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TOPIC: Edwards, Jonathan - Rational Biblical Theology (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: Chapt 03 PostEdwardsian
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1. The Breakdown of the Classical Christian Synthesis - Kant’s Copernican Revolution.
If the classical Christian view has been built on theistic proofs and biblical evidences one would hardly guess it today. We are living in a predominantly fideistic Christian era. By fideism (or faith-ism) I refer to the view that has faith resting, not on evidence, but on faith itself. It is faith in faith, not in any reasons for faith. We are so fideistic today that we tend to assume that Christianity obviously is, and equally obviously always has been, so. We are so sure of this that we cannot hear history speaking differently. Our age tends to see a “rationalist” in every Christian who attempts a reasonable defense of Christianity.
Clyde Manschreck, for example, is not only a Christian but an historian of Christianity. Furthermore, he is a specialist on Melanchthon whose theistic proofs we have earlier mentioned. But, Manschreck, quite typically, sees history through fideistically-colored glasses. William Chillingworth, (1602-1644), he notes is “sometimes called the father of the rationalists in religion.” *1* Why? Because in his book The Religion of Protestants, (1638), Chillingworth wrote:
For my part I am certain that God hath given us our reason to discern between truth and falsehood, and he that makes not this use of it but believes things he knows not why, I say, it is by chance that he believes the truth and not by choice; and that I cannot but fear that God will not accept this sacrifice of fools. *2*
Manschreck remarks that neither Geneva, Canterbury, nor Rome likes this view. But what is wrong with a view which says, once the authority of the Bible has been established:
Propose me anything out of this book and require whether I believe it or no, and seem it never so incomprehensible to human reason, I will subscribe it with hand and heart, as knowing no demonstration can be stronger than this; God hath said so, therefore it is true. *3*
Chillingworth was not the soundest of theologians, but at this starting point he is classically Christian and it is the modern fideistic commentator who is out of step with mainline Christian history.
Today, not only Christians in general and neo-orthodox ones in particular are fideistic. Even evangelical, reformed Christians tend to be *Son_4:1-16* At least many, indeed most, of these scholars, reject any theistic proofs. It is very difficult - if not logically impossible - to avoid fideism without them. Jaroslav Pelikan welcomes the fideism produced by Immanuel Kant thinking of him as a second Immanuel having delivered Christians from the responsibility of proving what they believe. *5*
How did this great rational shift come to pass? The answer is a man named Kant (1724-1804), who being dead nearly two centuries still dominates the rational theological scene. He claimed that in the realm of mind he effected a Copernican revolution. That may be an understatement. Kant banished God from the world of (pure) reason and to this day a proven God is in exile for most academicians. Scarcely anyone will try to prove God’s existence, however fervently he believes in it. God has been dead to the head for nearly two centuries. Incidentally, the Critique of Pure Reason *6* was first published in 1781 which makes Americans think of 1776 and their revolution. The United States declared political independence of Britain. Kant declared rational independence of the all-wise God. “I had,” he said, “to remove knowledge to make room for faith.” What he did was remove rational-revelational Christianity to make room for fideism.
Others, we have seen, doubted the Christian God’s existence before Kant. They argued against it. They claimed to refute the proofs for it in His Word. We have seen how Manicheanism held young Augustine captive for a decade. But these were not generally considered successful. The vast majority of thinkers argued more or less effectively for the divine existence. Kant laid his axe at the root of the tree of the knowledge of God. He tried to show by his Critique of Pure Reason, (and satisfied most of the scholarly world then and now), that it is impossible ever to know God with a scientific rationality much less prove Him. Men have always realized that they could not know God fully - finitum non capax infinitum. Kant said: You cannot know him at all - or your own soul or its immortality either. Unlike Scottish Realism, which in this country as well as Britain opposed Kant from the beginning, contemporary traditionalists have surrendered.
There are essentially three ways Kant attempted to establish his anti-theistic position. First, he argued that man’s knowledge only extends to this world’s phenomena and not to noumena or God’s world. Second, he also made a direct attack on the traditional theistic proofs. Third, he argued that theistic reasoning ends in antinomies. His Critique of Pure Reason was designed to show that knowledge of God was impossible. If theists did not accept his epistemology, he would show them that even on their own principles God cannot be proven to exist. It was said of Borden P. Bowne that when he debated he not only annihilated his opponent but dusted off the spot where he stood. Kant’s epistemology in the Critique of Pure Reason seems to annihilate all theistic opponents. By the specific attack on the proofs he thought and most theists think that he dusted off the spot where they once stood.
In the first argument, Kant erects a theory of knowledge that precludes any theoretical knowledge of God. Something comes to our minds from out-there, (the sense manifold), through our senses. This something is experienced with intuitions (Anchauungen) of space and time which are not out-there but in-here, in our sensibility. We could never apprehend the out-there without the element in-here. Still, we are not yet able to form a rational judgment for that involves certain categories, (quantity, quality, relation, modality), which also are not out-there but in-here, in our understanding (Verstand). The final step in knowledge is the schematism of the reason proper, (Vernunft), which combines these judgments into a cosmology, psychology, and theology of “phenomena” never the “noumena” or “Ding an sich” (thing in itself).
It is apparent that our knowledge, according to Kant, is largely what we would call subjective (in-here). If this is so, any knowledge of a divine being existing in and of Himself is beyond the reach of our minds.
