God and Other Spirits : Intimations of Transcendence in Christian Experience 9780198032120, 9780195140125

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God and Other Spirits: Intimations of Transcendence in Christian Experience

PHILLIP H. WIEBE

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

God and Other Spirits

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God and Other Spirits Intimations of Transcendence in Christian Experience

phillip h. wiebe

1 2004

1 Oxford New York Auckland Bangkok Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kolkata Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi Sa˜o Paulo Shanghai Taipei Tokyo Toronto

Copyright 䉷 2004 by Phillip H. Wiebe Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Wiebe, Phillip H., 1945– God and other spirits : intimations of transcendence in Christian experience / Phillip H. Wiebe. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-19-514012-5 1. God—Proof, Empirical. 2. Experience (Religion) 3. Spirits. I. Title. BT103.W54 2004 231'.042—dc21 2003008299

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

Preface

The academy continues to consider the existence of God as a claim that might be advanced as the conclusion of a neat argument. However, the scientific community recognizes that claims about what is real can generally be won only by close scrutiny of puzzling events and theorizing about possible explanations. Moreover, although popular culture insists that spirits other than God also exist, neither the academy nor the church seem eager to consider these metaphysical possibilities. I shall argue that religious experience provides the data upon which theorizing about the ontological claims in religion properly depends and that the efforts to obtain the numerous, detailed accounts required for adequate theorizing has only begun. I am grateful to those who allowed me to report their stories of personal experiences. I do not know if I will live to see the study of religion undertaken in the form I believe to be necessary, but if religious experience is ever given the sympathetic and simultaneously scrutinizing attention it deserves, a new attitude toward the rationality of religion will emerge. I thank my university for the sabbatical leave granted to me in 2000, during which a portion of this book was written. I take this opportunity to thank my doctoral thesis advisor, Jack Smart, formerly of the University of Adelaide, for motivating me to think about issues related to Christian theism from his perspective. I also thank my friend of many years, Donald Wiebe, for the invitation to read a paper to the Toronto School of Theology, a portion of which appears here in a modified form at the end of chapter 2. It was pub-

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lished in 2001 by the McMaster Journal of Theology and Ministry. Another part of chapter 2 bears some resemblance to “Evidence for a Resurrection,” published in 2001 by the Journal for Christian Theological Research, and some remarks about the Shroud of Turin echo parts of my “Design in the Shroud of Turin,” which was published by Worldwide Congress Sindone 2000. I am grateful to the editors of these journals for permission to publish simulacra of these papers here. I express my thanks to Doug Chaffee, who eagerly read the manuscript prior to its completion, caught some infelicities, and made a number of good suggestions. I am also grateful to Oxford University Press for bringing this book to completion, especially to Cynthia Read for her expert editorial assistance. Finally, I take pleasure in acknowledging the support of my wife Shirley.

Contents

Introduction, 1 1. Intimations of Evil?, 7 2. Judeo-Christian Experience of the Holy, 59 3. The Theory of Spirits, 111 4. The Challenge of Naturalism, 153 5. Naturalizing Supernaturalism, 189 Notes, 221 Bibliography, 239 Index of Biblical Names, 251 General Index, 253

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God and Other Spirits

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Introduction

The Christian faith in its orthodox form makes substantial claims about what exists. Not only is God in triune form said to be real but also other spiritual beings are considered to exist. Two centuries after Christianity emerged in the Greco-Roman world, Origen of Alexandria, the earliest of Christianity’s prominent theologians, summarized and explained the central elements of the Christian faith as the first apostles preached it. He said that they asserted the reality of seven distinct transcendent beings or kinds of being: one CreatorGod, Jesus the incarnate God, the Holy Spirit, Satan, fallen angels, holy angels of God, and human souls that survive bodily death.1 We need not dwell on the possibility that his list of transcendent realities might reflect only the beliefs of a Greek theologian, intent on interpreting a faith having Jewish origins for a polytheistic culture, for even a cursory look at the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures shows that their authors wrote of these beings. Origen is well known in Christian circles for expressing questionable or even heretical views, but his account of transcendent realities reflects an orthodox perspective. Origen identifies only two other elements in the teachings of the first apostles, namely, that the universe is not eternal but was created and that the Scripture carries a deeper meaning than the one apparent on its surface. The emphasis he places on the existence of transcendent realities suggests that they featured prominently in early Christianity. Origen’s account is remarkable for the evidence it provides of the early Christian church’s interest in metaphysics and its confidence in addressing such matters. This confi-

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dence is also borne out in the early creeds of the church, especially the Athanasian Creed, which elaborates on the metaphysical implications of the doctrine of the Trinity. These creeds say curiously little about angels and evil spirits, however, suggesting that these might not have been considered essential beliefs, although mention of “the communion of saints” is widely considered to refer to the dead in a way that presupposes the survival of the soul. During most of its history, the Christian church has exhibited confidence in proclaiming what it considers to be “the truth” about visible and invisible things. This confidence appears to have been seriously shaken in the last two centuries. The ancient and medieval views of the kinds of being found in the universe might not have been uniform, but transcendent realities similar to the ones described by Origen were very widely recognized. In The Discarded Image, C. S. Lewis describes the metaphysical commitments that characterized Christian Europe during the medieval era. He says that the Ptolemaic world of hollow and transparent globes was considered to be inhabited by beings and powers of different ranks and powers, including three hierarchies of angels, as described by pseudo-Dionysius.2 Humans were thought to form a second kind of rational being, their souls naturally considered immaterial and immortal. Some held that human souls were created, along with the angels, well before the creation of Adam, but others considered them to come into existence as bodies are formed.3 Lewis notes that rival views also existed about a third kind of rational being, variously known as elves, pygmies, gnomes, trolls, pans, fairies, hags, satyrs, fauns, water sprites, centaurs, dwarfs, nymphs, bogies, and other terms. These longaevi (creatures having long life) were believed by some to live on earth, by others to live in the air.4 Lewis remarks that he once stayed at a lonely place in Ireland that was avoided by the local people, not simply because the place was thought to be haunted by a ghost but because fairies were said to lurk nearby. He identifies four views of the longaevi among medieval theorists: Some considered them to be distinct from either angels or humans and identical to the daimons (or daemons) of Greek antiquity; others considered them to be angels who were demoted when Satan fell, not because they took part in the rebellion but because they were sympathetic; a third view was that these were the devils who participated in Satan’s rebellion; and a fourth position was that these beings were either spirits of the dead or a special class of the dead. Enlightenment influences in Western culture have virtually eliminated beliefs in longaevi and have contributed significantly to misgivings about other kinds of transcendent realities, such as angels and evil spirits. The question I wish to address in this book is whether evidence exists for some of the invisible beings or powers that Christianity has traditionally endorsed. Christians often appeal to Scripture and tradition to support their claims, but these appeals are likely to be authoritative only for those who already embrace this faith and

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seldom impress people of either a philosophical or a scientific bent. One would hardly expect that the Christian view of the universe could be established beyond reasonable doubt by empirical methods, but this does not mean that claims about transcendent beings lack evidential support. In the Boyles Lectures for 1965, Eric Mascall, historical theologian at the University of London, reaffirmed the existence of the transcendent realities central to Christian tradition, remarking that “behind and beyond the physical universe, there is a realm of purely spiritual beings, in whose affairs we have become implicated.”5 Mascall identified the crucial beliefs for Christianity to be the existence of God, human freedom, and the immortality of the soul, but he went on to speak about warfare between angels of light and the powers of darkness, dismissing the objection that some might write him off as preCopernican or antediluvian. Mascall’s defensive tone is indicative of the recent hesitation of Christian theologians to discuss metaphysical questions related to the Christian faith. Theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg says that only a few theologians are now willing to deal with questions of metaphysics, and these tend to belong to the Catholic Church. He traces this reluctance to the repudiation of metaphysics among philosophers during the last century and observes that thinkers as diverse as the logical positivists, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Martin Heidegger argued that metaphysics was either nonsense or impossible.6 Pannenberg does not discuss the impact of the academic study of religion by anthropologists and other social scientists on acceptance of the metaphysical claims of traditional Christianity, but these studies also appear to have contributed to the decline of metaphysics. According to Pannenberg, the metaphysical claims found in the sacred writings and traditions of the church are now proclaimed as elements of the original teachings (the kerygma) without further elaboration or are demythologized. Rudolf Bultmann is famous for having called his fellow theologians to demythologize the message of Scripture and the church. This call was based on his observation that modern science rejects the idea that the course of nature can be perforated by supernatural powers and the view that we live in a threestoried universe consisting of heaven, earth, and hell. Noting that history does not take into account any intervention of God or of the devil or of demons, he maintained that these elements should be removed from Christian faith.7 Bultmann’s call to drop reference to transcendent beings has largely been heeded in the Western church. This decline might be due in part to Bultmann’s own influence, for some consider him to be one of the foremost theologians of the twentieth century, or it could be a result of other influences to which he himself was responding, such as the increasing influence of science. Whatever the cause, the discussion of the possible existence of transcendent realities besides God has been significantly minimized in theological expositions, pulpits, and the writings of philosophers of religion. Robust beliefs in spirits are now expressed primarily in popular culture, in New Age thought, and among biblical

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literalists, but the naivete´, credulity, and lack of hermeneutic sophistication with which such groups are charged make their beliefs unacceptable in the academy. Western culture is loath to accord any religion authority to speak on questions of metaphysics, and science is increasingly viewed as having the sole authority to rule on questions of existence and other significant truth claims. Religion is allowed to attend primarily to practical matters, such as marking important moments in a person’s life, propounding an ethic, and providing psychological counsel for people in times of grief, distress, and, ironically, existential crisis over a universe emptied of transcendence. Although Trinitarian beliefs set orthodox Christianity apart from other religions, the other transcendent orders of reality it has endorsed—a supreme deity, angels, and evil spirits—have been considered real in most cultures and religious traditions. Sir James Frazer provided English readers a century ago with accounts from around the world of beliefs in gods and goddesses, spirits and demons. The Golden Bough became a classic because of the large amount of information gathered from ethnographers, missionaries, and colonial administrators on beliefs about invisible realities that supposedly influence our ordinary lives.8 Many of his accounts derived from European cultures, which indicates that beliefs about invisible agents and powers were still influential when the book was first published. Some of these beliefs were remnants of pre-Christian religions whose influence had never been eradicated by Christianity, and some were due to Christianity itself. Frazer poetically observed that “the army of spirits, once so near, has been receding farther and farther from us, banished by the magic wand of science from hearth and home, from . . . haunted glade and lonely mere, from the riven murky cloud that belches forth the lightning, and from those fairer clouds that pillow the silver moon or fret with flakes of burning red the golden eve.”9 Popular culture now seems to be turning back to “an enchanted world,” perhaps in response to disillusionment over the inability of science to deal with today’s problems. Movies and television programs based on supernatural forces are popular, and numerous accounts reporting encounters with angels have circulated in recent years. The bimonthly magazine Angels on Earth, which describes itself as presenting “true stories about God’s angels and humans who have played angelic roles in daily life,”10 is devoted to stories of encounters. Even some members of the academy have given accounts of such encounters, such as the Russian scientist who reported in 1985 that six cosmonauts saw angels with wings and halos near their space station.11 The angels are said to have followed the space station for about ten minutes on one occasion, when they were seen by three of the cosmonauts, and to have returned twelve days later, when all six saw these glowing figures. The academy does not give much credence to reports of supernatural encounters, just as it has not taken reports of UFOs very seriously. Patrick Harpur thinks that UFO encounters are the modern equivalent of medieval encounters with fairies and elves, so in refusing

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to examine reports of either the academy is acting consistently. He remarks that reports of encounters with “the greys” are now so frequent that the church and the academy are beginning to take note.12 A significant fact about the metaphysical commitments of Christianity is that only one of them clearly requires evidence drawn from a specific historical era. Evidence for the existence of God, evil spirits, angels, and souls that survive death, if such evidence exists, could be obtained in any era. The soul’s survival, for instance, is occasionally defended on the basis of ongoing human experiences, such as cases of alleged reincarnation, apparitions of the dead, communications with the dead, out-of-body experiences, and so forth.13 The evidence that is adduced is usually recent, but the survival hypothesis is not dependent upon evidence from any particular historical era. Neither is the existence of God viewed as being dependent upon finding evidence from some unique historical era, for people routinely defend it by an appeal to the existence of the universe, to elements of its design such as its having evolved to support human life (the anthropic principle), or to unique features of human life such as religious experiences, the capacity for morality, and mystical states of consciousness. These are ongoing characteristics of the universe or of people as a whole. The argument for God’s existence from the big bang admittedly requires knowledge of the universe’s “history” at one particular period, but most of the theistic arguments do not. Similarly, arguments in popular culture for the existence of angels are advanced from experiences spanning human history. Only the claim that God was incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth requires knowledge of specific historical facts. Christians have traditionally defended the deity of Jesus by reference to his extraordinary powers, such as being able to resurrect the dead and heal the sick, and by reference to his virgin birth and resurrection. The Resurrection would have to be plausible for claims about his deity to have any credibility, and defending these allegations requires specific knowledge about his life. However, other claims about transcendent realities can be assessed by considering evidence derived in any historical era, including the present one. Whether early Christianity adopted its beliefs in angels and evil spirits from the cultures in which it arose, or had its own evidence for these beliefs, is difficult to determine. Although it has consistently taught that at least some of its crucial dogmas, such as the triune character of God, could be fully known only as a result of divine revelation, many theologians have maintained that such revelation supplements evidence for a transcendent order found in human experience. My remarks to this point have been phrased in a way that presupposes that such expressions as God, transcendent realities, and spirits can be plausibly interpreted realistically. This presupposition is so commonsensical that stating it seems frivolous, but philosopher John Hick considers the present debate over realistic and nonrealistic interpretations of religious language to be the

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most fundamental to philosophy of religion.14 He identifies the onset of this debate with the German theologian Ludwig Feuerbach, whose Essence of Christianity expressed the view that the idea of God is a projection onto the universe of our ideal of love. Ludwig Wittgenstein’s analysis of how language functions in speech communities and his contention that language often does not serve the referring function it might appear to serve have been influential in developing nontraditional interpretations of religious language in the last fifty years. Wittgenstein gives expression to what are often described as postmodern views, although he is not so radical as to suggest that language never refers to things beyond itself. Questions remain about the complete interpretation of terms that purport to refer to transcendent realities, and some uses might be other than referential. However, I consider historic Christian faith as making commitments to metaphysical beings and will adopt a realistic interpretation of religious language. In this book I examine some of the vital phenomena that have been interpreted in Christian tradition as suggesting the existence of both good and evil beings that somehow transcend the known world. I do not confine my attention to the existence of God, even though this is the most important kind of transcendent being, but address the general category of a transcendent reality represented by holy angels and evil spirits. I do not examine the uniquely Christian doctrine of the Trinity, a topic that would take us further into dogmatic theology than I wish to go. Neither do I evaluate the grounds for claiming that the soul survives death. This topic has received recent attention because of the widespread reports of remarkable features of near-death experiences, but it is beyond the scope of this book. Philosophers give an extraordinary amount of attention to the existence of God as Supreme Deity but very little to other kinds of transcendent realities, especially beings that have been understood by tradition as finite. I shall try to correct this imbalance here. I shall argue that empirical inquiry into religious phenomena—inquiry that is simultaneously sympathetic and critical—meets established standards for rationality and that the future for the academic study of religion, including philosophy of religion, lies in the study of religious experience.

1 Intimations of Evil?

Let empiricism once become associated with religion, as hitherto, through some strange misunderstanding, it has been associated with irreligion, and I believe that a new era of religion as well as of philosophy will be ready to begin. —William James, A Pluralistic Universe Leo Harris of Adelaide, South Australia, was the senior minister of a large Christian church, as well as the founder and leader of an international association of more than sixty churches, when I got to know him in 1970. He was well known in Adelaide and widely regarded as a man of integrity and wisdom. Besides performing the usual duties that come with being a minister, he was reputed to conduct exorcisms. He made only brief references in public services to this controversial ritual, but in private settings he would sometimes provide fairly detailed accounts of some of his experiences. Leo’s beliefs on the subject were unquestionably shaped by a traditional interpretation of the Bible, but he also sought to substantiate claims about the existence of evil spirits out of his own experience. I was a doctoral student in philosophy at the University of Adelaide at the time, working on the general problem of defining corroborating evidence for hypotheses. I was intrigued by the claim that evil spirits exist and startled by the contention, extraordinary to me at the time, that contemporary experiences might corroborate it. I was brought up with Christian beliefs as shaped and mediated by Canadian Mennonites, in which emphasis was placed upon private spirituality, a humanitarian ethic, and pacifism, but at the uni-

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versity I embraced the interpretation of Christianity articulated by Rudolf Bultmann. I was impressed with his view that plausible beliefs about the world are determined by modern science, an implication of which is “that a corpse cannot come back to life or rise from the grave, that there are no demons and no magic causality.”1 I was aware that exorcism had been practiced in the church but thought that a worldview allowing for possession, exorcism, and other supernatural beliefs was absurd. I thought that supernaturalistic hypotheses either had been imposed on events capable of being explained in natural terms or that reports of events supposedly favoring a supernaturalistic explanation were exaggerated. As he responded to my queries about evidence for spirits, Leo’s accepting attitude toward me, combined with his Australian frankness, allowed me to become acquainted from a safe distance with some of the phenomena he had experienced. He seemed open to the idea that natural explanations for phenomena should be explored before appealing to supernatural causes. Leo told of disturbing phenomena, interpreted as evil spirits acting in or upon people and causing or contributing to bizarre behaviors, but he also told of remarkable cures apparently effected through prayer and other spiritual exercises. The following accounts of alleged demonic influence and exorcism use the language of those who believe that spirits exist and can “inhabit” or control people, inducing them to act in strange ways, including controlling their powers of speech. Case 1: Leo gave an account of an exorcism involving a young woman who had come to him for counsel and prayer. During one of the sessions a “voice” different from her normal one said to him, “I got her father, and I’ll get her too.” When the session was over, Leo asked what these words meant. She explained to him that the telling remark, which startled her when the “voice” uttered it, seemed to reveal the circumstances behind the suicide of her father. His family could not understand why he took his own life and carefully guarded this secret. Now the tragedy and its apparent cause had been revealed in a remark beyond her control. Evil spirits were once widely thought to cause suicide, and this case might seem to be an instance of a “suicidal spirit” being passed from one generation to another. Suicide is now widely considered to be explicable in natural terms, however. The suicide rates in Hungary and Finland, for example, many of whose people have common ancestry in the Finno-Ugric people who lived in the Ural Mountains three thousand years ago, are twice the average in the rest of Europe. Moreover, a recent study of suicide among Amish people showed that 73% of the suicides in a hundred-year period could be traced to four families, who made up only 16% of the total Amish population.2 Such studies suggest

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that some genetic characteristic makes certain people more susceptible to suicide than others. Other studies, including some with identical twins and adopted children,3 confirm the conjecture. Recent evidence suggesting a link between genetics and suicide comes from a study of serotonin 5-HT2A by researchers at the Royal Ottawa Hospital in Canada.4 They found that this neurotransmitter was found to be more common in the blood of suicidal people than in the rest of the population. Although these researchers do not rule out the significance of cultural and environmental factors, they argue that a genetic mutation is implicated in the prevalence of suicide in particular ethnic groups and families. A defender of naturalism could plausibly argue that the young woman in Case 1 inherited a disposition toward suicide from her biological father; moreover, because she grew up with him, she shared the environment that contributed to his suicide. Hence, evil spirits had nothing to do with her behavior. This naturalistic explanation seems to account for the suicidal disposition the young woman might have had, but it does not quite handle the peculiar but intelligible remark, “I got her father, and I’ll get her too,” that came from her during the so-called exorcism. Her use of I makes little sense if we interpret it as an instance of the young woman referring to herself in a normal way. The statement had a precise meaning for her, as well as great significance in view of the tragic event to which it seemed to refer, so some explanation is required. In another exorcism session from that period in her life, a voice other than her own, filled with hideous mockery, boasted to Leo, “She thought I was God.” These first-person remarks exhibit a kind of sentience that we associate only with persons and give the impression of coming from a “person” or “persons” other than the young woman. That such phenomena have been interpreted as coming from diabolical sentient beings is not surprising. However, theories that make reference to psychological disorders, rather than supernatural agents, purport to provide adequate explanations for behavioral features such as these. Multiple personality disorder, which is now widely known as dissociative identity disorder, is a psychological disorder in which people exhibit behaviors that suggest that their personalities have been segmented, often to cope with traumas that would otherwise be insurmountable. Although its feasibility is a matter of debate among specialists, this disorder has been popularized through such films as The Three Faces of Eve, in which actors portray events that resemble real experiences when a human being appears to exhibit the behaviors of different persons. The Minds of Billy Milligan, by Daniel Keyes, is another popular account of an American who was diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder. Milligan was carefully observed by a group of psychotherapists for about nine months, during which time he exhibited as many as twenty-four personalities. In one of these, he could write Arabic, and in another he could speak a Serbo-Croatian dialect, even though he had been taught neither lan-

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guage. Descriptions of this disorder suggest that the self that we often uncritically assume to be single and united can be fragmented. The different voices of people and the strange things they say sometimes reveal previous experiences. For example, an adult who has been sexually assaulted as a child might speak in a child’s voice and say something appropriate to the trauma experienced. This psychiatric approach to the phenomena in question does not presuppose the existence of discrete beings known to religious thought as evil spirits; instead, it offers an understanding that can be seen as fitting into a broadly naturalistic interpretation of human behavior. Whether postulating psychological disorders can account for all instances of peculiar but intelligible speech is debatable, however. Leo gave another example of an exorcism involving intelligible but peculiar speech, which also exhibits an explicit link to Christian doctrines. Case 2: A woman came to Leo for prayer, and believing that she was harassed by an evil spirit in some way, he urged her to meditate on a few specific passages of the New Testament and return to see him in a week. She returned at the appointed time, and just as he began to pray with her, a piercing voice exclaimed, “She’s clean, she’s clean. I can’t stay.” With that, Leo said, the exorcism was over. He then asked the woman to describe what had happened during the previous week, and she explained that she had followed his instructions exactly, meditating on the passages he had suggested. She reported that the passage that became particularly meaningful to her was: “Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you” (according to the King James Version, which is the version that Leo used). This text occurs in John’s account of the Last Supper and reports a remark that Jesus made to his disciples after Judas Iscariot had left the assembled group to plot the betrayal of Jesus. John says that Satan entered into Judas as he participated in the first Eucharistic meal. Leo considered the timing of Jesus’ remark to be significant, for Judas was not “clean.” This case seems to be an instance of what the Catholic Encyclopedia describes as demonic possession. It defines this controversial phenomenon as follows: “An evil spirit, one of the fallen angels, has entered into the demoniac, that this spirit may speak through the voice of the demonized person, but that it is not the man, but the spirit, who is speaking, and that by the command of Christ or that of one of His servants the evil spirit may be cast out, and the possessed person set free.”5 Leo reported that when he first began to perform exorcisms he spent a great deal of time praying with people who came for help. He said that his efforts were often poorly rewarded, for either people were not helped at all or the benefits were temporary. He then introduced meditation on specific pas-

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sages of Scripture, instructing those who sought help to spend much time reflecting on the meaning and significance of these passages. Leo taught that the exorcisms occurred primarily as a result of the authority of Jesus Christ and his words and that the role of the exorcist was modest. The practice of incorporating Scripture passages into one’s personal life is sometimes described as part of the contemplative practice known as hesychasm. This meditative technique is considered by the Greek Orthodox Church to provide knowledge of the “uncreated light” and was widely practiced in antiquity by those who lived in Christian monastic life.6 Leo was regarded in his church, as well as in the sixty that he directly or indirectly founded, with a measure of respect that bordered on awe. I had the impression that the people in the Adelaide church treated the exorcism phenomena with great caution and some fear. Michael Cuneo describes some American charismatics who underwent exorcism in the 1970s as having regarded demonic bondage as a mark of “spiritual glamour and prestige.”7 This outlook is completely foreign to what was expressed in Adelaide. Case 2 again demonstrates the occurrence of intelligible and meaningful speech, although its meaningfulness derives from knowing that the woman who was involved had meditated during the week on this particular passage and that it had become especially significant to her. The remark, “She’s clean, she’s clean. I can’t stay,” is peculiar from the standpoint of the woman. She says it, but it is not the sort of thing one would expect her to say. We want to ask: Why does she refer to herself as she rather than I? Who is the I that cannot stay? Where does the I not want to stay? The original quotation, “Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you,” has been transformed so that the gist of it is expressed from what sounds like the point of view of someone else occupying her body. One could perhaps understand her having repeated the original quotation in much like its original form, perhaps even altering it slightly so that it became something like “I am clean through the word spoken unto me.” Case 2, however, like the first one, gives the distinct impression that a mind or an intelligence other than her own is speaking through her. This impression is strengthened by the fact that the voice heard to speak did not sound like her usual voice, although perhaps too much should not be made of this fact, in that people often alter their voices depending on their audience and on other circumstances. Defenders of psychological explanations might insist that this case is another example of dissociative identity disorder and that no appeal needs to be made to any supernatural agent. Perhaps they are right. However, Leo gave another example that is not readily explicable as an instance of dissociative identity disorder. Case 3: In one of the exorcisms that Leo conducted, the spirits8 who were ordered to leave a man responded in a distinctive voice with the threat that if they did so, they would enter a certain young man,

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god and other spirits who was known to Leo. The young man also lived in Adelaide, which was a city of about 700,000 at the time. Leo said he told the spirits to leave in spite of the threat and ordered them not to enter the young man. Within a half hour or so of this exorcism, he received a telephone call from the mother of the young man who had been named. She begged Leo to come to the house immediately because “something strange had come over her son.” When Leo arrived at the house, the young man’s mother informed Leo that her son refused to talk and would not leave his room. Leo went to the young man’s room and saw from the doorway that he was lying on his bed. Leo entered the room and shut the door behind him, whereupon the threatening voice that he had heard from the older man a short while ago now spoke to him from the bed, saying, “We told you we would get him, didn’t we?” Leo believed that the same spirits he had exorcised in a different part of the city were now in the young man. Leo explained that his authority to control the activity of spirits was limited, and that despite the fact that he would order them to refrain from entering others, they did not always obey.

The remarkable feature of this case is the intelligibility of the whole complex of events, especially the remarks coming from the two men other than Leo. The first man uttered threatening words and named the young man; the young man immediately behaved in a strange way and soon afterward uttered words that suggested that the threat had been carried out. The sequence of the reported events, the close timing of them, the coherence of the utterances involved, and perhaps also the similarity of the distinctive voice coming from the two men suggest that something left the first man and entered the second. The events seem to be an instance of what is sometimes called demonic contagion. A defender of a naturalistic explanation for these events might suggest that the speech and other behaviors of the two men can be explained by the fact that both of them had dissociative identity disorder. However, this explanation could be viewed as adequate only if we ignored the content of what was said, the sequence of the events, and the apparent link between the two. We cannot be expected to ignore the content of the statements, however, for such contents are typically used by psychotherapists to attribute dissociative identity disorder to a person and to understand the causes of the supposed dissociation. Another remarkable feature about this case is that the individual events involving the men are not paranormal from the standpoint of contemporary psychiatric theory, for the theory of dissociative identity disorder supposedly explains them. So the usual objection brought by naturalists to paranormal claims is not applicable here. The extraordinary character of this story emerges only when we consider the events together. I am sure Leo believed that no normal contact existed between these two men and that they did not conspire

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to deceive him, although these claims are impossible to corroborate now.9 I will assume for the purposes of discussion that the events transpired more or less as he related them. These events apparently providing evidence of “possession” or “demonization” are markedly different from many others alleged in the history of possession, as when humans are said to have been changed into animals or their bodies transported through space. Skepticism about paranormal claims of the latter kinds seems justified, but the allegations at the heart of Case 3 are not of this kind. Speech suggestive of dissociative identity disorder occurs frequently enough so that it is not viewed as paranormal. A superficial response to these events would be to treat them as coincidences. Of course, we have to concede that a small probability exists that the first man would name precisely the young man who immediately began to behave strangely, that the young man would say something that fitted in well with the earlier threat, and that causality does not “connect” them. However, interpreting this sequence of events as coincidences denies to them the kind of intelligibility we find in human life, where speech and actions appropriate to a particular context and past events occur. If we regard the events as separate instances of dissociative identity disorder, we deny to the whole complex its intelligibility. Treating the events as coincidences or as unrelated cases of dissociative identity disorder is an interpretive choice, but such a choice is not consistent with the interpretation generally given to events in human life. The suggestion that we are merely looking at two unrelated instances of dissociative identity disorder seems less plausible than the claim that we are confronted with a coherent complex requiring some other kind of explanation. An example such as Case 3 could induce us to reconsider the adequacy of dissociative identity disorder as an explanation for some of the other cases involving intelligible but peculiar speech. A causal connection seems to exist between the events in Case 3 because they occurred close together in time and because of the order in which they occurred: the threat to “get” the young man was followed by an event that implies that it was carried out. These are conditions that are normally satisfied by events that are in a causal sequence. Perhaps a question might be raised about claiming a causal link between two events when they are not instances of an established pattern. This query about causality derives from scientific contexts in which variables can be controlled, so that sufficient information can be obtained to establish patterns. Such a requirement is probably too stringent for events involving human behavior, where the conjectures we advance about causes often depend on a vast network of background information that cannot be structured to resemble the hypotheses found in physical sciences. Of course, we are not examining a claim here simply about human agents and their behavior, but the relevant background appears to be the human sciences, where claims about causal connections are often tentative and incompletely supported by observation.

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The second part of this incident gives the first part a causal significance that it would not otherwise have. If all that had happened was that the first man uttered words that expressed a threat to the second man and then the second man neither did nor said anything remarkable, a defender of the theory of dissociative identity could plausibly maintain that the incident had been explained. It would merely be an instance of a “voice” making a threat to a second person, followed by nothing that could give that threat meaning. However, the events reported concerning the second man put those involving the first in a new light and lend credence to the claim that “something” was “transmitted” from one to the other. Psychiatry is appropriately preoccupied with providing care to those with psychological disorders and explaining their occurrence, and it cannot be expected to examine the supposed causal connections between the abnormal behaviors of different people. Unfortunately, phenomena such as those described in Case 3 do not fall into the boundaries of well-established sciences. One peculiarity of the remark that came from the young man was the use of the pronoun we. This could be as innocent as the royal we, which ordinary people sometimes mimic in a mocking way. But it could have another meaning. Leo said that in some exorcisms the “voices” referred to other spirits or implied that they spoke of behalf of a group of spirits. He described a case involving a woman who had suffered several miscarriages and at least one stillbirth. During exorcism a “voice” boasted that “he” was a prince and had authority to allow other spirits to enter into a person or require them to leave. This “voice” went on to say that the refusal of the woman to look at her stillborn child was unfortunate from its standpoint, for her shock at seeing it would have given “him” further opportunity to allow another spirit “in.” Before the exorcism this woman could not bear children, but afterward she gave birth to several healthy children. The “we” in the case of the young man could have been the expression of a “voice” speaking on behalf of “others.” The examples I have discussed belong to a small subgroup within the large class of phenomena that have been attributed to spirits. Ethnographers, anthropologists, and missionaries have amply documented numerous kinds of phenomena that people have considered to have a source in evil spirits, including storms, diseases, crop failures, and other natural disasters. Many of these examples, however, are not as strongly suggestive of the action of spirits as are the instances of intelligible and peculiar speech illustrated here. Oxford philosopher Anthony Quinton plausibly observed that if a tree emitted coherent speech appropriate to a situation and with the kind of continuity exhibited by normal persons, we might reasonably regard the tree as a person.10 The Catholic Church has long maintained that specific criteria need to be satisfied to plausibly attribute being “demonized” to a person in a form requiring exorcism.11 These criteria include speaking in unknown languages or being able to understand languages without having learned them; levitating or

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performing extraordinary feats of strength for one’s physical condition; vehement aversion to God, Mary, the saints, the cross, and sacred images; correct prediction of future events; or correct description of events taking place at some distance.12 According to Catholic theology, only persons exhibiting such specific criteria are in need of exorcism. The difficulty with these criteria, as Aldous Huxley observes, is that they have also been attributed to recipients of extraordinary divine grace as well, which makes it difficult to draw the distinction between being demonized and being a recipient of grace. At this point the church generally introduces the moral impact of these experiences on recipients, as well as the circumstances leading up to their appearance. The Religious Experience Research Unit, developed about thirty years ago by Sir Alister Hardy from Oxford University, has collected more than six thousand accounts of various kinds of religious experience, among which are some that describe cases of exorcism.13 Their files are available to researchers, but details that might identify the individuals involved cannot be published. An Anglican priest, who will be identified here as William, provided the following account of an exorcism that is said to have taken place in the Rhineland of Germany in 1947. The person who underwent exorcism will be identified as Nathan, and the witness to the event will be identified as Thomas. Case 4: On the last evening of the Rhineland Keswick Convention three of us set out, at about 10:15 p.m. for a walk through a small wood which led to a village on the other side. Nathan, one of the party, started to tell the story of his life, and when we came to a clearing in the wood Thomas suggested that we should sit down for awhile. Nathan continued to relate his story. On joining the Royal Air Force he had missed the influence of home, and fell into bad company, unable to resist temptation. As Nathan finished his story there was silence. I sat with my eyes closed, wondering how I, as one of the convention leaders, could help the young fellow. What happened next was over in a very short space of time. Breaking through the silence, and crashing through the darkness with tremendous power came my voice, “In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ depart.” Immediately Nathan let out a half shout, and fell towards me. He said afterwards, “At those words I saw a black form appear from somewhere at my feet and vanish into the wood, and, at the same time, something indescribable left me.” I felt an urgency for prayer, and if Nathan did not pray, something would happen to him. It was at this point an event occurred so dreadful that since I have prayed that it should never happen again. It seemed as if horrifying pandemonium had been let loose; as if all the powers of hell were concentrated in that spot in the wood. I saw numbers of black shapes, blacker than the night, mov-

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god and other spirits ing about and seeking to come between myself and Nathan, whom I was gripping hard. I saw three demon spirits, perhaps more, between Nathan and myself. These shapes were intelligences. They were different from one another. Each had a personality of its own. They began to buffet me, not striking me physically, but thrusting me backwards in spirit away from Nathan so as to make me recoil, perhaps from fear, and so loose my hold. Two other demon spirits, about shoulder high, were just behind me, one on my right, the other on my left. These two were moving about with a swaying, menacing up-and-down motion, such as boxers use when seeking an opening for attack. Again I felt an intense urgency for prayer, particularly for Nathan. “Pray Nathan,” I called to him, but the poor fellow could do nothing but sob. With my hands on my shoulders I cried, “The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin.” Again and again I repeated the phrase. I did not notice that Thomas was silent until he said, “What a horrible atmosphere.” “Pray Thomas,” I commanded. “Pray for us.” Together we cried with a loud voice, “The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin.” Then, after a pause, in a colossal voice such as I have never heard before or since came a verse from Scripture through my lips in terrifying power. The words were forced out of my mouth, “I give to my sheep eternal life; they shall never perish, neither shall any pluck them out of my hand.” I was left absolutely gasping after this. My mouth had been stretched open wider and wider, as if the words were too big for my lips to utter. I then led with the Lord’s Prayer. For Thomas this was a real climax. He saw nothing, but again felt the atmosphere change. As we reached the words, “Deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory” the feeling of power was immense. The atmosphere was charged with a living presence, impossible to describe. Then everything grew quiet. The air seemed soft and pleasant, as if angel voices were singing, as if a battle had ended, or a great storm had blown itself out. Nathan whispered, “Praise God, Oh what joy.” We made our way back to the conference centre. Nathan could not wait until morning to share the news of his deliverance. Quite independently, Nathan told of how he had seen seven black forms emerge from the trees in the wood, and how he felt some power pushing him forward out of my grip.

The correspondence with the Religious Experience Research Unit indicates that Thomas was contacted by Sir Alister Hardy to give further details of the event, but he declined to do so. Thomas mentioned that he had written a full account of the event at the time it occurred but had shown it to no one. One

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puzzling feature of the account is the claim that these events occurred soon after 10:15 p.m. One would think that insufficient light would be available in a forest to see black shapes. Apart from this detail, I find the account impressive for the information it provides about what it feels like to experience exorcism. The descriptions and impressions supplied by those who deem themselves to have been freed from demonic power can be especially valuable in providing the phenomenological detail that forms part of the basis for thinking that evil spirits might be causally implicated. Case 5: A young man whom I have known since his infancy described an experience in which “something indescribable” left his body. Gerald (not his real name) was a graduate student in a wellknown Canadian university when he was gripped by the powerful thought that God had deserted him, even though he grew up in a stable Christian home and had embraced Christian faith since his childhood. Gerald went into a depression that left him paranoid, suicidal, and in need of psychiatric care. Neither medication nor therapy seemed to help him very much. About two years after suffering in this condition, an employee at the group home in which he had been placed by his psychiatrist remarked to him, “Gerald, God has not forsaken you.” Gerald later told my family that this remark had impressed him so profoundly that he had immediately gone to his room to pray to God for help. As he did so, he said that he felt strange “sensations” move from the lower part of his abdomen, up through his stomach and upper torso, and into his throat. As he stood and prayed in a loud voice the “sensation” left through his mouth with a loud scream and he fell backward onto the floor. His mental health immediately began to improve, so that he has required little care for more than three years (at the time of publication). His terrifying hallucinations have stopped, as well as his paranoia about being pursued by a gang of bikers. Gerald believes that he was freed from a demonic influence. The church he has attended since childhood does not explicitly teach much on demonic influence, so one can plausibly say that his beliefs on this point have been primarily obtained through critical reflection on the phenomenological aspects of his own experience. I suppose an obdurate naturalist could insist that a natural explanation can be found for the strange “sensation” that moved up his torso, his falling back on the floor, and his rapid recovery. However, Gerald’s belief is not unreasonable, perhaps especially in view of some other cases that more strongly suggest the existence of such beings, such as those involving several agents, such as Case 3, and such as those involving apparitions simultaneously seen by several people, such as Case 4. The conjecture that evil spirits might influence or control people is so

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psychologically disturbing for most people that it understandably induces some to suppress reports of possible corroborating events. Others, of course, find other ways of explaining the phenomena in question. But simply relegating alleged events to “primitive minds” or writing them off as instances of “magical thinking,” without attempting to explore their character in more depth, strikes me as irresponsible. At the same time, uncritical acceptance of the existence of spirits, without doing the hard work of scrutinizing the claims advanced to support the hypothesis, also seems irresponsible.

The Eliminative Approach Defenders of naturalism generally classify the phenomena that have been advanced in favor of the existence of evil spirits either as paranormal, and therefore lacking adequate evidence, or as normal, and therefore admitting of explanations that do not appeal to any supernatural agencies or forces. Philosopher Richard Rorty illustrates the attitude of naturalists toward the “demon hypothesis” in a paper that marked an important turn in the discussion of the mind-body problem.14 Rorty asks his readers to imagine a primitive tribe that holds that illnesses are caused by demons, with each different illness caused by a different demon. He remarks that “if we encountered such a tribe, we would be inclined to tell them that there are no demons . . . that diseases were caused by germs, viruses, and the like,” and we would tell witch doctors who claimed to see demons that they were “merely having hallucinations.”15 Rorty’s comments were made about forty years ago, and the eliminativist position he articulated has become an important feature of discussions of the mind-body problem. This kind of eliminativism is also commonly advanced concerning the theory of evil spirits.16 Rorty develops two standard objections in these remarks. He first suggests that the demon hypothesis is unnecessary; spirits have nothing to explain, since diseases are supposedly adequately explained in naturalistic terms. His second remark suggests that experiences in which people think they see demons have been inaccurately described, for those who think they see real objects are mistaking them for hallucinated objects. Rorty’s first remark suggests that postulating demons is an example of advancing of a theory that postulates nonexistent objects, but the second remark suggests that claiming to see demons, as some people do, involves an erroneous interpretation of a perceptual experience. Rorty’s comments implicitly illustrate two levels at which the theory of spirits might be understood. Some who accept the existence of spirits construe them as entities hypothesized to explain phenomena, whereas others seem to accept the existence of spirits at the level of observation itself. I will come back to this distinction between observations and the theories conjectured to explain observations.

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Rorty mentioned the demon hypothesis because it supposedly provided an illustration of the fact that in the history of scientific thought many theories have been eliminated. He was arguing that such a fate would eventually befall the dualistic view of human nature. At the time his paper was published, the main forms of naturalism about minds discussed by philosophers were that mental states were identical to brain states or functionally equivalent to descriptions of human behavior (or dispositions to behave). Rorty supplemented these views with the claim that statements about minds and mental states might be eliminated altogether at some future time, so that theorists would not even bother to show that mental states were identical with brain states or with behavioral descriptions. Rorty presented the demon hypothesis as an example of a theory that had been eliminated in Western thought, disregarding the fact that its elimination has never really been complete. Rorty makes use of an approach to understanding theories that allows us to identify the main question with which this book is concerned. Rorty recognizes that an explanatory theory could be proposed whose basic concepts are either unnecessary or so defective that the entire theory warrants repudiation. Implicit in this view is that the basic concepts of the theory cannot be modified to yield a more adequate explanation and that the entire theory and its underlying conceptual scheme need to be abandoned in favor of something completely different. The main question I am concerned with in this book is whether the theory of transcendent beings still retains any descriptive and explanatory value. Rorty’s approach to the assessment of theories is commonplace today, perhaps because of the influence of Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Kuhn documented the revolutionary character of changes to conceptual structures or paradigms, so that theories dependent upon them were abandoned. Physics and cosmology provided Kuhn with impressive examples, for many theories about the physical universe, as well as concepts used in reports of observations, have been abandoned or altered in the course of scientific advances. Kuhn speaks, for example, about the abandonment of the view that the heavenly bodies in the solar system revolve about Earth in favor of the Copernican hypothesis. Kuhn emphasized revolutions in science, but gradual changes occur as well. His point can be reformulated to reflect both rapid and slowly evolving changes to say that the concepts used to report “facts” and formulate theories undergo change, with the result that wholesale changes in worldviews occur. The demon hypothesis is an alleged case in point. It was once proposed as an explanation for many kinds of phenomena that naturalistic theories now more accurately explain. The conceptual resources of the hypothesis of evil spirits—indeed, of transcendent beings of any kind—are often thought to be bankrupt, making it a theory that ought to be abandoned. Rorty’s contention that the demon hypothesis has been eliminated as a way of explaining diseases is plausible, for very few people now want to ap-

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proach the causes of disease in this way. But he did not convincingly argue that explanations postulating the existence of spirits have no explanatory value or plausibility at all. He does not, for example, consider the kinds of cases with which I opened this chapter, especially the kind of phenomena described in Case 3, which gives the demon hypothesis greater credibility than do diseases. Psychiatrist Scott Peck claims that 95% of the disorders he has encountered in his psychotherapeutic practice can be explained in naturalistic, psychodynamic terms, but he cautiously allows for the possibility of a supernatural evil presence as a causal influence in the other 5%.17 Peck concedes that this evil presence might be only the patient’s own diseased subconscious, which we can plausibly interpret as a concession to naturalism. But his openness to the existence of an evil presence suggests that he has not dismissed the demon hypothesis altogether. Rorty identifies only two kinds of phenomena for which the demon hypothesis has been invoked. I will refer later to an important medieval handbook that mentions about seventy kinds of phenomena supposedly caused by demons. Rorty’s portrayal of the issue in question is simplistic by comparison. He might be correct about the superiority of naturalism over a worldview that also finds some place for transcendent beings, but that position needs to be won by careful argument and more complete attention to the phenomena that have been alleged as best explained by hypotheses postulating transcendent beings. The naturalistic approach to explanation has been so successful, especially in incorporating the latest developments in specialized sciences, that it has put belief in transcendence on the defensive. Theorists in the medieval world could present their view of an enchanted world without apology, but that is no longer the case. Anyone who now wonders if transcendence might have some explanatory value is required to show both that no known naturalistic account can provide the required explanation and that no account of this kind is likely to emerge soon. These are extremely difficult demands for anyone to meet, for they imply virtual omniscience about possible naturalistic theories. The books comprising the Christian Bible form the most authoritative sources for Christian metaphysical views, and the phenomena described there are diverse and provocative. I will critically examine several examples alleged in them, with a view to considering their evidential value for the hypothesis that evil spirits exist. I will not examine closely the detailed critiques on particular passages offered by biblical scholars who have raised questions about the genre, historical sources, editorial influences, oral traditions, and other factors that give the accounts in question their distinctive features. My approach is primarily epistemological and complements other kinds of biblical criticism, for I wish to evaluate the evidential value of events traditionally alleged in support of the claim that evil spirits exist. I will approach the biblical accounts in a way that reconstructs the material as advancing evidence for

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metaphysical views and set aside the question of the degree to which these rational reconstructions represent the actual thought of the original writers.

Examples from the Hebrew Bible The earliest and best known passage in the Hebrew Bible that seems to refer to an evil spirit is the story of “the serpent” tempting Eve in the Garden of Eden. This account does not identify the serpent as Satan, nor does it explicitly say that an evil spirit spoke through the reptile, but this is how tradition interprets the story. The text simply ascribes the power of speech to the subtlest (or wisest) of the wild creatures that God made and describes how it beguiled Eve so that she ate some of the forbidden fruit and then offered it to Adam. The curse God imposed on the serpent reinforces the impression that the serpent is meant to be a symbol for diabolical influence. Christian tradition interprets the story as representing a historical event known as the Fall, but it could also be interpreted symbolically or nonhistorically as expressing a deep insight into human fallenness. This account comes from a part of the Bible whose historicity is hotly disputed. The meaning and significance of the accounts of the Creation and the Fall have been especially disputed since the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species. Defenders of the historicity of the early chapters of Genesis, however, do not always appreciate the extraordinary character of this story. The allegation that animals produce intelligible speech is a paranormal phenomenon that is difficult to substantiate. That the Christian church now often chooses to interpret this story symbolically should come as no surprise. Emphasizing its historicity, in fact, tends to obscure its theological significance. At the very least, this story tells us that people are beguiled by appearances and, against conscience and better judgment, choose a course of action that brings disaster. It also suggests that evil comes in a personal form to allure us. But the story does not provide us with an obvious historical incident featuring a diabolical agent. Comparing it with another incident whose historical character is less contentious reinforces this conclusion. The story in 1 Samuel of King Saul, who is said to have been troubled periodically by an evil spirit, has a very different quality than the story of Eve and the serpent. Although doubts have recently arisen about the historicity of the main protagonists in the saga of Samuel, Saul and David, the story is true enough to human experience to be believable and does not have an inherently paranormal quality. Some biblical scholars say that several sources contribute to the account in 1 Samuel—a late source that expresses opposition to Israel’s becoming a monarchy and contends that an earthly king will usurp the role of Yahweh and an early source that views the monarchy as divinely ordained.

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Biblical scholar Herbert May regards the early source to be a single individual and says that the historical and literary quality of the account is remarkable enough to warrant giving its author the title “the father of history.”18 Herodotus, the Greek historian who lived hundreds of years later, is usually given that honor. The story of Saul unfolds with incidents that give us a sense of plausible historical progression. The prophet Samuel, who serves as ruler and circuit judge of Israel, appoints his sons as judges as he becomes too old to perform his duties. However, Samuel’s sons pervert justice by taking bribes and using their office for personal advantage. The exasperated elders of Israel finally beg Samuel for “a king like all the nations,” and Saul is chosen, even though he comes from one of the humblest families among the least of the twelve tribes. Saul wages war against various nations surrounding Israel, including the Philistines, and initially meets with great success as he follows the advice of Samuel. Saul then questions the prophet’s counsel and undertakes campaigns on his own terms, in disobedience to God’s commands through Samuel. Samuel is then instructed by God to anoint David as the next king of Israel, without Saul’s knowledge. The account goes on to say that the Spirit of God departed from Saul and that an evil spirit from God began to torment him. Saul’s servants then suggest that they find someone who could play the lyre well, so that “when the evil spirit from God is upon you, he will play it, and you will be well.”19 At this point David enters the picture. His playing is said to have given Saul temporary relief from the evil spirit. The account does not mention all of the precise ways in which Saul was tormented, although it says that this evil spirit caused Saul to rave and to throw his spear at David in order to pin him to the wall. Josephus’s account of this incident, written in the first century of our era, says that “some strange and demoniacal disorders came upon [Saul], and brought upon him such suffocations as were ready to choke him; for which the physicians could find no other remedy but . . . by [someone] singing, and playing upon the harp.”20 Josephus’s reference to choking and suffocation is curious, for these effects are not mentioned in the biblical account. Perhaps the centuries of rabbinical interpretation between Samuel’s account and Josephus’s time, including the development of beliefs about demonic realities, might account for the differences. Choking and suffocation are sometimes cited today as effects of demonic spirits acting upon people. Saul is portrayed in these accounts as susceptible to both divine and diabolical influences, for the Spirit of God is said to have also caused him to prophesy. In one of these ecstatic experiences, Saul took off all his clothes and lay naked all day and all night, prophesying before Samuel.21 In an earlier incident, Samuel foretold how Saul would meet a group of prophets playing musical instruments and that the Spirit of God would come upon Saul so that

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he, too, would prophesy “and be changed into another man.”22 The nature of this change is not described, but some behavioral change is implied. A modern way of interpreting the reference to Saul’s tormenting evil spirit would be to treat it euphemistically, as when people say of those who are always uncooperative that they have an uncooperative spirit, or of those who are habitually angry that they have an angry spirit. This slightly archaic way of speaking is no longer seen as making a literal reference to a spirit, although such language might well derive from an era when mood swings and dramatic behavioral changes were considered the effects of supernatural agents. But the modern interpretation is probably not the correct one in the case of troubled Saul, given the prevalence of beliefs about the effects of supernatural agents in the ancient world. This story of a warrior-king with humble beginnings who suffers from an unspecified disorder at the height of his career has a plausible ring to it, even if we should balk at its explanation for the disorder. The story has enough historical detail to give it plausibility as an actual event requiring explanation, unlike the story of Eve and the serpent. In the story of Eve, we do not appear to be presented with an account of a historical event but rather with a story having profound theological significance.23 Such “big stories” that are central to a culture do not always make explicit metaphysical claims, but accounts of events linked to a person’s history can do so. The story of Saul does not suggest that his behavior was so extraordinary that we who live in the twenty-first century could not recognize it. Evil spirits have sometimes been postulated to account for events so unusual that our psychological theories are unable to account for them, such as in the story of Eve and the talking serpent, but this is not the case with Saul. In these two stories, we encounter the familiar dilemma posed by naturalism. The story of Eve does not appear obviously historical, in which case we are not confronted with a phenomenon plausibly construed as supporting a supernatural hypothesis. The story of Saul, however, sounds historical, but an evil spirit need not be postulated to account for his violent and unpredictable behavior. An intriguing feature of the story of Saul is that the evil spirit is described as having come from God. In another account from the Hebrew literature of this period, the prophet Micaiah reports a vision in which he sees God sitting on his throne, accompanied by the hosts of heaven.24 A lying spirit comes forward and offers to deceive the prophets who advise King Jehoshaphat. God gives his consent, implying that God directly controls both good and evil. Later writings of the Hebrew Scriptures remove the ambiguity implicit in such passages and assert that evil finds its source in Satan (meaning “adversary”), chief among the evil beings inhabiting the world of spirits. Some commentators interpret Saul’s malady as an occasional mental disorder. This seems to do justice to the modest information available in the text. Saul is portrayed as exhibiting periods of lucidity, even to the point of recog-

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nizing his disorder and calling for help. Mental illness still constitutes one of the most important categories in human experience for which evil spirits are occasionally postulated. The story of Eve and the serpent introduces an evil spirit for quite another purpose, and yet another group of phenomena seems to be explained by a diabolical agent in the story of Job. The book of Job opens with an account of the sons of God, including Satan, presenting themselves before God. Satan asks God for the right to test Job’s faith in a variety of ways, and this is granted. Job is then ruined financially, his children are killed, and he is inflicted with a painful disease. This book’s long speeches by Job, his friends, and God, finally, reflect on the human condition and the mystery of human suffering. The book has the ring, however, not of a historical document but of a story that shows how faith can be maintained in spite of suffering. But the kinds of disasters of which it speaks have often been attributed either to the direct action or to the indirect influence of evil spirits. The apparent absence of historical material in Job, particularly the early portion that portrays Satan in a contest with God over the life and health of Job, means that we probably are not presented with a historical event in which an evil spirit is postulated as an explanation. This book includes a provocative description of an encounter with a spirit that suggests that its author might have had firsthand knowledge. Eliphaz the Temanite speaks: Now a word was brought to me stealthily, my ear received the whisper of it. Amid thoughts from visions of the night, when deep sleep falls on men, dread came upon me, and trembling, which made all my bones shake. A spirit glided past my face; the hair of my flesh stood up. It stood still, but I could not discern its appearance. A form was before my eyes; there was silence, then I heard a voice: “Can mortal man be righteous before God? Can a man be pure before his Maker?”25 The speech continues for about sixty lines, in which Eliphaz urges Job to accept his troubles as the chastening of God. Like the rest of the book, this account of an encounter with a spirit with a message might be fictional, but the kind of apparition experience on which its author draws is not. Whether divine or diabolical, the experience carries the sense of the numinous. A significant number of passages in the Hebrew Scriptures make reference to or imply beliefs in evil spirits among the Hebrews. The Torah includes several injunctions prohibiting sacrifices to satyrs26 or demons,27 indicating that Israelite beliefs about supernatural agencies were similar to those of neighboring peoples. One of the psalmists mentions that innocent children were sacrificed to the idols of the Canaanites, which are also described as demons.28 The Hebrews lived among peoples steeped in beliefs about evil spirits, and they evidently shared a number of them. According to the authors of The

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Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, reference to more than a thousand deities, angels, and demons can be found in their Scriptures. But very few of these references could be plausibly interpreted as presenting an argument for the existence of such supernatural beings or even as describing phenomena that can be reconstructed to present such an argument. Exorcism is not described in the Hebrew Bible, but Josephus attributes knowledge of how to conduct exorcisms to the wisdom of Solomon, claiming that he saw Solomon’s methods used in his own day in the presence of Vespasian, the Roman emperor, by a man named Eleazar.29 This method is said to have involved putting “a ring with a root” to the nostrils of the demoniac, reciting incantations, and making mention of Solomon. This ritual was supposed to cause the demoniac to fall to the ground, which was taken to be one sign that the demon had left. The demon was then instructed to overturn a basin of water some distance away, in order to prove to onlookers that it had indeed left. After the demon was exorcised, it was instructed never to enter that person again. The source of Josephus’s story is not known, but some commentators consider it to derive from Babylonian or Egyptian influences.30 The instruction to the demon to overturn a basin of water is of interest; if such an event actually occurred, it would corroborate the claim that an invisible agent had been present. The person who incorporated this test of a demon— Solomon or someone else—understood the strictures placed by modern thought on what could be plausibly said to be real. The “overturned basin” test requires some change to the publicly perceptible world before asserting that demons exist. Of course, we would want assurance that the basin was not turned over by some natural cause, for example, by a gust of wind or an earth tremor. Another ancient tradition seems to assume that demons would not produce a change in the publicly observable world capable of establishing their reality. An apocryphal Christian text that describes a post-Resurrection appearance of Jesus to his disciples tells how Jesus appeared to the eleven disciples, who could hardly believe their eyes and expressed doubts about what they were seeing.31 So Jesus reassured them about his identity: Peter is invited to put his finger in the nail print of Jesus’ hands, Thomas is asked to put his hand in Jesus’ side, and Andrew is told to verify that Jesus’ footstep leaves an imprint in the ground. The text continues: “For it is written in the prophet, ‘But a ghost, or demon, leaves no print on the ground.’ ”32 This account construes demons as not leaving a publicly observable effect—at least not footprints—but the tradition preserved by Josephus asserts the opposite. Conflicting views about the capabilities of disembodied spirits among those who are inclined to believe in their existence are still expressed today. For example, some people who have survived a near-death experience report that they used the “hands” of their “spiritual bodies” to try to prevent their resuscitation by removing life-support equipment but found that their “hands” could not grip

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the tubes and wires. On the other hand, popular culture alleges that spirits of the departed can make alarm clocks or telephones ring to alert their surviving loved ones about imminent danger. The Dead Sea Scrolls indicate that the Essene community at Qumran had active beliefs in evil spirits. The nonbiblical literature of the Dead Sea Scrolls appears to have views about the demonic that are much more developed than those found in the Hebrew Bible and highly similar to the views found in the New Testament. In one document the text reads: “Let Satan have no dominion over me, nor an unclean spirit,”33 suggesting that the terms Satan and unclean spirit are used as we find them in the New Testament. Demons are elsewhere described in the Dead Sea Scrolls as “spirits of the destroying angels” and “spirits of the bastards.”34 In “The Songs of the Sage for Protection against Evil Spirits,” the name Lilith occurs. The literal translation of this name is “night hag” (or “night creature”), but in Semitic thought the name denoted a female night demon, found in abandoned places haunted by wild animals.35 Jeffrey Russell traces the source of Lilith to Mesopotamian demonology, where Lilitu was considered to be “a frigid, barren, husbandless ‘maid of destruction’ who roamed the night attacking men as a succubus or drinking their blood.”36 The Hebrews and Essenes seem to have kept this association with the demon Lilith. A scroll titled “An Exorcism” lists various demons, including ones associated with bodily ills, such as “the fever demon” and “the chest-pain demon,” and some associated with sexual impotence, such as “the male-wasting demon,” and “the female-wasting demon.”37 These ways of ascribing causes to physical illness and weakness seem antiquated now, but the claim that evil spirits might be associated with infertility in certain instances is still made today. For example, a pastor of a Christian community in Ann Arbor, Michigan, reported in 1980 that after he commanded demonic bondage to leave a woman in her twenties who had not menstruated for eight years, she began menstruating within a few weeks.38 The Dead Sea Scrolls also indicate that exorcism rites were known at Qumran. The text titled “Songs to Disperse Demons” provides words whose recitation was thought to dispel demons “into the great abyss, . . . lowest Hades.”39 King David, of Hebrew antiquity and fame, is said to have composed 4 psalms, out of a total of 446, expressly for the purpose of “charming the demon-possessed with music.”40 The Hebrew Bible, however, does not explicitly link any of its psalms with exorcism rituals.

Satan in Hebrew Scriptures Satan is frequently mentioned when the topics of evil spirits and demon possession are raised for discussion. He is often viewed as evil personified or as evil in its most destructive and debilitating form. Satan is infrequently mentioned in the Hebrew Scriptures, and when he is, he appears as a being that

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accuses people of wrongdoing rather than as the incarnation of evil. In 1 Chronicles 21, Satan is said to have incited King David to take a census of Israel, but the parallel passage in 2 Samuel 24 says that David was incited by the anger of the Lord. Perhaps these differences can be accounted for by a change in theological outlook between the times these books were written or by different theological perspectives in the authors of these ancient writings. The portrayal of Satan as accuser is also found in the prophet Zechariah’s account of a heavenly vision. Zechariah sees Satan accuse a high priest named Joshua, who is standing before “the angel of the Lord,” whereupon Satan is thoroughly rebuked. These passages undoubtedly have influenced the New Testament interpretation of Satan as the accuser of the people of God.41 Such visions have evidently played a significant role in shaping views about transcendent realities. The most dramatic passages appearing to refer to Satan are found in Isaiah and Ezekiel, even though Satan is not explicitly mentioned in either. Isaiah 14 has a long dirge against a tyrant whose identity is vague. He is initially referred to as king of Babylon, but later is said to be Day Star, son of Dawn, which are names for Canaanite deities. This text describes Day Star as having been cast out of heaven into Sheol, which is the underworld inhabited by the spirits of the dead, for trying to make himself like God. This passage has been traditionally interpreted as describing the fall of Satan from heaven, which requires importing a deeper meaning to the passage than the one apparent on its surface. A similar interpretation has traditionally been given to a lamentation in Ezekiel 28:12b-16, which describes the fall of the king of Tyre: “You were the signet of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone was your covering. . . . With an anointed guardian cherub I placed you; you were on the holy mountain of God; in the midst of the stones of fire you walked. You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created, till iniquity was found in you. In the abundance of your trade you were filled with violence, and you sinned; so I cast you as a profane thing from the mountain of God, and the guardian cherub drove you out from the midst of the stones of fire.” The reference to the Garden of Eden has suggested to many biblical expositors that “the king of Tyre” is more than a historical figure contemporary with Ezekiel and probably symbolizes the archenemy of God and his people. Seers such as Ezekiel, who is well known for his graphic visions, have traditionally been considered capable of having extraordinary insights into transcendent realities. There do not appear to be empirical grounds for asserting the existence of a single being who embodies evil to the greatest possible extent. However, an opposite opinion might be held among philosophers, who have offered arguments for the existence of a being worse than which nothing could be con-

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ceived, mirroring St. Anselm’s famous ontological argument for the existence of God—a being greater than which cannot be conceived. Anselm’s argument purports to deduce the existence of a Supreme Being from the concept of God as the greatest conceivable being and has been widely questioned since Immanuel Kant’s critique of it. I am dubious about St. Anselm’s argument, and even more about an ontological argument for the existence of a supremely wicked being, whom we might call Satan. Knowledge that Satan exists, if that is possible, would appear to require some revelatory source, such as an insight that only a seer might have. An empirical approach to understanding transcendent realities seems capable of providing grounds for general claims, rather than claims about this or that specific being.

Spirits as Postulated Entities The interpretation I have suggested for the story of Saul is a rational reconstruction, for I am construing the evil spirit as a postulated entity introduced to explain Saul’s mood swings. Another interpretation would be to view the evil spirit as an object of direct perception, for which Saul’s peculiar actions are the constitutive criteria. The text before us is not detailed enough to determine exactly how evil spirits were understood by its author (Samuel or some other source). The direct perceptual use of “evil spirit” would occur if Saul’s linguistic community could not see his peculiar behavior as anything but the influence of an evil spirit and if they taught their children to describe such events as involving evil spirits, which we do not. One can readily conceive of communities in which dramatic mood swings (as we perceive them) are so closely linked, conceptually speaking, to evil spirits that to have a swing in mood (as we understand this) is to be troubled by an evil spirit. Such a community would speak of evil spirits as we speak of mood swings, for evil spirits would be basic to their descriptive terminology rather than entities postulated to explain phenomena. Questioning the existence of evil spirits in such a setting would make little sense, for to have what we would call a mood swing would be identical to what they would describe as being troubled or possessed by an evil spirit. Spirits would constitute descriptive elements in a “language game” associated with behaviors of particular kinds, and that language game would be taught, along with the criteria for identifying spirits. Spirits would consequently be objects of direct perception. Jane Harrison describes the role of spirits in early Greek culture in these terms, remarking that “to the primitive mind all diseases are caused by, or rather are, bad spirits.”42 She says that by the time of Hesiod spirits were considered to cause diseases.43 Evil spirits probably seldom operate now in the direct perceptual way in Western culture, even for people who consider them real. Such people probably

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consider evil spirits as explaining extreme mood swings, say, but they would probably not see a mood swing as a troubling evil spirit. Spirits in Western thought now belong primarily to the framework of explanation, rather than description. Even naturalists who deny their existence altogether appear to interpret them as postulated entities. The only exception to this rule, perhaps, occurs when people experience an apparition and the being that appears to them seems to exist. Even in this kind of case, however, a person could consider the object of direct perception to be the images seemingly “before one’s eyes” and regard the spirit as a postulated being whose existence accounts for the perceptual images. The debate about postulated entities and objects of direct perception takes us into one of the enduring metaphysical controversies in Western philosophy. Physical objects, for example, are ordinarily taken to be objects of direct perception, but philosophers influenced by Rene´ Descartes’s epistemological approach have not considered them in that light. In his Atomism Lectures of 1918, for example, philosopher Bertrand Russell defended the view that physical objects are postulated entities, arguing that the real “objects” of direct perception are fleeting sensations, such as visual sensations of color or rectangularity, tactile sensations of smoothness or wetness, and auditory sensations of tones or noises. According to the phenomenalism espoused by Russell, the desk at which one sits and writes (according to an ordinary person’s interpretation of experience) is not capable of direct perception and is instead an object postulated to explain various regularly experienced sensations. Russell describes the sensations as being real and construes the desk as a “logical fiction.”44 This example differs, admittedly, from that of the evil spirits described previously, for there the ordinary way of interpreting evil spirits is to see them as postulated entities, but here the ordinary way of interpreting physical objects is to see them as objects of direct perception. The point is simply that evil spirits, like physical objects, could be interpreted either as objects of direct perception or as postulated objects. Phenomenalists argue that not only physical objects (as ordinarily understood) should be regarded as postulated objects but also other minds and past events should be similarly regarded. Several generations of philosophy students in the twentieth century were taught to think this way. We were told that we had no indubitable basis for holding that any mind existed but our own, as though having this profundity uttered by “another”—a professor in a classroom full of students—was unproblematic. An argument from analogy was then offered for the existence of minds other than our own, which went as follows: Because one knew from one’s own experience that one had a mind, and because one knew from experience that one’s mind was embodied (given the nonexistence of Descartes’s deceiving demon), and because one could observe other embodied beings that looked and acted sufficiently like oneself, one could infer (inductively) the existence of another being with a mind!

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Phenomenalists also maintained that we need to establish that the universe really had a past and that it had not come into existence only five minutes ago, complete with appropriate memories and fossils, as Russell put it. Epistemology was viewed by phenomenalists as the discipline within philosophy that was charged with the task of establishing the existence of the physical (or external) world, other minds, and the past. Descartes had also made God a central part of his epistemology, but twentieth-century phenomenalists, who often accepted the dicta of logical positivism about the meaninglessness of references to God and other spirits, saw no need to follow Descartes in that part of his philosophic venture. Ludwig Wittgenstein is credited, among other things, with having convincingly argued that this epistemological exercise is futile. He disputed the claim, for example, that one could “know in one’s own case that one had a mind” by arguing that this is a distorted understanding of the circumstances in which “to know” and cognate expressions are learned. The climate in AngloAmerican philosophy has changed during the last decades of the twentieth century, so that the physical world, other minds, and past events are no longer widely regarded as requiring a defense based on other indubitable claims. Although no philosophers that I know of have suggested that evil spirits could be interpreted as objects of direct perception—philosophers rarely discuss evil spirits45 —such a position on evil spirits appears to have been adopted much earlier in human history. I will treat them as postulated entities, however.

New Testament Views References to supernatural beings can be found in all of the kinds of literature that form the New Testament, but my interest here is in narratives, rather than didactic remarks. A reader of the New Testament who reads its books in the order in which they are normally found, rather than the chronological order that forms the basis for most biblical criticism, will quickly encounter the enigmatic stories of the temptations of Jesus. Satan is described as having set Jesus on the pinnacle of the temple in Jerusalem and as having taken him to a very high mountain in order to show him the kingdoms of the world.46 The literal interpretation of these texts implies events in which humans are “spirited away” by a supernatural agent. That these accounts are often given a symbolic interpretation in modern Christian circles, rather than understood literally, will come as no surprise. However, we are probably correct to think that the oral communities who spoke and the authors who wrote in this way meant these descriptions literally. Such paranormal allegations often belong to the domain of private experience, rather than public experience, and also appear to challenge the hegemony of naturalism. They are therefore likely to have their authenticity questioned.

