The Maturing of Monotheism: A Dialectical Path to its Truth

310 Pages·2019·1.95 MB·English

by  Garth Hallett

The Maturing of Monotheism
Also available from Bloomsbury
Free Will and Epistemology, by Robert Lockie
Evidentialism and the Will to Believe, by Scott F. Aikin
Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics, edited by Mikel Burley
God, Existence, and Fictional Objects, by John-Mark L. Miravalle

Contents
Preface
1 Truth
2 Theism
3 Diversity
4 Freedom
5 Goodness
6 Evil
7 Afterlife
8 Eternity
9 Focusing
10 Convergence
Notes
Works Cited
Index
Preface
I am curious, however, whether there is anyone who is genuinely indifferent as to whether there is a
God—anyone who, whatever his actual belief about the matter, doesn’t particularly want either one
of the answers to be correct (though of course he might want to know which answer was correct).
—Thomas Nagel, The Last Word1
In many domains including the religious, humanity’s perspectives have steadily
broadened and deepened. Within this evolving context, the present work speaks,
in ways often new, for the existence of a transcendent being such as the world’s
principal monotheistic religions have long worshipped and successive
generations have intensively debated and discussed: the supremely powerful,
wise, good creator of our ever more astonishing universe. Since most of
humanity’s major issues interrelate one way or another with the existence of
such a deity (here usually referred to, for convenience, by the single name
“God”), the present exposition will be holistic—that is, both broadly cumulative
and coherently interconnected, as in a court case where the pieces of evidence
not only link item by item with the verdict but are mutually reinforcing.
Differing importantly from its predecessor, A Middle Way to God (Oxford
University Press, 2000), for instance in its more ecumenical focus, the breadth of
the case it makes, and its consequent organization, the work unfolds as follows.
Two preparatory chapters focus first on truth, so basic a human value in theology
as elsewhere yet so variously conceived and so radically contested, then on
Jewish, Christian, and Muslim monotheism as a plausible claimant to this rightly
prized status. The next six chapters respond to major antitheistic challenges—
materialism, determinism, the denial of objective value, the pervasiveness of
evil, and predictions of eventual human individual and collective extinction. The
final two chapters, shifting back from the negative to the positive, first review
traditional metaphysical ways of making a case for monotheism, then, at greater
length, adopt and employ a cumulative, more experiential approach. The quick
synopses at the start of each chapter, supplementing the present preliminary
sketch, provide a somewhat fuller, step-by-step picture of the work’s dialectical
development.
Its historical aspect can be suggested through a comparison. On the one hand,
[a]s the history of science unfolds, science exhibits an increasing knowledge of what is the case. That
in turn suggests a thesis about how scientific belief is to be interpreted. It is in significant measure the
outcome of genuine real-world influences. So that, if we are giving an account of how scientific ideas
come and go, we will have to make reference to the fact that scientific thought and practice are
shaped by cognitive contact with natural reality. The story of science is a human story, but one which
is comprehensible only if we assume that human theory and practice are being in part, at least, shaped
by what the world is really like.2
Similarly, as the present account unfolds, it too will exhibit, but within still
broader horizons, our growing understanding of what is the case and how it
should be interpreted. For the story of theism is likewise a human story, but one
which is more fully comprehensible if we assume that here, too, human thought
and practice are progressively being shaped, at least in part, by what reality is
actually like. As science, looking closer and deeper, has gradually shed various
myths and misconceptions, so has theism. And, given the strong connections
between these two perspectives, the scientific and the theistic, this extensive
parallel is not entirely fortuitous.
The human search for transcendent truth is, however, far from being purely
intellectual. Thus the philosopher Albert Camus’s existentialist perspective
invites a complementary comparison:
If I ask myself how to judge that this question is more urgent than that, I reply that one judges by the
actions it entails. I have never seen anyone die for the ontological argument. Galileo, who held a
scientific truth of great importance, abjured it with the greatest of ease as soon as it endangered his
life. In a certain sense he did right. That truth was not worth the stake. Whether the earth or the sun
revolves around the other is a matter of profound indifference. To tell the truth, it is a futile question.
On the other hand, I see many people die because they judge that life is not worth living. I see others
paradoxically getting killed for the ideas or illusions that give them a reason for living (what is called
a reason for living is also an excellent reason for dying). I therefore conclude that the meaning of life
is the most urgent of questions.3
“The most urgent of questions” for us humans, it might be suggested, but far
from the largest or most important question overall. We, here on this little planet
of ours, are not the measure of all things. However, this contrast tends to
weaken, even evanesce, within a theistically holistic perspective. There, for the
personal and the cosmic, for the factual and the evaluative, for the totality of our
vast interrelated universe, the saying applies, “Light dawns gradually over the
whole.”
Gradually, and also with great difficulty. So in this present far-reaching
endeavor I am grateful for the insightful, eloquent words of many authors
(evident already here) and for the comments and suggestions of numerous
friends, including Bryce Deline, Mary Domahidy, John Greco, Rosemary
Jermann, Jack Marler, Daniel O’Connell, Joseph Tetlow, and Brother John of
Taizé. My special thanks go to William Rehg for his helpful comments on the
whole work; to Rosemary Jermann for her diligent, expert stylistic editing; and
to Douglas Marcouiller for his timely encouragement and support at a critical
early stage.
Garth L. Hallett
St. Louis, Missouri
1
Truth
The nature and importance of truth have long been obscured by the complexity of language, so
notably exemplified by its truth-terms. Now, however, the shift in Western philosophical reflection,
still incomplete, from the truth of thoughts to the truth of written or spoken statements as conceptually
primary dictates a decisively different approach to the formulation and cognitive appraisal of theism.
Rightly understood, everyday linguistic analogy can supplement and surpass alternatives—poetic
evocation of the ineffable, mental imagery, models, figurative speech, loose linguistic pragmatism—
as a normal, effective way of expressing transcendent truth.
Pervasively, fundamentally, and perhaps nowhere more notably than with regard
to the question of God, truth matters. Yet such obscurity still enshrouds the
ancient query “What is truth?” that some, abandoning the search, have
concluded that calling a proposition true amounts merely to affirming it: “P is
true” says no more than “P.” Hence, we are told, “truth is not, as often assumed,
a deep concept and should not be given a pivotal role in philosophical
theorizing.”1 It is “a parochial topic, one about which only philosophy professors
find it profitable to reflect.”2 Such dismissals, and the sort of practice they reflect
and widely foster, mark the antithetical stage in a dialectical development, with
the moment now ripe for synthetic clarification. For truth, true, and their
linguistic kin are far from vacuous, but their complexity and the consequent
invisibility of their mode of operation continue to veil their significance. The
index of many a work on knowledge, truth, and the like contains no reference to
language. So this opening chapter, looking in this still much-slighted direction,
will comment on truth’s well-concealed nature, on the multilayered manner of its
concealment, and on how, once its nature is more clearly revealed, the truth
regarding the existence and nature of God can and should be sought, identified,
and communicated. These clarifications, carried further in