Atheisms: The Philosophy of Non-Belief 9781138307575, 9781032470986, 9781315142395

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Atheisms

Questions about how to negotiate belief and non-belief in social and public spheres are attracting an increasing amount of attention from academics in a range of disciplines, and from concerned members of the public. This volume addresses the emergence of ‘new atheism’ and the developing ‘spiritual but not religious’ phenomenon. Avoiding simplistic accounts of atheism, and of religious belief, it provides readers with insight into a wide range of nuances within theism and atheism, as well as spiritual practice and faith. The chapters by an international panel of contributors focus on topics such as: a typology or cartography of atheisms and agnosticism; contrasting types of atheism within Christianity and Buddhism; questions about cognitive and doxastic stances in atheisms; theist rejections of and atheist embracing of ‘God’; and atheist aesthetics. Reaching beyond the Christian tradition, the book will be of particular interest to scholars of the philosophy of religion, as well as religious studies and theology more generally. Harriet A. Harris is Head of the award-winning Multi-faith and Belief Chaplaincy, and Honorary Fellow of the School of Divinity, at the University of Edinburgh; formerly a member of the Faculty of Theology at the University of Oxford, and a Lecturer in Theology at the University of Exeter. Victoria S. Harrison is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Macau, China. Until 2016, she was Reader in Philosophy at the University of Glasgow, where she was also Director of the Forum for Philosophy and Religion.

The British Society for the Philosophy of Religion Series Series editor: T. Ryan Byerly

Philosophy of religion is undergoing a fascinating period of development and transformation. Public interest is growing as the power of religion for both good and ill is becoming ever more apparent, as energetic forms of atheism open up the public imagination to many philosophical questions about God, and as fresh perspectives and questions arise due to the unprecedented level of interaction between different religious faiths. The British Society for the Philosophy of Religion harnesses, reflects and further promotes these interests, within the UK and internationally. The BSPR is the UK’s main forum for the interchange of ideas in the philosophy of religion. This series, in association with the BSPR, presents books devoted to themes of major concern within the field of philosophy of religion – books which will significantly shape contemporary debate around key themes both nationally and internationally. God, Goodness and Philosophy Edited by Harriet A. Harris God, Mind and Knowledge Andrew Moore Death, Immortality and Eternal Life Edited by T. Ryan Byerly Philosophy and the Spiritual Life Edited by Victoria S. Harrison and Tyler Dalton McNabb.

Atheisms The Philosophy of Non-Belief

Edited by Harriet A. Harris and Victoria S. Harrison

First published 2023 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 selection and editorial matter, Harriet A. Harris and Victoria S. Harrison; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Harriet A. Harris and Victoria S. Harrison to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 9781138307575 (hbk) ISBN: 9781032470986 (pbk) ISBN: 9781315142395 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781315142395 Typeset in Sabon by codeMantra

Contents

List of figures List of tables List of contributors Introduction: Atheisms and the Power to Be Confronted

vii ix xi 1

HARRIET A. HARRIS

1 A Quantum of Solace and a Heap of Doubt

14

CA R L-R EI N HOLD BR Å K EN H I ELM

2 Stepping Stone to Atheism? The Instability of Agnosticism

29

RO B I N L E P O I D E V I N

3 A New Theist Meets Two Atheists

44

JEA N I N E DILLER

4 Can an Atheist Display Religiously Significant Attitudes?

65

M A X B A K E R- H Y T C H

5 Doxastic and Nondoxastic Atheisms

75

C H R I S T O P H E R J AY

6 Atheists and Idolaters: The Case of John Wren-Lewis (1923–2006)

90

ST EPHEN R. L . CLAR K

7 How to Not Think about God M ICH A EL McGH EE

126

vi Contents 8 Atheist Aesthetics: A Critical Response

142

DA N I E L G U S TA F S S O N

9 Belief, Unbelief and Mystery

157

K A R E N K I L BY

Appendix: Mapping Agnosticism: Comment Inspired by Robin Le Poidevin’s ‘Stepping Stone to Atheism? The Instability of Agnosticism’

173

JEA N I N E DILLER

Index

177

Figures

A.1 Mapping Agnosticism Before Reading Le Poidevin (% = degree of confidence) A.2 Mapping Agnosticism After Reading Le Poidevin (% = degree of confidence)

173 174

Tables

3.1 Comparison of Curley’s and Dennett’s Atheisms and Bishop’s New Theism

56

Contributors

Max Baker-Hytch  is a Tutor in Philosophy at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford University, UK. Carl-Reinhold Bråkenhielm  is an Emeritus Professor in the Study of Worldviews at Uppsala University, Sweden. Stephen R. L. Clark is an Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Liverpool, UK. Jeanine Diller is an Associate Professor in Philosophy and Religious Studies at the University of Toledo, USA. Daniel Gustafsson is an independent scholar affiliated with the Centre for Lifelong Learning at the University of York, UK. Harriet A. Harris is Head of the Chaplaincy at the University of Edinburgh, UK. Victoria S. Harrison is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Macau, China. Christopher Jay is a Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of York, UK. Karen Kilby is the Bede Professor of Catholic Theology at the University of Durham, UK. Robin Le Poidevin is an Emeritus Professor of Metaphysics at the University of Leeds, UK. Michael McGhee  is an Honorary Senior Fellow at the University of Liverpool, UK.

