Abstract
‘No-fault unbelief’ can be named the view that there are those who do not believe in God through no moral or intellectual fault of their own. This view opposes a more traditional one, which can be named ‘flawed unbelief’ view, according to which religious unbelief signals a cognitive or moral flaw in the non-believer. Since this charge of mental or moral flaw causes a certain uneasiness, I oppose the former view, i.e. ‘no-fault unbelief’, with a strategy that has nothing to do with the latter. I assume that ‘no-fault unbelief’ is correct and show what consequences follow for both unbelievers and believers. I conclude that the assumption in question is superficially beneficial but deeply detrimental to unbelievers, and by contrast, it is superficially detrimental and deeply beneficial to believers.
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Notes
According to John Greco, who offers probably the first treatment of the subject, ‘it is hard to deny that there is something awkward about explaining non-belief in terms of some moral or intellectual flaw in the non-believer’ (J. Greco, ‘No-fault atheism’, in A. Green and E. Stump (eds), Hidden Divinity and Religious Belief (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2016), pp. 109–25, here p. 112).
While supporting his well-known version of the ‘divine hiddenness argument’, John Schellenberg speaks of “reasonable” unbelievers, namely people who, after due examination of any possible argument, did not find any motive for believing, and places himself among them. See J.L. Schellenberg, The Hiddenness Argument: Philosophy’s New Challenge to Belief in God (Oxford UK: Oxford Univ. Press, 2015), pp. 35f.
J. Greco, ‘No-fault atheism’, p. 109. Greco employs the word ‘atheism’, though he is well aware that not only atheists but also agnostics are involved in the discussion of the subject. However, he does not turn ‘flawed atheist response’ into ‘flawed non-believer response’ or ‘no-fault non-belief’, because the employment of non-belief is ‘not nearly as catchy’ (p. 109, footnote 2). In this essay, therefore, I am using ‘unbeliever’ instead of ‘non-believer’.
See Greco, p. 109.
Psalm 53:1. Hereafter, Bible quotations are from NRSV translation.
Romans 1:18–23.
J. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (Philadelphia: Westminster Press1960), book 1, chapter 3, pp. 43f.
See A. Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2000), pp. 205 and 208.
Analogously, God cannot be faulted for lack of appropriate belief on the part of the faithful. In this connection, Paul Moser distinguishes ‘people passively open to belief in God and people actively open to belief in God. People passively open to such belief do not put any serious effort into examining whether God has intervened, for example, in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Such people are ‘open’ to God with striking indifference. This indifference manifests itself in failure to act in ways that take seriously the availability of evidence for God… People actively open to belief in God take a morally serious interest in the availability of evidence for God. Such an interest has potential morally transforming effects’. (P. Moser, ‘Cognitive Idolatry and Divine Hiding’, in Howard-Snyder, D. and Moser, P. (eds) Divine Hiddenness: New Essays, pp. 142 f.)
While focusing on the help of grace, because of which we can believe the revealed truths, Aquinas openly claims that ‘to whomsoever it [the divine help] is given from above it is mercifully given; and from whom it is withheld it is justly withheld, as a punishment of a previous, or at least of original, sin’ (Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 2, a. 5, ad 1. Hereafter, quotations are from the version translated by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province, second and revised edition (London: Oates and Washbourne 1920)); Aquinas relies on Augustine’s passages such as De Correptione at gratia, 7, xiv.
See above footnote 2.
See J.L. Schellenberg, The Hiddenness Argument, pp. 133–39, where an impressively long bibliography of what has been published on the divine hiddenness argument is provided.
D. Hume, Letter 272 (April 6, 1765), in The Letters of David Hume, J.Y.T. Greig (ed.), (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1932), vol. 1, p. 498.
S. Freud, Future of an Illusion (London: Hogarth Press 1927), p. 43.
B. Russell, Why I am not a Christian, in The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell, R.E. Egner and L.E.Denonn (eds) (London: Allen and Unwin, 1961), pp. 595f.
S. Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation (New York: Knopf 2006), p. ix.
The faithful typically believe that God exists because—so they usually claim—God himself led them to believe. According to J. Bishop, ‘believers are to accept theological truths on divine authority, yet the truth that there is such an authority (historically mediated as the relevant tradition maintains) is among those very truths that are to be accepted on divine authority’ (J. Bishop, ‘Faith’, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2016 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/faith/>.) Obviously enough, a circular argument seems to emerge, but this is of no interest here.
