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Analysis, Metaphysics, and Belief

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

F. Michael McLain
F. Michael McLain
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of Religion, Southwestern at Memphis
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Extract

What has Jerusalem to do with Athens? The everchanging contours of the answer to this question have taken an arresting shape with the confluence of existentialist theology and analytic philosophy. This improbable union has led to an impressive and attractive account of religious belief and its language. Under the influence of Kierkegaard, Buber, and others, existentialist theology has argued persuasively for the non-theoretical, practical character of religious belief; it has, of late, discovered inspiration and assistance for this position in the reflections of recent analytic philosophy on the difficulties involved in speculative philosophy. The resultant theological point of view is one which argues for a ‘practical’ interpretation of religion, one which holds that the meaning of religious language is to be found exclusively in its use. Religion is seen as a self-contained ‘form of life’, and its language is held to have its own peculiar ‘logic’. It follows that religious beliefs and conceptions are intelligible in their own right and do not need to be explicated or justified with the aid of an ontology or metaphysic. I propose in this essay to appraise a recent statement of this position, and, in so doing, explore the broad question of the bearing of analytic reflections on the question of Christian theology's relationship to philosophy.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , October 1969 , pp. 29 - 39
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1969

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References

page 29 note 1 Examples of the type of theological position I am considering are Hordern, William, Speaking of God (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1964)Google Scholar, the writings of Holmer, Paul L., for example ‘Language and Theology: Some Critical Notes’ Harvard Theological Review, LVIII, 3 (July 1965), pp. 242–61, and the essay discussed below. I mean by a practical (or convictional) view of religious belief one that takes the meaning and truth of such belief to be exclusively a function of correct religious practice. The religious ‘discourse’ of pulpit and pew is assumed to be meaningful in and of itself in its proper employment; it does not raise metaphysical questions which need to be ‘solved.’Google Scholar

page 29 note 2 Allen, Diogenes, ‘Christianity's Stake in Metaphysics’ Theology Today, XXIV, 2 (07 1967), pp. 185–200.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 30 note 1 The most considered treatment of the analogical character of metaphysics and theology remains that of Emmet, Dorothy, The Nature of Metaphysical Thinking (London: Macmillan, 1957).Google Scholar

page 30 note 2 In Allen's words, ‘the only effect on this [his] view of Christianity of the claim that meta-physical questions are pseudo-ones arising from a misuse of language is that it must exercise care in specifying religious questions.’ ibid., pp. 195–6.

page 32 note 1 Cf. the position of Malcolm, Norman, ‘Moore and Ordinary Language’ The Philosophy of G. E. Moore, ed. A. Schilpp, Paul (LaSalle, Illinois. Open Court, 1942), pp. 343–69.Google Scholar

page 32 note 2 Walsh, W. H., Metaphysics (London. Hutchison University Library, 1963), p. 120 ff.Google Scholar

page 32 note 3 Ryle, Gilbert, The Concept of Mind (New York, Barnes and Noble, Inc., 1949), esp. chapters 3–6.Google Scholar

page 33 note 1 Ryle, Gilbert, The Concept of Mind, p. 78.Google Scholar

page 33 note 2 ibid., p. 195.

page 34 note 1 Ryle, Gilbert, The Concept of Mind, p. 197.Google Scholar

page 34 note 2 For a comparison of these two models, see Hampshire, Stuart and Hart, H. L. A., ‘Decision, Intention, and Certainty’ Mind, LXVII (January 1958), pp. 1–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 34 note 3 The ‘absolute certainty’ of decision does not exclude either the possibility that I may change my mind or that I may fail to bring off my decision.

page 35 note 1 By a ‘metaphysical’ solution to the problem of free agency, I mean a proposal which shows the relationship between a consideration of human actions as occurrences, that is, which views them in terms of sequences and uniformities, and an account of them as the effects of an agent. Cf., for instance, Farrer, Austin, The Freedom of the Will (London. Adam and Charles Black, 1958), esp. chapter 9.Google Scholar

page 35 note 2 Walsh, W. H. arrives at the same conclusion. Op. cit., pp. 193–4.Google Scholar

page 36 note 1 , Allen, op. cit., pp. 199–200.Google Scholar

page 36 note 2 ibid., p. 195.

page 37 note 1 Allen op. cit., p.195. This is illustrated also by Hordern's, W.Speaking of God, in which he treats religious discourse as a ‘convictional language game.’ Cf. note 1.Google Scholar

page 37 note 2 ibid., p. 200.

page 38 note 1 Farrer, Austin, Faith and Speculation (London. Adam and Charles Black, 1967), p. 13. J. S. K. Ward is making the same point, I take it, when he remarks that ‘believers would not admit that the way the world is seen is quite an arbitrary decision, and that the world itself is quite ambiguous, so that it may seem theistic to one person and atheistic to another, when all the facts are equally evident to both.’ Theistic faith rules out other world views because it is prepared to argue that the decision not to view the world theistically is, in some sense, incompatible with the ‘facts’Google Scholar. Cf. , Ward, ‘Existence, Transcendence and God’ Religious Studies, III (April 1968), pp. 466–7.Google Scholar

page 38 note 2 , Allen, op. cit., p. 194.Google Scholar

page 38 note 3 This is what Allen does when he positions metaphysical explanation ‘in continuity with’ other forms of explanation. There is a sense in which this is true; but the sense in which theistic meta-physics is discontinuous with other forms of explanation is all important. It is one thing to attempt to get finite reality into focus by viewing it through the perspectives of the various sciences; it is something else to become aware of finite being as the field of a divine activity. One must, in the second case, ‘get God into focus, as well as his finite creations; and this is to go into another dimension, with which the modes of natural knowledge are not concerned.’ Farrer, Faith and Speculation, p. 21.

page 38 note 4 Cf. on this point, Farrer, Austin, Saving Belief (London. Hodder and Stoughton, 1964), chapter 1.Google Scholar