referring expression has
been used within a linguistic community. The use of the referring expression is
traced to an initial "baptism," where some speaker originally used the referring
expression in question to refer to a specific individual. 88
In order to identify the referent of any referring expression on the causal account
of reference, one must examine the history of the use of the particular referring
expression in question and tell a story that ends by establishing a causal connection
between the initial use of the referring expression and some individual. The causal
connection then continues from the initial baptism of the referring expression
through its different uses to the present case. One important consequence of the
causal connection is that successful reference to a specific individual may take
place even if none of the descriptions, or predicates, or characteristics attributed to
that individual is actually true. 89 The difference between the descriptivist theory
and the causal theory can easily be illustrated with the case of the name 'Moses.'
Suppose that we were to discover that none of the descriptions which have been
commonly attributed to Moses and associated with the use of the name 'Moses'
(for example, being placed in the bulrushes, being raised in the house of the
Pharaoh, leading the Israelites from Egypt, or parting the Red Sea) is actually true
of the individual who was originally dubbed with the name 'Moses.'9o The
descriptivist theory would then have us say that reference fails; that is, there is and
was no Moses. However, the causal theory would have us say that there was indeed
a Moses, but none of the things that we have previously thought to be true of him is
really true of him.
Both Richard Miller and William P. Alston have championed the causal theory
of reference for use with religious language in certain circumstances (discussed in
Chapters II and IV).91 Miller and Alston suggest that the use of the causal theory of
reference provides a philosophical framework within which an account can be
given for how different referring expressions from different religious traditions
might all be explained as having a single referent - Hick's single referent
hypothesis. Initially, the causal theory of reference seems to hold great promise for
religious pluralism, since it allows for the distinct possibility that the uses of
different referring expressions in different religious traditions might all refer to the
same single, divine Reality even if the content or descriptions of those referring
expressions are not true of the Reality to which they refer. The causal theory also,
unlike the descriptivist theory, can account for how different conflicting referring
expressions can refer to the same individual.
Saul Kripke, Naming and Necessity (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1972), pp. 95ff.
Ibid., p. 61ff.
90 See James F. Harris, "The Causal Theory of Reference and Religious Language," International
Journalfor Philosophy of Religion, VoL 29, 1991, pp. 77ff.
91 If Moses did posses any of these characteristics, it would simply be a contingent matter of fact in
this actual world, and we can easily imagine some possible world, Kripke would say, where Moses
exists but in which he (the one and the same Moses) does not possess any of the characteristics that we
have attributed to him in this world. See Kripke, ibid., pp. 62-63.
88
89
396
DIFFICULTIES WITH THE CAUSAL THEORY OF REFERENCE

Just as there are difficulties with general descriptivist theories of reference, there
are several major difficulties with the causal theory of reference as a general theory
of reference. I cannot compare the relative merits of general theories of reference
here; however, special difficulties arise with the use of the causal theory of
reference within religious language - difficulties that bear particularly upon the
single referent hypothesis. In the first place, although it is theoretically possible,
under the causal theory, that all of the different referring expressions from the
different religious traditions of the world might refer to the same noumenal, divine
Reality, the practical possibility of ever establishing that all of the causal and
historical chains of the uses of the many different separate and disparate
descriptions of the divine all converge to a single individual seems nil. More
importantly, however, is the fact that the reference, if it is successful, takes place
completely independently of any content or description contained in or associated
with the referring expression. In practical terms, what this means is that, as Alston
maintains, even if nothing that different religious believers have ever said or
believed about the object of their worship is true, they are still worshiping God if
the referring expressions are linked to a causal chain within which the original
reference was to God. 92
The consequences of such a view seem to represent a high price to pay for
securing simply the theoretical possibility of univocal reference for the different
referring expressions used to refer to God. For example, in the cases of Judaism
and Christianity, even if none of the descriptions which have ever been attributed
to God through the ages - "creator of heaven and earth, righteous judge, merciful
redeemer, and so on" - are really true of the individual that has been worshiped
and addressed with these descriptions, then that individual is still God just because
that individual happened to be the individual that stands in the causal chain of the
use ofthe name 'God.'93
Suppose that Freud was right, and the origin of the use of 'God' was the result
of someone's internalized father figure very long ago. Then, using the causal
theory of reference, if that imaginary figure is the origin of the initial use of 'God,'
it is true that God exists; but God is simply an internalized father figure. However,
is this not exactly the circumstances under which we would normally say that God
does not exist - if there is no individual which possesses a central core of the
attributes normally regarded by theists as belonging to God? Byrne appears to be
right when he says that "whether two men worship the same thing or not depends
not so much on similarity in how they respond to that thing, but rather in there
being a sufficient similarity in what they say about that thing.,,94 If God exists but
is simply the internalized father figure of some person who lived long ago, then
what difference would there be between theism and atheism - between God
existing and God not existing?
See William Alston, ibid., p. 12l.

James Harris, "Individuating Gods," p. 6. Also see Chapter IV.
94 Peter Byrne, "John Hick's Philosophy of World Religions," Scottish Journal of Theology, 1982,
Vol. 35, p. 293-94. Quoted by Hick in Problems of Religious Pluralism, p. 107. Also compare Byrne,
Prolegomena to Religious Pluralism, p. 42.
92
93
397
Hick limits his presumption that phenomenal religious experience is authentic

and based upon the noumenal, divine Reality to the major religious traditions that
have lasted for long periods of time and have attracted large numbers of
believers. 95 However, if the causal theory is the basis for guaranteeing successful
reference to the noumenal, divine Reality, then what we call Satanic cults, religious
fanatics, and the like cannot be ruled out. When the members of such groups use
referring expressions, they may be referring to the noumenal, divine Reality, even
though, just like the members of the established religious traditions, nothing that
they attribute to God or Satan is really true. On what grounds are some
phenomenal religious traditions to be judged legitimate and others not? How are
we to determine that Muslims and Jews and Christians are worshiping the same
noumenal, divine Reality but that Satanists or early Greeks who worshiped Zeus
are not?
Hick maintains that "when we are confronted with a stream of religious life and
thought and experience that has persisted for many centuries, which has produced
inspiring scriptures and a rich succession of saints and prophets and profound
thinkers, and has provided a spiritual home in which hundreds of millions of
human lives have lived, then I think we have to assume that it represents a genuine
awareness of and response to the Eternal One [the Real].,,96 However, there are two
things wrong with this answer. First, are we to suppose that there is a certain
number of true believers a religious tradition must attract before it can be said to
contain "a genuine awareness" of the divine? And exactly how long must a certain
religious tradition persist to be a genuine representation of the Real? Are Jews,
Christians, and Muslims the only ones that can claim to have traditions that are
genuine representations of the Real? Hick is not consistent on this point. In his
discussion of some "primitive" religions (including that of ancient Egypt), he
suggests that these early, limited, culturally conditioned religions were all still
genuine "human awarenesses" of the divine reality.,,97 The problem is one of
determining whether or not different peoples, even very closely related ones, are or
were worshiping or referring to the same divine reality. Even providing a
theoretical framework within which such an investigation makes sense is an
extraordinarily complex and controversial matter that involves very arguable
claims about the meaning and reference of language,98 and exactly how one might
go about constructing such a framework (or even if one can go about constructing
such a framework) using the causal theory of reference is not clear at all. Secondly,
Hick seems to suggest that the good religious traditions are good because they are
salvifically efficacious in producing a transformation from self-centeredness to
Reality-centeredness; however, as I have already argued, there are no grounds for
supposing that the noumenal Real prefers such a transformation. Hick's answer to
the question of why some religious traditions are good while others are not cannot
be based upon claims about any of the supposed characteristics of the noumenal,
John Hick, Problems of Religious Pluralism, pp. 106-107.
John Hick, God Has Many Names (Philadelphia, Pa.: Westminister Press, 1980), p. 56.
97 Ibid., p. 51-52.
98 See, for example, Bowman L. Clarke, "Identity and the Divinities," International Journal for
Philosophy of Religion, 31, 1992, pp. 133-48; Patrick Shaw, "On Worshiping the Same God," Religious
Studies, 28,1992, pp. 511-32; and James Harris, "Individuating Gods," pp. 1-18.
95
96
398
divine Real and what we might be led to expect from different "manifestations" of
such a reality.
HYBRID THEORIES OF REFERENCE
Clearly, neither a straightforward descriptivist or causal theory of reference will
do for Hick's purposes. Peter Byrne has attempted to "reconstruct" reference in a
way that will accommodate religious pluralism by combining crucial aspects of the
descriptivist and causal theories. 99 Drawing upon examples from science, Byrne
suggests supplementing the causal theory with conceptual and linguistic categories
we use for securing reference to individuals that are not directly experienced.
However, the meaning or sense of the descriptions would not be regarded as
responsible for actually guaranteeing reference. Descriptions of individuals create a
context within which reference is possible and beyond which it is impossible. For
example, if, over some period of time different scientists or different religious
believers use similar descriptions to describe a certain phenomenon, then it
becomes understandable how it might be true that they are referring to the same
individual. When the descriptions are too different and disparate, then it becomes
understandable how it is unlikely that they are referring to the same individual. loo
Such a hybrid theory of reference might have various problems of consistency as a
general theory of reference, but some such combination of the descriptivist and
causal theories appears to hold the only promise as an adequate theory of reference
for religious pluralism.
Janet Martin Soskice has also advocated a hybrid theory of reference that
combines the descriptivist and causal theories. 101 Soskice recognizes that the
content or description associated with the name or description is important, but she
emphasizes the role of the causal connections of the uses of referring expressions
by insisting that "reference is determined by speakers in contexts of use, and not
simply by individual speakers but by communities of speakers whose language
provides access to the states and relations which are of interest to them.'"o2 Soskice
never abandons a version of the descriptivist theory; she simply supplements it
with the use of metaphor and the notion of speaker reference. Successful reference,
she insists, is a matter of speakers referring by the use of language within a
particular context. The importance of the context of use for Soskice for successful
reference clearly mitigates against Hick's notion of religious pluralism. In order for
religious believers to refer on Soskice's account of reference, a community of
speakers must develop uses of language that allow them to make such reference
successfully. If reference takes place within the contexts created by existing
religious communities using their different languages, reference must be to the
different phenomenal experiences of the members of these different communities.
Such a suggestion leads clearly away from pluralism and in the direction of
religious exclusivism.
See Peter Byrne, Prolegomena to Religious Pluralism, pp. 42ff.
Ibid., pp. 47-48.
IO[ Janet Martin Soskice, Metaphor and Religious Language (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), pp.
I 32ff.
102 Ibid., p. 132. Because of the limitations of the descriptivist theory, Soskice introduces the use of
metaphor for describing reality (discussed in Chapter IV).
99
[00
399
The emphasis here upon the problem of reference, and the very central position
this problem occupies in the controversies surrounding religious pluralism, is an
example of how the legacy of "the linguistic turn" in philosophy, which gave rise
to analytic philosophy and linguistic philosophy (see Chapters I and II), is still
being felt in the philosophy of religion. The claim of religious pluralism that
different religious traditions are all somehow worshipping the same God can only
be "unpacked" and understood in terms of how the different linguistic expressions
that occur in those traditions (and the different practices that are described in
language) are related to reality - one of the fundamental problems of analytic
philosophy of language. This is evident by the way in which Hick encapsulates the
fundamental thesis of his religious pluralism: God Has Many Names. 103 His central
claim focuses upon the use of proper names, so to understand and investigate this
claim, we must understand and investigate the theory of naming and reference
upon which it is based. In its very general form then, the problem of religious
pluralism brings to the foreground both the most fundamental methodologies and
the fundamental problems of linguistic analysis and the philosophy of language.
RECENT DEFENSES OF EXCLUSIVISM
Undoubtedly, the most telling criticisms of exclusivism have taken the form of
attacks based upon the apparently obvious consequences that the view has for nonChristians. These attacks presume what is called the "pluralistic spirit"l04 that is
considered to be the enlightened, tolerant, liberal, and informed view. In contrast,
exclusivism is described as "irrational, or egotistical and unjustified, or
intellectually arrogant, or elitist, or a manifestation of harmful pride, or even
oppressive and imperialistic." 105 Pluralists have succeeded in attaching to
exclusivism the same sort of negative connotation that relativists have succeeded in
attaching to non-relativistic theories of human knowledge and human reason.106
Since exclusivism must eventually be based upon some claim to privileged belief
or knowledge, it is painted with the same broad brush of the relativists who call
such positions of epistemic privilege "conceited, ignorant, superficial, incomplete,
and dishonest.,,107
Recently, Alvin Plantinga and Peter van Inwagen have both responded to these
attacks upon exclusivism.108 I will concentrate here upon a brief sketch of
Plantinga's response, since van Inwagen's response is more theological than it is
John Hick, God Has Many Names.
See John Cobb, "The Meaning of Pluralism for Christian Self-Understanding," in Religious
Pluralism, edited by Leroy S. Rouner (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), p.
171.
105 This list has been complied from the attacks of various pluralists by Alvin Plantinga. See his
"Pluralism: A Defense of Religious Exc1usivism," in The Rationality of Belief and the Plurality of
Faith: Essays in Honor of William P. Alston, edited by Thomas D. Senor (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell
University Press, 1995), pp. 194-95. Joseph Runzo has been especially critical of exclusivism. See his
article "God, Commitment, and Other Faiths: Pluralism vs. Relativism," Faith and Philosophy, Vol. 5,
1988.
106 See James F. Harris, Against Relativism: A Philosophical Defense of Method (La Salle, TIL: Open
Court, 1992), pp. 1-2.
107 Paul Feyerbend, Farewell to Reason (New York: Verso, 1987), p. 25.
lOS See Plantinga, ibid., pp. 191-215 and Peter van Inwagen, " Non Est Hick," in The Rationality of
Belief and the Plurality of Faith, edited by Thomas Senor, pp. 216-41.
103
104
400
philosophical. 109 The epithets used to describe exclusivism fall neatly into two
different categories. One line of attack upon exclusivism is on moral grounds, and
the other is on epistemic grounds. The moral complaints are reminiscent of the
debate at the beginning of the twentieth century between William James and W. K.
Clifford concerning the "ethics of belief." Christian exclusivists are described as
arrogant, egotistical, or conceited because they believe something (the uniqueness
of God incarnate in Jesus Christ) that other people do not believe. If we assume
that the grounds upon which Christians hold this belief are not grounds that are
going to convince non-Christians to share this belief, then if Christians continue to
hold this belief, it seems to be simply a case of personal arrogance.
Plantinga responds appropriately to such a charge by demonstrating that such
"arrogance" is simply the natural consequence of holding any belief;110 anytime a
person S holds a particular belief p to be true, then S must believe also that other
people who hold other beliefs that are incompatible with p believe something that
is false. Is this arrogance? If so, it is not an arrogance that is unique to religious
exclusivists. On any account of belief and knowledge on any grounds other than
those of extreme, radical epistemological relativism, to hold certain beliefs as true
is to exclude other beliefs as false. If beliefs are the kinds of things upon which
actions are predicated and by which actions are directed, then holding a particular
belief and being prepared to act upon it precludes holding or "tolerating" other,
conflicting beliefs. If this is an arrogance, it is a general epistemological arrogance
and not one that is peculiar to religious exclusivism. As Plantinga notes, "there is
no reflective attitude which is not open to the same strictures," and such charges of
arrogance are a "philosophical tar baby" that sticks to anyone who gets too close to
it (which means, in this case, anyone who holds any reflective, considered
judgment at all). 111
Such charges of arrogance apply equally to the pluralist. Consider what the
pluralist might say to the exclusivist (call this principle RP, for religious
pluralism): If a person S believes some proposition p that other people do not
believe, and S knows that there are other people who do not believe p but believe
something that conflicts with p, and S lacks any convincing evidence to persuade
those who disagree with S that S is correct in believing p, then S should not believe
p.112 But this principle of general epistemological tolerance establishes a very
severe condition that will apply to any belief in a situation where there is serious
epistemological disagreement. In fact, the religious pluralist is "hoist with his own
petard," since the principle RP is certainly a principle about which not everyone
agrees and for which there is yet no convincing evidence to convince those who
disagree. So it would seem that the religious pluralist would have to withhold
belief from the principle RP that is used to attack the exclusivist. 113 In conclusion,
[09 For example, van Inwagen bases his version of exclusivism upon the Barthian distinction
between Christianity and other religions by claiming that other religions are all "human creations,"
while Christianity is the unique and direct result of divine revelation. See van Inwagen, "Non Est Hick,"
pp.224ff.
no Alvin Plantinga, "Pluralism: A Defense of Religious Exclusivism," pp. 197ff.
III Ibid., p. 197.
112 This is an adaptation of the condition raised by Plantinga in ibid., p. 200.
113 See ibid., pp. 200-201.
401
on the point of the ethics of the belief of the exclusivists, there seems to be no
significantly different problems for holding such a belief than there are for holding
other beliefs about which there is serious disagreement.
THE ACCIDENT OF BIRTH
Another difficulty to be considered is the matter raised by Hick and others
concerning the way in which our accidental births affect the particular beliefs that
we hold. This is certainly true about our religious beliefs as well as most of the
other beliefs that we hold; however, as a general principle, if it is the case that a
person should give up or suspend judgment concerning such beliefs, then we
would have to give up most beliefs. What we would have to give up would include
not only religious beliefs but also, arguably, beliefs about the social sciences upon
which our knowledge of our place in the world and the differences that we might
have with other peoples are based. It certainly does not follow, as Plantinga
observes, that simply because a person would hold a different set of beliefs if that
person had been born elsewhere that the processes by which those beliefs were
produced are not epistemically reliable processes. 114
Furthermore, our "accidental births" will affect, among other beliefs, the beliefs
that we might have or develop concerning religious pluralism itself. For example,
if John Hick had been born to Buddhist parents in Thailand or in Madagascar to
parents of some primitive religion, then he probably would not be a pluralist. lls So
Hick's beliefs concerning religious pluralism are conditioned by his birth in the
same way as the religious exclusivist's beliefs are conditioned by his birth. But this
does not mean that either set of beliefs was produced by an epistemically
unreliable process. To claim such is to commit a genetic fallacy. Each set of beliefs
must be examined on the basis of epistemic justification and warrant, and the
religious exclusivist should not be denied the opportunity to conduct such an
examination because of the accident of birth any more than the religious pluralist
should be because of the accident of birth.
Other attacks upon exclusivism are based upon the epistemological
considerations concerning justification, warrant, and rationality, and Plantinga has
responded to each of these criticisms in turn. The epistemological notions of
justification and warrant are quite complex notions, and any attempt at brief and
general summaries must be, in the end, inadequate, but it must suffice here to
simply give a general summary of Plantinga's account (see Chapter IV). Plantinga
argues that the exclusivist is not under any epistemic duty to treat all competing
and conflicting religious beliefs on a par. If an exclusivist thinks that his beliefs are
true, then it is logical that he should think that those beliefs that conflict with his
own are false. Is the initial commitment to his own beliefs arbitrary, as Hick
claims? Plantinga's answer to this question is that on both intemalist and
externalist accounts of justification, the exclusivist might very understandably have
grounds for claiming that his own beliefs are epistemically justified and have
greater warrant than others have for beliefs that conflict with his own. The case of
the religious exclusivist is analogous to the case of the person who has moral
114
115
Ibid., pp. 211-12.

