Dmitry Chernikov’s Blog

1. Open Microsoft Word (I use Office XP).

2. If the symbols you need are present in the default font, keep it, else change the font to Lucida Sans Unicode (which my research says ships with Windows 98 and higher) or Arial Unicode MS (which ships with Office 2002 and higher). Arial Unicode MS is more powerful, but there is less chance that it will be installed on the user’s machine. NB: Even though I use Lucida Sans Unicode here, this page does not display perfectly on those university computers that run XP without Office. It could be that the version of the font installed on those machines is older.

3. Choose Insert | Symbol… on the menu.

4. Pick the symbols you want, e.g.,

□∀(x)[x ∉ Γ ∩ Δ]
∠ABC
if ╞ A, then ├ A
Дмитрий

5. Choose File | Save As… on the menu. Select “Web Page” in “Save as type” in the dialog box.

6. Open the file you have just saved in a text editor, such as Notepad or TextPad.

7. Copy and edit the lines that define the symbols into your web page. The resulting lines should look like this:

<span style='font-family:"Lucida Sans Unicode"'>&#9633;&#8704;(x)[x &#8713; &#915; &#8745; &#916;]</span>

See also Additional Named Entities for HTML.

8. There, you are done!

On pp. 69-71 of Human Action Mises, quite brilliantly, warns against attempting to apply the methodology of the study of human action to the study of God. Just as the methods of natural sciences do not work in praxeology, the methods of praxeology do not work in theology. So, we have to keep the methodologies of rational “cosmology,” “psychology,” and “theology” separate. Thus, for example, attributing dissatisfaction or action to God is utterly erroneous.

But admitting these points does not make the notions of omnipotence or omniscience paradoxical. And why does life entail change?

NB: Click only if you know Russian.

А Ну Отдай Мой Каменный Топор

В Далёком Созвездие Тау-Кита

Диалог У Телевизора

Как Ныне Сбирается Вещий Олег
- It is interesting that in the Pushkin’s version of this poem Oleg asks the magus to reveal to him his destiny; In Vysotsky’s funnier version the magus or magi tell him “out of the blue” or “apropos of nothing.”

Лукоморья Больше Нет

Баллада О Брошенном Корабле

God’s nature or actions may justify the prefix “super” for two reasons. Either God stands in such a relationship to nature as to be somehow above it, or God’s nature is very different from the natures of created things in such a way as to be more excellent than they.

The first reason yields the following comparisons:

1. God is opposed to nature as being the Author and Creator of it.

   Now it may at once be objected that by itself this does not mean much, for if the Son is begotten by the Father yet is equal to the Father, might not the created nature be equal to its creator? And if a human child may, upon growing up, surpass his father, might not we surpass God? Finally, if humans can build machines that perform certain functions better than they (e.g., computation), is it not possible that the creation might outdo its creator in some things? “No” to all three, because

   1. the Father and the Son are of one essence, while the creation is separate from God; further, God thanscends all genera and species, which is why nothing created, which is classifiable into a genus and species, can be perfectly like Him;
   2. God can exist without creation, while creation cannot exist without God.
   3. God is perfect and cannot be exceeded;
   4. God designs nature; whereas for humans nature, “in order to be commanded, must be obeyed.”
2. God is capable of overriding natural laws via miracles.
3. Nature imitates God but not vice versa.
4. Nature is incomplete and needs grace in order to conform to God; on the contrary, God’s nature is complete as to require nothing beyond itself.

According to the second reason,

1. God’s knowledge is the (ultimate) cause of things known by God, while human knowledge is caused by things.
2. God is identical with His own nature, while created beings (except, perhaps, angels) are not identical with their natures.
3. God’s nature is absolutely simple, while no created being is simple.
4. As already montioned below, God is unlimited in greatness, while nature is finite.

Are these points good enough to warrant calling things that are of God supernatural?

Johnny-Dee of Fides Quaerens Intellectum has picked my blog as one of his personal favorites. Thank you, my friend; I am very honored.

Deductive Evil Disproofs of the Existence of God

(1) Evil and Omnipotence
(2) The Problem of Evil
(3) Plantinga on the Free Will Defense
(4) A Sound Logical Argument from Evil
(5) Unjustified Evil and God’s Choice

1. Evil and Omnipotence
by J.L. Mackie

In this brilliant and beautifully argued paper Mackie gives the best presentation of the soul-making solution to the problem of evil that I’ve seen anywhere. Of course, he is not entirely happy with it, but that I will try to remedy here. Let us first see what he has for us.

Let us call pain and misery ‘first-order evil’ or ‘evil (1)’. What contrasts with this, namely, pleasure and happiness, will be called ‘first-order good’ or ‘good (1)’. Distinct from this is ’second-order good’ or ‘good (2)’, which somehow emerges in a complex situation in which evil (1) is a necessary component – logically, not merely causally, necessary. (Exactly how it emerges does not matter: in the crudest version of this solution, good (2) is simply the heightening of happiness by the contrast with misery; in other versions it includes sympathy with suffering, heroism in facing danger, and the gradual decrease of first-order evil and increase of first-order good.) It is also being assumed that second-order good is more important than first-order good or evil, in particular that it more than outweighs the first-order evil it involves. (The Impossibility of God, 67)

The first objection to this that Mackie advances is that goods of the second order are merely means to the goods of the first order. Suppose so. It may still be the case that they are essential means to those goods. Thus, temporary struggles during which second-order goods are created should in the end foster first-order goods. In other words, overcoming evils (of whatever order) results in virtues which are essential for any kind of human happiness. Mackie is right to say that he “should not press this objection.” (68)

The allegedly “fatal” difficulty, however, is that the human response to first-order evils can itself be evil (in which case it will be an evil of the 2nd order). “This would include malevolence, cruelty, callousness, cowardice, and states in which good (1) is decreasing and evil (1) increasing.” (68) And the same reasoning would apply to discredit the notion that the purpose of the (n)th order evil is to promote (n + 1)st order good.

But wait, Mackie is not done with the solutions to the problem of evil. For we can now say that higher-order evil is due to human free will. In other words, evil (1) is the physical evil designed to encourage second-order goods. But second-order evils, such as those described above, are no longer physical but moral. Although these evils can result in physical pain and suffering for others, nonetheless for their perpetrator they are moral evils. Thus, physical evil is reducible to moral evil.

To explain why a wholly good God gave men free will although it would lead to some important evils, it must be argued that it is better on the whole that men should act freely, and sometimes err, than that they should be innocent automata, acting rightly in a wholly determined way. Freedom, that is to say, is now treated as a third-order good and as being more valuable than second-order goods (such as sympathy and heroism) would be if they were deterministically produced, and it is being assumed that second-order evils, such as cruelty, are logically necessary accompaniments of freedom, just as pain is a logically necessary precondition of sympathy. (68ff)

Inspired, isn’t it? Mackie immediately objects that an omnipotent God could create humans who, though possessing free will, always chose the good. “If there is no logical impossibility in a man’s freely choosing the good on one, or on several, occasions, there cannot be a logical impossibility in his freely choosing the good on every occasion.” (69) My reply is that there is indeed no logical impossibility of never committing a sin, but given that humans live, on average, for something like 80 years and start out as infants with only miniscule amounts of love, knowledge, and power, having to acquire those by growing up in a tremendously complex world and to become highly complex human beings, mistakes are practically inevitable.