Kant also directly attacked the ontological, cosmological and teleological arguments. He rejected the ontological argument. We cannot conclude that because the idea of a perfect being entails the idea of existence that said existence is a fact. The cosmological argument is said to reduce to the ontological argument and thereby proves its invalidity. If it does not, it is still invalid because we do not know things as they are but only as they appear. For the teleological argument, Kant has the greatest respect short of acceptance. It proves at most, he says, an architect trying to shape the world and not a creator dominating it. Moreover, purpose is a highly subjective thing which we tend to read into nature and history (Critique of Judgment, 1789-93).
Kant’s third basic line of argument is his antinomies. Briefly, these are attempts to show that one line of traditional argumentation for a particular theistic proof can be countered by another line of reasoning proving the opposite. Thus they neutralize or cancel each other.
Kant claims to take non-Kantian assumptions to show that theistic argumentation, on its own principles, is self-contradictory. He has already shown, on the ground of his epistemological analysis, that there is no possibility of rational argument for God. He is now, supposedly, coming over to theistic ground to show that even here, arguing ad hominem, there is no sound argument.
Four sets of antinomies are advanced:
(a) One can argue that the world had no beginning in unlimited space and time. Otherwise cause would be in the series itself and would need explanation. On the other hand, the world had a beginning in space and time. Otherwise, there would have been a void from which nothing could have come.
(b) Existing entities must be simple not complex but, on the other hand, they must consist of parts and cannot be simple substances.
(c) Freedom-causality antinomy: if every effect must have a cause, nothing is free. But free agency must exist to will the effects.
(d) There must be a necessary being on which the contingent temporalities depend. But, there cannot be such a necessary being, because such a being would have no relation to the contingent.
In the course of the following discussion it will be seen that, and how, Edwards responds to the alleged “antinomies.”
2. Jonathan Edwards and the Classical Synthesis
If Edwards’ great contemporary Kant was the great divide in Christian thought on which side was Jonathan Edwards? There is no doubt in the mind of Mattoon Curtis and Douglas Elwood. Curtis finds Edwards to be a veritable Kantian as we shall see while Elwood thinks that he was beyond trying to prove Christianity. Edwards was undoubtedly an intellectual defender of traditional theism. It is also true that he defended it in his own unique manner. This unique quality of his thought smacks somewhat of a “reverent agnosticism,” and helps to explain the error of Mattoon Curtis and Douglas Elwood.
This apparent bifurcation in the philosophy of Jonathan Edwards will be explored more thoroughly in the following chapters justifying, I believe, his reputation as an essentially traditional defender of traditional theism. If Jonathan Edwards is calling the church back to her old and tried ways, it should be remembered he was but one voice in the eighteenth century. Rejecting the rationalistic Deists, Christians ought not to reject rationality with them, contended Edwards. As John Orr has shown in his English Deism: Its Roots and Its Fruits, *7* Edwards’ century was the golden age of rational apologetics. However, for every one who has read John Orr probably ten have read John Dillenberger’s Protestant Thought and Natural Science *8* which reads the eighteenth century through twentieth century glasses.
If my view of Edwards is correct - as remains to be seen - Edwards’ place in the history of Christian theology is secure as one of orthodoxy’s greatest champions of Christian philosophy no less than theology. If Miller and Ramsey can say with justification that his work on the Freedom of the Will alone was enough to establish him as the foremost philosopher-theologian ever to grace the American scene, and William Frankena *9* can call him the greatest philosophical defender of Calvinism, his overall achievement places him with Augustine and Aquinas and Calvin among the greatest systematizers of the reasonable Christian tradition in all of its long history. If his work as a biblical interpreter, preacher, evangelist, saint, husband, father, and cultural influence are added we may have the greatest Christian since the apostolic age. Yet today, though the classical apologetics of Jonathan Edwards is not dead, it is surely under severe attack. It to an examination of that assault that we now turn.
3. Contemporary Advocates of the Classical Synthesis.
The synthesis may be in decline but it is far from moribund. A number of capable thinkers still advance it without fear of being charged either with stubbornness or stupidity. To name but two one thinks of E. L. Mascall and S. Hackett. And there are those who are revisiting the theistic proofs and reporting that they may have been prematurely dismissed: Norman Malcolm, Peter Bertocci, G. Berkouwer, Charles Hartshorne, Edward Farley. The Aristotelian Society, Thomistic Review, and New Scholasticism as well as Bibliothica Sacra and other journals regularly keep these issues alive.
Probably the best known twentieth century scholarly advocate of the classical Christian synthesis is E. L. Mascall. First, we will listen to him as others have heard him and then listen to him for ourselves. It has been said that it is not what you say that matters but what others hear you saying. We think this is true in the case of Mascall; at least, some are hearing him say things that we do not hear him saying.
I consider, first, Cobb’s presentation of Mascall’s argument in Living Options in Protestant Theology. *10* Cobb notes that Mascall does not think that one would come to natural theology except by means of special revelation. And his criticism at the end of the survey is that Mascall makes reason rest on faith, after all. For Cobb, this is Augustinianism, or (to his mind), fideism.
All of this only proves that Cobb does not hear Mascall or even Augustine aright, if I do. I will leave Augustine aside at this time but try to show that Mascall is first misunderstood and then criticized for what he is not saying. The misunderstanding is easily and commonly made. Thomas and the Thomists after him, readily admit that they realized the truth of natural revelation only after being illumined by special revelation and that when they argue for natural revelation they are already persuaded of special. We have heard Mascall at Oxford say this very thing about Anselm as well as Aquinas. No doubt it is true of Mascall also. But this is not the same thing as saying that natural revelation rests on special pleading and that reason is merely special pleading for faith, as Barth contends is the case with Anselm. What these apologists do mean is that only after their minds were opened to the God of Christian revelation were they also opened to the truth of natural revelation. Natural revelation was there all the time but they had not seen it until their eyes were opened to it through Scripture. Faith did not create the evidence but led them to see it. “Once I was blind but now I can see,” rather than, “once there was no evidence but now the eyes of faith have provided it.” The mind has the eyes which faith opens.
