What’s New
in....
Philosophy of
Religion
Daniel Hill describes how the
work of Alvin Plantinga
has revolutionised Philosophy of Religion
T
he way we see the philosophy of religion will depend on the way we see its
mother discipline, philosophy itself. Suppose that we think of philosophy as the analysis
of abstract and, in some sense, ultimate concepts. One way to define philosophy of
religion then would be to say that it is the analysis of the concepts which we encounter in
religion(s), just as philosophy of science is the analysis of the concepts which we
encounter in science. On the other hand, looking at many of the philosopher of religion’s
traditional concerns, one could easily see it as really being a branch of metaphysics.
Many of the concepts of religion (the concept of God, for instance) are important for the
metaphysician to grapple with. After all, if there is a God, then God is a pretty important
part of the nature of reality as a whole (see ‘Philosophy in a Nutshell’). If there is no God,
then God isn’t very important at all, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not important to say
why one believes there isn’t a God.
It might be thought that one good candidate for philosoph- ical analysis would be the
concept of religion itself. However, only a few philosophers of religion have devoted
time to this. John Hick and D.Z.Phillips have thought about it, but most philosophers of
religion turn straight to the Big Concept – the concept of God.
Where Do They Do It?
Nobody doubts that the world’s leading centre for this sub- ject is the University of Notre
Dame in Indiana, USA, where almost everybody seems to be doing philosophy of
religion. Yale University is fairly important, too. In Britain the two main centres are
Oxford and King’s College London, both of which always have a Professor of
Philosophy of Religion (a ‘named chair’).
Continentals versus Analyticals
Philosophers of religion, like other philosophers, fall into two camps; those influenced by
‘continental philosophy’ who tend to dominate theology departments, and ‘analytical
philosophers’, who dominate the philosophy departments, at least at the main centres for
philosophy of religion. So the analytical philosophers have tended to approach
philosophy of religion with the tools for which they are famed: logic, preci- sion, clarity,
and careful argumentation. The continentals
generally go for the Big Questions of love, life, and death in the less formal and more
literary style of their influences. It is important to remember that most philosophers of
religion also work in other areas of philosophy.
Catholics & Calvinists
Most philosophers of religion also fall into one of two camps from the religious point of
view too: the majority are either Roman Catholics or Reformed Calvinists. (There are a
few important exceptions, such as William Alston and Peter van Inwagen, who are both
Episcopalians, and Richard Swinburne of Oxford, a member of the Orthodox Church.)
Notre Dame itself seems to have cornered the market in phi- losophy of religion by
recruiting both Roman Catholics and Reformed Calvinists.
Big Alvin
Notre Dame’s brightest star is Alvin Plantinga, whom everyone agrees to be the current
world-leader in the field. He is a product of the analytical school of philosophy and of the
Dutch Reformed Church. Hence the Dutch surname; Plantinga himself once quipped that
“there is a law-like gener- alisation that if an American philosopher’s name ends in ‘-a’ ...
then that philosopher is a graduate of Calvin College”.
(Calvin College was, when
Plantinga wrote, the leading train- ing ground for Reformed Calvinists, but now, like
everyone else, they all seem to be going to Notre Dame.) One of
Alvin Plantinga
30 PhilosophyNow�Summer1998
Plantinga’s most important early works was The Nature of Necessity (1974) which was
essentially (if you’ll excuse the pun) a treatise on modal logic, but which had some
important applications to the philosophy of religion. Plantinga had already begun to
explore these applications in his book God and Other Minds (1967) and in its
slightly
more popular version God,
Freedom, and Evil (1974). In these
books Plantinga
attempts to rebut
arguments against belief in God (the-
ism), and to show how belief in
God
can be justified. Since then Plantinga
has broadened his concerns into gen-
eral
epistemology, in other words the
study of how we can know things. He
has been
writing a three volume trilo-
gy on warrant (warrant is ‘that which
turns true belief
into knowledge’).
The first two volumes, which
appeared in 1993, are Warrant:
The
Current Debate and Warrant and
Proper Function. The third volume,
Warrant
and Christian Belief, is expect-
ed out very soon (in fact, it is over-
due), and the
academic rumour mill is
working overtime with conversations
with people who claim
to have seen it
in manuscript form. The topics on
which Plantinga has written
have
been the most important ones in the
philosophy of religion over the past
thirty
years, important because he has
written on them. As a result of his
work, the burning
question in philos-
ophy of religion today is “What sort
of justification, if any, is
needed for
religious belief?” Let us look at this
next.