Introduction Atheisms and the Power to Be Confronted Harriet A. Harris

As head of a multi-faith and belief Chaplaincy in a large international ­university, I encounter multiple forms of atheism weekly. These include forms of state atheism that students and staff from current or former ­communist countries describe to me. Some of the students raised in atheist regimes practised their faith underground in their young teens, and remember being forbidden to say prayers before taking exams, and their lives and those of their family members being at risk from authorities.1 Others arrive at university ignorant of religion and find the opportunity to learn about diverse faiths intriguing, disturbing, and enticing. These state-encultured atheists are very different, in age and motivation, from Christian or post-Christian atheists whom I am sometimes asked to address. Most of these follow Don Cupitt or Richard Holloway and have the Honest to God debates of the 1960s as a key reference point. Rather like the new atheists, post-Christian atheists are preoccupied with rejecting belief in a transcendent God, and also with being liberated from needing to believe in the miracles recounted in the Gospels. Many are departers from church, and others are interested observers and atheist participants in church services, such as those interviewed by Brian Mountford (Mountford 2011). Still more closely related to new atheism is the stance of the Secular Society which, in 2019, lobbied Scottish universities to have prayers removed from Anatomy Services. Anatomy Services are memorial services in honour of those who have given their bodies to science, and they are held with the Medical Schools whose students have worked with the cadavers. The ­representative of the Secular Society with whom I engaged on this matter explained that he was reluctant to donate his body to the University if it meant that his wife would need to sit through prayers at the Service by which the University honoured his gift. His reason was that he and his wife found prayers annoying. When I suggested that prayers did not have integrity for him, he was glad of the handle. After further conversation, he acknowledged that an absence of prayers would do some mourners harm and that the presence of prayer would probably not cause harm to himself or his family beyond getting on their nerves. He was in the end, I think,

DOI: 10.4324/9781315142395-1

1

2  Harriet A. Harris gracious in allowing that finding prayers annoying was not a good reason to remove them, when other people wished for them, found them consoling, and ­perhaps believed in their efficacy beyond consolation. Another form of atheism that I see up close at present is of a wholly different nature: respectful of religious belief and practice, and looking for the kinds of spiritual awakenings and transformations that prayer, ritual, and connection to transcendence help to effect. This is the world of personal development, futures thinking, and culture change. I am thinking of aspects of the training and development industry that are turned not only towards one’s self but also towards reading culture, and being of service in the world. The burgeoning realm of coaching might be seen as the umbrella under which to hold together the trends devoted to helping people ‘be the change’ they want to see – to quote a common mantra (e.g. Beck 2021: 290–93). ‘Be the change’ is a saying often associated with Mahatma Gandhi, though these words are not ones he himself used. Gandhi wrote: Religious books tell us that when man becomes pure in heart, the lamb and the tiger will live like friends. So long as in our own selves there is conflict between the tiger and the lamb, is it any wonder that there should be a similar conflict in this world-body? We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do. (Gandhi 9-8-1913, Indian Opinion, printed in Collected Works Vol 13, Sect 153 ‘General Knowledge about Health’, 12. Accidents: Snake-Bite’, p. 241, https://www.gandhiashramsevagram.org/gandhiliterature/mahatma-gandhi-collected-works-volume-13.pdf last consulted 23 January 2023) ‘Be the change you want to see happen instead of trying to change everyone else’ is a saying taken up in the 1970s by associates of Arleen Lorrance. Lorrance was a school teacher in Brooklyn, committed to educational reform. She wrote: ‘One way to start a preventative program is to be the change you wish to see happen’ (Lorrance 1974: 85). That was the essence of her program, ‘The Love Project’, which was premised on the idea that if children from a rough neighbourhood were given a calm and accepting presence at school, they would benefit in their lives and learning, and also take these benefits back into their community. The notion ‘be the change’ was taken by others into marriage preparation classes (Rev Ernest Troutner), and grief counselling (Diane Kennedy Pike), and it has now become commonplace in corporate settings. 2

