EPS Blog

We continue our interview with Chad Meister about his Introducing Philosophy of Religion. In this part, Chad shares with us about he teaches philosophy and how philosophy of religion has influenced other areas of philosophy.

What are some lessons that you’ve learned over the years about how to teach philosophy of religion?

My overall pedagogical methods in the classroom have changed significantly over the last ten years or so, and this is especially true in upper level undergraduate philosophy courses such as philosophy of religion. Here are what I consider to be some significant lessons for teaching philosophy of religion (or any undergraduate philosophy course). Some of these lessons I gleaned from pedagogy researcher Ken Bain:

• Students are not typically familiar with many, if not most, of the central topics and ideas discussed in the field, nor are they familiar with how the topics are typically approached. So rather than focusing on one or two main issues, or reading one or two primary sources, I find it helpful to first introduce them to a number of relevant topics and then to hone in on several key ones. For their assigned papers, then, I give them the opportunity to choose one or two issues with which to spend a good deal of time over the course of the semester.
• I usually begin class with an excellent question (a question that is meaningful to the student)—that is, with a BIG question. So I generally create at least one major question for each class period and write it on the board or in PowerPoint. For example, I might ask, “What is John Hick’s pluralistic hypothesis, and what are some reasons you have for agreeing or disagreeing with it?” The lecture/discussion will generally, then, focus on this question.
• As Ken Bain notes, a recent Harvard study of the most successful students included two key elements in the classroom: tough classes and the opportunity to try, fail, get feedback, etc. separate from a grade. I believe creating assignments, such as short papers on a central theme, that allow students to work on a topic, turn in the assignment, receive comments, and re-work the assignment are effective means. These early papers receive no grade, but the final product (a longer paper including research and reflection from the earlier shorter ones) does.
• Students need to have some control over their own education. For papers, I offer students multiple topics from which to choose, or I allow them to pick a subject related to their major or area of interest.
• As many of the great ancient Greek philosophers understood, one of the most helpful ways of acquiring knowledge and being transformed by it is seeing it modeled by a respected mentor. So, for example, I invite students over to my home regularly to discuss issues in that environment and work to develop respect by the “younger” students for the more advanced ones. I even encourage their involvement in an official mentoring program at the college where students and faculty mentor others, and I mentor a number of the philosophy majors myself. There should be regular collaborative efforts between students, so I have them work together in small groups on projects both in and outside of class. When appropriate, I have the “advanced” students help/mentor the “newer” ones. Especially for the philosophy majors, I try to create an environment where we are growing together and encouraging one another as a community of learners.
• Students must believe that their own work will really matter (though it may be quite basic at this stage), so I have individual meetings with them to discuss their paper topics. I encourage them to focus on a theme that is significant—both to them and to the field at large—and explain why what they are doing is philosophically significant. Furthermore, I offer them the opportunity as a class to craft a journal—one structured very much like a professional philosophy journal, but with other features that make it more fun and exciting for undergraduates (for example, including timelines, glossaries, even a comics section!). This has been a very productive, collaborative kind of project which, in one case, we published. I also encourage students to work toward writing publishable papers (and to try to publish them if they are of that quality) and to attend conferences where students and others are presenting papers. It is oftentimes in these kinds of contexts where the significance of their own work can be more fully appreciated.

How has philosophy of religion work influenced other fields in philosophy?

There is a long story to be told here, but I’ll try to keep this brief. There is a fascinating symbiotic relationship among those doing work in the various fields of philosophy you mention and work being done in philosophy of religion. Consider first a brief account (one probably quite familiar to many readers) of the resurgence of philosophy of religion over the past century with respect to work done in epistemology, metaphysics, and philosophy of language.

Philosophy, especially within the analytic tradition, emphasizes precision of terms and clarity of concepts. Religion, however, is often imprecise and veiled in mystery. This imprecision was challenged in the mid-twentieth century with the rise of logical positivism. Logical positivists used a principle of verifiability to reject as meaningless all non-empirical claims; only the tautologies of mathematics and logic, along with statements containing empirical observations or inferences, were considered meaningful. Many religious statements, however, such as claims about the transcendent, are neither tautological nor empirically verifiable. So certain fundamental religious claims and beliefs (such as “Yahweh is good” or “Atman is Brahman”) were taken by the positivists to be cognitively meaningless utterances. Positivism became a dominant philosophical approach and for a time, for this and related reasons, philosophy of religion as a discipline became suspect.

The philosophical tide began to turn, however, in the latter half of the twentieth century with respect to religious language. Many argued that the positivists’ empiricist criteria of meaning were unsatisfactory and problematic. Due to the philosophical insights on the nature and meaning of language provided by the later Ludwig Wittgenstein, the rise of a pragmatic version of naturalism offered by Willard Quine, and other factors, logical positivism quickly waned. For these reasons, along with the exemplary work of such analytic philosophers of religion as Alvin Plantinga, Richard Swinburne, John Hick, and others, by the 1970s discussions about religious (and metaphysical and ethical) concepts were revived and soon became accepted arenas of viable philosophical and religious discourse.

Since that time, philosophy of religion has become a burgeoning field. For example, two leading philosophy journals today—Philosophia Christi and Faith and Philosophy—are primarily focused on issues in philosophy of religion. In addition, two of the largest (if not the largest) subgroups within the American Philosophical Association are the Evangelical Philosophical Society and the Society of Christian Philosophers. Furthermore, one could cite countless examples of recent work that integrates other fields of philosophy with philosophy of religion, or philosophy of religion work which has influenced other fields. Consider just a few fine examples (with apologies for the many other fine examples which are not included):

• Metaphysics: work on ontology and naturalism by Mike Rea, JP Moreland, and Alvin Plantinga;
• Epistemology: work on religious epistemology by Paul Moser, Alvin Plantinga, and Doug Geivett;
• Ethics: Paul Copan’s work on God and morality; John Hare’s work on ethics and religion;
• Philosophy of Mind: Charles Taliaferro’s work on the mind; JP Moreland’s work on the argument from consciousness;
• Philosophy of Time: work on God and time by William Lane Craig, Greg Ganssle, Gary DeWeese, and Alan Padgett.

The list goes on and on. Those doing work in philosophy of religion have indeed made great strides in influencing other fields in philosophy over the past fifty years, and there is no indication of its waning any time soon.

More about Chad Meister can be found at his website.

Labels: chad meister, interview, introducing philosophy of religion (book)

We are glad to announce the release of J.P. Moreland's latest book, The Recalcitrant Imago Dei: Human Persons and the Failure of Naturalism (SCM Press, 2009). J.P. is the Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Biola University. We previously interviewed him about his Consciousness and the Existence of God (Routledge, 2008). Below is part one of our interview with him about his latest book and the philosophical failure of naturalism.

In roughly 200 pages, you try to clarify, if not recapture, an emphasis on the recalcitrant imago Dei? Why this emphasis?

In its doctrine of the image of God, the Bible teaches that the human constitution has features in common with God; we are like God in important respects. Namely, we have a will, consciousness, reason, etc. If Christianity is true, one would predict that alternative worldviews whose basic entity or entities are not spiritual would find these features of the human person recalcitrant, that is, hard to explain or explain away. And that is exactly what one finds, especially in connection with philosophical naturalism. If, in the beginning was the Logos, then, I claim, it is easy to see how six features of human persons could obtain—consciousness, libertarian freedom, rationality, a unified/simple self, equal and intrinsic value, and moral action of a certain sort. But if, in the beginning were the particles, then one cannot adequately account for these features, and reductive or eliminative strategies must be employed. I argue that these strategies are a failure, and, therefore, these six features provide rebutting defeaters for naturalism and confirmation (to a degree I specify) for biblical theism.


What is the worldview of naturalism?

Naturalism has many incarnations, but if it is taken to be explanatorily superior to rival worldviews, then it may be fairly characterized according to a majority construal of it, which would be (1) a scientistic attitude, which says that all that is real is physical and that knowledge is only that which can be detected by the sciences; (2) an origins account constituted by an event-causal story explains how everything has come-to-be as a result of combinatorial processes and rearrangements of micro-physical entities to form various structurally different macro-objects, and centered on the atomic theory of matter and evolutionary biology; (3) a strictly physicalist ontology that quantifies over and only over those entities that conform to (1) and (2). I argue in the book that the naturalist ontology cannot account for real substances (besides atomic simples if such there be) or genuinely emergent, sui generis properties, especially those constitutive of the six features mentioned above.


It seems that most public policy and pop cultural discussions about what it means to be a human person are largely shaped by the offerings of the hard or soft sciences. How is your approach different and why does that matter?

The fundamental questions about the nature of human beings are these: Is consciousness real and is it non-physical? Do I have free will and, if so, what is it? How could human rationality be possible, and if it is, what does that tell us about the nature of the human person? Do I have a unified self that remains the same through change, or am I just an aggregate of parts? Do human persons have equal and high moral value, and if so, how could such a thing be the case? What is a moral action, and can human persons engage in such? None of these questions is capable of being formulated or answered by the hard and social sciences, because they are, one and all, descriptive and not prescriptive disciplines. They have nothing to say about what must be the case or what ought to be the case. The questions listed above are all philosophical and theological questions. That is how I treat them in The Recalcitrant Imago Dei, and the answers I provide require philosophical and theological evaluation.


Philosopher Howard Robinson (Budapest’s Central European University) says that the “great service” of your book is that you cumulatively demonstrate how naturalism fails to give us an accurate account of some of the most basic fundamentals of human existence. Can you further unpack the failure of naturalism?

I argue that the worldview of naturalism denies the objectivity of value, meaning in and to life, free will and responsibility, normative rationality, sameness of self through various changes, and the possibility of a ground for equal rights and moral action.

With an overreliance on the hard sciences, secularism reduces us to our brains, our wills to nerve reactions to inputs, our value to the dictates of the herd. In the process, we lose what is so special to us—our consciousness, freedom, rationality, self and value.


Naturalism has singularly failed to provide a plausible, deep analysis of human persons sufficient to account for who they are, how they can have value and purpose in life, and how they can flourish in a robust social and ethical way. As naturalist views of human persons proliferate, people turn to sex and entertainment, all centered on the satisfaction of immediate desire, as the rails upon which they run their lives. In turn, this generates passivity and all kinds of addictions.

The worldview is kept in business, intellectually, by its alleged—but non-existent—connection with physical science, and, spiritually, by anger towards God and hostility towards religion. The former is simply false—it is not science, but philosophical naturalism itself that underwrites its core intellectual commitments (and a troublesome argumentative circle is lurking in the neighborhood; to avoid this, one must provide independent epistemic and methodological arguments for adopting naturalism, but these are, in my view, extremely weak). The latter is becoming more apparent now that the resurgence of Christian philosophy has made it more difficult to justify intellectually the claim that belief in God is irrational.


Does one have to be a Christian in order to buy into your view of the human person?

One does not need to be a Christian theist to accept the analysis of human persons I defend in The Recalcitrant Imago Dei. But if that analysis is accepted, then one is obligated to offer an account concerning how human persons could be this way. In other words, one does not get a free pass in their ontology of the human person. One has to tell a broad worldview story, including a creation account, within which that ontology is intelligible and plausible.


Stay tuned for part two. More about J.P. Moreland's work can be found here.

Labels: imago Dei, interview, introducing philosophy of religion (book), jp moreland, naturalism, philosophy of mind, recalcitrant imago dei

What is unique about your intent, approach, and features in this Christian introduction to philosophy?


COWAN: We set out to produce a book that avoided two shortcomings we found in other Christian philosophy texts. On the one hand, we did not want to treat issues in a superficial and cursory way. We wanted to provide significant depth so that the reader could come away with a good grasp of the issues and the range of answers that have been given to major philosophical questions. On the other hand, we did not want our discussion to be limited to only a narrow range of topics. We wanted to introduce the reader to all the main areas of philosophy.


Secondly, we wanted the text to be as friendly as possible to the needs of teachers. This required that we include pedagogical aids like diagrams, illustrations, study questions, recommended reading lists, and the like. It also required that we leave a lot of philosophical discussions open-ended rather than stating and defending our own preferred answers to every question. So on issues where Christian philosophers are deeply divided, we resisted the temptation to come down firmly on one side. This way, no matter what view a teacher holds, he or she can comfortably use the text to inform students about the debate and generate classroom discussion.One unique feature of the book, as has been widely touted, is that it includes chapters on subjects that usually get shorted or ignored in other texts, namely political philosophy and aesthetics. Jim and I wanted our treatment of value theory go beyond the requisite chapter on ethics and include these other subjects as well. It is a much better book because of it.