But why should it be so? “[W]hy, we may ask, should God refrain from controlling evil wills? Why should he not leave men free to will rightly, but intervene when he sees them beginning to will wrongly?” (70) The first answer is that God does intervene by bestowing grace, by affecting either what a person loves, or his knowledge of the means to what he loves, or his strength to overcome the hurdles on the way to his goals. It can be difficult to recognize that one is receiving grace; e.g., Aquinas writes that “a man may, of himself, know something, and with certainty; and in this way no one can know that he has grace.” (ST, II-I, 112, 5) So God stays hidden, even as He uplifts men: “work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.” (Phil 2:12-13)

Secondly, controlling evil wills would seem to entail destruction of the natural laws, according to which human nature operates on its own.

Thirdly, God cannot unilaterally decide what sort of person you want to be. You have to make your own identity. That’s why God cannot crudely interfere with the process of self-making. Mackie argues that “there would be a loss of value if God took away the wrongness and freedom together. But this is utterly opposed to what theists say about sin in other contexts.” (70) Here I confess I have no idea what he is talking about. Who would want his own freedom to be taken away so long as he no longer sins? The key is to learn not to make mistakes in life and to retain your freedom, not to turn into a machine.

2. The Problem of Evil
by J.L. Mackie

This paper is an elaboration of the previous one. Here are some highlights:

Our author writes that one way in which particular evil may be required for the universal good is through sheer contrast: “in a musical work, for example, there may occur discords which somehow add to the beauty of the work as a whole.” (76) To illustrate this, I’ll reach to popular culture and present the following speech from the movie Troy:

Mackie calls those evils that are justified by some higher-order good absorbed evils. But, he argues, there are many unabsorbed evils in the world. And perhaps there are. My reply will be analogous to the difference between act and rule utilitarianism. The adherents of the former may accuse the adherents of the latter of “rule worship” or insufficient concern for actual utility or happiness. But rule utilitarianism is an eminently defensible theory. Hence God, too, may allow some evils in order to preserve the causal structure of the world. The rules or laws, according to which the world works, are essential to our very existence; and the good of man’s ability to act, of the ends-means connections, outweigh the evils that might occur because of the general character of these rules. In other words, the universal goodness of the presence of causality itself in the world precisely absorbs, to use Mackie’s terminology, those evils that come from the particular and unfortunate workings out of those rules. Thus, the general good of having abundant water for drinking, swimming in, etc. may lead to a particular evil of drowning. But that evil would nevertheless be absorbed. Further, to underscore the point made earlier, some evils are due to human agency, such that physical evil morphs into moral evil, and are absorbed by the third-order good of freedom of the will.

Mackie considers a way of sidestepping the problem of evil as follows:

Theists, Rolf Gruner says, “would be wiser still if they not only admitted evil but emphasized it as crucial. For it is no overstatement to say that their faith depends on it. All religious belief is connected with the manner in which men see themselves and the world, and where the ‘tragic sense’ of life is lacking and the consciousness of indigence, deficiency and transitoriness absent, religion will be unknown. Perfect beings in a perfect universe have no need of it, nor apparently have those for whom evils are avoidable defects to be pradually eliminated by man’s growing perfection… the strongest believers have usually been those who have had the firmest conviction of the reality of evil, and many or most of them have never made any attempt at theodicy.” (79)

This is a very bad attempt to solve the problem of evil. For “in a perfect universe,” as I pointed out in Part I, faith in the blessed is vision, hope is comprehension, and charity is fruition. Faith as such therefore no longer exists in heaven. At best, Gruner is presenting a soul-making theodicy, such that the virtue of faith is attained through struggle with adversity whose first-order pain and evil then become essential to the faith’s second-order good. And Mackie is certainly correct in saying that even though it may be true that “some of the firmest believers feel no need for a theodicy, … one is still needed if their position, and that of theism generally, is to be made rationally defensible.” (80)

Mackie is also right to point out that sin followed by repentance may cause joy to heavenly beings (Lk 15:7), but “it does not follow that the father prefers on the whole to have a prodigal son who ultimately returns than to have a constantly well-behaved one or that the housewife would be better pleased on the whole to have lost the coin and found it again than never to have lost it. Perhaps these, odd though they are, would be comprehensible human reactions; even so, it would be hard to transfer them to a supposedly omniscient god…” (80)

Yet the supposed “paradox of omniscience” is solvable in the familiar way by saying that grace (God’s “control” of our actions) builds on nature. In a way, in order to influence us, God has to use the “user interface” which He Himself created. He can’t, for example, turn one into a pillar of salt, for such a “miracle” entails a wholesale destruction of the person and a creation ex nihilo of the pillar, rather than a transformation which preserves identity through change.

A discussion of free will follows. Now I regard the will as an intellectual appetite which either desires something as examined by the power of judgment or enjoys something already obtained. Free-will, in contrast with the will, is the power of choice. If I desire x, that which desires is the will; but that which chooses (the pursuit of) x while setting aside y and z is the free will. But both will and free will are the same power. Now what causes a man to will something? Who knows? And who cares? We all desire different things somehow and for some reason. That may as well be a brute fact. The value of freedom is not, obviously, the variety of good and evil; it is the variety of the good. To each, as it were, his own; each person reflects the divine nature in his own unique way.

I don’t understand Mackie’s rejection of Plantinga’s free will defense based on everyone’s transworld depravity. It may be logically possible for every person not to sin, but it is not in practically possible, given God’s aim of having creatures who make themselves.

3. Plantinga on the Free Will Defense
by Hugh LaFollette

This article is fairly technical, which is why I will summarize it very briefly and then reply to it. Interested readers should refer to the book itself, p. 97.

Consider, [Plantinga] says, some human, Maurice, who will at some time t in the near future, be free with respect to some insignificant action – like having oatmeal for breakfast. That is, at time t, he will be free to take oatmeal, but also free to take something else, say, shredded wheat. “Next suppose we consider S’ a state of affairs that is included in the actual world and includes Maurice’s being free at time t to take oatmeal and free to reject it.” This S’, Plantinga tell us, includes neither Maurice’s taking nor rejecting the oatmeal. … God knows that one of the following conditionals is true:

8) If S’ were to obtain, Maurice will freely take the oatmeal.

or

9) If S’ were to obtain, Maurice will freely reject the oatmeal. (99)

Suppose that S’ obtains and (God knows that) 8) is true there. Then the world W’ in which Maurice will freely reject the oatmeal, though possible, is “unfeasible” for God. For if God leaves things be, then Maurice will freely take the oatmeal and W’ will not be actualized; if God forces Maurice to reject the oatmeal, our hero’s decision will no longer be free, and once again W’ will not be actualized. LaFollette argues that to say that S’ obtains, 8) is true, and each of the two W’ possibilities occur is to utter a logical contradiction. (He says it’s meaningless, as though contradictions were meaningless; did our author not read his Quine?) And contradictions indicate impossible not merely unfeasible worlds. The issue here turns on how best to reconcile God’s foreknowledge and contingent events. If we say that God knowledge depends on or is determined by creaturely actions, then LaFollette has no case: it could have happened that W’ occurred and then God would have known something different, namely that Maurice would freely not take the oatmeal. (This solution does not entail any potency in God; God does not have to “wait” for creatures to act before He knows what they will do. God knows contingent things through His perfect predictive power rooted, as always, in His knowledge of His own essence and therefore of how all things imitate that essence.)

