__________________________________________________________________ Title: Warranted Christian Belief Creator(s): Plantinga, Alvin (1932-) Print Basis: Oxford University Press, 2000 Rights: Copyright 2000 by Alvin Plantinga. Used by permission of Oxford University Press. CCEL Subjects: All; Philosophy; Apologetics LC Call no: BT1102.P57 1999 LC Subjects: Doctrinal theology Apologetics. Evidences of Christianity __________________________________________________________________ WARRANTED CHRISTIAN BELIEF Alvin Plantinga New York Oxford Oxford University Press 2000 Copyright © 2000 by Alvin Plantinga Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York, 10016 Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Plantinga, Alvin. Warranted Christian belief / Alvin Plantinga. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 0-19-513193-2 (pbk.)--ISBN 0-19-513192-4 1. Apologetics. 2. Christianity--Philosophy. 3. Faith and reason--Christianity. I. Title. BT1102.P57 1999 230'.01-dc21 98.054362 __________________________________________________________________ To WILLIAM P. ALSTON Mentor, Model, Friend __________________________________________________________________ Preface This book is about the intellectual or rational acceptability of Christian belief. When I speak here of Christian belief, I mean what is common to the great creeds of the main branches of the Christian church, what unites Calvin and Aquinas, Luther and Augustine, Menno Simons and Karl Barth, Mother Teresa and St. Maximus the Confessor, Billy Graham and St. Gregory Palamas--classical Christian belief, as we might call it. Classical Christian belief includes, in the first place, the belief that there is such a person as God. God is a person: that is, a being with intellect and will. A person has (or can have) knowledge and belief, but also affections, loves, and hates; a person, furthermore, also has or can have intentions, and can act so as to fulfill them. God has all of these qualities and has some (knowledge, power, and love, for example) to the maximal degree. God is thus all-knowing and all-powerful; he is also perfectly good and wholly loving. Still further, he has created the universe and constantly upholds and providentially guides it. This is the theistic component of Christian belief. But there is also the uniquely Christian component: that we human beings are somehow mired in rebellion and sin, that we consequently require deliverance and salvation, and that God has arranged for that deliverance through the sacrificial suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, who was both a man and also the second member of the Trinity, the uniquely divine son of God. I shall use the term Christian belief' to designate these two components taken together. Of course, I realize that others may use that term more narrowly or more broadly. There is no need to argue about words here: the beliefs I mentioned are the ones I shall discuss, however exactly we propose to use the term Christian'. I also recognize that there are partial approximations to Christian belief so understood, as well as borderline cases, beliefs such that it simply isn't clear whether they qualify as Christian belief. All of this is true, but as far as I can see, none of it compromises my project. Accordingly, our question is this: is belief of this sort intellectually acceptable? In particular, is it intellectually acceptable for us, now? For educated and intelligent people living in the twenty-first century, with all that has happened over the last four or five hundred years? Some will concede that Christian belief was acceptable and even appropriate for our ancestors, [1] people who knew little of other religions, who knew nothing of evolution and our animal ancestry, nothing of contemporary subatomic physics and the strange, eerie, disquieting world it postulates, nothing of those great masters of suspicion, Nietzsche, Marx, and Freud, nothing of the acids of modern historical biblical criticism. But for us enlightened contemporary intellectuals (so the claim continues) things are wholly different; for people who know about those things (people of our rather impressive intellectual attainments), there is something naive and foolish, or perhaps bullheaded and irresponsible, or even vaguely pathological in holding onto such belief. But can't we be a little more precise about the objection? What, exactly, is the problem? The answer, I think, is that there are alleged to be two main problems. Western thought since the eighteenth-century Enlightenment has displayed at least two distinct styles of objection. First, there have been de facto objections: objections to the truth of Christian belief. Perhaps the most important de facto objection would be the argument from suffering and evil. This objection goes all the way back to Democritus in the ancient world but is also the most prominent contemporary de facto objection (see chapter 14). It has often been stated philosophically, but has also received powerful literary expression (for example, in Dostoevski's The Brothers Karamazov). The objection goes as follows: according to Christian belief, we human beings have been created by an all-powerful, all-knowing God who loves us enough to send his son, the second person of the divine Trinity, to suffer and die on our account; but given the devastating amount and variety of human suffering and evil in our sad world, this simply can't be true. The argument from evil may be the most important de facto objection, but it isn't the only one. There are also the claims that crucial Christian doctrines--Trinity, Incarnation, or Atonement, for example--are incoherent or necessarily false. Many have argued that the Christian doctrine of three divine persons with one nature cannot be coherently stated; many have claimed that it is not logically possible that a human being, Jesus of Nazareth, should also be the second person of the divine Trinity, and many have thought it impossible that one person's suffering--even if that person is divine--should atone for someone else's sins. Indeed, there are claims that the advance of science has somehow shown that there really isn't any supernatural realm at all--no God who has created us and governs our world, let alone a Trinity of divine persons, one of whom became a human being, died, and rose from the dead, thereby redeeming human beings from sin and suffering. De facto objections, therefore, are many, and they enjoy a long and distinguished history in Western thought. Even more prevalent, however, have been de jure objections. These are arguments or claims to the effect that Christian belief, whether or not true, is at any rate unjustifiable, or rationally unjustified, or irrational, or not intellectually respectable, or contrary to sound morality, or without sufficient evidence, or in some other way rationally unacceptable, not up to snuff from an intellectual point of view. There is, for example, the Freudian claim that belief in God is really a result of wish fulfillment; there is the evidentialist claim that there isn't sufficient evidence for Christian belief; and there is the pluralist claim that there is something arbitrary and even arrogant in holding that Christian belief is true and anything incompatible with it false. De facto and de jure objections are separate species, but they sometimes coincide. Thus there is a de jure objection from suffering and evil as well as a de facto: it is often claimed that the existence of suffering and evil in the world makes it irrational to hold that Christian belief is, in fact, true. De facto objections are relatively straightforward and initially uncomplicated: the claim is that Christian belief must be false (or at any rate improbable), given something or other we are alleged to know. Quite often the claim is that it is something we now know, something our ancestors allegedly did not know, as in Rudolf Bultmann's widely quoted remark that "it is impossible to use electrical light and the wireless and to avail ourselves of modern medical and surgical discoveries, and at the same time to believe in the New Testament world of spirits and miracles." [2] De jure objections, by contrast, while perhaps more widely urged than their de facto counterparts, are also much less straightforward. The conclusion of such an objection will be that there is something wrong with Christian belief--something other than falsehood--or else something wrong with the Christian believer: it or she is unjustified, or irrational, or rationally unacceptable, in some way wanting. But what way, exactly? Just what is it to be unjustified or irrational? No doubt it is a bad thing to hold beliefs that are rationally unjustified: but what precisely is the problem? Wherein lies the badness? This is ordinarily not made clear. According to the evidentialist, for example, the evidence for Christian belief is insufficient: but insufficient for what? And suppose you believe something for which the evidence is insufficient: what, exactly, is the matter with you? Are you thereby subject to moral blame, or shown to be somehow incompetent, or unusually ignorant, or subject to some kind of pathology, or what? According to Freud and some of his followers, Christian and theistic belief is a product of wish fulfillment or some other projective mechanism. Well, suppose (contrary to fact, as I see it) that is true: just what is the problem? Is it that such a belief is likely to be false? Is it that if you accept a belief formed on the basis of wish fulfillment, you have done something that merits blame? Or are you, instead, a proper object of pity? What, precisely, is the problem? These questions are much harder to answer than one might think. One project of this book is to try to answer them: I try to find a serious and viable de jure objection to Christian belief. That is, I try to find a de jure objection that is both a real objection and also at least plausibly attached to Christian belief. But there is a prior question: is there actually any such thing as Christian belief, conceived as Christians conceive it? Some thinkers (often citing the authority of the great eighteenth-century philosopher Immanuel Kant) argue that we couldn't so much as think about such a being as the Christian God, infinite and transcendent as he is supposed to be. That is because our all-too-human concepts could not apply to such a being; our concepts can apply only to finite beings, beings who are not transcendent in the way Christians take God to be. But if it is really true that our concepts cannot apply to an infinite and transcendent being, if we cannot so much as think about such a being, then we human beings also have no beliefs about such a being. Indeed, we can't have beliefs about such a being. ANd then the fact is there isn't any such thing as Christian belief: Christians think they have beliefs about an infinite and transcendent being, but in fact they are mistaken. In part I, "Is There a Question?" (chapters 1 and 2), I argue that there is no reason at all to accept this skeptical claim: Kant himself provides no reason, and those contemporaries who appeal to his authority certainly do no better. That conclusion clears the deck for the main question of the book: is there a viable de jure objection to Christian belief? One that is independent of de facto objections and does not presuppose that Christian belief is false? There are, I believe, fundamentally three main candidates: that Christian belief is unjustified, that it is irrational, and that it is unwarranted. These candidates will be introduced in due course; for the moment, note just that three of the main characters of this drama, therefore, are justification, rationality, and warrant. In part II, "What Is the Question?" (chapters 3-4), I ask first whether a viable de jure criticism can be developed in terms of justification and rationality; I conclude that it cannot. Then I turn (chapter 5) to the objections offered by Freud, Marx, and Nietzsche; and here we finally find an initially promising candidate for a de jure objection. This complaint is in the vicinity of warrant. To see what warrant is, note that not all true beliefs constitute knowledge. You are an ardent Detroit Tigers fan; out of sheer bravado and misplaced loyalty, you believe that they will win the pennant, despite the fact that last year they finished last and during the off season dealt away their best pitcher. As it happens, the Tigers unaccountably do win the pennant, by virtue of an improbable series of amazing flukes. Your belief that they will, obviously, wasn't knowledge; it was more like an incredibly lucky guess. To count as knowledge, a belief, obviously enough, must have more going for it than truth. That extra something is what I call warrant'. As I see it, if there are any real de jure objections to Christian belief, they lie in the neighborhood of warrant. That may not come as much of a surprise, given that this book is a sequel to Warrant: The Current Debate and Warrant and Proper Function. [3] In the first of those books I introduced the term warrant' as a name for that property--or better, quantity--enough of which is what makes the difference between knowledge and mere true belief. I went on to examine the various contemporary theories of warrant: what exactly is the property that distinguishes knowledge from mere true belief? I canvassed the contemporary theories on offer: is it justification? coherence? rationality? being produced by reliable belief-producing faculties or processes? The answer, I argued, is none of the above; none of these theories is right. In Warrant and Proper Function I went on to give what seems to me to be the correct answer: warrant is intimately connected with proper function. More fully, a belief has warrant just if it is produced by cognitive processes or faculties that are functioning properly, in a cognitive environment that is propitious for that exercise of cognitive powers, according to a design plan that is successfully aimed at the production of true belief. (For explanation of that perhaps baffling formula, see chapter 5.) According to Freud and Marx, therefore, the real problem with theistic (and hence Christian) belief is that it lacks warrant. In part III, "Warranted Christian Belief" (chapters 6-10), I address this objection. As it turns out, this de jure objection is really dependent on a de facto objection. That is because (as I argue) if Christian belief is true, then it is also warranted; the claim that theistic (and hence Christian) belief is unwarranted really presupposes that Christian belief is false. Freud and Marx, therefore, do not give us a de jure objection that is independent of the truth of Christian belief; their objection presupposes its falsehood. I go on (in chapter 6) to offer a model, the Aquinas/Calvin (A/C) model, for theistic beliefs having warrant and argue that if theistic belief is in fact true, then something like this model is in fact correct. In chapters 7 through 10, I extend the A/C model to cover full-blown Christian belief (as opposed to theistic belief simpliciter), beginning (in chapter 7) with an account of the place of sin in the model. Next (in chapters 8 and 9), I propose the extended A/C model; according to this model, Christian belief is warranted because it meets the conditions of warrant spelled out in Warrant and Proper Function. That is, Christian belief is produced by a cognitive process (the "internal instigation of the Holy Spirit" [Aquinas] or the "internal testimony of the Holy Spirit" [Calvin]) functioning properly in an appropriate epistemic environment according to a design plan successfully aimed at truth. Chapter 8, "The Extended A/C Model: Revealed to Our Minds," sets out the cognitive side of this process. The process involves the affections as well as reason, however (i.e., it involves will as well as intellect), and chapter 9, "The Testimonial Model: Sealed upon Our Hearts," explains some of the connections between reason and the affections. Chapter 10 concludes part III by considering various actual and possible objections to the model; none is successful. What I officially claim for the extended A/C model is not that it is true but, rather, that it is epistemically possible (i.e., nothing we know commits us to its falsehood); I add that if Christian belief is true, then very likely this model or something like it is also true. If I am right in these claims, there aren't any viable de jure criticisms that are compatible with the truth of Christian belief; that is, there aren't any viable de jure objections independent of de facto objections. And if that is so, then the attitude expressed in "Well, I don't know whether Christian belief is true (after all, who could know a thing like that?), but I do know that it is irrational (or intellectually unjustified or unreasonable or intellectually questionable)"--that attitude, if I am right, is indefensible. Finally, in part IV, "Defeaters?" (chapters 11-14), I confront the following claim. Someone might concede that Christian belief could in principle be warranted in the way the model suggests; she might go on to insist, however, that in fact there are various defeaters for the warrant Christian belief might otherwise enjoy. A defeater for a belief A is another belief B such that once you come to accept B, you can no longer continue to accept A without falling into irrationality. In the present case, then, these alleged defeaters would be beliefs a knowledgeable Christian can be expected to have; they would also be beliefs such that one who accepts them cannot rationally continue in firmly accepting Christian belief. After exploring the nature of defeaters, I examine the chief candidates: first, the alleged abrasive results of historical biblical criticism; second, a recognition of the variety and importance of religions incompatible with Christian belief, together with certain related postmodern claims; and third, a deep recognition of the facts of suffering and evil. I argue that none of these succeeds as a defeater for classical Christian belief. This book can be thought of in at least two quite different ways. On the one hand, it is an exercise in apologetics and philosophy of religion, an attempt to demonstrate the failure of a range of objections to Christian belief. De jure objections, so the argument goes, are either obviously implausible, like those based on the claim that Christian belief is not or cannot be justified, or else they presuppose that Christian belief is not true, as with those based on the claim that Christian belief lacks external rationality or lacks warrant. Hence there aren't any decent de jure objections that do not depend on de facto objections. Everything really depends on the truth of Christian belief; but that refutes the common suggestion that Christian belief, whether true or not, is intellectually unacceptable. On the other hand, however, the book is an exercise in Christian philosophy: in the effort to consider and answer philosophical questions--the sorts of questions philosophers ask and answer--from a Christian perspective. What I claim for the extended A/C model of chapters 8 and 9 is twofold: first, it shows that and how Christian belief can perfectly well have warrant, thus refuting a range of de jure objections to Christian belief. But I also claim that the model provides a good way for Christians to think about the epistemology of Christian belief, in particular the question whether and how Christian belief has warrant. So there are two projects, or two arguments, going on simultaneously. The first is addressed to everyone, believer and nonbeliever alike; it is intended as a contribution to an ongoing public discussion of the epistemology of Christian belief; it does not appeal to specifically Christian premises or presuppositions. I shall argue that, from this public point of view, there isn't the faintest reason to think that Christian belief lacks justification, rationality, or warrant--at least no reason that does not presuppose the falsehood of Christian belief. The other project, however--the project of proposing an epistemological account of Christian belief from a Christian perspective--will be of special interest to Christians. Here the project is that of starting from an assumption of the truth of Christian belief and from that standpoint investigating its epistemology, asking whether and how such belief has warrant. We might think of this project as a mirror image of the philosophical naturalist's project, when he or she assumes the truth of naturalism and then tries to develop an epistemology that fits well with that naturalistic standpoint. I hope Christians will find this second project appealing; I hope others as well may be interested--just as those who don't accept philosophical naturalism might nevertheless be interested to see what kind of epistemology would best go with naturalism. The centerpiece of each of the two projects--the apologetic project and the project in Christian philosophy--is the extended A/C model. Taken the first way, that model is a defense of the idea that Christian belief has warrant and an effort to show that if Christian belief is true, then (very likely) it does have warrant; taken the second, it is a recommendation as to how Christians can profitably understand and conceive of the warrant they take Christian belief to have. The reader is owed an apology for the inordinate length of this book. All I can say by way of self-exculpation is that its length is due to a determination not to commit a tetralogy: a trilogy is perhaps unduly self-indulgent, but a tetralogy is unforgivable. (I suppose a cynic might question the difference between a tetralogy and a trilogy, the last member of which is twice as long as the preceding members.) In any event, not every reader need read every page. For example, those readers who are not tempted to think that our concepts could not apply to God can safely skip part I, and those readers who want to read only the central part of the story line can confine themselves to chapters 6 through 9. Furthermore, even though the book is long, I am aware that it covers a shameful amount of ground, and that in nearly every chapter (but in particular chapters 8 and 12) a really proper job would go into considerably more detail. My excuse is that it is important to see the forest as well as the trees; God may be in the details, but God is also in the whole sweeping vista of the epistemology of Christian belief. Trained observers may note two styles of print: large and small. The main argument of the book goes on in the large print; the small print adds further analysis, argument, or other points the specialist may find of interest. This book is not written mainly for the specialist in philosophy. I hope and intend that it will be intelligible and useful to, for example, students who have taken a course in philosophy or apologetics, as well as the fabled general reader with an interest in its subject. Although it is the third member of a trilogy, the book is designed to be relatively independent of Warrant: The Current Debate and Warrant and Proper Function (and it therefore sometimes contains brief accounts of what goes on in them). Most books, of course, are to one degree or another cooperative enterprises; every author is heavily indebted to others in a thousand profound ways. (This is, if anything, especially evident in those authors--one thinks of a long line of modern and contemporary philosophers, beginning perhaps with Descartes--who apparently believe that they have jettisoned all that has already been thought and written, starting the whole subject anew.) The present book is no exception; it is very much a cooperative enterprise. This is so for the usual reasons, but also for a special reason. At several junctures, I have simply appealed to the work of others--most often William P. Alston and Nicholas Wolterstorff--for a particular building block of the argument. This is especially so when I have little or nothing to add to what they have already said on the topic in question, but sometimes also when I might myself have a mildly different slant on the topic in question. The book is also something of a cooperative enterprise by virtue of the advice, instruction, and criticism I have received from others--an embarrassingly large number of others (I am entirely sensible of the fact that with so much help, I should have done better). I'm grateful to all those who helped me with the first two volumes and also to Jonathan Kvanvig and the authors of the essays in his Warrant in Contemporary Epistemology: Essays in Honor of Plantinga's Theory of Knowledge. Among those to whom I am particularly grateful for help with this third volume are Karl Ameriks, Jim Beilby (who also kindly prepared the index), David Burrell, Kelly Clark, John Cooper, Kevin Corcoran, Andrew Cortens, Fred Crosson, Paul Draper, Steve Evans, Ronald Feenstra, Fred Freddoso, Richard Gale, Lee Hardy, John Hare, Van Harvey, David Hunt, Hugh McCann, Greg Mellema, Ric Otte, Neal Plantinga, Bill Prior, Tapio Puolimatka, Philip Quinn, Del Ratzsch, Dan Rieger, Robert Roberts, Bill Rowe, John Sanders, Henry Schuurman, James Sennett, Ernie Sosa, Michael Sudduth, Richard Swinburne, Bill Talbott, James VanderKam, Bas van Fraassen, Calvin Van Reken, Rene van Woudenberg, Steve Wykstra, and Henry Zwaanstra. (I've undoubtedly omitted people who belong on this list; to them, I express both my gratitude and my apologies.) William Alston, Dewey Hoitenga, Eleonore Stump, and Nicholas Wolterstorff read and commented on the entire manuscript; to them, I am especially grateful. One of my most significant debts is to a rotating cadre of Notre Dame graduate students who, as a group and over a period of several years, read the entire manuscript and submitted it to the sort of searching and detailed criticism that only aroused and contentious graduate students can muster. This group includes, among others, Mike Bergmann, Tom Crisp, Pat Kain, Andy Koehl, Kevin Meeker, Trenton Merricks, Marie Pannier, Mike Rea, Ray Van Arragon and David VanderLaan. I am similarly indebted to Nicholas Wolterstorff's fall 1997 graduate seminar at Yale (especially Andrews Chignell and Dole), who (with their mentor) read the manuscript and provided illuminating and valuable comments. And once again I thank Martha Detlefsen, whose valiant efforts to keep me and this manuscript properly organized have been ingenious and untiring. These three volumes began life as Gifford Lectures at the University of Aberdeen in 1986 and 1987 and Wilde Lectures at Oxford in 1988. I am grateful to both sets of electors; I am equally grateful for the hospitality my wife and I enjoyed while visiting Aberdeen and Oxford. Thanks are also due to the University of Notre Dame for a sabbatical in 1995 and 1996 and to the National Endowment for the Humanities for a fellowship that same year. A couple of bits of this volume have already seen the light of publication: chapter 13 contains a few pages from "Pluralism: A Defense of Religious Exclusivism" in The Rationality of Belief and the Plurality of Faith, ed. Thomas Senor (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995), and chapter 14 contains a few paragraphs from "On Being Evidentially Challenged," in The Evidential Argument from Evil, ed. Daniel Howard-Snyder (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996). Finally, I make special mention of William P. Alston. Bill was my teacher when I began graduate school in 1954 (if I wasn't able to understand Alfred Whitehead's Process and Reality, the subject of that first seminar, the fault was mine [or maybe Whitehead's], not Bill's.) I learned much from him then and much more from him since. His generosity in reading this entire manuscript was characteristic; so was the trenchancy and penetration of his comments. Alston's contributions to contemporary philosophy and philosophy of religion (his leadership in establishing the Society of Christian Philosophers and the journal Faith and Philosophy, his splendid works in epistemology and philosophy of religion) are, of course, well and widely known; there is no need to enumerate them here (and in any case they are nearly indenumerable). It is to him that I dedicate this book. A. P. Notre Dame, Indiana September 1998 __________________________________________________________________ [1] And perhaps (as they may add) even for contemporaries who lead sheltered lives in cultural backwaters--for instance, the area between the east and west coasts of the United States. [2] Kerygma and Myth (New York: Harper and Row, 1961), p. 5. [3] Both published by Oxford University Press (New York, 1993). This book is also, and in a slightly different direction, a sequel to God and Other Minds (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967) and "Reason and Belief in God," in Faith and Rationality, ed. A. Plantinga and N. Wolterstorff (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983). __________________________________________________________________ PART I IS THERE A QUESTION? __________________________________________________________________ 1 Kant "To whom will you liken me? Who is my equal? With what can you compare me? Where is my like?" Isaiah 46:5 __________________________________________________________________ I. The Problem Our interest, in this book, is the de jure question: [4] is it rational, reasonable, justifiable, warranted to accept Christian belief--Christian belief as outlined in the preface? Or is there something epistemically unacceptable in so doing, something foolish, or silly, or foolhardy, or stupid, or unjustified, or unreasonable, or in some other way epistemically deplorable? But there is a prior question: is the very idea of Christian belief coherent? Can there really be such a thing as Christian belief? Well, why should that be a question? Isn't it obvious that many people hold just those beliefs mentioned in the preface? Here is the problem. To accept Christian belief, I say, is to believe that there is an all-powerful, all-knowing, wholly good person (a person without a body) who has created us and our world, who loves us and was willing to send his son into the world to undergo suffering, humiliation, and death in order to redeem us. It is also to believe, of course, that no more than one being has these properties. And Christian belief involves not only that there is such a being but also that we are able to address him in prayer, refer to him, think and talk about him, and predicate properties of him. We have some kind of cognitive access to and grasp of him. We can refer to him, for example, as the all-powerful, all-knowing person who has created and upholds the world, and we can predicate of him such properties as being all-powerful, being all-knowing, and having created the world. We can use a definite description like this to refer to this being, to pick him out, to single him out for thought; and we can give a proper name to the being thus singled out. For example, we can use the term God' as his name. Accordingly, Christians ordinarily take it for granted that it is possible to refer to God by such descriptions as the all-powerful, all-knowing creator of the universe', and possible, furthermore, to predicate properties (wisdom, goodness) of the being thus referred to. Of course, such a description succeeds in actually naming something only if there really is a being who is all-powerful and all-knowing and created the universe. Furthermore, it must be possible, if I can think about God and predicate properties of him, not only that there be such a being but also that my concepts apply to it. If not, then I am not in a position to assert or believe or even entertain any of the propositions mentioned above, if indeed there are any such propositions. Now Christians also take it for granted that God is infinite, transcendent, and ultimate (however, precisely, we gloss those terms). And just here is the alleged problem. It seems many theologians and others believe that there is real difficulty with the idea that our concepts could apply to God--that is, could apply to a being with the properties of being infinite, transcendent, and ultimate. The idea is that if there is such a being, we couldn't speak about it, couldn't think and talk about it, couldn't ascribe properties to it. If that is true, however, then, strictly speaking, Christian belief, at least as the Christian understands it, is impossible. For Christians believe that there is an infinite, transcendent, ultimate being about whom they hold beliefs; but if our concepts cannot apply to a being of that sort, then there cannot be beliefs about a being of that sort. This idea often sees the light of publication; it is even more heavily present in the oral tradition. In the spirit of interdisciplinary ecumenism, therefore, I want to begin by looking into this question. Consider, for example, the theologian Gordon Kaufman: The central problem of theological discourse, not shared with any other "language game" is the meaning of the term "God." "God" raises special problems of meaning because it is a noun which by definition refers to a reality transcendent of, and thus not locatable within, experience. [5] In particular, it seems to be widely accepted, among theologians, that Kant showed that reference to or thought about such a being (even if there is one) is impossible or at least deeply problematic, [6] or at any rate much more problematic than the idea that we can refer to and think about ourselves and other people, trees and mountains, planets and stars, and so on. Those theologians who think or suspect Kant showed this do not ordinarily develop the point in detail; [7] they ordinarily content themselves with a ritual bow in his direction. They do not explain how they think these things were shown or what the arguments establishing them are; perhaps they think (quite properly) that that is the job of philosophers. Some of these theologians then go on to suggest that language ostensibly about a transcendent God isn't what it looks like at all; it really serves some quite different purpose. Alternatively, perhaps, it really serves no useful purpose as it stands; what we have to do is find a useful purpose for it to serve. Perhaps it can be used, somehow, to further or promote human flourishing and humaneness, [8] or religious tolerance, [9] or liberating praxis, or the rights of women, [10] or the fight against oppression. But what is important for my present purposes is not an exploration of the ways in which religious language might be reconstrued or restructured, once we see (as we think) that it cannot function the way ordinary believers think it does; I want, instead, to examine the prior claim that, indeed, it cannot function as ordinary believers assume it does. Is there really something especially problematic about referring to or thinking about God? Did Kant show that if there were such a person as God, we couldn't refer to or think about him? Or if show' is too strong a word, did he give us powerful or even decent reason to believe that our concepts couldn't apply to God, if there is such a being? Or if he didn't do that, do some of his contemporary followers--Gordon Kaufman, for example, or John Hick--give us a reason to think this is indeed true? And is the claim in question--that our concepts do not apply to God--a coherent one? (Or rather, is there a coherent claim somewhere in the nearby bushes, since clearly there are several different claims lurking in these bushes?) Initially, the answer seems to be no; one who makes the claim seems to set up a certain subject for predication--God--and then declare that our concepts do not apply to this being. But if this is so, then, presumably, at least one of our concepts--being such that our concepts don't apply to it--does apply to this being. Either those who attempt to make this claim succeed in making an assertion or not. If they don't succeed, we have nothing to consider; if they do, however, they appear to be predicating a property of a being they have referred to, in which case at least some of our concepts do apply to it, contrary to the claim they make. So if they succeed in making a claim, they make a false claim. Note how difficult it is, initially, to state the claim in question, the claim that if there is a being with the properties Christians ascribe to God, our concepts would not apply to that being. Consider the proposition (1) If there were an infinite, transcendent, and ultimate being, our concepts could not apply to it. But now suppose (1) were true. The idea, one takes it, is that we do have at least some grasp of the properties of being infinite, transcendent, and ultimate (else we shouldn't be able to understand the sentence or grasp the proposition it expresses). An infinite being, we might say, is an unlimited being--unlimited, that is, with respect to certain properties. Among these properties might be power, knowledge, goodness, love, and the like. (A being is unlimited with respect to power and (propositional) knowledge, for example, if there is a maximal degree of power and knowledge, and the being in question enjoys that maximal degree of those properties. It might be hard to say precisely what the maximal degree of these properties is; with respect to knowledge, we might begin by saying that a being displays that maximal degree if it knows all true propositions and believes no false proposition.) Perhaps we can also give an explanation of what it is for a being to be transcendent: such a being transcends the created universe; and a being transcends the created universe if it is not identical with any being in that universe (if it is not created) and if it depends on nothing at all for its existence. So we do have the ideas of transcendence and being infinite (and if not, then (1) makes no sense). And the idea behind (1) is that if there is such a being (i.e., if there is an infinite and transcendent being), then none of our concepts could apply to it. In particular, then, the concepts being infinite and being transcendent could not apply to it. But how could that be? How could it be that there is a being that is infinite and transcendent (i.e., falls under our concepts infinity and transcendence) but is nevertheless such that the concepts infinity and transcendence do not apply to it? Is the idea, perhaps, that these concepts are impossible, incoherent, like the concept of a round square, a concept such that we can just see a priori that it couldn't apply to anything, that there couldn't be a thing to which it applied? [11] That would make (1) trivially true, at least if a conditional with an impossible antecedent is thereby true. Of course, it would also make (1*) true: (1*) If there were an all-powerful, all-knowing being, our concepts would apply to it. So presumably that is not the idea here. What, then, is the idea? I think the best we can do in trying to state such a view coherently is to say with John Hick (see below, pp. 47ff.) that there is a being to which none of our positive, nonformal concepts apply (a being that has none of the positive, nonformal properties of which we have concepts) and that this being, somehow, is the one with which Christians and others are in touch in religious practice. This is perhaps the best we can do; I shall argue below (pp. 59ff.), however, that it isn't good enough; it suffers from serious, indeed fatal difficulties. So the suggestion is that Kant showed us, somehow, that there are real, perhaps insurmountable problems in the idea that there is a being like that acknowledged in traditional Christianity, to whom we can refer and to whom our concepts apply. This is a question of considerable import for our present project, for if this suggestion is right, then there really isn't any such question as the one I say I propose to discuss; then, the sentences Christians use to express (as they think) their beliefs, do not really express the kinds of propositions or thoughts Christians think they express. Indeed, perhaps, they don't express any propositions or thoughts at all but are a sort of disguised nonsense: they look as if they express propositions but in fact do not. Before we explicitly turn to Kant, however, it is worth reminding ourselves that the claim in question is by no means a new claim in the present historical context. Beginning in the 1930s, the logical positivists were fond of insisting that the sentences Christians typically use--God loves us' or The universe was created by God' or God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself'--do not, as they are ordinarily used, say anything at all; they express no propositions at all; they are really disguised nonsense. [12] They look like they say something, and Christians and others think they say something; in fact, however, they altogether fail to express a proposition, just as does an obvious nonsense sentence like "'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves / did gyre and gimbol in the wabe." The positivists appealed to the dreaded "Verifiability Criterion of Meaning," according to which a sentence makes sense, is literally significant, or is cognitively meaningful only if it is empirically verifiable' (or falsifiable)--only if, that is, its truth (or falsehood) can be established by something like the methods of natural and empirical science. Beginning in the 1940s or so, the main questions asked and answered by philosophers of religion in the English-speaking world were whether it is possible to refer to God at all and whether the sentences typically uttered by Christians and other believers in God really make sense or are, instead, nonsense, cognitively insignificant. [13] Of course it doesn't follow that such meaningless sentences are altogether useless; perhaps they serve some other function. Rudolf Carnap, for example, wondered whether the meaningless sentences of metaphysics and theology might not really be a form of music. [14] (It isn't known whether he expected them to supplant Mozart and Bach, or even Wagner. I myself doubt that metaphysics will ever replace Mozart, but perhaps we could see it as a peculiarly avant-garde form of rock.) By now, logical positivism has retreated into the obscurity it so richly deserves. [15] There still persists, however, the widespread impression that reference to God is problematic; it is time to turn explicitly to Kant, the main source of this idea. Does his work offer cause for concern to those who propose to think about, refer to, pray to, or worship a being described the way Christians describe God--as a personal being who is transcendent and infinite? __________________________________________________________________ [4] For the contrast between de jure and de facto questions, see Preface, pp. viff. [5] God the Problem (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972), p. 8. [6] The whole medieval tradition of negative theology also finds reference to God problematic. The difference is that the medievals took it for granted that, of course, we can refer to God; the problem is to explain just how this can be accomplished. For the contemporaries I am thinking of, however, the difficulties (whether apparent or real) lead them to doubt that we can, in fact, refer to and talk about a being that is ultimate and transcendent. [7] As we shall see in chapter 2, however, John Hick constitutes an exception. [8] As in Gordon Kaufman: see chapter 2, p. 41. [9] As in John Hick: see chapter 2, p. 60. [10] See Sallie McFague, Models of God (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987). [11] Thus some philosophers have claimed that the notion of omnipotence is incoherent; others have paid the same compliment to the notion of omniscience (see Patrick Grim and Alvin Plantinga, "Truth, Omniscience, and Cantorian Arguments: An Exchange," Philosophical Studies 70 [August 1993]); still others have argued the same point with respect to the idea that God is a person without a body. [12] See, e.g., A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic (New York: Dover Publications, 1946), pp. 115ff. [13] See, e.g., New Essays in Philosophical Theology, ed. Antony Flew and Alasdair MacIntyre (London: SCM Press, 1955). [14] Perhaps metaphysics can have other aesthetic functions as well, as can Carnap's own work. Although, as far as I know, no one has ever used Carnap's writings as music (or even set them to music), in 1976 the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford displayed a page of Carnap's Logical Syntax of Language magnified about 20x and posted on the wall. No doubt a piece of metaphysics could serve the same purpose. [15] For an account of the harrowing vicissitudes of the Verifiability Criterion, see Carl Hempel, "Problems and Changes in the Empiricist Criterion of Meaning," in Semantics and the Philosophy of Language, ed. Leonard Linsky (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1952), and my God and Other Minds (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967), chapter 7. Something like it lingers on, not only among some theologians who propose to reconstrue religious language in such a way that it no longer refers to God but also in the Wittgensteinian fideism of D. Z. Phillips and others, which is a sort of continuation of positivism by other means. Although some of this work is eminently worth discussing, I will not discuss it here, referring the reader instead to Nicholas Wolterstorff's perceptive "Philosophy of Religion after Foundationalism I: Wittgensteinian Fideism" (presently unpublished), to which I have little to add. __________________________________________________________________ II. KANT Immanuel Kant was a virtual titan of philosophy, with an absolutely enormous influence upon subsequent philosophy and theology. This is no doubt due to his great insight and raw philosophical power; it is perhaps also due to the grave hermeneutical difficulties that attend study of his work. The British philosopher David Hume writes with a certain surface clarity that disappointingly disappears on closer inspection. With Kant, there is good news and bad news: the good news is that we don't suffer that disappointment; the bad news is that it's because there isn't any surface clarity to begin with. We can't turn to a settled interpretation of Kant to see whether he showed or even held that our concepts don't apply to God; there is no settled interpretation. The first thing to note, however, is that Kant often writes as if we can perfectly well refer to God. In the Critique of Practical Reason and elsewhere (Religion within the Boundary of Pure Reason; Lectures on Philosophical Theology), Kant regularly seems to refer to God and clearly takes himself to be doing exactly that. Even in the Critique of Pure Reason, his work most heavily influential in this skeptical direction, Kant often seems to suggest that we can indeed refer to and think about God. He often seems to suggest that the problem is not that we can't think about God but that we can't come to speculative or metaphysical knowledge of God. His aim in this Critique, he says, is to curb knowledge in order to make room for faith. [16] The faith in question, presumably, is like that expressed in the Critique of Practical Reason and elsewhere; it would certainly involve referring to God and taking his existence and attributes as a postulate of practical reason, a presupposition of the reality and seriousness of the moral life. Indeed, some who understand him this way believe that Kant was himself a theist, holding that the things in themselves are just things as they appear to God, that is, things as they really are. [17] Of course if this way of thinking about Kant is correct, then on his view it is perfectly possible to refer to God; if that is possible, it is also possible to ascribe properties and attributes to him; and if that is possible, then our concepts do, indeed, apply to him. For example, the negative concepts not being in space and time and not being dependent on human beings for his existence would thus apply to him. Further, on this understanding of Kant, such positive concepts as having knowledge and having power would apply to God, as would having created the world. On this understanding, it would be an error to suppose that Kant showed that our concepts can't apply to God--unless one were prepared to hold that Kant showed this but failed to notice that he did, thus mistakenly taking himself to be referring to that to which he himself showed it was not possible to refer. This latter is, of course, a possibility, although it would require an unusually high level of absentmindedness. Still, the idea that according to Kant our concepts couldn't apply to God is no mere fabrication, no merely thoughtless misunderstanding--or, more exactly, if it is a misunderstanding, it is one with considerable basis in the Kantian text. There is much in the Critique of Pure Reason to suggest this or something like it; at any rate, there is much to suggest that the categories of the understanding, which are concepts of the first importance, do not apply to the things in themselves (and thus not to God). For example: If, therefore, we should attempt to apply the categories to objects which are not viewed as being appearances, we should have to postulate an intuition other than the sensible, and the object would thus be a noumenon in the positive sense. Since, however, such a type of intuition, intellectual intuition, forms no part whatsoever of our faculty of knowledge, it follows that the employment of the categories can never extend further than to the objects of experience. (A353, B309, Kant's emphasis) Here and elsewhere, Kant suggests that the categories of the understanding do not apply beyond the realm of appearance, the world of phenomena. ("Suggests," I say; these passages, like all the others, contain more than a hint of possible ambiguity.) But if those categories do not apply to the noumena, the Dinge an sich, then perhaps the same goes for the rest of our concepts. And if our concepts do not apply beyond the world of experience, the world of appearance, then they do not apply to God, who, of course, would be a noumenon in excelsis. So the claim would be that Kant shows or believes (at any rate in the Critique of Pure Reason) that our concepts do not apply to God, in which case we cannot refer to or think about him. __________________________________________________________________ A. Two Worlds or One? What is to be said for this understanding of Kant? Hermeneutical obstacles of formidable proportions loom. First, how are we to think about this distinction between the noumena and the phenomena, the things in themselves and the things for us? Unfortunately, the commentators are not of one mind. There is a huge interpretative watershed, a continental divide, between two fundamentally different interpretations or basic pictures of what Kant had in mind, each with several variations when it comes to detail. According to the first and more traditional picture, Kant held that there are two realms of objects, two fundamentally different kinds of things. These are the phenomena, on the one hand, and the noumena, on the other; the things in themselves and the things für uns. (These two distinctions don't exactly coincide in Kant; the ways in which they don't aren't relevant to our present inquiry.) On the one hand, on this picture, there are tables and chairs, horses and cows, stars and planets, the oak tree in your backyard, just as we ordinarily think. These things really exist and are really there. They are phenomenally real, real parts of the world of experience. But they are also transcendentally ideal: that is, they are not part of the world as it is independent of human experience. On the other hand, there are the noumena, which are transcendentally real. These are the things as they are in themselves; they do not depend for their existence or character upon human beings or human experience. These two realms are disjoint: none of the phenomenal objects is a noumenon, and none of the noumenal objects is a phenomenon. Here are a couple of passages supporting this interpretation: Now we must bear in mind that the concept of appearances, as limited by the Transcendental Aesthetic, already of itself establishes the objective reality of noumena and justifies the division of objects into phaenomena and noumena and so of the world into a world of the sense and a world of the understanding (mundus sensibilis et intelligibilis) and indeed in such manner that the distinction does not refer merely to the logical form of our knowledge of one and the same thing, according as it is indistinct or distinct, but to the difference in the manner in which the two worlds can be first given to our knowledge, and in conformity with this difference, to the manner in which they are in themselves generically distinct from one another. (A249, Kant's emphasis) Appearances are the sole objects which can be given to us immediately, and that in them which relates immediately to the object is called intuition. Appearances are not things in themselves; they are only representations, which in turn have their object--an object which cannot be intuited by us, and which may, therefore, be named the non-empirical, that is, transcendental object = x. (A109) These phenomena are objects, objects that exist in space and time. The noumena, by contrast, are neither temporal nor spatial; space and time are forms of our intuition rather than realities that characterize the things in themselves. Noumena and phenomena, therefore, are distinct. Still further, we have experience only of the phenomena, not of the noumena: We have sufficiently proved in the Transcendental Aesthetic that everything intuited in space or time, and therefore all objects of any experience possible to us, are nothing but appearances, that is, mere representations, Further still, the phenomena, the world of stars and planets, trees and animals, depends on us for existence. The above passage continues: which in the manner in which they are represented, as extended beings, or as series of alternations have no independent existence outside our thoughts. (A491, B519) Elsewhere: That nature should direct itself according to our subject ground of apperception, and should indeed depend upon it in respect of its conformity to law, sounds very strange and absurd. But when we consider that this nature is not a thing in itself but is merely an aggregate of appearances, so many representations of the mind, . . . (A114) Now to assert in this manner, that all these appearances, and consequently all objects with which we can occupy ourselves, are one and all in me, that is are determinations of my identical self, is only another way of saying that there must be a complete unity of them in one and the same apperception. (A129) This is the more traditional way of understanding Kant, the way Kant was taken by his great successors. To put it briefly and all too baldly, there are two realms of objects; our experience is only of one realm, the realm of phenomena, which themselves depend on us for their existence; if we should go out of existence, so would they. That is because the phenomenal realm is somehow constructed by us out of the given, the data, the raw material of experience. The noumenal realm, however, is not thus dependent on us but is also such that we have no intuition, no direct experience of it. Finally, there is nevertheless a connection between the two worlds in that something like a causal transaction between the noumena and the transcendental ego (itself a noumenon) produces in us the given out of which we construct the phenomenal world. Call the above the two-world picture; this has been the dominant interpretation. There has always been another basic interpretation of Kant, however, one that more recently has perhaps achieved majority status. According to this other picture, there really aren't two worlds after all, a world of phenomena and underlying it another world of noumena. There is only one world and only one kind of object, but there are (at least) two ways of thinking about or considering this one world. All objects are really noumenal objects, and talk about the phenomena is just a picturesque way of talking about how the noumena, the only things there are, appear to us. The phenomena-noumena distinction is not between two kinds of objects but, rather, between how the things are in themselves and how they appear to us. So, for example, Graham Bird: Such phrases [e.g., transcendental objects and empirical objects'] should be understood to refer not to two different kinds of entity, but instead to two different ways of talking about one and the same thing. [18] And Michael Devitt: It is tempting to equate an appearance with the foundationalist's sense datum, taking the thing-in-itself as the unknowable external cause of this mental entity. Kant's writing often encourages this temptation. Nevertheless, scholars seem generally agreed--and have convinced me--that this two-worlds interpretation is wrong. What Kant intends is the following influential, but rather mysterious, one world view. An Appearance is not a mental sense datum, but an external object as we know it. In contrast the thing-in-itself is the object independent of our knowledge of it; it is not a second object, and does not, indeed could not, cause an appearance. . . . [19] Although this second picture is perhaps now the majority opinion, it seems a bit difficult to reconcile it with Kant's own view that his thought constituted a revolution--his famous second Copernican revolution. [20] After all, much of this second picture would be accepted even by such staunch prerevolutionaries as Aristotle and Aquinas. Both would agree that there is or can be a difference between the world (or any less impressive object) as it is in itself and the world as it appears to us; this is to admit no more than that we can be mistaken about the world or things in the world, and of course Aristotle and Aquinas would hardly deny that. Both would agree to something much stronger: that the world might have many properties of which we have no conception, so that our way of thinking about the world, the properties we ascribe to it, are not necessarily all and only the properties it has. For Aquinas or any other theist, this would be close to a truism: God, obviously enough, has many properties we don't know about, and presumably many of which we could not so much as form a conception. The essential elements of the one-world view seem perhaps a bit too uncontroversial, at least with respect to Kant's predecessors, to constitute a revolution, Copernican or otherwise. According to Merold Westphal: Finally, all twelve categories insofar as they constitute the world of human experience and are not merely formal features of judgment, are schematized with an essential reference to time. Thus the object and property that would disappear from the world in the absence of human knowers are not object and property per se, but substance and accident as defined by human temporality. Similarly, the truth and falsity that would disappear derive from the categories of reality and negation as essentially linked to our experience of time. Thus we are back to the tautology that in the absence of human cognition the world as apprehended by human minds would disappear. [21] That does, indeed, seem to be a tautology, or at least a trivially necessary truth; we could add that in the absence of bovine cognition, the world as apprehended by bovine minds would disappear. But how could Kant think of this as constituting a revolution, one according to which objects must conform to our minds (rather than, as previously thought, our minds to objects) if we are to have knowledge? Could a tautology constitute a revolution? 1. The One-World Picture and Reference to the Noumena Our main interest here does not lie in trying to resolve the question of what Kant intended: that is perhaps necessarily beyond our powers. Instead, we are looking to see if there is good reason, either given by Kant or constructible from materials given by him, for the conclusion that our concepts do not apply to God. And how does the difference between these two interpretations of Kant bear on this question? Consider the second picture first, and note that on this picture, if our concepts apply to anything, they apply to the Dinge, those being the only things there are. Similarly, if we manage to refer to and think about anything at all, we succeed in referring to and thinking about the Dinge, because they are all that there is. So how could it be that the categories and our other concepts do not apply to them? Well, what is it for a concept to apply to something, for something to fall under a concept? Consider the concept being wise. That concept applies to something (a thing falls under that concept) only if that thing is wise, only if, that is, it has the property of being wise. Properties and concepts are thus correlative. I have the concept being wise only if I grasp, apprehend, understand the property being wise. I have the concept being a prime number if and only if I grasp or apprehend the property being a prime number. For each property or attribute of which I have a grasp, I have a concept. Of course there are properties of which I have no concept. Small children often lack the concept of being a philosopher; that is to say, they have no grasp of the property being a philosopher. Large philosophers often lack the concept of being a quark; that is to say, they have no grasp of the property being a quark. No doubt there are properties none of us human beings grasps. One further familiar fact about properties and concepts: they have negations or complements. There is the property being red; there is also its complement, which, naturally enough, is being unred, not being red. There is the property of being wise but also the property of being unwise, failing to be wise. So if one of my concepts (e.g., being wise) does not apply to a thing, then the complement of that concept (being nonwise, not being wise) does apply to it. Perhaps you want to point out that this way of putting the matter presupposes that there are negative properties, such properties as being nonred, being unwise, and the like; you might object that in fact there are only positive properties, not negative ones. (You might also object to disjunctive and conjunctive properties.) This is no place to try to settle that issue. Clearly, there is the concept of a thing's failing to be wise (I know what it is for a thing not to be wise), even if there is no negative property nonwisdom. So if you object to negative properties, say that a thing falls under the concept nonwisdom just in case it does not fall under the concept wisdom; more generally, for any property P, a thing falls under the concept P if and only if it has the property P; it falls under the concept not-P if and only if it does not fall under the concept P. Given this elementary lore about concepts and properties, how could it be that the categories and our other concepts do not apply to the Dinge? Take the categories first--the category of causality, for example. What would it mean to say that this category does not apply to the Dinge? So far as I can see, what this would mean is that the noumena do not stand in causal relations to each other or anything else. Consider the property stands in causal relation to something; if the category of causality does not apply to the noumena, then it must be that none of them has that property. So our concept standing in causal relation to something wouldn't apply to things as they are in themselves. It follows, however, that the complement of that category or concept would apply to things as they are in themselves: each of them would be such that it does not stand in a causal relation to anything else. The same would go for our other concepts. On this way of thinking of the matter, our positive' concepts, you might say, do not apply to things as they are in themselves, which is really to say that there is no positive property we grasp that characterizes a thing as it is in itself. As it stands, however, this needs more work: there are problems about this distinction between positive and negative properties. There are also problems of other sorts: what about such positive properties as being self-identical, for example? Are we to suppose the Dinge are not self-identical? Well, perhaps these matters can be straightened out. (See chapter 2, p. 48.) For present purposes, what we need to see is that on this way of thinking, it would not really be the case that our concepts fail to apply to God in such a way that we cannot refer to and think about him. What would follow, given that he is a noumenon (of course, in this way of thinking, everything is a noumenon), is that God would not have any of the positive properties of which we have a grasp. It would not be the case that we couldn't refer to God and predicate properties of him: we could perfectly well do so, but we would be mistaken if we predicated of him a positive property of which we have a grasp. Thus we would make a mistake if we said that God is wise, or good, or powerful, or loving. That would be because nothing is wise, good, powerful, loving, and the like. (On the one-world picture, the Dinge are all there is; so if positive properties can't be ascribed to the Dinge, they can't be ascribed to anything.) Here there would be nothing at all special about God; what holds for him also holds for everything else. But those theologians who suggest that Kant showed we cannot refer to and think about God presumably believe that Kant showed there was a special problem about God; they don't think that what Kant really showed is that we can't talk or think about anything. As Kaufman puts it in the passage I quoted above (p. 4), "The central problem of theological discourse, not shared with any other language game,' is the meaning of the term God.'?" So Kant, taken this way, doesn't fill this particular bill; it doesn't give us a relevant way of seeing that our concepts do not apply to God. 2. The Two-World Picture and Reference to the Noumena Now suppose we consider the other main interpretation of Kant: the two-world picture. This is the more traditional way to understand Kant and still, perhaps, deserves the nod. (Here I am not interested in which picture most accurately represents Kant, but whether Kant, taken any plausible way, gives support to the idea that we cannot refer to and think about God. [22] ) On this picture, there are two disjoint realms: phenomena and noumena, the Dinge and the things of experience. To add another quotation: Accordingly, that which is in space and time is an appearance; it is not anything in itself, but consists merely of representations, which, if not given in us--that is to say, in perception--are nowhere to be met with. (A494, B522) Now when we think about the application of our concepts to the noumena, we see that this two-world picture divides into two subpictures. (a) The Moderate Subpicture. On the one way of thinking, (some of) our concepts apply to the things in themselves; we can think about them and refer to them, all right, but we can't have any knowledge of them. When we think about them, predicate properties of them, what we have is just speculation, mere transcendental schein, and we deceive ourselves if we think we have more. Our knowledge doesn't extend beyond experience; hence, it does not extend to the realm of the things in themselves. This would explain that bewildering variety and proliferation of metaphysical views Kant found so shocking. The reason, fundamentally, is really that all the metaphysicians have been just guessing, whatever their pretensions to apodictic conclusions and conclusive certainty. Our reason can't operate in the rarefied atmosphere of the noumena, and the result of trying to do so is a mere beating of wings against the void. Of course Kant also represents his own work in the Critique of Pure Reason as knowledge and as certain and conclusive. And in that Critique he seems to tell us a fair amount about the Dinge: that they are not in space and time, that the world of experience is (in part) a result of a causal transaction' [23] between the Dinge and the transcendental ego, and that the latter has no intellectual intuition into the former. So the picture isn't wholly coherent. Coherent or not, however, this picture doesn't even suggest that we cannot think about and predicate properties of God. What it suggests, instead, is that when we do, we are not on the sure path of knowledge but on some much more hazardous climber's trail of mere opinion. So the moderate subpicture, too, gives no aid and comfort to the claim that our concepts do not apply to God. (b) The Radical Subpicture. There is a more striking version of the two-world picture, however, on which we do get the result that we can neither refer to God nor predicate properties of him (call it the radical subpicture'). On both versions of the two-world picture, the appearances are distinct from the things in themselves. The appearances are objects; they exist; they are empirically real. But they are also transcendentally ideal. And what this means, in part, is that they depend for their existence on us (on the transcendental ego[s]) and our cognitive activity. We ourselves are both noumena and phenomena: there is both a noumenal self and an empirical self. The things in themselves somehow impinge on us (taken as transcendental ego), causing experience in us; there is a productive interaction between the transcendental ego and the Dinge (the other Dinge, since the transcendental ego is itself a noumenon), the result of which is experience, the manifold of experience. As it is initially given to us, this manifold of experience is a blooming, buzzing confusion with no structure. Perhaps it contains among other things what Kant calls representations' (Vorstellungen); these are of more than one kind, but among them might be phenomenal qualia, something like sense data, or Humean impressions and ideas. The manifold must be worked up' (Kant's term) and synthesized by the application of the categories and other concepts. Thus we impose structure and form on it, and in so doing we construct the phenomena, the appearances. So the phenomena, the things für uns, are constructed out of the manifold of experience. Well, how do we do a thing like that? How do we construct a phenomenon (a horse, let's say) from the manifold of experience? At this point, the radical subpicture diverges from the more pedestrian version of the two-world picture, for on the radical subpicture, we construct objects by applying concepts (representations, Vorstellungen) to the manifold. The world of appearance gets constructed by virtue of our synthesizing the manifold, which proceeds by way of our applying concepts--both the categories and other concepts--to the manifold. We can't perceive or in some other way witness this construction; Kant says we are largely unconscious of the activity whereby we structure the manifold and construct the phenomena. Still, it proceeds by way of the application of concepts to the blooming buzzing manifold of experience. This would require a way of thinking about concepts and their function that is very different from the way of thinking about them I outlined above (a way according to which a concept is fundamentally a grasp of a property). And Kant suggests a different way of thinking of concepts: he sometimes calls them rules. Kant says that the understanding is the faculty of concepts; it is the source of our concepts. But he also says of the understanding, "We may now characterize it as the faculty of rules. . . . Sensibility gives us forms (of intuition) but understanding gives us rules" (A126, Kant's emphasis). And he goes on to say, Rules, so far as they are objective . . . are called laws. Although we learn many laws through experience, they are only special determinations of still higher laws, and the highest of these, under which the others all stand, issue a priori from the understanding itself. They are not borrowed from experience; on the contrary, they have to confer upon appearances their conformity to law, and so to make experience possible. Thus the understanding is something more than a power of formulating rules through comparison of appearances; it is itself the lawgiver of nature. (A127) I don't for a moment pretend that this passage or others that could be cited are easy to interpret. Still, the passage does seem to suggest that concepts are rules and rules are laws. What sort of rules and what sort of laws? Perhaps they are rules for synthesizing the manifold, rules for constructing the phenomena. This is the heart of the radical subpicture. Again, I don't mean to suggest that this is Kant's view, but some of what he says suggests it. (Some of what he says also suggests that it is false; that is part of his charm.) For example: "What is first given to us is appearance. When combined with consciousness, it is called perception. . . . " Interpretative difficulties abound; the basic idea, however, is that concepts are rules, rules for the synthesis of the manifold and the construction of phenomena. (They are also laws, laws whereby the phenomena are constructed from the manifold of experience.) These rules apply to portions or bits of experience and, by way of their application, the phenomena are constructed. A rule of this sort perhaps specifies that certain portions of the manifold are to be combined or thought together' as an object. So, for example, consider your concept of a horse: it instructs you to associate, think together a variety of representations, a variety of items of experience, thus unifying that bit of the manifold into an empirical object: a horse. It is a rule which would say something like: think that particular congeries of representations together as a unity. Now again, I don't mean to claim that this is a coherent picture or a coherent way of thinking about concepts; on the contrary, I believe that it is not. But note that if it is coherent, then (at least if all of our concepts have this function [24] and only this function) our concepts will not apply to the noumena. Consider the concept being a horse. Understood this way, this concept is a rule for constructing phenomenal objects out of the manifold of experience. Of course it does not apply to the noumena: it cannot be used to construct an object out of them; they are not given to us (experience, the manifold, is what is given to us), and in any event they aren't the sorts of things out of which phenomenal objects could be constructed. So it isn't just that the concept being a horse does not apply to the Dinge in the sense that none of them, as it happens, is a horse (all are nonhorses), for then the complement of that concept--being a nonhorse--would apply. But that concept doesn't apply either: it, too, is a rule for constructing objects from the manifold. It is another way of unifying, synthesizing the manifold. So thought of, a concept could no more apply to the Dinge than a horse could be a number. On the radical subpicture, therefore, our concepts surely wouldn't apply to God, if there were such a person. For God would be a noumenon. God would not be something we have constructed by applying concepts to the manifold of experience (God has created us; we have not constructed him.) So, on the radical subpicture, we can't refer to, think about, or predicate properties of God. This way of thinking clearly displays a deep incoherence: on this picture, Kant holds that the Dinge stand in a causal or interactive relationship with us, taken as transcendental ego(s); [25] and he also says that they are not in space and time. But on the radical subpicture, Kant (at least if his intellectual equipment is like that of the rest of us) should not be able to refer to the Dinge at all, or even speculate that there might be such things. He certainly shouldn't be able to refer to them and attribute to them the properties of being atemporal and aspatial, or the property of affecting the transcendental ego(s), thereby producing experience in them. He shouldn't be able to refer to us (i.e., us transcendental egos), claiming that we don't have the sort of godlike intellectual intuition into reality that would be required if we were to have synthetic a priori knowledge of the world as it is in itself. (On this picture, we might say, Kant's thought founders on the fact that the picture requires that he have knowledge the picture denies him.) If this picture were really correct, the noumena would have to drop out altogether, so that all that there is is what has been structured or made by us. The idea that there might be reality beyond what we ourselves have constructed out of experience would not be so much as thinkable. [26] __________________________________________________________________ [18] Kant's Theory of Knowledge (New York: Humanities Press, 1962), p. 37. [19] Realism and Truth (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), p. 59. See also D. P. Dryer, Kant's Solution for Verification in Metaphysics (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1966), chapter 11, section vi; H. E. Matthews, "Strawson on Transcendental Idealism," Philosophical Quarterly 19 (1969), pp. 204-220; Henry Allison, Kant's Transcendental Idealism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983). I am indebted, for these references, to Karl Ameriks ("Recent Work on Kant's Theoretical Philosophy," American Philosophical Quarterly 19 [1982], and "Kantian Idealism Today," History of Philosophy Quarterly 9 [1992]) and to James Van Cleve, Problems from Kant (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). [20] "Hitherto it has been assumed that all our knowledge must conform to objects. But also attempts to extend our knowledge of objects by establishing something in regard to them a priori, by means of concepts, have, on this assumption, ended in failure. We must therefore make trial whether we may not have more success in the tasks of metaphysics, if we suppose that objects must conform to our knowledge. We should then be proceeding precisely on the lines of Copernicus' primary hypothesis." (Bxvii) [21] "In Defense of the Thing in Itself," p. 170. [22] Of course, I do not mean to suggest that the one- and two-world pictures as I present them are the only possible (or actual) interpretations of Kant; clearly, there are various complications and extensions of each. What I claim is that none of them offers aid and comfort to the claim that our concepts do not apply to God. [23] We need the scare quotes because Kant's official view is that the concept of causality doesn't apply to the Dinge. [24] As Karl Ameriks (private communication) reminded me, Kant's metaphysical deduction certainly seems intended to reveal concepts which are rules for judgments of any sort, whether limited to items of experience or not. [25] How many of those transcendental egos are there, anyway? Like many questions of Kantian exegesis, this question is vexed. Indeed, on the radical subpicture, it is more than vexed. If the category of number doesn't apply to the noumena, then there is presumably no number n, finite or infinite, such that the right answer to the question "How many of those transcendental egos are there?" is n. [26] In addition, of course, there is the problem that it takes a great deal of effort to believe that we are really responsible for the existence of sun, moon, and stars, not to mention dinosaurs and other things, that (as we think) existed long before there were any human beings. __________________________________________________________________ B. Arguments or Reasons? Clearly, there are problems of coherence here. Suppose we ignore them for the moment: what kinds of reasons does Kant give for the contention that we can't think about, refer to, predicate properties of the Dinge? Or, if he gives no such reasons (perhaps because he thinks we can think about them), what sorts of reasons or arguments does his work suggest for that conclusion? This conclusion--that our concepts are really rules for synthesizing the manifold into phenomenal objects and that the only things we can think about are objects we ourselves have somehow constructed--is, to say the least, rather startling. Some pretty powerful arguments would be required. Argument for this view is distressingly scarce. It is extremely difficult to find much that could pass muster as an argument, or even as one of those "considerations determining the intellect" John Stuart Mill sometimes gave when, as he conceded, he didn't have an argument. There is nothing here like the ontological or cosmological arguments for the existence of God, or Descartes' argument that a person is not identical with her body (but is, instead, an immaterial substance), or the argument for the conclusion that propositions, the things we believe and assert, are not contingent objects. [27] Perhaps one must think of the radical subpicture as a sort of hypothesis proposed as best explaining certain phenomena. More likely, those who urge it are simply overwhelmed by what they see as its sheer intellectual beauty and power; they don't feel the need of argument. Indeed, they find the picture so dazzling they are willing to put up with a strong dose of incoherence in addition to absence of argument. Well, if you find the radical subpicture overwhelmingly attractive, then (incoherence aside) I guess you'll have to go with it. Then again, that doesn't constitute much of a reason for the rest of us--those of us more impressed by the incoherence of the picture than its beauty--to accept it. There is, however, a set of Kantian considerations that some might see as taking us partway to the conclusion. These are to be found in what he says about the antinomies: allegedly powerful arguments on both sides of a given question. Thus there is an allegedly compelling antinomical argument for the thesis that the world had a beginning in time, but an equally compelling argument for the antithesis that it did not. In the same way, there are compelling arguments for the theses that the world is composed of simples, that there is such a thing as agent causation (where an agent cause is a being that freely originates a new causal series), and that there is an absolutely necessary being; sadly enough, however, there are equally compelling arguments for the antitheses that the world is not composed of simples, that there is no such thing as agent causation, and that there is no absolutely necessary being. Here we seem to be in a nasty fix; we can prove four (everything in the Critique comes in fours) important theses, and for each of these four, we can also prove its denial. Now Kant apparently intends these antinomies to constitute an essential part of the argument for his transcendental idealism, the doctrine that the things we deal with (stars and planets, trees, animals and other people) are transcendentally ideal (depend upon us for their reality and structure), even if empirically real. We fall into the problem posed by the antinomies, says Kant, only because we take ourselves to be thinking about things in themselves as opposed to the things for us, noumena as opposed to mere appearances: If in employing the principles of understanding we do not merely apply our reason to objects of experience, but venture to extend these principles beyond the limits of experience, there arise pseudo-rational doctrines which can neither hope for confirmation in experience nor fear refutation by it. Each of them is not only in itself free from contradiction, but finds conditions of its necessity in the very nature of reason--only that, unfortunately, the assertion of the opposite has, on its side, grounds that are just as valid and necessary. (A421, B449) We solve the problem by recognizing our limitations, realizing that we can't think, or can't think to any good purpose, about the Dinge. In presenting the antinomies, Kant does not explicitly argue for the radical subpicture. But suppose we try to find something like an argument there, either for the radical subpicture or for the conclusion we have been deriving from the radical subpicture, the conclusion that our concepts do not apply to the noumena, so that we cannot refer to and think about them. Perhaps the premises would be: (2) If we are able to think about and refer to the Dinge, then the premises of the antinomical arguments (the premises of the arguments for the theses and for the antitheses) are about the Dinge and are all true, and (3) If those premises are all true, then the theses and antitheses would all be true, so that contradictions would be true. Naturally enough, however, (4) No contradictions are true. Therefore: (5) We cannot think about or refer to the Dinge. We could perhaps weaken the first premise (2) to make it a bit more plausible: (2*) If we can refer to and think about the Dinge, then each of the premises of the antinomical arguments will be about the Dinge and have overwhelming intuitive support. (This is weaker, of course, because it says, not that the antinomical premises are true, if we can think about the Dinge, but that they strongly seem true to us.) The second premise would then be: (3*) If each of the premises has overwhelming intuitive support, we will have overwhelming reason to accept each of the theses and antitheses, and we see that each thesis is contradicted by its antithesis. If, however, we weaken the first premise, we must strengthen one of the other two. Perhaps we could strengthen the third as follows: (4*) It couldn't be that we should have overwhelming reason to accept a proposition p and also its contradictory not-p. And the conclusion would be as before. Is it really true that (as (4*) claims) we couldn't have overwhelming reason to accept both a proposition p and also its denial not-p? [28] This would be an interesting inquiry but would take us too far afield; in any event, it isn't necessary for our present purposes, for there are at least two impressive problems with these arguments, one debilitating and the other fatal. I shall briefly outline the first and then look into the second in more detail. The first, the debilitating objection, is that even if we are not able to think of the noumena, we can think of the phenomena; and if the first premises of these arguments are true for the noumena, what is to prevent their being true for the phenomena as well? The two versions of the first premise ((2) and (2*)) of the argument claim the following: if it is true that we can think about the noumena, then the antinomical premises are about the noumena and either are true or have overwhelming intuitive support. Isn't it equally apparent that if we can think about the phenomena, then the antinomical premises are about the phenomena and are either true or have overwhelming support? If so, however, the argument would also prove that we can't refer to the appearances. What it would really prove, then, if it proved anything, is that we can't refer to or think about either noumena or phenomena. Because noumena and phenomena are all the things there are, the conclusion would be that we can't think about anything; and that seems a bit strong. Much more should be said about this objection to the argument, but I want to turn to the fatal objection. That is just that the antinomical arguments are not, to put the best face on it, at all compelling. Here I will argue this only for the premises of the first antinomy; exactly similar comments would apply to the others. In the first antinomy, there is an argument for the conclusion that "The world had a beginning in time and is also limited as regards space" (A426, B454); this is the thesis. There is also an argument for the antithesis: "The world has no beginning, and no limits in space; it is infinite as regards both time and space" (A426, B454). And the idea (in accordance with premises (2) and (2*)) is that if we can think about and refer to the Dinge, then both of these would be true or would have overwhelming intuitive support. Well, what is the argument? I am sorry to say it is hard to take seriously. The argument for the thesis goes as follows: If we assume that the world had no beginning in time, then up to every given moment an eternity has elapsed, and there has passed away in the world an infinite series of successive states of things. Now the infinity of a series consists in the fact that it can never be completed through successive synthesis. It thus follows that it is impossible for an infinite world-series to have passed away, and that a beginning of the world is therefore a necessary condition of the world's existence. (A426, B454) This argument proceeds by reductio ad absurdum: show that the denial of your conclusion leads to a contradiction, thereby proving your conclusion. The first premise is that if the world had no beginning in time, then at any point in time an infinite stretch of time would already have elapsed. This is dubious because it is at least abstractly possible that time and the world began together, some finitely many years (or seconds) ago. If so, then we should say that the world didn't have a beginning in time, although it did have a beginning with time. But let that pass. According to the second premise, "the infinity of a series consists in the fact that it can never be completed through successive synthesis"; that is, it is characteristic of an infinite series that it can't be completed by starting from the beginning (or, more generally, some point only finitely far from the beginning) and adding things (events, say) one at a time (or more generally, finitely many at a time). This is true, provided the things (events) in question are added at a constant rate. If you start with the first event (or the nth, for some finite n) and add another event every second, you will never complete the series: at any subsequent time only a finite number of events will have occurred. According to current lore about the infinite, however, there is no bar of this kind to completing the infinite series in a finite time if the time taken for each event diminishes appropriately. For example, the first event takes one second to happen; the second event takes half a second; the third a quarter, the fourth an eighth of a second, and so on. At that rate, it won't take long at all for an infinite number of events to have elapsed--only a couple of seconds. But the real problem with the argument lies in a different direction. Kant points out that an infinite series can't be completed by starting from some point finitely far from the beginning and adding members finitely many at a time at a constant rate; fair enough. He then concludes, "It thus follows that it is impossible for an infinite world-series to have passed away, and that a beginning of the world is therefore a necessary condition of the world's existence." This doesn't follow at all. To claim that it does is to claim just what is to be proved: that the series in question had a beginning. The premise tells us that if you start from some finite point in a series--that is, some point finitely far from the beginning of the series--and add a finite number per unit time, then you will never complete the series. Fair enough; but if the world has existed for an infinite stretch of time, then there was no first moment, no first event, and no beginning either to the series of moments or the series of events; more generally, at any preceding moment an infinite time would already have elapsed. To conclude, as Kant does, that it is impossible that an infinite series of events has occurred is just to assume that the series in question had a beginning--that is, is finite--but that is precisely what was to be proved. So the argument really has no force at all. It is not as if it is an argument the premises of which have a certain limited amount of intuitive plausibility; it is rather that this transition to the conclusion completely begs the question by assuming what was to be proved: that the series in question has a beginning. The argument therefore fails to establish its conclusion; it merely assumes it. It therefore gives us no reason at all for accepting that conclusion. The argument for the antithesis is no more promising. Here is how Kant puts it: Let us assume that it [the world] had a beginning. Since the beginning is an existence which is preceded by a time in which the thing is not, there must have been a preceding time in which the world was not, i.e., an empty time. Now no coming to be of a thing is possible in an empty time, because no part of such a time possesses, as compared with any other, a distinguishing condition of existence rather than nonexistence. . . . (A427, B455) Again, the argument is by reductio: assume the denial of your conclusion and show that it is impossible, thereby establishing the conclusion. Here the two premises are (6) The beginning of an event or a thing is always preceded by a time in which the thing is not, that is, a time at which the thing in question does not exist. and (7) In an empty time (a time at which nothing exists) nothing could come to be, because there would be no more reason for it to come to be at one part of that empty time than at any other part of it. Neither premise is at all compelling. As to the first, this is true only if it is not possible that time and the world (the first event) should come into existence together, simultaneously. Is it known that this isn't possible? Certainly not. Indeed, some of the most popular theories of time (relational theories) would assume, not merely that this is possible, but that it is true. As for the second premise, it is equally unpromising. Suppose (in accord with the picture governing the argument) an infinity of time had elapsed before the first event of the world took place--before its creation, say. The objection is that there would have been no more reason for God to create the world at one moment than at any other; hence he wouldn't or couldn't have created it at any moment at all. Again, why believe this? If God proposed to create the world, and no time was more propitious than any other, why couldn't he just arbitrarily select a time? [29] This argument is like those arguments that start from the premise that God, if he created the world, would have created the best world he could have; they go on to add that for every world God could have created (weakly actualized, [30] say) there is an even better world he could have created or weakly actualized; therefore, they conclude, he wouldn't have weakly actualized any world at all, and the actual world has not been weakly actualized by God. Again, there seems no reason to believe the first premise. If there were only finitely many worlds among which God was obliged to choose, then perhaps he would have been obliged, somehow, to choose the best (although even this is at best dubious). [31] But if there is no best world at all among those he could have chosen (if for every world he could have chosen, there is a better world he could have chosen), why think a world's failing to be the best is sufficient for God's being unable to actualize it? Suppose a man had the benefit of immortality and had a bottle of wine that would improve every day, no matter how long he waits to drink it. Would he be rationally obliged never to drink it, on the grounds that for any time he might be tempted to, it would be better yet the next day? Suppose a donkey were stranded exactly midway between two bales of hay: would it be rationally obliged to stay there and starve to death because there is no more reason to move to the one bale than to the other? The arguments for the other antinomies don't fare any better. In no case is there anything like a conclusive argument (given the assumption that we are thinking about the Dinge) for either the thesis or the antithesis. In some cases, we may not know or be able to tell which (thesis or antithesis) is true: but that doesn't constitute much of an argument for the conclusion that we can't think about the noumena. What would be needed for the argument to work would be a really powerful argument for the thesis and an equally powerful argument for the antithesis. In none of these cases do we have something like that. Suppose we think a bit further about antinomies and paradoxes in connection with this question of concluding that we simply can't think about a given area or topic. Consider the Russell paradoxes, in their simple set-theoretical guise. Like Frege, we are all initially inclined to think that for every condition or property, there exists the set of just those things that meet the condition or have the property. It is pointed out that there is such a property as being nonselfmembered, the property a thing has just if it is not a member of itself; hence there must be a set S of nonselfmembered sets, but then S is a member of itself if and only if it is not a member of itself, which is a contradiction. Here it would be unduly enthusiastic to conclude that we can't really think and talk about sets as they are in themselves and can instead think only about sets that we have ourselves constructed, sets as they appear to us. One takes the argument as proving only that there is no set of nonselfmembered sets and that, contrary to appearances, it is not true that for every property or condition, there exists the set of just those things satisfying the condition or displaying the property. Take, instead, the Russell paradox as specified to properties, rather than sets; in some ways, this is a more serious paradox. One is initially inclined to think that there are properties, that some properties (for example, the property of being a property) exemplify themselves, so that there is such a property as self-exemplification, and that every property has a complement. These together lead to trouble: they imply that there is such a property as non-self-exemplification, which inconsiderately both does and doesn't exemplify itself. [32] Once again, however, it hardly seems to follow that we simply can't think and talk about properties an sich. We needn't hold that if we can think about properties an sich, then there is a property that both does and doesn't exemplify itself. We can quite properly conclude, instead, that one of the group of propositions we are initially inclined to accept must be false, and we look for the one with the least intuitive warrant or support, the one we are least strongly inclined to believe. (We might be inclined to think, for example, that there really isn't such a property as non-self-exemplification [even though it seems as if there is] so that either there is no such property as self-exemplification, or it is false that every property has a complement.) This is mildly disquieting, and gives us reason for a bit of humility with respect to the deliverances of reason, but we certainly aren't forced into the position of holding that we can't refer to and think about properties an sich. In what conditions would this drastic conclusion be right? Perhaps in none at all, and if in some, it is hard to say which. At the least, however, it would involve our being very strongly inclined to accept each member of a set of propositions about some subject matter, which set (by argument forms we are very strongly inclined to accept) entails a contradiction. It would also involve there being several such sets of propositions about the subject matter in question. Each of the premises and arguments involved would have to have very powerful, maximal or near maximal intuitive support; otherwise, we could more reasonably hold that a premise (or argument form) with only moderate intuitive support is false (or invalid). If there were several such sets of propositions--about properties, say--and each of these propositions and argument forms had the degree of intuitive support enjoyed by, say, 2 + 1 = 3 and modus ponens, then perhaps the right conclusion to draw would be that either there simply aren't any such things as the objects in the alleged realm, or that if there are, we are incapable of thinking about them. Even here, however, there would be reason to doubt the success of the argument. It would involve as a premise something like: (8) If there are several sets of premises about properties, each member of each set having maximal intuitive warrant, and the members of each set together entail a contradiction, then we cannot refer to and think about properties an sich. The next premise would be the antecedent of (8), and the conclusion would be the consequent of (8)--that is, the proposition that we cannot refer to and think about properties an sich. But if that conclusion were true, how could we grasp (8), the first premise? That premise seems to be, among other things, about properties an sich, and if we grasp it, we are able to think about properties an sich. The argument appears to be self-referentially self-refuting: if it is a successful argument, its first premise is both about noumena and such that we can grasp it, in which case that premise must be false. The sensible Kantian conclusion, so it seems to me, is that if, indeed, we can refer to and think about the Dinge, reason alone doesn't tell us such things as whether the world had a beginning in time or whether there are simple substances. It seems more likely than not, perhaps, that there are simple substances and that there are free agents who initiate new causal chains in the world, but the negations of these propositions are not demonstrably mistaken. Most certainly, it is not the case that both these propositions and their denials are demonstrable, so that each is both demonstrably true and, furthermore, demonstrably false. We must also recall that the whole scheme, the whole radical subpicture, seems incoherent in a familiar way. One who states and proposes this scheme makes several claims about the Dinge: that they are not in space and time, for example, and more poignantly, that our concepts don't apply to them (applying only to the phenomena), so that we cannot refer to or think about them. But if we really can't think the Dinge, then we can't think them (and can't whistle them either); if we can't think about them, we can't so much as entertain the thought that there are such things. The incoherence is patent. Would it be possible to induce coherence by refusing to make the distinction between phenomena and noumena, speaking only of what, if we did make that distinction, would be the phenomena, and claiming that whatever there is, is either a bit of experience or an object constructed by us from bits of experience by way of concepts (i.e., rules for constructing things from experience)? That is extremely hard to believe: are the stars, for example, which, as far as we can tell, existed long before we did, either bits of human experience or objects constructed by us from bits of human experience? How are we supposed to make sense of that? On this view, furthermore, the objection to Christian belief would not be that serious Christians improperly take it that they can refer to God; the objection would be that there is no God. If there were such a person, he certainly wouldn't be either a bit of human experience or something we have constructed from it. Still further, on this picture we ourselves (because we are among the things there are) would either have constructed ourselves from bits of experience or we would just be bits of experience; but of course we couldn't have constructed ourselves before we existed, so we must have started off, at least, as bits of experience with the power to construct things. Not a pretty picture. And even if we could somehow induce coherence here, why should we feel obliged to believe it? What possible claim could such a bizarre scheme have on us? By way of conclusion then: it doesn't look as if there is good reason in Kant or in the neighborhood of Kant for the conclusion that our concepts do not apply to God, so that we cannot think about him. Contemporary theologians and others sometimes complain that contemporary philosophers of religion often write as if they have never read their Kant. Perhaps the reason they write that way, however, is not that they have never read their Kant but rather that they have read him and remain unconvinced. They may be unconvinced that Kant actually claimed that our concepts do not apply to God. Alternatively, they may concede that Kant did claim this, but remain unconvinced that he was right; after all, it is not just a given of the intellectual life that Kant is right. Either way, they don't think Kant gives us reason to hold that we cannot think about God. __________________________________________________________________ [27] See my Warrant and Proper Function (WPF), pp. 117ff. [28] It seems we could have good reason to accept each member of a set S of beliefs such that there is no possible world in which all the members of S are true (the conjunction of the members of S is impossible), as is shown by the paradox of the preface. I write a book, of course believing every proposition asserted therein. Past experience and self-knowledge, however, lead me to think that very likely the book contains at least one false statement. (All of my previous books, as I've discovered to my sorrow, contain false statements.) In the preface, therefore, I sadly concede that at least one statement in the book is false. The total set of my beliefs, therefore--the statements in the book plus the statement that at least one statement in the book is false--is such that it must contain at least one falsehood; nevertheless, I have good reason to accept each member. [29] Compare Augustine's answer to those who wanted to know what God was doing before he created the world in The Confessions of St. Augustine, tr. Rex Warner (New York: New American Library, 1963), book 11, chapter 12, pp. 265-66. [30] For the notion of weak actualization, see my The Nature of Necessity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), p. 173, and Alvin Plantinga, ed. James Tomberlin and Peter van Inwagen (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1985), p. 49. [31] See Robert Adams's "Must God Create the Best?" Philosophical Review 81 (1972), pp. 317-32. [32] If you balk at such properties as self-exemplification and non-self-exemplification, conduct the argument instead in terms of conditions; see Tomberlin and van Inwagen, Alvin Plantinga, p. 320. __________________________________________________________________ [16] Critique of Pure Reason, tr. Norman Kemp Smith (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1965), Preface to second edition, Bxxx, p. 29: "I have therefore found it necessary to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith" (Kant's emphasis). [17] See Merold Westphal, "In Defense of the Thing in Itself," Kant-Studien 59/1 (1968), pp. 118ff. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ 2 Kaufman and Hick Our subject is the de jure question about Christian belief: the question whether it is rational, or reasonable, or rationally justifiable, or intellectually defensible to accept such belief. A previous question, as we saw in the last chapter, is the question whether there is any de jure question about Christian belief or, indeed, any de facto question either. Christian belief is belief, among other things, in the existence of God. And Christians believe that God is infinite: unlimited with respect to such important properties as knowledge, wisdom, goodness, and power. They also believe that God is transcendent: distinct from the created universe, in no way dependent on it, and such that it is dependent on him. Finally, they assume that it is possible to refer to God, talk and think about him, address him in prayer, and worship him. Many contemporary theologians, however, apparently believe that these ideas are excessively naive: they hold that there are profound problems in the very idea that we can refer to and think about a being characterized in the way Christians characterize God. In particular, they seem to believe that Immanuel Kant gave us excellent reason to be (at best) extremely suspicious of such naively realistic ways of thinking about God or religious language. As we saw in the last chapter, however, there is really nothing in Kant to suggest that in fact we can't think or talk about God. More generally, it is exceedingly hard to see how to construct an argument--an argument for the conclusion that we cannot refer to and think about God--from materials to be found in the work of Kant. Of course that doesn't show that no such argument can be found: but if one can be found, it is, I should say, up to those who think there is one to produce and develop it. In this chapter, I shall pursue this question into the present: if Kant gives us no reason to accept this conceptual agnosticism, do contemporary theologians (or writers in religious studies) do so? I choose two representatives: Gordon Kaufman and John Hick. __________________________________________________________________ I. Kaufman __________________________________________________________________ A. The Real Referent and the Available Referent According to Gordon Kaufman, The central problem of theological discourse, not shared with any other "language game," is the meaning of the term "God." "God" raises special problems of meaning because it is a noun which by definition refers to a reality transcendent of, and thus not locatable within, experience. A new convert may wish to refer the "warm feeling" in his heart to God, but God is hardly to be identified with this emotion; the biblicist may regard the Bible as God's Word; the moralist may believe God speaks through men's consciences; the churchman may believe God is present among his people--but each of these would agree that God himself transcends the locus referred to. As the Creator or Source of all that is, God is not to be identified with any particular finite reality; as the proper object of ultimate loyalty or faith, God is to be distinguished from every proximate or penultimate value or being. But if absolutely nothing within our experience can be directly identified as that to which the term "God" properly refers, what meaning does or can the word have? [33] So the claim is that God is not to be identified with any particular finite reality--on the grounds, presumably, that God is not in fact identical with any particular finite reality. From the Christian perspective, this is, of course, no more than the sober truth: God is infinite and therefore not identical with any finite reality. So far, so good. Kaufman apparently infers from this, however, that "absolutely nothing within our experience can be directly identified as that to which the term God' properly refers"; he adds that if this is so, then there is a real problem for the reference of our term God': if "nothing within our experience can be directly identified as that to which the term God' properly refers, then what meaning does or can the word have?" I realize this last is a question, but it looks like a rhetorical question; the idea is that if nothing within our experience can be directly identified as that to which the term God' properly refers, then the term God' doesn't refer to anything, or at any rate there is a real problem about its referring to something. Here, therefore, we have two claims: (a) if God is not a finite reality, then absolutely nothing within our experience can be directly identified as that to which the term God' properly refers. and (b) if nothing within our experience can be directly identified as that to which the term God' properly refers, then the term God' doesn't refer to anything, or at least it is problematic that it does. These claims awaken Kantian echoes--echoes that get stronger as we move further into Kaufman's thought. And surely both are initially dubious. Consider (a). First, we must ask what it means to say that "nothing within our experience can be directly identified as that to which the term God' properly applies." What is it, as Kaufman is thinking of it, for something to be within our experience, and to be such that it can be directly identified as that to which a certain term properly applies? What about my friend's cat Maynard: is Maynard something within our experience which can be directly identified as that to which the term Maynard' properly applies? I should think so: else the problem is not merely with reference to God, but with reference to anything at all; Kaufman's suggestion, I think, is that the problem is specifically with respect to God. According to (a) it is because God is infinite that the term God' doesn't properly apply to anything within our experience. Now why, precisely, is that true? Maynard, I take it, is something within our experience, and this is because we can experience Maynard. We can perceive him: we can see, hear, touch, and sometimes smell him. The idea must be, then, that if God is not a finite reality, then we cannot experience him; we cannot perceive him (we cannot see, hear, or touch him) or in any other way experience him. An infinite being--one that is omnipotent and omniscient, for example--cannot be perceived or experienced in any way whatever. Is that really true? How does the fact that God is infinite mean that we cannot experience him? Many Christians and Jews believe that God spoke to Moses from the burning bush; Moses heard him. He spoke to Abraham in a dream. He spoke to several people when he said, "This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased"; these people all heard him. Christians may also believe that the Holy Spirit works in their hearts, producing conviction and faith, as well as the religious affections of which Jonathan Edwards spoke; are they not then experiencing God? The term experience' (taken as either a noun or a verb) is notoriously slippery, but if these things do in fact happen, do not the people involved experience God? Christians may go still further and hold that in some circumstances some people perceive God, a theme that has received explicit and powerful treatment in William P. Alston's Perceiving God. If they are right, then in these cases too they experience God. Now Kaufman apparently thinks the fact that God is infinite--unlimited along several dimensions--means that these people are mistaken: whatever they think, they do not experience God. Again, why so? God is infinite with respect to power, that is, omnipotent: how does that so much as slyly suggest that God cannot make himself heard or that he cannot be experienced? He is infinite with respect to knowledge, that is, omniscient; does that somehow show that he could not speak to Abraham or anyone else? Is it perhaps the combination of omnipotence and omniscience that shows this? It is certainly hard to see how. If God is omnipotent, infinitely powerful, won't he be able to manifest himself in our experience, bring it about that we experience him? He will be unable to do so, presumably, under those conditions, only if it is logically impossible (impossible in the broadly logical sense) that an omniscient and omnipotent being should be able to make himself heard. But so far as I can see, there isn't even the slightest reason to think that; certainly Kaufman gives us none. I will go into the question of the nature of experience of God in more detail in chapters 6, 8, and 9; here I only want to point out that it seems initially implausible to declare that God, if he is infinite and omnipotent, could not bring it about that we experience him. The second premise (b)--the claim that if nothing within our experience can be directly identified as that to which the term God' refers, then the term God' doesn't refer to anything (or it is at least problematic that it does)--also seems dubious. Cosmologists tell us of the Big Bang, an event that occurred several billion years ago in which an explosion of enormous energy caused an expansion from an initial configuration of enormous density. I suppose the Big Bang is not something within our experience, something that can be directly identified as that to which the term the Big Bang' correctly refers; does it follow that there is a profound problem with this term? Is the real problem with contemporary cosmology not just the speculative nature of those suggestions about many universes and what happened during Planck time, but rather the very idea that we can refer to and think about that initial Big Bang? It isn't easy to see why: at the least, a powerful argument would be required. And if there is no particular problem here, why is there a special problem in the case of God? [34] Well, then, someone might say, if there is no problem about referring to an infinite being, how do we refer to God? In chapter 1, I suggested that we could do so, first, by way of definite descriptions such as the creator of the heavens and the earth', the omnipotent and omniscient creator of the world', the divine father of our lord and savior Jesus Christ', the divine person who spoke to Abraham', the divine person I am presently experiencing,' and so on. Each of these descriptions will refer to something if there is exactly one thing exemplifying the properties mentioned in the description; if not, then the description will not refer. (If Christian belief is true, of course, then each of these terms does refer to something, indeed, to the same thing.) Furthermore, we can use the proper name God' to refer to the being denoted by those descriptions. That term can serve as a proper name, for me, of God, in several ways. For example, I might fix the reference' of the term God' by one of the above descriptions, such as the creator of heaven and earth'; if, indeed, just one person created the heavens and the earth, and if that person is also denoted by those other descriptions, then my name God' will be a proper name of the same being as that denoted by those descriptions. My name will be a proper name of a being who is omniscient, omnipotent, the creator of the world, the father of our lord and savior Jesus Christ, and the like. Under these conditions, my name God' will express an essence of that being. [35] Perhaps my name, introduced in that way, will not express the same essence of God as your name, introduced by way of a different description. Even so, however, they will express logically equivalent (even if epistemically inequivalent) essences of God. [36] Alternatively, I might not get my proper name of God by using a definite description to fix the reference and then officially baptize the thing to which the description refers: I might instead just catch the name, so to speak, from others. In fact, this is the more usual way. Proper names, like colds, are ordinarily caught from our associates. As a child, I hear talk of God, talk in which the name God' occurs; I pick up the name, tacitly or implicitly intending to use it to refer to the same being to which those from whom I get the name refer. If they do indeed succeed in referring to God by using that name, then so will I. (Here is another way in which the success of my noetic ventures depends on the success of similar ventures on the parts of those around me: see Warrant and Proper Function, pp. 77-78.) In any event, Kaufman holds that we can neither know nor experience what he calls the real referent' of the term God': The real referent for "God" is never accessible to us or in any way open to our observation or experience. It must remain always an unknown X. . . . (GP 85) When Christians use the term God', therefore, they do not refer to the real referent of that term (but then why call it "the real referent"?). To whom or what (if anything) do they refer when they say such things as that God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, or that God created the heavens and the earth, or that God is our faithful and loving father? The answer, says Kaufman, is that when they say these things they are referring to the "available referent" of the name God', and the available referent is an imaginative construct, something we have somehow created: For all practical purposes it is the available referent--a particular imaginative construct--that bears significantly on human life and thought. It is the "available God" whom we have in mind when we worship or pray . . . it is the available God in terms of which we speak and think whenever we use the word "God." In this sense "God" denotes for all practical purposes what is essentially a mental or imaginative construct. (GP 85-86) God is a symbol--an imaginative construct--that enables men to view the world and themselves in such a way as to make action and morality ultimately (metaphysically) meaningful. (GP 109) So the available God, the God whom we have in mind when we worship and pray, the being to which we refer when we use the term God'--this being is a human creation, an imaginative construct, something we ourselves have created. The view seems to be initially that there is this available referent, but also a real referent of the term God', a being with whom we have no noetic contact and about whom we cannot speak. Or rather, the view is, I think, that there might be a real referent, and that if there is, it is a being we cannot think about: This fact, that the God actually available to people is an imaginative construct, does not necessarily mean that God is "unreal" or "merely imaginary" or something of that sort. That question remains open for further investigation. (GP 86) Does this mean, then, that the conclusion is, after all, that God really does not exist, that He is only a figment of our imaginations? If those words are intended to put the speculative question about the ultimate nature of things, then, as we have seen, there is no possible way to give an answer. (GP 111) In essence, then, Kaufman's view in God the Problem appears to be the following. The term God' has an available referent: this is a human construction, something we have created; when we speak of God in worship or to him in prayer, it is this available referent about which (or to which) we are talking. Perhaps the term also has a real referent. If so, however, it transcends our experience and is hence something to which our concepts do not apply: a mere unknown X, to adopt Kaufman's Kantian terminology. Now I've already argued that there seems no good reason to hold this position. Here I must go on to add that there is excellent reason not to hold it. As it stands, the view is incoherent. First, the available referent': the suggestion is that when Christians pray and worship and speak about God, they are talking about the available referent. When they say such things, for example, as God created the heavens and the earth', they are really attributing this property--the property of having created the heavens and the earth--to the available referent. But the available referent is a human construct, and hence presumably did not exist before there were human beings. How then did it manage to create the heavens and the earth? Could it somehow do this before it existed? In any event, an imaginative construct, a symbol, a structure of meanings of some kind is just not the sort of thing that could create the heavens and the earth or, indeed, anything else. A symbol, an imaginative construct, may have properties: being a construct, for example, or being a symbol, or being appropriately used by human beings for such and such a purpose; it certainly won't have such properties as being omniscient or creating the world. I suppose it could be that Christians are confused: they think they are referring to and talking about something that created them, but the fact is they are referring to something they themselves have created. Is it really plausible to think they are as confused as all that, however? Those who believe there is no such person as God will see Christians as mistaken in thinking there is, and perhaps it is at least sensible to think them mistaken in that way. Is it really sensible to think them mistaken in such a way that they predicate the properties of God of a mere construct? Well, perhaps that could happen; but surely a strong argument would be required to make this even reasonably plausible. Say that a property P entails a property Q just if it is necessary in the broadly logical sense that everything that exemplifies P also exemplifies Q; and say that a concept C contains a property P if the property of which C is a grasp entails P. Then it is clear that a concept might contain such properties as being omniscient or having created the world (even if it couldn't exemplify them), and equally clear that the concept corresponding to the definite description the omniscient creator of the world' contains the properties being omniscient and being the creator of the world. Could it be that what Kaufman really means is not that Christians assert that the available referent--which is something like a concept containing salient properties of God--exemplifies those properties, but rather that it contains them? This too seems wrong. It is indeed true that certain concepts, including some associated with descriptions of God, contain those properties. When Christians make their characteristic claims, however, they are not merely saying such things as that the concept being the omniscient creator of the heavens and earth contains the properties being omniscient and being the creator of the heavens and earth. That would, of course, be true; it would also be wholly trivial. It wouldn't be at all distinctive of Christians or theists: even the most hardened atheist would agree that this concept contains those properties. What Christians claim entails rather that these properties are exemplified, that there really exists a being who has them. The above seems to be the literal construal of Kaufman's words; of course there are other possibilities in the neighborhood. Perhaps, for example, he thinks of the available referent not as a being with the properties Christians ascribe to God, but as something like a certain type with which those properties are associated. [37] This may seem a more sympathetic construal of Kaufman; I doubt that it really is. If Kaufman's claim is that Christians ordinarily worship that type, then his claim is outrageous in just the way I suggest. If his claim, however, is only that Christians believe they worship a being having the properties associated with the type but are possibly mistaken, then is his claim more than the uninteresting suggestion that Christians may be wrong about whether there is such a person as God? Now consider the real referent. The idea is that our concepts do not apply to the real referent, if indeed there is such a thing. It follows that this being is not wise, almighty, or the creator of the heavens and the earth. For consider our concept of wisdom. This concept applies to a thing just if that thing is wise. So a being to which this concept did not apply would not be wise, whatever else it might be. If, therefore, our concepts do not apply to the real referent of the term God', then our concepts of being loving, almighty, wise, creator, and redeemer do not apply to it, in which case it is not loving, almighty, wise, a creator, or a redeemer. It wouldn't have any of the properties Christians ascribe to God. And of course so far this is in accord with Kaufman's intentions. I suspect, however, that his official position has other consequences Kaufman does not intend. If this being, this real referent, is really such that none of our concepts applies to it, then it will also lack such properties as self-identity, existence, and being either a material object or an immaterial object, these being properties of which we have concepts. Indeed, it wouldn't have the property of being the real referent of the term God' or any other term; our concept being the referent of a term will not apply to it. The fact is this being won't have any properties at all because our concept of having at least one property does not apply to it. Kaufman's view seems to entail that there could be a being that had no properties, didn't exist, wasn't self-identical, wasn't either a material object or an immaterial object, and didn't have any properties. Taken strictly, therefore, Kaufman's position is incoherent. __________________________________________________________________ [33] God the Problem (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972), p. 7. Henceforth GP. [34] One source of Kaufman's views here may be a sort of lingering allegiance to the "Verifiability Criterion of Meaning" mentioned above (pp. 7-8): "Since seemingly no clear experiential evidence can be cited for or against that to which the word God' allegedly refers, the question has been repeatedly raised whether all talk about him is not in the strict sense cognitively meaningless" (p. 8). As we saw in chapter 1, however, there is little to be said for the Verifiability Criterion. [35] See my The Nature of Necessity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974), pp. 77ff. [36] See my "The Boethian Compromise," in American Philosophical Quarterly (1978). [37] See Nicholas Wolterstorff's so-far-unpublished From Presence to Practice; Mind, World, and Entitlement to Believe, chapter 1. __________________________________________________________________ B. The Function of Religious Language Perhaps it is for reasons like these that in more recent work, in particular The Theological Imagination, [38] Kaufman seems to have given up the real referent. Instead, he claims that "it is an error to reify God into an independent being" (TI 38), that "To regard God as some kind of describable or knowable object over against us would be at once a degradation of God and a serious category error" (TI 244), and that It is a mistake, therefore, to regard qualities attributed to God (e.g., aseity, holiness, omnipotence, omniscience, providence, love, self-revelation) as though they were features or activities of such a particular being. Rather, in the mind's construction of the image/concept of God, the ordinary relation of subject and predicate is reversed. Instead of the subject (God) being a given to which the various predicate adjectives are then assigned, here the descriptive terms themselves are the building blocks which the imagination uses in putting together its conception. . . . Contemporary theological construction needs to recognize that these terms and concepts do not refer directly to "objects" or "realities" or their qualities and relations, but function rather as the building blocks or reference points which articulate the theistic world-picture or vision of life. (TI 244) Why must we think these terms do not, in fact, denote an all-powerful, all-wise creator of the universe? As far as I can see, it is because Kaufman does not believe that there is any such thing: he thinks, so far as I can see, that the proper attitude toward this proposition is either disbelief or withholding, either atheism or agnosticism. Naturally enough, if there is no being of that sort, then none of our terms will denote a being of that sort. This is perhaps a surprising position for a theologian; a theologian who does not believe in God is like a mountaineer for whom it is an open question whether there are any mountains or a plumber agnostic about pipes: a beguiling spectacle, but hard to take seriously. [39] And why does he think there is no such person? Again, there is precious little by way of argument. He cites first "the rise of a new consciousness of the significance of religious pluralism"; [40] second, he says in the same article, "new theories about the ways in which cultural and linguistic symbolic or conceptual frames shape all our experiencing and thinking . . . have given rise in theologians to a new self-consciousness about the extraordinarily complex and problematic character of all so-called religious truth-claims,' including those that are made by Christian faith"; third, he refers to the traditional problem of evil but with a twist: Christians themselves are responsible for more of the evil the world displays than they would like to think. (This last, sadly enough, is true, and perhaps [to take just one example] part of the occasion for modern apostasy, in the West, was the unedifying spectacle of Christians at each other's throats in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.) It is an enormous leap, however, to the conclusion that probably there is no such person as God. In chapter 14, we'll examine the question whether evil constitutes a defeater for Christian belief, and in chapter 13 we'll do the same for the plurality of religions the world displays. As for the second suggestion--the claim that many now hold that "cultural and linguistic symbolic or conceptual frames shape all our experiencing and thinking"--perhaps this claim is true: but if it casts doubt on all of our experiencing and thinking, thus including Christianity, doesn't it do the same for every other way of thinking, including the thought that it casts doubt on what we think? If so, it would seem to leave everything as it was, not functioning as a reason for being doubtful specifically about theism (or, indeed, anything else). One might expect someone who is atheist or agnostic about God to move away from religion altogether, viewing religious devotion and belief with something of a jaundiced or a pitying eye. This is not Kaufman's course. Instead, he argues that religious practice and devotion "still has an important function to play in life." This function, of course, is not that of putting us in touch with a being with the properties traditionally ascribed to God or that of enabling us to appropriate the salvation in Jesus Christ that God has promised us. Rather, this new function requires that theologians should construct or reconstruct the concept of God. Religious language is still important, but it should be recast so as no longer to involve a forlorn attempt to refer to a being who isn't there. Instead, it should be used to promote human flourishing, "human fulfillment and meaning" (TI 34). The word God' is to be associated with a symbol or image or concept theologians construct; it is their job to reconstruct the concept or symbol God' in a way that is appropriate to our present historical situation. (Thus in Theology for a Nuclear Age, he suggests that in this modern nuclear age we should think of God as "the historical evolutionary force that has brought us all into being." [41] ) The word God', therefore, should no longer be thought of as referring to the all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving person who has created the world; it is not to be thought of as referring to a person at all. Instead, this word is to be seen as a sort of symbol of certain states of affairs. For example, Christians have thought of transcendence as a property of God; Kaufman recommends that, in constructing the new symbol, we retain transcendence: [42] What seems to be at stake here is a claim that human individuals and communities need a center of orientation and devotion outside themselves and their perceived desires and needs if they are to find genuine fulfillment. (TI 35-36) God symbolizes that in the ongoing evolutionary historical process which grounds our being as distinctively human and which draws (or drives) us on toward authentic human fulfillment (salvation). . . . And ritualized devotion to God in religious cult as well as in the private disciplines of prayer and meditation still has an important function to play in life. (TI 41) More generally: "God" is the personifying symbol of that cosmic activity which has created our humanity and continues to press for its full realization. Such a personification has a considerable advantage for some purposes over abstract concepts such as "cosmic forces" or "foundation for our humanity in the ultimate nature of things": the symbol "God" is concrete and definite, a sharply defined image, and as such it can readily become the central focus for devotion and service. . . . "God" is a symbol that gathers up into itself and focuses for us all those cosmic forces working toward the fully humane existence for which we long. (TI 50) Speech about the Christian God as "real" or "existent" expresses symbolically this conviction that free and loving persons-in-community have a substantial metaphysical foundation, that there are cosmic forces working toward this sort of humanization. (TI 49) The Christian image/concept of God, as I have presented it here, is an imaginative construct which orients selves and communities so as to facilitate development toward loving and caring selfhood, and toward communities of openness, love, and freedom. (TI 48) The idea, so far as I can grasp it, seems to be this. Perhaps there is no such person as theists have traditionally believed in. Nevertheless, it is a good idea to continue to use the term God' and, in fact, to continue to utter many of the very same words and phrases and sentences as do those who believe in God; done properly, this will promote human flourishing. How, exactly? Perhaps as follows. We realize, first, that there is probably no such person as God. We are then free to select a concept/image God' and associate with it certain properties--existence and transcendence, perhaps--and use that symbol to symbolize such things as that the world is hospitable, to at least some degree, to distinctively human aspirations, goals, needs, and desires. We are to say such things as God is real', meaning that in fact there are forces in the world that contribute to human flourishing. (We should add, I suppose, that the devil is also real, thereby symbolizing that there are forces working against human flourishing.) We are to say God is independent of us,' meaning thereby that a community or person needs a focus of interest outside itself to flourish. (Perhaps we should add that We are justified by the suffering and death of Jesus Christ,' thereby symbolizing the fact that we do not always feel guilty, or God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself,' thereby meaning that things are now more propitious for human flourishing than they have been at some times in the past.) And saying these things will itself promote human flourishing. Can we take any of this seriously? This is not a matter of pouring new wine into old wineskins: what we have here is nothing like the rich, powerful, fragrant wine of the great Christian truths; what we have is something wholly drab, trivial, and insipid. It is not even a matter of throwing out the baby with the bathwater; it is, instead, throwing out the baby and keeping the tepid bathwater, at best a bland, unappetizing potion that is neither hot nor cold and at worst a nauseating brew, fit for neither man nor beast. Furthermore, this rehashing of secularity under the guise of reconstructing' Christianity encourages dishonesty and hypocrisy; it results in a sort of private code whereby one utters the same phrases as those who accept Christian belief but means something wholly different by them. You thereby appear to concur with those who accept Christian belief; in fact, you wholly reject what they believe. You can thereby patronize the person in the pew (who has not reached your level of enlightenment) but without paying the cost of unduly disturbing her. The fact is such double-talk is at best confusing and deceptive, contributing only to misunderstanding, dishonesty, and hypocrisy. Wouldn't it be vastly more honest to follow the lead of, for example, Bertrand Russell, A. J. Ayer, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, or even Madalyn Murray O' Hair, declaring forthrightly that there is no God and that Christianity is an enormous mistake? __________________________________________________________________ [38] Subtitled Constructing the Concept of God (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1981; hereafter TI). See also his Essay on Theological Method (Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press, 1975 and 1979). [39] Unhappily, this spectacle is not at present uncommon. Compare, for example, Don Cupitt, who has similar views sometimes expressed with a certain amiable dottiness: "It is spiritual vulgarity and immaturity to demand an extra-religious reality of God" (p. 10 of his Taking Leave of God [New York: Crossroad, 1981]); he adds, "The real external existence of God is of no religious interest" (p. 96). [40] "Evidentialism: A Theologian's Response," Faith and Philosophy (January 1989), p. 30. [41] Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985, p. 43. [42] How do properties such as transcendence or aseity get related to those symbols we construct? Do we just draw up a list of properties and declare them associated with the term God'? It is far from easy to see how this is supposed to work, and Kaufman doesn't say. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ II. Hick John Hick's work is interesting both intrinsically and with respect to our topic; he too holds a view heavily indebted to Kant, and his view too can be put (with considerable qualifications) as the view that our concepts do not apply to God or The Real'. There are evocative echoes of Kant and also evocative echoes of some of the trials and tribulations dogging an effort to find a coherent interpretation or understanding of Kant. __________________________________________________________________ A. The Real The traditional doctrine of divine ineffability is to be found in Christianity, as well as other religious traditions. Hick believes that this doctrine is really the recognition of a quasi-Kantian distinction between God (the Real, the Ultimate [43] ) as it is in itself and as it is for us (as we know or experience it): In each of the great traditions a distinction has been drawn, though with varying degrees of emphasis, between the Real (thought of as God, Brahman, the Dharmakaya . . .) in itself and the Real as manifested within the intellectual and experiential purview of that tradition. (236) So far, so good; this claim--that there is a distinction between the Real as it is in itself and as it is for us--is relatively weak. It requires only that the way we think of God does not completely match what God actually is; it would be satisfied if, for example, there are things about God that we didn't know or, more strongly, if there were things about him we couldn't know. But Hick goes much further; the Real is such that we cannot say anything at all about it, in that none of our terms can be literally (and correctly) applied to it: Thus although we cannot speak of the Real an sich in literal terms, nevertheless we live inescapably in relation to it. (351) It is within the phenomenal or experienceable realm that language has developed and it is to this that it literally applies. Indeed the system of concepts embodied in human language has contributed reciprocally to the formation of the humanly perceived world. It is as much constructed as given. But our language can have no purchase on a postulated noumenal reality which is not even partly formed by human concepts. This lies outside the scope of our cognitive capacities. (350) This sounds like the two-world interpretation of Kant (above, pp. 10ff.). There is the phenomenal realm, to which our language literally applies; this "humanly perceived world" is as much constructed as given, and it is constructed, in part, by virtue of our application of concepts. However, there is also a noumenal world (The Real'), "which is not even partly formed by human concepts," and as a result it is outside the scope of our cognitive capacities. And here some of the same questions arise as with the two-world interpretation of Kant: why think something is within the scope of our cognitive capacities only if it is partly formed by human concepts? Are horses and dinosaurs (partly) formed by our concepts? (Which parts?) And if the noumena lie outside the scope of our cognitive capacities, how is it that we know something about them, or even that there are any such things? More frequently, however, he adopts the one-world view: Kant distinguished between noumenon and phenomenon, or between a Ding an sich and that thing as it appears to human consciousness. . . . In this strand of Kant's thought--not the only strand, but the one which I am seeking to press into service in the epistemology of religion--the noumenal world exists independently of our perception of it and the phenomenal world is that same world as it appears to our human consciousness. . . . I want to say that the noumenal Real is experienced and thought by different human mentalities, forming and formed by different religious traditions, as the range of gods and absolutes which the phenomenology of religion reports. (241-42) Further, it is unclear whether Hick thinks we can or can't, do or don't perceive this being or in some other way experience it. On the negative side, we have If the Real in itself is not and cannot be humanly experienced, why postulate such an unknown and unknowable Ding as sich? The answer is that the divine noumenon is a necessary postulate of the pluralistic religious life of humanity. (249) On the positive side, we have, for example, Analogously, I want to say that the noumenal Real is experienced and thought by different human mentalities, forming and formed by different religious traditions, as the range of gods and absolutes which the phenomenology of religion reports. (242) and The noumenal Real is such as to be authentically experienced as a range of both theistic and nontheistic phenomena. (246-47) There are several more passages to quote on each side; clearly, Hick is ambivalent about the answer to this question. But perhaps this is not fatal; his answer, I should think, would be "In a way, yes, and in a way, no." The noumenal real makes a crucial causal contribution of some sort to our experience; perhaps it doesn't matter whether we say that we actually experience it or say, instead, only that it contributes to our experience. Another ambiguity, however, is not so easily dismissed. In chapter 19, Hick seems to say that our concepts do not apply to the noumenon, or, as he puts it there, none of our terms applies literally to it. He quotes the Buddha as saying, with respect to where or in what sphere a Tathagata (a fully enlightened being) arises after death, that none of the terms arises', does not arise', both arises and does not arise,' and neither arises nor does not arise' applies to the condition of the Tathagata (346). Hick apparently approves of this suggestion and adds, "We have here the idea of realities and circumstances which transcend the categories available in our unillumined thought and language. Their total elusiveness is signaled by the Buddha's rejection not only of the straight positive and negative assertions but also of their combination and disjunction" (347). Hick also claims that "we cannot speak of the Real an sich in literal terms" (351). If Hick really means that none of our terms applies literally to the Real, then it isn't possible to make sense of what he says. I take it the term tricycle' does not apply to the Real; the Real is not a tricycle. But if the Real is not a tricycle, then is not a tricycle' applies literally to it; it is a nontricycle. It could hardly be neither a tricycle nor a nontricycle, nor do I think that Hick would want to suggest that it could. In chapter 14, however, Hick makes a suggestion of quite a different kind. As he says, "it would not indeed make sense to say of X that none of our concepts apply to it" (p. 239); for example, at least our concept being such that we can refer to it would have to apply to any X of which we were properly prepared to say anything at all, including that our concepts do not apply to it. The idea is rather, says Hick, that among our concepts, only formal concepts and negative concepts apply to the Real. That is to say, of the properties of which we have a grasp, only those that are formal, such as having some properties, being self-identical, and being such that 7 + 5 = 12, and those that are negative, such as not being a horse, not being a tricycle, and not being good, would apply to it. Hick adds that there is a substantial tradition within Christianity and other religions, according to which we should distinguish between what we might call substantial properties, such as being good', being powerful', having knowledge', and purely formal and logically generated properties such as being a referent of a term' and being such that our substantial concepts do not apply'. What they wanted to affirm was that the substantial characterizations do not apply to God in God's self-existent being, beyond the range of human experience. They often expressed this by saying that we can only make negative statements about the Ultimate. . . . This via negativa (or via remotionis) consists in applying negative concepts to the Ultimate--the concept of not being finite, and so on--as a way of saying that it lies beyond the range of all our positive substantial characterizations. It is in this qualified sense that it makes perfectly good sense to say that our substantial concepts do not apply to the Ultimate. (239) Here Hick is apparently endorsing what he sees these traditions as delivering. I am not sure there is any way of harmonizing chapter 14 with chapter 19; if not, I suggest we go with chapter 14. At some points in characterizing these traditions he is historically incorrect. For example, he claims that "Calvin taught that we do not know God's essence but only God as revealed to us" (250), and he refers to Calvin's Institutes, I: xiii: 21. But Calvin doesn't teach that we can't know anything of God's essence. In this chapter, he begins by arguing that The scriptural teaching concerning God's infinite and spiritual essence ought to be enough, not only to banish popular delusions, but also to refute the subtleties of secular philosophy. [44] He goes on to point out that we can't measure' God by our own senses' as he puts it: But even if God to keep us sober speaks sparingly of his essence, yet by those two titles that I have used [infinite' and spiritual'], he both banishes stupid imaginings and restrains the boldness of the human mind. Surely his infinity ought to make us afraid to try to measure him by our own senses. (p. 121) Calvin's next point is that because God is a spirit, we can't properly attribute corporeal characteristics to him. He concedes that Scripture does seem to attribute such characteristics (a mouth, an arm, ears, eyes, hands) to him, but those who therefore take it that he has such bodily characteristics fail to understand that "as nurses commonly do with infants, God is wont in a measure to lisp' in speaking to us" (p. 121). Here Calvin clearly thinks we know that God in himself' is infinite, spiritual, and incorporeal; his essence includes infinity and incorporeality. In the passage to which Hick refers, furthermore, Calvin's point is to caution us not to try to figure out God's essence by way just of the resources of reason; given its limitations, that is bound to prove futile: For how can the human mind measure off the measureless essence of God according to its own little measure, a mind as yet unable to establish for certain the nature of the sun's body, though men's eyes daily gaze upon it? . . . Let us then willingly leave to God the knowledge of himself. . . . But we shall be "leaving it to him" if we conceive him to be as he reveals himself to us, without inquiring about him elsewhere than from his Word. (I, xiii, 1, p. 146) The point is that Scripture is a much better source of knowledge of God (including knowledge of his essence) than rational speculation. But Calvin didn't think for a moment that none of our positive substantial concepts applies to God; he clearly believed that God really is the creator of the heavens and the earth, that he really does love us, that he is incorporeal, wise, powerful, loving, and the like. On this view, Hick's claim about the Real is not that none of our concepts applies to it or that none of our terms literally applies to it; that is clearly incoherent. His claim, instead, is that only our formal concepts and terms and our negative concepts and terms apply to it. That is to say, the only properties it has of which we have a grasp are formal properties and negative properties. Consider first those formal concepts. Included here would be, first of all, concepts of properties which are such that everything has them and furthermore has them necessarily. [45] Hick is thinking (I take it) of properties such that it is necessary that everything has them: such properties as being self-identical, having properties, having essential properties, being either a horse or a nonhorse, and being such that 7 + 5 = 12. These properties are necessarily had by everything. We might add that they are essential to everything, where a property is essential to an object if it is not possible that the object exist but lack the property: the property of being self-identical would be an example. We could add still further that each of these properties is such that it is necessary that everything has it essentially. So take any of the properties under consideration: everything has it, it is necessary that everything has it, everything has it essentially, and it is necessary that everything has it essentially. Existence is another of those formal properties: everything exists, existence is an essential property of everything, and it is a necessary truth that existence is essential to everything. But these aren't the only properties that Hick means to include under the rubric formal'. Others are such properties as being referred to by human beings and being thought of by John. So the idea is not that we cannot talk or think about the being in question. On the contrary: we can think about it, refer to it, and say of it that it exists. We can say of it, furthermore, that we can refer to it. Second, in addition to formal properties, we can predicate negative properties of this being--that is, we can correctly predicate negative properties of it. This is implied by Hick's position as I have so far explained it. We can see this as follows. First, note that every property has a complement, where the complement of a property P is the property of not having P. Each of the properties of which we have a concept has a complement: the property of not having that property. Thus the complement of the property wisdom is the property of not being wise, a property enjoyed by everything that is not wise. And if we have a grasp, a conception, of the property in question (wisdom, for example) then we also have a grasp of its complement. Now consider any property P and its complement -P; the property P or -P is one of those formal properties every thing necessarily has. Of course, anything that has that property has either the property P or else has its complement -P. (For anything you pick, either it is wise or it is not wise.) According to Hick's position as so far explained, however, the Real doesn't have any positive nonformal property of which we have a grasp. It follows, then, that for all the positive properties P of which we have a grasp, the Real has -P. Here we are speaking of the properties the thing in question has, not about our abilities or lack thereof to know or warrantedly believe something or other about its properties. I say that every object has essentially the property of having P or -P for any property P; I say further that if a being has that property, then either it has P or it has -P. Still, a being might be known (or justifiably believed or warrantedly believed) to have P or -P without being known (justifiably believed, etc.) to have P and without being known to have -P. I do not know and have no view on the question whether Socrates ever owned a horse; nevertheless, either he did own a horse or he didn't. In developing Hick's view, then, I am taking for granted a sort of realism: the idea that things (some things) can be a certain way even if neither I nor any other human being knows whether they are that way or not. There is nothing in what Hick says to suggest that his position obliges him to take issue with this truism. So the idea is that we can predicate negative properties of this being. Furthermore, the idea is that we can correctly predicate negative properties of it: it has negative properties. Indeed, for each of the nonformal positive properties we grasp, the Real has the complement of that property (which is a negative property). Among our positive concepts, only the purely formal ones apply to this being; as for the rest of our concepts, only the negative ones apply to it. The Real doesn't have wisdom: therefore it has nonwisdom; it does not have love: therefore it has nonlove; and so on for all the other positive nonformal properties we grasp. But, you say: it is not possible that there be a being that has only formal and negative properties. No doubt that's true; still, it is neither here nor there, so far as Hick's claim goes. The being in question may very well have positive properties in addition to the formal properties; it is only required by Hick's position that those be positive properties of which we have no concept, properties of which we have no grasp. And we certainly don't know that there aren't any positive properties like that. We must ask two questions here: first, is this Hickian position coherent? And second, is there any reason to accept it? __________________________________________________________________ [43] An Interpretation of Religion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), pp. 236-39. Unless otherwise noted, page references to Hick's work will be to this book. [44] Tr. Ford Lewis Battles and ed. John T. McNeill (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), I, xiii, 1, p. 120. (Page references to the Institutes are to this edition.) [45] A concept's meeting the first condition but not the second (i.e., being such that everything falls under it but not such that everything necessarily falls under it) is not sufficient for its being formal. For example, the concept either not living on the moon or else not being human applies to everything (there are no human beings who live on the moon), but it isn't a formal concept in the intended sense. __________________________________________________________________ B. Coherent? 1. Can There Be a Being with Only Formal and Negative Properties? This being, says Hick, has no positive, nonformal properties of which we have a concept; the only positive properties it has are those of which we have no grasp. This is not clearly incoherent. We can't just see, I think, that there couldn't be a being like that; that is because we have a very slim grasp of those properties we don't grasp. We just don't know enough about them to know that it isn't possible that there be a being like that. Of course, we also have no reason to think that there can be such a being: the fact that we can't see that there can't be a being like that is little or no reason for thinking we can see that there can be. (It is one thing to fail to see that something is impossible; it is quite another to see that it is possible.) In this case, so it seems, we don't know enough to be able to tell whether it is possible that there be such a being. So suppose we provisionally concede, at least for purposes of argument, that it is possible that there be such a being. But if there is such a being, how is it that we are able to refer to it, have some way of singling it out as a subject of predication? How can that be done? Not, to be sure, by way of the definite descriptions whereby Christians believe they can pick out God--such descriptions, say, as the all-powerful, all-knowing creator of the world'; such descriptions involve positive, nonformal properties of which we have a conception. Could we instead use the description: the being that has no positive, substantial properties of which we have a grasp'? No; for if there is one such being, then maybe there are several more, none with any positive, nonformal properties we can grasp but differing from each other in positive, nonformal properties we can't grasp. So we have no reason to think that that description will work either. (Of course once again we don't know that it doesn't work; for all we know or can tell, there is exactly one being with no positive nonformal properties of which we have a grasp.) Now Hick's idea, I think, is that those who practice the great religions really refer to this being (the Real, which has no positive nonformal properties of which we have a grasp) when (as it seems to them) they refer to God, Allah, Brahman, Shiva, Vishnu, the Dharmakaya, or whatever. So Christians think they refer to a being who is personal, loving, knowledgeable, and the like; the fact is, however, they do not refer to such a being, but to a being who doesn't have any of these properties or, indeed, any other positive properties of which we have a grasp. Is this really possible? Is it possible that we refer to a being, thinking it has properties P[1],. . .,P[n], when, in fact, it doesn't have any of those properties or any other positive properties of which we have a conception? This too is not at any rate clearly impossible. It can certainly happen that we refer to a being when we are very much mistaken about the properties it has. I have never met you; in a letter, I tell you that I am a world-class tennis player and an athlete of enviable talents; the fact is that I am a complete duffer at tennis and at every similar activity. I go on to claim that I have a tenor voice to rival Pavarotti's, have a Nobel prize in economics, am strikingly handsome, and write splendid poetry; all of this is whoppingly false. (In fact, I am unable even to appreciate any poetry above the level of William E. McGonagall, poet and tragedian, [46] know absolutely nothing about economics, can't sing a note, and am very plain.) Then I have few of the properties you ascribe to me; still, you can refer to me. Of course, there must be some kind of connection between us. You can't pick me out as that handsome tenor-cum-poet-cum-economist who lives in (say) Jamestown, North Dakota; that description doesn't apply to me. [47] However you can refer to me as the one who wrote you a letter claiming to be all these things (supposing you received only one such letter). And perhaps something similar would be so for the Real. How is the reference supposed to go? Well, presumably Hick's idea is that we can refer to the Real as the being that the practitioners of the great religions refer to when they think they are referring to beings with the properties ascribed to God, Allah, Brahman, Vishnu, and the like. Obviously, that just pushes the problem back a step: how do they refer to it? How does it happen that when Christians use the term God' they are, in fact, referring to this being that has no positive properties they grasp, despite the fact that they think they are referring to a being with a lot of positive properties of that sort? Again, there would have to be some connection between them and the Real. (It isn't the case, of course, that the practitioners of Christianity, say, hypothesize that there is a being with no positive properties of which we have a grasp to whom they refer when they think they are referring to an omnipotent, omniscient, and wholly good creator of the universe; that would make no sense.) So how do they refer to this being? Well, presumably this could happen only if they had some kind of experiential contact with it, experienced this being in one way or another (whatever precisely it means to say that one being experiences another). They think they are in contact with a being with the properties ascribed to God; they are mistaken, however--not in thinking they are in contact with something, but in thinking the something with which they are in contact has the properties they ascribe to God. Now perhaps this is possible: still, it does require a modification--and a significant modification--of Hick's position. If this is the way the wind blows, then the Real enjoys at least one positive nonformal property of which we have a conception: the property being experienced by us. It stands in at least one positive nonformal relation of which we have a conception: the relation being experienced by. (So the ambiguity we noted above, pp. 44-45, must be resolved in favor of the alternative according to which we do experience the Real.) And that may lead to more, for what is involved in something's being experienced by us or by the practitioners of the great religions? What is it for something to be experienced by us? Here there are several views. One is that the thing in question appears to us, in a way that defies further analysis. Another is that it causes us to be appeared to in a certain way, or causes some other kind of experience in us (and meets certain other conditions). What these have in common is at the least the idea that in order to experience the Real, we must be in causal contact with it, stand in a causal relation with it. There is perhaps one alternative to be found in the history of philosophy: that would be the idea that we could experience something, perhaps in an analogically extended sense of experience', if there were a preestablished harmony between experiential states of ours and states of the thing in question. [48] But that, too, would involve the thing in question's being in a causal relation to the thing or person (in Leibniz's thought, God) who arranges the preestablished harmony. Here, too, therefore, a causal relation would be required between the thing experienced and something else, so that here, too, that thing stands in causal relations and (perhaps at one or more removes) in causal relations to the experiencing subject. And this means that Hick or a Hickian (for perhaps we are going beyond Hick's position here) must also ascribe another positive nonformal property to the Real: the property of being causally connected with us human beings. This is not a merely formal property, and it is also not a negative property. Still further, it may involve additional properties: whatever properties are necessarily connected with standing in a causal relation to human beings. The thing in question could not, for example, be like numbers and propositions are ordinarily thought to be: abstract objects that are incapable of standing in causal relations. So the being in question must have the property of being a concrete object, as opposed to an abstract object. The property of being a concrete object is also a nonformal property (many things lack it); as we shall see below, it isn't easy to tell whether it is a positive or a negative property. And of course there may be still more properties necessarily connected with the property of standing in a causal relation with us human beings. 2. Positive versus Negative Properties Should we perhaps say that this last property--being a concrete object--is really a negative property? Why can't we think of the property being concrete as simply the complement of the property being abstract, with the latter positive and the former negative? Perhaps being concrete is really just not being abstract. But this leads to a real difficulty: why go that way? Can't we just as well take the property being abstract as the property not being concrete, so that being concrete is the positive property and being abstract the negative? How do we determine which of the two properties really is positive, and which is really negative? Indeed, are we guaranteed that this distinction between positive and negative properties really applies to properties at all? Is there really such a distinction for properties? Of course, there is a distinction between positive and negative predicates, linguistic items or phrases such as is a horse', is not a cat,' and the like. (Both not being abstract' and not being concrete' are negative predicates; both is concrete' and is abstract' are positive predicates.) But do we know that this distinction between positive and negative extends beyond predicates to properties? What makes a predicate (in English) negative is the presence in it of some negative particle, such as not' or non' or un' (as in unlimited') or a' (as in asymmetrical') or dis' or anti' (as in antidisestablishmentarianism'). But properties presumably don't contain particles or other bits of language. What would distinguish positive properties from negative properties? Is there really such a distinction? This is not an easy question to answer. Can the Hickian perhaps claim that he really owes us no further answer? There is a distinction between positivity and negativity for properties, he says, and there is no way of getting behind this distinction, to say what it consists in, what it is that makes a property positive, or anything of that sort. This distinction is rock bottom and cannot be explained in terms of anything else. There are clear examples: wisdom is a positive property, and its complement, unwisdom (enjoyed both by those things capable of but lacking wisdom and by those not capable of it), is clearly a negative property; the distinction itself is ultimate and can't be explained in other terms. Well, maybe so, but can we say anything general about which properties are positive and which negative? Presumably the idea is that (1) every property is either positive or negative, (2) every property has a complement, (3) the complement of a property P has the opposite sense from P (that is, the complement of a positive property is negative and the complement of a negative property is positive), (4) a property equivalent [49] to a given property has the same sense as that property, and (5) the Real has no positive properties of which we have a conception. (We have already seen that there must be exceptions to this last principle, but let that pass.) Furthermore, (6) no negative property of which we have a conception entails [50] a positive property of which we have a conception; else the Real would have those positive properties entailed by those negative properties of which we have a conception. What about conjunctive and disjunctive properties? A conjunctive property P & Q is negative if and only if both P and Q are negative. (If P & Q were negative and either P or Q were positive, the negative P & Q would entail a positive property, in which case the Real would have that positive property.) What about disjunctive properties? A disjunction P v Q of properties of which we have a conception could not be positive if either P or Q were negative: else the positive P v Q would be entailed by the negative P or the negative Q. So far as I can see, there is nothing problematic about (1)--(6) at the level of logic alone. Indeed, note that we can give a truth table' (actually, a positivity table') for the complement of a property and for disjunction and conjunction among properties, and note further that the positivity table for conjunction is the truth table for disjunction and the positivity table for disjunction the truth table for conjunction. Mapping disjunction for properties onto conjunction for propositions, and conjunction for properties onto disjunction for propositions, we can help ourselves to some results from propositional logic and see that the logic of properties generated by (1)-(6) is consistent, complete, decidable, and so on. Nevertheless, there still remains a problem with coherence. It appears, initially at least, that some nonformal positive properties are entailed by negative properties (given that there is such a distinction for properties). For example, according to Hick, the Real is both ultimate and infinite: Unlimitedness, or infinity, is a negative concept, the denial of limitation. That this denial must be made of the Ultimate is a basic assumption of all the great traditions. It is a natural and reasonable assumption: for an ultimate that is limited in some mode would be limited by something other than itself; and this would entail its non-ultimacy. (237-38) But what about this property of being ultimate? First, what is it to be ultimate? Well, at the least it is to be independent of all other beings, not depending on any other beings for existence or for intrinsic properties. And that sounds appropriately negative. Nevertheless, it entails the property of being self-sufficient; and that sounds positive. So it looks as if the negative property being independent of all others entails the positive property being self-sufficient. Of course, it is perhaps possible to bite the bullet and maintain that the property of being self-sufficient, contrary to appearances, is really negative. Well, perhaps we can live with that. But what about infinity? According to Hick, the property of being unlimited, being infinite, is a negative property: it is the complement of the positive property of being limited or being finite. (Here is another case where it is far from obvious, initially, which of the pair in question is positive and which negative; let's just concede for purposes of argument that being limited is a positive property.) Here we run into a real problem. What is this property of being unlimited? It is the negative property not being limited. Well, what is it to be limited? In the spatial analogue from which the notion is taken, it is to have limits or borders. A country that is unlimited, therefore, would have no borders and occupy all of space. (Again, having no borders sounds negative while occupying all of space sounds positive.) Now of course the idea is not that the Real is spatially unlimited and occupies all of space. But then how does the analogy apply? In the spatial analogue, there are two features: an unlimited country is unlimited in a certain respect or along a certain dimension: space. It is also unlimited by any other country or space-occupying entity. In the same way, then, the Real, if it is unlimited, is unlimited along certain dimensions and is unlimited by any other being. Christians have traditionally thought of God as unlimited, infinite, in both these ways. To take the second first, God is unlimited by any other being: that is, he is unlimited in power or with respect to his being able to accomplish his will; no being can obstruct him, none can prevent him from doing what he wills. Clearly, this property, even if we think of it as negative, entails positive properties. If God is unlimited with respect to power, then he has power, which is certainly a positive property. If he is unlimited with respect to being able to accomplish his will, then he has the positive property of being able to accomplish his will. And if nothing can prevent him from doing what he wills, then he has the positive property of being able to do what he wills. Being unlimited along certain dimensions or in certain important respects is similar. God is not unlimited in every respect: that could presumably be so only if he had every property to the maximal degree, which is impossible. If, for example, he has the property of being a spirit, then he does not also have the property of being a material object--a tree, for instance. Rather, the traditional idea has been that God has every great-making property to the maximal degree. [51] So God is unlimited with respect, for example, to knowledge. And a being that is not limited with respect to knowledge has the maximal degree of knowledge, is omniscient, all-knowing. Such a being, of course, would have the positive property being a knower. [52] Is there a way out of this difficulty for the Hickian? Perhaps. He might try saying that this being is ultimate and unlimited, all right, but only with respect to properties of which we have no grasp. With respect to all the properties of which we do have a grasp, it is indeed limited, limited in the limiting sense of not exemplifying the property at all. It has the complement of every property we have a grasp of; it has other properties we have no grasp of; and the way in which it is infinite is that it has to the maximal degree some properties of which we have no grasp. Well, this sounds a little bizarre, but perhaps it avoids incoherence (and anyway, who promised us that reality would not be bizarre?). The idea is that there is a being that has no positive properties of which we have a conception, except for being involved in human experience and any properties that entails. This being is also unlimited in that it has to the maximal degree properties of which we have no conception. __________________________________________________________________ [46] See McGonagall's Poetic Gems (Dundee: David Winter and Son; London: Gerald Duckworth, first published in two parts in 1890 and first published as one volume in 1934). See also his More Poetic Gems, Still More Poetic Gems, Yet More Poetic Gems, and Poetic Gems Once Again. [47] But even this might be possible; if I have some other way of referring to you but also think that this description applies to you, then perhaps when I use that description, thinking it applies to you, I do, in fact, refer to you. Suppose God doesn't have some of the properties we think he has: suppose, for example, he isn't simple, in the classical sense, but composite, with a distinction to be made between him and his properties, between him and his existence, and so on. Even so, if a creed like the Belgic Confession refers to him as the spiritual, simple, creator of the universe, it still refers to him by that description, even if the description doesn't apply. [48] Kant's objection to this Leibnizian suggestion is that any such preestablished harmony would not be a cognitive relation; it couldn't support our having knowledge of the things in question. But it is very difficult to see why that should be so. Suppose God brings it about that our cognitive states appropriately match those of the world around us, and suppose the other conditions for warrant are met (as outlined, e.g., in Warrant and Proper Function): why wouldn't that be sufficient for our having knowledge of those things? [49] Where P is equivalent to Q if and only if it is necessary in the broadly logical sense that whatever exemplifies either P or Q exemplifies both P and Q. [50] Where a property A entails a property B if (and only if) it is necessary that any object that has A also has B. [51] This idea is what drives the ontological argument; see my The Nature of Necessity, chapter 10. [52] Indeed, the being in question would have at least uncountably many such properties: for each proposition P, the being in question would have the property of knowing whether P is true. Here I assume that there are at least uncountably many distinct propositions. This seems relatively uncontroversial in view of the fact that for each distinct real number r, there is the distinct proposition r is not identical with the Taj Mahal. __________________________________________________________________ C. Religiously Relevant? Even if the view is not incoherent, it pays another price. For suppose we believe there is a being of that sort. It is for us an empty idea; still, that is not to say that there couldn't be such a being. I don't know whether it is possible that there be a being like this, and have no grounds for making a judgment either way as to whether it is possible. Suppose we concede for the moment that it is. The basic question here is this: what reason is there for thinking such a being, if indeed there could be and is such a being, is in any special way connected with religion? According to Hick, "we can say of the postulated Real an sich that it is the noumenal ground of the encountered gods and experienced absolutes witnessed to by the religious traditions" (246). Why should we think so? What reason is there for thinking this being is connected in some way with Christianity or with any other religion? Why say that Christians are in fact referring to or witnessing to this being? Maybe it is, instead, connected with warfare, prostitution, family violence, bigotry, or racism. And why think this being, or contact with it, has anything to do with "transformation of human existence from self-centredness to Reality-centredness" (355)? Perhaps it is especially when human beings are in the grip of self-aggrandizement, hate, selfishness, and the like that they are most in contact with this being. If it has no positive properties of which we have a conception, why is the one assumption the least bit better than the other? The basic problem, here, is that if the Real has no positive properties of which we have a conception, then we have no reason at all to think that it is in religion that human beings get in experiential contact with this being, rather than in any other human activity: war or oppression, for example. This being has none of the properties ascribed by the practitioners of most of the great religions to the beings they worship: it is not good, or loving, or concerned with human beings, or wise, or powerful; it has not created the universe, does not uphold it, and does not pay attention to the universe or the creatures it contains. It is an unknown and unknowable X. But then why associate this unknowable X with religion, as opposed to warfare, violence, bigotry, and the horrifying things human beings often do to each other? We can put this question another way. Hick suggests that when Christians make their characteristic utterances, saying, for instance, "In Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself," what they say cannot be literally true but can be mythologically true. By literal' truth, he just means truth, ordinary truth: "The literal truth or falsity of a factual assertion . . . consists in its conformity or lack of conformity to fact: it is raining here now' is literally true if and only if it is raining here now" (348). The mythological truth of a statement is a horse of quite another color: "A statement or set of statements about X is mythologically true if it is not literally true but nevertheless tends to evoke an appropriate dispositional attitude to X" (348). So some dispositional attitudes toward the Real are appropriate and others (presumably) are not; some ways of responding to it are appropriate and others (presumably) not: Thus although we cannot speak of the Real an sich in literal terms, [53] nevertheless we live inescapably in relation to it, and in all that we do and undergo we are having to do with it as well as, and in terms of, our more proximate situations. Our actions are appropriate or inappropriate not only in relation to our physical and social environments but also in relation to our ultimate environment, the Real. True religious myths are accordingly those that evoke in us attitudes and modes of behaviour which are appropriate to our situation vis-à-vis the Real. (351) And now our question can be put in terms of this suggestion. Why think that "we live in relation to . . . the Real" at all? Either the relation living in relation to is merely formal or it is not. If it is, then it would have no connection with religion. So it isn't. But if it isn't, then (1) we have still another positive property had by the Real: the property of being such that we live in relation to it. And (2) (and more poignantly) why think we live in relation to the Real at all? After all, we don't live in relation to just any old thing--the highest mountain on Mars, for example, or the meanest shark in the Indian Ocean. If the Real has no positive properties of which we have a grasp, what is the reason for thinking we live in relation to it? Second, why think some ways of behavior are appropriate to the Real and others are not? Again, unless this is a purely formal relationship, not just anything is such that some ways of behaving are appropriate or, for that matter, inappropriate with respect to it. None of my behavior, I think, is either appropriate or inappropriate with respect to the highest mountain on Mars or the meanest shark in the Indian Ocean. If the Real has no positive properties of which we have a grasp, how could we possibly know or have grounds for believing that some ways of behaving with respect to it are more appropriate than others? Hick, of course, thinks that some ways of behaving with respect to the Real are more appropriate than others, and goes on to specify what those ways are: we are behaving appropriately with respect to the Real when we learn to turn away from self-centeredness and selfishness ("the transformation of human existence from self-centredness to Reality-centredness"). But why think that? This would, indeed, make sense if the Real had the attributes of God: if it were, in fact, a person who loves us, and wills that we turn from loving only ourselves to loving him above all and our neighbor as ourselves, and has so designed us that we attain our end and happiness when we do so. But the Real doesn't have any of those properties (they being positive properties of which we have a conception). And if it has no positive properties of which we have a grasp, why not suppose that hateful and selfish behavior are appropriate with respect to it? Or behaving in that weak, sniveling, envious way that Nietzsche thought characteristic of real Christians? We can't have it both ways. If this being is really such that we literally know nothing positive about it (if it has no positive properties of which we have a grasp), then there is no reason to think self-centered behavior is less appropriate with respect to it (granting, indeed, that some modes of behavior are more appropriate with respect to it than others) than living a life of love. We can put the question in still another way. Hick apparently thinks that some religious conceptions or ideas are authentic manifestations ("personae" or "impersonae") of the Real: And to the extent that the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ' is indeed an authentic persona of the Real, constituting the form in which the Real is validly thought and experienced from within the Christian strand of religious history, to that extent the dispositional response appropriate to this persona constitutes an appropriate response to the Real. . . . and of the eternal Buddha nature, he says And to the extent that this is an authentic impersona of the Real, validly thought and experienced from within the Buddhist tradition, life in accordance with the Dharma is likewise an appropriate response to the Real. (353) Again, the main question here is obvious: if the Real has no positive, nonformal properties of which we have a grasp, how could we possibly know or have reason to believe that any such personae or impersonae are authentic or, for that matter, inauthentic? Authenticity implies a certain fit between the (im)persona in question and the Real; but if we have no positive idea what the Real is like, we have no reason to think some personae or impersonae fit it better than others. Again, Hick thinks not only that some do fit better than others but also that we have some idea what they are: the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, for example, and also others from other traditions. But how could we have reason to think a thing like that? If all we know about the Real is what Hick says we know, then for all we can tell, God, Vishnu and the Buddha are inauthentic and it is, for example, Ares, the god of war, Lucifer, and Stalin (or, for that matter, Uriah Heep or Beavis and Butthead) that are the authentic personae of the Real. Again, we can't have it both ways. If we know nothing about the Real, we have no reason to pick the personae Hick picks as authentic manifestations of it. The main point is that if the Real has no positive nonformal properties of which we have a grasp, then, for all we can see, any department of human life is as revelatory of the Real as any other. We don't have any way to pick and choose among them, thinking, for example, that the great world religions are where the Real manifests itself or where human beings experience it. For all we know, on this showing, it is in living like a thugee or like a member of the Ku Klux Klan that one is most authentically in touch with the Real. __________________________________________________________________ [53] Recall that we are amending this claim from chapter 19 in the light of chapter 14; we can speak literally of the Real, but only to predicate negative and purely formal properties of it, together with those positive properties entailed by its being such that we human beings are in experiential contact with it. __________________________________________________________________ D. Is There Such a Thing? So the view seems to be of dubious coherence. Stated carefully, it isn't initially incoherent. From Hick's point of view, however, the most important feature of this alleged being is that it is in some special way associated with religion; this being is what those who serve God, Brahman, and so on are really referring to; in the great world religions, people get into a special relationship to it. And that seems wholly gratuitous; perhaps the Real is really connected with those who serve themselves, or power, or white supremacy. But I come now, finally, to the question what reason Hick has for postulating such a being: why does he think there is a being with no positive properties of which we have a grasp? Hick's answer: The Real an sich is postulated by us as a pre-supposition, not of the moral life, but of religious experience and the religious life, whilst the gods, as also the mystically known Brahman, Sunyata and so on, are phenomenal manifestations of the Real occurring within the realm of religious experience. Conflating these two theses one can say that the Real is experienced by human beings, but experienced in a manner analogous to that in which, according to Kant, we experience the world: namely by informational input from external reality being interpreted by the mind in terms of its own categorial scheme and thus coming to consciousness as meaningful phenomenal experience. (243) Why should we want to postulate such a thing, a thing with no positive properties of which we have any grasp, but which is experienced by human beings in the great religions? More to the point, why does Hick postulate such a being? The answer, I think, must be explained dialectically. Hick began his spiritual odyssey as a traditional, orthodox Christian, accepting what I have been calling Christian belief'. He was then struck by the fact that there are other religions in which the claims of orthodox Christianity--trinity, incarnation, atonement--are rejected. Furthermore, so far as one can tell from the outside, so to speak, the claims of these other religions, taken literally, are as respectable, epistemically speaking, as the claims of Christianity. Still further, according to Jesus himself, "By their fruits you shall know them." The most important fruits, Hick thinks, are practical: turning away from a life of selfishness to a life of service; on this point, these other religions, he thinks, seem to do as well as Christianity. The conclusion he draws is that where Christianity differs from the others, we can't properly hold that it is literally true and the others literally false; that would be, he thinks, a sort of intellectual arrogance, a sort of spiritual imperialism, a matter of exalting ourselves and our beliefs at the expense of others. Instead, we must hold that the great religions are all equally valuable and equally true. How do we do this? Here is Hick's response: But if the Real in itself is not and cannot be humanly experienced, why postulate such an unknown and unknowable Ding an sich? The answer is that the divine noumenon is a necessary postulate of the pluralistic religious life of humanity. For within each tradition we regard as real the object of our worship or contemplation. If, as I have already argued, it is also proper to regard as real the objects of worship or contemplation within the other traditions, we are led to postulate the Real an sich as the presupposition of the veridical character of this range of forms of religious experience. Without this postulate we should be left with a plurality of personae and impersonae each of which is claimed to be the Ultimate, but no one of which alone can be. We should have either to regard all the reported experiences as illusory or else return to the confessional position in which we affirm the authenticity of our own stream of religious experience whilst dismissing as illusory those occurring within other traditions. But for those to whom neither of these options seems realistic the pluralistic affirmation becomes inevitable, and with it the postulation of the Real an sich, which is variously experienced and thought. . . . (249) Now this passage is apparently an argument of some kind, an argument for the conclusion that there is a being (the Real) of the sort Hick says there is. The argument seems to proceed from two premises: (1) all the great religions are "veridical," and (2) none of them is more veridical than the others. How does the argument go? The idea, I think, is that if we suppose there is a being of the sort Hick says there is, then, according to Hick, we can see how (1) and (2) could be true. I'm not sure I see just how that is supposed to go, but let that pass. What isn't as easily ignored, however, is a sort of incoherence. "Within each tradition," he says, "we regard as real the object of our worship or contemplation." So within the Christian tradition, we regard God as real; it is also "proper to regard as real the objects of worship or contemplation within the other traditions." This, of course, leads to a problem; for some of the personae and impersonae are such that if they are real, and have the properties ascribed to them, then other (im)personae are either unreal or do not have the properties ascribed to them. Well, perhaps the idea, as Hick seems to suggest elsewhere, is that we are to regard each of the (im)personae as empirically real, not transcendentally real (not really real); and perhaps we are to understand that as meaning that each being is such that by way of it, the practitioners of the religion in question somehow get in touch with the Real. The essential point, however, is that we are not to think of one or some of these as more valuable or closer to the truth than the others; that would be arbitrary and unwarranted. We should no longer regard as really real (or rather real simpliciter) the objects of worship of our own tradition. We must treat all traditions alike. Now the way Hick proposes to do this is to declare that all the traditions are actually mistaken; the beliefs in each tradition are mostly false. ("Literally" false, he says; but literal truth and falsehood, as Hick conceives them, are just truth and falsehood.) Still, there is something right or valid in religion--the recognition that there is something beyond the natural world, and the encouragement to live a life in which self-centeredness is overcome. So really, the bottom line is that Hick cannot find it in himself to think one religion--Christianity, say--is true and the others false, or that one is closer to the truth than the others. At bottom, there is a generous desire to avoid the self-aggrandizement and self-exaltation he sees as attaching to the declaration that one's own religious beliefs are true and those of others false. Here there are three comments or questions. First, is this posture in fact possible for a human being: can a person accept it, and accept it authentically, without bad faith or doublethink? I am to remain a Christian, to take part in Christian worship, to accept the splendid and powerful doctrines of traditional Christianity. However, I am also to take it that these doctrines are only mythologically true: they are literally false, although accepting them (i.e., accepting them as true, as literally true) puts or tends to put one into the right relation with the Real. And how can I possibly accept them, adopt that attitude toward them, if I think they are only mythologically true--that is, really false? I could, indeed, believe that they are mythologically true; believing that, however, doesn't move one toward the right kind of life; it is only believing the teachings themselves that allegedly has that salutary effect. Once I am sufficiently enlightened, once I see that those doctrines are not true, I can no longer take the stance with respect to them that leads to the hoped-for practical result. I am left, instead, in the position of a sad and disillusioned Gnostic. I no longer hold Christian belief; I recognize, as I think, that it is in fact false. I also see, of course, that those who do accept it as true are mistaken, deluded; but at any rate they are in the fortunate position of enjoying the comfort and strength and consolation these false beliefs bring; they are also being moved closer to the right kind of life by virtue of accepting them. Neither the comfort [54] and consolation nor the practical efficacy is available to me. Second, there is something wholly self-defeating, so it seems to me, in Hick's posture. If we take this position, then we can't say, for example, that Christianity is right and Buddhism wrong; as Christians, we don't disagree with the Buddhists; and we take this stance in an effort to avoid self-exultation and imperialism. But we do something from the point of view of intellectual imperialism and self-exaltation that is much worse: we now declare that everyone is mistaken here, everyone except for ourselves and a few other enlightened souls. We and our graduate students know the truth; everyone else is sadly mistaken. Isn't this to exalt ourselves at the expense of nearly everyone else? Those who think there really is such a person as God are benighted, unsophisticated, unaware of the real truth of the matter, which is that there isn't any such person (even if thinking there is can lead to practical fruits). We see Christians as deeply mistaken; of course we pay the same compliment to the practitioners of the other great religions; we are equal-opportunity animadverters. We benevolently regard the rest of humanity as misguided; no doubt their hearts are in the right place; still, they are sadly mistaken about what they take to be most important and precious. I find it hard to see how this attitude is a manifestation of tolerance or intellectual humility: it looks more like patronizing condescension. The basic problem is that, given our actual intellectual and spiritual situation, it simply isn't possible to avoid serious disagreement with others. If some people believe p and others believe something q incompatible with p, there is no way in which we can avoid serious disagreement. If we affirm p, we disagree with those who affirm q; if we affirm q, we disagree with those who affirm p; if we propose a higher resolution, saying that neither p nor q is true (though perhaps each is mythologically true'), then we disagree with both groups. [55] But if it is imperialistic or somehow out of order to affirm p, thus disrespecting the partisans of q, why is it better to disrespect them all by pronouncing them all wrong? Third, Hick doesn't, of course, produce an argument for the conclusion that no religion could be closer to the truth than others; it is more like a practical postulate, a benevolent and charitable resolution to avoid imperialism and self-aggrandizement. But is this the way to do it? Clearly, in most areas of life, some people are closer to the truth than others. If the nominalists are right, all of us realists are wrong; if the modal skeptics are right, we modal true believers are mistaken; if the white supremacists are right, many of the rest of us, bent as we are on toleration, are wrong, and seriously wrong. Why should it be different in religion? The idea that in religion we must all be equally right and all equally wrong seems no more compelling than the idea that in thinking about religion we must all be equally right and equally wrong. Hick's reason for thinking all religions equally right seems to be a desire to avoid self-aggrandizement; shouldn't the same desire lead him to hold that his views about religion--his view, for example, that they are all equally right and equally wrong--really have no more claim to truth than any other view here (for example, the view that Christianity alone, say, is correct)? He doesn't do that, and rightly so. We can't properly do so in religious belief either. In religious belief as elsewhere, we must take our chances, recognizing that we could be wrong, dreadfully wrong. There are no guarantees; the religious life is a venture; foolish and debilitating error is a permanent possibility. (If we can be wrong, however, we can also be right.) Our topic, in this book, is the de jure question with respect to Christian belief--not the question whether Christian belief is true (although, of course, that is the more important question) but whether it is reasonable or rational or rationally justifiable to accept it. We have been examining a preliminary matter: is there really such a question? Is there really such a thing as Christian belief? Or is it rather the case that even if there were such a person as God, we couldn't refer to and think about him, or predicate positive, nonformal properties of him? Our results, so far, have been that there isn't the slightest reason to think so. There is no reason at all to think it isn't possible to think about God; there is no reason at all to think that we cannot predicate such positive, nonformal properties of him as wisdom, knowledge, love, and all the rest. Obviously, there is enormously more to be said; this topic deserves a book in itself. There isn't room for that in this book; so we shall have to content ourselves with what we have. At any rate, we can rest in the assurance that if there is reason to think our question ill-formed or somehow logically out of order, it is at the least exceedingly well concealed. We can therefore go in reasonable confidence to the next question: what, precisely, is this de jure question? __________________________________________________________________ [54] According to the Heidelberg Catechism (Q. 1), "My only comfort in life and in death is that I am not my own, but belong--body and soul, in life and in death--to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ." According to Hick, however, my only comfort in life and in death is that I know the sad truth: believing the great teachings of Christianity has beneficial effects, but those teachings are, in fact, false. [55] The same goes if we propose to remain agnostic about p and q; see below, chapter 13. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ PART II WHAT IS THE QUESTION? __________________________________________________________________ 3 Justification and the Classical Picture In part I, I considered a certain kind of objection to the de jure question with respect to Christian belief--the question, that is, whether it is rational or reasonable or intellectually respectable to accept Christian belief. This objection was that the de jure question is, to say the least, premature: strictly speaking, it isn't really possible to hold a belief of the sort traditional Christians think they hold. That is because Christians think of God as ultimate and infinite, and there is something conceptually out of order with the very idea that it is possible to have a belief about a being that is ultimate and infinite. I concluded that this objection isn't cogent; there is here no obstacle to raising the de jure question. But the next thing to see is that it is far from obvious just what that de jure question or objection is supposed to be; precisely what question (or questions) is it that critics mean to press when they ask whether Christian and theistic belief is rational, or rationally defensible, or rationally justifiable, or whatever? Critics claim that Christian belief is not rationally justified or justifiable: what, precisely, is the infirmity or defect they are ascribing to the Christian believer? What, exactly, is the question? Call this question the metaquestion'. One problem with contemporary discussions of the justification of Christian belief is that the metaquestion is almost never asked. People ask whether Christian belief is rational or reasonable or rationally justifiable; they turn immediately to answering that question, without first considering just what the question is. What is it? That is not easy to say; nevertheless, it is our subject in part II. This chapter is devoted to examining a certain answer to the metaquestion: that the de jure question is whether Christian belief is justified. That question is one that originates in classical foundationalism, a way of thinking about these topics that has historically been extremely influential and is still very much with us now. According to the classical foundationalist, the de jure question is really the question whether Christian belief is justified; but how is this term to be understood? I shall examine the seventeenth-century roots of classical foundationalism, explore the connection between justification and evidentialism that the classical foundationalist sees, and briefly outline some of its contemporary descendants. Then in the second half of the chapter, I'll argue both that classical foundationalism faces insuperable problems, and that the notion of justification does not offer a satisfying version of the de jure question. We must begin with some history--first, a look back into the relatively recent past and then a deeper look into the more remote past. With respect to the first, I can make my point most easily by referring to some earlier work of my own; please forgive the personal reference. The present book, as I said in the preface, is a sequel: to Warrant: The Current Debate (hereafter WCD) and Warranted Proper Function (hereafter WPF); it is also and perhaps more important a sequel to God and Other Minds [56] and "Reason and Belief in God." [57] The chief topic of God and Other Minds, as I put it then, is the "rational justification" of belief in God. I set out to address the de jure question; like everyone else, however, I didn't so much as raise the metaquestion. Following my elders and betters, I initially took it for granted that this question of the rational justification of theistic belief is identical with, or intimately connected with, the question whether there are proofs, or at least good arguments, for or against the existence of God. You discuss this question of the rationality of belief in God by consulting the evidence: does it on balance support theistic belief? (If it does [and does so strongly enough], such belief is rational; otherwise it is irrational.) And that question, in turn, was so taken that the way to answer it is by considering the arguments for and against the existence of God. On the pro side, there were the traditional theistic proofs, the cosmological, teleological, and ontological arguments, to follow Kant's classification. On the con side, there was, first of all, the problem of evil (construed as the claim that the existence of evil is logically inconsistent with the existence of a wholly good, all-powerful, and all-knowing God). Then there were also some rather opaque claims to the effect that the progress of modern science, or the attitudes necessary to its proper pursuits, or perhaps something similar lurking in the nearby bushes, or maybe something else that had been learned by "man come of age"--the idea was that something in this general neighborhood also offers evidence against the existence of God. And it was also clearly assumed that belief in God was rational and proper only if on balance the evidence, so construed, favored it. So here is a possible answer to the metaquestion and a candidate for the post of being the de jure question: does the evidence support Christian belief? In this chapter I want to think about this answer to the metaquestion. Does it give us a serious question for Christian believers or a serious criticism of Christian belief? In God and Other Minds, I argued first that the theistic proofs or arguments do not succeed. In evaluating these arguments, I employed a traditional but wholly improper standard: I took it that these arguments are successful only if they start from propositions that compel assent from every honest and intelligent person and proceed majestically to their conclusion by way of forms of argument that can be rejected only on pain of insincerity or irrationality. Naturally enough, I joined the contemporary chorus in holding that none of the traditional arguments was successful. (I failed to note that no philosophical arguments of any consequence meet that standard; hence the fact that theistic arguments do not is of less significance than I thought.) I then argued that the objections to theistic belief are equally unimpressive; in particular, the deductive argument from evil (the argument that there is a contradiction between the existence of God and the existence of evil), I said, is entirely unsuccessful. So I saw, as I thought, that neither the arguments for the existence of God nor the arguments against it are conclusive; but then where does that leave us with respect to the question of the rationality or rational justifiability of belief in God? Does it follow, as seemed to be the prevailing opinion, that agnosticism was the right response and that belief in God, under these conditions, is irrational, contrary to reason, not rationally justifiable? That seemed to me wrong, but where could we go to pursue this question? How could we carry the inquiry further? Faced with this impasse, I decided to compare belief in God with other beliefs, in particular, our belief in other minds. There is allegedly a traditional philosophical problem of other minds: since we can't perceive the thoughts and feelings of other people, do we know and how do we know they really have thoughts and feelings? More poignantly, how do we know that what we take to be persons (beings with thoughts, feelings, and intentions) really are persons and not, for example, cunningly constructed robots? [58] I noted that the dialectical structure uncovered in the case of theistic arguments is recapitulated in the case of other minds: the objections to belief in other minds don't seem at all formidable, but unhappily there also aren't any good arguments for other minds--particularly if we employ the same high standards of goodness as were ordinarily applied to theistic arguments. I claimed that the strongest argument for the existence of God and the strongest argument for other minds are similar and that they fail in similar ways. Hence my "tentative conclusion": "if my belief in other minds is rational, so is my belief in God. But obviously the former is rational; so, therefore, is the latter." Here two things are noteworthy. First, I was somehow both accepting but also questioning what was then axiomatic: that belief in God, if it is to be rationally acceptable, must be such that there is good evidence for it. This evidence would be propositional evidence: evidence from other propositions you believe, and it would have to come in the form of arguments. This claim wasn't itself argued for: it was simply asserted, or better, just assumed as self-evident or at least utterly obvious. What was then taken for granted has now come to be called evidentialism' (a better title would be evidentialism with respect to belief in God', but that's a bit unwieldy). Evidentialism is the view that belief in God is rationally justifiable or acceptable only if there is good evidence for it, where good evidence would be arguments from other propositions one knows. If it is accepted apart from such evidence or arguments, then it is at best intellectually third-rate: irrational, or unreasonable, or contrary to one's intellectual obligations. Second, I failed to ask why this question of rational justifiability is important or, indeed, what the question is. I didn't give that question--namely, the question what is this rational justifiability of which I am speaking?--so much as a passing glance. Further, why would rational justification, whatever precisely it is, require evidence? What is the connection between evidence and justification? And if the latter does require evidence, why would that evidence have to take the form of arguments (deductive or probabilistic), evidence from other propositions one already believes? And what sorts of propositions could properly function as the premises of these arguments? I didn't raise these questions. It wasn't, however, because their answers were well-known, so that further inquiry would be carrying coals to Newcastle. On the contrary: no one else asked or answered these questions either; instead, people turned directly to the arguments for and against theistic belief, taking it utterly for granted that this was the way to investigate its rational justification. [59] Taking evidentialism for granted was de rigueur then and is still popular now. But what is this rational justification? And why does it require evidence, propositional evidence? And how does it happen that everyone just took for granted this connection between justification and propositional evidence? These are some of the questions we must ask. __________________________________________________________________ I. John Locke Here what we need is another bit of history, some more of that archaeology of which Foucault speaks (although again [see WCD, p. 11] I doubt that we will uncover a hidden political agenda or a subterranean bid for power). This question as to the rational justifiability of Christian belief goes back to the Enlightenment response to the spiritual and intellectual ferment generated (in part) by the Reformation; the characteristically modern response to this ferment can be seen as getting its start in the works of René Descartes and John Locke. Both Descartes and Locke were impressed by the enormous disagreement in religious and philosophical matters; this means, of course, that error pervades our belief in these areas. They were also impressed (along with their successors) with the meager progress made in philosophical matters. Philosophy, said Descartes, "has been cultivated for many centuries by the best minds that have ever lived, and nevertheless no single thing is to be found in it which is not a subject of dispute, and in consequence which is not dubious." [60] Descartes has his remedy (a characteristically modern remedy): start over. Discard anything that isn't certain, and rebuild your noetic structure on the basis of what is certain. Recall those famous words in the introduction to the Meditations: It is now some years since I detected how many are the false beliefs that I had from my earliest youth admitted as true, and how doubtful was everything I had since constructed on this basis, and from that time I was convinced that I must once for all seriously undertake to rid myself of all the opinions which I formerly accepted, and commence to build anew from the foundation. . . . [61] It is John Locke, however, not Descartes, who is probably most crucial for our understanding of the de jure question and the modern compulsion to ask it. [62] In the "Epistle to the Reader" prefacing his long, rambling An Essay concerning Human Understanding, Locke recounts a meeting with "five or six friends," in which they discussed a certain subject that Locke doesn't there identify: [They] found themselves quickly at a stand, by the difficulties that rose on every side. After we had awhile puzzled ourselves, without coming any nearer a resolution of those doubts which perplexed us, it came into my thoughts that we took a wrong course; and that before we set ourselves upon inquiries of that nature, it was necessary to examine our own abilities, and see what objects our understandings were, or were not, fitted to deal with. This I proposed to the company, who all readily assented; and thereupon it was agreed that this should be our first inquiry. [63] That discussion was the genesis of the Essay; it probably took place in the winter of 1670-71, [64] and a momentous meeting it was. The book itself wasn't finished (or at least published) for another eighteen years or so, which accounts in part for its length and rather disorganized, repetitious character. Locke doesn't tell us what the topic of discussion was, but James Tyrell, one of the five or six friends at the gathering, noted in the margin of his copy of the Essay (now in the British Museum) that the topic of discussion was "the principles of morality and revealed religion." [65] And Locke's Essay has been immensely influential in modern thought on this topic; it is perhaps not too much to say that his seminal work is the single most important source of the way of thinking on these topics that has dominated Western thought for the last three centuries. This book ushers in epistemology in the West. It is not, of course, that previous philosophers had nothing to say about epistemology. After all, Plato's Theaetetus asks one of the main questions in the theory of knowledge: what is it that must be added to mere true belief to get knowledge? What is that quality or quantity, enough of which makes the difference between true belief and knowledge? Aristotle and Aquinas, furthermore, had much to say about scientia, scientific knowledge, and also much to say about how the process of intellection works, what goes on when someone knows or believes something. Still, the questions Locke asked and the answers he gave have a peculiarly modern ring; we resonate to them, because his way of thinking about them became the modern way of thinking about them; and despite postmodern proclamations of the death or end of epistemology, this is still, for the most part, our way of thinking about these matters. Locke lived through one of the most turbulent periods of British intellectual and spiritual history; it was, in particular, the religious ferment and diversity, the enormous variety of religious opinion, that caught his attention. Of course he knew that in parts of the world other than Europe there were religions quite different from Christianity, but he was particularly impressed by the diversity of religious opinion in his own country. There was the Catholic-Protestant debate, and within Protestantism there were countless sects, countless disagreements and controversies; it was a time when every man thought what was right in his own eyes. Locke proposes to inquire into the grounds of those persuasions which are to be found amongst men, so various, different, and wholly contradictory; and yet asserted somewhere or other with such assurance and confidence, that he that shall take a view of the opinions of mankind, observe their opposition, and at the same time consider the fondness and devotion wherewith they are embraced, the resolution and eagerness wherewith they are maintained, may perhaps have reason to suspect, that either there is no such thing as truth at all, or that mankind hath no sufficient means to attain a certain knowledge of it. (Locke's Introduction to the Essay, para. 2, p. 27) One problem here, says Locke, is fideism; many oppose faith to reason, declaring both that faith prescribes what reason proscribes, and that it is faith that is to be accepted and followed: For, to this crying up of faith in opposition [his emphasis] to reason, we may, I think, in good measure ascribe those absurdities that fill almost all the religions which possess and divide mankind. For men having been principled with an opinion, that they must not consult reason in the things of religion, however apparently contradictory to common sense and the very principles of all their knowledge, have let loose their fancies and natural superstition; and have been by them led into so strange opinions, and extravagant practices in religion, that a considerate man cannot but stand amazed at their follies, and judge them so far from being acceptable to the great and wise God, that he cannot avoid thinking them ridiculous and offensive to a sober good man. So that, in effect, religion, which should most distinguish us from beasts, and ought most peculiarly to elevate us, as rational creatures, above brutes, is that wherein men often appear most irrational, and more senseless than beasts themselves (bk. IV, chap. xviii, para. 11, p. 426) Another source of riotous error and confusion in religion is tradition, believing a proposition just because you have been taught it or because those around you believe it: The great obstinacy that is to be found in men firmly believing quite contrary opinions, though many times equally absurd, in the various religions of mankind, are as evident a proof as they are an unavoidable consequence of this way of reasoning from received traditional principles. So that men will disbelieve their own eyes, renounce the evidence of their senses, and give their own experience the lie, rather than admit of anything disagreeing with these sacred tenets. (IV, xx, 10, p. 450) Tradition, he says (in characteristic Enlightenment disparagement), keeps in ignorance or error more people than all the other [the other sources of error] together . . . I mean the giving up our assent to the common received opinions, either of our friends or party, neighbourhood or country. How many men have no other ground for their tenets, than the supposed honesty, or learning, or number of those of the same profession? (IV, xx, 17, pp. 456-57) Appeals to tradition to settle disagreement had become ineffective; there were just too many. One had to choose which of these many conflicting traditions to endorse. Locke thought this disorderly pluralism quite scandalous; it was even more scandalous that there seemed no rational way to put an end to the contentious disputes. The Essay was Locke's attempt to do what he could to put matters right. Book IV, "Of Knowledge and Probability," is the end of the book--both in comprising the last three hundred pages or so and in dealing with the question whose resolution is Locke's goal; and even in book IV he spends another two hundred pages before explicitly addressing it. That main question is: how should we regulate our opinion with respect to belief in general? In particular, how shall we regulate our opinion with respect to religious belief? As A. D. Woozley [66] says, this is the principal topic of the Essay. As he also says, readers often don't get to it, being a bit disheartened by having to wade through what amounts to a six-hundred-page preface. Still, it is what he says on this head that is most crucial to an understanding of Locke's enterprise, as well as to our metaquestion. __________________________________________________________________ A. Living by Reason The initial problem, of course, is that disorderly crowd of opinions: "men, extending their inquiries beyond their capacities, and letting their thought wander into those depths where they can find no sure footing, it is no wonder that they raise questions and multiply disputes, which, never coming to any clear resolution, are proper only to continue and increase their doubts, and to confirm them at last in perfect skepticism" (Locke's Introduction to the Essay, para. 7, p. 31). Like Hume and Kant after him, Locke thinks the remedy requires that we first make a juster and more accurate appraisal of our intellectual capacities and capabilities: Whereas were the capacities of our understandings well considered, the extent of our knowledge once discovered, and the horizon found which sets the bounds between the enlightened and dark parts of things; between what is and what is not comprehensible by us, men would perhaps with less scruple acquiesce in the avowed ignorance of the one, and employ their thoughts and discourse with more advantage and satisfaction in the other. (Locke's Introduction to the Essay, para. 7, p. 31) The aim is not to achieve Cartesian certainty (about which he makes several disparaging remarks). Rather, "If we can find out those measures, whereby a rational creature, put in that state in which man is in this world, may and ought to govern his opinions, and actions depending thereon, we need not to be troubled that some other things escape our knowledge" (Introduction, para. 6, p. 31). What we need to find out is how we may and ought to govern and regulate our opinion, or assent. And his answer, in prototypical Enlightenment fashion, is that we ought to govern our opinion by following reason. But what does that mean? What is opinion and what is reason, and how can we govern the former by following the latter? 1. Opinion If we are to have any hope of overcoming the contentious and disputatious horde of conflicting opinion with which we are beset, says Locke, we must all learn to govern opinion and assent properly. Following Plato, Locke thinks of opinion as contrasting with knowledge; to see what he thinks opinion is, we must therefore look to his views about knowledge. He thinks we have four kinds of knowledge, all of them involving certainty. First, there is what he regards as the paradigm of knowledge: perceiving the "agreement or disagreement of our ideas." It isn't easy to see precisely what he had in mind here, but the principal sort of knowledge involved here is the knowledge of self-evident propositions, such propositions as 2 + 1 = 3. [67] A properly functioning human being can simply see that these propositions are true (and further, that they couldn't possibly be false). There is no issue of regulating this kind of belief, says Locke, because a properly formed human being simply can't withhold belief from self-evident propositions: "This part of knowledge is irresistible, and like bright sunshine, forces itself immediately to be perceived, as soon as ever the mind turns its view that way; and leaves no room for hesitation, doubt, or examination, but the mind is presently filled with the clear light of it" (IV, ii, 1, p. 177). Such knowledge is certain; it is "beyond all doubt, and needs no probation, nor can have any; this being the highest of all human certainty" (IV, xvii, 14, p. 407). Second, there is knowledge of propositions about the contents of your own mind, that is, propositions about the ideas of which you are the subject. An example would be your knowledge that you have a mild pain in your left elbow, or that you seem to see something white (i.e., things look to you the way they look when you are in fact seeing something white). This knowledge, says Locke, is infallible (IV, i, 4, p. 169, and elsewhere). This means at least that you cannot mistakenly believe such a proposition; if you believe that you seem to see something white, it follows that you do seem to see something white (though, of course, you may be mistaken in thinking there really is something white there). Following later custom, let's say that propositions of this sort about my own mental states are incorrigible for me. Third, there is also a kind of knowledge of "other things," of external objects around you: And of this, the greatest assurance I can possibly have, and to which my faculties can attain, is the testimony of my eyes, which are the proper and sole judges of this thing; whose testimony I have reason to rely on as so certain, that I can no more doubt, whilst I write this, that I see white and black, and that something really exists that causes that sensation in me, than that I write or move my hand; which is a certainty as great as human nature is capable of, concerning the existence of anything, but a man's self alone, and of God. (IV, xi, 2, pp. 326-27; see also IV, ii, 14, p. 186) It isn't wholly clear just what it is I know here: do I know that the piece of paper is white, that my hand is moving, and that the ink is black? Locke vacillates. Sometimes (for example, when commenting on the relation between faith and reason) he speaks as if our knowledge of external objects includes the sort of everyday knowledge we get from perception: that my hand is moving, that the trees in the backyard are budding, and so on. Other times, and perhaps when he's being more careful or at least more official, he suggests that what we know of the external world is much sparser, more like My current ideas of treehood and green are caused by something external to me. I may not know what these external objects are like (I don't know that they include trees, or buds, or objects that are green), but I do know that there is something external causing me to have these ideas. And fourth, there is demonstrative knowledge. I can come to know a proposition by deducing it from or seeing that it is entailed by propositions of the above three sorts (where a proposition p entails a proposition q just if it is not possible, in the broadly logical sense, that p be true and q false. [68] Accordingly, some propositions that you can deduce from propositions that are self-evident, incorrigible, or evident to the senses are also certain for you; among these propositions, Locke thinks, is the existence of God (IV, x, 1-6, pp. 306-10). Indeed, he adds, "From what has been said, it is plain to me we have a more certain knowledge of the existence of a God, than of anything our senses have not immediately discovered to us." When it comes to knowledge, therefore, we have no control over our giving assent; assent is elicited willy-nilly, and the question of how we should regulate assent in this area therefore does not arise. (We can't regulate it at all, anymore than I could regulate the direction in which I fall, if I fell off a cliff.) Of course, knowledge forms only a part of the beliefs to be found in a human noetic structure and, according to Locke, a relatively small part ("Our knowledge, as has been shown, being very narrow," IV, xv, 2, p. 364). It is opinion that includes the bulk of what we ordinarily believe; and it is with respect to opinion--that which we believe but do not know--that the question of regulation does arise. 