Introduction  3 I mention coaching trends at some length not only because of their c­ontemporary influence but also because they foster a culture in which theism and atheism sit alongside one another in seemingly respectful, unthreatened ways (though see the caveat below about the historical relationship between religious toleration and atheism); a culture which thereby provides interesting points of comparison and contrast with positions argued in this volume. The coaching and futures culture includes Theory U and the Presencing Institute at MIT, which advises businesses, social entrepreneurs, governments, charities, educational institutions, and others, on how to move into the emerging future by making oneself deeply and intuitively present to the present moment (Scharmer 2016). In this context of futures thinking, Mindfulness is practised individually and collectively to grow wisdom, in ways that can easily acknowledge the value of religious meditation, contemplation, ritual, and prayer. Life coaches and corporate coaches similarly promote practices that help us to be awake and fully present to what is happening inside and around us. It will suffice to mention two such coaches, by way of example. Both are best-selling authors with international followings: American sociologist Martha Beck, author of many books including Leaving the Saints: How I Lost the Mormons and Found My Faith and The Way of Integrity, who as far as possible seeks out a life of solitude; and South African Creative Development Trainer William Whitecloud, author of The Magician’s Way, The Last Shaman, and Secrets of Natural Success, who runs international programmes based on his publications. Religious belief and practice can sit within the coaching that Beck and Whitecloud deliver. Beck maps her Way of Integrity onto Dante’s Divine Comedy, using Dante as a guide to help us to see and let go of error and self-betrayal; submit to cleansing; handle attacks of pride, envy, and wrath; enter mystery, ‘“Magic” and “Miracles”’ (Beck 2021: 275–81); and support others along the way of integrity. Whitecloud also references Dante, in the context of interpreting Jesus’ saying, ‘No one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again’. ‘To me’, Whitecloud writes, the kingdom of God is a reference to Higher Consciousness, … To move on from your fears and desires and pass through to eternity, as Dante puts it, you have to die to the wounded persona you took on when you first got here and wake up to your eternal nature. (Whitecloud 2019: 191) Whilst Beck and Whitecloud both use the term magic, and Whitecloud fashions himself as a Magician and an alchemist, they also regard the skills that they impart as ‘just physics’ (Beck 2021: xxii), and as ‘Natural Ability’ (Whitecloud 2019: 15). If prayer or other spiritual practices from traditional religious observance help you to grow your intuition and heighten your integrity, this is all well and good with the coaching

4  Harriet A. Harris industry, and the results are regarded simultaneously as magical and natural. Coaching is therefore tolerant of traditional religious belief and ­reconnects  some people to their lapsed faith, whilst softening others up to the notion that there is more out there than meets the eye. Tolerance is also a step towards atheism, as has historically been the case (Ryrie 2019). Toleration involves levelling, and it erodes claims to distinction. If we find our purpose and integrity through magical-natural ways, we can respect theistic religion as a vehicle, and we can also let go of theistic religion as unnecessary. Perhaps most commonly, I encounter Buddhist-influenced, Mindfulnessinfluenced atheism, which is present in the coaching industry and in the many other environments where Mindfulness is practised, including health care, sport, education, prisons, businesses, and the armed forces. Mindfulness-practice has been criticised for playing into the hands of our corporate-consumerist-target-orientated Capitalist culture, by calming people down and enabling them to put up with the stresses induced by their harmful working and living conditions (Purser 2019). This is not the intention of Buddhist Masters. Mindfulness is rather intended to wake people up to what is going on, within themselves and their environments, as Michael McGhee conveys in his chapter in this volume. Mindfulness-practice therefore has the spiritual power to convert: to change how people think and act. As with coaching, so with Mindfulness, people can become open and tolerant of spirituality and so of theism, whilst also finding that they have no need of the latter. The above few paragraphs portray a range of atheisms that play out across a typical week in a twenty-first century international university, and probably in many other settings too. How does the present volume relate to these atheisms-on-the-ground? The authors are members of the British Society of the Philosophy of Religion and guest contributors from academic theology. They give a nod to new-atheist concerns, as would be shared by the Secular Society, locating them in relation to particular assumptions about classical theism (Diller, Bråkenhielm, Baker-Hytch, Gustafsson). Some are mapping out the landscape, or providing taxonomies to help us understand varieties of atheism, and routes away from theism (Le Poidevin, Diller, Bråkenhielm, Jay). Some of the contributors represent (at least in their chapters for this volume) immanentist theisms that can closely resemble spiritual expressions of atheism (Clark, Baker-Hytch). McGhee gives profound voice to such convergence from a Buddhist perspective. Le Poidevin and Jay write from agnostic and atheistic stances in relation to Christianity and Judaism. Gustafsson and Kilby inhabit classical theism, or at least say nothing inconsistent with classical theism. They draw the reader into aesthetic and religious sensibilities that reintroduce a sense that theism and atheism are worldviews apart. They are powerful examples of why holding to classical

