The Coherence of Christian Theism
23
Religious Pluralism
It is time to draw together the threads of the last three chapters. I began by suggesting that religious pluralism should be understood as a subtype of divine hiddenness which, as we saw in Chapter 6, is a necessary feature of any antecedent world capable of producing creatures fit for a relationship with God. For this reason a plurality of religions making conflicting claims does not prove that God has not specially revealed himself in one of them. Generally, my claim was that God has good reason for allowing us the freedom to form a false conception of him and good reason for providing a revelation by means of which we can form a correct one. But in that case, of course, it must be possible for a determined and conscientious inquirer to distinguish the true conception from the false. The way to defend Christianity against the objection from religious pluralism turns out to be the intuitive and obvious one: Providing arguments and evidence to show that Christianity is more plausibly true than any other religion. This, I said, should consist of two steps. First, a priori arguments to demonstrate that Christian doctrine is more probable and coherent than the doctrines of any other religion; and second, historical evidence to demonstrate that the founding miracle of Christianity is better authenticated than any other miracle in history. The second step is the subject of Part IV. This chapter completes the first.
Preliminary Considerations
I will find it helpful to frame what follows with three preliminary considerations.
The first: It is no entailment of the claim that Christianity is true that every other world religion is completely false. In my discussion of religious experience I noted Swinburne’s point that, “religious experiences in traditions outside of Christianity are of beings having similar properties to God or of lesser beings but not of beings whose existence is incompatible with the existence of God.” Naturally enough, people describe religious experiences in the vocabulary familiar to them. But this does not of itself entail that their different descriptions are in conflict. God may be known under different names to different cultures—a point acknowledged in both the Old and New Testaments. Thus a Hindu who claims to have had a religious experience is not necessarily in conflict with a Christian who claims the same. So long as the adherent of the weaker doctrine is willing to describe his experience in a less-committed way (“I experienced a supernatural presence, though perhaps not Vishnu, as I first claimed”) there is no reason of principle why he should have to withdraw it entirely.
The Second: The point just made can hold even when claimed commands from God are in direct conflict. It was noted earlier that a morally perfect God cannot lie 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. But, adds Swinburne, “it does not follow that he will not give different people commands, both of which cannot be executed successfully.” Suppose, for instance, that a Muslim is told by God to defend Jerusalem against the infidel and a Christian is told by God to attack it. Does the fact that these commands conflict entail that at least one of them is false; i.e., not commanded by God? Not necessarily. For consider, with Swinburne, the possibility that as a result of historical factors for which humans are to blame, Muslims and Christians have each developed a different and limited understanding of God. Plausibly, God himself wishes for our understanding of him to develop through experience, effort, and cooperation and not solely by means of divine intervention. Just as plausibly, God wishes for people at any point in history to be willing to live and die by the ideals that they then hold. He therefore commands the Muslim and the Christian each to live by the beliefs he has knowing that the experience of so doing may eventually lead each to a deeper understanding. In a like case, “a sage might well sometimes give to each of two persons who sought his advice the advice to oppose the other thinking it for the good of both that they should seek to develop their independence and authority.”
The third and final preliminary point: It is no entailment of the claim that Christianity is true, nor any part of Christian doctrine, that any particular person is in Hell. Certainly Christian doctrine teaches that this possibility exists for those who are incorrigibly bad. But many of the great Christian thinkers (including Augustine and Aquinas) allowed that those outside the Church can attain Heaven and this view became official Roman Catholic doctrine during the second Vatican Council in 1963—6.
In short, a successful argument for the truth of Christianity in the face of religious pluralism does not entail that the religious experiences and doctrines of other religions are completely false or that the adherents of those religions are destined for Hell. It establishes only that, if there is a God and he has revealed himself to humanity, then he has revealed himself through Jesus and the Church Jesus founded is where we should seek him.
General Objections to Rival Religions
We have seen that there are good a priori grounds for thinking that God is tripersonal and that, in response to human sin and suffering, he would likely become incarnate on Earth. Christianity, of course, makes both claims: That God is a Trinity of three divine persons and that the second person, the Son, became incarnate in Jesus Christ. I will now briefly consider the general relevance of these points to the problem of religious pluralism.
