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Truth Journal
Advice to Christian Philosophers
(With a special preface for Christian thinkers from
different disciplines)
Professor Alvin Plantinga
Preface.
In the paper that follows I write from the perspective of a philosopher,
and of course I have detailed knowledge of (at best) only my own field.
I am convinced, however, that many other disciplines resemble philosophy
with respect to things I say below. (It will be up to the practitioners
of those other disciplines to see whether or not I am right.)
First, it isn't just in philosophy that we Christians are heavily
influenced by the practice and procedures of our non-Christian peers.
(Indeed, given the cantankerousness of philosophers and the rampant
disagreement in philosophy it is probably easier to be a maverick there
than in most other disciplines.) The same holds for nearly any important
contemporary intellectual discipline: history, literary and artistic
criticism, musicology, and the sciences, both social and natural. In all
of these areas there are ways of proceeding, pervasive assumptions about
the nature of the discipline (for example, assumptions about the nature
of science and its place in our intellectual economy), assumptions about
how the discipline should be carried on and what a valuable or
worthwhile contribution is like and so on; we imbibe these assumptions,
if not with our mother's milk, at any rate in learning to pursue our
disciplines. In all these areas we learn how to pursue our disciplines
under the direction and influence of our peers.
But in many cases these assumptions and presumptions do not easily mesh
with a Christian or theistic way of looking at the world. This is
obvious in many areas: in literary criticism and film theory, where
creative anti-realism (see below) runs riot; in sociology and psychology
and the other human sciences; in history; and even in a good deal of
contemporary (liberal) theology. It is less obvious but nonetheless
present in the so-called natural sciences. The Australian philosopher J.
J. C. Smart once remarked that an argument useful (from his naturalistic
point of view) for convincing believers in human freedom of the error of
their ways is to point out that contemporary mechanistic biology seems
to leave no room for human free will: how, for example, could such a
thing have developed in the evolutionary course of things? Even in
physics and mathematics, those austere bastions of pure reason, similar
questions arise. These questions have to do with the content of these
sciences and the way in which they have developed. They also have to do
with the way in which (as they are ordinarily taught and practiced)
these disciplines are artificially separated from questions concerning
the nature of the objects they study-a separation determined, not by
what is most natural to the subject matter in question, but by a broadly
positivist conception of the nature of knowledge and the nature of human
intellectual activity.
And thirdly, here, as in philosophy, Christians must display autonomy
and integrality. If contemporary mechanistic biology really has no place
for human freedom, then something other than contemporary mechanistic
biology is called for; and the Christian community must develop it. If
contemporary psychology is fundamentally naturalist, then it is up to
Christian psychologists to develop an alternative that fits well with
Christian supernaturalism-one that takes its start from such
scientifically seminal truths as that God has created humankind in his
own image.
Of course I do not presume to tell Christian practitioners of other
disciplines how properly to pursue those disciplines as Christians. (I
have enough and to spare in trying to discern how to pursue my own
discipline properly.) But I deeply believe that the pattern displayed in
philosophy is also to be found in nearly every area of serious
intellectual endeavor. In each of these areas the fundamental and often
unexpressed presuppositions that govern and direct the discipline are
not religiously neutral; they are often antithetic to a Christian
perspective. In these areas, then, as in philosophy, it is up to
Christians who practice the relevant discipline to develop the right
Christian alternatives.
1.Introduction
Christianity, these days, and in our part of the world, is on the move,
There are many signs pointing in this direction: the growth of Christian
schools, of the serious conservative Christian denominations, the furor
over prayer in public schools, the creationism/evolution controversy,
and others.
There is also powerful evidence for this contention in philosophy.
Thirty or thirty-five years ago, the public temper of mainline
establishment philosophy in the English speaking world was deeply
non-Christian. Few establishment philosophers were Christian; even fewer
were willing to admit in public that they were, and still fewer thought
of their being Christian as making a real difference to their practice
as philosophers. The most popular question of philosophical theology, at
that time, was not whether Christianity or theism is true; the
question, instead, was whether it even makes sense to
say that there is such a person as god. According to the
logical positivism then running riot, the sentence "there is such a
person as God" literally makes no sense; it is disguised nonsense; it
altogether fails to express a thought or a proposition. The central
question wasn't whether theism is true; it was whether there is
such a thing as theism-a genuine factual claim that is either true or
false-at all. But things have changed. There are now many more
Christians and many more unabashed Christians in the professional
mainstream of American philosophical life. For example, the foundation
of the Society for Christian Philosophers, an organization to promote
fellowship and exchange of ideas among Christian philosophers, is both
an evidence and a consequence of that fact. Founded some six years ago,
it is now a thriving organization with regional meetings in every part
of the country; its members are deeply involved in American professional
philosophical life. So Christianity is on the move, and on the move in
philosophy, as well as in other areas of intellectual life.
But even if Christianity is on the move, it has taken only a few brief
steps; and it is marching through largely alien territory. For the
intellectual culture of our day is for the most part profoundly non-
theistic and hence non-Christian- more than that, it is anti-theistic.
Most of the so-called human sciences, much of the non-human sciences,
most of non-scientific intellectual endeavor and even a good bit of
allegedly Christian theology is animated by a spirit wholly foreign to
that of Christian theism. I don't have the space here to elaborate and
develop this point; but I don't have to, for it is familiar to you all.
To return to philosophy: most of the major philosophy departments in
America have next to nothing to offer the student intent on coming to
see how to be a Christian in philosophy-how to assess and develop the
bearing of Christianity on matters of current philosophical concern, and
how to think about those philosophical matters of interest to the
Christian community. In the typical graduate philosophy department there
will be little more, along these lines, than a course in philosophy of
religion in which it is suggested that the evidence for the existence of
God-the classical theistic proofs, say-is at least counterbalanced by
the evidence against the existence of God-the problem of evil, perhaps;
and it may then be added that the wisest course, in view of such maxims
as Ockham's Razor, is to dispense with the whole idea of God, at least
for philosophical purposes.