Introduction  5 theism does not commit one to a narrow focus on propositional aspects of religious faith. They also recapture why theism is not merely to be reckoned as ­pragmatically useful. The volume sets out with some discussion of new-atheist concerns, ­travels through ambiguous territory in which atheism and theism come close to merging, at least pragmatically and in relation to an immanentist ontology, and then closes with a renewed sense that theism and atheism are strongly distinct, but that the distinction cannot be captured in terms of propositional belief nor pragmatic effect. We begin with a chapter by Carl-Reinhold Bråkenhielm. Of all the ­contributors, Bråkenhielm is the most engaged in propositional, rational-­ empirical reasoning in responding to atheist concerns, although he supports faith positions that reach beyond evidence and reason. He engages, amongst others, Newman, Dawkins, Leibniz, Mill, and Marilyn McCord Adams. He considers, as I did with the Secular Society, claims that religion provides important consolation in the face of suffering. Against these claims, he posits legitimate atheistic arguments that just because a belief may console, this does not mean it is true. He addresses one of new atheism’s key challenges, that of the problem of evil, and comes round to espousing a Wittgensteinian theology of waiting. He adopts a theism akin to that of John Stuart Mill, holding that there is some evidence or reason to believe that the universe is created by an intelligent mind, ‘whose power over the materials was not absolute, whose love for his creatures was not his sole actuating inducement, but who nevertheless desired their good’, and who is silent and unresponsive much of the time. Positing a God whose power over materials is not absolute is, Bråkenhielm acknowledges, a step away from traditional Western theism. It could constitute a step towards more immanentist and process notions of the divine, though Bråkenhielm chooses not to build a case for a process God and instead explores what is involved in holding a religious worldview ‘beyond the objective canons of science and logic’. Robin le Poidevin makes a close study of the sorts of steps thinkers take when they move from theism to atheism, or vice versa. He compares and contrasts three stepping stones between opposing theses. The three stones are epiphenomenalism, the mind dependence of time’s passage, and agnosticism. Epiphenomenalism holds that the mind is real, non-physical, and without causal efficacy. It is, Le Poidevin says, a compromise position: resisting physicalist reductionism, wherein we are only the sum of our physical parts, whilst not able to believe in Cartesian minds. A consequence of epiphenomenalism is that we cease to be agents of change, either as mind or matter, and so the compromise is not worth having. The belief is unstable as we lose the motivation for holding it. The mind dependence of the passing of time, which Le Poidevin explores in the writing of H. G. Wells, is a similarly unstable belief: a compromise between a belief that time passes in reality, and a position that the passage of time is wholly

6  Harriet A. Harris illusory. The compromise is that the passage of time is only in the mind. The ­compromise risks inconsistency, because the mind is also part of reality. Agnosticism, Le Poidevin goes on to argue, is significantly unlike these two other stepping stones. Whilst it is an intermediary belief, between theism and atheism, it does not imply the falsity of the two beliefs it sits between. This is because agnosticism is not a thesis about God, but a thesis about our capacity for knowledge with regard to deity. Agnosticism does not involve an inconsistency as does belief in the mind dependence of time’s passage. Nor is agnosticism unstable in a parallel way to epiphenomenalism: it does not modify a notion of God such that the notion is no longer worth having. So what is the nature of a shift from theism to agnosticism? This question moves us ‘away from purely theoretical sources of instability to the practical: the question is whether agnosticism provides a stable way of life, or whether it becomes the practical equivalent of atheism’. Le Poidevin’s question as to whether there is a stable form of agnosticism inspires Jeanine Diller to do an exercise in ‘Mapping Agnosticism’. Diller defines the stable agnostic as ‘one who is not at all confident whether God exists or not, but very confident that knowledge on this matter cannot be reached’. Should confidence grow in the second-order position that knowledge of God’s existence can be reached, then the first-order agnosticism as to whether God exists or not becomes less stable. Le Poidevin opts for agnosticism as a stepping stone that one may inhabit and wobble upon, as one keeps alive the religious questions at stake. Diller provides a map that captures the distinctions Le Poidevin is making between first and second-order agnosticism. She concurs with Le Poidevin’s resting position, which is an ease with agnosticism, and a phlegmatic acceptance of oscillation as part of the human condition. Diller also provides a substantive chapter on Edwin Curley and Daniel Dennett, whose atheisms do not deny the theism of a third philosopher, John Bishop. These philosophers are talking past each other in their notions of ‘God’ and ‘faith’. ‘New atheists’ pitch themselves against a form of classical theism, as Diller points out, and they parody classical theism unless they engage carefully with nuanced positions within the tradition. Others within this volume concur. Gustafsson writes that ‘what the atheist rejects is seldom what the theologian or believer professes’, and Baker-Hytch accuses new atheists of understanding faith ‘in a jaundiced manner’, overly focused on propositional belief. Diller encourages detailed attention to how individual thinkers use their terms. She draws on Francis Clooney’s method of ‘Comparative Theology’ to explore a range of ways in which atheists misconstrue what theists believe. She sees the exchange between atheists and ‘new theists’, as good for the field and good for atheism. ‘New theists’ are those who let go of a classical theist position (by which Diller means positing a God with all the omni-qualities), and make concessions to some atheist concerns, such as the problem of evil, by accepting more of a process view of God.

