DO THEISTIC PROOFS PROVE THE WRONG GOD

In the "memorial," a fragmentary record of a profound experience of God, Blaise Pascal contrasted "the God of philosophers and scholars" with "the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob" or "the God of Jesus Christ." The former is but a philosophical abstraction; the latter is a living reality of whom Pascal testifies, and not simply a warranted conclusion. Pascal summarizes his experience with one word, "Fire," and elaborates by saying: "Certainty, certainty, heartfelt joy, peace." He further differentiated the God of the philosophers from the God of his fiery experience by saying "He [God] can only be found by the ways taught in the Gospels."[i] Theistic proofs are certainly not in view. Even if one would assent to classical theistic proofs, this would not yield the biblical deity. As Pascal affirms in Pensées:

The last phrase is paramount for Pascal. Here, unlike the passages on God's infinity that introduce the wager argument, he seems to grant that some kinds of natural theology might yield the existence of a metaphysically ultimate being, but that such proof, in itself, lacks the religious force required to transform one into a devout and obedient Christian. One convinced by the argument from immutable truth—and Pascal probably has Father Mersenne or Augustine in mind—need not, for instance, view the Christian doctrines of original sin or the Incarnation to be truths. Rather, if the argument is successful, God's existence is deduced from the existence of eternal truth, but not all of these truths need be those of orthodox theology. Such a God may be a divine mathematician, but not much more. Pascal goes on to say: "The Christian's God does not consist merely of a God who is the author of mathematical truths and the order of the elements."[iii] This "God," Pascal avers, is too abstract and too impersonal to be a compelling object of spiritual consecration.

Pascal's fundamental worries about the sub-Christian object of natural theology have been voiced by Christian theologians and philosophers throughout the centuries. These thinkers—such as Tertullian, Kierkegaard, Karl Barth, and John Hick—join Pascal to argue that the kind of entity argued for by the various forms of natural theology falls far short of the living and personal Deity of biblical revelation.[iv] As such, these proofs or arguments[v], even if philosophically successful, do little if anything to substantiate the biblical position because the "God of the philosophers" has so little (if any) affinity with the living Lord of Christian faith.

In light of the recent renewed interest among philosophers in theistic arguments, this kind of criticism is important to discuss, since its truth would render even the best argument (or collection of arguments) religiously inadequate or even misguided. I believe Pascal's objection highlights the theological limits of any natural theology but that he is, nevertheless, essentially misguided in claiming that the enterprise of natural theology is defective in principle. A close scrutiny of Pascal's arguments will, I believe, help disclose the inadequacies of his objection.

Pascal's overall argument against the "God of the philosophers" from the Pensées can be reconstructed as follows:

Even philosophers who find theistic arguments compelling or at least plausible admit that the classical arguments taken singly or conjointly do not demonstrate the existence of a God possessing all of the important attributes of God as given in revealed theology. Elements of the divine character essential and indispensable to Christian theism—such as the Trinity or the Incarnation—are not deducible through philosophical argument alone (although they may be rendered more intelligible or coherent through philosophical analysis).[vi] St. Thomas Aquinas readily admitted that theistic argumentation, what he called "the philosophical sciences," must be supplemented by revelation for any adequate view of God and, further, for any hope of attaining salvation.[vii]

Along these lines, Richard Taylor, having presented cosmological and design arguments for God's existence, admits that his theistic conclusions hardly "amount to any sort of confirmation of religion" because they are "metaphysical and philosophical considerations having implications of only a purely speculative kind" that "imply almost nothing with respect to any divine attributes, such as benevolence."[viii]

Perhaps Taylor is being too theologically modest. If his arguments succeed, he has proved this:

This being would be the only such being to possess causally necessary existence or self-existence (aseity). This accords well with Christian theism's view of God as the supreme existent who sustains the universe. Taylor's philosophically derived deity is also like the Christian God because both are viewed as a cosmic designer.