The Incarnation In Chapter 21, I presented Swinburne’s argument that God would become incarnate for three purposes: To discharge an obligation to share in the human suffering which, though for good reason, he allows; to offer wrongdoers a means of making atonement; and to help us live morally good lives by example and instruction. It was further noted that the life and teaching of God Incarnate would require a “divine signature” and that he would need to establish a worldwide church to tell us what he has done and how we can avail ourselves of it. Any religion plausibly claiming to be a divine revelation to humanity must therefore have global reach: It is improbable in excelsis that God would give a revelation of himself and fail to ensure that it was made widely available. And from this it follows that only the major world religions are plausible candidates for a special revelation from God: Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism—with consideration also given to Judaism. [1]
Whatever the moral quality of the life and teaching of Moses, Muhammad and Buddha they made no claim to be God Incarnate and they made no claim to be making an atonement for human wrongdoing. Buddha, notes Swinburne, did not even believe in the existence of a personal God—something for which, as we saw in Part II, there is good evidence. And while Hindu holy texts claim that Vishnu became incarnate in Krishna, there is altogether no historical evidence for the existence of Krishna—let alone for his having lived a perfect human life filled with much suffering that ended with a miracle. [2] Islam does not claim this for Muhammad and Buddhism does not claim it for the Buddha—both of whose lives ended in entirely unmiraculous ways. And finally: while many modern messiahs have claimed to be God Incarnate there is no evidence whatsoever that their lives had the features with which we are concerned: A life of moral perfection and great suffering ending in a miracle.
The nine arguments presented in Part II showed that there very probably is a God and in Chapter 21 we saw that if there is a God he would very probably become incarnate on Earth. These ten arguments together show that God will very probably become incarnate on Earth and if that has already happened [3] the points discussed in the previous paragraph suggest that it was in Jesus Christ that he did so. Therefore, very probably, Jesus Christ was God Incarnate. The first general consideration therefore demonstrates that Christianity is far more probably than not, and far more probably than any rival religion, the special revelation of God.
The Trinity In Chapter 22 I presented Swinburne’s a priori argument for the Trinity. There we saw that an omnipotent God could bring about an equal to love and be loved by and that an all loving God would. The argument for no more or less than three persons, though difficult in places, unfolded from two very basic moral intuitions. The first was that perfect love among perfect beings requires both the total sharing of the self with an equal and the total sharing of the moral good of sharing. The second was that a perfect and perfectly unselfish love among divine beings would inevitably produce three beings so that for each being there is someone other than himself for every other to love and be loved by.
Buddha himself, as already noted, did not believe in a personal God and there is no settled position on God in Buddhist doctrine. [4] Classical Buddhism is atheistic, some modern strains are pantheistic, but none of them affirm belief in a triune God or anything like it. Islam and Judaism, needless to say, zealously affirm unitarianism and reject the Christian doctrine of the Trinity as heretical. On this view God existed alone for all eternity—capable but unwilling, or willing but incapable, of creating an equal to love and be loved by. Such a concept of God is morally defective. Hinduism, finally, occupies the opposite end of the spectrum in affirming the existence of 330 million deities. However, since among three divine beings every possible moral good is already instantiated, additional beings would not be metaphysically necessary and so, ipso facto, would not be divine. Such concept of God is theologically incoherent. Thus our second general consideration also demonstrates that Christianity is far more coherent, and so far more probable, than any rival religion.
Specific Objections to Rival Revelation
There are, of course, specific objections that are pressed against Christianity. Some of these were mentioned in the Introduction—that the Old Testament contains atrocities and falsehoods, for example, or that the doctrine of Hell is unconscionable. In the three chapters following this one I will be discussing these objections and showing them to be without warrant. But for the moment I am going to consider specific objections against the relative plausibility of rival religions since these will help strengthen my general claim.
Judaism In addition to what has already been said, there are two special considerations of moral and historical coherence which further diminish the probable truth of the claim that Judaism, sans Jesus, is the one true revelation of God.
