It is a plain fact – obvious to any minimally perceptive person familiar with an adequate cross-section of humanity – that rationality, erudition, and moral goodness are to be found among both secular people and religious people alike, including followers of Christian and non-Christian religions. Can Christians plausibly account for this? Can they plausibly account for the fact that many non-Christians (whether religious or not) are not only morally good in many respects but also morally better than many Christians? More specifically, if they think salvation is for Christians rather than non-Christians, must they think (implausibly) that all Christians are morally better than all non-Christians? If not, must they think that (if not everyone is saved) God is unfair in saving some who are morally worse rather than others who are morally better? In this paper, I will defend a negative answer to these last two questions and (at the same time) a positive answer to the title question.
It is a plain fact – obvious to any minimally perceptive person familiar with an adequate cross-section of humanity – that rationality, erudition, and moral goodness are to be found among both secular people and religious people alike, including followers of Christian and non-Christian religions. Can we (whether we are adherents of some religious tradition or not) plausibly account for this? In particular, can we plausibly account for the fact that those who disagree with us deeply on religious matters of great importance are people we respect as intelligent, well-informed, and morally upstanding (where these features are understood in an ordinary commonsense sort of way)? If we cannot do so while maintaining our controversial views, this can cast doubt on those views, or so many people think.
The challenge of answering this sort of question is an important one for philosophers (and, really, all thoughtful humans) given how common it is for intellectually and morally admirable people to disagree with our views on religious matters, whether we support religious perspectives or oppose them. Thoughtful people often find themselves mulling over uncomfortable questions such as this one focused on
Is there a way to avoid this implausible approach while rationally maintaining one's religious or irreligious views? Applied specifically to Christians, one version of this question (again, focused on
I'll be touching briefly on this sort of question in this paper, in part to provide some context for the question I'll mention next. But my main focus will be on a slightly different and perhaps even more uncomfortable question, one that focuses not on how those who disagree with you compare with you in terms of things like
Q2 and questions like it (i.e., those applied not to Christians but to those endorsing non-religious or non-Christian religious perspectives) challenge those faced with the evidence that many who disagree with them (on religious topics) are morally better than many who agree with them. Q2 presents Christians with a dilemma: If Christians say ‘yes’ to Q2, then it seems they’re both arrogant and blind to the plain fact that many non-Christians (whether religious or not) are not only morally good in many respects but also morally better than many Christians. If Christians say ‘no’ to Q2, then it seems they must think that God gives and withholds salvation in ways that are unfair.
To elaborate on the second horn of the dilemma: if Christians answer Q2 negatively, it seems that they must think that God withholds salvation from those who are morally no worse than (and in some cases, it seems, morally better than) some of the Christians who receive it. And, this seems unfair given the Christian teachings that the benefits of salvation (including an experience of the beatific vision, which involves direct vision of and union with God) are our greatest goods, that being denied these goods is among the greatest deprivations we can suffer,
My aim in this paper is to defend a negative answer to Q2 – while avoiding the objectionable implications just mentioned, thereby avoiding the dilemma in the previous paragraph – and, in doing so, to defend an affirmative answer to the title question. In Section 1, I’ll say something about the version of Christianity with which I’ll be operating, because the options one has for dealing with Q2 depend in part on which version of Christianity one has in mind. In Section 2, I’ll discuss Q1 because responding to that similar question provides a helpful context (in ways that I’ll make clear at the end of that section) for developing a response to Q2. I’ll argue in that section that Christians can have better evidence than non-Christians, even if they aren’t more rational than those non-Christians. Then, in Section 3, I’ll answer Q2 (and the title question), working with the version of Christianity identified in Section 1 and in light of the response to Q1 given in Section 2. I’ll argue in that section that those who never become Christians can be blameworthy for this, even if they are morally better than many Christians. In the last section, I’ll close by mentioning two important things to keep in mind when thinking about these matters.
