The philosophy of religion
Encyclopedia Britannica
The study, from a philosophical perspective, of the nature of religion and religious belief, including such specific questions as the existence and nature of God and the presence of evil and suffering in the world
In addition to treating what is commonly called the philosophy of religion, this article considers a wide spectrum of situations, experiences, and issues recognized as “religious” and endeavours to appraise the characteristic approaches and attitudes not only of the adherents of particular religions but also of those who stand outside any particular religion, whether as sympathizers or caustic critics. Outside the scope of this discussion, however, are questions relating to the study of religions and its methodology or questions relating to the types of argument by which one interpretation of a religious claim is preferred to another
Contents
1 Religion as a fact in human experience, culture, and history
1.1 The findings of psychology
1.3 The findings of the history of religions
1.4 The role of religion in culture
2 Views with transcendent references
2.1 Relation to an ultimate power or being, to values, or to ideals
2.2 Seeking salvation in a life beyond
3 Views with anthropic references
3.1 Inner attitudes and dispositions
3.2 Behavioral discipline with prescribed practices
3.3 Participation in a social institution
3.4 The view from within as privileged
4 The dimension of religion for insiders
4.1 The essence or core of religion
4.2 The subjective and objective aspects of religion
4.3 The dimension of religion for insiders
4.4 Effects of religious beliefs and practices
4.5 Internal criticisms of religion
5 The rejection of religion or religiousness
5.1 Rejections on the grounds of alleged incoherence
5.1.1 Alleged logical incoherence
5.1.2 Alleged moral incoherence
5.2 Other grounds for the rejection of religion
5.2.1 Rejection of historical beliefs, practices, and institutions as spurious or irrelevant
5.2.2 Rejection of religious sentiments or dispositions as valueless
5.2.3 Naturalistic or skeptical views of the origin and development of religion
6 The acknowledgment of religion or religiousness as valid
6.1 Traditional justifications
6.1.1 Religion as pointing to an ultimate power, being, or value
6.1.2 Religion as producing wholesome spiritual or moral effects
6.2 Alternatives to traditional beliefs, practices, and institutions
6.2.1 The quest for authentic existence
7 History of the philosophy of religion
7.1.1 Ancient and medieval concepts
7.2.2 Confucian, Taoist, and Japanese concepts
7.2.5 East and West: common ground
8 Basic themes and problems in the philosophy of religion
8.1 The problem of God, the Absolute, or the supreme value
8.2.2 Self-identity and immortality
9 The present situation in the philosophy of religion
The philosophy of religion
Evidences of religious attitudes and loyalties exist in every sector of human life—in human experience in general; in “culture,” the complex interweaving of attitudes, concerns, and views; and in history, the record of social and personal behaviour
Religion incorporates certain characteristic feelings and emotions such as wonder, awe, and reverence. The religious person tends to show a concern for values, moral and aesthetic, and to seek appropriate action to embody these values. He is likely to characterize behaviour not only as good or evil but also as holy or unholy and people as not only virtuous or unvirtuous but also as godly or ungodly
As a feature of human existence, religious life can be studied, for example, in terms of psychology, sociology, and history. Among the first books in the psychology of religion were two by Jonathan Edwards, an 18th-century American theologian: A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God (1737) and A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections (1746). About a century later, during a period of religious “revivals,” interest developed concerning the age at which conversions most often took place—the period of adolescence. Reflections on such facts, and in this sense the psychology of religion, only came, however, with the works of two American psychologists: Edwin Diller Starbuck's Psychology of Religion (1889) and the classical treatment by William James's Varieties of Religious Experience (1902). Generally, the psychology of religion has shown that though religion for some is a crisis experience, for others it is a natural growth
As psychology became more analytical it became more interested in the abnormal, in neuroses and dreams, in the techniques of hypnosis, and in the kinds of experience induced by drugs. When Freud spoke of religion as an illusion, he maintained that it is a fantasy structure from which a man must be set free if he is to grow to maturity; and in his treatment of the unconscious he moved toward atheism. The study of the unconscious by the Swiss psychiatrist Jung, however, suggested that dominant archetypes (implying innate tendencies to form symbolic images) are supplied by a racial unconscious, thus providing a psychological approach to belief in God
In classifying individuals into different types, psychology has distinguished between religious people who are: “extrovert” or “introvert” (Jung), “healthy minded” or “sick” (William James), and “objective” or “subjective” worshippers (J.B. Pratt). There is always the danger, however, that psychological distinctions may beg too many philosophical questions
One of the most widely accepted studies of religious experience in regard to feelings was written by the modern German Protestant theologian Rudolf Otto. In his Idea of the Holy, Otto analyzed what is distinctively religious in terms of the unique concept of the “numinous”; i.e., something both awesome and appealing, both fearful and attractive
Psychology, however, is concerned not only with individuals but also with what is known about group behaviour, which can also be of importance in any study of the Christian Church or other religious institutions regarded as communities of religious people. The authority of a religious leader, like that of all leaders, is derived from his symbolic character and the extent to which the leader and his followers share a common ideal
The ideas and images of a religion are much influenced by the social culture in which it emerges. Some of the oldest social institutions and practices, such as those concerning birth and death, marriage and the family, and art and music, have developed in a religious context. Religion has often been a driving force in the reform of social abuses, but also it has been associated with reaction and oppression. More recently, the sociology of religion—influenced by contemporary sociology—has been concerned with making use of sociological criteria and of demographical and statistical studies in planning the church's mission and appraising its significance
Conclusions in the history of religions have been largely determined by the particular ideas of man or history with which the study was approached. Some scholars have supposed that at the dawn of human existence there was a belief in a single god and that only later there occurred a development into a belief in many gods as well as animism (a belief in souls or spirits in man and other aspects of nature). Other scholars have supposed an evolutionary development of religion, which only reached monotheism—considered to be the highest form of religious belief—after a long period of purification. The two approaches sponsor, respectively, two contrasting myths about primitive man. According to the one, there was once a golden age of innocence and harmony; according to the other, the life of the earliest man was nasty, brutish, and short
Granted the ubiquity of religion and its diversity, historians have found no universal essence expressible in terms of common beliefs. What is probably common to all religions is nothing more than the claim that reality is not restricted solely to what is yielded by sense experience itself
Religion has had a strong but ambiguous cultural influence. The thought that a man depended for his life and existence on a power not his own has encouraged some persons to be lazy, as it has inspired others to greater effort. A conviction about another world has led some religious people to disvalue human life; it has led others to view human life as having the significance of a state of probation. It has been plausibly argued by some (e.g., the German sociologist Max Weber) that Protestantism provided a seedbed for modern capitalism; Catholicism, according to others, easily accommodates a Socialist point of view
Because a religious view is generally associated with a conviction about the inadequacy of “things seen and temporal,” religion as a cultural influence usually shows itself dissatisfied with things as they are. Often, however, when confronted with novelty, religion has tended to be conservative. Thus, religion has alternately opposed or fostered social and cultural development
A situation is regarded as religious when through its spatiotemporal features what can be termed depth or another dimension can be disclosed objectively. In this sense, there cannot be such a thing as a religion that is nontranscendent. On the subjective side, there will be a matching self-disclosure, a “coming to one's self” that occurs as a response to a vision of the eternal in and through the temporal
Different religious approaches can be distinguished by the different interpretations they give of what is objectively disclosed, of what in this sense is the transcendent. In primitive religion, for example, the transcendent is always interpreted in terms of an ultimate power or activity expressing itself, whether singly (monism) or with multiplicity (pluralism), through the objects and events of the world
Animism views the world as having life, power, and feeling as do men. A monistic view of the universe is conceptually akin to the view according to which people or objects exert the peculiar influence they do and have the strange significance they possess because of mana—a power or force somewhat similar to the scientific concept of energy—that they embody. Animism becomes more diversified and pluralistic when it becomes spiritism, which locates the cosmic life, power, and feeling in particular objects. Totemism involves a highly complex system of beliefs and practices whereby an animal or plant becomes a totem, or a focal symbol for the life and well-being of a tribe. Just as tribal communities are sustained by a power that the totem symbolizes and expresses, so the patterns of tribal behaviour are maintained by taboos. Persons, things, and behaviour are taboo, or are prohibited to members of a society, when they are judged to be so highly charged with sacred power that ordinary “profane” persons must keep their distance
These primitive viewpoints have a certain conceptual kinship with what the more sophisticated religious viewpoints have labelled with such terms as theism, polytheism, pluralism, and Idealism. Theism interprets the one cosmic, life-giving power in personal terms—different versions varying in their views of the adequacy of those personal terms. Polytheism posits a multiplicity of cosmic personal powers on whose activity (whether in cooperation or conflict) the universe depends. Pluralism views cosmic power as mediated and expressed through a multiplicity of ultimates (e.g., finite persons) or otherwise views the universe as best understood in terms of ultimate atomic units, with no claim made for the absolute supremacy of any one of them. In this way, pluralism—even of a personal kind—differs from theism, which holds that God is a Supreme Person