Consider first its obvious inconsistency with our moral intuitions about what an all loving God is likely to do. The Christian claim is that an ancient nomadic tribe was chosen to be the porthole through which God dilated his frame of benevolent concern to include all of humanity; that is, the Jewish people were singled out by God because it was through one of their descendants that God wished to enter the world incarnate in Jesus and offer atonement and instruction and encouragement to us all. The Jewish counterclaim has, therefore, a highly implausible entailment: That our omnibenevolent creator did not invite us all into a relationship with him but instead remains obsessively preoccupied with only 0.2 percent of his creations. Indeed, an all loving Creator who does not seek a loving relationship with all his creations is oxymoronic.
Consider, next, the historical incoherence. Prior to Jesus the Temple in Jerusalem was the most sacred site in all of Judaism—a place where the Jewish people made sacrifices to God and encountered his immediate presence. Moreover: There, under the Old Covenant, they were required to sacrifice animals in atonement of sin. In Exodus, we are told that this is a binding act of Covenant obedience forever. Jesus’ ministry, meanwhile, included this scandalous claim: Henceforth, he said, sin would be dealt with, and God accessed, through him. Jesus also predicted that the Temple would fall—which it did, in 70 AD, just as he predicted, and to date has not been rebuilt. How, without a Temple in which to make sacrifices, can Jews obey their eternal Covenant with God? They cannot. And the Jewish explanation for this is that, though formerly a binding covenant forever, sacrifices are no longer required because, quite simply, there is no longer a Temple.
On the supposition that Judaism is true and Jesus was a false prophet, these historical facts are not at all to be expected: It is highly implausible that God would allow the Temple to fall just as the Church founded by a man blasphemously claiming to be the New Temple exploded worldwide; and it is just as implausible that, the Temple having fallen, God would not command a new one to be built. Recall: Because God is omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent, an event only happens because he causes or allows it and is aware of it when it occurs and present at the place where it occurs. Thus on historical and theological reflection, the God of this Jewish anti-Christian narrative is either deceitful, incompetent or uncaring. Like a trickster deity, he brings about the destruction of the Temple and so authenticates the claims of a heretic who now stands at the very centre of human history with more followers than any other world religion. Or else God fails to providentially orchestrate history in a way that ensures his plans are understood and fulfilled. Or else he is the deus absconditus of Voltaire and Locke who refrains from acting in human history which he views from afar with cool indifference. All three ideas are inconsistent with classical theology and Jewish theism alike.
Islam We have already seen that Islam is morally deficient on two general grounds. In addition, there are several special considerations which count against it.
The first: Muslims claim that the Quran is the infallible word of God. Muhammad, they believe, took dictation from God in writing it and the resulting text, ex hypothesi, cannot contain error. This claim goes much further than the Christian claim that the authors of the Bible were inspired by God to write texts in their own words through which God mediated his message—and so has an unwelcome consequence for the Muslim: It means that proven errors in the Quran may be taken as proof of its inveracity. I will mention just one representative error: The Quran incorrectly asserts that Christians believe in a trinity composed of God, Mary and Jesus. This is evident in passages such as sura 5, verse 116, which rejects a trinity thus misconceived: “God will say, ‘Jesus, Son of Mary, did you ever say to mankind, “Worship me and my mother as gods besides God?”' 'Glory be to you,' he will answer, 'I could never have claimed what I have no right to.’” On the supposition that Muhammad wrote the Quran under mundane circumstances, this is unsurprising. The Bible was unavailable on the Arabian Peninsula in his time and his knowledge of Christian doctrine was learned by hearsay. But it is not at all to be expected on the supposition that Muhammad took direct verbatim dictation from an omniscient God. Whether or not Christianity is true, it is an indisputable historical fact that Christians at the time did not include Mary in the holy Trinity.
Islam, secondly, gives an account of God that is entirely at odds with one of his essential attributes: omnibenevolence. The Bible teaches that God loves all his fallen creatures with a love that is extravagant, unconditional and self-sacrificial. In the Quran declarations of God’s lack of love for his creatures repeat like a drumbeat. We are told that, "God loves not the unbelievers," "God loves not sinners," "God loves not the proud," "God loves not the prodigal," "God loves not the treacherous," and even, "God is an enemy to unbelievers." The God of Islam, clearly enough, loves conditionally—the sort of love of which Jesus said human sinners and tax collectors are capable and which he commanded us to improve upon by loving even our enemies—thereby emulating divine love.
