Among the more than 110 books that Nicholas Rescher wrote during his prolific intellectual career, there used to be none officially devoted to the philosophy of religion, with the exception of the essay on Pascal's Wager of 1985. Most of his works are concerned with the theory of knowledge, logic, metaphysics, pragmatism, the philosophy of science, value theory, and the history of philosophy, including Arabic logic. In the present volume, Rescher has collected eleven essays in which he spells out philosophical views on religion, a topic which turns out to be near to his heart. As he says in the concluding ‘personal statement’ (Chapter 11), ‘few other aspects of ourselves reveal so deeply and far-reachingly the sort of people we actually are as do our thoughts and actions in matters of religion’ (p. 109).

Apart from ‘The Ontological Proof Revisited’, a revised version of an article published in 1959 (Chapter 2), all other chapters of the volume either appear here for the first time (3, 6, 7, and 8), or are versions of articles published between 1990 and 2004. Rescher investigates, for example, to what extent pragmatism can make a constructive contribution to religion (Chapter 3), he argues that Process Philosophy is able to develop a more satisfying (dynamic and interactive) conception of God than the classical and static substantialism inherited by Christianity from Greek philosophy (Chapter 4), and he defends the maxim that one should ‘only have explanatory recourse to God in philosophy when this is absolutely unavoidable for dealing adequately with the issues at hand’ (p. 50, Chapter 5), thereby justifying the absence of references to God from most of his many books and articles.

Furthermore, Rescher refutes 16 arguments to the effect that scientists cannot be serious about religion (Chapter 6), he contends that even if the universe is intelligently designed in the sense that it is ‘as though an intelligent designer has contrived it’, this does not justify the conclusion that there is an intelligent creator (Chapter 7), and he stresses that if God has created the world, scientific progress will probably remain open-ended because of the Thomist Principle of Epistemic Disparity, according to which ‘a mind of lesser power is for this very reason unable to understand adequately the workings of a mind of greater power’ (Chapter 8, p. 84). Incidentally, Rescher argued earlier on more secular grounds that there are unavoidable limits to scientific progress in his book Priceless Knowledge? Natural Science in Economic Perspective (1996). Chapter 9 on the importance of Thomism and Chapter 10 on the kind of respect a Catholic philosopher should pay to the Catholic philosophical tradition, will be of interest particularly to those who, like Rescher, situate themselves in that lineage. The latter chapter served as Rescher's 2004 Presidential Address to the American Catholic Philosophical Association.

Most instructive for understanding Rescher's systematic position in the philosophy of religion is the first chapter ‘On Faith and Belief’, which should be read against the background of his personal statement ‘In Matters of Religion’ (Chapter 11). Indeed, one might say that Rescher's philosophical position concerning religion articulates his personal stance in these matters, as it has developed during his religious journey or Werdegang over the years, which he characterizes as ‘long, circuitous, and complex’ (p. 109).

Rescher was born in Hagen, Westphalia, in 1928, and the family fled from Hitler to the USA in 1938. Although religion did not play more than a marginal role in his early family life and his student days, being a refugee from Nazi Germany and absolving his military service during the Korean war left him ‘acutely aware of the contingency and uncertainties of human life’ (110). By the mid-1950s, Rescher joined Quakerism, preceded by his mother and attracted by ‘the absence of creed commitments’ and its ‘dedication to human decency’. During the ‘productive silence’ of the Quaker services, he ‘gradually came to find’ within himself ‘an increasing degree of Christian commitment’. However, having moved to Pittsburgh in 1961 and having joined the local Quaker meeting, Rescher's ‘Quaker connection drifted away into a not altogether contended inactivity in religious regards’. Later, he began to attend Roman Catholic services at the University of Pittsburgh's Heinz Chapel, and after some years the Provost of the University Oratory convinced Rescher to join the Church of Rome (111–112).

Reflecting on the motives that led him to his Catholic commitment, Rescher refers not only to a sense of familial solidarity – his wife was a Catholic – but also to ‘something deeper and more ideological’, that lay deep in his ‘emotional make-up’. Wanting to align himself with ‘spiritual kinfolk’, he felt more drawn to ‘theistically committed Platos and Ploninuses’, ‘Anselms and Aquinases’, or ‘Leibnizes and Hegels’, ‘who saw humanity as subject to transcendent aspirations and obligations’, than to ‘the religion-disdaining Lucretiuses, Voltaires, Humes, Nietzsches, and Bertrand Russells of the world’. As Rescher stresses, it was not by thought and reflection on ‘the rational fabric of theological deliberations’ that he deepened his religious commitments, but rather by feeling, both ‘awe and wonder at the mystery of existence’ and ‘a sentiment of solidarity’ with those whom he admired (113). In the final analysis, he became and continues to be a committed Catholic because ‘that is where I feel at home’, ‘being in communion with people whose ideas, allegiances, and values are in substantial measure congenial to one's own’ (114).

Even if one's motives for becoming religious are to such an extent emotional, a Catholic philosopher has the task ‘to harmonize the commitments of faith with the fruits of inquiry proceeding under the auspices of reason’ (p. xi). This is the main objective of Rescher's book. His global strategy in this harmonizing endeavour resembles at first sight that of Stephen J. Gould in his celebrated article ‘Nonoverlapping Magisteria’.Footnote ¹ Like Gould, Rescher stresses that ‘science and religion have different jobs to do’, so that, in Gould's terminology, they are NoMa. Whereas science is concerned with things and processes in the world, with explanation and prediction, with the investigation of facts and events, religion ‘addresses normative issues and involves questions of meaning and value’ (53–54). Accordingly, Rescher distinguishes in his first chapter two radically different approaches to theism, or two different stances towards the existence of God. Whereas the doxastic theist believes that God in fact exists (conceived of in specific ways, and for specific reasons), the axiological theist wants or hopes God to exist (conceived of in specific ways, and for specific reasons). Rescher argues that if the core-business of religion is the meaning of life, doxastic theism is not required for religion, since ‘the existence of God is not as such a pivotal issue for the question of the meaningfulness of our lives’ (3).