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The credibility of reports of paranormal phenomena is a notorious problem, and I know of no simple solution to it. Near-death experiences (NDEs) provide us with the most significant example in recent times where general attitudes have changed toward phenomena once generally dismissed as paranormal. The supposed encounters with “another world” or deceased loved ones widely reported as NDEs in the last three decades are highly similar to experiences formerly reported as visions of or travels to “another world.”47 Visionary experiences were once viewed suspiciously by people of a naturalistic bent, but they are no longer seriously questioned. The thousands of reports of similar NDEs have shown that most of the visions once viewed suspiciously probably occurred. The causes and significance of these experiences are still a matter of dispute, for naturalists generally deny the claim that some kind of transcendent being or place is experienced, but the occurrence of NDEs is no longer in doubt. The NDE demonstrates that a disputed kind of event can become acceptable if it is reported often enough, in various places, and by different people. The Gospels give accounts of dumb people being able to speak after exorcism of a demon,48 of the healing of a blind and dumb demoniac,49 and of the healing of a young girl who is described by her mother as “severely possessed by a demon.”50 One account of the young girl’s experience says she was healed instantly, although it does not identify her malady or explain why her mother described her as severely possessed. In another account a man describes his son as suffering terribly from epilepsy, so that he would fall into water or the fire.51 This child is said to have been instantly healed after Jesus rebuked a demon. Epilepsy was thought at the time to be an influence of the moon, which was considered to exercise a spiritual influence over people. In several places in the Gospels, we read about strange but intelligible speech, similar to the incidents with which I opened this chapter. Luke, for example, says at one place that demons came out of many people at the command of Jesus, crying, “You are the Son of God!”52 whereupon Jesus instructed these spirits not to speak this way. This is often interpreted to mean that Jesus did not want to receive recognition from such unsavory beings. One of the most significant New Testament possession accounts is the story of two demoniacs whose actions were so fierce and destructive that people would not travel near the area they inhabited.53 These men ripped off the chains with which they were fettered, wandered around naked, and bruised themselves with stones.54 When Jesus came near, they are said to have addressed him as the Son of God and to have cried, “Have you come here to torment us before the time?” The demons are here portrayed as having knowledge of a future judgment that ordinary humans would not normally have had, consequently reinforcing the claim that such extraordinary sentient beings exist. The account that follows of the exorcism of these demoniacs living in the Gadarenes is remarkable. Jesus is said to have instructed the legion of evil spirits to leave the demoniacs, and when the reluctant demons beg to be allowed to enter the

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herd of swine nearby, Jesus gives permission. The demons are said to have entered the swine, causing them to rush down a steep bank into the sea so that they drowned. The demoniacs were healed. The accounts of this exorcism found in the three Gospels tell the story so that the relevant events follow a plausible sequence and are close together in time. These factors contribute strongly to the impression that the events are causally related. The demons are described as expressing their desire not to leave the demoniacs, but when forced to leave they ask to enter the swine. An observer would have heard Jesus give permission to the demons to enter the swine, then heard his command that they leave the demoniacs, and then seen the swine rush into the sea. I imagine that observing such events in close sequence would give the overwhelming impression that they were causally connected. This case is similar to Case 3 discussed at the beginning of this chapter, where a causal connection between the postulated beings and the reported events seems to be present. The striking difference between these two cases is that in Case 3 the exorcised spirits enter another person, but in the case of the Gadarene demoniacs, the exorcised spirits enter swine. Jesus has been understood in Christian faith as having had authority incapable of being successfully challenged, so that any evil spirits that might have threatened to enter another person would have been prevented from doing so. Leo Harris attempted to prevent such “contagion” but admitted to having had insufficient authority (or power) to do so. In view of the epistemological significance of this kind of example for rendering credible the theory of evil spirits, we are fortunate that such an account from the life of Jesus was preserved. Most of the other exorcism cases in the New Testament could perhaps be explained as instances of dissociative identity disorder, but this one cannot. This incident introduces a test for the reality of demons that is almost as impressive as the test involving the basin of water that was mentioned by Josephus. I suppose that the behavior of animals can be erratic and unpredictable on occasion, but the strange behavior of as many as two thousand swine is remarkable. Perhaps the opinions of people who know the habits of swine might be useful at this point and might conceivably challenge the claim that their behavior was really that strange. However, the behavior of the pigs in the story of the Gadarene demoniacs, especially just after Jesus’ command to the demons to leave the demoniacs, provides an impressive basis for thinking that evil spirits might exist. The phenomena explained in this story by the hypothesis of evil spirits are a mix of ordinary and paranormal phenomena, as these are generally understood. Stephen Braude has introduced a classification scheme that is helpful in discussing paranormal phenomena.55 He classifies evidence as experimental, semiexperimental, and anecdotal. He describes experimental evidence as that obtained in settings such as laboratories where the control of variables allows us to obtain as much information as time and resources allow. This

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kind of evidence is not likely to be found in connection with hypotheses about evil spirits. Semiexperimental evidence consists of reports of events that occur repeatedly but cannot be obtained at will. Anecdotal evidence consists of reports that occur too infrequently to warrant being included in theorizing about the world. The fierce behavior, extraordinary strength, and peculiar but intelligible remarks found in the accounts of the Gadarene demoniacs occur frequently enough in cases of alleged possession for them to be readily classified as semiexperimental. However, classifying the claim that the demoniacs addressed Jesus as the Son of God is more difficult, although the Gospels report that demoniacs frequently referred to him this way. This title seems to have been rare or nonexistent among his followers until well after his Crucifixion, so its occurrence in the mouths of demoniacs is startling. The part about the swine rushing into the sea and drowning seems to belong to the category of anecdote, for one does not hear of swine or similar mammals behaving in such a way. The most poignant element in the story is the marked difference in the demoniacs after the exorcism. Whatever we might think of the theory that is implied in the rites of exorcism, the positive effect of what is said to have happened to the demoniacs is remarkable. Exorcism is still viewed by some people as a beneficial ritual. The British government shocked many people in 1999 when it added exorcism to the list of recognized therapies.56 I surmise that enough people seem to have been helped by this ritual that their health authorities took notice. The fact that the Gospels narrate specific events in some detail—although the detail is seldom enough for the purposes of developing or properly evaluating theories—is more significant than it might appear. In this way the authors of the Gospels have provided us with phenomena requiring explanation and a rudimentary theory to explain them. We might question the adequacy of the theory and even the occurrence of the reported phenomena, but accounts of these kinds form the basis for any serious theorizing. Carefully laid out doctrines expressed in formal and precise language might please theological purists, but the grounds for advancing a hypothesis about some feature of the universe are the data the theory is introduced to explain. Every scientific endeavor and exact empirical inquiry has narration about observed phenomena at its core. Physics books that introduce students to the double-slit experiment, to take one well-known example, narrate events observed in the laboratory. Just as only careful scrutiny, repeated tests, and ingenious theorizing win claims about the unobservable, indirectly observable, or rarely observable objects of science, claims about spirits cannot be won without hard labor. The idea that existential claims about transcendent realities, including God, might be obtained in short, snappy proofs strikes me as absurd. Two transcendent orders are suggested by exorcism cases. One order appears to be intent on human destruction or at least on creating a debilitating

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influence upon human life. The other appears to rescue humans from these destructive forces that humans are apparently incapable of withstanding or overcoming. Dramatic instances of exorcism suggest that cosmic battles are taking place in which humans are unfortunately implicated. As soon as these two orders are considered to be real, the difficult task arises of trying to determine which order is at work. The New Testament describes deadly disputes between Jesus and some leaders of Judaism about the source of his extraordinary powers. At one point they accuse him of casting out evil spirits by using the power of the greatest of them, known to them as Beelzebul,57 which is an accusation tantamount to asserting that Jesus was himself demon-possessed. Jesus’ response to this criticism is curious, for he does not attempt to rebut the accusation directly. Rather, he observes that some of his disciples who were performing exorcisms under his tutelage had received their earlier religious instruction from those who accused Jesus of being demon-possessed. Jesus then remarks, “Then they will be your judges,” as though he is prepared to concede his extraordinary office of final judge to his disciples. His remark is evidently a reference to the judgments that will occur at the end of the world, when, according to Christian doctrine, God or those whom he appoints will judge all humanity. Both Christians and Jews expect the Messiah to play a crucial role in this climactic event, but here Jesus ironically suggests that he might relinquish his role as judge to others. He seemingly plays fast and loose with his office as Messiah to drive home the point to his accusers that they will face judgment for what they have said. In another place he describes the sin of knowingly attributing divine acts to diabolical powers as unpardonable. In these exchanges we are given a brief glimpse into the powerful passions that are aroused in religious contexts by the phenomena of possession and exorcism. Paul contributed significantly to the Christian understanding of the activity and character of evil spirits. In several texts he teaches that humans contend against evil spirits having various ranks, described as principalities, powers, and “world rulers of this present darkness.”58 He advances these claims without providing empirical grounds for them, however, which evokes questions about his basis for asserting them. Perhaps he was familiar with the kinds of exorcisms in which “voices” purporting to be superior demons speak about other spirits in their control. These rankings were explicitly incorporated into church teachings, particularly because of the writings of pseudo-Dionysius. In The Celestial Hierarchies, pseudo-Dionysius describes three levels of angelic being, each level further divided into three kinds.59 Tradition has accepted that this hierarchy was preserved among the angels that fell. C. S. Lewis describes pseudo-Dionysius as having had more influence than any other author in bringing the medieval frame of mind into being, during the third to sixth centuries.60 Paul is said to have expelled evil spirits in the course of his missionary

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endeavors, even from those who do not appear to have been willing. Luke tells us that a slave girl from Philippi followed Paul and Silas around the city, saying, “These men are servants of the Most High God.” This continued for a time until Paul became annoyed and commanded the evil spirit to leave her, as though the source of this insight about them could not have come from the girl herself. With that her powers of divination came to an end, and her owners, who made money by her soothsaying, had Paul and Silas arrested. Paul also teaches that the worship of idols by pagans is the really the worship of demons. He therefore cautions Christians in several of his epistles to avoid eating food for sale in public markets that had been offered to idols. The danger here is described as becoming “partners with demons.”61 The New Testament accounts can easily be reconstructed so that evil spirits play an explanatory role with respect to specific behavioral phenomena, many of which are described well enough to give us a general sense of how the demon hypothesis functioned in the first century. We might be scornful today of the predilection of people in the ancient world to attribute such conditions as blindness and the inability to speak to the influence of evil spirits. We might also think that they used the demon hypothesis far too uncritically, both because they used it to explain too many phenomena and because they might not have considered other hypotheses. However, these theorists, if we may call them that, can be given credit for selecting specific behavioral phenomena, frequently extraordinary, for explanation by reference to the postulated evil spirits. Postulating a sentient spirit for intelligible but peculiar speech, for example, does not seem to be an irresponsible use of the spirit hypothesis. Given that this speech emanates from someone for whom it is inappropriate or peculiar, these theorists exhibit a measure of rationality in assigning its source to some unknown agent.

Ante-Nicene Thought The church fathers who wrote prior to the Council of Nicaea in 325 c.e. express views on evil spirits similar to those found in the New Testament. The first three centuries of the common era were formative in developing the structures central to Christianity, including defining its central dogmas; creating its holy orders of bishops, priests, and deacons; articulating a morality; developing a liturgy; and selecting its Scriptures. So we should not be surprised to find that the content of the ante-Nicene writings resembles that of the Christian Scriptures. The early fathers occasionally seem to take over beliefs found in the New Testament without offering much by way of independent evidence, but in other cases they appear to base their views on corroborating evidence derived from their own experience. All are agreed that evil spirits, commonly known as demons, are spiritual essences intent on human harm and destruction.

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Lactantius (ca. 260–330 c.e.) views evil spirits as having two different sources.62 One group of spirits is said to have fallen from heaven, together with Satan, who is considered by some fathers as the angel originally given the responsibility for material substances.63 A second group of spirits is said to have been produced when some of these fallen angels had sexual intercourse with women. The progeny of this illicit sexual act, sometimes known as daemons or genii,64 were considered to have a mixed nature and consequently were not welcome in hell. Lactantius identifies the daemon that accompanied Socrates as a being of the latter kind and says that these beings deceive people about their destructive tendencies. He views them as capable of clinging to people and inhabiting houses; having subtle and intangible bodies, these spirits “insinuate themselves into the bodies of men” and there corrupt the health of people, hasten diseases, terrify them with dreams, and harass their minds so that people will turn to them for help. He also identifies them as the source of astrology, soothsaying, divination, necromancy, magic arts, oracles, idolatry, and other forms of deceit and evil. The only protection from these beings, says Lactantius, is piety, which he interprets as knowledge of God.65 Lactantius’s comments about Socrates obviously put this famous Athenian in an unfavorable light, for being accompanied by and prompted by an evil spirit have been generally viewed with loathing. This evaluation of such an esteemed philosopher, who made the teaching of moral rectitude a central portion of his life, has not been well received in all sectors of the Christian church. Cardinal Manning of the Catholic Church offered another perspective on the matter a century ago,66 pointing out that Plato used several Greek words in his discussion of supernatural influences upon people, including Socrates. One of these was daimon, but another was daimonion, which Cicero interpreted to mean “something divine.” Manning concludes that the promptings of Socrates’ daemon were the dictates of his conscience, which Manning understands to be the voice of God. Patrick Harpur deplores the Christian practice of identifying all the gods or daimons of non-Christian religions with demons, which he defines as evil beings cast out of heaven and as having a pure spiritual character.67 Harpur notes that fairies are beings that are neither wholly physical nor wholly spiritual and neither wholly good nor wholly bad. Harpur’s characterization of Christian views on spirits probably sums up the view held by most of the church fathers, although exceptions could perhaps be found. Clement of Alexandria (ca. 153– 217 c.e.), for example, says that God “gave philosophy to the Greeks by means of the inferior angels” and further distributed angels among all the nations so that humans would pursue goodness.68 Clement stops short of equating the holy angels of early Christian thought with the gods or daimons of Greek antiquity thought to have induced people to pursue moral virtue and knowledge, but it would be a small step to make this identification. Lactantius describes demons as being so terrified by the sign of the cross

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that their powers were held in check by it.69 He says that the presence of Christians bearing that sign70 prevented pagan diviners from foretelling the future and caused diviners such great fits of madness that they even attacked their own temples and committed sacrilege. He does not say exactly how this sign was displayed during such events. He says that demons flee when adjured by the name of the true God. Lactantius interprets the adherents of the GrecoRoman religions as worshiping wicked spirits and says that these spirits confess that they are demons when they are adjured. He challenges those who doubt his account to consult conjurers capable of calling forth Jupiter, Neptune, Vulcan, and other gods, and then remarks: “All [demons] will answer from the lower regions; and being questioned they will speak, and confess respecting themselves and God.” He says that if someone “excited by the impulse of the demon is out of his senses, raves, [or] is mad,” that person cannot be cured by the priests of Jupiter, Aesculapius, Apollo, or any other deity. However, if such a person is adjured in the name of the true God, even if this occurs in the temple of Apollo, not only will the demon leave but also Apollo will depart from the priest, who will never again be able to utter oracles. Lactantius also says that when such spirits are adjured by the righteous, they utter great howlings and cry out that they are being beaten or are on fire or say that they are about to come out of the person they are harassing.71 Lactantius is clearly substantiating his claim that evil spirits exist by interpreting them as intelligences capable of speaking through human beings. He does not indicate the extent to which he has made his own observations, however, or whether he is repeating widely circulated beliefs. Tatian the Assyrian (110–172 c.e.) has been described as half early church father and half heretic.72 His numerous writings after his lapse from orthodoxy late in life have not survived, but his Address to the Greeks gives us an indication of his opposition to non-Christian religion and philosophy. He describes demons as misleading people by giving them “deceptive scenic representations” and also says that they occasionally appear to people, perhaps to harm them or to honor them.73 He says that demons can give a person a sense of their presence by means of dreams and can produce diseases that will disappear when they leave a body.74 Tatian says they sometimes exhibit a “tempest of folly” in a person but depart in terror when “smitten by the word of God.”75 Clement of Alexandria also reports that demons are occasionally seen and says that these impure spirits are “acknowledged by all to be of an earthly and watery nature,” dimly appearing near graves and tombs as shadowy phantasms.76 Clement is evidently offering an explanation for what are widely known as ghost sightings. Homilies attributed to Clement of Rome describe the methods used by evil spirits to deceive and inhabit people. He says that heathen worshipers under the power of demons gather in places dedicated to these beings and take delight in becoming drunk, stealing, murdering, and committing lascivious

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acts. Clement considers blood sacrifices and ceremonial libations of wine to produce odors that attract spirits. He says that demons “lurk within you and cause you to take pleasure in the things that are transacted there, and in dreams surround you with false phantasies, and punish you with myriads of diseases.”77 He considers contact with demons to cause suicide and apoplexy. The belief that demons gather in places dedicated to them persists in our day. One of my philosophy of religion students described an incident in which he and his church youth group thought that they encountered evil spirits in bunkers that were built on the West Coast of the United States during World War II. He says that they found objects in these bunkers that seemed to be remains of ritual worship and then collectively heard what sounded like organ music that had no obvious human source, in that they were miles from any habitation. At that point, they were frightened and left the bunkers to return to their vehicles. He reports that on the way back to the parking lot, two young men of their group simultaneously reported that something was attacking their necks. They tried to fend off these invisible attackers and ran for cover. Minucius Felix, a lawyer in Rome prior to his conversion, writes in his Octavius that words and prayers drive out demons. He says that the gods worshiped as Saturn, Serapis, and Jupiter are demons, for they declare their true nature when expelled and would not “lie to their own discredit.”78 He says that the demons leave immediately or by degrees, depending on the faith of the sufferer and the grace present in the healer. Cyprian of Carthage (200–258 c.e.), bishop and martyr, credits the water of baptism as driving evil spirits out of converts.79 Origen adds that demons have been driven out of animals,80 but he does not elaborate on the observations that he considers as corroborating this claim. Although the extant writings of the early church fathers provide consistent accounts of the kinds of effects that evil spirits have upon people and seem to be based on some firsthand observations, they provide us with only a few specific accounts. Cyprian of Carthage tells of a prophetess who acted as if she was filled with the Holy Spirit81 and prophesied that she would make the earth shake. Significant earthquakes subsequently occurred, but Cyprian interprets this as merely the result of the prescience of the evil spirit, not a consequence of its power. He also says that the demon gave this woman the ability to walk over frozen snow on her bare feet and not be troubled or hurt. Cyprian reports that she created general havoc in the Christian community by having sexual intercourse with a presbyter and a deacon, until an exorcist exposed her. Cyprian appears to have relied on the judgment of the exorcist, and perhaps the evidence of her dalliances, to defend the claim that she was possessed, for her powers of foretelling the future and avoiding injury from cold weather could just as easily be attributed to divine favor. Tertullian of Carthage (ca. 145–220 c.e.) reports that a woman went to a show and came back possessed. He does not describe the kind of show she

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went to, but the book from which this example is drawn covers events ranging from dramas to gladiatorial combat. He says that in the exorcism the “unclean creature” was reproached for attacking a believer, but it replied, “And in truth I did it most righteously, for I found her in my domain.”82 He reports another case in which a woman dreamed of a tragedian after hearing him perform. In the dream she saw a linen cloth and heard his name mentioned in disapproving tones. Five days later she died. Tertullian does not explain why he considers this an instance of someone becoming possessed by an evil spirit after attending the theater, but he is writing to fellow Christians and expects them to understand. He says that demons and angels, being invisible and intangible, can be known only by their effects and that they act on humans in ways that are best described as obscure.83 This remark puts him in the company of modern theorists who have postulated unobservable objects to explain phenomena that are otherwise inexplicable. Some Christians have defended the existence of evil spirits and holy angels primarily on the basis of texts deemed to be inspired or on such texts and the declarations of the church. However, Christian thought of the Ante-Nicene period, while biblical, is also strongly empirical and sometimes surprisingly modern. The phenomena discussed to this point that are supposedly caused by evil spirits can be usefully summarized. 1. Intelligible speech from human beings, but deemed inappropriate for those uttering it 2. Intelligible speech from animals 3. Raving fits and violence 4. Levitation and extraordinary strength 5. Suffocation 6. Foretelling the future 7. Conception 8. Diseases 9. Mental illness 10. Storms and natural disasters 11. Abnormal movement of objects and people, including teleportation 12. Homicide and suicide, including self-destruction among animals 13. Sacrilegious acts, including acts against one’s own religion 14. Apparitions 15. Dreams of certain kinds The effects of the rituals of exorcism also have contributed to the claim that evil spirits exist. For example, finding that people regain their sight or hearing or mental wholeness after an exorcism in which evil spirits are commanded to leave a person, as though those spirits were causally responsible for producing the malady, adds credence to the claim that spirits might exist. Also, finding that a particular power is lost after such a ritual, as in the case of the

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diviner rebuked by Paul and Silas, would provide a basis for asserting their existence. Some of the phenomena in the list are paranormal in character, such as the reference to demons producing storms and natural disasters. We do not know the extent to which people of ancient and medieval times saw such events as brought about by invisible beings, both good and evil. They might have been more discriminating in their assessment of the sources of these phenomena than they are often given credit for. A prominent medieval document about which I shall say more momentarily gives an account of how an eight-year-old girl from Swabia supposedly showed her father how she could make hail fall on one of his fields and rain on another.84 This account suggests that only some storms were interpreted as having their source in spirits, either acting on their own or in cooperation with human beings. Medieval Christian thought also allowed for children to be occasionally conceived by the action of spirits, but it did not consistently construe spirits to be their source. Bronislaw Malinowski’s early-twentieth-century account of the beliefs of the native Trobriand Islanders about sexual matters, by way of contrast, presents evidence that these islanders considered all children to come from spirits.85 Although these islanders thought a woman needed sexual experience before bearing a child, they did not consider sexual intercourse to cause conception; children were brought by the baloma, the spirits of the dead. People from ancient and medieval times are often portrayed as uncritically attributing almost everything to the action of spirits. Although this might have been true of most people, some were perhaps much more discriminating in their efforts to construct plausible causal theories about the things that exist, or supposedly do, both natural and supernatural. Perhaps subtle thought about criteria for attributing events to spiritual beings or entities lies behind the accusation mentioned in the Gospels that Jesus performed miracles by “the power of Beelzebul,” prince of the demons. This ever-popular and simplistic way of dismissing the life and teaching of a controversial religious figure was countered by one of Jesus’ defenders with “But can a demon open the eyes of one blind from birth?” Ordinary religious beliefs in Judea allowed for demons to cause disease, which was expected to disappear if the evil spirit was exorcised. However, giving the power of sight to someone born blind required a creative miracle. Spirits, whether angelic or demonic, were not viewed as having that kind of power.

Malleus Maleficarum Malleus Maleficarum (The Witch Hammer), probably first published in 1486, is a fascinating medieval compendium of phenomena said to be produced by

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demonic powers. Its authors, Heinrich Kramer (also known as Heinrich Institoris) and James Sprenger, were commissioned by Pope Innocent VIII to be inquisitors in northern Germany of allegations that “many persons of both sexes, unmindful of their own salvation and straying from the Catholic Faith, have abandoned themselves to devils, incubi and succubi.”86 In introducing his translation of this book into English, Montague Summers says that it is “the most prominent, the most important, [and] the most authoritative” of the many books on the subject.87 Philosopher Paul Carus offered a sharply contrasting opinion of the book a century ago, describing it as heinous, selfcontradictory, nonsensical, irrational, and superstitious.88 This book was the ultimate authority on witchcraft for more than two centuries, continually appealed to in trials of witches in Germany, France, Italy, and England. Its association with the ignominy of the Inquisition, as well as its negative view of women, who are said to be more adept at witchcraft than men,89 has brought it into disrepute, but it probably describes and illustrates beliefs in demons at their zenith in Christian thought. The horrors undertaken under its authority in trials of witches on both sides of the Atlantic have been widely publicized, suggesting that people who harbor irresponsible beliefs about diabolical forces should not be trusted with affairs of state. Malleus Maleficarum identifies approximately seventy kinds of phenomena as caused by demonic powers, usually acting through or by human agents, for demons are said to take delight in involving people in perverse and destructive exploits. These exploits range over well-known paranormal allegations, including flying through the air, apparitions, speaking in unknown languages, clairvoyance, and levitation, to paranormal phenomena not as well known, such as madness in animals, precision archery, fragmenting human fetuses in their mothers’ wombs, assuming the shape of animals, copulating with incubi, and striking objects with lightning. Many phenomena now judged natural are also attributed to the causal influence of evil spirits. Among these are barrenness, blindness, physical deformity, death, delusions, sudden disease, healing, impotence, irrationality, inordinate lusts, paralysis, violent storms, extraordinary stench, and sterility. Kramer and Sprenger offer many examples from their own experience, either implicating evil spirits as sole sources or assigning a significant causal role to them. Some of their examples demonstrate the unavailability of scientific explanations in the fifteenth century, for example, the failure of cows to give milk or of churned cream to become butter. These kinds of examples have helped to popularize the idea that all of the phenomena that evil spirits were postulated to explain have since been successfully explained by science. Upon first reading of the bizarre sexual acts attributed to incubi and succubi, one might think that this explanation was invented only to account for instances of genetic throwbacks or births exhibiting other abnormalities. But Kramer

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and Sprenger offer examples that suggest otherwise. They distinguish between kinds of possession, give reasons for possession, differentiate between possession and bewitchment, and list the kinds and methods of exorcism. They claim to have witnessed such phenomena as the teleportation of objects, supposedly brought about by demonic powers. One of these events allegedly occurred after a devout woman in the city of Spires engaged in heated conversation with a woman suspected of being a witch.90 Fearing what the supposed witch might do, the devout woman sought to secure her child’s safety when putting it to bed that night by sprinkling it with holy water and signing it with the cross. In the middle of the night, she heard the child cry; going to its cradle to comfort it, she found that the child was not there. She finally found the child in a corner under a chair, crying but unhurt. Kramer and Sprenger say that this incident occurred the year their book was begun, but they do not indicate whether they obtained the information firsthand. Neither do they indicate why they consider the suspected witch to have caused the child’s removal from its cradle. They do not offer reasons for rejecting the suggestion that some other person moved the child, for example, and they do not speculate about the possibility that the woman herself removed the child while she sleepwalked. They exhibit too much credulity at many points, but they also describe some cases that appear to be on better footing. They give a second example of teleportation reported to them by a friend who was a priest in Oberdorf.91 The priest reported that a group of scholars met together to drink beer and agreed that the one who fetched the beer would not have to pay for it. One of them went to get beer but returned in terror a short while later, reporting that he had seen a thick cloud before the threshold of the public house. A companion replied, “Even if the devil was there, I shall fetch the drink.” Upon saying this, he was “carried through the air in the sight of all the others . . . arms stretched out, shouting but not whimpering.” The second example is more impressive than the first in several obvious ways. The events reported in the first story were evidently seen only by the mother of the child, while those involving the drinking scholars were said to have been seen by all. Moreover, in the second example, unlike the first, the events are close together in time, reinforcing the impression that they are causally connected. Also, the second example involved several participants, for the first man who went to get beer “saw a thick cloud,” and his companion is said to have been spirited away. Events that involve a group of participants have features that link them to the space-time-causal domain more strongly than those involving lone individuals. The most pressing question about the second story is whether we should accept its authenticity—maybe the scholars had imbibed too much beer! A case of teleportation that seems much better attested than those found in Malleus Maleficarum is that of St. Joseph of Copertino. This seventeenth-century friar, said to be in no other way remarkable, was reported to fly by hundreds of witnesses, among them many influential and

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respected people, including a pope, two kings, the Duke of Brunswick, and the philosopher Gottfried Leibniz.92 The source of this power is evidently deemed to have been divine, however, not demonic. Kramer and Sprenger offer five reasons for possession.93 They say that a small number of people are possessed for their own benefit and offer the example of St. Martin, the fourth-century saint who is said to have expelled demons by doing nothing more than sending his hair shirt or writing a letter to a demoniac. St. Martin became so famous as an exorcist that he was tempted by pride, so he asked God that he might be possessed for five months to humble him. This prayer is supposed to have been answered. A second reason for possession is the sins of the exorcist. They illustrate this with an example drawn from St. Gregory, who reported that after an abbot exulted immoderately over the exorcism of a young boy, the boy was again possessed. Only with many tears and fasting was he permanently delivered. The third reason for possession is one’s own venial sin, which they illustrate by the hermit who “went a little too far in the expression of a certain opinion” in a dispute with an abbot. The hermit is said to have become possessed immediately by a devil, “who caused him to void his natural excrements through his mouth.” Through prayer and submission to the abbot, the hermit was delivered. The fourth reason arises from the serious sin of another. They cite another story from St. Gregory, who reported that a man received a guest who was really the devil in the guise of a pilgrim, recently cast out of someone by Bishop Fortunatus. When the host took pleasure in a story derogatory of the bishop, “the devil entered [the host’s] son, and cast him upon the fire, and killed him.” The fifth reason is the serious sins of the one who is possessed, and here they cite as an example King Saul’s sin of disobedience, discussed previously. The illustrations they provide of alleged phenomena in which evil spirits are implicated vary in detail and impressiveness, as the examples just related demonstrate. Kramer and Sprenger reinforce the impression people generally have of the medieval age as one in which belief in supernatural forces was virtually unbridled. Sexual intercourse with incubi and succubi, which they describe in considerable detail, must surely rank among the most extraordinary phenomena attributed to demons. Compendium Maleficarum, written by the Ambrosian monk Francesco Maria Guazzo about a hundred years after Malleus Maleficarum, provides us with accounts almost as comprehensive as its earlier counterpart. Guazzo claims that almost all theologians and philosophers in his day accepted that witches practice coition with demons and avers that this has been the experience of all times and of all nations. Guazzo argues that because demons can assume to themselves a body resembling flesh, they can “create the appearance of sex which is not naturally present, and show themselves to men in a feminine form, and to women in a masculine form, and lie with each accordingly.”94 Claims such as these are so remote from the age in which we

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live that they beg our incredulity and have bestowed on the medieval world and mind a large measure of opprobrium. However, belief in the existence of demons capable of coition can still be found in our day. T. K. Oesterreich, professor of philosophy at the University of Tu¨bingen until he was ousted by the Nazis in 1933, says that the medieval period is full of phenomena interpreted as possession and cites as evidence the presence of accounts in virtually all of the more than sixty volumes of the Acta Sanctorum.95 He observes that the same kinds of cases are reported again and again, eventually producing monotony. He claims that this monotony “offers striking proof of the stability of these phenomena in the Christian era.”96

Catholic Views of Diabolical Possession and Exorcism The Catholic Church is well known for its endorsement of the view that demonic manifestations and exorcisms are possible, although its educated class is probably as skeptical of traditional beliefs as the educated of any other Christian denomination. An interesting shift in outlook can be found in some of its authoritative documents, which nicely mirror the impact that the growing interest in the human sciences is having on Christians everywhere. The articles titled “Possession” and “Demonology” in The Catholic Encyclopedia, published in 1909, exhibit what would be widely viewed as traditional Christian beliefs. It takes accounts of exorcisms in the New Testament at face value and accepts biblical ascriptions of various maladies to the influence of demons. Moreover, the authors of its articles resist the efforts of biblical critics to reinterpret accounts of possession as instances of mental illness. However, the outlook adopted on exorcism and related topics by the authors of the New Catholic Encyclopedia, first published in 1967, is quite different. These articles generally adopt a cautious stance on the topic of diabolical possession and report that the church has become reluctant to admit supernatural possession in particular cases, especially because naturalistic explanations have become available for many phenomena once deemed demonic. A practical implication of this reluctance to accept possession was the abolition in 1972 of the references in Catholic initiation rites to the domination of this world by Satan and a routine prayer of exorcism.97 Although a ceremonial prayer for exorcism remains in the baptismal rite, as well as anointing with oil, which was used historically in conducting exorcisms, this prayer does not carry the significance found in the traditional rite. The newer encyclopedia clearly exhibits the impact of sixty years of science and biblical criticism on the Catholic Church since the older encyclopedia was published. The article in the New Catholic Encyclopedia titled “Diabolical Possession in the Bible” observes that the New Testament writers often attribute disorders

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to demons because they lack the knowledge necessary for scientific diagnosis of nervous and mental disorders. It says, moreover, that because the New Testament writers construe sin, disease, and death as the continuing effects of Satan and his minions in the world, which Christ has come to destroy, instances of these familiar forms of negativity are associated freely with demonic powers. The article titled “Theology of Demonic Possession” acknowledges the important role that psychiatry has played in the twentieth century and says that this science has shown that “the workings of the subconscious explain many, if not most, of the abnormal conditions that earlier generations had attributed to diabolical activity.” The article notes that for this reason demonology has not been the object of much serious study in the twentieth century. Demons have been traditionally understood as “capable of penetrating and manipulating matter of any sort,”98 and demon possession involves entrance into a human body and control of its physical faculties. Various images have been traditionally offered to try to explain the relationship between demons and the people they possess, including the image of a ship, with the demon as the pilot who steers the vessel. The most authoritative statement of possession, however, is said to have been offered by Pope Benedict XIV, who held that “Demons, in the individuals whom they possess, are like motors within the bodies which they move, but in such a way that they impress no quality on the human body nor do they give it any new mode of existence nor, strictly speaking, do they constitute, together with the possessed person, a single being.”99 The newer encyclopedia describes obsession, which is distinguished from demon possession, to be a “hostile action of the devil or an evil spirit besetting anyone from without.”100 Obsession is said to include molestation and bombardment of individuals, houses, and animals; however, the article considers these cases as possibly due to natural forces that are “as little known to us as the latent forces of electricity were known to the Greeks.”101 Spastic movements or hysterical convulsions are said to be insufficient criteria for attributing possession to a person, and even such criteria as knowledge of secret things and knowledge of languages never learned are questioned, because of “the very real probability that telepathic communications between human beings exist.”102 A surer criterion is said to be the lack of memory as to what one did during a seizure, but here again the article notes that multiple personality disorder, which is not to be automatically viewed as an instance of possession, might be involved. The article then adds: “Perhaps only the effect of an exorcism upon the person possessed can really be said to settle the question.” The New Catholic Encyclopedia does not rule out the possibility of oppression or possession or infestations of evil spirits, but it is reluctant to admit the objective occurrence of such phenomena.

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A reversion to older attitudes is apparent in the writings and work of Gabriele Amorth, Rome’s chief exorcist at present, who claims to have performed more than fifty thousand exorcisms.103 He says that talk of exorcism is not popular in the Catholic establishment, where leaders prefer to speak about “the spirit of evil” as opposed to “evil spirits.” But he is convinced that evil spirits are real and is not fully in agreement with the new exorcism rite that the Catholic Church recently approved. He says that the new guidelines do not allow an exorcism to be performed unless an exorcist knows for certain that evil spirits are present. He says, however, that evil spirits often reveal themselves only when an exorcism is attempted. Amorth claims that Pope John Paul II has performed exorcisms. Amorth reports that a young woman began to shriek obscenities at the pope in a strange voice as he attempted to bless her. Amorth says that although the pope did bless her and bring her some relief, further rituals designed to exorcise the spirits in her were subsequently performed by others. The criteria Amorth has adopted as grounds for claiming possession are more lenient that those outlined in the New Catholic Encyclopedia, but they reflect the older tradition. Amorth says that he has met people whose possession is characterized by acute physical pain, including such agony that they cannot move.104 He claims that the symptoms of possession often include violent headaches and stomach cramps, but he is quick to add that demonic possession should not be confused with ordinary illness. Amorth distinguishes seven kinds of diabolic activity: ordinary temptation, which is something that all people experience; physical pain that does not affect the soul; possession, in which full possession of the body occurs, so that evil spirits speak and act without the consent of the person they possess; oppression, which varies in character and is illustrated in the life of the biblical character Job; obsession, which includes sudden attacks of absurd thoughts; infestation, a term he uses to refer to diabolical influences only upon things other than people, including houses, physical objects, and animals; and subjugation, which occurs when people form blood pacts with Satan or consecrate themselves to him.105 He distinguishes between deliverance and exorcism, for exorcism is a sacred rite that can be performed only by bishops or those that they license, whereas any Christian can say the prayers of deliverance. He acknowledges the importance of distinguishing phenomena that are naturally caused from those that have a supernatural origin, but he also thinks that little harm can come from treating a mysterious condition as one that requires exorcism.106 Amorth deplores the intolerance that many Catholics, including its clergy, feel toward exorcism and urges bishops to take this ministry seriously.107 Whether the Catholic Church is generally reverting to the older attitudes toward possession and exorcism is unclear, but it might be experiencing the division on these topics that is common in Protestant churches.

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Exorcism in Ontario In January 2000, I visited Chartwell Baptist Church in Oakville, Ontario, to speak with its pastor, Roy Matheson, about his work in exorcism. Matheson is also a theology professor at Tyndale Seminary in Toronto, where he teaches a course on spiritual warfare. He explained to me that neither his Christian upbringing nor his theological education, including a doctorate in theology from Dallas Theological Seminary, predisposed him to accept the presentday existence of evil spirits. Matheson said that Dallas Seminary generally teaches that the extraordinary phenomena characterizing the biblical era ceased, but he also said that exceptions to this strict view could be found among its faculty. He outlined the events that led him to reconsider his outlook on the possibility of “demonization,” a general term often used to cover a variety of phenomena supposedly caused by evil spirits. A medical doctor in his church was entrusted with the care of Sharon (not her real name), a psychiatric patient in a nearby hospital, when her psychiatrist felt that he could do nothing more for her. Sharon’s psychiatrist reportedly told the doctor that this woman of twentyone was so damaged that nothing more could damage her, so he asked the doctor to take care of her physical needs. After a few visits, the doctor thought he would pray with Sharon and read to her from the Bible. When he began to read, she immediately went into an altered state of consciousness, and a different voice, deeper than her own, said, “She can only hear what we allow her to hear. She belongs to us.” On another occasion, when the doctor began to read the story of the Gadarene demoniacs, Sharon took a knife and waved it toward him in a menacing fashion. The doctor claimed the protection of Christ upon himself, and she dropped the knife. These incidents, in addition to several others, made him wonder if he was dealing with a demonic presence. Matheson became involved at this point. He, along with the doctor and several other people from his church, began to counsel Sharon, pray for her, and seek to expel the debilitating influences in her life. Sometimes they videotaped the sessions. Matheson once read Matthew’s account of the Gadarene demoniacs to Sharon, but she stopped him and pointed out that Mark’s account of this incident mentions only one demoniac, not two, and argued that the Bible must contradict itself. Matheson said that Sharon’s knowledge of the New Testament was virtually nonexistent, and he thinks that the knowledge of this small difference in the synoptic accounts derived from the demonic spirits that had invaded her life. He said that on other occasions she exhibited knowledge for which no explanation could be provided. The possibility of demonic possession was then raised with her in one of the sessions, but she questioned the plausibility of it. However, when Sharon was shown the videotape in which she showed knowledge of the difference between the accounts in Matthew and

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Mark, she became open to the possibility of demonic possession, because she could not explain how she had come up with the information. On several occasions, Sharon would be asked to read the Scriptures, but she would often misread them. For example, when she came to “Christ” in the text, she would skip over it, or when she came to the word “life,” she would instead read “death.” When confronted with this, she would deny she had done so. At about this point in the counseling, Scott Peck was contacted for advice, but he said that what he knew about such cases had been written up in People of the Lie. A team was then put together to counsel and pray with Sharon on a regular basis. Sometimes they would pray with her all night. Once they did so from Friday night to Monday morning, and at the end of it everyone who was involved was exhausted, except for Sharon, who still had lots of energy. Matheson said that a week later, after another marathon session, “in a very quiet way she expelled the spirits and invited Christ into her life.” Matheson explained that he described the event in these words because the active, conscious participation of the one who is being exorcised is generally required for exorcism to occur. Prior to this turning point, Sharon had spent 340 days of a year on a psychiatric ward, and after it she needed psychiatric care only 5 or 6 days in a year. Matheson said that Sharon’s social development had been impaired because of the events that led up to her hospitalization, but she has been part of the Chartwell community most of the time since her exorcism in 1983. He said that she is understandably reluctant to talk about that dark period of her life, and I did not speak with her. This exorcism suggested to Matheson that distinct demonic hierarchies were involved in bringing debilitating influences into Sharon’s life. Like Catholic exorcists who use objects having spiritual significance, the team once used a cross in conducting an exorcism. Matheson reported that Sharon was normally unable to hold a cross in her hand because she said it burned her hand, but when a specific demonic presence was manifesting itself, she was able to hold the cross. The “voice” in her would say, “Only the strong one can hold the cross.” On such occasions, Sharon would hold the cross and wave it in a mocking way. Matheson said that when hierarchies are involved, the highest one might describe itself as a gatekeeper with authority over other spirits, each one of which is assigned a specific role in bringing bondage into a person’s life. Matheson says that the lesser spirits greatly fear the stronger ones and are eager to complete their assignment well. He also says that if the gatekeeper can be expelled, then the others can be expelled as well. Matheson says that evil spirits are sometimes defined by the function they serve in bringing bondage into a person’s life, for example, the bondage of fear or sexual lust. On other occasions they have names associated with idolatrous practices known to us from antiquity. On one occasion someone who was helping to conduct an exorcism session suggested to Matheson that a passage from the Hebrew Bible be read. First Samuel 5 describes how enemies of

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ancient Israel stole their hallowed ark and placed it in the temple of their god Dagon. The account says that when the devotees of Dagon went to their temple the next morning, they found their idol face down on the ground in front of the ark. Matheson initially thought that reading this passage was irrelevant to what they were trying to accomplish, but when the name Dagon was mentioned, the man for whom they were praying went into an altered state of consciousness, leaped up, and hissed. Matheson believes that this was the name of the spirit that was afflicting him. On another occasion the Assyrian god Moloch was named, with a similar effect. Matheson makes a clear distinction between having dissociative identity disorder and having a demonic power attached to one’s personality. He recognizes dissociative identity disorder as a defense mechanism that helps people cope with traumatic events in life and thinks that everyone dissociates to a certain extent. However, having a demonic power attached to one’s personality is different, and he offers criteria based on his experience. He believes that people who have severe psychological problems, after receiving good counseling and being checked out by the medical community, might be affected by a demonic presence. He also considers the display of extreme behaviors, such as slithering to the floor, self-mutilating, or exhibiting overwhelming strength, as important in making the diagnosis. He says that other symptoms of a demonic presence are altered states of consciousness when spiritual topics are brought up and persistent, bizarre dreams. Matheson said that he once received a phone call from a pastor in another church about a woman in that church who wanted to start attending Chartwell Baptist. Her pastor mentioned, however, that this woman would let out blood-curdling screams each time the worship service began. Matheson said that he wanted to talk to the woman before she attended his church. They met in his office, and within three minutes of conversing with her she emitted a scream and went rigid. The doctor who assists Matheson with clinical evaluations of people’s behaviors was present and observed her symptoms closely. Although he is not a psychiatrist, the doctor told Matheson that her behavior was superficially like that of those who undergo epileptic seizures but that it differed from epilepsy in some important ways. Matheson thought that her behavior suggested the presence of a demonic power and then took steps to free her from it. On another occasion he was called to a church in the Toronto area to offer advice concerning a young man who was acting very strangely. Although the young man had never heard of Roy Matheson, he went berserk when Matheson’s name was mentioned. In the exorcism session that ensued, Matheson asked the “voice” what right he had to be there, and the “voice” replied, “He invited us in.” Matheson said that subsequent investigation indicated that this young man had used a Ouija board to contact a friend who had died in a tragic accident.108 Matheson has had a considerable amount of experience with exorcism in the seventeen years since he first began that aspect of his ministry. He iden-

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tifies sexual abuse and trauma, persistent sin, and involvement with occult practices as events when demonic powers can attach themselves to people’s personalities. He also said that such activities by one’s ancestors could be a cause. Matheson considers turning away from sinful practices and deliberately embracing the person of Jesus Christ and his sacrifice of himself as the greatest sources of freedom from demonic influences. He says that many times such influences drop away with no active effort to dispel them, but in other cases the efforts of an exorcist are required. Matheson seems reluctant to consider demonic influence as a hypothesis to explain most bizarre experiences and strange behaviors before natural explanations have been exhausted. I was present on two days of Matheson’s five-day course on spiritual warfare that he taught for Tyndale Seminary during my visit to Oakville in January 2000. On a student who wanted prayer and allowed herself to be prayed for in front of about seventy students, he demonstrated the method of exorcism he uses. She did not explain why she wanted prayer, but the session we saw was not the first she had requested. She did not exhibit any strange behavior, and I do not know why Matheson thought that she might have been troubled by a demonic influence. Four people made up the team that was involved in counseling and prayer. Matheson took the lead in speaking to and praying for her, two others were assigned the task of trying to discern what the sources of her bondage might be, and the fourth silently prayed for the tasks undertaken by the other three. Matheson used what he described as “binding commands,” designed to restrict the activity of spirits of darkness. He prayed for protection from evil spirits over everyone present, as well as their families, explaining later that the “voices” that are confronted routinely threaten to kill exorcists and their family members. Another intriguing feature of the session was a binding command to cancel curses, hexes, or spells “in as many multiples of seven as are needed.” Matheson explained that rituals in which curses are placed on people or their families often involve incantations in multiples of seven. Matheson said that he experienced only one case in which exorcism brought about physical healing, in contrast with some other contemporary exorcists who report many.109 He said that a man came to him who had many dizzy spells and was on medication to minimize their effect on his life. After praying for him, Matheson thought that a spirit might be responsible for the dizziness and consequently took steps to expel it. The man’s dizziness left him, and he needed no further medication. This malady exhibited itself only one more time, when the man decided to go to the seminary where Matheson teaches. For several days after making this decision, the young man was again beset by dizziness, but when he resisted the evil spirit on his own, commanding it to leave him alone, the dizziness disappeared and has apparently not returned. Perhaps the most dramatic feature of the course was the account that Alexi

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(not her real name) gave to the class. She described her exorcism, or what she can remember of it, and the events that led up to it, and Matheson added details that she was unable to provide. Case 6: Alexi explained that although she had been to church camps as a child and teenager, the message of Christ did not penetrate her as she was growing up. During her undergraduate studies in sociology at the University of Toronto, she had no interest in Christianity at all. When Alexi was seventeen, a spiritualist told her that she was surrounded by spirit guides, so Alexi began to call on these spirits to help her, including one occasion when she was involved in a car accident. Alexi now considers all of these events as having contributed to the debilitating influences she later felt in her life. Another important incident took place when Alexi took a trip to India. In one of the markets she visited, she found a statue of Shiva and fell in love with it. Alexi found its beauty and power so compelling that she purchased it and brought it home to Toronto. When Alexi completed her degree, she pursued a vocation as a spiritual healer and lived for a time in an ashram in Massachusetts to undertake the necessary training. She learned the ceremonies in which spirits are called in to help people obtain healing and says she often recognized people’s physical disabilities simply by looking at them. She set up a practice in the Toronto area and used all the skills she had acquired to help people. However, she still searched for something that was missing in her life. During the years that Alexi practiced her healing therapies, she occasionally conversed about Jesus Christ with a friend who had become a Christian. Having heard that Roy Matheson was knowledgeable about the kind of conversion her friend had experienced, Alexi visited Chartwell Baptist Church and met Roy Matheson. He gave her a book to read but she found that she was unable to read it—as if a physical obstruction prevented her from seeing and understanding the words on the page. Although Alexi decided to embrace the message and meaning of Jesus Christ, she was not prepared for the events that ensued. Alexi began to feel that she was losing touch with reality and was not “present” all of the time. She occasionally found herself pinned to the floor, unable to walk or able only to crawl from one room to another. She felt as though madness was imminent. She was afraid to go out in the dark and would seldom venture from her home without her husband. Alexi conducted her healing practice in her house, and after giving a friend a massage one day, she found that the hallway leading to the front door had taken on a peculiar shade of gray. She attributes this now to the effect of the demonic

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god and other spirits spirits attached to her. She says: “They were there to debilitate me, to bring a lack of conviction about following through [on being a Christian].” She met with Matheson for counsel and prayer, and he and a team confronted the demonic forces in her life in three sessions, although she does not remember very much of them. Matheson says that during exorcism those who are being exorcised usually enter altered states of consciousness and do not remember what happens or become detached about the events and act like a spectator. Alexi remembers the visual images associated with two of the most significant sessions, however. When Matheson confronted the spirits in one session, she felt that part of her self “stepped away,” as though the event was not part of her life. In this altered state, she could see the throne room of God in exquisite light, which gave her a sense of safety because of its huge size and solidity. She then saw the demons kneel in response to the presence of God and slither away like puddles of water. In the second experience, she saw herself lying inside and protected by what seemed like a walnut shell, which was located in a room consisting of tar and pitch. Jesus Christ then shone a ray of intense light on her, led her out of the room, and freed her from bondage. To solidify the exorcism, Alexi and her husband destroyed the Shiva idol she had bought in India and burned all of the books that related to her pursuit of healing powers and soothsaying.110 In conversation with them about this incident, they told me that when Alexi’s husband poked the books with a stick to make them burn better, the fire went up the stick and across his hand, even though no flammable material was on either. They interpret this as an act of resistance on the part of the evil spirits that they were confronting. These events took place in 1990 and 1991. Having given up her vocation as a psychic healer, Alexi worked in the church for about three years and then became a seminary student.

Matheson’s experience with and attitude toward exorcism is fascinating in several ways. Perhaps the most striking feature is how events in his own experience convinced him that evil spirits capable of producing debilitating influences were real and that they could be expelled in ways that seem to replicate the practice of the early church. Unlike seminarians who train for the priesthood in traditional Catholic circles, Matheson’s theological instruction in a Protestant seminary was far enough removed from belief in demonization and exorcism that one could hardly attribute his beliefs to the seminary’s influence on him. Although he was taught to embrace the Bible as the inspired and inerrant source of Christian doctrine and to accept the historicity of the ac-

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counts of the life of Jesus, these theological presuppositions did not predispose him to accept the present-day reality of demonization and exorcism. Matheson seems to have embraced these realities on empirical grounds and, as such, exhibits a mindset belonging to the modern era, in which hypotheses are advanced on the basis of evidence that is carefully gathered and critically examined. His modernity is also exhibited by his reluctance to advance a demonization hypothesis before naturalistic hypotheses have been considered and rendered implausible. Matheson does not appear to have come across cases like Case 3 or the one involving the Gadarene demoniacs, where events involving several people more strongly suggest the existence of spirits than do those involving only one person. Matheson made extensive references in his seminar to other Christian people involved in exorcism at the present time. The literature now being published on this topic is large and growing. Some of it seems to exhibit an uncritical eagerness to employ the hypothesis of demonization, rather than the almost reluctant stance that Matheson exhibited, and for that reason probably should be treated with caution.

Other Christian Perspectives Matheson’s comment about the importance of having the active participation of the person undergoing the exorcism ritual is of interest, because it suggests that autosuggestion might be the operative psychological mechanism in some cases of exorcism. William Bryan, medical doctor and former president of the American Institute of Hypnosis, argues that an understanding of hypnosis can unlock many of the secrets of exorcism. He describes the hypnotic state as an altered state of consciousness in which a person exhibits extreme concentration on some object.111 He observes that we can choose to concentrate on God in such states of consciousness, the effect of which is to experience freedom from anxiety and other debilitating psychological states. Bryan observes that Franz Mesmer, the psychologist who is credited with developing hypnosis, or mesmerism, as a therapeutic technique, learned his technique from an eighteenthcentury Catholic priest, Father Gassner, who was reputed to be an exorcist.112 Gassner would arrange for the person supposedly needing exorcism to be brought to the church in which the ritual would be performed. The “demoniacs” would be made to kneel down and await the coming of Gassner, as they were told by one of Gassner’s assistants that the devils would leave when they were touched by the brass cross that Gassner carried. The ritual was designed to take some time so that the sense of expectation would increase in the patients, and witnesses would be invited to observe this cure, both to give publicity to the power of the church and to increase patients’ motivation to be cured. Mesmer happened to be present at one such session, and when Gassner

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completed the ritual, “the patient immediately collapsed, then rose to his feet, praised God and announced that he was well.”113 Bryan undertakes a sympathetic study of New Testament accounts of both exorcism and healing and argues that Jesus successfully used hypnotism to effect cures. Bryan observes that hypnotism has been successfully used today to cure dermatological lesions, warts, allergies, hives, and other skin disorders, which resemble the leprosy that Jesus is said to have healed.114 Bryan says that hypnosis can be used to dispel debilitating influences that were known in earlier times as demonic possession and cites the case of a modern neurotic who was healed of his fear to leave his home.115 He says that what the New Testament describes as faith is really an ability to concentrate one’s mind so as to produce the things in which we have faith. Bryan accepts the New Testament cures at face value and cites hypnotic therapy as having been the source. We might plausibly conjecture that some cases of what has been known as exorcism in certain cultural contexts are known today as hypnosis, but whether all instances of exorcism lend themselves to reinterpretation in this way is debatable. The exorcisms that suggest demonic contagion, such as Case 3, and cases of possession that involve simultaneously observed apparitions, such as Case 4, are a problem for this view. Some Christian approaches to possession and exorcism are greatly influenced by the results of scientific work, and adherents either are unaware of or choose not to address contemporary allegations. An example of this stance can be found in Psychology through the Eyes of Faith, by Christian psychologists David Myers and Malcolm Jeeves, in which only biblical cases of demon possession are briefly discussed. The Coalition of Christian Colleges and Universities commissioned their book as part of a collection that purports to articulate a Christian worldview. Because of the importance of psychology to Christian thought, this book was written first in the series, and the coalition sought eminent psychologists to write it. Myers and Jeeves speak about the changes that scientific naturalism have produced in Christian thought, illustrating this by the claim that Christians no longer pray that God will spare their children from diphtheria, but vaccinate them, and no longer mistakenly think that mental disorders are instances of demon possession.116 They construe the “bizarre phenomena” that science cannot describe, such as being able to read the minds of others and foretell future events, as not worthy of belief and affirm that “God alone is omniscient (thus able to read minds and know the future).”117 They go on to discuss a variety of topics, including the efficacy of prayer. They charge General George Patton with trying to manipulate God with superstitious magic because he asked all his chaplains to pray for a stop to the rains that immobilized his troops in 1944.118 They approvingly quote St. Paul, who told Christians to aspire after the gifts of the Holy Spirit, but when they list these controversial gifts, they tellingly omit the gifts of speaking “various kinds of

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tongues,” working miracles, healing, and distinguishing between spirits,119 which seem to be associated with what they describe as bizarre phenomena. At the same time, Myers and Jeeves encourage their readers to embrace the life and death of Jesus, as well as his Resurrection, which they consider to be a rather different phenomenon than the survival of the soul.120 They do not say what part about the life of Jesus they consider to be worthy of acceptance, however, so we are left wondering if this is to include his healing of the Gadarene demoniacs. According to their comments on demon possession, I suppose that to accept this event as a significant part of the life of Jesus would be to accept that he found a way of helping mentally ill people recover by talking to them. However, I doubt that they think that Jesus also found a way to transmit mental illness simultaneously to as many as two thousand swine! Their remarks about the Resurrection suggest that we can embrace the claim that someone actually came back to life, as though this was consistent with scientific naturalism. The Resurrection seems to be the most extraordinary claim that Christianity makes, and if one can accept that, every other paranormal claim put forward in the Bible should be credible. Myers and Jeeves are clearly uneasy about allegations of paranormal events, but they somehow manage to overlook the fact that almost every page of Bible narrative makes paranormal claims. For the worldview embedded in the Bible to hold up to rational scrutiny, these claims must be either supported by evidence or consistently demythologized. Bultmann’s position on scientific naturalism, which seeks to retain a greatly truncated place for religion in relation to science but rejects all paranormal phenomena, is more consistently articulated than that of Myers and Jeeves. Their view makes significant concessions to scientific naturalism when demon possession is considered, but it stops short of attempting to interpret the Resurrection in similar terms. Most theorists who discuss possession in the Christian tradition interpret it at the level of individual life. Several authors, however, including Paul Tillich, the well-known existentialist theologian, have argued that the demonic can also be found in human institutions. Tillich says that the demonic consists of the finite claiming to be infinite when it is not, no matter how sublime or dignified it might be.121 He considers demons to be not simply the negation of the divine but beings that participate in the power and the holiness of the divine in a distorted way. He says that demonization can occur at the level of nations when one nation claims self-elevation over others in the name of its God or system of values and thereby produces a similar reaction from other nations.122 It can also occur in the individual, when particular forces in the personality are elevated, claim superiority over others, and thereby split the consciousness,123 and at the level of culture, when unconditional demands are made by social structures, for example, by scientific absolutism.124 Demonization can also occur in religion when the finite symbols of the holy are taken to be the holy itself or

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when new insights having their source in the divine are suppressed by religion in the name of dogma.125 He considers all religions, including Christianity, to be susceptible to demonic distortion. Tillich grounds his understanding of the demonic by contrasting it with ecstatic experiences that are revelatory of the divine.126 He says that in divine ecstasy the human mind goes beyond reason itself, even beyond the subjectobject structure of normal thought; however, reason is neither denied nor negated. Moreover, divine ecstasy affirms ethics and the logical principles of thought, whereas demonic possession destroys them: “In the state of demonic possession the mind is not really ‘beside itself,’ but rather it is in the power of elements of itself which aspire to be the whole mind which grasp the center of the rational self and destroy it.”127 Tillich considers the holy to be in contrast with the unclean and thinks that both originally produced numinous awe as well as the taboos that governed the conduct deemed to be acceptable in its presence. He consequently construes the demonic as sharing in the mysterium and the tremendum found in the divine, as Rudolf Otto observed in his classic study, The Idea of the Holy.128 Tillich views divine and demonic holiness as having been first distinguished only with the emergence of prophetic criticism among the Hebrews. Tillich’s interpretation of the demonic is programmatic, inasmuch as he offers no clear criteria for identifying its presence in complex social structures or nations. The concept of demonic distortion itself is evidently derived from phenomena first identified as occurring among individuals, and Tillich has extended its use beyond the context of its origin. This strategy can have several possible effects. In view of the powerful emotions associated with the demonic at the level of individuals, especially the emotions deriving from its irresponsible use in witch trials, those emotions might be transferred to nations, cultural forces, social structures, and even corporations. When Hitler’s regime, for example, is described as demonic, speakers usually seek to express their abhorrence of it in the most forceful terms available. These condemnations might not be intended in a literal way, for the existence of evil spirits as these have been traditionally understood might not be construed as operative at any level other than the individual. We might say that the emotive power of such condemnations, rather than their cognitive content, is being harnessed. The second possible effect of such expressions, which is related to the first, is that statements about the demonic at the level of the individual might be emptied of their cognitive significance. This is the level, however, at which the concept seemingly first acquired its meaning and where reasonably clear criteria for its responsible use can be outlined. Tillich clearly wants to retain its use at the level of the individual, as well as use it at higher levels, so he cannot be plausibly accused of irresponsible use of the notion, even though he has not supplied us with adequate criteria for its use at levels beyond the individual.

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Conclusion The belief that evil in some personified form exists is not readily given overt expression in contemporary Western society, but it emerges occasionally. When human evil reaches proportions that appear nonhuman, for example, people can be heard to give expression to the thought that evil spirits might exist. This sentiment is sometimes expressed when the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust are discussed. Moreover, the possibility that evil spirits might haunt places or houses seems also to be the basis for remarkable public acts of cleansing, such as razing or burning houses in which unspeakable crimes are committed. A house in St. Catherines, Ontario, was destroyed a few years ago because a young married couple lured young girls there for rape, torture, and eventual murder, all sadistically captured on video. The language that gives explicit expression to the belief in evil spirits might not always be overtly employed, but the acts that are performed suggest that transcendent causes are thought to be implicated. The kinds of phenomena that give intimations of destructive, malevolent forces in human life, for which evil spirits have been postulated as probable causes, are probably more numerous than those suggested in the accounts given and alluded to in this chapter. The literature purporting to describe them is extensive within Christendom alone, quite apart from that available from other religious traditions and cultures not associated with or touched by Christianity. Some accounts from psychiatric literature could probably be added to this number. These facts indicate that the number of cases suggesting claims about diabolical beings is immense. However, no easy way exists of assessing the credibility of these accounts. A number of accounts are no doubt too fabulous to accept, at least if the accounts in Malleus Maleficarum are representative. Moreover, assessments of the credibility of allegations of earlier centuries are difficult when we do not know the standards of evidence that were used. Neither do we always know whether diabolical forces were part of the descriptive framework that people presupposed. We seem to be on safer ground in accepting accounts of events that are older than a century or two if we can find similar events in our day that seem to be plausible instances of possession or exorcism. This might seem to be an unnecessarily restrictive standard for assessing cases prior to the Enlightenment, which is widely considered to have introduced skeptical views about supernatural claims. However, when allegations satisfy the standards that are advanced in a skeptical era, such as ours, as opposed to an era that seems overly credulous about supernatural beings, such as the medieval, the events seem more believable. The number of credible particular cases suggesting the existence of diabolical beings is difficult to determine. The evidence is probably

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semiexperimental, as I am using this term. We need not lament the fact that the evidence is not experimental and never will be, however, for human life is richest and most authentic when it is viewed in situ. The phenomena that provide the strongest intimations that a malevolent form of transcendent reality exists are those that leave traces in the spatiotemporal-causal world or are intersubjectively observable. The cases that the Catholic Church has historically found suitable for the responsible use of exorcism, such as those that involve levitation, unusual strength, or the ability to speak unlearned languages, also provide impressive grounds for asserting that a transcendent reality exists. Apparitions in which diabolical beings appear can also provide evidence for thinking that evil might exist in some objective way. Some cases of exorcism, finally, suggest the existence of evil spirits, as well as another order of transcendent being capable of mastering them. Much more careful study of allegations is needed before we can advance a conclusive position on the existence of evil spirits. Moreover, naturalistic explanations continue to be sought for the phenomena that unquestionably occur. However, the evidence that is available suggests that the conjecture that evil spirits exist has some plausibility.

2 Judeo-Christian Experience of the Holy

Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of our religion: God was manifested in the flesh. —St. Paul (1 Timothy 3:16) The narrative portions of the Hebrew Bible could be interpreted as providing a sustained account of encounters with God or the holy angels who do his bidding. The New Testament carries on with this theme, focusing on the events central to the life of Jesus and supplementing these with acts of the Holy Spirit. No “proofs” for the existence of any holy beings are ever attempted, but events are described, along with an interpretation of them that places God or his intermediaries at their center. Religious biographies and hagiographies—whether Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant—since biblical times continue this tradition of describing experiences in which divine reality is supposedly encountered or revealed. Proof, in the strict sense, belongs only to mathematics and logic, not to empirical claims, so the approach of the biblical writers is consistent with the defense of knowledge claims that I am endorsing here. In this discussion I refer to God as “he,” in keeping with the biblical texts and Judeo-Christian tradition. Reasons have been offered for trying to change this and similar customs on the use of pronouns to refer to objects and various beings, but I will not digress to consider them. Carol Zaleski plausibly interprets the contemporary theologian who contends that God is not only Father but also Mother as making a statement in which “he or she is not describing the facts per se, but

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is evaluating the potency of our culture’s images for God—their capacity to evoke a sense of relationship to the transcendent.”1

Good and Evil Justifying the division of the transcendent world into two distinct moral orders is difficult from a theoretical standpoint. Reference to some beings that are absolutely good and to others that are evil raises questions about justifying the criteria used for distinguishing the two. This issue is particularly important in considering the Hebrew Bible because some of the accounts purporting to describe the acts of God challenge standards of morality in significant ways. Many people are bewildered, for example, by God’s commands to Israel through Moses to destroy whole cities, including apparently undeserving noncombatants and children. These commands seem to counsel blatantly unjust acts, and if they could be plausibly ascribed to some transcendent power, one might wonder about the moral character of such a being. Of course, this remark presupposes that we have a plausible standard for regarding the people who were destroyed as undeserving and that we are aware of all relevant facts. One way of supposedly solving this problem would be to claim that whatever God does is right, no matter how much it might appear otherwise. But this shifts the “burden of proof ” onto those who claim that God, not some other transcendent being, is the source of the command. Some theologians view the Hebrew people of antiquity as not knowing how to contain the problems of demonic influence associated with idolatry and thinking that genocide was the best solution.2 In The Idea of the Holy, Rudolf Otto suggested that the holy could be understood as existing beyond the domain of good and evil, as this is conventionally understood.3 However, Christian theologians have generally understood biblical authors as ascribing unqualified moral goodness to God and the spirits that do his bidding, and moral heinousness and perversity to Satan and other demonic spirits. Holy beings are understood to desire the good for its own sake, whereas Satan and his cohorts, while perhaps not desiring evil for its own sake, are understood as taking delight in every form of evil, as widely shared conventions have interpreted this distinction. Judeo-Christian faith has extensively debated the feasibility of allowing the existence of an independent standard of goodness against which the acts of God could be evaluated. Subjecting God to some standard beyond himself has been widely seen as impious. Moreover, because God is construed as the ultimate source of all, including humanity’s interest in making evaluations and our capacity to do so, he is widely seen as the causal source of value itself. But trying to disentangle the acts of good transcendent beings from evil ones, once both are admitted to exist, without some criteria of moral value, however provisional, is formidable.

