The Predicament of Belief: A Reflection
Philip Clayton & Steven Knapp, Predicament of Belief: Science, Philosophy, Faith (Oxford University Press: Oxford, NY, 2011.
I want to invite you to reflect upon the difficulty and dilemma we face in our secular setting with holding a set of convictions that include a religious dimension. Secularity presents no challenge to all forms of such commitments, for one can hold passionately held ideological or political views. Our historical setting does present some a dilemma for religious community, for their reference to and their commitment to a divine reality around which they are willing to organize their lives has become increasingly doubtful.Churches of many denominational traditions need to be going through some wrestling with their relationship with the secular culture and the mindset it forms in minds and hearts.
First, the challenge from the scientific mind-set is deeper than many devotees of religions will admit. All religions face a difficulty in the modern setting. Science is the authority regarding the nature and source of the universe. It is rational, objective, and dispassionate. The universe has become a closed and self-explanatory system. The presumption of the scientific method is that cause and effect natural explanations are present or will be discovered for every event. It is a rule regarding how scientists must about the universe. The most sustained direct challenge to religion from secularism is by intellectuals like biologist Richard Dawkins (author of 2006's The God Delusion) and journalist Christopher Hitchens (who wrote the 2009 bestseller, God Is Not Great). Before his death from esophageal cancer in 2011, Hitchens relentlessly criticized all religions -- and particularly Christianity -- as outmoded attempts to explain the intricacies of the natural world. He jeers, "Thanks to the telescope and the microscope, [religion] no longer offers an explanation of anything important."
Is it really the purpose of religious faith to explain how the natural world works? Christianity was not meant as an explanation of anything. Both science and religion require creative imagination and are closest to each other in this. Such a response to the atheist critique is more sophisticated than the blunt-force counterattack of those who dig for the remains of Noah's Ark on Mount Ararat or surmise that God buried dinosaur bones in certain rock strata solely to test 21st-century human faith. Such responses merely buy into the atheists' assertion that truth begins and ends with scientific evidence. There are different facets of truth, which science and religion illuminate in parallel, complementary ways.
Christians need to stop thinking that God gave Scripture as a witness to revelation to provide answers to all things scientific, whether it is paleontology or cosmology. We need not get frustrated when scientific research is at odds with the written Word. Divine revelation relates to our desire to participate in what is true, good, and beautiful. This desire is what makes human beings who they are. Revelation addresses that need. As important as logic, math, and science are in our quest to understand the universe in which we live, and to improve our daily lives, they are not everything. In fact, we cannot reduce some of the most critical areas of human individual and corporate life to the scientific. To put it bluntly, anyone who would reduce to scientific explanation Plato, Aristotle, Shakespeare, poetry, novels, religious sensibility, witness to divine revelation, and so on, is going down a path that will lead to a dead end.
Second, secularity seems open to the mystery of immanence. If the proper object of the search of modern persons is God, this God is not served by human hands like the gods in the temples (and the gods in our kitchens, on our computer screens, and in our social media feeds) who require constant maintenance. This God is the source of life. This God has made us in such a way that our search for meaning and purpose is a valid one and indicates that this God is not far from any of us. In the play Inherit the Wind, one of the characters says: “He got lost. He was looking for God too high up and too far away.”
To relate an experience I had, one assured of his atheism described his experience of naming his child. Several incidents during a few days led him to think that the universe was trying to tell him something. Of course, the universe could not tell him anything, and he nodded and smiled to himself. The notion of luck or happy circumstance replaces the notion of divine guidance or influence upon life. A fortunate set of circumstances can feel like luck or good fortune, but we dare not think that it might be the Spirit of God luring and guiding us in a certain direction. If we listen to the movies, television shows, and literature of this secular generations, we will see that the hunger for transcendence, to connect with something beyond and larger, remains deep within us.
We live in an age that respects individual fulfillment above all. Properly understood, I can say yes. However, I am going to suggest that individual fulfillment is a by-product of other commitments we have made in our lives. Many people today have no higher good than self-fulfillment. We abandon the struggle when we adopt a form of relativism that removes any communal and historical standard. We are in danger of removing the heart, our struggle with truth, goodness, and beauty, out of the body of humanity. Truth, goodness, and beauty direct our attention away from self. They represent human aspiration. Yet, in focusing our attention on that which is beyond self, we return to the self, hopefully expanded and deepened by the journey. I can affirm this aspect of German Idealism. Yet too many act surprised when, with the heart removed, we no longer develop the basic virtues and character necessary for a free society.