These two qualities, contra Taylor, surely are part of a larger cluster of essential "divine attributes," classically understood. But these attributes, while necessary for the Christian view of God, are not sufficient to establish God's moral character ("benevolence") or any specific intentions toward humanity. They say nothing of the Trinity or of the Incarnation or of any way of salvation. Taylor himself seems to rest content in something less than Christian theism when he concludes Metaphysics by recommending that one seek to understand "what Spinoza meant by the intellectual love of God."[xi] This shows that a philosophically derived deity may be worthy of assent and some wonderment, but may fail to evoke the worship required by a spiritually vigorous monotheism. Whether this less than orthodox view is necessarily or even likely the conclusion for those who argue philosophically about God will be taken up below.

Without referring to Pascal directly, Peter Geach attacks the idea embraced by Pascal that the God of natural theology is too abstract to be identical with the "true and living" God of revealed religion and religious belief. Geach finds this view confused. He argues that abstract inferences can single out concrete referents in certain situations; and if this is so, there is no reason to disqualify natural theology from referring to the God of Scripture simply on the basis that natural theology can yield only an abstract entity that lacks some of the essential attributes of the God of biblical revelation. His project is not to construct a cogent natural theology but to justify this kind of project as free from any intrinsic theological deformity.

To make his point about abstract reference and concrete referents, Geach uses an example from Sherlock Holmes's investigation of a mysterious death. Imagine that Holmes deduced from available evidence both the existence of a murderer—that the death in question was a homicide—and some of the murder's characteristics. This is a rather abstract notion of the murderer in the sense of being general; it is not a specific or personal description. The description is abstract in that the characteristics of the murder are ones that many people share. The description fails to pick out one particular person, as would that person's finger prints and social security number.

But suppose the police then arrested a man with the general characteristics deduced by Holmes and found other "confirmatory proofs of his guilt."[xii] Geach says, "it would occur to nobody, I imagine, to distinguish between the abstract murderer of Sherlock Holmes' deductions and the real live murderer raging in his cell."[xiii] In other words, the two kinds of reference would, nonetheless, have a common referent.

To return to the issue at hand, Geach's claim seems to be that abstract reasoning—or reasoning that infers the existence of a subject that can only be described through the use of rather general references—need not exclude the discovery of a specific and personal subject of that reasoning. He seems to be arguing that a rather abstract description will fit a specific case under certain circumstances, such as when the murderer is apprehended. But he notes that other "confirmatory proofs" are required to properly establish the identity of the particular man as the murderer. These evidential factors are presented in addition to what Holmes has deduced and so involve evidence compatible with, but also beyond the scope of, his original inference.

To anticipate a distinction later made by Geach in connection with natural theology, the inference that there is a murderer means that someone or another occupies the title, position, or status as "the murderer" (as opposed to there being no murderer because the death was accidental or suicidal). A particular person is the murderer, but we do not yet know which person has the status or claims the position as the murderer, even though we have a few leads as to what kind of a person it is. Whoever it might be, "murderer" is not his or her proper name. Before the "confirmatory proofs" are found, any number of people could conceivably occupy the title or position of murderer, just as several baseball players could bat in the cleanup position for their team in the opening lineup.

This situation of identifying a title or position that someone (we know not who) occupies as a murderer differs from another context in which we are acquainted with a "nice" person who we later discover is a murderer. In this kind of case we know the particular person before knowing that he has the title or position of being a murderer.

Geach does not develop his provocative analogy any further, but we can do so without, I think, departing from his essential insights: Natural theology tells us in the abstract that there is a God with certain attributes who can be discovered with the assistance of certain other "confirmatory proofs," just as Holmes's murderer is discovered through this means. When these additional arguments are given, we find that the specific God discovered is one and the same as the God of abstract natural theology, just as the abstract description of the murderer corresponds with the actual apprehended murderer. To stay with Geach's analogy, the additional arguments, whatever they might be, would have to show that God possessed certain attributes neither proved by, nor incompatible with, the project of natural theology alone.