Following Plantinga, I will be thinking of generic Christian belief as consisting, first, of the theistic belief that there exists a supreme and perfect personal being, God, who created, sustains, and providentially guides the entire universe and, second, of belief in the more specifically Christian teachings that:
we human beings are somehow mired in rebellion and sin, that we consequently require deliverance and salvation, and that God has arranged for that deliverance through the sacrificial suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, who was both a man and also the second member of the Trinity, the unique son of God. (Plantinga, 2000, p. vii)
For the purposes of this paper, I’ll think of Christians as those who (a) endorse generic Christian belief so understood (or something very much like it),
The first relevant point of difference among Christians has to do with the claim that:
(1)
Those Christians endorsing (1) typically do so because they believe that humans are, one and all, incredibly sinful in ways we cannot fully comprehend, at least not without having this revealed to us by means of Christian faith, the teaching of the Church and the Bible, or the work of the Holy Spirit. So the appearance that some humans are good and decent while others are wicked and vile is an illusion. The fact is that we’re all basically on a par, morally speaking, and we're all more wicked and vile than we realize (apart from divine revelation). Those who emphasize (1) might hold that the answer to Q2 is that Christians needn't think they're better than all non-Christians, but neither do they need to think they're worse because there are no significant moral differences between humans. Thus, according to this view, the appearance that some non-Christians are significantly morally better than some Christians is an illusion. By asserting (1), these Christians escape the dilemma (from the penultimate paragraph of the introduction) because they can answer ‘no’ to Q2 without being committed to the view that God withholds salvation from those non-Christians who are
The version of Christianity I'll be working with denies (1). Of course, it's part of generic Christian teaching, as given above, that we are all somehow “mired in rebellion and sin”
The second relevant point of difference among Christians has to do with the claim that:
(2)
One possible basis for (2) is the view (plausibly derived from the New Testament) that
If (2*) is true and it implies (2), then Christians can answer ‘yes’ to Q2 and simply deny the charge in the first horn of the dilemma from the penultimate paragraph in the introduction, insisting that a ‘yes’ answer is not problematic but is instead perfectly plausible given Christian teaching.
The version of Christianity with which I’ll be working denies (2) and that (2*) implies (2) when ‘morally better’ in the latter is understood in standard ways. Even if there is a way to interpret ‘morally better’ in (2) so that (2) is implied by (2*), that sense of ‘morally better’ is an unusual one and is neither the only one nor the standard one.
The third relevant point of difference among Christians has to do with the claim that:
(3)
It might be tempting to infer (3) from the view (also plausibly derived from the New Testament) that:
If (3*) is true and implies (3), then Christians can answer ‘no’ to Q2 and insist that:
it wouldn’t be unfair for God to withhold salvation from all fallen humans given that none of us deserve it, so it isn't unfair to withhold it from non-Christians; salvation isn't given to anyone even partly on the basis of their doing anything or their being morally good enough to deserve it, so the fact that it is withheld from some who are morally better in important respects (in virtue of what they've done) than those who receive it is not unfair.
Thus, Christians who endorse (3*) and think that (3*) implies (3) might conclude – in light of (a) and (b) – that it is not unfair for God to withhold salvation from those non-Christians who are morally better than Christians who receive it.
The version of Christianity that I have in mind denies (3), and that (3*) implies (3). Moreover, it does not attempt to defend God's fairness by appealing to (a) or (b). Instead, the version of Christianity that I have in mind insists that even though salvation is an undeserved gift due to God's grace and even though Christians have been drawn by God toward the reception of this gift and empowered by God to be able to freely receive it, Christians are at least partly responsible for their free choice (which is a morally good choice) to
The benefit of denying (3) and affirming the view just presented is that it opens up the possibility that people are saved only if they freely receive the gift of salvation that has been made available to all humans. Of course, there are further questions concerning whether this gift really has been
The fourth relevant point of difference among Christians has to do with the claim that:
If (4) is true, then (given that there are some non-Christians who appear to be morally better than some Christians and who seem not to become Christians before they die) the dilemma mentioned in the introduction can make people feel pressure to endorse (1) or (2) or (3) given the pathways they open up for avoiding the horns of that dilemma – pathways that are viewed by many as implausible, for the reasons noted above. But if (4) is false then Christians can avoid endorsing (1)–(3) and their problematic ways of escaping that dilemma.
The version of Christianity I will be working with says that (4) is false. In support of this denial of (4), consider the following:
it is a common Christian teaching that many of the people in the Old Testament who died before Christ was born (and, as a result, never became Christians or endorsed generic Christian teaching before they died) will receive salvation; it is plausible, from a Christian perspective and in light of the point just mentioned about people in the Old Testament, that theists who (before they die) recognize and confess their sin, asking God for forgiveness for and rescue from their sin and its consequences – but who don’t (before they die) endorse generic Christian teaching (perhaps because they've never heard it) – will receive an opportunity after they die to accept generic Christian teaching and to be saved; it’s implausible that the “rules about salvation” changed at the time of Christ, so that people living in the Americas in 200 BCE could (like the saved people mentioned in the Old Testament) be saved without becoming Christians whereas people living in the Americas in 200 CE couldn’t be saved in this condition (this is implausible because their ignorance of and lack of contact with the Christian message remained unchanged during that period); in light of the Christian teachings that “all who call on the name of the Lord will be saved” and “a broken and contrite heart God will not despise,”
These considerations don't make it impossible to defend (4) or something close to it. But they lend plausibility to a version of the Christian faith that denies (4).
The fifth relevant point of difference among Christians has to do with the claim that:
(4)
If (5) is true, then many of the concerns behind Q2 evaporate. For if all humans will eventually receive salvation, then the worries about God's unfairness in doling out salvation aren't pressing. After all, one of the main things driving those worries is that it seems unfair that some people receive salvation whereas other people who are morally on a par with them or better don't – and this won't be the case if (5) is true. For the purposes of this paper, I will be assuming that (5) may well be false. This makes the challenge posed by Q2 more difficult and more interesting. If (5) is false (for all we know), the challenge posed by Q2 is not so easily addressed.