Proving God Exists
Traditionally, philosophers of religion have answered “deductively or inductively sound
arguments” to the above question, and a large part of the philosophy of religion has
consisted of the advancement of arguments designed to sup- port the conclusion that
there is a God. There are three very important ones:
(i) The ontological argument. This had been written off (like so much else in the
philosophy of religion) until Plantinga revived it in The Nature of Necessity in a new,
modal, version. The argument was originally put forward in 1078AD by Anselm,
Archbishop of Canterbury, in his work Proslogion, though it is hotly disputed whether it
actually is an argument or rather an investigation into God’s mode of existence.
Plantinga’s modal version, however, claims that God is a logi- cally necessary being and
then moves from the alleged possibil- ity of God’s necessary existence to God’s actual
necessary exis- tence. This move is legitimated by a system of modal logic known as
(S5). There is still much debate about Plantinga’s argument and how to understand
Anselm’s version. Graham Oppy has even written a whole book recently, just on the
ontological argument: Ontological Arguments and Belief in God. (ii) The cosmological
argument. This also has many
forms, one being that if there exists a contingent being, there must exist a necessary being
to, as it were, explain its exis- tence. This has also received some consideration in the
litera- ture, with one of the sharpest recent philosophers of religion,
Peter van Inwagen, propounding a surprising a priori version of the argu- ment in his
book Metaphysics .
(iii) The argument from design. Historically, this argument was proposed by many philosophers, and given classic formulation with a famous ‘watch on the
heath’ example by William Paley in his Natural Theology (1802). However, the argument
was severely attacked by David Hume in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
(1779), and received another severe blow in the form of the theory of evolution. More
recently Richard Swinburne, Nolloth Professor of the Philosophy of the Christian
Religion at Oxford, has given a new version of the argument from design using probability theory in his book The Existence of God. There has been some debate over how
appropriate and how successful it is to use the tools of the philosophy of science to show
that God’s existence is more probable than not.
As for arguments against the existence of God, many of the arguments of the logical
positivists, such as the one that talk about God is meaningless because it is unverifiable,
have vanished with- out trace, along with the logical posi- tivists themselves. One
argument
which has shown no sign of diminishing in popularity, still less vanishing, is the problem
of evil. This may be expressed very roughly as follows. The set of propositions (1)–(4) is
inconsis- tent, so at least one of them must be wrong:
(1) God is good, and therefore wants to remove evil
(2) God is omniscient, and therefore knows
that there is evil (3) God is omnipotent, and therefore can remove evil
(4) Evil exists.
It is very rare these days to see the problem of evil held up as a knock-down argument for
atheism. This is due to the pio- neering work of Alvin Plantinga (you guessed it), who has
shown that it is impossibly difficult to establish any sound proof of God’s non-existence
using this argument. Instead, it is usually now presented as showing just that God’s
existence is improbable. Debate continues to rage fiercely about whether it succeeds in
this. If God did exist, would we neces- sarily know God’s reasons for allowing suffering?
People even disagree on whether the burden of proof here lies with the atheists or the
believers. This brings up a distinction drawn by Plantinga between a theodicy and a
defence. Plantinga only claims to offer a defence, that is a demonstration of why the
atheist’s arguments do not succeed. He says that he is not able to offer a theodicy, that is,
an explanation of why God allows
TRADITIONAL PROOFS OF THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
Ontological Argument
By investigating the nature of God it is deduced that God exists. St Anselm argued that God is ‘something tha
something existing in reality is greater than something existing only in the mind. Therefore God must exist in
would not be ‘something than which nothing greater can be imagined’.
Cosmological Argument
A whole family of related arguments, of which the following is an example. All thing need an explanation. B
each thing explained by another, since then there would be no explana- tion for the chain taken as a whole. So
God. (See Aquinas, Summa Theologica)
Argument from Design
(Teleological Argument)
The universe is not just disordered chaos; every- where we look we see examples
pocket watch, for instance. If the world has been designed, there must be a designer, namely God.
Summer1998�PhilosophyNow 31
suffering.
It seems that most people agree with Plantinga that the
prospects for a successful solution to the problem of evil are not good. However, some
brave souls are trying to explain the existence of suffering: Richard Swinburne’s book
Providence is due out in the Autumn. If you wish to know more, there is no shortage of
literature – over 3600 articles and books have been written on the problem of evil since
1960 alone. I trust that the reader will therefore forgive the brevity of this survey.
Is Belief Rational?