Thirdly and finally: The moral deficiency of the God of Muhammad is most clearly exhibited in the attitude that believers are commanded to take toward unbelievers. In ominous contrast to Jesus, Muhammad commanded his followers to murder their enemies.
Early in his career Muhammad had a positive attitude toward Jews and Christians—perhaps because he himself belonged to a persecuted minority. He called them “people of the book” on account of their faith in the Bible and believed that, once they understood his message, they would willingly convert to Islam. But when this did not happen, Muhammad became increasingly hostile. Indeed, as Muhammad the persecuted prophet gained political and military strength he transformed into Muhammad the machiavellian politician and warmonger. Seeking to unify the divided Arab tribes though a campaign of military expansion, Muhammad invaded Syria and Iraq. The ninth chapter of the Quran comes from this period of Muhammad’s life. It declares, “Kill the idolaters wherever you find them. Arrest them. Besiege them." Only those who submit to Islam are to be spared. These are the last commands in the Quran concerning unbelievers. Muhammad died shortly thereafter in 632 with plans before him to attack neighboring nations.
Islam claims to have an infallible verbatim dictation from God that contains errors; it teaches that an all loving God does not love all; and it enjoins its followers to be violent and has been propagated by violence from its inception. It is, a priori, extremely improbable that an all knowing God would make mistakes or that an all loving God would himself lack love and command violence and murder. These special considerations therefore weaken still further the hypothesis that Islam is the special revelation of God.
Buddhism There would seem to be no special considerations in the case of Buddhism. It is not plausible that a revelation from God would be nontheistic; that is, that it would deny or omit to mention the existence of God. But suppose one were to reason: “God is not concerned with our belief in him. He is only concerned for us to live peaceful lives.” Might he have entrusted one man with the knowledge of how this is to be achieved? However, even ignoring the results of the last three chapters, there are special considerations which make even this assumption implausible.
Buddhists believe that a Nepalese prince named Siddhartha Guatama achieved enlightenment while meditating under a fig tree in the sixth century B.C. Guatama's insight can be captured in a single sentence: He realised that all suffering is caused by the frustration of desire and, since there is no way for finite and mortal beings to satisfy all their desires, the only way to completely escape from suffering is to detach oneself from desire itself.
The problem with Buddha’s insight is that it only holds if atheism is true. Consider: If the material world is all that exists then all our desires are eventually frustrated by old age and death. Under these circumstances Buddha is right that detaching from desire is the only way to definitely eliminate suffering during our earthly life. Is the elimination of suffering, if at all possible, a moral good? The conclusion of Chapter 5, in which we saw that suffering is a necessary feature of any world in which virtue is universally attainable, would suggest that it is not. Moreover, if there is a God the object of spiritual desire is the supreme and eternal good at the very heart of reality: God himself. And by pursuing that desire one is vouchsafed eternal human peace and happiness while by detaching from that desire one risks the ultimate in human suffering.
Note that the logic of this objection does not depend on a doctrine of hell. “Thou hast made us for thyself,” said St. Augustine, “and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.” Augustine means that because God made us in his image and for himself we are incomplete until we find completion in him. Infinitude is the medium in which we are ultimately intended to live and breathe. Intellectus naturaliter desiderat esse semper, observed Aquinas: “The mind naturally desires to exist forever.” Thus it is only in loving communion with his creator that man can find the ultimate happiness for which he was created. And so it follows that every argument for the existence of God is an argument against the wisdom of Buddha’s project—including, of course, the compelling cumulative case presented in Part II. Against this background evidence and the considerations of the previous three chapters a seeker of God has forceful a priori grounds for disregarding Buddhism.
Hinduism In addition to the general considerations already discussed, there is a special consideration which further diminishes the probable truth of Hinduism.
Hinduism and some strains of Buddhism affirm a doctrine of reincarnation. On this view when humans die they are reborn as other organisms whose fates are determined by the law of karma. The law of karma, relevantly, is a law of moral causation: All our experiences in this life are determined by our actions in a previous life. The problem, as we shall now see, is that the law of karma cannot give a coherent account of moral agency.