2. Reason Locke's crucial claim is that we must be guided, in the formation of opinion, by reason. Well, what is reason? First, it is "a faculty in man, that faculty whereby man is supposed to be distinguished from beasts, and wherein it is evident he much surpasses them" (IV, xvii, 1, p. 386). Second, reason is the power whereby we can discern broadly logical relations among propositions (IV, xviii, 3, p. 417), which, of course, are the candidates for our assent, the things we believe. In particular, by virtue of employment of reason, we distinguish two kinds of relations among propositions: The greatest part of our knowledge depends upon deductions and intermediate ideas: and in those cases where we are fain to substitute assent instead of knowledge, and take propositions for true, without being certain they are so, we have need to find out, examine, and compare the grounds of their probability. In both these cases, the faculty which finds out the means, and rightly applies them, to discover certainty in the one, and probability in the other, is that which we call reason. For, as reason perceives the necessary and indubitable connexion of all the ideas or proofs one to another, in each step of any demonstration that produces knowledge; so it likewise perceives the probable connexion of all the ideas or proofs one to another, in every step of a discourse, to which it will think assent due. (IV, xvii, 2, p. 387) It is by reason, therefore, that we perceive deductive and probabilistic relations among propositions. We needn't say anything here about deductive relations between propositions; and while much needs to be said about probability, Locke doesn't say it. He does say a little, however, beginning rather inauspiciously by declaring, "Probability is likeliness to be true" (IV, xv, 3, p. 365). The uninformative character of this, however, is ameliorated by his pointing out [69] that probability has to do with what occurs for the most part' in our experience; and he adds that testimony from others also establishes probability (IV, xv, 4, pp. 365-66). Locke seems to think of probability as an objective relation among propositions; he probably also thinks that it is a quasi-logical relationship among them; his views, therefore, may be precursors of those of J. M. Keynes, Rudolf Carnap, and others. [70] Probability, furthermore, comes in degrees: "Upon these grounds depends the probability of any proposition: and as the conformity of our knowledge, as the certainty of observations, as the frequency and constancy of experience, and the number and credibility of testimonies do more or less agree or disagree with it, so is any proposition in itself more or less probable" (IV, xv, 6, p. 367). Here he seems to suggest that a proposition is probable to some degree "in itself"; he is better understood, I think, as holding that probability is a relation between propositions. A proposition has a certain degree of probability for me' (i.e., relative to those propositions that are certain for me); what counts with respect to the formation of my opinion is the probability of the candidate in question with respect to what is certain for me. 3. Regulating Opinion by Reason Locke's claim is that we should regulate our opinion or assent by reason; but what does this mean? How do you do a thing like that? His answer, fundamentally, is that I must regulate my opinion in such a way that I opine only that which is probable with respect to that which is certain for me. I have no control over my assent when it comes to knowledge, what is certain for me; however, I do have control over my assent when it comes to opinion, what isn't certain. And the rule here is that I must not assent to a proposition unless it is probable with respect to what is certain for me. Assent, furthermore, comes in degrees [71] (IV, xvi, 1, p. 369). More exactly, then, the rule is that I should proportion my degree of assent to the probability of the proposition in question: "The grounds of probability we have laid down in the foregoing chapter: as they are the foundations on which our assent is built, so are they also the measure whereby its several degrees are, or ought to be regulated" (IV, xvi, 1, p. 369). More specifically, for any proposition that comes to my attention, I should proportion my degree of assent to it to the degree to which that proposition is probable with respect to what is certain for me. Proper procedure here is "not entertaining any proposition with greater assurance than the proofs [deductive or inductive] it is built upon will warrant" (IV, xix, 1, p. 429) (probabilistic proofs as well as deductive proofs). Another way to put this: I should proportion degree of assent to the evidence; that is, I should believe a proposition p with a firmness that is proportional to the degree to which p is probable with respect to what is certain for me. This is what it is to regulate or govern opinion according to reason. __________________________________________________________________ [67] For an account of self-evidence, see WPF, chapter 6. [68] I do not and cannot know all propositions entailed by those of the above sort, of course; some might be much too complicated and difficult for me to grasp, and others might be such that I simply can't see the connection between them and propositions of the above three sorts. For still others, the argument for them is so long and complicated that I lack the certainty required by knowledge. [69] As Aristotle also did; see WPF, p. 159. [70] What he says is consistent with other views, however, including the one proposed in chapter 9 of WPF. [71] Here I think he means to point to two phenomena: first, that one believes some propositions more firmly than others, and second, that we judge some propositions more probable than others. To illustrate the first, I believe that 7 + 5 = 12 more firmly than I believe that Glasgow is west of Aberdeen, but I do believe both of these propositions. As for the second, I believe it is reasonably probable that all the continents of Earth once formed a supercontinent; I also believe that it is more probable that the works attributed to Shakespeare were really written by Shakespeare, not by Bacon. __________________________________________________________________ B. Revelation The question that started off the whole discussion issuing in the nine hundred pages of the Essay was on "the principles of morality and revealed religion." But now we see that we are to regulate our opinion by reason, that is, proportion our belief in a proposition to the degree to which it is probable with respect to what is certain for us. Does this mean, then, that divine revelation, "revealed religion," is to play no role in the right regulation of opinion? If that regulation demands that we proportion degree of assent to the evidence, what room is there for assenting to "the great things of the Gospel," as Jonathan Edwards calls them, the incarnation, atonement, and other central features of Christianity? Must we conclude that God could not reveal to us propositions unavailable by the use of our natural faculties? Surely not: "God, in giving us the light of reason, has not thereby tied up his own hands from affording us, when he thinks fit, the light of revelation" (IV, xviii, 8, p. 423). Even if he does afford us the light of revelation, however, must we not regulate assent in such a way as to believe what he reveals, only if the latter is probable with respect to what is certain for us? If so, how can we accept what he teaches by way of revelation? Incarnation, atonement, and trinity don't seem particularly probable with respect to what is self-evident or about my own mental states. Locke answers, first, that God indeed can and does reveal such truths to us, and that what he reveals should certainly be believed: "we may as well doubt of our own being, as we can whether any revelation from God be true" (IV, xvi, 14, p. 383); "Whatever God hath revealed is certainly true: no doubt can be made of it" (IV, xviii, 10, p. 425). But then does he think these great truths are probable with respect to what is certain for us? First, he declares repeatedly that we can't properly believe what goes against reason in the sense of going contrary to the principles of knowledge: a man can never have so certain a knowledge, that a proposition which contradicts the clear principles and evidence of his own knowledge was divinely revealed, or that he understands the words rightly wherein it is delivered, as he has that the contrary is true, and so is bound to consider and judge of it as a matter of reason, and not swallow it. . . . (IV, xviii, 8, p. 424) However, it is not required that to be worthy of assent, such a teaching must be probable with respect to what is certain for me. Rather, what has to be probable, in this way, is that the doctrine in question is indeed revealed, really is proposed for our assent by the Lord: So that faith is a settled and sure principle of assent and assurance, and leaves no manner of room for doubt or hesitation. Only we must be sure that it be a divine revelation, and that we understand it right: else we shall expose ourselves to all the extravagancy of enthusiasm . . . (IV, xvi, 14, p. 383) and Whatever God hath revealed is certainly true: no doubt can be made of it. This is the proper object of faith: but whether it be a divine revelation or no, reason must judge. (IV, xviii, 10, p. 425) Locke's constant question is how do you know that this is from God?' "How do I know that God is the revealer of this to me; that this impression is made upon my mind by his Holy Spirit; and that therefore I ought to obey it? If I know not this, how great soever the assurance is that I am possessed with, it is groundless; whatever light I pretend to, it is but enthusiasm" (IV, xix, 10, p. 435). "Reason," he says, "must be our last judge and guide in everything" (IV, xix, 14, p. 438, his emphasis). He goes on: I do not mean that we must consult reason, and examine whether a proposition revealed from God can be made out by natural principles, and if it cannot, that then we may reject it: but consult it we must, and by it examine whether it be a revelation from God or no: and if reason finds it to be revealed from God, reason then declares for it as much as for any other truth, and makes it one of her dictates. (IV, xix, 14, p. 439) Overall, then, the view is this: God can certainly reveal truths to us. We are not obliged to accept as revealed, however, anything that would go contrary to what we would otherwise know, even with respect to the lowest level of knowledge. Furthermore, a given candidate p for revelation, if it doesn't have evidence from what is certain, cannot have any more epistemic probability than is enjoyed by the proposition that p is indeed a revelation from God (IV, xvi, 14, p. 383). So we are to follow reason, in the formation of religious opinion, but so doing does not preclude accepting certain propositions as specially revealed by God, and accepting them on that basis. __________________________________________________________________ [60] Part I of the Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason and Seeking Truth in the Sciences, in The Philosophical Works of Descartes, tr. and ed. Elizabeth S. Haldane and G. R. T. Ross (New York: Dover, 1955 [originally published by Cambridge University Press in 1931]), pp. 85-86. [61] The Philosophical Works of Descartes, p. 144. [62] See Nicholas Wolterstorff's luminous and illuminating essay on Locke in John Locke and the Ethics of Belief (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). [63] An Essay concerning Human Understanding, ed. with "Prolegomena" by Alexander Fraser (New York: Dover, 1959 [first published by Oxford University Press in 1894]), vol. 1, p. 9. Subsequent page references to Locke's essay are to this edition. [64] Fraser's footnote 1, p. 9. [65] Fraser's "Prolegomena," p. xvii. [66] Introduction to his abridgment of the Essay (New York: NAL Penguin, 1974 [originally published Collins, 1964]), p. 15. The Essay is long and confusing; it was composed over many years and didn't receive anything like the final editing it needed. As a result, it has been published in abridged editions going all the way back to 1694 (Boston: Printed by Manning and Loring, for J. White, Thomas and Andrews, D. West, E. Larkin, J. West and the proprietor of the Boston bookstore) four years or so after its publication and ten years before Locke's death. These abridgments sometimes delete some of the passages most important to a proper understanding of the Essay; for example, A. D. Woozley's omits the absolutely crucial passage quoted on pp. 86-87, below. __________________________________________________________________ II. Classical Evidentialism, Deontologism, and Foundationalism In God and Other Minds, I took for granted what was then axiomatic: that belief in God is rationally justifiable only if there are good arguments for it, and only if the arguments in favor of it are stronger than the arguments against it. The origin--at least the proximate origin--of this idea is to be found in the work of Locke I've been outlining. A belief is acceptable, he says, only if it is either itself certain or else probable (i.e., more probable than not) with respect to propositions that are certain for me. Christian belief, clearly enough, is not certain for me: it is not self-evident, incorrigible, or a deliverance of the senses. Hence, if it is to be acceptable, it must be probable with respect to propositions of these sorts. Locke doesn't, so far as I know, explicitly raise the question whether I must know or believe that the belief is thus probable, if it is to be acceptable for me; I think he assumes that it must be. He thinks of the matter in terms of applying a test: a certain belief p comes within your purview; you are to determine whether it is probable with respect to what is certain for you in order to determine whether it is acceptable for you. But then you will accept the belief only if you see or believe that it does pass this test. Evidentialism is the claim that religious belief is rationally acceptable only if there are good arguments for it; Locke is both a paradigm evidentialist and the proximate source of the entire evidentialist tradition, [72] from him through Hume and Reid and Kant and the nineteenth century to the present. Locke's classical evidentialism is one element of a larger whole that also includes classical foundationalism and classical deontologism. This connected complex of theses and attitudes has been enormously influential in epistemology since the Enlightenment, and enormously influential especially with respect to our question, the question of the rational justifiability of religious belief: call it the classical package. The classical package includes ways of thinking about faith, reason, rationality, justification, knowledge, the nature of belief, and other related topics. It is hard to overemphasize the importance of these ways of thinking for the de jure question. We have seen how Locke is the fountainhead of the evidentialist tradition, one of the elements in the classical package; but he is also a main source, for us moderns (and postmoderns), of the other two elements: classical foundationalism and classical deontologism. I now turn to them. [73] __________________________________________________________________ A. Classical Foundationalism First, classical foundationalism is foundationalism. Here the crucial notion is that of believing one proposition on the evidential basis of others. Like any important philosophical notion, this one has its problems, complications, and perplexities. Let's ignore them. The notion is serviceable even if it is less than wholly clear, and at any rate there are clear examples. I believe that 32 × 94 is 3008 (I've just calculated it); I believe this proposition on the evidential basis of others, such as 4 × 2 = 8, 4 × 3 = 12, 8 + 2 = 10, and so on. However I don't believe those latter on the evidential basis of any other propositions at all; instead, they are basic' for me. I simply see that they are true, and accept them. I accept many propositions in this basic way: that there is snow in my backyard, for example, and that it is still white. I also believe, in the basic way, that it seems to me that I am seeing something white (I am being appeared to whitely), that I had cornflakes for breakfast, and a thousand other things. The propositions I accept in the basic way are, so to say, starting points for my thought. (This is not to say, of course, that what you take as basic doesn't depend on what else you know or believe. I believe in the basic way that what I see coming toward me is a truck; someone with no acquaintance with trucks or motor vehicles couldn't form that belief at all, let alone hold it in the basic way.) The propositions that I accept in this basic way are the foundations of my structure of beliefs--my noetic structure', as I shall call it for ease of reference. [74] And according to the foundationalist, in an acceptable, properly formed noetic structure, every proposition is either in the foundations or believed on the evidential basis of other propositions. Indeed, this much is trivially true; a proposition is in the foundations of my noetic structure if and only if it is basic for me, and it is basic for me if and only if I don't accept it on the evidential basis of other propositions. This much of foundationalism should be uncontroversial and accepted by all. [75] Further (and still properly uncontroversial), for every proposition in my noetic structure that is not in the foundations, there is an evidential path terminating in the foundations: that is, if A is nonbasic for me, then I believe it on the basis of some other proposition B, which I believe on the basis of some other proposition C, and so on down to a foundational proposition or propositions. [76] Now Locke clearly accepts this much; but he also accepts more. A foundationalist will also typically claim that not just any belief is properly basic; some propositions are such that if I accept them in the basic way, there is something wrong, something skewed, something unjustified about my noetic structure. Imagine, for example, that because of an inordinate admiration for Picasso, I suddenly find myself with the belief that he didn't die; like Elijah, he was directly transported to heaven (in a peculiarly warped sort of chariot with a great misshapen eye in the middle of its side). If I don't believe this proposition on the evidential basis of any others, it is basic for me. But there is something defective, wrong, unhappy in my believing this proposition in the basic way; this proposition is not properly basic. Noting that only some propositions seem to be properly basic, a foundationalist may go on to lay down conditions of proper basicality, admitting some kinds of propositions to this exalted condition and rejecting others. And the classical foundationalist holds that the only propositions that are properly basic for me are the ones that are certain for me. Certainty is another difficult and much contested notion; again, let us ignore the difficulties and contests, noting that classical foundationalists don't always agree as to which propositions are indeed certain in this way. Descartes admits only propositions that are self-evident or incorrigible. Locke accepts these as properly basic; he also adds, as I said earlier, propositions that are evident to the senses'--at least such propositions as something is causing me to have the ideas I do in fact have, and possibly also more robust propositions, such as that the ground is showing through the snow in my backyard. Let's say, a bit vaguely, that according to classical foundationalists, a proposition is properly basic, for a person S, if and only if it is self-evident for S, or incorrigible for S, or evident to the senses for S. Further, according to the classical foundationalists (and everyone else), you can't properly believe just any proposition on the basis of just any other. I can't properly believe, for example, the proposition that Abraham lived around 1800 b.c. on the basis of the proposition that Brutus stabbed Julius Caesar; the latter has nothing to do, evidentially speaking, with the former. Rather, I properly believe A on the basis of B only if B supports A, is in fact evidence for A. Again, this notion of evidential support is difficult and controversial; [77] once more, let us ignore the difficulties and controversies and note that different classical foundationalists propose different evidential relationships as being what is required if my belief of A on the basis of belief B is to be proper. Descartes seems to suggest that a proposition is acceptable in the superstructure of my noetic structure only if I have deduced it from or seen it to be entailed by those in the foundations. This is an extremely strenuous standard (and in fact very few of our beliefs turn out to be acceptable on this standard.) Locke admitted probabilistic support or evidence, and he also admitted testimony. Later on, Charles Sanders Peirce and others went further still and admitted also what he sometimes called abduction'--something like the relationship between a scientific theory and the evidence on which it is based. Stating classical foundationalism at its most capacious, therefore, suppose we put it as follows: (CF) A belief is acceptable for a person if (and only if) it is either properly basic (i.e., self-evident, incorrigible, or evident to the senses for that person), or believed on the evidential basis of propositions that are acceptable and that support it deductively, inductively, or abductively. In a properly run noetic structure, therefore, if you take any belief B that is not basic (not in the foundations), B will be accepted on the basis of other beliefs that are acceptable and that support B (either deductively, inductively, or abductively); if those others are not in the foundations, they will be accepted on the basis of still others that are acceptable and that support them, and so on, down to the foundations--that is, down to propositions that are self-evident, incorrigible, or evident to the senses for you. Classical foundationalism, as I say, has been enormously influential from the Enlightenment to the present. For many philosophers and others (for myself earlier on), it has amounted to a sort of unquestioned assumption, unquestioned because it isn't seen clearly enough even to recognize as an assumption. Locke's views here, particularly with respect to religion, have achieved the status of orthodoxy, and most discussions of the rational justification of religious belief have been and still are conducted in the unthinking acceptance of that framework. There may be modifications of one sort or another, analogical extensions of the original framework, departures of one sort or another; there may be a sort of unease with it, a dimly felt sense that not all is well with it; still, for most of us, the basic framework remains in the near neighborhood of classical foundationalism. __________________________________________________________________ [74] For an account of noetic structures, see WCD, pp. 72ff. [75] Even by coherentists: see WCD, pp. 78ff. [76] See "Reason and Belief in God," p. 54. [77] See WCD, pp. 69ff. __________________________________________________________________ B. Classical Deontologism We must now ask a question that has been clamoring for attention all along. Suppose your beliefs don't correspond to the standards the classical foundationalist or evidentialist holds before you: so what? Exactly what is the matter with you? You will be told that your belief structure is unacceptable and not rationally justified, and that you yourself are irrational; but again, so what? What is wrong with being irrational or with holding beliefs that are not rationally justified? It certainly sounds reprehensible, but what, exactly, is the problem? That is what we must know if we are to understand our de jure question. Consider, for example, John Mackie in The Miracle of Theism. [78] He believes he has shown that the central doctrines of theism are not rational or "rationally defensible" because (as he thinks) he has shown that they are not probable with respect to what he takes to be the relevant evidence. What does he mean here by "rational"? How is he using this protean term? Suppose he is right in thinking that it would be irrational to be a theist if theistic belief is not probable with respect to the evidence (whatever precisely that is): what is this property of irrationality that would then afflict theism or theists? Mackie doesn't say. And Mackie is not alone in failing to say. Many evidentialist objectors argue that theistic belief is irrational because there is insufficient evidence for it; they clearly think being irrational is a bad business; but they seldom say what's bad about it. Instead, they move immediately to the task of showing, as they think, that there is insufficient evidence for belief in God. This prior question, nevertheless, remains crucial: insufficient for what? What is supposed to be bad about believing in the absence of evidence? Contemporary evidentialist objectors don't (for the most part) explicitly say; their progenitor Locke, however, does say. His question, you recall, is how "a rational creature, put in that state in which man is in this world, may and ought to govern his opinions, and actions depending thereon." And his answer, as we have seen, is that a rational creature in our circumstances ought to govern his opinions by reason--that is, proportion his belief to what is certain for him. But how are we to understand the may' and ought' and should' that Locke employs in stating his project? At first sight, his words have a deontological ring; they are redolent of duty, obligation, permission, being within your rights and the rest of the deontological stable. Closer inspection reveals that this is, indeed, how they are to be taken. It is Locke's idea that we have a duty, an obligation to regulate opinion in the way he suggests. We enjoy high standing as rational creatures, creatures capable of belief and knowledge. Noblesse oblige, however; privilege has its obligations, and we are obliged to conduct our intellectual or cognitive life in a certain way. Our exalted station as rational creatures, creatures with reason, carries with it duties and requirements: faith is nothing but a firm assent of the mind: which, if it be regulated, as is our duty, cannot be afforded to anything but upon good reason; and so cannot be opposite to it. He that believes without having any reason for believing, may be in love with his own fancies; but neither seeks truth as he ought, nor pays the obedience due to his Maker, who would have him use those discerning faculties he has given him, to keep him out of mistake and error. He that does not this to the best of his power, however he sometimes lights on truth, is in the right but by chance; and I know not whether the luckiness of the accident will excuse the irregularity of his proceeding. This at least is certain, that he must be accountable for whatever mistakes he runs into: whereas he that makes use of the light and faculties God has given him, and seeks sincerely to discover truth by those helps and abilities he has, may have this satisfaction in doing his duty as a rational creature, that, though he should miss truth, he will not miss the reward of it. For he governs his assent right, and places it as he should, who, in any case or matter whatsoever, believes or disbelieves according as reason directs him. He that doth otherwise, transgresses against his own light, and misuses those faculties which were given him to no other end, but to search and follow the clearer evidence and greater probability. (IV, xvii, 24, pp. 413-14) Here Locke isn't speaking about specifically religious faith (faith as contrasted with reason, say), but about assent or opinion generally; and his central claim here is that there are duties and obligations with respect to its management or regulation. In particular, you are obliged to give assent only to that for which you have good reasons, good evidence: you are to accept a proposition only if it is probable with respect to what is certain for you. Someone who doesn't regulate opinion in this way "neither seeks truth as he ought, nor pays the obedience due to his Maker" (emphasis added); God commands us to seek truth in this way and to regulate opinion in this way. Someone who does seek truth in this way, even if he should happen to miss it, still "may have this satisfaction in doing his duty as a rational creature." You govern your assent "right," he says, you place it as you "should" if you believe or disbelieve as reason directs you. And if you don't do that, then you transgress against your own lights. One who governs his opinion thus is acting in accord with duty, is within his rights, is flouting no obligation, is not blameworthy, is, in a word, justified. The English terms justified', justification', and the like, go back at least to the King James version of the Bible. We are justified, in this use, if Christ's atoning sacrifice for sin has applied to us, so that we are now no longer blameworthy and our sin has been covered, removed, obliterated, taken away; we are no longer guilty; it is as if (so far as guilt is concerned) our sin had never existed. As a matter of fact the term taken in that sense goes back to Wycliffe's 1382 translation of the Bible; the Oxford English Dictionary cites especially Romans 5:16. And Locke is really claiming that you are justified in this sense (guiltless, conforming to your obligations and duties) in believing a proposition p only if p is either certain for you or such that it is probable with respect to propositions that are certain for you. More precisely, your assent to p is justified only if the degree of your assent to p is proportional to the degree to which p is probable with respect to what is certain for you. If you believe in some other way, then you are going contrary to your epistemic obligations; you are guilty; you are flouting epistemic duty. This is the aboriginal and basic idea of the justificationist tradition, the palimpsest in terms of which other justificationist notions are to be understood by way of analogical extensions. And of course there are analogical extensions. For example, if you follow Locke in thinking we have such a duty, then you will be inclined to transfer the term justified' from the believer to the believed, and speak, as in fact we do speak, of a proposition's being justified, or justified for someone, meaning that the person in question has a good bit of evidence for the proposition in question. You will also say, no doubt, that there is a good deal of justification or rational justification for a given proposition, meaning thereby that there is a good deal of evidence for it. [79] __________________________________________________________________ [78] Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982. [79] There are many other analogical extensions or retrenchments of this original notion of justification, and many other analogically extended uses of the term; see WCD, chapter 1. __________________________________________________________________ [72] In "Reason and Belief in God," I suggested that Aquinas was also an evidentialist in this sense; various people (Alfred Freddoso, Norman Kretzmann, Eleonore Stump, Linda Zagzebski, and John Zeis in "Natural Theology: Reformed?" in Rational Faith: Catholic Responses to Reformed Epistemology, ed. Linda Zagzebski [Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993], p. 72) remonstrated with me, pointing out that things were much more complicated than I thought. The fact is that Aquinas is an evidentialist with respect to scientia, scientific knowledge. But it doesn't follow that he thought a person could properly accept belief in God, say, only if he had (or there are) good theistic arguments. On the contrary, Aquinas thought it perfectly sensible and reasonable to accept this belief on faith. [73] I examine classical foundationalism in detail in WCD and "Reason and Belief in God"; here I shall be brief and schematic. __________________________________________________________________ III. Back to the Present Locke's thought initiates the classical package: evidentialism, deontologism, and classical foundationalism. It is according to the first two that Christian belief requires evidence; that is, Christian believers are within their intellectual rights and conforming to intellectual duty, only if they have evidence for that belief. It is according to the third that the evidence must trace back, finally, to what is certain for them: what is self-evident or incorrigible or evident to the senses. This connection between justification and evidence has been at the center of the whole justificationist tradition in Western epistemology; it has been of particular importance for subsequent thought about the de jure question for Christian belief. According to this tradition, the de jure question is really the question whether Christian belief is rationally justified--that is, whether believers are justified in holding these beliefs, and whether they are conforming to intellectual duty in holding them. The main intellectual duty, however, is that of proportioning belief to the evidence, to what is certain. Hence the first version of the de jure question gets transformed into a second: do believers have sufficient evidence for their beliefs? We now see the connection between these two forms of the de jure question: the first is the basic question, but if we add (with Locke and the classical tradition) that the main duty here is that of proportioning belief to evidence, then we get the second question. I say Locke's influence--and that of the classical package--has been paramount in discussions of the de jure question. If I am right, we should expect at least two things. We should expect, first, that those who raise the de jure question would put it in terms of evidence, argument, propositional evidence, evidence from other things one thinks. And we should expect, second, that they also put it in terms of justification--justification construed deontologically or in terms of some analogical extension of deontology. Both of these expectations are amply fulfilled. Of course I don't expect you just to take my word for it, and I don't have the space for extensive documentation; I shall instead just give a bit of corroborating evidence. For the last hundred years, W. K. Clifford's essay "The Ethics of Belief" has been cited in discussions of the de jure question; Clifford (that "delicious enfant terrible," as William James called him) claimed (with charming and restrained understatement) that "it is wrong, always, everywhere, and for anyone to believe anything upon insufficient evidence." [80] Here we have the combination of deontologism and evidentialism. This passage doesn't display classical foundationalism as well (it doesn't say what the evidence must consist in), but no doubt Clifford was a classical foundationalist; at least he thought that belief in God requires evidence. William James's essay "The Will to Believe" [81] has been a sort of companion piece to Clifford's; it has been cited for almost as long in discussions of our question, and because James comments on and criticizes Clifford, the two essays have often been anthologized in tandem. James titled his essay "The Will to Believe"; "The Right to Believe" would have been more accurate. His central claim is that under certain conditions it is not contrary to duty to believe a proposition (a proposition that isn't certain) even if one has no evidence for it. If believing this proposition is a forced option and a live option, for you, and if there is no evidence against it, then you have a right to believe it, even though you don't have evidence for it. In this way James tries to make room for belief in God (even if not full Christian belief) by inserting it in the gaps of the evidence. The evidentialism and deontologism, again, are evident. [82] James and Clifford wrote a hundred years ago and more; but the last half-century has seen a host of evidentialist objectors to Christian belief, thinkers who hold both that this sort of belief, if it is to be rational, must be accepted on the basis of propositional evidence, and that the evidence is insufficient. (Among them would be Brand Blanshard, [83] Bertrand Russell, [84] Michael Scriven, [85] Antony Flew, [86] Wesley Salmon, [87] J. C. A. Gaskin, [88] Anthony O'Hear, [89] to some degree Richard Gale, [90] and John Mackie in his posthumous book, The Miracle of Theism. [91] ) Although the deontological component in these positions is often more muted than the evidentialism, it is clearly present and sometimes wholly explicit. Thus Blanshard: everywhere and always belief has an ethical aspect. There is such a thing as a general ethic of the intellect. The main principle of that ethic I hold to be the same inside and outside religion. That principle is simple and sweeping: equate your assent to the evidence. [92] Of course it isn't only evidentialist objectors to theistic belief who embrace evidentialism. John Locke himself was an evidentialist, but no evidentialist objector. Locke thought that religious belief is evidence essential' [93] in the sense that it can be rationally accepted only if believed on the basis of good evidence; he also thought the requisite good evidence was available. Several contemporary writers follow in his footsteps: they accept evidentialism, but believe the evidence is forthcoming (or at least aren't sure that it isn't). Among them would be, for example, Basil Mitchell [94] and William Abraham; [95] Stephen Wykstra defends a "more sensible" evidentialism. [96] Anthony Kenny displays some sympathy for evidentialism; [97] as does Richard Swinburne: "the use of symbols . . . enables me to bring out the close similarities which exist between religious theories and large scale hypotheses." [98] Terence Penelhum is no evidentialist, but evidential considerations play a large role in his God and Skepticism; [99] the same can be said for Gary Gutting's Religious Belief and Religious Skepticism. [100] Still, it is the evidentialist objectors that most clearly display evidentialism. John Mackie's The Miracle of Theism is evidentialism at its most formidable; by way of conclusion, then, suppose we briefly note the form evidentialism takes in that book. Mackie proposes to "examine the arguments for and against the existence of God carefully and in some detail, taking account both of the traditional concept of God and of the traditional proofs of his existence and of more recent interpretations and approaches." He goes on: If it is agreed that the central assertions of theism are literally meaningful, it must also be admitted that they are not directly verified or directly verifiable. It follows that any rational consideration of whether they are true or not will involve arguments. . . . it [whether God exists] must be examined either by deductive or inductive reasoning or, if that yields no decision, by arguments to the best explanation; for in such a context nothing else can have any coherent bearing on the issue. (pp. 4, 6) Mackie assumes that the rational acceptability of theistic belief depends on the outcome of this examination: if, on balance, the evidence favors theism, then theistic belief is rationally acceptable; if the evidence favors atheism, then theism is not rationally acceptable. The evidentialism, of course, is palpable. Now Mackie takes it that theism is a hypothesis, something like a very large-scale scientific hypothesis (the theory of evolution, perhaps, or general relativity). He assumes further that its rational acceptability depends upon its success as a hypothesis. Speaking of religious experience, he makes the following characteristic remark: "Here, as elsewhere, the supernaturalist hypothesis fails because there is an adequate and much more economical naturalistic alternative" (p. 198). Clearly, this remark is relevant only if we think of belief in God as or as like a scientific hypothesis, a theory designed to explain some body of evidence, and acceptable to the degree that it succeeds in explaining that evidence. On this way of looking at the matter, there is a relevant body of evidence shared by believer and unbeliever alike; theism is a hypothesis designed to explain that body of evidence; and theism is rationally defensible only to the extent that it is a good explanation thereof. Now Mackie thinks it is not a good explanation: he concludes, "In the end, therefore, we can agree with what Laplace said about God: we have no need of that hypothesis" (p. 253); he goes on to claim, "The balance of probabilities, therefore, comes out strongly against the existence of a god." He clearly takes it for granted, furthermore, that if the balance of probabilities comes out as he says it does, then there is no case for theism, and the theist stands revealed as somehow irrational or intellectually deficient or perhaps intellectually out of line; as he puts it, "It would appear from our discussion so far that the central doctrines of theism, literally interpreted, cannot be rationally defended." [101] But why make assumptions like that? Why think that theism is rationally acceptable only if there are good arguments for it? Why think that it is, or is significantly like, a scientific hypothesis? Of course these assumptions form part of the classical package: well, why should we accept that package? Clearly there are sensible alternatives. Consider our memory beliefs, for example: obviously, one could take a Mackie-like view here as well. I believe that I had a banana for breakfast; one could hold that a belief like this (and indeed even the belief that there has been such a thing as the past) is best thought of as like a scientific hypothesis, designed to explain such present phenomena as (among other things) apparent memories; if there were a more "economical" explanation of these phenomena that did not postulate, say, the existence of the past or of past facts, then our usual beliefs in the past "could not be rationally defended." But here this seems clearly mistaken; the availability of such an "explanation" wouldn't in any way tell against our ordinary belief that there has really been a past. Why couldn't the same hold for theism or, more broadly, for Christian belief? What is to be said for (and against) the classical package, taken in particular with respect to Christian belief? __________________________________________________________________ [80] Lectures and Essays (London: Macmillan, 1901), p. 183. [81] In The Will to Believe, and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (New York: Longmans, Green, 1897). [82] "It's not exactly emphasized any longer, but one of James's original purposes in promoting pragmatism was not to get rid of empirically unverifiable beliefs, but to make room, in a scientistic world view, for faith and God. . . . This was explicitly the context for the 1898 lecture" (Louis Menand, "An American Prodigy," New York Review of Books [December 2, 1993], p. 33). The "1898 lecture" is "The Will to Believe." [83] Reason and Belief (London: Allen and Unwin, 1974), pp. 400ff. [84] "Why I Am Not a Christian" in his Why I Am Not a Christian (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1957), pp. 3ff. [85] Primary Philosophy (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966), pp. 87ff. [86] The Presumption of Atheism (London: Pemberton, 1976), pp. 22ff. [87] "Religion and Science: A New Look at Hume's Dialogues," Philosophical Studies 33 (1978), pp. 176ff. [88] The Quest for Eternity: An Outline of the Philosophy of Religion (New York: Penguin, 1984). [89] Experience, Explanation, and Faith: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (London, Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984). [90] On the Nature and Existence of God (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). [91] Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982. [92] Reason and Belief, p. 401. More evidence for the pervasive influence of the deontological component of the classical package can be found in chapter 1 of WCD. There I argue that both the prevalence of internalism in contemporary epistemology and the multifarious and confusing array of concepts of justification among contemporary epistemologists can be understood in terms of their relation to deontology. [93] To use Stephen Wykstra's term; see his "Towards a Sensible Evidentialism: On the Notion of Needing Evidence,'?" in Philosophy of Religion: Selected Readings, 2d ed., ed. William Rowe and William Wainwright (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1989). [94] See his The Existence of God (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981). [95] An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice Hall, 1985). [96] "Towards a Sensible Evidentialism." [97] See his Faith and Reason (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), especially chapters 3 and 4. [98] See his The Existence of God (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979). Swinburne, however, can't be considered an evidentialist in view of his "Principle of Credulity": "that (in the absence of special considerations) if it seems (epistemically) to a subject that x is present, then probably x is present" (p. 254). [99] Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1983. [100] Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1982. [101] Indeed, Mackie takes the title of his book from Hume's ironic suggestion that upon the whole, we may conclude that the Christian Religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one. . . . Whoever is moved by Faith to assent to it, is conscious of a continued miracle in his own person, which subverts all the principles of his understanding, and gives him a determination to believe what is most contrary to custom and experience. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (LaSalle, Ill.: Open Court, 1966), p. 145. __________________________________________________________________ IV. Problems with the Classical Picture The classical picture has been enormously influential in guiding thought about the de jure question; its near relatives still dominate discussion of it; in particular, the evidentialism of the classical picture persists. This picture, however, like some other big pictures, doesn't survive close examination; it is subject to powerful, indeed, fatal objections. After pointing out some of the problems, I'll consider contemporary analogical extensions of the various elements of the classical picture to see whether any of them supports the evidentialism that is still widely popular and finds such a comfortable home in the classical picture. I'll conclude that in fact there is no reason at all to think that Christian belief requires argument or propositional evidence, if it is to be justified. Christians--indeed, well-educated, contemporary, and culturally aware Christians--can be justified, so I shall argue, even if they don't hold their beliefs on the basis of arguments or evidence, even if they aren't aware of any good arguments for their beliefs, and even if, indeed, there aren't any. Indeed, it is obvious that they can be justified in this way; as I shall argue, that suggests that the de jure question we seek is not this question of justification; that question is too easy to answer. So, first, what are these problems attaching to the classical picture? Recent philosophy has not been kind to classical foundationalism; many objections have been raised, many problems pointed out. I shall confine my attention to two objections, both fatal. First, as I've argued elsewhere, [102] classical foundationalism appears to be self-referentially incoherent: it lays down a standard for justified belief that it doesn't itself meet. More exactly, the classical foundationalist, in asserting (and presumably believing) his classical foundationalism, lays down a standard for being justified, blameless, within one's intellectual rights: a standard which his own belief in the classical picture doesn't meet. Stated at slightly greater length, what he claims is that (CP) A person S is justified in accepting a belief p if and only if either (1) p is properly basic for S, that is, self-evident, incorrigible, or Lockeanly evident to the senses for S, [103] or (2) S believes p on the evidential basis of propositions that are properly basic and that evidentially support p deductively, inductively, or abductively. Here I ignore the fact that the believes on the basis of' relation is not transitive. The classical picture doesn't really require that all of one's nonbasic beliefs be believed on the evidential basis of basic beliefs; some nonbasic beliefs may be believed on the basis of other nonbasic beliefs that support them, provided those others are believed on the basis of still other beliefs that support them, provided those others. . . . To put this more accurately, say that a nonbasic belief is properly based if and only if it is believed on the evidential basis of beliefs that are either properly basic or properly based. Then, according to the classical picture, every nonbasic belief must be properly based. Further, I ignore another condition that is really part of the classical picture. Suppose I believe p on the basis of propositions q[1], q[2] . . . q[n] where the q[i] in fact support p, but I can't see that they do. (Perhaps I believe that there is no greatest cardinal on the basis of ordinary axioms for set theory, but don't know, can't see, and have no reason to believe that the latter support the former.) Then, presumably, on the classical picture I am not justified in this belief. My duty is to believe a nonbasic proposition on the basis of propositions that I can see support it, not just any old propositions that happen to support it, whether or not I can see it. Hence perhaps we should add what Locke and Descartes take for granted here: if S is justified in believing p on the basis of other propositions, it must be that those other propositions support p, of course; further, S must also recognize that they do so. __________________________________________________________________ A. Self-Referential Problems Now consider (CP) itself. First, it isn't properly basic according to the classical foundationalist's lights. To be properly basic, it would have to be self-evident, incorrigible, or Lockeanly evident to the senses. But first, it isn't self-evident for the foundationalist (or for the rest of us). Even if someone claims it has some intuitive support, one couldn't with a straight face claim that it has enough intuitive support to be self-evident. For if it were self-evident, it would be such that it isn't even possible for a properly functioning human being to understand it without seeing that it is true. [104] Clearly (CP) isn't like that at all; for example, I understand it, and I don't see that it is true; and I'll bet the same goes for you. In this regard (CP) is wholly unlike 2 + 1 = 3 or If all cats are animals and Maynard is a cat, then Maynard is an animal. Second, it isn't about anyone's mental states and therefore isn't incorrigible for the foundationalist (or any of the rest of us). And third, it obviously isn't evident to the senses. According to (CP) itself, therefore, (CP) is not properly basic. That means that if (CP) is true, those who are within their rights in believing (CP) must believe it on the evidential basis of other propositions--propositions that are properly basic and that evidentially support it. And if they do, in fact, believe it in that way, then there will be good inductive, deductive, or abductive arguments to (CP) from propositions that are properly basic according to (CP). As far as I know, there aren't any such arguments. As far as I know, no classical foundationalist has produced any such arguments or proposed some properly basic propositions that support (CP). It is of course possible that there are such arguments, even if so far no one has produced them; but the probabilities seem to be against it. So probably one who accepts (CP) does so in a way that violates (CP); (CP) lays down a condition for being justified, dutiful, which is such that one who accepts it probably violates it. If it is true, therefore, the devotee of (CP) is probably going contrary to duty in believing it. So it is either false or such that one goes contrary to duty in accepting it; either way, one shouldn't accept it. But couldn't one who accepts (CP) perhaps find a sort of inductive argument for it? [105] Perhaps the defender of (CP) (the classicist', as I'll call her) reads Roderick Chisholm [106] and embraces particularism'; she proposes to develop a criterion of justified belief by assembling samples of justified and samples of unjustified belief and finding a criterion that best fits them. She assembles a reasonably large and representative sample J of cases of beliefs that, as she thinks, are justified, such that the believer is dutiful in accepting them, and another such sample U of beliefs that she takes to be unjustified, accepted in such a way as to flout intellectual duty. Then perhaps she notes that all of the beliefs in J but none in U conform to (CP); she conjectures that a belief is justified if and only if it conforms to (CP). This would be an inductive argument, of sorts, for (CP). Here is the question, however: are its premises properly basic according to the classical picture? The premises include, crucially, the propositions with respect to each member of J that it is justified and of each member of U that it is not justified. What form do such beliefs take? Well, presumably the sample classes would include such propositions as S[1] is justified in believing B[1] in circumstances C[1] and S[2] is not justified in believing P[2] in circumstances C[2]. (The sample classes need not include only actual beliefs, so to speak; they should also include clear cases of beliefs that would be justified in certain circumstances, whether or not anyone has ever actually held such beliefs in those circumstances.) And presumably these are beliefs she accepts in the basic way. (She can't, of course, use (CP) to arrive at them; that would be blatantly circular.) Clearly, beliefs of these sorts aren't either incorrigible or evident to the senses for her; so if they are properly basic, then, according to (CP), they would have to be self-evident. Now here the classicist will be told that she has a really nasty problem: she will be told that there aren't any cases at all where it is self-evident that a belief is unjustified, such that the believer has gone contrary to duty and in fact warrants disapproval and blame. The alleged reason is that our beliefs are not within our direct control; one can't just decide to hold or withhold a belief. If you offer me $1,000,000 to believe that I am under 30, or even to stop believing that I am over 30, there is no way (short of mind-altering drugs, say) I can collect. Still, this is by no means the whole story. A full examination of this question would take us too far afield, but first some of my beliefs are indirectly within my control (in the way in which, for example, my weight is), even if I can't simply decide what to believe and what not to. I can train myself not to assume automatically that people in white coats know what they are talking about; I can train myself to pay more attention to the evidence, to be less credulous and gullible (or less cynical and skeptical), and so on. Furthermore, some of my beliefs or belief states are, in a way, within my direct control. I don't at the moment have a belief on the question of the year of George Washington's birth; a quick look at my encyclopedia or a call to my eighth-grade history teacher would remedy this deficiency. It is therefore directly within my power to bring it about that I have a belief on that topic. We might even go on to say that there is a belief on that topic (the one the encyclopedia reports) such that it is directly within my power to bring it about that I have that belief. Still further, I can be in a state of epistemic sin by virtue of failing to have a certain belief. If it is my responsibility to care for a child and I see her playing with a suspicious looking bottle but don't take the trouble to examine its label, I can't expect to deflect blame by claiming that I didn't know the bottle contained poison. I should have known. ("I didn't know the gun was loaded" doesn't always suffice for self-exculpation; it might be my responsibility to know.) And there are plenty of other ways to be in epistemic sin by virtue of the beliefs you hold or don't hold. I believe that you failed to pay your income taxes last year because X, whom I would have known to be irresponsible had I made any inquiries, said so; and I was in the wrong not to make further inquiries.) I am malicious and wish you ill; the speaker says your thought is deep and rigorous; by virtue of my ill will, I form the belief that what she said is that your thought is weak and frivolous. Out of vanity and pride, I may form the belief that my work is unduly neglected when the fact is it gets more attention than it deserves. And so on. Further, in these cases it is perhaps self-evident that the beliefs in question are unjustified, formed in a way contrary to duty; at any rate I am not prepared to dispute the claim. So suppose we accommodate the classical foundationalist by stipulating that at any rate there are some cases of self-evidently unjustified belief: there still remains a real problem for the classicist. That is because these cases, at least the ones I can think of, lend no support to the claim that it is unjustified to form a belief that is neither properly basic (according to classical standards) nor believed on the basis of such propositions. More important, aren't there cases where a belief is formed according to (CP), but is nevertheless unjustified? I shouldn't form the belief that you failed to pay your taxes last year on the basis of merely casual inquiry; the stakes are too high. But suppose I do just that: your false friend Myrtle tells me you didn't pay them; I believe this in the usual way, a way, let us assume, that conforms to (CP); I am nevertheless unjustified in that belief. And on the other side, aren't there any number of cases where it is self-evident that a belief not formed in accord with (CP) is justified? Someone asks you what you had for breakfast; you reply that it was an orange and some cornflakes. You can't really think of any propositions that are properly basic according to (CP) and support your memory belief; but isn't it self-evident that you are not guilty, not worthy of reproof or blame, in so believing? And of course there will be an enormous number of examples of this sort. And the relevance of this is as follows: if the samples are chosen in any responsible and plausible way (if they are appropriately random'), they will not support that conjecture that a person is conforming to intellectual duty if and only if her beliefs conform to (CP). Hence, I can't see how a devotee of (CP) could responsibly argue for it by way of such an inductive, particularist procedure; and hence I conclude that there is probably no way in which the classicist can argue for (CP). If so, however, then (because she also holds that (CP) is not properly basic) she will be unjustified in believing (CP) if it is true; it is therefore self-referentially incoherent for her. __________________________________________________________________ [104] See WPF, p. 109. [105] See Philip Quinn's "In Search of the Foundations of Theism," Faith and Philosophy 2 (1985), pp. 474ff.; my response, "The Foundations of Theism: A Reply," Faith and Philosophy 3 (1986), p. 298; and Quinn's rejoinder, "The Foundations of Theism Again," in Rational Faith: Catholic Responses to Reformed Epistemology, ed. Linda Zagzebski (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993), pp. 22ff. I am grateful to Quinn for showing that this possibility needs to be taken much more seriously than I had been taking it. [106] Theory of Knowledge, 3d ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice Hall, 1989), p. 7. See also "Reason and Belief in God," pp. 75ff. __________________________________________________________________ B. Most of Our Beliefs Unjustified? In his controversies with David Hume, Thomas Reid pointed out that the vast majority of our beliefs do not seem to conform to (CP): at least as far as justification is concerned, they are none the worse for that. This sentiment was echoed in the nineteenth century by others, in particular, Cardinal Newman. Says Newman: Nor is the assent which we give to facts limited to the range of self-consciousness. We are sure beyond all hazard of a mistake, that our own self is not the only being existing; that there is an external world; that it is a system with parts and a whole, a universe carried on by laws; and that the future is affected by the past. We accept and hold with an unqualified assent, that the earth, considered as a phenomenon, is a globe; that all its regions see the sun by turns; that there are vast tracts on it of land and water; that there are really existing cities on definite sites, which go by the names of London, Paris, Florence and Madrid. [107] But how much of this can be seen to be probable with respect to what is certain for us? How much meets the classical conditions for being properly basic? Not much, if any. I believe that I had cornflakes for breakfast, that my wife was amused at some little stupidity of mine, that there really are such external objects' as trees and squirrels, and that the world was not created ten minutes ago with all its dusty books, apparent memories, crumbling mountains, and deeply carved canyons. These things, according to classical foundationalism, are not properly basic; they must be believed on the evidential basis of propositions that are self-evident or evident to the senses (in Locke's restricted sense) or incorrigible for me. Furthermore, they must be probable and seen to be probable with respect to propositions of that sort: there must be good arguments, deductive, inductive, or abductive to these conclusions from those kinds of propositions. If there is any lesson at all to be learned from the history of modern philosophy from Descartes through Hume (and Reid), it is that such beliefs cannot be seen to be supported by, to be probable with respect to beliefs that meet the classical conditions for being properly basic. So either most of our beliefs are such that we are going contrary to epistemic obligations in holding them, or (CP) is false. It certainly doesn't seem that we must be flouting duty in holding these beliefs in the way we do. I believe in the basic way that there is a lot of snow in the backyard just now and that I met my class yesterday; I don't believe either of these things on the basis of propositions that meet the classical conditions for proper basicality; I do not believe there are any propositions of that sort with respect to which they are probable. Of course I realize I could be mistaken; but am I flouting duty in so believing? I reflect on the matter as carefully as I can; I simply see no duty here--and not because I doubt the existence of duties generally, or of epistemic duties specifically. Indeed there are duties of that sort: but is there a duty to conform belief to (CP)? I don't think so. But then how can I be guilty, blameworthy, for believing in this way? Could it be that I escape blame only because of ignorance? As we saw in WCD (pp. 15ff.), there is a distinction to be drawn between subjective and objective duty, a distinction that goes all the way back to the New Testament. The apostle Paul takes up the question whether it is wrong to eat meat sacrificed to idols. Paul holds that this isn't really wrong; however, if someone thinks (mistakenly) that it is wrong, then it is wrong for him to do so: "I am absolutely convinced, as a Christian, that nothing is impure in itself; only, if a man considers a particular thing impure, then to him it is impure" (Romans 14:14). Certain kinds of actions (e.g., eating meat sacrificed to idols) are objectively permissible: if what makes an action wrong is that God has prohibited it, then these actions have not been prohibited by God. But if I believe they are wrong--say I mistakenly believe they have been prohibited by God--then I am blameworthy if I perform them. Conversely, certain actions in certain situations are objectively wrong; they are not to be done. Still, if I don't know that they are not to be done and justifiably believe that they are permissible, then I am not blameworthy if I do one of them. My objective duty is what I objectively ought to do; my subjective duty is what I (nonculpably) take to be my objective duty. And perhaps the classical foundationalist can take advantage of this distinction as follows: "True," he says, "you are not blameworthy in failing to conform your beliefs to (CP). But that is only because of ignorance. Fortunately for you, you nonculpably can't see that you have a duty to conform your beliefs to (CP); that protects you from blame and guilt; nevertheless, you really do have an objective duty to regulate belief in the fashion I have described, even if you can't see that you do." Here discussion seems to come to an end. All I can do is ask my interlocutor why he thinks there is such an objective duty and how he came to the knowledge, as he thinks, that there is any such thing. Can he do more than to simply repeat that as a matter of fact we all have this duty? But why should we believe that? What reason is there for thinking it true? Further, I can't properly accept (CP), even if by some wild chance it happens to be true. For if it is true, then to do my duty with respect to accepting it, I must believe it only on the basis of properly basic propositions, and ones such that I can see that they evidentially support (CP). But I don't see that any such propositions support it (and the evidentialist apparently can't help me by, e.g., giving me an appropriate argument). So if it is true and I accept it, I will be going contrary to objective duty; but if I accept it, I will (naturally enough) think it is true, and will therefore believe I am going contrary to my objective duty; hence if it is true and I believe it, I will be going contrary both to objective and subjective duty. __________________________________________________________________ [107] A Grammar of Assent (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979), p. 149. __________________________________________________________________ [102] "Reason and Belief in God," pp. 61ff. [103] Here I am reading Locke (see above, pp. 76-77) as claiming that what I know immediately is only that my sensations are caused by external objects of some kind or other, not that those objects have the properties of trees, horses, or the other sorts of objects we think there are. __________________________________________________________________ V. Christian Belief Justified The classical package taken neat, so to speak, can't be right: there simply doesn't seem to be a duty to form belief in accordance with (CP). Of course there may be other sorts of intellectual duties. There is a duty to the truth of some kind. It may be hard to state this duty exactly; [108] perhaps it is in the neighborhood of a requirement to do your best to believe as many important truths as possible and avoid as many important falsehoods as possible. Whatever precisely our duties to the truth, I want to argue next that Christian belief can certainly be justified and can certainly be justified when taken in the basic way. We are construing justification in a broadly deontological way, so that it includes being within one's epistemic rights and also includes being epistemically responsible with respect to belief formation. (Perhaps you will think the second follows from the first.) This is a perfectly reasonable requirement; if Christian belief cannot be held in such a way as to satisfy it, then there is something wrong with Christian belief. But it isn't at all difficult for a Christian--even a sophisticated and knowledgeable contemporary believer aware of all the criticisms and contrary currents of opinion--to be justified, in this sense, in her belief; and this whether or not she believes in God or in more specific Christian doctrines on the basis of propositional evidence. Consider such a believer: as far as we can see, her cognitive faculties are functioning properly; she displays no noticeable dysfunction. She is aware of the objections people have made to Christian belief; she has read and reflected on Freud, Marx, and Nietzsche (not to mention Flew, Mackie, and Nielsen) and the other critics of Christian or theistic belief; she knows that the world contains many who do not believe as she does. She doesn't believe on the basis of propositional evidence; she therefore believes in the basic way. Can she be justified (in this broadly deontological sense) in believing in God in this way? The answer seems to be pretty easy. She reads Nietzsche, but remains unmoved by his complaint that Christianity fosters a weak, whining, whimpering, and generally disgusting kind of person: most of the Christians she knows or knows of--Mother Teresa, for instance--don't fit that mold. She finds Freud's contemptuous attitude toward Christianity and theistic belief backed by little more than implausible fantasies about the origin of belief in God [109] (patricide in the primal horde? Can he be serious?); and she finds little more of substance in Marx. She thinks as carefully as she can about these objections and others, but finds them wholly uncompelling. On the other side, although she is aware of theistic arguments and thinks some of them not without value, she doesn't believe on the basis of them. Rather, she has a rich inner spiritual life, the sort described in the early pages of Jonathan Edwards's Religious Affections; [110] it seems to her that she is sometimes made aware, catches a glimpse, of something of the overwhelming beauty and loveliness of the Lord; she is often aware, as it strongly seems to her, of the work of the Holy Spirit in her heart, comforting, encouraging, teaching, leading her to accept the "great things of the gospel" (as Edwards calls them), helping her see that the magnificent scheme of salvation devised by the Lord himself is not only for others but for her as well. After long, hard, conscientious reflection, this all seems to her enormously more convincing than the complaints of the critics. Is she then going contrary to duty in believing as she does? Is she being irresponsible? Clearly not. There could be something defective about her, some malfunction not apparent on the surface. She could be mistaken, a victim of illusion or wishful thinking, despite her best efforts. She could be wrong, desperately wrong, pitiably wrong, in thinking these things; nevertheless, she isn't flouting any discernible duty. She is fulfilling her epistemic responsibilities; she is doing her level best; she is justified. And this is not only true, but obviously true. We may feel in some subterranean way that without evidence she isn't justified; if so, this must be because we are importing some other conception of justification. But if it is justification in the deontological sense, the sense involving responsibility, being within one's intellectual rights, she is surely justified. How could she possibly be blameworthy or irresponsible, if she thinks about the matter as hard as she can, in the most responsible way she can, and she still comes to these conclusions? Indeed, no matter what conclusions she arrived at, wouldn't she be justified if she arrived at them in this way? Even if they are wholly unreasonable, in some clear sense? An inmate of Pine Rest Christian Psychiatric Hospital once complained that he wasn't getting the credit he deserved for inventing a new form of human reproduction, "rotational reproduction," as he called it. This kind of reproduction doesn't involve sex. Instead, you suspend a woman from the ceiling with a rope and get her rotating at a high rate of speed; the result is a large number of children, enough to populate a city the size of Chicago. As a matter of fact, he claimed, this is precisely how Chicago was populated. He realized, he said, that there is something churlish about insisting on getting all the credit due him, but he did think he really hadn't gotten enough recognition for this important discovery. After all, where would Chicago be without it? Now there is no reason to think this unfortunate man was flouting epistemic duty, or derelict with respect to cognitive requirement, or careless about his epistemic obligations, or cognitively irresponsible. Perhaps he was doing his level best to satisfy these obligations. Indeed, we can imagine that his main goal in life is satisfying his intellectual obligations and carrying out his cognitive duties. Perhaps he was dutiful in excelsis. If so, he was justified in these mad beliefs, even if they are mad, and even though they result from cognitive dysfunction. [111] Our main quarry, of course, is the de jure objection or question. One prominent candidate is the question whether the Christian believer can be justified in believing as she does. Take that term in its original and basic deontological sense. Then the question is: can the Christian believer be within her epistemic rights and epistemically responsible in forming belief as she does? Can she be justified even if she doesn't believe on the basis of propositional evidence and even if there is no good propositional evidence? The answer to this question is obvious--too obvious, in fact, for it to be the de jure question, at least if that question is to be worthy of serious disagreement and discussion. Of course she can be justified, and my guess would be that many or most contemporary Christians are justified in holding their characteristically Christian beliefs. We must therefore look elsewhere for the de jure question. __________________________________________________________________ [108] See WCD, p. 33. [109] See below, chapter 5, pp. 137ff. [110] Ed. John Smith (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959, first published 1746), p. 271. [111] Again, what I've really argued is that this believer is subjectively justified. Can the classical foundationalist concede this but claim that he is not objectively justified, that there really is a duty, whether he knows it or not, to believe only on the basis of evidence? But is there even the slightest reason to think there is any such duty? Here at the least the classicist owes us an argument. __________________________________________________________________ VI. Analogical Variations __________________________________________________________________ A. Variations on Classical Foundationalism The classical picture taken neat, therefore, is subject to devastating difficulty. Nowadays, however, it is seldom taken neat. Instead, there are many analogical extensions or analogically related alternatives for each of the three main components of the classical package: the evidentialism, the classical foundationalism, and the deontology. For example, John Mackie [112] retains the evidentialist component, claiming that Christian belief requires evidence on the part of the believer. But Mackie apparently construes evidence much more broadly than the classicist. In his view as in the classical picture, there is a body of knowledge--my evidence--with respect to which a belief must be probable, if it is to be justified; however, this evidence includes much more for Mackie than it does in the classical picture. It includes what is self-evident and incorrigible, of course, but it also includes ordinary perceptual judgments, memory beliefs, some basic science, some of the maxims of probability theory, and so on. Alternatively, we might follow Stephen Wykstra, who concedes that an individual Christian believer doesn't need evidence to be justified; still, Christian belief, he suggests, is evidence-essential in the sense that there must be propositional evidence for it in the Christian community. [113] Or we might go still further, following Norman Kretzmann [114] and broadening the classical requirement in such a way that what is required is only that the believer have evidence of some sort, even if the evidence in question isn't propositional. Sensuous experience might then be evidence for perceptual belief; other sorts of experience, perhaps some of the kinds of experience that go under the rubric religious experience', could also be evidence for Christian belief. These variations are all variations on the classical foundationalist component of the classical picture: according to Mackie and Kretzmann, the believer must have evidence, but evidence is more broadly construed; according to Wykstra, on the other hand, evidence is required, but it need not be possessed by the individual believer, so long as it resides somewhere in the believer's community. Mackie, Kretzmann, and Wykstra retain the evidentialism (with respect to Christian belief) of the classical picture, but modify the foundationalism. It isn't clear whether they accept the deontological component of the classical picture; suppose for the moment we keep that component fixed, modifying only the evidential requirement. It is then obvious, I think, that the believer can be justified even if there aren't good arguments from Mackie-style evidence, even if there isn't good propositional evidence in the community, and even if there isn't evidence in the broad Kretzmann sense. If it seems to me very strongly that the great things of the gospel are true, if upon reading the Scriptures I find myself convinced, and if after considerable reflection--on all the objections, for example--I still find myself convinced, how could I be properly blamed for believing as I do? Again, I could be wrong, deluded, a victim of wishful thinking, subject to some kind of cognitive disorder: nevertheless, there is no duty I am flouting. If the de jure question is whether the believer can be justified, or justified without evidence, the answer is still too easy: of course she can. __________________________________________________________________ [112] The Miracle of Theism. [113] See above, footnote 38. [114] In Our Knowledge of God: Essays on Natural and Philosophical Theology, ed. Kelly Clark (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1992). __________________________________________________________________ B. Variations on the Deontology The above involved extensions of the classical foundationalist ingredient of the classical picture. Note that we can also ring the analogical changes on the deontological component, and we can mix and match the extensions in a dazzling variety of combinations. I can't possibly examine all these multifarious versions of evidentialism in all their permutations and combinations, [115] but I do wish to examine one particularly salient variety: Alston justification, which is believing on the basis of a reliable ground or indicator. Alston puts it as follows: to be justified in believing that p is to be in a strong position for realizing the epistemic aim of getting the truth. . . . I will begin by making the plausible assumption that to be in an epistemically strong position in believing that p is to have an adequate ground or basis for believing that p. Where the justification is mediate, this ground will consist in other things one knows or justifiably believes. Where it is immediate, it will consist typically of some experience. . . . [116] A belief is justified, therefore, if and only if it is formed on the basis of an adequate ground. Clearly, Alston justification differs radically from the original deontological notion. That is because it doesn't contain so much as a hint of the deontology of the classical picture: "I reject all versions of a deontological concept [of justification] on the grounds that they either make unrealistic assumptions of the voluntary control of belief or they radically fail to provide what we expect of a concept of justification." [117] Well then, why does he call what he proposes justification'? Or better, why do I consider it under the rubric justification'? How is it an analogical extension of that notion? The answer is that what it requires--that the belief in question be based on a truth-conducive ground--is an analogical extension of what, according to the classical picture, is the relevant duty. There is a complex and interesting relation between justification taken deontologically, as in the classical picture, and Alston justification (justification as truth-conducive evidence or ground). The latter discards the deontology of the former, but takes the term justification' to denote the condition which, according to the former, is sufficient for satisfying the duty that, according to the former but not the latter, is in fact laid on us human beings. (I'll leave as homework the problem of figuring out how to state this more intelligibly.) Now what sort of animal is a ground of belief? A mediate ground of a belief, according to Alston, is another belief, on the basis of which the belief in question is formed; an immediate ground of a belief is an experience, on the basis of which the belief is formed. And what is it for the ground of a belief to be adequate? "The ground of a belief will suffice to justify it only if it is sufficiently indicative of the truth of the belief. If the ground is to be adequate to the task, it must be the case that the belief is very probably true, given that it was formed on that basis." [118] The idea, therefore, is that the ground G of a belief B is adequate just if a certain conditional probability is high: the probability that B is true given that it has been formed on G. And here the probability in question is an objective probability [119] of some sort; if a belief B is justified, then it was formed on the basis of a ground G, such that the objective conditional probability of B on G (P(B/G)) is high. I form the belief that the largest oak in my backyard is now losing its leaves. I form this belief on the basis of experience of some kind--as Alston might state the matter, it seems to me that the tree is presenting itself to me as losing its leaves. Then that belief is justified if and only if it is objectively probable that the tree is losing its leaves, given that I undergo that experience. Putting these elements together, we can say that a belief B is justified--actually, prima facie justified--for S if and only if it is formed on the basis of a truth-conducive ground G--if and only if, that is, it is formed on the basis of some ground G, such that the objective probability that B is true, given that it has been formed on G, is high. __________________________________________________________________ [115] For some of them, see WCD, chapter 1. I leave as homework the problem of showing that Christian belief can indeed be justified on these construals. [116] Perceiving God (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), p. 73. [117] Ibid. [118] Ibid., p. 75. [119] See WPF, pp. 138ff. __________________________________________________________________ C. Is This the de Jure Question? Have we found the (or a) relevant de jure question? Is the right question to ask the question whether Christian belief is Alston justified? More specifically, the question, for a given Christian belief B I hold--the belief, say, that in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself--is whether there is some truth-conducive ground G such that I hold the belief in question on the basis of that ground. But is this really a viable de jure question? I want to suggest that it is not. When we ask the de jure question about Christian belief, we are asking whether Christian belief is acceptable, OK, such that a sensible, intelligent, rational, informed person in something like our epistemic circumstances could or would hold such beliefs. The question as to whether such belief sometimes or typically has a truth-conducive ground, however, seems to be a very different question. I have two reasons for thinking so. In the first place, several important sorts of beliefs--a priori belief and memory belief in particular--do not seem to have a ground in Alston's sense at all, but are nonetheless perfectly in order from an epistemic point of view. Consider memory. You remember what you had for lunch: lentil soup and a doughnut. This belief isn't based on propositional evidence. You don't infer it from other things you know or believe, such things, perhaps, as your knowledge that you always have a doughnut and lentil soup for lunch, or your knowledge that it is now shortly after lunchtime and there are doughnut crumbs on your desk and an empty plastic soup dish in your trash. So it doesn't have a mediate ground. But it also isn't based on an experience. At any rate, it is clear that memory beliefs are not based on anything like sensuous experience or phenomenal imagery. [120] There may be a bit of such imagery present (a fragmentary and partial image of a doughnut or a bowl, perhaps), but you certainly don't form the belief on the basis of that image. It is clear that you could remember without having that imagery--or, indeed, any other imagery; some people report that they have no phenomenal imagery associated with memory at all. So the imagery isn't necessary. It is also insufficient; you could also have that imagery without remembering. The reason is that the imagery that goes with imagining that you had a doughnut and lentil soup for lunch, or entertaining the proposition that you did, is indistinguishable (at least in my own case) from the imagery that goes with remembering that you had a doughnut and lentil soup for lunch. And even if you do have fairly explicit phenomenal imagery in connection with this memory, you surely don't know that it was lentil soup on the basis of that imagery; the image isn't nearly clear, detailed, and explicit enough to enable you to distinguish it from, for example, imagery of pea soup, or bean soup, or many other kinds of soup. [121] Accordingly, it isn't that you know it was lentil soup on the basis of this experience; you don't form the belief that it was lentil soup with that experience as ground. (The image seems to be more like a disposable decoration.) Instead, you simply remember, simply form that belief. Or, perhaps more accurately, that belief is formed in you: you don't yourself, so to speak, take much of a hand in forming it. The same goes (though perhaps more controversially) for a priori belief. [122] I believe the proposition Necessarily, if all men are mortal and Socrates is a man, then Socrates is mortal. Now there is, indeed, a sort of imagery connected with this belief when I entertain it--perhaps something like a fragmentary image of the relevant English sentence written on a blackboard as in a logic class. But surely the belief isn't formed on the basis of that imagery; that imagery isn't anything like a ground for it; it doesn't stand to that imagery in anything like the way in which my belief that the snow in my backyard is melting stands to the visual imagery I now enjoy. Indeed, the imagery accompanying that proposition is the same, so far as I can tell, as that which accompanies entertaining Necessarily, if all men are mortal and Socrates is mortal, then Socrates is a man. So many memory and a priori beliefs are not formed on the basis of a ground in Alston's sense, either mediate or immediate. But of course many memory and a priori beliefs are eminently sensible, reasonable, rational, and the like. It therefore follows that a belief need not have a truth-conducive ground to be reasonable, sensible, or rational. Second, there are also beliefs that do have a truth-conducive ground (explained as Alston explains it) but are nonetheless not sensible or reasonable. A belief is based on an adequate ground, says Alston, if and only if it is based on a ground such that it is objectively probable that it is true, given that it is based on that ground. Note that (if objective probability conforms to the probability calculus) a necessary truth will have an objective probability of 1 on any other proposition whatever. Consider therefore the proposition 29 × 38 = 1102: the probability of this proposition is 1 on any condition whatever. Any belief in this proposition on any ground, therefore, is automatically a belief on the basis of an adequate ground. More generally, any grounded belief in any necessary proposition p is justified on this account; for the objective conditional probability that p on any proposition will be 1. So suppose I am extraordinarily gullible when it comes to set theory and believe, say, Cantor's Theorem (according to which the cardinality of any set is always less than that of its power set), not because I have understood a proof or been told by someone competent that it is true, but just because I picked up a comic book on the sidewalk and found therein a character who claims it is his favorite theorem. Then this belief of mine has a truth-conducive ground, but isn't rational or reasonable. Further and closer to current concerns, according to the bulk of the theistic tradition, God is a necessary being who has his most important attributes essentially: there is no possible world in which he does not exist, and none in which he lacks such attributes as omniscience, goodness, love, and the like. If this is true, then the proposition that there is such a being as God (or that he is omniscient, or loving) will have an unconditional objective probability of 1, and consequently an objective conditional probability of 1 on any other proposition. Hence for any ground at all, the probability that one of those beliefs is true, given that it is formed on the basis of that ground, is 1. In asking the de jure question about belief in God, however, we presumably do not mean to ask a question to which an affirmative answer follows just from the fact that God is a necessary being who has his primary attributes essentially. Suppose God is indeed a necessary being; then if I believe in God just to please my friends, or because I am brainwashed or hypnotized, or because I am part of an evil social system, I will be justified in the Alston sense. If so, however, it is too easy to achieve justification in this sense. No doubt there are variations on Alstonian justification, and in a complete treatment we should have to deal with them. But vita brevis est, even if philosophia longa est. I tentatively conclude, therefore, that the de jure question is not the question whether Christian belief is Alston justified. The de jure question is still elusive. __________________________________________________________________ [120] See WPF, pp. 58ff. [121] See WPF, pp. 57ff. [122] See WPF, pp. 104ff. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ [56] Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967. [57] In Faith and Rationality, ed. Alvin Plantinga and Nicholas Wolterstorff (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983). [58] Actually, this is not a traditional philosophical problem in the sense that it is a problem for all philosophers or all positions in philosophy; you will find it pressing only if you accept some version of classical foundationalism. [59] The exception was William James, whose "The Will to Believe," in The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (New York: Longmans, Green, 1897), was widely anthologized and took the radical line (as it was then perceived) that if religious belief is a live option for you, and a forced option, then believing even without evidence is excusable. See below, p. 89. __________________________________________________________________ 4 Rationality We have seen that the relevant de jure question--the question whether Christian belief is justified, or rational, or reasonable, or intellectually respectable--can't be the question of justification strictly so called. That is, it can't be the Lockean, deontological question whether Christian believers are or can be epistemically responsible, within their epistemic rights, flouting no epistemic duties, in believing as they do. That question, we saw, is much too easy to answer: obviously, a believer--even an intelligent, well-educated, contemporary believer who has heard and considered all the objections--can be justified in this original sense. We saw also that there are analogically extended senses of the term justification'; but none of them is such that it is clear that a Christian believer can't be justified, in that sense, in holding Christian belief. Believers may be mistaken; they may be deluded; they may be foolish; they may be insufficiently critical (in a way that doesn't involve blameworthiness); but there is no reason to think either that they are inevitably derelict in their epistemic duties or that they are unjustified in one of those analogical extensions of the term. __________________________________________________________________ I. Some Assorted Versions of Rationality Of course there are other questions lurking in the nearby bushes, other ways to construe the de jure question. In particular, we can ask whether the believer is rational in believing as she does. Many who put the de jure question or urge a de jure criticism put it in terms of rationality, not justification. (More often, they put it both ways, sometimes just using the one as a synonym for the other.) So suppose we look into this matter: could it be that the appropriate de jure question is whether Christian belief (with or without evidence) is rational? But what is it for a belief to be rational? The first thing to note is that this term is multifarious, indeed, polyphonous, as our postmodern compatriots like to say. There are several importantly different ideas of rationality floating around, and the first thing we have to do is to specify the concept of rationality involved in our question. What are the main conceptions of rationality? In Warrant: The Current Debate (hereafter WCD), I specified some different but analogically related senses of the term. The basic sense is (1) Aristotelian rationality, the sense in which, as Aristotle said, "Man is a rational animal." Related to it in various ways are (2) rationality as proper function; (3) rationality as within or conforming to the deliverances of reason; (4) means-ends rationality, where the question is whether a particular means someone chooses is, in fact, a good means to her ends; and (5) deontological rationality. We must look briefly at these; after that, we shall turn at slightly greater length to William Alston's practical rationality. Our task will be lightened, however, by the fact that we have already dealt with (5) in the last chapter. [123] __________________________________________________________________ A. Aristotelian Rationality According to Aristotle, man is a rational animal. Fair enough--on this point as on others, Aristotle is no doubt right: but what specifically did he have in mind? Here the term rational' apparently points to or expresses a property that distinguishes human beings from other animals. As Aristotle saw it, this property is the possession of ratio, the power of reason. The idea is that human beings, unlike at least some other animals, have concepts and can hold beliefs; they can reason, reflect, and think about things, even things far removed in space or time; human beings are (or, at any rate, can be) knowers. This is what it is to be a rational creature; and this is what Aristotle saw as distinctive about human beings. Of course rational powers can come in degrees. We ordinarily think of ourselves (no doubt in a burst of specific chauvinism) as much more talented, along these lines, than other terrestrial animals, although perhaps we are prepared to concede that some of them display at least rudimentary powers of reason. We also realize there may be other creatures, perhaps in other parts of the universe, that put us absolutely in the shade when it comes to intellectual power. Now is the de jure question the question whether a creature rational in this sense can accept Christian belief? Presumably not: given the many millions of rational animals who do accept it, that question, like the question of justification, has much too easy an answer. __________________________________________________________________ B. Rationality as Proper Function If we agree that rational creatures do and therefore can accept Christian belief, we might ask whether it is only malfunctioning rational creatures that do so, creatures whose rational faculties are in some way dysfunctional. A person who suffers from pathological confusion, or flight of ideas, or the manic stage of bipolar disorder, or delusions (perhaps thinking the Martians are out to get him) is said to be irrational. Here the problem is dysfunction, malfunction of the rational faculties. The paranoid doesn't form beliefs in the way a normal, properly functioning human being does; some part of the cognitive apparatus fails to function properly. Pathologically confused people may not know what day it is or where they live. Such dysfunction can be long-term or episodic; if it is the latter, then after the episode is over, we say rationality is restored. This sense of rationality, therefore, has to do with proper function, the absence of dysfunction or pathology: you are rational if not subject to such pathology. Correlatively, irrationality, in this sense, is a matter of malfunction of (some of) the rational faculties, the faculties by virtue of which we are rational animals. So there is an analogical connection between Aristotelian rationality and rationality construed as proper function. We must distinguish two forms of rationality as proper function. On the one hand, there is what we might call internal rationality. We can initially characterize internal rationality as a matter of proper function of all belief-producing processes downstream from experience'. How can we explain this metaphor? We may begin by noting that experience comes in several varieties. First, there is sensuous imagery, the kind of experience you have most prominently in vision but in hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching as well. To use Roderick Chisholm's terminology, in this kind of experience one is appeared to in such and such a way. Sensuous imagery plays an enormously significant role in perception; perceptual beliefs are formed in response to sensuous imagery and on the basis of such imagery. Still, this isn't the only kind of experience that goes with belief formation. In chapter 3 (p. 106) and in Warrant and Proper Function (188-93, hereafter WPF), I pointed out that the formation of memory beliefs is often unaccompanied by phenomenal experience, or else accompanied only by fragmentary, fleeting, indistinct, hard-to-focus sensuous imagery. You remember that you went to a party in Novosibirsk; there is a bit of imagery, all right, although it is fleeting, partial, indistinct, and such that when you try to focus your attention on it, it disappears. But there is another kind of experience present: the belief that it was Novosibirsk (and not, say, Cleveland) seems right, acceptable, natural; it forces itself upon you; it seems somehow inevitable (the right words are hard to find). The belief feels right, acceptable, and natural; it feels different from what you think is a false belief. The same goes for a priori belief. You believe that no dogs are sets. This belief, too, involves little by way of sensuous imagery. When you consider that proposition, perhaps it is as if you catch a momentary and fleeting glimpse of part of a sentence expressing the proposition, or perhaps a fragmentary glimpse of a dog, or perhaps of a dog enclosed within braces; this imagery seems unimportant, however, more like mere decoration than something on the basis of which the belief in question is formed. And here, too, there is also this other sort of experience: it's just seeming true and indeed necessarily true that no dogs are sets. Thinking about this proposition feels different from thinking about the proposition that some dogs (your dog Tietje, for example) are sets. Still a third kind of example, also discussed in more detail in WPF (48ff.): the knowledge that it is you (as opposed to someone else) who is now perceiving the page in front of you. This too is not a matter of sensuous imagery: it is not on the basis of sensuous imagery that you believe it is you who are perceiving that page, rather than your cousin in Cleveland. Here too there is that other sort of phenomenal experience, that feeling that the proposition in question is the right one. Suppose we call this second kind of phenomenal experience doxastic experience because it always goes with the formation of belief. [124] Internal rationality includes, in the first place, forming or holding the appropriate beliefs in response to experience, including both phenomenal imagery and doxastic experience. With respect to the first, I will form beliefs appropriate to the phenomenal imagery I enjoy: for example, when appeared to in the way that goes with seeing a gray elephant, I will not form the belief that I am perceiving an orange flamingo. That sort of response is precluded by internal rationality. But perhaps the second--forming the right beliefs in response to doxastic experience--is more interesting. A pathological skeptic, for example, might have the same sort of doxastic experience as the rest of us, but still be unable to form the appropriate beliefs. I might be appeared to in the way that goes with seeing that Peter is running toward me; out of pathological caution, however, I am unable to believe that he is really running toward me (after all, it could be a cunningly contrived robot, or I could be dreaming, or a brain in a vat, or a victim of some other kind of illusion; and can I be certain that it is really me that he is running toward?). This sort of response is also precluded by internal rationality. By contrast, René Descartes notes that there are people "whose cerebella are so troubled and clouded by the violent vapours of black bile, that they . . . imagine that they have an earthenware head or are nothing but pumpkins or are made of glass." [125] That sort of response is not (necessarily) precluded by internal rationality. Perhaps these madmen are subjected to overwhelming doxastic experience here. Perhaps this proposition--that their heads are made of glass--seems utterly obvious to them, as obvious as that 3 + 1 = 4. Then the problem lies with this seeming, with their having this kind of doxastic experience. Given this doxastic experience, what proper function requires (all else being equal) is forming this belief; and that they do. They display external irrationality, but not internal irrationality. There is more that internal rationality requires; we can deal with it briefly. A person is internally rational only if her beliefs are coherent, or at any rate are sufficiently coherent to satisfy proper function. If she is internally rational, then if she believes that her head is made of earthenware, she will not also believe that it is made of flesh and blood--or at least won't believe these both within the confines of the same thought, so to speak. Much more ought to be said about the coherence required by proper function; it will have to await another occasion. Further, an internally rational person will draw the right inferences when the occasion arises: for example, someone who is internally rational but believes that her head is made of earthenware will probably believe that playing football (at any rate without a really good helmet) is very dangerous. Still further, given the beliefs she has, she will make the right decisions with respect to her courses of action--that is, the decisions required by proper function. Given that you do believe you are made of glass, for example, the rational thing to do is to avoid bumps. And finally, if she is internally rational, she will do what proper function requires with respect to such things as preferring to believe what is true, looking for further evidence when that is appropriate, and in general being epistemically responsible. And now that we have internal rationality in hand, external rationality is easy to explain. It requires, first, proper function with respect to the formation of the sensuous experience on which perceptual belief is based. And it consists second in the formation of the right kind of doxastic experience--that is, the sort of doxastic experience required by proper function. I suppose it would be widely conceded that Christian belief can be held by people whose rational faculties are not malfunctioning, or at any rate not malfunctioning in a way that involves clinical psychoses. [126] The fact is many Christian believers are able to hold jobs, some even as academics. (Of course, you may think this latter guarantees little by way of cognitive proper function.) So presumably the de jure question is also not the question whether Christian belief can be held by people whose cognitive or rational faculties are functioning properly, at least in this clinical sense. But this by no means settles the issue; there are subtler forms of cognitive malfunction, and impedance of cognitive proper function. As a matter of fact, the (or a) sensible version of the de jure question does lie in the neighborhood of one of these subtler forms. We'll return to the notion of proper function in more depth and detail in the next chapter, where we explore the notion of warrant. In the meantime, however, suppose we turn to still another kind of rationality. __________________________________________________________________ [124] From doxa, the Greek word for belief. In WPF I called this kind of experience impulsional evidence'. [125] Meditations, Meditation I. [126] Although Richard Rorty somewhere suggests that in the new liberal society, those who think there is such a thing as the chief end of man will have to be considered insane. See also Daniel Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995), p. 516, where he suggests that perhaps Baptists should be kept in zoos and preserved as interesting cultural relics, but only if they refrain from telling their children such patent untruths as that "man' is not a product of evolution by natural selection" (519). __________________________________________________________________ C. The Deliverances of Reason First, what are the deliverances of reason? Here we have to take the term reason' a bit more narrowly than we did in thinking about Aristotelian rationality. Among the things we know, some are self-evident. It isn't entirely easy to see what it is for a proposition to be self-evident; [127] the rough idea, however, is that a proposition is self-evident if it is so utterly obvious that we can't even understand it without seeing that it is true. Examples would be propositions like 7 + 5 = 12; if all men are mortal and Socrates is a man, then Socrates is mortal; and if Tom is taller than Sam, and Sam is taller than George, then Tom is taller than George. And the idea is that reason, taken in this narrower sense, is the faculty or power whereby we see the truth of self-evident propositions. Of course it is also reason whereby we see that one proposition entails or implies another: if I learn from the bartender that everyone at the party was drunk, and from you that Paul was at the party, I can conclude that Paul was drunk. The deliverances of reason, therefore, will be self-evident propositions, together with propositions that are self-evident consequences of deliverances of reason. (We might put this by saying that self-evidenceis closed under self-evident consequence.) And then we might say that a proposition is rational if it is among the deliverances of reason, and irrational if its denial is among the deliverances of reason. Note that many propositions--for example, the proposition that Caesar crossed the Rubicon--will then be neither rational nor irrational: neither they nor their denials are among the deliverances of reason. [128] And again, the connection with Aristotelian rationality is easy to see: reason taken in this narrow sense is one of the faculties the possession of which distinguishes us from other animals, and when it is functioning properly, what it yields are the deliverances of reason. There is a problem here. The deliverances of reason obviously come in degrees: some seem much more compelling than others, and only some have the overwhelmingly obvious nature of the propositions mentioned above. So, for example, it is obvious, I think, that there aren't any things that do not exist, although this has been disputed, and although it is not as obvious as the propositions mentioned in the above paragraph. Another example is serious actualism: the proposition that an object has properties only in worlds in which it exists. [129] This proposition has intuitive warrant, intuitive support, and can be deduced from actualism, together with other obvious principles; but it isn't just self-evident. You can understand it and nevertheless reject it, and indeed some philosophers do exactly that. [130] Should we admit these propositions that have at least some intuitive warrant to the august company of deliverances of reason, even if they are not self-evident? Indeed we should; if we do, however, we can no longer say that the deliverances of reason are closed under self-evident entailment. That is because of Russell-like paradoxes. It is a deliverance of reason that there are properties, that there is such a property as self-exemplification, and that every property has a complement, so that there is also such a property as non-self-exemplification. The rest of the sad story is well known. Is Christian belief rational in this sense? No; the central truths of Christianity are certainly not self-evident, nor, so far as anyone can see, are they such that they can be deduced from what is self-evident. Of course, that is nothing whatever against Christian belief; the same holds for, for example, what we are taught by historians, physicists, and evolutionary biologists. So the de jure question can't be the question whether Christian belief is rational in this sense. That is because a negative answer to the question is supposed to be a serious criticism of Christian belief; but it is no criticism of Christian belief (or the theory of evolution, or the belief that you live in Cleveland) that it is not a deliverance of reason in this sense. Well, is Christian belief irrational, in this sense? That is, are the denials of some of the propositions falling within Christian belief either self-evident or deducible from propositions that are self-evident? Could that be the de jure question? If Christian beliefs were irrational in this sense, that would certainly be something against them. Some have certainly argued that characteristic Christian belief is inconsistent. For example, it has often been claimed that the existence of God is incompatible with the existence of evil; Christian doctrine, however, embraces both. I believe it is clear, however, that there is no inconsistency here; [131] in fact those contemporaries who press the problem of evil against Christian or theistic belief no longer make that claim of inconsistency. Some atheologians have also urged that certain Christian doctrines (e.g., the doctrine of the trinity or the doctrine of the incarnation) are self-contradictory and hence inconsistent with the deliverances of reason. But these claims are at best inconclusive; everything depends on which precise formulation of these doctrines we consider. Some of these formulations may perhaps be inconsistent, although it is very hard to find any formulations of these doctrines that are both clearly inconsistent and also widely accepted. (In particular, the formulations to be found in the great creeds of the Christian church are not clearly inconsistent.) Other formulations clearly are not inconsistent. Further, Christians who come to realize that they have accepted an inconsistent version of one of these doctrines can easily replace that version by one that is not inconsistent. So if this were the de jure question, then even if some formulations of central Christian doctrine are contrary to the deliverances of reason, the unhappy condition of believing such a thing could be easily avoided: just move to a formulation that is not inconsistent. But those who urge the de jure question with respect to Christian belief do not, presumably, mean to claim just that Christian belief is inconsistent: even if it is perfectly consistent, they think, there is still something seriously wrong with it. We can't mollify them merely by pointing out that there are consistent versions of Christian belief. This, too, it seems, is not the de jure question. __________________________________________________________________ [127] See WPF, pp. 108ff. [128] Alternatively, we might say that a proposition is irrational if its denial is among the deliverances of reason, and rational if it is not irrational: then, of course, every proposition will be either rational or irrational. [129] See "Replies," in Alvin Plantinga, ed. James Tomberlin and Peter van Inwagen (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1985), pp. 316ff. [130] See John Pollock, "Plantinga on Possible Worlds," in Alvin Plantinga, pp. 126ff., and also Nathan Salmon, "Nonexistence," Noûs (September 1998), p. 290. [131] See chapter 9 of my The Nature of Necessity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974). __________________________________________________________________ D. Means-End Rationality What about means-end rationality, what our continental cousins sometimes call Zweckrationalität? This is the sort of rationality displayed by the actions of someone who aims to achieve a certain goal and chooses means that are effective for attaining that goal. Perhaps, more exactly, we should say that this kind of rationality characterizes the actions of a rational creature--one rational in the Aristotelian and proper function sense--who is aiming to achieve a certain goal; so once again we see the connection with the basic Aristotelian sense. Means-end rationality is a matter of knowing how to get what you want; we might think of it as the cunning of reason. [132] If I want to get to Los Angeles as quickly as possible, it would be irrational to take the bus or ride my bicycle: the rational thing to do would be to take the plane. Is the de jure question about this kind of rationality? Means-end rationality is a property of actions; hence it isn't initially obvious that belief is the sort of thing that can be rational and irrational in this sense, because it isn't initially obvious that beliefs are actions. In fact it seems initially obvious that beliefs (believings) are not actions. You don't ordinarily form a given belief because you think holding that belief would be a good means to some end or other. Still, suppose we did think of belief as a sort of action (perhaps in a limiting sense); then presumably the end in view would be believing or knowing the truth. And then Christian belief would be rational in this sense if and only if a rational person, one whose cognitive faculties were functioning properly, would or could choose this means to the end of believing the truth. But there is something very peculiar about this suggestion. What you rationally choose as a means to an end depends on what you believe--for example, on what you believe about the likelihood that a given course of action will yield the result you are aiming at. But what if your aim is to believe truth? Then (pretending for the moment that what you believe is within your power in the appropriate way) you will, of course, believe a proposition if you think it is true: for if it is true, then, naturally enough, believing it is a good way to believe truth. So taking the action of believing Christian teaching will be rational for you, if, in fact, you do believe Christian teaching. (This oddness brings out the way in which belief really isn't action or, if it is, at least isn't much like other forms of action.) The real question, then, will be whether a rational person can believe the claims of Christianity, whether a rational person can accept Christian belief. And that means that the question whether Christian belief is means-end rational really reduces to the question whether it is rational in some other sense: the Aristotelian sense or, more likely, the proper function sense. So we don't have here an independent sense of rationality; because we have already dealt with that sense, what we really see is that the de jure question can't be this question of means-end rationality either. __________________________________________________________________ [132] Of course there are many variations on this notion of rationality. The rational action might be the one that would in fact lead to the achievement of your goal, or the one you think would, or the one you would think would, if your cognitive faculties were functioning properly, or the one you would think would if your cognitive faculties were functioning properly and you reflected long enough, or the one you would think would if . . . and you were sufficiently acute, or . . . and you were not distracted by lust, greed or ambition, and so on. __________________________________________________________________ [123] Deontological rationality is really justification; see above, chapter 3, p. 87. It is worth noting the analogical connection between justification and rationality. __________________________________________________________________ II. Alstonian Practical Rationality None of the varieties of rationality I have so far mentioned offers the resources for a sensible de jure question. In his magisterial book, Perceiving God, [133] William Alston proposes still another way to construe rationality (and the de jure question). Given the power and depth of Alston's account, this one merits a more careful look. __________________________________________________________________ A. The Initial Question The conclusion of Alston's book is really that it is rational--practically rational, as he says--for at least many of us to engage in what he calls Christian Mystical Practice' (CMP, for short): the practice of forming beliefs about God (or the Ultimate) on the basis of experience of God, or more exactly (putative) perception of God (or the Ultimate): My main thesis in this chapter, and indeed in the whole book, is that CMP is rationally engaged in [my emphasis] since it is a socially established doxastic practice that is not demonstrably unreliable or otherwise disqualified for rational acceptance. (194) The sort of rationality at issue here is practical' rationality; we shall therefore consider whether the de jure question might be the question whether Christian belief is practically rational in his sense. Now Alston himself does not really address specifically Christian belief--trinity, incarnation, atonement, and resurrection, for example. He is instead concerned with the sorts of beliefs that are produced by (putative) perception of God. These include such beliefs as that God is glorious, delightful, holy, majestic, all-powerful, loving, and the like, as well as such beliefs as that he is strengthening, supporting or comforting one. These are not specifically Christian beliefs, and, of course, our de jure question is about the rationality of specifically Christian beliefs. Nevertheless, perceptual beliefs about God could contribute support to Christian beliefs about God; in any event, it will be of interest to ask whether Christian belief is rational in the sense of rationality Alston identifies, even if he himself does not address that issue. Further, the question whether Christian belief is practically rational seems to me at any rate closer to the de jure question we seek than the candidates we have already canvassed. But what is this practical rationality'? How does Alston understand this protean notion, and how does he argue for the practical rationality of CMP and the beliefs it produces? __________________________________________________________________ B. Doxastic Practices Here we need a bit of stage setting. A distinctive feature of Alston's entire epistemology is its emphasis upon social doxastic practices--socially established ways of forming belief. (It makes a certain rough sense to think of Alston as judiciously blending Reid with Wittgenstein. [134] ) For example, there is sense perception (hereafter SP), the social practice of forming beliefs on the basis of perception of objects in our environment; there is also the practice of forming beliefs by way of reasoning, both deductive and nondeductive, as well as the practice of forming beliefs on the basis of memory. Together these three form what Alston calls "the standard package," perhaps because they are shared by all properly functioning human beings. Further, there is the practice of attributing beliefs, desires, pains and pleasures, affective states, spiritual gifts, and the like to our fellow human beings. Thomas Reid calls this practice (or, rather, the faculty or power that underlies it) sympathy'; we may think of sympathy as part of SP or, if we prefer, as a practice intimately linked with SP, but nonetheless separate and semiautonomous. (If we think of it the latter way, we should consider it part of the standard package.) These are doxastic practices: they issue in the formation of beliefs. They are also social practices in that they contain a considerable component contributed by our social environment. SP, for example, involves a substantial social component in that what we learn from others by way of teaching and testimony becomes part of the practice. For example, what we learn from others is involved in the society of checks and tests whereby we determine whether a putative perception is a real perception; I had to learn from others (parents, for example) what it is that I perceive when I perceive a tree or house or star. The contributions of nature and nurture may vary over these different practices; the contribution of nurture is perhaps maximal with respect to SP and perhaps minimal with respect to our grasp of elementary arithmetic and logic. In addition to these universally shared practices, there is also what Alston calls MP, mystical practice', the practice whereby many but not all of us form beliefs about God (or the Ultimate) on the basis of experience or perception of God (or the Ultimate). CMP is a specific variant of mystical practice, where the beliefs formed are the specifically Christian beliefs held by Christians of all stripes in many different parts of the world and at all times since the beginning of the Christian era. __________________________________________________________________ [134] See Alston's "A Doxastic Practice Approach to Epistemology," Knowledge and Skepticism, ed. M. Clay and K. Lehrer (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1988). __________________________________________________________________ C. Epistemic Circularity Clearly, we can raise many questions about these practices: in particular, we can ask whether they are reliable. We can also ask whether we can show that they are reliable. If we ask this latter question about SP, then we are asking whether we can show or successfully argue that the beliefs formed in this practice are for the most part true or, at any rate, close to the truth, or likely to be true or close to the truth. Our main target, of course, is CMP; but because Alston thinks of CMP as essentially involving perception of God, he attacks the question of the reliability of CMP in tandem with the counterpart question about SP. Alston concedes that we can't give a good noncircular argument for the claim that CMP is in fact reliable. He pays the same compliment to SP, however: we can't give a good noncircular argument for its reliability either. So that distressing fact about CMP is balanced by a complementary distressing fact about SP. The problem with arguments for the reliability of SP is typically what he calls epistemic circularity, a malady from which an argument for the reliability of a faculty or source of belief suffers when one of its premises is such that my acceptance of that premise originates in the operation of the very faculty or source of belief in question. If you give an epistemically circular argument for the reliability of a faculty, then you rely on that very faculty for the truth of one of your premises. An obvious example would be arguing that your intuitive arithmetical faculties are reliable by pointing out that your arithmetic intuitions seem to you to be intuitively sound. A less obviously circular project would be that of trying to determine if human cognitive faculties (including your own) are reliable by doing some science: you find out what human beings think, and then check to see whether what they think is true. Clearly enough, this procedure is epistemically circular, for you rely on human cognitive faculties--yours--in finding out what human beings think and also checking to see if what they think is true. Alston detects many examples of epistemic circularity (more than you might have thought), some obvious and some not so obvious. I believe he succeeds in establishing the important conclusion that it is not possible to show in a noncircular fashion that SP is reliable--at any rate he gets as close to establishing this conclusion as philosophers ever get to establishing any important conclusion. [135] So according to Alston, SP and CMP are in the same leaky epistemological boat. Indeed, the fact is, he argues, all of our basic doxastic practices are in the same epistemological boat; none of them can be shown in noncircular fashion to be reliable. __________________________________________________________________ [135] The argument is given at even greater depth and explicitness in his The Reliability of Sense Perception (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993). __________________________________________________________________ D. The Argument for Practical Rationality The unhappy developments just explained, says Alston, present us with a "crisis of rationality" and a "desperate situation": "The course of the argument led us to the conclusion that with respect to even those sources of belief of which we are normally the most confident we have no sufficient noncircular reason for taking them to be reliable" (146). What are we to do? Well, we are obliged to settle for second best: although we can't show that any of these practices is reliable, perhaps we can show that we are rational--practically rational--to engage in them. Alston offers two connected arguments for supposing that it is practically rational to engage in these practices. According to the first, in essence, it is perfectly sensible or rational to continue to form beliefs in the SP and CMP ways, because (1) those ways do not lead to massive inconsistencies, (2) there is no reason to think them unreliable, (3) we know of no alternative doxastic practices whose reliability we could demonstrate in an epistemically noncircular fashion, and (4) changing to some other practice would be massively difficult and disruptive. According to the second argument, any socially and psychologically established doxastic practice that meets certain other plausible conditions is prima facie rational (i.e., such that it is prima facie rational to engage in it); such a practice will be all-things-considered rational if, as far as we can see, there is no reason to abandon it. These two arguments are connected, as I shall argue below; it is only the second that he explicitly employs with respect to CMP. Suppose we begin by examining the second argument; as we shall see, this argument leads back to the first. Here is how Alston puts the matter: My main thesis . . . is that CMP is rationally engaged in since it is a socially established doxastic practice that is not demonstrably unreliable or otherwise disqualified for rational acceptance. If CMP is, indeed, a socially established doxastic practice, it follows from the position defended in Chapter 4 that it is prima facie worthy of rational participation. And this means that it is prima facie rational to regard it as reliable, sufficiently reliable to be a source of prima facie justification of the beliefs it engenders. And if, furthermore, it is not discredited by being shown to be unreliable or deficient in some other way that will cancel its prima facie rationality, then we may conclude that it is unqualifiedly rational to regard it as sufficiently reliable to use in belief formation. (194) The basic contention is that it is prima facie rational to engage in CMP . . . because it is a socially established doxastic practice; and that it is unqualifiedly rational to engage in it . . . because we lack sufficient reason for regarding it as unreliable or otherwise disqualified for rational participation. (223) The main premise of this argument, then, is: It is prima facie rational (practically rational) to engage in a socially established doxastic practice, and unqualifiedly rational (rational all things considered) to engage in a socially established practice that doesn't encounter severe internal or external incompatibilities. And in chapters 5 through 7 Alston goes on to argue that CMP is indeed a socially established doxastic practice, and that it does not encounter severe internal or external incompatibilities. __________________________________________________________________ E. Practical Rationality Initially Characterized Turn now to the main premise. First, I don't know precisely how to state the second part, the part about rationality all things considered', but while this is mildly annoying, it isn't really serious, because I intend to comment only on the first part. How exactly are we to understand this proposition, and what is the sense of rational' in which it is prima facie rational to engage in a socially established doxastic practice? As to the second, we are talking about the rationality or lack thereof of taking a course of action, of doing something or other, of acting in a certain way. (That is why we're talking practical rationality.) Whether an action is rational for me will obviously have something to do with what it is I am aiming at in taking that action, what I am trying to accomplish, what my purpose, end, goal is. So the kind of rationality at issue is that means-ends rationality, that Zweckrationalität we came across above (p. 115). The rational action, for me, is the one that will contribute to the realization of my goal, or contribute more to it than any other action open to me. But is it the action that will in fact contribute to my goal that is rational for me, or the one I believe will so contribute? Presumably the second: I am not irrational, in taking a given line of action, if I make a perfectly sensible mistake about what the best means to my end is. [136] If I am thirsty and what I want is a drink of water, it will be rational for me to open the faucet and hold a glass under it; I believe that is a fine way to get a glass of water. It would be irrational for me, under these circumstances, to go (instead) for a walk in the desert; I know that water is hard to find in the desert. On the other hand, if I believed that the faucet isn't connected to any source of water, then the action of opening the faucet wouldn't be a rational way for me to get a drink; and if I believed the nearest water is in the Sonoran Desert just outside Tucson, the action of going for a walk in the desert would be rational. Now the case under consideration, of course, is the case of those doxastic practices; we are to ask whether it is rational to form beliefs by engaging in SP, CMP, or both. Here our relevant aim or goal, says Alston, is that of getting in the right relation to the truth, achieving some appropriate balance between avoiding error and believing truth. And now the question for us is whether a rational way to try to achieve that goal is to form beliefs as we always have, by employing SP, CMP, or both. Of course, this question has about it a certain air of unreality. It is up to me whether I open the faucet to get a drink of water, but it isn't really up to me whether I will form beliefs in accord with SP. I don't have any choice in the matter. And that means that the question of the practical rationality of continuing in SP is a little peculiar. I might as well ask whether it is rational for me to continue to be such that the earth attracts my body with a force that is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between us: this really isn't up to me. The same goes with respect to my major ways of forming belief: it isn't up to me whether I form beliefs in those ways. I can try as hard as I like, but (apart from such draconian measures as mind-altering drugs) I doubt that I could seriously alter my basic belief-forming proclivities. Offer me a million dollars to believe that I live in Wyoming or that I am really the president of the United States: I can strain my utmost, but I won't be able to collect. [137] Alston is perfectly well aware of the problem here, and what he suggests is that the interesting question is whether it would be rational to continue to engage in the practice in question if it were within my power to continue and within my power to refrain (168). The question is what it would be rational for me to do, if I were in a certain position: a position in which one of the things I believe, and believe truly, is that it is within my power to continue to form beliefs in the ways I have (by using the standard package and CMP), and also within my power to refrain from forming beliefs in those ways--either forming no beliefs at all of those sorts, or perhaps using some quite different belief-forming practice. __________________________________________________________________ [136] As we saw above in footnote 10, there are important distinctions within this category. [137] Well, perhaps I do have a bit more control over my belief-forming proclivities than over whether my body is attracted by the earth. The fact is there are rather standard ways in which I can influence, mold, or form my belief-producing tendencies. __________________________________________________________________ F. The Original Position Suppose (with an apologetic bow to John Rawls) we call this position the original position'. Our question, specified to the standard package, is something like this. Suppose I am in the original position: I know (or at any rate believe truly) that it is within my power to stop forming beliefs in the ordinary way, via SP, memory, and reasoning (the standard package). Perhaps I also know that it is within my power to choose some other way of forming belief. Then what would be the rational thing to do: continue to form beliefs as I have all along, try some other way, or give up on this whole belief-forming enterprise? The answer, as we have seen, depends at least in part on my aims, ends, and goals. If my aim is psychological comfort, feeling really good about myself, perhaps I should choose some belief-forming mechanisms that lead me to think I am a really fine fellow. Perhaps I should choose a way that will bring it about that I believe I have just won the Nobel Prize in chemistry, heroically overcoming such serious obstacles as that I have no training in the subject and know next to nothing about it. Naturally I should carefully avoid any belief-forming practices on the basis of which I would come to see the true extent of my failures and ineptness, my sins and miseries, as the Heidelberg Catechism puts it. In the present context, of course, my aim, according to Alston, is not personal comfort, or happiness, or psychological well-being, but getting properly in touch with the truth. The rational course depends on my aims and goals; it also depends on what I believe--that is, what I believe at the time I take the decision in question. If my aim is to feel good about myself, it would be irrational to choose belief-forming mechanisms that, as I believe, would lead to a proper knowledge of my sins and miseries. To make the rational choice, I must figure out which course is most likely to lead to the accomplishment of my goal(s), and then act on that belief by taking that course. And this leads to an important question about the main premise. As you recall, it begins thus: It is prima facie rational (practically rational) to engage in a socially established doxastic practice. . . . But why this emphasis on socially established doxastic practices? True, if in the original position I think socially established practices are especially likely to yield true beliefs, then the rational thing for me to do, in that position, is to choose socially established doxastic practices. But what if I don't think that? I unwisely read Nietzsche, becoming convinced that the common herd is commonly wrong; I develop a lordly Nietzschean disdain for the ways in which the generality of humankind form their belief. Then presumably the rational thing would be to choose practices that are not socially established. I should, instead, choose practices that are enjoyed only by the fortunate few whose Promethean efforts have taken them far beyond hoi polloi. Why is social establishment important or relevant? What counts, for practical rationality, is what I think will achieve my goal; in the original position, it may or may not be the case that I think socially established practices are especially likely to achieve my goal of believing the truth. Here we see the connection between the first and second of Alston's arguments for the practical rationality of SP and CMP. The main premise of the second argument, we might say, takes it for granted that in the original position I believe that socially established practices are as likely to lead us to the right relationship to the truth as any alternative; and indeed I suppose most of us do in fact believe that. The main premise of the first argument is different; it is that I don't know that SP (or CMP) is subject to any massive unreliability, and I also don't know of any alternative practice I could adopt which is such that I could show with respect to it that it is reliable. In the original position (the first argument continues), I would have this belief (I would believe that I know of no better alternative practice); therefore, the rational thing to do is to stick with what I've got. (Or if that seems a bit strong, it is at any rate true that sticking with my present practices is a rational thing to do.) The first argument is the basic one; the second argument takes for granted the main premise of the first argument and then incorporates something else most of us are in fact inclined to believe, namely, that socially established doxastic practices have a good chance of being reliable, perhaps a better chance than idiosyncratic doxastic practices. __________________________________________________________________ G. The Wide Original Position These thoughts lead to a crucial question: precisely what is it that I believe in the original position? In particular, what do I believe about the reliability of SP and CMP in that position? Is the idea that my beliefs, in the original position, are as much as possible like the beliefs I do in fact have, given that (in that position) I know or truly believe that it is within my power to give up SP, CMP, or both? (Call this the wide original position.) Perhaps that is the way to think of the original position. But this doesn't take us very far. The fact is that I now believe that both SP and CMP are reliable. Therefore, if my beliefs in the original position are the ones I do in fact have, the question as to the rational course is easily answered: obviously, I should continue to form beliefs in the way I have been forming them. My aim is to be in the right relationship to the truth; I propose to attain as good a mixture of achieving the truth and avoiding error as possible; but in fact I believe that SP and CMP offer a vastly better chance to achieve that goal than any alternative I can think of; therefore, the rational choice for me to make, obviously enough, is to continue both in SP and in CMP. Here there is a strong odor of triviality. I do in fact think both SP and CMP are reliable; so if, in the original position, I have the beliefs about SP and CMP that in fact I do have, then in that position, naturally enough, the rational choice would be to continue with SP and CMP. Given what I do believe about them, that would be the rational