Ever since the time of Pascal men have feared that the ‘God’ worshipped by believers and the ‘God’ contemplated by philosophers were somehow different. The former was personal, historically active, slow to anger and plentiful in mercy: the latter was dubiously able to be described in personal terms at all, and infinite in such a way as to baffle the imagination. The ‘God’ of the former at least had the advantage of complying with what was alleged to be religious experience: and so it was not surprising that religious men feared that the ‘God’ of philosophy threatened that experience itself; whereas at times philosophers have fed such suspicions by denying to God various properties not on logical grounds but because close involvement with man seemed to them not to comport with the divine dignity.

‘What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What accord is there between the Academy and the Church? Our instruction comes from the porch of Solomon, who has himself taught that the Lord must be sought in simplicity of heart. Away with those who have brought forward a Stoic, or Platonic or dialectic Christianity. As for us, we need not be concerned to know anything but Jesus Christ, in quest of anything but the Gospel. Inasmuch as we have faith, we need not believe anything else.’ Such are the thoroughly uncompromising terms in which, about the year 200, Tertullian defined an entirely negative relationship—what he at least considered the utter incompatibility—of Christianity and pagan philosophy.

In this paper I propose to examine the cognitive status of mystical experience.

There are, I think, (at least) three distinct but overlapping sorts of religious experience. (1) In the first place, there are two kinds of mystical experience. The extrovertive or nature mystic (in some sense) identifies himself with a world which is both transfigured and one. The introvertive mystic withdraws from the world and, after stripping the mind of concepts and images, experiences union with something which (in some respects at least) can be described as an undifferentiated unity. Introvertive mysticism is a more important phenomenon than extrovertive mysticism. (2) Numinous experiences are complex experiences involving dread, awe, wonder, and fascination. One (apparently) finds oneself confronted with something which is radically unlike ordinary objects. Before its overwhelming majesty and power, one is nothing but dust and ashes. In contrasting oneself with its uncanny beauty and goodness, one experiences one's own uncleanness and ugliness. (3) The experiences bound up with the devotional life of the ordinary believer (gratitude, love, trust, filial fear, etc.) are also religious in character. Nevertheless these more ordinary experiences should, I think, be distinguished both from numinous experiences and from mystical experiences, for they do not appear to involve the sense of immediate presence which characterises the latter.

To mount a critique of Freud's views on any polemical issue is almost always a risky business. This is partly because one remembers the fate of so many of his earlier critics. As Phillip Rieff so delightfully puts it, ‘much of Freud's polemical writing is so superior to that of his opponents, that it takes on the character of a totem feast in which the most powerful sons are carved up with swift clean strokes, the father, meanwhile, justifying his action at every stroke’. There is also the possibility that exposure to psychoanalytic theory of one's own presuppositions and views will result in their being transformed into something quite different or to their being quite psychoanalysed away. Nevertheless the task must be undertaken. Freud's approach to religion has had too pervasive an influence upon modern thought to be ignored. Also, its complexity and potential have not always been sufficiently discerned by those who, especially from a Christian point of view, have sought to grapple with it.

In the continuing dialogue between Western philosophy and the Christian religion, the central issue has generally been the existence of God. There has however been a discernible shift in the focus of the discussion in recent years. Rather than the existence of God, the issue now seems to be the concept of God. It is increasingly argued by philosophers critical of religion that the concept of God is basically incoherent, and that therefore the question of God's existence or non-existence does not even arise. What cannot be conceived is not even a possible object of faith.

Dr Ian Ramsey has made considerable use of the word ‘disclosure’ in what he has to say about religion and in his attempts to give an account of the meaning of religious language. He sometimes (e.g. in Religious Language) speaks of ‘discernment’ or ‘insight’ but ‘disclosure’ is the word he normally favours. In what follows I shall ask: what a disclosure is, to what extent Dr Ramsey's use of the notion leads to confusions, and what questions have to be faced in order to resolve these confusions.

Anselm built his meditation Proslogion on the formula ‘that than which nothing greater can be conceived’. The peculiarity of this phrase has been often remarked but not, I believe, fully appreciated. Properly understood, I shall argue, this formula, although unable to support the so-called ontological argument, throws important light on the logic of the religious use of the word ‘God’. My argument will turn on the difference between the two uses of the verb ‘conceive’ in Anselm's claim that we can conceive of that than which nothing greater can be conceived.

People not only disagree about religious belief, but they disagree about what it is to disagree about religious belief; and consequently about what it would be for one religion to be uniquely true. What I shall try to do first is to characterise the nature of religious disagreement; and next to suggest in what the uniqueness of Christianity might consist.

Expressions used in religious contexts have often seemed odd and paradoxical to philosophers. Statements have appeared in Christian discourse to the effect that God is not a person and yet is a person, that he is a servant and a king, that he is nothingness and being itself. These statements appear unintelligible either because their terms are self-contradictory or because they are mutually exclusive.