Perhaps you think that a version of Christianity according to which (5) is true is much more plausible than a version according to which it is false or may (for all we know) be false. In that case, you might think it’s best to focus on a version of Christianity that endorses (5) and easily takes care of the problem this paper is addressing, rather than on the (allegedly less plausible) version of Christianity I’m focusing on in this paper. In light of this, what reason is there (other than the reason already mentioned – namely, to take seriously a more interesting and difficult challenge to Christianity) – for focusing on a version of Christianity according to which (5) is or may well be false? One reason is that a major traditional strand of Christian teaching, from its inception up until the present, explicitly refrains from endorsing (5) and, instead, endorses its denial.
In short, then, the version of Christianity that I will have in mind (in answering Q2 and, in doing so, trying to escape the dilemma mentioned in the penultimate paragraph of the introduction) endorses the following views:
A version of Christianity that endorses (6)–(8) allows for a more plausible way of answering Q2 and escaping that dilemma, insofar as it rejects (1) through (4), which are problematic in the ways indicated in this section. And a version of Christianity that endorses (9) faces a more interesting and challenging form of that dilemma. Before addressing Q2, let’s first consider in the next section a similar question (Q1), the response to which will be useful to have in mind when considering Q2.
As I noted earlier, our focus in this section will be Q1, although I'd like to begin with a more general version of Q1.
Anyone who endorses a controversial religion or worldview faces a more specific version of Q1*. We can ask whether Muslims or atheists or agnostics must think they are
One common way forward in these cases is to make two points. The first is to grant the epistemic principle that:
The second point is to insist that, despite agreeing about EP and that (i) from EP is satisfied by those who disagree with you, it’s not the case that both (ii) and (iii) from EP are likewise satisfied. Responses of this sort can seem plausible to adherents of many different religions or worldviews all of whom will agree with EP and that (i) from EP is true of many who disagree with them even though either (ii) or (iii) from EP is not.
For example, people might think that their own evidence is different from the evidence of those who disagree with them. Those taking this line will often focus on a phenomenal conception of evidence, according to which evidence consists not of things like objects presented in court or propositions that make other propositions probable but of conscious mental states on which beliefs are based.
The
The Christian's
There are many good questions that can be raised about the quality and adequacy of the first- and second-order evidence just recounted and how helpful it is in responding to objections based on peer disagreement. But we don't have the time here to discuss those questions, so I will just assume that something like this account of the evidence on which rational Christian belief depends is right.
This situation where you are falsely accused in a courtroom is, of course, different in many ways from the religious person's situation. But the similarities I want to highlight are these: in each case, a person can rationally continue holding a belief in the face of disagreement with highly intelligent and rational objectors; and in each case, this is because (i) the person has sufficiently strong additional evidence that they can report but cannot give to others and (ii) this evidence isn't something one gets by being more intelligent and rational than those with whom one disagrees.
So, in response to Q1, the answer could sensibly be ‘no’: the Christian needn't think Christians are more rational than all non-Christians any more than you (in the courtroom example) would need to think you are more rational than the jurors who think you're guilty. Nor will the Christian face pressure to give up her Christian beliefs, on the grounds that people who are at least as rational as her think otherwise (any more than you would face pressure to give up your belief in your innocence, on the grounds that the jurors, who are at least as rational and intelligent as you, think otherwise). For although those others, who are at least as rational as you, disagree with you, their evidence isn’t as good as yours.
With this explanation in hand for why Christians needn't think they are
In this section, I will explain how Christians can escape the dilemma that Q2 poses for them – a dilemma explained in the penultimate paragraph of the introduction. In Section 3.1, I’ll explain a way in which certain Christians might feel pressure to think that
Let’s begin with the first point, from the final paragraph of Section 2, about how my answer to Q1 provides a helpful context for answering Q2. There I drew attention to this question: if a person is doing the best she can to rationally believe in accord with the (insufficient) evidence she has and this leads her to refrain from believing generic Christian teaching, how can it be fair to withhold salvation from her while giving it to Christians?
What matters, it seems, is
If a Christian takes Option A, saying these non-Christians are to blame in some way, then that Christian is claiming that all non-Christians who lack this evidence are morally inferior in at least one way to Christians who have this evidence (i.e., in being blameworthy for lacking evidence for Christian belief). But this claim seems implausible, given that (i) some people never have a chance to hear and consider the claims endorsed in generic Christian teaching, (ii) some who do have such a chance don’t have compelling evidence for believing it (evidence of the sort described in Section 2, which includes its
However, it's important to ask
In order for an option in the neighborhood of Option B to have the sort of implausible consequence noted above, we need to revise the manner in which we lay out the available options, so that they are stated in something like the following way:
Of course, there is the question of whether there will be any people who never steadfastly endorse generic Christian belief and never have sufficient evidence for it. Perhaps everyone will eventually get such evidence, in which case there won't be such people. If everyone eventually gets sufficient evidence for generic Christian belief (and, moreover, gets wooed by God and enabled to repent and receive God's offer of salvation), then it’s more plausible that those who (despite these benefits) choose not to repent and receive salvation are not being treated unfairly by God.