Third, the way religion listens to secularity is important. Secularity is not simply an opponent. It has much to teach religion about the importance of this world, individuals, and freedom. Religious institutions are better off if they separate from the governing relations of a country. Yet, such separation need not lead us toward privatizing religious beliefs and values. Rather, religion teaches secularity that matters of “infinite disclosure” and meaning remain important. Experiences of the infinite questioning of human beings, the advancing of the finite through community and sociality, and the way time finds its fulfillment in eternity, form the basis for all religious talk. The religions offer a challenge to secularity to discuss honestly matters of supreme importance. Humanity wrestles with a reliable basis in life, the Infinite as the basis for finite experience, awareness that our finite life is part of a universal or whole, openness to the world and questioning of human existence, and the use of language as ultimate disclosure. Such human wrestling forms the basis in human life for discussion of God. To the secular culture in which I live, I invite you to consider the religions as providing a framework for wrestling with such experiences.
One way forward in the relation of the secular and religious mind is the language of disclosure, total commitment, and complexity. The basic issues of human beings are still present in a secular culture. Most human beings will not be content with the meaninglessness of human history. They will want to believe that the slaughter-bench of human history and its sacrifices have a purpose (Hegel). They still find many sources of wonderment and amazement, from the birth of a child to the beauty and vastness of the universe (Aristotle, Kant). Suffering and death still give them pause to consider the meaning of their lives and at times larger issues related to why human beings are here (existentialism). Human beings have enquiring minds, even if our minds may cause us to stretch beyond our capacity (Kant). Human beings want to know. The word of caution here is that the point of such a disclosure is not an elevated human experience, but rather, a disclosure of the divine and the disposition of the divine toward humanity. Such frontier or limit situations of suffering and death may provide a hint of transcendence. Yet, human beings are tough. The search for transcendence may be nothing more than a quest for self. A demon may lurk there in the frontier of human experience. We need to exercise care in ascribing too much to such disclosure experiences.[1] Yet, such disclosures can reveal our participation in and encounter with wholeness.[2] It suggests a contemplative approach to reality in which we have an immediate awareness of the Infinite and Eternal. This devotion would perceive the presence of the Infinite and Eternal in all things, and of all things in the Infinite and Eternal. Religion in this sense does not arise from the desire to know. Religion arises from a desire to connect the part to the whole, the finite to the Infinite, the temporal to the Eternal. Religion arises from a desire for meaning and wholeness.[3] Religion arises out of the encounter between the finite and temporal I with the Infinite and Eternal as divine.[4]
The insight of Robert Jenson is helpful here. He directs us to Aristotle (Poetics 1452a, 3), who noticed that a relevant story is one in which events occur unexpectedly but on account of each other, so that before each decisive event we cannot predict it, but afterwards see it was just what had to happen. He refers to it as dramatic coherence, a notion he uses to make sense of the notion of divine identity in the long history of revelation in the Bible. He notes the dramatic shifts of patriarchs, tribal federation, sacral kingship, exile, and the crucifixion-resurrection, all of which is a narrative of divine disclosure. The point is that dramatic coherence requires closure to the story to constitute identity, for so long as the story simply continues the narrated individuality remains uncertain. The story of God remains committed to a story with the creatures God has made. This means divine identity is a matter of anticipation of the end. In fact, in the history of religion, gods whose identity relies upon the persistence of a beginning view the changes of history and the future as a threat. We do not know the narrated story until the end, but the way the sentences, paragraphs, and chapters fit together should anticipate that end.[5]
Fourth, the classical philosophical notions of the true, good, and beautiful have much to teach secularity about itself. Although I will focus upon truth for the sake of brevity, much of what I say here could be said about the good and the beautiful as well.
