Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
In a recent article in Religious Studies, Gregory S. Kavka argues that John Hick was wrong when he said that the statement ‘God (as conceived by Christians) exists’ is verifiable but not falsifiable. Kavka constructs an imaginary `resurrection world' ruled by Satan and inhabited by such resurrected evildoers as Hitler and Stalin. In such a world, those who had been virtuous in earthly life in the hopes of a Christ-dominated resurrection world discover that virtue is inversely rewarded, with the ‘living’ intolerable for them and worst of all for those among them who had lived especially virtuous lives, i.e. the saints. Further, they are told by presumably knowledgeable inhabitants of this world that:
…the historical Christ was an agent sent by Satan to raise in good people false hopes of eternal salvation. This story is confirmed by Satan himself who demonstrates through a huge telescope-like device how he continues to send false saviours to other planets inhabited by intelligent beings in a cruel plan to make such beings miserable in the long run.
page 69 note 1 ‘Eschatological Falsification’, Religious Studies, XII, 2 (June 1976).Google Scholar
page 69 note 2 Hick makes this claim in ‘Theology and Verification’, Theology Today (April 1960); reprinted in Hick, John, ed., The Existence of God (New York: Macmillan, 1964).Google Scholar
page 69 note 3 ‘Eschatological Falsification’, loc. cit. p. 202.Google Scholar
page 69 note 4 Flew makes this claim in ‘Theology and Falsification’, in Flew, Antony and MacIntyre, Alasdair (eds), New Essays in Philosophical Theology (New York: Macmillan, 1955)Google Scholar; reprinted in Hick, John (ed.), The Existence of God (New York: Macmillan, 1964). Quotations from Flew wi11 refer to the pagination in Hick.Google Scholar
page 70 note 1 ‘Eschatological Falsification’, loc. cit. p. 202.Google Scholar
page 71 note 1 Ibid. p. 203.
page 71 note 2 Ibid. p. 204.
page 72 note 1 ‘Theology and Falsification’, loc. cit. p. 227.Google Scholar