Your text intends to take the acquisition of wisdom as a serious matter when “doing philosophy.” How is this intention realized throughout the book?


SPIEGEL: The two primary ways we do this are methodological and substantive. As a matter of method, we explain and apply the “Socratic method,” which emphasizes humility in inquiry, as well as defining terms and using well-constructed arguments. Substantively, at various places in the discussion we explain how a particular view or acquaintance with an issue will help readers to understand to make wise judgments regarding a wide range of practical issues in ethics, politics, and aesthetics. In addition to standard moral issues, such as abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment, and animal rights, we address such issues as civil disobedience, religion in the public square, and how to assess artworks which are aesthetically admirable but morally problematic.


COWAN: Where possible, throughout the book, we try to bring out the practical implications of the views we discuss. Even in philosophical areas that are seen as more abstract we want the reader to see that whatever position he takes, it will have practical and ethical consequences. For example, it's hard to imagine a more abstract topic than the metaphysical debate between Platonism (the view that universals exist) and nominalism (which denies the existence of universals). We show that nominalism has adverse implications for the objectivity of moral values. If there are no universal essences, say, then there is no such thing as humanity. And this makes it hard to make sense of the concept of human rights. So even abstract philosophical topics can contribute to our ability to navigate wisely through life.


Who do you have in mind to most benefit from this book?


SPIEGEL: We wrote the book in such a way that Philosophy students at all stages would have much to gain by reading it. Beginners will appreciate the clear presentation of issues and definitions of terms, while intermediate and advanced students will appreciate the thorough review of arguments for and against the major positions on the issues. As Philosophy teachers ourselves, we appreciate texts that allow for flexibility in use. Professors will benefit from the thorough coverage of topics, which will enable them to tailor reading assignments according to the specific structure and aims of their courses.


Walk us through a brief overview of the three main parts of this book and their significance of content and organization.


SPIEGEL: The book is divided into three parts: knowledge, being and value. The first part contains chapters on logic, epistemology, and philosophy of science. The section on being features chapters on metaphysics, human nature, and philosophy of religion. And the last section includes chapters on ethics, political philosophy and aesthetics. Perhaps our Trinitarian Christian theology impacted our decision to go with all of these triads :), but the book really just seemed to make the most sense this way from an organizational standpoint. The early chapters on logic and epistemology provide readers with conceptual tools that are valuable for reading the other chapters. And understanding several issues in metaphysics, human nature, and philosophy of religion is critical for properly addressing a number of questions in value theory taken up in the last section of the book.

You can learn more about the work of Steve Cowan and Jim Spiegel by visiting their websites: Cowan Chronicles and JimSpiegel.com

Labels: interview, jim spiegel, love of wisdom (book), philosophy of religion, steve cowan

What is the overall aim of this textbook?

The aim of this textbook is to help students and others reflect philosophically on important religious ideas, including religious diversity, concepts of God/Ultimate Reality, arguments for and against the existence of God, problems of evil, science and faith, religious experience, the self, death and the afterlife.

What is unique about your content, approach, intent, and scope for this introduction to philosophy of religion?

This book covers a broad array of topics—some of which are not typically covered in philosophy of religion texts but are nonetheless important in contemporary discussions—including non-Western conceptions of Ultimate Reality and conceptions of the self, reincarnation, and karma. Unlike other works I’ve done, I am not arguing in this book for any particular positions which I may personally hold. I attempt to be as fair and impartial as possible, and to provide arguments and evidences for each position.

Here is a quick overview of the chapter titles and main objectives:

Chapter 1: Religion and the Philosophy of Religion

• Describe what is generally meant by the terms philosophy, religion, and philosophy of religion
• Access an extensive philosophy of religion timeline
• Explain religious realism and non-realism and note prominent adherents of each

Chapter 2: Religious Diversity and Pluralism

• Describe several central elements of five major world religions
• Explain six different philosophical approaches to religious diversity
• Clarify five fundamental criteria for evaluating religious systems
• Expound on some important reasons for manifesting religious tolerance with respect to the various traditions

Chapter 3: Conceptions of Ultimate Reality

• Elucidate some major differences between Eastern and Western views of Ultimate Reality
• Provide a concise summary of Hindu Absolutism and Buddhist Metaphysics
• Present five attributes of the traditional concept of the God of theism and some challenges to them

Chapter 4: Cosmological Arguments for God's Existence

• Explicate three cosmological arguments for God's existence and describe support for and objections to each of them
• State scientific evidences for and against the claim that the universe began to exist
• Concisely explain the cosmological argument for atheism

Chapter 5: Teleological Arguments for God's Existence

• Explain three teleological arguments for God's existence and describe support for and objections to each of them
• Expound on scientific findings which relate to alleged fine-tuning of the universe
• Describe the intelligent design movement and arguments for and against irreducible complexity

Chapter 6: Ontological Arguments for God's Existence

• Explain two ontological arguments for God's existence: one classic and one contemporary
• Summarize several main objections and replies to each of these two arguments

Chapter 7: Problems of Evil

• Classify various kinds of evil
• Explicate the logical, evidential, and existential problems of evil and responses to them
• Describe three major theodicies and some central objections to them

Chapter 8: Science, Faith and Reason

• Explain three primary relationships between religion and science
• Differentiate between rational validation and non-evidential views of religious justification
• Understand the meaning of classical foundationalism, a reason for rejecting it, and the role of properly basic beliefs in a more recent version of foundationalism found in Reformed epistemology

Chapter 9: Religious Experience

• Delineate three general features common to religious experience
• Distinguish three general categories of religious experience
• Provide reasons for and against the use of religious experience as justification for religious beliefs
• Describe two scientific explanations for religious experience

Chapter 10: The Self, Death and the Afterlife

• Explain four major conceptions of the self from the East and the West as well as arguments for and against them
• Describe the doctrines of reincarnation and karma and their significance to two Eastern religious traditions
• Expound on four arguments in favor of immortality and three arguments against it

There are a number of pedagogical features in the book and on a Routledge website dedicated to the book, including charts, diagrams, chapter outlines, objectives, timeline, glossary, PowerPoint slides, and other resources.

My hope is that students and others working through this text (along with an anthology which is relatively global in scope, such as my corresponding Philosophy of Religion Reader) will gain a broad and fairly comprehensive understanding of the field of philosophy of religion as practiced today, and that they will be enticed to further research and study on these topics.


How has your extensive experience as a professor and work as an editor of several philosophy of religion books shaped what is unique to this textbook?

Teaching at both the graduate and undergraduate levels over the past ten years has undoubtedly provided a plethora of dialectical encounters with students which proved fruitful in crafting this textbook as a dialogical work. I have also gained significant insight through various editing projects over the last few years. For example, in The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Religion (which I co-edited with Paul Copan), The Philosophy of Religion Reader (read the interview here), and The Oxford Handbook of Religious Diversity (which I am just now finishing), I have been engaged with the works of philosophers of religion from across religious and philosophical spectrums. It has been a most enlightening experience working with atheists, pluralists, feminists, Continental philosophers, and Hindu, Buddhist, and Islamic scholars. I have leaned much from them and am deeply indebted to them, and this dialogue has enriched my own thinking about a number of issues.

For more about Chad Meister, visit his website: http://www.chadmeister.com/

Labels: chad meister, interview, introducing philosophy of religion (book), philosophy of religion

We interviewed Peter S. Williams, an EPS blogger and contributor to Philosophia Christi, about his just released book, A Sceptic's Guide to Atheism (Paternostre, 2009). A talk by Peter about his new book can be downloaded by clicking here.

What is unique about your book compared to other critical treatments on the “new atheists”?

The new atheism is characterised by the propositions that belief in God is false and evil. The new atheists believe that at the core of even the most outwardly benign theism is an immoral commitment to flouting one’s intellectual responsibilities. That means that the new atheism presupposes both an account of rationality and an account of morality. What’s unique about my book is that I examine those accounts and turn the results of this analysis against the new atheism. By systematically reviewing their major arguments, I show how the new atheism is grounded in incoherent accounts of knowledge and morality.

It’s not just that the new atheists are wrong to define ‘faith’ as ‘belief without evidence’ or ‘belief against the evidence’. It’s that their positive account of what it means to live up to one’s intellectual responsibilities is self-contradictory. I counter with an epistemology that isn’t self-contradictory, which frowns upon both ‘blind faith’ and belief despite overwhelming counter evidence, but which opens up the possibility of a faith in God that’s compatible with living up to one’s genuine intellectual responsibilities.

Then again, the new atheists put a lot of emphasis on arguments against belief in God, as opposed to arguments against the existence of God, and these arguments all have a moral dimension. For example, the argument that faith means being committed to ignoring one’s intellectual responsibilities presupposes that we have an objective moral responsibility to reason in a certain way. However, for the new atheists to invoke objective moral responsibilities is self-contradictory, since the naturalistic worldview of the new atheism excludes the reality of any objective moral values. For example, Dawkins says both that there are no normative facts, no good, no evil, and that faith is an evil that leads people to do evil things. These claims form an in consistent set.

Of all the different new atheist voices that are out there, who do you find to be the most compelling in their case against the existence of God?

Dawkins makes the most compelling case against the truth of belief in God; but that’s partly because, despite being such a poor logician, he is a good rhetoritician, and partly because the other new atheists are even worse on this issue! The God Delusion was the first new atheist book I read, and I thought at the time that it was a low point for atheistic apologetics. Dawkins clearly doesn’t even understand the theistic arguments he critiques, and his book is consequently full of embarrassing errors. When it comes to his ‘central’ argument against theism, it turns out to be an exercise begging the question. Dawkins’ engagement with natural theology is a litany of formal and informal logical fallacies; but he’s a zoologist and not a philosopher. I expected more from new atheists who are philosophers, and I was disappointed to discover that Dawkins is actually the high water mark for new atheist engagement with the question of God’s existence!

The new atheists spend very little time arguing against the existence of God, or trying to counter the arguments for God’s existence. Dawkins’ is the most sustained effort on offer. Dennett’s Breaking the Spell is crucially predicated upon the non-existence of God, but he only spends eleven paragraphs (from pages 240-245) on this issue! Like his compatriots, Dennett skims over straw-man presentations of a small sub-set of theistic arguments which he dismisses using long discredited counter-arguments.

Anyone who didn’t know better and was inclined to trust what the new atheist’s say would come away from their books with the false impression that the cosmological argument depends upon the premise that ‘everything has a cause’ (thus leading to the question ‘Who made God?’), and that the moral argument claims that people can’t discern or behave in accordance with the good unless they believe in God (or in the Bible as the inspired word of God). As far as I’m concerned, that’s an academic scandal.

What are some of the sociological, cultural-historical or philosophical factors that have empowered the new atheism to emerge now compared to, say, fifty years ago?

I think the explanation is multi-factorial. The terrorist attacks of September 2001 clearly put the issue of religiously motivated violence smack in the centre of Western public consciousness; but I don’t think we can simply point the finger at the actions of a certain type of Muslim and say that the new atheism is a secular reaction to their actions. For one thing, Christians shouldn’t let themselves off the hook here. Many atheists have legitimate cause to feel themselves an oppressed minority. In 2006 researchers at the University of Minnesota identified atheists as America’s most distrusted minority, and the American Sociological Review reported that it is generally thought socially acceptable in America to say that you are intolerant of atheists. I think that the Church must ask itself if it is ‘speaking the truth’ to atheists ‘in love’, or in fear and hate? Perhaps we’ve had a hand in creating a stick with which to beat out own backs.

Another factor is the way in which the new atheism offers an apparently meaningful and purposeful existence to its converts. Materialism is the metaphysics of nihilism par excellence (cf. my book I Wish I Could Believe in Meaning: A Response to Nihilism) but the new atheism dresses itself up in fake robes of meaning and purpose, like the fairy-tale about the Emperor’s New Clothes. The fake meaning comes in the guise of moral outrage at the (generalised) behaviour of theists. The fake purpose comes in the form of an intellectual-cum-socio-political crusade against theistic belief and for a metaphysically naturalistic worldview. The ‘new atheism’ thus offers an apparently valuable meaning and purpose to people’s lives, a daring intellectual identity and a community of like-minded fellow-pilgrims. And the Emperor’s new tailor appeared to offer him the finest new robes…

Where do you think the discussion is going between new atheists and theists in the years to come?

I suspect that the new atheism has already had its cultural hay-day. It has now lost something of that ‘lure of the new’ to which our media-saturated culture is so in thralled, and it seems unlikely that Dawkins et al can sustain their movement’s momentum even if they manage to write a new set of books to keep their ideas in the public eye.

