Through A Glass, Darkly 4j1i4u

T h r o u g h a G l a s s, Darkl y



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Contents 1. Preface

5 I. THE COHERENCE of BARE THEISM

2. Introduction 3. An Immaterial Person 4. The Attributes of God 5. The Problem of Evil 6. The Hiddenness of God 7. The Ontological Argument 8. Conclusion

11 15 25 37 43 55

II. EVIDENCE for BARE THEISM

9. Introduction 10. The Modal Cosmological Argument 11. The Kalam Cosmological Argument 12. The Argument from Cosmic Teleology 13. The Argument from Biological Teleology 14. The Argument from Consciousness 15. The Argument from Adequation 16. The Argument from Moral Experience 17. The Argument from Desire 18. The Argument from Religious Experience 19. Conclusion

73 77 87 97 107 121 133 145 159 169 185

III. THE COHERENCE of CHRISTIAN THEISM

20. Introduction 21. The Incarnation 22. The Trinity 23. Religious Pluralism 24. Scientific Objections 25. Violence in the Old Testament 26. The Doctrine of Hell 27. Conclusion

191 197 211 221 233 251 263 273

IV. EVIDENCE for CHRISTIAN THEISM

28. Introduction 29. The New Testament 30. The Life of Jesus 31. The Resurrection of Jesus 32. Conclusion



278 285 297 311 331

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Preface There is a scene in a novel by De Vries in which the parish priest and the village atheist get into an argument about religion—an argument that lasts all night and is so intense and evenly matched that, by the time the sun comes up, the priest has become an atheist and the atheist believes in God. In the real world, debates about religion tend to end less dramatically. Most of the debates that I have had with atheists have ended in a deadlock. Sometimes this is due to paradigm pressures. Sometimes it is because the arguments are not presented or evaluated with sufficient care. But there have been times when my opponent is open and rational and recognises the force of my argument but rejects it because it depends for its tenability on an unspoken assumption that has not been defended and which, it turns out, he does not accept. What I mean is easily illustrated. Suppose that John is told there is entertainable historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. No matter how compellingly this is argued, he will never accept it if he believes on other grounds that there is no God. The proper starting point for a debate with him is therefore the existence of God. But, again, he will never be persuaded to accept evidence for the existence of God if he believes that the very concept of God is logically incoherent. And in that case the proper starting point for the debate is the rational coherence of theism—arguments to show that it is not logically impossible that God exists. What has been said here of God can be said, mutatis mutantis, of Christianity. For suppose for a moment that it can be shown that it is possible and probable that God exists. Could there now be any possible objection to presenting historical evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth? Yes. For it is logically possible that God exists and that Christianity is false—either because some other religion is true or because, his existence notwithstanding, God has not revealed himself to humanity and therefore no religion is true. And this, moreover, is something that could be known if the very concept of Christianity were logically incoherent. And so, once one has made the case for bare

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theism, it will be necessary to defend Christian theism against the charge of incoherence before presenting historical evidence to show that it is probable that Christian theism is true. The right sequence of arguments in of Christianity is therefore: arguments to show that it is possible God exists; arguments and evidence to show that it is probable God exists; arguments to show that it is possible Christianity is true; 1 and, finally, arguments and evidence to show that it is probable. Christianity is true. All this can be illustrated with the following pyramid,

This lays out the basic structure of what follows. To make sure that all the key arguments and objections are ed for, I have assumed that my reader is an atheist of the most skeptical sort possible—not only does he claim that there is no evidence for the existence of God, he claims that the very concept of God is 1 I should add here that some of the a

priori arguments for Christian theism may do more than simply defend it against incoherence. For example: an argument that, if there is a God, he would more probably than not become incarnate would, if successful, give us grounds in advance of the historical evidence for thinking that an event like the Resurrection will occur. More on this in Chapter 21.



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illogical. In due course we will ascend to the arguments for the existence of God, the problem of religious pluralism and the historical case for the resurrection of Jesus. But we must enter the debate on the ground floor with the coherence of theism.

Rational Permission and Rational Obligation Here the distinction between what philosophers call "rational permission" and "rational obligation" is very helpful and beautifully illustrated by J. P. Moreland in his book Scaling Secular City. Suppose you are expecting a visit from a friend at 3 o'clock in the afternoon and at 2:58 PM your wife tells you that a man is walking down the driveway towards the house. You are rationally permitted to believe that the man is your friend. (It might not be your friend but it would not be irrational for you to believe that it is.) Suppose now that your wife tells you that the man walking down the drive is in a police uniform and your friend, too, is a policeman. You are now rationally obligated to believe it is your friend. (It might not be your friend but it would be irrational not to believe that it is.) With the help of these concepts, my task can now be stated in a single sentence: To demonstrate that God is a logically coherent concept in order to gain rational permission to present the evidence for his existence; then, having made the case for his existence, to demonstrate that Christianity is logically coherent in order to gain rational permission to present the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. The following pages represent, in short, the best arguments for Christianity in their most logical and persuasive sequence. I have taken pains to present them as clearly and succinctly as I can and I hope that my reader will find them helpful.



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I The Coherence of Bare Theism



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2 Introduction What does it mean to say that something is incoherent? The answer is appealingly simple. In philosophy, an entity or state of affairs is incoherent if it contains a contradiction. Thus, the two paradigmatic examples of incoherence in the literature are the “square circle” and “married bachelor.” That these are simply contradictory pairings of words that do not pick out entities in the real world is something we can know by means of rational reflection alone without needing to undertake an investigation or conduct an experiment. It follows that any mathematician who did seek a Euclidian proof or disproof of the “square circle” (or any sociologist who applied for a research grant to prove or disprove the existence of the “married bachelor”) would be acting irrationally. To express all this somewhat differently: If it can be shown that some postulated entity or state of affairs contains or entails a contradiction we have the strongest possible epistemic justification for affirming that it does not exist. We would not then need any evidence to falsify the claim that it exists and, a fortiori, would never be justified in looking at evidence purporting to prove its existence. The question we are asking is whether God is a logically coherent concept. For if it can be shown that it is not logically coherent to even suppose that there is a God (if it can be shown that the claim, God exists, is analogous to the claim, Square circles exist; that is, absurd and disprovable by first principles) then the whole debate over the evidence for and against the existence of God would be irrational and unnecessary. Before coming to the evidence, it is therefore necessary to defend the claim that God exists against the charge of incoherence. The first issue, given satisfactory criteria for what qualifies as a person, will be whether it is coherent to suppose that an immaterial person exists; the second, whether the attributes of God (such as omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, and so on) entail logical contradictions; and the third, whether these same attributes are



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incoherent in view of certain features of human experience—such as the fact that God is said to be perfectly good and all-powerful while our world is filled with evil and suffering.2 Definition of Key Before going further, it will be helpful to define some key . I will understand "God" to mean An immaterial person that is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, necessary, eternal and perfectly good. And I will understand "incoherent" to mean that some state of affairs is logically impossible because it contains or entails a contradiction. However, philosophers recognise two different kinds of logical incoherence that will be of use in this discussion: Strict logical incoherence and broad logical incoherence. I will briefly define these now. In a case of strict logical incoherence the contradiction is explicit in the description of some entity or state of affairs. The phrases square circle and married bachelor are both good examples of this. The words square and circle together mean, "a round polygon that has four equal sides." And married and bachelor together mean, "an unmarried man who is married." All that is required to see the incoherence in each case is an understanding of the words in the description. A polygon cannot be round and have four sides and a man cannot be married and unmarried. Both commit us to saying, P is q and not-q which is a contradiction. Contradictory things are unactualizable and so cannot exist. In a case of broad logical incoherence, on the other hand, the contradiction is entailed by the description of some entity or state of affairs. The sentence, The Prime Minister of England is a prime number is an example of this. Here the contradiction is implicit in the description because "Prime Minister" and "prime number" are not in direct logical opposition in the way that "square-circle" and 2 Referring to "features of human experience" in a discussion of this nature involves a slight relaxation of the distinction between analytic and synthetic propositions. In doing so I take a hint from Wittgenstein who stressed the importance of including very basic empirical propositions of the sort we are taught as children (such as that, "the Earth is round and men's heads are not full of sawdust and cars do not grow out of the ground") among our first principles. "Propositions of the form of empirical propositions," he writes, "and not only propositions of logic, form the foundation of all operating with thoughts."



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"married-bachelor" are. To perceive the incoherence, we need to follow out the entailments of the sentence. In the present case, we would do this as follows. A prime number, being an abstract mathematic entity, is immaterial; a Prime Minister, being the head of an elected government of human beings, is material. The sentence, The Prime Minister is a prime number therefore commits us to saying that something is both immaterial and material which is, finally, a strict logical contradiction of the sort "square circle" or P is q and not-q. With this understanding of God and of the two subtypes of incoherence in hand, we will now consider whether the concept of An immaterial person who is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, necessary, eternal and perfectly good contains either a strict or a broad logical incoherence. I will begin in the next section with the fundamental question of whether or not an immaterial person of any kind is logically coherent, before discussing the logical coherence of an immaterial person with the attributes ascribed to God in classical theology. On this subject Oxford professor of philosophy Richard Swinburne has written an entire book, The Coherence of Theism. And in the following pages, I will be paraphrasing several of his arguments.



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3 An Immaterial Person In everyday use the word "person" means a human being. However, in what follows I will be using the word in its more general philosophical sense to mean, "a conscious entity that has rational thoughts, memories, moral awareness, intentions, continuity of identity and who is able to perform various basic and nonbasic actions." Basic actions are actions, such as moving one's hand, that are produced directly by the intention to perform them and do not depend on intermediary actions. Nonbasic actions are actions, such as posting a letter, that are produced by a sequence of intermediary basic actions—opening the front door, walking to the post office, and so on. Given this definition of a person, is the concept of an immaterial person logically incoherent in either sense sketched out in the Introduction? Note first that the words immaterial and person do not stand in strict logical opposition in the way square and circle do. Moreover, it is characteristic of cases of strict logical incoherence that the entities and states of affairs that they postulate are inapprehensible. It is not possible to visualise a perfectly circular polygon with four equal sides or to rationally intuit what it means for a man to be simultaneously married and unmarried. But the concept of disembodied personhood does not have this property of inapprehensibility. It is easy to imagine the experience of losing your body and retaining your mental life—as we do whenever we read s by those who claim to have had out of body experiences. And it is also possible to imagine what it would mean if, so disembodied, we discovered we could move objects or perform other actions simply by forming the intention to do so. So much for the strict logical incoherence of the concept of an immaterial person. But is it logically incoherent in the broad sense which I have defined? Whether you think so will depend on whether or not you are prepared to affirm a metaphysical worldview known as physicalism. Physicalism (also known as "naturalism" or



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"materialism") is the view that only the physical exists and that absolutely everything is reducible to it. On this view there can be no such things as platonic objects, objective moral values or immaterial beings and substances. Consciousness, the physicalist claims, is either an epiphenomenon of physical brain states or else just is a physical process in the brain. Whichever view is adopted, it follows that mental states cannot possibly exist without the physical substrate of the brain and so for the physicalist the concept of an "immaterial person" is logically incoherent in the broad sense. 1. Physicalism Strictly speaking, inductive knowledge does not belong in an a priori objection. Inductive knowledge is based on observation and the phrase “a priori objection” means, “an objection prior to observation.” And while it may be true that every mind of which we have direct knowledge is embodied this does not prove that unembodied minds are logically impossible; indeed, inductive knowledge cannot prove that anything is logically impossible. In the philosophy of science this is called, “The problem of induction.” In inductive reasoning, one makes a series of observations and infers a conclusion. For instance, having observed many swans and found them all to be white, it seems valid to conclude, All swans are white. But no number of confirming observations, however large, can prove a universal generalisation. Only deductive conclusions in mathematics and philosophy are logically necessary; conclusions based on observation, however reliable they seem, are always in principle falsifiable—a fact which led the philosopher C. D. Broad to declare that, "induction is the glory of science and the scandal of philosophy." But suppose that we take a hint from Wittgenstein who recommended a slight relaxation of the distinction between analytic and synthetic propositions. Wittgenstein, that is, stressed the importance of including very basic empirical propositions of the sort we are taught as children (such as that, "the Earth is round and men's heads are not full of sawdust and cars do not grow out of the ground") among our first principles. "Propositions of the form of empirical propositions," he writes, "and not only propositions of logic, form the foundation of all operating with thoughts." On this



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view, might the fact that every mind observed is embodied count against the logical coherence of the concept of an immaterial mind? I will it that I had some initial sympathy with physicalistic s of the mind. The inference from all known examples of minds to the idea that minds and bodies are indissociable seems plausible and the observation that our bodily states (such as drunkenness and fatigue) affect our mental states seems to it. However, even if we it inductive knowledge into the discussion, the objection to the concept of an immaterial mind does not obtain. And this is because physicalism itself cannot for the mind. Consider, by way of analogy, a scientist who claims that a certain bacteria cannot survive at low temperatures because it has only ever been observed at high temperatures. If it is later proven that the bacteria in question cannot actually reproduce at high temperatures then clearly the argument has lost all force. To tell the complete story of that bacteria we will need to understand it in a way that includes its independence from hightemperature environments. 2. Arguments Against Physicalism This is a subject that will be discussed in detail in my Chapter on the Argument from Consciousness. For now I will just provide a very brief sketch of three forceful arguments from the literature to establish my preliminary claim that a physicalistic of the mind is incompletable in principle.3 2.1 Mental States Are Irreducible Reduction in the physical sciences is achieved by distinguishing mental phenomena from more fundamental physical phenomena and giving primacy to the latter. Warmth, for instance, is reduced to molecular energy in thermodynamics. Thereafter, molecular energy is understood to be what warmth, “really is.” Because sensory perception is subjective and can show variation between individuals and species, we therefore move toward a more objective 3 For a more detailed discussion see Mind

and Cosmos: Why the Materialist NeoDarwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False by Thomas Nagel and Chapter 9 of The Existence of God and Chapter 7 of The Coherence of Theism by Richard Swinburne.



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knowledge of the world when we understand it in this way: when we understand warmth as the way in which molecular energy is perceived in consciousness; or understand colour as the way in which electromagnetic wavelengths are perceived in consciousness—and so on. “What the evidence of the history of science shows,” notes Swinburne, “is that the way to achieve integration of sciences is to ignore the mental.” But an intractable problem arises when we come to the mental itself: We do not move towards a more objective understanding of consciousness along analogous lines when we attempt to understand consciousness as the way in which brain activity is perceived in consciousness: It is simply incoherent to reduce consciousness to some more fundamental physical phenomenon and ignore the former because the former, consciousness, is the very thing we are attempting to explain. 2.2 The Intentionality of Mental States A second property of mental states that physicalism cannot for is what philosophers call their intentionality or aboutness. By this they simply mean that thoughts are always about or of something external to themselves. When you think about shoes and ships and sealing-wax, for example, your thoughts are in those moments of or about shoes and ships and sealing-wax. That thoughts do have this property is inescapable: The thought, "Thoughts do not have intentionality," if it is to be meaningful, must itself be about intentionality and therefore have intentionality. The denial of intentionality would therefore suffer from what Plantinga calls, "self-referential inconsistency," and cannot be rationally affirmed. The intractable problem intentionality raises for physicalism can be drawn out in the following way. Consider the word moon penciled on a piece of paper. In the absence of a literate observer to read the word and associate it with the moon, can the carbon particles of pencil lead and the wood pulp that composes the sheet of paper be said to be "about" the moon? Clearly not. And what can be said of a printed word on the page can be said equally of physical brain states. A pattern of firing neurones representing someone's thought about the moon cannot, in the absence of a conscious observer to experience that



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brain event as a thought about the moon, be said to be "neurones about the moon" in any meaningful and objective sense. Physical things (whether they be neurones or particles of pencil lead or teapots or rocks) are not "about" other physical things in the way that mental states are. And so an exhaustive physicalistic description of mental states would leave something essential to them out of . 2.3 Privileged Access of Mental States But the most essential property of mental states which physicalism cannot for is their personal immediacy to the subject who experiences them. “A mental property,” as Swinburne puts it, “is one to whose instantiation the substance in which it is instantiated necessarily has privileged access.” To help us understand this problem, Swinburne invites us to consider the following thought experiment. It is a helpful preliminary to what follows to note that people can enjoy a relatively normal mental life with only half a brain—a procedure known as a "hemispherectomy." Suppose, firstly, that Swinburne is involved in a car accident that destroys his body but leaves his brain intact; suppose, secondly, that this occurs at a future date when brain transplants are feasible; suppose, finally, that a whimsical surgeon is responsible for the treatment of Swinburne and decides to perform a bizarre experiment: He will transplant the left hemisphere of Swinburne's brain in one donor body and the right hemisphere of his brain into another donor body. Let us refer to these two new bodies, each of which contains one half of Swinburne's brain, as Person A and Person B. The operation is a success. Person A and Person B recover and both somewhat resemble Swinburne in of character and memory. The question arises whether Swinburne has survived the operation. The claim that Swinburne is now both Person A and Person B is eliminable by a law of logic known as the identity of indiscernibles. Very simply expressed: If Swinburne is identical to Person A and Person B, then Person A and Person B are identical to each other and are therefore the same person—which they are not.4 The remaining possibilities are 4

The Identity of Indiscernibles, also knows as "Leibniz's Law" after its formulator Wilhelm Gottfried Leibniz, is a principle of analytic ontology which states that no two separate entities can have all their properties in common. The fact that Person A and



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that Swinburne is Person A or that he is Person B or that he is neither because the operation destroyed him. The relevance of this thought experiment to physicalism is as follows. Whether or not Swinburne survived the bizarre experiment is an objective fact about the world. But it will not be possible to know the answer by either the most thorough cross examination of Person A and Person B or the most exhaustive physicalistic description of their respective hemispheres. And so an exhaustive physicalistic description of the universe would leave something essential out of ; namely, who experienced which brain states. What arguments of this sort bring out is the "privileged access" of the subject to his own mental life—what Searle calls their, "first person ontology." "Others," Swinburne writes, "can learn about my pains and thoughts by studying my behaviour and perhaps also by studying my brain. Yet I, too, could study my behaviour (I could watch a film of myself; I could study my brain via a system of mirrors and microscopes) just as well as anyone else could. But I have a way of knowing about pains and thoughts other than those available to the best student of my behavior or brain: I experience them." And the problem this raises for physicalism is that what makes a mental event a mental event is not the public knowledge captured by physicalism but just this private knowledge that physicalism cannot possibly capture. 3. Mind is Essentially Nonphysical It is vital to note that all three problems under discussion are intractable to the physical sciences. There is in principle no physical evidence which can circumvent the irreducibility of consciousness because the very structure of the reductive step, "Consciousness is the way in which p is experienced in consciousness," leaves consciousness unreduced no matter what physical evidence is substituted for p. And we can no more expect physical evidence to explain the intentionality of thought than we Person B are physically distinct should not mislead us. Swinburne is concerned not with the body and brain per se but with the continuity of the personal identity and mental life of preoperative Swinburne—whether this is transplanted into either or neither of the postoperative bodies. It is obvious that the continuity of identity essential to personhood could not survive division or (due to Leibniz's law) be doubly instantiated.



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can expect an exhaustive chemical analysis of the carbon particles of pencil lead to eventually yield the meaning of the word moon which to a literate English observer they compose. And, finally, physical evidence is by definition public and so can never collapse into or capture the privileged access of the subject to his own mental life which is, moreover, its essential feature. From here we can proceed by a disjunctive syllogism to the conclusion that mind is an essentially nonphysical entity.5 P1. Mind is either essentially physical or nonphysical. P2. It is not essentially physical. C. Therefore, it is essentially nonphysical.

The logical structure of the argument is watertight. To avoid the conclusion, the physicalist needs to falsify one of the premises: Either by combing up with a new metaphysical category that is neither physical nor nonphysical or by demonstrating that mind can be reduced to the physical. However, both of these escape routes are imible in principle. The latter for reasons just given and the former because the notion of a metaphysical category neither physical nor nonphysical is as incoherent as an entity that has zero mass and has mass n or a colour that is neither primary red nor not primary red. I began by noting that the concept of an immaterial person is incoherent on a physicalistic of the mind. If a mind "just is" a physical brain state then of course the one cannot exist without the other. However, we have seen that physicalism entails the mind is reducible to the physical; that this cannot possibly be true; and that, therefore, its antithesis cannot possibly be false. The mind is an irreducibly nonphysical entity. And, of course, the falsity 5 A disjunctive syllogism is a rule of inference having the form, A or B. Not A. Therefore, B. Its validity obviously depends on there being only two possible explanatory options. Thus, Either John is in Tokyo or he is not in Tokyo is a valid first premise because there is no third alternative; however, Either John is in Tokyo or he is in Osaka may not be a valid premise because it is possible that John is in Seoul or Beijing.



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of physicalism leaves the skeptic without grounds for rejecting the concept of an immaterial person. 4. The Lack of Identifying Criteria Some recent writers, while conceding that we can make sense of the concept of an immaterial person in all the above ways, have questioned whether it would ever be possible to identify and reidentify them; that is, whether there could ever be reliable criteria for differentiating between two different immaterial persons or even between one immaterial person encountered at two different times. The objection, in short, is not that immaterial persons are logically impossible but that if they did exist it would be logically impossible to identify them. Even so, this objection depends upon a physicalistic understanding of personal identity in of bodily continuity. Allowing that it is not logically impossible that there exist immaterial persons, where a "person" is a conscious entity that has rational thoughts, memories, moral awareness, intentions, continuity of identity and who is able to perform basic and nonbasic actions, it is not logically impossible that such persons could provide proof of memory and character by performing basic actions and so successfully identify themselves. Such basic actions might include moving a planchette across a Ouija board during a séance, causing a specific pattern of vibrations in the air to produce a recognisable voice, or exciting a pattern of photons that together produce a recognisable image—all things of a sort spirits have been supposed to do. 5. Conclusion We have seen that it is not incoherent in the strict sense to suppose that immaterial persons exist; and we have seen that the claim that it is logically incoherent in the broad sense depends on a commitment to a physicalistic worldview that cannot possibly for our mental life. That we have a mental life of thoughts and perceptions is the most fundamental feature of human experience and the starting point for every other field of inquiry. It follows that any worldview that fails utterly to for our mental life cannot be rationally affirmed. And so any claim about that mental life which depends on physicalism



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cannot be rationally affirmed either. It is therefore not logically incoherent in either the strict or the broad sense to suppose that immaterial persons exist and nor is there any incoherence in supposing that such persons, if they exist, would be able to identify themselves. However, the proposition that God exists is not simply the proposition that an immaterial person exists. God is also said to be omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, necessary, eternal and perfectly good. In the next chapter I will consider whether an immaterial person with these divine attributes is a logically coherent concept.



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4 The Attributes of God 1. Omnipotence The claim that God is omnipotent is the claim that God has unlimited power to perform basic actions. While there is no strict logical incoherence in postulating the existence of such a being (the description A being with unlimited power does not involve a contradiction in the way that square circle does) it is sometimes claimed that omnipotence is broadly incoherent on two grounds: It has paradoxical consequences and it is incompatible with the existence of preventable human suffering. The first type of objection is usually made by describing some action such that a limit is imposed upon God whether he performs it or not. Consider the question, "Can God create a stone too heavy for him to lift?" or, "Can God create a universe too wayward for him to control?" If God can create such a universe, to take the second example, then there is an action he cannot subsequently perform; namely, control it; and if he can not create such a universe, then there is a different action that he cannot perform; namely, create it. Either way, the argument goes, there will be an action God cannot perform and so omnipotence is logically impossible. To see why this objection fails, we need to understand omnipotence in a more careful way. Theologians have always understood omnipotence to mean the power to perform any logically possible action. To note that God could not create a square circle imposes no limit on his powers because creating a square circle is not an action whose difficulty lies in the brute force required to perform it. In fact, it is not an action at all; rather, the imperative Create a square circle is a logically incoherent combination of English words which have no referent in the set of all logically possible actions that belong to omnipotence. This refinement defangs the objection completely. Stones so heavy that unlimited forces cannot lift them and Universes so wayward unlimited forces cannot control them both belong with



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square circles and married bachelors to a class of logically impossible entities.6 The limitations in question are limitations not of power but of logical possibility. In a like case, the Bible teaches that God, being perfect, can do no evil and this "limitation" can be understood in the same sense as those just discussed: A morally perfect being who acts immorally describes a logically incoherent state of affairs. God cannot logically be expected to perform an action such that, if it is performed, that action has the entailment that God did not perform it. The second objection to the coherence of omnipotence finds a contradiction in the conjunction of omnipotence, moral perfection, and the existence of preventable human suffering. The claim is that if God is all good, he would want to end human suffering; and if he is all powerful, he would have the ability to do so. Of all the objections to the coherence of theism, this one requires the most attention. I therefore address it separately in the next chapter. 2. Omniscience The claim that God is omniscient is the claim that God knows all true propositions and believes no false ones. There is no strict logical incoherence in postulating the existence of an omniscient being because the description A being who knows all true propositions does not contain a contradiction. However, objections to the broad coherence of omniscience are sometimes raised based on set theory, the impossibility of actual infinities, incompleteness theorems and human free will. I will now briefly discuss these in the order just given. The proponent of the first objection begins by noting that a Set of all sets is an incoherent concept because it generates a new set not included in that superset of "all" sets. 7 He then attempts to apply this paradox to the concept of a Set of all truths and claims that it is inapprehensible—and therefore incoherent to suppose that any being could be omniscient. However, the 6 All paradoxes of this sort can be simplified to the question, "Can God abrogate his own omnipotence?" As Swinburne notes, it is logically possible that the answer to this question is yes but God never chooses to do so. In this scenario, too, the paradox is circumvented: God, being omnipotent, can perform the proposed action but, in choosing not to, remains omnipotent. 7 See Russell's Paradox.



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problem only arises from an arbitrary and unnecessary insistence on the conceptual constructs of naive set theory. It is perfectly coherent to qualify omniscience in other ways. For example: The statement, For any proposition p, if it is true, God knows it, nicely captures what the theist wants to say about omniscience and entails no contradiction. The proponent of the second objection assumes that omniscience entails the apprehension of an infinite number of discrete propositions. To show that this is incoherent, he then appeals to a thought experiment by the mathematician David Hilbert which appears to illustrate the impossibility of an actual infinite number of things. Before this objection can be appreciated, I need to give a brief sketch of the thought experiment in question and I will do that now. Hilbert asks us to imagine a fully occupied hotel with infinitely many rooms. One might think that, since the hotel is fully occupied, it could not accommodate a single new guest. However, by moving the guest in Room 1 to Room 2, the guest in Room 2 to Room 3, and so on, to infinity, Room 1 will be made available and no guest will be without a room. What's more: If every guest moves into a room whose room number is double that of his own (that is, if the guest in Room 1 moves to Room 2, the guess in Room 2 to Room 4, Room 3 to 6, and so on, to infinity) all of the infinitely many odd-numbered rooms will be available and the hotel will be able to accommodate an infinite number of new guests—and since this process can be repeated indefinitely, the hotel will be able to accommodate infinitely many new guests infinitely many times. Hilbert's Hotel is absurd. And since nothing hangs on the presentation of the problem in of guests and hotel rooms, it has led some philosophers to believe that an actually infinite number of entities of any sort is unactualizable. However, even allowing that this is so and applies equally to concrete entities in space as to propositions in an immaterial mind, omniscience need not be conceptualised as comprising an infinite number of discrete propositions. On the contrary, many theologians throughout history have construed God's omniscience as a single undifferentiated intuition of all reality. A helpful analogy to this understanding of divine cognition is the visual field which we take



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in as an undifferentiated whole even though it may be atomised into infinite points. The third objection to omniscience concerns incompleteness theorems. 8 These are theorems in mathematical logic which demonstrate that no consistent system of axioms is capable of proving all arithmetical truths. In essence, the claim here is that if there exist unknowable truths then the sum of all truths is incompletable and omniscience impossible. However, this objection is based on a slight mischaracterisation of the problem. What these incompleteness theorems actually demonstrate is not the unknowability of some mathematical truth p but rather its underivability from the axioms of the relevant theory. We can therefore reframe the problem by saying that according to these theorems p does have a truth value—but one that is inaccessible by inference. And this is an important point because the theist is not claiming that God progressed from a state of nescience to a state of omniscience by inference but that omniscience belongs to him as an essential attribute. The fourth and final objection to the coherence of omniscience claims that it is incompatible with human free will which the theist also wishes to uphold. That is, if God foreknows all human actions, free will is illusory: We must (it would seem) act exactly as it was foreknown by God that we would act. It is now agreed this objection commits a modal fallacy and is invalid; moreover, many theologians are happy to constrain omniscience to Knowing all truths it is logically possible to know and exclude from this category freely willed actions—a move that simply removes the apparent tension. I will now briefly discuss both of these points. Modal logic is concerned with the ways in which propositions are either necessarily or contingently true or false; and a modal fallacy involves imputing necessary truth to a proposition that is only contingently true. Take the following example, A) Bachelors are necessarily unmarried. B) John is a bachelor.

8 See Godels Incompleteness Theorems.

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C) Therefore, John is necessarily unmarried; i.e., cannot possibly marry.

The first statement is necessarily true in virtue of its logical form; the second is contingently true because, while John is unmarried, it is logically possible for him to marry. The fallacy therefore lies in mistakenly extending the scope of necessary truth in the first statement to include the second which is only contingently true. And the same fallacy is committed in the objection under discussion. A) God foreknows that John will marry Jane. B) John marries Jane. C) Therefore, necessarily, John married Jane; i.e., had no choice.

In this case, the necessary truth of God's foreknowledge of John's future choice, given John's future choice, is mistakenly extended to include the choice itself when this is actually contingent on John's free will. To express the key point very simply: God's foreknowledge does not determine our choices; our choices determine God's foreknowledge. What follows from God's infallible foreknowledge of p is just that p will happen but not that p will happen necessarily. It is possible that p, being contingent, could not have happened—but in that case, God's foreknowledge would have been different. In this sense divine foreknowledge may be likened to an infallible barometer which, while it will tell you with infallible correctness what the weather will be, does not itself cause the weather. The misstep made here is tricky but, as I said, uncontroversially recognized as a misstep. However, some theists avoid the apparent tension altogether by adopting a position called Open Theism. This is the view that it is impossible even for God to know what free agents will do and therefore omniscience needs to be understood in a similarly careful way to omnipotence with respect to logical possibility. That is, just as God cannot be required to do what it is logically impossible to do, so God cannot be required to know what it is logically impossible to know. Swinburne, who affirms Open Theism, adds, "Since God is omnipotent, it will only be because God allows there to be free persons that there will be any free persons. So this limit to divine omniscience arises from

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the consequences of his own choice to create free agents." Unlike the logical constraints on omnipotence with respect to actualising impossible states of affairs, God could abolish the logical constraints upon omniscience with respect to the choices of agents with free will by abolishing the free will or the agents. It is a contingent, rather than a necessary, limitation. It is important to that, if God exists, it does not matter which if any of these ways of understanding his omniscience is true. The fact that even one of them is logically possible suffices to discharge the objection that the concept of omniscience is logically impossible. 3. Omnipresence The claim that God is omnipresent is often misunderstood. For this reason it will be helpful to begin by specifying what the claim is not. When the theist says that God is omnipresent he wishes to refute the idea that God is localised at any particular place either in the universe or in any other realm such as "heaven." 9 However, the theist does not propose as an alternative the view that God is spread throughout space like an invisible gas. This would have an unwanted consequence for it would mean that God is never fully present anywhere: There would be a certain cubic volume of God in your room, a larger cubic volume of God in St Paul's Cathedral, and the greater portion of God suffused throughout the observable universe. A more satisfactory description of omnipresence would be to say that it is a way of understanding the claim that God is a disembodied mind who is able to move any part of the universe as a basic action and who does not look out on the universe from any particular location but knows without inference every state of affairs within it. We could further simplify this by saying with William Lane Craig that, "God is cognisant of, and causally active at, every point in space." 9 And, a fortiori, the comical depiction

of God in pop culture as a giant bearded humanoid in a toga and sandals. William Lane Craig suggests that this unfortunate meme has its origin in Michelangelo's fresco The Creation of Adam and then adds, perhaps correctly, that the famous image has done more damage to the proper understanding of God than any other. However, God is said to be a disembodied spirit in the very first verses of Genesis and no biblically-literate Christian should ever have understood the word God to mean anything else.



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There is no strict logical incoherence entailed by this description of divine omnipresence. However, it has been suggested that it is incompatible with a further claim which the theist wishes to make; the claim that God has personhood. The proponent of this objection begins by insisting that having wants and fears is essential to persons. He then claims that only a person who sometimes takes steps towards things can rightly be said to want them; and only a person who sometimes runs away from things can rightly be said to fear them. A person who is simultaneously present everywhere can do neither. However, this objection shows a failure of imagination with respect to the many ways in which an omnipresent person who can affect the world through basic actions could give expression to his desires and fears. If he wants a man on a journey to change direction, for example, he may cause a landslide blocking his path; if he fears a man will die of thirst, he may intervene in natural processes to make it rain—and so on. "It is important in this connection," writes Swinburne, "not to overemphasize the extent of God's non-embodiment in the view of traditional theism. The view of traditional theism is that in many ways God is not related to a material object as a person is to his body but in other ways he is so related." The key differences are that the world plays no role in mediating God's perceptions; there is no material object in which disturbances cause God pain; and God could annihilate the universe by a basic action and continue to exist without it. 4. Necessity and Eternality In making the claim that God is necessary, theologians have wanted to say two things. Firstly, that while the universe could not exist without God, God existed before the universe and could, if he chose to, annihilate the universe and continue to exist without it. And secondly, that God's existence with or without the universe is not an accidental feature of ultimate reality; rather, God's nonexistence is impossible. This second claim has traditionally been understood in one of two ways, both of which further entail God's eternality: In the weak sense of factual necessity and in the strong sense of logical necessity. The claim that God's existence is a factual necessity is the claim that while it is logically possible that there is no God the



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impossibility of his nonexistence is implied by his attributes if he in fact exists. We can easily understand what is meant by this understanding of God's necessity by postulating the existence of a single absolutely indestructible elementary particle. It is logically possible that no such particle exists; but if it did come into existence then, by definition, it could not thereafter cease to exist. In a like case, it is logically possible that there exists no being like God but if a being like God does in fact exist, there is nothing that could possibly bring about his nonexistence and so his existence is factually necessary. So described, the factual necessity of God if God exists is not incoherent in either the strict or the broad sense. It is simply a tautology of logic, such as, If it is raining, then it is raining, which it would be incoherent to deny. This assumes, of course, that in view of God's other attributes it would be incoherent to suppose that God could destroy himself. The stronger claim that God's existence is a logical necessity is the claim that it is logically impossible for God not to exist. Strictly speaking, a proposition is logically necessary if its negation is a logical contradiction. The proposition God does not exist is not a logical contradiction. It follows that if it is incoherent to deny the existence of God, it will be incoherent in the broad sense; that is, to see why it is incoherent we will need to follow out the entailments of the nonexistence of God. The Ontological Argument, which I will discuss later, argues for the logical necessity of God from first principles; and in Part II, I will be presenting arguments which show that in the absence of God we cannot make sense of mental and moral experience. The Modal Cosmological Argument, as we shall see, is reducible to the proposition, If a contingent being exists, then a Necessary Being exists. Copleston argued that this is a logically necessary proposition but not, strictly speaking, an analytic proposition. And this is because it is logically necessary only given that there exists a contingent being, which has to be discovered by experience, and the proposition, A contingent being exists is not analytic. “Though once you know that there is a contingent being,” he emphasised, “it follows of necessity that there is a Necessary Being.” However, in this chapter I am not concerned with whether God actually exists but only with whether it is coherent to suppose that God exists; and presently, with whether it is coherent to



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suppose that his existence is necessitated. I will therefore conclude as follows: It is not incoherent to suppose that if God exists his existence is factually necessitated in the way I have defined. The stronger claim that it is logically necessitated, and which entails that God actually exists, needs to be made at greater length. 5. Perfect Goodness Here I will find Swinburne's definition of perfect goodness helpful: A good person is one who performs good actions of many kinds and few bad ones; a perfectly good person is one who performs only morally best actions of many kinds and no bad ones. However, this understanding of perfect goodness needs to be qualified slightly. Swinburne reminds us that sometimes there are situations in which there is no morally best action. Suppose, for instance, that you are faced with two people who will die without your help and you are only able to help one. In this situation (all other things being equal) helping Person A and helping Person B are what Swinburne calls "equal best" actions. Faced with a choice of equal best actions, a perfectly good person is free to choose arbitrarily between them. A perfectly good person can also choose arbitrarily, Swinburne suggests, when faced with situations in which there is an infinite spectrum of increasingly good actions and so, again, no best action. For example: Suppose, what is reasonable, that creating people, planets and stars is a good action. The universe contains finite quantities of all of them. Wouldn't a better world be one with more of each? Yes but there is no limit to how many there could be and so no best action. Even if there were infinitely many people, planets and stars there could always be a few more. So here too there is no morally best action. The concept of equal best actions and the concept of infinite spectrums of increasingly good actions help us to make sense of moral perfection and divine freedom. Consider: If creating the universe and not creating it were equal best actions (perhaps because one action affords finite creatures the opportunity to know God and the other avoids moral and natural evil) then either action would be consistent with the moral perfection of God and God could create or not create the universe by an act of free will. The properties of the objects it contains would likewise be open to



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infinitely many equal best variations and, as we have just seen, there is no morally best number of objects and so the size and population of the universe is also a matter of free will. It would seem, then, that there is no strict incoherence in the claim that God is perfectly good because the proposition, There exists a being who in every situation always performs either a morally best or an equal best action or else chooses arbitrarily from an infinite spectrum of increasingly good actions contains no contradiction and is further compatible with divine freedom of the will in an infinitely large number of situations. But are there any a priori grounds for thinking that God is perfectly good? The German philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Leibniz offered one intriguing argument for the mutual inclusiveness of omniscience and moral perfection. The argument unfolds from the observation that all freely willed action strives towards some goal and that all goals are the pursuit of an apparent good entertained by the agent. Importantly, this also holds for morally bad actions. A thief, for instance, seeks the “good” of an increase in his personal fortune and his action is to be understood as bad insofar as it pursues this small selfish good at the cost of a significant decrease in the total good—the unhappiness he brings to his victim; the mistrust and unease he inspires; his subversion of laws that conduce to social harmony and so on. However, since the “apparent good” of any action is also dependent on our knowledge, increases in knowledge will refine our judgment of good and evil and, with that refinement, improve our morality. This is not to imply that a wrongdoer is entirely unaware of the wrongfulness of his actions; but it is to say that he fails to or refuses to recognise the importance of a greater good beyond the limited good he arrogates to himself. By contrast, an enlightened mind is not subject to the selfish impulse to seek some small good at the cost of a decrease in the total good—and in a divine mind this principle is developed to its ultimate logical consequence. Being disembodied, a divine mind is free from carnality; being omniscient, it is free from irrationality; being omnipotent, it is free from want. Its greatest pleasure, according to Leibniz, is found, "in recognising that it perform virtuous deeds and in pursuing goals which promote universal perfection." Perfect knowledge, in short, produces a perfect



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awareness of and pursuit of the good. And since God's knowledge is perfect, his goodness is perfect too. As already noted, the most famous objection to the existence of God is that the t claims that God is morally perfect and omnipotent are incompatible with the existence of evil and suffering. In the next chapter, this claim will be carefully evaluated and found to be fully resolved by the so-called "Higher Order Goods Defence." 6. Conclusion I have now discussed all the key attributes of God in classical theism. Omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, necessity and eternity were all shown to be coherent in both the broad and the strict sense I defined. And while the problem of evil has yet to be discussed, nevertheless, the concept of God is emerging as a logically coherent one. As a final point it is worth adding that several more of the attributes of God discussed above cohere logically in the way that omniscience and moral perfection were shown to do. For instance: If God is omnipotent, there is no point in space that he could not affect by a basic action—which is consistent with his omnipresence; and if he is omnipresent, there is no point in space which he could not directly perceive—which is consistent with his omniscience. A lack of knowledge, moreover, would impose constraints on omnipotence and so omniscience and omnipotence also cohere by logical necessity. Having established that God is coherent in abstracto let us now consider whether it is coherent to suppose God exists in view of the fact of human suffering.



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5 The Problem Of Evil One of the most famous objections to the existence of God is that the t claims that God is morally perfect and omnipotent are incompatible with the existence of evil and suffering—for if God were all good, he would want to prevent evil and suffering, and if he were all powerful, he would be able to do so. Therefore, the argument goes, evil and suffering prove one of three things: That God does not exist, or that he is not all good, or that he is not all powerful. The moral perfection of God is, on this view, broadly incoherent. Before responding, I need to briefly define a few that will be of use in what follows. "Free will" is the power of an agent to perform actions that are influenced but never fully determined by forces external to himself but of itself free will does not necessarily entail the capacity to do evil. God could, for instance, give us free will but constrain its exercise to the choice between different but equally good actions. I will therefore use the term "moral liberty" for the power of an agent to exercise his free will in making choices between good and bad actions; and "moral evil" for the use of moral liberty to perform bad actions. Finally, I will use the term "natural evil" for suffering having causes unrelated to moral evil—the suffering caused by natural disasters, accidents, diseases, and so on. 1. Moral Evil I suggested earlier that we need to understand omnipotence in a way that allows for the constraints of logical possibility. The relevance of this point to moral evil should be immediately obvious. It is logically impossible for God to create agents with moral liberty and ensure that they do not sin. The potential for moral evil is therefore an unavoidable consequence of moral liberty.10 The question that needs to be asked is whether moral 10 To create agents with moral liberty and constrain them from moral evil is simply to deny them moral liberty. It is logically possible, though hugely improbable, that a planet of agents with moral liberty will by chance alone do no evil. But, needless to say, this state of affairs does not obtain on our planet



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liberty confers any significant benefits upon mankind; and if it does, whether those benefits outweigh the suffering that it entails. In the following paragraphs I will be arguing that it confers upon mankind very significant benefits indeed; namely, that it makes possible the attainment of virtue, the formation of moral character and the capacity for genuine love. 1.1 The Attainment of Virtue To understand the importance of moral liberty to virtue, imagine a world from which moral liberty has been removed; in other words, a world in which the only possible exercise of free will is in the choice between different kinds of equally good actions. The result would be a toy universe or pleasure park in which we exist like animals or small children—experiencing comfort and sensory pleasure but without the opportunity to show empathy, courage, patience, self-sacrifice, forgiveness or heroism. Such thought experiments help to bring out an important moral distinction between innocence and virtue. Innocence is a mere ignorance of evil; virtue requires that one face a significant choice between good and evil and freely choose the good. And since it is logically impossible for God to force us to freely choose the good, any world in which virtue is attainable is a world in which moral evil is a distinct possibility. 1.2 The Formation of Moral Character Because we have moral liberty we are continuously faced with the choice between performing good and bad actions. And, as Swinburne notes, humans are so made that when we choose to do good, it becomes slightly easier to choose to do good again at the next opportunity; and when we choose to do evil, it becomes slightly easier to choose to do evil again at the next opportunity. In this way, over time, we are able to change the desires that influence us and form either a very good or a very bad character. Without moral liberty our characters would be uniformly good and uniformly devoid of moral significance. 1.3 The Capacity for Genuine Love Love that is induced through the use of potions, hypnotism or spells is not considered genuine. For love between humans to be



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genuine, it must be freely given. It follows from this simple truth that any world in which genuine human love is a possibility is a world in which moral evil is a possibility. And this is because if you are truly free to give love you must be truly free to withhold it—even in situations where withholding it would be wrong. For a mother's love for her young children to be genuine, for example, it cannot be forced upon her from above by God; it must be freely given and in that case it must be logically possible for her to withhold it—and so, perhaps, to neglect and abuse her children. All this holds equally for our love of God. To be genuine a love of God cannot be built into us by God. It must be freely given and this entails the freedom to withhold it.11 Moral liberty therefore confers the profoundest imaginable benefits upon mankind. It provides us with the opportunity to attain virtue, form a moral character, and experience genuine love for each other and for God. It is not at all incoherent to suppose that a perfectly good person would choose to create a world in which these supreme goods were possible—even at the cost of moral evil. 2. Natural Evil In discussing natural evil, it is important to recognise that the suffering it entails is often bound up with moral evil. Cheaply built and poorly planned towns, for instance, can significantly raise the death toll during earthquakes and floods; the misuse of certain chemicals can significantly increases the incidence of cancer; the failure of wealthy countries to provide aid to poor countries can result in preventable famines—and so forth. Nevertheless, there is a great deal of suffering on Earth for which no human agent is responsible. And in what follows I will be arguing that such natural evil fulfils three additional and important purposes which moral 11 The question arises whether God can freely withhold

his love and if not then how, given my argument, it can be genuine. However, the difficulty only arises in the case of finite persons created by God for the purpose of knowing and loving him and each other. For if God created us with an immutable and irresistible love for himself and each other, that love would have its origin in something external to ourselves—namely, God—and would not therefore be freely given and genuine. But since God's love is past eternal and has no cause external to himself, it is genuine even though by a necessity of his divine nature he is incapable of withholding it.



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evil alone could not fulfil: It ensures that opportunities to obtain virtue are universal; it broadens the scope and significance of our moral choices; and, most importantly, it conduces to the religious life. 2.1 It Makes Opportunities to Obtain Virtue Universal In the section discussing moral liberty, we saw that empathy, courage, patience, self-sacrifice, forgiveness and heroism are all states contributive to virtue. But it needs to be noted that it is not moral liberty alone, but moral liberty and moral evil together, that provide an opportunity to manifest these virtues. In other words, only if someone eventually exercises their moral liberty to assault or abuse you can I exercise mine to show you empathy; only if you are robbed can I make personal sacrifices to provide for you. The question arises whether moral evil alone would afford adequate opportunities for everyone to form a virtuous moral character. In this connection Swinburne writes, You can show courage when threatened by a gunman as well as when threatened by cancer; and show sympathy to those likely to be killed by gunmen as well as to those likely to die of cancer. But just imagine all the suffering of mind and body caused by disease, earthquake, and accident unpreventable by humans removed at a stroke from our society—no sickness, no senility, no bereavement in consequence of the untimely death of the young. Many of us would then have such an easy life that we simply would not have much opportunity to show courage or, indeed, manifest much in the way of great goodness at all.

Consider a world without disaster, disease and decrepitude; a world in which the only cause of injury and death is, respectively, assault and murder. It is a mathematical certainty that such a world would provide far, far fewer opportunities for virtue and highly probable that some people would have no such opportunities at all. 2.2 It Broadens The Scope of Moral Liberty Moreover, with careful reflection it is apparent that the removal of natural evil would also considerably constrain the scope and significance of moral liberty. For instance: The knowledge that poison causes death is unobtainable unless someone is first observed to have accidentally died by poisoning. And knowledge of

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poisonous toadstools and berries thereafter affords us an opportunity to exercise significant moral liberty: We can use that knowledge to kill off a neighbouring village by poisoning its well or to warn the neighbouring village not to eat toadstools. Earthquake belts, to give another example, give us a choice between building upon them cities that may be destroyed long after we are dead or avoiding doing so. Pathogens give us a choice between making biological weapons that kill thousands or developing antibiotics that save thousands. These examples show that natural evil broadens the scope and significance of our choices so that they are able to benefit or harm others far from us in both time and space. This confers on us a solemn moral responsibility and significance and so plausibly conduces to the aims of a morally perfect creator for his creatures. 2.3 It Conduces to the Religious Life If God exists he is the consummation and source of all power, knowledge, wisdom, beauty, rationality and love lying at the very heart of reality. A genuine and eternal love relationship with God is therefore greatest conceivable good available to us. The question arises: Does a world that contains moral and natural evil conduce to the greatest number of creatures freely seeking the greatest conceivable good available to them? Reason and experience suggest that the answer may be yes. Pleasure and comfort are good and our world, of course, includes both. But a life that offered nothing else would make us complacent, hedonistic, idle and shallow. Suffering and death, on the other hand, force us all to confront questions about the ultimate meaning of life and so, for very many, plays a causal role in developing a relationship with God and living a religious life.

3. Conclusion The objection from evil seems ultimately to rest on the naive assumption that God created the universe to serve as a comfortable habitat for his human pets. However, we have seen that moral and natural evil are an unpreventable feature of any world in which the supreme goods of virtue, moral self-determination, genuine love



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and knowledge of God are significantly and universally attainable. It is probable that the creation of a pleasure park inhabited by creatures who know endless pleasure and comfort but are devoid of moral and spiritual significance would be a morally good act. But it is not at all incoherent to suppose that, viewed under the aspect of his infinite intelligence and moral perfection, God would know that the creation of a world precisely like ours is a morally better act. This is the so-called "Higher-Order Goods" solution to the problem of evil. Pleasure, innocence and comfort are good; but virtue, significance and love are better. And God, being perfectly good, gives us the very best things He has to give.



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6 The Hiddenness Of God The vast majority of people in the vast majority of times and places have believed in God;12 nevertheless, most believers struggle with doubt at some point in their life and some people, of course, do not believe in God at all. In the previous chapter, God was described as the supreme and tremendous fact about ultimate reality and the source of all power, knowledge, wisdom, beauty, and love. A skeptic might reasonably object that, if such an entity really existed, its existence would be as overwhelming and undeniable as the noonday sun in full blaze; or, at the very least, not open to dispute. The objection seems especially troubling in view of the claim that God, in addition to being our creator and sustainer, wishes to have a relationship with us. A father who hid himself from his children to the point that some of them came to doubt his existence would rightly be called neglectful. This is the problem of divine hiddenness. It is helpful to note that there are two aspects to divine hiddenness correlating with two ways of knowing God. Moses at Mount Sinai and Paul on the road to Damascus both obtained direct knowledge of God and many mystics and some ordinary believers claim to experience God in a similarly immediate way. The believer who is persuaded by arguments for the existence of God, on the other hand, or who claims that God has answered one of his prayers, believes he has indirect knowledge of God. The complaint from divine hiddenness can now be slightly refined: "God does not directly reveal himself often enough, and he does not indirectly reveal himself compellingly enough." 12 Examples of “primitive atheism” are almost unheard of in anthropology.

The Story of Civilisation by Will Durant includes reports that certain Pygmy tribes found in Africa were observed to have no identifiable cults or rites—but the evidence is rather thin and, in any case, I think the paltriness of such exceptions suffices to prove the rule.



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In the following paragraphs I will be arguing, firstly, that if God exists he is the sort of being whose salience would be observer-relative in two specific and important ways; secondly, that divine hiddenness in general confers significant benefits upon mankind; and finally, that the assumption that we should be able to identify God by normal observational criteria may be at variance with his radical alterity or "otherness." However, before coming to these points I need to set a critical implication of theism in the foreground of the discussion. And I will do this now. 1. The Opposite Problem of Certain Knowledge In most forms of theism and in all Abrahamic ones the belief in God is coned with a belief in an afterlife. Our present life of pain and suffering, the theist claims, is merely a preparation for a perfect and eternal life to come. Some may wish to know why God did not simply create the perfect world and by the imperfect one. And the answer given by theologians in reply to this question will help us to frame the problem of divine hiddenness in the right way. In the previous chapter we saw that moral liberty requires the freedom to do good as well as evil, that genuine love requires the freedom to give and to withhold love, and that a morally perfect God has reason to create agents capable of both kinds of freedom. However, a problem arises if the naked countenance of God is, as most theologians suppose, overwhelming. In that case, finite agents created and held ab ovo in the presence of God would mass around him in involuntary ecstatic adoration like metal filings massed around a powerful magnet. Given the definitions of genuine love and virtue already outlined, agents who came into existence in this way would have neither. Moreover, a God who respects the free will of his creatures would need to let them choose whether or not they want to spend eternity with him. One solution would be for God to create an antecedent world from which his countenance is hidden and then populate it with agents who begin life in a state of moral and spiritual ignorance.13 In such a world, knowledge of God would 13 See 1 Corinthians 13:12.

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no longer be overwhelming, immediate and incessant like the noonday sun in full blaze; but a further problem arises if the discovery of certain knowledge of God (through, say, empirical poofs and unambiguous and universal religious experiences) is a threat to genuine love and moral liberty—as I will shortly be arguing it is. What is the solution to this problem? One possibility would be for God to calibrate the minds of his creatures and the obtainable knowledge of his existence in such a way that belief is produced in ratio to each creature's desire for him; religious experiences, likewise, could be mostly restricted to those either open to God or already living a religious life. In this way any creature who freely committed itself to the good and to God could enter the presence of God after death; moral liberty, having served its purpose, would be lost and as in the first scenario the creature would exist in ecstatic adoration of the Godhead—but with the difference that, this time, the creature's moral goodness has been self-determined, its love for God is genuine, and its eternal state has been freely entered into. If the scenarios I have sketched out above are at all plausible, it follows that any antecedent world capable of producing creatures of the desired kind is by necessity a world that produces theists, agnostics and atheists—a world, that is, precisely like ours. The rest of his chapter assumes that we live in such an antecedent world (in which the countenance of God is hidden but in which limited direct and indirect knowledge of God is widely available) and presents arguments to show that the benefits this confers upon us significantly outweigh the costs. 2. Observer-Relative Salience The failure to observe some object may be due to a property of that object which makes it difficult to observe or else it may be due to some limit or deficiency in the observer. I may fail to see a hare, for example, because it is camouflaged or I may fail to see it because I have poor vision. This simple truth helps to introduce the two ways in which the salience of God may be observer-relative. In order to understand the first, it needs to be ed that if God exists he is not just another being among many. He is the creator and ruler of the universe and the source of all moral authority. It follows that coming to a knowledge of God's existence



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imposes profound moral obligations upon the creature in a way that no other discovery could. The choice thrust upon him is between submitting to the will of God (which, in view of the definition of God just given, is the only rational response available) or else refusing to do so and thereby pitting his finite selfhood against the infinite power and maximal authority of God. It is possible that being confronted with certain knowledge of the existence of God when you are not yet willing to respond appropriately would be psychologically devastating. God, being omniscient, knows whether you are ready; and being morally perfect, wishes to avoid harming you if you are not. The obvious way he could do this is by hiding himself.14 The hiddenness of God, in this scenario, is God's comionate response to a deficiency in the creature. In the second scenario, however, the hiddenness may be due entirely to the deficiency. Michael Rea has noted, correctly, I think, that, "Most sensible people would recoil in horror upon hearing that a person of great power and influence had taken a special interest in them and had very definite, detailed and not-easilyimplemented views about how they ought to live their lives." In many cases this horror is unconcealed. The eminent philosopher Thomas Nagel, for instance, has written that, "I want atheism to be true. I hope there is no God. I do not want there to be a God. I do not want the universe to be like that." It is certainly possible that, for some, feelings of this sort could operate below the threshold of conscious awareness and both prejudice their mind against the evidence for God's existence and blunt their receptivity to religious experience. 15 14 Here an obvious point of difference emerges between the hare in my example and the first sense in which the salience of God may be observer-relative. The hare's being camouflaged may be indirectly due to my status as a potential predator but it has nothing to do with my particular personality and nor is the hare aware of my poor vision. With God it is different: Aware of my deficiencies, God hides himself and it is in this sense that the salience of the object of perception is observer-relative even though it is under the control of the object.

15 Alvin Plantinga has argued that humans can sense God by means of an innate faculty,

a sensus divinitatis, that is damaged by moral evil in the way that our vision is damaged by reading in low light or our hearing by loud music. On this view, atheism may be due to the, " noetic effects of sin."



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This hypothesis will be offensive to atheists. But atheists, of course, must recognise its tenability because they press similar objections against believers. On the supposition that God exists, it is not at all improbable that the paradigm pressures and cognitive biases they familiarly impute to believers could exert force in the opposite direction to produce unreasonable unbelief; nor is it improbable that God would allow spiritually unprepared creatures to seek temporary refuge from him in this way. 3. The Benefits of Divine Hiddenness Generally The argument just given is of limited use. It does not tell us why some believers struggle with doubt nor why there should be what Schellenberg calls, "nonresistant nonbelievers"—that is, people who seem open to believing in God but do not come to believe in him.16 To state the problem precisely: If God exists, is perfectly 16 The weakness in Schellenberg's argument is the forever uncertain status of the "nonresistant nonbeliever." Theism, to borrow a phrase from N. T. Wright, is the most "self-involving" hypothesis imaginable because affirming it entails a complete change in one's way of life. Powerful paradigm pressures therefore apply to everyone, everywhere, forever. An unconscious resistance to God is certainly possible and if present then, by definition, the "nonresistant" nonbeliever would not be conscious of it and would not report it. It follows that it is possible that there is no lifelong nonresistant nonbelief. In fact, there is an intriguing philosophical doctrine that appears to this view. Doxastic voluntarism is the theory that we have indirect voluntary control over some of our beliefs in the same way that we have indirect voluntary control over our actions. On this view, a man who is indisposed to belief in God can choose to read books by atheists which justify his indisposition; to read books by theists which challenge his indisposition; or to read evenly from both sides of the debate. Which of these choices he makes will determine both the kinds of beliefs he holds and the confidence with which he holds them. And of course all of this applies, mutatis mutandis, to the man who is disposed to belief in God and to the man who has no preexisting disposition. The doctrine applies most plausibly to propositions which are on superficial inspection inconclusive and between which we are caught somewhat like Buridan’s Ass. Suppose now that the existence for the existence of God is like this and consider Mr Green. Because of his isolated background, he is ignorant both of the standard arguments for and of the standard arguments against the existence of God. Nonetheless, he understands the proposition God exists and on some level desires to believe it. He therefore takes the voluntary intermediary steps productive of belief—reading books on natural theology with a formative desire to give their arguments his assent. During this time, he also goes for late night walks gazing at the heavens wondering if there really is a God, hoping that there is, and seeking numinous experiences; he buys Bach’s Mass in B minor and listens to the Agnus Dei aria while leafing through a book of religious art—and so on. God begins to manifest his presence in the life of Mr Green who is moved by these corroborating experiences and becomes a theist. What is interesting is that whatever rational grounds Mr Green arrives at, his belief in God may have its ultimate cause in an act of volition prior to but continuing throughout



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good, and wishes to have a relationship with us, the theist owes an explanation for divine hiddenness in general that is consistent with this conjunct of claims. The question we must ask is whether divine hiddenness confers any significant benefits upon us and upon our relationship with God; and if it does, whether those benefits outweigh the unbelief and doubt that divine hiddenness allows and which (on the supposition that God exists) are a source of confusion and error about the nature of ultimate reality. I will now be arguing that there are in fact many benefits to divine hiddenness which are of supreme value. 3.1 Moral Liberty By now the claim that the attainment of virtue and the formation of a moral character depend on moral liberty will be familiar. However, any world in which the superintendence of God is an obvious fact is a world in which significant moral liberty is almost impossible. Imagine, by way of illustration, a young child who senses his mother's watchful presence at the nursery door. The desire to please his mother and the lack of a feasible prospect of misbehaving with impunity will in that moment completely extinguish all temptation and so leave him without significant choice. Living under the gaze of God would have analogous results. 17 One way in which God could vouchsafe us significant moral choice is by temporarily situating himself at an, "epistemic distance." It is this that we experience as divine hiddenness.

his investigation and religious experiences and perhaps prior even to his conscious desire to seek to believe in God. And something like this could hold in reverse for the atheist. Indeed, one of the troubling implications of doxastic voluntarism for atheism is that, whatever rational grounds the atheist acquires, he may ultimately have repudiated God by an act of prior volition.

17 Here it is important to distinguish between what I have called the "bare countenance

of God," and permanent undeniable sensory evidence of his existence. In the first case, the holy presence of God is completely disclosed and completely overwhelming; in the second case, the countenance is veiled but God is imagined to provide some permanent sign of his existence and moral surveillance—a luminous apparition that follows and watches every human being, for example, or a single, vast abyssal eye looming over the Earth.