See ibid. and John Hick, An Interpretation of Religion, p. 2.
402
beliefs but realizes that there are those who have moral beliefs that are different
from his own. A person might be well aware that there are such other people in the
world, and that person might admit that he might be wrong in his beliefs. Still,
simply because there are other people in the world who think that they have
adequate or equal justification for their conflicting beliefs does not mean that
everyone should withhold assent to any beliefs at all or to grant blanket, general
epistemic approval to all beliefs. If such were the case, we would be required to
withhold belief regarding most matters.
For Plantinga, the reality of religious diversity might have an epistemic impact
upon the exclusivist by serving as an epistemic defeater for his beliefs; that is, the
increased detail that there are many people in the world who do not believe as I do
about a particular matter might serve to "undercut" my beliefs by reducing my
level of confidence in my beliefs. But of course, things do not have to happen this
way. It seems clear that a person might reasonably persist in holding a particular
belief even while recognizing that many other people disagree and even while
admitting that other people might have very good reasons for holding different
beliefs. 116
ALSTON AND RELIGIOUS PLURALISM
William P. Alston attempts to provide a rationale for improving the odds when
such a wager is made. He develops a theory of religious experience that is modeled
upon sense experience and that relies upon the legitimating influence of socially
established systems of doxastic practices. In the case of religious experience and a
person's perception of God, Alston recognizes the difficulty created by religious
pluralism and the competing doxastic practices for beliefs based upon mystical
experiences; thus he attempts to build a case for the reliability of the Christian
mystical practice (CMP) as a "background," "overrider" system for assessing such
beliefs (discussed in Chapter IV).ll7
Alston considers, but rejects, John Hick's attempt to defuse the apparent
differences among different religious traditions by using the Kantian distinction
between the noumenal Real and its phenomenal manifestations. 118 He concludes
that the apparent conflicts between different and rival socially established doxastic
practices are real differences that are logically incompatible and cannot be
explained away or vitiated. He regards this umesolved, logical conflict among rival
systems of socially established doxastic practices as the greatest challenge to his
account of religious perception and CMP. Because the conflict among rival
doxastic practices is uneliminative, it becomes impossible for Alston to give an
external justification of CMP. The challenge of religious diversity thus threatens
the rationality of CMP, since if it is only from within CMP that one can find good
116 The matter of comparing, or "grading," religions is much discussed in the literature. See, for
example, John Hick, "On Grading Religions," Religious Studies, 17,1982; Paul Griffiths and Dehnas
Lewis, "On Grading Religions, Seeking Truth, and Being Nice to People," Religious Studies, 19, 1983;
and John Hick, "On Conflicting TruthC1aims," Religious Studies, 19, 1983. The Hick articles are
included in his Problems of Religious Pluralism as Chapters 5 and 6.
117 William P. Alston, Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience (Ithaca, N.Y.:
Cornell University Press, 1991).
118 Ibid., pp. 264-65.
403
reasons for accepting CMP, and if each rival set of doxastic practices and the
beliefs generated by them are in the same epistemic position, then there appears to
be no reason for preferring CMP over rival sets of doxastic practices and Christian
religious beliefs over rival religious beliefs. 1l9 Since Alston grounds religious
beliefs in systems of socially established doxastic practices, the problem of rival
sets of doxastic practices must be addressed on that level. According to Alston, on
the level of socially established doxastic practices, we must give epistemic
preference to the long-standing, firmly established doxastic practices over the
short-lived, "idiosyncratic" doxastic practices. In terms of both beliefs about the
physical world and rival M-beliefs (mystical beliefs), Alston relies upon the notion
of "practical rationality." Doxastic practices that regulate and standardize the ways
in which we form beliefs are rational when those ways of forming our beliefs "are
established in our society and ... firmly embedded in our psyches.,,120 Suppose that
there are different cultures in which there are different doxastic practices that are
incompatible with one another but that are each pragmatically valuable in the sense
that different people rely upon these different practices in interacting with the
environment and with one another. Suppose also that each culture has produced a
very adequate physical science. If we are wedded to our own particular set of
doxastic practices, then, Alston concludes, in such a situation, the rational thing to
do is to stick with our own practice. He says:
In the absence of any external reason for supposing that one of the competing
practices is more accurate than my own, the only rational course for me is to sit
tight with the practice of which I am a master and which serves me well in
guiding my activity in the world. 121
Alston claims that the actual situation with respect to CMP is "precisely
parallel" to this imagined situation. Thus, he concludes, the only rational thing for
a practitioner of CMP to do is to keep doing what he is doing and continue to form
religious beliefs based upon CMP of which he is a "master."
Alston does not really argue for his conclusion that, in the circumstance where
one is faced with rival doxastic practices, the only rational thing for one to do is to
sit tight with one's own practice of which one is the master. Apparently, this is
supposed to be obvious on the basis of practical reason. But does this conclusion
follow? There is good reason to think that it does not. While it is easy to see that
rival doxastic practices threaten the rationality of CMP by being potential
defeaters, the issue is whether the challenge rises to the point of undermining the
claim that the only rational thing is for a person to stick with CMP when the rival
doxastic practices do not rise to the level of completely undermining the beliefs
produced on the basis of CMP.

Ibid., p. 168.
121 Ibid. pp. 273-74.
119
120
404
IS "SITTING TIGHT" WITH CMP THE ONLY RATIONAL THING TO DO?

