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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
Nearly three decades have passed since Antony Flew first issued his now famous falsification challenge: ‘What would have to occur or to have occurred to constitute for you a disproof of the love of, or of the existence of, God?’ The purpose of the question is to challenge the sophisticated believer to describe a state of affairs in which a basic putative theistic assertion like ‘God exists’ would be false. If the believer admits that he cannot provide such a description then, Flew would argue, he is admitting that at least his putative theistic assertion is compatible with every state of affairs; consequently it is factually meaningless. The reason for this is that every factually significant assertion must deny that some describable state of affairs obtains. To illustrate, just as when we draw a circle we simultaneously draw in and draw out two particular areas, so when we state a fact we simultaneously deny a fact(s). Here is the difficulty, Flew would say, in which the sophisticated believer puts himself when he uses putative theistic assertions: factually he denies nothing, hence factually he asserts nothing.
page 323 note 1 Flew, Antony, ‘Theology and Falsification’, in New Essays in Philosophical Theology, ed. Flew, Antony and Maclntyre, Alasdair (London: SCM Press, 1955), p. 99.Google Scholar To understand the circumstances in which the challenge was first issued see Flew, Antony, “‘Theology and Falsification” in Retrospect’, in The Logic of God, ed. Diamond, Malcolm and Litzenburg, Thomas V. Jr (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1975), pp. 269 ff.Google Scholar
page 323 note 2 The importance of the element of denial in successful fact-stating is recognized not only by Flew in his brief symposium paper ( ‘Theology and Falsification’, New Essays, pp. 96–9Google Scholar), but also by I. M. Crombie in his response to Flew's paper ( ‘Theology and Falsification’, New Essays, pp. 109, 110).Google Scholar
page 323 note 3 E.g. Plantinga, Alvin, God and Other Minds (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967), pp. 156–68Google Scholar; Mavrodes, George, ‘God and Verification’, Canadian journal of Theology, x, 3 (1964), 187–91.Google Scholar
page 324 note 1 E.g. Ramsey, Ian T., Religious Language (London: SCM Press, 1957)Google Scholar; Hare, R. M., ‘Theology and Falsification’, New Essays, pp. 99–103.Google Scholar
page 324 note 2 E.g. Hick, John, Faith and Knowledge (2nd ednIthaca: Cornell University Press, 1966)Google Scholar; Mitchell, Basil, ‘Theology and Falsification’, New Essays, pp. 103–5.Google Scholar
page 324 note 3 Nielsen, Kai, Contemporary Critiques of Religion (London: Macmillan, 1971)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; hereafter referred to as Critiques.
page 325 note 1 Ibid. p. 17.
page 325 note 2 Ibid. pp. 1, 10, 11, 17, 18, 20, 67.
page 325 note 3 Ibid. p. 31.
page 325 note 4 Ibid. pp, 39, 40.
page 326 note 1 Ibid. A small sampling on pp. 40, 44, 58, 59.
page 326 note 2 Ibid. pp. 40, 41.
page 326 note 3 Ibid. p. 58.
page 326 note 4 Ibid. pp. 3, 14, 43, 72, 77.
page 326 note 5 Ibid. p. 43.
page 326 note 6 Ibid. pp. 57, 58, 59.
page 327 note 1 Ibid. p. 38.
page 327 note 2 Ibid. p. 38.
page 327 note 3 Ibid. p. 38. It should be emphasized here that Nielsen does not stipulate that the referent for ‘God’ must be something like a rock or a tree, in order to satisfy him; it could be an ethereal phenomenon, something like a pain or an anxiety. Briefly, he would apparently be satisfied if it were ‘something given in experience’. We shall therefore understand his request for such a referent in very broad experiential terms.
page 327 note 4 Ibid. p. 2.
page 327 note 5 Ibid. p. 94.
page 327 note 6 Ibid. He uses the similar phrases on pp. 1, 2, 3, 4, 19, 25, 29, 61.
page 327 note 7 Ibid. pp. 2, 3, 4, 19, 20, 28.
page 328 note 1 Ibid. p. 24.
page 329 note 1 Ibid. p. 2.
page 330 note 1 Ibid. p. 94.
page 330 note 2 Webster's Third New International Dictionary (1963), p. 921.Google Scholar
page 331 note 1 Ibid. p. 77.
page 332 note 1 John, . 20: 26–9Google Scholar( Revised Standard Version, 1946Google Scholar, 1952). (Subsequent quotations are also from the RSV.)
page 332 note 2 See for example Stott, John R. W., Basic Christianity (London: Inter-Varsity Press, 1958)Google Scholar, part 1; Geisler, Norman, Christian Apologetics (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1976), pp. 329–52.Google Scholar
page 332 note 3 I.e. attributes which, if possessed, warrant a person's being called ‘divine’ or ‘God’.