Of course, this does not prove that there is evidence or that Mascall was right in so thinking. But it does mean that he is not resting on prior faith. One does not necessarily beg a question when he begins his reasoning as a committed Christian. It is like an Ellery Queen mystery. The writer puts in enough data that the reader can solve the mystery for himself. Most of us fail to do that. We are able to do so only after the writer points out “whodunnit.” Then we can see quite plainly, even wondering why we did not see it on our own much sooner. The evidence was there all the time but we did not see it until we knew the answer from another source. But the evidence was and is there. We can even show it much better from knowing the answer. But that does not necessarily mean that one can only see it if he knows that answer from another source.
This seems to be the only serious criticism of Mascall which Cobb offers. His general exposition of Mascall is fair, clear and even suggests that Cobb does not have much to which he takes exception. He does say here and there that Mascall “admits” this and that, suggesting that the Neo-thomist does well in so doing, whereas Mascall himself does not feel he is making crucial concessions. But, since Cobb does not say so either, I cannot assume (except for his final criticism), that he does not go along with Mascall himself.
When we consider Reymond the objections to Mascall are much more numerous and serious. *11* According to this author, Mascall: 1. assumes that the world is an effect and that this, by definition, implies a cause. Reymond thinks that Mascall is thus guilty of tautology. If Mascall argued as Reymond thinks he does, he is guilty as charged. But it is Reymond who is guilty of not noticing that Mascall attempts to prove that the world has a beginning and then assuming, of course, that whatever begins to be must have a cause, believes he proves that the world must have a cause outside the world. Perhaps Mascall does not succeed in proving that the world is an effect, (I think that he does); but, in any case this argument is not, as presented, a tautology. 2. Again, Reymond charges that Mascall’s form of the infinite regress argument is this: If there were an infinite regress then there would be no first cause; therefore, there is no infinite regress because there must be a first cause. This is the way Mascall is supposed to prove from infinite regress that there must be a first cause. But instead of Mascall begging the point, we fear it is Reymond missing the point. The Oxonian specifically states:
The point is not really that we cannot have an infinite regress in the order of nature, but that such an infinite regress in the series of moved movers would necessitate an unmoved First Mover not in the order of nature but above it. *12*
Reymond further criticizes Mascall’s cosmological argument saying it would at most prove a God who created the world and not the God of the Bible. *13* We were of the opinion that that was all that Mascall, or any other theistic reasoner, had hoped to prove by the theistic argument. Theistic proofs are meant to prove the existence of God (theos). It seems that even if they prove what they set out to prove they are not successful because they did not prove what they did not set out to prove. The Bible purports to be a special revelation from the God who created the world. If we could know this revelation from the evidence that He is the creator of the world, it is not immediately evident why further revelation would be necessary. This is a form of the Pascalian observation that the God of the philosophers is not the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. This could mean that the God we learn from nature is different from the God we learn from the Bible. If the God of the Bible is the only true God, as the Bible claims, then there must be something wrong about what the theistic proofs prove; that is, they must be invalid. Pascal never quite said as much but that seems to be the only form in which this “objection” is worthy of the name. If the objection only observes that we know some personal saving things about God from special revelation that the general revelation of nature does not reveal, surely this is no objection to theistic evidence. If anything, it is a confirmation. That is, theistic argument would prove the existence of a God who just might speak as the Bible claims He actually did. The fact that Mascall does not find as much information about God from nature as the Bible reveals is hardly an argument against theistic proofs.
Reymond is not yet finished. With the Bible (he thinks), and not just Hume, on his side he will show that theistic argument is futile because it cannot convince the unbeliever of the existence of God. *14* Once again, Mascall’s theistic argument is condemned for not doing what it never tried or claimed to do. “Theistic proofs” claim one thing: to prove the existence of God. They are not theistic converters or theistic persuaders. They never said that a man convinced against his will is not of the same opinion still. They simply say that the evidence is there - and they claim to point it out - that should make a believer and will make a believer of anyone who candidly considers the evidence. They do not claim to be able to make people candidly consider. They present the evidence, but do not say that all who see it will acknowledge it. They claim to prove, not to convert. Any Mascall can make an argument but only God can make a convert. That a man cannot do what only God can do seems to be no valid objection against any man’s doing what he can.
So we have come to Mascall’s theistic argument by the back door. This is the way most people today come to any form of the theistic argument. They urge the kind of objections we have seen presented before they ever hear the argument. Even learned men frequently dismiss the argument unheard.
But now that we have removed these conventional roadblocks in the way of the cultured despisers of theistic proofs, perhaps we can hear what the proofs are trying to say. If they are not simply rationalizations of previously held faith positions, if they do not try to prove what the Bible alone can reveal, if they are not claiming to be able to change the hearts of men but merely to enlighten their minds if they are honest, what are they doing?
For time’s sake we may merely note, without evaluation, Mascall’s preliminary observation that the only other ways, besides the theistic (cosmological) proof, for demonstrating the existence of God, namely conscience and self-evidence, are not valid. This is interesting, if true, because it means that all the apologetic eggs are in this one cosmological basket. Since we are primarily concerned with what is in this basket, and not whether it is alone, we go immediately to his argument proper.
