In his recent book, Evil and the God of Love,1 Dr John Hick examined various Christian responses to the problem of evil. He traced two related, but in important respects different, paths of thought, which correspond to the two main ways in which the genesis or origin of evil have been understood: either as a capacity for goodness which has not yet been realised (with life, therefore, as a ‘vale of soul-making’), or as an original defect which has vitiated all subsequent life. The former is a ‘minority’ report, which Dr Hick called ‘Irenaean’, since the first person of renown to put it forward in reasonably articulate form was Irenaeus. The latter is the dominant, or majority, report, which Dr Hick called ‘Augustinian’, since Augustine's formulation of it became deeply and profoundly influential in subsequent Christian thought. The differences are not absolute, but the contrasts are clear: ‘Instead of the Augustinian view of life's trials as a divine punishment for Adam's sin, Irenaeus sees our world of mingled good and evil as a divinely appointed environment for man's development towards the perfection that represents the fulfillment of God's good purpose for him.’2

William James catalogued an amazing diversity of religious experiences. Yet even the pluralistic James was able to find a nucleus, consisting of an uneasiness and its solution, ‘1. The uneasiness, reduced to its simplest terms, is a sense that there is something wrong about us as we naturally stand. 2. The solution is a sense that we are saved from the wrongness by making proper connection with the higher powers.’ But by stressing the moral factor, James seems to exclude those who stress rather the sense of mystery stemming from man's theoretical limitations. Einstein, for example, writes: ‘The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious side of life. It is the deep feeling which is at the cradle of all true art and science. In this sense, and only in this sense, I count myself amongst the most deeply religious people.’ For Einstein as for Pascal (Pensées, Fr. 267): ‘The last proceeding of reason is to recognise that there is an infinity of things which are beyond it.’ Thus I propose the following revision of James' conception of the nucleus of the religious experience: (1) uneasy awareness of the limitations of man's moral or theoretical powers, especially when reality is restricted to sense data and natural objects; (2) awe-full awareness of a further reality—beyond or behind or within; (3) conviction that participation with this further reality is of supreme importance.

The traditional problem of evil is set forth, by no means for the first time, in Part X of Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion in these familiar words: ‘Is [God] willing to prevent evil, but not able? then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? whence then is evil?’ This formulation of the problem of evil obviously suggests an argument to the effect that the existence of evil in the world demonstrates that God does not exist. The purpose of this paper is to examine this argument, with a view to showing that while it is not a conclusive argument, it is much stronger than some apologists for traditional theism allow.

One of the issues in the current controversy concerning demythologising is whether or not our concept of God is itself mythological. Before this can be resolved, however, we have to sort out what we mean by ‘myth’ and compare this with other possible ways of describing divine activity. Likewise, if we are to decide whether or not all religious uses of language are ‘symbolical’ we have to clarify our conception of symbols. Such clarification is hampered by the almost indiscriminate mention of parables, models, myths, symbols, analogues and allegories which we find in philosophy today. In this paper, I shall list some distinctions of meaning amongst these terms which seem worth keeping in mind. My concern in doing so is not to provide an exhaustive list but to suggest how the distinctions affect our justification of linguistic usage in religion.

The falsifiability of theistic assertions no longer appears to be the burning issue it once was, and perhaps this is all to the good. For one thing, it was never entirely clear just what demand was being made of the theist. In this paper I shall not discuss the nature or legitimacy of the falsification requirement as applied to theistic assertions. Instead I shall argue that some of the reasons which have been offered to show that these assertions are not falsifiable are by no means conclusive. Since the most plausible bit of anti-theistic evidence is the existence of evil, it would seem to be legitimate for us to devote our attention to arguments which are designed to show that the theist does not allow the presence of evil to count against his claims.

Modernisation, whatever else it involves, is always a moral and a religious problem. If it has sometimes been hailed as an exhilarating challenge to create new values and meanings it has also often been feared as a threat to an existing pattern of values and meanings. In either case the personal and social forces called into play have been powerful.

The history of doctrine is an important field of study. So also is the study of doctrine itself. Like the two natures of Christ they ought neither to be confused nor separated. ‘The unassumed is the unhealed’ is a phrase justly famed in doctrinal history. It is a question worth asking whether it merits a position of similar importance in the study of doctrine itself.

On what grounds will the rational man become a Christian? It is often assumed by many, especially non-Christians, that he will become a Christian if and only if he judges that the evidence available to him shows that it is more likely than not that the Christian theological system is true, that, in mathematical terms, on the evidence available to him, the probability of its truth is greater than half. It is the purpose of this paper to investigate whether or not this is a necessary and sufficient condition for the rational man to adopt Christianity.

To a student audience seduced by the claims of a ‘secular Christianity’, Professor Gordon Rupp once urged the combined loyalties of ‘worldmanship’ and ‘other-worldmanship’. The Muslim world shows little friendship to secularist ideologies which explicitly reject the eschatological dimension, but Muslims are increasingly involved in secularising processes; many of these are ‘Islamised’, if they are compatible with Islamic social or political ideals, and the stigma of bid‘ah, innovation, is thereby avoided. A Lebanese author, Muhammad Darwazah, in his Dustūr al-Qur’ ānī, Cairo 1956, advocated a ‘Qur'ānic Constitution’ for the modern world since the Qur'ān’s world-view is both in-worldly and other-worldly:

‘Islam is a religion of the world (dīn al-dunyā), of government, society, morals and order, to the same extent as it is a religion of faith and belief and the next world (dīn al-ākhirah).’