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The problem of evaluating the source of experiences is evident in the famous test of Abraham’s faith, when he was told to sacrifice his son Isaac on Mount Moriah. The text says that God spoke to him, although, as usual, it does not elaborate on the phenomenological elements of the experience described as hearing the voice of God. The fact that killing a person was commanded might suggest to some that the voice was diabolical rather than divine. Those who believe that spirits exist consider evil ones, not holy ones, to give such instructions. We are not told what Abraham thought when the command came to sacrifice his son. However, some other feature of the experience might have given Abraham a reason for thinking that the command had a divine source. By this time in his life, according to the biblical record, he had experienced half a dozen divine encounters, so something unknown to us might have assured him he had not confused the divine with the diabolical. Another possibility is that Abraham determined the source of the original voice only as the events unfolded. The account says that as he was about to obey, “the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven” and told Abraham not to lay his hand on Isaac. Abraham then found caught in a nearby thicket a ram that served as a substitute for Isaac. We are not told what Abraham thought and felt between the original instruction and the final moment. As a genuine test of Abraham’s confidence in the trustworthiness of the original voice and the claim that God had addressed him, I surmise that this experience might have included a multitude of conflicting emotions and thoughts. Every experience that is considered to be an encounter with a transcendent being seemingly evokes a cluster of interrelated methodological, epistemological, ontological, and moral questions. Consider the account of Moses’ first encounter with God near Mount Horeb.4 Moses was leading his flock of sheep when he came across a thornbush that appeared to be on fire but was not consumed. On closer inspection he saw a being in the flame of fire. This being instructed Moses to take off his shoes because the place where he was standing was holy and then declared himself to be the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. As the conversation ensued, Moses was told that he was to lead the Israelites out of Egypt, back to the land promised to Abraham. When Moses sought confirmation that he was indeed being authorized to be the leader of Israel, he was told that he was speaking with “I am.”5 Everything about Moses’ account of this event, evidently foundational to his life as a prophet, suggests that he encountered a being that ascribed to himself the powers and rights of deity. The remarkable signs Moses is said to have been given the ability to perform in this encounter, including making his hand leprous or healing it simply by placing it inside his bosom, speak of divine powers. A significant factor contributing to his claim that it was God that he encountered, rather than some other transcendent being, is found in the conversation itself. The being who converses with Moses identifies himself in this way. The first question that such a supposed encounter would appear to evoke

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is whether it is really happening. Those of us who live more than three thousand years afterward certainly might wonder if an event like the one described took place. Moses seems to have been alone when it happened, for he does not mention any other person in the context of this story. His brother Aaron is in many of the other stories, but on this occasion Moses seems to have been alone. For people whose standards of authenticity require multiple attestations, the account of this experience is problematic. In Visions of Jesus, I recounted the stories of thirty people who reported to me what they took to be encounters with a transcendent being they identified as Jesus Christ.6 If these stories are representative, people who provide such reports often experience bewilderment. The biblical documents, especially the New Testament, occasionally indicate that the supposed recipients of divine encounters were unsure about the events that transpired. Another question that a supposed encounter would seemingly evoke is whether an explanation needs to be considered that transcends the known natural order. Few theorists now consider transcendent explanations as so inherently plausible that natural ones need not be exhausted before considering a transcendent one. Perhaps this bias against transcendent explanations is unwarranted, but it forms part of today’s usual methodological assumptions. The approach of analytic philosopher Alvin Plantinga to the existence of God could be interpreted as an attempt to challenge this assumption. He insists that God is as basic to a descriptive and explanatory account of the universe as are the common beliefs in physical objects, past events, and the existence of minds other than our own. Construing God as “properly basic,” which is what Plantinga does,7 might not strike people of a postmodern mindset as extraordinary, but it is for those who embrace the perspective of modernity. Suggesting transcendent causes raises ontological questions for those of a modern bent, including questions about the properties of such postulated beings and their relation to other things whose existence is not in doubt. On the assumption that an explanation postulating a transcendent cause might be plausible, a third question that emerges is whether it is worthy of respect and perhaps obedience. When St. Martin had an apparition experience in which he seemed to encounter Jesus Christ, St. Martin told the figure that he would not acknowledge him unless he appeared with his cross and stigmata. The apparition is said to have disappeared, which seems to have led St. Martin to assess its source as diabolical rather than divine. Moses also, presumably, had to consider whether he would obey the instructions given to him or respond in some other way. The moral issues evoked by the experiences of Moses and St. Martin, assuming that they occurred as described, might not seem as profound as the one that Abraham had to face when he was instructed to offer Isaac as a sacrifice, but they are present. Assuming that the response to the third question is that a morally good

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transcendent being has been encountered, the final question that emerges is whether one is in fact being confronted by God, that is, the one who is supreme among divine beings, rather than by some lesser being. This question is, of course, an ontological one, but it is also epistemological inasmuch as the one who asserts that an experience is of God seems to be obligated (in an epistemic sense) to provide a basis for asserting that the Supreme Being has been encountered. Claims to have encountered the Supreme Being appear to be incapable of direct empirical support, for no obvious criteria for supremacy in the universe exist. The questions emerging out of experiences that give intimations of transcendence probably do not arise in the neat order suggested but instead come in a cluster demanding resolution. A rich dialectic is involved in asserting that a being full of moral perfection is the cause of some event. This dialectic involves several moves, including tentatively identifying a transcendent being or power as the cause of some act; suggesting a standard against which the moral aspects that are present might be measured; proposing that a morally perfect being is its source; considering alternative moral standards, including those suggested by other acts; allowing the initial standard to be modified in the light of other evaluations or some other information; and questioning the identity of the being that is the presumed cause. Ontological, epistemological, methodological, and moral issues are all implicated in advancing a plausible position. Addressing all of these issues simultaneously is as formidable as any problem in philosophy. Because the primary question I wish to address here is whether an empirical basis exists for asserting that spirits exist, I will not paralyze this discussion by focusing on the question of moral standards. This does not mean that the question is unimportant, however. I will continue to assume that events that contribute to debilitating human well-being are evil and that those that contribute to our well-being are good. I will also bracket events that result in death, in that these relate to an afterlife, which is mysterious and beyond the scope of this book. These questions emerge in contemporary experiences just as powerfully as they do in reconstructed events from antiquity, as the following example shows. Case 1: Tom Arthur (not his real name) of Abbotsford, British Columbia, says he was a nominal theist for most of his life. He occasionally went to church but did not take “religion” seriously until he was asked to be a pallbearer at the funeral of a friend. The service made him think about God and the direction of his own life. When the funeral was over, he prayed to God, asking him to reveal himself if he was real. Tom added, “But please don’t scare me.” Nothing happened for a week or so, but not long afterward, when he and his

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god and other spirits wife returned home from shopping, they noticed that their bedroom light was on. They were sure they had shut it off before going out and wondered if someone had been in their house. They did not notice anything missing and so gave the incident little attention at the time, thinking that maybe they had left the light on and forgotten that they had done so. A similar incident occurred a few days later when they again went out, only this time the light and the television set in their bedroom were both on when they returned. They were sure that they had not left on both the light and the TV. They examined the doors and windows, but none of them showed any evidence of an attempted entry. They phoned their son to find out if he had paid them an unexpected call, but he had not. They even phoned the previous owners of the house, just in case they had kept a key to the house and had come over for some reason. The former owners assured them that they had not been to the house. Tom’s wife was so spooked by these incidents that she wanted to sell the house, but Tom wasn’t ready to sell. Then a third incident occurred a week or so later. They came home to find their bedroom light on and Tom’s good suit laid out on the bed, as though he was supposed to go somewhere. It was the same suit he had worn to the funeral and the kind of clothes he would wear to church, if he went. Tom wondered if “someone” was trying to get him to go to church and if that someone could be God. The strange events stopped when he and his wife started going to church.

The cluster of ontological, epistemological, and moral questions previously alluded to would naturally surface at the beginning of such a sequence of events, taking some form such as: Are we really seeing what we think we are seeing? We surely could not be hallucinating, for could we both simultaneously hallucinate the same events on several occasions? Are our memories failing us about whether we turned out the lights and shut off the television set? Do we have an intruder who wants nothing in our apartment but delights in keeping us puzzled? Is some being beyond the known natural order trying to attract our attention? If this is so, can it be construed as personal or personlike? If it is personlike, is it intent on doing us good? Are we safe in trusting it or responding to it in an open way? Are the criteria we use to judge something as morally good reasonable or at least provisionally reliable, or are they flawed in ways unknown to us at present? Is this an encounter with God or the holy angels said to do his bidding? Is this series of events connected to the prayer I prayed? And so on. Once the judgment is made that no known natural cause can account for the events, another kind of cause might be postulated, even though an explicit account of its properties might not be possible.

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Biblical Prehistory The narratives in the first eleven chapters of Genesis include only one detailed description of a human encounter with a holy being. This is the tragic story of how God conversed with Adam and Eve after their disobedience, evicted them from Eden, and placed cherubim to guard the entrance to the garden so that they could not return. The account does not supply us with much phenomenological detail about the experience, except to say that Adam and Eve heard God walking in the garden as he looked for them and called to them. The reader is left wondering if they heard leaves rustling along a path or the crunch of gravel underfoot, for what could hearing another walk mean? A humanlike quality is assigned to God, for he does not use his powers of absolute knowledge to locate them but instead goes looking for them, waiting for their response to his voice. The symbolic significance of these early chapters of Genesis overwhelms any attempt to extract historical events that might serve the purpose of rational reconstruction. The other accounts in these chapters of primitive “history” portray God as one who speaks to humanity, although the precise way this took place is not described. God is said to have instructed Noah to prepare an ark, for example, but we are not told how God spoke. We might wonder whether this occurred in an apparition, in an audible voice, or in some ordinary way that Noah interpreted as divine. We might also question why Noah attributed this message to God rather than to some other being. But these details are not supplied. The terseness of the descriptions and the directness in ascribing these events to God are startling. Modern accounts of experiences in which God is supposedly encountered tend to be couched in cautious language, for we appreciate the controversial character of the phenomena and the boldness of the claim that God has been encountered. However, the Bible is not cautious. The more detailed narratives of direct encounters with God or holy angels begin with Abraham’s call to leave his country in search of a land that God would give him. The first part of the account in Genesis 12 says only that God spoke to Abraham, without detailing the circumstances surrounding this remarkable message. Abraham left his home to go to Canaan, and when he got there, God appeared to him. We are not given any details about what Abraham actually saw or under what circumstances, but this experience is the beginning of the revelations to the patriarchs of Israel. Tradition ascribes authorship of the Pentateuch to Moses, but biblical scholarship has called this into question. If the author was Moses, whose prophetic vocation is said to have begun with an outstanding visual encounter, he must have been especially intrigued by the oral traditions of the lives of the patriarchs that featured experiences similar to his own.

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Dreams The Bible is well known for its accounts of dreams in which God is said to have spoken. In Genesis 15 we find a fairly detailed description of the second of Abraham’s alleged experiences. The text says that God instructed him to cut several animals in two and to watch that no birds of prey or wild animals tried to eat them. As the sun was setting, Abraham fell into a deep sleep, and “a dread and great darkness fell upon him.” God then spoke to Abraham, telling him that his descendants would be slaves in Egypt for four hundred years and then leave that foreign country with great wealth. In this strange darkness, Abraham saw a smoking fire pot and burning torch pass between the dissected animals, as though an invisible being walked among them. We might be tempted to think that Abraham was “only dreaming” and that he saw the fire pot and torch in his dream, but then we would need to explain how his dream happened to have dissected animals that corresponded to the animals that lay near at hand. Dreams seldom exhibit objects that correspond to things found at the place where the dreamer is sleeping, but the oral tradition presents the mystery without making any attempt to resolve it. Those who are skeptical of the cosmic significance of dreams might dismiss this incident in Abraham’s life as inconsequential, but this response might be premature. According to the history of the Israelite people, the dream was prophetic, and the slavery of the Israelites lasted four hundred years. If a dream occurred in which God was seemingly encountered, that replicated objects as they existed in real life, and that included a correct prediction about future events, the dreamer, or those who later reflected on the dream, might understandably conjecture that the experience symbolized an encounter with God. Abraham, of course, did not live to determine whether the prediction was accurate, so the feature of the dream on which he presumably pondered—besides its intrinsic phenomenological “feel,” perhaps, for which no description is given— was the strange correspondence between the dissected animals and those in his dream. Those who are skeptical about this strange correspondence cannot be easily answered, and we might wonder now why such skepticism was not found in the world of Abraham and his descendants. That the story survived to be recorded for all time is something of a marvel. On the other hand, those ancient peoples might have known something about dreams that moderns have forgotten, as the following example suggests. Case 2: Close friends recently told me about Hilda (not her real name), a woman of their acquaintance who recently died of cancer at forty years of age. Hilda’s parents have been involved in Christian ministry all of their lives, and her maternal grandparents were, too, while they were alive. Hilda’s parents received three unusual tele-

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phone calls on the day after her death. One was from a city close to my own, where someone reported a dream in which Hilda’s grandparents were seen in heaven with their arms outstretched welcoming someone whose identity they were not given. A second telephone call came from a family friend from Wales, where someone had a dream that was identical to that reported in the first call. Finally, a chaplain who occasionally visited Hilda phoned her parents, saying that he had dreamed that he met her in heaven and began to converse with her about her sufferings. He did not know that Hilda had just died. In the conversation, she dismissed her pain as insignificant in comparison with the joy she was experiencing. Hilda’s parents do not think these three individuals had any contact with each other. The occurrence of three dreams that have a direct bearing on an event in the ordinary space-time-causal world seems to be more than a coincidence. Aristotle seriously considered the possibility that some dreams were sent by God. In On Prophesying by Dreams, he discusses reports of dreams that portray events before they occurred and speculates about their causes. He seems to reject God as the source of some, primarily because such dreams were experienced not by “the best and wisest, but merely commonplace persons.”8 He considers most prophetic dreams to be coincidences but said that some dreams of future events could result from “emanations” or “images” from events about to happen. Aristotle seems to construe these emanations as resembling waves in air or water that propagate information to the sensory powers of people before the cause itself becomes apparent. He explains that these emanations are apt to be experienced at night because then “the air is less disturbed, there being then less wind” and that they occur in sleep because “persons are more sensitive even to slight sensory movements when asleep than when awake.”9 He says that if God were the source of these experiences, they would regularly occur both in the daytime and to the wise.10 Aristotle’s comments here are of interest because he considers the possibility that God might be the source of distinct events in human experience, and he offers specific grounds for rejecting the hypothesis, in addition to indicating what conditions he would consider corroborative. He interprets theistic hypotheses as capable of empirical testing. Although Aristotle grants that all dreams have a divine aspect, since nature, their cause, is divinely planned,11 he implies that God might be a cause alongside other possible causes, whether natural or supernatural. Aristotle’s perspective is interesting because it conflicts with a common view of the causal role of God. Some theorists seem to construe God as having a causal role only over and above the natural causes that exist for events. They even consider the origin of the order found in the universe to be found in a cause other than God. In this scheme of thought,

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God plays what could be described as a superexplanatory function, which is compatible with any naturalistic explanation that happens to be proposed. Aristotle adopts what seems to be an older view of God’s causal activity, for God is seen as possibly having a direct causal role in particular events, even though he might be the creator and sustainer of all. In this way Aristotle gives expression to a view of God widely found in the Bible and significantly present in Judeo-Christian thought. Morton Kelsey, noted theologian and psychologist, claims that “dreams offer the best evidence for the existence of another level of reality and the best introduction to its nature.”12 He credits Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung with having restored the importance of dreams to Western civilization and notes that all the church fathers and many of its early theologians considered dreams to give us access to God. Kelsey thinks that the church began to devalue dreams when Scholasticism began to pay more attention to Aristotle than to the life of the early church. Subsequent Enlightenment thought and Protestant approaches to theology minimized the significance of dreams and other experiences considered in antiquity to provide knowledge of God. Kelsey considers Descartes to have sparked the Enlightenment, noting that Descartes’s central ideas, ironically, were obtained from dreams.13 Kelsey remarks that biblical thought prominently features dreams and visions, which are virtually indistinguishable in biblical thought as vehicles by which humans know something of the domain that God inhabits. One of my close friends related a dream to me that he interprets as an encounter with God. It occurred about forty years ago and has been foundational to his life since then. Case 3: Gordon Edmunds grew up in the small prairie town of Shoal Lake in the province of Manitoba. He says that his mother had a legalistic approach to Christian faith and that his father was not religious at all. Her religious background was Pentecostal, but because no church of that denomination was in their town, a pastor from a nearby town would regularly come to their house to hold services. One of the most vivid memories Gordon has of his father is the day he was converted at one of these private services. Gordon had never seen his father weep, but there he was, singing “My Jesus I Love Thee” and holding a hymn book up to his face so that others would not see his tears. Three weeks later, when Gordon was only twelve, his father died. Gordon’s mother remarried, but he did not get along with his stepfather. One day they came to blows, and the next day, at age fifteen, Gordon was put on a bus to live with his aunt in nearby Brandon. Gordon inherited his mother’s ability in music, and by the time he was eighteen he had his own dance band. The High Five

judeo-christian experience of the holy became the first rock-and-roll band in western Manitoba, and they were very well received, playing in clubs, on radio, and on television. Gordon enjoyed the partying that went along with playing in a traveling band, although he knew his mother would have been scandalized had she known. He made his living as an optician, but his passion was music. Gordon married Lillian along the way and was having the time of his life. In 1961, after ten years of “making music,” things began to go wrong. Relationships in the band began to sour, and Gordon found that managing it became a chore. In January of that year, he began to have recurring dreams. Although he had not been to church since he was thirteen, apart from weddings and funerals, and had absolutely no interest in spiritual matters, he repeatedly dreamed that he was in a church service in which the speaker was beckoning him to come to the front. He knew what that symbolized, for in his background people would go to the front of the church, repent of their sins, and embrace Christian faith. During the next six months, these dreams became more intense and frequent. Events came to a head in August of that year. He says that he will never forget the Thursday night when he was awakened from his dream by a booming voice that seemed no more than ten inches from his ear. The voice said, “Gordon, my spirit will not always strive with you.” He woke up with a start and cried out, “Oh God! No!” For the next half hour he was in shock, shivering with cold one minute and “on the edge of hell” the next. He says that he cannot describe the fright he felt. He went back to bed, but sleep never came. He thought that he had gone beyond any hope of being reconciled with God and was haunted by this for the next four days. On Saturday he drove to a bridge nearby and contemplated jumping off. One voice inside him told him he should commit suicide because life had become hell, but another voice told him that if he jumped, he would go to hell. Gordon’s band had been booked for several nights, and he decided to play his guitar one more time. In a few days he had come to hate the music and felt that it was part of his spiritual downfall. He went to work on Monday, even though he had hardly slept on the weekend, and he tried to grind lenses through his tears. He decided to visit his tailor, whose shop was only two blocks away. Gordon had bought his suits for years from Ed Watt, who was a Christian but never really preached to Gordon, apart from reminding him of God’s love for him. Gordon blurted out, “God is doing something horrible in my life and has deserted me.” When Ed saw the distress on Gordon’s face, he locked the door, pulled the blind to indicate that the shop was closed, and instructed Gordon to get

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god and other spirits down on his knees and pray. Gordon says that he cried out to God for mercy and repented of having turned his back on God and rejected him. After twenty minutes of prayer, he says that he felt as though two large weights were lifted off his shoulders. Feeling that God had heard his prayer, he jumped to his feet and danced around the tailor shop. When he went outside, the trees and grass seemed greener than before, and the songs of the birds were more beautiful. He quit his band at once and took his life in a different direction. The dreams never came back to haunt him.

The similarity of Gordon’s conversion experience to those that William James made famous in The Varieties of Religious Experience is striking. One of the best known dreams in the Hebrew Bible is in the story of Jacob, Abraham’s grandson. Jacob dreamed of a ladder reaching to heaven, on which the angels of God ascended and descended. The account in Genesis 28:13, 17 reads: “The Lord stood above it and said, ‘I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your descendants.’ ” When he awoke, Jacob “was afraid, and said, ‘How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.’ ” He named the place Bethel, which means “the house of God.” The account of this dream was included in Israel’s sacred literature and perhaps formed some of the evidence the nation adduced for the extraordinary claim that they had been given a particular parcel of land by God himself. Years later, after leaving the land of promise and working for the right to marry the daughters of Laban, Jacob had another dream. In it, God identified himself as the one who had spoken to him at Bethel. The most remarkable feature of these experiences is the fact that someone claiming deity addressed Jacob. Although no obvious way exists of establishing the authenticity of such dreams—certainly not by those who merely hear about them and never get to experience such dreams for themselves—the impact they have on those who experience them seems profound. Other Hebrew personae are said to have encountered God in dreams. King Solomon dreamed that God asked him what gifts Solomon would like, and Solomon replied: “Give thy servant therefore an understanding mind to govern thy people, that I may discern between good and evil.”14 Because Solomon asked for wisdom, rather than riches and honor, he was given all of these gifts. The prophet Daniel is described as having had “a dream and visions of his head as he lay in his bed.”15 He saw the “one that was ancient of days” take his seat on a throne made of fiery flames, its wheels of burning fire. Then “the court sat in judgment, and the books were opened,” which some expositors interpret as referring to a time when God will judge all humanity and establish his righteous kingdom. The Hebrew prophets did not always consider dreams

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authoritative, however. Jeremiah and Zechariah, for example, warn about the dangers of false dreams and dreamers. The New Testament continues to feature dreams as a method by which God communicates. Matthew gives several accounts of how the family of Jesus was informed of impending disaster through the dreams of Joseph. Dreams still carry cosmic significance on occasion and remain a source of mystery and awe. Until recently, dreamers were considered the only people who could tell that a dream had taken place. Research into the physiological states that occur during dreaming, however, such as rapid eye movement and changes to brain wave patterns, has allowed psychologists to determine that someone is dreaming even when, upon waking, they do not think they have been. Prior to this development in the concept of dreaming itself, a dream was an object of immediate awareness for the dreamer. A dream is now also an inner state postulated to account for physiological conditions that can be observed by others. For the concept of dreaming to have evolved in this way, so that both dreamers and external observers could authoritatively report that someone had dreamed, dreamers’ reports that they had just dreamed had to be trusted. Such reports allowed an appropriate correlation between eye movement and brain waves, on the one hand, and dreams, on the other, to be made. Empiricism has often been associated with the view that the concepts central to it are derived only from experience and that they are indubitable and fixed. However, empiricism need not be interpreted in that way. The Harvard philosopher W. V. O. Quine is well known for having articulated an empiricism without either fixed concepts or firm foundations, and this is closer to the kind I am advancing here, as I will explain in later chapters.

Encounters with Angels Many of the encounters with God narrated in the Hebrew Bible describe the being who appears as “the angel of the Lord,” thereby preserving the ancient beliefs that God does not allow himself to be seen and that he appears to people. The first such incident in the Hebrew Bible is found in Genesis 16, involving an encounter between “the angel of the Lord” and Hagar, who was maid to Sarah, Abraham’s wife, until Sarah’s cruelty drove her away. The account says that the angel met Hagar at a spring of water in the desert to which she had fled, instructed her to return to her mistress, and promised her that she would become the mother of a multitude of descendants. After the conversation, Hagar marveled that she had “seen God and remained alive” to tell about it. Perhaps the most dramatic of all of the encounters associated with Abraham is the story of three men who “appeared to him by the oaks of Mamre,

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as he sat at the door of his tent in the heat of the day.”16 Abraham immediately ran toward his visitors, offered to wash their feet, and asked his servant and Sarah, his wife, to help prepare some food for them. Sarah baked cakes, while the servant slaughtered a calf. The text then describes two conversations between Abraham and the three men. The first conversation is about Sarah. They ask Abraham where she is, and he tells them that Sarah is in the tent. One of the men, identified as the Lord, then says to Abraham: “I will surely return to you in the spring, and Sarah your wife shall have a son.” Sarah was close enough to hear all this, and she laughed to herself about this prediction, for she was well past the normal age of childbearing. The Lord heard her laugh and immediately confronted her about her disbelief. She denied that she had laughed, but he insisted: “No, but you did laugh.” Several details are of interest here. The events described suggest that several hours elapsed before the meal was ready, for an animal had to be slaughtered and roasted. Many encounters with God seem to last a few minutes, perhaps less, but this one seems to have occurred over a number of hours. Given the awesome character of such alleged encounters, I cannot imaginatively enter into this one with Abraham. A second curious feature is Sarah’s temerity, first in laughing at the prediction that she would have a child and then denying to the face of God that she had laughed when he was there to hear it. A very humanlike quality is again ascribed to God in this story, for he asks for information as though he did not know the answers, he sits down and eats with Abraham and Sarah, and he argues with Sarah about whether she laughed. Although the author does not qualify in any way the identity of the being who was encountered, he does not indicate exactly when Abraham and Sarah became aware of who it was that they entertained. The second conversation with Abraham is about the impending destruction of Sodom. The Lord says: “Because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great and their sin is very grave, I will go down to see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry which has come to me, and if not, I will know.” The author goes on to relate that God wondered to himself if he should tell Abraham about his intention to destroy Sodom, as though God pondered choices the way a mortal might do, and as if the author (or the author’s source, presumably Abraham) could read the thoughts of God. The ensuing conversation describes how Abraham bargained with God about the number of righteous people that would need to be found in Sodom to prevent its destruction. Abraham finally gets a concession that ten righteous people would be enough. This segment of the story ends with the comment: “And the Lord went his way, when he had finished speaking to Abraham.” The story continues in Genesis 19 with two angels arriving in Sodom in the evening. They inform Lot, Abraham’s nephew, that they have been sent by the Lord to destroy the city. At one point in the story, they strike the men of Sodom with blindness for their unbridled sexual aggression. The account implies that two angels (three men in total) accompanied the Lord when he came

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to the home of Abraham and that he sent the two angels to destroy Sodom after completing his visit with Abraham. But Christian theologians have also interpreted it as a story that prefigures the doctrine of the Trinity. The Hebrew Bible is incomplete and ambiguous in many of its descriptions of the acts in which God is said to have disclosed himself. In many accounts God is only heard to speak, but in a few cases we have accounts alleging powers and paranormal experiences that transcend the mundane world. Because biblical accounts derive from ancient cultures and, in the case of the Hebrew Bible, from a culture seemingly remote from the Greco-Roman one that has shaped so much of Western thought, we might wonder about the authenticity of those ancient experiences. In addition, doubts about the intentions of the biblical authors might leave us with uncertainties about those experiences and the implications we can draw from them. I have no doubt, however, that remarkable events occurred in antiquity that people interpreted as encounters with the Deity, for comparable accounts are found throughout human history, including the present. A remarkable story is told in the Hebrew Bible about an animal seeing an angel.17 The king of Moab feared that his nation would be the next conquest of the warring Israelites, so he hired Balaam, a diviner, to curse them. Balaam rode an ass as he made his way to Israel, but at a narrow point on the path, the ass refused to continue. The text explains that it did so because it saw an angel with a drawn sword and was afraid. Balaam was angry with the ass and struck her with his staff. Then the ass spoke, rebuking Balaam for hurting her. At this point God is said to have opened Balaam’s eyes, so that he also saw the angel. This incident strikes a modern reader as a fable, of course, but we can see how the angel is postulated to explain the ass’s obstinate behavior. If Balaam were not said to have seen the angel himself, we would insist on a natural explanation for the ass’s behavior. In some modern accounts of apparitions, animals are said to react as though they see something. But too little information is available about this class of phenomenon to give it the credence other kinds of experience have earned. Maureen Hason, now of Calgary, Alberta, told me about an encounter with angelic beings that rivals some of those found in the Hebrew Bible. She was living about a mile from my home in Langley when it occurred. The incident involved Maureen, her husband, and her son. Case 4: The Hason family went out one evening, and when they returned home, Maureen observed that their entire property was ringed by beings who looked as though they were guarding their home and property. These humanlike, wingless beings of average height stood shoulder to shoulder on the edge of their property so that the whole yard was enclosed by them. They stood facing the adjoining properties and street, as though they were preventing any-

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god and other spirits one from trespassing onto the Hason property. They were very serious in their demeanor and did not smile. This company of beings not only ringed the property but lined both sides of the sidewalk leading to the front door. Maureen noticed that these figures did not look at the Hason family but directed their gaze above them and seemed to make signs of deference by slight movements of their heads. This puzzled Maureen until they reached the front door. As her husband opened the front door, Maureen saw three other beings approximately nine feet tall standing immediately behind them. They also were very serious and gave the sense of being focused on the task of caring for Maureen and her family. These three beings then entered the house with the Hason family. These were their personal guardians, Maureen said, and the shorter beings had been showing deference to the taller ones. Maureen reported that neither her husband nor her son saw anything. She considers the event to have been real and not at all imaginary, in part because of how she was feeling at the time it happened. She and her family were coming home quite late that evening, and she felt quite tired. Normally, when she comes home late, she is too tired to be aware of events going on around her and wants to go bed as quickly as possible. She certainly was not looking for any excitement at that time of night and so considers the fact that she was aware of these beings as evidence that they were real.

Experiences like these reinforce ancient claims about the existence of normally unseen agencies that protect human beings, and they also reinforce the belief that not everyone is privy to their activities. Accounts of angelic encounters have been revived in Western culture during the last decades of the twentieth century to an astonishing degree. Many books and articles have been written to describe angelic interventions, although sometimes these accounts sketch only a serendipitous event without any reference to seeing a supernatural agent. The reference to angels seems euphemistic in such cases, based on the person’s conviction that angels are special messengers sent to guard or aid people. On other occasions, as the magazine Angels on Earth makes clear, people allege sensory experiences in which they see beings who are taken to be angels. This magazine reports the experience of John and Julia Massara, for example, who both said that they saw angels descend from a mural on the ceiling upon their two-year-old daughter, Angela, who was seriously sick. Friends of mine say that their three-year-old daughter reported to them that a tall man in shining clothes protected her when she had been separated from the rest of her family as they shopped in a large department store. We might smile at such reports coming from the “mouths of

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babes,” but her parents, who prayed desperately for her safety as they searched for her, are inclined to think that she really saw something. Emma Heathcote of the University of Birmingham researched encounters with angels for her doctoral degree. She reports that more than eight hundred people responded to her request for firsthand accounts.18 One of these came from a medical doctor in an emergency ward who treated a three-year-old girl who had been run over by a large truck. When the doctor took off the child’s clothes to examine her injuries, he observed that no injuries were visible. The child then asked for the man in white she had seen earlier, and a male doctor dressed in his whites responded, “Here I am.” “No,” she said, “I mean the man in white who was wearing shiny clothes.” Heathcote also reported an incident in which about half of the people present in a church in England, including its rector, saw a being they consider an angel during a baptismal service. A reporter from the London Times also made contact with the rector, who spoke on the condition that his church would remain unidentified. Carol Midgley quotes the rector as saying, Suddenly there was a man in white standing in front of the font about 18 inches away. He was a man but he was totally, utterly different from the rest of us. He was wearing something long, like a robe, but it was so white it was almost transparent. . . . He was just looking at us. It was the most wonderful feeling. Not a word was spoken; various people began to touch their arms because it felt like having warm oil poured over you. The children came forward with their mouths wide open. Then all of a sudden—I suppose it was a few seconds, but time seemed to stop—the angel was gone. Everyone who was there was quite convinced that the angel came to encourage us.19 Shared visual experiences of this kind obviously carry the impression that the being that appears is real. These experiences also seem to have greater epistemic significance than events in which unobservable objects are postulated to account for phenomena that are otherwise inexplicable.

Fire and Radiant Light The experiences of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob establish the uniqueness of the Israelite nation and provide the basis for the remarkable claim that God gave a particular tract of land to them for all time—a claim that took on renewed significance in the Zionist movement of the twentieth century. However, the core of the Israelite religion is associated with various theophanies to Moses. He is described as the man who talked with God face to face, as one would

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talk with a friend. In Exodus 6, God is described as having told Moses that he had revealed himself to the patriarchs of the nation as El Shaddai, meaning “God, the One of the Mountains,” but to Moses he revealed himself as Yahweh, which is etymologically related to “I am.”20 The most moving of all of Moses’ experiences is the one in Exodus 33 when he asked God to show him his glory. The Lord consented, instructing Moses to come to the top of Mount Sinai, bringing tables of stone on which God could write the Ten Commandments. On the next day, Moses went up the Mount, and “the Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord.” Then God placed Moses in a cleft of a nearby rock and walked in front of him. To prevent Moses from seeing his face, however, he covered Moses’ face, and allowed Moses to see only his back. The radiance or glory of God is said to have been so great that Moses’ face shone. This theme of light and radiance associated with the presence of God is prominent in biblical experience and continues to be reported today. Case 5: Alan Shore was raised in a home in New York City that did not stress religion. Although some members of his extended family embraced Jewish faith, his father was a professed atheist and his mother was a nonobservant Jew. He describes his home as characterized by a form of cultural Judaism that emphasized social justice. As a child Alan was aware of Christian ideas through such items in popular culture as Christmas carols, but after his bar mitzvah he decided that he was finished with religion. Like many American young people of the 1960s, Alan explored the free lifestyle with friends, who were also from his Jewish community. In college he developed an interest in Eastern thought and began to develop an eclectic outlook that included but did not emphasize Jewish identity. After graduating from college, he took a trip to Europe in a search for some direction to his life. Alan’s backpacking around many cities of continental Europe eventually took him to Paris, where he hoped to develop a relationship with a young French woman he had met on a train. As he checked into the youth hostel that first night, for the first time on his three-month trip he removed his money belt, in which he stored his cash, passport, return airline ticket, and the young woman’s telephone number. When he woke up the next morning, he discovered that during the night he had been robbed of all his possessions, except his dirty laundry. The experience left him feeling unusually free, however, as though these possessions were standing between him and the adventure he had gone to Europe to find. The custodian of the hostel gave him enough money for a pastry and coffee, and Alan decided he would see as much of Paris as he could.

judeo-christian experience of the holy He went to the Louvre, where he happened to meet a backpacker like himself who turned out to be an American. Sarah bought him lunch and befriended him. Over the next two or three days, they did some sightseeing together and talked much. She was different from many women he had met, however, and the idea of a romantic relationship with her seemed inappropriate. Sarah seemed to be characterized by such words as devotion, chastity, and consecration. Alan then discovered that she was a Christian, but she did not fit the stereotypes he had built up about them, mostly as a result of seeing movies. She was articulate, intelligent, and interesting, not dull and plodding, as he had come to think of Christians. A few days before Sarah returned home, they visited the Louvre one more time. They were looking at an exhibit of Renaissance art, and Alan’s attention was drawn to the halos that were featured over the heads of various saints. He began to wonder about the halo, what artists who painted them meant by them, and what was understood by halos in the cultures for which the art had been painted. He did not understand their significance and was preoccupied with the question when he turned to ask his friend Sarah about this matter. He then saw that a halo was upon her. His words to me were: “Resting on her head and shoulders was a glorious, numinous, golden, living presence. I could see it. I shook my head, shut my eyes and opened them, and it persisted. It was as though a large space was being scooped out of me and being filled with a capacity to discern what it meant. Words like holiness and righteousness began to resonate with me.” He says that he also knew that she had not earned it but had received it from someone. He thought it came from Jesus Christ. Although Alan saw Sarah only one other time after returning to the United States, she placed him in contact with other members of her sacred dance group in Colorado. He spent the following summer visiting them, and after some months of reading the New Testament, reflecting on what he had seen, and closely observing the quality of their life together, Alan decided to become a Christian. He says that this vision that occurred in 1974 is the only one he has ever experienced. In our conversation together, Alan stressed how coming to faith in the Messiah has helped him to explore and understand his Jewish identity. He says, “It is within the framework of New Testament faith that the purpose and destiny of the Jewish people achieve fruition.” Alan has a Master of Divinity degree from Fuller Seminary in Pasadena, California, and now works with a Jewish messianic mission organization.

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This experience seems to be part of the tradition described in the Hebrew Bible as seeing the glory of God. Another experience was reported to me in which God is said to have been encountered in the form of flaming fire. Case 6: Paula Adkin (nee Paula Murray) grew up in Ontario and went to a Catholic church as a child, but her family was not particularly religious. Her parents occasionally sent Paula to a nondenominational Christian summer camp known as Camp IAWAH, located just north of Kingston, Ontario. This is where she first experienced God in a decisive way, in 1969 at eleven years of age. Each night the girls in her cabin would say prayers together before going to sleep. One night after they prayed together, she says that the cabin was filled with an incredible sense of peace. The intensity of this presence was so great that most of the girls were weeping. Stillness came over the cabin, and when Paula looked across the room, she saw that a flame of fire was hovering above the wooden floor about ten feet from her bunk. The yellowish-orange flickering flame stayed there for about ten seconds, floating six to eight inches above the floor. No flammable object was on fire, and no one had ignited anything. She felt no fear as she looked at the dancing flame, only a profound sense of peace and comfort. Paula believes that everyone in the cabin, which included about twelve girls her age and a counselor perhaps ten years older, saw this spectacle. No one talked about it, however. She interprets this as an indication that the experience was designed to be important to each of them individually. She now would like to know how it has affected the others in the group, all of whom she has lost contact with. Paula’s immediate thought was that they had visibly experienced the presence of the Holy Spirit, who is said to have been manifested in fire on the day of Pentecost and in other experiences. People to whom she has told this story have wondered why she attributes it to the Holy Spirit, to which her reply is “What else could it be?” The pervading sense of intense peace, combined with the fact that they were in an attitude of prayer, induced her to attribute it to the Holy Spirit. Paula says that her religious knowledge to that point in her life was not very extensive, but God became very real to her after that. She had never heard of this kind of thing happening in modern times. She had heard the stories of the Bible, including the story of Moses’ experience with the bush that was on fire but was not consumed, but she did not expect anything comparable to happen to her or anyone she knew. Paula says that she has felt the peace of God many times as she has gone to church to worship God, but

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none of these subsequent experiences resembles the incident at Camp IAWAH. Paula now makes her home in Kamloops, British Columbia, and works as a library technician at the University College of the Cariboo. Various other divine or angelic encounters are described in the Hebrew Bible. Some take the form of visions, as in the accounts in Ezekiel and Zechariah. These authors seem to have the usual difficulties in describing their visionary experiences. Theological insights and interpretations of human experience, to be sure, also form a substantial portion of the Hebrew Bible, but the many accounts of divine encounters are impressive in their own right.

The Acts of the Prophets The prophets of Israel are the heirs of the patriarchs and Moses, in a spiritual sense, for the tradition of experiences taken to be revelatory of God, angels, and the realm they are said to inhabit continues with them. Elijah and Elisha are well known for their numerous exploits. For example, Elijah is said to have secured supernatural provision for a widow and her son who were too poor to obtain the food needed to live. His words were: “The jar of meal shall not be spent, and the cruse of oil shall not fail, until the day that the Lord sends rain upon the earth.”21 This incident is reminiscent of the multiplication of food accomplished by Jesus many years later. Comparable stories of marvelous provision still circulate in Christendom, it seems. When I lived in Australia, I met a man from Holland who said that such an incident occurred in his family during World War II. They were so destitute that his mother did not have enough food to feed her children, let alone the unexpected guests who arrived one day. He claims that she put all the pasta she had in a large pot, but the bottom of the pot was not even covered. She poured water in the pot, put a lid on it, and prayed over it. He says that when she took off the lid fifteen minutes later, she found that the pot was full. Most of these stories are impossible to authenticate, and most clergy seem to be suspicious of them, but the laity talk about them when clergy and educated people are not present or can be trusted not to subject to ridicule those who speak of such things. I have heard firsthand allegations of virtually every kind of extraordinary phenomenon described in the Bible. This evidence is generally anecdotal, of course, and so must be accorded the least amount of credibility among the three kinds of evidence I spoke about earlier. If I am right in thinking that laypeople are very easily intimidated by people privileged with education, especially theological or philosophical education, the implication of their reluctance to speak for the study of religious experience is significant, inasmuch as those of us who wish to

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reflect critically on relevant matters are impaired in our ability to acquire the necessary information. Ridicule is still widely used as a method of discounting controversial but metaphysically significant allegations, I regret to say. Some Christians adopt a credulous attitude toward the claims found in biblical accounts. They profess to believe these, no matter how extraordinary they are or how beset with epistemic difficulties, but disbelieve any comparable claim made today, no matter how readily accessible to critical scrutiny the latter might be. This attitude was present in the second and third centuries of our era, according to Origen. In Contra Celsus, he criticized Christians who neither gave nor received reasons for their beliefs, but simply repeated, “Do not examine, but just believe.”22 Origen here speaks for the theological tradition that affirms the importance of corroborating religious claims by evidence wherever possible. A distinction needs to be drawn between general theological assertions, such as claiming that God exists because the visible world is best interpreted as having come into being by some great power, and specific historical claims, whether about Jesus of Nazareth or individuals living today who claim extraordinary phenomena. The Hebrew Bible contains accounts of prophets performing numerous kinds of extraordinary feats, including raising the dead, preventing rain from falling, calling down fire from the heavens, prophesying the future, uncovering the secrets of people’s lives, parting rivers, bringing death upon those who ridiculed their powers, bringing healing to people with serious sicknesses, and knowing events occurring in distant places. The New Testament continues the prophetic tradition, especially in the lives of Jesus and the first apostles. These kinds of phenomena have been alleged throughout Christian history and continue to be alleged to this day. The following account of having secrets revealed was supplied by one of my students, who shared it with my class on philosophy of religion. Case 7: Camilla Bjurling says that her knowledge that God was real, and that he cared for her, occurred in connection with a decision to abandon her Christian faith and have nothing more to do with either the church or God. She was tired of being thought of as “a good little minister’s daughter” and wanted to live her own life, just as some of her friends from high school seemed to be doing. She was sitting in church one Sunday morning in June 1991, pondering the decision she had just made and waiting for the service to finish. The guest speaker who spoke that morning seemed to take forever, but finally he began to close the service. As he was about to pray, he mentioned to the audience that someone in the service was running away from God. He asked if anyone was present who met that description, and five people raised their hands. He said to them, “Thank you, but you are not the one I am speaking about.” Camilla

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thought to herself, “Come on, whoever you are, put up your hand so we can get out of here.” The speaker waited for a moment and then said, “I am going to describe the person.” He gave a physical description that matched her, even though she had told no one of her earlier decision to abandon her faith. Camilla then put up her hand to get him to stop, but she had no intention of letting him pray for her. She still intended to carry out her decision. The speaker called her down to the front of the church to receive prayer, and in embarrassment she responded. He told her that God knew her and wanted her to return to him. Her words were: “I was blown away that God would single me out from three hundred people in the church. To think that God saw me and cared about me even with the entire world to take care of blew me away. He’s been showing his love and grace to me ever since, and I cannot not believe, because he is so real.” The work of the Alister Hardy Center is to be commended for its efforts in adding to our knowledge of religious experience that has implications for beliefs about transcendent orders of reality. Many of the first six thousand accounts appear to have been the experiences of people who live in countries where Christianity is predominant,23 although later studies have been directed to the experiences of people from other religious backgrounds. These reports are probably merely illustrative of the phenomena having religious import, whose number seems incalculable. The number of well-documented accounts, however, seems insufficient to convince skeptics.

New Testament Events The Christian church makes the remarkable claim that God was incarnated in Jesus Christ. Church tradition holds that the intimations of the holy are more powerful and significant in Jesus than in anyone or anything else in human history and experience. His teachings and his acts have been more closely scrutinized, perhaps, than those of anyone else in human history. Christian tradition interprets the narratives of Jesus’ birth, resurrection, and miraculous deeds at face value. Bultmann’s call to demythologize this feature of the New Testament has met with both enthusiasm and resistance. For some, it signals the possibility of articulating the significance of Christian faith without having to settle difficult questions about the life of Jesus. For others, demythologizing has removed the particulars of a life on which their entire religious faith depends. Perhaps it is fair to say that for many educated Christians the program of demythologizing is not particularly disturbing when applied to the Hebrew Bible. Its accounts of “magical causality,” to use Bultmann’s phrase, do not

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need to be embraced literally to understand that it is a summons to everyone to make a decision about how they will live. Some read the Torah as an inspired piece of Mosaic writing, seemingly based on events that transpired in the life of a nation but in reality a brilliantly designed set of myths around which are woven revelatory insights capable of being transmitted to those who are open to its message. For such people the questions of historicity surrounding Creation, the call to Abraham, the founding of the Israelite nation, the deliverance of Israel from bondage to the Egyptians, the restoration of Israel to the Promised Land, and so on are quite beside the point. The claim that the New Testament narratives might be viewed in entirely the same light does not sit quite so well for many Christians. Such a position seems to signal the end of a distinctly Christian faith, although it would not at all mean the end of theism. Perhaps the New Testament narratives are sometimes given more credence than those in the Hebrew Bible because events in the Greco-Roman world are more readily accessible from a Western perspective than those of the Semitic world or because events of two millennia ago are not as remote in time as those of three millennia ago. Perhaps some other factor influences judgments about how the New Testament should be read. The New Testament appears to make historical claims about the life, death, and especially the resurrection of Jesus. Like many of Bultmann’s followers, New Testament critic Gerd Ludemann claims both that “we can no longer understand the resurrection of Jesus in a literal sense” and also that we can still be Christians.24 However, many Christians are unsure that the historical foundations of Christian faith can be demythologized so that even the Resurrection only has mythic status without eroding the basis for continuing to use Christian mythology at all. For many Christians, the claim that the remains of Jesus are somewhere in greater Jerusalem, probably in an unmarked grave, is not good news. New Testament scholars seem to be divided on both the extent to which demythologizing has been successful and the significance of it. Conservative New Testament critic Craig A. Evans claims that attitudes toward the New Testament are different now than they were when the program of demythologizing the Bible was in its heyday.25 He says that New Testament scholars are open to possibility of miracles (“magic causality”) in a way that they were not forty years ago. Evans also appears to construe the significance of Christianity to depend on the historicity of at least some of the claims that Christian tradition has wanted to make about Jesus, for example, his physical resurrection. Distinguished New Testament scholar E. P. Sanders expresses a different perspective. He is convinced that we know a lot about the life of Jesus, for example, “that he started under John the Baptist, that he had disciples, that he expected a ‘kingdom,’ that he went from Galilee to Jerusalem, that he did something hostile against the Temple, that he was tried and executed.”26 As far as the Resurrection is concerned, however, Sanders says that we know only that his

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followers had experiences that they interpreted as the appearance of a living but transformed person who had actually died. He says that he does not know what reality gave rise to those experiences and implies that the traditional notion of a physical resurrection is not historically credible. The general field of biblical studies is immense, and studies of the historical Jesus are significant in their own right. Some scholars seem to be convinced that a close scrutiny of the texts, combined with knowledge of the relevant history, religious beliefs and practices, anthropology, and so on, will give us an “authentic Jesus.” Most scholars in the academy in general, apart from those in biblical studies, seem to believe that textual studies of the New Testament will give us only probable knowledge of the “ordinary” features of Jesus’ life and that knowledge of those “extraordinary” features of his life on which his claim to deity depends, especially his resurrection, cannot be established as credible.

The Virginal Conception of Jesus The ancient creeds assert that Jesus was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. The claim that a woman might conceive a male child without sexual intercourse is as exceptional as any that have been considered to this point. Perhaps it is not an exaggeration to say that many well-educated Christians have difficulty accepting it at face value. Only Matthew and Luke provide us with accounts of the events surrounding the conception of Jesus by a “virgin”—which might mean only “young woman”—and only Luke really tells the story in detail. He places the story in a larger context of extraordinary phenomena. Luke’s account begins with the visit of the angel Gabriel to the priest Zechariah, informing him that his wife, Elizabeth, who was past the point of fertility, would conceive a son whom they were to name John. Gabriel is also said to have intimated that John, whose life would resemble that of the Israelite prophets, would be the precursor of someone even greater than himself. This is the context in which Gabriel went to Mary with the news that she would conceive a son, who would be “the Son of the Most High.”27 When Mary queried the angel how this would happen, since she had no husband, she was told: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.”28 Christian thought correctly maintains that the virginal conception could not be an act of parthenogenesis; an unfertilized ovum that grew into a child would have been a daughter because the Y chromosome needed for a son could be obtained only from the father. The claim that this conception has its source in a transcendent power has not been advanced simply because no other natural explanation is available, although this is undoubtedly a factor, but because of the other events said to have surrounded the

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conception, particularly those involving Gabriel. The thought that is involved here can be reconstructed to fit a familiar pattern: A source seemingly beyond the natural order is postulated to account for a reported phenomenon for which no explanation is found among those that appeal to a large set of known natural processes. The claim that conception has occurred due to a heavenly visitation and without a human father is problematic from several standpoints, not least of which is the practical impossibility of showing that a human father was not involved.29 To rule out impregnation by a human father, a woman would somehow need to show that at no time while conception was possible did she have intercourse with a man. The all-encompassing nature of this claim is what makes it incredible, for people cannot easily vouch for their whereabouts and their activities during all of their waking moments. Moreover, because women are sometimes the victims of sexual aggression while unconscious, their own testimony about their waking lives does not cover all the relevant times. A woman’s claim that she has had no sexual contact with a man might be one that she alone cannot make, and because the witness of several people might be required to render the claim credible, it is open to question. These are the difficulties generated by the first part of the claim. The implausibility of a virginal conception can be shown simply from the standpoint of the evidence required to establish the claim beyond reasonable doubt, without having to debate its source in an allegedly divine act, which is the second problem. The second part of the claim to virginal conception requires establishing the plausibility of a particular claim, not a universal one. A woman would need to show that she experienced a divine visitation that resulted in her pregnancy. The difficulty here is trying to show that a particular experience is an event involving a transcendent being, which is, in essence, the subject of this book. Consider the claim of St. Teresa of Avila, for example, that an angel transfixed her heart. Although this experience is not exactly analogous to a divine visitation resulting in virginal conception, it shares some relevant similarities with such an allegation. St. Teresa’s moving account of this event, set within a life marked by allegations of numerous divine visitations, has convinced some critics that the transfixation actually did occur.30 The claim that this was an objective experience is naturally controversial, as are all of her allegedly supernatural experiences, and it requires an argument for the causal role of a being apparently incapable of being observed in a conventional sense. Given the success in the twentieth century of theories postulating unobservable entities, the difficulty presented by this part of the claim to virginal conception should not be viewed as insurmountable. Consequently, the greatest difficulty in asserting a virginal conception arises from the first part of the claim, as discussed previously, rather than the second. A few other people are rumored to have been conceived without sexual intercourse. The chronicler Wavrin claims that Merlin the magician was con-

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ceived without a human father. Merlin first emerges in Wavrin’s story of King Vortigern, whom the Saxons drove from England into Wales in the seventh century. The king’s advisors told him that he needed to build a tower to protect himself from further attacks, and to ensure the success of the building project, they said he would need to mix the mortar with the blood of a child who was conceived without a father.31 Merlin was reputed to be such a child and was located. When he and his mother were brought before King Vortigern, she told her story. She, a king’s daughter, had become a nun and asserted that although she had never had sexual intercourse, she conceived Merlin by the power of a spirit that appeared to her in the monastery.32 The king called in a philosopher to verify that this was possible, and he assured the king, naturally, that spirits were capable of doing such a thing. Although Merlin satisfied the king’s need to find a child suitable for a sacrifice, Merlin so impressed the king with his knowledge that the king spared his life. Wavrin is thought to have been born in 1394 and to have died about eighty years later. These chronicles were translated from French and published in 1864 by the authority of the commissioners of Queen Victoria’s treasury, under the direction of the Master of the Rolls. The translator apologizes for the fabulous character of some of Wavrin’s accounts and urges that “he be judged according to the spirit of the age in which he lived.”33 These chronicles are full of incredible accounts and indeed serve, as the translator remarks, as “a record of what our ancestors deemed within the pale of belief.”34 This account of the origin of Merlin is too astonishing to warrant further comment. It illustrates an important psychological process, however, especially when considered alongside the story of the virginal conception of Jesus. This story of Merlin’s alleged virgin birth seems to be poorly known in Western culture, and if I am correct, it illustrates the effect of having a story told many times. People who first hear the story of the conception of Merlin generally react with disbelief. The fact that the source of it is at least thirteen hundred years later than the accounts of the conception of Jesus is not deemed to lend it any more credibility than the story of the virgin birth, although accounts closer to our time are sometimes thought more credible than much earlier ones. The instinctive disbelief people generally direct to the story of Merlin is indicative of its inherent incredibility, and these consistent responses need to be respected as a starting point in any critical discussion of the epistemic merits of such a claim. The story of the virginal conception of Jesus probably has a similar level of inherent incredibility, but the strong expressions of belief in it among many adherents of the Christian faith suggest that they fail to sense its dubiousness. The frequency with which the story of Jesus’ conception is told in many places—at Christmas of each year at least—probably contributes to the impression that the phenomenon might be believable. Other factors might do so as well. For example, one who comes to believe that Jesus performed extraor.

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dinary acts of healing might be able to believe that a virgin conceived him. However, one more item of evidence needs to be considered before offering a verdict on the claim that Jesus was conceived by a virgin. It requires what might initially seem like a long digression into a controversial subject, but this digression will also allow us to discuss Christianity’s remarkable claim that Jesus was resurrected.

The Shroud of Turin The Shroud of Turin has recently been conjectured to provide evidence for the disappearance of the body of Jesus after his death in such a remarkable way that the two most extraordinary matters alleged about him—his virginal conception and his resurrection—are rendered more credible if this conjecture is true. The significance of the shroud for understanding the Passion is not always accepted or acknowledged by biblical scholars, so the point of view I am presenting is controversial in two respects. The shroud itself is a controversial object, given its enigmatic properties and mysterious origin. Moreover, introducing it as evidence in connection with the Passion, as though textual evidence is inadequate to the task, is a point of view that many biblical scholars seem reluctant to admit, if they have considered it at all. The evidence needed to support the conjecture in question is complex and inconclusive at various points. However, the cumulative effect of the evidence is weighty, and its relevance to several vital claims in Christian history is both striking and inadequately appreciated. The virginal conception and the Resurrection involve allegations that implicate the space-time-causal order and consequently assume a level of significance for claims about transcendent beings beyond that found in subjective experiences, which are momentous primarily to those who have them. The claim that new evidence for these remarkable claims exists is worth presenting in some detail. The three claims needed to give plausibility to the matter at issue are (a) that the Shroud of Turin is likely not an objet d’art but was formed in some other way, (b) that the image of the man and the blood found on the shroud are of Jesus Christ, and (c) that the conjecture that his body disappeared explains several features of the shroud that are not otherwise readily explicable. I will examine each of these claims briefly. The study of the shroud now involves more than two dozen academic disciplines, so that doing it justice is difficult for any single researcher, especially within the limitations of space and the objectives of this book. I shall content myself here with presenting outlines of the relevant claims about the shroud and count on the fact that the results of research into the shroud during the last forty years are already somewhat known. These results are certainly readily available.35 For once, we are looking

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at something whose reality is not in doubt, unlike many of the experiences sometimes adduced as evidence for the existence of transcendent beings. Many of the basic features of the shroud are well known. All the media have extensively reported that it portrays a man who bears the wounds of crucifixion, that the shroud has the properties of a photographic negative, and that the carbon-dating tests conducted in 1988 indicated that it originated no earlier than the year 1240. Other features of the shroud are not as well known, for example, the presence of information in its image that has allowed a threedimensional reconstruction of the man to be produced and the congruity of the image of the face on the shroud to Christian icons that date back as early as the sixth century of our era.

Is the Shroud an Objet d’Art? The claim that the shroud is an objet d’art still circulates,36 but it has no real plausibility. The most impressive reasons for rejecting the notion that the image was painted onto the cloth are as follows. 1. The image of the body looks very different than the blood remains, which resemble the residue of paint. The blood remains have a readily perceptible red hue, whereas the image of the body appears simply as a color variation of the already yellowish hue of the cloth itself and seems to fade imperceptibly into the cloth whenever one tries to examine it closely.37 The color variations on the fibers that form the image are so delicate that if the image was painted, an artist would have to have used a brush with only one hair in it, and that thinner than a human hair.38 The optimal viewing distance is six to ten feet away, and at less than six feet the image almost disappears.39 If an artist produced the image, he or she would have to have stood a considerable distance away to produce even a slightly plausible figure— all in the form of a photographic negative. 2. Hungarian artist Isabel Piczek, who has painted the human form, often on large murals, for more than forty years, says that the anatomical perfection exhibited on the shroud could not be painted today, even with the aid of a camera. The image is also done without any visible outlines on the cloth.40 3. No substantial paint, dye, or stain residues have been found on the shroud. The small amounts present on it probably were deposited when artists’ copies of it were pressed against it to imbue the copies with holiness.41 Also, the fibers of the cloth are not cemented together, which they would have been if paint had been used to produce the image.42

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god and other spirits 4. Microscopic examination of the image of the face reveals no preferred direction, but a painter could not have avoided showing some preference in distributing paint or some other medium over the surface. 5. The three-dimensional character of the image cannot be replicated even with today’s technology. This feature was discovered during the study undertaken by the Shroud of Turin Research Project team about thirty-five years ago. An instrument developed for NASA, known as a VP-8 image analyzer, was used to view the image of the man. It showed that the color variations that form the image could be plotted as amounts of vertical relief in a three-dimensional domain to form a realistic sculpture of a man. This image analyzer was originally developed so that monochromatic pictures taken from space could be interpreted to show Earth’s three-dimensional contours, for example, where fault lines in earthquake zones were located. 6. An artist painting prior to the twentieth century would probably have painted the hands with thumbs, rather than without them. The absence of obvious thumbs on the shroud image is now known to be consistent with damage to the radial nerves in the wrists, which results in the thumbs flexing into the palms. 7. High levels of bilirubin occur in the blood found on the shroud. Bilirubin is a chemical that turns the bile pigments reddish orange in color and is indicative of severe jaundice, often brought on by physical trauma. An artist living prior to the discovery of bilirubin in the modern era would not have thought of adding bilirubin-laced blood to the image to give it a lifelike quality. The bilirubin probably came from the blood of a traumatized man who was wrapped in the shroud. 8. The foot imprint on the half of the shroud depicting the man’s heels has an abundance of microscopic dust, atypical of the rest of the image. An artist is unlikely to have added this element, for he or she could not have seen the dust and would have no reason to put the dust there since no one else could see it either.43 The dust most likely came from the feet of a man once wrapped in the shroud.

The similarity of the hues that form the image to the hues of the burn marks on the shroud from a fire in 1532 has led to the suggestion that throwing the cloth over a hot statue formed the image. This conjecture, however, is rendered implausible both by some of the characteristics of the shroud just listed and by the fact that this method could hardly have been so well controlled that the image was confined to the top two or three fibrils that form the threads of the cloth. The image does not penetrate through the cloth and is not visible on

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both sides. Most researchers working on the shroud reject the suggestion that the image might have been produced by human ingenuity. This clears the way to considering other explanations, including ones associated with the view that the shroud once was wrapped around a body.

Is the Man Jesus Christ? Research during the early part of the twentieth century concentrated on the apparent congruity of the apparent wounds of the man on the shroud with those said in the Gospels to have been inflicted on Jesus. Although the image appears somewhat obscure to the naked eye, photographs of the whole shroud have allowed forensic pathologists to observe the bloodstains on the cloth in relation to various features of the image itself. The following features have been observed. 1. The shroud exhibits blood flows from hands and feet, as from nailing. These correspond to the wounds of crucifixion described in the Gospels. 2. Pathologists also say that the shroud indicates that the victim was flogged, and close measurements of the wounds reveal that the instrument apparently used is consistent with relics preserved from the Roman era used to carry out this form of torture. The Gospel accounts say that Jesus was subjected to this cruelty prior to his crucifixion. 3. The shroud shows that the victim has injuries to his head, as from a crown (or cap) of thorns. The Gospels explain that this was devised for Jesus, probably uniquely, perhaps to ridicule the claim that he was a king, and it has been widely considered a strong reason for thinking the man on the shroud might be Jesus. 4. The shroud shows that the victim did not have his legs broken, contrary to the usual practice in crucifixion. Some researchers think that victims of crucifixion died of asphyxiation, as the weight of their own bodies hanging by their hands made breathing difficult, and exhaustion finally prevented them from raising their chests sufficiently to take a breath by pushing down on their impaled feet. In a final act of mercy, executioners would break the victim’s legs so that asphyxiation would come quickly. John’s Gospel says that Jesus’ legs were not broken, offering one more point of congruity with the shroud. 5. The victim on the shroud seems to have been struck on his face, for a swelling appears to be present under the right eye. The Gospels say that soldiers blindfolded Jesus and struck him on the head. This is not a particularly impressive item of evidence because it is easy to

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6.

7.

8.

9.

imagine that victims of crucifixion might have been routinely subjected to many kinds of inhumane treatment, given the brutality of crucifixion itself. The victim depicted on the shroud has the blood of a human male, for both X and Y chromosomes have been found. The blood is type AB, which is found in only 3.2% of the world’s population but in 18% of the Jewish people in the Near East.44 The victim depicted on the shroud appears to have had a chin-band tied around his head, which is consistent with some Jewish burial practices.45 John makes reference to a cloth that was around the head of Jesus. The victim depicted on the shroud seems to have his heart pierced by a sharp object, for images appear on the back that correspond to blood and “water”46 (serous fluid). John says that Jesus’ heart was pierced. Pathologists say that the victim on the shroud was between 30 and 35 years of age, which is consistent with information available from the New Testament about the age at which Jesus was crucified.

These items, like many others that researchers have adduced, vary in force as far as establishing the identity of the man on the shroud. For example, the fact that the image depicts one who was crucified does not uniquely identify Jesus as the man on the shroud; many people were crucified in antiquity. However, the fact that the image depicts one who had an apparently unique implement of torture placed on his head, such as a crown (or cap) of thorns, goes a long way toward identifying the person as Jesus. Moreover, the evidential force of any one of these items might not be that significant, but their combined effect in corroborating the accounts in the Gospels is impressive. Two probability assignments are often involved in assessing the evidential weight of a particular item. The first probability assignment pertains to the likelihood that an alleged item of evidence is real, and the second pertains to the value of the evidence on the assumption that it is correct. For example, the claim that the victim had a blood type widely found among Jewish people at the time that he lived must be assigned a particular probability value. If the biochemical study on which this claim is based was competently carried out, this value is high, but it might not have a value of 1.47 The second probability value attempts to reflect the weight of this item of evidence in support of the claim that the man on the shroud is Jesus. For example, the evidence of a crown of thorns on the shroud, assuming that it is not an objet d’art, gives a fairly high probability value to the hypothesis that the image is that of Jesus. This probability value is admittedly less than 1, but it ought to be well above 0. The grounds for assigning probability values is a complex issue in its own

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right, and the assumption should not be made that the two probability values needed here will be of similar kinds. Philosophers recognize as many as six interpretations of probability statements, which I will elaborate on in a later chapter. Several other points about the shroud should be noted, although their value as evidence for the identity of the man in the image is modest: 1. Coins appear to have been placed over the eyes of the victim depicted on the shroud, in keeping with common burial practice in Judea during the first half of the first century. The first coin was reported in 1979 by a theologian at Loyola University in Chicago and reconfirmed in 1985 by an Italian coin expert.48 The existence of a second coin was reported in 1996 by a medical examiner from the University of Turin, along with an expert in computer enhancement from the same institution. Enlargements of the inscriptions appear to indicate that these coins were minted during the reign of Tiberius Caesar, 29 a.d. in our system of dating.49 This item of evidence is remarkable, for it is difficult to imagine how an image on a rather porous piece of cloth, rather than photographic film, could yield such detail, and some commentators treat the claim with caution, preferring to regard the alleged coin images as only a quirk of the shroud’s weave.50 2. Forty of the pollen grains found on the shroud are from plants growing exclusively in Israel. This implies that the shroud was exposed to the open air in that country, which is the usual way pollen becomes embedded in the fibers of a piece of cloth. An extreme skeptic could argue that pollen from Israel might have been borne to Europe by the wind, but this claim goes beyond the bounds of plausibility, for the prevailing winds in Europe are not from east to west. This fact points to Israel as the place of origin of the shroud. 3. A faint outline of a flower garland has been detected among the various images on the shroud. Paul Maloney says he found a chrysanthemum-shaped flower,51 and an Israeli botanist has confirmed the presence of plants exclusive to Israel in this garland, providing still more evidence that the shroud has been in Israel.52 This finding is even more significant than the pollen grains, for the process by which the body image was formed seems to have been the same that resulted in the image of the flower garland, suggesting that they were produced at the same time. This would place the origin of the shroud in Israel. 4. The dust found in the area of the feet contains limestone of the relatively rare aragonite variety, rather than the common calcite variety.

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god and other spirits The limestone has small quantities of iron and strontium but no lead, and it corresponds to limestone found in tombs near Jerusalem.53 5. Some objets d’art from antiquity depict Jesus in a way that is reminiscent of the shroud. For example, an image on plaster in the Domitilla catacomb in Rome, considered by some to be a painting of Jesus produced in the first century, resembles the shroud image.54

The various items of evidence advanced to this point are not conclusive about the identity of the person depicted on the shroud, but they do point in the direction of Jesus. The shroud unquestionably has its origins somewhere in Europe or the Middle East, most likely the Middle East. Moreover, Jesus is one of the few people whose method of execution and appearance in death have been celebrated by his followers. The claim that the victim is Jesus has plausibility. Of course, the carbon-dating test performed on the shroud in 1988 seems to put its origin in the thirteenth century and so undermines the claim that the image is that of Jesus.

Other Items of Evidence Researchers have puzzled about this carbon-dating result, for it is obviously inconsistent with the evidence suggesting that the man is Jesus. Other features of the image are also difficult to explain, such as its three-dimensional character. Another is that the image is formed by extremely small pixel-like dots, resembling pointillism in art, although in the case of the shroud the dots are microscopic in size. These dots have been formed by what appear to be chemical burns to the tiny fibrils that form the threads of the cloth. This feature suggests that the image was produced by bombardment of some sort. Other peculiarities include the surface character of the image, which is seen on only one side of the cloth; the absence of side images of the man; and the vertical alignment of the image and associated body parts, such as the face, legs, and hands. Still another anomaly is the odd locations of some of the blood residues on the shroud, which seem to have gotten onto the cloth by contact with the man. Some of the blood residues, for example, appear to be on the hair on the man’s head, too far away from a possible point of bleeding. Another peculiarity associated with the blood spatters on the shroud is that blood-impregnated fibers exhibit no evidence of fraying. Other puzzling features are the man’s elongated fingers and a spot on one of the hands that seems to register the presence of a thumb folded into the palm. More controversial are the claims that faint images of teeth, vertebrae, metacarpal bones in the wrists, and other bones can be seen.55 The question that researchers are confronted with is what conjecture might explain all or most of these puzzling features of the shroud.

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Physicist John Jackson, long associated with research into the shroud, has conjectured that the body of the man in the shroud “became mechanically ‘transparent’ to its physical surroundings” and that “a stimulus was generated that recorded the passage of the cloth through the body region onto the cloth as an image.”56 Historian of physics Thaddeus Trenn describes the essential element in Jackson’s obscure explanation as “weak dematerialization.” Trenn suggests that the nuclei of the atoms constituting the body of the man once wrapped in the shroud broke apart.57 The freed subatomic particles formed a flux through which the shroud fell, by virtue of the gravitational force acting on the cloth.58 These particles left their “imprint” on the cloth, so that the color variations that form the image resulted from the number of subatomic particles that bombarded the cloth: The fewer the number of particles, the lighter the image (on the original cloth), and the larger the number of particles, the darker the image. This conjecture would explain the pointillism, the threedimensional effect, the absence of torn fibrils in the area of the blood stains, the alignment of parts of the body with elements of the image, the absence of side images, and the faint images (possibly) of bones and the thumb inside the palm. Jackson explains the elongated fingers by suggesting that the man’s knees were bent, so that a slight fold in the cloth coincided with the location of the man’s fingers. When the body dematerialized beneath the cloth, the subatomic material that formed the fingers registered its presence in an image that is slightly longer than the fingers themselves. Another feature of the crossed hands of the man on the shroud is worth noting. Close scrutiny of the three-dimensional image shows that it depicts the palms of the hands as disproportionately thicker than the man’s fingers. Moreover, the fingers rapidly drop away from the palm in a peculiar manner in the three-dimensional image of the man. Jackson can explain this by reference to the fact that the amount of matter comprising the crossed hands (the thickness) is about two or three times as great as the amount of matter comprising the fingers of one hand. According to the theory of weak dematerialization, the proportionally greater amount of matter found in the two palms of the crossed hands compared with the matter found in the fingers of one hand would be exhibited in a sharp drop at the point where the fingers of either hand meet the crossed palms. A corroboration of Jackson’s hypothesis has recently been provided by the research of August Accetta, a medical doctor who has experimented with the effects of radioactive decay.59 Accetta injected himself with the radioactive isotopes used in normal radiography and waited until these subatomic materials were chemically bound to all of his cells, including bones, ligaments, and soft tissue. The maximum absorption effect was achieved after about six hours, when he placed his crossed hands under the x-ray machine. The image that was produced on a conventional radiograph shows only variations of the gray color tones, similar to the x-rays that everyone has seen. However, when this image was placed under the VP-8 image analyzer, the

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three-dimensional image showed the fingers rapidly dropping away at the point where they meet the crossed palms, in just the way that the fingers of the man on the shroud drop away. This experimental result suggests that subatomic matter is implicated in the formation of the shroud image. Trenn argues that this theory postulates a “radiation event” that could account for the medieval carbon dating claimed in the 1988 test, for the theory implies that freed neutrons from the nuclei would have converted some of the nitrogen in the linen that forms the shroud into carbon-14, thereby producing sufficient additional amounts of this isotope to make the shroud look medieval rather than ancient.60 Trenn observes that this theory is testable, for an implication is that the carbon-14 amounts would vary over the surface of the cloth. Cloth in the immediate vicinity of the image would have a higher concentration of carbon-14 than cloth on the edges. This implication has not been tested, to my knowledge, although one statistician has reported that a significant variation is already evident in the results from the three laboratories that carbondated the shroud in 1988.61 The Oxford laboratory reported a smaller amount of the carbon-14 isotope, on which carbon-dating results depend, than the laboratories in Tucson and in Zurich. The sample sent to Oxford was just slighter farther from the image of the man than the samples sent to the other laboratories, so this result is consistent with Jackson’s theory. Much more could be said about the enigmatic Shroud of Turin, but this is sufficient to show the plausibility of the conjecture that the body of the man on the shroud might have disappeared. Everyone else in human history “disappears,” or is apt to do so, by undergoing change at the molecular level, as decay sets in and “worms eat our flesh.” No person in history supposedly dissipated in a cloud of subatomic particles, as the man on the shroud is conjectured to have disappeared. If this man lived and died in the medieval age, as the 1988 carbon-dating result seemed to show, he is among the most enigmatic the world has ever known. If this man lived in the ancient world and died in Israel, he might well be Jesus. Finally, if Jesus is depicted on the shroud and had such a remarkable end, perhaps he had the remarkable beginning described in the Gospels. The virginal conception of Jesus is somehow more believable if we embrace Jackson’s conjecture about Jesus’ most extraordinary end than if we do not. This conjecture about the shroud’s origin, moreover, has several other far-reaching but virtually unnoticed implications for Christianity.

