The Coherence of Theism by Richard Swinburne

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS 478 In conclusion let us thank the translator, Alphonso Lingis, for his work in making Levinas available in English-Totality and Infinity in 1969 and Autrement qu'etre and several articles in the near future. I can only be pleased to see Levinas acquiring a potentially larger audience, with the reservation already so often expressed regarding this particular work, that I hope this younger Levinas will not be misconstrued as being the philosophical equal of the Levinas of today. 39 Blvd. de Reuilly Paris, France CRAIG R. vASEY The Coherence of Theism. By RICHARD SWINBURNE. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977. Pp. 302. Swinburne's The Coherence of Theism is a valuable and very welcome contribution to the philosophy of religion. In the course of this century, philosophers of religion have made or received attacks not only on the truth but also on the coherence of theism, charging that there is a logical incompatibility, for example, between two or more of the attributes traditionally assigned to God or between a state of affairs in the world (the existence of evil) and the existence of God. The object of Swinburne's book is to demonstrate that, whether theism is true or false, it is not incoherent. The book is remarkable for the lucidity, patience, and philosophical ability of its author. He does not eschew broad, controversial issues outside the specific range of philosophy of religion, such as the objectivity of morality or the nature of necessity, when they are relevant to his argument; and though he cannot deal exhaustively with these issues within the scope of this book, he discusses them with such philosophical sophistication and clarity that philosophers concerned more with one of these issues than with the philosophy of religion may very well be interested in the book. The rigor and the subject of the book may in fact repel or annoy readers whose devotion to theism or to a less formal style of philosophical theology makes them feel that the investigations of the book are needless or worse. Swinburne's introductory remarks to such readers are moving and cogent: " Religion [such a reader may think] is not a matter of affirming creeds, but of a personal relationship to God iu Christ.... [But] even if affirming creeds were no part of religion, you can only have a personal relationship to God in Christ, if it is true that God exists. And it is true that God exists only if it is coherent to suppose that he exists. . .. [Furthermore,] even if the religious man has no need to question the truth, let alone the coherence, of his beliefs and of the claim that he has a personal relationship to God, he has, at any rate on the Christian view, 474 BOOK REVIEWS a duty to convert others. If they are to believe, those others need to have explained to them what the theist's claims mean. They often doubt the coherence of these claims. If the religious man could show the claims to be cohe1·ent, he would remove a stumbling block in the way of the conversion of the unbelievers. . . . Some religious men may [also] feel that a book such as this gets too subtle and difficult. . .. [But] it is one of the intellectual tragedies of our age that when philosophy in English-speaking countries has developed high standards of argument and clear th:Uking, the style of theological writing has been largely influenced by the continental philosophy of Existentialism, which, despite its considerable other merits, has been distinguished by a very loose and sloppy style of argument. If argument has a place in theology, large-scale theology needs clear and rigorous argument. That point was very well grasped by Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus, by Berkeley, Butler, and Paley. It is high time for theology to return to their standards " (pp. 6-7) . The book begins with an investigation of the conditions necessary for a sentence's expressing a coherent statement. The discussion then turns to the analogical use of terms in theological language, as understood by some medieval and post-medieval theologians, and Part I concludes with an examination of the claim that the sentences that make...