In this paper it is my intention to do the following: first, to make some general observations on the ‘Third Way’ of St Thomas Aquinas as set out in Summa Theologica, Pt. I Quaest. ii Art. 3; secondly, to offer interpretation of, comment on, and present an account of, the first premiss of the ‘Third Way’; and finally to offer a provisional account of what someone who advocates the ‘Third Way’ might be conceived of as doing in the light of the account offered of the first premiss of that ‘Way’. I do not suggest thai the account I offer of the first premiss under consideration or the account of the argument as a whole which I shall offer, is one which St Thomas would have accepted. My claim is only that for reasons to be offered, it is a possible and plausible account I also want to make it clear from the outset that I shall not be discussing the validity of the ‘Third Way’; this is an independent question to my inquiry.

I submit as a good rule of thumb (but one which is sometimes wrong) that if a discussion of any major philosophical position or proposition ends with the conclusion that that position or proposition is ‘absurd’ or ‘meaningless’ then a mistake has been made in the discussion. The mistake often turns out to be the accuser's failure to appreciate precisely what the position being attacked really is.

Anselm's two ‘ontological’ arguments rest upon three fundamental assertions:

(1) The idea of God is the idea of a being than which nothing more perfect is conceivable.

(2) Whatever exists in the understanding and outside the understanding is more perfect than whatever exists in the understanding alone. (Prosologion 2)

(3) Whatever cannot be conceived not to exist is more perfect than whatever can be conceived not to exist. (Proslogion 3)

As traditionally understood, faith rests on an interior illumination which makes the believer certain that the doctrine proposed for belief is true. St Thomas calls this illumination ‘the light of faith’, and Calvin, ‘the interior testimony of the Holy Spirit.’ The claim of certainty encounters some serious difficulties, however, and it seems tome we have to accept an interpretation of the ‘light of faith’ in which some doubts are left unresolved. Faith turns out not to be a simple state at all, but is composed of three distinct elements. The first element is an intuition that what is proposed for belief is true, which is accompanied by hesitation and fear of error. The second element is the infusion of a doubt-free state, in which doubts, while not resolved, are removed to the periphery of consciousness, and lose their power to cause anxiety. The third element is an intuition which makes the believer certain that he is morally required to allow this state to continue. Although many of the sources I will be discussing use ‘faith’ in an exclusively Christiansense, I believe my conclusions will hold for theistic faith in general.

Although the basic ideas of the ontological argument can be found in Aristotle and Philo Judaeus (cf. AD pp. 141 ff.), the argument received its classical formulation in Anselm's Proslogion and his Reply to the objections raised by Gaunilo. During the succeeding nine centuries the argument has had a chequered career. It was supported by some scholastic theologians but rejected by Aquinas. Descartes and Leibniz offered their own versions of the proof but Kant's refutation of the argument has generally been accepted as conclusive during the past century and a half. Nevertheless, interest in the proof has never completely disappeared—perhaps provoked by Aquinas' suggestion that the proof may be valid for God even though it cannot be valid for us because of the inadequacy of our knowledge of God. Recently there has been a revival of interest in the ontological argument. J. N. Findlay put the argument into reverse to show the necessary non-existence of God in an article in 1948 (Can God's existence be disproved?) but in later writings he has suggested that the argument may have positive significance. In 1960 Norman Malcolm published a paper in which he distinguished two basically different forms of the ontological argument in the Proslogion and defended the possible validity of the second of them.

Here is an argument for the existence of the most perfect being:

1. There is a concept of a greatest conceivable being (most perfect being, being than which none greater can be conceived, etc.—hereafter I shall sometimes use ‘G.C.B.’ to represent this notion).

2. This being cannot be conceived of only, as then it would lack existence and so not be the greatest conceivable.

To the student of the recent history of theological ideas in the West, it sometimes seems as though, of all the ‘new’ subjects that have been intro duced into theological discussion during the last hundred or so years, only two have proved to be of permanent significance. One is, of course, biblical criticism, and the other, the subject which in my University is still called ‘comparative religion’—the (as far as possible) dispassionate study of the religions of the world as phenomena in their own right.

Anselm presented his ontological argument in three main forms. In Proslogion II he argued that the very concept of God implies his actual existence. In Reply to Gaunilo (I)—the argument from aseity—he argued that the conception of God as an eternal existent rules out his conception as a merely possible existent. In Proslogion III he argued that the concept of God implies his actual existence as logically necessary. Each of these arguments has its traditional refutation. Against Proslogion II it is argued that the analytic use of ‘exists’ conceptually and descriptively is logically distinct from its synthetic use as an empirical judgement. Against the argument from aseity the same point is made about ‘exists eternally’, and against the detail of his argument it is said that the second premise is not a proposition with a single implication, but a disjunction. Against Proslogion III it is argued that ‘logically necessary existence’ is a meaningless notion. This paper is designed to show that Anselm's arguments may be refuted without recourse to these traditional criticisms; that each of his arguments contains at least one further error, of equal if not more importance, which has passed unnoticed. If this appears to be bringing yet further coals to Newcastle, the revival of the argument by Hartshorne and Malcolm, and the supposed ‘ontological disproof’ by Findlay, may indicate our need of further fuel.

‘Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous.’—Hume, Treatise, I, iv, 7.

Several years have elapsed since Professor Malcolm's astonishing revival of St Anselm's ontological argument (s). The first shock-wave of criticism has likewise passed, having been absorbed by now into the bound volumes of the periodical literature. This note is not intended to add much weight to the common conclusion of that impressive body of criticism, for, though interesting and important logical issues remain to be discussed in connection with the ontological argument, there can be little doubt that it fails as a demonstration of God's existence. Nevertheless, there is one move made by Malcolm in his determined defence of Anselm which may have had unfortunate repercussions far beyond the reaches of philosophical theology. Perhaps a discussion of this one step in the argument will help to dispel some erroneous impressions.