Mascall’s way, in agreement with most Thomists today, acknowledges that Thomas’s five ways are really one way: the way of causality. This argument from contingency to non-contingent causality is, Mascall thinks, valid still. The evidence cannot be refuted: the universe we know is a dependent one. “Change and decay in all around we see.” It could not have come out of nothing from which nothing could come and it could not come out of itself which always depends on something other than itself. Mascall feels that there can be no other logical possibility than an eternal cause and thinks this is generally felt to be true. Yet eternal cause raises a certain problem that keeps many thinkers from acknowledging its cogency.
To this problem especially he addresses his attention. He admits that this First Cause must be qualitatively different from the reasoner who himself is a part of this contingent universe. His knowledge cannot, therefore, be the same as that of this First Cause. That is, it cannot be univocal. Man’s knowledge of it would not be the same as its knowledge of us. Can we say, therefore, that we know this being, whose being is different from our being and any other being we know? On the other hand, if we say that this knowledge is equivocal let us stop fooling ourselves - we simply, then, do not know this being. But, argues Mascall, since in fact we do know this being from the causal evidence adduced, and our knowledge cannot be either univocal or equivocal, it must be, as Thomas Aquinas said long ago, analogical, proportional, or partial.
Mascall admits that there are difficulties here but takes his stand on two grounds: one, there is knowledge and it must be analogical; and two, though difficult, analogical knowledge is not absurd but thinkable. *15* We think that he carries his point with more modesty than necessary, if that is possible. Univocal knowledge we could not have because we are not omniscient; equivocal knowledge we could not have because it really is not knowledge; but why can we not have analogical knowledge? What real difficulty is there in claiming such if the causal argument is valid, as Mascall thinks? We are suggesting that Mascall is guilty of British understatement here. If he is worried about Kant’s contention that no amount of finite causes can yield an infinite one, is it not clear that the opposite is the case? Any amount of finite causes must yield an infinite (non-finite) one. If the finite cause can never explain contingency, must it not always require a non-finite cause? To be sure, we cannot know such a cause as that cause would know itself, because we are finite. But why can we not know that there is such a cause? We do not “know” (comprehend) the infinite but we “know” (recognize) that there must be the infinite, the non-finite. How could we not know it? But such knowledge cannot be univocal or equivocal. It must be analogical.
Stuart Hackett’s, The Resurrection of Theism, *16* and his later work, Reconstruction of the Christian Revelation Claim: A Philosophical and Critical Apologetic *17* are essentially valid statements of the classical view. Here the theistic arguments are presented in essentially traditional form by a professional philosopher. We need not state the general rehabilitation which he offers. Perhaps his confrontation with Kant is most significant. Let us notice, therefore, how Dr. Hackett responds to the first antinomy, which Kant cited to show that traditional theism falls of its own weight. Kant argues that one can equally well prove the traditional argument and its opposite in all four areas of quantity, quality, modality and relation. The first antinomy has to do with the quantitative: temporal and spatial limitations of the universe. Kant said that we could argue that the world had a beginning in time and space just as the traditionalists have always done. However, we can also prove that the world did not have a beginning in time and space. Thus the argument is neutralized and cancelled. Hackett, of course, has no trouble with the first part of the antinomy but does address himself to the second part to show its invalidity, thus leaving the argument for the temporal and spatial beginning of the world standing alone. Kant had adduced in support of the second part of the antinomy that if the world did have a beginning in time and space there must have been a temporal and spatial void before things began to be. Since they could not come from a void, they must be eternal. Hackett refutes this showing that assuming a void rather than God is gratuitous. So he continues dealing with the other antinomies and criticism of Kant. On the whole, Dr. Kenneth Kantzer was justified in calling Hackett’s “The most serious attempt at an apologetic for Christian theism made by an evangelical since The Christian View of God and the World by James Orr, over a half century ago.”
In addition to Mascall and Hackett, many others in this century defend the classical synthesis. Among them are: C. S. Lewis especially in his Beyond Personality, *18* Floyd Hamilton in Basis of Christian Faith, *19* John Gerstner in Reasons for Faith, *20* Sproul, Gerstner, and Lindsley in Classical Apologetics, *21* Bruce Demarest, General *Rev_22:1-21* and Norman Geisler, Christian Apologetics. *23* Edward John Carnell, An Introduction to Christian Apologetics, *24* Bernard Ramm, Varieties of Christian Apologetics, *25* Carl F. H. Henry, God, Revelation and Authority, *26* and others show traces of the synthesis but less and less as their Christian apologetics developed.
Still others in the classical tradition present the “Case for Christianity” more as “suggestive” than “compelling.” John W. Montgomery, Francis Schaeffer and Clark Pinnock are instances of this very modern, very sophisticated, and slightly fideistic form of an essentially classical position.
Montgomery writes that even the proven resurrection does not “force” faith because this is against the very nature of Christianity. It is designed only to persuade persons to experiment with Christ according to John 7:17. *27* Clark Pinnock also writes:
The intent of Christian apologetics and evidences is not to coerce people to accept the Christian faith, but to make it possible for them to do so intelligently. *28*
Even Francis Schaeffer seems to feel it is an apologetic sin to be demonstrative. His running criticism of Aquinas, especially in Escape from Reason, *29* shows this tendency, though his own reasoning is not altogether different.
But why the fear of coercion? Surely one need not suppose any apologist is advocating physical force to compel agreement. We are not in the age of the Inquisition. What objection is there against logical compulsion? What is logic if it is not compelling? If the case for Christianity is merely suggestive, or makes consideration feasible or intelligible or respectable why should anyone convert? He may conceivably have good and sufficient reasons for not doing the respectable, the feasible, and the intelligible. If so, it may be feasible, respectable and intelligible if he does not convert. This is not what these theists want to happen. Their own arguments are too strong to let it happen reasonably. Their case for Christianity in the main, is better than their own estimate of it.