My aim, in this talk, is to give some advice to philosophers who are
Christians. And although my advice is directed specifically to Christian
philosophers, it is relevant to all philosophers who believe in God,
whether Christian, Jewish or Moslem. I propose to give some advice to
the Christian or theistic philosophical community: some advice relevant
to the situation in which in fact we find ourselves. "Who are you," you
say, "to give the rest of us advice?" That's a good question to which
one doesn't know the answer: I shall ignore it. My counsel can be summed
up on two connected suggestions, along with a codicil. First, Christian
philosophers and Christian intellectuals generally must display more
autonomy-more independence of the rest of philosophical world. Second,
Christian philosophers must display more integrity-integrity in the
sense of integral wholeness, or oneness, or unity, being all of one
piece. Perhaps 'integrality' would be the better word here. And
necessary to these two is a third: Christian courage, or boldness, or
strength, or perhaps Christian self-confidence. We Christian
philosophers must display more faith, more trust in the Lord; we must
put on the whole armor of God. Let me explain in a brief and preliminary
way what I have in mind; then I shall go on to consider some examples in
more detail.
Consider a Christian college student from Grand Rapids, Michigan, say,
or Arkadelphia, Arkansas-who decides philosophy is the subject for her.
Naturally enough, she will go to graduate school to learn how to become
a philosopher. Perhaps she goes to Princeton, or Berkeley, or
Pittsburgh, or Arizona; it doesn't much matter which. There she learns
how philosophy is presently practiced. The burning questions of the day
are such topics as the new theory of reference; the realism/anti-realism
controversy; the problems with probability; Quine's claims about the
radical indeterminacy of translation; Rawls on justice; the causal
theory of knowledge; Gettier problems; the artificial intelligence model
for the understanding of what it is to be a person; the question of the
ontological status of unobservable entities in science; whether there is
genuine objectivity in science or anywhere else; whether mathematics can
be reduced to set theory and whether abstract entities generally-
numbers, propositions, properties-can be, as we quaintly say, "dispensed
with"; whether possible worlds are abstract or concrete; whether our
assertions are best seen as mere moves in a language game or as attempts
to state the sober truth about the world; whether the rational egoist
can be shown to be irrational, and all the rest. It is then natural for
her, after she gets her Ph.D., to continue to think about and work on
these topics. And it is natural, furthermore, for her to work on them in
the way she was taught to, thinking about them in the light of the
assumptions made by her mentors and in terms of currently accepted ideas
as to what a philosopher should start from or take for granted, what
requires argument and defense, and what a satisfying philosophical
explanation or a proper resolution to a philosophical question is like.
She will be uneasy about departing widely from these topics and
assumptions, feeling instinctively that any such departures are at best
marginally respectable. Philosophy is a social enterprise; and our
standards and assumptions-the parameters within which we practice our
craft-are set by our mentors and by the great contemporary centers of
philosophy.
From one point of view this is natural and proper; from another,
however, it is profoundly unsatisfactory. The questions I mentioned are
important and interesting. Christian philosophers, however, are the
philosophers of the Christian community; and it is part of their task as
Christian philosophers to serve the Christian community. But
the Christian community has its own questions, its own concerns, its own
topics for investigation, its own agenda and its own research program.
Christian philosophers ought not merely take their inspiration from
what's going on at Princeton or Berkeley or Harvard, attractive and
scintillating as that may be; for perhaps those questions and topics are
not the ones, or not the only ones, they should be thinking about as the
philosophers of the Christian community. There are other philosophical
topics the Christian community must work at, and other topics the
Christian community must work at philosophically. And obviously,
Christian philosophers are the ones who must do the philosophical work
involved. If they devote their best efforts to the topics fashionable to
the non-Christian philosophical world, they will neglect a crucial and
central part of their task as Christian philosophers. What is needed
here is more independence, more autonomy with respect to the projects
and concerns of the non-theistic philosophical world.
But something else is at least as important here. Suppose the student I
mentioned above goes to Harvard; she studies with Willard van Orman
Quine. She finds herself attracted to Quine's programs and procedures:
his radical empiricism, his allegiance to natural science, his
inclination towards behaviorism, his uncompromising naturalism, and his
taste for desert landscapes and ontological parsimony. It would be
wholly natural for her to become totally involved in these projects and
programs, to come to think of fruitful and worthwhile philosophy as
substantially circumscribed by them. Of course she will note certain
tensions between her Christian belief and her way of practicing
philosophy; and she may then bend her efforts to putting the two
together, to harmonizing them. She may devote her time and energy to
seeing how one might understand or reinterpret Christian belief in such
a way as to be palatable to the Quinian. One philosopher I know,
embarking on just such a project, suggested that Christians should think
of God as a set (Quine is prepared to countenance sets): the
set of all true propositions, perhaps, or the set of right actions, or
the union of those sets, or perhaps their Cartesian product. This is
understandable; but it is also profoundly misdirected. Quine is a
marvelously gifted philosopher: a subtle, original and powerful
philosophical force. But his fundamental commitments, his fundamental
projects and concerns, are wholly different from those of the Christian
community-wholly different and, indeed, antithetical to them. And the
result of attempting to graft Christian thought onto his basic view of
the world will be at best an unintegral pastiche; at worst it
will seriously compromise, or distort, or trivialize the claims of
Christian theism. What is needed here is more wholeness, more
integrality.
So the Christian philosopher has his own topics and projects to think
about; and when he thinks about the topics of current concern in the
broader philosophical world, he will think about them in his own way,
which may be a different way. He may have to reject certain
currently fashionable assumptions about the philosophic enterprise-he
may have to reject widely accepted assumptions as to what are the proper
starting points and procedures for philosophical endeavor. And-and this
is crucially important-the Christian philosopher has a perfect right to
the point of view and prephilosophical assumptions he brings to
philosophic work; the fact that these are not widely shared outside the
Christian or theistic community is interesting but fundamentally
irrelevant. I can best explain what I mean by way of example; so I shall
descend from the level of lofty generality to specific examples.
