A Reply to a Critic
By David Baggett
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Recently we at the Worldview Bulletin did a series on so-called existential reasons to believe, using Clifford Williams’ book Existential Reasons for Belief in God: A Defense of Desires and Emotions for Faith as something of the impetus for our reflections. We divided the labor by Paul Copan discussing the universal experience of human guilt and the inability to escape from it apart from a gracious God who forgives. Paul Gould examined the human need for a deep and expansive life, which, he argued, is best explained by being made for God and to thrive in his creation. And I explored the human desire for immortality and how the Christian worldview meets this need in a marvelous way. What Williams’ book makes clear is that, though such arguments can supplement and buttress evidential considerations, they are not sufficient in themselves to make the full case for faith. So from the start, using Williams’ approach as our springboard, there was an implicit limitation to the arguments on offer. They were but a part of a much bigger picture.
A reader named Wayne offered some critiques of what we wrote, which we appreciate, and I thought I’d take a moment to offer a few replies, for what they’re worth. His first concern was to stress that the human desire for immortality is not universal. “Many people including myself have no problem with ceasing to exist when we die, after all we will be unaware.”
There are two questions here: the empirical matter of how widespread such a desire is, and what if anything the widespread desire for immortality might suggest about reality. Surely the desire for immortality is not universal; there are some if not many who would claim indifference on the matter, or even a preference for mortality. I have recently seen in more than one piece of fiction the idea recur that what gives life meaning is the fact that it comes to an end, for example. But of course “some” or “many” is consistent with a relatively small percentage of people. I don’t claim any particular expertise on the matter, but a desire for immortality is quite common even if it is not universal. Not much rides on its being universal for present purposes. Mercy on the oppressed isn’t universal, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t proper. Something can be a ubiquitous human desire and still admit of some exceptions.
Setting the question of universality aside, is there any existential or evidential significance to the widespread phenomenon of the desire for immortality among human beings? Again, the suggestion is not that such a desire entails or provides a knock-down argument for its truth, but rather that it’s a significant existential feature of the human condition, and a desire that, as it happens, the Christian worldview impeccably satisfies. If there are other reasons to take the truth of Christianity seriously (which we believe there are), this additional consideration may well add something to the overall case. So considerations of immortality may well have apologetic significance. In this life, for example, there is often a conspicuous disconnect between virtue and happiness; the scales of justice often go unbalanced; nothing like perfect joy is achieved; nothing like total holiness is found. For most people, this life leaves us wanting more. Christianity teaches that this desire is no Pollyannaish pipe dream, but a veridical hope that won’t disappoint.
Secondly, Wayne asserted that the “nearly universal experience of human guilt” is a phenomenon mostly associated with Christianity, because that is the way Christians have been taught. This is an eminently interesting critique, and it reminds me of something that the great Roman Catholic philosopher and famed student of Wittgenstein, Cambridge philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe, once wrote in a piece called “Modern Moral Philosophy.” There she argued the concepts of moral obligations, and the sort of distinctive guilt we feel for violating them, as these developed in the Western world, were a function of our theological heritage. Such binding duties and resultant guilt made sense in a world in which God and authoritative divine commands is taken seriously, but not otherwise.
Baylor’s Steve Evans challenges Anscombe on this score, though, by pointing to what we can learn about guilt and our moral duties by a careful examination of the four features that stand out to Evans as comprising moral obligations: (1) A judgment about a moral obligation is a kind of verdict on my actions. (2) A moral obligation brings reflection to closure. (3) A moral obligation involves accountability or responsibility. (4) A moral obligation involves holds for persons simply as persons. Interestingly enough, contra Anscombe, Evans then shows that all four of these features can be found in the ideas of Socrates, who obviously predated Christianity. This is significant in showing that the notion of duties as verdict-like and rife with authority, whose violations rightly lead to ascriptions of moral guilt, are no mere function of special revelation, but arguably a part of general revelation. Thus they potentially can stand in an evidential relation to an instance of special revelation like the deliverances of Christianity.
Most all of us seem to have a deep existential moral need to be forgiven for wrongdoing. We have feelings of guilt, which most of us, at least on occasion, tend to connect with an objective condition of guilt. If such guilt is not merely a false appearance, it raises the question of how to deal with it. Christianity offers a good explanation of why we both feel and are guilty and how we can be forgiven. Might this point in the direction of God generally or even Christianity particularly? Perhaps so. Evans invokes the notion of a “natural sign” here, fulfilling the Pascalian constraints of being both universally accessible and easily resistible.