William Wainwright has rightly pointed out that there is a significant difference
in the epistemic situations between a person U who is an unbeliever and a person B
who is already a believer and a practitioner of CMP. 122 According to Alston, if B is
rationally justified in sticking with CMP and its output beliefs, then U should be
rationally justified in believing the output beliefs represented to him by B, since
presumably U would recognize that B is rationally justified in believing the outputs
of CMP. However, as Wainwright correctly points out, U is in the same epistemic
position with respect to rival doxastic practices and their output beliefs (which are,
ex hypothesis, logically incompatible with CMP) as B is with respect to CMP
doxastic practices and its output beliefs. Thus, Wainwright thinks that the existence
of religious diversity seems to mean that an unbeliever should suspend judgment,
or perhaps more cautiously, we might say that the existence of religious diversity
means that it is not irrational for an unbeliever to suspend judgment. In other
words, there is no compelling reason, on Alstonian grounds, for an unbeliever to
commit to CMP rather than sticking with some competing set of beliefs produced
by some competing set of doxastic practices. This consequence raises a rather
pessimistic outlook for natural theology in general and for conversion of any kind.
Alston's claim, however, addresses the situation of Christian believers who are,
by whatever means, already believers and who already accept the output beliefs of
CMP. Here, there are other difficulties. Alston's argument is intended to show that,
whatever the difficulties are that might be posed by religious diversity to CMP,
they do not rise to the level of being defeaters of CMP or to the level of
undermining the prima facie rationality of accepting the beliefs produced by CMP.
This is what lies behind his claim that "the only rational course" for a practitioner
of CMP is to "sit tight." Thus, Alston seems to set up a "fight or switch" dilemma.
Philip Quinn criticizes this conclusion of Alston's as a false dilemma. There is,
according to Quinn, a third alternative that is rational for a practitioner of CMP. He
argues that it is reasonable for a practitioner of CMP to attempt to revise CMP
when faced with evidence of rival beliefs and doxastic practices (as well as other
independent evidence that might conflict with CMP). One would then work toward
attempting to have one's revised CMP become socially established. 123 Quinn
makes his point by using an analogy regarding sense perception (SP) first proposed
by Alston. 124 We might imagine two different cultures, one of which is Aristotelian
in terms of its practices regarding sense experience, so that sense experience is
regarded as consisting of experiences of discrete, physical objects in space. The
other culture is more Whiteheadian, so that sense experience is of connected spacetime volumes. If we further suppose that each of these sense perception
background practices function equally well in terms of allowing their practitioners
122 William J. Wainwright, "Religious Experience and Religious Pluralism," in The Rationality of
Belief and the Plurality of Faith, edited by Thomas Senor. Page numbers refer to reprint in The
Philosophical Challenge of Religious Diversity, edited by Philip L. Quinn and Kevin Meeker (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 220.
123 Philip L. Quinn, "Towards Thinner Theologies: Hick and Alston on Religious Diversity," pp.
240-01.
124 See William P. Alston, Perceiving God, pp. 273ff.; and Quinn, ibid., pp. 240ff. The comparison
of CMP and SP is treated at some length in Chapter IV.
405
to interact with each other and their environments and if each supports welldeveloped science, then, according to Alston, the only rational thing for members
of each culture to do is to "stick to their guns." However, Quinn suggests, if the
members of the Aristotelian culture learn, for example, that the perception of color
is mind and medium dependent, then they might very well revise their strict
Aristotelian practice in the direction of a more Kantian practice that incorporates
the difference between phenomenal appearances of objects and things in
themselves. In this situation, the Aristotelians might well decide "to modify the
functions of ... [their] sensory practice so that they map sensory inputs onto
doxastic outputs about the appearances of things ... but not about how things really
are."\2S The Aristotelians would thus work from within to change their background
doxastic practice and then work to see that the changes became socially accepted.
The same is true, Quinn thinks, "by parity of reasoning" for CMP. Although it is
rational for Christian believers to "sit tight" with CMP, it is also rational for them
to revise CMP in the face of rival religious doxastic practices. Quinn concludes
with what amounts to a synthesis of Hick and Alston as follows:
Hence, I think it would be rational for a knowledgeable and reflective Christian
to revise CMP from within in ways that are designed to bring it into line with a
Kantian understanding of Christian belief of the sort expressed by some refined
pluralistic hypothesis and to try to get CMP thus revised socially established. 126
Quinn's suggestion is thus an attempt to "loosen up" strict exclusivism and move it
more toward an inclusivism with promise of (or at least the theoretical possibility
of) a universal ecumenism.
What are we to make of Quinn's position? I have just two brief comments to
make. First, as Quinn recognizes, his approach will appeal only to those Christians
who are willing to accept "thicker phenomenologies and thinner theologies.,,127 But
those Christians do not need Quinn's urging to "thin out" or "loosen up" their
theology; they are already so disposed. Alston does not show such a disposition.
He wants to retain as much of the central core of traditional Christian theology as
possible; so, it seems, Quinn is probably "preaching to the choir." It is doubtful
that his argument will have much of an effect upon more hardcore exc1usivists or
to Alston. Why will it not fare better with Christians who intend to stick with a
thicker theology? The answer is found in a second problem with Quinn's
suggestion, which is a more serious difficulty. Quinn, in parity of reasoning with
Alston's parity of reasoning, builds his case for the revision of CMP from within
on the basis of the analogy with sense perception and the revision from within of
an Aristotelian practice regarding sense perception upon the discovery of the
phenomenal aspect of color. However, what could possibly be a comparable,
independent "discovery" that might trigger the revision of CMP from within for
Christians who hold fast to a thick theology? Quinn is more optimistic about such a
possibility than seems warranted. Science has a self-correcting mechanism built
125
Philip L. Quinn, "Towards Thinner Theologies," p. 241.
Ibid., p. 242.
127 Ibid., p. 242.
126
406
into the scientific method; however, the difficulty is that CMP has a self-protection
mechanism for defending a thick theology. As I argue in Chapter IV, religious
authority plays an important role both in establishing the practices that comprise
CMP and in adjudicating claims about religious experiences. Quinn's suggestion
requires that some independent evidence be regarded as a defeater of at least some
beliefs based upon CMP, but arguably there is no independent evidence
comparable to the discovery of the phenomenal aspect of color, which would be
acceptable to many Christian believers, upon which CMP would then be revised.
There is a lesson from Quine's holism here. Some people will hold onto a belief
and refuse to revise it "no matter what" and "come what may." In the end, Quinn's
position seems to face the same dilemma that is at the heart of the difference
between exclusivists and inclusivists. For exclusivists, there are some peripheral
beliefs that may be negotiable and revisable, but there are core beliefs that are not.
Quinn's example involves scientists discovering the phenomenal aspect of color.
This is a substantial discovery that would have a major impact upon the
fundamental nature of the practices regarding sense perception in the Aristotelian
culture and the core beliefs of the people of that culture. However, for Alston,
CMP functions in a way that will not recognize any such threatening, independent
"discovery," and the core beliefs of CMP appear to be immune to the kinds of
serious revisions that are necessary for Quinn's suggestion to work.
INCLUSIVISM
In the latter part of the twentieth century, inclusivism, as a response to religious
diversity, was most closely identified with Roman Catholicism and specifically
with the Second Vatican Council. The position adopted by the Catholic Church in
its statement "Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian
Religions" now serves as a blueprint for an inclusivist approach to the world's
religions. 128 Since Vatican II, several scholars have recognized and emphasized the
close identity between inclusivism and Roman Catholicism. 129
Inclusivism attempts to stake out a middle ground between exclusivism and
pluralism. Inclusivists side with the exclusivists by maintaining that the revelation
of God in Christianity is unique because of the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ.
Because of this uniqueness, salvation can come about only through Christ, and the
inclusivists align themselves with the exclusivists on this score. At the same time,
inclusivists accept the universal salvific will of God emphasized by Hick and align
themselves with the pluralists in denying that God would allow all those peoples of
the world of different religious beliefs to perish. The attempted synthesis of these
two ostensibly disparate claims requires some imaginative efforts.
One of the more noted inclusivists of the latter half of the twentieth century was
Karl Rahner, who was so influential upon the actual substance of Vatican II that he
128 "Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions," from Vatican n, is
reprinted in Christianity and Other Religions: Selected Readings, edited by John Hick and Rain
Hebblethwaite (philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980), pp. 80-86.
129 See, for example, Alan Race, Christians and Religious Pluralism, Chapter 3; and Paul Knitter,
"No Other Name?" Chapter 7. Knitter identifies inc1usivism as "the Catholic model," pp. 120ff. For
disagreement, see D'Costa, Theology and Religious Pluralism, p. 80ff.
407
has been called its "chief engineer" 130 and its "major architect."l3l Rahner's version
of inclusivism has come to serve as the standard version that others attack, modify,
or elaborate upon. I will provide here only a very brief summary of the theological
basis for Rahner's position.132 Reflecting the obvious influence of German
idealism,133 he claims that human nature, in acts of cognition, is characterized by a
kind of "openness" to unlimited being; that is, a condition of understanding any
single thing is to understand that that single thing is different from every other
thing. In terms of religious concerns, human beings have what has been described
as a "pre-reflective" and "pre-apprehension" awareness of unlimited being - that
is, God - which Rahner identifies as "transcendental revelation.,,134 Because of the
natural openness that human beings have to God as a part of human nature, people
actually experience the grace of God in various kinds of aesthetic or interpersonal
experiences that involve human free choice whether we are aware of it or not.
Thus, whereas exclusivists distinguish between the divine revelation found in
Christianity and other religions on the grounds that the one is divinely revealed
while the others are merely "human creations," Rahner denies such a sharp
distinction and maintains that being "merely human" does not mean being
separated from the grace of God since all human beings have a natural openness to
the divine. The grace of God is thus present to human beings in many different
ways and in many different circumstances outside Christianity and the Church.
Thus, other, non-Christian religions are not simply the source of natural knowledge
of God; they also contain "supernatural elements arising out of the grace which is
given to men as a gratuitous gift on account of ChriSt.,,135 Rahner's understanding
of God's universal salvific will means that it was intended for the millions of
people who lived before Jesus and the millions who lived after him who never
knew or understood the Christian gospel.l 36 Human beings thus have a natural
relationship with God, which Rahner terms the "supernatural existential," simply
by virtue of being human and not as the result of organized religion or some
religious tradition.
At the same time, Rahner holds fast to the exclusivist belief that salvation comes
only through Jesus Christ. He still embraces the universal salvific will of God, but
he insists that "Christianity understands itself as the absolute religion, intended for
all men, which cannot recognize any other religion beside itself of equal right.,,137
The uniqueness of Christianity is because of the uniqueness of Jesus Christ, God
incarnate, but everyone is blessed by the saving grace of God, Christian and nonPaul Knitter, ibid., p. 125.
Alan Race, Christians and Religious Pluralism, p. 45.
132 For detailed treatments of Rahner, see Race, ibid., Chapter 3; Paul Knitter, No Other Name?,
Chapter7; and Gavin D'Costa, Theology and Religious Pluralism, Chapter 4. The most succinct version
of Karl Rahner's view appears in his "Christianity and the Non-Christian Religions," which appears in
his Theological Investigations (London: Darton, Longman, and Todd, 1966), Vol. 5, pp. 115-34.
133 Rahner studied Kant under Heidegger at Freiburg.
134 Gavin D'Costa, Theology and Religious Pluralism, p.81. The summary discussion of Rahner here
is based upon D'Costa, ibid., pp. 81-96; Alan Race, Christians and Religious Pluralism, pp. 43-50; Paul
Knitter, No Other Name?, pp. 125-30; and Karl Rahner, "Christianity and the Non-Christian Religions."
135 Karl Rahner, ibid., p. 121.
136 Ibid., pp. 122-23.
137 Ibid., p. 118.
130
131
408
Christian alike, because Jesus came to save all people. To synthesize these two
notions of the universal salvific will of God and the uniqueness of the incarnation
of God in Jesus Christ, Rahner emphasizes the difference between Christ and the
organized Church. Salvation, he insists, is through the grace of God, not the
Church. He thus coins the phrase "anonymous Christian" to be used to describe
those people of different world religions who might have experienced the grace of
God through their own religious traditions, though they have never seriously
encountered Christianity. An anonymous Christian is one who, according to
Rahner, "has experienced the grace of God ... [and] has already accepted this grace
as the ultimate, unfathomable entelechy of his existence by accepting the
immeasurableness of his dying existence as opening out into infinity.,,138 For
Rahner, the claim that pre-Christians and non-Christians can all equally share the
salvation that comes through the grace of God because of the death and
resurrection of Jesus means that "the Church will not so much regard herself today
as the exclusive community of those who have a claim to salvation but rather as the
historically tangible vanguard and the historically and socially constituted explicit
expression of what the Christian hope is present as a hidden reality even outside
the visible Church.,,139
REACTIONS TO RAHNER
Many of the criticisms of Rahner and of Vatican II are based more upon
theological disputes than they are upon philosophical argumentation and have to do
with views about the nature of the Roman Catholic Church and God's relationship
to the Church. I will focus here upon the more philosophical disagreements and
criticisms.
John Hick complains that Rahner is simply trying "to have it both ways" by
embracing both the uniqueness of the incarnation of God in Jesus and the universal
salvific will of God. 140 However, to continue on the metaphorical level, this
criticism amounts to a case of the pot calling the kettle black, since, as we have
seen earlier in this chapter, Hick plays fast and loose with Kant's notion of the
noumenal in order to "have it both ways." Nevertheless, Hick does have a
legitimate point. It would be just as reasonable, he claims, "to label devout
Christians as anonymous Muslims, or anonymous Hindus, as to label devout
Hindus or Muslims as anonymous Christians.,,141 When confronted with the
suggestion of such a possibility, Rahner admits that, in terms of "social
awareness," Christianity is different from other, non-Christian religions, but, he
thinks, fundamentally and "correctly understood, to be a genuine Zen Buddhist [for
example] is identical with being a genuine Christian.,,142 Maintaining such an
inclusivist view of different religious traditions while, at the same time, relying
138 Ibid., p. 131. For a detailed treatment of the theological foundations for Rahner's notion of
anonymous Christian, see Paul Knitter, No Other Name?, pp. 128ff.; and Gavin D'Costa, Theology and
Religious Pluralism, pp. 83ff. For Rahner's recent elaborations upon the notion of an anonymous
Christian, see his Theological Investigations, Vol. 14, 1976, Chapter 17, and Vol. 16, 1979, Chapter 13.
139 Karl Rahner, "Christianity and the Non-Christian Religions," p. 133.
140 John Hick, God Has Many Names, p. 27.
141 Ibid.
142 Karl Rahner, Theological Investigations, 1979, Vol. 16, p. 219.
409
upon the theological belief in the incarnation of God in Jesus to establish the
uniqueness of Christianity puts an unbearable strain upon Rahner's version of
inclusivism. Hick regards these unusual machinations as simply another epicycle that is, an arbitrary adjustment to the general theory in an attempt to accommodate
new and conflicting data or views. 143 It appears that there is no way for Rahner to
avoid the charge of arbitrariness without replying upon revelation and theology,
and then the argument will proceed along theological rather than philosophical
lines. Hick is right that the very concept of an anonymous Christian is bound to be
insulting to a non-Christian who is pictured as an "invincibly ignorant man" who
belongs to "the invisible church."I44
Hans Kung has been one of the more forceful critics of Rahner's version of
inclusivism. Kung calls Rahner's notion of an anonymous Christian a "theological
fabrication" and accuses Rahner of trying to get non-Christians into the "back door
of the 'holy Roman Church.",145 Such a suggestion, Kung argues, is sure to
antagonize the members of non-Christian religious traditions and cut off the
opportunity for discussion and dialogue, since non-Christians are bound to be
insulted by Rahner's description of them as anonymous Christians. 146 However, in
the end, Kung also wants to have his cake and eat it too. Attempting to vitiate the
insult that is likely to result from Rahner's notion of anonymous Christians, Kung
insists that a people will be saved with the religion that is possible for them given
the historical and cultural situation in which they live. However, he distinguishes
between the generic, brand X form of salvation, "the general way of salvation,"
and the "very special and extraordinary" kind of salvation that comes through
Christianity.147 It appears that the generic, "general way" of salvation is a
temporary form of salvation that somehow protects non-Christians until they can
get the legitimate and "extraordinary" form of salvation that they can find only in
Christianity.148 In the end, we are left in no better position by what Hick would call
Kung's "epicycles" than results from Rahner's brand of inclusivism. All of the
epicycles and semantic differences notwithstanding, there is no definite, clear-cut
ploy for winnowing out the essential wheat from the inessential chaff when
comparing the different world religions.
There are at least two other, more serious problems with Rahner's version of
inclusivism, both of which center upon the interaction between Christianity and
non-Christian religions. The first problem arises from the fact that the notion of
universal grace is not present in all religious traditions but only in what Rahner
calls "lawful religions." Now there is obviously a major difficulty in describing (in
a nonarbitrary way) exactly what might be meant by the notion of a "lawful
143 John Hick, God Has Many Names, p. 34. The reference to the adjustment as an epicycle is Hick's
continuation of his earlier use of the dispute between Ptolemaic and Copernican astronomy as an
analogy for the conflict between pluralism and exclusivism. See above in this chapter and ibid., pp. 3139.
144 Ibid., p. 34.
145 Hans Kling, On Being a Christian (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1976), p. 98.
146 Ibid.
147 Hans Kling, "The World's Religions in God's Plan of Salvation," in Christian Revelation and
World Religions, edited by 1. Neuner (London: Burns and Oates, 1967), p. 52ff.
148 Although this distinction between different kinds of salvation was made in one of Kling's early
articles, in On Being a Christian, he never addresses this issue and so never repudiates the distinction.
410
religion." This is a rather crucial point, since it is only the members of "lawful
religions" who are regarded by Rahner as enjoying the universal grace of God. So,
again, we have the same problem as we encountered with Hick's pluralism: the
problem of separating the religious sheep from the religious goats. Rahner admits
that the notion of a lawful religion admits of differing degrees and that, in some
cases, if a religion is "wrong in its deepest and most specific being," then it is not a
lawful religion, and the grace of God is not then at work in such a religion. 149 But
such judgments and distinctions obviously raise significant problems. On exactly
what grounds and using what content and substance of what religious tradition are
such judgments to be made? It is obvious that Rahner intends for Christianity to be
the basis for judging "lawful religions"; however, giving such priority to
Christianity seems to push him back into the camp ofthe exclusivist. For example,
fundamentalist Islam advocates violence, but so did Joan of Arc. Witchcraft and
voodoo use the forces of good and evil on people, objects, and events, but many
Christians believe that religious icons and prayer do the same thing. Any good
philosopher can blur the distinction between Christianity and the other, "lawful,"
non-Christian religions and make this distinction unusable for Rahner's purposes.
The second problem that arises from trying to understand the relationship
between different religions on Rahner's theory is the one of determining exactly
what would constitute a legitimate encounter with Christianity by members of
other, non-Christian religious traditions. According to Rahner, members of
"lawful," non-Christian religious traditions will be saved unless they "encounter"
Christianity and then reject it; however, just how much does a person have to learn
about Christianity and from what sources must one learn it in order for the
encounter to be a legitimate one? As we have seen above, Kling has objected that
Rahner's inclusivism would be insulting to members of other religions and would
therefore interfere with attempts at developing dialogue. But the more serious
problem is that Rahner's version of inclusivism would undermine one of the main
reasons for dialogue. If everyone understands and adopts Rahner's inclusivism,
then, since everyone will be saved anyway because of God's universal grace
bestowed upon all mankind, why would there be any reason to pursue dialogue
among the members of the different religious traditions? For Christians, it would
seem to be a lot of wasted effort, since those whom they intend to save are already
saved, and why would any sincere Christian then engage in any missionary work?
Non-Christians are at considerable more risk by being exposed to Christianity,
since if they do have a genuine encounter and then reject Christianity, they will be
damned. If Christians are genuinely concerned about saving non-Christians, then
the best thing that they could do would be to leave them alone. Since nonChristians are assured of salvation unless they encounter Christianity and then fail
to respond appropriately, why should any reasonable person risk being damned by
engaging in dialogue with Christians?
CONCLUSION
Like many of the other problems that have been faced by contemporary analytic
philosophy of religion, "the problem of religious pluralism" is ancient in its origin;
149
Karl Rahner, Theological Investigations, Vol. 5, pp. 125 and 127.
411
however, the problem came to occupy a central location in the philosophy of