This confirmatory project of proof could be difficult, more difficult, in fact, than in the case of the murderer. If natural theology yields a necessary being or designer or a maximal being, is this the God of Judaism, Christianity, or Islam or some monotheistic God distinct from these traditions (there is, for instance, a theistic strain in Hinduism) or of any historical tradition? Geach does not take this up, apart from his comments on how far one can stray from a proper theological description without describing the wrong God. Historically speaking, most natural theologians have only claimed to establish philosophically a monotheistic deity whose specific identity is not exhaustively determined through their procedures. Aquinas ends his discussion of the theistic proofs with the famous conclusion "and this all men call God," but he grants that natural theology cannot prove the Trinity or creation ex nihilo. Room must be left for revelation and other types of argumentation to fill out the picture.[xiv] Natural theology tells us that there is a God and that God has certain attributes. But it is left to us to inquire as to which of the theological contenders, if any, is the specifically genuine deity.

Unlike the case where Holmes's deduction leads the authorities to pursue the purported murderer, the natural theologian might stop at the deduction of a generic deity and investigate the matter no further. If this is all that natural theology can establish, why go beyond it? There is clearly a moral imperative to catch a murderer, but is there such an imperative to transcend generic theism and decide between competing monotheisms?

In the case of the murderer, a suspect is apprehended through descriptions given by Holmes. Then, through "confirmatory proofs," the suspect becomes a convict. In the case of the God of natural theology, we have at least three suspects and the matter of convicting or confirming proof is very involved indeed, more involved that what is required to identify the murder suspect. Viewed in this way by filling out Geach's analogy, these "confirmatory proofs"—whatever they may be—have substantial epistemic force in identifying the true God.[xv]

The cases are analogous in that some kind of "confirmatory proofs" are needed; but a disanalogy appears in considering the complicated nature in discerning just what this confirmation would involve. Holmes gives an abstract description of a human being. His description is abstract in that it could refer to any number of people because it is general. But as Geach says, no one will have any reason to differentiate the "abstract murderer" from the "real live murderer" raging about in the cell. Yet this assertion confuses matters. Strictly speaking, there was, in this historical scenario, no "abstract murderer" (to use Geach's term), only a concrete murderer who, when his existence was first deduced by Holmes, was referred to in an abstract manner.[xvi] The reference was abstract because of a lack of knowledge by Holmes that rendered his speculative reference a general one. At that point, the question of the existence or non-existence of a murderer was solved, but the exact or specific identity of the murderer remained unsolved. To use our previous distinction: we know that someone holds the position or title of "murderer"; we do not know exactly who holds that title. I cannot now remember the name of the queen of the Netherlands; but I know that there is someone who occupies that position or title. Holmes knew that the murderer was a human being of some stripe, and he knew what kind of creatures human beings are, even if he could not give a specific description of the particular person.

What worries thinkers like Pascal is that natural theologians not only make abstract references to God (that refer to God in philosophical, and not devotional, terms) but actually may refer to God as an abstract being—as a kind of Cosmic Principle or Source lacking concrete personality or goodness or the ability or willingness to redeem erring mortals. We know the murderer is some kind of person, but do we have this knowledge of God, given the restricted scope of natural theology? Pascal explains the nature of the God in which he is interested in a section contesting natural theology. He emphasizes people's subjective response to the biblical God that would not necessarily be entailed by abstract deities:

The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, the God of the Christians is a God of love and consolation: he is a God who fills the soul and heart of those whom he possesses: he is a God who makes them inwardly aware of their wretchedness and his infinite mercy: who unites himself with them in the depths of their soul: who fills it with humility, joy, confidence and love: who makes them incapable of having any other end but him.[xvii]

Pascal does not elaborate on the exact nature of his concern with the limits or misleading aspects of natural theology, but we can develop it, nevertheless. The God of natural theology might fall short of the biblical deity in at least three different ways.

