Professor Anthony Flew has recently republished God & Philosophy, an excellent secondary source for studying the arguments raised by secular humanists since the Enlightenment.
WE ARE THE HOLLOW MEN WE ARE THE STUFFED MEN LEANING TOGETHER HEADPIECE FILLED WITH STRAW. ALAS! — T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men, 1925
The book under review, God and Philosophy, was originally published in 1966, and republished in 1986 under the title, God: A Critical Enquiry. A short time ago the author, Professor Anthony Flew, agreed with his publisher, Prometheus Books, to re-issue the book in 2005, with a new introduction, and therein followed something of a controversy. Following a television interview, it appeared to several philosophers, theologians, and journalists, that Flew, a leading atheist, had experienced something of a Deistic epiphany! You may remember the brouhaha that followed, though the scholarly philosophy professor indicated that the interested public would have to wait until the publication of the book to find out if he continues on as an atheist. Professor Flew (one is hesitant to refer to him as “Anthony”) has written numerous books, essays, articles, and reviews, and is one of the world’s leading philosophers. He has the lean, hard, look of a man weathered in Her Majesty’s service; one can easily envision him, stern and stalwart, standing astride the poop on one of Lord Nelson’s three-masters, ordering the decks cleared for battle! And, Flew is an interesting character; a man who once was a member of C. S. Lewis’s Socratic Club at Oxford and counted among his friends: Bertrand Russell, J.L. Mackie, and A. J. Ayer. Unlike many atheists, Flew has a warm spot in his heart for Christianity, particularly Methodism (his father was a well known and respected Methodist minister). He credits John and Charles Wesley (the founders of Methodism) with inculcating a tough, resilient, and durable moral character among England’s working class that resulted in the British Communist Party never being able to gain sufficient numbers from among its ranks.1 The reader should note that Dr. Flew considers his book, God and Philosophy, “…out of date and should now be seen as an historical document rather than as a direct contribution to current discussions.” This should not alarm the reader in any way because God and Philosophy is an excellent secondary source for studying those arguments raised by secular humanists since the age of the Enlightenment. The book is suitable for the layman interested in the ultimate philosophical question. But there is a qualifier, because there are a few philosophical terms you might want to familiarize yourself with while reading; consequently, a dictionary is most helpful. Flew’s most significant objection to the theistic argument is the question of “evil.” And, it is this problem that first occurred to him at the age of fifteen that made him reject his father’s God. “…it first appeared to me,” he recently said, “that the thesis that the universe was created and sustained by a Being of infinite power and goodness is flatly incompatible with the occurrence of massive undeniable and undenied evils in that universe, was my first step towards my future career as a philosopher.” For me, that argument has always been a bete noire because it rejects one of the foundational building blocks of Western civilization. If you do not care to engage in a Biblical study to understand the incorporation of “evil” into the world, then reading John Milton’s Paradise Lost will certainly suffice. God allows evil to exist in this world for the same reason He has granted mankind free will. What good would free will be in a perfect, utopian society? Of course everyone — or nearly everyone — would love God because He gave us this perfect world, perfect peace, perfect health. Human life would be just a pleasant way station, an island of repose before eternity. God has devised the most ingenious test for our stubborn, stiff-necked, and fallible specie; the world and our existence therein is the Great Drama. The antagonist is Satan who was not granted free will, and was the highest and the most perfect of God’s creations. An angel who became obsessed with the pride of self, a not uncommon phenomenon in our own age. His sin was so great he was cast out of heaven, turned away from the presence of God. As Milton so eloquently has him saying, “It’s better to rule in hell than serve in heaven.” Satan, for a time, has dominion over the world, he is the father of sin and the author of misery, famine, disease, war, oppression, degradation, and every horror that befalls mankind! Will we obey God’s law and love Him of our own free will, here on earth, or will we embrace the “way of the world,” will we be seduced by the temptations of the lost angel and his minions? I am disappointed that Dr. Flew has pinned his opposition of a revealed theism to the “problem of sin,” simply because he is a brilliant and interesting thinker. I hesitate to define him as an “intellectual” because far too many of those people turn out to be reprobates of one form or another and Anthony Flew appears to be a genuinely affable fellow. Thanks to advances in “intelligent design” and physics, Dr. Flew has shifted his thinking toward theism and remarks that he is “open” to the question of a revealed God. That is an interesting and, perhaps, afflated comment, because the God that loved, protected, and nurtured his father, surely waits to embrace the son. Footnotes 1. Comments on Dr. Flew’s life were gleamed from an interesting interview he gave to Dr. Gary R. Habermas, Professor of Philosophy and Theology, and a member of the editorial board of Philosophia Christi, on December 9, 2004. God and Philosophy is available on Amazon.com. Bob Cheeks has written for The American Enterprise, Human Events, Southern Partisan, and The Pittsburgh Tribune Review. Email Bob Cheeks
robertcheeks@core.com
Read more articles by Bob Cheeks