Resurrection and the Shroud of Turin Christianity has been universally understood by its critics, and widely interpreted by its defenders, as having at its center the bold claim that Jesus of Nazareth was raised from death to live an indestructible life. Peter Carnley sums up the significance of the resurrection for incarnational theology: “It is

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the resurrection which is the foundation of the Church, its worship and its theology, for the Church gathers not just around the rehearsal of the story of the incarnation of God, but around the perceived presence of the raised Christ himself.”62 No other claim about the life of Jesus has been as suggestive of the existence of a transcendent power, or as carefully scrutinized. Many views about the Resurrection have been and continue to be debated. Tradition understands the texts that describe the Resurrection at face value and tries to harmonize the various accounts to produce a seamless whole. Some theologians question the historicity of the accounts, however, especially those describing various encounters with the risen Jesus. Other theologians consider the Resurrection to be eschatological in character, not historical, and for that reason not suitable for historical analysis in the usual way. Still other theologians are not sure that sacred texts used for liturgical purposes, which these texts were, can be plausibly interpreted as purporting to describe any event at all, let alone an extraordinary one. And so on. These and other interpretive issues surrounding the Resurrection obviously deserve consideration, which I cannot undertake here, but I doubt that the original interpretation that construes the Resurrection to be a historical claim will ever be displaced. This remains the default position against which other interpretations compete, and it certainly characterizes the view of the ante-Nicene fathers during the crucial period of the church when central doctrines were formulated and sacred texts were chosen. The default view is the one I will presuppose in my discussion here. The New Testament describes a number of instances of people coming back to life, but the resurrection of Jesus is implicitly distinguished from these in 1 Corinthians 15. Paul’s statements in this seminal passage on the Resurrection describe it as the defeat of death itself and as the model for an event that will be experienced someday by both the living and the dead. Paul says that the body of Jesus that was raised from death was glorious, not dishonorable; imperishable, not perishable; powerful, not weak; immortal, not mortal; and spiritual, not physical. In John’s Gospel we read how Jesus brought Lazarus back to life, but none of these extraordinary attributes is ascribed to the resuscitated body of Lazarus. So tradition has viewed the Resurrection as different than what we could call the resuscitations described in the New Testament. However, the Resurrection is assumed to share some characteristics of resuscitations, as I am using this term. For a resuscitation to be defended as plausible, three conditions must be satisfied: (a) The person must truly have died, not merely have fainted or become comatose, (b) the person’s corpse must no longer exist after the resuscitation has taken place, and (c) the person must be seen to be alive again. The New Testament writers go to some length to show that these conditions were met in the resurrection of Jesus to indicate that it was not merely a resuscitation, although it met the conditions for one. Although Paul does not evince explicit knowledge of the empty tomb tradition

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in 1 Corinthians 15, which is the earliest text that refers to the Resurrection chronologically speaking, he pointedly says that Jesus died and was buried, that he was raised from death, and that he was seen again. The phenomenon of someone coming back to life seems almost incomprehensible. The well-publicized research into NDEs during the last thirty years appears to have expanded our understanding of someone coming back to life, but the NDE is still under critical scrutiny. The people undergoing NDEs might be brain-dead,63 perhaps even temporarily devoid of heartbeat and the capacity to breathe, but the claim that they are fully dead is not universally conceded. If we understand resuscitation as having someone who is genuinely dead come back to life, we might do well to avoid describing people who are revived after NDEs as having been resuscitated. The first challenge facing anyone reporting a resuscitation is showing that the person said to have been resuscitated was really dead. People have been comatose for long periods of time and have exhibited no vital signs, so that even trained observers regard them as dead. But when they revive, contrary to all expectations, that is generally taken to be evidence that they were not truly dead. Those who are prepared to defend the historical authenticity of resuscitations, such as Lazarus and other people that Jesus is said to have raised, have to face this issue, and it has, of course, been raised in connection with Jesus. A number of biblical critics in the nineteenth century questioned whether Jesus actually died by crucifixion, and a few perhaps consider this possibility now. Usually the extensive character of Jesus’ wounds and the belief that the Roman soldiers responsible for his execution would not have allowed him to be removed from the cross until he was dead are sufficient to set this doubt aside. But a residue of doubt remains and seems incapable of being removed. For example, Holger Kersten and Elmar Gruber make this claim central to their recent analysis of the Shroud of Turin.64 They consider the shroud to be that of Jesus and argue that the amount of blood on it shows that Jesus was not dead when he was placed in it. Corpses, they insist, do not bleed. Jackson’s theory presents a significant response to the first condition needed for a resuscitation and, by implication, the resurrection of Jesus. If Jackson’s theory is correct, even if the body of Jesus was not dead when it was placed in the shroud, the conjectured weak dematerialization would bring about a death even more complete than that ordinarily experienced, for it hypothesizes not merely molecular but also atomic or subatomic dissolution. The shroud, given Jackson’s hypothesis, might provide us with better evidence that Jesus “died” than the evidence supplied by the New Testament accounts. The second condition that needs to be met to defend a resuscitation is that the corpse of the person said to have been resuscitated (or resurrected) must no longer exist. This condition is much stronger than merely asserting that the grave in which the corpse was placed no longer contains it. If someone were to be resuscitated, we would normally expect the grave in which the

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person had been placed (assuming burial) to be empty. Of course, we can conceive of circumstances where this might not be the case, for example, people apparently resuscitated by medical intervention who are still so fragile that they cannot move from their hospital beds. In the story of Lazarus, the implication is that he was brought back to life in such a way that he was able to carry on with normal life. A resuscitation that left the person hardly better than the weakened condition he or she was in shortly before death might not be a welcome event! While we would reasonably expect a grave to be empty if a resuscitation took place, the converse does not hold. Just because the place in which a person was buried is found not to contain the corpse, we cannot plausibly assert that the person was probably resuscitated. Grave robbers have no doubt been found in most places of the world at various times, and good reasons also exist for exhuming or moving corpses. The Gospel accounts of the Resurrection indicate that questions were raised about whether the body of Jesus had been moved.65 Of course, if none of the graves or other places where a corpse might be kept contained a particular body, we might wonder whether the person had been raised from death. But this imaginary suggestion cannot be met in real life, for a corpse could be buried or hid in innumerable places or be cremated or otherwise disposed of. An empty tomb is evidence for a resuscitation but not very significant evidence, for it is only a probable consequence of a resuscitation (assuming the mobility of the resuscitated person). An empty tomb is clearly not sufficient evidence of a resuscitation. Evidence that a corpse went out of existence is what is required. Jackson’s conjecture about how the Shroud of Turin might have been formed comes in at this point also. His theory, if correct, would allow us to hold that a body disappeared in just the way required for a resuscitation and, by implication, for the Resurrection. The shroud would be substantially stronger evidence than an empty tomb, moreover, for an empty tomb, while necessary for a resuscitation, does not adequately address the question of whether the body had been moved to another place. Even the shroud, however, assuming that it was formed in accordance with Jackson’s hypothesis, does not provide complete evidence for a resuscitation, since that claim also requires evidence that the resuscitated person has been seen alive since his or her death. His theory is silent about subsequent appearances, so even if it is true, it does not provide complete evidence for the resurrection. Some defenders of the traditional view of the Resurrection, such as George Ladd,66 William Lane Craig,67 and Gary Habermas,68 have not adequately addressed the weakness of the biblical evidence in relation to the second requirement for claiming a resuscitation. They evidently think that by marshaling the circumstantial textual evidence pertaining to the empty tomb, they can make a case for the disappearance of the corpse in the way required for a resurrection. The problem is that adequate evidence cannot be provided for the claim that

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the corpse of Jesus went out of existence by first showing that the tomb in which it had been placed was indeed found empty and then by arguing that none of the players in the drama had the motive, the opportunity, and the means to move the body of Jesus to another place. The evidence from the shroud, however, if Jackson’s theory is right, does so simply and elegantly. This evidence is not textual, however, but derives from a physical object. New Testament critic Gerd Ludemann has recently reviewed the textual evidence for the Resurrection. According to his recent reconstruction of the Resurrection, the corpse of Jesus never disappeared, even though the tomb might have been reported empty.69 Ludemann considers the reported appearances to have been visions, the first one of which was experienced by Peter, which influenced other disciples to experience similar visions. Ludemann maintains that “the original seeing of the Easter witnesses was a seeing in the spirit and not the seeing of a revived corpse.”70 Like Bultmann, he considers the scientific picture of the world to have removed the literal meaning of the traditional Christian interpretation of the universe. Ludemann recognizes that his critical reconstruction requires one to conclude that the Resurrection cannot be understood in a literal sense.71 According to New Testament professor Gregory Riley, various early writings attributed to Thomas advance a “spiritual” resurrection that sees the soul of Jesus ascend to heaven while his body remains in the ground.72 This familiar Greco-Roman view of postmortem existence has been firmly set aside by orthodox Christian tradition.

The Identity of the Resurrected Person One difficulty the shroud might be thought to present, on Jackson’s conjecture of how it was formed, is that it introduces a novel understanding of the Resurrection. On this conjecture, Jesus does not come back to life in the way that Lazarus and the widow’s son are supposed to have done. Rather, the corpse of Jesus would have gone completely out of existence, and another body would have formed to become the resurrected Jesus.73 In an ideal resuscitation, observers would see a corpse come back to life, so that no doubt would remain about either the fact that the corpse went out of existence or the identity of the resuscitated person. This condition is not met in the descriptions of the Resurrection, for no eyewitnesses reported that they saw the corpse of Jesus metamorphose into a resurrected being. The apocryphal Gospel of Peter almost does this, in its story of two men coming down from heaven, opening the sepulchre in which Jesus was buried, and helping him walk out. But this account has not been accorded any authority in the history of the church. While Jackson’s theory would revise popular conceptions of the Resurrection, it would help to make more sense of the claim that in the Resurrection Jesus arose from death with a glorious and immortal body, not with the same sort of body he had before his death.

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Another difficulty with Jackson’s theory is that it is saddled with establishing the continuity of personal identity between Jesus who was crucified and the resurrected being. The popular view that construes the resurrected body as “emerging” out of the corpse (which the New Testament does not adequately support) does not have the problem of establishing the continuity of personal identity. However, I think that the problem of continuing identity can be adequately addressed. It requires providing evidence that the usual criteria of continuing personal identity, including continuity of memory, similarity of personality, and perhaps also spatio-temporal continuity between the corpse of Jesus and the resurrected body, are satisfied.74 We must conclude that the New Testament does not offer as much evidence that the corpse of Jesus disappeared as a resurrection claim would require. Again, the shroud might provide greater evidence, given the correctness of Jackson’s theory or some close variation on it. The preceding discussion has shown that the usual evidence adduced for the Resurrection is not as complete as traditional defenders have often claimed. A considerable amount of circumstantial evidence for the Resurrection can be adduced if we take the New Testament accounts as reports of events, but even this interpretive strategy will not quite do the job. Perhaps the early church’s confidence in the Resurrection depended on additional evidence available to the first disciples but unavailable to us. If the image on the Shroud of Turin was formed as Jackson conjectures but the shroud is not the authentic burial cloth of Jesus, it tantalizingly demonstrates the kind of evidence that is needed but would be unavailable. The Shroud of Turin, on the assumption that its image was formed by a man who disappeared in a shower of subatomic particles, either provides startling new evidence for the Resurrection claim or exhibits the weakness of the traditional position in an unexpected way. The two most important challenges facing the traditional view, in my opinion, are showing that the corpse of Jesus went out of existence and that appearances took place in the public domain.

Intimations of Transcendence in the Shroud Jackson’s theory about the way the shroud image was formed suggests that an intelligent, powerful being was involved in its formation. The theory conjectures that the body of one specific man dematerialized and that the shroud in which the man was wrapped, although pressed against his body, did not dematerialize along with the body. Jackson and Trenn do not specifically comment on whether any other objects that might have been near or on the man’s body, such as coins over his eyes or a flower garland around his head, might have similarly dematerialized, but I take them to suggest that nothing other than the body of the man depicted underwent this remarkable form of dissolution.

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The shroud would be unique if the theory in question is correct, for no object from any time in history seems to have such an origin. It appears to be unique in any case. Similarities have sometimes been drawn between the shroud image and the images on concrete walls of Japanese people obliterated by nuclear blasts in World War II. However, the latter images do not exhibit the remarkable details apparent on the shroud, such as very well defined body parts. Moreover, obliteration by nuclear blasts would not be limited to human beings, for any animal or other object that happened to be in the vicinity of such an explosion would leave a similar image. The explosions at Hiroshima did not discriminate between one object and another and did not dematerialize only living bodies but somehow exempt the clothing covering their bodies. In the dematerialization suggested to have formed the shroud image, a particular individual appears to have been singled out for a special kind of disintegration. The suggested dematerialization is significantly different than that which occurs with the breakup of nuclei in known natural processes. Type II supernovas of large stars, for example, begin with a process in a star in which hydrogen fusion produces helium; further fusion sequences in turn produce carbon, neon, oxygen, silicon, and finally iron.75 The effect of the process is to increase pressure in the core of the star, which causes the iron nuclei to break up into smaller nuclei. This fragmentation increases the number of nuclear particles, with further nuclear reactions changing the species of nuclei present in the core. This process involves the breakup of nuclei and so might seem to resemble the fragmentation of atomic nuclei suggested by the shroud. However, the process in a supernova is not directed so specifically as it is in the event conjectured to have produced the shroud image. The atoms of large, indeterminate masses comprising stars undergo dissolution, not a specific body as we see in the conjectured formation of the shroud image. Another physical process that involves the fission of nuclei is radioactive decay. This process involves random decay and again does not have the precise directedness suggested by the image on the shroud. If only random parts of the body of the man in the shroud had dematerialized, or only atoms of one kind comprising his mass, for example, hydrogen atoms, had dematerialized, the conjectured dematerialization would not give the impression that a purposive intelligence caused it. The structure of thought here is often described as an argument, although this should not be uncritically interpreted to mean it fits standard models. The reasoning involved is, of course, not deductive, but it also does not fit enumerative inductive models, where two observable objects or properties can be correlated in numerous observations. The thought structure makes use of such background knowledge as that only powerful, intelligent beings are capable of the kind of precise and highly directed actions hypothesized. The method of hypothesis, on which I will elaborate in the next chapter, rather than deductive or inductive arguments, captures the essence of the reasoning involved here.

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The agency responsible for the disappearance of the man on the shroud, given the conjecture under scrutiny, appears to have exhibited a power greater than that known in the physical world, for the theory claims that the strong nuclear force that binds protons and neutrons in their nuclei—the strongest of the four fundamental forces known in nature—was overcome. This argument does not specifically require that the source of the conjectured dematerialization had omnipotence or omnipresence or benevolence or perfect knowledge, although such an infinite being would naturally serve the explanatory requirements. The intimations of transcendence suggested by Jackson’s conjecture are striking and significant.

Appearances and Other Kinds of Evidence The third significant factor needed to defend a resuscitation—and the resurrection of Jesus—is that the person said to have died and whose corpse has disappeared is seen to live again in a way that leaves little question about his or her identity. Perhaps no other component of all the New Testament writings has been subjected to more critical scrutiny and negative criticism than the accounts that purport to describe events when Jesus was seen after his death. The Shroud of Turin, given Jackson’s theory of how it was formed, is not relevant to this third condition and so cannot offer complete evidence for the Resurrection, even if it is the shroud of Jesus. My position here about the relevance of the shroud to the Resurrection probably differs from the one adopted by those shroud researchers who seem to think that accepting its authenticity automatically establishes the plausibility of the Resurrection. In an ideal resuscitation, the resuscitated body would be seen to “emerge” from the corpse and be seen in the public domain to live again. The complete criteria for an event’s occurring in the public domain are difficult to establish, but in a case of resuscitation they minimally include the collective, rather than exclusively private, viewing of the resuscitated person, as well as causal traces of the event in the space-time-causal world. It might be thought that combined sight and touch of an object, which we find in one of Luke’s accounts of the postmortem appearances, might do so as well, but this point is controversial, for some psychiatric researchers regard hallucinations in two sensory modalities to be possible. The New Testament accounts of the post-Resurrection appearances provide evidence that groups of people, not just individuals, are said to have seen Jesus alive. This counters the claim that all the appearances were hallucinations, as this term is conventionally understood. The New Testament also offers evidence that the resurrected Jesus performed acts that left causal effects in the ordinary space-time-causal world. The most noteworthy is the claim that he ate food before his disciples. We are evidently meant to understand that the

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food disappeared in just the way it does when ordinary people eat food. The New Testament accounts attribute new properties to the resurrected Jesus, inasmuch as he is described by Luke and John as capable of transporting himself instantly and passing through objects normally impervious to ordinary people. These claims are perhaps more intelligible at present than at any previous time, for we now understand more about the structure of matter, including its permeability. Such remarkable powers are crucial for defending the claim that his resurrection resulted in an immortal and glorious life, and they simultaneously indicate that his was no mere resuscitation. Many biblical critics question whether public, intersubjectively observable appearances took place and whether Jesus left traces of himself in the familiar space-time-causal world. In Visions of Jesus, I argued that phenomena identical or comparable to these appearances have been occurring since New Testament times, including today. I contested the claim that such phenomena are readily explained by psychological theories, including some that incorporate findings from neurophysiology. I also rebutted the claim that these are obviously hallucinatory.76 The claim that Jesus was seen alive after his death, in a way suggesting that he lives an indestructible life, cannot be dismissed as easily as some biblical critics seem to think. The preceding argument suggests that the shroud and contemporary visions of Jesus are needed at present to buttress the traditional claim about the Resurrection. While the New Testament is the obvious original source of traditional claims, it needs to be enhanced if the Resurrection is going to be maintained with plausibility in the face of extensive biblical criticism and the increased standards of evidence that have arisen with the emphasis on science in Western culture. Theologians of a traditional persuasion generally claim more evidence for the Resurrection than they are entitled to, seemingly because they seldom dispassionately examine what would be needed for any resuscitation at all. When faced by arguments that undermine the historicity of the Resurrection, some have retreated to the supposedly safe contention that the presence of the risen Jesus can be felt in a way that makes rational argument superfluous. I would not deny the existence of this sense of presence, but without evidence for what looks ever so much like a historical claim, one is hard-pressed to explain what it is about certain states of mind that allows them to be identified as the felt presence of the risen Jesus. The preceding comments suggest that some strategies for defending the historicity of the Resurrection are flawed or incomplete. Some theologians see the rise of the Christian church to be compelling evidence, but this position does not consider the possibility that the belief that Jesus was resurrected might be sufficient to account for the rise of the church. I have never yet met a person who thinks that the rise of the Mormon Church about 180 years ago, which now numbers about eleven million, provides a compelling basis for embracing the historicity of Joseph Smith’s finding gold plates on which The Book of

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Mormon was written. Other theologians seem to suppose that very early statements asserting that Jesus was resurrected would provide impressive support for the claim. However, these statements are not evidence in any significant sense unless they directly address the three conditions previously identified as essential to a plausible resuscitation claim. Theologian John Stackhouse claims that he can offer an argument for the Resurrection without having to address the alleged post-Resurrection appearances. Stackhouse considers the empty tomb and the changed attitudes of the disciples—from despair to joy—to be sufficient.77 But these two conditions would not provide a plausible basis for a resuscitation and are hardly impressive evidence for the Resurrection, which is an even more demanding claim, inasmuch as Jesus is said to have been raised immortal. For example, finding that a grave that once contained the corpse of Winston Churchill was empty, and that his friends were elated, rather than despondent, at the prospect that he had come back to life, would provide very meager evidence for his resuscitation. One can plausibly assert that these two events could be causally connected to a resuscitation, and so we must concede their evidential value, but they are too insignificant to establish a resuscitation as plausible. A comparable flaw is present in John Hick’s contention that two examples of resurrection can be found in Hinduism from the last hundred years. Sri Yukteswar is said to have appeared after his death to Paramahans Yogananda in a hotel bedroom in Bombay,78 and Yogananda also reports that Sri Yukteswar saw his own guru in 1895. These claims as evidence for a resuscitation are not impressive, however. Hick’s examples involve only apparitions of the dead. These apparitions would need to be combined with evidence suggesting that the bodies of the dead persons were nowhere to be found, which is virtually impossible to supply.

Pilch on the Appearances of the Risen Jesus Biblical scholar John Pilch, of Georgetown University, has recently challenged the traditional interpretation of the post-Resurrection encounters by arguing that they were perceptual experiences that occurred in an altered state of consciousness. An implication of this is that they do not have the status of normal observations. Pilch’s position can easily be generalized to undermine the evidential value of all visionary experiences, whether ancient, medieval, or modern, and so deserves close examination. Pilch defines an altered state of consciousness as a human experience in which “sensations, perception, cognition, and emotions are altered. The result is changes in sensing, perceiving, thinking, and feeling. Further, these states modify the relation of the individual to the self and the body, to one’s sense of identity, and to the environment of time, space, and other people.”79 He speaks elsewhere of altered states of consciousness as trances or waking dreams,80

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acknowledging the imprecision of the term trance as a way of referring to some altered states of consciousness. Pilch suggests that a key defining characteristic of an altered state of consciousness is “intensely focused attention which reduces awareness of the experience-context, namely, objects, stimuli or environment outside the specific focus.”81 The practices said to bring it on include fasting, silence, and lack of sleep. Pilch construes altered states of consciousness to be found in a wide range of conscious states, including several kinds of sleep (such as REM sleep), alcohol intoxication, creative states, dance and music trances, religious experiences at revival meetings, fervent prayer, daydreaming, and glossolalia.82 Pilch says that these states are distinguishable from experiences in ordinary or normal consciousness, but he does not offer explicit criteria to distinguish the two kinds of consciousness. Pilch claims that because the appearances of Jesus described in the New Testament occurred in a Mediterranean culture and took place near his tomb, they are most plausibly interpreted as similar to experiences in those cultures.83 He observes that holy men in such cultures have been venerated at or near their tombs for the last four thousand years and then argues that because such experiences are best understood as altered states of consciousness, the New Testament appearances are most plausibly interpreted in a similar vein. Pilch’s claim challenges the traditional view of the appearances of Jesus,84 but it plausibly maintains that the results of psychological anthropology might have some bearing on the interpretation of the appearances. Like most interpreters of the New Testament post-Resurrection phenomena, Pilch concentrates his attention on the appearance accounts and does little with the postascension visions, thereby endorsing the traditional distinction between appearances and visions of Jesus. Pilch’s conjecture that all the appearances were altered states of consciousness, however, assimilates them into the category of visions, for some visions are plausibly considered to occur in altered states of consciousness, as Pilch’s discussion of the experiences of twentieth-century Moroccan Jews makes clear.85 A difficulty in Pilch’s conjecture now comes to light. If he interprets appearances as altered states of consciousness, he has no reason to limit his discussion to just those phenomena that tradition has interpreted in that way but should also include the so-called postascension visions. However, the visions of Jesus that are said to have followed the appearances have not been limited to events simply in the vicinity of the tomb of Jesus. They have been reported all over the world, and even New Testament accounts of postascension visions indicate that a number took place outside Judea and Galilee. For example, Paul’s first encounter with the risen Jesus took place on the road to Damascus, presumably some distance out of Jerusalem, and Paul’s third visionary encounter was in Corinth.86 Moreover, the visual encounter of the author of The Revelation is said to have occurred on Patmos, an island between modern-day Turkey and Greece. Pilch “saves the hypothesis” by ignoring the visions of Jesus in Corinth and Patmos and by

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failing to remark on the visions of Jesus that have been reported in many places in the world over nearly two millennia. These remarks only touch the surface of Pilch’s position, however, and a question still remains about the nature of the experiences in which Jesus seems to be encountered. The appearances described in the New Testament have been approached in traditional Christian thought as having involved conventional perceptual powers, not altered states of consciousness. The object of such perception— the resurrected body of Jesus—has certainly not been considered ordinary and so might be thought to belong to an alternate reality. But traditional Christianity has also been quite insistent that its reality is not identical to that of spirits as these have been conventionally understood. Luke offers an intriguing account87 of an appearance of Jesus to his disciples, who wonder if they are seeing a spirit. Jesus assures them that he is different and invites them to touch him and watch him eat food. He tells them “a spirit has not flesh and bones as you see that I have.” Jesus says “see” here but evidently means “tactilely feel.” Our tactile sense, not our visual one, is the primary one that is capable of detecting the existence of bones, although our visual sense detects the bulk of an arm, some of which is normally composed of bones. Pilch discusses this incident and contends that Jesus ate the food in an alternate reality,88 but he somehow misses the question of whether the disciples observed this in altered or ordinary states of consciousness. The biblical text, although incomplete for settling questions on this point, suggests that the perceptions were simultaneous, which satisfies an important requirement for ordinary states of consciousness. In Visions of Jesus, I gave several accounts of contemporary visions of Christ that are said to have been simultaneously experienced and argued that such evidence supports the claim that at least some of the New Testament experiences must have been in ordinary states of consciousness. The information about the appearances described in the New Testament is frequently too limited to say precisely what happened, but many do not appear to have occurred in altered states of consciousness. The first of just two appearance accounts in Matthew, for example, says only that as the women left the tomb, Jesus met them, and they “came up and took hold of his feet and worshiped him.” Jesus then spoke to them, saying that they should tell the disciples that they would see him in Galilee. Pilch has no substantial basis for saying that this experience took place in an altered rather than an ordinary perceptual state. The phenomenological detail presented here is so modest that we cannot readily compare it with that available in contemporary experiences. One noteworthy element in the account from Matthew is the reference to the women taking hold of Jesus’ feet. This has been widely interpreted as a detail that was added by someone in an attempt to combat the influence of Docetism in the early church, but it might describe a reality check that the women attempted in their effort to respond to what appeared to them as an aberrant visual object. Even if it was a reality check, we cannot tell from the account

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whether tactile and visual perceptions were combined in ways suggesting an ordinary state of consciousness, for the author is not interested in that level of detail. The appearance account in Luke of the eleven (or more) disciples who touched Jesus with their hands and watched him eat food involves explicit reality checks. Pilch argues that this account is a case of someone eating in an alternate reality, in keeping with explicit rabbinical traditions that righteous people enjoy meals in heaven.89 We might concede to Pilch that Jesus ate the fish in an alternate reality, but the question that remains is whether the eleven disciples observed this in altered states of consciousness. Luke appears to describe an intersubjectively observable event, which is implausibly interpreted for that reason as one occurring in an altered state of consciousness. If eleven disciples simultaneously saw and touched Jesus, their experience would seem to satisfy a condition for normal perception. Although such simultaneous experiences are just conceivably an instance of mass hallucination, as this is conventionally understood, showing that this is what occurred is very difficult. We can satisfy criteria for mass hallucination only by having precise information about the simultaneous perceptual experiences of different percipients. Luke, for all his exactness in descriptions compared with other New Testament writers, does not satisfy our demands for detail concerning what might have been in the visual fields of the disciples. For example, we do not know if each of the disciples experienced inappropriate visual perceptions for their spatial positions relative to one another and to the figure that appeared. If they formed a complete circle, say, and the figure appeared in its center but each simultaneously saw the figure’s face, we could plausibly conjecture that this was a mass hallucination. The references to group appearances in the New Testament accounts strongly suggest that they occurred in ordinary, rather than altered, states of consciousness, although the accounts are not detailed enough to be sure about this point. The reference to Jesus’ eating fish in Luke implies that some intersubjectively observable change to the ordinary world took place. It seems that at one moment a piece of fish was visibly present, and a moment later the fish was ingested and presumably incapable of being seen in just the way that food ordinarily “disappears” when it is eaten. We cannot be sure, of course, of what the eleven disciples actually saw, for again Luke does not provide us with detail. But the collective nature of the observation appears to put the “disappearing” of the fish in the ordinary perceptual domain. Our evaluation of the situation might be different if the observations were not collective although accompanied by some intersubjectively observable change to the ordinary world. In the experiences I investigated, for example, I came across a case in which a young man who had broken three neck vertebrae in a skiing accident claimed that Jesus healed him in a visual encounter. Eight days after being hospitalized in Bellingham, Washington, Barry Dyck woke up

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to find Jesus standing at the foot of his bed. Barry reports that when he awoke the next morning he was perfectly well. The alleged healing is an intersubjectively observable causal effect (or concomitant) of the visual encounter, but we cannot determine whether that encounter occurred in an altered, rather than ordinary, state of consciousness. The private nature of the encounter prevents one from claiming that it took place in an ordinary state of consciousness. Collective visual encounters, combined with intersubjectively observable effects, are strong candidates for occurring in ordinary states of consciousness, however. Luke gives a second appearance account in his Gospel, where two disciples walked to Emmaus with a stranger who evinced knowledge of the crucifixion and reports of the Resurrection.90 Luke describes how these three men walked a distance of about seven miles and conversed as people normally do. Nothing about this sounds like an experience in an altered state of consciousness, although the stranger’s alleged “instantaneous disappearance” as they sat down to eat is certainly remarkable. Two accounts in John91 describe similar acts of “instantaneous appearance,” strongly suggesting that the body of the risen Jesus was considered to be out of the ordinary in some way or other. These three events are consistently presented as having been intersubjectively observed and for that reason seem to be experienced in ordinary states of consciousness. We are given the impression that an alternate form of reality was experienced in ordinary states of consciousness. Insisting that these perceptual experiences occurred in altered states of consciousness is not explicitly supported by anything in the text. Pilch’s contention that the New Testament accounts all constitute experiences in altered states of consciousness is without specific support and is undermined by the little evidence that is available. Pilch remarks that many inadequate interpretations of the appearances have been offered in the literature of biblical theology,92 and he consequently offers his own. I suggest that it is the incompleteness of the appearance accounts that has allowed so many competing explanations to be offered for the appearance (and vision) phenomena. Contemporary experiences suggest that attempts to provide definitive interpretations of the appearance (and vision) accounts might always be inadequate. Pilch stresses understanding the appearances of Jesus within their cultural context and so looks for comparisons among visions of holy men in Mediterranean culture. No objection can be leveled at trying to understand experiences in their cultural context. I have argued, however, that another kind of evidence needs to be considered in evaluating the visual encounters with Jesus. Traditional Christian thought has claimed that Jesus, despite his humble Judean origins, has worldwide significance through a unique resurrection. Contemporary experiences interpreted as visual encounters with Jesus cast doubt on the claim that the original appearances were uniform and were obviously all altered states of consciousness. Perhaps altered states of consciousness illu-

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minate other kinds of experience mentioned in the New Testament, but they do not provide the Rosetta stone for understanding the appearance accounts. Having said this, I do agree that both contemporary and ancient experiences have mysterious aspects to them. However, visionary encounters, or whatever we might choose to call them, continue to give intimations of transcendent beings.

Conclusion Many educated Christians now seem to accept the critique of Christianity’s traditional claims arising from the Enlightenment and reinforced by contemporary science. They seem prepared to construe the range of religious experience to be restricted to subjective experiences that do not implicate the natural order in significant ways. John Wesley was keenly aware of the impact that the Enlightenment was having on traditional Christian beliefs. In his journal for May 25, 1768, for example, he wrote that the English in general and most men of learning in Europe, including many who believed the Bible, had “given up all accounts of . . . apparitions, as mere old wives’ fables.”93 Wesley observes that “if but one account of the intercourse of men with separate spirits be admitted, their whole castle in the air (Deism, Atheism, Materialism) falls to the ground.” His journals include a substantial number of reports of extraordinary events he had personally experienced or witnessed. Wesley’s views are seldom echoed among the Christian intelligentsia now, although exceptions can be found, of course. Robert Larmer, philosopher at the University of New Brunswick, has defended the possibility of miracles, as these phenomena are often called. His Questions of Miracle also includes references to several phenomena that he personally observed or has on good authority.94 William James’s classic on religious experience is perhaps indicative of the shift that took place in Protestant thought after the Enlightenment. In outlining the scope of religious experience, he defines religion as “the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine.”95 The varieties he illustrates focus on subjective experiences, in keeping with this way of approaching religion. James seems to be less interested in phenomena that appear to implicate the ordinary space-time-causal order, although he does include a chapter titled “The Religion of Healthy-Mindedness” in which he documents cases of physical healing. By “healthy-minded,” James means people “whose affinities are rather with flowers and birds and all enchanted innocencies, than with dark human passions, who can think no ill of man or God, and in whom religious gladness, being in possession from the outset, needs no deliverance from any antecedent burden.”96 According to James, a preoccupation with human failings and original sin—a religion of chronic

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anxiety97 —typifies people with an unhealthy mind. He mentions some of the effects of healthy religion: “The blind have been made to see, the halt to walk; lifelong invalids have had their health restored. The moral fruits have been no less remarkable.”98 He attributes the remarkable deeds of Jesus to his healthy attitude and accepts claims of what he calls “mind-cures” without objection, whether associated with religious belief or not. James is perhaps best known for his accounts of conversion, and while this phenomenon is not the only object of his attention, it occupies much of his attention. Most of the examples of religious experience in James’s classic do not implicate the natural order in a significant way. The notion of implicating the natural order is difficult to define, but it has been illustrated several times already. The Resurrection is an example of something that seems to have left its imprint on the space-time-causal order, inasmuch as a resurrection entails the disappearance of a corpse, which is something that detached observers might be able to corroborate. In chapter 1, I spoke about the way Jesus’ exorcism of the Gadarene demoniacs implicated the natural order, inasmuch as the behavior of the swine seems to have been causally affected by something that seems to have left the demoniacs. James does a masterful job of describing a wide range of experiences with profound religious import for those who undergo them, but most of these experiences do not implicate the natural order in a similar way. Of course, a critic might insist that whenever a conversion experience or a mystical experience (in James’s sense) is followed by a significant moral change, as evidenced in behavior, the natural order is implicated. This would be to miss the import of my remark, however. Revelatory experiences are only one kind of religious experience that people regularly report, and they might not be the most important kind. This raises the question of how many kinds we should recognize. Richard Swinburne argues that exactly five possible kinds exist by considering a series of mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive classes: An experience is either mediated by an ordinary object or it is not; it is either private or public; it is either capable of being described with ordinary vocabulary or it is not; and it is either unusual or ordinary.99 Caroline Franks Davis adopts a sixfold classification in her defense of the significance of religious experience to theism in general, and she offers many brief examples from accounts of religious experience across the world’s major religions.100 Some of her classes are identical or very similar to those that Swinburne identifies. The kinds that Davis identifies are as follows. 1. Interpretive experiences, in which an ordinary experience is interpreted within a religious framework 2. Quasi-sensory experiences, including “visions and dreams, voices and other sounds, smells, tastes, the feeling of being touched, heat, pain, and the sensation of rising up (levitation)”101

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This classification scheme is useful for attempting to bring some order into the welter of experiences that have religious significance for those who have them, but I am not sure whether it adequately identifies all the different kinds. For example, the intelligible but peculiar speech that is a feature of experiences giving rise to the belief in demon possession does not seem to be suitably captured, although it might be represented under the subcategory of “voices” in Davis’s quasi-sensory experiences. I surmise that a fuller study of religious experience would demonstrate the familiar fact that adequate classification schemes emerge as a result of examining the phenomenological detail of numerous actual cases. My experience with examining visions of Jesus suggests to me that religious experiences often have ambiguous and complex elements. Consequently, I consider introducing rigid ways of classifying such experiences as running the risk of misrepresenting them. The biblical texts present a large number of accounts that purport to describe experiences in which a transcendent realm was encountered. We might be justified in offering a different interpretation of these accounts if subsequent Christian experience appeared to be very different. However, experiential and mystical traditions in the church, whether Orthodox, Catholic, or Protestant, allege phenomena similar to those found in the Bible, reinforcing the view that the kinds of encounters described in its pages are genuine. Judaism has also maintained that experiences similar to those found in its Bible continue to be experienced by its mystics and saints. Religious experience is not always accorded respect in the church. This is perhaps understandable, for excesses have probably always occurred and may even have been encouraged on occasion. But experiences continue to occur that have intimations of beings who derive from the transcendent domain, not just for those who experience them, but occasionally even for the detached observer.

3 The Theory of Spirits

In point of epistemological footing the physical objects and the gods differ only in degree and not in kind. Both sorts of entities enter our conception only as cultural posits. The myth of physical objects is epistemologically superior to most in that it has proved more efficacious than other myths as a device for working a manageable structure into the flux of experience. —W. V. O. Quine, From a Logical Point of View The phenomena discussed in the last two chapters suggest that people from ancient to modern times have encountered forms of reality that transcend the known natural order. I surmise that even welleducated people from today’s Western culture who would witness an exorcism similar to that of the Gadarene demoniacs, or have an encounter comparable to Moses’ with the being in the burning thornbush, might think that beings beyond the known order are implicated in them. Allegations of phenomena no less compelling circulate today, although insufficient effort seems to be expended to collect them or give them the careful scrutiny they deserve. The first response to witnessing such events might well be to wonder if they actually took place. This would not be the response of just entrenched skeptics, I suspect, but one that most people might make, perhaps even those who have the experiences in question. Reports of phenomena that purport to implicate another order of reality are met with a remarkable amount of skepticism. The high degree of resistance to seemingly well-attested reports of UFOs, for example, is indicative of a widespread and deeply felt skepticism

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about the possibility that beings other than those ordinarily experienced might exist. People who live in an intellectual climate characterized by the rejection of transcendent beings are apt to approach even their own experiences in a disbelieving way. However, if reports taken to suggest the existence of such transcendent beings are thought to be reliable, then available natural explanations are likely to be reexamined with even more care in an effort to determine whether one has been overlooked or whether some such theory might be modified to explain the unexplained events. If this critical examination does not turn up a possible explanation, the stage is set for introducing one that postulates the existence of some person or thing outside the known order. For example, if no known explanation can be given for Moses’ experience, we will need to consider a theory that postulates the existence of something else. The details of the events for which explanations are sought, as well as the larger context in which the events occur, are significant in shaping the content of the theory. The story of Moses’ encounter, for example, provides us with important details, although it does not say exactly what Moses saw that induced him to describe the experience as one in which he encountered the angel of the Lord. The occurrence of intelligible speech is significant in itself, for reasons already outlined. The background to the encounter is also important, for the conversation is understood only by knowing this larger setting. The conversation focuses on the many years of slavery of the Israelites and presupposes Moses’ knowledge of the promise of land given to the patriarchs centuries earlier. Other features of the conversation are telling as well, for Moses is asked to take off his shoes, and reference is made to the staff in his hand. Since Moses had his shoes on and had his staff in his hand, these remarks imply powers of perception on the part of the one asking questions. The fact that this visible being (in this case) seems to have mysteriously appeared and then disappeared suggests that Moses encountered something having power either over itself, over its own observability, or over Moses’ perceptual faculties. Finally, the portion of the encounter in which the being refers to himself in terms denoting deity and gives unusual powers to Moses understandably evokes the conjecture that the being is the person he claims to be. In the story in question, a being is postulated with properties that serve as an explanation of the reported phenomena. The structured form in which I have presented the events that lead to proposing the existence of transcendent beings probably does not capture the simultaneous flood of possibilities and conjectures a person actually feels in such experiences, especially among those who are inclined to theorize by virtue of education or natural disposition. I surmise that they immediately outline various possible theories, assess them for plausibility, and also question that which they seem to have experienced. This process of developing conjectures to explain events having religious significance and then assessing their rationality is seemingly no different than that which occurs in science and in other

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settings where critical judgment is exercised. Explanations that postulate the existence of spirits can be reconstructed to form a rational system of thought, although this claim is very different than asserting that views about spirits as we usually find them—inside or outside the church—are rational. Defenders of naturalism often portray the belief in spirits as irrational, so in asserting that theories that refer to spirits could be rational, I am contesting an influential position. I am, of course, assuming that we are examining cases in which references to spirits are meant to describe real beings.

Spirits as Postulated Entities In the discussion of specific alleged phenomena the previous chapters, I have illustrated how spirits are hypothesized or postulated in explanations. General consideration of the reasoning involved is undertaken in this chapter—a kind of reasoning often called the method of hypothesis. The nineteenth-century American pragmatist Charles Saunders Peirce called it “abduction” in order to distinguish it from deduction and induction.1 Abduction typically begins with the observation that some phenomenon has been reported for which no adequate explanation seems available. If we are convinced that the phenomenon is real and that no established theory explains it, a preliminary conjecture is advanced that appears to provide an adequate explanation. The next stage in the process usually involves acquiring more information showing that this conjecture warrants consideration. When sufficient information is deemed to have been obtained, an explanatory hypothesis is advanced. Such a hypothesis must be free of contradiction, must be capable of being used to predict other phenomena, and should be compatible with other accepted theories. The method of hypothesis is widely used in science and ordinary life, where its value in helping us ferret out possible explanations has been established. The importance of the method of hypothesis for understanding claims about God is gradually gaining recognition in philosophical discussions, but deductive strategies are still widely considered. I illustrated the value of abduction in chapter 1 by considering the events said to have occurred in the exorcism of the Gadarene demoniacs. I mentioned that an observer who would have been present to hear the verbal exchanges between Jesus and the demoniacs, see the men begin to behave normally, and then see the strange behavior of the swine would have had reason to think that a causal connection existed between these elements in the whole event. The conjecture that a “somethingwe-know-not-what”—call it a “spirit”—passed from the demoniacs to the swine, which resulted in the healing of the demoniacs and the strange behavior of the swine, has some plausibility. Even a single indisputable event of this kind would be a significant basis for making such a conjecture. As cautious theorists, however, we might insist on many similar cases before we seriously

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advanced a theory of evil spirits. If we found a number of similar cases, we might responsibly advance the conjecture that evil spirits exist and are capable of acting in specific ways in specific circumstances. The theory is likely to be initially formulated in an imprecise and incomplete way, particularly if we have reason to think that the postulated beings are not readily observed or are unobservable. Hypotheses that postulate unobservable objects will obviously be more difficult to confirm than hypotheses that postulate observable objects, but this is a difficulty that all hypotheses postulating unobservable objects have to address. The ability of a conjecture to be used in prediction has been widely considered to be crucial for its plausibility. We could view Case 3 described in chapter 1 as the kind of event that is predictable on the basis of the theory of evil spirits that had been introduced earlier to explain the events involving the Gadarene demoniacs. The conjecture that holy or benign spirits exist can also be reconstructed with the method of hypothesis, as I have suggested in earlier remarks. The method of hypothesis is used in science to postulate both observable and unobservable entities. The concept of being observable is not as straightforward as it was once considered to be, for electron microscopes, computer technology, and other sophisticated kinds of equipment have expanded the concept from what it once was. Physicists now routinely speak about observing neutrinos, for example, which are subatomic particles that stream from the sun and pass through the earth as though it were not an obstacle.2 Neutrinos are “caught” in large vats of carbon tetrachloride placed in abandoned mines, as a few of these solar particles trigger chemical changes that can be detected. From the standpoint of common sense, neutrinos are not observable, but physicists tend to think otherwise, given their expanded understanding of observability. Some objects that are not actually observed are observable in principle, provided someone is present to witness an event when it occurs. Other objects seem unobservable by anything or anyone. Collisions between asteroids and the Earth are events that are observable in principle. However, because they rarely occur and people are usually unable to observe them or record them on film, they generally go unobserved. The conjecture that such collisions have occurred is now widely considered to be the cause of certain geological formations, the extinction of dinosaurs, and other natural phenomena. Postulating an event of this kind in Earth’s distant past is an example of the method of hypothesis being used to put forward a hypothesis about events that might be unobserved but are observable in principle. Describing an object as unobservable in principle is itself to advance a conjecture about the behavior of a postulated object. Spirits are often considered to be unobservable, but I do not think that a definite position is required on whether they are or on what “observable” must mean in order to advance the theory of spirits as a plausible explanation. The experimental work that led to claims that certain baryon particles

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exist3 is an instructive example of using the method of hypothesis to argue for the existence of unobservable entities. Photographic plates that are sensitive to the presence of charged particles were used to record the effects of collisions between known subatomic particles. The plate that led to the discovery first exhibited a straight line, then a blank, and then a V-shaped pair of tracks. The straight line indicated that the collision produced a charged particle. This particle was very short-lived, however, as indicated by the shortness of the line registering the effect of the initial collision. The baryon particle was postulated to correspond to the blank space and considered to have either no charge at all or one too small to be detected by the equipment. It, too, was considered to be unstable, given the shortness of the length of the blank on the photographic plate. The V-shaped tracks indicated that the baryon particle disintegrated to form two particles having the same electrical charge, which consequently repelled each other. We might not be able to assert in some final sense that the baryon particle is unobservable, for some future technology might “observe” its presence. The method used to conjecture the existence of this particle is abduction, and the same method can be used to conjecture that spirits exist.

Abduction, Induction, and Deduction Abduction allows theories that postulate new kinds of objects or properties of objects to be advanced to explain phenomena for which we have no other explanations. Abductive reasoning does not attempt to guarantee the completeness or finality of any proposed explanation; rather, the theories that are advanced and the objects that are postulated to exist with this method are conjectural and tentatively put forward. For those to whom the only responsible theories are ones that offer certainty, abduction will be a doubtful method. However, some the greatest scientific and intellectual achievements of the last two centuries are due to the use of abduction. Abduction allows human “knowledge” to be expanded in creative ways, beyond those that are available by means of strict observation. I am using “knowledge” here in a sense weaker than that generally favored by philosophers, for the vast “belief systems” that have been put in place by use of abduction might not be justified in the sense demanded of ordinary knowledge claims. Atomism, evolutionary theory, genetic theory, and the theory that unconscious states influence human behavior are four of the best known systems of integrated claims advanced in the last two centuries. They owe their place in Western culture to the use of abductive reasoning. These are not merely simple hypotheses designed to explain single events but vast conceptual networks that include concepts that refer to unobserved objects and properties of those objects, as well as observed objects about which controversy might not

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exist. The theory of spirits can be reconstructed as an instance of the use of abductive reasoning in order to provide a rational explanation for certain phenomena widely considered to be part of religion. Abduction is sometimes considered to be one kind of inductive argument, but it is strikingly different from other kinds of induction such as enumerative induction and certain arguments from analogy, which do not allow for the expansive opportunities in developing theories offered by abduction. Enumerative induction is widely used to defend the universal generalizations that express many laws of nature, such as the gas laws that assert that heating gases causes them to expand and that putting gases under more pressure causes them to contract. Of course, physical atomism now explains these regularities, which are known as Charles’s law and Boyle’s law, respectively. If induction is broadly construed to consist of ampliative inference—that is, a method of argumentation in which the conclusion of the argument amplifies or goes beyond the premises—then both the method of hypothesis and enumerative induction are forms of induction. However, enumerative induction does not allow introducing a completely new object or property into one’s reasoning, for it takes observed objects or properties of objects and generalizes from what has already been observed. The method of hypothesis, by contrast, allows us to introduce a new object or property into our thought, including objects we might never expect to observe, such as baryon particles, as well as objects not yet found, such as the tectonic plates hypothesized to account for continental drift. Abduction allows us to expand the domain of possible knowledge beyond what we have at present. Of course, we have to qualify our “knowledge claim” in such cases, for we can only tentatively advance the existence of these unobserved objects. Even if further testing initially bears out our conjecture, we might eventually be forced to abandon our theory. Abduction allows for creative expansion of our beliefs in a way that enumerative induction does not, but abductive reasoning also carries the significant risk of having theories advanced by its method overthrown. Enumerative induction is inherently conservative, but abduction is bold and risk taking in character. Its importance for science and all rational thought was clearly understood and articulated in the philosophic work of Karl Popper.4 Bertrand Russell, who is among the most influential twentieth-century philosophers, overlooked the profound difference between enumerative induction and abduction when he developed his famous version of empiricism in The Problems of Philosophy. This small book has been widely used to introduce students to Western philosophy and has been in print ever since it was first published in 1910.5 Russell presents the empiricist view of the foundations of knowledge in relation to the writings of such great philosophers as Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant. He accepts Descartes’s methodological gambit of doubting everything in order to discover that which is indubitable and argues that we can build upon items of immediate experience that are indu-

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bitable for each of us. To “establish” the existence of physical objects in the external world, for example, he says that we need to build on the indubitable foundation of immediate sense impressions, such as tactile sensations of smoothness and visual sensations of blueness. Inasmuch as the method of deduction does not allow us to infer the existence of physical objects from immediate sense impressions and because he does not want to define physical objects in terms of immediate sense impressions, as John Stuart Mill had done, Russell invokes induction as the method that will take him beyond sense impressions and other forms of indubitable knowledge to physical objects. Russell’s account of induction, however, focuses on enumerative induction. After examining its value and admitting its deficiencies, he suggests that enumerative induction can be used to defend the existence of physical objects in an external world. He does not seem to notice, however, that enumerative induction cannot make claims about physical objects plausible in the system that he has set up. He needs a creative form of argumentation that allows him to postulate the existence of objects that might be causally responsible for immediate sense impressions. He needs abduction to argue for the existence of physical objects that are unobservable, as he understands physical objects here; Russell considers sense impressions, not physical objects as these are conventionally understood, to be observable. Russell’s problem is one that traditional empiricism, which does not generally tolerate unobservable things, must eventually confront. If deduction and enumerative induction are the only methods deemed appropriate for extending knowledge beyond the domain of what is immediately given, theories that represent some of the most creative work in human history will have to be jettisoned. Logical positivism was empiricist in Russell’s sense, and the insistence of its defenders that atoms and subatomic particles were not real but only useful instruments for bringing coherence into innumerable observations is consistent with their refusal to embrace abduction, including its capacity to introduce unobservable objects as possibly being real. The impressive achievements of physics during the twentieth century have contributed significantly, in my opinion, to the demise of logical positivism and its associated form of empiricism. A comprehensive system of supposedly rational beliefs, which logical positivism once was considered to provide, is seldom refuted directly, but it is apt to be overwhelmed by other intellectual forces. This seems to have happened in the last century. The method of deduction offers a third way of approaching questions of existence, and it is the method most widely associated with attempts to “prove” the existence of God. The advantage that deduction has over any other method of argumentation is that it offers conclusive grounds for the conclusions that are put forward. Of course, these conclusions are no better than the premises from which the reasoning begins, but if the premises are deemed to be well established, the conclusions will be, too. All students of Western philosophy

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are familiar with Anselm’s and Aquinas’s attempts to provide deductive proofs for God’s existence. A typical part of the “proof ” is a definition of God, perhaps as a being whose nonexistence is inconceivable, as a being that is greater than any other conceivable being, or as a being who has all possible perfections and no imperfections. In the philosophic tradition established by Aristotle, adequate definitions are considered to identify the essential features of the object being defined. Essential to an eclipse, for example, is the interposition of an object,6 such as the interposition of Earth between the moon and the sun in an eclipse of the moon. Many modern philosophers question the idea that essential properties can be identified, thus also questioning Aristotle’s approach. However, his insistence that we begin with definitions of key terms still appears in most discussions of the existence of God. Another vital component in the method of deduction is the use of first principles from which, in conjunction with definitions, further propositions can be deduced. Aristotle discussed the importance of first principles and maintained that scientific knowledge is impossible “unless a man knows the primary immediate premisses.”7 He denies that we possess them from birth or that they are developed from other “higher states of knowledge”8 and argues that sense perception is the method by which they are known. Although Aristotle viewed all animals as capable of sense perception, he held that only humans have sense perceptions that persist. Persistent and repeated sense perceptions form memories, he said, and “out of frequently repeated memories of the same thing develops experience.”9 From a critical scrutiny of experience, the properly trained theorist—whom Aristotle would identify as a person trained in the science of “existence” or “being”—can discern what is universal. He says that the human soul is so constituted as to be capable of knowing what is universally true in the particular things that are being examined, although he admits to having difficulty in giving a clear statement of the mechanism by which this occurs. He says that the method by which the primary premises are known is capable of giving us knowledge of some principles that he describes as “unfailingly true” and “more knowable than demonstrations.”10 So he accords to first principles an intuitive certainty that is usually denied today to any propositions found in science. Euclidean geometry is a well-known example of a “science” in the sense understood by Aristotle. Many theorists now dispute whether geometry is a science in the sense in which physics, chemistry, and biology are sciences, for geometry does not appear to describe features of the actual world in the way that undisputed sciences do. Euclid’s geometry conceives of perfectly straight lines, for example, which no object or event in actual experience can exhibit.11 Euclid’s geometry consists of definitions, axioms, and deductions from these to further propositions known as theorems. Perhaps the best known example of a Euclidean definition is that a straight line is the shortest distance between

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two points. The best known and most controversial axiom in Euclid’s geometry is the fifth postulate, which asserts that if we have a straight line and a point outside that line, we can draw exactly one line parallel to the first line through that point. According to the method outlined by Aristotle, such a first principle would be knowable only by humans using sense perception, memory, and the capacity to see the universal truth in the particular case by intuition. Euclidean geometry, including the controversial fifth postulate, is still useful in architecture, surveying, and other practical sciences in which geometric reasoning is required, but mathematicians and scientists question its value for correctly understanding our four-dimensional world. When nineteenth-century mathematicians questioned the fifth postulate, non-Euclidean geometric systems were born. Even though theorists might argue over the scientific status of geometry and other branches of mathematics, this does not detract from the significance of Euclidean geometry in Western thought. It remains as an illustration of a model of the structure of science and has profoundly influenced discussions of method. Mechanics, as a branch of physics, has been reconstructed so that theorems are deduced from axioms (first principles) and definitions, and the method has been proposed in theology. Aquinas has the Aristotelian view of scientific method in mind when he outlines his approach to theology in Summa Theologica. He says that “sacred doctrine” or what we might today call “formal theology” is a science, which he understands to be an ordered body of knowledge in which propositions are deduced from other propositions that are either self-evident or knowable in some comparable way.12 Aquinas says that arithmetic and geometry are higher sciences, for they proceed “from a principle known by the natural light of the intellect,” whereas the lower science of perspective “proceeds from principles established by geometry.”13 He takes theology to be a higher science, for it uses as first principles the propositions revealed by God and deals primarily with God. Like other sciences, which are concerned more with general knowledge than with knowledge of particulars, theology addresses general topics and treats the information about particular events as merely illustrative. Aquinas regards certain parts of theology as deducible from propositions revealed to humanity by God. These propositions correspond to those that are intuitively known in such sciences as mathematics and physics. The indubitable character of first principles in theology arises from their having been revealed by God. Aquinas’s theology appeals to matters that reason is deemed to be capable of establishing, as well as to biblical revelation. Aquinas considers the existence of God to be capable of demonstration and to be a preamble to subsequent articles of faith.14 Such knowledge is a part of natural knowledge, he says, which faith presupposes. However, he allows that those who cannot grasp a proof might accept the existence of God “as a matter of faith.” When Aquinas argues that angels exist in large numbers, he quotes biblical texts, Aristotle, and var-

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ious church fathers such as pseudo-Dionysius, but he also offers arguments.15 Aquinas’s contention that some first principles of theology are known only by revelation is echoed in much subsequent Catholic teaching. The recent papal encyclical Fides et Ratio (Faith and Reason), issued in 1998 by Pope John Paul II, explicitly reaffirms the Catholic tradition of using revelation as a source of knowledge, evidently for the purpose of providing first principles from which further propositions might be deduced. John Paul II writes: “Once reason successfully intuits and formulates the first universal principles of being and correctly draws from them conclusions which are coherent both logically and ethically, then it may be called right reason or, as the ancients called it, orthos logos, recta ratio.”16 A few paragraphs later, he endorses the view that revelation is a source of knowledge that ought to be used in developing theology: “The knowledge which the Church offers to man has its origin not in any speculation of her own, however sublime, but in the word of God which she has received in faith”17 and “there exists a knowledge which is peculiar to faith, surpassing the knowledge proper to human reason, which nevertheless by its nature can discover the Creator. This knowledge expresses a truth based upon the very fact of God who reveals himself, a truth which is most certain, since God neither deceives nor wishes to deceive.”18 Then John Paul II goes on the reaffirm the words of the First Vatican Council, according to which two orders of knowledge exist that are “distinct not only as regards their source, but also as regards their object. With regard to the source, because we know in one by natural reason, in the other by divine faith.”19 Theologian Avery Dulles says that although John Paul II agrees with those who hold that God might be known apart from faith, he also thinks that such knowledge is completed by the revelation embedded and expressed in Christian faith.20

Limitations of the Deductive Method My reasons for adopting a methodological approach that makes the method of abduction central to a discussion of God, rather than the method of deduction, can now be described more fully. The method of deduction requires that we find first principles from which we might deduce the existence of beings that transcend the known natural order. The idea that a proposition asserting the existence of a transcendent being could be deduced from propositions describing features of the natural world seems counterintuitive, but advancing first principles that already presuppose the existence of forms of reality above the natural order begs the question in their favor. Deduction is a form of reasoning in which the conclusion of an argument extracts information that is implicit in the premises of

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that argument. Perhaps an exception to this principle could be said to occur when an argument has a contradiction embedded in the premises, in which case any proposition whatsoever can be deduced.21 Deductive argumentation is of interest only inasmuch as it draws attention to implications of the propositions that serve as premises, particularly those implications of which we might not have been aware, had we not examined the premises under deduction. What argument, we might wonder, could conceivably allow one to deduce that a transcendent being exists, especially one with infinite attributes, from premises that describe characteristics of the natural order? Deduction is a form of argumentation that is much more decisive than either induction or abduction, so its preference over either of the latter is understandable, but its value is questionable for addressing debatable forms of reality. The method of abduction, on the other hand, is much more tentative about what one can claim to exist. This method is conjectural, probing, open, and exploratory. It does not have a firm objective in place at the outset, as though it already knew what needed to be shown to exist. It requires that we approach the domain of human experience with no definite positions in place about what must be found. The proofs for God’s existence that make use of definitions of God as a being greater than which none is conceivable or as a being whose nonexistence is inconceivable are particularly transparent in their attempt to begin with propositions that will guarantee their theological objectives. The method of deduction provides an elegant structure for a body of propositions about objects whose existence is not in serious doubt, but it does not capture the reasoning involved in speculating about kinds of existing things and testing those speculations. Abduction attempts to do just that, however. Moreover, the deductive method misrepresents the vital existential questions concerning a transcendent reality, for it assumes that the only important theological question concerns the existence of God. The primary theological question facing Western society at present, as I see it, is whether a transcendent order of any kind exists, whether this order consists of one being or many. Human experience suggests that finite transcendent beings intent on human destruction might exist, as well as a benevolent being with extraordinarily great powers, perhaps assisted by other limited benevolent beings. However, finding first principles that might be used to demonstrate the existence of these kinds of being does not look promising. Focusing on an infinite being, to the neglect of supposedly finite beings that clearly admit of no precise definition in advance of inquiry, gives the impression that theology might be plausibly structured to conform to the requirements of the method of deduction. This impression is amplified by focusing on God, who is defined as the greatest conceivable being, or a being whose nonexistence is inconceivable, or a being with infinite properties, and so on. These special interpretations of God tempt

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us with the thought that useful implications might be found if they are incorporated into the premises. If phenomena suggesting the existence of finite beings were more in view, for which the method of deduction is obviously unsuitable, this method would be seen to be quite inappropriate. Popular culture’s interest in angels and evil spirits, as well as the theological views expressed in process theology, where some of the traditional divine attributes are called into question, signal the need to abandon the method of deduction in philosophical theology. The method of deduction seems to have had limited achievements in its more than two thousand years of history. Geometry and mechanics are frequently cited as examples of exact studies in which this method has been used to reconstruct the knowledge secured through careful reasoning, generally aided by observation. The method of hypothesis and induction have proven to be much more valuable resources for expanding our scientific knowledge in the last four hundred years. The striking achievements in physics and biology in the twentieth century have been substantially a result of abductive reasoning, although deduction and induction are also involved, inasmuch as they are needed for testing the conjectures that scientists have advanced. Defending the method of deduction as the primary tool available to theology is to exhibit a conservatism about method that science has long ago shed. In addition, deduction is an inappropriate method for defending the existence of entities that might well be unobservable. Judeo-Christian faith has been reluctant to regard God as directly observable, even in perceptual experiences in which a being seems to be glimpsed. God is deemed to be behind the appearances, so to speak. To preserve the possibility that God—and perhaps other spirits as well—might not be observable, we need a method that is suitable for exploring such a kind of being. The method of abduction has been used in connection with objects deemed to be unobservable, although subsequent investigations have sometimes shown them to be otherwise—as with genes—and is suitable for use in such investigations. The method of deduction, in the few cases in which it has proved useful, has been used with objects readily observed. Both geometry and mechanics, for example, deal with observable objects whose properties or actions approximate closely to the results predicted by the theories, which are idealizations of what can be expected in nature. To insist on the method of deduction in natural theology is to insist on a method having limited applicability, given its historical record. Philosophers’ discussions of the existence of God are remarkable in two ways. The arguments that tend to be given most consideration are those that make deduction central to their method; moreover, the existence of God is usually isolated from questions about the existence of other spirits. The attention that is given in most philosophy textbooks to “proofs” using the method of deduction tempts one into thinking that the method of deduction might be a profitable approach to the existence of God. Students of philosophy have been

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presented with these and other arguments, along with objections to them that often prove convincing, as though deduction is the appropriate method to establish the existence of objects, including ones that might be unobservable, if they exist at all. The vigor with which such arguments are refuted also implies that deduction might be a useful method for addressing God’s existence. Perhaps the intention of authors who review the attempted proofs and the criticisms of them might be to indicate to students of philosophy only the strategies that have been attempted in the history of Western philosophy. However, the prominence given to deductive arguments suggests that the method of deduction is seen as a plausible way to address questions of existence—including a being widely deemed to be imperceptible. Even a moment’s reflection on the method by which well-known sciences have recently defended claims about imperceptible or hardly perceptible objects reveals the impotence of the method of deduction for such an objective. Such sciences are never expected to deduce their existential claims from intuitively obvious propositions, nor are the objects whose existence is in question defined in advance of inquiry. The suggestion that the existence of God might be plausibly approached by using deduction seems counterintuitive. Philosophers’ preoccupation with the method of deduction is revealed in the fact that they often criticize the statements of others on the grounds that those statements do not follow from other well-attested statements. For example, an unsophisticated person’s belief that God exists or that a world external to our sense experience exists is often criticized because such a claim does not follow from other claims that are beyond reasonable doubt. Criticism of this kind suggests that the only appropriate method for advancing plausible conjectures is by deduction. It betrays a narrow view about the kinds of methods customarily used to defend beliefs. Deduction is an important method for testing conjectures, but it is not the only way to defend plausible views. Induction and the method of hypothesis also render certain claims plausible. The method of deduction reflects an ancient view about the structure of a rational body of knowledge. It began to be eclipsed by the method of induction in the seventeenth century, when theorists recognized that only a limited number of domains allowed the discovery of highly plausible first principles from which a body of propositions could be deduced. The methods of deduction and induction have been further eclipsed by the method of hypothesis in the last two centuries. Theologians and philosophers still wedded to the highly restrictive requirements of the method of deduction need to consider the significance of the method of abduction, especially where unobservable objects might be involved. Critical thought concerning an order of reality that appears to transcend the known natural order needs a method commensurate with the entities whose existence is postulated.