Absolute Idealism maintains that activity is an ultimate category but makes no claim, as does theism, for this activity to be personal. Instead, it takes a biological organism as its dominant model. Theism, like deism, has sometimes posited an ultimate personal power or being beyond, above, and certainly separated from the changing scenes of life, whereas absolute Idealism posits an ultimate power or being that is considered to be the whole, of which the changing scenes of life are but a part
Religion is not merely a matter of being aware of a transcendent dimension nor is it merely a claim for a broader and more comprehensive view of the reality. Fundamental to religion is the conviction that through a right relation with a cosmic power or powers, man will find his salvation. Various views of such salvation have been held. Salvation has been regarded as something attainable only after this life. Other views, however, tend to posit a salvation for man through escape rather than fulfillment. Alternatively, salvation may be viewed as something anticipated in the present but fulfilled perfectly after this life. Salvation also has been interpreted in terms of fellowship with God or as a state of bliss needing no God (as by the early 20th-century British philosopher J.M.E. McTaggart), as a state of ultimate peace that arises when man sees his peculiar and rightful place in the whole universe (as by Spinoza), and as a state of bliss in which man cannot properly speak of himself as a self-conscious individual as in the Buddhist state of Nirvana
A religious view of the universe contends that a new dimension and depth can be disclosed within the person who responds. Though religious faith has its characteristic inner attitudes and dispositions, they must be of a transcendently self-involving kind, and there must be a depth to any attitude or disposition before it can be called religious. Thus, the attitude of awe is related to the feeling of fear. For fear to become awe, however, it must be characterized by a particular depth and self-involvement that come from responding to the presence and activity of God, or of the sacred or holy that call it forth
Religion relates to the whole of a man's personality and because of this totality of human response, people speak of “conversion” in relation to religious attitudes. Generally, a person who becomes religious or ceases to be religious undergoes a profound transformation. Persons who have become converted to religion speak of the world as having taken on a fuller and richer dimension; those for whom the religious vision has disappeared speak of a world as having become flat, dead, and bleak
Many religions bind their adherents to specific practices and particular moral codes. Thus, conversion has often shown itself in radical changes of behaviour; e.g., an alcoholic becoming a total abstainer. Such behaviour as murder, lying, breaking promises, stealing, and committing adultery have been condemned by the world religions. So strong is the ethical element in Confucianism that some regard it more as an ethical system than a religion. Yet, ethical (and ceremonial) codes can be transformed imperceptibly into no more than current social conventions and mere customs. Whether such codes have changed or not, their range and detail vary widely. Pork is eaten by Christians but is considered to be unclean by Jews and Muslims. Muslims and Buddhists abstain totally from alcohol; Christians and Jews need not. A Sikh will not shave his beard; but Hindus, Christians, and Muslims are free to do so if they wish. In contrast with Christians, Buddhists will not kill animals, and Muslims may practice polygamy
Whatever the diversities, religious faith is not only self-involving, but it has a social dimension as well. Hermits apart, religion brings people together as children of one family having a common father. For Christians, the significance of the universal religious community, the church, has been variously interpreted. Some, with a Protestant emphasis, have viewed the church as a voluntary institution created ad hoc for the convenience of its members to enable them to gather together to worship, to sing hymns, and to share common interests and beliefs. The Catholic view is that the church is a social institution that is derived from God and whose structure expresses the givenness of God himself
To be of religious significance, however, social practices and moral codes, like inner experiences must have depth, a transcendent dimension, or they become superficial and dangerous parodies of religion, all the more dangerous for being in their outward features so similar
The assertion that the view of religion from within is privileged needs careful analysis
First, religious faith is logically privileged insofar as it is characterized by a self-involvement, commitment to which partial commitments can only point. A temporary loyalty, however intensive, is at best a distant pointer to a conversion. Further, because religious faith is grounded in a disclosure, there is something logically privileged about it in the same sense that some are “privileged” to understand a joke when others do not. Yet, even though religion has a disclosure basis, it is still true that just as there are techniques for jokes so also are there techniques for meditation, whether in Christianity or in other religions. By virtue of such techniques men can have a reasonable expectation of a view of religion from within. In another sense, the view that religion from within is privileged may merely mean that if a man believes something and is committed, he is more involved than a man who does not believe
One aspect of the logically privileged position of religion might be called its semantic privilege; i.e., the fact that a religious vision cannot adequately be expressed. One fundamental problem for religious language, according to linguistic analysts, is to discover more reliable rather than less reliable ways of talking. One need not presuppose, however, so fundamental a distinction between the sacred and the secular that men become committed to total silence on religious matters. When St. Paul, for example, wrote of being “caught up” (in II Cor.) he “heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter.” If this statement of Paul's were generally true of religion, however, religious people would be so privileged that they would be living in a segregated silence
Some scholars have argued that the privileged character of religion makes it unsuitable as a proper study for the philosopher, who must in principle be detached, not committed, and have an openness to all truth. The lack of finality in philosophical thought is contrasted with religious commitment and the final claims sometimes made for religious doctrine. Nevertheless, insofar as anyone has a coherent world view, there will be some degree of commitment
Religion is not, however, altogether beyond argument, and those who are outside a religion can still have some inkling of what is being discussed within a religion and the manner in which it is being discussed, especially when the social, cultural, historical, and psychological embodiments of the religion are described. For this reason Western Christians and Jews, for example, are able to know something about the primitive religion of an African or Indonesian tribe
Thus, much about religion can be known by those outside it, however, views about the nature of religion and definitions of religion have a systematic inadequacy about them. Like everything of the spirit, religion cannot be described so as to make clear to the detached observer the characteristic quality and depth of religious awareness and commitment
For the insider, the essence of religion is given in a moment of vision and disclosure. Friedrich Schleiermacher, a German philosopher of the 18th and 19th centuries, described the basic religious experience in terms of a kiss or an embrace. Attempts to understand such a unity can only be made in terms of the particulars into which the unity subsequently breaks, and such particulars then fall broadly into subjective and objective compartments
Faith describes a subjective state that accepts what a disclosure discloses and is akin to personal trustfulness, to a conation or striving that, according to Spinoza, all living things display. Prayer is the utterance of words (rite) with or without some dramatic context (ceremonial) designed either to carry one into the presence of what is worshipped or to express appropriate sentiments in the presence of what is worshipped. Most prayers incorporate words that function in both ways. Ritual is especially concerned with events in human life that have disclosure possibilities and in which mystery is at its highest
Mystery in the context of religion refers to situations, such as birth, reproduction, death, and suffering, in which there are numerous possibilities for new insights and yet further insights. Public worship must constantly renew and realize in the liturgy the possibilities of the past disclosures. If the outward expressions and forms come to dominate, ritual can become an empty shell, and religious practices can become devoid of religious significance
One of the effects of religious beliefs and practices is sacralization, a process in which certain persons, days, or objects become regarded as sacred. If such objects are granted more than the status of symbols, they may become objects of idolatry or superstition
Belief in salvation, which often accompanies religious commitment, can have various practical results. If salvation is viewed as something that inspires progress and may be accomplished in the realm of time, such doctrines of salvation encourage social reforms and projects that envision an abundant life for humanity. If, on the other hand, salvation is viewed as something that is beyond the realm of time and set entirely apart from this world—something for which at best this world is a probation and at worst a sink of misery and iniquity from which the sooner man is released the better—such doctrines of salvation can be excessively individualistic and may even encourage oppression and tyranny
Religious belief has sometimes led men to detailed conclusions about nature and history. Good harvests have been interpreted as due rewards for appropriate worship or good behaviour, or both; calamities have been viewed as the results of sin, either ceremonial or moral. If God is believed to be in control of history, a nation that does what is right and follows his guidance, as expressed through its prophets and other religious personages, is expected to experience national prosperity and success. In previous periods, when this did not occur, the ensuing calamities were attributed to the backslidings of earlier generations
Many observers of religion claim that in the modern world few would suppose that God intervenes in this direct and predictable way. According to this view, God's activity in the world, apart from being expressed in its constant creativity and conservation, is effective through man's own intellectual and physical activity. Insofar as man's own creativity is exercised, however, within the framework of the order that the world displays, and in no way violates it, one cannot exclude a similar creativity on the part of God. Admittedly, the fact that man expresses his activity through an intermediate organism (his body) indicates that there is no exact parallel between God and man; nevertheless, because God's activity terminates with the universe, the analogy with God's activity might very well be expressed in the number of ways in which man can effect creative development in his own body