Montgomery thinks that the purpose of Christian apologetics is to show unbelievers the advisability of experimenting with Christ’s statement: “If any man will to do his will, he shall know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority” (Joh_7:17). But to show that this is not the way Christ intended this statement we propose the following consideration: First, this cannot be an invitation to an unbeliever to “experiment” because it is impossible for an unbeliever to do the will of God. To do God’s will one must begin by believing in Him and repenting one’s sins which, by definition, an unbeliever cannot do. An experimenting unbeliever is a contradiction in terms. The person who says, “I believe, help thou mine unbelief,” is essentially a believer, not an experimenter. Second, Joh_7:17 states the inner certainty given to the man who believes; that is, the man who wills to do God’s will. Third, the statement is a rebuke to unbelief showing that unbelief is based not on sharp thinking but wicked living (not doing God’s will). Those who do God’s will do know the truth. Those who do not know truth, do not do God’s will. “Every one who does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light lest his deeds should be exposed” (Joh_3:20) “So they are without excuse; for although they knew God they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him, but became futile in their thinking and their senseless minds were darkened.” (Rom_1:20-21) So far, therefore, from this text being an invitation to unbelievers to experiment, it is a rebuke to them that their not doing God’s will is the source of their blind unbelief rather than vaunted rational unbelief’s being a sound reason for disobedience.
We believe that what has happened here is what often happens with young modern scholars who remain conservative in spite of their education to the contrary. They are sufficiently chastened in the process that, though they are unrepentant, they are not altogether unafraid. After all, to be told with great confidence by many learned men for many years that such and such notions are no longer believed, (perhaps have not been believed for a hundred or two hundred years), makes it a little difficult for such evangelical men to say, without hedging their bets a little, that they do still believe them. But we must not take these over-cautions too seriously. At most they are the static through which the message, nevertheless, comes through, if not loud and clear.
The apologetic message comes through; but, as we said, it is rather sophisticated and understated. Instead of strongly stressing theistic proofs these men almost gloss over them in their eagerness to come to biblical data. But theistic evidence is there. Schaeffer does not like Aquinas’ five ways but he has his own way of saying the same thing. Much may be learned through logic but we never give up logic. That Christianity may be more than rational, but certainly it is not less, is an important theme in his Escape from Reason.
Montgomery in 1969 delivered a lecture at DePaul University entitled, “Is Man His Own God?” He presented four arguments which he believed showed the existence of a God other than ourselves. The first was a variation of Copplestone’s: there must be a being necessary in itself. Montgomery appealed to the entropy argument that since the world is running down it cannot be eternal. He thinks this proves the necessity of an eternal being without gratuitously assuming a cause-and-effect universe which is supposed to violate the indeterminacy principle of modern physics. The second argument is based on God and personhood. Montgomery contends that self-transcendence is assumed by every experimenter and that this, in turn, assumes, in order to be reasonable, an ultimate transcendence. Transcendence involves freedom and freedom involves selfhood. Thus the existence of finite and infinite selves are proven. The third argument sees in the resurrection of Christ proof of his deity. Finally, Montgomery appeals to human experience of guilt that assumes One who can forgive.
One can recognize in this approach a form of the classic theistic argument with genuflections to the contemporary thought that is supposed to have made such classic arguments untenable. In our opinion, these arguments are suggestive rather than tight. As formulated, not a one, (except Copplestone’s which is really bypassed), would endure close analysis to which we will not here subject them. We are merely noting in passing how modern evangelical scholars have been affected by contemporary anti-theistic thought. Their heads are bloody but by no means completely bowed.
In his 1967 Set Forth Your Case, Clark Pinnock effectively shows the futility of the attacks on theism, but his reaffirmation of the theistic arguments is subdued. In the summer of 1971, he wrote a brief note for His magazine, “Naturalism - The Losing Battle.” Against Naturalism, Pinnock quickly and cleverly cites eight arguments: 1. Thermodynamics (which says the world should be run down by now); 2. Rationality (if this came about from atoms we cannot rely on it and therefore we cannot rely on the notion that it came from atoms); 3. Personal freedom (if everything is determined, and therefore unbelievable, so is determinism); 4. Morality (which we feel deep down); 5. ESP (which is too far out for Naturalism); 6. Hope (which is an illusion unless there is a God); 7. Meaning (craving for this cannot be satisfied here, therefore must be satisfied there); 8. Historical Christ (the historical resurrection shows him to be divine). We would say that if one sorts out these arguments he will find, differently but delightfully stated, the old arguments for God called anthropological, teleological and possibly even the cosmological; though they are not so demonstratively stated, as in the traditional case for Christianity. Pinnock, as others, has continued along this path but becomes ever less and less rationally persuasive - less and less Edwardsian, we might say. Biblical Revelation *30* is an excellent critique of fideism but remains fideistic itself with respect to the deity of Christ.
3. Contemporary Opponents of the Classical Christian Synthesis
If we may think of the historical synthesis of faith and reason as a tree with its root and trunk in nature which branched and flowered out in revelation then we may say that today some are dwarfing this tree, others are cutting its branches, still others putting the axe to its root, while yet others are digging up its very roots and one group is even cementing the hole to prevent anything from ever growing there again. The dwarfers are the Bertoccis and the Buswells; the branch cutters, the Cobbs; with their axes at the root of this tree are the Barths and Bultmanns and their progeny; the Wittgensteinians are pulling out the remaining root and the Dooyeweerdians are busy cementing the hole.
(1) Dwarfing the Tree: Bertocci and Buswell.