In other words, 8) is true because W’ does not occur; but if it were to occur, then 8) would be false and God would have known that. It is certainly true that the conjunction of S’, 8) and W’ is impossible, but that is irrelevant, because 8) and W’ will never occur together; 8) is a variable that is counterfactually dependent on the occurrence or non-occurrence of W’. By knowing 8) by prediction, God foreknows what Maurice will as a matter of fact do. But if that is so, then it is not within God’s power to cause Maurice to freely choose not to have oatmeal, yet the world in which this happens is clearly a possible one.

(Now parenthetically, I believe that it is within God’s power to cause anyone to freely choose anything. That power is called grace. However, it seems to me that the reason why God does not bestow grace more often is that doing so might endanger the recipient’s personal identity.)

LaFollette’s analysis of the argument from transworld depravity is way off mark. What Plantinga actually argues is that ∀(x)(x has committed even a single moral evil ⊃ ◊(x has transworld depravity)) or, equivalently, ∀(x)(x has committed even a single moral evil ⊃ ◊□(x is depraved)) or, from the S5 system of modal logic, ∀(x)(x has committed even a single moral evil ⊃ □(x is depraved)) or, simply,

(a) ∀(x)(x is depraved ⊃ □(x is depraved)).

Plantinga does not say that it is possible that (a) is true in the sense that it is true in some possible world; in that case LaFollette’s criticisms would indeed be valid. Rather, (a) is possibly true in the sense that we do not know whether it is true in the actual world. There is really no evidence either for (a) or against (a), but (a) is conceivable, and that is sufficient to demonstrate the compatibility of 1) God is omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good and 5) The actual world contains moral evil. In other words, we can say that based on our current knowledge of things, it is not appropriate to confidently affirm that 1) and 5) contradict each other.

In addition, LaFollette claims that Plantinga’s proof entails

15) It is necessarily true that: no significantly free possible human can produce moral good without also producing moral evil.

But that indeed does not follow, because there may be people who never do evil, for example, Mary the Mother of God. Therefore, it is not a consequence of Plantinga’s proof that every possible person suffers from transworld depravity; only those who are actually depraved. In other words, 15) is avoided given the antecedent of (a).

4. A Sound Logical Argument from Evil
by Quentin Smith

Smith begins by considering three distinct concepts of freedom. First, there is external freedom: “A person is externally free with respect to an action A if and only if nothing other than… herself determines either that she perform A or refrain from performing A.” Then there is internal freedom: “A person is internally free with respect to an action A if and only if it is false that his past physical and psychological states, in conjunction with causal laws, determine either that he perform A or refrain from performing A.” Finally, there is logical freedom: “A person is logically free with respect to an action A if and only if there is some possible world in which he performs A and there is another possible world in which he does not perform A.” (107)

I agree with Smith that God is externally free and logically determined with respect to a “wholly good life,” (107) but I am not sure that God is internally free, given that He has no “past” physical and psychological states, being outside of time, that He is identical with His nature, and that He is simple. It may, in fact, be that God is internally determined (though still quite unpredictable to finite minds) which causes Him to be logically determined (with respect to a wholly good life). Moreover, God has no power to sin (108), because such a thing would lessen His perfection and destroy His pure actuality. But these are minor points.

Recall that Plantinga argues that it is conceivable that

(a) ∀(x)(x is depraved ⊃ □(x is depraved)).

In order to refute him then one must show that

(b) ∃(x)(x is depraved & ◊(x is 100% righteous)).

I argued in the previous section that such a thing is logically possible yet practically impossible given the desirability of a world in which humans make themselves. Further, even if it is possible for (b) to be true for some individual, the question is whether on the whole the balance of good vs. evil would the greatest. Perhaps by actualizing world S in which person P is fully righteous would have caused a hundred other humans to be eternally damned. So, God chose to create world S’ in which P does commits some moral evil but these hundred others are saved. In other words, the attempt to create the best possible world surely involved for God some heavy utilitarian calculations.

At this point our author’s argument takes a bizarre turn. Why, he asks, couldn’t God have created men necessarily good or logically determined with respect to good acts? The obvious answer is: if God could not create beings who would be always actually righteous (because of their transworld depravity), then a fortiori, he could not create beings who would be necessarily righteous. Smith argues “for the stronger claim that there is a different sort of creature, rational persons who are internally-externally free but logically determined to do what is right and… there is a possible world containing only them and God. This stronger claim is needed to withstand Plantinga’s criticism that it is possible that if God created the persons in question, they would choose to do some wrong acts, even though they might not have.” (115) Did our author imagine that the stronger claim can better “withstand” criticism (it’s stronger and tougher, after all) if the weaker claims fails? Buddy, it’s the other way around!

But perhaps Smith raises the issue of whether there could be rational creatures who would have such a nature that they would be necessarily good for the following reason: if God is logically determined toward good, why couldn’t He make humans (or call them whatever) who would be exactly like Him in goodness? The answer to that is: God begot only one Son who is equal to the Father in all respects. Note also that in God one perfect attribute necessarily entails the other two, e.g., omnipotence entails omniscience and perfect goodness. And, lack of any of the three attributes entails the lack of the other two. So, humans cannot be made equal to God. Now can created beings ever be truly safe from the lure of evil? Yes, they can but only in heaven where the process of self-making will cease. They can never be fully safe while away from God, away from beholding Him as He is.

Smith has the final objection. Humans, he says, did not need God’s infinite love, knowledge, and power to lead perfectly good lives, but could have had sufficient (though finite) love, knowledge, and power to always do good. I am not sure that such a thing would not have interfered with self-making. For a gradual process of “concrescence,” to use Whitehead’s term, including of acquisition of moral knowledge and the will to use it, is how God chose to create us. Why? Why us in addition to angels? “It was God’s good pleasure and, hopefully, yours.”

5. Unjustified Evil and God’s Choice
by Richard R. La Croex

La Croex expends far too many words in an argument that could be expressed very simply: In order for evil not to exist, God could have refrained from creating the world; further, since God is the greatest good, no reality was added to God as a result of creation, so why did God create? Perhaps it would be better if He had not:

[O]n the theist’s own view prior to creation there was nothing missing from the perfect value of God which would call for creation. One possible approach to a satisfactory apologetic of creation, for example, might be to point out that if God had not created, then there would be no human free will or human moral good. But this kind of an approach would require a further premise to the effect that a created, hierarchy of value adds to the overall value and, hence, God created. It would follow from this, however, that created value adds to God’s value and, hence, that God is not the greatest possible good because His goodness can be increased by the addition of created value. (124)

Which would be bad. Now it is part of the Christian doctrine that in creating God did not act in the sense which praxeology attaches to this term. God is perfectly happy with or without creation. He created then out of self-giving love. To take the Thomistic view of this matter, God loves in the sense of willing good to His creatures: “the love of God infuses and creates goodness.” (ST, I, 20, 2) God “loves all things by an act of the will that is one, simple, and always the same.” (ST, I, 20, 3) God has known creatures from eternity “in their proper natures” (ST, I, 20, 2, ad 2), and so loved us even logically prior to creation.