Nevertheless, significant numbers of people have been profoundly influenced by the new atheism. If there’s one thing to be said for the new atheism it is that antipathy towards Christianity is better than apathy; and the new atheism means Christians will meet more antipathy, albeit an intellectually under-resourced antipathy. Christians must ‘speak the truth in love’ to those influenced by the new atheism, engaging them with the real reasons for the hope that we have (rather than the straw-men boldly eviscerated by Dawkins et al), but also engaging with them on a personal level as friends whom Christ loves. If the new atheism can lead to more disagreements that are not disagreeable, then it may be a blessing in disguise!

Peter S. Williams is a philosophy and apologetics researcher, lecturer, and author with the UK based Damaris Trust.

Labels: interview, new atheists, peter williams

We interviewed Carl Raschke, a professor and chairperson of the department of religious studies at the University of Denver, about his recent book, GloboChristi: The Great Commission Takes a Postmodern Turn (Baker Academic, 2008).

What is “GloboPomo” and how might Christian philosophers pay attention to it in the way that they engage ideas?

The term “globopomo” is a word I crafted in the book to convey forcefully the sense that what we in the developed world blandly term the “postmodern world” these days is ultimately the emerging globalized world. The process of globalization , which is often misunderstood as involving mainly finance and communications, challenges Christian thinkers in particular to think through questions that have been in the past remained largely local, regional, or simply hemispheric – we might also add culture-specific, sectarian, and denominational - in scope.

Borrowing from the argot of French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, we can say that globalization is an ongoing, simultaneous transformation of nations, cultures, and religious outlooks and practices everywhere on the planet which they term “de-territorialization.” De-territorialization, especially in the field of anthropology, has come to mean the uncoupling of meaning from its specific historical site, or locus. Thus, for example, “Mexican food” really has little to do with cuisine consumed regularly in Mexico. The growth of Christianity in Roman times represented a de-territorialization of what were once exclusively Jewish signs and symbols - e.g., the notion of the Messiah. Paul’s writings is a treasure trove of globalized, and thus de-territorialized, Jewish soteriology and eschatology.

But this “de-territorialization” is what makes Christianity distinctive historically. It is also the key to what we understand as the unique Christian revelation. Now we are witnessing on an impressive scale the de-territorialization of what until recently was considered a “Western religion.” The book plays off the unquestionable sociological reality that the center of gravity of world Christianity is rapidly moving from the developed West (or the “global north”) to the developing world, or the “global south.” That is far more than a geographical trend. Our very notion of what it means to be “Christian” is being de-territorialized. De-territorialization is a word that applies to the history of culture and ideas in the same way that “de-construction,” which is closely associated with postmodernism, applies to the reading of texts. God is using history to deconstruct Christianity. But, of course, he is “deconstructing” it to fulfill what Christ commanded us to do in the first place – “make disciples of all nations.” The theology of globopomo is the incipient new theology of the Great Commission.

Tell us about yourself. How would you describe your own journey as a Christian? How has that journey helped shape what you are passionate about in GloboChrist?

A good bit of my own “journey” or long process of spiritual formation is laid out in my earlier book The Next Reformation (Baker Academic 2004). I won’t rehash it here. All I can say is that God is constantly encountering me, transforming me, and of course using me in both subtle and obvious ways, which have varied from era to era. I’m chronologically older than a lot of people who know me realize, which means only that I’ve been around. I guess I could best sum up my life with the famous words of The Grateful Dead – “it’s been a long, strange trip.” But so is God’s story from Abraham through the prophets through Jesus to the present. The story keeps going on. That story is “His-story,” and of course his-story and her-story. As to why I’m passionate about what I write in GloboChrist, that’s pretty easy to explain.

I was getting tired of all the controversy – and really rather silly and unproductive bickering about whether we should, shouldn’t, or shoulda or woulda consider ourselves “postmodern.” Or “emergent,” or non-traditional, or whatever. So I asked myself, okay, what does that word “postmodern” really mean. Well, I went one Sunday to a rather mainstream, relatively large church in Arlington, Texas and I heard an aging missionary give a passionate testimony about why he was living out his seeking to fulfill the Great Commission. The pomo crowd doesn’t usually take missionaries very seriously, but for some reason it just hit me (or God hit me over the head, take your pick), not quite like on the road to Damascus, but close. The guy didn’t talk all about the “souls” he was saving. He talked about doing his own little part to be obedient to Christ’s global command to us on his resurrection appearance. And I thought to myself, “that guy is more postmodern than anyone who’s read all of Derrida five times over.”

You claim that “Relational Christianity is postmodern Christianity” (italics in original, 20). Can you briefly explain what you mean? How and why is “relational Christianity” not premodern Christianity, for example?

I’m not sure how to answer such a question, because I’m not making a “claim.” Claims are for lawyers, argumentative philosophers, and mining assayers. As one of my good friends and former grad students who is a “missional” megachurch pastor in Denver would put it, if it’s in the Word of God, which it is, it’s not a “claim.” There’s a difference between a claim we make about God and how God reveals himself to us. God reveals himself to us as the “relational God.” We can start with the nature of human beings made in the “image of God,” which is an image of pure relationality, as Karl Barth has insisted. But we need only to reference the Emmanuel prophecy. Our God is inextricably “God with us.” That’s what makes Christianity unique, and it’s why all evangelicals say you have to have a relationship to God (not “claim” you have a relationship to God) to be saved. It’s also an argument against those who deny the Trinity.

Now when I say that “is” postmodern Christianity, I’m not historicizing it. Obviously, it is Christianity, as I’ve indicated. But I find it not a little significant that those who spend most of their times among evangelical theologians attacking the straw man of “postmodernism” and insist they are defending Biblical Christianity rarely dwell on this fact of God’s relationality. They want to defend the “truth claims” of Scripture, etc. Scripture doesn’t make claims about anything at all. Through Scripture God claims us, and claims our lives, or whole lives, our whole being. Christian Scripture is not our “revelation.” Our revelation is the person of Jesus Christ himself, a person with whom we are in relationship with and who dwells in the midst of our relationship with others, who reveals himself in those relationships. As I’m fond of saying, if you want your revelation to be a book or set of texts, you might as well become a Muslim. When I say “relational Christianity is postmodern Christianity” I’m saying that, theologically speaking, we’ve finally got a handle in our postmodern age what Christianity is all about. We lost that sense long ago, maybe as far back as the second century.

In GloboPomo, a decent amount of attention is given to the influence of Islam and eschatology and its relevancy in the “postmodern moment”. Can you briefly explain their importance for understanding the times we live in and the sort of realities that confront global Christian witness.

Let’s go back to what I just said in answer to the last question. Islam is the 800-pound gorilla in today’s world, and that includes the Christian world. We in the West don’t seem to want to talk about it in a honest way, though I can say most Muslims do, if we would let them. We either want to make it a ferocious bogey (on the right) that somehow threatens the foundations of our “American way of life”, or on the left we want to trivialize it as a bunch of people with “alternative life styles” that we need to be more understanding of. A lot of those on the religious left seem to put Islam in the same category as being gay or being vegan – in other words, one more colorful specimen of “otherness” that we can admire while we’re pushing our conceptual shopping cart down the great supermarket isle of cultural and religious diversity.

Of course, if any of these people actually studied Islam closely, which they don’t, they might have quite a different take. Islam claims to be the “final revelation,” and that Mohammed is the “seal of the prophets.” In other words, Islam purports to have the final truth – about everything. That’s why I say we are experiencing not a “clash of civilizations,” but the historical working out of what is a “clash of revelations.” And revelation is about what is final, i.e, about how things are shown to be the case in the final summation, i.e, about eschatology. Before the worldwide Islamic revival that really started in the late 1960s, we didn’t have to take Islam that seriously, because it didn’t take itself that seriously. But now it does. The Islamic revival is not at all about a bunch of “extremists.” That’ s our own condescending, wishful thinking. It’s about people taking seriously the depth and passion of their own eschatological commitments. We ignore our own real Christian commitments at our own peril.

What we have in the West, and just as much in the “emergent” church as in the traditional church, is a tendency to substitute the spiritual version of “consumer choices” for committed Christianity. It’s what I call “Burger King Christianity.” We say to our followers, like the old Burger King slogan, “have it your way.” You want a good, intellectually satisfying, evidentially grounded defense of Christian doctrine? We’ve got it. You want to get transported away in the ecstasy of worshiping God through music and swaying with the music? Well, we’ve got that too. You want a group of people who think like you, and believe God is a Republican, if you’re a Republican, or God is a Democrat, if you’re a Democrat, hey, of course we aim to please. Take your pick. It’s your choice. No, actually, it’s not our choice. We are the ones who are chosen. We only have the choice, as in Mission Possible, of accepting the mission for which we are chosen. I ask basically in the book, are we as Christians “eschatologically committed” to our own revelation (not to our own personal ideologies and life-style choices), the reality of the Personhood of Jesus Christ, King of Kings and Lord of Lords? Are we committed in a global sense?

If a North American Christian philosopher is to take your GloboChrist seriously and attempt to apply your thesis and perspective to their thinking Christianly about matters of philosophy, theology and apologetics, how would you like to see your book influence them?

As I’ve indicated, I haven’t customized my writing for what I think you might mean when you say “North American Christian philosopher.” I’m writing for Christians who happen to have an interest in postmodern philosophy – and theories of globalization - rather than, say, gourmet cooking. But I’m writing for those who are willing to let go of what they think they require to be convinced. As the Gospels show us, the people who always had the best, technical – and often “philosophical” - arguments were the Pharisees. And Jesus didn’t seem to ever convince them. How could he? “Hearing they will not hear.”

I’m not saying the “North American Christian philosopher” can’t be convinced (though he should be “convicted”), nor am I necessarily comparing him, or her, to a Pharisee. But people who have the best arguments often have the least sensitivity to what God is trying to say. That’s perhaps why, as the Gospels tell us, Jesus spoke in parables. All I can say to them, or anyone else for that matter, is “study the Bible, go listen to some people, read some philosophical and social theoretical books, and ultimately experience God in a way you’re not used to doing.” That’s how I came to write this book in the first place.

More of Carl Raschke can be found at his www.carlraschke.com. This interview was the result of an advertisement agreement with Baker Academic.

Labels: carl raschke, globochrist, interview, postmodernism

Please provide a brief overview of the book's scope and thesis.

This groundbreaking collection considers empire from a global perspective, exploring the role of evangelicals in political, social, and economic engagement at a time when empire is alternately denounced and embraced. It brings noted thinkers from a range of theological perspectives together to engage the most explosive and discussed theorists of empire in the first decade of the twenty-first century, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. Using their work as a springboard, the contributors challenge evangelicalism's identification with right-wing politics and grapple with the natures of both empire and evangelicalism.

Why the focus on "Evangelicals and Empire"?

As my co-editor and I considered the evangelical landscape, it became apparent that there was a rapidly developing critical mass of younger—and even somewhat older—evangelicals (such as the emergents, Jill Wallis, the red-letter Christians) who simply didn’t buy the evangelical embrace of empire. Hardt and Negri helped us think through the problem of empire not simply in terms of the nation state but also in terms of global capitalism. While we find Hardt and Negri’s vision of “multitude” problematic, the term resonates with a new generation of prophetic evangelicals who seek the embodiment of the kingdom of heaven.

Tell us about your own journey with this topic. How did you get interested?

Both of us happened to move to New York City just days before 9/11. That event awakened us to political realities in a remarkably new way. For my co-editor, that meant returning to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s sermon at Riverside Church in 1967, in which he spoke of the need to forsake the idols of racism, materialism, and militarism and live into what he termed “the beloved community.” For me, it meant feeling in a deep and practical way the call of the marginalized other that is so central to the thought of the Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas and the Christian philosopher Jean-Luc Marion. Both of them remind us that God judges us on how we treat the least in society—the stranger, the widow, and the orphan.

In terms of the "political status quo" to which you offer "Christian alternatives," what is in view here and why does that status quo require a Christian alternative?

At the time we began working on the book, the hold of the so-called “religious right” on the Republican Party was remarkably strong. While we as editors hold many things regarding orthodox Christianity in common with the “religious right,” we felt that an important missing aspect was what we term the “unified Gospel,” in which the personal Gospel is fully united with a concern for social justice (the so-called “Social Gospel”). I think it is safe to say that, however much the contributors to this volume differ on all sorts of things, they all agree on that commitment to a unified Gospel.