In 1967 Peter Bertocci wrote an essay, “The Cosmological Argument revisited and revised.” *31* In this he admits a certain cogency in the various objections to the traditional cosmological argument that call for revision which, when done, does give the argument a relative validity, (far less than what had been claimed for it, but something nonetheless). The argument is reduced to size. And what is that? Let Bertocci himself speak:
While the argument does not adequately justify belief in the traditional theological theism, it does lay the ground work for hypotheticals which philosophical theology, in particular, can explore further. . . . *32*
In other words, the cosmological argument does not prove the existence of God, but it does justify God as a respectable hypothesis. God may not be flattered by such a status but this is quite a concession to the argument from a modern philosopher.
But why is he so modest in his claims? For one thing, Bertocci is sensitive to Munitz’s charge of a fallacy of composition, (assuming that the world is finite because all its parts are). Bertocci feels that, in this case, the burden of the proof is on him who maintains that a world made up of finite parts is not itself finite. Apparently he feels it is not unthinkable that such a burden of proof could be shouldered. What seems more serious to Bertocci is that this unchanging ground of being (that God would have to be), must be in a constant relation with contingency and that this might affect his being so that He might not be unchanging. The real significance of Bertocci is not that he is so impressed with these standard objections that have long ago been answered by theistic advocates but that he is not overwhelmed by them as the habit of most modern philosophers is.
J. O. Buswell was a theologian who was also a philosopher while Bertocci is a philosopher who is also a theologian. There is another interesting difference between these two scholars, one conservative and the other liberal, and that is that Bertocci believes less with more proof and Buswell believes more with less proof. We find it difficult to understand why Bertocci, on the basis of his argument, holds back or why Buswell, on the basis of his, goes forward.
In the first volume of his Systematic Theology, Buswell enters into a critique of the theistic proof as formulated by Aquinas. On the first “way”, (that motion implies a first mover), Buswell believes that eternal motion is thinkable. Though he thinks it probable that God started the motion, the argument for him is not demonstrative. The second “way” (that a series of effects requires an uncaused First Cause if infinite regress is to be avoided), Buswell cannot accept either. The reason is that an infinite regress is not unthinkable. It is not as likely an explanation as the uncaused First Cause but it cannot be logically rejected categorically. Buswell thinks that the Thomistic reasoning here is circular and rather more a “monstration” than a demonstration. On the third “way” (that contingent things require a necessary being) Buswell believes Kant has shown that a necessary being cannot be proven. That God is, must be, and will continue to be, is all that can be said. Buswell seems to think that the contemporary emergentists are justified in thinking that something may come from nothing. For himself he thinks it more feasible to believe that something came from God rather than from nothing. On the fourth “way” (that the presence of gradations or imperfections in the world implies a perfect standard), Buswell contends that the argument implies the standard but not the existence of the standard. Speaking summarily, he remarks: “There is no logical reason why the entire universe might not be made up of interdependent contingencies.” *33*
Yet we must notice that Buswell, for all this, is, in an extremely qualified way, in favor of the theistic proofs or, rather, suggestions. As monstrations they seem to succeed with him as clearly as they fail as demonstrations. As we said above, he is much more destructive of the theistic proofs than Bertocci but still yields them much more credit. One cannot help suspecting that with Buswell that confidence comes from another source, namely, the authoritative teaching of the Bible that God is the creator of the world and that that creation shows itself such.
(2) Cutting Off the Branches-Ogden.
Schubert Ogden represents a rather small number of modern religious philosophers who are in the process of moving from an existential subjectivism to a very cautious objectivism. A close student and translator of Bultmann and once a general adherent of his existentialist theology, Ogden is looking for roots today. Still believing that the existentialist, Martin Heidegger, is relevant, Ogden is demanding a more metaphysical basis for his belief. But Tillich’s Absolute is too much for him and he seems to be settling for the process theology of Whitehead and Wieman. It seems that he wants a God but one who is not immutably the same, yesterday, today and forever; rather a changing, process-deity. This may be a God who is quite different from the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob but still much more of an object of worship than the non-metaphysical God of Existentialism.
Consequently, Ogden, viewed from the perspective of his own personal odyssey, is moving toward natural theology (though from the viewpoint of classical natural theology his is greatly truncated). He may be on his way home but if Aquinas be considered home Ogden is yet a long way off. We are interested here, in any case, with what elements of natural theology he does offer.
Ogden’s is a logically unfolding quest. In The Reality of God and Other Essays *34* he expresses need for a God who validates the value of our own existence. Where Sartre hesitates and refuses to go, Ogden rather rushes in. It is a great yawning need for the affirmation of his own existence-being which is driving him to seek metaphysical roots for it. In his later essay, “The Task of the Philosopher-Theologian,” *35* he enumerates the steps which he and the philosopher-theologian in general must take to the desired goal. First, he insists that “to exist at all is only on the basis of faith.” *36* Thus he shows that he may take the existentialist out of Existentialism but he cannot take the Existentialism out of the existentialist. His Heiddeggerian, Bultmannian convictions are still with him at this fundamental level. He is saying: I exist, therefore I believe I exist. But we suppose that he means more than that, namely: I believe I exist, therefore I am. Credo ergo sum. It may seem that this is an equivalent expression to Descartes’ famous cogito ergo sum. Descartes knew that all men do believe that they exist but he went on to prove that this thinking - or even doubting - entails existence. So there is at least a great difference of emphasis, or a difference of great emphasis. So far, Ogden is not arguing or reasoning but merely testifying to faith in a certain existence. Apparently, for him, this is the starting point of all our pilgrimage, philosophical or theological. Reason consists in conceptualizing all this; but, by existential faith we exist.
