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Vagueness and the verifiability of ordinary faith

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Denis F. Sullivan
Denis F. Sullivan
Affiliation:
St John's University, Jamaica, New York
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Extract

The analysis of religious assertions in terms of a language game or in terms of eschotological verification are the two most notable defences today of the factual significance of religious language. But both of these approaches, I believe, are to be found wanting, not only on philosophical grounds, but especially on the grounds of faith. Neither of these approaches reflects ordinary faith, the faith of ordinary believers. And it is in terms of such ordinary faith that we can find the key to a more adequate answer to the challenge of verifiability.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 14 , Issue 4 , December 1978 , pp. 459 - 467
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1978

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References

page 460 note 1 There are some logical problems involved in trying to conceive of God's action. See, for example, Nielsen, Kai, ‘The intelligibility of God-Talk’, Religious Studies, vi, 1 (1970), 16.Google Scholar But these problems, as has been pointed out, are problems involved in conceiving any personal action. See Hudson, Donald, Ludwig Wittgenstein: the bearing of his Philosophy upon Religious Belief (London, 1968), p. 40Google Scholar and also Hudson's, A Philosophical Approach to Religion (New York, 1974), pp. 161–76Google Scholar and Tooley, Michael, ‘John Hick and the Concept of Eschatological Verification’, Religious Studies, xii, 2 (1970), 196–9.Google Scholar The resolution to them, therefore, is to be found not in philosophical theology but in the philosophy of mind.

page 460 note 2 See Hick, John, Faith and Knowledge (Ithaca, 1966), pp. 95–119, 177–8;Google ScholarHudson, , Wittgenstein, pp. 48–55;Google ScholarHare, R. M.,New Essays in Philosophical Theology, eds. Flew, Anthony and Mac-Intyre, Alasdair (New York, 1966), pp. 99–103.Google Scholar

page 461 note 1 Braithwaite, R. D., ‘An Empiricist's View of the Nature of Religious Belief’, in The Existence of God, ed. Hick, John (New York, 1964), pp. 229–52.Google Scholar

page 461 note 2 Hick, John, Faith and Knowledge, pp. 169–99.Google Scholar

page 462 note 1 Nielsen, Kai, ‘Eschatological Verification’, The Canadian journal of Theology, xvii, 4 (1960), 274–81Google Scholar

page 462 note 2 References in the text to The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, vols i–v, eds Hartshorn, Charles and Weiss, Paul (Cambridge, 1931–1935), will be by the conventional volume and paragraph number.Google Scholar

page 462 note 3 MS 283, 137. The manuscript numbers are from Robin's, RichardAnnotated Catalogue of the Papers of Charles S. Peirc (Amherst, 1967).Google Scholar

page 466 note 1 In the Christian tradition the ordinary faith of the first believers has a privileged status.