We all want truth. The search for truth is deep within the human spirit. Deep down inside all human beings, is the desire to know the truth, regardless of how good that may be or how painful it may be. A sign of health in us is that we search for the truth. The opposite is also true. We human beings want to avoid people or events that deceive us. We do not want the deception of lies, distortions, and half-truths. A sign of sickness in us as human beings is that we try to avoid, distort, or manipulate the truth. Moreover, we want to find the truth out about everything. All human beings have this spirit of truth, the desire to find truth in all aspects of our lives. For example, we want to find out the truth about our universe, including how it works. We want to find out the truth about the sun, moon, and the stars. We want to find out the truth about the origins of our universe and the destiny of our universe. We want to find out the truth if there is life living out there somewhere in the universe. The purpose of the science of astronomy is to discover the truth about how our universe works. We want to know the truth. That is just the way we human beings are. We want to find out the truth about ourselves. What makes us tick? Why do we do the things we do? Why do we not do other things? We have an interest in psychology, sociology, and anthropology. Why are human beings such warring animals? Why were there so many kamikaze pilots in World War II and so many terrorists willing to be human bombs? So much about humanity perplexes us. We human beings want to know the truth about everything. It is like we human beings are on a quest, not for the Holy Grail, the cup of Christ from the Last Supper, but we are on a quest to find the Holy Grails, the truth about life in all its infinite variations.[6] Yet, only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.[7] Our dreams and aspirations motivate us. If we lose them, we may still exist, but fail to live.[8]
Fifth, the notions of the true, good, and beautiful require a community of reasonable discourse regarding these matters. The truth will disclose itself in the practice of reasonable discourse and the action of people who freely live their lives in accord with its teaching. This means truth itself has a historical dimension, revealing itself in the lives of individuals, social institutions, and world history. The truths of science are flat in the sense that the current state of scientific knowledge reflects what it has to offer humanity. The same is true of math. We must not minimize the importance of these truths, for they have improved the quality of human life. Yet, other areas of exploration whether in religion, philosophy, political theory, economic theory, psychology, have a historical dimension. Truths in areas that matter yield themselves with an awareness of the insights gained in history. As such, some insights of the past, we forget and need to recover. We need to liberate ourselves from some truths that must yield to new historical settings. Compared to science and math, such a reasoning process is not truth at all. Such a reasoning process is difficult. Opposing ideas, represented by groups of persons who believe in them, do battle against each other. In our physically violent world, one can only hope that the battle is in the pages of books and articles and in interpersonal debate. Such engagement of opposing ideas may well allow a truth to emerge at an historical moment. Yet, that truth will carry the seeds of its own weakness and generate an opposing position. We might call it a dialectical form of reasoning, a process quite different from the mathematical form of reasoning we find in science.
I am suggesting that truth emerges in events and encounters. The smooth and flat knowledge we gain through science and math does not operate in other realms of human experience. In fact, if it did, the people would have to deliver themselves to the elite in possession of such knowledge. Instead, as we consider the things that matter, ranging from personal meaning to how we organize our life together, we need the free and conflicting engagement of groups and ideas for truths to emerge. Such truths have a strong historical dimension.
Religion must fit itself into such a community of reasonable discourse. Religion has a right to expect others to respect its sacred texts. Religion has no right to assume their truth. The truths of religion originate in and receive validation from testimony. Testimony is notoriously subjective. Yet, I will suggest that testimony is a valuable element in a community of reasonable discourse. This means all views have the nature of a hypothesis that remains open to criticism. It means no one has the right to retreat to dogmatism, ideology, or revelation from God to avoid engaging discourse. It means all of us engage in the everyday learning process of trial and error.[9] In fact, Michael Polanyi and Thomas Kuhn have shown us that science is not as objective as many would like to think. The development of large hypotheses in physics and biology have the nature of providing a perspective that proves helpful in understanding the world combined with openness to new discoveries that may amend or overthrow the hypothesis. Such hypotheses provide coherence within itself as well as enable scientific engagement with the world. Let us consider this way of acting within science as a way of understanding what happens in other realms of human experience. If we think at this level, we become aware of a certain view of the world that guides us. If we approach these matters in a healthy way, we aim for a coherent view of the world that also helps engage the world in a way that leads to human flourishing. It will be a guide. It will also have openness to innovative ideas, insights, and experiences that allow for amendment or even an overthrow. We might call such an overthrow of a worldview a conversion. Such a worldview will cohere with other forms of human experience. I want to be quite clear that in this process, no religion, scientific theory, or theories in the human sciences of psychology, sociology, or philosophy, has a prior claim to truth. Given the historicity of human beings, we develop such views of the world while renouncing any prior claim to truth. This also means that appeals to authority are not enough in making the case. The process I have described seems like giving rational assent to a set of beliefs. Yet, such is not the case. Taking the risk of total commitment of one’s life recognizes that one place one’s trust in the wrong thing. Since none of us likes to admit we are wrong, conversion is rare. Yet, admitting one has lived in accord with wrong commitments is also part of why engage in this process of reasoning.
Religious communities have been around for a long time. Quite they have been around from the beginning of the humanity as a species of animal. Many such religions have died. I think it proper to assume that their death means that whatever truth they had was no longer able to meet the challenges of their times and places. An opposing religion has absorbed into itself any truth it might have had.
All of this suggests that truth is always open to further verification or falsification. Core affirmations are always debatable along the course of history. We know only in part (I Corinthians 13:12). We need to admit that especially in the commitments related to ultimate matters we are in the realm of faith, making provisional and anticipatory commitments. History is always open. Communities are historical. Even communities that can claim a certain degree of longevity live and believe quite differently than their ancestors. Such re-thinking shows the vitality of the community to face new challenges that new historical settings provide.