Two questions arise here. First, are existing creatures loved more than mere essences existing in the mind of God (cf. the ontological argument)? In other words, there are actual entities, possible entities in God’s mind which are destined to become actual logically prior to creation, and possible entities which will never be actualized. What does God love how? The first are loved with the same intensity of the act of will as the second, for God loves creatures inasmuch as He loves and delights in Himself and sees them imitate His own goodness; yet they are loved more than the second, if we mean that more good is willed to existing things than to non-existing ideas. In fact, God loves all things as deeply as He loves Himself. The third, I think, are loved, again, with the same intensity, yet less good is willed to them than to either the first or the second, for the first are actual, the second are potential to being instantiated, while the third are neither.

Second, does God love a greater number of things because He created? Yes, if we mean “actual” things; no, if we mean “all” things which include potential and merely possible things. This is because all things pre-exist in God Who knows them perfectly through His essence.

Further, if evil is a privation of good, then whatever God has created is metaphysically good, despite whatever defects it may have. That people generally act morally, seek righteousness, and often succeed at these tasks means that there is moral goodness in the world. And most of us think that life is worth living despite its hardships. So, there is the goodness of happiness, too. Thus, if God had not created, much would be lost.

But does creation add “value” to God? Well, value for whom? For God? I’m honestly loathe to attribute values to God, but perhaps by “value” La Croex means “metaphysical worth.” Even if no more “value” or worth can be added to God’s, nevertheless, what can be added are things that have value or worth. We can take a clue from Whitehead and say that every existing thing is an actual entity, and here God is on par with creatures (although Aquinas would say that God is more actual than any created thing). God is as “natural” as a hydrogen atom.

Alternatively, we can solve this problem by noticing a distinction between

a being, an entity, an individual, on the one hand, and any state of affairs which involves that individual. The distinction is a fundamental and quite simple one. I am an individual being, my Pelikan 800 fountain pen is an individual entity, and we are both involved in the state of affairs of my writing this sentence with my Pelikan 800 fountain pen. Likewise, we must carefully distinguish between the state of affairs of that fountain pen’s existing and the object which is that fountain pen.

With this sort of distinction clearly in mind, we can clarify exactly what the central claim of perfect being theology is: It is that God is to be thought of as the greatest possible being. And this is a claim that docs not entail the separate proposition that the state of affairs of God’s existing alone is the greatest possible state of affairs. … we can acknowledge that the state of affairs consisting in God’s sharing existence with our created universe is greater than the state of affairs of God’s existing in pristine isolation or solitude. But from this, it does not follow that there is any being or individual greater than God. This would be the case only if God and the created universe could be thought of as parts of a larger object, God-and-the-world, which could be assigned a value as a distinct individual, additively derived from the values of its parts. And this is prohibited for at least two reasons. First, there is no natural principle of unity in accordance with which God and the created universe would together compose one object. Second, it is just conceptually precluded by perfect being theology that God ever be considered a part of a larger and more valuable whole, an entity distinct from, but partially composed by, God. With all this in mind, we can affirm the positive value, even the great positive value, of the created universe, without thereby posing any threat to the conception of God as the greatest possible being, and without any risk of contradiction arising in connection with that conception. (Thomas V. Morris, Our Idea of God, 143)

And if we are talking about value for humans and for the rest of God’s creatures, then certainly it has been added to.

m-w.com defines it quite competently as “an exaggerated trust in the efficacy of the methods of natural science applied to all areas of investigation (as in philosophy, the social sciences, and the humanities).” And here is Rothbard on scientism.

“I don’t think the ’supernatural’ character of God is any essential part of Christian doctrine. So the fact that in some sense God could turn out to be a ‘natural’ entity doesn’t especially bother me,” writes Victor Reppert. “Obviously if you’ve got a definition of the natural that excludes the theistic God in some non-arbitrary way, that’s a whole different matter. … Words like ’supernatural’ which have strong emotive connotations with some people, have to be clarified before they are at all useful. Lewis has a definition of the supernatural as what ‘won’t fit in’ with the closed system of mindless physical causes.”

In theology we do talk about God’s nature and not God’s “supernature.” But I think that the distinction between the natural and the supernatural is useful for the following reasons. Creatures can only transform objects in their environment; God can create out of nothing. Creatures can forgive trespasses against themselves; God can forgive all sins. Creatures can give each other gifts; but only God can infuse grace directly into the soul and deify a man. In a way, then, the natural world is finite; God is infinite. In SCG Aquinas says that God’s infinity pertains to “spiritual greatness,” which “may be either in power or in goodness (or completeness) of nature. Of these two greatnesses the one follows upon the other: for by the fact of a thing being in actuality it is capable of action. According then to the completeness of its actuality is the measure of the greatness of its power.” And “if the world was made a fact from being previously no fact at all, the power of the Maker must be infinite.” (I, 43) But just as power applies to the Father, knowledge and love apply to the Son and the Holy Spirit respectively, and those are infinite, too. In ST he is more abstract, saying that “On the other hand, form is not made perfect by matter, but rather is contracted by matter; and hence the infinite, regarded on the part of the form not determined by matter, has the nature of something perfect. Now being is the most formal of all things… Since therefore the divine being is not a being received in anything, but He is His own subsistent being…, it is clear that God Himself is infinite…” (I, 7, 1)

Thus, the lack of limits on God can be contrasted with the finitude of the created world. The former can be called supernatural; the latter, natural.

But can we predict God’s behavior? On the one hand, God is completely free; on the other hand, He is His own essence, and so His actions are determined by His essence. Reppert writes that “we can generate [probabilistic expectations] based on what we take to be the character of the person we are talking about. It’s not part of anything I believe that God is completely capricious in his actions.” Well, surely, if one asks God for forgiveness, one can expect to be forgiven. But it is not that God has to do it or that the penitent can do anything to cause God to do forgive him. God alone decides who to grace and who not to. It is that in practice, actually, He forgives everyone, because of His goodness. But His sovereignty and freedom are not thereby compromised. Further, if God is, say, a utilitarian and maximizes human happiness, then we can predict His behavior based on His own rules.

Definitional Disproofs of the Existence of God

(1) Can God’s Existence Be Disproved?
(2) God’s Non-Existence: A Reply to Mr. Rainer and Mr. Hughes
(3) Proving the Non-Existence of God
(4) Moral Virtues and the Non-Existence of God
(5) God and Moral Autonomy

1. Can God’s Existence Be Disproved?
by J.N. Findlay

Findlay begins with panache; he writes that in attempting to prove the existence of God,

some have founded themselves on very general facts, as that something exists or that something is in motion, while others have tried to build on highly special facts, as that living beings are put together in a purposive manner, or that human beings are subject to certain improbable urges and passions, such as zeal for righteousness, the love for useless truths and unprofitable beauties, as well as the many specifically religious needs and feelings. (The Impossibility of God, 19)

He avers that “[t]he general philosophical verdict is that none of these ‘proofs’ are truly compelling.” (19) But no matter. This is the first time that I have encountered a case for the existence of God based on “zeal for righteousness.” Applying the Bayes’ theorem to it like we did for the argument from desire, we can see that it constitutes evidence for theism.