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Neutral Descriptions? According to the interpretation I am putting on spirits, these entities are postulated by a theory that tentatively asserts their existence and also tentatively assigns properties to them and relations to other things, including objects whose existence is not in doubt. In the story of Jesus exorcising the evil spirits from the Gadarene demoniacs, for example, evil spirits are postulated to exist as the story is told. Although we customarily distinguish the data needing explanation from the theories that are introduced to explain the data, the way this particular story is told presents the data and the story together. We might think that we do not need to tell the story so that it makes the evil spirits an integral part of it and that we could “translate” the story so that evil spirits do not appear. In Matthew’s account, for example, the men are described as first saying, “What have you to do with us, O Son of God?” but two sentences later the demons beg him, “If you cast us out, send away us into the herd of swine.” This way of describing the situation presupposes that evil spirits exist and somehow can generate speech through the men. Those who object to presupposing or asserting the existence of evil spirits might think that they can retell this story so that the men speak in both cases and that they can tell the rest of the story so that no reference is made to the demons leaving the men and entering the swine. They might suggest, for example, that this part of the account can be captured by saying that just as a remarkable calm came over the men to whom Jesus was speaking, the herd of many swine,22 which they had just been talking about and which had been quietly feeding, suddenly rushed into the sea and were drowned. Philosophers sometimes speak of descriptions of events that seek to avoid presupposing one theory or another as being topic-neutral. Of course, this new description presupposes the existence of many things in its own right, but these things are not likely to be as controversial as spirits are widely considered to be. Under the new description of the events needing explanation, we have a conversation in which two fierce and uncontrollable men, rather than demons, address Jesus as the Son of God and ask him if he is going torment them.23 Jesus then converses with them about the swine feeding nearby, and when he speaks words that have the sense of issuing a command, the fierce and uncontrollable demeanor of the men disappears, and the herd of swine rush off to drown themselves! This attempt at topic-neutrality might initially appear to capture the gist of what happened, but several items are left out. The words uttered by Jesus as a command to evil spirits are not fully captured, for example. Perhaps this is an inescapable feature of a topic-neutral description, for in the original account the command to leave is issued to the evil spirits, not the men! Making sense of this command, which is a performative utter-

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ance24 designed to accomplish some task other than description, is problematic without having a theory that gives it significance. In the end, retelling this story so that it does not presuppose the existence of doubtful beings does not work without omitting what appears to be a significant element. The original account embeds the theory of evil spirits and is an example of a description that is theory-laden rather than topic-neutral. Whether the phenomena that have been thought to occur in religious experience can be adequately described without using the language of spirits is debatable. In the opening section of chapter 1, where I related some of the alleged incidents that awakened me to the possibility of possession and exorcism, I used such terms as voice, enter, and leave in keeping with the descriptions typically given by those who believe that spirits exist. Although I wanted to give topic-neutral accounts of what had been supposedly experienced, so that my account would not presuppose the existence of controversial beings, I could not really do so without using this terminology. These terms were generally placed within quotation marks to alert the reader to the dependence of the descriptions upon the theory of spirits, about whose plausibility and correctness I wish to be open. Perhaps some of the phenomena alleged to be produced by spirits might be describable in topic-neutral language, however. An example of a topicneutral account can be found in Visions of Jesus concerning the experience of Pauline Langlois,25 who told me that she did not believe in a spiritual world until events seemingly involving no visible agents convinced her that an evil spirit, as she called it, was trying to scare her. Doors would slam behind her, plants would move across the table, water taps would turn on and off, music would come from the corners of the rooms, lights would go on and off, and furniture would move across the floor—all without any visible agent. She says that members of her extended family witnessed these events as well and helped her accept that she was not “crazy,” as she put it. These events culminated with the outside door opening and closing of its own accord, followed by the bathroom door opening, the bathroom light coming on, the bathroom door closing, the toilet flushing, and then a sequence of events corresponding to someone leaving the bathroom and then the house. The phenomena said to have taken place can be described without presupposing the theory of spirits, and the theory is introduced in order to account for the events. Data and theory are independently advanced in this story, rather than in a coherent whole whose parts cannot be separated without destroying its integrity. These examples show that the nature of theorizing needs to be carefully scrutinized in each instance of its use. Some phenomena appear to be describable without presupposing the existence of spirits, while other phenomena seem to be incapable of adequate description without presupposing their existence. Descriptions of phenomena involving the intelligent and appropri-

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ate use of language in contexts where the apparent source is not visible seem to present both data and theory in a coherent whole. Such examples demonstrate the close conceptual ties that exist between intelligible speech and persons, which have traditionally been understood as not restricted to human beings. A few pages earlier, I mentioned introducing the theory of spirits. This remark might have sounded peculiar, for it could be interpreted to mean that I am about to develop a new theory for a kind of being whose existence has been accepted since the dawn of literature. However, I am speaking about reconstructing the theory of spirits so that it might be seen as a domain in which one might find explanations for particular kinds of reported phenomena. Philosopher Wilfrid Sellars, for many years at the University of Pittsburgh, wrote about introducing the theory of mental states and processes in just the way that I want to speak about introducing the theory of spirits. Sellars was trying to show that much of the language of folk psychology—that is, references of “ordinary folks” to thoughts, sense impressions, memories, and other “inner” states or processes—could be viewed as a theory postulating entities and processes. To explain his approach, he indulges in some fiction. Sellars first imagines a state in human prehistory when language contains only descriptive terms that refer to “public properties of public objects located in space and enduring through time” and logical expressions, such as those that express negation, conjunction, existence, subjunctive conditionals, and so forth.26 He suggests that while the expressive powers of such a language might be impressive, these powers are not enough to speak about thoughts, choices, feelings, desires, wishes, and other distinctly mental states and processes that are common for us. Sellars then imagines that a genius called Jones comes along and develops a theory to explain the existence of spoken language. According to Jones’s theory, speech is the culmination of a process that begins with “inner” episodes commonly described as thoughts, desires, feelings, memories, and so on. Sellars does not suppose either that the “inner” episodes need to be located in a separate substance,27 which is how classical dualists about mind and body have understood mind, or that they need to be understood as physiological in character, which is how materialists of various kinds have understood them. They are simply entities postulated by a theory to account for verbal acts and other acts typical to human life. In Sellars’s story, mental states and processes are part of a theory that is introduced to explain human behavior. Jones’s theory supplements the descriptive accounts and accompanying theory supplied by the limited language found in prehistory. We can indulge in a bit of our own “anthropological science fiction” to explain what I mean by introducing the theory of spirits. Suppose that the “prehistorical language” consists of that characteristic of naturalists living at the beginning of the twenty-first century. They use the language of public

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objects in public space and the language needed to express logical relations, similar to the people in Sellars’s myth. In other words, they often use the language of “common sense” as this is found among all peoples of the world, who talk of “shoes and ships and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings” and many other things and their properties. In addition, they use the language of mental states and processes but in a way that does not assume that these states and processes are characteristics of a special substance known as mind or soul. They also embrace attempts to replace substantial chunks of the “commonsense framework” with concepts emerging from specialized sciences. For example, they no longer talk about the weight and the speed of a projectile but instead talk of its mass and velocity, respectively, as these are understood by physicists; they no longer interpret the sun as setting each day but see the earth as rotating on its axis once in approximately twenty-four hours; they think of lit candles as oxidizing rather than burning, although they might not say so in front of their acquaintances who lack scientific sophistication; they anticipate the day when the language of neurophysiology will replace at least some of the language of mental states and processes; and so on. In other words, they accept that the seemingly homogeneous conceptual domain of “common sense,” admittedly slightly different in various cultures and subject to slow evolution in each, is gradually being fragmented and replaced as specialized sciences focus on particular domains and offer more precise ways of describing and explaining. Finally, they recognize that language serves many more functions than describing and explaining phenomena, such as performing actions that are vital to ordinary life. The question these “fictional people”—if we can really call them that, since the educated classes within Western civilization seem to be populated primarily by them—ask is: Why should we introduce a theory of spirits of any kind into our account of the universe, whether the spirits are finite or infinite, good or evil, and interested in or disdainful of human affairs? In Sellars’s fictional world, the one who introduces the theory of mental states and processes is said to be a genius; in our fictional world, anyone who attempts to introduce a theory of spirits is seen as “a primitive” because this theory is deemed to serve no explanatory function or because some other theory is viewed as doing a better job of explanation. A defender of the theory of spirits must somehow show that phenomena exist for which the theory provides an explanation that seems more plausible than any alternative theory. The explanation might not be complete, and it might not withstand later attempts to alter or even replace it entirely, but it must have at least a measure of plausibility. The theory might make secondary use of the postulated entities of some other theories, but it must be seen to make some substantial contribution of its own, even if not an unassailable one. This is the challenge that must be addressed by those who deem religious beliefs to be capable of being rational.

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Defining Postulated Entities The terms that designate postulated entities generally have no meaning outside the theory that introduces them. The meaning of such terms is provided primarily by the causal links the postulated objects have to other objects whose existence is not in doubt. For example, the term “baryon particle” is understood to refer to an object whose existence is caused by the decay of its predecessor and whose decay, in turn, causes two particles with the same charge to be produced. Reference of the term “baryon particle” is supplied primarily by the causal role that the postulated entity bears to other objects, as revealed on the photographic plate. Of course, each of these designating expressions is set within a larger theory of physical microentities, whose meaning ultimately depends on observable phenomena with which these microentities are causally related. The fact that not even a track on a photographic plate reveals the presence of what is known as a baryon particle makes it a paradigmatic example of an unobservable object. Particles are generally known to exist by the photographic evidence that they leave, but this one is known by the absence of such evidence. We could avoid postulating its existence, but that would require postulating a discontinuity in space-time to correspond with the blank on the photographic plate. The conjecture that an uncharged, unstable object corresponds to the blank does not seem as implausible as a discontinuity in space-time that would allow a thing to disappear at one place and reappear some considerable distance away. Minds and mental states have also been convincingly construed as entities postulated by a theory, this time to explain human behavior. This rational reconstruction of the theory of mind emerged in the 1960s, as materialistic views about human nature began to dominate discussions of the mind-body problem and dualistic approaches were abandoned. Talk of mind and mental states was no longer interpreted as an attempt to refer to a nonmaterialistic substance, whose existence was doubted, but was understood to articulate a theory whose postulated entities, properties, or processes acquired their meaning primarily by the causal relationships these things bore to other things whose existence was not in doubt. For example, anger, as a mental state, came to be understood in its causal relationship to events that typically bring about such a state, such as rude behavior, as well as its causal relationship to events that are typically brought about by anger, such as shouts, rude gestures, and acts of retaliation.28 No mysterious nonmaterialistic substance needs to be postulated to understand such mental states. Such philosophers as Wilfrid Sellars, David Lewis, and J. J. C. Smart reinterpreted talk of mind and mental states so that it became respectable, in a way that conflicted sharply with earlier materialists who wished to repudiate all mention of mind and mental states. Admittedly, most of the theorists who adopted this new way of interpreting talk of minds and

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mental states were committed to a materialistic view of mind, primarily by finding neurophysiological correlates of what are commonly known as mental states or abilities. A similar causal mechanism can be understood as operating in the theory of spirits as I am reconstructing it. In the story of the Gadarene demoniacs, for example, the evil spirits are postulated as that which is causally responsible (in conjunction with unspecified features of the demoniacs) for fierce and uncontrollable behavior, acts of self-mutilation, intelligible but peculiar speech addressed to Jesus, and the swine rushing into the sea. The exorcism of them from the demoniacs is described as causally producing the peace and calm that come over them. A complex set of events in which the evil spirits are assigned a causal role secures their status as real in our world. Similar remarks could be made about the incident involving Moses and the burning thornbush. A being is postulated to explain the intelligible speech emanating from the thornbush and the powers said to have been given to Moses by that being. The tentative claim that this being is real is secured primarily by the phenomena it is said to have caused. The status of spirits is not secured for all time, of course, for the theory is subject to change and possible reduction, as are other theories and their postulated entities. A significant difference exists in ascribing a causal role to an unobservable object as opposed to an observable one whose probable effects are also observable. All students of inductive logic are familiar with John Stuart Mill’s account of five criteria by which a causal connection might be determined in the latter case. Mill observed, for example, that when one event (or object) occurred concomitantly with another, the first is likely to be the cause of the second. Also, if the second event is observed to be absent whenever the first is, the first is likely to be the cause of the second. These criteria for causal connections between events in the observable domain unquestionably constitute a precondition for reflecting critically upon plausible causal connections between unobservable and observable events. The sophistication required of the latter requires training in the former, which is simpler. Edward Schoen argues for a view about explanation in religion that is similar to that which I am advancing here.29 He observes that we can structure religious explanations so that they resemble scientific ones in which entities are postulated. Of course, patterns of phenomena must be identified before an explanation can be proposed in science, and he argues that a similar requirement must be met by religion. He shows how God might be suggested as causally responsible for events of various kinds, thereby providing a functional definition of God. This initial characterization can be supplemented with other characteristics, and these characteristics can be modified as still more information is acquired. Schoen observes that this approach to understanding God and doing theology allows for no more certainty than that provided by this method in scientific inquiry, but he argues that such inquiry meets recognized standards for rationality in the sciences.

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Although causality remains the most important relationship for grounding newly postulated entities, other kinds of relationships between postulated entities and other objects already accepted as existing also help to do so. Relationships of similarity, of parts and wholes, and of classes and members, for example, determine the kind of entity we are postulating. Spirits have often been considered similar to minds, for example, so having a well-developed theory of mind in place could conceivably illuminate what we mean when we talk about spirits. But minds do not need to be understood as nonmaterialistic objects to be construed as similar to spirits. They are simply entities postulated to account for human behavior or other kinds of observed phenomena. Anthropologist Felicitas Goodman begins one of her recent books on demon possession with the remark: “In order to understand possession, we need first of all to come to terms with the concept of the soul.”30 She goes on to talk about the repudiation of the soul in the behavioral sciences and the need to address the conflict between dualistic and naturalistic views of human nature. According to the view I am advancing here, however, no endorsement of bodymind or body-soul dualism is required to give credence to the theory of spirits. Spirits are postulated entities that can be understood primarily by the causal relationships they have with objects whose existence is not in doubt. Showing similarities between them and other entities postulated by theories, including minds or souls, might illuminate spirits, but spirits do not depend on the viability of the concepts of soul or mind. Like most theorists who talk about spirits, Goodman does not seem to appreciate the role that causality plays in helping us determine the reference of a term such as “spirit” and does not realize that we do not need to link spirits to a dualistic view of human nature. Unobservable theoretical entities have often been sharply contrasted with observable ones in discussing the structure of scientific theories, and the former have been defined in various ways, as philosophy of science has had to grapple with unobservables.31 However, David Lewis shows that we do not need to adopt this strict distinction in advancing mental states as postulated entities. He simply defines mental entities or properties by the causal relationship these things have to things whose existence we take for granted. This approach to understanding postulated entities has the advantage of not trying to build up a view of what exists from the ground up. We simply begin our theorizing at a point where the objects assumed to exist are not in doubt. Lewis’s approach has considerable advantages over the foundationalist approach taken by traditional empiricists, such as Bertrand Russell and many logical positivists, who tried to establish that immediate experiences were real and then sought to give credence only to what could be established on this foundation. Early discussions about observable and unobservable objects followed the empiricist approach to understanding unobservable objects, but Lewis’s approach does away with trying to supply foundations for everything. We can begin our theorizing about a new kind of postulated entity by beginning with objects ordinarily

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accepted as real, which philosophers have also generally accepted, despite occasional remarks to the contrary. If we approach the theory of evil spirits in the way suggested by Lewis and regard the story of the Gadarene demoniacs, say, as providing us with a causal nexus that partially determines the meaning of the terms of the theory, we would say that prior to the telling of the story the term “evil spirit” has no meaning, but after the story is told, it does. No formal definition in the sense widely demanded by exact inquiry, including much science and philosophy, has been provided, but meaning has been. This reconstruction does not attempt to capture how spirits were first introduced into human consciousness and language—this is lost to us, of course—but it does not need to do so. The reconstruction addresses semantic issues of meaning and reference for terms designating newly postulated entities by specifying their relationship to things whose existence is not in doubt. Postulated entities can be introduced by a small number of phenomena in which those entities are causally implicated. For example, in reconstructing the introduction of anger into folk psychology, we can content ourselves with identifying typical causes and effects of anger, rather than trying to identify all the phenomena in which anger supposedly figures. If verbal abuse, say, is selected as a typical cause of anger in introducing this postulated state, then anger is partially defined by this causal relation. An implication is that statements linking verbal abuse and anger become mere tautologies. For example, to say that verbal abuse causes anger is to say no more than that verbal abuse causes that which is caused by verbal abuse. Once anger has been introduced as a postulated entity, however, it can provide an account for other behaviors. If verbal abuse of a person is followed by bouts of depression and selfdeprecation in that person, but depression and self-deprecation have not been used to introduce anger into the theory, we can offer the conjecture that anger causes (in conjunction with other factors, not all of which will be known) depression and self-deprecation. This statement is not a tautology but is one that purports to add to our understanding of the causal role of anger. All of the statements in which “anger” is found contribute to its meaning, although only selected phenomena are needed to introduce the term. Another way of approaching the question of how a theory introduces terms that designate postulated entities would be to interpret every occasion of the use of such terms in a theory as doing so. The disadvantage with this approach is that the term changes its designation every time a theory undergoes a change. This issue has been discussed with respect to the successive theories that have been put in place to describe electrons. An early-nineteenth-century theory of the structure of the atom described electrons and protons as homogeneously distributed throughout the atom. A later version of this theory described the electrons as orbiting about the nucleus in spiral paths. The theory accepted today describes electrons as occupying orbits at discrete and fixed

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distances from the nuclei. If the complete account of electrons is considered to designate them, rather than typical causes and effects, the successive theories would not be about electrons simpliciter but about electrons1, electrons2, electrons3, and so on. Since we are trying to understand the properties of something that is hypothesized to exist but whose properties are not immediately accessible, because the objects having those properties are not observable, an approach that interprets a complete account to designate terms strongly suggests that things are created by theories. The advantage of an approach that requires only typical causes and effects to introduce designating terms is that it retains the idea that the purpose of critical inquiry is to investigate the characteristics of objects deemed to be real. Similar remarks apply to the theory of spirits. The kind of phenomenon reported in the story of the Gadarene demoniacs, for example, as well as other phenomena considered to constitute either typical effects of spirits or typical causes of their influence, can be used to introduce spirits as postulated entities. These determine the primary designation of spirit and related expressions. Other uses of the terms central to this theory then refer back to the phenomena used to introduce the postulated entities in the first place. A similar strategy can be used to introduce terms denoting holy beings. An implication of this approach to introducing terms is that the claim that the theory of spirits is devoid of meaning is mistaken. The usual approach to definition demands that the person introducing a new term clearly specify its meaning in advance of using it. This is a reasonable demand to make in many contexts, and in the grand tradition established by Aristotle of structuring theories as deductions from first principles and definitions, terms were defined by locating the object it designated in a larger class—typically the genus or family—and then identifying the feature of the object that made it unique in its class. Aristotle is famous for having defined a human being as a rational animal, and he defined a house as a building having a certain form and function, for houses belong to the class of buildings and are distinctly marked by having a certain form and serving some particular purpose.32 These definitions are appropriate for the commonsense domain, where entities are generally observable and are already classified in thought so that they belong to a structured hierarchy. However, this kind of definition is not possible in any meaningful sense with respect to unobservable entities. Because we know so little about them and can only glean through indirect means the characteristics they seemingly possess, if they actually exist, we cannot locate them within a larger class already known to us, and neither can we readily distinguish them from other objects in that class by using a criterion that appeals to observable characteristics. Contextual definition of the kind previously outlined is needed for unobservable objects. When theorists insist on approaching the existence of God as requiring a definition in advance of what might be found by conjecture, testing, and careful observation, they block

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the use of the method of abduction and insist on a method that cannot illuminate the process by which the conjectured qualities of postulated entities are known. The approach I have outlined here, about the mechanisms that assign meaning to terms and help to determine their reference, demonstrates the significance of narratives to theories. What I am calling “narrative” is called by other names in scientific inquiry. Journal articles that describe the physics experiments that give credence to postulated entities are not normally called “narratives,” but they could be, for they document actual experience. Western society is remarkable for the assiduousness with which phenomena observed in the laboratory are carefully written up and widely disseminated in refereed journals and for the disdain with which religious experiences are regarded. However, just as laboratory findings provide the lifeblood of the theoretical sciences that are advanced to explain these findings, experiences that purport to be encounters with forms of reality beyond the known natural order provide the lifeblood for the empirical claims that are at the heart of much religion, including much traditional Christianity. The decline of Christianity in intellectual culture, simultaneously with the rising influence of the physical sciences, is consistent with the differing amounts of attention given to the data relevant to theory formation.

Kinds of Unobservable Objects Scientists and philosophers have debated the relationship between the physical atoms out of which ordinary objects are composed and those ordinary objects themselves. Arthur Eddington formulated the “two-table” position in his Gifford Lectures more than seventy years ago: The “ordinary table” is solid, colored, and made of wood, whereas the “scientific table” is mostly empty space occupied by electrons and other subatomic particles moving at great speed. He considered the “scientific table” to be real but the world of external objects to be “a world of shadows” and “all symbolic.”33 Scientific realists construe such constituent subatomic objects to be real, although they are usually hesitant to assert that the theories we now possess are unreservedly true. These theories are generally understood to be approximately true, for critical inquiry into the properties of objects in these domains has resulted in a succession of theories, each of which is usually deemed to be an improvement on its predecessor. The notion of approximate truth is, of course, controversial, for it seems to imply that a complete account might eventually be provided and that we would be able to recognize it when we had found it. Both of these implications seem implausible, however. The advantage of using approximate truth is that it is a way of acknowledging not only that something is real in an ultimate sense but also that our descriptions of this reality probably are flawed. The

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epithet “true” can seemingly be appropriately applied to both commonsense descriptions of objects and scientific descriptions purporting to speak about the constituent microentities of those objects. “A gray squirrel is sitting on my front porch” can obviously be true, and the counterpart to this that uses the language of microentities, which is an objective evidently very far from being realized, can be deemed approximately true. The reality of which these accounts speak is one, but the language used to describe it is not. The language of microentities depends on, but moves beyond, commonsense language. Many theories postulate entities that are not constituents in the sense that the microentities of physics are. For example, mental states and processes, genes, phlogiston, the ether once postulated as a substance “conducting” gravitational attraction between masses, tectonic plates, and the unconscious found in Freud’s psychoanalytic theory are not constituents of objects deemed to be real in the commonsense framework. The question of whether these postulated entities are real takes a different form than the question posed with respect to the microentities of physics. In the case of ordinary objects and microentities, the question is whether we should count both as real, in that microentities constitute ordinary objects. However, the questions about such things as mental states, tectonic plates, spirits, and so on are whether we have grounds for asserting the existence of the postulated entities in the first place and whether we might discover other theories having greater explanatory and predictive power or better coherence with other established theories. Spirits, like mental states and processes, have long been part of the commonsense framework. As this framework has come under critical scrutiny, some parts of it have been abandoned in favor of superior descriptive and explanatory accounts, and other parts have been kept and refined. Spirits have unquestionably served an explanatory function for phenomena whose existence is not in doubt. Everyone is agreed that some kinds of mental illness were once explained by reference to evil spirits. However, the plausibility of explanations adverting to spirits is now widely questioned. For example, psychotherapist Carl Goldberg introduces his study of the causes of malevolent behavior with the observation that attempts to ascertain the existence of a supernatural diabolical force have been fruitless. Based on his training as a psychologist and his experience as a psychotherapist, Goldberg offers explanations of malevolence without reference to any transcendent forces or beings, remarking that to limit oneself to explaining destructive behavior “by supposing the existence of a pervasive supernatural force that takes possession of people . . . would in effect be conceding that our intelligence and understanding are limited to the level of the primitive.”34 Although he sometimes uses therapeutic techniques that make use of classical sources that portray diabolical possession as real, Goldberg argues that six concepts drawn from social and psychological processes can fully explain malevolence: shame, contempt, rationalization, justification, inability or unwillingness to self-examine,

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and magical thinking. His reconstructions of patient histories and accounts of therapeutic sessions, many of which have resulted in a much greater degree of psychological wholeness in his patients, are designed to demonstrate the superiority of his theory to any that adverts to diabolical possession to explain human malevolence. Goldberg sets a relatively easy task for himself, however, for he does not show how his theory would account for most of the kinds of phenomena discussed in chapter 1, including those alleged in Cases 3 and 4 and in the exorcism of the Gadarene demoniacs, which provide a much more impressive basis for the plausibility of the theory of spirits than malevolent behavior. Restricting his discussion to malevolent behavior, Goldberg argues that his six concepts are adequate to the explanatory task—and they probably are. The theory of phlogiston is an instructive historical example to set next to the traditional theory of spirits, for spirits are widely considered to be well along the way to being discarded in just the way that phlogiston was discarded in late-eighteenth-century chemistry. Phlogiston was once postulated to account for common chemical changes, such as burning, rusting, and calcification. Most substances capable of decomposition were thought to be composed primarily of phlogiston. Wood and similar flammable materials, for example, were thought to have a considerable amount of phlogiston. The application of heat to such materials was thought to release phlogiston, so that a relatively small amount of ash and vapor were the only residues left behind after the phlogiston had escaped. This theory was found to be inadequate, however, when some substances were found to weigh more after being heated than they weighed before heat was applied. The suggestion that phlogiston might have “negative weight,” so that its release could cause a substance to weigh more after being heated (!), was a desperate measure to save the theory. The work of Antoine Lavoisier and other chemists more than two hundred years ago provided scientists with a competing explanation for the changes thought to be due to the loss of phlogiston, and the theory of phlogiston was completely abandoned. The history of science is said to be littered with theories that, along with their postulated entities, have been abandoned. The changes that occur among the chemical elements as succinctly summarized in the periodic table have taken over the explanatory roles once served by phlogiston. Phlogiston has not even survived in a transmuted form, for we cannot readily identify its causal role with that of some other element, for example, oxygen. The terms introduced by a theory might have meaning, but that does not provide a guarantee that the objects designated by those terms exist. The term phlogiston was given a meaning in the theory that purported to explain its role in natural processes such as burning and rusting, but the accompanying theory’s account of why wood burned and iron rusted proved to be wrong. The theory of spirits, like the theory of phlogiston, is now often considered to have no explanatory value at all, perhaps because of deficiencies in the theory when

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it is compared with scientific theories or because the phenomena once explained by reference to spirits are no longer considered to occur at all. The basic questions raised by the theory of spirits are whether it has any explanatory value and, if it does, whether it can resist reduction so that the entities it postulates are fundamental to an adequate view of the universe.

Phenomenalism and the Theory of Spirits Anglo-American philosophy has largely abandoned its former interest in logical atomism—that is, the smallest units of meaning—and has made physical atomism the focus of sympathetic attention. Whereas philosophers once considered sense impressions to be prototypical of what is real, they are apt to consider the atomic constituents of ordinary objects to be the entities to which the epithet “real” belongs in the fullest sense. This shift away from immediate sense experience might tempt us to think that we might dispense with the need to attend to the phenomenological details of experience, but this is not the case when we consider religious experience. However, we do not need to embrace phenomenalism to appreciate the importance of paying attention to phenomenological detail. Even though Anglo-American philosophy has abandoned the “myth of the given”—that is, the claim that immediate experience might serve as an indubitable foundation for making justified knowledge claims—we cannot afford to abandon the centrality of immediate experience in understanding religious experience. The ancient story of Moses makes reference to “fire” that did not consume the thornbush, and people living today refer to remarkable perceptions that would normally be construed as visual anomalies. For example, Paula Adkin reported a flame hovering above a floor that seemed to consume nothing, and Alan Shore reported an inexplicable radiance over the head of a visitor to the Louvre.35 These features of their experiences are linked in an important causal way to the entities they postulated as their source. The description of the place of these phenomena in the theory of spirits needs to start with their immediate experience, in just the way that the philosophic tradition shared by Descartes, Berkeley, Hume, Russell, and many others demanded. We should resist these philosophers’ insistence, however, that the analysis of ordinary perception always needs to begin there. Paula referred to the “object” before her as a flame of fire, and although she cannot be faulted for having chosen this terminology to describe it, we need to make a distinction between flames of fire, as these are ordinarily understood, and what she apparently saw. Ordinary fire is not just something that appears to us as a flickering light, having a yellow or orange or blue color, depending on the chemical composition of what is burning, but it also is something that usually generates heat, burns flesh, consumes objects, gives off

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smoke and an aroma, and produces other effects. Although no definitive boundaries exist that allow us to unfailingly define what is fire, we who use language competently generally agree on the appropriate criteria for the use of this term. When an object deviates too far from the requirements set down for the appropriate use of a term, we hesitate to use it. Paula hesitated slightly in describing what she saw as a flame of fire, although she exhibited this as much in her “body English” as in her speech. Reports of anomalous experiences are typically described hesitantly and with qualifications. What appeared to her seemed to be fire, and on the basis of the visual elements alone she described what she saw as fire, even though it did not conform to the other criteria usually employed for calling something “fire.” Using the language of phenomenalism, we might say that she had sensory impressions of flames of fire.36 The question that this experience poses, of course, is whether anything existing external to her was represented by, corresponds to, or is correlated with her perceptual experience. The concepts of representation and correspondence that I have just used have come under criticism for various reasons, not least of which is that a defender of the claim that a perception (of redness, say) might represent or correspond to an object (the red color of a brick, say) is not in a position to know the brick apart from perceptions in order to compare those perceptions with the object. Moreover, we cannot establish that properties of perceptual experience allow for meaningful comparisons with properties of objects. Instead of speaking of perceptions representing or corresponding to objects, we could perhaps speak of perceptions as being correlated with (supposed) objects, taking advantage of the imprecision of this term to frame the questions that experiences such as Paula’s evoke. Whether this vaguer expression would render our analysis here more plausible is a matter of opinion. Some might think her experience was hallucinatory, that is, that no object external to her corresponded with or was represented by (or was correlated with) her visual perception. In spite of the many objections advanced against the notions of representation and correspondence, they are virtually indispensable in discussing perceptual experiences of the kinds in question now. These concepts are so closely linked with the concept of hallucination that to question their viability is also to call into question the concept of hallucination, but a discussion of religious experience can hardly be undertaken without the concept of hallucination. However, I do not think that complexities arising over giving an accurate account of the relation between sense experience and objects that are sensed should unduly obstruct the analysis required here. In reflecting on Paula’s experience, assuming that it happened much as she described it, we might say that her visual sensations corresponded with something we should perhaps call “t-fire” rather than “fire.” Here the prefix “t” is added to “fire” to indicate that a theory embedded in a narrative postulates something that possesses some of the causal effects of fire but fails to exhibit

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properties in keeping with other well-established criteria for something’s being fire. Although many other people in addition to Paula have reported seeing something that looked like fire but did not behave like normal fire, this kind of experience does not belong to a language community in a way that has allowed language customs to be established. Because we do not have another word to function as the shorthand for “something that appears visually as fire but lacks its other usual properties,” we have to resort to a more complex way of presenting the unique perceptual elements reported. “T-fire” uses some of the criteria for the correct use of “fire,” but it does not use all of them. We might be tempted to say that Paula’s experience was analogous to experiencing fire, but this way of describing it forces the concept of analogy to do all the work. As soon as the notion of analogy is invoked, accounts of the relevant analogies with fire, as well as any disanalogies, which probably are numerous, are required. When the notion of causality is invoked, however, we can plausibly assert that something-we-know-not-exactly-what has caused Paula’s visual perception of flame. This way of describing the situation allows for the possibility that the visual perception was hallucinatory, rather than from a source external to her. It also allows for the perception to have its source in a domain of reality other than the one normally experienced. The concept of hallucinatory experience requires some reference to one thing corresponding to or representing another, however inexact or crude these concepts of correspondence or representation might be. Phenomenalism is an interesting philosophical position, for it adopts no concept of correspondence or representation and so finds itself hampered in elucidating the concept of hallucination, which it retains. The differences between the pink rat said to be hallucinated by those with delirium tremens and the gray rat seen in real life are analyzed by phenomenalists in terms of the differences between the degrees of orderliness of the relevant sense impressions. Sense impressions of a gray rat running across the floor, unlike sense impressions of the pink rat, are considered to be regularly accompanied by sensations of food being eaten and traps being sprung. Because phenomenalists consider sense impressions to be constitutive of what is real, both hallucinated “objects” and “objects” that are normally seen (as realists about physical objects ordinarily understand this) must be counted as real. One form of reality, however, is more orderly than the other. This way of analyzing the differences between hallucination and veridical seeing (so-called) might seem strained, but phenomenalism has an answer for everything and seems to be impervious to falsification. Reasons for its abandonment among Anglo-American philosophers in the latter half of the twentieth century must consequently be found elsewhere. Noncognitive factors are probably included, inasmuch as phenomenalists seem to have recognized that the problems that they were pursuing and the positions that they were defending made their discipline too remote from the interests of society and even the interests of academia. The earlier

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popularity of phenomenalism among Anglo-American philosophers allowed philosophers to be caricatured as academics who were not sure of the existence of even themselves. The attention now being given by philosophers to logic and artificial intelligence; to science, especially cognitive science; and to ethics has made their critical work better known in society and the academy. The peculiar phenomena involving fire, radiance, and halos seem to have been a consistent feature of Christian experience during the last two millennia. The Greek Orthodox Church speaks about the uncreated light and reports that some of its mystics are said to have perceived it. Although some sectors of the church seem to be interested in suppressing reports of such experiences, especially reports from people whom some would deem to be casual mystics, I am more suspicious of the experiences of those who lock themselves up in rooms for many years, engage in many kinds of sensory deprivation, and then emerge reporting that they have seen God. I prefer the naivete´ of a girl of eleven, who, having no history of self-recriminations, fasting, excessive piety, or attempts to generate spiritual experiences, reports what she interpreted as the visible presence of the Holy Spirit, seemingly similar to that reported on the first Pentecost. Although the theory of spirits might occasionally introduce special terms like t-fire into its vocabulary, not all of the terms it employs should be expected to be special. One of the key terms in elucidating the theory, for example, is “person.” The concept of a person is not a simple one, of course, as debates about the metaphysical issues surrounding abortion and euthanasia have shown. We should assume that all of the difficulties around the term “person” in those debates are capable of resurfacing in any discussion of spirits that uses the concept of a person in elucidating probable properties of spirits. The criteria associated with the concept of person include intelligible and appropriate speech, as I have already discussed. The account that Pauline Langlois gave of some of the strange events that led her to believe in spirits points to another criterion. Consider the sequence of events she reported, in which the outside door opened and closed as though a person had entered her house, followed by the bathroom door opening, and so on. Although no voice was heard, or form seen, Pauline had the impression that a person had entered her house, used the bathroom, and then left. The marks of intelligence and deliberation exhibited here by what was considered a spirit satisfy criteria for identifying a person, so that describing the acts as performed by a person (or perhaps a t-person) seems plausible. Even though the physical form generally associated with a conventional person is missing, another criterion seems to be satisfied. Experiences of apparitions in which a form is seen, especially a form that is highly similar to the forms that ordinary humans take, obviously satisfy yet another criterion for being a person. We generally think that a person is present simply by seeing a form, without requiring of it either intelligent speech or acts exhibiting deliberation. Specifying the complete criteria for be-

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ing a person is probably impossible, given the complexity of the concept and its primitive place in conceptions of the world. Whether we should count the sequence of events reported by Pauline Langlois as the acts of a “person” or acts of a “t-person” depends on a judgment concerning the extent to which conventional criteria for persons are satisfied. Similar remarks could be made about the voices sometimes reported that are deemed to come from a holy being or an evil spirit. In my examination of reported apparitions of Jesus, for example, many people who heard the figure speak usually did not see his lips move and often did not consider the voice to come from the direction of the figure. Instead, the voice seemed to come “from within themselves.” We might raise the question of whether they heard a voice or a t-voice. Perhaps we also need to question whether they heard something or t-heard something. As I mentioned earlier, the analysis must begin with the phenomenal elements as reported by those who have the experiences, but we do not need to endorse all of phenomenalism to appreciate the centrality of sense impressions in understanding and analyzing certain kinds of religious experience. The complexity of the theory of spirits and the kinds of entities it either postulates or “borrows” from other theoretical domains can be appreciated by looking at another complex theory, namely, physical atomism. Atomism introduces many terms that are understood only in the context of the theory, such as “proton,” “neutron,” “orbital,” “spin,” “particle,” “wave,” and “electron jump.”37 These concepts are contextually defined, in part by postulates that primarily use concepts that are unique to atomism. For example, the statement that atoms are minimally constituted by electrons and protons, with protons found in the nucleus and electrons occupying orbitals at discrete distances from the nucleus, primarily uses concepts unique to atomism. Among the most vital statements in atomism, however, are those that causally link its postulated entities and their properties with observable phenomena. An example of this is the statement that the spectral lines of hydrogen—an observable phenomenon—are produced by exciting the electrons so that they occupy a higher orbital. The phenomena in the observable domain are themselves described by using an array of concepts, some of which appear to reflect observations directly, while others do not. The concepts that would be employed in attempting to articulate a complete theory of spirits would also be complex and varied. We could describe the theory of spirits as comprised of a vast network of statements expressed in concepts of various kinds. Some concepts are found only in this theory, but many belong to the domain of common sense. The most important feature of this theory is its attempt to provide an explanation for phenomena that appear to be otherwise inexplicable.

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Incorporeal Being The approach I have taken in reconstructing the theory of spirits does not imply anything about their status as material or immaterial. In that respect, it breaks with traditional ways of understanding the notion of spirit. Among the more than thirty definitions of “spirit” found in the Oxford English Dictionary is the following: “A supernatural, incorporeal, rational being or personality, usually regarded as imperceptible at ordinary times to the human senses, but capable of becoming visible at pleasure, and frequently conceived as troublesome, terrifying, or hostile to mankind.” This definition nicely captures one of the primary senses with which the term is used, and I do not doubt that many who talk about spirits—whether they affirm or deny their existence—think of them as incorporeal and supernatural. However, this definition is more definite about the characteristics of spirits than I am prepared to be. Consider the claim that God raised Jesus from death and caused him to live again in a glorious and immortal form, as this has been understood in Christian tradition. Two beings are postulated in this statement of Christian dogma. Jesus in a resurrected form is postulated to account for the fact that his corpse evidently could not be found after his burial and for subsequent appearances of him. God, moreover, is postulated to account for the Resurrection. Christian tradition is clear in asserting that Jesus in his resurrected form is corporeal and supernatural and that God is incorporeal and supernatural. The empirical approach I am advocating, however, approaches attributions of corporeality and incorporeality with more caution. The concept of corporeality derives from the commonsense domain, which also provides the criteria for its correct and incorrect uses. An ordinary corporeal object is generally capable not only of being seen but also of being touched. The cup we hold in our hands and the tea inside it are corporeal objects, although the air we breathe and the rainbow we admire are not as obviously corporeal. “Objects” that appear in apparitions are often construed as incorporeal, for although they might be seen, they do not appear to be generally understood as capable of being touched. Some of those who report apparitions would disagree with this characterization of apparitions. For example, the woman who is said to appear to the visionaries from Medjugorje as the Virgin Mary is also said to be touchable, and quite a number of the visionaries whose experiences I described in Visions of Jesus said that they touched the being that appeared to them. The concepts of corporeality and incorporeality belong to the commonsense domain, where approximate criteria for their correct application have been developed. Even in the commonsense domain, however, objects are sometimes difficult to classify. By using our normal sense of touch, we experience objects as hard, soft, rigid, penetrable, malleable, and in many other ways, depending on what is

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touched. These properties that we normally ascribe to objects take on a different character when we approach them from the standpoint of atomism. Ice is hard to the touch, but water is easily penetrable by the human hand. The difference is understood in terms of the rigid structure that water molecules acquire when they undergo a change of state, in relation to the solidity of the hand’s molecular structure. Many of the properties ascribed to objects by common sense must be understood as relations from the standpoint of atomism. A human hand finds ice to be incapable of being penetrated, but a neutrino has no difficulty passing through ice—or anything else, for that matter. Atomism has undermined the authority of common sense to determine “objective” properties of objects. We cannot raise coherent questions about the corporeality of molecules because the concept of corporeality belongs in the commonsense domain, but molecules do not belong there in as obvious a way. If we were to insist on the continuing value of the concept of corporeality for understanding experiences having religious import, that would be tantamount to insisting on addressing such experience only from the standpoint of common sense. Such an approach would ignore the impact of several centuries of critical reflection on theories that purport to describe what is real, including theories that postulate unobservable entities. I consequently wish to remain neutral on the question of whether spirits are corporeal and instead draw attention to the difficulties involved in discussing forms of reality that might not fit nicely into either the domain of common sense or that of physical atomism. I recognize that God has been consistently described in Christian tradition as incorporeal. However, the background against which traditional theology has been undertaken has generally been one in which a commonsense view of the world, rather than an atomistic view, has been assumed. This is even the case when theology has been Platonistic, inasmuch as Forms are contrasted with the material objects of common sense. The influence of modern physics on theology is perhaps best seen in the work deriving from Alfred North Whitehead, but the full import of atomism for altering general views of the world in relation to theology has yet to be appreciated.

The Principle of Credulity An important methodological principle in the examination of religious experience is the principle of credulity, which Richard Swinburne and Carolyn Davis both endorse in recent books.38 This principle asserts that the way things appear are probably the way they are, unless we have reason to question this. The principle of credulity is obviously important for shaping our responses to the alleged experiences of such persons as Paula Adkin and Alan Shore. Swinburne and Davis use it in conjunction with the principle of testimony, which

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asserts that reports from those who claim to have directly experienced something ought to be accepted, unless we have reason to question these reports. The principle of testimony is meant to address the question of whether people are trustworthy or deceptive about what they report. However, the principle of credulity is relevant to the reports of people whom we deem trustworthy, suggesting, for example, that we might be justified in doubting reports of people who cannot readily distinguish dreams from real life. Such people might not engage in willful deception but could suffer from another kind of impairment that makes their reports questionable. The principle of credulity is an example of a principle that seems to obtain its credence from reflecting on ordinary experience and the common belief that the ways things appear is the way they generally are. For example, if friends back from sailing around Africa look as if they have lost a lot of weight, they probably have, and if a car looks as if it has recently been painted blue, it probably has been. Behind this principle, however, is a commitment to endorsing a commonsense approach to knowledge, which seems to be just what is open to question when approaching perceptual religious experiences of the kind in question in this book. When a commonsense approach is taken to objects, we can often confidently say that they are the way they appear. The pen I hold in my hand looks maroon, so it probably is maroon, for nothing about my visual abilities is generally called into question. Moreover, when I remark about its maroon color to others, they never object or look at me peculiarly. Events of these kinds appear to establish beyond reasonable doubt that the pen is the way it appears, and consistent tests of my perceptual powers might even establish my reliability as a reporter of events in the ebb and flow of normal life. However, what would we do if I were to report that I had seen a flame hovering above the floor without consuming anything, just after a time of prayer during which a preternatural sense of peace had pervaded the room? Would we still want to say that things probably are pretty much the way they appear? This principle seems to be undermined by two separate considerations. Developments in physics during the last century enter into the debate at this point. What we know from physics about the constituent structure of physical objects has undermined the kind of naive realism implicit in the principle of credulity. Only as long as we remain within the commonsense domain can we be confident that people who look as if they weigh less probably do and that cars that look as if they have been painted blue probably have been. We now know that weight is a function of forces that act upon masses, as well as that the colors that objects appear to have depend on surface qualities of objects, light sources that irradiate them, and perceptual powers of people. Contemporary realism that is shaped by modern physics is reluctant to assert that things are the way they appear, although it might continue to maintain, along with common sense, that things that appear to exist generally do. Physics, rather than common sense, is now widely thought to provide an account of

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how things are. The principle of credulity is drawn from the commonsense domain, where it usually works quite well, but when we extend it to a conception of the world that presupposes insights from contemporary physics, it goes askew. The principle of credulity presupposes the aptness of the direct perceptual relation between perceivers and objects (for example, things that look maroon under normal conditions are maroon), but contemporary physics asks us to construe the fundamental relation to be a causal one (for example, scattered light from the sun or other comparable sources is reflected at discrete wavelengths by the molecular surfaces of objects and is experienced neurophysiologically by a normal observer as a caused event described as “seeing maroon”). The failure of the principle of credulity to reflect the sea change that has occurred with the emergence of physics as an account of how things are might not be sufficient to call into question its applicability in every case of perceptual experience having implications for religious beliefs. However, if the approach I have defended in this chapter is correct, then the fundamental relation in terms of which religious experience, such as that reported by Alan Shore and Paula Adkin, needs to be understood is causal, not one of direct perception. Suppose we concede not only that Alan and Paula are reliable reporters of what they experienced but also that the radiance and flame they reported were seen using their normal perceptual powers. Even in such a case I do not think we need to insist that a reality exists in the way that it appears. My position, moreover, seems to be consistent with the interpretation that Christian tradition has put upon similar experiences. At the first Pentecost, fire is said to have been visible to the disciples who had gathered to wait for the Holy Spirit. However, the principle of credulity does not seem to have inspired confidence in the claim that things probably were the way they appeared. Tradition seems to hold that they encountered we-know-not-exactly-what, but that this we-know-notexactly-what caused what was seen as fire (or “t-fire”) to be distributed on the heads of those who were present. The centrality of causality in trying to understand this phenomenon, rather than the relation of direct perception, suggests that the principle of credulity is an inappropriate one to invoke. The foregoing criticism of the principle of credulity combines a number of methodological principles and is illustrative of the kind of critical scrutiny typically undertaken in philosophy. Neither data in need of explanation nor theories purporting to provide those explanations are presented without methodological assumptions, although the latter might not be explicitly articulated. The data, theory, and underlying methodological principles (at various levels of complexity)39 could be construed as forming a comprehensive theoretical structure. This structure has been examined most closely in connection with physical atomism, but it also is applicable in understanding the theory of spirits.

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Problems with Abduction The method of abduction is not without problems, especially when it is used to develop theories that postulate entities that might never be observed. One difficulty with abductive reasoning is that it allows many theories inconsistent with one another to be formulated, each of which adequately explains the limited data available to us. For example, the data available to us for which a theory of spirits might serve as a plausible explanation might not be sufficient to choose among theories, one of which asserts the existence of exactly one being, another that asserts the existence of exactly two, and so on. Patrick Harpur bemoans the Christian practice of identifying all the gods or daimons of nonChristian religions with demons, as I mentioned in chapter 1.40 He would expand the theory of spirits to include fairies, which he characterizes as neither wholly physical nor wholly spiritual and neither wholly good nor wholly bad. His modification to the theory of spirits, to which many Christians in the medieval world might not have objected, reflects the fact that many theories strictly incommensurable with one another, but having a similar form, could be proposed to account for the available data, many of which are still controversial and so are problematic in another way. One of the standard responses to this problem is an appeal to simplicity: The simplest theory among a group of inconsistent theories is the one that ought to be chosen. This is a prescriptive methodological principle concerning theories, and although appeals to simplicity seem to be popular among theorists, they are problematic in two main ways. The first problem is advancing a plausible criterion for simplicity, especially in view of the many kinds of theory that are found in various domains of inquiry, scientific and otherwise. Perhaps this difficulty can be practically circumvented in concrete cases, without addressing the problem of a criterion in a comprehensive way. I suppose that some theorists would suggest that we need not postulate two transcendent orders to explain the kinds of phenomena described in the first two chapters of this book but instead postulate a single being in whom are found the sources of both good and evil. This suggestion has been anathema to orthodox Christianity, and the phenomena associated with exorcism suggest that two beings provisionally provide a better explanation, one of which is intent on destroying people and the other of which is intent on rescuing and freeing those who are being destroyed. Christianity has also claimed that beyond whatever theories might be developed by using principles appropriate to an empirical investigation, given my broad understanding of empiricism, revelatory events might supplement the bare bones of the theory that is obtained through empirical methods. The most pressing difficulty associated with the principle of simplicity is that it seems to be a pragmatic principle, rather than one that obviously helps

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us approximate the truth about the universe. We live in an era in which truth and knowledge are too readily sacrificed for the sake of parsimony and convenience, so adopting a principle that appears to support such questionable objectives is problematic. Although I cannot take the time here to defend the search for knowledge, I do not think that it has been as widely abandoned as an ideal as some would have us think, nor should it be. The claim that nothing is knowable—that is, that everything is doubtful—cannot be conclusively advanced. This claim is not obviously self-evident, and if it is defensible by an argument, that argument will either be inductive (in a broad sense) or deductive. Because inductive inferences have conclusions that by definition assert more than their premises, inductive inference cannot render the claim conclusive. If the argument is deductive, finally, the argument must be valid and the premises must be true for the argument to be sound, that is, of epistemic value. However, if we were to find a valid deductive argument whose conclusion was that all claims are doubtful, this conclusion would undermine the premises, and so the argument would not be sound. Jarrett Leplin has recently shown how this argument that I have sketched to undermine the claim that everything is doubtful can be adapted to refute the allegations that all knowledge is a social construction, that all research is biased, and that all claims are irremediably biased.41 These refutations suggest that popular postmodern opinions about the relativity or impossibility of all knowledge claims are poorly founded. Richard Swinburne has defended the claim that simpler theories are more likely to be correct than complex ones, arguing that this principle is a fundamental a priori one, inasmuch as no empirical justification for it can be given.42 Sometimes the place of simplicity in the selection of theories seems fairly easy to resolve. Consider the incident described by Pauline Langlois that suggested to her that a spirit had entered her home and “used” her bathroom. The entity she postulated could plausibly count as an unobserved object, for she neither saw nor touched anything.43 The series of events in question could theoretically be explained in an unlimited number of ways. One entity could be postulated to explain the opening of the outside door, another to explain its closing, a third to explain the opening of the bathroom door, a fourth to explain the bathroom light’s coming on, and so on. Alternatively, we could theoretically postulate exactly five entities, or more, or fewer. Pauline postulated a single invisible entity, however, which seems to be more plausible than any of the other suggestions just outlined. I am not sure, however, that the principle of simplicity is the only relevant principle at work in suggesting the existence of no more than one. For example, the temporal and spatial proximity of the related events seems to have some bearing on postulating a single cause, rather than many. A vast array of background information is seemingly brought to bear on our interpretation of the event in question. This background information apparently includes the remarkable human ability to discover causal connections

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between events. The basis for advancing plausible connections between events seems to derive from an ability that has been described as insight, although its existence, and hence its elucidation, are matters of controversy.44 Bernard Lonergan describes human insight, including scientific insight, as a faculty in which experience, understanding, and judgment are incorporated so that we are able to acquire a knowledge of reality.45 Issues surrounding an appeal to simplicity continue to be debated, but I will not attempt to enter into that debate here. Some appeals to simplicity are quite convincing, while others are not, but I am loath to speculate on why this is so. Another problem with abduction, which is related to the foregoing brief discussion, is providing a basis for claiming that the same unobservable being is responsible for events that are widely separated in time and space from one another. This issue arises with respect to both good and bad spirits, for example, when people claim that a particular angel is responsible for several interventions or that a particular evil spirit is responsible for more than one instance of possession. Such claims are difficult to defend, as are comparable claims about unobservable objects featured in scientific domains. Again, one could perhaps appeal to the principle of simplicity to resolve the difficulty, but such an appeal appears too easy. Abductive arguments involving unobservable objects are problematic in all domains of critical inquiry. However, rejecting abduction on this account would be to advance a methodological view that would undo important scientific advances in the last two centuries.

Realism and Instrumentalism Talking about unobservable objects raises an issue on which philosophers in the twentieth century have been divided. The instrumentalist view that unobservable or theoretical objects are primarily useful tools or instruments for helping us articulate relationships between various observations certainly seems plausible in some cases. We speak about the density or specific gravity of objects, for example, but density need not be construed as intrinsic to a kind of element or compound but only a useful measure of the mass of an object in relation to its volume. Quarks constitute a second example in which the instrumentalist approach initially seemed plausible, for when quarks were initially introduced into physics in 1963 it was for theoretical reasons, in that no experiments had been attempted that could be interpreted as indicating their existence.46 Their function was to serve in a mathematical scheme that ordered and classified the objects that were subject to the strong force in the nucleus of the atom. However, later experimental work pointed in the direction of their existence, and realists about physics now consider them to be real. Philosophers of science are still divided over the status that should be accorded the postulated objects of subatomic physics. Philosopher Dudley Shapere describes

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the choice as one between real objects and idealizations and suggests that the differences can be summarized as follows: 1. Real objects can interact with other things that exist, but idealizations cannot. 2. Real objects can have properties that are not manifesting themselves and might not yet have been discovered, but idealizations lack these features. 3. Real objects might have properties incorrectly ascribed to them, but idealizations cannot. 4. Real objects are things about which we might have conflicting theories, but idealizations are not.47 Such principles can help us decide how we should assess the entities postulated by a theory, perhaps including the theory of spirits. Arthur Fine has attempted to forge a middle position between those who are realists about the theoretical objects of physics and those who are antirealists, which is how he describes the instrumentalists. He remarks: “Realism is dead. Its death was announced by the neopositivists who realized that they could accept all the results of science, including all the members of the scientific zoo, and still declare that the questions raised by the existence claims of realism were mere pseudo-questions.”48 He describes the realist as one who accepts the results of scientific inquiry and then stamps his feet in response to the instrumentalist and says, “No, they really exist.” He characterizes the antirealist, by contrast, as one who wants to construe apparent references to theoretical objects as reducible to statements about immediate sense experience and interprets claims to truth pragmatically, rather than as an attempt to refer to the hidden world of unobservable objects. Fine’s middle way, which he describes as the natural ontological attitude, accepts that scientific theories give us true accounts in the referential rather than the pragmatic sense, “just in case the entities referred to stand in the referred-to relations.”49 In this respect, Fine embraces the view sometimes described as ontological realism, which construes statements about theoretical entities as capable of being true or false. Unlike the standard realist, however, who sees the progress of science as taking us closer to the truth about the way things are in the universe, the defender of the natural ontological attitude is committed only to the existence of theoretical entities while the larger paradigm or conceptual scheme lasts, within which science is done. Here Fine adopts the perspective of Thomas Kuhn, who is famous for claiming that science is done within paradigms that can suddenly change. Fine adopts the usual canons of scientific rationality, including providing confirmation of theories through observation and experimental testing, although he acknowledges that these can change with different paradigms. On Fine’s view, presumably, we could say that some of the phenomena

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once explicable in terms of the activities of wicked spirits, such as malevolent acts, might have been accurately explained when that conceptual scheme was the only one available for explaining human behavior. With the advent of modern psychology, however, including such a theory as that offered by Carl Goldberg, a new paradigm for explaining malevolence has been found, and in this paradigm Goldberg’s theory is true, or near to it. On Fine’s approach, as on Kuhn’s, truth is relativized to the dominant conceptual scheme in place at the time a particular explanation is examined. Fine’s account does not say, however, what we are to think when one conceptual scheme is being challenged, but an alternative is not fully in place. This is the situation at present, I suggest, with respect to the theory of spirits in general, which include God and other spirits. This theory has not been replaced in toto with various naturalistic theories. Neither is the strategy by means of which such a replacement might be accomplished clearly established. Some phenomena that were once widely explained with the theory of spirits, such as malevolent behavior, conversion experiences, visions, and apparitions, have been deemed to be sufficiently well attested that they are considered as requiring explanation, although not in nonnaturalistic terms. However, other phenomena alleged to have been produced by spirits are viewed as never having occurred. So the future of the theory of spirits and the phenomena it has been traditionally construed as serving to explain are uncertain. Leplin summarizes Fine’s position as one that concedes that the world has a “deep structure” that is causally responsible for what we experience, where this structure is not experientially accessible and no representation of it can be endorsed. He adds: “The best that can be said for any representation is that the actual structure produces the observable effects that it would produce were that representation true of it,” and labels it “surrealism” or “surrogate realism.”50 In contrast with Arthur Fine, Jarrett Leplin advances a position he describes as minimal epistemic realism. Epistemic realism asserts that we can know enough about the structure of theoretical claims to determine whether any of them are true or approximately so. The minimalist version of this position, which he puts forward, is “that there are possible empirical conditions, realizable in principle, under which we would be justified in judging some deep structural statements to be true, or, at least, partially so.”51 Leplin considers that the most important empirical conditions a theory must be able to meet are to be susceptible to independent tests, to be useful in making novel predictions, and to be open to falsification. He does not think we can explain the successes of physics during the twentieth century without endorsing some version of epistemic realism, whether that is his minimalist version or some stronger version.52 He also thinks that most theoretical physicists, especially those working in elementary particle theory who conjecture about the nature of the universe in its earliest moments, presuppose something like his view about the implicit method of science.

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Caution needs to be exercised in taking physics and its challenges in dealing with microentities as our model for all critical thought about postulated objects, although this temptation is strong because postulated objects in physics have been better studied than those in any other scientific discipline. However, the stance that Leplin takes on epistemic realism is similar to one advanced by Janet Soskice on religious language. She construes such language as expressing a theory about a particular part of the universe but in such a way that we are never in a position to say whether this theory gives us access to those objects or beings as they really are. Our access is only epistemic, even though our language is intended to refer.53 The term “critical realism” is also used by philosophers to describe a view that asserts that certain objects are real, even though we might not be in a position to describe those objects adequately or completely. Here, as in many other areas of philosophy, different philosophers use various terms, and more keep being injected into the discussion. The abductive method applied to unobservable objects might allow us to plausibly hold that such objects do exist, without being able to assert a great deal about them. The theological view that is a natural ally to my methodological position is found in mysticism and the apophatic tradition, in which God and other spirits are certainly deemed to be real, although their attributes are considered to be incompletely known.

Subtle Nature? The empirical approach to spirits that I have outlined in this chapter does not require that they be conceived of as supernatural objects. The terms “natural” and “supernatural” both have a long history, and as they are ordinarily understood they mutually exclude one another. However, nothing requires us to construe the causes of the phenomena outlined and discussed in the first two chapters as existing beyond the natural order. I have been careful to describe the beings postulated to exist in my reconstruction of Christian thought as existing beyond the known natural order, but I have attempted to avoid asserting that they are supernatural. This is not just a quibble about words, although the point I wish to make obviously requires making use of and commenting on a pair of terms about which many have emphatic views and definite feelings. Natural phenomena are easily illustrated, and the limits of the natural order might seem to be well defined. However, many phenomena once deemed explicable only by reference to so-called supernatural agencies have come to be explained by reference to causes normally considered natural. Dissociative identity disorder, for example, has come to be accepted as providing natural explanations for behavioral disorders once considered explicable only in terms of evil spirits. Natural explanations belonging to physics, chemistry, and biology have also been provided for many phenomena that were once explained

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by reference to God or other spirits. The boundary of the phenomena once considered supernatural has continually shifted as explanations generally considered naturalistic have been uncovered. This means that no rigid classification of data into natural and supernatural is plausible. The implications of critical or epistemic realism for the theoretical entities that our theory of spirits postulates are that we do not know enough about their “real nature” to assert that they cannot be embraced within the natural order. The objects postulated by the theory of spirits could be viewed as part of “subtle nature” about which we know relatively little, in part because of the widespread reluctance to investigate the phenomena that have been this theory’s lifeblood. The boundary between nature and supernature at the explanatory level could be obliterated, just as it has been at the level of describing phenomena requiring explanation. Christian faith has something to say about the distinction between the natural and the supernatural. It asserts that the Supreme Being, who exists in triune form, is over and against every other kind of being, even finite spirits, whether good or evil, for he is the undisputed creator and sustainer of the universe. This claim is offered as one that is known by revelation, however, rather than one that is accessible within the method of an empirical investigation. Of course, Christian faith considers this revelatory insight to be empirically confirmed in the experiences of some of its sages, and so it is not wholly outside the empirical method I am outlining here. The theory of spirits can be plausibly interpreted as once having been an undisputed part of every commonsense framework, and its prevalence in the thought and language of peoples that many of our intellectual forebears in Western culture derided as “primitive” is impressive testimony to this fact. Spirits took their place alongside inanimate things, plants, animals, and minds, as objects deemed to be part of the universe. Spirits were included in descriptions of phenomena and were implicitly incorporated into explanations for certain kinds of events. The commonsense framework found in Western societies has been extensively changed as science has been increasingly incorporated into the thought of those who purport to describe our world. Each of the sciences can be linked with some part of the commonsense framework, usually by their taking some circumscribed domain and supplementing, altering, and correcting its accounts. Physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, ichthyology, paleontology, zoology, physiology, medicine, anthropology, sociology, economics, political science, ethnology, and many more fields of critical inquiry can be linked to some part of the commonsense domain that they have rendered almost unrecognizable. Twentieth-century behaviorism and eliminative materialism articulated approaches to mind that would have seen its conceptual structure in the commonsense framework disappear without a trace. They can be deemed to have been unsuccessful. Cognitive science and neurophysiology have acknowledged the value of mind as an initial approach to understanding human life and behavior, although concepts and beliefs associated

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with mind are also being modified, supplemented, abandoned, and corrected. The one remaining component of the commonsense framework whose future is unsure is that of spirits. Many who wholeheartedly endorse the expansion of critical inquiry (or science) into all parts of the commonsense framework apparently expect spirits to disappear in the way that phlogiston did or in the way that behaviorists and eliminative materialists expected and urged mind to disappear. Finite spirits might have disappeared already, had it not been for a popular culture that refuses to banish them completely. God remains the greatest obstacle to an eliminative strategy, and evidence suggests that significant portions of the academy are not prepared to abandon this limited but important part of the theory of spirits. According to the position I have maintained to this point, claims that God and other spirits are real are rationally defensible.

4 The Challenge of Naturalism

Philosophy is itself to be conceived as an invitational, dialectical activity rather than as any system of dicta. A philosopher can be thought of as someone who, far from commanding assent with any thunderous barrage of argumentative artillery, invites you to think the world or some aspect of it in a somewhat different way. “Come in,” we are cordially told, “and welcome. Sit down. Let me mix you an idea. Sip this thought, and tell me how your own experience looks. If you should find my way of construing our world unappetizing or unpromising, pray show me your way. Let us once again in the good old Greek way, dia-lego, talk it through together.” —Adapted from Douglas N. Morgan, “Must Art Tell the Truth?” An uncompromising challenge to the existence of a transcendent order comes from those who contend that the physical sciences provide us with the conceptual resources to describe and explain all phenomena in the universe. J. J. C. Smart has articulated such a position in a dialogue with J. J. Haldane, philosopher at St. Andrew’s University and defender of orthodox Christianity. Although they differ profoundly on how the universe should be understood, they both endorse metaphysical realism, which asserts that a world exists apart from any finite mind and that the world possesses characteristics that are independent of and prior to its description by common sense, science, or philosophy.1 They differ here from philosophers who assign a significant role to the language in which the universe is described in determining what is real. The question for Smart

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and Haldane is whether an adequate explanation of the universe requires reference to a deity. Haldane describes himself as an “unreconstructed” Catholic, by which he means that he believes orthodox Christian doctrines such as creation ex nihilo, the Trinity, the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the future resurrection of the dead. Haldane considers the precise formulation of Christian theism, however, as I do, to depend on scholarship coming from science, philosophy, and history.2 He consequently avoids some of the dogmatism found in other expressions of Christian theism. Haldane says that he considers religion to be more than simply a personal way of engaging the world, devoid of metaphysical or historical claims. Other theists see the issues differently, of course. The debate between Haldane and Smart has more than passing interest for me. I share their conviction on metaphysical realism, and I also share Haldane’s interest in articulating Christian orthodoxy in a way that is consistent with and illuminated by the results of various kinds of scholarship. I also concur with Smart’s attitude toward theism in this debate, which consists of demanding of any theist a sound rationale for not being content with some form of naturalism. Smart supervised my doctoral dissertation during a period of my life when I encountered some of the religious phenomena that motivated me to question the adequacy of naturalism, so his contribution to this debate with Haldane evokes significant memories. However, I find myself in disagreement with the positions of both Haldane and Smart on the question of theism. Haldane has more confidence than I do in holding that the strength of theism lies in arguments that defend its capacity to account for the origin of life, selfreproducing beings, and conscious beings, and Smart has more confidence than I do that physicalism can account for the full range of religious experiences in a way that leaves no foothold for God and other spirits.3

The Physicalism of Smart Smart prefers to describe himself as a physicalist, rather than as a materialist, because he is inclined to believe in things that are physical, but not material, such as space-time, the set of points comprising space-time, and mathematical objects.4 In an earlier time, his views would have been classified as broadly materialistic, and in discussions of mental states and processes he is widely acknowledged as having articulated a compelling materialistic account. Smart understands theism to assert the existence of an eternal creator, who is personal, omnipotent, omniscient, and loving—a spiritual being who is similar to Descartes’s understanding of a soul as immaterial and nonphysical.5 He follows customary usage in distinguishing theism from deism and interprets polytheism in two senses: The strong sense holds that God is identified with the universe, and the weak sense holds only that the world has a spiritual

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aspect. Smart considers pantheism in the weak sense to be plausible, for the only way in which such pantheists differ from atheists is in their attitude toward the universe, not in their beliefs. Smart clearly considers theism to be a meaningful and coherent theory, but he also considers it to be unnecessary. Smart considers the explanatory achievements of the sciences, especially physics, chemistry, and biology, which never now make use of a spiritual (or nonmaterial) being, to be so impressive that we have every reason to be confident that any phenomena about which humans might still be puzzled will someday be explained by these or related sciences. He considers the object of scientific inquiry to be the ability to account for phenomena sub specie aeternitatas, that is, expressed in concepts capable of describing the eternal truth about things. He rejects the idea, often associated with Thomas Kuhn,6 that scientific theories are so dependent on the paradigms in which they are embedded that when those paradigms change, then the associated theories must be abandoned. He considers a fundamental mark of truth for any theory to be the extent to which it can be seen to be plausible in the light of total science, and he brushes off the anticipated objection that he is guilty of scientism.7 Smart uses Quine’s celebrated “web of belief ” to give plausibility to the physicalist scheme that he is outlining. According to Quine, we do not assess truth claims individually for plausibility but evaluate them in conjunction with a large network of claims that purport to give us an interpretation of the known world—an interpretation that approximates ever more closely to an accurate account of the things that exist and the properties found in those objects. Smart construes the fundamental reality to consist of the elementary particles—which also exhibit the properties of waves—postulated by physics and the forces to which such particles are subject. His physicalism consequently makes him suspicious of common sense, but he denies that he is reductionist about the objects commonly asserted to exist, such as tomatoes and trees. He denies, for example, that talk about tomatoes can be “translated into talk of electrons, protons, and other entities postulated in physical theory,”8 for the molecules that form a tomato are immensely numerous, and their arrangements are too complex to be described. He holds that a tomato just is a very complex physical mechanism, which makes his physicalism ontological, rather than translational. Smart considers the term “tomato” to be more abstract than “hydrogen atom,” for the arrangements of elementary particles in one tomato would not be identical to the arrangements in another tomato, but hydrogen atoms are indistinguishable from one another. Smart has been suspicious of common sense for a long time. In a paper published in 1965, he explained that “common sense language does to some extent present a false theory about the world . . . [for] example: common sense makes a partition between space and time which Minkowski has shown to be untenable.”9 He did not repudiate the value of common sense completely, however, but held that as rational persons we should prefer the scientific image of

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the world, even though as mortals we cannot help but lapse into the commonsense view. In 1965 he toyed with the idea that we might go straight to the scientific image of the world without “basing ourselves first on the manifest image”10 and speculated about teaching a child the language of physics without first teaching the child the language of common sense. Instead of teaching a child to talk about seeing a book, for example, a child could be taught to talk about seeing a parallelepiped swarm of atoms, and instead of talking about carrying a heavy suitcase, a child could be taught to talk about feeling the curvature of space-time.11 Smart’s view about the supremacy of the scientific image over that of common sense has been part of his philosophical stance for most of his professional life. Smart does not elaborate on the correctness, or otherwise, of commonsense views of the world in Atheism and Theism, but I consider his expressed reluctance to completely abandon common sense to be sound. The idea that the universe might be understood and described12 only by reference to atomic objects and forces, without reference to common sense at all, is chimerical. A world consisting of subatomic particles held together and interacting according to the fundamental forces of nature without any additional principles of organization imposed upon it, would be a domain marked by nothing more significant than varying fields of force and varying relative densities. No reason would seemingly exist to take any interest in the accumulation of particles that comprise the objects that are found in our commonsense world. Without a human being capable of perception, which is a commonsense notion, this physicalist vision of the universe could not be articulated. A miniature robot that wandered to and fro within this formless world, imposing some arbitrary order on the objects of its “perceptions,” would not have any reason to select a collection of particles that form the ordinary objects known to common sense. It might select all the molecules in a small, conical space-time region for consideration, for example, or all hydrogen atoms or every ninth carbon atom encountered along its chaotic path. No reason would apparently exist to select for consideration the molecules that form this tomato, that tree, or yonder galvanometer (Smart’s example in the 1965 paper), for such selections are human ones and reflect human interests and the commonsense scheme of the world. Smart is indebted to common sense and accepts it reluctantly, for he aspires to view the world sub specie aeternitatas, but he is forced to view it sub specie humanitatas. Smart made his mark as a physicalist in 1959 in a paper that is still widely read. In “Sensations and Brain Processes,” he argued that mental states and processes—whether perceiving a tomato, doubting a report, intending to sleep, or desiring a vacation—were identical to neurophysiological phenomena, although the details of how this could occur were not known and might never be. He subsequently spelled out a physicalist interpretation for other commonsense claims, identifying ordinary objects such as tomatoes and galvanometers as identical to arrangements of atoms of various kinds. Presumably he is

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also interested in the differences exhibited by tomatoes and galvanometers, including the fact that one is alive and grows naturally, whereas the other is not alive but results from intelligent beings assembling inanimate objects in order to achieve some specific purpose. His brand of physicalism does not dwell on these differences, however. For Haldane, the differences between inanimate objects, on the one hand, and living things, including conscious beings that eventually emerged in evolutionary history, on the other, are vital. Smart’s physicalism cannot now explain how these important changes took place, but he is confident that an explanation will be forthcoming. He considers the past successes of physicalism to be reason enough to count on its future success. A similar “promissory note” is offered in each of the identity claims that Smart advances, for example, the identity between a tomato and some arrangement of atoms. However, we do not know if these promissory notes will ever be paid in full. Another difficulty for physicalism now becomes apparent. The “is” of identity13 is used to assert the central position of physicalism, for example, in asserting that a tomato or a galvanometer is an arrangement of atoms. This fact technically allows the same proposition to be asserted when this order is reversed, as in “This . . . arrangement of atoms is a tomato” or “That . . . arrangement of atoms is a galvanometer.” Physicalism is never expressed in such a form, however. In articulating its central dogma, its defenders first draw our attention to objects drawn from the commonsense domain. We always read that tomatoes and galvanometers are swarms of atoms, not the reverse, since a description of even one of the arrangements of atoms that might count as a tomato or a galvanometer is incapable of being provided. Physicalism is reminiscent here of phenomenalism, which is a version of materialism that was popular during the heyday of logical positivism. Phenomenalists assert that a tomato just is the complete set of actual and possible sense perceptions—visual, tactile, olfactory, and so on—given in experience. Whereas commonsense realism considers the tomato to be a real object that is capable of being perceived, phenomenalism considers only sensations to be real. Physicalists such as Smart have replaced the sense data of phenomenalism with the subatomic particles of contemporary physics (whatever these might turn out to be). However, one of the weaknesses of phenomenalism was its defenders’ inability to provide a complete account of the sense data that supposedly comprise what common sense considers to be a discrete object, such as a tomato. Phenomenalism also issues a promissory note, claiming that the sensations constituting an object could in principle be given. However, critics of phenomenalism saw through the indefensible faith expressed in its central dogma. Physicalism faces a similar challenge. Its proponents confidently assert that all objects are arrangements of atoms, but these arrangements are never described. Like phenomenalism, moreover, physicalism always formulates its view by placing the term that denotes the supposed commonsense

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object first in the identity statement, helping to conceal the fact that it cannot provide a complete description of the atomic arrangement that it asserts to exist. The incompleteness of physicalism raises the possibility that commonsense objects are more than arrangements of atoms, particularly in the case of living organisms, whose uniqueness lies in the properties of whole objects that are more than and emerge from the sum of their atomic parts. Smart insists that his physicalism has no room for such emergent properties, but other theorists are willing to consider such properties, as I will discuss later. In his attempt to show that theism serves no explanatory purpose, Smart surveys the features of the universe that have long been construed by Christian theists as best explained by a creator who is personal, omnipotent, and so on.14 These features include the fine-tuning among cosmological constants that make human life possible, such as the precise strength of gravitational attraction, phenomena suggesting design or purposive intelligence, the existence of values (axiarchism), religious experience, miracles, and the existence of objects that might not have existed (contingent existence). Smart rejects each argument advanced based on these features of the universe. For example, he considers the argument from contingent existence to be baseless, for it depends on a concept of necessary existence, which he deems to result from a confusion of language. He argues that the phenomena generally classed as religious experiences, such as remarkable medical recoveries that theists commonly describe as miracles, will be explained in physicalist terms someday. And so on.15 His strategy of dismissing each basis for advancing theism is well known to students of the philosophy of religion. Haldane’s strategy in defending the plausibility of theism consists of identifying key features of the universe that seem to be intractable to any physicalist explanation, such as the dawning of life in the universe, the development of self-reproducing organisms, and the emergence of consciousness. Smart’s response is to insist that physicalism, which has a history of success, will be extended to cover such seemingly intractable phenomena. He can, of course, point to several centuries of extraordinary explanatory successes in various fields of science, especially physics, chemistry, and biology. Smart buttresses his case psychologically by noting that he was once a theist and by suggesting that he might like to be one again if doing so did not mean embracing a less rational view than physicalism. He presents theism as an explanatory scheme that is flawed, just like most of the explanations offered by common sense. Smart exhibits extraordinary confidence in the future of physicalism and the results of scientific research. He is not alone in advancing this position, of course, but speaks for many philosophers who have come to view their profession as primarily articulating physicalism and defending its feasibility. The greatest weakness in physicalism is its contention that past accomplishments will be extended to all domains for which it has not yet proved

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successful. This is an extrapolation for which its defenders offer inadequate evidence, for the success of physicalism in the human sciences has yet to be demonstrated. I have argued that radical physicalism is not plausible, which means that some concepts from the commonsense domain will continue to play a crucial part in future theorizing. I have also argued that spirits can be meaningfully and plausibly postulated—under restricted conditions—to account for several kinds of reputed phenomena, even though the mechanisms by which these agents produce their effects are not known. Physicalism cannot begin to describe what it will replace these explanations with, so it is not rational to abandon explanations provided by a transcendent reality in the absence of a better alternative. I am not arguing that physicalism will never be able to offer a competitor, although I doubt that it will, but only that no sufficient reason exists at present to embrace physicalism over a more complex ontological view that allows for spirits. As I explained in chapter 3, we do not need to follow Smart in defining God and other spirits as nonmaterial and incorporeal and so heighten the prospect of having to endorse dualism. Instead, we can characterize these transcendent beings by the causal roles they are assigned in explanations and tentatively advance a plurality of entities and beings whose precise characteristics we will probably never know completely.

