The Intellectual Option of Theism

It is possible to have insight into the world as a realm in which goodness, beauty and truth exist as ideals to be followed, though self-will makes their pursuit difficult. Human experience may show traces of such ideals, in the intelligibility and beauty of nature, in the sense of human significance and dignity, in the inclination to do good even in the face of adversity, and in feelings of transcendent depth and value that are so common yet so conceptually ill defined. These are forms of experience that lead to an affirmation of a deeper spiritual reality of supreme objective value beneath the appearances of the sensory world.

What [Nietzsche's atheistic] philosophy shows, in my view, is that if God is totally and consciously rejected, the reason upon which science relies, the values upon which human welfare depends, and the sense of human or personal dignity upon which moral sensitivity relies, is imperilled. That way madness lies.

There is good reason to preserve and strengthen the Western classical philosophical committment to God, while recognising that the idea of God has needed and will always need to be rethought many times, and that it has sometimes been held hostage by negative and over-dogmatic forms of religious belief.

After all the intellectual struggles of the modern world, the God conclusion remains a real and living intellectual possibility, perhaps a moral necessity, for all who are concerned to probe the deepest questions of human meaning and signficance.

Keith Ward, God and the Philosophers (pp128/129)

 

Professor Keith Ward is a world-renowned philosopher and theologian. He held positions teaching philosophy and theology at Glasgow, London and Cambridge Universities before taking up the position of Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford. For more of Keith Ward, check out his website.