religion in the last half of the twentieth century as the plethora of books and
articles on religious diversity, pluralism, exclusivism, and inclusivism attest. I have
shown at the beginning of this chapter how the sources for such increased interest
and attention are deeply seated in the changes that took place in philosophy and the
social sciences during the same period. With the increased contact among different
cultures and the increased information that is now easily available concerning
different religions, the problem of religious diversity and reactions to it will
undoubtedly continue to dominate much of the philosophy of religion well into the
twenty-first century. Certainly, more and more attention is now being given to the
effect of religious diversity upon the philosophy of religion as evidenced by the
new designations such as "cross-cultural philosophy of religion," "comparative
philosophy of religion," "world theology," "the theology of world religions,"
"global theology," "philosophies of religion," and even "the Christian theology of
world religions." Ironically, the central questions raised by religious diversity and
the question of the proper responses to such diversity must eventually lead back to
the kind of philosophical considerations discussed in the early chapters of this
volume. Inevitably, questions concerning the meaning of central words and phrases
in different religions, questions about the truth of various, differing religious
claims, and questions about the referents of different referring expressions must all
be considered. The matter of making meaningful comparisons and evaluations of
different claims will be a fundamental issue. Wilfred Cantwell Smith has proven to
be right about the importance of language in the philosophical investigation of the
different world religions. Attention to fundamental issues in the philosophy of
language, such as a criterion for meaningfulness and the problem of reference,
cannot be avoided.
For any progress to be made beyond where we are now in handling the
problems raised by religious pluralism, and in order to avoid extreme relativism,
some understanding and some judgments must be made about the relative merits of
different claims made by believers of different religions. This means that some
progress must be made in dealing with the matter of religious truth. For the
comparison and evaluation of different religious traditions to take place, there must
be some way of determining and assessing competing truth claims that come from
these different traditions. This means that we must arrive at some agreement
concerning explicit and definite criteria for evaluating such claims and resolving
competing claims. At the moment, although several scholars have suggested
different approaches to this problem (and, in some cases, explicit criteria), there is
no wide agreement about such criteria, the need for such criteria, whether such
criteria can be objective, or even the possibility of such criteria. 150 Some will
maintain that we simply must continue to "muddle through." However, further
progress in the future in the study of cross-cultural philosophy of religion seems to
depend upon some progress in making judgments and evaluations concerning
150 See, for example, essays by Ninian Smart, William Wainwright, and Mary Ann Steger, in Part IT
of Religious Pluralism and Truth: Essays on Cross-Cultural Philosophy of Religion, edited by Thomas
Dean (Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1995); Keith Yandell, "Religious Experience and Rational
Appraisal," Religious Studies, VoL 8, 1974; John Hick, "On Grading Religions," Religious Studies, Vol.
17,1981.
412
different religious claims made within different religious traditions. It is in this area
that I predict the most important work will be done in the next century. Otherwise,
cross-cultural philosophy of religion will simply amount to replowing the same
fields that have already been tilled repeatedly. 151
151 It is possible, of course, that no progress will be made in determining the status of competing
religious truth claims, and we will have to simply admit that religion is a subject about which
reasonable people will continue to disagree.
x.
Summary And Conclusion
Analytic philosophy of religion is a predominantly English-speaking enterprise

and, hence, a predominantly Western enterprise. It is distinguished both by the
particular topics, issues, and problems addressed and by the philosophical method
used, and the main focus has been on the particular problems and issues generated
by and of importance to theism. Analytic philosophy of religion has gone through
several very distinctive phases of development, which are the result of the more
fundamental phases that analytic philosophy itself has gone through as well as
various developments in science. In this volume, I have identified the
developments in contemporary analytic philosophy of religion and situated these
developments in the broader philosophical context in which they have taken place.
I have also described the various issues and problems generated by those developments and examined critically the positions taken by the major figures in the field.
Analytic philosophy is a rich and varied philosophical development that is
identified by a group of Wittgensteinian family resemblances regarding the nature
of the proper methodology for philosophical inquiry and the nature of the kind of
philosophical problems and issues that can be the proper objects of philosophical
inquiry. There are similarities and differences to be found amongst analytic
philosophers and differences in the similarities and similarities in the differences.
What commonality there is amongst analytic philosophers can be explained in
terms of some common agreement concerning the fundamental importance of the
role of language and linguistic analysis in philosophical inquiry. We can at least
say that such an agreement characterized what has been a dominant part of what is
now called "analytic philosophy" - especially since the time of Wittgenstein.
While this may not sound like much, it is hard to say much more without
provoking disagreement from one quarter or another of the analytic tradition. There
is also a certain kind of conceptual reductionism that is built into the very notion of
analysis, which involves an investigation that proceeds through a breakdown or
division of the matter under scrutiny into its constituent parts.
THE RISE OF ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY
It is possible, however, to trace a fairly uncontroversial historical development
of analytic philosophy, as I have done in Chapter I, and to identify the main
philosophical sources and figures that influenced that development. It is also
413
414
possible to identify fairly definite phases in this development, each of which