What is distinctly Christian about the alternatives that are presented?

In line with that commitment to a unified Gospel, the contributors to this volume take the truly radical aspects of the Gospel quite seriously. They are “prophetic” in the sense of returning to the calls of the Hebrew prophets, which Jesus repeats and even intensifies. Contributors to this volume take seriously the idea that the witness of the Christian community is distinct because we testify to the living Christ and are empowered by the Spirit to work for justice in the world. Whereas secular activists think that they can make the world a better place, we are saying—like King—that justice will flow like a mighty stream through the power of a loving God. We find this all to be deeply humbling, since we realize that we are merely repeating anew what the Hebrew prophets and Jesus said.

The book appears to be mostly focused on Western political policy and philosophy? Why is that?

Given that Hardt and Negri are working out of Marxist philosophy as inflected by Michel Foucault, they are western philosophy. In contrast, we are pushing back against them by way of world Christianity. We explicitly draw on world Christianity—whether African, Asian, or Latin American—to speak to the west. Although western Christians tend to think that Christianity is a “western” religion, the contributors to this volume try to remind those in the west that Christianity’s roots and certainly much of its history are distinctly eastern.

For Christian philosophers working on Christian and public policy issues, what advice would you offer for how to approach the subject of political power?

Read the four Gospels and do what Jesus commands.

More of Bruce Benson can be found at his website. This interview was the result of an advertisement agreement with Baker Academic.

Labels: books, bruce benson, interview, political power

What is “Kerygmatic Philosophy”?

Kerygmatic philosophy is philosophy anchored in and motivated by the Good News of God’s personal redemptive intervention in human lives, particularly through God’s authoritative call to humans as represented paradigmatically in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. The key term “kerygma,” as used here, means “proclaimed Good News.” Christian philosophy, according to the metaphilosophical position developed in The Elusive God (Cambridge University Press, 2008), is inherently kerygmatic in virtue of stemming from God’s Good News call as personified (in human form) in Jesus.

What does kerygmatic philosophy uniquely offer compared to other Christian approaches to philosophy?

It preserves a unique role for God’s personal redemptive call to humans, and it encompasses an epistemology that is pneumatic and incarnational. The accompanying epistemology is pneumatic owing to a distinctive cognitive role for personal divine Spirit (who cannot be reduced to Calvin’s sensus divinitatis), and this epistemology is therefore foreign to secular epistemology and even to much philosophy of religion that claims to be Christian. It is also an incarnational epistemology, given its distinctive cognitive role for God’s Spirit dwelling in humans, in such a way that they become a temple of God’s Spirit (see 1 Cor. 6:19). We may think of incarnational epistemology as requiring that human inquirers themselves become salient evidence of God’s reality in virtue of becoming God’s temple. According to this approach, characteristic evidence of God’s reality is increasingly available to me as I myself am increasingly willing to become such evidence, that is, living and personified evidence of God’s reality. Philosophy in general and epistemology in particular thus take on an irredeemably existential significance and thereby exclude any merely spectator, armchair, or ivory tower approach.

The epistemology offered in kerygmatic philosophy is grace-based, in that firsthand knowledge of God’s reality is a direct gift of God’s grace. The cognitive grace in question supplies a cognitive gift that replaces any demand for intellectual earning, controlling, or dominating with a freely given presence of God’s inviting and transforming Spirit who seeks morally transformative fellowship with humans. This cognitive, irreducibly personal gift must be appropriated by humans in Gethsemane struggles (of submitting one’s will to God’s non-coercive will), given the human condition of sin, but it is not shrouded in philosophical sophistication of the sort accompanying contemporary natural theology. This gift is directly challenging toward natural human ways that resist God, including toward human cognitive idolatry (that exalts cognitive standards inimical to God’s character), but it does not get bogged down in its own intellectual complications. The EPS paper on kerygmatic philosophy shows how natural theology fails in areas where incarnational epistemology makes a needed contribution.

How does the thesis of this paper reflect your recent CUP book, The Elusive God.

The EPS paper develops the volitional epistemology of The Elusive God in a way that bears directly on natural theology. The motivation is to challenge some harmful effects of natural theology, including its neglect of (a) divine elusiveness, (b) the cognitively crucial role of God’s call to humans, and (c) the cognitive importance of human repentance before God. More specifically, natural theology obscures the desperate human needs for (i) the cognitive grace of God’s call to humans and (ii) human turning, in repentance, to receive and obey that life-giving transformative call to fellowship. This obscuring arises from the focus of natural theology on merely de dicto arguments rather than on an experienced divine call de re to humans. In effect, the history of natural theology has been the history of trying to secure knowledge of God’s reality without acknowledging evidence of God’s authoritative personal call to humans.

If Christian philosophers are to take seriously kerygmatic philosophy as both an approach to and the content of philosophical work, what would kerygmatic philosophy work look like?

I offer The Elusive God as an attempt to instantiate kerygmatic philosophy with special attention to epistemological issues, including issues of skepticism. Its metaphilosophy makes a case for the central role of God’s personal redemptive call in Christian philosophy. Given its argument for kerygmatic philosophy, people are well-advised to look carefully for a divine call in their lives. In particular, they should be attentive to experiences that convey a divine call to fellowship with God. Philosophy can and should help with this life-giving project. It can make such contributions as (a) an elucidating phenomenology of a divine call to humans, (b) a clarification of the human conditions for noticing and receiving a divine call, and (c) an account of how evidence of a divine call can be conclusive and thus resistant to skeptical challenges. It is, however, very rare to find such contributions in the philosophy of religion. In neglecting the potential divine call to humans, philosophy of religion has neglected the vital cognitive role of the Good News that God has reached out to confront humans directly in their distressed and dying condition, for the sake of divine–human fellowship. Kerygmatic philosophy can revitalize and redirect philosophy in ways that make it vital and urgent for human life and relationships. This kind of provision is long overdue in philosophy, which has become a fractured discipline without a unifying guide. See chapter 4 of The Elusive God for some details of kerygmatic philosophy and its contrasts with some other philosophical approaches.

Who are some thinkers that have influenced your reflection and development of kerygmatic philosophy and its significance?

My perspective on philosophy and epistemology is based on various New Testament writers, particularly Paul and John. I read the Gospel of John as an inherently epistemological gospel, offering the basics of an epistemology of human knowledge of God. I read some sections of Paul’s letters as similarly epistemological, for instance, 1 Cor. 1-2, Rom. 5, 8. It’s noteworthy that the New Testament writers show no need of arguments of natural theology. They do, however, make important cognitive use of the human experience of God’s call, and they acknowledge the importance of the human will in apprehending evidence of divine reality (see, e.g., Jn. 7:17; 1 Jn. 4:8). For some Pauline remarks on God’s call, see, for instance, 1 Cor. 1:9; cf. 1 Cor. 1:2, 26, 7:17–24, Rom. 1:6–7, Eph. 1:18-19. For 20th-century efforts to preserve the central role of God’s call in philosophy and theology, see Emil Brunner, The Divine Imperative, and the works of two evangelical Quaker Christians, Rufus Jones and Thomas R. Kelly (especially the latter’s Testament of Devotion).

If you were to communicate and relate pastorally to Christians that are laboring in philosophical work, how would you encourage them about their life and vocation, their priorities and aspirations, their relationship to both the church, to the academy and to their communities?

I would note that God tries to meet us in our daily lives even when we are unaware of God’s presence. Usually we are looking for the wrong kind of thing. God does not favor the circus settings of the contemporary revivalists or the rarified arguments of academic philosophers. Matt. 25:31-46 tells us where we should expect to find God’s presence. The cognitive problem is squarely with us humans, not with God or with the evidence characteristic of God. We tend to want the wrong kind of evidence, the kind we can use take self-credit or otherwise to puff up ourselves. God offers the kind of evidence that promotes unselfish love and fellowship. So, we need eyes to see the crucial evidence, and we need to ask God for the needed clear vision. Perhaps prayer, then, is central to epistemology done right. Philosophers do well to redirect their attention, and their lives, to that neglected but vital area. The need for transformation is not easy, but it is, in the end, the only road to life without end.

Labels: interview, kerygmatic philosophy, paul k. moser, philosophy of religion

Here is the second part of our interview with Owen Anderson about his two recent books, The Clarity of God's Existence and Reason and Worldviews (University Press of America, 2008)

Both of your books elucidate the concept of “clarity” and the “ethics of belief.” Can you please unpack what you mean by these concepts, how and why they are related, and what is their significance not just for your books but to understanding God’s existence and the purpose of knowledge and arguments for God’s existence.

In general, the ethics of belief asks if I, as a human, am responsible to believe anything? The idea of clarity arises from considering this question from the opposite side: if I am responsible to believe something then it must be clear. Or it could be said that there must be clarity at the basic level if anything is clear at any other level. For instance, there is a clear distinction between a and non-a, and between being and non-being, and between eternal and non-eternal. What I am asking is whether it is clear what is eternal? Is it possible that all is eternal (without beginning)? Or is it clear that only God is eternal? If it is not clear what is eternal then humans cannot be held responsible for knowing what is eternal. Yet Christianity says that humans are held responsible for ignorance about God—specifically his eternal power and divine nature. The implication is that Christianity must show that it is clear that God exists so that there is no excuse for unbelief. This requires showing that any attempt to maintain belief that something besides God is eternal leads to a blurring of clear distinctions.

The traditional arguments for God’s existence, relying on Platonism and Aristotelianism, have set out to prove that there is a highest being, a first cause, or a designer/moral governor. It was thought that this was enough since the Bible supplies the rest. The problem is that the Bible begins by assuming that God the Creator exists (In the beginning God created . . . ). The Bible is redemptive revelation about the need for atonement because humans have not known God as they should have. That is where my research picks up: what should humans have known about God such that the failure to do so is culpable and results in eternal damnation or redemption through the atoning death of the Son of God? Such significant consequences require that there be no possible excuse for this culpable ignorance.

Can it be shown that it is clear that God exists in this way? It is standard to argue that this kind of clarity is an immediate intuition or religious experience. And so Paul in Romans 1:20 is interpreted as speaking of a “deep down” knowledge everyone has even if they deny it. I do not believe this is what Paul is speaking about. This is not what is meant by clarity precisely because it provides an excuse and does not account for alternative beliefs about what is eternal. One requirement for saying someone knows “God exists” is that they believe “God exists” is true. Obviously, many deny that they believe this. They deny that they belief this and exchange belief in God for an alternative claim about what is eternal. To say that it is clear that God exists is to say that these alternatives are inexcusable. This requires the work of inferences not simply an appeal to what is immediately apprehended. Both sides in a debate can claim that they immediately perceive their conclusion to be true based on some experience, intuition, or common sense claim. To show inexcusability one must go further than merely asserting an immediate experience and show that the alternative involves a contradiction about what is eternal. I believe this is how Paul proceeds in Romans 1, that humans exchanged belief in God for belief in something else, and these alternative beliefs are inexcusable because they claim that something is eternal which is not (for instance, some aspect of the material world).

What is so important about the inexcusability of unbelief is that it is presupposed by Christianity’s claims about the need for redemption through the death of the Son of God. If there is not a clear general revelation to all humans then ignorance cannot be culpable. To say this is satisfied by asserting that everyone has an intuition about God or the moral law is insufficient because i) it is not clear that this true, ii) it begs the question since any religion can make this same assertion about their own beliefs, iii) knowledge requires not just an intuition but being able respond to defeaters—defeaters which have continued to build over the ages.

My book is not about giving an argument to show that God exists, it is one step prior to that. It is about why it is necessary to show the clarity of God’s existence or abandon claims about the need for redemption from unbelief. I believe this is one of the most significant issues of the day and my hope is that this book will encourage others to further study what it means to say that it is clear that God exists.

For the last thirty-years or so, how would you characterize the “success” of philosophy of religion work concerning arguments for the existence of God?

I’m not sure how “success” is monitored. For instance, a well known atheist recently came to believe in something besides the material world. He characterized this as similar to Aristotle’s view of the unmoved mover. Many Christians heralded this as proof that there are successful arguments. But is Aristotelian dualism really closer to theism than is materialism? Doesn’t Christianity maintain that they are both equally inexcusable? Aristotle believed that the material universe has existed from eternity, and that the unmoved mover is not aware of humanity but is forever in perfect self-contemplation. Is this anything like the God of theism? I don’t see how this is a success for theistic arguments, although I do think it highlights my conclusions about why theistic proofs are failing. The historical proofs do not distinguish between the unmoved mover of Aristotle and God the Creator. Indeed, Aquinas said we cannot know from general revelation if the material world was created—translation: we cannot know from general revelation if God the Creator exists.