Internal criticisms of religion have their basis in the imbalance that occurs when one aspect or one understanding of religion is allowed to dominate the rest. Heresies have arisen when one way of understanding has been developed without balancing it with another. In the development of doctrines concerning the nature and person of Christ within Christianity, for example, heresies arose when a particular model (e.g., that of fatherhood and sonship) was believed to be capable of infinite development. The model of the Father–Son relationship was pressed too far, and the Son was subordinated to the Father in a way inconsistent with Christian orthodoxy, thus leading to what became heresy. Sectarianism develops when religious insights are associated exclusively with one particular doctrinal or theological phrase, such as justification by faith, or with one particular theological view regarding religious practices; e.g., baptism. Because religion is at once infinite and mysterious, it is important that religious belief does full justice to a wide variety of approaches
Another criticism of religion has been that it has tended to be overintellectual; and when this trait has been combined with moral laxity and factional rivalries, it has led to protests about the arrogance of intellectualized religion, often leading to the opposite error of supposing that belief does not matter as long as common sentiments are shared. Religious believers have not always recognized that for the most part their belief explicates metaphors, images, and symbols. Though ways of religious reasoning are appropriately informal and variegated, having their origins in a multitude of images and symbols, it nevertheless is considered a religious duty to produce the most reliable overall discourse based on the various images and models
The fundamental difficulty of all religious understanding, however, is to balance intelligibility and mystery. If the intelligibility is neglected, religious belief can become dishonest and religious men can lose integrity; if mystery is neglected, there may be splendid controversy and exercises in logical appraisal, but the heart of religion will have disappeared
The basic difficulty of all religions and of historical religions in particular is to effect a constant rebirth of symbols in changing cultures. In the course of time some of the most powerful images and symbols lose their fertility in promoting ideas that inform a religious community. This might be said of the image of sacrifice in the Christian religion. Religious practices and institutions, though they may have social merits, can all become stereotyped routine, as happens when they fail to preserve a sense of reverence and fail to disclose the givenness of the sacred or holy. Because religious belief is so important and influences all aspects of a society, there is a tendency for religious institutions to become authoritarian and oppressive. If a religious institution becomes interwoven with political views it can become tyrannical. Religion's only compulsion, according to some scholars, must be the compelling power of a vision, as the modern English–American philosopher Alfred North Whitehead expressed it: “The power of God is the worship He inspires.” The authority of any religion is the authority of a vision, the authority of that which, in being disclosed, inspires men and leads them to fulfillment in their lives. For a Christian, the final authority is the love of God in Christ, and love is not love if its power is anything but inspiration. For other religions there is the compelling inspiration of that to which—Nirvana or the Qur'an, the Buddha or Muhammad—point
Internal criticisms of religion usually focus on such themes as narrowness, sectarianism, traditionalism, conventionalism, materialism, and immorality. Some criticism is also reserved for religiosity, which, though granting a dimension of faith, treats faith in an altogether superficial and often unbalanced way. Religiosity represents an excessive preoccupation with religion that is depicted in an incoherent and oversimplified relating of religious faith to intellectual views and social and personal practices
Because religious commitment is so all-embracing and tends to influence thought, feelings, and behaviour, it is not surprising that there are many reasons why religious claims have been rejected
Religious claims have been rejected because of their alleged logical or moral incoherence
Logical incoherence may arise internally or externally and in relation to different issues. In regard to internal coherence, critics have maintained that man should be able to expect that God would see to it that there could be no possibility of ignoring his existence or of making mistakes about religious beliefs and behaviour, if religious convictions are so important. They have also claimed that it is altogether too naïve, though inevitable, to think of God as made in the image of man. Some have rejected theistic belief because of the incoherence of the idea of God, which must—they claim—combine so many incompatible predicates; e.g., God is eternal, yet acts in time, or he is loving and yet incapable of suffering or feeling
Religious beliefs have been alleged to be externally, as well as internally, incoherent because of their conflict with other views about the universe, especially scientific views. The doctrines of heaven and hell, in particular, which have given great personal and social significance to religious belief, have been rejected by many critics when these doctrines were viewed literally. Yet it has been the supposed actuality of heaven and hell that has given religious persons their hope and their terror respectively. Absolute Idealism, it has sometimes been alleged, is incoherent insofar as it states that time is not “real” and that evil does not really exist. This is not to say, however, that there is no temporal succession or nothing evil, claims that would be obviously incoherent. What is being claimed is that within a particular interpretation of the universe, time and evil are not left as ultimate categories but are in some sense derivative from other categories
It has been argued that by far the greatest problem of external incoherence that belief in God has to face is that of the evil and suffering that characterize the world. Critics have stated that if God cannot rid the world of evil and suffering, he is not all-powerful; if he could, but he won't, then he isn't all-good; if he is powerful and good but not all-wise, then, even though he is trying his best, there are bound to be disasters. The most serious classical expression of this problem was given by David Hume, in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779). With such considerations in mind, some philosophers, such as John Stuart Mill, have been willing to argue for a limited God—i.e., the great fellow-sufferer who understands and has compassionate sympathy
Though religious conviction shows itself in moral behaviour, it has been argued that religious people have not shown outstanding moral qualities. An 18th-century English philosopher and churchman, Bishop George Berkeley, when presented with this objection, remarked that nothing evil can be attributed as such to the Christian religion and that the only legitimate comparison is that between a person who is a Christian and what the same person would have been otherwise. The distinctiveness of the Christian faith, however, has sometimes been supported by arguing a stark contrast with morality. The 19th-century Danish philosophical theologian Søren Kierkegaard, for example, by a too literal misreading of the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac (Gen. 22), supposed that religious obedience must be in radical opposition to moral duty. However that may be, religious men often may be only too well aware of their moral lapses, their sins, and for this very reason they seek the grace and power of God. The good that they would do they do not do, and the evil that they despise they continually do, as St. Paul noted in his letter to the Romans. In this moral predicament, those with a Christian commitment believe that the grace and power of God comes to inspire and release them from the dominion of sin. This does not mean that the Christian never sins, but it does mean that he is assured of ultimate victory over sin. The Christian Church is viewed not as a society of saints but a school for sinners
The exclusiveness of religious sects is regarded by those outside the sects as hardly to the sectarians' credit. For Christians, sectarian exclusiveness is viewed as a scandal to the gospel that they preach. On the other hand, the criticisms of Puritanism that hold it as inevitably negative and oppressive sometimes fail to see that it may be neither negative nor oppressive if it is grounded in a spiritual and religious vision
The doctrine of grace (the view that God grants man abilities that man does not merit by his own efforts) has sometimes appeared to make God himself—interpreted as the spirit dwelling in a man—the actual agent of good behaviour. In this way, some interpretations of the doctrines of grace have compromised man's freedom and come close to denying man responsibility for his actions
Outside Christianity, critics have pointed to the gap between religious profession and moral action, though within Christianity, with its strong emphasis on moral transformation, the gap has been very wide and the criticism most challenging. In Hinduism for instance, Gandhian reformational and nonviolence ideals have not mixed well with social corruption or with the type of neutralism that allowed China to persecute Tibetan Buddhists. Again, the Buddhist who goes to a temple is not necessarily compassionate as his religion dictates, and the Muslim who attends services in a mosque may be less filled with an inner sense of justice and patience than with thoughts of a holy war. In Sri Lanka (Ceylon) and Vietnam nationalist loyalties have given rise to a violence untypical of Buddhism. In the last resort, however, each religion will appeal to its doctrine of salvation when presented with a gap between its moral ideals and the actual actions and behaviour of its adherents
When a religion appeals to historical events, other grounds for its rejection arise. The Old Testament view of history appears to have been exceedingly selective in order to emphasize a particular point about God and his activity. The miracles of Jesus—both those relating to his own person (his birth and Resurrection) and those that he himself performed (especially nature miracles)—conflict with what men experience in the normal course of their natural lives and experience. Prayers requesting favourable weather, plentiful crops, or safety in a journey are characterized by many as spurious and irrelevant. Ideas of God intervening in the universe, according to such critics, satisfy neither science nor religion. From a scientific point of view, “laws” of nature are no longer viewed as divine prescriptions; and the word law becomes, in fact, misleading. Furthermore, in order to allow for miraculous intervention of this kind, God's providential care is viewed as a compromise. He thus becomes the absentee landlord who absented himself from the world, which must take care of itself except for some spectacular visitation. According to this view, the only coherent way to speak of an intervention of God is to interpret it in the context of personal intervention
Religious institutions have been criticized on the grounds that they conflict with the ideas of the founder and are supported by claims that cannot be historically verified. These claims, according to critics, depend on taking certain historical events on which the religion is founded, and reinterpreting them by theological speculation or a very full imagination, to produce, for example, a doctrine of papal supremacy according to which Christ is believed to have given explicitly to the successors of St. Peter final jurisdiction over the church