The hidden premise of this argument is that the meaning of human life can be articulated entirely in terms of its meeting moral requirements. If this is the issue, Rescher deems it to be a mistake to think that ‘the existence of God is a requisite for human life to be meaningful’. He avers that concerning the meaningfulness of our lives, there are only two crucial questions. The first is whether ‘I have a conception of God that is worthy of this name’. The second is whether ‘if this God… did indeed exist,… he would… approve of what I do with my life’ (3). In other words, axiological theism suffices for the meaningfulness of our lives, since a life is meaningful to the extent that a god who is so noble that one would like him or her to exist, would approve of what one does. It seems, then, that Rescher's conception of axiological theism is a radicalized version of Kant's Religion within the Bounds of Mere Reason (1793), since it aims at spelling out what type of religion is needed for a moral evaluation of life.

If this is Rescher's objective, however, he seems to be landed in a dilemma. Either he does indeed restrict religion to what is needed for a moral evaluation of life, that is, to axiological theism. But then it seems that theism evaporates altogether, because it turns out to be superfluous. Or he argues somehow that the axiological theist should also embrace doxastic theism. But in that case the clear-cut NoMa-solution to the problem of how faith and reason are related, will not work any more, and Rescher will have to engage contrecoeur in the complexities of natural theology in order to justify his doxastic theism. Let me explain. For ease of exposition, I abbreviate ‘axiological theism’ as axtheism and ‘doxastic theism’ as doxtheism.

Rescher insists that for the axiological theist, ‘it is the idea of God that serves to set a high standard’ (4). This is somewhat misleading, however, since each axtheist selects a specific conception of God as the object of his or her religious desire. According to Rescher, the axtheist's conception of God is ‘worthy of that name’ for the axtheist if this conceived god instantiates or personifies the moral values and ideals of the axtheist. This is why Rescher stresses that ‘the conception that people have of God speaks volumes about their personality’ (4). But if the axtheist's god is a personification of his or her own moral values and ideals, it is the axtheist and not (the idea of) God who ‘serves to set a high standard’. In that case, however, it would be more honest to admit this fact, and, endorsing the Kantian idea of moral autonomy, to say that our life is meaningful for us to the extent that we live up to our own moral standards and ideals. Hence, if religion is restricted to what we need for the moral meaningfulness of life, we do not need it at all, not even axtheism.

Should Rescher then embrace the other horn of the dilemma, and argue for some kind of transition from axtheism to doxtheism? Such a transition should be justified in order to avoid the odium that it is a case of mere wishful thinking. But how can it be justified? One strategy would be to engage in natural theology and to adduce evidence for the truth of a version of doxtheism. In principle, Rescher agrees that this should be done. As he says, doxtheism ‘involves an existential claim for whose rational warranting some sort of evidence is needed’ (7). He also endorses the view of Antony Flew, defended in the latter's celebrated article “The Presumption of Atheism”, that since doxtheism is a positive factual contention, the onus of proof is on the side of the theist (5–6). Yet, Rescher barely engages in natural theology in Issues in the Philosophy of Religion. He does not even mention the names of prominent writers in the field, such as Richard Swinburne, Alvin Plantinga, or J. L. Mackie. The reason is, I presume, that Rescher lacks confidence concerning the prospects of this first strategy. It is telling that he quotes four times Laplace's famous dictum about God that ‘We have no need for that hypothesis’ (Nous n'avons pas besoin de cette hypothèse, pp. 37, 46, 56, 58).

Probably this is why Rescher prefers another type of transition from axtheism to doxtheism, a transition of faith or of the will. However, such a transition is not always legitimate. As Rescher says, if the doxastic atheist ‘could actually prove his case outright, then axiological theism would be reduced to mere wishful thinking’, and, a fortiori, doxtheism would be irrational. But, Rescher continues, ‘outside of pure mathematics such demonstrations of nonexistence are difficult if not impossible to come by’ (5). He seems to think, then, that it is perfectly legitimate and reasonable to hope or wish that God exists as long there is no proof to the contrary. And once one has started to be an axtheist in this ‘ecological niche left by an absence of outright atheism’ (5), Rescher deems it ‘a certain personal shortcoming, a defeatist failure of nerve’, if one does not make the ‘transition from an axiological to a doxastic theism’ (10). Indeed, he claims that not making such a transition is ‘a moral failure of sorts that has something deeply regrettable about it’ and ‘a crabbed failure of confidence’ (10–11).

There are several problems with these verdicts. First, it has been argued convincingly by many philosophers that having a belief that p is not optional. Whether we believe that p is not a free choice but rather a matter of whether we think that there are sufficient grounds or reasons for p being true. But if believing that God exists is not optional, it cannot be a moral failure not to do so. Furthermore, even if the doxastic atheist cannot prove that a specific god does not exist, someone may have very good reasons for not endorsing any doxtheist creed. One may have perused the writings of many prominent religious apologists and found their arguments wanting. With regard to all gods ever invented by mankind, from the Hindu god Ganesha to Jaweh and Allah, one may think on good grounds that their actual existence is highly unlikely given what we know about the universe. In that case it would not only be an epistemic failure to be a theist of sorts. It would also be a moral failure, if at least there is some moral worth in striving to have true beliefs rather than false ones.

We have to conclude, then, that Rescher's axtheism is superfluous for the moral meaningfulness of our lives, and that Rescher does not justify a transition from axtheism to doxtheism either.