The Coherence of Christian Theism
20
Introduction
The last of the nine arguments I presented in Part II was Swinburne's Argument from Religious Experience. This claims that many people throughout history have had experiences apparently of God and defends the evidential value of their testimony. If God has revealed himself to certain people the question might reasonably be asked whether he has ever revealed himself more generally and decisively to the world. And, of course, Christianity claims to have evidence for an event that proves he has done just that.
However, before we examine the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus there is a preliminary question that needs to be asked. And that is: Is Christianity coherent? As I pointed out in my Preface, evidence for bare theism is not necessarily evidence for Christian theism. For it is logically possible that God exists and that Christianity is false—either because some other religion is true or because, for whatever reason, God has not revealed himself to the world and therefore no religion is true. And this, presumably, is something that could be known if the very concept of Christianity were illogical.
Although this point is the justification for Part III of my argument, it is, I think, somewhat overstated. After all, evidence for the existence of God and the resurrection of Jesus would still be evidence for Christianity even if parts of Christian doctrine were illogical. For suppose three things are true: God exists, Jesus rose from the dead and the Bible contains absurdities. What would be the most reasonable response? I suggest that it would be far more reasonable to try and make sense of the absurdities in view of the miracle than to ignore the miracle in view of the absurdities.
Nevertheless, anyone who believes that Christianity is illogical will believe that he has grounds to dismiss the whole religion out of hand and this will prejudice him against any historical evidence purporting to authenticate its founding miracle. I think it is therefore prudent to first “clear the air” by showing that, whether or not Christianity is actually true, it is possibly true insofar as it faces no indefeasible a priori objections.
The usual objections fall into three categories. The first arise from religious pluralism. The objector notes that there are many world religions all making competing claims about God and reasons that, since these cannot all be true, they must all be false. Religion, on this view, is a sort of viral memeplex which one contracts from the culture into which they happen to be born. The second category of objections suggest that Christianity is antiscientific: The Church is and always has been a dead hand on scientific progress and a Christian is required to believe in mythological nonsense that has been scientifically falsified. The third category of objections suggest that Christianity is morally unconscionable: The violence in the Old Testament and the doctrine of hell cannot possibly be reconciled with the idea that God is all loving.
In the following six chapters it will be my concern to show that these objections are all misconceived. But first I need to say a little about the structure of the argument.
The Structure of the Argument
The first and most obvious problem that needs to be addressed is religious pluralism. For as soon as we earnestly ask the question Has God ever decisively revealed himself to the world? we are confronted by the fact that there are many different world religious. Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and Christianity each make different claims about God. Which, if any of them, is true? Two extreme possibilities may at once suggest themselves. The first is to wonder if they are all false and the second is to wonder if they are all true.
But both conjectures are unsatisfactory.
The second seems to take a hint from Symmachus who wrote that, “Infinite religions befit an infinite God.” The different world religions, the proponent of this view might reason, are disparate in aspect and identical in essence: Buddha, Moses, Muhammad, Brahma and Christ are like different emissaries God has chosen or different masks which he has worn—perhaps each one appropriate to the cultural and historical context in which he met us.
But on reflection religious relativism is logically incoherent. The great world religions make conflicting claims about God. God, meanwhile, is holy and this entails that he does not, indeed cannot, lie. [1] And if he cannot lie he cannot reveal two mutually exclusive doctrines about himself—one of which, by the law of noncontradiction, must be false. Consider the doctrine of the Incarnation. Christianity claims God become incarnate in Christ. Judaism, Islam and Buddhism deny this. [2] It is not possible that God did and did not become incarnate in Christ. Therefore, Christianity, Judaism, Islam and Buddhism cannot all be true. [3]
Is, then, the first conjecture correct? Given a set of claims which cannot all be true it does not necessarily follow that all are false. Indeed, as William Lane Craig has observed, if it did then atheism would also be false since it too belongs to the set of claims about God that cannot all be true. By way of illustration, consider the following: Mr Ito died in Osaka. Mr Ito died in Tokyo. Mr Ito died in Nagasaki. Clearly, it is impossible that all three are true—Mr Ito cannot have died three times. Just as clearly, it is possible that all three are false—Mr Ito may have died in Kyoto. But it is equally possible that one of them is true since Mr Ito may in fact have died in one of the three cities in which he is claimed to have died.
Religious pluralism, then, does not entail that all religions are false but it does present a challenge to the coherence of each one—including Christianity. And the challenge is to explain why, if there is a God who revealed himself to us, he would allow potential confusion about that revelation. The way to meet this challenge is to first understand religious pluralism as a subtype of divine hiddenness. As we saw in Chapter 6, divine hiddenness is a necessary feature of any antecedent world capable of producing creatures fit for a relationship with God. With this in mind consider the following three premises,
P1 It is not possible that God would specially reveal himself in two or more mutually exclusive religions. (Because a morally perfect being cannot lie).
