We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 October 2008
This reply offers a detailed refutation of some of the objections raised in Christopher Coope's extended discussion of The Spiritual Dimension. It explains the ‘non-partisan’ strategy of the book, which Coope systematically misunderstands, and exposes some serious problems with Coope's own preference for a harshly exclusivist form of Christianity. Several issues connected with religious belief are then discussed, including emotional involvement versus detachment in the assessment of religious claims; layers of meaning in religious language; human autonomy and divine authority; the problem of evil; apophatic theology and transcendence; divine action in the world; and the doctrine of the afterlife.
1 Cottingham, John, On the Meaning of Life (London: Routledge, 2003), p. ixGoogle Scholar.
2 For a classic example, see the splenetic debate between Elizabeth Anscombe, R. M. Hare and others, in The Listener, February to April 1957.
3 Page references are to Cottingham, J., The Spiritual Dimension (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4 ‘I have written my philosophy in such a way as to make it acceptable anywhere, even among the Turks, so as to avoid giving the slightest offence to anyone.’ Conversation with Burman [1648], AT V 159: CSMK 342. ‘AT’ = C. Adam & P. Tannery (eds), Œuvres de Descartes (12 vols, revised edn, Paris: Vrin/CNRS, 1964–76); ‘CSMK’ = Cottingham, J., Stoothoff, R., Murdoch, D. and Kenny, A., The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vol. III, The Correspondence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, l991)Google Scholar.
5 Even if this passage, or other similar ones, should turn out to be genuine, they would still not need to be interpreted in exclusivist terms as saying that doctrinal allegiance is necessary (let alone sufficient) for salvation. A great deal would depend on exactly what ‘he that believeth’ (ho pisteusas) means. The apocalyptic warnings in Matthew 25: 31–46 make clear Christ's repudiation of those who claim to be his followers but do not feed the hungry or visit the sick.
6 ‘What Difference Does It Make? The Nature and Significance of Theistic Belief.’ Ratio XIX (4) December 2006, pp. 401–420, repr. in Cottingham, J. (ed.), The Meaning of Theism (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007)Google Scholar.
7 Cottingham, J., Philosophy and the Good Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), Ch. 4CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
8 A brief extract from which Coope alludes to as an example of the ‘thickets of barely intelligible quotation’ which he claims to have found in the book. Unless he has been stumped by the lucid sentences I cited from Aristotle, Hume, Kant, Wittgenstein, Nussbaum, Williams, Plantinga and many other mainstream philosophers, he may perhaps be objecting to the fact that I occasionally quoted from more poetic sources, such as Julian of Norwich, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Gerard Manley Hopkins and C. Day Lewis. I am more than happy to leave the reader to decide whether such material should be outlawed from all philosophical writing.
9 Davies, B., Aquinas (London: Continuum, 2002), p. 46Google Scholar.
10 Augustine, Sermones, 52.
11 See McCabe, Herbert, Faith Within Reason (London: Continuum, 2006)Google Scholar, and my review of this work in The Tablet, 7 April 2007.
12 There are no easy answers, but the right kind of theological and philosophical framework for a solution seems to me likely to be contained in the following: ‘It is time to reaffirm the importance of prayer in the face of … growing secularism … Clearly, the Christian who prays does not claim to be able to change God's plans or correct what he has foreseen. Rather, he seeks an encounter with the Father of Jesus Christ, asking God to be present with the consolation of the Sprit to him and his work.’ Benedict XVI, Deus est Caritas, §37.
13 ‘What Difference Does it Make?’
14 McGrath, A., A Scientific Theology, Volume III: Theory (London: T & T Clark, 2003), p. 208Google Scholar; thoughtfully discussed in Moore, Andrew, ‘Not Explanation but Salvation’, Modern Theology 22:1 (2006), pp. 65–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
15 I am grateful to Nick Waghorn and Max de Gaynesford for helpful comments on an earlier draft.