Secondly, philosophy for Ogden is the fully reflective understanding of this faith. The faith is basic and the philosophy secondary, but not unimportant. Indeed, philosophy is mysticism, he argues, precisely because it is an articulation of a given faith-stance.
Nevertheless, thirdly, the task of the philosopher-theologian is to answer whether God exists or not. Metaphysics cannot be neutral but must speak clearly to be meaningful and to be philosophical, in fact. The only proof that philosophy does yield, however, is clarity. Existence is implied in the original experience and its clarification is the only proof that philosophy can produce which is
one of the routes by which self-evidence is often obtained. They presuppose some clarity and all also presuppose that this clarity represents imperfect penetration and are dim recognitions of the world around. . . . *37*
This, Ogden feels, neither over - nor under - estimates “proof.” This is the necessary “theistic proof.”
Finally, apparently as a confirmatory argument, theology presupposes this philosophical basis. To say that faith does not need rational justification is either to ignore faith’s own character to be meaningful and true, or else to admit, in effect, that its claim is empty. *38*
No one will deny that this is a variety of natural theology nor will anyone deny that it is about as abstract as anything called natural theology could well be. It argues from something assumed as given (sense of our own value), to a God needed to validate such a conviction. This is the reverse of the Cartesian method which moves from a proven God to an assurance that our senses and consciousness are not deceived. Ogden goes from the subjective to the objective rather than the usual a posteriori, cosmological manner of proceeding from the objective to the subjective. There is, of course, always a sense in which we must assume ourselves and our consciousness at the outset in order to think at all. But Ogden is doing more. Though unusual, and we would say invalid, reasoning, it is nonetheless an involuted argument for God - a truncated natural theology. It is a “proof” of the divine existence said to be assumed by theology.
(3) The Axe at the Root of the Tree (Barth and Bultmann)
The first two contemporary approaches to natural theology may fall far short of the classical position but at the same time they represent, at least, a significant remnant of it. These views may not be adequate for natural theology but they are not hostile to it. They may not satisfactorily establish rationally the existence of God but they do aim at and claim just that.
In the third view, very much more widespread than the two preceding, we have a direct and thorough-going attack on natural theology. We are not pruning the argument now; the axe is at the root. This approach in theology may be said to go back to Kierkegaard (1813-1855), and it is more philosophically articulated in Brunner and it receives even more radical development in Bultmann, but we will here consider Barth’s presentation because it is probably more representative and more influential than any other.
At the very outset of Barth’s magnum opus, entitled Church Dogmatics, the largest systematic theology ever written (and itself unfinished), he repudiates any rational defense of Christianity as futile at best, and a contradiction in terms at worst. *39* He had early written that what was philosophical was not Christian and what was Christian was not philosophical. For him more radically than for Pascal, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob was not the God of the philosophers.
One of Barth’s great appeals to his contemporaries has always been that he has known what to do when the foundations were destroyed. We have heard Ogden say that theology must presuppose philosophical justification but when most men think such justification is not forthcoming they look to find one who would show them how to theologize without it. So we find in the testimonies given to Karl Barth on the occasion of his various anniversaries.
Near the beginning of Barth’s greatest impact in this country H. L. Stewart announced the “Reverent Agnosticism” as noted above. ** This “Agnosticism” with respect to the theistic proofs, and indeed to any kind of proofs, lasted throughout his writing career. We will notice it more particularly when we come later to the “new Calvinism” as one of the contemporary options. Here we are merely noting this approach in its relation to philosophical theology.
Appealing as this radical agnosticism is to many harassed theologians, it cannot satisfy for several reasons: First, man is indeed a rational animal and finds it against his nature to have faith without any reasons. The Psalmist’s question, after all, is a rhetorical one: “If the foundations be destroyed what shall the righteous do?” (Psa_11:3) If one is to have faith he must first have some notion of what it is that is to be believed (which only reason can ascertain), and why it should be believed (which only reason can demonstrate). Augustine, who is so very commonly misrepresented as a fideist, once wrote that the “amount of reason which leads us to accord faith is anterior to faith.” *41* The fault in the root and branch attack of Barth on natural theology is more and more being acknowledged now that the era of the “irrational man” is disappearing. Compare, for example, the remark of I. T. Ramsey in his introduction to Locke’s Reasonableness of Christianity:
So the question properly arises: Can the Christian faith be claimed as both distinctive and reasonable? If only a negative answer can be given, we must give up all idea of integrating the Christian faith with philosophical speculation and culture whether humanist or scientific. The Christian faith will preserve its distinctiveness only at the cost of being utterly irrelevant. *42*
Furthermore, one can see even in Barth (not to mention Barthians) a surreptitious rationality. He cannot quite admit it because it would destroy tranquility or compromise the purity of faith as he sees faith. But, between the lines it is there. For example, the avoidance of reasons, because of the fear that appeal to them would bring irresistible opposition, is really more of an argument against appealing openly to reasons that against having them. It is virtually an admission that one cannot argue, or does not know the arguments, as well as his secular friends know objections. So the safe course is to keep one’s reasons which one must have to oneself. What did Pascal mean by saying that “the heart has reasons the mind knows not of” except something like this? If the heart has reasons it is only the reason that could “know” them. In any case, the heart has reasons. But it wants to keep them from the examination of reason fearing that these reasons which it has might seem not to be true which the heart knows them to be. Why would anyone believe anything unless he thought it to be true; indeed, because he thought it to be true?