II.Theism and Verifiability
First, the dreaded "Verifiability Criterion of Meaning." During the
palmy days of logical positivism, some thirty or forty years ago, the
positivists claimed that most of the sentences Christians
characteristically utter-"God loves us," for example, or "God created
the heavens and the earth"-don't even have the grace to be false; they
are, said the positivists, literally meaningless. It is not that they
express false propositions; they don't express any propositions
at all. Like that lovely line from Alice in Wonderland, "T'was
brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gymbol in the wabe," they say
nothing false, but only because they say nothing at all; they are
"cognitively meaningless," to use the positivist's charming phrase. The
sorts of things theists and others had been saying for centuries, they
said, were now shown to be without sense; we theists had all been the
victims, it seems, of a cruel hoax-perpetrated, perhaps, by ambitious
priests and foisted upon us by our own credulous natures.
Now if this is true, it is indeed important. How had the positivists
come by this startling piece of intelligence? They inferred it from the
Verifiability Criterion of Meaning, which said, roughly, that a sentence
is meaningful only if either it is analytic, or its truth or falsehood
can be determined by empirical or scientific investigation-by the
methods of the empirical sciences. On these grounds not only theism and
theology, but most of traditional metaphysics and philosophy and much
else besides was declared nonsense, without any literal sense at all.
Some positivists conceded that metaphysics and theology, though strictly
meaningless, might still have a certain limited value. Carnap, for
example, thought they might be a kind of music. It isn't known
whether he expected theology and metaphysics to supplant Bach and
Mozart, or even Wagner; I myself, however, think they could nicely
supersede rock. Hegel could take the place of The Talking
Heads; Immanuel Kant could replace The Beach Boys; and instead of The
Grateful Dead we could have, say, Arthur Schopenhauer.
Positivism had a delicious air of being avant garde and
with-it; and many philosophers found it extremely attractive.
Furthermore, many who didn't endorse it nonetheless entertained it with
great hospitality as at the least extremely plausible. As a consequence
many philosophers-both Christians and non-Christians-saw here a real
challenge and an important danger to Christianity: "The main danger to
theism today," said J. J. C. Smart in 1955, "comes from people who want
to say that 'God exists' and 'God does not exist' are equally absurd."
In 1955 New Essays in Philosophical Theology appeared, a volume
of essays that was to set the tone and topics for philosophy of religion
for the next decade or more; and most of this volume was given over to a
discussion of the impact of Verificationism on theism. Many
philosophically inclined Christians were disturbed and perplexed and
felt deeply threatened; could it really be true that linguistic
philosophers had somehow discovered that the Christian's most cherished
convictions were, in fact, just meaningless? There was a great deal of
anxious hand wringing among philosophers, either themselves theists or
sympathetic to theism. Some suggested, in the face of positivistic
onslaught, that the thing for the Christian community to do was to fold
up its tents and silently slink away, admitting that the verifiability
criterion was probably true. Others conceded that strictly speaking,
theism really is nonsense, but is important nonsense.
Still others suggested that the sentences in question should be
reinterpreted in such a way as not to give offense to the positivists;
someone seriously suggested, for example, that Christians resolve,
henceforth, to use the sentence "God exists" to mean "some men and women
have had, and all may have, experiences called 'meeting God'"; he added
that when we say "God created the world from nothing" what we should
mean is "everything we call 'material' can be used in such a way that it
contributes to the well-being of men." In a different context but the
same spirit, Rudolph Bultmann embarked upon his program of
demythologizing Christianity. Traditional supernaturalistic Christian
belief, he said, is "impossible in this age of electric light and the
wireless." (One can perhaps imagine an earlier village skeptic taking a
similar view of, say, the tallow candle and printing press, or perhaps
the pine torch and the papyrus scroll.)
By now, of course, Verificationism has retreated into the obscurity it
so richly deserves; but the moral remains. This hand wringing and those
attempts to accommodate the positivist were wholly inappropriate. I
realize that hindsight is clearer than foresight and I do not recount
this bit of recent intellectual history in order to be critical of my
elders or to claim that we are wiser than our fathers: what I want to
point out is that we can learn something from the whole nasty
incident. For Christian philosophers should have adopted a quite
different attitude towards positivism and its verifiability criterion.
What they should have said to the positivists is: "Your criterion is
mistaken: for such statements as 'God loves us' and 'God created the
heavens and the earth' are clearly meaningful; so if they aren't
verifiable in your sense, then it is false that all and only statements
verifiable in that sense are meaningful." What was needed here was less
accommodation to current fashion and more Christian self-confidence:
Christian theism is true; if Christian theism is true, then the
verifiability criterion is false; so the verifiability criterion is
false. Of course, if the verificationists had given cogent
arguments for their criterion, from premises that had some
legitimate claim on Christian or theistic thinkers, then perhaps there
would have been a problem here for the Christian philosopher; then we
would have been obliged either to agree that Christian theism is
cognitively meaningless, or else revise or reject those premises. But
the Verificationists never gave any cogent arguments; indeed, they
seldom gave any arguments at all. Some simply trumpeted this principle
as a great discovery, and when challenged, repeated it loudly and
slowly; but why should that disturb anyone? Others proposed it
as a definition-a definition of the term "meaningful." Now of
course the positivists had a right to use this term in any way they
chose; it's a free country. But how could their decision to use that
term in a particular way show anything so momentous as that all those
who took themselves to be believers in God were wholly deluded? If I
propose to use the term 'Democrat' to mean 'unmitigated scoundrel,'
would it follow that Democrats everywhere should hang their heads in
shame? And my point, to repeat myself, is that Christian philosophers
should have displayed more integrity, more independence, less readiness
to trim their sails to the prevailing philosophical winds of doctrine,
and more Christian self-confidence.
III.Theism and Theory of Knowledge
I can best approach my second example by indirection. Many philosophers
have claimed to find a serious problem for theism in the existence of
evil, or of the amount and kinds of evil we do in fact find. Many who
claim to find a problem here for theists have urged the deductive
argument from evil: they have claimed that the existence of an
omnipotent, omniscient, and wholly good God is logically
incompatible with the presence of evil in the world-a presence
conceded and indeed insisted upon by Christian theists. For their part,
theists have argued that there is no inconsistency here. I think the
present consensus, even among those who urge some form of the argument
from evil, is that the deductive form of the argument from evil is
unsuccessful.