In support of (2b), in fact, it can be said that there may be some great good justifying God in ensuring that not all now believe. It may be a great good for one human to play a significant role in bringing another human to a saving belief. As D. Crummett points out describing the core of the so called ‘responsibility argument’, ‘many religious traditions (the author refers especially to Christianity) suggest that we have been tasked with helping one another come to knowledge of and relationship with God, and that helping us fulfil this task is one of the major reasons God has established religious communities’ (Dustin Crummett, “We Are Here to Help Each Other: Religious Community, Divine Hiddenness, and the Responsibility Argument”, Faith and Philosophy 32 [2015], p. 46). (I thank an anonymous referee of ‘Sophia’ for this reflection.) In other words, God may ensure our happiness and ultimate well-being in a way that is, at first sight, incomprehensible to us. While reflecting on the problem of divine hiddenness, for example, Paul Moser and Daniel Howard-Snyder argue that ‘the Jewish-Christian God hides at times for a range of reasons, not all of which seem clear to humans.’ (D. Howard-Snyder and P. Moser (eds), Divine Hiddenness: New Essays (Cambridge UK: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2002), p. 9)
Luke 17:5.
Augustine, The Soliloquies (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1910), vol. 1, 1:5.
S. Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, H.E.Hong and E.H.Hong (eds) (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1991), p. 156.
Aquinas, Summa theologiae, II-II,82,1.
Ibid., II-II,82,4.
Let me cite the whole passage: ‘The direct and principal effect of devotion is the spiritual joy of the mind, though sorrow is its secondary and indirect effect. For it has been stated that devotion is caused by a twofold consideration: chiefly by the consideration of God’s goodness, because this consideration belongs to the term, as it were, of the movement of the will in surrendering itself to God, and the direct result of this consideration is joy, according to Psalm 76:4, “I remembered God, and was delighted”; but accidentally this consideration causes a certain sorrow in those who do not yet enjoy God fully, according to Psalm 41:3, “My soul hath thirsted after the strong living God”, and afterwards it is said (Psalm 41.4): “My tears have been my bread”, etc. Secondarily devotion is caused as stated, by the consideration of one’s own failings; for this consideration regards the term from which man withdraws by the movement of his devout will, in that he trusts not in himself, but subjects himself to God. This consideration has an opposite tendency to the first: for it is of a nature to cause sorrow directly (when one thinks over one’s own failings), and joy accidentally, namely through hope of the Divine assistance. It is accordingly evident that the first and direct effect of devotion is joy, while the secondary and accidental effect is that “sorrow which is according to God” (2 Corinthians 7:10)’ (ibid., II-II,82,4).
J. Schellenberg Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason (Ithaca NY: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2006 [1993]), p. 21.
Ibid., p. 18.
Romans 1: 17.
‘The quantity of a habit may be considered from two points of view: first, on the part of the object; secondly, on the part of its participation by the subject. Now the object of faith may be considered in two ways: first, in respect of its formal aspect; secondly, in respect of the material object which is proposed to be believed. Now the formal object of faith is one and simple, namely the First Truth, as stated above. Hence, in this respect, there is no diversity of faith among believers, but it is specifically one in all, as stated above. But the things which are proposed as the matter of our belief are many and can be received more or less explicitly; and in this respect, one man can believe explicitly more things than another, so that faith can be greater in one man on account of its being more explicit. If, on the other hand, we consider faith from the point of view of its participation by the subject, this happens in two ways, since the act of faith proceeds both from the intellect and from the will, as stated above. Consequently a man’s faith may be described as being greater, in one way, on the part of his intellect, on account of its greater certitude and firmness, and, in another way, on the part of his will, on account of his greater promptitude, devotion or confidence’ (Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II, 5, 4).
See ibid., II-II,2,2.
According to Aquinas, ‘the measure of charity’ (ratio caritatis) ‘makes the will ready to believe them (the truths of faith), even if they were unseen’ (ibid., II-II, 2, 10, ad2).
Luke 12:48b.
Mark 10:43.
Phil 2:3.
1 Corinthians 10:12.
I am indebted to three anonymous referees of ‘Sophia’ for their helpful comments.
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Di Ceglie, R. No-Fault Unbelief. SOPHIA 60, 91–101 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-020-00761-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-020-00761-0