Abstract
This Festschrift in honour of Stephen T. Davis, Emeritus Russell K. Pitzer Professor of Philosophy at Claremont McKenna College, is elegantly produced. Davis is an analytic philosopher of religion and a philosophical theologian of first rank who over the course of more than four decades has written on scripture, the problem of evil, and the relationship between reason and belief. Davis is one who has quite deliberately crossed the lines between philosophy and theology, when others would prefer to keep them separate. On his personal website Davis describes himself as one who has taught philosophy and religion, with an emphasis on Christian philosophy, and ‘(sometimes) theology.’
The list of contributors to the volume reads like a veritable ‘who’s who’ of contemporary philosophy of religion but it also includes important contributions from biblical scholars and theologians. Among those included are Charles Taliaferro, Richard Swinburne, John Hick, Eleonore Stump, William Lane Craig, Anselm K. Min, Linda Zagzebski, and Alvin Plantinga, while Gerard O’Collins SJ is the pre-eminent theologian-contributor to the final section of the volume, a section which seeks to bring together the perspectives of philosophy of religion, scripture studies, and theology. Contributions are for the most part new, with just a few having previously appeared elsewhere. The volume is divided in four sections: I. ‘Doctrine and Christian Belief’; II. ‘The Nature of God and Christian Belief’; III. ‘Reason and Christian Belief’; IV. ‘Scripture, Theology, and Christian Belief.’ In this review I focus on the contributions which have been of most interest to me and which in some cases have not featured much in other reviews of the book which have appeared since its publication.
In his essay, the first of the volume, ‘Deep Redemption,’ Charles Taliaferro focuses on Stephen Davis’s own understanding of redemption which is rooted firmly in the Anselmian theology of substitution and sacrifice, whereby Christ through his suffering and death on the Cross paid the penalty and made possible the forgiveness of our sins. Taliaferro agrees with Davis in rooting the Christian concept of redemption in Christ’s sacrificial death on the Cross but differs with Davis in arguing that the whole event of Christ’s life, teaching, passionate sacrifice, and Resurrection brings about restoration and healing. Taliaferro accordingly seeks to supplement Davis’s approach with a richer and deeper concept of the restorative work of redemption with the promise of new life in Christ and in our relationship with the Trinity. However, taking into account the full range of Davis’s work on topics other than redemption (e.g. on the Atonement and the Trinity), Taliaferro argues that his own ‘deep’ approach to redemption has been in fact inspired by Davis himself.
Following on from essays by Richard Swinburne (previously published elsewhere), Brian Leftow, John Hick, William Hasker, and Dale Tuggy, Eleonore Stump writes on the topic of divine simplicity and focuses on the distinction in Aquinas between God’s essence, or esse, and an entity, or id quod est. Id quod est signifies something concrete, while esse does not. Similarly, id quod est signifies something particular, while esse does not. Aquinas asserts that God is nothing more than his esse and esse is distinct from id quod est: God is, therefore, simple. On the standard interpretation of Aquinas, this means that he holds that God is not an entity at all. However, for Stump, this interpretation is mistaken and makes it difficult to see how God, as simple, identical with his essence, and not an entity, could be a person who instantiates causal power, is omniscient, and interacts with human beings. On the analogy of quantum mechanics and the possibility of characterizing light as sometimes a wave, sometimes a particle, Stump asserts that God is sometimes to be characterized as esse, sometimes as id quod est. It is, for Stump, fine to characterize God as esse as long as this does not rule out the equally true claim that God is id quod est, a person, in other words, capable of relating, creating, loving, and acting. Stump offers a compelling account for how divine simplicity, on Aquinas’s account, might best and more richly be understood. Perhaps, however, the quantum analogy might be problematic in so far as it focuses on human observation and its limitations, on the human ability to see something in one way and then another which is also a recognition of the limits of perspective. Perhaps the recognition of God as both esse and id quod est might be better rooted in the nature of God as pure esse itself rather than in the relativity of quantum mechanics. Stump is right to point to the inadequacies in the standard account of Aquinas on divine simplicity but perhaps her quantum analogy is too limiting.
William Lane Craig addresses the topic ‘God and Abstract Objects: The Theological Challenge of Platonism.’ He argues that orthodox theists should not be Platonist if, by Platonism, we mean the assertion that abstract objects are metaphysically necessary, mind-independent entities. For Craig, Platonism is incompatible with the doctrine of creation ex nihilo and so it fundamentally compromises divine aseity. If Platonism is true, for Craig, then the property of existing a se no longer belongs to God alone; God has a rival in the class of abstract objects. However, Platonism must prove the existence of metaphysically necessary abstract objects if it is to retain any credibility. Craig looks to two famous defences of Platonism: Quine’s Indispensability Argument and Burgess and Rosen’s Revised Indispensability Argument. He argues that neither succeeds and insists, accordingly, that the theist is justified in asserting divine aseity and creation ex nihilo and free, therefore, to explore other ways of accounting for abstract objects. Craig offers a fuller account of himself in his God over All: Divine Aseity and the Challenge of Platonism (Oxford University, 2016). His contribution to the volume reviewed here is in itself an excellent introduction to Craig’s bracingly rigorous approach to metaphysics. His clarity of approach could be very helpful in evaluating patristic, medieval, and modern ‘mergings’ of Platonic and Christian thought. At the same time, one would hope that Craig’s admirably uncompromising approach would not militate against the appreciation of the value of the Platonic dimension of Christian philosophy and theology over the centuries.
