Claims about ‘the meaning of life’ have tended to be made and discussed in conjunction with bold metaphysical and theological affirmations. For life to have meaning, there must (it is assumed) be a comprehensive divine plan to give it meaning, or there must be an intelligible cosmic process with a ‘telos’ that a man needs to know if his life is to be meaningfully orientated. Or, it is thought to be a condition of the meaningfulness of life, that values should be ultimately ‘conserved’ in some way, that no evil should be unredeemable and irrational. And it may be claimed that if death were to end our experience, meaninglessness would triumph.

Epistemologists have not usually had much to say about believing ‘in’, though ever since Plato's time they have been interested in believing ‘that’. Students of religion, on the other hand, have been greatly concerned with belief ‘in’, and many of them, I think, would maintain that it is something quite different from belief ‘that’. Surely belief ‘in’ is an attitude to a person, whether human or divine, while belief ‘that’ is just an attitude to a proposition? Could any difference be more obvious than this? And if we over-look it, shall we not be led into a quite mistaken analysis of religious belief, at any rate if it is religious belief of the theistic sort? On this view belief ‘in’ is not a propositional attitude at all.

Various attempts have been made in recent years to present Christianity in such a way that no use is made of the traditional dichotomy between the ‘natural’ and the ‘supernatural’. Braithwaite, Hare, and van Buren, for instance, appear to have no use for the dichotomy; and I think that, without too much distortion, one can say the same of Bultmann, Tillich, and Robinson. I am not, however, concerned in this paper with the work of any one thinker as such, but rather with a general climate of opinion. What I want to do is to examine the grounds on which it might be argued that belief in the supernatural is discredited. The issue seems to me of special importance at the present time, since, if these grounds are inadequate, programmes of reform under the general heading ‘Christianity without the supernatural’lose much of their point; if, on the other hand, the grounds are compelling, then reform of some kind is forced upon us whatever the accompanying difficulties.

A rough circumscription of our area of study will be achieved when I say that by images I mean the kind of thing about which Ian Crombie and Austin Farrer have written in Faith and Logic and Farrer also in The Glass of Vision. In the latter work Farrer cites as examples of religious images the Kingdom of God, the Son of Man, the Israel of God and the ‘infinitely complex and fertile image of sacrifice and communion, of expiation and covenant’. Farrer's images are essentially verbal pictures whose function is to interpret and elucidate revelatory events. He writes:

The great images interpreted the events of Christ's ministry, death and resurrection, and the events interpreted the images; the interplay of the two is revelation. Certainly the events without the images would be no revelation at all, and the images without the events would remain shadows on the clouds. The events by themselves are not revelation, for they do not by themselves reveal the divine work which is accomplished in them: the martyrdom of a virtuous Rabbi and his miraculous return are not of themselves the redemption of the world.

I do not think that the existence of God can be proved or even that the main justification for the belief can be found in argument in the ordinary sense of that term, but I think two of the three which have, since Kant at least, been classified as the traditional arguments of natural theology have some force and are worthy of serious consideration. This consideration I shall now proceed to give. I cannot say this of the remaining one of the arguments, the ‘ontological proof’, which I shall therefore not discuss here.

I am not so insular and I hope not so presumptuous as to suppose that there is no contemporary philosophy apart from that empiricism which dominates very much of Great Britain, North America and Scandinavia. So let us notice that contemporary philosophy embraces broadly three points of view, though it will be part of my argument that they largely combine in the lessons they have to teach us, and in many of their implications for theology.

The word mysticism serves to draw attention to certain similarities in religious experience in both Western and Eastern religion, and it is difficult to find a really satisfactory substitute. What is important is that we should not suppose it to be a simple term, but should recognise that it has many variations. There are varieties of mysticism, recognisable by a certain family resemblance, and it is probably safer therefore to use the word with some qualifying adjective, e.g. Christian mysticism, Jewish mysticism, and so on.

