I have been doing some writing on God and belief in God for a few projects, and so I was very interested when I received a review copy of a new book by IVP called Existential Reasons for Belief in God. The book’s thesis is simple: author Clifford Williams contends that needs, emotions and desires are all valid parts of faith, and quite essential in many cases. This thesis is quite different from the ways I’ve heard belief in God presented before (you must believe intellectually in a list of facts) yet consistent with most evangelistic approaches that tap into a person’s existential angst.

The author opens the book with two questions: “1) Is it legitimate to acquire faith in God solely through satisfaction of needs? 2) Does faith in God consist of emotions?” (12)

Well what do you think?

The author contends that “the ideal way to acquire faith in God is through both need and reason, and that faith should consist of both emotion and assent.” (12) While Rationalists emphasize reason and Emotionalists emphasize emotion and need, Williams wants to emphasize both, especially in defending the legitimacy of acquiring faith through need, emotion, and reason.

He does so in the context of arguing eight themes:

1.) Emotion and need can be trusted for faith in God as much as reason.
2.) The negative assessment of emotions by some Christians is unjustified.
3.) The remedy for being led astray by emotions is not to distrust emotions, but to develop the right emotions.
4.) Christians should cultivate emotions as much as they do commitment and right action.
5.) Having the right emotions is necessary for discovering certain truths.
6.) We are not just rational animals, but emotional animals as well.
7.) Apologetics has been too evidential. It should be supplemented with existential apologetics, the demonstration that Christian faith is justified because it satisfies certain emotional and spiritual needs.
8.) Emotions are part of what makes life spectacular.

Williams maintains there are two categories of existential need that are valid for drawing and compelling people toward faith in Jesus: Self-directed and other-directed. Self-directed include: cosmic security; security beyond the grave; attainment of heaven; the ideal good life; a larger more expansive life; the need to be loved; meaning; and forgiveness. Other-directed are aimed at the good of others or simply the good, and include: the need to love; feeling of awe; delight in goodness; presence; and justice and fairness. All of these he argues are actually needs, rather than simply desires and are legitimate reasons for belief. (21-27)

A basic form of the argument is as follows: 1) We need cosmic security, to feel that we will not sink into the nothingness of existence and will be protected by God no matter what. 2) Faith in God satisfies this need. 3) Therefore, we are justified in having faith in God. As you can see, this existential argument focuses on the features of the human condition which, it says, involve needs that can be satisfied by faith in God. Williams maintains this form of argument fits more with Kierkegaard’s existentialism, than with that of the French atheists. Like Camus or Sarte, Kierkegaard also examins the despair and meaninglessness of life, yet beliefs they are aimed at actually prodding people toward Christian faith and the Christian answer to that existential condition.

This is in fact what Williams is arguing for: that existential need actually is an argument for the belief in the existence of God. In fact, Jesus appeals to this need in many ways with his well-known invitation in Matt 11: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” As Williams asserts, “Jesus will give rest to those who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens if they come to him. Jesus assumes that people possess the need to be free from weariness and from carrying heavy burdens.” (38) I tend to agree. It seems like the whole ministry of Jesus assumed even back then the type of existential angst we deal with today, which to be frank is no different than the angst of past eras, only in different clothes!

Willaims also appeals to the heart itself, saying that it “knows God directly, through perception, not through argument. And this perception is a kind of reason…I suggest a reason based on inclination, or the satisfaction of needs.” (55) Williams has already said he wants hold on to both reason and need, so this statement is probably meant more to compensate for the typically Western impulse to deny the emotion and the heart in favor of logical arguments and the brain. And since we are creatures with immense need, Williams maintains this is an initial plausibility, though this initial plausibility must be substantiated with reasons to be credible. (59)

Williams outlines four objections to the credibility of the existentialist argument: it does not guarantee truth; it justifies belief in any type of God; not everyone feels existential need; and existential needs can be satisfied without faith. In each of these chapters the author demonstrates the absolutely vital role existential reasons for belief in God provoke and maintain faith.

