God, Reason and Religions: New Essays in the Philosophy of Religion

231 Pages·1995·5.997 MB·English

by  Eugene Thomas Long (auth.), Eugene Thomas Long (eds.)

GOD, REASON AND RELIGIONS
NEW ESSAYS IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION
STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION
Volume 18
God, Reason and Religions
New Essays in the Philosophy of Religion
Ediledby
EUGENE THOMAS LONG
Department ofP hilosophy,
University of SOUlh CeraUna,
Co/ambia, South Carolina, USA
Reprimedjrom
International Journal for Philosophy ofReligion
Va/urne 38, Nos. 1-3 (1995), Speciallssue
oll/he Occasion af/he 25th Anniversary oflheJaurnal
Springer-Science+Business Media, B.V.
A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-94-010-4186-7 ISBN 978-94-011-0417-3 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-011-0417-3
Printed on acid-free paper
All Rights Reserved
© 1995 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1995
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1s t edition 1995
No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in
any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or
by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the
copyright owner.
Contents
Preface vii
1. God, reason and religions: An introduction
by Eugene Thomas Long 1
2. Religion within the bounds of naturalism: Dewey and Wieman
by William L. Rowe 17
3. Realism and the Christian faith
by William P. Alston 37
4. Two process views of God
by Bowman L. Clarke 61
5. Theodicy, our well-being, and God's rights
by Richard Swinburne 75
6. Can religion be understood philosophically?
by Robert P. Scharlemann 93
7. Philosophy and religion: One central reflection
by John E. Smith 103
8. Philosophy and religion: Attention to language and the role of reason
by David B. Burrell 109
9. Postmodernism and religious reflection
by Merold Westphal 127
10. Towards thinner theologies: Hick and Alston on religious diversity
by Philip L. Quinn 145
11. Religions, philosophies, and philosophy of religion
by Robert Cummings Neville 165
Cumulative index of all the published articles and reviews, published in
International Journal for Philosophy of Religion during the period
1970-1995, compiled by Nayna Jivan and Eugene Thomas Long, with the
assistance of Pataki Antal 183
Preface
The first issue of the International Journal for the Philosophy of Religion
appeared in the Spring, 1970. This collection of essays is presented in cele
bration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the journal. Contributors to the
volume are to be counted among today's leading philosophers of religion.
They represent different approaches to the philosophical consideration of
religion and their published work is helping shape discussions of the philos
ophy of religion as we approach the beginning of the twenty-first century.
Considered by some to be terminal at mid-century, the philosophy of reli
gion has undergone a renaissance during the second half of the century. And
the journal may be said to provide some of the explanation for this develop
ment. A special debt of gratitude is owed to Edgar Henderson, Robert Leet
Patterson and Henry Sprinkle, founders of the journal. Without their vision
and determination it would not have come into existence.
There are many persons to thank in a venture of this kind. First, I wish to
thank the contributors who responded most graciously to my invitation to
write essays for this volume. Second, I thank Peter de Liefde and Hendrik
Jan van Leusen of Kluwer Academic Publishers for their good advice and
support in editing the journal and this special volume. Third, I wish to thank
Nayna Jivan, Secretary to the Editor of the Journal. Her dedication and
intelligent assistance contribute in many ways to the journals's day to day
operations. She has played a major role in compiling the cumulative indexes
of articles and book reviews included in this volume.
EUGENE THOMAS LONG
God, reason and religions: An Introduction
EUGENE THOMAS LONG
Editor-in-Chief
This volume is presented in celebration of the 25th anniversary of the
International Journal for Philosophy of Religion. 1 In introducing the first
issue of the journal in the Spring of 1970, the Editor, Edgar Henderson,
began with a question put to him by one of his philosopher friends, 'Reli
gion is dead - why then are you trying to contribute to philosophy of reli
gion by founding a new journal in this field?, In answering this question,
Henderson noted first that there was almost no space available in philoso
phy journals for articles in the philosophy of religion, that such articles pub
lished in religion journals often missed the philosophical audience and that
a questionnaire had indicated a large reservoir of material available. He also
argued that religion at the time was in a state of confusion, that thinking
persons found it difficult to make sense of religion and that older philosoph
ical systems that once illuminated religion had been shattered. Religion had
suffered from the criticisms of scientists, philosophers, theologians and
ordinary thinking persons, but also from infighting within and among the
great world religions. What was needed, Henderson argued, was the cool
and comprehensive analysis of the philosopher to sort out the contending
ideas of religion and harmonize its embattled values. The journal, said the
Editor, was to be world wide in scope. It was to 'provide a medium for the
fruitful interchange of basic philosophical ideas between all peoples, all
major faiths, and all varieties of philosophical thought'.