Consider the example of a man hiding in a park at night contemplating murder. On a sudden impulse he decides to go home and rethink his decision—but just then a lone woman walks into view. His bloodlust is suddenly rekindled. For a moment he is torn between two conflicting impulses. On the karmic view this scenario presents an insoluble paradox. For if the man attacks the woman, she is paying the price for past wrongdoing, and in that case the man has no choice but to murder her: He is merely a cog in the karmic machine that manufactures her fate. If, on the other hand, the woman does not deserve to be murdered (perhaps because her previous life was free from wrongdoing) then the law of karma will prevent her from being murdered. And in that case the man will be unable to attack her.
There are further problems with the doctrine of reincarnation but the one I have mentioned will suffice. A moral system which either denies moral responsibility to moral agents or in which the victims of wrongdoing are themselves to blame for the wrong done against them is incoherent and so cannot be rationally affirmed.
Conclusion
It has been my concern to show that general reflection on the nature of God and the condition of man give us a priori grounds for expecting both an Incarnation and a Trinity and we have now seen that these key features of Christian doctrine are absent from every other world religion. In view of these two general considerations, and the various special considerations discussed after them, I conclude that Christianity has a greater a priori probability than any other world religion.
This conclusion can now be set against my background claim that, given the importance of divine hiddenness to human moral freedom, God has good reason for allowing us to form false conceptions of him and good reason for providing a revelation by means of which we can form a correct one. The logic of this solution to religious pluralism depended on the ability of a conscientious inquirer to determine the true revelation from the false on a priori and evidential grounds. So long as the special objections to Christian doctrine are defeasible (and that they are is the claim of the next three chapters) I suggest that we have such a priori grounds for Christianity. The evidential grounds which complete the solution to religious pluralism will, as already noted, be presented in Part IV.
[1] Because only 0.2 percent of the world are Jewish (and fewer still practicing Jews) Judaism is not generally considered a world religion and its inclusion requires a little justification. I include it for two reasons. The first is that it is known throughout the world even if it is only practiced by a tiny minority. The second is because of its importance to the world’s two largest religions. Both the Quran and the New Testament accept, and are to some degree outgrowths of, the holy texts Judaism.
[2] Hindus claim Krishna spoke to his student Arjuna some 5,000 years ago; meanwhile, no Hindu holy text can be reliably dated prior to the twelfth century AD. This results in a gap of 4,200 years between the purported existence of Krishna and those texts purporting to record his words.
[3] Swinburne considers, and rejects, the possibility that God has yet to become incarnate for two reasons. Firstly, because, “it would have been dishonest of God to allow the occurrence of evidence of the strength that there is with respect to Jesus that he was God Incarnate if he was not in fact God Incarnate.” And secondly because, to exceed the evidence we already have for the incarnation of God in Jesus, a present day incarnation would need to be overwhelming—televised, say, and witnessed by millions. Yet such overwhelming evidence would dissolve the hiddenness of God and so curtail human moral freedom—a point that was discussed in Chapter 6.
[4] Asked by a journalist whether Buddhists believe in God, the Dalai Lama gave an upbeat but rather slippery reply. “God exists or God does not exist,” he said with a laugh. “Leave the question to us and learn to live peacefully!”
[2] Hindus claim Krishna spoke to his student Arjuna some 5,000 years ago; meanwhile, no Hindu holy text can be reliably dated prior to the twelfth century AD. This results in a gap of 4,200 years between the purported existence of Krishna and those texts purporting to record his words.
[3] Swinburne considers, and rejects, the possibility that God has yet to become incarnate for two reasons. Firstly, because, “it would have been dishonest of God to allow the occurrence of evidence of the strength that there is with respect to Jesus that he was God Incarnate if he was not in fact God Incarnate.” And secondly because, to exceed the evidence we already have for the incarnation of God in Jesus, a present day incarnation would need to be overwhelming—televised, say, and witnessed by millions. Yet such overwhelming evidence would dissolve the hiddenness of God and so curtail human moral freedom—a point that was discussed in Chapter 6.
[4] Asked by a journalist whether Buddhists believe in God, the Dalai Lama gave an upbeat but rather slippery reply. “God exists or God does not exist,” he said with a laugh. “Leave the question to us and learn to live peacefully!”