Truth is not a finished product. Our quest for truth keeps pushing us toward the wholeness of truth, but we never arrive. We cannot determine the true meaning of things and events so long as the course of history continues. The inner dynamic of the process becomes visible only at the end of the process. We are still on the way. The inner contradictions of each preliminary stage drive the moment beyond itself. They find their truth beyond themselves. Each stage is the provisional whole of the entire path. If we apply this notion to a human life, we must wait for the end of a life and survey the whole and the relation between the parts. We must wait for the end of history of history to have all the material necessary to determine its meaning.[10] This means that all experiences of meaning are hypothetical in that they are part of our everyday reasoning process of trial and error. Such experiences are an anticipation of the totality that is still in the process of formation. Every experience of meaning is an implicit anticipation of the totality of meaning. Admittedly, religion seeks to make the totality of meaning explicit and clear. Such a worldview or model becomes tenable when we recognize the world, humanity, and history in the model.
Sixth, a philosophy of religion will have a modest objective. It will explore human experience, using the tools that philosophy, psychology, and sociology provide. One can have no theology without interaction with philosophy. Yet, if a philosophical perspective or worldview dominates the theologian, the theologian has adopted a questionable authority. At the same time, interaction with philosophy, psychology, and sociology will sharpen and clarify the thinking of the theologian and yield an improved theology.
A proper philosophy of religion will suggest that our human experience provides hints of the divine. If it finds too much of the preferred theology of the writer in human experience, then it goes too far.
Such hints occur in the overwhelming context of human pain, suffering, and tragedy. Suffering and evil are perennial obstacles to belief, at least in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Reconciling the notion of an all-powerful, good, and compassionate God with the presence of evil and suffering can be done in some cases, but it will never satisfy fully. I will not want to minimize this reality. Amid so much random, meaningless suffering, human beings desire the truth in the sense of wholeness of life, the good in the sense of morality, and the beautiful in the sense of profound aesthetic experience. We express this desire in our personal lives in how we think and live. We also express the desire in the institutions we build. Behind such desires and the expressions in personal and corporate life is a type of love for life. We want to see the flourishing of life in general and of human life in particular.
The desire for truth, goodness, and beauty has a darkness as well. Such is the nature of the dignity and misery of humanity. We have the capacity to turn that which is our gift into a curse we inflict upon self and others. Our experience, as reflected in philosophy and psychology, discloses both the dignity and misery of humanity. Our experience reveals both our quest for wholeness and the brokenness that plagues our personal and corporate lives. Our human experience of openness to our world, which shows itself in our capacity to learn across time to improve the human condition, meets its counterpoint in our tendency to close ourselves off from world. The infinite horizon of life meets the resistance within us to close off questions and think we have reached the end of such explorations.
I am suggesting that talk of the divine is at least reasonable and worthy of our pursuit. Of course, my specific goal is that you will find talk of God as revealed in Jesus of Nazareth is a worthy discussion for us to have.
A modest form of natural theology is an aid in presenting Christian teaching. This will mean that a philosophy of religion will be an important way to begin our reflections. However, such theology has many difficulties.
Seventh, the difficulty from science regarding the notion of divine agency is one with which all religions will need to wrestle. The scientific theory of the emergence of complexity can explain much regarding how beings like us emerged from a universe like this. Yet, there are what Peter Berger called signals of transcendence, that a reality behind this natural world is benevolent toward humanity and desires our flourishing. Such signals are far short of sufficient evidence that such a reality exists. Even if such a reality exists, does it have intentions that it can communicate. It seems like the personal acts we would expect from such a divine being. It reminds me of a Thomas Hardy poem, God-Forgotten.
I towered far, and lo! I stood within
The presence of the Lord Most High,
Sent thither by the sons of earth, to win
Some answer to their cry.
--"The Earth, say'st thou? The Human race?
By Me created? Sad its lot?
Nay: I have no remembrance of such place:
Such world I fashioned not." -
--"O Lord, forgive me when I say
Thou spak'st the word, and mad'st it all." -
"The Earth of men--let me bethink me . . . Yea!
I dimly do recall
"Some tiny sphere I built long back
(Mid millions of such shapes of mine)
So named . . . It perished, surely--not a wrack
Remaining, or a sign?
"It lost my interest from the first,
My aims therefor succeeding ill;
Haply it died of doing as it durst?" -
"Lord, it existeth still." -
"Dark, then, its life! For not a cry
Of aught it bears do I now hear;
Of its own act the threads were snapt whereby
Its plaints had reached mine ear.
"It used to ask for gifts of good,
Till came its severance self-entailed,
When sudden silence on that side ensued,
And has till now prevailed.
"All other orbs have kept in touch;
Their voicings reach me speedily:
Thy people took upon them overmuch
In sundering them from me!