Introduction  7 Max Baker-Hytch picks up the close scrutiny of the notion of ‘faith’. He explores some non-propositional attitudes, which he argues are at least as important to faith as are propositional beliefs, and which may sometimes be shared by atheists. An example, following Tillich, would be living in a way that acknowledges something as being of ultimate concern. The two faith attitudes that Baker-Hytch focuses upon are: the hope or expectation that an object will provide ultimate fulfilment; and the attitude that one’s life would lack overall meaning and purpose without that object. He argues that these are religiously significant attitudes, and that they are psychologically possible for a genuine atheist: the attitudes of longing for ultimate fulfilment and purpose are attitudes that an atheist can display. He closes with a suggestion that an atheist might hold these attitudes towards an object, such as Goodness, without realising that this object is God. Christopher Jay, who in his writings finds much practical use for religious fictionalism, takes a detailed and nuanced look at atheisms amongst contemporary Jewish thinkers. He is interested in exploring differences between ‘fully fledged’ atheists like himself, and those whom he regards as doxastic atheists, who, despite aspects of unbelief, engage in religious practices or identify with religious communities. He focuses on Peter Lipton and Howard Wettstein. Lipton rejects as false various literally construed articles of Jewish faith. Wettstein, Jay characterises as a ‘metaphysical quietist’. In calling these two Jewish thinkers doxastic atheists, Jay attributes to them absence of belief in the supernatural, even when a literal construal of some of the doctrines which seem central to the practices they see value in seems to involve a supernatural interpretation, and even though one is not to refuse that literal interpretation. Religious identification via practice, a way of life, or association with a people, rather than via belief is not uncommon in Judaism, nor in dharmic religions, and is always an interesting consideration for Christian and post-Christian contexts. ‘It’s what’s so great about being Jewish’, says the black Rabbi, Spenser Throckmorton, in Paul Beatty’s novel Tuff. ‘You don’t have to believe in God per se, just in being Jewish’ (Beatty 2001: 13). Jay takes a granular look at what might be going on belief-wise when people identify with a religion whilst rejecting many of its central tenets. He suggests that ‘privileging’ some beliefs over others, choosing which to accept as a tool for thinking about our world, provides the best explanatory framework, and he suggests a parallel with mathematical fictionalism. Harty Field sees mathematics as a way of thinking about our world, whilst one need not believe the claims through which one is thinking. Similarly Lipton, Jay suggests, has an approach that: we might think through moral problems and other things about our world by employing [and so privileging] a structured system of claims

8  Harriet A. Harris which are useful for bringing certain facts or values to light even though they are claims which, in other contexts, we have every reason to reject. Such privileging might be, for example, ‘thinking of the world as one in which a providential God exists rather than as one in which such a God does not exist (in the relevant deliberative context, at least)’. Jay ­distinguishes himself from people who need that kind of a lens: Full-blown atheists like me miss out on authentic religiosity not because we believe that God does not exist, but because there is nothing in our self-conception or system of values which makes it necessary for us to privilege particular religious claims in the course of thinking through moral issues or participating in certain practices. The chapters we have so far canvassed have addressed a stark opposition between atheism and theism such as is depicted by new atheists. Theistic contributors Bråkenhielm, Diller, and Baker-Hytch, have in various ways moved away from classical theism in accommodating atheistic concerns. Classical theism, we might characterise as a belief in a self-sufficient God, who creates ex nihilo, and is logically and metaphysically distinct from creation. More immanentist theisms, as developed post-Hegel, and particularly post-World War 2, emphasise God-within-us. Immanentist theists, like John Robinson in Honest to God, often reject, rather than hold in paradox, a transcendent God ‘up there’ or ‘out there’ (Robinson 1963: 22). They conceive of creation as emanating from God, and of God as vulnerable to creation’s twists and turns. Immanentist theists may or may not identify with process theology, or with panentheism. Atheists and immanentist theists can appear strikingly alike, and can be committed to the same purpose, such as debunking the cultural lies we human beings tell ourselves. Stephen Clark shows how this can be so, in reviving for us the 1960s thinker WrenLewis, a participant in the Honest to God debates. Wren-Lewis, as conveyed to us by Clark, celebrated the collapse of ­‘magical feeling’ in the 1960s. He was allergic to the notion that there is another ‘spiritual’ world ‘behind the scenes’. He accused Julian Huxley of not being an honest-to-god atheist because he treated evolution as a god and the universe as an all-embracing evolutionary process. But then WrenLewis had a near-death experience in which he felt himself to be born anew, such that his prior life had been one of sleep out of which he had now awoken. Clark suggests that Wren-Lewis remained an atheist, in rejecting a transcendent Supreme Being, but believed in a God in whom we live and move and have our being: ‘Wren-Lewis seems to have admitted that he had been wrong to reject the notion of an “occult” reality, and wrong to emphasise ­individual selfhood so strongly in his assault on traditional “magical ­feeling”’ (Clark).