thing to do. This conclusion, while no doubt true, is pretty weak tea. Of course, if I knew I could refrain from forming beliefs in the SP and CMP way, and also believed that those ways were reliable, more reliable than any alternative way open to me, I would choose to continue to form beliefs that way. True, but not very interesting: how would this fact show or tend to show that my SP and CMP beliefs are in fact rational, in some interesting sense? We are told that if we knew it was within our power to continue to form beliefs in this way, and also within our power to abstain from so doing, then if we believed that SP and CMP are reliable, the rational thing to do would be to choose to continue to form beliefs in those ways. No doubt: nothing of interest follows. The same would go for any beliefs I have, no matter how crazy. The same would go, for example, for the insane beliefs of Descartes's madmen, who believed that they themselves were gourds--zucchini, perhaps, or summer squash--and that their heads were made of pottery. If I really do believe that I am a summer squash, then the rational thing for me to do, if offered the chance, is to continue to form beliefs in a way that yields (as I see it) this true belief. Still, that doesn't show that this belief itself is rational. We haven't yet located the de jure question. However we do have to consider another facet of the dialectical situation, one that so far I have been slighting: I am aware, in the original position, of the fact that neither SP, nor CMP, nor any other major doxastic practice can be noncircularly shown to be reliable. That, after all, is what, according to Alston, precipitated the crisis of rationality and called forth the question of rationality in the first place. It is after we realize this, he thinks, that we are in the desperate situation of which he speaks. So we must add that in the original position I am aware of the fact that we can't noncircularly establish that the practices in question are reliable. (We must also add, perhaps, that I have devoted some attention to this fact, have thought about it at least a bit; perhaps we should say that I am acutely aware of it.) This changes very little. In the original position as now conceived (the wide original position), I know that it is within my power to withhold perceptual and Christian belief; I also know that it isn't possible to give a good noncircular argument for the reliability of these sources of belief; but otherwise my beliefs are as much as possible like they are in fact. And our question remains: what would be the rational thing to do: continue with SP and CMP, or stop forming beliefs in those ways? Again, however, the answer is too easy: of course the rational thing would be to continue with SP and CMP. Once more, this is because I am in fact convinced that these sources of belief are reliable. True enough: I realize that I can't give a good noncircular argument for their reliability, but this gives me no pause. I can't see that this puts us in a desperate situation or that it should lead to a crisis of rationality: for this situation is a necessary feature of any doxastic condition. Not even God himself, necessarily omniscient as he is, can give a noncircular argument for the reliability of his ways of forming beliefs. [138] God himself is trapped inside the circle of his own ideas. About all we can say about God's ways of forming beliefs is that it is necessary, in the broadly logical sense, that a proposition p is true if and only if God believes p. [139] Of course God knows that and knows, therefore, that all of his beliefs are true. However (naturally enough), he knows this only by virtue of relying on his ways of forming beliefs. If, per impossible, he became a bit apprehensive about the reliability of those ways of forming beliefs, he would be in the same boat as we are about that question. He couldn't give an epistemically noncircular argument for the reliability of his ways of forming beliefs; for the beliefs constituting the premises of any such argument would themselves have been formed in those ways. But any epistemic debility that afflicts a necessarily omniscient being is hardly worth worrying about. In the wide original position, therefore, I would be convinced that SP and CMP are reliable sources of belief, despite the fact that I realize it isn't possible to give a good noncircular argument for their reliability; hence, in the wide original position, the rational thing to do, obviously, would be to continue with them. We are still mired in triviality. We still don't have either the de jure question or the original position quite right. The problem is that if, in the original position, we have the beliefs we actually have with respect to SP and CMP, then it is trivially obvious that the rational decision would be to continue to form beliefs in those ways. Unfortunately, the fact that this is the rational decision, given those beliefs, does nothing to show that the beliefs we form on the basis of SP and CMP are rational in any interesting sense. In particular, the atheologian who raises the de jure question with respect to Christian belief will not be mollified if told that it would be rational, given that you thought CMP reliable, to decide to continue to form beliefs in the CMP way. __________________________________________________________________ [138] Here I assume what Alston disputes: that God has beliefs. (Of course, on Alston's view, there would be something like beliefs in God.) But this is really irrelevant to the point I make here, which is that it is a necessary truth that no doxastic agent, no matter how exalted, could give a good, epistemically noncircular argument for the reliability of his doxastic faculties. [139] See my "Divine Knowledge," in Christian Perspectives on Religious Knowledge, ed. C. Stephen Evans and Merold Westphal (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993). __________________________________________________________________ H. A Narrow Original Position? In any event, there would be something very peculiar about supposing that the original position includes the beliefs I actually have about the reliability of SP and CMP (as well as the beliefs I actually form on the basis of those practices). The whole question of the rationality or sensibleness of CMP and SP arises, after all, because we realize we can't successfully argue that those sources of belief are reliable. (It is this realization that precipitates the "crisis of rationality.") We need a term for those beliefs which are such that we can't successfully argue that the sources that produce them are reliable: say that such beliefs are uncredentialed. Then the crisis of rationality, with respect to SP and CMP beliefs, arises because we realize that they are uncredentialed. What to do? Alston suggests that at any rate we can argue that it is practically rational to form belief in the CMP and SP ways. That will give us something, even if it is settling for second best. So the idea is to show that there is something rational or reasonable about beliefs formed the SP and CMP ways, by showing that it would be rational to choose to form beliefs that way in the original position. But then presumably there would be something at best very peculiar about relying on the belief that CMP and SP are reliable; that belief itself, of course, is uncredentialed. And, in fact, Alston's idea, in Perceiving God, is that these beliefs are not to be included in the original position: But I was also thinking of this subject [the person in the original position] as realizing that s/he is unable to show that any of these practices are reliable, and believing that this implies that s/he is unable to use beliefs in that reliability, or beliefs that presuppose that reliability, to determine the most rational course to take vis-à-vis belief formation. [140] The suggestion is, I think, that in the original position we bracket our confidence in the practices in question; better, we simply don't have any beliefs of this sort in that position. In making this decision, we languish (or flourish) behind a veil of ignorance. This is a narrow original position. We are to engage in the following thought experiment: try to see what it would be rational to do if you didn't already believe in the reliability of SP or CMP, knew that there are no good noncircular arguments for their reliability, and (correctly) believed that it is up to you whether you engage in those practices: under those conditions, would it be rational to continue in forming beliefs the SP or CMP way? The idea here seems to be that the original position wouldn't include the belief that SP or CMP is reliable, or even any of beliefs formed on the basis of SP and CMP; for presumably those beliefs presuppose the reliability of SP and CMP (at least if I understand what Alston means here by presuppose'). [141] Well then, what beliefs are included in this narrow original position? Which of my beliefs could I sensibly use, in coming to a decision as to whether to continue with CMP, SP, or both? Alston holds, of course, that I can properly use the premises of his arguments for the practical rationality of CMP and SP; these are included in the original position. As you recall, the premises of the first argument include something like (1) SP and CMP do not lead to massive inconsistencies; there is no reason to think them unreliable; we know of no alternative doxastic practices whose reliability we could demonstrate in an epistemically noncircular fashion; and it would be disruptive to stop forming belief in these ways; the premises of the second include (2) SP and CMP are socially established practices that are not demonstrably unreliable or otherwise disqualified; and it would be disruptive to stop forming belief in these ways. Here (1) would be teamed with another premise according to which it is practically rational to decide to continue a practice that meets the conditions (1) says SP and CMP meet; there would be a similar premise to go with (2). And Alston's idea is that at any rate we can use these premises in coming to a decision as to whether to continue in SP and CMP. So even though the original position is narrow, it would still include the premises of his arguments. But why so? Why would it be appropriate to rely on these premises, in the original position? The problem with relying on the beliefs that CMP and SP are reliable and on the beliefs that are formed by way of CMP and SP, of course, is that it is these very beliefs that are uncredentialed. Doesn't the same go, however, for the doxastic practices that yield (1) and (2)? Can we do any better with respect to them? For example, both (1) and (2) include the belief that we have been engaging in CMP and SP, forming beliefs in the CMP and SP ways. But how do I know that we have been doing this for some time? Presumably, it is only by way, in part, of perception itself: I perceive other people (or, to be really finicky, their bodies), and that perception is necessary to my knowledge that they use CMP, SP, or both. But perceptual beliefs are also uncredentialed: so these beliefs of mine are uncredentialed. [142] And how do I know that we have been doing this for some time? Presumably by way of memory. Memory beliefs too, sadly enough, are uncredentialed; there is no way, as far as I can see anyway, in which one can show, in an epistemically noncircular way, that memory is reliable. And how do we know that it would be disruptive to stop forming beliefs in these ways? Presumably on the basis of our general knowledge of human beings and human nature, at least part of which comes by way of perception. And how do I know the truth of those additional premises, according to which it would be practically rational to continue with doxastic practices that meet the conditions laid down in (1) and (2)? Here presumably the idea is that these beliefs are self-evident, or obvious, or at any rate have a good deal of intuitive support. Therefore these premises would be among the deliverances of reason. Therefore they too are uncredentialed; we can't give an epistemically noncircular argument for the reliability of reason, for in giving such an argument, obviously enough, we would be obliged to rely upon reason. So (1) and (2) are no better off than the beliefs that SP and CMP are reliable: if the latter can't properly be used in the original position because they are uncredentialed, then the same is true of the former. Indeed, as Alston himself points out (146-47), it is easy to see that none of our beliefs is credentialed. Even if we could give an argument to show that a given source of belief was, in fact, reliable, in making that argument we would be obliged to rely on other sources of beliefs. In particular, we would have to rely on reason; but clearly we can't establish that reason is reliable without relying on reason itself; so beliefs that are produced by reason are uncredentialed. Hence, if we insist that the original position must include only credentialed beliefs, it won't include any beliefs at all. And if it doesn't contain any beliefs at all, then in the original position you wouldn't have the faintest idea what to do, whether to continue with SP and CMP or not. You might as well flip a coin; more likely, the rational thing to do would be to withhold judgment altogether. But why would that matter with respect to the question of the rationality of forming beliefs in the SP or CMP way? Obviously, if you had no beliefs to go on, you couldn't come to a sensible decision as to whether to continue with SP or CMP; why would that fact show that there is something irrational in forming belief in accord with SP and CMP? If you had no beliefs at all on the subject, you couldn't come to a sensible decision as to whether to continue with SP and CMP: but that fact is quite irrelevant to the question whether there is something wrong with forming beliefs in the SP and CMP ways. If so, however, the de jure question would not be the question whether it would be rational to continue with CMP (or SP) if I were in the narrow original position. [143] Should we perhaps consider a different possible narrow original position for SP and CMP? As for the first, take the original position to include the standard package minus perception: reason, memory, and introspection, the faculty (or means) whereby we know what our experience is (for example, how we are appeared to). Of course it would include only part of memory: in the original position thus conceived, I wouldn't have any memory belief that depends upon perceptual belief. (For example, I wouldn't have the memory belief that I saw a cat yesterday, but only the belief that it seems to me that I saw a cat.) What I would have to go on, therefore, would be just introspection, reason, and some fragment of memory. Then the original position with respect to SP includes (1) my knowing that it is within my power to form beliefs in the SP way and also within my power to withhold SP beliefs, (2) my knowing that it is not possible to give a good noncircular argument for the reliability of SP, (3) my having no views as to the reliability or unreliability of this practice, and (4) my not having SP beliefs or beliefs dependent on perceptual beliefs. My aim or purpose, of course, is to believe truth and avoid error. And now the question is: what would it be rational for me to do, if in fact I were in that position? Decide to continue to form beliefs the SP way? Or reject them? Again, however, the real question, it seems to me, is this: why is that question relevant? That is, why would the answer to the question what it would be rational to do in that position have anything to do with whether it is rational, or whatever, for me to form beliefs in the SP way in the position I am actually in? I doubt that anything epistemically interesting hangs on the answer to it. What we have left isn't much to go on, and I really can't see where the probabilities would lie. [144] Well, suppose the answer is that those probabilities lie with agnosticism. All things considered, from the perspective of the narrow original position with respect to SP, it looks as if the course most likely to produce the most favorable position with respect to the truth is agnosticism about the deliverances of SP; the rational thing to do would be to withhold these beliefs. How would that be relevant to the question whether it is in fact (in the situation in which in fact I find myself) rational, in some interesting sense of rational', to form belief the SP way? If we decide this question by asking whether it would be practically rational to do so in this narrow original position, we are entirely ignoring perception as a source of warrant. We are treating it as if it had no authority or credentials of its own, even with respect to the very area to which it seems to be addressed. We are treating it in the way Thomas Reid thinks Hume treats it. As Reid also asks, however, why should I trust reason (and that smidgin of memory) more than SP? [145] Why should SP have to prove itself before the bar of reason? [146] To descend from the level of metaphor: why is it rational (in the relevant sense of rational', whatever precisely that is) for me to form belief in the SP way only if it is more likely than not from the perspective just of reason, that fragment of memory, and introspection that SP is reliable? Perhaps, from that impoverished point of view, it is not more likely than not that SP is reliable; does that show anything of interest? I doubt it. Suppose our battery of ways of forming beliefs, our belief-forming faculties, are in fact reliable; suppose, indeed, that we have been created by God, who intended that we be able to know the sorts of things we think we know by virtue of just such a battery of faculties: reason, memory, sense perception, introspection, sympathy, the sensus divinitatis and the internal instigation of the Holy Spirit (see below, chapter 8), if there are such sources of belief, and all the rest. What reason is there to think that if these faculties are reliable, then it would appear that they are from the perspective just of reason, that bit of memory, and introspection? Maybe those three simply aren't able to give much of an answer: would that matter with respect to the rationality of forming perceptual beliefs? I can't see that it would. So it isn't clear to me that, in the case of SP, it matters much which answer we get here. The question was: would it be practically rational, in the narrow original position, to decide to engage in SP, to form beliefs in the SP way? The answer to that question, however, doesn't really matter with respect to the question whether it is rational for us to engage in SP; we don't have here a sensible de jure question about SP. The situation is a bit different with CMP. First, the narrow original position is different. It includes introspection, memory, and reason, as in the previous case, but it also includes perception and sympathy. So the narrow original position with respect to CMP includes my aiming at the truth, believing what I do, in fact, believe on the basis of the standard package; it also includes having no beliefs one way or the other about the reliability of CMP. I am to try to decide which among the courses open to me is the most likely to get me in the right relation to the truth. One option is to accept CMP. Another is to reject it in favor of some other systematic practice of forming beliefs on the questions to which CMP is addressed: for example, I could accept philosophical naturalism, or perhaps some non-Christian religious practice. Still another option, presumably, would be to continue in the agnosticism that is part of the original position, and yet another is to adopt a sort of ironic Rortian double-mindedness, a frame of mind as difficult to describe as it is intriguing, one in which at one level I believe these things; at another, I maintain a certain delicate distance, sheepishly conceding that I do in a way believe these things, but adding that officially I don't take these beliefs at all seriously, instead adopting toward them an attitude of irony and condescension. (In my study, when I reflect on it, I can see things straight; but in church, with all that liturgy, those hymns, those people I love and admire, that Bible reading and powerful preaching. . . .) And the question is, if I were in this situation, what would be the rational thing for me to do: adopt CMP, adopt some alternative to it, or remain agnostic? Here, it seems to me, agnosticism should probably get the nod. All things considered, the best road to avoiding error and believing truth on the topics of CMP as judged from this narrow original position is agnosticism. To establish this, of course, would require a lot of work--first, a canvass of all the rational arguments for and against the existence of God, and then an examination of the arguments for and against the thought that we human beings do, in fact, perceive God (given that there is such a person). From the point of view of the standard package, [147] I think, it is somewhat more likely than not that there is such a person as God. Although the standard arguments don't have anything like the probative force some have claimed for them, they do have (I think) some force; there are, in addition, a great number of other theistic arguments, all with at least a bit of force. [148] On the other side is the problem of evil, of course; on balance, however, it seems to me that the nod goes to theism. But what about the claim that we human beings do in fact perceive God? Here I think the appropriate attitude would be agnosticism: from the point of view of the resources included in the narrow original position, one simply can't determine whether we human beings perceive God. But to discuss this matter in proper detail would take us too far afield--particularly in view of the fact that the question put this way is, in any event, the wrong question. For why suppose that if CMP is sensible or rational (in some important sense of that multifarious term), then from the point of view of the standard package it must be more likely than not that CMP is reliable? Consider memory, and consider its credentials from the point of view of the rest of the standard package. Suppose you don't know that there's been a past; you know only what reason, perception, and introspection tell you. How likely is it, from that perspective, that the deliverances of memory are mostly true? Not very likely, I'd say. Would that be a reason for mistrusting it, regarding it as suspect, or believing that it was less than wholly rational to rely on it? Would it so much as slyly suggest that it isn't rational to form beliefs in the memory way? I don't see how. But then presumably the same thing goes for CMP. Suppose there is such a thing as perception of God; suppose that CMP is in fact reliable. Would it follow that it is more probable than not, just given the deliverances of the standard package, that CMP is reliable? I don't think so. So there is no reason to hold that it is rational to take part in CMP only if its reliability is more likely than not with respect to the standard package. To think otherwise is to arbitrarily assume in advance that if CMP is a source of warranted belief, it must be likely with respect to the standard package that it is reliable; but there is no reason to accept this assumption. Here things stand with CMP just as with SP. It seems entirely arbitrary to insist that it is rational to engage in SP only if the reliability of SP is more likely than not with respect to the deliverances of some group of epistemic powers that doesn't include SP; in the same way, it is not sensible to conclude that CMP is rational only if its reliability is more likely than not from the perspective of the standard package. Suppose God has created us with a battery of faculties aimed at our being able to acquire truth in different areas: it doesn't follow that the reliability of any of these faculties would be more probable than not with respect to the deliverances of some package of faculties that does not include the one in question. By way of summary, then: either the original position with respect to CMP is wide or it is narrow. If it is wide, then it will include my belief that CMP is reliable; in that case, the rational decision, clearly enough, would be to continue with CMP. But this does nothing to relieve any anxieties someone might have about the rationality or reasonability of CMP. If the original position is narrow, however, then it really doesn't matter whether from that position it would be rational to continue with CMP. Now suppose we return to specifically Christian belief. Our quarry is the de jure question: what is this rationality or rational justification Christian belief is alleged by its detractors not to have? Our current suggestion is that perhaps it is practical rationality. Perhaps the de jure question is the question whether Christian belief is in fact practically rational and the de jure objection is that it is not. But the same dialectic applies here as in the case of CMP. If we are thinking of the original position with respect to Christian belief as wide, then it will include Christian belief itself. From that point of view, obviously, the rational decision would be to continue to form and maintain belief in the way in which I do, in fact, form and maintain it (i.e., to form and maintain Christian belief); but that does little to show that Christian belief is rational in any interesting sense. So suppose, by contrast, that the appropriate original position is narrow. Then, to be sure, it will include only the standard package and it won't include Christian belief. Now perhaps from that perspective it isn't at all clear that the rational decision would be to endorse Christian belief; perhaps the rational decision would be to give it up. So what? Why should the truth of Christian belief (or the reliability of the sources producing it) have to be more likely than not from that standpoint for it to be rational? Why think that the rationality, in some interesting sense, of Christian beliefs requires that it be more likely than not from the standpoint of the standard package that it is reliably produced? No reason; hence we still haven't located the de jure question. So what is the question? Surely there is a sensible de jure question lurking somewhere in this neighborhood: what might it be? Where shall we look for it? Perhaps in the following locality. Go back to the wide original position, and recall that if, in that position, I accept SP and CMP beliefs, then, trivially, the rational thing to do is to decide to continue to form beliefs in those ways. Of course this would be true for other beliefs as well. In fact it would be true even for beliefs that are in some clear sense irrational. René Descartes notes that there are people "whose cerebella are so troubled and clouded by the violent vapours of black bile, that they . . . imagine that they have an earthenware head or are nothing but pumpkins or are made of glass." [149] No doubt these people avoided bumps like the plague. Given that you do believe you are made of glass, the rational thing to do is to avoid bumps. In the same way, given that you do believe you are made of glass, the rational thing to do in the service of truth is (if you are given the choice) to continue in that belief. After all, you think the belief is true; so if your aim is to believe truth and avoid falsehood, you will continue to hold it. Fair enough: given that you think your head is made of glass, it is rational to wear your football helmet wherever you go, and rational to decide, if presented with the choice, to continue in that belief. But is it rational to hold that belief in the first place? Given that you hold the beliefs produced by SP or CMP and you don't know of any epistemically superior practice, it is indeed rational to continue to form beliefs in that way: is it or was it rational, reasonable, sensible to hold those beliefs in the first place? It is in this neighborhood, I suggest, that we must look for the de jure question with respect to Christian belief. What is it that determines whether a given way of acting or believing, given that your circumstances are thus-and-so, is rational or reasonable, in the relevant sense? Here is my suggestion: what determines this is what a creature of our kind with properly functioning reason (ratio) would do or believe, given that she was in those circumstances. Or perhaps it is what someone with ideal ratio--ratio ideal for our kind of creature--would do or think in the circumstances. The question is really about the human design plan; it has to do with what that design plan, or perhaps a slightly idealized version of it, dictates for the situation in question. The question is about the sorts of beliefs a properly functioning human being would have in the relevant circumstances. What kind of question is this? It isn't a question of practical rationality. The question is not: given that I am in circumstances C, have aims and beliefs A and B, and have raised the question whether or not to do X, how likely is it that doing X will contribute to my aims and goals? (How sensible would it be to do X?) It's a different kind of question altogether. In the next chapter we shall have to try to specify this question and get a closer look at it. __________________________________________________________________ [140] Alston's reply to comments on Perceiving God at a meeting of the Society of Christian Philosophers (concurrent with the meeting of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association) in Atlanta, December, 1993 (a published version can be found in The Journal of Philosophical Research 20 (1995), pp. 67ff. [141] Another reason for supposing SP and CMP beliefs are not to be included in the narrow original position: if they were, then, of course, in that position we would think them true, and we would know that they were delivered by SP and CMP. But then, obviously, we would have excellent reason to think SP and CMP are reliable, and it would be obvious that the rational thing to do would be to continue forming beliefs the SP and CMP way; we should be back at the previous condition of triviality. [142] Does the fact that the argument takes as a premise a belief that is a deliverance of the very practice under consideration show that the argument is epistemically circular? Not obviously: the conclusion of this argument is not that SP is reliable, but that it is practically rational to engage in it. [143] Do I know, however (in the narrow original position), that I have been forming beliefs all along in the SP and CMP way, and that it would therefore be inconvenient to change my way of forming beliefs, whether or not other people are involved? I think this leads to a puzzle, illustrating the limitations of this kind of counterfactual thought experiment. I am to imagine myself in the narrow original position, one in which I don't have any SP and CMP beliefs; but then, of course, I would have a different way of forming beliefs from the way in which I actually do form them. If I were in that position, it would not be true that if I were not to employ SP and CMP, then I would be changing my ways of forming beliefs; for in the narrow original position I don't form beliefs in those ways! What this shows, I think, is that this counterfactual way of trying to get at the de jure question, either about SP or about CMP, suffers from substantial limitations. For example, perhaps you endorse conservatism: all else being equal, you say, the sensible thing to do is to continue with the way you've been doing things. But in the narrow original position, the conservative thing would be to continue in the agnosticism that is part of that position; so if, in that position, you accept conservatism, then the rational thing to do would be to remain agnostic. [144] Another possibility is that in the narrow original position with respect to SP, I continue to form beliefs the CMP way (so that the narrow position with respect to SP includes the beliefs I actually form on the basis of CMP). In that case, I think the probabilities would be with SP, at least if one thing I know in that position is that I have an enormously powerful tendency or natural inclination to form beliefs the SP way. God, as Descartes insisted, is no deceiver. [145] "The sceptic asks me, Why do you believe the existence of the external object which you perceive? This belief, sir, is none of my manufacture; it came from the mint of Nature; it bears her image and superscription; and, if it is not right, the fault is not mine; I ever took it upon trust, and without suspicion. Reason, says the sceptic, is the only judge of truth, and you ought to throw off every opinion and every belief that is not grounded on reason. Why, sir, should I believe the faculty of reason more than that of perception? They came both out of the same shop, and were made by the same artist; and if he puts one piece of false ware into my hands, what should hinder him from putting another?" (An Inquiry into the Human Mind, in Thomas Reid's Inquiry and Essays, ed. Ronald Beanblossom and Keith Lehrer [Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1983], pp. 84-85). [146] See WCD, pp. 97ff. Of course I don't mean to suggest that Alston thinks SP does have to prove itself before the bar of reason; I am exploring various answers to the question what do we know or believe in the original position?' [147] Eliminating, of course, Calvin's sensus divinitatis, even if, as Calvin thought, that belief-forming power or mechanism is part of the original epistemic equipment of humankind generally. [148] As outlined in my so-far-unpublished "Two Dozen or So Good Theistic Arguments." [149] Meditations, Meditation I. __________________________________________________________________ [133] Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991. Subsequent page references will be to this book. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ 5 Warrant and the Freud-and-Marx Complaint The genius of a man capable of explaining religion seems to me to be of a higher order than that of a founder of religion. And that is the glory to which I aspire. Charles DuPuis What we have seen so far is what the de jure question and criticism are not: it is not the complaint that the believer is not within her intellectual rights in believing as she does; it is not the complaint that she has no good argument from propositions that are self-evident, about her own mental states, or evident to the senses for her; it is not the complaint that she has no good argument of some other sort; it is not the complaint that her Christian belief lacks Alstonian justification, or means-end rationality; and it is not the complaint that it isn't practically rational to decide to continue to form belief on the basis of experience. None of these criticisms has much of a leg to stand on. So the de jure criticism has proven elusive. In the last chapter, however, we did finally catch a glimpse of our quarry--no more than a glimpse, though--and in this chapter I want to look further into the nature of this style of criticism, in part by trying to come to an understanding of the rejection of religious belief associated with Freud and Marx. Then I will point out the connection between the de jure question, properly understood, and warrant, the subject of the two preceding books in this series. In the next few chapters, I will consider more explicitly the question whether Christian belief can have warrant even if it doesn't receive it by way of argument or propositional evidence. This is really the question (as I might have put it in "Reason and Belief in God" [150] ) whether belief in God and Christian belief more generally can be properly basic--properly basic with respect to warrant. (It is also the question I was raising [rather inchoately] in God and Other Minds. [151] ) Perhaps another way to put this question is to ask whether Christian belief can get warrant, not by argument but by virtue of (broadly construed) religious experience. __________________________________________________________________ I. The F&M Complaint As we have seen, atheologians (those who argue against Christian belief) have often claimed that Christian belief is irrational; so far, we have failed to find a sensible version of this claim. But perhaps we can make progress by exploring the animadversions on Christian belief proposed by Freud, Marx, and the whole cadre of their nineteenth- and twentieth-century followers. [152] We could also examine here Nietzsche's similar complaint: that religion originates in slave morality, in the ressentiment of the oppressed. As Nietzsche sees it, Christianity both fosters and arises from a sort of sniveling, cowardly, servile, evasive, duplicitous, and all-around contemptible sort of character, which is at the same time envious, self-righteous, and full of hate disguised as charitable kindness. (Not a pretty picture.) I've chosen not to consider Nietzsche for two reasons: first, he really has little to add to what Marx and Freud say; second, he is harder to take seriously. He writes with a fine coruscating brilliance, his outrageous rhetoric is sometimes entertaining, and no doubt much of the extravagance is meant as overstatement to make a point. Taken overall, however, the violence and exaggeration seem pathological; for a candidate for the sober truth, we shall certainly have to look elsewhere. [153] Now Freud, Marx, and their many epigoni (and anticipators) criticize religious belief; they purport to find something wrong with it; they are masters of suspicion' and (at any rate in their own view) unmask it. And in examining their critical comments on religious belief, I think we can finally locate a proper de jure question: one that is distinct from the de facto question, is such that the answer is nontrivial, and is relevant in the sense that a negative answer to it would be a serious point against Christian belief. The first order of business, therefore, is to try to get clear as to what the Freud-Marx critical project (the F&M complaint', as I shall call it) really is. __________________________________________________________________ A. Freud There are several sides to Freud's critique of religion. For example, he was fascinated by what he saw as the Darwinian picture of early human beings coming together in packs or herds (like wolves or elk), all the females belonging to one powerful, dominant, jealous male, and he tells a dramatic story about how religion arose out of an extraordinary interaction among the members of that primal horde: The father of the primal horde, since he was an unlimited despot, had seized all the women for himself; his sons, being dangerous to him as rivals, had been killed or driven away. One day, however, the sons came together and united to overwhelm, kill, and devour their father, who had been their enemy but also their ideal. After the deed they were unable to take over their heritage since they stood in one another's way. Under the influence of failure and remorse they learned to come to an agreement among themselves; they banded themselves into a clan of brothers by the help of the ordinances of totemism, which aimed at preventing a repetition of such a deed, and they jointly undertook to forgo the possession of the women on whose account they had killed their father. They were then driven to finding strange women, and this was the origin of the exogamy which is so closely bound up with totemism. The Totem meal was the festival commemorating the fearful deed from which sprang man's sense of guilt (or original sin'). . . . . . . This view of religion throws a particularly clear light upon the psychological basis of Christianity, in which, as we know, the ceremony of the totem meal still survives, with but little distortion, in the form of Communion. [154] Strong stuff, this, displaying Freud's redoubtable imaginative powers and his ability to tell a sensational story; [155] all the elements--sex, murder, cannibalism, remorse--of a dandy Hollywood spectacular are here. Taken as a serious attempt at a historical account of the origin of religion, though, it has little to recommend it and is at best a wild guess, much less science than science fiction. [156] But perhaps Freud didn't intend it as sober and literal truth. (He himself calls it a vision'.) Perhaps it is something like a parable, maybe something like how some Christians understand early Genesis or Job, meant to illustrate and present a truth in graphic but nonliteral form. (Maybe here as elsewhere Freud is under the spell of biblical ways of writing and thinking.) And just as it isn't always easy to draw the right moral from a biblical parable, so it isn't easy to see what Freud intends us to gather from this gripping if grisly little tale. In any event, Freud offers quite a different account of the psychological origins of religious (theistic) belief: These [religious beliefs], which are given out as teachings, are not precipitates of experience or end-results of thinking: they are illusions, fulfillments of the oldest, strongest and most urgent wishes of mankind. The secret of their strength lies in the strength of those wishes. As we already know, the terrifying impressions of helplessness in childhood aroused the need for protection--for protection through love--which was provided by the father; and the recognition that this helplessness lasts throughout life made it necessary to cling to the existence of a father, but this time a more powerful one. Thus the benevolent rule of a divine Providence allays our fear of the dangers of life; the establishment of a moral world-order ensures the fulfillment of the demands of justice, which have so often remained unfulfilled in human civilization; and the prolongation of earthly existence in a future life provides the local and temporal framework in which these wish-fulfillments shall take place. [157] As we see, there is more to Freud's critique than phantasmagoric fables about the primal horde. The idea is that theistic belief arises from a psychological mechanism Freud calls wish-fulfillment'; the wish in this case is father, not to the deed, but to the belief. Nature rises up against us, cold, pitiless, implacable, blind to our needs and desires. She delivers hurt, fear, and pain; in the end, she demands our death. Paralyzed and appalled, we invent (unconsciously, of course) a Father in Heaven who exceeds our earthly fathers as much in power and knowledge as in goodness and benevolence; the alternative would be to sink into depression, stupor, paralysis, and finally death. According to Freud, belief in God is an illusion in a semitechnical use of the term: a belief that arises from the mechanism of wish-fulfillment. This illusion somehow becomes internalized. [158] An illusion (as opposed to a delusion), says Freud, is not necessarily false; and he goes on to add that it isn't possible to prove that theistic belief is mistaken. Nevertheless, there is more here than a mere antiseptic comment on the origin of religion. Although religion originates in the cognitive mechanism of wish-fulfillment, Freud apparently believes that it is within our power to resist this illusion, and that there is something condemnable, something intellectually irresponsible, in failing to do so: If ever there was a case of a lame excuse we have it here. Ignorance is ignorance; no right to believe anything can be derived from it. In other matters no sensible person will behave so irresponsibly or rest content with such feeble grounds for his opinions and for the line he takes. . . . Where questions of religion are concerned, people are guilty of every possible sort of dishonesty and intellectual misdemeanour. [159] Psychoanalysis, furthermore, provides arguments against the truth of religious belief: "If the application of the psycho-analytic method makes it possible to find a new argument against the truths [sic] of religion, tant pis for religion . . . ." (p. 37). Once we see that religious belief takes its origin in wishful thinking, we will presumably no longer find it attractive; perhaps this will also induce in us a certain pity for those benighted souls who will never rise to our enlightened heights: The whole thing is so patently infantile, so incongruous with reality, that to one whose attitude to humanity is friendly, it is painful to think that the great majority of mortals will never be able to rise above this view of life. [160] Freud hopes and expects that we human beings will eventually give up religious belief, once we are clear about its origin, in favor of a view of the world that is closer to the actual facts of the matter: I am reminded of one of my children who was distinguished at an early age by a peculiarly marked matter-of-factness. When the children were being told a fairy story and were listening to it with rapt attention, he would come up and ask: "Is that a true story?" When he was told it was not, he would turn away with a look of disdain. We may expect that people will soon behave in the same way towards the fairy tales of religion. . . . [161] The fundamental theme here, therefore, is that religious belief arises from wish-fulfillment. We shall have to try to see more exactly what this amounts to and what bearing, if any, it has on the rationality of Christian belief; first, however, we should briefly note Marx's rather similar criticism. __________________________________________________________________ [154] "An Autobiographical Study," in volume 20 of the Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (London: Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psychoanalysis, 1953-74), p. 68. See also Totem and Taboo, authorized translation by James Strachey (New York: W. W. Norton, 1950 [originally published in 1913]), pp. 140ff. [155] Freud tells a similarly fantastic story about how we human beings tamed fire--"a quite extraordinary and unexampled achievement," he says--and turned it to our use: Psychoanalytic material, incomplete as it is and not susceptible to clear interpretation, nevertheless admits of a conjecture--a fantastic-sounding one--about the origin of this human feat. It is as though primal man had the habit, when he came in contact with fire, of satisfying an infantile desire connected with it, by putting it out with a stream of his urine. The legends that we possess leave no doubt about the originally phallic view taken of tongues of flame as they shoot upwards. Putting out fire by micturating--a theme to which modern giants, Gulliver in Lilliput and Rabelais' Gargantua, still hark back--was therefore a kind of a sexual act with a male, an enjoyment of sexual potency in a homosexual competition. The first person to renounce this desire and spare the fire was able to carry it off with him and subdue it to his own use. By damping down the fire of his own sexual excitation, he had tamed the natural force of fire. This great cultural conquest was thus the reward for his renunciation of instinct. Further, it is as though woman had been appointed guardian of the fire which was held captive on the domestic hearth, because her anatomy made it impossible for her to yield to the temptation of this desire. (Civilization and Its Discontents, tr. and ed. James Strachey [New York: W. W. Norton, 1961 (originally published in 1930 as Das Unbehagen in der Kultur)], p. 37) [156] Here see, e.g., Wilhelm Schmidt, The Origin and Growth of Religion: Facts and Theories, tr. H. J. Rose (New York: L. MacVeagh, Dial Press, 1931), p. 114, who makes an attempt to evaluate this story as serious science; see also Evan Fales, "Scientific Explanations of Mystical Experiences, Part I: The Case of St. Teresa," Religious Studies 32, no. 1 (June 1996), p. 148. [157] The Future of an Illusion, tr. and ed. James Strachey (New York: W. W. Norton, 1961), p. 30. This work was originally published as Die Zukunft einer Illusion (Leipzig: Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag, 1927). [158] And in such a way that it (or its deliverances) rather resembles Calvin's sensus divinitatis (chapter 6, below); see Moses and Monotheism (New York: Vintage, 1967), pp. 167ff. [159] The Future of an Illusion, p. 32. [160] Civilization and Its Discontents, p. 21. [161] The Future of an Illusion, p. 29. Freud isn't unambiguously sanguine on this point; he thinks there are three powers (religion, art, and philosophy) that challenge the claims of science to cognitive supremacy, and of these three only religion "is to be taken seriously as an enemy" (22:160). __________________________________________________________________ B. Marx Marx's most famous pronouncement on religion: The basis of irreligious criticism is man makes religion, religion does not make man. In other words, religion is the self-consciousness and the self-feeling of the man who has either not yet found himself, or else (having found himself) has lost himself once more. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man, the state, society. This state, this society, produce religion, a perverted world consciousness, because they are a perverted world. . . . Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusions about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which requires illusions. The criticism of religion is therefore in embryo the criticism of the vale of woe, the halo of which is religion [Marx's emphasis]. [162] Marx suggests that religion arises from perverted world consciousness--perverted from a correct, or right, or natural condition. Religion involves a cognitive dysfunction, a disorder or perversion that is apparently brought about, somehow, by an unhealthy and perverted social order. Religious belief, according to Marx, is a result of cognitive dysfunction, of a lack of mental and emotional health. The believer is therefore in an etymological sense insane. Because of a dysfunctional, perverse social environment, the believer's cognitive equipment isn't working properly. If his cognitive equipment were working properly--if, for example, it were working more like Marx's--he would not be under the spell of this illusion. He would instead face the world and our place in it with the clear-eyed apprehension that we are alone, and that any comfort and help we get will have to be of our own devising. [163] And here we can see an initial difference between Freud and Marx: Freud doesn't necessarily think religious belief is produced by cognitive faculties that are malfunctioning. Religious belief--specifically belief in God--is, indeed, produced by wish-fulfillment; it is the product of illusion; still, illusion and wish-fulfillment have their functions. In this case, their function is to enable us to get along in this cold and heartless world into which we find ourselves thrown. How then is this a criticism of religious belief? Freud speaks elsewhere of a "reality principle." Beliefs produced by wish-fulfillment aren't oriented toward reality; their function is not to produce true belief, but belief with some other property (psychological comfort, for example). So we could initially put it like this: religious belief is produced by cognitive processes whose function is not that of producing true beliefs, but rather that of producing beliefs conducive to psychological well-being. We will look into this in more detail below; for the moment, perhaps what we can say is that the Marxist criticism of religious belief is that it is produced by disordered cognitive processes, while the Freudian criticism is that it is produced by processes that are not aimed at the production of true beliefs. __________________________________________________________________ [162] "Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, Introduction," in On Religion, by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, tr. Reinhold Niebuhr (Chico, Calif.: Scholar's Press, 1964), pp. 41-42. Engels echoes Marx: All religion, however, is nothing but the fantastic reflection in men's minds of those external forces which control their daily life, a reflection in which the terrestrial forces assume the form of supernatural forces. In the beginnings of history it was the forces of nature which were first so reflected and which in the course of further evolution underwent the most manifold and varied personifications among the various peoples. . . . But it is not long before, side by side with the forces of nature, social forces begin to be active--forces which confront man as equally alien and at first inexplicable, dominating him with the same apparent natural necessity as the forces of nature themselves. . . . At a still further stage of evolution, all the natural and social attributes of the numerous gods are transferred to one almighty god, who is but a reflection of the abstract man. Such was the origin of monotheism. . . . It is still true that man proposes and God (that is, the alien domination of the capitalist mode of production) disposes. . . . What is above all necessary for this is a social act. And when this act has been accomplished, when society, by taking possession of all means of production and using them on a planned basis, has freed itself and all its members from the bondage in which they are now held by these means of production which they themselves have produced but which confront them as an irresistible alien force; when, therefore man not only proposes, but also disposes--only then will the last alien force which is still reflected in religion vanish; and with it will also vanish the religious reflection itself, for the simple reason that then there will be nothing left to reflect. (Anti-Dühring, pp. 147-49 in On Religion) [163] There is another possibility as to how to understand Marx here: see below, p. 162. __________________________________________________________________ C. Others We must take a deeper look at these claims. First, however, we should note that although Freud and Marx often get the credit for this alleged unmasking (perhaps with a crumb thrown in the direction of Nietzsche), its essence is to be found much earlier. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78) thought Christian belief was a product of corrupt society, and that the natural spirituality of our souls has been damaged by a Christianized civilization; he thus anticipates Marx in seeing Christian belief as a result of cognitive malfunction resulting from social malfunction. David Hume, a British contemporary of Rousseau, anticipates Freud: It must necessarily, indeed, be allowed, that, in order to carry men's intention beyond the present course of things, or lead them into any inference concerning invisible intelligent power, they must be actuated by some passion, which prompts their thought and reflection; some motive, which urges their first enquiry. But what passion shall we here have recourse to, for explaining an effect of such mighty consequences? Not speculative curiosity, surely, or the pure love of truth. That motive is too refined for such gross apprehensions; and would lead men into enquiries concerning the frame of nature, a subject too large and comprehensive for their narrow capacities. No passions, therefore, can be supposed to work upon such barbarians, but the ordinary affections of human life; the anxious concern for happiness, the dread of future misery, the terror of death, the thirst of revenge, the appetite for food and other necessaries. Agitated by hopes and fears of this nature, especially the latter, men scrutinize with a trembling curiosity, the course of future causes, and examine the various and contrary events of human life. And in this disordered scene, with eyes still more disordered and astonished, they see the first obscure traces of divinity. [164] What is crucial here is the claim that religious belief does not arise from the pure love of truth', but from other sources: desire for happiness, fear of death, and the like. In fact Hume ironically suggests that Christian belief is so contrary to experience and to the "principles of understanding" (i.e., the deliverances of reason) that a reasonable person can accept it only by virtue of a miracle: upon the whole, we may conclude that the Christian Religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one. . . . Whoever is moved by Faith to assent to it, is conscious of a continued miracle in his own person, which subverts all the principles of his understanding, and gives him a determination to believe what is most contrary to custom and experience. [165] So the fundamental thrust of Hume's suggestion, as of Freud's, is that religious belief doesn't emerge from the segment of our whole cognitive economy that is, as we might put it, aimed at the production of true belief; it comes, instead, from a desire for security or a fear of death or whatever. And of course what underlies Hume's ironic jape is the idea that Christian belief goes directly contrary to the deliverances of reason and experience. Many of our contemporaries also see religious beliefs in these terms. Thus Northrop Frye weighs in on Marx's side, but employs Freudian or semi-Freudian categories: speaking of "the curious aberration of believing the Bible'," he says: such belief is really a voluntarily induced schizophrenia, and probably a fruitful source of the infantilism and hysterical anxieties about belief which are so frequently found in the neighborhood of religion, at least in its more uncritical areas. [166] In the same vein, we have Don Cupitt: "Theological realism can only be actually true for [i. e. thought to be true by] a heteronomous consciousness such as no normal person ought now to have." [167] Those who claim that they really are theological realists' (i.e., claim that they really do believe in God), he says, are hypocrites [168] or have succumbed to "a kind of madness." [169] Cupitt seems to think that (perhaps, as they say, given what we now know') you would have to be psychotic to actually be a theological realist (one who believes that there really is such a person as God); if you are not psychotic but nonetheless profess theistic belief, then you must be one of those hypocrites Christian churches are supposed to be full of. A final witness. Charles Daniels agrees with Freud in finding the origin of religious belief in wishful thinking: we must begin to entertain suspicions that the explanation for these [religious] experiences does not lie in any perceived religious reality, but is rather the effect of some other cause--perhaps excessive emotion and fervor. . . . It is not at all difficult, however, to construct a plausible explanation not consisting of mere possibilities like the machinations of demons, why people should come very strongly to believe there to be a divinely populated religious reality which is perceived in religious experience even when there is none . . . we very much want there to be an understandable order to the universe, we very much want our lives to be of consequence, and we very much want to know in practical detail what's right and wrong. Religion addresses what we very much want. The universe has an intelligible order because there is an intelligent powerful God who made it. We are important because God made us (as Christians say, "in his image") and gave us the faculties of understanding and free, intelligent action. [170] __________________________________________________________________ [164] David Hume: The Natural History of Religion, ed. H. E. Root (Stanford, Ca.: Stanford University Press, 1957), p. 166. [165] An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1956), p. 145. [166] Speaking of infantilism, Frye's intemperate comments call to mind schoolyard debating styles (perhaps about fifth grade): "Oh Yeah? Well, the trouble with you is you're crazy, and so's your whole dumb family!" [167] Taking Leave of God (New York: Crossroad, 1980), p. 12. One gathers that Cupitt thinks it is "our modern form of consciousness" that makes this obligatory. [168] Ibid., p. 21. [169] The World to Come (London: SCM Press, 1982), p. 83. [170] "Experiencing God," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (1989), pp. 497, 499. __________________________________________________________________ D. How Shall We Understand the F&M Complaint? Now the F&M (Freud-and-Marx) complaint is, naturally enough, a complaint, a (negative) criticism of religious belief, including Christian belief. But the general project under which the efforts of Freud and Marx fall is that of giving naturalistic explanations of religious belief, explanations that don't involve the truth of the beliefs in question or the truth of any other supernaturalistic beliefs or hypotheses. Many (in addition to those cited above) have joined them in this effort, and by now there is quite a variety of naturalistic explanations of religious belief. [171] But of course giving a naturalistic account of a kind of belief isn't automatically a criticism of that kind of belief. Consider a priori belief, belief in such propositions as the laws of logic, perhaps, or the basic truths of arithmetic, or the proposition that if all cats are animals, and Maynard is a cat, then Maynard is an animal. Perhaps it is possible to give a naturalistic' account of our knowledge of these truths: an account, that is, that stands in the same relation to them as a naturalistic account of religious belief stands to it. Such an account would not invoke the truth of these a priori beliefs as part of the explanation; it would proceed instead by outlining certain salient features of the causal genesis or antecedents of these beliefs, perhaps pointing to events of some kind in the nervous system. The existence of a causal explanation, of this sort, of a priori belief would not show or tend to show that such beliefs are unreliable. The same would go for religious belief. To show that there are natural processes that produce religious belief does nothing, so far, to discredit it; perhaps God designed us in such a way that it is by virtue of those processes that we come to have knowledge of him. Suppose it could be demonstrated that a certain kind of complex neural stimulation could produce theistic belief. This would have no tendency to discredit religious belief--just as memory is not discredited by the fact that one can produce memory beliefs by stimulating the right part of the brain. Clearly, it is possible both that there is an explanation in terms of natural processes of religious belief (perhaps a brain physiological account of what happens when someone holds religious beliefs), and that these beliefs have a perfectly respectable epistemic status. If we are to have a criticism of religion by way of a naturalistic explanation, what we need is something that in some way discredits religious belief, casts doubt on it, shows that it is not epistemically respectable--in a word, shows that there is something wrong with it. And the criticism, of course, is that religious belief (including Christian belief) is irrational. But irrational in just what way? What exactly is wrong with religious belief, according to the F&M complaint? How, exactly, shall we understand the F&M complaint? First, an assumption underlying it. Going all the way back to Plato and Aristotle, it has been assumed that there are intellectual or cognitive or rational powers or faculties, or (possibly) virtues: for example, perception and memory. Joining the computer craze, we might say that these faculties have inputs and outputs; their outputs are beliefs. It is these processes that produce in us the myriad beliefs we hold. These faculties are also something like instruments; and, like instruments, they have a function or purpose. If we thought of ourselves as created and designed either by a Master Craftsman or by evolution, these cognitive faculties would be the parts of our total cognitive establishment or total cognitive design whose purpose it is to produce beliefs in us. Their overall purpose, furthermore, is presumably to produce true beliefs in us; to put it a bit less passively, they are designed in such a way that by using them properly we can come to true belief. Our cognitive faculties work over a surprisingly large area to deliver beliefs of many different topics: beliefs about our immediate environment; about the external world at large; about the past; about numbers, propositions, and other abstract objects and the relations between them; about other people and what they are thinking and feeling; about what the future will be like; about right and wrong; about God. These faculties and processes are the instruments or organs, as we might put it, whereby we come to have knowledge. They are aimed at the truth in the sense that their purpose or function is to furnish us with true belief. Like any other instruments or organs, they can work properly or improperly; they can function well or malfunction. A wart or a tumor doesn't either malfunction (although it might be by virtue of malfunction in some system that the tumor is present) or function properly: it doesn't have a function or purpose. But an organ--your heart, for example, or liver or pancreas--does have a function, and does either work properly or malfunction. And the same goes for cognitive faculties or capacities: they too can function well or ill. The condition in which they function really badly is insanity; of course there are much milder, less intrusive forms of cognitive malfunction. Now among these faculties one of the most important is reason. Taken narrowly, reason is the faculty or power whereby we form a priori beliefs, beliefs that are prior to experience or, better, independent, in some way, of experience. [172] These beliefs include what in chapter 4 we called the deliverances of reason: first of all, simple truths of arithmetic and logic, such as 2 + 1 = 3 and if all men are mortal and Socrates is a man, then Socrates is mortal. They also include such beliefs as that nothing can be red all over and also green all over and that to be a person you must at least be potentially capable of forming beliefs and having ends or aims. Still further, they include more controversial items, such as the belief that there are properties, states of affairs, propositions, and other abstract objects, and the belief that no object has a property in a possible world in which it doesn't exist. (So I say, anyway; there are those who disagree.) The deliverances of reason also include beliefs that obviously follow from deliverances of reason. [173] And still further, reason is the power or capacity whereby we see or detect logical relationships among propositions. There are other faculties or rational powers that have as their purpose the production of true beliefs in us; [174] for example, there are perception and memory, which, along with reason, constitute the standard package of chapter 4. Further, there are introspection, by which I learn such things about myself as that I am appeared to a certain way, and believe this or that; induction, whereby (in a way that defies explicit statement) we come to expect the future to be like the past in certain respects, thereby being able to learn from experience; [175] and Thomas Reid's sympathy, whereby we come to be aware of what other people are thinking, feeling, and believing. Still further, there is testimony or credulity, whereby we learn from others, by believing what they tell us. By sympathy I learn that you are telling me that your name is Archibald; for me to believe you, however, something further is required. (Thus by perception, I see that you are in such and such a bodily state; by sympathy, I learn that you are claiming that your name is Archibald; and by testimony, I believe you.) The Enlightenment looked askance at testimony and tradition; Locke saw them as a preeminent source of error. The Enlightenment idea is that perhaps we start by learning from others--our parents, for example. Properly mature and independent adults, however, will have passed beyond all that and believe what they do on the basis of the evidence. But this is a mistake; you can't know so much as your name or what city you live in without relying on testimony. (Will you produce your birth certificate for the first, or consult a handy map for the second? In each case you are of course relying on testimony.) As Thomas Reid puts it: I believed by instinct whatever they [my "parents and tutors"] told me, long before I had the idea of a lie, or a thought of the possibility of their deceiving me. Afterwards, upon reflection, I found they had acted like fair and honest people, who wished me well. I found that, if I had not believed what they told me, before I could give a reason for my belief, I had to this day been little better than a changeling. And although this natural credulity hath sometimes occasioned my being imposed upon by deceivers, yet it hath been of infinite advantage to me upon the whole; therefore, I consider it as another good gift of Nature. [176] In addition to the cognitive powers or rational faculties mentioned so far there may be others that are more controversial. For example, we seem to have a moral sense: certain kinds of behavior and certain kinds of character seem wrong, bad, to be avoided; others seem right, good, fitting, to be promoted. It is obviously wrong (all else being equal) to hurt young children or to refuse to care for your aging parents; perhaps we see this by way of a sort of moral sense. (It is no doubt because this moral sense can malfunction, or atrophy, that inability to tell right from wrong is a legal defense.) My point here is not to argue that indeed there is a moral sense, although I believe that there is, but rather to note that there could well be truth-aimed faculties in addition to the ones mentioned so far. Similarly a believer in God might think that there is such a thing as Calvin's sensus divinitatis, [177] a natural, inborn sense of God, or of divinity, that is the origin and source of the world's religions; perhaps there is also such a thing as the inward invitation or instigation of the Holy Spirit (to anticipate chapter 8) whereby the believer comes to accept the central truths of the Christian faith. As we have seen, these rational faculties can function either properly or improperly. We ordinarily take it for granted that when our cognitive faculties are functioning properly, when they are not subject to dysfunction or malfunction, then, for the most part, the beliefs they produce are true, or close to the truth. If your perceptual faculties are functioning properly, what you think you see is probably what you do see. (If you are suffering from delirium tremens, all bets are off.) There is, we might say, a presumption of reliability for properly functioning faculties; we are inclined (rightly or wrongly) to take it that properly functioning cognitive faculties for the most part deliver true belief. Of course there will be mistakes and disagreements, and we may be inclined to skepticism about various areas of belief: political beliefs, for example, as well as beliefs formed at the limits of our ability, as in particle physics and cosmology; but the bulk of the everyday beliefs delivered by our rational faculties, so we think, are true. At any rate, the deliverances of our rational faculties, taken broadly, comprise our best bet for achieving truth. Returning finally to the F&M complaint, it's clear that it has to do with the deliverances of our rational faculties. Freud and Marx acquiesce in the presumption of reliability; they assume (as do we all) that when our rational faculties are functioning properly and are used properly, then for the most part their deliverances are true, or at any rate close to the truth. Of course, as we saw, it is possible for cognitive faculties to function well or ill. The insane beliefs of Descartes's madmen [178] were due to cognitive malfunction of some sort. There are more subtle ways, however, in which nonrational or irrational beliefs can be formed in us. First of all, there are belief-forming processes or mechanisms that are aimed, not at the formation of true belief, but at the formation of belief with some other property--the property of contributing to survival, perhaps, or to peace of mind or psychological well-being in this sometimes dangerous and threatening world of ours. [179] Those with a lethal disease may believe their chances for recovery much higher than the statistics in their possession would warrant; again, the function of the relevant process would not be that of furnishing true beliefs but of furnishing beliefs that make it more likely that the believer will recover. A mountaineer whose survival depends on his ability to leap a crevasse may form an extremely optimistic estimate of his powers as a long-jumper; it is more likely that he will be able to leap the crevasse (or at least give it a try) if he thinks he can than if he thinks he can't. Most of us form estimates of our intelligence, wisdom, and moral fiber that are considerably higher than an objective estimate would warrant; no doubt 90 percent of us think ourselves well above average along these lines. [180] A person may be blinded (as we say) by ambition, failing to see that a certain course of action is wrong or stupid, even though it is obvious to everyone else. Our idea, here, is that inordinately ambitious people fail to recognize something they would otherwise recognize; the normal functioning of some aspect of their cognitive powers is inhibited or overridden or impeded by that excessive ambition. You may be blinded also by loyalty, continuing to believe in the honesty of your friend long after an objective look at the evidence would have dictated a reluctant change of mind. You can also be blinded by covetousness, love, fear, lust, anger, pride, grief, social pressure, and a thousand other things. In polemic, it is common to attack someone's views by claiming that the denial of what they think is patently obvious (i.e., such that any right-thinking, properly functioning person can immediately see that it is so); we then attribute their opposing this obvious truth either to dishonesty (they don't really believe what they say; after all, who could?) or to their being blinded by something or other--maybe a reluctance to change, an aversion to new ideas, personal ambition, sexism, racism, or homophobia. Thus according to Judith Plaskow, "If the Rabbinical Assembly Law Committee cannot see that it is reflecting and supporting a long history of religious homophobia (Jewish and otherwise), then it is either willfully blind or patently dishonest." [181] In a similar vein, Richard Dawkins insists (in a recent review in the New York Times), "It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet someone who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid, or insane (or wicked, but I'd rather not consider that)." [182] Dawkins apparently thinks the truth of evolution is utterly clear and obvious to anyone who is not unduly ignorant, is not too stupid to follow the arguments, and is sane (i.e., with rational faculties that are functioning properly); it is therefore obvious that all who aren't just (wickedly) lying through their teeth would have to admit that they believe in evolution. What are appealed to in all these cases are mechanisms that can override or cancel what our rational faculties would ordinarily deliver, substituting a belief that is either contrary to what unimpeded rational faculties would deliver, or at any rate distinct from what reason would deliver. What we see, therefore, is that there are at least three ways in which a belief can fail to be a proper deliverance of our rational faculties: it may be produced by malfunctioning faculties, by cognitive processes aimed at something other than the truth, or by faculties whose function has been impeded and overridden by lust, ambition, greed, selfishness, grief, fear, low self-esteem, and other emotional conditions. [183] Accordingly, a belief can fail to be a proper deliverance of our rational faculties by way of malfunction and by way of being produced by a process that is not aimed at the production of true belief. And here we come to the heart of the F&M objection: when F&M say that Christian belief, or theistic belief, or even perhaps religious belief in general is irrational, the basic idea is that belief of this sort is not among the proper deliverances of our rational faculties. It is not produced by properly functioning truth-aimed cognitive faculties or processes. It is not produced by belief-producing processes that are free of dysfunction and whose purpose it is to furnish us with true belief. And this means that the presumption of the reliability of properly functioning cognitive faculties does not apply to the processes that yield belief in God or Christian belief more broadly. The fundamental idea is that religious belief has a source distinct from those of our faculties that are aimed at the truth. Alternatively, if religious belief does somehow issue from those truth-aimed faculties, their operation, when they function in such a way as to produce religious belief, is overridden and impeded by something else: a need for security, or for feeling important in the whole scheme of things, or for psychological comfort in the face of this pitiless, intimidating, and implacable world we face. Just what sort of deviation from the norm does religious belief present? Here Freud and Marx seem to diverge. Although Marx has relatively little to say about religion, there is of course that famous passage I quoted above (pp. 140-41); he seems to hold that what our rational faculties teach us (when they are unimpeded by that cognitive dysfunction produced by a perverted social order) is that there is no God and no religious meaning to life. There is no Father in Heaven to turn to and no prospect of anything, after death, but dissolution. The fundamental idea is that religious belief is irrational in a double sense: first, it is a product of cognitive faculties that are malfunctioning in response to social and political disorder; second, what these faculties produce when malfunctioning in this way is contrary to the deliverances of our rational faculties--that is, contrary to what they deliver when they function properly. For Freud, too, the main point is that theistic and religious belief, or theistic belief insofar as it is religious, does not arise from the proper function of truth-aimed cognitive processes or faculties, but rather from wishful thinking. [184] This is the force of Freud's claim that religious belief is an illusion. Of course, illusions have their functions, and a place in the human cognitive design plan; they may serve important ends, such as the end Freud thinks religious belief serves. Nevertheless, such cognitive processes as wishful thinking are not aimed at the production of true beliefs. Beliefs produced by wishful thinking are therefore irrational or nonrational in the sense that they are not produced by our rational faculties; they are not produced by truth-aimed cognitive processes. Like Marx, however, Freud thinks religious belief is also irrational in a stronger sense. Such belief runs contrary to the deliverances of our rational powers; they are "patently infantile" and "foreign to reality." The F&M criticism, then, is that religious belief is not produced by cognitive faculties that are functioning properly and aimed at the truth. And this, I think, leads us finally to a viable de jure question. Those who raise this question are not interested first of all in the truth of Christian belief: their claim is that there is something wrong with believing it. Christian belief may be true, and it may be false; but at any rate it is irrational to accept it. They are best construed, I think, as complaining that Christian belief is not produced by cognitive faculties functioning properly and aimed at the truth. Now what this suggests (at least to anyone who has taken a look at the first two volumes in this series) is warrant. Freud and Marx, from the perspective of those volumes, are really complaining that theistic belief and religious belief generally lack warrant. And the de jure criticism, so it seems to me, is best construed as the claim that Christian belief, whether true or false, is at any rate without warrant. __________________________________________________________________ [171] See, for example, J. Samuel Preus, Explaining Religion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987). [172] See my Warrant and Proper Function (hereafter WPF), chapter 6. [173] But see above, chapter 4, p. 114. [174] For more detail, see WPF, chapters 3-9. [175] See WPF, pp. 122ff. [176] Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man, in Thomas Reid's Inquiry and Essays, ed. R. Beanblossom and K. Lehrer (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1983), VI, 5, pp. 281-82; see also WPF, pp. 77ff. [177] See below, chapter 6. [178] Above, p. 133. [179] See WPF, pp. 11ff. [180] I can't resist repeating (from WPF, p. 12) a couple of passages from Locke: Would it not be an insufferable thing for a learned professor, and that which his scarlet would blush at, to have his authority of forty years standing wrought out of hard rock Greek and Latin, with no small expence of time and candle, and confirmed by general tradition, and a reverent beard, in an instant overturned by an upstart novelist? Can any one expect that he should be made to confess, that what he taught his scholars thirty years ago, was all errour and mistake; and that he sold them hard words and ignorance at a very dear rate? (An Essay concerning Human Understanding, ed. A. D. Woozley [New York: World Publishing, 1963], IV, xx, 11) And Let never so much probability land on one side of a covetous man's reasoning, and money on the other, it is easy to foresee which will outweigh. Tell a man, passionately in love, that he is jilted; bring a score of witnesses of the falsehood of his mistress, tis ten to one but three kind words of hers, shall invalidate all their testimonies . . . and though men cannot always openly gain-say, or resist the force of manifest probabilities, that make against them; yet yield they not to the argument. (Ibid., IV, xx, 12) [181] "Burning in Hell, Conservative Movement Style," Tikkun (May-June 1993), pp. 49-50. Recall in this connection Don Cupitt's charge that those who claim to accept "theological realism" (i.e., those who claim to believe that there really is such a person as God) are "hypocrites or psychotics"--the former, presumably, if they merely claim to be theological realists, and the latter if they really are. [182] New York Times, April 9, 1989, sec. 7, p. 34. Daniel Dennett goes Dawkins one (or two) better, claiming that one who so much as harbors doubts about evolution is "inexcusably ignorant" (Darwin's Dangerous Idea [New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995], p. 46)--thus displaying both ignorance and wrongdoing. [183] This last (perhaps we can call it impedance') is not strictly a case of malfunction, but for present purposes I shall include it under malfunction. [184] Freud thinks of reason as the aggregate of those faculties (and he thinks of them as the ones involved in the pursuit of science); his idea, furthermore, is that reason taken this way is the only means we have for achieving the truth. Displaying that touching confidence in science characteristic of the Enlightenment, Freud assumes that scientific reason will enable us to achieve the truth in areas where for centuries we wandered in darkness; more modestly, perhaps reason so taken gives us our best shot at the truth. Ironically enough, there is excellent reason to doubt that Freud's characteristic contributions themselves constitute science in any sensible sense; see Adolf Grünbaum's The Foundations of Psychoanalysis (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984). __________________________________________________________________ [152] Of course, it wasn't only Christian belief that drew their fire: Freud and Marx were equal-opportunity animadverters, attacking religion generally and without discrimination. [153] I don't mean for a moment to dispute Merold Westphal's contention (in Suspicion and Faith: The Religious Uses of Modern Atheism [Grand Rapids: W. B. Eerdmans, 1993]) that Christians have something to learn from Nietzsche (as from Freud and Marx). Of course they do, but the same lessons can be learned at a much subtler level from, for example, the Bible--where, as Westphal points out, Nietzsche's criticisms, insofar as they are on the mark, are anticipated. Taken as a serious account of the origin of Christianity, however, Nietzsche's intemperate scoldings can't really be seen as a serious contribution to the subject. __________________________________________________________________ II. Warrant: The Sober Truth I've said most [185] of what I have to say about the nature of warrant in Warrant: The Current Debate (WCD) and WPF. To spare the reader a trip to the library, however, I will briefly recapitulate; readers who want more depth and detail should consult those volumes (although on pp. 156ff. below I make a correction to what is said in WCD and WPF). The question is as old as Plato's Theaetetus: what is it that distinguishes knowledge from mere true belief? What further quality or quantity must a true belief have, if it is to constitute knowledge? This is one of the main questions of epistemology. (No doubt that is why it is called theory of knowledge'.) Along with nearly all subsequent thinkers, Plato takes it for granted that knowledge is at least true belief: you know a proposition p only if you believe it, and only if it is true. But Plato goes on to point out that true belief, while necessary for knowledge, is clearly not sufficient: it is entirely possible to believe something that is true without knowing it. You are congenitally given to pessimism; you believe that the stock market will plunge tomorrow, even though you have no evidence; even if you turn out to be right, you didn't know. You have traveled two thousand miles to the North Cascades for a climbing trip; you are desperately eager to climb. Being an incurable optimist, you believe it will be bright, sunny, and warm tomorrow, despite the forecast, which calls for high winds and a nasty mixture of rain, sleet, and snow. As it turns out, the forecasters were wrong, and tomorrow turns out sunny and beautiful: your belief was true, but didn't constitute knowledge. Suppose we use the term warrant' to denote that further quality or quantity (perhaps it comes in degrees), whatever precisely it may be, enough of which distinguishes knowledge from mere true belief. Then our question (the subject of WPF): what is warrant? My suggestion (WPF, chapters 1 and 2) begins with the idea that a belief has warrant only if it is produced by cognitive faculties that are functioning properly, subject to no disorder or dysfunction--construed as including absence of impedance as well as pathology. The notion of proper function is fundamental to our central ways of thinking about knowledge. But that notion is inextricably bound with another: that of a design plan. [186] Human beings and their organs are so constructed that there is a way they should work, a way they are supposed to work, a way they work when they work right; this is the way they work when there is no malfunction. There is a way in which your heart is supposed to work: for example, your pulse rate should be about 50 to 80 beats per minute when you are at rest and (if you are under age forty) achieve a maximum rate of some 180 to 200 beats per minute when you are exercising really hard. If your resting pulse is 160, or if you can't get your pulse above 60 beats per minute no matter how hard you work, then your heart isn't functioning properly. (Then again, a bird whose resting heart rate is 160 might be perfectly healthy.) We needn't initially take the notions of design plan and way in which a thing is supposed to work to entail conscious design or purpose. I don't here mean to claim that organisms are created by a conscious agent (God) according to a design plan, in something like the way in which human artifacts are constructed and designed (although in fact I think something like that is true). I am not supposing, initially at least, that having a design plan implies having been created by God or some other conscious agent; it is perhaps possible that evolution (undirected by God or anyone else) has somehow furnished us with our design plans. [187] I mean, instead, to point to something nearly all of us, theists or not, believe: there is a way in which a human organ or system works when it works properly, works as it is supposed to work; and this way of working is given by its design or design plan. Proper function and design go hand in hand with the notion of purpose or function. The various organs and systems of the body (and the ways in which they work) have their functions, their purposes: the function or purpose of the heart is to pump the blood; of the immune system, to fight off disease; of the lungs to provide oxygen; of peristalsis, to move nutrients along the intestinal tract, and so on. If the design is a good design, then when the organ or system functions properly (i.e., according to its design plan), that purpose will be achieved. The design plan specifies a particular way of working that subserves that purpose. Of course, the design plan for human beings will include specifications for our cognitive system or faculties, as well as for noncognitive systems and organs. Like the rest of our organs and systems, our cognitive faculties can work well or ill; they can malfunction or function properly. They too work in a certain way when they are functioning properly--and work in a certain way to accomplish their purpose. Accordingly, the first element in our conception of warrant (so I say) is that a belief has warrant for someone only if her faculties are functioning properly, are subject to no dysfunction, in producing that belief. [188] But that's not enough. Many systems of your body, obviously, are designed to work in a certain kind of environment. You can't breathe under water; your muscles atrophy in zero gravity; you can't get enough oxygen at the top of Mount Everest. Clearly, the same goes for your cognitive faculties; they too will achieve their purpose only if functioning in an environment much like the one for which they were designed (by God or evolution). Thus they won't work well in an environment (on some other planet, for example) in which a certain subtle radiation impedes the function of memory. And this is still not enough. It is clearly possible that a belief be produced by cognitive faculties that are functioning properly in an environment for which they were designed, but nonetheless lack warrant; the above two conditions are not sufficient. We think that the purpose or function of our belief-producing faculties is to furnish us with true (or verisimilitudinous) belief. As we saw above in connection with the F&M complaint, however, it is clearly possible that the purpose or function of some belief-producing faculties or mechanisms is the production of beliefs with some other virtue--perhaps that of enabling us to get along in this cold, cruel, threatening world, or of enabling us to survive a dangerous situation or a life-threatening disease. So we must add that the belief in question is produced by cognitive faculties such that the purpose of those faculties is that of producing true belief. More exactly, we must add that the portion of the design plan governing the production of the belief in question is aimed at the production of true belief (rather than survival, or psychological comfort, or the possibility of loyalty, or something else). Even this isn't sufficient. We can see why by reflecting on a fantasy of David Hume's: This world, for aught he knows, is very faulty and imperfect, compared to a superior standard; and was only the first rude essay of some infant Deity, who afterwards abandoned it, ashamed of his lame performance; it is the work only of some dependent, inferior Deity; and is the object of derision to his superiors; it is the production of old age and dotage in some superannuated Deity; and ever since his death, has run on at adventures, from the first impulse and active force, which it received from him. [189] So imagine that a young and untutored apprentice deity sets out to build cognitive beings, beings capable of belief and knowledge. Immaturity and incompetence triumph; the design contains serious glitches. In fact, in some areas of the design, when the faculties work just as they were designed to, the result is ludicrously false belief: thus when the cognitive faculties of these beings are working according to their design plan, they constantly confuse horses and hearses, forming the odd beliefs that cowboys in the old West rode hearses and that corpses are usually transported in horses. These beliefs are then produced by cognitive faculties working properly in the right sort of environment according to a design plan aimed at truth, but they still lack warrant. What is missing? Clearly enough, what must be added is that the design plan in question is a good one, one that is successfully aimed at truth, one such that there is a high (objective) probability that a belief produced according to that plan will be true (or nearly true). Put in a nutshell, then, a belief has warrant for a person S only if that belief is produced in S by cognitive faculties functioning properly (subject to no dysfunction) in a cognitive environment that is appropriate for S's kind of cognitive faculties, according to a design plan that is successfully aimed at truth. We must add, furthermore, that when a belief meets these conditions and does enjoy warrant, the degree of warrant it enjoys depends on the strength of the belief, the firmness with which S holds it. This is intended as an account of the central core of our concept of warrant; there is a penumbral area surrounding the central core where there are many analogical extensions of that central core; and beyond the penumbral area, still another belt of vagueness and imprecision, a host of possible cases and circumstances where there is really no answer to the question whether a given case is or isn't a case of warrant. [190] This means that the sort of classical analysis in which necessary and sufficient conditions are set out in a stylishly austere clause or two is of limited value here. What we need, instead, is an explanation and description of how the account works in the main areas of our cognitive life; that was the task of WPF. Responses to the above account of warrant have made it abundantly clear that it needs a certain kind of supplementation and fine tuning. [191] To see this, consider the following kind of Gettier example. I own a Chevrolet van, drive to Notre Dame on a football Saturday, and unthinkingly park in one of the many spaces reserved for the football coach. Naturally, his minions tow my van away and, as befits such lèse-majesté, destroy it. By a splendid piece of good luck, however, I have won the Varsity Club's Win-a-Chevrolet-Van contest, although I haven't yet heard the good news. You ask me what sort of automobile I own; I reply, both honestly and truthfully, "A Chevrolet van." My belief that I own such a van is true, but just by accident' (more accurately, it is only by accident that I happen to form a true belief); hence it does not constitute knowledge. All of the nonenvironmental conditions for warrant, furthermore, are met. It also looks as if the environmental condition is met: after all, isn't the cognitive environment here on earth and in South Bend just the one for which our faculties were designed? What is important about the example is this: it is clear that if the coach's minions had been a bit less zealous and had not destroyed my van, the conditions for warrant outlined above would have obtained and I would have known that I owned a Chevrolet van. In the actual situation, however, the one in which the van is destroyed, my belief is produced by the very same processes functioning the very same way in (apparently) the same cognitive environment. Hence, on my account, either both of these situations are ones in which I know that I own a Chevrolet van, or neither is. But clearly one is, and the other isn't. Therefore my account is apparently defective. [192] Consider another Gettier example, this one antedating Gettier's birth (it was proposed by Bertrand Russell). I glance at a clock, forming the opinion that it is 3:43 p.m.; as luck would have it, the clock stopped precisely twenty-four hours ago. The belief I form is indeed true; again, however, it is true just by accident' (the clock could just as well have stopped an hour earlier or later); it does not constitute knowledge. As in the previous case, if the clock had been running properly and I had formed the same belief by the same exercise of cognitive powers, I would have known; here, therefore, we have another example that apparently refutes my account. Still another example: I am not aware that Paul's look-alike brother Peter is staying at his house; if I'm across the street, take a quick look, and form the belief that Paul is emerging from his house, I don't know that it's Paul, even if in fact it is (it could just as well have been Peter emerging); again, if Peter hadn't been in the neighborhood, I would have known. What is crucial, in each of these cases, is that my cognitive faculties display a certain lack of resolution. I am unable, by a quick glance, to distinguish the state of affairs in which the clock is running properly and telling the right time from a state of affairs in which it stopped just twelve or twenty-four hours earlier. I cannot distinguish Paul from Peter just by a quick look from across the street. Of course, this lack of resolution is in each case relative to the particular exercise of cognitive powers in question. If I had watched the clock for ten minutes, say, I would have known that it isn't running, and if I had walked across the street and taken a good look, I'd have known that it wasn't Paul but Peter at the door. What I can't distinguish by those exercises of my epistemic powers are different cognitive minienvironments. In "Respondeo," there is a fuller development of the distinction between cognitive maxienvironments and cognitive minienvironments; here the following will suffice. First, a cognitive maxienvironment is more general and more global than a cognitive minienvironment. Our cognitive maxienvironment here on earth would include such macroscopic features as the presence and properties of light and air, the presence of visible objects, of other objects detectable by cognitive systems of our kind, of some objects not so detectable, of the regularities of nature, of the existence and general nature of other people, and so on. Our cognitive faculties are designed (by God or evolution) to function in this maxienvironment, or one like it. They are not designed for a maxienvironment in which, for example, there is constant darkness, or where everything is in a state of constant random flux, or where the only food available contains a substance that destroys short-term memory, or where there aren't any distinguishable objects, or no regularities of a kind we can detect; in such an environment, our faculties will not fulfill their function of providing us with true beliefs. Now a given cognitive maxienvironment can contain many different minienvironments--for example, the one where the clock stops, but also one where it doesn't; the one where Peter is visiting Paul, but also one where he isn't; the one where the coach's minions destroy my van, but also one where they magnanimously temper the punishment I so richly deserve, contenting themselves with painting the windshield black. And now here's the point: some cognitive minienvironments--such as those of the Notre Dame van case, the clock that stopped, Peter's visit to Paul--are misleading for some exercises of cognitive faculties, even when those faculties are functioning properly and even when the maxienvironment is favorable. The maxienvironment is right, but the minienvironment isn't; in those minienvironments the cognitive faculties in question (more exactly, particular exercises of the cognitive faculties in question) can't be counted on to produce true beliefs. The basic idea is this: our cognitive faculties have been designed for a certain kind of maxienvironment. Even within that maxienvironment, however, they don't function perfectly (they sometimes produce false belief), although they do function reliably. (Perhaps perfectly functioning cognitive faculties would require too much brain size, thus interfering with the achievement of other desiderata.) In some minienvironments, therefore, they can't be counted on to produce a true belief: if they do, it is just by accident and does not constitute knowledge. So even if the maxienvironment is favorable and the other conditions of warrant are met, a belief could still be true just by accident', thus not constituting knowledge. It is clear, therefore, that S knows p, on a given occasion, only if S's cognitive minienvironment, on that occasion, is not misleading--more exactly, not misleading with respect to the particular exercise of cognitive powers producing the belief that p. So the conditions of warrant (i.e., for the degree of warrant sufficient for knowledge [193] ) need an addition: the maxienvironment must, indeed, be favorable or appropriate, but so must the cognitive minienvironment. What must then be added to the other conditions of warrant is the resolution condition: (RC) A belief B produced by an exercise E of cognitive powers has warrant sufficient for knowledge only if MBE (the minienvironment with respect to B and E) is favorable for E. What does appropriateness' or favorability', or nonmisleadingness', for a cognitive minienvironment, consist in: can we say anything more definite? Intuitively, a minienvironment is favorable, for an exercise of cognitive powers, if that exercise can be counted on to produce a true belief in that minienvironment. Perhaps this is as specific as we can sensibly get; in "Respondeo," however, I went on to make a tentative suggestion as to how we could say a bit more precisely what this favorability consists in. Where B is a belief, E the exercise of cognitive powers that produces B, and MBE a minienvironment with respect to B and E, say that (F) MBE is favorable for E if and only if, if S were to form a belief by way of E in MBE, S would form a true belief. [194] Sadly enough, though, (F) won't do the trick at all; the relevant counterfactual itself can be true just by accident'--that is, by accident from the point of view of the design plan. [195] There are plenty of possible cases to demonstrate this: here is one. Return to those impecunious Wisconsinites trying to put the best face on things by erecting a lot of fake barns. [196] Suppose I am driving through the area on an early September morning when there is a good deal of mist and fog. I glance to the right and see a real barn; as it happens, all the nearby fake barns (which outnumber the real ones) are obscured by the morning mist; I say to myself, "Now that is a fine barn!" The belief I form is true; the relevant counterfactual is also true because of the way the fake barns are obscured by mist; but the belief does not have warrant sufficient for knowledge. What to do? Here is another (also tentative) suggestion. Recall that the resolution problem arises because I can't (for example) distinguish Paul from Peter from across the street just by looking; this particular exercise of cognitive powers displays insufficient resolution for that. So consider a given exercise of cognitive powers E, the belief B formed on that occasion, and a relevant cognitive minienvironment MBE. If the conditions of warrant have been met, B will be probable (ordinarily very probable) with respect to MBE. Of course, MBE is a state of affairs. Among the states of affairs it includes are some that E is competent to detect, that are cognitively accessible to E. Thus in the twin case the appearance of a person, of a man, of someone across the road, and the like, are all detectable by E--that is, just by taking a look. On the other hand, it's being Paul rather than Peter who appears in the doorway is not thus detectable; they look just alike at this distance, and I know nothing entailing that Peter isn't there. So consider the conjunction of circumstances C contained in MBE such that C is detectable by E; call this conjunctive state of affairs DMBE. In the case in question, these circumstances will be observable, and observable by way of taking a look from across the road. In the typical case, furthermore (assuming that the general conditions of warrant are met), B will also be probable with respect to DMBE. And now we can say what it is for a minienvironment to be favorable: MBE is favorable just if there is no state of affairs S included in MBE but not in DMBE such that the objective probability of B with respect to the conjunction of DMBE and S falls below r, where r is some real number representing a reasonably high probability. In the twin case, for example, a state of affairs S such that B is not probable enough with respect to the conjunction of DMBE and S would be Peter's being in the house as well as Paul, and being indistinguishable from him from across the street. In the case of the impecunious Wisconsinites, it is that there are more fake barns than real barns in the neighborhood. Also, of course, I don't specify the requisite level of probability r, which in any case will display a certain contextual character, differing from case to case. This suggestion seems promising, although induction leads me to be less than wholly confident that it is right. It may be that in the long run we can't say more than that the minienvironment must be favorable. The overall picture, then, is as follows. Our faculties are designed for a certain kind of cognitive maxienvironment, one that sufficiently resembles the one in which we do, in fact, find ourselves. And when a belief is formed by properly functioning faculties in an environment of that sort (and the bit of the design plan that governs its production is successfully aimed at truth), then the belief in question has some degree of warrant, even if it happens to be false. But our cognitive faculties are not maximally effective--not only in that there is much we aren't capable of coming to know but also in that we are sometimes prone to err, even when the maxienvironment is right and the relevant faculties are functioning properly. Another way to put the same point: within a favorable cognitive maxienvironment, there can be minienvironments for a given exercise of our faculties, in which it is just by accident, dumb luck, that a true belief is formed, if one is indeed formed. A true belief formed in such a minienvironment doesn't have warrant sufficient for knowledge, even if it has some degree of warrant. To achieve that more exalted degree of warrant, the belief must be formed in a minienvironment such that the exercise of the cognitive powers producing it can be counted on to produce a true belief. Hence the resolution condition. Beliefs that meet all of the conditions will then constitute knowledge (provided they are accepted with sufficient firmness). I have neglected several important components of our epistemic establishment. First, I have said nothing here about defeaters; in chapter 11, I'll address this topic. Another very important topic ignored here [197] is that of epistemic probability. Further, knowledge or warrant seems to have a contextual character; the degree of warrant necessary for knowledge seems to depend, to some extent, on circumstances and context. I don't have the space to go into these matters here. __________________________________________________________________ [185] The rest is to be found in my reply to Alston, Ginet, Steup, Swinburne, and Taylor in "Reliabilism, Analyses and Defeaters," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 55/2 (1995), pp. 427ff.; "Respondeo," in Warrant in Contemporary Epistemology: Essays in Honor of Plantinga's Theory of Knowledge, ed. J. Kvanvig (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1996); "Warrant and Accidentally True Belief," Analysis 57, n. 2 (April 1, 1997), p. 140; and pp. 156ff., below. [186] See WPF, pp. 11ff. [187] Although in WPF, chapter 11, I argue that there is no viable naturalistic account of proper function. [188] For necessary qualifications, see WPF, pp. 9ff. and 22-42. [189] Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, ed. Nelson Pike (Indianapolis and New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1970), p. 53. [190] As I argue in WPF, pp. 212-13. [191] By Robert Shope in "Gettier Problems," in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward Craig (London: Routledge, 1998), and his forthcoming book Knowledge as Power; Richard Feldman in "Plantinga, Gettier, and Warrant," in Warrant in Contemporary Epistemology: Essays in Honor of Plantinga's Theory of Knowledge, ed. Jonathan Kvanvig (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 1996), p. 216; and Peter Klein, "Warrant, Proper Function, Reliabilism, and Defeasibility," in Warrant in Contemporary Epistemology, p. 105. I am grateful to all three for instruction and enlightenment. For my reply and an effort at repair, see "Respondeo," in Warrant in Contemporary Epistemology. [192] For fuller development here, see "Respondeo," in Warrant in Contemporary Epistemology, pp. 314ff. [193] The thought is not that a belief produced in an unfavorable minienvironment has no warrant at all, but only that it doesn't have a degree of warrant sufficient for knowledge. See Trenton Merricks's "Warrant Entails Truth," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 55, no. 4 (December 1995), p. 841; see also Sharon Ryan's reply, "Does Warrant Entail Truth?" Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 56, no. 1 (March 1996), p. 183, and Merricks's rejoinder, "More on Warrant's Entailing Truth," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 57, no. 3 (September 1997), p. 627. [194] Here I am assuming (contrary to the usual semantics for counterfactuals) that truth of antecedent and consequent is not sufficient for truth of the counterfactual (a counterfactual can be false even if it has a true antecedent and a true consequent). What is also required is that there be no sufficiently close possible world in which the counterfactual has a true antecedent and false consequent. [195] As was pointed out to me by Thomas Crisp. [196] See WPF, pp. 32-33. [197] But treated in WPF, chapter 9. __________________________________________________________________ III. The F&M Complaint Again Now we are ready to return to the F&M complaint. What we see is a clear if surprising connection between the topic of warrrant and the F&M complaint: the latter is really the claim that theistic belief lacks warrant. According to Freud, theistic belief is produced by cognitive faculties that are functioning properly, but the process that produces it--wishful thinking--does not have the production of true belief as its purpose; it is aimed, instead, at something like enabling us to carry on in the grim and threatening world in which we find ourselves. Therefore, theistic belief does not meet the third condition of warrant; as a result, the presumption of reliability that goes with warranted beliefs does not apply to it. Theistic belief is no more respectable, epistemically speaking, than propositions selected entirely at random. Suppose I have a random generator of English declarative sentences (sentences that express propositions); it randomly chooses one of a stockpile of a million sentences and their negations, flashing its selection on a big screen. I use the machine, recommending the resulting proposition to you for belief. You quite properly demur, pointing out that there isn't the slightest reason to think the belief in question true. Theistic belief, thinks Freud, has no better epistemic credentials, for the believer, than the propositions expressed by those sentences would have for someone for whom they have no source of warrant in addition to their appearing on the screen. It is baseless superstition. Still further, Freud thinks, once we see that theistic and religious belief has its origin in wishful thinking, we will also see that it is very probably false. There is no good argument from this fact about its origin to the conclusion that it is false; nor is it that someone who recognizes its origin in wishful thinking will simply see that it is false. It is rather just that people of sense who know something about how the world works will take it to be probably false. They will take the same attitude toward theistic and Christian belief that they take toward the stories in Greek or Aztec or Persian mythology: we can't really prove that these stories are false, but their chances of being true are pretty slim. So the proper intellectual attitude toward these beliefs isn't merely agnosticism; it is that the beliefs in question are unwarranted and furthermore are very probably false. Marx's views are similar. He thinks first that theistic and religious belief is produced by cognitive faculties that are not functioning properly. Those faculties are, to the extent that they produce such belief, dysfunctional; the dysfunction is due to a sort of perversion in social structure, a sort of social malfunction. Religious belief therefore doesn't meet the first condition of warrant; it is therefore without warrant, and an intellectually healthy person will reject it. Further, Marx also thinks that a person whose cognitive faculties are functioning properly and who knows what was known by the middle of the nineteenth century will see that materialism is very probably true, in which case Christian and theistic belief is very likely false. So he would join Freud in the contention that Christian and theistic belief is without warrant, a baseless superstition, and very probably false. We could see the matter slightly differently. Perhaps the problem with religious belief, according to Marx, is not that it is produced by malfunctioning faculties, but rather that capitalist society constitutes a hostile environment for the operation of human cognitive faculties; then the problem would be the second condition rather than the first. Still another possibility: perhaps the production of theistic or religious belief is like a damage-control mechanism. When people are subjected to the nasty conditions of capitalism, they come to believe these tales of a God and another world as a means of coping with their otherwise intolerable situation. Then Marx's view would be more like Freud's, and religious belief could be seen as an illusion in the Freudian sense. There would remain the following difference. According to Freud, the inclination to form religious belief arises out of our nature and is therefore to be expected, no matter what the social structure. According to this version of Marx, however, religious belief is a response to the very special social circumstances of misery and injustice generated by capitalist society, so that there need be no inclination toward it among people in a society that doesn't display that or a similar perversion. Of course Marx actually says little about religion, not enough to make it possible to distinguish one of these possibilities as the one he had in mind. The F&M complaint, therefore, is that theistic belief and religious belief in general lack warrant. So say Freud and Marx--but are they right? In the next chapter, we shall turn to a model for the possession of warrant by Christian belief. Model in hand, we shall then evaluate the F&M complaint. __________________________________________________________________ [150] In Faith and Rationality, ed. Alvin Plantinga and Nicholas Wolterstorff (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983). [151] Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ PART III WARRANTED CHRISTIAN BELIEF __________________________________________________________________ 6 Warranted Belief in God To know in a general and confused way that God exists is implanted in us by nature. . . . Thomas Aquinas for since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made. . . . St. Paul The de jure challenge to Christian (or theistic) belief, as we have seen, is the claim that such belief is irrational or unreasonable or unjustified or in some other way properly subject to invidious epistemic criticism; it contrasts with the de facto challenge, according to which the belief in question is false. Put just like that, the de jure rebuke is pretty vague and general; we can't do much by way of evaluating the proposed complaint without achieving a clearer and more specific formulation of it. As we have seen, clear and sensible formulation of the de jure criticism--at any rate of one that isn't just obviously mistaken--has proven elusive. In the last chapter, however, we were able to make progress by considering the F&M (Freud and Marx) complaint. What we saw is that this complaint is really the claim that Christian and other theistic belief is irrational in the sense that it originates in cognitive malfunction (Marx) or in cognitive proper function that is aimed at something other than the truth (Freud)--comfort, perhaps, or the ability to soldier on in this appalling world in which we find ourselves. To put it another way, the claim is that such belief doesn't originate in the proper function of cognitive faculties successfully aimed at producing true beliefs. To put it in still another way, the charge is that theistic and Christian belief lacks warrant. By way of response, in this chapter I shall first offer a model--a model based on a claim made jointly by Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin--for a way in which theistic belief could have warrant. Once we see how theistic belief might have warrant, we can also see the futility of the F&M complaint and its contemporary successors. In the remaining chapters of part III, I shall extend the model to cover specifically Christian belief. Chapter 7 will deal with sin and its noetic results. The extended model crucially involves the notion of faith. Following Aquinas and Calvin, I shall argue that faith has both an intellectual and an affective component: chapter 8 will therefore examine the way in which, as Calvin says, the great truths of the gospel are "revealed to our minds," and chapter 9 will examine the way in which, as he also says, they are "sealed upon our hearts." Then in chapter 10, I'll consider and reply to objections to the original and extended models. __________________________________________________________________ I. The Aquinas/Calvin Model __________________________________________________________________ A. Models I say I propose in this chapter to give a model of theistic belief's having warrant; but what sort of animal is a model, and what would it be good for? There are models of many different kinds: model airplanes, artists' models, models in the sense of exemplars, models of a modern major general. There is also the logician's sense of model in which, for example, any consistent first-order theory has a model in the natural numbers. My use of the term here is more abstract than the first and more concrete than the second. The rough idea is this: to give a model of a proposition or state of affairs S is to show how it could be that S is true or actual. The model itself will be another proposition (or state of affairs), one such that it is clear (1) that it is possible and (2) that if it is true, then so is the target proposition. From these two, of course, it follows that the target proposition is possible. In this chapter, I shall give a model of theistic belief's having warrant: the Aquinas/Calvin (A/C) model. Then in chapters 7, 8, and 9, I will extend the A/C model to a model in which specific and full-blooded Christian belief has warrant. I claim four things for these two models. First, they are possible, and thus show it is possible that theistic and Christian belief have warrant. The sense of possibility here, however, isn't just broadly logical possibility--after all, such obvious falsehoods as the population of China is less than a thousand are possible in that sense--but something much stronger. I claim that these models are epistemically possible: they are consistent with what we know, where "what we know" is what all (or most) of the participants in the discussion agree on. [198] Second, and related to the first assertion, I claim that there aren't any cogent objections to the model--that is, to the proposition that the model is in fact true or actual. More exactly, there are no cogent objections of a philosophic or scientific kind (or indeed any other kind) to the model that are not also cogent objections to theism or Christian belief. Another way to put it: any cogent objection to the model's truth will also have to be a cogent objection to the truth of theistic or Christian belief. I shall go on to argue that if Christian belief is indeed true, then the model in question or one very like it is also true. If I am successful, therefore, the upshot will be that there is no viable de jure (as opposed to de facto) challenge either to theistic or to Christian belief. There is no sensible challenge to the rationality or rational justification or warrant of Christian belief that is not also a challenge to its truth. That is, there is no de jure challenge that is independent of a de facto challenge. That means that a particularly popular way of criticizing Christian belief--to be found in the evidentialist objection, in the F&M complaint, in many versions of the argument from evil, and in still other objections--is not viable. This is the sort of challenge that goes as follows: "I don't know whether Christian (or theistic) belief is true--how could anyone know a thing like that? But I do know that it is irrational, or rationally unacceptable or unjustified or without warrant (or in some other way epistemically challenged)." If my argument is right, no objection of this sort has any force. Third, I believe that the models I shall present are not only possible and beyond philosophical challenge but also true, or at least verisimilitudinous, close to the truth. Still, I don't claim to show that they are true. That is because the A/C model entails the truth of theism and the extended A/C model the truth of classical Christianity. To show that these models are true, therefore, would also be to show that theism and Christianity are true; and I don't know how to do something one could sensibly call showing' that either of these is true. I believe there are a large number (at least a couple dozen) good arguments for the existence of God; none, however, can really be thought of as a showing or demonstration. As for classical Christianity, there is even less prospect of demonstrating its truth. [199] Of course this is nothing against either their truth or their warrant; very little of what we believe can be demonstrated' or shown'. Fourth, there is a whole range of models for the warrant of Christian belief, all different but similar to the A/C and extended A/C models. (In claiming that models I present are close to the truth, what I am claiming is that they belong to that range.) And the fourth thing to say here is that if classical Christian belief is indeed true, then one of these models is very likely also true. Alternatively, for one who thinks Christian belief true, one or more of these models (or their disjunction) is a good way in which to conceive the warrant of Christian belief. __________________________________________________________________ [198] Epistemic possibility is stronger than broadly logical possibility, but also weaker. There are propositions that are epistemically possible, but not possible in the broadly logical sense--true for all we know, but nonetheless impossible. Of course I can hardly be required to produce one; but I can produce a pair one or the other of which enjoys this distinction. Thus consider existentialism: the proposition that singular states of affairs and propositions are not necessarily existent but are ontologically dependent upon the objects with respect to which they are singular. For example, according to existentialism, no proposition singular with respect to Socrates--Socrates was wise, for example--could have existed if Socrates had not. I believe existentialism is false (see my "On Existentialism," Philosophical Studies [July 1983]), but I could scarcely claim to know that it is false, and, I believe, the same goes for everyone else. Existentialism is therefore epistemically possible. The same goes, naturally enough, for its denial. Each of these propositions, however, is necessarily true if true at all; hence one or the other is necessarily false, in the broadly logical sense, even if epistemically possible. [199] As I shall argue below, p. 271. __________________________________________________________________ B. Presentation of the Model Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin concur on the claim that there is a kind of natural knowledge of God (and anything on which Calvin and Aquinas are in accord is something to which we had better pay careful attention). Here I want to propose a model based on Calvin's version of the suggestion, not because I think Calvin should be the cynosure of all eyes theological, but because he presents an interesting development of the particular thought in question. And here, as in several other areas, we can usefully see Calvin's suggestion as a kind of meditation on and development of a theme suggested by Aquinas. According to the latter, "To know in a general and confused way that God exists is implanted in us by nature." [200] In the opening chapters of the Institutes of the Christian Religion, [201] Calvin concurs: there is a sort of natural knowledge of God. Calvin expands this theme into a suggestion as to the way in which beliefs about God can have warrant; he has a suggestion as to the nature of the faculty or mechanism whereby we acquire true beliefs about God. His idea here can also be seen as a development of what the apostle Paul says in Romans 1: For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of men who by their wickedness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. . . . (Romans 1:18-20) [202] For our purposes, Calvin's basic claim is that there is a sort of instinct, a natural human tendency, a disposition, a nisus to form beliefs about God under a variety of conditions and in a variety of situations. Thus in his commentary on the above passage: By saying, that God has made it manifest, he means, that man was created to be a spectator of this formed world, and that eyes were given him, that he might, by looking on so beautiful a picture, be led up to the Author himself. [203] In the Institutes, he develops this thought: There is within the human mind, and indeed by natural instinct, an awareness of divinity. This we take to be beyond controversy. To prevent anyone from taking refuge in the pretense of ignorance, God himself has implanted in all men a certain understanding of his divine majesty. . . . Since, therefore, men one and all perceive that there is a God and that he is their maker, they are condemned by their own testimony because they have failed to honor him and to consecrate their lives to his will. . . there is, as the eminent pagan says, no nation so barbarous, no people so savage, that they have not a deep seated conviction that there is a God. . . . Therefore, since from the beginning of the world there has been no region, no city, in short, no household, that could do without religion, there lies in this a tacit confession of a sense of deity inscribed in the hearts of all. (Institutes I, iii, 1, p. 44) [204] Calvin goes on to claim that many rejections of God, or attempts to do without him, are really further testimonies to this natural inclination: Men of sound judgment will always be sure that a sense of divinity which can never be effaced is engraved upon men's minds. Indeed, the perversity of the impious, who though they struggle furiously are unable to extricate themselves from the fear of God, is abundant testimony that this conviction, namely that there is some God, is naturally inborn in all, and is fixed deep within, as it were in the very marrow. . . . From this we conclude that it is not a doctrine that must first be learned in school, but one of which each of us is master from his mother's womb and which nature itself permits no one to forget, although many strive with every nerve to this end. (I, iii, 3, p. 46) Separated from the extravagance of expression that sometimes characterizes Calvin, the basic idea, I think, is that there is a kind of faculty or a cognitive mechanism, what Calvin calls a sensus divinitatis or sense of divinity, which in a wide variety of circumstances produces in us beliefs about God. These circumstances, we might say, trigger the disposition to form the beliefs in question; they form the occasion on which those beliefs arise. Under these circumstances, we develop or form theistic beliefs--or, rather, these beliefs are formed in us; in the typical case we don't consciously choose to have those beliefs. Instead, we find ourselves with them, just as we find ourselves with perceptual and memory beliefs. (You don't and can't simply decide to have this belief, thereby acquiring it.) [205] These passages suggest that awareness of God is natural, widespread, and not easy to forget, ignore, or destroy. Seventy years of determined but unsuccessful Marxist efforts to uproot Christianity in the former Soviet Union tend to confirm this claim. [206] Second, it also sounds as if Calvin thinks knowledge of God is innate, such that one has it from birth, "from his mother's womb." Still, perhaps Calvin doesn't really mean to endorse either of these suggestions. The capacity for such knowledge is indeed innate, like the capacity for arithmetical knowledge. Still, it doesn't follow that we know elementary arithmetic from our mother's womb; it takes a little maturity. My guess is Calvin thinks the same with respect to this knowledge of God; what one has from one's mother's womb is not this knowledge of God, but a capacity for it. Whatever Calvin thinks, however, it's our model; and according to the model the development of the sensus divinitatis requires a certain maturity (although it is often manifested by very young children). The sensus divinitatis is a disposition or set of dispositions to form theistic beliefs in various circumstances, in response to the sorts of conditions or stimuli that trigger the working of this sense of divinity. Calvin thinks in particular of some of nature's grand spectacles. Like Kant, he was especially impressed, in this connection, by the marvelous compages of the starry heavens above: Even the common folk and the most untutored, who have been taught only by the aid of the eyes, cannot be unaware of the excellence of divine art, for it reveals itself in this innumerable and yet distinct and well-ordered variety of the heavenly host. It is, accordingly, clear that there is no one to whom the Lord does not abundantly show his wisdom. (I, v, 2, p. 53) You see the blazing glory of the heavens from a mountainside at 13,000 feet; you think about those unimaginable distances; you find yourself filled with awe and wonder, and you form the belief that God must be great to have created this magnificent heavenly host. But it isn't only the variety of the heavenly host that catches his eye here: Lest anyone, then, be excluded from access to happiness, he not only sowed in men's minds that seed of religion of which we have spoken, but revealed himself and daily discloses himself in the whole workmanship of the universe. As a consequence, men cannot open their eyes without being compelled to see him. . . . But upon his individual works he has engraved unmistakable marks of his glory . . . wherever you cast your eyes, there is no spot in the universe wherein you cannot discern at least some sparks of his glory. (I, v, 1, p. 52) [207] Calvin's idea is that the workings of the sensus divinitatis is triggered or occasioned by a wide variety of circumstances, including in particular some of the glories of nature: the marvelous, impressive beauty of the night sky; the timeless crash and roar of the surf that resonates deep within us; the majestic grandeur of the mountains (the North Cascades, say, as viewed from Whatcom Pass); the ancient, brooding presence of the Australian outback; the thunder of a great waterfall. But it isn't only grandeur and majesty that counts; he would say the same for the subtle play of sunlight on a field in spring, or the dainty, articulate beauty of a tiny flower, or aspen leaves shimmering and dancing in the breeze. "There is no spot in the universe," he says, "wherein you cannot discern at least some sparks of his glory." Calvin could have added other sorts of circumstances: there is something like an awareness of divine disapproval upon having done what is wrong, or cheap, and something like a perception of divine forgiveness upon confession and repentance. People in grave danger instinctively turn to the Lord to ask for succor and support, having formed the belief that he can hear and help if he sees fit. (They say there are no atheists in foxholes.) On a beautiful spring morning (the birds singing, heaven and earth alight and alive with glory, the air fresh and cool, the treetops gleaming in the sun), a spontaneous hymn of thanks to the Lord--thanks for your circumstances and your very existence--may arise in your soul. According to the model, therefore, there are many circumstances, and circumstances of many kinds, that call forth or occasion theistic belief. Here the sensus divinitatis resembles other belief-producing faculties or mechanisms. If we wish to think in terms of the overworked functional analogy, we can think of the sensus divinitatis, too, as an input-output device: it takes the circumstances mentioned above as input and issues as output theistic beliefs, beliefs about God. We must note six further features of the model. 