Secondly, believing that there is a God who has revealed Himself, Barth recognizes the qualitatively other character of such a being and infers the qualitatively other character of His revelation. We need not here ask whether such an opinion is correct or not, but if it is granted that this indeed is Barth’s view it explains why he is against reasons for faith. Reasons pertain to the human mind and faith applies to the infinite revelation. “Finitum non capax infinitum.” There can be no analogy of being because there is no proportion between God and man. Any analogy will have to be an “analogy of faith.” To think otherwise would be a mark of the Antichrist. Whether this is correct or not, is it not consistent with itself? Is Barth’s conclusion not eminently logical? Has he not given the best of reasons for giving no reasons for faith? Is this not the greatest of reasonableness, and Karl Barth the supreme rationalist?
In other words, Barth attempts rationally to justify his anti-rationality in the things of revelation. He gives reasons for no reasons. This amounts to reasons for non-rational faith - that is, reasons for faith, in the last analysis. Barth protests his anti-rationality too much.
Showing Barth’s crypto-rationalism (Dirk Jellema actually speaks of Barth’s “revival of scholastic Calvinism”) may refute his own fideism but it does not refute his ostensible attack on normal natural theology. That question has been faced in our earlier discussion of Mascall and Hackett and need not be reinvestigated here. Sufficient to say summarily: the infinite being must be capable of communicating Himself to our capacities seeing He has made them and may desire to reveal Himself to them. That He cannot make Himself known analogically - Karl Barth notwithstanding - has yet to be demonstrated.
The reason for no reasons that Barth may derive from the supposition that enemies of the faith could make more of it than friends, falls of its own weight. If reasons really were against believing should one believe? If sound reasons do favor faith (as we have noted that Barth really thinks), should this not be capable of demonstration? You cannot win this argument. If sound reasons are against faith it is wrong to believe and if not it is wrong not to argue.
As for making God subject to men by asking whether God has spoken - which is what Barth’s supposition amounts to - is this not theological nonsense? For a person to want to know to whom he is speaking seems something less than presumptuous. To ask whether a voice is from heaven because it says so, does not, on the surface of it, appear to be the essence of arrogance. Could God take offense that His creatures look to see whether the voice they hear is His voice before they say, “Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth?” “Is that you, Lord” is not quite the same as saying, “Not so, Lord.” If an F.B.I. agent will display his credentials when he approaches, is it improper to suppose that one infinitely greater than the F.B.I. would confirm His identity?
(4) Rooting out the Stump (Wittgenstein)
Barth tried to annihilate the existing natural theology but Wittgenstein goes even further by trying to make natural theology impossible in the nature of the case. Language is theology’s inevitable medium of conception and expression. According to Wittgenstein, language is not equal to the task. The old vessels cannot hold the new wine. God is a meaningless term. Even if one could prove there is a God he would have proven nothing conceivable. “In the beginning was the word” (Joh_1:1); but, here the word is the end. The word was God, says John; the word cannot even point to God, says Wittgenstein.
To understand this development in thought we must go back to John Locke who died in 1704 and Immanuel Kant who died in 1804. Locke had maintained in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding that we begin with sensations from which ideas come from which knowledge is built up by reflection. He continued to believe that there was a something “out-there,” some substance, but it was “I know not what.” Hume carried this to the point of skepticism but Kant also believed in a sense-manifold that was somehow “out-there.” However, for Kant, our actual knowledge with its core in the sense-manifold was nevertheless essentially a construct of our active understanding (Verstand). Thus, he internalized knowledge more than Locke had done. Ideas of the reason (Vernunft), such as the soul, world, and God were not “constitutive” but merely “limiting” concepts; we would probably say today, hypotheses or hypothetical constructs. This was what Kant himself recognized as a “Copernican revolution” in thought and the world has never been the same since.
Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-philosophicus *43* ) is clearly in this tradition bringing a further development. As one of his school has well observed, language is for Wittgenstein equal to the sense-data of Kant and Kant’s a priori rules of the understanding are the linguistic analysis of Wittgenstein. Philosophy is the structure of language. At this point Locke returns and British empiricism is grafted onto German idealism. Empirical verification is the only test of truth. There are three kinds of statements: analytic, synthetic and nonsense. Analytic statements are merely a part of the definition of the thing about which the statement is made; for example, that body is extended tells us nothing about the body that is not a part of its very definition. Nonsense statements are those which admit of no meaning capable of verification while true statements would be synthetic statements which can be verified empirically; for example, heat expands.
It is analytically evident that this type of thought, logical positivism and linguistic analysis, removes the roots of natural theology. We must use language to conceive of and to state theology. God is viewed by linguistic analysis as a term which is incapable of verification and therefore is a nonsense term. Manifestly, if God is a nonsense term natural theology is a futile exercise. Van Buren who is well known as one of the death of God theologians speaks not only of God being dead but of the very word “God” being dead as well.
Before, however, this philosophy, or lack of it, destroys natural theology it destroys itself. If philosophy is reduced to talk about talk what is the point of talking at all any more? Does one not necessarily assume when he talks that he is talking about something? Even when one reduces philosophy to talk about talk does he not believe he is saying something about the nature of reality? Suddenly the word becomes the thing if the thing is reduced to the word for it. And we could well conceive, in the terms of John’s Gospel, that the word was God. From that beginning we could theoretically ascribe all the traditional attributes (words) to God. They would not have lost their reality but the word “word” would have taken on new reality not usually attributed to what we commonly think of as the mere word. It seems that we are playing linguistic games but they turn out to be fun rather than catastrophes. Instead of God being thought out of existence, words are thought into reality. This is Tillich’s myths participating in being. It is interesting and significant that A.J. Ayer in what may be his philosophical swan-song Philosophy in the Twentieth Century, *44* tends to end with Hume.