Introduction  9 Clark appreciates the awakening undergone by Wren-Lewis, as revealing to us lies that we collectively imbibe: we must, so the story goes, be stripped of all our illusions, all our idols – including the contemporary idols that we hardly notice, the easy assumption that real beings are intrinsically separate, that human beings are of their own nature elevated far beyond the beasts, that time is passing and that space is stretched out far beyond us, that we can manage science and love and sanity by our own powers, and that we ourselves – being modern – are always in the right. Michael McGhee, a philosopher much influenced by Buddhist meditative practices, similarly looks for how our spiritual commitments awake us out of existential and cultural slumber. He is interested in the ways in which spirituality shapes belief and is often prior to or contemporaneous with the development of beliefs. He is critical of philosophers of religion in the analytic tradition, who ‘have routinely conflated religion with religious belief, in the sense that they have conflated religion with belief in God, and have reduced that to belief in the existence of God’, as though ‘everything else’, including prayer and spiritual practice, ‘depends’ on establishing that existence. McGhee accuses analytical philosophers of religion of failing to understand how to deal with a system of belief. They deal with a system of belief as they do with an errant belief, in terms of a failure of procedural rationality, and seemingly lack awareness of the process of doing theology on one’s knees, i.e. appreciating that theology is rooted in prayer. McGhee suggests an atheistic parallel to doing theology on your knees: ‘a silence constituted by the quietening of the violent and destructive passions, of what the Buddhist traditions refer to as the klesas’. This quieting, which is the aim of samatha meditation in Buddhism, is not neutral but is dispositional: it ‘includes the quietening of those passions from which issues that impulse to power and domination, expressed in Genesis as the ambition to be as gods’. Whilst writing on a different theme, that of aesthetics, Daniel Gustafsson shares McGhee’s concern about the unwillingness to undergo metanoia (a change of heart and perception), or to appreciate sufficiently that metanoia is relevant to how and what we see and believe. In considering how an atheist might approach a piece of Christian art he writes: until the atheist is able rather to approach the world of the work, to appreciate the work on its own terms, he will remain in a world apart, and the ontological status – indeed, the very existence – of the work, not simply its values, will elude him. He regards ‘love [as] a prerequisite for the production and reception of Christian art, in line with an understanding of faith as the loving

10  Harriet A. Harris second-person relation to, and knowledge of, God’. For Gustafsson, then, the affective precedes and informs the cognitive, in some significant way. However, he is not thereby arguing that we must first invoke religious ­emotional or psychological states. Rather, we are to enter into the ­ontology: God’s work, and ours with God, of restoring the world to its intended glory. Gustafsson’s aesthetic is consistent with more of a classical theist ontology, and at the same time his appreciation of the spiritual work of metanoia is consistent with McGhee’s call for the silencing of violent voices, of the babble (Babel, in Genesis), and with Clark and Wren-Lewis’ recognition that we need to be stripped of all our illusions. In the case of a piece of Christian art, Gustafsson holds that the theological worldview brings the art into being, rather than the art existing and telling us something about theology. ‘Only if we are able to perceive the artwork in line with this assumption [of Christian artwork’s ontological aspirations], can we be said to perceive the artwork as what it is’. Similarly, atheist artwork will be in some way uncomprehended by those who are unable or unwilling to enter the ontological worldview of atheist artists. Gustafsson interprets atheism not so much as a rejection of particular beliefs but of a way of seeing; an unwillingness to enter into a Christian universe, ‘where to see at all is to see in the light of God’s revelation, where to exist at all is to be in relation to God’. Gustafsson’s rich ontology is consonant with that of the final chapter in the volume, from theologian Karen Kilby. Kilby takes us into a community of faith, and looks at ways in which that community responds to its own decline and to increasing atheism. She focuses on Karl Rahner’s attitude in the 1970s to the contemporary and prospective on-going diminishment of the Roman Catholic Church. She notes that instead of offering arguments as to why the church is declining, such as blaming wrong turns taken by Scotus, Kant, or Schleiermacher, or defending decline as a blessing because it frees the church from the clutches of Constantinianism (or worldly power), Rahner responds with sadness. Kilby resists the notion that if only we get our theology right, all will be well. This, she says, puts ourselves too much at the centre of the story. Kilby turns to notions of providence and hope, thus giving us a reasoned example of how these concepts can work in a community of faith. She provides flesh for some of the earlier philosophical chapters that speculate on how such concepts might work (or why they might be rejected): a person may die through no fault of their own, and a person may die while still in their prime, vocation unfulfilled. By analogy, I think, we should be able to say that something in the Church—some version of church, some dynamism, some institutional presence—can come to an end, or be severely diminished, through no fault of its own (or not only through its own fault), but at least in part because of larger forces beyond its control; and this may happen even if there was something