But in order to give this objection a chance (which I think it deserves), let’s assume that, from the Christian perspective, there may well be people who never have sufficient evidence for believing in generic Christian teaching (evidence of the sort that makes it seem true to them). The objector to Christianity can then sensibly argue that those Christians who take Option B* (and who think, as Christians tend to think, that all who are saved will eventually steadfastly endorse generic Christian belief) are implausibly claiming that a fair and perfectly loving God will exclude from salvation all those who through no fault of their own
In what follows, I will defend Option A* by telling a possible Christian story – i.e., a story that is compatible with the version of Christianity described in Section 1 and that for all we know is true (given that version of Christianity). This story has the following two features: (i) if true, it explains how the italicized restatement of Option A* (from the previous paragraph) could be plausible and (ii) it is compatible with the plain fact that some non-Christians are more morally upstanding than many who are Christians.
According to the possible Christian story I’m telling, the strong human tendency to sin can be understood on analogy with addiction to alcohol. (For our purposes, we can think of sinning as thinking, speaking, and acting in ways that are infected by wrongful selfishness or pride.) The analogy isn’t perfect of course. The key point of similarity is that addiction (to sin or to alcohol) involves a strong and nearly impossible-to-resist desire to return repeatedly to particular thoughts, words, or actions for perceived short-term benefits, even when, in one's clearer moments, one has at least some sense that doing so is ultimately very harmful to oneself.
I will call believing and acting in the ways one must believe and act in order to take these three steps (or something like them) a ‘proto-conversion’ to Christianity.
It's plausible that if God exists, God will judge humans by what they do with the resources they have been given. (a) all humans will eventually (either before or after they die) have evidence to believe and reasons to act in something like the ways one must believe and act if one takes those three proto-conversion steps; (b) all who do believe and act in something like the ways one must believe and act if one takes those three steps will eventually get more evidence and reasons to believe and act in similar ways; (c) all who repeatedly continue to go along with the process described in (b) will eventually get evidence to believe in generic Christian teaching and reasons to repent and receive God's gift of salvation (i.e., they'll get evidence and reasons for becoming a Christian).
The evidence and reasons that – according to (a) – all humans will eventually get will be such that those who get it will be morally blameworthy if they fail to take those three steps, or something like them. Likewise, the evidence and reasons that – according to (b) and (c) – all humans who take those three steps (and continue to do so) will eventually get will also be such that those who get it will be morally blameworthy if they fail to eventually get evidence for generic Christian teaching. Thus, according to this possible Christian story, the only people who never steadfastly endorse generic Christian teaching and never get evidence for it are (as Option A* says) in some way morally to blame for lacking this evidence.
Moreover, this possible Christian story also includes the following additional claim:
(d) for all those who never steadfastly endorse generic Christian belief and who are also to blame for never having sufficient evidence for it, God will have guaranteed that they have had the opportunities that are the
Thus, given (d), it won't be the case that someone is blameworthy for failing to become a Christian and yet God could have led them down a different pathway – of getting evidence and reasons of the sort mentioned in (a) through (c) – where they wouldn't have culpably failed to follow the path all the way to Christian belief and salvation. On the contrary: all such people will have been given their
Non-Christians might be tempted to challenge the claim that this possible Christian story is compatible with what they know of themselves. They can acknowledge that they can’t now see, by observation and memory, that that story does not accurately describe how things will in fact unfold if Christianity is true (at least not in the way they might be able to see now, by observation and memory, that this is not how things have in fact unfolded
For my purposes in this paper, it's not important that this story is in fact true. Nor is it important that this story is falsifiable in this life.
This possible Christian story has the first of the two features mentioned above: if true, it explains how it could be plausible to think (in accord with Option A*) that
In a similar way, those who take the first three steps for dealing with addiction to sin may have lives that are much more obviously under the control of and harmed by that addiction. As a result, they may be less morally good (overall) than those who don't take those three steps. Sincere Christians have taken those first three steps.
Notice that endorsing Christian belief and the possible truth of the story presented above does not involve judging anyone for anything in particular. At most, it endorses the general claim that all humans are mired in rebellion and sin from which all require deliverance. Jesus said, “Judge not lest ye be judged.”
