The Suffering God of the Philosophers

Abstract

A growing body of Christian Natural Theology has argued that there is good historical evidence for Jesus’ bodily Resurrection. One recurrent (Humean) worry however, concerns the prior probability of the miraculous. It is widely believed that, in Hume’s contention, testimonial evidence could never establish the miraculous. Specifically, Hume’s seems to have said that the un-altered operation of natural laws constitutes a ‘proof’ against the miraculous. Whereas, any testimonial evidence amounts, at best, to a ‘probability’. In which case, Hume thinks, for any miracle claim M, the laws of nature furnish such proof against M, that transmission error is always a more likely explanation. However, this is quite simply false if: (1) There is such evidence for Theism as would render it about as probable as not, and; (2) Given Theism, we ought to expect the occurrence of a soteriologically significant miracle. A defense of (1) would be the remit of a much larger project. For present purposes I am forced to assume it. The primary interest of this thesis is (2); aka the “Conditional Claim”. My contention is three-fold. On the one hand, Theism leads us to expect the realization of conscious and intimate Divine-Human relationships. The problem however, is that horrendous evils appear to threaten the possibility of such intimacy. If God is there, He seems a distant metaphysical posit; un-interested in anything like an intimate personal relationship with us. My contention is, that an adequate solution to this problem must involve the life, death and public confirmation/vindication of God Incarnate. Since, in the ordinary course of events, we would not conclude that a specific individual was God Incarnate, some manner of public miracle or wonder is necessary.