"And it is strange--though sad enough -
Earth's race should think that one whose call
Frames, daily, shining spheres of flawless stuff
Must heed their tainted ball! . . .
"But say'st thou 'tis by pangs distraught,
And strife, and silent suffering? -
Deep grieved am I that injury should be wrought
Even on so poor a thing!
"Thou should'st have learnt that Not to Mend
For Me could mean but Not to Know:
Hence, Messengers! and straightway put an end
To what men undergo." . . .
Homing at dawn, I thought to see
One of the Messengers standing by.
- Oh, childish thought! . . . Yet oft it comes to me
When trouble hovers nigh.
Can one give an account of divine motive and action that can explain what can seem like divine neglect?
In a universe that gives rise to beings like us, doing so by its internal regularities, requires a degree of regularity. Abrogation of this regularity by divine will is morally inconsistent with the divine nature. This may mean that the personal agency of God becomes irrelevant to human experience and action. However, we may have opened the door for the notion of the divine lure upon human thought processes. Anomalous monism suggests the nomological (non-lawlike) operations of mind. It suggests irreducibly holistic features of life in this universe. In the realm of mind, human actions are not determined by natural laws or regularities. [This would go against the Isaac Asimov science fiction series Foundation]. An emergent theory that there are influences higher up the hierarchy of complexity that influence the lower forms of complexity, but that there are also influences from the lower forms of complexity to the higher. This influence occurs within the regularities of the natural world. This opens us to the possibility of a noninterventionist understanding of divine action. The divine attraction is toward luring all creation into conformity with the divine will. In this sense, the big bang theory does a disservice as a model for divine action. A divine word speaks into existence the conditions for all things? The event that looks like a big bang to science is an example of a divine action that emerged out of the divine Infinite and Eternal life and that desired the existence of finite-temporal things to exist within and to be embraced by divine life. Such a view would be panentheist. God engages us in the modes of gentle guidance, growing illumination, and persistent attraction. The question arises as to why God did not create a world already in conformity with the will of God to have fellowship with what God has created. However, such a fellowship can emerge only from a process designed to endow part of that creation with relative autonomy.
Such reasoning is general. Its benefit is that it opens the door for the possibility of divine personal agency in a way that is consistent with the scientific notions of complexity and the emergence of life out of inanimate forms. However, assessed from the standpoint of the central affirmations of all religions, it does not accomplish much. The passionate devotee of any religion would not be moved by this argument. All we have done is provide a rationale for believing that has some consistency of current science.
Eighth, the sense of the wholeness of life, of its meaning and significance, will require finding a way to reconnect with the philosophical notions of the Infinite and Eternal. The scientific notion of complexity and the emergence of life out of inorganic matter is a help here.
Some persons will find the flatten and purposeless nature of the world described by science and technology as enough. For such persons, all we need to know in ontology is that atoms and cells exist. Such a naturalist and materialist view of ontology assumes that science is the only arbiter of truth. I am not satisfied by that. I find myself amazed that such beings as us exist, who are conscious of our lives and the life around us. We are beings who try to figure out truth, who evaluate goodness, and who find ourselves attracted to the beautiful in nature and in our creations. We are beings who wonder about our world and the self. We have questions that suggest the mystery that surrounds us the mystery within us. However, the classical quest for truth, goodness, and beauty suggests that there is something more for us to ponder than simply what science would allow. As powerful as science is, it does not represent the totality of human reasoning.
The intuition of the wholeness of life is an important one. While we may have moments when we feel have arrived at that point of wholeness, we inevitably find reminders that we are only on the way toward it. Our lives often degenerate into fragments, but something within us longs for wholeness. The opposing forces of life keep moving us toward fragmentation. In that sense, wholeness stands between fragmentation and completion. We exhibit the power to be and to develop; we exhibit the capacity to recognize or produce minimal structure; we exhibit the mystery of the indeterminate nature of a human life.[11]
We will need to recover the connection between philosophical notions of time, the Infinite, and the Eternal. We will not truly grasp the significance of individual things or beings in the world without making this connection. We will not deal with death (finitude and temporality) until we make this connection. “Infinite” is the way in which we express our awareness of the interconnected quality of reality. Individual things participate in this wholeness, and this participation is what we mean by “Infinite.”[12] Thus, our perception of the Infinite is “in some way” prior to that of finite things. Since we perceive the passing away of the finite, and yet, the continuation of reality, the Infinite has more reality than do finite things.[13]Our grasp of the Infinite is unthematic and confused. The finite has its limit in the Infinite. If so, he is thinking of an intuition of the Infinite that precedes the contents of consciousness. We might think of this experience as a transcendent mystery or silent Infinity of reality beyond our control, but which also constantly presents itself to us as a mystery.