influenced the philosophy of religion in very different ways. The ancestry of
contemporary analytic philosophy lies in eighteenth-century empiricism (especially
that of Hume) and in the new developments in logic that occurred in the nineteenth
century (especially those of Frege). At least equally important, and perhaps even
more important, was the rejection of absolute idealism, which had dominated
British philosophy for much of the nineteenth century. In the earliest phase of the
development of analytic philosophy, just after the turn of the twentieth century, the
attack upon absolute idealism, which cleared the path for the development of later
phases of the analytic movement, was led by G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell in
England and by the American pragmatists. Moore led the way and focused upon
what we now call "conceptual analysis," which focuses upon the meanings of
terms, phrases, and propositions. Russell was quick to follow Moore with his
logicism, based upon the logical language and system developed with Whitehead
in Principia Mathematica. In retrospect, the ramifications of this early phase of the
development of analytic philosophy for the philosophy of religion are now very
evident even if they were not so evident at the time. If the system of Principia
Mathematica is complete and consistent, then it provides the beginning point for an
expansion to a single logical system that would be adequate for providing a
complete description of the world in which every single meaningful proposition
would be contained. By developing such a system, Russell saw himself as rescuing
mathematics from the metaphysical grounding that idealists gave to mathematics.
His influential theory of descriptions continued in the same vein by analyzing
proper names and descriptions in a manner that was ontologically frugal and
reductive. By the end of the second decade of the twentieth century, a watershed
had been reached where the dominant philosophical influence in the Englishspeaking world was no longer absolute idealism. The philosophical climate had
changed in a way that was quickly to become unfriendly and even hostile to the
philosophy of religion as it had been known and practiced.
This first phase of the rise of analytic philosophy eventually led to what Gilbert
Ryle has called the "Revolution in Philosophy"! and what Richard Rorty has called
the "Linguistic Turn."2 In a broader sense, this "revolution" and "turn" was a
revolution from idealism and abstract, metaphysical speculation and a turn toward
realism, empiricism, and common sense. Attention to the problems of
meaningfulness and reference were pushed to the forefront of philosophical
inquiry, and philosophical progress was measured in terms of the adequacy of
theories regarding the proper analysis of proper names, descriptions, reference
failures, and legitimate propositions. Common sense replaced metaphysical
speculation, and logicism replaced a priori reasoning.
THE ATTACK ON METAPHYSICS AND THEOLOGY
The effects of this revolution in philosophy upon the philosophy of religion
were immediate and far-reaching and were to shape the agenda for analytic
Gilbert Ryle, The Revolution in Philosophy (London: Macmillan, 1957).
Richard Rorty, The linguistic Turn (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967). There is much
disagreement about exactly when and with whom the linguistic turn began. Some think that it began as
early as Frege, at the end of the nineteenth century; others claim that it began with Wittgenstein.
1
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
415
philosophy of religion to the present day. The main influence came through
Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and the Vienna Circle. 3 In the
Tractatus, Wittgenstein maintained that the only purpose of philosophy was
analysis. He also continued the attack upon metaphysics and provided an account
of mathematics and logic in terms of tautologies that were regarded as cognitively
meaningless and uninformative. Even the metaphysical claims of the Tractatus
itself fall upon the same rigid standard and are thus meaningless, and even the
possibility of metaphysics or theology is denied.
These major themes (philosophy as analysis and the rejection of metaphysics)
were adopted and developed by the members of the Vienna Circle into what was
the most radical and influential attack by analytic philosophers upon metaphysics
and theology in the twentieth century (and the philosophy of religion as it was then
practiced). The attack upon theology came about via the attack upon metaphysics.
The musings of metaphysics were to be abolished since they were not legitimate
propositions and were regarded as cognitively meaningless. Philosophy was taken
to be primarily a matter of analysis, and the analysis of metaphysical claims including the claims of theism - revealed that they are cognitively meaningless.
Thus, the matter of cognitive meaningfulness came to the forefront of analytic
philosophy along with attempts to construct a criterion of cognitive meaningfulness
through the use of verification. Although there were many competing versions of
the verification criterion of meaning, theism and claims about the existence and/or
nature of God faired poorly on all accounts. Analytic philosophy of religion came
to be dominated by various permutations upon the basic challenge to the
meaningfulness of religious language and various permutations upon attempts to
defend that meaningfulness. This early phase of analytic philosophy was thus
responsible for focusing analytic philosophy of religion on the problem of religious
language and the problem of cognitive meaningfulness.
Although the logical positivism of the Vienna Circle proved to be short-lived,
the notions of verification and falsification, along with the problem of the
meaningfulness of religious language, came to dominate the debate between theism
and atheism. The problem of religious knowledge was considered to be derivative
and dependent upon the "first-order" problem of meaningfulness and inextricably
interwoven with religious language. A new form of atheism emerged, according to
which the claim that God exists was not regarded as demonstrably false but simply
as cognitively meaningless. The main point of contention between theists and
atheists thus came to revolve around the question of the cognitive meaningfulness
of religious language. Some analytic philosophers defended religious language by
attempting to show how religious utterances can be understood as cognitively
meaningful while others abandoned the claim to the cognitive meaningfulness of
religious language in favor of a special sense of religious meaningfulness.
One group of analytic philosophers who do not fit comfortably into this scheme
are the followers of the later work of Wittgenstein who regard the dispute between
3 Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, translated by D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuinness (London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1961).
416
the cognitivists and the noncognitivists as an illegitimate dispute. Since languagegames are autonomous, the grammar of religious language is unique, that is, it is
used in ways that are determined simply by the conventions of the language-game.
These Wittgensteinians insist that the philosopher should not impose any
normative notions upon religious language but should simply "leave everything as
it is" and look to see what the grammar of the language-game really is. When
theists affirm the existence of God, they are simply affirming something about the
way in which things in the universe exist. Thus, it is claimed, theists and atheists
may not contradict one another regarding ontology. Religious belief and "playing
the religious language-game" are regarded as adding a depth and quality to a way
of life that give a different understanding of the universe and one's place in it.
However, there is a serious problem involved when a philosopher examines the
grammar of a language-game and attempts to "leave things as they are." She must
ensure that she is, in fact, simply describing the conceptual mapwork of the
language-game, which comprises the grammar, and not imposing any normative or
revisionist interpretation upon that grammar. When disagreements arise about the
nature of the grammar of religious language-games, there is no clear way to
determine how those disagreements can be objectively resolved.
PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS AND THE COHERENCE OF THEISM
Further evidence of the impact of the view that the proper function of
philosophy is analysis and the clarification of concepts is the attention given by
analytic philosophers of religion to the unique set of characteristics that are
attributed to God within theism. Although many of these attributes have been
philosophically vexing for centuries, the additional scrutiny that results from the
sharpened tools of linguistic and conceptual analysis as practiced by analytic
philosophers raises new difficulties for understanding the individual characteristics
of God as well as new difficulties for explaining the coherence of the set of those
characteristics. A coherent concept of God is fundamental to traditional theism,
and much recent debate has centered around the difficulties in understanding the
various attributes of God that give substance to that concept.
The additional scrutiny that has resulted from both the paradox of the stone and
the paradox of omnipotence has led to an understanding of the attribute of
omnipotence that is more refined and, in most cases, more restrictive than earlier
treatments of this concept. Similar kinds of refmements have been introduced into
the discussion concerning the attribute of omniscience. The apparent conflict
between divine foreknowledge and human free will seems to create a dilemma for
the theist in which either God's knowledge or human free will must be restricted in
some way. One way of putting the restrictions on the concepts of omnipotence and
omniscience (if indeed these are considered restrictions) is to say that God can do
anything that it is logically possible to do and that God can know anything that it is
logically possible to know. In effect, this means that God can do everything that is
doable and can know everything that is knowable. Exactly how what is doable and
what is knowable are explained is what then becomes the subject matter of debate
and the target of philosophical analysis.
Attempting to explain the coherence of the concept of God has also led to a
continued investigation of how God is related to time and the implications of that
417
relationship. Some have developed contemporary versions of Boethius's view that

