Consider the following argument (I shall call it ‘the atheist's argument’) for the non-existence of God:

(1) Some men are morally reprehensible for failing to perform certain actions, e.g. actions of abolishing suffering which is destructive of character.

(2) Concentrate, for simplicity, just on actions of this latter sort. If there is an omnipotent and omniscient being, then he, too, fails to perform actions of this sort, and, hence, he is also morally reprehensible unless some such difference obtains between him and the men mentioned in (1) (call them ‘M’) as his being unable to abolish this suffering, while M is able to abolish it, or his not knowing that this suffering is in fact destructive of character, while M does know this.

(3) But being omnipotent and omniscient is incompatible with any such difference obtaining. (For example, being omnipotent is incompatible with being unable to abolish the suffering under discussion and being omniscient is incompatible with failing to know that a given instance of suffering which is destructive of character does in fact have that property.)

I would like to explain the point of view from which this paper is written. And this in itself will be a difficult task. In a religious dialogue we could be concerned in some way with questions which arise as a result of serious differences in doctrines between adherents of different religions or religious faiths. The ensuing debate or dialogue could take the form of an argument conducted from points of view that are distinctly partisan. If two doctrines are or are taken to be in head-on collision with each other by those who accept these doctrines, the holder of one doctrine would argue with the holder of the other doctrine with the object of showing that he is partly or wholly in error. If two statements both claiming to have truth-value are, or are taken to be, inconsistent with each other, then it is clear that one or both of them are or must be taken to be partly or wholly false. To attempt to show by marshalling reasons that the proposition inconsistent with that which one holds is wholly or partly false is what I mean by the partisan approach. The approach in a dialogue is partisan even if truth is claimed and the opposing ‘error’ exposed by reference to authority; for so long as there is to be a dialogue the setting up of a particular authority or of an authority specified in a particular way has to be justified by reasoning or at least a show of reasoning. If reasoning flows from and terminates in an authority without flowing beyond it and around it, so to speak, the fact that that ‘authority’ is not accepted by the other party is sufficient to bring the dialogue to an immediate end, leaving room only for a futile talking at cross purposes.

Mr Olding's recent attack on my exposition of the argument from design gives me an opportunity to defend the central theses of my original article. My article pointed out that there were arguments from design of two types—those which take as their premisses regularities of copresence (spatial order) and those which take as their premisses regularities of succession (temporal order). I sought to defend an argument of the second type. One merit of such an argument is that there is no doubt about the truth of its premisses. Almost all objects in the world behave in a highly regular way describable by scientific laws. Further, any scientific explanation of such a regularity must invoke some more general regularity. (We explain the gas laws by Newton's laws.) The most general regularities of all are, as such, scientifically inexplicable. The question arises whether there is a possible explanation of another kind which can be provided for them, and whether their occurrence gives any or much support to that explanation. I urged that we do explain some phenomena by explanation of an entirely different kind from the scientific. We explain states of affairs by the action of agents who bring them about intentionally of their own choice. Regularities of succession, as well as other phenomena may be explained in this way. Explanation of this kind I will term intentional explanation. Intentional explanation of some phenomenon E consists in adducing an agent A who brought E about of his own choice and a further end G which, he believed, would be forwarded by the production of E. (When an agent brings about E ‘for its own sake’, E will be the same as G.)

This paper has four roots.

First, an increasing dissatisfaction over the gulf between classical and theological studies. Christianity in origin, after all, is a part of the story of the ancient world, and has to be seen in context. The context is complex: it is Judaea as part of the Hellenistic world under the rule of Rome: we ignore any part of that context at our peril. Classical scholars tend to be suspicious of those with theological interests: I was forbidden by an examining board of the University of London to set the first verse of St John's Gospel for comment in a paper on Greek philosophy: they were being doctrinaire, not I. But equally some theologians have neglected the disciplined study of the ancient world. It would not be so bad if they left the context out; but instead they offer windy generalisations, secondhand, ill-based and false. Some corrective is needed.

The writing of yet another paper on miracles probably stands in need of justification. The justification I wish to claim has two aspects. Firstly, I think that the concepts of the miraculous usually defended and, in turn, criticized, are unacceptable and that a better one is available. Secondly, and more importantly, I think that these unacceptable concepts produce in virtue of their inherent weaknesses a situation in which only the less important questions get asked about miracles. These questions are those which relate to the ontological status of miracles. I think it can be shown that is is the epistemological questions about miracles which are more interesting and important and, furthermore, that the standard accounts are so hemmed in by the difficulties raised for them that a preoccupation with ontological questions characterizes most discussion.