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3.2 A Total Commitment to the Good As Swinburne notes, divine hiddenness also provides us with opportunities to demonstrate, "a total commitment to the good." To return to the example just given: A child who shares food with his younger sister when he believes they are alone shows a greater commitment to the good than a child who shares food with his sister under his mother's approving gaze. And what is said here of children and mothers can be said of man and God. Giving to the poor in the certain knowledge that a perfectly good and infinitely powerful being is watching is of a different moral quality to giving to the poor despite entertainable doubts about the existence of God. Divine hiddenness therefore makes it possible for us to perform potentially selfless and unrewarded good actions and so form a very good moral character. It is therefore a plausible feature of an antecedent world created by God with a view to producing creatures who are morally fit for an eternal one. 3.3 Discerning the Ultimate Truths A further benefit of divine hiddenness relates to the life of the mind. When a child asks its parent a question about the world it is good for the parent to answer it directly; but it may be better for the parent to help the child to discover the answer for themselves. In a like case, while it may have been good for God to frontload knowledge of his existence into our brains, it may have been better for him to have given us the responsibility of discovering for ourselves the ultimate truth about reality. The problem of hiddenness arises because, like a human parent, God is a loving person who wishes to have a relationship with us but, unlike a human parent, he is himself the ultimate truth about reality he wishes for us to discover. However, as we have seen, divine hiddenness is already a necessary feature of any antecedent world capable of producing truly free and virtuous creatures fit for a meaningful relationship with God. The benefit just described does not therefore entail a cost but is naturally compatible with those conditions which are already in place because they conduce to a greater good.18 18 The

"discoverability" of the truth about ultimate reality also has a moral dimension that should not be overlooked. For example: A mother who provides her son with the means of finding the answer to his question about plants (such as by giving him a book on botany



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3.4 The Regularity of Natural Law The ability of an agent to exercise moral liberty depends on his ability to perform basic and nonbasic actions. These, in turn, depend on natural laws. In order to strike you or save you from drowning, for instance, my mind must be reliably mapped to my muscular reflexes. And what is true here of individual agents is true for societies at large: The ability to build structures and do science (to moral or immoral ends) depend on the regularity of the laws which govern our world. In this obvious truth Swinburne sees another reason for divine hiddenness: If God intervened too frequently in the antecedent world (such as by answering almost every prayer, intervening to prevent almost every wrongdoing, and working miracles everywhere) it would lack this crucial regularity and the feasibility of societies of morally free agents would be compromised. Constraining indirect knowledge of his existence by means of divine intervention is, on this view, pragmatic. 3.5 Personal Relationships A strong natural desire for the love and approval of other persons is an essential element of our capacity to form and sustain relationships with each other and with God. And such relationships and the desire that facilitates them are very obviously supreme goods of a sort that a morally perfect God would wish to vouchsafe us. In this Swinburne identifies yet another reason for divine hiddenness: If I have a strong and constant awareness of the presence of the supreme person of God, my temptation to do evil will be reduced in proportion to my natural desire for the love and approval of other persons; and this, in turn, will cripple my moral liberty. Swinburne concludes that, "The possibility of a free choice between right and wrong will exist only given a certain ratio of strength between the desire to please God and the desire to do wrong." In other words, to make moral liberty possible God would need to eliminate our strong desire for and directions to a botanical garden) also gives him a choice between making an effort to discover the answer or not bothering. The hiddenness of God provides a similar choice. Doubters can study the relevant issues in science and philosophy to discover whether or not it is likely that God exists or they can choose not to bother. In this way, divine hiddenness further extends the scope of our moral and intellectual freedom.



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the love and approval of other persons and this would make love and friendship universally unfeasible.19 3.6 Appropriate Religious Attitudes Finally, and perhaps most importantly, divine hiddenness may be, "good for the soul." Theologians sometimes make the point that God does not care about your belief in his existence per se. The Bible tells us that even the demons believe, "and shudder." What God cares about is your response to the belief that he exists; your relationship with him. This helps us to make further sense of the problem of divine hiddenness, for while it is true that it is responsible for unbelief, it also ensures that those who do believe develop a number of appropriate religious attitudes. I will mention just three. Firstly, it ensures that those who seek God are sincere and selfless. The concern is not simply that there might be something coercive in confronting undoubtable knowledge of God. Some of his properties (overwhelming beauty, unlimited resources) also make a certain kind of genuineness in our response to him very difficult. God might therefore need to hide himself to allow us to develop the right sort of selfless desire for him—somewhat analogous to a billionaire who, seeking genuine love, conceals his fantastic wealth until he has found it. Secondly, divine hiddenness calls on those who do develop a selfless desire for God to make a deliberate and continuous effort to pursue him as the summum 19 Schellenberg suggests that God could solve this problem by endowing us with a strong natural proclivity for self-deception. To his way of thinking this would allow a strong and constant sense of the presence of God to coexist with moral liberty: If I wish to sin, I simply deceive myself into thinking that I can do so with impunity—perhaps by persuading myself that God wants me to sin, or that he is not actually omniscient, or even that he does not, after all, exist. There are several problems with Schellenberg's suggestion. Firstly, if a strong proclivity for self-deception is to replace divine hiddenness as the facilitator of moral liberty, it would need to be as universal as the doubt which hiddenness produces and this would render our cognitive faculties completely unreliable. Secondly, in order to entertain the idea of sinning I would need to have already deceived myself. But if self-deception must precede temptation, there can be no possible temptation to deceive myself in the first place. And finally, the suggestion that we could deceive ourselves about the existence of God only serves to bring out the necessity of hiddenness. In an effort to make the higher order goods under discussion attainable without hiddenness, Schellenberg ends up describing a divine-hiddenness-like world which reinforces the point he wishes to refute. An objection which aids the case it wishes to oppose is literally, "worse than useless."



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bonum--the highest good. Scripture everywhere ens us to thirst and hunger after God in this way; to seek, to ask and to knock. If the existence of God were an obvious feature of our world, this religious virtue would be unattainable. Knowledge of the highest good at the heart of reality could then be got on the cheap and the freedom to pursue it and to ignore it would both be removed. Finally, divine hiddenness might simply teach us something important about the nature of God. He does not appear on command to settle debates about his existence or obey skeptics' demands to levitate objects on pain of their continued unbelief. Even a man who begins to live a religious life is quickly given to understand that he cannot summon the presence of God by prayer and incantation. "God," Michael Rea reminds us, "is maximally free, maximally authoritative, and will be manipulated by no one." This might be a lesson that it is good for us to learn.20 4. Conclusion The objection from divine hiddenness arises from a confident assumption about how God, if he exists, ought to act. A final point that needs to be considered is whether our finite minds can formulate reliable observational criteria for an entity of abyssal intelligence, unlimited power and perfect love. The argument insists that a loving being of unlimited powers would surely reveal itself to each of us in whatever form or fashion produces our belief in it. The implication, clearly, is that God must conform himself to our expectations concerning him and the failure to do so exposes a deficiency in his nature. But what if the unbeliever's expectations about God are fundamentally dysfunctional, unreasonable and wrong? In that case, God would want the unbeliever to overcome them and conforming to them would mislead and harm him. And even the further objection that God, being all powerful and all knowing, would be able to find some appropriate way to make his existence obvious to each of his creatures, whatever their 20 The list of higher-order goods just given

is by no means exhaustive. For example, Swinburne argues that agnosticism also, "makes possible a great good for the religious believer. It allows the believer to have the awesome choice of helping or not helping the agnostic to understand the source of his existence and his ultimate well-being," both by evangelising and by living an exemplary religious life. This further introduces a dimension of moral evil since, "agnosticism may, if there is a God, be due to the failures of believers to help agnostics in these ways."



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expectations, does not escape the problem. For just the same God either conforms to the unbeliever's expectations or he does not.21 And so our confidence in the objection from divine hiddenness is only as strong as our confidence in the tenability of the unbeliever's expectations about God. And here no confidence is justified. It is logical: A being who can control every atom in the universe by a basic action and who views us under the aspect of eternity and infinite intelligence may very well have ways of fulfilling his loving purposes for us that do not meet our expectations—purposes in which, perhaps, even our doubt and unbelief have their preordained place. In discussing this problem under the name of "divine silence," Michael Rea asks us to imagine, A wise and virtuous person who is utterly beyond you intellectually and silently leads you on a journey that might teach you a lot more about herself and about other things on your journey than she would if she tried to tell you all of the things that she wants to teach you. In such a case, objecting to the silence, interpreting it as an offence, or wishing that the person would just talk to you rather than make you figure things out for yourself might just be childish.

The silence of the mysterious psychopomp in Rea's example is not inconsistent with her benevolence if her silence (and her silence about her silence) is in your best interests. And while in the 21 Holding certain kinds of inflexible expectations about God could itself amount to a form of resistance. On the supposition that God exists, consider the case of Jane. She implores God on her knees to save her from her own unbelief but in answer to her prayer receives only silence. Reasoning that if there were a God he would surely want her to believe in him, Jane lapses into permanent unbelief. Jane may be taken to be the paradigmatic example of the Schellenbergian "nonresistant nonbeliever." After all, she clearly wanted to believe in God when she prayed and now does not. But suppose that we press Jane and learn that she will not believe in God unless and until God appears visibly before her, or obediently performs a miracle to disabuse her of her doubts, or speaks to her in an audible voice. And suppose, moreover, that manifesting himself in the way Jane expects is contrary to God's purpose for Jane. (Perhaps because God wishes to vouchsafe Jane the higher order goods discussed above, or else he wishes to encounter her at a more propitious time, or in a way that instructively transcends her expectations, or because his silence is spiritually ameliorative for Jane, etc.) In this scenario Jane is resisting God by narrowly defining the conditions under which God, a transcendent being, is permitted to act in order to have a relationship with her.



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case of divine hiddenness we must subtract the visible form of the woman before us and keep the silence—we must also add the circumstance that, if God exists, the whole material world in which our journey takes place is amenable to his intelligible manipulation. Ultimately, the objection from divine hiddenness seems to rest on a gross failure of imagination concerning the one subject about which limitations are unjustified. God, as Coppleston famously onished, is not the sort of thing the human mind, "can pin down like a butterfly in a showcase."



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7 The Ontological Argument We have looked at every significant objection to the concept of God and seen that each one is defeasible: There are no good a priori grounds for thinking that God does not exist. In showing this the discussion has been defensive but in this final chapter on the coherence of theism it will take a more offensive stance. I will now be discussing a priori grounds for thinking that God does exist; namely, the famous and intriguing Ontological Argument which attempts to prove the existence of God from first principles. 1. The Classical Version The first ontological argument was put forward by Saint Anselm in the twelfth century. Anslem said that the statement, "It is possible to conceive of a being than which none greater can be conceived," is incoherent if that being does not exist for in that case a stillgreater being can be conceived: one that does exist. To his way of thinking, imputing nonexistence to the "greatest conceivable being" was like imputing finitude to "the greatest possible number" and so implying that that number is both finite and infinite. And since postulating the nonexistence of God seems to entail an analogously illogical state of affairs, and since illogical states of affairs cannot obtain in the real world, God must exist. Rene Descartes and Gottfried Leibniz both independently formulated similar arguments. Kant, though himself a theist, famously objected to all this by insisting that existence is not a property. To say that something exists or does not exist is just to say that its properties are or are not exemplified in the world. When one says that an apple is red, sweet and round, for instance, one is describing its properties. But if they add that the apple "exists" they are not describing a further property possessed by the apple but merely telling you that the apple and its properties are exemplified. Anslem, Kant concluded, was inferring the existence of God out of



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an illicit conception of existence and nonexistence as properties that can be imputed to God. This objection remained influential until the twentieth century when the American analytic philosopher Alvin Plantinga reformulated the argument in a way which escapes it. 2. The Modal Logic Version Plantinga's version of the argument is much less confusing than Anselm's but understanding it requires a familiarity with a few simple concepts of modal logic. I will briefly explain these now. Modal logic, as you may recall from my discussion of omniscience and free will, is concerned with the ways in which propositions are either possibly or necessarily true or false.22 In analysing propositions in this way modal theorists make use of the concept of possible worlds. Bachelors are unmarried is necessarily true if there is no possible world in which it is false; Bachelors are married is necessarily false if there is no possible world in which it is true; and John is a bachelor is possibly true if there are some possible worlds in which it is true and some possible worlds in which it is false. But what exactly is meant by "possible world"? It is important to understand that a possible world is not another planet or a parallel universe. For the purposes of modal logic it is a comprehensive description of a possible reality where “possible reality” is analogous to "hypothetical state of affairs" with the added condition that it entails no logical contradictions. For 22 It may be helpful to what follows for

me to briefly explicate the three modal categories: If a proposition is metaphysically necessary its negation contains or entails a contradiction. For example: “2+2=4” and “There is a number between 4 and 6.” If a proposition is metaphysically impossible, on the other hand, its affirmation contains or entails a contradiction. For example: “2+2=3” “The Prime Minister of England is a prime number.” And finally, if a proposition is metaphysically possible neither its affirmation nor its negation contains or entails a contradiction. For example: “There is a cat in Buckingham Palace.” “One day there will be cities on the moon.” It is also important not to confuse metaphysical possibility with epistemic possibility: The latter simply refers to our knowledge or lack of knowledge regarding the truth of some proposition with no bearing on its modal status. For example: “John is absent; it is possible he is unwell.” “It is possible that 9/11 was an inside job—who knows?” With these distinctions in place, it is possible to reduce Plantinga's argument to a single proposition: If it is metaphysically possible that it is metaphysically necessary that God exists, God exists.



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example: A world precisely like this one except that Sandro Botticelli was a famous sonneteer is a possible world. It entails no logical contradiction and so “exists” in modal logic just as the set of all prime numbers "exists" in set theory. On the other hand, a world precisely like this one except that Botticelli was a "married bachelor" is not a possible world. It contains a logical contradiction and so does not exist. Just there are infinitely many sets in set theory, so there are infinitely many possible worlds in modal logic. And critically: our world, the actual world, is also a possible world in modal theory because it contains no logical contradictions (married bachelors, square circles, integers which are both odd and even, etc.) and of course because it exists and could not exist if it were not possible. 3. The Argument Using the concept of possible worlds just described, Plantinga first asks us to consider the proposition, It is possible that a Maximally Excellent Being exists where "a Maximally Excellent Being" is one that possesses every excellence to the maximal degree; i.e., is unlimited in power, intelligence, virtue, knowledge, freedom, and so on. So defined, does the concept of a Maximally Excellent Being contain a logical contradiction? We have seen in Part I that it does not and so, together with Botticelli the Sonneteer, a maximally excellent being exists in some possible world. Plantinga then asks us to consider the proposition, It is possible that a Maximally Great Being exists where "a Maximally Great Being" is one that possesses maximal excellence in every possible world. Unless it can be shown that this proposition contains a logical contradiction (and it is not obvious that it can) we must conclude that God exists, P1. It is possible that a Maximally Great Being exists. (It contains no logical contradiction of the sort, “married bachelor," or "square circle.") P2. If it is possible that a Maximally Great Being exists, then a Maximally Great Being exists in some possible world. (This follows trivially from P1 in modal logic.)



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P3. If a Maximally Great Being exists in some possible world, then it exists in every possible world. (This is entailed by the definition of maximal greatness.) P4. If a Maximally Great Being exists in every possible world, then it exists in the actual world. (Because the actual world is also a possible world.) P5. If a Maximally Great Being exists in the actual world, then a maximally great being exists. C. Therefore, a Maximally Great Being exists.

We can see that Plantinga's argument is Kant-proof because it does not presuppose the existence of the Maximally Great Being; i.e., Plantinga does not take existence to be a property that is or is not imputed to God. Recall: When we say that Botticelli the Sonneteer "exists" in some possible world we are not committing ourselves to saying that he existed in the actual world. We merely acknowledge that it is logically possible that the man Botticelli might have chosen to write sonnets instead of paint; therefore, Botticelli the Sonneteer is a logical possibility. Plantinga, likewise, does not commit himself to saying that a Maximally Great Being exists in the actual world when he suggests that it exists in some possible world. The intrusion of the Maximally Great Being into the actual world is not an entailment of his modal conjecture in the first premise but an entailment of the subsequent fact that one of the sum of all possible worlds which the maximally great being exhaustively occupies happens to be exemplified. 4. Parodies of the Argument Bertrand Russell, who was at one point convinced by Anslem's version of the argument, opined that, "It is easier to feel convinced that the argument must be fallacious than it is to find out precisely where the fallacy lies."23 In response to this difficulty skeptics have tended to construct a parody whose conclusion is absurd. Thus 23 In his autobiography, Russell relates that he was returning from the tobacconist when the realisation struck and inspired a rather dusty oath. "Great God in Boots," he reports himself as exclaiming, "the ontological argument is sound!"



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Gaunilo, a contemporary of Anselm, invited his readers to conceive of an island more excellent than any other and suggested that, by Anselm's reasoning, it must exist. Others have suggested that the argument can be used to prove the existence of virtually anything: a maximally great but evil being, a Flying Spaghetti Monster, an Invisible Unicorn, and so on. And quite recently the Australian philosopher Douglas Gasking developed an argument which attempts to prove God's nonexistence, The merit of an achievement is the product of its quality and the creator's disability: the greater the disability of the creator, the more impressive the achievement. Nonexistence would be the greatest handicap. Therefore, if the universe is the product of an existent creator, we could conceive of a greater being—one which does not exist. A nonexistent creator is greater than one which exists, so God does not exist.

In order to understand why all such parodies fail, we need to set out the concept of "maximal excellence" more carefully. 4.1 A Perfect Island In reflecting on this parody we realise that the excellence of the Maximally Excellent Being is "maximisable" in a way that the excellence of an island is not. The knowledge of the Being is maximal if there are no limits to what it knows; its power is maximal if there are no limits on what it can do; its intelligence is maximal if there are no limits on what it can think. But the maximisation of excellence with respect to islands cannot be objectively formulated in this way. One can always add more palm trees, for example; more beaches; more coves. Moreover, the features which are conducive to the perfection of islands are relative to the tastes of the individual contemplator. A maximally excellent island is therefore an incoherent notion. 4.2 A Maximally Great but Evil Being At the end of the previous chapter, I summarised an argument from Leibniz to show that omniscience and moral perfection are mutually inclusive: all freely willed action strives towards some goal; all goals are the pursuit of some good entertained by the agent; the scope and quality of entertainable goods is dependent on knowledge; the maximisation of knowledge perfects an agent's

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judgment of the good. An evil being therefore lacks perfect knowledge; and lacking perfect knowledge, is not omniscient; and lacking omniscience, cannot be omnipotent since there will be some actions it lacks the knowledge to perform. The proposition, It is possible that a maximally great but evil being exists is therefore broadly incoherent. A being cannot be both evil and maximally great. 4.3 A Flying Spaghetti Monster All parodies of this sort fail for the same reason. To be maximally great, an entity must be perfectly free and a being that is permanently confined to a particular material body or even to a particular immaterial form is not perfectly free. In response to this the skeptic may wish to amend his claim by adding that his Flying Spaghetti Monster can change bodies and forms at will but this is no solution: It requires him to postulate an immaterial being who is free to assume whatever form it chooses and in so doing returns him to the Maximally Great Being of the original argument. Ultimately, such parodies simply give Plantinga's Maximally Great Being an arbitrarily ridiculous name without avoiding the conclusion of his argument. 4.4 A Nonexistent Creator The definition of merit on which this argument depends is highly questionable. But there is a far more obvious problem. We have seen that the contents of a possible world are by definition conditional on logical coherence. Gasking's nonexistent creator is paradigmatically incoherent: A creator, very obviously, must exist in the real world in order to have causal agency in the real world. It is possible that a nonexistent creator exists is strictly incoherent in the way that Square circle and Married bachelor are. 4.5 Other Parodies What has been demonstrated here for perfect islands, maximally great but evil beings and nonexistent creators can be demonstrated for every possible parody: However far and wide one casts about for candidate entities, proper attention to the logic of the argument produces a list of one. And this is because whatever entity is fed into the argument and adjusted to met the conditions of maximal



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excellence and logical coherence becomes indistinguishable from the God of classical theism. 5. Conclusion An argument is valid if its conclusion follows logically from its premises and sound if it is valid and its premises are all true. There is broad agreement that Plantinga's modal logic version of the ontological argument is valid.24 But is it sound? Schopenhauer, himself a resolved atheist, was content to dismiss the argument as a, "charming joke." But Anselm, Descartes and Leibniz were not its only proponents. In recent times, Kurt Gödel, Charles Hartshorne and Norman Malcolm have all formulated and presented ontological arguments while Plantinga's modal logic version enjoys the continued of many contemporary philosophers.25 The eminent metaphysician Peter van Inwagen probably summarises the current state of the debate fairly when he writes that, "anyone who wants to claim either that this argument is sound or that it is unsound is faced with grave difficulties." However, this is surely an interesting and significant conclusion to our survey of the coherence of theism: Not only is there no indefeasible a priori argument against the existence of God, there seems to be one indefeasible a priori argument for the existence of God.

24 A computerised theorem prover

has also shown this to be the case. See the Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Volume 89, 2011.

25 The Ontological Argument shows that if it is possible that God exists, it is necessary

that God exists. William Lane Craig rightly points out that this increases the atheist's burden of proof considerably. To discharge this argument it will not suffice for him to argue that God does not exists in fact; he needs to show that God cannot exist in principle. And we have already seen that this is not something that can be shown.



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8 Conclusion My concern has been to show that theism is coherent, where “theism” is understood to be the proposition, There exists an immaterial spirit who is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, necessary, eternal and perfectly good and “coherent” is understood to mean, Containing or entailing no contradictions. In practical , this has involved discharging objections to the concept of an immaterial person in general; an immaterial person with divine attributes in particular; and the existence of such a being given certain basic features of human experience—namely, the problem of evil and divine hiddenness. So long as all the objections to theism are defeasible in the way I have suggested, the existence of God is a logical possibility. Have we therefore gained rational permission to look at evidence for his existence? Not quite. For even allowing that it is not logically impossible that God exists, there are three final objections that a skeptic can make against entertaining evidence for the existence of God. I will address these now. 1. The Intrinsic Probability of Theism Before moving to consider the positive arguments for the existence of God, a preliminary question needs to be asked: How likely is it that God exists? Consider the case of John and Jane. John assumes that the existence of God is profoundly unlikely. He therefore views theistic proofs with deep suspicion and finds them unpersuasive. Jane, on the other hand, assumes that the existence and nonexistence of God are about equiprobable. She therefore views those same proofs with an open mind and finds them persuasive. The point is that our presuppositions about the intrinsic probabilityof theism (where the "intrinsic probability" of a hypothesis is a measure of its simplicity prior to the evidence) are crucial to the outcome of any



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discussion of evidence for the existence of God and need to be taken into .26 On superficial inspection is tempting to think that John is correct. The existence of God is about as improbable as anything could be. God, if he exists, is unlimited: infinite in power, knowledge and love. The principle of parsimony, which recommends the simpler of any two competing explanations, would seem to recommend an atheistic explanation in every possible case: whenever there are two possible explanations for the evidence, one which appeals to the existence of God and one which does not, the explanation which does not appeal to the existence of God is simpler and therefore has greater intrinsic probability. Prejudice against theistic claims is, it seems, justified. However, in The Existence of God, Swinburne presents a strong counterargument to this view. He first notes that to postulate a limited force is to postulate two things: The force and whatever constrains it; while to postulate an unlimited force is to postulate one thing: The force, which, being unlimited, is not constrained by anything. "For this reason," he continues, "scientists have always favoured a hypothesis ascribing zero or infinite value to some entity over a hypothesis ascribing a finite value when both hypotheses are compatible with the data." Thus, "the hypothesis that some particle has zero or infinite mass is simpler than the hypothesis that it has a mass of 0.3412 or a velocity of 301,000 kilometres per second." Theism is the proposition that the ultimate explanation of the universe is a single immaterial entity which is of the simplest kind imaginable because it is unlimited. Since a person is, "a conscious entity that has rational thoughts, memories, moral awareness, intentions, continuity of identity and who is able to perform various basic and nonbasic actions," a person having zero powers would not be a person at all. It follows that in postulating a person with

26 Some philosophers do not recognise the concept of "intrinsic probability." Plantinga, for example, thinks it is doubtful that there is such thing as intrinsic logical probability but concedes that, "we certainly do favour simplicity and we are inclined to think that simple explanations and hypotheses are more likely to be true than complicated epicyclic ones." The reader who shares this view can simply equate "intrinsic probability" with the notion that, all things being equal, the simpler a hypothesis the more likely it is to be true.



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infinite powers the theist is postulating the simplest person logically possible.27 The intrinsic probability of theism is, therefore, high. 2. Who Created God? Allowing, then, that the existence of God is logically possible and entertainably parsimonious, a further objection is sometimes raised. It can be summarised as follows: "God, if he exists, is the most complex conceivable being; therefore, to postulate God to explain p is by definition to postulate an explanation more complex than whatever it is you are trying to explain. This leaves us with the more difficult question of explaining the explanation." This objection, which is reducible to the schoolyard teaser, Who created God? is the "central argument" of The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. Three things need to be said in response to this. 2.1 Divine Simplicity The first is that the key premise is false and hangs on the assumption that mental states are reducible to physical states and that the existence of an infinite mind therefore implies the existence of an infinitely complex physical substrate—analogous to an infinite computer or human brain. Thus the objection does not even apply to God: Whether God exists or not, he is postulated to be an immaterial being and not an infinite physical brain. And moreover, as we saw in Chapter 2, mental states are not reducible to physical brain states: What is essential to minds is intractably nonphysical and so lacks the "heterogeneity of parts" which Dawkins himself recommends as the indicator of complexity. The error consists in conflating the mind itself with the mind's ideas. A divine mind may certainly have complex ideas. It may be thinking, for instance, of the infinitesimal calculus while monitoring and controlling the status of every elementary particle in the universe. But being unembodied it lacks physical parts and 27 In common usage a "person" is, of course, a human being. The reader should recall that the word is being used in its philosophical sense; that is, "a conscious entity that has rational thoughts, memories, moral awareness, intentions, continuity of identity and who is able to perform various basic and nonbasic actions."



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so is reducible to a single supremely simple entity whose properties (consciousness, rationality, volition, and so on) are all essential to it. 2.2 Explanatory Termini The second point that needs to be made in response to the demand for an "explanation of the explanation" is that the same demand can be made of any final theory of the universe. In scaling up the ladder of metaphysical explanation, atheist and theist alike arrive at a final rung. There will be, for both, a final brute fact or explanatory terminus for which there can be no further explanation. Physicalism, for instance, is the claim that only the physical universe exists. "The universe," Bertrand Russell asserted, "just is." But this is every bit as much a metaphysical claim as theism. The atheist cannot, therefore, simply dismiss theistic proofs and rest his case; he needs to make his case in the court of philosophical analysis. There, our task will be to determine which of several competing explanatory termini (including theism and atheism) is on balance the most coherent. But demanding an "explanation of the explanation" is not a legitimate response to any final metaphysic under consideration because it entails an infinite regress: we can then demand an explanation of the explanation-of-the-explanation; and then an explanation of that— and so on ad infinitum. In order to recognise that some explanatory terminus it is the best, it is not necessary explain it.28 2.3 Uncaused Entities The third, final and most important point is that the question, Who created God? makes a category mistake. In postulating the existence of God the theist is postulating an uncaused and eternal being. Asking, "What caused the uncaused?" is akin to asking, "Who is the bachelor's wife?" Nor does defining God as uncaused insulate theism against rational critique. The 28 To illustrate this elementary precept of scientific reasoning, William Lane Craig invites us to imagine a group of archeologists who unearth artifacts resembling jewellery, pottery shards and arrowheads. They would be justified, he points out, in inferring that these object were the products of some unknown group of people rather than the results of the chance processes of sedimentation. And the fact that the archeologists cannot tell us who these unknown people were or how the artefacts came to be there in no way invalidates their explanation.



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atheist can object that the concept of God is incoherent or that there is no evidence to his existence. But what the atheist cannot do is dismiss the concept of an uncaused being a priori because the theist is unable to tell him what caused it. Uncaused entities are not incoherent in principle; on the contrary, they are a legitimate concept in both philosophy and mathematics.29 And critically, the atheist himself is postulating an uncaused entity in asserting that the physical is all that there is. When Bertrand Russell asserts that the universe "just is" he is asserting that the universe exists as a brute fact without cause or explanation. The question we must ask is which explanatory terminus, the universe or God, is an inference to the best explanation from the philosophical and scientific evidence. And this is not resolved by pressing an objection against the theist that applies with equal force to the atheist. 3. The Identification of Unobservable Entities The final objection that needs to be addressed before moving to the positive arguments for the existence of God concerns the possibility of identifying unobservable entities. An entomologist identifies a new species of moth by collecting a specimen; an astronomer studies the moons of Jupiter through his telescope; a neuroscientist uses a microscope to observe the activity of brain cells. But God, being immaterial, will by definition escape such direct empirical detection. What possible evidence, then, can be advanced in of the claim that God exists? This objection, which goes back to David Hume and Immanuel Kant, is out of touch with modern scientific developments. As Swinburne explains, Science is often able to locate the cause of phenomena in some unobservable entity or process. Both Hume and Kant wrote when science had not had the success that it has had today in discovering the unobservable causes of observable events; and their philosophy of religion is often vitiated by the implicit or explicit principle that we could be justified in postulating a cause

29 As John Lennox, Oxford professor of

mathematics, expressed it: "The set of the uncaused in not empty." It very plausibly already includes mathematical and logical truths, moral values and metaphysical universals.



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of some observable event only if the cause was also something observable. It is sufficient to reflect on the evident success of chemistry and physics in providing good grounds to believe in the existence of atoms, electrons, photons, etc., to realise that that principle is quite mistaken.

There are valid rules of inference that can be applied to scientific evidence and which, if the premises are true, will lead to a justified belief in the existence of an unobservable entity. One of these, a disjunctive syllogism, was introduced in Chapter 2. A or B. Not A. Therefore, B.

In discussing physicalism, we saw that what is essential to mental states is either reducible to a physical brain state or it is not; and, since it is not, what is essential to mental states is nonphysical. In this and many other cases, there may be only two possible conclusions: one entailing the existence of an observable and the other an unobservable. Suppose, for instance, that the following statement is true: Either space and time has no cause or the cause of the universe transcends space and time. Ruling out the first will provide evidence for the second even though, by definition, it is unobservable. Another important law of inference in arguments for the existence of God is the so-called abductive argument, or "inference to the best explanation." The surprising fact p is observed If q were true, p would follow as a matter of course Therefore, probably, q

Let p here represent, say, the fine tuning of the laws and constants of the universe and suppose that we assemble a pool of candidate explanations for q: Chance, A multiverse, and A transcendent intelligence. Here, again, successfully ruling out the first alternative will provide evidence for either one of two unobservable entities.



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4. Conclusion I have now completed my defence of theism against the charge of a priori incoherence: I have shown that objections to the concept of God are defeasible and that, therefore, the existence of God logically possible. I have also shown that theism is a parsimonious hypothesis of high intrinsic probability and that God is an acceptable explanatory terminus to a final theory of the universe. And I have shown that unobservable entities, such as God, are within the scope of scientific epistemology. Moreover, in accomplishing these tasks, we have seen that mind is essentially nonphysical (which s theistic claims about the existence of immaterial persons) and discussed one entertainable a priori argument for the existence of God which resists disproof. I conclude that we have therefore established the coherence of theism and have earned rational permission to examine the arguments and evidence for the existence of God. This is the subject of Part II.



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II The Evidence for Bare Theism



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9 Introduction Before moving to the first argument for the existence of God, it will be helpful to note a few preliminary points. 1. The Scope of the Arguments The nine arguments that follow are matched to the occurrence of the phenomena they discuss. The first set deals with the existence, origin and structure of the universe; the second, with the origin of life on Earth; and the third, with human mental and moral experience. It is significant that the claimed evidence for the existence of God should range across so many fundamental aspects of reality. This is just what we would expect to find if theism were true. God, if he exists, is the ultimate explanation for the universe, life, consciousness and morality and an isolated cluster of arguments around mental experience alone, say, or evolutionary biology alone, would not command the same attention. A prima facie evaluation of the scope of the evidence suggests that it is consistent with the truth of theism. This is the first preliminary point to note. 2. A Cumulative Case for Theism Theism is the claim that, There exists an immaterial spirit who is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, necessary, eternal and perfectly good. The second point to note is that none of the arguments that follow on its own make it more probable than not this entire proposition is true. Rather, each argument captures a single feature of the proposition. The Modal Cosmological Argument, for instance, establishes the necessity of a transcendent Necessary Being; the Kalam Cosmological Argument, a transcendent Necessary Being with conscious volition; the Argument from Cosmic Teleology, a transcendent Necessary Being with conscious volition that is of incomprehensible intelligence and power—and so on. The skeptic is not therefore justified in dismissing an argument by saying, "Even if it obtains, it does not prove that the entity postulated is God," because this is a

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point the theist himself is careful to make. The nine arguments taken together form a cumulative case for theism. 3. Evaluating the Arguments The third point to note is that the arguments for the existence of God are not hard proofs. This, however, does not count against theism for the excellent reason that, outside of mathematics and symbolic logic, there are no hard proofs. In natural theology, as in every other philosophical and scientific enterprise, we will be dealing with arguments whose premises must be weighed for their plausibility or probability—and this goes for arguments for atheism as well as theism. In each case, an argument will be a successful argument if and only if it has a valid logical structure and its premises are more plausible or probable than their negations: This, in turn, will make its conclusion more plausibly or probably true than false and we will be then rationally obligated to give it our assent.30 I think this is an especially important point because the skeptic often makes the mistake of thinking that he can reject an argument for the existence of God, or a premise in it, by suggesting the mere possibility of its negation. This is a valid strategy in response to certain modal propositions. Thus the logic of the proposition, If a man is married then, necessarily, he has a wife is invalidated by the possibility of a case of same sex marriage: If it is possible that a married man has a husband, then it is not necessarily the case that he has a wife. But the proposition, All the available evidence points to a beginning of the universe is not invalidated by claiming that it is possible that the evidence is misleading and the universe is past eternal. "Possibilities," as William Lane Craig reminds us, "come cheap." To discharge this premise the skeptic 30 If p is more probable than not-p it is irrational to deny

p and affirm not-p. But if it is significantly more probable that p than not-p it is irrational to deny both p and not-p on the basis of a lack of certain knowledge. If you are expecting a visit from your friend, a policeman, at 3 o'clock and at 2:58 your wife tells you that a man in a police uniform is walking down the drive it is on balance far more probable than not that it is your friend: Although you do not have certain knowledge, and could therefore be wrong, it would be irrational to reason, "I do not have certain knowledge that it is my friend; therefore, I deny that it is my friend and that it isn't my friend." Rational obligations apply even in the absence of certain knowledge.



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needs to demonstrate that it is on balance more plausible or probable that the universe is past eternal than finite. 4. Hume’s Objection from Uniqueness A final point: The first three of the following arguments for the existence of God all involve inferences about the nature and origin of the universe. Such inferences are sometimes met with an objection that goes back at least to David Hume and which, to avoid repetition, I will address once here: Hume argued that inferences are made after an examination of many cases of a similar kind and are not permissible when we are dealing with a unique case. Since there is only one universe, his objection goes, it is impossible to make inferences about it and wrong to apply to it a principles that have been inferred from local cases within the universe. Swinburne begins his reply to this by noting that it has a consequence that is both surprising and unwelcome, even to its proponents: It entails that physical cosmology cannot reach justified conclusions about the size, age or density of the universe (since it is the only one of which we have knowledge) and also that physical anthropology could not reach justified conclusions about the origin and development of the human race (since it is the only one of which we have knowledge). “The implausibility of these consequences,” he writes, “leads us to doubt the original objection, which is indeed totally misguided.” It is misguided, Swinburne explains, because uniqueness is relative to description and every object is unique under some description. This is true of both spatial descriptions (p occupies such-and-such a location) and qualitative descriptions (p has suchand-such a property). In this, then, the universe is no different from any other object.31 And so it follows that if we rigorously apply the principle that inferences cannot be made about unique objects and 31 In this connection Swinbune compares

the universe with his writing table. The universe, spatially and qualitatively described, is the only physical object consisting of all physical objects spatially related to each other and not related to any other object that is subject to certain laws of nature from specified initial conditions. His writing table, meanwhile, is the one and only writing table of its kind in such an such an apartment having such and such a weight and scratches on its surface that is subject to certain laws of nature from specified initial conditions.



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events, then since all objects and events are in some way unique, it becomes impossible to make inferences about anything at all. Moreover, both the universe and all objects it contains are characterised by properties which are common to more than one object. For instance: The universe, in common with the solar system, is a configuration of material bodies distributed in empty space; and like other objects, the universe has a certain density and mass. Swinburne concludes that, “the objection fails to make any crucial distinction between the universe and other objects; and so it fails in its attempt to prevent at the outset a rational inquiry into the issue of whether the universe has some origin outside itself.” All this should be borne in mind while reading the Modal Cosmological Argument, the Kalam Cosmological Argument and the Argument from Cosmic Teleology. Having settled these four preliminary matters, us now move to the first argument for the existence of God.



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10 The Modal Cosmological Argument It is said that all philosophy begins in wonder; and Leibniz was surely right in insisting that the most fundamental thing to wonder at is why anything exists at all. "Why," he asked, "is there something rather than nothing? This is the first question which should rightly be asked." Even if it turns out to be unanswerable, the question is certainly reasonable. Everything that exists (from protozoa and poets to planets and parrots) has an explanation of its existence. It would be very strange indeed if, meanwhile, there were no ultimate explanation for the totality of things that comprise the universe. However, in seeking ultimate explanations a philosophical riddle emerges—even if we constrain our focus to the ultimate explanation for the existence of a single thing. For we observe that all things owe their existence to some prior thing and we know that the series of causally interrelated things is either infinite or finite. But if the series is infinite, then there is no beginning to or explanation for it; and if the series is finite, then it must come to a stop at some first thing which, strangely, will not owe its existence to some prior thing. A number of different philosophers and thinkers in a number of different times and places have pondered this riddle and concluded to the necessity of an originating cause of everything in God.32 The cluster of arguments which emerge from this way of thinking are together called, “cosmological arguments.” However, 32 Ancient Greek philosophers developed the cosmological argument into clear form. Christian, Jewish, and Islamic traditions all know it. And it can be found in African, Buddhist and Hindu thought as well. It is, moreover, studied and defended by contemporary philosophers and remains influential—in some cases, surprisingly so. Alasdair MacIntyre, for example, is recognized as one of the most important Anglophone philosophers of the 20th century. He claims that he converted to Catholicism, “as a result of being convinced of Thomism while attempting to disabuse his students of its authenticity.” (Thomism being the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas of which three versions of the cosmological argument are an integral feature). The philosopher Edward Feser tells an almost identical story about his own conversion.



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in this chapter I will be focusing mostly on Leibniz’s modal formulation of the argument which is, I think, the hardest to refute.33 1. Contingent and Necessary Beings On superficial inspection, one might be tempted to object to the above line of reasoning as follows: If everything that exists needs an explanation, then God needs an explanation; and if God doesn't need an explanation, then why does the universe need an explanation? The Cosmological Argument seems to come to grief on the child's question, "Who created God?" However, Leibniz attends to this issue by first classifying all existent things into two broad categories: contingent and necessary. A "contingent thing" is the most familiar: a thing whose existence is explained by, or contingent on, something external to itself and which could therefore have failed to exist. All manmade objects are like this. They owe their existence to whoever created them and it is conceivable that whoever created them could have failed to do so or chosen not to do so. We can easily conceive of a world in which Rembrandt did not paint The Night Watch or a world in which a particular teacup in your kitchen cupboard was not manufactured. Paintings and teacups and umbrellas and clocks are therefore contingent things. You and I, likewise, are contingent: Our parents might never have met or might have chosen not to have children. And things in the natural world, too, such as starlings, sapphires and stars, seem to fall into the same category. It is plausible to think that the universe, having developed differently, could get along without them. A "necessary thing," by contrast, is a thing which exists by a necessity of its own nature and which could not possibly have failed to exist. Things of this sort are few and far between but many philosophers think abstract objects (such as numbers, sets and propositions) exist in this way. The number 5, for example, is not caused to exist by anything external to itself; it just exists 33 As I explained previously, modal logic is concerned with the ways in which propositions are either necessarily or contingently true or false. The Leibnizian cosmological argument is "modal" because it is predicated on a distinction between contingent and necessary things.



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necessarily. In the same way, no matter how the universe turned out, two plus two would always make four. Unlike poets and paintings and planets, there is no possible world in which mathematical and logical truths do not exist, and so each contains within itself the reason for its own existence: It exists because its nature is such that its nonexistence is logically impossible. 2. The Principle of Sufficient Reason Having set out this distinction between contingent and necessary things, Leibniz formalised it into his famous Principle of Sufficient Reason: Everything that exists has a sufficient reason for its existence, either in an external cause, or in the necessity of its own nature. This principle is widely recognized as powerful and intuitive; and is, moreover, the way every rational person already thinks—even in the most extraordinary of cases. Suppose that you saw an adult horse materialise out of thin air. You would first seek a physical cause (“It is the work of an illusionist”) or, failing that, a psychological cause, (“I am hallucinating”) or, failing that, a supernatural cause (“God did it”). As a last resort, you might simply give up and it that you don't know the reason, whatever it is, but what you would never do is conclude that, “There is no reason.” 3. The Universe Is Contingent Unless it can be demonstrated that the Principle of Sufficient Reason is less plausible than its negation (unless it can be demonstrated that it is more plausible to believe that things can exist without a sufficient reason for their existence) we are rationally obligated to postulate a sufficient reason for the existence of the universe. The question arises whether, like an abstract object, it exists by a necessity of its own nature or whether, like a blackbird or a black hole, the reason for its existence is to be found in an external cause. But very obviously the nonexistence of the universe is not logically impossible. There is no incoherence in postulating a universe with one less star; or half as many stars; or no stars. And one can, likewise, coherently postulate a universe from which 99 percent of all matter, space and energy has been removed and there is no known metaphysical precept or rule of



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inference preventing one from removing the remaining one percent. The universe is therefore contingent. 4. The Fallacy of Composition Skeptics will sometimes object to this line of reasoning by suggesting that it commits the fallacy of composition. This is the error of thinking that what is true of the parts of the whole is necessarily true of the whole. To reason that, One brick weighs five pounds; the building is made of bricks; therefore, the building weighs five pounds is clearly fallacious. In a like case, even if each thing in the universe is contingent, one might ask why the universe as a whole must be contingent. There are two things that need to be said in response. The first is that not every inference from parts to whole commits the fallacy of composition and whether or not it does depends on the subject under discussion. If each brick in the building is red, it does follow that the building as a whole is red. The fallacy only occurs in certain cases—including those where the property belonging to the parts and imputed to the whole is quantitative. If A and B each weigh five pounds then, obviously, A and B together will weigh ten pounds. But if A and B are red then, just as obviously, A and B together will also be red. But which case applies to the inference from the contingency of parts to the contingency of the whole? It is clearly the second. Contingency is not a quantity but a quality. If A and B are contingent individually they are contingent together and the burden of proof is on the objector to explain why a contingent collection of contingent things becomes necessary once it reaches a certain size.34 34 This issue came up in the famous debate between

the Frederick Copleston and Bertrand Russell. Copleston insisted that, “a total has no reality apart from its ,” and that, if each thing in the universe is contingent, the universe itself is contingent. Russell, in response, accused Copleston of committing the fallacy of composition. “Every man who exists has a mother,” Russell said, “and it seems to me your argument is that therefore the human race must have a mother.” But Russell, as Copleston went on to explain, had misunderstood the argument. It is not that a series of phenomenal causes must have a phenomenal cause—that would not, ex hypothesi, escape the regress, which is the very point Copleston was pressing. The argument, rather, is that the only sufficient explanation for series of phenomenal cases is a transcendent cause.



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The second thing which needs to be said in response to the suggestion that the proponent of the Cosmological Argument commits the fallacy of composition is that the proponent of the Cosmological Argument does not even need to establish that the universe as a whole is contingent in order to reach his conclusion— as we shall shortly see. The question can just be ignored and, so long as there is a single contingent thing (a typewriter, rock, or jellyfish) the inferential progression to a necessary being is inescapable.35 5. The Impossibility of an Infinite Regress Allowing that contingent things stand in need of explanation by means of something external to themselves and that the universe is a collection of contingent things, a skeptic might be tempted to appeal to the eternality of the universe. If the chain of causation or explanation recedes into the infinite past, then one might argue with Hume that for each and every state of the universe q there is a prior state p which caused it, and so on, ad infinitum, with no state being left without explanation. However, multiplying the number of contingent things, even to infinity, fails to solve the problem. Leibniz himself anticipates this objection and, in response to it, asks us to imagine a book on geometry that was copied from an earlier book, which was copied from a still earlier book, and so on, to eternity past. "It is obvious," he says, "that although we can explain a present copy of the book from the previous book from which it was copied, this will never lead us to a complete explanation, no matter how many books back we go." Even given an infinite series of copies, we will always be left wondering why that particular book with those particular contents exists to be 35 The cosmological argument is reducible

to the proposition, If a contingent being exists, then a Necessary Being exists. Copleton argued that this is a logically necessary proposition but not, strictly speaking, an analytic proposition. And this is because it is logically necessary only given that there exists a contingent being, which has to be discovered by experience, and the proposition, A contingent being exists is not analytic. “Though once you know that there is a contingent being,” he emphasised, “it follows of necessity that there is a Necessary Being.”



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copied; that is, we will still be left without a sufficient reason for the existence of the book. Another analogy has been used in recent discussions and is helpful here.36 We are asked to imagine a man who has never seen a train before and arrives at a crossing as a long freight train is filing slowly past. Intrigued, he asks what is causing the boxcars to move and is told that the boxcar before him is being pulled by the boxcar in front of it, which is being pulled by the boxcar in front of it, and so on, down the line. It is obvious that we have not given the man a sufficient reason for the movement of the boxcar and that his question will remain unanswered even if we tell him that the boxcars are connected together in a circle, or that the whole universe is cluttered with slow-moving boxcars all intricately interconnected, or even that there are infinitely many boxcars. This analogy presents the problem in of a causal series but it can also be framed in of a simultaneity of causes: The rotation of meshing cogwheels in a watch cannot be explained without reference to a spring, even if there are infinitely many cogwheels. In The Coherence of Theism, Swinburne finds and precisely articulates the problem under discussion: A series of causes and effects sufficiently explains itself if and only if none of the causes is itself a member of the collection of effects. If the cause of a lamp 36 This analogy is used in discussions

of the version of the cosmological argument presented by Thomas Aquinas, which focuses on the necessity of a first cause, but it is included here because it helps to bring out the problem with infinite regresses generally. The version of the cosmological argument presented by Leibniz and the version presented by Aquinas are similar but it is helpful to the difference between them. Aquinas draws our attention to the fact that causes and effects cannot coherently recede into the infinite past—as here illustrated by the boxcar and cogwheel analogies. His argument therefore suggests the necessity of an Uncaused Cause. Leibniz, by contrast, draws our attention to the fact that explanations cannot coherently recede into the infinite past—here illustrated by the geometry book analogy. His argument therefore suggests the necessity of a Self-Explanatory Explanation. The version given by Leibniz is, as I said, more difficult to refute. For even if one successfully argued against Aquinas that an infinite series of causes and effects provides a cause for every effect and therefore leaves nothing uned for, he would not have ed for why the series of causes and effects exists in the first place. Leibniz’s Principle of Sufficient Reason would still be violated with respect to the existence of the universe. In this connection, see also the next footnote, number 37.



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lighting up is its being connected to a battery, and the cause of a second lamp lighting up is its being connected to a second battery, then the cause of the two lamps lighting up is ed for—a principle that would hold even given infinite lamps and batteries.37 However, this principle cannot for cases where each event is both the effect of a preceding cause and the cause of a succeeding effect. For if Event A causes Event B which causes Event C which causes Event D, then, properly speaking, the cause of Event D is not Event C but Event A. An infinite series of causally concatenated events is therefore like an infinite number of lamps all wired together in a vast network in which a battery is nowhere to be found. Peter Kreef calls this the "buck-ing" problem. In seeking the ultimate explanation for any particular thing, each and every thing we isolate es the buck: It refers us to some earlier thing, which thing, in turn, refers us to some still earlier thing, and so on, to infinity. Here the sufficient reason we seek is like a Mysterious Book. When I ask you for it, and you tell me, "My wife has it," and when I ask your wife for it, she tells me, "My neighbour has it," and when I ask her neighbour for it, he tells me, "My teacher has it," and so on, forever, with the result that no one actually has the book. And likewise, if each and every particular thing is explained by some earlier thing, no particular thing contains the ultimate explanation for its own existence or the existence of any other thing. Appealing to an infinite regress of explanations and causes is no better than suggesting that, when it comes to the universe, there is no cause or explanation. Both responses violate the Principle of Sufficient Reason. Schopenhauer aptly dubbed such reasoning a commission of, "the taxicab fallacy." The Principle of Sufficient Reason is a lynchpin of rational thought for atheist and theist alike and all a proponent of the Cosmological Argument is doing is 37 It is here that the force of Leibniz's argument comes through clearly. For even

if the scenario described reflected the reality (that is, even if each effect could be paired up with a unique companion cause in causal isolation) we would still lack a sufficient reason for the existence of the collection of causes and effects. In other words, if the cause of a lamp lighting up is its being connected to a battery, we have explained why the lamp lit up—but we have not explained why the lamp or battery exist in the first place.



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inviting us to follow it out to its ultimate logical consequence. The atheist, seeing where the principle is leading, cannot simply dismiss it like a hired hack because it has already taken him as far as he is willing to go. 6. The Argument The main thrust of the foregoing discussion can now be compendiated into the following form, P1. Everything that exists has an explanation of its existence, either in the necessity of its own nature, or in an external cause. (The Principle of Sufficient Reason). P2. The universe exists. P3. Therefore, the universe has an explanation of its existence. (This follows from P1 and P2). P4. The only possible explanation of the existence of the universe is God, or something like God. (Since, as we saw, it cannot be found in any individual thing in the universe; nor in the collection of things that is the universe; nor in earlier states of the universe—even if these regress infinitely.) C. Therefore God, or something like God, exists.

7. Conclusion Premise 2 is self-evident; and Premise 1 and 3 have both been defended: We have seen that denying an ultimate explanation or cause of contingent things (either simpliciter, or by appealing to an infinite regress of causes and explanations) violates the Principle of Sufficient Reason. It follows that we are obligated, on pain of irrationality, to postulate a terminus to the series of causes and explanations. But why should we accept Premise 4 and the Conclusion; that is, why think that the terminus implicated is God? Just as it is possible to make inferences about a writer or painter from his or her artistic output, so it is possible to make inferences about a cause from its effect. And what can we infer about the cause of the universe from its effect? We begin to answer this question by asking another: What is the universe? The universe is

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all existing space, time, matter and energy. And it follows that the cause of the universe is something immaterial and beyond space and time. Only two entities fit this description: An abstract object and God. But abstract objects are by definition lacking in causal powers and so cannot possibly be capable of creating the universe. The entity implicated by the Cosmological Argument is therefore God, or something like God: a transcendent being of unimaginable intelligence and creative power. "Or," quips William Lane Craig, "if you prefer not to use the term God, you may simply call it the extremely powerful, uncaused, necessarily-existing, noncontingent, nonphysical, immaterial eternal being who created the entire universe and everything in it."



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11 The Kalam Cosmological Argument

The Kalam Cosmological Argument is named for its origins in Islamic scholastic theology but it owes its current form and notoriety to the American analytic philosopher William Lane Craig. The argument, as Craig presents it, rests on three premises which are all striking in their simplicity, P1 W hatever begins to exist has a cause P2 The universe began to exist P3 Therefore, the universe has a cause

Like the Modal Argument just discussed, the Kalam Argument begins by insisting that a basic feature of the universe stands in need of explanation and then goes on to argue that the only possible explanation for it is God. However, there is an obvious and important difference between them: While the Modal Argument unfolds from the undeniable postulate that the universe contains contingent things, the Kalam Argument claims that the universe began to exist—and this is somewhat controversial. Until the development and confirmation of the Big Bang theory about sixty years ago, most scientists denied the finitude of the universe and some still do. But the logical structure of the argument is airtight and it can, moreover, marshal philosophical and scientific evidence of remarkable force to the defence of its one controversial premise—as we shall see. Thus philosopher of religion Michael Martin, though himself an atheist, concedes that the Kalam Cosmological Argument is, "among the most sophisticated and well argued in contemporary theological philosophy." In the following paragraphs, I will summarise Craig's defence of each of the above premises and then draw out their theistic implications. However, I think it will be helpful to first recall a proviso from my Introduction: Outside of mathematics and



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symbolic logic, there is no certain knowledge.38 Here, as in every other philosophical and scientific enterprise, we will be dealing with arguments whose premises cannot be proved but must be weighed for their plausibility. The question we must ask of each of the three premises below is not, "Could it possibly be false?" since almost everything, including the reality of the external world, could possibly be false. The question we must ask is, "Is it more plausibly true than its negation?" And if it is (and notwithstanding a lack of absolute certainty) we are rationally obligated to give it our assent. 1. Whatever Begins to Exist Has a Cause Craig gives three reasons why we should accept the first premise: It is intuitive; its negation entails absurdities we do not observe; and it is always confirmed and never falsified by scientific evidence. 1.1 It Is Confirmed by Rational Intuition Denying the proposition, Whatever begins to exist has a cause entails a commitment to its negation; namely, it commits us to saying that something can come into being from nothing uncaused. It is difficult to disagree with Craig when he suggests that this is something which no rational mind sincerely believes. The idea that things could pop into existence out of literal nothingness and for no reason is paradigmatically counterintuitive. In fact, the law of causality is arguably the most important first principle of scientific reasoning—one which was learned at the dawn of scientific thought in ancient Greece and whose logic is captured by the lapidary statement of Parmenides: Ex nihilo nihil fit: “From nothing, nothing comes.” 1.2 Its Negation Entails Absurdities Moreover, if it were the case that things could pop into being from nothing uncaused then why don’t we observe it? Since nothing is a 38 Recall again the problem of induction. In inductive reasoning, one makes a series of observations and infers a conclusion. For instance, having observed many swans and found them all to be white, it seems valid to conclude, All swans are white. But no number of confirming observations, however large, can prove a universal generalisation. Only analytic arguments can be proved deductively; synthetic arguments, however reliable, are always in principle falsifiable.



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principle of universal negation, there is nothing about nothing that could possibly constrain it from discharging tables, topaz and tapeworms into existence at every point in space and at every moment in time. Indeed, it would be more reasonable to expect the whole universe to be cluttered with such metaphysical jetsam than for nothing to produce something only once at the moment of the Big Bang and forever after remain conveniently quiescent. The first premise of the argument is therefore confirmed (and its negation disconfirmed) by observation. 1.3 It Is Always Confirmed, Never Falsified Inductive reasoning (reasoning from particular instances to a general principle) lies at the very heart of the scientific method. The scientist makes many observations, discerns a pattern, formulates a generalisation and infers a theory. The proposition, Whatever begins to exist has a cause should therefore commend itself to every scientifically literate mind as more plausibly true than false. And this because every observation confirms it and no observation falsifies it: Whenever we observe something begin to exist, we observe that it has a cause.39 It may not quite qualify as a logical truism but it is, at the very least, "a powerful inductive inference," whose negation is ad hoc and without rational or evidential of any kind. In view of the three reasons just given the first premise is on balance far more plausibly true than the alternative.

39 Skeptics often point to quantum physics as supplying a plausible exception to

this precept since, on some interpretations, subatomic events are described as being “uncaused.” There are three points to note. Firstly, quantum physics is an incomplete field with many competing models—a number of which are fully deterministic. Thus quantum physics is not a proven exception. Secondly, even on the indeterministic interpretation, particles do not come into being out of nothing uncaused. “They arise,” notes Craig, “as spontaneous fluctuations of the energy contained in the subatomic vacuum which is the indeterministic cause of their origination.” Popular magazine articles describing models in which the universe came into being out of “nothing” are similarly misleading. The quantum vacuum is not “nothing” but a sea of roiling energy with a rich structure subject to physical laws. Neither scenario demonstrates acausality or ex nihilo origination.



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2. The Universe Began to Exist For the second premise, Craig offers scientific from thermodynamics and cosmology and philosophical in the form of arguments which demonstrate the metaphysical paradoxicality of an infinite past. 2.1 The Second Law of Thermodynamics The first piece of evidence is the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This states that disorder in closed systems increases irreversibly over time. If a parcel of molecules introduced into a vacuum flask, for instance, the molecules will eventually distribute themselves throughout the available space and thereafter remain in equilibrium. Thermodynamics thus entails a grim prediction for a physicalistic universe. For if physicalism is true (that is, if it is true that nothing exists but matter and its movements and modifications) then the universe itself is a supermassive closed system that is progressing inexorably towards a state of final equilibrium or "heat death." Each and every lightning strike and meal metabolised (together with the vibration of every atom and the burning of every star) represents an energy exchange; and each and every energy exchange inches the universe closer to thermal extinction. As the aeons elapse, the universe will grow increasingly "cold, dark, dilute and dead,"40 until at last all of physical reality will consist of an inert atomic soup in which no further energy exchanges are possible. This cheerless prediction raises an obvious question. If the the past is infinite and the future heat death of the universe is unavoidable, why hasn't it already happened? Cosmologists estimate that the so-called Dark Era just described will occur in approximately 10 years—both an obscenely vast stretch of time and an almost nonexistently-tiny fraction of eternity. In fact, so strange is eternity that, if the past were really infinite, the universe should have entered the Dark Era an infinite number of years ago. The Laws of Thermodynamics therefore disconfirm the infinitude of the past and the second premise of the Kalam Cosmological Argument. 100

40 William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith, p.143.

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2.2 The Big Bang The second premise is further confirmed by a series of remarkable scientific discoveries beginning in the early twentieth century. In the 1920s, Alexander Friedmann and George Lemaitre both independently inferred from Einstein's equations of General Relativity that the universe is expanding—a theory that was confirmed empirically when Edwin Hubble observed the red shift in light from distant galaxies. In 1931, Lemaitre went even further. He suggested that the observed expansion of the universe, projected back in time, required us to postulate a smaller and smaller universe terminating in a "primeval atom" and so an instant at which all of space and time came into existence.

Representation of the Standard Model of Space-Time

Almost every major cosmologist at the time opposed Lemaitre’s theory with many openly resisting its religious implications—a rather unscientific complaint that was surely exacerbated by the fact that Lemaitre was both a physicist and a Roman Catholic priest. The preferred theory was the Steady State Model of Fred Hoyle and, ironically, it was Hoyle who coined the phrase “Big Bang” in a throwaway remark on the BBC while discussing their rival views. By the 1950s was split but the discovery and confirmation of the cosmic microwave background radiation in 1964 vindicated Lemaitre. Opposition to a cosmic beginning continued with many alternative models being presented. However, none of these have



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prevailed and the Big Bang theory remains the accepted cosmological model of the universe. More recently, something of a watershed seems to have been reached. In 2003, three leading cosmologists—Arvin Borde, Alan Guth and Alexander Vilenkin— were able to prove a theorem that any universe that has been expanding throughout its history must have a space-time boundary. The so-called Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem is also independent of the various possible descriptions of the universe prior to Planck time. This is important because our lack of knowledge about the early universe has invited speculation about its possible pasteternity. The theorem even applies to the multiverse hypothesis in which those opposed to a beginning to our universe have often taken refuge. Vilenkin himself is very blunt about the implications of all this. He writes, It is said that an argument is what convinces reasonable men and a proof is what it takes to convince even an unreasonable man. With the proof now in place, cosmologists can no longer hide behind the possibility of a past-eternal universe. There is no escape. They have to face the problem of a cosmic beginning.

