Apologetics
Southwestern Journal of Theology
Volume 60, No. 2 – Spring 2018
Managing Editor: W. Madison Grace II
Edited by Steven B. Cowan and James S. Spiegel. New York: Bloomsbury, 2016. 211 pages. Hardcover, $100.00.
When Christian philosophers develop mature theories of the world, they often employ divine ideas to do philosophical work. A standard move for the medievals, for example, was to relocate the Platonic horde (which includes properties, relations, and propositions) out of Plato’s heaven and into the mind of God, identifying such recondite objects with divine ideas or collections of divine ideas. In the modern era, Bishop Berkeley pushed this strategy to its extreme, reducing all of physical reality to divine ideas. According to Berkeleyan idealism, there exist minds (a divine mind, which is the source of everything else, and many finite minds) and ideas (divine and non-divine). Rocks, chairs, and bears exist, but not as enmattered mind-independent realities. Rather, physical objects are mind-dependent; nothing escapes the all-knowing gaze of the Cosmic Mind. The idealist thesis strikes many as obviously false, a violation of common sense. Yet a number of prominent Christian philosophers think Berkeleyan idealism is both orthodox and true. Idealism and Christian Philosophy is an attempt by its contributors to show the Christian credentials and explanatory benefit of Berkeleyan idealism.
Each of the ten essays addresses an area of philosophical concern—the rationality of theism (chapter 1), realism and truth (chapter 2), the metaphysics of particulars (chapter 3), perception (chapter 4), the mind-body problem (chapter 5), the nature of God (chapter 6), God’s relationship to time (chapter 7), science (chapter 8), miracles (chapter 9), and the moral life (chapter 10)—demonstrating the fruitfulness of idealism in resolving long-standing issues as well as its compatibility with Christian orthodoxy. The essays are all tightly argued and well-written. Still, while more plausible than typically thought, it is not obvious (to this reviewer) that idealism is the rationally preferred theory of reality. Space prohibits a detailed exploration of each chapter. I confine myself to a few worries representative of the kinds of worries I see throughout the entire book.
In chapter 1, James Spiegel aims to show how the idealist thesis provides “a more reasonable or plausible brand of theism” (25). I am not convinced Spiegel’s case is successful. Two examples will do. First, Spiegel claims that since every perceptual experience is a perception of a divine idea, it follows that “every single percept we gather . . . is immediate evidence for God” (12). But in fact, our perceptual experience is not immediate evidence for God, if he means by immediate, “non-inferential.” Rather, the theistic idealist, like the theistic non-idealist, makes an inference to the best explanation in order to account for our perceptual experience. As Spiegel notes, we postulate a divine mind as the source of our perceptual experience because of its unity and consistency and the fact that human minds are just not up to the task of producing them. It is certainly not the case that “for the idealist, then, the reality of God is immediately apparent” (14), unless we assume at the outset Berkeleyan (theistic) idealism. But that would be to argue in a circle, which falls well short of a “more reasonable brand of theism.” Second, Spiegel argues idealism solves the age-old problem of how an immaterial divine spirit causally interacts with material objects by removing the dualism of immaterial/material in favor of a monism of mental substances (15–16). Unfortunately, the interactionist problem does not dissolve; it relocates. The question now is: how does my finite spirit enjoy two-way causal interaction with the collection of divine ideas that is my body?
Interestingly, in chapter 3, Steven Cowan notes that there may well be no causal interaction between the mind and the body, and idealists have tended, therefore, to embrace occasionalism. Fair enough, but now the explanatory benefits accrued to the idealist in solving the causal interaction problem may be (for many philosophers) negated by the inclusion of occasionalism, the view that God is the only causal agent in the physical world. The price of endorsing idealism continues to mount as explanatory benefits in one area give way to costs in others. For example, Cowan argues that all living organisms, including plants, are best understood as immaterial substances. But, on idealism, substances are not merely immaterial, they are immaterial minds. Thus, if the idealist is to maintain the esse est percipi aut percipere mantra, it seems plants must be minds, too.
In chapter 6, Adam Groza argues Berkeleyan idealism is committed to a weak version of panentheism, “but not in a way that conflicts with an orthodox understanding of God’s nature” (119). But in fact, idealism does seem to entail a problematic version of panentheism in conflict with orthodoxy, since it seems to make creation part of God. Assume, reasonably, that divine ideas are part of God. But, if the physical world is composed of divine ideas, then the physical world too is part of God. Moreover, creation is not ex nihilo. As Marc Hight acknowledges in chapter 8, since divine ideas eternally exist in the mind of God, the “creation” of the physical world is not the coming to be of a previously non-existent reality. Rather, it is just the making public of certain divine ideas, “and this was not creation from nothing” (181).
For at least these reasons, it is not clear to me that Berkeleyan idealism is as attractive as the contributors to this volume claim. Regardless, I highly recommend the book to those interested in the intersection of Christian theism and philosophy.