Thus, the possible Christian story I laid out doesn’t encourage or provide grounds for any speculation about how well those around us are doing with the resources they have. A Christian who accepted the possible truth of that story above could quite sensibly acknowledge that we can’t tell how best to judge those who reject generic Christian belief—even if they do so on their deathbed. Christians simply don’t know what resources these non-Christians have available. So Christians usually aren’t able to determine (i) whether at this point in time these non-Christians have the required evidence for belief or reasons for acting in accordance with the Christian invitation to receive God's gift of saving grace through generic Christian belief and (ii) if they don’t, whether they’re to blame for this. Of course, Christians think that these people may have rejected an extremely important truth. But whether they are blameworthy in doing so typically isn’t something Christians can discern. That they’ve done so in a blameworthy way may even strike Christians as being implausible in a particular case, though even that positive evaluative judgment about another person should be made only cautiously, given the difficulties already noted with judging others.
In response to Q2, therefore, the answer I am defending is ‘no’: Christians needn’t think they are morally better than all non-Christians. Christians typically don’t know whether those non-Christians around them – the ones who seem to be at least as morally good as, if not morally better than, many Christians – non-culpably lack evidence that would provide a rational basis for becoming a Christian. If they do non- culpably lack such evidence, then there may well be no reason to think their being non-Christians makes them morally worse than Christians. However, those who think that the possible Christian story told in Section 3.2 may be true, for all we know, can sensibly also think that all those who never endorse generic Christian belief (before or after death) might ultimately be doing morally worse in at least one way than those who do eventually endorse it, namely, they’ll ultimately be culpably failing to respond properly to the reasons and evidence they’ve received (reasons and evidence leading them along the most promising path for them to proto-conversion and to becoming a Christian). It’s true that doing morally worse in that way has significant negative consequences. But doing morally worse in that way (at a certain time) is compatible with being morally better overall (at that time) than some of those who don’t do worse in that way – just as a “high-functioning” alcoholic’s doing morally worse (at a certain time) by not acknowledging his alcoholism or seeking help in dealing with it is compatible with him being morally better overall (at that time) than some alcoholics who have severely damaged their lives and relationships but are now in AA dealing with their problem.
This explanation of how a negative answer to Q2 can be plausible shows how one can escape the charge in the second horn of the dilemma from the introduction. It shows that it needn’t be unfair for salvation to be withheld from those who are (overall) morally better in this earthly life than some of the Christians who receive it. It needn’t be unfair because, despite being given (before or after death) their best chance to be saved, these non-Christians culpably resist the beliefs or actions that they must take in order to be saved. The points made in this paragraph and the previous one
I’ll close with two final comments that are worth keeping in mind.
First, according to Jesus, not all who call him their Lord will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only those who do the will of his Father in heaven.
Second, I obviously think it can be beneficial to speak (as I have in this paper) about whether and why we lack evidence for Christian belief and about the benefits of responding properly to the evidence we have. But this shouldn't make us think that Christianity teaches that the primary reason that people miss out on the benefits of salvation (assuming that some do) is their failure to have the right evidence or to believe rationally in accordance with the evidence they have. Instead, Christianity teaches that the primary reason that people miss out on the benefits of salvation (again, assuming that some do) is that they are mired in rebellion and sin. And it teaches that the primary means by which we are saved is not by having access to evidence or by rationally responding to evidence we have but by God's grace through Christ's atoning work on the cross. This isn't a way of taking back point (7) from Section 1, according to which the free choice to receive God's grace – a choice for which Christians are at least partly responsible – is a necessary condition for salvation. It's just to clarify what is of primary importance in human salvation, according to Christian teaching, and what is not.
See, for example,
As we will see in , there are other kinds of demotion that are plausible (i.e., kinds of demotion that don't deny the plain fact noted at the beginning of this paper).
Obviously, both Q1 and Q2 are asking whether Christians must do these things in order to be consistent with their allegiance to Christianity.
Or at least it does if Christians think that to receive salvation one must be a Christian – in belief and practice. Christians typically think that in order to receive salvation, one must eventually endorse Christian belief (before or after death) so that those who never accept it are those who never receive salvation. This isn't to say that there is no Christian faith without outright belief in Christian teaching; it's just to say that all who are saved will eventually have outright belief in Christian teaching.
Even if those who do not receive salvation go out of existence altogether (i.e., are annihilated) and, for that reason, don’t experience an afterlife without the goods associated with salvation, they still have suffered the deprivation entailed by an existence that never included their greatest good.
On one way to think about fairness, it requires that people aren’t kept from getting benefits they deserve. Giving undeserved benefits to some but not others needn’t violate fairness so understood (since no deserved benefits are being withheld from anyone). However, the notion of fairness employed in this objection adds something that is slightly different. The thought here is that if God lovingly gives some deeply needy people undeserved salvation (from severe harms caused by their own moral failures) and doesn’t do the same for others, then, unless this differential treatment is due to some relevant difference between the saved and the unsaved, God is displaying a kind of unfair and arbitrary partiality. The partiality manifested in this uneven distribution of love and kindness by God (who has the ability to be loving and kind in these ways to all people) is viewed as unfair because, even if no created person deserves salvation, each one has an equal claim on their creator’s love – a claim that ought not to be arbitrarily ignored in some cases and not others (just as each of a parent’s children has an equal claim on that parent’s love – a claim that ought not to be arbitrarily ignored in the case of one child but not another).