Interestingly, he argues that the superiority of God reduces us to “comparative nothingness.” (22) This is not so. This life is not strictly about God; it is not strictly about us; it is about the family consisting of God and men and a union of God and each person that results in ineffable happiness. Human beings are separate from God, good by their own goodness; they are great and courageous creatures; and so there is no need for false self-abasement. Humility is a virtue only insofar as it prevents you from tending to great things immoderately or stupidly.

With respect to the thesis stated in the title of this short article, there are actually no arguments in its defense. After presenting the Thomistic God to us, Findlay blithely declares that “the Divine Existence is either senseless or impossible. The modern mind feels not the faintest axiomatic force in principles which trace contingent things back to some necessarily existent source, nor does it find it hard to conceive that things should display various excellent qualities without deriving them from a source which manifests them supremely.” (24) I don’t get it – what is this, an argument from the attributes of the modern mind? Huh?

2. God’s Non-Existence: A Reply to Mr. Rainer and Mr. Hughes
by J.N. Findlay

In this piece our author to an extent clarifies his purpose: he is apparently arguing against the ontological argument along Kantian lines. (The latter argument’s shortest form is this: “God is perfect. Perfection includes existence. Therefore God exists.”) Kant’s critique, briefly, for anyone interested, is as follows:

‘Being‘ is obviously not a real predicate; that is, it is not a concept of something which could be added to the concept of a thing. It is merely the positing of a thing, or of certain determinations, as existing in themselves. …

If, now, we take the subject (God) with all its predicates (among which is omnipotence), and say ‘God is’, or ‘There is a God’, we attach no new predicate to the concept of God, but only posit the subject in itself with all its predicates, and indeed posit it as being an object that stands in relation to my concept. The content of both must be one and the same; nothing can have been added to the concept, which expresses merely what is possible, by my thinking its object (through the expression ‘it is’) as given absolutely. Otherwise stated, the real contains no more than the merely possible. …

By whatever and by however many predicates we may think a thing – even if we completely determine it – we do not make the least addition to the thing when we further declare that this thing is. Otherwise, it would not be exactly the same thing that exists, but something more than we had thought in the concept; and we could not, therefore, say that the exact object of my concept exists.

If we think in a thing every feature of reality except one, the missing reality is not added by my saying that this defective thing exists. On the contrary, it exists with the same defect with which I have thought it, since otherwise what exists would be something different from what I thought. When, therefore, I think a being as the supreme reality, without any defect, the question still remains whether it exists or not. (Critique of Pure Reason, Norman Kemp Smith tr., 504ff)

Hence, Findlay says, God does not exist “in some necessary and inescapable manner.” (28) But a God stripped of self-existence or of necessary existence might as well not exist at all. Such a God would be less than what can be conceived; therefore our own conceptions will be superior to God; and consequently God is no longer worthy of worship or latria and can be dispensed with altogether: “it is, in fact, because I think so highly of certain ideals, that I also think it unworthy to identify them with anything existent. And there is nothing absurd in having any number of emotional or other attitudes to objects that one thinks of as imaginary. … And the atheist might also admit the existence of something that I should describe (with great trepidation) as a ‘godward trend’ in things: certainly there are some facts in our experience which are (one might say) as if there were a God.” (29)

To the extent that Findlay regurgitates Kant, there is nothing new here. But as for Kant’s actual critique, first, I agree that existence is a peculiar property. It is clearly different from essence and is not a part of it. It is less a property than a “precondition for the instantiation of properties.” But even though it is in this way different, perhaps it still attributes something great to an entity. That is, the difference may not be relevant for the ontological argument, and actual existence may indeed be greater than existence only in the mind.

Second, it seems to me unhelpful to compare with respect to greatness one existing thing and a different mental concept. What is greater, our idea of God or this actually existing piece of chocolate? I don’t know; what a preposterous question that is! But perhaps it is possible to compare the greatnesses of two existent entities, one of which has an essence and the other does not; or the greatnesses of the same essence, one of which exists and the other does not. In other words, what is greater, an existing bare particular (or prime matter) or an existing piece of chocolate? I think the chocolate clearly wins. Similarly, what is greater, a God in the understanding or an actually existing God? The latter, in my opinion. The difference is that there is a multiplicity and hierarchy of essences, while existence is an all-or-nothing property. But, once again, is this a relevant difference? I think not. So, Kant’s critique may be unproblematic to deal with.

Finally, simply to say that all the proofs besides the ontological proof are not “compelling” is surely empty, and it leaves one to wonder why these two articles were included in this anthology.

3. Proving the Non-Existence of God
by John L. Pollock

Pollock want to show that the being described by the proposition (Eg ⊃ □Eg) cannot exist (E means “exists,” and P means “perfect”). The ontological argument is used as fodder for Pollock’s project throughout. He considers the following two versions of it, the second version being somewhat more Kant-proof:

Our author says that the move from (1) to (2) is illegitimate. For what if we let ‘Ax’ in a =_Df (the x such that Ax) be ‘Bx & ~Bx’? Then ‘Bg & ~ Bg’ will be true, which is absurd. The most we can get from (1) is

(2′) □(Eg ⊃ Pg), from which we can derive
(5”) □(Eg ⊃ □Eg) or “it is a necessary truth that if God exists, then He exists necessarily.”

Now assuming that God exists necessarily iff the meaning of “God” requires that He exist,

(8) □Eg ≡ [(g =_Df the x such that Px) → Eg].

But Eg does not follow, because the argument (1) - (5) is compromised; hence

(9) ~□Eg and, by contraposition from (5”), ~Eg. Therefore God does not exist; moreover, “it is necessarily true that God does not exist” (because if God existed in some non-actual possible world, then He would again exist necessarily, which we have proven He does not). (33)

Evaluation. There are two problems here. First, (2′) does follow from (1), but it is far too weak. God would be perfect (in the understanding, which is all we need) even if He did not exist or rather existed only as a concept. Thus, we have

(2*) (Eg ⊃ Pg) & (~Eg ⊃ Pg) which is equivalent to Pg.

Further, (2) does not follow from (1) logically, but it does follow from it given the interpretation of (1) as “g is a being than which nothing greater can be conceived.” The stronger inference is valid due to the nature of the predicate P, because P is surely not a self-contradiction, unlike ‘Bx & ~Bx’.

There are two possibilities. Either (5”) does not follow, because the argument equivocates with respect to the word “perfect”: according to Pollock, if God exists, then He is perfect in reality (by definition), and if God is perfect in the understanding, then He exists (by the OA). From this he derives “if God exists, then He exists necessarily.” But, of course, this does not follow. Or Pg = “God is perfect in the understanding,” in which case (2) follows, and (1) - (5) is sound.

Therefore, if the ontological argument is correct, then Eg follows, that is, (g =_Df the x such that Px) → Eg, contrary to what he claims.