Introduction  11 good and valuable and necessary in this expression of the church. The fact that it can diminish and die shouldn’t be taken as proof that it never was worthwhile, or that it is no longer needed. Kilby’s reflections raise a question about our eagerness to account logically for God’s seeming providence or silence. We must make room for acknowledging loss, sadness, and mourning if we are to exercise our thought well, rather than fall into a ‘pugnacious self-assertion…about the relationship of belief to unbelief’. Rahner had become infamous for his use of the concept ‘anonymous Christianity’, a phrase which he did not coin, and for which he has been misleadingly portrayed as a patronising inclusivist. The concept of anonymous Christianity was around in the 1960s, and Rahner adopted it as a choice against embattlement and sectarianism. Kilby considers his stance as one of confidence in God’s grace: ‘Though my neighbours, my friends, my children, profess a different view of things, I do not have to suppose a huge gulf has opened up between me and them’. She proposes therefore that  the ‘theory of anonymous Christianity is one way…of affirming a solidarity, in spite of apparent dramatic difference, between believer and unbeliever’. She ends with a consideration of Rahner’s essay ‘The Concept of Mystery in Catholic Theology’, in which love and knowledge intertwine; a similar sensibility to Gustafsson’s account of Christian aesthetics. Rahner wishes to redress the overly complex propositionalism of neo-Scholasticism. He does so not by suggesting that grace will make things a lot clearer, but rather that grace will bring mystery closer, and the supreme act of knowledge will be the assertion and immediacy of mystery. Here, we see an expression of theology-as-prayer, or a practice of silence. Kilby quotes Rahner: Nothing is more familiar and obvious to the alerted spirit than the silent question which hovers over all that it has attained and mastered…In his heart of hearts, there is nothing man [sic] knows better than that his knowledge, ordinarily so-called, is only a tiny island in the immense ocean of the unexplored. Apparent in the coaching-culture described early on in this introduction is a pragmatic stance close to Jay’s account of fictionalism. A coach might say: we are not claiming that x is true (where x might be ‘we can trust that we will have what we need, when we need it’), we are saying that in our experience it is an effective way to think and live. The invitation is not to commit to a worldview, but to experiment with living ‘as though’. Coaching provides an interesting culture for considering atheism because it is a tolerant context in which theism and atheism co-exist; proponents of both theism and atheism can test how life goes if we trust that we will always have what we need, when we need it. A theist could root such trust in God; an

12  Harriet A. Harris atheist in ‘Goodness’ (Dennett) or ‘the universe’ (Huxley), or psychological empowerment, or some other energy. Equally, the trust could be rooted in nothing other than an experience that life goes well, or we make wiser, less fear-based decisions, when we have such trust. We could regard such thinking and its results as magical, or natural, or both, and theists and atheists alike could share in it. The difference between this land in which atheism and theism can merge pragmatically, and the aesthetic and religious sensibility conveyed by Gustafsson and Kilby, is that in the latter, we are not the centre of the story. God is the ultimate Subject. Gustafsson and Kilby present us with an ontology that will not bend to us, but in relation to which we find our fullest way of being alive. Likewise, for immanentist theists like Wren-Lewis, as portrayed by Clark, in God we live and move and have our being. Our truest selves are found in the ultimate Subject, an outlook with which the Buddhist-atheist McGhee shares sympathy when he recalls theists to the task of doing their theology on their knees: it is God, not the theologian or philosopher, who is the proper Subject of theology. A further mapping, then, that could be given at the end of this volume is the degree to which different theists and atheists subscribe to a view that our beliefs, or some aspect of our consciousness, create our reality – a principle common in the coaching world (Whitecloud 2019: 34–45), and one which diverse fictionalists express in various ways. At some level, we can all observe that our beliefs create our reality: for example, if we believe that the government is not to be trusted regarding vaccines, we may not get ourselves vaccinated, and reality will unfold along particular lines as a result; if we are traumatised and believe that no-one can be trusted (even our own selves), we will live our lives defensively and aim to keep safe by keeping ourselves apart from others. At an ultimate level, if we believe there is a Subject who defines reality, against whom all else measures up and in relation to whom we can be most fully alive, we will want to get our thinking about ourselves, society, the world, and the universe (we may speak of ‘all creation’) in alignment with that Subject.

Notes 1 Such was also the case with one of our Staff Chaplains, https://www.­ churchofscotland.org.uk/news-and-events/news/2022/articles/iron-curtain-­ democracy-activist-ordained-into-the-church-of-scotland, accessed 3 June 2022. 2 A referenced history of the saying can be found here https://quoteinvestigator. com/2017/10/23/be-change/ consulted 17 February 2022.

References Beatty, P., Tuff (New YorK: Anchor, 2001). Beck, Martha C., The Way of Integrity: Finding the Path to Your True Self (Boston, MA: Little Brown Book Group, 2021).