The first premise of the Kalam Cosmological Argument is therefore consistent with our current best understanding of the universe. 2.3 Philosophical The philosophical arguments for the beginning of the universe draw on the idea that the existence of an actual infinite number of things entails logical contradictions and is therefore impossible. However, before going further, it is important to make a distinction between an actual infinity and a potential infinity. A potential infinity is simply the lack of a limit on the increase of some quantity or duration. Consider the plight of the adulteress sca in Dante's Inferno. sca died in 1285 and in Dante's poem was assigned to the Second Circle of hell for her affair with Paolo. Damnation is eternal in duration. But suppose that Dante were immortal and visited sca an infinite number of times for all eternity. Whenever Dante visits sca and asks, "How long have you been in hell?" her answer will always be a period of finite duration—specifically, the year of Dante's visit



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minus 1285. Or else consider the ancient Chinese paradox of the staff that is cut in half, then into fourths, then into eighths, then into sixteenths, and so on, forever. Even given eternity, the "infinitieth"" division will never be made. In both examples infinity is potential: It is something that is forever approached and never reached. Potential infinities can and do exist—the number line being an obvious example. An actual infinity is different: It consists of an infinite number of discrete and this entails logical absurdities. In this connection, the reader may recall the thought experiment by David Hilbert that was discussed in Chapter 4. Hilbert asks us to imagine a fully occupied hotel with infinitely many rooms. Since the hotel is fully occupied (there is a flesh-andblood guest in each and every room) it cannot possibly accommodate a single new guest. However, by moving the guest in Room 1 to Room 2, the guest in Room 2 to Room 3, and so on, to infinity, Room 1 will be made available and a new quest can be accommodated after all.41 This is paradoxical: It is not logically possible that a hotel can and cannot accommodate a new quest. A similar problem arises if the past is infinite. Consider the case of two planets orbiting the sun at different speeds; suppose, that is, that for every orbit which Saturn completes, Jupiter completes two. It follows that the longer the two planets orbit, the farther Saturn falls behind: When Jupiter has completed ten orbits, Saturn will have completed only five; when Jupiter has completed twenty million orbits, Saturn will have completed ten million, and so on. The number of times each planet has orbited the sun and the differential between those two numbers are objective facts about he world. However, if both planets have been orbiting from eternity past, then they will already have completed infinite orbits and this entails absurdities. For example: We can ask the seemingly redundant question, Which planet has completed the most orbits? But the answer is that both planets have orbited the sun an infinite, 41 Recall also that if every guest moves

into a room whose room number is double that of his own (that is, if the guest in Room 1 moves to Room 2, the guess in Room 2 to Room 4, Room 3 to 6, and so on, to infinity) all of the infinitely many odd-numbered rooms will be available and the hotel will be able to accommodate an infinite number of new guests—and since this process can be repeated indefinitely, the hotel will be able to accommodate infinitely many new guests infinitely many times.



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and therefore equal, number of times. Such absurdities abound in a past-eternal universe. To mention just one more: Tristram Shandy, the fictional hero of a novel by Laurence Sterne, writes his autobiography so slowly and carefully that it takes him one year to record the events of a single day. If Tristram is mortal he can, of course, never finish his book. But if he lives from eternity past and into eternity future, there will be a one-to-one correspondence of days to years (i.e., an infinite number) and so Tristram can accomplish the impossible. Paradoxes of this sort have led many philosophers to the conclusion that the infinitude of the past is a metaphysical impossibility—which further s the second premise. 3. Therefore, the Universe Has a Cause The third premise follows by tautology from the first two: If everything that begins to exist has a cause, and the universe began to exist, then the universe has a cause. But why think that the cause of the universe is God or anything like God? According to Craig, the divine properties of the cause of the universe follow by entailment from the initial syllogism of the Kalam Argument. 3.1 The Cause Must be Transcendent and Uncaused The universe is all of space-time reality and its contents. And since the cause of the universe must exist outside of the universe, the required entity must be timeless, spaceless, immaterial and (since it brought all of material reality into existence) unimaginably powerful. It must, moreover, be absolutely first and uncaused to avoid an infinite regress of causes, while the principle of parsimony further suggests that the unicity of the first cause should be assumed in the absence of any reason to postulate multiple cause. So far, the Kalam Argument is leading to the same conclusion as the Modal Argument of the previous chapter: A transcendent Uncaused Cause of the universe. However, the Kalam Argument is able to add a critical refinement. 3.2 The Cause Must Have Conscious Volition Whatever exists outside of time and space is, by metaphysical necessity, eternal and changeless. Only two entities fit this description: an abstract object and God. And abstract objects



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(numbers, sets, propositions) are by definition causally effete. This, too, was established by the Modal Argument. But in the Kalam Argument the eternality of the cause and the temporality of the effect raise a problem whose only possible solution is inescapably theistic. For as Craig notes, “if the cause were simply a mechanically operating set of necessary and sufficient conditions existing from eternity, then why would not the effect also exist from eternity?” By way of illustration: The cause of water boiling is its being at a temperature of 100 degrees—and it cannot boil until, or fail to boil after, it reaches this temperature. A universe that begins to exist due to a timeless and unchanging cause is therefore equivalent to water that begins to boil despite having been at a temperature of 100 degrees from past eternity. The only way to explain an eternal cause with a temporal effect is to postulate agent causation: A timeless and unchanging conscious being that brings about an effect at a chosen point in time through the exercise of its free will. 4. Conclusion We have seen that the first premise of the Kalam Argument is intuitive; consistent with observation; and always confirmed and never falsified by scientific evidence. And we have seen that the second premise is ed by the laws of thermodynamics and our current best understanding of cosmology as well as forceful philosophical arguments against the infinitude of the past. The conclusion that the universe began to exist and therefore requires a transcendent cause of its existence follows by inferential necessity. But while the modal argument also requires us to postulate a transcendent cause of the universe, the Kalam Argument allows us to impute an additional theistic property to it; namely, voluntary agency. We are led to conclude, the Kalam Argument suggests, that there is an uncaused, eternal, changeless, timeless, immaterial and unimaginably powerful agent who freely elected to bring all of material reality into existence.



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12 The Argument From Cosmic Teleology Imagine that you are standing by a garden wall watching a housefly crawl along its surface. Suddenly, a small dart flits past your ear and pins the fly to the wall. If a marksman is nowhere in sight, you may assume that a stray dart has entered your garden and impaled the fly by chance. However, suppose that as you stroll along the wall you see a second, third, fourth and fifth fly all meet the same fate. At some point you will be rationally obligated to reject your stray dart hypothesis and postulate the existence of a hidden marksman of extraordinary visual acuity and skill. And this is because the observed phenomenon is credibly probable on the hypothesis that there is someone aiming the darts and incredibly improbable on the hypothesis that there is not—a difference between the two hypotheses that is amplified by each new fly that is hit. The reasoning used in this example is analogous to that of the Teleological Argument for the existence of God. Formed from the Greek root telos, meaning “goal” or “purpose,” teleological arguments suggest that our universe is characterised by strange congruences which, like the darts and flies in my example, are so unlikely to occur by chance that they implicate the activity of an intelligent agent. And one of the most recent and most powerful arguments for the existence of God applies such teleological reasoning to the newly discovered fine tuning of the universe. 1. Cosmological Fine Tuning Over the last 40 or 50 years, cosmologists studying the initial conditions of the universe have made a surprising discovery. They have discovered that the laws and constants of physics all fell within an astoundingly narrow life-permitting range at the Big Bang. For ease of understanding, imagine a of dials. The notches on the dials represent the values which the physical constants and initial conditions could have taken during the formation of the universe. In order for intelligent life to be possible, each and every dial needed to be set to a very particular value—a value which it did, in



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fact, take. It is in this sense that the universe is said to be, "fine tuned," for life. 2. Requirements for Intelligent Life Before looking at examples of fine tuning, it will help to clarify the argument if we first note the minimal requirements for intelligent life. And this is because the conditions that must be met to produce them will approximate the “flies” in my opening example. The skeptic takes the view that all these “hits” are to be explained by chance; while the proponent of the Teleological Argument insists that they cannot be so explained and therefore implicate the activity of an intelligent agent. The minimal requirements for intelligent life are carbon, planets and stars and the conditions that must be met to produce them are, as we shall see, manifold. The first, carbon, is uniquely suited for the formation of intelligent life: Because it can enter into many different chemical combinations to produce new compounds that are stable over long periods of time, “more information can be stored in carbon compounds than in those of any other elements.” 42 Moreover, carbon can combine with hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen to form long and complex chain molecules called “polymers.” And when these information-rich polymers combine with calcium for structural rigidity, they are able to become a, “continuing independent component of the universe.” It is highly doubtful whether there could be any other kind of intelligent life.43 And if intelligent carbon-based life is to exist, it will further require a moderate range of temperatures and pressures and a solid substrate on which to live. Stars and planets are also therefore indispensable.

42 Barrow and Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, 1986 43 It has been suggested that silicon could replace carbon in this role. It hardly matters that this seems doubtful (silicon compounds do not have the stability of carbon compounds) because the conditions necessary for the evolution of silicon-based life are very similar to those necessary for the evolution of carbon-based life. The fine tuning argument would not therefore need much alteration to for this possibility.



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2.1 Forces and Constants All the forces and constants of physics are fine tuned to produce the above requirements. The strong nuclear force, for instance, binds atoms together. If it were fractionally weaker (000.6 instead of 000.7) the universe would contain nothing but hydrogen and complex biochemistry would be impossible; if it were a comparable fraction stronger, all the hydrogen in the universe would have fused into heavier elements with the same fatal result. The gravitational constant is the attractive force braking the expansion of the universe since the Big Bang; the cosmological constant is the repulsive force driving it. Both forces must be delicately balanced to a precision of, respectively, 1 part in 10 and 1 part in 10 . If either of them were altered, the universe would either fly apart or collapse to a singularity. If the electromagnetic constant were altered beyond a precision of around 4 percent, stable chemical bonds could not form. If the weak nuclear force were altered by even 1 part in 10 , stars, which produce carbon and sustain life, could not form. 60

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2.2 Initial Conditions The initial conditions present at the beginning of the universe were similarly ideal for the eventual development of intelligent life. For example: an initial state of inhomogeneity in the distribution of matter was required to ensure a universe with usable energy.44 This is called, “low entropy” and it has been calculated that the odds of the initial low entropy state of our universe are 1 in 10 —a ludicrous improbability and a subject to which we shall return. Meanwhile, if the ratio of masses for protons and electrons were altered, DNA could not have formed. If the velocity of light were altered, stars would be either too luminous for life or not luminous enough. If the mass excess of neutron over proton were greater, 10^123

44 A point that was discussed in the previous

chapter. Energy exchanges increase the disorder of closed systems—a process which, according to the second law of thermodynamics, is irreversible. It follows that the initial order of a closed system is a measure of its usable energy. Thus if physical reality is all that exists, the universe itself is a supermassive closed system that required an initial state of order to supply usable energy for the evolution of life.



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there would be too few heavy elements for life; if it were smaller, stars would quickly collapse into black holes with the same fatal result. The density of dark energy, the ratio of baryons to antibaryons and the number of spatial dimensions were all similarly felicitous.45 Some popular examples of fine tuning are disputed and there are tricky philosophical debates about how probabilities are to be calculated. 46 Nevertheless, there is broad agreement in physical cosmology on the general claim of the last two paragraphs; namely, that during the Big Bang the physical constants and initial conditions all fell within an astoundingly narrow range that ensured both the formation of the building blocks of intelligent life and the stars and planets needed to provide a suitable environment for intelligent life should it develop. The words of the physicist Freeman Dyson reflect the view of many when contemplating fine tuning. “The more I examine the universe and study the details of its architecture,” he said, “the more evidence I find that the universe in some sense knew we were coming.” Our explanandum, or “thing to be explained,” is this apparent conspiracy of the early universe to facilitate life. 3. An Attempt to Deny the Explanandum Given the implications of fine tuning, the temptation among skeptics to deny it out of hand is understandable. Outside of cosmology, some have attempted to do so by arguing that, however the universe turned out, life of one kind or another could have evolved in it. The suggestion is that arguments from fine tuning confuse cause and effect: It is not the universe that is fine tuned for 45 Lists of fine tuning parameters vary from 22 to as many as 99. The philosopher John Leslie finds this fact relevant to the force of the argument. “Clues heaped upon clues,” he notes, “can constitute weighty evidence despite doubts about each element in the pile.”

46 One attempt to hamstring the discussion echoes the Humean uniqueness objection to

the cosmological argument discussed in the Introduction. Its proponent suggests that it is meaningless to speak of the probability of fine tuning because we only have one observed case of universe to work with. This objection assumes a frequentist interpretation of probability—the view that probability should be calculated statistically from many observed cases. However, in the absence of any physical reason to think that the probabilities are constrained, we are justified in assuming a “principle of indifference” with respect to them. The point has been rigorously defended by the philosopher Robin Collins.



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life; it is life that is fine tuned for the universe. The logic of this objection is nicely captured by Douglas Adams’ famous puddle analogy. Against the claim that the world appears to be custommade to accommodate us, he wrote, This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, “This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in, fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!”

The analogy helps to bring out the error underlying the objection.47 For it incorrectly equates infinite possible puddle-holes which can all accommodate a volume of water with the idea that infinite possible initial conditions of the universe could all accommodate intelligent life. But unlike puddle-water which can sit in any puddle-hole, intelligent life could not exist in any universe. In fact, adjusting the physical constants and initial conditions by even a hairsbreadth would have catastrophic consequences for even the most exotic forms of life imaginable. By “life,” scientists mean that property of organisms to take in food, extract energy from it, adapt, grow, and reproduce. No form of life, so defined, can exist in a universe without chemistry; or one with only heavy elements; or one containing nothing but hydrogen; or one without stars and planets; or one that has collapsed to a singularity. 4. Explanatory Options Fine tuning, then, cannot be credibly denied and so it must be explained. Much of the debate has centred on three explanatory options: chance, necessity and some sort of intelligent agency. 47 A similar, and similarly flawed, objection:

Every universe is equiprobable; we cannot observe universes that don't allow for our existence; therefore, we should not be surprised to observe that the one in which we do exist allows for our existence. Leslie and Swinburne both offer illustrations to expose the fallacy in this objection. In Leslie's, a man stands before a firing squad consisting of one hundred trained marksmen. The order to fire is given, the guns roar—and the man observes that he is still alive. Craig draws out the point of the illustration succinctly: "While it is correct that you should not be surprised that you don't observe that you are dead, it does not follow that you should not be surprised that you do observe that you are alive."



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4.1 Chance Operating in a Single Universe The idea that fine tuning is to be explained by sheer chance operating in a single universe has not commended itself due to the crushing improbabilities involved. This is a point the dial analogy I offered above fails to convey. Consider, then, a few numbers approaching the dimensions of those with which we are concerned. The approximate number of cells in your body is 10 ; that is, a 1 followed by 14 zeroes. The number of seconds that have elapsed since the beginning of the universe is 10 . And the total number of subatomic particles in the universe is around 10 . With those numbers in mind, recall that the gravitational constant is fine tuned to 1 part in 10 . To appreciate just how improbable this is, consider that the “dial” for the gravitational constant has three times as many notches as seconds which have elapsed since the Big Bang. And if it were shifted just one notch in either direction, the universe would be life-prohibiting. The cosmological constant, meanwhile, is fine tuned to 1 part in 10 . This dial has more notches than there are elementary particles in the entire universe. And yet both numbers are completely dwarfed by the odds of the initial low-entropy state of our universe necessary for life. This, recall, was 1 in 10 to the power of 10 . It is impossible to grasp this number. It is impossible even to write it down in ordinary decimal notation because it contains more zeroes than there are elementary particles in the entire universe. Mathematicians define odds of less than 1:10 as, "prohibitively improbable," which is another way of saying, "a zero probability," which is another way of saying, "impossible." It is for this reason that, according to Antony Flew, “virtually no scientist today claims that fine tuning was purely a result of chance factors at work in a single universe.”48 48 Antony Flew is the British philosopher who renounced atheism—partly in response to 14

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the discovery of fine tuning, and partly in response to developments in molecular biology to be discussed in the next chapter. Discussing his conversion, Flew says, There were two factors in particular that were decisive. One was my growing empathy with the insight of Einstein and other noted scientists that there had to be an Intelligence behind the integrated complexity of the physical Universe. The second was my own insight that the integrated complexity of life itself—which is far more complex than the physical Universe—can only be explained in of an Intelligent Source.



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4.2 Chance Operating in a Multiverse In an effort to salvage chance as an entertainable explanation for fine tuning, some scientists have resorted to postulating a multiverse. If our universe is one of almost infinitely many, each of which has random laws and constants, then the “law of large numbers” would appear to diminish the improbability: It seems reasonable enough to suppose that at least one of these universes would be fine tuned for the development of life—and, of course, since observable universes are constrained by the necessity of being conducive to the evolution of intelligent observers, we, being intelligent observers, happen to find ourselves in a universe that is so constrained. The most obvious flaw in the multiverse theory is its amazing extravagance. Any theory which conjures forth trillions of unobservable universes to explain the conditions in the one we do observe can scarcely be thought to satisfy the principle of parsimony.49 Moreover, a supermassive array of universes raises the question of the law of laws governing the multiverse: Either this is configured to exhaust every possible permutation of parameters until it generates a universe like ours, or else the parameters of our universe were included in the finite set of permutations which the multiverse could generate. The problem is that neither assumption removes the fine tuning. Both imply that the multiverse was somehow fine tuned to guarantee the production of a fine tuned universe. The multiverse theory, nevertheless, is the most tenable hypothesis available to the skeptic confronted with fine tuning. 4.3 Necessity The final explanatory option available to the skeptic is surely something of a last resort. It suggests that the physical constants and initial conditions of the universe may all cohere in a way that is physically necessitated. Put slightly differently, the proponent of 49 William Lane Craig cautions us not to overlook this curious fact: In response

to the evidence for cosmological fine tuning, hardboiled physicalists are taking refuge in the metaphysics of multiple universes which are all in principle undetectable. It surely is, as he suggests, "a backhanded compliment" to the force of the argument.



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this theory suggests that a life-prohibiting universe is impossible. The physicist Paul Davies calls this, “promissory triumphalism,” and states that it is “demonstrably false” that there can only be one way that the universe can exist. Certainly, it is a radical view which requires, but finds, no strong proof. It is simply put forward as a bare possibility. A further weakness with this option is that, even if for the sake of argument it is granted, it cannot explain the initial conditions. The low entropy state; the density of dark energy, the ratio of baryons to antibaryons—all these things are simply “put in” as initial conditions and are independent of the laws of physics. As Davies reminds us, there are no “laws of initial conditions.” Thus, even conceding the flagrantly ad hoc premise, the conclusion does not follow. Davies, entertaining it, still concludes that, “The physical universe does not have to be the way it is: It could have been otherwise.” 4.4 Intelligent Agency We come at last to the Argument from Cosmic Teleology. This suggests that if there is no God it is unreasonably improbable that the constants and initial conditions of the universe will be such as to bring about the evolution of intelligent life; while if there is a God it is highly probable that they will have this feature. The fine tuning of the universe, the argument suggests, is powerful inductive evidence for the activity of an intelligent agent during the formation of the universe. 5. Evaluating the Explanatory Options In what follows, I will find it helpful to appeal to the following criteria for evaluating competing hypotheses, Explanatory scope The best hypothesis will explain more of the evidence than any other Parsimony The best hypothesis will fewest assumptions and therefore be the simplest

make

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Degree of Ad Hoc-ness The best hypothesis will avoid making uned adjustments just to avoid falsification



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Plausibility The best hypothesis will fit in with more of our background beliefs than any other

Proceeding now in ascending order of probability: The hypothesis that the laws and initial conditions somehow cohered by physical necessity is parsimonious but it fails every other criteria. Since there is no independent reason to the hypothesis outside of a desire to circumvent theism,it is paradigmatically ad hoc and implausible; and since even if there were such a reason it still could not possibly explain the initial conditions, it also lacks explanatory scope. The hypothesis that fine tuning can be explained by chance operating in a single universe is likewise parsimonious but comes to utter grief on the first and last criterion. The improbabilities involved are simply prohibitive on this assumption—a fact that is reflected by the lack of for it among cosmologists. The debate, as already implied, is therefore between the multiverse and some sort of intelligent agency. However, we have already seen that the multiverse theory is unparsimonious in the extreme. “It is the height of irrationality,” notes Swinburne, “to postulate an infinite number of universes never causally connected with each other merely to avoid the hypothesis of theism.” And we have also seen that it requires postulating a metalaw governing the ensemble of worlds to ensure that it exhausts the sum of possible initial conditions in order to produce a fine tuned universe—an ad hoc feature of the theory which itself assumes a degree of fine tuning. And a final entailment of the hypothesis (one which has not yet been mentioned but which surely counts against its plausibility) is this: The existence of an absurd and terrifying kaleidoscope world in which every possibility is realised: Infinite versions of you and me in infinite states of terror and ecstasy. So long as one is free of a dispositional resistance to the supernatural, theism clearly satisfies the criteria better than every rival hypothesis. It tidily explains the evidence; it is parsimonious in its postulation of a single cause; and it is not ad hoc since there are independent grounds for believing that a Creator and Designer of the universe exists; namely, the Modal Cosmological Argument and the Kalam Cosmological Argument already discussed.



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6. Conclusion The foregoing discussion can now be formalised into an abductive syllogism, The surprising fact p is observed If r were the case, p would follow as a matter of course Therefore, probably, r

The surprising fact p is, of course, cosmological fine tuning. And when the candidate r-explanations were discussed and compared using the accepted criteria for competing hypotheses, theism clearly emerged as an inference to the best explanation. On the basis of the three arguments so far given, we are rationally obligated to conclude that there exists an uncaused, eternal, changeless, timeless, immaterial and unimaginably powerful agent who by an act of free will brought the universe into being with the goal of creating a substrate for intelligent life.



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13 The Argument From Biological Teleology Teleological arguments have explanatory force when two conditions are met: Our observations are congruent with the telos or intention of an agent and they are prohibitively improbable on the hypothesis that no such agent exists. Observing many houseflies on a wall hit by darts, for example, is congruent with the intention of a marksman to kill flies but prohibitively improbable on the hypothesis that the darts are hitting the wall at random. Therefore, the existence of a marksman is implicated. In the previous chapter, we applied teleological reasoning to the fine tuning of the physical constants and initial conditions at the Big Bang. Since this is congruent with the intention of an intelligent agent to create life, but prohibitively improbable on the hypothesis that it occurred by chance, an intelligent agent was implicated. However, it is important to note that a fine tuned universe is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for life.50 It merely provides a suitable substrate for life without explaining its origin and development. And this means that the telos implicated by fine tuning is not fulfilled until life appears and that the appearance of life is a second and separate explanandum. In the following paragraphs, it will be my concern to show that the riddle of improbability presented by the cosmos at large in the case of fine tuning is repeated at the molecular level in the case of abiogenesis— a fact which both completes and adds significant force to the conclusion of the previous argument since we will now be faced with one prohibitive probability balanced upon another.

50 A necessary condition is one that is required before some state of affairs can obtain; a sufficient condition is one that ensures that some state of affairs obtains. Thus in the case of triangles: Being a polygon is a necessary condition; being a three-sided polygon is a sufficient condition.



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1. Biological Explananda Fine tuning, as already noted, does not of itself explain the enigmatic saltus from dead matter to teleological intelligence. John Locke was especially struck by this problem. “It is as impossible to conceive that ever incogitative Matter should produce a thinking intelligent Being,” he wrote, “as that nothing should of itself produce Matter.” Locke ed his puzzlement almost two hundred years before the publication of On the Origin of the Species. However, Darwin would have been of little help. Since his theory of evolution purported to explain how life developed and speciated from “one or a few simple forms,” the origin of those forms lay, and still lies, outside its explanatory boundary.51 I will now be arguing that life instantiates three properties whose origination is as improbable on naturalism as fine tuning; namely, reproductivity, semantic information and teleology. 1.1 The Origin of Genetic Reproductivity Evolution involves the winnowing of random genetic mutations by natural selection—a process that may govern the development of organisms on Earth but which cannot explain the origin of those organisms any more than a computer program can explain the origin of electrical circuitry. Another way of expressing this point is to say that evolution presupposes the existence of self-replicating genetic material. The specific problem to be solved, therefore, is the emergence of the first genetic replicators from prebiotic matter—a problem whose difficulty is proportional to the organisation and complexity of those replicators, and that organisation and complexity is staggering indeed.52 The simplest conceivable biological cell capable of replication is a miniaturised factory of extraordinary complexity. A key player in its maintenance is the protein: an aggregate of amino acids which 51 In Darwin’s own time biologists assumed that the essence of life was a chemically simple substance called “protoplasm” and the cell an undifferentiated globule containing it. Theories of abiogenesis accordingly envisioned life arising with relative ease from a process of chemical “autogeny” that comprised only one or two steps. Such conjectures, of course, reflected a gross ignorance of the complexity of the cell. 52 Most of the technical details that follow are taken from DNA and the Origin of Life:

Information, Specification and Explanation by Stephen Meyer.



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meshes with other molecules to build key structures that together regulate the metabolism of the cell, materials back and forth across its membranes, destroy waste and perform many other tasks. All this swarming activity is coordinated by the spiralling ladder of DNA whose sugar-and-phosphate backbone encodes instructions for the assembly of proteins from amino acids and also performs the key role in genetic replication: Its ladder is “unzipped,” copied, transcribed to RNA, and then conveyed to the amino acids which are assembled into new proteins. Two points here are critical and problematic. The first is that the errors which occur during replication produce the mutations on which natural selection operates. The second is that DNA replication cannot occur without the proteins which DNA itself constructs. It follows that evolution depends on a duality of protein manufacture and composition within the cell which poses a riddle of causality evolution cannot solve. As Robert Sharpiro explains, Which came first, the chicken or the egg? DNA holds the recipe for protein construction. Yet that information cannot be retrieved or copied without the assistance of proteins. Which large molecule appeared first? Proteins—the chicken; or DNA— the egg?

It is in light of this paradox that Theodosius Dobzhansky has declared, "prebiological natural selection is a contradiction in ." Whatever theory is advanced for the appearance of the first living cell, it cannot call to its aid the explanatory power of evolution. 1.2 Semantic Information Understanding the second property of living matter which naturalism cannot for requires a familiarity with two concepts used in information theory which I will now briefly describe. Information theory equates the amount of information transmitted by an event with the amount of uncertainty eliminated. Thus rolling a die conveys more information than flipping a coin because the former eliminates five out of six possible outcomes and the latter only one out of two. On this view a random sequence of letters and a meaningful phrase both convey information and must



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be individuated into the syntactic and semantic. Consider the following, dhcrm l chtdjf odjan rkkjfopbq Torchlight red on sweaty faces The first sequence is merely syntactic. It conveys information insofar as it eliminates every other possible sequence of its length from a total of 26 characters but it has no meaning. The second sequence is semantic. In addition to eliminating every other possible sequence of its length from a total of 26 characters it also communicates a meaning. Interestingly, and significantly, the information coded in DNA is closer to the second sequence than the first.53 We can begin to understand this by first noting that while both of the above sequences are highly improbable only the second exhibits specification: It is specified to one of a proportionally infinitesimal number of intelligible sequences within the total set of possible permutations of letters. 54 And because this smaller set distinguishes functional from nonfunctional English sequences, and because the functionality of alphabetic sequences depends on the preexisting conventions of the English language, the smaller set qualifies as a “conditionally independent” pattern. All of this can be tidily transposed to biological organisms. To maintain viability, the cell must manufacture specific molecular constituents whose three-dimensional shapes require equally specific arrangements of nucleotide bases. Like the letters of an alphabet, the chemical properties of DNA allow a vast number of possible sequences of nucleotide bases. And within that set of possible sequences, a proportionally infinitesimal number will produce functional proteins. Because this smaller set distinguishes functional from nonfunctional proteins, and because the functionality of nucleotide base sequences depends on the 53 The word “semantic” here carries a stronger conception of information than that of information-theorists and a slightly weaker conception that of linguists and ordinary s: While both natural languages and DNA base sequences are specified only natural language conveys subjective meaning.

54 Just how infinitesimal readers of Borges’ The Library of Babel will appreciate.



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preexisting requirements of protein function, the smaller set again qualifies as a “conditionally independent” pattern. What this means is that any sequence that meets these requirements is not only improbable, like a sequence of English gibberish, but specified to a preexisting pattern, like a meaningful phrase: The nucleotide sequences in the coding regions of DNA exhibit both syntactic and semantic information. Paul Davies concludes, “The problem of how meaningful or semantic information can emerge spontaneously from a collection of mindless molecules subject to blind and purposeless forces presents a deep conceptual challenge.” 1.3 Teleology Borges, abridging Schopenhauer, said that there is something in the universe that “wants to live” and is manifest in all things. “It lies dead in minerals, dormant in plants, dreams in animals and reaches consciousness in man.” Shaw and Bergson spoke of it, respectively, as the “life force” and “élan vital.” Schopenhauer himself called it wille. “Here,” concluded Borges, “we have the explanation of that line of Aquinas: Intellectus naturaliter desiderat esse semper: ‘The mind naturally desires to exist forever.’” The felicity of Borges’ phrasing masks an infelicity of philosophy. If a property is “dead” in some object can that object be said to instantiate it? In his discussion of the subject, Antony Flew draws our attention to the obvious point. “Living matter,” he writes, “possesses a goal-directed organisation that is nowhere present in the matter that preceded it.” Scientists from Haldane to Ayala concede that teleological language is ineliminable in evolutionary biology—at the same time as they bridle at its affinity to natural theology. “Teleology is like a mistress to a biologist,” said Haldane. “He cannot live without her but he's unwilling to be seen with her in public." The third explanandum, then, is how the prebiotic soup of the early Earth gave rise to matter so radically different from itself; matter that resists description in nonteleological ; that possesses intrinsic ends, goals, purposes—pursues a good of its own. Flew thinks this question poses a deep philosophical challenge to biology that has been largely overlooked. "Most studies on the origin of life," he explains, "are carried out by scientists who rarely



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attend to the philosophical dimension of their findings. Philosophers, on the other hand, have said little on the nature and origin of life." 2. Explanatory Options We have seen that the leap from chemistry to biology resists naturalistic explanation on of three properties: The ability of living matter to replicate, convey and process semantic information and pursue its own ends. In what follows I will briefly discuss the inviability of the only explanatory options available to the naturalist (chance, prebiotic evolution and chemical necessity) before defending the teleological explanation. 2.1 Chance Almost all serious origin-of-life researchers now consider sheer chance an inadequate causal explanation for the origin of life. To understand why, consider the probability of even one short protein molecule 100 amino acids in length forming at random under ideal prebiotic conditions. Amino acids must form a chemical bond known as a peptide bond in the protein chain. Many other types of chemical bonds are possible; in fact, peptide and nonpeptide bonds occur with equal probability. The probability of a chain of 100 amino acids in which all bonds are peptide bonds forming at random is about 1:10 . Moreover, every amino acid found in proteins, with one exception, has two distinct mirror images of itself called optical isomers. Functioning proteins tolerate only left-handed amino acids but the right-handed and left-handed isomers occur in chemical reactions with equal frequency. The probability of a peptide chain of 100 left-handed amino acids forming at random is about 1:10 . Putting this together: The probability of a 100-amino-acid-length chain in which all bonds are peptide bonds and all amino acids are lefthanded is about 1:1060. Functional proteins, finally, must link up in a specific sequential arrangement. Changing even one amino acid results in loss of function. 55 It has been calculated that the probability of attaining a particular protein 100 amino acids long is 30

30

55 “A topoisomerase,” notes Meyer,

“can no more perform the job of a polymerase than a spoon could perform the function of a corkscrew.”



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about 1:10 —overwhelmingly and prohibitively improbable through the operation of chance alone on the chemical soup of the early earth. And this, recall, is for a single short protein under hypothetically optimal prebiotic conditions. Calculations for the chance assembly of an organism with the minimal complexity to sustain and reproduce itself under more realistic conditions suggest odds of about 1:10 —an event far exceeding even the probabilistic resources of a concentrated solution of amino acids the size of the observable universe. 150

2.2 Prebiotic Natural Selection Dawkins and Kuppers, conceding all the above, have used computer models in an attempt to demonstrate how “prebiotic natural selection” might bring the probabilities to within feasible limits. Each chooses a target sequence to represent a desired functional polymer. After creating a crop of randomly constructed sequences and generating variations among them at random, the computer program selects those sequences that match the target sequence most closely. In this way the target phrase is soon reached. The problem is that, unlike a human agent deg a computer program, molecules in situ do not have a target phrase “in mind.” Discussions of this problem have routinely appealed to the analogy of n number of monkeys hitting typewriter keys at random over varying periods of time—one often used to illustrate the emergence of complexity from random processes. In its most familiar formulation, a monkey with infinite time and paper produces the complete works of Shakespeare. But the idea, while it seems apposite to the task of explaining the origin of life, actually serves to demonstrate the impossibility of even modest complexity emerging from randomness as soon as any sort of time constraint is imposed. And this is a problem because time constraints obviously apply. John Lennox, an Oxford professor of mathematics, is comfortably at home as he walks us through the various calculations. A representative example: To type out Hamlet a monkey hitting one random key per nano second would need a length of time next to which the estimated life of the universe



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would appear insignificant by comparison. And as Hoyle and Wickramasinghe inform us, we cannot bring the probability to within feasible limits by multiplying the monkeys because the observable universe is simply not large enough to contain the number of monkeys required. Applying the analogy to Dawkins and Kuppers, they have circumvented the above problem by teaching their monkeys a rule: For all monkeys there is a target phrase and for each monkey a target letter. As paraphrased by Lennox, Each time a monkey hits a letter, the letter it types is compared with its target letter—a highly non-random process. This comparison, of course, has to be done by some mechanism such as a computer—or a Head Monkey, as mathematician David Berlinski delightfully suggests. If the monkey has typed its target letter the comparison mechanism retains that letter and the monkey stops typing—another highly non-random process. If not, the monkey is allowed to go on randomly typing until it gets its target letter.

Consider for a moment both that "target phrase" and "target letter." This is what has happened: In an attempt to tame the disqualifying improbabilities involved in genetic self-assembly and so remove the suggestion of intelligent agency, Dawkins and Kuppers simply introduce an element of intelligent agency. Berlinski, in a much discussed article, describes this as "an achievement in selfdeception" since, "the mechanism of deliberate design, purged by Darwinian theory on the level of the organism, has reappeared in the description of natural selection itself." 2.3 Chemical Necessity Those committed to finding a naturalistic explanation for the origin of life must turn to physical or chemical necessity. The proponent of this solution begins by noting that natural forces regularly produce order. Gravitational energy, for instance, will produce vortices in a draining bathtub; electrostatic forces will draw sodium and chloride ions together into ordered patterns within a crystal of salt. It seems reasonable enough to suppose that, in a like case, amino acids with special affinities for each other might arrange themselves to form proteins. There are two problems to note.

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The first is that there are no chemical bonds between bases along the axis of the DNA molecule and yet it is precisely along this axis that genetic information is coded. This can be seen in the diagram of bonding relationships below. Sugars are designated by pentagons and phosphates by circled Ps. These are linked chemically—represented by solid lines. Meanwhile, nucleotide bases (As, Ts, Gs and Cs) are bonded to the sugar-phosphate backbone and linked by hydrogen bonds—the dotted lines. Note, however, an absence of vertical lines between the squares. This is because there are no chemical bonds between the nucleotide bases along the message-bearing spine of the helix. As magnetic letters on a refrigerator door can be combined and recombined in any of various ways to produce specific sequences, so nucleotide bases can attach to any site on the DNA backbone with equal facility.



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Indeed, there are no significant differential affinities between any of the four bases and the binding sites along the sugar-phosphate backbone. It follows that physical bonding affinities cannot explain the sequentially specific arrangement of nucleotide bases in DNA. Notes Carl Woese, The coding, mechanistic, and evolutionary facets of the problem now became separate issues. The idea that gene expression, like gene replication, was underlain by some fundamental physical principle is gone.

The second problem with this explanatory option is that if chemical affinities did determine the arrangement of the bases, such affinities would dramatically diminish the capacity of DNA to carry information. Information theory, recall, equates the reduction of uncertainty with the transmission of information. The information-bearing capacity of DNA therefore requires physical and chemical contingency. Consider what would happen if each nucleotide base interacted by chemical necessity along the information-bearing axis of DNA; suppose, that is, that every time adenine occurred in a growing genetic sequence, it attracted cytosine to it; and every time guanine appeared, thymine followed. The result would be repetition and redundancy that was ordered but lacking in both information and complexity—much like the arrangement of atoms in crystals. 56 "Whatever may be the origin of a DNA," concludes Meyer, "it can function as a code only if its order is not due to the forces of potential energy. It must be as physically indeterminate as the sequence of words is on a printed page." 2.4 Intelligent Agency Paul Davies, a physicist and origin of life researcher, thinks that the failure of science to explain the origin of life may be due to a category error; that is, he thinks that it is a problem for information theorists that has been left in the hands of chemists. “Chemistry,” 56 Imagine, by way of analogy, the difficulty you would have communicating your thoughts using a word processing program with the following feature. If you type an H, the only possible letter that may succeed it is an R; and if you type an R, the only possible letter that may succeed it is an S—and so on, for the remaining 24 letters.



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he explains, “is about substances and how they react, whereas biology appeals to information and organisation.” Davies invites us to think of a computer. “Attempts at chemical synthesis focus on the hardware—the chemical substrate of life—but ignore the software—the informational aspect.” He then suggests a new perspective on the problem: The answer to the origin of life does not lie in an elusive chemical transformation but a transformation in the organisation of information flow. In physical systems the parts determine the operation of the whole. Davies says this can be understood as, “a flow of information from the bottom up.” A meteorologist who wishes to predict the weather, for example, will begin with local conditions (temperature, air pressure, and so on) and then calculate how the system as a whole will behave. In living organisms, bottom-up information flow mingles with top-down information flow—insofar as what happens at the local level can depend on the global environment and vice versa. Citing mathematical models produced with the help of an astrobiologist, Davies concludes, “The key transition on the road to life occurred when top-down information flow first predominated. We think it may have happened suddenly, analogously to a heated gas abruptly bursting into flame.” The image is suggestive. Is there any known entity with the causal powers to create large amounts of specified information in this way? There is. “The creation of new information,” notes Quastler, “is habitually associated with conscious activity.” This is a precept for which experience provides amble evidence. The information on a computer screen, for example, originates in the mind of a software engineer; the information on a page, in the mind of a writer. And it holds, importantly, for other forms of specified complexity. The ultimate explanation for the meshing gears of a watch is in the intelligent agency of a horologist. Insurance-fraud investigators detect “cheating patterns” that distinguish intentional manipulation from accident; cryptographers distinguish between random signals and those that carry encoded messages. Inferring agency from specified complexity is a familiar and coherent mode of reasoning.



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3. Evaluating the Explanatory Options We have seen that chance is inviable on grounds of prohibitive improbability. It cannot for the origin of a single protein— let alone a functioning molecule. Prebiotic evolution, meanwhile, is explanatorily bankrupt because it smuggles design into natural selection. And chemical necessity both fails to explain the genetic code, which is not determined by bonding, and thwarts the information carrying capacity of DNA. It is notable that all three explanatory options available to the naturalist fall at the first stile: Not one of them can for the origination of cellular molecules. They all come to grief before semantic information and teleology even enter the discussion. The hypothesis of intelligent agency, on the other hand, tidily explains all three properties of life and life's origin. It suggests that if there is no God it is unreasonably improbable that teleological entities capable of replicating themselves and processing semantic information will emerge from the prebiotic soup of the early Earth while if there is a God it is highly probable that this will occur. The origin of life, the argument suggests, is powerful inductive evidence for the telos of an intelligent agent—complementing, completing and adding considerable force to the previous argument from cosmic teleology. 57 Flew, who famously renounced his atheism on review of the foregoing arguments, was moved to conclude: "Intelligence, rather than emerging as a late outgrowth of the evolution of life, has always existed as the matrix and substrate of physical reality." 4. Conclusion The foregoing discussion can now be formalised into an abductive syllogism,

57 The inference to agency from the integrated complexity of the physical world is not a proof of the existence of God—these, as already noted, do not exist outside of mathematics and symbolic logic. But nor is it a fallacious argument from ignorance—or a “God of the Gaps.” Arguments from ignorance occur when evidence against a proposition p is offered as the sole grounds for accepting some alternative proposition r. The foregoing argument does not commit this fallacy.



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The surprising fact p is observed If r were the case, p would follow as a matter of course Therefore, probably, r

The surprising fact p is the origin of life. And in discussing the completing hypotheses for r, theism has clearly emerged as an inference to the best explanation. On the basis of the four arguments so far given, we are rationally obligated to conclude that there exists an uncaused, eternal, changeless, timeless, immaterial and unimaginably powerful agent who by an act of free will brought the universe into being with the goal of creating intelligent life on Earth.



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14 The Argument From Consciousness

That we have a mental life of thoughts and perceptions is the most fundamental fact of human experience and the starting point for every other kind of inquiry. Colours and objects in our field of vision; intentions and beliefs; pains, memories, thoughts—the most radical forms of philosophical skepticism must take all these as properly basic even when denying everything else.58 At the start of the previous chapter I mentioned Locke’s puzzlement that, “ever incogitative Matter should produce a thinking intelligent Being.” It should be noted that our discussion of the very considerable difficulties attending the origin of life only approached but did not reach Locke’s principal concern. Life, after all, no more explains the emergence of consciousness than fine tuning explains the emergence of life. And indeed, many philosophers of mind consider the origin of consciousness more mysterious and problematic than the origin of life itself. 1. Mental Properties In what follows I will be discussing five properties of consciousness that are permanently unsusceptible of psychophysical reduction and unproblematically compatible with theism—a circumstance which, I shall argue, is precisely what we would expect if physicalism is false and theism is true. It will therefore be my concern to show that, together with the arguments already given, consciousness contributes forceful posterior evidence for the existence of God.59 58 Philosophical idealism takes a skeptical

view of the external world and holds that reality is fundamentally mental; solipsism holds that only one’s own mind can really be said to exist. Descartes famously held that we can coherently doubt everything except the fact that we doubt: Cogito ergo sum.

59 Intentionality, privileged access and irreducibility were all introduced in Chapter 2.

However, since the concepts are both critical and difficult, I think they can be revisited with profit.



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1.1 Qualia The hiss of car tyres on a wet road; the smell of jasmine or the taste of avocado; a flash of sunlight on a stormy lake. All these things have a raw qualitative “feel” that is as immediate and undeniable as it is indescribable. Philosophers call these subjective tinctures of sense perception qualia; and in his influential paper What Is It Like to Be a Bat? the eminent philosopher of mind Thomas Nagel argues that they present an insurmountable conceptual challenge to physicalism. Nagel begins by noting that if an organism is conscious at all then, “there is something it is like to be that organism.” To complete a physicalistic of mind, this subjective savour of selfhood must be reducible to an objective brain state. The problem is that the reductive step by which a physical theory is arrived at translates what is private and subjective into what is public and objective—a point to which we shall return. Qualia, meanwhile, just are the private and subjective experiences of sense perception. And since quaila are also facts about the world it follows that there are facts about the world that physicalism cannot possibly explain. To help us understand this point and its implications Nagel invites us to consider what it is like to be a bat. Sonar, though a form of perception, is wholly unlike any sense that we possess and there is no reason to suppose that the subjective experience of a bat is like anything we can experience. Imagining that you have webbed arms that enable you to fly around at dusk catching insects in your mouth; or that you perceive the world by means of high frequency sound signals; or that you spend the day hanging upside down by your feet in an attic—all this only tells you what it would be like for you to behave as a bat behaves and that is not the question. “I want to know,” Nagel writes, “what it is like for a bat to be a bat.” How, then, can this be known? The answer is that it cannot because the task is impossible by tautology: Bat qualia can no more be instantiated in nonbat consciousness than triangularity can be instantiated in a circle. Limited to the resources of the human mind, the extrapolation to bat experience is incompleteable. And critically, the problem is not confined to such exotic cases. In contemplating bats, says Nagel, we are in the same position of an intelligent bat contemplating us. The structure



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of their minds make it impossible for them to succeed; and nor could they plausibly deny that there are qualia of human experience. We know what it is like to be us; know, that is, the ineffable but highly specific subjective savour of personhood from moment to moment. Nagel concludes that qualia are trapped within a particular point of view and can never survive transference to a physical theory open to multiple points of view. 1.2 Intentionality A second property of mental states that defies physicalistic explanation is what philosophers call the "intentionality" or "aboutness" of thought. By this they simply mean that all thoughts have the property of being about or ofsomething external to themselves. When you think about shoes and ships and sealingwax, for example, your thoughts are in those moments of or about shoes and ships and sealing-wax—a property, moreover, that is inescapable since even the thought, "Thoughts do not have intentionality," if it is to be meaningful, must itself be about intentionality and therefore have intentionality. The denial of intentionality would therefore suffer from what Plantinga calls, "self-referential inconsistency," and cannot be rationally affirmed. The intractable problem intentionality raises for physicalism can be drawn out in the following way. Consider the word moonpenciled on a piece of paper. In the absence of a literate observer to read the word and associate it with the moon, can the carbon particles of pencil lead and the wood pulp that composes the sheet of paper be said to be "about" the moon? Clearly not. And what can be said of a penciled word on the page can be said equally of physical brain states. A pattern of firing neurones representing someone's thought about the moon cannot, in the absence of a conscious observer to experience that brain event as a thought about the moon, be said to be "neurones about the moon" in any meaningful and objective sense. Physical things (whether they be neurones or particles of pencil lead or teapots or rocks) are not "about" other physical things in the way that mental states are. And so an exhaustive physicalistic description of mental states would leave something essential to them out of .



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1.3 Free Will Friends and foes of the intuitive and commonsense view that humans have libertarian freedom of the will all agree that it is, on the face of it, incompatible with physicalism. If the mind just is the brain and the brain just is a physical object subject to the laws of physics, our thoughts and intentions would seem to be the result of causal forces which predate us and over which we have no control. Free will, on this view, is an illusion. There are three points to note. The first: John Searle has written that the experience of free will is so compelling that people cannot act as though it is an illusion even if it is one. Hoffman and Rosenkrantz, in another connection, have said something of significance to the dispute. They take the view that if something belongs to a universal and commonsense ontology, “then there is a prima facie presumption in favour of its reality. Those who deny its existence assume the burden of proof.” Swinburne has formalised these ideas into a basic principle of epistemology which he calls The Principle of Credulity: We should, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, believe that things are the way they seem to be. The second: There is, on present evidence, no good reason to think that humans do not have libertarian freedom of the will. The laws of Quantum Theory, notes Swinburne, are probabilistic. And while, in general, indeterministic behaviour on the small scale averages out to produce deterministic behaviour on the large scale, “it is possible to have devices that multiply small-scale indeterminacies so that a small variation in the behaviour of one atom can have a large scale effect." Consider, for instance, an atomic bomb designed to detonate if and only if a certain carbon 14 atom decays within an hour. This would qualify as a "multiplying system," since it relays indeterminacy on the small scale into the large scale, while a block of radioactive carbon would be an "averaging system," since it averages out indeterminacy on the small scale to produce determinacy on the large scale. The brain, notably, is the most complex physical system known to science. And because it, "causes conscious events and its states are caused by conscious events," so, clearly, "laws of a very different kind govern the brain from those that govern all other physical states.” It is possible that the brain is a multiplying system rather



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than an averaging system. And for this reason, "it is widely believed that Quantum Theory rules out physical determinism." The third and final point is of great relevance to the first. There is in principle no possible evidence that could produce a justified belief in determinism because free will is a prerequisite to the formation of justified belief of every kind—including justified belief in determinism itself. To understand this last point consider the plight of a neuroscientist who seeks to establish that determinism is true. To complete his task he must make observations, discern a pattern, formulate a generalisation and infer a theory. All this relies on rational adjudication, memory and intention. But if determinism is true, these mental operations and their results have no rational content. His belief in determinism is, ex hypothesi, not caused by the apprehension of reasons but produced by a brain state that is itself determined by extramental forces. Justified belief in determinism therefore requires that determinism is false and so suffers from selfreferential incoherence. It follows from the combination of all these points (the compelling experience of free will, the Principle of Credulity, the lack of evidence and the a priori impossibility of justified belief in determinism) that we are rationally obligated to affirm free will. 1.4 Nonphysicality Another crucial problem for physicalism is that mental states are in every important respect nonphysical. A desire for roast beef has no length; nostalgia lacks spatial extension; the mental picture of a tiger is without weight. Beliefs, moreover, are true or false and right or wrong—properties that have no meaningful application to physical objects. The flux of brain signals associated with the impulse to commit murder is not immoral; the axons and dendrites associated with the false belief that Shelley wrote The Rime of the Ancient Mariner are not themselves "false." Nor can the physical structure of the brain (its electrochemical impulses, say, or its neurones) be lucid or confused or naive or cynical in the way that thoughts and beliefs undeniably can be.



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1.5 Privileged Access The fifth and final property of mental states is the most essential and also the most problematic: their personal immediacy to the subject who experiences them. “A mental property,” as Swinburne puts it, “is one to whose instantiation the substance in which it is instantiated necessarily has privileged access.” “Others," he clarifies, "can learn about my pains and thoughts by studying my behaviour and perhaps also by studying my brain. Yet I, too, could study my behaviour (I could watch a film of myself; I could study my brain via a system of mirrors and microscopes) just as well as anyone else could. But I have a way of knowing about pains and thoughts other than those available to the best student of my behaviour or brain: I experience them." And the problem this raises for physicalism is that what makes a mental event a mental event is not the public knowledge captured by physicalism but just this private knowledge that physicalism cannot possibly capture. In this connection Swinburne’s offers several thought experiments. I previously considered one; let us now consider another.60 Suppose, firstly, that Swinburne dies and his family pay for his body to be cryogenically frozen; suppose, secondly, that shortly afterwards there is an earthquake and Swinburne’s brain is broken into many parts—a few of which are lost; suppose, finally, that fifty years later medical technology has advanced to the point where his descendants are able to have him revived using replacement parts from another brain: His body and most of his original brain become a living person who behaves somewhat like Swinburne and seems to much of his past experiences. Reflection on this thought experiment shows that, however much we know about what has happened to his brain (“and we may know,” Swinburne emphasises, “exactly what has happened to every atom in it”) we do not know what has happened to him. And this is important because whether Swinburne has survived the ordeal or not is an objective truth about the world that cannot possibly be captured by physicalism. “And note,” adds Swinburne, “that the extra truth is not about what thoughts and feelings and purposes the revived person has. Rather, the extra truth, the truth 60 See the "split brain" thought experiment in Chapter 2.

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about whether I have survived, is a truth about who that is-which substance those properties are instantiated in.” 2. Worldview Compatibility Physicalism entails that mindless particles organised in various ways by mindless forces is all that exists. Theism, per contra, entails that, "Mind, rather than emerging as a late outgrowth of the evolution of life, has always existed as the matrix and substrate of physical reality." I will now be arguing that since the five properties of consciousness just discussed are recalcitrant on a physicalistic worldview but entirely to be expected on a theistic one, consciousness provides forceful posterior evidence for the existence of God. 2.1 Physicalism “How,” asks John Searle, “can we square the self-conception of ourselves as mindful, meaning-creating, free, rational agents with a universe that consists entirely of mindless, meaningless, unfree, nonrational, brute physical particles?” The answer, Moreland replies, is, “Not very well.” In the following paragraphs, I will summarise three reasons for thinking that our conscious life, in view of the five properties under discussion, is impervious to physicalistic explanation. 2.1.1 Irreducibility Reduction in the physical sciences is achieved by distinguishing mental phenomena from more fundamental physical phenomena and giving primacy to the latter. Warmth, for instance, is reduced to molecular energy in thermodynamics. Thereafter, molecular energy is understood to be what warmth, “really is.” Because sensory perception is subjective and can show variation between individuals and species we therefore move toward a more objective knowledge of the world when we understand it in this way; when we understand warmth as the way in which molecular energy is perceived in consciousness; or understand colour as the way in which electromagnetic wavelengths are perceived in consciousness—and so on. “What the evidence of the history of science shows,” notes Swinburne, “is that the way to achieve integration of sciences is to ignore the mental.” But an intractable



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problem arises when we come to the mental itself: We do not move towards a more objective understanding of consciousness along analogous lines when we attempt to understand consciousness as the way in which brain activity is perceived in consciousness: It is simply incoherent to reduce consciousness to some more fundamental physical phenomenon and ignore the former because the former, consciousness, is the very thing we are attempting to explain. Here, again, an exhaustive physicalistic description of the universe is incompletable. 2.1.2 The Impossibility of a Physical Law Physical objects differ from each other in measurable ways. As a result, we can have general laws that relate quantities in all bodies by a mathematical formula. Rather than an exhaustive index of laws (an object of mass n and velocity p colliding with one of mass q and velocity r results in t—and so on for innumerable different cases) it is possible to formulate a single law that, “for every pair of objects in collision the mass of the first multiplied by its velocity plus the mass of the second multiplied by its velocity is always conserved.” The problem for any psychophysical theory of mind is that thoughts do not differ from each other in measurable ways. One thought does not have exactly twice as much meaning as another one; nor could one put a figure on the strength of a ed odour or weigh the poignancy of a memory. An infinitely long list of psychophysical laws matching every possible brain state to a mental state is impossible in practice and useless in theory. An elegant and simple general law describing the correlation of brain states and mental states, on the other hand, is unachievable in principle. “Above all,” adds Swinburne, “there could not be a formula that had the consequence that this brain would give rise to my mind and that one to yours rather than vice versa. We could discover at most that there were these connections, not why there were these connections.” 2.1.3 Limits of Evolution Natural selection is a theory of elimination. It explains why variants thrown up by evolution are eliminated. But it does not explain why they were thrown up in the first place. In the case of physical variants (the countershading of a moth, say) there can be an



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adequate explanation in of a mutation that causes the variant to appear in accordance with the basic laws of chemistry. But our problem is to explain why some physical state produces a conscious mind with properties so recalcitrant to physicalistic explanation in the way we have discussed. Natural selection can perhaps explain how, having appeared in evolutionary history, conscious animals survived; and it may explain how they developed a preponderance of true beliefs. But it cannot explain the origination of the most novel feature of human beings: Their conscious life. Moreover, so long as an organism generates the correct behavioural outputs in response to stimuli, it will survive: Functions that organisms can and do execute unconsciously. For this reason conscious states are, strictly speaking, superfluous to evolution and so lie beyond its explanatory limits. It is important to recognise that all five properties under discussion are intractable on physicalism and must be taken as brute facts. It is in the very nature of qualia to be unsusceptible of objective analysis and we can no more expect physical evidence to explain the intentionality of thought than we can expect an exhaustive chemical analysis of the carbon particles of pencil leadto eventually yield the meaning of the word moon which to a literate English observer they compose. The denial of libertarian causation and nonphysical entities is, meanwhile, presupposed by physicalism and physical evidence is by definition public and so can never collapse into or capture the privileged access of the subject to his own mental life which is, moreover, its essential feature. 2.2 Theism All five properties of consciousness we have discussed are unproblematically compatible with theism. Rather than mindless particles compelled by equally mindless forces, mind is basic to the theistic ontology. God, the Basic Being, is a nonphysical conscious self with irreducible teleology, rationality and free will. Moreover, since the Bible teaches that God created man in his image, Abrahamic theists have a priori grounds to expect these properties to be instantiated if God exists. It is no surprise on theism that our most novel and essential feature, our mental life, should be recalcitrantly nonphysical. And this is because it is imparted to us



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by our nonphysical creator. Free will, too, is provocatively suggestive of the imago dei since if man exercises libertarian causation he instantiates in miniature the principle of uncaused causation imputed to God in classical theism. The foregoing can be compendiated into the following syllogism, P1 If theism is true, human beings should have properties that resist physicalistic explanation P2 Human beings do, in fact, have such properties C Therefore, these properties provide posterior evidence for theism

3. Conclusion We have seen that the most essential feature of human experience, our conscious life, is inexplicable on a physicalistic ontology while for the theist all such difficulties fall away. The theist can, moreover, provide a priori reasons for the instantiation of consciousness in the doctrine of the imago dei. In Is There a God? Swinburne suggests yet another such reason: If God is unlimited in power and intelligence, it is certain that he could create a universe that contained intelligent beings; and if He is perfectly good, it is reasonably probable that He would. Writes Swinburne, We have some understanding of what a good person will do. Good people will try to make other people happy, happy in doing and enjoying worthwhile things (but not happy in causing pain to others). Good people try to help other people for whom they are responsible (for example, their own children) to be good people themselves. Good people seek to share what they have with others and to cooperate with others in all these activities.

God, in other words, might reasonably be expected to create a universe in order to share with us the good things He has—such as a mental life, knowledge, freedom and love. All of these things require consciousness. And if all humans are to have access to the greatest good of all, knowledge of God himself, they will need to be able to develop sophisticated metaphysics which will require

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rational intuition. It is therefore credibly probable that agents with these abilities will exist if there is a God but incredibly improbable that they would exist if there is not. The existence of conscious agents therefore provides evidence that there is a God who created them.



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15 The Argument From Adequation The regularity of the world is something we tend to take for granted. To recall that ice melts, rocks sink and fire burns is unlikely to elicit astonishment. However, science has discovered that the many “phenomenal” regularities of everyday life arise from a handful of more fundamental regularities that are rather more mysterious: A small array of elementary particles subject to four forces and two laws. The whole matter can be comed in a few sentences. Atoms are made of electrons, protons and neutrons which are in turn made of quarks. These are governed by gravity, electromagnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces. Add to this the constraints of General Relativity and Quantum Theory and our picture of physical reality is virtually complete:61 A few simple laws governing the unobservably tiny building blocks of the world. 1. The Rational Universe The Argument from Adequation 62 unfolds from four facts attending this scientific discovery: That such regularities exist at all; that they are best understood as laws; that the laws are expressible using elegant mathematical equations; and that these equations have been discovered by the human mind. In what follows, I shall argue that each of these four facts is completely inexplicable and unexpected on physicalism but completely explicable and expected on theism. It will therefore be my concern to show that the rational structure of physical reality and the adequation of the human intellect to it is further evidence for the existence of God. 61 “Probably,” adds Swinburne, “the laws of electromagnetism and the weak force derive from the more general laws of an “electroweak theory.”

62 As I am calling it. No single name for the argument is used. Swinburne discusses it

under the argument from consciousness; Craig has called it (after Wigner, though somewhat clumsily) “the argument from the unusual efficacy of mathematics” and C. S. Lewis defended a related, “argument from reason.” My discussion is a summary of Plantinga. See Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion and Naturalism.