First, natural theology might claim to establish the existence of a God that is more of a metaphysical principle than a personal being. This would contradict the orthodox claim that God is a thoroughly personal being who cannot be subsumed under any higher impersonal philosophical category. H. P. Owen notes that theists "differ from thinkers such as Sankara, Spinoza, Hegel, and F. H. Bradley for whom personal images of God are intellectually immature depictions of a suprapersonal Absolute."[xviii] For theism, God is personal all the way down. Proofs for an impersonal deity would not assist the theistic cause; they would contradict it.[xix]

Second, natural theology could claim to establish the existence of a God that is the source of the universe but maintain that the question of whether God possesses any distinctly personal attributes (such as a moral disposition, reflective self-awareness, and a capacity for volitional agency) transcends its philosophical prowess. This is roughly Richard Taylor's position as explained in his book Metaphysics.

Third, natural theology could argue that it demonstrates the existence of a personal source of the world but cannot tell us very much about what God's personal characteristics might be. This is similar to an archaeologist who unearths a piece of ancient pottery that he discerns was made by a human, not by natural processes or by any animal; but he cannot determine very much as to what the creator of the pottery was like.

The first instance is the only case in which natural theology directly threatens Pascal's theology. The last two cases of natural theology do not necessarily undermine any Christian notion of God; they simply underdetermine it.

Geach anticipates the problem of defining the attributes of the God of natural theology. He raises the difficulty of the natural theologian who, on the one hand, correctly proves the existence of God with attributes ABC, which are solely predicable of God, but who, on the other hand, predicates to God attributes XYZ, which God does not, in fact, possess. This, according to Geach, is the error of Spinoza, who falsely believed that "God produces all possible creatures, by a natural necessity of fully manifesting his infinite power."[xx] In this case, Geach contends, the natural theologian has proved the existence of the true God (there is only one) but his conception of God is partially incorrect.

A critic can question Geach's claim that the true God may be proved by those who significantly misdescribe this God. He might think that such an understanding is too charitable and wonder whether the deity derived can really be considered the true God. He might ask: Which deity has been deduced (by Spinoza or any other erring natural theologian)--the real God or another one? Can Geach accommodate the distressing contention that natural theology may "prove" false deities? Put another way, if the procedures of natural theology allow for conflicting theistic conclusions, then, by reductio ad absurdum, something is wrong with those procedures. It could be that the procedures are intrinsically defective.

Geach attempts to dissolve this problem by more carefully articulating what is at issue. The question, he thinks, is not "Which God has been proved to exist—the true God or some other?"[xxi] Rather, the proposition "A God exists" does not predicate existence to one of several God-candidates (one real, the others illusory), but instead "affirms that something-or-another has Divine attributes."[xxii] The situation could be put another way: the divine attributes ABC are uniquely predicated of X--whatever else X may be (in addition to ABC). Geach gives an example. Someone correctly believes that the President of France exists, but is mistaken as to who exactly holds the office--he might even think it is occupied by someone whose very identity was a muddle, such as Poincare who was thought by a student to be an eminent statesman as well as a mathematician. Geach says:

Geach seems to be saying that one might truly believe or know that divine attributes exist but falsely believe that, for instance, the Hegelian Absolute (which does not exist) is the philosophically discovered God that possesses them. This is what Geach likely means by “a phantom object,” in this case “the God of the philosophers.” On the other hand, if one takes the universe to be identical with God and so possessing divine attributes (pantheism), Geach could say that the universe in this case is an “inferior object” because, although it does exist (unlike the Hegelian Absolute), it has no divine attributes--attributes that only inhere in a God who transcends the universe and is who not identical with it.[xxiv]