First, the idea that the existentialist argument does not guarantee truth relates to the objection that “basing belief in God solely on satisfaction of need is illegitimate, because God might not exist even though believing in God satisfies our needs for cosmic security and life beyond the grave.” (61) Therefore, belief in God for existential reasons does not mean God’s existence is true. While the author agrees with this objection at face-value, saying it’s not enough that our beliefs satisfy our need, need has indeed been a driving force for belief in God, which allows us to seek a way to legitimize that force. That legitimization can come by adding reason to need; it’s a need argument with a cognitive assumption and evidence.

The second objection is rooted in the notion that basing belief in God solely on the satisfaction of need is illegitimate because it would justify believing in any kind of God—would it not justify believing in an invisible cosmic tyrant who likes to torture humans with murder, starvation, political oppression and the like? (87) Again, he believes this objection is right if need on its own were the only criteria. He also believes need and reason must go together, and he proposes 5 criteria a need must meet for it to be included in the existentialist argument: needs must be felt by many; needs must endure, not fleeting; needs must be significant, not trivial or superficial; needs must be part of a constellation of connected needs; needs must be felt strongly. (89)

Thirdly, some charge that not everyone experiences or feels one or any of the 13 needs he describes. While the author concedes the argument, he wants to say that it does not mean that the existential argument does not work for those who do indeed feel the needs, because it does. “The existentialist argument for belief in God still works, thought it is limited to those who feel the needs mentioned in the argument.” (109) He also argues that we are never aware of all of our needs and states, therefore to say that not everyone has an actual need for one of the thirteen doesn’t seem true. While we may not be aware of the need or feel it, it’s there. For example, the experience of many has shown that emotional hermits can come to feel the need to be loved, even though they may not feel it at the time (122). Therefore, the same is true for the need for God.

A final objection insists that, though it can be true that God satisfies the thirteen needs listed, it doesn’t have to be so. “Although some people find they need faith in the Christian God to satisfy the existential needs, others find that they can satisfy needs with faith in a different God,” or no god at all. (131) In this final rebuttal, the author argues for two tests: the restlessness test—which is designed to determine the effectiveness of ways in which we try to satisfy existential needs, seeing whether we are still restless as a result of trying to satisfy them; the obstacles test—which is designed to uncover noncognitive obstacles that prevent a person from feeling that faith in God satisfies existential needs by looking for desires and motives that are likely to conflict with faith in God.

At the end of the book is a money quote: “The belief view has generally ignored needs, except, of course, the need to know what is true. In so doing, it has overintellectualized faith and misperceived what humans really are. Humans are at least as much creatures with existential needs as creatures with minds. Faith must include the satisfaction of those needs.” (174) I think Williams is right on! But he also reminds us that “emotion needs to be supplemented with beliefs about God in addition to the construals that emotions themselves contains.” (174) Right again.

In the end, this was a very interesting book and presented the beginnings of some solid ideas regarding the presentation of belief in God in a culture that is more beholden to existential needs than perhaps in the past. But I do wonder at what point is there a danger in a presentation of the Christian faith that simply meets the needs of people. Yes all of us need things, particularly the forgiveness of sins and also to be put back together again in this life because of those sins. But could there be a danger of this type of thinking playing into the consumeristic impulses of 21st century Western living? Is there a way of recognizing the existential needs that people have without diminishing the spiritual needs people also possess—mainly the need to be reconciled to a holy, righteous God? I don’t believe either of these concerns were addressed in the book.

All in all a good book that I think will help anyone doing ministry in a postmodern context better present the solution to peoples existential angst: the only One true God who can ever rescue them from themselves, their sin and their life, and put them back together again by re-creating them to the way they were originally intended to be at creation—Jesus Christ.

A 4/5 star book for sure!