The popular belief that religion is the same everywhere or that all religions are ‘at bottom’ identical in essentials is a widespread falsehood that is saved from being completely worthless by the fact that religion does exhibit a universal or common structure wherever it appears. This structure is intimately related to the structure of human life in the world. The enduring pattern that enables us to understand religions widely separated in both time and space depends largely on the fact that man and the process of human life in the world have their own structures which remain, despite the undeniable variety introduced by vast differences of culture, ethnic features, geographical location, climate etc. Structure means pattern or form; it is reality significantly organised. It can be grasped as that which endures above and beyond changing historical details. Because human life has a structure, we are able to understand the wrath of Achilles or sympathise with the love of Abélard for Héloïse although we are separated from both by centuries of time.

A considerable part of mystical literature deals with, or reports on, experiences that are of a cognitive and not merely of an emotive nature. Information is alleged to have been received not only from higher spheres but also about these higher spheres. Detailed, and at times highly complex, theories are put forward regarding the nature and evolution of the cosmos, the essence of man and his place and function in the scheme of things. The writings of many mystics reveal mysteries that have been infused from above, or apprehended ‘from below’ by the development and use of special spiritual or mental organs. What all these higher insights have in common in spite of their great diversity, is their discursive, objective and detailed, elaborate character. Mysticism of this type is a kind of supernal science. It is distinct from ordinary science as regards its origin and its emotional charge, but it is similar to science in terms of its formal structure. The Jewish mysticism known as Kabbalah is, I think, an instructive example of this discursive tendency, for the literary output of the kabbalists very largely substitutes a theosophical dialectic for the traditional legal dialectic of the Talmudic rabbis. In the case of the kabbalists this tendency was indebted to the medieval identification of mysticism and prophecy: like prophecy, every illumination by the Holy Spirit was supposed to be a matter of ‘clear and distinct’ contents. But, of course, not every form of cognitive mysticism is related to doctrines of prophecy. Cognitive mysticism can be found everywhere, in the revelation of gnostic mysteries as well as in the quest of modern ‘spiritual’ sciences, such as theosophy and anthroposophy, for hidden and occult truths.

In this article I propose to discuss some recent theological contributions to the problem of the historicity of the Gospels, and I wish to suggest that philosophical issues may ultimately be relevant to its solution.

Professor R. C. Zaehner's distinction between panenhenic, monistic and theistic mysticism will be examined. It will be argued that there is no necessary reason to suppose that the latter two types involve different sorts of experience: the difference lies rather in the way the experience is interpreted. Likewise it will be argued that the Theravādin experience of nirvana, which is interpreted neither in a monistic nor in a theistic sense, may well be identical substantially with the foregoing two types. All this raises important methodological problems, in relation to the contrast between experience and interpretation. The fact that mysticism is substantially the same in different cultures and religions does not, however, entail that there is a ‘perennial philosophy’ common to mystics. Their doctrines are determined partly by factors other than mystical experience itself.

(5) ἆρ' ∈ἰ kaì ⋯γ ∈´νητον (282 a 25) … πρòς τò ɸθαρτόν, ⋯ϕ' ᾧΘ (283 a 3). Aristotle claims so far to have proved that the eternal is incorruptible and that it is ungenerated. He has still to prove the converse of each of these propositions, namely, that whatever is incorruptible is eternal and that whatever is ungenerated is eternal also. After putting the thesis in question form he gives a further definition of ⋯γ∈´νητος and ἄɸθαρτος in the parenthesis of 282 a 27–30. Unfortunately in both cases he uses the assertoric form of the definiens, although in chapter 11 he had used a modal form in the relevant passages (cf. kυρίως 280 b 32 and 282 a 27); but this confusion does not seem to affect the immediate trend of the argument. He then (282 a 30—b 1) shows that his thesis follows necessarily from the convertibility of ⋯γ∈´νητος and ἄɸθαρτος. The additional premiss that is necessary in order to secure this inference, namely, that that which is both ungenerated and incorruptible is eternal, is clear from the definition of the terms. It is also clear from the convertibility of ɸθαρτóς and γ∈ νητóς, which itself is entailed by the supposed convertibility of their contradictories. This last inference seems too trivial to deserve a mention, but Aristotle devotes 282 b 2–5 to proving it. Then, having demonstrated to his satisfaction that the convertibility of ἄɸθαρτος and ⋯γ∈´νητος necessarily implies the eternity of both the incorruptible and the ungenerated, he adds, for good measure, that if the terms are not convertible the implication is no longer necessary (282 b 5–7).