Second, (8) should rather be

(8*) [(g =_Df the x such that Px) → Eg] → □Eg

in order to accommodate other possible definitions of necessary existence. And if the antecedent is false, then who knows about the consequent.

Pollock should have realized that proving that God does not exist “by logical means” is perilous business.

4. Can an Ancient Argument of Carneades on Cardinal Virtues and Divine Attributes Be Used to Disprove the Existence of God?
by Douglas Walton

The argument is as follows:

1. God is (by definition) a being than which no greater being can be thought.
2. Greatness includes greatness of virtue.
3. Therefore, God is a being than which no being could be more virtuous.
4. But virtue involves overcoming pains and danger.
5. Indeed, a being can only be properly said to be virtuous if it can suffer pain or be destroyed.
6. A God that can suffer pain or is destructible is not one than which no greater being can be thought.
7. For you can think of a greater being, that is, one that is nonsuffering and indestructible.
8. Therefore, God does not exist. (38)

Alright, now virtues are traditionally divided into four groups:

1. the (cardinal) moral virtues: fear of the law, courage or fortitude, justice, and prudence;
2. the intellectual virtues: knowledge, understanding, and wisdom;
3. the theological virtues: faith, hope, charity; and
4. the special virtue of temperance which pertains to the proper ordering of pleasures.

All these can be precisely defined and explicated.

It has to be understood that God does not have moral virtues. However, He has intellectual virtues, though in a more excellent way that we humans have them. He has theological virtues in the following sense: faith in God is vision, hope is comprehension, and charity is fruition. “For even among ourselves not everything seen is held or possessed, forasmuch as things either appear sometimes afar off, or they are not in our power of attainment. Neither, again, do we always enjoy what we possess; either because we find no pleasure in them, or because such things are not the ultimate end of our desire, so as to satisfy and quell it. But the blessed possess these three things in God; because they see Him, and in seeing Him, possess Him as present, having the power to see Him always; and possessing Him, they enjoy Him as the ultimate fulfillment of desire.” (ST, I, 12, 7, ad 1) Finally, God does not have temperance, insofar as He has only one pleasure: contemplation of Himself and of creatures as known through His essence.

But what does it mean to say that God has no moral virtues? Well, there is no fear of the law in God, since He is the law unto Himself; there is no fortitude, as nothing can harm God; nor commutative justice, because God owes nothing to anyone; nor is there prudence, because God does not, like humans, act to improve His own well-being. The following things should be noted. The laws that God laid down in the created world are His to sustain or break. No worldly power can overcome God. Distributive justice is in God insofar as He rewards according to merit, but even that is ultimately a metaphor. Creation of the world and the adjustment of means to ends was due to the union of the intellectual virtues and not to the moral virtue of prudence.

Interestingly, Aquinas held that human moral virtues are preserved in heaven after a fashion. (ST, II-I, 67, 1)

Does God’s not having moral virtues make Him less than can be conceived? Obviously not. Moral virtues perfect us in the active life; God does not act, being fully satisfied, but only contemplates. Hence His perfection is not diminished by the absence of what is entirely superfluous for Him. In other words, premise 2 of Walton’s argument should read “Greatness includes greatness of virtue where appropriate.”

5. God and Moral Autonomy
by James Rachels

The argument in this paper is that worshipping God entails abdicating one’s moral autonomy and judgment. “In saying that a being is worthy of worship, we would be recognizing him as having an unqualified claim on our obedience.” (53) Is it true, therefore, that there is “a conflict between the role of worshiper, which by its very nature commits one to total subservience to God, and the role of moral agent, which necessarily involves autonomous decision making”? (54) The formal argument is this:

1. If any being is God, he must be a fitting object of worship.
2. No being could possibly be a fitting object of worship, since worship requires the abandonment of one’s role as an autonomous moral agent.
3. Therefore, there cannot be any being who is God. (54)

In other words, Rachels thinks that worshiping God entails obeying His decrees blindly. There is a certain weak connection here, e.g., here is Aquinas on what we owe to God as our Father:

1. Honor.

1. In reference to Him, we should honor God by giving Him praise.
2. In reference to ourselves, we should honor God by purity of body.
3. In reference to our neighbor, we should honor God by judging him justly.

2. Imitation.

1. by loving Him, and this must be in the heart;
2. by showing mercy, because mercy is bound to accompany love, and this must be in deed;
3. by being perfect, since love and mercy should be perfect.

3. Obedience.

1. because of His dominion, for He is the Lord;
2. because of His example, since His true Son was made obedient to the Father unto death;
3. because obedience is good for us.

4. Patience. We own God patience under His chastening: “My son, reject not the correction of the Lord and do not faint when thou art chastised by Him: for whom the Lord loveth, He chastiseth even as a father the son in whom he delighteth.” (Rom 12:10) (The Aquinas Catechism, 110ff)

But the loving Father-child relationship of Christianity is not at all the master-slave relationship in which the slave’s fear is predominant. The first thing to note is that worship has nothing to do with the divine command theory of ethics. You can without contradiction be a utilitarian or a virtue theorist or whatever and still worship God. One should obey for the same reason why a child obeys his father: out of self-interest, for the father has the child’s best interests at heart.

Rachels is solicitous enough to consider objections to his thesis. The first one is based on the fact that, to quote again my favorite Bible verse, “God… left [man] in the hand of his own counsel.” (Sir 15:14) Our author replies that “this is a mere contingency, and that even if God did not require obedience to detailed commands, the worshiper would still be committed to the abandonment of his role as a moral agent if God required it.” (55) But what if God is the kind of being who never actually commands anyone to do anything and, in fact, necessarily acts only by persuasion (or would, at least, if that was the most efficient method of making saints out of human beings)? Then that we live according to our own consciences is no longer a contingent fact.

The second objection is that God requires men to do only the right thing. “Therefore, in obeying God, we would only be doing what we should do in any case. So there is no incompatibility between obeying him and carrying out our moral responsibilities.” (55) Unfortunately, recognizing that it is God who commands us to do something presupposes the ability to determine that what He commands is right. “Thus, our own judgment that some actions are right and others wrongs is logically prior to our recognition of any being as God.” (55) But suppose that we could recognize a being as God by means other than whether his commands seem good to us. E.g., the Holy Spirit can witness as to His own authenticity by directly infusing a certain kind of grace into the soul. Then with this assurance that the command comes from God, we can honor it and do the right thing, as we are supposed to anyway.

The third objection is that because our “consciences are corrupt and unreliable guides, … we cannot trust our own judgment; we must trust God and do what he wills.” (55) This is dismissed on the grounds that we make a correct moral choice by obeying God. Therefore, our capacity to judge aright is not completely attenuated. But we don’t have to declare ourselves totally depraved in order to realize that human power of judgment is very limited, e.g., we may try to be good utilitarians, but our ability to calculate the consequences of our actions is depressingly poor; God, however, is omniscient. Perhaps obeying Him, when He does talk to us in our most private moments, is in our best interests.