I would say that success should be measured in terms of what has been shown to be clear to reason. Because the theistic arguments are not aiming at this, but are satisfied with arguing for the plausibility of an unmoved mover, a first cause, a designer, a moral governor, or similar conclusions which fall short of God the Creator, they are not even aiming at showing what is clear about God. And yet we are told not that it is clear that there is a first cause, but that God’s eternal power and divine nature are clear so that there is not excuse for believing the alternative. Showing that would be success indeed!

In light of the thesis in your two books, how might arguments for the existence of God be strengthened?

My concern about proofs for the existence of God is threefold. First, they are viewed as nice but not necessary; second, plausibility is thought to be sufficient; third, they do not identify the real challenge. By way of contrast, I believe that it is necessary for the central claims of Christianity that there be no excuse for unbelief. This means that all alternative views of the metaphysical absolute—what is eternal, claims about the material world existing from eternity, about God and the world being co-eternal, about the world as an illusion in the mind of eternal consciousness, must be addressed. Currently, the theistic proofs limit themselves by overextending from premise to conclusion (premises that don’t actually arrive at the theistic concept of God) or by simply showing that the material world had a beginning and then not addressing the many other worldviews that agree with this but are not theistic.

The focus on plausibility is indicative of the focus on trying to convince others. We want others to believe and so we work on persuading them. This turns philosophy into a branch of marketing. What I find plausible says a great deal about me but nothing about what is true. In other words, what persuades tells us more about the person being persuaded then it does the quality of the claim. By way of contrast, what if the focus was shifted to knowing rather than convincing? Rather than starting by saying “God exists and I’m going to prove it,” what if we start by asking “what can be known, is anything clear at the basic level?”

Since convincing the other is the goal, and this can be achieved apart from rational argumentation and knowledge, the challenge to reason is not seen and is allowed to pass. It is even conceded that there is no certainty but only plausibility. But this challenge has massive implications for humanity: if reason cannot be used to show what is clear about the metaphysical absolute, then any other claim which presupposes knowledge about the metaphysical absolute is also lost. If we cannot know what is real, then we cannot know what is good; if we cannot know what is good then we cannot claim that humans should obey or should be redeemed—needless to say this has significant implications on our lives.

Instead, what if the focus is on what is clear such that there is no excuse for not knowing it? Whether or not a person is convinced is another matter that involves issues about the extent to which they are seeking to know. If nothing is clear at the most basic level, then nothing is clear at any other level that assumes the basic level. Humans cannot be responsible for what is not clear. Therefore, if Christians maintain that humans are responsible then they must show that there is something clear at the basic level, at the level of the metaphysical absolute, or God. This would bring into focus why the challenge to reason is so important: if humans cannot know from reason that God exists, then less basic issues are not clear either and so there can be no responsibility for unbelief—the entire Christian message of the need for redemption through the death of the Son of God hinges on this.

What do you envision to be the future prospects for philosophy of religion work in the North America academy. Please offer your sense of where the field is going, might go, or could go in light of your knowledge and experience.

I have recently read that there is a renaissance in Christian philosophy, and that what is going on can be numbered among the Great Awakenings that frequently occur in American history. I suspect these claims are true. There is new interest in the Philosophy of Religion. However, I’m not sure that these claims are made with the whole picture in mind. I have heard these claims cited with excitement because they are thought to indicate a revival in thoughtful Christianity. Certain schools are mentioned where this is occurring, such as Talbot, Notre Dame, and Yale. I think there certainly is a growth in numbers and an interest in young Christians to move through those schools to their PH.D and to teach.

However, I also see a different picture. I teach at a school where there is also an increase of interest in the Philosophy of Religion and in Religious Studies. And yet this is not limited to young Christians. Instead, this is an interest from students who are asking questions about the world. Events are happening that necessarily raise questions about the role of religion and the ability to work through religious strife. These students see that the answers that have been given, answers that rely on fideism or appeals to tradition or one’s own culture, are insufficient. There is a desire for more—both personally and in order to solve problems facing the world. I think this can be understood as a desire for what is foundational—in contrast to the shifting sands of relativism that noticeably produce global disunity, there is a desire to find that which is not going to change and which can serve as a lasting foundation on which to build for the future. This is the “whole picture” I mentioned a moment ago—we are at a point in world history where conflicts are global and require attention. Differences have been allowed to persist because secondary disagreements have been the focus while basic differences are not noticed or even known.

This could foretell negative implications. In the past, when there have been “Great Awakenings” or revivals, that have failed to adequately solve basic problems facing humanity, they have left “burned over districts” in their path that in turn lead to greater turning away. When hope for certainty is stirred up but certainty is not provided this dashes hope and results in a counter-reaction. Therefore, the popularity of Christian philosophy now could turn into an anger and turning away from it later if it fails to provide a lasting foundation on which to build and on which to solve the problems facing the world.

Nevertheless, I do think there is hope. The challenges that have been raised both culturally and globally are challenges that must be dealt with in the field of philosophy. They are challenges about how we can know (fideism and assertion are not enough—that one is warranted does not settle anything since this is taken away through defeaters and it is our responsibility as rational beings to seek out possible defeaters in leading the examined life); they are challenges about what is real (maintaining that everyone believes in God deep down is asserting what must be proven since any worldview can say this same thing about their metaphysical absolute); and they are challenges about what is good (an emphasis on being saved to go to heaven where the good is achieved does not address alternative views of soteriology and does not explain how the good is accessible in this life). These are philosophical problems that engage the world we live in today. Different views of the good life that rest on different views of the metaphysical absolute are behind global conflicts. I am hopeful that these questions can be answered. I am hopeful because I believe that these questions must be answered if life is to have meaning, and that as my students wrestle with them and find that there are answers this makes a difference in their lives.

I believe there are philosophers out there who are doing this kind of work. A recent book that has had impact on me is Surrendra Gangadean’s Philosophical Foundation: A Critical Analysis of Basic Beliefs. I have known Surrendra for a number of years and I have seen how he has worked on these problems in the field of philosophy.

So I have hope, but am also wary about repeating patterns that have been seen in American history. We must do more than offer an otherworldly vision of the good that is achieved through what is essentially fideism. We must show that these core questions can be answered, that there are clear answers, and that humans are responsible to live the examined life and know the answers to these kinds of questions.

Labels: interview, owen anderson, philosophy of religion, reason and worldviews, the clarity of god's existence

We interviewed Owen Anderson about his two recent books: Reason and Worldviews (University Press of America, 2008) and The Clarity of God's Existence (Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2008). Owen is Assistant Professor of Philosophy of Religion at Arizona State University West.

How did you get into philosophy?

I personally came to be interested in philosophy when I realized that the way I came to hold my worldview was analogous to how others (friends of mine in school) came to hold alternative worldviews. I had no proof, justification, or warrant that they could not also appeal to in order to arrive at a contrary conclusion. My parents/grandparents told me this is true, my religious book tells me this is true, my inner feelings/experiences tell me this is true, the best people I know of tell me this is true, it makes sense to me, etc. I call this “fideism” because we are asked to believe something on which hinges our entire existence but only offered proof that either begs the question or can be used to support alternative beliefs.

This problem built up and I came to a point where I did not want to believe in this way. In the midst of this I discovered the Great Books series in my school’s library. I began reading Aquinas and Freud (I don’t remember why I picked these). At the same time, my dad took me to a debate between William Lane Craig and an atheist, and shortly after that I took my first philosophy class. These events combined so that I became convinced that the kind of fideism I defined above was completely incompatible with the Christian religion, and yet also that the Christian philosophers I studied were often relying on just that kind of fideism. They would give evidences for Christianity, or argue that Christianity is plausible, but these same methods could be used to support alternative conclusions and they generally begged the question. I wanted more.

The consequence was that I pursued studies in philosophy in order to examine questions about how we know, what is real, and what is good. I did not want to beg the question by saying “the Christian view of these is correct and I’m going to prove it.” Instead, I asked myself “are there clear answers to these basic questions, and if so are humans responsible for knowing these answers?” The implication of my studies was that if there are clear answers, and humans have not known them, then humans are guilty for this ignorance. This raises questions about the need for redemption and how that is achieved.

I noticed on your blog that Craig Hazen reviewed the movie Religulous, and said that he came away from it thinking about how important it is for Christians to get away from the idea of faith as fideism. I am encouraged by this. I am hoping that the change will be not simply to saying “we have some arguments in our favor,” but to studying what is necessary to make the claim “there is no excuse for not knowing what is eternal (the eternal power and divine nature).”


What is it like to be a Christian scholar at ASU?

ASU has been a very encouraging place to work in the areas of Philosophy of Religion and Religious Studies. As a secular institution, it provides a context in which critical analysis of basic beliefs can occur. I’m especially interested in working on the intersection between disciplines such as Philosophy, Religious Studies, and History, and ASU is moving in the direction of being a leader in interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary work. I’m especially excited about this kind of research because in the past I have encountered boundaries where research gets shut down—claims such as “analytic philosophers don’t study that,” or “when we study religion we don’t do philosophical analysis of beliefs.” What I want to study is what can be known from general revelation, what humans are responsible for knowing from general revelation, and ASU has provided a context in which to do that.

How would you characterize your projects in The Clarity of God’s Existence and your Reason and Worldviews?

Reason and Worldviews is a second edition of my first book Benjamin B. Warfield and Right Reason. This is an interdisciplinary book that draws from history, philosophy, and religious studies. The Clarity of God’s Existence also draws from these disciplines although its main goal is philosophical analysis of challenges to the ethics of belief in God. These books are aimed at a college audience or interested general reader.

Why did you write these books? How did they come about?

These books developed out of my studies at secular university. I am interested in how challenges to belief in God have mounted since the Enlightenment. In Reason and Worldviews I study how Common Sense Philosophy was used at Princeton, and its heritage in thinkers like Cornelius Van Til and Alvin Plantinga. In The Clarity of God’s Existence I study why it is necessary for Christianity to show that it is clear that God exists, and how challenges from David Hume and Immanuel Kant continue to be unanswered. A recent edited volume that claimed to respond to Hume began by stating that there cannot be a conclusive argument showing God’s existence, there is only plausibility. In other words, “it is not clear that God exists so that there is an excuse for unbelief, but here are some arguments that have persuaded us.” Rather than being a response to Hume, I think this has conceded to Hume his skeptical claims about the power of reason. I hope that my books will bring to the forefront the need to show the clarity of God’s existence if the claim that unbelief is inexcusable is to be taken seriously.

Please briefly summarize your discussion in Reason and Worldviews

Reason and Worldviews developed out of the questions: how has Christian apologetics developed in American history? What have been the best examples of arguments for belief? Why have these failed to show that there is no excuse for unbelief? What hindrances remain in showing this? As I studied the tradition of Common Sense Philosophy and how it uniquely developed at Princeton, the puzzle began to be solved. If the best relied on appeals to common sense, is it any wonder that this has been set aside for naturalism? I also went on to study Van Til and Plantinga to discern their contribution and whether they helped overcome the problems facing appeals to common sense. I hope this book will contribute by bringing into focus the development of thought about knowing God and what more needs to be done.

Please briefly summarize your discussion in The Clarity of God’s Existence.

In The Clarity of God’s Existence I study why it is important for Christianity to show that there is no excuse for unbelief. I examine how there has been a failure to understand this need, and how challenges have built up from thinkers like David Hume and Immanuel Kant. It has come to a point that many in society believe that there is no excuse for belief rather than for unbelief. I study how this shift occurred, and how contemporary Christian philosophy does not generally understand this challenge. I then give some suggestions on how this can be addressed, although in this book I do not offer a full account of how to show the clarity of God’s existence. Instead, the bulk of the text is spent on tracing the history of challenges since the Enlightenment and showing why clarity is necessary.

Stay tuned for part two ...

Labels: interview, owen anderson, philosophy of religion, reasons and worldviews, the clarity of god's existence

We interviewed Mike Austin, an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Eastern Kentucky University, about his recent book, Conceptions of Parenthood. The book is part of Ashgate's "Studies in Applied Ethics" series.

What do you try to accomplish in Conceptions of Parenthood?

In the book, I argue for a pluralistic understanding of the basis of parental rights and obligations. A conception of parenthood, as I define it, is an account of the grounds for the special rights and obligations of parents. The book is unique insofar as it is the only existing work that comprehensively analyzes the different views put forth by philosophers, defends a pluralistic understanding of the foundations of parenthood, and incorporates this pluralism into a stewardship conception, or meta-conception, of parenthood. I then consider implications of the stewardship view for political, social, and personal issues related to family ethics, such as the religious upbringing of children and proposals for requiring parenting licenses.