More recently, philosophers have claimed that the existence of God,
while perhaps not actually inconsistent with the existence of
the amount and kinds of evil we do in fact find, is at any rate
unlikely or improbable with respect to it; that is,
the probability of the existence of God with respect to the evil we
find, is less than the probability, with respect to that same evidence,
that there is no God-no omnipotent, omniscient and wholly good Creator.
Hence the existence of God is improbable with respect to what we know.
But if theistic belief is improbable with respect to what we know, then,
so goes the claim, it is irrational or in any event intellectually
second rate to accept it.
Now suppose we briefly examine this claim. The objector holds that
- God is the omnipotent, omniscient and wholly good creator of the
world
is improbable or unlikely with respect to
- There are 10E+13 turps of evil
(where the turp is the basic unit of evil).
I've argued elsewhere that enormous difficulties beset the claim that
(1) is unlikely or improbable given (2). Call that response "the low
road reply." Here I want to pursue what I shall call the high
road reply. Suppose we stipulate, for purposes of argument, that
(1) is, in fact, improbable on (2). Let's agree that it is
unlikely, given the existence of 10E+13 turps of evil, that the world
has been created by a God who is perfect in power, knowledge and
goodness. What is supposed to follow from that? How is that to be
construed as an objection to theistic belief? How does the objector's
argument go from there? It doesn't follow, of course, that theism is
false. Nor does it follow that one who accepts both (1) and (2) (and
let's add, recognizes that (1) is improbable with respect to (2)) has an
irrational system of beliefs or is in any way guilty of noetic
impropriety; obviously there might be pairs of propositions A and B,
such that we know both A and B, despite the fact that A is
improbable on B. I might know, for example, both that Feike is a Frisian
and 9 out of 10 Frisians can't swim, and also that Feike can swim; then
I am obviously within my intellectual rights in accepting both these
propositions, even though the latter is improbable with respect to the
former. So even if it were a fact that (1) is improbable with respect to
(2), that fact, so far, wouldn't be of much consequence. How, therefore,
can this objection be developed?
Presumably what the objector means to hold is that (1) is improbable,
not just on (2) but on some appropriate body of total evidence-
perhaps all the evidence the theist has, or perhaps the body of evidence
he is rationally obliged to have. The objector must be supposing that
the theist has a relevant body of total evidence here, a body of
evidence that includes (2); and his claim is that (1) is improbable with
respect to this relevant body of total evidence. Suppose we say that
T is the relevant body of total evidence for a given theist T;
and suppose we agree that a brief is rationally acceptable for him only
if it is not improbable with respect to T. Now what sorts of
propositions are to be found in T? Perhaps the propositions he
knows to be true, or perhaps the largest subset of his beliefs
that he can rationally accept without evidence from other propositions,
or perhaps the propositions he knows immediately-knows, but
does not know on the basis of other propositions. However exactly we
characterize this set T, the question I mean to press is this:
why can't belief in God be itself a member of T? Perhaps for
the theist-for many theists, at any rate-belief in God is a member of
T. Perhaps the theist has a right to start from belief
in God, taking that proposition to be one of the ones probability with
respect to which determines the rational propriety of other
beliefs he holds. But if so, then the Christian philosopher is
entirely within his rights in starting from belief in God to his
philosophizing. He has a right to take the existence of God for granted
and go on from there in his philosophical work-just as other
philosophers take for granted the existence of the past, say, or of
other persons, or the basic claims of contemporary physics.
And this leads me to my point here. Many Christian philosophers appear
to think of themselves qua philosophers as engaged with the
atheist and agnostic philosopher in a common search for the correct
philosophical position vis a vis the question whether there is
such a person as God. Of course the Christian philosopher will have his
own private conviction on the point; he will believe, of course, that
indeed there is such a person as God. But he will think, or be inclined
to think, or half inclined to think that as a philosopher he
has no right to this position unless he is able to show that it follows
from, or is probable, or justified with respect to premises accepted by
all parties to the discussion-theist, agnostic and atheist alike.
Furthermore, he will be half inclined to think he has no right, as a
philosopher, to positions that presuppose the existence of God, if he
can't show that belief to be justified in this way. What I want to urge
is that the Christian philosophical community ought not think of itself
as engaged in this common effort to determine the probability or
philosophical plausibility of belief in God. The Christian philosopher
quite properly starts from the existence of God, and
presupposes it in philosophical work, whether or not he can show it to
be probable or plausible with respect to premises accepted by all
philosophers, or most philosophers at the great contemporary centers of
philosophy.
Taking it for granted, for example, that there is such a person as God
and that we are indeed within our epistemic rights (are in that sense
justified) in believing that there is, the Christian epistemologist
might ask what it is that confers justification here: by virtue of what
is the theist justified? Perhaps there are several sensible responses.
One answer he might give and try to develop is that of John Calvin (and
before him, of the Augustinian, Anselmian, Bonaventurian tradition of
the middle ages): God, said Calvin, has implanted in humankind a
tendency or nisus or disposition to believe in him:
"There is within the human mind, and indeed by
natural instinct, an awareness of divinity." This we take to
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 . . .
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.[2]
Calvin's claim, then, is that God has so created us that we have by
nature a strong tendency or inclination or disposition towards belief in
him.
Although this disposition to believe in God has been in part smothered
or suppressed by sin, it is nevertheless universally present. And it is
triggered or actuated by widely realized conditions:
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 disclosed himself in the whole workmanship of the
universe. As, a consequence, men cannot open their eyes
without being compelled to see him (p. 51).
Like Kant, Calvin is 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 (p. 52).
And now what Calvin says suggests that one who accedes to this tendency
and in these circumstances accepts the belief that God has created the
world-perhaps upon beholding the starry heavens, or the splendid majesty
of the mountains, or the intricate, articulate beauty of a tiny flower-
is quite as rational and quite as justified as one who believes that he
sees a tree upon having that characteristic being-appeared-to-treely
kind of experience.
