David S. Dockery & American Evangelicalism
Southwestern Journal of Theology
Volume 68, No. 2 - Spring 2026
Editor: Malcolm B. Yarnell III
What God Would Have Known: How Human Intellectual and Moral Development Undermines Christian Doctrine. By J. L. Schellenberg. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024, 216 pp., $40.00.
In his 2015 work, The Hiddenness of God, J. L. Schellenberg argues that a God of maximal love would also be maximally open in such a way that no humans would be willing to believe in God and yet fail to believe. His challenge rests on the theistic concept of God’s goodness, and it has sparked no small conversation among theists about how to respond. In his newest book, What God Would Have Known, Schellenberg moves from the broad realm of theism to specifically Christian doctrines about God and humanity. He develops twenty distinct arguments against belief in the God of the Bible and believe in Christian doctrines, each one individually sufficient to make belief in Christianity irrational. His hope, as he puts it, is to birth a new field of study called “the philosophy of Christianity” to investigate more critically the believability of Christian ideas (x).
While Schellenberg presents a plurality of arguments across the book, they all tie together under a similar theme: errors exist in Christian doctrine that are only now realizable due to human developments in intellect and morality over the past two millennia. If central Christian doctrines are demonstrably fallacious, then the God of Christianity does not exist. Across the book’s ten chapters, Schellenberg attacks the doctrines of sin, salvation, Jesus’s divinity, the Holy Spirit, revelation, theology proper, and Christianity wholesale. In each case, the general argumentative form Schellenberg uses is the following: 1) Christian doctrine teaches x; 2) some contemporary human development has shown that x is false; 3) therefore, Christian doctrine about x is false.
As an example, on the doctrine of sin, Schellenberg claims that, “If the Christian doctrine of sin is true, then the worst problem faced by humans today is constituted by a pattern of bad, self-oriented human actions and moral dispositions in which all ordinary human beings are implicated” (39). He argues against the consequent of this implication through a combination of factors like the general selflessness that can be observed among non-believers as well as a supposed consensus view that the world is either mostly or entirely deterministic, greatly reducing the amount of moral responsibility people have for their actions. Space is too short in this review to go over all twenty of his arguments, but they follow this general form, arguing against some implication of Christian doctrine using current human perspectives about reality.
Readers should note up front that Schellenberg does not intend to present fully developed criticisms of the Christian doctrines he attacks. He hopes to start a conversation. Each chapter gives a sketch or direction by which a critic could undermine the truthfulness of those doctrines, and thus undermine the rationality of belief in the Christian God. To this end, the book gives Christian philosophers and apologists a lot to chew on. Schellenberg shines a spotlight on how out of step Christian doctrine is with current majority positions in the hard sciences, medicine, psychology, and sociology. Regarding the doctrine of sin, he points to developments in human understanding of mental illness and environmental factors in human behavior. On salvation, he points to the lack of biblical interaction on things like social justice as well as new discoveries about ailments like epilepsy, which may explain what Christians long considered to be demon possession. Historically, Schellenberg claims, Christians have harmed people when they misdiagnose a medical disorder as a spiritual disorder, undermining the positive impact of Christian belief on human life. None of these accusations means that the respective Christian doctrine is wrong, but Christian ministers and thinkers should have a good response to them.
At the same time, the book carries much less bite than it seems Schellenberg intended. Many of his definitions for doctrines appear engineered to allow his particular criticisms, and they differ dramatically from what most Christians actually mean by those doctrines. His definition of salvation is almost fully based on societal betterment and has nothing to do with atonement for sin or metaphysical renewal of human will. His attack on the divinity of Jesus relies on the supposed knowledge humans now have that homosexual relationships can be morally good. Regarding revelation, he leverages the assumption that acknowledging the dignity of women would require God to use female authors for some components of Scripture. He gives no rigorous demonstration that these claims are true; he simply assumes them as the standard position.
Ultimately, while Schellenberg has given readers much to consider, he has provided little in terms of meaningful counterargument. His claims rely on current societal norms being objectively correct. Yet, today’s progressivism is often tomorrow’s barbarism. What humans claim to be true on any given day is likely to be viewed a century hence to be just as obviously wrongheaded as are many consensus views from a century past. The majority western position on reality at any time will always be shaky ground for disproving universal claims like God’s existence.