God is timeless and metaphorically "outside" time4 while others have insisted that
such a view is inconsistent with the part of God's nature according to which God
loves human beings and cares for us. Regarding God as timeless preserves the
Neo-Platonist view of God and the metaphysical attributes of God - in particular
God's immutability and simplicity. However, the central view of Christianity of
God as love and Jesus as Redeemer seems to require that God be deeply and
genuinely affected by human and animal suffering. Determining exactly how God
may be affected by suffering can only be done by developing a view of divine
agency that is, at least metaphorically, based upon human agency. One must make
sense of how a divine, noncorporeal spirit can have states of consciousness,
intentions, and emotions in order to make sense of how God may interact with and
be affected by the events in this world. The dominant mind-body dualism view of
persons does not work very well in this context, and recent attention has been
devoted to making the notion of divine agency a coherent one and to developing
alternative views of the nature of personal agency. In the end, such attempts may
generate as many new questions as they answer, and the problem of developing a
coherent concept of God's nature and divine agency is still as vexing as ever.
DEVELOPMENTS IN SCIENCE AND ARGUMENTS FOR THE
EXISTENCE OF GOD
One of the most significant changes that has taken place in recent discussions of
natural theology involves the ways in which the different arguments for the
existence of God are to be regarded. Analytic philosophy is well informed by and
heavily influenced by the developments taking place in science, and these various
new developments in science from the late nineteenth century and the twentieth
century - particularly in biology and physics - are particularly influential in
shaping contemporary natural theology. Neo-Darwinianism has come to dominate
biology as big bang theory has come to dominate physics. Within natural theology,
the result of these developments has been a general reversal of the priority of the
teleological and cosmological arguments for the existence of God. Whereas the
teleological argument had dominated nineteenth-century natural theology, the
cosmological argument has come to dominate recent natural theology. The reason
for this reversal of fortunes of the two arguments can be accounted for in terms of
the relative explanatory scopes and limits of evolutionary theory and big bang
theory. The enormous explanatory power of evolutionary theory means that, for the
first time, it has become at least plausible to appeal to a scientific theory to account
for the existence of design in the universe (or the appearance of design in the
universe). The mechanistic naturalism of the nineteenth century, which still did not
provide an account of design and thus encouraged deism, gave way to a dynamic
naturalism and evolution by natural selection, which provides a completely natural
accounting of design (or apparent design). At the same time, the explanatory power
of big bang theory is limited to the period immediately following the big bang
itself and allows theists to ask the obvious question "What caused the big bang?"
Physics cannot penetrate the theoretical limit know as Planck time. The result is
4
Eleanor Stump and Norman Kretzmann. "Eternity." Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 78, 1981.
418
that the inability of science to provide an explanation of how the ordered cosmos
came from the unordered chaos of the initial singularity leaves an opportunity for
the theist to provide such an explanation using the cosmological argument. At this
point, it is safe to say that natural theologians using the cosmological argument are
at least on equal footing with physicists using big bang theory in accounting for the
ultimate explanation for the existence of the universe.
DEVELOPMENTS IN LOGIC AND THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
The last few decades have seen a resurgence of interest in the ontological
argument for the existence of God. Charles Hartshorne and Norman Malcolm
claimed that Anselm actually had two different versions of the ontological
argument and that his second, modal version of the argument has been neglected
by scholars. 5 As a result of Hartshorne and Malcolm's redirecting attention to the
ontological argument, several different modal versions of the ontological argument
have been recently developed. These modal versions of the argument trade upon
the insight that necessary existence is a superior mode of existence to contingent
existence and that mere contingent existence would be a defect in a perfect being.
One of the principle consequences of this modal interpretation is to show that the
most forceful version of the ontological argument is immune to Kant's criticism
that existence is not a predicate.
Alvin Plantinga is responsible for developing what has become the best-known
modal version of the ontological argument. Plantinga correctly identifies the
fundamental deficiency of the revised modal versions of the ontological argument:
even if God's existence is determined to be possible, this means that God
necessarily exists in some possible world, but that possible world may not be this
actual world. Plantinga's modal proof proceeds on the basis of the assumption that
a being with maximal excellence has certain properties (the usual properties
attributed to God) in a given possible world and that it is possible that there is a
being with maximal greatness who has maximal excellence in every possible
world. According to S5, if God has maximal greatness in any possible world, then
"God has maximal greatness" is necessarily true in that possible world. However,
if this claim is necessarily true in any possible world, then it is necessarily true in
every possible world, including this one; thus, there must be a being with maximal
greatness in this actual world (as well as all other possible worlds). Although
Plantinga thinks that his assumption that maximal greatness is a legitimate
predicate that is actualized in every possible world, he maintains that it is not
necessary to prove that this assumption is actually true. He maintains that,
minimally, it is rational to accept his assumption regarding maximal greatness and
that it is therefore rational to accept belief in God's necessary existence.
Central to the assessment of these new modal versions of the ontological
argument is what I call the possibility of modal peifection, that is, the possibility
that a modally perfect being exists (or, in Plantinga's terminology, the possibility
that there is a being with maximal greatness). How this modality is regarded will
be a function of whether necessary existence is regarded as a legitimate predicate,
5 Charles Hartshorne, The Logic of Perfection (LaSalle, ill.: Open Court, 1965), and Norman
Malcolm, "Anselm's Ontological Arguments," Philosophical Review, Vol. 69, no. I, January 1960.
419
which in turn will be a function of conceptual analysis and modern, modal logic,
and there is much controversy and disagreement about whether such a predicate is
legitimate and coherent.
SCIENCE AND THEISM
Whereas earlier periods of conflict between religion and science were
characterized by disputes concerning the proper method for investigating the
natural world, disputes between religion and science in the twentieth century came
to be waged concerning the specific content of new scientific theories and
competing claims to the authority for determining and interpreting that content. In
particular, evolutionary theory based on natural selection has undercut the
immutability and unchangeability of the species and, at the same time, an
anthropocentric view of the universe. The challenges to traditional theistic beliefs
posed by evolution by natural selection are the most serious in the history of
modern science. Evolution provides a plausible alternative explanation for the
origin of design in the universe and buttresses a naturalistic explanation of design
as an expected and necessary natural phenomenon.
Of course Darwinian evolutionary theory remains controversial. One source of
opposition comes from theological conservatives who rely upon a literal
interpretation of the Bible. Scientific creationism represents a challenge to
evolutionary theory based upon natural selection that is ostensibly a challenge
based upon competing claims regarding what is good scientific procedure and what
is scientific truth. Hemy Morris and other creationists argue that evolution is bad
science and that "good" science supports a biblical account of creation. 6 However,
while scientific creationism initially appears to move the dispute between science
and religion to another level, I have shown that there is very little science in
scientific creationism and that what science there is is distorted and confused.
Thus, the conflict between evolutionists and theists who oppose evolutionary
theory remains fundamentally a conflict about the proper method and authority for
investigating nature and natural phenomena
scientific creationism
notwithstanding.
The development of quantum theory has also proven to be a new source of
conflict between religion and science. The view of the subatomic world that is the
result of quantum theory is truly revolutionary. Old notions of Newtonian classical
mechanics are undercut, and theoretical limitations are determined about what we
can know about electrons. Some theists have seized upon the indeterminacy and
uncertainty that are vital parts of quantum theory and extrapolated to the
macro world of human beings. While I have argued that such extrapolations from
quantum theory are unjustified and represent umeasonable and unacceptable
extensions of scientific theory, there is in this attempt at least the effort to use the
most highly developed and the best informed scientific theories to understand
human nature and the place of human beings in the cosmos.
6 See Henry Morris, The Twilight of Evolution (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1963);
The Remarkable Birth of Planet Earth (San Diego: Creation-Life Publishers, 1972); and The Troubled
Waters of Evolution (San Diego: Creation-Life Publishers, 1974). Also see Scientific Creationism,
edited by Henry Morris (San Diego: Creation-Life Publishers, 1974), and D. C. C. Watson, The Great
Brain Robbery (Chicago, Ill.: Moody Press, 1976).
420
ANALYTIe PHILOSOPHY OF REUGION
This kind of effort has led more recently to the attempt to integrate religion and
science into a theology of nature. For example, Arthur Peacocke attempts to
integrate religion and science, developing a "critical-realist theology" in the
process, by incorporating the information from the natural sciences concerning
human nature and the natural world into theology. 7 Given the influence of recent
developments in both the biological and physical sciences upon reshaping the
traditional arguments for the existence of God in natural theology, the impact of
recent developments in psychology and neurophysiology upon reshaping our
understanding of human nature, and the obvious consequences of these new views
for traditional theistic beliefs, a theology of nature seems to be the predictable next
stage in the interplay between religion and science. A theology of nature, well
informed by and integrated with the best science available, holds the promise of
being more attuned to a scientific view and more acceptable to people in modem
scientific Western cultures in the twenty-first century. The key to how successful
such a development will be is the degree to which theists will be willing to adjust
and reformulate the content of their theology based upon science.
THE PROBLEM OF EVIL
Major developments during the second half of the twentieth century have
resulted in contemporary treatments of the problem of evil that incorporate new
interpretations of the problem and new contributions to both the challenge of the
problem for theism and the attempts by theists to resolve the problem. It has now
become customary to distinguish between the logical problem of evil, which
addresses apparent logical inconsistency between the existence of God and the
existence of evil, and the evidential problem, which addresses the apparent conflict
between the existence of God and the particular kinds and amounts of evil that
actually exist in this world. J. L. Mackie maintains that the logical problem makes
theism inconsistent and illogical while Alvin Plantinga responds with the free will
.
defense. 8
While Plantinga's free will defense has won wide acceptance in responding to
the logical problem of evil, several serious difficulties remain. The free will
defense clearly is more applicable in the case of moral evil, and there is the matter
of accounting for the existence of natural evil. Plantinga manages extending the
free will defense to natural evil only by appealing to additional theological claims
regarding the possibility of fallen angels. A more plausible extension of the free
will defense to natural evils may come through an analysis of the notion of a moral
agent and an analysis of what it means for agents freely to care about things and
the kinds of things about which we human beings do freely care.
The evidential problem of evil has continued to be as vexing and intractable for
the theist as ever. William Rowe has continued to press the argument based upon
7 A. R. Peacocke, The Sciences and Theology in the Twentieth Century (Notre Dame, fud.:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), p. xiv. Peacocke argues for the rejection of the sociology of
knowledge and the adoption of critical realism in his Imitations of Reality (Notre Dame, fud.: University
of Notre Dame, 1984), pp. 19ff.
8 J. L. Mackie, "Evil and Omnipotence," Mind, Vol. 64, no. 254, 1955, and Alvin Plantinga, God,
Freedom, and Evil (New York: Harper and Row, 1974).
421
the existence of evil as prima facie evidence against the existence of the God of
traditional Judeo-Christian theism. 9 Rowe's version of the argument is based upon
the premise that there exist instances of human and animal pain and suffering in
this world that could have been prevented by an omniscient and omnipotent God
with no loss of any greater good and without permitting any greater evil. It is this
premise that has proven to be the most controversial part of the evidential
argument from evil, and much of the current debate centers on the legitimacy of
this premise.
The evidential problem of evil has prompted several different theodicies. The
free will theodicy and the soul-making theodicy have arguably received more
attention than have other theodicies. Two main difficulties continue to plague the
different attempts at constructing an adequate theodicy - the suffering of animals
and the suffering of innocents. The brutal suffering that we now know exists in the
animal kingdom and the suffering of young, innocent babies weigh heavily against
both the free will theodicy and John Hick's soul-making theodicy.lO Animals do
not have free will or souls to be improved, and it is difficult to imagine that an
omnipotent and omnibenevolent God would have to allow the suffering of an
innocent child for some utilitarian purpose. No theodicy for responding to the
evidential problem of evil has received the kind of support that Alvin Plantinga's
free will defense has received for responding to the logical problem of evil nor is
there likely to be any significant advance in developing a completely satisfactory
theodicy. Even if the contingent facts regarding pain .and suffering in this world
were to change dramatically, the history of pain and suffering amongst both human
beings and other animals would remain very strong prima facie evidence against
the existence of the God of theism.
Recent application of modem probability to the evidential argument has resulted
in the challenge to theism based upon the existence of evil being cast in a way that
does not make use of the controversial premise that there are instances of evil that
God may have prevented but did not. Paul Draper has developed a probability
version of the evidential argument according to which a completely naturalistic
explanation of the existence of evil is more probable (and hence more reasonable)
than a theistic account. 11 Given the biologically useful roles of pain and pleasure, it
is reasonable and natural to suppose that pain and pleasure would exist on
naturalistic grounds while, given the normal attributes of God in traditional JudeoChristian theology, it is not reasonable and natural to suppose that evil would exist.
Draper's argument assumes that the theist and nontheist are in the same epistemic
position; however, since theodicies used by the theist to explain the existence of
evil rely upon other theological beliefs, the theist and nontheist will always occupy
different episternic positions, which undercuts the persuasive force of Draper's
argument.
9 William Rowe, "The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism," American Philosophical
Quarterly, Vol. 16, no. 4, 1979.
10 John Hick, Evil and the God of Love (New York: Harper and Row, 1966).
II Paul Draper, "Pain and Pleasure: An Evidential Problem for Theists," Nous, Vol. 23, 1989.
422
RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
The closing decades of the twentieth century saw renewed interest in religious
experience and significantly new developments in the philosophical treatments of
religious experience and religious epistemology. For some central figures, issues
concerning the need for the justification of religious beliefs and questions about the
need for and importance of evidence for religious beliefs have become matters of
crucial importance. The discussion concerning the justification of religious beliefs
has taken a very strong - perhaps even dominant - anti-evidentialist direction. In
some cases, this has been accompanied by a rejection of natural theology.
Religious experience came to be regarded by some figures, such as Richard
Swinburne, as part of the cumulative case argument for the existence of GOd. 12
Since the gradual and inductive cumulative case argument does not defend any
single one of the traditional arguments for the existence of God as sound but
simply takes belief in the existence of God to be more reasonable than nonbelief,
all things considered, the cumulative case argument does represent a gradual
erosion of the more stringent demands upon reason and evidence set forth by some
proponents of the traditional arguments for the existence of God. Much of the
recent discussion concerning religious experience has thus centered upon the
reasonableness of the principle of credulity and to what degree it is incumbent
upon a rational person to accept the honest and sincere reports from another person
about his or her experience. If religious experience is analogous to sense
experience, then the principle of credulity ought to be used with religious
experience in the same way in which it is used in sense experience, and religious
experience would then provide prima facie evidence for the existence of the objects
of that experience as sense experience provides prima facie evidence for the
objects of sense experience.
William Alston develops what is perhaps the most detailed and sophisticated
attempt to model religious experience on sense experience. 13 Alston maintains that
there can be nonempirical, nonsensory modes of perception and that evidentialism
has ignored these other modes of perception as sources of evidence for beliefs.
Perceptions of God give rise to beliefs concerning the existence of the object of
those perceptions just as perceptions of a physical object give rise to beliefs
concerning the existence of the object of those perceptions. Both beliefs about the
existence of the physical world and religious beliefs about the existence of God
require the context of doxastic structures and practices. What Alston calls the
Christian mystical perceptual practice provides the doxastic framework for
regulating and standardizing religious beliefs in a way that is analogous to ways in
which sense experience provides the doxastic framework for regulating and
standardizing beliefs about the external, physical world. There are, of course, rival
and competing doxastic practices, but Alston thinks that there is an external
justification for the Christian mystical perceptual practice since it is a longstanding and well-established practice that provides for a richer spiritual life for it
practitioners.
12
13
See, for example, Richard Swinburne, The Existence a/God (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989).
William P. Alslon, Perceiving God (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991).
423
THE PROBLEM OF REFERENCE AND THE OBJECT OF RELIGIOUS