“God of the Gaps” In one of the responses addressed to Haldane, Smart suggests that he has used God to fill some of the important explanatory gaps in the evolutionary record. Haldane goes to some length to show that his approach is not open to the “God of the gaps” objection. He argues that he has philosophical arguments for the position that theism best explains some of the vital gaps in the evolutionary record, such as the supposed emergence of self-reproductive life from organisms that do not reproduce themselves. Haldane considers his position to be protected from developments in biology that could replace his theistic explanation for self-reproductive life, but Smart’s rebuttal is methodologically grounded. Smart sees no reason why a self-replicating life might not have emerged from “the coming together of a number of self-replicating molecules,” noting that our immense universe was in existence long before life began, thus giving it time to produce any imaginably large number of different kinds of molecules.16 Smart contends that all he needs to do to fill such gaps in our knowledge, such as how self-replicating life emerged, is to “point to reasonable speculations as to how it might have been filled.”17 These speculations, he grants, have to be informed by well-tested theory, but he argues that they are supported by the successes of evolutionary theory from the last century and a half. Although Smart does not explicitly charge Haldane with advancing a “God

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of the gaps” objection to theism, Haldane seems to be vulnerable to the charge. However, I do not consider this objection to be as telling as those do who wield it. The reference to the “God of the gaps” objection seems to identify several different problems, not just one. The objection could be an instance of the ad ignorantium fallacy in logic, an example of which would be to argue that God must be the cause of some event if he has not been shown not to be the cause. Such fallacious thinking, of course, deserves to be repudiated. The “God of the gaps” objection could also be an oblique way of objecting to theorizing that might be described as lazy, as when God is deemed to serve as an adequate explanation for a phenomenon, but no effort is expended to find another explanation, possibly including a naturalistic one. This reasoning is closely related to ascribing an event to God, no matter what that event might be. For example, an elderly man’s eventual recovery from a dreadful disease might be ascribed to God, but if the man had died, the same persons who earlier ascribed his recovery to God would then have ascribed his death to God. This approach to invoking God for explanatory purposes seems unreasonable, and if this is what the “God of the gaps” objection is meant to protest, it is legitimate. When the explanation refers to a spirit, instead of God, this is just a slight variation of the objection that shares the same problem. However, the “God of the gaps” objection appears to take another form, which might in fact be the usual one. The objection appears to suggest that postulating God (or a spirit) as an explanation for a specific phenomenon is flawed, for such a postulation allows for the possibility that another explanation, most likely a naturalistic one, might be found that offers a better explanation than the appeal to the Deity (or a spirit) does. A defender of theism might find, the objection continues, that all of the phenomena for which God (or a spirit) was originally postulated as the cause eventually are explained naturalistically, so that the evidential basis for advancing the existence of God (or a spirit) is totally eroded, and the falsity or inadequacy of theism must be conceded. For example, the Melanesian Islanders, who are said to have believed that children were not conceived because of sexual intercourse between a man and a woman but because a woman had been visited by spirits, could be deemed to have used an explanation that is just as vulnerable to the “God of the gaps” objection as the theistic explanations favored by Haldane and other theists. This is the form of the objection whose plausibility I wish to challenge. The first observation I would make is that no other theory is immediately objected to on the grounds that we might find another explanation that could turn out to be superior. The nature of critical inquiry is such that we often are not in a position to know how a proposed theory will fare against future competitors. Many theories have succumbed in the past to other theories that proved to be superior, but we cannot know this in advance. The claim that spirits exist who are capable of acting in our world does not appear to be either

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self-contradictory or so counterintuitive that it should never be proposed. In fact, phenomena continue to be alleged for which it seems a plausible explanation. The fact that some other theory might come along and do a better job does not seem to be grounds for not initially proposing it. The “God of the gaps” objection does not appear to have any plausibility when considered in reference to the way in which other empirical investigations are carried out. However, its proponents may have something different in mind. One possibility is that its defender could be saying, in effect, that the only plausible theistic explanation is one that is incapable of being supplanted by another, perhaps because theism must be construed as providing an explanation for everything, not merely a proper subset of actual phenomena, or because theism postulates a necessary being and so cannot be supplanted by any other explanation that postulates contingent beings (that is, beings whose nonexistence is possible). The first of these possible kinds of explanation appears in one version of the cosmological argument for the existence of God, and the second appears in the argument from contingency. The cosmological argument I am referring to asserts that even if we were to find explanations (so-called secondary causes) for each event in the universe, we would still need an explanation—a “super explanation”—for the fact that all these events, rather than others, occur. This is where God (a primary cause) is supposed to come in, for no matter what configuration of particular events occurs, God explains their collective occurrence. The argument from contingency asserts that a necessary being (one whose nonexistence is impossible) must exist in order to account for any contingent being. An explanation that postulates a necessary being asserts the existence of something that is superior to anything that is merely a contingent being, and so might be considered incapable of being supplanted. However, both of these interpretations of the reasons for advancing the “God of the gaps” objection are problematic. The arguments just outlined are controversial. Opponents of the cosmological argument in the form I have advanced it argue that once we have an explanation for each individual event, we do not need some additional explanation.18 They contend that theists who insist on finding some superexplanation have a faulty understanding of explanation. Moreover, the notion of a necessary being has also been widely questioned, especially by naturalists.19 One has only to read Smart’s discussion of the possibility of a necessary being, which reads much like Quine on the subject, to get a good sense of the issues that render the second possibility problematic. Quine holds that to assert that something is necessary is to assert that the proposition asserting that thing’s existence is a necessary truth. My remarks here about possible interpretations of the “God of the gaps” objection are speculative, but they cast doubt on the cogency of the objection. Perhaps I have missed an interpretation that is intended by some who raise the objection. However, I do not understand the basis for considering the “God of the gaps” objection to be a telling one.20 My opinion here is clearly in the

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minority, for those who advance this objection usually do so without further comment, as though neither a defense nor an explanation of it is necessary. Defenders of the “God of the gaps” objection appear to be setting up a questionable dilemma for one who is considering postulating God as a cause for an event. The suggestion that God might be the cause of a specific event is objected to because this explanation might be eroded in the future, but the suggestion that God might explain everything is open to an objection either over the understanding of explanation or over the concept of a necessary being. The tactics employed in advancing the “God of the gaps” objection strike me as a questionable way of stymieing the investigative process. I have already offered phenomena for which postulating the existence of God and other spirits seems to be a restrained and rational instance of the use of the theory of spirits. A defender of the value of this objection might protest at this point and argue that I have been intent on dismissing it because the strategy I have proposed in advancing the theory of spirits is vulnerable to it. In response, I would concede that I am particularly interested in phenomena that appear to involve transcendent beings who exhibit sentience and other abilities unique to mature humans and that also appear to be inexplicable by naturalism as we now know it. I have been careful to avoid the term “miracle” in describing such phenomena, for it can be question begging. This would occur if “miracle” were to be interpreted to mean “a violation of a law of nature that is brought about by a supernatural agent,” which is problematic on two counts. First of all, if we are confronted with phenomena for which we have no ready explanation—such as the apparent transfer of destructive behavior from humans to swine by a mere command or seeing a being in a thornbush that appears to be on fire but is not consumed—we might not know, or be prepared to assert, that these phenomena violate laws of nature. We might want to know much more about regular occurrences in order to assert that these events either do not occur regularly or that they are inconsistent with established regularities. Second, we might not be prepared to assert unequivocally that a supernatural agent produces them. We might conjecture that such a being might have caused them, but that might be all we are prepared to say. The problem with the term “miracle”—besides being the object of irresponsible use, varying interpretations, and endless discussion—is that it can be used in a way that asserts claims that need to be argued and is apt to be understood in a way that makes openended discussion impossible. In response to the criticism that my approach is open to the “God of the gaps” objection, I would say that the challenge for the theory of spirits is to show that it still provides a plausible explanation—at least a first approximation to one—for certain kinds of phenomena, especially after many centuries of irresponsible use. Once the theory of spirits is admitted as having some explanatory value, the question that arises is how narrowly, or how widely, such beings are causally implicated in phenomena. Theists generally claim that they

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might be widely implicated, especially in influencing individual acts that have significant moral aspects. Theists also generally claim that God sustains the world in being and so could play an ongoing role in the existence of ordinary objects. Haldane has chosen to make the case for theism primarily from features of the universe’s design, but I have selected another group of phenomena as a basis for advancing a theory of spirits because its evidential value strikes me as more compelling. However, nothing in my strategy requires that I deny some kind of explanatory role to God (or other spirits) in those domains that others find more epistemically impressive than I do.

Naturalism without Reduction The robust form of naturalism found in Smart is not the only important expression of this view of the world. Some naturalists maintain, for example, that conscious states cannot be reduced to the events or processes involving microphysical entities and their associated forces. They maintain that conscious states and the correlated science of psychology constitute a domain that is autonomous from physics. Moreover, they hold that psychology need not postulate a special kind of being historically known as soul or spirit for this position to be advanced, for psychology can be construed as a scientific domain that is characterized by properties that are not found among the constituent objects on which it is dependent. According to this interpretation of naturalism, a hierarchy of sciences needs to be recognized, each level of which advances its own kind of irreducible being, although dependent on a more basic level. One of the classical expressions of this hierarchy of sciences is in a paper published in 1958 by philosophers Paul Oppenheim and Hilary Putnam,21 expressed in the following table. Level 6 Level 5 Level 4 Level 3 Level 2 Level 1

Social groups Multicellular living things Cells Molecules Atoms Elementary particles

Although Oppenheim and Putnam advanced this hierarchy as part of a physicalism that would see all the sciences unified in a manner that was thoroughly reductionistic, theorists sympathetic to naturalism but dubious about reductionism have incorporated this hierarchy into their thinking. Reductive physicalism is committed to the claim that all levels above the first level will eventually be reduced to it, so that elementary particles and the forces operative upon and among them can be considered to be that which is real in the fullest sense of this widely used term. Reductive physicalism is a simple implication

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of the claim that if one level is reducible to a second, and the latter is reducible to a third, then the first is reducible to the third. The nonreductionistic naturalism that begins its description of metaphysical realities by using this hierarchy, or some variant on it, construes the entities found at each level above level 1 to be dependent upon, but not reducible to, the entities found at the level immediately below. For example, cells are seen as dependent upon molecular structures, and social groups upon individual living beings. However, the entities postulated at each level are deemed to be incapable of being reduced to the entities in the level immediately below. For example, political events are more than the aggregate of the individual events found in the lives of those involved in a political act. Another example is provided by proteins, which are molecules that have attributes that are not exhibited by any of their component atoms.22 In general, irreducible entities above level 1 are deemed to have properties that do not appear at a level below; moreover, such properties are seen as emerging as a result of complex interrelationships between entities on the adjacent lower level. Any talk of reducing entities, explanations, or scientific domains takes us into the philosophy of science, where reduction in many different forms is discussed. Not only sciences and kinds of being are said to be capable of reduction but also theories, laws, and descriptive statements. Ernest Nagel is often cited as having undertaken the first thorough discussion of this concept. He focused on reducing laws in one explanatory domain into the laws of an underlying reality, such as reducing the laws of chemistry to laws of physics.23 However, the concept of reduction has been used in many other ways. I will not enter into the technical discussion of reduction, much of which makes use of the concepts of symbolic logic and hence the theory of description implicit in that logic. I will use the term primarily to express the idea of replacing one explanatory theory that purports to assert the existence of one kind of being with another theory that purports to assert the existence of another kind. Ontological reduction of this kind is perhaps the most profound threat to theism. Smart exhibits it in his physicalism when he contends that certain events that theists consider to be best explained by a supernatural being are best explained by using physical theory. Emergent properties are a point of contention between physicalists and nonreductive naturalists, and Smart, for one, is careful to avoid granting their existence in any significant sense. He discusses an electronic device known as a thermionic valve in a radio receiver to illustrate the point, because such a valve has properties that would not be found among its constitutive parts.24 He observes that the functioning of this valve can be described in terms of the varied flow of electrons from the cathode to the anode across a grid as the signal fed into the grid changes. This valve plays a unique role in the radio receiver, all of whose components can be explained in similar physical terms but must be connected in a definite way to function as a radio. The radio itself

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can do things that its components cannot do and so has properties found in none of its parts, but, according to Smart, these are emergent properties in only a weak sense of the term. Smart argues that the functioning of the radio receiver itself is ultimately explicable in physical terms, and he thinks that we do not require an endorsement of emergent properties in a stronger sense in any account of phenomena found in the universe, including an understanding of the relationship between biology and the human sciences. Theologian Nancey Murphy from Fuller Seminary claims that the hierarchical view of science that is being developed in nonreductive naturalism— also known as “nonreductive physicalism”—is capable of accommodating enough of what theologians have wanted to say about God’s action in the world so that we can be both naturalists and theists.25 She observes that scientists from various disciplines are increasingly recognizing the inadequacy of the kind of reductivism associated with most expositions of physicalism in the twentieth century, because of three developments.26 1. The apparent existence of emergent properties in some sense stronger than that tolerated by Smart and physicalists of a similar leaning. 2. Recognition of the relative autonomy of the various levels of scientific inquiry, corresponding approximately to the hierarchy outlined in the table. 3. Acceptance of “downward causation,” that is, the causal influence of levels of organization higher than that for which an explanation is being sought. For example, the organizational structure of the whole brain is thought to determine the particular kind of sensory information that is received by a perceiver. Acceptance of these developments, says Murphy, does not deny the causal role of microscopic structures in determining higher levels of organization, nor does it mean that reduction could not occur in particular domains. What it does mean, according to Murphy, is that we have to modify our understanding of the causal intricacies between events. For example, although some biological phenomena, such as the death of a particular animal, can be explained in chemical terms alone, other events, such as the extinction of a species, need to be explained ecologically. Ecological explanations involve a level of organization higher than biology on the hierarchy and so appeal to downward causation as part of the whole explanation. Murphy also claims that we now have conceptual tools for relating theology and science in ways that were impossible when reductivistic physicalism dominated discussions of physicalism. Murphy follows Arthur Peacocke, biologist and theologian at Oxford University, in holding that theology can be “conceived as the science at the top of the hierarchy,” inasmuch as “theology is the intellectual discipline whose subject matter is the relation of God to everything else, both the natural world and

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the human world.”27 These theorists see theology, like other sciences, as having its own distinctive subject matter, concepts, and language. Theology is thus deemed to be relatively autonomous from other sciences. In explaining the role that theology might take vis-a`-vis other sciences, Murphy considers the questions now being raised by cosmology that no other sciences seem equipped to answer.28 Why do the basic constants (such as the ratios of weights among subatomic particles) have the values we find necessary for a universe that supports life? What caused the big bang? Why do laws of nature exist? Why does a universe exist at all? Theology does not just “interact” with the natural sciences, according to Murphy, for theology is capable of illuminating questions that arise in the human sciences, which, in turn, are capable of shaping theological positions. She offers science’s capacity to illuminate sin as an illustration of the latter. Murphy defines sin as the transgression of a divine law and observes that in one circumstance an act might not be sin, but in another circumstance it is. She suggests that when humans were evolving, for example, a way of ensuring survival of the human family was promiscuous sexual behavior, in accordance with an innately felt biological drive. Now that human survival is not at risk, however, promiscuous sexual behavior is a sin, even though the innate tendency toward it is still present within the human family. Murphy presents God’s causal role in downward-causation as a crucial step for understanding God’s action in the world and observes that this interpretation of causation means that God does not violate any natural law, which is contrary to the way that divine acts are commonly interpreted. She is concerned, however, to ensure that God’s intentional causal acts are not seen as merely one more kind of physical cause, which placing them in a physical hierarchy is apt to do. She also wishes to avoid the pantheistic tendencies she finds in Peacocke, who restricts God’s action to downward-causation. Murphy wants to affirm the presence of “special divine actions” and remarks that we have no scientific or philosophical reasons for rejecting them and considerable theological grounds for accepting them.29 She speculates that God might additionally act at the level of quantum events in order to explain phenomena in which he is implicated. Jackson’s theory of weak dematerialization concerning the formation of the Shroud of Turin illustrates an event in which God might have acted at the quantum level. One of the difficulties with the view of scientific hierarchies articulated by Murphy is that it appears to make the existence of God dependent upon physical realities. This occurs as a result of the claim that each level apart from the first is still deemed to be ontologically dependent on the entities found in the level below. Biological life, for example, is deemed to depend on the entities postulated by molecular chemistry. Even if biological life has enough autonomy to warrant being considered a scientific domain without being reduced to chemistry, and even if it exhibits emergent properties and requires both

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“bottom-up” and “top-down” causation for the explanation to be complete, the fact remains that without molecules biological life as we know it would not exist. Similar remarks could be made about the other levels and associated sciences, so that we finally get down to the level of subatomic particles. Without these, nothing would exist at level 2; hence, nothing would exist at level 3; and so on. The difficulty for the existence of God, given this scheme, is that he is dependent on some lower level (or levels), because he also is placed in the hierarchy. An implication of placing God in this hierarchy is that if subatomic particles did not exist, neither would God. Murphy proposes that we rethink the nature of causal dependence in the hierarchy. Perhaps we can take her advice and admit downward-causation, but even if we do so, we have not altered the ontological dependence that provides the basis for the hierarchy in the first place. I doubt that Murphy wishes to advance the idea that God depends on the existence of subatomic particles, given her orthodox Christianity. However, she has not explained how one can embrace a natural hierarchy that includes the existence of a being who is not dependent for his existence on natural objects and is deemed by theists to have created them. The nonreductive physicalism outlined in this section does not rule out the possibility that subtle forms of nature exist whose relationship to the visible order, including human life, is mysterious and largely unknown. Perhaps some of the phenomena that are now classed broadly as spiritual in character, including some to which I have alluded in the first two chapters, are capable of being accommodated in this framework. However, the idea that the Source might be placed in any other position than creator and sustainer of things is one that the Christian church considers untouchable. Even the suggestion that matter and other forms of limited being exist eternally alongside the Eternal One in endless dependence on him is more readily tolerable.

Schlagel’s Contextual Realism Philosopher Richard Schlagel advances an attractive version of nonreductive naturalism, but he unfortunately does not draw the conclusions that would allow for a new rapprochement between science and theology. He describes his realism as contextual realism and, unlike Smart and some other physicalists, holds that the changing context in which knowledge is set prevents us from claiming to know anything in an absolute sense or from a timeless perspective. He does not explicitly subscribe to the “levels hypothesis” as a way of describing physical reality and instead prefers to describe reality as “an inexhaustible matrix of relatively autonomous contexts.”30 He fully embraces the results of scientific efforts to understand the universe and so takes issue with ordinary language philosophers who hold that the obvious truth of commonsense statements and the certainty of commonsense beliefs are sufficient to

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express basic insights about the universe.31 However, Schlagel is also unwilling to embrace the claim of some theorists who hold that “inquiry at any dimensional level of the universe will disclose the same basic elements, underlying structures, and explanatory principles.”32 He holds that although all knowledge is relative to limited conditions and contexts, confirmable truth and reliable knowledge are possible, including factual knowledge of some of the trivial truths that anyone could affirm, such as that grass is green and that the present was preceded by past events.33 It also includes knowledge of microscopic realities, however, so Schlagel insists that we do not need to choose between a commonsense view of what is real and a scientific representation of reality, for neither view “does justice to the complexity of the world as we find it today.”34 Schlagel also accepts the value of the ontological claims implicit in our talk of minds and mental states, although he allows for the possibility of radical revisions in the ways in which we view ourselves. However, he rejects the traditional view of human nature according to which we have an “ontologically distinct spiritual or mental substance harbored in the body.”35 Schlagel adopts a basically naturalistic perspective that neither endorses nor repudiates the dependencies that are featured in strictly reductive approaches or in the view advanced by nonreductive physicalists. Much more could be said about Schlagel’s helpful approach to issues of ontology, but I wish to draw attention to his views on matters that would normally be deemed “religious.” He discusses the question of whether ghosts might exist and notes that some very rational and “tough-minded” acquaintances, whose judgment he would unhesitatingly accept on other matters, have provided him with firsthand reports of experiences that, “if authentic, would necessitate a radical revision in our conception of man and ‘life after death.’ ”36 In view of his rather generous approach to ontological claims, which countenances the microentities of physics, the objects of commonsense experience, and mental states, one might think that he would be willing to recognize the entities commonly known as ghosts, but he does not. He denies that this is because he has not seen a ghost, for he says that he believes in all sorts of things he has not seen, “such as electric currents, light and sound waves, and mesons.” He objects to claims that ghosts and other spirits exist because they “do not conform to my categorical scheme,” and then adds, “The reason that most of us today (in contrast to primitive peoples who readily accepted the existence of spirits, daemons, and the ghosts of dead ancestors) scoffingly dismiss ghosts as unreal is that they do not behave as do the physical objects around us (they cannot be publicly observed, they cannot be photographed, they have an anomalous space-time existence, and so forth), and their presence cannot be experimentally confirmed, unlike unobservable scientific entities.”37 Schlagel’s objections are of interest, for he claims to speak for many others— probably including many academics—and because his approach to issues of

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ontology appears to be more amenable to including spirits than that espoused by physicalists such as Smart. Schlagel touches on the issue of what amount of evidence from reliable witnesses would be sufficient to warrant revising such basic beliefs as those about the existence of ghosts. We might wonder how he is able to accept the judgment of the rational, “tough-minded” persons he respects on matters other than ghosts, but not on ghosts. I suspect, however, that Schlagel is giving expression to an epistemic response that is commonly felt. This gives his comments more interest than they would otherwise have. His remarks are especially interesting for me because I once shared his scoffing dismissal of the claim that ghosts exist. My beliefs on the matter changed, but I can neither identify all of the events that caused my mind to change nor the precise time it happened. The reports of Christic apparitions that I examined in Visions of Jesus certainly influenced me to regard accounts of ghosts more favorably, because similarities can be found between the two. However, because I have never experienced an apparition in any form, my belief about ghosts seems to have changed on the basis of others’ reports of their experiences. I recognize now, as I did when I began to take such reports seriously, that all of them were open to the usual kinds of skeptical objections. These objections were evidently not overwhelming, for my beliefs changed. I surmise now that this change was not associated with any single event and took place gradually. I regard my earlier belief that ghosts do not exist as having then been reasonable, for nothing in my own experience warranted such a belief, nor had I encountered enough plausible cases reported by others that seemed capable of producing such a belief. The belief emerged as I assessed the evidence that was presented to me, including the trustworthiness of those who presented it. I do not remember “deciding to believe” either of the conflicting claims about ghosts and am puzzled when philosophers speak in such terms about beliefs. I wish to elaborate on the interpretation I am giving here to beliefs and “deciding to believe,” because this interpretation is relevant to the discussion of naturalizing epistemology, which I will discuss in the last chapter. I am mindful of the famous essay by William James titled “The Will to Believe,” although I do not intend to analyze his remarks about belief here. I suspect that he uses this well-worn term in more than one distinct sense and also that he found a sense to which he could meaningfully attach the idea that a belief can be willed. The term “belief ” probably has more than one established sense, but in the sense in which I wish to use it, beliefs cannot be chosen or willed. Defining the different senses of belief is difficult, not only for the general reasons concerning definition outlined in chapter 3 but also because the term denotes a psychological state known to us through introspection. Because I wish to distance myself from the idea that a person can will to believe a proposition, I also wish to distance myself from the view of rationality that asserts

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that the degree to which people are rational is the degree to which people bring their beliefs in conformity to those claims for which they have adequate evidence. I will begin with a homely example to elucidate the sense of “believe” I wish to use. I have observed that some crockery manufacturers put labels on the bottom of their products, and some do not. On the desk beside me is a cup that was recently given to me. I cannot see the underside of it as I write, and so it is an example of something that is unobserved. This is not an example of an unobservable object, of course, which is the kind of object that interests me most in this discussion of God and other spirits, but my example will have to suffice. I have actually seen its underside in the past, but because the cup I am using as an example is so ordinary, and because I have no abiding interest in its qualities, I cannot remember if it has a label. As I canvass my stock of beliefs, I discover that I have no definite belief about the presence or absence of a label. I have noticed that cheap cups tend to be without labels and that expensive ones usually have labels. This particular cup does not look expensive, but I know that moderately priced cups can also come with labels. My evidence on the matter is inconclusive, but quite apart from the matter of evidence, I have no definite belief about whether the cup has a label. Then I turn the cup over and see that it has no label. The belief that it has no label flows in upon me with such conviction that nothing I can do can prevent it. I did not “will to believe” but only willed to turn over the cup. The belief entered of its own accord, once I looked at the underside of the cup. I could have refrained from responding to the impulse to look at the cup’s underside and would presumably have remained in a state of “suspended belief ” forever. Maybe something else would have caused a belief to form in me, such as finding a label on a cup that looked identical to it. Of course, such a belief might have been false, for companies that sell crockery probably change their manufacturers from time to time and hence their manufacturing standards. The point I am making is that in one important sense of the term “believe,” we do not decide to believe that something is the case. Rather, we discover, upon introspection, that a belief is present or that it is not. So it was that I first discovered that I did not believe in ghosts and some years later discovered that I did. Moreover, I can offer what seem to me to be reasonable grounds for each of these beliefs and, consequently, for the change. The point I have made about belief could also be made if I spoke about conviction, rather than belief: I find myself convinced about matters for which the causes are only partially known to me. One advantage of using “conviction” is that the verb form of the noun— namely, “am convinced”—has a passive sense, which correctly conveys the dependency of the psychological state of which I am speaking upon causes of which I might be unaware. “Believe,” the verb form of “belief,” perhaps conveys less passivity and has come to have other meanings associated with it. “Believe” is often used as a synonym for “accept,” and I, of course, believe (am convinced)

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that we can decide to accept various propositions, either in the sense of deciding to accept them as true, deciding to accept them as worthy of further reflection, or deciding to accept them as worthy of being used as an assumption in a scientific experiment, and so on. When William James speaks about the will to believe, I think he sometimes is thinking about deciding to accept a proposition, perhaps in one of the senses of “accept” just outlined. However, I consider the sense of “believe” I have sketched to be a different concept and, moreover, to be a fundamental use of the term. In this sense of “believe,” we do not decide to believe but discover that we believe or that we fail to believe, or whatever the case may be. The belief in ghosts seems to arise principally from events in which people see, or seem to see, an object in the ordinary space-time-causal order that is anomalous in some way—the object resembles a human form but is semitransparent, appears from “out of nowhere,” disappears instantaneously, or passes through solid objects, and so on. These characteristics are only illustrative of the kinds of experiences that are known as seeing a ghost, but enough is generally understood from numerous reports of ghost sightings about what can count as such an experience. The concept of a ghost sighting is openended, so we cannot define it exhaustively, but it also has reasonably clear criteria that can be drawn from paradigmatic experiences. The belief in ghosts can naturally have a source other than a sighting and evidently does among those who, never having “directly experienced” one, believe them to exist. The causal origins of such beliefs among those who are of a skeptical bent and who, like Schlagel, tend to dismiss such claims appear to be complex and largely beyond our capacity to elucidate completely. Such beliefs are causally influenced by, among other things, our assessments of the reliability of people, including their honesty, their accuracy in reporting specific kinds of claims, their capacity to mislead or be misled, and so on. These beliefs appear to be generated more slowly than those that depend on direct perception, although beliefs of the latter kind are also apt to be critically evaluated by those who have them, depending on such factors as their mental states at the time of the experiences, the presence of any abnormalities that might impair perception, their background beliefs about the “openness” of the universe, perhaps their education, and so on. Everyone who is interested in the possibility that ghosts might exist has favorite stories, and one of mine comes from an older cousin who has been a Protestant minister for many years and has also worked for book publishers for about twelve years. When Rod received word that his mother was dying in a hospital in Omaha, Nebraska, he went to be with her. Rod stayed in a hotel near the hospital where she was being cared for so he could visit her several times each day. He was awakened from sleep one morning to see his mother, my Aunt Anne, standing near his bed. She was wearing a dress that was appropriate for one who would be out in public and was looking at him. Rod

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asked her how she was feeling—they conversed in the German dialect used by my ancestors—and she replied that she felt perfectly fine. She said that she could even see well, which intrigued him, for Rod knew that his mother’s eyesight had failed badly. She then disappeared from view, as apparitions are wont to do, and the hospital telephoned a few minutes later to tell him that his mother had just died. Few of my readers would know my cousin, of course, and might not know what interpretation to put on his story. However, I believe him! Of course, I cannot ferret out the causes for my belief, but one factor is my belief in his integrity and honesty, and another is the influence of hearing similar stories from other people I trust. No doubt the accounts of similar stories have had an influence on me. In the case of reports whose sources I do not personally know, however, I am persuaded in part by the large number of similar accounts, obtained from rather different cultures and settings. I do not believe that Rod’s experience was hallucinatory, by which I mean, roughly, that the experience had its source wholly within him, perhaps because of deficient perceptual or cognitive mechanisms. In saying this, I am not asserting that the reality that Rod “encountered” exists in the exact form in which he perceived it. However, I believe his perceptual experience causally derived—at least in part—from something other than that which we encounter in the normal space-time-causal order. I think of this reality as a subtle form of nature, perhaps capable of manipulating our powers of perception so that we seem to see objects that are projected in space, and having many of the properties found in ordinary objects. Of course, my belief could be mistaken. Schlagel objects to the reality of ghosts because they do not square with his approach to theorizing. He says that ghosts do not satisfy the requirements of the framework in which physical objects are found, for ghosts cannot be publicly observed, they cannot be photographed, their space-time existence is anomalous, and their presence cannot be experimentally confirmed, unlike unobservable entities postulated by the sciences. Given his generous attitude toward the objects postulated by various kinds of theories, however, Schlagel’s demand that ghosts satisfy the requirements for physical objects seems unreasonable. Some unobservable entities postulated by science, for example, do not meet the requirements for physical objects that he has set out, such as the requirement that they be photographed. Neither do mental states. I can only guess at the reasons Schlagel might have for demanding that ghosts be photographed. Perhaps he considers ghosts as they are conventionally described to be sufficiently similar in size and form to the medium-sized objects found in the commonsense domain, which are photographable, that ghosts should be photographable. However, I do not understand why Schlagel considers that all forms of reality must satisfy the requirements for ordinary physical objects, especially after relaxing the criteria for being real to include mental states and unobservable entities. Schlagel emphasizes the importance of the testing undertaken by the sci-

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ences in enunciating standards for evaluating objects as real, but many events in the commonsense domain fail to satisfy such requirements. For example, much of our information about the kinds of experiences and conditions in which death occurs in humans has not been obtained in circumstances that we could describe as scientific. Only a few societies—God be thanked!—have experimented creatively with human death. The information we have is semiexperimental, rather than experimental, in the senses of these terms given by Braude.38 Moreover, important claims in various sciences, such as geology, natural biology, and astronomy, are dependent on information that is not obtained in circumstances where variables can be carefully controlled and detailed tests can be carried out. Observers need to be appropriately positioned, for example, to observe a volcano, the birth of quintuplets, or a supernova. These events are not generally capable of being scientifically confirmed by creating the conditions so that the outcome is replicated. Science does not have the uniform character sometimes implied in discussions of scientific method, and Schlagel knows this. In his discussion of the reality of ghosts, however, he enunciates criteria that seem to overlook this point. Finally, many of Schlagel’s criteria for being real that ghosts supposedly fail to satisfy are matters of controversy. Although I would concede to Schlagel that most accounts of ghost encounters are private experiences, a sizable number of experiences have been reported in which two or more percipients report seeing the same apparition simultaneously.39 Also, the claim that ghosts cannot be photographed is debated among those who have studied ghost sightings. Many photographs exist that apparently feature ghosts, including photographs that generally predate the technology that now allows them to be easily “doctored.” Although the existence of ghosts in the space-time-causal world is anomalous, to use Schlagel’s term, the basic question, in my view, is whether enough accounts are on record to give ghost encounters some credence. My impression is that tens of thousands, perhaps even hundreds of thousands, of accounts have been advanced over the years, often by people to whom the ghostly apparition appeared. The near-death experience (NDE) also sheds light on the epistemic question at issue here, although its implications for methodology do not appear to be adequately appreciated. The NDE has become accepted as genuine in the last three decades, although competing explanations for it continue to be debated, because numerous accounts similar to those first reported by Raymond Moody in 1975 have been found to occur around the world. In earlier times, these experiences were often described as visions of the afterlife and treated with suspicion by Western academics. Research into the NDE resulting in greater knowledge about the frequency with which they occur has altered those suspicious attitudes toward them. The numerous similar accounts of experiences generally known as ghost encounters also warrant acceptance, given the plausibility of the methodological principle that has been operative in assessing the NDE. The interest among academics in explaining

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the NDE suggests that phenomena that Schlagel has dubbed as nonscientific and dismissed as primitive can become the object of serious study, even if an adequate explanation for them is not available. The views of Smart, Murphy, and Schlagel could be viewed as three forms of naturalism on a continuum that exhibit increasing tolerance toward the kinds of transcendent reality whose plausibility I am defending. Smart’s robust physicalist reductionism provides no basis for spirits, since the ultimate entities are the entities postulated by physics. Murphy’s nonreductionist physicalism supposedly finds a place for transcendent realities, but only if they are viewed as dependent on physical objects. Schlagel’s naturalism abandons the hierarchy that shapes the thought of both Smart and Murphy and is easily the most accommodating form of naturalism to the transcendence that I am defending. For some reason, however, Schlagel cannot bring himself to grant that these forms of reality possibly exist, but this is only because he considers the data on which a theory might rest to be inadequate. He and I obviously disagree on the nature of the evidence and consequently on the need for a theory that postulates transcendent beings.

The Mythopoeic Character of Religion Another challenge to the possibility of a transcendent order comes from those who see insuperable difficulties in the language that is used to give expression to a transcendent order. This challenge can be formulated in terms of difficulties found in the concepts that are used to give expression to religious beliefs, but the gist of the objection is similar. Sometimes the whole of religion is in view when such positions are presented, and other times Christianity is singled out for special attention. Given the limited objectives of this study, I will focus on an important objection to the language of Christian faith. Donald Wiebe, professor of religion at the University of Toronto, has forcefully and provocatively expressed his criticism of Christian beliefs in The Irony of Theology and the Nature of Religious Thought, adopting an approach to the development of human thought that goes back to Lucien Le´vy-Bruhl. In publications that began early in the twentieth century, Le´vy-Bruhl observed the differences in structure between what he calls “primitive thought” and the thought found in “modern western industrial societies.”40 Wiebe traces some of the debate during the last century primarily as it applies to the expression of religious beliefs, drawing a sharp distinction between the mythopoeic mind and the rational mind. The distinction is variously expressed as a dichotomy between magic41 and science, superstition and cognition,42 the mythological and the empirical, the mythopoeic and the philosophic/scientific,43 and the practical and the abstract.44 Wiebe considers the dichotomy to be complete enough to render the thought patterns incommensurable and views Western

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scientific thought as the benchmark for intellectual achievements.45 He follows Ernest Geller in asserting that “there is one homogeneous kind of modernity and one homogeneous kind of savagery.”46 The title of Wiebe’s book derives from the fact that theology is often understood as an attempt to render religion rational and so is considered an academic discipline; however, because he considers religion to be inherently irrational, any attempt to render it rational is a discrepancy between appearance and reality and hence an irony.47 Wiebe considers all religious belief, not just Christian, to be mythopoeic, but my interest here is primarily in his remarks on Christianity. Wiebe interprets religion essentially as affirming the belief in a transcendent world of superhuman beings having the ability to assist or harm humans,48 which is the sense I give the term. Consequently, the position he articulates could be interpreted as challenging the claims I am making in this book. Wiebe’s position can be profitably compared and contrasted with other worldviews already discussed, such as the relationship between common sense and science. Wilfrid Sellars is reputed to have viewed these two perspectives to be incommensurable. Because religious beliefs belong to the commonsense framework, Sellars would probably have agreed with Wiebe about the dichotomy thesis. However, Sellars’s view is much more ambitious, and Wiebe’s dichotomy thesis can be embraced without jettisoning common sense completely. The main difference between Smart’s position and the one articulated by Wiebe is that Smart considers explanations that appeal to transcendent beings to be unnecessary, given the explanatory power of science, whereas Wiebe views the two domains as incommensurable. Wiebe seems open to the possibility that scientific thought might have evolved out of mythopoeic thought, perhaps by means of an intermediate stage,49 but he does not consider this possibility to undermine the dichotomy thesis. He describes the dichotomy as “two kinds of activity of one mind, with different qualities of thought.”50 The position I have been taking in this book is that certain claims about transcendent beings can be reconstructed to conform to standards of rational inquiry that have emerged out of science and Western philosophy. This position is part of a larger one, according to which science is dependent on, and evolves out of, a commonsense view of the world. The larger view shapes how we view those parts of common sense that have not been replaced by or reduced to science, such as beliefs about mental states and powers and much of social science. Wiebe formulates his position on the incommensurability of religious and scientific belief systems by directing his attention to different facets of such systems of thought, including the concepts they use, the kinds of statements found within them, the kinds of explanations they propose, the methodology associated with forming and evaluating beliefs, and the mental outlooks of those who exhibit the religious and scientific attitudes. His position is partly developed in relation to the writers who defend or criticize the position of Le´vy-

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Bruhl or simulacra of it, so Wiebe is saddled with some of their terminology, but he discusses the dichotomy thesis in sufficient detail, often contrasting the two outlooks, that a clear picture emerges of his views of the main differences. According to Wiebe, the mythopoeic and scientific outlooks both purport to describe and explain the universe, including the place of humans in it, so in that respect they have a common cognitive objective. However, their similarities virtually end there. Wiebe says that the explanations characteristic of mythopoeic thought broadly refer to the supermundane powers of personal agents,51 capable of performing “magic” and of working wonders,52 both in human life and in the cosmos. Scientific explanations, by contrast, are said to be impersonal and mechanistic,53 as illustrated by the atomism of Democritus and other ancient pre-Socratics among whom the scientific perspective was first substantially exhibited. Science does not invoke gods to explain phenomena but introduces order and rationality into explanations without reference to personal agents.54 Science appeals to natural substances in order to explain, and its explanations are reductionistic55 in character. The beliefs found in the two domains of thought also exhibit striking differences, according to Wiebe. Religious beliefs are expressed in ways that conflate the descriptive, explanatory, and evaluative roles of language, for religion articulates one general vision of what is normal and does not differentiate various kinds of function that language serves.56 Scientific thought, by contrast, rigorously separates descriptive and explanatory claims, on the one hand, from evaluative statements, on the other, and construes science as not articulating the framework for a social and moral order.57 Scientific beliefs are said to provide the basis for knowledge for its own sake, but religious beliefs are said both to provide a basis for a social bond among those subscribing to that religion and to subordinate the cognitive function of religious beliefs. Moreover, Wiebe views religious beliefs, which are apt to be defended by rhetoric and persuasion, as often wandering and even contradictory, but he describes scientific and associated philosophic thought as emphasizing reasoning and precision.58 Wiebe also says that the concepts of those who engage in religious thought do not allow systematic classification of phenomena and resemble those of a child in an early stage of life.59 For example, Wiebe considers the qualitative concepts of time, space, and causality that are found in religious belief systems to be devoid of the objectivity found in their scientific counterparts and views them as prelogical or prescientific;60 science, however, uses numbers and calculations in describing the world. Moreover, religion considers the concept of agency to be the stopping point in explanation, but science considers a person to be as legitimate an object of analysis as any material object would be, even if the effect is dehumanizing.61 Finally, Wiebe considers the methodological approaches and mental outlooks of those who adopt these two approaches to reality to reveal marked

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differences. The scientific perspective is speculative and critical and gives autonomy to reason, he says, and is not compliant, obedient, or subservient to higher powers whose goodwill must be secured through prescribed ritual behavior.62 Wiebe tends to follow Karl Popper in his outline of scientific method and so places emphasis upon the importance of the critical appraisal of the conjectures proposed as explanations of phenomena. However, scattered remarks indicate that Wiebe respects the contribution that deductive and inductive logic in general have made to the emergence of science and critical philosophy in Western thought. Religion does not encourage critical inquiry or tolerate rational autonomy, according to Wiebe, but both of these are crucial for science. Many questions could be raised about the plausibility of Wiebe’s account of two strictly dichotomous ways of thinking, but I will mention only a few. I am intrigued by the large number of striking differences he finds and by the small number of similarities, but I have not made religions in general a sufficient object of study to question his characterization of mythopoeic thought and the supposed uniformity of it. I do have misgivings, however, about how he characterizes science. As I indicated previously, he sometimes follows Popper in construing science as a form of inquiry marked by the development of speculative conjectures to explain phenomena. Popper held that these conjectures need to be subjected to tests that expose them to possible falsification in order to be worthy of being considered as adequate. These tests consist primarily of deducing implications from the conjectures and testing them for adequacy. Popper elaborated on the ideas of this basic account of scientific methodology over a lifetime of philosophical work, and some of his students, including Imre Lakatos, have achieved fame by building on and modifying Popperian ideas. Popper uses the term “fallibilist” to describe his view of scientific method, for he was so aware of human fallibility in attempts to achieve knowledge that he felt more confident about a methodology that allowed conjectures to be ruled out as implausible than about a methodology that allowed conjectures to be admitted as plausible.63 Crucial to Wiebe’s characterization of the two approaches is an adequate characterization of science, but this is not as straightforward as he suggests. Someone might suggest that Wiebe could obtain a characterization of science by first selecting the kinds of inquiries that Popper would deem scientific according to his view of method. However, a problem now arises. Popper’s account of “science” or “rational inquiry” is incommensurable with various fields of inquiry generally described as scientific or rational, for many scientists do not incorporate Popper’s fallibilism. They tend to be inductivist about scientific method, rather than fallibilist, and accept conjectures as plausible, provided these conjectures are consistent with many observations. Popper scorned inductivist method, which means that these two schools of scientific methodology adopt different views about what counts as a science. In general terms,

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the scope of science on a fallibilist view of method is much narrower than on an inductivist view. If Wiebe wishes to provide a characterization of science on the basis of inductivism, his account will be rather different. He does not resolve the question of whether his view of what counts as a science is shaped by a methodological approach or by something else. Wiebe is obviously interested in the emergence of science in Western history, particularly in the thought of the pre-Socratics. It might be thought, therefore, that identifying an activity as scientific or rational might be done historically, rather than methodologically. This approach would allow us to identify certain activities as scientific and others as nonscientific, and then the features of scientific thought could be determined. However, a historical approach to identifying the sciences is fraught with as many problems and difficult decisions as an attempt to proceed methodologically. Phrenology and astrology, for example, were once considered sciences, but they are no longer considered to have this honorific status. Moreover, questions remain about the status of psychoanalysis and Marxist thought—fields of inquiry about which Popper was understandably greatly exercised, given the historical period in which he lived and exercised his influence. If Wiebe wants his characterization of science to be determined by consensus within a culture—if such a consensus is even achievable without begging questions—he will find that the views about the content of science in Western history are inconsistent. An inquiry that is deemed scientific in one century is deemed unscientific the next, and vice versa. Wiebe glosses over the problems for philosophy of science and history of science in his characterization of science. Other difficulties can be briefly mentioned. For example, Wiebe stresses the importance to science of quantitative concepts and mentions that religion uses only qualitative concepts. Many domains of science, however, including botany, zoology, and geology, employ qualitative concepts in their descriptive accounts of their subject matter. Of course, quantitative concepts are being developed in many fields of critical inquiry, but these fields are not deemed unscientific until such concepts are obtained. Moreover, various branches of social science, including history and economics, explain certain phenomena by reference to the actions of human beings. Such “agentic explanation” is a feature of religion and supposedly makes religion inferior to science, on Wiebe’s view. He can, of course, insist that inasmuch as such explanations are featured in history and economics, they are neither scientific nor rational. However, he then must defend his prescriptive view of science and deal with the anomalies that this method engenders. Finally, we might raise questions about the extent to which the physics of the twentieth century, especially quantum theory, satisfies Wiebe’s account of science. The epithet “mechanistic” does not apply well to quantum physics, and the apparently conflicting claims that characterize religious thought seem to be found there as well. Wiebe pro-

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vides a caricature of science and glosses over many of the complexities exhibited by activities that are widely deemed to be scientific. The most important question for my study is whether anything Wiebe says prevents one from advancing a conjecture about the existence of a transcendent being or object as an explanation for an observed event. His account of the relation between science and religion appears to be applicable only to particular ways of articulating religious beliefs. In Psalm 18:7-13 we have a poem that appears to illustrate the kind of mythopoeic account that Wiebe construes as symptomatic of religion: Then the earth reeled and rocked; the foundations also of the mountains trembled and quaked, because he [God] was angry. Smoke went up from his nostrils, and devouring fire from his mouth; glowing coals flamed forth from him. He bowed the heavens, and came down; thick darkness was under his feet. He rode on a cherub, and flew; he came swiftly upon the wings of the wind. He made darkness his covering around him, his canopy thick clouds dark with water. Out of the brightness before him there broke through his clouds hailstones and coals of fire. The Lord also thundered in the heavens, and the Most High uttered his voice, hailstones and coals of fire. This account unequivocally offers an “agentic explanation” for natural phenomena. However, this is not the kind of example to which I have given primacy in this book. I have argued that experiences occur in which postulating the existence of entities that appear to transcend the natural order is plausible. Of course, we might have no way of ensuring that the postulated entities are fully transcendent, but the manner in which they appear to function makes such a conjecture plausible. I refer again to phenomena such as Cases 3 and 4 in chapter 1, the exorcising of the Gadarene demoniacs, and the resurrection of Jesus. The unobserved beings postulated to account for these events are conjectured to exist and take their place among all the other objects from various branches of critical inquiry similarly conjectured to exist. Test implications are drawn from the theories postulating their existence, which include predictions that similar cases will be found in human experience. These unobserved objects

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are characterized primarily by the causal role they appear to play, although other methods of helping to fix their reference might also be employed. Their properties are tentatively established as more phenomena occur in which they appear to be causally implicated. Consequently, they might be found to resemble objects found in the natural domain; virtually everything, after all, can be found to resemble something else. According to the method being outlined here, finally, these objects need not be considered to be immune from elimination if a superior theory postulating other objects is found that accounts for the events that led to the postulation of spirits in the first place. The account I have just provided outlines rational grounds for tentatively introducing spirits into one’s ontology. It does not resemble Wiebe’s analysis of mythopoeic thought but satisfies Popper’s strictures on rational inquiry. If Wiebe were to modify his view to say that Christian faith virtually never adopts such a fallibilist stance, I would be sympathetic to his incommensurability thesis. If he were to concede that religious thought could be reconstructed to conform to the approach that I have just outlined, we would be in substantial agreement. The major outstanding issue would be “agentic explanation.” Wiebe’s objection to it seems to arise from the expectation that something like Smart’s physicalism is likely to be implemented. For reasons I have already outlined, however, I cannot see a plausible form of naturalism taking this configuration. The commonsense domain remains important for the cognitive sciences, and this domain includes the notion of an agent that acts. The onus of proof concerning the dispensability of agents is not on those of us who include it in our theorizing and expect that agents will be important as long as humans exist, but on those who demand their demise. They—if I might be permitted the irony of saying so—need to show that it is dispensable.

Kai Nielsen on Perceiving God Philosopher Kai Nielsen defends naturalism in yet another way. He argues that the concept of God found in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition is incoherent. If this were true, then any attempt to incorporate the concept into a more comprehensive explanatory account would render the resulting theory incoherent. If we suppose that some form of naturalism does not suffer from the incoherence said to be found in Christian theism, an unalloyed naturalism will obviously be superior to any attempt to blend theories coming from the naturalistic and transcendent domains, which is what I am suggesting. The naturalism that Nielsen espouses is not based on the explanatory superfluity of theism, as in Smart, or the superiority of science over religion, which are said to be incommensurable, as in Wiebe, but in the incoherence of theism itself. Nielsen has had academic appointments at the University of Calgary and Concordia University in Montreal and is well known for his vig-

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orous opposition to Christian theism during his career. It appears in his book Skepticism, published in 1973; in a reply to William Alston published in 1994; and in publications between these dates. Alston is well known for his defense of the view that God can be perceived.64 He argues that the experience of God is sufficiently similar to sense perception, in which objects are directly perceived, that one can plausibly hold that God is directly perceived. Because I have an interest in the positions of both authors, I will examine Nielsen’s critique of Alston, which will provide me with an opportunity to discuss both. Nielsen defends his contention that the notion of God is incoherent by taking note of the difficulties in asserting that God has no body, yet acts in the world as a person; that he is transcendent to the universe, yet is perceived by humans in that universe; that God is a person, yet omnipresent and infinite; and so on.65 The conception of God that Nielsen sketches here is indeed that found within Christian orthodoxy, but whether it is incoherent is a matter of debate. Richard Swinburne has argued in The Coherence of Theism66 and in subsequent writings that the orthodox conception of God is coherent. In Skepticism, Nielsen posed a dilemma to the theist, according to which theism must either frame its conception of God in the supposedly incoherent manner just described or must describe God in anthropomorphic terms. Nielsen considers the latter kind of description to be unworthy of a Supreme Being, so the theist is forced to choose between incoherence and unworthiness. Nielsen does not appear to have strayed far from his positivist roots in placing strictures upon the concepts expressed in theories. The question that needs to be answered is whether the concept of God can be understood so that this dilemma can be avoided. I will offer a speculation of how the traditional concept might have coalesced around experience. The Judeo-Christian tradition has made much of the superlative attributes of God, such as omnipotence, omniscience, being ever present, and so on. Although some theologians probably hold that knowledge of such attributes derive from acts of self-disclosure by God, such knowledge could have originated from extraordinary experiences suggesting them, from which these superlative attributes were obtained by extrapolations. Being sure about the origins of these attributes is impossible, given the obscurity of the origins of Judeo-Christian dogmas, but some of the descriptions we have in the relevant Scriptures suggest this. Luke’s account of the conception of Jesus says that the angel who replied to Mary’s skepticism about the possibility of a virginal conception is described as having said, “With God anything is possible.” Suppose an angelic encounter did take place as described, a supposition that is not that improbable, given the large number of angelic encounters reported from antiquity to the present time. Suppose also, mirabile dictu, that the child was conceived without a human father. This extraordinary event would give some sense to the claim that God is omnipotent, although claiming omnipotence is obviously an extrapolation from claiming that God caused a virginal concep-

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tion. This experience would also give some sense to the claim that God is supreme in the entire universe, which is a claim functionally equivalent to saying that God is omnipotent, but one that avoids the difficulties of infinite attributes. Other numinous phenomena appear to be behind such claims as that God is without a body, although capable of appearing in an embodied form; of being greater than or transcending any specific phenomenon or event in which he seems to be involved; and so on. The conception of God in the Christian tradition does not appear incoherent when we consider the place that extrapolating from experience might have played in its conceptual development. I described an experience in Visions of Jesus that sheds light on the claim that something can be experienced as transcendent to the world but experienced in the world. Helen Bezanson reported that she went to a Christian service to please her mother-in-law and for the same reason went to the front to pray. As she stood there, she felt a sensation on her hand as though someone had touched her. She opened her eyes to see if someone had, but no one was standing near enough to touch her. She closed her eyes in prayer, and when she felt this sensation again, she opened her eyes and saw a being that she took to be Jesus, who was standing on a pillar about nine feet away, surrounded by a glow. He was smiling at her and then made a gathering motion with his hands, as though to show her that he was accepting her. He looked so real and alive that Helen thought that others must be looking at him, too. She looked around to see if others were paying attention to him, but no one else seemed to notice him. She thought to herself, “What’s wrong with them? They’re not looking at him.” She looked back to see if he was still there, and he was. Helen said she had the sense that she was looking at God, which gave the visual impression a characteristic that she was not able to describe. She knew enough about the building she was in to know that it did not have pillars, so seeing someone stand on a pillar, surrounded by a kind of radiance hardly experienced in ordinary life, understandably gave her the sense that something transcending the ordinary world was before her. She believed that her experience was in this world for a number of reasons, including the fact that she had no sense that she had “left her body.” In addition, the impact of being able to conduct the simple reality check of turning away and seeing the other people in the building, whom she knew to be there from her nonaberrant perceptual experience moments earlier, and then turning back to find that the same aberrant object was still visible, probably contributed to her sense that the experience occurred in this world. I am not asserting that her experience was objective, in the sense that she saw something as it really was, but she had reason to think that it took place in this world and that it involved an object that transcended the conventional space-time-causal world. Her experience might even have been one in which she apprehended an infinite being. Another experience that sheds light on the phenomenological background

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to attributes used of God is that of Maureen Hason, whose experience I also described in Visions of Jesus.67 She said that she felt that she was in the throne room of God one night when she was asleep, but she does not consider the experience to have been a dream. The experience was not pleasant, and she sought to escape his presence by turning, but wherever she turned, he was there. She felt that he enveloped the whole room, and the thought came to her, “I can’t escape God.” Maureen’s experience could be understood as giving some sense to the claim that God might be perceived as present everywhere. Nielsen’s position looks implausible, given the fact that these experiences do not appear incoherent. The experiences of Helen Bezanson and Maureen Hason are extraordinary and possess unusual perceptual elements, but neither one seems unintelligible or inconsistent. Nielsen says that the claim that God can be perceived is incoherent, but the experiences I have recounted do not exhibit incoherence in an obvious way. The examples of perceptual experiences that I have just mentioned are different from the experiences toward which Alston directs his attention in his earliest papers and those on which Nielsen focuses in his reply. In the first of the papers previously mentioned, Alston says that he is interested in “perceptual experiences,” but when he illustrates them, he identifies experiences in which a person comes to think that “God is sustaining her in being, filling her with His love, strengthening her, or communicating a certain message to her.”68 Alston does not provide any more detail than this. As described, these experiences are not particularly suggestive of a transcendent being or constituted by perceptions for which a naturalistic cause seems inadequate. Rather, they are experiences having a distinctive “affective tone” that do not appear to be a challenge for naturalism. Nielsen takes advantage of Alston’s choice of examples in his reply, noting that when we try to identify what it might be that would be direct awareness of God, we get only affective qualities, such as feelings of love, dependency, goodness, or power.69 Alston perhaps had a much larger group of experiences in mind at the time he wrote this paper, for he refers to “the long and varied experiential encounters with God,”70 which could easily be interpreted to include the extraordinary encounters found in the Christian traditions. However, Alston’s focus is on experiences that are frequently explained naturalistically or are ones that a believer chooses to interpret as conveying the presence of God. Alston’s interest in experiences that more readily suggest a transcendent source is more evident in his later book, Perceiving God, in which he considers the visions of such persons as Teresa of Avila. The standard objection to these from naturalists, of course, is that they are “mere hallucinations.” I do not reject Alston’s claim that the presence of God might be perceived in the ordinary kinds of experiences he initially mentioned but contend only that they do not provide the foothold for the position that a transcendent being is a plausible explanation for an experience. Naturalism is the default position

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for many theorists, as I have noted, and the task for someone who is challenging its adequacy is to come up with phenomena suggesting otherwise. Mundane experiences, such as feelings of being loved or forgiven, for instance, which theists might construe as experiences in which God is perceived, are often thought by nontheists to be explicable in naturalistic terms. By contrast, experiences having perceptual elements that give intimations of transcendence, such as the ones I have described, while ultimately incapable of delivering everything that Nielsen might want, perhaps, or everything that theists might occasionally claim for them, at least suggest that another order of reality exists that is capable of being experienced. Alston mentions experiences that are quite vulnerable to Nielsen’s rebuff. Of course, extraordinary experiences could prove to be no better than mundane ones for providing grounds for arguing that perception of God is possible. We might find that what began as a good candidate for a transcendent event is found to be explicable in natural terms. However, because the concept of God is, at the very least, one of a transcendent being, it makes sense to look for candidates for encounters with God among experiences having intimations of transcendence. Experiences from the domain of ordinary experience are particularly unlikely to prove convincing to those who are only the observers of the experiences of others. Of course, subjects of such experiences might think otherwise. The suggestion that we begin with experiences other than mundane ones is epistemic, for to advance the claim that God can be experienced, the most reasonable place to begin is with experiences that have intimations of transcendence, rather than with mundane experiences that appear to be explicable in naturalistic terms. Orthodox Christian theists, of course, believe that God is somehow implicated in all events that occur, not only the ones that have intimations of transcendence, but naturalists consider most of the events that are part of the natural world as having few, if any, intimations of transcendence. The latter do not seem to be a promising place to look. I will not attempt a distinction between ordinary and extraordinary experiences. The terms “ordinary” and “extraordinary” are merely preliminary markers helping to identify the phenomena under consideration. The point here is to offer a preliminary identification of events requiring explanation and to examine critically a range of conjectured explanations, eliminating those that are incoherent, falsified in testing, or in other ways objectionable. We cannot assume at the outset of an investigation that explanations postulating transcendent beings will be needed or that they will not; neither can we specify where the natural order will stop, if it does, or where the transcendent will begin. Defenders of transcendent beings could prove to be as mistaken in their reading of the universe as they consider naturalists to be. But a wide range of experiential phenomena continue to be reported that have no obvious causes and give intimations of transcendence to those who experience them and even occasionally to outside observers. The tentative, conjectural, probing stance I

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am advocating here is admittedly only one of the possible methodological positions that might be taken in any empirical investigation, and I can only commend it to my readers for consideration, not establish it definitively. Supernaturalism, like naturalism, can be construed as not having firm epistemological foundations. A qualification is required concerning the claim that God can be directly perceived. This qualification arises from reflecting on ordinary sense perception, although I acknowledge that I am uncertain about the extent to which analogies between ordinary sense perception and perceiving God can be pressed. Ordinary sense perception, whether visual, tactile, gustatory, or whatever, does not normally provide us with anything more than a knowledge of what we might call the “surface qualities” of an object. In ordinary perception, we experience sensations from which we construct a conceptual profile of the object that is their supposed cause. We now know enough about perception and the physics of objects to recognize that sense perception provides us with only partial knowledge. We use our knowledge of physics and other sciences to supplement or correct what is achieved in ordinary perception. Moreover, we know that perceptual and cognitive deficiencies of individual percipients can limit the information they obtain in ordinary perception. These features of ordinary perception suggest that if a person were to encounter God, human limitations might restrict the way in which or the extent to which God was experienced. I do not know if Maureen Hason encountered God in that nocturnal experience that seemed to be other than a dream, but she might have experienced him, particularly with respect to his omnipresence, only to the extent that her capacities allowed. The content of her experience seems to have been rich and vivid enough so that she had the phenomenological perception of someone who was “present no matter where she turned.” One can readily understand how she might extrapolate from this to believe that she had encountered a being whose presence is perceivable everywhere. If God exists and is infinite in one way or another, and if the properties of infinite objects can be experienced only to the extent of finite observers’ capacities, it would be dubious to suppose that we might experience those infinite properties in their infinitude. The most plausible interpretation of the claim that God can be directly perceived, then, would be that God is perceived only to the extent possible for limited perceivers, rather than that he is perceived in his infinity. A perception of God, if it did occur, would seemingly not provide us with anything more than a knowledge of God’s “surface qualities.” If Nielsen’s claim about incoherence were only that we have no criteria allowing us to determine that we are experiencing an infinite being in its infinitude, his point would be well taken. But it seems to be stronger, for he seems to say that experience of God in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition is impossible. The plausibility of this claim is weakened by what we know about our limitations as perceivers.

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This point about human limitations is strengthened by the apparent lack of criteria for claiming that something with infinite powers is being observed in action. An example will help to make this clear. Suppose we were to discover a nearby planet undergoing the evolutionary changes supposed to constitute the long history of our planet, only collapsed into a few years. With our telescopes we could watch flora and fauna appearing and disappearing every few seconds or minutes. Surely some would construe these events as the acts of an omnipotent being, but they would not uniquely select the actions of an infinite being as opposed to a being with extraordinarily great powers. Examples of this kind could easily be multiplied. Infinite greatness and, for that matter, infinite smallness are seemingly incapable of being given empirical criteria, although mathematicians have found ways of making sense of these properties for mathematical entities, which appear to be rather different than the objects we encounter in perceptual experience. But even though infinite properties might be incapable of being experienced in their infinitude by finite beings, and might be devoid of empirical criteria, an infinite being could exist and be experienced. Christianity is divided on the value of ongoing experience for interpreting or shaping theological views. Many theologians of a traditional bent construe the concept of God as having been established in antiquity by authoritative experiences, embedded in the writings of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, and refined by subsequent theological reflection. They have accordingly directed their attention primarily to these two kinds of written sources. But some theologians allow ongoing experience to temper theology. The latter approach allows for the possibility that experiences might occur that are similar to those out of which the concept of God was perhaps originally forged; it also allows the concept of God to be refined. Such an approach to the understanding of God allows somewhat tentative and conjectural descriptions to take the place of rigid, dogmatic ones. Nielsen gives the impression that the concept of God is fixed, but he should not be faulted for interpreting God in this way, since many theologians have been unwilling to treat God as an indeterminate concept. In the apophatic theological tradition, God remains a mysterious and aweinspiring causal agent whose attributes—perhaps infinite—are beyond the capacity of mere mortals to fix in a determinate way. The experiences of Helen Bezanson and Maureen Hason are noteworthy for their intimations of transcendence, as well as for their contribution to an understanding of how theism might have originated. They suggest that theology might continue its task of elucidating the notion of God. I remarked before that such experiences might not give theists everything that they have occasionally claimed for them. Nielsen notes that Rudolf Otto and Friedrich Schleiermacher held that religious experience gives subjects an indubitable grasp on God, and he commends Alston for rejecting the infallibility of such knowledge.71 Nielsen is correct to protest against the alleged

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indubitability of even numinous experience. Subjects of such experiences, of course, might find these experiences so convincing that they are apt to treat them as indubitable, but this is a psychological fact about them, not an epistemic one. The claim that God, even a God with infinite attributes, is perceived in such encounters remains a hypothesis that cannot be established beyond question, for other explanations can always be offered. In this respect, theism resembles other empirical theories. But it is not incoherent.

Conclusion The authors whose positions I have briefly examined in this chapter are illustrative of a wide set of attitudes toward religion. Some, like Smart, view religious claims as coherent but serving no ultimate descriptive or explanatory value, inasmuch as the kind of phenomena they purport to address are either already capable of being assimilated into existing sciences, or soon will be. My response to this is that phenomena continue to be reported that appear to be best explained with the conceptual resources of religion—more specifically, the resources of orthodox Christian faith—rather than the resources of the known sciences. The objections that religion is either incoherent on its own or is incommensurable with philosophy and the sciences—humanity’s most rational enterprises—really find their replies in the first three chapters of this book. In this study I have not attempted to defend all that Christian theologians assert about the beliefs that form the core of orthodoxy. I would assert, however, that the charge of incoherence cannot be sustained if the cautious and tentative approach to theorizing illustrated in the first two chapters is adopted. I have not attempted to cover every important stance toward religion in this chapter. For example, I have not examined the views of those who view religious language as having primarily a nondescriptive purpose, such as the outlook of D. Z. Phillips on questions of God’s existence.72 I think that we can concede to Phillips that religious language does not always serve a descriptive purpose, even though its grammatical character might suggest that it does, and still maintain that religious language purports to describe and explain. Moreover, when “God-talk” is considered alongside language that purports to refer to so-called finite spirits, its descriptive purpose becomes transparent. The discussion in this chapter indicates that strategies that naturalists have developed to challenge the claim that transcendent beings exist can be effectively answered. However, a fuller understanding requires more thorough acquaintance with the rich and diverse religious experiences that people have reported since time immemorial, and still report. I consider these phenomena to be as worthy of academic attention as the impressive phenomena that are studied by other sciences.