1. Basicality According to the A/C model, this natural knowledge of God is not arrived at by inference or argument (for example, the famous theistic proofs of natural theology) but in a much more immediate way. The deliverances of the sensus divinitatis are not quick and sotto voce inferences from the circumstances that trigger its operation. It isn't that one beholds the night sky, notes that it is grand, and concludes that there must be such a person as God: an argument like that would be ridiculously weak. It isn't that one notes some feature of the Australian outback--that it is ancient and brooding, for example--and draws the conclusion that God exists. It is rather that, upon the perception of the night sky or the mountain vista or the tiny flower, these beliefs just arise within us. They are occasioned by the circumstances; they are not conclusions from them. The heavens declare the glory of God and the skies proclaim the work of his hands: but not by way of serving as premises for an argument. Awareness of guilt may lead me to God; but it is not that in this awareness I have the material for a quick theistic argument: I am guilty, so there must be a God. This argument isn't nearly as silly as it looks; but when the operation of the sensus divinitatis is triggered by perception of my guilt, it doesn't work by way of an argument. I don't take my guilt as evidence for the existence of God, or for the proposition that he is displeased with me. It is rather that in that circumstance--the circumstance of my clearly seeing my guilt--I simply find myself with the belief that God is disapproving or disappointed. In this regard, the sensus divinitatis resembles perception, memory, and a priori belief. Consider the first. I look out into the backyard; I see that the coral tiger lilies are in bloom. I don't note that I am being appeared to a certain complicated way (that my experience is of a certain complicated character) and then make an argument from my being appeared to in that way to the conclusion that in fact there are coral tiger lilies in bloom there. (The whole history of modern philosophy up to Hume and Reid shows that such an argument would be thoroughly inconclusive.) It is rather that upon being appeared to in that way (and given my previous training), the belief that the coral tiger lilies are in bloom spontaneously arises in me. This belief will ordinarily be basic, in the sense that it is not accepted on the evidential basis of other propositions. The same goes for memory. You ask me what I had for breakfast; I think for a moment and then remember: pancakes with blueberries. I don't argue from the fact that it seems to me that I remember having pancakes for breakfast to the conclusion that I did; rather, you ask me what I had for breakfast, and the answer simply comes to mind. Or consider a priori belief. I don't infer from other things that, for example, modus ponens is a valid form of argument: I just see that it is so and, in fact, must be so. All of these, we might say, are starting points for thought. But (on the model) the same goes for the sense of divinity. It isn't a matter of making a quick and dirty inference from the grandeur of the mountains or the beauty of the flower or the sun on the treetops to the existence of God; instead, a belief about God spontaneously arises in those circumstances, the circumstances that trigger the operation of the sensus divinitatis. This belief is another of those starting points for thought; it too is basic in the sense that the beliefs in question are not accepted on the evidential basis of other beliefs. [208] Of course there are options here. The model could be developed in such a way that the role of the sensus divinitatis is to enable one to see the truth of the crucial premise for a quick theistic argument--such as the heavens can be gloriously beautiful only if God has created them. This proposition is a consequence of theism in any event; what the present suggestion would add is that it plays a crucial role in the genesis of theistic belief. [209] In the Summa Theologiae passage quoted above in footnote 3, Aquinas goes on to make a suggestion like this: he suggests that this natural knowledge of God is "immediate," but also by way of inference: this is due either to the fact that it is self-evident that God exists, just as other principles of demonstration are--a view held by some people, as we said in Book One--or, what seems indeed to be true, that man can immediately reach some sort of knowledge of God by natural reason. For, when men see that things in nature run according to a definite order, and that ordering does not occur without an orderer, they perceive in most cases that there is some orderer of the things that we see. Here two things are noteworthy. First, what Aquinas says here suggests that this knowledge (the second variety) is by way of inference, so that, strictly speaking, this knowledge of God would not be basic. The inference, however, would be very quick, elementary, and obvious, so that perhaps believing by way of this kind of inference isn't easily distinguished from believing in the basic way. Second, note that this knowledge of God can indeed be very confused: But this knowledge admits of a mixture of many errors. Some people have believed that there is no other orderer of worldly things than the celestial bodies, and so they said that the celestial bodies are gods. Other people pushed it farther, to the very elements and the things generated from them, thinking that motion and the natural function which these elements have are not present in them as the effect of some other orderer, but that other things are ordered by them. Contemporary naturalists such as Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins [210] would presumably concur with those who think that "motion and the natural function which these elements have are not present in them as the effect of some other orderer." Aquinas would apparently include them among those who have a natural knowledge of God--at least if they also believe that there is something (if only, e.g., natural laws) that orders the things we see. Apparently this kind of knowledge of God, oddly enough, does not preclude being an atheist or a naturalist. Perhaps we can understand Aquinas as follows. Consider the description that which orders what we see. This description in fact applies to God. One who believes that it does indeed apply to something or other can therefore have de re knowledge of God; for example, she can believe of that which orders what we see that it has one or another properties--that it exists, is powerful, and indeed orders what we see. This would be to believe de re of God that he exists, is powerful, and orders what we see. But this knowledge also "admits of many errors": for example, the naturalist thinks that what orders what we see is, in fact, the ensemble of natural laws; she therefore believes de re of God that he is the ensemble of natural laws. Calvin's view of natural knowledge of God would be a bit different. Following Paul in Romans 1, he holds that the natural knowledge in question is sufficient to render human beings guilty--guilty of failing to worship, obey, and commit ourselves to God. Hence this knowledge includes that God is to be worshiped and obeyed, so that God couldn't be, for example, the ensemble of natural laws. (Of course there is a sense in which one does obey natural laws--if there are any [211] --but in this sense you can't fail to obey them, and wouldn't necessarily be guilty if you could and did.) 2. Proper Basicality with Respect to Justification On the A/C model, then, theistic belief as produced by the sensus divinitatis is basic. It is also properly basic, and that in at least two senses. On the one hand, a belief can be properly basic for a person in the sense that it is indeed basic for him (he doesn't accept it on the evidential basis of other propositions) and, furthermore, he is justified in holding it in the basic way: he is within his epistemic rights, is not irresponsible, is violating no epistemic or other duties in holding that belief in that way. This is the sense of proper basicality that was foremost in "Reason and Belief in God." That sense was foremost there because there I was contesting the views of the evidentialist objectors to theistic belief. They didn't ordinarily say precisely what they think the problem is with believing in God in the basic way (without propositional evidence), but as far as I can see, they were claiming that belief in God taken that way is unjustified. Further, they apparently understood justification and lack of justification in deontological terms: to be unjustified is to be epistemically irresponsible, to flout an epistemic duty or requirement of some sort. As I argued above in chapter 3, however, it is really pretty obvious that a believer in God is or can be deontologically justified. You think about the matter carefully and at length, considering the F&M complaint and all the rest, but it still seems clear or obvious (perhaps even overwhelmingly so) that there is such a person as God: how could someone sensibly claim that you were being irresponsible or derelict with respect to some epistemic duty? That would be a hard saying indeed. 3. Proper Basicality with Respect to Warrant There is another sense in which a belief can be properly or improperly basic: p is properly basic for S in this sense if and only if S accepts p in the basic way, and furthermore p has warrant for S, accepted in that way. Perceptual beliefs are properly basic in this sense: such beliefs are typically accepted in the basic way, and they often have warrant. (They are often produced by cognitive faculties functioning properly in a congenial epistemic environment according to a design plan successfully aimed at truth.) The same goes for memory beliefs, some a priori beliefs, and many other beliefs. I suppose the fact is most of our beliefs that have warrant, have it in this basic way; it is only in a smallish area of our cognitive life that the warrant a belief has for us derives from the fact that it is accepted on the evidential basis of other beliefs. Of course, sometimes beliefs are accepted in the basic way but do not have warrant. As we saw in chapter 4, this can be due to cognitive malfunction, or to a cognitive faculty's being impeded by such conditions as rage, lust, ambition, grief, and the like; it can also be because the bit of the design plan governing the production of the belief is aimed not at truth but at something else (survival, e.g.), or because something in the testimonial chain has gone wrong (one of your friends has lied to you), or for still other reasons. According to the A/C model I am presenting here, theistic belief produced by the sensus divinitatis can also be properly basic with respect to warrant. [212] It isn't just that the believer in God is within her epistemic rights in accepting theistic belief in the basic way. That is indeed so; more than that, however, this belief can have warrant for the person in question, warrant that is often sufficient for knowledge. The sensus divinitatis is a belief-producing faculty (or power, or mechanism) that under the right conditions produces belief that isn't evidentially based on other beliefs. On this model, our cognitive faculties have been designed and created by God; the design plan, therefore, is a design plan in the literal and paradigmatic sense. It is a blueprint or plan for our ways of functioning, and it has been developed and instituted by a conscious, intelligent agent. The purpose of the sensus divinitatis is to enable us to have true beliefs about God; when it functions properly, it ordinarily does produce true beliefs about God. These beliefs therefore meet the conditions for warrant; if the beliefs produced are strong enough, then they constitute knowledge. [213] There will be a complicated and many-sided interplay between the deliverances of the sensus divinitatis and the deliverances of other sources of belief, just as there is a complicated interplay between the deliverances of perception, which are accepted in the basic way, and other sources of belief. It is not the case, of course, that a person who acquires belief by way of the sensus divinitatis need have any well-formed ideas about the source or origin of the belief, or any idea that there is such a faculty as the sensus divinitatis. (Just as most of us don't have well-developed ideas as to the source and origin of our a priori beliefs.) Nor would such a person accept the belief in question on the basis of the following sort of argument: this belief seems to be a deliverance of the sensus divinitatis; the sensus divinitatis is a reliable belief-producing mechanism; therefore, probably this belief is true. Of course not; here, as in the case of other original sources of belief (memory, perception, a priori belief, etc.), the belief in question isn't typically accepted on the basis of any argument at all, and the belief can have warrant even if the believer has no second-level beliefs at all about the belief in question. 4. Natural Knowledge of God This capacity for knowledge of God is part of our original cognitive equipment, part of the fundamental epistemic establishment with which we have been created by God. In this, it contrasts with one of the subjects of chapter 8, the internal instigation of the Holy Spirit. As we shall see there, the latter is an element in the divine response to human sin and the human predicament, a predicament in which we human beings require healing, restoration, and salvation. According to fundamental Christian teaching, the central divine response to our predicament is the incarnation and atonement: the life, sacrificial death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the divine son of God. By virtue of this divine response, we human beings can be put right with God and live triumphantly with him in this life and the next. Another part of God's response to our condition, however, is Scripture and the testimony of the Holy Spirit. God speaks to us in Scripture, teaching us his response to our fallen condition and the way in which this response is to be appropriated by us. By virtue of the inward instigation of the Holy Spirit, we see that the teachings of Scripture are true. This work of the Holy Spirit, therefore, is a very special kind of cognitive instrument or agency; it is a belief-producing process, all right, but one that is very much out of the ordinary. It is not part of our original noetic equipment (not part of our constitution as we came from the hand of the Maker), but instead part of a special divine response to our (unnatural) sinful condition. Later, we will look at these notions in more detail; here, the thing to see is the contrast between the activity of the Holy Spirit in our cognitive lives, on the one hand, and the sensus divinitatis on the other. The former is part of a special response to the fallen condition into which humankind has precipitated itself; the latter is part of our original epistemic endowment. The former is a special divine response to sin; presumably it would not have taken place had there been no sin. The latter would no doubt have been part of our epistemic establishment even if humanity had not fallen into sin. 5. Perceptual or Experiential Knowledge? Suppose something like the A/C model is in fact correct: knowledge of God ordinarily comes not through inference from other things one believes, but from a sensus divinitatis, as characterized above. Would it follow that our knowledge of God comes by way of perception? That is, would it follow that the warrant enjoyed by theistic belief is perceptual warrant? Not necessarily. This is not because there is any real question about the possibility or, indeed, the actuality of perception of God. I believe William Alston has shown that if there is such a person as God, there could certainly be perception of him, and indeed is perception of him. Alston's powerful discussion shows that the usual objections to perception of God (no independent way of checking, disagreement as to what God is like, differences from sense perception, apparent relativity to the theological beliefs of the alleged perceiver, and so on) have very little to be said for them. [214] Of course it isn't wholly clear just what perception is (there is as much dispute about that as about any other philosophical topic); conceivably, the way to think of perception strictly so-called is such that it essentially involves specifically sensuous imagery. This imagery need not be of the sort that goes with our sense perception; other kinds are certainly possible. (Perhaps sensuous imagery goes with the bat's echolocation, a kind of imagery wholly foreign to us.) But sensuous imagery of some kind may be necessary for perception, and perhaps it is also required that this imagery plays a certain specific (and hard to specify) causal role in the genesis of the candidates for perceptual belief in question. What Alston thinks of as putative perception of God, however, often appears not to involve sensuous imagery. [215] If so, then, strictly speaking, there wouldn't be perception of God; what Alston's discussion would then show is that (given the existence of God) there could certainly be and probably is something very like perception of God (something that is epistemically on all fours with perception in that it, like the latter, can be a source of warrant). This something, therefore, can properly be called perception' in an analogically extended sense of that term. To the believer, the presence of God is often palpable. A surprising number of people report that at one time or another, they feel the presence of God, or at any rate it seems to them that they feel the presence of God--where the feeling' also doesn't seem to go by way of sensuous imagery. Many others (by no means for the most part spiritual heroes or even serious believers) report hearing God speak to them. And among these cases, cases where it seems right or nearly right to speak of perceiving God (feeling his presence, perhaps hearing his voice), there is great variation. There are the shattering, overwhelming sorts of experiences had by Paul (then Saul') on the road to Damascus and reported by mystics and other masters of the interior life. In these cases there may be vivid sensuous imagery of more than one kind. Still, there is also a sort of awareness of God where it seems right to say one feels his presence, but where there is little or none of the sort of sensuous imagery that typically goes with perception; it is more like a nonsensuous impression of a brooding presence. And (apparently) there are all sorts of examples between these two extremes. So I have no doubt that perception of God or something very much like it does occur, and occur rather widely. But would beliefs gained by way of the sensus divinitatis of the A/C model be perceptual belief--that is, would the knowledge of God afforded (in the A/C model) by the sensus divinitatis be by way of perception? I'm inclined to think not. There are different accounts of what is essential to perception; Alston's, I think, is as good as any. As he puts it, what I take to be definitive of perceptual consciousness is that something (or so it seems to the subject) presents itself to the subject's awareness as so-and-so--as red, round, loving, or whatever. When I stand before my desk with my eyes closed and then open them, the most striking difference in my consciousness is that items that I was previously merely thinking about or remembering, if conscious of them in any way, are now present to me. (PG, p. 36) Of course it isn't easy to say, in every sort of case, when the object seems to present itself to the subject; let's suppose we have something of a grasp of this notion and can tell within reasonable limits when it applies. Then I think it is clear that in some of the experiences that are, on the model, operations of the sensus divinitatis, there is a sense of God's actually being presented to, present to, one's awareness, but in others not. In the sorts of cases Calvin speaks of (the night sky, the mountains, the ocean), it is sometimes as if one feels, perceives the very presence of God. This would be what Alston calls (p. 21) indirect perception of God--the perception of God mediated by the perception of something else (the night sky, the mountains). In other cases of this sort, however, God doesn't seem exactly present, or presented, even though various beliefs about him--that he is powerful, glorious, to be worshiped, obeyed, thanked--arise. And in some of the other sorts of manifestations of the sensus divinitatis--situations of guilt, danger, gratitude--the sense that God is actually present to one, as Alston is thinking of it, seems rarer. So according to the model, the operation of the sensus divinitatis doesn't necessarily involve perception of God. Well, even if this sort of knowledge of God isn't perceptual, can we at any rate say that it is by way of religious experience? Can we say that the warrant it gets comes from experience? The first thing to see is that this term religious experience' is construed in a thousand different ways to cover a vast and confusing variety of cases; the question as it stands is multiply ambiguous and, in fact, we are probably better off boycotting the term. [216] Still, perhaps we can say at least the following: the operation of the sensus divinitatis will always involve the presence of experience of some kind or other, even if sensuous imagery isn't always present. Sometimes there is sensuous imagery; sometimes there is something like feeling the presence of God, where there seems to be no sensuous imagery present, but perhaps something (necessarily hard to describe) like it; often there is also the sort of experience that goes with being frightened, feeling grateful, delighted, foolish, angry, pleased, and the like. A common component is a sort of awe, a sense of the numinous; [217] a sense of being in the presence of a being of overwhelming majesty and greatness. None of these is inevitably connected with the operation of the sensus divinitatis, although perhaps no occasion of its operation fails to display one or another of these varieties of experience. But there is another sort of experience that is always present in the operation of the sensus divinitatis. Recall the distinction made a couple of chapters back between sensuous imagery and what I called above doxastic experience, the sort of experience one has when entertaining any proposition one believes. Entertaining, for instance, the proposition that 3 + 2 = 5 or that Mount Everest is higher than Mount Blanc feels different from entertaining one you think is clearly false--3 + 2 = 6, for example, or Mount Blanc is higher than Mount Everest. The first two feel natural, right, acceptable; the second two feel objectionable, wrong, eminently rejectable. [218] As I say, this experience is always connected with operations of the sensus divinitatis, because always connected with the formation or sustenance of any belief. So all of these varieties of experience can be found in the operation of the sensus divinitatis; doxastic experience accompanies any beliefs formed by its operation, as it does the formation of any other belief. So back to our question: shall we therefore say that knowledge by way of the sensus divinitatis comes by way of religious experience, that it is experiential knowledge? Shall we say that (on the model) the warrant it has comes from experience? I don't propose to answer the question. An answer would involve a long and essentially irrelevant effort to answer another question: "What does it mean to say that the warrant of a belief comes from (or comes by way of) experience, religious or otherwise?" This is an interesting question, and a tough question (doxastic experience always accompanies the formation of a priori belief, and scraps of sensuous imagery typically accompany it; does the warrant of a priori belief therefore come from experience?). But we don't need an answer to that question for our purposes. We can be satisfied with an account of how (on the model) the sensus divinitatis does in fact work; given that account, the answer to the question whether this is by way of experience is unimportant and optional. 6. Sin and Natural Knowledge of God Finally, according to the A/C model this natural knowledge of God has been compromised, weakened, reduced, smothered, overlaid, or impeded by sin and its consequences. In the next chapter, we shall explore the noetic effects of sin in more detail, and in chapter 8 we shall see that (on the model) the sensus divinitatis is restored to proper function by regeneration and the operation of the Holy Spirit. For now, we note only that the knowledge of God provided by the sensus divinitatis, prior to faith and regeneration, is both narrowed in scope and partially suppressed. Due to one cause or another, the faculty itself may be diseased and thus partly or wholly disabled. There is such a thing as cognitive disease; there is blindness, deafness, inability to tell right from wrong, insanity; and there are analogues of these conditions with respect to the operation of the sensus divinitatis. According to Marx and Marxists, of course, it is belief in God that is a result of cognitive disease, of dysfunction. In an etymological sense, Marx thinks, the believer is insane. A milder, more conciliatory way to put it is that the believer, from those perspectives, is irrational; rational faculties fail to work as they should. But here the A/C model stands Freud and Marx on their heads (more accurately, what we see here is part of F&M's extensive borrowing from Christian and Jewish ways of thinking); according to the model, it is really the unbeliever who displays epistemic malfunction; failing to believe in God is a result of some kind of dysfunction of the sensus divinitatis. And here we should note that the notion of warrant can be usefully generalized. So far, we have thought of warrant as a property or characteristic of beliefs; the basic idea is that a belief enjoys warrant when it is formed by properly functioning cognitive faculties in a congenial epistemic environment according to a design plan successfully aimed at truth--which includes, we should note, the avoidance of error. But withholdings, failures to believe, can also be dictated by a design plan successfully aimed at truth and the avoidance of error. You have conflicting evidence for the proposition that there is intelligent life in other parts of the universe: some of those you trust say yes, some say no, and some say there is little evidence either way. You therefore withhold that belief, believing neither that there is nor that there isn't life elsewhere in the universe. Your friends with the rocky marriage tell you conflicting stories about the latest quarrel: by virtue of past experience in similar situations you have learned to believe neither story without further corroboration. Your young son asks you how high the highest mountain in Antarctica is; you have a dim impression of having heard that it is in the neighborhood of 16,000 feet, but don't really know; you form no belief on the subject. In all of these cases, withholding is what the design plan dictates. Thus withholding displays a sort of analogue of warrant: it too can in certain circumstances be dictated by the proper function of cognitive faculties operating in a congenial epistemic environment according to a design plan successfully aimed at truth and the avoidance of error. By contrast, if you call and ask what I am doing at the moment and I don't form the belief that I am sitting at my computer trying to work on my book, there is something wrong somewhere in my noetic establishment. I am introduced to someone at a party; although I have no reason to do so, I withhold the belief that what I see before me is a person, motivated by nothing more than the broadly logical possibility that what I see is really an extraordinarily clever hologram with sound effects attached. I read Bertrand Russell and see that it is possible (in the broadly logical sense) and compatible with appearances that the world popped into existence just five minutes ago, complete with all those apparent memories, crumbling mountains, and dusty books; as a result, I withhold the belief that I am more than five minutes old. In these cases, my failure to believe is a sign, not of exemplary epistemic caution, but of cognitive malfunction; these withholdings lack the analogue of warrant. Of course I might, in a frenzy due to philosophical error, come to the conclusion that in some way I ought not to believe in other people; I might come to the conclusion that such belief is unjustified, somehow; and I might try not to believe in other people. I might even succeed for brief periods in my study. But it is exceedingly hard to maintain this attitude, as is demonstrated by the famous lady who dropped Bertrand Russell a postcard on which she wrote something like "I agree entirely with you that solipsism is the correct and most reasonable position: so why aren't there more of us solipsists?" As Hume notoriously noted, it is exceedingly hard to maintain this attitude for long, or outside your study. The fact is that someone who consistently believes that she is the only person in the universe is suffering from a serious mental disorder, and the same is true for the person who is merely agnostic about the existence of other persons. We could put the same point by saying that some withholdings are rational and some irrational. An important sense of the term rational' [219] is one in which a belief is rational if it is produced by cognitive faculties functioning properly. But the same can be said for withholdings: they can be produced by cognitive faculties functioning properly, as in the first three examples above, but also by cognitive faculties functioning improperly, as in the next three examples. According to the model, the same thing can happen with respect to belief in God. Failure to believe can be due to a sort of blindness or deafness, to improper function of the sensus divinitatis. On the present model, such failure to believe is irrational, and such withholdings lack the analogue of warrant. It doesn't follow that failure to believe is unjustified--if it is due solely to cognitive malfunction, then there is no dereliction of epistemic duty--but it is nonetheless irrational. Contrary to a sort of ethos induced by classical foundationalism, it is not the case that the way to demonstrate rationality is to believe as little as possible; withholding, failure to believe, agnosticism, is not always, from the point of view of rationality, the safest and best path. In some contexts it is instead a sign of serious irrationality. According to the present model, then, the sensus divinitatis has been damaged and corrupted by sin. Further, according to the extended model I mean to propose in chapter 8, the sensus divinitatis is partly healed and restored to proper function by faith and the concomitant work of the Holy Spirit in one's heart. So the model as so far outlined is incomplete; the rest will come in chapters 8 and 9. Even if incomplete, however, the model as so far outlined will suffice for present purposes. For it shows us a sufficiently detailed way in which a properly functioning sensus divinitatis can produce theistic belief which is (1) taken in the basic way and (2), so taken, can indeed have warrant, and warrant sufficient for knowledge. __________________________________________________________________ [200] Summa Theologiae I, q. 2, a. 1, ad 1. In Summa contra Gentiles Aquinas adds, "There is a certain general and confused knowledge of God, which is in almost all men . . ." (Bk. III, ch. 38). [201] Tr. Ford Lewis Battles and ed. John T. McNeill (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960 [originally published in 1555]). Page references to the Institutes are to this edition. [202] As Etienne Gilson says, very many medieval and later thinkers have found in this passage a charter for natural theology, construed as the effort to present proofs or arguments for the existence of God. But is Paul really talking here about proofs or arguments? Natural theology, as Aquinas says, is pretty difficult for most of us; most of us have neither the leisure, ability, inclination, nor education to follow those theistic proofs. But here Paul seems to be speaking of all of us human beings; what can be known about God is plain, he says. It is true that this knowledge comes by way of what God has made, but it doesn't follow that it comes by way of argument, the arguments of natural theology, for example. See below, p. 175. [203] Commentaries on the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans, volume XIX of Calvin's Commentaries (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1979; originally printed for the Calvin Translation Society of Edinburgh, Scotland), p. 70. [204] The "eminent pagan" is Cicero. John Beversluis suggests that these passages from the Institutes are really directed to human knowledge before the fall, and that, according to Calvin, "fallen human beings lack both the direct and immediate knowledge of God with which they were originally created and the capacity to achieve it. In Plantinga's language, the innate tendency, or nisus, or disposition' to believe in God with which human beings were originally created is no longer operative in fallen humanity" ("Reforming the Reformed Objection to Natural Theology," Faith and Philosophy 12, no. 2 (April 1995), p. 193; see also p. 197). Of course Calvin interpretation is not my project here; still, Calvin is pretty clearly teaching that all people, fallen as well as unfallen, have this knowledge ("naturally inborn in all"; "each of us is master from his mother's womb"). Furthermore, as Beversluis points out, according to Calvin (following Romans 1) this knowledge renders those who have "failed to honor him" condemned by their own words (guilty); but of course that isn't possible unless the sensus divinitatis is working in them, even if it is not in its pristine state. There is an additional subtlety here: Beversluis speaks of a tendency "to believe in God." There is obviously an important difference between believing in God and believing that God exists (that there is such a person as God); chapter 9 is devoted in part to that difference. Perhaps in unfallen humanity, according to Calvin, the sensus divinitatis is a disposition to believe in God (to love him, trust him, see his beauty and glory and loveliness), but in fallen humanity only a tendency to believe that there is such a person, just as (according to the book of James) the devils do. See chapter 7 on the noetic effects of sin. [205] See my "Reason and Belief in God," in Faith and Rationality, ed. Alvin Plantinga and Nicholas Wolterstorff (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983), pp. 34ff. [206] It is no part of the model, however, to hold that the sensus divinitatis is never subject to malfunction; perhaps it is sometimes diseased or even inoperative. It can also be impeded in the usual ways, and its deliverances can perhaps sometimes be extinguished by the wrong kind of nurture. [207] Compare Charles Sanders Peirce: A man looks upon nature, sees its sublimity and beauty, and his spirit gradually rises to the idea of God. He does not see the Divinity, nor does nature prove to him the existence of that Being, but it does excite his mind and imagination until the idea becomes rooted in his heart. Quoted by Edward T. Oakes, "Discovering the American Aristotle," First Things (December 1993), p. 27. [208] It is worth noting that even if I believe something in the basic way, it doesn't follow that I wouldn't cite various other propositions in response to your question, "Why do you believe p? What is your reason for believing p?" See "Reason and Belief in God," p. 51. [209] For suggestions as to how the model could be developed in this direction, see Michael Sudduth, "Prospects for Mediate' Natural Theology in John Calvin," Religious Studies 31, no. 1 (March 1995), p. 53. [210] See the former's Darwin's Dangerous Idea (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995) and the latter's The Blind Watchmaker (New York: W. W. Norton, 1986). [211] For arguments casting doubt on the existence of natural laws, see Bas van Fraassen's Laws and Symmetry (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), pp. 17ff. [212] And since a belief has warrant only if it is produced by properly functioning processes or faculties, a belief properly basic with respect to warrant is also properly basic with respect to rationality (that is, rationality as proper function; see above, p. 110). [213] Of course it doesn't follow that theistic belief can't get warrant by way of argument from other beliefs; nor does it follow that natural theology and more informal theistic argument is of no worth in the believer's intellectual and spiritual life. Note further that, according to the model, sin damages the sensus divinitatis and compromises its operation; see below, p. 184 and chapter 7. [214] Perceiving God; The Epistemology of Religious Experience (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), chapters 1, 2, 5, and 6 (hereafter PG). [215] "Although mystical perception may or may not involve sensory content, I will be focusing on the non-sensory variety, since, in my judgment, it has a better claim to be a genuine direct perception of God" (PG, p. 36). [216] As Alston (PG, p. 34) suggests. [217] See Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958). [218] For more on doxastic evidence, see Warrant and Proper Function (hereafter WPF), pp. 190ff. [219] As we saw above, p. 110. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ II. Is Belief in God Warrant-Basic? __________________________________________________________________ A. If False, Probably Not As we saw above, Freud doesn't really argue that theistic belief has no warrant if taken in the basic way: he seems to assume that such belief is false, and then infers in rather quick and casual fashion that it is produced by wish-fulfillment and hence doesn't have warrant. Here (despite the appearance of carelessness) perhaps Freud's instincts are right: I shall argue that if theistic belief is false, but taken in the basic way, [220] then it probably has no warrant. First, as we saw above, no false belief has warrant sufficient for knowledge; therefore, if theistic belief is false, it doesn't have that degree of warrant. Still, couldn't it nonetheless have some warrant? There are at least two reasons for thinking not. First, when does a false belief have warrant? Typically, in a case where the faculty that produces the belief is working at the limit of its capability. You see a mountain goat on a distant crag and mistakenly think you see that it has horns; as a matter of fact, it is just too far away for you to see clearly that it doesn't have horns. You are a particle physicist and mistakenly believe that a certain subatomic model is close to the truth: working as you are at the outer limits of the cognitive domain for which our faculties are designed, your belief is false but not without warrant. If there is no such person as God, of course, then there is no such thing as a sensus divinitatis; and what truth-aimed faculty would be such that it is working at the limit of its ability in producing the belief that there is such a person as God, if that latter belief is false? It is exceedingly hard to think of decent candidates. Further, if your faculties are functioning properly and are unimpeded by desire for fame, ambition, lust, and the like, then if they are working at the limit of their capability, you will not ordinarily believe the proposition in question with great firmness--you will not believe it with anything like the degree of firmness often displayed by theistic belief. Thus you won't be sure that you see horns on that goat: you will instead think to yourself, "Well, it looks as if it has horns, but it's too far away to be sure." You won't insist that your physical model is correct; if you believe it is, it will be with a certain tentativeness. These considerations suggest that if theistic belief is false, it is not produced by cognitive processes successfully aimed at the truth, and hence does not have warrant. There is another and more important consideration, which we can approach indirectly as follows. A belief has warrant only if the cognitive process that produces it is successfully aimed at the truth--that is, only if there is a high objective probability that a belief produced by this process is true (given that the process is functioning properly in the sort of epistemic environment for which it is designed). Now from the fact that a belief is false, it doesn't follow that it is not produced by a process or faculty successfully aimed at truth. It could be that on a given occasion a process issues a false belief, even though there is a substantial objective probability that any belief it produces will be true (given the satisfaction of the other conditions of warrant). For example, a reliable barometer may give a false reading because of an unusual and improbable confluence of circumstances. Physicists tell us that it is possible (though extremely unlikely) that, for just a moment, all the air molecules in the room should congregate in the upper northwest corner of the room. Suppose this happens; at that moment, the air pressure in the vicinity of the barometer in the lower southeast corner of the room is zero; the barometer, however, still registers 29.72, because there hasn't been a long enough time for it to react to the change. The fact that it issues a false reading under these circumstances doesn't mean it is not a reliable instrument. Similarly for a cognitive process: there might in fact be a high probability that a belief it produces is true, despite the fact that on a given occasion (even though the other conditions of warrant are satisfied) it issues a false belief. Couldn't something similar hold for the processes that produce belief in God? Might it not be that belief in God is produced by cognitive processes successfully aimed at the truth, even if that belief is, as a matter of fact, false? I think not. A proposition is objectively probable, with respect to some condition C, only if that proposition is true in most of the nearby possible worlds that display C. [221] But now consider the process that produces theistic belief: if it is successfully aimed at truth, then in most of the nearby possible worlds it produces a true belief. Assuming that in those nearby possible worlds it produces the same belief as it does in fact (i.e., belief in God) it follows that in most of the nearby possible worlds that belief is in fact true: in most of the nearby possible worlds there is such a person as God. However, that can't be, if the fact is there is no such person as God. For if in fact (in the actual world) there is no such person as God, then a world in which there is such a person--an omniscient, omnipotent, wholly good person who has created the world--would be enormously, unimaginably different from the actual world, and enormously dissimilar from it. So if there is no such person as God, it is probably not the case that the process that produces theistic belief produces a true belief in most of the nearby possible worlds. Therefore, it is unlikely that belief in God is produced by a process that is functioning properly in a congenial epistemic environment according to a design plan successfully aimed at the production of true belief. So if theistic belief is false, it probably has no warrant. Freud is right: if theistic belief is false, then it is at the least very likely that it has little or no warrant. __________________________________________________________________ [220] And, let's add, not taken on testimony. That is because testimony, like inference, is not an ultimate source of warrant; a belief taken on testimony has warrant for someone only if that belief has warrant for the testifier. See WPF, p. 83. [221] For an account of the connection between possible worlds and objective probability, see WPF, p. 162. __________________________________________________________________ B. If True, Probably So On the other hand, if theistic belief is true, then it seems likely that it does have warrant. If it is true, then there is, indeed, such a person as God, a person who has created us in his image (so that we resemble him, among other things, in having the capacity for knowledge), who loves us, who desires that we know and love him, and who is such that it is our end and good to know and love him. But if these things are so, then he would of course intend that we be able to be aware of his presence and to know something about him. And if that is so, the natural thing to think is that he created us in such a way that we would come to hold such true beliefs as that there is such a person as God, that he is our creator, that we owe him obedience and worship, that he is worthy of worship, that he loves us, and so on. And if that is so, then the natural thing to think is that the cognitive processes that do produce belief in God are aimed by their designer at producing that belief. But then the belief in question will be produced by cognitive faculties functioning properly according to a design plan successfully aimed at truth: it will therefore have warrant. Again, this isn't certain; the argument is not deductively valid. It is abstractly possible, I suppose, that God has created us with a certain faculty f for knowing him; for one reason or another, f always malfunctions, and some other faculty f' created to produce some other beliefs, often malfunctions in such a way that it produces belief in God. Then our belief in God wouldn't have warrant, despite the fact that it is true. (This would be something like a sort of complex and peculiar theological Gettier problem.) And the abstract character of this possibility is perhaps strengthened when we think of the fact that human beings, according to Christian belief, have fallen into sin, which has noetic effects as well as effects of other sorts. Nevertheless, the more probable thing, at least so far as I can see, is that if in fact theism is true, then theistic belief has warrant. Suppose we try to take a deeper look. How could we make sense of the idea that theism is true but belief in God doesn't have warrant? We'd have to suppose (1) that there is such a person as God, who has created us in his image and has created us in such a way that our chief end and good is knowledge of him, and (2) that belief in God (i.e., our belief in God, human belief in God) has no warrant: is not produced by cognitive processes successfully aimed at giving us true beliefs about God, functioning properly in a congenial epistemic environment. That is, we'd have to think that belief in God is produced by cognitive processes that either (1) are not functioning properly (because of disease or impedance), (2) are not aimed at producing true beliefs about God, or (3) are so aimed but not successfully aimed, or (4) the cognitive environment is uncongenial, not one for which our faculties are designed. With respect to (4), however, we are supposing God has created us; there seems no reason at all to think our epistemic environment is not the one for which he created us. (We have no reason, for example, to think that our ancestors originated on some other planet and made a long, hazardous journey to Earth.) With respect to (3), because, by hypothesis, theistic belief is true, it seems that if the cognitive process that produces it is aimed at the truth, it is successfully aimed at the truth. That leaves us with (1) and (2). Given that God would certainly want us to be able to know him, the chances are excellent that he would create us with faculties enabling us to do just that. So the natural thing to think is that those faculties that produce theistic belief were indeed designed to produce that sort of belief and are functioning properly in so doing. Of course it is possible, in the broadly logical sense, that the faculties designed to produce theistic belief don't work for one reason or another, and some other faculties not aimed at producing theistic belief malfunction, thus producing it. The same, I suppose, is abstractly possible with respect to perception: the original faculties whereby we knew our environment began to malfunction, and by some serendipitous happenstance, other faculties began to malfunction in just such a way as to produce our perceptual beliefs. Possible, but not likely. This is an abstract possibility, but not much more. And suppose, improbably, that something like this did happen with the original sensus divinitatis: it stopped working (perhaps as a result of sin), and some other faculty began to malfunction and leapt into the breach, by serendipitous happenstance producing the very sorts of beliefs the original sensus divinitatis did: then it would seem likely that God has adopted this other way of working as our design plan, so that theistic belief does indeed have warrant, but via a sort of circuitous route. The conclusion to draw, I think, is that the epistemic probability of theistic belief's being warranted, given that theism is true, is very high. [222] __________________________________________________________________ [222] Here we must also suppose, in accord with the conclusion of part IV of this book, that it is not the case that those who believe in God for the most part have defeaters for that belief. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ III. The de Jure Question is not Independent of the de Facto Question And here we see the ontological or metaphysical or ultimately religious roots of the question as to the rationality or warrant or lack thereof for belief in God. What you properly take to be rational, at least in the sense of warranted, depends on what sort of metaphysical and religious stance you adopt. It depends on what kind of beings you think human beings are, what sorts of beliefs you think their noetic faculties will produce when they are functioning properly, and which of their faculties or cognitive mechanisms are aimed at the truth. Your view as to what sort of creature a human being is will determine or at any rate heavily influence your views as to whether theistic belief is warranted or not warranted, rational or irrational for human beings. And so the dispute as to whether theistic belief is rational (warranted) can't be settled just by attending to epistemological considerations; it is at bottom not merely an epistemological dispute, but an ontological or theological dispute. You may think humankind is created by God in the image of God--and created both with a natural tendency to see God's hand in the world about us and with a natural tendency to recognize that we have indeed been created and are beholden to our creator, owing him worship and allegiance. Then, of course, you will not think of belief in God as in the typical case a manifestation of any kind of intellectual defect. Nor will you think it is a manifestation of a belief-producing power or mechanism that is not aimed at the truth. It is instead a cognitive mechanism whereby we are put in touch with part of reality--indeed, by far the most important part of reality. It is in this regard like a deliverance of sense perception, or memory, or reason, the faculty responsible for a priori knowledge. On the other hand, you may think we human beings are the product of blind evolutionary forces; you may think there is no God and that we are part of a godless universe. Then you will be inclined to accept the sort of view according to which belief in God is an illusion of some sort, properly traced to wishful thinking or some other cognitive mechanism not aimed at the truth (Freud) or to a sort of disease or dysfunction on the part of the individual or society (Marx). And this dependence of the question of warrant or rationality on the truth or falsehood of theism leads to a very interesting conclusion. If the warrant enjoyed by belief in God is related in this way to the truth of that belief, then the question whether theistic belief has warrant is not, after all, independent of the question whether theistic belief is true. So the de jure question we have finally found is not, after all, really independent of the de facto question; to answer the former we must answer the latter. This is important: what it shows is that a successful atheological objection will have to be to the truth of theism, not to its rationality, justification, intellectual respectability, rational justification, or whatever. Atheologians who wish to attack theistic belief will have to restrict themselves to objections like the argument from evil, the claim that theism is incoherent, or the idea that in some other way there is strong evidence against theistic belief. They can't any longer adopt the following stance: "Well, I certainly don't know whether theistic belief is true--who could know a thing like that?--but I do know this: it is irrational, or unjustified, or not rationally justified, or contrary to reason or intellectually irresponsible or . . ." There isn't a sensible de jure question or criticism that is independent of the de facto question. There aren't any de jure criticisms that are sensible when conjoined with the truth of theistic belief; all of them either fail right from the start (as with the claim that it is unjustified to accept theistic belief) or else really presuppose that theism is false. This fact by itself invalidates an enormous amount of recent and contemporary atheology; for much of that atheology is devoted to de jure complaints that are allegedly independent of the de facto question. If my argument so far is right, though, there aren't any sensible complaints of that sort. (More modestly, none have been so far proposed; it is always possible, I suppose, that someone will come up with one.) __________________________________________________________________ IV. The F&M Complaint Revisited Now that we have the A/C model before us, we can deal with the F&M complaint in summary fashion. As we saw in the last chapter, Marx's complaint about religion is that it is produced by cognitive faculties that are malfunctioning; this cognitive dysfunction is due to social dysfunction and dislocation. Besides that famous "Religion is the opium of the people" passage, however, Marx doesn't have a lot to say about religious belief--except, of course, for a number of semi-journalistic gibes and japes and other expressions of hostility. [223] I shall therefore concentrate on Freud, who holds (as we saw in the last chapter) not that theistic belief originates in cognitive malfunction, but that it is an illusion, in his technical sense. It finds its origin in wish-fulfillment, which, although it is a cognitive process with an important role to play in the total economy of our intellectual life, is nevertheless not aimed at the production of true beliefs. On Freud's view, then, theistic belief, given that it is produced by wish-fulfillment, does not have warrant; it fails to satisfy the condition of being produced by cognitive faculties whose purpose it is to produce true belief. He goes on to characterize religious belief as "neurosis," "illusion," "poison," "intoxicant," and "childishness to be overcome," all on one page of The Future of an Illusion. [224] Not to be outdone, a substantial number of subsequent psychologists, sociologists, and anthropologists have followed his lead. Thus Albert Ellis: Religiosity is in many respects equivalent to irrational thinking and emotional disturbance. . . . The elegant therapeutic solution to emotional problems is to be quite unreligious . . . the less religious they are, the more emotionally healthy they will be. [225] Sometimes these suggestions take rather bizarre forms, worthy, almost to be compared with Freud's own highly imaginative stories about the origin of religion and the taming of fire. [226] According to Michael P. Carroll, for example, praying the rosary is "a disguised gratification of repressed anal-erotic desires"--a substitute for "playing with one's feces." [227] Perhaps this isn't up to Freud's standard when it comes to evoking that mist-enshrouded world of our distant ancestors, but it does match Freud for implausibility. A rather common view has been that religious belief is not so much a matter of illusion or cognitive malfunction as of simple stupidity. This view has sometimes been expressed rather colorfully; thus Warren Wilson blamed the growth of evangelical Protestant groups in rural America on the fact that "among country people there are many inferior minds." He went on to explain that revivalism was bound to persist in these regions "until we can lift the administration of popular institutions that are governed by public opinion out of the hand of the weak brother and the silly sister." [228] This kind of opinion is still widely popular among those who propose to study religion scientifically, [229] although (given current sensibilities) ordinarily not expressed with quite the same reckless enthusiasm. Following Voltaire, Rousseau, and others, furthermore, people in these fields regularly declare that (in this modern, scientific age) the death of religion is at hand [230] --about as often, perhaps, as others predict that the return of Jesus Christ is at hand. Of course previous predictions of the former kind (like previous predictions of the latter) have failed; as a result, these forecasts of the demise of religion (if not of the world) now tend to be more circumspect. For example: the evolutionary future of religion is extinction. Belief in supernatural beings and in supernatural forces that affect nature without obeying nature's laws will erode and become only an interesting historical memory. To be sure, this event is not likely to occur in the next generation; the process will very likely take several hundred years, and there will probably always remain individuals, or even occasional small cult groups who respond to hallucination, trance, and obsession with supernaturalist interpretation. But as a cultural trait, belief in supernatural powers is doomed to die out, all over the world, as a result of the increasing adequacy and diffusion of scientific knowledge . . . the process is inevitable. [231] Is there any reason to believe these things? Is there any evidence for the F&M complaint? Why should anyone believe it? First, however, it is only fair to defend this complaint against a fairly common objection. The F&M style of criticizing religious (or other) belief is often improperly dismissed as an instance of the genetic fallacy'. The question, so the claim goes, is whether the theistic beliefs in question are true; the question is not how it is that someone comes to hold them or what the origin of the belief might be. Furthermore (so the claim continues), questions of origin are ordinarily irrelevant to questions of truth. ("Ordinarily"--of course we can think of silly exceptions. For example, we might know that Sam came to believe a proposition by accepting the testimony of someone who, on the subject of the belief in question, asserts nothing but falsehoods; in that case the origin of the belief is obviously relevant to its truth.) This criticism of the F&M complaint is mistaken. True, questions of origin are ordinarily not relevant to the question of the truth of a belief; but they can be crucially relevant to the question of the warrant a belief enjoys. The objector fails to note that there are de jure questions and criticisms as well as de facto; his objection is relevant only if it is the latter sort that is at issue. But the F&M complaint is that theistic belief is not rational and lacks warrant. Unlike memory beliefs, a priori beliefs, or perceptual belief, theistic belief does not originate in the proper function of cognitive processes successfully aimed at the production of true belief. And if the problem, according to F&M, is that such beliefs have no warrant, then questions of origin may be intensely relevant; on many accounts of warrant, including the one I defend in WPF, the genesis of a belief is intimately connected with the degree of warrant, if any, it enjoys. Furthermore, there is an indirect connection with truth. Return to the random generator of p. 161, above: I use the machine, proposing the selected proposition to you for belief. You demur, citing the origin of the proposed belief, whereupon I accuse you of committing the genetic fallacy. Surely I am wrong; the fact is you haven't committed a fallacy at all, and your real complaint is that you haven't the faintest reason to think the proposition in question true. It is the same with beliefs that have no warrant for anyone. We ordinarily assume that propositions with warrant have something going for them: it is likely, or at least more likely than not, that they will be true. If I have reason to think your belief that your name is Sam' has warrant (you're pretty likely to know what your name is), then I have a reason to accept this belief. If I know that a belief has no warrant for anyone, however, then I have no reason at all to think that belief true, no reason at all to rely on that proposition. Once I see this, I see that the proposition in question has no claim whatever on my belief. But is Freud right: does theistic belief arise from wish-fulfillment, thereby failing to have warrant? Is there any reason to believe this? Does he offer argument or evidence for this claim, or (in Mill's phrase) other considerations to determine the intellect? Or is it mere assertion? Note that if the F&M complaint is to be a successful criticism, if it is to show that theistic belief lacks warrant, it must meet two conditions. First, it must show that theistic belief really does arise from the mechanism of wish-fulfillment; second (as I'll explain below), it must show that this particular operation of that mechanism is not aimed at the production of true beliefs. Consider the first. Freud offers no more than the most perfunctory argument here, and one can see why: it isn't easy to see how to argue the point. How would one argue that it is that mechanism, wish-fulfillment, rather than some other, that produces religious belief? Much of religious belief, after all, is not something that, on the face of it, fulfills your wildest dreams. Thus Christianity (as well as other theistic religions) includes the belief that human beings have sinned, that they merit divine wrath and even damnation, and that they are broken, wretched, in need of salvation; according to the Heidelberg Catechism, the first thing I have to know is my sins and miseries. This isn't precisely a fulfillment of one's wildest dreams. A follower of Freud might say: "Well, at any rate theistic belief, the belief that there is such a person as God, arises from wish-fulfillment." But this also is far from clear: many people thoroughly dislike the idea of an omnipotent, omniscient being monitoring their every activity, privy to their every thought, and passing judgment on all they do or think. Others dislike the lack of human autonomy consequent upon there being a Someone by comparison with whom we are as dust and ashes, and to whom we owe worship and obedience. And in any event where is the evidence (empirical or otherwise) for the Freudian claim? A survey wouldn't be of much use. Hardly anyone reports believing in God out of wish-fulfillment; the usual reports are, instead, of being seized, compelled, or overwhelmed, or its just seeming right after considerable thought and agony, or its having always seemed clearly true, or its suddenly becoming obvious that it is really so. It certainly doesn't seem to those of us who believe in God that we do so out of wish-fulfillment. Of course that won't be taken as relevant; the beauty of Freudian explanations is that the postulated mechanisms all operate unconsciously, unavailable to inspection. The claim is that you subconsciously recognize the miserable and frightening condition we human beings face, subconsciously see that the alternatives are paralyzing despair or belief in God, and subconsciously opt for the latter. Even after careful introspection and reflection, you can't see that the proffered explanation is true: that fact won't be taken as even the slightest reason for doubting the explanation. (Just as with your indignant denial that you hate your father because you see him as a rival for your mother's sexual favors. In fact your indignation may be taken as confirmation; you are resisting what at some level you know or suspect is the proper diagnosis.) So suppose you subject yourself to a decade or so of psychoanalysis, but still can't see that this is the origin of your belief; well (so you'll be told), psychoanalysis isn't always successful. (In fact its cure rate, as far as scientific study can demonstrate, is about the same as no treatment at all.) Now things could be like this; and in the nature of the case maybe this sort of thing can't be demonstrated. Still, why should we believe it? As far as I can see, the only evidence Freud actually offers is the claim that we see a lot of young people, nowadays, who give up religion when their father's authority breaks down: Psycho-analysis has made us familiar with the intimate connection between the father-complex and belief in God: it has shown us that a personal God is, psychologically, nothing other than an exalted father, and it brings us evidence every day of how young people lose their religious beliefs as soon as their father's authority breaks down. Thus we recognize that the roots of the need for religion are in the parental complex: the almighty and just God, and kindly Nature, appear to us as grand sublimations of father and mother. . . . [232] No doubt Freud saw a good bit of that in his day (and perhaps even in his own case: his relationship with his father, according to E. M. Jones, [233] seems to have left much to be desired). But how is this alleged evidence supposed to confirm the thesis that theistic belief results from wish-fulfillment? The claim is that when the father's authority (Freud doesn't say whether he means specifically with respect to religious belief or more generally) breaks down, young people often lose their religious beliefs. How is that fact, supposing that it is a fact, supposed to be evidence for the thesis that theistic belief results from wish-fulfillment? That's not at all obvious. Suppose theistic belief did result from wish-fulfillment: then wouldn't we expect some kind of correlation between serious belief and a recognition of the pitiless, indifferent character of nature? On Freud's thesis, we would expect that a young person would start evincing belief in God perhaps fairly soon after he comes to see that this is in fact the way the world is. But (given the thesis) why would we expect someone whose father's authority had suffered a breakdown to give up belief in God? The fact is someone who had a warm, loving, respectful relation with his father would be less likely to see the cold and indifferent face of nature than someone whose father had lost authority. As far as I can see, therefore, this alleged evidence doesn't fit well with the main Freudian thesis about the origin of theistic belief and certainly doesn't serve as evidence for it. Perhaps it shows instead that some young people like to display their maturity and independence by rejecting the religious stance of their parents, whatever that stance might be. (Thus at present we find many cases of children rejecting the unbelief of their parents.) But it certainly doesn't tend to show that religious or theistic belief arises out of wish-fulfillment. Of course the thesis isn't stated exactly, or with enough detail to enable us to see just what would be evidence for it. One naturally thinks that there must be a deeper, more precise statement of the theory somewhere; sadly enough, one can't find any such thing. The evidence for the theory would perhaps have to be something like the way it fits or explains all the data, all the phenomena of religious or theistic belief. But before we could seriously assess its fit with the evidence, the theory would have to be stated much more precisely; we should have to be able to see what it does and doesn't predict much more clearly than, in fact, we can. Freudian explanations have never been strong along these lines. [234] Even if it were established that wish-fulfillment is the source of theistic belief, however, that wouldn't be enough to establish that the latter has no warrant. It must also be established that wish-fulfillment in this particular manifestation is not aimed at true belief. The cognitive design plan of human beings is subtle and complicated; a source of belief might be such that in general it isn't aimed at the formation of true belief, but in some special cases it is. So perhaps this is true of wish-fulfillment; in general, its purpose is not that of producing true belief, but in this special case precisely that is its purpose. Perhaps human beings have been created by God with a deep need to believe in his presence and goodness and love. Perhaps God designed us that way in order that we come to believe in him and be aware of his presence. Perhaps this is how God has arranged for us to come to know him. If so, then the particular bit of the cognitive design plan governing the formation of theistic belief is indeed aimed at true belief, even if the belief in question arises from wish-fulfillment. Perhaps God has designed us to know that he is present and loves us by way of creating us with a strong desire for him, a desire that leads to the belief that in fact he is there. Nor is this a mere speculative possibility; something like it is embraced both by St. Augustine ("Our hearts are restless til they rest in thee, O God") and Jonathan Edwards (below, p. 305ff). And how would Freud or a follower establish that the mechanism whereby human beings come to believe in God (come to believe that there is such a person as God) is not aimed at the truth? This is really the crux of the matter. Freud offers no arguments or reasons here at all. As far as I can see, he simply takes it for granted that there is no God and that theistic belief is false; he then casts about for some kind of explanation of this widespread phenomenon of mistaken belief. He hits on wish-fulfillment and apparently assumes it is obvious that this mechanism is not "reality oriented"--that is, is not aimed at the production of true belief--so that such belief lacks warrant. As we have seen, this is a safe assumption if in fact theism is false. But then Freud's version of the de jure criticism really depends on his atheism: it isn't an independent criticism at all, and it won't (or shouldn't) have any force for anyone who doesn't share that atheism. Given the results of parts II and III of this chapter, this is of course just what we should expect. Now a believer in God, a Christian or Jew or Muslim, is unlikely to acquiesce in the F&M claim that belief in God has no warrant. (It is only a certain variety of liberal' theologian, crazed by the thirst for novelty and the desire to accommodate current secularity, who might agree with F&M here.) Indeed, a believer will see the shoe as on the other foot. According to St. Paul, it is unbelief that is a result of dysfunction, brokenness, failure to function properly, or impedance of rational faculties. Unbelief, he says, is a result of sin; it originates in an effort, as Romans 1 puts it, to "suppress the truth in unrighteousness." [235] In the next chapter, we shall begin to explore the extended A/C model, considering some of the ways in which this suppression and impedance can go. __________________________________________________________________ [223] See On Religion by Karl Marx and Frederich Engels, ed. Reinhold Niebuhr (Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1964). This is a collection of bits of various writings on religion by Marx and Engels. [224] New York: W. W. Norton, 1961 (originally published 1927), p. 49. [225] "Psychotherapy and Atheistic Values," Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 48, no. 5 (October 1980), pp. 635-39. [226] See above, pp. 137-38. [227] "Praying the Rosary: The Anal-Erotic Origins of a Popular Catholic Devotion," Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 26, no. 4 (December 1987), p. 491. [228] The Farmer's Church (New York: Century, 1925), p. 58. [229] See, for example, Herbert Simon's recent article, "A Mechanism for Social Selection and Successful Altruism," Science 250 (December 1990), pp. 1665ff, in which he argues that the behavior of people like Mother Teresa, who are prepared to sacrifice their own interests for those of other people, is to be explained in terms of "docility" and "bounded rationality." [230] Freud himself was often more careful on this point; see footnote 161, above, p. 140. [231] Anthony F. C. Wallace, Religion: An Anthropological View (New York: Random House, 1966), pp. 264-65. Like the last three quoted passages, this one is quoted in Rodney Stark, Laurence Iannaccone, and Roger Finke, "Rationality and the Religious' Mind," Economic Inquiry 36, no. 3 (July 1998). This very interesting paper takes an innovative approach to serious religious belief, swimming against the stream of sociological analyses that see such belief as a manifestation of one or another kind of irrationality. [232] Memoir of Leonardo da Vinci in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. J. Strachey (London: Hogarth Press, 1957), vol. 11, p. 123. [233] Degenerate Moderns (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), p. 191. According to Jones, Freud thought of his father as weak and "a pervert." Jeffrey Masson, The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess, 1887-1904 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985), p. 222. See also Paul Vitz's Sigmund Freud's Christian Unconscious (New York: Guilford, 1988). [234] Adolf Grünbaum's The Foundations of Psychoanalysis (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984) is a meticulous (and thoroughly unflattering) chronicle of the scientific failings of Freud and Freudianism. Some others are Malcolm Macmillan's Freud Evaluated: The Completed Arc (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1991) and Allen Esterson's Seductive Mirage: An Exploration of the Work of Sigmund Freud (Chicago: Open Court, 1993). [235] Of course it isn't Paul's idea that those who don't believe are, by that very fact, seen to be more sinful than those who do. On the contrary: just a couple of chapters later he says we are all involved in sin, including, of course, himself ("Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?"). Furthermore, the malfunction that lies at the root of unbelief is not necessarily that of the unbeliever herself. Some kinds of unbelief (see below, p. 215) are like blindness; upon seeing a blind man, the disciples asked Jesus, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" (John 9:2)--to which Jesus replied that this blindness was due neither to the man's own sin nor to that of his parents. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ 7 Sin and Its Cognitive Consequences The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked; who can understand it? Jeremiah 17:9 __________________________________________________________________ I. Preliminaries According to the Aquinas/Calvin (A/C) model, theistic belief (belief in God) has warrant, indeed, sufficient warrant for knowledge. The central feature of this model is the stipulation that God has created us human beings with a belief-producing process or source of belief, the sensus divinitatis; this source works under various conditions to produce beliefs about God, including, of course, beliefs that immediately entail his existence. Belief produced in this way, I said, can easily meet the conditions for warrant; given that it is true (and held sufficiently strongly), it would constitute knowledge. So far, therefore, we have been thinking just about belief that there is such a person as God. But to go no further would be to give legitimate grounds for complaint: First, the beliefs that really shape and determine Christian intellectual identity and existence are much more precise and specific than belief in God. They are constituted by profound convictions about the person of Christ, about the mysterious reality of the Holy Trinity, about the presence of the Holy Spirit in one's life. . . . It is these rather than some minimalist theism which really matters to the vast majority of religious believers. Yet until very recently these have received next to no attention on the part of philosophers interested in the rationality of religious belief. Somehow they are taken as secondary and peripheral. [236] Well, I doubt that these beliefs have been neglected because they were thought secondary and peripheral; there is a more plausible explanation. Christian philosophers have been for the most part responding to various kinds of attacks on the rational justifiability of religious belief. Those who mount such attacks typically do so by attacking belief in God, which is the heart and soul of Christian belief as well as of the other theistic religions. This is a sensible strategy: if the atheologian can show that this belief is relevantly objectionable, he won't have to deal piecemeal with all those more specific beliefs; he can do for them all in one fell swoop. But then Christian responses to these objections, naturally enough, have dealt with animadversions on belief in God. Still, Abraham is quite right; we must indeed think about specifically Christian belief and inquire into its justification, rationality, and warrant. That is the task of the next four chapters; my aim is to extend the model of chapter 6 to include specifically Christian belief. The extended model will bear some of the earmarks of Reformed theology, but similar models can be constructed for other theological traditions. This model, incidentally, will essentially involve such theological notions as faith and the work of the Holy Spirit. Some may find it scandalous that theological ideas should be taken seriously in a book on philosophy; I find it no more scandalous than the ingression into philosophy of scientific ideas from (for example) quantum mechanics, cosmology, and evolutionary biology. My aim is to show how it can be that Christians can be justified, rational (both internally and externally), and warranted in holding full-blooded Christian belief--not just ignorant fundamentalists', but sophisticated, aware, educated, turn-of-the-millennium people who have read their Freud and Nietzsche, their Hume and Mackie (their Dennett and Dawkins). Justification and internal rationality are easy enough: just as for theistic belief, I'll argue that many or most Christians not only can be but also are both justified and internally rational in holding their characteristic beliefs. External rationality and warrant are harder. The only way I can see to argue that Christian belief has these virtues is to argue that Christian belief is, indeed, true. I don't propose to offer such an argument. That is because I don't know of an argument for Christian belief that seems very likely to convince one who doesn't already accept its conclusion. That is nothing against Christian belief, however, and indeed I shall argue that if Christian beliefs are true, then the standard and most satisfactory way to hold them will not be as the conclusions of argument. What I will do instead is extend the A/C model of chapter 6 to a model according to which specifically Christian belief (as well as theism) has both warrant and external rationality, and enough of the former to constitute knowledge. This model will include the main lines of ecumenical classic Christian belief. It also needs a certain amount of additional detail. This additional detail is broadly Reformed or Calvinist in inspiration, but I shall develop it in my own way. The point of the extended model is like the point of the A/C model itself. I shall use the model to argue three things. First, I will use it to argue that Christian belief can very well be both externally rational and warranted: there is a perfectly viable epistemological account of how it is that they should have these virtues, and no cogent objections to their having it. Second, I'll argue (as in chapter 6 I did with respect to theistic belief) that if Christian belief is true, then it is probably both externally rational and warranted for most Christians. Thus I'll be attacking again that stance I mentioned (above, p. x): the claim that of course we don't know whether Christian belief is, in fact, true (that's a pretty tall order, after all), but we do know that even if it happens to be true, it isn't rational or warranted. Third, I'll recommend the story or model I present as a good way, though not necessarily the only good way, for Christians to think about the epistemological status of Christian belief. Now one important difference between bare theism and Christianity has to do essentially with sin and the divine remedy proposed for it; it is sin that occasions Incarnation and Atonement, redemption and renewal. The present chapter, therefore, will examine the nature of sin and its noetic effects. Chapters 8 and 9 will address faith, the Bible, and the internal instigation of the Holy Spirit; these, on the extended model, are together the central source of warrant for Christian belief. According to Calvin, whose thought I shall follow (even if at some distance), faith is "a firm and certain knowledge (cognitio) of God's benevolence towards us, founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ, both revealed to our minds and sealed upon our hearts through the Holy Spirit." [237] Chapter 8 will show how Christian belief is revealed to our minds, thus enjoying warrant; chapter 9 will deal with its being sealed upon our hearts; it therefore addresses the question of religious affections and the will, asking, among other things, whether there are analogues of justification, rationality, and warrant for the affections; chapter 10 will examine actual and possible objections to the extended model. An initial problem: the term Christian belief', like most useful terms, is vague. Does Tillich count as a Christian theologian? What about Mormon beliefs: are they Christian? [238] What about people who think Jesus was a great model and moral teacher, but doubt that he was God, rose from the dead, or atoned for our sins: are their beliefs Christian? What, precisely, must a set of beliefs be in order to be Christian--that is, to be properly denominated by that term? [239] This isn't a problem for my project. First, no doubt the term Christian' is vague; still, as Dr. Johnson once remarked, the existence of twilight is not a good argument against the distinction between day and night. There is such a thing as Christian belief, and there is also such a thing as non-Christian belief, even if it is difficult to say where the one begins and the other ends. Second, nothing in my project depends on a specific use of the term Christian'. However we propose to use that term, my project is to inquire into the epistemological status of a certain set of beliefs: the ones embodied, say, in the Apostle's Creed and the Nicene Creed. (Alternatively, we could identify the beliefs in question as belonging to the intersection of those expressed in the creeds of more specific Christian communities [the New Catholic Catechism, the Heidelberg Catechism, the Augsburg Confession, the Westminster Catechism, and so on].) Included are the affirmations that God created the heavens and the earth; that he created human beings in his own image; that human beings fell ruinously into sin, from which they require salvation; that in response God graciously sent Jesus Christ, the divine son of God, who took on our flesh (became incarnate), suffered, and died as an atonement for our sins, and rose from the dead, thus enabling us fallen human beings to have eternal life with God. These beliefs are ordinarily thought of as paradigmatically Christian and ordinarily referred to by the term Christian'. Still, nothing depends on the use of that term: my project is that of inquiring into the epistemological status of those beliefs. __________________________________________________________________ [236] William Abraham, "The Epistemological Significance of the Inner Witness of the Holy Spirit," Faith and Philosophy (1990), p. 435. Abraham goes on to complain that the "reformed epistemologists" have so far said little about the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit and haven't made explicit the relation between "talk of the inner witness of the Holy Spirit and their epistemological proposals" (p. 446). This is true (and the present volume aims to help repair the deficiency), but what's to prevent Abraham himself from lighting a candle (instead of cursing the darkness) and making some of these connections explicit? [237] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill and tr. Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960 [originally published in 1559]), III, ii, 7, p. 551. Subsequent page references to the Institutes are to this edition. [238] See, for example, Albert Howsepian's "Are Mormons Theists?" Religious Studies 32 (September 1996), pp. 357ff.; for a reply, see Blake T. Ostler, "Worship-worthiness and the Mormon Conception of God," Religious Studies 33 (September 1997), pp. 315ff. [239] Indeed, there is vagueness with respect to theism as well: what, precisely, must you believe to be a theist? That the Ultimate or the Real is personal? Or could you be a theist if (e.g., with Carl Sagan) you proposed that the laws of nature are somehow ultimate, should be called God', and should be worshiped? Could you be a theist if you thought that God is really a set--perhaps the Cartesian product of the sets of possibly good actions and true propositions? (Ignore the difficulty that there probably is no such thing as the set of true propositions--or, if you refuse to ignore it, see Patrick Grim and Alvin Plantinga, "Truth, Omniscience, and Cantorian Arguments: An Exchange," Philosophical Studies 70 [August 1993].) __________________________________________________________________ II. Initial Statement of the Extended Model Now our question is whether these beliefs are justified, rational, or warranted. But justification and internal rationality are easily dealt with. First, justification taken deontologically, in terms of intellectual rights and obligations, is no more problematic here than in the case of theism. Clearly, a person (including a highly educated, wholly with-it, twenty-first-century person who has read all the latest objections to Christian belief) could be justified in accepting these and other Christian beliefs and would be so justified if (for example) after careful and nonculpable reflection and investigation into the alleged objections and defeaters, she still found those beliefs wholly compelling. She could hardly be blamed for believing what strongly seems, after extensive investigation, to be the truth of the matter. (She's supposed to believe what seems false to her?) [240] As for the various analogical extensions of justification in this original sense--being responsible, doing as well as could be expected with respect to your part in belief formation, and the like--again, it is obvious, I think, both that believers can meet these conditions and that many believers do meet them. The same goes for internal rationality, which is a matter of the proper function of cognitive processes downstream from experience (see above, p. 110. for explanation of this metaphor). These beliefs, we are stipulating, seem to her to be clearly true. She finds them wholly convincing, just as she does her beliefs about other persons, say, and an external world; they remain thus convincing even after she has considered the objections she has encountered. She has a powerful inclination to believe these things and hence has strong doxastic evidence for them. But then there need be no cognitive malfunction, glitch, or other infelicity in her actually believing them; therefore, her belief is internally rational. As we saw in the case of theistic belief, however, these observations won't or shouldn't quiet the critics. For even if Christian believers are justified and internally rational in their beliefs, they might still be externally irrational (see above, p. 112) and thus wholly without warrant. After all, even the beliefs of a madman or of a victim of a Cartesian evil demon can be both justified and internally rational. Well, then, what about external rationality and warrant? A belief is externally rational if it is produced by cognitive faculties that are functioning properly and successfully aimed at truth (i.e., aimed at the production of true belief)--as opposed, for example, to being the product of wish-fulfillment or cognitive malfunction. Now warrant, the property enough of which distinguishes knowledge from mere true belief, is a property or quantity had by a belief if and only if (so I say) that belief is produced by cognitive faculties functioning properly in a congenial epistemic environment according to a design plan successfully aimed at truth. Because rationality (in the sense of proper function of rational powers) is included in warrant, the real question, here, is whether Christian belief does or can have warrant. According to the extended A/C model, Christian belief does indeed have warrant. In essence, the model goes like this. First, God has created us human beings in his own image: this centrally involves our resembling God in being persons--that is, beings with intellect and will. Like God, we are the sort of beings who have beliefs and understanding: we have intellect. There is also will, however: we also resemble God in having affections (loves and hates), in forming aims and intentions, and in being able to act to accomplish these aims and intentions. [241] Call this the broad image of God. But human beings as originally created also displayed a narrow image: they had extensive and intimate knowledge of God, and sound affections, including gratitude for God's goodness. [242] They loved and hated what was lovable and hateful; above all, they knew and loved God. Part of this image was the sensus divinitatis of chapter 6. The extended model retains this feature and adds more. First, it adds that we human beings have fallen into sin, a calamitous condition from which we require salvation--a salvation we are unable to accomplish by our own efforts. This sin alienates us from God and makes us unfit for communion with him. Our fall into sin has had cataclysmic consequences, both affective and cognitive. As to affective consequences, our affections are skewed and our hearts now harbor deep and radical evil: we love ourselves above all, rather than God. There were also ruinous cognitive consequences. Our original knowledge of God and of his marvelous beauty, glory, and loveliness has been severely compromised; in this way the narrow image of God in us was destroyed and the broad image damaged, distorted. [243] In particular, the sensus divinitatis has been damaged and deformed; because of the fall, we no longer know God in the same natural and un-problematic way in which we know each other and the world around us. Still further, sin induces in us a resistance to the deliverances of the sensus divinitatis, muted as they are by the first factor; we don't want to pay attention to its deliverances. We are unable by our own efforts to extricate ourselves from this quagmire; God himself, however, has provided a remedy for sin and its ruinous effects, a means of salvation from sin and restoration to his favor and fellowship. This remedy is made available in the life, atoning suffering and death, and resurrection of his divine Son, Jesus Christ. Salvation involves among other things rebirth and regeneration, a process (beginning in the present life and reaching fruition in the next) that involves a restoration and repair of the image of God in us. So far, what we have here is the mere Christianity of which C. S. Lewis spoke; [244] we now come to a more specifically cognitive side of the model. God needed a way to inform human beings of many times and places of the scheme of salvation he has graciously made available. No doubt he could have done this in a thousand different ways; in fact he chose to do so in the following way. First, there is Scripture, the Bible, a collection of writings by human authors, but specially inspired by God in such a way that he can be said to be its principal author. Second, he has sent the Holy Spirit, promised by Christ before his death and resurrection. [245] A principal work of the Holy Spirit with respect to us human beings is the production in us of the gift of faith, that "firm and certain knowledge of God's benevolence towards us, founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ, both revealed to our minds and sealed upon our hearts through the Holy Spirit" of which Calvin speaks (below, p. 244). By virtue of the internal instigation of the Holy Spirit, we come to see the truth of the central Christian affirmations. Now faith is not just a cognitive affair: its being "sealed upon our hearts" is a matter of will and affect; it is a repair of the madness of the will that is at the heart of sin. Still, it is at least a cognitive matter. In giving us faith, the Holy Spirit enables us to see the truth of the main lines of the Christian gospel as set forth in Scripture. The internal invitation of the Holy Spirit is therefore a source of belief, a cognitive process [246] that produces in us belief in the main lines of the Christian story. Still further, according to the model, the beliefs thus produced in us meet the conditions necessary and sufficient for warrant; they are produced by cognitive processes functioning properly (in accord with their design plan) in an appropriate epistemic environment (both maxi and mini) according to a design plan successfully aimed at truth; if they are held with sufficient firmness, these beliefs qualify as knowledge, just as Calvin's definition of faith has it. __________________________________________________________________ [240] It is open to someone to claim that the Christian believer enjoys only subjective justification, not objective justification; that is because (so the claim goes) the fact is there are objective epistemic duties such that one cannot accept Christian belief without violating them (above, pp. 98-99), and the believer escapes guilt only because she is not aware of them. (Thus ignorance is a protection from guilt.) Once more, however: what would those objective duties be? And is there even a suggestion of a reason for thinking there are any such duties? [241] Here I am thinking of will in such a way that it includes not only decision and choice (the executive function of will) but also loves and hates, desire and conation (the affective function of will). This is a bit broader than the usual contemporary understanding of the will, but in line with older ways of thinking about it (see, e.g., Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 82, a. 1 and 2 and Summa contra Gentiles Bk. III, ch. 26). [242] Here I was helped by Derek Jeffreys. [243] As Calvin puts it, "The natural gifts in man were corrupted, but the supernatural were taken away" (II, ii, 4, p. 260). And according to Aquinas, "Man in the state of corrupted nature falls short even of what he can do by his nature, so that he is unable to fulfill all of it by his own natural power." We therefore need "a gratuitous strength superadded to natural strength" not only "to do and will supernatural good," but also, he says, to live up to our original nature as persons (Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 102, a. 2, respondeo). Here we should note an ambiguity in such terms as "our natural condition." On the one hand, the term can refer to what we human beings were like in our original and sinless condition, fresh from the hand of God, and what we would still be like if it weren't for sin; on the other, the term refers to our fallen condition, prior to regeneration and renewal. [244] Mere Christianity (New York: Macmillan, 1958). [245] See, e.g., John 14:26: "All this have I spoken while still with you. But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you." [246] Those who raise their eyebrows at the application of this term to the work of the Holy Spirit are invited to note the explanation below, pp. 257-58. __________________________________________________________________ III. The Nature of Sin Now that we have the extended model before us in outline, we must take a more detailed look into some of its various aspects, starting with the nature of sin and its cognitive consequences. Reformed theologians used to speak of the "noetic effects of sin"; although (sadly enough) this topic has at present dropped out of favor, it will be important for our model, so after an examination of the nature of sin we'll turn in the remaining part of the chapter to its cognitive consequences. What is sin? Whatever it is, it is both astonishingly deep and deeply elusive. According to the model, there is first the phenomenon of sinning: of doing what is wrong, what is contrary to God's will. This is something for which the sinner is responsible; he is guilty and warrants blame--but only if he recognizes that what he does is sin, or is culpable in failing to recognize that it is. There is also the condition of being in sin, a state in which we human beings find ourselves from our very birth. A traditional Christian term for this condition is original sin'. Unlike a sinful act I perform, original sin need not be thought of as something for which I am culpable (original sin is not necessarily original guilt); insofar as I am born in this predicament, my being in it is not within my control and not up to me. (In any event there is plenty of opportunity for culpability with respect to the less original variety of sin.) How does it happen that we human beings are mired in this desperate and deplorable condition? The traditional Christian answer: it is as a result of the sinful actions of Adam and Eve, our original parents and the first human beings. Whether this is indeed how it happened is a matter on which the model need not take a stand; what is part of the model is that in fact we are in the condition. G. K. Chesterton once remarked that of all the doctrines of Christianity, the doctrine of original sin has the strongest claim to "empirical verifiability," the quality that back in the palmy days of positivism was widely trumpeted as the very criterion of cognitive meaningfulness'; it has been verified in the wars, cruelty, and general hatefulness that have characterized human history from its very inception to the present. Indeed, no century has seen more organized hatred, contempt, and cruelty than ours, and none has seen it on as grand a scale. Our century in particular also enables us to see the social side of sin. We human beings are deeply communal; we learn from parents, teachers, peers, and others, both by imitation and by precept. We acquire beliefs in this way, but just as important (and perhaps less self-consciously), we acquire attitudes and affections, loves and hates. Because of our social nature, sin and its effects can be like a contagion that spreads from one to another, eventually corrupting [247] an entire society or segment of it. Original sin involves both intellect and will; it is both cognitive and affective. On the one hand, it carries with it a sort of blindness, a sort of imperceptiveness, dullness, stupidity. This is a cognitive limitation that first of all prevents its victim from proper knowledge of God and his beauty, glory, and love; it also prevents him from seeing what is worth loving and what worth hating, what should be sought and what eschewed. It therefore compromises both knowledge of fact and knowledge of value. But sin is also and perhaps primarily an affective disorder or malfunction. Our affections are skewed, directed to the wrong objects; we love and hate the wrong things. Instead of seeking first the kingdom of God, I am inclined to seek first my own personal glorification and aggrandizement, bending all my efforts toward making myself look good. Instead of loving God above all and my neighbor as myself, I am inclined to love myself above all and, indeed, to hate God and my neighbor. [248] Much of this hatred and hostility springs from pride, that aboriginal sin, and from consequent attempts at self-aggrandizement. We think of getting the world's good things as a zero-sum game: any bit of it you have is a bit I can't have--and want. I want to be better known than you, so anytime you do something noteworthy I feel a prick of envy. I may want to be rich. What counts is not how much money I have, absolutely speaking; what counts is whether I have more than you, or most people, or everybody else. But then you and others are obstacles to the fulfillment of my desires; I can thus come to resent and hate you. And God himself, the source of my very being, can also be a threat. In my prideful desire for autonomy and self-sufficiency I can come to resent the presence of someone upon whom I depend for my every breath and by comparison with whom I am small potatoes indeed. I can therefore come to hate him too. I want to be autonomous, beholden to no one. Perhaps this is the deepest root of the condition of sin. [249] The defect here is affective, not intellectual. Our affections are disordered; they no longer work as in God's original design plan for human beings. There is a failure of proper function, an affective disorder, a sort of madness of the will. In this condition, we know (in some way and to some degree) what is to be loved (what is objectively lovable), but we nevertheless perversely turn away from what ought to be loved and instead love something else. (As the popular song has it: "My heart has a mind of its own.") We know (at some level) what is right, but find ourselves drawn to what is wrong; we know that we should love God and our neighbor, but we nonetheless prefer not to. Of course this raises an ancient question, one going back to Socrates: can a person really do what she knows or believes is wrong? [250] If she sees what is right, how can she still do what is wrong? The answer is simple enough: she sees what is right, but prefers what is wrong. Socrates fails to see the possibility of affective disorder, as opposed to intellectual deficiency or ignorance. In the absence of affective disorder, perhaps, indeed, I cannot see the good but prefer the evil, knowing that it is evil. Unfortunately, however, we can't count on the absence of that disorder; sin is, in large part, precisely such disorder. Because of this affective malfunction, I desire and seek what I know or believe is bad. There are many traditional arguments for the idea that you can't desire what on balance you see to be wrong: I don't have the space to deal with these arguments here, except to say that I don't find them at all convincing. One argument I would like to mention, though, can be put as follows: "There a serious semantic problem here. It isn't so much as coherent to suggest that a person might love and value what she knows is hateful, or hate what she knows is good. Consider Sam, who says, I love and propose to promote what is in fact evil': his words fail to make coherent sense. Words like good', evil', right', wrong', etc. are used to commend and censure, express approval and disapproval; hence the first part of Sam's utterance expresses his approval of the very thing of which the second part of the utterance expresses his disapproval. You can sensibly say that you are given to approving what is evil, that you have done so often in the past and even that you often do so; but you can't sensibly say that right now you approve what is evil or hate what is good. Sam hasn't contradicted himself (he hasn't asserted a proposition and its denial); what he says is nevertheless incoherent, just as if he had said Hooray for the red, white and blue, and furthermore execrations upon it!'