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1.1 Regularity To observe that objects always fall to the ground is no explanation of why they do so. This point can be generalised by saying that inductive knowledge describes but does not explain. The mathematician David Berlinski relates an instructive anecdote in this connection: Joel Primack, a cosmologist at the University of California, once posed an interesting question to the physicist Neil Turok. "What is it that makes the electrons continue to follow the laws?" Primack asked. Turok was said to be surprised by the question and recognized its force. “Something,” writes Berlinski, “seems to compel physical objects to obey the laws of nature and what makes this observation odd is that neither ‘compulsion’ nor ‘obedience’ are physical ideas.” Consider the fact that, say, every positron in the universe attracts every electron with a force inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. Just as we would seek to explain all the coins of the realm having an identical pattern by means of a common mould, so, suggests Swinburne, we should seek to explain physical objects having an identical form and behaviour by means of a common source. On physicalism there are three explanatory options: The universe is infinitely old and every substance is caused by a preceding substance with the result that, “there can be substances with exactly the same properties only because there always has been;” or it began in a state of finite density and consisted of a very large number of substances of very few kinds; or it began in a state of infinite density and there was a point endowed with the power to decay into a large number of substances of very few kinds. Theories of the universe as a whole have identical scope. Swinburne therefore notes that, “simplicity is the sole indicator of intrinsic probability.” Clearly, the theory that the universe began with a single substance is more probable on this criterion than the theory that it began with many substances. But postulating a point with the power to produce substances of few kinds is far less parsimonious than a point with no power or only the power to produce one substance. And so the theory that the universe developed many substances of few kinds having identical powers is just as improbable as the theory that there always were



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such substances. “Such a coincidence,” concludes Swinburne, “cries out for some single common source with the power to produce it.” On physicalism the undeviating regularity of elementary particles must be taken as a brute fact. Countless identical coins of the realm just exist. There was no mould. There is no explanation. On theism it is precisely to be expected and can, furthermore, be imputed to a single and supremely simple explanatory entity: 63 God, to create an orderly physical substrate for life, ensures an arrangement of substances of the right kind and thereafter sustains them in existence. This is close to the view of medieval theology. Deus est ubique conservans mumdum: "God is everywhere conserving the world." 1.2 Laws Because these regularities are universal, mathematically precise and “tied together” they are usually thought of as laws. This poses a second difficulty for physicalism. The inverse square law of gravity, for instance, is not a metaphor. We did not invent it and we did not impose it. “These laws,” says Paul Davies, “really exist.” And an inescapable entailment of this view is that rationality is among the very stuff of which our world is made—an attribute of the universe as substantive and concrete as its carbon or its hydrogen. As Einstein was moved to remark, the universe is, “reason incarnate.” However, Davies further notes that the laws of nature are not observed directly but extrapolated from mathematical theory and experiment. The question arises: How can rationality be “incarnated” in mindless matter? This problem has inspired theistic intuitions in the greatest scientists who have contemplated it. Thus Einstein felt that the laws of the universe inspire belief in, 63 Mental substances, being nonphysical, lack the "heterogeneity of parts" which Dawkins recommends as the indicator of complexity. Recall, further, Swinburne’s argument that a hypothesis ascribing zero or infinite value to some entity is simpler than hypothesis ascribing a finite value when both hypotheses are compatible with the data: In the second case, one postulates both a force and a constraint; in the first case, one postulates only the force. And since a person having zero powers would not be a person at all, it follows that in postulating a person with infinite powers (that is, God) the theist is postulating the simplest person logically possible.



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"a spirit vastly superior to that of man." And he was not alone in feeling this way. As Flew notes, "the progenitors of quantum physics, Planck, Heisenberg, Schrödinger and Dirac, have all made similar statements." 64 More recently, and dramatically, Allan Sandage ("widely regarded," says Lennox, "as the greatest living cosmologist") converted to Christian theism under the same conviction.65 A second difficulty for physicalism concerns the modal nature of the laws. We can begin to appreciate this by first noting that not every universal truth is a law. Thus, No man on broad the Titanic had prosopagnosia and No diamond is larger than the moon may be both true and universal but do not qualify as laws. The difference between a law and a universal truth, says Plantinga, is that universal truths are accidental and laws are thought to be in some way necessary. But in what way is a law of nature necessary? It is not logically necessary since something is logically necessary only if its negation entails a contradiction. Thus 2+3=5 is logically necessary because its negation (say, 2+3=65) is absurd. But it is not logically absurd in this way to suppose that the sun will not rise or that a pair of particles will on occasion not attract each other with a force inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. 66 “All we’re ordinarily told,” complains 64 Even Darwin can be added to this list.

He confessed that in contemplating, "this immense and wonderful universe" he felt, "compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to man,” concluding that, “I deserve to be called a Theist."

65 The case of Flew himself is equally impressive. After a lifetime of influential

philosophical writings on atheism, he declared himself a theist. 66 G. K. Chesterton noticed this. To say an apple hit Newton’s nose, he wrote, is to say

that Newton’s nose was hit by an apple. That is an inviolable law because the one cannot logically occur without the other. “But,” Chesterton continues, “we can quite well conceive the apple not falling on his nose; we can fancy it flying ardently through the air to hit some other nose of which it had a more definite dislike.” Newtonian equations, like all scientific “laws,” provide a description but leave us without an explanation. They are not laws at all but, "mere facts." And Chesterton completes the thought with these memorable words, When we are asked why eggs turn to birds or fruits fall in autumn, we must answer exactly as the fairy godmother would answer if Cinderella asked her why mice turned into horses or her clothes fell from her at twelve o’clock. We must answer that it is magic. It is not a “law” for we do not understand its general formula. It is not a necessity, for though we can count on it happening, we have no right to say that it must



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Plantinga, “is that this necessity is weaker than logical necessity but still stronger than mere universal truth.” Here, again, theism can offer important explanatory resources. The laws are necessary and contingent. They are necessary because they are decreed by an omnipotent mind and no finite power can act against and falsify them—they are, as Plantinga puts it, “finitely inviolable;”67 and they are contingent because they could, logically, be otherwise: God could have created a world in which, say, the speed of light was half c or in which Newton’s laws did not hold for medium sized objects.68 Theism, then, tidily explains how laws of nature are grounded and what they are like; physicalism stands mute before them. 1.3 Mathematics The laws of nature are in essence mathematical structures and this raises further problems for physicalism; namely, the applicability, ontology and accessibility of mathematics itself. Eugene Wigner spoke of the, “unreasonable efficacy of mathematics in the natural sciences.” The logic of his muchdiscussed remark is nicely captured by the following examples: Consider the fact that Maxwell's equations modelling electrical and magnetic phenomena also describe radio waves discovered after his death; or that Einstein’s equations inspired by a daydream of falling elevators led to a description of space and time that has been confirmed by observation and experiment for one hundred years; or that Peter Higgs should sit down at his desk extrapolate from mathematical equations the existence of a particle which, 30 years later, is empirically detected. always happen. A tree grows fruit because it is a magic tree. The sun shines because it is bewitched.

67 Thus Roger Cotes, from the preface he wrote for the second edition of

Newton’s Principia Mathematica: "From this fountain it is that those laws, which we call the laws of Nature, have flowed, in which there appear many traces indeed of the most wise contrivance but not the least shadow of necessity." 68 It is worth noting the here the similarities and differences between moral law and

natural law. Both are degreed by God. But moral laws arise from the nature of God and are for free creatures who can obey or disobey them: They are logically necessary but finitely violable. Natural laws arise from the free will of God and are for the inanimate world of matter which cannot disobey them: They are logically contingent but finitely inviolable.



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Mathematical concepts have an uncanny applicability to an unexpectedly large class of phenomena in the natural world. You may object that, however the universe turned out, it would be mathematically describable. Correct. But what is unreasonable, Wigner says, is that the universe should be explanatorily amenable to general mathematical laws of both deep complexity and simplicity. Suppose all that exists is an inert and amorphous goo. A mathematical description of it would be possible but uninteresting. Suppose events occur in chaotic succession with no discernible pattern. Here, too, a mathematical description is possible (Event A lasted 10 seconds; Event B had twice as many components as event A, and so on) but uninteresting and bereft of predictive power. Suppose, finally, that surface chaos is underlain by an inaccessibly deep order or surface order arises from an underlying chaos. In both cases mathematics would be inefficacious.69 Wigner concludes his paper by describing the efficacy of mathematics as a “miracle” that we should accept with uncomprehending gratitude. The theist, once again, can bring explanatory resources to the mystery. “God,” Paul Dirac opined, “is a mathematician of a very high order and He used advanced mathematics in constructing the universe.” On this view the deep concord between mathematics and the natural world is entirely to be expected. A second problem: Mathematics, naturally enough, uses numbers and sets. But both available intuitions about the ontology of numbers and sets are, as we shall see, inexplicable on physicalism. The first intuition views numbers and sets as abstract objects. These strange entities differ from concrete objects in two important respects: They do not occupy space and do not enter into causal relations. The number 5, for instance, exists necessarily, unchangingly, and somehow immaterially, whether or not there are minds to apprehend it. But this creates a puzzle for the physicalist. 69 It may be necessary here to anticipate

an objection: In these alternative universes, conscious life could not exist and therefore mathematics of any kind would be impossible. However, the question Plantinga is asking is: What sort of mathematics is in principle possible in alternative universes. The fact that some of them don't allow for the existence of actual mathematicians does not affect this. See, also, the sixth footnote to Chapter 12.



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It is reasonable to think that all the objects we can know must stand in a causal relationship to us. We know about lions because we perceive them: Light waves from an approaching lion form an imagine on the retina that induces electrical activity in the optic nerve and s, finally, in the brain. Abstract objects, if they exist at all, would seem to be things we could not know about on physicalism. The second and far more widespread intuition finds it incredible that numbers should exist independently of the mind. Abstract objects are thought of as ontologically dependent upon the mental: They just are thoughts, or else, could not exist if not thought of. But here, too, is a puzzle for physicalism: Since there are infinitely many numbers, sets and propositions, it is not possible for them all to be mentally instantiated in finite minds. And this entails, absurdly, that most of the theoretical resources of mathematics and logic do not exist. Both intuitions are unproblematically compatible with theism. Numbers and sets exist as divine thoughts which explains their ontology and also their accessibility. The imago dei, Augustine said, entails the capax dei. Because we are made in the image of God we are capable of receiving and partaking of God. 1.4 Adequation And why, finally, should any of this have been discovered by human minds? On physicalism our cognitive faculties come to us through natural selection winnowing random genetic mutations on the Pleistocene savanna. “Boiled down to essentials,” Churchland says, this equips us to accomplish the “Four F’s: Feeding, fleeing, fighting and reproduction.” Current physics, meanwhile, requires powers of cognition in profligate excess of what is required for survival. Berlinski makes the same point rather colourfully when he asks, Why should a limited and finite organ such as the human brain have the power to see into the heart of the matter of mathematics? These are subjects that have nothing to do with the Darwinian business of scrabbling up the greasy pole of life. It is as if the liver, in addition to producing bile, were to demonstrate an unexpected ability to play the violin.



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Here is yet another enigma for the physicalist and yet another datum to be expected on theism. Rationality is basic to the theistic ontology. God, the Basic Being, created the world and us in his image. He further ensured that the two were in accord so that the heavens might declare his glory to us and the sky proclaim his handiwork. Medieval theologians understood this as the adequatio intellectus ad rem: “The adequation of the intellect to reality.” 2. Worldview Compatibility: Physicalism We have seen that both the rational structure of the universe and human knowledge of it lie beyond the explanatory scope of physicalism. On physicalism the phenomenal and fundamental regularities of the universe are an inexplicable coincidence; the existence and modal properties of the laws of nature extrapolated from those regularities are a brute fact; and the applicability, ontology and accessibility of the mathematics underlying those laws are without explanation. The physicalist who undertakes to object to the foregoing pointby-point will have a further difficulty to address: Plantinga has extended all these ideas to show that physicalism undermines the rational basis of belief of every kind, including belief in physicalism. This is his Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism and I will briefly summarise it now. 2.1 The Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism Our cognitive faculties include memory, perception and rational intuition. In science as in every day life, these work together to produce beliefs. It is natural to assume that our cognitive faculties produce beliefs that are mostly true. But Plantinga says that, on physicalism, this assumption is unsafe. Consider: The physicalist believes the mind “just is” the brain and so takes a belief to be something like a long-standing structure in the nervous system. The problem is that neurology can produce behaviours that increase fitness whether or not the beliefs annexed to that neurology are true. Survival, to be sure, does require cognitive devices that track crucial features of the environment and are appropriately connected to intention and muscular reflexes. That is not disputed. What is disputed is the necessary annexation between those cognitive devices and true beliefs. In fact, adaptive



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behaviour does not require true belief—or belief at all. Think of an organism fleeing from a predator. Undoubtably, its cognitive devices are tracking the predator and producing a useful response. But “tracking” itself is not belief and, so long as the neurology of the organism causes it to flee, the belief annexed to its neurology need not even contain a predator and it certainly need not be true. “It could be true,” says Plantinga, “it could be false; it doesn’t matter.” Darwin himself was troubled by this. “With me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy,” he wrote in a private correspondence. “Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind? The problem was also noticed by C. S. Lewis, the chemist J. B. S. Haldane70 and atheist philosopher John Gray. "Modern humanism," Gray writes, "is the faith that through science humankind can know the truth. But if Darwin's theory of natural selection is true, this is impossible. The human mind serves evolutionary success, not truth." Plantinga’s argument applies to all beliefs but with a force that increases as beliefs become irrelevant to survival. Perception, for example, is especially relevant to feeding, fleeing, fighting and reproduction and so beliefs directly informed by perception may be taken to be more reliable. Beliefs about physics, aesthetics and philosophy, on the other hand, are irrelevant to survival. These must be regarded as far less reliable. Metaphysical beliefs, including both physicalism and theism, fall into this second category. What then is the likelihood, on physicalism, that some belief p instantiated in an organism is true? Plantinga suggests that, since the 70 Haldane complained that if the thoughts in his mind were just the motions of atoms in his brain (a mechanism that has arisen by a motiveless and unguided mechanism) why should he believe anything they tell him—including the fact that his brain is made of atoms? Lewis, for his part, wrote, If all that exists is Nature, the great mindless interlocking event, if our own deepest convictions are merely the by-products of an irrational process, then clearly there is not the slightest ground for supposing that our sense of fitness and our consequent faith in uniformity tell us anything about a reality external to ourselves. Our convictions are simply a fact —like the colour of our hair.



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alternatives seem about equiprobable, we should give it a probability of about a half. And what, in that case, is the probability that its cognitive faculties are generally reliable? Plantinga suggests we consider his cognitive faculties reliable if they generate true beliefs 45 percent of the time. He writes, If I have one thousand independent beliefs, for example, the probability that three quarters or more of these beliefs are true will be less than 10 . And even if I am running a modest epistemic establishment of only one hundred beliefs, the probability that three-quarters of them are true is very low— something like .000001 –58

The rest of the argument follows by tautology: If I cannot trust my cognitive faculties, I cannot trust any belief they produce and especially not any metaphysical belief; but physicalism itself is a metaphysical belief produced by my cognitive faculties; therefore, I cannot trust physicalism. Plantinga concludes by saying that physicalism is self-referentially incoherent and cannot be rationally affirmed. I think it is worth dwelling for a moment on the inescapable circularity of every possible objection to this argument: Any theory pwhich purports to prove the reliability of your cognitive faculties is itself a product of the cognitive faculties whose reliability it seeks to prove. Thomas Reid memorably analogised this problem by observing that, "If a man's honesty were called into question, it would be ridiculous to refer to that man's own word whether he be honest or not." In a like case, Reid said, it is absurd to try and, "prove by reasoning that reason is not fallacious.” 3. Worldview Compatibility: Theism Theism clears with ease every stile at which physicalism falls. It explains the phenomenal and fundamental regularity of the world by means of a single parsimonious cause; it s for the existence and modal properties of natural law; and it explains the efficacy, ontology and accessibility of mathematics. However, these points were ancillary to the central mystery of this chapter: The human apprehension of the deepest truths at the heart of physical reality. Here the explanatory superiority of theism was at its most



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striking. The adequation of rational minds to the rational structure of the universe implicates the Rational Being who created both. 4. Conclusion The foregoing discussion can now be formalised into an abductive syllogism, The surprising fact p is observed If r were the case, p would follow as a matter of course Therefore, probably, r

The surprising fact p is the adequation of the human intellect to a rationally structured universe. My discussion compared and contrasted the probability of p under two worldviews: physicalism and theism. Physicalism was shown to be in conflict with four key features of p and generally. Theism was found to be unproblematically compatible with the same. The Argument from Adequation therefore provides evidence that there is a God who created the universe and the beings who contemplate it.



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16 The Argument From Moral Experience "The man who says that it is morally acceptable to rape little children,” writes atheist philosopher Michael Ruse, “is just as mistaken as the man who says 2+2=5." Few would wish to object. Dostoyevsky, meanwhile, has a character in The Brothers Karamazov describe this scene from the Slavic uprising: Soldiers snatching a baby from its mother, throwing it into the air and catching it on a bayonet. That also, I would assume, could never be anything but wrong. In what follows, I will be arguing, firstly, that our moral perception is normatively productive of belief in objective moral truth; secondly, that this raises insoluble difficulties for physicalism; and thirdly, that the same is unproblematically compatible with theism. It will therefore be my concern to show that moral experience offers further evidence for the existence of God. 1. Explanandum The difference between subjective and objective is critical to what follows. I will therefore find it helpful to begin by setting out the difference with care. Firstly, I will understand some proposition p to be subjective if its truth is dependent on facts about the subject in whom it is instantiated as a belief. Thus Drinking whiskey is pleasant will be true for a subject S only if S enjoys drinking whiskey. So defined, subjective propositions do not really refer to an object of perception at all; rather, they refer to a relation between the subject and the object.71 One entailment of this is that opposite subjective truths can coexist without contradiction. Suppose, for instance, that 71 Sometimes objective propositions can masquerade as subjective propositions and visa versa. Thus whether Smith is the worst president is subjective or objective will depend on the unstated criterion. If that criterion is "I hate him" a subjective truth has being expressed; if the criterion is, say, "Unemployment reached a record high during his presidency," then the statement was motivated by an objective truth that could be stated us such; i.e., Unemployed reached a record high during the Smith presidency.



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a man sees an empty nocturnal street down which a single sheet of newspaper is blowing. He says, “What a sad and lonely sight!” However, a second man who is lost arrives on the same street which he recognises as the one on which he lives. He says, “What a joyful sight!” The two men have made opposite claims about the same perceptum without contradiction. And this is because neither claim imputes “sadness” or “joy” to the street itself. They describe two different relations between subject and object. Secondly, I will understand some proposition p to be objective if its truth or falsity is independent of every possible fact about the subject in whom it is instantiated as a belief. Thus Whiskey is a liquid is true whether the subject who apprehends it believes it or not and irrespective of any other fact about him. In contrast to subjective propositions, then, objective propositions refer to objects of perception and ignore the relations between subject and object. They are, in this way, mind-independent. The Argument from Moral Experience begins with the intuitive and commonsense view that moral truths are objective in the way I have just defined. If I read that Anne Frank died of typhus in a Nazi death camp and say, “That is morally wrong,” my claim is not onlythat her death makes me “feel moral wrongness.” I am also claiming that moral wrongness is a property of her death. Thus if a second man claims that her death was good he is simply mistaken, no matter what his intelligence, learning and authority; indeed, if the whole planet thought this way then the whole planet would be mistaken. Moral truths, as Ruse suggests, are like mathematical truths. They are true independently of the minds which apprehend them. This, then, is the explanandum from which the argument will unfold: Rightly or wrongly, moral perception is normatively productive of the belief in objective moral truth in the same way that sensory perception is normatively productive of belief in an autonomous external world. 2. Preliminary Matters However, before going further there are two common but misconceived responses to the Moral Argument that need to be set aside. The first is the objection from moral disagreement and the



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second is the complaint that religion is irrelevant to moral awareness. 2.1 Moral Disagreement Against belief in objective moral truth the skeptic may wish to appeal to puzzle cases that produce moral disagreement. One example is the Trolley Problem in which one faces a hypothetical choice between throwing a lever to redirect a trolley or letting the trolley take its course. If you take action, a man stuck on the tracks will be run over; if you do nothing, the trolley will crash and everyone will die. These and other thought experiments are much discussed in moral philosophy. In many of them there seems to be no correct answer. This, a skeptic might claim, proves that morality is not objective. Moreland draws out the fallacy in such objections by reference to the Sorites Problem posed by the ancient Greeks. Given a small heap of wheat, can I produce a large heap by adding a single grain? Clearly not. From this an absurdity follows: One can never produce a large heap of wheat by adding grains one at a time to a small heap. Or consider another puzzle: If a piece of fruit changes gradually from orange to red, can I pinpoint the moment at which the change in colour occurs? Perhaps not. Therefore, just as absurdly, I cannot know when I am looking at red and not at orange. The problem with both puzzles is this: They falsely assume that in the absence of independent criteria for borderline cases one cannot have knowledge of clear cases. But in fact it is the clear cases that supply the criteria by which the borderline cases are judged. I do not need independent criteria for my belief in the external world before claiming that there is a lake before me. Only in a borderline case are criteria required. If I am in a desert and may be seeing a mirage, for instance, I may need to refer to a map or the independent testimony of a local to justify my claim there is a lake before me. But both of these proofs assume the clear case— the reality of the external world. Generally, moral realists argue that the deliverances of moral experience are analogous to the deliverances of sensory perception, memory and rational intuition. Each of these have what is called, “proper basicality.” They are the foundation from which all beliefs



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are derived but are themselves nonderivative or “basic.” This is a point to which we will return. For the moment it will suffice to note that the Trolley Problem no more proves the moral inscrutability of infanticide than a mirage proves the unreality of the external world or the Sorites Problem the impossibility of producing a large heap of wheat grain by grain. Psychopaths and moral nihilists, for their part, stand in the same relation to moral truths as the colour blind to the colour spectrum. The fact that a few people do not perceive something does not call into question the deliverances of normative perception. 2.2 Moral Epistemology and Moral Ontology Atheists sometimes complain that moral awareness does not require religious belief.72 This is true but irrelevant. To be clear: It will nowhere be claimed in what follows that one must believe in God in order to know right from wrong, live a morally good life or formulate a coherent ethical system. The theist readily grants that the atheist can do all three and, indeed, the Bible itself affirms this.73 But believing something is one thing and having a coherent metaphysical foundation for that belief is another. Several philosophers party to the dispute have qualified this point in of a distinction between moral epistemology and moral ontology. Consider the example of John who claims to believe in time travel and note that there are two theories about time. On the Dynamic Theory of time only the present exists. On the Static Theory of time, the past, present and future all exist concretely in a spacetime block and the flow of time is an illusion. Time travel, relevantly, is only possible on the second theory since, on the first, there is no past to travel to. Let us allow that John has some epistemic grounds for his belief in time travel—perhaps the testimony of a visitor from the future who has already made many 72 The following comment by Christopher Hitchens is representative, I think our knowledge of right and wrong is innate in us. Religion gets its morality from humans. We know that we can't get along if we permit perjury, theft, murder, rape, all societies at all times, well before the advent of monarchies and certainly, have forbidden it. Why don't we just assume that we do have some internal com?

73 Romans, 2.14-15



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accurate predictions. But if John also holds to a Dynamic Theory of time then his belief in time travel is in conflict with his metaphysics. The claim of the Moral Argument is that a moral realist who is also an atheist is in a similar position to John. Like the theist, his belief in moral truths has epistemic justification in moral experience; but unlike the theist, this belief is without a metaphysical foundation. 3. Explanatory Options: Physicalism On physicalism, morality shares its origin with cognition: It is a result of natural selection winnowing random genetic mutations on the Pleistocene Savanna. The Darwinian is familiar enough. Protecting your children from predators is better than feeding your children to predators insofar as one helps to perpetuate your genes and the other does not. And what goes for paternal care goes for sharing, cooperation, reciprocal altruism, honesty, love and so forth. The essential point to note here is that what is morally good is determined by and tracked to reproductive fitness and what conduces to reproductive fitness is open to a range of possibilities so wide that morality loses all meaning. Thus Darwin writes, If men were reared under precisely the same conditions as hive bees, there can hardly be a doubt that our unmarried females would, like the worker bees, think it a sacred duty to kill their brothers, and mothers would strive to kill their fertile daughters and no one would think of interfering.

More recently, Francisco Ayala has noted that even genocide could be regarded as “morally good” to the not inconceivable extent that it helps to preserve the genes of those committing it. Clearly, on such an a given moral proposition fails our criterion for objectivity: Its truth is dependent on facts about the subject in whom it is instantiated as a belief; namely, that the behaviour entailed conduces to his reproductive fitness. Wilson and Ruse are among those who have faced the implications of this. “The belief in moral objectivity,” they write, “is a useful fiction and its utility is in the name of reproductive fitness.” It is an unpalatable but



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unavoidable consequence of physicalism that there are altogether no moral facts. 3.1 Unliveability Moral skepticism is unliveable. It is therefore ironic but unsurprising that those who affirm a worldview that entails moral skepticism are often found promoting moral causes. Nietzsche, for example, declares himself beyond Good and Evil but then renounces Wagner for an anti-Semite; atheists Sartre and Russell each raise a moral indictment against the Second World War; Dennett the physicalist ens us to “presuppose” truth and justice and the irrepressible Dawkins directs moral contempt at the Ten Commandments while offering his own Secular Man’s guide to ethics—and so on though countless examples. William Lane Craig has rightly lampooned all this as the "shopping trolley" approach to the moral quandary of atheism. Realising that his worldview is unliveable, the atheist simply barges through its philosophical constraints and shamelessly helps himself to the moral values he needs to make it liveable. “They castrate,” quipped Lewis thinking of the same, “and bid the geldings to be fruitful.” This may have some philosophical relevance. Moreland has suggested that one test for the truth of a worldview is whether it can be consistently lived out. Reid, meanwhile, compared the course of modern philosophy from Descartes to Hume to a traveler who, upon finding himself in a coal pit, realizes that he has taken a wrong turn.74 It might still be claimed, perhaps not unreasonably, that this first objection is of uncertain force. After all, the truth is under no obligation to be liveable and the physicalist might still choose to bite the bullet and embrace moral skepticism. But in doing so he faces two further obstacles. 74 Reid argued that we should include

moral principle among the first principles of philosophy and concluded that by denying them the moral skeptic simply disqualifies himself from reasonable debate. “Just as there is no reasoning with the man who, despite apparent evidence to the contrary, is convinced that his head is a gourd,” Linville summarises him, “neither is there advantage in engaging in moral argument with a man who fails to recognise self-evident principles of morality.”



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3.2 Selective Basicality Skepticism The atheist philosopher Louise Antony once conceded during a debate that, “Any argument for moral skepticism is going to be based upon premises which are less obvious than the reality of moral values and duties themselves.” This is a point that I will now briefly develop by reference to the idea of “proper basicality” introduced above. To better understand what is meant by this note first that there is no noncircular way of proving the general reliability of sensory perception. This is because any evidence p which purports to do so will itself rely on the sensory perception whose reliability it sought to prove. A belief in the existence of the external world is therefore a “properly basic” belief: It is not and cannot be reached by inference but must be assumed if beliefs of any sort are to be possible. Likewise, there is no noncircular way of proving the general reliability of rational intuition. This point is nicely captured by Reid's analogy. "If a man's honesty were called into question," he writes, "it would be ridiculous to refer to that man's own word whether he be honest or not.” And so it is absurd to try and, "prove by reasoning that reason is not fallacious.” Thus the deliverances of rational intuition are also “properly basic.” They cannot be proved trustworthy by inference but must be assumed trustworthy if beliefs of any sort are possible. And this goes for memory and, arguably, moral perception. That bayoneting babies is wrong is something we must, on pain of irrationality, include in the fund of first principles with which we begin moral. ing Antony’s remark that arguments for moral skepticism are less obvious than the deliverances of moral perception itself, let us consider another decidedly “clear case”— again from Dovstoyevsky. Ivan Karamazov is relating newspaper stories from the Slavic uprising. He says, 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, holds out its little hands to the pistol, and he pulls the trigger in the baby's face.



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Confronted with such scenes, moral perception may have all the force of sensory perception; that is, it may be as difficult to deny that what Ivan relates is morally wrong as it would be to deny that there are physical objects before our gaze—and certainly more difficult than denying the unproved premises of an argument for moral skepticism. But this invites the question: If both faculties are properly basic, why trust the weak force of rational intuition upon contemplating moral skepticism over the intense force of moral perception upon contemplating evil and depravity? Because our basic beliefs are all equally noninferential, "selective basicality skepticism" just implicitly begs the question against moral realism. Consistently applying our skepticism to all properly basic beliefs, on the other hand, undermines belief of every kind—including the belief in skepticism itself. 3.3 Self-Referential Incoherence This leads neatly into the last and most potent objection to moral skepticism. In pressing the evolutionary argument against moral realism, Sommers and Rosenberg write that, “If our best theory of why people believe pdoes not require that p is true, then there are no grounds to believe pis true.” The problem with this rubric is that it applies with as much force to our cognitive faculties as it does to our moral faculties and this has an unwelcome consequence for physicalism and moral skepticism alike. The point is one which Plantinga has developed into his Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism already discussed. Again, briefly: Animal neurology can produce behaviours that increase fitness whether or not the beliefs annexed to that neurology are true. Think of an organism fleeing from a predator. Undoubtably, its cognitive devices are tracking the predator and producing a useful response. But “tracking” itself is not belief and, so long as the neurology of the organism causes it to flee, the belief annexed to its neurology need not even contain a predator and it certainly need not be true. What then is the likelihood, on physicalism, that some belief p instantiated in an organism is true? Plantinga suggests that the alternatives are equiprobable and so should be assigned a probability of about a half. And what, in that case, is the probability that its cognitive faculties are generally reliable? Plantinga suggests



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we consider his cognitive faculties reliable if they generate true beliefs 45 percent of the time and concludes, “If I have one thousand independent beliefs, the probability that three quarters or more of these beliefs are true will be less than 10 .” The argument applies to all beliefs but with a force that increases as beliefs become irrelevant to survival. Perception is especially relevant to feeding, fleeing, fighting and reproduction and so beliefs directly informed by perception may be taken to be more reliable. Metaphysical beliefs, on the other hand, are irrelevant to survival and these must be regarded as far less reliable. Physicalism, of course, falls into this second category. The rest of the argument follows by tautology: If I cannot trust my cognitive faculties, I cannot trust any belief they produce and especially not any metaphysical belief; but physicalism itself is a metaphysical belief produced by my cognitive faculties; therefore, I cannot trust physicalism. What Plantinga concludes of physicalism can be concluded of the moral skepticism that it entails: It is selfreferentially incoherent and cannot be rationally affirmed. –58

4. Explanatory Options: Atheistic Moral Platonism The only recourse available to a moral realist who wishes to avoid the hypothesis of theism has been dubbed, “Atheistic Moral Platonism.” This is a view that jettisons physicalism and affirms that moral properties exist in abstracto and supervene upon those natural properties that approximate to them. Moral awareness, the moral platonist claims, is not an illusion tracked to reproductive fitness; rather, our moral awareness has somehow become coextensive with these abstract moral objects through evolutionary processes. Atheistic Moral Platonism thus allows its proponent to avoid moral skepticism. But we shall see that faces a number of serious philosophical obstacles. 4.1 The Problem of Knowledge Firstly, abstract objects differ from concrete objects in two important respects: They do not occupy space and they do not enter into causal relations. The reader may recall our discussion of this point from the previous chapter. On mathematical platonism the number 5 exists necessarily, unchangingly, and somehow immaterially, whether or not there are minds to apprehend it. But



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mathematical and moral platonism alike pose a riddle for the erstwhile physicalist. It is reasonable to think that all the objects we can know must stand in a causal relationship to us. We know about lions and rocks and trees because we perceive them. But abstract objects do not occupy space or stand in causal relationships and so seem to be things we could not possibly know about on physicalism. Swinburne, though he spends little time on the Moral Argument, further notes that a moral belief is not necessary for a moral action. Thus even if a moral property supervened on a natural one our awareness of the fact would remain unexplained. 4.2 The Problem of Free Will Secondly: On physicalism the mind just is the brain and the brain just is a physical object subject to the laws of physics. It follows that our thoughts and intentions are the result of causal forces which predate us and over which we have no control. Free will, therefore, is an illusion. This is problematic for the atheistic moral platonist because moral responsibility requires free will and determinism is not resolved by simply annexing moral platonism to a physicalistic worldview. Its proponent is therefore forced to either deny free will and with it all possibility of a coherent moral philosophy—the very thing he was attempting to salvage—or else postulate substance dualism as a further unexplained fact in conflict with his already diluted physicalism. 4.3 Worldview Incompatibility Physicalism, thirdly, entails that mindless particles organised in various ways by mindless forces is all that exists. To annex abstract moral objects to this metaphysic as brute facts is paradigmatically ad hoc. What does it mean to say that Justice and Kindness exist eternally and immaterially in the absence of persons to instantiate them? Moral values are intrinsically personal properties that can have no coherent ontology as mere abstractions. Craig also notes that, curiously, the abstract object Love is not itself loving. From this it follows that in the absence of persons Love is not instantiated and so does not exist—and so on for the remaining objects.



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4.4 The Problem of Moral Duties The fourth and final objection to Atheistic Moral Platonism arises from a distinction between moral values and moral duties; that is, between what is good and what is obligatory. To grasp the distinction consider that becoming a doctor to aid the sick and feeding your children are both morally good but only the second is morally obligatory. But who or what on atheism lays such obligations upon us? The problem, to be clear, is not the removal of reward and punishment but the removal of an ultimate frame of reference for, and authoritative superintendence of, our moral choices. The ethicist Richard Taylor, though himself an atheist, concedes that in a Godless universe man is in the same position as the lower animals. A magpie takes but does not steal; a tiger kills but do not murder. Human moral behaviour is simply evolutionary adaptation elevated into a social custom. And on this view, rape and murder are merely heterodox, unfashionable—no worse than producing a cubist painting in 1907 or waltzing in 1770. “The concept of moral obligation,” Taylor concludes, “is unintelligible apart from the idea of God.” Introducing abstract moral objects into ones metaphysic does not resolve this problem. For, as Craig notes, “Moral vices such as Greed, Hatred, and Selfishness also presumably exist as abstract objects. Why am I obligated to align my life with one set of abstract objects rather than any other?” 5. Explanatory Options: Theism The six previous arguments have discussed the existence of contingent entities, the beginning of the universe, cosmological fine tuning, the origin of life, the nature of consciousness and its adequation to a rationally structured universe. In each case, I showed that the phenomenon in question is credibly probable if there is a God and incredibly improbable if there is not. As more and more phenomena accumulate, the probability that all of them would occur in a Godless universe grows smaller and smaller. In this chapter I have discussed moral experience and shown that neither available atheistic explanation can for it. It only remains to consider theism. What, if any, explanatory resources can theism offer?



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Once again we find that a fundamental feature of human experience is unproblematically compatible with theism. Firstly, morality is already basic to the theistic ontology: God, the Basic Being, is the morally perfect creator and ruler of the universe whose moral authority lays our moral duties upon us and whose eternal and unchanging nature provides the paradigm to which our moral conduct approximates. The doctrine of the imago dei, moreover, grounds our intrinsic moral worth in the Godhead as well as our moral rights and obligations; this doctrine, in turn, entails the capax dei on which our moral awareness is entirely to be expected: Because we are made in the divine image we are capable of receiving and partaking in the divine. The voice of conscience, theists have always held, is the voice of God. The foregoing can now be compendiated into the following syllogism, P1 If theism is true, human beings should have properties and experiences that resist physicalistic explanation P2 Human beings do, in fact, have such properties and experiences C Therefore, these properties and provide posterior evidence for theism

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6. Conclusion Moral experience is inexplicable on both a physicalistic and platonic worldview. Physicalism entails, unpalatably, that there are no moral facts but is undermined by a basicality bias and suffers from self-referential incoherence. Moral platonism, on the other hand, is paradigmatically ad hoc and fails to provide an intelligible of moral awareness, free will and moral obligation. On theism all such difficulties fall away.75 The theist can, 75 Plato’s Euthyphro Dilemma is often pressed against theistic s of morality. It asks, “Is something good because God wills it or does God will something because it is good?” In the first case, the objection goes, what is good seems arbitrary because God could have commanded anything; in the second case, the good seems to be something God recognises outside of himself and conforms to.



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moreover, appeal to a priori grounds for the instantiation of moral awareness in the doctrine of the capax dei. Further such grounds, drawn from Swinburne, were noted at the end of the argument from consciousness and apply here with only slight adjustment: If God is unlimited in power and intelligence, it is certain that he could create a universe that contained moral agents; and if He is perfectly good, it is reasonably probable that He would. “We have some understanding of what a good person will do,” writes Swinburne, and includes among a list of representative actions that, “Good people seek to share what they have with others.” God, in other words, might reasonably be expected to create a world and populate it with agents in order to share with us the good things He has—including virtue. But for finite beings, the attainment of virtue requires both free will and moral awareness.76 It is therefore credibly probable that intelligent agents with moral awareness will exist if there is a God but incredibly improbable that they would exist if there is not. The existence of moral agents therefore provides evidence that there is a God who created them.

Before giving the orthodox response from philosophical theology it is worth noting that both horns of the dilemma are compatible with theism and still allow a moral philosophy that is explanatorily superior to atheism. Swinburne, for instance, takes the first horn and affirms that moral truths are logically necessary; William of Ockham takes the second horn and affirms any command of God is ipso facto good. Both theologies nevertheless explain moral awareness, moral duties and the intrinsic worth of persons— which are either inexplicable or unaffirmable on atheism. However, a far more common response is to note that the dilemma is a false one because there is a third option. “God wills something because he is good.” God’s own nature is the standard of moral goodness just as a live performance is the standard of a hifidelity recording. The more accurately a recording approximates a live performance, the better it is; and likewise, the more closely a moral action conforms to God’s nature, the better it is.

76 For a discussion of this point, see the chapter on The Problem of Evil.



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17 The Argument From Desire I have now given seven arguments. These have discussed the existence of contingent things; the beginning and fine tuning of the universe; the origin of life; the nature of consciousness; the adequation of the human mind to a rationally structured physical reality and, lastly, moral awareness. In each case, the phenomenon under discussion was shown to be credibly probable on the hypothesis that there is a God and incredibly improbable on the hypothesis that there is not. And, as already noted, with each new phenomenon introduced the probability that they would all occur in a Godless universe grows smaller and smaller. The arguments taken together therefore make it highly probable that there is a God who created us in his image. And from that certain things follow. One of the things that follow is that human beings should manifest a widespread desire for spiritual transcendence: It is not plausible that God would create beings for a relationship with himself and fail to endow them with the faculties and motivation to seek it; nor is it plausible that physically embodied beings said to be made in the image of an Eternal Spirit should manifest no awareness of or propensity for eternal and spiritual things. That the vast majority of people in the vast majority of times and places have had such desires is therefore precisely what we would expect to find if theism were true. 1. Explanandum However, matters are a little complicated by the fact that the explanandum of the Argument from Desire is best understood as the corollary of two key theistic claims: That God has created man in his image and that God is hidden. After discussing the two main features of desire (a vague and unsatisfiable longing for transcendence and an abhorrence of futility and finitude) I will therefore need to revisit the problem of divine hiddenness and



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explain why, in combination with the imago dei, it has explanatory relevance to the argument. I will, finally, judge there to be no particular reason to expect widespread and primordial spiritual desire on physicalism and very particular reason to expect it on theism. My general concern in this chapter will be to show that the Argument from Desire adds moderate force to a cumulative case for the existence of God. 1.1 Vague, Unsatisfiable Longing The Argument from Desire begins with the observation that natural needs always exist in relation to a real object which can meet those needs. Hunger, for example, exists because there is a real possibility of obtaining food; thirst, of obtaining water; sexual desire, of obtaining a mate. The theistic explanation for this is divine providence: God provides for our needs. The atheistic explanation is evolutionary: instincts are adaptive only insofar as they lead us to something that benefits us. Either way, we have natural desires only for things that exist. Thus, with Leucippus, a proponent of the Argument from Desire claims, Natura nihil frustra facit: “Nature does nothing in vain.” This is the first premise. Human beings, meanwhile, have a haunting desire for ultimate, transcendent joy that nothing on Earth can satisfy. “The centre of me is always and eternally a terrible pain,” wrote Bertrand Russell; “a curious wild pain—a searching for something beyond what the world contains.” Such feelings seem to be widespread in every culture. In the word “sehnsucht” describes, “an ardent longing for something which one cannot readily identify.” The Welsh word “hiraeth” describes, “a mysterious longing for something indeterminate or unknown that is attended by a feeling comparable to homesickness.” There is also the word “saudade” in Portuguese; “dor” in Romanian; “tizita” in Ethiopian; “morriña” in Galician and “clivota” in Slovak. And whether or not one has a word for it, the recurring but elusive pang for some tremendous transcendent thing at the boundary of reality is surely common to us all. Normatively, such feelings resolve themselves into religious belief in a higher power: A longing for immortality and for God. This is the second premise.



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C. S. Lewis, to whom the argument owes its fame, argued that these desires were natural to man and so must also exist in relation to and in consequence of a real object which can satisfy them. Lewis thought this implicated a transcendent reality and so, perhaps, the existence of God. A century before Lewis the German philosopher Gustav Fechner thought of the embryo before it leaves the womb equipped with arms, legs, and hands that do nothing and, before birth, have no meaning. We ought to believe, he concluded, that the same happens with us; that our spiritual aspirations are to us what arms, legs and hands are to the foetus in the womb. The easy response from the skeptic is to offer a reductio ad absurdum: If my desire for p entails that p exists, then absolutely anything I desire exits. On this view the explanation for religious belief is the Freudian one. The premise is a wish and the conclusion wish-fulfilment. However, proponents of the argument insist on a distinction between natural and artificial desires. Examples of the first kind include the desire for food, companionship, sex and knowledge; examples of the second kind include the desire for new patio furniture, a house on Park Lane or the ability to fly.77 Precisely because desires of the second kind are idiosyncratic and acquired they do not tell us anything about the existence of their objects—some of them exist and some of them don’t. Natural desires are different. A thirsty man’s whole organism participates in the reality of water; a rutting stag in the reality of copulation. The one is unthinkable without the other.78 77 The human desire for flight is the

most promising objection to the argument. However, if it is natural in the sense I have defined (unacquired, primordial, universal) I think it is best understood as part of a general desire to expand one’s range of basic actions by means of technology. It belongs to the desire to run, grasp, hit, throw and climb. Clearly, basic actions and the objects of the desire to expand them exist (tools, technology and so on) even though we can imagine ways of satisfying them (such as magic carpets and time machines) that probably cannot exist.

78 It is sometimes suggested that identifying the part of the brain responsible for

religiosity would prove that religious belief was a product of the brain with no basis in reality. This, just in ing, is a commission of the genetic fallacy because the origin of a belief does not settle its truth-status. The argument from desire further suggests that if a physical basis of religious desire in the brain were found it would implicate the reality of its object as surely as the stomach implicates the reality of alimentation.



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The argument therefore hangs on whether spiritual desire is artificial or natural; that is, on whether the human desire for spiritual transcendence is contrived and acquired, like the desire for a silk kimono or the ability to breathe fire, or primordial and universal, like the desire for love, food and companionship. On this point cultural anthropology clearly weighs in favour of Lewis. Religion, whatever else it does, presupposes and pursues the objects of spiritual desire and that religion is primordial and universal cannot reasonably be denied. Even on a cursory study of the history of human civilisation it is obvious, perhaps more obvious than anything else, that man is a religious animal who desires transcendence and immortality. 1.2 Abhorrence of Finitude and Futility Because they can go unfulfilled, desires of all kinds entail the possibility of frustration for the agent who has them. This is true of both natural and artificial desires but there is an important difference. Life without patio furniture is not intolerable and nor does the inability to breathe fire prevent human happiness. Trying to live without the possibility of food, companionship or mental stimulation, on the other hand, will result in either death or in deep existential discontent. And spiritual desire, significantly, appears to fit to the natural model. Physicalism flatly denies the objects of spiritual desire and so leaves spiritual desires unfulfilled. If spiritual desires are natural we would therefore expect physicalism, when honestly confronted,79 to be met with deep existential discontent. And so we do. 79 This claim is consistent with the existence of atheists who claim no existential dismay at physicalism if we allow that on religious questions men are disposed to irrationality and inconsistency. Some may simply fail face the existential implications of their worldview (“The philistine,” noted Kierkegaard, “tranquillises himself with the trivial”); others may adopt the axiological equivalent of the "shopping trolley approach” discussed in connection with the moral quandary of atheism. But even the most staid of physicalists cannot reasonably deny that his worldview thwarts every enduring human hope. “The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless,” confesses Steven Wineberg. He then allows that making, “a little island of warmth and love and science and art for ourselves,” is, “not an entirely despicable role for us to play.” I have already noted that atheists will, with Camus and Russell, suggest solutions to the depressing existential implications of physicalism. My claim is that these solutions, honestly evaluated, will be met with deep discontent by anyone who has experienced the normative human desire for spiritual transcendence.



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Few recall that Nietzsche’s man first cried, “God is dead!” not in triumph but with dismay and metaphysical vertigo. Sartre and Camus, taking up the theme, followed their atheism through to its ultimate logical consequence and arrived, respectively, at la nauséeand l'absurde—at the conviction that nausea and absurdity were the essence of the human experience. In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus sets out his thesis and its hidden entailment that the existence of God and a transcendent purpose for human life stand or fall together. Man, Camus tells us, thirsts for a meaning in life and finds none; he is a being with an intrinsic need for meaning in a universe that is intrinsically meaningless—an animal at odds with its world. And this conundrum leads him to ask in all seriousness if everyone should just commit suicide. The same problem was phrased in a tidy syllogism by one of Tolstoy's characters when he said, ''Without knowing what I am and why I'm here, it is impossible for me to live; and I cannot know that, therefore I cannot live.'' To this depressing problem every available atheistic solution is just as depressing. Camus, for example, suggests man must try to find a defiant enjoyment in, or in spite of, his absurd existence: If Sisyphus can smirk to himself as he descends for the billionth time after his bolder, that ineradicable smirk is sufficient to undermine the gods that are punishing him and the universe in which that punishment is his fate. Bertrand Russell, realising that, “the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins,” suggests that our soul must build its habitation upon, “the firm foundation of unyielding despair.” This, he said, was our only hope—though the word "hope," if it is to be applied here, no longer has any meaning. The universe of Camus and Russell is the same one portrayed by Kafka: An incomprehensible and hostile place in which the human individual is lonely, perplexed and threatened. Against the crushing opposition of an irrational cosmos we are ened to pursue a hope that has receded to infinity. But the man who both denies and urges the pursuit of an ultimate purpose is no different from the man who both denies morality and urges moral living. “They castrate,” quipped Lewis, “and bid the geldings to be fruitful.”

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2. Worldview Compatibility: Physicalism There is no very particular reason to expect any of this on physicalism. The idea under consideration is that of a universe that contemplates itself through human consciousness with our own fear and astonishment; a universe that experiences a frightened astonishment at itself. But why should the universe develop a capacity for self-inspection only to recoil in dismay at its own reflection? One partial reason for the dismay is that physicalism disabuses mankind of its spiritual aspirations. But this just raises another equally pressing question. Why do these aspirations exist in the first place? To say with Freud that belief in God serves as some sort of existential crutch does not answer the point. And it does not answer the point because there is nothing in an atheistic universe constraining the development of minds free of both spiritual aspirations and the resulting abhorrence of futility and finitude. In other words, it is not just the crutch that needs an explanation but also the wound that necessitates that crutch. The vast majority of human beings throughout history have resolved the tension by presupposing and pursuing the objects of spiritual desire; in other words, by means of religion. There is, moreover, emerging evidence of a correlation between religiosity and psychohygiene.80 , to give just one example, has both the lowest rate of mass attendance and the highest rate of antidepressant consumption in Europe. It seems religion is good for us. To for these facts the physicalist offers an evolutionary story that runs roughly as follows: "All human properties come down to us by means of natural selection winnowing random genetic mutations on the Pleistocene savanna. Spiritual beliefs exist because they served reproductive fitness. That their denial produces existential dismay is an accident of evolutionary history with which we will just have to come to ." But how credible is this? Note first that the beliefs in question are instantiated in minds whose properties and moral experience physicalism cannot, in principle, for; that these minds arise 80 According to the Mayo Clinic, “Most studies have shown that religious involvement and spirituality are associated with better health, greater longevity, coping skills and quality of life (even during terminal illness) and less anxiety, depression, and suicide.”



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from life whose origination lies beyond the explanatory scope of evolution; that this life inhabits a universe whose existence and beginning and fine tuning and intelligibility are all without explanation. And recall, with Plantinga, that the belief that we cannot trust beliefs that arise from evolutionary processes is itself a belief that arose from evolutionary processes. The argument forphysicalism is therefore self-referentially incoherent and cannot be rationally affirmed. To this jeopardized metaphysic we are now asked to annex an eighth brute fact: The universe developed the capacity to find spiritual meaning only to despair that there is no spiritual meaning to be found. And since spiritual desire, finally, is primordial and universal the denial that it exists in relation to any real object is also inconsistent with the paradigm for beliefs of this type. I suggest that, on balance, this explanation for spiritual desire is not very credible at all. 3. Worldview Compatibility: Theism Theism, once again, brings important explanatory resources to a key feature of human experience. Both our vague and unsatisfiable longing for transcendence and our abhorrence of futility and finitude are precisely to be expected on theism. The reason was identified by St. Augustine about fifteen centuries ago. “Thou hast made us for Thyself,” he wrote in his Confessions, “and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in Thee.” The wound, in other words, is our separation from God; and our spiritual aspirations are not a crutch but an intuition of the source of our being in which healing and completion may be found. However, as already noted, to properly understand the theistic explanation for spiritual desire I need to revisit the problem of divine hiddenness and explain why, in combination with the imago dei, it has explanatory relevance to the argument. And I will do this now. 3.1 Divine Hiddenness and the Imago Dei Proponents of the objection from divine hiddenness think that if God really existed his existence would be overwhelming or, at the very least, not open to dispute. They further note that some people seek and do not find God and claim that this is inconsistent with the idea that God is all loving and wishes to have a relationship with



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us. In general, they claim that the fact that it is possible to doubt the existence of God is evidence against the existence of God. In reply, the theist first notes that belief in God is always coned with a belief in an afterlife. Our present life containing suffering and doubt, he says, is merely a preparation for a perfect and eternal life to come. And if asked why God did not simply create the perfect world and by the imperfect one, his reply to this question is also his reply to the problem of divine hiddenness. Attaining virtue requires facing a significant choice between good and evil and choosing to do good. A morally perfect God therefore has reason to create agents capable of moral freedom. However, a problem arises if the naked countenance of God is overwhelming. For in that case, finite agents created and held ab ovo in the presence of God would never experience the temptation to do evil. One solution would be for God to create an antecedent world from which his countenance is hidden and then populate it with agents who begin life in a state of moral and spiritual ignorance. But a further problem will arise if certain knowledge of God (if, say, theistic poofs exist and are universally known and everyone has unambiguous religious experiences) is also a threat to moral liberty. Theists claim that this is so. God has therefore temporarily situated himself at an “epistemic distance” in order to vouchsafe his creatures the opportunity to attain various moral goods that would otherwise be unattainable.81 This antecedent world in which God is hidden is, the theist will stress, temporary. And any creature in it who freely commits itself to the good and to God will enter the presence of God after death. Moral freedom, having served its purpose, will be lost and as in the first scenario the creature will exist in ecstatic adoration of the naked countenance of God—but with the difference that, this time, his moral goodness has been self-determined, his love for God is genuine and not compelled, and his eternal state has been freely entered into. “For now we see through a glass darkly,” writes Paul, “but then we shall see face to face.” We are now in a position to understand the idea of an aching human desire for spiritual transcendence as the corollary of two 81 See Chapter 6: The Hiddenness of God.

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key theistic claims: The claim that we are made in the image of God with the purpose of knowing God and the claim that divine hiddenness is a necessary feature of any antecedent world capable of producing creatures fit for a relationship with God. It is logical: If our essence and ultimate purpose is found in things eternal and divine, and it is possible to deny the existence of things eternal and divine, then it is possible to deny our own essence and ultimate purpose and so become a creature at odds with its world and with itself. On this view the unbeliever is like a landlocked seal galumphing across cracked sunbaked earth on its fins. It has never seen the ocean; in fact, it denies that such things as oceans exist and so imputes its clumsiness, dehydration and misery to, “the absurdity of life.” Returning to St. Augustine’s answer, I think it is important to note that it comprises both a cause and an effect: “Thou hast made us for thyself and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.” Augustine means that because God made us in his image and for himself we are incomplete until we find completion in Him. And it is this that explains why the heat death of the universe should fill Russell with, “unyielding despair.” Like fish flapping on an arid sandbank, we abhor finitude and mortality because they are alien to our essence. Infinitude is the medium in which we are ultimately intended to live and breathe. Intellectus naturaliter desiderat esse semper, observed Aquinas: “The mind naturally desires to exist forever.” The foregoing can now be formalised as follows, P1. Human beings have a natural desire for the transcendent P2. Natural desires exist in relation to some real object that can satisfy them C. Therefore, probably, something transcendent exists

4. Conclusion We have seen that there is no very particular reason to expect widespread spiritual desire on physicalism and a very particular reason to expect it on theism.

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On physicalism spiritual desire is problematic. Because spiritual desires are primordial and universal the denial that they exist in relation to a real object is inconsistent with the paradigm for desires of this type. To argue, on the other hand, that the truth status of belief is irrelevant so long as a belief is adaptive undermines our rational warrant for belief of every kind—including our belief in physicalism. On physicalism our spiritual desires are assumed to have no object and the existential discontent this produces is a brute fact annexed to an explanatory narrative that already fails to for the origin and properties of the agents in whom those desires are instantiated and the origin and properties of the universe they inhabit. On theism all of this is precisely to be expected. Human beings are made in the image of God with the purpose of knowing God but also inhabit an antecedent world from which God has temporarily hidden his countenance. There we naturally seek eternal and spiritual things whose existence it is also possible for us to doubt and deny. Thus the imago dei and hiddenness of God together explain both our haunting desire for ultimate, transcendent joy and the deep existential discontent with which denying the object of that desire is met. I conclude that it is on balance more probable that agents a natural desire for spiritual transcendence will exist if there is a God than it is that they would exist if there is not. The fact that human spiritual desire is widespread and primordial therefore adds moderate force to a cumulative case for theism.



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18 The Argument From Religious Experience I have now given eight arguments which together make it highly probable that there is a God who created us in his image. From that at least two things follow. The first was the subject of the previous chapter; namely, that human beings will manifest a widespread and primordial desire for spiritual transcendence. The second is the subject of the present chapter: That God might reasonably be expected to reveal himself directly to at least some of his creatures—though not too evidently or too publicly since, as we have seen, certain and universally available knowledge of God would curtail moral freedom. 82 The Argument from Religious Experience claims that this is so: Many people throughout history have reported encounters with God and can offer testimony in of his existence. The argument is simple but presents unique difficulties. On the one hand, it consists of a single premise whose conclusion follows without much argument. If you accept that Saint Teresa of Avila experienced God, you accept that God exists. On the other hand, skeptics will strongly resist the truth of the premise, i.e., that Saint Teresa in fact experienced God. These two features of the argument for the structure of what follows. I will first need to carefully define religious experience in a way that avoids presupposing the conclusion that God exists and only then justify its evidential value. For this reason the evidential value of religious experience will not enter the picture until after my discussion of religious experience itself—a point it may pay to bear in mind. In all of this I will be closely following the argument given by Swinburne in The Existence of God. It will be my concern to outline his claim that religious experiences, given two principles of rationality that will be defined and defended, provide further evidence for theism. 82 See Chapter 6: The Hiddenness of God

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1. Preliminary Definitions: Kinds of Experience We begin with some necessary definitions of the kinds of experience in general before moving to religious experiences in particular. 1.1 Internal vs External An experience is a conscious mental event that can be given an external or an internal description; that is, it can be described in a way that commits us to the existence of something in the external world or it can be described in a way that entails no such commitment. Thus I hear the rattle of a coach outside my window entails that there is a coach outside my window while I heard a sound as of a coach outside my window does not. As already noted, the argument Saint Teresa experienced God; therefore God exists is philosophically unserviceable because its premise presupposes the conclusion; i.e., God exists. “If they are to be useful at all,” Swinburne notes, “arguments from religious experience must be phrased as arguments from experiences given internal descriptions.” There are various ways of giving internal descriptions to one’s experience. Normally, this is done by describing how things seem to the subject—including experiences that the subject believes to be of something outside himself. The ship seemed to be moving away from me and His face appeared strangely changed are both examples of this. 1.2 Epistemic vs Comparative Appearances However, there is a crucial distinction that needs to be made between the way things can seem to the subject. Appearances (conscious events described by the verbs seems and appears and looks) can be understood in either an epistemic or a comparative sense. If I say, epistemically, There appears to be a penny in my soup I am saying that my sensory experience leads me to believe that there really is a penny in my soup. However, if I say, comparatively, From this angle, the penny on the table appears elliptical I mean only that the penny looks the way elliptical things look but not that I believe it to be so—indeed, I may well know that it is not. Perception can involve both kinds of internal description. Viewing a penny from an angle, it looks both elliptical and copper.



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Here my experience is of the penny appearing to me in both a comparative and an epistemic sense. 1.3 Public vs Private Experiences A further distinction relevant to the argument is between public and private experiences. An object x is public if it causes all attentive persons present and equipped with the right sensory faculties to have an experience of it appearing to them that x is present. Almost all of our perceptions (for example, seeing a bird or hearing a clap of thunder) are public in this way. But there may be objects y that cause only certain persons to have the experience of it seeming to them that y is present. Perhaps, speculates Swinburne, the causal chains that bring about perceptions of y are nondeterministic: The laws of optics do not guarantee that all attentive persons present perceive y. Or perhaps y is an exotic entity that can cause only some to have the experience of it seeming to them that y is present—such as a normallyimperceptible being that has the power of letting you, but not me, sense it. “If religious experiences are of anything,” Swinburne concludes, “they are normally private perceptions.” Thus one person may have a religious experience while his companion (though present and attentive and equipped with the right sensory faculties) does not. 1.4 Relations Between Experiences Swinburne, finally, draws attention to the relation between experiences; that is, to the fact that one often perceives p in perceiving q. Thus seeing a man dressed in a certain way and having a certain face and physique and gait, I see Count Vronsky; seeing a certain configuration of bright stars in the sky, I see Ursa Major. In perceiving the second thing I do not notice some further detail that had first escaped my notice; rather, I see the first thing as the second thing. Importantly, the same perceptions of q can entail or not entail the perception of p. Swinburne gives the example of a bright spot in the visual field which may produce in one subject but not another the experience of seeming to see a lighthouse; and, of course, the same sensory perceptions can produce different experiences of this secondary sort in different subjects.



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2. Classification of Religious Experience With this terminology in place, we are now in a position to define religious experiences in a constructive way. Broadly, then, a religious experience is a private experience that to the subject seems, in the epistemic sense, to be a perception of God or of some other supernatural thing. Swinburne divides such experiences into five types. 2.1 Ordinary Public Object First are private experiences that seem, epistemically, to be experiences of the supernatural but that arise from a perceptual relation to ordinary public objects. Just as someone may look at a stocky, bewhiskered man in uniform and see General Walters, so someone may gaze into the sky at night and have a sudden lucid awareness of the whole universe as a contingent object sustained in existence by God. 2.2 Unusual Public Object Second are experiences in which one perceives the supernatural in a very unusual public object—though the public perceptum q may or may not entail the religious perceptum p for all observers present and attentive and equipped with the appropriate sensory faculties. The post mortem appearances of Jesus belong to this second type. A man who appeared, in the comparative sense, to be Jesus showed up three days after his death and ate some fish. Many had the religious experience that the man appeared, in the epistemic sense, to be Jesus. A skeptic may have had the same visual and auditory perceptions without the religious experience. 2.3 Describable Private Perception Third are entirely private experiences of a sort describable in the same language used to describe sensory experience. For example: In Matthew 1:20-1, Joseph dreamed he saw an angel. Here there is no public perceptum but Joseph is able to describe his visual and auditory sensations: “I saw a figure in white who said certain things.” What made the dream a religious experience is that, upon



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waking, it seemed to Joseph, in the epistemic sense, that an angel of the Lord had appeared to him in a dream.

Conversion on the Way to Damascus by Caravaggio. This famous painting depicts the moment Saul of Tarsus, soon to be the Apostle Paul, is overcome by the presence of God and falls from his horse. Paul's experience belongs to type two in Swinburne's taxonomy since at least some of his companions saw the light and heard the voice. However, only Paul had a religious experience.