Having said all the above, the major question and discus- sion in the philosophy of
religion at the moment is what sort of justification one needs for religious belief. This
question was first raised by Plantinga in a book he edited with a fellow
Richard Swinburne
Reformed Calvinist, Nicholas Wolterstorff, Noah Porter Professor of Philosophical
Theology at Yale, Faith and Rationality: Reason and Belief in God , when he suggested
that religious belief might be a properly basic belief, in other words one which may rationally be held without being logically inferred from other beliefs. If Plantinga is right then
all the discussion of arguments for religious belief
suddenly seems less important, since the arguments aren’t necessary for rationality
(though they may be necessary for the purpose of convincing unbelievers). Since then
Plantinga has been arguing in his Warrant trilogy that a belief is justified if it is produced
by a cognitive mechanism functioning in accordance with its design plan. It seems pretty
likely that if God designed us then it is part of God’s design plan that we believe in God,
so belief in God is rational. This, of course, will do little to convince the atheist, but this
does not worry Plantinga unduly. He views his main tasks as being the expo- sition of the
truth about the epistemic status of theism and the defence thereof against attacks, rather
than attempts to con- vert sceptics to his position. In particular, if Plantinga is right, it
shifts the burden of proof onto the atheist: if she wants to show that the theist is irrational
then she will have to show that the theist has not been designed by God to believe in God.
But this seems a very difficult thing to prove. Meanwhile, philosophers of religion the
world over continue to hold their collective breath as they wait for the authorita- tive
statement of Plantinga’s views to hit the bookshops.
A different attempt at justification has come from William Alston (who taught Plantinga
when Plantinga was a graduate student). Alston has worked on the nature of religious
experi- ence, producing a book called Perceiving God. In it he claims that “putative direct
awareness of God can provide justifica- tion for certain kinds of beliefs about God.”
Since its publica- tion a very lively debate has raged over whether this is true, and over
questions such as whether perception always involves conceptualisation, and whether
religious experiences of differ- ent religious traditions are comparable or not.
Finally on this topic, Edinburgh University Press has now
32 PhilosophyNow�Summer1998
launched a series on religious epistemology called ‘Reason and Religion’. This series is
edited by Paul Helm, Professor of the History and Philosophy of Religion at King’s
College London, and President of the British Society for the Philosophy of Religion.
Each volume in the series is an exploration of one of the ways of seeking justification for
reli- gious beliefs.
What Is God Like?
Apart from the attempt to justify the claims of religion, the philosophy of religion has
traditionally sought to understand and explain those claims. The central claim of western
reli- gions is that there is a God, and so western analytical philoso- phers of religion have
spent a lot of their time trying to analyse that claim. This enterprise is usually called
philosoph- ical theology, though it belongs as much to metaphysics as it does to theology.
In particular, debate has focussed on four of God’s attributes: omnipotence, omniscience,
eternity, and goodness. For each of these, discussion tends to involve puz- zles, such as
“Can God create a stone too heavy for God to lift?” or “Can God create a person who
knows a secret that even God does not know?”. Debate about omniscience has revolved
around the question of whether God can know now what I shall freely do tomorrow.
After Alvin Plantinga pub- lished an article on this called ‘On Ockham’s Way Out’
(Faith and Philosophy 1986) restating the solution of the mediaeval philosopher William
of Ockham, the debate exploded, with articles appearing in every issue of the specialist
journals debating whether God’s beliefs were hard facts, soft facts, hard-type soft facts,
or “hard facts with soft underbellies”! Things often became convoluted; William Alston
once remarked that “At the March 1984 Pacific Regional meeting of the Society of
Christian Philosophers, Pike presented a dis- cussion of Fischer’s paper, which was
responded to by Marilyn Adams and Fischer, so that the conferees were treated to hearing Adams on Pike on Fischer on Adams on Pike, and Fischer on Pike on Fischer on
Adams on Pike. ‘Enough!’ you may well cry. And yet the beat goes on.”
Eternity is also still a ‘hot’ issue, the question here being whether to understand God’s
eternity as timelessness, as Paul Helm suggests in his Eternal God, or as being
everlasting in time as suggested by Nicholas Wolterstorff in his article ‘God Everlasting’.
As for divine goodness, apart from the issues raised by evil, the questions being widely
discussed include whether God can really be praised for doing good if it is impossible for
God to do evil.
Religious Language
Other traditional issues within the philosophy of religion such as the nature of religious
language have been rather quiet lately (perhaps because Alvin Plantinga hasn’t written
any- thing on them). The questions here concern whether lan- guage about God should be
understood as literal or as in some way analogical or metaphorical. William Alston has
written some helpful essays on this, collected in his Divine Nature and Human Language.