According to some views, anyone who prizes “another world” must despise this world and be uncertain in his attitude toward the world around him. In this way, it is said, religion dries up the sources of its activity and attacks such happiness as this world can provide—though promising happiness hereafter, which has been called “pie in the sky” or “opiate of the people” by critics of religion. A humanist concern to liberalize and relax laws (e.g., on abortion and divorce), to abolish capital punishment, and to encourage birth control has always been opposed, according to humanists, by Christian orthodoxy, which they interpret as having a negative and conservative attitude that has proceeded from a nervous fear of a decline in moral standards. At the same time, humanists would continue, moral standards have hardly been upheld by sectarian strife and persecutions. Further, they point out, too often the church, in its desire to indicate what abides, has confused what is abiding with current social and political institutions and traditions inherited from the past, generally resulting in an illiberal obscurantism and a reactionary outlook
Some critics of religion have contended that almost all scientific progress has been hindered by religious beliefs and attitudes. Biology, physics, and geology, they have claimed, only made the rapid progress that they did when they were freed from a context of religious belief by the 17th-century philosopher René Descartes, who devised a metaphysical myth of the separation of mind and body
In the matter of the origins and development of religion, many (e.g., the psychologist James Henry Leuba in his Psychology of Religious Mysticism [1925]) have argued that there is a close connection between mysticism and hallucination, between hysteria and ecstatic institutionalized inspiration as, for example, in Pentecostal churches. Religious people, according to such views, often have personality weaknesses and are psychologically disturbed. Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, maintained that inner conflicts—often the result of repression, particularly in relation to sex—become expressed in peculiarities of behaviour and mood, especially in the vivid imagery of dreams that erupt from the unconscious area of one's personality. By comparing the symbolism of dreams and mythology, Freud held that belief in God—in particular, the father image—merely perpetuates in fantasy what the individual must in actual fact overcome as part of his growth to maturity, thus giving religious belief a treatment that not only made belief in God unnecessary but positively unhelpful
Carl Jung, a former disciple of Freud, gave a different account of the psychology of the unconscious. Each person displays a libido, a fundamental striving that is creative and purposive and of which there is evidence in the symbolic language of dreams. Behind all such symbolic language are archetypes (innate tendencies to form symbolic images), which all humanity shares and which inspire a person to move toward a balanced integration to which the energy of the libido would creatively move, if given proper freedom and encouragement. Thus, Jung posits a racial or impersonal unconscious in which, at the deepest level, all individual human beings share. Jung's archetypes raise the metaphysical question of whether they are symbols of an existent God or gods—a question that psychology leaves open. For many psychologists it is a question of little interest, because for them the archetypes themselves suffice in practice
In addition to such naturalistic or skeptical views about the origin and development of religion are other claims that religion is merely an infantile reaction to fear, a more or less harmful sublimation of sex, a projection of wishful thinking, or a social device for use in the class struggle. On the other side, however, it is likely to be pointed out that one must be careful not to indulge in the genetic fallacy: no account of the origin and development of anything, of religion in particular, is necessarily a reliable analysis of what that particular phenomenon is now; a single explanation of the origin and development of a phenomenon as complex and variegated as religion is difficult to describe and maintain. It is also necessary to beware of the “really only,” or reductionist, fallacy. To say “x is really only y” is, in effect, denying the significance of y language despite the fact that y-talk as well as x-talk already occurs; e.g., persons are really only “machines,” or worship is really only a social occasion. Over-simplification streamlines discourse at the cost of adequacy and truth
Some have thought of religion as no more than a body of stories designed to encourage a noble attitude toward life and humanity. If, however, one asks why or how these attitudes encourage and why a particular attitude is valued, what begins as a simple account of religion becomes, in the end, as complicated as any. Another criticism of religion, arguing for its redundancy, claims that the progress of man in society can and should be determined by scientific considerations. This contention, however, goes beyond the particular conclusions of the individual sciences; it is to make a philosophy out of science. On the one hand, such a scientific view of man and society would be open to philosophical criticism, not the least if it were suggested that man's subjectivity—that which makes him the unique person he is—has to be analyzed in terms of the objects of science. On the other hand, if science becomes a philosophy, it might be said to have assumed a religious dimension itself
In the realm of religion in the latter part of the 20th century, in what might still be called the Christian societies of the West, the attitude of very many people lies in an intermediate zone between religious belief and atheism, but the content appears rather to be given to agnosticism. Such persons believe in God but dislike any kind of formal worship, pray only on exceptional occasions, and find it difficult to have a sense of sin but admire saintliness. They are critical of the need for a Christian ministry except insofar as a priest or pastor can show sympathy and act as a vehicle of social concern. They are distrustful of dogma and critical of Christian sectarianism. They may be uncertain of Christ's divinity, but the words and example of Jesus are viewed as a guide to the good life. This outlook has many affinities with the “natural religion” of the 18th century in which the ethical example and teachings of Jesus were emphasized. Though, as in the 18th century, there may be an intent to reject revelation, persons holding such an outlook may rather be rejecting certain stylings of Christian revelation
Examples of occurrence of such a “natural piety” can also be found in religions other than Christianity, though significantly not in Islam—unless the Baha'i movement be taken as an approximation of this outlook. This attitude, for example, has provided the basic cohesion for the State of Israel in the latter half of the 20th century. Further, the spread of technology has gradually been alienating many Hindus and Buddhists from their traditional beliefs, but the Hindu has continued to treasure his spiritual ideology, which may well give to technological development its needed direction and wider setting. Buddhism in Japan, and perhaps elsewhere in the East, is still valued in the 20th century insofar as it supplies a local religious dimension to a society whose public and industrial life has been increasingly Westernized. Thus, an attitude has arisen that is sympathetic to the broad claims of religion, but has been critical, if not disdainful, of theological dogma and rivalries
More generally, persons who are outside the particular religions and who have nevertheless acknowledged religion as significant often seem to base their views on a fundamental feeling of absolute dependence. The grandeur of the universe, the character of the moral struggle, reflections on human nature, and an awareness of moral values inspiring men to reform society have all joined together to point men to an ultimate power or being—a “power, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness,” according to the 19th-century English poet Matthew Arnold
The fundamental difference in the latter part of the 20th century between the secularist and the religious person most likely has been between someone who takes a narrower and someone who takes a wider view of humanity. That there is an acknowledged need in modern times to give a moral direction to technology seems to many to bring with it the need for a religious view of the universe, even though they may not themselves be adherents of a particular religion
Others point to examples of the wholesome moral and spiritual effects that religion has had. They mention that society has ceased to practice child exposure and there has been a notable development in the status of women in society. Religion, where it is not parodied, misrepresented, or misunderstood, broadens rather than narrows vision. Insofar as human nature is inadequately understood, if no place is granted to the spirit of man, human nature, it is argued, will never find satisfaction except through the self-realization and self-fulfillment that come from responding to the inspiring ideal
In the 20th century various alternatives to traditional religious beliefs, practices, and institutions have become apparent. Chief among these is the quest for authentic existence. This has been encouraged and portrayed by various Existentialists (those who view man in terms of his existing thoughts and actions rather than in terms of his “essence”), who have been concerned in one way or another with emphasizing the significance of certain situations. In this way, they have given their own versions of salvation—that situation in which a person finds his true significance. For some, such as the German philosopher Martin Heidegger, a sense of authentic existence is given to each person when he realizes his true subjectivity, which his life in the world and his social transactions so often conceal. Authentic existence is often contrasted with cosmic anxiety—i.e., anxiety of a deep and far-reaching kind to which the antidote is to find oneself and one's freedom in a total commitment to what is called the ground of Being
Existentialists of an atheistic persuasion, such as the philosopher and Nobel laureate Jean-Paul Sartre, regard human existence as absurd and other people as hell, because, though one needs other people, they can never be other than “other people”—their subjecthood, their freedom is inaccessible. Love is, thus, doomed to permanent frustration. The need to know others like oneself is matched by its impossibility. According to Sartre, this condition only reflects the absurdity of man's own existence, which is always attempting to overcome a radical estrangement between man as the object of scientific study and man himself (en soi) and the subjectivity man knows in consciousness (pour soi). Suicide is the final absurdity, for in getting rid of en soi, what man is, pour soi disappears at the same time