page 332 note 4 Cf. Exod, . 3: 14Google Scholar, John, 8: 58Google Scholar; Gen, . 17: 1Google Scholar, Matt, . 28: 18.Google Scholar A detailed treatment of this point can be found in my ‘Biblical Theism and the Question of Factual Significance’ (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Waterloo, 1979), pp. 80–117.
page 332 note 5 Critiques, p. 75.Google Scholar
page 333 note 1 Analogously, the physicist who speaks of the dual nature of radiation at the microphysical level is not required to understand how light can be both undulatory and corpuscular in character before he speaks factually about light as a wave or about light as a particle. Indeed the understanding process would appear to be just the reverse. I have dealt with this point a little more expansively in my doctoral dissertation, pp. 42–4, 109, 110
page 333 note 2 Ibid. He uses these or similar phrases on pp. 1, 2, 3, 4, 19, 25, 29, 61.
page 333 note 3 Ibid. p. 3.
page 334 note 1 Ibid. p. 19.
page 334 note 2 Mark, 14: 36Google Scholar; Gal, . 4: 6Google Scholar; Romans, 8: 15.Google Scholar See commentaries on Romans, and Galatians, in The New Bible Commentary Revised, ed. Guthrie, D. (London: Inter-Varsity Press, 1970), pp. 1031, 1100.Google Scholar
page 334 note 3 See Webster's Third New International Dictionary (1963), p. 93Google Scholar and Funk and Wagnalls Standard College Dictionary (1963), p. 63.Google Scholar
page 334 note 4 Beegle, Dewey M., Baker's Dictionary of Theology, ed. Harrison, Everett F. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1960), p. 45.Google Scholar
page 335 note 1 Ibid. p. 46.
page 335 note 2 Ibid. pp. 45, 46.
page 335 note 3 Rad, Gerhard Von, Genesis, A Commentary, trans. by Marks, John H. (Philadelphia: the Westminster Press, 1961).Google Scholar
page 335 note 4 John, 1: 14.Google Scholar
page 335 note 5 Philippians, 2: 5–8.Google Scholar
page 335 note 6 E.g. Exod, . 3 ff.Google Scholar; the life of David, King in Samuel, 16 ff.Google Scholar
page 335 note 7 For a brief account that reveals how Tillich's Gad eludes any anthropomorphic or space-time reference see Diamond's, MalcolmContemporary Philosophy and Religious Thought (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974), chapters 13–15.Google Scholar
page 336 note 1 Critiques, pp. 17, 19Google Scholar, 23, 24, 28, 36, 38.
page 336 note 2 Ibid. pp. 17, 19, 23, 24, 28, 36, 38.
page 336 note 3 Pike, Nelson, God and Timelessness (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970)Google Scholar; Durrant, Michael, The Logical Status of ‘God’ (London: Macmillan, 1973).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
page 336 note 4 Critiques, p. 24.Google Scholar
page 337 note 1 It is not my intention to try to make all these venerable men subscribe to the detail of my theological viewpoint. However, I do wish to argue that with respect to the fundamental doctrine of Christ's deity at least they would all agree with the biblical account to which I am referring here. See, for example, Berkhof, L., The History of Christian Doctrines (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1949)Google Scholar; Seeberg, Reinhold, Text-book of the History of Doctrines, trans. by Hay, Charles E. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1961).Google Scholar
page 337 note 2 Diamond, , The Logic of God, p. 43.Google Scholar
page 337 note 3 Ibid. p. 45.
page 337 note 4 Heimbeck, Raeburne S., Theology and Meaning (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1969).Google Scholar
page 338 note 1 E.g. Swinburne, Richard, The Concept of Miracle (London: Macmillan, 1970)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bruce, F. F., The New Testament Documents (5th edn, rev.; London: Inter-Varsity Press, 1960).Google Scholar
page 338 note 2 For a brief but useful discussion of the distinction here being discussed see Hordern, William E., A Layman's Guide to Protestant Theology (rev. ednNew York: Macmillan, 1962).Google Scholar
page 338 note 3 Hick, John, Christianity at the Centre (London: SCM Press, 1968), pp. 9–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
page 339 note 1 Ibid. pp. 9, 10. Emphases added.
page 341 note 1 Bultmann, Rudolph, Kerygma and Myth, Bartsch, Hans W., ed. Reginald H. Fuller, trans. (New York: Harper & Row, 1961), pp. 1–16Google Scholar; Diamond, Malcolm, Contemporary Philosophy and Religious Thought (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974) pp. 322–393.Google Scholar
page 341 note 2 A word used by Diamond, Malcolm in his Contemporary Philosophy and Religious Thought, p. 375.Google Scholar
page 342 note 1 E.g. a standard anthology on the religious language debate is New Essays in Philosophical Theology by Flew and MacIntyre. With the exception of Crombie's essay no reference, to my knowledge, is made to the fundamental importance of the Bible in the discussion at hand.