Henderson's remarks reflect the kind of ambivalence about religion and
the changes that were taking place in the study of religion in general and the
philosophy of religion in particular at the time. At mid century western phi
losophy of religion was suffering from illnesses that appeared to some to be
terminal. The rebirth of Kant and Hegel which had characterized discus
sions of religion at the turn of the century had been largely succeeded by
realism, empiricism and naturalism of the kind that with some exceptions
tended to be indifferent if not openly hostile to religious thought. Logical
Positivism and its immediate successors had relegated metaphysical and
religious assertions to the scrap heap of the non-cognitive. Neo-Thomists,
responding to a late nineteenth century encyclical to emphasize the study of
International lournalfor Philosophy ofR eligion 38: I-IS, 1995
E. Th. Long (ed.), God, Reason and Religions: New Essays in the Philosophy of Religion
© 1995 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
2 EUGENE THOMAS LONG
St. Thomas were at work reconstructing the traditional arguments for the
existence of God. But these arguments had long since been declared an
antiquarian study by many philosophers and the tendency of some Neo
Thomists to withdraw into the security of the classical theological tradition
made their work appear irrelevant to many. Kerygmatic theologians were
having an impact in the Protestant church but with this often came the view
that religious knowledge was a matter of revelation and faith and that phi
losophy had nothing to contribute. This was often accompanied by an atti
tude of religious exclusivism which denied truth claims in other religious
traditions. In some cases theologians were openly hostile to philosophy.
Some philosophers of religion report that the value of their subject as a field
of instruction was being challenged by faculties in divinity as well as
philosophy.
The year 1955 saw the publication of New Essays in Philosophical Theo
logy, edited by Antony Flew and Alasdair MacIntyre. This was first volume
in The Library of Philosophy and Theology, edited by Ronald Gregor Smith.
In introducing the library, Gregor Smith commented that only a generation
ago it was customary for theological thinking to be carried out within an
avowedly philosophical framework and that much of the work in nineteenth
century theology had been undertaken by scholars well trained in the ideal
ist movement in philosophy. But blasts of dogmatic theology blowing from
Switzerland upon Britain and America and radical changes in philosophy
had brought about a revolution in which this conjunction of philosophy and
theology was no longer possible. We live, said Gregor Smith, in a post-liberal,
post-idealist age in theology and philosophy and the(lll)gians and philoso
phers are being compelled to face their problems in a new and radical way.
'The present Library of Philosophy and Theology', he wrote, 'desires to offer
a meeting-place for the thought of contemporary theologians and philoso
phers, Continental and Anglo-Saxon, yet without partisan or a priori assump
tions about the way in which such a meeting may best be used' .2 This Library
became an important collection of books by and about such major thinkers
as Karl Barth, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Rudolf Bultmann, Friedrich Gogarten,
Charles Hartshorne, Martin Heidegger, John Macquarrie, Richard R. Niebuhr,
Wolhart Pannenberg, Ian Ramsey, Max Scheler, Ninian Smart, Paul Tillich
and Ernst Troeltsch.
It is probable that neither the General Editor nor the Editors of New
Essays could have anticipated the impact of this collection of, for the most
part, previously published articles, or that some of them would still appear in
text books in the philosophy of religion in the 1990s. It is clear, however, that
Flew and MacIntyre intended to provoke discussions of theological matters
following the weakening of the hold of Logical Positivism upon philosophy.
The first essay, by A.N. Prior, published originally in 1942, helps set the mid-
GOD, REASON AND RELIGIONS: AN INTRODUCTION 3
century context for philosophy of religion. This essay, 'Can religion be dis
cussed?', consists of a dialogue among several theological and philosophical
characters. Barthian Protestant expresses doubts about the value of discus
sions of religion among Christians and non-Christians on the ground that
there is no point of contact between them. The truth of Christianity cannot
be proved, he said, 'faith is a gift of God'. Modernist Protestant says that
religion is a matter of profound feeling and more available to the methods
of poetry than the methods of philosophy. Catholic agrees with Logician
that a request for a criterion of truth in religious questions and a clear state
ment about the meaningfulness of religious belief are justified but he belie
ves that the work of the medieval schoolmen has not been improved upon.