But perhaps Geach could also refer to a situation where a partially erring, but theistic natural theologian might correctly ascribe the divine attributes of omniscience and omnipotence and omnipresence to a being whom, the natural theologian wrongly supposes, also possesses an attribute not truly possessed by the extant Trinitarian God, such as the absolute and undifferentiated unity ascribed to Allah in the Koran. In this case of false unitarian ascription, the partially erring natural theologian's concept of God is "inferior" to that which Geach takes to be the correct concept of the existing Christian God. However, the theological offense would not be as severe as ascribing divine attributes to the nonexistent Hegelian Absolute (“a phantom object”) or the existent but nondivine universe (“an inferior object”). Geach might describe the non-Trinitarian idea of Allah as an “inferior object,” but the order of theological offense would not be of ascribing divine attributes to an entity that possessed no divine attributes (such as the created universe). Such “phantom” and “inferior” objects taken to possess divine attributes raise the question of just what comprises the divine attributes. The Hegelian Absolute is metaphysically supreme, providential, and omnipresent (all attributes of the Christian God), but not a personal being (as is the Christian God). The same is true of the universe in a pantheistic view, although the purported divine object differs somewhat from the Hegelian Absolute.[xxv]

These reflections on Geach’s discussion help establish an important differentiation. Although he doesn't put it this way, Geach is drawing a distinction between (1) the word "God" as an office, title, position or set of capacities that is owned by one entity or another and (2) "God" as a proper name that can refer to only one person (a more rigid designator). This echoes the distinction previously made between "the murderer" as a position and the occupant of that position. To use another example, any number of people could be the president of the United States. However, all the recent presidents, by virtue of their office, have certain things in common such as being the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, being over thirty-five years of age, being limited to two terms in office, etc. Therefore, although someone could know that the presidency was occupied by someone he could be mistaken as to who that person was. But one could not be so confused as to think that the presidency was occupied by a thirty-one-year old who was elected for a ten-year term. The American Constitution forbids this.

Geach states that only God can "draw the line" where a natural theologian stops believing in the true God because of the admixture of false predicates. It is certainly true that we often err in our beliefs about other people—many of whom we know quite well—without being mistaken about their essential identity. I know my wife truly, but I might hold a few false beliefs about her—if my past experience can serve as a guide. None of these errors have been serious enough to discredit my opinion of her completely, as would be the case if I discovered to my horror that she was an escaped serial killer. The discovery of her criminality would show my belief in her as a decent person to be radically erroneous and would reveal that I did not really know her at all. My wife, qua loving person through and through, does not exist.

But surely some determinate divine attributes must be properly identified if the claim can be sustained that the partially erring natural theologian has proven and identified the real God at all. Here Geach appears to be somewhat careless. Upon closer inspection, his example of Spinoza is not a case where substantial theistic attributes are properly identified but muddied up with additional attributes not possessed by the real God (who Geach understands to be the Christian God). Properly understood, Spinoza's God is the one infinite substance that includes all existence (monism). He says in Proposition 14 of Book One of his Ethics "There can be, or be conceived, no other substance but God." This substance is, in his words, Deus sive natura, (God or nature), a pantheistic deity not ontologically distinct from nature; it is impersonal as well, as the previous quote by Owen noted. Therefore, Geach should say that Spinoza fundamentally misidentified what the "divine attributes" actually are because Spinoza includes important attributes that are antithetical to classically essential theistic attributes—even if he retains some attributes compatible with Christian theism such as self-existence and omnipresence. This case is similar to the one where someone says that he knows that the present President of the United States is thirty-one-years old. Geach should recognize that Spinoza goes beyond misidentifying who occupies the title of God; he misunderstands what the title itself stipulates.

Geach's distinction works better in cases where basic theistic attributes are defended by natural theologians, but, nevertheless, other attributes are falsely ascribed in addition to the necessary theistic core. In Geach's case as a Roman Catholic believer, he could say that the Jewish natural theologian Maimonides as a monotheist correctly ascribed to God the attributes of omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence but incorrectly denied the Trinity. Consider these six criteria necessary for any classical monotheism:

Maimonides affirms 1-6. Spinoza unambiguously affirms only 1, 2 and 6; in any event, he falls outside of theism, as the leaders of his synagogue rightly concluded before excommunicating him for heresy. Richard Taylor unambiguously affirms only 1, 2, and 5; he may accept 3 and 6; but he rejects 4 outright, a point crucial to Pascal. Similar criteria checks can be made for various natural theologians.