2.4 Indescribable Private Perception Fourth are religious experiences in which the subject has private sensations of a kind that are not describable using normal vocabulary. These may include some elements analogous to sensory perception but what is essential to the experience remains

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ineffable. A man who reports an experience that he says is impossible to describe, while insisting that there is something to be described if only he knew the words, has had an experience of this type. 2.5 Extrasensory Awareness In the last type of religious experience the subject does not have perceptions at all but nevertheless reports having been aware of God or of ultimate reality, “just as it may seem to me,” analogises Swinburne, “that my hand behind my back is facing upward rather than downward.” Mystics seem to claim such knowledge of God (something they may be trying to express when they say that their encounter with God was mediated by “blackness” or “nothingness”) but more ordinary cases also belong to this type. Thus someone may feel that God is urging him to do something (such as follow a particular vocation) in the absence of auditory and visual sensation of any sort. 3. The Evidential Value of Religious Experience The question that must now be asked is this: What, if any, evidential value do such experiences have? Swinburne begins his reply to this question by introducing and defending two basic principles of rationality. 3.1 Principle of Credulity The first principle of rationality states: If to a subject S it seems, in an epistemic sense, that x is present then, in the absence of special considerations, probably x is present. Swinburne calls this the Principle of Credulity and argues that it is very obviously correct in most cases. If Mr Green has the experience of it seeming to him, in the epistemic sense, that there is a German shepherd on his lawn then that is good evidence for his believing that there is a German shepherd on his lawn. "The principle of Credulity," Swinburne asserts, "is a fundamental principle of rationality and unless we allow it to have considerable force, we quickly find ourselves in a skeptical bog in which we can hardly know anything." And a provisional entailment of giving this principle "considerable force," is that, again in the absence of special considerations, a subject



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ought to take his own religious experience to be good evidence for belief in the existence of its apparent object. The entailment will be resisted by skeptics while the principle itself must, on pain of irrationality, be accepted. The force of the Argument from Religious Experience therefore depends on whether the Principle of Credulity can be generally restricted to rule out its application to religious experience and, failing that, on whether there are special considerations that invalidate the evidential value of all religious experiences. Swinburne argues that neither of these conditions obtain. 3.1.1 Attempts to Restrict the Principle to the Nonreligious Experiences The first attempt supposes that the way things seem requires inductive justification that is available in ordinary cases and unavailable in religious ones. Specifically, the objector claims: Its seeming that x is present is good grounds for supposing that x is present only if we have evidence that, when in the past it appeared that x was present, x was proved to be present. In other words, a skeptic might argue that we are justified in taking what appears to be a table to be a table only because past experiences prove such appearances to be trustworthy and we do not have such inductive evidence in the case of religious experiences. There are two difficulties with this view. The first is that, ordinarily, its seeming a table is present s justified belief that a table is present even if the subject does not or cannot at the same time recall his past experiences with tables. Here it will not do to say that merely having had past experiences, now forgotten, justifies the present inference. "If a claim is to be justified inductively," explains Swinburne, "we must in some sense have the evidence of past performance in order to be justified in making the inference." And so an inference from past to present experience is only justified if the subject recalls his past experiences correctly. And what grounds do we have for supposing that we do? Because inductive justification of the reliability of memory would be circular (“My memory is reliable because I recall, reliably, that it is reliable”) the objector himself must finally appeal to the principle that things are they way the seem. And the same problem arises if it is required that other people shall have



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had reliable experience of it seeming to them that a table is present. Here you must appeal finally to the Principle of Credulity twice in justification of the testimony of others; i.e., you must assume that its seeming to be the case that other people have said p is grounds for believing it to be true that they have said p and also that what other people tell you is probably true.

The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa by Bernini. Saint Teresa was a Spanish nun who reported many religious experiences in her autobiography The Life of Saint Teresa of Alvila by Herself. Bernini’s famous sculpture depicts an experience that would seem to match to either type two or type three in Swinburne’s taxonomy: A forceful but private experience that she struggled to express in words. In 1559, Teresa became firmly convinced that she was being visited by a physical but invisible Christ—an experience perhaps belonging to type five: Extrasensory awareness.



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The second problem with the objection from inductive justification is that it cannot deal with cases in which the subject has no experience of x but does have experience of its componential properties. A centaur, for example, is a being with the head, trunk and arms of a man and the body and legs of a horse. Let there be a subject who has seen humans and horses but not centaurs. Because its seeming to him, epistemically, that a centaur is now present is good reason for believing that a centaur is present, the inductive principle will need to be modified as follows: Its appearing that x is present is good grounds for supposing that x is present only if we have evidence that when in the past it has appeared that x or any of its properties were present they have proved so to be. So modified the argument, whatever its merits, has no force against he claims of religious experience. For God, like centaur, is defined in of properties (power, knowledge, freedom, love, and so on) of which most of us have had mundane experience. And one who has had sensory experience of recognising persons with these properties to a limited degree might well be able to recognise when he was in the presence of an entity with these properties to an unlimited degree. The second attempt to restrict the Principle of Credulity allows that it holds without inductive justification for the “sensible’” properties of the objects of experience but denies that it holds for the objects themselves. A proponent of this view modifies the principle as follows: If to a subject S it seems, in an epistemic sense, that the properties of x are present then that is good evidence for the belief that the properties of x are present. On this view the existence of x itself is inferred. And so its seeing to you that something brown and solid is present is grounds for believing that the object of your experience is brown and solid but not necessarily that it is a table. The implication for religious experience is clear. In seeing or hearing God the subject is having an experience that can be understood in a more mundane way (seeing colours, hearing noises) which he interprets as God. Swinburne points out that the argument depends on a tidy division between experience and interpretation and that no such division exists. “For clearly,” writes Swinburne, “we are justified in holding many perceptual beliefs about objects having nonsensible characteristics that cannot be backed up in of beliefs about



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objects having sensible characteristics.” Thus Swinburne is justified in believing that a certain woman is his wife though unable to describe precisely those sensible properties that produce this belief. And forcing him to do so would produce a description to which thousands of women conform—not one of whom would Swinburne mistake for his wife. “That one can recognize,” he notes, “does not entail that one can describe or even that one knows what the features are by which one recognizes.” In a like case, recognising your mother’s voice on the telephone, or that a man sitting across from you on the bus is vaguely familiar, or that there is a phantom trace of a certain perfume in an empty elevator are all justified beliefs—whether or not we can say what the essential sensible features of each experience are. Subjects vary in the kinds of objects and properties they can recognise. Sometimes one can describe the sensible characteristics of experience and sometimes one cannot. And even if one can, the recognition of an object by means of more sophisticated properties may be more natural and immediate than a description of its sensible characteristics. “There is no reason of principle,” says Swinburne, “why we should not grow so adept at spotting Russian ships or Victorian tables or elliptical galaxies that we can recognize them immediately without being able to say what in the way of sensible characteristics makes us do so.” He concludes that arguments against the Principle of Credulity fail and the principle stands. If to a subject S it seems, epistemically, that x is present then, in the absence of special considerations, that is good reason for S to believe that x is present. It is to these "special considerations" that we must now turn. 3.2.1 Special Considerations Swinburne suggests that there are four special considerations that defeat perceptual claims. And none of them, as we shall now see, can be universally applied to religious experience. 3.2.2 The Conditions or Subject Are Unreliable First one may show that the perception occurred under conditions or was claimed by a subject proven to be unreliable. Suppose Professor Brown claims to have seen a tiger during his evening



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walk in Hyde Park but Professor Brown is prone to lies and exaggeration or was known to be on drugs at the time. In that case, his reported experience is of no evidential worth. Swinburne says that this consideration may invalidate some religious experiences but is not generally available. “Most religious experiences,” he says, “are reported by subjects who normally make reliable perceptual claims and have not recently taken drugs.” 3.2.3 The Claimed Perception Can Be Falsified Second one may be able to falsify a claimed perception inductively. Suppose I claim to have read the time on a wrist watch from a distance of 300 meters. If you test me on a number of occasions and find that I cannot do so again that is good inductive evidence that my original claim was false. This second consideration can not be universally applied to religious experience without a proof of the nonexistence of God— and we have already seen that the existence and properties of the universe and the existence and properties of the conscious beings that inhabit it together make the existence of God highly probable. Here a dual onus falls on the skeptic. He must first negate the force of the arguments for the existence of God and, secondly, produce a positive proof of atheism. If he cannot do that, the claimed religious experience stands. The question does arise whether the second consideration can be applied to religious experience in a more limited way in view of the fact that many religious experiences entail doctrinal commitments that are in conflict with each other. But Swinburne says that even here the objection is of very limited force. Naturally enough, people describe religious experiences in the religious vocabulary familiar to them. But this does not of itself entail that their different descriptions are in conflict. God may be known under different names to different cultures (a point acknowledged in both the Old and New Testaments83). Thus a Greek who claims to have talked to Poseidon is not necessarily in conflict with a Jew who claims to have talked to the angel who watches over the sea; unless, adds Swinburne, “to it the 83 Exodus 6:2-3 and Acts 17:23

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existence of Poseidon is to commit one to a whole polytheistic theology, and there is no need to suppose that it generally is.” It is true that sometimes religious experiences do entail doctrinal commitments that are in conflict. An apparition of Christ, for example, commits one to a belief in the Incarnation which an orthodox Jew, perhaps reporting an apparition of his own,84 would not accept. In that case, Swinburne says, the opponent of the doctrine must produce good grounds for rejecting it—say, that conflicting claims are more numerous and better authenticated. But even if he can do so, the subject of the religious experience need not withdraw his original claim completely but only describe it in a less committed way—such as, “I was aware of some supernatural being, though not necessarily Dionysus, as I originally claimed.” Generally, conflict between various descriptions of religious experience is a source of skepticism about a particular detailed claim but not about religious experience in toto. “Babylonian astronomers,” notes Swinburne, “reported the movement of holes in the firmament; Greek astronomers the movement of physical bodies in space. The conflict between them did not mean that there were no things in the sky of which both groups were giving further descriptions.” And so with religious experience. A final objection to religious experience under this second special consideration would be to claim: One cannot identify an entity x unless one has previously experienced or been given a detailed description of x. But, Swinburne says, this argument is clearly mistaken. “I can come to recognise people whom I have never perceived before after being given descriptions of them that can hardly be regarded as descriptions of their appearance appropriate to the modality of the sense involved.” In this connection Swinburne invites us to consider the description, Smelinowski is the only Ruritanian with a really English sense of humour and General Walters is the most 84 Swinburne makes the further point that religious experiences in traditions outside of Christianity are of beings having similar properties to God or of lesser beings but not of beings whose existence is incompatible with the existence of God. The only evidence of this sort that could falsify Christianity would be, “vastly many experiences apparently of an omnipotent Devil.” There are, of course, not such experiences.



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commanding personality whom I am ever likely to meet. Both may facilitate the successful identification of their referents. And so too the description of God as, The one and only Eternal Being unlimited in power, knowledge and moral goodness may suffice for someone to recognise God—by, “feeling his presence, hearing his voice, or by some sixth sense.” Nor, adds Swinburne, does the ability to recognise something require that we can clearly conceive in advance what the experience of recognition would be like. “What you tell me about a colour I have never seen may enable me to recognise that colour when I see it.” 3.2.4 The Claimed Object of Perception Is, On the Background Evidence, Unlikely to Have Been Present The third special consideration that can defeat a perceptual claim: One may be able to demonstrate that the presence of the claimed object of perception is very improbable on the background evidence. The emphasis, says Swinburne, is necessary to for the considerable evidential force of sensory experience: Seeming to walk past Mr Ito on Park Lane is strong evidence for the belief that Mr Ito is the object of the experience even if it is more probable, a priori, that he is in Osaka where he lives. "We would indeed be imprisoned within the circle of our existing beliefs," notes Swinburne, "if experience did not normally have this force." Thus only if it is very improbable that Mr Ito is on Park Lane (perhaps because it is very probable that he is dead) can the background evidence outweigh the force of immediate experience. As with the second special consideration, successfully pressing this objection against all religious experiences requires one to prove that very probably God does not exist. For clearly, if God does exist, then God is everywhere: God only fails to be present at the site of some perceptual experience if he does not exist. Again, therefore, the onus is upon the skeptic to provide a positive proof of atheism. Nor can it be objected of some religious experience that all attentive persons present and equipped with the right sensory faculties failed to have an experience of it appearing to them that God was present. And this is because an omnipotent entity qualifies as an object y that can remain imperceptible but



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occasionally cause only some to have the experience of it seeming to them that it is present. 3.2.5 The Object Was Unlikely to Have Been the Cause of the Perception The fourth and final way to falsify a perceptual claim is to show that, whether or not x was present, x was probably not the cause of its seeming to the subject that x was present. One obvious way of doing this is to show that something else caused the experience. If you show me an actor dressed up as Mr Ito who spent the day walking up and down Park Lane, I realise that my experience of seeming to Mr Ito was probably caused by the actor and that I have no grounds for believing Mr Ito was the object of that experience. Swinburne notes that this is a particularly awkward challenge to apply when we are dealing with a purported experience of God. Clearly: An apparent perception of x is an experience of x if x belongs to the causal chain that brings about my perception of it by its presence where it appears to be.85 But if there is a God, he is omnipresent and omnipotent: Causal processes operate only because he sustains them. “Hence any causal processes at all that bring about my experience will have God among their causes; and any experience of him will be of him as present at a place where he is.” Showing that a perception apparently of God arose from natural processes does not therefore show that that perception was not veridical. In order to show this, you would need to show that God did not cause those natural processes and this can only be done by showing that God does not exist.86 85 This consideration may apply to lesser beings who are the objects of religious perception. For example: Since the Virgin Mary is not omnipresent, she may only be able to appear in one place; and, since she is not the sustainer of the world, she can only be responsible for some of the causal processes within it. 86 God may bring about a religious experience, not only by intervening in the operation

of natural laws, but merely by sustaining their normal operations. “Such laws would be ones that produce religious experiences in people with certain beliefs or brain states in certain circumstances—for example, when fasting, or in dark churches.” Swinburne adds that while the laws of nature might be such as to lead to people having such experiences anyway, it is more probable that people will have such experience if there is a God than if there is not; that is, “It is more likely that they will have an experience apparently of x if x is present than if x is not present.”



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3.3 The Principle of Testimony The Principle of Credulity affirms the rationality of believing that, in the absence of special considerations, things are probably as they seem to be. In ordinary experience we also use a wider principle: Other things being equal, we believe that what others tell us is probably true. “Most of our beliefs about the world,” observes Swinburne, “are based on what others claim to have perceived— beliefs about geography and history and science and everything else beyond immediate experience.” Swinburne argues that such beliefs are justified even when (as per usual) we do not personally vet witnesses for their reliability. For this reason he affirms a second principe of rationality he calls the Principle of Testimony: The experiences of others, in the absence of special considerations, are probably as they report them. Some of the special considerations already discussed will of course apply to some reports.87 If Professor Brown is known to lie or regularly take hallucinogens his experience will have little evidential worth. But since this is not the norm and since others probably have the experiences that they report and things are probably as their experience suggests, so things probably are as others report—though the degree of probability is greater for the subject than for those to whom he reports his experience. As Swinburne puts it, “If p is evidence for q, and q is evidence for r, then p is normally less evidence for r than it is for q.” Thus a report is not as good a reason for believing in the object of perception as the perception itself but still is quite a good reason. “Our whole system of beliefs about the world beyond our immediate experience,” Swinburne reminds us, “is based on trusting the reports of others.”88 87 “One ancient test,” Swinburne says, “may

be used where there is about about the veracity of a report of some religious experience: To see whether the subject’s lifestyle has undergone a change.” If Mr Jones claims to have had an overwhelming experience of God, we would expect that to make a difference to his way of living.

88 There may be arguments to show that it is very, very improbable that a perfectly good

God said or did what the subject claims. Claims that God told one to lie, rape, or torture, for instance, will be immensely improbable. Swinburne adds here that we do not need to hold that God does not exist in order to hold that causal processes that he sustains lead to people having false beliefs about what he has told them to do.



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4. Conclusion We have seen that anyone who has an experience apparently of God has, on the Principle of Credulity, good reason for believing that there is a God; and we have seen that one who has not himself had an experience apparently of God has reason, though not quite as good a reason, for believing that there is a God on the testimony of many others who have had such experiences. The only way to circumvent this conclusion is to provide a proof of atheism—since no objection or special consideration can be universally applied to religious experience without it. As a final point it is worth ing that the evidential force of perception can outweigh all but the strongest a priori improbability that the object of perception is present. This point was illustrated by a Park Lane encounter with Mr Ita who, a priori, is more probably in Osaka where he lives. Thus even if the probability of the existence of God on the evidence of natural theology is significantly less than half an individual perception of God only requires by the testimony of others who have had similar experiences to overcome the background improbability. And that testimony is evidently available: Millions of human beings down the centuries have had religious experiences of one or more of the kinds discussed. To overcome the combined weight of all this testimony the probability of theism must be vanishingly small. And in view of the eight phenomena already discussed (each of which is credibly probable on the hypothesis that there is a God and incredibly improbable on the hypothesis that there is not) this is something than cannot possibly be affirmed. I conclude that Swinburne’s argument succeeds: Human religious experience provides forceful evidence for the existence of the God who is the object of those experiences.



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19 Conclusion It has been my concern to show that there is a God who created and sustains us and the world we inhabit. To this end I presented nine lines of evidence from philosophy, physical cosmology, molecular biology and human mental, moral and spiritual experience. In each case the phenomenon in question was shown to be credibly probable on the hypothesis that God exists and incredibly improbable on the hypothesis that he does not. Taken together, these nine lines of evidence form a powerful cumulative case for theism.89 Having now established both that the concept of God is coherent and that there is good evidence for his existence I have established that theism is rationally permissible: It is not irrational to believe that there is a God. And this, in turn, gives us rational permission to discuss Christianity. For if it is not irrational to believe that there is a God, then it is not irrational to suppose that God might have revealed himself decisively in human history; and if it is not irrational to suppose that God might have revealed himself in decisively in human history, then it is not irrational to assess a religion which claims to have evidence that he has done so. However, before moving to Christian theism it is worth seeing if the present conclusion can with justification be stated more strongly; that is, whether on the nine lines of evidence just given theism is rationally obligatory. A proposition is rationally obligatory if it is irrational not to affirm it. And I suggest that in view of the nine previous arguments atheism and agnosticism both entail absurdities that it would be irrational to knowingly affirm. Let us begin with atheism. 89 Ten lines of evidence if we include the Modal Ontological Argument.

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Recall first that to avoid the conclusion of the Modal Argument an atheist must deny the Principle of Sufficient Reason: He must hold to the principle that a physical object can exist without a sufficient reason for its existence. Schopenhauer aptly dubbed this a commission of, "the taxicab fallacy." The reason is as follows: Ordinarily, the atheist agrees that things have sufficient causes and explanations: headaches, global warming, diamonds, teapots, lightning. Indeed, the Principle of Sufficient Reason is a lynchpin of rational thought for theist and atheist alike. But when the atheist is asked to follow the principle through to its ultimate logical consequence (i.e., the universe) he attempts to dismiss it like a hired hack—and not because it is rational to do so but because he doesn’t like where it is taking him. As we move through the rest of the arguments the cost of atheism continues to rise. Faced with the Kalam Argument, an atheist must deny the precept of Parmenides that ex nihilo nihil fit; in other words, he must believe that physical objects can pop into existence uncaused out of metaphysical nothingness. To avoid the theistic implications of cosmological fine tuning, he must (in an extravagant defiance of the principle of parsimony) postulate the existence of infinitely many unobservable universes. To explain the origin of life, he must believe that it self-assembled by chance in the prebiotic soup of the early Earth when on every reasonable calculation this is prohibitively improbable. To reconcile his atheism with the essential properties of human mental states, he must deny those properties—including free will and, with it, the rational content of his own denial. He must, finally, deny moral objectivity since morality, on his metaphysic, arises from evolutionary processes in the service of reproductive fitness. This has the absurd and unpalatable consequence that to first principles of moral reasoning (say, It is always wrong to bayonet babies for sport) he cannot give his unqualified assent. And when it is pointed out to him that his belief that, "Beliefs that arise from evolutionary processes serve reproductive fitness and cannot be trusted," is itself a belief that arose from evolutionary processes and so, ex hypothesi, cannot be trusted, he has no reply. The entailments of atheism are counterexperiential and absurd. Atheism cannot be rationally affirmed.



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On the face of it agnosticism would seem to be a very reasonable position to take. What could be more prudent than suspending judgement in matters about which absolute certainty is impossible? Note, however, that to be agnostic is to hold that, possibly, atheism is true. And since to affirm atheism is to affirm that all its entailments obtain, to hold to agnosticism is to affirm that, possibly, all the entailments of atheism obtain: It is possible that physical objects can exist without a sufficient reason for their existence; it is possible that physical objects can pop into existence out of nothingness uncaused—and so on. Clearly: If it is absurd to believe that married bachelors actually exist then it is just as absurd to believe that married bachelors possibly exist. Atheism and agnosticism cannot therefore be rationally affirmed and so it follows that theism is rationally obligatory. However, this stronger conclusion is not essential to the argument. So long as you are willing to grant that theism is rationally permissible we are in a position to proceed to Part III: The Coherence of Christian Theism.



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III The Coherence of Christian Theism



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20 Introduction The last of the nine arguments I presented in Part II was Swinburne's Argument from Religious Experience. This claims that many people throughout history have had experiences apparently of God and defends the evidential value of their testimony. If God has revealed himself to certain people the question might reasonably be asked whether he has ever revealed himself more generally and decisively to the world. And, of course, Christianity claims to have evidence for an event that proves he has done just that. However, before we examine the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus there is a preliminary question that needs to be asked. And that is: Is Christianity coherent? As I pointed out in my Preface, evidence for bare theism is not necessarily evidence for Christian theism. For it is logically possible that God exists and that Christianity is false—either because some other religion is true or because, for whatever reason, God has not revealed himself to the world and therefore no religion is true. And this, presumably, is something that could be known if the very concept of Christianity were illogical. Although this point is the justification for Part III of my argument, it is, I think, somewhat overstated. After all, evidence for the existence of God and the resurrection of Jesus would still be evidence for Christianity even if parts of Christian doctrine were illogical. For suppose three things are true: God exists, Jesus rose from the dead and the Bible contains absurdities. What would be the most reasonable response? I suggest that it would be far more reasonable to try and make sense of the absurdities in view of the miracle than to ignore the miracle in view of the absurdities. Nevertheless, anyone who believes that Christianity is illogical will believe that he has grounds to dismiss the whole religion out of hand and this will prejudice him against any historical evidence purporting to authenticate its founding miracle. I think it is therefore prudent to first “clear the air” by showing that, whether or



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not Christianity is actually true, it is possibly true insofar as it faces no indefeasible a priori objections. The usual objections fall into three categories. The first arise from religious pluralism. The objector notes that there are many world religions all making competing claims about God and reasons that, since these cannot all be true, they must all be false. Religion, on this view, is a sort of viral memeplex which one contracts from the culture into which they happen to be born. The second category of objections suggest that Christianity is antiscientific: The Church is and always has been a dead hand on scientific progress and a Christian is required to believe in mythological nonsense that has been scientifically falsified. The third category of objections suggest that Christianity is morally unconscionable: The violence in the Old Testament and the doctrine of hell cannot possibly be reconciled with the idea that God is all loving. In the following six chapters it will be my concern to show that these objections are all misconceived. But first I need to say a little about the structure of the argument. The Structure of the Argument The first and most obvious problem that needs to be addressed is religious pluralism. For as soon as we earnestly ask the question Has God ever decisively revealed himself to the world? we are confronted by the fact that there are many different world religious. Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and Christianity each make different claims about God. Which, if any of them, is true? Two extreme possibilities may at once suggest themselves. The first is to wonder if they are all false and the second is to wonder if they are all true. But both conjectures are unsatisfactory. The second seems to take a hint from Symmachus who wrote that, “Infinite religions befit an infinite God.” The different world religions, the proponent of this view might reason, are disparate in aspect and identical in essence: Buddha, Moses, Muhammad, Brahma and Christ are like different emissaries God has chosen or different masks which he has worn—perhaps each one appropriate to the cultural and historical context in which he met us. But on reflection religious relativism is logically incoherent.



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The great world religions make conflicting claims about God. God, meanwhile, is holy and this entails that he does not, indeed cannot, lie.90 And if he cannot lie he cannot reveal two mutually exclusive doctrines about himself—one of which, by the law of noncontradiction, must be false. Consider the doctrine of the Incarnation. Christianity claims God become incarnate in Christ. Judaism, Islam and Buddhism deny this.91 It is not possible that God did and did not become incarnate in Christ. Therefore, Christianity, Judaism, Islam and Buddhism cannot all be true.92 Is, then, the first conjecture correct? Given a set of claims which cannot all be true it does not necessarily follow that all are false. Indeed, as William Lane Craig has observed, if it did then atheism would also be false since it too belongs to the set of claims about God that cannot all be true. By way of illustration, consider the following: Mr Ito died in Osaka. Mr Ito died in Tokyo. Mr Ito died in Nagasaki. Clearly, it is impossible that all three are true— Mr Ito cannot have died three times. Just as clearly, it is possible that all three are false—Mr Ito may have died in Kyoto. But it is equally possible that one of them is true since Mr Ito may in fact have died in one of the three cities in which he is claimed to have died. Religious pluralism, then, does not entail that all religions are false but it does present a challenge to the coherence of each one— including Christianity. And the challenge is to explain why, if there 90 This is sometimes referred to in theology as the "impeccability" of God. Hebrews 6:18 says that, "it is impossible for God to lie." Thus while God is perfectly free his actions are always consistent with his moral perfection.

91 Hinduism does not reject the Incarnation outright: In Hinduism, there is a vast list of

“ishtas,” or divine beings, to which the Hindu is quite happy to add Jesus. They will not therefore raise an objection to Christianity—until, that is, one insists that Jesus was the unique revelation of God.

92 Here a mystic may wish to appeal to the idea that logical contradictions can be

resolved at infinity. For example, consider the proposition: x is both a perfect circle and a perfectly straight line. Clearly, this is impossible. If x is a circle it cannot be a straight line; if x is a straight line it cannot be a circle. But now consider a circle of infinite radius. Since the arc of a circle approaches rectilinearity as its radius increases, an infinite circle is an infinite straight line—just as a polygon with infinite sides is a perfect circle and a sphere of infinite size is an infinite plane. So, the mystic might conclude, are religious contradictions resolved in the infinite godhead.



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is a God who revealed himself to us, he would allow potential confusion about that revelation. The way to meet this challenge is to first understand religious pluralism as a subtype of divine hiddenness. As we saw in Chapter 6, divine hiddenness is a necessary feature of any antecedent world capable of producing creatures fit for a relationship with God. With this in mind consider the following three premises, P1 It is not possible that God would specially reveal himself in two or more mutually exclusive religions. (Because a morally perfect being cannot lie). P2 It is not plausible that there should be unresolvableuncertainty about a special revelation of God. (Because if God chooses to specially reveal himself he has both the reason and the means to miraculously authenticate his special revelation). P3 It is plausible that God would permit resolvableuncertainty about his special revelation. (Because religious pluralism is a subtype of divine hiddenness and divine hiddenness vouchsafes human moral freedom).

It follows from P3 that prima facie confusion due to religious pluralism does not prove that God has not revealed himself specially. It follows from P1 that if he has revealed himself specially it will be in only one religion. And it follows from P2 and P3 that whatever religion has, on balance, the best historical evidence for a miraculous authentication and the greatest theological coherence is far more probably than not, and far more probably than any other, the true special revelation of God. In short, my claim is that God may have good reason for allowing us to form a false conception of him while, at the same time, providing a revelation by means of which we can form a correct one. But in that case it must be possible for a determined and conscientious inquirer to distinguish the true conception from the false. And so the solution to the problem of religious pluralism is, finally, the intuitive and obvious one: Providing arguments and evidence to show that Christianity is more plausibly true than any other religion. This should consist of two steps. The first is to provide a priori arguments to demonstrate that Christianity is

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more coherent; the second is to provide a historical argument to demonstrate that the founding miracle of Christianity is better authenticated than any other miracle in history. And we shall see that both are available. In the first three chapters of Part III, I will give the a priori argument. This will have two main themes, both summarising Swinburne. The first: Given both that moral and natural evil exist and that God is morally perfect, I will argue that we have good reason to expect an Incarnation. The second: Given that God is all loving and love is a relational property, I will argue we have good reason to expect a plurality of divine persons in the Godhead. This explains the order of the first three chapters: Discussing the Incarnation in the first chapter and the Trinity in the second will provide me with the tools needed to address religious pluralism in the third. The second argument in reply to religious pluralism will be to establish that the evidence for the founding miracle of Christianity is far better in both quality and quantity than that for any other claimed miracle in history. However, since this is the topic of Part IV, the first three chapters of Part III are only a partial answer to religious pluralism that will not be complete until I have concluded my entire argument. Once religious pluralism has been addressed the rest of the discussion will be straightforward. In the forth chapter I will consider and discharge the claim that Christianity is antiscientific and in the fifth and sixth show that objections to Christianity based on the violence in the Old Testament and the doctrine of hell are ultimately without warrant.



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21 The Incarnation 1. A Preliminary Distinction Before presenting Swinburne’s argument it may be helpful to clarify the difference between a posteriori and a priori reasons for thinking some hypothesis is true. 93 Suppose that a safe is robbed and our working hypothesis is John stole the money from the safe. During the investigation we may discover two kinds of evidence. First, we may find John’s fingerprints at the crime scene and a sum of money on him matching the sum that was stolen. This will be a posteriori grounds for the truth of the hypothesis; that is, consequences to be expected if the hypothesis is true. Second, we may learn that John has a history of robbing safes and is also in debt. This will be a priori grounds for the truth of the hypothesis; that is, evidence that belongs outside the scope of the hypothesis but nevertheless increases its probable truth. The historical case for the resurrection which I will be presenting later is a posteriori grounds for thinking Jesus was God Incarnate. Like fingerprints on a safe, it is a consequence to be expected if the hypothesis that Jesus rose form the dead is true and not at all to be expected if it is false. The arguments that follow are a priori grounds for thinking that Jesus was God Incarnate. Just as reflection on John’s criminal past and present financial situation may prove him more likely to have committed a crime, so moral reflection on the nature of God and the condition of man may suggest that God is likely to act in certain ways. In what follows, it will be my concern to summarise Swinburne's argument that, given human sin and suffering, a loving God is likely to act in the way Christianity claims he has acted; that is, by becoming incarnate. 93 The phrase a posteriori means posterior to

and so, “from what comes after” and the phrase a priori means prior to and so, “from what comes before.”



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2. The Nature of God and the Condition of Man Swinburne begins his argument with two preliminary points. The first is that God is morally perfect. The second is that human suffering exists in the universe he has created. Such suffering is something which God has good reason to allow but it is also, as we shall see, something to which he is also likely to respond. However, before presenting the argument itself, I will find it helpful to briefly revisit these two points. 2.1 The Moral Perfection of God The moral perfection of God is integral to classical theism. One argument for it unfolds from the observation that voluntary actions always strive towards an apparent good entertained by the agent who performs them. And importantly, this also held for morally bad actions. A thief, for instance, seeks the “good” of an increase in his personal fortune and his action is to be understood as bad insofar as it pursues this small selfish good at the cost of a decrease in the total good—the unhappiness he brings to his victim; the mistrust and unease he inspires; his disruption of social harmony, and so on. However, since all voluntary action is already motivated by the good, and since the good of any action entertained by an agent is dependent on his knowledge and rationality, so increases in knowledge and rationality will refine his judgment of the good and, with that refinement, improve his morality. In a divine mind this principle is developed to its ultimate logical consequence. Being disembodied, God is free from carnality; being omniscient, he is free from irrationality; being omnipotent, he is free from want. His greatest pleasure is therefore found in recognising that he performs virtuous deeds and in pursuing goals which promote universal perfection. Perfect knowledge and power, in short, will produce a perfect awareness of and pursuit of the good. Swinburne suggests that we define the moral perfection of God in this way: God performs only morally best or equally best actions of many kinds and no bad ones.



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2.2 The Sin and Suffering of Man Suffering, meanwhile, is an unpreventable feature of any world in which virtue and moral self-determination are widely attainable for finite agents. This was a point discussed in Chapter 5. Again, briefly: Free will ensures that we have a choice between doing good and doing evil. Humans are so made that when we do good it becomes easier to do good again at the next opportunity and when we do evil it becomes easier to do evil again at the next opportunity. 94 In this way, we gradually strengthen or weaken desires of different kinds and so form a moral character. Without free will none of this would be possible. And while God is omnipotent his omnipotence needs to be understood in a way that allows for the constraints of logical possibility. And since it is logically impossible for God to create agents with free will and ensure that they do no evil, human suffering is a potential feature of any world in which virtue is attainable. It is because God wants us to freely become good people that he permits temporary moral evil and suffering. But it needs to be noted that it is not free will alone, but free will and moral evil together, that provide an opportunity to manifest most virtues. In other words, only if someone eventually exercises their free will to assault or abuse you can I exercise mine to show you empathy; only if you are robbed can I make personal sacrifices to provide for you. The question arises whether moral evil alone would afford adequate opportunities for everyone to form a virtuous moral character. Swinburne suggests that it would not. A world in which opportunities to obtain virtue are universally available must therefore contain natural evil. Consider again a world without disaster, disease and decrepitude; a world in which the only cause of injury and death is, respectively, assault and murder. It is a mathematical certainty that such a world would provide far, far fewer opportunities for comion, self-sacrifice, courage, forbearance, and so forth, and highly probable that some of us would have no such opportunities at all. Pleasure and comfort are good and our world, of course, 94 As Emerson put it, “Sew a thought, reap an action; sew an action, reap a habit; sew a habit, reap a character; sew a character, reap a destiny.”



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includes both. But a life that offered nothing else would make us complacent, hedonistic, idle, selfish and shallow. 3. A Priori Reasons for the Incarnation The initial conditions of the argument are therefore as follows: Human beings are misusing their free will to do evil. As a result, many individuals and societies are developing a bad moral character. This fact, together with the natural evil necessary to ensure that opportunities to obtain virtue are universally available, causes human suffering that is often widespread and profound. God, meanwhile, is morally perfect. How is he likely to respond? Swinburne argues that God will likely respond by becoming incarnate. Let us now consider the three arguments he gives. 3.1 An Obligation to Share in Human Suffering Parents often subject their children to suffering for the sake of some greater good. Mrs Bell, for instance, may put her overweight daughter on a stringent diet. Mr Wild may ask his son to attend a “difficult” neighbourhood school for the sake of good community relations. Under such circumstances, it is good but not obligatory for the parent to show solidarity with their child by taking a share in the suffering that has been imposed. Thus Mrs Bell may decide to her daughter in eating a green salad for dinner even though Mrs Bell herself is not overweight. And likewise Mr Wild may present himself at the “difficult” neighbourhood school to enrol in the parent-teacher association or offer to coach the soccer team. In both examples the suffering imposed is mild. But Swinburne suggests that when the suffering imposed reaches a certain level of intensity the good of sharing in that suffering for the one who imposes it rises to an obligation. In this connection he offers the following example. Suppose, firstly, that England has been unjustly attacked and the government has conscripted all men between 18 and 30 to defend it; suppose, secondly, that a parent may “veto” the conscription of their son if he is under 21; suppose, thirdly, that older men under 50 may volunteer. Most parents with teenage sons veto the conscription but Swinburne, in view of the gravity of the situation, refuses to do so: He insists that his 19 year old son enlist. Suppose finally that Swinburne is 45 and so himself eligible but under no obligation to serve. “Since I am forcing my son to endure



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the hardship and danger of military service,” concludes Swinburne, “I have a moral obligation to him to volunteer myself.” And of course in circumstances of this kind the sharing could not be incognito. “The parent needs not merely to share the child’s suffering but to show him that he is doing so.” The relevance of all this to the doctrine of the Incarnation can be spelled out as follows: Given the amount of pain and suffering which God, though for a good purpose, permits us to endure it is very plausible to suppose that he incurs a moral obligation upon himself to share in that suffering; and given that God, being perfectly good, always performs the morally best available action, it is very plausible to suppose that he would discharge that obligation. This could be achieved by means of an incarnation; that is, by becoming human and, “living a life containing much suffering and ending with the great crisis which all humans have to face: the crisis of death.” And one way to ensure that he has shared in the very worst suffering humans must endure is to live a life that ends in a brutal and unjustly imposed execution.

One way God Incarnate could ensure that he has shared in the very worst suffering humans must endure is to live a life that ends in a burtal and unjustly imposed execution.



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A moment ago it was noted that the obligation to share in the suffering one imposes on another can not be discharged in secret. Thus an incarnation would not fulfil its purpose unless the knowledge that it had occurred were made widely available to the future human race. And since the human life of God Incarnate would be of limited duration he must also found an institution to proclaim his message—a point to which we shall return. 3.2 To Provide a Means of Making Atonement The second argument begins with three moral concepts: obligation, guilt and atonement. Swinburne divides good actions into two broad types. Obligations are good actions that we owe to others: It is good in this first sense for you to feed your children and tell others the truth. Supererogatory actions are nonobligatory good actions: It is good in this second sense to volunteer at a soup kitchen. We do not wrong others when we fail to perform supererogatory actions but we do wrong others when we fail to meet our obligations—to respect each other's property and personhood, for example, or to keep our promises. For wronging others we are blameworthy and so incur guilt. And in order to remove our guilt we need to “make atonement.” Atonement, Swinburne says, usually has four components: repentance, apology, reparation and penance. If I have stolen your watch I must return it to you or give you something of equivalent value. Such reparation deals with the effects of my wrongdoing but it does not deal with the fact of my wrongdoing—that I sought to harm you. I must also therefore distance myself from my wrongdoing by a sincere apology and repentance. Often this will suffice to remove my guilt but in cases of serious wrongdoing something extra may be required: a small gift or service as a token of my sorrow. Swinburne calls this “making a penance.” The process is completed when the victim agrees to treat me, insofar as he can, as one who has not wronged him: And this is to forgive me. It is an obvious general fact, claims Swinburne, that all humans have wronged God. We have wronged God directly by failing to show reverence and gratitude to him as the holy source of our existence and we have wronged him indirectly by wronging each



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other. If I hit my wife I abuse the free will and responsibility entrusted to me by God and I also hurt a creature he created—just as I wrong you if I hit your child because I hurt someone upon whom you have lavished your loving care and attention. In addition to incurring guilt through our wrongdoing we inherit a general propensity to wrongdoing. This is partly social (you are more likely to abuse your children if you yourself were abused) and partly genetic: Evidence has emerged that what a person does and has done to him at an early age affects the genes he hands on to his children.95 Swinburne suggests that we also inherit something analogous to guilt: We are indebted to our ancestors for our life and for many benefits that come down to us through them; our ancestors, in turn, are indebted to God for their own wrongdoing. We therefore incur an obligation to help atone for their guilt. “Even the English law,” notes Swinburne, “requires that before you can claim what you inherit from your dead parents you must pay their debts.” Thus while the guilt itself is not ours, the obligation to atone for it is, and our failure to meet this obligation can be a further source of guilt. It would seem, then, that human beings have a serious obligation to make atonement and are in a poor position to do so— owing to both the size of the moral debt and the propensity to continued wrongdoing. How might a morally perfect God respond to this? Swinburne suggests that God would likely respond by helping us to make a proper atonement. Earlier I made the obvious point that if I steal your watch I owe you a watch—or something of equal value. The question arises: What is the proper reparation for a wrongdoer to offer God? What has gone wrong, says Swinburne, is that we have failed to live good lives. One proper reparation would therefore be a perfect human life which we can offer to God in repentance. And while that one perfect human life may not morally counterbalance all the wrongdoing of n number of morally bad human lives, it is up to the injured party to determine when a sufficient reparation has been made. And one truly perfect human life would plausibly 95 Swinburne thus understands “Adam and Eve” to symbolise the first humans with free will and moral awareness and “Original Sin” to be the subsequent moment at which conscious wrongdoing began to emerge.



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enable a merciful and morally perfect being to justifiably make that determination. Here the skeptic may still object that a third party cannot make restitution for the offences of another. No one would consider justice done if a judge were to have an innocent man seized off the street and thrown in jail for the crimes of the murderer who himself remained free. Correct. But the problem lies not with the argument but the analogy. Consider a more helpful one. Suppose Mrs Hall hires a man, John, to paint her house. John is paid in advance but procrastinates providing his services and finally spends the money on a ski trip during which he breaks his leg. Ideally, he would either return the money or find someone else to paint the house on his behalf. But if he is incapable of doing either of these things (because, say, he is broke and and doesn't know anyone prepared to paint the house) he finds himself in the position of having an insoluble debt. Plausibly, Mrs Hall could dismiss the whole matter with an airy wave of her hand and hire a new painter. But now suppose the following: That Mrs Hall is a morally conscientious woman who thinks it important that John should take his wrongdoing seriously; that she is very generous; and that she knows someone who is prepared to paint her house on John's behalf. No one would consider the matter resolved if she were to call this third party and engage him to paint her house without John's knowledge: By every reasonable assessment John would still be in her debt. But she might consider the matter resolved to her satisfaction if John himself were involved in the arrangements—if, for example, he were to express remorse for the situation and then, having been provided with the details, were to call the third party in order to explain the problem and ask for his help. In this analogy, needless to say, Mrs Hall represents God, John a human wrongdoer, and Jesus the third party whose assistance we must solicit. As Aquinas noted, confession and contrition must be shown by the sinner himself but, “satisfaction has to do with the exterior act and here one can make use of friends.” Two final points. The first is that there could by chance appear many prophets falsely claiming to be a divine offer of atonement for human wrongdoing. A prophet making the claim truthfully would



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therefore need the "signature" of God upon his work—an effect that only God can bring about and which can be taken as a mark of endorsement. This would show us that God, the injured party, was willing to accept the reparation. One obvious way God could do this would be to violate the laws of nature—such as by raising the prophet back to life three days after his death. The second final point is that the means of atonement God offers makes no difference to us unless we associate ourselves with it. Just as John, in my analogy, needs to both repent and himself solicit the assistance of the third party in order to discharge his debt, so a wrongdoer needs to ask God to accept the life of Jesus as a reparation for his sins. And this again entails the necessity of a worldwide institution to announce that God has provided a means of atonement and to en us to avail ourselves of it. Swinburne suggests that the Christian claim that Jesus saved us from our sins is to be understood in the above way. By becoming incarnate in Jesus and living a perfect life, God provided a means of atonement. Thus, "God was both the wronged person and also the one who, thinking it so important that we should take our wrongdoing seriously, made available the reparation for us to offer back to him." 3.3 To Help Us Live Morally Good Lives Making atonement helps us to deal with past wrongdoings. But God also wants us to live morally good lives in the present; indeed, God wants us, as Swinburne puts it, “to become saints.” This is something most of us obviously fail to do. It is therefore plausible that God would become incarnate for a third reason: To reveal knowledge and found an institution to help us become morally good. Swinburne suggests that this knowledge is of three kinds. Firstly, we need knowledge of what God is like and what he has done in order to properly worship him; for example, that he is a Trinity and shares in our suffering and wishes to provide us with a means of making atonement. Even if we learned these things through a priori arguments, we would still need to know when and as which human God became incarnate so that we can appropriate that atonement to ourselves. And we also need to know something of his future plans for us so that we can make a right response—for



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example, that there are serious consequences for those who become incorrigibly bad. All this requires a “propositional revelation” from God: a revelation of certain propositions (such as God became incarnate in Jesus Christ) by a trustworthy authority. Secondly, we need moral knowledge about which actions are obligatory and which are supererogatory. Humans, the Bible already affirms, have a natural sense of right and wrong.96 But having moral intuition no more guarantees moral living than having a sense of direction guarantees that one will never get lost. It has already been noted that humans have an inherited propensity to wrongdoing. And this can manifest as a tendency to conceal moral truths from ourselves or to interpret them in our preferred way. A parent who sets their child a difficult and risky task (perhaps thinking it is best for the child to learn some things for themselves) may decide to intervene at a critical moment. Seeing that we have failed to live good lives according to what moral awareness is natural to us, it is likewise probable that God would intervene to provide us with moral instruction. Further, because God is our creator and sustainer he has the right to create obligations for us; that is, to issue commands which, if they had not been commanded, would be supererogatory, but, having been commanded, become obligations; i.e., Keep the Sabbath holy. Why would God burden us with these further obligations? Swinburne suggests there are two reasons. The first is to ensure coordination of good actions. Consider, by way of illustration, that is important that drivers travelling in opposite directions agree to keep to opposite sides of the road but unimportant which side they agree to—so long as they do all agree. Likewise, we have a moral obligation to show gratitude to God as our benefactor through worship though doing so on a particular day is only obligatory because God commands it—and God commands a particular day to help ensure that the main obligation is fulfilled. The second reason for creating obligations is help us form the habit of doing what is supererogatorily good. For this same reason a parent may tell a child to do the shopping for a sick 96 Romans 2:15

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neighbour—making a nonobligatory good action obligatory in the hope that the child will develop a habit of doing good beyond what is obligated and so become a morally exemplary person. “If anyone forces you to go one mile,” Jesus instructed, “go with them two miles.” This command may belong to the kind under discussion. This brings us to the third and final way in which an incarnation may help us to live a morally good life. “It would be a lot easier to understand how to live a perfectly good life,” notes Swinburne, “if we have an example of someone doing this.” Thus by becoming incarnate and living a perfect life himself (a life of perfect comion, pacifism, generosity and love) God provides valuable knowledge and encouragement to his creatures seeking do the same: He not only tells us how to live but shows us—and thereby demonstrates that it can be done and inspires us to emulate him. And yet again for all these purposes to be realised and continue into the future God Incarnate would need to establish a worldwide institution to record, interpret and promulgate his life story and teachings: the Church. 4. The Christian Doctrine of the Incarnation God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, eternal. He has these and other properties essentially and this means he cannot cease to have one and remain God any more than a square can cease to have four sides and remain a square. How could God become human and so limited in all of the above respects? “To be human,” explains Swinburne, “is to have a human way of thinking and acting and a human body through which to act.” To become human God would therefore need to acquire a human way of thinking and acting in addition to his divine way of thinking and acting. 4.1 The Human Nature of Jesus Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, showed how a person can have two independent systems of belief; and how, while all the beliefs of such a person are accessible to him, he refuses to it to his consciousness the beliefs of the one system when he is acting under the other. The Freudian is derived from cases of self-deception: a pathetic state of which that person needs to be cured. But it helps us to see the possibility of a



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person willingly keeping a lesser belief system separate from his main belief system and performing different actions under different systems of beliefs—all for some very good reason. In becoming incarnate God allowed himself to develop a second and separate system of human-beliefs acquired through the sensory experience of his human body. The separation of these two belief systems would be a voluntary act—known to his divine mind but not to his human mind. Thus we have a picture of a divine consciousness that includes a human consciousness and a human consciousness that excludes the divine consciousness. It is important to emphasise that God would not have limited his powers by becoming incarnate. He would simply have taken on an additional limited way of operating. And in so doing he would remain divine while acting and feeling much like ourselves. 4.2 The Virgin Birth The doctrine of the Virgin Birth claims that God caused Mary, the mother of Jesus, to conceive Jesus without that conception involving any sperm from a male human. “It would not have taken a very large miracle,” notes Swinburne, “for God to turn some of the material of Mary’s egg into a second half-set of chromosomes, which, together with the normal half-set derived from Mary, would provide a full set.” But is there any a priori reason for supposing that God would choose to become incarnate in this way? Yes. “It would mean that Jesus came into existence as a human on earth partly by the normal process by which all humans come into existence and partly as a result of a quite abnormal process. It would thus be a historical event symbolizing the doctrine of the Incarnation: that Jesus is partly of human origin and so has a human nature and partly of divine origin and so has a divine nature.” In this way the Virgin Birth would help those who learnt about it later to understand the doctrine of the Incarnation. 4.3 The Ascension Christian doctrine claims that at the end of his life on earth Jesus, “ascended into the heavens.” Just as, “coming down from the heavens” is clearly to be understood as, “acquired a limited human way of operating,” so “ascended into the heavens,” should be understood as, “abandoned his limited human way of operating.”



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In the New Testament this event is symbolised by his body riwards into the sky until covered by a cloud—something which readers of the Old Testament (in which God manifests as a cloud) would understand as a return to God. Thereafter he remained, “seated at the right hand of the Father”—a phrase which must be understood as, “honourably united to his Father,” since God has no spatial location. An ascension, therefore, has a nonneglibible a priori probability. Like the Virgin Birth, it helps those who learn about it later to better understand the doctrine of the Incarnation. 5. Conclusion We have seen that it is highly probable that a loving God will become incarnate in response to human sin and suffering: in order to discharge an obligation to share in the suffering which, though for good reason, he allows; to offer wrongdoers a means of making atonement; and to help us live morally good lives by example and instruction. The fulfilment of all three purposes further requires the establishment of a worldwide Church—both to tell us what God Incarnate has done and how we can avail ourselves of it and also to provide guidance and in living a morally good life. Given the obvious general facts of human sin and suffering, it is highly probable that a loving God will act in the way Christianity claims he has acted. Against the background evidence for bare theism discussed in Part II, Christian doctrine has high a priori probability.



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22 The Trinity 1. God the Father The nine arguments presented in Part II concluded to the existence of God: at least one immaterial being who is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, necessary, eternal and perfectly good. God, of course, is genderless but for the purposes of this discussion let us follow the tradition of referring to this being as, “God the Father.” That he exists is something about which Judaism, Islam and Christianity are all in agreement. But Christianity makes the further claim that there are three divine persons who depend on each other and act together in a Trinity. Granting on the evidence given that there is a God, one might reasonably ask: What reason is there for thinking that God is “tripersonal”? Swinburne suggests that there are, in fact, good a priori grounds for this belief and in what follows I will be summarising his argument.97 2. The Necessity of God the Son The Judaic and Islamic claim that God is a single person is sometimes called unitarianism. All Abrahamic theists, meanwhile, agree that God is morally perfect, that love is a moral perfection, and that, therefore, God is perfectly loving. The problem this inserts into the unitarian concept of God is that love is a relational property. For suppose a perfectly loving God has existed alone from eternity past. Prior to the creation of the man, whom has he loved? A being that is essentially and perfectly loving needs someone to love, and, moreover, as in a perfect 97 It may seem unlikely that anyone would develop an

a priori argument for the Trinity unless they had had some with the Christian tradition. Swinburne concedes this point but then adds that, “Unless I had been brought up in the tradition of Western mathematics, I would be unlikely to believe that there is no greatest prime number; for I would not even have the concept of a prime number.” But, “once I have derived from tradition the relevant concepts, I am in a position to assess the proof that there is no greatest prime number.” And likewise, “we need first to be taught what a religious system claims; only then are we in a position to assess whether or not it is true.”



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marriage, a perfect love is a mutual love between equals. It is logical: If God is omnipotent he could bring about an equal to love and with whom to share all that he has and if God is all loving he would.98 Let us again follow the tradition and refer to this second being as, “God the Son.” The Father has his attributes, including moral perfection, essentially: The Father can no more lack one and remain the Father than a square can lack four sides and remain a square. This means that Father could not bring the Son into being at some finite point in the past (say, a quintillion years ago) because for all eternity before that time he would have lacked moral perfection. The past-eternal existence of the Son is therefore an entailment of the moral perfection of the Father: The Father would not exist unless he caused the Son to exist and so requires the Son to exist for his own existence. And because both Father and Son are perfectly good they love each other without limit. But how is one to conceptualise this? It would be quite illogical to suppose that at some point in the past God created a being with the property of having always existed—a being that exists at all moments prior to its creation despite the fact that it has not yet been created. Instead, we should try to imagine that, for as long as the Father has existed, he has sustained the Son in existence, and since the Father has always existed, the Son has always existed too: The creation of the Son, in other words, is not a discrete event locatable in time but a continuous action that recedes with the Father into the infinite past. With this in mind we can easily understand what theologians have meant when they said that the Son is, "eternally begotten.” 3. The Necessity of God the Holy Spirit In creating the Son the Father shares with another all of his essential properties: The Son enjoys omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, eternity and moral perfection. But in a divine duality the moral good of sharing itself is the Father’s alone. 98 Augustine, writing in On Diverse Questions,

suggested that if the Father wished to beget the Son and was unable to do it, he would have been weak; and if he was able to do it but did not wish to, he would have failed to do it because of envy. Thus unitarianism is incompatible with the omnipotence and moral perfection of God.



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Suppose, by way of illustration, that I provide you with money to pay off your debts. In doing so I have shared my money with you but the moral good of sharing itself is mine alone. However, if I provide you with enough money to pay off your debts and yourself pay off the debts of a third person I will have performed a still better action: I will have shared with you both my money and the moral good of sharing it. The love of the Father for the Son must therefore include a wish to cooperate with the Son in further total sharing with an equal: The Father and the Son must together bring into being a third divine person whom, again following the tradition, we may call the Holy Spirit. A godhead in which there is sharing but not cooperation in further total sharing is less than morally perfect. In the twelfth century Richard of St Victor made this same point and added a further argument. Consider: If you love another perfectly you will naturally seek some third person for them to love and be loved by—just as a married couple who love each other may naturally seek to produce a third person, a child, who can share in their love and whose existence allows each of the three family to unjealously enjoy the love between the other two. In a like case a third divine person means that for each divine person there is someone besides himself for every other divine person to love and be loved by—a state of affairs that demands no less than three divine persons. And since neither the sharing of sharing nor the sharing of love can be instantiated between two, moral perfection can only be instantiated among three. The Holy Spirit, then, in common with the Son, could not enter into existence at some finite point in time before which God lacked moral perfection. The Holy Spirit must "proceed eternally" from the Father and the Son. And so Father, Son and Spirit are all coeternal and divine and, being morally perfect, love each other without limit. And this means that the Trinity has always existed: God is a society of divine beings whose essence is love. 4. Spheres of Activity In my previous chapter I noted that God, being morally perfect, always performs the morally best action. Faced with a situation in which there is a morally best action three morally perfect and omnipotent persons will naturally coordinate to perform it. But a



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problem arises in the case of what Swinburne calls "equal best" actions; that is, one of two or more actions which are all equally good. Suppose there are two people who will die without your help and you are only able to help one. All other things being equal, helping Person A and helping Person B are equal best actions. And faced with a choice of equal best actions a morally perfect person is unobligated in his choice: He can choose arbitrarily. It is here that there is need of an argument to explain how a Trinity of omnipotent and morally perfect persons avoid conflict over equal best actions. Consider the direction in which Jupiter rotates and suppose that making it rotate clockwise and counterclockwise are equal best actions in the way just described: It is possible that the Father will try to make Jupiter rotate in one direction and the Son try to make it rotate in the other. Clearly, they cannot both succeed. It follows, says Swinburne, that each of the three of the Trinity must have different spheres of activity within which they are morally obligated to operate. In this way, each divine person would be omnipotent but, because of his perfect goodness, would never choose to perform an action incompatible with the action of another divine person. But what would determine which sphere of activity each being operated within? Swinburne finds the answer in the causal dependence of the Son and the Spirit on the Father: Persons caused to exist by another have an obligation to the person that causes them to exist. The Father, being perfectly good, will seek to avoid conflict by laying down for every other divine persons a sphere of activity; and the Son and the Spirit, being perfectly good, will recognise an obligation to conform to his adjudication. 5. The Ontology of the Trinity This point helps us to make further sense of the ontology of the Trinity. For if the Son and the Spirit were not caused to exist by the Father there would be no divine person with the authority to lay down a sphere of activity for every other. Divine persons might therefore find themselves in the position of two pedestrians who come face to face while walking in opposite directions and bob left and right attempting to avoid each other. Without some arbitrary rule (Always keep left) they will only avoid each other by chance—



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and an arbitrary rule requires an authority to impose it. From this Swinburne concludes that there could not be more than one ontologically necessary person; that is, one person whose existence is uncaused. “But,” he adds, “since the perfect goodness of the Father requires the other two divine persons to exist just as inevitably as the Father exists, they are what I will call ‘metaphysically necessary.’” In Swinburne’s taxonomy a person is metaphysically necessary if it is either ontologically necessary or inevitably caused to exist by an ontologically necessary person. Thus while the Father is the only ontologically necessary person all three of the Trinity are metaphysically necessary persons and the Trinity as a whole is ontologically necessary because nothing else caused it to exist. Because each person exists as inevitably as every other they are, finally, all equally worthy of worship. 6. Properties of the Persons A property is essential to a thing if that thing cannot exist without it. Thus the property having three sides is essential to a triangle while the property of having a red hypotenuse or being drawn in pencil is not. Philosophers further recognise two kinds of essential and nonessential properties: monadic and relational. A monadic property is simply a property which a thing has apart from its relation to other things: Thus being brown or made of wood are monadic properties of my desk. A relational property is a property which a thing has in relation to other things: Thus being next to the door or made by a carpenter are relational properties of my desk. Critically, some things can share the same monadic properties and yet be distinct: It is possible that there exists a parallel universe that contains a person exactly like you in every respect: the same appearance, mental life, memory and personality. What makes a particular person who they are is not, therefore, a combination of monadic properties but something underlying those properties which philosophers sometimes call “haecceity” or “thisness.” To more easily grasp the concept of thisness it helps to consider something that lacks it: a gravitational field. Any gravitational field which had the same strength, shape and size as the one which surrounds our earth would be that gravitational field.



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God clearly has properties of the first four kinds. He has the essential monadic property of being omnipotent and the nonessential relational property of being the creator of the universe. But Swinburne suggests that divine persons, like gravitational fields, lack thisness: There could not be an ontologically necessary and omnimaximal being who was not the Father; nor an omnimaximal being sustained in existence by the Father who was not the Son—and so on. This point, as we shall shortly see, has important implications for the Trinity. But meanwhile, the question arises: What exactly differentiates one divine person from another? After all, being incorporeal, they lack physical features; being omniscient, they share the identical set of all true propositions; being infinitely good, they share an identical and identically perfect moral character; and being omnipotent, they can all perform the same unlimited number of actions. What does set them apart, Swinburne explains, are their “relational properties”: The Father is the Father because he has the essential property of being uncaused; the Son is the Son because he has the essential property of being caused to exist by an uncaused divine person acting alone; the Spirit is the Spirit because he is caused to exist by an uncaused divine person acting in cooperation with a divine person who is himself caused to exist by the uncaused divine person acting alone. Because the divine persons are individuated by relational properties and lack thisness there is an additional entailment for the Trinity. That human parents produce a first child does not determine who that child will be. By contrast, it was not a matter of chance or arbitrary choice by the Father which Son he caused to exist: any divine person caused to exist solely by the Father would have been the Son. And, similarly, any divine person caused to exist by Father and Son together would have been the Spirit. For this reason, Swinburne adds, creating the Son was not merely an equal best act but a unique best act—and so too, mutatis mutandis, for the Spirit. 7. The Limit of Three It might still be wondered why there are only three and not four or an infinite number of divine persons. For if two divine persons are



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better than one, and three better than two, would not four be better than three—and so on, ad infinitum? Recall first that God is morally perfect and so must perform a morally best action when there is one to perform. Sharing his divinity by creating the Son, and sharing the moral good of sharing divinity by creating the Spirit with the Son, are both actions of this kind. But again sharing the moral good of sharing divinity with a fourth person is not qualitatively different from sharing the moral good of sharing divinity with a third. And so too with Richard of St Victor’s point: The coexistence of three divine persons provides for each divine person someone other than himself for every other divine person to love and be loved by but adding a fourth divine person adds no further good state. And this means that the Father is under no obligation to create a fourth divine person. Nevertheless, one might still object that adding superfluous divine persons would increase the total good. And so however many divine persons the Father created it would be still better to create one more. To address this point we will need to make a very brief digression into a subclass of equal best actions. We have already seen that, faced with a choice of equal best actions, a morally perfect person is unobligated in his choice: He can choose arbitrarily. Another scenario in which a morally perfect person can choose arbitrarily is when he is faced with an unlimited scale of increasingly good actions. For example: People and stars are good. The universe contains finite quantities of both. Wouldn't a better universe be one with still more of each? Yes. But there is no limit to how many there could be—even if there were infinitely many people and stars there could always be a few more. And so, here too, there is no morally best action and God can satisfy the demands of his moral perfection by creating an arbitrarily finite number of people and stars (perhaps the actual number: 10 billion and 10 respectively) or none at all. But what has just been said of people and stars cannot be said of divine persons owing to this critical difference: Divine persons, by definition, are metaphysically necessitated. And this means that when the Father has already fulfilled his divine nature by creating two further divine persons a fourth divine person becomes 11



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superfluous and so is not metaphysically necessary; that is, his existence would not be a necessary consequence of an ontologically necessary being and so he would not be divine. There cannot be a fourth divine person. There must and can only be three. [3] It is in this sense that the "one God" and "three persons" of Christian doctrine is to be spelled out. The three persons of the Trinity form a “totally integrated divine society” which “acts as one coordinated whole.” The Trinity itself is therefore a single divine tripersonal being of which there can only be one. This is an important point: While the Christian concept of God is trinitarian it is not "tritheistic" but monotheistic: There are three persons in one God and, “whatever one divine person is and does, God is and does.” 8. Conclusion We have seen that there are good a priori grounds for thinking that a perfectly loving God is tripersonal. In places Swinburne's argument was somewhat difficult but it unfolded from two very basic moral intuitions. The first was that perfect love among perfect beings requires both the total sharing of the self with an equal and the total sharing of the moral good of sharing. The second was that a perfect and perfectly unselfish love among divine beings would inevitably produce three beings so that for each being there is someone other than himself for every other to love and be loved by. In closing it is worth noting that the doctrine of the Trinity is not held by Christians solely on the basis of moral intuitions about divine love. It is also held because it is believed to have been revealed by Jesus and proclaimed as a central doctrine by the Church he founded and which exploded worldwide on the strength of the evidence for his resurrection. The point of a revelation, of course, is to tell us things we could not discover for ourselves. If, on the one hand, Jesus were God Incarnate we might expect him to reveal truths about the nature of God that are unexpected but turn out to have deep philosophical meaning—and the doctrine of the Trinity certainly has both these properties; and if, on the other hand, we have good reason to believe Jesus rose from the dead that would be good reason to believe that what he revealed is true.