EXPERIENCE
One of the major issues that has developed from the renewed interest in
religious experience is the degree to which such experience has epistemic value. A
fundamental and crucial matter in pursuing any question about the epistemic value
of religious experience is determining the reference for the referring expressions
used to describe the objects(s) of such experience, and it is through the problem of
reference that we find the lasting remnants and influence of early analytic
philosophy and even logical positivism.
If religious experience is to have cognitive import, then there must be a
theoretical framework within which one can explain how it is possible to identify
the objects of religious experience. Certainly one of the most important issues is to
determine which religious experiences are veridical and which ones are not, and,
whatever else we may say about the veridical ones, it seems crucial that it be God
that is doing the appearing. So when a person says, "God appeared to me," it is
necessary for 'God' to refer to God.
Both Swinburne and Alston are aware of the fundamental importance of
reference to the problem of religious experience. S winburne attempts to address the
problem of reference by implicitly appealing to a descriptivist theory of reference
whereby a referent is determined by a combination of essential properties that
belong to the referent; however, there are serious doubts that a descriptivist theory
of reference can be made to work when the referent is supposed to be God. Since
God exhibits any property possessed to the maximal degree possible, then any
person S who has a religious experience must be in a position to distinguish the
exhibition of a property to its maximal degree and the exhibition of that property to
a degree that is not its maximal possible degree but is a degree that is far beyond
any degree that S has ever experienced before or even imagined possible. The
normal recognition of properties and their various degrees in sense experience is
developed gradually and inductively; however, when a person has no previous
experience with a particular property or no experience with a familiar property
exhibited to a hitherto unimaginable degree, then the use and recognition of such
properties cannot be inductive.
Perhaps because of a recognition of these difficulties, Alston appeals to a
causal-historical theory of reference. He claims that for a person S to recognize
God as God when S is appeared to by God, S does not have to recognize and
identify any essential properties of God. However, when S is appeared to by God,
S must be able to pick God out from the surrounding spacial-temporal dimension
(or mystical dimension) in which God appears. Alston suggests that one plausible
way in which S is able to account for the reference of referring expressions used to
refer to God is through "direct reference," that is, reference in which the speaker
refers to some object x of an immediate experience directly without using any
predicates of x. However, if the referent of a referring expression used to refer to
God (or any other object) is not a publicly observable individual, then there is no
criterion of correctness to determine when S uses the referring expression to
determine correct and incorrect uses. To paraphrase Wittgenstein, whatever seems
right to S will be right, so there can be no right or wrong in such cases. When no
descriptive predicates are used to account for the reference of 'God,' there is no
424
clear way to account for the difference between God appearing to S and Satan
appearing to S in the guise of God. Even if these difficulties are successfully
addressed or circumvented, there is still the further difficulty caused by the nature
of the causal theory itself. In the causal theory, successful reference can take place
even if none of the predicates attributed to the referent are actually true of that
referent. In the case of the referent of 'God,' this means that even if nothing that
theists have ever said about God is true, 'God' still refers to God. Such a result of
the causal theory appears to undermine basic theistic claims about the nature of
God. Work still needs to be done in developing an account of reference and a
theoretical framework for distinguishing successful from unsuccessful reference
for direct religious experience, and neither a descriptivist account nor a causal
account seems very plausible or very promising.
RELIGIOUS EPISTEMOLOGY
Alston's theory of religious perception may be seen as providing an alternative
to natural theology and the classical arguments for the existence of God as a basis
for belief in God. In this sense, when compared with evidentialism and classical
epistemological foundationalism, perceiving God and direct religious experience of
God significantly broaden the class of justified beliefs by including beliefs based
upon nonsensory, religious perception along with those based on sensory
perception. The strongest attacks on classical foundationalism, however, have
come from Alvin Plantinga, who maintains that the restrictions placed upon what
can be a properly basic belief by classical foundationalism are arbitrary and selfserving. 14 Plantinga argues that it is a mistake to respond to the challenge of
evidentialism, as natural theology has done, by being forced into providing
arguments and evidence to support belief in God. Taking his point of departure
from John Calvin, Plantinga develops his Reformed epistemology, according to
which the theistic belief in the existence of God is a properly basic belief Such a
belief is independent of propositional evidence or any process of reasoning
whereby the belief in the existence of God is inferred from other evidence.
Although belief in God is not inferred from evidence, it is not an irrational belief
since, according to Plantinga, such a belief is the natural and expected consequence
of a person's sensus divinitatis, the natural propensity to believe in God. It is
doubtful, however, that Plantinga can sort out the legitimate claims for properly
basic beliefs 'from the illegitimate ones without relying upon additional theological
claims and thereby begging the question. His defense of Christianity and the
properly basic beliefs that are the result of what is regarded as a properly
functioning sensus divinitatis is an internal one. Christians can choose to believe
what they think are properly basic beliefs just as others are free to choose other
beliefs as properly basic; however, given Plantinga's internalist defense of
Reformed epistemology, the epistemology appears to reduce to theology and
religious faith.
14 Alvin Plantinga, "Is Belief in God Properly Basic," Nous, Vol. 15, 1981, and "Rationality and
Religious Belief," in Contemporary Philosophy of Religion, edited by Steven Cahn and David Shatz
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982).
425
A PLURALISTIC WORLD AND RELIGIOUS PLURALISM

The increase in knowledge concerning different cultures and peoples of the
world, which became available during the twentieth century, revealed a diversity of
religious beliefs and practices unknown to scholars in earlier times. Conservative
Christians have reacted to this religious diversity by claiming that Christianity,
based upon the true word of God and the unique divine revelation of God, is the
exclusive means to salvation through Jesus Christ. However, along with the
increased knowledge of other peoples has come an increased familiarity with them
and an increased concern about their theological standing. The obvious result of
religious exclusivism is that a significant percentage of the world's population will
not enjoy eternal salvation but will suffer some form of eternal punishment, which
raises a serious conflict with views of God as a God of love. Religious pluralism is
the attempt to avoid such seemingly unpalatable consequences through an
emphasis on the universal salvific will of God.
Relying upon what he regards as an extension of Kantian metaphysics, John
Hick has developed a theoretical account of religious pluralism in which he
interprets the different religious beliefs and practices as different phenomenal
expressions of the same "ultimate divine reality" - the noumenal Real.'s With this
general approach, Hick defends what he calls "a Copernican revolution" in
theology, the result of which is to see the diverse religious practices and beliefs of
different people as culturally conditioned interpretations and manifestations of a
single divine Reality.
Hick must explain how a single, underlying noumenal divine Reality may be
understood as manifested in or interpreted by the different phenomenal religious
practices. In his attempt to offer such an explanation, Hick adopts what I call the
single referent hypothesis, that is, the hypothesis that different referring
expressions found among the diversity of world religions all refer to the same
single divine Real.
Central to the process of explaining how a single divine Reality may be
connected with different phenomenal manifestations and interpretations is the
matter of accounting for how the many different referring expressions that occur in
different world religions may be understood as having the same referent. Thus, as
in the case of religious experience, developing a theory of reference for religious
referring expressions is fundamental and crucial for religious pluralism. Given the
diversity and the conflicting nature of the different referring expressions found
among the various religious traditions of the world, it is unlikely that a descriptivist
account of reference can ever be made suitable for supporting the single referent
hypothesis. Unlike other commonly known cases of different referring expressions
having the same referent where we can observe the single referent, such as the
Morning Star and the Evening Star, no one is ever in a position to determine (or
even gather evidence to support the claim) that the different referring expressions
used in different religious traditions refer to the same noumenal, divine Reality.
One may suppose, then, that a causal-historical account of reference may support
the single referent hypothesis, but the causal theory presents major difficulties as
well since it accounts for the reference of 'God' completely independently of any
15
John Hick, God and the Universe of Faiths (London: Macmillan, 1973).
426
predicates or attributes that may be attributed to God. For example, if we suppose

for the sake of argument that Freud was right and that 'God' came into use by
referring to someone' s internalized father figure, then this could perhaps be taken
to support the single referent hypothesis; however, there is nothing theistic or even
religious about such a claim and nothing to qualify such a referent as the
noumenal, divine Reality.
How one may go about constructing a framework within which an investigation
into determining whether and to what extent different peoples of the world have or
are worshiping or describing the same divine reality is not clear. What is clear,
however, is that the problem of reference must occupy center stage. The analysis of
language and a suitable and plausible accounting of the nature of the different
aspects and functions of language (in particular, the analysis of the referring
expressions used to refer to God) are as crucial and fundamental to contemporary
treatments of religious experience and religious pluralism as they were to the early
analytic philosophers. The current interests in religious pluralism and religious
experience among analytic philosophers of religion demonstrate the importance of
fundamental issues involving religious language - except the main focus has
shifted from the problem of cognitive meaningfulness to the problem of reference.
Thus, the recent strong, anti-evidentialist trend notwithstanding, the legacy of
early-twentieth-century analytic philosophy still continues to influence the nature
and direction of contemporary philosophy of religion.
Given the diversity that is found both in the traditions of analytic philosophy
and among analytic philosophers of religion - theists and nontheists alike - it is
impossible to draw many definite conclusions about the impact of analytic
philosophy upon the philosophy of religion or the future direction of what is now
regarded as analytic philosophy of religion. However, conceptual clarity and
careful, rigorous argumentation are still hallmarks of analytic philosophy of
religion, as they will continue to be, and themes emphasizing the importance of
linguistic analysis and ontological reduction will undoubtedly continue to be felt.
While the antimetaphysical disposition among some contemporary analytic
philosophers of religion is not the result of a strict verificationalist stance deriving
from logical positivism, there is still a healthy suspicion regarding speculative
metaphysics, and there is an extra burden of proof on theists to make their
metaphysical claims in ways that are logically coherent and conceptually clear.
Questions about logical coherence and conceptual clarity inevitably reintroduce the
process of philosophical analysis. Finally, there is the strong, underlying remnant
of the empirical and scientific aspect of early analytic philosophy, which
emphasizes the philosophical importance of fact and truth. It is this approach that
explains the presumption of analytic philosophers that through more sophisticated
and more refined techniques of analysis, it will be possible to "get to the bottom of
things." Among analytic philosophers of religion, this presumption is manifested in
the belief that it is possible to make progress in moving toward some definite
resolutions concerning disputes about religious beliefs. It is perhaps this
confidence in the ability of continued philosophical analysis to produce
philosophically important results and to advance philosophical inquiry, which
appeals to both theists and nontheists, that will both characterize and guarantee the
future of analytic philosophy of religion.
Index
Blind Watchmaker, The 297-298

Boer, Steven 246,247,248,249
Boethius 90,91,417
Bohr, Niels 221,222,223
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich 310-311
Bradley. F. H. 4, 6, 8
Braithwaite, R. B. 49-50,56, 184, 187,
188
Broad, C. D. 149
Brothers Karamazov, The 251
Brown, Patterson 338-340,342,347,348,
349-351,
Bryan, William Jennings 206
Burt, Cyril 327
Byrne, Peter 375,393, 396, 398
absolute idealism 4-6, 10

Adams, Marilyn 87-89
Adams, Robert Merrihew 271-274,338,
348-349, 353-355
After Virtue 333, 362, 363
Alston, WilliamP. 55,56,100,101,142,
152,159-170,175,176,177,189,259,
308,395,402-406,422,423,424
and literal talk of God, 66-70
analogical language 43-45
anonymous Christian 408, 409
Anscombe, Elizabeth 332, 362
Anselm 91, 105, 106, 107, 108, 111, 112,
113,115,116,175,389,418
anthropic principle, the 130, 133-139
Aquinas, Thomas 2,45,78,82,91, 123,
152,278,296,309,364,371
Aristotle 2,87,98,204,208,295,333,
355,358,362,363,364,366,368,370,
372,404,405
atheistic cosmological argument 132-133
Augustine 91,267,309,364,365,368,
369
Austin, J. L. 21,22-23,51,74
and speech-acts, 22-23
Ayer, A. J. 14-15
Calvin, John 171,174,289,424

Capra, Fritjof 223
Carnap, Rudolf 12, 17
Carter, Brandon 134, 137
category mistake 18, 123
causal theory of reference 71-72
Cavell, Stanley 21fn44
Cessario, Romanus 364-365, 366, 369,
370,371
Chomsky, Norm 220
Christian Message in a Non-Christian
World, The 376
Clarke, Bowman 56
Clarke, Samuel 124
Clifford, William 142-145,170,400
Cobb, John 232
Coherence of Theism, The 77
Concept of Mind, The 18
conceptual analysis 1-2
continental philosophy 25
Copernicus 194,205,207,208,221
Badham, Linda 325

Badham, Raymond 325
Barbour, Ian 42,201,221,223,226-227
Barth, Karl 227, 377, 378
Behe, Michael 298-301
Bellah, Robert 289
big bang theory 122, 127-129,417
Birch, Charles 232
Blackmore, Susan 326, 328
Blackstone, Neil W. 300
427
428
Copleston, Frederick 123

Corey, M. A. 135, 137
Coughlan, Michael 184, 186
Cox, Harvey 310
Coyne, Jerry 300
Craig, William Lane 129-132, 133
Creel, Richard 96, 97
Critique of Pure Reason 106
Crombie, Ian 60-63
Cummins, Robert 296,301
cumulative case argument 146-148, 160,
329
Danto, Arthur 98
Darrow, Clarence 206
Darwin, Charles 188, 194,207,289,293,
329
and the theory of evolution, 199-201,
296,298-301
and design, 201-204, 292-301
Darwin's Black Box 298-301
Davies, Brian 335-336
Davies, Paul 129, 137
Davis, Stephen 95
Dawkins, Richard 297-298,301
D'Costa, Gavin 378, 384
deism 291
Democritus 278
Dennett, Daniel 200
Derrida, Jacques 25
Descartes 78, 105, 106, 107, 108, 145,
171,241,313,315
Dewey, John 309,312
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
124,202,235,251,253,271,278,291,
307
Dialogues on the Two World Systems 197,
198
direct reference 167-170
divine agency 98-102
divine command theory 332-336, 352353, 356-360
and the autonomy of ethics, 336-349
and moral deontology, 348, 349-351
Donnellan, Keith 71, 167-168
Dore, Clement 115-116,117
Dostoevsky, Fydor 251, 262
Draper, Paul 130, 157,253-254,421
Dun Scotus 94fn63
Durkheim, Emile 154, 285-289
Earman, John 138
Einstein, Albert 30,91, 127

