I.

The problem: It seems that Christianity holds that we are obligated to believe certain
things. But beliefs don’t seem to be subject to our control, so how can we be held
responsible for holding or not holding any beliefs?

All three of these seem intuitive to the Christian:

(1) We ought to believe certain things (e.g. certain religious doctrines).
(2) Ought implies can.
(3) We cannot voluntarily control our beliefs.

Three possible responses to the triad.

The first denies (1), holding that we do not have obligations to believe any propositions.
The obligations are located elsewhere instead, such as obligations to act rightly or to
commit oneself to religion.

The second option denies (2), that ought-implies-can. I won’t be discussing this
approach as I don’t find it very plausible.

The third option denies (3), but breaks into two camps. One holds that while we do not
have direct control over our beliefs, we do have indirect control. The other holds that we
do have some kind of direct control over our beliefs.

II. Rejecting (1)

Reject that we ought to believe certain things. This view takes the strictly involuntarist
approach that we do not have the ability to control our beliefs so are not obligated to
believe any specific doctrine. Instead, God wants us to take certain stances and
volitions towards himself and the world.

Side note: This actually looks quite similar to my proposal in Philo and Faith. We’re not
obligated to believe certain things, for those things are provided to us as part of our
epistemic build - the Sensus Divinitatis - instead, we’re obligated to take certain stances
towards those propositions.

III. Rejecting (3)

Rejecting (3) is my preferred approach. It comes in two flavors:

(a) We can directly control our beliefs.
(b) We can only control our beliefs indirectly.

We’ll explain and defend (a) first.

An example of indirect control:
Our blood pressure. We cannot control it immediately, by a simple act of
will, but we can influence it over a longer period of time.
 Similarly for religious belief. We can influence it over a longer course of time by
attending church, being around religious people, surveying the evidences for
theism, and so on. This is reminiscent of Pascal’s suggestion.

It’s inevitable that we all make selective choices about evidence. We have to
decide what evidence to focus on, who to listen to, and what we read in almost
every epistemic situation. We can make it likely that we will form certain beliefs,
and this is the source of our religious doxastic obligations.

Note: Doxastic involuntarism has only recently been widely received. Aristotle,
Augustine, Newman, Locke, Kant, Pascal, Clifford and so on all disagreed with it.
Swinburne is an involuntarist.

One type of indirect control we have over our beliefs is a type of will-commitment.
If it is weak, it’s more easily given up. We can own or disown our beliefs, making
it much more likely we maintain them down the line. If belief in God is a central
life commitment, it makes it more likely that the belief persists over time.

Turning to option (b), Jackson now explains and defends cases where we can have
direct control over our beliefs.
Direct Control over Beliefs: The idea that a belief can be a basic action that
doesn’t require any intervening actions or causes. Or, if believing isn’t a basic
action, then it can be controlled via a short series of other actions.

We have such direct control over going on a run, making dinner, etc., even
though we cannot do those things in a swift uninterrupted single act.

Perhaps theistic belief could be similar, such as a deliberate act of focusing on

certain aspects of one’s evidence.

Here’s one case where direct control for theism or religious propositions may be
possible:
Imagine that our evidence doesn’t strongly push us one way or another.
In this case, it seems we can form our beliefs for non-evidential reasons,
such as desires, emotions, et. This enables us to believe *beyond* the
evidence but not against it.

Epistemic Permissivism: The view that in some evidential situations, there is

more than one rational attitude one can take toward a proposition p.

If permissivism is true, then two people can share evidence and take different
positions on whether God exists, and both be perfectly rational. It’s not at all
clear that non-evidential factors couldn’t play a role in determining whether one
 believes. If there’s an epistemic tie, why couldn’t that tie be broken by one’s will
or desires? Especially so if there’s a *forced* choice, when you must pick one of
the options, it’s not clear that you couldn't pick one for practical reasons.

Permissivism is the key to our original puzzle. It provides a compelling reason to

deny (3).

Many of the cases used to motivate involuntarism involve propositions that are
clearly true or false; the authors point out that you cannot believe something that
is clearly false, even for a significant practical benefit. But these arguments fail to
consider the possibility that one is in a permissive case.

Consider Inwagen’s conversion story, which seems to be a permissive case:

“There was a period of transition, a period during which I could move back and
forth at will.”

Thus permissivism clears space for voluntarism, even of a direct sort.

Conclusion: We could take a combination of the three options.

IV. Bonus (Taken from Jackson’s IEP article on Faith)

Anscombe thinks that it’s possible to both hold that rational faith does not violate
evidentialism, while also thinking that faith can be resilient in the face of
counter-evidence.

Here’s the suggestion for how this works: Faith is based on testimony. Testimony is a
form of evidence. The sense in which faith goes beyond the evidence is that it goes
beyond certain kinds of evidence - like visual evidence, perhaps - while nevertheless still
being evidentially based.

Note: This approach is very similar to Philo’s, as I argued in my Philo paper.

This view construes the testimonia in primarily evidential terms, while Plantinga sees it
more as a mental faculty producing reliable beliefs. Perhaps both tracks can be taken
together.

Lydia McGrew: I would say with C.S. Lewis that faith is opposed not to reason but to instinct or
other arational forces that would lead us to doubt even what we have good reason for or that
would lead us to demand a type of evidence that is not really required. For example, a person
may be afraid of flying even though there is plenty of evidence that flying on a commercial plane
is quite safe. In that secular context faith would be what would lead him to fly on the plane
anyway because he knows that is acting in accordance with right reason, even though it is
acting against his fears of flying. A person who has plenty of reason to believe Christianity is
true may in a time of great suffering find his mind "scripting" things like, "God doesn't love you,
it's all false," etc., and faith is what keeps him going and rejecting those false scripts. In
Scripture faith is opposed to sight, not to reason. When a skeptic says that he has to see the
miracle for himself and not accept it on the basis of testimony, he's not being reasonable. If he
becomes a Christian he may still find himself with those old habits telling him that this is all a lot
of nonsense because he didn't see Jesus after his resurrection for himself, etc. Faith is opposed
to that faulty kind of "reason" that is not really rational.