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The a prioriargument for the Trinity and the historical evidence for the resurrection are therefore mutually authenticating. Given all these facts and the coherence of an incarnation discussed in the previous chapter, together with the background evidence for bare theism presented in Part II, I conclude that Christian doctrine has a very high a priori probability.



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23 Religious Pluralism

It is time to draw together the threads of the last three chapters. I began by suggesting that religious pluralism should be understood as a subtype of divine hiddenness which, as we saw in Chapter 6, is a necessary feature of any antecedent world capable of producing creatures fit for a relationship with God. For this reason a plurality of religions making conflicting claims does not prove that God has not specially revealed himself in one of them. Generally, my claim was that God has good reason for allowing us the freedom to form a false conception of him and good reason for providing a revelation by means of which we can form a correct one. But in that case, of course, it must be possible for a determined and conscientious inquirer to distinguish the true conception from the false. The way to defend Christianity against the objection from religious pluralism turns out to be the intuitive and obvious one: Providing arguments and evidence to show that Christianity is more plausibly true than any other religion. This, I said, should consist of two steps. First, a priori arguments to demonstrate that Christian doctrine is more probable and coherent than the doctrines of any other religion; and second, historical evidence to demonstrate that the founding miracle of Christianity is better authenticated than any other miracle in history. The second step is the subject of Part IV. This chapter completes the first. 1. Preliminary Considerations I will find it helpful to frame what follows with three preliminary considerations. The first: It is no entailment of the claim that Christianity is true that every other world religion is completely false. In my discussion of religious experience I noted Swinburne’s point that, “religious experiences in traditions outside of Christianity are of beings having similar properties to God or of lesser beings but not of beings whose existence is incompatible with the existence of God.” Naturally enough, people describe religious experiences in

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the vocabulary familiar to them. But this does not of itself entail that their different descriptions are in conflict. God may be known under different names to different cultures—a point acknowledged in both the Old and New Testaments. Thus a Hindu who claims to have had a religious experience is not necessarily in conflict with a Christian who claims the same. So long as the adherent of the weaker doctrine is willing to describe his experience in a lesscommitted way (“I experienced a supernatural presence, though perhaps not Vishnu, as I first claimed”) there is no reason of principle why he should have to withdraw it entirely. The Second: The point just made can hold even when claimed commands from God are in direct conflict. It was noted earlier that a morally perfect God cannot lie and if he cannot lie he cannot reveal two mutually exclusive doctrines about himself—one of which, by the law of noncontradiction, must be false. But, adds Swinburne, “it does not follow that he will not give different people commands, both of which cannot be executed successfully.” Suppose, for instance, that a Muslim is told by God to defend Jerusalem against the infidel and a Christian is told by God to attack it. Does the fact that these commands conflict entail that at least one of them is false; i.e., not commanded by God? Not necessarily. For consider, with Swinburne, the possibility that as a result of historical factors for which humans are to blame, Muslims and Christians have each developed a different and limited understanding of God. Plausibly, God himself wishes for our understanding of him to develop through experience, effort, and cooperation and not solely by means of divine intervention. Just as plausibly, God wishes for people at any point in history to be willing to live and die by the ideals that they then hold. He therefore commands the Muslim and the Christian each to live by the beliefs he has knowing that the experience of so doing may eventually lead each to a deeper understanding. In a like case, “a sage might well sometimes give to each of two persons who sought his advice the advice to oppose the other thinking it for the good of both that they should seek to develop their independence and authority.” The third and final preliminary point: It is no entailment of the claim that Christianity is true, nor any part of Christian doctrine, that any particular person is in Hell. Certainly Christian



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doctrine teaches that this possibility exists for those who are incorrigibly bad. But many of the great Christian thinkers (including Augustine and Aquinas) allowed that those outside the Church can attain Heaven and this view became official Roman Catholic doctrine during the second Vatican Council in 1963—6. In short, a successful argument for the truth of Christianity in the face of religious pluralism does not entail that the religious experiences and doctrines of other religions are completely false or that the adherents of those religions are destined for Hell. It establishes only that, if there is a God and he has revealed himself to humanity, then he has revealed himself through Jesus and the Church Jesus founded is where we should seek him.

2. General Objections to Rival Religions We have seen that there are good a priori grounds for thinking that God is tripersonal and that, in response to human sin and suffering, he would likely become incarnate on Earth. Christianity, of course, makes both claims: That God is a Trinity of three divine persons and that the second person, the Son, became incarnate in Jesus Christ. I will now briefly consider the general relevance of these points to the problem of religious pluralism. 2.1 The Incarnation In Chapter 21, I presented Swinburne’s argument that God would become incarnate for three purposes: To discharge an obligation to share in the human suffering which, though for good reason, he allows; to offer wrongdoers a means of making atonement; and to help us live morally good lives by example and instruction. It was further noted that the life and teaching of God Incarnate would require a “divine signature” and that he would need to establish a worldwide church to tell us what he has done and how we can avail ourselves of it. Any religion plausibly claiming to be a divine revelation to humanity must therefore have global reach: It is improbable in excelsis that God would give a revelation of himself and fail to ensure that it was made widely available. And from this it follows that only the major world religions are plausible candidates for a special revelation from God: Christianity, Islam,



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Buddhism and Hinduism—with consideration also given to Judaism.99 Whatever the moral quality of the life and teaching of Moses, Muhammad and Buddha they made no claim to be God Incarnate and they made no claim to be making an atonement for human wrongdoing. Buddha, notes Swinburne, did not even believe in the existence of a personal God—something for which, as we saw in Part II, there is good evidence. And while Hindu holy texts claim that Vishnu became incarnate in Krishna, there is altogether no historical evidence for the existence of Krishna—let alone for his having lived a perfect human life filled with much suffering that ended with a miracle.100 Islam does not claim this for Muhammad and Buddhism does not claim it for the Buddha—both of whose lives ended in entirely unmiraculous ways. And finally: while many modern messiahs have claimed to be God Incarnate there is no evidence whatsoever that their lives had the features with which we are concerned: A life of moral perfection and great suffering ending in a miracle. The nine arguments presented in Part II showed that there very probably is a God and in Chapter 21 we saw that if there is a God he would very probably become incarnate on Earth. These ten arguments together show that God will very probably become incarnate on Earth and if that has already happened the points discussed in the previous paragraph suggest that it was in Jesus 101

99 Because only 0.2 percent of the world

are Jewish (and fewer still practicing Jews) Judaism is not generally considered a world religion and its inclusion requires a little justification. I include it for two reasons. The first is that it is known throughout the world even if it is only practiced by a tiny minority. The second is because of its importance to the world’s two largest religions. Both the Quran and the New Testament accept, and are to some degree outgrowths of, the holy texts Judaism.

100 Hindus claim Krishna spoke to his student Arjuna some 5,000 years ago;

meanwhile, no Hindu holy text can be reliably dated prior to the twelfth century AD. This results in a gap of 4,200 years between the purported existence of Krishna and those texts purporting to record his words. 101 Swinburne considers, and rejects, the possibility that God has yet to become

incarnate for two reasons. Firstly, because, “it would have been dishonest of God to allow the occurrence of evidence of the strength that there is with respect to Jesus that he was God Incarnate if he was not in fact God Incarnate.” And secondly because, to exceed the evidence we already have for the incarnation of God in Jesus, a present day incarnation would need to be overwhelming—televised, say, and witnessed by millions. Yet such overwhelming evidence would dissolve the hiddenness of God and so curtail human moral freedom—a point that was discussed in Chapter 6.



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Christ that he did so. Therefore, very probably, Jesus Christ was God Incarnate. The first general consideration therefore demonstrates that Christianity is far more probably than not, and far more probably than any rival religion, the special revelation of God. 2.2 The Trinity In Chapter 22 I presented Swinburne’s a priori argument for the Trinity. There we saw that an omnipotent God could bring about an equal to love and be loved by and that an all loving God would. The argument for no more or less than three persons, though difficult in places, unfolded from two very basic moral intuitions. The first was that perfect love among perfect beings requires both the total sharing of the self with an equal and the total sharing of the moral good of sharing. The second was that a perfect and perfectly unselfish love among divine beings would inevitably produce three beings so that for each being there is someone other than himself for every other to love and be loved by. Buddha himself, as already noted, did not believe in a personal God and there is no settled position on God in Buddhist doctrine.102 Classical Buddhism is atheistic, some modern strains are pantheistic, but none of them affirm belief in a triune God or anything like it. Islam and Judaism, needless to say, zealously affirm unitarianism and reject the Christian doctrine of the Trinity as heretical. On this view God existed alone for all eternity—capable but unwilling, or willing but incapable, of creating an equal to love and be loved by. Such a concept of God is morally defective. Hinduism, finally, occupies the opposite end of the spectrum in affirming the existence of 330 million deities. However, since among three divine beings every possible moral good is already instantiated, additional beings would not be metaphysically necessary and so, ipso facto, would not be divine. Such concept of God is theologically incoherent. Thus our second general consideration also demonstrates that Christianity is far more coherent, and so far more probable, than any rival religion. 102 Asked by a journalist whether Buddhists believe in God, the Dalai Lama gave an upbeat but rather slippery reply. “God exists or God does not exist,” he said with a laugh. “Leave the question to us and learn to live peacefully!”



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3. Specific Objections to Rival Revelation There are, of course, specific objections that are pressed against Christianity. Some of these were mentioned in the Introduction—that the Old Testament contains atrocities and falsehoods, for example, or that the doctrine of Hell is unconscionable. In the three chapters following this one I will be discussing these objections and showing them to be without warrant. But for the moment I am going to consider specific objections against the relative plausibility of rival religions since these will help strengthen my general claim. 3.1 Judaism In addition to what has already been said, there are two special considerations of moral and historical coherence which further diminish the probable truth of the claim that Judaism, sans Jesus, is the one true revelation of God. Consider first its obvious inconsistency with our moral intuitions about what an all loving God is likely to do. The Christian claim is that an ancient nomadic tribe was chosen to be the porthole through which God dilated his frame of benevolent concern to include all of humanity; that is, the Jewish people were singled out by God because it was through one of their descendants that God wished to enter the world incarnate in Jesus and offer atonement and instruction and encouragement to us all. The Jewish counterclaim has, therefore, a highly implausible entailment: That our omnibenevolent creator did not invite us all into a relationship with him but instead remains obsessively preoccupied with only 0.2 percent of his creations. Indeed, an all loving Creator who does not seek a loving relationship with all his creations is oxymoronic. Consider, next, the historical incoherence. Prior to Jesus the Temple in Jerusalem was the most sacred site in all of Judaism—a place where the Jewish people made sacrifices to God and encountered his immediate presence. Moreover: There, under the Old Covenant, they were required to sacrifice animals in atonement of sin. In Exodus, we are told that this is a binding act of Covenant obedience forever. Jesus’ ministry, meanwhile, included this scandalous claim: Henceforth, he said, sin would be dealt with,



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and God accessed, through him. Jesus also predicted that the Temple would fall—which it did, in 70 AD, just as he predicted, and to date has not been rebuilt. How, without a Temple in which to make sacrifices, can Jews obey their eternal Covenant with God? They cannot. And the Jewish explanation for this is that, though formerly a binding covenant forever, sacrifices are no longer required because, quite simply, there is no longer a Temple. On the supposition that Judaism is true and Jesus was a false prophet, these historical facts are not at all to be expected: It is highly implausible that God would allow the Temple to fall just as the Church founded by a man blasphemously claiming to be the New Temple exploded worldwide; and it is just as implausible that, the Temple having fallen, God would not command a new one to be built. Recall: Because God is omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent, an event only happens because he causes or allows it and is aware of it when it occurs and present at the place where it occurs. Thus on historical and theological reflection, the God of this Jewish anti-Christian narrative is either deceitful, incompetent or uncaring. Like a trickster deity, he brings about the destruction of the Temple and so authenticates the claims of a heretic who now stands at the very centre of human history with more followers than any other world religion. Or else God fails to providentially orchestrate history in a way that ensures his plans are understood and fulfilled. Or else he is the deus absconditus of Voltaire and Locke who refrains from acting in human history which he views from afar with cool indifference. All three ideas are inconsistent with classical theology and Jewish theism alike. 3.2 Islam We have already seen that Islam is morally deficient on two general grounds. In addition, there are several special considerations which count against it. The first: Muslims claim that the Quran is the infallible word of God. Muhammad, they believe, took dictation from God in writing it and the resulting text, ex hypothesi, cannot contain error. This claim goes much further than the Christian claim that the authors of the Bible were inspired by God to write texts in their own words through which God mediated his message—and so has an unwelcome consequence for the Muslim: It means that proven



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errors in the Quran may be taken as proof of its inveracity. I will mention just one representative error: The Quran incorrectly asserts that Christians believe in a trinity composed of God, Mary and Jesus. This is evident in ages such as sura 5, verse 116, which rejects a trinity thus misconceived: “God will say, ‘Jesus, Son of Mary, did you ever say to mankind, “Worship me and my mother as gods besides God?”' 'Glory be to you,' he will answer, 'I could never have claimed what I have no right to.’” On the supposition that Muhammad wrote the Quran under mundane circumstances, this is unsurprising. The Bible was unavailable on the Arabian Peninsula in his time and his knowledge of Christian doctrine was learned by hearsay. But it is not at all to be expected on the supposition that Muhammad took direct verbatim dictation from an omniscient God. Whether or not Christianity is true, it is an indisputable historical fact that Christians at the time did not include Mary in the holy Trinity. Islam, secondly, gives an of God that is entirely at odds with one of his essential attributes: omnibenevolence. The Bible teaches that God loves all his fallen creatures with a love that is extravagant, unconditional and self-sacrificial. In the Quran declarations of God’s lack of love for his creatures repeat like a drumbeat. We are told that, "God loves not the unbelievers," "God loves not sinners," "God loves not the proud," "God loves not the prodigal," "God loves not the treacherous," and even, "God is an enemy to unbelievers." The God of Islam, clearly enough, loves conditionally—the sort of love of which Jesus said human sinners and tax collectors are capable and which he commanded us to improve upon by loving even our enemies—thereby emulating divine love. Thirdly and finally: The moral deficiency of the God of Muhammad is most clearly exhibited in the attitude that believers are commanded to take toward unbelievers. In ominous contrast to Jesus, Muhammad commanded his followers to murder their enemies. Early in his career Muhammad had a positive attitude toward Jews and Christians—perhaps because he himself belonged to a persecuted minority. He called them “people of the book” on of their faith in the Bible and believed that, once they understood his message, they would willingly convert to Islam. But



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when this did not happen, Muhammad became increasingly hostile. Indeed, as Muhammad the persecuted prophet gained political and military strength he transformed into Muhammad the machiavellian politician and warmonger. Seeking to unify the divided Arab tribes though a campaign of military expansion, Muhammad invaded Syria and Iraq. The ninth chapter of the Quran comes from this period of Muhammad’s life. It declares, “Kill the idolaters wherever you find them. Arrest them. Besiege them." Only those who submit to Islam are to be spared. These are the last commands in the Quran concerning unbelievers. Muhammad died shortly thereafter in 632 with plans before him to attack neighboring nations. Islam claims to have an infallible verbatim dictation from God that contains errors; it teaches that an all loving God does not love all; and it ens its followers to be violent and has been propagated by violence from its inception. It is, a priori, extremely improbable that an all knowing God would make mistakes or that an all loving God would himself lack love and command violence and murder. These special considerations therefore weaken still further the hypothesis that Islam is the special revelation of God. 3.3 Buddhism There would seem to be no special considerations in the case of Buddhism. It is not plausible that a revelation from God would be nontheistic; that is, that it would deny or omit to mention the existence of God. But suppose one were to reason: “God is not concerned with our belief in him. He is only concerned for us to live peaceful lives.” Might he have entrusted one man with the knowledge of how this is to be achieved? However, even ignoring the results of the last three chapters, there are special considerations which make even this assumption implausible. Buddhists believe that a Nepalese prince named Siddhartha Guatama achieved enlightenment while meditating under a fig tree in the sixth century B.C. Guatama's insight can be captured in a single sentence: He realised that all suffering is caused by the frustration of desire and, since there is no way for finite and mortal beings to satisfy all their desires, the only way to completely escape from suffering is to detach oneself from desire itself.



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The problem with Buddha’s insight is that it only holds if atheism is true. Consider: If the material world is all that exists then all our desires are eventually frustrated by old age and death. Under these circumstances Buddha is right that detaching from desire is the only way to definitely eliminate suffering during our earthly life. Is the elimination of suffering, if at all possible, a moral good? The conclusion of Chapter 5, in which we saw that suffering is a necessary feature of any world in which virtue is universally attainable, would suggest that it is not. Moreover, if there is a God the object of spiritual desire is the supreme and eternal good at the very heart of reality: God himself. And by pursuing that desire one is vouchsafed eternal human peace and happiness while by detachingfrom that desire one risks the ultimate in human suffering. Note that the logic of this objection does not depend on a doctrine of hell. “Thou hast made us for thyself,” said St. Augustine, “and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.” Augustine means that because God made us in his image and for himself we are incomplete until we find completion in him. Infinitude is the medium in which we are ultimately intended to live and breathe. Intellectus naturaliter desiderat esse semper, observed Aquinas: “The mind naturally desires to exist forever.” Thus it is only in loving communion with his creator that man can find the ultimate happiness for which he was created. And so it follows that every argument for the existence of God is an argument against the wisdom of Buddha’s project—including, of course, the compelling cumulative case presented in Part II. Against this background evidence and the considerations of the previous three chapters a seeker of God has forceful a priori grounds for disregarding Buddhism. 3.4 Hinduism In addition to the general considerations already discussed, there is a special consideration which further diminishes the probable truth of Hinduism. Hinduism and some strains of Buddhism affirm a doctrine of reincarnation. On this view when humans die they are reborn as other organisms whose fates are determined by the law of karma. The law of karma, relevantly, is a law of moral causation: All our



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experiences in this life are determined by our actions in a previous life. The problem, as we shall now see, is that the law of karma cannot give a coherent of moral agency. Consider the example of a man hiding in a park at night contemplating murder. On a sudden impulse he decides to go home and rethink his decision—but just then a lone woman walks into view. His bloodlust is suddenly rekindled. For a moment he is torn between two conflicting impulses. On the karmic view this scenario presents an insoluble paradox. For if the man attacks the woman, she is paying the price for past wrongdoing, and in that case the man has no choice but to murder her: He is merely a cog in the karmic machine that manufactures her fate. If, on the other hand, the woman does not deserve to be murdered (perhaps because her previous life was free from wrongdoing) then the law of karma will prevent her from being murdered. And in that case the man will be unable to attack her. There are further problems with the doctrine of reincarnation but the one I have mentioned will suffice. A moral system which either denies moral responsibility to moral agents or in which the victims of wrongdoing are themselves to blame for the wrong done against them is incoherent and so cannot be rationally affirmed. 4. Conclusion It has been my concern to show that general reflection on the nature of God and the condition of man give us a priori grounds for expecting both an Incarnation and a Trinity and we have now seen that these key features of Christian doctrine are absent from every other world religion. In view of these two general considerations, and the various special considerations discussed after them, I conclude that Christianity has a greater a priori probability than any other world religion. This conclusion can now be set against my background claim that, given the importance of divine hiddenness to human moral freedom, God has good reason for allowing us to form false conceptions of him and good reason for providing a revelation by means of which we can form a correct one. The logic of this solution to religious pluralism depended on the ability of a conscientious inquirer to determine the true revelation from the false on a priori and evidential grounds. So long as the special



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objections to Christian doctrine are defeasible (and that they are is the claim of the next three chapters) I suggest that we have such a priori grounds for Christianity. The evidential grounds which complete the solution to religious pluralism will, as already noted, be presented in Part IV.



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24 Scientific Objections

The conclusion of the previous chapter was that, on general moral and theological reflection, Christianity has greater a prioricoherence than any other world religion—a conclusion that was strengthened by specific objections to each of its rivals. It only remains now to discuss the specific objections pressed against Christianity and determine what force they have against the conclusion of the three previous chapters. As noted in the Introduction, the usual objections to Christianity fall into three categories. The first category of objections are general to all religions and arise from religious pluralism. The second category of objections suggest that Christianity is antiscientific. And the third category of objections suggest that Christianity is morally unconscionable. In this chapter I will discuss the scientific objections and in the two following chapters the moral objections. The claim that Christianity is in conflict with science has two main features. Its proponent claims that the Church is and always has been a dead hand on scientific progress and he claims that a Christian is required to believe in all sorts of mythological nonsense that has been scientifically falsified. We shall now see that the first of these claims is historically inaccurate and that the second is misconceived. Both are completely without warrant. 1. The Conflict Thesis The belief that Christianity has been the historic enemy of science is sometimes called, “the conflict thesis.” Its tropes are familiar enough. Hundreds of years ago scientists began to make discoveries that conflicted with Christian doctrine. A sclerotic Church demanded they recant. Those who refused to do so were burnt at the stake. The conflict thesis is so widespread and entrenched that it may surprise many to learn that it has no basis whatsoever in historical fact. As Alvin Plantinga explains,



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Modern Western empirical science originated and flourished in the bosom of Christian theism and nowhere else. Some have found this anomalous. Bertrand Russell, for example, thought of the Christian church as repressing and inhibiting the growth of science. He was therefore disappointed to note that science did not emerge in China, even though, as he said, the spread of scientific knowledge there encountered no such obstacles as he thought the Church put in its way in Europe. But the fact is, it was Christian Europe that fostered, promoted, and nourished modern science. It arose nowhere else.

All of the great names of early Western science, moreover, were serious believers in God: Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Boyle, and many others. C. F. Von Weizacker goes so far as to say, “In this sense, I call modern science a legacy of Christianity.” And throughout its development, too, Christian theists figure prominently—from the discovery of genetics by an Augustinian friar to the discovery of the Big Bang by a Roman Catholic priest. The conflict thesis is false. Neither Christianity nor the Church retarded the development of science. Did they, on the contrary, contribute to the origin and development of a scientific worldview? “As I try to discern its origin,” writes Melvin Calvin, thinking of the same, “I seem to find it in a basic notion discovered 2,000 or 3000 years ago, and enunciated first in the Western world by the ancient Hebrews: namely that the universe is governed by a single God and is not the product of the whims of many gods.” Polytheism, Melvin suggests, retarded the development of a scientific worldview because it primed us to view the universe as unpredictable. After all, if the governance of nature is divided up among many independent and capricious deities then nature itself is capricious and there is no motivation to look for unifying principles. Monotheism, on the other hand, inspires just the opposite expectation: That all creation conforms to a cohesive design conceived by a single rational creator. 2. Scientifically Falsifiable Claims The historical relationship between the Church and science is, however, something of an aside. The main point the skeptic wants to make when he says that Christianity is antiscientific is that it makes claims which have been scientifically falsified. Genesis, for instance, tells us that the world and its biota were created in six days

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when we know that our planet and the life on it developed into its present form over billions of years. Nor was the world created in 4,000 BC—the conclusion you reach if you take literally the combined ages of people in the biblical genealogy back to Adam. Nor was there a worldwide flood in 3,000 BC. And so on. If the claim The Bible is true is understood to mean Every sentence in the Bible, taken literally, is factual then very obviously Christianity makes claims that have been scientifically falsified. Modern Christian "fundamentalists" nevertheless insist that the Bible is literally true; that is, they think that believing that the Bible is true entails believing that each sentence of the Bible is a literal statement of fact: There were literally two individuals called Adam and Eve whom God placed in a literal Garden of Eden in 4,000 BC—and so forth. Unfortunately, this view has come to characterise Christianity in the minds of many skeptics and explains the objection under discussion: Christians believe absurdities on faith that have no basis in our current best understanding of science and history. What these skeptics may not know is that the fundamentalist view is not the traditional view of the Church but in fact a heresy which the Church rejects. Indeed, some of the earliest and most influential Christian theologians mocked the idea of taking Genesis literally. At the beginning of the third century, Origen wrote of the Garden of Eden, Who is so silly as to believe that God, after the manner of a farmer “planted a paradise eastward in Eden” and set in it a visible and palpable “tree of life” of such a sort that anyone who tasted its fruit with his bodily teeth would gain life? And when God is said to "walk in the paradise in the cool of the day" and Adam to hide himself behind a tree, I do not think that anyone will doubt that these are metaphorical expressions which indicate certain mysteries by means of a story which does not correspond to actual events.

The fact that parts of the Bible contain "metaphorical expressions" does not, of course, mean that those parts are false—any more than the fictionality of Pierre Bezukhov entails that what War and Peace tells us about the Nepoleonic invasion or the human condition is false. And nor does it mean that it does not include parts which should be taken literally. What is required, then, is a coherent method of interpretation.

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2.1 Genres To coherently interpret the Bible one must begin by recognising that it is a big book gradually compiled from smaller books belonging to different genres. Of these genres Swinburne offers the following taxonomy.

History In a newspaper report of a political coup or a larger work of history each sentence is understood to be literally true or false: It will be true if it describes accurately what really happened and it will be false if it does not. It should be noted, however, that ancient historians did not have the same standards of accuracy as modern historians and so ancient works of history need to be judged by the standards the writer was seeking to satisfy: Accurate in their main historical claims with minor discrepancies of detail. The Bible contains some works of history, so understood, which we can assess for overall truth: Kings, St Mark’s Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles all belong to this genre. Historical Fable In addition to works of history the Bible contains what Swinburne calls, “historical fables.” He explains this genre by comparison to modern television “docudramas.” A docudrama tells us the main events in the life of a historical figure but is filled out with fictional details. The fictional details, importantly, are not claimed by the author to have occurred but are included to help illustrate general historical truths. Thus while Queen Elizabeth may not have said many of the words attributed to her in a docudrama about her it may nevertheless be a reliable portrait of her life. The Bible, says Swinburne, contains many books belonging to this genre, such as Judges and the first and second book of Samuel. Moral Fables Thirdly are what Swinburne calls “moral fables”: Fictional stories with a moral message. Swinburne suggests that the book of Jonah is such moral fable. In it, Jonah is called by God to preach in Nineveh but disobeys and attempts to escape by sea. During a storm he is thrown overboard and swallowed by a whale—only to be



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saved and finally succeed in his mission. On this view Jonah is a fictional story whose purpose is to en the Jews to take their religious message to the Gentiles. “If we are to assess such a book as true,” Swinburne writes, “all we can mean by saying that the book is true is that its moral message is a true one.” In a like case Hamlet is "true" if it is true that, say, crippling indecision can be the undoing of a sensitive intellectual thrust into circumstances that require fierce resolve.

Metaphysical Fable The Bible may also contain some “metaphysical fables.” These, according to Swinburne, are “fictional stories telling us something very important about the human condition.” Plato's Allegory of the Cave is a paradigmatic example of a metaphysical fable. And the opening chapters of the book of Genesis may also be like this; that is, Genesis may be a sort of prose poem which tells us that all things were created by and depend on God by means of a story in which he creates this on the first day, that on the second day, and so forth. A metaphysical fable will be true if the story, read metaphorically, tells us something true about the human condition. If Genesis is a metaphysical fable it will be a true metaphysical fable if it is true that all things were created by and depend on God. Other Genres The Bible, finally, also contains hymns, personal letters, moral homilies, theological dialogues and books of still more genres. It follows from all this that the claim The Bible is true is to be understood as the claim that each book of the Bible is true by the criteria of its own genre; that is, each sentence of a work of history is factual within the limits of accuracy observed by its ancient author; that each moral fable communicates a true moral message; that each metaphysical fable tells us something true about the condition of man—and so on. Nevertheless, major difficulties remain. One is that we do not know the genre of some books and so do not know by which criteria they are to be judged true. Another is that there remain ages in the Bible that are inconsistent with each other. A third and final difficulty is that there remain at least some ages inconsistent with the results of modern science, history and



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Christian doctrine. The early Christian theologians, the Church Fathers, as they are called, were well aware of all these difficulties— the only difference being that the science with which parts of the Bible seemed in conflict was Greek cosmology. In the next two chapters I will set out the principle of interpretation they used to settle such difficulties and then argue for its coherence both in their time and in ours. 2.2 Principle of Interpretation The principle the Church Fathers used to interpret difficult ages in the Old Testament was the same principle they used to determine which books were to form part of the New Testament; namely, a prior understanding of Christian doctrine derived from the revelation of God through Jesus which had become Church orthodoxy before most of the New Testament was compiled and given its canonical status.103 That a modern inquirer can establish the existence of God and the resurrection of Jesus without appealing in any way to the infallibility or the authority of the Bible is a point to which we shall return; and in the next chapter the principle of interpretation used by the Church from its very foundation will be set out in detail and will be shown to completely resolve the alleged conflict between the Old Testament and widely held moral and scientific beliefs. For the time being let us consider just a few points. It is a logical consequence of the omniscience of God that God knows all the truths of science and history. And the Fathers believed that the Church, the intended audience of the Bible, knew most of the truths of Christian doctrine and many truths of science. From all this the Fathers concluded: If some biblical age understood in its most natural and literal sense is inconsistent with Christian doctrine, science or history, it should be interpreted it in a way consistent with Christian doctrine, science and history—even if, on some occasions, that interpretation is not the most obvious or 103 In his book The Canon of the New

Testament, Bruce Metzger identifies three criteria by means of which a book was entered into the canon of the New Testament: Conformity with basic Christian tradition, apostolicity (that is, having been written by an Apostle or an author in close with an Apostle) and widespread acceptance by the Church at large. And all three criteria apply again to the interpretation of each book and age in the canon.



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natural one.104 Thus, “Augustine’s basic rule,” notes Swinburne, “was the same as that of Origen and Gregory. 'We must show,' he said, 'the way to find out whether a phrase is literal or figurative. And the way is certainly as follows: Whatever there is in the word of God that cannot, when taken literally, be referred either to purity of life or soundness of doctrine, you may set down as metaphorical.'” It needs to be stressed that Augustine, Origen and Gregory were not minor theologians: The influence of each on early Christian doctrine was formative and profound. Gregory, for instance, was one of the leading bishops at the Council of Constantinople which produced the Nicene Creed—the formal statement of Christian belief in wide use today. This states that, "God spoke by the prophets," meaning, inspired the Old Testament. And Gregory, and so the Church, understood this to amount to a belief that God had given the Church both a Bible and a method of interpreting it: The so-called, "Patristic Method" which is the subject of the next chapter. And there is, as we shall soon see, no justification for accepting the authority of the Bible without accepting the authority of the Church to so interpret it. 2.2 Justification of the Principle It is important here to understand that while the Church believe God is the ultimate author of the Bible this “doctrine of inspiration” needs to be spelled out with care. In contrast with the Islamic view that Muhammad took direct verbatim dictation from Allah, the Church believes God inspired certain human authors to write certain texts in their own style and from their own limited worldview, or else inspired them to compile those texts from various sources, but in such a way that God's message to humanity was successfully mediated through them. The Bible, as the Second Vatican Council put it, is "the words of God in the words of men." Understood in this way, the Christian doctrine of inspiration has an important entailment: Precisely because the 104 This principle of interpretation has an interesting and relevant implication. It implies

that the human authors of the Bible may have written ages which they understood in one way but which God intended to be taken in another way; that is, the human authors of the Bible did not always know how their texts were to be understood.



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Bible is a human production and also a divine revelation (“The Bible,” affirmed Pope Gregory the Great, “is God’s letter to his creature”) it needs to be interpreted in the light of God’s beliefs and not those of the human authors—and also in light of the beliefs of the audience for which it was intended, that is, the whole human race, and not merely those who first read it. And “the whole human race” must further be understood as the human race of future as well as past centuries. On the operating assumption that God is the ultimate author of the Bible and all of humanity its intended audience, the principle of interpretation adopted by the Church is the only rational one. “It is a basic precept of interpreting texts,” notes Swinburne, “that you interpret them in a way consistent with the author’s known beliefs and the beliefs which he believes that his audience hold.” If I write that “John is sharp,” and I know as well as my reader than John does not have a pointed edge I must be understood to be saying something else—that John is quick witted. And if I write that "Colonel Winston is a dinosaur" and know as well as my reader that Colonel Winston is not a prehistoric reptile I must be understood to be saying something else—that Colonel Winston is old or out of touch with the modern world. And so, generally, if someone produces a sentence which neither he nor his hearers believe if understood in a literal sense that sentence must be understood metaphorically. 2.3 Relevance of the Principle to Modern Science Whether by setting up natural processes or by a more direct intervention into the conscious life of certain authors, compilers and copyists, it is plausible to suppose that God inspired the writing and assembly of a book that communicates deep and important truths even if some parts of that book, taken literally, are scientifically and historically false. And while some of the Fathers disagreed about whether the Bible or the Greeks provided the best guide to science and so to what God believed, it was generally regarded as permissible to view Greek science as the best guide to God’s beliefs. But, as Swinburne notes, “they were not committed to the view that there was no more science to be discovered. And so if we are to interpret the Bible by their method we must interpret it in a way compatible with modern science and history.”



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Plausibly, then, the Genesis of creation teaches us truthfully that the universe was created by and depends upon God even while giving a false picture of the method and timescale— the correct method and timescale being something a future and more intellectually and scientifically sophisticated generation can discover while retaining the deeper metaphysical truth. And so Adam and Eve may symbolise the first human individuals or communities with free will and moral awareness. Original Sin and the Fall of Man, on this view, would be the subsequent moment at which conscious wrongdoing began to emerge and humanity to incur a moral debt to God. And as in the case of the creation narrative, future generations can discover the exact processes by which life developed (evolutionary descent from protocells in the chemical soup of the early Earth, say, rather than the creation of adult humans from clay) while again retaining the deeper metaphysical truth—and so again if this scientific paradigm is, like the Greek cosmology of the Church Fathers, superseded by future scientific discoveries. And similarly: Many stories contain important moral messages even if they have no basis in history. Thus while Israel may not really have worshipped a Golden Calf and been punished by Moses, everyone who hears the story can understand that no material object should be worshipped—and so generally. “I suggest,” concludes Swinburne, “that it is plausible to suppose that God inspired the writing of the Bible to convey both the very limited message comprehensible at the time a age was written and the deeper message comprehensible later.” 3. Criteria of Justification outside the Church Clearly, the principle of interpretation just outlined depends on the prior truth of at least two features of Christian doctrine; namely, that there is a God who created and sustains the universe and that God became incarnate in Jesus whose teachings are therefore from God. There is, of course, no sense in using the Bible as the evidential basis for these Christian doctrines because the prior truth of these doctrines was the principle used in compiling and interpreting the Bible. However, as already noted, basic Christian doctrine was derived not from the Bible but from the revelation of



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God through Jesus preserved by the Apostolic Church he established. It is worth noting that a modern inquirer, as I have already suggested, can establish both claims without presupposing the authority of the Bible; indeed, the existence of God can be established without appealing to the Bible at all: The nine lines of evidence presented in Part II concluded to the existence of God on purely philosophical and scientific grounds. And the resurrection of Jesus, already probable on a priori grounds, can, as we shall see in Part IV, be established using accepted criteria of historical authenticity without presupposing the infallibility or authority of the New Testament. Once these two conclusions are independently established (i.e., the existence of God and the resurrection of Jesus) the principle of interpretation just defended follows by tautology and so the Bible can be accepted as true within the limits set out above. There are two critical points to note. The first is that a Christian is not, as the skeptic claims, committed to accepting scientific falsehoods. The second is that he is not committed to accepting the Bible on faith where “faith” is understood to mean a willingness to believe despite a lack of evidence and argument. This is something worth making explicit. Consider, then, the following chain of a priori and evidential arguments on the basis of which a Christian may finally affirm the truth of the Bible, P1 On the evidence of natural theology it is probable that there is a God. (The nine lines of evidence presented in Part II). P2 Given human sin and suffering, it is probable that, if there is a God, God, being morally perfect, will become incarnate. (The a priori argument for the Incarnation presented in Chapter 21.) P3 There is good historical evidence for the resurrection and self-proclaimed deity of Jesus. (Evidence that in no way presupposes the authority or infallibility of the New Testament—as we shall see in Part IV.) P4 It is not plausible that a morally perfect God would allow evidence of the strength of the evidence



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for the resurrection of Jesus if Jesus were not God Incarnate. (Because a morally perfect being would not deceive.) P5 Jesus was very probably God Incarnate. (From P2 to P4.) P6 Therefore, basic Christian doctrine can be established on independent criteria. (From P1 to P5.) P7 Therefore, the principle of interpretation used by the Church to resolve inconsistencies in the Bible is justified. (Since it is based on the prior truth of basic Christian doctrine.) C Therefore, the Bible is probably true. (That is, each book of the Bible is probably true by the criteria of its own genre.)

This conclusion is strengthened by a final consideration that figured prominently in Chapter 21. There it was noted that, since the human life of God Incarnate would be of limited duration, he would need to found a worldwide institution to record, interpret and promulgate his life and teachings: the Church. This provides further grounds for trusting the authority of the Church Jesus established in interpreting the Bible. For if there is a God and Jesus were God Incarnate, as the evidence suggests, it is very plausible to suppose that God would providentially guide the history of the Church Jesus founded to ensure that his teachings are correctly interpreted and made widely available. And, indeed, the Gospels contain various sayings implying that Jesus or the Holy Spirit would continue to guide the Church after his departure. The final words of Jesus in Matthew are, “I am with you always to the end of the age.” 4. Miracles The view that a Christian is required to accept on faith claims that are in conflict with science is, as we have seen, false. Like Allan Sandage, who was both a Christian and one of the most influential astronomers of the 20th century, one can coherently accept both the evidence of physical cosmology about the age and timescale of the universe and the deeper metaphysical truths imparted by the creation in Genesis. Like the geneticist Francis Collins,



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who is both a Christian and the former leader of the Human Genome Project, one can coherently accept both biological evolution and the deeper metaphysical truths imparted by the Biblical story of Adam and Eve—and so forth.105 Nevertheless, after we have successfully reconciled the contents of the Old Testament with science and history the skeptic has a further objection: The Bible contains s of miracles and a Christian iscommitted to taking many of these literally; indeed, Christianity stands or falls on the truth of the claim that Jesus rose miraculously from the dead—a point acknowledged by the very first Christians. Paul writes, “And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain.” The question arises: Is it demonstrably absurd and irrational, on a modern scientific worldview, to believe in miracles? Let us begin by defining a miracle. A miracle is A claimed event which, if it occurred, would constitute a violation of the laws nature. By this definition it is not certain that all of the extraordinary claims in the New Testament are miracles. In Where the Conflict Really Lies, for example, Plantigna includes a Quantum Mechanical of the transformation of water into wine—provided by the atheistic but rather sporting physicist Bradley Monton. GRW, for what it is worth, refers to the Ghirard-RiminiWeber approach—one of a set of collapse theories in quantum mechanics. Morton says, The wave function for each particle is spread throughout an unbounded region of the universe at every time except perhaps momentary instants of time. This means that for each particle there is at most a finite region where it couldn’t be localised by a GRW hit. Some, probably even most, particles could be localised anywhere. So for changing water into wine, it’s not a big deal— you’ve got a bunch of individual particles that are composing the water, and they can all have GRW hits such that their positions are redistributed to the locations that would be appropriate for them to compose wine.

105 Like British philosopher Antony Flew, Allan Sandage and Francis Collins both came to reject atheism on the basis of the view that the integrated complexity of the physical world is best explained by intelligent agency. Thus not only were they able to read the Bible in a way that is consistent with the findings of modern science, their conversion to theism was based on the findings of modern science.



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Monton's final assessment is that, "all of the other miracles are unproblematically compatible with quantum mechanics." Morton helps to show that even the most extraordinary claims in the New Testament are not in principle beyond the purview of science but such speculations are, in the end, beside the point. And this is because the Christian claim is not that the miracles recorded in the New Testament are Quantum anomalies—even ones deliberately caused by Jesus. Christians claim that the miracles of Jesus, and in particular the resurrection of Jesus, did violate the laws of nature. And since violating the laws of nature is something which only God could do, the resurrection constitutes a divine signature on the life and teachings of Jesus. I will now briefly discuss three standard objections to the belief in miracles and show that each one is ultimately without warrant. 4.1 The Objection from Scientism The first objection holds that the scientific method is the only valid source of knowledge about the world. Its proponent claims: If something cannot be empirically measured and quantified, or proven by means of a repeatable experiment, then it cannot be rationally affirmed. And since miracle claims, by definition, lie beyond the scope of the scientific method they cannot be affirmed either. The problem with this view, dubbed “scientism” by its critics, is that it is self-referentially incoherent. Consider: The claim Science is the only valid source of true beliefs about the world is a metascientific claim—a belief about the world that cannot itself be proved by experiment. To demonstrate its validity one would therefore need to produce a philosophical proof—but since this proof would not be the result of an empirical inquiry, it would, if valid, disqualify itself. Scientism fails its own test for truth. Recently, scientism has enjoyed an unselfconscious resurgence in the writing of the New Atheists but it originates in an obsolete mid-twentieth century movement in Western philosophy called Logical Positivism. Logical Positivism held that the only meaningful statements were those capable of being verified through sense experience or (as in pure logic and mathematics) those that are true by tautology. All other claims were subject to the “verification



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principle” championed by A. J. Ayer in his 1936 book, Language, Truth and Logic. God, interestingly, was excluded from the conversation: Ayer said that it was just as absurd to be an atheist as to be a theist. The statements, “God exists” and “God does not exist” simply had no meaning. By 1945 Logical Positivism has been abandoned by its own founders. The first problem with the verifiability criterion was that it forbade universal statements necessary to formulate a theoretical framework for scientific inquiry. The second problem was the fatal one already noted: The verifiability criterion itself is not verifiable. As the mathematician David Berlinski puts it, "All such arguments, when self-applied, self-destruct." 4.2 The Objection from Hume A second influential objection against the belief in miracles goes back to Hume. Hume claimed that the inductive confirmation of natural law in everyday experience is so overwhelming that no eyewitness report of a violation of natural law could ever outweigh it. For instance: The fact that heavy objects are always and everywhere observed to fall to the Earth is overwhelming background evidence against a report that, say, a marble bust of Mozart had levitated into the air. Whether or not this miracle really occurred, an ordinary subject is rationally compelled to reject it on the basis of his everyday experience of gravity. Contemporary philosophers of religion identify two flaws in Hume's argument, both of which are discussed by Swinburne in The Existence of God. Swinburne first notes that, even granting Hume’s claim that the only relevant background evidence is our experience of the laws of nature, there is no reason to suppose that this evidence always counts decisively against the report. “Maybe,” Swinburne writes, “so many careful witnesses report very clearly what happened that their evidence can outweigh the evidence from the normal operation of laws of nature.” In of this point one may appeal to the two principles of rationality discussed in Chapter 18: The Principle of Credulity and the Principle of Testimony—without allowing which we quickly find ourselves in a "skeptical bog."106 106 Recall: The Principle of Credulity states: If to a subject S it seems, in an epistemic sense, that x is present then, in the absence of special considerations, probably x is



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“But Hume’s main mistake,” continues Swinburne, “was his assumption that in such cases our knowledge of what are the laws of nature is our only relevant background evidence.” Equally relevant to our assessment of a purported miracle is any background evidence for the existence of God—such as the nine lines of evidence presented in Part II. And if on the total background evidence it is probable that there is a God then it is probable that there exists a being with the power to violate the laws of nature. Evidence that there is a God is therefore evidence that laws of nature can be violated—which will have particular relevance in cases where the event is of a kind that God would have reason to bring about. What reasons might God have to occasionally bring about an event that violates laws whose regular operation he usually ensures? Swinburne suggests that there are reasons of two kinds. The first is to answer human prayer. “A world in which everything occurred in accordance with natural laws,” he notes, “would not be a world in which God had any living interaction with human beings.” The second kind of reason why God might violate natural law is, "just occasionally to put his signature on the work or teaching of some prophet in order to show that that work or teaching was God’s work or teaching." An Incarnation authenticated by a divine miracle has, as we saw in Chapter 21, a certain a priori probability given the moral perfection of God and the obvious general fact of human sin and present. Thus if Mr Green has the experience of it seeming to him that there is a German shepherd on his lawn then that is good evidence for his believing that there is a German shepherd on his lawn. "The principle of Credulity," Swinburne asserts, "is a fundamental principle of rationality and unless we allow it to have considerable force, we quickly find ourselves in a skeptical bog in which we can hardly know anything." In ordinary experience we also use a wider principle: Other things being equal, we believe that what others tell us is probably true. “Most of our beliefs about the world,” observes Swinburne, “are based on what others claim to have perceived—beliefs about geography and history and science and everything else beyond immediate experience.” Swinburne argues that such beliefs are justified even when (as per usual) we do not personally vet witnesses for their reliability. Thus the Principle of Testimony: The experiences of others, in the absence of special considerations, are probably as they report them. Given these two principles of rationality, so, contra Hume, receiving detailed reports of a miracle from several reliable sources may outweigh the inductive evidence of natural law from everyday experience—even without including the evidence of natural theology in our total background evidence.



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suffering. And when this a priori probability is combined with the evidence for the existence of God from natural theology, a multiply and independently attested miracle of the right kind under the right circumstances may outweigh the inductive evidence that, when natural laws operate in the usual way, such things do not occur. Thus on the total relevant background evidence Hume’s objection fails to establish that a miracle is always unworthy of credit.

4.3 The Objection from the Laws of Conservation The third and final objection to miracles claims that special divine action in the world would violate the laws of physics. Take Plantinga’s example of a miracle: God creating ex nihilo an adult horse in the middle of Times Square. During such an event the laws of conservation of energy, momentum, and so forth, would all be violated. Physics, meanwhile, tells us that this is impossible. The objector therefore concludes miracles are impossible. However, the laws of conservation in fact apply to systems that are causally closed—closed to causal influence from without. But it is no part of standard physics that the universe is causally closed and whether or not it is depends on whether or not God exists. For consider: If God does exist then there exists an omnipotent being who can act upon the universe from without. Evidence for the existence of God is therefore, equally, evidence against the causal closure of the universe. And likewise: any system in which a miracle occurs is, ipso facto, not constrained by the various conservation laws. One cannot reject a miracle on the assumption that God does not exist and therefore the universe is causally closed; indeed, the reported miracle itself is evidence against the presupposition on the basis of which the skeptic rejects it. 5. Conclusion We have seen that both features of the claim that Christianity is in conflict with science are without warrant. The conflict thesis was shown to be false: Western empirical science emerged in Christian Europe and nowhere else and has been assisted throughout its development by prominent Christian theists. A Christian, moreover, is not required to accept on faith claims that are in conflict with science; per contra, much of the alleged conflict only



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arises from taking every sentence of the Bible literally—an approach promoted by modern fundamentalists but rejected by the early Church Fathers. A Christian can, and should, accept the rational and nuanced interpretation of scripture traditionally provided by the Church Jesus founded. And while a Christian is committed to the belief that Jesus rose miraculously from the dead, this is something than can be rationally assessed on the available evidence of natural theology and history: Claimed grounds for rejecting reports of miracles out of hand were shown to be unfounded.



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25 Violence In The Old Testament The moral perfection of God is integral to classical theism. In Chapter 4, I noted Swinburne’s suggestion that we understand this to entail that, “God performs only morally best actions of many kinds and no bad ones.” The Old Testament, meanwhile, contains many ages in which God commands or condones violence. For example: In the First Book of Samuel, God commands Saul to smite the Amalekites, adding, “Slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.” A verse in Psalm 137 appears to bestow a bleson one who seizes a Babylonian child and dashes it against a rock. And in the twentieth chapter of Deuteronomy, God orders the Israelites to conquer Canaan—the sixteenth verse concluding: “Thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth.” And so on, bloodthirstily, in several other ages. Drawing attention to both the claimed moral perfection of God and the violence in the Old Testament is a popular tactic among modern critics of the Christian faith. Typically, the objection goes something like this: "On the one hand, Christians believe that God Incarnate commanded us to love our enemies; on the other hand, Christians believe in a divinely inspired book in which God commands Israel to slaughter her enemies." The skeptic asserts that this is a moral paradox and the only way to resolve it is to conclude that either God is not all loving or that the Bible was not inspired by God. Christianity, he suggests, entails contradictions and so should be dismissed out of hand. 1. The General Principle of Interpretation The problem is not a new one and nor are skeptics the only ones to notice it. In fact, it was grappled with and pondered by some of the earliest Christian theologians. In the second century, two schools of thought went so far as to suggest that the Old Testament should be jettisoned completely. The Gnostics and Marcionites both claimed that Jesus was the revelation of the true God and the Old Testament was the revelation of a separate and morally inferior deity. However, this view was rejected as heresy by the

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Church which, led by Irenaeus, reasserted the orthodoxy of the Old Testament but insisted that it be read through the prism of the New Testament. Both books, the Church said, must be read together as the common witness to the true God.107 Having adopted this guiding principle of interpretation three difficulties remain. The first is show what justification there is for it; the second is to explain exactly how violent ages in the Old Testament can be understood in light of the moral teachings of the New Testament; and the third is to explain why those violent ages are in the Old Testament at all. Such is the basic structure of this chapter—a continuation of Swinburne’s discussion of the Patristic Method touched on in the previous chapter. 1.1 The Truth Conditions of Sentences The meaning of a sentence, notes Swinburne, is determined not merely by the dictionary meanings of the words it contains but also its literary, social and cultural context. By literary context he simply means the work of which the sentence forms a part; by social context the human writer and his intended reader; and by cultural context the shared beliefs of the culture in which the writer and reader live. By way of illustrating all these points, consider the single sentence, Larry is an elephant. To understand this sentence we will first need to know its cultural context because this will tell us the literary genres available to its author—perhaps zoo guide, children’sfiction and personal letter; and when we know that, we will then need to know its literary context—perhaps that it indeed occurs in a zoo guide; and when we know that we will 107 To this basic principle of interpretation

the influential theologian Origen of Alexander added an important refinement: We must, he said, read the whole Bible from the perspective of the last book of the Bible. And there, interestingly, we find a scene that allegorises and narrowly specifies the principle of interpretation which the Church was adopting: In Revelation a scroll sealed with seven seals descends from heaven. No one is able to open until a lamb appears which, “stands as though slain.” Taking the scroll to represent the Bible, the seven seals the difficulty of interpreting it, and the image of the wounded lamb who alone can unlock it Jesus Christ, the Church concluded that the Old Testament should be read not merely through the prism of the New Testament in general but through the prism of Christ crucified in particular; in other words, our guiding principle for interpreting the Old Testament is, according to Church orthodoxy, an image of God as a figure of supreme meekness and mercy.



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finally need to know its social context—perhaps that it was written for the London Zoo of 1950. Only when all three contexts are known will the “truth conditions” of the sentence be known. And then the sentence will be true if it is true that there was an elephant called Larry in London Zoo in 1950 and false if it is false. Sometimes, and relevantly to my purposes, the truth conditions of the sentence can make it clear that its author intended it to be understood metaphorically. Thus if the sentence Larry is an elephant occurs in a personal letter from a mother about her son, it cannot possibly be understood literally if both the writer and the reader know that Larry is human. It will, rather, be ascribing to Larry some quality possessed by elephants (being large, say, or having a prodigious memory) and so must, in this context, be understood metaphorically. And if the sentence Larry is an elephant occurs in a work of children's fiction it will be neither true nor false—though if the story has a moral or metaphysical message the whole story will be true if its moral or metaphysical message is true and false if it is false. 1.2 The Truth Conditions of Biblical Sentences The relevance of all this to the Bible can now be shown. As pointed out in the previous chapter, the Bible is a big book slowly put together from smaller books of many different literary, social and cultural contexts. These smaller books, moreover, were put together from still smaller units of text of many different contexts themselves put together from still smaller strands of text of yet other contexts. Strands, units and books were then put together by compilers with the aid of connecting verses into the books of the Hebrew Bible which was itself, finally, incorporated into the Christian Bible as the Old Testament. Sewing texts together in this way gives them a new literary, social and cultural context: That of the compiler. “The most familiar modern secular example of this,” says Swinburne, “is where one author puts a number of his previously published papers together into one volume and adds a preface explaining that while he republishes the papers in the form in which they were originally published he now wishes some of them to be understood with certain qualifications.” And when the papers are placed in thiscontext the author is not expressing the views contained in



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the papers so much as quoting them. The meaning of the whole book will then be whatever the author says it is in the preface with the qualifications he makes therein. There are already examples in the Old Testament of additional text changing the whole meaning of a whole text in this way. Thus to the end of Ecclesiastes are annexed verses purporting to summarise its message but which actually give to it a radically new meaning: a message of existential resignation (“All is vanity!”) becomes an exhortation to repose our hopes in God who alone “endures forever.” Similar examples are found in Daniel and Genesis. From all this it follows that each sentence in the Bible has many different possible meanings according to the many different literary, social and cultural contexts of that sentence at each stage of its inscription. The question arises: What is the context by means of which Christians should understand a sentence of the Bible? It was noted earlier that the social context of a sentence is just the writer and intended reader. The claim of the Church is that, “The Bible is God’s letter to his creature,” where this is understood to mean that God inspired human writers and compilers to write and compile texts in order to communicate his message to humanity. This, then, is the exotic social context of the Bible. The literary context is the compilation of all the books of the Old and New Testaments into Holy Scripture. And the cultural context is that of the Church of the first centuriess of Christianity which put the Bible together by the criteria of the revelation it claimed to have received from God Incarnate. So: While the original author of, say, Isaiah 77 is of considerable historical interest, it is not what that sentence means in that context that the Church purports to be revealed truth. Rather, the revealed truth is whatever meaning the sentence has if the Bible has the unique social, literary and cultural contexts the Church claims and which I have just set out. The remainder of this chapter considers the meaning violent sentences and ages in the Old Testament have under these unique truth conditions which are the truth conditions of Christian orthodoxy. We shall see that when the Bible is read the way the Church that compiled and presented it to the world authorised, the skeptic's moral objections to the Old Testament lose all force.



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2. Application of the Principle A sentence should always be understood in the most natural and literal sense possible given its social context: It will be literal if its author and reader know it to be true and metaphorical if, understood literally, they know it to be false. However, it follows from the social context of a biblical sentence as we are now understanding it that this determination is relative not to the beliefs of its original human author and his contemporaneous human readers but to the beliefs of God which the Church claims were revealed by Jesus and the beliefs of human readers of the Bible in every age and place; that is, it will be literal if it is consistent with God's moral beliefs as revealed in Christian doctrine and as understood by the Church and false if it is in conflict with the same. The moral beliefs of the Christian God include, ex hypothesi, the moral beliefs of the Sermon on the Mount. And so it follows that if a sentence taken literally contradicts the Sermon on the Mount or Christian doctrine more generally we must understand it in some other sense. The Church Fathers, as I say, were well aware that there are ages in the Old Testament that contradict Christian doctrine. And they claimed that these ages must be interpreted in a way consistent with that doctrine even if that interpretation is less natural. Psalm 137:9, as I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, pronounces a blessing on those who smash against a rock the children of the Babylonians. This is in clear conflict with the command of Jesus to “Love your enemies” and so stands in the same relation to the Bible as the sentence Larry is an elephant to a mother’s letter about her son. And here, as there, the incompatibility is resolved by understanding the sentence as metaphorical. The interpretation could then be filled out as follows: Since the Jews had become enslaved in Babylon, Babylon represent evil. Jesus had compared relying on him to building one's house upon a rock. Psalm 137:9 was then interpreted by many of the Fathers as a blessing on those who take the offspring of evil, which are our evil inclinations, and destroy them through the power of Jesus Christ. Origen, applying the principle in a very general way, claimed that the whole Old Testament should be read as a symbolic prefiguration of the New Testament teaching of the Kingdom of



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God: The Kingdom of God was a New Jerusalem, the Church a New Israel and Jesus the new Moses who leads the people of a New Israel to the New Jerusalem in the way that Moses led the people of the Old Israel to the Promised Land. And so Old Testament mention of “Jerusalem” can be understood as referring to a heavenly Jerusalem even if it can also be understood as sometimes referring to an earthly city; and so Old Testament prophecies that mete out fates to earthly enemies of Israel, Origen continues, in fact prophecy that God will mete out different fates in the afterlife—a difference of moral relevance being that those sinners really would have the vices unfairly imputed to Tyre or Egypt in toto. Origen’s method of reading the Bible was adopted by Gregory and eventually Augustine and became a standard approach to the Bible. 3. Justification of the Principle We have seen that the method of interpretation adopted by the Church Fathers resolves the moral conflict between the Old and New Testaments. But with what justification can a modern Christian accept it? There are three important points to note. The first is that the need to interpret biblical sentences and ages in a metaphorical way existed before Origen, Gregory and Augustine developed the method of interpretation under discussion. For example, the biblical sentence, “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” would, if taken literally, be telling us that God is a pair of Greek alphabetic letters. The Song of Songs is an erotic love poem which, included in "God's letter to his creature," must be understood in a metaphorical way if it is to have any spiritual meaning at all. And if Moses were taken to be the author of the book of Deuteronomy a literal reading of its closing lines would imply that Moses were himself describing his own burial. “If Origen and others needed biblical authority for their method of interpretation,” adds Swinburne, “they would have to look no further than Saint Paul who explicitly denied that the Old Testament command, ‘You shall not muzzle an ox while it’s treading out the grain,’ should be interpreted literally. Its meaning was, Paul said, that congregations should provide adequate remuneration for church leaders.”



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The second point to note is that while the metaphorical way in which Origen, Gregory and Augustine interpreted some of the Old Testament may seem unnatural today they developed it in a cultural context where large scale allegory was very natural and so in no way ad hoc. The Jewish philosopher Philo, for instance, had already given allegorical readings of Genesis and other Old Testament books in the first century BC. Several commentators of classical Greek literature even interpreted Homer in allegorical ways: The Iliad and The Odyssey, which purported to tell the story of the Trojan War and of the return of Odysseus to Ithaca, were read as metaphors—as a treatise on medicine, by one of them. In doing so it was usually claimed that the text had a metaphorical meaning in addition to its literal reading. And while it is natural to think of a sentence written by a human author as always having some literal meaning, sometimes, with good reason, the Church Fathers denied that a biblical sentence had a literal meaning at all. In these cases it followed that the human author himself did not know the divine meaning of what he wrote. But this, too, can claim biblical authority: The author of the book of Daniel claims not to understand his own prophecies. "I heard," he writes, "but understood not." The last point to note was stressed in the previous chapter and should be stressed again here: Augustine, Origen and Gregory were not minor theologians. The influence of each on early Christian doctrine was formative and profound. Gregory, for instance, was one of the leading bishops at the Council of Constantinople which produced the Nicene Creed—the formal statement of Christian belief in wide use today. This states that, "God spoke by the prophets," meaning, inspired the Old Testament. And Gregory, and so the Church, understood this to amount to a belief that God had given the Church both a Bible and a method of interpreting it: The so-called, "Patristic Method" which has just been set out. There is no justification for accepting the authority of the Bible without also accepting the interpretative method which the Church gave the world together with the Bible after claiming for the latter its unique authority.