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5 Naturalizing Supernaturalism

Religion is in no sense concerned with the First Cause; rather is its essence to be found in the revelation of something which the mind by itself cannot grasp. The First Cause has nothing to do with the world and with Creation; it exercises neither providence nor retribution. It is the God of the philosophers, the God of Aristotle, which . . . even Nimrod, Pharaoh and the pagans have worshipped. The God of religion, on the other hand, is the God of Sinai. —Gershom G. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism The approach I am taking to Judeo-Christian theism breaks with tradition in a number of ways and might appear to conflict with approaches that other philosophers of religion have taken in their defense of theism. To round out the defense for the position I am advocating here, I will consider a number of influential views that have been articulated in recent years, as well as try to anticipate some objections that might be advanced against my view. One objection could be that the method I have outlined does not allow God to be treated as a special case among spirits. My method seemingly conflates nonhuman finite spirits, if any exist, with a being very widely construed in the history of Judeo-Christian thought as infinite. God, moreover, might be said to be capable of being known with certainty, whereas finite spirits might be conceded to be objects of mere conjecture. This objection correctly asserts that the approach I have been

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advocating construes the claims of Judeo-Christian theism, including claims about the existence of a possibly infinite God, to be conjectural. My approach makes use of empirical information for advancing the existence of every form of reality, including transcendent forms of reality. However, this approach does not commit me to insisting that other methods of defending transcendent forms of reality are impossible. Perhaps some deductive argument for God’s existence, but not finite spirits, can be found that would supplement the claims I have already defended. Perhaps plausible claims to revelation can be found concerning the existence of God but not of finite spirits. Nothing about an abductive approach to defending the existence of transcendent beings requires repudiating these other claims. Just in case all other suggested gambits prove unsuccessful, however, the approach I have advocated is available. In replying to this objection more fully I will comment briefly on several strategies sometimes considered adequate for a defense of the existence of God as a special kind of transcendent being. These are strategies that highlight the differences between God and any lesser kind of being. In discussing John Haldane’s defense for theism in Chapter 4, I mentioned that the phenomena that he finds most impressive for the existence of a supreme being are the emergence of living things, self-reproducing organisms, and conscious beings. Although some philosophers would prefer to interpret these features of our universe as rendering theism as the most probable cause of these phenomena, Haldane does not argue for theism by using probabilistic reasoning. He wants a more definitive result. The crucial principles that impress Haldane are such claims as “Order cannot come from chaos” and “Things that exhibit great complexity cannot be caused by those that have less.” These principles take their place beside comparable claims that have been advanced in other deductive arguments for God’s existence, such as “Something cannot come from nothing,” “Insensate matter cannot produce beings capable of cognition,” “Everything has some cause,” and “The powers inherent in causes are at least as great as the powers found in their effects.” All of these principles purport to advance some deep insight into the causal structure of the universe. Questions remain about the grounds we have for advancing these general principles with confidence, for each seems either to assert some claim for which the evidence is incomplete or to be an assumption that forms part of contemporary “knowledge.” The fact that some of these assumptions are embedded in science seems to make them unassailable, but science itself seems to be in the habit of overturning, or at least questioning, some of its assumptions. The issues raised here are many and complex, but I will comment briefly only on those that command attention at present.

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God and Cosmology A great deal of debate is presently taking place among scientists, philosophers, and theologians over scientific developments that are thought to enhance the case for theism. The big bang is now often seen as providing a scientific perspective on the method by which the Supreme Deity might have brought the universe and its laws into existence. The grand evolutionary story seeks to combine an account of the events that produced the distribution of matter found in the cosmos with the familiar account of the origin of species. The big bang and biological evolution have brought religion and science together in a way that is both fruitful and provocative. Some people who thought that religion and science were implacable enemies have become convinced that these two domains can be brought together in amiable conversation,1 whereas others see religion capitulating to science in this exchange. Physicists naturally continue to speculate about the big bang as an adequate origin of the universe. According to the “inflation version” of the theory, the universe underwent a spurt of exponential growth in the first milliseconds after the initial explosion. Some physicists think that we are on the brink of being able to calculate this rate of expansion, which is known as the Hubble constant. Older forms of the cosmological argument express wonder at the fact that something exists at all, without concerning themselves unduly about the universe’s orderliness, and contend that the existence of the cosmos itself requires an explanation. The idea that a chaotic universe would provide impressive grounds for claiming the existence of a deity seems implausible, however, so the existence of an ordered cosmos, in some sense of orderliness, has probably been implicit in discussion of the cosmological argument for some time. The teleological argument in one of its forms gives expression to the idea that the orderliness found in a universe that rigidly obeys causal laws could itself provide a rational basis for advancing the existence of God.2 This is not the form in which William Paley presented his famous teleological argument, for he made purpose the central idea. Paley was impressed with the way in which the many parts of various organs found in animals, such as eyes, served to accomplish some noble purpose, such as sight. As detailed biological studies have documented the changes that have taken place during the evolution of species, the value of arguments from purpose have been diminished. Of course, the evolutionary scheme itself can be interpreted as exhibiting a form of orderliness warranting an explanation and thus be viewed as serving theism rather than detracting from it, which is contrary to how evolution is often seen. More recent forms of cosmological arguments for the existence of God have incorporated orderliness, however, so that we find theorists debating the significance of the existence of a universe in which vital cosmological and biochemical characteristics have allowed the emergence of human life—hence

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the expression “the anthropic principle” to describe this kind of argument. For example, if Planck’s constant, which expresses the amount of energy emitted by an electron radiating at a particular frequency, had been a different value— say, 6.626 ⫻ 10⫺33 instead of 10⫺34—intelligent life as we know it would not have evolved.3 In a similar way, if the gravitational constant had been slightly different than it is, the universe might not have continued to expand appreciably after the big bang. Alternatively, the universe might have continued to expand in a way that did not allow some of its matter to congeal to form solar systems, such as the one we live in. Moreover, the thousands of attempts to demonstrate in a laboratory how primitive life might have formed out of “prebiotic soup” have failed, suggesting that life as it is found in evolutionary development was assembled by an intelligence.4 The argument from the existence and intelligent design of the cosmos, suggested by a variety of items, is deemed by some to have sufficient cumulative effect to suggest a supermind. This argument has several limitations and difficulties, however. For example, this argument would not demonstrate the existence of a personal and loving God, if it succeeded. Neither would it provide grounds for thinking that the Creator existed prior to its creation, and so it would not provide endorsement of traditional Christian belief in creation ex nihilo. Orthodox Christian thought maintains that the world is dependent on God, even if it should happen to be coeternal with him. God is marked with a radical form of Otherness so that all created things and beings, including angels and evil spirits, if they exist, are distinct from him and dependent on him for their very being. A third difficulty arises from the recent claim that cosmological constants might not be as uniform as defenders of this argument suppose.5 However, if these constants did vary in ways that could be described in some pleasing equation, I think that defenders of the anthropic principle would view the problem of changing constants as having been overcome. In responding further to these difficulties, we could say that the argument at least attempts to advance scientific grounds for a being whose existence has sometimes been seen as an article of faith. A striking feature of this argument is its anthropocentric formulation, for it focuses on the cosmological characteristics that are necessary for human life. This suggests that it might be given other formulations. For example, if a more evolved creature happened to emerge after humans become extinct, such as the kind of being envisaged by Teilhard de Chardin, it could formulate the argument for itself. This being would express wonder at the cosmological constants and other facts that allowed it to evolve, not at the fact that the cosmos allowed humans to evolve. Also, if sentient beings exist on other planets, they could presumably formulate the argument for themselves in comparable terms. Moreover, any sentient beings that happened to exist in a universe with different cosmological features could formulate the argument for themselves.

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These variations on the theme, however, seem to blunt the force of the argument and take away the extraordinary position that humans supposedly occupy. This argument also focuses on the supposedly favorable results of cosmological constants. If Earth were perhaps to be buffeted by sizable asteroids each year for a hundred years, we might wish that some cosmological constants had been adjusted slightly! In conclusion, this argument has some psychological impact to it, but its logical force is more doubtful. Philosophers continue to debate various other forms of the cosmological argument. The best known form of the cosmological arguments maintains that all events can be construed as part of a causal series: One event is caused by another, the second is caused by a third, and so on. A well-known example is found in the genealogy of a person. Defenders of this form of cosmological argument argue that such series cannot continue infinitely long,6 in which case the series has a first member, which everyone knows as God. An obvious difficulty with this argument, however, is that it does not establish the present existence of the First Cause. Consequently, another version has been introduced, according to which the causes sustain their effects in existence and, according to its defenders, could not have an infinite number of members. For example, a person’s life is sustained by, among other things, the presence of air that allows one’s lungs to exchange carbon dioxide for oxygen. Moreover, the presence of an oxygen source near the surface of the earth depends, among other things, on the (apparently) unique cosmological events forming the history of our planet so that our atmosphere consists primarily of nitrogen and oxygen rather than, say, methane or carbon monoxide.7 In addition, the gravitational forces in the solar system that allow this body of air to remain in position without being drawn away by other heavenly bodies must also be cited as a causal factor. The earth’s atmosphere and gravitational forces in turn have their causes, of course. This causal sequence of events is not temporarily ordered, but each effect occurs simultaneously with its cause. The “first” cause in this supposedly finite sequence of causes is God, who is deemed to simultaneously sustain in being the members of the ordered sequence and consequently must now exist. A criticism of this argument is that it assumes that the universe itself is not self-sustaining, which is perhaps a disguised way of suggesting that “God”—the Universe itself—might be an impersonal source of energy. An obvious question raised by the second form of cosmological argument is whether we can adequately explain phenomena only in terms of sustaining causes, without mentioning temporally ordered series of causes. For example, my present existence is explained not only by the causes that sustain me in being but also by the procreative events among my ancestors. Similar causes can be cited as significant for any object, as cosmology and evolutionary theory clearly bring out. However valuable sustaining causes might be, temporally

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ordered causes help to complete the causal story. The interest in the big bang among contemporary theists indicates the continuing importance of temporally ordered causes, which takes us back to the first form of the argument. Another criticism of the first form of the cosmological argument is that it does not require a single first cause, but the criticism that seems to have evoked the most discussion is that theists have no basis for thinking that the universe cannot have a temporally ordered series of events whose members are infinite in number. Defenders of the Kalam version of the cosmological argument, whose name and formulation derive from Arabic-speaking scholars of Islamic faith, are particularly anxious to rebut the idea that the universe might have an infinite number of temporally ordered causes. William Craig and J. P. Moreland argue that no actual series could be infinite, for if we did propose one— for example, a library with an infinite number of black books and an infinite number of red books—we could withdraw all the red books without reducing the holdings of the library.8 This consequence indicates that the idea of an actual series of infinite ordered causes is counterintuitive. John Mackie is well known for his vociferous opposition to theism, and of the Kalam argument he says: “[The] principle, that where items are ordered by a relation of dependence, the regress must terminate somewhere, and cannot be either infinite or circular, though plausible, may not be really sound. But the greatest weakness [is] . . . why should God, rather than anything else, be taken as the only satisfactory termination of the regress?”9 The plausibility of the form of the cosmological argument that depends on temporally ordered series certainly is contentious and seems to be in considerable question as an effective deductive argument. Philosopher William Rowe has argued that a third version of the cosmological argument needs to be considered. This argument suggests that even if the series of ordered causes constituting the universe’s history were to be infinite, with each element in the series explained by some other member in that series, we would need an explanation—we could call it a “superexplanation”—for the fact that the series has the members it has, rather than other members or even no members at all. He claims that we can demand a superexplanation of an infinite series of events but that such an explanation is not needed for a finite series, because the members of finite series themselves exhaust any demand for explanation.10 Rowe considers the differences between finite and infinite series, as these are conventionally understood in mathematical contexts, to be sufficient to defend this point. Rowe’s form of the cosmological argument depends on a strong interpretation of the principle of sufficient reason, which asserts that a cause—a sufficient reason—exists for everything in the universe. What is remarkable about Rowe’s position is that he wants to apply this principle even to infinite series of causes, each of which already has a cause. A skeptic about this form of the argument might wonder why everything needs a cause, even series of causes, each member of which is already explained. Another skeptical response would be to criticize the prin-

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ciple of sufficient reason itself, for example, from the fact that contemporary science allows uncaused events at the quantum level. The second criticism could be combined with the observation that the support available for the principle of sufficient reason is inductive, in which case the defense for the principle is insufficient because it is supported by only observed instances in which phenomena are found to have causes. Whether any form of the cosmological argument could provide a deductive basis for advancing the existence of God continues to be a matter of debate. The persistence of these arguments appears to be due, in part, to the powerful hold of such time-honored principles as “Something does not come from nothing” and others listed earlier in this chapter. These principles play a significant role in much theorizing and can hardly be regarded as trivial. However, the basis for considering them virtually impregnable remains something of a mystery. In an earlier time, when Kant’s approach to knowledge was widely discussed, these principles would have been candidates for synthetic a priori knowledge, that is, substantive knowledge claims that are defensible by reason apart from sense experience. Quine is widely viewed among philosophers as having convincingly shown that a sharp distinction between synthetic and analytic11 propositions cannot be upheld, which has made an appeal to synthetic a priori knowledge questionable. Perhaps appeals to a priori knowledge are innocent, but we are still left wondering about the remarkable hold that the principles embedded in well-known deductive arguments have for most people.

The Probability of God’s Existence The discussion to this point in this chapter about deductive arguments is admittedly sketchy, but it accords with the skepticism that is now often expressed about the ability of deductive arguments to establish God’s existence. Philosophers have turned to probabilistic arguments to defend the existence of God as confidence in the value of deductive arguments has waned. Traditional cosmological and teleological arguments have been recast as inductive arguments, and the existence of God is now often said to be probable, or perhaps highly probable, on such evidence, not conclusively demonstrable. Theists sometimes take comfort from the fact that many scientific claims can be said only to be probable, not conclusive, so that theistic claims are not inferior to scientific ones. Richard Swinburne is well known for arguing that the probability that God exists is enhanced from what it would otherwise be by the presence of design, miracles, religious experience, and moral awareness in humans. Caroline Franks Davis takes Swinburne’s argument one step further, arguing that the cumulative effect of such elements is greater than the mere sum of these elements considered individually.12 Swinburne’s defense for Christian theism

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in The Coherence of Theism, The Existence of God, Revelation, The Evolution of the Soul, The Concept of Miracle, Responsibility and Atonement, and The Christian God, as well as his books on metaphysics and epistemology, makes him one of the foremost philosophical theologians in Western thought.13 Using a series of implications of the probability calculus, Swinburne argues that it is more probable that God would exist uncaused than that the universe would. He also argues that if there is a God, it is probable that he would make a complex universe.14 These claims involve arguing that the probability is low that a complex universe exists, given no God, and that the probability that a universe exists is not particularly high, given the truth of theism, for God might not have created anything. These are only a few of the probability statements that Swinburne advances in the course of his defense of theism. The particular issue I will examine is his use of arguments that appeal to such claims as that the existence of God is highly probable, or more probable than not, on the basis of some feature of the universe. This requires a digression into the different meanings attached to probability statements. The probability calculus consists of a set of axioms and the theorems that are derived from them. The calculus includes such axioms as P(H,E) ⫹ P(⬃H,E) ⫽ 1,15 which is the source of our bemused response to such empty predictions as that the probability that tomorrow we will either have rain or we will not, given today’s atmospheric conditions, is 1 (or 100%). The calculus also includes the axiom P(H&B,E) ⫽ P(H,B&E) ⫻ P(B,E), which allows us to calculate complex predictions, such as the probability of throwing a six with a black die, if the urn from which the die is blindly drawn has equal numbers of black and red dice. The latter axiom is also used to derive Bayes’s theorem, about which I will say more later, which is used to estimate probabilities indirectly when a direct estimate seems impossible. The question of how probability statements are to be interpreted has been a matter of considerable discussion among philosophers, and the outcome has relevance to probabilistic arguments for theism. Philosophers have identified six different interpretations of probability statements, but the question of whether any of these interpretations helps the theistic cause is the point at issue here. One interpretation of probability statements is to consider them as expressions of relative frequencies, as when we say that the probability of buying a new automobile with sound tires is very high, say .99. This interpretation of the probability calculus, widely used in both the physical and social sciences, clearly is not the sense in which the hypothesis that God created the world is said to be highly probable, given the evidence from design, miracles, and the kinds of phenomena that inductivists adduce. It would be a bad joke to say that we can point to a large number of instances in which God has indisputably accounted for the design in the world, for miracles, and so on! The second interpretation of probability statements is to consider them as expressions of the ratio of favorable to possible outcomes. The classical inter-

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pretation, whose characteristics were explored by Pierre Laplace early in the nineteenth century, often is meant when we say that the probability of throwing a six with a die is 1/6. Of course, we can interpret this probability statement in the relative frequency sense. However, the classical interpretation does not capture the sense of the term employed by inductivists in defense of theism either. When these theists assert that the probability is modest (say 20%) that God has created the orderliness of the cosmos, they could hardly mean that only five explanations for these features of the world are possible, and only one of them makes reference to a supreme being! The two interpretations of probability statements just discussed are the most widely known, but they do not exhaust common uses. The fact that a third interpretation of probability statements needs to be recognized arises from a moment’s reflection on the weather forecasts daily made in the media. When meteorologists state that the probability is 20% of having rain fall in Vancouver tomorrow (November 1, say), they do not mean that rain has fallen twenty times in Vancouver on November 1 during the last hundred years or that they have been right in their weather forecasts 20% of the time! Neither do they mean that exactly five kinds of weather exist, and rain is one of them! This probability statement about weather is evidently an estimate of the strength of evidence in favor of the occurrence of rain. Although meteorology is not a precise science, meteorologists evaluate the significance of such objective factors as the kind of clouds in the vicinity of the place for which the forecast is made, high and low pressure systems found nearby, wind patterns, relative humidity, and air temperature. The combined causal effect of these and other relevant factors appears to be reflected in the probability estimate about weather. The method by which the probability value is obtained is something of a mystery, and meteorologists would probably concede that they do not have an exact basis for choosing between two close numerical values. Although this example might seem artificial, because it is formulated by using exact probability values expressed in quantitative terms rather than in vague qualitative terms such as “low” and “high,” the challenge here is to provide an interpretation of the general kind of probability statement involved. The subjective interpretation attempts to give expression to the degree of conviction subjectively felt about a hypothesis upon certain evidence, which unquestionably captures a feature of common experience and could explain the statements of meteorologists just mentioned. This interpretation of probability statements about God does not help inductivists, however, for people’s convictions about questions of probability can be quite irrational and do not satisfy the constraints placed on the concept of probability by its calculus. For example, people might consider the probability of throwing a six with a die to be 1/6 and might consider the successive throws to be independent of one another. In these matters, they seem to be completely rational. However, they might also consider the probability of throwing a six in three throws to be 50%.

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This probability value is much too high, but empirical research shows that this kind of irrationality is common.16 This disappointing result has led to the introduction of the personal interpretation of the probability calculus, in which an ideal person is postulated who supposedly does not exhibit this form of irrationality because she or he assigns probability values that conform to the probability calculus. However, because the probability calculus does not really provide us with much guidance about how to assign probability values, except that tautologies should be assigned a probability of one, and contradictions a probability of zero, the personal interpretation seems to allow a collection of irrational beliefs, provided that all the other beliefs are adjusted so that their probability values are consistent with them and satisfy the probability calculus. A person could conceivably have the conviction that the probability is 90% that the next toss of a certain coin will be heads, even though it has come up tails more than half the time in hundreds of tosses.17 She or he then simply adjusts other beliefs to form a consistent group with this irrational belief. This fourth interpretation of probability statements also fails to serve the defender of inductive arguments for theism, for it requires only consistency among a set of beliefs about God, expressed in probability statements, whether these beliefs are rational or not. The personal interpretation does not provide a basis for asserting that the probability that God exists, given the existence of the cosmos, say, is high. Neither does it allow us to assert that the existence of God is more probable than not, given the existence of the cosmos. The propensity interpretation was advanced by Karl Popper for elucidating the meaning of probability statements concerning single events, for which several other interpretations are problematic. To elucidate this concept, we might envision an indefinitely long series of throws with a biased die where the frequency with which a six appears is 1/4. If this series included a few throws of a seemingly fair die, these throws would not affect the frequency with which a six appears in the total sequence; the frequency would still be 1/4. However, we would be inclined to construe the probability of a six appearing with the fair die to be 1/6, in the sense that the six has the propensity to occur only 1/6 of the time it is thrown. The propensity interpretation evidently seeks to capture the disposition of one set of events to cause another. The meteorological example I sketched a few pages back also appears to illustrate one use of the propensity interpretation: One set of meteorological conditions has a modest propensity, 20%, say, of producing rain, whereas another set of conditions has a significant propensity, 80%, say, of producing rain. The propensity interpretation is asserting something about the known causal conditions apt to bring about rain or some other form of weather. Several difficulties arise with the propensity interpretation in the context of inductive arguments for theism, however. This interpretation of the probability statements is said to violate Bayes’s theorem,18 which has implications for the method by which some crucial probability values are determined. For

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example, if we wished to determine whether the presence of some form of orderliness (O) found in the world made the existence of God (G) more probable than no information about the orderliness or otherwise of the world, we would need to determine whether P(G,O) ⬎ P(G), where P(G) is the prior probability. This is where Bayes’s theorem comes in. Prior probability values, such as the numerical value of the claim that God has a propensity to exist, sometimes are incapable of being directly determined. Where an interpretation of a probability statement satisfies the probability calculus, however, which includes Bayes’s theorem, we might be able to determine this value indirectly.19 This option is not available to us when we are using the propensity interpretation. We might wonder how we could go about directly estimating a supreme deity’s propensity to exist, given the existence of an orderly world, compared with a supreme deity’s propensity to exist. This brings us to a second difficulty. The meteorological example has the advantage of allowing us to observe both meteorological conditions and the varied kinds of weather that follow those conditions and evidently are caused by them. Because many different meteorological conditions are causal factors in the onset of varied kinds of weather, we are able to assert only that one set of conditions has one propensity to produce a particular kind of weather and that another set of conditions has a different propensity to produce a different kind of weather. Indeed, estimates of propensities appear to be bolstered by, although not exhausted by, observations of relative frequencies, where specified prior conditions have led in the past to weather of a specific kind. Probability assignments in conventional theistic arguments, by contrast, are not accompanied by subsequent observations of both alleged causes and effects, for the alleged cause—namely, God— is unobservable. The cogency of speaking about the propensity of an unobservable being to produce a given effect is threatened, because this interpretation appears to be applicable only in contexts in which causes that are deemed to have particular propensities are capable of being observed and correlated roughly with supposed effects. The sixth and last of the well-known interpretations of probability statements is the logical interpretation, whose explication was initially the work of University of Illinois philosopher Rudolf Carnap. Carnap argued that some probability statements appear to be an approximate measure of the evidential force of one proposition for another, based on the relative content of the two propositions.20 Carnap worked with some examples of simple imaginary universes to elucidate his ideas. For example, in a universe having exactly three objects, we find exactly eight (23) possible descriptions of these three objects with respect to a particular predicate, such as being red in color: All can be red, exactly one can be red (yielding three possibilities), exactly two can be red (again yielding three possibilities), and none could be red. The content of such propositions that everything is red or that only something is red can be described in this simple universe. Carnap then explores various ways of measur-

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ing the content of these propositions and assigning numerical values to probability statements by using these measures of content. He discusses, for example, the problem of assigning a value to the probability that everything is red in this universe, on discovering that one thing is red.21 In Carnap’s view, the value of this probability statement depends on the relative amount of overlap between the content of the two propositions: The proposition that everything is red is one of eight possibilities, whereas the proposition that one thing is red is satisfied in three possible ways, so the degree of probability that everything is red, given that one thing is red, is some value less than 1/2 but greater than zero.22 An implication of Carnap’s approach is that the probability of a universal generalization such as a law of nature, given a finite amount of supporting evidence, becomes smaller as the imaginary universe grows larger, no matter how much supporting evidence is found. In an infinite universe, the probability value of a law of nature based on finite evidence would be zero, for the content of that law is infinitely larger than any amount of finite evidence. This result, for which Carnap was criticized, is an implication of using the relative content of propositions as a basis for assigning probability values. This difficulty also appears to show up in attempts to interpret probability statements in the logical sense in theistic arguments. For example, claiming that an ordered cosmos makes God’s existence more probable than no information at all requires comparing the overlapping content in the proposition asserting that God exists with a proposition describing the ordered cosmos. If God is understood to have some infinite attribute, however, which is standard in traditional theological accounts, the content of the proposition that God exists will be infinite. Moreover, if the description of the ordered cosmos has a finite content, then the relative overlap will be minimal; however, if the description of the ordered cosmos has an infinite content, since this description is likely to have laws of nature as part of it, then we will be forced to compare one infinite description with another. Some of Carnap’s critics argued that grounds existed for assigning numerical values other than zero for the relative content of infinite laws of nature compared with descriptions of finite amounts of evidence, and defenders of probabilistic arguments (in the logical sense) for the existence of God can perhaps take comfort in this. However, the method by which the content of the relevant propositions in probabilistic arguments for the existence of God can be determined to assess their overlap is not easy to understand. The relevant propositions, such as “God exists” and “An ordered cosmos exists,” do not resemble Carnap’s examples of simple propositions. Swinburne maintains that God can be ultimately defined as pure, limitless, intentional power,23 from which the traditional Christian descriptions of God as omnipotent, omniscient, morally perfect, free, and so on, can be derived. That these implications of the proposition that God exists can help to elucidate its content so that the logical interpretation of probability statements can be plausibly employed is unclear.

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Swinburne has another strategy for overcoming the problem of determining whether such features of the universe as order render the existence of God more probable than it would be on no information. Using theorems from the probability calculus and some assumptions about vital probability statements having a value other than zero (so that denominators are not zero), he shows that the probability statement P(G,O) ⬎ P(G) is equivalent to another in which the probability that order is found, given the existence of God, is greater than the probability that order is found, given God’s nonexistence, that is, P(O,G) ⬎ P(O, ⬃G).24 We can test the plausibility of this consequence of the probability calculus by considering Carnap’s previously mentioned example. To show that finding a red object (R) renders the proposition that everything is red (E) more probable than having no information about the objects in this simple universe, that is, P(E,R) ⬎ P(E), we can compare the probability that something is red if everything is with the probability that something is red if it is not the case that everything is, that is, P(R,E) ⬎ P(R,⬃E). The first probability value is one, because E logically implies R.25 The second probability value, P(R,⬃E), requires assessing the probability that something is red if either nothing is red or exactly one thing is red or exactly two things are red. We can see that this value will be less than one, and so P(R,E) ⬎ P(R,⬃E). The question that this raises is whether a similar result can be obtained in our complex world, whose natural features are only partially known and which might include transcendent beings with only dimly known characteristics. Swinburne deems the existence of God to explain the order we find in nature better than the claim that God does not exist—that is, P(O,G) ⬎ P(O,⬃G)—and so he considers order in the cosmos to increase the probability that God exists from what it would otherwise be. As part of the larger argument here, Swinburne contends that an explanation that makes reference to an infinite being is simpler than one that makes reference to a finite one and that we have sound epistemic grounds for considering simpler explanations to be closer to the truth of things than complex explanations.26 To show that the first probability value, P(O,G), is greater than the second, P(O,⬃G), Swinburne needs to estimate the probability that order exists, given the denial of the existential claim that God exists. According to conventional logic, the denial of an existential claim is a universal statement, which in this case amounts to asserting that everything is not God. So the second of the vital estimates involves assessing the probability that order exists, given the existence of each thing in the universe that is not God, whatever these things happen to be. Because this indefinitely large list could include transcendent beings who might have remarkable but not infinite powers, the second probability value might equal the first. If this were to occur, an ordered cosmos would be neutral as evidence. This difficulty expressed in relation to probability statements mirrors a problem that has often been raised in theistic debates, namely, that the existence of order in the cosmos could be explained by a being, or by beings,

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with very great powers that are other than infinite. The source of the difficulty appears to arise from applying the concept of infinity to our universe, rather than to mathematical objects. Many complex issues are triggered by Swinburne’s impressive approach to probabilistic arguments for theism, but the one difficulty that repeatedly emerges is how the probability values, given the logical interpretation, are to be determined. The logical interpretation of probability statements seems to be on much firmer ground when we work with the kinds of simple universes envisaged by Carnap. Whether theists who embrace the logical interpretation can make it work satisfactorily is an open question. I have covered the well-known interpretations of probability statements and have not found one that obviously illuminates or allows for defensible estimates of probabilistic arguments for God’s existence. However, I recognize both that probability statements exhibit a remarkable amount of diversity and also that an understanding of probabilistic thinking is probably—here is that word again!—not fully developed. Probabilistic thought appears to be in its own element when we are dealing with observable objects, whose properties and propensities are known to a limited degree only because of our limitations as observers. Probabilistic thought, in short, seems to be an integral part of inductivist methodology but is of limited value in addressing abduction to unobservable beings. This result is regrettable, because being able to supplement abductive reasoning with probabilistic arguments would strengthen the case for theism. Perhaps further work on probabilistic reasoning will bring to light another possible meaning of probability statements that will enhance the inductivist case for theism. On the other hand, Swinburne might be right in thinking that the logical sense of the term is capable of plausible elucidation. Without a definitive account of the interpretation of probability statements and the methods by which probability values are to be calculated, however, the inductivist approach to defending the existence of God is questionable.

Divine Revelation The common belief that “no atheists are found in foxholes” has contributed to the conviction that God has not left the all-important insight that he exists to the logical prowess of philosophers, whether this prowess is expressed in deductive or in probabilistic arguments. The unknown author of Hebrews in the New Testament declares: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. . . . By faith we understand that the world was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was made out of things which do not appear” (11:1, 3). Here the word faith seems to describe a human state— having assurance or conviction—in which the acts of God are apprehended because of divine illumination of the human mind itself. Paul echoes this

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thought in the first chapter of his argumentative masterpiece, Romans, when he asserts: “Ever since the creation of the world, his [God’s] invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made” (1:20). Also, Paul’s speech to the people of Athens, as given to us by Luke, reinforces the possibility of divine self-disclosure when he says that God has created humans so that they might seek him, “in the hope that they might feel after him and find him. Yet he is not far from each of us, for ‘In him we live and move and have our being.’ ”27 Paul seems to suggest in these passages, which, like all other biblical texts, have been variously interpreted, that the human mind directly grasps that the visible world has its source in Someone invisible. He does not indicate whether the human mind is “programmed” to achieve such insights, or whether the eternal Word somehow individually enlightens everyone who comes into the world.28 Austin Farrer, philosophical theologian at Oxford in the mid-twentieth century, argues that humans are capable of cognitive acts in which existent beings are known. As such, this is a commonplace observation, but Farrer applies it directly to human insight concerning the divine, which, from God’s perspective, might be described as revelation. Farrer contends that whereas divine knowledge knows all things as they are in themselves, human knowledge “falls utterly short of the divine, as well in the scope as in the fashion of its knowing.”29 He argues that to make up for the shortfall of our limited apprehension, “we have continually to be steadying and confirming our darkened vision by comparing what we suppose ourselves to see here with what we suppose ourselves to see there, until we gain both confidence and precision.”30 He says that this continual cross-referencing is instinctive and generally described as reasoning. However, unlike most philosophers in Western thought, he does not consider reason as a source of knowledge but views it as an instrument that clarifies our apprehension. He adds that “what we apprehend we accept in the last resort in the evidence of its self-presentation.”31 Farrer holds that when we apprehend natural objects, we grasp their existence as finite objects. However, we also grasp that the finite is one expression of the creative act of the infinite, “whom we therefore apprehend just in so far as he and his agency are expressed in the existence of the finite.”32 Farrer argues that the infinite constitutes a second order of knowledge, in the sense that if we did not apprehend finite objects, we would not know the infinite, although knowledge of the finite could be present without apprehending the infinite. A similar relationship is taken to hold between historical facts and the way in which the infinite acts with particular purposes in human life: “Remove the knowledge of historical facts and there is no field left in which the revelation can appear; remove the knowledge of infinite being and there remains no understanding of who or what is revealed: the story of Christ becomes a mere fairy-tale about a spirit who performs just these miraculous actions and is otherwise unknown.”33 Farrer holds that knowledge of human freedom must

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also come before apprehending God’s freedom, so that it is absurd to deny that humans are free just because God is absolutely free. Farrer describes two sides of one process here. The apprehension into divine matters by humans is a form of insight, and the other side of the process is the revelatory action of God, so that the finite human mind can apprehend that which is not finite. Farrer does not think, however, that human insight can be made the measure of the divine. He says that the infinite far outstrips anything known in the finite world, yet the finite is needed for the infinite to be known at all, even in part. Nothing that has been said in this section about possible revelatory insights into the existence of God is inconsistent with what I said in chapter 3, where I advocated the use of the abductive method in attempting to account for experiences that seem to those who have them to be encounters with the divine. These experiences frequently carry a character to them that seems selfauthenticating to those who undergo them, and Farrer’s remarks illuminate this feature of them. He says that a revelatory event cannot really be judged to be revelatory by preconceived standards, although we must ask ourselves whether we in fact apprehend the infinite in the event. He adds, “Yet in another sense ‘we’ cannot judge it even so: for it is not ‘we,’ our neutral selves, that judge; neither is it our natural selves that apprehend, but the Holy Spirit in us. But this is a dogmatic and not an epistemological consideration.”34 Farrer here is introducing a new issue into the discussion, having to do with the basis for interpreting our experience as revelatory of God, the Supreme Deity. He says that God has the power to disclose his existence through a human insight obtained in the context of a mundane event or a finite object; moreover, although we can correctly say that we know (not just believe) that God exists, we cannot say how it is that we know this. The question of whether a natural human power can assess the revelatory character of an event is usually posed as a question about the capacity of reason to judge faith, which is to pose a widely debated and complex question. One possibility is that revelatory insights are incompatible with human insights, so that a choice must be made between the two. Some theologians seem to approach revelation from this standpoint and consequently embrace contradiction or paradox in their theology. Another possibility is that revelatory insights are compatible with human insights, but this is capable of being understood in various ways. Aquinas is well known for asserting that the insights revealed by God can also be demonstrated by using the method of deduction. I have indicated my reluctance to follow Aquinas. Another possibility is that revelatory insights might be corroborated by probabilistic and abductive arguments. I have defended the importance of abduction and have questioned the value of probabilistic reasoning. Yet another possibility is that divine revelation occurs and that nothing more can be said about it from the standpoint of human insight. We could put this another way and say that revelatory insights are not

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incompatible with human insights, but neither are human insights capable of being corroborative of them. Perhaps the last of these positions is the most frustrating of all those outlined, for it does not seem to allow debate. In concluding this brief discussion on the possibility of self-disclosing events, I will refer to a puzzling personal experience that illuminates the phenomenon of “knowing” something that appears to have no justification. In 1993 I took a sabbatical leave from my teaching and spent most of the year in Oxford. During the first month, my wife and I were invited by a violinist and her husband to attend a benefit concert at which she was playing. The nearby village of Ewelme was trying to raise money to replace the existing roof of the village hall with thatch, I presume because of their desire to preserve the tradition of thatched roofs. At the door of the village hall, I was offered tickets for a drawing that would be held during the evening, and for one pound I got five tickets. I do not know how many people bought tickets, but a good number of the approximately one hundred people in attendance appeared to buy some. Soon after taking my seat a “mental event” occurred unlike anything I had ever experienced. The most accurate description I can give of it is that I “knew” that I would win a door prize. I don’t remember much about the concert because I was so taken with this peculiar state of mind, which I immediately reported to my wife sitting next to me. My background in philosophy assured me that I could not know that I would win; this belief was not justified and was not obviously true,35 but no other description of my state of mind seemed accurate. I certainly believed I would win a prize, but this does not fully capture the mental state that I was experiencing. To say that I accepted that I would win a prize sounds peculiar, for this term seems most appropriate in circumstances in which I have a choice, and I did not feel that I was choosing that mental state I am calling “knowledge.” I felt the kind of certainty I associate with knowledge, and I was so sure that I would win, in fact, that I began to ponder the possibility that I might win twice. I did not want to win a second prize, because I did not want to appear to get more than my fair share and somehow spoil the friendly atmosphere of the evening. Most of the people who gathered seemed to know one another and to be pleased to be doing something for their community. As a first-time visitor to the community, I just wanted to blend in, but I “knew” I would win a prize. I decided well before the drawing took place that if I won a second time I would decline the prize. I never believed or “knew” that I would win a second prize, but I knew—or so it seemed—that I would win one. The violinist’s husband chaired the evening and conducted the drawing. He held the hat containing the tickets high above his head as each ticket was drawn. Someone near him pulled the first ticket, and then each winner pulled another ticket until five prizes were awarded. I won the fourth of the prizes, feeling very unusual about the event that had happened and wondering how I could have “known.” Four of the five winning tickets, in fact, were held by people sitting in my row of about seven people, and I overheard

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someone in the row behind us express mild resentment at the fact that so many of the prizes were won by people in just one row. I cannot explain this as anything but coincidence. Later that year I had an experience of a similar kind. I “knew” that a close acquaintance was involved in questionable activities. I have never been able to confirm whether this was the case, so I do not know what to make of the second experience. Again, my cognitive state was so much like the first that I also want to call it “knowledge.” But the absence of not only a justification for this belief but also a basis for claiming that my belief is true creates a hesitation in speaking about it as knowledge. In the first experience, I had the advantage of being able to check out the truth of the “knowledge” claim within an hour or so of its onset, but no opportunity to check out the truth of the second has ever presented itself. I surmise that some might view the “knowledge” I have described as similar to the insight that is obtained in experiences in which God reveals his existence to people. What I found peculiar about my mental state is that although I wanted to describe it as “knowledge,” I could not identify anything that could serve as a justification for its presence. When we make knowledge claims, we can generally point to some evidence that serves as a justification, even if that evidence is very modest. However, because my “knowledge” was of a future event over which I had no influence and depended on the free acts of people who were unknown to me,36 I could not identify anything that could serve a justificatory role. Moreover, because the “knowledge claim” turned out to be true, one of the important conditions for knowledge had been satisfied. I seemed to “know” something that could not be justified.37 The position that appears plausible to me is that events are experienced in which God discloses something of himself or his plans to people and that corroborating evidence can occasionally be adduced for such events. Perhaps events also occur in which nothing that serves as a plausible justification can be identified. In describing this experience in Ewelme, I am not asserting that I had a revelatory experience; winning an inexpensive door prize has no cosmic significance! Neither am I asserting that God was not causally implicated. I do not know what to make of it, but it has illuminated for me the nature of supposedly revelatory events.

Is God Properly Basic? Alvin Plantinga, philosopher from the University of Notre Dame, is well known for advancing the position that the existence of God is “properly basic.” He explicates the concept of being properly basic primarily with respect to the epistemic issues that once dominated Anglo-American philosophy—other minds, the world of objects external to ourselves, and past events—although

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he sometimes also uses examples from other domains of inquiry, including mathematics. Plantinga plausibly argues38 that although we might not be able to elucidate the supposed foundations on which such basic beliefs as that minds other than our own really exist, that objects external to ourselves exist, and that the millennia that constitute the world’s past are real, these beliefs are rational to hold. He argues that no violation of rational structures occurs in holding such fundamental beliefs, that we can rationally consider arguments against each of these basic beliefs, and that these matters are not merely articles of faith. Plantinga claims that belief in God is comparable to other properly basic beliefs and says that his purpose in defending God as properly basic is “to rebut the claim made by the evidentialist objector [who insists] that the theist who has no evidence for theism is in some way irrational.”39 In describing the nature of theistic belief, Plantinga acknowledges that people often acquire beliefs because of circumstances beyond their control. So a fourteen-year-old boy who grows up in a context where the existence of God is taken for granted and never is made the explicit object of argument might find himself believing that God exists without being able to satisfy the kinds of demands that skeptics often make of theists.40 Plantinga maintains that such a young man has a rational belief even though he does not have evidence for it and cannot articulate his grounds for believing that God exists. The young man’s position is comparable to someone of his age believing that other people with minds exist and that physical objects have a real existence even when no one is perceiving them, although he cannot articulate his reasons for believing such claims—against which common sense never protests. Plantinga rebuts the objection that his position might require him to accept almost any proposition as properly basic, for example, that the Great Pumpkin makes its annual visit on Halloween.41 Plantinga identifies his epistemological views with closely allied positions advanced by theologians in the Reformed tradition, such as John Calvin and Karl Barth. According to Plantinga, Reformed epistemologists hold that God has placed a belief in us of his own existence, but not that of the Great Pumpkin. He observes that John Calvin maintained that “God has created us with a nisus or tendency to see His hand in the world around us.”42 Believers can be considered to have violated no cognitive obligation in embracing theistic faith and to have a right to such beliefs. Plantinga holds that properly basic beliefs might have grounds in memories or in direct perceptual experience, but these grounds should not be seen as evidence. Plantinga holds, for example, that the behavior of a person in pain is normally the ground of someone’s belief that another is in pain, but such behavior should not be viewed as evidence that another is in pain.43 Belief in God can have grounds, as found in the objects around us that seem to speak to us of God, Plantinga says, but natural theologians have made the mistake of construing these grounds as evidence for the existence of God and consequently have been drawn into debates about

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the strength or weakness of this evidence. Reformed theologians object to the approach taken by natural theologians, in which the existence of God is viewed as a claim that must be based on evidence to be reasonable. Plantinga says that the existence of God is not a belief that is based on arguments, for such arguments are inadequate to begin with and do not reflect the manner in which the belief in God arises. Like many other beliefs, the belief in God arises spontaneously, so he recommends that in presenting the rationality of theism, the Christian believer should start from belief in God, which he claims that Scripture does. Although Plantinga’s view is sometimes identified as a form of fideism, he denies that it is. Fideism in general terms says religious belief should rely on faith44 alone. Plantinga describes the moderate fideists as relying more on faith than on reason but allowing reason to play a part; on the other hand, the extreme fideists think that faith and reason conflict or that one should never rely on reason. He observes that this issue of faith and reason is complicated by the fact that no simple equivalence exists between propositions that are properly basic and propositions believed on faith (as opposed to reason). Plantinga says that because properly basic beliefs are based on reason, arguments against basic beliefs are possible, which means that such a belief could be given up if arguments against it are epistemically impressive. Beliefs that are “accepted on faith” tend to be kept no matter what seems to conflict with them. Plantinga holds that the innate tendency to believe in God that he has placed in each person is partially suppressed by sin, but the tendency is still universally present and is triggered by such things as the starry heavens and the beauty of a flower. Plantinga says that a Christian ought not to believe45 on the basis of arguments, and that to do so is to have beliefs that waver. Reformed epistemology has become something of a rallying point in Anglo-American philosophy of religion, and Plantinga’s views have generated much discussion. I concur with Plantinga in holding that claims about other minds, the external world, and the world’s past are best viewed as properly basic. Any attempt to advance a view of the world that goes contrary to these beliefs is generally incapable of being coherently articulated. Moreover, these beliefs have their basis in shared perception and critical reflection, but fully elucidating the grounds for these beliefs seems to be impossible in practice, although philosophers have tried. Ordinary beliefs about other minds, the external world, and the world’s past so convincingly exhibit their status as basic to any meaningful description that Plantinga’s point about them is beyond serious dispute. However, the claim that the Christian God whose attributes and acts are allegedly described in the Bible plays a comparable role is not equally obvious. Plantinga uses the example of the boy who is brought up in a religious context where belief in God is taken for granted, where questioning of theism is not seriously entertained, and where arguments for the existence of God are never advanced. I do not know if he is recalling his own religious background,

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but I recognize this background because of the religious community in which I was raised. We were instructed to “start from the Bible” and to avoid questioning deep matters such as God’s existence. I recall being mystified by the strange claims made by Christians, including reference to the human soul or spirit, and considered the frequent appeal to God as the explanation for all sorts of intriguing natural phenomena, including the origins of life, to be simplistic. I was not a convinced atheist, for I thought that the cosmos might have its source in some powerful being. Perhaps this should count as treating God’s existence as properly basic. However, I was unable to relate to the advice that one should “start from the Bible,” in that historical claims were involved. I find Plantinga’s illustration of the context in which one might consider God to be properly basic to be telling. He considers the perspective of a boy raised in a deeply religious environment, whose outlook has been shaped by it. He does not envision the kind of person I described in chapter 3, who instinctively adverts to the specialized sciences to understand natural phenomena and wonders about the adequacy of reasons adduced for theism by theists. I do not doubt that men and women can readily be found who meet Plantinga’s description of those who consider God’s existence to be properly basic. However, their instinctive responses can hardly be considered a general standard of rationality concerning the question of God’s existence. What would we say about these same young people who no longer consider God’s existence to be rational at twenty-four years of age? J. J. C. Smart speaks about the shift that took place in his thought in the following terms: “I look back with horror on my unregenerate religious days when I failed to come to terms with reconciling my church-going on the one hand with my philosophical and scientific opinions on the other.”46 Smart evidently found a basis for questioning his uncritical theistic beliefs. Plantinga’s position can be brought into sharper focus by considering whether he would regard “lesser spirits” as properly basic. No doubt we could find young people who are taught to view the world so that spirits are construed as the appropriate causal agents for certain events. We need look no further than Melanesia early in the twentieth century, where, according to Bronislaw Malinowski, baloma (spirits) were considered to be the agents responsible for conception. According to an informed biological outlook, however, this belief, although perhaps properly basic for any one of these islanders, is generally mistaken.47 A natural explanation for ordinary conception awaits their discovery, when the earlier belief will be discarded as foolish. We can legitimately question why belief in the Christian God should be viewed as properly basic if a general belief in spirits is not likely to be considered in the same light. Moreover, for Plantinga to maintain that belief in God is properly basic, he needs to do more than show that it is so for a considerable portion of the population who have this belief deeply inculcated in them. Perhaps I have misinterpreted the sense he wishes to place on the claim that the existence of

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God is properly basic, but it does not appear to function in a way comparable to the external world, other minds, and the past. These are so basic to a coherent account of the universe that to deny any of them virtually requires presupposing their existence. The second feature in Plantinga’s approach that I find problematic is his contention that a defense of Christian theism might be an approach in which we start with God, just as Scripture does: “Scripture ‘proceeds from God as the starting point,’ and so should the believer. There is nothing by way of proofs or arguments for God’s existence in the Bible; that is simply presupposed. The same should be true of the Christian believer then; he should start from belief in God rather than from the premises of some argument whose conclusion is that God exists.”48 In articulating his position, Plantinga quotes approvingly from the text in Romans 1 about God’s eternal power and deity being clearly perceived in the things that have been made. Plantinga interprets this text as substantiating his view that the Christian Scriptures construe God as properly basic. However, I have already indicated that this text could easily be understood as referring to the “self-disclosing” character of phenomena by which God, their Creator, is known. We might wonder whether Plantinga is actually endorsing knowledge by revelation that is capable of being buttressed by good reasons and choosing to describe this as having properly basic beliefs. At this point, however, the comparison with other properly basic beliefs becomes problematic. I doubt that he considers our knowledge of other minds, the external world, and the past as instances of divine revelation. A substantial problem concerning Christian theism emerges for Plantinga when he advises that we might “start with the Bible.” Christian faith is much more than a general form of theism that affirms the existence of a creator, for it makes historical claims about God having acted in history, as I have amply discussed in chapter 2. Historical claims need to have evidential support to be credible. We could concede to Plantinga that the existence of the Creator-God (who acts either in concert with or independently of evolutionary processes) is properly basic without advancing very far in the direction of orthodox Christian faith. Plantinga offers an interesting comment in a recent paper in which he continues to resist a place for evidence in Christian theism. [Christians] don’t postulate the existence of God, as if this were a scientific hypothesis of some kind. . . . When God spoke to Moses from the burning bush, Moses didn’t say, “Hey, look at that weird bush! It’s on fire but isn’t burning up! And listen to those sounds coming out of it! What’s the best explanatory hypothesis I can think of ? Perhaps there is an all-knowing, all-powerful wholly good being who created the world, and he is addressing me from that bush. Yes, that must be it, that’s a good explanation of the phenomena.” . . . What Christian would reason like that? Hardly any. Rather, the traditional

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Christian thinks she knows these things by way of faith and its correlate, divine revelation through divinely inspired Scripture and/or the teaching of the church, the body of Christ.49 I do not doubt that Plantinga is describing the stance adopted by many who are raised in the church, but he is not articulating the challenge that Christian theism presents for the person impressed with the achievements of the sciences and lured by naturalism. Moreover, my contact with adults who have embraced Christian faith because of their experience with what they deem “transcends the natural domain,” including people who report Christic visions, indicates that the conjectural and tentative approach to proposed explanations Plantinga rejects is in fact taken. Plantinga’s claim about how people respond to extraordinary religious phenomena is an empirical one, and my impression is that many thoughtful people—Alan Shore, whose experience was discussed in chapter 2, immediately comes to mind—take a cautious and conjectural approach. I argued in chapter 3 for a different reading of the Bible than the one proposed by Plantinga. I acknowledge that the existence of God is not argued in the Bible but seems to be presupposed, as Plantinga observes. However, the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures can be read as ones in which a wide range of phenomena are described for which God and other spirits are postulated as causes. Perhaps this reading is overly generous to these ancient authors, for they might not have had the penchant for conjecturing that marks our age and is implicit in my description. Did they perhaps take over beliefs that were found in their cultures or follow the lead of some influential individuals? The answers to these questions may be lost to us now, but in any case I have chosen to reconstruct their thought by employing the method of abducting to unobservable objects. My preferred reading can hardly be described as “starting with the Bible.” It starts instead with descriptions of alleged phenomena that are apt to be interpreted even in our day as suggesting a transcendent order. Although many of these phenomena might now be in doubt because of their extraordinary nature and rarity, the theory itself that postulates God and other spirits should be deemed plausible if these phenomena occurred. The claims about the postulated beings of Christian theism are matters that require some evidence, even if general theism is not, and cannot be plausibly advanced as properly basic.

Is Normative Epistemology Justifiable? Someone might object to the argument advanced to this point on the grounds that it places too much emphasis on justifying beliefs and does not sufficiently consider how beliefs are caused, perhaps citing the objections to classical em-

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piricism advanced by W. V. O. Quine. Quine is well known among philosophers for advocating a new approach to epistemology from that widely practiced for three centuries. His “Epistemology Naturalized,” written in 1969, recognizes the failure of classical empiricism’s objective of justifying beliefs by showing either that they are definable in terms of statements about observable phenomena or derivable from such statements. Philosophers have widely interpreted the work of epistemologists as providing criteria of how we ought to arrive at our beliefs, while the work of psychologists and related cognitive scientists has been thought to provide accounts of how we in fact acquire them. The normative activity of epistemologists was considered to fall outside the domain of natural science. Quine, however, questions this distinction between giving descriptions and offering normative standards and suggests that philosophers might content themselves with giving accounts of how beliefs are acquired. Classical epistemology has its most obvious expression in Descartes, who sought to secure the foundations of knowledge by first subjecting everything to systematic doubt and then identifying that which cannot be doubted. He held that other indubitable propositions could be obtained by deduction, thereby extending infallibility to a vital body of propositions. Descartes finds the supposedly indubitable foundations of knowledge by reflecting on his activity as a thinking being, thus making the introspected self the starting point of knowledge. British empiricists also used Descartes’s general approach to justify knowledge claims, but they stressed the indubitable character of immediate perception and took the existence of a self for granted.50 Inasmuch as deductive inferences from such minimal claims would not justify most beliefs about the world, they turned to induction to justify those claims. David Hume pointed out, however, that the use of induction needs justification; moreover, because deduction cannot supply that justification, and an inductive justification of induction is question begging, no justification for claims beyond immediate perception can be supplied. Although Hume is widely interpreted as a skeptic about most knowledge claims, he can also be viewed as one who is mystified by the fact that we seem to know so much more than we can justify. Quine concedes the failure of epistemology as envisioned by Cartesian rationalists and British empiricists. However, he follows the empiricists in emphasizing the importance of observation in making knowledge claims. Quine argues that instead of focusing on the justification of supposed knowledge claims, philosophers should concern themselves with the causes of such supposed knowledge. Of course, we also need an account of the way in which the linguistic ability needed to describe such knowledge is acquired, but he thought that this could be provided by describing how a child “learns his first words and sentences by hearing and using them in the presence of appropriate stimuli.”51 For Quine, epistemology simply becomes a chapter of psychology in which the human subject is studied, particularly with a view to the way in

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which the stimulation of sensory receptors results in “a description of the three dimensional external world and its history.”52 In Quine’s view, the nature of epistemology needs to change so that it becomes part of natural science, addressing causal issues, not justificatory ones as these have been traditionally understood. The implications of this shift in epistemology, if it were to be widely adopted, would be significant for the philosophy of religion. The central question would become something like “What are the causes of beliefs about God and other spirits?” rather than “How can we justify beliefs about God and other spirits?” The new philosophy of religion would concern itself only with how “stimulation of our senses” results in the creation of theories about transcendent realities. This is a radical proposal, for it would eliminate most philosophic work on the subject of philosophy of religion, which is justificatory in character, not simply descriptive. Jaegwon Kim concurs with Quine’s contention that the epistemological program set in motion by Descartes has failed. However, Kim does not think that we need to conclude that all justificatory activities and normative claims must be set aside in favor of causal accounts of how beliefs are obtained.53 He argues that any concern with evidence for a theory, which Quine also professes an interest in, will involve questions about justification, not merely questions about causes and their effects. Quine is impressed with the way in which the meager amounts of sensory stimulation can cause what he calls “torrential outputs,” that is, large belief systems. Kim says that Quine is mistaken, however, if he thinks that the causal regularities that psychologists might find between stimuli and beliefs will exhaust the important relations between the two. Kim argues for a position that moderates Quine’s call for a study of psychological processes involved in theory formation, in a way that does not dismiss some traditional epistemological interests. Kim observes, for instance, that a legitimate object of epistemological inquiry is a study of the phenomena that provide evidence for theories and also that matters of evidence also belong to traditional epistemology. The search for “reliable belief-forming processes” could be included in a naturalistic epistemology, according to Kim. We can disclose the revolutionary character of Quine’s proposal by considering a comparable proposal for logic, which is a normative domain central to all traditional philosophy, including epistemology. Logic is also a field in which Quine has made his mark. Suppose that researchers five hundred years from now would simply record the inferences that people make, in an effort to determine the prevalent natural logical patterns. Suppose also that logicians, who currently critique the inferences that people are apt to draw, no longer perform critical activities. These “logicians,” if indeed we can call them that, would presumably find that people generally infer “q” from the premises “If p then q” and “p” and might acknowledge that this inference conforms to a rule once known as modus ponens that was once universally deemed to be valid. If people in the twenty-sixth century happen to reason anything like people do

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who live today, which we have no good reason to doubt, these researchers would also find that people frequently infer “not-q” from the premises “If p then q” and “not-p.” What are they supposed to make of this inference pattern, now known as the formal fallacy of denying the antecedent of a conditional? Should it be listed, along with modus ponens, as legitimate because a regularity has been established?54 To do so would be to overlook the critical acumen that is also part of nature’s endowment to human thought. The fallacy of denying the antecedent is a well-entrenched component of belief-forming processes and seems to be found in all cultures, but it is still a fallacy. A similar point can be made about the informal fallacies that are part of the study of the logic, such as the argumentum ad hominem, that is, “the argument against the person.” Explaining and illustrating this fallacy in several of its forms, including the abusive and circumstantial varieties, is a standard part of an introductory course in logic. The abusive form of this argument attempts to rebut a proposition by abusing or ridiculing the person advancing it. The circumstantial ad hominem occurs when special circumstances between the person advancing a proposition and that proposition are taken as grounds for rejecting it. For example, when the president of a labor union contends that the members of her union deserve an increase in salary, the circumstantial ad hominem is committed when someone objects to the president’s position on the grounds simply that she has a vested interest in seeing salaries increase. The abusive and circumstantial forms are often committed in one breath, as invectives and unprepared objections are hurled in a heated debate. Fallacies seem to get named when they occur frequently enough to command our attention. The students who have studied logic with me during the last thirty years have come from around the globe, and although English might not be their first language, they immediately understand and recognize the ad hominem fallacy. Obviously, a more careful empirical study about the prevalence of these and other fallacies across the world needs to be undertaken than I can offer here, but we seem to have every reason to think that human intelligence is “programmed” to include well-known fallacies.55 We might say that some “law of thought” allows this fallacy to occur. Even people who know the fallacy well might find themselves on the verge of committing it in the heat of debate, if they are not cautious. This is not the end of the story, of course, but if it were, logic could take its place alongside other empirical studies as “logicians” provide information about the inference patterns that people regularly use. The self-reflective capacity to evaluate one’s own “natural” reasoning, thereby recognizing certain inference patterns as valid and others as invalid, seems to be as much a part of a person’s natural endowment as the capacity for drawing inferences of any kind in the first place. Students generally find the achievements of past logicians challenging enough to master, without trying to discover the valid argument forms by themselves, but perhaps some of them could. Aristotle seems to have discovered the valid forms for which he is

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justly famous and did not simply borrow them from earlier logicians.56 Students of logic recognize the correctness of valid inference forms upon being introduced to them, even though their uninhibited “reasoning” consists of a mix of valid and invalid inferences. Something allows them to recognize validity, and consequently invalidity, as they are working through the insights of the logicians who have established the field. Students learn to adopt a certain perspective with respect to inferences, whether these are their own or those of others, so that they can recognize the truth-preserving character of arguments even when a conclusion might be unwelcome or when they want to advance a fallacious argument. No doubt a neurophysiological mechanism is implicated when someone manages to adopt this “distanced” and self-critical perspective, but we do not need to identify this mechanism in order to say more about the logical point of view.57 The logical point of view is disinterested, for the one who adopts it is not concerned with an argument’s favoring one’s own preferred viewpoint or that of one’s friends. Valid arguments are truth preserving, in the sense that if one begins one’s reasoning with truth, the valid argument forms will ensure that one infers only truths, never falsehoods.58 Fallacious arguments, by contrast, often reflect the interests of those who use them. Instead of trying to provide proper arguments against a labor union president who advocates higher wages for her bargaining group, those who resort to a fallacious method of attacking her reveal that they either have no good arguments or have not bothered to come up with any. The tendency in all of us to employ fallacious arguments on occasion generally reveals our passionate interest in a matter, but our capacity to suppress this irrational tendency, usually with the help of some training in logic, indicates that something else in us is capable of overriding our irrationality. The logical point of view reflects our dispassionate capacity to examine truth claims, which has been described since Plato as our rational faculty. More could be said about the perspective that is adopted when we assess other matters normatively, for example, from an aesthetic or moral perspective. These perspectives require the disinterest and dispassion already mentioned, but they also require being as knowledgeable as possible about an art object, or an act or a trait, respectively, that is subject to evaluation. Such qualities are not needed to assess a logical inference. When our cultivated powers of reason are directed toward the reasoning processes themselves, some patterns of thought are readily found to be fallacious, whereas others are found to be valid. Adopting a proposal that advocates that we stifle the normative capacities in the domain of logic would be tantamount to denying our powers of self-reflection. Quine seems to be suggesting nothing less in epistemology. Our powers of self-reflection are as apparent in epistemology as they are in logic. No reflective person is content with the beliefs and putative knowledge claims that might be assimilated from one’s culture by virtue of its subtle

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conditioning techniques. Beliefs that are formulated by using the terminology supplied by one’s culture and that are kept in place by a pervasive reward and punishment system can be and often are challenged by those who develop their critical faculties. With some effort, we can recognize some of our own beliefs to be irrational, just as we recognize the irrational beliefs of others. Quine’s radical proposal for naturalizing epistemology seems flawed, but this does not mean that the Cartesian approach to epistemology must be embraced once more. I will follow more moderate defenders of naturalizing epistemology, such as Kim, and consequently seek to understand the way in which beliefs are acquired but continue to critically assess the evidential grounds for beliefs, including beliefs about God and other spirits. Although the circumstances in which beliefs about spirits arise are of epistemic significance, this does not mean that we should not exercise critical judgment about the claims that are advanced. I surmise that a wide variety of events evoke beliefs about transcendent realities, both good and evil. An important group of experiences that seemingly influence people to adopt theism, perhaps even Christian theism, are those that are directed to the created order, including the existence of the cosmos itself and the appearance of design in the cosmos. I offer the conjecture that one of the reasons for the persistence of the cosmological and design arguments is that they describe phenomena that are psychologically impressive for many people. The following account illustrates this point.59 A husband and wife in the former Soviet Union, who made their living as sculptors, are said to have come to believe in God as a result of sculpting the human form. They were both brought up in an educational system that taught that no god existed, and they accepted this claim. One day as they were sculpting a human hand, they were taken with the dexterity and usefulness of the thumb. They asked each other who had designed the human thumb and responded with what they had been taught: Nobody had designed the thumb. Like the messenger in Alice in Wonderland, who mistook “Nobody” for a name, they began to worship this Nobody who had formed not only the human thumb but also the whole world. This account is remarkable in that we are not confronted with an argument for the existence of God but with an account of the circumstances in which this belief is said to have emerged in self-aware, reflective adults whose culture had not inculcated a belief in God. I suspect but cannot show that this kind of experience is more pervasive than we currently have a right to assert. When this experience is forced into the deductive mold of argumentation, however, the resulting argument is so flawed than any first-year student of philosophy understands how to critique it. In spite of the obvious failings of traditional arguments, however, these arguments have been repeated in the education of

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many generations of people, perhaps in silent witness of their psychological importance. The existence of the cosmos and the elements of its design— perhaps even particular items as relatively insignificant as the human thumb— become the occasions on which theistic belief or perhaps belief in a transcendent order of unknown character is evoked. I surmise that a sizable portion of the population is influenced by experiences comparable to the two Soviet sculptors. It is a mistake to reconstruct these experiences as deductive arguments, however, and perhaps we should not even try to fit them into an inductivist mold by saying that such experiences make the existence of God more probable than God’s existence would be without them. I suggest, however, that we might conjecture that a being exists that is capable of evoking such tantalizing thoughts and claim no more for our conjecture on the basis of this experience. Experiences such as the one described, reported by reflective adults whose background and education seemingly provided little natural inducement to embrace theistic belief, and who also lived in a cultural setting where such a belief was in neither their economic nor social interests, are impressive as instances in which theistic beliefs “naturally arise.” A naturalized epistemology, such as that advanced by Quine, would first attempt to determine how beliefs in a transcendent reality emerge in their “natural habitat.” An epistemology worth the name would then critically reflect on the plausibility or implausibility of the religious claims that are made by using standards derived from critical inquiry that is abductive in character. The argument of this section has an obvious implication for popular postmodern perspectives on philosophy. We do not need to locate the source of “objectivity” in mysterious external objects60 but can locate it in the remarkable powers of self-critical reflection that humans naturally exhibit and are certainly capable of cultivating.

Naturalizing Supernaturalism My purpose in this book has been to show that the claims about transcendent realities found in Christian thought could be reconstructed to satisfy plausible standards of reasonableness suggested by various existing sciences and by other examples of critical thought not generally deemed to be scientific. I have not suggested that the method of abducting to unobservable objects by itself can fully secure the dogmatic ontological views that characterize Christian orthodoxy. These views, however, are certainly not inconsistent with what is reported in human experience. In fact, the theory embedded in Christian orthodoxy does a commendable job of making sense of religious experience reported by Christians. My purpose here has been to make religious experience central to the defense for the ontological claims embedded in Christian thought and to ele-

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vate it over other phenomena featured in traditional arguments, certainly where these are expressed as deductions and even when they are structured as inductive arguments. I hasten to add, however, that deduction and induction serve important roles in the whole belief system concerning God and other spirits, just as they do in scientific theories. Deduction enters into theory testing, inasmuch as deductive implications from generalizations must be drawn to see whether those generalizations are reliable. Of course, these generalizations are typically drawn from several propositions taken together, which means that the generalizations are not being tested individually but are tested in conjunction with other claims. Induction also enters in, as accounts of similar religious experiences are examined for common elements, and generalizations are tentatively advanced on inductive grounds. For example, one of the common beliefs about experiences of God, as opposed to diabolical beings, is that these bring about a positive moral change in those who have these experiences. The basis for this belief could easily be a theological dogma, of course, rather than an inductively supported generalization, but it could also be the latter. Not all of the theorizing that is involved in critical reflection on religion involves abducting to unobservable objects, for some of it consists of obtaining plausible inductive inferences about events or experiences of various kinds. The question of what counts as moral reformation is not as simple as it appears, however. I reported in Visions of Jesus that several percipients who had experienced such a vision said that they were not aware of significant immediate moral changes in their lives as a result of this experience, but they said that a second vision of Jesus some years later had a profound effect upon them. Those who adopt a very strict view about the divine source of religious experiences and their moral effects would presumably be impressed with the second experiences but not the first.61 My impression is that people have “rushed to judgment” over visionary experiences and other experiences of a profoundly religious kind and have consequently articulated simplistic views, including the claim that such experiences always have an immediate and profound moral impact. If the scientific finesse we routinely exhibit in almost any other area of scrutiny were directed to religious experience in a serious way, I think we would find that most of what passes for common wisdom about religious experience would be discarded. Because religious experience is relatively unexamined, compared with the many domains that have become objects of careful scientific examination, generalizations about religious experience are accorded more respect than they deserve. Many of these generalizations strike me as having as much intellectual merit as the claim that colds are caused by drafts! I say again that I consider the fact that religious belief systems have any vitality at all in the West to be something of a marvel. The domain of religious experience is probably too vast to comment on authoritatively. The large number of accounts obtained by Sir Alister Hardy and the center that continues his work, in response to public requests for

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descriptions, is indicative of their variety and ubiquity. Also, books and magazines that include accounts of personal experiences indicate that many individuals have religious experiences of various kinds. Although some academic journals have directed their efforts to discussing the nature and implications of religious experience, I surmise that the vast majority of those who have these experiences never record them and seldom report them to those who might document them. The certainty with which people who have religious experiences approach transcendent realities gives cause for wonder, especially when they have not been previously predisposed to hold such beliefs. Their own coming to believe in transcendent realities should be allowed to count as a significant observation, even though it might not have the detachment that we might customarily desire of scientific observation. When their own accounts can be corroborated by friends or detached observers, that only lends strength to what they have reported. Phenomenological elements of religious experience can generally be reported only by those who have them, so self-reporting is crucial to this “science.” Because explanation is the purpose behind the intellectual activity, those who are best situated to speak about the sequence of events deemed to exhibit causality must be allowed a voice. However, openness to the accounts of others must be combined with caution. I do not think that the critical study of religious experiences that have implications for metaphysics must be left only to those with religious beliefs. Those of us who have religious beliefs must allow our beliefs to be tempered by the insights and critical acumen of those who do not. Although all kinds of religious experience might be of epistemic value, special consideration has to be given to experiences that are intersubjectively observable or leave traces in the ordinary space-time-causal world. This is the domain in which the epithet “real” first belongs and with which supposed metaphysical realities must interact to warrant having that term extended to them. Sensory experiences of individuals must also be given close consideration, especially experiences in which those who have them glean insights into causal origins. William James claimed that religious experience had authority only for those who had it, but experiences having the characteristics I have just mentioned should be viewed as legitimately making stronger ontological claims; otherwise, we would have to revise our judgments about science. Finally, experiences that occur across cultures and are reported throughout human history also deserve a significant place in theorizing about transcendent realities. Although I have directed my attention in this book to phenomena adduced by Christianity as vital to its interpretation of the universe and human history, the methodological principles endorsed here need not be viewed as having applicability to only this religion. The outlook I have embraced could be readily applied to metaphysical beliefs found in other religious traditions.