P2 It is not plausible that there should be unresolvable uncertainty about a special revelation of God. (Because if God chooses to specially reveal himself he has both the reason and the means to miraculously authenticate his special revelation). P3 It is plausible that God would permit resolvable uncertainty about his special revelation. (Because religious pluralism is a subtype of divine hiddenness and divine hiddenness vouchsafes human moral freedom). |
It follows from P3 that prima facie confusion due to religious pluralism does not prove that God has not revealed himself specially. It follows from P1 that if he has revealed himself specially it will be in only one religion. And it follows from P2 and P3 that whatever religion has, on balance, the best historical evidence for a miraculous authentication and the greatest theological coherence is far more probably than not, and far more probably than any other, the true special revelation of God.
In short, my claim is that God may have good reason for allowing us to form a false conception of him while, at the same time, providing a revelation by means of which we can form a correct one. But in that case it must be possible for a determined and conscientious inquirer to distinguish the true conception from the false. And so the solution to the problem of religious pluralism is, finally, the intuitive and obvious one: Providing arguments and evidence to show that Christianity is more plausibly true than any other religion. This should consist of two steps. The first is to provide a priori arguments to demonstrate that Christianity is more coherent; the second is to provide a historical argument to demonstrate that the founding miracle of Christianity is better authenticated than any other miracle in history. And we shall see that both are available.
In the first three chapters of Part III, I will give the a priori argument. This will have two main themes, both summarising Swinburne. The first: Given both that moral and natural evil exist and that God is morally perfect, I will argue that we have good reason to expect an Incarnation. The second: Given that God is all loving and love is a relational property, I will argue we have good reason to expect a plurality of divine persons in the Godhead. This explains the order of the first three chapters: Discussing the Incarnation in the first chapter and the Trinity in the second will provide me with the tools needed to address religious pluralism in the third.
The second argument in reply to religious pluralism will be to establish that the evidence for the founding miracle of Christianity is far better in both quality and quantity than that for any other claimed miracle in history. However, since this is the topic of Part IV, the first three chapters of Part III are only a partial answer to religious pluralism that will not be complete until I have concluded my entire argument.
Once religious pluralism has been addressed the rest of the discussion will be straightforward. In the forth chapter I will consider and discharge the claim that Christianity is antiscientific and in the fifth and sixth show that objections to Christianity based on the violence in the Old Testament and the doctrine of hell are ultimately without warrant.
In short, my claim is that God may have good reason for allowing us to form a false conception of him while, at the same time, providing a revelation by means of which we can form a correct one. But in that case it must be possible for a determined and conscientious inquirer to distinguish the true conception from the false. And so the solution to the problem of religious pluralism is, finally, the intuitive and obvious one: Providing arguments and evidence to show that Christianity is more plausibly true than any other religion. This should consist of two steps. The first is to provide a priori arguments to demonstrate that Christianity is more coherent; the second is to provide a historical argument to demonstrate that the founding miracle of Christianity is better authenticated than any other miracle in history. And we shall see that both are available.
In the first three chapters of Part III, I will give the a priori argument. This will have two main themes, both summarising Swinburne. The first: Given both that moral and natural evil exist and that God is morally perfect, I will argue that we have good reason to expect an Incarnation. The second: Given that God is all loving and love is a relational property, I will argue we have good reason to expect a plurality of divine persons in the Godhead. This explains the order of the first three chapters: Discussing the Incarnation in the first chapter and the Trinity in the second will provide me with the tools needed to address religious pluralism in the third.
The second argument in reply to religious pluralism will be to establish that the evidence for the founding miracle of Christianity is far better in both quality and quantity than that for any other claimed miracle in history. However, since this is the topic of Part IV, the first three chapters of Part III are only a partial answer to religious pluralism that will not be complete until I have concluded my entire argument.
Once religious pluralism has been addressed the rest of the discussion will be straightforward. In the forth chapter I will consider and discharge the claim that Christianity is antiscientific and in the fifth and sixth show that objections to Christianity based on the violence in the Old Testament and the doctrine of hell are ultimately without warrant.
[1] Hinduism does not reject the Incarnation outright: In Hinduism, there is a vast list of “ishtas,” or divine beings, to which the Hindu is quite happy to add Jesus. They will not therefore raise an objection to Christianity—until, that is, one insists that Jesus was the unique revelation of God.
[2] This is sometimes referred to in theology as the "impeccability" of God. Hebrews 6:18 says that, "it is impossible for God to lie." Thus while God is perfectly free his actions are always consistent with his moral perfection.
[3] Here a mystic may wish to appeal to the idea that logical contradictions can be resolved at infinity. For example, consider the proposition: x is both a perfect circle and a perfectly straight line. Clearly, this is impossible. If x is a circle it cannot be a straight line; if x is a straight line it cannot be a circle. But now consider a circle of infinite radius. Since the arc of a circle approaches rectilinearity as its radius increases, an infinite circle is an infinite straight line—just as a polygon with infinite sides is a perfect circle and a sphere of infinite size is an infinite plane. So, the mystic might conclude, are religious contradictions resolved in the infinite godhead.