C. F. Beckingham, in his inaugural lecture to the Chair of Islamic Studies, discussed the manner in which European explorers sought for the elusive Prester John, and remarked that it was unusual to lecture on a person who probably did not exist. The Comparative Study of Religions has a universal scale and religions certainly exist. But it has often been held that other religions than our own are untrue, and the attitude adopted towards them by many theologians, and others, has been that which was expressed by Hilaire Belloc in his Cautionary Verses, ‘And is it true? It is not true.’

One of the widely held philosophical doctrines of this century in the English speaking world is that there is no logical bridge between fact and value, between the ‘is’ and the ‘ought’. Human nature may be such that all or most of us approve common states of affairs. That is, there seem to be experiential or psychological ways of bridging the gap. But, on this view, no value judgment is ever inconsistent with any description of the world or of part of the world. Describe the world as you will, there is no logical reason to move on to any specific value judgment about the event or events under the given description.

Remarks to the effect that a correct answer depends upon a correct question —that from a misleading question there can result only a misleading answer—are common today. In fact, one might suspect that such common concentration on finding the right questions has something to do with what seems to be an uncommon lack of answers. This concentration on the importance of asking the right questions can be applied to the interpretation of biblical literature. For here, certainly, the questions asked are often decisive. They guide the inquiry by setting the terms of the search and, in this sense, they determine at least the kind of answers that will be given. Further, they often disclose the presuppositions with which one is working.

It is a curious fact that the much maligned ontological argument to prove the existence of God has in recent times enjoyed a revival of interest to which even Karl Barth, the arch-enemy of natural theology has contributed; but since the revival of interest has appared in a wide diversity of intellectual contexts, both philosophical and theological, the revival is itself almost as problematic as the argument itself.

‘The formulas of advanced English politicians are as stiff and arrogant as the formulas of theology. Truth itself becomes distasteful to me when it comes in the shape of a proposition. Half the life of it is struck out of it in the process.’

Christianity affirms, with Judaism and Islam, that God is the omnipotent Creator of all things. But it diverges from them in also affirming that the Creator assumed a human nature in one figure of history, Jesus of Nazareth. Christ thus differs from other men in kind, not merely in degree; he is absolutely, not just relatively, unique. Admittedly many Christian theologians have held that the difference between Christ and other men is only one of degree. Yet the Church's traditional claim, as expressed in the Chalcedonian Definition, is that Jesus was both creature and Creator, both fully man and fully God.

To many it seems obvious that any reduction of the nature of man to purely physical components involves an (at least) indirect attack on the doctrine of human immortality. To so reduce human nature, it may be argued, is to eliminate the soul and it is this essential component of man, rather than his body, which is the foundation of his immortality. This seems to me an altogether mistaken notion. My purpose in this paper, therefore, is to clarify the relation of physicalism and immortality and thereby to reveal the error in this alleged incompatibility.

In this paper I shall discuss a certain theodicy, or line of argument in response to the problem of evil, viz, the so-called ‘free will defence’. What I propose to do is defend this theodicy against an objection that has been made to it in recent years.

Everything about us today tells us that we live in a world which will be increasingly dominated by empirical and theoretic science. This is the world in which the Church lives and proclaims its message about Jesus Christ. It is not an alien world, for it is in this world of space and time that God has planted us. He made the universe and endowed man with gifts to investigate and understand it. Just as he made life to produce itself, so he has made the universe with man as an essential constituent in it, that it may bring forth and articulate knowledge of itself. Regarded in this light the pursuit of science is one of the ways in which man exercises the dominion in the earth which he was given at his creation. That is how, for example, Francis Bacon understood the work of human science, as man's obedience to God. Science is a religious duty, while man as scientist can be spoken of as the priest of creation, whose task it is to interpret the books of nature, to understand the universe in its wonderful structures and harmonies, and to bring it all into orderly articulation, so that it fulfils its proper end as the vast theatre of glory in which the creator is worshipped and praised. Nature itself is dumb, but it is man's part to bring it to word, to be its mouth through which the whole universe gives voice to the glory and majesty of the living God.

