Keith Ward (1)Reseñas

Keith Ward uses the Bible itself to challenge some of the views that people say "The Bible says". To follow his line of argument is to be made to think deeply about different ways that the Bible can be understood. It is certainly a challenge to simplistic proof-texting or parroting of other's interpretations, and an invitation for us to study the Bible deeper ourselves.

Keith Ward explains what he thinks fundamentalist Christians get wrong about the Bible.

He argues for the primacy of love and God's desire to reconcile humans to himself and that the Bible must be interpreted in that light. He is not afraid to say some parts of the Bible must be jettisoned as conflicting with the general spiritual principles underlying the overall message. Although I have great sympathy for his approach, I do wonder if it is overly intellectual, making Christianity a religion that only speaks to people with a certain level of education.

Since first Thomas Aquinas defined theology as revelation, or the rational elucidation of revealed truth, the idea of revelation has played a fundamental role in the history of western theology. This book provides a new and detailed investigation of the concept, examining its nature, sources, and limitations in all five of the major scriptural religions of the world: Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. The first part of the book discusses the nature of theology, and expounds the comparative method as the most useful and appropriate for the modern age. Part Two focuses on the nature of religion and its early historical manifestations, whilst the third part of the book goes on to consider the idea of revelation as found in the great canonical traditions of the religions of the world. Part Four develops the distinctively Christian idea of revelation as divine self-expression in history. The final part of the book discusses how far the idea of revelation must be revised or adapted in the light of modern historical and scientific thought, and proposes a new and positive theology of revelation for the future. The book includes discussions of the work of most major theologians and scholars in the study of religion - Aquinas, Tillich, Barth, Temple, Frazer, and Evans Pritchard - and should be of interest to many scholars and students of comparative religion and theology, and anthropologists.

Abandoning. Got to a part where he claims to have argued effectively for his position and I found myself asking, "huh? Where?" Not very good, he's not an effective explainer. I had lots of pencil notes commenting on where he makes claims that are just not backed up at all, and he hadn't referenced or noted the claims. This was my second Ward and there won't be a third."

Found the first two chapters to be incoherent and returned the book to the library. Either I'm too dumb, or he is.

This book was my 'break through' in terms of thinking theologically - second trimester, first year of Divinity School.

This book, written in an conversational, low-key and interesting style, attempts to refute the main arguments in Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion and to show that “the God hypothesis” is reasonable, even highly likely, given a couple of basic premises. In the end, Ward makes clear that Dawkins’ conclusions are reasonable given his (Dawkins’) materialistic premises, while “the God hypothesis” is quite reasonable given a different starting point which, in Ward’s view, is better at explaining the universe.



The most important difference between the two viewpoints is that materialism sees everything as derived from physical laws of nature. In this view, consciousness, values, relationships, and other aspects of our personal world are somehow merely results of the physical phenomena and could, in principle, be fully explained by physical laws.



Ward argues that idealism, “in the very broad sense of accepting consciousness or mind as the fundamental character of reality,” is a stronger foundation. His arguments are based partly on the problems of explaining consciousness on the basis of materialism, and partly on the problem that materialism itself is looking more problematic as the very concepts of matter, time, space, and energy have become highly complex.



As I understand it, the barest outline of Ward’s argument has two threads. The first is the one above, that consciousness if fundamental and that personal causation exists alongside material causation. That is, some thing happen because someone, a conscious entity, wants them to happen; our sense that we are agents, capable of doing things, is not just an illusion but real. If this is true, then it is not unreasonable, he argues, that consciousness could exist apart from matter and outside the physical universe.



The second thread argues that if the universe is rational, able to be understood in terms of logic and causation, then it must have a necessary (non-contingent) and eternal cause. This cause is not necessarily conscious—it could be an equation, or the fact that all possible universes must exist—but there must be something that is itself uncaused. I think this what another reviewer says is just the kalam argument.



One of the more interesting aspects of the book for me was the discussion of multiple universes and how they do or don’t solve the problems of ultimate causation and the fine-tuning of our own universe.



I doubt that a truly new argument for the existence or absence of God arises as often as once a century, though I don’t really know since philosophy is not my field. Still, it’s not the novelty of Ward’s arguments that makes the book worth reading, but rather the clarity of the writing and the way the arguments directly speak to those of Dawkins.

Ward presents me with the idea that there are two different ways of explaining things: the scientific explanation and the personal explanation. Allow me to illustrate by way of an elephant's trunk:
The scientific explanation would entail evolution by natural selection, genes, and the increasing height of trees.
The personal explanation would entail a crocodile.
Ward asserts that both explanations can co-exist. I hadn't thought of it like that Ward. Thanks.

