The questions set in the draft programme for this session of the conference are:

Is it possible to understand the religion of somebody else, or must one be committed to a religious position in order to understand it? Is belief a condition for understanding?

These questions give the contemporary form of the debate about the perennial problem of the relationship between belief and understanding, and I sympathise with Professor Kuitert's sense that these questions themselves require further definition. Fortunately for the sake of philosophical dialogue I do not fully accept his conclusions. This however, is not because he wants to deny that belief is a condition for understanding, whereas I wish to affirm this. The main part of my paper will be devoted to showing what I find to be unsatisfactory in such an antithesis.