No doubt this suggestion won't convince the skeptic; taken as an attempt
to convince the skeptic it is circular. My point is just this: the
Christian has his own questions to answer, and his own projects; these
projects may not mesh with those of the skeptical or unbelieving
philosopher. He has his own questions and his own starting point in
investigating these questions. Of course, I don't mean to suggest that
the Christian philosopher must accept Calvin's answer to the question I
mentioned above; but I do say it is entirely fitting for him to give to
this question an answer that presupposes precisely that of which the
skeptic is skeptical-even if this skepticism is nearly unanimous in most
of the prestigious philosophy departments of our day. The Christian
philosopher does indeed have a responsibility to the philosophical world
at large; but his fundamental responsibility is to the Christian
community, and finally to God.
Again, a Christian philosopher may be interested in the relation between
faith and reason, and faith and knowledge: granted that we hold some
things by faith and know other things: granted we believe that there is
such a person as God and that this belief is true; do we also
know that God exists? Do we accept this belief by faith or by
reason? A theist may be inclined towards a reliabilist theory
of knowledge; he may be inclined to think that a true belief constitutes
knowledge if it is produced by a reliable belief producing mechanism.
(There are hard problems here, but suppose for now we ignore them.) If
the theist thinks God has created us with the sensus
divinitatis Calvin speaks of, he will hold that indeed there is a
reliable belief producing mechanism that produces theistic belief; he
will thus hold that we know that God exists. One who follows
Calvin here will also hold that a capacity to apprehend God's existence
is as much part of our natural noetic or intellectual equipment as is
the capacity to apprehend truths of logic, perceptual truths, truths
about the past, and truths about other minds. Belief in the existence of
God is then in the same boat as belief in truths of logic, other minds,
the past, and perceptual objects; in each case God has so constructed us
that in the right circumstances we acquire the belief in question. But
then the belief that there is such a person as God is as much among the
deliverances of our natural noetic faculties as are those other beliefs.
Hence we know that there is such a person as God, and don't
merely believe it; and it isn't by faith that we apprehend the
existence of God, but by reason; and this whether or not any of the
classical theistic arguments is successful.
Now my point is not that Christian philosophers must follow Calvin here.
My point is that the Christian philosopher has a right (I should say a
duty) to work at his own projects-projects set by the beliefs of the
Christian community of which he is a part. The Christian philosophical
community must work out the answers to its questions; and both
the questions and the appropriate ways of working out their answers may
presuppose beliefs rejected at most of the leading centers of
philosophy. But the Christian is proceeding quite properly in starting
from these beliefs, even if they are so rejected. He is under no
obligation to confine his research projects to those pursued at those
centers, or to pursue his own projects on the basis of the assumptions
that prevail there.
Perhaps I can clarify what I want to say by contrasting it with a wholly
different view. According to the theologian David Tracy,
In fact the modern Christian theologian cannot
ethically do other than challenge the traditional
self-understanding of the theologian. He no longer sees his
task as a simple defense of or even as an orthodox
reinterpretation of traditional belief. Rather, he finds
that his ethical commitment to the morality of scientific
knowledge forces him to assume a critical posture towards
his own and his tradition's beliefs. . . In principle, the
fundamental loyalty of the theologian qua
theologian is to that morality of scientific knowledge which
he shares with his colleagues, the philosophers, historians
and social sciences. No more than they can he allow his own-
or his tradition's-beliefs to serve as warrants for his
arguments. In fact, in all properly theological inquiry, the
analysis should be characterized by those same ethical
stances of autonomous judgment, critical judgment and
properly skeptical hard-mindedness that characterizes
analysis in other fields.[3]
Furthermore, this "morality of scientific knowledge insists that each
inquirer start with the present methods and knowledge of the field in
question, unless one has evidence of the same logical type for rejecting
those methods and that knowledge." Still further, "for the new
scientific morality, one's fundamental loyalty as an analyst of any and
all cognitive claims is solely to those methodological procedures which
the particular scientific community in question has developed" (6).
I say caveat lector. I'm prepared to bet that this "new
scientific morality" is like the Holy Roman Empire: it is neither new
nor scientific nor morally obligatory. Furthermore the "new scientific
morality" looks to me to be monumentally inauspicious as a stance for a
Christian theologian, modern or otherwise. Even if there were a set of
methodological procedures held in common by most philosophers,
historians and social scientists, or most secular philosophers,
historians, and social scientists, why should a Christian theologian
give ultimate allegiance to them rather than, say, to God, or to the
fundamental truths of Christianity? Tracy's suggestion as to how
Christian theologians should proceed seems at best wholly unpromising.
Of course I am only a philosopher, not a modern theologian; no doubt I
am venturing beyond my depths. So I don't presume to speak for modern
theologians; but however things stand for them, the modern Christian
philosopher has a perfect right, as a philosopher, to start
from his belief in God. He has a right to assume it, take it for
granted, in his philosophical work-whether or not he can convince his
unbelieving colleagues either that this belief is true or that it is
sanctioned by those "methodological procedures" Tracy mentions.
And the Christian philosophical community ought to get on with the
philosophical questions of importance to the Christian community. It
ought to get on with the project of exploring and developing the
implications of Christian theism for the whole range of questions
philosophers ask and answer. It ought to do this whether or not it can
convince the philosophical community at large either that there really
is such a person as God, or that it is rational or reasonable to believe
that there is. Perhaps the Christian philosopher can convince
the skeptic or the unbelieving philosopher that indeed there is such a
person as God. Perhaps this is possible in at least some instances. In
other instances, of course, it may be impossible; even if the skeptic in
fact accepts premises from which theistic belief follows by argument
forms he also accepts, he may, when apprised of this situation, give up
those premises rather than his unbelief. (In this way it is possible to
reduce someone from knowledge to ignorance by giving him an argument he
sees to be valid from premises he knows to be true.)