Despite the limitations delineated above, if natural theology could establish 1-6 it would at least narrow the theological field considerably because these divine attributes, if proved, would eliminate pantheism, polytheism, deism, and dualism as metaphysical challengers to theism--even though it would still permit a variety of monotheisms. If this was the case, additional argumentation or investigation could concentrate on which of the theistic religions is the true religion. Natural theology would have done some important prefatory work, albeit limited in scope. Even if the "God of the philosophers" ends up being abstract, at least some other abstract notions would be eliminated from theistic competition.

Pascal's first premise that the biblical God is not abstract should also be assessed. The premise requires some unpacking considering the various meanings of the word "abstract."

First, the word abstract may concern general or basic descriptions lacking certain content. This is the matter taken up by Geach's murderer example and we need not discuss it more.

Second, another use of "abstract" that Pascal is concerned about, I think, is talk of God that is abstract in the sense of being philosophically abstruse and impersonal. In Thomistic language, to refer to God as "pure act" (actus purus) is abstract in that it says nothing about any personal traits such as love, mercy or justice; it also takes some thinking to understand just what actus purus means because we must master the Aristotelian categories of actuality and potentiality.

However, this objection to abstraction as abstruse language and impersonal can be rebutted through a consideration of different types of complementary description. God, as presented in biblical materials, is not described philosophically, but as a particular divine being with specifiable attributes often evidenced in relation to human beings. For instance, the living God of the Hebrews is never referred to as "aseic" or as "omnicompetent” (abstract epithets) used by some philosophers and theologians. Nevertheless, the biblical God, according to orthodox thought, possesses attributes that, when distinguished from particular claims about historical intervention, are abstract in the sense of being metaphysical or somewhat abstruse.

To say that God is self-existent or the maximally greatest being or the First Cause is to speak in abstractions since we are not speaking of particular divine actions or intentions but of rather arcane (but not unintelligible) metaphysical concepts. Yet as understood within the theistic traditions, these abstract attributes do apply to the particular and personal deity described in Scripture. In that way, God does possess attributes that can legitimately be seen as abstract (from one philosophical angle at least), but these abstract descriptions do not necessarily override or undermine the distinctively personal attributes of God.

John Hick seems to agree with Pascal's concern when he speaks of the difference between the God of religion and the God of the philosophers. He says that the Hebrew-Christian God “was not a proposition completing a syllogism, or an abstract idea accepted by the mind, but the reality which gave meaning to their lives."[xxvi] Of course, no orthodox theist, philosophically inclined or otherwise, thinks that God is a proposition. God may be provable through an argument that concludes with the proposition "God exists," but that is a different matter than God being a proposition. Caricature aside, Hick introduces a different aspect to the notion of an abstract God when he says that this intellectual view of deity is merely "accepted by the mind." This might be called intellectualism, which means a purely cognitive recognition of certain theological facts that fails to affect existentially one's innermost spiritual life.

Hick's description does seem to fit the orientation of the biblical writers, but there need be no dichotomy between the philosophical and the devotional approaches to God. There is no necessary contradiction between believing God's existence (or at least certain things about God) can be proved through argument and believing that this same God, understood from within a religious tradition, can give meaning and inspiration to one's life. Also, as mentioned above, certain attributes of God can be "abstract" in the sense of being metaphysical qualities, such as aseity, and also be possessed by a living and personal God who acts in history. We should remember that Anselm's rather abstruse ontological argument was situated—without artifice, I believe—within a prayer.

Natural theology offers arguments for a God who is self-existent, or the maximally greatest being, or the designer, or the source or the moral law, etc. Successful proofs provide an abstract framework for the divine being, but they do not fill in the specifics about that being's character. Even an ontological argument—which, if successful, establishes a maximally great being—does not specify just what the good may be or how we should imitate it. For instance, if it is good to be both loving and just, how then are these two goods both maximized in the divine nature? Revealed religion answers this question by appealing to the doctrines of the Incarnation and atonement, but the ontological argument does not answer it because of its formal and abstract character. Nevertheless, this abstraction does not logically preclude the claim that God is a personal being who can be accurately, if inadequately, described in an abstract manner--and who could harmonize in his being both love and justice.

