For Further Reading
3
Evidence of a Morally Perfect God
Paul K. Moser
The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.
1 JOHN 4:8
The question of whether God exists is at least as old as the human race, if not the hills. But age has not yielded broad clarity in this case. In fact, this question—although obviously of first importance—has suffered from a certain widespread bias regarding how it should be approached. This essay uncovers the bias, challenges it and offers an alternative, more defensible approach to the question. We shall see that a morally robust version of theism is cognitively more resilient than contemporary critics have supposed.
The Knowledge Question
Many sane, educated and generally trustworthy people claim not only that God exists but also that they have genuine knowledge, including justified true belief, that God exists. Because claims are typically cheap and easy, however, the claim to know that God exists will prompt the following response, usually sooner rather than later: How do they know?
This common four-word question, although irksome at times, is perfectly intelligible and even valuable, as far as it goes. It seeks an explanation of how the belief that God exists exceeds mere belief, or opinion, and achieves the status of genuine knowledge. In particular, this question typically seeks an explanation of how, if at all, the belief that God exists is grounded, justified, reasonable or evidence-based regarding affirmation of its truth.
A plausible goal behind our four-word question is, at least for many inquirers, to acquire truth in a manner that includes an adequate indication of true belief. These truth-seeking inquirers aim not only to avoid false belief and lucky guesswork, but also to minimize the risk of error in their beliefs (at least in a way befitting to the acquisition of truth). We should aim for the same, as people who seek truth but who are faced sometimes with facts and other realities at odds with our opinions. In seeking truth about God’s existence, in particular, we thus should seek truth based on evidence for God’s reality. Such evidence, if available, would indicate that it is true that God exists, or (in other words) that God is real rather than fictional.
In treating any questions about God’s existence, we do well to begin with some clarity regarding what (or whom) we are asking about: in this case, God’s existence. Are we asking about a morally indefinite but strikingly powerful creator? Many academic writers on theism, “mere theism,” deism, atheism, agnosticism and related philosophical positions inquire about the existence of such a creator, whatever the creator’s moral character may be.[1] The creator in question may turn out to be an evil tyrant or at least a morally indifferent slouch. Such inquiry, however earnest and rigorous in its search for a creator, may rest on a misleading bias regarding God’s character and would thus be significantly different from inquiry about the existence of a God who is worthy of worship, who is morally perfect, including being perfectly loving toward all persons. So let’s clarify the latter kind of inquiry.
The Title “God”
As suggested, we should approach the question about human knowledge of God’s existence by asking specifically what, or (better) whose, conceivable existence we are considering. Clearly, if the question of human knowledge of God’s existence lacks value, then we should change the subject to something worthwhile.[2] Many people, however, will contend that this question actually has unsurpassed, life-or-death importance. The difference lies in what is meant by the term God. In this case, at least, one’s meaning of a term matters significantly and thus deserves careful attention.
In keeping with a prominent traditional usage, we can fruitfully use the term God as a most exalted title rather than as a name. Part of the value of using the title thus is that it allows us to engage some central theological concerns of traditional monotheism (particularly of Judaism, Christianity and Islam) without arbitrarily dismissing atheists and agnostics by a naming fiat. For better or worse, people cannot name or postulate God into existence by refusing to imagine that God does not exist. Likewise, people cannot define or postulate God out of existence, as if a mere definition could block the actual existence of God. A God worthy of worship would not be at the linguistic mercy of people in any such way. The title God, on the proposed usage, signifies a being worthy of worship, even if such a being fails to exist and thus even if the title fails to refer to an actual thing.
Let’s say that a being is worthy of worship if and only if that being, having inherent moral perfection, merits worship as unqualified adoration, love, trust and obedience. Of course, humans can worship a morally defective powerful being, perhaps out of human fear of harmful power, but the being in question would not be worthy of worship. Worthiness of worship requires inherent (or self-contained) moral perfection, including perfect moral righteousness, and such perfection in an agent demands, in turn, a perfectly loving character, including perfect love toward one’s enemies (cf. Mt 5:38-48). An agent’s selfish failure to love would block that agent from having a morally perfect character, however powerful and knowledgeable that selfish agent is. People, to their own detriment, often worship false gods, despite the unworthiness and unreliability of those gods. The results of such misguided worship do not include lasting human satisfaction, however, whatever else they include. Indeed, such worship is typically a recipe for frustration and other trouble.
Given the exalted moral standard for worthiness of worship, we can readily exclude most claimants to the title on the ground of moral deficiency. Moral defects bar a candidate from the status of God automatically and decisively. People sometimes casually use the term God in ways contrary to worthiness of worship, but this fact does not challenge the value of the current morally demanding usage.
Indications of God
We can have an intelligible title such as God but have no ground whatever for acknowledging the reality of an actual titleholder. To avoid mere wishful thinking about God’s existence we need some indication of the reality of an agent worthy of worship. In particular, given that worthiness of worship includes perfect love, we need evidence of the actual motivational power that is perfect love in an agent. This required power includes the agent’s intention to bring about unselfishly what is good, and only what is good, for all affected persons, even those who are the agent’s enemies. Perfect love thus underwrites the amazing phenomenon called “enemy-love” and hence does not settle for love just for one’s friends or helpful associates. This accounts for its rare occurrence among humans.
Genuine, morally righteous love aims to culminate in beneficial intentional actions toward others, and thus it must be rooted in one’s intentions to love in action. Because intentions to love, when real, operate at the very heart of an agent, particularly at the heart of agent motivation, perfect unselfish love would reside ultimately in an agent’s motivational center, or “heart” (kardia, in ancient Greek). This position is assumed in the Jewish scriptures (Deut 6:4-6, for example) and in the Christian New Testament (Mk 12:29-30, for example). We humans, it is arguable, cannot create this rare power ourselves, but God as perfectly loving would seek uncoercively to introduce, proliferate and sustain this power among all humans, at their motivational centers (see 1 Jn 4:7-9, 19). Humans would thus depend on God for this unusual power, even if some humans mistakenly take credit for it themselves. Such mistaken self-credit, I suggest, is the typical root of failing to apprehend salient evidence of God’s existence.
Ideally, by divine hope, all capable agents would willingly receive divine love from God and then manifest it from the heart toward all agents, even toward their worst enemies and critics. Mere human agents, as suggested, would manifest such love in a manner dependent on God, but God would do so inherently, as a matter of inherent moral character. This consideration suggests a distinctive kind of theology: kardiatheology, as theology aimed at one’s motivational heart (including one’s will) rather than just at one’s mind or one’s emotions. Such theology accommodates Henry Sidgwick’s observation, in keeping with Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount/Plain, that “inwardness, rightness of heart or spirit, is the special and pre-eminent characteristic of Christian goodness.”[3]
Divine self-revelation or self-manifestation to humans, it is arguable, would fit with kardiatheology in aiming uncoercively to realize divine perfect love in human hearts rather than just to expand human reflection or information. A God worthy of worship would not be in the business of just expanding our databases. Divine self-revelation and its corresponding evidence would thus seek to transform humans motivationally, and not just intellectually, toward perfect love. In this respect, a God worthy of worship would have important practical interests regarding human intentions and actions, beyond merely theoretical interests regarding human judgments and beliefs. This widely neglected consideration, we shall see, underwrites a distinctive account of the evidence for God.
If divine self-revelation to humans would include a manifestation and an offering of divine perfect love, then we inquirers about God’s existence should identify, at least in general, what an actual indication of such a manifestation and an offering would look like. Perhaps the indication will be subtle, elusive and puzzling, in order (a) to avoid intimidating, coercing or indulging humans, and (b) to offer a profound existential, motivational challenge to wayward humans. God would thus have definite purposes in offering evidence of divine reality, and these purposes would guide the kind of evidence offered and the way it is to be received. We shall call this purposively available evidence of divine reality, because it would be offered in accordance with definite divine purposes for humans.
Bias in Inquiry About God
A widespread bias in human expectations of God is, as previously noted, that God would be revealed to humans as a morally indefinite creator, in a way that sets aside or postpones moral issues regarding humans relative to God. In asking about a morally indefinite creator, however, inquirers might miss out on available salient evidence of an ethically robust God—no morally indefinite creator but rather inherently morally righteous and challenging, particularly toward wayward humans. They might miss out on such evidence because they are looking for God in all the wrong places, especially in the supposedly morally indefinite places. The bias invites this largely ignored issue: are we humans in a position on our own to answer the question of whether God exists, without our being morally challenged by God, if God exists?
Perhaps the true God, being morally perfect, is in fact intentionally elusive and even obscure regarding the ethically casual issue of whether there is a morally indefinite creator. One of God’s aims with divine elusiveness would be to focus and highlight a more urgent question for humans: namely, who exactly is in charge here? Who is the proper moral authority over the universe, including over all humans? A related urgent question in need of focus may be: exactly how is God in charge over this morally troubled universe?
A morally definite, perfectly loving God could use such questions to prompt us to ask seriously: To whom are we humans, as responsible agents, ultimately morally accountable—even with regard to how we inquire about God? Will we let God be truly God (and thus morally robust) even in the area of human inquiry about God?
We harmfully jump the gun, philosophically speaking, when we pursue the question of God’s existence as if God is morally indefinite and thus not intentionally elusive toward human pursuit of a morally indefinite creator. Indeed, our jumping the gun in this manner may involve a kind of cognitive idolatry, whereby we use cognitive standards that displace God’s cognitive and moral supremacy, including God’s authority over the manner of divine self-manifestation and corresponding evidence. Such idolatry would inevitably be harmful to inquirers in its distancing them from needed suitable knowledge and evidence of the true God.[4]
Jesus may have had a challenge to cognitive idolatry in mind with this otherwise puzzling prayer of gratitude for divine hiding:
At that time Jesus said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure. All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” (Mt 11:25-27, italics added; cf. Lk 10:21-22; 1 Cor 2:4-14)
Jesus thus portrays his divine Father as hiding divine ways and means from people who are pridefully “wise and learned” in their own eyes. He suggests that God is intentionally elusive, even to the point of hiding, relative to people who oppose God’s authority and morally righteous ways. This suggestion agrees with a long-standing teaching of the prophetic tradition in the Hebrew scriptures, including Isaiah 45:15: “Truly you are a God who hides himself, O God and Savior of Israel.” If we take Jesus and the Hebrew prophetic tradition seriously, we should expect God to be morally righteous, perfectly loving and thus at times elusive toward wayward humans. God would then be anything but a morally indefinite creator.
People, however, are sometimes not ready and willing to receive God’s self-manifestation aright, with due honor and gratitude. Accordingly, God would offer needed challenges of various sorts to humans, and some divine hiding is one such challenge (cf. Rom 1:18-23).[5] In this regard, we should expect God to be a moving target, and not an object for casual or convenient human inspection or speculation. God’s morally profound character and aims would preclude God’s joining in human intellectual games that shortchange serious human moral needs. We must be wary, then, of morally neutralizing or otherwise domesticating God in our inquiry about God’s existence. Accordingly, we should steer clear of the aforementioned bias.
A perfectly loving God would have morally definite purposes toward humans, including the purpose to invite and encourage able-minded humans to enter into cooperative fellowship with God—and thereby to become loving as God is loving, even toward resolute enemies. As suggested, therefore, God would make evidence of divine reality purposively available to humans, that is, available in a way that serves God’s perfectly loving aims for humans.
These aims would include a call from God to humans to yield to and obey God as authoritative Lord, and this call would seek uncoercively to engage humans at a level of motivational depth, rather than at a superficial level. This God would thus contrast sharply with the relatively aloof creator postulated by deism or morally indefinite theism. Human inquiry about God should be prepared to follow suit, in agreement with its quarry.
Cognitive Grace
On reflection, we should expect a perfectly loving God to offer any divine self-manifestation and accompanying evidence toward humans as a matter of divine cognitive grace, rather than human merit or even humanly controllable evidence. In other words, divine self-manifestation and its corresponding evidence, if they were to come at all, would come to humans as a humanly unearned gift. Humans would not be in charge or control how or when the gracious gift is offered to them.
Being anchored in such a gracious gift, human knowledge (and evidence) of a perfectly loving God would differ importantly from the kinds of human knowledge that have humanly controllable objects, such as lab specimens, kitchen appliances or patio-furniture pieces. Even so, the divine gracious gift in question, in its invitational call to humans, could and would make uncoercive demands on humans for the sake of reconciling humans to God.
Given divine moral perfection, an obedient human response to divine demands to receive and to practice divine love would be the suitable way for a human to receive the divine gift on offer. Accordingly, we should expect the availability of some evidence of divine reality to be sensitive to the will of its intended human recipients. Inquiry about divine reality would thus move to a new level, beyond mere reflection and inference, to human obedience and disobedience. The key question will thus become: who is inquiring about the existence of God? More specifically, what kind of person is inquiring about divine reality—a person willing or unwilling to yield to a perfectly loving God?
A perfectly loving God would thus turn the tables on human inquirers by asking about their own status, particularly their own moral position, before God. Inquiry about divine reality would no longer be a casual, morally indefinite matter akin to a spectator sport. Approached aright, it would become morally loaded and humanly humbling. Inquirers about God’s existence typically overlook this important cognitive consideration about a God worthy of worship.
Giving Serious Questions Due Seriousness
We are reorienting inquiry about God’s existence by asking with due seriousness the following questions:
Philosophers and theologians have not given adequate attention to such important questions. As explanatory disciplines, philosophy and theology routinely introduce and explore what-if questions. We do well, accordingly, to extend the previous list of questions a bit in order to identify some areas in need of explanation:
In that case such knowledge would demand, at least to some extent, human volitional yielding to God as Lord. We would then have to consider an important distinction between unavailable spectator knowledge of God and available authoritative and invitational knowledge of God.
What would become of evidence of God if we set aside spectator knowledge of God as unavailable to humans? Could there still be salient evidence of God’s reality available? There definitely could be, as long as the relevant evidence would fit with God’s distinctive character and purposes. That is, the evidence in question would be purposively available to humans in keeping with God’s perfectly loving purposes for humans. Its being apprehended by humans would thus be sensitive to the attitudes, including volitional attitudes, of humans toward God’s character and purposes. It is no surprise, then, that in regard to the evidence of divine intervention through himself, Jesus speaks of the need for “eyes to see and ears to hear” (cf. Mk 4:22-23).
Many writers assume that God would have a magic cognitive bullet, whereby God guarantees that the divinely offered evidence of God’s existence is actually willingly received by humans. This is a mistake. A sincere person’s telling the truth to others does not guarantee that the intended audience actually willingly receives that truth. Intended recipients of evidence can fail to be actual willing recipients, owing to their unreceptive, resistant ways. For example, to acknowledge a humbling truth about themselves may seem too painful, and therefore they might opt not to acknowledge it. Similarly, love offered to a person clearly need not be received or valued at all by that person. Accordingly, unreceptive humans would be able to block any magic cognitive bullet on God’s part.
Whose Are We?
As inquirers about God’s existence, we should attend to various questions of the form “What if God wanted . . .” given that such questions can reliably guide and even correct human expectations about divine evidence. Our questions about the evidence for God would then be sensitive to what God would want to accomplish in offering the relevant evidence to humans. They would include, for instance, a question of this sort: if God desired to use divine self-manifestation uncoercively to challenge human selfishness and pride, including self-righteousness, and to transform humans toward unselfish, morally righteous love, then what generally would the relevant evidence of divine reality look like? Traditional philosophy of religion suffers from inadequate attention to such a question. A correct answer, however, would be invaluable to the inquiry.
A perfectly loving God would seek uncoercively to have others willingly receive and then manifest God’s perfect love at the level of their motivational center (or heart) for the sake of building God’s kingdom community. This would involve not just a theology of the mind or emotions but also the aforementioned kardiatheology. So, certain kinds of evidence expected or demanded by many humans would not fit at all with what a perfectly loving God seeks. Divine massive fireworks displays, for instance, however entertaining they may be for some humans, would not do the desired job. We should not expect God to offer such relatively superficial displays. Instead, we should expect something more profound, and more challenging too.
A perfectly loving God would desire, and uncoercively promote, that all people, both individually and collectively, willingly receive divine love and thereby worship God and live in loving fellowship with God from their heart, for their own good. The desired fellowship would include uncoerced human volitional (that is, will-based) cooperation with God, particularly cooperation with God’s advancement of unselfish love toward all people, even toward God’s enemies. To that end, God would want people to be related to God on perfectly loving terms that exclude selfishness and pride and advance unselfish love toward all agents.
Being related to God on these terms would include people in a morally transformative divine-human relationship that increasingly replaces human selfishness and pride with human reception and promotion of divine morally righteous love. These people would be individually in an I-Thou relationship and collectively in a we-Thou relationship with God. They would receive divine love, and on that basis they would adore, love, trust and obey God directly and, ideally, wholeheartedly. Evidence of divine reality, anchored in divine cognitive grace, would conform to such distinctive purposes.
The transformative relationship in question would include an initiating and sustaining divine call, via human conscience: specifically, a call away from human selfishness and pride, including self-righteousness, and toward (receiving and manifesting) divine perfect love and its morally righteous requirements. This follows from the fact that divine perfect love would be invitational. It would invite people into volitional fellowship with God and thereby with others who have similar aims. This invitational call would be directed at human conscience for the sake of existential personal depth, and it would thereby invite one to be sincerely disclosed, or revealed, before God. In particular, it would seek free disclosure of who one truly is morally, and who one morally ought to be by the exalted standard of a perfect loving God. God would thus seek a relationship of human transformation toward God’s perfect love, in divine-human volitional fellowship. Being purposively available, evidence of divine reality for humans would emerge from, and fit with, the same divine desire for human transformation in divine-human cooperation.
The divine evidence in question would itself be invitational, including a call to humans to enter into volitional fellowship with God. This evidence would also be authoritative—an authoritative call to humans from an authoritative God. The divine authority thereby indicated would include God’s being inherently worthy of human love, trust and obedience, in contrast to any kind of spectator evidence that makes no demand or call on the direction of a human will or life (such as either observational evidence from design or order in nature, or theoretical evidence concerning the need for a first cause of experienced contingent events). Let’s acknowledge, then, a distinction between authoritative-invitational evidence and spectator evidence.
Agapē
The ancient Greek term agapē refers to the divine morally righteous unselfish love that uncoercively seeks what is good for all people involved. Agapē-enhancing occasions are “agapē-enlightening” in that they bring agapē regarding God and others into human attention (at least for the willing humans involved) as worthy of being received or advanced. In contrast, agapē-resisting occasions are “agapē-dimming” in that they obscure or reduce for the relevant humans the value of agapē regarding God and others. An agapē-enhancing occasion, where a human is willingly receiving agapē from or advancing agapē toward God and other agents, is distinct from an agapē-resisting occasion, where a human is willingly neglecting agapē or opposing agapē toward God and other agents. God’s desired transformation of humans would include a change from agapē-resisting to agapē-enhancing occasions.
If God’s character is inherently a character of agapē, as some of the Hebrew prophets and New Testament writers suggest, then agapē-resisting tendencies among humans could obscure the value of God’s presence for those humans. In doing so, those tendencies could also obscure the reality of God’s presence, because in neglecting the value of divine love we could easily fail to look for it at all. How we treat agapē toward people could be equivalent to how we treat God: with acceptance, indifference or rejection. To the extent that we take credit for unselfish love toward people, we obscure its real source and the evidence for that source. We also then fail to give credit where credit is due: to God.
What we may call “agapē-transformation” would aim for cooperative divine-human fellowship and thus would include a manifestation, if temporary and incomplete, of God’s morally perfect character. This divine manifestation, in keeping with God’s perfectly loving character, would seek to offer divine love to a wider audience or to a particular audience more deeply.
The question of evidence for God’s existence should become for us humans the question of how we respond to the gift of agapē toward ourselves and others. In this connection, philosophy can only remove obstacles and clear a path for something ultimately nonphilosophical, because that “thing” is uncontrollable and more profound and transformative than any philosophy. It is irreducibly person-to-person: an I-Thou acquaintance of a person with the living God. At this sacred place, humans will be in the presence of the personal God of holy love whom Blaise Pascal met and memorialized as follows:
God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of philosophers and scholars.
Certainty, certainty, heartfelt, joy, peace.
God of Jesus Christ. God of Jesus Christ.
My God and your God.
We all now face not an abstract argument but a life-or-death question: are we sincerely attending to the divine call via conscience and experienced agapē in a way that leads us before the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Jesus, where we can become part of God’s new creation? The evidence for God can then be clarified and deepened in a way that we ourselves become part of this evidence as newly recreated children of the living God (cf. Jn 3:1-8; 2 Cor 5:14-18). The best explanation of our new lives will be that God has indeed visited us, and that is evidence enough.
For Further Reading
Farmer, H. H. The World and God. 2nd ed. London: Nisbet, 1936.
———. God and Men. New York: Abingdon, 1947.
Moser, Paul K. The Elusive God: Reorienting Religious Epistemology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
———. The Evidence for God. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Oman, John. Grace and Personality. 4th ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1931.
———. Concerning the Ministry. London: SCM Press, 1936.