This pessimistic estimate of human life and its apparent absurdity, however, has been converted into a religious view by other Existentialists, such as Gabriel Marcel, another French philosopher, who point to a participation—a mysterious self-involvement that persons can have intersubjectively with each other—in a kind of fellowship that is viewed as God-given. According to this view, man needs to open himself to the presence and grace of God for a dynamic transformation in which the mysterious transcends the purely problematic. Common to all Existentialists, however, is the view that the authentic man is not merely satisfied with playing a role, with being a cog in industrial society. One way or another, the quest for authentic existence is to discover the means by which man can recapture and enjoy occasions of self-disclosure. So significant are these occasions that they have been viewed by some theologians to be the paradigm for the kind of situation that the Christian gospels recount
Another feature of 20th-century development has been society's rediscovery of the significance of the secular. This change has led to an outlook and attitude that has been characterized as “religionless Christianity,” a Christianity influenced by its residual social and political ideal, but bereft of its specifically religious practices, doctrines, or institutions. Such practices as traditional intercessory prayer are dismissed as empty approximations to magic; doctrine is condemned as outdated and expressed in terms of past cultures; institutions are criticized as oppressive and conservative
Behind all this suspicion of structures and doctrinal schemes and practices, however, is a desire to get back to basic principles and origins, to learn again what is distinctive about the religious point of view. According to some proponents, such a goal might be attained by beginning with the secular, with activities in the secular world, not least with compassionate service, by seeing where the need arises for religious conviction and by ascertaining what contribution faith will make to secular endeavour. Though secular religion broadens out into a more sympathetic and a more positive attitude than agnosticism, it is never as explicit or particularized as orthodoxy
Marxism, which provides remarkable evidence of the power of dominant key ideas to inspire and direct man, is undoubtedly one of the greatest challenges to traditional religious belief. Based on the socio-economic philosophical thought of the 19th-century thinker Karl Marx, Marxism can be said to be a quasi-religion on two counts. First, Marxism had connections with the metaphysics of G.W.F. Hegel, an 18th–19th-century German philosopher who interpreted reality in terms of a spiritual Absolute. Furthermore, the thinking of Marx had religious overtones, whether from his own Jewish background or from a Christian atmosphere, not least in Britain where he lived from 1849 to 1883. Second, Marxism can be called a quasi-religion insofar as it calls from its followers a devotion and a commitment that in their empirical character greatly resemble the commitment and devotion that characterize religious people. Marxism has undoubtedly fired the spirit of man and given to revolutions, whether in Russia or China, a powerful direction that has maintained stability and avoided anarchy. Furthermore, like a religion, it has provided themes of fulfillment and hope—a revolution interpreted as the initiation of a Communist world society that would be a final consummation. There are many logical similarities between the doctrine of the Marxist millennium and the Christian doctrine of Christ's Second Coming. Marxism has also stressed the significance of cooperating with the immanent spirit of the times—something comparable to the providence of God—in economic and military struggles that are viewed as the travail by which society would be reborn. The main difference between Marxism and Christianity in the 19th and early 20th centuries, according to some scholars, was that for many the Christian vision encouraged men to endure tyranny, while the Marxist view inspired men to rebel. Yet, once it can be established that religion is not the servant of oppression, is not necessarily linked with an illiberal regime, and does not use concepts of “other worldliness” to make men content with tyranny and injustice, then religion may yet have a place in the Communist state. Such a religion would not have to concern itself with the kind of supernaturalism that Marxism now rejects; it would not have to appeal to an invisible world entirely other than the present world. It is not without significance that Marxism has its own form of public ceremonial and its own language of glorification. If it has to be granted that many religions have a ceremonial, a symbolism, and a moral code that has lost the vision they once had, Marxism is a social program, a doctrine, and a ceremonial searching for a vision that haunts it and that may at some time bring it to fruition. In this regard, Chinese Marxism is particularly significant insofar as Marxism in China cannot escape some interweaving with Chinese Buddhism. Chinese Buddhism brings with it a natural framework of absolute Idealism, which may yet supply Marxism with the spiritual dimension that for many critics appears to be Marxism's main inadequacy, something it lost when it shed its Hegelian metaphysics and became the anti-God Materialistic world-view of the U.S.S.R
Most philosophies have incorporated religious views in the wide sense of being concerned with a reality beyond appearance, and in this sense they have provided a philosophy of religion
For the Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle, wonder was the beginning of philosophy. From such wonder, according to Plato, emerged religious knowledge that was also mediated through Ideas, eternal entities or concepts in which the things of time participate. In performing every good act, man realizes his link with eternity and the Idea of the Good. For the moment, however, man, as in a cave, is chained by his earthly existence so that he cannot see the light outside; he can only see shadows on the wall, which are signs and tokens of the eternal light behind him. This was Plato's way of styling the relationship between time and eternity, between appearance and reality, and it is a styling that found a particular welcome in the Christian tradition and not least by Christian Platonists, whether of the 2nd or 17th centuries. Plato's philosophy also led to belief in God, and his Timaeus is a philosophical creation story
Aristotle, impressed with organic life in man and animals, took as his fundamental category growth and development. The nature of anything was thought of as a form by which its movement and development as an organism was to be understood. It was as if the form supplied the driving force. In this context, God was thought of as pure form, as final cause, and as prime mover. Aristotle provided for St. Thomas Aquinas, the great medieval philosopher of Western Christendom, the foundation on which he developed Scholasticism, which has been a distinctive feature of Christian philosophy of religion since the 13th century. Other medieval philosophers, such as Erigena, with his pantheism (God in all); Abelard, with his critical questions; Eckehart, with his mysticism; and Duns Scotus and Bonaventure, with a wider view of reason than could be contained in the Scholastic philosophy, all illustrate the variety and independence of Christian thinkers
Descartes, the “father of modern philosophy,” is significant in terms of his reacting against external authority in matters of belief, seeking a fresh basis for certainty, and finding it in the existence of his own mind. He must think in order to doubt his existence, hence his famous statement, Cogito ergo sum (“I think, therefore, I am”). Henceforward, much significance was given to the individual mind, and the resulting myth of the body–mind separation enabled both physics and biology to develop without the risk of ecclesiastical interference. Only in recent years has the inadequacy of the Cartesian body–mind myth come under general criticism not only because of the metaphysical problems it poses but also because it fails to do justice to the unity of personality that recent developments in medicine, such as those pertaining to psychosomatic disorders, presuppose
Many of Descartes's 17th- and 18th-century successors can be best understood by reference to him. Nicolas Malebranche, a French Cartesian philosopher, and the occasionalist philosophers, were more radical than Descartes; they dispensed with any unity whatever in man himself and linked together man's mind and body by means of the constant correlation effected by God himself, claiming that mental events were merely “occasions” for God effecting material change. For Spinoza, the whole universe had not only Descartes's two attributes of mentality and materiality but an infinite number of attributes, and it could be alternatively named God or Nature. Each existent in the world could be pictured as a particular whirlpool in an infinitely deep sea made up of endless layers of particular fluids of which man knows only two—mentality and materiality. Gottfried Leibniz viewed Descartes's minds as the only ultimate existents, so that even material things were colonies of souls. God was viewed as the supreme monad (the ultimate substance) that establishes coherence and harmony among all other monads. What appears to men as the external world is, so to speak, the result of blurred vision on the part of those groups of monads that are human beings
After Descartes there appeared the British Empiricists: John Locke, George Berkeley, Joseph Butler, and David Hume. Locke, though rejecting some of Descartes's characteristic doctrines, nevertheless took over Descartes's view of the human mind and then concerned himself with the philosophical psychology of how the mind comes to have the ideas it possesses. By the time of David Hume (died 1776), the mind was viewed as nothing more than a collection or bundle of ideas thought of as very similar to images, which means, as Hume frankly admitted, that it becomes impossible to do justice to the subjectivity that makes each person distinctively the person he is. The significance of Berkeley (died 1753) in this sequence is that he saw the need for an extended Empiricism that took the notion of personality seriously and that regarded activity as a key concept. Indeed, for Berkeley the fundamental unit for thought was “activity-directed-towards-and-terminating-in ideas,” and it was the activity of God directed to those ideas, which make up the external world, that gave to this world its continuous independent existence. His contemporary Butler also argued for a broader Empiricism, which for him centred on the significance of man as a moral agent and on a reasonableness that need not always conform to a mathematical paradigm. In a matter of great consequence, a man's action can be reasonable even though there may be little supporting evidence for his decision and though, indeed, the evidence may be very much against it. It may, thus, often be a moral duty to act in such problematical circumstances. This led to Butler's famous doctrine of probability—“probability is the very guide of life”—a view that influenced the treatment of belief in The Grammar of Assent (1870), by the English theologian John Henry Newman
Immanuel Kant has been called the second founder of modern philosophy. With Kant, late 18th-century philosophy began to take an interest in human knowledge, its varieties, scope, and limits. In Kant's critical philosophy, which emerged in his old age, he showed how scientific knowledge left room for morality. Though he was inclined to interpret all religious assertions in terms of morality, belief in God was justified as the holding of a regulative idea that brings coherence into all of man's thinking. The foundation of this idea is to be found, in fact, in those experiences of unity to which moral ideals, beauty, and the notion of a purposive universe all point. This idea of unity, largely implicit in Kant, was developed by Hegel, who came to regard the universe and its cultural, social, and political progress as but manifestations in time of an unchanging absolute spirit. In this way, Hegelianism provided a spiritual interpretation of the universe, but it regarded particular religions as no more than visual aids toward understanding Hegelian truths. A century later, the British philosopher F.H. Bradley was able to use a Hegelian approach in a much more empirical and far less intellectual context. Whatever form Hegelianism took and though its spiritual insights seemed on first view to make it a friend to religion, it has proved to be a position in opposition to Christianity, whether by its minimizing the historical element or by the way in which it compromises belief in a personal God
