In God, Chance and Purpose David Bartholomew, by training a statistician, aims to articulate and defend the thesis that those who believe in the God of classical theism should see ‘chance within the providence of God rather than outside it’ (15). Quite what this means is of course destined to be only as clear as the definitions of the key terms, so we shall start with these.

According to Bartholomew, to ‘say that some event happens by chance is to say no more than that we do not know enough about its antecedents to predict its outcome with certainty’ (18). On this definition then, of necessity all events inside our universe yet outside our light cone happen by chance and indeed almost all events inside our light cone do too; after all, of very few events outside our own immediate vicinity on the surface of this planet do we know enough to predict outcomes at all. Of course this supposes a particular reading of ‘we’, one which Bartholomew might eschew. Unfortunately quite how Bartholomew intends his readers to take the ‘we’ is never unpacked; it may be ‘we qua cognitively normal humans’; ‘we qua humans in general’; ‘we qua creatures of a certain level of cognitive ability’; or something else again. Bartholomew does say something about predicting with certainty. Predicting with certainty, as Bartholomew understands it, is something which ‘we’, whoever we are, manage to do relatively frequently in the ‘commonsense’ (18) way he intends this to be taken. ‘Death and taxes are the traditional certainties but there are many others. If we drop a lead ball from an unobstructed church tower, we are certain that it will hit the ground. If we are bitten by a poisonous snake, we are certain to be very unwell’ (18). Even if what ambiguities remain were removed, it would strike many as odd that Bartholomew wishes to define an event happening by chance as it happening in a way that has epistemic consequences for us; it would strike many that an event's happening by chance is more naturally thought of as something metaphysical, something to do with it's aetiology perhaps (from which, assuredly, epistemic consequences for certain types of creatures may be argued to follow). Be this as it may, one would be wasting time worrying over these details as, in fact, as one reads on, it becomes more or less clear that – despite this early definition – it is not really chance understood in this epistemic way that Barthlomew wishes to argue the theist should see as ‘within the providence of God rather than outside it’. Rather, it is in fact something metaphysical, something closer to ‘events uncaused by preceding physical states’. This last seems at least to be what Bartholomew has in mind, sometimes, when he uses the word ‘random’ of events, as he starts to do as the book goes on. I say ‘more or less clear’ and ‘closer to’ as, even when one finishes the book, one is hard pressed to say with certainty what concept of chance or randomness it is that Bartholomew is arguing the theist should believe is instantiated in the world in such a way that its instantiations fall within divine providence rather than outside it. Matters are similar with the concept of divine providence. Initially one might fear they would be worse as divine providence is not defined at all, but as the book goes on it becomes tolerably clear that Bartholomew thinks of divine providence as a matter of God's getting what He wants out of the natural order: things/events that contribute positively to Him getting what He wants are to be counted as within His providence; those that detract from Him getting what He wants (if there are any) are to be counted as outside it. (It is not made quite so clear how we should categorize those things/events, if any, which are neutral with respect to Him getting what He wants.)

As it is rather difficult to discern the precise outlines of Bartholomew's thesis, it is no surprise that chance and risk attend a critical assessment of it and the arguments leading to it. Nevertheless, at least a couple of recognizable ideas and reasons emerge from the mist.

First, Bartholomew endorses libertarianism as an account of free will. Thus he believes that there being events which are not entirely causally necessitated by preceding physical states is necessary for there to be free action in the world. Believing in addition, as he does, that we act freely in the world and that God would wish to preserve in Himself the ability to act freely in the world without violating natural laws, so we should admit that not every event is entirely causally necessitated by preceding physical states. Allowing such ‘chance’ or ‘random’ events, if we may call them these (and my tentative suggestion is that this is what Bartholomew calls them), is thus something the theist who shares these assumptions should do.

Second, as Bartholomew observes, ‘haphazard happenings at one level may lead to lawfulness at a higher level… A single toss of a coin is a highly uncertain matter yet the collective tossing of a million coins is a highly predictable event’ (28-29). So, were God to wish to generate a number of outcomes that fitted a higher-level pattern, He might very well employ randomness, now perhaps being understood as ‘complete uncausedness’, at a lower level. ‘If there is a method so simple and elegant, it is surely the method God would use… There is then no need for him to be concerned with happenings at the individual level. All that matters is their behaviour in the aggregate’ (133). In response to the question, ‘Why wouldn't God determine in detail the lower level too?’ Bartholomew encourages us to ‘think through the process of trying to construct a sequence of heads and tails which had all the appearance of being random’ (125). As we do so, Bartholomew argues, we will find that we are forced to postulate an incredibly complex pseudo-random number generator or some such or revert back to randomness – complete uncausedness – again. Okay, one might respond, but complexity is surely no obstacle for God. To this Bartholomew replies: ‘The response that … God is big enough to encompass all this and to choose the outcomes is too glib. The profound theological question is not so much whether God could handle the enormous complexity of the scenarios I have hinted at but whether it is a God-like enough thing for him to be doing’ (128). ‘The picture of a world in which the details take care of themselves, leaving the big issues to the Creator, is more appealing and more worthy of directing our worship’ (153). Well, Bartholomew's views of the nature of freedom and what would be most God-like are not everyone's. But some may find support for what I take it is Bartholomew's position on the ‘allowing libertarian free actions’ and, perhaps additionally, ‘being more ‘God-like’ fronts.

On finishing the book, one is certainly left then with the impression that there is an interesting thesis in it, trying to get out. Sadly, as well as its being hampered in doing so by unclarity in (or sometimes the complete absence of) definitions of key terms, it is not helped by Bartholomew's failure to link it to standard positions and arguments. Throughout, the book shows very minimal awareness of the relevant argumentation that pre-exists it in the philosophical literature. For example, the ultimate chapter, ‘God and Risk’, where the strands of Bartholomew's argument appear to be drawn together, fails even to mention Open Theism, the literature on which has blossomed in recent years and a lot of which would be relevant to his thesis, if I have understood it correctly even in outline. This lack of engagement leaves unsupported a claim that Bartholomew makes in his preface: ‘there is a great deal of misunderstanding which can be dispelled by rigorously subjecting widely accepted arguments to the critical eyes of someone trained in the statistical sciences’ (x). Those familiar with the literature may be left, having read Bartholomew's book, considering the fact that the misunderstandings which are dispelled by his critical eyes are not widely accepted in the literature; some of them are not even occurrent in the literature. Also in the preface (xii), Bartholomew quotes with approval a fellow statistician as saying that ‘the best thing about being a statistician is that you get to play in everyone else's back yard’. Perhaps that is the best thing about being a statistician. Be that as it may, if you are careless in setting up the definitions and rules of your game before you start playing it and if you start playing it in a yard with little apparent awareness of those who have been playing there before you, you shouldn't be too surprised if your reporting that you've won your game doesn't elicit overwhelming applause.