The phenomenon of guilt is quite interesting, and I suspect that it would do us all good to be carefully attentive to its salient features. It's easy to be in too big a rush and miss its significance. In his classic Gifford lectures Faith of a Moralist, A. E. Taylor, for example, identified such features of guilt as these: (1) it involves a sense of condemnation for ourselves and our actions, so it's different from mere discontent with our surroundings; (2) its indelibility, or power of asserting itself with unabated poignancy; (3) the regular attendance of a demand for punishment; (4) a particularly polluting quality; and 5) the sense that it's the very foundation of our moral personality that's somehow poisoned.
A visceral recognition of a deep sense of guilt is ubiquitous. This raises the question of how best to make sense of such a phenomenon, and how best to deal with it—really to explain it and not just explain it away. A Christian solution involves forgiveness from the One before whom we are guilty, not to mention deliverance from shame that can cripple us, sinful patterns that can hold us in bondage, and hope for ultimate deliverance from moral brokenness altogether. Again, this is quick and cursory, but the basic idea is that such good answers to these practically universal, deep existential moral needs makes Christianity more likely than it would otherwise be—even if taken by themselves they don't make Christianity or theism more likely true than not. In this sense, as I see it, it is in the spirit of something like Book 1 of Mere Christianity and chapters 5 and 10 of John Henry Newman's Grammar of Assent.
Third, is God needed for a deep and expansive life? Wayne is skeptical. He says that when he thinks about the history of the world and tragedies that befall so many innocent people, and God’s apparent unconcern, he’s concluded that “I should just get on with life, accepting that God may be watching, and accepting that if we actively love one another, we are satisfying the stated requirement of loving God.” Loving one another, he thinks, makes sense, but loving God is a much more mysterious notion.
I think Wayne is certainly right that there is a great deal of mystery associated with God. We see through a glass darkly, and his ways are above our own. But something I might resist is the implicit tension or contrast between loving God and loving our neighbor. From the earliest pages of the Old Testament the commands to love God and neighbor are inextricably tied together. I might suggest that the way to learn to love God is to start by trying to love our neighbors as we ought.
This reminds me of a passage I recently read by Tony Campolo in Why I Left, Why I Stayed. He was relating a conversation he had had with some students at the University of Pennsylvania years ago, in which he had argued that we can meet the resurrected Jesus, who can enable us to overcome the feeling of alienation that plagues our existence. He was asked how, and this is what he said:
“Jesus can be found exactly where He said,” I told them. “He told us that He did not dwell in temples and churches that we build in His honor. Instead, He encouraged us to look for Him in one another. He said, ‘You are my temples; I dwell in you.’ What I am trying to say is that the Jesus who incarnated God two thousand years ago is mystically present and waiting to be discovered in every person you and I encounter. I am claiming that every one of us is a priest who can communicate Jesus to those whom we meet, and that those whom we meet are priests who can communicate Jesus to each of us. Consider the very obvious fact that all of us are aware that there is something sacred in every other person. Something about each of them makes us believe that each is of infinite value and worth. Usually we do not bother to name this sacred presence we encounter in others, but we know it is real and that it requires respect.”
Rather than arguing that God is not mysterious, perhaps I’m rather inclined to argue, in the spirit of what Campolo just said, that loving our neighbor is a more mysterious thing than we might think. Presumably love is more than just a biological event in our brain; there’s something about it that is transcendent, bursting the confines of a material world alone.
An Oxford contemporary of C. S. Lewis, Austin Farrer, similarly spoke of the regard we should have for other persons. Thinking of our neighbors in too garden variety a way, apart from the element of transcendence we can discern within them, can’t sustain the esteem we intuitively think they deserve, he argued. The conclusion to which Farrer felt compelled is that what deserves our regard is not simply our neighbor but God in our neighbor and our neighbor in God.
As Christians we also speak of the need for God’s grace truly to love our neighbors as we ought. Our neighbors, like ourselves, aren’t always easy to love. By God’s grace we can better and better love as we ought. In all of these ways, starting by loving our neighbors is a great place to start, and we would submit that in that very process we discern inklings of something yet more ultimate.
We applaud your efforts to discover the truth, Wayne, and we are honored to strive doing so alongside of you. Thanks for the feedback.
— David Baggett is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Center for the Foundations of Ethics at Houston Baptist University. He is the author or editor of about fifteen books, most recently The Moral Argument: A History written with Jerry Walls.
Believing Philosophy
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Along with explaining how and why Christians should study philosophy, philosopher Dolores Morris also surveys key issues in Christian philosophy, including:
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