Basil Mitchell's contribution to the debate offered yet another entry in the contest of
dueling parables:
In time of war in an occupied country, a member of the resistance meets one night a
stranger who deeply impresses him. They spend that night together in conversation. The
Stranger tells the partisan that he himself is on the side of the resistance—indeed that he
is in command of it, and urges the partisan to have faith in him no matter what happens.
The partisan is utterly convinced at that meeting of the Stranger's sincerity and constancy
and undertakes to trust him. (Flew et al. 1955, 103)
As time passes, the Stranger is sometimes seen to be helping the resistance, but at other
times he fails to help when asked, and at yet other times he appears to be helping the
enemy. But even in the face of this, the partisan continues to insist, “He is on our side.”
When his friends ask him, “Well, what would he have to do for you to admit that you
were wrong and that he is not on our side?” the partisan refuses to answer: “He will not
consent to put the Stranger to the test” (104).
In commenting on this parable, Mitchell makes three points about religious faith. First,
unexplained evil does count as evidence against the existence and goodness of God, just
as the Stranger's ambiguous behavior counts against his being a supporter of the
resistance. Second, both the partisan and the religious believer are committed to the
objects of their respective faiths, so neither will allow that the negative evidence counts
decisively against that faith. But third, at some point it might become “just silly” for the
partisan, or the believer, to maintain faith in the face of contrary evidence, though it is
impossible to say in advance exactly when that point would be reached. (Yet a fourth
point lies just below the surface of the parable: the source of the faith in the first place
lies in an actual encounter that has occurred; for Mitchell, this encounter surely is the one
recounted in the Christian Story.)
In replying to Mitchell, Flew admits that his response is actually more typical of
theologians than the one Flew attributed to them in his original article. But this is not, he
claims, a response that can be successfully maintained in the face of the actual evidence.
The Stranger is only another human being, and so there can be plausible excuses for his
ambiguous behavior. But Mitchell “has given God attributes which rule out all possible
saving explanationsWe cannot say that he would like to help but cannot: God is
omnipotent. We cannot say that he would help if he only knew: God is omniscient. We
cannot say that he is not responsible for the wickedness of others: God creates those
others” (Flew et al. 1955, 107).
What should not be overlooked in this response is that, in giving it, Flew has shifted the
terms of the debate—and shifted them in a very traditional direction.
end p.424
No longer is it being said that theological assertions are meaningless because
unfalsifiable; rather, the claim is that, in the light of the evidence, they must be judged to
be false. And the reason behind this claim is also very traditional, namely, the problem of
evil. If this shift in the debate had been clearly recognized at the time, we might have
been spared some of the subsequent protracted discussion of the “problem of religious
language.”