With his contribution entitled ‘Why Only an Immutable God can Love, Relate, and Suffer,’ Anselm K. Min offers a refreshing defence of the classical Christian tradition regarding divine immutability. While not seeking to gloss over the philosophical difficulties, Min follows his instincts and ultimately sees no contradiction between the assertion that God is unchanging and the assertion that God cares for and responds to us. It is precisely because of God’s transcendence and immutability that God is able to ‘love us, relate to us, and suffer with us in a way that simply transcends the way we can ever, love, relate to, and suffer for another’(p. 204). With the help of Aquinas, Min carefully distinguishes between God in his own eternal nature and God in the otherness of created human nature: God loves and suffers with us even as God remains eternal and immutable in his divine nature. Having established this, Min goes on to clarify precisely what divine immutability means. He then seeks to develop an ontology and phenomenology of suffering, relating, and love at the human, finite, level which cries out to be redeemed by a being who is infinite, eternal, and immutable. Finally, Min seeks to develop an ontology of divine love on the part of God which recognizes that the word ‘love’ when spoken by Jesus means so much more than it could in our mouths. God as fullness of being—classically, ipsum esse per se subsistens—clarifies the true nature of divine immutability, the relationship between God and Creation, and the relationship between God and the creatures whom he loves and with whom he suffers. The very nature of God as immutable is what makes this possible.
The contribution from Linda Zagzebski is superb and comes with the spark of originality one has come to expect from this important thinker in the area of philosophy of religion today. Addressing the topic ‘Faith and Testimony,’ Zagzebski discusses the relationship between testimony and the formation of justified religious beliefs. Aside from religion, the role of testimony is an important, if at times undervalued, consideration in epistemology: regardless of where one stands in the knowledge as belief debate, testimony or relying on the witness of others is indispensable to a true description of knowledge acquisition in human beings. In the case of religious belief Zagzebski insists that the evidence model of justification is not appropriate on account of its distrust of the witness of others. Zagzebski proposes instead an assurance model of justified religious belief that is based on trust and on the reality of interpersonal relationship between testifier and believer. Such an approach on the part of Zagzebski also redresses the balance in epistemological discussion from an overly intellectual or rationalistic emphasis. On her account, for me to be justified in believing that p on the basis of someone’s testimony, I need only be justified in believing that the testifier is a trustworthy person. Zagzebski emphasizes first-person reasons for belief: what she calls ‘deliberative reasons.’ The deliberative, ‘first-person,’ reason why I believe in relation to the testimony of another is important and not the mere ‘disembodied’ or ‘disinterested’ theoretical reasoning as to the evidence for good or bad belief. Again, here Zagzebski is drawing on the best ancient philosophical thinking in relation to the acquisition of knowledge (and the role of testimony) in a way compelling for contemporary debate. While focused on philosophy of religion, Zagzebski’s contribution to the volume has much to offer wider discussion concerning knowledge, belief, and justification in epistemology today. Zagzebski has, of course, entered fully into that wider epistemological conversation with her recent work, Epistemic Authority: A Theory of Trust, Authority, and Autonomy of Belief (Oxford: 2014). There follow three further essays under the heading of reason and Christian belief by Kelly James Clark, C. Stephen Evans, and Alvin Plantinga (previously published elsewhere).
The volume concludes with an essay by Gerard O’Collins SJ: ‘The Philosophical Theology of Stephen Davis: Does it Coincide with Fundamental Theology?’ Following on from fine contributions by fellow theologians of different Christian denominations, Marguerite Shuster and Alan G. Padgett, O’Collins’s piece turns on the distinction he makes between philosophical theology, which requires faith, and philosophy of religion which does not. On the basis of this distinction, much of Davis’s work, for O’Collins, is seen to fall under the heading of philosophical theology. Davis accordingly is much more concerned with the believer’s understanding of his or her religion than with thinking about religion. Davis’s work is, accordingly, much more to be located within the tradition of the Anselmian paradigm of ‘faith seeking understanding’ which also best describes the approach of Fundamental Theology. In sum, for O’Collins, there is in Davis’s work a partial convergence between philosophical theology and Fundamental Theology in ways that are creative and point to opportunities for future dialogue.
The editor of the volume is C.P. Ruloff, an instructor of philosophy at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Surrey, British Columbia, Canada. The volume includes a select bibliography of works by Stephen T. Davis and a useful index. The fact that this Festschrift is well organized thematically, according to the very themes which have been of most interest to Davis himself, means the volume comes together as a coherent whole which draws the reader along. It is a fine tribute to an important thinker and writer of our time and affords the reader a very real opportunity of gaining insight into current discussion in philosophical theology and philosophy of religion.