It appears to me that most traditional criticism of the Ontological argument misses the mark because the proponents imply a premise which, if true, would validate their argument on precisely the point attacked by the opponents. In view of this possibility, I propose the following analysis:

(1) state the traditional ontological argument without the implied premise;

(2) state the traditional criticisms, showing how they miss the mark;

(3) restate the ontological argument with the implied premise made clear;

(4) offer a defence of the implied premise;

(5) show how the ontological argument is still invalidated by another criticism;

(6) argue that the only way to avoid this other criticism is to borrow another premise from the cosmological argument, and

(7) that when these premises are borrowed the result is a valid form of the cosmological argument for the existence of a necessary being.

It has often been claimed by philosophical theologians that the concept of God functions as an ‘ultimate explanation’ of the nature of the universe. In recent years, various theologians have regarded this notion of ‘ultimate explanation’ as one which has a central place in religious belief; and they construe the concept of God, at least in part, and sometimes mainly, as a concept which provides such an explanation. On the other hand, from the time of David Hume there has been a long line of eminent philosophers who have found the whole idea of an ultimate explanation—something which completely explains absolutely everything—an incoherent one, analogous to the idea of the square of a circle. I think it worth trying to explore the possibilities and limits of the notion, and attempting to assess its importance for religious belief. First, I will briefly sketch the notion as it is found in recent work, and then offer an analysis of the notion of ‘explanation’ in general. Finally, I will try to ascertain the nature and limits of the notion in religion.

In the philosophical world Anselm is known almost exclusively for the work in his two earliest writings, the Monologion and Proslogion, which, of course, includes his celebrated ontological argument for the existence of God. It is unfortunate that the rest of his work is not more widely known, for he makes some important contributions to western thought in later treatises that are virtually unknown to present-day philosophers and theologians. One such contribution is his concept of freedom, which he explains and defends primarily in De Libertate Arbitrii (hereafter DLA), written somewhere between 1085 and 1090. Anselm's concept of freedom is important for a number of reasons. First, he argues for a definition of freedom which is significantly different from others found in the history of western thought. Second, in his investigation of freedom he makes use of a methodological procedure which in certain respects has striking similarities (though there are also important differences) to certain analytic techniques well-known today. And finally, the single definition that Anselm provides is intended to include in its compass two major and seemingly different senses of ‘freedom’.

What I shall call ‘the ordinary Christian view of life after death’, namely, the belief that after persons die, their souls go to some kind of spiritual abode (‘Heaven’, ‘Hell’ or ‘Purgatory’, depending on God's Judgement), has come in for a great deal of criticism in recent years. Opponents of the belief have been encouraged by the lack of evidence from the countless areas of scientific research and by the large numbers of philosophers (even Christian philosophers) who claim that a proper understanding of personal identity precludes any sort of hope of existence in a non-physical body.

When we think of the problem of ‘universals’, we tend first of all to identify this issue with medieval philosophy. In that period the arguments ran hot and heavy, and the result was that philosophers almost came to be classified according to the position each took about the relation between the individual and universal concepts. Of course, the fact is that the problem of universals has been important in every philosophical age in western thought. Metaphysics as an enterprise may rise and fall in popularity, but the problem of universals is always with us. Yet, like most philosophical problems of importance, it has not always meant one thing.

The great Falsification Debate about the logical status of religious beliefs seems fairly quiescent at present. Most philosophers of religion have opted for one or the other of two opposite responses to the falsificationists' challenge.

In a recent article Professor Phillips has argued against Mascall's contention that the role of philosophy in relation to religious belief is to justify that belief by seeking ‘rational grounds for asserting the existence of God’. In this paper I shall investigate the case Phillips presents and the argument he utilises from Winch to establish the conclusion that it is a fundamental misunderstanding to think that one could justify religious belief and I shall further point out a serious dilemma in Phillips's position on the question of religious truth. It is my claim that Phillips does not establish that Mascall's enterprise is an impossible one and that his own position in criticising Mascall leads him into the dilemma I have alluded to.

The status of religion in the modern world is intimately related to the rise of science. The clearest way of getting at this relation is to consider the issue of miracle. Given the success of scientists in predicting and controlling natural phenomena, many of the leading theologians of the modern era abandoned the understanding of miracle as a supernatural violation of natural regularities. They conceded the capacity of scientists to offer natural explanations of phenomena that are naturally observable and shifted their theological focus from the observable patterns of nature to morality, religious experience, and history. Although many liberal and existentialistic theologians affirmed the miraculous, especially with regard to the Resurrection, they avoided a head on collision with science.

What is Contemplation? What is Reason?

Will the answers to these questions allow one to compare and distinguish them on a common level? If this comparison and this distinction succeed and are to lead us to a better understanding of human knowledge, how do we have to conceive of that human knowledge itself? And, finally, if this is to be done in the light of a theory of values, what are values, and which values are there?

In The Historian and the Believer Van Harvey advances the opinion that belief in the resurrection of Jesus is not necessary for radical faith in God. He supports this idea by trying to establish two things: that radical faith has no clear relation to any remote historical event, and that the idea of a resurrection of Jesus is either incredible (if it is supposed to be an historical event) or meaningless (if it is supposed to be an event that transcends history). I want to argue that these last two contentions are false, and that in certain quite ordinary circumstances—such as one's believing that Jesus was the decisive revelation of God's grace—belief in the resurrection of Jesus is necessary for radical faith in God, unless the concept of God is altered substantially.