The last two decades or so have seen a remarkable resurgence of interest in the ontological, the cosmological and the design arguments for the existence of God.

The ontological argument owes its ‘rebirth’ to the formulation of a ‘second’ or modal version of the argument by Norman Malcolm, Charles Hartshorne and Alvin Plantinga. The cosmological argument has been defended in recent years by John J. Shepherd and Germain Grisez. The design, or teleological, argument has been resuscitated by Richard Swinburne and Brian Davies. This renewed interest in the ‘theistic arguments’ has culminated in Keith Ward's attempt to construct a system of ‘rational theism’, using the ‘theistic arguments’ as a foundation, in his 1980 Cadbury Lectures Rational Theology and the Creativity of God. In propounding this theological system, Ward operates on the bold and novel principle that all the main ‘theistic arguments’ are valid, and that, moreover, the canons which are implicit in any quest for a rational and coherent conception of ‘reality’ will serve to establish the truth of the premises of these arguments. In an essay of somewhat limited scope, it will not be possible to examine Ward's theological system in its entirety. Neither will it be possible to scrutinize, in detail, his formulation of each of the ‘theistic arguments’. However, since Ward himself admits that the ontological argument (primarily by virtue of its peculiar character as a strictly logical or a priori argument) is somehow conceptually antecedent to the other ‘theistic arguments’, it will be in order to restrict our attention to Ward's presentation of the ontological argument: this argument can be said to function as the nerve-point of Ward's theological strategy, and any demonstrable weakness in Ward's formulation of it will inevitably serve to undermine the foundations of his ‘theistic’ system.