The fourth objection hinges on the idea that conscience is the voice of God. “This would resolve the conflict, because in following one’s conscience, one would at the same time be discharging one’s obligation as a worshiper to obey God. However, this maneuver is unsatisfying because if it were taken seriously, it would lead to the conclusion that in speaking to us through ‘consciences,’ God is merely tricking us, for he is giving us the illusion of self-governance while all the time he is manipulating our thoughts from without.” (56) But conscience is a “voice of God” only metaphorically. God is not actually speaking to you when you are evaluating “the moral goodness or blameworthiness of one’s own conduct, intentions, or character together with [having] a feeling of obligation to do right or be good.” (m-w.com) Conscience belongs to a person as his property and part of his nature; and while it can be enhanced by grace, it is not a link to the divine such that God deliberately uploads information into our minds. Conscience is an innate and natural capacity of all men. It is a voice of God only in the sense that God has implanted conscience into every person. Therefore, there are no tricks and no manipulation.

Finally, in practice, how often does it happen in an average person’s life that God speaks to him directly and commands that something be done? Very rarely, obviously, and so the whole issue is moot. In sum, then, worship, adoration, etc. do not require any abdication of moral responsibility.

Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League has called for an apology from himself for perpetuating the classic anti-Semitic stereotype of the Jews as a perpetually whining victim group. “It is simply false that Jews are hated by many and need to protect themselves by an organization such as the ADL by playing on the terror most Americans feel of offending anyone, rightly or wrongly,” Foxman said. “The ADL is, at best, unnecessary, and, at worst, a willing cog in the American welfare-warfare state. I hope that I will realize the pain my words have caused to many people and make clear that I understand why my remarks about Jews were so inappropriate and offensive. The cause of liberty, of which freedom of speech and freedom of association are crucial parts, demands not only that I apologize but that the Anti-Defamation League close its doors. The Jews stand in no need of my organization’s services. Seeing that political correctness, naturally repugnant to all lovers of truth, manifests itself both in kangaroo trials in the court of public opinion-molders and in the nation’s legal system, I shall devote my efforts to changing our culture of victimhood, as well as to getting all anti-discrimination laws repealed on every level of government.”

“I shall try to be very crafty at my new task,” added Foxman. “I intend to hire some big-time Jew lawyers in order to make a Constitutional and common law case against grants of legal privileges to the various allegedly ‘oppressed’ groups.”

Thanks to Lew Rockwell for the link to the original story. And here is St. Thomas on craftiness.

Everyone has heard the truism that one should take something one likes to do and find a way to get paid for doing it. But how to ensure that you enjoy your work? One word: competence. Learn every nook and cranny of your trade or science, and you’ll be guaranteed a positive utility of labor in your area of expertise.

If there is universal salvation, then capital punishment for breaking human laws is illegitimate. For hell represents the destruction of the soul, and if God’s power is great enough to save everyone, no matter how evil, then capital punishment, which represents the destruction of the body and is, as such, a temporal equivalent of eternal damnation, should be abolished. In other words, there is a clear analogy between hell and a lethal injection. If no one is thrown away by God, then no one should be thrown away by man either. Even if we don’t know for sure whether or not everyone (eventually) goes to heaven, the possibility of that alone should make us wary of official killings.

Similarly, life imprisonments simpliciter should be eliminated. For a man does not stay in purgatory forever but is released when he is sufficiently purified. Neither then should a stay in a human prison be for the criminal’s entire life span, but should be limited in duration. Now it is true that one may not be reformed until death. Still, there should be no punishments, especially life terms, without possibility of parole.

In addition, any prisoner should be permitted to pay a restitution to his victims, if possible, e.g., by working and relinquishing all or part of his salary to them, and thereby shorten his sentence, the counterpart to works of mercy, fasting, praying, etc. to atone for past sins. Finally, the victims should be able to forgive the criminal and commute his sentence.

Now we come to the most fascinating chapters in Smith’s book. In them he builds up a brutal indictment of Christianity as an “anti-life” religion. Let’s look at some of his claims.

Here is our author’s definition of “religious morality”:

Basically, [it] defends a universal moral order established by god and existing independently of man. Man is born into this moral structure, where he finds that his foremost duty is to obey the dictates of his supernatural lawgiver. Morality, according to this view, serves the purpose of god, not man; and man is required to subordinate himself to the moral code. Obedience is the major virtue, disobedience the major vice. (Atheism: The Case Against God, 297)

This sounds very much like the divine command theory of ethics. It is not worth discussing this strawman. “God made man from the beginning, and left him in the hand of his own counsel.” (Sir 15:14) Natural ethics has nothing whatsoever to do with divine commands. And as for divine ethics, Smith has read Aquinas for the purpose of writing this book; did he never reach his treatment of happiness in ST, II-I, 1-5, habits in the second part of II-I, and particular virtues in II-II?

What of hell as a sanction for disobedience? Think of it this way. Good deeds, virtuous behavior “sculpt” the soul into something beautiful and Godlike. They define a person. Evil deeds, hatred, mortal sins, on the contrary, corrupt the soul and make it less human, more undefined. At the end of one’s life, you will end up as either a tough soul-builder, a warrior who has not given in to evil, or a spiritually sick and twisted weakling. The former will enjoy his reward, while the latter may be thrown out into the fire as a worthless and wicked creature. Now I personally am sympathetic to universal salvation. But I could be wrong. So as a practical matter, one would be well-advised to fear hell.

Smith’s second point is that the Christian clergy “feeds” on guilt. It fosters guilt within the souls of the laity where there is no need for it. “Christianity thrives on guilt. Guilt, not love, is the fundamental emotion that Christianity seeks to induce – and this is symptomatic of a viciousness in Christianity that few people care to acknowledge. For all of its alleged concern for the ‘poor in spirit,’ Christianity does it best to perpetuate spiritual impoverishment.” (304) But wait a minute. Is Smith condemning guilt as such? If one has done something wrong and bad, is it not an appropriate response of a healthy individual to feel guilty? What is wrong with a criminal repenting of his crime and making amends? I think our author has proved far too much.

Second, guilt can be taken away through confession, and the traditional prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. Thus, Catholicism provides the means to elimination of guilt. No one forces a person to confess his sins or to try to atone for them. It is Christianity that actually helps one to leave his guilt behind. I have even heard atheists absurdly claim that “A believer can even things up with his imaginary friend without addressing the consequences of his actions in the real world.” Yet this charge directly contradicts Smith’s. (Of course, neither accusation is correct.)

Third, there is no need to feel guilty if one has achieved something or done something praiseworthy. Pride is not a sin when it is within right reason; honor is a good worth striving for; and achieving heavenly glory is the whole purpose of life. (”‘A man is said to be proud, because he wishes to appear above… what he really is’; for he who wishes to overstep beyond what he is, is proud. Now right reason requires that every man’s will should tend to that which is proportionate to him. Therefore it is evident that pride denotes something opposed to right reason, and this shows it to have the character of sin.” (ST, II-II, 162, 1))

Fourth, Smith has postulated a conspiracy of the Church to dupe the impressionable masses into demanding its services and, presumably, paying for them (through donations). “Christianity,” he says, “has a vested interest in human misery.” (309, emphasis removed) Now Smith is a libertarian and an Objectivist. Does he believe that under the free market car repairmen prowl at night surreptitiously breaking cars hoping to cash in on the increased demand for their services? Do drug companies manufacture viruses with the intention of releasing them in midtown Manhattan hoping to profit from selling the cure? All these are logically possible, and the last one was even the plot of a movie, but they don’t happen in reality. So why has the Church allegedly succeeded in its particular conspiracy where no one else has?