All in all, Pascal's premise 1 is not clearly true since the God of religion can be understood in certain abstract ways without necessarily suffering any spiritual diminution in the philosophical process. Natural theology will, by its very nature, fail to demonstrate all the attributes of the Deity described in Scripture, but this need not cripple the endeavor. This conclusion frees the aspiring natural theologian from at least one theological fetter often applied to his metaphysical endeavors.[xxvii]

ENDNOTES

[i] Blaise Pascal, Pensées, translated by A. J. Krailshaimer (New York: Penguin, 1966), 309.

[ii] Ibid., 449/556. The first number is the Lafuma enumeration of the fragments; the second is the older Brunschvicg system.

[iii] Ibid.

[iv] Hick's position will briefly be discussed below.

[v] Recent discussions of natural theology have distinguished a theistic proof (as a demonstrative argument) from a theistic argument (a compelling but less than demonstrative case). For the purposes of this paper, the distinction is moot because in the case of both theistic proofs and arguments the object of the argumentation is philosophically derived--and this is the factor that bothers Pascal and others.

[vi] In addition to the elements of monotheism discussed below, I take Christian theism to mean the belief in one God who exists in three co-equal and co-eternal persons--the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. God is also taken to be omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and omnibenevolent, as well as having incarnated in the person of Jesus Christ for the purpose of human redemption. Theological debates on the precise definitions of all these theological terms need not be addressed for the purposes of this paper; although my understanding of Christian theism does rule out the Process theology of some thinkers (especially those significantly influenced by Alfred North Whitehead) who identify themselves with the Christian tradition despite their redefinition of key Christian doctrines about God.

[vii] See Summa Theologica, 1a, 1, 1.

[viii] Richard Taylor, Metaphysics 4th ed. (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1992), 115.

[ix] Ibid., 99-110

[x] Ibid., 110-116.

[xi] Ibid., 123.

[xii] Peter Geach, God and the Soul (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969), 113.

[xiii] Ibid.

[xiv] The rational defense of the Christian world view has traditionally been divided into two categories: natural theology and Christian evidences. The latter addresses specific historical claims such as the historical reliability of the Scriptures. Of course, the categories overlap in many interesting ways.

[xv] Pascal himself offered several different kinds of arguments for the truth of the Christian faith in his Pensées. However, he did not invoke natural theology as traditionally understood.

[xvi] Given my construal of the situation we need not discuss the deeper ontological question of whether or not there are abstract objects or entities.

[xvii] Pascal, 449/556.

[xviii] H.P. Owen, "Theism," Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Paul Edwards, ed., (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company Co., and the Free Press, 1967) 7:97.

[xix] Although Pascal does not mention the problem of theological impersonalism specifically, he could have been concerned that Aquinas' proofs, relying as they do on Aristotelian notions, might only prove an impersonal Unmoved Mover, and not the "I am who I am" of the Scriptures. This is a legitimate concern whether or not Pascal had Thomas in mind.

[xx] Geach, 114. Geach's description of Spinoza's God as "producing creatures" may be somewhat misleading since the God of Spinoza was really God/nature where God is not ontologically distinct from nature and so does not produce distinct creatures. But this is a minor point since it is clear that Spinoza's theology is at odds with orthodox monotheism at many pivotal points. See the following discussion on this.

[xxi] Ibid.

[xxii] Ibid., 115.

[xxiii] Ibid.

[xxiv] I owe the germ of these insights to a perceptive comment by an anonymous reviewer.

[xxv] Hegel’s metaphysic is usually taken to be panentheistic (the Absolute encompasses the world but is not identical to it because it also transcends it) as opposed to pantheistic (the world and God are identical).

[xxvi] John Hick, Philosophy of Religion, 2nd ed. (Englewood, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1973), 51.

[xxvii] I would like to thank Professor Robert T. Herbert and an anonymous reviewer at Christian Scholars Review for their helpful comments on earlier version of this paper.