But whether or not this is possible, the Christian philosopher has other
fish to fry and other questions to think about. Of course he must listen
to, understand, and learn from the broader philosophical community and
he must take his place in it; but his work as a philosopher is not
circumscribed by what either the skeptic or the rest of the
philosophical world thinks of theism. Justifying or trying to justify
theistic belief in the eyes of the broader philosophical community is
not the only task of the Christian philosophical community; perhaps it
isn't even among its most important tasks. Philosophy is a communal
enterprise. The Christian philosopher who looks exclusively to the
philosophical world at large, who thinks of himself as belonging
primarily to that world, runs a two-fold risk. He may neglect
an essential part of his task as a Christian philosopher; and he may
find himself adopting principles and procedures that don't comport well
with his beliefs as a Christian. What is needed, once more, is autonomy
and integrality.
IV.Theism and Persons
My third example has to do with philosophical anthropology: how should
we think about human persons? What sorts of things, fundamentally,
are they? What is it to be a person, what is it to be a
human person, and how shall we think about personhood? How, in
particular, should Christians, Christian philosophers, think about these
things? The first point to note is that on the Christian scheme of
things, God is the premier person, the first and chief exemplar
of personhood. God, furthermore, has created man in his own image; we
men and women are image bearers of God, and the properties most
important for an understanding of our personhood are properties we share
with him. How we think about God, then, will have an immediate and
direct bearing on how we think about humankind. Of course we learn much
about ourselves from other sources-from everyday observation, from
introspection and self-observation, from scientific investigation and
the like. But it is also perfectly proper to start from what we know as
Christians. It is not the case that rationality, or proper philosophical
method, or intellectual responsibility, or the new scientific morality,
or whatever, require that we start from beliefs we share with everyone
else-what common sense and current science teach, e.g.-and attempt to
reason to or justify those beliefs we hold as Christians. In trying to
give a satisfying philosophical account of some area or phenomenon, we
may properly appeal, in our account or explanation, to anything else we
already rationally believe- whether it be current science or Christian
doctrine.
Let me proceed again to specific examples. There is a fundamental
watershed, in philosophical anthropology, between those who think of
human beings as free-free in the libertarian sense-and those
who espouse determinism. According to determinists, every human action
is a consequence of initial conditions outside our control by way of
causal laws that are also outside our control. Sometimes underlying this
claim is a picture of the universe as a vast machine where, at any rate
at the macroscopic level, all events, including human actions, are
determined by previous events and causal laws. On this view every action
I have in fact performed was such that it wasn't within my power to
refrain from performing it; and if, on a given occasion I did
not perform a given action, then it wasn't then within my power
to perform it. If I now raise my arm, then, on the view in question, it
wasn't within my power just then not to raise it. Now the Christian
thinker has a stake in this controversy just by virtue of being a
Christian. For she will no doubt believe that God holds us human beings
responsible for much of what we do-responsible, and thus properly
subject to praise or blame, approval or disapproval. But how can I be
responsible for my actions, if it was never within my power to perform
any actions I didn't in fact perform, and never within my power to
refrain from performing any I did perform? If my actions are thus
determined, then I am not rightly or justly held accountable for them;
but God does nothing improper or unjust, and he holds me accountable for
some of my actions; hence it is not the case that all of my actions are
thus determined. The Christian has an initially strong reason to reject
the claim that all of our actions are causally determined-a reason much
stronger than the meager and anemic arguments the determinist can muster
on the other side. Of course if there were powerful arguments
on the other side, then there might be a problem here. But there aren't;
so there isn't.
Now the determinist may reply that freedom and causal determinism are,
contrary to initial appearances, in fact compatible. He may argue that
my being free with respect to an action I performed at a time t
for example, doesn't entail that it was then within my power to refrain
from performing it, but only something weaker-perhaps something like
if I had chosen not to perform it, I would not have performed
it. Indeed, the clearheaded compatibilist will go further. He will
maintain, not merely that freedom is compatible with
determinism, but that freedom requires determinism. He will
hold with Hume that the proposition S is free with respect to action
A or S does A freely entails that S is causally
determined with respect to A-that there are causal laws and
antecedent conditions that together entail either that S
performs A or that S does not perform A. And
he will back up this claim by insisting that if S is not thus
determined with respect to A, then it's merely a matter of
chance-due, perhaps, to quantum effects in S's brain-
that S does A. But if it is just a matter of chance
that S does A then either S doesn't really do
A at all, or at any rate S is not responsible for
doing A. If S's doing A is just a matter of
chance, then S's doing A is something that just
happens to him; but then it is not really the case that he
performs A-at any rate it is not the case that he is
responsible for performing A. And hence freedom, in
the sense that is required for responsibility, itself requires
determinism.
But the Christian thinker will find this claim monumentally implausible.
Presumably the determinist means to hold that what he says characterizes
actions generally, not just those of human beings. He will hold that it
is a necessary truth that if an agent isn't caused to perform
an action then it is a mere matter of chance that the agent in question
performs the action in question. From a Christian perspective, however,
this is wholly incredible. For God performs actions, and performs free
actions; and surely it is not the case that there are causal laws and
antecedent conditions outside his control that determine what he does.
On the contrary: God is the author of the causal laws that do in fact
obtain; indeed, perhaps the best way to think of these causal laws is as
records of the ways in which God ordinarily treats the beings he has
created. But of course it is not simply a matter of chance that
God does what he does-creates and upholds the world, let's say, and
offers redemption and renewal to his children. So a Christian
philosopher has an extremely good reason for rejecting this premise,
along with the determinism and compatibilism it supports.
What is really at stake in this discussion is the notion of agent
causation: the notion of a person as an ultimate source of action.
According to the friends of agent causation, some events are caused, not
by other events, but by substances, objects-typically personal agents.
