I like how on 44 & 48, Flew accepts that pain is something theists let count against (falsify) the hypothesis that God loves humankind, so that it is not an empty hypothesis, and things can count for (verify, though less stringently defined) that hypothesis, as well. I like that he agrees with Heimbeck’s critique that he was wrong to collapse the distinction between “counts against” and “is incompatible with”. It becomes an issue of – is it a defeater? Flew references the free will defense (73), and distinguishes between the moral movings of action/will and the physical motions of necessary will – seeing design in both (110…). No algorithm without a programmer; no automation without design.
Here’s a falsifying defeater: If there is no demonstration of God’s love in a context understood by the community in which it was demonstrated (47), the claim that God is love is not real/actual – it does not apply.
This got me thinking back to…
If there IS a good (loving), omnipotent God, THEN there is a problem of evil.
If there is no good (loving), omnipotent God, there can be no problem of evil, because without real/actual goodness, there cannot be its privation (evil).
Those who affirm evil is a problem must accept (in order to remain consistent) there is a real/actual good, omnipotent God of which evil is the privation.
If there is a real/actual good, omnipotent God of which evil is a privation, there will be a demonstration of that goodness (love) in a context understood by the community in which it was demonstrated (47). Everything before that demonstration would be prefiguring/foreshadowing in order to “teach the language” and prepare the message of the demonstration (living, incarnate parable, 46) to be understood.
That relates to panentheism, because how can a God who is merely transcendent communicate an eternal truth (“God is love”) experienced/applied immanently in human history?
I like this quote from Varghese in Appendix A, 183: “If we are centers of consciousness and thought who are able to know and love and intend and execute, I cannot see how such centers could come to be from something that is itself incapable of all these activities.”
It is an echo of where Flew writes in agreement with Thomas Tracy how God (spirit) would be identified: “To say that God is loving is to say that God loves in concrete ways, shown in his actions, and these actions represent his identity as an agent.” (150). If love is not love without demonstration, then said demonstration (active love) is eternally concurrent, omnipresent & omnitemporal, subsuming the sequence (“timeline”). I believe this agrees with his discussion of Brian Leftow following his discussion of Thomas Tracy, if by “outside” of time, one just means “not subject to, but instead subsuming as source.” “At the very least, the studies of Tracy and Leftow show that the idea of an omnipresent Spirit is not intrinsically incoherent if we see such a Spirit as an agent outside space and time that uniquely executes its intentions in the spacio-temporal continuum,” (153-154). To me that is panentheism, but not an impersonal creator/mind (oxymoron).
I take issue with N.T. Wright’s Appendix B where he says, “Only it isn’t through the Word and wisdom and the rest. It’s in and as a person,” (192). Word, wisdom, person… same, same. And, “I think he knew he might actually be wrong,” (193). That doesn’t make sense of the evidence. There must be some subtle cultural thing going on with that sentence to where Wright didn’t actually mean that.
Is Flew really a deist if he thinks God did not just wind up the designed watch & let it go, but intricately wove together life? Is he really a deist if he is open to God making his love actual in human history? He says in his concluding reflections, “Is it possible that there has been or can be divine revelation? As I said, you cannot limit the possibilities of omnipotence except to produce the logically impossible. Everything else is open to omnipotence,” (213).
I am interested in knowing how Flew’s contribution as an atheist to “Did Jesus Rise from the Dead?” (with Habermas and Miethe, published 2003) differs from his contribution as a deist to “Did the Resurrection Happen?” (again with Habermas, published 2009).