What got you interested in this important subject?

I was looking to write on something in applied ethics, and was considering topics related to bioethics when I was pointed to some of the philosophical literature on parenthood. I wanted to work on something that was both philosophically substantive but highly relevant to daily life, and the parent-child relationship fit the bill. Plus, as a parent with 3 daughters, it was of course highly relevant to my own life!

Who are some important thinkers in this discussion?

Brenda Almond's recent book, The Fragmenting Family (Oxford University Press), is a very important work which includes a defense of a more traditional view of marriage and family. David Archard has written two important books--Children, Family, and State (Ashgate) and Children: Rights and Childhood (Routledge)--as well as several journal articles. Mary Shanley's Making Babies, Making Families (Beacon Press) also addresses many important issues.


Briefly outline what you take to be the the main claims and objections to the different conceptions of parenting?

In the book, I reject "proprietarian views" which seek to ground parental rights in ways similar to property rights, insofar as the child is the product of the parent's labor or self. My primary objection is that it is immoral to conceive of humans as property. I also reject "biological conceptions" because there are counterexamples to both the necessity and the sufficiency of a genetic or gestational tie to the child for the acquisition of parental rights and obligations. This does not mean that biological ties are unimportant, but rather that they are unable to generate parenthood on their own. When they appear to do so, I argue that it is the causal element that is morally relevant. I reject "best interests" accounts because they fail to adequately take into account the relevant interests of parents and the state. I defend consent and custodial relationship conceptions of parenthood, with certain qualifications. One of the most significant aspects of the book is my argument in favor of a causal conception of parenthood, which includes the claim that if you cause a child to come to exist in the relevant manner, you incur special obligations to the child. This is controversial in contemporary moral philosophy because most ethicists want to defend the view that giving consent to taking on special obligations is a requirement for incurring such obligations. This is a view I believe to be false, and in the process of defending the causal conception I explain why. I ultimately defend a stewardship conception of parenthood. That is, once one becomes a parent through consent, causation, or a custodial relationship, one should act as a steward who holds the child and the child's life in trust for the child in the present, for the adult the child will become, and on behalf of the community as well.

You reject an "absolutist" and "quasi-absolutist" view of parental rights. Please state what these views are and briefly state your reason for this rejection.

Absolutists hold that parents have absolute control over their children's lives, even to the point of killing them. Hobbes, Jean Bodin, and Robert Filmer are representative of such a view. The "quasi-absolutist," as I define them, stops short of claiming that parents have the power of life or death over children, but believes that parents should always have the final say in other matters pertaining to their children. They should be able to determine the religion of their children, their form of education and moral outlook, as well as what medical care they may receive. The view I defend is that there are particular cases in which parents should not have final say, and the state should be able to intervene (e.g. serious medical issues). I also think that parents do not have the right to determine the religion of their children, though they do have the right to seek to influence their children in favor of their religion in a wide variety of ways.

What are the relevant factors pertaining to the legal and moral obligations of parents?

The foundation of the rights and obligations of parents as I describe it in the book are certain fundamental interests of parents and children, including physical and psychological well-being, intimate relationships, and the freedom to pursue that which brings meaning and satisfaction to life. I think that the state should have clear guidelines as to when intervention is justified, limited to the undermining of fundamental interests of children by parents, though the practical outworkings of this are difficult to implement in a just manner.

How do you think philosophical discussions about ethics, parenthood, and the family should proceed?

I think that we need to examine and criticize the assumptions made about human nature and social life in the more radical proposals, such as "children's liberationism," which states that children should have the same legal rights as adults. My view is that discussions of family ethics must be subsumed under a more general understanding of the relationship between human nature, ethics, and human fulfillment. While I am critical of views in family ethics that focus solely on the interests of children, it seems to me that many who advocate large changes in our understanding of the family or who want to abolish it fail to sufficiently consider the interests and welfare of children as well as the society they will create and inhabit in the future. Personal freedom and autonomy are important, but they are not the sole value to be accounted for in this area of inquiry. Finally, in a different but related project that I'm working on dealing with family ethics that is more explicitly Christian, I try to employ some insights related to the Trinity to family life, and consider what implications this aspect of God's nature might have related to family life for those with Christian commitments.

Labels: interview, mike austin, parenthood

We interviewed Robert Velarde about his book, Conversations with C.S. Lewis: Imaginative Discussions About Life, Christianity and God (IVP, 2008). Robert is a Christian philosopher and apologist who used to be an atheist.

What motivated you to write Conversations with C.S. Lewis?

One of my academic specialties is C.S. Lewis. As a result, I've studied his life and works in-depth. My motivation for writing Conversations with C.S. Lewis (CCL) began as a fun side project when I had the idea to write a book featuring Lewis as one of the main characters of a story. The motivation is to reach a broader audience with an engaging presentation of the life and thought of C.S. Lewis.

How would you characterize the genre of your book?

CCL is tough to pin down to a typical genre. InterVarsity Press has it listed as "Christian Theology" and "Apologetics", though that doesn't quite capture the extent of what I cover. While working on the manuscript, I described CCL as a mixture of A Christmas Carol by Dickens and The Dialogues of Plato. Whether I pulled this off or not is debatable, but Lewis scholar Peter Kreeft, who endorsed my book, likened it to a mixture of A Christmas Carol, The Great Divorce, and It's a Wonderful Life, so maybe there's something to that.

At the most fundamental level, I'd characterize the genre as creative fiction with an emphasis on biographical apologetics. This is because I cover key aspects of the life of Lewis, as well as communicate his essential apologetic approach, but do this through a story. The two main characters are C.S. Lewis and a contemporary skeptic named Tom. They are on a journey through the life of Lewis, as well as being on a figurative spiritual journey for truth.

Who are the sorts of readers that you think would appreciate this book?

I would like to delight three kinds of readers. First, the Christian who may not know a lot about C.S. Lewis beyond maybe having read Mere Christianity or the Chronicles of Narnia, and not having a background in apologetics.

Second, CCL is appealing to open-minded skeptics--those who are really looking for truth in this world, but haven't found it or are doubtful about the claims of Christianity as a viable worldview. I think CCL offers a great opportunity for a Christian and open-minded skeptic to read and discuss the ideas presented together or even as part of a book discussion group.

Third, those already familiar with C.S. Lewis or even advanced in their knowledge of Lewis and his writings will enjoy CCL as an entertaining journey through the life and thought of Lewis. I've made a number of allusions to many books and ideas set forth by Lewis, so committed fans of Lewis will enjoy spotting these connections. Beyond that, it's just enjoyable to have Lewis "come to life" and interact with a contemporary skeptic through a fictional narrative. I did my best to have Lewis come across as true to his ideas, as well as making the skeptic a believable character and not a pushover.

Please briefly state what you attempt to accomplish in your book and why you think it is important to your readers?

I'd hope readers would come away with a better understanding of how Lewis defended Christianity in light of competing beliefs, particularly skepticism and atheism. The book will not only provide readers with an introduction to Lewis's life and thought, but it is also a sort of primer on defending Christianity, as it addresses the problem of evil, the existence of God, morality, the claims of Christ, grief, immortality, heaven, hell, and more.

I'd also like readers to see in Lewis an example of defending Christianity with gentleness and respect, as we're told to do in 1 Peter 3:15. In an age of incivility on the part of some atheists, and sometimes on the part of Christians as well, CCL offers a friendly dialogue between a Christian and a skeptic, demonstrating that we can still disagree but remain civil or even be good friends.

How does CCL contribute to the other books that you have written on Lewis?

My other books about Lewis include The Heart of Narnia (NavPress, 2008) and Inside The Screwtape Letters (Baker, forthcoming). The Narnia book focuses almost exclusively on the ethics of the Narnia series, exploring and assessing various vices and virtues represented in the series, as well as Lewis's ideas on ethics as represented in his other writings. Similarly, my Screwtape book, which is a reader's guide and commentary, also spends a lot of time on ethics, though it does touch upon other areas of philosophy.

Conversations with C.S. Lewis, however, is broader in its coverage of apologetics and philosophy as they relate to Lewis. It covers not only ethics, but also metaphysics and epistemology. The fact that this is done via creative fiction also means that it's meant to entertain as well as edify and educate. As such, it is my goal to appeal to a broader audience and communicate the Christian worldview in a manner that is appealing.

What are the benefits of your approach when seeking to understand Lewis, his ideas and their significance for our lives?

In an era of literally hundreds of books about C.S. Lewis ranging from his life, thought, fiction, and just about everything else he was involved in, why do we need another book about him? Just about every book about Lewis is non-fiction, presenting facts and information almost as textbooks would.

Unfortunately, not everyone wants to read a textbook or a non-fiction title. But everyone loves a good story. That's why people enjoy going to the movies or reading the latest bestselling novel. It's about the story and drawing readers into an engaging world. And that's exactly what I do in CCL. I give readers an entertaining story that also offers thought-provoking discussions on timeless philosophical questions such as the existence of God, evil and suffering, and the meaning of morality.

Readers will get to journey with Lewis, listening in as he converses not only with a skeptic, but with real-life individuals such as J.R.R. Tolkien and Lewis's wife Joy Davidman, visiting places such as Lewis's rooms at Oxford, the pub where Lewis and his friends--the Inklings--met to discuss their various projects, the trenches of World War I where Lewis fought, his imaginary world of Narnia, and more. But the topics they discuss along the way are timeless and relevant to anyone.

How would you assess evangelical apologetic efforts?

I think we have access to some of the best apologists and apologetic material around. But I still run into Christians regularly who have no idea what apologetics is or why we should be engaged in it. There is still, in my assessment, a conscious or subconscious anti-intellectualism in the church in Western culture. As such, apologists need to continue to spread the word regarding the role and value of defending the faith.

As to the strengths of evangelical apologetic efforts, I'd say it is in the fact that there remains a core of committed Christian individuals willing to engage culture intelligently, yet wisely. We're producing some great materials in the area of apologetics and holding some amazing conferences and debates.

But there are weaknesses. One of those weaknesses is the constraints that most apologists remain bound to by choice. That is, the kinds of resources being produced, with few exceptions, are largely the same sort of thing we've come to expect from the Christian apologetics movement. We're producing non-fiction books that in many cases continue to appeal to the same kinds of readers.

But by using creative fiction to communicate Christian truth, as Christ did with his parables, we can reach a much broader audience interested in story. There is a danger here, too, in that we need to be careful that when creative fiction and apologetics meet, we need to remain faithful to God's truth and avoid falling into theological error.

In one sense, creative fiction and apologetics or theology is not new. Milton's Paradise Lost or Dante's Divine Comedy, for instance, are in one sense works of creative Christian fiction. More recently, Lewis's space trilogy, especially That Hideous Strength, communicated apologetic elements largely based on his non-fiction work The Abolition of Man.

Don't get me wrong, though. We certainly will continue to need non-fiction works and textbooks on apologetics. They are desperately needed in the academic arena, as well as at a popular level. Some people read only non-fiction, while others read only fiction or a mixture of both. But we should not neglect the broad audience eager to read creative fiction that is winsome, entertaining, and edifying, but true to God's Word.

How might CCL contribute to the strengths of our apologetic activities and help us to address our weaknesses.

Conversations with C.S. Lewis will reach a broader audience with the message of apologetics and a reasonable faith because it is written as an engaging story. Its strength is in its unique presentation and delivery.

If it helps Christians know more about what they believe and why they believe, that would be great. If it moves an open-minded skeptic closer to a decision for Christ that ultimately sees that person come to Christ, then it has made an eternal contribution and one that I would rejoice in. If it spurs other apologists and Christian thinkers to reevaluate their approach in order to present their message in a more creative way, then I think together we'll reach a lot more people more effectively.

Labels: apologetics, books, c.s. lewis, fiction, interview, robert velarde

We did an interview with J.P. Moreland, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Biola University, about his just released Consciousness and the Existence of God (Routledge, 2008). Moreland has written similar items on this subject-matter in Philosophia Christi 7:2 (Winter 2005) and 1:1 (Summer 1999).

What do you attempt to do in Consciousness and the Existence of God?

The book's central claim is that the existence of finite, irreducible consciousness (or its regular, lawlike correlation with physical states) provides strong evidence for the existence of God. I call this the Argument from Consciousness (AC). I defend AC and rebut its extant rivals.