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Being religious is quite a separate matter from accepting the claim that religious belief systems are capable of being articulated in an empirically defensible way. A person could come to be convinced that the Christian faith embeds empirically supportable metaphysical claims and still might want nothing to do with it. Being religious typically involves much more than giving intellectual assent to the dogmas advanced by a particular religion. It involves volitional, dispositional, and behavioral aspects of a person’s life to such an extent that we routinely recognize these as characterizing someone as Christian, even when they do not have settled beliefs about the matters I have been examining. The beliefs that are embedded in traditional Christian faith are more than scientific curiosities, however, for this faith cannot be expected to survive in a scientific age if its cognitive component is deemed to be without significant empirical support. Many significant obstacles prevent the growth of the “science of religion.” One of these is the prevalence in academia of the view that religion consists of nothing more than either irrational beliefs or claims that have no basis in human experience and can be only “taken on faith.” Another is the reluctance among those who have significant experiences to share them and their fear that they will be ridiculed for speaking openly. A third is the bias that some academics exhibit toward the uneducated who have these experiences, as though their lack of academic sophistication prevents them from describing their experiences in adequate phenomenological detail. Fortunately, we see some efforts being extended to overcome the culture of mutual suspicion that has existed between science and religion and some signs of a rapprochement between these important intellectual and practical endeavors. Much remains to be done, however, in understanding the phenomena that are evidentially and psychologically significant for advancing the existence of God and other spirits.

Notes

introduction 1. Origen, De Principiis, Preface. 2. C. S. Lewis, The Discarded Image, pp. 70f. Some historians place Dionysius’s Celestial Hierarchies in the sixth century, but Lewis evidently thinks it is earlier. Disputes about authorship have led to “pseudo-” being attached to his name. Modern commentators, unlike medieval authors, do not think he is the Dionysius from Athens mentioned in the New Testament (Acts 17: 34). 3. Ibid., p. 155. 4. Ibid., chap. VI. See Janet Bord, Fairies, for a recent attempt to document their existence. 5. Eric L. Mascall, The Christian Universe, p. 110. 6. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Metaphysics and the Idea of God, pp. 3f. 7. Rudolf Bultmann, Jesus Christ and Mythology, p. 15. 8. James Frazer, The Golden Bough, new abrdg., p. xv. 9. Frazer, The Golden Bough, abrdg. ed., p. 546. 10. It began to be published in the mid-1990s by Guideposts, a magazine founded by Norman Vincent Peale. 11. This account was carried by various newspapers and is mentioned by Sophy Burnham, A Book of Angels, p. 25. 12. Patrick Harpur, Daimonic Reality, p. 275. 13. See Carl Becker, Paranormal Experience and Survival of Death, and Robert Almeder, Death and Personal Survival, for two such recent studies. 14. John Hick, Disputed Questions, p. 3.

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chapter 1 1. Karl Jaspers and Rudolf Bultmann, Myth and Christianity, p. 60. 2. Janice Egeland et al., A. M. Hostetter et al., and K. K. Kidd et al., “Amish Studies.” 3. Alex Roy, Nancy Segal, and Marco Sarchiapone, “Attempted Suicide among Living Co-Twins of Twin Suicide Victims.” 4. Lisheng Du et al., “Association of Polymorphism of Serotonin 2A Receptor Gene with Suicidal Ideation in Major Depressive Disorder.” 5. Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 4, “Demoniacs.” 6. Encyclopedia Britannica, “Hesychasm.” 7. Michael Cuneo, American Exorcism, p. 125. 8. I do not recall whether he offered grounds for construing the possessing spirits to be more than one. 9. Such far-reaching skepticism can be overcome only by discovering enough similar accounts. 10. Anthony Quinton, “The Soul,” p. 408. 11. This is exorcism of a major form. The Catholic Church recognizes as a minor exorcism the withdrawal of people and objects from the dominion of the Evil One, which is performed in the normal baptismal rite. 12. “Introduction to the New Rite of Exorcism,” p. 269; cf. Aldous Huxley, The Devils of Loudun, p. 176. 13. Few of the approximately six hundred files I surveyed in 2000 seemed to describe phenomena commonly interpreted as demonic. The Religious Experience Research Unit is now located at the University of Wales in Lampeter. 14. Richard Rorty, “Mind-Body Identity, Privacy, and Categories.” 15. Ibid., p. 178. 16. For example, by Dan O’Brien, “Review,” in reviewing a book on ontology: “Certainly . . . ontologies such as those concerning demons or phlogiston should be eliminated.” 17. Scott Peck, People of the Lie, pp. 195ff., especially p. 209. 18. Introduction to 1 Samuel, The Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha. 19. 1 Samuel 16:16. 20. Josephus, The Antiquities of the Jews, book 6, chap. 8, sec. 2. 21. 1 Samuel 19:24. 22. 1 Samuel 10:6. 23. Cf. Paul Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil, part 2, chap. 3, on the “Adamic Myth.” 24. 1 Kings 22:19. 25. Job 4:12–17. 26. Leviticus 17:7. 27. Deuteronomy 32:17. 28. Psalms 106:38. 29. Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, book 8, chap. 2, para. 5. Cf. Larry Perkins, “Greater Than Solomon (Matthew 12:42).” 30. For example, T. K. Oesterreich, Possession, p. 169.

notes to pages 25–36

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31. Schneemelcher, New Testament Apocrypha, Epistula Apostolorum, vol. 1, pp. 249ff. 32. Ibid., chapter 11, in the Ethiopic version. 33. Wise, Abegg, and Cook, The Dead Sea Scrolls, Document 11Q6, fragment A 15 (p. 450). 34. Ibid., Document 4Q510 (p. 415). 35. The Oxford Annotated Bible, note on Isaiah 34. 36. Jeffrey Russell, The Devil, p. 92. 37. Wise, Abegg, and Cook, The Dead Sea Scrolls, Document 4Q560 (p. 443). 38. Michael Scanlan and Randall J. Cirner, Deliverance from Evil Spirits, pp. 47f. Scanlan was then president of the University of Steubenville (Ohio), which is Catholic, and Cirner was the pastor in Ann Arbor. 39. Wise, Abegg, and Cook, The Dead Sea Scrolls, Document 11Q11, column 3, 7 (p. 454). 40. Ibid., Document 11Q5, column 27, 10 (p. 452). This claim is considered spurious by some scholars because the language is a late form of biblical Hebrew; cf. M. Wise et al., The Dead Sea Scrolls, p. 447. 41. Zechariah 3; Revelation 12:10. 42. Jane Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, p. 167; italics in the original. This was first published in 1903, when pejorative references to “primitive minds” were common among European scholars. 43. Ibid., p. 170. 44. See chapter 8 of Russell, The Philosophy of Logical Atomism, 128ff. 45. I do not recall any serious discussion of evil spirits among philosophers I have known either during the years in which I earned three degrees in philosophy or during the thirty years subsequent in which I have taught philosophy. God is a different matter, of course. 46. Matthew 4; Luke 4. 47. Carol Zaleski has examined these phenomena in Otherworld Journeys. 48. Matthew 9. 49. Matthew 12. 50. Parallel accounts are given in Matthew 15 and Mark 7. 51. Matthew 17. 52. Luke 4. 53. Matthew, whose account I am following, says there were two demoniacs (chap. 8), but Mark (chap. 5) and Luke (chap. 8) say there was one. 54. Luke suggests that the disorder was occasional rather than constant. 55. Stephen Braude, The Limits of Influence, pp. 1f. 56. The National Post, Don Mills, Ontario, September 27, 1999. 57. Matthew 12:24. 58. Ephesians 6:12; cf. Romans 8:38. 59. Dionysius, The Celestial Hierarchies, chaps. 7–9. 60. C. S. Lewis, The Discarded Image, p. 75. 61. 1 Corinthians 10:20. The topic is also discussed in 1 Corinthians 8 and is alluded to in Romans. 62. Lactantius, Divine Institutes, book 2, chap. 15.

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63. E.g., Athenagoras of Athens, A Plea for the Christians, chap. 24. 64. The first of these terms is a transliteration of the Greek term δαηµονεs (daemones), and the second is the Latin equivalent. Some modern writers distinguish demons from daemons (or daimons), construing demons as evil and daemons as either morally ambiguous (that is, not obviously evil) or morally good. Christian authors of the ante-Nicene period view both as evil. 65. Lactantius, Divine Institutes, book 2, chap. 16. 66. Catholic Encyclopedia, “Demon.” 67. Patrick Harpur, Daimonic Reality, p. 54. 68. Clement of Alexandria, The Stromata, or Miscellanies, book 7, chap. 4. 69. Lactantius, Divine Institutes, book 4, chap. 27. 70. In The Epitome of the Divine Institutes, Lactantius says that all the demons are put to flight by this sign (chap. 51). 71. Lactantius, Divine Institutes, book 2, chap. 16. 72. Tatian the Assyrian, introductory note, vol. 2, Ante-Nicene Fathers, p. 61. 73. Tatian the Assyrian, Address to the Greeks, chap. 16. Athenagoras attempts to explain this in A Plea for the Christians, chap. 27. 74. Tatian the Assyrian, chap. 18. 75. Ibid., chap. 16. 76. Clement of Alexandria, Exhortation to the Heathen, chap. 3. 77. Clement of Rome, The Clementine Homilies, homily 15. 78. Minucius Felix, The Octavius, chap. 27. 79. Cyprian of Carthage, The Epistles, epistle 75, chaps. 10–11. 80. Origen, Contra Celsus, book 7, chap. 67. 81. Cyprian of Carthage, The Epistles, epistle 76, chap. 10. 82. Tertullian of Carthage, The Shows, chap. 26. 83. Tertullian of Carthage, Apology, chap. 22. 84. Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger, Malleus Maleficarum, part 2, ques. 1, chap. 13. 85. Bronislaw Malinowski, Magic, Science and Religion, pp. 220ff. 86. Kramer and Sprenger, “The Bull of Innocent VIII,” Malleus Maleficarum, p. xliii. 87. Ibid., introduction to 1948 edition, p. vii. Summers says that the library of witchcraft might be so large as to be incalculable. 88. Paul Carus, The History of the Devil, p. 322. Carus says that five other popes issued bulls in the same spirit for different parts of Europe. 89. Kramer and Sprenger, Malleus Maleficarum, part 2, ques. 2, chap. 2 (p. 167 in the 1971 Dover edition). Men are said here, however, to be more susceptible to bewitching than women, so I am not sure which sex comes out looking worse. Rebecca Lesses discusses the prevalence in ancient Jewish and Babylonian culture of ascribing powers of witchcraft primarily to women in “Exe(o)rcising Power.” 90. Kramer and Sprenger, Malleus Maleficarum, part 2, ques. 1 (p. 91). 91. Ibid., part 2, ques. 1, chap. 3 (p. 105). 92. Malcolm Godwin, Angels, pp. 223f. 93. Kramer and Sprenger, Malleus Maleficarum., part 2, ques. 1, chap. 10 (pp. 130f.). 94. Guazzo, Compendium Maleficarum, p. 30.

notes to pages 44–60

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95. T. K. Oesterreich, Possession, p. 176. 96. Ibid., p. 177. 97. New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality, “Demon(s), Demonic, Devil(s).” 98. New Catholic Encyclopedia, “Diabolical Possession (Theology of ).” 99. Ibid. 100. New Catholic Encyclopedia, “Diabolical Obsession.” 101. Ibid. 102. New Catholic Encyclopedia, “Diabolical Possession (Theology of ).” 103. Vancouver Sun, December 9, 2000, p. A21. 104. Ibid. 105. Gabriele Amorth, An Exorcist Tells His Story, pp. 32f. 106. Ibid., p. 44. 107. Ibid., p. 14. 108. Concerns and controversies over Ouija boards in Britain in the 1970s are described by John Richards in But Deliver Us from Evil, pp. 59f. 109. For example, Charles Kraft, a professor of anthropology and communication at Fuller Seminary in Pasadena, California, reports that many of his exorcisms involve dispelling demons that produce disease; see his I Give You Authority and several other books on this topic drawn from his own experience. 110. This is reminiscent of an incident described in Acts 19, where new Christians destroyed books valued then at 50,000 pieces of silver. 111. William Bryan, The Religious Aspects of Hypnosis, p. 6. 112. Ibid., p. 23. 113. Ibid. 114. Ibid., p. 40. 115. Ibid., p. 57. 116. David Myers and Malcolm Jeeves, Psychology through the Eyes of Faith, p. 41. 117. Ibid., p. 42. 118. Ibid., pp. 90f. 119. Ibid., p. 106. 120. Ibid., p. 28. 121. Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol. 3, p. 102. 122. Ibid., p. 103. Walter Wink develops Tillichian ideas in some detail in Engaging the Powers, but he does not offer workable criteria for identifying the demonic at some level other than the individual, about which he is dubious (p. 313). 123. Ibid., p. 103. Tillich seems to be thinking of dissociative identity disorder. 124. Ibid. 125. Ibid., vol. 3, p. 105. 126. Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 112ff. 127. Ibid., vol. 1, p. 114. 128. Ibid., vol. 1, p. 217; cf. Otto, The Idea of the Holy, chap. 5.

chapter 2 1. Carol Zaleski, Otherworld Journeys, p. 191. Keith Ward argues in God, Faith and the New Millennium that the Holy Spirit in Christian theology can be construed to exhibit feminine aspects of the Deity (pp. 37f.).

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2. Mark Pearson suggests this in Christian Healing, p. 133. 3. Otto, The Idea of the Holy, chap. 2. 4. Exodus 3 and 4. 5. This is sometimes rendered as “I am who I am.” Some theologians consider this to have been a revelation of God as the eternal being, but others consider it to imply that God is the one who acts in historical affairs and causes things to happen, according to The Oxford Annotated Bible, p. 70. 6. Wiebe, Visions of Jesus, chap. 2. 7. See chapter 5 below for further discussion. 8. Aristotle, On Prophesying by Dreams, 462b. 9. Ibid., 464b. 10. Ibid., 464a. 11. Ibid., 463b. 12. Morton T. Kelsey, The Other Side of Silence, p. 165. 13. Ibid., p. 166. 14. 1 Kings 3:9. 15. Daniel 7. 16. Genesis 18. 17. Numbers 22. 18. University of Birmingham Web site: http://www.unitednewscanada.org/ JanFeb2001/janfeb/wnw.html (October 21, 2003). The source is identified as the Sunday Telegraph (London). 19. As reported in Vancouver Sun, December 12, 2000, p. A7. 20. Oxford Annotated Bible, pp. 19, 70. 21. 1 Kings 17:14. 22. Origen, Contra Celsus, book 1, chap. 9. 23. See Meg Maxwell and Vernena Tschudin, Seeing the Invisible, for several hundred accounts from its collection. 24. Gerd Ludemann, The Resurrection of Jesus, pp. 180f. 25. Craig A. Evans, “Life-of-Jesus Research and the Eclipse of Mythology,” pp. 13f. 26. E. P. Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus, p. 280. 27. Luke 1:32. 28. Luke 1:35. 29. Philosopher Christine Overall, for example, suggests that Mary and Joseph might have lied, that Joseph might have raped Mary while she was unconscious, or that Mary was artificially inseminated by some primitive method, in “Miracles and God,” pp. 745f. She is replying to philosopher Robert Larmer’s defense of miracles. 30. The objectivity of St. Teresa’s transfixation is suggested by Deirdre Green, Gold in the Crucible, p. 52; and considered by Victoria Sackville-West, The Eagle and the Dove, p. 32. Sackville-West’s uncertainty is related to questions about Teresa’s mental stability, which is also questioned, among others, by Christopher Bache in “A Reappraisal of Teresa of Avila’s Supposed Hysteria,” but not by Laurence Nixon in “Maladjustment and Self-Actualization in the Life of Teresa of Avila.” The subjectivity of St. Teresa’s experiences is endorsed by J. M. Cohen, The Life of Saint Teresa of Avila by Herself, p. 16; Alison Peers, The Life of the Holy Mother Teresa of Jesus, p. 20; Stephen Clissold, St. Teresa of Avila, p. 120; and Rowan Williams, Teresa of Avila, p. 4.

notes to pages 85–96

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31. John de Wavrin, A Collection of the Chronicles, p. 194. 32. Ibid., p. 196. 33. Ibid., preface, x. 34. Ibid., preface, xi. 35. Historian Ian Wilson has written extensively on the shroud and has relayed many of the important insights obtained from various fields of inquiry. Moreover, a number of easily accessible Web sites provide helpful resources. 36. See, for example, Gary Vikan, “Debunking the Shroud,” which was published in a respected archaeological journal in 1998. 37. Ian Wilson, The Mysterious Shroud, p. 99. 38. Ibid., p. 113, quoting chemistry professor Alan Adler. 39. Frank C. Tribbe,Portrait of Jesus? p. 175. 40. Ian Wilson, The Blood and the Shroud, p. 21. 41. Tribbe, Portrait of Jesus? p. 134. 42. Documentary: “Behold a Mystery: A Reexamination of the Shroud of Turin,” Regent University, 1991. 43. John P. Jackson, “An Unconventional Hypothesis,” p. 328. 44. Ian Wilson and Barrie Schwortz, The Turin Shroud, p. 76. 45. Thomas Humber, The Sacred Shroud, p. 62. 46. Ibid., p. 42. 47. Probability values range from a low of 0 to a high of 1. 48. Antonio Gaspari, “The Shadow of a Coin,” p. 20. See the discussion of the possibility of coins by Antonio Lombatti, “Doubts concerning the Coins over the Eyes.” 49. Tribbe, Portrait of Jesus? p. 163. 50. Maloney, “History of Botanical Research on the Shroud of Turin.” 51. Wilson, The Mysterious Shroud, p. 153. 52. Avinoam Danin, “The Origin of the Shroud of Turin.” 53. Wilson, The Blood and the Shroud, pp. 104f. 54. Rex Morgan, “The Greatest Secret of the Catacombs?” 55. Mary Whanger and Alan Whanger, The Shroud of Turin, chap. 10. 56. Jackson, “An Unconventional Hypothesis,” p. 328. 57. Thaddeus Trenn, “The Shroud of Turin: Resetting the Carbon-14 Clock.” 58. See the extensive discussion of the theories of Jackson, Trenn, and also JeanBaptiste Rinaudo about radiation being the cause of the shroud image in Mark Antonacci, The Resurrection of the Shroud, chap. 10. 59. August Accetta et al., “Nuclear Medicine and Its Relevance to the Shroud of Turin.” 60. The possibility that the shroud was irradiated by neutrons was briefly discussed by physicists Thomas Phillips (“Shroud Irradiated with Neutrons?”) and R. E. M. Hedges (“Reply”) in Nature in 1989. 61. Brian Walsh, “The 1988 Shroud of Turin Radiocarbon Tests Considered.” 62. Peter Carnley, The Structure of Resurrection Belief, p. 8. Italics in original. 63. This definition of death is now under scrutiny because of experiences in which people have revived who were deemed brain-dead and were about to have their organs harvested. D. Alan Shewmon has recently described the basis for revising his view, in “Recovery from ‘Brain Death’: A Neurologist’s Apologia.”

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64. Holger Kersten and Elmar Gruber, The Jesus Conspiracy, especially parts 3 and 4. 65. This was Mary Magdalene’s question to the unknown person she saw outside the tomb. Contemporary scholarship has called this incident, like many of the appearance accounts, into question. 66. George Ladd, I Believe in the Resurrection of Jesus. 67. William Lane Craig in Assessing the New Testament Evidence and Reasonable Faith. 68. Gary R. Habermas in several books, including The Verdict of History: Conclusive Evidence for the Life of Jesus and, with J. P. Moreland, Immortality: The Other Side of Death, chap. 4. Habermas and Moreland identify twelve reasons for advancing the Resurrection, which fall into the categories I have identified. 69. Gerd Ludemann, The Resurrection of Jesus, p. 180. 70. Ibid., p. 163. Ludemann’s suggestion that the resurrected Jesus might have been a “revived corpse” fails to capture the import of Paul’s remarkable description of the body that was raised from death. However, the resuscitated Lazarus could be described as a revived corpse. 71. Ibid., p. 180. 72. See Gregory Riley’s discussion in Resurrection Reconsidered of this tradition, and the perspectives conveyed by the New Testament apocryphal books—Gospel of Thomas, Book of Thomas, and Acts of Thomas—as well as some other early literature. 73. Aquinas holds that for a resuscitation (what he calls “resurrection”) to occur, it is necessary for the selfsame soul to be united to the selfsame body (Summa Theologica, part 3, supp. ques. 79, art. 2). He requires that “essential and organic parts” of a body retain their position at the resuscitation but not the “accidental parts” such as hair and fingernails (ibid., art. 3). Jackson’s hypothesis appears to be compatible with the Thomist view of continuing identity, which is much stronger than that normally advanced for continuing personal identity by modern philosophers. 74. I discussed the problem of continuing identity in the Resurrection in my Visions of Jesus, pp. 135–40. 75. Hans A. Bethe and Gerald Brown, “How a Supernova Explodes.” 76. See my recent paper, “Critical Reflections on Christic Visions,” for more detailed treatment of this claim than that developed in Visions of Jesus. 77. John Stackhouse, Can God Be Trusted? pp. 139–46. 78. John Hick, Disputed Questions in Theology and the Philosophy of Religion, p. 42. 79. John J. Pilch, “Appearances of the Risen Jesus in Cultural Context,” p. 53. 80. John J. Pilch, “The Transfiguration of Jesus,” p. 51. 81. Ibid., p. 53. 82. John J. Pilch, “Visions in Revelation and Alternate Consciousness,” p. 236. 83. John J. Pilch, “Appearances of the Risen Jesus in Cultural Context.” 84. Pilch’s interpretation of the post-Resurrection encounters also introduces a possible motive for someone’s moving the body of Jesus among religious leaders who did not want a cult-following of Jesus near his tomb. Traditionalists about the Resurrection generally argue that nobody had a motive for moving the body of Jesus.

notes to pages 104–19

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85. John J. Pilch, “Appearances of the Risen Jesus in Cultural Context,” pp. 55– 56. 86. Acts 18. 87. Luke 24. 88. John J. Pilch, “Appearances of the Risen Jesus in Cultural Context,” p. 53. 89. Ibid., pp. 54–55. 90. Luke 24. 91. John 20. 92. John J. Pilch, “Appearances of the Risen Jesus in Cultural Context.” 93. Larmer, Questions of Miracle, pp. 129–30. 94. John Wesley, The Journal of the Rev. John Wesley, vol. 5. 95. William James, Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 53. 96. Ibid., p. 102 97. Ibid., p. 117. James describes the evangelical movements of England and America in the early nineteenth century in these terms. 98. Ibid., p. 117. 99. Richard Swinburne, Existence of God, pp. 250f. 100. Caroline Franks Davis, The Evidential Force of Religious Experience, chap. 2. Davis is interested in their evidential value for theism in general, not specifically Christian theism. 101. Ibid., p. 36. 102. Ibid., p. 5.

chapter 3 1. See Peirce’s “The Logic of Abduction,” in Essays in the Philosophy of Science, pp. 235–55. 2. Dudley Shapere, “The Concept of Observation in Science and Philosophy.” 3. I cannot recall where I read this, but substantially similar events involving Kmesons are described in Wehr, Richards, and Adair, Physics of the Atom, p. 450f. 4. See, for example, Karl R. Popper’s The Logic of Scientific Discovery and Conjectures and Refutations. 5. See especially the first five chapters. 6. Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, book 2, chap. 16 (98b). 7. Ibid., 2.19 (99b). 8. Ibid., 2.19 (99b). 9. Ibid., 2.19 (100a). 10. Ibid., 2.19 (100b). 11. In reply to this, some theorists would say that all of our undisputed sciences involve idealizations to which actual objects or events can only approximate. For example, the gas laws are idealizations to which the motion of gases only approximates. These theorists about scientific method are known as conventionalists; cf. Imre Lakatos, “History of Science and Its Rational Reconstruction,” for a discussion of this method compared with inductivism and Popperian falsificationism. 12. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, part 1, ques. 1, art. 2. 13. Ibid., 1.2.2.

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14. Ibid., 1.2.2. 15. Ibid., 1.50.3. 16. John Paul II, Encyclical Letter, Fides et Ratio, para. 4. 17. Ibid., para. 7. 18. Ibid., para. 8. 19. Ibid., para. 9. 20. Avery Dulles, “Can Philosophy Be Christian?” p. 26. 21. The valid argument forms in which the conclusion “p or q” is inferred from exactly one of “p” and “q” might seem to be another exception, but the conclusion “weakens the premise.” 22. According to Mark’s account they are said to have numbered two thousand. 23. Their question, according to Matthew, includes something about being tormented “before the time,” which is usually interpreted as meaning that the evil spirits understood the threat of a final judgment. This part drops out of the new description of the verbal interchange. 24. This is well known from John Austin’s exposition in How to Do Things with Words. 25. Wiebe, Visions of Jesus, p. 72f. 26. Wilfrid Sellars, Science, Perception and Reality, p. 178. This is drawn from the essay Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind, which has recently been published on its own with an introductory essay. 27. Ibid., p. 187. 28. David Lewis developed this position in “An Argument for the Identity Theory,” “How to Define Theoretical Terms,” and “Psychophysical and Theoretical Identifications.” 29. Edward Schoen, Religious Explanations: A Model from the Sciences, esp. chap. 4. 30. Felicitas D. Goodman, How About Demons? p. 1. 31. See Frederick Suppe, The Structure of Theories, “Introduction,” for an overview of important positions. 32. Aristotle, On the Soul, book 1, chap. 1. 33. Arthur Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World, xiv. 34. Carl Goldberg, Speaking with the Devil, pp. xii–xiii. This book, published in 1996, continues the tradition of stigmatizing as primitive those who believe in spirits. 35. See chapter 2. 36. Some phenomenalists objected to this way of describing such an experience, for it left the impression that flames of fire might be real, whereas the point behind phenomenalism was to be able to question the existence of objects external to a perceiving mind. So the “adverbial” description was introduced, which, in Paula’s case, would require that we describe her as having perceived “flamely” or “firely.” 37. Classic accounts are found in Herbert Feigl, “The ‘Orthodox’ View of Theories,” and Carl Hempel, “On the ‘Standard Conception’ of Scientific Theories.” I have modified their descriptions slightly so that the foundationalist flavor exhibited in their accounts, especially that of Feigl’s, is minimized. Ernan McMullin discusses the impact of the critique of foundationalism and other assumptions of traditional empiricism upon Feigl and Hempel in “Empiricism at Sea.”

notes to pages 142–56

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38. See Swinburne, The Existence of God, pp. 260ff., and Davis, The Evidential Force of Religious Experience, pp. 96ff. 39. This important topic would take us too far afield, but it is worth noting that some methodological principles apply to data items only, other principles apply to theories only, and still others apply to both data items and theories. For example, the popular view that all descriptions of data are theory-laden illustrates the third kind of methodological principle listed. Of course, metamethodological principles also need to be recognized. Much philosophy is taken up with these methodological issues, and obtaining agreement on matters of methodology is as difficult as reconciling competing philosophical positions. 40. Harpur, Daimonic Reality, p. 54f. 41. Jarrett Leplin, A Novel Defense of Scientific Realism, pp. 4f. 42. Epistemic Justification, p. 102. 43. Maybe a case could be made for saying that she heard the entity she postulated to exist, but we would need to analyze the place of auditory experience in “observation.” One philosopher once raised the question of whether electrons could be included as observable objects in view of the fact that we can feel them when we touch a live wire! 44. Leplin, A Novel Defense of Scientific Realism, p. 5, says that although we have a good understanding of the natural world, our understanding of methodology is in its adolescence. 45. See the exposition in Hugo Meynell, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Bernard Lonergan, chaps. 1 and 2. 46. Leplin, A Novel Defense of Scientific Realism, p. 170. 47. Dudley Shapere, “Editorial Interpolation,” p. 569. 48. Arthur Fine, “The Natural Ontological Attitude,” p. 261. 49. Ibid., p. 271. 50. Jarrett Leplin, A Novel Defense, p. 26. 51. Ibid., p. 26. 52. Ibid., p. 185. 53. Janet Soskice, Metaphor and Religious Language, pp. 131f.

chapter 4 1. J. J. C. Smart and John Haldane, Atheism and Theism, p. 85. 2. Ibid., p. 87. 3. Neither author discusses spirits other than God. 4. Ibid., p. 10. 5. Ibid., p. 9. 6. Smart thinks that this popular interpretation of Kuhn’s view might be a vulgarization of him; ibid., p. 12. 7. Ibid., p. 6. 8. Ibid., p. 170; my emphasis. 9. J. J. C. Smart, “Conflicting Views about Explanation,” p. 167. 10. Ibid., p. 167. He is using Wilfrid Sellars’s term “manifest image,” which

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means “commonsense image.” Sellars considered these perspectives to be incommensurable with each other. 11. Ibid., p. 158. 12. We might want to add “by a person” at this point in the sentence, but the possibility that Smart was envisioning provides no basis for thinking that persons would be part of such a physicalist ontology. 13. Analytic philosophers distinguish the “is” of identity from the “is” of predication, as in “Snow is white,” and from the “is” of existence, as in “There is an abominable snowman.” 14. Smart and Haldane, Atheism and Theism, pp. 16–66. 15. I examine some of these arguments more closely in chapter 5. 16. Ibid., p. 169. 17. Ibid. 18. This has been debated, of course, as in Paul Edwards, “The Cosmological Argument,” and William Rowe, “Two Criticisms of the Cosmological Argument.” 19. Smart and Haldane differ sharply on the value of the concept of a necessary being. Smart consistently objects to it, but Haldane notes that this notion is coming back into favor among certain philosophers. 20. Robert Larmer, philosopher and personal friend, sent me a copy of an unpublished paper objecting to the “God of the gaps” objection at about the time this section was first written. I have tried to develop my own position here, but I might be more indebted to Robert than I realize. 21. Paul Oppenheim and Hilary Putnam, “Unity of Science as a Working Hypothesis.” 22. Nancey Murphy, Beyond Liberalism and Fundamentalism, p. 139, quoting from Silvan S. Schweber, “Physics, Community and the Crisis in Physical Theory.” 23. Ernest Nagel, The Structure of Science. 24. Ibid., pp. 170f. 25. Nancey Murphy, Beyond Liberalism and Fundamentalism, pp. 135ff. 26. Ibid., pp. 139f. 27. Ibid., p. 144. 28. Ibid., pp. 146f. 29. Ibid., p. 148. 30. Richard H. Schlagel, Contextual Realism, p. 274. 31. Ibid., p. 294. This issue still constitutes an important divide among AngloAmerican philosophers. Postmodern thought seems to be allied in an important way with ordinary language philosophy. 32. Ibid., p. 275. 33. Ibid., p. 283. 34. Ibid., p. 288. Schlagel considers the question posed by physicist Eddington about the two tables to have been misleading. 35. Ibid., p. 149. 36. Ibid., p. 251, italics in original. Schlagel does not spell out who is denoted in his use of “our,” but he could be referring to the views of most philosophers or fellow academics. The general population in North America is split on the question of whether ghosts exist.

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37. Ibid. p. 252. His reference to “my categorial scheme” is curious, for it suggests that he could pick and choose beliefs about what is real. 38. I discussed these terms in chapter 1. 39. See the classic accounts of apparitions and ghosts in such sources as E. J. Dingwall, Ghosts and Spirits of the Ancient World; Hornell Hart, The Enigma of Survival; Andrew MacKenzie, Apparitions and Ghosts; F. W. H. Myers, Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death; and G. N. M. Tyrrell, Apparitions. Innumerable other popular accounts have been published. I have discussed several group experiences of Christic apparitions in my Visions of Jesus. 40. Donald Wiebe, The Irony of Theology, p. 4. 41. Bronislow Malinowski, in A Scientific Theory of Culture, credits James Frazer with having plausibly characterized magic as a form of thinking in which two principles are operative: (a) like produces like, and (b) “things which have been once in contact with each other continue to act on each other at a distance” (p. 196). 42. Donald Wiebe, The Irony of Theology, p. 5. 43. Ibid., p. 196. 44. Ibid., pp. 70f. 45. Ibid., p. 5. 46. Ibid., p. 61, fn. 39. 47. Ibid., p. 7. Wiebe says that some studies described as theology are compatible with religion, but academic theology is not. Academic theology uses reason to explicate religion and attempts to create plausible arguments for beliefs that people are expected to hold on faith; ibid., p. 175. 48. Ibid., p. 37. 49. See his discussion of William F. Albright, ibid., pp. 178ff. 50. Ibid., p. 80. 51. Ibid., p. 73. 52. Ibid., p. 96. 53. Ibid., pp. 70, 89, for example. Wiebe devotes a chapter to an examination of Greek thought, arguing that Plato opted for a mythopoeic perspective rather than the scientific one that emerged in pre-Socratic writing. 54. Ibid., pp. 113f. 55. Ibid., p. 222. 56. Ibid., p. 82. 57. Ibid., p. 215. 58. Ibid., pp. 79, 122. 59. Ibid., p. 74. 60. Ibid., p. 177. 61. Ibid., p. 222. 62. Ibid., pp. 73, 105, 109, 126f. 63. Popper’s view of method can be found in his classic The Logic of Scientific Discovery and also in his Conjectures and Refutations. Further information, including criticism of his views and Popper’s response to his critics, can be found in P. A. Schilpp, The Philosophy of Karl Popper. 64. Notably, in William Alston, “Perceiving God,” “The Perception of God,” and Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience.

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65. William Alston, “Perceiving God,” pp. 11f. 66. Richard Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism; this book, published in 1977, represents a significant rebuttal to the positivist critique of theism, which had dominated in Anglo-American philosophy during the previous part of the twentieth century. 67. My Visions of Jesus, pp. 71f. 68. Alston, “Perceiving God,” p. 655. 69. Nielsen, “Perceiving God,” pp. 6f. 70. Alston, “Perceiving God,” p. 660. 71. “Perceiving God,” p. 4. 72. See D. Z. Phillips, Religion without Explanation, chap. 10, for instance.

chapter 5 1. The Templeton Foundation is at present funding a considerable amount of work in the interface between science and religion. Access to the relevant literature can readily be obtained from the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences, in Berkeley, California. 2. See Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God, chap. 8. 3. According to L. Stafford Betty and Bruce Cordell, “The Anthropic Teleological Argument,” p. 221. 4. Ibid., p. 206. 5. John K. Webb et al., “Further Evidence for Cosmological Evolution of the Fine Structure Constant.” See also the Web site http://bat.phys.unsw.edu.au/⬃mim/res .html. 6. Aquinas apparently thought such series could be infinite, according to Patterson Brown, in “Infinite Causal Regression,” part 4. Brown says that Aquinas did not allow for infinite series in the sense of sustaining causes because such series would not allow for responsibility for an event to be assigned to anyone or anything. 7. This point was more impressive when oxygen was thought to be necessary for life, prior to the recent discovery near thermal vents deep in the oceans of forms of life that metabolize sulfur. 8. J. P. Moreland, “The Kalam Cosmological Argument,” p. 179. He cites his indebtedness to Craig, who has published several books and various essays on the topic. 9. J. L. Mackie, “Critique of the Cosmological Argument,” p. 215. This is drawn from his well-known book The Miracle of Theism. 10. William L. Rowe, “Two Criticisms of the Cosmological Argument.” 11. Kant defined analytic propositions as ones in which the predicate was contained in the subject (as in “All bachelors are male”), but this definition does not handle more complex propositions, such as those in which the predicate expresses a relation between two or more objects. Another popular definition of analytic propositions holds that these propositions are true by logical form or meaning of terms alone, which this example also illustrates. Synthetic propositions would simply be propositions that are not analytic. Quine argued that the latter definition of analyticity needed a criterion for synonymy, for it was by replacing terms with their synonymous expressions that we could show that the required logical form was exhibited. For example, if

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we define “bachelors” as “never-married adult males” and substitute this definition in the example, we reduce the proposition to “All never-married adult males are males,” whose analyticity is obvious. Quine argued that an adequate definition for synonymy could not be provided. 12. Carolyn Franks Davis, The Evidential Force of Religious Experience, chap. 4. 13. Smart and Haldane say that Swinburne has done the most impressive work in philosophical theology since the Middle Ages. This would evidently include Thomas Aqunas (ibid., p. 222), and so their remark is high praise indeed. 14. Swinburne, The Existence of God, chap. 7. 15. This is understood to mean that the probability of H on E plus the probability of H on not-E is 1. 16. Merrilee H. Salmon et al., Introduction to the Philosophy of Science, p. 81. 17. Ibid., p. 84. 18. Ibid., p. 80. 19. This consequence occurs as a result of three probability statements: (a) P(G&O) ⫽ P(O&G), (b) P(G&O) ⫽ P(G,O) x P(O), and (c) P(O&G) ⫽ P(O,G) x P(G). From these we can infer that P(G) ⫽ (G,O) x P(O)/P(O,G), provided that P(O,G) is not zero. 20. Rudolf Carnap’s Logical Foundations of Probability is a long, technical exposition of the topic. 21. See Merrilee H. Salmon et al., Introduction to the Philosophy of Science, chap. 2, for a succinct account. 22. Carnap explored different ways of assigning numerical values. 23. The Christian God, chap. 6. 24. Epistemic Justification, p. 104. 25. The standard probability calculus has an axiom to this effect. 26. Ibid., p. 82ff. 27. Acts 18:27–28. The quotation here is sometimes attributed to Epimenides. 28. This is a paraphrase of John 1:9, which speaks of Christ. 29. Austin Farrer, “Faith and Reason,” in Reflective Faith, p. 49. 30. Ibid., p. 50. 31. Ibid., p. 50. 32. Ibid., p. 51. 33. Ibid., p. 52. 34. Ibid., p. 54. 35. Edmund Gettier issued a challenge in 1963, in “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?” to Plato’s famous position that three conditions are needed for asserting that someone knows some proposition: (a) that one believes the proposition, (b) that one is justified in believing the proposition, and (c) that the proposition is true. Gettier thought a fourth condition was needed, and philosophers have argued about Gettier’s proposal and other similar suggestions. A different approach to the analysis of knowledge has recently been advanced by Timothy Williamson in “Is Knowing a State of Mind.” He argues that whereas true belief is needed for knowledge, the justificatory condition cannot be analyzed but can be immediately recognized. 36. This experience has disposed me to question the claim advanced by some theologians that God cannot know the future events that are dependent upon the free

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acts of people. This issue has been debated in recent years by a number of philosophers, including Richard Swinburne, Jonathan Kvanvig, Charles Taliaferro, and Peter VanInwagen. 37. Internalists about knowledge insist that the person who claims to have knowledge must be in possession of a justification for beliefs, but externalists simply claim that some justification must exist. 38. Alvin Plantinga, “Reason and Belief in God,” pp. 73f. 39. Alvin Plantinga, “Intellectual Sophistication and Basic Belief in God.” 40. Alvin Plantinga, “Reason and Belief in God,” pp. 33f. 41. Ibid., p. 74. 42. Alvin Plantinga, “Theism, Atheism, and Rationality.” 43. Ludwig Wittgenstein is famous for having argued the distinction between the ground of a belief and evidence for it in Philosophical Investigations. 44. I doubt that Plantinga’s use of “faith” can unquestionably be equated with the sense I gave this term in the previous section. Sometimes “faith” means something like “deciding to accept for the purposes of living one’s life, even though one has no firm conviction that the things that one decides to trust are true.” This also is an important sense of the term, but I doubt that the author to the Hebrews that I quoted means this. 45. Plantinga also holds to the inevitability of belief that I articulated earlier, which makes claims about obligations to believe or not to believe problematic. Perhaps he means “believe” in the sense of “accept.” 46. J. J. C. Smart and John Haldane, Atheism and Theism, p. 168. 47. The virgin birth remains a possible exception. 48. Alvin Plantinga, “Reason and Belief in God,” p. 64. Plantinga is summarizing and endorsing the views of nineteenth-century Dutch Reformed theologian Herman Bavinck. 49. Alvin Plantinga, “Darwin, Mind and Meaning.” 50. John Locke and Bishop Berkeley treat the existence of the self as self-evident. David Hume is famous for arguing that the self is a construction, which is a view that has emerged with renewed vigor in recent literary and philosophical criticism. 51. W. V. O. Quine, “Epistemology Naturalized,” p. 24. 52. Ibid., p. 25. 53. Jaegwon Kim, “What Is ‘Naturalized Epistemology’?” 54. Some textbooks in cognitive psychology teach that fallaciousness can be determined empirically. If such an approach were to be widely embraced, that would signal entry into a new, intellectual dark age, in my opinion. 55. This fact, incidentally, seems to augur badly for claims that computing technology can readily replicate human “reasoning,” some of which is fallacious. Deductive and inductive forms of reasoning seem well in hand, but does a basis exist for thinking that a firm could develop a blueprint for building computers that can be predicted to fail in identical ways for the next three millennia, no matter where they are built? This time period roughly corresponds to available human records that contain logical fallacies. 56. The fact that Plato committed fallacies has been widely discussed by philosophers, so I surmise Aristotle did not obtain his logic from Plato. The precisely 24 valid inference patterns among categorical syllogisms that Aristotle discovered, out of

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a possible 256, are easy to demonstrate now with the help of Venn diagrams. However, prior to John Venn’s innovation, this understanding was no mean achievement. I consider Aristotle’s logic and Euclid’s geometry to be among the greatest achievements of the ancient world, and they are well worth everyone’s respectful study, although both have been superseded in the last 150 years. 57. Philosopher and cognitive scientist Jerry Fodor argues in The Modularity of Mind that deduction is served by a “module,” that is, an area of the brain dedicated to some specific function. 58. The evaluation here takes the form of a subjunctive conditional, for it requires determining whether “q” would be true if “p” were to be true. This interpretation of validity is compatible with a system of statements whose truth or falsity cannot be determined. 59. I cannot now recall where I read this, but the account purported to describe an actual event. 60. This position also has implications—negative ones—for the claim that an objective moral order requires a divine source. As theists we naturally endorse the claim that God is the source of all, including the existence of moral values, but this does not have obvious further implications for moral theory. 61. A psychiatrist to whom I spoke about the visions of Jesus I had researched looked disparagingly on the experiences of one person in my data because the man, whom he knew, had been a difficult houseguest on one occasion. The psychiatrist did not charge him with any serious moral failing but only with being difficult; that seemed to be sufficient to doubt the man’s religious experiences. The psychiatrist evidently did not consider the fact that the man suffered from Alzheimer’s disease when he was a guest to be sufficient to excuse his behavior.

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Index of Biblical Names

Aaron, 62 Abraham: angelic encounters of, 71– 73; and first recorded theophany, 65; peculiar dream of, 66; and “sacrifice” of Isaac, 61; significance for Israel of, 75 Adam, 2, 21, 65 Andrew, 25 Balaam, 73 Beelzebul, 34, 40 Daniel, 70 David, 21–22, 26–27 Dionysius, 221 n.2 Elijah, 79 Eliphaz, 24 Elisha, 79 Eve, 21, 23, 65 Ezekiel, 27, 79 Gabriel, 83–84

Jacob, 70 Jehoshaphat, 23 Jeremiah, 71 Jesus Christ: exorcisms by, 31–34, 40, 47, 55, 124, 129; healings by, 54, 109; historical claims concerning, 80, 81–83, 203; as Judge, 34, 230n; post-Resurrection appearances of, 25, 103–8; Resurrection of, 94–99, 101–3, 141, 179, 228n; the Shroud of Turin and, 86, 89–94; temptations of, 30; virginal conception of, 83–86, 94, 181, 226 n.29; visions of, 62, 102–3, 141, 169, 182, 218 Job, 24, 46 John, the apostle, 89–90, 95 John, author of The Revelation, 104 John the Baptist, 83 Joseph, the husband of Mary, 71 Lazarus, 95–96 Lot, 72 Luke, 83, 102

Hagar, 71 Isaac, 61 Isaiah, 27

Mary Magdalene, 228 n.65 Mary, the Virgin, 15, 83–86, 141, 181

252

index of biblical names

Matthew, 47, 83, 105, 124 Micaiah, 23 Moloch, 49 Moses: author of the Pentatech, 65; and the “burning bush” experience, 61–62, 112, 129, 136, 210; as one allowed to see God, 75–76 Noah, 65 Paul: on evil spirits, 34; as exorcist, 40; on gifts of the Holy Spirit, 54–55; on God’s self-disclosure, 202–3; postResurrection appearances of Jesus to, 104; on the Resurrection, 95 Peter, 25

Samuel, 21–22, 27, 48 Sarah, 71 Satan: ante-Nicence views of, 36; as delighting in evil, 60; as destroyer of Job, 24; as dominating this world, 44; as entering Judas Iscariot, 10; in Hebrew Scriptures, 26–28; as the serpent who tempted Eve, 21; as tempting Jesus, 30 Saul, 21–24, 28, 43 Sheol, 27 Solomon, 25, 70 Thomas, 25, 98 Zechariah, the Hebrew prophet, 27, 71 Zechariah, the priest, 83

General Index

Abductive arguments: compared with deductive and inductive arguments, 115–20, 123, 190, 204; nature of, 113–15; problems with, 145–47; tentative character of, 121, 150 Accetta, August, 93–94 Agentic explanation, 176, 178 Alston, William, 181–84 Altered state of consciousness, 47– 48, 53–54, 103–8 Amorth, Gabriele, 46 Analogy, argument from, 29, 116, 138, 185 Angel(s): destroying, 26; distinct from God, 192; encounters with, 70, 71–75, 181; evidence for existence of, 5, 39, 119, 147; fallen, 2, 10, 36; of the Lord, 27, 61, 112; powers of, 40; rankings of, 34; seen in space, 4; transfixed by an, 84 Anselm, St., 28, 118 Ante-Nicene thought, 35–39 Anthropic principle, 5, 191–92 Antonacci, Mark, 227 n.58 Apophatic tradition, 150, 186 Apparitions: 139, 173; animals’ reaction to, 73; caused by evil

spirits, 39, 44, 54, 58; of the dead, 5, 17, 24, 29, 103; as fables, 108; of Jesus, 62, 140, 169; of Mary, 141 Approximate truth, 133–34 Aquinas, Thomas, 118–20, 204, 228 n.73, 234 n.6 Aristotle, 67, 118–20, 132, 214–15, 236 n.56 Atomism: logical, 29, 136; physical, 115–17, 131–32, 136, 140, 142, 176 Atoms: break up of, 93–94, 100–1; reduction to, 163–67; strong force in, 147; structure of, 155–58; as unobservable objects, 133–34. See also Dematerialization Austin, John, 230 n.24 Bache, Christopher, 226 n.30 Baloma (spirits), 40, 209 Barth, Karl, 207 Baryon particle, 114–15, 128 Bayes’s Theorem, 196, 198–99 Benedict XIV, Pope, 45 Berkeley, George, 116, 136, 236 n.50 Big Bang, 5, 166, 191–92, 194 Bilirubin, 88 Bord, Janet, 221 Braude, Stephen, 32, 173

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Brown, Patterson, 234 n.6 Bryan, William, 53–54 Bultmann, Rudolf, 3–4, 8, 55, 81–82, 98 Burnham, Sophy, 221 n.11 Calvin, John, 207 Carbon dating, 87, 94 Cardinal Manning, 36 Carnap, Rudolf, 199–202 Carnley, Peter, 94–95 Carus, Paul, 41 Catholic Church, 3, 14–15, 53; views of diabolical possession and exorcism, 44– 46, 48, 52, 58 Causation, downward (or top-down), 165– 67 Cause(s): of beliefs, 169–71, 211–17; distinguishing good from evil, 60–63; establishing connections with effects, 13–14, 32, 113–15, 129, 147; God as, 159– 63, 166–67, 181–83, 186; interpreting, 143–44; in madness, 37; magical, 8, 81– 82; of malevolence, 134–35; and meaning, 128–33, 159, 180; of observable effects, 102, 107, 109; phenomenological basis for, 17; principles related to, 190; propensities as, 198–99; series of, 193–95; spirits as, 39, 40–44, 136–40; supernatural, 8, 18, 20, 25, 28, 176; unobservable, 84, 145–46, 149–50. See also Magical thinking de Chardin, Teilhard, 192 Clement of Alexandria, 36–37 Clement of Rome, 37–38 Clissold, Stephen, 226 n.30 Cohen, J. M., 226 n.30 Common sense: descriptions, 134; framework, 126–27, 132, 134, 140–44, 207; spirits as a conceptual part of, 151, 172–73; versus science, 114, 154– 59, 167–68, 175, 180 Conceptual scheme, 19, 115, 148–49 Contemporary experiences: Adkin, Paula (Case 6, chap. 2), 78–79; “Alexi” (Case 6, chap. 1), 50–52; “Arthur, Tom”

(Case 1, chap. 2), 63–64; Bezanson, Helen, 182; Bjurling, Camilla (Case 7, chap. 2), 80–81; Case 1, chap. 1, 8; Case 2, chap. 1, 10; Case 3, chap. 1, 11– 12; Dyck, Barry, 106–7; Edmunds, Gordon (Case 3, chap. 2), 68–70; “Gerald” (Case 5, chap. 1), 17; Hason, Maureen (Case 4, chap. 2), 73–74, 183; “Hilda” (Case 2, chap. 2), 66–67; Langlois, Pauline, 139–40; Massara, John and Julia, 74; “Nathan” (Case 4, chap. 1), 15–16; Rod, 171–72; “Sharon,” 47–48; Shore, Alan (Case 5, chap. 2), 76–77; Soviet Union sculptors, 216 Contingent existence argument, 158, 161 Cosmological arguments, 161, 191–95 Cosmological constants, 158, 191–92 Craig, William Lane, 97, 194 Creation, 21, 82, 154, 192 Cuneo, Michael, 11 Cyprian of Carthage, 38 Darwin, Charles, 21 Davis, Carolyn Franks, 109–10, 142, 195, 229 n.100 Dead Sea scrolls, 26 Deciding to believe, 169–71 Deductive arguments: for designer, 100; distinguished from inductive and abductive arguments, 113, 115–20, 132, 146; for God’s existence, 190, limitations of, 120–23, 194–95, 203–4, 216–18; value of, 177, 212 Dematerialization, 93–94, 99–101 Democritus, 176 Demonic possession: in ante-Nicene thought, 35–39; Catholic views on, 14– 15, 44–46; causes of, 37–39, 43; descriptions of, 124–25; in the Hebrew Bible, 21–25; medieval examples of, 40– 44; modern examples of, 8–12, 15–17, 47–53; in the New Testament, 30–35; Paul Tillich on, 55–56; ranks of, 34 Demons (or evil spirits): “basin test” for presence of, 25, 32; in Christian faith,

general index 3; contagion of, 12, 32, 54; as essentially finite, 192; in Dead Sea scrolls, 26; evidence for, 5, 25–26, 39– 40, 57–58; hierarchy among, 14, 34; hypotheses concerning, 18–20, 35; identification of, 147; incubi and succubi, 41, 43; and malevolence, 134– 35; medieval views of, 2; as natural objects, 151; as postulated entities, 28– 30, 113–15, 129–35; versus daimons (or daemons), 2, 36, 224 n.64. See also Demonic possession; Exorcism Demythologizing, 81–82 Descartes, Rene´: concept of soul, 154; Enlightenment and, 68; epistemology of, 29–30, 212–13; radical doubt of, 116; immediate experience in, 136 Dissociative identity disorder, 9–13, 32, 49, 150 Docetism, 105 Dreams: distinguished from real life, 143, 183–85; and evil spirits, 36–39, 49; and the Holy, 66–71, 109; waking, 103–4 Dualism, mind-body, 130, 159 Dulles, Avery, 120 Ecstasy, divine, 56 Eddington, Arthur, 133, 232 n.34 Eliminative materialism, 18, 152 Emergent properties, 158, 164–65, 167 Empiricism, 71, 116–17, 145, 212 Empty tomb, 95–98, 103 Epilepsy, 31, 49 Epistemology: internalism in, 236 n.37; naturalized, 169, 211–17; purposes of, 30; Reformed, 207. See also Descartes, Rene´ Essenes, 26 Essential properties, 118 Euclidean geometry, 118–19 Evans, Craig A., 82 Evidence, kinds of: 32–33, 79–80; semiexperimental, 57–58, 173 Exorcism: British approval of, 33; of Gadarene demoniacs, 31–33, 47–48, 55, 109, 113–14, 124–26, 129–32, 179; and

255

hypnosis, 53–54; major and minor, 222 n.11; and the natural order, 109 External world, 117, 208–10, 213 Fallacies: argumentum ad hominem, 214; argumentum ad ignorantium, 160; denying the antecedent of a conditional, 214; God of the gaps, 159 Fallibilism, 177–78, 180 Farrer, Austin, 203–4 Feigl, Herbert, 230 n.37 Feuerbach, Ludwig, 6 Fideism, 208 Fine, Arthur, 148–49 Fine tuning argument, 158 First Cause, 193–94 First principles, 118–23, 132 Fodor, Jerry, 237 n.57 Folk psychology, 126, 131 Foundationalism, 130 Frazer, James, 4 Freud, Sigmund, 68, 134 Geller, Ernest, 175 Gettier, Edmund, 235 n.35 Ghosts, 2, 25, 37, 168–73 God of the gaps, 159–63 God-talk, 187 Goldberg, Carl, 134–35, 149 Goodman, Felicitas, 130 Green, Deirdre, 226 n.30 Gruber, Elmar, 96 Guazzo, Francesco Maria, 43 Habermas, Gary, 97 Haldane, John, 153–54, 157–60, 163, 190 Hallucination(s): concept of representation and, 137–38; mass, 106; in phenomenalism, 138; postResurrection appearances as, 101–2; questions about, 64; seeing demons as, 18; visions as, 183 Hardy, Alister, 15–16, 81, 218 Harpur, Patrick, 4, 36, 42, 145 Harrison, Jane, 28 Heathcote, Emma, 75

256

general index

Heidegger, Martin, 3 Hempel, Carl, 230 n.37 Herodotus, 22 Hick, John, 5–6, 103 Hierarchy, of sciences, 163–67, 174 Hinduism, 103 Hume, David, 116, 136, 212, 236 n.50 Huxley, Aldous, 15 Incorporeal being, 141–42, 159 Inductive arguments: character of, 100, 113, 119, 146, 177–78; distinguished from abductive arguments, 121–23; distinguished from deductive and abductive arguments, 115–17; and the existence of God, 217–18; justification of, 212; and the principle of sufficient reason, 195; probabilistic arguments as, 196–202. See also Probability Infinite: being, 101, 121–2, 127, 189–90, 201–2; as creative, 203–4; divine attributes as, 181–87; finite claiming to be, 55; incoherence of persons as, 181; series, 193–95; universe, 200 Inquisition, 41 Intersubjective observations, 58, 102, 106– 7, 219 Jackson, John, 93–94, 96–101, 166 James, William, 70, 108–10, 169–71, 219 Jeeves, Malcolm, 54–55 John Paul II, Pope, 46, 120 Josephus, 22, 25, 32 Jung, Carl, 68 Kalam cosmological argument, 194. See also Cosmological arguments Kant, Immanuel, 28, 116, 195, 234 n.11 Kelsey, Morton, 68 Kersten, Holgar, 96 Kim, Jaegwon, 213, 216 K-mesons, 229 n.3 Kraft, Charles, 225 n.109 Kramer, Heinrich, 41–43 Kuhn, Thomas, 19, 148–49, 155

Lactantius, 36–37 Ladd, George, 97 Lakatos, Imre, 177, 229 n.11 Larmer, Robert, 108, 232 n.20 Lavoisier, Antoine, 135 Leplin, Jarrett, 146, 149–50, 231 n.44 Lesses, Rebecca, 224 n.89 Levitation, 39, 41, 58, 109 Le´vy-Bruhl, Lucien, 174–76 Lewis, C. S., 2, 34 Lewis, David, 128, 130–31 Lilith, 26 Locke, John, 116, 236 n.50 Logic: in discussion of theory reduction, 164; language expressing concepts of, 126–27; normative character of, 213–15; used with probability assignments, 201; proof as part of, 59 Logical atomism, 29, 136 Logical positivism: attitude to metaphysics, 3; foundationalism in, 130; and phenomenalism, 30, 157; physics and, 117 Lonergan, Bernard, 147 Ludemann, Gerd, 82, 98, 228 n.70 Mackie, John, 194 Magical thinking: belief in evil spirits as, 18, 134–35; biblical events as instances of, 81–82; prayer as, 54; religious thought as, 174, 176 Malinowski, Bronislaw, 40, 209, 233 n.41 Maloney, Paul, 91 Mascall, Eric, 3 Materialism: and belief in spirits, 108; challenges for, 157; compared with physicalism, 154; and understanding mind, 126, 128–30. See also Physicalism Matheson, Roy, 47–53 McMullin, Ernan, 230 n.37 Melanesia, 160, 209 Mental illness: once seen as possession, 23–24, 39, 54–55, 134–35; recent Catholic views on, 44

general index Mental states: elimination of, 19; as postulated entities, 134, 168, 172, 175; reduction of, 126–27, 128–31, 154, 156 Merlin, the magician, 84–85 Mesmer, Franz, 53–54 Microentities, 128, 133–34, 147–50, 168 Midgley, Carol, 75 Mill, John Stuart, 117, 129 Mind-body problem, 18, 128 Minucius Felix, 38 Miracle: accepted by some scholars, 82; as basis for defense of God, 158, 195– 96; healing as, 40, 55; meaning of, 162; value for Christian faith of, 108 Moody, Raymond, 173 Moral(ity): capacity for, 5; impact of experience upon, 15, 108–9, 218; importance of, 36, 162–63, 195; orders, 60–64; point of view, 215; versus scientific thought, 176 Moreland, J. P., 194 Mormon Church, 102 Multiple personality disorder, 9. See also Dissociative identity disorder Murphy, Nancy, 165–67, 174 Myers, David, 54–55 Mystical experience, 110 Mythopoeic thought, 174–80 Nagel, Ernest, 164 Narrative, importance of, 133, 137–38 Naturalism: alternative to supernaturalism, 8–10, 12–13, 17, 113, 149, 160; compatible with belief in God and other spirits, 67, 130, 150–52, 217–20; defense of, 18–20; description of, 126–27; dilemma posed by, 23; in epistemology, 211–17; in explanations, 44, 58; of Murphy, 163–67; of Nielsen, 180–85; paranormal challenge to, 30–31; and postulated entities, 29; preference shown to, 52, 54–55; of Schlagel, 167–74; of Smart, 154–59; of Wiebe, 174–70. See also Physicalism Near-death experience (NDE), 31, 96, 173– 74

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Necessary being, 161–62 Neutrino, 114, 142 Nielsen, Kai, 180–87 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 3 Nixon, Laurence, 226 n.30 Numinous, sense of the: in contemporary experience, 77; as lacking indubitability, 186–87; mentioned in Job, 24; as understood by Paul Tillich, 56; as religious experience, 110, 182 O’Brien, Dan, 222 n.16 Oesterreich, T. K., 44 Ontological: argument, 28, 118; dogmatism, 217–19; reduction, 163–67, 168; physicalism, 155, 159; realism, 148– 49; questions, 60–64 Oppenheim, Paul, 163 Origen, 1–2, 38, 80 Other minds, 29–30, 206–10 Otto, Rudolf, 56, 60, 110, 186 Ouija board, 49, 225 n.108 Overall, Christine, 226 n.29 Paley, William, 191 Pannenberg, Wolfhart, 3 Paranormal phenomena: classification of, 32–33, 40, 41; as difficult to substantiate, 21, 30–31; evil spirits as, 18; skepticism about, 12–13, 55, 73 Parthenogenesis, 83 Peacocke, Arthur, 165–66 Pearson, Mark, 226 n.2 Peck, Scott, 20, 48 Peers, Alison, 226 n.30 Peirce, Charles Saunders, 113 Performative utterance, 124–25, 127 Personal identity, 99, 228 n.73 Phenomenalism, 29–30, 136–40, 157–58, 230 n.36 Phenomenological description: details of, 61, 65, 66, 110, 136; incomplete, 105; of infinite properties, 185; value of, 17, 182–83, 219 Phillips, D. Z., 187

258

general index

Phlogiston, 134–36, 152 Physicalism: non-reductionistic, 165–69; reductionistic, 154–59, 163–65, 174, 180. See also Naturalism Piczek, Isabel, 87 Pilch, John, 103–8, 228 n.84 Plantinga, Alvin, 62, 206–11, 236 n.44 Plato, 36, 215, 236 n.56 Platonism, 142 Pointillism, 92–93 Popper, Karl, 116, 177–80, 198, 233 n.63 Postmodern perspective, 62, 146, 217 Postulated entities: abduction and, 115–23; angels as, 73; defining, 128–33, 140; evil spirits as, 23–24, 28–30, 32–35, 39, 41, 57, 124–25; good or evil spirits as, 62, 113–15; ideal persons as, 198; inner states as, 71; microentities as, 133–34, 155–58; nature of, 151–52; non-existent, 18; phlogiston as, 135–36; soul as, 163; as real, 147–50; transcendent beings as, 83, 112, 145–47, 160–62, 179–80, 210–11; unobservable, 172 Pre-Socratics, 176, 178, 233 n.53 Principle of Credulity, 142–44 Principle of Simplicity, 145–47 Principle of Sufficient Reason, 194–95 Principle of Testimony, 142–43 Probability: calculus, 196; classical interpretation of, 196–97; estimates concerning the Shroud of Turin, 90– 91; of God’s existence, 195–202; logical interpretation of, 199–202; personal interpretation of, 198; propensity interpretation of, 198–99; relative frequency interpretation of, 196–97; subjective interpretation of, 197–98 Properly basic beliefs, 62, 206–11 Pseudo-Dionysius, 2, 34, 119–20 Psychology: attitude to evil spirits in, 54– 55, 149; epistemology as part of, 212– 13; minds and mental states in, 126– 29; relation to commonsense framework, 151; relation to physical sciences, 163 Putnam, Hilary, 163

Quarks, 147 Quine, W.V.O.: on distinction between analytic and synthetic propositions, 195, 234 n.11; form of empiricism in, 71; on naturalizing epistemology, 211– 17; on necessary being, 161; “web of belief ” in, 155 Quinton, Anthony, 14 Radiance, experience of, 75–79, 136–39, 144, 182 Radiography, 93 Realism: contextual, 167–74; epistemic (or critical) realism, 149–50, 151–52; and instrumentalism (or antirealism), 147–50; metaphysical, 153–54; naı¨ve (or common sense), 143–44, 157–59; ontological realism, 148–49; surrogate realism (or surrealism), 149 Reality-check, 105–6, 182 Resurrection of Jesus: and appearances, 101–8; as historical event, 5, 25, 55, 81– 83, 86; and the Shroud of Turin, 86– 101; versus resuscitation, 95–97, 228 n.73 Revelation: as additional source of knowledge, 119–20, 145, 151, 190; of Christian dogmas, 5, 28; of the Divine, 56, 65, 79, 202–6, 210–11; experiences of, 109–10 Richards, John, 225 n.108 Riley, Gregory, 98, 228 n.72 Rorty, Richard, 18–20 Rowe, William, 194–95, 232 n.18 Russell, Bertrand, 29–30, 116–17, 130, 136 Russell, Jeffrey, 26 Sackville-West, Victoria, 226 n.30 Sanders, E. P., 82 Schlagel, Richard, 167–74, 232 nn.34, 36 Schleiermacher, Friedrich, 186 Schoen, Edward, 129 Self-replicating life, 158–59 Sellars, Wilfrid, 126–27, 175, 231 n.10 Shapere, Dudley, 147–48 Shewmon, D. Alan, 227 n.63

general index Shroud of Turin: dematerization as source of image on, 93–94, 99–101, 166; evidence for Middle East origin, 91–92; not an objet d’art, 87–89; probability assessments concerning, 90–91; puzzling data from, 92–94; revelance to resurrection, 94–98; similarity to gospel accounts of crucifixion, 89–90 Smart, J.J.C.: on emergent properties, 164–65; the form of naturalism of, 174; on mind-body problem, 128, 232 n.12; the physicalism of, 153–59, 163, 167, 180; on religion and transcendent beings, 175, 187, 209, 232 n.19 Smith, Joseph, 102 Socrates, 36 Soskice, Janet, 150 Soul: Aristotle on, 118; ascension of Jesus’, 98; immortal, 2; as nonphysical substance, 127, 130, 154, 163, 209; survival of, 1–2, 5, 54 Space-time-causal order: collective experiences and, 42; dreams and, 66– 67; and ghosts, 171–73; and reality, 219; religious experience and, 108–9; resurrection and, 86, 101–2; virgin birth and, 86; visions and, 182 Sprenger, James, 41–43 St. Gregory, 43 St. Martin, 43, 62 Stackhouse, John, 103 Sub specie aeternitatas, describing the world, 155–56 Suffocation, 22, 39 Suicide, 8–9, 38, 39, 69 Summers, Montague, 41, 224 n.89 Super-explanation, 194 Supernovas, 100 Swinburne, Richard: on coherence of concept of God, 181; on kinds of religious experiences, 109; on principle of credulity, 142; on probability of God’s existence, 195–202; prominence of, 235 n.13; on simplicity, 146

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Tatian, 37 Teleological argument, 191, 195 Teleportation, 39, 42–43 Teresa of Avila, 84, 183 Tertullian, 38–39 Theory-laden observation, 125–26 Tillich, Paul, 55–56 Topic-neutral description, 124–25 Trenn, Thaddeus, 93–94, 99 Truth, correspondence theory of, 137–38 UFOs, 4–5, 111–12 Uncreated light, 11, 139 Unobservable beings or objects: arguing to existence of, 202, 211, 217–18; baryon particles as, 114–15, 128; causal role for, 129–31; and common sense beliefs, 142; difficulty in confirming theories about, 114; efforts to discover, 33; ghosts as, 168–69, 172–73; God as, 122–23, 199; instrumentalism on, 147– 50; kinds of, 133–36; physical objects as, 117; problem of reidentifying, 147; success of theories of, 84; Tertullian on, 39; versus observable phenomena, 75 Vespasian, Emperor, 25 Vikan, Gary, 227 n.36 Ward, Keith, 225 n.1 de Wavrin, John, 84–85 Wesley, John, 108, 110 Whitehead, Alfred North, 142 Wiebe, Donald, 174–80, 233 n.47 Williams, Rowan, 226 n.30 Williamson, Timothy, 235 n.35 Wilson, Ian, 227 n.35 Wink, Walter, 225 n.122 Witchcraft, 40–44 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 6, 30, 236 n.43 Yogananda, Paramahans, 103 Yukteswar, Sri, 103 Zaleski, Carol, 59–60, 223 n.47