And at least since the time of David Hume, the idea of agent causation
has been languishing. It is fair to say, I think, that most contemporary
philosophers who work in this area either reject agent causation
outright or are at the least extremely suspicious of it. They see
causation as a relation among events; they can understand how
one event can cause another event, or how events of one kind can cause
events of another kind. But the idea of a person, say, causing
an event, seems to them unintelligible, unless it can be analyzed,
somehow, in terms of event causation. It is this devotion to event
causation, of course, that explains the claim that if you perform an
action but are not caused to do so, then your performing that action is
a matter of chance. For if I hold that all causation is ultimately event
causation, then I will suppose that if you perform an action but are not
caused to do so by previous events, then your performing that action
isn't caused at all and is therefore a mere matter of chance. The
devotee of event causation, furthermore, will perhaps argue for his
position as follows. If such agents as persons cause effects that take
place in the physical world-my body's moving in a certain way, for
example-then these effects must ultimately be caused by volitions or
undertakings-which, apparently, are immaterial, unphysical
events. He will then claim that the idea of an immaterial event's having
causal efficacy in the physical world is puzzling or dubious or
worse.
But a Christian philosopher will find this argument unimpressive and
this devotion to event causation uncongenial. As for the argument, the
Christian already and independently believes that acts of volition have
causal efficacy; he believes indeed, that the physical universe owes its
very existence to just such volitional acts-God's undertaking to create
it. And as for the devotion to event causation, the Christian will be,
initially, at any rate, strongly inclined to reject the idea that event
causation is primary and agent causation to be explained in terms of it.
For he believes that God does and has done many things: he has created
the world; he sustains it in being; he communicates with his children.
But it is extraordinarily hard to see how these truths can be analyzed
in terms of causal relations among events. What events could possibly
cause God's creating the world or his undertaking to create the world?
God himself institutes or establishes the causal laws that do in fact
hold; how, then, can we see all the events constituted by his actions as
related to causal laws to earlier events? How could it be that
propositions ascribing actions to him are to be explained in terms of
event causation?
Some theistic thinkers have noted this problem and reacted by soft
pedaling God's causal activity, or by impetuously following Kant in
declaring that it is of a wholly different order from that in which we
engage, an order beyond our comprehension. I believe this is the wrong
response. Why should a Christian philosopher join in the general
obeisance to event causation? It is not as if there are cogent
arguments here. The real force behind this claim is a certain
philosophical way of looking at persons and the world; but this view has
no initial plausibility from a Christian perspective and no compelling
argument in its favor.
So on all these disputed points in philosophical anthropology the theist
will have a strong initial predilection for resolving the dispute in one
way rather than another. He will be inclined to reject compatibilism, to
hold that event causation (if indeed there is such a thing) is to be
explained in
terms of agent causation, to reject the idea that if an event isn't
caused by other events then its occurrence is a matter of chance, and to
reject the idea that events in the physical world can't be caused by an
agent's undertaking to do something. And my point here is this. The
Christian philosopher is within his right in holding these positions,
whether or not he can convince the rest of the philosophical world and
whatever the current philosophical consensus is, if there is a
consensus. But isn't such an appeal to God and his properties, in this
philosophical context, a shameless appeal to a deus ex machina?
Surely not. "Philosophy," as Hegel once exclaimed in a rare fit of
lucidity, "is thinking things over." Philosophy is in large part a
clarification, systematization, articulation, relating and deepening of
pre-philosophical opinion. We come to philosophy with a range of
opinions about the world and humankind and the place of the latter in
the former; and in philosophy we think about these matters,
systematically articulate our views, put together and relate our views
on diverse topics, and deepen our views by finding unexpected
interconnections and by discovering and answering unanticipated
questions. Of course we may come to change our minds by virtue of
philosophical endeavor; we may discover incompatibilities or other
infelicities. But we come to philosophy with prephilosophical opinions;
we can do no other. And the point is: the Christian has as much right to
his prephilosophical opinions, as others have to theirs. He needn't try
first to 'prove' them from propositions accepted by, say, the bulk of
the non-Christian philosophical community; and if they are widely
rejected as naive, or pre-scientific, or primitive, or unworthy of "man
come of age," that is nothing whatever against them. Of course if there
were genuine and substantial arguments against them from premises that
have some legitimate claim on the Christian philosopher, then he would
have a problem; he would have to make some kind of change somewhere. But
in the absence of such arguments-and the absence of such arguments is
evident-the Christian philosophical community, quite properly starts, in
philosophy, from what it believes.
But this means that the Christian philosophical community need not
devote all of its efforts to attempting to refute opposing claims and or
to arguing for its own claims, in each case from premises accepted by
the bulk of the philosophical community at large. It ought to do this,
indeed, but it ought to do more. For if it does only this, it will
neglect a pressing philosophical task: systematizing, deepening,
clarifying Christian thought on these topics. So here again: my plea is
for the Christian philosopher, the Christian philosophical community, to
display, first, more independence and autonomy: we needn't take as our
research projects just those projects that currently enjoy widespread
popularity; we have our own questions to think about. Secondly, we must
display more integrity. We must not automatically assimilate what is
current or fashionable or popular by way of philosophical opinion and
procedures; for much of it comports ill with Christian ways of thinking.
And finally, we must display more Christian self-confidence or courage
or boldness. We have a perfect right to our pre-philosophical views:
why, therefore, should we be intimidated by what the rest of the
philosophical world thinks plausible or implausible?
These, then, are my examples; I could have chosen others. In ethics, for
example: perhaps the chief theoretical concern, from the theistic
perspective, is the question how are right and wrong, good and bad,
duty, permission and obligation related to God and to his will and to
his creative activity? This question doesn't arise, naturally enough,
from a non--theistic perspective; and so, naturally enough, non-theist
ethicists do not address it. But it is perhaps the most important
question for a Christian ethicist to tackle. I have already spoken about
epistemology; let me mention another example from this area.
Epistemologists sometimes worry about the confluence or lack thereof of
epistemic justification, on the one hand, and truth,
or reliability, on the other. Suppose we do the best that can
be expected of us, noetically speaking; suppose we do our intellectual
duties and satisfy our intellectual obligations: what guarantee is there
that in so doing we shall arrive at the truth? Is there even any reason
for supposing that if we thus satisfy our obligations, we shall have a
better chance of arriving at the truth than if we brazenly flout them?
