Abstract
On the assumption that theistic religious commitment takes place in the face of evidential ambiguity, the question arises under what conditions it is permissible to make a doxastic venture beyond one’s evidence in favour of a religious proposition. In this paper I explore the implications for orthodox theistic commitment of adopting, in answer to that question, a modest, moral coherentist, fideism. This extended Jamesian fideism crucially requires positive ethical evaluation of both the motivation and content of religious doxastic ventures. I suggest that, even though the existence of horrendous evil does not resolve evidential ambiguity in favour of atheism, there are reasonable value commitments that would preclude those who hold them from satisfying extended Jamesian fideist conditions for committing themselves to classical theism. I then begin a discussion of a possible revisionary theistic alternative (in the Christian tradition) which – one might hope – may meet those conditions. An earlier, shorter, version of this paper was delivered as a keynote address at the APA Pacific 2007 Mini-Conference on Models of God.
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Notes
Perhaps what is basically evident is not so much God’s existence as such, but other claims that presuppose God’s existence, such as God’s comforting me, God’s speaking to me, etc. I will here ignore this qualification, however. The most fully worked out defence of Reformed epistemology is to be found in Plantinga (2000).
For a fuller presentation of this line of argument see Bishop and Aijaz (2004).
I thus accept the straightforward implication that any belief that God exists that does not make such a practical difference is not a religious belief, but rather some purely theoretical or ‘thin’ metaphysical belief. Compare Paul Helm’s distinction between ‘thick’ and ‘thin’ beliefs (Helm 2000, pp. 103–110).
The question why people make religious faith-ventures can, of course, be treated as an empirical scientific question, and there has recently been considerable interest in evolutionary psychological explanations of religious belief. See, for example, Boyer (2001) and Dennett (2006). Wolpert’s (2007) recent book on this subject uses in its title the White Queen’s remark to Alice in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass: “Why, sometimes I believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” But the implicature – that religious beliefs are (always, or even typically) held counter-rationally – is evidently contestable. On the question whether our current understanding of the natural, evolutionary, causes of religious belief has implications for the normative issue of whether one ought to commit oneself to religious beliefs of any kind, see Bishop (2007), 204–205.
See Burleigh (2000).
Indeed, it is worth remarking that judgments as to the applicability of the previously mentioned, non-moral, constraints on permissible faith-ventures will also be fallible.
As Imran Aijaz has pointed out to me, the evidential ambiguity of theism may impose constraints on justifiable theistic commitment independently of those arising from the conditions imposed by an acceptable fideism. Aijaz cites, for example, the implication that acceptable expanded theistic beliefs can hardly include the claim that it is a matter of great importance to God that humans should have very specific beliefs (e.g. that Jesus died for their sins) [private communication]. I agree that this may well be the case: my present interest, however, is just in the constraints that arise from the need to justify a fideist position in order to defend faith-commitment under evidential ambiguity – and, in particular, from accepting that the right fideist position is the modest extended Jamesian variety I have been sketching.
By ‘classical theism’ I here mean a theism that takes God to be the omnipotent, omnibenevolent, supernatural personal Creator ex nihilo of all else that exists.
I do mean here to evoke Marilyn McCord Adams’ notion according to which horrendous evils are “evils the participation in which ... constitutes prima facie reason to doubt whether the participant’s life could (given their inclusion in it) be a great good to him/her on the whole” (Adams 1999, p. 26). My present argument is not, however, committed to this definition, and would go through, I believe, with ‘horrendous evil’ understood less precisely.
For a defence of the importance of the notion of virtual consent in theodicy see Forrest (1996), pp. 226–230.
Adams (2006) endorses a view of this general kind. Here she elaborates her view that a God who loves individual created persons will not merely balance off but defeat horrendous evils, and proposes a detailed three-stage account of how such defeat is possible. Adams’ distinction between ‘balancing off’ and ‘defeating’ evil has significantly informed my present argument.