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3. The Purpose of Violent ages The Patristic Method of interpretation resolves the moral conflict between the Old and New Testaments and we have seen that its application to the Bible is rationally and historically justified. However, the argument just given would also seem to entail that God inspired ages of scripture that, at least at the time of their inscription, were approving a view of God and of human behaviour which we now recognise as immoral. Is it really plausible to think that God would inspire ages which, as then understood, suggest he is violent and vindictive? In short: The question arises why the Bible contains these ages in the first place, and in response to it, Swinburne suggests there are three things to say. 3.1 Inspiration and Context The first is that the doctrine of inspiration is not committed to any view about exactly who was inspired—whether the original author of a sentence or the one who compiled it into a larger unit and thereby gave it a new social, literary and cultural context and so also a new meaning. “The smallest unit,” says Swinburne, “may not have been inspired at all.” And even just read against the broad context of the whole Old Testament (that is, the Old Testament before it was combined with the New into the Christian Bible) these units of text have a different meaning. Consider: At the same time that Psalm 137 was written, Jeremiah wrote a letter to the Jewish exiles in Babylon telling them in God’s name, “to seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile and to pray to the Lord on its behalf for in its welfare you will find your welfare.” If both contemporaneous works were read as revealed truth by the Jewish exiles, Psalm 137 would not have the same message it would seem to have in isolation. 3.2 The Principle of Accommodation The Fathers also recognized a Principle of Accommodation. This is the idea that just as a human parent may need to use crude simplifications to help a child understand things that would otherwise be beyond them (such as during a talk on “the Birds and the Bees”) so God may have inspired ages that allowed an unsophisticated audience to obtain a rudimentary grasp of concepts



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otherwise beyond them in order that these concepts may be developed into a more adequate form later on. Novatian, thinking of the attribution to God of “bodily emotion,” said, “The prophet was speaking about God at that point in symbolic language fitted to that state of belief—not as God was but as the people were able to understand.” The Principle of Accommodation plausibly applies to moral instruction as well. “There are certain moral truths,” Swinburne suggests, “which a primitive people are too primitive to grasp or at any rate to continue to hold.” One possible example is as follows: Individuals suffer as a result of the sins of their parents. This is because God gives to parents responsibility for their children and wrongdoing by parents has negative consequences on the development of the children. However, an individual who suffers due to the sins of his parents is not guilty of the sins of his parents. “But maybe,” speculates Swinburne, “this subtle distinction between suffering in consequence of sin and being guilty of sin was beyond the capacities of the first recipients of Exodus chapter 20 with its attribution to God of the intention to punish children for the sins of their parents.” And later parts of the Old Testament make it very clear that children are not guilty for the sins of their parents. Jesus himself seems to have recognized that God was constrained in how strong or how clear a message he was able to get home to ancient Israel. For when Jesus prohibited all divorce with one possible exception and the Pharisees pointed out that Moses had allowed it, Jesus replied, “But Moses only wrote this commandment because of their hardness of heart.” But if primitive people can not readily learn sophisticated moral truths a final question arises: Why create primitive people? “It’s good for people to have the opportunity to work out things for themselves,” Swinburne says, considering this point, “even if they need and get quite a bit of help from God in due course.” He concludes by suggesting it is plausible to suppose God inspired the writing and compilation of the Bible even if some parts of the Bible introduce concepts which as originally understood have an inadequate morality that is capable of being understood in a more adequate way only later.



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3.3 The Unique Rights and Reasons of God The last point in response to the question of why there are violent ages in the Bible is, says Swinburne, to consider the possibility that some of them are to be taken literally and then try to make sense of this by deeper reflection on the unique rights and reasons of God to command certain actions which it would be immoral for anyone without such rights and reasons to command. Consider for a moment the supposition that God really did command the Israelites to kill the Canaanites. Because God is our holy creator and sustainer from moment to moment our life is a temporary gift from him which he can take back when he chooses. Swinburne reasons out the rest as follows: "If A has the right to take something back from B then A has the right to command someone else to take it back from B. God therefore has the right to command someone else to end a life on his behalf." It is, meanwhile, a moral truism that we have a duty to please our benefactors and as our holy creator and sustainer God is our supreme benefactor. Pleasing a supreme benefactor entails obeying his commands when it is possible to do so and the commands are morally justified. It is important to here that you cannot postulate that God gave this command without postulating that God exists and all that that entails. And what that entails is that human beings have souls that survive into the afterlife. On an atheistic ontology the death of a Canaanite or anyone else is eternal; but on the theistic ontology we are considering death is a painful but rapid process of metaphysical relocation. So: God’s command, if such a command really were given, was not in fact to “kill” the Canaanites as atheists understand it but to “metaphysically relocate” them—each then delivered to his respective moral renumeration including, for some, eternal bliss. So much for the rights of God. But what possible reason could God have had? According to Swinburne, the Old Testament says the command was issued, "to protect the young monotheistic religion of Israel from lethal spiritual infection by the polytheism of the Canaanites—a religion which included child sacrifice and cultic prostitution." If Jewish monotheism was in fact the beginning of the true revelation of God that would culminate in the Incarnation, a lethal spiritual infection would endanger the spiritual wellbeing of



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the world—though once monotheism was more firmly established in Israel, such measures, according to the Old Testament, were not required again. Even if God does not exist or exists but did not give this command, taking extreme measures of some kind to end the practice of child sacrifice would have been justified. But if God does exist and did issue the command then moral reasoning shows both that God had the right to issue it and the Israelites had a duty to obey him. A final question is why God might command the Israelites to kill the Canaanites rather than send them a plague or himself miraculously annihilate them. The Israelites had been given the awesome responsibility of receiving and sharing with the world a revelation from God. There can be little doubt that the command, if it were really issued, brought home to them the fearful importance of worshipping the God who had revealed himself to them and no other God and thereby vouchsafed the revelation they had received and ensured that it was made widely available to future generations. Swinburne stresses that the answer to violence in the Old Testament is the Patristic Method with which the bulk of our discussion has been concerned. All these final points are made merely to show that deeper reflection on the rights and reasons of God, “may lead us to recognise more inspiration by God of the early Israelites than we are at first sight inclined to recognise.” 4. Conclusion In this chapter it has been my concern to disprove the claim that violent ages in the Old Testament are incompatible with the moral perfection of God. To do this I introduced the Patristic Method of interpretation developed by the Church Fathers who compiled the Bible. This was shown to be rationally consistent with basic principles used to interpret texts and to have a historical provenance in the early life of the Church. And since there is no justification for accepting the authority of the Bible without also accepting the interpretative method which the Church gave the world together with the Bible after claiming for the latter its unique authority, I conclude that there are no indefeasible moral objections against the Christian Bible.



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26 The Doctrine Of Hell It is often suggested that the Christian doctrine of Hell is morally unconscionable. Understanding this doctrine to entail that the nonbeliever is sent to a physical location where for his nonbelief he is burned for all eternity, the skeptic makes the obvious point that this is incompatible with the moral perfection of God: The claim that God is all loving and the claim that God punishes his creatures eternally for finite offences are irreconcilable. Christianity therefore entails an obvious contradiction and so should, concludes the skeptic, be dismissed out of hand. In what follows it will be my concern to show that this objection is based on a crude caricature of Hell that is quite different from what the Church actually teaches. And we shall see that when that doctrine is properly understood there are no indefeasible moral objections against it. First, however, I will find it helpful to set Hell within its proper theological context by providing a brief overview of the Christian view of the afterlife. 1. Death and the End of the World By now the relationship between divine hiddenness and moral liberty should be familiar. As we saw in Chapter 6 and again briefly in Chapter 17, moral self-determination requires a significant freedom of choice between good and bad actions. And since certain knowledge that a morally perfect being of unlimited power was watching us at all times would greatly curtail that freedom, so, Christians claim, God has situated himself at an epistemic distance so that we see him only, "through a glass, darkly." Divine hiddenness and free will together make it possible for us to become naturally good people fit for an eternal relationship with God but they also come at a high cost. The high cost is the moral and natural evil discussed in Chapter 5. “Creating humans,” as Swinburne puts it, “was taking a great risk." God therefore has reason to place sensible limits upon his "risky experiment" both by setting a limit on the duration of a human life (and so on the



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suffering that a human being can cause) and also by one day bringing the whole world to an end.108 The Nicene Creed indeed affirms that, sooner or later, God the Son, “will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead.” Reflecting on the end of an individual human life and the end of the world raises the same obvious question; namely, how will a morally perfect and all powerful being deal with those who have become naturally good, those who have become incorrigibly bad and those who remain of an uncertain moral character? 2. The Fate of the Firmly Good A person who exercises his free will to become a naturally good person will be a person who naturally wants to do the good: to reverence what is holy, to express gratitude to his benefactors and to grow in understanding and in iration of beauty and truth while helping others to do the same. Such a person will be naturally happy in a state of loving communion with God and God, being morally perfect, will want to give that person the everlasting happiness of knowing and doing the good forever. Forever existing in loving communion with God and with others who are in loving communion with God without the impediments of suffering and hiddenness is just what being in Heaven would consist of. Skeptics do not raise a moral objection against this feature of the doctrine; however, they do sometimes suggest that happiness of any sort would, if telescoped to infinity, eventually result in repetition, boredom and weariness. Any heaven that lasted for eternity, the argument goes, could end up being its own sort of hell. The first thing to note about this objection is its doubtful assumption that a beatific vision of God is something of which one could grow tired. But there is a further problem with it that can be clearly demonstrated by reference to the difference between an 108 Christian doctrine claims that those who die before the end of the world enter into disembodied communion with God until the general resurrection of the dead when God will recreate the world and souls will be given an immortal resurrection body. Thus Christianity does not claim that the final fate of the blessed is a disembodied state in a heavenly realm—that is only a sort of holding pattern for those who die before the end of the world. Rather, the final fate of the blessed is physical embodiment on a reformed Earth. For this reason N. T. Wright refers to the Kingdom of God as, "Life after life after death."



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actual and a potential infinity. This was something briefly discussed in Chapter 11. An actual infinity, you may recall, consists of an infinite number of discrete and simultaneously existent things: If the universe is infinite then there is, at this moment, an infinite number of stars. A potential infinity, on the other hand, is simply the lack of a limit on the increase of some finite quantity: A man who is given eternity to count to infinity will never actually arrive at infinity; rather, infinity is simply the limit that he forever approaches and never reaches. And because it is not possible to exhaust an infinite fund of things in a potentially infinite period of time, so God, being infinite, can forever unfold new novelties, new delights, and new facets of his infinite knowledge upon his creatures.109 “Eye hath not seen,” the Bible tells us, “nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.”

3. The Fate of Those of Mostly Good Moral Character Many people on Earth seek to do good but at the end of their lives remain to various degrees unaware of which actions are good and which are bad. Given that such people may have a strong basic inclination to do good but in ignorance fail to satisfy all of their moral obligations, it is plausible to suppose that a morally perfect God would wish to be in loving communion with them also. He could, therefore, help such people to learn after death which actions are good (such as showing gratitude to and seeking forgiveness from God) and then, in virtue of their knowledge of what is in fact good, allow them to enter into loving communion with himself. Catholic doctrine teaches just such a view: That many of the dead whom God deems to have been sufficiently good to go to Heaven need preliminary purification in Purgatory. Paintings of 109 Catholics hold that God delights in letting those creatures with whom he is in loving communion cooperate with him in helping other creatures to themselves become fit for loving communion with him. It is for this reason that Catholics pray for the intercession of the saints and why Christians of all denominations recognise the duty to evangelise. Swinburne therefore suggests that one of the activities of the blessed in heaven will be helping others on Earth. And since there is no reason why God should limit himself to one universe (and since he may go on creating universes forever) there may be no end to the cooperation between God and those creatures already in loving communion with him in helping others to come into loving communion with him.



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Purgatory in the Western tradition portray it as a place of suffering but the doctrine includes some surprisingly agreeable features. For example, souls in Purgatory know they are destined for heaven, experience happiness and are in communion with God. And even the suffering itself is, according to Aquinas and others, voluntary: Given a vision of God souls willingly submit to a process that enables them to be in communion with him. What suffering there is consists in the fact that, as Swinburne puts it, “changing your behaviour, however good your intentions, can be a bit painful.” Thus Purgatory, properly classified, is a region of Heaven. The doctrine of Purgatory may help to reconcile verses in the Bible which state that the only way to Heaven is through Jesus and the view of many great Christian thinkers that those outside the Church can attain Heaven—something which has been official Roman Catholic doctrine since the second Vatican Council in 1963-6. “I am the way, the truth and the life,” reads John 14:6. “No one cometh unto the Father, but by me.” If Jesus was God Incarnate his words are true by tautology: No one comes to God but through God. But it is not stipulated when one accepts God and so plausible to suppose that those of a basically good moral character who were nonculpably unable to accept God's offer of love in the person of Jesus during their earthly life may accept that offer post mortem in Purgatory. 4. The Fate of Those of Unformed Moral Character By exercising our free will to choose between good and bad actions we slowly strengthen or weaken desires of various kinds to form a moral character. Because this process takes time many people die young with a moral character that is unformed or else die so young that they have no moral awareness at all. How will a morally perfect God deal with such people? Swinburne suggests several possibilities. Firstly, God could simply give such people the benefit of the doubt and impose upon them a firmly good character. The Church teaches that such is the fate of baptised babies. And while this would allow that person to exist in blissful communion with God it would have the disadvantage of depriving them of moral self-determination. God may therefore put some into another world with such moral propensities as they have formed and let them complete there the



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task of character formation. Or he could, finally, give them a good afterlife but one that is suitable for those ignorant of moral sanctity and so not the life of Heaven as we are understanding it. The Church teaching on Limbo suggests that this third possibility exists for some—though it is held as an official theological hypothesis rather than a dogma. Those in Limbo would exist in a state of natural though not supernatural happiness; that is, they would have natural knowledge of God but would not enjoy the beatific vision. However, as recently as 2007, the Church has suggested that there are, “serious theological and liturgical grounds,” for the plausibility of the first mentioned possibility: That those of unformed moral character are simply saved.110 5. The Fate of the Incorrigibly Bad We come at last to the fate of the incorrigibly bad. Let us first understand “incorrigibly bad” to describe a person who has exercised his free will to do evil to such a degree that he has finally developed an evil character. His natural desire is to perform bad and selfish actions and in particular to hurt and dominate others. It was noted earlier that God has good reason to allow moral evil while people form their moral character in this world. But there is no good reason for God to allow people to continue hurting others forever in another world after their moral character is already fully formed. In what follows I will briefly discuss two alternative views about the fate of the incorrigibly bad before defending, but carefully qualifying, the traditional teaching of the Church. My conclusion will be that while we may reasonably hope that Hell is empty its possible existence must be affirmed in view of human freedom.

110 The document was originally commission by Pope John Paul II and realised by the International Theological Commission on April 20, 2007. It states that, "the ordinary way of salvation is by the sacrament of baptism," while on the question of salvation outside that sacrament there are, "reasons for playful hope" though not, "sure knowledge." The tone is thus optimistic but cautious. Referring to John 16:12 it adds, "There is much that simply has not been revealed to us."



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5.1 Universalism It might be wondered: Why does God not simply force upon such people a good moral character? Some hold that God does just this—including Origen, an influential Church Father, and several contemporary theologians. This view, because it entails that all people go to Heaven, is called Universalism. But forcing a good moral character upon an evil person is forcing upon them a character which they have persistently and knowingly chosen not to have. And if God is to respect the free will of persons in choosing their own moral character he must finally respect the moral character they have chosen. To do otherwise would be to rescind the free will he had originally given: God would then be a sort of moral totalitarian who ensures that, in the end, whatever choices people make, they become the sort of people God wants them to be with no ultimate freedom to determine the sort of person they want to be. We have seen that incorrigibly bad people are a possible outcome of any world in which all people enjoy significant moral self-determination; and we have seen that naturally good people will be naturally happy in loving communion with a morally perfect being. By contrast: Allowing oneself to become a collection of evil desires whose fulfilment is eternally frustrated by an all powerful being would be a deeply unhappy state. The question arises: If God will not force a good moral character upon such people, what is he likely to do with them? 5.2 Annihilationism Christian theology holds that all things are sustained in existence by God from one moment to the next. Each one of us therefore stands in the same relation to God as the piano sonata to the pianist: The moment God ceases to consciously and deliberately sustain us in existence is the moment we cease to exist. This doctrine helps to introduce a second view on the fate of the incorrigibly bad: Annihilationism. Annihilationism holds that at the end of the world God simply ceases to sustain the incorrigibly bad in existence; and the incorrigibly bad, as a result, simply cease to exist. Proponents of this view suggest that Bible verses which speak of evildoers being thrown into a lake of fire in fact symbolize their



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annihilation. “If talk of fire is to be taken literally or even as an analogy for the destiny of the wicked,” Swinburne explains, “the consequence of putting the wicked in such a fire would be their speedy elimination.” We have just noted that having all ones desires frustrated by an all powerful being would be an inherently miserable state. And so perhaps God would eliminate evil people— particularly if that is what they wanted. It is this fate, annihilationists insist, that Jesus warned us to avoid in many places in the New Testament, such as Matthew 10:28, And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.

However, others have objected to annihilationism on the grounds that, much like universalism, it puts God in the role of a moral totalitarian. God does not force a good moral character upon those who have freely chosen evil; rather, he refuses to allow them to exist at all. And so, in the end, whatever choices people make, they either become the sort of people God wants them to be or God destroys them. 5.3 Hell Let us consider finally the traditional teaching of the Church that the incorrigibly bad are in danger of Hell. How can we understand this idea in light of the moral perfection of God? We can begin to do so by first recognising that Hell is not a physical location to which people are sent and actively tormented by God. It is, rather, an existential state that results from freely rejecting the divine love. Consider now three operating assumptions. One: In Heaven naturally good people freely submit themselves to the will of God; two: God, being all loving, wishes for all people to be happy in so doing (happy in reverencing what is holy, loving those who were formerly enemies, selflessly cooperating with others—and so forth); and three: All people are given radical freedom in determining 111

111 Indeed, Augustine believed the suffering of Hell is compounded because God

continues to love the sinner who is not able to return the love. According to the Church, whatever is the nature of the torments in Hell, "they are not imposed by a vindictive judge"



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their own moral character. It follows from all this that at least somepeople may eternally resist the invitation to participate in the divine love—preferring instead to hate their enemies and the God who ens them to let go of that hatred and to freely and eternally ignore God's sincere heavenly welcome out of immortal spite or pride or self-pity. As Dallas Willard expresses it, for some people, "the fires of Heaven, we might suspect, are hotter than the fires of Hell." C. S. Lewis before him made a similar point. “The gates of Hell,” he wrote, “are locked on the inside.” It should also be kept in mind here that any person who finds themselves in Hell was not thrust there suddenly upon death; Hell, rather, is the ultimate logical consequence of the pattern of choices an evil person made throughout his earthly life. God provides each of us with a conscience and countless opportunities to exercise our free will for good or evil. An incorrigibly bad person therefore owes his character to his prolonged and decisive refusal to heed the deliverances of the conscience which God gave him in preference for evil. Lewis understood this too. “There are only two kinds of people in the end,” he said. “Those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’” and those to whom God says in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’” Understood in this way, Hell has a surprising, ironic but entirely logical entailment: It pays deep respect to persons. Faced with the incorrigibly bad, God does not force upon them a good moral character and he does not destroy them. God accepts the person they have chosen to be and provides a place in his created order for them to live out the reality of being that person. Only in Hell can the free will and so the personhood of the incorrigibly bad be preserved. “Hell,” as Willard puts it, “is God’s best for some people.” And it was the unhappy possibility of finding ourselves forever in this state that Jesus is warning us of when he speaks of the eternal torments of Hell. 6. Conclusion In discussing the possibility of Hell it is important to that it is no part of Christian doctrine that any particular person, or that any person at all, is actually in Hell. Not many people, I would think, allow themselves to become incorrigibly bad and the doctrines of Purgatory and Limbo would surely provide an all



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loving God with a wide range of options in dealing with those who are further up on the moral spectrum. Moreover, only God can know what transpires in a human heart in the final moments of life and in the first moments of the afterlife. A private moment of redemption in extremis or even in articulo mortis is always possible and no one knows what opportunities are available beyond that. Reflections similar to these led the twentieth century Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar to say, “We may reasonably hope that all people will be saved.” Balthasar’s position thus draws right back from the deep pessimism of Aquinas and Augustine, who both held that the mass of humanity will be lost, without quite affirming the Universalism of Origen and others. Balthasar instead suggested that we entertain Universalism with a cautious optimism. Why? The optimism was justified, Balthasar said, in view of the radical expression of divine love manifest in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus—that God should send his Son all the way to the limits of God-forsakenness in order to bring back into the divine life all those who had wandered far from it. But the caution was necessary in view of the radical freedom God entrusted us with—a freedom which, if it is to be honoured and upheld by God at all, must include at least the possibility of eternally rejecting God. The Catholic author and theologian Fr. Robert Barron agrees. A Catholic, he says, must accept the existence of Hell as a possibility because of human freedom. “But” he adds, “we may pray, and may even reasonably hope, that all people will be saved.”



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27 Conclusion

In Part III it has been my concern to show that Christian theism is coherent where “coherent” is understood to mean “containing or entailing no contradictions.” My objective in doing so was not to show that Christianity is in fact true but to gain rational permission to examine the evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus. This was a point discussed in the Introduction. There I noted that if it could be shown that Christianity lacked internal coherence we would have the strongest possible epistemic justification for rejecting it. And in thatcase any historical evidence purporting to authenticate its founding miracle would need to be met with profound skepticism. The purpose of Part III was therefore to “clear the air” by showing that, whether or not the evidence will show Christianity to be probablytrue, a priori reasoning shows its claims to be possibly true. The structure of Part III is the most intricate of the entire argument. And since it forms an important part of the background knowledge against which we will be examining the historical evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus, I think it would be helpful to briefly review what has been established in the previous seven chapters. In practical "clearing the air" involved defending Christian doctrine against objections. The first objection arose from religious pluralism—the fact that there are many religions in the world all making competing claims. In reply to it I suggested that religious pluralism should be understood as part of the problem of divine hiddenness. Because divine hiddenness vouchsafes human moral freedom it is plausible that God would allow a multiplicity of world religions. But this also entails that, if he does reveal himself, it must be possible for a determined and conscientious inquirer to discover that he has done so. And so I concluded that whatever religion has, on balance, the greatest a priori coherence and the strongest historical evidence for a miraculous authentication is far



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more probably than not, and far more probably than any other, the special revelation of God. This established the structure of the rest of the argument. In Chapters 21 to 26 I showed that Christianity has greater a priori coherence and in Part IV I will show that the strength of the evidence for its founding miracle is better than for any other claimed miracle in history—which means, recall, that the reply to religious pluralism will not be complete until the entire argument is complete. It is also worth recalling that while Swinburne's arguments for the Incarnation and the Trinity were given with a view to establishing the general coherence of Christianity they greatly exceeded their brief by establishing the high prior probability of two basic Christian doctrines: Given human sin and suffering, it is highly probable that a morally perfect God will become incarnate; and given that God is all powerful and all loving, God is necessarily a Trinity. Just as knowledge of John’s criminal past and present indigence may prove him more likely to have committed a further crime prior to the discovery of his fingerprints at the crime scene, so moral reflection on the nature of God and the condition of man may suggest what God is like and what he is likely to do prior to our consideration of the historical evidence for the Resurrection. The arguments of Chapter 21 and 22 therefore provide a priori grounds for affirming the probable truth of Christianity prior to the historical evidence—since Christianity, of course, claims both that God is a Trinity and that God became incarnate. Having set out the structure of my response to religious pluralism and defended two central Christian doctrines, I next discussed scientific and moral objections to the Bible and moral objections to the doctrine of Hell and found them all to be without warrant. In Chapter 24 the claimed conflict between science and Christianity was shown to be false: Western empirical science emerged in Christian Europe and nowhere else and has been assisted throughout its development by prominent Christian theists. A Christian, moreover, is not required to accept on faith claims that are in conflict with science; per contra, the alleged conflict only arises from taking every sentence of the Bible literally—an



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approach promoted by modern fundamentalists but rejected by the Church. To explain this I introduced the Patristic Method developed by the Church Fathers and argued that a Christian can, and should, accept the rational and nuanced interpretation of scripture it allows and which comes down to us from the Church Jesus founded. And while a Christian is committed to the belief that Jesus rose miraculously from the dead, this is something than can be rationally assessed on the available evidence of natural theology and history: Claimed grounds for rejecting reports of miracles out of hand were also shown to be unfounded. In Chapter 25 the claim that violent ages in the Old Testament are incompatible with the moral perfection of God was also shown to be unfounded. There I set out in much more detail the Patristic Method of interpretation introduced in the previous chapter and showed it to completely resolve the alleged conflict and also to be rationally consistent with basic principles used to interpret texts and also to have a valid historical provenance in the early life of the Church. And since there is finally no justification for accepting the authority of the Bible without also accepting the interpretative method which the Church gave the world together with the Bible after claiming for the latter its unique authority, I concluded that there are no indefeasible moral objections against the Christian Bible. It only remained to discuss the doctrine of Hell. This was the subject of Chapter 26. I began by acknowledging that the claim that God is all loving and the claim that God punishes his creatures eternally for finite offences are irreconcilable. However, I then demonstrated that this objection is based on a crude caricature of Hell that is quite different from what the Church actually teaches. Hell is not a physical location in which souls are actively tormented by God but an existential state that an incorrigibly bad person enters by freely and permanently rejecting the divine love. Hell, I suggested, therefore pays deep respect to persons: Faced with the incorrigibly bad, God does not force upon them a good moral character and he does not destroy them. God accepts the person they have chosen to be and provides a place in his created order for them to live out the reality of being that person. I concluded my discussion of Hell with the suggestion of Fr. Robert Barron: We must accept the possibility of Hell in view of human freedom but,



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in view of the outlandish love God demonstrated through the ion of Jesus, we may also reasonably hope that it is empty. So: We have seen that Christian doctrine is coherent; indeed, that two of its key doctrines have high a priori probability. I conclude that we have gained rational permission to examine the evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus. And this is the subject of the next four chapters.



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IV The Evidence for Christian Theism



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28 Introduction Before coming to the evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus a few general remarks are in order. 1. The Christ Myth Theory The first is a response to the claim that no such historical person as Jesus ever existed. This view, sometimes called, “Christ Mythicism,” holds that Jesus is a legendary figure cobbled together from various pagan myths and gradually embellished over the centuries. While a popular topic of discussion on the internet among amateur critics of religion, the Christ Myth Theory is universally rejected by serious historians for the excellent reason that the evidence for the historicity of Jesus is better than that for most other figures of the ancient world. In the following chapters we shall see that the New Testament is a historically reliable source of information about Jesus and there are, moreover, references to him in ancient non-Christian authors. In addition we also have the indisputable fact of a worldwide Christian Church that, against initially fierce persecution, rapidly rose and spread out from Judea in the first century AD.112 Many details of the life of Jesus, finally, satisfy accepted criteria of historical authenticity.113 To deny the 112 Professor C. F. D. Moule of Cambridge writes, If the coming into existence of the Nazarenes, a phenomenon undeniably attested by the New Testament, rips a hole in history, a hole the size and shape of the Resurrection, what does the secular historian propose to stop it up with? The birth and rapid rise of the Christian Church remains an unsolved enigma for any historian who refuses to take seriously the only explanation offered by the Church itself.

113 These will be discussed in the next post. To take one example, consider the

"Criterion of Embarrassment." This is a principle of historical analysis which states that any detail problematic to an ancient can be presumed true on the logic that the author would not have invented a detail problematic to his . Both the baptism of and the crucifixion of Jesus are ed by this Criterion since neither are events of a sort the early Christian Church would wish to invent: Baptism was istered for the remission of sins and Jesus is held by the church to have been sinless; nor would the Church have plausibly invented the brutal, humiliating death of its leader.



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existence of Jesus is therefore to adopt a historical skepticism so radical that one must jettison most of ancient history. Among mainstream modern historians the existence of Jesus is historical fact. 2. The Evidence Is Surprisingly Strong Though universally rejected by serious historians, the Christ Myth Theory has a certain purchase on popular perception. For this reason it may be helpful to preface our discussion by noting the following: Not only is the existence of Jesus historical fact, but the evidence for his resurrection is surprisingly strong. This claim is likely to be met with surprise by those unfamiliar with the consensus in contemporary New Testament scholarship concerning the historicity of the key facts undergirding the Resurrection Hypothesis; that is, that Jesus died by crucifixion and was buried; that his tomb was found to be empty three days later by a group of his female followers and that various individuals and groups thereafter had experiences that completely convinced them that they had seen, spoken to and eaten with a physically resurrected Jesus—points to which we shall shortly return. Meanwhile, a few examples may serve to establish the present claim that there is a compelling historical case for the Resurrection to be considered. Antony Flew is the British philosopher who renounced his atheism on review of the evidence for the existence of God from the integrated complexity of the physical world—the arguments from cosmic and biological teleology discussed in Chapter 12 and Chapter 13 respectively. Flew did not publicly convert to Christianity but, as a result of discussions with the historians Gary Habermas and N. T. Wright, and after 50 years of fierce antireligious polemic, he was nevertheless compelled to concede that, “The evidence for the resurrection is better than for claimed miracles in any other religion. It is outstandingly different in quality and quantity." Flew is representative of many skeptics who have been challenged by the strength of the evidence for the Resurrection. To his number we may add journalist Lee Strobel and the criminologist J. Warner Wallace who each began to investigate the Resurrection evidence as committed atheists (one to disabuse his



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wife of her fledgling Christianity; the other to demolish his religious coworkers in workplace debates) only to both unexpectedly come themselves to believe. And not only atheists but also those with prior religious commitments that would plausibly prejudice them against belief in the Resurrection of Jesus have been swayed by the evidence. The Jewish scholar and historian Pinchas Lapide, for instance, was finally compelled to conclude that the only explanation for the historical evidence was that his God, the God of Israel, had raised Jesus from the dead. The case of Nabeel Queshi is equally dramatic. He was an Islamic apologist who began a debate with Christian David Wood on the competing historical claims of their respective religions. The debate lasted many years. At the end of it, Queshi converted to Christianity and wrote the best-selling book, Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus. Historian Gaza Vermes, meanwhile, may represent the limit to which skepticism may be taken while responsibly ing for the facts. He formulated eight possible theories to explain the historical evidence which fall between two extremes of opposite certainty. One of those extremes is total denial and the other is total acceptance and both of them, Vermes said, are, "not susceptible to rational judgement." This much is undeniable: Conscientious inquirers have been challenged and often persuaded by the evidence against strong predispositions to the contrary. These examples do not of course make the case for the Resurrection of Jesus but they do show that there is a case to be heard. And while there are many rational responses to all of this, ignoring the unavoidable inference that there is something here that requires attention is not one of them. The evidence that we will be examining in the following chapters is worthy of serious consideration. I noted earlier that the majority of New Testament scholars affirm the key facts undergirding the inference to the Resurrection. And in what follows we shall see that while there are various theories put forward to for these facts the Resurrection itself is an inference to the best explanation using the accepted criteria for assessing competing historical hypotheses. If all this is so, it might be wondered why the majority of New Testament scholars do not also affirm the Resurrection Hypothesis. And this



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brings us to two final considerations that need to be borne in mind as we assess the historical case for the Resurrection. 3. The Total Relevant Background Evidence New Testament historians who affirm the key facts undergirding the inference to the Resurrection of Jesus but then postulate a naturalistic explanation for those facts typically do so on methodological grounds or on the basis of philosophical presuppositions that lie out the scope of the historical argument. Bart Ehrman, for example, objects that miracles by their very nature lie beyond the explanatory scope of the historian. “Historians,” he writes, “have no difficulty whatsoever speaking about the belief in Jesus’ resurrection. For it is a historical fact that some of Jesus’ followers came to believe that he had been raised from the dead soon after his execution.” But a historian, qua historian, cannot adjudicate on whether a miracle occurred. And so Ehrman places the Resurrection hypothesis in historical quarantine. Whatever the merits of this view there is no reason of principle why the methodological constraints that normatively apply to a historian should proscribe a synthetic argument for the resurrection that includes historical evidence. Likewise, the fact that cosmology is the study of the physical universe has no bearing on the soundness of a synthetic argument for the existence of God that includes data on cosmological fine tuning—even though its formulator, by postulating God, has left the methodological constraints of pure cosmology for natural theology. Indeed, the strength of the cumulative case for Christian theism is found precisely in the cohesion of the evidence for its central claims across multiple disciplines. Integral to Ehrman’s ban on miracles is the assumption that history is limited to what can occur in the natural world and that what can occur in the natural world is determined by the inductive confirmation of natural law in everyday experience. This recalls Hume’s objection to miracles discussed in Chapter 24. But as we saw there the assumption that our experience of the laws of nature is our only relevant background evidence is unwarranted. Equally relevant to our assessment of a purported miracle is any background evidence for the existence of God—such as the nine



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lines of evidence presented in Chapters 10 to 18. And if on the total background evidence it is probable that there is a God then it is probable that there exists a being with the power to violate the laws of nature and a claimed miracle can be rationally evaluated on the basis of whatever evidence is available for it. This is a point I have been at pains to emphasise from the very beginning of my argument. Clearly enough, if you think it unlikely that there is a God then, however good the historical evidence, you will think it unlikely that a God raised Jesus from the dead. If, on the other hand, you think it very likely that there is a God and come to see that the Resurrection is an inference to the best explanation from the historical evidence, then you will think it very likely that God raised Jesus from the dead. The historical evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus must therefore be evaluated against the total relevant background evidence for the existence of God. And since we have seen Parts II and III that the evidence of natural theology and a priori reasoning not only establishes that there very probably is a God but that God will very probably become incarnate and live a perfect life filled with great suffering that ends in a miracle, so good historical evidence for a prophet whose life meets all of these criteria will be very compelling indeed. 4. Paradigm Pressures A final of word of caution is due. No one can evaluate this subject in a vacuum because everyone brings to it a prior attitude towards the religious life. The Resurrection of Jesus is, as N. T. Wright puts it, “a self-involving hypothesis.” And this is because anyone assessing the historical evidence for the Resurrection who begins to intuit its credibility will feel himself suddenly implicated in a very personal way. Here we should recall Nagel who confessed, "I want atheism to be true. I hope there is no God. I do not want there to be a God. I do not want the universe to be like that,” as well as Michael Rea’s observation that, "Most sensible people would recoil in horror upon hearing that a person of great power and influence had taken a special interest in them and had very definite, detailed and not-easily-implemented views about how they ought to live their lives.” 114 And if, what is by no means improbable, 114 Paradigm pressures apply to the evaluation of arguments for theism in general and to arguments for Christian theism in particular. And this is because



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one does have a preexisting indisposition to becoming a Christian he is going to feel the sudden force of massive paradigm pressures that may interfere with his rational adjudication of the evidence. To clarify this point consider someone who has a strong indisposition to living a religious life; who is examining the Resurrection evidence for the first time; and who with considerable unease is just beginning to recognise the force of that evidence. What options will lie before him if he finds himself rationally obligated to conclude that Jesus rose from the dead? There are two. One: ing Socrates’ policy that we must, “Follow the argument wherever it takes us,” he may simply draw the conclusion and declare himself a Christian. This, I suggest, is the only rational response to the reality of the Incarnation but it is also, as we are supposing, something he does not want to do. Two: He may accept the reality of the Incarnation but refuse to declare himself a Christian. Very few people, however, would be willing to live in defiance of their own rational principles. Wishing to avoid this dilemma he may therefore choose to preemptively resist the deliverances of rational intuition in his ongoing assessment of the evidence. And in that case his conclusion, whatever it is, will be a post hoc rationalisation for something that was determined in advance and on nonrational grounds. Nagel, though himself an atheist, proposes something of the sort as an explanation for the monomaniacal, neurotic physicalism in the philosophy of mind and the dull refusal to look beyond the embattled physicalistic paradigm. Moreland, taking up the theme, suggests that from pneumatophobia a man naturally takes refuge in hylomania. 115 The idea applies to the historical case for the Resurrection with only slight adjustment. In closing I wish to emphasise this strongly: I am not suggesting every New Testament scholar who proposes a naturalistic explanation for the historical facts undergirding the Resurrection Hypothesis is Christophobic. But suppose, firstly, that it can be shown that the Resurrection is an inference to the best explanation the moral and religious restrictions that inhere only vaguely in the idea of basic theism are made concrete and explicit in the exacting and uncompromising moral teachings of Jesus. 115 That is, from a fear of the spiritual one naturally takes refuge in the physical.



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using accepted criteria for evaluating competing historical hypotheses; secondly, that the relevant background evidence of natural theology is included and s that inference; and thirdly, that methodological issues have been addressed. If under these conditions, and without further justification, one insists upon a naturalistic explanation for the Resurrection evidence then, in the absence of a reason to think otherwise, we are justified in suspecting that paradigm pressures are at play. Socrates is surely right. We must follow the argument wherever it takes us. And this entails we pay no heed to who is and who is not willing to come with us.



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29 The New Testament The Resurrection Hypothesis understands the Resurrection as a divine signature upon the life of Jesus. However, before presenting the historical evidence for it we need to settle a few preliminary matters. First, we need to establish that the New Testament, which is our primary source of evidence about Jesus, is generally reliable. Then, we need to draw on that evidence to show that the life of Jesus was one to which God would affix his signature; one having, that is, the five features discussed in Chapter 21. Only then will we be ready to assess the historical evidence for the Resurrection itself. This explains the basic structure of what follows. In this chapter I will argue that the New Testament is generally reliable and then explain various criteria of historical authenticity that apply to and further strengthen many of its claims. In the next chapter I will argue that the life of Jesus does indeed satisfy our five criteria; that is, I will argue that Jesus claimed to be God Incarnate and an atonement for human sin while also giving plausible teachings, founding a church and living a perfect life filled with suffering. And then in Chapter 31 I will present the historical case for the Resurrection. I should also note that in all three chapters I will not be presenting original research but closely following and compendiating the work of Gary Habermas, Michael Licona, Richard Swinburne, N. T. Wright and William Lane Craig. 1. The General Reliability of the New Testament The main source of evidence about Jesus is the New Testament: The four Gospels, Acts and the letters claiming to have been written by St. Paul. 1.1 Paul's Epistles Paul converted to Christianity three years after the death of Jesus, in around AD 32, and almost all scholars agree that many of the letters attributed to him are authentic and so the earliest New Testament books. Named after the churches to which they were

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addressed, the letters widely acknowledged to have been written by Paul are I Thessaslonians, Galatians, I and II Corinthians, Romans, Philippians and Philemon. Though in writing them Paul was more concerned with settling matters of Christian teaching than with assembling evidence for the life of Jesus his letters nevertheless provide a certain amount of very early information about Jesus and have a personal character which, together with the careful historical detail they contain, provide a clear picture of Paul as an honest and conscientious man of obvious intelligence and learning. Paul did not know Jesus during his earthly ministry but he spent time on two occasions with leading disciples who had followed Jesus and Paul cross-examined them about him.116 One occasion, according to Galatians, was three years after his religious experience and conversion on the road to Damascus when he visited Peter, the leader of the Church, and James, the brother of Jesus, in Jerusalem. He also interacted with others who had known Jesus or were close to those who had known him and thus we have in Paul an authentic and trustworthy authority relaying to us eyewitness testimony about Jesus. What Paul writes is what the followers of Jesus claimed to have seen and heard. 1.2 The Gospels Each of the four Gospels, meanwhile, seeks to tell us about the life of Jesus and what he taught and what significance it holds. The first three “Synoptic Gospels” are compilations of stories and teachings from various sources. There are differing views about when the Gospels achieved their final form but we could tentatively put Mark at AD 70 and Matthew and Luke at AD 80.117 Luke also wrote Acts which tells us about the life of the early Church and Paul’s contribution to it. Scholars date Acts to AD 80 with many arguing that most of it was written much earlier. John probably reached its 116 In Galatians 2:6 Paul tells us that he actually compared notes with the Apostles and they, "added nothing to my message." This gives us historical grounds for accepting Paul's to be a faithful representation of the testimony of those who were with Jesus before and, allegedly, after his death.

117 It is not known exactly who Matthew, Mark and Luke were but it is clear that they

were Christians associated with the leadership of the early Church.



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finished form by around AD 90—either written or inspired by St John who was one of the twelve Apostles of Jesus. Like Paul’s letters, the Synoptic Gospels and Acts present themselves to us as works of history. At the beginning of his Gospel Luke writes that he has, “undertaken to set down an orderly of the events which have been fulfilled among us just as they were handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses.” This suggests that Luke was claiming to write a work of history and so must have understood Mark, from which he drew material, as work of history also; and this in turn suggests that Matthew understood Mark as a work of history and so, in using material from Mark, was himself seeking to write a work of history. Acts, likewise, reads as a work of history and, as Swinburne notes, is “in places is so detailed and matter-of-fact that it has a diarylike quality.” Such first impressions of historicity are borne out by closer analysis. There is, for instance, general agreement between the Gospels about the main events of the life of Jesus—even when these events have unwanted implications. The Baptism of Jesus is a good example of this. Since Jesus was held to be sinless, and baptism was istered for the remission of sins, the Baptism of Jesus is theologically problematic—a point which we will return to in the next chapter. Nevertheless the Synoptic Gospels all dutifully record this event. Their s of Jesus' teachings also square with each other and with the only of that teaching outside the New Testament that has a plausible claim to authenticity; namely, the Gospel of Thomas. And they agree again on the four Roman governors and the four kings of Judea who are claimed to have interacted with Jesus and later with Paul; 118 respectively, Pilate, Gallio, Festus, Felix and Herod the Great, Herod Antipas and Herod Agrippa I and II. All eight figures, furthermore, are known to history and from the writing of contemporary Jewish historian Josephus who, as already noted, also mentions Jesus and John the Baptist. The author of the Gospel of John is also clearly seeking to 118 Some of these interactions allow us to assign precise dates to events described in the New Testament. Gallio, for example, was governor of Greece for only one year, AD 52, and so Paul’s appearance before him described in Acts 18:12 must have occurred in AD 52.



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write an essentially historical work since he records most of the events recorded in the Synoptic Gospels and on two occasions declaims solemnly that he or his immediate source were witnesses to those events.119 2. Qualifications So far my concern has been to show that, in the absence of some reason to think otherwise, a number of key New Testament books should be regarded as basically reliable works of history. But before drawing a provisional conclusion and moving to the criteria of historical authenticity, I need to make a few qualifications. 2.1 Minor Discrepancies of Detail It was noted above that there is general agreement between the Gospels on the main events of the life of Jesus and this of course implies that there is minor disagreement. As we saw in Chapter 24, ancient historians did not have the same standards of accuracy as modern historians. In a modern newspaper report or a larger work of history each sentence is understood to be literally true or false: It will be true if it describes accurately what really happened and it will be false if it does not. Ancient works of history, by contrast, must be judged by the standards the writer was seeking to satisfy: Accurate in their main historical claims with minor discrepancies of detail. This point needs to be borne in mind when faced with minor discrepancies of detail between the Gospel s. However, as N. T. Wright notes, those minor discrepancies of detail not explained by the different standards of historical accuracy in the ancient world may actually give us further grounds for regarding the New Testament testimony as genuine. This idea seems counterintuitive but is widely recognised in law courts entrusted with the task of evaluating eyewitness testimony. The reason is as follows: It is psychologically impossible, given variations of viewpoint and the fallibility of human memory, for multiple eyewitness s to be in perfect agreement down to the smallest detail. Thus any judge faced with multiple statements 119 For instance, John 19:35 says, “The man who saw it has given testimony, and his testimony is true. He knows that he tells the truth, and he testifies so that you also may believe.”



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that do so agree is likely to deduce that there has been a collusion to mislead the court. Nor, obviously, can there be any truth in testimonies which are in hopeless disagreement on all points. What is looked for in reliable testimony from multiple eyewitnesses is precisely what we find in the Gospel s: Agreement on all the most salient features of an event with just that measure of discrepancy which plausibly s for the normative fallibility of the human witnesses. 2.2 Metaphysical Parables The second qualification to the general reliability of the New Testament: There may be some ages in John and perhaps elsewhere which the original author did not intend to be taken as literal history—such as when an event is described which we have very good reason to think did not occur, which is not multiply attested and which naturally lends itself to an allegorical reading. In these cases the author may be giving us what Swinburne has called a “metaphysical parable.” This, as the reader may recall from Chapter 24, is a fictional episode used to set out some deeper theological truth. Swinburne suggests that one obvious example of this is the miracle of Jesus at the pool of Bethesda in John 5:2-18. This tells of a mysterious pool of water that is regularly disturbed by an invisible force. The first invalid to get into the water after the disturbance is healed. However, there is one man who is never able to get into the water in time. And so Jesus, taking pity on the man, miraculously heals him. If this story is taken to be historical it postulates regular events of the most extraordinary kind for which we have no evidence from any other source. “Perhaps John was misinformed,” speculates Swinburne, “but then he also tells us that man had been sick for thirty-eight years,” and likewise, "the people of Israel wandered in the wilderness for thirty-eight years until Joshua, which is the Hebrew name for Jesus, led them through the river Jordan to the promised land." Throughout John it is clear that symbolism is of central importance to its author. And so plausibly this story is a metaphysical parable: a way for John to tell us that, “Jesus helps the sick in soul through the water of baptism into the kingdom of Heaven.”



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3. The Miracles Here the skeptic may be tempted to suggest that since all the miracles reported in the New Testament are “events of the most extraordinary kind” we have very good reason to think none of them occurred. And so on the logic of the preceding qualification he may want to suggest that all the miracles of Jesus are “metaphysical parables.” However, our reason for doubting the historicity of John 5:2-18 is not that Jesus worked a miracle but the allegorical character of the story together with the lack of historical sources for the healing pool of Bethesda—sources which we might expect if such regular healings occurred there. And this brings us to the third and final qualification: That while we do not have lists of eyewitnesses for the miracles Jesus performed during his ministry, we do have a list of eyewitnesses to the Resurrection, and so the former miracles can be rationally affirmed on the strength of the evidence for the latter. This is an important point and so worth spelling out in detail. The main reason skeptics object to the Gospel stories is that they describe miraculous events; events which, if they had occurred, would be violations of the laws of nature. Implicit in such objections is Hume’s mistake of assuming that our inductive experience of the laws of nature is our only relevant background evidence. But as we have seen in Chapter 24 and again in Chapter 27, equally relevant to our assessment of a purported miracle is any background evidence for the existence of God—such as the nine lines of evidence presented in Part II. And if on the total background evidence it is probable that there is a God then it is probable that there exists a being with the power to violate the laws of nature. Evidence that there is a God is therefore evidence that miraculous events can occur—which will have particular relevance in cases where the event is of a kind that God would have reason to bring about. What reason might God have to work miracles through Jesus? Most of the miracles of Jesus during his ministry were healings and it is a priori very plausible that God Incarnate, being morally perfect, would perform them out of comion and also to show that, while for good reason he temporarily allows suffering, God has the means and the will to eventually bring it to an end. And



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since, as we saw in Chapter 21, God Incarnate would also need to found a Church, it is likewise probable that he would perform miracles to accumulate a following and demonstrate his divine authority—of which the Resurrection, again, would be the supreme proof. The Virgin Birth and Ascension, finally, would help those who learned about them to properly understand the doctrine of the Incarnation—a point discussed at the end of Chapter 21. However, even if we have good reason to think that there is a God who can suspend the laws of nature, and good a priori grounds for thinking that he is likely to do so in some particular way, we will still require substantial historical evidence to affirm that a miracle has in fact occurred. A moment ago I noted that we do not have lists of eyewitnesses for the miracles Jesus performed during his ministry. The exception is the Resurrection for which, as we shall see in Chapter 31, the evidence is very strong. If God affixed his signature to the life of Jesus by raising him from the dead, it is very plausible that he worked other miracles through him. Curing lepers and healing withered hands fulfil a similar purpose to the Resurrection—both vindicating the authority and teachings of Jesus and providing evidence of God’s reality and intentions. 120 In short: if the Resurrection really happened then the probability of the other miracles is increased beyond the evidence available for them and so they may be regarded as historical also—just as, analogously, it is rational to believe a man who claims to be able to consistently win at poker on thin evidence if he has already provided very strong evidence that he can read minds. 4. Provisional Conclusion The Principle of Testimony is a basic principle of rationality which states: In the absence of a reason to believe otherwise, what people tell us is probably true. “Most of our beliefs about the world,” observes Swinburne, “are based on what others claim to have 120 Including, in the case of the Resurrection, proof of the general resurrection at the end of history. Thus Swinburne writes: “The Resurrection provided partial fulfilment of Jesus’s prediction that all humans would be raised from the dead by showing that one human (Jesus) was raised. That showed that resurrection is possible and so could happen to us.”



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perceived—beliefs about geography and history and science and everything else beyond immediate experience.” We would indeed be imprisoned within the small circle of our own immediate experience if testimony did not normally have this force. And we should likewise understand that testimony, again in the absence of a reason to believe otherwise, in its most natural literal sense. Many of the early Christians, including Paul, were killed for refusing to recant Christian doctrines founded on the life and teachings of Jesus and this suggests that they had a very strong and literal belief in those doctrines. We have also seen that the authors of key books of the New Testament understood themselves to be writing works of history and that those books commend themselves as basically reliable historical sources. In view of all these special considerations and the absence of a reason to believe otherwise, I conclude that on the historical evidence and against the background evidence for the existence of God from natural theology the New Testament is a generally reliable source of information about Jesus. 5. The Criteria of Historical Authenticity As noted at the start of this chapter, my conclusion that the New Testament is a generally reliable source of information about Jesus is ed by the so-called “criteria of historical authenticity” that apply to and further strengthen many of its claims. Before introducing these it is important to note that they state sufficient but not necessary conditions of historicity; in other words, that one or nnumber of criteria apply to p is further reason to regard p as historically authentic but that only one or none of the criteria apply to q is not a reason to regard q as historically inauthentic. It should also be borne in mind that they are not infallible guides to authenticity; rather, we should regard them as “Indicators of Authenticity.” We could summarise all this by just saying that the probability that some saying or event in the New Testament is historical is greater for its satisfying the criteria than it would be if it did not. There are a number of such criteria but I will mention only five which are the most important and will be of use in the following two chapters.



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5.1 Early Multiple Attestation According to this criterion the historicity of p is more probable if p appears in early, multiple and independent sources near in time and space to the alleged occurrence of p. It applies at many points to the New Testament of which I will give just one example here. The Resurrection appearances are multiply attested in Pauline and Gospel sources and were quickly proclaimed by the first Christians in the very city where Jesus had been crucified and buried. In his first letter to the Corinthians Paul says that the risen Jesus was seen by as many as five hundred witnesses at one time— and adds that many of those witnesses are still alive to be questioned. If Paul made up this claim and then announced it in the place where, within living memory of his audience, it was alleged to have occurred, he would have been exposed as a fraud. This gives us further reason for thinking that it is historically reliable. Attestation has particular force when it originates in a hostile witness and we see this throughout the New Testament also. To again give just one example: The Sanhedrin, the Jewish court which engineered the crucifixion of Jesus, responded to the Christian claim that he had risen from the dead by accusing the disciples of stealing the body. This is an incidental ission from hostile witnesses of a fact that actually corroborates the Resurrection Hypothesis; namely, since the Sanhedrin would certainly have produced the corpse of Jesus if they could, the accusation strongly suggests that the tomb of Jesus was empty which is precisely what the Christians claimed a group of women had discovered on Easter morning. As Paul Maier notes, "if a source its a fact that is decidedly not in its favour, the fact is to be presumed genuine." 5.2 Dissimiliarity This criterion states that the historicity of p is more probable if p is dissimilar to the prior beliefs of those claiming its occurrence. The death and Resurrection of Jesus satisfy this criterion very clearly: Since first century Jews expected a Messiah who overthrows the Roman occupiers and a general resurrection at the end of history, a Messiah who dies and is individually resurrected in the middle of history represents a very strange and dramatic mutation within the Jewish worldview. N. T. Wright



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makes this point central to his massive study The Resurrection of the Son of God in which he argues that only the Resurrection itself can satisfactorily for the emergence of a sincere Jewish belief in a dying and rising Messiah. The historicity of the New Testament claim that Jesus rose from the dead is thus highly probable on the criterion of dissimilarity. 5.3 Embarrassment The criterion of embarrassment states that the historicity of p is more probable if p is problematic for the one who claims the occurrence of p—since people do not lie to their own disadvantage. It applies to many New Testament claims but to none more obviously than the crucifixion of Jesus. Prior to the Resurrection the Apostles had believed that Jesus was the Messiah prophesied to defeat the foreign occupying power and restore the throne of David in Jerusalem. His ignominious execution by the very foreign power his followers expected him to overthrow was therefore a profound embarrassment: It dashed their hopes of his triumph and appeared to confirm the Sanhedrin claim that Jesus was a false prophet accused by God. On the criterion of embarrassment the historicity of the crucifixion is highly probable. 5.4 The Criterion of Historical Congruence This criterion states that the historicity of p is more probable if p coheres with known historical facts about the context in which p is said to have occurred. This criterion applies at many points of the New Testament of which I will mention just one: The New Testament claims that Joseph of Arimathea requested the body of Jesus from Pilate so that he could bury it before the Sabbath; that Joseph and Nicodemus together bound the body in linen and placed it in a hewn tomb; and, finally, that when the Sabbath was over a group of female followers of Jesus arrived at the tomb with spices to anoint the body. Because all of these details are congruent with our knowledge of Jewish burial customs in the first century the criterion of historical congruence gives us further grounds for affirming their historicity.



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5.5 Semitisms This criterion states that the historicity of a New Testament sentence p is more probable if it contains traces of an Aramaic or Hebraic origin. Since the New Testament was written in Greek and Jesus spoke Aramaic, traces of Aramaic in the Greek of the New Testament argue in favour of a primitive tradition that originates in Jesus. We see this, for example, in Paul’s quotation of a creedal tradition in Corinthians. “I delivered to you,” he reminds the Corinthians, “what I also received," suggesting the transmission of an oral tradition. Paul then recites a list of eyewitnesses to the risen Jesus which, as Habermas and Licona point out, contains numerous hints of an Aramaic origin that would seem to vouch for its authenticity—including the fourfold use of the Greek term for "that," hoti, common in Aramaic narration, and the use of the name Cephas (“He appeared to Cephas”) which is the Aramaic for Peter. 6. Conclusion As noted, these criteria of authenticity further strengthen the conclusion reached in the first half of this chapter: That several key New Testament books are historically reliable sources of information about Jesus. Having established this, let us now consider whether the historical evidence shows that the life of Jesus has the five features of God Incarnate discussed in Chapter 21.



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30 The Life Of Jesus In Chapter 21, I gave Swinburne’s a priori argument for the Incarnation. This showed that, if there is a God, then it is highly probable that he will respond to our sin and suffering by entering into history in human form: in order to discharge an obligation to share in the suffering which, though for good reason, he allows; to offer wrongdoers a means of making atonement and to help us live morally good lives by example and instruction. The fulfilment of these purposes requires that the life of God Incarnate satisfy five initial criteria: he himself must live a life that is morally perfect and filled with suffering; he must claim to be divine; he must claim to be making an atonement for human sin; he must give plausible teachings and establish a worldwide church to tell future generations what he has done and how they may avail themselves of it. A sixth and final criterion is that his life must receive a divine signature; that is, God must involve himself in the life of the person in whom he became incarnate by means of some action only God can perform. This will prove that the life, claims and teaching of that person have received divine approval and so that person was, indeed, God Incarnate. In this chapter I am going to argue that on the evidence we have the life of Jesus satisfies the first five criteria and in the next chapter I will argue that it satisfies the sixth. My general discussion here follows Swinburne point by point with interpolations from other sources.121 1. Jesus Led a Perfect Life Filled with Suffering The only possible evidence for the moral character of a person’s life is their public behaviour. However, the evidence we have for the life of Jesus is the evidence we would expect if he had led a perfect life. It is, for example, almost universally acknowledged that 121 See Richard Swinburne, Was Jesus God?

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(2008).

Jesus befriended and ate with the outcasts of society. In Jesus the Jew, distinguished Jewish scholar Geza Vermes writes of Jesus that, In one respect more than any other he differed from both his contemporaries and even his prophetic predecessors. The prophets spoke on behalf of the honest poor, and defended the widows and the fatherless, those oppressed and exploited by the wicked, rich and powerful. Jesus went further. In addition to proclaiming these blessed, he actually took his stand among the pariahs of his world, those despised by the respectable. Sinners were his table companions and the ostracised tax collectors and prostitutes his friends.

In first century Judea, tax collectors were loathed because they had a reputation for extracting more taxes than they were authorised to by the Roman authorities for whom they worked. Thus when Jesus went to stay with the tax collector Zacchaeus, those who learned of it complained that, “He has gone to be the guest of a notorious sinner.” Jesus showed love to all. The Gospels also report that Jesus was often swarmed and harried by crowds and always met them with the same unwavering comion, generosity and love. Luke, for instance, tells us of one occasion on which so many people surrounded the house in which Jesus was staying that a group of men carrying a cripple could find no way in. And so the men ripped a hole in the roof and lowered the cripple and stretcher on which he lay into the house. At this means of entry, farcical in its intrusiveness, Jesus did not evince the slightest annoyance. “Friend,” Jesus told the cripple, “your sins are forgiven.” And so generally thought his ministry. “When he saw the crowds,” Matthew tells us, “he had comion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” Prayer and religious experience played an important part in the life of Jesus who consistently taught his followers to seek repentance from, pray and give thanks to God. This is a great moral good for at least three reasons. God, if he exists at all, is the consummation of all love, power, beauty and intelligence lying at the heart of reality. It follows that a relationship with God is the greatest possible good available to the creature. And since it is a moral truism that we owe gratitude to our benefactors and God, as the holy source of our existence from moment to moment, is our supreme benefactor, it follows also that it is good for us to show

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gratitude to God. And, finally, since we all wrong God directly by failing to show him that gratitude and indirectly by wronging each other, it is good that we should show repentance to God and seek his forgiveness. Like John the Baptist, Jesus did not reserve his teaching for committed disciples or a spiritual elite; he taught publicly to all who were willing to listen. The personal and public spiritual life of Jesus is therefore a further mark of moral perfection. In the previous chapter it was noted that the Baptism of Jesus seems theologically problematic. However, the fact that Jesus sought baptism from John the Baptist does not imply that Jesus considered himself a sinner: Not until the foundation of the Christian Church in the years after the Resurrection was baptism istered solely for the remission of the sins of the person being baptised. There is no evidence that John’s baptism of Jesus had this character and Jewish historian Josephus denied that it did. Baptism was sometimes sought as a means of identifying oneself with the Israelites and their collective need for the remission of sins and in I Corinthians 15:29 Paul mentions the practice, which did not continue, of being baptised on behalf of the dead. Throughout his three year ministry Jesus lived as an itinerant teacher and, in the absence of a reason to think otherwise, we should believe him when he states that, “The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” All the Gospel s of his betrayal, arrest, trial and execution also emphasise that he willingly yielded himself at each stage of his ordeal despite knowing that doing so would result in death. Jesus therefore showed a radical commitment to the cause of changing people by reason and example rather than by force or insurrection. That Jesus also led a life involving pain and suffering is more obvious on the historical evidence than almost anything else. But let us examine it in a little more detail. The life of Jesus ended with his Crucifixion engineered by the Jewish high court and carried out by the Romans. The charge pressed against Jesus by the Jewish authorities was “blasphemy” which is how they characterised and understood the fact that Jesus claimed rights that belonged to God alone. However, if, as the evidence will suggest, Jesus was in fact God Incarnate, then Jesus was innocent of that charge.