Chapters three through five rebut naturalist rivals to AC: John Searle and contingent correlation, Timothy O'Connor and emergent necessitation, Colin McGinn and mysterian "naturalism." Chapters six and seven rebut two additional rivals: David Skrbina and panpsychism, Philip Clayton and pluralistic emergentist monism. Given AC and the failure of its rivals, non-theists should prefer strict physicalism to emergent property dualism. In chapter eight, I argue that, contrary to what many claim, science provides virtually no evidence at all for strict physicalism. Since most physicalists claim that science is the main justification for the view, it is important to ask why strict physicalism is so popular. In chapter nine, I argue that the fear of God - "the cosmic authority problem" - is the main reason for physicalism's popularity. I conclude that it is the relationship between dualism (substance or property) and theism, especially as formulated in AC, that accounts for physicalism's hegemony.

How would you characterize this monograph's contribution? Is this philosophy of mind or philosophy of religion work or both?

To date, there has been no book length treatment of this topic. Swinburne, Oppy, and others have short treatments of this argument. Further, the vast majority of treatments of irreducible property dualism and its implications take place within a prior commitment to naturalism. My book combines philosophy of mind and philosophy of religion into a book-length treatment of the problem from a theistic perspective. In that regard, it is uniqe in the literature.

What sort of discussion would you like to see sparked as a result of your book?

I want to challenge naturalists to opt for strict physicalism as a result of taking the naturalist turn because I believe that it is the most reasonable alternative for them by far and it is obviously false. I also want to challenge the naturalist employment of emergent properties as a way of harmonizing the irreducible features of various entities with a naturalist worldview. Emergent properties are the things that need to be solved, and calling them "emergent" names but does not solve anything, or so I argue.

Labels: consciousness, interview, jp moreland, philosophy of mind, philosophy of religion

We interviewed Craig J. Hazen, Editor of Philosophia Christi, about his new book Five Sacred Crossings: A Novel Approach to a Reasonable Faith (Harvest House, 2008). If you are in the Southern California area, Biola University is sponsoring a "Five Sacred Crossings" event on May 8th at 7:30 pm. Register here.

How would you characterize Five Sacred Crossings?

That's pretty straight forward. Five Sacred Crossings is a novel, pure and simple. The best way to capture the genre is to compare it to Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code. The Da Vinci Code is a fast-paced, page turning mystery novel that packed into its center is some teaching about the origins of Christianity. Unfortunately, Dan Brown bought an ugly package of historical gossip and unfounded nonsense as the "suppressed truth" he was hoping to reveal to the world. But what better way to communicate such things than for a couple of years to have every other person on a given airliner reading about it! Dan Brown had the wrong message, but the right vehicle to disseminate it.

What I attempted to do was similar except that I packed into the core of the mystery novel key elements of the Christian worldview that make Christianity attractive and grounded in knowledge.

A funny side point is that the knowledgeable folks at Harvest House decided to position Five Sacred Crossings as a book of apologetics and not as a novel because the Christian fiction genre is so over saturated right now. They wanted my new book not to be lost in that category. Hence, they helped come up with a subtitle "A Novel Approach to Reasonable Faith." So I don't know where you will find Five Sacred Crossings in the bookstore - in the apologetics/religion section, or in the fiction section.

Without giving too much away, can you say what the book is about?

The book is about a few weeks in the life of a college professor and brilliant natural linguist named Michael Jernigan who takes a college class through some teachings called "the five crossings" that he learned about in the Cambodian mountains as a young soldier in the Vietnam War. Through these teachings, and raucous discussion among a group of very diverse students, the class learns how the wisest of people approach life's biggest questions. The book is punctuated by an intense story about an Indonesian terror cell in the college town. I certainly won't tell you how it ends, but I've been stunned by the fact that about a dozen grown men (not to mention the scores of women) have contacted me to tell me they couldn't put it down and were in tears when they finished it.

Why did you write it?

It seems to me that Christian philosophers, apologetics, and theologians in our generation have done some extraordinary work in re-establishing the intellectual credibility and the integrity of the Christian worldview in a secular and pluralistic age. What we haven't done, though, is find new ways to communicate these great truths to the masses who are so confused on issues of religious truth and the meaning of life. I thought I would try my hand at writing something that would appeal to people I know who would never read an apologetics textbook or a philosophy article in an attempt to engage them with clear thinking on the issues that matter most.

Who is your intended readership? And can you tell us about some of the reaction to the book?

I had certain folks in mind when I was putting the story together. Think about the millions of people who watch Oprah every day - they are open to spiritual and religious ideas, but want to connect with them first on an emotional level. They are open to thinking about the big issues if they are presented in a relevant and engaging way.

Forget about my intended readership for a moment, though. The book has been out long enough so that we know who is reading it - and it is really remarkable. Everyone you can imagine. Octogenarians, non-Christians, teenagers, women, men, people who haven't read a novel in decades, Christians, people in the highest ranks of the federal government, major TV stars, pastors, atheist college professors, a woman from Liechtenstein, a stuntman from Brazil, an Israeli soldier, a missionary in Cambodia, and on it goes.

As an evangelical Christian, it is very exciting to receive feedback from non-Christians who are reading it and caught up in the story and the ideas presented. I've heard dozens of accounts from unbelievers who read the story and then contacted me or other Christian people they know. The book really throws them for a loop. They resonate with all five of the "crossings" and find the main character very attractive—but at the same time they know that these are Christian ideas being presented. It's as if they needed to hear the big issues of the Gospel in a compelling new way. I intentionally wrote this book to break down stereotypes of Christianity and provide a fresh look at eternal truths. As one life-time agnostic told me after reading it, "we've got to talk about this - if this is how you look at the world it is far more rational and attractive than I have assumed."

Why should philosophers and apologists read fiction?

Christian philosophers and apologists need to read fiction (and poetry, and listen to music, and at least occasionally watch films and TV) in order to be culturally relevant. Jesus led his revolution primarily by telling unforgettable stories that stuck with people who heard him. Humans are wired for hearing and telling stories. The great ideas that are so compelling and persuasive to high-level Christian thinkers need to become part of the mindset for people in all societal strata. Therefore we need new channels of communication to make these ideas relevant to everyone. This is a creative project of the highest order. Although philosophers and apologists may not be the ones writing the novels, screenplays, and operas that ultimately move the culture, we need to be familiar with these modes of communication and discourse if we want to see our ideas last beyond the life cycle of our latest book from a university press.

Are there fiction writers that you admire or use as your model?

No, I can't say I used anyone as a model. Although I would recommend that anyone wanting to try their hand at what I call "didactic Christian fiction" should, for two reasons, read widely among very popular novelists whose works fill the racks at popular bookstores and airports. First, so you can see what level of discourse and style the general population finds engaging (after all, these are the people who you are seeking to influence with this kind of writing project). Second, it will encourage you because I think for the most part your reaction will be: "Oh my goodness, I can do much better than that." You might be wrong, but it will help overcome your insecurities about shifting gears to fiction writing.

Can you tell us what it was like to write Five Sacred Crossings?

The thing I enjoyed the most was discovering myself where the story was going next. I did not have a detailed master plan before writing, so every day was a little surprise with regard to the unfolding of the narrative. I am still surprised by my own ending. Re-reading it was an experience that I certainly have never had when writing academic books and essays. I picked it up started to read somewhere in the middle and couldn't put it down. I wrote the darn thing yet got caught up in the story myself! It was far more exciting and emotional than I remember when first writing it out.

What would you like to see happen with this book?

Of course, I would like to see it recommended by Oprah so it gets the widest possible reading! Okay, so maybe that's not going to happen, but it's a good dream. My book probably won't get that kind of exposure, but I hope some other compelling, thoughtful, stereotype-breaking Christian literature does. I think this is going to be most likely if those of us in the community of Christian philosophy and apologetics interact with the Christian creative community more intentionally and intensely.

From where you observe, as the Director of a cutting-edge Graduate Program in Christian Apologetics at Biola University, can you say how we - as American Evangelicals - are doing in our apologetic efforts?

How are we doing with apologetics? Not bad. There is one advantage when secular culture encroaches more and more on the Church's turf - the Church seems to awaken to some of the important things she has neglected like the apostolic command in 1 Peter 3:15 to "be prepared always to give an answer." By any measure the interest in clear-thinking Christianity has been on the increase. This may just be a regional phenomenon, but huge crowds come out to Biola to hear lectures and debates now that would have only attracted a handful twenty years ago. We have a long way to go, but I think significant progress has been obvious and measurable.

Our greatest weakness with regard to apologetics is that by-and-large the average Christian and pastor still thinks that knowledge and faith are non-overlapping realms of human endeavor and experience. Our greatest strength with regard to apologetics is that so many leaders and teachers in the movement model that fact and that it is not just about giving answers and winning arguments, but rather it is about living a full-orbed life in Christ.

How might Five Sacred Crossings cultivate the strengths of our apologetic efforts?

I think Five Sacred Crossings is centered on this key strength I just mentioned. The book uses arguments and persuasion, but the key characters model grace, kindness, courage, love, and sacrifice to make the arguments real and weighty. I see my colleagues in apologetics and philosophy at Biola doing this every day and it is more inspiring than just about anything you can encounter. These are men and women living the great answers to life's questions, not just speaking them.

Labels: apologetics, books, craig hazen, fiction, interview

We interviewed Chad Meister, Vice President of the Evangelical Philosophical Society, about his recently released Philosophy of Religion Reader (Routledge, 2007).

Chad, you are a seasoned observer and contributor to philosophy of religion work. Give us a sense for how this field in philosophy has blossomed over the last 50 years or so.

The field of philosophy of religion has exploded in recent years. In some ways this is a surprising phenomenon, for in the mid-twentieth century, with the rise of logical positivism, discussions of religious matters were basically relegated to Bible and religion departments. With the demise of positivism, and the work of such first-rate philosophers as Alvin Plantinga and Richard Swinburne, philosophy of religion was resurrected. There is now widespread interest in the philosophical reflection on religious issues, and this is evident in the growing number of articles, monographs, companions, journals, and anthologies dedicated to the field. It is perhaps right now one of the "hottest" areas of philosophy.

As you know there are different philosophy of religion anthologies available today. What makes your selections unique? What sort of contribution are you trying to achieve with this anthology?

In the past, most philosophy of religion anthologies focused exclusively on Western theistic issues such as arguments for and against God's existence, religious language, morality, the nature of God, and so forth. While much work in the field is still Western and theistic in nature (and these are indeed yet productive and fertile times for engaging in such issues), religious parochialism is unwarranted, and the discussion is now beginning to swing in broader directions. There are rich traditions of philosophical thought in non-Western and non-theistic religions, and as the world community has globalized in myriad ways in recent decades, such interaction, engagement, and expansion should be reflected in philosophical and religious publications as well. So besides traditional Western issues (including such recent ones as intelligent design and open theism), I have also included in my reader non-theistic perspectives of ultimate reality and their responses to evil, religious experience, and death and the afterlife. I have also included some of the recent trends which are often ignored in anthologies such as feminism in philosophy of religion and religion and the environment. In addition, I wanted this work to be a useful reader and guide for students, so I included a significant number of pedagogical tools (as I note below). I don't think any reader/anthology on the market has as many student aids.

I'm finishing up a textbook that is designed to be used along with this reader, and it is scheduled to be published yet this year. Many of the central issues included in the reader (both Eastern and Western) are also addressed in this textbook. Another good introductory textbook that would work well in tandem with this reader is Reason and Religious Belief by Michael Peterson, William Hasker, Bruce Reichenbach, and David Basinger (Oxford University Press, 2003, 2008).

What was it like to produce this anthology? Can you briefly walk us through why you wanted to do this anthology? Were there guidelines/principles that you followed to help decide what to include vs. what to exclude from this volume?

I was invited by the publisher to craft the reader and the corresponding textbook. I strongly suggested that they be more global than most of the readers and texts in print since this more accurately reflects current trends and research interests in the field. The publisher agreed and allowed me to move in this direction. In terms of the entries, I wanted to include classic and contemporary pieces - both Eastern and Western - that have (or I believe will) stand the test of time as major works in philosophy of religion.

Producing this volume was a lot more work than I anticipated. Not only did I read through all 63 essays several times before submitting them to the publisher (all 700 pages of them), I also wrote section introductions, introductions and reflection questions for each essay, and annotated further readings for every essay. I also wrote a glossary of technical terms and compiled an extensive, three-column index. Just thinking about that project makes me tired!

Anthologies are a wonderful occasion to consider where a discussion has gone and where it might go. Are there areas of philosophy of religion that remain underdeveloped for one reason or another? Where might some fruitful research yet occur in light of the trajectory of the field?

As I mentioned above, most of the philosophy of religion readers and anthologies published in the past few decades have focused almost exclusively on a handful of issues. These are no doubt fundamental and timeless topics. However, the field is now much broader than this, and there is much work to be done in engaging with Eastern thought, continental and feminist studies, religious diversity and comparative religion. Furthermore, studies in philosophical theology (which is often taken to be an area within philosophy of religion) is beginning to blossom, and I believe the next several years will reflect much new and exciting work in these areas.

Can you identify any emerging philosophy of religion leaders who are doing some important work today?

There are a number of scholars who are emerging leaders in the different areas of philosophy of religion. I'll mention just a few who come to mind: Michael Rea (philosophical theology), Robin Collins (fine-tuning argument for God), Paul Griffiths (religious diversity), Sarah Coakley and Pamela Sue Anderson (feminist philosophy of religion), Paul Copan (ethics and the moral argument for God), Daniel Howard-Snyder and Paul Draper (problem of evil), Paul Moser (divine hiddenness), Jerome Gellman (religious experience and mysticism), and Charles Taliaferro (coherence of theism, among others).

You do work in philosophy of religion and Christian apologetics. These two areas are interrelated. What might professional philosophers of religion learn from apologetics ministries? Conversely, what might apologetics ministries learn from professionals in philosophy of religion?

Apologetics ministries are typically focused on questions and concerns which are immediately relevant to the culture. For example, many such ministries have been responding recently to the works of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel Dennett, as these new atheists are having a significant influence on the culture. Tackling some of the philosophical and moral challenges raised by the new atheists would certainly be a worthy endeavor for professional philosophers of religion. Thankfully, some have. Bill Craig and I, for example, have brought together about a dozen philosophers (as well as a few theologians and biblical scholars) to take on these new atheist challenges in a forthcoming book we are co-editing.

Apologetics ministries are also addressing some important questions that have not been on the forefront of philosophy of religion studies in recent years. For example, religious rites comes to mind. With the liturgical renewal currently occurring in many contexts, such as in the emergent church movement, it would behoove philosophers of religion to reflect on such questions as What is a religious rite? Why have religious rites been neglected in recent philosophy of religion? How important are such rites in the practice of religion? Charles Taliaferro has begun to tackle these questions, but much more philosophical work needs to be done here.

Apologetics ministries can learn much from philosophers as well. For example, the rigorous philosophical work that's been done on a few key apologetics issues has been quite impressive in recent years. As a case in point, consider the remarkable works of Alvin Plantinga and Eleonore Stump on the problem of evil. Many apologists do not realize that now even most atheist philosophers agree that the logical problem of evil has been forcefully rebutted - so much so that leading atheist philosophers no longer focus on it but have moved on to the evidential problem instead. Reading journals like Philosophia Christi would also benefit apologists as many apologetics-related issues are regularly addressed in the journal by leading philosophers of religion.

Chad Meister is the Director of the Philosophy Program and Associate Professor of Philosophy at Bethel College. More information about Chad's speaking and writing can be found at www.bethelcollege.edu

Labels: books, chad meister, interview, philosophy of religion

We interviewed Paul Copan, President of the Evangelical Philosophical Society, about his forthcoming article in our Summer 2008 issue of Philosophia Christi (10:1). Paul is also the Pledger Family Chair of Philosophy and Ethics Palm Beach Atlantic University (West Palm Beach, FL)

His Philosophia Christi article is titled, "Is Yahweh a Moral Monster? The New Atheists and Old Testament Ethics."

Who are the "new atheists" and what makes them new?

The new atheists include Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens - the "Four Horsemen," they've been called. Perhaps because of the fading Judeo-Christian cultural consensus or worldview in our culture, they have been emboldened to take on a new stridency and, in some cases, even anger and hostility. God is "not great" (Hitchens) and a "monster" (Dawkins). (Dan Dennett strikes me as more even-handed. I've met him and have enjoyed cordial conversation with him, and we've contributed to a forthcoming book with Fortress Press, which I mention later.)

One feature many critics acknowledge about the new atheists is that their case against God tends to be fairly flimsy and not very tightly argued at all. In his book I Don't Believe in Atheists (New York: Free Press, 2008), Chris Hedges writes of Harris's book The End of Faith: "His facile attack on a form of religious belief we all hate, his childish simplicity and ignorance of world affairs, as well as his demonization of Muslims, made the book tedious, at its best, and often idiotic and racist" (2). Though Hedges shares the new atheists' disgust - as do I! - with "the chauvinism, intolerance, anti-intellectualism and self-righteousness of religious fundamentalists" (3), he believes that their confidence in reason and science is profoundly misplaced and their optimism about human nature and utopian visions is equally misguided.

Hedges says that we should carefully distinguish between religious values or certain religious figures and religious institutions: "Religion, real religion, involved fighting for justice, standing up for the voiceless and the weak, reaching out in acts of kindness and compassion to the stranger and the outcast, living a life of simplicity, cultivating empathy and defying the powerful" (5-6). I think that if Christians took "real religion" (or, as James 1 says, "true religion") seriously, many of the points made by the new atheists would be greatly weakened.

Why should thoughtful religious persons pay attention to what the new atheists are claiming?

These new atheists are getting quite a bit of attention with their claims that God and science conflict or that Christianity (or "religion") is bad for people. They are rhetorically effective and happen to be churning out best-sellers, influencing the minds of many. Yes, the new atheists have plenty of critics. For instance, atheist philosopher of science Michael Ruse writes that Dawkins's argumentation in the God Delusion "makes me embarrassed to be an atheist." Many critics of the new atheists see them as strident. But this hasn't prevented a lot of people from taking the new atheists very seriously.

How should theists listen to these claims?

I think that theist and atheist alike should listen fairly and even-handedly to them. The reader should sort out legitimate arguments from the anger, the rhetoric, the anecdotal and ad hominem argumentation, the exaggerated claims (such as the God-science conflict), the red herrings and caricatures (e.g., all Christians are young-earth creationists), and so forth.

Christians of course, need to be well-grounded in their faith, being able to graciously respond to some very legitimate questions the new atheists raise. (Indeed, many Christians themselves have grappled with questions that about the Old Testament's harshness and, in places, inferior moral standards that are permitted because of human hard-heartedness). Christians must also be clear-minded and discriminating about what in Scripture is normative and what is not, about what is enduring and what is temporary, of what springs from human sin and what is rooted in the character of God.

Christians also should carefully guard what is articulated in the Declaration of Independence - that all humans "have been endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights." We are experiencing a crisis in the West as to what our moral foundations are. If God does not exist who has made human beings and thus nature's mindless, valueless processes have produced us as merely advanced animals, then such a crisis of moral foundations will only deepen.

What appears to be the main claim(s) of the new atheists when it concerns Old Testament ethics?

The main claims of the new atheists are these: (1) They see the "Old Testament God" as mean-spirited, cruel, capricious (e.g., God's command to Abraham to kill his son, God's permitting slavery or commanding the killing of the Canaanites). (2) They consider moral standards and practices in the Old Testament to be repugnant and strange (e.g., Lot's daughters having sex with their drunken father out of a desire to have children). (3) These new atheists make the faulty inference that to be thoroughly biblical means embracing the death penalty for adulterers or idolaters and, further that the Mosaic Law is the presumed enduring moral and legal standard for all nations. (4) The new atheists point out that we can know moral standards without needing to appeal to Scripture.

Why would the new atheists be interested in "Old Testament ethics" and the "Old Testament God"?

If the character of "the God of the Bible" can be rightly questioned, then one has all the more reason for rooting the standard of objective goodness in something natural rather than supernatural. Attacking Old Testament ethics appears to be the best way of making quick work of dismissing God altogether.

What sort of reasons and evidences are presented by the new atheists when they offer support for their main claim(s)?

The new atheists appeal to science, history, and reason/philosophy to make their case for a decent world without God. They seem unaware of how the Christian faith helped give birth to modern science and early on shaped the philosophical assumptions that scientists - theistic or atheistic - utilize today. The new atheists downplay the remarkable cultural/moral influence the Christian faith has played in the West, and they overplay horrors committed in the name of Christ while underplaying the destructive role of atheistic ideologies in the twentieth century. Finally, the new atheists are remarkably out of touch with, say, sophisticated theistic arguments for God's existence. Their arguments against God tend to be very superficial (bordering on village atheist argumentation that is often ad hominem or hasty generalization) and often naively tout science as the arbiter of truth, following in the barren footsteps of their positivistic forebears.

Your Philosophia Christi article claims to offer a "nuanced response to the new atheists." Please briefly explain your response and why you take it to be significant to this discussion.

The new atheists are skillful rhetoricians. They commonly use one-liners, distorted descriptions, and emotional zingers to make their points. They generally do not give an accurate, well-rounded picture of Old Testament ethical questions, but they score a lot of rhetorical points with many readers. I'm trying to respond to this strategy with more nuanced description and reasoning to put such criticisms in proper perspective. While I am not here responding in kind rhetorically, I want to give adequate, well-researched material that others can utilize in response to the new atheists' witty, but weak, argumentation on Old Testament ethics. I hope to write a fuller treatment on Old Testament ethics that is more popularly accessible.

In the "Final Thoughts" section of your article, you offer three final claims against the new atheists. Please summarize them and say how they compliment your "nuanced response."

First, the new atheists reject the very theistic foundations that have made modern science possible, that have shaped the direction of the West's moral progress, and that stand as the basis of human rights and dignity. Theism affirms humans have value because they have been made in the image of God. A supremely valuable being - not valueless, mindless processes - has endowed us earthly creatures with dignity and value. To get rid of God is to get rid of the kinds of values that these new atheists would like to affirm.

Second, the new atheists assume that theocracy or a nation ruled directly by God is the ideal when in actual fact a theocracy is simply one of several developments in Israel's history. Indeed, the Old Testament itself looks beyond ethnic Israel as the true people of God to an interethnic, international body of believers who are the true Israel in Christ.

Third, as I noted earlier, the new atheists assume that the Old Testament proclaims and enduring moral standard for all nations for all time. However, we can rightly agree with Daniel Dennett, who thanks "heaven" that the numbers of those who believe this are dwindling!

So we can side with the new atheists on these last two points but without jettisoning God's moral authority over humankind.

Can you recommend any other Christian responses or resources about the new atheists?

One can gain a lot from looking at Alister McGrath, The Dawkins Delusion?; John Haught, God and the New Atheism; John Lennox, God's Undertaker: Has Science Buried God?; David Marshall, The Truth Behind the New Atheism; Francis Collins, The Language of God (to some degree); Dinesh D'Souza has debated new atheists such as Christopher Hitchens and Daniel Dennett (available at Youtube). See also Alister McGrath's interaction with Daniel Dennett in The Future of Atheism: Alister McGrath and Daniel Dennett in Dialogue, ed. Robert Stewart (Fortress Press, forthcoming) - a book to which I have contributed on the topic of "Naturalism, Theism, and the Foundations of Morality"; and, as previously mentioned, Chris Hedges, I Don't Believe in Atheists (though responding to the new atheists from a distinct vantage point).

If Christians are to effectively respond to new atheist challenges, can you offer recommendations and encouragement in this area?

I have tried to take seriously these sorts of challenges. My popular-level books True for You, But Not for Me, That's Just Your Interpretation, How Do You Know You're Not Wrong? and When God Goes to Starbucks have attempted to address many Old Testament ethical topics (and lots more!) in user-friendly, accessible ways. I'm working on another book that tackles Old Testament ethical issues specifically, again at a popular level.

In general, I would say that Christians need to be well-informed about their faith and its robust intellectual strength as well as common challenges to their faith. This will require turning off the TV and doing research and deeper thinking. We must also help equip the next generation of Christians to be more thoughtful about their faith rather than presuming upon the fading Judeo-Christian heritage that many Christians in our culture seem to cling to. Although the church throughout the world is growing dramatically, the church in North America is facing great challenges from within and without.

Along these lines, Christians need to see that much of the criticism directed toward the church stems from deeper problems such as hypocrisy, judgmentalism, anti-intellectualism, and a host of other concerns. I would recommend David Kinnaman's helpful corrective, the book unChristian (Baker) - an excellent wake-up call to the church.

More of Paul Copan can be found at his website: www.paulcopan.com. He blogs at Parchment & Pen and recently posted "The Moral Indignation of Richard Dawkins."

Labels: 10:1, evil, interview, new atheists, paul copan, philosophia christi