This is the view Dostoyevsky (1958) puts into the mouth of his character Ivan Karamazov in The Brothers Karamazov, pp. 286–288.
Furthermore, it might also be argued that it is a world where historical creature-to-creature personal relationships must also fall short of the highest ideal of mutual loving personal relationship because those relationships cannot but be contrived by supernatural omnipotence. That conclusion will be resisted by appeal to the libertarian free will of created persons – but it may threaten if scepticism about the possibility of created libertarian free will turns out to be justified. For further discussion, see Bishop (1993).
Though this general line of criticism is reminiscent of Nietzsche’s critique of Christianity, the postponement of ‘real life’ until the hereafter might also be rejected by Christians who maintain that fully mature relationship with God is possible for the redeemed within the historical order. (Is Christ’s assurance that we are to be his friends and no longer servants – John 15:14–15 – a promise realisable in historical existence, or only in a future post-mortem state?)
My account is here equivalent to the view that it is the logical version of the Argument from Evil that succeeds (contrary to the currently widespread view that only ‘evidential’ versions of the Argument could possibly hope to succeed) – but then only relatively to prior specific value commitments which are not themselves rationally required.
I John 4:16.
This is, of course, a constraint independent of those imposed by extended Jamesian fideism.
For example, Richard Swinburne defines God as “[a] person without a body (i.e. a spirit) who is eternal, free, able to do anything, knows everything, is prefectly good, is the proper object of human worship and obedience, the creator and sustainer of the Universe” (Swinburne (1977), p. 1, my emphasis). And Alvin Plantinga introduces his account of the theistic component of Christian belief thus: “Classical Christian belief includes, in the first place, the belief that there is such a person as God” (Plantinga (2000), p. vii, my emphasis).
A community of personal agents a greater than which cannot be conceived is not, of course, equivalent to a community of individual personal agents each unsurpassingly great. For, very plausibly, there cannot be more than one individual personal agent such that none greater than it can be conceived – see, for example, H. P. Owen’s discussion of Aquinas’s argument for the oneness of God (Owen 1971, pp. 5–8). Rather, the idea is that what can count as unsurpassingly great qua being isn’t any kind of individual at all, but some kind of society of individuals instead.
This description of perichoresis rests on the most fundamental meaning of the root verb \( \chi \omega \rho {\mathop \varepsilon \limits^\prime }\omega \) (‘to make room for another’): my attention was drawn to it (via Robin Angus) by Professor John Richardson (St Columba’s-by-the-Castle Episcopal church, Edinburgh).
For a succinct account of recent theological advocacy of the social doctrine of the Trinity, and the use of the notion of perichoresis to characterise the divine nature, see Kilby (2000). Kilby herself questions whether the historical point of the doctrine of the Trinity is to give insight into the nature of God. Even if her doubts are well founded, the doctrine of the Trinity might yet provide useful resources for the revisionary Christian theist who has come to reject the classical theist understanding of God.
Even if they are cautious about orthodox understandings of the divinity of Christ, theists in the Christian tradition will still need to give some content to the claim that the divine is incarnate. For example, they may affirm that in Jesus they have experienced the power of divine love working among us, that Love’s means of confronting evil is revealed on the Cross, vindicated in the Resurrection, and then made into our means of dealing with suffering and evil through the outpouring of the Spirit. I do not assume, however, that Christianity has a monopoly on incarnational insights.
Compare Wittgenstein’s (1963) remark that ‘it is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists.’ Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 6.44.
Leslie (1989). It is not clear to me how understanding the Universe as the active self-realisation of the Good can avoid a problem of evil similar to that which faces classical theism.
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I am grateful to Jeanine Diller, both for the invitation to participate, and for valuable commentary and discussion. I am also grateful to Imran Aijaz and Thomas Harvey for helpful comments on earlier drafts.
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Bishop, J. How a Modest Fideism may Constrain Theistic Commitments: Exploring an Alternative to Classical Theism. Philosophia 35, 387–402 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-007-9071-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-007-9071-y