The topic was very important when the logical positivists ruled philosophy because
theists were busy trying to find a way of construing religious language which A.J.Ayer
would declare meaningful. Now that this threat has been lifted, philosophers of religion
feel free to say that they mean what they say (and that they say what they mean).
‘Christian Philosophy’
Two growth areas for philosophy of religion at the moment are its expansion into other
areas of philosophy, through what is sometimes called ‘Christian Philosophy’, and its
expansion into other areas of theology. This is all due, of course, to Alvin Plantinga, who
in his inaugural lecture at Notre Dame, ‘Advice to Christian Philosophers’, suggested that
the people of his title shouldn’t feel obliged to follow the current trends and interests in
contemporary secular philosophy, but should instead fulfill their obligation to the
Christian church by phi- losophizing about issues of importance to the church. Plantinga
also urged Christian philosophers not to forget their religious commitments when
working in other branches of philosophy. Quite a few, particularly at Notre Dame, have
taken up his challenge and one of the results is the book
Christian Theism and the Problems of Philosophy, (1990). In it Christian philosophers
bring their faith to bear on several unlikely top- ics, such as the analysis
of counterfactuals. As for the first part of Plantinga’s request, perhaps the most
systematic treatment of issues arising from the Christian creeds is Richard Swinburne’s
tetralogy. The first volume of this is Responsibility and Atonement, which is about
humankind’s sinfulness, guilt, and God’s salvation of humans by the atonement. The
second volume, Revelation, discusses what it would be for a sacred book, such as the
Bible, to be a revelation from God. The third, The Christian God, deals with the doctrines
of the incarnation and the Trinity. The fourth volume is eagerly awaited. (Perhaps this
year is rather a waiting time in the philosophy of religion, as both Swinburne and
Plantinga are expected to publish important work in the next few months.) Out of all
these issues, the doc- trine of the Trinity has perhaps seized the philosophical imagination most, and provoked the liveliest debate. It should be emphasized that Professor
Swinburne’s works and most of the
Finding out more
philosophical discussion arising differ from the standard theo- logical treatments of these
issues by using the tools of analyti- cal philosophy. It is not uncommon to find in the
journals detailed use of formal logic to discuss the Trinity, for example.
Conclusion
To conclude, the prospects for philosophy of religion look brighter than they have done
for many moons. The general standard of discussion in the analytical philosophy of
religion is high – in my judgment, as high as in any other branch of philosophy. It is also
provoking much interest both amongst professional philosophers in other fields (David
Lewis and Martin Davies, for instance, have both written articles on the philosophy of
religion) and amongst students taking philoso- phy at university (at Oxford, philosophy
of religion is the sec- ond most popular optional subject, after philosophy of mind). In
addition, it is a lively, interesting and accessible area, whose questions are surely relevant
to all (don’t atheists need to con- sider the arguments for God, and perhaps provide some
rea- sons for their rejection of theism?). If you would like to study it, there are many easy
ways into the academic subject, and I feel sure that it will amply repay your time and
attention.
© DANIEL HILL 1998
I would like to thank Paul Helm, Martin Stone and Richard Swinburne for all their help
in preparing this article. Any remain- ing errors are my own.
Bibliography
William Alston Perceiving God (Cornell Univ. Press, Ithaca, 1991); Divine Nature and Human
Language (Cornell Univ. Press, Ithaca, 1989)
Paul Helm Eternal God (Clarendon Press, Oxford,
1988)
Graham Oppy Ontological Arguments & Belief in God (CUP, New York 1995). Alvin
Plantinga:The Nature of Necessity (OUP 1974); God and Other Minds (Cornell Univ. Press,
1967); God, Freedom, and Evil (Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 1974); Warrant: The Current Debate
(OUP 1993); Warrant and Proper Function (OUP 1993). Ed. with Nicholas Wolterstorff, Faith
and Rationality: Reason and Belief in God (Notre Dame Press, Indiana, 1983), Richard
Swinburne The Existence of God (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1979) Peter van Inwagen
Metaphysics (OUP, Oxford, 1993).
Nicholas Wolterstorff ‘God Everlasting’ in God and the Good eds. Orlebeke & Smedes, Grand
Rapids, 1975.
Christian Theism and the Problems of Philosophy, ed. by Michael Beaty (Univ.
of Notre Dame Press, Indiana, 1990).