We may well ponder whether creaturely experience has the capacity for such lofty thinking. Yet, Aristotle said that knowledge begins in wonder. It begins with a form of learned ignorance, recognition that not knowing something, and the suspicion that what you do not know is both important and wonderful. Such wonder can lead us to explore our world so that we can understand it better. Any of the sciences can help us move that direction. We are trying to push back the frontiers of our own ignorance of the world in which we live.
Ninth, our notion of reason needs to expand. It includes reasoning, and thus the capacity for logical thinking and the capacity for inference (drawing conclusions from premises). It includes conceptualization as an expression of the intellect that emerges out of sense perception. Since both thought and feeling can be irrational, our notion of reason needs to embrace thinking and feeling as important dimensions of our experience. Faith or trust is as deeply personal activity as is rationality and thus rationality embraces faith as well. We are not simply computers that dispense information and ideas. Thus, there are cases when it is reasonable for us to believe and trust where we are not able to adequate logic, inference, or conceptualization. The context of reasoning is the mutuality of us as persons, identified well by Martin Buber and Gabriel Marcel. Personhood and sense of self arises out of relatedness. Implicit in the mutuality of the personal is a principle of personal growth and the rhythm of withdrawal and return. the original field of interpersonal relatedness, the withdrawal of the individual from the field into the self to develop identity and individuality, in the return of the individual to the interrelation of persons to enrich it with the fruits of individuality and to endow individuality with its fullness and significance, is central to this rhythm. This suggests that we are first acting and engaged agents of relatedness, and thus, thinking follows this activity, which may well be rational, even if our action arises out of feeling and faith more so than conceptualization. Our withdrawal from relatedness provides the opportunity to reflect rationally upon our activity and thereby either verify or amend that behavior. Rational activity is self-transcendent in that it is both free and it reacts to the drives, impulses, and instincts of the other. Our capacity to act irrationally is part of our human rational nature, which in turn implies an agent who is free, finite, and fallible. Still, irrationality is a subordinate aspect of reason. For rationality ought to predominate over irrationality, keeping the latter in potency, we should always act rationally rather than irrationally. We apply rationality to matters involving action/behavior and the practical, feeling/emotion, and the intellectual/conceptual. Science is the obvious mode of conceptual rationality, the aesthetic is the mode of rationality in feeling, and morality is the mode of rationality in action. Philosophy is the synthesis of feeling and the conceptual. Since rationality is deeply relational, its structure is determined by the object to which it relates. The sub-personal realms of the inanimate or the biological, the relatedness of human beings in political and economic systems, the validity or falsity of moral action, and the supra-personal relation to ultimate reality (the spiritual realm or the divine). Each will require a different form of personal engagement of faith, feeling, logic, inference, and conceptualization. Since moral action arises from the field or interrelation of persons as persons, its primary purpose is to promote and maintain the good or well-being, the rationality or transcendence, of persons in relation. Freedom implies acquired freedom, which signifies two interrelated qualities that of being oneself, and that of self-mastery. Equality denotes the personal rather than the net the natural, social, or legal equality. Personal equality simply denotes the intention of the self to treat their personal other as a person and with the respect that is commensurate with the dignity of a person and thus as Kant put it to treat the other person as an end and never simply as a means. Justice is giving the other person what is due as a matter of right. The concern of religion also emphasizes human well-being, rationality, and community. It goes beyond it in three significant respects. First religion is unlike morality in that it is explicitly and necessarily based upon the human relation to God. The second difference between religion and morality is that religion involves the celebration of community especially in rituals and ceremonies. And thirdly religion involves reference to the realm of the Infinite and Eternal, what we might also call ultimate reality or the divine and the relation of the finite and temporal to it. [14]
These realities of our intellectual setting can lead us to re-think traditional beliefs and hold a minimal set of beliefs that are consistent with modern forms of thinking. Regardless, all devotees of a religion need to consider holding their beliefs lightly in the sense that one believes the central witness is true is only slightly more credible than its falsity. One can still believe passionately, but with openness to the possibility that one is wrong and may gather added information and experience that will lead one to amend their belief. It would not make sense to organize one’s life around a set of beliefs one had no evaluate or confirm. The divine reality behind religious beliefs has made itself known in such a way that human beings can respond. One can respond with strong personal commitment that exceeds the certainty with which one holds to this belief. Further, not all beliefs will not have the same rational justification. Some beliefs will be beyond the ability of the believer to justify fully even to oneself.
Behind my argument are at least two important assumptions. One is the significance of the future in orienting our thinking and life. Openness to the future means that we do not allow any of our beliefs to close back upon themselves. We are always in dialogue for amendment and even radical change. Two is that any religion must have the ability to change as it moves through human history and enters multiple cultures. This means valuing a form of syncretism.