As for what counts as “something very much like” these teachings, that’s hard to say (just as it’s hard to say who counts as a Christian). I won’t try to be more precise than this. As for what sort of endorsement of these teachings is required to count as a Christian (whether it must involve outright belief or whether something less than belief – such as acceptance – would do as well), that too is hard to say. I won’t try to be more precise about this either. See
For an eloquent and convincing elaboration and defense of this pessimistic characterization of humanity as mired in rebellion and sin — an elaboration and defense that, as Hudson (
The Bible seems to endorse the view that behaving morally matters to God and that there are important differences between humans, morally speaking. See, for example, Matthew 25:31-46, Romans 2:7-11, and James 1:19-27.
See Romans 4:6, 1 Corinthians 1:30, and 2 Corinthians 5:21. A view similar to (2*) is:
(2**) Because they receive infused theological virtues by divine grace, all Christians have a kind of moral goodness that all non-Christians lack.
For reasons similar to those mentioned in the main text, where I explain why we can accept (2*) while denying (2), my view is that we can accept (2**) while denying (2).
I’m not here saying what the standard sense of ‘morally better’ is; I’m only saying this isn’t it. As I suggested in the opening paragraph of the paper, I’m focusing on an ordinary and commonsense usage of ‘morally better’.
See Ephesians 2:8-9, Romans 3:20-28, and Romans 6:23.
Semi-Pelagianism, which was condemned in 529 at the Second Council of Orange (
This position can be thought of as a development of Revelation 3:20, according to which Jesus says “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me."
As already noted, in making this choice, we will be taking advantage of God's grace empowering us to make such choices, even if we don't recognize that we are benefiting from God's grace in this way.
Why is receiving the gift of salvation a morally good choice? It's a morally good thing to acknowledge one's need to be rescued from one's state of severe moral failure, to be willing to give up one's self – sufficiency in this regard, and to humble oneself enough to receive God's offer to be so rescued. (See Luke 18:9-14.) It's because receiving this gift involves all of these things that it is morally good; and yet it is still absurd to boast about it, just as in the case of the drowning man receiving the life preserver.
Some Christians might endorse (4) with the qualification that it applies only to those who have lived as cognitively competent adult humans and not to very young children or those who are severely mentally disabled and have never had the cognitive abilities of a typical adult human. The version of Christianity I have in mind denies (4) even in this qualified form.
See Sections 3.2 and 3.3 of this paper for further discussion of ideas in this neighborhood.
See Romans 10:13 (quoting Joel 2:32) and Psalm 51:17.
Keith DeRose defends this position here:
Of course, by allowing that (5) may well be false and that not all humans will be saved, this version of Christianity faces the difficulty of explaining how a perfect God could permit some humans either to be permanently annihilated or to exist forever in hell. I can't fully address these concerns here (and I'm not myself committed to denying the universalism that (5) endorses), but I'll briefly mention a few considerations that might help in addressing the problem of God permitting an everlasting hell for some humans. (The following thoughts, especially the second point, constitute a rough first stab at the ideas for a paper on hell that I hope to write someday.) First, as C.S. Lewis says (
Some of the points in the previous paragraph arguably take for granted that Molinism — the claim that God’s providential control works by way of God’s middle knowledge —is true. I don’t have the space in this paper to discuss what Molinism is or whether it is true. But see
Many of the papers in
Another reason for not limiting our focus to a (5)-endorsing version of Christianity, is that it’s not clear that Christianity is more plausible if it endorses (5) than if it rejects (5) or says that (5) may well be false. How plausible it is to insist that (5) is true (if Christianity is) depends in part on how plausible it is that it would be better for God not to create people whom God knew would never receive salvation. On that question, see note 23 – especially the second, third, and fifth considerations enumerated there. Although note 23 is talking about some people being forever in hell and not about some people being permanently annihilated after death – both of which are possible alternatives to (5)’s claim about everyone eventually receiving (eternal) salvation—the second, third, and fifth considerations mentioned in note 23 could be modified to apply to the annihilation view.
Points similar to those made in this section are developed at greater length in
I'm thinking of agnostics as principled agnostics (about God's existence) – i.e., those who explicitly withhold judgment on whether God exists and think that this is what rationality requires of us.