Since the absolute Idealists, there has perhaps been only one philosopher in the mainstream of tradition—Alfred North Whitehead—who, in taking becoming rather than being as the fundamental category, made “process philosophy” possible. This philosophical view maintains a metaphysics that not only provides an interpretative scheme linking God, man, and the world but one that incorporates scientific and historical thinking, though in taking growth and process as fundamental, Whitehead seems, to some, to have an evolutionary God
There were two main reactions against Hegelianism. The first, initiated by Kierkegaard, viewed Hegelianism as altogether too detached and objective and its ways of reasoning entirely unsuited to the deepest experiences of human life, the tragic situations in which human beings find themselves. From Kierkegaard, the Existentialist movement began. Also, in reaction against Hegel, were the modern Empiricists, such as Bertrand Russell and G.E. Moore from England, whose watchword was clarification in their attempts to create a straightforward, unambiguous language. This movement passed easily into Logical Positivism (a philosophical position that accepts only scientific knowledge as factual and rejects metaphysics), which challenged not only the truth but the meaning of theological assertions
Among the religious philosophies of the East, the conservative Theravada (Way of the Elders and another term for Hinayana) Buddhism regarded all existence as a succession of transitory states: what alone was permanent was Nirvana, a deathless realm the existence of which was revealed to the Buddha himself in the Enlightenment that came to him while he meditated beneath the bo tree (late 6th century BC). About Nirvana, the wise will say little more except to affirm its existence and to express their conviction that the plurality of individual souls that man knows in this world cannot in the same way exist in that deathless realm where there is no rebirth. Such ideas find a natural home in the philosophical standpoint of absolute Idealism, and Nirvana can be regarded as an alternative word for the Absolute. Broadly speaking, Buddhism is agnostic both about a personal creator and personal immortality, though Theravada Buddhism explicitly rejects belief in a creator. Undoubtedly, the dominant theme of Buddhism is the quest for release from the changes and chances of this world, which will lead to the serenity and peace of Nirvana. A Buddhist saint is someone who has indeed become the Absolute, which thus incorporates and transcends all human imperfections and struggles and all the imperfect ideas, ideals, and deities of popular religion and popular ways of thinking. The difference between the arhat of Theravada, and the bodhisattva of the Mahayana is one between two different routes of realizing Nirvana—the one through self-concentration; the other through self-sacrifice for the welfare of others. The difference is one between two “saintly” routes to the one saintliness—being possessed by and dwelling in the Absolute
Thus, Buddhism, by embracing what is, in effect, a metaphysical concept of the absolute, not only could but did hold together a complex mythology within a unifying philosophical insight and was able, as in Japan and China, to incorporate a complex popular pantheon of the cult of ancestors. Furthermore, it could combine a popular devotion to a personal lord with a mystical contemplation that had encouraged the development of Buddhist monasteries. In sponsoring such a broad synthetic (all-embracing) view, the philosophical significance of Mahayana (Greater Vehicle) Buddhism emerged. Such developments began about 100 BC and lasted for several centuries; it was Mahayana Buddhism that spread to China and East Asia to influence and modify the religions native to those areas. In Mahayana, the humanitarian saviour notion of the bodhisattva has some echoes in Kenotic Christianity (i.e., emptying oneself to become a suffering servant), and attitudes to the Buddhist scriptures have parallels with those of Christians toward the Bible. Common to both is the view that revelation can express itself in developing forms and that it is a mistake to concentrate on the texts themselves, sacred though they are, rather than on that which transcends them and of which they are symbols and to which they point. In this respect, one may contrast the open and exploratory attitudes of many Buddhists and Christians toward their sacred books with the closed and rigid attitudes of most Muslims
Prior to the introduction of Buddhism into China in the 1st century AD, the two main strands of religious thought in that country were represented by Confucianism and Taoism. Confucianism displays a reverential propriety that is expressed and developed in social relationships and fulfilled in Heaven. Taoism claims that the wise man will constantly seek harmony and rapport with Tao (the Way), which, at one and the same time, is the way for men to follow if they would reach blessedness and the principle that underlies and sustains the world. As a concept that is both moral and cosmological, Tao has a logical status similar to that of the Logos (or Word, the active principle of God in creation and revelation) in Christian philosophy. The Taoist thinks little of the ways of the world, including the decorum of the Confucianist; his outlook rather encourages a laissez-faire policy toward the world and even withdrawal from its affairs. The immediate mystical experience of Taoism or the inspired behaviour of Confucianism can easily blend with Buddhism, which sets both within a metaphysics of the Absolute
In Japanese religion are found the
same two themes that are found in most religions, though in their extreme forms
they are mutually exclusive. On the one hand is mysticism—specifically,
nature mysticism, of which the mysticism of the Zen
practitioner belonging to an intuitive meditative form of Buddhism is a
specific example. In Zen Buddhism, religion is scarcely distinguished from an
aesthetic experience in which shrines, gardens, mountains, woods, and streams
reveal a mysterious beauty and in which the exercise of the intellect is at a
minimum. In contrast to mysticism, there is devotion to a supreme personal
lord, at one time symbolized in the emperor as a descendant of Amaterasu, the
Sun-Goddess. At other times Shinto (“Way of the
gods”) devotion focussed on particular shrines and particular deities, just as
Zen Buddhism could concentrate on a particular image or on particular events.
In both types of devotions, however, it could be argued that such particularity
was fulfilled and transcended in the unity revealed to a mature mystical
insight. These different philosophical positions have an interesting reflection
in the Christian position in which the Christian claims to find evidence of
God's presence and activity in particular places and situations (especially in
the incarnation of Christ), though at the same time allowing for God to be
omnipresent.
This mixture of a mystical contemplation, which sees the divine everywhere, and a personal devotion to a particularized divinity recur in Hinduism. The most characteristic feature of Hinduism, however, is the doctrine of an eternal soul and its rebirth. The universe is pictured as the arena in which the immortal soul engages in a succession of incarnations from which man seeks release, a release that true contemplation can give him, especially when approached through Yoga (a mental, physical, and spiritual meditation technique). At the same time, a sensitivity to the numinous (spiritual) has left open the possibility of and certainly encouraged personal devotion. The most famous of Indian scriptures, the Bhagavadgita (“Song of God”) has for its recurrent theme the majesty, glory, and terror of God and the devotion due to him, though as in Christianity these attributes are compatible with a loving God. In the matter of revelation and incarnation, it is an open question as to how far the Hindu conception of revelation is the same or similar to Christian or Muslim conceptions. The Hindu view of avatara (“incarnation”), however, implies many incarnations and in a Christian context would demand many Christs; thus, the concept of avatara, a salient feature of Vaisnavism (centring on the veneration of Vishnu, the preserver), cannot be easily reconciled with the uniqueness attributed to Jesus
Depending on the particular questions that determine a particular content of discussion, Hinduism can talk of a plurality of souls, when it would concentrate on the theme of reincarnation, but, especially when influenced by Buddhist (and also pre-Buddhist) ideas, it can also sponsor an absolutism, or a monism; yet, again, it can come very close to a traditional Western theism. On the whole, however, it might be said that Hinduism holds together in a creative tension both theism and monism, though often it appears that in conceptual foundations and philosophical discussion the theistic strand predominates. Even in its classical period (600 BC to 450 BC) Hinduism was characterized by an astonishing variety of doctrines and cultures. Indeed, it well illustrates a characteristic of Indian thought that is becoming more acceptable to Western ways of thinking—the notion that there are many different approaches to the truth, which matches the concept of a multiple theology. It was regarded, however, as a retrograde step when these varieties of culture, ritual, and mythology became hardened into social strata and castes
In the medieval period, Sankara (c. 788–820), the leading exponent of Advaita Vedanta, or nondualism, is the most significant Hindu figure in the philosophy of religion. Arguing in a way very reminiscent of absolute Idealism, he claimed that the only existent was an absolute and that all else was an illusion. In this context he equated atman (the individual soul) with Brahman (the universal or absolute soul). Both were viewed as one in a cosmic consciousness. For Sankara, only ignorance or lack of insight into the nature of being prevents a man from realizing his identity with Brahman and thus becoming here and now aware of the freedom that is his. Sankara also allows as permissible, without being accepted as the truth, talk of God as personal and as creator and of men as separate souls related to one another and to him. This, however, is only considered a way of talking—salvation in the Absolute transcends all such imperfect discourse. The same logical problems recur here in the concept of Nirvana in Buddhism. In Hinduism, the Upanisads, Hindu philosophical treatises, and the Bhagavadgita use the imperfect language of finite man, who has not yet found release, and in this way they can only point beyond themselves to that which they cannot adequately express. Here again are ideas reminiscent of some of those in Western philosophy of religion in the modern world: the importance of theological reticence, the limitations of theological language, and, in another context, the significance of “existential situations.”