Is there room in the modern setting for what devotees of a religion consider its most cherished and distinctive beliefs? This question raises the challenge of the plurality of religious claims to what is true.
Theology needs to discuss freely its way of knowing. Theology is not myth or superstition. Theology is an intellectual exploration. It must be a description of reality. A theological exploration examines the claim of church proclamation that Christ is the center of reality. It examines the truth of this testimony. Yet, theology recognizes that any talk of God is also talk that concerns humanity in a unique way. It claims to point people to the meaning and purpose of their lives. Its aim is human action. This means the focus is salvation. In fact, talk of God communicates salvation. Such a notion is Christ-centered.[15]
For theology, the significance of the particularity of revelation is great. If you are philosopher or scientist who thinks of truth as only that which is most universal and general, this will frustrate. The subjectivity of testimony, which is the basis for the core teachings of all religions, makes the core teachings of all religions less credible. It is personal and passionate biography. Added to this is that the plurality of competing passionate testimonies regarding who God is and the basis for such claims opens the door for a deepening of the obstacle of testimony. It seems like God could have avoided confusion by providing in some way the same revelation and witness. Religions have competing truth claims. One needs a means to treat all religions respectfully enough not to reduce them to a preconceived notion of their commonality. For Christianity, the obstacle is increased when we consider the complexity and uncertainty regarding the sources of what we know about Jesus of Nazareth. The difficulties raised by the narratives regarding the appearances of Jesus after his death place the resurrection of Jesus, the provocative central claim of Christianity, becomes even less believable.
The Christian tradition rests upon the provocative thesis that the God of Israel raised Jesus of Nazareth from the dead after his crucifixion at the behest of Jewish leaders and with the cooperation of Rome. If one can cross the threshold of belief, it will open the door to believing that the power that is behind all that exists is a force intended us as human beings and desires our flourishing. Jesus forms the “controlling story” for human life as the Christian sees it. In a culture exploring secular forms of religious feeling and expression, Christians must become storytellers who point to the climax of the story in Jesus Christ. Such a presentation will show that the false gods of secularity will not deliver on the promise of happiness. It will show that the truth revealed in the event of Jesus of Nazareth can lead to truly satisfying and meaningful way of life lived in the context of a beautiful hope for humanity and the world.
Most traditions look back to a significant event in history, although myth-oriented religions like Hinduism and traditional African religions would not do so. Applied to Christianity, to have faith in what the God of Israel did in and through the live of Jesus of Nazareth is to open oneself to the new possibility for a human life lived with the power that gave new life to Jesus after his crucifixion. Knowing the details of what that new life was is not important to us, other than recognizing that it gives to the revelation of God in Jesus a definitive, unique, and universal disclosure as to the quality and nature of the life of God. This includes the Trinitarian insight into the divine life, which shows the relational quality of divine life finds its parallel in the relational quality of life in this universe. Embracing the submission of Jesus to the will of his Father is to open oneself to the new life of the Spirit that in some way raised him from death. Jesus gives us insight into the divine intention and action toward humanity in what he said and did, but especially in his death. It was an ontological breakthrough accomplished through human obedience and divine love. Such a notion is consistent with the idea of the emergence of divine life and love during the historical course of the life of Jesus that would find affirmation in the core Christian affirmation of the Incarnation. Such an idea finds expression in the first witnesses to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus as they discovered a new possibility of the divine and human encounter beyond the boundaries of law-relation as defined in Judaism. It opened the door for a new covenant between the God of Israel and humanity. The Spirit at work in Jesus that culminated in his resurrection also transformed the lives of the first witnesses to embrace a new possibility in their relation to God and in their relation to other human beings, especially the gentile.
If we consider all this in terms of the degrees of justification, we can see readily see a spectrum that moves from beliefs that most of the community of persons who might believe in the divine would embrace, or would embrace if given good reasons, or would embrace if the community could see its mistaken reasoning. However, another set of beliefs is irreducibly controversial, are attractive by one can only hope will be true, and another set are metaphorically valuable. Life experience and reasoning will mean shifting positions for us as individuals who believe. Josh McDowell may hold to the historicity of the resurrection tightly. Richard Swinburne does so as well. While metaphysically possible for one who believes in divine agency, it would be a unique event, which is the point. Granted, the narratives of the appearances of the risen Lord found in Matthew, Luke, and John, the foreshadowing of those appearances we find in Mark in the walking of Jesus upon the Sea of Galilee and in the Mount of Transfiguration, are reflections of the theology of the authors long after the death of Jesus. However, the first preaching of the believing community affirmed that the God of Israel raised Jesus of Nazareth from the realm of the dead and brought him into life with God, who was his Father. Paul thought of the appearance to him as of a similar type as that to Peter, the apostles, James, and the 500. He put the matter sharply: If Christ is not raised our faith is vain. My point here is that one can hold lightly the matter of how this happened, but I think it questionable for Christian thinking to set it aside. I think it also questionable for Christian thinking to set aside the connection with the Old Testament, the fulfillment of Jewish hope and divine promise, and its effect upon the Trinitarian notion of God.