As I explain in Bergmann (
When working with the phenomenal conception of evidence (as I am in this paper), shared evidence is not literally shared, since even when you and I have equally good eyesight and are standing next to one another looking at a nearby tree in good lighting, you will have your mental state consisting of your sensory experience of the tree and I will have my own distinct mental state consisting of my sensory experience of the tree. What makes our experience “shared evidence” is that we each have evidence (consisting of mental states) that is of the same qualitative type. Private evidence on the other hand will consist of evidence (consisting of mental states) that one person has in a set of circumstances while another person in similar circumstances lacks evidence of that qualitative type. For example, suppose that two 19-year-old first-year college students (one logically adept and the other logically inept) hear and observe a somewhat difficult logical proof carefully explained by a professor. Both might be in the same circumstances (i.e., working hard to attend well to the same careful explanation given) but the logically adept student might have evidence (consisting of clear logical intuitions in support of the validity of the inferences as they’re explained) that the logically inept student lacks. That’s a case where the logically adept student has evidence that is private rather than shared (vis-a-vis the logically inept student) whereas their sensory experiences of what the instructor says and writes on the chalk board is shared (perceptual) evidence the two students have. With shared evidence, it’s usually easier to guarantee that another has it by putting them in similar circumstances to receive it; with private evidence, this is typically not as easy to guarantee in this way.
A seeming is the mental state one is in when it seems to one (or strikes one) that something is the case. For more on how to understand seemings, see Bergmann (
See Plantinga (
See Bergmann (
But see the discussions mentioned in the previous two footnotes as well as related discussion in
This example is inspired by similar examples in Plantinga (
Why will the Christian think the non-Christian's evidence is inferior, given that (despite the fact that the content of the non-Christian's seemings conflicts with Christian teaching) the non-Christian's seemings might be similar to the Christian's seemings,in terms of how strong and compelling they feel to those who have them? Mainly because the Christian will (i) lack with respect to the non-Christian's evidence what she has with respect to her own evidence – namely, higher-order evidence supporting the reliability and epistemic goodness of the non-Christian's seemings (that are opposed to Christian teaching) and (ii) have with respect to the non-Christian's evidence what she lacks with respect to her own evidence – namely, evidence that the non-Christian's seemings (that are opposed to Christian teaching) are misleading. For some discussion of these points, see Bergmann (
An agnostic might respond differently. She might say that her overall impression of the evidence for and against theism and Christianity is very different from the Christian's. And not only does the agnostic lack most of the Christian's first-order evidence, she may also have very different second-order evidence when she considers the epistemic value of the Christian's first-order evidence and what the rational response to it should be. For unlike the Christian, she might think it is not rational to respond to it in the way the Christian does.
But the agnostic might (without realizing it) not have a good grasp of the Christian's first-order evidence, which will be the case if she thinks of it as having features it doesn't in fact have. (It is no easy matter to know exactly what the evidence of another person is like. Even those who used to identify as Christians can't be sure that the evidence they had then was of the kind that other Christians around them had then or have now — or whether they are correctly recalling what their own evidence was like then.) And this might mean that the agnostic's second-order evidence is not actually in conflict with the second-order evidence the Christian has, since the agnostic and the Christian might not have conflicting epistemic intuitions about the same first-order evidence but, instead, compatible epistemic intuitions about different first-order evidence.
Must agnostics, atheists, Muslims, etc. think they are more rational than those who disagree with them? I suspect that they can employ a strategy similar to the one just outlined for the Christian – one that enables them to think that those who disagree with them are mistaken without claiming that those who agree with them are always more rational than those who don't.
Some people think that even if Christian faith is part of the pathway to salvation, faith needn't involve belief, so Christian beliefis not a part of the pathway to salvation. But even if Christian faith needn't involve belief, it is plausible that (according to Christian teaching) the pathway to salvation (which includes the beatific vision) will eventually include Christian belief. See note 4.
See note 6 for some discussion of the notions of fairness and unfairness at work here.
To steadfastly endorse generic Christian belief is to endorse it without giving it up. To never steadfastly endorse it is to never endorse it or to always give it up after endorsing it. The reason for adding the qualifier ‘steadfastly’ in this claim about endorsement of Christian belief is that Christian teaching seems to insist that an endorsement of Christian belief that is later forsaken forever is insufficient for salvation (see Hebrews 6:4-6). So what matters is that one eventually steadfastly endorses it.
The assumption here is that one can be enabled by God to repent and receive the gift of salvation (if one chooses) while choosing not to do those things. Being enabled to do a thing involves having an ability to do that thing; but one can have an ability to do a thing without doing that thing.
Thus, this story is similar to the kind of story that Peter van Inwagen (
Of course, Christians think Christ was human (as well as divine) and is an exception to this generalization. Some Christians think that Jesus’ mother Mary is another exception.
Keep in mind that the thought here is that, in the end, all and only those who receive salvation will be Christians. But humans can be moving appropriately along the pathway to salvation even if they are not yet Christians. What is required for moving appropriately along the pathway to salvation is to act and believe in something like the ways specified in the three steps outlined in the next paragraph.
The latter part of Romans 7 gives this kind of account of the attraction humans have to sin.
The first three of the original twelve steps as used in Alcoholics Anonymous (see: STEP 1: We admitted we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable. STEP 2: Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. STEP 3: Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
According to the version of Christianity I have in mind, God's wooing and God's enabling power are required for such proto-conversions to occur. In calling this a ‘proto-conversion to Christianity', I'm not denying that it might also be sensible for adherents of some other religion X to think of taking these three steps as undergoing a proto-conversion to religion X. But from the Christian perspective, it makes sense to think of this process as a proto-conversion to Christianity.