Ward proceeds to describe various multiverse hypotheses. I have never read about multiverses before, but I think I follow his explanations and certainly learn that there is something that troubles Ward during his contemplation of these multiverses. Allow me to illustrate again:
Among all the multiverses imagined by Ward, are several in which I every morning circumcise myself and eat my own foreskin. Such thoughts, understandably, fill Ward with moral revulsion. But, no worries, this is an opportunity for one of Ward's ...personal explanations to come to the rescue. "God" simply wouldn't create such universes as would trouble Ward's tender mind... I will, however, permit myself to suggest a slightly easier (that means simpler Ward) solution to his moral qualms: Stop contemplating my foreskin(s). Not that I insist.

It seems possible that Ward may be flying a false flag. It seems possible to me that his intention with all this weaving of words may be to test his readers: those who have learnt to use their own minds pass; those who haven't remain tithers. It may in fact be necessary that men like Ward exist, because as we all know: "The world wants to be deceived, so let it be deceived" by Ward. Continuing to (ab)use words like "possible" in the vein of Ward, I think it possible, and therefore almost certainly true, that he was laughing himself utterly silly imagining the effects on people's minds of some of the things he has written. My personal (and hence unassailable by mockery?) explanation is then that through his personal explanations, Ward rapes Philosophy and Logic and abuses the trust and good will of his readers.

I won't answer for Dawkins, but my own dismissal of claims of god-existence is not grounded on any insistence on materialism as Ward claims, but rather stems largely from learning the differences between the plain speaking of such as Dawkins and the wizardry of such as Ward.

Why exactly, pray tell, does Ward waste so many dead trees attempting to discredit Dawkins through claims of insufficient knowledge of theology and philosophy? Surely Ward realises that it was precisely the boy's ignorance of the explanations of the tailors that allowed him to see the lard jiggling away behind the Emperor's new clothes?½

Brilliant response to the inadequate arguments of Dawkins in his "The God Delusion". Respectful, intellectually humble, and devastating!

given me by Margaret saylor. Very heavy-going , philosophica, yet intriguing.Didnt change my views at all.

This book is like a short systematic theology of Keith Ward's Christianity. Taking the reader through the creation narratives, doctrines of God, Jesus, the miracles, the atonement, the Bible and prayer (and several I haven't mentioned). This book describes Keith Ward's understanding of his faith and to some extent his vision for its future.

Keith Ward sits in the liberal wing of the church - but he is what one must admit is a thinking liberal. For him the resurrection is still very much the defining event of the Christian faith. The experience Christ's disciples had with the risen Jesus being what makes Christianity more than the collected wisdom of a moral teacher.

However the book is perhaps too wide ranging, because it is therefore necessarily brief on each subject. As a handbook on Christianity, this is not bad - but I think it would leave someone brand new to the concepts of Christianity still somewhat perplexed. As a guide to what Ward believes, it does better - and is an interesting read. But anyone really wanting to understand Ward or any of the positions he describes in the book will want to wade through his list of further reading, and then quite a bit more!

This book took me several days to read despite the fact it is relatively short at 150 pages. The reason is the content. Here at last is a book that avoids simplistic platitudes and tired old arguments traded by one side or another in religious debates. Instead the author builds a philosophical argument that systematically deconstructs the unchallenged assumptions of Dawkin's materialism, and replaces them with a philosophical framework that is at its core rational and consistent - and that makes God necessary.

Keith Ward is much more honest than certain other writers in this book. His case is convincing, but he draws attention to its limitations - primarily that we must assume the universe is both rational and intelligible. Thus ultimately all he can tell us is "why there almost certainly is a God". But he does exactly that.

The book is heavy going, and will probably only be appreciated fully by readers who know at least some philosophy, some logic and some physics. Ward does his best to put the argument in terms that don't require such a grounding, but the argument relies heavily on the understanding of terms such as necessity, contingency and other such concepts that are the bread and butter of philosophers, but not often discussed over a game of darts in the pub.

But it is quite clear that Keith Ward does something quite remarkable - he pulls the rug from under the assumptions of materialism, and if nothing else, it shows that the arguments of Dawkins et al. cause rather more problems than they resolve. The clear message of this book -whether you accept the hypothesis of God's existence or not - is that belief in God is profoundly a rational belief.

Thoroughly recommended - a book to make you think long and hard whether you agree with it or not.

This is generally a good acount of some of the philosophical questions around God and Science. However at times it seems to me to be in danger of promoting a 'God of the gaps' - that is, God is invoked where no scientific explanation seems to be available - cf. especially chapter 4 on Darwin and Natural Selection.

Quite a slender little book, only a hundred-odd pages. Part 1 covers creation (pretty much going over the same ground as [God, Science, and the New Millennium]) and describes the Fall in evolutionary terms. I wish he'd expanded this a bit.

After a reasonably coherent account of the evolution of the Bible and early Christianity, the book tended to get a bit woolly, particularly with regard to the discussion of other religions. Either Jesus was the Son of God, the second Person of the trinity, as Christianity teaches or he wasn't as Islam and Judaism teach. I don't think you can have it both ways.

I found the section on the goal of creation rather difficult to follow, but the section on prayer was interesting.½

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