Fifth, to say that the focus on guilt is greater than the focus on love is a travesty. God loves more the better things, and to the extent that dealing with the emotions and actions that yield guilt will improve a person, so much the better. One will enjoy peace with the Lord and further, as the song goes, “Many are the blessings He bears to those who walk in His ways.” Charity, for example, is divided with respect to its strength into beginning, progressing, and perfect. As Aquinas writes, “Even the perfect make progress in charity: yet this is not their chief care, but their aim is principally directed towards union with God. And though both the beginner and the proficient seek this, yet their solicitude is chiefly about other things, with the beginner, about avoiding sin, with the proficient, about progressing in virtue.” (ST, II-II, 24, 9, ad 3) So guilt and penance are for the beginners; once a person has reached a certain level of spiritual development, guilt all but disappears.

Sixth, how does Christianity perpetuate spiritual impoverishment? Here we have to understand Smith’s take on faith: “acts of faith are united by their submission to an authoritative moral code.” (306) Here by faith he means blind acceptance of the moral rules promulgated by the Church. This acceptance is a recipe for an escape from individual responsibility. “I was obeying God’s will” becomes, Smith says, a universal excuse. Really? If a murderer on trial were to offer that during his defense, he’d be laughed out of the courtroom and into an electric chair or, at best, be encouraged to enter an insanity plea. In any case, the Church’s rules are not arbitrary and anybody can and should examine them for himself if only to be convinced of their value and reasonableness.

Then there is this little gem:

Christian virtues – such as humility, self-sacrifice and a sense of sin – without exception, are geared to the destruction of man’s inner sense of dignity, efficacy and personal worth. It is not accidental that Christianity regards pride as a major sin. A man of self-esteem is an unlikely candidate for the master-slave relationship that Christianity offers him. … Christianity has nothing to offer a happy man living in a natural intelligible universe. (308)

There are errors galore in this. Humility is a virtue properly understood: “Wherefore a twofold virtue is necessary with regard to the difficult good: one, to temper and restrain the mind, lest it tend to high things immoderately; and this belongs to the virtue of humility: and another to strengthen the mind against despair, and urge it on to the pursuit of great things according to right reason; and this is magnanimity.” (ST, II-II, 161, 1) Humility results from the self-knowledge of one’s own limitations, from the realization that some goods are too high above oneself and cannot be attained. But one must be both humble and magnanimous, in the sense of aspiring to great things. For example, on the free market those entrepreneurs are most successful who have created the most value for the consumers. Their greatness is proportional to the quality of their service to the public. And service is a practical corollary of humility. If we praise captains of industry, we must praise them in part for their humility. Self-sacrifice may be appropriate even in Smith’s own teleological ethics; e.g., utilitarianism may require self-sacrifice if the good obtained somehow outweighs the evil suffered (unless Smith subscribes to moral egoism). Further, and obviously, one cannot sin and have dignity. When one sins, he becomes a slave. And speaking of which, Christianity does not, of course, proffer a master-slave relationship; it welcomes a believer into a Father-child relationship. How can Smith be so deluded? Finally, Christianity has everything to offer a naturally happy man. It offers a lifting up above his nature, knowledge of God, assurance that “what we do in life echoes in eternity,” supernatural happiness, and bliss such as cannot be described.

What of self-sacrifice? It is a mere pedagogical tool for those without a holy will. Through helping others, perhaps in spite of one’s own initial inclination, it is hoped that one will come to love the people he helps and the happiness he thereby engenders. So, that way lies the road to perfection. Self-sacrifice is not an end in itself but a means to becoming good. In response to that Smith has the following to say:

If Christianity is to gain a motivational foothold, it must declare war on earthly pleasure and happiness, and this, historically, has been its precise course of action. … It is not accidental that Christianity is profoundly anti-pleasure, especially in the area of sex; this bias serves a specific function. Pleasure is the fuel of life, and sexual pleasure is the most intense form of pleasure that man can experience. To deny oneself pleasure, or to convince oneself that pleasure is evil, is to produce frustration and anxiety and thereby become potential material for salvation. (308)

It is certainly true that pleasure is the fuel of life; all human actions are done for pleasure. But there are different kinds of pleasure (for example, there is sensual delight and intellectual joy). And some less valued pleasures interfere with the enjoyment of the more valued ones. The rational thing to do would be to abandon the lower pleasures. But we humans are hardly rational. In fact, with respect to concupiscence, we are quite insane. Now as for sex, I think it is hardly necessary to describe the trouble one can get into with pre-marital sex and with other, even less appealing perversions of sexuality. At any rate, sex we have in common with animals; to be truly human we must think, and, as Aquinas argues, the greatest happiness man can have lies in the sole contemplation of God seen in His essence.

Smith complains that “Another significant teaching of Jesus… is that certain feelings and desires are in themselves sinful. Merely feeling or desiring something can bring divine condemnation upon oneself, regardless of whether one translates the feeling into action: ‘every one who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment’; ‘every one who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.’” (323) What is our author’s reply? “Psychological health, to a large extent, consists of being in touch with one’s feelings.” (323) I see. Go on, then, be in touch with your envy, your anger, you vanity, your sloth, our egotism, and so on. Trust me on this, these feelings can destroy you from within, especially if you are “in touch” with them.

Can the emotion of love be forced? “Love,” according to our author, “is an emotional response to values, and if we do not perceive the necessary values in many people, how are we to force the emotion of love.” (323) But the love that is spoken of here is not an “emotional response” to the value of a thing for one’s own purposes. It is unconditional love, the willing of good to another, loving and delighting in them for their own sake. As I pointed out above, this kind of love can grow through works of mercy, study, prayer, and the like.

Finally, it is not a doctrine of Christianity that “We are not to judge others… which is merely another facet of suspending one’s critical faculties. We are to tolerate injustice, we are to refrain from passing value judgments of other people – such precepts require the obliteration of one’s capacity to distinguish the good from the evil; they require the kind of intellectual and moral passiveness that generates a mentality of obedience.” (325) Nonsense, all of it. We can judge any aspect of human beings just as we can judge any aspect of the physical world. Love is not blind, after all; it has eyes: “be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.” (Mt 10:16) One loves in proportion to the goodness of a thing. Conditional approval then is just as important as unconditional love; in fact, the two are the twin sides of the same coin: you love the good unconditionally, but how much you love it depends on the amount of goodness (or being, to be Thomistic about it) in a thing and is therefore conditional. Jesus’s saying with respect to justice is to be understood as a command to love everyone, even one’s enemies. Yet justice is to be fought for, just like any other virtue. The only counsel that Christianity recommends that we heed is that we ought not to forget the good in an entity we are judging, even if its evil characteristics seem most prominent.

It is time to bring this critique to a close. Smith’s book is interesting but fatally flawed. The case against God is weak, indeed.