This independently plausible thought about what a fair God would do is suggested in Luke 12:47-48 and Luke 21:1-4.
Adding (d) to the possible story suggests that those who never have sufficient evidence for generic Christian belief wouldn’t be more likely to become Christians if they did get that evidence. This could be so either because (i) if they got that evidence, they’d be less likely to proto-convert and become a Christian or because (ii) if they got that evidence, they’d be just as likely (or unlikely) to proto-convert and become a Christian (though perhaps if they did get that evidence, but never became a Christian, they’d be worse off overall). I take it to be true, for all we know (given the truth of Christian belief), that either (i) or (ii) is true.
Some of the characters observed by the narrator in
Objection: The possible Christian story I’ve laid out says that all humans will eventually get evidence making it rational for them to believe as indicated in the three proto-conversion steps. But consider those who (through no fault of their own) have undergone religious trauma, thought of as an extremely negative experience of religion (e.g., horrific sexual abuse by someone viewed as a representative of Christianity) that produces in them deep-seated psychological obstacles to appreciating religion. As a result of these obstacles, even if these people come to have some evidence E1 – where E1 would have resulted in them having evidence E2 (consisting of its seeming to them that a loving God exists) had they not suffered religious trauma – something in their psyche prevents their experience of E1 from resulting in their having evidence E2. For that reason – contrary to the possible Christian story I’ve laid out – it is impossible for these people to ever get the evidence (consisting of seemings like E2) required to make it rational for them to believe as indicated in the three proto-conversion steps.
Reply: I don’t have the space here to give this objection the space it deserves. Briefly, though, it is certainly plausible that it might be extremely difficult (especially in this earthly life) for victims of religious trauma to come have evidence consisting of its seeming to them that a loving God exists. But it’s not plausible to think that we can see that it is literally impossible, despite the time and resources available to God in the afterlife, for God to arrange for such people eventually to be healed of the harms of their religious trauma and to come to have such evidence. Perhaps such people can come to feel deeply loved by – and come to trust – some person or persons who show spectacularly insightful understanding of their hurt and who eventually lead them through a healing process whereby they come to view God as existing and perfectly loving, despite God’s permitting them to undergo religious trauma in their past. We simply don’t have enough evidence about human psychology (especially in light of how it could be gradually enhanced or healed in an extended afterlife) to make it plausible for us to think that it is literally impossible for it to ever come to seem to victims of religious trauma (through a process that, to them, feels coherent and true to who they are) that a loving God exists. See Adams (
It may be falsifiable in the afterlife – if there is one and we are able to discern why people at that time continue to resist endorsing generic Christian belief (if any do).
And, as noted above, some who aren’t Christians (perhaps because they’ve never become familiar with generic Christian teaching) might also have taken these three steps (thereby undergoing proto-conversion to Christianity).
Keep in mind that one shouldn’t read too much into this comparison between alcohol addiction and sin addiction. The comparison made in this paragraph and the previous one is intended mainly to illustrate how (a) a person can be doing morally worse in one respect while being morally better overall and how (b) being morally better in one respect can be more important in some ways than being morally better overall.
Matthew 7:1.
The points I’ve been making here fit well with Jesus’s parable (Luke 18:9-14) of two men praying – one who is a morally impressive person (a Pharisee) and the other who is a morally pathetic person (a tax collector). The former thanks God that he isn’t failing morally in the way that others, such as the tax collector, are; the latter, too ashamed to look up to heaven, beats his breast and says, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” Jesus concludes by saying that the tax collector “rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted."
See Matthew 7:21. How does this view of what it is to be a Christian fit with the view mentioned at the beginning of Section 1 according to which Christians are those who endorse generic Christian belief, repent of their sin, and put their trust in Christ to save them? That's a question for another time, but one possibility is that the two views are coextensive in terms of who they identify as Christians.
An ancestor of this paper was the William Alston Lecture, which I presented at the Society of Christian Philosophers session at the Central Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association in February 2019. Thanks to audience members on that occasion as well as to those who participated in discussions of this paper at the University of Notre Dame's Center for Philosophy of Religion in September of 2018, at the “Epistemology of Theism” seminar in Nancy, France in June of 2019, and at a University of Notre Dame graduate student discussion group in June of 2024. For helpful conversations and comments on earlier drafts of this paper, I'm especially grateful to Nathan Ballantyne, Jeff Brower, Laura Callahan, Paul Draper, Hud Hudson, Patrick Kain, Noah McKay, JP Messina, Cyrille Michon, David Moore, Mark Murphy, Sam Newlands, Katie O'Dell, Meghan Page, Michael Rea, Eric Sampson, Spencer Smith, Johnny Waldrop, and two anonymous referees for this journal.