Twentieth-century Hinduism has been chiefly characterized by attempts to purify and reform the doctrines of its medieval period, to deepen its spirituality, to reassert its moral dimension, and to inspire social reform. Mahatma Gandhi and Sri Aurobindo, the founder of a spiritual community and a Communist, were significant in such ventures. Aurobindo has been compared with the French Jesuit paleontologist and theologian Teilhard de Chardin insofar as both have a repeated experience of cosmic consciousness and a profound belief in evolution, both of which point to a divinization of man
At the heart of Islam is an experience of awe before the one, all-powerful, mysterious creator Allah. Thus, its dominant theme has been surrender, though it must not be forgotten that it has nurtured mystics to whom the mysterious and awesome God has revealed himself through created things. Allah controls man's destiny, whether to salvation or damnation, which points to the ultimacy of God, to his majesty and power. The concept of heaven inspired warriors to fight to the death; the concept of hell encouraged loyalty by showing what terrible punishments awaited the disloyal. The Qur'an (the Islamic sacred scriptures) is regarded as an infallible book—a transcript of a tablet that is eternal in the heavens. Islam shows pre-eminently the strength and limitations of a total surrender based on clear-cut beliefs, themselves arising from a basis in infallible texts, the whole being translated into vigorous political and social practices associated with a rigorous ritual and ceremonial discipline. Its mixture of both rigour in theology and vigour in politics in India and the Middle East from the Middle Ages to the 20th century can perhaps be compared with the same mixture as has been seen in the Protestant and Catholic communities in Ireland since the 17th century. However much the concept and practice of holy warfare is repugnant to many minds today, in the context of Islam it implies a sensitivity to evil and a conviction that evil has to be resisted and overcome in a total dedication. In this way the faith of Islam has shaped human history by obedience to a resolute and powerful God. Islam also illustrates the point that predestination need not bring with it a submissive fatalism. Furthermore, it has to be granted that Islam has allowed, within itself, for some allegorical interpretations of the scriptures—explicitly by the Sufis (mystics)—and it has also allowed for differences of piety and beliefs and even intellectual exploration on the part of particular disciples. Nevertheless, to other religions Islam has shown itself to be very conservative and with a distrust of compromise and a passionate desire to proselytize
In reviewing the different philosophical understandings of religions in both East and West, two points clearly emerge. First, that however great the variety, there is almost universal agreement that “what there is” is not restricted to the facts and features of the world as they are given to or received by man's senses. Secondly, what has been for the philosophy of religion in the East almost a permanent problem is coming to be a crucial problem for the West, viz., how to preserve both the concept of absolute spirit and the significance of personal individuality or, alternatively, how far one can speak reliably of God as a person. The West is becoming aware of the problematic character of religious discourse. If, in such ways, Western philosophy of religion can benefit from some of the insights of the East, so also can the East—as a growing interest in the Empiricists of the West demonstrates—gain from the West. Not least, scientific developments have created Eastern interest in the English Empiricists, particularly John Locke; Eastern philosophers also have been impressed by the political liberalism of some modern Western Empiricists, such as Bertrand Russell. The Empirical philosophy of religion, as it has been recently developed in the West, may provide basic approaches and techniques for a closer mutual study of religions in East and West
The so-called proofs of God's existence are of two kinds: independent logical exercises or particular conclusions set within an overall metaphysics. Either way, the discourse of these independent proofs or metaphysical schemes is best viewed as speech designed to evoke a disclosure. A particular argument recommends, as a way of speaking about what the disclosure discloses, a particular brand of discourse offering an interpretation of the world and man and one that develops from a specific key idea grounded in the disclosure. The existence of an Absolute or a supreme value has never been concluded as a result of an isolated logical exercise but has always arisen in the context of a total metaphysics. Thus, a quasi-mathematical structure, for Spinoza; a dialectic method, for Hegel; and evolutionary considerations, for the modern French philosopher Henri Bergson, determined the discourse that these three philosophers used in order to evoke that situation to which God or Nature, the Absolute Spirit, or the life force became for them respectively key concepts of interpretation. Bradley similarly reached a belief in an Absolute Spirit by reflecting on the logical problems of relatedness
The following are some traditional arguments for the existence of God restyled along the lines suggested above:
The ontological argument of Anselm of Canterbury (c. 1033–1109) takes a phrase “that than which nothing greater can be conceived” and uses it as a technique for disclosure, directing one without limit to an ever-increasing perspective, in the hope that at some point the light will dawn, whereupon the phrase “necessary being” will be used to develop talk of the God
The cosmological argument uses as a technique for disclosure such questions as “Why is this thus?” or “Why is there anything at all?” In receiving replies to these questions in causal terms, the cosmological argument builds up an ever-increasing causal spread until a disclosure occurs, whereupon the phrase “first cause” specifies what is disclosed and advocates certain ways of talking
The argument from design takes a story with acknowledged disclosure possibilities—e.g., the interrelated parts of a watch—and uses this as a catalyst to evoke a disclosure around some ever-broadening purpose patterns of the universe, in relation to which one can speak of God in terms, for example, of eternal purpose
What is, in different ways, implied by these arguments is that the word God is unique in its logic, that it works in discourse as no other word exactly works. Thus, one cannot say “God exists” but rather “God necessarily exists.” This is sometimes expressed by remarking that the existence of God is not the existence of a physical object or even the existence of a person, though what can be said about persons is less misleading in speaking about God than in speaking about the logic of things. This point is sometimes made, albeit misleadingly by saying that God does not exist, but this is only a picturesque way of saying that he does not exist in the way that a table exists
These reflections are of wider applicability in relation to the nature and attributes of God. Such attributes are spoken of in terms of personal models, such as wisdom, goodness, power, love, mercy, righteousness, and so on. These models, however, will always need qualification by words such as infinite, perfect, and all. What is quite clear is that grammar itself is no clue to the logic of phrases such as “infinitely wise.” Although that phrase is similar in grammar to one such as “exceedingly wise”—a phrase that is entirely descriptive in its logic—it is logically quite different, because “infinitely wise” has both descriptive and what has been called performative force. In other words, it not only describes some matters of fact—some specimens of wisdom—because of the word wise, which works descriptively as a model, but it also generates something—the word infinite acting as an operator, continually directing persons to expand their understanding until a moment of vision emerges. Alternatively, the point that God is not a being has sometimes been made by saying that God is the ground of Being—“the ground of” functioning as a qualifier, operating as the model of beings, or things. The emphasis of such qualifiers is twofold. First, they remind one of the inadequacy of all language used to speak of God—language authorized by particular models that, arising in a moment of vision or disclosure, naturally originate speech about what the disclosure discloses. Secondly, qualifiers constantly point one back through developed discourse to that moment of vision in which the discourse originated and in which alone one knows what the discourse is speaking about. The logic of models and qualifiers is a way of combining the intelligibility and mystery that any philosophy of religion must preserve
Language about God thus develops as a multiple discourse, having various strands of which each is authorized by a particular model and of which each must, somewhere along the line, be modified by the presence of the others. Thus, theological understanding is a complex interweaving of different strands, and not least is the task of the philosopher of religion to produce the most comprehensive, coherent, consistent, and simple discourse he can. When problems arise that seem to be problems about the nature of God—for example, the conflict between different attributes—these are most profitably translated into problems of language. They then become problems of how to create discourse of the kind that in the end produces the best understanding of a cosmic disclosure with a single individuation, in which all the pertinent discourse originates and about which all the different strands endeavour to speak
Natural theology is the name given to the kind of discourse about God and the world that originates in natural moments of vision without reference to God's revelation of himself in an incarnation, and in this sense “natural theology” is distinguished from “revealed theology.” Among some philosophers—e.g., Locke—the distinction is one between general and special revelation. In natural theology are generally included the “proofs” of the existence of God, discussions about the immortality of the soul, and discussions about God's providential control of the world, which provides for man a state of moral probation
Some have viewed religious experience as affording direct evidence for the existence of God. In any discussion of religious experience, however, it is important at the outset to distinguish religious experience in general—a sense of awe or reverence, or a sense of the numinous—from mystical experience. The language of mystics is notoriously confusing to those not accustomed to the mystical idiom, and a leading question is how far mystical experience can establish the kind of objective reference it claims. Words such as immediate, direct, and intuitive refer rather to the way in which the experience occurs as a disclosure rather than justifying one in taking as guaranteed the interpretation that this disclosure appears to bring with it. If one already has an interpretative scheme, then mystical experience may provide an instance of such a scheme, but this has been rightly described as supporting belief in God “on the way back” rather than “on the way out.” The concept of revelation is used by Christians to describe the way in which God's activity is uniquely disclosed in Christ, and faith relates to the human attitude and response that matches revelation subjectively. Revelation is sometimes contrasted with discovery, the former being said to relate to a passive subject, the latter to an active subject, but the distinction is largely one of emphasis. Philosophers of religion are now inclined to view revelation in terms of activity that waits to be interpreted rather than as a revelation of propositions. Revelation thus relates to events rather than to doctrine. According to this view, doctrine could never have the ultimacy and finality that necessarily belongs to the givenness of God in his incarnation or incarnations
Among the classical problems in the philosophy of religion
are those of free will, self-identity, immortality,
evil, and suffering. The freedom of the will is a claim for the uniqueness of
the subject, known in occasions of activity in which the subject “comes alive”
and realizes his subjectivity as that which cannot be reduced to the behaviour
patterns and facts—i.e., the objects—of the natural and social sciences.