Logician argues that none of the theists manage to show that the hypothesis
of belief in God is a meaningful one.
In 'A religious way of knowing', C. B. Martin argues that when the the
ologians John Baillie and H. H. Farmer base their claims on direct experi
ence they betray a logic much like that of introspective and subjective ways
of knowing while Thomas McPherson argues that Logical Positivists have
done theologians a service in helping them to see that much that is impor
tant to religion belongs to the realm of the unutterable. Ronald Hepburn, in
his critique of Rudolf Bultmann's program of demythologizing, argues that
while philosophers and theologians should not be bound by the artificial trun
cation of language on dogmatic positivist lines they must avoid crying mystery
where there is only muddle. And J. J. C. Smart following a critique of the
classical arguments for the existence of God says that the greatest danger to
theism today comes not from those who challenge the validity of the argu
ments but 'from people who want to say that "God exists" and "God does
not exist" are equally absurd' .3
Perhaps the most frequently reprinted essay in the volume is the discus
sion among Flew, R. M. Hare and Basil Mitchell entitled 'Theology and
Falsification'. In this essay Flew lays down the gauntlet of empirical falsifi
cation arguing that since religious believers are unwilling to admit to any
conceivable event that would count against such alleged assertions as 'God
exists' or 'God loves us', these sentences are not really assertions. I cannot
here cover all of the articles collected in New Essays. And we need to keep
in mind that these articles are intended only to be representative of work
being done in British philosophy of religion of the period. The volume as a
whole, however, does suggest a significant change in attitude, method and
world view from the turn of the century when philosophers and theologians
often shared intensive training in Kant and Hegel and when religious
thought was considered fertile ground for philosophical reflection. Contri
butors may have moved beyond the early days of dogmatic positivism and
they share a concern with and take seriously theological questions. But
4 EUGENE THOMAS LONG
many still suffer from the limitations of a fairly narrow kind of empiricism.
Indeed, the ghost of Logical Positivism seems often to lurk in the shadows
of many of these essays.
Given hindsight, one can say that Flew and MacIntyre volume gave evi
dence of the beginning of a turn towards a new era in which the philosophy
of religion would become a more fertile field, albeit one more involved in a
new and more empirical age. For beginning in the 1960s there emerged what
John Macquarrie has called a watershed in religious thought. In this regard
it is interesting to contrast New Essays with a volume edited by Ian Ramsey
in 1961 entitled Prospect for Metaphysics. In introducing this volume
Ramsey says, 'Thirty-five years ago metaphysics was no more than a topic
for abuse and ridicule. But in more recent years there has been evidence of
a broader empiricism willing to leave room for the possibility of significant
metaphysical discourse'. He adds that the contributors to the volume share a
sympathy for some of the insights of comtemporary empiricism and says,
'Common to us all, for instance, is the position that we can no longer view
natural theology as a tight, rigorous, deductive system, taking us to God by
a process of unmistakable inference'.4 But the alternative, agreed the con
tributors to this volume, need not be irrationalism.
Ramsey does not provide us with a theory of the broader empiricism of
which he speaks, but we do gain some insights from contributions to the
volume. In their essays, for example, D. A. Rees and A. C. Ewing suggest a
parallel kind of reasoning in ethics and metaphysics which goes beyond the
limits set by the earlier uses of empirical verification and falsification.
Howard Root says that there is something mysterious about the step from
religious experience or revelation, in which the believer says that God has
found her, to theology. Nevertheless, Root argues, believers do give reasons
of a moral, aesthetic or even scientific kind to help satisfy the mind that the
ology deserves continued belief. Ninian Smart, who begins his essay with
the sentence, 'Natural theology is the sick man of Europe', goes on to argue
that there is a middle way between the traditional arguments for the exis
tence of God and a simple appeal to revelation. He proposes what he calls a
soft natural theology which claims that traditional metaphysics 'expresses,
or even evokes, intuitions or disclosures of the divine being'. 5 Several con
tributors including Illtyd Trethowan, H. D. Lewis and Ramsey speak of an
intuitive awareness of the divine which in some ways parallels the intuitive
awareness each person has of himself or herself and others in personal rela
tionships. Intuitive awareness in these cases is considered to point to an
element of mystery at various points of experience without being irrational.
Ramsey, following the suggestion of Whitehead that metaphysics has to do
with framing a scheme of ideas and exploring the interpretations of experi
ence in terms of these schemes, says that the broad purpose of metaphysics