On Moser's Rejection of Natural Theology

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Not too long ago I read Paul Moser’s recent book, The Evidence for God: Religious Knowledge Reexamined (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010) and overall I think it’s a fabulous book that is worth reading carefully. He provides an insightful critique of both “nontheistic naturalism” and fideism (chapters two and three, respectively) that should be helpful to anyone interested in the philosophy of religion (his critique of Kierkegaard’s “leap of faith” is devastating). His rejection of fideism should not, however, lead one to think he’s a supporter of natural theology. He rejects that too (chapter four), and quite forcefully.1 This rejection of natural theology is what I’d like to briefly address in the remainder of this post.To be clear, this shouldn’t be read as a full evaluation of Moser’s rejection of natural theology. He’s simply written far too much on the subject for me to tackle in a blog post. In what follows I want to address what seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding, at least as expressed in The Evidence for God, of 1) the aim of natural theology and 2) its scope.

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Enns's Invalid Inference

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We philosophers at Tyndale University College try to regularly point out to students that taking basic courses in critical reasoning and logic can be immensely valuable—even for non-philosophers. In particular, students that plan to enter some type of vocational ministry or plan to pursue an academic career in biblical studies or theology really should become well versed in basic elements of reasoning. We stress this point because, unfortunately, we too often come across eminent scholars that have committed rudimentary errors in reasoning. Take, for example, Paul Enns. In his book The Moody Handbook of Theology, Paul Enns writes the following about covenant theology.

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Dualism and the Goodness of Heaven

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One of the courses I teach at Tyndale University College is Philosophy of Mind. We spend all semester talking about the common options one might take when it comes to the mind's relationship to the body (assuming there is such a thing as a 'mind'). Given that Tyndale is a Christian university, I like to conclude the term with a discussion of how one's account of mind and body makes sense of the resurrection. To that end, I have my students read Trenton Merricks's, "The Resurrection of the Body and the Life Everlasting."[1] I think he does a good job of setting up the various issues, the downside is that in it he also makes his case for physicalism (I say it's a downside because I think physicalism is false—other physicalists will obviously see this as a benefit!).One way the Christian physicalists might argue for their view is to try and show that physicalism is consistent with Christianity. That is, there is nothing in the Christian worldview that logically precludes one from being a physicalist. Merricks, however, does much more than that. He also argues that physicalism makes more sense of certain Christian ideas than does dualism. I think this attempt is admirable since holding views that are merely logically compatible with Christianity is a pretty low bar.[2] Ideally, our philosophical views will also enable us to have a better understanding of our Christian beliefs. In what follows I'd like to examine one of Merricks's arguments for this contention and state why I think it fails.[3]

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Peter Enns Doesn't Believe in God Anymore?

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Even though my last post was also a critique of Peter Enns, I promise that this blog will be more than just an avenue through which I can critique Enns. However, I would like to say a few words about a post he wrote earlier this month, "Why I Don't Believe in God Anymore." I should start by saying that we shouldn't be worried about the title of that post. Even though Enns says he doesn't believe in God anymore, it's clear that he does. He just doesn't recognize that his trust in God requires believing in God. But we're getting slightly ahead of ourselves. Before we get to what's wrong with the ideas he expresses, let's take a look at them first.

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Peter Enns, Adam, and an Overcommitment to Science

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Last week I had the opportunity to read a paper at the Northeast Region meeting of the Evangelical Theological/Philosophical Society. I got a lot of helpful comments on my paper and that alone would've made the trip worthwhile. However, the conference also featured two plenary sessions with very prominent scholars on a controversial topic and these sessions were very interesting. For now, I want to reflect a bit on the first session by Peter Enns in which he outlined why he no longer believes in a literal Adam.

According to Enns, discussions of whether there was a literal Adam must account for both the reality of evolution and the whole of biblical scholarship. Now in many respects one shouldn't be surprised at Enns's conclusion There was no literal Adam given his stated starting point for the discussion Evolution is true. Throughout his talk Enns regularly referred to the need for dialogue between biblical scholarship and various other disciplines. In this context, of course, that discipline is science, but one could pretty easily see how the point could be extended to psychology, sociology, history, etc. For what it's worth, I think Enns is right about this. In formulating one's worldview one ought to take into account all truths about this world, no matter the discipline from which they are acquired. However, what we'll see is that Enns appears to be committed to a problematic way in which that dialogue is supposed to proceed. Before we get to that, it may be helpful to consider a major concern that was raised at the conference.

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