The one clear insight which can be gleaned from the discussions of religious language by both theologians and philosophers is that its reference is to the transcendent. This is almost axiomatic in Philosophy of Religion nowadays, and we feel that the remarks of Milton's archangel to the first man are most appropriate when he insists that all the conceptions we have of God or of the spiritual world are but inadequate symbols. Though this view has a long history, it does not seem to have been at all general in antiquity. It may be said to have begun with Plato and then to have continued through later generations in Neo-Platonism till it mingled with the Christian tradition. We can see how easily such traditions were fused when we look at the fusion of Platonism and Judaism in Philo of Alexandria. This is how he expounds the Exodus passage where Moses is allowed to see the back, but not the face, of God:

Everything which is subsequent to God the virtuous man may apprehend: God alone is inapprehensible. That is to say, God is not apprehensible by direct frontal approach—for such approach would imply God's being disclosed such as He is: but He is apprehensible through the Powers which are consequent upon His being; for those Powers do not present His being, nature, essence but only His existence from the resultant effects.

In a discussion-note in Mind (July 1958), Father P. M. Farrell, O.P., gave an account, in what he admitted to be an embarrassingly brief compass, of the Thomist doctrine concerning evil. There is one sentence in this discussion which at first glance appears paradoxical. Father Farrell has been arguing that a universe containing ‘corruptible good’ as well as incorruptible is better than one containing ‘incorruptible good’ only. He continues: ‘If, however, they are to manifest this corruptible good, they must be corruptible and they must sometimes corrupt.’ The final words, despite Father Farrell's italics, strike one as expressing, not a self-evident truth, but a non sequitur. The fact that I am capable of committing murder does not entail that I will at some time commit it. It is not immediately obvious that a similar entailment holds in the case of corruption and corruptibility.

The Irish poet W. B. Yeats once wrote, with great sapience and perception:

Nor dread, nor hope attend

A dying animal;

A man awaits his end

Dreading and hoping all.

That death has ever been a problem to man is attested as far back as we can trace our species in the archaeological record—indeed, it seems to have been a problem even for that immediate precursor of homo sapiens, the so-called Neanderthal Man; for he buried his dead.

The appearance of several important books on Indian religion and philosophy provides an opportunity for consideration of the attractions and obstacles to understanding that important world of thought. At the end of the British Raj it seemed as if there might be a slackening of interest in India, but nothing will stop Indians writing and many books arestill coming from European and American writers. But how reliable are they? ‘Indian philosophy is much bound up with theology’, remarks Ninian Smart, and ‘suspicions of Indian philosophy are not mitigated by the current Western enthusiasm for Oriental spirituality: travelling monks and yogis (though often innocent of pompous intentions) tend to speak of their “philosophy” rather than of religion, partly because the latter term is loaded in a special way in its Western use. Thus they give the impression that spiritual uplift, rather than analytic exactness, is the chief characteristic of Indian philosophy.’ On the other hand, ‘there is the prevalent suspicion, among English-speaking philosophers, that the theological bent of much Indian metaphysics means that Indian argumentation is neither rigorous nor realistic’. And in any case it may be held that ‘philosophy is either an international activity where national roots are irrelevant or it is mere history of ideas’, and so the complex Indian schools are only of incidental interest.

Two successive theologians at Westminster College, Cambridge, John Oman and Herbert H. Farmer, represented a distinctive theological development which extended over fifty years of the present century. Oman with his original mind was the inaugurator; Farmer was the disciple who followed with great devotion, but who also exhibited independence and attempted to bring his teacher's insight into creative relation with later theological emphases, especially with the renewed interest in Christology.