If we step back, what I am arguing is that religious beliefs, when thoughtfully contemplated, are an expression of the depth and breadth of our rationality. For that reason, we rightly seek a degree of rational justification for what we believe. In fact, given the violent nature of humanity, we want to encourage such reasoning as much as possible. However, we need to learn the various degrees to which we justifiably hold our beliefs. The core beliefs of religions are typically beliefs for which rational justification is for the devotee only slightly more likely than not accepting them, and thus can be held passionately in the sense that one might choose to organize one’s life around them, but also held lightly, in the sense that all human decisions are open-ended, that one may amend one’s beliefs at a future date, and that one recognizes may with rational justification make an opposing decision to one’s own.
I offer a few closing remarks.
In his famous 1896 lecture, The Will to Believe, American philosopher and pioneer psychologist William James defends the adoption of certain beliefs that are, by nature, incapable of empirical proof. Within this category, he includes religious belief. James summarizes his argument by saying that our passion, will, intuition, are valid ways in which to make decisions when logic or science does not provide the tools to make the decisions. We can do so without risk of losing our concern for truth.[16] James says that the scientific method is of tremendous value, but when it comes to weighty matters of the heart, there are certain propositions that can only remain as hypotheses. There is no way to prove such hypotheses, but there is likewise no way to disprove them. In the absence of such empirical proof, there is a recognition we experience as we encounter faith-propositions: "Of some things we feel that we are certain: we know, and we know that we do know. There is something that gives a click inside of us, a bell that strikes twelve, when the hands of our mental clock have swept the dial and meet over the meridian hour" (13). It would be absurd, in committed human relationships like marriage, to base our participation solely on empirical evidence. No one would ever make it to the wedding chapel on that basis! Because faith is about having a personal relationship with God, James continues, a similar dynamic pertains: "The universe is no longer a mere It to us, but a Thou, if we are religious; and any relation that may be possible from person to person might be possible here" (27-28).
The human faculty that allows us to make faith-commitments is the will. People of faith can admit that matters of faith involve us in a different type of reasoning than one finds in science. Yet, science often makes advances that arise out of intuition (Michael Polanyi). Even scientists must rely upon a sense of where the answer may lay. Decision-making is not a matter of strict logic or a scientific formula. It will involve our will to believe.
If the only God I were allowed to believe in was the God described by atheists like Nietzsche and Camus, I too would be an atheist. I could never believe in a God who did not suffer — given the suffering of the world. I could never believe in a God whose chief characteristic was power rather than goodness. In the Christian view of God, the chief characteristic of this God is pain. The one who keeps Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep. This God hangs upon a cross, a victim not an executioner; the quarry, not the hunter; and one who not only suffers with me but for me, seeking not only to console but, beyond consolation, to strengthen me. Such a God I can affirm and a world with such a God in it I can affirm too. The metaphysical and ontological issues related to suffering are difficult. I can only resolve it by sharing it — by holding hands with the dying, by protesting in the name of my crucified Lord against war, hunger, oppression, torture, against suffering inflicted by our own human injustice. I know that the worst of all evil is indifference to evil. What I need to do with my life is to keep vigil with the one who neither slumbers nor sleeps — that is the way to live.[17]
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[6] Edward F. Markquart, The Spirit of Truth
[7] --T.S. Eliot
[8] Do not lose hold of your dreams or aspirations. For if you do, you may still exist but you have ceased to live. --Henry David Thoreau.
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[12] Nicolaus Malebranche (The Search for Truth, Book Three, Part Two, Chapter 6, 1674-75).
[13] Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy (Third Meditation, par. 24, 1641).
[14] Walter G. Jeffko, “A Personalist Concept of Human Reason,” International Philosophical Quarterly XIV (June 1974), 161-80.
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[16] "Our passional nature not only lawfully may, but must, decide an option between propositions, whenever it is a genuine option that cannot by its nature be decided on intellectual grounds; for to say, under such circumstances, 'Do not decide, but leave the question open,' is itself a passional decision, -- just like deciding yes or no, -- and is attended with the same risk of losing the truth" (11).
[17] Inspired by William Sloane Coffin, “The Uses and Misuses of Suffering,” in Collected Sermons of William Sloane Coffin: Volume 1 —The Riverside Years (Westminster John Knox, 2008).
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