Elementary Forms of Religious Life, The
286
eschatological verification 60-63
essentialism 20, 23, 48
ET-simultaneity 91-92,95
Evans, Donald 305, 306
Evans-Pritchard, E. E. 182
evidentialism 141-145,159,170,171
responses to, 145-146
evolutionary theory 199-201, 301, 329
and design, 201-202,417,419
and creationism, 207-209
Ewing, A. C. 337
exc1usivism 376-378,425
Falk, W. D. 359
Farrer, Austin 43
Feigl, Herbert 12
feminist theology 214
Feyerabend, Paul 215-216,217,218
fideism 146, 176-178, 178-193
Findlay, J. N. 117-119
Fischer, John Martin 88
Flew, Antony 17,63,65,296,304-306,
313,318-319,320
and falsification, 31-35, 60
Forgie, J. William 388
Frankfurt, Harry 80,86, 101,247-248,
249
Freddoso, Alfred 90
Frege 19,21,392,394,414
Freud, Sigmund 154,278-285,287,289
Friedman, Alexander 127
Future of an Illusion, The 280, 282, 283
Gadamer, Hans-Georg 25
Gale, Richard 120, 123, 166
Galileo Galilei 194, 195-199,205,207,
209,212,216,221
and the Roman Catholic Church, 195198
Gamow, George 127
Geach, Peter 355, 359
Geller, Uri 99
Gettier, Edmund 141
Gilighan, Carol 371-372
God Has Many Names 399
God of the gaps 290, 329
Green, Michael 384
Gutting, Gary 175, 290, 302
INDEX
Habermas, Jiirgen 25
hard and soft facts 87-89
Hare, R. M. 36-38,51,57,351
and bliks, 36-38, 60, 65
Hartshorne, Charles 78fn2, 102, 103,122,
232,418
and the modal ontological argument,
108-112,113,116,118,119,120
Hasker, William 89,90,92,271,274-275
Hauerwas, Stanley 366-367,368
Hawking, Stephen 128, 133
Hegel 8,14,98
Heisenberg, Werner 222,224-226
Hellenistic philosophy 309
Henle, Paul 116-117,152
Hick, John 62-63, 118, 157-158, 161,216,
241,258,263-267,288,313,318-319,
320,376,379-399,401,402,405,406,
408-409,421,425
Hill, Thomas 346
Hobbes, Thomas 280, 304
Hoffman, Joshua 78
Holland, R. F. 59
Honest to God 310
Hubble's Law 127
Hudson, Donald 310
Humanist Manifesto 309
Hume, David 46, 109, 202-203, 230, 235,
251,253,271,278,286,292,293,307,
315,351,414
Hurlbutt, Robert 293
Huxley, Thomas 201
Idea of a Social Science and Its Relation to

Philosophy, The 182
In a Different Voice 371,373
inclusivism 406-410
inductive cosmological argument 132
internal relations, doctrine of 5, 6
Irenaeus 263
Issues in Science and Religion 201
James, William 10,11-12,93,142-145,
152,157,278,315,374,400
Jantzen, Grace 100,102,103
Jones, Jim 153
Jung, Carl 325
justified true belief 141-145,159
kaliim cosmological argument 129-130
429
Kant, Immanuel 8,128,139,309,315,

336,345,358,362,363,381,385-389,
402,405,408,418,425
and criticism of the ontological
argument, 105-108, 109, 111, 118
Kenny, Anthony 82,91
Kierkegaard, S!Ilren 26fn57, 176, 178,360,
362
Kitcher, Phillip 208, 209, 295, 301
Koresh, David 153
Kraemer, Hendrik 376-378
Kretzmann, Norman 83,90,91-93
Kripke,Saul 72,73,167,169
Kuhn, Thomas 24,211-213,215,233,381
Kung, Hans 409
LaCroix, Richard 78
Lamarck, Jean 200
Language, Truth and Logic 14-15,16
Laplace, Simon de 128
Lee, Jung Young 96
Leibniz 230, 240, 244, 245
Leibniz's Lapse 245-247
Leucippis 278
liberation theology 214
Life After Life 324
logical postivism 12-17,19,23,73
Luther 102, 241
MacIntyre, Alasdair 50-51,333,337-338,
362-364,366,367,368-370,373
Mackie, J. L. 81,106-107,121-122,123,
126,236-237,239,241,244,293,420
Macquarrie,John 104
Malcolm, Norman 108, 109, 122, 180182,418
112-114,116,118,119,120
Martin, C. B. 156
Martin, Michael 307
Marx, Karl 289
Mascall, E. L. 43
Mavrodes, George 78-80,82,331,357
McCloskey, H. J. 240,241
McFague, Sallie 47-48
McPherson, Thomas 56-59
McTaggart, John McTaggart Ellis 6, 8
Meinong 9
Mendel, George 210-211
metaphor and religious language 47-48
middle knowledge 89-90, 102
Mill, John Stuart 4
430
Miller, Caleb 365, 366, 369, 370

Miller, Richard 73, 167, 169, 170, 395
Millikan, Ruth 294-295,296, 301
Mitchell, Basil 64-66, 147
modal perfection 115-117
modified divine command theory 353-355
Molina 89, 90
Moody, Raymond 324
Mooney, Christopher 225
Moore, G. E. 6,7,11,12,13,17,19,334,
335,338,414
Morris, Henry 207, 419
Munz, Peter 353
Myth of God Incarnate, The 384
narrative ethics 366-370
natural theology 25
Natural Theology 203
naturalistic fallacy 334
near death experience (NDE) 323-329
necessary existence 104-105
Nelson, Kenneth 302
Neo-Hegelianism 4,5,13,14
Neo-Platonism 95,96,97,417
Newton, Issac 196,221,230,419
Nielsen, Kai 216,305-306,347,359-360
Nietzsche 311
Oakes, Robert 345
omnificience 101, 102
omnipotence 78-82
omniscience 82-90
and free will, 83-90
On Certainty 180, 189
On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres
197
ontological argument, the 104-122
Oppy, Graham 107, 108
ordinary language 17-19, 73
Origin of Species 199
Otto, Rudolf 57, 148
Oxford philosophy 22
Paley, William 203, 292, 294, 295
Paradox of Omnipotence 81-82, 416
Paradox of the Stone 79-81,416
Pascal 144,176
passibility and impassibility 95-98
Peaceable Kingdom, The 366
Peacocke, A. R. 217,227-230
Peirce, Charles Sanders 10,93, 145,306
Penelhum, Terence 70,172,173,176,314
Phenomenon of Man 231

Phillips, D. Z. 21,22, 182, 184-193,216,
273,284,287,288,360-362
Philosophical Investigations 19,20,22,
48,49
philosophy of biology 294-298
Pike, Nelson 84-85, 86, 87, 90, 93
Planck time 128,417
Plantinga, Alvin 33,34,82,90, 105, 107,
108, 122, 139, 142, 159, 160, 170, 173,
237,239,241,253,260,261,267,284,
308,399,400,401,402
119-122,418
and Reformed epistemology, 170-178,
424
and the free will defense, 243-250, 420
Plato 9,240,295,349
Plotinus 44
Pollard, Willard 225
Popper, Karl 30
Pragmatism 11,143
"Presumption of Atheism, The" 304
Principia Ethica 6, 7
Principia Mathematica 8,9, 17,414
principle of complementarity 222-224
principle of credulity 149-150, 154-157,
422
objections to, 151-154
principle of indeterminancy 222, 224-226
principle oftestimony 150
Process and Reality 230
process philosophy 232
Protestant Reformation 194
Proudfoot, Wayne 155
Pucetti, Roland 265-266
Putnam, Hilary 348
quantum theory 221,222-226

Quine, Willard VanOrman 24, 107, 406
Quinn, Philip 274, 338, 342-345, 347,
349-351,352,355-356,358,361,385386,387,404-405
Quinton, Anthony 313,317
Rachels, James 205,340-345
radical relativism 215, 216
Rahner, Karl 406-410
Rainbow of Faiths, The 390
Ramsey, Ian T. 38-40
Reason and Faiths 374-375
Reason Within the Bounds of Religion 176
INDEX
reference and religious language 70-74

Reformed epistemology 146, 159, 170176,424
and properly basic beliefs, 171-172
and The Great Pumpkin Objection, 173175
Reichenbach, Bruce 78, 126,239, 242,
252-253,267,270-271
Religion with the Limits of Reason Alone
389
Religious Language 39
religious pluralism 47-48,378-399,425,
426
and Christology, 382-385
and reference, 391-399
replica theory 318-322
Rhees, Rush 21
Robinson, John A. T. 310,312
Roman Catholic Church 194,216,376,
379,406,408
and Galileo, 195-198
Rorty, Richard 3,24-25,414
Rowe, William 35fn19,88, 121,123,124,
125,154,155,254-255,258-260,265,
390, 420-421
Runzo, Joseph 388
Russell, Bertrand 4,6,7,11,12,17,19,
20,21,23,74,123,124,392,394,414
and the theory of descriptions, 9-10
Ryle, Gilbert 3,17,18,22,123,414
Sabom, Michael 326,327
Salmon, Wesley 252-253,306-308
Santoni, Ronald E. 36fn19
Sapir, Edward 218
Sapir-Whorl Hypothesis 218-220
Saunders, John Turk 87
Savage, Wade 80
Sch1eiermacher, Friedrich 57,266
Schlick, Moritz 12,64
Scopes trial 206
Searle, John 114
Second Vatican Council 406
Secular City, The 310
secularization 310-312
sensus divinitatis 173, 174, 175, 177, 178,
424
Sherry, Patrick 103
Smart, J. J. C. 315
Smart, Ninian 374
Smith, Quentin 131,132-133
Smith, Wilfred Cantwell 375,411
431
sociology and science 213-215

sociology of religion 213-215,285-289
Soskice, Janet 41,398
soul-making theodicy 263-267
responses to, 264-267
speech-acts 22-23
and religious language, 74-76
Sperry, Derek 317,318,319,320-322
Starry Messanger, The 197
Stoicism 309, 332, 358, 362
Strawson. P. F. 67-70,316
Structure of Scientific Revolutions, The
211
Stump, Eleanor 90,91-93
Summa Theologica 290, 364
supernaturalistic fallacy 335,337,338
Swinburne, Richard 77,80,85,94,95,98,
99, 100, 103, 126, 129, 132, 136, 138,
139,140,160,161,163,165,176,242,
262,267-269,270,271,308,422,423
and the cumulative case argument, 148151
Taliaferro, Charles 100,103-104,351-352
Taoism 223-224
Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre 231
Tennyson, Alfred Lord 5
Thales 4
theology of nature 227-230
Tillich, Paul 54-56, 102, 311
Tooley, Michael 120
Totem and Taboo 280
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 19,49,
51,58,415
Troeltsch, Ernst 378
Truman, Harry 187
Unger, Peter 316
universal salvific will 379-380, 425
van Buren, Paul 53-54, 184, 187, 188
van Inwagen, Peter 256-257,301-303,
321-322,399
Varieties of Religious Experience, The 12,
278,374
verification criterion of meaning 14, 1516,22
Vienna Circle 12, 14, 15,74,415
virtue ethics and religion 362-366
Wainwright, William 152, 156, 164, 302,
404
432
Waismann, Friedrick 12
Wallace, Alfred Russel 134
Warranted Christian Belief 177
Watson, David 207,208,209
Weber, Max 289
Whitehead, Alfred North 8,9,17,195,
229-232,251,404,414
Whittaker, John 187
Whorf, Benjamin 218
"Will to Believe, The" 143-145, 157,278
WilliamofOckham 87,88,195
Williams, Bernard 316
Winch, Peter 180,182-184,188,216
Wisdom, John 31
Wittgenstein, Ludwig 17,18,19-22,23,

48,49,51-53,57,58,73,74,137,158,
168,169,179,180,183,184-193,216,
284,306,357,361,413,414,415,423
and language games, 21-22, 51-53, 178193,216,217,233,375,416
and fideism, 178-193
and meaning as use, 48-49
Wolterstorff, Nicholas 95,97-98, 170, 176
Woodward, Linda 372
Wykstra, Stephen 177, 259
Yandell, Keith 33, 34
Zagzebski, Linda 87,89,92,365-366
Zoological Philosophy 200
Handbook of Contemporary Philosophy of Religion

1.
E.T. Long: Twentieth-Century Western Philosophy of Religion 1900-2000. 2000

ISBN 0-7923-6285-3
2.
B.J. Shanley, O.P.: The Thomist Tradition. 2001
ISBN 1-4020-0078-2
3.
J.E Harris: Analytic Philosophy of Religion. 2002
ISBN 1-4020-0530-X
Kluwer Academic Publishers - Dordrecht / Boston / London

(Handbook of Contemporary Philosophy of Religion 3) James F. Harris (Auth.) - Analytic Philosophy of Religion-Springer Netherlands (2002)

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ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION