Miracles . . . . . . . . . . .
IN THE LATE 1960s, PRESIDENT JAMES MCCORD OF PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL Seminary declared that Protestant theology's death-of-God movement was ushering in a "whole new era in theology."' Nevertheless, Time's ominous front cover, which asked the question "Is God Dead?" was not really as prophetic as President McCord had thought. For only five years later Time heralded on its front cover the sudden revival of evangelical faith among Roman Catholic and Protestant young people with a psychedelic portrait of Jesus of Nazareth, labeled "The Jesus Revolution." 2 Some of these `Jesus People," as they matured in their faith, began to take seriously the philosophical and theological traditions of the Christian church and became part of the burgeoning movement in professional philosophy that has produced two important academic organization, the Evangelical Philosophical Society (EPS) and the Society of Christian Philosophers (SCP). Both groups produce first-rate academic journals, Philosophia Christi and Faith & Philosophy, which have received high praise from the wider philosophical community.
Many of these Christian philosophers offer new and improved versions of the traditional arguments for God's existence. In this portion of the book, we include five such arguments: the kalam cosmological argument (R. Douglas Geivett), an argument from design (William A. Dembski), a Thomistic cosmological argument (W. David Beck), a moral argument (Paul Copan) and an ontological argument (William Lane Craig).
Arguments 1 and 3 (chapters four and six) are cosmological arguments. They are called cosmological because defenders of these arguments make a case for God being the cause of the universe (or cosmos) from the fact of its contingent existence. That is, because the universe cannot account for its own existence, there must exist a being who exists in such a way that he does not depend on anything for his existence.
Design (or teleological) arguments are offered to support belief in God's existence by appealing to the apparent design of the universe as a whole or aspects of it. For example, some philosophers argue that because the universe seems fine-tuned for the arising of human life, and because such fine-tuning requires an agent powerful enough to design a universe, the universe was likely designed by a superior agent with attributes we typically associate with a being called God. In chapter five, Dembski offers a much more modest version of the design argument, one that does not claim to prove God's existence but rather shows that certain aspects of the natural universe that exhibit design cannot be accounted for by naturalism. According to Dembski, "Design arguments can tell us that certain patterns exhibited in nature reliably point us to a designing intelligence.... A design argument can clear away materialistic stumblingblocks to belief in God (for example, it can refute the claim that science has shown that all the patterns in nature can be explained without recourse to intelligence). Clearing away such stumbling blocks has immense apologetic value, especially in the current cultural and intellectual climate."
Chapter seven is a moral argument for God's existence, a version of which was made popular by C. S. Lewis in the first five chapters of Mere Christianity. Defenders of this type of argument maintain that the reality of moral law in the world cannot be accounted for in a naturalist universe. In this book, Paul Copan offers a version of the moral argument that is in the tradition of Lewis but engages contemporary atheistic critics such as Michael Martin.
Probably the most difficult argument to understand for God's exis tence is the ontological argument. First offered to the Christian church by the medievel philosopher Anselm of Canterbury and recently reformulated by Norman Malcolm and Alvin Plantinga, this argument maintains that once one understands what is meant by the term God, then one is driven to the conclusion that God must exist. Although it is a highly controversial argument rejected by some Christian philosophers, William Lane Craig defends a version of it in chapter eight.
I FIRST LEARNED OF THE KALAM COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT FROM NORM Geisler some twenty years ago. What struck me then was that Norm, an unrepentant Thomist, was genuinely enthusiastic about an argument that had been repudiated by St. Thomas. From the beginning, I was drawn to Norm's thoughtful approach to Christian belief and to the kalam argument that I learned at his knee. For two decades, this argument has figured prominently in my own conception of a viable program of natural theology. This chapter is written as a tribute to Norm for the generosity of spirit he has always shown me. Thank you, Norm, for turning the key that unlocked my passion to become a philosopher.
WHAT IS THE KALAM COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT?
I've structured this chapter as a series of reflections on questions pertaining to the kalam cosmological argument. The first and most obvious question must be, what is the kalam cosmological argument?
First, it is an argument for the existence of God. In the final section of this chapter, IT clarify the sense in which God is contained in the conclusion.
Second, the kalam argument is a cosmological argument for God's existence. There are various versions of the cosmological argument. Their family resemblance is determined by what they all have in common. Cosmological arguments for the existence of God conclude that God exists as the cause of the universe. Each version of cosmological argument focuses on some feature of the cosmos that implies that the cosmos was caused to exist. Some versions hold that the universe is contingent rather than necessary, so that some necessary being must exist and be the ultimate cause of the universe. The kalam argument infers the existence of God from a different fact about the universe-namely, that the universe began to exist a finite time ago.
Fourth, the basic structure of the kalam argument may be captured in the following straightforward manner:
1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.
While this is not, as it stands, an explicit argument for the existence of God, it is an argument that the beginning of the universe implies the existence of a First Cause.3 All that remains for this to qualify as an argument for the existence of God is to show that the First Cause must, if it is to be such a cause, have properties that usually are uniquely ascribed to God. At the very least, the argument suggests that the First Cause is the personal Creator of the universe, a being who decided to create and did so for reasons.
Fifth, while all versions of the kalam argument share the same basic structure, they vary in several respects. They differ, first, with respect to the support offered for each of the major steps in the argument. For example, there are at least two philosophical arguments and two scientific arguments that the universe began to exist.' Those who are convinced by all four arguments often integrate them into a single multipart argument for the premise that the universe began to exist. Different arguments have also been offered in support of the claim that "whatever begins to exist has a cause." This premise has been variously grounded in a metaphysical intuition, an induction from empirical observation, and a practical principle of rationality. Again, some proponents of the kalam argument seem to favor a plurality of defenses of this premise.
Sixth, the distinctive feature of the kalam argument, setting it apart from other cosmological arguments for the existence of God, is the central role it attributes to the claim that the universe began to exist. This gives the argument at least four advantages. First, the claim that the uni verse began to exist comports nicely with what the Bible says in Genesis 1:1, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." Second, the claim that the universe began to exist is initially more intuitively accessible than, say, the claim that the universe is contingent. Third, that the universe had a beginning is one indication that the universe is contingent. And fourth, the claim that the universe began to exist enjoys both philosophical support and corroboration from science.
DID THE UNIVERSE BEGIN TO EXIST?
The argument I have in mind has been stated by William Craig as follows:
1. The temporal series of events is a collection formed by successive addition.
2. The collection formed by successive addition cannot be an actual infinite.
3. Therefore the temporal series of events cannot be an actual infinite.'
It follows that the temporal series of events is finite and therefore has a beginning.
Perhaps a simple illustration will help. Suppose that before you, the reader, reached this page in your reading of the present book you had first to read the page before it, and that before you read that page you had to read the one before it, and so on, going all the way back to the first page. Since the book has a first page, your coming to this page requires that you first read only a finite number of pages. More pages could be added to the front of this book to lengthen the time it would take for you to get to this page.
Let us suppose that you are a better than average reader and that it takes only two minutes for you to read each page; and let us suppose that you read continuously until you get to this page. Then, if there are only ten pages to complete before this page, it will take you twenty minutes to get to this page in your reading. How long will it take if you must first read twenty pages, or fifty pages, or a hundred pages, or ten thousand pages?
I'll let you do the math. The important thing to notice is that in every case there is always only a finite amount of time it will take. When will you get to this page if you must first read 200,000 pages? In about 66,667 hours! That's a long but finite amount of time. But suppose we now add an infinity of pages to the front of this book. When will you get to this page if you must first read all of those pages? Answer: never. So if you find yourself reading this page after completing all the pages before it, you know you've read only a finite number of pages.
The same sort of thing holds for the series of events making up the total history of the universe. Take some event in the actual history of the universe, like the birth of my daughter Erin. That event can occur only if a finite number of events must occur first. If an infinite number of events must occur before her birth, then she would never he horn. So, either I have hallucinated her birth, or only a finite number of events occurred prior to her birth. If only a finite number of events occurred before her birth, then the universe has not always existed but had a beginning. Since I am not hallucinating, the universe must have had a beginning.
Of course, the possibility of hallucinating is introduced for humorous effect. The point is that no particular event whatsoever would ever occur if it had first to be preceded by the occurrence of an infinite number of events, one after the other in temporal sequence.
The most common objection to this argument is due to a confusion. Here's the objection as stated by philosopher Paul Draper:
Draper seems to think that if we ask, "How long will it take for a particular event to occur if it is preceded by a chain of infinitely many events?" the answer will simply be, "An infinite amount of time." But the question is ill-formed in the case of a supposed infinite chain of events. The more revealing (and less question-begging) question is, "When will event E occur if it is preceded by an infinite chain of events?" One might think that the answer would simply be, "After an eternity." But when is that? How can anything come after an eternity? An eternity is an always incomplete series. But on our supposition, event E occurs only when the series is completed.
WHO MADE GOD?
"Who made God?" I once asked my older daughter, Kaitlyn. She must have been about two years of age at the time. The way she said, "Dad!" in two syllables-"Da-ad!!"-told me she considered the question impertinent. We all know that if God exists, he's always existed.
Or do we? After I've sketched the kalam cosmological argument for an audience of skeptics, I'm almost always asked, "So what caused God?" It might be easy to dismiss the question as sophomoric, except that some impressive minds have pressed it pretty persistently.
Of course, there's an initially promising reply. "God does not need a cause. God is not an event. I have argued that events have causes and that the beginning of the universe must be caused because it is an event." This isn't always enough to silence the obstreperous. And here's why.
When the universe begins to exist, time itself begins. God sans creation is timeless, but begins to exist in time when he creates the universe and time itself. God's beginning to exist in time entails that God begins to exist.
So far, this doesn't sound as clever as it should. Who can't see the difference between beginning to exist and beginning to exist in time? Surely, God could begin to exist in time without beginning to exist.
But the objection is more subtle than it first appears. The kalam argument uses the locution "begins to exist" a certain way. The argument appeals to our ordinary intuitions about what it means for something to begin to exist. So, it seems committed to the usual way we think about something beginning to exist. The objection we are considering goes one step further in referencing our intuitions. It supposes either that our intuitions leave out something crucial for the kalam argument, or that we have the intuition that anything that begins to exist in time begins to exist as such. If we suppose that God begins to exist in time but does not begin to exist as such, then our ordinary intuitions about 'begins to exist" are unreliable and must be corrected. But then the original authority for the statement "everything that begins to exist has a cause" is compromised. It will no longer be enough to observe that this conviction is justified on the basis of ordinary intuition.
Notice, the problem is not that, on any construal of "begins to exist," God must begin to exist as such precisely when God begins to exist in time. It is intelligible to distinguish between beginning to exist and beginning to exist in time. But for that distinction to carry freight for the kalam argument, "begins to exist" must be glossed a certain way. Craig, the best-known sponsor of the kalam argument, has suggested the following more precise analysis of "xbegins to exist (as such)":
It may now seem that the question "What caused God?" is insincere, since the objector may very well allow that because God himself is not an event he does not have a cause. But the question only seems insincere because it is code for an objection to the way the kalam proponent supports his claim that "whatever begins to exist has a cause."
What are we to make of this concern? That depends on whether we're dealing with the moderate version of the complaint or a more virulent form of the objection, which holds that Craig's gloss on "begins to exist" is actually counterintuitive.
The moderate version of the complaint does not asseverate that Craig's gloss is opposed to our intuitions. It maintains only that the gloss is not explicitly countenanced by our intuitions. As Wes Morriston has suggested, the gloss is an amendment to our intuitions about what it means for something to begin to exist. Now if this is right, then we don't have clear intuitions about whether "begins to exist in time" entails "begins to exist as such." But this in no way compromises the intuition that "whatever begins to exist (as such) has a cause of its existence." The kalam proponent who supports the latter statement by appealing to metaphysical intuition does not need the same sort of support for the altogether different claim that something may begin to exist in time without beginning as such.
What about the stronger claim that the Craig gloss on "begins to exist" is counterintuitive? Well, if it is counterintuitive, then that would be a problem for supporting the premise `Whatever begins to exist has a cause" by suggesting that it is a metaphysical intuition. But is the gloss counterintuitive? Not by a long shot.
First, whether something that begins to exist in time must begin to exist as such is not at all part of the intuition that whatever begins to exist has a cause. Second, there is no widely shared intuition that "if x begins to exist in time, then x must begin to exist as such." Indeed, as we have noted, it seems perfectly natural to speak of something beginning to exist in time without supposing that it began to exist as such. The strong version of the objection errs in loading our intuitions about "begins to exist" with questionable baggage.
I conclude that the reasoning behind the question, "What caused God?" turns out to be specious, even if it is subtle and sincere.
MUST THE BEGINNING OF THE UNIVERSE HAVE A CAUSE?
"Whatever begins to exist has a cause" is a key premise in the kalam cosmological argument. We've just seen that the question "What caused God?" may be motivated by skepticism about the support sometimes offered for this premise. Some kalam proponents hold that justification of this premise is grounded in a "metaphysical intuition."' j That is, we know it to he true by a kind of direct rational awareness.
"Intuition" here does not refer to a special sixth sense or a gut feeling. It refers, rather, to an ordinary faculty of cognition, common to all normally functioning human persons. It is by means of this faculty that we are supposed to apprehend the so-called truths of reason, including analytic truths, such as "The same physical object cannot be both red all over and green all over at the same time," and possibly some synthetic statements, such as "Everything that begins to exist has a cause."
It's easy enough to find sophisticated thinkers who deny that we have an epistemically secure metaphysical intuition that "whatever begins to exist has a cause." Most who deny this deny that we have any synthetic a priori knowledge. They are called empiricists.
It would be worthwhile to consider the question, how does an empiricist know there are no synthetic a priori truths? The statement "there are no synthetic a priori truths" is not itself analytically true, and it's not at all clear how such a statement could be empirically confirmed. The best evidence that there are synthetic a priori truths is that we know them. And that we know them is good evidence that we have the requisite faculty for knowing them.
The empiricist may be willing to allow that for every instance-that we have so far examined-of something beginning to exist, it has a cause. But the kalam argument needs the more general claim that for every instance-without qualification-of something beginning to exist, it has a cause. Empirical observation can't get that for us. First, empirical observation does not warrant the belief that if something begins to exist, then it must have a cause. The necessity of a cause for something that begins to exist is not available for empirical observation. Second, the sample of observed instances of something beginning to exist and having a cause is too small to warrant the empirical generalization (induction) that in all likelihood everything that begins to exist has a cause.
The empiricist, however, is faced with some awkward questions. As Hume showed, it's not clear how an empiricist could justify inferring the existence of a cause for any event whatsoever, unless "cause" is reduced to "constant conjunction," in which case, reference to causes will have no explanatory power. In other words, it's hard to take the empiricist seriously.
It's also relevant that when we witness an event, our confidence that it has a cause does not depend on our ability to see or infer its cause. Quite often our confidence that an event has a cause precedes our awareness of the cause itself. (Something similar happens in reverse as well. We observe a set of conditions and expect an event of a certain sort.) Now this might be due to custom or habit. But I doubt it. Even if it is, the expectation is routinely rewarded with precisely what we expected-a particular cause.
But wait, aren't we told by physicists that there is a species of event that occurs without a cause? It's true-some physicists believe that "quantum indeterminacy" is evidence that subatomic events have no cause.
The kalam proponent is free to quibble with this by noting that physicists and philosophers of physics disagree about quantum inde- terminacy.rs But let us suppose that quantum events are indeterminate so that they are not causally necessitated by antecedent states of affairs. It does not follow that they are not causally conditioned. In fact, they are. If they were not at all causally conditioned, they wouldn't be repeatable under controlled circumstances in the physicist's laboratory.
Furthermore, the typical example of a quantum event is said to be indeterminate relative to a set of possible events, given certain specifiable conditions (though not necessarily exhaustively specifiable conditions). But such an event is not indeterminate with respect to the disjunction of all the members of the set of events made possible by conditions C. Consider a simple case where there is exactly one alternative to a particular quantum event, El, that actually occurs under conditions C. The rule would seem to be roughly as follows: if conditions C is obtained, then either event El or event E2 will occur. That one or the other quantum event will occur is determined by conditions C, even if conditions C don't determine which event will occur.
Some physicists will generalize from "garden variety" quantum events that occur within the universe to the origin of the universe itself, supposing that the big bang singularity is a quantum event that has no cause. Such a universe is said to be "inflationary."
Alan Guth has developed a highly celebrated model of how the big bang went "bang." Listen as he summarizes the potential significance of his stunning achievement:
While attempts to describe the materialization of the universe from nothing remain highly speculative, they represent an exciting enlargement of the boundaries of science. If someday this program can be completed, it would mean that the existence and history of the universe could be explained by the underlying laws of nature. That is, the laws of physics would imply the existence of the universe. We would have accomplished the spectacular goal of understanding why there is something rather than nothing-because, if this approach is right, perpetual `nothing' is impossible. If the creation of the universe can be described as a quantum process, we would be left with one deep mystery of existence: What is it that determined the laws of physics?16
Never mind that Guth ends with a question that may itself invite a theistic reply. Notice the central idea of his hypothetical model: "the creation of the universe can be described as a quantum process." If he means that we can extrapolate from particle physics to the physics of the early universe and from there to the instant of the big hang itself, then we should wonder how what he calls "nothing" could match the conditions for garden variety indeterminacy. We are far from having any empirical basis for believing that events occur in a totally conditionless void.
In the more familiar quantum context of the everyday world (I use the word , familiar advisedly), what is indeterminate is which event will occur given the specified conditions. I doubt that we know enough to know that such "indeterminacy" is ontic and not merely epistemic.17 But even if it is, this does nothing to show that there are events that are strictly causally indeterminate.
It is helpful to keep in mind that the kalam can he formulated as an inference to the best explanation. "What is the cause of the beginning of the universe?" is a perfectly natural and intelligible explanation-seeking question. As long as something identifiable can be reasonably proposed as the cause of the beginning of the universe, it will be more reasonable to infer the existence of that than to suppose that there is no cause at all. This is a principle of rationality. Reasonable belief is guided by what it makes the most sense to believe. A best explanation in terms of a cause provides better guidance about what to believe than no explanation at all. While it's true that the best explanation for some puzzling state of affairs is not always the correct explanation, the best explanation is at least the one most likely to be true, all things considered-until more is known and some other explanation commends itself as better."'
MUST THE CAUSE BE GOD?
I've just suggested that something identifiable can be reasonably proposed as the cause of the beginning of the universe. By this I mean that there is something that falls under a certain description, such that it fulfills the requirements of an adequate causal explanation for the origin of the universe. I am referring, of course, to God.
It's important to be clear about the scope of the term God as it appears in the conclusion of the kalam cosmological argument. The argument infers that there must be some personal and timeless being, powerful and intelligent enough to cause the universe to begin to exist. This fully transcendent Agent presumably acted for reasons when creating the universe. Even if that is all that can be said about the most likely cause of the beginning of the universe, it already appears to be a good candidate for the appellation God.
First, there must be more to this Agent than what meets the eye trained only on the evidence of the origin of the universe. We know from the description warranted by the kalam argument that there's much more that we don't know on the basis of this evidence only. We should not conclude that there is nothing more to the Creator than what is specifically implied by the evidence featured in the kalam argument.
Second, the above description of the Agent credited with creating the universe is compatible with the fuller description of God as expressed in classical theism. Indeed, it overlaps the tradition of classical theism in important respects. Classical theism embraces a rich and complex description of God. It should not be surprising if a plurality of evidences will be required to exhibit the strength of classical theism in all its richness and complexity.
Third, there are specific parallels between this being and the God of the Bible. Most notably, both are presented as the Creator of the uni verse. If there is one Creator of the universe, as both the kalam and the Bible suggest," then the kalam and the Bible can be harmonized only on the assumption that the kalam and the Bible refer to the same Agent.
Fourth, the Agent exposed in the kalam is "Tully transcendent" in that it stands apart from the created world as a timeless being, apparently self-subsistent, and the universe and its inhabitants depend entirely on the good will of this Agent for their own existence. This Agent is selfsubsistent in that it is timeless and uncaused. It is not "self-caused."
Fifth, as a personal being, acting from the intention to create a physical universe, this Agent is a mindful being. It can be presumed that this mindful Agent acted for a purpose in creating the universe. There is, in principle, a way to test this presumption and even to discover what that purpose may be. The Creator of the universe may have left signposts of his creative purposes in the world he created. And he may arrange for direct communication of his purposes. (See point seven below.)
Sixth, the production of a physical universe out of nothing implies unimaginable intelligence and power. It's difficult to say whether a being that is not quite omnipotent and/or not quite omniscient could do such a thing. But if such a being did create the universe and eventually claimed to be omnipotent and omniscient, I'd be reluctant to disagree with him.
Seventh, since our actual physical universe would not exist if this Agent had not created it, the whole of the physical universe is a source of evidence to be further excavated and developed, with the very good prospect of finding out more about the Creator and learning something about the Creator's intentions. In other words, the kalam sets the stage for a fuller inquiry into the nature of God and God's relationship to the world, a world especially remarkable for being inhabited by other agents. The evidence of design, of moral responsibility, of beauty, of consciousness, of the human hankering for the Transcendent, of religious experience, of patterns in history, and so forth, all acquire a compelling cumulative force pointing to a fuller composite description of the Creator of the universe."'
While I appreciate Draper's candor regarding the trouble that would confront naturalism by a successful kalam argument, and I agree that only a proper part of the biblical description of God is contained in the conclusion of the kalam, I must say that his acknowledgment of the potential force of the kalam is much too guarded and understated. Yes, the kalam, if successful, entails that naturalism is false. But it also frames the project of further exploration into the nature of the Creator in a way that is highly suggestive of even deeper parallels with the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob-not to mention Jesus.
FOR FURTHER READING
Craig, William Lane. The Kalam Cosmological Argument. London: Macmillan, 1979.
Geivett, R. Douglas. Evil and the Evidence for God. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993.
Geivett, R. Douglas, and Brendan Sweetman, eds. Contemporary Perspectives on Religious Epistemology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Wallace, Stan W., ed. Does God Exist? The Craig-Flew Debate. Aldershot, England: Ashgate Publishing, 2003.
THE DESIGN ARGUMENT BEGINS WITH FEATURES OF THE NATURAL. WORLD THAT exhibit evidence of purpose and from there attempts to establish the existence and attributes of an intelligent cause responsible for those features. Just what features signal an intelligent cause, what the nature of that intelligent cause is (for example, personal agent or teleological process) and how convincingly those features establish the existence of an intelligent cause remain subjects for debate and account for the variety of design arguments over the centuries. In this chapter I formulate the design argument in terms of information theory. To set the stage, I want first to provide a brief historical overview of design arguments.
HISTORICAL SYNOPSIS
Perhaps the best known design argument is William Paley's. According to Paley, if we find a watch in a field, the watch's adaptation of parts to telling time ensures that it is the product of an intelligence. So too, according to Paley, the marvelous adaptations of means to ends in organisms (like the human eye) ensure that organisms are the product of an intelligence. Paley published this design argument in 1802 in a book titled Natural Theology. The subtitle of that book is revealing: Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, Collected from the Appear ances of Nature. Paley's project was to examine features of the natural world ("appearances of nature") and from there draw conclusions about the existence and attributes of a designing intelligence responsible for those features (whom Paley identified with the God of Christianity).
Paley was too optimistic about how much theological mileage could be obtained from the design argument. As Immanuel Kant noted in his Critique of Pure Reason, the most the design argument can establish is "an architect of the world who is constrained by the adaptability of the material in which he works, not a creator of the world to whose idea everything is subject." Far from rejecting the design argument, Kant objected to overextending it. For Kant, the design argument legitimately establishes an "architect" (that is, an intelligent cause whose contrivances are constrained by the materials that make up the world), but it can never establish a creator who originates the very materials which the architect then fashions.
We need here to draw a clear distinction between creation and design. Creation is always about the source of being of the world. Design is about arrangements of preexisting materials that point to an intelligence. Creation and design are therefore quite different. One can have creation without design and design without creation. For instance, one can have a doctrine of creation in which God creates the world in such a way that nothing about the world points to design. Richard Dawkins has a book titled The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design. Suppose Dawkins is right about the universe revealing no evidence of design. It would not logically follow that it was not created. It is logically possible that God created a world that provides no evidence of his handiwork. By contrast, it is logically possible that the world is full of signs of intelligence but was not created. This was the ancient Stoic view, in which the world was eternal and uncreated, and yet a rational principle pervaded the world and produced marks of intelligence in it.
There's a joke that clarifies the difference between design and creation. Scientists come to God and claim they can do everything God can do. "Like what?" asks God. "Like creating human beings," say the scientists. "Show me," says God. The scientists say, "Well, we start with some dust and then-." God interrupts, "Wait a second. Get your own dust." Just as a carpenter must take preexisting wood to form a piece of furniture, so these scientists have to take preexisting dust to form a human being. But where did the dust-the raw materials-come from to make a human being? From stars? And where did stars come from? From the big bang? And where did the big bang come from? From a quantum vacuum fluctuation? And where did that quantum fluctuation come from? At some point such questions must end. Creation asks for an ultimate resting place of explanation-the source of being of the world. Design, by contrast, inquires not into the ultimate source of matter and energy but into the cause of their present arrangements, particularly those entities, large and small, that exhibit signs of intelligence.
Even Thomas Aquinas admitted the need for modesty in design reasoning. In his Summa Contra Gentiles, Aquinas wrote: "By his natural reason man is able to arrive at some knowledge of God. For seeing that natural things run their course according to a fixed order, and since there cannot be order without a cause of order, men, for the most part, perceive that there is one who orders the things that we see. But who or of what kind this cause of order may be, or whether there he but one, cannot be gathered from this general consideration." Aquinas here was not doing first philosophy or metaphysics. He was simply noting that our natural reason readily infers some sort of "orderer" or "designer" behind nature. Aquinas calls this designer God, but he was clearly speaking of this designer very loosely-the nature and even plurality of that designer could for Aquinas not be settled simply by studying nature.
Design arguments can tell us that certain patterns exhibited in nature reliably point us to a designing intelligence. But there's no inferential chain that leads from such finite design-conducing patterns in nature to the infinite, personal, transcendent Creator God of Christianity. Nevertheless, a design argument can clear away materialistic stumbling blocks to belief in God (for example, it can refute the claim that science has shown that all the patterns in nature can be explained without recourse to intelligence). Clearing away such stumbling blocks has immense apologetic value, especially in the current cultural and intellectual climate. A particularly effective way to cash out the design argument is with the concept of information. Such an information-theoretic design argument is the subject of the remainder of this chapter.
INFORMATION AND MATTER
To develop this argument, let's start by elucidating the distinction between information and matter. Imagine you are an interior decorator. Bill Gates hires you to decorate his mansion. You decide to put a big marble bust of the composer Ludwig van Beethoven in the music room. You therefore contract with Laszlo, a promising if eccentric young sculptor, to make the bust and deliver it to the mansion. The next clay he drops by the mansion and tells you he's finished. Naturally you're skeptical, but he rolls an imposing crate into the music room and with some fanfare removes the "sculpture." You find yourself staring at a big marble cube. Shocked, you ask the sculptor where the bust of Beethoven is. "The bust is there all right," he says, handing you his bill. "You just have to scoot aside the excess marble." When you protest, he grows red-faced and yells, "I defy you to find a single, solitary molecule of Beethoven's bust that isn't in that block of marble! Now pay what you owe me!"
The quarrel escalates, each of you growing increasingly red-faced until who should walk into the room but Bill Gates himself. He calms the two of you and gets first your side of the story and then the sculptor's. "Tell you what," Gates says after he's heard the sculptor out. "I'm so impressed with your sculpture, Laszlo, that instead of paying you what we agreed I'll trade you an advance copy of the next generation of Microsoft Windows." Here Gates produces an unmarked compact disc. "This is it, and you're free to sell the operating system on the black market to whomever you wish as often as you wish." "Are you crazy?" you shout, forgetting yourself. "That's worth billions!" "Deal!" Laszlo shouts, snatches the disc from Gates's hand and rushes to a nearby computer. After some pointing and clicking, the sculptor turns on Mr. Gates. "The disc is blank! Give me the operating system!" "Oh, but friend," Gates says, resting an avuncular hand on the young sculptor's shoulder. "I defy you to find a single, solitary molecule of the operating system that isn't on that disc. You just have to scoot aside the excess polycarbonate and there it is."
This story illustrates the difference between information and matter. Matter is raw stuff that can take any number of shapes. Information is what gives shape to matter, fixing one shape to the exclusion of others. Both the words matter and information derive from Latin. Matter (from the Latin noun materia) initially referred to the raw timber used in building houses. Later it came to mean any raw stuff or material with the potential to assume different shapes, forms or arrangements. Information (from the Latin verb it formare) literally means to give form or shape to something. Unlike passive or inert matter, which needs to be acted upon, information is active. Information acts on matter to give it its form, shape, arrangement or structure. (Note that I'm using these terms loosely and interchangeably. Aristotle would distinguish form, in the sense of substantial form or essence, from mere shape or arrangement. Its enough for my purposes here, however, that shape or arrangement be correlated with form in Aristotle's sense. Thus for marble to express the form [sensu Aristotle] of Beethoven's likeness, it must be shaped or arranged in very particular ways.)
As an interior decorator, you were paying the sculptor to "inform" a slab of marble-to take an unformed slab of marble and give it the form or shape of Ludwig van Beethoven. For the sculptor to tell you that the cube of marble contains the promised bust of Beethoven (you just have to remove some excess marble) is therefore totally unacceptable. That's what you were paying the sculptor to do. Yes, the marble cube has the potential to become a bust of Beethoven. But it also has the potential to take on countless other shapes. It was the sculptor's job to give the marble the shape you requested.
The relation between matter, with its potential to assume any possible shapes, and information, with its restriction of possibilities to a narrow range of shapes, is fundamental to our understanding of the world. Certainly this relation holds for all human artifacts. This is true not only for human artifacts composed of physical stuff (like marble busts of Beethoven) but also for human artifacts composed of more abstract stuff (like poetry and mathematics). Indeed, the raw material for many human inventions consists not of physical stuff but of abstract stuff like alphabetic characters, musical notes and numbers. For instance, the raw ma terial for a Shakespearean sonnet consists of the twenty-six letters of the alphabet. Just as a bust of Beethoven is only potential in a slab of marble, so a Shakespearean sonnet is only potential in those twenty-six letters. It takes a sculptor to actualize the bust of Beethoven, and it takes a Shakespeare to arrange those twenty-six letters appropriately so that one of his sonnets emerges.
The relation between matter and information that we are describing here is old and was understood by the ancient Greeks, especially the Stoics. What's more, nothing said so far about the relation between matter and information is especially controversial. The world consists of a lot of raw material waiting to be suitably arranged. There's matter, passive or inert stuff waiting to be arranged, and there's information, an active principle or agency that does the arranging. This is a perfectly straightforward and useful way of carving up experience and making sense of the world. Much of our knowledge of the world depends on understanding the relation between matter and information.
Nonetheless, the relation between matter and information does become controversial once we add another dimension to it. That happens when we place matter and information in combination with design and nature:
So far the examples of information that we've considered have focused on the activity of a designing intelligence (a sculptor or writer) informing or giving shape to certain raw materials (a slab of marble or letters of the alphabet). But designing intelligences are not the only causal powers capable of structuring matter and thereby conferring information. Nature, too, is capable of structuring matter and conferring information.
Consider the difference between raw pieces of wood and an acorn. Raw pieces of wood do not have the power to assemble themselves into a ship. For raw pieces of wood to form a ship requires a designer to draw up a blueprint and then take the pieces of wood and, in line with the blueprint, fashion them into a ship. But where is the designer that causes an acorn to develop into a full-grown oak tree? There isn't any. The acorn has within itself the power to transform itself into an oak tree.
Nature and design therefore represent two different ways of producing information. Nature produces information, as it were, internally. The acorn assumes the shape it does through powers internal to it the acorn is a seed programmed to produce an oak tree. But a ship assumes the shape it does through powers external to it -a designing intelligence imposes a suitable structure on pieces of wood to form a ship.
Not only did the ancient Greeks know about the distinction between information and matter, but they also knew about the distinction between design and nature. For Aristotle, for instance, design consisted in capacities external to an object for bringing about its form with outside help. Nature, however, consisted in capacities internal to an object for transforming itself without outside help. Thus in book twelve of the Metaphysics Aristotle wrote, "[Design] is a principle of movement in something other than the thing moved; nature is a principle in the thing itself." In book two of the Physics Aristotle referred to design as completing "what nature cannot bring to a finish." (Note that Thomas Aquinas took this idea and sacramentalized it into grace completing nature).
The Greek word here translated "design" is techne, from which we get our word technology. In translations of Aristotle's work, the English word most commonly used to translate techne is "art" (in the sense of "artifact"). Design, art and techne are synonyms. The essential idea behind these terms is that information is conferred on an object from outside the object and that the material constituting the object, apart from that outside information, does not have the power to assume the form it does. For instance, raw pieces of wood do not by themselves have the power to form a ship.
This contrasts with nature, which does have the power within itself to express information. Thus in book two of the Physics Aristotle wrote, "If the ship-building art were in the wood, it would produce the same results by nature." In other words, if raw pieces of wood had the capacity to form ships, we would say that ships come about by nature. The Greek word here translated "nature" is physis, from which we get our word physics. The Indo-European root meaning behind physis is growth and development. Nature produces information not by imposing it from outside but by growing or developing informationally rich structures from within. Consider again the acorn. Unlike wood that needs to be fashioned by a designer to form a ship, acorns produce oak trees naturallythe acorn simply needs a suitable environment in which to grow.
The central question that an information-theoretic design argument needs to resolve can therefore be stated as follows: Is nature complete in the sense of possessing all the resources needed to bring about the information-rich structures we see in nature or does nature also require some contribution of design to bring about those structures? Aristotle claimed that the art of ship building is not in the wood that constitutes the ship. We've seen that the art of sonnet composing is not in the letters of the alphabet. Likewise, the art of statue making is not in the stone out of which statues are made. Each of these cases requires a designer. So too, an information-theoretic design argument contends that the art of building certain information-rich structures in nature (like biological organisms) is not in the physical stuff that constitutes these structures but requires a designer.
COMPLEX SPECIFIED INFORMATION
I want next to describe the particular type of information required for an information-theoretic design argument, namely, complex specified information. To understand this concept we need briefly to review contemporary information theory as employed by mathematicians (don't worry, I'll keep the discussion user-friendly). Ordinarily when we think of information, we think of meaningful statements that we communicate to each other. The vehicle of communication here is language, and the information is the meaning communicated by some utterance or linguistic expression. This picture of information diverges sharply from the picture of information associated with the mathematical theory of information. The ordinary picture of information focuses on meaning and treats the linguistic vehicle by which that meaning is transmitted as secondary. The mathematical picture of information, by contrast, focuses exclusively on the vehicle and ignores the meaning entirely.
Consider a spy who needs to determine the intentions of an enemywhether that enemy intends to go to war or preserve the peace. The spy agrees with headquarters about what signal will indicate war and what signal will indicate peace. Let's imagine that the spy will send headquarters a radio transmission and that each transmission takes the form of a bit string (i.e., a sequence of Os and 1s). The spy and headquarters might therefore agree that 0 means war and 1 means peace. But because noise along the communication channel might flip a 0 to a 1 and vice versa, it might be good to have some redundancy in the transmission. Thus the spy and headquarters might agree that 000 represents war and 111 peace and that anything else will be regarded as a garbled transmission. Or perhaps they will agree to let 0 represent a dot and 1 a dash and let the spy communicate via Morse code in plain English whether the enemy plans to go to war or maintain peace.
This example illustrates how information, in the sense of meaning, can remain constant whereas the vehicle for representing and transmitting this information can vary. In ordinary life we are concerned with meaning. If we are at headquarters, we want to know whether we're going to war or staying at peace. Yet from the vantage of mathematical information theory, the only thing that's important here is the mathematical properties of the linguistic expressions we use to represent the meaning. If we represent war with 000 as opposed to 0, we require three times as many bits to represent war, and so from the vantage of mathematical information theory we are utilizing three times as much information. The information content of 000 is three bits whereas that of 0 is just one bit.
Claude Shannon invented the mathematical theory of information shortly after World War II. The inspiration for his theory derived from his work on cryptography during the war. In cryptography, meaningful messages get encrypted to prevent an enemy from reading one's mail. The important thing in cryptography is to have a secure encryption decryption scheme, to be able to code messages efficiently as character strings from some alphabet, and then to be able to move those character strings efficiently across communication channels.
The actual meaning of a character string therefore takes second seat in the mathematical theory of information. Think of the mathematical theory of information as an internet service provider. The internet service provider is not concerned with the meaning of your email messages or what product you're trying to sell on your website. What they're concerned about is that the character strings you use to convey meaning in your emails or on your website is faithfully stored and transmitted. That's what the mathematical theory of information is all about. Specifically, it is about quantifying the information in such character strings, characterizing the statistical properties of such strings when they are sent across a noisy communication channel (noise typically is represented as a stochastic process that disrupts the strings in statistically well-defined ways), preserving the strings despite the presence of noise (i.e., the theory of error-correcting codes), compressing the strings to improve efficiency, and transforming the strings into other strings to maintain their security (i.e., cryptography).
Although Shannon's theory started out as a syntactic theory concerned with character strings based on a fixed alphabet, it quickly became a statistical theory. Characters from an alphabet will often have different probabilities of occurrence (for instance, the letters from our ordinary alphabet occur with widely varying frequencies-in English the letter e occurs roughly 13 percent of the time, the letter q less than 1 percent of the time; what's more, u follows q with probability one). These probabilities in turn determine how much information any given string can convey. In general, the quantity of information contained in a character string corresponds to the improbability of that character string. Thus, the more improbable the string, the more information it contains.
To see why this should be the case, consider the claim "it's raining outside." This claim will be more informative (now in a loose semantic sense) depending on how improbable it is. If it refers to weather in the Sahara desert during the summer when the chance of rain is very low, then this claim will be both highly improbable and highly informative it's telling you something you wouldn't otherwise have guessed. But if this claim refers to weather in Seattle during the spring when the chance of rain is very high, then it will be both probable and uninformativeit's telling you something you could easily have guessed. The mathematical theory of information models this feature of our ordinary understanding of information, making high probability claims have low information content and low probability (high improbability) claims have high information content.
Given this characterization of high and low information in terms of probability, there's no reason to confine the mathematical theory of information to character strings. Indeed, any reference class of possibilities over which there is a probability distribution is fair game for the mathematical theory of information. For information to be generated therefore means identifying one possibility and ruling out the rest. The more possibilities get ruled out and, correspondingly, the more improbable the possibility that actually obtains, the greater the information generated. To rule out no possibilities is to assert a tautology and provide no information. "It's raining or it's not raining" is true but totally uninformative. But "it's raining" is informative because it rules out "it's not raining." Moreover, "it's raining" is informative to the degree that this claim is improbable (this claim is therefore going to be more informative in the Sahara desert than in Seattle).
To generate information is therefore to rule out possibilities. Moreover, the amount of information generated here corresponds to the probability of that possibility (or range of possibilities) that wasn't ruled out. But who or what rules out possibilities? In practice, there are two sources of information: intelligent agency and physical processes. An intelligent agent may explicitly identify a pattern within the reference class of possibilities and thereby generate information. Alternatively, a physical process can produce an event, represented as a possibility within the reference class of possibilities, and thereby generate information. Let us refer to the former type of information as agent-induced or conceptual information and to the latter as event-induced or physical information.
Now, what happens when conceptual information and physical information coincide? Consider, for instance, the Search for Extraterrestrial In telligence (SETI), which looks for signs of intelligence in radio signals from outer space. What happens if, as a conceptual act, SETI researchers identify a sequence of prime numbers, and then, lo and behold, as in the movie Contact, that very sequence is transmitted, as a physical event, to the radio telescopes that these same SETI researchers are monitoring? As in the movie, they would conclude that an extraterrestrial intelligence had established contact. Now it's precisely such a coincidence between conceptual and physical information that constitutes complex specified information.
Yet within Shannon's theory of information, such a coincidence plays no role. Shannon's theory is simply concerned with generating information from a reference class of possibilities. It is immaterial to Shannon's theory whether the information generated is agent-induced or event-induced. Complex specified information, by contrast, requires a dual ruling out of possibilities, one by an intelligent agent who identifies a pattern and one by physical processes that induce an event. Provided these coincide, the probability is small, and the pattern can be identified independently of the event, we say the event exhibits complex specified information.
Complex specified information is therefore a souped-up form of information. To be sure, complex specified information is consistent with the basic idea behind information, which is the reduction or ruling out of possibilities from a reference class of possibilities. But whereas the traditional understanding of information is unary, conceiving of information as a single reduction of possibilities, complex specified information is a binary form of information. Complex specified information depends on a dual reduction of possibilities, a conceptual reduction (i.e., conceptual information) combined with a physical reduction (i.e., physical information). Moreover, these dual reductions must be coordinated so that the physical information matches the pattern set by the conceptual information. When they match, we have complex specified information.
FROM COMPLEX SPECIFIED INFORMATION TO DESIGN
Complex specified information reliably detects design. To see this, we need to consider the nature of intelligent agency and, specifically, what it is about intelligent agents that makes them detectable. The principal characteristic of intelligent agency is choice. The very etymology of the word intelligent makes this clear. "Intelligent" derives from two Latin words, the preposition inter, meaning "between," and the verb lego, meaning "to choose or select." Thus, according to its etymology, intelligence consists in choosing between. For an intelligent agent to act is therefore to choose from a range of competing possibilities.
This is true not just of humans but of animals as well as of extraterrestrial intelligences. A rat navigating a maze must choose whether to go right or left at various points in the maze. When SETI researchers attempt to discover intelligence in the extraterrestrial radio transmissions they are monitoring, they assume an extraterrestrial intelligence could have chosen any number of possible radio transmissions and then attempt to match the transmissions they observe with certain patterns as opposed to others. Whenever a human being utters meaningful speech, a choice is made from a range of possible sound-combinations that might have been uttered. Intelligent agency always entails discrimination, choosing certain things, ruling out others.
Given this characterization of intelligent agency, the crucial question is how to recognize it. Intelligent agents act by making a choice. How, then, do we recognize that an intelligent agent has made a choice? A bottle of ink spills accidentally onto a sheet of paper; someone takes a fountain pen and writes a message on a sheet of paper. In both instances ink is applied to paper. In both instances one among an almost infinite set of possibilities is realized. In both instances a contingency is actualized and others are ruled out. Yet in one instance we ascribe agency, in the other chance.
What is the relevant difference? Not only do we need to observe that a contingency was actualized, but we ourselves need also to be able to specify that contingency. The contingency must conform to an independently given pattern, and we must be able independently to construct that pattern. A random ink blot is unspecified; a message written with ink on paper is specified. To be sure, the exact message recorded may not be specified. But orthographic, syntactic and semantic constraints will nonetheless specify it.
Actualizing one among several competing possibilities, ruling out the rest and specifying the one that was actualized encapsulates how we recognize intelligent agency, or equivalently, how we detect design. Experimental psychologists who study animal learning and behavior have known this all along. To learn a task, an animal must acquire the ability to actualize behaviors suitable for the task as well as the ability to rule out behaviors unsuitable for the task. Moreover, for a psychologist to recognize that an animal has learned a task, it is necessary not only to observe the animal making the appropriate discrimination but also to specify the discrimination.
Thus, to recognize whether a rat has successfully learned how to traverse a maze, a psychologist must first specify which sequence of right and left turns conducts the rat out of the maze. No doubt, a rat randomly wandering a maze also discriminates a sequence of right and left turns. But by randomly wandering the maze, the rat gives no indication that it can discriminate the appropriate sequence of right and left turns for exiting the maze. Consequently, the psychologist studying the rat will have no reason to think the rat has learned how to traverse the maze.
Only if the rat executes the sequence of right and left turns specified by the psychologist will the psychologist recognize that the rat has learned how to traverse the maze. Now it is precisely the learned behaviors we regard as intelligence in animals. Hence it is no surprise that the same scheme for recognizing animal learning recurs for recognizing intelligent agency generally, to wit: actualizing one among several competing possibilities, ruling out the others and specifying the one actualized.
Note that complexity is implicit here as well. To see this, consider again a rat traversing a maze, but now take a very simple maze in which two right turns conduct the rat out of the maze. How will a psychologist studying the rat determine whether it has learned to exit the maze? Just putting the rat in the maze will not be enough. Because the maze is so simple, the rat could by chance just happen to take two right turns and thereby exit the maze. The psychologist will therefore be uncertain whether the rat actually learned to exit this maze or whether the rat just got lucky.
But contrast this with a complicated maze in which a rat must take just the right sequence of left and right turns to exit the maze. Suppose the rat must take one hundred appropriate right and left turns and that any mistake will prevent the rat from exiting the maze. A psychologist who sees the rat take no erroneous turns and in short order exit the maze will be convinced that the rat has indeed learned how to exit the maze and that this was not dumb luck.
This general scheme for recognizing intelligent agency mirrors complex specified information. In general, to recognize intelligent agency we must observe an actualization of one among several competing possibilities, note which possibilities were ruled out and then be able to specify the possibility that was actualized. What's more, the competing possibilities that were ruled out must be live possibilities and sufficiently numerous so that specifying the possibility that was actualized cannot be attributed to chance. This is just another way of saying that the possibility that was actualized is complex. All the elements in this general scheme for recognizing intelligent agency (i.e., actualizing, ruling out and specifying) therefore find their counterpart in complex specified information. It follows that complex specified information formalizes what it is that all along has enabled us to recognize intelligent agency. Complex specified information pinpoints how we detect design.
DISPLACEMENT
Not everyone agrees. Darwinian naturalists, for instance, accept that biological systems exhibit complex specified information but deny that it results from intelligence. Rather, they contend that it results from a nonteleological process or mechanism (typically the Darwinian mechanism of natural selection and random variation). In effect, the Darwinian naturalist claims that nature is capable of generating complex specified information apart from intelligence. To see that nature has no such capacity, we need to understand the concept of displacement as it applies to information generally and complex specified information in particular.
The basic idea behind displacement is this: Suppose you need to search a space of possibilities. The space is so large and the possibilities individually so improbable that an exhaustive search is not feasible and a random search is highly unlikely to conclude the search successfully. In consequence, you need some constraints on the search-some information to help guide the search to a solution (think of an Easter egg hunt where no one provides hints or guidance versus one where someone directs you by saying "warm," "warmer" and "hot"). All such information that assists your search, however, resides in a search space of its ownan informational space. So the search of the original space gets displaced to a search of an informational space in which the crucial information for successfully searching the original space resides. Now it is a mathematical fact that such a higher-order informational space ("higher" with respect to the original search space) is always at least as big and at least as hard to search as the original space (for the details see chapter four of my book No Free Lunch). I call this the displacement problem.
Think of it this way. Imagine an island with buried treasure. You can scour the island trying to find the buried treasure. Alternatively, you can try to find a map that tells you where the treasure is buried. Once such a map is in hand, finding the treasure is no problem. But how to find such a map? For every place on the island there is a map with an "x" marking where the treasure could be located. There are also maps with directions such as "turn here, walk ten paces, then start to dig." The vast majority of such maps will be misleading and provide no help in locating the treasure. Indeed, a map that accurately informs us where the treasure is will be mixed among a huge assortment of misleading maps. The huge assortment of maps is the informational space associated with the original search space. Finding the right map within that huge assortment is no easier than simply searching the island directly (and in fact, mathematics tells us it will be more difficult).
It follows that constraining the search of an original space by employing information does not provide a nonteleological, design-free explanation for the success of that search. Instead, the solution found in the original space merely reflects the solution already in hand in a higherorder informational space. And if the one solution exhibits complex specified information, then so does the other (this follows from the simple fact that any information that identifies complex specified information is itself complex specified information-for the details see chapter three of No Free Lunch). In particular, when nonteleological processes output complex specified information, it is because they take preexisting complex specified information and merely re-express it. They are not generating it for free or from scratch. To claim otherwise is like filling one hole by digging another. If the problem was to be rid of holes period (i.e., design), then the problem hasn't been resolved but merely relocated.
Displacement implies that if you have some naturalistic process whose output exhibits complex specified information, then that process was front-loaded with complex specified information. The task of the information theorist in that case is to "follow the information trail" and show where the complex specified information that was outputted was first inputted. Displacement is essentially a bookkeeping device for keeping science honest about the sources of information. It forces us to show where complex specified information supposedly gotten for free has in fact been front-loaded, smuggled in or hidden from view.
The existence of complex specified information in nature argues for real design in the world. But that raises the question, who designed the designer? If the designer exhibits complex specified information, this would imply a design regress in which attributions to design based on complex specified information always give way to some other explanation. But in fact there is no reason to suppose that the designer responsible for complex specified information in nature is part of nature and therefore in turn exhibits complex specified information. Complex specified information refers to patterns embodied in physical structures. But if the designer is not a physical structure, the designer, though capable of bringing about complex specified information, would not in turn exhibit complex specified information. The very definition of complex specified information therefore precludes the design regress in whichto stay consistent with our methods of design detection-we must answer whether the designer is designed. The designer responsible for the complex specified information in nature is, as best we can tell, not an event, object or structure. Consequently, the designer, though capable of producing phenomena that exhibit complex specified information, does not in turn exhibit complex specified information.
Who is the designer? As a Christian I hold that the Christian God is the ultimate source of design behind the universe (though that leaves open that God works through secondary causes, including derived intelligences such as angels or teleological processes). But there's no way for design inferences based on features of the natural world to reach that conclusion. Design inferred from complex specified information in nature is compatible with Christian belief but does not entail it. This is as it should be. Nature is silent about the revelation of Christ in Scripture. At the same time, nothing prevents nature from independently testifying to the God revealed in the Scripture. The complex specified information exhibited in natural phenomena is perhaps best thought of as God's fingerprints. Fingerprints never tell us the character of the one whose fingers are in question. But they can tell us that we are dealing with the fingers of an intelligence, and this in turn can lead us to inquire into the character of that intelligence. An information-theoretic design argument therefore doesn't so much lead us to God as remove us from paths that lead away from God.
FOR FURTHER READING
Behe, Michael. Darwins Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution. New York: The Free Press, 1996.
Dembski, William A. The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance Through Small Probabilities. Cambridge Studies in Probability, Induction and Decision Theory. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
No Free Lunch:: Why Specified Complexity CannotBe Purchased Without Intelligence. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002.
Dembski, William A., and Michael Ruse, eds. Debating Design: From Darwin to DNA. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Ratzsch, Del. Nature, Science and Design: The Status of Design in Natural Science. Philosophy and Biology Series. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001.
Rea, Michael C. World Without Design: The Ontological Consequence of Naturalism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
THE TERM "COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT" (HEREAFTER CA) REFERS TO A WHOLE class of arguments or patterns of thinking that have in common the conclusion that God is real because the things we see around us never exist unless something makes them exist. So, roughly, the CA concludes to God as a first cause or initiating source of things because there cannot he an infinite sequence of causes of the existence of the things around us, those things that we observe as existing only because they are caused to do so.
We can distinguish types of the CA in several ways. First, most have been based on observations of the real world. Some, however, have been argued strictly on the basis of what is logically possible and necessary (see below).
A second critical distinction is between arguments that imply that God is chronologically first in time versus those that conclude to a God as the first cause in a concurrent sequence of dependent causes, all at the same time. A third distinction is between those arguments that refer to the whole universe as a single dependent object and those that refer only to individual causal chains as the basis for needing a first cause.
Fourth, some arguments attempt to conclude to a full-blown concept of God. This demands a rather complex argument. By contrast, many rather simple arguments arrive at the minimal conclusion of a first cause. They will then add supplemental arguments that provide a fuller conclusion as to the nature of this cause.
This chapter is concerned with the classic form of the CA, first fully stated by Aristotle and best known as developed by Thomas Aquinas. We will begin with a historical overview.
A LITTLE HISTORY
Looking at the development of Greek philosophy, we see a step-by-step unfolding of an argument delineating the source of the universe. What drives it is the recognition of change, motion, the combining and recombining of chemical elements, that is, the dependency of things on an organizing, designing and driving cause. In Heraclitus it is a logos or lawfulness; in Anaxagoras it has become Mind.
The first time, however, that this becomes a real argument for an actual agent is in Plato. In his Phaedrus and in Laws, we have the key elements of the CA: (1) the things we observe are arranged in sequences of causes and effects; (2) such sequences cannot go on endlessly; and (3) the beginning point, or initiating cause, will be different from the other causes in not being caused by something else. For Plato it is Soul.
Aristotle, Plato's student, carefully refines this argument into its standard format in his Metaphysics. He has a clearer concept of "infinite" and provides a subargument as to precisely why there cannot be an infinite sequence of causes of dependent things. He also provides some implications about the nature of this first cause that follow just because it cannot itself be caused but is precisely uncaused.
Little knowledge of Aristotle is preserved for Roman and early Christian Europe. It is, however, maintained in Arab culture and is central in the development of Islamic philosophy. The version of the CA put forward by al-Ghazali, Ibn Rushd and others understands the sequence of causes as a chronological argument for a first cause of the universe backwards in time. This CA has come to be known as the kalam argument and is the subject of another chapter.
By the twelfth century, Aristotle's Metaphysics had been brought to Europe by way of the Muslim conquest of Spain. Enter Thomas Aquinas. What is most significant is his development of the argument within the context of Christian theology. In the Summa Theologica and in the Summa Contra Gentiles he gives five brief statements of the CA that have come to be known as the Five Ways, though they are not the same in each book.
By far the most important direction taken by the CA comes in the eighteenth century at the hands of G. W. F. Leibniz and Samuel Clarke. The notable addition to the CA is what Leibniz calls the principle of sufficient reason: nothing happens or exists without a reason. This transforms the CA into a significantly different argument. First, it is now an argument about the reason for the entire universe rather than its cause. Second, it concludes to a God whose existence is necessary, that is, who exists in such a way that it makes no sense to ask the reason for the necessary being's existence.
It is precisely this second point that forms the basis for an attack by Immanuel Kant in his Critique ofPure Reason (1781). He holds that the very concept of a necessarily existing being is incoherent. The debate over Kant's criticism continues, but its effect on the entire discussion of the CA in the nineteenth century was devastating, even though Kant's criticism only affects Leibniz's version of the CA.
A renewed discussion begins in the 1960s as a result of the work of Bruce Reichenhach, William Rowe and others.' Since then, the volume of published literature on this form of the CA and the principle of sufficient reason has exploded.
These three lines of development should not cloud the fact that the standard CA itself continues to be developed following Thomas. This process comes to an almost virtual standstill with the apparently successful critique leveled by Kant.
THE ARGUMENT
Our purpose in this chapter is to examine the traditional argument of Aristotle and Thomas. This argument is based on simple observations of the world around us. It looks at causal connections as a concurrent series and not one going hack in time. It focuses on individual, actual se quences and does not need to talk of the universe as a whole. Finally, its conclusion is simple, with a minimal conception of God, and leaves a fuller concept of God to subsequent conclusions.
The briefest and most general statement of Thomas's argument is found in chapter fifteen of the Summa Contra Gentiles. It is also close to its predecessor in Aristotle.
We see things in the world that can exist and can also not exist. Now everything that can exist has a cause. But one cannot go on ad infinitum in causes.... Therefore one must posit something the existing of which is necessary. (Summa Contra Gentiles 15.124, excerpts)
There are three basic points in this argument.
Premise 1: "hat we observe in this universe is contingent. This argument begins with a simple observation concerning the things we see and know about in the real world around us. It is not intended to be about everything in the universe, let alone every possible entity, only those things we have actually observed. The key element in this first premise is the notion of contingency. In this context this means that something owes its existence to something else; it does not exist in and of itself.
So these causal relations are transferring not initiating. That is, A is caused by B, but only as B is caused by C. Everything we know of possesses this sort of contingency: it exists and functions only as it is caused by other factors in its causal chain. We know of nothing that by itself spontaneously initiates causal activity. But note that nothing here turns on our knowing about everything. Even if something does turn out to spontaneously initiate, it would have no effect on the CA.
Premise 2: A sequence of causally related contingent things cannot be infinite. The point of the second premise is to show that regardless of how complex and interconnected, and regardless of how extensive they may be, the sequence of causally related contingent things is not infinite. Thomas at one point uses the picture of a hand moving a stick moving a ball. Perhaps the most frequently used analogy in recent discussions is the train.
Imagine seeing a train moving past you for the first time. Baffled, you wonder how the boxcar is moving. You come to realize that it is being pulled by another boxcar in front of it, and so on, and so on down the tracks.
This allows us to visualize the various naturalistic scenarios, so commonly heard in our society, that describe how it is that things exist in the real world. "The cosmos is a great circle of being," we are told. But stringing boxcars all the way around in a circle until the last one hooks up to the first will still not explain the motion even of the first boxcar. And likewise, if contingent things cause each other to exist in a circle, there is no initiating of the causality. The naturalist offers another more promising scenario: "The cosmos is an intricately evolved ecosystem in which everything is related causally to everything else." So boxcars clutter the world in an unimaginably complex system of railroads such that in some way every boxcar is coupled to and pulling the first one. We still have no accounting for the motion of that first boxcar and likewise for the existence of actual things.
It is always tempting, of course, to say that it is just enough to know that the one in front of it is pulling each boxcar. In one sense it is clearly true that boxcar A is pulled by boxcar B. But B can pull A only because at the same time C is pulling B. The pulling action of B is transferred from C. And so it is also true that A is being pulled by C. The same is true, of course, about D, and about E, and so on.
One last option suggests itself. Suppose that there are infinite boxcars, or as the naturalist says: "The intricacy of the universe is lost in infinite complexity." But infinite boxcars, no matter how complexly arranged, still leave unexplained why our first boxcar is moving and hence why any are. Letting the sequence go to infinity fails to explain anything. It just puts off infinitely the question of what initiates the causality.
Premise 3:775e sequence of causally dependent contingent things must befinite. The rest of the CA simply draws the obvious conclusion from premise 2. If the sequence cannot be infinite, then it must be finite. There is, of course, one other alternative, just as there is one way in which the line of boxcars can be infinite, namely, if they are not moving at all. There might of course be infinite boxcars in the train, but there could not be a moving train that consisted only of an infinity of boxcars. Just so, there might exist infinite things but not an infinite network of concurrently causally dependent, contingent things.
Conclusion: There must be a first cause in the sequence of contingent causes. If the causal sequence is finite, then there is a first cause regardless of how many causes there might be in the series. This concept of "first cause" involves two component concepts. To say that it is the_first cause is to say that it neither requires nor has a cause itself. First is first! Thus it is fundamentally different from every other cause in the system: it is not contingent. It depends on, is limited by, or exists because of absolutely nothing else. It does not pass on causality it receives in a transferring relation; rather it strictly initiates causality. It is itself uncaused.
To say of the conclusion that it is the first cause is to define its relation to everything else in the sequence: namely, that it is their cause. It is the cause of all things in that it initiates all of the causal activity in the sequence, without negating that each cause is, in fact, a cause in its own right of the following one in the sequence, and is an effect of the proceeding one.
The only explanation for the moving line of boxcars is that somewhere there is a locomotive powerful enough to pull the whole train while itself not needing to be pulled. And so the concept of a first cause is richer than it might at first appear. It is the initiating cause of existence of everything in the series of causes and exists without any cause or dependency whatsoever. It is strictly an uncaused cause.
WHAT FOLLOWS ABOUT GOD'S NATURE?
The fairly simple argument of Aristotle and Thomas gives us no more than a first cause. It does, however, set up a series of subsequent arguments that fill in a good deal of content and provide a preface of something we are more justified in calling God.
For the most part, these subarguments go back to Parmenides. He was something of an oddity in Greek philosophy by thinking that the universe is just one simple uncaused thing and not a network of casually connected things. It is precisely this notion that pushed him to ask what characteristics the universe must possess if it is in-and-of-itself or necessary. But notice that this is exactly where the CA leaves us too. What follows from the fact that something is a first cause, that is, entirely without cause while causing all relevant effects?
Uniqueness. Why think that there is only one first cause? It seems to me that in fact many of the versions of the CA have been directed at precisely this goal. The obvious way to do it is to find a way to make the CA an argument about the entire universe, and the best way to do that is to incorporate some principle that includes all possible reality, for example, the principle of sufficient reason. But this is not the tactic taken by Aristotle and Thomas.
The subargument they use can be simplified like this. Imagine there are two first and uncaused causes. Call them FC1 and FC2. What is it that distinguishes them and hence determines that they are two, not one? What controls our thinking here is the logical principle that two things that do not differ in any respect at all are just the same thing.
Put briefly, the only way FC2 could differ from FC1 would be for it to have some characteristic that FC1 does not. But if FC1 lacks something that is available (since FC2 has it) then it is limited or caused not to have it. But that is impossible since FC1 is not caused in any way. And so we have to conclude that any two-or more for that matter-uncaused first causes would have to be identical in the strict sense, and therefore there could only be one of them.
Simplicity. That God is "simple" is a difficult but crucial concept. It means at least the following: (a) God has no parts and is therefore not material (made of measurable units); (b) God does not change, that is, he cannot add or subtract parts of what he is; (c) God is all one thing. There is not one part of him that is distinguishable from others. He simply is what he is.
All of the meanings given to simplicity imply that God has parts, that is, that God has internal differences. The Bible sometimes seems to refer such things to God, just as we correctly do to human persons, such as changing his mind, or being somewhere (such as a burning bush) but not somewhere else. With some people he seems to act judgmentally. With others he is loving and forgiving. How are we to understand this?
The argument here is a version of the argument for God's uniqueness. Any differences between parts would involve a lack of something in one of them. Such a lack would have to be a limit due to some cause, but that is impossible for an uncaused first cause.
These two arguments might seem abstract or irrelevant at first glance, but they play quite important roles in a larger conception of God. That there is only one God is crucial enough, and so is the point that God is what he is without change. Put together, these arguments form boundaries for the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. That is, there is only one God, not three, and he does not have internal divisions or parts. The hih- lical data has to be compiled in a way that fits these logical boundaries.
Perfection. An uncaused first cause, existing in and of itself, must therefore be perfect. This is simply the reverse of the argument used in the first two points above. If God has no limitations in what he is, then he is simply unlimited.
The difficulty here is that we do not have any really positive meaning to this notion. When I say that I am 5'11" tall or that I am sitting at my desk, I am actually describing my limitations. My size is confined in certain ways, as is my presence in the room, as well as in the world. God, it turns out, must be described avoiding any limitations. Expressing that, however, can be accomplished only by consistently denying definitions of God. For example, God is not spatial. We say this by using the term omnipresent. But that should not be taken to mean that God is located in every space. Rather, he is just not located in any sense. And this is to be applied to every description of God. Thus a seemingly empty term, applied to God, turns out to generate a great deal of important theology. We have come to call it "perfect being theology."
Personhood We are still left with a rather abstract, nonrelational or, in general, nonpersonal being at best. Does anything follow from the CA that would indicate that God has personal characteristics?
Both Aristotle and Thomas do have subarguments that God possesses knowledge and will. Aristotle's God, however, is nonrelational, knowing only himself. Thomas, however, shows that God's knowing of himself as first cause of all things does in fact involve a perfect knowing that is truly relational.
I want, however, to mention here a simpler argument for personhood that flows from the CA. Among recent philosophers, it can be found in Norman Geisler's discussions. Put briefly, since the universe contains persons who are rational, social, moral and free, how could the first cause of all things be any less than a person? In particular, if the first cause is both uncaused and explains itself, then it must be free, not determined.
There is much more to be said here as to what can he developed out of the CA. This, however, is enough to show that Thomas's simple argument does provide the basis for a fuller concept of God.
SOME BASIC OBJECTIONS TO THE ARGUMENT
During our discussion of the argument we have dealt with a number of problems, objections or alternate views. Here I want only to bring up two very general objections to the CA.
First, certainly the most frequent criticism of the CA is that there is no reason to think that it concludes to God. Even if it were a sound argument, the objection typically goes, it only gives us a first cause. This could well be some space/time factor, say, the big bang or elementary particles of some sort, but not an infinite creator God who loves us and desires relationship and worship.
Any response to this objection will first have to pose the question of what it takes to identify someone. Specifically, what characteristics do you have to know in order to identify someone? Clearly one answer is that you need only one, if it is a uniquely identifying characteristic. If only one object in the universe has a specific property, and even if that is the only property I know, then I am able to correctly identify that object.
Given that principle, we should say that strictly speaking the minimal CA discussed above, by itself, does not uniquely identify God in its conclusion. However, that there must be finite links in every causal network and thus a first, uncaused cause is already enough to defeat most forms of atheistic naturalism which hold that the universe is a closed causal network.
More important, of course, the CA has immediate implications that do provide unique identifiers. So a good strategy is to leave the argument as simple as possible rather than burden it with all sorts of complex premises that only demand additional, often difficult and only moderately probable premises.
There are those who still object, including some Christian theists, that even with all the subarguments we are left with an abstract, impersonal something that does not demand religious worship. The best response is to agree: the CA proves only what it proves. Certainly we will want more and different kinds of input, including revelation and experience. This further objection often supposes that unless we know everything about God, we know nothing. But this is not only obviously false-I certainly know many things without knowing everything about any of them-it is also self-contradictory since the objector clearly does not know everything about the objection. I conclude that the argument yields a little but crucial and uniquely identifying knowledge of God.
A second frequent objection makes the point that infinite series are possible. Since the CA depends on a denial of an infinite series of causes, the argument fails. It is, of course, true that infinite series are possible. The sequence of cardinal numbers, as we all learned in elementary school, is infinite. We could assign a cardinal number to each member of any causal sequence, and we would then have an infinite sequence of causes.
This objection occurs in many forms, but they all overlook the specifics of the sequence of causes in the CA. There are four characteristics of this series and each is crucial to eliminating the possibility of infinity. (1) It is a sequence, a connected series of causes to effects. (2) Each cause is itself contingent. It, in turn, needs a cause. (3) The dependency in the Aristotelian/Thomistic CA is concurrent not chronological. It refers to concurrent dependency relations of cause and effect. (4) The specific relation to which the generic CA refers is the causing of existence itself. The key point in the CA is that there cannot be an infinite series of causes with all four of the above characteristics, not that there cannot be infinite series of other types.
Note that, given this point, it is irrelevant to the argument whether the universe itself might be infinite. Thomas thought that it is at least possible that the universe exists in infinite time, as Aristotle had held. That God created the beginning of time we know only by revelation. Many objections attempt to show that in some respects the universe is infinite, so the CA must be wrong. Attached to this is typically that Thomas's physics is just wrong. But this is all irrelevant to the CA. It shows only that there cannot be an infinite sequence of concurrent dependent causes of existence.
CONCLUSION: WHY Is THIS ARGUMENT IMPORTANT?
It is clear that Thomas intended this argument to play a critical role in our understanding, not just of God and religion but, as it did for Aristotle, of everything. We cannot make sense of our reality at all apart from God. The God of the CA best explains life as we experience it.
At the same time this argument is not a starting point. It is based on other arguments and observations, and so God is also a conclusion from the evidence. My point here is that one way in which the CA is important is that it demonstrates that God is not a belief or a creation of faith but part of our true description of things. So the CA is tremendously valuable for apologetics.
This argument along with its subarguments is also vital in setting logical guidelines for theology. We mentioned earlier how it helps us in regard to the doctrine of the Trinity, but there are many other applications. The CA demands that God is unchanging. Applied to God as knowing, choosing, willing or acting in any way at all, we will have to see "unchangingly" as a filter that always modifies our understanding of how God is to be conceptualized. If we extend this to all of the aspects of God's nature that are identified in the various subarguments of the CA and then apply them in turn to each of God's actions, we have built a framework for theology: a perfect being theology.
Finally, the CA is important for us in doing science. It specifies the relationship between God's acting and the processes of science, including the behaviors of human beings. It says that God is the true sourcethe first cause-of all processes, every event and even every free action. We must note that this concept does not eliminate, replace or reduce the necessity of doing science. It is not a god-of-the-gaps view. It respects the proper place of science; in fact, it grounds science by explaining why it is even possible.
This brings us back to the original question of how the universe operates and the subsequent moves in philosophy that culminate in Aristotle's and Thomas's arguments. The CA can be seen as establishing or underwriting a worldview: a big-picture understanding of how everything works-namely, theism, as opposed to naturalism.
I have argued that cosmological thinking is important to our large tin- derstanding of everything. There is much work yet to be done on the CA, and it may well be that faults will be found with our current ways of wording this argument. The objections that have been brought against it over virtually the entire history of both western and eastern philosophy either fail or only point out the obvious limitations of the CA. It remains an essential part of a Christian apologetic.
FOR FURTHER READING
Burrill, David, ed. The Cosmological Arguments. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor, 1967.
Davis, Stephen. God, Reason and Theistic Proofs. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerd- mans, 1997.
Davies, Brian. The Thought of Thomas Aquinas. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992.
Edwards, Paul. The Cosmological Argument." Published in 1959, it can be found in many anthologies, including Burrill's mentioned above.
Geisler, Norman L. Thomas Aquinas: An Evangelical Appraisal. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 1991.
Geisler, Norman L., and Winfried Corduan. Philosophy of Religion. 2nd ec!. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 1988.
WHAT MORAL DIFFERENCE WOULD IT MAKE IF GOD DID NOT EXIST? SOME WILL say, "Not much. After all, atheists can be just as moral as believers. We can be good without God." The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) simply assumes this point of view without any reference to God: "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood." By contrast, the U.S. Declaration of Independence (1776) asserts: "We hold these truths to be selfevident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights."
An obvious point of departure between these two declarations is that the Declaration of independence grounds human rights and dignity in our having been created by God whereas the UN declaration simply posits human equality and dignity without offering any basis or foundation for intrinsic human value.
Norman Geisler, to whose major work in contemporary Christian apologetics many others and I owe a great debt, observes that God serves as this crucial foundation. He is the "infinite and necessarily good" Source of all finite goods.' Indeed, the good ("that which is desired for its own sake") is inescapable. Persons want to be treated as persons, not as objects, and they act as though intrinsic goods exist (even in express ing the right to dissent from such a view).'
Indeed, the difference God makes is momentous. Indeed, if God doesn't exist, then we simply do not have an adequate foundation for objective ethics-including intrinsic human dignity and rights, personal responsibility and moral obligation. Furthermore, if the divine grounding for morality is lacking, then (as Nietzsche argued) it is not a far step to undercut moral motivation as well.
In this chapter I want to argue, first, that basic moral values exist, and there is no good reason to deny them. Second, humans have dignity because they are made in the image of God, the source of goodness. Naturalism cannot adequately account for moral obligation or human rights since valueless processes cannot conceivably produce valuable personal beings. If God doesn't exist, then objective moral values and rights don't exist. Third, the theistic basis for objective moral values and human dignity is further supported by the fact that many atheists recognize the intrinsic connection between God and objective moral values/human rights. Fourth, morality is not the byproduct of evolutionary forces that enable us to survive and reproduce. The naturalistic mechanisms behind evolutionary ethics would undermine not only virtue but rational thought itself. Finally, nontheists (following Plato's Euthyphro argument) may argue that if God exists, then God's commands or character must be subject to nonarbitrary principles of goodness that are independent of God; so moral values can exist independently of God. As we'll see, this is a weak argument.
A strong case can be made for the difference God makes for both moral foundations and motivation. The general argument we'll be using can be summarized as follows:
If objective moral values exist, then God exists.
Objective moral values do exist.
Therefore, God exists.
OBJECTIVE MORAL VALUES AS PROPERLY BASIC
Pro-Nazi philosopher Martin Heidegger said of Hitler, "He alone is the German reality of today, and of the future, and of its law." But when the Germans were defeated in world War II, the French confiscated his property because of his Nazi sympathies. In response, he wrote an indignant letter to the commander of the French forces: "What justice there is in treating me in this unheard of way is inconceivable to me."3 To Heidegger's mind, there was not a "German morality" and a different "French morality." Despite being mesmerized by Hitler, he was assuming some universal standard of justice that even the French could understand!
Here's a good rule of thumb about morality: Don't believe people who say murder or rape may not really be wrong. Such people haven't looked deeply enough into the basis for moral belief; they just aren't functioning properly. Just as color-blind persons need help distinguishing red from green, morally malfunctioning persons (who can't "see" basic moral truths) need help psychologically and spiritually; they don't need arguments! Like sense perception, we have certain moral intuitions or instincts that are basic to properly functioning humans. If we don't have them, something's wrong with us. And in the absence of strong reasons to overturn these intuitions, they should be taken seriously. The credu- lityprinciple is appropriate both with regard to our sense perceptions as well as our moral intuitions/perception-they are innocent until proven guilty. I am wise to accept their testimony unless I have a strong, overriding reasons to doubt them.
I was speaking at a university in New York, and during the questionand-answer time a female student stood up and charged me with being ethnocentric. (At least she believed that ethnocentrism is wrong for all people everywhere!) When I asked why, she replied, "You believe that your morality should be imposed on other people." I asked her, "If you're walking down a dark alley and you're about to be raped and there is a bystander who could help you, would you want that bystander to impose his morality on your attacker?" I added that it's easy to claim morality is relative when it doesn't immediately affect me, but when someone violates my rights, deeply humiliates me or steals my property, then I respond to this personal affront as morally wrong.
As C. S. Lewis has documented in The Abolition of Man,4 the same sorts of moral standards-don't murder, don't take another's property, don't defraud-continually surface across civilizations and cultures and throughout history. We don't need to look far to find commonalities. Such moral principles are discovered, not invented. Without them, the idea of moral reform makes no sense. Furthermore, properly functioning persons generally know when they're being treated like an object (e.g., child abuse, rape, the torture of innocent people for fun) rather than with dignity and respect. If one can't see this, something's malfunctioning (e.g., self-deception, hard-heartedness). As part of God's general self-revelation, all people-unless they ignore or suppress their consciences-can and should have basic moral insight, knowing truths generally available to any morally sensitive person (Rom 2:14-15). We just know the rightness of virtues (kindness, trustworthiness, unselfishness), and the burden of proof falls on those who deny this.
Objective moral values do exist, and we can recognize them. The existence of gray areas doesn't mean that we can't readily recognize general moral principles. In making moral judgments, we must begin with the clear and move to the unclear, not vice versa. Just because moral uncertainty or ambiguity exists, this doesn't eclipse the morally obvious. As Dr. Samuel Johnson put it, "The fact that there is such a thing as twilight does not mean that we cannot distinguish between clay and night."
THE CONNECTION BETWEEN GOD AND OBJECTIVE MORAL VALUES/HUMAN DIGNITY
In writing an essay presenting an argument for God's existence from morality, why am I citing Nielsen-an atheist for support? The short answer is: atheists have been made in the image of God and can therefore recognize the same sorts of moral values Christians can. Atheists don't need the Bible to recognize basic objective moral values. They have been created or constituted to be able to recognize them, even if they disbelieve. All humans are hard-wired the same way: they are made to function properly when living morally. This moral awareness is part of God's general self-revelation. We see something of God in the moral order of the universe.
Atheist Michael Martin asks, "Why would the nonexistence of God adversely affect the goodness of mercy, compassion, and justice? ... One could affirm the objective immorality of rape and deny the existence of God with perfect consistency." 6 Martin claims that even if God didn't exist, we could still know that objective morality exists. The Christian will cite the same reasons as the atheist about the wrongness of rape: "It violates the victim's rights and offends her dignity. It also contributes to the destruction of society." The atheist appears to be vindicated. He can say to the theist: "See? Your reasons didn't even appeal to God's existence. The very reasons you give are the ones I give."
This is too hasty. We must distinguish between knowing and being and get clear on which is more fundamental. At one level (knowing), Martin's argument appears to make sense. Because human beings have been made in God's image as intrinsically valuable (endowed with rights, dignity, conscience, moral responsibility and the basic capacity to recognize right and wrong), we should not be surprised that an atheist holds similar beliefs about human rights, dignity and obligation. But Martin's defense of objective morality only works at one level-knowl- edge.7 The more fundamental level of being-that is, the actual ground or basis (which makes moral knowledge possible)-is inadequate."
Ironically, we live in a time when many claim everything is relative, yet they believe they have rights. But if morality is just the product of naturalistic evolution or cultural development or personal choice, then rights do not truly exist. But if they do exist and if human persons truly have value in and of themselves-regardless of what their culture or the high priests of science (or better, scientism) say-then what is the basis for this value? Did this intrinsic value come from impersonal, nonconscious, unguided, valueless processes over time (naturalism)? The contextual fit isn't a good one.9 A more natural context for moral values and human dignity is the theistic one-in which we've been made by a personal, self-aware, purposeful, good God to resemble him in certain important ways.
In table 7.1, note how theism offers a superior explanatory context than naturalism to account for objective moral values, human dignity and other important phenomena we readily recognize or observe.
Theism is the more natural context for these features. Given materialistic, impersonal, nonconscious, valueless, deterministic processes, the atheist is hard pressed to account for personal, self-conscious, valuable, morally responsible persons. Theism offers a better fit, and this fit is one important basis for affirming one context (in this case, theism) and rejecting another (naturalism).
The reason theism makes more sense here is that personhood and morality are necessarily connected. That is, moral values are rooted in personhood. Without God (a personal Being), no persons-and thus no moral values-would exist at all. The moral argument points to a personal, good Being to whom we're responsible. Only if God exists can moral properties be realized or instantiated.
Table 7.1 Naturalism versus theism: which context best explains the phenomena we observe?
So when atheists like Martin10 appeal to objective ethical systems that make no reference to God (e.g., Immanuel Kant or Aristotle)," the theist can affirm much of what they have to say but show that their ethical systems are still incomplete, lacking sufficient grounding.
NONTHEISTS' RECOGNITION OF THE GOD-AND-MORALITY CONNECTION
What further reinforces the connection between God and objective morality is the fact that many atheists and skeptics have observed that a Godless world would entail an absence of objective moral values. But if objective moral values exist, then this would be an argument for God's existence.
Let's look at what some naturalists have said in this regard.
Bertrand Russell stood on the "firm foundation of unyielding despair. ,12 He claimed, "The whole subject of ethics arises from the pressure of the community on the individual.""
Agnostic philosopher Paul Draper agrees with Mackie: "A moral world is ... very probable on theism." 1'
Ethicist James Rachels insists, "Man is a moral (altruistic) being, not because he intuits the rightness of loving his neighbor, or because he responds to some noble ideal, but because his behavior is comprised of tendencies which natural selection has favoured. ,16
The list goes on and on.
That said, many theistic philosophers and theologians, past and present, have made the necessary connection between God's existence and objective moral values-that somehow God and objective moral values/human dignity are intrinsically connected.
Furthermore, Nielsen recognizes the inadequacy of grounding objective morality from a naturalistic point of view:
We have not been able to show that reason requires the moral point of view or that all really rational persons, unhoodwinked by myth or ideology, not be individual egoists or classic amoralists. Reason doesn't decide here.
There is an important connection between God and objective moral values. Negatively stated, naturalism/God's nonexistence entails that there are no objective moral values, and it is no surprise that many nontheists take this entailment for granted.
GOD AND EVOLUTIONARY ETHICS
The naturalist of Ruse's stripe might say to the theist, "You take moral belief as properly basic, but what if we're just hard-wired to believe what contributes to our fitness and survival? Belief in moral values helps us to survive and nothing more." I want to deal with this potential objection to the existence of objective moral values.
The evolutionary process is interested in fitness and survival, not in true belief.22 The problem with naturalistic evolution is that not only is objective morality undermined, but so is rational thought. Our beliefsmoral or epistemic-may help us survive, but there is no reason to think they are true.23
So we may believe that human beings are intrinsically valuable, and this belief may help homo sapiens to survive, but it may be wholly false. We may believe with full conviction that we have moral obligations, and this belief may help us survive, but it may be completely wrong. We may have the belief that our wills are free and that our choices do make a difference, but, again, we may be in serious error. If we are blindly hardwired by nature to accept certain beliefs because of their survival-enhancing value, then we would not have access to the truth-status of these beliefs. They may help us to survive, but how could we know whether they are true or false?
Every waking hour, we depend upon our rational faculties to make basic inferences and to guide us toward truth. We take our sense perceptions as basically reliable. Many of us assume moral intuitions to be generally trustworthy. But if we're hard-wired to reproduce and survive, then the reliability of our reason, sense perceptions and moral intuitions must be called into question. The scandal of such skepticism is this: I am relying on the very cognitive faculties whose unreliability is the conclusion of my skeptical argument.24 I am assuming a trustworthy reasoning process to arrive at the conclusion that I can't trust my reasoning.
Moreover, we believe lots of things that don't help us survive but are still true (e.g., the current temperature at the North Pole). The fact that we seek to know the truth about many things apart from their survival value indicates that we are living according to a theistic worldview rather than a naturalistic one. We have been made in the image of a truthful, rational Being. So it would make sense that we would be functioning properly when our cognitive faculties are directed at the truth. In our very nature, we are interested in more than just survival.
So the evolutionary ethics argument to explain away objective moral values is inadequate. Our basic moral intuitions-along with our faculties of reason and sense perception-are generally reliable (unless we're malfunctioning); there is no good reason to deny them. And if we claim that such basic beliefs should be questioned in the name of our impulse to survive and reproduce, then this skeptical conclusion is itself the result of those same impulses.
Naturalism does not inspire confidence in our belief-forming mechanisms. Indeed, naturalism has the potential to undermine our conviction that rationality and objective moral values exist. If our beliefs-moral or epistemic-are survival-enhancing byproducts of Darwinistic evolution, why think that we actually have dignity, rights and obligations-or that we are thinking rationally? A theistic worldview, by contrast, does assure us that we can know moral and rational truths-even if they may not contribute one whit to our survival.
THE EUTHYPHRO PROBLEM
In Plato's Euthyphro dialogue, Socrates asks, "Is what is holy holy because the gods approve it, or do they approve it because it is holy?"'s Skeptics like to raise this dilemma: Either (a) God's commands are arbitrary (something is good because God commands it-and he could have commanded "You shall murder/commit adultery") or (h) there must be some autonomous moral standard (which God consults in order to com- mand).2`' Are we left with divine "caprice," as Russell suggested,'' or with a moral standard completely independent of God?
Although God's commands may serve as a partial guide to living rightly (e.g., God's civil laws given at Mount Sinai to theocratic Israel), God's character is the more ultimate and underlying reality. Indeed, the final resolution to the Euthyphro dilemma is that God's good character/ nature sufficiently grounds objective morality. So we don't need to look elsewhere for such a standard. We have been made in the divine image, without which we would neither (a) be moral beings nor (b) have the capacity to recognize objective moral values.2 The ultimate solution to the Euthyphro dilemma shifts the grounding of morality from the commands of God to something more basic-that is, the nature or character of God. Thus, we human beings (who have been made to resemble God in certain ways) have the capacity to recognize them, and thus his commands-far from being arbitrary-are in accor- 29 dance with that nature.
The atheist may push the Euthyphro dilemma further by questioning whether the very character of God is good because it is God's character or it is God's character because it is good. Several responses are in order to this revised Euthyphro dilemma.
First, if a good God does not exist, why think that morally responsible, intrinsically valuable, rights-bearing beings would exist at all? Without God, moral properties would never be instantiated or realized. Personhood is the locus of objective moral values, and without God, no persons would exist. Contextually, theism-not naturalism-favors such moral obligations and human dignity.
Second, if the naturalist is correct, then she herself cannot escape a similar dilemma; her argument offers her no actual advantage. Atheist Robin Le Poidevin declares that "we can, apparently, only make sense of these doctrines [that God is good and wills us to do what is good] if we think of goodness as being defined independently of God. "3('But the theist could reply that we can make sense of these doctrines if humans have been made in the image of the Source of goodness. Further, we can ask the naturalistic moral realist: "Are these moral values good simply because they are good, or is there some independent standard of good to which they conform?" She faces the same alleged dilemma of arbitrariness or some (additional) autonomous standard. So it is difficult to see why the theist's stopping point-God-is arbitrary and the naturalist's is not. The sword cuts both ways. Le Poidevin's comment that we must think of goodness as defined independently of God is merely posited, and there's no good reason to accept it. And if we remember that two entities are sufficient to establish a relation-namely, God's character and objective moral values-the third, some standard independent of God to assess the connection between them, becomes superfluous.
Fourth, God, who is essentially perfect, does not have obligations to some external moral standard; God simply acts, and what he naturally does is good.3' The revised Euthyphro dilemma wrongly assumes God has moral obligations. If such an external standard existed, God would be obligated to it. But God's actions and will operate according to the divine nature. So God's goodness should not be viewed as his fulfilling moral obligations but as expressing the way he is: "No preliminary stage of checking the relevant principles is required. ,33
Fifth, the idea that God could be evil or command evil is utterly con trary to the very definition of God; otherwise, such a being would not he God and would not be worthy of worship. Worshiping God because of his great power or knowledge alone is inadequate. A being worthy of worship must also be essentially good. As Robert Adams states, `Belief in the existence of an evil or amoral God would be morally intolera ble.-34 So when atheists like Martin suggest God may be an evil being,3 this is a straw man.
In light of these points, there seems to be no good reason to see the Euthyphro dilemma as a serious threat to a theistically rooted ethic.
CONCLUSION
Unlike the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which takes human rights and moral obligations for granted, the Declaration of independence presents the essential grounding for human rights and dignity as being rooted in our Creator"-a personal Being who has made us in his image. Without God, there would be no moral values, no moral obligations, no human rights, no human dignity. Rist observes that there is "widely admitted to be a crisis in contemporary Western debate about ethical foundations."37 Without a return to the God of the JewishChristian tradition as the "infinite and necessarily good" Source of all finite goods, the crisis will only become more pronounced.
Fop, FURTHER READING
Beckwith, Francis 1., and Gregory P. Koukl. Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 1998.
Copan, Paul. "Atheistic Goodness Revisited: A Personal Reply to Michael Martin." Philosophia Christi n.s. 2/1 (2000): 91-104.
. "Is Michael Martin a Moral Realist? Sic et Non. - Philosophic Christi n.s. 1 (1999).
. "The Moral Argument," in The Rationality of Theism. Edited by Paul Copan and Paul K. Moser. London: Routledge, 2003.
Mavrodes, George I. "Religion and the Queerness of Morality," in Rationality, Religious Belief and Moral Commitment. Edited by Robert Audi and William Wainwright. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1986.
Moreland, J. P., and Kai Nielsen. "Does Ethics Need God?" in Do the Right Thing. Readings in Applied Ethics and Social Philosophy. Edited by Francis J. Beckwith. 2nd ed. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 2002.
IN 1078 A BENEDICTINE MONK NAMED ANSELM, LATER TO BECOME THE ARCHbishop of Canterbury, broached a novel and bold argument for the existence of God which has now fascinated philosophers for over a millennium. A year earlier, in 1077, Anselm had finished a treatise entitled the Monologium, a soliloquy in which he argued for the existence of God by means of moral and cosmological arguments. But Anselm remained dissatisfied with the complexity of his demonstration and yearned to find a single argument which would on its own prove that God exists in all his greatness. It was then that he hit upon the conception of God as "the greatest conceivable being" (aliquid quo nib ii mains cogitaripossit), which provided the key to his new argument. In his discourse entitled Proslogium Anselm argued that once a person truly understands the notion of a greatest conceivable being, then he will see that such being must exist, since if it did not, it would not be the greatest conceivable being. A greatest conceivable being must be an existent being. God's existence, then, is truly inconceivable for him who rightly understands the word God (Proslogium 2-3). For that reason the Scripture calls him who "hath said in his heart there is no God" a "fool" (Ps 14:1 KJv), for anyone who properly understands the word God will see that God cannot fail to exist.
Anselm's argument, which has come to be known as the ontological argument (from the Greek word ontos, "being"), went on to assume a variety of forms, being defended by such notable thinkers as Duns Scotus, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz and others. What is the common thread in all these arguments that makes them versions of the ontological argument? Although Graham Oppy in his very thorough study Ontological Arguments and Belief in God identifies six basic types of ontological argument, his identification of an argument as ontological is based on a criterion far too vague for useful classification (namely, an argument is a form of the ontological argument if it proceeds from considerations that are entirely internal to the theistic worldview).1 Rather the common thread in ontological arguments is that they try to deduce the existence of God from the very concept of God, together with certain other necessary truths. Proponents of the argument claim that once we understand what God is-the greatest conceivable being or the most perfect being or the most real being-then we shall see that such a being must in fact exist.
The argument tends to sharply polarize philosophers. Many would agree with Arthur Schopenhauer's dismissal of the argument as "a charming joke," but a number of recent, prominent philosophers such as Norman Malcolm, Charles Hartshorne and Alvin Plantinga not only take the argument seriously but even consider it to be sound. Since the formulation and defense of the argument provided by Plantinga are by far the most sophisticated in the long history of the ontological argument, profiting from the missteps and oversights of his predecessors, Plantinga's version of the argument has the best chance of being cogent and will therefore serve as the springboard for our discussion.
In his version of the argument, Plantinga appropriates the insight of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz that the ontological argument assumes that the concept of God is possible.' That is to say, the argument assumes that the concept "God" or "greatest conceivable being" is a coherent concept or, employing the semantics of possible worlds, that there is a possible world in which God exists.
For those who are unfamiliar with the semantics of possible worlds, we should explain that by "a possible world" one does not mean a planet or even a universe but rather a maximal description of reality or a way reality might be. Perhaps the best way to think of a possible world is as a huge conjunction p & q & r & s ... ("&" means "and"), whose individual conjuncts are the propositions p, q, r, s .... A possible world is a conjunction which comprises every proposition or its contradictory, so that it yields a maximal description of reality-nothing is left out of such a description. By negating different conjuncts in a maximal description (`'-means `it is not the case that"), we arrive at different possible worlds:
Only one of these descriptions will be composed of conjuncts all of which are true and so will be the way reality actually is, that is to say, the actual world.
Since we are talking about possible worlds, the various conjuncts which a possible world comprises must be capable of being true both individually and together. For example, the proposition Theprime minister is a prime number is not even possibly true, for numbers are abstract objects which could not conceivably be identical with a concrete object like the prime minister. Therefore, no possible world will have that proposition as one of its conjuncts. Such a proposition is necessarily false, that is to say, it is false in every possible world. By contrast, the proposition George McGovern is the president of the United States is false in the actual world but could be true and so is a component of some possible worlds. To say that George McGovern is the president of the United States in some possible world is to say that there is a maximal description of reality having the relevant proposition as one of its conjuncts. Similarly, to say that God exists in some possible world is to say that the proposition God exists is comprised by some maximal description of reality. Leibniz's insight into the ontological argument was that the argument assumes that the proposition "God exists" (or "A greatest conceivable being exists" or "A perfect being exists") is possibly true, that is to say, God exists in some possible world. For if the concept of God is incoherent or impossible, then the word God cannot possibly refer to anything, anymore than the words square circle could refer to something. The expression greatest conceivable being would in that case just be an incoherent combination of words.
Now in his version of the argument, Plantinga conceives of God as a being which is "maximally excellent" in every possible world. Plantinga takes maximal excellence to entail such excellent-making properties as omniscience, omnipotence and moral perfection. A being which has maximal excellence in every possible world would have what Plantinga calls "maximal greatness." Now the property of maximal greatness, Plantinga avers, is possibly exemplified, that is to say, there is a possible world in which a maximally great being exists. But then this being must exist in a maximally excellent way in every possible world, including the actual world. Therefore God exists.
Although Plantinga thinks that the ontological argument is sound and non-question-begging, still he did not initially regard it as "a successful piece of natural theology" because the key premise, "Possibly, maximal greatness is exemplified," can be rationally denied.3 Plantinga later confessed that he had set the bar for "success" in natural theology unreasonably high. He muses,
In fact, Plantinga believes that "the ontological argument provides as good grounds for the existence of God as does any serious philosophical argument for any important philosophical conclusion."' George Mavrodes rightly remarks, "But if natural theology can be that good, as good as the best arguments anywhere in serious philosophy, ... why should we not put forward these powerful arguments as proofs of God?"'
We can formulate Plantinga's version of the ontological argument as follows:
1. It is possible that a maximally great being exists.
2. If it is possible that a maximally great being exists, then a maximally great being exists in some possible world.
3. If a maximally great being exists in some possible world, then it exists in every possible world.
4. If a maximally great being exists in every possible world, then it exists in the actual world.
5. If a maximally great being exists in the actual world, then a maximally great being exists.
The principal issue to be settled with respect to Plantinga's ontological argument is what warrant exists for thinking the key premise "It is possible that a maximally great being exists" to be true. In dealing with this issue, it is crucial that we keep clear on the difference between metaphysical and merely epistemic possibility. One is tempted to say, "It's possible that God exists, and it's possible that he doesn't exist!" But this assertion is true only with respect to epistemic possibility: for all we know, God may exist or he may not exist. But if God is conceived as a maximally great being, then his existence is either necessary or impossible, regardless of our epistemic uncertainty. To illustrate: some extraordinarily difficult mathematical equation may be beyond our ability to grasp, and so we say that it is possible that the equation is true and it is possible that it is false. But we thereby merely confess our epistemic uncertainty concerning the equation's truth value. As a piece of mathematics, the equation itself is either necessarily true or necessarily false. In the same way, the epistemic entertainability of the ontological argument's key premise (or its denial) does not guarantee its metaphysical possibility.
That being said, however, it remains the case that the concept of a maximally great being is intuitively a coherent notion and, hence, it might he argued, possibly instantiated. In order for the ontological argument to fail, the concept of a maximally great being must he incoherent, like the concept of a married bachelor. The concept of a married bachelor is not a strictly self-contradictory concept (as is the concept of a married unmarried man), and yet it is obvious, once one understands the meaning of the words married and bachelor, that nothing corresponding to that concept can exist. By contrast, the concept of a maximally great being does not seem even remotely incoherent. This provides some prima facie warrant for thinking that it is possible that a maximally great being exists.
But will this appeal to intuition not lead to a sort of ontological overkill? One of the most important strategies employed by detractors of the ontological argument ever since Anslem's fellow monk Gaunilo wrote a response "On Behalf of the Fool" (who, it will be remembered, says that there is no God) has been the construction of parodies of the argument designed to defeat the prima facie warrant which the argument's main premise is said to enjoy. By showing that analogous notions like that of "a most perfect island" or "a necessarily existent lion" also seem prima facie to be coherent concepts, critics have tried to show that one is forced by the logic of the argument to postulate the existence of all sorts of ridiculous beings.
But the argument's defender may plausibly argue that the idea of God differs from supposedly parallel notions traditionally put forward by the argument's detractors. For one thing, the properties that go to make up maximal excellence as Plantinga defines it have intrinsic maximum values, whereas the excellent-making properties of things like islands do not. For example, omniscience is the property of knowing only and all truths. It is impossible to know any more truths than that. By contrast, in the case of islands, there could always be more palm trees or native dancing girls! Thus there cannot be a most perfect or greatest conceivable island. Moreover, it is far from clear that there even are objective excellent-making properties of things like islands, for the excellence of islands seems to be relative to one's interests-does one prefer a desert island or an island boasting the finest resort hotels?
The idea of something like a necessarily existent lion also seems incoherent. For as a necessary being, such a beast would have to exist in every possible world we can conceive. But any animal which could exist in a possible world in which the universe is composed wholly of a singularity of infinite space-time curvature, density and temperature just is not a lion. By contrast, a maximally excellent being, if it is immaterial, could transcend such physical limitations and so be conceived as necessarily existent.
Perhaps the greatest challenge to the appeal to intuition to warrant the premise that maximal greatness is possibly exemplified is that it seems intuitively coherent in the same way to conceive of a quasi-maximally great being-for example, one which is in every other respect maximally excellent save that it does not know truths about future contingents (for example, the truth about what you will be doing ten years from now). Why is the key premise of the ontological argument more plausibly true than a parallel premise "It is possible that a quasi-maximally great being exists"? If we are warranted in thinking that a maximally great being exists, are we not equally warranted in thinking that a quasi-maximally great being exists?
Perhaps not; for maximal greatness is logically incompatible with quasi-maximal greatness. Since a maximally great being is by definition omnipotent, no concrete object can exist independently of its creative power. As an omnipotent being, a maximally great being must have the power to freely refrain from creating anything at all, so that there must be possible worlds in which nothing other than the maximally great being exists. But that entails that if maximal greatness is possibly exemplified, then quasi-maximal greatness is not. A quasi-excellent being may exist in many worlds (worlds in which the maximally great being has chosen to create it), but such a being would lack necessary existence and thus not be quasi-maximally great. Hence, if maximal greatness is possibly exemplified, quasi-maximal greatness is impossible. Thus our intuition that a maximally great being is possible is not undermined by the claim that a quasi-maximally great being is also intuitively possible, for we see that the latter intuition depends on the assumption that a maximally great being cannot possibly exist, which begs the question.
Still, modal skeptics will insist that we have no way of knowing a priori whether maximal greatness or quasi-maximal greatness is possibly exemplified. It cannot be both, but we have no idea if either is possible. Our intuitions about modality are unreliable guides. In the face of such skepticism, can anything more be said in defense of the ontological argument's key premise? Plantinga provides a clue when he says that if we "carefully ponder" the key premise and the alleged objections to it, if we "consider its connections with other propositions we accept or reject" and we still find it compelling, then we are within our rational rights in accepting it.' Such a procedure is a far cry from the sort of a priori speculations decried by the modal skeptic. Even if we cannot determine a priori whether maximal greatness is possibly exemplified, we may come to believe on the basis of a posteriori considerations that it is possible that a maximally great being exists.
1. Every existing thing has an explanation of its existence, either in the necessity of its own nature or in an external cause.
2. If the universe has an explanation of its existence, that explanation is God.
3. The universe is an existing thing.
4. Therefore the explanation of the existence of the universe is God.
Many philosophers have objected to Leibniz's own formulation of the argument because his Principle of Sufficient Reason that "no fact can be real or existent, no statement true, unless there be a sufficient reason why it is so and not otherwise"9 seems too strong to he plausible. Some theists such as Richard Swinburne have responded to this objection by agreeing that one must ultimately come to some explanatory stopping point which is simply a brute contingent, which they identify as God. But the above formulation of the Leibnizian argument avoids the objection without retreating to the dubious position that God is a contingent being. For premise 1 merely requires any existing thing to have an explanation of its existence, either in the necessity of its own nature or in some external cause. This premise is compatible with there being brute facts or states of affairs about the world. What it precludes is that there could exist things-substances exemplifying properties-which just exist inexplicably. This principle seems quite plausible, at least more so than its contradictory, which is all that is required for a successful argument. On this analysis, there are two kinds of beings: necessary beings, which exist of their own nature and so have no external cause of their existence, and contingent beings, whose existence is accounted for by causal factors outside themselves. Numbers might he prime candidates for the first sort of being, while familiar physical objects fall under the second kind of being.
Premise 2 is, in effect, the contrapositive of the typical atheist response to Leihniz that on the atheistic worldview the universe simply exists as a brute contingent thing. Atheists typically assert that, there being no God, it is false that everything has an explanation of its existence, for the universe, in this case, just exists inexplicably. In so saying, the atheist implicitly recognizes that if the universe has an explanation, then God exists as its explanatory ground. This premise also seems quite plausible in its own right, for since the universe, by definition, includes all of physical reality, its explanation must be found in some external, transcendent cause which exists beyond space and time. The only things we know of that could possess such a mode of existence are either abstract objects or a mind. But abstract objects do not stand in causal relations. So the cause of the universe must be found in a transcendent mind. This is what we normally mean by God.
Finally, premise 3 states the obvious, that there is a universe.10 Since the universe is obviously an existing thing (especially evident in its very early stages when its density was so extreme) possessing many unique properties such as a certain density, pressure, temperature, space-time curvature, and so on, it follows that God exists and does so by a necessity of his own nature, that is to say, God is a metaphysically necessary being.
A plausible version of the moral argument may be formulated as follows:
1. If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.
2. Objective moral values and duties do exist.
3. Therefore God exists.
Consider premise 1. If God does not exist, then what is the foundation for moral values? More particularly, what is the basis for the value of human beings? If God does not exist, then it is difficult to see any reason to think that human beings are special or that their morality is objectively valid. Moreover, why think that we have any moral obligations to do anything? Who or what imposes moral duties upon us? As a result of socio-biological pressures, there has evolved among homo sapiens a sort of herd morality which functions well in the perpetuation of our species in the struggle for survival. But if there is no God, then any ground for regarding the herd morality evolved by homo sapiens as objectively true seems to have been removed. Human beings are just accidental byproducts of nature which have evolved relatively recently on an infinitesimal speck of dust lost somewhere in a hostile and mindless universe and which are doomed to perish individually and collectively in a relatively short time. Some action, say, rape, may not be socially advantageous and so in the course of human evolution has become taboo; but on the athe istic view it is difficult to see why there is really anything wrong about raping someone. Crudely put, on the atheistic view human beings are just animals, relatively advanced primates; and animals are not moral agents.
Few philosophers have the stomach for the moral nihilism which atheism seems to imply. Many therefore try to salvage the existence of objective moral principles or properties in the context of a naturalistic worldview. But the advocates of such theories are typically at a loss to justify their starting point. If their approach to metaethical theory is to be serious metaphysics rather than just a shopping list approach, whereby one simply helps oneself to the moral properties or principles needed to do the job, then some sort of explanation is required for why moral properties supervene on certain natural states or why such principles are true. It is insufficient for the naturalist to point out that we do, in fact, apprehend the goodness of some feature of human existence, for that only goes to establish the objectivity of moral values and duties, which the proponent of the moral argument is eager to affirm.
Much more deserves to be said about this," but if we do think that objective moral values exist, as premise 2 states, then we shall be led logically to the conclusion that God exists. And surely we do apprehend a realm of objective moral values. There is no more reason to deny the objective reality of moral values than the objective reality of the physical world. If moral values are gradually discovered rather than invented, then our gradual and fallible apprehension of the moral realm no more undermines the objective reality of that realm than our gradual, fallible perception of the physical world undermines the objectivity of that realm. The best way to make sense of our moral obligations is in terms of agreement or disagreement of certain acts with the will or commands of an essentially holy and loving God.
Now the interesting thing about moral principles is that at least some of them seem to be necessary truths. As one naturalist philosopher confesses, "The man who says that it is morally acceptable to rape little children is just as mistaken as the man who says, 2+2=5."12 Hence, if God's nature and will ground such necessary moral principles, it follows that God exists not just in the actual world but in every possible world, that is to say, his existence is necessary.
Moreover, we may find ourselves persuaded by a conceptualist argument for God's existence that the best metaphysical grounding for the existence of abstract objects is an infinite mind whose concepts they are. Such an argument might be formulated as follows:
1. Abstract objects, such as numbers and propositions, are either independently existing realities or else concepts in some mind.
2. Abstract objects are not independently existing realities.
3. If abstract objects are concepts in some mind, then an omniscient, metaphysically necessary being exists.
4. Therefore an omniscient, metaphysically necessary being exists.
A defense of premise 1 will involve a refutation of nominalism, the view that abstract objects do not exist at all. Premise 2 rejects Platonism with respect to abstract objects, most plausibly on the grounds of their causal isolation and hence irrelevance to what exists or transpires in the world. Premise 3 excludes the grounding of abstract objects in some human mind, for there are too many such objects to be grounded in anything less than an infinite intelligence, and since many of these objects exist necessarily, they cannot in any case be grounded in the mind of a merely contingent being. Thus one is brought to the existence of an omniscient, necessary mind as the foundation of the existence of abstract objects.
Thus the cosmological argument leads to a metaphysically necessary being which is the ground of existence for any concrete reality, the moral argument to a locus of moral value which must be as metaphysically necessary as the moral values it grounds, and the conceptualist argument to an omniscient, metaphysically necessary intelligence as the foundation of abstract objects.
Considerations of simplicity might also come into play here. For example, it is simpler to posit one metaphysically necessary, infinite, omniscient, morally perfect being than to think that three separate neces sary beings exist exemplifying these respective excellent-making properties. Similarly, with respect to quasi-maximally great beings, Swinburne's contention seems plausible that it is simpler (or perhaps less ad hoc) to posit either zero or infinity as the measure of a degreed property than to posit some inexplicably finite measure. Thus it would be more plausible to think that maximal greatness is possibly instantiated than quasi-maximal greatness. On the basis of considerations like these, we might well consider ourselves to be warranted in believing that it is possible that a maximally great being exists.
The question which arises at this point is whether the ontological argument has not then become question begging. An argument is question begging if one's only reason for accepting a premise in the argument is that one already accepts the conclusion, so that one in effect reasons in a circle. In the present case it might seem that the reason one thinks that it is possible that a maximally great being exists is that one has good reasons to think that a maximally great being does exist.
But this misgiving may arise as a result of thinking of the project of natural theology in too linear a fashion. The theistic arguments need not he taken to he like links in a chain, in which one link follows another so that the chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Rather they are like links in a coat of chain mail, in which all the links reinforce one another so that the strength of the whole exceeds that of any single link. The ontological argument might play its part in a cumulative case for theism, in which a multitude of factors simultaneously conspire to lead one to the global conclusion that God exists. In that sense Anselm was wrong in thinking that he had discovered a single argument which, standing independently of all the rest, served to demonstrate God's existence in all his greatness. Nevertheless, his argument does encapsulate the thrust of all the arguments together to show that God, the Supreme Being, exists.
FOR FURTHER READING
Davis, Stephen. "The Ontological Argument." In The Rationality gf'Theism. Edited by Paul Copan and Paul K. Moser. London: Routledge, 2003.
Geisler, Norman L. "The Missing Premise in the Ontological Argument." Religious Studies 9, no. 3 (September 1973).
Hick, John H., and Arthur C. McGill. The Many faced Argument. New York: Macmillan, 1967.
Oppy, Graham. Ontological Arguments and Belief in God. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Plantinga, Alvin. The Nature of Necessity. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974.
Plantings, Alvin, ecl. The OntologicalArgument. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1965.
IN 1985 A PROMINENT NEW TESTAMENT SCHOLAR NAMED ROBERT FUNK founded a think tank in Southern California which he called the Jesus Seminar. The ostensible purpose of the seminar was to uncover the historical person Jesus of Nazareth using the best methods of scientific, biblical criticism. In Funk's view the historical Jesus has been so overlaid by Christian legend, myth and metaphysics that he scarcely resembles the Christ figure presented in the Gospels and worshiped by the church today. The goal of the seminar was to strip away these layers and to recover the Jesus who really lived and taught.
The historical Jesus uncovered by the seminar turns out to have been a sort of itinerant social critic, the Jewish equivalent of a Greek Cynic philosopher. He never claimed to be the Son of God or to forgive sins or to inaugurate a new covenant between God and man. His crucifixion was an accident of history; his corpse was probably thrown into a shallow dirt grave where it rotted away or was eaten by wild dogs.
Now if these conclusions are correct, we who are Christians today are the victims of a massive delusion. To continue to worship Jesus today in light of these conclusions would be either idolatry or mythology-idolatry if we worship the merely human figure who actually lived, mythology if we worship the figment of the church's imagination. None of us, I hazard to think, wants to be either an idolater or a mythologizer. Therefore it is of utmost importance to assess whether the claims of the radical critics are true.
Crucial to any examination of the historical Jesus will be the question of presuppositions. Skeptical critics, like those in the Jesus Seminar, have certain presuppositions which determine how they look at the evidence. Fortunately, scholars in the Jesus Seminar have been commendably forthright in stating some of their presuppositions. The introduction to the seminar publication The Five Gospels states:
This is an expression of scientific naturalism, which holds that every event in the world has a natural cause. There are no events with supernatural causes. In other words, miracles cannot happen.
But why, we might ask, must we in a scientific age presuppose a purely naturalistic Jesus? After all, a good many scientists are Christian believers, and contemporary physics shows itself quite open to the possibility of realities which lie outside the domain of physics. What justification is there for a purely naturalistic approach to Jesus of Nazareth?
Now consider carefully what the Jesus Seminar says about Strauss: "Strauss distinguished what he called the `mythical' (defined by him as anything legendary or supernatural) in the Gospels from the historical. ... The choice Strauss posed in his assessment of the Gospels was between the supernatural Jesus-the Christ of faith-and the historical Jesus. "4
Anything that is supernatural is by definition not historical. No argument is given for that conclusion; it is simply a matter of definition. As a result we have a radical divorce between the Christ of faith, or the su pernatural Jesus, and the real, historical Jesus. The Jesus Seminar gives a ringing endorsement of Strauss's bifurcation: they say that the distinction between the historical Jesus and the Christ of faith is "the first pillar of scholarly wisdom." s
But now the whole quest of the historical Jesus becomes a charade. If we begin by presupposing naturalism, then of course what we wind up with is a purely natural Jesus. This reconstructed, naturalistic Jesus is not based on evidence but on mere definition. What is remarkable is that the Jesus Seminar makes no attempt at all to defend this naturalism; it is just presupposed.
If we are at least open to supernaturalism, then miraculous events cannot be ruled out in advance. We have to be open to looking honestly at the evidence that they occurred.' In fact, if we do not presuppose natu ralism, then the Gospels come out looking pretty good as historical sources for the life of Jesus. R. T. France, a British New Testament scholar, has written,
In other words, skepticism about the Gospels is not based so much on historical considerations as on the presupposition of naturalism.
In this section of the book we shall examine the feasibility of investigating the historical Jesus without the prejudicial assumption of naturalism, as well as the self-understanding of the historical Jesus and finally the credibility of his resurrection as an event of history.
WHEN THE C'HRISTOLOGY OFJESUS WAS WRITTEN NOW ALMOST FIFTEEN YEARS ago,' the reaction of scholars was predictably mixed. There was some awkward silence, there was some enthusiastic acceptance, and there was some rather vehement rejection..I remember well the wry smile of one member of the SNTS (Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas) Historical Jesus section when I suggested the christology of Jesus as a topic for discussion. It was assumed that Rudolf Bultmann had long ago pronounced the benediction on this topic when he said that we could know next to nothing with any certainty about the historical Jesus other than that he was crucified under Pontius Pilate. As things have turned out, quite a lot of New Testament scholars, including a wide variety of contributors to the Third Quest for the Historical Jesus, have chosen to disagree with Bultmann not only in general about the historical Jesus but on the specific question of Jesus' self-understanding. To choose but one example, John P. Meier has argued, as I did, that there is much to be learned about Jesus' self-understanding by examining him in his relationships with various other significant figures such as John the Baptist, the Pharisees and the first disciples.3
One of the questions I have pondered a good deal of late is whether we really have framed the questions about Jesus' relationships properly. Have we not simply assumed that ancient persons related to one another much as we do today? Have we not presumed that ancient persons and personality were not essentially different from ourselves and our personas, and thus that we can evaluate Jesus as if he were a candidate for modern or postmodern western psychological evaluation?4 The problem of anachronism has all too often been insufficiently conjured with, even though we know that nurture as well as nature, culture as well as genetics affect the sort of person one turns out to be. It is in this area of the social and cultural conditioning of human personality that I think the exploration of Jesus' self-understanding has been lacking. I propose then in this study to do two things: to try to more closely focus the discussion of Jesus in his social context and relationships and to try and make some introductory suggestions about how this sort of social data and approach might illuminate the discussion of the so-called christological titles found in the Synoptic Gospels.
To KNOW AS ONE Is KNOWN
One of the areas in which distinct progress has been made in Gospel studies since The Christology of Jesus was written is in genre studies. The crucial work of R. A. Burridge has provided a strong case that at least three of the four Gospels fall into the category of ancient GrecoRoman biographies.' One of the most striking features of these sorts of ancient biographical works, whether one thinks of Plutarch's Lives or Josephus's Lye of Apion or Tacitus's Agricola or Mark's Gospel, is that instead of presenting womb-to-tomb analyses of the development of a particular human personality, the authors regularly assume that a per son's character does not develop over time. To the contrary, time is thought to simply reveal the character a person has always had. Human personality was viewed as static, and therefore a change in one's personality, a conversion or chameleon-like behavior would be viewed with extreme skepticism by most. Knowing what we now know on this front, it becomes very difficult to psychoanalyze Jesus on the basis of texts that by and large don't believe in developmental theories of personality and do not present us with anything like adequate data about things such as Jesus' "early childhood influences."" What we can say about the historical Jesus must stand or fall on the data of what is revealed in the Gospels about the adult Jesus during the last three or so years of his life. It is not the stuff of modern biographical portraits, for it provides us few opportunities to speculate about how he grew or changed over time.
The study of ancient Mediterranean persons and personalities reveals that it was assumed that normal persons were not what we'd call unique individuals but rather mirrors of the virtues and vices, the strengths and flaws of some particular ancient group. What we might call stereotypes, ancients would see as character types or traits that explain both individuals and the groups of which they are a part. The remarks we find at Titus 1:12, "Cretans are always liars, vicious brutes, lazy gluttons" (a quotation from a famous Cretan no less), and at John 1:46 are frankly typical of this sort of ancient literature. Human identity was established by the group and was confirmed to the individual by members of the group. Life was not by and large about establishing one's unique place in the world, discovering one's distinctive character or making personal claims for oneself.
In antiquity it was widely assumed that gender, generation and geog raphy for the most part determined one's identity,' and with good reason. Corporate or group identity rather than individual identity was primary. A person who sought to stand out from his ethnic, familial, geographical or gender group was seen as a deviant, not as a person simply being himself. In this sort of environment, even a remarkable and somewhat distinctive person like Jesus would seek to identify himself by indicating the relationships that were formative for him and would seek to have his identity confirmed to him by his most intimate dialogue partners since it was normal that someone other than oneself had a crucial say in who one was and could be (cf., e.g., Mk 1:11; 8:27-30).
As it turns out there is nothing very surprising about a first-century person choosing only to speak indirectly or eliptically about himself, if at all. This is what one would expect in a culture where corporate identity was not merely prominent but dominant. If Mark's messianic secret and silencing motif does to some degree go back to the historical Jesus' situation, it would not suggest that Jesus had doubts about his identity or was seeking to veil it or was being coy. It would merely indicate that Jesus was an ancient person who played out his life in a setting where whose child one was was far more important than who one was (in one's inner self or uniqueness).
Something must be said at this juncture about Jesus as a change agent in a patriarchal world and then about Jesus' relationships with his family. It has become a commonplace of discussion of Jesus' environment that he lived in a male-dominated and androcentric world. Slim evidence to the contrary, coming from Jewish colonies outside of Israel, does not change the basic picture that has been usually painted of Galilee and Judea." I know of no evidence of women as synagogue leaders or elders or teachers of Torah with disciples in the Holy Land prior to or during the time of Jesus. Still extant traditional Near Eastern or Far Eastern cultures in our world are far closer analogies to what we find in Jesus' en vironment than anything in the West today. In this sort of environment it is no surprise that Jesus had twelve male disciples as his inner circle. What is very surprising is that he also apparently had various women disciples, something that would have scandalized many in his setting.
Clearly enough, Jesus was not a person who simply followed the flow of his culture, but equally clearly he was able to relate to others in this male-dominated environment, and in various cases do so successfully. This must tell us something about how Jesus viewed himself and his place in his Jewish world. His social approach to relationships was such that he could relate well to both men and women and could attract both men and women to his circle of disciples. This is in part why I have suggested in my earlier work on women in Jesus' ministry that he must be seen as some sort of reformer within Judaism, creating a community with differing values within that society, not a revolutionary building base camps in Galilean villages in preparation for a revolt against the dominant Roman or client king power structures.1° He is eschatological and theocratic in orientation in a somewhat similar fashion to the way the Qumran community was and unlike the way the Zealots were."
One must admit that in Jesus' culture his gender is probably a reason why he was able to attract a following of both men and women in his social setting, why he was able to be a public person and build his social network as he did, why he was able to conjure up conjectures by various people about whether he was some sort of a messianic figure or not. Note, however, that his own teaching and way of relating suggests that he believed that the inbreaking dominion of God was in the process of changing some of the social stereotypes and constrictions that especially plagued women and other subordinant members of society in this culture. This Jesus still does not fit neatly into modern pigeonholes of chauvinist or feminist.
If his gender may have been something of an asset as he strove to be some sort of leader figure in Israel, Jesus' geographical location and family connections would seem to have been liabilities on the whole. Jesus lived in a culture where people had no last names to distinguish them from others. Rather a patronymic or a geographical tag was used to distinguish one person from another who had the same personal name. From start to finish in the Gospels Jesus is regularly identified as Jesus of Nazareth (e.g., Jn 1:45-46; Mk 16:6). This cannot be accidental. The initial impression for some will have been that this determined his identity, and more specifically it ruled out any likelihood of Jesus being some kind of messianic figure (Jn 1:46). Yet what is striking is that in spite of this geographical tag, Jesus managed to raise eyebrows and messianic questions anyway. This suggests, albeit in an indirect fashion, that Jesus' words, deeds and relationships must have been extraordinarily suggestive to overcome this sort of geographical identity marker. Surely no one was looking for God's eschatological Anointed One to come from a backwater town in Galilee like Nazareth, and yet Jesus' followers enshrined this part of his identity repeatedly in the Gospels. One must ask how Jesus overcame this geographical determinism to still stir up hopes and fears, curses and blessings during his ministry. That Jesus was not simply dismissed by all and sundry suggests he did overcome this initial obstacle, at least in the minds of some.
Perhaps most importantly there is the whole question of Jesus' family. What do we make of the fact that Jesus is rarely identified by a patronymic, indeed is sometimes identified by a matronymic, in a culture where the question, who is your father and/or mother? was always critical to figuring out the identity of someone? True enough, we have texts like John 1:45 or the variant reading in Mark 6:3, but in both cases it would appear that we are meant to think that those speaking are not necessarily in the best position to know the full truth about Jesus' rela tionship with Mary's husband, Joseph. Indeed, both texts are laden with irony, for in Mark 6 the hometown crowd goes on to reject Jesus on the basis of what they think they know about his true identity, and in John 1 we have just begun a Gospel-long trek through various attempts to properly name Jesus, a trek that does not come to a fully satisfactory conclusion until finally a confession of Thomas in John 20 matches up with that of the prologue in John 1.12
Furthermore, the most likely reading in Mark 6:3 is "the carpenter, the son of Mary," and there is some reason to suspect that this is meant as a disparaging identity statement.13 In this sort of setting, when a man's parentage was either open to disparaging remarks or open to question, or the issue was left open, it is very hard to see how Jesus could have suggested to anyone that he might be a messianic figure unless there was something dramatically impressive about his words, deeds and relationships that suggested that the identity markers of geography and generation would prove inadequate in his case. The overcoming of traditional identity markers and boundaries is a telltale sign that Jesus did not present himself as just one of the crowd.
If we probe a bit further in regard to Jesus' relationship with his family, note that it is plainly admitted in both the Synoptic and Johannine traditions that there was a certain distance between Jesus and his family during his ministry (Mk 3:21, 31-35; in 7:5); indeed they could not really be said to be followers of Jesus at this time. This is frankly a shocking admission in an environment where family, including extended family, was perhaps the chief building block of Jewish society and where, after the death of a father, the eldest son, in this case presumably Jesus, would be expected to take over as head of the kinship group. This was a critical matter in the times in which Jesus lived, precisely because, as Richard Horsley has suggested, there was enormous pressure on such lower- or artisan-class family units in Galilee and elsewhere in Israel because of the way the economy worked in Jesus' day and the pressures brought to bear on the economy by tax farmers, client rulers and others trying to raise funds to satisfy the various demands for taxes.
To make matters worse, the Gospels suggest that Jesus actually befriended some of the tax and toll collectors in the region, even discipling some. This would surely have been seen as a betrayal by many Jews, perhaps even by members of Jesus' own family.14 What one must ask is, How did Jesus during his itinerant ministry overcome the negative stigma of being considered a bad Jew, one who was a social deviant, one who associated with the wrong sorts of people, one who did not properly honor his parents and family by living among them and serving them? How, in spite of the fact that the text freely admits that Jesus apparently refused to be taken home by his family when he was causing too much controversy (Mk 3:31-35), did Jesus implant positive impressions in the minds and hearts of early Jews that suggested to some of them that he was a messianic figure?'' Again, the more we know about the social matrix out of which Jesus came, the more it looks likely that Jesus must indeed have made some sort of messianic claims, indirectly or directly, to overcome so much and so many ordinary ancient beliefs about what established identity.
It needs to be understood that it was expected to some degree that prophets and kingly figures and sages would deviate somewhat from the norm. For example, John the Baptist would still be seen by many in Israel as a true prophet despite his abnormal lifestyle. I would argue that only a strongly implanted suggestion during Jesus' lifetime that Jesus was more than an ordinary person, that he was at least some sort of prophet or sage or messianic figure, could have likely overcome all these obstacles, including especially the crucifixion, and could have led those who knew Jesus before his death to proclaim him after the Easter events as the Jewish messiah.'6
We must ask then, what sort of person in this androcentric culture built on extended families leaves home and family; itinerates with women and men; calls his own followers his family; fraternizes with women, slaves, minors, tax collectors; and overcomes geographical and familial drawbacks to announce the arrival of the dominion of God? With this set of credentials and list of activities it is not surprising so many saw Jesus as someone out of the ordinary either in a good way or a bad way; lT what is surprising is that the positive viewpoint prevailed even after Jesus' execution.
The so-called big bang theory of Easter, which suggests that the appearances of Jesus are what created much of the later christological speculation, does not account for the social matters we have just discussed, it does not adequately deal with Jesus in his own social setting, and it is especially inadequate to deal with the fact that the first postEaster witnesses for Jesus had previously been pre-Easter followers of Jesus whose hopes had been shattered, as the Gospels freely admit, on Good Friday (e.g., Lk 24:21). Note too that the social networks of Jesus continued to operate for him after his death. Indeed, to judge from Acts 1:14, the previously unpersuaded family members become persuaded. An adequate explanation must be given for all these remarkable facts. Bearing these things in mind we turn to the so-called titles of Christ.
ENTITLED TO A NAME
Naming in antiquity was not very much like modern practices where a husband and wife gather together a list of names they like the sound of or family names they are partial to and then choose a moniker for their child. It was often and widely assumed in antiquity that a name, and perhaps especially a nickname or self-chosen form of identification, revealed something about someone's nature. Names were not mere distin guishing labels in antiquity. They were badges of honor or dishonor. And the exercise of naming established a social relationship of power flowing in a particular direction from one person to another (e.g., Mk 1:11; Mt 16:16-17). This process is different from title or honor recognition or from name calling in the pejorative sense (e.g., Jn 8:48). It needs to be seen then that the titles Son of man, Son of God, Lord and Christ are not names for Jesus or names that Jesus uses. Nor are they mere labels. In each case they are honor claims, and they are relational in character.
The first of these perhaps deserves the closest scrutiny. Whatever else one may wish to say about the endlessly debated phrase bar enasha, it is clear enough that it is not a proper name, nor is it a nickname, in Daniel 7 or in the Gospels. In Daniel 7 it is intended as a description, functioning as part of an analogy. Furthermore it says something about the person in question in his relationship to human beings. Like other such Semitic phrases that characterize using the phrase "son of" and then a qualifier, the qualifier is meant to inform us about something crucial or definitive that characterizes or shapes the person in question. For example, the phrase Boanerges, or sons of thunder, was meant to tell us something about the Zebedees that shaped or characterized them in their actions or attitudes or words, just as the phrases "sons of light" and "sons of darkness" in the Qumran literature indicate persons whose lives are charaterized by either one or the other of these qualities. The idea is that an outside force or group is shaping or defining a person's identity.
In Daniel 7 the phrase bar enasha must be exegeted in the larger context of what is suggested about the evil empires discussed in the previous chapters-namely, that they are beastly in character compared to this figure which comes into the presence of God. The one "like a son of man" has a human face and can truly represent human beings, particularly God's people, in the presence of God. He is representative of these human beings (hence he is said to be like them), and he represents them. He in turn is given tasks and dominion somewhat reminiscent of those given Adam (cf. Dan 7:14 to Gen 1:28).
Perhaps then the first question to be asked about Jesus' use of the phrase bar enasha of himself, especially when coupled with his regular pronouncements about God's dominion, is this-why did he most often choose these terms to identify himself instead of for instance the phrase "son of David"?'8 The latter would have more clearly had a messianic ring to it at least in some quarters. Perhaps the answer lies in the fact that Jesus believed that he represented humankind with a different vision of kingdom than that of the beastly kingdoms. God's dominion which Jesus would proclaim and seek to inaugurate would be a place where things dehumanizing would have no place and where even the least, last and lost would be able to be all they were meant to he. In other words, "Son of man" is a relational phrase, but it indicates that Jesus saw himself not as defined or characterized by humanness as opposed to divineness but rather, to judge from Daniel 7, by humanness as opposed to subhumanness or beastliness, especially in the form of the structured evil found in empires and their tyrannical rulers. To put it another way, the coming of God's dominion was about humanity gone right in the Son of man, as opposed to humanity gone beastly and wrong in Adam and his kin, or perhaps more nearly in Jesus' day in Caesar and his kin or in Herod and his. This is what God had promised to his oppressed people in Daniel 7.
The second phrase, "Son of God," will of course be more controversial, but it needs to be said that this is a phrase that the Synoptics all suggest Jesus first had applied to him by an outside source-namely, by a voice from heaven at his baptism (Mk 1:11 and par.).19 This phrase is of course known to have messianic overtones from the discoveries in cave 4 at Qumran ,21) but here we are talking about the act of being named by a divine Power. Identity is being confirmed or established through this experience, and it is suggested that who Jesus is will perhaps hest he revealed by the sort of relationship he has with God. It is in this light that the shorter phrase "the Son" or the use of the term Abba take on fresh meaning.
We are being told that if one wants to know who Jesus is one should contemplate how he relates to and names God and how as a basis of that he sees himself as being named by God. One is not Son of God in isolation but rather in constant relationship to the divine. It is this idea, rather than his being son of Joseph or Son of David, that characterized Jesus and how he viewed himself. Like other ancients he is named by others, and like other ancients he identifies himself by the group he sees himself representing. Yet for Jesus it is not finally gender, geography or ethnic generation that are the determinants but rather even more basic determinants both human and divine.
In many ways the scene we find in Mark 8:27-30 is a typical ancient naming story. Rather than Jesus telling his disciples who he is, he asks them what the word is on the street, so to speak. Having heard that answer he then asks the disciples directly what they think. Their response represented by Peter is said to be that they thought Jesus was God's Anointed One, that is, the person especially endued by God with power and mission to bring in God's reign among God's people. Once again this is not a case of Jesus making a claim and then responding to challenges. Jesus operates like other ancients and is told how he is viewed and then can concur or disagree or conclude the discussion. In the earliest form of this story in Mark, Jesus would appear not to disagree with the disciple's suggestion, but it is treated as a dangerous suggestion and apparently because of this is silenced. It is notable that it is this title that is closest to what seems to have appeared on the titulus at Jesus' death.
What would it have meant for Jesus to accept the acclamation that he was God's Anointed One, as he apparently did on this or some other occasion? It would mean that he recognized that his commission, his mission, his power, his authority came from God, and that he had certain eschatological tasks to perform for God and on behalf of God's people as a royal figure. It is telling that this term mashiach, which would more narrowly limit Jesus' scope to his relationship to Israel, is not his own preferred phrase of self-designation.2' Yet he appears not to have simply rejected the suggestion that there was a certain appro priateness in claiming this relationship for Jesus.
Lastly, there is the term Lord. Apart from the fact that Jesus may have been called mare as a teacher or Jewish leader, indicating he was a respected figure, there is no suggestion in the Synoptics that Jesus was named this by others during his ministry with a meaning other than in the mundane sense of the term. It does, however, appear that Jesus may well have prompted such an exalted form of naming after he engaged in debate with other Jewish leaders about the significance of Psalm 110:1. Perhaps Jesus in this debate was suggesting that Davidic connections were not necessarily the most crucial issue when one is talking about one who is David's Lord (Mk 12:35-37 and par.). If this is so, it would comport with Jesus' efforts elsewhere to make clear that generation and geography should not be the final determinants of identity for someone such as this person that the Scriptures describe. In short, it would make clear that Jesus was acting as an ancient person and dealing with relational language in a way that his social world would find understandable. A great deal more could be said along these lines, but it will be appropriate to draw some conclusions at this point.
CONCLUSIONS: AND SO?
It is no accident that all the major titles used of Jesus in the Synoptics (Son of Man, Son of God, Christ, Lord) refer to relationships that Jesus was believed to have had and must be understood as relational in meaning and character. One can be a Son only in relationship to another or others, one can be an Anointed One only in relationship to an Anointer, and finally one can he a Lord only in relationship to some subjects. These titles attempt to tell us who Jesus was, not in isolation but in his social and religious relationships. The christological issue is framed in this fashion because of the social contours of the world out of which both Jesus and the Gospels came.
Whether we call it dyadic personality, as modern sociologists would, or group-formed identity, the christological discussions in the Gospels clearly manifest a world where who a person was was largely determined by whose child one was, what group one was an indigenous part of and what locale one lived in. Into this world where gender, generation and geography were major determinants of identity came Jesus, who, at least in regard to the matter of generation and geography, seems to have chosen to swim against the current. Then too he rejects various of the basic assumptions about what roles are appropriate in Jewish society for men and women. This is not because he could even remotely be thought of as being like a late-twentieth-century Western individual. It is because Jesus chose a different sort of social network in which to flesh out his identity, one where he would be primarily and properly named by God and by his own disciples, and by himself rather than by his parents, his home town folks or even his fellow male leaders in early Judaism. It is the way Jesus modifies the social assumptions and networks of his day that reveals, more than any ordinary close scrutiny of titles could, that Jesus stood out from the crowd, chose to create his own community or family and thereby made at least implicit and indirect claims about himself that were rightly interpreted by the earliest Christians as messianic or christological in character.
Jesus did not come on the scene of first-century Judaism to conform to anyone's preconceived expectations about prophets, sages or messiahs, much less to ours at the end of the twentieth century. He came to make known something about God and something about humankind and something about their interrelationship in the crucible of a volatile environment in which proclamations about the intervening saving reign of God were dangerous and could get one crucified because of what such messages implied about one's own relationships of power to both God and God's people. The names Jesus chose for himself as well as the ones he accepted from others both divine and human are meant to help us locate Jesus on the social map of Jewish messianic pretenders and contenders. They distinguish Jesus from many other contemporary claimants, but they also identify him with basic elements imbedded in the Hebrew Scriptures as part of the hopes of God's people. The more we learn about Jesus' social matrix, the more clearly the christological questions seem to come into question.
What this greater clarity does not do is settle whether we likewise will name Jesus as the Evangelists did. It is always possible that one may become convinced that though there was a christological claim made by Jesus in the way he related to others (receiving and offering names), that in the end that claim was not justified. The truth about the historical issues does not settle whether we will conclude that the theological claims are also true.
Finally, whatever else we may say, it is clear enough from the recent sound and fury of the Third Quest for the Historical Jesus that the Western world is still a Jesus-haunted place, with many wishing to claim Jesus for their own causes and caucuses." In our own social context a bit more light on the historical Jesus is always welcome, especially when the hysterical Jesus is the one who seems to appear most frequently in the Western media.
Perhaps fides quaerens intellectum is after all not such a bad mode of pursuing and perusing this issue of Jesus' names and claims, since we know very well there is no such thing as pure objectivity in such matters. This Anselmian model appears to be a sane and sober one which will direct our studies to the most secure results.
FOR FURTHER READING
Habermas, Gary R. The Historical Jesus: Ancient Evidence for the Life of Christ. Rev. ed. Joplin, Mo.: College Press, 1996.
Harris, Murray J. Jesus As God: The New Testament Use of Theos in Reference to Jesus. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 1992.
Kreeft, Peter. Between Heaven and Hell. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1982.
Wilkins, Michael, and J. P. Moreland, eds. Jesus UnderFire. Modern Scholarship Reinvents the HistoricalJesus. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zonclervan, 1995.
Witherington, Ben, III. The Christology ofJesus. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990.
The Jesus Quest: The Third Search for the Jew from Nazareth. 2nd ed. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1997.