Such freedom is realized in responding to a situation that has equally come
alive objectively to inspire a person and call forth such response. Some claim
the predictable character of human behaviour rules out man's freedom; others
state that the extent to which human behaviour is unpredictable argues for
freedom. This controversy, however, does not in any way solve the problem of
freedom; it only makes evident what kind of problem the problem of freedom is,
viz., how far human nature is capable of being analyzed into behavioral terms
without any residue.
When there has been a self-disclosure of transcendence, of what cannot be characterized in space and time, one cannot say that any self so disclosed entirely comes to an end. In this sense, there is an argument for personal immortality, though one can only talk sensibly about it by expressing immortality in terms of continuing personal life. In Christianity this becomes speech about the resurrection of the body, and in Hinduism it becomes speech about reincarnation in this world or in the universe at large. All detailed talk about a future life, whether in Christianity or other religions, is only a way of spelling out and pointing back to that experience of man's transcendence here and now, in terms of language that expresses the claim that such a transcendent element is not annihilated by death. To be articulate about immortality, emphasis is placed on features of life that, at first view, have high significance and point here and now to experiences in which man's self-disclosure is most often found—e.g., inspiring music or the intimate and deep fellowship of a particularly significant meal. General claims for immortality in relation to an objective disclosure (whether it be spoken of in terms of God or moral ideals) have to be distinguished from, though they have evident similarities to, the Christian claim for eternal life. Eternal life is, according to the Christian view, a subjective self-disclosure alongside the objective disclosure of God's activity in Jesus Christ, and it is as unique as the uniqueness of God in Christ, a uniqueness that is, however, an inclusive, and not exclusive, uniqueness
The problem of evil arises (1) from the loss of a sense of God's presence in the face of evil or suffering and (2) from an apparent conflict between the language used to describe God (e.g., all powerful, all good, and all wise) and that to describe the world as being characterized by evil and suffering. The solution proffered by the Book of Job in the Old Testament is that of evoking such a sense of awe around the created universe that, discovering in this way a renewed sense of God's presence, one accepts both evil and good and contents himself verbally by acknowledging a final incomprehensibility
Other solutions relate good and evil to God and thus seek consistency by relating good and evil to God's primary and secondary will or to God's willing and permitting, respectively. In demanding some overall purpose to complete such a story, however, these solutions point to others that seek to resolve the conflict between good and evil within some reconciling model, which is then used to specify, with suitable qualification, a purpose or attribute of God. Thus, the conflict necessarily involved in the creation of a community of freely responsible persons is used as a model to illuminate a personal conflict exhibited, for example, by war. Also, the conflicts resulting from general rules imposed for the sake of training are used to provide a model to illuminate the disharmony exhibited in, for example, earthquakes or floods. These models are then developed and amplified in order to lead one to a renewed disclosure of God's presence. These solutions—by raising questions about God's character—perhaps point to another solution that attributes to God redeeming love—something that, as directed to evil, can be creative of personal maturity and fulfillment in a way not otherwise attainable. This attribute must then be appropriately qualified so as to lead to a renewed disclosure of God's presence, in this way enabling one both to face evil and to talk of it more coherently in relation to God
In the matter of absolute Idealism, which is the kind of metaphysics implied in Eastern religions generally, evil and good are transcended in the Absolute Spirit that is beyond good and evil. Logically, this is akin to the solution of the Book of Job
In the latter part of the 20th century in western Europe and the United States there has been an Empirical philosophy of religion, the interest of which has been in religious language and the kind of Empirical basis there can be for religious discourse. The definitive question has been concerned with what are the patterns of religious reasoning and what is the character of religious language if such discourse points back to and articulates situations of the particular kind that have been discussed above. The approach originated in what has been called Logical Positivism. According to the verification principle, which gave what the Positivists considered to be the touchstone of meaning, an assertion had meaning if and only if it was verifiable at least in principle by sense experience. Logical Positivists were not at all daunted when this seemed to exclude the whole of theology and a good deal of ethics from meaningful discourse
Since the 1950s, however, there has been a reaction against the Positivist's veto, and the works of the Austrian British philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein are symptomatic of those who broadened Empiricism so that it has become interested in displaying and elucidating the variegation of language, in setting language in actual contexts, and in relating it to specific situations. Significantly, this mellowing of Empiricism has been accompanied by a growing interest in personality and the self. This newer emphasis of Empiricism unites with Existentialism in suggesting that personal situations may very well provide helpful parallels to religious situations. There has been introduced into the philosophy of religion a renewed sense of the significance of mystery and a new emphasis on theological reticence. With this has come a renewed awareness of the significance of metaphor, myth, and symbol, and there has also emerged a significant use of the concept of the model. The use of terms like myth and mythological, it is important to recognize, does not mean that the assertions so called are false. Myth includes stories that try to articulate what is objectively given in a certain religious situation. Myths also relate to historical events—though the myth may be selective in its choice of such events—when speech about these events is used to articulate a claim of a transcendent kind. In other words, myth, metaphor, symbol, and model are all ways of expressing in ordinary language an extraordinary point
The present stress on metaphors and models in religious language, however, inevitably raises two far-reaching questions: the question of reference and the question of criteria. The former concerns the possibility of the assurance that one is talking about anything at all. The latter concerns what the criteria are for better and worse ways of talking. The question of criteria has been answered in terms of the logical character and the empirical pattern of the multimodel discourse to which the different strands arising from the different metaphors or models give rise. That this discourse talks about something must in the end rest on the claim that, in a disclosure situation, a subject is relatively passive—i.e., aware of an activity bearing on his own and thus aware of something other than himself about which he is talking
In this context the significance of the Existentialist approach is to underline, as does recent Empiricism, the importance of a wider view of human experience than ordinary scientific experience might allow and to point one to highly significant personal situations that cannot be netted in scientific terms. The phenomenological approach, as developed by the Moravian philosopher Edmund Husserl, represents an attempt to be objective and scientific about experience, an endeavour to set out facts uncompromised and unprejudiced by metaphysical frameworks. As an endeavour to reach agreement on what is being talked about and as an attempt to seek the simplest and clearest interpretations, the phenomenological approach has been applauded by many philosophers of religion and theologians. There can be no question, however, about a purely scientific account of a religious situation—that would be a contradiction in terms, and, though there can be a phenomenological approach to religious situations, there can be no phenomenological explanation of them that claims to be adequate. The main contribution of Phenomenology is that of encouraging scholars to describe situations with as much critical analysis as possible
Logical Empiricism, it might be said, has absorbed something of the Phenomenologists' concern. It has certainly raised questions about and directed interest toward the way situations are talked about and interpreted, the possibility of there being different interpretations of the same situation, and so on. In this way it has provided the tools for and greatly stimulated contemporary interest in hermeneutics (critical interpretations)—a second order appraisal of interpretations together with an interest in their empirical bases
As to the future of the philosophy of religion, a merging of the Empirical and Existential strands may well be expected. Metaphysical and religious views of the future most likely will combine conviction with tolerance and commitment with openness. The commitment and the conviction will probably come from moments of vision. Claims to finality, fanaticism, and bigotry will disappear, it is hoped, when it is made obvious that no self-guaranteed translations of what disclosure is are given, and tolerance and openness will arise from the acknowledgment that all understanding of these moments of vision is a multiple exploration, an exploration yielding different strands of discourse. Solutions to contemporary problems, social and intellectual, demand a multiple consideration by scholars from many disciplines of all the issues involved in the problem, a consideration set within a framework of faith and morality in which man is interpreted as distinctively human, characteristically a person. From such interprofessional, interdisciplinary groups may emerge a new metaphysics and a new theology linked with, but by no means prescriptive of, assertions in other subjects. In this way there may be created a new culture—scientific, moral, religious, and technological at the same time. To be involved in such groups would seem to be the main task of the philosopher of religion, as of the metaphysician, today. If he is successful and if these interdisciplinary groups are creative, the modern period will then take its place among those that have marked crucial turning points in the history of mankind and its culture
The Rt. Rev. Ian Thomas Ramsey