?" Reply: first, there are two separate questions here: (1) Is it possible to love what one knows is evil? and (2) Is Sam's utterance coherent? These are independent: one is a question about what sorts of attitudes are possible, and the other about what sentences make coherent sense (in English). Even if Sam's utterance is incoherent, it might still be possible to love what one knows to be evil. But second, the fact is Sam's utterance makes perfect sense. When Milton's Satan says, "Evil, be thou my good," what he says is perfectly intelligible: he means to say that he prefers, and proposes to promote, what he recognizes to be evil. We can see what is going on here as follows. It is indeed true that words like good', bad', and evil' perform the function of expressing approval or disapproval. That is only part of their function, however: they also express properties. (It doesn't matter for present purposes precisely what properties they express, but perhaps the property expressed by good' [bad'] is at any rate equivalent, in the broadly logical sense, to the property of being approved [disapproved] by God.) Ordinarily these two go together: one expresses approval of what one takes to have the property expressed by good'. The important point, however, is that the two functions can also be prized apart: either of the two components of the meaning of these terms can be canceled. When Satan says, "Evil, be thou my good," the aspect of the term evil' by which it ordinarily expresses disapproval gets canceled, as does the aspect of the term good' whereby it ordinarily expresses the property of being good. So Satan is not (of course) endorsing or proposing a condition in which what has the property of being evil shall henceforth have the property of goodness; nor is he expressing both disapproval and approval of the same thing. He is, instead, declaring, of what he knows has the property of being evil, that he approves of it, loves it, values it, and aims to promote it. His words can be used to do this just because either of the two components--property expression and attitude or affection expression--of the meaning of good', evil', and similar terms can be canceled. As both Augustine and Pascal noted, this whole complex and confusing congeries of attitudes, affections and beliefs that constitutes the state of sin is a fertile field for ambiguity and self-deception. [251] According to the extended model, we human beings typically have at least some knowledge of God, and some grasp of what is required of us; this is so even in the state of sin and even apart from regeneration. The condition of sin involves damage to the sensus divinitatis, but not obliteration; it remains partially functional in most of us. We therefore typically have some grasp of God's presence and properties and demands, but this knowledge is covered over, impeded, suppressed. We are prone to hate God but, confusingly, in some way also inclined to love and seek him; we are prone to hate our neighbor, to see her as a competitor for scarce goods, but also, paradoxically, to prize her and love her. Perhaps I recognize, in a sort of semisubliminal way, that there is deep disorder and worse in my life. I half-recognize the selfishness and self-centeredness that characterizes most of my waking moments. Perhaps I note that even (or perhaps especially) in private soliloquy, where there is no question of influencing others, I imaginatively create, rehearse, and contemplate various situations in which I come out victorious, or heroic, or virtuously long-suffering, or anyway abundantly admirable. Perhaps I also glimpse the foolishness and corruption here, but most of the time I pay no attention. I ignore it; I hide it from myself, escaping into work, projects, family, the whole realm of the everyday. (As Pascal says, "Right now I can't be bothered; I have to return my opponent's serve." [252] ) This ambiguity extends even deeper. One can't help but concur with the apostle Paul: "For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do--this I keep on doing" (Romans 7:19). I often do what I recognize is the wrong thing, even though I don't want to do the wrong thing; and I don't do what's right, even though I do want to do what's right. It seems that I don't do what I want to do and, instead, do what I don't want to. Or is it instead that when I do wrong, I want to do that very thing, but don't then think it is wrong (though at other times I see perfectly well that it is, and very much wish that I hadn't done it)? Or is it rather that at that time I do see (to at least some degree) that it's wrong, or would clearly see that it is if I paid attention (and I also semiknow that fact then), but I don't pay attention, because I want to do this thing? Or is it that when I do something wrong, then I do want to do that wrong thing, knowing (in a sort of muffled way) that it is wrong, even though I don't want to want to do the wrong thing? Or is it that when I am wanting to do what is wrong, I don't even raise for myself the question whether it is wrong? My second-level affections can seem typically better attuned or calibrated than my first level: I often want to do what is wrong; wanting to want to do what is wrong is much less frequent. I want to love and hate the right things--that is, what I see as the right things--even if in fact, as I sadly recognize, I do love and hate the wrong things. I don't want to love myself above all; that doesn't stop me from loving myself above all. A traditional conundrum (or pair of conundra) asks how a person--human or otherwise--could get into this condition in the first place, and whether what is deepest here is a problem of intellect or a problem of will. According to Calvin (Institutes II, i, 4, p. 245), the first and primal sin is disobedience; he also says elsewhere that it is failure to trust God. According to Augustine, [253] it is pride that is the deepest root of sin; he also says elsewhere that envy occupies this unenviable position. These four conditions are clearly connected. I pridefully want to think of myself as just as good as anyone else, including God; it therefore irks me to have to obey him. And if he requires that I obey him, will I not begin to mistrust him? (I don't want to obey him; it is a short step to convincing myself that what he requires of me is not for my own good.) Of course I also recognize that I don't have divine status; hence the envy (and once again, ambiguity and self-deception). Perhaps all of these originate in that Promethean desire for autonomy, for being beholden to nothing and no one. But how can I get into the condition of desiring this autonomy in the first place? Or rather, since I am born in it, how could Eve have done so? She knew that God alone is the first being of the universe; she knew that she owed God obedience and love; she knew that her own interest lay in loving and serving God, and, in fact, she did love and serve him. So how could she get into this condition of sin? It must include an intellectual defect; it must be by way of somehow acquiring a false belief. Somehow she gets deceived into thinking that it would be better for her to go her own way, to be her own person. But how could she come to think a thing like that? "Not only because he [Adam] was seized by Satan's blandishments," says Calvin, "but contemptuous of truth, he turned aside to falsehood" (II, i, 4, p. 245). So it wasn't just that he somehow non-culpably fell into false belief. He was indeed deceived, but he had a hand in it himself; it was partly a matter of self-deception. He was contemptuous of truth, and that was because at some point his affections went wrong: he was seized by pride. Still, why would his affections go wrong in this way? He must have known that this disobedience is both corrupt and contrary to his own good. So there must have been some kind of prior intellectual fault. But where could such a fault originate: how could it get started? It must be because of self-deception, turning away from what he in some sense knew was the truth. But why deceive himself? There is a complicated many-sided, dialectical relationship between intellect and will here, one such that it isn't possible to say that either is absolutely prior to the other with respect to falling into sin. One thinks that in some way it must be pride and desire for autonomy that lie at the bottom of the whole mess. Somehow there arises a sneaking desire to be like God, indeed to be equal with him, not to have to play second fiddle (or nth fiddle, for very large n). Of course the final mystery remains: where does this sneaking desire to be equal with God come from in the first place? How could the very idea so much as enter Adam's soul? In one way, this is easy enough for us to understand; we ourselves share in the same corruption, the same madness of the will. But Adam was made perfect; so how could it happen? That's not easy to say. God grants us an area of autonomy (we can accept or reject him), and this desire somehow arises out of that autonomy. I see what God is like, I see what I am like, and I have a choice (a choice I partly hide from myself): I can take pleasure in my condition, which is wonderfully good, or I can give in to envy. (Perhaps at first a mere prick, a small discomfort I can't even identify, a subterranean half-thought: why can't I be like that, like God, who owes no one anything and is such that what he wills determines what is good?) A speculation: for any free creature God creates, this falling into sin is clearly a possibility; God can't create significantly free creatures who cannot fall into sin. And perhaps a high probability of such a fall attaches to free creatures (creatures with an area of autonomy) who are created in the image of God. God sets out to create beings in his own image: they resemble him in having will and intellect, and they recognize the lustrous beauty, glory, and desirability of God's position. God is himself the center of the universe; his creatures see the splendor and wonderful desirability of that condition. Perhaps, insofar as one is free, and sees both the glory of this position and its enormous desirability, there is a powerful tendency to desire it for oneself. Perhaps there is a high probability that beings created in the image of God will also wind up resembling him in this: that they want to see and do see themselves as the center of the universe. Perhaps a substantial probability of falling into this condition is built into the very nature of free creatures who have knowledge of God's glorious status and do see it as indeed glorious and desirable. There are possible worlds in which there are free creatures with that kind of knowledge and affection who don't fall into this condition of sin, but perhaps these worlds form only a small proportion of the space of the totality of possible worlds containing free creatures. Fall isn't inevitable or necessary; nevertheless, perhaps its objective probability is very high. __________________________________________________________________ [247] Examples of this contagion are salient in our century (though also of course in earlier times); for an unusual fictional example, see Brian Moore's Black Robe (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1985). [248] Question 5 of the Heidelberg Catechism: "Can you live up to all this perfectly?" Answer: "No. I have a natural tendency to hate God and my neighbor." [249] This desire for autonomy, self-definition, and self-creation can assume quite remarkable proportions: according to Richard Rorty, Martin Heidegger felt guilty about living in a world he hadn't himself created, refused to feel at home in any such world, and couldn't stand the thought that he was not his own creation (Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989], p. 109). [250] Meno 77b-78a; see also Protagoras, 345e. [251] For contemporary comment, see Bas van Fraassen's "The Peculiar Effects of Love and Desire," in Perspectives on Self-Deception, ed. A. Rorty and B. McLaughlin (Berkeley: University of California Press), 1988. Van Fraassen offers a subtle account of some of the tangled depths of self-deception. [252] Quoted in van Fraassen, "The Peculiar Effects." [253] (Psalms, Ps. 18, ii, 15). This became a common medieval theme; compare, e.g., Peter Lombard, II sent., d. 42, c. 7: "Superbia radix cuncti mali, et initium omnis peccati" ("Pride is the root of evil, and the beginning of all sin"). Luther concurred; see his Lecture on Romans, tr. and ed. Wilhelm Pauck (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1961), pp. 5ff. __________________________________________________________________ IV. The Noetic Effects of Sin __________________________________________________________________ A. The Basic Consequence These are deep and dark (and gloomy) theological waters; fortunately the model need not take a stand on the questions how God's creatures could fall into sin, and whether it is intellect or will that is primary in sin. Suffice it to say that we human beings have indeed fallen from a pristine state into sin, a condition that involves both intellect and will. It is an affective malaise, a malfunction or madness of the will. But it is also a cognitive condition, and in what follows we will inquire a bit more closely into the cognitive consequences of sin. According to the extended A/C model, the noetic effects of sin are concentrated with respect to our knowledge of other people, of ourselves, and of God; they are less relevant (or relevant in a different way: see below, p. 218.) to our knowledge of nature and the world. Sin affects my knowledge of others in many ways. Because of hatred or distaste for some group of human beings, I may think them inferior, of less worth than I myself and my more accomplished friends. Because of hostility and resentment, I may misestimate or entirely misunderstand someone else's attitude toward me, suspecting them of trying to do me in, when in fact there is nothing to the suggestion. [254] Due to that basic and aboriginal sin pride, I may unthinkingly and almost without noticing assume that I am the center of the universe (of course if you ask me, I will deny thinking any such thing), vastly exaggerating the importance of what happens to me as opposed to what happens to others. I may vastly overestimate my own attainments and accomplishments, [255] consequently discounting the accomplishments of others. I may also fail to perceive my own sin or see it as less distasteful than it really is; I may fail to see myself as a creature, who, if not viewed through the lens of Christ's sacrifice, would be worthy of divine punishment. (Thus among the ravages of sin is my very failure to note those ravages.) Our grasp of ourselves as image bearers of God himself, the First Being of the universe, can also be damaged or compromised or dimmed. For example, we may think the way to understand human characteristics and ventures such as love, humor, adventure, art, music, science, religion, and morality is solely in terms of our evolutionary origin, rather than in terms of our being image bearers of God. [256] By failing to know God, we can come to a vastly skewed view of what we ourselves are, what we need, what is good for us, and how to attain it. The most serious noetic effects of sin have to do with our knowledge of God. Were it not for sin and its effects, God's presence and glory would be as obvious and uncontroversial to us all as the presence of other minds, physical objects, and the past. Like any cognitive process, however, the sensus divinitatis can malfunction; as a result of sin, it has indeed been damaged. [257] Our original knowledge of God and his glory is muffled and impaired; it has been replaced (by virtue of sin) by stupidity, dullness, blindness, inability to perceive God or to perceive him in his handiwork. Our knowledge of his character and his love toward us can be smothered: it can even be transformed into a resentful thought that God is to be feared and mistrusted; we may see him as indifferent or even malignant. In the traditional taxonomy of the seven deadly sins, this is sloth. Sloth is not simple laziness, like the inclination to lie down and watch television rather than go out and get the exercise you need; it is, instead, a kind of spiritual deadness, blindness, imperceptiveness, acedia, torpor, a failure to be aware of God's presence, love, requirements. [258] And in addition to the general injury due to the condition of sin itself, there is also the possibility of special damage or disease; perhaps in some people at some times, the sensus divinitatis doesn't work at all. Furthermore, the deliverances of the sensus divinitatis, muffled as they already are, can easily be suppressed and impeded. That can happen in various ways: for example, by deliberately or semideliberately turning one's attention away from them. Perhaps I am tormented by guilt before God, or perhaps by my desire to live a way of which, as I see it, God disapproves; then I may be inclined (with Paul Tillich) to think of God as an impersonal abstract object ("the ground of being") rather than as a living person who judges me. Or I may come to think of him as unconcerned with the day-to-day behavior of his creatures. Or I may come to think of him, not as a holy God who hates sin, but more like an indulgent grandparent who smiles at the childish peccadilloes of her grandchildren. That is just one way in which sin interferes with the deliverances of the sense of divinity. Another way in which the latter can be compromised is by way of testimony (which includes not only the case where someone rushes up and breathlessly tells me that my house is on fire but also the whole course of my upbringing and acculturation by parents and peers). Perhaps I am brought up to think there is no such person as God, that belief in God is a result of superstition, belonging to the infancy of the race. Perhaps I read Don Cupitt (after ingesting hallucinogens) and come to regard serious believers in God as objects of pity or figures of fun. Perhaps I am brought up to think of serious theistic belief as the universal obsessional neurosis of humanity and begin to look upon the rest of believing mankind with a sort of amused condescension. For these reasons or others, I ignore the promptings of the sense of divinity, a little ashamed, no doubt, to note its stirring within my heart. Ordinarily there will be a complicated interplay between guilt and damage, between what is due to my own sin (in the primary sense) and what is due to the noetic effects of sin that are beyond my control. [259] An analogy: Thomas Reid and others point out that the idea of truth, as a relation between beliefs and the world, is part of our native noetic equipment. We ordinarily take it utterly for granted that there is such a thing as truth, and we ordinarily take it for granted, with respect to any given belief we hold, that it is indeed true. But the right kind of cognitive environment can squelch and smother our notion of truth, so that some people in some circumstances wind up apparently with no concept of truth at all--or, more likely, with a way of thought that displays deep and buried conflicts. One way this can happen is by way of perverse philosophizing. Following certain postmodern thinkers, I can come to see that classical foundationalism is deeply mistaken, and then (perversely) leap lightly to the conclusion that really, there is no such thing as truth. (There is only my version, your version, and so on; where these differ, there is only an issue of power, not of truth.) It can happen in other ways as well. It is said that one of the most serious results of the long Communist tyranny in eastern Europe was just such a suppression of the idea of truth. The truth was officially perverted so often and so cynically (for example, the official organ of the Communist party devoted to the dissemination of this propaganda was ironically named Pravda, i.e., truth) that people came to lose the very idea of truth. They were lied to at every level in utterly shameless and blatant ways; they knew they were being lied to, knew that those who lied to them knew they were lying and that those to whom they lied knew they were being lied to, and so on; the result was that the whole idea of truth tended to evaporate. One said whatever would be of advantage; the question whether it was true no longer arose. In the same sort of way, the deliverances of the sensus divinitatis can be compromised, skewed, or even suppressed altogether. __________________________________________________________________ [254] There are also beliefs we think no person of good will could come to hold, so that holding them is prima facie evidence of culpability; see my "Reason and Belief in God," in Faith and Rationality, ed. Alvin Plantinga and Nicholas Wolterstorff (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), p. 36. According to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, certain kinds of knowledge--knowledge of how to achieve salvation or happiness--require obedience: one won't be able to acquire this sort of knowledge without obedience. ("The Call of Discipleship," in The Cost of Discipleship [New York: Macmillan, 1963], pp. 83ff.) [255] "'Tis inexpressible, and almost inconceivable, how strong a self-righteous, self-exalting disposition is naturally in man; and what he will not do and suffer to feed and gratify it: and what lengths have been gone in a seeming self-denial in other respects . . . ; and all to do sacrifice to this Moloch of spiritual pride or self-righteousness; and that they may have something wherein to exalt themselves before God, and above their fellow creatures," Jonathan Edwards, Religious Affections (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959), p. 241. [256] Thus Herbert Simon ("A Mechanism for Social Selection and Successful Altruism," Science 250 [December 1990], pp. 1665ff.) believes that the rational way to behave is to act or try to act in such a way as to increase one's personal fitness, that is, to act so as to increase the probability that one's genes will be widely disseminated in the next and subsequent generations, thus doing well in the evolutionary derby; this, he thinks, is given by our evolutionary history. But then how do we account for the behavior of people like Mother Teresa, the Scottish missionary Eric Liddel, the Jesuit missionaries of the seventeenth century, or the Methodist missionaries of the nineteenth? Why do they devote their time and energy and indeed their entire lives to the welfare of other people, apparently not giving a fig about the fate of their genes? Two mechanisms, says Simon: "docility," whereby they are unusually likely to believe what others tell them (1666), and "limited rationality" (1667)--to speak plainly, stupidity. [257] It is no part of the model to say that damage to the sensus divinitatis on the part of a person is due to sin on the part of the same person. Such damage is like other disease and handicaps: due ultimately to the ravages of sin, but not necessarily sin on the part of the person with the disease. In this connection, see Jesus' remarks (John 9:1-3) about the man blind from birth. [258] It is this sloth as blindness that C. S. Peirce finds in David Hume: "Lately, when I was suffering at every mouth through which a man can drink suffering, I tried to beguile it by reading three books that I hadn't read for a long time, three religious books: Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy, and Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. The last one did one most good owing to the utter blindness of the man" (quoted in Edward T. Oakes, "Discovering the American Aristotle," First Things [December 1993], p. 27). Insofar as sloth (so thought of) is (in part) an element of original sin, it is not something for which one is wholly responsible. [259] There are also those who are "always learning but never able to acknowledge the truth" (2 Timothy 3:7), despaired of by both St. Paul and Tertullian, like the theologian in C. S. Lewis's The Great Divorce who finds hell more interesting than heaven on the grounds that it offers more scope for lively and controversial theological inquiry and discussion. (In heaven there is that stultifying theological uniformity. . . .) __________________________________________________________________ B. Sin and Knowledge The most important cognitive consequence of sin, therefore, is failure to know God. And this failure can have further cognitive consequences. At present and especially in academia, there is widespread doubt and agnosticism with respect to the very existence of God. But if we don't know that there is such a person as God, we don't know the first thing (the most important thing) about ourselves, each other, and our world. That is because (from the point of view of the model) the most important truths about us and them is that we have been created by the Lord and utterly depend upon him for our continued existence. [260] We don't know what our happiness consists in, and we don't know how to achieve it. We don't know that we have been created in the image of God, and we don't grasp the significance of such characteristically human phenomena as love, humor, adventure, science, art, music, philosophy, history, and so on. Can we take things a step further yet? According to John Calvin, "As soon as ever we depart from Christ, there is nothing, be it ever so gross or insignificant in itself, respecting which we are not necessarily deceived." [261] Perhaps Calvin means only what we have already noted: one who doesn't know God fails to know the most important truth about anything else. He may mean to go even further, however: perhaps he means to say that those who don't know God suffer much wider ranging cognitive deprivation and, in fact, don't really have any knowledge at all. (This view is at any rate attributed (rightly or wrongly) to some of his followers, for example, Cornelius van Til.) That seems a shade harsh, particularly because many who don't believe in God seem to know a great deal more about some topics than most believers do. (Could I sensibly claim, for example, that I know more logic than, say, Willard van Orman Quine, even if I can't do any but the simplest logic exercises, on the grounds that at any rate I know something about logic and he, being an unbeliever, knows nothing at all about that subject or indeed anything else?) As it stands, this suggestion is desperately wide of the mark; surely many nontheists do know some things, for example, their age to the nearest year or so, to whom if anyone they are married, and which university it is that employs them. (If this weren't so, contemporary academia would display even more confusion than it does.) 1. Sin and Skepticism A couple of less sweeping views however have a great deal to be said for them. One who is agnostic about the existence of God may also be agnostic about his origin and his place in the universe. In this section, I shall argue that one who displays a certain kind of agnosticism with respect to his origin and place in the universe, and also grasps a certain cogent argument, will not, in fact, know anything at all; nothing he believes will have warrant sufficient for knowledge. To explore this suggestion, we may begin by considering the Scottish philosopher David Hume. Thomas Reid, Hume's great contemporary and antagonist, took Hume to be a skeptic with respect to external objects, an enduring self, other minds, causality, the past, and so on. [262] As Reid sees him, Hume thinks that there is something wrong in believing the things we ordinarily do: it isn't as if Hume simply announces that as a matter of fact we don't really know all we think we know about external objects, causal relations, our own selves. Perhaps that would be bad enough, but there is something much deeper. We can see what by considering the Hume of the conclusion of Book I of the Treatise. [263] Here he isn't coolly announcing, as a mildly interesting fact about us, that fewer of our beliefs constitute knowledge than we ordinarily think. Instead, he finds himself in a sort of existential crisis; he simply doesn't know what to believe. When he follows out what seem to be the promptings and leading of reason, he winds up time after time in a black coal pit, not knowing which way to turn: Where am I, or what? From what causes do I derive my existence, and to what condition shall I return? Whose favour shall I court, and whose anger must I dread? What beings surround me? and on whom have I any influence, or who have any influence on me? I am confounded with all these questions, and begin to fancy myself in the most deplorable condition imaginable, inviron'd with the deepest darkness, and utterly depriv'd of the use of every member and faculty. (p. 269) Of course this is Hume in his study, sometime before he emerges for that famous game of backgammon. Nature herself, fortunately, dispels these clouds of despair: she "cures me of this philosophical melancholy and delirium, either by relaxing this bent of mind, or by some avocation, and lively impression of my senses, which obliterate all these chimeras. I dine, I play a game of backgammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends" (p. 269). Still, the enlightened person, Hume thinks, holds the consolations of Nature at arm's length. She knows she can't help acquiescing in the common illusion, but she maintains her skepticism of "the general maxims of the world" and adopts a certain ironic distance, a wary double-mindedness: "I may, nay I must yield to the current of nature, in submitting to my senses and understanding; and in this blind submission I shew most perfectly my sceptical disposition and principles" (p. 269). This is the irony of the human condition: those who are enlightened can see that what nature inevitably leads us to believe is false, or arbitrary, or at best extremely dubious; they also see, however, that even the best of us simply don't have it in them to successfully resist her blandishments. We can't help believing those "general maxims," or if we can, it is only for brief periods of time and in artificial situations. No one can think Humean thoughts about, say, induction, when under attack by a shark or when clinging precariously to a rock face high above the valley floor. (You won't find yourself saying, "Well, I do of course believe that if this handhold breaks out, I'll hurtle down to the ground and get killed, still [fleeting sardonic, self-deprecatory smile] I also know that this thought is just a deliverance of my nature and is therefore not really to be taken seriously.") Still, in other circumstances, one can take a sort of condescending and dismissive stance with respect to these promptings of nature; in reflective moments in my study, for example, I see through them. As a rational creature, I can rise above them, recognizing that they have little or nothing to be said for them. Indeed, I see more: this skepticism is itself a reflexive skepticism; it arises even with respect to this very thought; this very doubt, this feeling of superiority, this seeing through what our natures impose on us, is itself a deliverance of my nature and is thus as suspect as any other. The true skeptic, says Hume, "will be diffident of his philosophical doubts, as well as of his philosophical conviction" (p. 273). [264] In these passages, therefore, Hume isn't shamefacedly confessing an epistemic weakness or flaw, rather as a victim of neurosis or mental disease might. ("Doctor, I often find that I simply can't bring myself to believe that induction will continue to work, or that I myself have existed for a good long time, or that there really are other people or external objects.") No; this multiply skeptical position, he thinks, is somehow the right one, the one that the man of sense (at least the man of philosophic sense) will adopt. The rest of us who unthinkingly acquiesce in the promptings of nature, who without a thought believe in causal connection, induction, persistent selves, external objects--the rest of us are from this perspective naive or foolish, unwitting dupes of our own nature. Hume is a sort of Presbyterian of the intellect; we are all, sage and ingenue alike, enmeshed in the toils of an original sin of the mind (and here perhaps we can see a lingering influence of the Calvinism of his youth). Of course Hume might claim that at least he has the advantage of recognizing that (ordinarily) he is a dupe. In this regard, he may seem like the publican in Jesus' parable, who at any rate had the grace to confess that he was indeed a sinner. But the fact is Hume is really more like the Pharisee. He isn't confessing a frailty or shortcoming, hoping for a cure; he is arguing, as he sees it, from a position of strength or at least insight; the rest of us who unthinkingly accede to the promptings of nature are the ones who suffer from intellectual shortcoming. More than that, we are irrational, in the Humean view, in that reason, carefully preserved from the corrupting influence of everyday attitudes, enjoins this skepticism upon us. To fail to accept it is to fail to follow reason, to go against its teachings, and in that sense to fall into irrationality. Now Thomas Reid takes issue with Hume (at any rate Hume as he sees him) at just this point. He sees Hume as standing with Descartes in thinking that the deliverances of perception, memory, induction, sympathy, testimony, and any other faculty we might have must be validated before the bar of reason and consciousness. That is, none of these faculties can reasonably be trusted until it has been shown to be reliable by an argument that meets two conditions. First, the argument in question must start from premises that are either self-evident (like elementary truths of arithmetic), or else deliverances of consciousness: such propositions about my own mind as that I seem to see a horse, or am appeared to redly, or believe that the Orkney Islands are north of Aberdeen. Second, the argument must be such that each of its steps is self-evidently valid. Now Descartes thought that in fact the other sources of belief could be legitimated by reason and consciousness. He thought first to establish the reliability of reason itself by giving a reasoned (rational) proof that we have been created by a benevolent God who is nondeceptive (and here we fall into that distressing Cartesian circle), but God would be a deceiver if the world weren't very much like our perceptual faculties reveal it to be. As Reid sees it, Descartes is mistaken at several points; the point of present interest, however, is Descartes's confidence that the reliability of those other sources can be established by reason. It took the work of modern philosophy from Descartes to Hume, so Reid thinks, to show that this is in fact a chimera, a will-o'-the-wisp; it simply can't be done. (The inevitable failure of this Cartesian project was therefore wholly evident to Reid some two hundred years or so before Rorty and Quine took this failure as a reason for proclaiming the death of epistemology [Rorty [265] ] or its transmogrification into empirical psychology [Quine [266] ].) Now one reaction would be to see this condition as interesting and perhaps even mildly regrettable, but of no real importance: these other sources of belief are perfectly acceptable, whether or not we can find arguments of the above sort for their reliability. Reid's Hume, however, takes quite a different tack; he takes it to be a sign of foolishness or error or dupery (in any event, part of the deplorable human condition) to accept the testimony of any source whose veracity hasn't been (or, worse, can't be) established by way of consciousness and reason. He therefore concludes that the rational course is to reject these beliefs (given that we can't show in the way in question that their sources are reliable), even if because of nature's imperious edicts we can't actually follow that austere prescription. This strikes Reid as a piece of consummate arbitrariness: The sceptic asks me, Why do you believe the existence of the external object which you perceive? This belief, sir, is none of my manufacture; it came from the mint of Nature; it bears her image and superscription; and, if it is not right, the fault is not mine: I ever took it upon trust, and without suspicion. Reason, says the sceptic, is the only judge of truth, and you ought to throw off every opinion and every belief that is not grounded on reason. Why, sir, should I believe the faculty of reason more than that of perception?--they came both out of the same shop, and were made by the same artist; and if he puts one piece of false ware into my hands, what should hinder him from putting another? [267] I believe that Reid is substantially right here; the Humean skeptic is arbitrary. [268] But this is not the place for a discussion of this point: what I want to argue instead is that Hume has a different reason for his skepticism, a reason shared by anyone who concurs with him in agnosticism about our origin and the origin of our cognitive faculties. Suppose, for one reason or another, you give up this idea that we have been created by a benevolent deity. Perhaps with Hume you adopt instead a thoroughgoing agnosticism: there is simply no way to know whether there is any being at all like God, no way to know whether there is a divine being who created the world, no way, indeed, to know anything about the ultimate origin of the world or of the ultimate origin of ourselves and our cognitive faculties. "Our experience," he says, "so imperfect in itself and so limited both in extent and duration, can afford us no probable conjecture concerning the whole of things." [269] Perhaps the world owes its existence to intelligent design: just as likely, though (at least as far as we can tell), it owes it to animal or even vegetative generation (perhaps comets are seeds and our world has arisen from one); and there are a thousand other possibilities, some of them canvassed with grace and style in the Dialogues concerning Natural Religion. Hume's [270] conclusion there, it seems, is that In such questions as the present [cosmogony, the origin of the universe], a hundred contradictory views may preserve a kind of imperfect analogy, and invention has here full scope to exert itself. Without any great effort of thought, I believe that I could, in an instant, propose other systems of cosmogony which would have some faint appearance of truth: though it is a thousand, a million to one if either yours or any one of mine be the true system. (Dialogues, p. 49) He adds a bit later that on this topic, "A total suspense of judgment is here our only reasonable resource" (p. 53). Hume so understood has no idea at all how the world got here, how rational creatures such as we ourselves have arisen, and what the origin and provenance of our rational or belief-producing faculties might be. Now turn to the question whether our cognitive faculties are reliable and do, in fact, produce for the most part true belief. Given Hume's complete agnosticism about the origins of his cognitive faculties, something like his deeply agnostic attitude to that question is no more than sensible. For suppose Hume asks himself how likely it is that our cognitive faculties are reliable, given his views (or rather lack of views) about the origin and provenance of ourselves and those faculties. What is the probability that our faculties produce the considerable preponderance of true belief over false required by reliability, given his views of their origin and purpose (if any)? I should think he would have to say that this probability is either low or inscrutable--impossible to determine. From his point of view, there are innumerable scenarios, innumerable ways in which we and our cognitive faculties could have come into being: perhaps we have been created by God, but perhaps we and the world are the result of some kind of vegetative principle, or a result of copulation on the part of animals we have no knowledge of, or the result of Russell's accidental collocation of atoms, or of . . . . On many of these scenarios, our cognitive faculties wouldn't be reliable (although they might contribute to fitness or survival); perhaps on others they would be reliable; on balance, one just wouldn't know what to think about this probability. We can see this more fully as follows. Let R be the proposition that our cognitive faculties are reliable: now what is the likelihood of R? As Reid points out, we all instinctively believe or assume that our cognitive faculties are indeed reliable; but what is the probability of that assumption, given the relevant facts? Well, what are the relevant facts? First, they would be facts about those faculties: the probability of R given (relative to) the population of China would not be relevant. And presumably the relevant facts would be facts about how these faculties originated; whether they were designed; if so, by whom and with what end in view; what constraints governed their development; and what their purpose and function is, if, indeed, they have a purpose and function. Were they, as Reid thought, created in us by a being who intends that they function reliably to give us knowledge about our environment, ourselves, and God himself--all the knowledge needed for us to attain shalom, to be the sort of beings God intended us to be? On that scenario, the purpose of our cognitive faculties would be (in part, at least) to supply us with true beliefs on those topics, and (given that they are functioning properly) there would be a high probability of their doing just that. Did they, by contrast, arise by way of some chance mechanism, something like the mindless swerve of atoms in the Democritian void? What is the likelihood, on that possibility, that our cognitive faculties are reliable? Well, you might think it pretty low. More likely, you may think that you simply can't say what that probability is: perhaps it is high (though presumably not very high), perhaps it is low; you simply can't tell. [271] There will be many more such scenarios, says Hume, some involving vegetative origin, some copulative origin, some still other kinds of origin; with respect to them, too, the probability that our cognitive faculties are reliable is simply inscrutable. So first, Hume thinks his grasp of the whole set of relevant scenarios is at best infirm; second, with respect to many of these scenarios, those possible origins, the probability of R is inscrutable; and finally, the probability with respect to any of these scenarios that it is in fact the truth of the matter is also, as far as Hume is concerned, quite inscrutable. But that means that the probability of R, given Hume's agnosticism, is also inscrutable for Hume. Let F be the relevant facts about their origin, purpose, and provenance: my claim is that, for Hume, P(R/F) (the probability of R on F) is inscrutable. He simply doesn't know what it is and has no opinion about its value, although presumably it wouldn't be very high. Another way to put it: the probability of R, given Hume's agnosticism, is inscrutable. And that gives Hume a reason to be agnostic with respect to R as well; it gives him a reason to doubt that R is, in fact, true. For our cognitive faculties, our belief-producing mechanisms, are a bit like measuring instruments (more exactly, measuring instruments under an interpretation). Our faculties produce beliefs; for each belief, there is the content of that belief, the proposition believed, a proposition that is true if and only if the belief is true. Now a state of a measuring instrument (relative to a scheme of interpretation) can also be said (in an analogically extended sense) to have content. For definiteness, consider a thermometer and suppose its pointer is resting on the number 70. Given the natural scheme of interpretation, this state can be said to have the content that the ambient temperature is 70? F. And of course a thermometer is reliable only if the propositions it delivers in this way are for the most part true, or nearly true. Imagine, then, that you embark on a voyage of space exploration and land on a planet revolving about a distant sun. This planet has a favorable atmosphere, but you know little more about it. You crack the hatch, step out, and immediately find something that looks a lot like a radio; it periodically emits strings of sounds that, oddly enough, form sentences in English. The sentences emitted by this instrument express propositions only about topics of which you have no knowledge: what the weather is like in Beijing at the moment, whether Caesar had eggs on toast on the morning he crossed the Rubicon, whether the first human being to cross the Bering Strait and set foot on North America was left-handed, and the like. A bit unduly impressed with your find, you initially form the opinion that this quasi radio speaks the truth: that is, the propositions expressed (in English) by those sentences are true. But then you recall that you have no idea at all as to what the purpose of this apparent instrument is, whether it has a purpose, or how it came to be. You see that the probability of its being reliable, given what you know about it, is for you inscrutable. Then (in the absence of investigation) you have a defeater for your initial belief that the thing does, in fact, speak the truth, a reason to reject that belief, a reason to give it up, to be agnostic with respect to it. Relative to your beliefs about the origin, purpose, and provenance of this apparent instrument, the probability that it is a reliable source of information is low or (more likely) inscrutable. And that gives you a defeater for your original and hasty belief that the thing really does speak the truth. If you don't have or get further information about its reliability, the reasonable course is agnosticism about that proposition. The same goes, I think, in the case of Humean views (or non-views) about our origins and the origin and purpose, if any, of our cognitive faculties. Suppose I join Hume in that agnosticism. Then P(R/F) is for me inscrutable (as for Hume); I have no idea what the probability of my faculties being reliable is, given the relevant facts about their origin and purpose. But then I have a defeater for my original belief or assumption that my faculties are in fact reliable. If I have or can get no further information about their reliability, the reasonable course for me is agnosticism with respect to R, giving it up, failing to believe it. It isn't that rationality requires that I believe its denial, but it does require that I not believe it. Suppose, therefore, that I am agnostic with respect to R: I believe neither it nor its denial. And now consider any belief B I have: that belief, of course, will be a deliverance of my cognitive faculties. However, I don't believe that my cognitive faculties are reliable--not because I've never thought about the question, but because I have thought about it and seen that P(R/F) is inscrutable for me. Well, what does rationality require with respect to this belief B? The clear answer seems to be that I have a defeater for this belief too, a reason to withhold it, to be agnostic with respect to it. Perhaps it isn't possible, given my nature, that I be agnostic with respect to it, at least much of the time; as Hume says, nature may not permit this. Still, this agnosticism is what reason requires, just as Hume suggests (though for different reasons). And we can take one further step with Hume. Because B is just any belief I hold--because I have a defeater for just any belief I hold--I also have a defeater for my belief that I have a defeater for B. This universal, all-purpose defeater provided by my agnosticism is also a defeater for itself, a self-defeating defeater. [272] And hence this complex, confusing, multilayered, reflexive skepticism Hume describes, a skepticism in which I am skeptical of my beliefs and also of my doubts, and of the beliefs that lead to those doubts, and of my doubts with respect to those doubts, and the beliefs leading to them. Thus the true skeptic will be skeptical all the way down; he "will be diffident of his philosophical doubts, as well as his philosophical conviction." Here we can imagine the following response: "Hey, hang on a minute! You said Hume and any similarly situated agnostic has a defeater for R, a belief to which he is inclined by nature--and you added that the rational course for them therefore is to give up belief in R--provided they have no other information about the reliability of their faculties. But what about that strong natural inclination to believe that our faculties are in fact reliable? Doesn't that count as other information'?" According to Reid (who might object to being pressed into service in defense of Hume), this belief in the reliability of our faculties is a first principle: Another first principle is--That the natural faculties, by which we distinguish truth from error, are not fallacious. (275) He goes on: If any truth can be said to be prior to all others in the order of nature, this seems to have the best claim; because, in every instance of assent, whether upon intuitive, demonstrative, or probable evidence, the truth of our faculties is taken for granted. . . . (277) Surely there is truth here: this conviction is one normal human beings ordinarily have, and, as Reid gleefully points outs, even skeptics also seem to assume, in the course of ordinary daily living, to be sure, but most poignantly when proposing their skeptical arguments, that their faculties are functioning reliably. Very few skeptics, in offering their skeptical arguments, preface the argument by saying something like, "Well, here is an argument for general skepticism with respect to our cognitive faculties; of course I realize that the premises of this argument are themselves produced by cognitive faculties whose reliability the conclusion impugns, and of whose truth I am therefore extremely doubtful." But our question is whether this belief can sensibly be pressed into service as information that can defeat the defeater provided for R by Hume's agnosticism about the origin and provenance of ourselves and our faculties. As Reid clearly sees, it cannot. If the general reliability of our cognitive faculties is under question, we can't hope to answer the question whether they are reliable by pointing out that these faculties themselves deliver the belief that they are, in fact, reliable. "If a man's honesty were called into question," says Reid, "it would be ridiculous to refer it to the man's own word, whether he be honest or not" (276). Concede that it is part of our nature to assume R; concede further that it is part of our nature to take R in the basic way, so that this conviction is not given or achieved by argument and evidence but comes with our mother's milk; concede still further, if you like, that this belief is produced by our cognitive faculties functioning properly. None of this, clearly enough, can serve to defeat the defeater for R provided by Hume's agnosticism. That is because any doubt about our cognitive faculties generally is a doubt about the specific faculty that produces this conviction; therefore we can't allay such a doubt by appealing to the deliverances of that faculty. [273] 2. Naturalism and Lack of Knowledge Agnosticism with respect to our origins is one way to reject the theistic belief that we human beings have been created in the image of God: as we have seen, agnosticism with respect to origins destroys knowledge. There is another way to reject the belief in question: by accepting a belief incompatible with it, for example, philosophical or metaphysical naturalism. As Bas van Fraassen notes, it isn't easy to say precisely what naturalism is; [274] for present purposes, suppose we take it to be the view that there is no such person as God, nor anyone or anything at all like him (it isn't that you believe, for example, that there are one or more finite gods). Paradigm cases of naturalism would be the views of Daniel Dennett in Darwin's Dangerous Idea [275] or Bertrand Russell in "A Free Man's Worship": you think that "man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving, that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms." [276] (Perhaps you even go so far as to add, with Richard Dawkins, that the very idea that there is such a person as God is really a kind of cognitive virus, an epistemic sickness or disease, distorting the cognitive stance of what would otherwise be reasonable and rational human beings. [277] ) Unlike Hume, therefore, you are not agnostic as to whether there is such a person as God or any being at all like him; you think there is not. There is likely to be a further difference between you and Hume. Having rejected theism, Hume had no comparable story to put in its place: he was left with no idea as to how humanity arose, under what conditions our cognitive faculties came to be, and so on. The contemporary naturalist, however, is in a different condition; for naturalism now sports a shared myth or story about ourselves and our origins, a set of shared beliefs about who we are, where we come from, and how we got here. The story is familiar; I shall be brief. We human beings have arrived on the scene after millions, indeed, billions of years of organic evolution. In the beginning, there was just inorganic matter; somehow, and by way of processes of which we currently have no grasp, life, despite its enormous and daunting complexity at even the simplest level, arose from nonliving matter, and arose just by way of the regularities studied in physics and chemistry. Once life arose, random genetic mutation and natural selection, those great twin engines of evolution, swung into action. [278] These genetic mutations are multiply random: they weren't intended by anyone, of course, but also were not directed by any sort of natural teleology and do not arise at the behest of the design plan of the organism. They are "not in a response to the needs of the organism" (Ernst Mayr); they just unaccountably appear. Occasionally, some of them yield an adaptive advantage; their possessors come to predominate in the population, and they are passed on to the next and subsequent generations. In this way, all the enormous variety of flora and fauna we behold came into being. Including ourselves and our cognitive systems. These systems and the underlying mechanisms have also been selected for, directly or indirectly, in the course of evolution. Consider, for example, the mammalian brain in all its enormous complexity. It could have been directly selected for in the following sense: at each stage in its development, the new stage (by virtue of the structures and behaviors it helped bestow) contributed to fitness and conferred an evolutionary advantage, giving its possessors a better chance of surviving and reproducing. Alternatively, at certain stages new structures (or new modifications of old structures) arose, not because they were themselves selected for, but because they were genetically associated with something else that was selected for (pliotropy). Either way these structures were not selected for their penchant for producing true beliefs in us; instead, they conferred an adaptive advantage or were genetically associated with something that conferred such an advantage. And the ultimate purpose or function, if any, of these belief-producing mechanisms will not be the production of true beliefs, but survival--of the gene, genotype, individual, species, whatever. If you are a naturalist and also believe these things, then you are what I shall call an ordinary naturalist. [279] In chapter 12 of Warrant and Proper Function (WPF), I argued that an ordinary naturalist is like Hume in that she has a defeater for any belief she holds--including, ironically enough, ordinary naturalism itself, so that ordinary naturalism is self-defeating. [280] I shall not repeat that argument; instead, I will take this opportunity to make some corrections, simplifications, and additions. First, a correction. In chapter 12 of WPF, there are really two arguments: a preliminary argument and a main argument. The main argument is for the conclusion that naturalism is self-defeating (and hence not rationally acceptable); the preliminary argument is not for that conclusion, but is, instead, a straightforward (probabilistic) argument for the falsehood of naturalism. The preliminary argument is also straightforwardly incorrect. [281] We can see this as follows. It began with an argument for the conclusion that P(R/N&E&C) is fairly low. Here R is the proposition that our cognitive faculties are reliable, N is metaphysical naturalism, E is the proposition that our cognitive faculties have developed by way of the mechanisms to which contemporary evolutionary theory directs our attention, and C was an unspecified proposition describing our noetic systems. In fact, C is dispensable, so in what follows I shall suppress it. After arguing that P(R/N&E) is low, I went on: Suppose you do estimate these probabilities in roughly this way: suppose you concur in Darwin's Doubt, taking P(R/N&E) to be fairly low. But suppose you also think, as most of us do, that, in fact, our cognitive faculties are reliable (with the qualifications and nuances introduced above). Then you have a straightforward probabilistic argument against naturalism--and for traditional theism, if you think these two the significant alternatives. According to Bayes's Theorem, P(N&E/R) = P(N&E) × P(R/N&E) / P(R) where P(N&E) is your estimate of the probability for N&E independent of the consideration of R. You believe R, so you assign it a probability of 1 (or nearly 1); and you take P(R/N&E) to be no more than 1/2. Then P(N&E/R) will be no greater than 1/2 times P(N&E), and will thus be fairly low. No doubt you will also assign a very high probability to the conditional if naturalism is true, then our faculties have arisen by way of evolution; if so, then you will judge that P(N/R) is also low. But you do think R is true; you therefore have evidence against N. So your belief that our cognitive faculties are reliable gives you a reason for rejecting naturalism and accepting its denial (p. 228). A very pretty little argument: too bad it contains a serious flaw. Here is the problem: in this argument, I was confusing the absolute (logical or anyway objective) probability of R with its probability conditional on our background information B; that is, I was confusing P(R/B) with P(R) simpliciter. (For simplicity, I shall henceforth also suppress E, annexing it to N, so that henceforth N will stand for ordinary naturalism, the conjunction of naturalism simpliciter with E.) We can see this by considering the argument both ways: first, relativizing the probabilities to our background knowledge B, and second, not so relativizing them. First interpretation: if we relativize the probabilities in question to B, then the relevant application of Bayes's Theorem will be P(N/R&B) = P(N/B) × P(R/N&B) / P(R/B) Here I can set P(R/B) very high, just as I say on p. 228. But I can't sensibly claim that P(R/N&B) is low. That P(R/N) is low is what I argued: I didn't argue that the probability of R is low on N plus background knowledge. In the argument that P(R/N) is low, I was abstracting from what we ordinarily think we know (for example, R itself). So I can't, without further argument, anyway, claim that the probability of R on N together with our background knowledge, is low. Second interpretation: if we don't relativize the argument to B (or anything else), the relevant application of Bayes's will be P(N/R) = P(N) × P(R/N) / P(R) as I said on p. 228. But if we are thinking of the absolute probability of R (conditioned only on necessary truths), then I can't claim (as I did) that P(R) is high: how would I know what proportion of the space of possible worlds is occupied by worlds in which R is true? In particular, the fact that R is true in fact is no reason for assigning it a high absolute (logical) probability. So either way the argument fails. Fortunately, there is a repair. We are comparing theism (T) and N. So the relevant applications of Bayes's will be P(N/R) = P(N) × P(R/N) / P(R) and P(T/R) = P(T) × P(R/T) / P(R) where we are thinking of absolute or logical probabilities. P(R) will have the same value in each expression; so the question is, how do (a) P(N) × P(R/N) and (b) P(T) × P(R/T) compare in value? Well, P(R/N) is low, as I had argued. However, P(R/T) is not; R is just what we'd expect, given T. (At any rate we've got no reason for thinking P(R/T) low.) So (given that we don't assign N a considerably higher absolute probability than T) we should take the probability of T on R to be greater than that of N on R. But we do, in fact, believe R. So we have a reason to prefer T to N. Not perhaps a very strong reason (this doesn't tell us a whole lot about the probabilities of T and N on our total evidence) but a reason nonetheless. (It's the same sort of reason the atheologian has for preferring atheism to theism, given that he thinks it unlikely that a world created by God would display all the evil the world does, in fact, display.) In essence, the main argument is for the conclusions that P(R/N&E&C) (which I'll abbreviate as P(R/N); see small print above) is either low or inscrutable; in either case, so I argued, one who accepts N (and also grasps the argument for a low or inscrutable value of P(R/N)) has a defeater for R. This induces a defeater, for him, for any belief produced by his cognitive faculties, including N itself; hence, ordinary naturalism is self-defeating. Now I argued that P(R/N) is low or inscrutable by noting first that natural selection isn't interested in true belief but in adaptive behavior (taken broadly), so that everything turns on the relation between belief and behavior. I then presented five mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive possibilities for the relation between belief and behavior, arguing with respect to each possibility P[i] that P(R/N&P[i]) is low or inscrutable, yielding the result that P(R/N) is low or inscrutable. Here we can simplify by dropping two of the five possibilities, leaving just epiphenomenalism, semantic epiphenomenalism (perhaps content epiphenomenalism' would be a more felicitous name), and the common sense (folk psychological') view of the causal relation between belief and behavior. The first possibility (call it P[1]') is epiphenomenalism, the proposition that belief (conscious belief) isn't involved in the causal chain leading to behavior at all. This view was named and suggested by T. H. Huxley ("Darwin's bulldog"). [282] Although epiphenomenalism runs counter to our commonsense ways of thinking, it is nonetheless widely popular among those enthusiastic about the "scientific" study of human beings. According to Time, a few years ago the eminent biologist J. M. Smith "wrote that he had never understood why organisms have feelings. After all, orthodox biologists believe that behavior, however complex, is governed entirely by biochemistry and that the attendant sensations--fear, pain, wonder, love--are just shadows cast by that biochemistry, not themselves vital to the organism's behavior." [283] And the same can be said for conscious belief: if "behavior, however complex, is governed entirely by biochemistry," there seems to be no room for conscious belief to become involved in the causal story, no way in which conscious belief can get its hand in; it will be causally inert. Furthermore, if this possibility were, in fact, actual, then evolution would not have been able to mold and shape our beliefs, or belief-producing structures, weeding out falsehood and encouraging truth; for then our beliefs would be, so to speak, invisible to evolution. Which beliefs (if any) an organism had, under this scenario, would be merely accidental as far as evolution is concerned. It wouldn't make any difference to behavior or fitness what beliefs our cognitive mechanisms had produced, because (under this scenario) those beliefs play no role in the production or explanation of behavior. What then is the probability of R on this scenario? That is, what is P(R/N&P[1])? What reliability requires, of course, is that a large preponderance of our beliefs be true. Now most large sets of propositions do not meet that condition; but one large set of beliefs--at any rate, of beliefs we human beings are capable of having--would seem to be about as likely as any other on this scenario. Hence we couldn't claim with a straight face that there is a high probability, on this scenario, that most of our beliefs are true. Perhaps the verdict is that this probability is relatively low; just for definiteness, let's say it's in the neighborhood of .3 or so. Alternatively, we might think that the right attitude here is that we simply can't make a sensible estimate of this probability, so that P(R/N&P[1]) is inscrutable. The second possibility as to the relation between belief and behavior (call it P[2]) is semantic epiphenomenalism. From a naturalistic point of view, the natural thing to think is that human beings are material objects. [284] Well, suppose that's what they are: then what sort of thing will a belief--perhaps the belief that Cartesian dualism is false--be? Presumably it will be a long-standing neural or neuronal event of some kind. This neural event will have electrochemical properties: the number of neurons involved; the way in which the neurons involved are connected with each other, with other neuronal events, with muscles, with sense organs, and so on; the average rate and intensity of neuronal firing in various parts of this event and the ways in which this changes over time and with respect to input from other areas. (Call these the syntax' of the belief.) Of course it is easy to see how these properties of this neuronal event should have causal influence on behavior. A given belief is neurally connected both with other beliefs and with muscles; we can see how electrical impulses coming from the belief can negotiate the usual neuronal channels and ultimately cause muscular contraction. Now if this belief is really a belief, then it will also have other properties, properties in addition to its syntax or neurophysiological properties. In particular, it will have content; it will be the belief that p, for some proposition p--in this case, the proposition Cartesian dualism is false. But how does the content of this neuronal event--that proposition--get involved in the causal chain leading to behavior? [285] Under this scenario, it will be difficult or impossible to see how a belief can have causal influence on our behavior or action by virtue of its content. Suppose the belief had had the same electrochemical properties but some entirely different content, perhaps the proposition Cartesian dualism is true; would that have made any difference to its role in the causation of behavior? It is certainly hard to see how: there would have been the same electrical impulses traveling down the same channels, issuing in the same muscular contractions. The neurophysiological properties seem to have swept the field when it comes to the causation of behavior; there seems to be no way in which content can get its foot in the door. Of course, it is the content of my beliefs, not their electrochemical properties, that is the subject of truth and falsehood: a belief is true just if the proposition that constitutes its content is true. As in the epiphenomenalist scenario, therefore, the content of belief would be invisible to evolution. Accordingly, the fact that we have survived and evolved, that our cognitive equipment was good enough to enable our ancestors to survive and reproduce--that fact would tell us nothing at all about the truth of our beliefs or the reliability of our cognitive faculties. It would tell something about the neurophysiological properties of our beliefs; it would tell us that, by virtue of these properties, those beliefs have played a role in the production of adaptive behavior. But it would tell us nothing about the contents of these beliefs, and hence nothing about their truth or falsehood. On this scenario as on the last, therefore, we couldn't sensibly claim a high probability for R. As with the last scenario, the best we could say, I think, is that this probability is either low or inscrutable; P(R/N&P[2]) is low or inscrutable, just as is P(R/N&P[1]). Finally, what is the probability of R, given N&P[3], the commonsense (folk psychological) view as to the causal relation between behavior and belief? According to folk psychology, belief serves as a (partial) cause and thus explanation of behavior--and this explicitly holds for the content of belief. I want a beer and believe there is one in the fridge; that belief, we ordinarily think, partly explains those movements of that large lumpy object that is my body as it heaves itself out of the armchair, moves over to the fridge, opens it, and extracts the beer. Can we mount an argument from the evolutionary origins of the processes, whatever they are, that produce these beliefs to the reliability of those processes? Could we argue, for example, that these beliefs of ours are connected with behavior in such a way that false belief would produce maladaptive behavior, behavior which would tend to reduce the probability of the believers' surviving and reproducing? [286] No. False belief doesn't by any means guarantee maladaptive action. Perhaps a primitive tribe thinks that everything is really alive, or is a witch or a demon of some sort; and perhaps all or nearly all of their beliefs are of the form this witch is F or that demon is G: this witch is good to eat, or that demon is likely to eat me if I give it a chance. If they ascribe the right properties to the right witches, their beliefs could be adaptive while nonetheless (assuming that in fact there aren't any witches) false. [287] Also, of course, there is the fact that behavior, if it is partly produced by belief, is also partly produced by desire: it is belief and desire, along with other things, that together produce behavior. But then clearly there could be many different systems of belief and desire that yield the same bit of adaptive behavior, and in many of those systems the belief components are largely false; there are many possible belief-desire systems that yield the whole course of my behavior, where in each system most of the beliefs are false. The fact that my behavior (or that of my ancestors) has been adaptive, therefore, is at best a third-rate reason for thinking my beliefs mostly true and my cognitive faculties reliable--and that is true even given the commonsense view of the relation of belief to behavior. So we can't sensibly argue from the fact that our behavior (or that of our ancestors) has been adaptive, to the conclusion that our beliefs are mostly true and our cognitive faculties reliable. It isn't easy to estimate P(R/N&P[3]); if it isn't inscrutable, perhaps it is moderately high. To concede as much as possible to the opposition, let's say that this probability is either inscrutable or in the neighborhood of .9. Note that epiphenomenalism simpliciter and semantic epiphenomenalism unite in declaring or implying that the content of belief lacks causal efficacy with respect to behavior; the content of belief does not get involved in the causal chain leading to behavior. So perhaps we can reduce these two possibilities to one: the possibility that the content of belief has no causal efficacy. Call this possibility -C. What we have so far seen is that the probability of R on N&-C is low or inscrutable, and that the probability of R on N&C is also inscrutable or at best moderate. Now what we are looking for is P(R/N). Because C and -C are jointly exhaustive and mutually exclusive, the calculus of probabilities tells us that P(R/N) = P(R/N&C) × P(C/N) + P(R/N&-C) × P(-C/N), that is, the probability of R on N is the weighted average of the probabilities of R on N&C and N&-C--weighted by the probabilities of C and -C on N. We have already noted that the left-hand term of the first of the two products on the right side of the equality is either moderately high or inscrutable; the second is either low or inscrutable. What remains is to evaluate the weights, the right-hand terms of the two products. So what is the probability of -C, given ordinary naturalism: what is the probability that one or the other of the two epiphenomenalistic scenarios is true? Note that according to Robert Cummins, semantic epiphenomenalism is in fact the received view as to the relation between belief and behavior. [288] That is because it is extremely hard to envisage a way, given materialism, in which the content of a belief could get causally involved in behavior. If a belief just is a neural structure of some kind--a structure that somehow possesses content--then it is exceedingly hard to see how content can get involved in the causal chain leading to behavior: had a given such structure had a different content, its causal contribution to behavior, one thinks, would be the same. By contrast, if a belief is not a material structure at all but a nonphysical bit of consciousness, it is hard to see that there is any room for it in the causal chain leading to behavior; what causes the muscular contractions involved in behavior will be states of the nervous system, with no point at which this nonphysical bit of consciousness makes a causal contribution. So it is exceedingly hard to see, given N, how the content of a belief can have causal efficacy. It is exceedingly hard to see, that is, how epiphenomenalism--semantic or simpliciter--can be avoided, given N. (There have been some valiant efforts, but things don't look hopeful.) So it looks as if P(-C/N) will have to be estimated as relatively high; let's say (for definiteness) .7, in which case P(C/N) will be .3. Of course we could easily be wrong--we don't really have a solid way of telling--so perhaps the conservative position here is that this probability, too, is inscrutable: one simply can't tell what it is. Given current knowledge, therefore, P(-C/N) is either high or inscrutable. And if P(-C/N) is inscrutable, then the same goes, naturally enough, for P(C/N). What does that mean for the sum of these two products, i.e., P(R/N)? Well, we really have several possibilities. Suppose we think first about the matter from the point of view of someone who doesn't find any of the probabilities involved inscrutable. Then P(C/N) will be in the neighborhood of .3, P(-C/N) in the neighborhood of .7, and P(R/N&-C) perhaps in the neighborhood of .2. This leaves P(R/N&C), the probability that R is true, given ordinary naturalism together with the commonsense or folk-theoretical view as to the relation between belief and behavior. Given that this probability is not inscrutable, let's say that it is in the neighborhood of .9. And given these estimates, P(R/N) will be in the neighborhood of .41. [289] Suppose, however, we think the probabilities involved are inscrutable: then we will have to say the same for P(R/N). Therefore, P(R/N) is either relatively low--less than .5, at any rate--or inscrutable. In either case, however, doesn't the ordinary naturalist--at any rate, one who sees that P(R/N) is low or inscrutable--have a defeater for R, and for the proposition that his own cognitive faculties are reliable? I say he does. To see how, we must note some analogies with clear cases. First, there are the analogies I mentioned in WPF (229-31); here are a couple more. Return (pp. 224) to that voyage of space exploration and the radio-like device that emitted sounds that constitute English sentences, sentences that express propositions of whose truth value you are ignorant. At first, you were inclined to believe these propositions, if only because of shock and astonishment. After a bit of cool reflection, however, you realize that you know nothing at all about the purpose, if any, of this instrument, or who or what constructed it. The probability that this device is reliable, given what you know about it, is low or inscrutable; and this gives you a defeater for your initial belief that the instrument indeed speaks the truth. Consider another analogy. You start thinking seriously about the possibility that you are a brain in a vat, being subjected to experiment by Alpha Centaurian cognitive scientists in such a way that your cognitive faculties are not, in fact, reliable. For one reason or another, you come to think this probability is greater than .5; then you have a defeater for your belief that your cognitive faculties are reliable. Suppose instead that you think this is a genuine possibility, but you can't make any estimate at all of its likelihood, so that you can't make any estimate at all of the probability that your faculties are reliable: as far as you can tell, the probability could be anywhere between and 1. Then too you have a defeater for your natural belief that your cognitive faculties are reliable. The same goes for the naturalist who realizes that P(R/N) is low or inscrutable. With respect to those factors crucially important for coming to a sensible view of the reliability of his belief-producing mechanisms--how they were formed and what their purpose is, if any--he must concede that the probability that those faculties are reliable is at best inscrutable. Unless he has some other information, [290] the right attitude would be to withhold R. But then something like Hume's attitude toward my beliefs would be the appropriate one. I recognize that I can't help forming most of the beliefs I do form; for example, it isn't within my power, just now, to withhold the belief that there are trees and grass outside my window. However, because I now do not believe that my cognitive faculties are reliable (I withhold that proposition), I also realize that these beliefs produced by my cognitive faculties are no more likely to be true than false: I therefore assume a certain skeptical distance with respect to them. And, because my doubts about my beliefs themselves depend on my beliefs, I also assume a certain skeptical distance with respect to these doubts, and with respect to the beliefs prompting those doubts, and with respect to the beliefs prompting the doubts about those doubts. . . . The ordinary naturalist, therefore, should join Hume in this same skeptical, ironic attitude toward his beliefs. This holds, of course, for N itself; for this reason, we might say that N is self-defeating, in that if it is accepted in the ordinary way, it provides a defeater for itself, a defeater that can't be defeated. [291] We can briefly extend this result to the case where I am agnostic about ordinary naturalism. I don't really believe it; either it seems to me to be about as likely as its denial, or its probability is inscrutable for me. In either case, once more, I have a defeater for R, just as in the case of the ordinary naturalist. To see this, consider once again an analogy, and just to preserve continuity, make it another instrumental analogy. You are confronted with a measuring instrument of some kind--a barometer, say. You believe that this barometer is in one or the other of two conditions, C1 and C2; the probability that it is in either is for you either inscrutable or about .5. The probability of its being reliable, given that it is in C1, is high, certainly high enough so that if you believed that it was in C1, you would unhesitatingly accept its deliverances. However, the likelihood that it is reliable, given that it is in condition C2, is inscrutable so far as you are concerned: it could be high, but it could also be low; you just don't know what to think about that probability. Would it be reasonable to accept the deliverances of this instrument? I should think not. You know that if it is in C1, it is reliable; but the probability that it is in C1 is (for you) either about .5 or inscrutable. Either way, the rational attitude is to withhold the belief that it is reliable, accepting neither it nor its denial. And then (given that you have no other source of information) the same goes for the output of the barometer: for any proposition in its output, the rational course for you would be agnosticism with respect to that proposition. The pointer points to thirty inches; still (if you have no other information), you will not on that account believe that the ambient atmospheric pressure is thirty inches. Of course you won't form a belief inconsistent with that one either: you will withhold the proposition. It is easy enough to make the application to agnosticism as between theism and ordinary naturalism. If I am such an agnostic, the probability of ordinary naturalism is either in the neighborhood of .5 or inscrutable for me. Suppose the former: what attitude should I take toward R? Well, there is a fifty-fifty chance that my cognitive faculties were produced in a way with respect to which the probability of R is low or inscrutable; if so, however, I have a defeater for R, good reason to withhold. Suppose the latter: then I can't rule out any probability for ordinary naturalism. Because the probability of R on ordinary naturalism is also inscrutable, I can't rule out any probability for R; in particular, I can't rule out a low probability for R. But again, that gives me a defeater for my ordinary and instinctive belief that R. In either case, therefore, I acquire a defeater for R; unless I have or can come up with a defeater-defeater for this defeater, [292] I should be agnostic with respect to R. And if I am agnostic with respect to R, then just as Hume sees, the rational attitude is to be agnostic with respect to any of the deliverances of my cognitive faculties. I may not, in fact, be able to be agnostic with respect to them, but agnosticism is what rationality requires. Of course I also recognize that the beliefs involved in my coming to this agnosticism--such as the belief that the relevant probabilities are inscrutable--are themselves products of my cognitive faculties, and no better off than any other such products. Hence that multilayered reflexive Humean skepticism. By way of conclusion: the noetic effects of sin don't necessarily include failure to know anything; Calvin (if that is what, in fact, he thought) goes too far. Still, something in the same general neighborhood is true. If I reject theism in favor of ordinary naturalism, and also see that P(R/N) is low or inscrutable, then I will have a defeater for any belief I hold. If so, I will not, if forming beliefs rationally, hold any belief firmly enough to constitute knowledge. The same goes if I am merely agnostic as between theism and ordinary naturalism. And the same goes if I am agnostic about my origin and the origin of my cognitive faculties. So rejection of theistic belief doesn't automatically produce skepticism: many who don't believe in God know much. But that is only because they don't accurately think through the consequences of this rejection. Once they do, they will lose their knowledge; here, therefore, is another of those cases where, by learning more, one comes to know less. In this chapter, we have begun to explore the extended model by exploring the nature of sin and some of its cognitive consequences. These consequences extend further than one would ordinarily think; indeed, insofar as sin interferes with the sensus divinitatis and thus with our knowledge of God, it can easily lead to a noetic condition where what rationality demands is that complex, many-layered Humean skepticism. But here a nasty problem looms. According to the A/C model of chapter 6, knowledge requires proper function, and knowledge of God requires proper function of the sensus divinitatis. According to the extended model, however, this belief-producing process has been damaged because of sin, so that it no longer functions properly: how then (on this model) can we have knowledge of the existence and character of God? In the next chapter, we turn to the question how specifically Christian belief, not just generically theistic belief, can have warrant; in answering that question we will also see how the sensus divinitatis is repaired. __________________________________________________________________ [260] In this connection, consider the despised creationists, who believe that the world is only ten thousand years old: they are ignorant, pitifully ignorant about when God created the world. From the point of view of the model, this ignorance pales into utter insignificance compared with that of many of their cultured detractors, who foolishly believe that there is no God and thus (naturally enough) are ignorant of the vastly more important fact that the world was, indeed, created by God. [261] Commentaries on the First Book of Moses, Called Genesis, tr. John King (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1847); reprinted by Baker Book House (Grand Rapids, 1979). [262] Although Reid's view has been the majority opinion with respect to Humean exegesis, there has always been a minority opinion according to which Hume really wasn't a skeptic at all. This striking divergence is testimony to the fact that Hume is a black enigma: a certain surface clarity masks a deep underlying murkiness that makes confident interpretation impossible. [263] Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1951; first published in 1739), pp. 263ff. Subsequent page references to the Treatise are to this edition. [264] And this leads to the scandal of skepticism: if I argue to skepticism, then of course I rely on the very cognitive faculties whose unreliability is the conclusion of my skeptical argument. [265] See his Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979). [266] As in "Epistemology Naturalized," in Ontological Relativity and Other Essays (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969). [267] Thomas Reid's Inquiry and Essays, ed. Keith Lehrer and Ronald E. Beanblossom (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1975), pp. 84-85. [268] But perhaps not entirely arbitrary; see Warrant: The Current Debate, pp. 100ff. [269] Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, ed. Richard Popkin (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1980), p. 45. [270] Or at any rate Philo's; I make no pretense to settle the question of who speaks for Hume in the Dialogues, something Hume artfully conceals. [271] We aren't thinking here of Bayesian personal probability but of some kind of objective probability, the sort of probability Hume has in mind when he says that "it is a thousand, a million to one if either yours or any one of mine be the true system." [272] Of course this raises problems: if I have a defeater-defeater (a defeater for my defeater for R), then don't I thereby lose my defeater for R? Am I back where I was before I acquired the defeater for R? No; for my defeater-defeater is also a defeater for R. For explanation and detail, see part IV, section E, "The Dreaded Loop," from my "Naturalism Defeated," presently unpublished. [273] The same goes, naturally enough, for the suggestion that we try to determine by scientific means whether our cognitive faculties are reliable; any such attempt could proceed only by reliance on the very faculties whose reliability is at issue. [274] See his "Science, Materialism, and False Consciousness," in Warrant in Contemporary Epistemology: Essays in Honor of Plantinga's Theory of Knowledge, ed. Jonathan Kvanvig (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 1996). [275] New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995. [276] In Why I Am Not a Christian (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1957), p. 107. [277] "Viruses of the Mind," in Dennett and His Critics: Demystifying Mind, ed. Bo Dahlbom (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), pp. 13ff. As evidence for the virulence and tenacity of this virus, Dawkins cites the fact that it took Sir Anthony Kenny (as learned and sapient a person as we can easily find), a very long time to fight his way clear of it. Others may wonder whether the virus is all Dawkins says it is, given that Dawkins himself apparently escaped it long ago. [278] Various other mechanisms (e.g., genetic drift and neutral evolution) have been proposed, but these two remain the favorites. [279] Daniel Dennett's book Darwin's Dangerous Idea is a paradigm of ordinary naturalism as well as naturalism simpliciter; the same goes for Richard Dawkins's The Blind Watchmaker (London: W. W. Norton, 1986). For animadversions on Darwin's Dangerous Idea (and on Darwin's dangerous idea), see my "Dennett's Dangerous Idea," Books and Culture (May-June 1996); for a powerful animadversion on the first but not the second, see Jerry Fodor's "Deconstructing Dennett's Darwin," in Mind and Language 11, no. 3 (September 1996), pp. 246-62. [280] See James Beilby, ed. Naturalism Defeated? Essays on Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument against Naturalism (forthcoming) for fascinating objections to and critical comments on this argument, along with my reply. [281] Here I was helped by Branden Fitelson and Elliott Sober; see their paper "Plantinga's Probability Arguments against Evolutionary Naturalism," Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 79 (1998), pp. 115-29. [282] "It may be assumed . . . that molecular changes in the brain are the causes of all the states of consciousness. . . . [But is] there any evidence that these stages of consciousness may, conversely, cause . . . molecular changes [in the brain] which give rise to muscular motion? I see no such evidence. . . . [Consciousness appears] to be . . . completely without any power of modifying [the] working of the body, just as the steam whistle . . . of a locomotive engine is without influence upon its machinery" (T. H. Huxley, "On the Hypothesis That Animals Are Automata and Its History" [1874], chapter 5 of his Method and Results [London: Macmillan, 1893], pp. 239-40.) Later in the essay: "To the best of my judgment, the argumentation which applies to brutes holds equally good of men; and therefore . . . all states of consciousness in us, as in them, are immediately caused by molecular changes of the brain-substance. It seems to me that in men, as in brutes, there is no proof that any state of consciousness is the cause of change in the motion of the matter of the organism. . . . We are conscious automata" (243-44). (Note the occurrence here of that widely popular form of argument, I know of no proof that not-p; therefore, there is no proof that not-p; therefore, p.) In contrast to Huxley, I am here using the term epiphenomenalism' to denote any view according to which belief isn't involved in the causal chain leading to behavior, whether or not that view involves the dualism apparently part of Huxley's version. [283] December 28, 1992, p. 41. [284] Though it isn't easy to say just what a material object is (as Bas van Fraassen emphasizes in "Science, Materialism, and False Consciousness"; see above, footnote 274). For present purposes we need not try to address that project; we can simply narrow our focus to the claim that beliefs are neural events or processes of some sort. [285] A question just as pressing, of course, is How does this neuronal event have a content at all?' What is it that assigns to this neuronal event the proposition that Cartesian dualism is false, as opposed, for instance, to the proposition that it is true, or interesting, or obsolete, or vaguely obscene? [286] Thus Quine: "There is some encouragement in Darwin. If people's innate spacing of qualities is a gene-linked trait, then the spacing that has made for the most successful inductions will have tended to predominate through natural selection. Creatures inveterately wrong in their inductions have a pathetic but praiseworthy tendency to die before reproducing their kind" ("Natural Kinds," in Ontological Relativity and Other Essays [New York: Columbia University Press, 1969], p. 126). [287] Objection: in any event, these tribespeople would be ascribing the right properties to the right things, so that their beliefs are, in some loose sense, accurate, even if strictly speaking false. Reply: by further gerrymandering, we can easily find schemes under which their beliefs would lead to adaptive behavior (thus being functionally equivalent with respect to behavior to the true scheme) but are not accurate even in this loose sense. There are schemes of this sort, in fact, in which the properties ascribed are logically incapable of exemplification. They think everything is a witch; perhaps, then, their analogue of property ascriptions involves ascribing certain sorts of witches (rather than properties). (One of these witches, for example, is such that, as we would put it, if a thing has it, then that thing is red.) Then their beliefs will not be accurate in the above sense and will indeed be necessarily false. [288] Meaning and Mental Representation (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989), p. 130. [289] Of course these figures are the merest approximations; others might make the estimates somewhat differently; but they can be significantly altered without significantly altering the final result. For example, perhaps you think P(R/N&C) is higher, perhaps even 1; then (retaining the other assignments) P(R/N) will be in the neighborhood of .44. Or perhaps you reject the thought that P(-C/N) is more probable than P(C/N), thinking them about equal. Then (again, retaining the other assignments) P(R/N) will be in the neighborhood of .55. [290] And how could he have or get other information? Any such information would consist in beliefs that were a product of his cognitive faculties, but he has a defeater for the reliability of those faculties and hence for any belief produced by them. [291] See chapter 12 of WPF, and "Naturalism Defeated." The defeater can't be defeated because any defeater would arise from the very faculties or belief-producing processes in question. For example, the defeater might take the form of an argument, perhaps for the conclusion that those belief-producing processes are reliable after all. But then I would have the same defeater for each of the premises of this argument, as well as for my belief that if the premises are true, then so is the conclusion. [292] And again (see footnote 291), how could I? Any such defeater-defeater would be subject to the very defeater defeating R in the first place. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ 8 The Extended Aquinas/Calvin Model: Revealed to Our Minds The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children. Romans 8:16 In chapter 6, I proposed a model--the Aquinas/Calvin (A/C) model--according to which belief in God can have the three varieties of positive epistemic status with which we have been concerned: justification, rationality (in both its external and internal guises), and warrant. What about specifically Christian belief, belief, not just in God, but in trinity, incarnation, Christ's resurrection, atonement, forgiveness of sins, salvation, regeneration, eternal life? The main business of this chapter is to extend the A/C model to cover these beliefs, to show how they, too, can have those varieties of positive epistemic status. In chapter 7, I gave an initial statement of this extended model. One element of the extended A/C model has to do with sin and its epistemic consequences; most of chapter 7 was devoted to a development of this feature of the model. In this chapter, I turn to the central elements of the model: how can we think of the full panoply of Christian belief in all its particularity as enjoying justification, rationality in both its internal and external varieties, and warrant? How can we think of these beliefs--some of which, as David Hume loved to point out, go entirely contrary to ordinary human experience--as reasonable or rational, let alone warranted, let alone having warrant sufficient for knowledge? The materials for an answer lie close at hand. Actually, the materials have lain close at hand for several centuries--certainly since the publication of Jonathan Edwards's Religious Affections [293] and John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion. [294] As a matter of fact, they have lain close at hand for much longer than that: much of what Calvin says can be usefully seen as development of remarks of Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventura. Indeed, these materials go much further back yet, all the way back to the New Testament, in particular, the Gospel of John and the epistles of Paul. In this chapter, I shall develop those materials and propose a model--the extended A/C model--for warranted Christian belief: a model in which full-blooded Christian belief in all its particularity is justified, rational, and warranted. [295] I shall argue further that Christian belief can be justified, rational, and warranted not just for ignorant fundamentalists or benighted medievals but for informed and educated twenty-first-century Christians who are entirely aware of all the artillery that has been rolled up against Christian belief since the Enlightenment. I shall argue that if Christian belief is true, then it is rational and warranted for most of those who accept it. I shall therefore be refuting the widespread idea that Christian belief is lacking in positive epistemic status, even if it happens, somehow, to be true. If I am right, the atheologian can't sensibly take the attitude, "I don't know whether Christian belief is true or not (who could know a thing like that?); still I do know that it isn't rational (or warranted, or justified, or rationally justified, or intellectually respectable or . . . )." For the sake of definiteness I shall be following one particular and traditional way of thinking about our knowledge of Christian truth. I believe that this account or something similar is, in fact, rather close to the sober truth; other models fitting other traditions can easily be constructed. My extended model will have one further feature: it will complete and deepen the previous account (chapter 6) of our knowledge of God. The central themes of this extended model are the Bible, the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit, and faith. I'll begin with a quick overview of the essential elements of the extended model. According to the model (as we saw in chapter 7), we human beings were created in the image of God: we were created both with appropriate affections and with knowledge of God and his greatness and glory. Because of the greatest calamity to befall the human race, however, we fell into sin, a ruinous condition from which we require rescue and redemption. God proposed and instituted a plan of salvation: the life, atoning suffering and death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the incarnate second person of the trinity. The result for us is the possibility of salvation from sin and renewed relationship with God. Now (and here we come to the specifically epistemological extension of the model) God needed a way to inform us--us human beings of many different times and places--of the scheme of salvation he has graciously made available. [296] No doubt he could have done this in many different ways; in fact he chose to do so by way of a three-tiered cognitive process. First, he arranged for the production of Scripture, the Bible, a library of books or writings each of which has a human author, but each of which is also specially inspired by God in such a way that he himself is its principal author. Thus, the whole library has a single principal author: God himself. In this library, he proposes much for our belief and action, but there is a central theme and focus (and for this reason this collection of books is itself a book): the gospel, the stunning good news of the way of salvation God has graciously offered. [297] Correlative with Scripture and necessary to its properly serving its purpose is the second element of this three-tiered cognitive process: the presence and action of the Holy Spirit promised by Christ himself before his death and resurrection, [298] and invoked and celebrated in the epistles of the apostle Paul. [299] By virtue of the work of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of those to whom faith is given, the ravages of sin (including the cognitive damage) are repaired, gradually or suddenly, to a greater or lesser extent. Furthermore, it is by virtue of the activity of the Holy Spirit that Christians come to grasp, believe, accept, endorse, and rejoice in the truth of the great things of the gospel. It is thus by virtue of this activity that the Christian believes that "in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting men's sins against them" (2 Corinthians 5:19). According to John Calvin, the principal work of the Holy Spirit is the production (in the hearts of Christian believers) of the third element of the process, faith. Like the regeneration of which it is a part, faith is a gift; it is given to anyone who is willing to accept it. Faith, says Calvin, is "a firm and certain knowledge of God's benevolence towards us, founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ, both revealed to our minds and sealed upon our hearts through the Holy Spirit" (Institutes III, ii, 7, p. 551). Faith therefore involves an explicitly cognitive element; it is, says Calvin, knowledge--knowledge of the availability of redemption and salvation through the person and work of Jesus Christ--and it is revealed to our minds. To have faith, therefore, is to know and hence believe something or other. But (as we shall see in chapter 9) faith also involves the will: it is "sealed upon our hearts." By virtue of this sealing, the believer not only knows about the scheme of salvation God has prepared (according to the book of James [2:19], the devils also know about that, and they shudder) but is also heartily grateful to the Lord for it, and loves him on this account. Sealing, furthermore, also involves the executive function of the will: believers accept the proffered gift and commit themselves to the Lord, to conforming their lives to his will, to living lives of gratitude. [300] But isn't all this just endorsing a wholly outmoded and discredited fundamentalism, that condition than which, according to many academics, none lesser can be conceived? I fully realize that the dreaded f-word will be trotted out to stigmatize any model of this kind. Before responding, however, we must first look into the use of this term fundamentalist'. On the most common contemporary academic use of the term, it is a term of abuse or disapprobation, rather like son of a bitch', more exactly sonovabitch', or perhaps still more exactly (at least according to those authorities who look to the Old West as normative on matters of pronunciation) sumbitch'. When the term is used in this way, no definition of it is ordinarily given. (If you called someone a sumbitch, would you feel obliged first to define the term?) Still, there is a bit more to the meaning of fundamentalist' (in this widely current use): it isn't simply a term of abuse. In addition to its emotive force, it does have some cognitive content, and ordinarily denotes relatively conservative theological views. That makes it more like stupid sumbitch' (or maybe fascist sumbitch'?) than sumbitch' simpliciter. It isn't exactly like that term either, however, because its cognitive content can expand and contract on demand; its content seems to depend on who is using it. In the mouths of certain liberal theologians, for example, it tends to denote any who accept traditional Christianity, including Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, and Barth; in the mouths of devout secularists like Richard Dawkins or Daniel Dennett, it tends to denote anyone who believes there is such a person as God. The explanation is that the term has a certain indexical element: its cognitive content is given by the phrase considerably to the right, theologically speaking, of me and my enlightened friends.' The full meaning of the term, therefore (in this use), can be given by something like stupid sumbitch whose theological opinions are considerably to the right of mine'. It is therefore hard to take seriously the charge that the views I'm suggesting are fundamentalist; more exactly, it is hard to take it seriously as a charge. The alleged charge means only that these views are rather more conservative than those of the objector, together with the expression of a certain distaste for the views or those who hold them. But how is that an objection to anything, and why should it warrant the contempt and contumely that goes with the term? An argument of some kind against those conservative views would be of interest, but merely pointing out that they differ from the objector's (even with the addition of that abusive emotive force) is not. How does this model, with its excursion into theology, provide an answer to an epistemological question? How can it be a model for a way in which Christian belief has or could have justification, rationality, warrant? The answer is simplicity itself. These beliefs do not come to the Christian just by way of memory, perception, reason, testimony, the sensus divinitatis, or any other of the cognitive faculties with which we human beings were originally created; they come instead by way of the work of the Holy Spirit, who gets us to accept, causes us to believe, these great truths of the gospel. These beliefs don't come just by way of the normal operation of our natural faculties; they are a supernatural gift. Still, the Christian who has received this gift of faith will of course be justified (in the basic sense of the term) in believing as he does; there will be nothing contrary to epistemic or other duty in so believing (indeed, once he has accepted the gift, it may not be within his power to withhold belief). Given the model, however, the beliefs in question will typically (or at least often) have the other kinds of positive epistemic status we have been considering as well. First, they will be internally rational: [301] they will be an appropriate doxastic response to what is given to the believer by way of her previous belief and current experience. That is, the believer's response is such that a properly functioning person with the same current experience and antecedent beliefs could form the same or similar beliefs, without compromising proper function. But the beliefs in question will typically also have external rationality. There need be no cognitive malfunction downstream from experience (see above, p. 110), in believers, but there need be none upstream either: all of their cognitive faculties can be functioning properly. Finally, on the model, these beliefs will also have warrant for believers: they will be produced in them by a belief-producing process [302] that is functioning properly in an appropriate cognitive environment (the one for which they were designed), according to a design plan successfully aimed at the production of true beliefs. __________________________________________________________________ I. Faith Now Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Hebrews 11:1 So much for the initial account of the model; I turn now to a more detailed development of some of its aspects, beginning with faith. The first thing to note is that this term, like nearly any philosophically useful term, is used variously, in a number of different but analogically connected senses. According to Mark Twain, faith is "believing what you know ain't true"; this only slightly exaggerates a common use of the term to denote a belief that lacks warrant and, indeed, is unlikely with respect to what does have warrant for the believer. A mother who believes, in the teeth of the evidence, that her son is in fact still alive will be said to have faith that he is still alive. It is in connection with this use that one thinks of a leap of faith', which is rather like a leap in the dark. A second way the term is used is to denote a vague and generalized trust that has no specific object, a confidence that things will go right, a sort of Bultmannian sitting loose with respect to the future, trusting that one can deal with whatever happens. To have faith in this sense is to "accept the universe," as the nineteenth-century transcendentalist Margaret Fuller was said to have declared she did. [303] In setting out the model, however, I am using the term in a different sense from any of those. My sense will be much closer to that which the Heidelberg Catechism (following John Calvin) ascribes to true faith': True faith is not only a knowledge and conviction that everything God reveals in his word is true; it is also a deep-rooted assurance, created in me by the Holy Spirit through the gospel, that, out of sheer grace earned for us by Christ, not only others, but I too, have had my sins forgiven, have been made forever right with God, and have been granted salvation. (Q. 21) We can think of this account as making more explicit the content of the definition of faith offered by Calvin in the Institutes (above, p. 244). The first thing to see is that faith, so taken, is a cognitive activity. It isn't merely a cognitive activity; it also involves the will, both the affections and the executive function. (It is a knowledge sealed upon our hearts, as well as revealed to our minds.) Still, even if faith is more than cognitive, it is also and at least a cognitive activity. It is a matter of believing ("knowledge," Calvin says) something or other. Christians, on this account, don't merely find their identity in the Christian story, or live in it or out of it; [304] they believe it, take the story to be the sober truth. Now what one believes are propositions. To have faith, therefore, is (at least) to believe some propositions. Which ones? Not, for example, that the world is the sort of place in which human beings can flourish, or even or primarily that there is such a person as God. [305] Indeed, on this model it isn't really by faith that one knows that there is such a person as God. Faith is instead, says Calvin, "firm and certain knowledge of God's benevolence towards us"; that is, a firm and certain knowledge that "not only others, but I too, have had my sins forgiven, have been made forever right with God, and have been granted salvation"; that is, a firm and certain knowledge of God's plan whereby we fallen humans can attain shalom, flourishing, well-being, happiness, felicity, salvation, all of which are essentially a matter of being rightly related to God. [306] So the propositional object of faith is the whole magnificent scheme of salvation God has arranged. To have faith is to know that and how God has made it possible for us human beings to escape the ravages of sin and be restored to a right relationship with him; it is therefore a knowledge of the main lines of the Christian gospel. [307] The content of faith is just the central teachings of the gospel; [308] it is contained in the intersection of the great Christian creeds. What is at issue, in faith, furthermore, is not just knowing that there is such a scheme (as we saw above, the devils believe that, and they shudder), but also and most important, that this scheme applies to and is available to me. [309] So what I know, in faith, is the main lines of specifically Christian teaching--together, we might say, with its universal instantiation with respect to me. Christ died for my sins, thus making it possible for me to be reconciled with God. Faith is initially and fundamentally practical; it is a knowledge of the good news and of its application to me, and of what I must do to receive the benefits it proclaims. Still, faith itself is a matter of belief rather than action; it is believing something rather than doing something. __________________________________________________________________ [303] To which Thomas Carlyle retorted, "Gad! She'd better!" Mark Twain, by contrast, claimed he hadn't heard it had been offered to her. [304] In this way, the model (apparently) differs from the postmodern Yale theology of Hans Frei (The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative [1974] and The Identity of Jesus Christ [1975]) and George Lindbeck (The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age [1984]), which emphasizes the role of the Bible in the Christian life but is a bit coy as to whether its apparent teachings--creation, sin, incarnation, atonement, Christ's resurrection--are to be taken as actually true. (See, for example, pp. 143-45 of The Identity of Jesus Christ.) This standoffishness about truth is perhaps the postliberal' element in Yale theology; according to the present model, however, it is also unnecessary. The model is designed to show that straightforward, downright, out-and-out belief in the great things of the gospel can have the epistemic virtues we are considering. [305] "In understanding faith," says Calvin, "it is not merely a question of knowing that God exists . . . but also--and this especially--of knowing what is his will toward us. For it is not so much our concern to know who he is in himself, as what he wills to be toward us" (549). [306] I take it this is a definition or description of faith by way of presenting a paradigm of it: fully formed and well-developed faith will be like this. Thus a person who (for example) believes these things, but without the firmness sufficient for knowledge of them, can still be said to have faith. [307] And hence not everything a typical Christian believes (as a Christian) will be, strictly speaking, part of faith. For example, she may believe that Jesus Christ performed miracles, or that God is omniscient, or that the Bible is a specially inspired word from the Lord, or that faith naturally issues in good works; none of these is, as such, part of the content of faith. (This is not in any way to downgrade the importance of these things, and certainly the content of faith may enter into her reasons for believing them.) And in thus specifying the content of faith, I am not, of course, trying to specify those beliefs which are such that accepting them is necessary for being a real Christian. [308] On the present model, therefore, faith is a bit narrower than in the account of true faith from the Heidelberg Catechism (above, p. 247), which includes a "conviction that everything God reveals in his word is true." God presumably reveals more, in his word, than the great truths of the gospel. For example, there is Jesus' turning water into wine, healing the demoniac, and raising Lazarus from the dead; these are not among the central truths of the gospel, although they are related to and illustrative of those truths. [309] See Calvin, III, ii, 16, p. 561: "Here, indeed, is the chief hinge on which faith turns: that we do not regard the promises of mercy that God offers as true only outside ourselves, but not at all in us; rather that we make them ours by inwardly embracing them." As we'll see in the next chapter, there is more that distinguishes what the devils know from what the person of faith knows: she but not they also knows the beauty, loveliness, splendor of this plan of salvation; still further, she loves it, gives it her hearty approval, is grateful for it, and commits herself to love and trust the Lord. __________________________________________________________________ II. How Does Faith Work? The principal answer is that faith is a work--the main work, according to Calvin--of the Holy Spirit; it is produced in us by the Holy Spirit. The suggestion that belief in the "great things of the gospel" (Jonathan Edwards's phrase) is a result of some special work of the Holy Spirit is often thought of as especially the teaching of such Calvinist thinkers as Edwards and John Calvin himself. It is, indeed, central to their teaching, and here the model follows them. On this point as on so many others, however, Calvin, despite his pugnacious noise about the pestilential papists and their colossal offenses, may be seen as following out and developing a line of thought already to be found in Thomas Aquinas. "The believer," says Aquinas, "has sufficient motive for believing, for he is moved by the authority of divine teaching confirmed by miracles and, what is more, by the inward instigation of the divine invitation." [310] Here we have (embryonically, at any rate) the same trio of processes: there is belief, there is the divine teaching (as given in Scripture) which is the object of that belief, and there is also special divine activity in the production of the belief ("the inward instigation of the divine invitation"). [311] What is really involved, in a believer's coming to accept the great things of the gospel, therefore, are three things: Scripture (the divine teaching), the internal invitation or instigation of the Holy Spirit, and faith, the human belief that results. What sort of phenomenology is involved in this epistemic process: what does it seem like from the inside? In the model, the beliefs constituting faith are typically taken as basic; that is, they are not accepted by way of argument from other propositions or on the evidential basis of other propositions. Of course they could be accepted on the basis of other propositions, and perhaps in some cases are. A believer could reason as follows: I have strong historical and archaeological evidence for the reliability of the Bible (or the church, or my parents, or some other authority); the Bible teaches the great things of the gospel; so probably these things are true. A believer could reason in this way, and perhaps some believers do in fact reason this way. But in the model it goes differently. We read Scripture, or something presenting scriptural teaching, or hear the gospel preached, or are told of it by parents, or encounter a scriptural teaching as the conclusion of an argument (or conceivably even as an object of ridicule), or in some other way encounter a proclamation of the Word. What is said simply seems right; it seems compelling; one finds oneself saying, "Yes, that's right, that's the truth of the matter; this is indeed the word of the Lord." I read, "God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself"; I come to think: "Right; that's true; God really was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself!" And I may also think something a bit different, something about that proposition: that it is a divine teaching or revelation, that in Calvin's words it is "from God." What one hears or reads seems clearly and obviously true and (at any rate in paradigm cases) seems also to be something the Lord is intending to teach. (As Calvin says, "the Spirit . . . is the only fit corrector and approver of doctrine, who seals it on our hearts, so that we may certainly know that God speaks. For while faith ought to look to God, he alone can be a witness to himself, so as to convince our hearts that what our ears receive has come from him.") So faith may have the phenomenology that goes with suddenly seeing something to be true: "Right! Now I see that this is indeed true and what the Lord is teaching!" Or perhaps the conviction arises slowly, and only after long and hard study, thought, discussion, prayer. Or perhaps it is a matter of a belief's having been there all along (from childhood, perhaps), but now being transformed, renewed, intensified, made vivid and alive. This process can go on in a thousand ways; in each case there is presentation or proposal of central Christian teaching and, by way of response, the phenomenon of being convinced, coming to see, forming of a conviction. There is the reading or hearing, and then there is the belief or conviction that what one reads or hears is true and a teaching of the Lord. According to the model, this conviction comes by way of the activity of the Holy Spirit. Calvin speaks here of the internal testimony' and (more often) witness' of the Holy Spirit; Aquinas, of the divine instigation' and invitation'. On the model, there is both Scripture and the divine activity leading to human belief. God himself (on the model) is the principal author of Scripture. Scripture is most importantly a message, a communication from God to humankind; Scripture is a word from the Lord. [312] But then this just is a special case of the pervasive process of testimony, by which, as a matter of fact, we learn most of what we know. [313] From this point of view, Scripture is as much a matter of testimony as is a letter you receive from a friend. What is proposed for our belief in Scripture, therefore, just is testimony--divine testimony. So the term testimony' is appropriate here. However, there is also the special work of the Holy Spirit in getting us to believe, in enabling us to see the truth of what is proposed. Here Aquinas's terms invitation' and instigation' are more appropriate. I shall therefore use the term inward instigation of the Holy Spirit' to denote this activity of the Holy Spirit, and (where no confusion threatens) the term faith' to denote both the whole tripartite process (Scripture, the inward instigation of the Holy Spirit, belief in the great things of the gospel) and the last member of that trio. So Scripture is, indeed, testimony, even if it is testimony of a very special kind. First, the principal testifier is God. It also differs from ordinary testimony in that in this case, unlike most others, there is both a principal testifier and subordinate testifiers: the human authors. [314] There is still another difference: it is the instigation of the Holy Spirit, on this model, that gets us to see and believe that the propositions proposed for our beliefs in Scripture really are a word from the Lord. This case also differs from the usual run of testimony, then, in that the Holy Spirit not only writes the letter (appropriately inspires the human authors) [315] but also does something special to enable you to believe and appropriate its contents. So this testimony is not the usual run of testimony; it is testimony nonetheless. According to the model, therefore, faith is belief in the great things of the gospel that results from the internal instigation of the Holy Spirit. __________________________________________________________________ [310] Summa Theologiae II-II, q.2, a.9, reply ob. 3 (my emphasis). According to Aquinas, therefore, faith is produced in human beings by God's action; "for since in assenting to the things of faith a person is raised above his own nature, he has this assent from a supernatural source influencing him; this source is God. The assent of faith, which is its principal act, therefore, has as its cause God, moving us inwardly through grace" (ST II-II, q.6, a.1, respondeo). [311] Calvin explicitly identifies the third person of the trinity as the divine actor in question, and Aquinas does not; this is not a difference of any moment. According to Aquinas, some of the items proposed by God for our belief can also be the objects of scientia; when they are, they are not accepted by faith, for it isn't possible, he thinks, to have both scientia and faith with respect to the same proposition. Because scientia is often translated as knowledge', this makes it look as if Calvin contradicts Aquinas when he says that faith is a sure and certain knowledge of God's benevolence toward us. Appearances are deceiving, however, and there is no contradiction here. Scientia for Aquinas is a very special relation between a person and a proposition; it is one that holds when the person sees that the proposition follows from first principles she sees to be true. Thus scientia' is much narrower than our term knowledge'. It is also narrower than Calvin's term cognitio', which is much closer to our contemporary use of knowledge'. When Calvin says that faith is a sure and certain knowledge of God's benevolence to us, he isn't ascribing to faith a status Aquinas denies it. On this topic, see Arvin Vos, Aquinas, Calvin & Contemporary Protestant Thought (Grand Rapids: W. B. Eerdmans, 1985), pp. 18-20. [312] On this model (pace most twentieth century Christian theologians), it is not the case that revelation occurs just by way of events, which must then be properly interpreted. No doubt this does indeed happen, but much of Scripture is centrally a matter of God's speaking, of his telling us things we need to know, of his communicating propositions to us. See Nicholas Wolterstorff's Divine Discourse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) for a specific account of precisely how it could be that the Bible constitutes divine speech and a divine communication to us. For the sake of definiteness, in what follows I shall incorporate in the model the proposition that something like Wolterstorff's account is in fact correct. (Of course other accounts could also serve in the model.) [313] See Warrant and Proper Function (hereafter WPF), pp. 77ff. [314] Most others: it sometimes happens with human testimony that one person is deputized to speak for another, and in those cases there is the same principal-subordinate structure. See Wolterstorff, Divine Discourse, pp. 38ff. [315] According to Acts 28:25, Paul says, "The Holy Spirit spoke the truth to your forefathers when he said through Isaiah the prophet: Go to this people and say, You will ever . . . '?" (Isaiah 6:9, 10). __________________________________________________________________ III. Faith and Positive Epistemic Status __________________________________________________________________ A. Justification I'm proposing this model as a model of Christian belief's having the sorts of epistemic virtues or positive epistemic status with which we've been concerned: justification, rationality of both the internal and the external variety, and warrant. Justification needn't detain us for long. There should be little doubt that Christian belief can be and probably is (deontologically) justified, and justified even for one well acquainted with Enlightenment and postmodern demurrers. If your belief is a result of the inward instigation of the Holy Spirit, it may seem obviously true, even after reflection on the various sorts of objections that have been offered. Clearly, one is then violating no intellectual obligations in accepting it. No doubt there are intellectual obligations and duties in the neighborhood; when you note that others disagree with you, for example, perhaps there is a duty to pay attention to them and to their objections, a duty to think again, reflect more deeply, consult others, look for and consider other possible defeaters. If you have done these things and still find the belief utterly compelling, however, you are not violating duty or obligation--especially if it seems to you, after reflection, that the teaching in question comes from God himself. Of course some writers charge that if you have faith (as on the model) and think your belief comes from God, then you are arrogant (and hence unjustified). Among the more vivid is the theologian John Macquarrie: The Calvinist believes that he himself, as one of the elect, has been rescued from this sea of error and that his mind has been enlightened by the Holy Spirit. However much he may insist that this is God's doing and not his own, his claim is nevertheless one of the most arrogant that has ever been made. It is this kind of thing that has rightly earned for theology the contempt of serious men. [316] A Calvinist's first impulse might be to retort by asking whom or what Macquarrie credits with furnishing him with the truth, when he finds himself disagreeing with the bulk of humankind on religious matters (as, of course, he does): his own cognitive prowess and native sagacity? his own self-developed penetration and perspicacity? And is that attribution less arrogant than to attribute enlightenment to the work of the Holy Spirit? Rather than pursue this unprofitable retort, however, let's think a bit more soberly about the charge. First, note that the accusation initially seems to be brought, not necessarily against someone who actually has been enlightened by the Holy Spirit, but against someone who believes that she has. No doubt it was the Holy Spirit who was at work in the hearts of the faithful and faith-filled patriarchs and others mentioned in Hebrews 11; but presumably they didn't know about the Holy Spirit and didn't have any views to the effect that their beliefs were due to the activity of the Holy Spirit. So perhaps Macquarrie's idea is that it's all right to know something others don't, but it's not all right to believe that you do, attributing your knowledge to the Holy Spirit. His criticism is directed, not necessarily toward a person who accepts Christian teaching (even if in fact such a person has, as in the model, been enlightened by the Holy Spirit), but toward someone who accepts the bit of Reformed theology according to which the Holy Spirit illuminates only some of us, and thinks that she is one of those thus illuminated. And the criticism is that such a person has culpably come to think more highly of herself than she ought. We'll look further into this charge of arrogance in chapter 13; for now, let me just ask this. Suppose you believe that you have been favored by the Lord in a way in which some others haven't been: does it really follow that you are arrogant? You recognize that in some respect you are better off than someone else: perhaps you have a happy marriage, or your children turn out well, or you are enjoying glowing good health while a good friend is succumbing to melanoma. And suppose you attribute at least part of the difference to God's activity. Are you then automatically arrogant? Isn't it rather that you would be arrogant if, instead, you thought the difference wasn't attributable to God but was a manifestation, say, of personal strength, or virtue, or wisdom on your part? Suppose you think you know something someone else doesn't--perhaps Macquarrie thinks that he, as opposed to his Calvinist friends, knows that the Calvinist view of faith is mistaken. Is he thereby arrogant? If not, is it that he fails to be arrogant because he does not attribute his good fortune to God, perhaps attributing it instead to his own native good sense? That hardly seem promising. The fact is there isn't any arrogance involved as such in recognizing that God has given you something he hasn't (or hasn't yet) given everyone. Human beings are, indeed, tempted to arrogance, and often succumb; still, one isn't arrogant just by virtue of recognizing that God has given you a good thing he hasn't (yet, anyway) given everyone else. (You might be as puzzled as anyone else that it is you who are the recipient of the gift.) Arrogance would be involved, no doubt, if you thought of this gift as your right, so that God would be unjust if he didn't give it to you. But you're not culpable if you believe your faith is a gift from the Lord and note that not everyone has as yet received this gift. Indeed, the right attitude here, far from a crestfallen admission that you have been arrogant in thus believing, is gratitude and thanksgiving for this wonderfully great gift. [317] Hearing of Jesus Christ's resurrection, the apostle Thomas declared, "Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it" (John 20:25). Later, Jesus shows himself to Thomas, inviting him to look at the nail marks, and put his hand into his side. Thomas then believes--upon which Jesus says to him, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed" (John 20:29). No doubt there is more than one point here; a central point, surely, is that those who have been given faith are indeed blessed. Their faith is a gift requiring joyful thanksgiving, not a moral lapse requiring shamefaced repentance. One who has faith, therefore, is (or may very well be) justified according to the model. And even apart from the model: how could you fail to be justified, within your epistemic rights, in believing what seems to you, after reflection and investigation, to be no more than the truth? __________________________________________________________________ [316] Principles of Christian Theology (New York: Charles Scribner, 1966, 1977), p. 50. [317] See my "Ad de Vries," The Christian Scholar's Review 19, no. 2 (1989), pp. 171-78. __________________________________________________________________ B. Internal Rationality Internal rationality (see above, pp. 110ff.) has a dual aspect: on the one hand, it requires proper function in the part of the cognitive system that lies "downstream from experience"; on the other, it requires more generally that you have done your best or anyway well enough with respect to the formation of the belief in question. [318] You have considered how it fits in with your other beliefs, engaged in the requisite seeking for defeaters, considered the objections that you have encountered, compared notes with the right people, and so on. Clearly, on the model (and even apart from the model), someone who accepts the Christian beliefs in question can easily meet these conditions. Suppose my experience is of the sort that goes with the testimony of the Holy Spirit (and in chapter 9 we'll see more of what that experience involves), so that the great things of the gospel seem powerfully plausible and compelling to me: then (given that I have no undefeated defeaters for these propositions) there will be nothing dysfunctional or contrary to proper function in accepting the beliefs in question. Indeed, given those experiences, it would be dysfunctional not to form them. And suppose I carefully consider the objections people raise, consult with others, ask how the beliefs in question match the rest of my beliefs, and all the rest. Then clearly I will have done my part with respect to the formation of these beliefs. On the testimonial model, therefore, Christian belief enjoys both justification and internal rationality. [319] __________________________________________________________________ [318] This requirement of internal rationality may seem to overlap with justification. It does, if in fact there are intellectual duties prescribing the behavior required by rationality. Even if there are no such duties, however, internal rationality still requires the behavior in question. [319] But aren't there many different theories of (say) incarnation and atonement? Don't Christians disagree about this? So which of the many views of Incarnation and Atonement are in fact rational? The question is misplaced. There are many different theories as to how it is that people are able to think; it is still plain to many of us that some people do (sometimes) think. There are many theories about what numbers are; it is still plain that 7 + 5 = 12. We can quite properly believe in the Atonement even if we don't see exactly how it is supposed to go and don't embrace any of the theories; it can also be that we are rational in believing in the Atonement but not in accepting some specific theory of it. __________________________________________________________________ C. External Rationality and Warrant: Faith Is Knowledge The part of Calvin's definition of faith that is especially striking to contemporary ears is that on his account faith is a really special case of knowledge ("a sure and certain knowledge"; compare also the account of true faith in the Heidelberg Catechism, above, p. 247). Faith is not to be contrasted with knowledge: faith (at least in paradigmatic instances) is knowledge, knowledge of a certain special kind. It is special in at least two ways. First, in its object: what is allegedly known is (if true) of stunning significance, certainly the most important thing a person could possibly know. But it is also unusual in the way in which that content is known; it is known by way of an extraordinary cognitive process or belief-producing mechanism. Christian belief is "revealed to our minds" by way of the Holy Spirit's inducing, in us, belief in the central message of Scripture. The belief-producing process is dual, involving both the divinely inspired Scripture (perhaps directly, or perhaps at the head of a testimonial chain) and the internal instigation of the Holy Spirit. Both involve the special activity of God. If faith is such an extraordinary way of holding belief, why call it knowledge' at all? What about it makes it a case of knowledge? Here we must look a bit more deeply into the model. The believer encounters the great truths of the gospel; by virtue of the activity of the Holy Spirit, she comes to see that these things are indeed true. And the first thing to see is that, on this model, faith is a belief-producing process or activity, like perception or memory. It is a cognitive device, a means by which belief, and belief on a certain specific set of topics, is regularly produced in regular ways. [320] In this it resembles memory, perception, reason, sympathy, induction, and other more standard belief-producing processes. It differs from them in that it also involves the direct action of the Holy Spirit, so that the immediate cause of belief is not to be found just in her natural epistemic equipment. There is the special and supernatural activity of the Holy Spirit. Nevertheless, faith is a belief-producing process. Now as we saw in chapter 7, what is required for knowledge is that a belief be produced by cognitive faculties or processes that are working properly, in an appropriate epistemic environment (both maxi and mini) according to a design plan that is aimed at truth, and is furthermore successfully aimed at truth. But according to this model, what one believes by faith (the beliefs that constitute faith) meets these four conditions. First, when these beliefs are accepted by faith and result from the internal instigation of the Holy Spirit, they are produced by cognitive processes working properly; [321] they are not produced by way of some cognitive malfunction. Faith, the whole process that produces them, is specifically designed by God himself to produce this very effect--just as vision, say, is designed by God to produce a certain kind of perceptual beliefs. When it does produce this effect, therefore, it is working properly; thus the beliefs in question satisfy the external rationality condition, which is also the first condition of warrant. Second, according to the model, the maxienvironment in which we find ourselves, including the cognitive contamination produced by sin, is precisely the cognitive environment for which this process is designed. The typical minienvironment is also favorable. Third, the process is designed to produce true beliefs; [322] and fourth, the beliefs it produces--belief in the great things of the gospel--are in fact true; faith is a reliable belief-producing process, so that the process in question is successfully aimed at the production of true beliefs. Reliability, of course, demands more than just that these beliefs be true. A thermometer stuck on 72?F is not reliable even if it is somewhere--San Diego, say--where it is always 72?F. What it would do if things were relevantly different (what it would do in appropriately nearby possible worlds) is also relevant; a process or instrument is reliable only if it would produce a true output under different conditions. On the current model, this condition is also met. The Holy Spirit doesn't work just by accident or at random, and there are a thousand ways in which, even if things had been different, the Holy Spirit would have produced the results actually produced. Clearly, any circumstances in which it produces this output are circumstances in which this output is true; hence, under those circumstances, it would have produced a true output. Under what conditions would the Holy Spirit have failed, with respect to a given person, to do this work of enabling one to see the truth of the great things of the gospel? The model need take no stand on this issue, but it is part of much traditional Christian teaching to hold that a necessary condition of my receiving the gift of faith is my acquiescing, being willing to accept the gift, being prepared to receive it. There is a contribution to this process that I myself must make, a contribution that I can withhold. According to this model, faith as a belief-producing mechanism involves a supernatural element; it involves God's doing something specially and directly and quite out of the ordinary. Does that compromise the claim that the deliverances of faith constitute knowledge? I can't see how. There was no suggestion in the original account that cognitive mechanisms must all be natural, whatever precisely that comes to. Must the account be revised because faith doesn't go just by natural laws or regularities, working instead by way of the free cooperation of a person--God himself--whose speaking in Scripture is, of course, free, as is the action of the Holy Spirit in revealing and sealing the great truths of the gospel? Again, I can't see why. The same goes for the mechanism Thomas Reid calls testimony', a mechanism whereby we learn from others; this mechanism too (often) works by way of free human agency. (When you ask me how old I am, I can [freely] tell you, or in a minor fit of pique, freely refuse.) Why, then, does faith constitute knowledge? Because what one believes by faith satisfies the conditions that are jointly sufficient and severally necessary for warrant. If the degree of warrant (which, given the satisfaction of the above conditions, is determined by the firmness or strength of belief) is high enough, then the beliefs in question will constitute knowledge. [323] __________________________________________________________________ [320] Although this regularity is typical of cognitive processes, it isn't really necessary; see my reply to Lehrer in Warrant in Contemporary Epistemology, ed. J. Kvanig (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 1996), pp. 332ff. [321] A caveat: as Andrew Dole points out in "Cognitive Processes, Cognitive Faculties, and the Holy Spirit in Plantinga's Warrant Series" (as yet unpublished), it is not obvious that one can directly transfer necessary and sufficient conditions for warrant from beliefs produced by faculties to beliefs produced by processes. [322] Though this need not be the only purpose involved. Perhaps the beliefs produced have other virtues in addition to truth: perhaps they enable one to stand in a personal relationship with God, to face life's vicissitudes with equanimity, to enjoy the comfort that naturally results from the belief that constitutes faith, and so on. [323] On the account of knowledge given in WPF. I leave as homework the problem of showing how to modify the model in such a way as to accommodate the other main accounts of warrant. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ IV. Proper Basicality and the Role of Scripture According to the model, Christian belief in the typical case is not the conclusion of an argument (which is not to say arguments cannot play an important role in its acceptance), [324] or accepted on the evidential basis of other beliefs, or accepted just because it constitutes a good explanation of phenomena of one kind or another. Specific Christian beliefs may, indeed, constitute excellent explanations of one or another phenomenon (the Christian teaching of sin leaps to mind here), but they aren't accepted because they provide such an explanation. Nor are they accepted as the conclusion of an argument from religious experience. According to the model, experience of a certain sort is intimately associated with the formation of warranted Christian belief, but the belief doesn't get its warrant by way of an argument from the experience. It isn't that the believer notes that she or someone else has a certain sort of experience, and somehow concludes that Christian belief must be true. It is rather that (as in the case of perception) the experience is the occasion for the formation of the beliefs in question, and plays a causal role (a role governed by the design plan) in their genesis. In the typical case, therefore, Christian belief is immediate; it is formed in the basic way. It doesn't proceed by way of an argument from, for example, the reliability of Scripture or the church. As Jonathan Edwards puts it, "This evidence, that they, that are spiritually enlightened, have of the truth of the things of religion, is a kind of intuitive and immediate evidence. They believe the doctrines of God's word to be divine, because they see divinity in them." [325] Christian belief is basic; furthermore, Christian belief is properly basic, where the propriety in question embraces all three of the epistemic virtues we are considering. On the model, the believer is justified in accepting these beliefs in the basic way and is rational (both internally and externally) in so doing; still further, the beliefs can have warrant, enough warrant for knowledge, when they are accepted in that basic way. [326] My Christian belief can have warrant, and warrant sufficient for knowledge, even if I don't know of and cannot make a good historical case for the reliability of the biblical writers or for what they teach. I don't need a good historical case for the truth of the central teachings of the gospel to be warranted in accepting them. I needn't be able to find a good argument, historical or otherwise, for the resurrection of Jesus Christ, or for his being the divine Son of God, or for the Christian claim that his suffering and death constitute an atoning sacrifice whereby we can be restored to the right relationship with God. On the model, the warrant for Christian belief doesn't require that I or anyone else have this kind of historical information; the warrant floats free of such questions. It doesn't require to be validated or proved by some source of belief other than faith, such as historical investigation. Instead, Scripture (through the work of the Holy Spirit) carries its own evidence with it; as Calvin says, it is self-authenticating': Let this point therefore stand: that those whom the Holy Spirit has inwardly taught truly rest upon Scripture, and that Scripture indeed is self-authenticated. . . . "Therefore," he says, illumined by his power, we believe neither by our own nor by anyone else's judgment that Scripture is from God; but above human judgment we affirm with utter certainty that it has flowed to us from the very mouth of God by the ministry of men. We seek no proofs, no marks of genuineness upon which our judgment may lean; but we subject our judgment and wit to it as to a thing far beyond any guess work! . . . Such, then, is a conviction that requires no reason; such, a knowledge with which the best reason agrees--in which the mind truly reposes more securely and constantly than in any reasons. I speak of nothing other than what each believer experiences within himself--though my words fall far beneath a just explanation of the matter. [327] Calvin speaks here of a certainty, a knowledge that Scripture "has flowed to us from the very mouth of God," even if it is "by the ministry of men." He does not mean to say, I think (at any rate this is not how the model goes), that the Holy Spirit induces belief in the proposition the Bible (or the book of Job, or Paul's epistles, or the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians) comes to us from the very mouth of God. [328] Rather, upon reading or hearing a given teaching--a given item from the great things of the gospel--the Holy Spirit teaches us, causes us to believe that that teaching is both true and comes from God. So the structure here is not: what is taught in Scripture is true; this (e.g., that in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself) is taught in Scripture; therefore, this is true. It is rather that, on reading or hearing a certain teaching t, one forms the belief that t, that very teaching, is true and from God. What is this self-authentication' of which Calvin speaks? Is he (or the model) claiming that the truths of the gospel are self-evident in something like the traditional sense in which 2 + 1 = 3 is said to be? Not at all. Self-evident propositions are necessarily true and, at least in the cases of maximal self-evidence, such that a properly functioning human being can't so much as grasp them without seeing that they couldn't be false. [329] But the great things of the gospel are not necessarily true (they are a result of God's free and gracious action), and it is entirely possible to grasp them without seeing that they are true (it is possible to understand them and reject them). So according to the model (and Calvin), these truths are not self-evident. The propositions Scripture is reliable or God is the author of the Bible are not self-evident; neither are such teachings as that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, or that this reconciliation was accomplished by virtue of Christ's atoning suffering and death. [330] Nor does Calvin mean to say (nor is it any part of the model to assert) that Scripture is self-authenticating in the sense that it offers evidence for itself or somehow proves itself to be accurate or reliable. Suppose a question is raised with respect to a given source of belief: is this source of belief really reliable? Suppose a question is raised with respect to a particular teaching of Scripture: is this particular teaching really true? Neither the source nor the particular teaching can, by itself, give an answer that (rationally) allays that doubt. Analogy: suppose I read Hume in an unduly receptive frame of mind and become doubtful that my cognitive faculties are, in fact, reliable. I can't rationally quell or quiet that doubt by offering myself an argument for their reliability. It is the reliability of those very faculties, that very source, that is at issue; and if I have a general doubt about their reliability, I should also have the same doubt about their reliability in this specific instance; I should have the same doubt about the premises of the argument I offer myself, and about my belief that the premises imply the conclusion. Similarly for Scripture: If I am doubtful about its reliability, I can't sensibly quell or quiet that doubt by noting that, say, II Timothy 3:16 says all Scripture is God-breathed (even if I were convinced that what is taught here refers to just the books I take to be canonical). So Scripture isn't self-authenticating in that sense either. What, then, could Calvin mean when he says that Scripture is self-authenticating? We can see what he means by noting a respect in which the gospel truths resemble self-evident propositions. According to the model, these truths, like self-evident truths, are indeed evident (do indeed have warrant); and, like self-evident truths, they have their evidence immediately--that is--not by way of propositional evidence. They do not get their evidence or warrant by way of being believed on the evidential basis of other propositions. So from that point of view, these truths too could be said to be self-evident--in a different and analogically extended sense of that term. They are evident, but don't get their evidence from other propositions; they have their evidence in themselves (and not by way of inference from other propositions). [331] In this same extended sense, perceptual and memory beliefs too are self-evident. They too are evident in themselves', in that they don't get their warrant (or evidence) by way of warrant transfer from other propositions. To say that a proposition p is self-evident in this sense is just to say that p does, indeed, have warrant or evidence and does not get that warrant by way of warrant transfer (that is, by way of being believed on the basis of other propositions)--in a word (or two), p is properly basic. [332] What Calvin means, then (and what the testimonial model endorses), is that we don't require argument from, for example, historically established premises about the authorship and reliability of the bit of Scripture in question to the conclusion that the bit in question is in fact true; that whole process gets short-circuited by way of the tripartite process producing faith. Scripture is self-authenticating in the sense that for belief in the great things of the gospel to be justified, rational, and warranted, no historical evidence and argument for the teaching in question, or for the veracity or reliability or divine character of Scripture (or the part of Scripture in which it is taught) are necessary. The process by which these beliefs have warrant for the believer swings free of those historical and other considerations; these beliefs have warrant in the basic way. But suppose someone does believe these things with a degree of firmness sufficient to constitute knowledge: isn't this attitude, however it is caused, irrational, contrary to reason? Suppose I read the gospels and come to believe, for example, that Jesus Christ is in fact the divine son of God and that by his passion, death, and resurrection we human beings, fallen and seriously flawed as we are, can be reconciled and have eternal life. Suppose I believe these things without any external evidence. Suppose, further, I pay little attention to Scripture scholarship and give no thought to the identity or credentials of the real or alleged authors of these documents. I pay little or no attention to such questions as when they were composed or redacted, by whom or how many, whether the redactor was trying to make a theological point in editing as he did, and so on. [333] Won't I be leaping to conclusions, forming belief too hastily? What am I really going on, in such a case? Where is my basis, my ground, my evidence? If I have neither propositional evidence nor the sort of ground afforded perception by perceptual experience, am I not just taking a blind leap? Isn't this leap of faith a leap in the dark? Am I not like someone whose house is on fire and blindly jumps from his third-story window, desperately hoping to catch hold of a branch of the tree he knows is somewhere outside the window? And isn't that irresponsible [334] and irrational? Not at all. Faith, according to the model, is far indeed from being a blind leap; it isn't even remotely like a leap in the dark. Suppose you are descending a glacier at twelve thousand feet on Mount Rainier; there is a nasty whiteout and you can't see more than four feet before you. It's getting very late, the wind is rising and the temperature dropping, and you won't survive (you are wearing only jeans and a T-shirt) unless you get down before nightfall. So you decide to try to leap the crevasse before you, even though you can't see its other side and haven't the faintest idea how far it is across it. That's a leap in the dark. In the case of faith, however, things are wholly different. You might as well claim that a memory belief, or the belief that 3 + 1 = 4 is a leap in the dark. What makes something a leap in the dark is that the leaper doesn't know and has no firm beliefs about what there is out there in the dark--you might succeed in jumping the crevasse and triumphantly continue your descent, but for all you know you might instead plummet two hundred feet into the icy depths of the glacier. You don't really believe that you can jump the crevasse (though you don't disbelieve it either); you hope you can, and act on what you do believe--namely, that if you don't jump it, you don't have a chance. The case of faith, this sure and certain knowledge, is very different. For the person with faith (at least in the paradigmatic instances), the great things of the gospel seem clearly true, obvious, compelling. She finds herself convinced--just as she does in the case of clear memory beliefs or her belief in elementary truths of arithmetic. [335] Phenomenologically, therefore, from the inside, there is no similarity at all to a leap in the dark. Nor, of course, is there (on the model) any similarity from the outside. This is no leap in the dark, not merely because the person with faith is wholly convinced but also because, as a matter of fact, the belief in question meets the conditions for rationality and warrant. Compare belief of this sort with the a priori and memory beliefs I spoke of above. In a certain sense, there isn't anything to go on in any of the three cases. You don't accept memory and obvious a priori beliefs on the basis of other beliefs; but you also lack the detailed phenomenological basis, the rich and highly articulated sensuous imagery that is involved in perception. What you do have in all three cases is another kind of phenomenal evidence, what I have been calling doxastic evidence. (In WPF I called it impulsional evidence.) There is a certain kind of phenomenology that distinguishes entertaining a proposition you believe from one you do not: the former simply seems right, correct, natural, approved--the experience isn't easy to describe (WPF, 190ff.). You have this doxastic evidence in all three sorts of cases (as, indeed, in any case of belief), and you have nothing else to go on. But you don't need anything else to go on: it is not as if things would be better, from an epistemic point of view, if you believed, say, 2 + 1 = 3 or that you had oatmeal for breakfast this morning on the evidential basis of other propositions, or on the basis of some kind of sensuous imagery more or less like that involved in perception. (I don't mean that you can't get more evidence, for something you believe by way of memory, but that you would not necessarily be better off, epistemically speaking, if you believed the proposition in question on the basis of other beliefs or on the basis of sensuous imagery.) The same goes (on the model) for the beliefs of faith: you don't have either sensuous imagery or evidence from other things you believe to go on; the beliefs are none the worse, epistemically speaking, for that. In fact (on the model) they are all the better for that; they have (or can have) much more firmness and stability than they could sensibly have if accepted on the basis of rational argument or, as in this case, historical investigation; they can also have much more warrant. These beliefs (on the model) are not accepted on the basis of other beliefs; in fact, other beliefs are accepted on the basis of them. You might think this model is a model of how, broadly speaking, Christian belief can have warrant by way of religious experience. That's not exactly right--or if it is right, then memory and a priori beliefs also get their warrant by way of experience. But suppose we think that (on the model) the beliefs of faith do get their warrant by way of experience--that is, by way of doxastic experience--and suppose we describe that experience as religious experience. What is crucially important to note is that we don't have here an argument from religious experience to the truth of these Christian beliefs. There could be something like that, a model according to which Christian belief got warrant by way of an argument from religious experience. This would be one in which you have religious experience (or note that others do), and then argue (perhaps by way of something roughly like the analogical argument for other minds) to the truth of these doctrines. Alternatively, it might be like the arguments some have offered from the facts of perceptual experience for the truth of perceptual beliefs. This model isn't like that. The experience in question is an occasion for the belief in question, not a phenomenon whose existence serves as a premise in an argument for that belief. According to Hebrews 11, "Now faith is the substance (hupostasiz) of things hoped for and the evidence (elenchoz) of things not seen" (King James translation). The key words substance' and evidence' are translated variously; for example, the more recent Revised Standard Version has "faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen" (my emphasis). Perhaps the former way is the better translation; in any event, it is the richer. For faith, according to Christian doctrine, is many things. It is the means or vehicle of salvation: "for it is by grace you have been saved, through faith" (Ephesians 1:8). It is also that by which we are justified (above, p. 87), as well as that by means of which we are regenerated, becoming new creatures in Christ. And it is also the foundation and substance (etymologically, that which stands under') of Christian hope. But faith is also "the evidence of things not seen." By faith--the whole process, involving the internal instigation of the Holy Spirit--something becomes evident (i.e., acquires warrant, has what it takes to be knowledge). And what thus becomes evident or warranted is indeed not seen. This doesn't mean that it is indistinct, blurred, uncertain, or a matter of guesswork; what it means is that the belief in question isn't made evident by way of the workings of the ordinary cognitive faculties with which we were originally created. (The author refers, by way of synecdoche, to these faculties as vision.) Return to the account of Thomas's skepticism (above, pp. 254): Thomas would not believe until he saw the nail holes, put his finger where the nails were, thrust his hand into Christ's side. Jesus then says to him, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed" (John 20:29). From the present point of view, this is neither a general counsel commending credulity nor a rebuke addressed to such embryonic empiricists as Thomas. It is, instead, the observation that those who have faith have a source of knowledge that transcends our ordinary perceptual faculties and cognitive processes, a source of knowledge that is a divine gift; hence they are indeed blessed. [336] __________________________________________________________________ [324] For example, in rebutting defeaters: see below, chapter 11. [325] A Treatise concerning Religious Affections, ed. John E. Smith (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959 [originally published 1746]), p. 298. Subsequent references to Religious Affections are to this edition. [326] Of course that is not to say that a believer can properly reject proposed defeaters out of hand, without examination (see below, chapters 11-14); nor is she committed to refusing to think she could be wrong. No doubt she can be wrong: that is part of the human condition. If there were a demonstration or a powerful argument from other sources against Christian belief, an argument to which neither she nor the Christian community could see a satisfactory reply, then she might have a problem; this would be a genuine example of a clash between faith and reason. No such demonstration or argument, however, has so far reared its ugly head. [327] I, vii, 5, pp. 80-81. Here Calvin speaks of "utter certainty" and of the mind "reposing securely" in these teachings. But this is only one side of the story: elsewhere he notes that even the best and most favored of us are subject to doubt and uncertainty: "For unbelief is so deeply rooted in our hearts, and we are so inclined to it, that not without hard struggle is each one able to persuade himself of what all confess with the mouth: namely, that God is faithful" (III, ii, 15); he also says that "unbelief, in all men, is always mixed with faith" (III, ii, 4, p. 547). (What he means, of course, is not that unbelievers always have a portion of faith, but that faith always contains a portion of unbelief.) It is only in the pure and paradigmatic instances of faith that there is that utter certainty'. [328] As to what Calvin actually meant here, there has been considerable debate. [329] See WPF, 108-9. [330] According to Richard Swinburne, "Very few parts of the Bible seem to claim either self-evident' authority or indeed even to be the immediate word of the Lord' . . . much of Scripture has not seemed self-evident to so many of its readers; argument is needed to show how it is to be understood and why it is to be believed. Those to whom Scripture seems self-evident' are well advised to reflect on these facts before reaffirming their conviction that its truth needs no argument" (Revelation [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992], p. 118). Here two issues are conflated: (a) are these gospel truths self-evident? and (b) can they properly be believed without argument? According to the present model the answer to (b) is yes' but to (a) is no'. (There is also still a further issue: according to the model, the central truths of the gospel are self-authenticating in this way; the same does not (necessarily) go for the rest of what the Bible teaches.) [331] Compare Jonathan Edwards: "The gospel of the blessed God don't go abroad a begging for its evidence, so much as some think; it has its highest and most proper evidence in itself" (Religious Affections, p. 307). [332] Faith resembles perception, memory, and rational intuition (whereby one grasps what is self-evident) in that in all three cases the beliefs in question are properly basic with respect to warrant. But faith differs from perception (though not from memory and rational intuition) in that it does not involve anything like the highly articulated and detailed sort of sensuous phenomenology that prompts perceptual belief. [333] I don't mean for a moment to suggest that Scripture scholarship is unimportant or unimportant for the Christian life (see chapter 12); what I mean is only that knowledge of its results is not necessary for warranted Christian belief. [334] As is argued by, e.g., James L. Muyskens, The Sufficiency of Hope: The Conceptual Foundations of Religion (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1979), p. 113; see also pp. 134-44. [335] Again, in the paradigmatic cases; but of course the fact is the conviction and belief involved in faith come in all degrees of firmness. As Calvin puts it, "in the believing mind certainty is mixed with doubt" and "we are troubled on all sides by the agitation of unbelief." In typical cases, therefore, as opposed to paradigmatic cases, degree of belief will be less than maximal. Furthermore, degree of belief, on the part of the person who has faith, typically varies from time to time, from circumstance to circumstance. [336] Compare Aquinas: "Accordingly, if anyone would reduce the foregoing words to the form of a definition, he may say that faith is a habit of the mind, whereby eternal life is begun in us, making the intellect assent to what is non-apparent (ST II-II, q.4, a.i, respondeo). __________________________________________________________________ V. Comparison with Locke We can understand this testimonial model better if we compare it with a picture of a very different sort--that of John Locke, whose Enlightenment model is still dominant in some Christian circles. [337] According to Locke, all of our beliefs should be formed by "following reason." What that means, more specifically, is that epistemic duty demands "not entertaining any proposition with greater assurance than the proofs [inductive as well as deductive] it is built upon will warrant." [338] And what that means (as we saw in chapter 4) is that I should proportion degree of assent to the evidence; that is, I should, as far as I can, believe a proposition p with a firmness that is proportional to the degree to which p is probable with respect to what is certain for me. All of our beliefs should be formed by following reason; but this doesn't mean, as Locke sees it, that there is no rational room for beliefs formed by faith, which he defines as "the assent to any proposition, not thus made out by the deductions of reason; but upon the credit of the proposer, as coming from God, in some extraordinary way of communication" (416). Nor does it mean that we can't properly believe an item of divine revelation, where that item itself is not more likely than not with respect to what is certain for us: I do not mean that we must consult reason, and examine whether a proposition revealed from God can be made out by natural principles, and if it cannot then we may reject it. . . . What he does mean is but consult it we must, and by it examine whether it be a revelation from God or no: and if reason finds it to be revealed from God, reason then declares for it as much as for any other truth, and makes it one of her dictates. (439) Locke's claim is that before believing an allegedly revealed proposition, we must first satisfy ourselves by reason that this proposition is, indeed, a revelation from God. What we need is a rational proof (a proof whose premises and procedures come from reason, not from revelation) that the proposition in question really is proposed for our belief by God. So what we need in the case of a scriptural teaching is a rational proof that this teaching is indeed a divine revelation; it is that proposition which must be shown to be probable with respect to what is certain for us. Once we have that, then we can properly believe what it teaches, although presumably with a firmness that is proportional to the probability (with respect to what is certain for us) that the teaching in question really does come from God. Things are very different on the testimonial model. It isn't that one believes, for example, that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, because one has first seen or shown that it is likely (with respect to what is certain) that this particular suggestion of Paul's (or perhaps all of II Corinthians, or perhaps the entire New Testament, or perhaps the entire Bible) is in fact divinely inspired and hence true. This would be vastly too tenuous and speculative. A belief that the passage is a divine revelation, if properly formed by way of historical inquiry, could only be halting and tentative; but then the belief itself would have to be equally halting and tentative. As Calvin puts it: If we desire to provide in the best way for our consciences--that they may not be perpetually beset by the instability of doubt or vacillation, and that they may not also boggle at the smallest quibbles--we ought to seek our conviction in another place than human reasons, judgment, or conjectures, that is, in the secret testimony of the Spirit. [339] Instead, on the present model the source of belief and knowledge here is independent of ordinary historical investigation and of the probability mongering, the vagaries and uncertainties to which that line of inquiry is condemned. The belief in question is, instead, immediate and basic, an immediate response to the proclamation. Of course this response takes place within the context of a whole interlocking system of beliefs; we may add, if we like, that it obtains some of its warrant from its coherence with a coherent system. Nevertheless, the belief is still basic in that it isn't accepted on the evidential basis of these beliefs or any others. It is basic, and properly basic--with respect to warrant and rationality as well as justification. Says Calvin, no doubt with an anticipatory glance in Locke's direction, Since for unbelieving men religion seems to stand by opinion alone, they, in order not to believe anything foolishly or lightly, both wish and demand rational proof that Moses and the prophets spoke divinely. But I reply: the testimony of the Spirit is more excellent than all reason. For as God alone is a fit witness of himself in his Word, so also the Word will not find acceptance in men's hearts before it is sealed by the inward testimony of the Spirit. The same Spirit, therefore, who has spoken through the mouths of the prophets must penetrate into our hearts to persuade us that they faithfully proclaimed what had been divinely commanded. (79) [340] __________________________________________________________________ [337] Locke's cool rationalism with respect to the authority of Scripture is echoed at present by, for example, Richard Swinburne (see footnote 348), but also by those more evangelical thinkers who hold that warrant for Christian belief can only come by way of argument or evidence. [338] An Essay concerning Human Understanding, ed. with "Prolegomena" by Alexander Fraser (New York: Dover, 1959 [original first published in 1690]), IV, xix, 1, p. 429. Subsequent page references to Locke's essay are to this edition. [339] Institutes, p. 78. Of course it doesn't follow that Scripture scholarship and biblical commentary are not both important and necessary; Calvin himself wrote more than twenty volumes of detailed and searching biblical commentary. [340] Note here that the Holy Spirit plays a dual role: inspiring the human authors of Scripture (bringing it about that they say what he wants them to say) but also working in the hearts of the hearers and readers, bringing it about that they believe what they hear and read. So the inward testimony of the Holy Spirit is to what he himself has said. __________________________________________________________________ VI. Why Necessary? Why is this elaborate scheme necessary? Why these supernaturally inspired writings and this individually applied supernatural testimony of the Holy Spirit? Or rather (because God could have accomplished his aim of enabling human beings of many times and places to know about the possibility and means of salvation in many different ways), what might recommend this particular scheme? Wouldn't some less extravagant means suffice? Couldn't this information come to us just as well by way of ordinary human testimony, for example? Perhaps (as Locke thought) God could have revealed the great truths of the gospel in some direct way only to certain human beings. They could then write them down for the benefit of the rest of us, who are then supposed to be able to see in the ordinary way that these writings do, indeed, constitute divine revelation (and are accordingly both true and to be believed). Why have any truck with special faculties or supernatural belief-producing processes like faith and the internal instigation of the Holy Spirit? Well, first of all, we have no reason to think God either specially prizes ontological economy or specially dislikes supernatural processes. But the main problem with Locke's appealingly simple device is that it wouldn't work. First, according to the extended A/C model, we human beings, apart from God's special and gracious activity, are sunk in sin; we are prone to hate God and our neighbor; our hearts, as Jeremiah said, are deceitful above all things and desperately corrupt. In this context, that fact is of great importance: without some special activity on the part of the Lord, we wouldn't believe. As the apostle Paul says, "The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned." [341] We human beings won't come to see the depth of our own sin and our need for salvation without regeneration, rebirth; according to Jesus himself, we need the testimony of the Holy Spirit to come to believe the great truths of the gospel. [342] Given our fallen nature and our natural antipathy to the message of the gospel, faith will have to be a gift, not in the way a glorious autumn day is a gift, but a special gift, one that wouldn't come to us in the ordinary run of things, one that requires supernatural and extraordinary activity on the part of God. [343] Furthermore, suppose someone did come to believe, just by way of historical investigation that Jesus was indeed the divine son of God, that he died for our sins and rose again, and that through him we can have eternal life. Merely believing this--as an interesting fact about the world, rather like the fact that the universe began in a Big Bang some twelve to sixteen billion years ago--is insufficient. These truths must be sealed to the heart, as well as revealed to the mind. This sealing is the topic of the next chapter; now we note only that coming to faith includes more than a change of opinion. It also (and crucially) includes a change of heart, a change in affection, in what one loves and hates, approves and disdains, seeks and avoids. According to the present model, faith is, indeed, a belief-producing process; it is also an affection-producing process, a process issuing in alteration of affection as well as change of opinion. Given our constitution, this alteration of affection can't be accomplished just by coming to believe, as a historical fact, the main lines of the gospel. [344] We therefore need a change of attitude in addition to a change of opinion, and won't sustain the latter without the former. Well then, why couldn't God (supernaturally if he feels that is necessary) just arrange for a change of attitude and affections? Why do we need that supernatural source for a change in opinion? Given the right affections, wouldn't Scripture and our ordinary faculties (reason, memory, perception, sympathy, induction, etc.) be sufficient to enable us to see the truth of the message of the gospel? I doubt it. First, what is proposed is such that by virtue of the ordinary faculties employed in historical investigation, only a few people would acquire the knowledge in question, and they only after a great deal of effort and much time; furthermore, their belief would be both uncertain and shot through with falsehood. [345] What is being taught, after all, is not something that chimes straightforwardly with our ordinary experience. It isn't like an account of an ancient war, or of the cruelty of the Athenians to the Melians, or of the overweening pride of some ancient despot. That sort of thing would be easy enough to believe. What we have instead, however, is the claim that a certain human being--Jesus of Nazareth--is also, astonishingly, the unique divine Son of God who has existed from eternity. Furthermore, this man died, which is not uncommon, but then three days later rose from the dead, which is uncommon indeed. Still further, it is by way of his atoning suffering and death and resurrection that we are justified, that our sins are forgiven, and that we may have life and have it more abundantly. This is heady stuff indeed, and the mere fact that some ancient authors believed it would certainly be insufficient for a sensible conviction on our part. As biblical scholars remind us, there are many ancient books with stories more or less (in my opinion, mostly less) like the biblical ones; how many of those ancient books do we in fact believe? Still (comes the reply), can't we discover for ourselves, without any special divine aid or assistance, that the Bible (the New Testament, say) is in fact "from God": divinely inspired in such a way that God speaks to us in it and through it, [346] and hence wholly reliable? [347] Can't we come to see this in the same way that we can learn that Herodotus and Xenophon are reasonably reliable reporters of what they hear and see? And once we see that, couldn't we then infer that the Bible's central message of incarnation and atonement is true? Can't we see and appreciate the historical case for the truth of the main lines of Christian belief without any special work of the Holy Spirit? "You must be born again" all right--your affections, aims, and intentions must be recalibrated, redirected, reversed--and that requires special divine help. But given that recalibration, couldn't you then see and appreciate the historical case for the truth of the main lines of Christianity without any special work of the Holy Spirit? I don't think so. Even discounting the effects of sin on our apprehension of the historical case, that case isn't strong enough to produce warranted belief that the main lines of Christian teaching are true--at most, it could produce the warranted belief that the main lines of Christian teaching aren't particularly improbable. For how could such a case go? [348] First, of course, the case in question couldn't in any way rely on the thought that the Bible is in some special way inspired by God; for these purposes, we should have to treat it exactly as we would any other ancient volume. We should have to follow the example of those Scripture scholars who try to determine (for example) what actually happened with Jesus--what he preached, whether he rose from the dead--without making any special theological assumptions about the reliability of the Bible or the person of Jesus. [349] They bracket any such theological beliefs they may have and then try to assess the historical case or evidence for such claims as that Jesus actually asserted that he was the divine redeemer, or the claim that he died and came back to life. Such a case for the truth of the main lines of Christianity could be at most a case for the probability that these teachings are true. What would such a case be like? How could it be constructed? The conclusion of the case (or argument) would be that the central Christian claims are probable. Now a proposition is probable only with respect to some other proposition or propositions. [350] In this case, the relevant other propositions would be some body of background knowledge K--what we all or nearly all know or take for granted or firmly believe, or what at any rate those conducting the inquiry know or take for granted or believe. [351] And the aim would be to show that the claims of the Christian gospel are probable with respect to K--that is, probable with respect to what we know or take for granted. For simplicity, take the central Christian claims to be sin (human beings are in need of salvation), incarnation (Jesus is the incarnate second person of the trinity), atonement (by virtue of his suffering and death, he atoned for our sin and enables us to attain eternal salvation), and general availability (salvation isn't restricted to just one group of people, for example, the Jews [352] ); and let's use G' to name their conjunction. Our aim, therefore, is to argue that G is reasonably probable on K; we can employ the usual symbolism for probability and put this by saying that P(G/K) is reasonably high. How can we construct such a case--argue that P(G/K) is reasonably high? The usual way (and the method followed by Swinburne) is to try to find some proposition (or group of propositions) P which is probable with respect to K, and which is such that G is probable with respect to its conjunction with K: that is, a proposition P such that P(P/K) and P(G/P&K) are both high. For example, you might argue first that T, the existence of God, is probable on K, our background knowledge. Then you might argue that given our background knowledge K and the existence of God (T), it is probable that God would reveal certain crucial truths (truths we need to know) to humankind. [353] Call that proposition R. Then you might continue arguing in the same vein (repeating the same form of argument), finally winding up with some propositions with respect to which it is likely that God raised Jesus from the dead, thus authorizing and validating the message of the New Testament. That message could then be taken as authorized by God and hence true; and the message contains those propositions G to whose probability we are trying to argue. So you might then conclude that G is in fact probable with respect to what we know. To illustrate and explain this procedure, suppose you are interested in the probability that Eleonore is at the party. It is very probable, on your background knowledge K, that Paul is at the party (call that proposition P'): P(P/K) is high--for definiteness, say it's .9. It is also very likely that Eleonore is at the party (call that proposition E'), given that Paul is (she ordinarily goes to every party he goes to); so P(E/P&K) is also high--say it is also .9. There is a formula from the probability calculus that enables you to conclude that it is likely that Eleonore is there, too: P(E/K) equals or exceeds P(P/K) × P(E/P&K). Thus P(E/K) will be at least .81. [354] This sort of argument can be reiterated. Perhaps you also know that there is a pretty good probability--.8, say--that Vonnie will be there, given that Eleonore is: in that case, you can conclude that the probability of Vonnie's being there is at least .648; and perhaps you know that the probability of Jim's being there, given that Vonnie is there, is .95; then the probability that he's there will be at least .616. Now suppose we try along these lines to construct a case for the probability of G with respect to that background knowledge K. We should first have to find the probability that T (theism) is true: what is the probability (on our background knowledge, or the totality of what we know apart from theism) that there is an omnipotent, omniscient, wholly good being who has created the world? In his book The Existence of God, [355] Swinburne considers this probability and concludes on the last page of the book, "On our total evidence theism is more probable than not." The argument is complex and at many points controversial. [356] From the present perspective, however, an even more vexing problem is that its conclusion is only that theism is more probable than not on the relevant body of knowledge or information K: it lies somewhere in the (half open) interval .5 to 1. Even if all the other probabilities involved in our historical case were as high as 1, we could conclude no more than that the probability of the truth of Christian teaching lies somewhere in that same interval. But if my only ground for Christian teaching is its probability with respect to K, and all I know about that probability is that it is greater than .5, then I can't rationally believe that teaching. Suppose I know that the coin you are about to toss is loaded. I don't know just how heavily it is loaded, so I don't know what the probability is that it will come up heads, but I do know that this probability is greater than .5. Under those conditions I do not believe that the next toss of this coin will come up heads. (Of course I also don't believe that it will come up tails; and I suspect that it will come up heads.) All I know is that it is more likely than not to come up heads; and that's not sufficient for my sensibly believing that it will. The same goes in this case: if what I know is only that the probability of Christian belief (with respect to K) is greater than .5, I can't sensibly believe it. [357] I can hope that it is true, and think it rather likely that it is; I can't believe it. To give the historical case for G a run for its money, therefore, suppose we arbitrarily assign T a much higher probability on K--let's say that it is at least .9. Many will howl with indignation at such a high assignment; let us ignore them for the moment. We must next consider the probability, given T&K, that A God would make some kind of revelation (of himself, or perhaps of what we need to know about him) to humankind. Well, that seems quite likely, although of course it's very hard to predict a priori what God would or wouldn't do. Again, let's be generous and estimate this probability as also lying in the interval .9 to 1. But now we come to the hard parts. Somehow we have to make a probabilistic argument for the proposition that such a revelation would contain G, the great claims of the gospel. Of course a revelation from God would include G only if G is true; so what we really need here is a probabilistic argument for a conclusion sufficient to entail G. One common way to do this would be to argue that it is likely that Jesus taught G, and that by raising Jesus from the dead God endorsed or ratified that teaching. But just on the basis of ordinary historical scholarship, without the assumption that the Bible is, in fact, a divine revelation, it really isn't likely that Jesus taught anything nearly as definite as G--that is, sin, incarnation, atonement, and general availability. Scripture scholars argue at length about what precisely Jesus taught, but those who approach the matter from below' (i.e., without employing any special theological assumptions) for the most part are not at all prepared to assert that Jesus taught G. Indeed, even if we do accept the Bible as authoritative, it still won't be clear that Jesus taught G; much of our grasp of the central claims of Christian faith comes from other parts of the Bible (e.g., the Pauline epistles) and later reflection (e.g., the Nicene Creed). Perhaps, though, it is likely just on historical grounds that the teachings of Jesus were such that by sensible interpretation and extrapolation one could arrive at G. So we must ask after the probability of B Jesus' teachings were such that they could be sensibly interpreted and extrapolated to G given K&T and A; that is, we must ask after the value of P(B/(K&T&A)). B is fairly vague, but let's suppose it's rather likely, just on the basis of historical scholarship. Of course there will be many who would demur--those who think Jesus was a homosexual magician, [358] for example, not to mention those who think he was the first Christian atheist. [359] Let's say they are wrong and that this probability is high--for definiteness, in the interval .7 to .9. But now things get harder yet. We must next consider the proposition that God endorsed Jesus' teachings by performing a great miracle and raising him from the dead. What is the probability, just on historical grounds, that C Jesus rose from the dead? Of course, C must be taken in a literal and bodily sense; it is not to be glossed as, for example, the mere thought that the followers of Jesus underwent some experience so impressive and revivifying that they acquired the energy and determination necessary to start a new religion. [360] And again, what we need to consider is the conditional probability of C on K, T, and A&B--that is, P(C/(K&T&A&B)). What is this probability? One hesitates to say much here, given the enormous controversies and disagreements among Scripture scholars. How many people are there who believe on strictly historical grounds together with theism (no help from theology, or the internal instigation of the Holy Spirit, or anything like that), that Jesus Christ arose from the dead (in the strict and literal sense)? Even if you had a fine command of the vast literature and thought there was rather a good historical case here, you would presumably think it pretty speculative and chancy. I'd guess that it is likely that the disciples believed that Jesus arose from the dead, but on sheerly historical grounds (together with the assumption that there really is such a person as God, who is rather likely to make a revelation to us) it is considerably less likely that this actually did happen. Given all the controversy among the experts, we should probably declare this probability inscrutable--that is, such that we can't really say with any confidence what it is. Again, let's be generous: let's say that this proposition is more probable than not--for definiteness, say it lies in the interval .6 to .8. Next, we must consider the probability of D In raising Jesus from the dead, God endorsed his teachings on the previous propositions; that is, we must consider P(D/(K&T&A&B&C)). From C we have only that Jesus arose from the dead, not that God raised him from the dead, thereby endorsing his teaching. Given T, though, it does seem likely that God raised him from the dead--how else would it happen? Still, did he, in so doing, ratify what Jesus taught? Not necessarily: there are other reasons why he might have done it. Perhaps it was to endorse the teaching of the Pharisees as opposed to the Sadducees (Matthew 22:23), or perhaps as a reward for special devotion and a holy life, or perhaps for some reason of which we have no knowledge. Still, this probability should probably be pegged fairly high: let's say, for definiteness, .9. But there is still another probability to be evaluated here: the probability that in raising Jesus from the dead and endorsing his teachings, he was also endorsing their extrapolation to G, the central teaching of Christianity: we must look into the probability of E The extension and extrapolation of Jesus' teachings to G is true That is, we must look into P(E/(K&T&A&B&C&D)). Here the issues are more complex than they appear at first. Suppose you were completely convinced, on merely historical grounds, that Jesus rose from the dead: wouldn't it be an enormous further step to conclude G, that he was, in fact, the divine and unique son of God, the second person of the trinity, and that his suffering and death is a propitiatory sacrifice, whereby we can have eternal life? It isn't easy to see how a powerful historical case for all this could be made; perhaps it could go as follows. In accord with B, above, Jesus' teachings can naturally be extrapolated or extended to G; and perhaps God endorsed this extension of Jesus' teachings in raising him from the dead. But why think so? Why think that extrapolation (as opposed to all the other possibilities) has it right? Well, perhaps Jesus intended to (and did) found a church to interpret and preserve his teachings; God ratified that intention too; the church he founded is still extant, preserved (by the Holy Spirit, perhaps) from error, and teaches G. Here we really have five further propositions that together constitute our historical case for E; so, instead of E, we must consider the probability of the conjunction of (1) Jesus intended to (and did) found a church to interpret and preserve his teachings, (2) God ratified that intention in raising him from the dead, (3) The church Jesus founded is still extant, (4) God has preserved that church from error, and (5) That church teaches G on K&T&A&B&C&D. Now in the context of the present argument, we can take the conjunction of (1) to (5) as E*. Our present project, then, is to evaluate the probability of E*, so construed, on K&T&A&B&C&D. It seems sensible to estimate P((1)&(2)&(3)&(4)/(K&T&A&B&C&D)) as very high: [361] to be generous (and keep things as simple as possible) let's say this probability is 1. That still leaves us with (5), however: what is its probability on K&T&A&B&C&D plus the conjunction of (1) to (4)? This is not easy to estimate. Given that there is a church that God has preserved from error, which church is it? Is it one that teaches G? At present, many mainline Protestant churches (and some Roman Catholic clergy), for example, don't seem really to teach G at all. These churches (and their members) display a very wide spectrum of opinion, ranging all the way from extremely liberal views, according to which very little of classical Christianity is actually true (though much of it perhaps warmly inspiring), to full-blooded classical Christian belief. Which of these opinions did Christ mean to endorse? Which of these most faithfully conforms to his intentions? Is it a group that actually teaches G? [362] That's not easy to say on historical grounds; once again, let's be generous and estimate this probability (i.e., P((5)/(K&T&A&B&C&D)) as somewhere in the interval .7 to .9. This means that P(E/(K&T&A&B&C&D)) will lie in that same interval. Now how do we get a probability (on K) for G, given all this? Note that E entails G; so (following our present argument) to find the probability of G on K, what we need is to find the probability of E on K. How do we do that? Our argument followed the strategy of finding a series of propositions, T and A-E, such that the first is probable on K, the second on K together with the first, the third on K together with the first and second, and so on. A little arithmetic enables us to conclude that P(E/K) will be equal to or greater than P(T/K) × (P(A/(K&T)) × P(B/(K&T&A)) × P(C/(K&T&A&B)) × P(D/(K&T&A&B&C)) × P(E/(K&T&A&B&C&D)). The little arithmetic goes as follows. By (1) P(X/Y) ? P(X/Z&Y) × P(Z/Y) we know that (2) P(E/K) ? P(E/K&T&A&B&C&D) × (P(T&A&B&C&D/K). Consider the right multiplicand. According to the probability calculus, (3) P(X&Y/Z) = P(X/Z) × P(Y/X&Z); hence (4) P(T&A&B&C&D/K) = P(T&A&B&C/K) × P(D/T&A&B&C&K). By substitution into (2) we have (5) P(E/K) ? P(E/T&A&B&C&D&K) × P(T&A&B&C/K) × P(D/T&A&B&C&K). Again, by (3) we know that (6) P(T&A&B&C/K) = P(C/T&A&B&K) × P(T&A&B/K); substituting into (5), we have (7) P(E/K) ? P(E/T&A&B&C&D&K) × P(C/T&A&B&K) × P(T&A&B/K) × P(D/A&B&C&K). Applying (3) and substitution a couple of more times and rearranging terms, we have (8) P(E/K) ? P(T/K) × P(A/K&T) × P(B/K&T&A) × P(C/K&T&A&B) × P(D/K&T&A&B&C) × P(E/K&T&A&B&C&D), which was to be demonstrated. In some cases these values were intervals rather than real numbers, sharp probabilities. That's no problem; since we are in any event winding up with the statement that P(G/K) is equal to or greater than some number, what we do is just use the lower bounds of the intervals. Doing the arithmetic, in the present case we wind up with the proposition that P(E/K) is at least .21. If instead of using just the lower bounds, we use the midpoints of the intervals assigned, we find that P(G/K) is at least .35. Suppose we stick with the midpoint (rather than the lower bound): then our argument entitles us to say only that the probability of G on K is at least .35. It could be higher, of course, but all we can say with confidence, given the argument, is that it is equal to or greater than .35. Now of course it is ludicrous to assign real numbers to these probabilities: there is vagueness of many kinds here. Not only can't we sensibly assign a real number to any of these probabilities, it also seems wrong to assign them intervals with sharp boundaries; our actual reasoning must be vaguer. Perhaps the best we can really say is that these probabilities are high, or low, or fairly near .5. Still, our reasoning, even if vague, would have to be guided here roughly and vaguely by the calculus of probabilities; and the best way to let it be thus guided is to assign probabilities (and intervals of probability) that comport with the vague estimates we seriously make, and then see what the consequent probabilities would be. When we do this in the present case, in our attempt to estimate the power of a historical argument for G, an argument that doesn't rely on faith or any special theological assumptions, what we can say is only that this probability is at least high enough not to be a whole lot less likely than its denial. Of course we might quibble with the specific values I proposed. But I tried to err on the side of generosity; and even if we assigned somewhat higher probabilities, the result won't change much. The conclusion to be drawn, I think, is that K, our background knowledge, historical and otherwise (excluding what we know by way of faith or revelation), isn't anywhere nearly sufficient to support serious belief in G. If K were all we had to go on, the only sensible course would be agnosticism: "I don't know whether G is true or not: all I can say for sure is that it is not terribly unlikely." The main problem for such a historical case, as I see it, is what we can call the principle of dwindling probabilities: the fact that in giving such a historical argument, we can't simply annex the intermediate propositions to K (as I'm afraid many who employ this sort of argument actually do) but must instead multiply the relevant probabilities. It is for this reason that some such scheme as proposed in the testimonial model is necessary, if we human beings are to be able to know the great truths of the gospel. __________________________________________________________________ [341] 1 Corinthians 2:14. Compare 1 Corinthians 1:23-24: "We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God." [342] "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him" (John 6:44); and "I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Counselor, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him; you know him for he dwells with you, and will be in you" (John 14:16-17). [343] This, once more, is a point on which Calvin and Aquinas concur: "for since, by assenting to what belongs to faith, man is raised above his nature, this must needs come to him from some supernatural principle moving him inwardly; and this is God" (STII-II, q.6, a.1, respondeo; see also article 2). When I speak of supernatural activity on the part of God, I don't mean to suggest a sort of incursion into or intervention in the natural order. The fact is, God is constantly active in the world: apart from his upholding activity, the world would disappear like a candle flame in a high wind. Supernatural activity on the part of God (as well as miracles) must be understood, instead, in terms of God's special activity, as opposed to the way in which he ordinarily treats the things he has created. There are depths and problems here; they will have to await another occasion. [344] "If they wouldn't believe Moses and the prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead" (Luke 16:31). [345] As Aquinas says about the existence of God if accepted on the basis of the theistic proofs (ST I, q.1, a.1, respondeo; Summa contra Gentiles, Bk. I, ch. 4; ST II-II, q.2, a.4). It is for this reason, Aquinas says, that it was entirely appropriate for the existence of God to be proposed as an object of belief or faith, even though it could in fact be proved by reason. [346] Perhaps in the way proposed by Nicholas Wolterstorff's Divine Discourse. As I understand Wolterstorff, however, his account of how it could be that God speaks presupposes the main lines of Christian teaching, and hence wouldn't offer a way in which we could come to see that that teaching is in fact true (i.e., wouldn't provide the materials for an argument for the truth of that teaching). [347] This would substantially be the Locke-Swinburne model; however, it isn't clear whether they would concur with the current proposal in the suggestion that a change in affection and attitude is necessary to a proper appreciation of the historical case. [348] What follows is roughly based on Richard Swinburne's argument for a similar conclusion in his Revelation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), chapters 5, 7, and 8. A difference is that Swinburne thinks one believes that p if and only if one believes that p is more probable than not. (Faith and Reason [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981], p. 32); I take it that belief that p is more probable than not is nowhere nearly sufficient for belief that p. (I am about to throw an ordinary die: I believe it is more likely than not that it won't come up showing face 2 or 3, but I certainly don't believe that it won't; what I actually believe on this head is only that it will come up showing one of faces 1 through 6 (and not, for example, wind up delicately balanced on one of its points or edges). [349] See below, pp. 390ff. [350] The absolute or logical probability of a proposition would then be its probability with respect to a necessary truth. [351] These probabilities would not be Bayesian measures of degrees of belief, but something much more objective--Richard Swinburne's epistemic probability, or the objective probability of WPF (pp. 161ff.). [352] Peter's vision in Acts 10. [353] Thus Swinburne: "So if there is other evidence which makes it quite likely that there is a God, all powerful and all good, who made the Earth and its inhabitants, then perhaps it becomes to some extent likely that he would intervene in human history to reveal things to them" (Revelation, p. 70). [354] "At least": that is because there could also be some probability that Eleonore would be there even if Paul were not. The probability of Eleonore's being there (E) will be the weighted average of the probabilities of E given Paul's being there (P) and the probability of E given -P--weighted by the probabilities of P and -P. The relevant formula is P(E/K) = [P(E/(P&K)) × P(P/K)] + [P(E/(-P&K)) × P(-P/K)]. [355] Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979. [356] Especially, perhaps, with respect to the judgments of comparative simplicity involved, and the judgment that simplicity is, in fact, a good guide to probability. [357] Note, of course, that we can't simply add theism to the relevant body of knowledge K on the grounds that it is more probable than not on what we know; that way lies contradiction. It is more probable than not that this die will not turn up ace; the same, of course, for each of the other five possibilities; so if we could add each of these propositions (it won't come up 1, it won't come up 2 . . . ) to K, we wind up with the contradiction that the die will come up showing some number between 1 and 6 (inclusive) and also that it will not. [358] See Morton Smith, Jesus the Magician (New York: Harper and Row, 1978). [359] See Thomas Sheehan, The First Coming (New York: Random House, 1976). [360] As in much contemporary liberal and quasi-liberal theology. See, e.g., Norman Perrin, The Resurrection according to Matthew, Mark, and Luke (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977), p. 83: of the witnesses to the resurrection appearances of Jesus, he says, "in some way they were granted a vision of Jesus which convinced them that God had vindicated Jesus out of His death and that therefore the death of Jesus was by no means the end of the impact of Jesus upon their lives." Here we can bracket the question what sort of body Jesus had upon resurrection: was the body he had upon resurrection (whether or not it was numerically the same body he had before his death) a glorified body with supernatural powers? The latter would be still harder to establish by historical argument (see Robert Cavin's "Is There Sufficient Historical Evidence to Establish the Resurrection of Jesus?" Faith and Philosophy [July 1995]). [361] Celsus, an early critic of Christianity, apparently thought this probability fairly low, not much greater than .5 (see Origen, Contra Celsum, 1.68); let's suppose Celsus was wrong. [362] Swinburne (Revelation, chapter 8) proposes two criteria for determining what is to count as the church: continuity of aim and continuity of organization. The first depends on continuity of doctrinal teaching; but then to apply it we would already have to know what the true church teaches. That is, we would have to know what Jesus intended his church to teach; but then we can't use this test to determine what Jesus intended his church to teach. __________________________________________________________________ VII. Cognitive Renewal According to Jesus Christ himself, "unless a person is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God" (John 3:3). And according to the apostle Paul, not as high an authority but still no slouch, a Christian believer becomes a new creature in Christ. The believer enters a process whereby she is regenerated, transformed, made into a new and better person. We might say she acquires a new and better nature. This new and better nature is also a renewal, a restoration of the nature with which humankind was originally created. Sin damaged our nature; regeneration, the work of the Holy Spirit, is (among other things) a matter of setting right and repairing that damage. The ravages of sin were of two sorts. First, affective effects: sin induces a sort of madness of the will whereby we fail to love God above all; instead, we love ourselves above all. But the damage was also cognitive. Sin induces a blindness, dullness, stupidity, imperceptiveness, whereby we are blinded to God, cannot hear his voice, do not recognize his beauty and glory, may even go so far as to deny that he exists. Regeneration heals the ravages of sin--embryonically in this life, and with ever greater fullness in the next. Just what are the cognitive benefits of regeneration? First, there is the repair of the sensus divinitatis, so that once again we can see God and be put in mind of him in the sorts of situations in which that belief-producing process is designed to work. The work of the Holy Spirit goes further. It gives us a much clearer view of the beauty, splendor, loveliness, attractiveness, glory of God. It enables us to see something of the spectacular depth of love revealed in the incarnation and atonement. Correlatively, it also gives me a much clearer view of the heinousness of sin, and of the degree and extent to which I am myself enmeshed in it. It gives me a better picture of my own place in the universe. Perhaps I will no longer see myself as the center of things, or see my wants, needs, and desires as more important and more worthy of fulfillment than anyone else's. I may come to see that I fit in as one of God's children, all of enormous value even if all vastly less important and valuable than God, and all equally important and valuable. There is also a certain reflexive benefit. Part of the model I am presenting is itself the main line of Christian belief, and it is part of the model that cognitive regeneration enables us to see that part of the model as indeed true. John Calvin summarizes some of these cognitive benefits in his famous spectacles metaphor: Just as old or bleary-eyed men and those with weak vision, if you thrust before them a most beautiful volume, even if they recognize it to be some sort of writing, yet can scarcely construe two words, but with the aid of spectacles will begin to read distinctly; so Scripture, gathering up the otherwise confused knowledge of God in our minds, having dispersed our dullness, clearly shows us the true God. (Institutes, p. 70) Here Calvin is suggesting that what we learn from Scripture and by way of faith gathers, focuses, and clarifies what we learn by way of the sensus divinitatis, enabling us to see God and his love, glory, beauty, and the like with much higher resolution. He could have added that it also gives us a clearer view of our world: we now see what is most important about all the furniture of heaven and earth--namely, that it has been created by God. We can even come to see, if we reflect, what is most important about numbers, propositions, properties, states of affairs, and possible worlds: namely, that they really are divine thoughts or concepts. [363] Still further, it enables us to see what is most important about ourselves, and in so doing removes the defeater that is the Achilles' heel of naturalism. As we saw in chapter 7, one of the most far-reaching of the noetic effects of sin is that it skews belief about our origins and the origins of our cognitive systems: it prevents us from seeing that we are the creatures of a just and loving God who has created us in his own image. We may come, instead, to think that God is terrible and to be feared rather than a good and loving Father, or distant and far off, or indifferent to us and our welfare; we may come to embrace some version of austere theism, or even agnosticism or naturalism. As we saw in chapter 7, the probability that our cognitive faculties are reliable, given any of these views of God, is low or inscrutable. Now consider anyone who accepts the view in question, and who sees the epistemic relation between that view and R, the proposition that his cognitive faculties are reliable. Such a person has a defeater for R--a defeater that can't itself be defeated. And that means that he suffers from still another noetic deficiency: he has a defeater for any of his own beliefs and is therefore in an irrational condition. But the restoration and healing induced by the work of the Holy Spirit also counters this noetic effect of sin. It restores us to a position of seeing that we have been created in God's image; in so doing, it removes that defeater. A popular objection to the evolutionary argument against naturalism is a tu quoque--briefly, "the same to you, buddy." Perhaps the most challenging version of this objection is by Keith Lehrer. Consider theism (and call it T')--not austere theism, but theism itself, including the proposition that we and our cognitive faculties have been created by a just and loving God and created in his image. What is P(R/T)? Well, maybe not as high as you think. The fact that God is just and loving doesn't prevent all the ills we human beings are heir to--warfare, cruelty, starvation, earthquakes, flood, fire, and pestilence. Granted, God has his own good reasons for permitting these things; still, they do indeed occur, and so are clearly compatible with our having been created by a just and loving Father. So even if God created humankind, he might for his own good reasons permit us to suffer from cognitive malfunction of some sort, cognitive disease or disorder; and such cognitive disorder could inhibit the reliability of our cognitive faculties. Even if God is wholly good, he has or may have permitted Satan to introduce widespread natural evil into the world; but then might he not also permit Satan (that father of lies) to introduce widespread error into the world? (Indeed, hasn't he done exactly that by permitting us to fall into sin?) Lehrer develops this thought: Compare, finally, S Satan and his cohorts produce incredible deceps of error with E Evolutionary processes produce incredible deceps of error. I find little to choose between them. A naturalist wishing to assign a high probability to the conclusion that the proper functioning of our faculties yields truth because they are the result of evolution must assign a low probability to E, while a supernaturalist wishing to assign a high probability to the conclusion that the proper functioning of our faculties yields truth because they are designed by God must assign a low probability to S. [364] And as a matter of fact, of course, according to Christianity precisely this or something like it has happened: God has permitted us to fall into sin with its attendant noetic effects. So what is P(R/T)? Wouldn't we have to say it is low or at any rate inscrutable, just like P(R/N&E)? So won't the theist join the naturalist in having a defeater for any of his beliefs? Won't he be in the very same leaky epistemic boat? This is a formidable objection; there is a reply. [365] For the Christian doesn't accept just theism; she also accepts the rest of the Christian story, including fall (along with corruption of the image of God), redemption, regeneration, and the consequent repair and restoration of that image. She believes she knows these truths by way of divine revelation. But she also knows, so she thinks, the truth of theism by way of divine revelation. And this delivers her (or rather R) from defeat. Consider an analogy. Suppose you tell me that (1) Feike is a very wealthy eccentric who loves to wear dilapidated old clothes from the local Goodwill. Acting on the principle that it is always a good idea to acquire some new true beliefs, I infer (2) Feike wears dilapidated old clothes. I have also believed for some time that (3) Feike is a millionaire. But now I note that P((3)/(2)) is low (most people who wear dilapidated old clothes are not millionaires); I conclude in considerable puzzlement that (2) is a defeater, for me, of (3), and do my best to refrain from believing (3). My error is plain: (2) isn't, in fact, a defeater for (3), for me. Why not? Well, for one thing, because I see that the warrant (2) has for me is derivative from the warrant (1) has for me, and obviously (1) is not, for me, a defeater for (3). But that means that (2) is not a defeater of (3). If you would like a principle, try: (4) If (i) S believes A, B, and C, and (ii) S believes that the warrant B has for her is derivative from the warrant A has for her, and (3) S believes that A is not a defeater, for her, of C, then B is not a defeater, for S, of C. [366] This principle, as I say, delivers R from defeat, for the Christian theist (and also delivers the evolutionary argument against naturalism from defeat by that tu quoque). For the Christian theist believes that she knows the whole Christian story, or that at any rate it has some considerable warrant for her. Theism is part of that story, and the warrant theism has for her is derivative from the warrant had for her of the whole Christian story. Hence by (4) theism won't be a defeater of R for her unless the whole Christian story is. But it isn't. Therefore, theism isn't a defeater of R, for her, and the objection crumbles. To recount the essential features of the model, the internal instigation of the Holy Spirit working in concord with God's teaching in Scripture is a cognitive process or belief-producing mechanism that produces in us the beliefs constituting faith, as well as a host of other beliefs. These beliefs, of course, will seem to the believer to be true: that is part of what it is for them to be beliefs. They will have the internal features of belief, of seeming to be true; and they can have this to various degrees. Second, according to the model, these beliefs will be justified; they will also have at least two further kinds of virtues. In the first place, they are internally rational, in the sense that the believer's response to the experience she has (given prior belief) is within the range permitted by rationality, that is, by proper function; there is nothing pathological there. And in the second place, the beliefs in question will have warrant: they will be produced by cognitive processes functioning properly in an appropriate environment according to a design plan successfully aimed at the production of true belief. To be sure, the process in question is not like the ordinary belief-producing mechanisms we have just by virtue of creation; it will be by a special work of the Holy Spirit. Recall Hume's sarcastic gibe: Upon the whole, we may conclude that the Christian Religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one. . . . Whoever is moved by Faith to assent to it, is conscious of a continued miracle in his own person, which subverts all the principles of his understanding, and gives him a determination to believe what is most contrary to custom and experience. [367] According to the testimonial model, Hume (sarcasm aside) is partly right: belief in the main lines of the gospel is produced in Christians by a special work of the Holy Spirit, not by the belief-producing faculties and processes with which we were originally created. Further, some of what Christians believe (e.g., that a human being was dead and then arose from the dead) is as Hume says, contrary to custom and experience: it seldom happens. Of course it doesn't follow, contrary to Hume's implicit suggestion, that there is anything irrational or contrary to reason in believing it, given the internal instigation of the Holy Spirit. What I claim for this model is that there aren't any successful philosophical objections to it (and in chapter 10 I'll look into some objections); so far as philosophical considerations go, given the truth of Christian belief, this model, or something very much like it, could be no more than the sober truth. Of course there may be philosophical objections to the truth of Christian belief itself; I shall consider some of them in part IV under the guise of defeaters. But the point here is that if Christian belief is true, then it could very well have warrant in the way proposed here. If (as I claim) the fact is there are no good philosophical objections to the model, given the truth of Christian belief, then any successful objection to the model will also have to be a successful objection to the truth of Christian belief. We can take the matter a step further. If Christian belief is true, then very likely it does have warrant--if not in the way proposed in the extended A/C model, then in some other similar way. For if it is true, then, indeed, there is such a person as God, who has created us in his image; we have fallen into sin and require salvation; and the means to such restoral and renewal have been provided in the incarnation, suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the second person of the trinity. Furthermore, the typical way of appropriating this restoral is by way of faith, which, of course, involves belief in these things--that is, belief in the great things of the gospel. If so, however, God would intend that we be able to be aware of these truths. And if that is so, the natural thing to think is that the cognitive processes that do indeed produce belief in the central elements of the Christian faith are aimed by their designer at producing that belief. But then these beliefs will have warrant. Someone who has read his Gettier [368] might object: "Isn't it possible God has created a certain process p in us for coming to know the great things of the gospel; this process p usually malfunctions, producing no belief at all; while another process p* also (and serendipitously) malfunctions, in precisely such a way as to produce in us the very beliefs p would have produced, had it not malfunctioned? Then the Christian story would be true, but Christian belief would have no warrant." No doubt this scenario is possible, even if a bit far-fetched. Even if it happened, however, it wouldn't follow that Christian belief, thus produced, lacks warrant. Even if Christian belief was (improbably) produced by a process p* originally designed for some other purpose, it wouldn't follow that Christian belief does not have warrant. For perhaps God has adopted p* and its new way of working as part of the design plan for human beings. Then, once more, Christian belief would have warrant, even if in a bit of a roundabout way. Finally, I should like to ask how my project in this book compares with William Alston's in his magisterial Perceiving God. [369] There is much similarity and overlap, but also important difference. First, the central thesis of Alston's book is that "experiential awareness of God, or as I shall be saying, the perception of God, makes an important contribution to the grounds of religious belief" (p. 1). The religious beliefs in question are of two sorts: "beliefs to the effect that God is doing something currently vis-à-vis the subject--comforting, strengthening, guiding . . . --or to the effect that God has some (allegedly) perceivable property--goodness, power, lovingness" (p. 1). What kind of contribution does experiential awareness of God make to the grounds of such beliefs? "More specifically, a person can become justified in holding certain kinds of beliefs about God by virtue of perceiving God as being or doing so-and-so" (p. 1). Alston's central claim, I think, is that this experiential awareness of God (i.e., what seems to the subject to be experiential awareness of God) makes it possible for the believer to be practically rational in the doxastic practices in question, and practically rational to take these practices to be a source of epistemic justification. (See chapter 4 above for my evaluation of the success of this claim.) My project differs in three ways. First, I am concerned not primarily with beliefs of the two sorts Alston mentions, but rather with the central claims or beliefs of the Christian faith. I am not limiting my attention to beliefs about God's (allegedly) perceptible properties or his current actions with respect to the believer. My aim, instead, is to examine the epistemic status of the great things of the gospel: that Jesus Christ is the second person of the trinity, that he became incarnate, suffered, died, and rose from the dead, and that by atoning for our sins he made it possible for us human beings to achieve a right relationship with God. Second, the epistemic property in which I am most interested is not justification, taken either deontologically or in the way in which Alston takes it, but warrant: does Christian belief have, can it have, the property enough of which is what distinguishes knowledge from mere true belief? And can it (if true) have enough of that property to constitute knowledge? Third, I don't argue that these Christian beliefs have or can have warrant by way of perception or experiential awareness of God or of his presence or his properties, but by way of faith. An Alston-like project in the neighborhood of my project would be an effort to argue that the kinds of beliefs he mentions--that God has some perceptible property, that he is acting a certain way vis-à-vis the believer--could have warrant by way of perception (there aren't any successful philosophical objections to the claim that they do) and that from a Christian perspective the most satisfactory way of thinking of their warrant is in terms of perception of God and his properties: if Christian belief is, in fact, true, then (probably) these beliefs do have warrant in these ways. What about these suggestions? First, I take it Alston has adequately (and more than adequately) disposed of the main philosophical objections to the thought that we human beings can perceive God and perceive that he is amiable, delightful, powerful, glorious, loving, and the like. On this point, Alston is close to Jonathan Edwards, who is best construed, as I argued above, as holding that we do (not merely can) perceive God and perceive these things of him. I have just one comment to make here. There is no doubt that human beings seem to experience God, and to experience him as being these things. To many, it has indeed seemed that God is present to their consciousness in something like the way in which any perceptible object can be present to my consciousness; it is equally clear that it has seemed to many that they experience God as having the properties in question. But are these really cases of seeming to perceive? On the one hand, they exhibit several salient differences from paradigm cases of perception, such as perception of trees, horses, other people: in particular, the phenomenology is quite different. (Of course the phenomenology of the various sensuous modalities of perception themselves also differ from each other.) On the other hand, there is the crucial similarity that, in this case as in the paradigm sensory cases, there is that sense of being in the presence of the object in question, the powerful impression that it is present or presented to one's consciousness. The thing to say, I think, is that these cases of putative perception of God are such that the term perception' applies to them either perfectly straightforwardly, or else by way of close analogy. Which is it? Perhaps this is not a very important question. If it isn't precisely perception, it is something closely and analogically related to it, and related in such a way that (if, in fact, things are as they seem to the believer) it too can perfectly well be a source of warranted belief. So I have a great deal of sympathy for this Alston-like project and would in fact be prepared to endorse it. Further, while I am not completely clear about Alston's notion of practical rationality (see above, pp. 119ff.), I believe it is fairly close to my internal rationality; I would therefore concur with him in thinking that Christian belief does indeed enjoy these varieties of positive epistemic status. Where my project differs from Alston's, then, is that I am concerned not simply with those perceptual (or perceptual') beliefs Alston mentions. Further (and on this point I am not, so far as I know, disputing anything Alston says), I doubt that perception of God, in his sense, is the central way in which Christian belief is formed. First, as Alston says, it is only the fortunate few who perceive God with any regularity. [370] Second, the sorts of beliefs with which I am centrally concerned do not ordinarily seem to come to the believers in question by way of perception. This is so even when the occasions in question are not ordinary, garden-variety occasions for the formation and sustenance of Christian belief. Thus John Wesley's famous experience: In the evening, I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther's Preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation; and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine and saved me from the law of sin and death. [371] Here what Wesley comes to believe, or believe more profoundly, is just what the Heidelberg Catechism sees as the content of true faith: that the divine scheme of salvation applies to oneself personally. As far as one can tell, however, this wasn't a matter of perceiving God. There was, indeed, sensuous phenomenology ("I felt my heart strangely warmed") and an oft-noted kind of phenomenology; but it doesn't seem to be perceptual. Indeed, it isn't clear that it is possible to perceive, for example, that Christ has taken away my sins, or that he is the incarnate second person of the trinity or that he suffered and died, thereby enabling us to have life. Consider also the apostle Paul's vision on the way to Damascus: no doubt he then did perceive Jesus, and furthermore perceived that he said that he was indeed the Christ. So it is certainly possible to perceive Jesus the Christ and perceive that he is saying that he is the Christ; still, can we perceive that Jesus actually is the Christ? That he actually is the second person of the trinity? I'm inclined to doubt it. And the more ordinary cases where someone's belief in the great things of the gospel comes by way of faith (i.e., Scripture/internal instigation of the Holy Spirit/faith) seem even less properly thought of as cases of perception. Accordingly, there is indeed such a thing as perceiving God; furthermore, perceiving God plays an important role in the religious and spiritual lives of many Christians, in particular, Christians who have been blessed with considerable progress in the spiritual life. Indeed, we might think, following Edwards, that perceiving God--perceiving that he is lovely, amiable, holy, glorious, and the like--is an essential element in the full-blown, well-rounded Christian life. I agree, furthermore, that these perceptual beliefs can have warrant. The central Christian beliefs, however, are not perceptual beliefs; they come, not by way of perception of God, but by way of faith. The warrant those beliefs have is not perceptual warrant; it comes rather by way of faith. In sum, perception of God is an important part of the mature Christian life, but maturity in the Christian life isn't attained by most of us; and even for the fortunate few who do achieve maturity, the warrant their central Christian beliefs enjoy does not come by way of perception. I therefore see Alston's project here as covering only part of the relevant epistemological territory--an important part, but only a part, and not the part by way of which the central beliefs of the Christian faith have warrant. __________________________________________________________________ [363] See Thomas Morris and Christopher Menzel, "Absolute Creation," American Philosophical Quarterly (October 1986) and Christopher Menzel, "Theism, Platonism, and the Metaphysics of Mathematics," in Christian Theism and the Problems of Philosophy, ed. Michael Beaty (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990). This theistic conceptualism' is controversial, though certainly the majority opinion in the tradition of those theists who have thought about it. [364] In his "Proper Function vs. Systematic Coherence," in Warrant in Contemporary Epistemology: Essays in Honor of Plantinga's Theory of Knowledge, ed. Jonathan Kvanvig (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1996), pp. 29-30. [365] See my "Respondeo," in Warrant in Contemporary Epistemology, pp. 333-38. [366] Here derivative from' must be construed narrowly, so that the paradigm case of the warrant of p's being derivative, for me, from the warrant of q is (as in this case) where I infer p from q (explicitly or implicitly). In fact, (4) can be strengthened by weakening the antecedent in various ways. [367] An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding (LaSalle, Ill.: Open Court Publishing, 1956), p. 145. [368] See WPF, pp. 32ff. [369] Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991. Subsequent page references are to this book. See above, chapter 5. [370] "The experiential awareness of God is a rare phenomenon except for a very few souls" (Perceiving God, p. 36). [371] John Wesley, ed. Albert Outler (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964), p. 66. __________________________________________________________________ [293] Ed. John Smith (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959 [first published 1746]). Subsequent page references to Religious Affections are to this edition. [294] Ed. John T. McNeill and tr. by Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960 [first published in 1559]). References to the Institutes are to this edition. [295] Contemporary relatives and ancestors of this model can be found in Stephen Davis, Risen Indeed (Grand Rapids: W. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1993); William Abraham, "The Epistemological Significance of the Inner Witness of the Holy Spirit," Faith and Philosophy 7, no. 4 (October 1990); C. Stephen Evans, The Historical Christ and the Jesus of Faith (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996); my The Twin Pillars of Christian Scholarship (Grand Rapids: Calvin College, 1989); and my "Christian Philosophy at the End of the 20th Century," in Christian Philosophy at the Close of the Twentieth Century, ed. Sander Griffioen and Bert Balk (Kampen: Kok, 1995), pp. 29-53. [296] It is no part of the model to suggest that explicit beliefs about Jesus Christ are a necessary condition of salvation: the Old Testament patriarchs, for example, are counted as heroes of faith in the New Testament (Hebrews 11), despite the fact that they presumably had no explicit beliefs about Jesus Christ. They trusted God to do whatever was necessary for their salvation and shalom, but they had no particular idea as to just what that might be. Furthermore, it is no part of the model to assert that all who believe these things have come to believe them by way of the processes proposed in the model: perhaps, for example, the apostles came to believe these truths in quite a different fashion. [297] But hasn't the historical-critical Scripture scholarship of the last two hundred years cast grave doubt on the reliability of the Bible and the claim that it is specially inspired by God? This suggestion is a proposed defeater for Christian belief and is the subject of chapter 12. [298] E.g., John 14:26: "but the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you." See also John 14:11 and 15:26: "When the Counselor comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father, he will testify about me. . . ." [299] E.g., Ephesians 1:17-19: "I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better." And 1 Corinthians 2:12-13: "We have not received the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit. . . ." [300] Presented in this brief and undeveloped way, this model can seem unduly individualistic. But of course it doesn't at all preclude the importance of the Christian community and the church to the belief of the individual Christian. It is the church or community that proclaims the gospel, guides the neophyte into it, and supports, instructs, encourages, and edifies believers of all sorts and conditions. [301] For the notion of internal rationality, see above, p. 110ff. [302] Of course this belief-producing process isn't exactly like the others--memory, perception, reason, and even the sensus divinitatis. That is because these others are all part of our original increated cognitive equipment, while (according to the model) the cognitive process here involves a special, supernatural activity on the part of the Holy Spirit. But this doesn't so much as suggest that its deliverances can't enjoy warrant, and warrant sufficient for knowledge. What it suggests, instead, is that the account of warrant of Warrant and Proper Function must be understood in such a way that a belief can have warrant even if it is produced by a belief-producing process of this special kind. True, such a process that consists in direct divine activity cannot fail to function properly; we may therefore say that it functions properly in a limiting sense of the term. __________________________________________________________________ 9 The Testimonial Model: Sealed upon Our Hearts Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. Jesus Christ If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. St. Paul He that has doctrinal knowledge and speculation only, without affection, never is engaged in the business of religion. Jonathan Edwards __________________________________________________________________ I. Belief and Affection In chapter 8, I proposed a model to show how Christian belief can have warrant. On this model, Christian belief is produced in the believer by the internal instigation of the Holy Spirit, endorsing the teachings of Scripture, which is itself divinely inspired by the Holy Spirit. The result of the work of the Holy Spirit is faith--which, according to both John Calvin and the model, is "a firm and certain knowledge of God's benevolence towards us, founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ, both revealed to our minds and sealed upon our hearts through the Holy Spirit." According to the model, these beliefs enjoy justification, rationality, and warrant. We may therefore say with Calvin that they are "revealed to our minds." There is more, however; they are also "sealed upon our hearts." What could this latter mean, and how does it figure into the model? Given that these truths are revealed to our minds, what more could we need? Why must they also be sealed upon our hearts? To answer, suppose we ask whether one could hold the beliefs in question but nonetheless fail to have faith. The traditional Christian answer is, "Well yes: the demons believe and they shudder" (James 2:19); [372] but the demons do not have faith. So what is the difference? What more is there to faith than belief? What distinguishes the Christian believer from the demons? According to the model, [373] the shape of the answer is given in the text just mentioned: the demons shudder. They believe these things, but hate them; and they also hate God. Perhaps they also hope against hope that these things aren't really so, or perhaps they believe them in a self-deceived way. They know of God's power and know that they have no hope of winning any contest of power with him; nevertheless, they engage in just such a contest, perhaps in that familiar self-deceived condition of really knowing, in one sense, that they couldn't possibly win such a contest, while at some other level nevertheless refusing to accept this truth, or hiding it from themselves. [374] Or perhaps the problem here is not merely cognitive but affective: knowing that they couldn't possibly win, they insist on fighting anyway, thinking of themselves as courageously Promethean, as heroically contending against nearly insuperable odds, a condition, they point out, in which God never finds himself, and hence a way in which they can think of themselves as his moral superior. The devils also know of God's wonderful scheme for the salvation of human beings, but they find this scheme--with its mercy and suffering love--offensive and unworthy. No doubt they endorse Nietzsche's notion that Christian love (including the love displayed in incarnation and atonement) is weak, whining, resentful, servile, duplicitous, pusillanimous, tergiversatory, and in general unappealing. The person with faith, however, not only believes the central claims of the Christian faith; she also (paradigmatically) finds the whole scheme of salvation enormously attractive, delightful, moving, a source of amazed wonderment. She is deeply grateful to the Lord for his great goodness and responds to his sacrificial love with love of her own. The difference between believer and devil, therefore, lies in the area of affections: of love and hate, attraction and repulsion, desire and detestation. In traditional categories, the difference lies in the orientation of the will. Not primarily in the executive function of the will (the function of making decisions, of seeking and avoiding various states of affairs), though of course that is also involved, but in its affective function, its function of loving and hating, finding attractive or repellent, approving or disapproving. And the believer, the person with faith, has the right beliefs, but also the right affections. Conversion and regeneration alters affection as well as belief. According to Calvin, it is the Holy Spirit who is responsible for this sealing upon our hearts of that firm and certain knowledge of God's benevolence toward us; it is the Holy Spirit who is responsible for this renewal and redirection of affections. Calvin is sometimes portrayed as spiritually cold, aloof, bloodless, rationalistic--a person in whom intellect unduly predominates. These charges may (or may not) have some validity with respect to the Reformed scholasticism of a century later; even a cursory examination of Calvin's work, however, reveals that with respect to him they are wildly inaccurate. [375] Calvin's emblem was a flaming heart on an outstretched hand; it bore the motto: Cor meum quasi immolatum tibi offero, Domine. [376] Of the Holy Spirit, he says that "persistently boiling away and burning up our vicious and inordinate desires, he enflames our hearts with the love of God and with zealous devotion." [377] The Institutes are throughout aimed at the practice of the Christian life (which essentially involves the affections), not at theological theory; the latter enters only in the service of the former. So the initial difference between believer and demon is a matter of affections: the former is inspired to gratitude and love, the latter to fear, hatred, and contempt. The Holy Spirit produces knowledge, in the believer; in sealing this knowledge to our hearts, however, it also produces the right affections. Chief among these right affections is love of God--desire for God, desire to know him, to have a personal relationship with him, desire to achieve a certain kind of unity with him, as well as delight in him, relishing his beauty, greatness, holiness, and the like. There is also trust, approval, gratitude, intending to please, expecting good things, and much more. Faith, therefore, isn't just a matter of believing certain propositions--not even the momentous propositions of the gospel. Faith is more than belief; in producing faith, the Holy Spirit does more than produce in us the belief that this or that proposition is indeed true. As Aquinas repeats four times in five pages, "the Holy Spirit makes us lovers of God." [378] And according to Martin Luther, there are two ways of believing. In the first place I may have faith concerning God. This is the case when I hold to be true what is said concerning God. Such faith is on the same level with the assent I give to statements concerning the Turk, the devil and hell. A faith of this kind should be called knowledge or information rather than faith. In the second place there is faith in. Such faith is mine when I not only hold to be true what is said concerning God, but when I put my trust in him in such a way as to enter into personal relations with him, believing firmly that I shall find him to be and to do as I have been taught. . . . The word in is well chosen and deserving of due attention. We do not say, I believe God the Father or concerning God the Father, but in God the Father, in Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Spirit. [379] Following Luther, we may distinguish believing in God from believing that God exists. The latter itself comes in two varieties: theism, and believing de re of God that he exists. A theist is one who believes a certain proposition: that there is an all-powerful, all-knowing, wholly good person who has created and sustains the world. Where God is indeed the unique being meeting this condition, the theist believes that there is such a being, but also, no doubt, believes of God, the being who in fact meets this description, that he exists. It isn't necessary, however, that he does the latter; perhaps he forms the de dicto belief but never performs the de re act of believing something or other of the being in question. It is even clearer that one can believe of God that he exists without being a theist: one can believe of God that he exists even if one is (from the theist's point of view) confused and mistaken about what properties God has. Perhaps I encounter God in experience, believing that he loves me, or perhaps I pick him out as the being that my parents worship. Then I will believe of God that he exists, even if I fail (for example) to believe that God created the world. (Perhaps, like some Mormons, I think God himself was created, and add that the world has always existed and was not created.) It is even possible to believe of God that he exists and be an atheist: I encounter God in experience, believe of the thing that I encounter that it exists, but fail to believe that this thing I encounter is all-powerful or all-knowing or wholly good, or has created the world; and I also believe that there is nothing that has those properties. Believing in God, of course, is different from either believing of God that he exists or being a theist. The demons, no doubt, are theists and also believe of God that he exists; the demons do not believe in God, because they do not trust and love God and do not make his purposes their own. __________________________________________________________________ [372] Perhaps this needs qualification. The content of faith is plausibly indexical: a person x has faith only if x believes or knows that God is benevolent toward x herself. But perhaps the devils do not believe that God is benevolent toward them. They know that God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and perfectly good, and that he has arranged a way of salvation for human beings; but perhaps they reject the belief that God is benevolent toward them. (Note, incidentally, that the author of James sometimes (in chapter 2, e.g.) seems to use the term faith' to mean mere cognitive or intellectual assent.) [373] And perhaps also according to Calvin. He sees this sealing, as in the first instance, a matter of God's putting his mark, imprint, seal upon the believer; but perhaps this seal consists in the believer's having the appropriate affections. [374] See Milton's Paradise Lost, books 5 and 6. [375] See, e.g., Dennis Tamburello, Union with Christ: John Calvin and the Mysticism of St. Bernard (Louisville, Ky: Westminster John Knox Press, 1994), chapters 1-3. [376] "My heart, as if aflame, I offer to you, Oh Lord." This particular phenomenology--a phenomenology that is naturally expressed in terms of one's heart being warmed or even aflame--goes back in the Christian tradition at least to the disciples who met the risen Christ on the road to Emmaus: "Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight. They asked each other Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?'?" (Luke 24:31-32). There are parallel passages in Aquinas; and in Preface to the Epistle to the Romans (1522), Luther says that faith "sets the heart aflame." John Wesley reports, "As one was reading Luther's Preface to Romans . . . I felt my heart strangely warmed." In the Orthodox tradition, St. Seraphim of Sarov reports something similar (see William Abraham, "The Epistemological Significance of the Inner Witness of the Holy Spirit," Faith and Philosophy 7, no. 4, p. 440). [377] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill and tr. Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960 [originally published in 1559]), III, i, 3, p. 540. [378] Summa contra Gentiles, tr. Charles J. O'Neil (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975), Bk. 4, ch. 21, 22 (pp. 122, 125, 126). [379] Luther's Catechetical Writings, tr. J. N. Lenker, 2 vols. (Minneapolis: Lutheran Press, 1907), 1:203, quoted in H. R. Niebuhr, Faith on Earth (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), p. 9. Consider also Pascal: "So those to whom God has imparted religion through the feeling of the heart are very fortunate and justly convinced" (Pensées, tr. M. Turnell [London: Harvill Press, 1962], p. 282). __________________________________________________________________ II. Jonathan Edwards Our topic, therefore, essentially involves the affections. In trying to understand the religious affections, we can obviously do no better than to consult Jonathan Edwards, one of the great masters of the interior life and a peerless student of the religious affections. Edwards, of course, concurs with Calvin that true religion is more than just right belief. Indeed, according to him, true religion is first a matter of having the right affections: "True religion, in great part, consists in holy affections." [380] "The Holy Scriptures do everywhere place religion very much in the affections; such as fear, hope, love, hatred, desire, joy, sorrow, gratitude, compassion and zeal" (p. 102). Mere knowledge isn't enough for true religion: There is a distinction to be made between a mere notional understanding, wherein the mind only beholds things in the exercise of a speculative faculty; and the sense of the heart, wherein the mind don't only speculate and behold, but relishes and feels. That sort of knowledge, by which a man has a sensible perception of amiableness and loathsomeness, or of sweetness and nauseousness, is not just the same sort of knowledge with that, by which he knows what a triangle is, and what a square is. The one is mere speculative knowledge; the other sensible knowledge, in which more than the mere intellect is concerned; the heart is the proper subject of it, or the soul as a being that not only beholds, but has inclination, and is pleased or displeased. (p. 272) Of course he doesn't think true religion is just a matter of affections, of loves and hates, as if belief and understanding had no role to play: "Holy affections are not heat without light; but evermore arise from some information of the understanding, some spiritual instruction that the mind receives, some light or actual knowledge" (p. 266). Still, true religion primarily involves (so he seems to say) the affections, in particular love: "all true religion summarily consists in the love of divine things" (p. 271). And love brings other affections in its train: "love to God," he says, "causes a man to delight in the thoughts of God, and to delight in the presence of God and to desire conformity to God, and the enjoyment of God" (p. 208); elsewhere, he adds that one who loves God will also delight in contemplating the great things of the gospel, taking pleasure in them, finding them attractive, marvelous, winsome (p. 250). Further, one who thus delights in the great truths of the gospel may find himself disgusted by various attempts (see chapter 2) to trade that splendidly rich and powerful gospel for cheap and trivial substitutes. Still further, acquiring the right affections enables one to see the true heinousness of sin: "he who sees the beauty of holiness, must necessarily see the hatefulness of sin, its contrary" (p. 274); and he who sees the hatefulness of sin (in himself and others) will also (given proper function) hate it. __________________________________________________________________ A. Intellect and Will: Which Is Prior? But how exactly is this supposed to work? What is the relation between affection and belief here, between will and intellect? Which, if either, is primary? Is it that first one sees (i.e., comes to know or believe) that the great things of the gospel and God himself are lovely and amiable, and then comes to love them? Or is it rather that first one comes to love them, thus coming to see that the things in question are, indeed, worthy of love? In working in our hearts, does the Holy Spirit first and supernaturally get us to see the truths of the great things of the gospel, our affections naturally following suit (so that we come to love and delight in them)? Or is it rather that the Holy Spirit first corrects our affections, cures the madness of our wills, so that we begin to love God above all rather than ourselves, as a result of which we come to believe the great things of the gospel? Or is neither prior, so that will and intellect are cured simultaneously? This question, of course, is connected with a correlative question we examined in chapter 7: is sin primarily a matter of intellect, of blindness, of failing to see or believe the right things, thus leading to wrong affection and wrong action? Or is it primarily a matter of the wrong affections, of loving and hating the wrong things? Although Edwards emphasizes the centrality of the affections, he also seems to endorse the position that intellect is prior to will. He seems to suggest that the believer first sees the beauty, amiability, loveliness of God and the great things of the gospel, her affections then naturally following: [The saints] first see that God is lovely, and that Christ is excellent and glorious, and their hearts are first captivated with this view, and the exercises of their love are wont from time to time to begin here, and to arise primarily from these views; and then, consequentially, they see God's love; and great favor to them. (p. 246) Here the focus of his attention isn't the question whether it is intellect or will that is prior (but whether the saints first see that God loves them and then come themselves to love God, or the other way around). Nevertheless, there is the clear suggestion that what happens first is that the saint sees that God is lovely and Christ excellent and glorious; this vision is captivating, delightful, winsome; the result is love for God. Elsewhere he is more explicit: "Knowledge is the key that first opens the hard heart and enlarges the affections, and so opens the way for men into the kingdom of heaven" (p. 266); "Gracious affections do arise from the mind's being enlightened, rightly and spiritually to understand or apprehend divine things." Furthermore, Truly spiritual and gracious affections . . . arise from the enlightening of the understanding to understand the things that are taught of God and Christ, in a new manner, the coming to a new understanding of the excellent nature of God, and his wonderful perfections, some new view of Christ in his spiritual excellencies and fullness, or things opened to him in a new manner, that appertain to the way of salvation by Christ, whereby he now sees how it is, and understands those divine and spiritual doctrines which once were foolishness to him. . . . That all gracious affections do arise from some instruction or enlightening of the understanding, is therefore a further proof. (pp. 267, 268) This apparently fits less than perfectly well with another of Edwards's characteristic doctrines: that what lies at the bottom of sin is hardness of heart--which, he says, is a matter of having the wrong affections, or (less disastrously) at any rate lacking the right affections: Divines are generally agreed, that sin radically and fundamentally consists in what is negative, or privative, having its root and foundation in a privation or want of holiness. And therefore undoubtedly, if it be so that sin does very much consist in hardness of heart, and so in the want of pious affections of heart; holiness does consist very much in those pious affections. (p. 118) Now by a hard heart, is plainly meant an unaffected heart, or a heart not easy to be moved with virtuous affections, like a stone, insensible, stupid, unmoved and hard to be impressed. Hence the hard heart is called [in Scripture] a stony heart, and is opposed to an heart of flesh, that has feeling, and is sensibly touched and moved. (p. 117) These passages suggest (as I argued in chapter 7) that sin is fundamentally a matter of failing to have the right affections and having the wrong ones; it isn't (in the first instance, anyway) a failure of knowledge. It is less a failure to see something than to feel something. [381] The hard-hearted person fails to love the right things; he lacks the virtuous affections of love for the Lord and neighbor and for the great truths of the gospel; he also lacks the hatred and sorrow for sin, gratitude for salvation, joy, peace, and all the rest that flow from a proper love of God. And that suggests that on receiving the gift of faith and the rebirth (regeneration) that goes with it, what happens is that the affections are redirected, so that one makes at least the first halting steps in the direction of loving God above all. Somehow consequent upon that is a new knowledge of the loveliness and gloriousness of God and of the Christian story as well. Still, this suggestion is compatible with the thought that in acquiring faith it is a kind of knowledge or enlightenment that is prior. Perhaps sin is, indeed, a malfunction of the will (a misdirection of affection); perhaps this malfunction is, indeed, what is repaired with regeneration; but perhaps the way this repair is effected is by way of being granted a certain kind of knowledge or enlightenment. It can be both that sin is fundamentally malfunction or dysfunction of the will, and that what comes first in regeneration is a certain understanding or insight. Then revealing would be prior to sealing, with respect to faith, even though what needs repair is, at bottom, will rather than intellect. Sometimes Edwards seems to suggest that neither intellect nor will is prior: Spiritual understanding consists primarily in a sense of heart of that spiritual beauty. I say, a sense of heart; for it is not speculation merely that is concerned in this kind of understanding: nor can there be a clear distinction made between the two faculties of understanding and will, as acting distinctly and separately, in this matter. When the mind is sensible of the sweet beauty and amiableness of a thing, that implies a sensibleness of sweetness and delight in the presence of the idea of it; and this sensibleness of the amiableness or delightfulness of beauty, carries in the very nature of it, the sense of the heart; or an effect and impression the soul is the subject of, as a substance possessed of taste, inclination and will. (p. 272) If there is no clear distinction between the two, then clearly neither is prior to the other. Even in this passage, however, it looks as if, according to Edwards, intellect really is prior. He speaks here of "a sense of heart"; that sounds like affection, but I think appearances are deceiving. To see how, we must note one further characteristic Edwardsian idea: that upon conversion and regeneration the believer acquires a "new simple idea." She thus acquires the ability to perceive something she wasn't able to perceive before. She can now perceive the beauty and amiability of the Lord, something she was unable to do prior to conversion. This ability involves a new phenomenology, one not available to "natural men": For if there be in the saints a kind of apprehension or perception, which is in its nature, perfectly diverse from all that natural men have, or that it is possible they should have, till they have a new nature; it must consist in their having a certain kind of ideas or sensations of mind, which are simply diverse from all that is or can be in the minds of natural men. And that is the same thing as to say, that it consists in the sensations of a new spiritual sense. (p. 271) Here Edwards speaks the epistemological language of the mid-eighteenth century. Knowledge or cognition involves mental entities Locke calls ideas' and Hume impressions and ideas'. These are on the order of mental images, like bits of visual or auditory imagery or other sensuous imagery. The details of the process, as the British empiricists thought of it, need not concern us now (and in any event are incoherent). But (to take an Edwardsian example) think of the taste of honey. You know what honey tastes like, and that knowledge crucially involves a certain kind of phenomenology. You wouldn't know what honey tastes like unless you actually tasted it (or in some other way experienced that taste). You can't have knowledge (more exactly, sensible knowledge) of the taste of honey or of its sweetness, without undergoing that phenomenology--without having that simple idea (as Edwards would think of it). There is a certain kind of experience that normally goes with seeing something red, and there is a certain kind of knowledge, namely, knowledge of what it's like to see something red, that you aren't able to have unless you have that experience. (Maybe this experience is a little like hearing the sound of a trumpet; still, that kind of analogy can take us only so far.) One who has never tasted sweetness or perceived red can know a good deal about the sweetness of honey and the look of something red (e.g., that both are experienced by many people, that people find the first pleasant and the second mildly exciting); there is also something she doesn't know, namely, what honey tastes like and what a sunset looks like. Now according to Edwards, one kind of experiential knowledge is spiritual knowledge; more exactly, there is such a thing as spiritual knowledge, and spiritual knowledge is experiential knowledge. This is knowledge of God's moral' qualities, as Edwards puts it--knowledge of his holiness, loveliness, beauty, glory, and amiability. Like knowledge of the taste and sweetness of honey, this knowledge requires that one have a certain characteristic phenomenal imagery, "a certain kind of ideas or sensations of mind," as he puts it. This is a new idea and a new simple idea. It is simple, first, because (unlike the image of a house, say) it is not compounded out of other ideas. And it is new in the sense that it is not available to "natural men"; it is available only to those in whom the process of regeneration has begun. In the fall into sin, Edwards thinks, we human beings lost a certain cognitive ability: the ability to apprehend God's moral qualities. With conversion comes regeneration; part of the latter is the regeneration (to a greater or lesser extent) of this cognitive ability to grasp or apprehend the beauty, sweetness, amiability of the Lord himself and of the whole scheme of salvation. And it is just this cognitive ability that involves that new simple idea. There is little to say by way of describing this new experience except to say that it is the experience of God's moral qualities; and one who doesn't have this new simple idea--one in whom the cognitive process in question has not been regenerated--doesn't have spiritual knowledge of God's beauty and loveliness. [382] Such a person may know, in a way, that God is beautiful and lovely (perhaps she takes this on the authority of someone else), but there is a kind of knowledge of this loveliness she doesn't have (experiential knowledge), and it is precisely this kind of knowledge that is the spiritual knowledge of which Edwards speaks. Spiritual knowledge is experiential knowledge, and a necessary condition of having the latter is having the right phenomenology, the right imagery, the new simple idea. I spoke of a cognitive ability, the ability to grasp and apprehend the beauty and sweetness and amiability of the Lord and of the great things of the gospel. Edwards constantly uses more specific language, the language of perception. One in whom the process of regeneration has reached a certain point can see the beauty of the Lord, taste his sweetness, feel his presence. I believe Edwards thinks these uses of the terms see', taste', and feel' are figurative or (better) analogical. On the other hand he thinks the term perceive' is being used perfectly literally, and in the same sense in which it is used when we speak of sight and hearing, taste and touch as perception. This ability to apprehend the beauty and glory of the Lord is in fact a perceptual ability. One may know that the Lord is, indeed, beautiful and glorious; there is also the different condition of perceiving that the Lord is beautiful and glorious. Here Edwards appeals to the language of Scripture, which often represents regeneration as a matter of giving eyes to see, ears to hear, unstopping the ears of the deaf, opening the eyes of the blind. It is important to see that Edwards thinks of these properties--beauty, glory, holiness, as well as love and benevolence--as genuine and objective properties, genuinely inhering in God. It isn't that beauty is really a subjective reaction on our part to something or other; rather, there is the property the Lord has of being beautiful; we grasp or apprehend that property and that the Lord has it; and a necessary condition of so doing is undergoing a certain kind of phenomenology. And of course this precisely mirrors the situation with respect to sensory perception. [383] Edwards believes we perceive these moral qualities of God; and I believe that Edwards's views here are, at the least, plausible. I don't propose to canvass the objections to perception of God, however, or defend its plausibility. That is because this has already been done in fine style by William Alston. [384] Alston shows that none of the objections to perception of God--that only material objects can be perceived (and God isn't a material object), that there aren't the right kinds of tests and measurements, that we can't demonstrate that the alleged perception is veridical and hence really perception, that not everyone has this alleged ability, that people disagree as to what it is that they (as they take it) perceive of God, and all the rest--Alston clearly shows that none of these objections is anywhere nearly cogent. He also develops a powerful generic account of perception according to which perception of God is perfectly possible. If indeed there is such a person as God, there is no reason why he couldn't have endowed us, his creation and his children, with the ability to perceive him and to perceive that he has certain properties. We can now return to the question that occasioned this detour: according to Edwards, which comes first, affection or intellection? Love for God or knowledge of God? I think Edwards's answer is that it is knowledge. I think he thinks that one first perceives the beauty and loveliness of the Lord, first comes to this experiential knowledge, and then comes to develop the right loves and hates: love for the Lord, for the great truths of the gospel, hatred for sin: "all gracious affections do arise from some instruction or enlightening of the understanding"; "Gracious affections do arise from the mind's being enlightened, rightly and spiritually to understand or apprehend divine things." What he means here, I think, is that this experiential knowledge of God and his qualities comes first; then there is a consequent raising of affections. "Truly spiritual and gracious affections . . . arise from . . . some new view of Christ in his spiritual excellencies and fullness." His idea, I think, is that the regenerated person perceives the beauty and loveliness of the Lord and of the great things of the gospel and then, naturally enough, comes to love them. It is the perceiving that comes first; in this respect, therefore, intellect is prior to will. Is Edwards right? Is it really true that intellect precedes will, that knowledge precedes love in this case? The question divides itself. We may think of the structure of intellect and will as follows. There are various dependency relations among the acts of intellect and will, of such a sort that certain intellectual acts (acts of cognition) are necessary conditions for certain acts of will. Any given act of will could be basic in the sense that it doesn't depend on any prior act of intellect, and any given act of intellect could be basic in the sense that it doesn't depend on any prior act of will. Perhaps one can't love God without first seeing that he is, indeed, lovely and attractive; if so, then no act of loving God will be basic in the present sense. On the other hand, perhaps certain affective acts do not depend on any prior acts of intellection; if so, those acts will be basic. What is the relevant sense of dependency involved? I suggest that it is a matter of design plan: an act of will is dependent, for a creature S, on a certain act of intellect if and only if S's design plan specifies that S will engage in the act of will in question only consequent upon engaging in the kind of act of intellect in question. [385] Given these preliminaries, it is evident that there are several different ways to take the claim that intellect precedes will here. It might be claimed only that (1) For any affective act of will, there is at least one kind of act of intellect upon which it is dependent, and some acts of intellect are not dependent on any act of will. By way of illustration, perhaps no one who is functioning properly comes to love God without first seeing, knowing, that God is indeed lovely and attractive (and perhaps that latter cognitive act must involve Edwards's experiential knowledge); but perhaps that cognitive, intellective act of knowing that God is lovely and attractive is not dependent on any (affective) act of will. One comes to see that God is lovely and then (and therefore) loves him. This is quite compatible with there being some acts of intellect that are dependent on acts of will; it requires only that there also be some that are not. So it might be held, more strenuously, that (2) For every (affective) act of will, there is a prior act of intellect on which it is dependent, and for no act of intellect is there a prior act of will on which it is dependent. It isn't easy to see which (if either) of these Edwards means to assert. And perhaps, indeed, he means to assert neither; perhaps he is thinking just of religious affections and the characteristic acts of intellect associated with them. Perhaps he means to claim only that the religious affections depend on a preceding (or concomitant) grasp or perception of some of the qualities of God, although it is not the case that perception of God's moral qualities is dependent on a prior affection. Perhaps he means to say that, in the process of regeneration, what happens first is that the Holy Spirit enables one to perceive something of God's moral qualities; this then (according to the normal working of the design plan) raises one's religious affections. He is committed to this much, but perhaps to nothing stronger. Still, even this much is too strong. In the state of sin, we are inclined to be indisposed to God and neighbor; this is the essence of our sinful condition. The real problem, then, is a matter of will. It isn't merely that we fail to see the beauty of the Lord and the lovableness of our brothers and sisters, thus failing to love them. Mere absence of the right affections is only part of the problem; there is also the fact that we are inclined to be resentful and dismissive toward the Lord and competitive and self-serving with respect to other people. What is required here isn't, first of all, more knowledge. Given our sinful inclinations to hate God and neighbor, we might perceive God's moral qualities and nonetheless continue to hold him at arm's length, refusing to love him--perhaps thus being in an even worse condition than when his presence was obscured by the smoke of our wrongdoing (Anselm) and we hated him, as it were, from afar. Edwards might retort that one simply can't perceive the moral qualities of God and fail to love him, to be attracted by him, to find him marvelously delightful and fascinating. This is dubious at best. No doubt one whose affective capacities or faculties are functioning properly will love the Lord on perceiving his loveliness, glory, and beauty; no doubt such a person will find him delightful. Conversely, consider someone who did perceive God's beauty and glory but was nonetheless put off by him: such a person would be malfunctioning in some way. (A person who saw God's beauty but didn't love him wouldn't, perhaps, describe God as beautiful (although he might describe him as terrible and fascinating, as a bird, transfixed by terror, might describe a snake, or a mariner the horrifying beauty and power of a storm that threatens his life); it doesn't follow that he doesn't, in fact, perceive that beauty.) When intellect and will function properly and are appropriately tuned to each other, we will delight in what we see to be delightful, love what we see to be amiable. [386] A chief component of sin, however, just is dysfunction of the affections; and there is no good reason to think someone suffering from a mad misdirection of affection couldn't be put off by what he saw to be beautiful. Curing the cognitive effects of sin doesn't automatically cure the affective madness. The gift of faith and consequent regeneration isn't just a matter of restoring the intellect to a pristine condition in which we can once again perceive God and his glories and beauties; it also, and essentially, requires curing that madness of the will. So which is primary in faith and regeneration: intellect or will? I say neither. Sin is a malfunction of the will, a skewing of affections; it is loving and hating the wrong things. Still, it also involves blindness, an inability to see the glory and beauty of the Lord. The answer to the question which is prior?' is neither' or there's no saying'. Regeneration is a matter of curing both intellectual and affective disorders. The structure of will and intellect here is perhaps a spiral, dialectical process: heightened affections enable us to see more of God's beauty and glory; being able to see more of God's beauty and glory and majesty in turn leads to heightened affections. There are certain things you won't know unless you love, have the right affections; there are certain affections you won't have without perceiving some of God's moral qualities; neither perceiving nor affection can be said to be prior to the other. Regeneration consists in curing the will, so that we at least begin to love and hate the right things; it also includes cognitive renewal, so that we come to perceive the beauty, holiness, and delightfulness of the Lord and of the scheme of salvation he has devised. __________________________________________________________________ [381] Though of course I don't mean to suggest for a moment that an affection is simply a feeling of some sort, as if it had no intentional component. [382] According to Edwards, those who have the requisite experience and enjoy the requisite phenomenology note that previous to this experience they hadn't really understood such phrases as a spiritual sight of Christ'; these terms had not conveyed "those special and distinct ideas to their minds which they were intended to signify; in some respects no more than the names of colors are to convey the ideas to one that is blind from birth" (The Great Awakening, ed. C. C. Goen [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972], p. 174). [383] For an insightful account of Edwards's sense of the heart (with extensive and useful quotations from Edwards's works), see William Wainwright's "Jonathan Edwards and the Sense of the Heart," Faith and Philosophy 7, no. 1 (January 1990). [384] Perceiving God (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991). See also my reply in chapter 10 to Richard Gale's suggestion that perception of God is not possible. [385] Of course there are other kinds of dependency; we could call the variety currently under discussion design plan dependency'. For present purposes I'm thinking of design plan dependency as including logical and causal dependency; thus, if a given act of will's (intellect's) occurring entails or causally necessitates a given act of intellect's (will's) occurring, the former act will be design-plan-dependent on the latter. [386] As I see it, therefore, there are such properties as being delightful, desirable, beautiful, and the like; there is also the cognitive condition of noting that something is delightful, desirable, or beautiful; in addition, there is the affective condition of delighting in the thing in question, or desiring it, or admiring and being drawn to its beauty. I believe Edwards concurs. __________________________________________________________________ B. The Affirmations of Faith So far we have been speaking of perception of God, religious affections, and relations between them. Now we turn to a different though related question: how is it, according to Edwards, that we come to believe what he calls the great things of the gospel--trinity, incarnation, atonement, and so on? It is one thing to perceive the glory and beauty of the Lord and something quite different to know that Jesus Christ was, in fact, the divine son of God who took on human flesh, and suffered and died, thereby atoning for human sin. Do we also perceive the latter? No. Edwards doesn't believe that we perceive the great truths of the gospel; we do not perceive such qualities of the Lord as that he loved us so much that he sent his only begotten son to suffer and die, thus enabling us to have life. A certain sort of perception may be involved in our coming to know these things, but we don't perceive these things themselves: A view of this divine glory directly convinces the mind of the divinity of these things, as this glory is in itself a direct, clear and all-conquering evidence of it. . . . He that has his judgment thus directly convinced and assured of the divinity of the things of the gospel, by a clear view of their divine glory, has a reasonable conviction; his belief and assurance is altogether agreeable to reason; because the divine glory and beauty of divine things is in itself, real evidence of their divinity, and the most direct and strong evidence. He that truly sees the divine, transcendent, supreme glory of these things which are divine, does as it were know their divinity intuitively; he not only argues that they are divine, but he sees that they are divine; he sees that in them wherein divinity chiefly consists. (p. 298) There are two ways of understanding this and similar passages. On the one hand, Edwards might think the believer perceives the divine glory and beauty of the things of the gospel, and then infers from that, in a quick argument, that they are indeed divine, from God, and hence are to be believed. On the other hand, the account could be that the believer sees the loveliness and beauty--divine beauty--of the things of the gospel, and consequently and immediately forms the beliefs that these things are true and that they are from God. The difference would be that, in the first case, there is an inference, perhaps so quick and inexplicit that one scarcely notices it, but an inference nonetheless. Then the internal instigation of the Holy Spirit would work as follows: the Holy Spirit enables the believer to see the glory and beauty of the gospel, whereupon she infers that they are in fact divine and hence to be believed. The "real evidence" Edwards mentions would be propositional evidence: it would be such propositions as this (one of the gospel teachings) is glorious and beautiful; and the conclusion would be this teaching is from God (and hence true). On the second construal, a perception of the glory and beauty of the teaching in question would be an occasion of the formation of the belief that the teaching is indeed from God (and is true), but the transition from the one to the other would not be by way of an inference. The belief in question would be held in the basic way, although occasioned by the perception of something else (the beauty and glory of the teaching in question). This second way would resemble the way in which (as I see it) Calvin thinks the sensus divinitatis operates. It isn't that upon beholding the glory of the mountains or the majesty of the ocean one infers that there is such a person as God who has created it; rather, the perception of the mountains or ocean (or one's own sin, or danger, or . . . ) is the occasion of the formation of the belief about God in question. On this construal, the "real evidence" in question wouldn't be propositional evidence functioning as premise for an inference. It would rather be something else that makes the belief in question evident--that is, something else that plays the appropriate role in the belief's having warrant for one. It would be like the role played by perception of someone else's facial expression in coming to the warranted belief that she is angry or depressed or delighted: again, even if I don't infer the latter from the former, the former is still my evidence for the latter in the sense that the former is (part of) what makes the latter evident (warranted) for me. Under the second construal, there are again two ways things could go. It could be that perception of the beauty and delightfulness of the great things of the gospel directly and without intermediary occasions the formation of the relevant belief. Then again, it could be that the Holy Spirit enables the believer to perceive that beauty and delightfulness and also enables her to make the right affective response of delight, admiration, and love: and it is that affective response which is the immediate occasion of the belief in question. You see that the great things of the gospel are glorious and beautiful; you find them winsome, delightful, and attractive; so you believe them. If things went this second way, then with respect to the formation of belief in the great things of the gospel, will (affection) would precede intellect. Which of these is the truth of the matter? What does Edwards think: is there or isn't there a quick inference involved? It's not easy to tell, and indeed perhaps he thinks the belief is formed both ways at once: "he not only argues that they are divine, but he sees that they are divine." I think the second position (according to which perception of the beauty of one of the great things of the gospel is a direct or indirect occasion of the formation of the belief that it is indeed true, not a premise of an inference whose conclusion is that belief) is the stronger. That is because the alleged inference in question seems dubious, questionable--just as would be an inference to the proposition that the sun is shining on the oaks from propositions reporting how I am now being appeared to. On the other hand, there need be nothing dubious or questionable about a process in which perception of the beauty and glory of that teaching is an occasion (direct or indirect) for the belief that it is true. Or is there something dubious here? Would it be somehow irrational to form a belief B as a response just to the perception that B is attractive and beautiful, or to the fact that you delight in the thought that B, that you have a certain affective response to B? Wouldn't this be like the cases we noted earlier on (above, pp. 149ff.) in which noncognitive or nonintellectual features of a cognitive situation can influence belief formation, thus impeding cognitive proper function? I don't think so. It needn't be the case that wherever there is influence of this sort--that is, from nonintellectual factors--what you have is impedance: perhaps the design plan calls for just this sort of belief formation, and perhaps the relevant part of the design plan is successfully aimed at true belief. According to the physicist Steven Weinberg, scientists often accept a view or a theory not (or not only) because there is good evidence for it, but because it is beautiful: Nevertheless, despite the weakness of the early experimental evidence for general relativity, Einstein's theory became the standard textbook theory of gravitation in the 1920s and retained that position from then on, even while the various eclipse expeditions of the 1920s and 1930s were reporting at best equivocal evidence for the theory. I remember that, when I learned general relativity in the 1950s, before modern radar and radio astronomy began to give impressive new evidence for the theory, I took it for granted that general relativity was more or less correct. Perhaps all of us were just gullible and lucky, but I do not think that is the real explanation. I believe that the general acceptance of general relativity was due in large part to the attractions of the theory itself--in short, to its beauty. [387] Here we have the same three possibilities: (a) Weinberg argued to the truth of general relativity, employing as a premise the proposition that the theory is beautiful (more exactly, displays a certain hard-to-specify kind of beauty or aesthetic appeal), or (b) Weinberg's perception of the beauty of the theory was the direct occasion of his belief that it is true, or (c) Weinberg's perception of the beauty was the direct occasion of an affective response of admiration, attraction, and delight, that affective response then occasioning belief. [388] There need be nothing irrational here, and won't be, if in fact this sort of belief formation is in accord with a part of our cognitive design plan, which is successfully aimed at the formation of true belief. Similarly with the great things of the gospel. We can also compare the second Edwardsian construal with Augustine's famous dictum: "Our hearts are restless till they rest in you, O Lord." [389] Perhaps this restlessness without God leads to belief in God; and perhaps God has designed us in this way to impel us to try to get in touch with him. If either Edwards or Augustine is right, the process by which belief (in God, or in the great things of the gospel) arises in us would be a little like the way in which Freud thinks theistic belief arises. According to Freud (see above, chapter 5), religious belief arises out of wishful thinking: we see that the world is cold, cruel, heedless of us and our needs and desires, hostile, unthinking, and all the rest; we respond by forming a belief in a heavenly father who loves us and is actually in control of the world. The difference would be, of course, that according to Freud this process of belief formation does not have the production of true belief as its purpose, but rather the production of belief with some other property--that of enabling us to cope with the cold, cruel world into which, as our continental cousins say, we have been geworfen. If Augustine or Edwards is right, however, the processes leading to the formation of the beliefs in question are directed to the truth: the relevant module of the design plan has as its purpose the production of true belief, even if it goes by way of perception of beauty or wish-fulfillment. Indeed, there is a connection between belief and perception of beauty (and similar qualities) that goes much deeper than Weinberg suggests. As Leibniz and many since have noted, there are ordinarily many different theories or beliefs compatible with our evidence. If we plot our data on Cartesian coordinates, we will be able to draw as many lines as we please through the points we plot, and we could project any of the appropriately related hypotheses. All emeralds so far examined have been green; if so, however, they have also all been grue, where an emerald is grue if either it is examined before 2050 a.d. (bringing Goodman up to date) and is found to be green, or is not so examined and is blue. [390] So (instead of projecting that all emeralds are green) we could project that all emeralds are grue, thus concluding that emeralds not observed before 2050 are blue. The sun has come up every morning so far; we form the belief that it comes up every day and will also come up tomorrow. We could have formed quite a different belief, however: where T is today, we could have formed the belief that the sun comes up every day prior to T and never after T. Why do we accept the hypotheses we do; why do we project green rather than grue, and the hypothesis that the sun will continue to come up rather than the one according to which it won't? Why do we project simple hypotheses rather than complex ones? Not because we have evidence that simpler hypotheses are more likely to be correct than complex ones; for, for any alleged evidence for this conclusion, there will be a more complex inference from the same data for the denial of this conclusion. So why do we do it? Because we find simple beliefs (whatever precisely simplicity is) more natural and more attractive than complex beliefs. Only a madman would project grue or its partner in crime, bleen. [391] Messy, complex beliefs are ugly, disgusting, weird, repellent: we dislike them and therefore reject them. We may hope that the world is in fact such that simplicity (at least simplicity of a certain sort and in certain areas) is a mark of truth; but we have no hope whatever of establishing that in a way that doesn't already rely upon simplicity. For suppose we note that in the last one thousand cases the simplest hypothesis has turned out to be true. Where t is the present, say that a belief is simplex' if it is formed before t and simple, or after t and complex; what we will have observed, so far, is that simplex beliefs tend to be true. But that means that from now on we should go for complex beliefs. How shall we think of these things in the model? There are the three Edwardsian possibilities: it could be that there is a quick inference from the beauty and glory of the gospel to its truth; it could be that such belief is uninferred, but directly consequent, according to the design plan, upon perception of the beauty and glory of the gospel; and it could be that perception of the beauty of the gospel induces admiration and delight, which induces belief. We need not choose among them. There is that affective response, there is the perception of beauty and glory, and there is the belief; it is no part of the model to say which, if any, is prior to which. __________________________________________________________________ [387] Dream of a Final Theory (New York: Pantheon, 1992), p. 98. See also P. Dirac, The Development of Quantum Theory (New York: Gordon and Breach, 1971), pp. 30-37; speaking of some of De Broglie's work, he says, "This connection of De Broglie's was very beautiful mathematically and was in agreement with the theory of relativity. It was very mysterious, but because of its mathematical beauty one felt that there must be some deep connection between the waves and the particles illustrated by this mathematics." [388] Ironically enough, Weinberg also argues (more exactly, asserts) that religious beliefs arrived at by way of experience are really formed by wishful thinking, completely failing to note the parallel with his idea that scientific beliefs are sometimes accepted because of their beauty. [389] Confessions. See here George Herbert's poem "The Pulley" in The Poetical Works of George Herbert, with life, critical dissertation, and explanatory notes by the Rev. George Gilfillan (Edinburgh: James Nichol, 1853), p. 167. [390] See Nelson Goodman, Fact, Fiction and Forecast (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1955; reprint, Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1973), p. 74 in the 1973 edition; and see the corrected version of the paradox in Problems and Projects (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1972), p. 359. See also Warrant and Proper Function, pp. 128ff. [391] Where, as you expect, x is bleen if either it is examined before 2050 a.d. and is found to be blue, or is not so examined and green. __________________________________________________________________ [380] A Treatise concerning Religious Affections, ed. John E. Smith (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959 [first published 1746]), p. 95. Page references to Religious Affections are to this edition. __________________________________________________________________ III. Analogue of Warrant We should note the deep analogies between will and intellect, affection and belief here. Intellect is the province of belief; will, the province of affection. Now when our cognitive faculties function properly, we won't believe just any propositions; we will (ordinarily) believe true propositions. [392] To put the matter in an older terminology, intellect is ordered to truth. Like intellect, however, affection also has an appropriate object--or, rather, the various affections have appropriate objects. When the sources of affection function properly, we will love what is lovable, take delight in what is delightful, and desire what is desirable. We will love God above all and our neighbor as ourselves; we will delight in his beauty and glory, and in created reflections of that beauty and glory; we will desire what is in fact good for us. Here I am assuming the unfashionable view that some individuals and some states of affairs are genuinely and objectively lovable, delightful, and desirable; others are genuinely and objectively hateful, disgusting, and undesirable; still others are none of the above. Delightfulness is not or not just the dispositional property a thing or state of affairs has of tending to produce delight in us; it is, rather, an objective property of an object or state of affairs, one that in no way depends upon human reactions to it. The beauty and delightfulness of a Mozart sonata are objective properties of (tokens of) the pattern of sounds; they aren't just subjective reactions on the part of the listener (or the dispositional properties of being apt for the production of such subjective reactions), although of course if things are going right, there will be such a reaction. (It may be that a thing's delightfulness depends on God's attitude toward it, but that is a very different matter.) Like beliefs, affections can be justified or unjustified--or, rather, I can be justified or unjustified in having a certain affection. [393] Furthermore, affections, like beliefs, can be rational or irrational: if I react to disaster with an amused smile, or love myself above all, or disdain someone because her relatives are poorer than mine, there is lack of proper function. There can also be proper and improper function with respect to the degree of affection, just as with degree of belief. I value a silly little ditty from a cigar commercial ("Man to man with a RoiTan! Man to man with a RoiTan cigar!") as much as Bach's B Minor Mass: that's a case of affective malfunction. Similarly if you value my good opinion more than God's. Still further, there is an analogue of warrant for affections. A belief has warrant when it is formed by cognitive faculties functioning properly in a congenial epistemic environment (both maxi and mini) according to a design plan successfully aimed at truth. An affection can have an analogous property. As we have already seen, it can be produced by faculties functioning properly or not. The environmental condition is equally obvious. On some distant planet, there could be a gas that causes human beings to react to disaster with a silly giggle or an indifferent shrug, or to become furiously angry for no reason at all. The right kind of affective environment (for us) will be one where, given our design plan, we will form the right affective responses. What about the last two conditions for warrant: (1) the faculty in question being such that it is aimed at the production of true beliefs, and (2) the design plan's being a good one? As to the first, again, there are clear analogues. It could be that a specific form of affection is aimed, not at our valuing something that is genuinely valuable, but at something else--at the continuation of the species, or survival, or whatever. An affection (or an instance of an affection) has the analogue of warrant only if it is produced by a process that isn't aimed at the production of affections with any of those properties, but instead at the production of affection that is appropriate to its object: valuing or loving or desiring what is valuable or lovable or desirable. The last condition for warrant is that the production of the belief be governed by a design plan that is good in the sense that there is a high objective probability that a belief formed in such a way as to satisfy the first three conditions will be true. Again, there is a clear analogue in the case of affection: the design plan governing the production of the affections is a good one just if, for example, it is objectively likely that a given instance of desire will be for something desirable and a given instance of hate will be of something hateful (given the satisfaction of the other three conditions). [394] __________________________________________________________________ [392] And, of course, not just any true propositions, but ones appropriate to the circumstances. I meet you at a party; you tell me you live in Omaha; I form the belief that you live there, rather than, say, the true belief that you were born in Cleveland or that Caesar crossed the Rubicon. [393] Furthermore, affection, like belief, is not within our direct control; for example, I can't just by willing to do so, take the right attitude toward someone who has wronged or offended me. But also affection, again like belief, is to some extent within our indirect control; one can train oneself not to be so sensitive to slights, to see (and feel) them as unimportant. One can fight against pride and self-centeredness, and sometimes achieve partial success. [394] Is there an analogue of the Gettier problem for affections? I leave this problem for homework, only reminding the reader that the essence of Gettier situations is the "resolution problem": the fact that cognitive minienvironments can be misleading, even if embedded in maxienvironments apt for our style of cognitive faculties (above, pp. 158ff.). __________________________________________________________________ IV. Eros Conversion, therefore, is fundamentally a turning of the will, a healing of the disorder of affection that afflicts us. It is a turning away from love of self, from thinking of oneself as the chief being of the universe, to love of God. But what is this love of God like, and how shall we understand it? William James, that cultured, sophisticated New England Victorian gentleman, notes the throbbing elements of longing, yearning, desire, eros in the writings of Teresa of Avila, looks down his cultivated nose, and finds all that a bit, well, tasteless, a bit declassé. Sniffs James, "in the main her idea of religion seems to have been that of an endless amatory flirtation . . . between the devotee and the deity." [395] Here the joke is on James. There is an intimate and long-standing connection between eros and developed spirituality. The Bible is full of expressions of that longing, yearning, Sehnsucht, desire; the Hebrew word for knowledge, as in knowledge of God, is also a word for sexual intercourse; [396] and when the children of Israel are unfaithful, turning aside to false gods, this is represented as adultery. The Psalms are particularly rich in such expressions of eros: My soul yearns, even faints for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God. (Psalm 84:2) Oh God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you. (Psalm 63:1) One thing have I desired of the Lord, that I will seek after; that I . . . behold the beauty of the Lord. (Psalm 27:4) As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. (Psalm 42:1-2) I open my mouth and pant, longing for your commands. (Psalm 119:131) This love for God isn't like, say, an inclination to spend the afternoon organizing your stamp collection. It is longing, filled with desire and yearning; and it is physical as well as spiritual: "my body longs for you, my soul pants for you." It is erotic; and one of the closest analogues would be with sexual eros. There is a powerful desire for union with God, the oneness Christ refers to in John 17. Another perhaps equally close analogue would be love between parent and small child; and this kind of love too is often employed in Scripture as a figure for love of God--both God's love for us and ours for him. Here too, of course, there is longing, yearning, desire for closeness, though not sexual longing; think of the longing in the homesickness of an eight-year-old or in the love of a mother for her hurt and suffering child. Of course expressions of this eros are not found only in the Psalms. In Isaiah, we read, "I will rejoice over Jerusalem and take delight in my people" (65:19); "As a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so will your God rejoice over you" (62:5b). This implies, I take it, not merely that God will rejoice over his people the way a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, but that the bride will return this love; when things go properly, God's people love him the way a bride loves her new husband, with a similar sort of erotic desire. Then there is the Song of Songs, with its intensely erotic imagery, imagery the church has all along taken to be a picture of the love between Christ and his church: I belong to my lover, and his desire is for me. Come, my lover, let us go to the countryside, let us spend the night in the villages. Let us go early to the vineyards to see if the vines have budded, if their blossoms have opened, and if the pomegranates are in bloom--there I will give you my love. (7:10-12) In the New Testament, the relationship between Christ and his church is repeatedly compared to that between husband and wife: He who loves his wife loves himself. For no man ever hates his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. "For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh" [Genesis 2:24]. This mystery is a profound one, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. (Ephesians 5:28b-32). Christians over the centuries have echoed these expressions. Thus Augustine: Late it was that I loved you, beauty so ancient and so new, late I loved you! . . . You called, you cried out, you shattered my deafness: you flashed, you shone, you scattered my blindness: you breathed perfume, and I drew in my breath and I pant for you: I tasted, and I am hungry and thirsty: you touched me, and I burned for your peace. [397] The great mystical masters of the spiritual life, furthermore, speak in similarly erotic terms: And although the attractions by which God draws us be admirably pleasing, sweet and delicious, yet on account of the force which the divine beauty and goodness have to draw unto them the attention and application of the spirit, it seems that it not only raises us but that it ravishes and bears us away. As, on the contrary, by reason of the most free consent and ardent motion, by which the ravished soul goes out after the divine attractions, she seems not only to mount and rise, but also to break out of herself and cast herself into the very divinity. [398] It isn't only the great mystics who have this sort of experience: as I turned and was about to take a seat by the fire, I received a mighty baptism of the Holy Ghost . . . the Holy Spirit descended upon me in a manner that seemed to go through me, body and soul. I could feel the impression, like a wave of electricity, going through and through me. Indeed, it seemed to come in waves and waves of liquid love; for I could not express it in any other way. [399] Even (and perhaps especially) the Puritans, dour and emotionally pinched as they are often represented, are full of expressions of erotic love of God. There is of course Jonathan Edwards; but he was by no means alone. Thus Henry Scougal: when once the soul is fixed on that supreme and all sufficient good, it finds so much perfection and goodness as does not only answer and satisfy its affection, but master and overpower it too: it finds all its love to be too faint and languid for such a noble objection, and is only sorry that it can command no more. It . . . longs for the time when it shall be wholly melted and dissolved into love. [400] What an infinite pleasure must it needs be, thus, as it were, to lose ourselves in him, and being swallowed up in the overcoming sense of his goodness, to offer ourselves a living sacrifice always ascending unto him in flames of love. [401] Amy Plantinga Pauw notes that The joy between Christ and the saints is described by such a staid figure as Samuel Willard in frankly erotic terms: "We shall then dwell at the Fountain of his Love, and the reciprocal ardours of Affection between him and us, shall break over all Banks and Bounds, and we shall be entirely satisfied, both in Soul and in Body." [402] What is to be made of this erotic love of God, this yearning, longing, desire, and its apparent fulfillment in some kind of ardent union between "the devotee and the deity"? This phenomenon comes in all grades of intensity: there is the full-blown, breathtaking, overpowering scenario de Sales points to, but also the much quieter and more restrained movement of the heart toward God on the part of one who gives thanks for a glorious June morning, or who for one brief moment sees the glory and beauty of the Christian story and feels a pang of attraction deeper than gratitude; and there is every degree between these two. What is to be made of this phenomenon? Most psychiatric literature has tended to follow Freud in understanding religion as a kind of neurosis, the "universal obsessional neurosis of humanity." [403] From this point of view, religious eros is to be understood as a kind of analogue, displacement, or sublimation of (broadly) sexual energy (presumably on the part of those who have little by way of the more conventional sexual outlets). What is it for sexual energy to be sublimated in art, or poetry, or love of God? The idea is that there is some finite store of energy whose natural' use or outlet is sexual; this energy can somehow be diverted into other channels, perhaps especially if the natural channels aren't available. (There is also the suggestion that these other channels are socially somehow more respectable.) The person in whom the sublimation occurs, of course, is not aware of this origin of what he thinks of as his higher feelings and desires. (Here there is more of that unmasking for which Freud is famous.) We might stop to try to understand this claim more fully: what is this energy' like, and what does it mean to say that it gets pointed in some other direction, and why would energy be diverted in this fashion? And isn't the whole claim really metaphorical (sublimation', energy', diversion', etc., are all used metaphorically here), and, if so, what is it a metaphor for? Is there any way to give a literal statement of the theory? Let's not tarry over those questions, however, and pretend we have a reasonably good grasp of the alleged theory: is there any reason to believe it? Here I think things stand as with Freud's account of religious belief as wish-fulfillment (chapter 5). We are confronted with a question: how is it that some people display this ardent desire and love for God? One sort of answer would be: "Well, God himself, according to Scripture and Christian belief, is essentially love; union with him is also the chief end of us human beings; it is therefore no surprise that he would create us in such a way that we have a deep desire for union with him, even if that desire has been partly suppressed and effaced by sin." But suppose you think there is no God and that Christian (and other) theism is an illusion (and delusion) of some kind: then how does it happen that many of us display this love for God? I take it Freud's suggestion is an answer to that question, or to that question with that presupposition. The answer is supposed to help us understand what would otherwise be (from that atheistic perspective) a puzzling phenomenon. The proposed explanation is that there is the natural, unsurprising, well-established phenomenon of sexual energy; we then imagine that this energy (for one reason or another) gets diverted' (in those deprived of the natural outlets) into another direction, a direction that may have some psychological function. In this way, we come to understand erotic love for God. Like his account of theistic belief as wish-fulfillment, this account (assuming we can make real sense of it) is of the sort that is vastly more likely to be true if theism is false than if it is true. It is, of course, possible that something like it is true, even if theism is true too. Even if theism is true, it is possible that (due, e.g., to sin) there is something like a drying up of the natural sources of love of God, and a sort of makeshift interim arrangement whereby sexual energy is commandeered for this purpose. Perhaps it is even possible that we were originally designed, in the unfallen state, in such a way that it was sexual energy that was somehow diverted and used in this other fashion--that is, for love of God (although, if that was part of the original human design plan, why call the energy in question sexual'?). These things are possible, though not likely (given theism or Christianity). Even if they were true, however, there would remain an important difference: from the Christian or theistic perspective, this system or set of systems would have been designed or redesigned with love of God as its aim or end: that is what it would be for. Not so, of course, from Freud's perspective. From a Christian perspective, then, here (as often) Freud has things just backwards. It isn't that religious eros, love for God, is really sexual eros gone astray or rechanneled, and it isn't sexual eros (important as it is) that is basic or fundamental, with religious eros somehow derivative from it. The fact is things are just the other way around. It is sexual desire and longing that is a sign of something deeper: it is a sign of this longing, yearning for God that we human beings achieve when we are graciously enabled to reach a certain level of the Christian life. It is love for God that is fundamental or basic, and sexual eros that is the sign or symbol or pointer to something else and something deeper. (Of course I don't mean to say that the importance and worth of sexual eros is exhausted in its being a sign of love of God.) In fact sexual eros points to two deeper realities. First, it points to human love for God, which is a passionate desire for the central condition for which God has designed us. According to the Westminster Catechism, the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. What is this "glorifying God and enjoying him forever"? The first is not fundamentally a matter of telling God how great he is, paying him effusive compliments, metaphysical or otherwise. God is, indeed, great, magnificent, and awe-inspiring beyond description; but he already knows that, and doesn't need to hear it from us, as with someone who is insecure, or whose swollen ego needs constant feeding of this type. More likely, it is a matter of perceiving, noting, appreciating, delighting in, relishing, God's glory and loveliness, his amiability and sweetness--the whole list of divine properties so often mentioned by Jonathan Edwards--and a natural expression of that perception and delight. [404] And the second--"enjoying him forever"--is some kind of union with God, a being united to, at one with him. To quote Samuel Willard again, "We shall then dwell at the Fountain of his Love, and the reciprocal ardours of Affection between him and us, shall break over all Banks and Bounds, and we shall be entirely satisfied, both in Soul and in Body." [405] Sexual eros with its longing and yearning is a sign and foreshadowing of the longing and yearning for God that will characterize us in our healed and renewed state in heaven; and sexual satisfaction and union, with its transports and ecstasy, is a sign and foreshadowing of the deeper reality of union with God--a union that is at present for the most part obscure to us. Bernard Williams seems to believe that heaven would be a bit boring for a person of taste and sensibility; [406] and Michael Levine suggests that friendship with God could be fairly interesting, but doubts that it would be "supremely worthwhile." [407] Perhaps these reactions are as spiritually immature as those of a nine-year-old child on first hearing of the pleasures of sex: could it really match marbles, or chocolate? [408] Of course it isn't only sexual eros that is in this way a sign or symbol of love for God. Sexual eros and love for God are both passionate desires for union, a passionate desire to be united with the object of desire. And there are other manifestations of the same kind of desire for union. Think of the haunting, supernal beauty of the prairie on an early morning in June, or the glorious but slightly menacing aspect of the Cathedral group in the Grand Tetons, or the gleaming splendor of Mount Shuksan and Mount Baker from Skyline Ridge, or the timeless crash and roar of the surf, or the melting sweetness of Mozart's "Dona Nobis Pacem" that can bring hot tears to your eyes, or the incredible grace, beauty, and power of an ice-skating routine or a kickoff returned for ninety-eight yards. In each, there is a kind of yearning, something perhaps a little like nostalgia, or perhaps homesickness, [409] a longing for one knows not what. This longing is different from sexual eros, though no doubt connected with it at a deep level (which is perhaps one of the things Freud did see). In these cases it isn't easy to say with any precision what the longing is a longing for, but it can seem to be for a sort of union: it's as if you want to be absorbed into the music, to become part of the ocean, to be at one with the landscape. You would love to climb that mountain, certainly, but that isn't enough; you also somehow want to become one with it, to become part of it, or to have it, or its beauty, or this particular aspect of it, somehow become part of your very soul. [410] Of course you can't; you remain unsatisfied. Jean-Paul Sartre says that man (and I doubt that he meant to single out just males) is too much, "de trop"; perhaps the truth is more like "not enough." He also says that man is a "useless passion." What he should have said is that man is an unfulfilled passion. When confronted with beauty, it is never enough; we are never really satisfied; there is more beyond, a more that we yearn for, but can only dimly conceive. We are limited to mere fleeting glimpses of the real satisfaction--unfulfilled until filled with the love of God. These longings too are types of longing for God; and the brief but joyous partial fulfillments are a type and foretaste of the fulfillment enjoyed by those who "glorify God and enjoy him forever." Sexual eros points to something deeper in a second way. As we have just seen, it is a sign or type of a deeper reality, a kind of love for God of which we now just have hints and intimations. It is also a sign, symbol, or type of God's love--not just of the love God's children will someday have for him but of the love he also has for them. As we noted above (p. 312), Scripture regularly compares God's love for his people and Christ's love for his church to the love of a groom for his new bride. Now a widely shared traditional view of God has been that he is impassible, without desire or feeling or passion, unable to feel sorrow at the sad condition of his world and the suffering of his children, and equally unable to feel joy, delight, longing, or yearning. The reason for so thinking, roughly, is that in the tradition originating in Greek philosophy, passions were thought of (naturally enough) as passive, something that happens to you, something you undergo, rather than something you actively do. You are subject to anger, love, joy, and all the rest. God, however, is pure act; he doesn't undergo' anything at all; he acts, and is never merely passive; and he isn't subject to anything. As far as eros is concerned, furthermore, there is an additional reason for thinking that it isn't part of God's life: longing and yearning signify need and incompleteness. One who yearns for something doesn't yet have it, and needs it, or at any rate thinks he needs it; God is of course paradigmatically complete and needs nothing beyond himself. How, then, could he be subject to eros? God's love, according to this tradition, is exclusively agape, benevolence, [411] a completely other-regarding, magnanimous love in which there is mercy but no element of desire. God loves us, but there is nothing we can do for him; he wishes nothing from us. On this particular point I think we must take leave of the tradition; this is one of those places where it has paid too much attention to Greek philosophy and too little to the Bible. I believe God can and does suffer; his capacity for suffering exceeds ours in the same measure that his knowledge exceeds ours. Christ's suffering was no charade; he was prepared to endure the agonies of the cross and of hell itself ("My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"). [412] God the Father was prepared to endure the anguish of seeing his Son, the second person of the trinity, consigned to the bitterly cruel and shameful death of the cross. [413] And isn't the same true for other passions? "There is more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent" (Luke 15:7); is God himself to be excluded from this rejoicing? Similarly for eros: "As a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so will your God rejoice over you" (Isaiah 62:5). The bridegroom rejoicing over his bride doesn't love her with a merely agapeic love. He isn't like her benevolent elder brother (although Christ is also said to be our elder brother). He desires and longs for something outside himself, namely union with his beloved. The church is the bride of Christ, not his little sister. He is not her benevolent elder brother, but her husband, lover. These scriptural images imply that God isn't impassive, and that his love for us is not exclusively agapeic. They suggest that God's love for his people involves an erotic element of desire: he desires the right kind of response from us, and union with us, just as we desire union with him. We can take this one step further (and here we may be crossing the boundary into groundless speculation). According to Jonathan Edwards, "The infinite happiness of the Father consists in the enjoyment of His Son." [414] This presumably isn't agape. It doesn't involve an element of mercy, as in his love for us. It is, instead, a matter of God's taking enormous pleasure, enjoyment, delight, happiness, delectation in the Son. Given the necessary existence of the Father and the Son, and their having their most important properties essentially, there is no way in which God could be deprived of the Son; [415] but if (per impossible) he were, it would occasion inconceivable sadness. The love in question is eros, not agape. [416] It is a desire for union that is continually, eternally, and joyfully satisfied. And our being created in his image involves our capacity for eros and for love of what is genuinely lovable, as well as knowledge and agenthood. Accordingly, the eros in our lives is a sign or a symbol of God's erotic love as well. Human erotic love is a sign of something deeper, something so deep that it is uncreated, an original and permanent and necessarily present feature of the universe. Eros undoubtedly characterizes many creatures other than human beings; no doubt much of the living universe shares this characteristic. More important, all of us creatures with eros reflect and partake in this profound divine property. So the most fundamental reality here is the love displayed by and in God: love within the trinity. [417] This love is erotic. It is a matter of perceiving and desiring and enjoying union with something valuable, in this case, Someone of supreme value. And God's love for us is manifested in his generously inviting us into this charmed circle (though not, of course, to ontological equality), thus satisfying the deepest longings of our souls. Within this circle, there is mercy, self-sacrifice, overflowing agape; there is also that longing and delight, that yearning and joy that make up eros. [418] Suppose we use the term human eros' to refer to sexual eros and also to the kinds of longing involved in our experience of beauty, nostalgia, and the like. I say that human eros is a sign, a symbol, a type, a figure, [419] a foreshadowing, both of God's love, and also of spiritually mature human love for God: but exactly what does that mean, and why can't I settle on just one of those five words? To take the easier question first, let's settle on the word type'; human eros is a type of God's love and of love for God. Of course this is just to give it a name: what is that relationship? This is a large and nontrivial question; here I can only try to mention a few of the surface essentials. First, the relation is not symmetrical: human eros is a type of God's love, but God's love is not a type of human eros. Second, the relationship in question is not, of course, the familiar type-token relationship. A horse is a token of the type the horse; an inscription of the word fish' is a token of that word. But sexual eros is not a token of divine love, and divine love is not a token of sexual eros; hence, neither is a token of the other. Third, like the type-token relation and unlike the relation between a word and what it denotes, the type-relationship here is not conventional. The word fish' stands for fish; the relationship between fish' and fish is conventional in the sense that this relationship holds by virtue of the existence of a certain linguistic convention. (Perhaps this relationship goes by way of the convention's establishing a relationship between the word fish' and the property of being a fish, the former expressing the latter.) The relationship between fish' and fish depends on us human beings and what we do; it holds because we (or some of us) have done what it takes to establish the convention whereby the former is a word for the latter. The fish (the type) is also a symbol for Jesus Christ. The connection between the fish and Jesus Christ is also conventional, though in a slightly different way. The former was adopted as a symbol for the latter because of a relation between the Greek word for fish (icthus) and a certain Greek phrase: Iesouz Chriztoz Theou Uikz Soter. The letters of the word, taken in order, are the first letters of the words of that phrase, taken in order. That relationship isn't itself merely conventional; but the relation between the fish and Jesus Christ is, in that it depends essentially upon our treating that type and some of its tokens in a certain conventional way. Not so for the way in which human eros is a type of divine love: this relationship doesn't depend on the establishment of any human conventions. Still, none of this tells us what this relationship is. Perhaps we can make a little progress by considering a biblical example. In Hebrews 8:5, we read that the high priest "serves at a sanctuary that is a copy and shadow of what is in heaven"; and in the next chapter, that "It was necessary, then, for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these sacrifices, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these" (9:23). What is meant here, I take it, is that the earthly sanctuary, the temple, is a type of what is in heaven, whatever exactly it is. The sacrifice of an animal, furthermore, is a type of the sacrifice of Christ, and the animals themselves types of Christ. The relationship here is that there is a certain kind of (sometimes functional) resemblance between the earthly copy and the heavenly exemplar, a relationship that is independent of any human convention. Of course that isn't saying much: any two things resemble each other in indefinitely many ways (and indefinitely many ways independent of human convention); what's at issue here is a relevant relationship, where it is easy to give examples but hard to say what relevance consists in. Perhaps the answer lies in the following area. There are features or properties of God that are very good--that is, features or properties such that exemplifications of them are good. These features would include his love, power, knowledge, mercy, justice, beauty, glory, and the like, and it is by exemplifying these features to the maximal degree that God is supremely good. [420] In creating creatures who are also good, God intends to make them in such a way that they resemble him by virtue of displaying some of these same features. They reflect and recapitulate the features of God in question. Of course there will be enormous differences; God's creatures are finite, created, and conditional, while he himself is infinite, uncreated, and unconditional; the theme in question is, so to say, transposed into another key. [421] Where b is a type of a, therefore, a will be of great value in some respect; b will resemble a in that respect, though b will be of less value than a (hence the asymmetry). Still further, part of what it is for human eros to be a type, a sign, or an analogue of divine love is God's intending to create something that resembles him in the relevant respect, and intending to create it just because it does resemble him in that respect. (The sound made by a deer drinking at a water hole may vaguely resemble the sound made by a very small mountain stream; neither stream nor deer, one thinks, is created because of that relationship.) These things are (I think) necessary; are they also sufficient? I doubt it, but do not know what further condition to add. The fact that human eros is a type of divine love means that this feature of our lives can be explained or understood a certain way. We understand it better, see what it is all about, see what is most important about it, when we see that it is a type or sign of divine love. We see how it fits in with the rest of reality, and how it is connected with what is most real. There are, of course, various evolutionary accounts of erotic love; they center, naturally enough, in the connection of eros with reproduction or, more broadly, with the mechanisms of survival and reproduction. Why do human beings display eros, and what is its significance? From an evolutionary or sociobiological point of view, the answer has to do with how this feature of our nature came to be, bit by bit, in small stages, each stage proving to be fitness inducing (or genetically connected with something fitness inducing). From a Christian perspective, however, things look quite different. The significance of this feature of our lives lies in the fact that displaying it is part of what it is to be created in the image of God; in this way, we human beings share in one of the fundamental properties of the First Being of the universe. The questions Why is it there?' and What's most significant about it?' are to be answered in terms of its being a type of divine love. In sum, then: according to the model, faith is a matter of a sure and certain knowledge, both revealed to the mind and sealed to the heart. This sealing, according to the model, consists in the having of the right sorts of affections; in essence, it consists in loving God above all and one's neighbor as oneself. There is an intimate relation between revealing and sealing, knowledge and affection, intellect and will; they cooperate in a deep and complex and intimate way in the person of faith. And the love involved is, in part, erotic; it involves that longing and yearning with which we are all familiar. Finally, love between human beings--between men and women, between parents and children, among friends--is a sign or type of something deeper: mature human love for God, on the one hand, and, on the other, the love of God displayed both among the members of the trinity and in God's love for his children. __________________________________________________________________ [395] The Varieties of Religious Experience (New York: Longmans, Green, 1902), p. 340. [396] A feature that is retained in the King James translation: "And Adam knew his wife Eve and she conceived and bare Cain" (Genesis 4:1). [397] Confessions, tr. Rex Warner (New York: New American Library, 1963), X, 27, p. 235. [398] Francis of Sales, Treatise on the Love of God, Library of St. Francis de Sales, tr. Henry B. Mackey (London: Burnes and Oates, 1884) Bk. VII, chap. iv, p. 294. See also, for another example among many, Fr. Nouet Conduite de l'homme d'Oraison, Bk. VI in Anton Poulain, The Graces of Interior Prayer, tr. Leonora York Smith (London: Roudedge and Kegan Paul, 1950), p. 111, quoted in William Alston's Perceiving God, p. 54. [399] Quoted (anonymously) in William James, Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 350. [400] The Life of God in the Soul of Man, or, the Nature and Excellency of the Christian Religion (Philadelphia: G. M. and W. Snider, 1827 [first published 1677]), p. 62. [401] Ibid., p. 66. [402] "Edwards on Heaven and the Trinity," Calvin Theological Journal 30, no. 2 (November 1995), pp. 392ff. The quotation from Willard is from A Compleat Body of Divinity (Boston, 1726), sermon 146. See also Abraham Kuyper, To Be near unto God, tr. John Hendrik de Vries (Grand Rapids: W. B. Eerdmans, 1918, 1925), p. 675: "The homesickness goes out after God Himself, until in your soul's transport of love you feel the warmth of his father heart in your own heart. It is not the Name of God, but God Himself Whom your soul desires, and can not do without, God Himself in the outshining of His life; and it is this outshining of His life that must penetrate you and must be assimilated in the blood of your soul." We should also note here some of John Donne's "Holy Sonnets," for example, 14: Batter my heart, three person'd God; for, you As yet but knocke, breathe, shine and seek to mend; That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow mee, and bend Your force, to breake, blowe, burn and make me new. I, like an usurpt towne, to another due, Labour to admit you, but Oh, to no end, Reason your viceroy in mee, mee should defend, But is captiv'd, and proves weake or untrue. Yet dearly I love you,' and would be loved faine, But am betrothed unto your enemie: Divorce mee, untie, or break that knot againe, Take mee to you, imprison mee, for Except you enthrall mee, shall never be free, Nor ever chast, except you ravish mee. [403] See above, chapter 5, pp. 137ff. See also Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry, vol. 2, ed. A. M. Freedman, H. I. Kaplan, and B. J. Sadock (Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, 1975), in particular, the article by Mortimer Ostow, "Religion and Psychiatry." [404] As Ronald Feenstra reminded me, it is also, no doubt, a matter of developing the image of God in us, both individually and corporately. [405] Compare Edwards, "I thought with myself, how excellent a Being that was; and how happy I should be, if I might enjoy that God, and be wrapped up to God in heaven, and be as it were swallowed up in him" ("A Personal Narrative," in A Jonathan Edwards Reader, ed. John Smith, Harry Stout, and Kenneth Minkema [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995], p. 284). [406] "The Macropoulos Case" in Problems of the Self (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), pp. 94-95. [407] "Swinburne's Heaven: One Hell of a Place," Religious Studies 4 (1993), p. 521. [408] Compare C. S. Lewis: such a person is "like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea" ("The Weight of Glory," in The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses, ed. with Introduction by Walter Hooper [New York: Macmillan, 1980], p. 4). [409] Kuyper, To Be near unto God, pp. 674-75. [410] Compare C. S. Lewis again: our "inconsolable secret" is that "We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words--to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it" (The Weight of Glory, p. 126). [411] See Anders Nygren, Agape and Eros, tr. Philip S. Watson (New York: Macmillan, 1939). [412] Can we say that Christ qua human being (according to his human nature) suffered while Christ qua divine (according to his divine nature) did not? This is hardly the place to try to address a question as ancient and deep as this one, but I'm inclined to think this suggestion incoherent. There is this person, the second person of the divine trinity who became incarnate. It is this person who suffers; if there really were two centers of consciousness here, one suffering and the other not, there would be two persons here (one human and one divine) rather than the one person who is both human and divine. See my "On Heresy, Mind, and Truth," Faith and Philosophy, 16, no. 2 (April 1999), p. 182. [413] He no doubt also suffers at the sufferings and defections of all his children: "this bitter grief is inflicted upon God, when a soul falls away from Him" (Kuyper, To Be near unto God, p. 30). [414] "An Essay on the Trinity," in Treatise on Grace and Other Posthumously Published Writings, ed. Paul Helm (Cambridge: James Clarke, 1971), p. 105. [415] And this is the answer to one of the traditional arguments for the conclusion that God has no passions: the Father and the Son do indeed need each other, but it is a need that is necessarily and eternally fulfilled. [416] "So when we say that God loves his Son, we are not talking about a love that is self-denying, sacrificial, or merciful. We are talking about a love of delight and pleasure. . . . He is well-pleased with his Son. His soul delights in the Son! When he looks at his Son he enjoys and admires and cherishes and prizes and relishes what he sees" (John Piper, The Pleasures of God [Portland: Multnomah Press, 1991], p. 31). [417] The thought that God is trinitarian distinguishes Christianity from other theistic religions; here we see a way in which this doctrine makes a real difference, in that it recognizes eros and love for others at the most fundamental level of reality. Does this suggest that we should lean toward a social conception of the trinity, the conception of Gregory and the Cappadocian fathers, rather than the Augustinian conception, which flirts with modalism? See Cornelius Plantinga Jr., "Social Trinity & Tritheism," in Trinity, Incarnation, and Atonement, ed. Ronald Feenstra and Cornelius Plantinga Jr. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989). [418] For a more poetic account of connections between human romantic love and divine love, see Charles Williams, Religion and Love in Dante: The Theology of Romantic Love (Westminster: Dacre Press, 1941). (See also, of course, Dante's Divine Comedy, the Paradiso.) Williams argues (p. 11) that being in love (that more or less ordinary but also utterly extraordinary way in which most of us are at one time or another) is a way of participating in the divine Love himself. [419] See Erich Auerbach's powerful "Figura" in Scenes from the Drama of European Literature (New York: Meridian Books, 1959). [420] Of course I don't mean to suggest that God somehow depends on these features, or is ontologically subsequent to them (whatever exactly that means); these features themselvess, as well as other properties, can perhaps best be thought of as divine concepts. See my Does God Have a Nature? (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1980). [421] C. S. Lewis, "Transposition," in Transposition and Other Addresses (London: G. Bles, 1949). __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ 10 Objections It is often taken for granted by the wise of this world, believers and unbelievers alike, that "religious experience" is a purely subjective phenomenon. Although it may have various psychosocial functions to play, any claims to its cognitive value can be safely dismissed without a hearing. William P. Alston Or, as we shall see, with at best a perfunctory hearing. In this chapter, we shall note and evaluate some alleged results of those perfunctory hearings. The extended Aquinas/Calvin (A/C) model of the last three chapters is intended to show how specifically Christian belief can have justification, internal and external rationality, and warrant. According to the model, we human beings have fallen into sin, a grievous condition from which we cannot extricate ourselves. Jesus Christ, both a human being and the divine son of God, made atonement for our sin by way of his suffering and death, thus making it possible for us to stand in the right relationship to God. The Bible is (among other things) a written communication from God to us human beings, proclaiming this good news. Because of our sinful condition, however, we need more than this information: we also need a change of heart. This is provided by the internal instigation of the Holy Spirit (IIHS); he both turns our affections in the right direction and enables us to see the truth of the great things of the gospel. The process whereby we come to believe those things, therefore, satisfies the conditions for warrant (and also the conditions for the affective analogue of warrant). But it is obvious that the beliefs in question are also such that they can be and often are both justified and internally rational. In this chapter, I shall do two things. First, I wish to consider some of the arguments for the conclusion that theistic and/or Christian belief lacks warrant; second, I want to consider objections to my arguments and claims about the way in which Christian belief can have warrant. What I have argued so far, in order of ascending strength, is that (1) the extended A/C model depicts a way in which Christian belief could have warrant; (2) given the truth of Christian belief, there are no cogent objections to its having warrant in the way suggested by the A/C model; and (3) given the truth of Christian belief, it very likely does have warrant, if not by way of the extended A/C model, then by way of a closely similar model. (3) is stronger than (2). (2) says that, given the assumption that Christian belief is true, there aren't any cogent objections to the A/C model and hence none to Christian belief's having warrant; but of course there might be no cogent objections to a proposition p, even if p is, as it turns out, false. (3) adds that in fact Christian belief very likely has warrant, given its truth. A successful argument for the conclusion that Christian or theistic belief lacks warrant, therefore, will be a successful argument against both (2) and (3)--provided, of course, that it doesn't assume (or argue for) the falsehood of Christian belief. Such an objection, therefore, will have to be independent of the question of the truth or falsehood of Christian belief; it will have to be cogent even on the supposition that Christian belief is true. Our question is really this: are there general epistemological reasons, independent of doubts about the truth of Christian or theistic belief, to think that it lacks warrant? If any of the objections is successful, therefore, it will remain successful even if we assume that indeed there is such a person as God and that Christian belief is, as a matter of fact, true. There is also an initial difficulty. Those who raise the de jure question about Christian or theistic belief typically complain that it is "irrational," or "unjustified," or "unreasonable," or "rationally unjustified," or "rationally indefensible" or the like; they seldom make a serious attempt to explain what they mean by these terms. Instead, they typically take it for granted that we know perfectly well what these terms mean; then they argue that theistic belief has the unflattering properties expressed by them. But these terms and their associated concepts have had an enormously checkered career in modern and contemporary epistemology; to assume that their meanings are perfectly clear is excessively naive. It is also confusing, making it hard to construe the objector's complaints with any exactitude. We have seen that the relevant de jure question is really the question whether Christian belief does or can have warrant: the property or quantity, enough of which is what distinguishes knowledge from mere true belief; I shall therefore handle this problem by construing the objections as arguments for the claim that Christian belief has no warrant. This course has the added attraction that, in at least some cases, it is likely that this is what the objector intended. A number of thinkers consider the question whether Christian belief can be justified or warranted by way of religious experience, and go on to argue that it cannot. Now I argued in chapter 6 that it isn't clear what it means to say that a belief is warranted by way of experience, and so didn't propose to say whether or not, on the model, theistic and Christian belief gets its warrant from or by way of religious experience. Technically speaking, therefore, these objections wouldn't apply to my claims about how it can be that such belief has warrant. For the purpose of considering these objections, however, let's concede what may well be false--namely that (on the model) these beliefs do get their warrant from experience. Then at any rate we can see the objections as initially relevant. __________________________________________________________________ I. Warrant and the Argument from Religious Experience The first objection is really less an objection, so it seems to me, than a confusion, a failure to make an important distinction. Anthony O'Hear considers the idea that theistic belief might be justified or receive warrant (it is hard to tell which he is thinking of) in a direct way, not by way of argument or inference. (In my terms, the question is whether theistic belief might be properly basic, either with respect to warrant or with respect to justification.) Referring to William James, John Baillie, and others, he notes that one suggestion as to how this might go would be by way of religious experience, broadly conceived. He then goes on to say: It is the idea of direct personal contact with a non-sensory reality that non-believers will find hard to grasp. In order to bring out the nature of the difficulty, I will consider the extent to which religious experience can provide evidence for the existence of a reality beyond the experience itself. Presumably people who are convinced that they are in personal contact with some super-reality will not often attempt to argue or prove their conviction at all, nor will their conviction be arrived at inferentially, any more than we naturally infer from statements about our sensations to statements about physical objects. Nevertheless the question of the extent to which the conviction can be justified by the experience naturally arises. [422] Here there are several questions. First, note that this quotation illustrates that initial difficulty I mentioned above: is O'Hear talking about justification, or rationality, or warrant, or what? This isn't clear from what he says here or elsewhere. Despite the occurrence of justified' in the last line of the quotation, I don't think he's really speaking of justification--and in any event, as we have already seen (above, pp. 99ff.), the question of justification is too easily answered to be interesting. Although O'Hear speaks of "personal contact," perhaps his question is best construed in the present context as the question whether religious experience could put us in epistemic contact with a nonsensory reality (i.e., one that can't, ordinarily, be seen, heard, touched, etc.) such as God; and that question, I take it, is the question whether beliefs about such a nonsensory reality could acquire warrant by way of religious experience. Now his initial suggestion is that there is something problematic about the very idea of a human person's being in cognitive contact (the kind required by warrant) with a nonsensory reality such as God. Why is this problematic? O'Hear doesn't directly answer that question, but proposes to "bring out the difficulty" by turning to the question whether "religious experience can provide evidence for the existence of a reality beyond the experience itself." This sounds like he thinks the way to answer the question Does religious experience make it possible for us to have the right sort of cognitive connection with God? is to ask Is there a good argument from the existence of the experience in question to the existence of God: an argument whose premises report the experience in question and whose conclusion is that there is such a person as God? That this is what he has in mind is confirmed by what he says a bit later: Christians, for example, tend to explain this unpredictability [of religious experience of the relevant sort] by saying that these experiences are a gift of God. This may be so, but saying it certainly weakens attempts to argue from the experience to the reality. (p. 44) This clearly suggests that what is at issue, here, with respect to the question whether theistic belief can have warrant by virtue of religious experience, is whether there is a good argument from premises reporting that experience to the existence of God. O'Hear goes on to say that what we are really asking for is grounds on which the religious experiences we have . . . could be regarded as experiences of an objective sort. (p. 45) the answer, he says, will have to be in terms of the explanatory power of the hypothesis that religious experiences are due at least in part to the existence and operation of an objective religious reality, rather than due to merely worldly factors, such as features of a person's psychology, chemistry or upbringing. (p. 45) His thought, then, as far as I can make it out, is twofold: (a) theistic belief can have warrant by virtue of religious experience only if there is a good (noncircular) argument from premises reporting the occurrence of such experiences to the existence of God and (b) such an argument will have to involve as a premise the proposition that the existence of God is the best explanation of religious experiences. (Of course such an argument would also have to provide reasons for thinking that premise true.) I say (a) is part of O'Hear's thought; perhaps assumption' would be a better term because he doesn't explicitly make this claim but rather just takes it for granted. Another way to put the assumption: theistic belief can have warrant by way of religious experience only if some theistic argument from religious experience is successful. This assumption is widely shared and seldom argued; as I shall maintain, however, it has the substantial disadvantage of being false. In fact, one of the main points to see here is that the question whether theistic belief can receive warrant by way of religious experience (and thus in the basic way) is a wholly different question from the question whether there is a good argument from the existence of religious experience to the existence of God. (Not only are these different questions: an affirmative answer to the first does not require an affirmative answer to the second.) I shall argue that (a) is false. (a)'s being false doesn't distinguish religious experience and theistic or Christian belief from other kinds of experience and belief: perceptual experience and belief, memorial experience and belief, a priori experience and belief, and the like, all resemble Christian belief in this respect. In each of these cases, it is entirely possible that the beliefs in question have warrant even if there is no good argument from the existence of the experience in question to the truth of those beliefs. [423] This is one of the most important things to see here; before arguing this claim, however, I want to note another writer who also simply assumes that (a) is true, without so much as raising the question whether it is. According to the late J. L. Mackie, an experience may have a real object: we ordinarily suppose our normal perceptual experience to be or to include awareness of independently existing material spatio-temporal things. The question then is whether specifically religious experiences should be taken to have real objects, to give us genuine information about independently existing supernatural entities or spiritual beings. [424] So far so good: this is the question whether religious experience can or does provide warrant for belief in "independently existing supernatural entities or spiritual beings" such as God. But Mackie goes on: Whether their content [i.e., the content of religious experiences] has any objective truth is the crucial further question. . . . The issue is whether the hypothesis that there objectively is a something more gives a better explanation of the whole range of phenomena than can be given without it. (p. 183) Mackie concludes his examination of the possible warrant conferred by religious experience with these words: if the religious experiences do not yield any argument for a further supernatural reality, and if, as we have seen in previous chapters, there is no other good argument for such a conclusion, then these experiences include in their content beliefs that are probably false and in any case unjustified. [I take it unjustified', here, means without warrant'.] (p. 186) Here we see the very same assumption at work as in O'Hear. Like the latter, Mackie assumes that theistic (or other religious) belief could get warrant by way of religious experience only if there is a good argument from the existence and character of that experience to the existence of God (or "something more"). (And like O'Hear, he also seems to endorse (b).) Neither Mackie nor O'Hear argues for this claim, simply taking it utterly for granted that the only way a belief (or at any rate a religious or theistic belief) could possibly receive warrant from experience would be by way of an implicit argument from the existence and properties of that experience to the truth of the belief in question. But why think a thing like that? It certainly isn't self-evident. In fact, once we explicitly raise the question whether it is true, (a) looks extremely problematic. Presumably one wouldn't want to say that perceptual beliefs get warrant from experience only if there is a good (noncircular) argument from the existence of perceptual experience to the truth of perceptual beliefs; if not, however, what is the reason for saying it in the case of theistic or Christian belief? Mackie makes this assumption, I believe, because he makes another: that theistic and Christian belief is or is relevantly like a scientific hypothesis--something like special relativity, for example, or quantum mechanics, or the theory of evolution. Still speaking of whether theistic belief can receive warrant by way of religious experience, he (characteristically) remarks: "Here, as elsewhere, the supernaturalist hypothesis fails because there is an adequate and much more economical naturalistic alternative" (p. 198). This remark is relevant only if we think of belief in God as or as like a sort of scientific hypothesis, a theory designed to explain some body of evidence, and acceptable or warranted to the degree that it explains that evidence. On this way of looking at the matter, there is a relevant body of evidence shared by believer and unbeliever alike; theism is one hypothesis designed to explain that body of evidence, and naturalism is another; and theism has warrant only to the extent that it is a good explanation thereof, or at any rate a better explanation than naturalism. But why should we think of theism like this? Why should we think of it as a kind of hypothesis, a sort of incipient science? Consider the extended A/C model of chapters 8 and 9. On that model, it is not that one notes the experiences, whatever exactly they are, connected with the operation of the sensus divinitatis, and then makes a quick inference to the existence of God. One doesn't argue thus: I am aware of the beauty and majesty of the heavens (or of my own guilt, or that I am in danger, or of the glorious beauty of the morning, or of my good circumstances): therefore there is such a person as God. The Christian doesn't argue: "I find myself loving and delighting in the great things of the gospel and inclined to believe them; therefore they are true." Those would be silly arguments; fortunately they are neither invoked nor needed. The experiences and beliefs involved in the operation of the sensus divinitatis and IIHS serve as occasions for theistic belief, not premises for an argument to it. The same holds for, say, memory beliefs. Obviously one could take a Mackie-like view here as well. One could hold that our beliefs about the past are really like scientific hypotheses, designed to explain such present phenomena as (among other things) apparent memories, and if there were a more "economical" explanation of these phenomena that did not postulate past facts, then our usual beliefs in the past would have no warrant. But of course this is merely fantastic; we don't in fact accept memory beliefs as hypotheses to explain present experience at all. Everyone, even small children and others with no interest in explaining anything, accepts memory beliefs. We all remember such things as what we had for breakfast, and we never or almost never propose such beliefs as good explanations of present experience and phenomena. And the same holds for theism and Christian belief in the suggested model. So Mackie apparently believes that (c) theistic belief is or is relevantly like a quasi-scientific hypothesis, designed to explain religious experience (perhaps among other things). This explains why he believes (a), that is, that theistic belief can get no warrant from religious experience unless there is a good argument from premises reporting the experiences to the existence of God. As we have seen, however, (c) is false. Well, perhaps Mackie would insist on (a) even if it is clear that Christians do not take belief in God or Christian belief generally as hypotheses; perhaps he would nonetheless insist that the only way in which such belief could possibly get warrant would be by being successful quasi-scientific hypotheses. But precisely this is what is refuted by the A/C model of chapter 6 and the extended A/C model of chapters 8 and 9. These models show that it is clearly possible that theistic and Christian belief have warrant, but not by way of being hypotheses that nicely explain a certain range of data. For if Christian belief is, in fact, true, then obviously there could be such cognitive processes as the sensus divinitatis and IIHS or faith. As we saw, beliefs produced by these processes would meet the conditions necessary and sufficient for having warrant: they would be the result of cognitive faculties functioning properly in a congenial epistemic environment according to a design plan successfully aimed at truth. Hence (a) is plainly false. It is plainly false that Christian belief has warrant (and could constitute knowledge) only if there is also a good argument from the existence of the experiences involved in the operation of IIHS to the truth of Christian belief; and the same point holds for theistic belief and the sensus divinitatis. Why suppose that if God proposes to enable us to have knowledge of a certain sort, he must arrange things in such a way that we can see an argumentative connection between the experiences involved in the cognitive processes he selects and the truth of the beliefs these processes produce? That requirement is both entirely gratuitous and also false, since it doesn't hold for such splendid examples of sources of knowledge as perception, memory, and a priori intuition. __________________________________________________________________ [422] Experience, Explanation and Faith (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984), p. 27. Page references to O'Hear are to this work. [423] See Warrant and Proper Function (hereafter WPF), pp. 61ff. and 93ff. [424] The Miracle of Theism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), p. 178. Page references to Mackie are to this work. __________________________________________________________________ II. What Can Experience Show? A second objection is that Christian and theistic belief could never receive warrant from religious experience because religious experience could never indicate or show anything as specific as that there is such a person as God--let alone such beliefs as that in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself. How could experience of any sort reveal the existence of a being who is omniscient, omnipotent, wholly good, and a fitting object of worship? How could it reveal that there is only one being like that? How could experience carry that kind of information? John Mackie is a spokesman for this objection too: Religious experience is also essentially incapable of supporting any argument for the traditional central doctrines of theism. Nothing in an experience as such could reveal a creator of the world, or omnipotence, or omniscience, or perfect goodness, or eternity, or even that there is just one god. (182) Now why would Mackie say a thing like that? And what precisely does he mean? For present purposes, suppose we restrict ourselves to the experience involved in the operation of the sensus divinitatis. I think what Mackie means is this: given any course of experience, religious or otherwise--that is, given any course of sensuous imagery, affective experience, and inclinations to believe I might have--that experience could be exactly as it is and there be no omnipotent being, or omniscient being, or perfectly good or eternal being. My experience could be precisely what it is, and there be no such person as God or anyone or anything at all like God. I could feel the very way I do feel, and there be no God. [425] I think this is what he means; I can't be sure. That is because it seems of only dubious relevance. Perhaps it is true that my experience could be just as it is and there be no such person as God; perhaps the existence and character of my experience don't entail the existence of God. What follows? Why should it follow that my experience cannot reveal a creator of the world or an omnipotent or omniscient being? Consider an analogy: in WPF (pp. 50ff.), I noted that we all ordinarily think we have existed for many years (or, in the case of you younger readers, many months). It is logically possible, however, that I should have existed for only a microsecond or two, displaying all the temporally specific properties I do in fact display. Then I wouldn't have such properties as being more than sixty years old or being responsible for something that happened ten minutes ago, although I would have such properties as thinking that I am more than sixty years old and that I am responsible for something that happened ten minutes ago. Not only is this logically possible, it is also compatible with the existence and character of all of my present experience. It is not compatible with my beliefs, of course (in that I believe I've existed for quite a while); still, it is compatible with the existence of those beliefs. It is possible that I should have precisely the beliefs and experiences I now have, despite my having come into existence just a second or less ago. (In fact [see WPF, pp. 50ff.], that is precisely what happens, according to those who think the word I', as I use it, denotes something like a momentary person stage.) For any course of experience and any set of beliefs I might have at this very moment, it is possible that I have that experience and hold those beliefs but nonetheless have existed for only a second or less. Does it follow that nothing in my experience can reveal that I have existed for more than the last second or so? Certainly not. To assume that it does follow is to assume something more general and vastly stronger than O'Hear's (a) (above, p. 328)--which, as we have already seen, is itself too strong to be true. There isn't the slightest reason to believe that if experience can reveal p, then the existence of that experience (or the proposition that it occurs) must entail the truth of p. There is no reason to think that if experience can reveal a proposition p, then that experience must be such that it (logically) cannot so much as exist if p is false. For consider perception, and consider your experience--the sensuous imagery, the affective experience, the doxastic experience--on an occasion when you see a horse. It is compatible with those experiences that there be no horse there then, that there be no horses at all, that there be no material objects that exist when I am not undergoing those experiences, and, indeed, that there be no material objects at all. Does it follow that perceptual experience doesn't reveal an external world? Does it follow that I can't tell from my experience that there is a horse in my backyard? Or that the lilacs are not in bloom? Surely not; that would be a leap of magnificent (if grotesque) proportions. Well then, how does perceptual experience reveal an external world--a horse, say? When I perceive a horse, I am the subject of experiences of various kinds: sensuous imagery (I am appeared to in a certain complicated and hard-to-describe fashion) and also, ordinarily, affective experience (perhaps I am frightened by the horse, or feel a certain admiration for it, or delight in its speed and strength or whatever). There is also doxastic experience. When I perceive a horse, there is that sensuous and affective experience, but also the feeling, experience, intimation with respect to a certain proposition (that I see a horse) that that proposition is true, right, to be believed, the way things really are. This doxastic experience plays a crucial role in perception. How does perceptual experience teach me that there is a horse in my backyard? By way of this belief's being occasioned (in part) by the experience, and by way of the belief's having warrant--being produced by properly functioning cognitive faculties in an appropriate epistemic environment (both mini and maxi), according to a design plan successfully aimed at truth. So can I tell from my experience that there is a horse there? Certainly. Telling such a thing from one's experience is forming the belief that a horse is there in response to the sensuous and doxastic experience, the belief's being formed under the conditions that confer warrant. The fact is, this happens all the time. My point here is not that, in fact, people do tell from their experience such things as that there is a horse in the backyard, but rather that this is possible. More exactly, my point is that your seeing a horse in your backyard (thus determining by experience that there is a horse there) is not precluded by the fact that your experience is logically compatible with there being no horse there (or anywhere else). Your experience is logically compatible with there being no horse there: fair enough; but it simply doesn't follow that you can't tell by experience that there is a horse there. (How else would you tell? Deduce it from first principles and self-evident truths?) That's the way it is with horses; can I also tell from my experience that I have existed for more than a microsecond or so? Certainly. I do this by remembering, for example, that I had breakfast much more than a microsecond ago and that I went to college embarrassingly long ago. True, my experience here (in particular, my doxastic experience) is compatible with its being the case that I have existed for only a microsecond; it simply doesn't follow that I can't tell by experience that I have existed for at least a good hour, say. I determine by experience that I have existed for more than a microsecond if the belief that I did something more than a microsecond ago is occasioned by my experience (doxastic and otherwise) and if that belief is formed under conditions that confer warrant upon it. This happens often: so we often tell (by experience) that we have existed for more than a microsecond. And of course the same goes for religious experience and theistic belief. True: the existence of the experiences that go with the operation of the sensus divinitatis (or IIHS) are compatible with there being no omnipotent, omniscient, wholly good creator of the universe. It doesn't follow from that, however, that we can't tell--and tell, broadly speaking, by experience--that there is such a person. For here, as elsewhere, there is doxastic experience: the belief that there is an almighty person to whom I owe allegiance and obedience just seems right, proper, true, the way things are. And one tells by experience that there is such a person if (1) the beliefs in question are formed in response to the experience (doxastic and otherwise) that go with the operation of the sensus divinitatis and (2) those beliefs are formed under the conditions of warrant. That these conditions should be met is, of course, entirely compatible with the fact that the existence of the experience, doxastic and otherwise, accompanying the operation of the sensus divinitatis is compatible with the falsehood of its deliverances. These beliefs can have warrant, and enough warrant to constitute knowledge, even if the existence of those experiences is compatible with the denials of those beliefs. [426] The same goes for belief in the great things of the gospel: they too can have warrant (and warrant sufficient for knowledge), even if, in fact, the existence of the experiences accompanying the IIHS is compatible with the falsehood of those beliefs. Could it be that Mackie's point lies in a different direction? Perhaps he's thinking like this: an experience could reveal a blue object, all right, but not an omnipotent object. The claim is not that experience can't reveal any objects at all; the claim is rather that there are some properties such that experience could not reveal that there is an object with those properties. Examples would be such properties as omniscience, omnipotence, being divine, being the son of God, and the like. Here Mackie would presumably be relying on the analogy with sensuous experience: sensuous experience can perhaps reveal the existence of objects with color and shape properties (it can reveal the existence of blue and square objects) but not the existence of objects with properties like omnipotence. By way of response: this is perhaps true of sensuous experience and of perception. It is not true of experience generally, however; in particular, it isn't true of doxastic experience. Memory and a priori belief formation involve doxastic experience; and the deliverances of memory and reason are not limited to the existence of things with perceptible properties. The same goes for the sensus divinitatis and the IIHS. Should we therefore conclude that what one learns, if anything, by way of these sources of belief is not really something learned by experience? Perhaps. If we do, however, then the claim that one can't learn by experience that there is for example an omnipotent being is no longer relevant to the model's stipulation that one can learn these things by way of the sensus divinitatis or the IIHS. Maybe one can't learn that sort of thing by experience; it will not follow that one cannot learn that sort of thing by way of the sensus divinitatis and the IIHS. __________________________________________________________________ [425] Conceding for purposes of argument that God is not a necessary being. Of course if God is a necessary being, as most of the Christian tradition has thought, then his existence is entailed by the existence of my experience, because entailed by the existence of anything at all. [426] I point out that this is so on my account of warrant, but the same goes for the other main accounts. Clearly beliefs produced by IIHS could be coherent with the appropriate body of belief, or formed by a reliable belief-producing mechanism, or justified, even if, as Mackie points out, the existence of the relevant experiences is compatible with the falsehood of the beliefs in question. __________________________________________________________________ III. A Killer Argument? Richard Gale asks whether religious experience is cognitive', as he puts it. [427] What precisely does he mean? I think he means to ask whether religious experience is or could be part of a cognitive process that puts us in epistemic touch with God. The question is whether religious experience resembles sense experience in being part of a cognitive process that issues in knowledge of or warranted belief about an independent reality: God, for example. Gale argues that in fact religious experience is not cognitive, in this sense. He gives this argument in the course of addressing what he calls "the analogical argument for cognitivity," which he associates with William Alston, Gary Gutting, Richard Swinburne, and William Wainwright. Their argument, he says, has two premises: 1. Religious experiences are analogous to sense experiences. 2. Sense experiences are cognitive. Therefore: 3. Religious experiences are cognitive. (p. 288) Gale directs most of his fire at the first premise. Here we must issue a couple of caveats. First, strictly speaking, Gale is objecting to this argument by objecting to premise 1; so, strictly speaking, his conclusion would not be that religious experience or belief is not cognitive, but only that this particular argument for its cognitivity fails. For present purposes, this doesn't matter: in fact Gale does much more than merely object to premise 1. What he really offers and what I want to consider is an argument for the conclusion that religious experience and belief are necessarily not cognitive. This argument, if successful, would show that it isn't possible that we should have anything like a perceptual awareness of God. Second, he also seems to believe or assume that any experiential awareness of God would have to be or be like perceptual awareness of God (that any experience of God that was part of a cognitive process yielding knowledge of or warranted belief about God would have to play the same role, in that process, as perceptual experience plays in perception); he therefore concludes, I think, that it is not possible to have knowledge of God by way of experience--that is, that religious experience is not cognitive. Now it isn't entirely clear just how Gale's argument bears on my argument for the conclusion that theistic and Christian belief can have warrant by way of the sensus divinitatis and the IIHS (that, given the truth of these beliefs, there are no cogent objections to their having warrant in that way, so that any objection to these beliefs will have to be to their truth rather than to their rationality or reasonability). First of all, Gale didn't have my argument in mind, an omission that is entirely excusable, given that he proposed his argument well before I proposed mine. But second, the bearing of his argument on mine isn't clear because it isn't clear whether knowledge by way of the sensus divinitatis and the IIHS is properly thought of as knowledge by way of experience. It would be a shame, however, to pass up the chance to consider an argument as engaging as Gale's; so suppose we assume, for purposes of argument, that if there is any such thing as knowledge by way of these processes, that knowledge is knowledge by way of experience. Then we can consider Gale's argument as an argument against my conclusion. (Of course it could turn out that his argument is only dubiously relevant to mine precisely because it is dubious that knowledge by way of the sensus divinitatis and the IIHS, if there is any such knowledge, should be thought of as knowledge by experience.) So how does the argument go? It begins with a playful threat directed at those who, as Gale thinks, accept the analogical argument for the cognitivity of religious experience: We have yet to unearth a deep disanalogy between sense and religious experience that will totally destroy the analogical premise of its analogical argument. This "big disanalogy" will prove to be the shipwreck of this defense of cognitivity, a time for Alston, Gutting, Swinburne, and Wainwright to join their fellow analogical arguers on the deck for a few heart-felt choruses of "Nearer My God to Thee." (pp. 326) Brave words! Does Gale speak with the tongue of an angel, or is he only a clanging cymbal? Precisely what is this killer argument? Necessarily, any cognitive perception is a veridical perception of an objective reality. It now will be argued that it is conceptually impossible for there to be a veridical perception of God . . . from which it follows by modus tollens that it is impossible that there be a cognitive religious experience. . . . A veridical sense perception must have an object that is able to exist when not actually perceived and be the common object of different sense perceptions. For this to be possible, the object must be housed in a space and time that includes both the object and perceiver. It then is shown that there is no religious experience analogue to this concept of objective existence, there being no analogous dimensions to space and time in which God, along with the perceiver, is housed and which can be invoked to make sense of God existing when not actually perceived and being the common object of different religious experiences. Because of this big disanalogy, God is categoreally unsuited to serve as the object of a veridical perception, whether sensory or nonsensory. (pp. 326-27) Note first the implied claim in the second sentence: if it is conceptually impossible that there be a veridical perception of God, then it follows that it is impossible that there be "a cognitive religious experience"; Gale seems to believe that any variety of religious experience would be cognitive only if it were a part of a veridical perception of God. This seems wrong: as I argued in chapters 6 and 8, we can appropriately think of the sensus divinitatis and IIHS, on the extended A/C model, as providing knowledge of God that is knowledge by way of experience, but not perceptual knowledge. Consider the sensus divinitatis: you are in grave danger and form the belief that God is able to help; there needn't be anything here we can sensibly refer to as perception. You suddenly realize that what you did was despicable; you form the belief that God disapproves, acknowledging to him that you did it; again, there need be nothing present that is properly called perception. On the model, there is knowledge of God here, and experience plays a crucial role--both the doxastic experience and also the experience that goes with feeling afraid or guilty or ashamed. This experience is closely associated with the operation of the sensus divinitatis, and perhaps triggers the production of the relevant belief. But the result is not, I should think, a perceptual belief. Furthermore, it is if anything clearer yet that knowledge of God and of the great things of the gospel by the IIHS is not perceptual knowledge (above, p. 288). If we don't think of the sensus divinitatis and IIHS as issuing in perceptual knowledge, however, then Gale's objection would be irrelevant. For present purposes then, suppose we also temporarily concede that knowledge of God by way of sensus divinitatis or IIHS would be perceptual knowledge of God, at least in an appropriately analogical sense. Alternatively, suppose we consider Gale's objection to perceptual knowledge of God, bracketing, for the moment, the question of its bearing on the extended A/C model. How does this objection go? "A veridical sense perception," he says, "must have an object that is able to exist when not actually perceived and be the common object of different sense perceptions." That seems right, or at any rate plausible; and if there is such a thing as experience of God, God will, of course, be able to exist when [428] not being experienced by any human cognizer (even if in fact his presence is always experienced by some human being or other). Furthermore, God himself, the very same being, would be grasped, cognized, or apprehended by many different persons. So what exactly is supposed to be the problem with supposing that you and I are both aware of God, and that God continues to exist when neither of us is aware of him? The problem, he thinks, is that if an object can exist when unperceived, and can be perceived by different perceivers, then "the object must be housed in a space and time that includes both the object and perceiver." Why so? Gale's strongest argument here is contained in the following passages: Another invidious consequence of their nondimensionality is that no analogous explanation can be given of how they can exist unperceived and be common objects of different perceptions to that which was previously given for empirical particulars. Whereas we could explain our failure to perceive an empirical particular, as well as our perceiving numerically one and the same empirical particular, in terms of our relationship to it in some nonempirical dimension, no such analogous explanation can be offered for our failure to perceive God and the like, or our perceiving numerically one and the same God. . . . Similarly, how is Gutting going to decide when two religious experiences of a very powerful and loving nonhuman person had by two people at one time or by one person at two different times are of numerically one and the same being or only qualitatively similar ones? (pp. 341-42) The alleged problem, therefore, seems to be twofold: it concerns (a) perceiving God at one time but not at another and (b) two different people's both perceiving God--that is, perceiving the very same all-powerful, all-knowing, and loving nonhuman person. It isn't as easy to see, however, just what Gale is claiming about (a) and (b). Two possibilities present themselves for (a) and three for (b). With respect to (a), Gale could be claiming that (1) if God is not in time and space, then no explanation could be given of our perceiving him at one time but not at another, and (2) if God is not in time and space, then it would not be possible that we experience him at one time but not at another. With respect to (b), the same two possibilities present themselves, and in addition there is the possibility that (3) if God is not in time and space, then we couldn't decide (tell) when two people are both perceiving God--that is, both perceiving the very same divine person. Well, consider (1) with respect to (a). Strictly speaking, I suppose, it wouldn't damage the sensus divinitatis model or the claim that it is possible to perceive God if there were no explanation of our perceiving God at one time but not at another. All the model says is that such knowledge occurs; it doesn't go on to add that there is an explanation of it, unless the model itself is an explanation. Still, I believe Gale is really claiming, in this first possibility, that we can't see any way in which it could happen that we should perceive God at one time but not at another. More strongly, I think he means to claim that we can see that a person could perceive God at one time and not at another only if he and we were in the same time and space. We can see that this is the only condition under which such a thing could happen. So really, (1) and (2) with respect to (a) come to the same claim: it would be possible for us to perceive or experience God at one time but not at another only if he were in the same space and time (spacetime) as we. So says Gale; is he right? I think not. Even with respect to things that are in space and time, there are a wide variety of explanations for my perceiving a thing at one time and not at another. I might perceive the thing at t[1], but then at t[2] have my eyes closed, or be asleep, or thinking of something else, or have lost my glasses, or have a brown paper bag over my head, or be under water, or be suffering from cognitive malfunction. Similarly for perceiving or cognizing God. God is, of course, always existent; furthermore, because (as we may assume for purposes of argument) he isn't in space, he is never related to me spatially in different ways at different times. Still, why should that mean that I couldn't perceive him or experience him at one time and not at another? I might perceive or experience him at t[1] but not at t[2] because at the latter I am asleep, or my attention might be elsewhere (I have just hit my thumb with a hammer or shot myself in the foot), or I might be suffering from cognitive malfunction, or I might be angry with God because of my friend's suffering and thus not in the right frame of mind. There are plenty of ways in which I might perceive him at one time but not at another, even if it's not possib