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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 April 2024
A paper presented at the International Symposium on Sociology and Theology, Oxford, January 1984
In his Earnest Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion, John Wesley spoke of faith as follows:
...as you cannot reason concerning colours if you have no natural sight—because all the ideas received by your senses are of a different kind... so you cannot reason concerning spiritual things if you have no spiritual sight, because all your ideas received by your outward senses are of a different kind; yea, far more different from those received by faith or internal sensation than the idea of colour from that of sound.
In Wesley’s mind faith is a ‘spiritual sense’ which enables the believer to perceive a reality beyond the scope of the non-believer restricted to the ‘natural’ senses. Faith, Wesley emphasises, is not a human choice but a gift of God. Those lacking this gift may no more understand what it means to have faith, than those lacking the gift of sight may understand what it means to see. (Note, incidentally, that in this article I am using ‘faith in’ God and ‘belief in’ God as interchangeable terms, and talk of ‘believers’ and ‘unbelievers’ as if there was no such thing as ‘half-belief’.)
The model of perception, when used in this way to explain the nature of religious belief, tends to make of believers a privileged group who may have only a limited dialogue with the ‘blind’. Indeed, it is difficult to see what sort of discussion would be possible between believer and unbeliever as to why one should believe.
1 Cragg, G.R. (ed.) The Works of John Wesley, Vol. II, (1975), p.57.Google Scholar
2 Marx, Karl ‘Theses on Fuerbach’ in Marx, , Early Writings, (Penguin 1975), p.423Google Scholar.
3 Price, H.H. ‘Faith and Unbelief’ in Hick, John (ed.) Faith and the Philosophers (Macmillan 1966), p.9Google Scholar.
4 H.H., Price Belief, (Allen & Unwin, 1969), p.432Google Scholar.
5 Flew, A. & MacIntyre, A. (edd.) New essays in Philosophical Theology (SCM 1955), pp.103—6Google Scholar.
6 Pascal, , Pensées, (J.M. Dent 1973), pp.93—6Google Scholar.
7 Ibid., p.94.
8 Ibid.
9 Ed. Gladstone, W.E. (Clarendon Press 1897)Google Scholar.
10 The two‐edged sword idea appeals, for instance, to J.C. Livingston in his Modern Christian Thought from the Enlightenment to Vatican II (Macmillan, 1971), p.51Google Scholar.
11 Butler, , Analogy (Ed. Gladstone, W.E., Clarendon Press, 1897), p.306Google Scholar.
12 SPCK, 1970
13 Notre Dame, Indiana, 1979.
14 Newman, University Sermons, p.215 (Sermon XI, para. 23).
15 Ibid.
16 Ibid (para. 22).
17 Ibid (footnote).
18 Although there is a debate as to whether they were in fact intended as ‘proofs’ at all. See for instance Appendix 5, ‘The Five Ways’, of Aquinas' Summa Theologiae Vol. 2,Google Scholar Existence and Nature of God, (Blackfriars), pp.188—90, esp. para. 2.
19 From Robert Browning's Bishop Blougram's Apology, (A selection by W.E. Williams, Penguin 1974), pp. 225—6.
20 Chadwick, H., Lessing's Theological Writings (A & C Black 1956), p.55Google Scholar.
21 Ibid., p.53: ‘accidental truths of history can never become the proof of necessary truths of reason’.
22 Ed & translated Carl E. Braaten, Fortress Press, 1966, p.74.
23 From Bultmann's ‘New Testament and Mythology’, inBartsch, H.‐W., ed., Kerygma and Myth (SPCK 1972), p.41Google Scholar.
24 In Bultmann, , Essays Philosophical and Theological, (SCM 1955), p.18Google Scholar.
25 Quoted in Peter Carnley's excellent essay ‘The Poverty of Historical Scepticism’ in Sykes, S.W. & Clayton, J.P. edd., Christ, Faith and History, (CUP 1972), p.166Google Scholar.
26 For instance by Soren Kierkegaard. In Concluding Unscientific Postscript (tr.Swenson, D.F., Princeton 1968), p.209Google Scholar, Kierkegaard writes: …to believe against the understanding is martyrdom; to begin to get the understanding a little in one's favor, is temptation and retrogression
27 James, 2:19.
28 Browning, op. cit., p.227.
29 See Bartley, W.W. III, The Retreat to Commitment, Chatto and Windus) 1964.Google Scholar
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