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The Gospels all claim that the Jewish authorities told the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, that Jesus claimed to be “King of the Jews.” On the criterion of dissimilarity, the historicity of this detail is highly probable: The phrase “King of the Jews” was not used by Jews or by anyone else in the Gospels but is very plausibly a way of explaining the Jewish concept of “Messiah” to Romans ignorant of the Jewish religion. However, it was also a phrase all too easy for them to misunderstand: Pilate might understand it to mean that Jesus planned to overthrow the Romans by force. So: The claims which Jesus made were claims which, if he were God incarnate, he had the right to make and which were plausibly misunderstood by the Roman authorities. And this means that the Roman authorities, at the instigation of the Jewish authorities, condemned an innocent man to death. In being deserted by his followers and dying by crucifixion when innocent of the charges against him, Jesus shared in the suffering and injustice of human life in a very profound way—as is quite evident during his agony in the Garden of Gethsemane. Just how brutal death by crucifixion was we shall see in the next chapter. And the Gospels all make it clear that Jesus willingly submitted to both the agony and the injustice. 2. Jesus Claimed to be Divine The Gospel writers report Jesus referring to himself as, “Son of God.” This phrase did not mean then what it came to mean in later Christian theology or imply that Jesus was divine: It may simply have meant “Messiah” or “Righteous Person.” However, there is evidence that Jesus insinuated his divinity before his Crucifixion and evidence that he proclaimed it openly afterwards. And there is also a good reason why he needed to proceed in this way rather than simply claim, “I am God,” from the beginning of his ministry. If God were to become incarnate for the reasons discussed in Chapter 21, he needed to take on a human body and a human way of thinking and acting in addition to his divine nature—as eventually codified in the Council of Chalcedon. This is something it is difficult to understand and very easy to misunderstand. Thus if Jesus had announced during his earthy ministry, “I am God,” his listeners and those who learned of the claim would have understood him to be telling them that he was a pagan god: a



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powerful and lustful being who had emerged from the primeval chaos and now occupied a human body but not the holy source of all being incarnate. Indeed, Geza Vermes writes that, “It is no exaggeration to contend that the identification of a contemporary historical figure with God would have been inconceivable to a first century Palestinian Jew.” The absence of an explicit declaration of divinity is not therefore evidence that Jesus did not believe himself to be God as this was something he could only proclaim openly after his Crucifixion had laid bare his humanity and his Resurrection had demonstrated the unique sense in which he was human. In short: Only under the aspect of his Crucifixion and Resurrection together did the Incarnation have any hope of being properly understood. The Gospel s of what Jesus said and did after his Resurrection are consistent with this view. All manuscripts of Matthew conclude with Jesus commanding the remaining disciples to baptise, “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” thereby denoting that the Son, Jesus himself, is equal in status to God the Father. John also records the explicit confession of Thomas who did not believe in the Resurrection of Jesus until he saw it with his own eyes. “My Lord and my God,” Thomas exclaims and Jesus does not correct him. Moreover, on two occasions after the Resurrection Matthew reports that the disciples “worshipped” Jesus and many manuscripts of Luke report the same. This evidence is particularly compelling placed in its proper historical and social context; i.e., when it is ed that the authors of the New Testament knew that it would be wrong to worship anyone but God. Matthew and Luke record Jesus quoting at Satan the Old Testament command to, “Worship the Lord your God and serve him only,” when Satan invites Jesus to worship him. And in Acts 10:26, when Cornelius tries to worship Peter, Peter onishes him with the words, “Stand up! I am only a mortal.” And, finally, twice in Revelation the angel commands John, its purported author, not to worship him with the words, “You must not do that! I am a fellow servant with you. Worship God!” Jesus, by contrast, is never reported rejecting worship and Matthew also records some occasions on which the disciples worshipped Jesus prior to his Resurrection. All of this evidence is the



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evidence we would expect to find if Jesus believed he were God Incarnate. I noted earlier that Jesus insinuated his divinity before his crucifixion. This is evident in several ways. It is evident first in the very charge of blasphemy which the Jewish authorities pressed against Jesus during his trial. Clearly enough, Jesus did not curse God. What was "blasphemous" in the view of his accs was that Jesus did things and claimed rights which only God could do and claim. It is in this way that John understands the accusation; for instance, in 10:33 he records the Jews picking up stones to throw at Jesus. “It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you, but for blasphemy, because you, though only a human being, are making yourself God.” That Jesus was indeed insinuating his divinity prior to his Resurrection also emerged during his trial. Challenged by Caiaphas to confirm or deny that he was the Messiah and “Son of the Blessed One,” Jesus replied, “I am,” and then quoted Daniel 7:13: “You will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of power and coming with the clouds of Heaven.” His words, according to Mark, caused an uproar. Caiaphas tore his clothes and exclaimed, “You have heard the blasphemy! What do you think?” and all those present agreed that he should be condemned to death. However, the strongest insinuation of divinity to emerge during the trial of Jesus relates to his predictions about the Temple. Mark and Matthew record that witnesses testified that Jesus had said he could or would destroy the Temple and build in three days, “another Temple not made with hands.” And John, too, quotes Jesus as saying this. “It is hard to imagine a purely fictional origin for the accusation that Jesus threatened to destroy the Temple,” writes the liberal biblical scholar E. P. Sanders. What is interesting is that Mark describes the accusation as “false.” If Mark was indeed written after AD 70 he would have known that the Temple was destroyed by the Romans in that year and, in any case, he elsewhere relates another prediction by Jesus of its destruction. All this implies that Mark believed that the Temple would be destroyed and so the falsity of the accusation lies in something else: Jesus did not predict that he himself would destroy and rebuild the Temple; rather, he predicted that the Temple would be destroyed and replaced by something else that



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had been destroyed and “raised up” after three days; namely, Jesus himself. In other words, Jesus predicted that in due course the Temple would be abolished and God would be accessed and experienced through him.122 Nowhere does Jesus claim that he has been commissioned by God to do this. And to replace the divinely ordained place of worship, and, moreover, to declare himself to beits replacement, is a claim to divinity. A fourth and final way in which Jesus insinuated his divinity was by forgiving sins as the Gospels report he did on at least two occasions. “Why does this fellow speak in this way?” protests a scribe on one of these occasions. “It is blasphemy! Who can forgive sins but God alone?” 2.1 Brief Digression on the Humanity of Jesus The purpose and nature of the Incarnation was introduced in Chapter 21 and because of it we need to keep the humanity of Jesus in view during any discussion of his divinity. Again, briefly: To share in our humanity God allowed himself to develop a second and separate system of human beliefs acquired through the sensory experience of a human body. The separation of these two belief systems, the human and the divine, was a voluntary act known to his divine mind but not to his human mind. And so while the divine consciousness would include a human consciousness the human consciousness would exclude the divine consciousness. And thismeans that, while remaining divine, Jesus would act and feel much like ourselves. We find this doctrine reflected throughout the New Testament. Thus Luke claims that Jesus “increased in wisdom,” which suggests that he was not always fully omniscient and Mark likewise reports that the Son did not know something which the Father knows; namely, the “day or hour” when the world will come to an end. The cry of dereliction which Jesus sent up from the Cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” further suggests that Jesus experienced a moment during which he ceased to believe that God was sustaining him. And there is, finally, a age in Mark 122 The Letter to the Hebrews describes Jesus as coming as "a high priest" through the "greater and more perfect tent not made with hands."



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that suggests Jesus was not always omnipotent: During a visit to the region of Palestine where Jesus grew up he could, “do no deed of power there.” That Jesus was tempted is also clear from the s of the beginning of his ministry in the Synoptic Gospels; experiences which Hebrews implies involved real temptations to which Jesus could have succumbed but did not. All of this shows that, if Jesus were God Incarnate, he become God Incarnate in just the way discussed in Chapter 21: By taking on a separate and limited human nature in addition to his divine nature. 3. Jesus Claimed to Be Making Atonement We have already seen that Jesus claimed he was providing a replacement for the Temple at which Jews offered sacrifices to God in atonement for sin. And it is consistent with this understanding that, during the Last Supper, Jesus gave his disciples bread and wine with the words, “This is my body,” and, “This is my blood.” Since body and blood are elements of sacrifice, Jesus was telling his disciples that his life was an atonement for human sin. New Testament s of the Last Supper all understand it in this way—as the “New Covenant” for the forgiveness of sin which the Old Testament had prophesied would one day replace the Old Convent system of Temple sacrifices. That Jesus wanted his life to be understood as an atonement for human sin is also very clearly reflected in the final days of his earthly ministry. It is clear, for instance, that after challenging the authorities Jesus took pains to avoid arrest until the over by staying outside Jerusalem and holding the Last Supper in secret; clear, in other words, that Jesus timed his trial and execution to coincide with the over which commemorates the Exodus of the Jews out of Egypt. And just as the Exodus told of the Jews' escape from enslavement, so, claims the New Testament, did the death of Jesus vouchsafe an escape for all humanity from enslavement to sin, guilt and death. Instituting the Eucharist shortly before allowing himself to be crucified at over therefore conveyed an unmistakeable message within first century Jewish culture: That Jesus understood himself to be, “dying for our sins.”



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4. Jesus Gave Plausible Teachings 4.1 On God Jesus taught that God is the all powerful, all knowing and morally perfect creator and sustainer of the world—an understanding of God consistent with that of philosophical theology. He also taught the great love of God for sinful human beings who in turn should love, rely on and worship God. All of this is clearly reflected in the parables of Jesus, such as the Parable of the Prodigal Son, the Parable of the Lost Sheep and the Parable of the Lost Coin, along with his explicit statements to the same effect: That God loves man more than the lilies and the birds on whom he also bestows love. And all this, in turn, is consistent with the omnibenevolence of God. In Chapter 22 we saw that if God exists and is all powerful and all loving God is necessarily a Trinity. And Jesus is reported to have said things which insinuate just this. It is no objection to this doctrine that Jesus did not teach it explicitly by saying, for example, “God is a Trinity.” For if a claim by Jesus to be God Incarnate would have been misunderstood before his Crucifixion and Resurrection so, a fortiori, would a claim that God was a Trinity have been misunderstood; mistaken, almost certainly, for the polytheism held by ordinary Greeks and Romans. Nevertheless, there are two insinuations made by Jesus which provided the Church with material to develop the doctrine. Firstly, while implying his divinity, Jesus sharply differentiated himself from God the Father. “All things have been handed over to me by my Father,” Luke reports Jesus as saying, “and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” Secondly, there is much in the New Testament about the role and personhood of the Holy Spirit. Mark and Matthew report Jesus seeing the Spirit descend on him in the form of a dove during his baptism and thereafter claim the Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted. The disciples themselves could not have known of the latter unless Jesus himself had told them and it seems that the Spirit was recognized at his baptism only by Jesus himself. Acts tells of the guidance of the Holy Spirit in spreading the Gospel. And John reports Jesus as teaching his disciples that the



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Holy Spirit would guide the Church after Jesus is no longer among them in bodily form. In that age Jesus refers to the Holy Spirit as “the Advocate” and also with the personal pronoun he. And there is, finally, the command of Jesus at the end of Matthew to baptise “in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit,” which denotes that the Holy Spirit, like the Son, is equal in status to God the Father. 4.2 On Love and Forgiveness It is also consistent with the moral perfection and the moral authority of God that Jesus taught us to show unconditional love for each other and to forgive each other for wrongdoing, “not seven times but, I tell you, seventy-seven times,” as Matthew reports Jesus saying. This is the obvious application of the Parable of the Two Servants and the Lord’s Prayer in which we are ened to pray, “Forgive us our debts as we have also forgiven our debtors.” In other words, to avoid hypocrisy by forgiving others before ourselves seeking the forgiveness of God. That, above all else, we should love one another is the central theme of the Sermon on the Mount. And asked to summarise his message, Jesus declares, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” 4.3 On Morality Jesus seems to have endorsed the Old Testament teaching contained in the Ten Commandments concerning the minimum moral requirements of a good human life: To worship God alone, respect our parents, refrain from theft, murder, adultery and lying and the importance of prayer, fasting and almsgiving are also important elements of his teaching. However, Old Testament also contains detailed Jewish laws concerning ritual and sacrifice which the Church (inspired, as it claimed, by the Holy Spirit) taught Christians need no longer conform to. In doing so they understood themselves to be acting in the spirit of the teachings of Jesus and Jesus himself taught that following him was more important than conforming to exact details of ritual. I noted earlier that, when asked to summarise his teaching, Jesus declared the two greatest commandments were, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all



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thy heart and with all thy soul,” and “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” And then, critically, Jesus adds, “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” Paul, understanding the point, compendiates it in seven words: “Love is the fulfilling of the law.” Both the teachings of Jesus on basic morality and the interpretation of those teachings by the Church are therefore consistent and plausible. In Chapter 21, we also saw that God may create obligations to help us form the habit of doing what is supererogatorily good. When a parent tells a child to do the shopping for a sick neighbour the parent makes a nonobligatory good action obligatory in the hope that the child will develop a habit of doing good beyond what is obligated and so become a morally exemplary person. And Jesus certainly created some moral obligations of this kind. For example, during his discussion of the Old Testament command to “Love your neighbour as yourself,” Jesus was asked, “And who is my neighbour?” and in reply told the parable of the Good Samaritan with its clear message that our neighbour is anyone at all with whom we are in . So interpreted the Command is very demanding and presses us to conform to the standard of morality which a morally perfect God would want to become natural to us. And this, too, is consistent with what a morally perfect God would be likely to teach and so evidence of a kind we would expect if Jesus were God Incarnate. 4.4 On the End of the World and the Afterlife And finally: It was noted at the start of Chapter 26 that while God has good reason for allowing humans to suffer he has equally good reason to place sensible limits upon that suffering—both by placing a limit on the duration of a human life (and so on the suffering that a human being can experience or cause) and also by one day bringing the whole world to an end. And Jesus indeed taught that, sooner or later, there would be a Parousia, or end of the world, followed by a Last Judgment. This second teaching entails that human beings will enter into different final states according to the moral character they freely formed during their earthly life—a



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subject discussed in Chapter 26 and, with the careful qualifications made there, also something we might expect God to do.123 5. Jesus Founded a Church It was noted in Chapter 21 that since the human life of God Incarnate would be of limited duration he would need to ensure that his message was ed on to future generations and the obvious way of doing this would be to found a worldwide institution or church. At the end of Matthew, Jesus tells the Apostles to, “go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them everything I have commanded you.” This suggests, plainly enough, that Jesus was entrusting the community he had formed with the task of taking his message to the world. Within the context of first century Judaism there are indications that this community was intended to have institutional character. For instance: That there were twelve Apostles is recorded throughout the New Testament and fixed so firmly in the minds of its authors that after Judas betrayed Jesus and only eleven remained they continued to refer to them as “the Twelve.” Israel, meanwhile, had traditionally had twelve tribes deriving from twelve leaders. And so any Jewish prophet who founded a community of twelve leaders with a sacrificial ceremony had to be understood as founding a “New Israel.” The sacrificial ceremony was, of course, the Eucharist and all subsequent Christian communities regularly met to celebrate it in keeping with what Jesus had instructed them to do. Moreover, Matthew twice records Jesus saying, “Whatever you bind on earth with be bound in Heaven and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in Heaven” which suggests that the Church would continue the teachings of Jesus. And there are, finally, 123 While Jesus refused to name an exact date when the end of the world, or "Parousia," would occur, his followers expected it to happen very soon. However, as Swinburne notes, "there is no good reason to suppose that in the final days of his life or after his Resurrection Jesus himself expected the Parousia to happen soon." On the contrary, the institution of the Eucharist implied a continued belief in Church organisation after his death and all the remarks attributed to him after his death concern his commissioning of the disciples to convert the whole world through the non-miraculous process of evangelism—something that would clearly take a very long time.



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various ages throughout the Gospels in which Jesus tells the disciples that the Holy Spirit will continue to guide the Church after his departure. Thus John reports Jesus saying, “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever.” And Matthew closes with Jesus promising, “I am with you always until the end of the age.” 6. Conclusion It has been my concern in this chapter to show that the life of Jesus satisfies the five initial criteria discussed in Chapter 21. And we have now seen that the evidence we have is the evidence we would expect if Jesus had lived a perfect life filled with suffering, claimed to be divine and an atonement for human sin, given plausible teachings and founded a church. We come now to the sixth and last criterion; namely, that on the evidence it is plausible to suppose that God affixed his signature to the life of Jesus by raising him from the dead.



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31 The Resurrection Of Jesus We come at last to the Resurrection evidence for which the previous 11 Chapters have laid the groundwork: By showing that religious pluralism is resolvable; Christian doctrine coherent and probable and the New Testament a generally reliable source of information about Jesus whose life is also the kind of life to which God would plausibly affix his signature. It is important to note that in making the case for the Resurrection of Jesus we need not assume that the New Testament is inspired or infallible. Here, as in the previous two chapters, we will be treating the New Testament as we would treat any other collection of ancient documents: approaching it with caution and skepticism and testing its claims against the criteria of historical authenticity. However, if in doing so we find ourselves rationally obligated to conclude on the evidence that Jesus rose from the dead, that will have implications for the status of the Bible as Holy Scripture—a point I will discuss in the next chapter. Structure of the Argument The historical case for the Resurrection of Jesus has three main components. I will first introduce what the historian Gary Habermas calls the “minimal facts.” These are four New Testament claims which undergird the inference to the Resurrection and which, because they satisfy multiple criteria of historical authenticity, are accepted by the majority of historians. Then I will introduce the explanatory options. These are the five candidate hypotheses (four naturalistic and one miraculous) that have been put forward to for the minimal facts. And lastly I will evaluate those competing hypotheses using the criteria historians employ in such cases and which I will introduce and explain in due course. My general concern in this chapter will be to show that when one uses accepted criteria for evaluating competing hypotheses and



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includes the evidence for the existence of God from natural theology in the total background evidence, the Resurrection emerges as an inference to the best explanation for the historically certain facts about Jesus and the early Church. 1. The Minimal Facts In Chapter 29 I showed that many books of the New Testament should be regarded as basically reliable works of history—many of whose key claims also satisfy multiple criteria of historical authenticity. That discussion will have particular relevance to what follows because the minimal facts with which we are now concerned are facts about Jesus and the early Church which are accepted by the majority of critical scholars precisely because they satisfy many of these criteria. The minimal facts are, 1.

2. 3.

4.

Crucifixion and Burial. That after his crucifixion and death under the governorship of Pontius Pilate, Jesus was buried in a tomb by one Joseph of Arimathea. The Empty Tomb. That days later the tomb was found to be empty by a group of Jesus' female followers. The Post Mortem Appearances. That thereafter various individuals and groups, at various times and places, had experiences that completely convinced them that they had seen, touched, spoken to and eaten with the risen Jesus. A Sincere Belief in the Resurrection. That these experiences completely transformed the disciples, inspired a belief among them that God had raised Jesus from the dead and led to the formation of the Church.

Before coming to the various hypotheses that have been put forward to explain these four facts, let us consider how the criteria of authenticity apply to each one. The crucifixion of Jesus is historical bedrock and so can be treated briefly. Not only is it prohibitively improbable that the disciples would invent the brutal, humiliating death of their leader but the event is described in the four canonical Gospels, Acts, the New Testament epistles and attested to in multiple Christian and non-Christian sources in the ancient world. There is simply no dispute whatever on this point among serious historians. Thus Bart Ehrman and John Dominic Crossan, both renowned New Testament historians and skeptics, state that the crucifixion of Jesus on the orders of Pontius Pilate is



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as certain as any historical fact can be. The remaining minimal facts are as follows. 1.1 The Burial and Empty Tomb The claim that Jesus was buried in a tomb that was later found to be empty satisfies several criteria of historical authenticity. Multiple independent attestation, for instance, is satisfied by the four canonical Gospels which all begin their s of the Resurrection with women visiting the tomb to anoint the body of Jesus on the morning of the first Easter Sunday and being surprised to discover that his body was not there. And Acts and a very early creedal tradition quoted by Paul in Corinthians both mention the burial and presuppose that the tomb is empty.124 The empty tomb also satisfies the criterion of embarrassment at multiple points. This, you may recall, argues that any detail problematic to an ancient can be presumed true on the logic that an author does not invent a detail problematic to his own . To appreciate its application here it is enough to know that Joseph of Arimathea, the man who both supplied the tomb and buried Jesus in it, was a member of the Sanhedrin; and the Sanhedrin was the Jewish court which had engineered the crucifixion of Jesus. If the Gospel authors wished to fabricate a story about the death and burial of Jesus they would not have given the Sanhedrin the dual role of murdering Jesus and then humanely laying him to rest. According to John A. T. Robinson of Cambridge, the entombment of Jesus by Joseph of Arimathea is, “one of the earliest and best attested facts about Jesus.” The criterion of embarrassment applies again to the discovery of the empty tomb by specifically female followers. And this is because, in first century Jewish culture, the eyewitness testimony of women was held in such low esteem that it was not permitted in a court of law. It is for this reason highly improbable that the Gospel authors would have hung a pivotal event in their story on the testimony of those witnesses least likely to be believed. The 124 First century Jews had a broad vocabulary

for various post mortem states and resurrection always meant the physical raising of the body and so by entailment an empty tomb. Thus when Paul says that Jesus was raised it is implied that the tomb is empty as surely as, “Jane got up and went to work” implies that her bed is empty.



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criterion of embarrassment suggests that both these inconvenient details—the burial of Jesus by a member of the Sanhedrin and the discovery of the empty tomb by a group of female followers—are truths reluctantly but dutifully recorded. The empty tomb is also indirectly testified by hostile witnesses. Matthew, for example, tells us that one of the first Sanhedrin responses to the claim that Jesus rose from the dead was to say that the disciples had stolen the body. Since Joseph of Arimathea was a member of the Sanhedrin, the Sanhedrin would themselves have been aware of the location of the tomb. And so if the tomb had not been empty they could have silenced Christianity for all eternity by producing the corpse of Jesus. The fact that they did not, but instead sought to explain away the empty tomb, strongly s the Gospel claim that the tomb was in fact empty. A further detail that must be noted here is that Christianity flourished in the very city were Jesus had been crucified and buried shortly after he had been crucified and buried. As Paul Althaus notes, the Resurrection story, “could not have been maintained in Jerusalem for a single day, for a single hour, if the emptiness of the tomb had not been established as a fact for all concerned.” And a final point that argues for the historicity of the empty tomb is that Christians claimed it was discovered on a Sunday and Sunday was thereafter universally adopted by Christians for the celebration of the “Eucharist” or Last Supper. Since Christian communities spread out from Jerusalem very quickly and took with them the custom of celebrating the Eucharist on a Sunday, the choice of day must predate the spread of Christian communities— otherwise there would have been disputes about when to celebrate and authoritative instructions given to settle those disputes as we have evidence for in other matters. 125 However, all early references to the Eucharist assume a weekly Sunday celebration, including Acts and I Corinthians, with Revelation calling Sunday, “the Lord’s day.” To understand the relevance of all this to the empty tomb consider that there are other days on which it might have seemed natural for Christians to celebrate the Eucharist—such as the day of the original Last Supper, a Thursday, or annually rather than 125 Such as disputes about circumcision and eating sacrificial meat which were resolved by the Council of Jerusalem described in Acts 15.



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weekly. But no such customs are known. And so the most plausible explanation for total agreement on the theological significance of Sunday from the very beginning of the Church is that Christians believed that the Resurrection had occurred on Sunday. Such a belief, clearly enough, would have to have been shared by the Apostles and would just as clearly have been inable unlessthey had seen the empty tomb or the risen Jesus on that day—and in the latter case they would certainly have investigated the tomb. All this demonstrates that the visit to the empty tomb on Easter Sunday was not a late invention read back into history but a separately authenticated event. For all these reasons the historicity of the discovery of the empty tomb is accepted by the vast majority of scholars—including skeptics and even including Jewish scholars such as Pinchas Lapide and Geza Vermes. “By far most exegetes,” writes New Testament critic Jacob Kremer, “hold firmly to the reliability of the biblical statements about the empty tomb.” D. H. Can Daalen adds that, "It is extremely difficult to object to the empty tomb on historical grounds. Those who deny it do so on the basis of theological or philosophical assumptions." 1.2 The Post Mortem Appearances Matthew, Luke, John, Acts and I Corinthians all provide lists of eyewitnesses who claim to have talked with Jesus after his death on the Cross. The earliest of these lists is a credal tradition from the Jerusalem church ed on by Paul in I Corinthains 15:5-8, For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the Apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.

He appeared to Cephas. Here Paul faithfully quotes the Aramaic form of Peter, which, as already noted, is one of many Semitisms in the creed that argues for its authenticity. Paul, you may also recall, spent time cross

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examining Peter and also James in Jerusalem and we can therefore be certain that Peter described the appearance to Paul. And the appearance is mentioned again in another early credal tradition found in Luke 24:34. In view of this early and multiple attestation virtually all New Testament scholars agree that, however one may wish to explain it, Peter did experience a post mortem appearance of the risen Jesus.

Then to the Twelve. The twelve refers to the original group of disciples chosen by Jesus—sans Judas, who had by this time committed suicide but whose absence did not affect the formal appellation. As with the appearance to Peter, its inclusion in the credal tradition constitutes very early independent attestation which is further corroborated by separate s in Luke 24:36 and John 20:19. The most notable feature of this particular appearance is that during it Jesus is said to have shown the disciples his wounds and then eaten a fish. In doing so Jesus demonstrated both the corporeality and continuity of his resurrection body: That he was physically raised from the dead in the same body that was crucified. Because it is vouched for by Paul, included in the earliest credal traditions, and independently described by both Luke and John, the historicity of this appearance is highly probable on the criterion of early multiple attestation. Then to more than five hundred brothers at one time. The third appearance is notable not only for the number of witnesses involved but also for Paul's avowal that most of them, “are still alive, though some have fallen asleep,” which suggests that Paul was in personal with some of them. As renowned New Testament scholar C. H. Dodd remarks, “There can hardly be any purpose in mentioning the fact unless Paul is saying, in effect, ‘The witnesses are there to be questioned.’” No one making up a claim this elaborate would invite those whom he wishes to deceive to discover his deception when the option of claiming they were all now dead was available. And again, we know that Paul would not have included this appearance in his list of witnesses unless it had been confirmed by Peter and James with whom he spent time after his conversion. All these points the historicity of the third appearance.



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Then he appeared to James. James, either the brother or a close relative of Jesus, was an unbeliever prior to the resurrection—a detail which, by the criterion of embarrassment, may be regarded as a historical. Second only to the conversion of Paul, James undergoes the most radical transformation of any New Testament figure. He is already found among the believers in the upper room in Jerusalem in Acts 1:14; he is visited by Paul as an Apostle in Galatians 1:19; and in just over a decade has become one of the three “pillars” of the church and a member of the Council of Elders. In AD 60, according to the Jewish historian Josephus, James is illegally stoned to death by the Sanhedrin for his faith in Jesus. Thus the conversion of and the appearance to James amply satisfies the criterion of hostile testimony. Skeptical critic Hans Grass acknowledges that the conversion of James is among the best evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. Then to all the Apostles. This appearance appears to refer to a wider circle of followers known to the Twelve and attested to in Acts 1:21. Is historicity is ed by Paul’s personal acquaintance with the Apostles with whom he had been in and from whom he had received the list. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared to me The conversion of Paul on the road to Damascus is the most dramatic transformation of any Apostle in the New Testament. Saul of Tarsus, who took the name Paul after his conversion, was a respected Pharisee and fierce enemy of Christianity engaged by the Sanhedrin to persecute its followers. He was referred to beyond the borders of Palestine as, “the wolf” who stalked, “the fold of the lamb” (Acts 9:13) and had personally overseen the torture and execution of Christians (22:19). On the day of his conversion, Paul was on his way from Jerusalem to Damascus with a clutch of arrest warrants for unnamed followers of the “Christian Way.” However: By the time Saul arrived in Damascus, and still blinded by what he had seen, he had conceived a sudden frightened categorical belief in the deity of Jesus—clear proof of which is found in the renunciation of his high station and entry into



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a life of poverty, ostracism, beatings, abuse, and, finally, martyrdom in Rome under the reign of Nero.126 And what he had seen was, according to his own in 1 Corinthians 9:1, “Jesus our Lord.” The conversion of Paul therefore abundantly satisfies the criterion of hostile testimony.

Other Appearances. The earliest list of Resurrection witnesses is, as noted, the one given by Paul and which we have just discussed. However, there are many other appearances recorded in the New Testament. Two of the Gospels begin with an appearance earlier than the appearance to Peter: Matthew reports an appearance of Jesus to Mary Magdalene and “the other Mary” on the first Easter morning and John also reports that Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene then. Luke reports that Jesus appeared to and spoke at length with Cleopas and another disciple on the road to Emmaus and lists a further appearance in Jerusalem to “the Eleven” on Easter evening. Matthew lists a further appearance in Galilee to the Eleven and John 20 another appearance to the disciples in Jerusalem and again a week later. John 21, meanwhile, reports an appearance to seven disciples, again in Galilee, and Acts, finally, begins with the claim that Jesus “presented himself alive,” to the Apostles “by many convincing proofs,” and continued to appear for over forty days, during which time he “spoke about the Kingdom of God,” and “ate and drank.” Apparent Discrepancies. As we can see the sources give somewhat different lists of who saw Jesus where and when and this is often thought to present a difficulty. However, there is an important reason for these differences between the list included in Paul’s credal statement and the Gospel lists: The list cited by Paul includes only those witnesses that Jews, to whom it was being presented as a proof, were likely to believe. I have already noted that first century Jews would not take 126 The appearance to Paul has unique features: a blinding light and a voice which Paul’s travelling companions experienced without themselves seeing Jesus. Plausibly, however, these elements of the appearance to Paul are explained by the fact that, unlike the other Apostles, Jesus appeared to Paul after his ascension into the presence of God.



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the testimony of women seriously and this s for the omission of the two Marys. Cleopas, likewise, was not a Church leader and his companion may have been his wife mentioned in John 19:25 as present at the Crucifixion. The Gospel writers, on the other hand, wrote at a time when Jewish attitudes had hardened and the Gospel was being taken to the Gentiles and so they were at liberty to list the other witnesses without giving any consideration to their credibility before Jews. And again: since it is very implausible on the criterion of embarrassment that Matthew and John would report appearances to women before Peter, the church leader, it may be taken as historical that they were convinced such appearances had occurred. In all, the historical evidence for the post mortem appearances just discussed is so compelling that even the skeptical German critic Gerd Ludemann was prepared to concede that, “It may be taken as historically certain that the disciples had experiences after Jesus' death in which Jesus appeared to them as the risen Christ.” 1.3 A Sincere Belief in the Resurrection The Jewish disciples of Jesus expected a Messiah who would overthrow the occupying power of Rome and restore the throne of David in Jerusalem. His ignominious execution by the very foreign power they expected him to overthrow represented a crushing and seemingly irremediable defeat. And while a “universal resurrection” was a component of Rabbinic Judaism, this, as the name suggests, was expected to occur to all Jews simultaneously at the end of the world. A Messiah who dies and is individually resurrected in the middle of history was to be a very strange and dramatic mutation within the Jewish worldview. That the disciples did not expect the ion of Jesus is clear from all four Gospel s. It is the reason why they scattered in despair when Jesus was arrested; why Peter denied him in the Sanhedrin courtyard; why as a group they shunned the scene of his execution and, in John 20:19, are found huddling together behind locked doors, “for fear of the Jews.” And here an obvious question arises: How was this group of broken, defeated men suddenly transformed into fearless zealots who, against fierce opposition, stormed Antioch, Ephesus, Corinth, Thessalonica, Cyprus, Crete and Rome with the radical and incongruous claim that the Jewish



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Messiah had died and risen from the grave; a claim, moreover, for which they were willing to die? That they had not expected the Resurrection is also clear. In Luke the disciples dismissed the women's report as, "an idle tale" and John reports that when they saw the tomb for themselves they, "as yet did not understand the scripture that the Messiah is to suffer and rise from the dead." And even when they experienced Jesus appearing to them they were still, "disbelieving in their joy." John also tells us that Thomas did not believe that the other disciples had seen Jesus and it is suggested that, in this story, Thomas may represent further disciples. And while the disciples of course came to believe both in the Resurrection and in its prefiguration in the Old Testament, these were things that Jesus had to explain to them when, according to Luke, he spoke at length with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. "Oh, how foolish you are and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared," was his onishment. The unanimity of all the s on this point is compelling: The disciples did not make themselves believe in the Resurrection because they had been expecting it. N. T. Wright makes this central to his huge study The Resurrection of the Son of God and argues that only the Resurrection itself can provide a satisfactory historical for the sudden emergence of a sincere Jewish belief in a dying and rising Messiah. In a moment we shall consider the merits of this claim. But first recall the criterion of dissimilarity. This states that the historicity of p is more probable if p is dissimilar to the prior beliefs of those claiming its occurrence. Because the death of Jesus and the belief in his Resurrection abundantly satisfy this criterion the historicity of both is highly probable. And it is for this reason that a majority of scholars concede that something must have happened to the disciples to produce their sudden and sincere belief that God had raised Jesus physically from the dead. 2. Explanatory Options and Criteria of Justification Having reviewed and established the historicity of the minimal facts, we come to the explanatory options and the criteria of justification with which we shall be evaluating them. The naturalistic hypotheses are sometimes combined in various ways but the following captures the main features,



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1. The Apparent Death Hypothesis. Jesus only swooned on the Cross and revived in the cool of the tomb. 2. The Conspiracy Hypothesis. Thieves or the disciples themselves stole the corpse from the tomb. 3. The Hallucination H ypothesis. The disciples only hallucinated that they saw the risen Jesus. 4. The Mistaken Tomb Hypothesis. The empty tomb which the disciples found was not the tomb in which Jesus lay. 5. The Resurrection Hypothesis. God raised Jesus from the dead.

Historians, as I noted at the start of this chapter, use a variety of criteria in assessing competing historical hypothesis. In his book Justifying Historical Descriptions, C. B. McCullagh lists the following as factors which historians typically consider in determining which historical reconstruction best s for the evidence, 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Explanatory scope. The best hypothesis will for more of the evidence than any other. (The best hypothesis will leave the fewest facts unexplained) Explanatory power. The best hypothesis will make the evidence more probable than any other. (On the best hypothesis the evidence we have will be the evidence we would expect if the hypothesis were true). Lack of Contrivance. The best hypothesis will postulate the fewest new beliefs to explain the evidence. (The best hypothesis will not require ad hoc adjustments to avoid falsification) Lack of Disconfirmation. The best hypothesis will conflict with the least amount of evidence. (The best hypothesis will not require us to conclude that too much of our evidence is false). Superiority to Rival Hypotheses. The best hypothesis will satisfy criteria 1–4 better than any other hypothesis

3. Analysis With the historicity of the four minimal facts established and the criteria of assessment in hand, let us now consider which of our five explanatory options is an inference to the best explanation.



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3.1 The Apparent Death Hypothesis The apparent death hypothesis, or swoon theory, finds virtually no among contemporary New Testament historians. The reasons are as follows. It is massively disconfirmed by our knowledge of Roman execution methods and military culture. As N. T. Wright notes, “The Romans were very, very good at killing people. They specialised in it.” One reason for this was that the authorities provided soldiers with a powerful incentive to carry out their orders successfully: Any soldier who let a prisoner escape would forfeit his own life in their place—sometimes by being buried up to the neck and burned to death under a fire fuelled by his own clothes. The rule applied if the escapee was an ordinary prisoner of war and applied, a fortiori, if he had been charged, like Jesus, with insurrection against the Roman Empire. Roman soldiers were also prohibited from leaving the scene of a crucifixion until death had occurred and it is inconceivable that the soldiers tasked with executing Jesus would have allowed him to be carried off unless they were certain he was dead. The swoon theory is also massively disconfirmed by our knowledge of crucifixion pathology. Victims of Roman crucifixion were typically scourged until their arteries, muscles and intestines had been laid bare. The Gospels report that Jesus was scourged and that after his scourging he was too weak to carry this Cross to Golgotha—a detail which medical authorities (Edwards, Gabel and Hosmer, 1986) suggest is consistent with hypovolemic shock. Once impaled upon the cross, the victim faced an excruciating physical dilemma: To yield to gravity and slump down, whereupon the weight of his body would constrict the intercostal muscles surrounding his lungs and cause asphyxiation and unconsciousness within around twelve minutes; or to push up against gravity to maintain consciousness but at the cost of ing his entire body weight on pierced feet. As the historian Gary Habermas observes, it would have been a very simple matter for a centurion practiced in crucifixion to determine that Jesus was dead: He would only have to observe that Jesus has ceased to haul himself up heaving for breath and had remained slumped on the cross for around half an hour. And the spear in the side, recorded in John 19:34, provides additional proof of mortality: The fluid which gushed forth is



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consistent with a rupture of the pericardium—the sac which surrounds the heart. And finally: The swoon theory lacks explanatory power to the point of total incoherence when its proponents attempt to for the origin of the transformative belief among the disciples that God had raised Jesus from the dead. It is prohibitively improbable that the moribund survivor of a botched execution somehow extricated himself from his burial shroud, pushed back the heavy bolder at the entrance of the tomb, overpowered the guard and limped back to his followers—who all immediately fell at his feet in frightened awe and proclaimed him the risen Lord and luminous conqueror of death. As early as 1879, German critic David Strauss put paid to the swoon theory for all time by pointing out that a halfdead Jesus would have inspired little more in the disciples than a wish to provide him with medical care. According to Habermas, Albert Schweitzer, in his classic volume surveying historical studies of Jesus, "lists no convinced proponents of the swoon theory after Strauss's critique in 1838." In view of its disconfirmation and catastrophic lack of explanatory power the apparent death hypothesis fails to for the Resurrection evidence. 3.2 The Conspiracy Hypothesis The conspiracy hypothesis imagines that the body of Jesus was stolen—perhaps by his followers, to revere it; or by enemies of Jesus, to prevent his tomb from becoming the centre of a cult; or by grave robbers, for profit. However, there are very serious difficulties with this theory in each of its forms. If the enemies of Jesus had stolen the body they would have produced it when Christianity began to flourish in order to disprove its central claim. Grave robbers were not interested in bodies, but only in valuables, and while they might have hoped for a reward from the Sanhedrin, we know that no such reward was collected because the Sanhedrin did not come into possession of the body. And if the body had been stolen by friends of Jesus, they would have told other followers so that they might share in devotion to the body. But that entails that there were no appearances; that, in fact, the first Christians were guilty of the greatest lie ever told, which in turn leaves us without any



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explanation for the transformative belief in the resurrection among the disciples and for the fact that they were willing to die for that belief. It is important to note here that while it is possible for cult and others to die for mistaken but sincerely held beliefs, the conspiracy theory holds that the first Christians knew their claims were false and it is therefore very improbable indeed that they would be willing to die for them. Nor does the conspiracy theory explain the embarrassing elements of the Christian story. In making up stories, one works from an unlimited palette of options. There is no need to include inconvenient details and no reason not to include convenient ones. Why not include, say, a description of the actual resurrection, male witnesses to the first post mortem appearance of Jesus, or an appearance to the high priest Caiaphas. “A plot to foster belief in the Resurrection,” concludes E. P. Sanders, “would have resulted in a more consistent story." Because of its lack of explanatory scope, its contrivance and its disconfirmation by the willingness of the first Christians to die for their beliefs, the conspiracy hypothesis has been almost universally rejected by contemporary historians. 3.3 The Hallucination Hypothesis The hypothesis that the disciples only imagined or hallucinated the appearances of Jesus lacks explanatory scope because it fails to for the empty tomb. And while its proponent may annex an independent hypothesis to explain that, doing so makes his final hypothesis more contrived and so less probable. An even more serious problem with the hallucination hypothesis is that, as Gary Habermas has shown, the resurrection appearances are marked by features that are entirely inconsistent with all the candidate scenarios for hallucination. The most discussed scenarios are: mass religious hysteria, bereavement induced hallucinations and idiosyncratic personal visions. The appearances are inconsistent with mass religious hysteria. As the anomalistic psychologists Leonard Zusne and Warren Jones note, mass religious hysterias are in all the relevant cases experienced by pilgrims who have, “traveled long distances and exuberantly gathered with the explicit desire to see something special.” The resurrection appearances, by contrast, were



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experienced by individuals and groups under entirely the wrong psychological conditions: Rather than feelings of “expectation and emotional excitement,” the early disciples were overwhelmed with fear, disillusionment and despondency. The “chain reaction” necessarily underwriting such an explanation also fails to for the experiences of Paul and James who, as skeptics, stood outside the chain. Habermas concludes that, “much of the data not only differs from, but actually contradicts, the necessary conditions for collective hallucinations.” The resurrection appearances are also distinctly unlike grief induced visions of a departed loved one. For while such visions are fairly common they do not inspire a steadfast conviction that the deceased has returned bodily to life. In fact, as N. T. Wright explains, people in the ancient world were very familiar with such apparitions and had the vocabulary to describe them: such visions, for them, were simply taken as evidence that the person were really dead and were certainly never described as "resurrections." It is worth repeating that a dying and rising Messiah was a totally incongruous and unexpected notion to a first century Palestinian Jew. What was culturally available was a belief in the assumption of prophets into heaven. And since a hallucinating first century Jew could not do otherwise than to project a vision of Jesus from his background beliefs, we would therefore expect him to report a resplendent vision of Jesus amid the heavenly host and not a physically resurrected Jesus who eats fish and es through walls.127 But the greatest difficult with the hallucination hypothesis is that the appearances of Jesus were experienced by individuals and 127 One of the strangest things about the post mortem appearances of Jesus is that they combine prosaic and supernatural elements. Thus Jesus both eats a fish and has long conversations with his disciples (and so is clearly present and physical in the ordinary way) but also freely appears in locked rooms and es through walls. The disciples also noticed something different about Jesus which they struggled to express. Thus in John 21:12 we read, “None of them dared ask, Who are you? They knew it was the Lord.” As N. T. Wright observes of this age, it, “only makes sense if Jesus is, as well as the same, somehow different. Somehow he had ed through death and into a strange new world where nobody had ever been before. His body was no longer subject to decay and death. What might that have been like?” Wright suggests that while the resurrection body of Jesus was undoubtably physical we must also think of it as being, in some obscure way, “transphysical.”



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groups at various times and places for forty days and many of them involved multiple people having conversations with Jesus of some length. The only way to for this on the hallucination hypothesis is to postulate a coincidentally simultaneous and coextensive series of sustained multisensory hallucinations experienced by multiple people. And it is massively improbable that each person in each case would have been in precisely the right frame of mind; and still more massively improbable that, just by chance, they would have experienced the same hallucination as every other person and for the same length of time. Habermas notes several further problems with the hypothesis: that the hallucinations lasted only 40 days and did not continue among new converts; that Jesus ate and drank before the witnesses; that the woman held Jesus by the feet; and the fact that the appearance to Paul occurred before Paul had met the disciples whom he only later discovered were proclaiming that Jesus had also appeared to them. The hallucination hypothesis is therefore disconfirmed by the psychology of the disciples, their background beliefs and by the nature of the appearances themselves. 3.4 The Mistaken Tomb Hypothesis The last naturalistic hypothesis imagines that the disciples mistook an empty tomb for the tomb of Jesus. However, Joseph of Arimathea, who owned the tomb, would soon have noticed the mistake; and if for some reason he hadn’t, the Sanhedrin would have looked to see whether the tomb was really empty when the Christians began to claim (as they very quickly did) that Jesus had risen from the dead. The mistaken tomb hypothesis also makes no attempt to for the disciples sincere and transformative belief in the Resurrection. And so to its problematic first premise the proponent of this hypothesis must annex either the conspiracy or hallucination hypothesis making his overall hypothesis more complicated and so less plausible. And ing each of those hypotheses are themselves problematic, what has been already said about them will apply to whatever pair of explanations is coned.



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Because it fails to for the evidence that the Sanhedrin knew the location of the tomb and makes no attempt to for the disciples' transformative belief in the Resurrection, the mistaken tomb hypothesis lacks both explanatory scope and power. And because it must then be combined with other theories which are themselves massively disconfirmed by our evidence about the character and the psychological state of the disciples as well as the physical appearances of Jesus to followers and skeptics at multiple times and places, the mistaken tomb hypothesis is overall a totally inadequate explanation of the Resurrection evidence. 3.5 The Resurrection Hypothesis The Resurrection hypothesis claims that God affixed his divine signature to the life of Jesus by raising Jesus from the dead. Let us now apply to it our five criteria and see how it fares against the rival hypotheses already discussed. The explanatory scope of the Resurrection hypothesis is exhaustive: It s for the empty tomb, the post mortem appearances and the disciples’ transformative belief in the Resurrection. All of these are consequences precisely to be expected if the hypothesis is true. The Resurrection hypothesis is also clearly superior to its rivals in explanatory power. It should be clear from the foregoing discussion that the chief difficulty facing the skeptical historian is to explain how a group of defeated, frightened Palestinian Jews developed a sudden, transformative belief in a dying and rising messiah. We have already seen that deliberate deception and group hallucination are inconsistent with the evidence. But that same evidence is precisely what we would expect if Jesus had confronted his disciples in supernatural good health a few days after his execution. It is at the criterion of disconfirmation that the importance of the previous 30 Chapters comes into sharp focus. Evaluated in vacuo, historical evidence for a Resurrection would seem to be disconfirmed by our inductive experience of natural law: The dead are always and everywhere observed to remain dead. And clearly the claim that God raised Jesus from the dead is false ipso facto if one thinks that God does not exist—and very improbable if one thinks it very improbable that God exists. But this again is Hume’s mistake of assuming that our experience of natural law is the only



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relevant background evidence whereas, as I have been at pains to emphasise, equally relevant is any evidence for the existence of a God who can violate or suspend natural law: The Resurrection evidence must therefore be evaluated against the total relevant background evidence from natural theology. In Parts II and III we saw that the evidence of natural theology and a priori reasoning together not only establish that there very probably is a God but also that God will very probably become incarnate and live a perfect life filled with great suffering that ends in a miracle. And so against the total relevant background evidence the Resurrection hypothesis is not disconfirmed but in fact has a high prior probability; that is, natural theology and a priori reasoning give us grounds in advance of evaluating the historical evidence for thinking that an event like the Resurrection will occur. I conclude that on balance the Resurrection hypothesis satisfies the criteria of justification far better than every rival hypothesis. And since good historical evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus further increases the probability that there is a God, the coincidence of the two kinds of evidence makes it very probable indeed on the total evidence that there is a God and that Jesus was God Incarnate. 4. Conclusion In this chapter I have established the historicity of four minimal facts about Jesus and the early Church and then demonstrated that the Resurrection is an inference to the best explanation for those facts using accepted criteria for evaluating competing historical hypotheses. The only possible reason for resisting this conclusion is a presupposition of atheism or the objection that miraculous events are disconfirmed by our inductive experience of natural law. However, since any evidence for the existence of God is highly relevant to the hypothesis and must be included in our total background evidence, so the evidence presented in Part II and Part III leaves us without rational justification for denying the conclusion of the foregoing argument. On the total evidence of natural theology and history, I therefore conclude that God raised Jesus from the dead.



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32 Conclusion In Part IV it has been my concern to show that the New Testament is a generally reliable source of information about Jesus; that the life of Jesus was the kind of life to which God would plausibly affix his signature; and that we can know on the evidence of natural theology, a priori reasoning and history that God did, in fact, raise Jesus from the dead. In drawing my entire argument to a close, there are three final matters to consider: the importance of the historical context of the Resurrection; the theological significance of the Resurrection to the status of the Bible and the personal significance of the Resurrection to anyone who feels persuaded by the evidence that it occurred. After that I will offer some final thoughts on the role of doubt and faith in the religious life. 1. The Historical Context of the Resurrection Sometimes, as a last resort, the skeptic will suggest that even if God or something like a God does exist and Jesus really did rise from the dead there is no obvious reason why we should attach any importance to that fact. Perhaps, the skeptic suggests, it was just a freak event (a quantum anomaly, say) or perhaps God raised Jesus from the dead for some unknown reason with which we need not concern ourselves. Generally, the objection is: It is no entailment of the Resurrection of Jesus that we should believe Jesus to be God Incarnate and follow his teachings. I do not think that the logic of this objection will have widespread appeal; nevertheless, the point that needs to be made in response to it is of general importance and so I will make it now. The Old Testament had two criteria by means of which to test a prophet. The first was that he must teach in the name of the God of Israel and not en his followers to worship other gods. Jesus clearly fulfilled the first criterion: He taught in the name of the God of Israel and told Jews to worship the God of Israel. The second criterion was that if the prophet makes a prophecy his prophecy must come to . The prophecy could not be something that might reasonably be expected to occur anyway in the ordinary

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course of nature but a miracle in response to a prayer by the prophet would amply satisfy this criterion. Thus Elijah called upon God to ignite a water-soaked sacrifice—an event which, if it occurred, would be understood as an act of God. And so at the ignition of the sacrifice Elijah was recognized as a true prophet of Israel. It is not important whether this story is true. It merely establishes that the Jews of Jesus' time understood what would constitute a divine signature on the work of a prophet. And since, according to Mark, Jesus prophesied his Resurrection on three separate occasions, so, in the historical context in which it occurred, the Resurrection of Jesus constituted a divine imprimatur on the life and teachings of Jesus. Putting predictions on the lips of heroes was a habit of ancient authors which has led some modern critics to call Jesus' predictions into question. However, there are three further and important predictions which Jesus made and which were fulfilled by his Resurrection. The first was his prediction that he would make a sacrifice of his own life for the atonement of human sin. Clearly enough, crucifixion alone would not demonstrate the fulfilment of his prediction—to have effect an offer of atonement must be accepted by the party who has been wronged; that is, by God. But the Resurrection demonstrates that Jesus' offer of atonement on behalf of the world had been accepted by God and so that that prediction was fulfilled. A second prediction of Jesus' that was verified and partially fulfilled: That humans would be raised from the dead. Jesus' own Resurrection showed that one man, Jesus himself, was raised and thus Resurrection is possible and will happen to us. And finally: The Resurrection also vindicated Jesus' claim to divine authority by reversing and countermanding the Sanhedrin verdict of blasphemy and demonstrating that Jesus wasdivine and had supernatural powers and status. A final point: The Nicene Creed claims that Jesus, “rose again on the third day according to the scriptures,” and, as noted in the previous Chapter, Jesus himself explained to his disciples that his suffering, death and “entering into glory” had been predicted by the prophets of the Old Testament. Many Old Testament ages do indeed seem to prefigure the details of the life and death of Jesus



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with uncanny exactitude—the Suffering Servant ages in Isaiah and Psalm 22 being the most obvious examples. Thus Jesus also appears to have fulfilled the Old Testament by providing those things for which so many of the prophets longed: complete and final atonement for sin, the triumph of good over evil and a deep understanding of God. And, of course, Jesus went on to found a Church tasked with converting the whole world and promised to one day raise all people of good moral character to eternal life. And it is in this religious and historical context that the deity of Jesus follows by logical entailment from his Resurrection. Consider: Because God is all powerful, all knowing and all present, Jesus could only rise from the dead if God caused him to rise or allowed him to rise while being present at and aware of his rising. And because God is all good, he would not deceive us by causing or allowing a false prophet to rise from the dead: For God to affix his divine signature to a lie would be to corroborate a lie and that is something God, being morally perfect, would not do. And so it follows that the Resurrection of Jesus is a divine vindication of his claim to be God and this means that his teachings also come from God and should be followed. 2. The Status of the Bible A second closing consideration concerns the significance of the Resurrection of Jesus to the status of the Bible. In making the case for the Resurrection the New Testament was treated like any other collection of ancient documents: approached with caution and skepticism and tested against the criteria of historical authenticity. However, by preceding in this fashion, and evaluating the historical evidence against the background evidence of natural theology, we were able to establish that, very probably, God raised Jesus from the dead. The reality of the Incarnation and Resurrection has a number of important consequences and one of them concerns the status of the Bible. It was noted in Chapter 21 that since the life of God Incarnate would be of limited duration, he would need to establish a worldwide Church to record, interpret and share his message and offer of atonement so that future generations could learn about and avail themselves of it. And I noted in Chapter 30 that Jesus indeed founded a Church which he tasked with taking his message to the



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world. Critically: Jesus also said that he would providentially guide that Church in spirit after his Incarnation. Thus Matthew closes with Jesus promising, “I am with you always until the end of the age.” If Jesus were God it follows that God has providentially guided the Church in recording, interpreting and sharing the message of Jesus—an activity which includes the compilation and interpretation of the whole Bible discussed in Chapter 24 and 25. And this means that the Church is correct in imputing to the Bible its unique status as Holy Scripture. And so, with the careful qualifications made in those chapters, that is how we should regard it. 3. Practical Application The second important consequence of the Resurrection is deeply personal. In the introduction to Part IV, I noted N. T. Wright’s observation that the statement, Jesus rose from the dead is “selfinvolving.” In the revenant age of The Resurrection of the Son of God, Wright makes the obvious point that there are different degrees of this. Consider the strength of self-involvement that inheres in the statement The Number 10 bus just ed when I state it blandly while sitting by the living room window and the same statement screamed in dismay when I am running to the bus stop on my way to a vital appointment. Wright continues, The point is that one cannot say, “Jesus of Nazareth was bodily raised from the dead,” with the minimal involvement of the first of those statements. If it happened, it matters. The world is a different place. Saying, “Jesus of Nazareth was bodily raised from the dead” is not only a self-involving statement; it is a selfcommitting statement. We cannot simply leave a flag stuck on a hill somewhere and sail back home to safety.

Wright is surely right. If some proposition is rational and entails that certain actions in response to it are rational then it is irrational for one who affirms that proposition not to take those actions. I suggested in Chapter 28 that conversion to Christianity is the only rational response to the reality of the Incarnation—and surely this is logical. If God really exists a relationship with God is the greatest possible good available to the creature and if it is rational to believe

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that God revealed himself through Jesus then it is rational to seek that relationship with God through Jesus and the Church Jesus founded and irrational not to. And so if, as I have argued, it is indeed probable on the evidence of natural theology, a priori reasoning and history that God raised Jesus from the dead then following the teachings of Jesus, and so conversion to Christianity, is rationally obligatory. 4. Doubt and Faith Even rationally obligatory propositions are open to doubt and the possibility and necessity of doubt have been a recurring feature of my whole argument: In Chapter 6 and 17 and throughout my discussion of religious pluralism I argued that divine hiddenness is a necessary feature of any world in which significant moral selfdetermination is possible and so a necessary feature of any world capable of producing virtuous creatures fit for a relationship with God. It is in keeping with this understanding of the relationship between divine hiddenness and moral self-determination that one of the main difficulties of living a religious life is persevering in our effort to meet the exacting moral standards of God in the face of fluctuating doubts about his existence. Swinburne finds some rational grounds for perseverance in the fact that it is good to live as though God exists whether he exists or not; good, that is, to try and become the sort of people that a morally perfect being would choose to sustain for all eternity if such a being existed—by being good and helping others to do the same and by loving each other and performing virtuous actions. In so far as the religious life helps us to do this, it is good to live a religious life even if there is no God. However, no discussion of religious doubt is complete without touching on faith. How can we best define this word about which there is already so much misgiving and misunderstanding? 128 I foresee no possibility of settling the dispute but would like offer the three points that I have found most helpful. 128 The New Atheists, for example, have repeatedly expressed great contempt for faith which they regard as irrational and dangerous and cite as one of the central reasons for their campaign against religion. They all define it, incorrectly, as, "believing something without evidence."



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In Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis provides a very serviceable definition of faith. “Now that I am a Christian,” he writes, “I do have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable: but when I was an atheist I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable.” For Lewis, faith is simply, “the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted in spite of your changing moods.” And certainly a person is rational to continue affirming a proposition without apprehending the evidence that first led him to accept it. Perhaps many years ago Mr Green studied the historical evidence which, he believed, made it probable that Jesus rose from the dead. He therefore believes the proposition Jesus rose from the dead even though he has now forgotten the historical evidence. His evidence today is just that he did once, honestly and conscientiously, examine historical evidence and reach that conclusion. And this holds, I think, even if the evidence is ed but, on a sudden impulse, it all seems rather improbable. At such times one dismisses the ing impulse and trusts, or has faith in, the inquiry already undertaken. This is the first helpful point. The second is to note that there is virtually nothing about which doubt is impossible. This was a point discussed in Chapter 9. Science, for instance, depends on inductive reasoning: one makes a series of observations and infers a conclusion. Thus having observed many swans and found them all to be white, it seems valid to conclude, All swans are white. But no number of confirming observations, however large, can prove a universal generalisation. Only the conclusions of sound analytic arguments are logically necessary; the conclusions of synthetic arguments based on observation, however probable, are always in principle falsifiable. So: In natural theology, as in every other philosophical and scientific enterprise, we are dealing with arguments whose premises must be weighed for their plausibility or probability. And this goes for arguments for atheism as well as theism. In each case, an argument for or against the existence of God will be a successful argument if and only if it has a valid logical structure and its premises are more plausible or probable than their negations: This, in turn, will make its conclusion more plausibly or probably true than false and we will be then rationally obligated to give it our assent.



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We have looked at a total of 13 positive arguments in a cumulative case for Christian theism. I have shown that those arguments make it far more probable than not that Jesus was God Incarnate. To negate this conclusion it is not enough to merely raise doubts; one would have to show that each premise in each argument is more plausibly false than true. And so doubt of itself is of little philosophical significance. At the close of his book Was Jesus God? Swinburne makes a similar point: He confronts his doubts and finds that, on balance, belief in God remains quite rational. “I am well aware,” he writes, “of objections other than the ones which I have discussed which can be made to almost every sentence which I have written. And I am aware of counter-objections which can be advanced in turn against every objection to my views.” He continues, Argument and counter-argument, qualification and amplification, can go on forever. But religion is not exceptional in this respect. With respect to any subject whatever, the discussion can go on forever. New experiments can always be done to test Quantum Theory, new interpretations can be proposed for old experiments, forever. And the same goes for interpretations of history or theories of politics. But life is short and we have to act on the basis of what such evidence as we have had time to investigate shows on balance to be probably true.

My third and final point concerning religious doubt and religious faith is the most important of all and with it I will close my argument. The conclusion of the last 32 chapters is that there is a God: An omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, necessary, eternal and perfectly good immaterial person. If you accept that conclusion then the arguments that led you to do so are thereafter almost irrelevant: Just as I cannot obtain personal knowledge of my wife by studying her circulation and blood pressure and metabolism, so I cannot obtain personal knowledge of God by studying the philosophy of religion. I obtain that knowledge by building a relationship with him. The relevance of all this to faith and doubt is as follows: By seeking to know God on a personal level through prayer and worship we open ourselves to religious experiences which will have considerably more force and meaning than any philosophical

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argument for the existence of God and so further diminish our doubts. And by coming to know God on a personal level through those experiences we may also discover a new kind of faith to draw on: faith not in our own rational adjudication but faith in God as the person who has proven himself reliable and so on whom we may rely. Just as a child who has learnt to trust their father implicitly will trust that he has a good reason for taking them somewhere without telling them where he is taking them, so one who has come to trust God implicitly will trust that he has good reason for allowing them to suffer doubts and trust, too, that he will keep his promise to one day bring both the doubt and the suffering to a decisive end. There is, however, more to having a relationship with God than our belief, prayer and religious experiences. If you accept that God exists it follows that you have certain obligations to him. For example: Because God is the holy source of your existence who sustains you from moment to moment you should show gratitude and obedience to him and this entails serving him by helping to further his divine purposes. God's divine purposes include willing the good of others and so serving him means giving to the poor, befriending the lonely, visiting the sick and so on. The burden is one that God does not force upon us. We can choose to take it up or choose not to bother. And even if we do take it up it there are obvious obstacles in our way; obstacles that are necessary, as Swinburne notes, “to ensure that our commitment is genuine.” But Swinburne adds that, “God has every reason in due course to remove those obstacles—to allow us to become the good people we seek to be, to give us the vision of himself—forever.” Thus Paul writes in I Corinthians: “For now we see through a glass darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”



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