The Christian faith, according to Alfred North Whitehead's familiar premise, ‘has always been a religion seeking a metaphysic’. Although it is debatable whether one should accept this thesis in a constructive sense, it does not appear that Christian belief from either an offensive or defensive position has the option of escaping from its philosophical implications. If, for example, a meeting with Christ occurs—either in an initial New Testament sense or through secondary channels in a contemporary moment—which functionally produces an existential consciousness of liberation that one may even dare to call ‘forgiveness of sins’, what confidence may he have that the experience is real and not only apparent, enduring and not just exuberance of mood, an encounter with life that touches the whole of his concern and not merely one atomistic fragment? These are surely questions which admit varying degrees of solution; yet they are genuine experiential issues which call for a recognition of ontological depth if they are to retain their functional effectiveness. This necessity which theology has of fulfilling its task within the comprehensive context of ontology is portrayed convincingly by Gerhard Ebeling in his essay entitled ‘Theology and Reality’ when he affirms:

‘Theology has to do with reality as a totality—not with the sum of all the realms of reality and all the ways in which reality encounters us…. However much theology is based upon the testimony of Christian faith, it has yet to make good faith's claim by bringing to expression what unconditionally concerns every man in his totality.’

To discover whether effort of will may be a basis for moral freedom we need to have before us a general description of the experiential situation in which an effort of will is found. The description need not be exhaustive, but it must be such as to permit us to identify situations in which an effort of will is to be found.

During World War I, Bertrand Russell's outspoken pacifism resulted in his being committed to jail. When he entered the prison, he was met by the warden who showed himself to be quite ecumenical in his religious beliefs, as indicated by this anecdote:

‘I was much cheered on my arrival by the warder at the gate, who had to take particluars about me. He asked my religion and I replied “agnostic”. He asked how to spell it, and remarked with a sigh: “Well, there are many religions, but I suppose they all worship the same God”. This remark kept me cheerful about a week.’

In his paper ‘The Problem of the Meaning of “Miracle” (Religious Studies, March, 1971), Professor Michael J. Langford proffers a concept of miracles that derives its intelligibility from the familiar phenomenon of the interaction of minds. Miraculous occurrences are portrayed as a variant, though abnormal, form of what we may term ‘inter-psychosomatic influence’, God's mind being the ultimate determinant. Langford thinks that to speak significantly of miracles, the phenomenon should be understood as ‘not totally dissimilar to our previous experience’ (p. 49); hence the familiar notion of inter-psychosomatic influence. He thinks, too, that to talk of miracles as God interfering directly with the natural order would be to admit that such interference would not upset our concept of human nature and responsibility, a consequence which, to Langford, would make it inconsistent for Christians to maintain the free-will defence in the face of the problem of evil. According to Langford, human interference with the natural order does not vitiate the preconditions of human responsibility, and so he thinks that his concept of miracle, which is only ‘an extension of the same phenomenon, of a kind that also does not disrupt either human freedom or the stable order that is the necessary context for human life’ (p. 49), will provide a way out of the dilemma. Having agreed with Hume and Flew that it would be unreasonable ‘to explain an unusual event by introducing divine causation if we hadn't already got independent evidence for the divine’ (p. 44), Langford nevertheless maintains that ‘unthought possibilities’ should not be ruled out in the manner of a ‘prejudiced theorist’ (p. 45). He thinks that such possibilities are left open in his concept of miracle, which makes the prior assumption that ‘independent grounds for belief in God’ exist (p. 51) before affirming that, given that God exists, miracles may be consistently and substantively understood in terms of a special distinguishable (pp. 50, 51) sort of inter-psychosomatic influence. He concedes, of course that his concept would rule out ‘those miracles that appear to be quite apart from the working of grace through human minds’ (p. 51). I think, however, that Langford's thesis is faulty at key places.

John L. Austin believed that in the illocution he had discovered a fundamental element of our speech, the understanding of which would disclose the significance of all kinds of linguistic action: not only proposing marriage and finding guilt, but also stating, reporting, conjecturing, and all the rest of the things men can do linguistically.2 We claim that the illocution, the full-fledged speech-act, is central to religious utterances as well, and that it provides a perspicuity in understanding them not elsewhere provided in the work of recent philosophy of religion. In particular we hold that understanding religious talk through the illocution shows the way in which the representative and affective elements are connected to one another and to the utterance as a whole. There may, further, be features in such an analysis which can be extended to other forms of discourse than religious.