And where do these intellectual obligations come from? How does it
happen that we have them? Here the theist has, if not a clear set of
answers, at any rate clear suggestions towards a set of answers. Another
example: creative anti-realism is presently popular among philosophers;
this is the view that it is human behavior-in particular, human thought
and language-that is somehow responsible for the fundamental structure
of the world and for the fundamental kinds of entities there are. From a
theistic point of view, however, universal creative anti-realism is at
best a mere impertinence, a piece of laughable bravado. For
God, of course, owes neither his existence nor his properties
to us and our ways of thinking; the truth is just the reverse. And so
far as the created universe is concerned, while it indeed owes its
existence and character to activity on the part of a person, that person
is certainly not a human person.
One final example, this time from philosophy of mathematics. Many who
think about sets and their nature are inclined to accept the
following ideas. First, no set is a member of itself. Second, whereas a
property has its extension contingently, a set has its
membership essentially. This means that no set could have existed if one
of its members had not, and that no set could have had fewer or
different members from the ones it in fact has. It means, furthermore,
that sets are contingent beings; if Ronald Reagan had not existed, then
his unit set would not have existed. And thirdly, sets form a sort of
iterated structure: at the first level there are sets whose members are
non-sets, at the second level sets whose members are non-sets or first
level sets; at the third level, sets whose members are non-sets or sets
of the first two levels, and so on. Many are also inclined, with George
Cantor, to regard sets as collections-as objects whose
existence is dependent upon a certain sort of intellectual activity-a
collecting or "thinking together" as Cantor put it. If sets were
collections of this sort, that would explain their displaying the first
three features I mentioned. But if the collecting or thinking together
had to be done by human thinkers, or any finite thinkers, there
wouldn't be nearly enough sets-not nearly as many as we think in fact
there are. From a theistic point of view, the natural conclusion is that
sets owe their existence to God's thinking things together. The
natural explanation of those three features is just that sets are indeed
collections-collections collected by God; they are or result from God's
thinking things together. This idea may not be popular at contemporary
centers of set theoretical activity; but that is neither here nor there.
Christians, theists, ought to understand sets from a Christian
and theistic point of view. What they believe as theists
affords a resource for understanding sets not available to the
non-theist; and why shouldn't they employ it? Perhaps here we
could proceed without appealing to what we believe as theists;
but why should we, if these beliefs are useful and explanatory?
I could probably get home this evening by hopping on one leg; and
conceivably I could climb Devil's Tower with my feet tied together. But
why should I want to?
The Christian or theistic philosopher, therefore, has his own way of
working at his craft. In some cases there are items on his agenda-
pressing items-not to be found on the agenda of the non-theistic
philosophical community. In others, items that are currently fashionable
appear of relatively minor interest from a Christian perspective. In
still others, the theist will reject common assumptions and views about
how to start, how to proceed, and what constitutes a good or satisfying
answer. In still others the Christian will take for granted and will
start from assumptions and premises rejected by the philosophical
community at large. Of course I don't mean for a moment to suggest that
Christian philosophers have nothing to learn from their non-Christian
and non-theist colleagues: that would be a piece of foolish arrogance,
utterly belied by the facts of the matter. Nor do I mean to suggest that
Christian philosophers should retreat into their own isolated enclave,
having as little as possible to do with non-theistic philosophers. Of
course not! Christians have much to learn and much of enormous
importance to learn by way of dialogue and discussion with their
non-theistic colleagues. Christian philosophers must be intimately
involved in the professional life of the philosophical community at
large, both because of what they can learn and because of what they can
contribute. Furthermore, while Christian philosophers need not and ought
not to see themselves as involved, for example, in a common effort to
determine whether there is such a person as God, we are all, theist and
non-theist alike, engaged in the common human project of understanding
ourselves and the world in which we find ourselves. If the Christian
philosophical community is doing its job properly, it will be engaged in
a complicated, many-sided dialectical discussion, making its own
contribution to that common human project. It must pay careful attention
to other contributions; it must gain a deep understanding of them; it
must learn what it can from them and it must take unbelief with profound
seriousness.
All of this is true and all of this important; but none of it runs
counter to what I have been saying. Philosophy is many things. I said
earlier that it is a matter of systematizing, developing and deepening
one's pre-philosophical opinions. It is that; but it is also an arena
for the articulation and interplay of commitments and allegiances
fundamentally religious in nature; it is an expression of deep and
fundamental perspectives, ways of viewing ourselves and the world and
God. Among its most important and pressing projects are systematizing,
deepening, exploring, articulating this perspective, and exploring its
bearing on the rest of what we think and do. But then the Christian
philosophical community has its own agenda; it need not and should not
automatically take its projects from the list of those currently in
favor at the leading contemporary centers of philosophy. Furthermore,
Christian philosophers must be wary about assimilating or accepting
presently popular philosophical ideas and procedures; for many of these
have roots that are deeply anti-Christian. And finally the Christian
philosophical community has a right to its perspectives; it is under no
obligation first to show that this perspective is plausible with respect
to what is taken for granted by all philosophers, or most philosophers,
or the leading philosophers of our day.
In sum, we who are Christians and propose to be philosophers must not
rest content with being philosophers who happen, incidentally, to be
Christians; we must strive to be Christian philosophers. We must
therefore pursue our projects with integrity, independence, and
Christian boldness.[4]
NOTES
- "The Probabilistic Argument from Evil," Philosophical
Studies, 1979, pp. 1-53.
- Institutes of the Christian Religion, tr. Ford Lewis
Battles (Philadelphia: The Westminister Press, 1960). Bk. 1, Chap. III,
pp. 43-44.
- Blessed Rage for Order (New York: Seabury Press), 1978,
p. 7.
- Delivered November 4, 1983, as the author's inaugural address as
John A. O'Brien Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame.
Copyright
Reprinted from Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian
Philosophers vol. 1, permanently copyrighted October 1984. Used by
permission of the Editor. New preface by author. Journal web site:
www.faithandphilosophy.com
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