Introduction  13 Gandhi, M., Indian Opinion 9—8-1913, printed in Collected Works Vol 13, Sect 153 ‘General Knowledge about Health’, 12. Accidents: Snake-Bite’, p. 241, https://www.gandhiashramsevagram.org/gandhi-literature/mahatma-­gandhicollected-works-volume-13.pdf last consulted 23 January 2023. Lorrance, A., ‘The Love Project’, in Richard Dean Kellough (ed.), Developing Priorities and a Style: Selected Readings in Education for Teachers and Parents (New York: MSS Information Corporation, 1974), pp. 85–97. Mountford, B., Christian Atheist: Belonging without Believing (London: O Books, 2011). Purser, R. E., McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality (London: Repeater Books, 2019). Robinson, J. A. T., Honest to God (London: SCM, 1963). Ryrie, A., Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt (Glasgow: William Collins, 2019). Scharmer, C. O., Theory U: Leading from the Future as It Emerges. The Social Technology of Presencing (Oakland, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, a BK Business Book, 2016). Whitecloud, W., Secrets of Natural Success: Five Steps to Unlocking Your Genius (East Lismore: Animal Dreaming Publishing, 2019).

1 A Quantum of Solace and a Heap of Doubt Carl-Reinhold Bråkenhielm

Introduction This chapter will argue that religious believers are justified when they draw consolation from their faith. They have a license to hope – and under ­certain specific conditions – also a license to believe and draw consolation from their faith. But in this, there is also an ineradicable element of doubt. They have, in short, a quantum of solace conjoined with an ineradicable heap of doubt. Can consolation and doubt coexist – and if so, how?

The ‘Factory-Girl’ Argument For those of us acquainted with Monty Python’s shoebox sketch, the ­‘factory girl’ argument may come across as comically exaggerated, yet its original intentions were very serious indeed. The argument is found in ­chapter 8, § 2, of Newman’s Grammar of Assent, the title of which is ‘Informal Inferences’, suggesting that Newman has certain reservations concerning the argument’s logical strength. He begins with the French philosopher and witty skeptic Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592): Montaigne was endowed with a good estate, health, leisure and an easy temper, literary tastes, and a sufficiency of books: he could afford thus to play with life, and the abysses into which it leads us. Let us take a case in contrast. ‘I think’, says the poor dying factory-girl in the tale, ‘if this should be the end of all, and if all I have been born for is just to work my heart and life away, and to sicken in this dree place, with those mill-stones in my ears forever, until I could scream out for them to stop and let me have a little piece of quiet, and with the fluff filling my lungs, until I thirst to death for one long deep breath of the clear air, and my mother gone, and I never been able to tell her again how I loved her, and of all my troubles.—I think, if this life is the end, and that there is no God to wipe away all tears from all eyes, I could go mad!’. (Newman 1870: 312)

14

DOI: 10.4324/9781315142395-2

A Quantum of Solace and a Heap of Doubt  15 The ‘factory-girl’ argument can be formally reconstructed in the following way: Premise 1: Religious belief offers consolation for many people in situations of distress and bereavement. Premise 2: If a belief offers consolation for many people in situations of distress and bereavement, then it is rational for those persons to seek consolation in religious belief. Conclusion: It is rational for people in distress and bereavement to seek consolation in religious belief. Without specific reference to Newman, Richard Dawkins discusses this argument from consolation toward the end of The God Delusion (2006). His main point is that ‘(r)eligion’s power to console doesn’t make it true’ (ibid.: 352), and I shall return to this point shortly. But Dawkins also has serious doubts concerning Premise 1. He defines consolation as the alleviation of sorrow and mental distress and recognises two forms of consolation, the first of which is direct physical consolation. It may appear that religious belief offers such consolation by direct contact with God, but this consolation is – writes Dawkins – imaginary, because God does not exist and, moreover, comfort from scientific medicine is much more effective (ibid.: 355). Needless to say, Dawkin’s argument is based on the presumption that there are valid arguments against the existence of God. If it is justified to dispute those arguments, however, then consolation from contact with God would be possible. Dawkins also considers another form of consolation, namely by discovery of a previously unappreciated fact or a previously undiscovered way of looking at existing facts. For example, ‘a woman whose husband has been killed in war may be consoled by the discovery that she is pregnant by him, or that he died a hero’ (ibid.: 353). Dawkins argues that religion cannot offer such a consolation, because religions rest on false beliefs and these ‘can be every bit as consoling as true ones, right up until the moment of disillusionment’ (ibid.: 355). But a few lines later, Dawkins acknowledges ‘(a) believer in life after death can never be ultimately disillusioned’ (ibid.: 356). From this, it seems as if Dawkins suggests that if you draw consolation from this belief before death, then it is a delusion, because there is no life after death. Again, this is convincing only under the provision that there are valid arguments against life after death. But what about consolation through discovery of a previously undiscovered way of looking at existing facts? Dawkins uses an interesting example (attributed to Derek Parfit) of this form of consolation. It merits to be quoted in full: A philosopher points out that there is nothing special about the moment when an old man dies. The child he once was ‘died’ long ago, not by

16  Carl-Reinhold Bråkenhielm suddenly ceasing to live, but by growing up. Each of Shakespeare’s seven ages of man ‘dies’ by slowly morphing into the next. From this point of view, the moment when the old man finally expires is no different from the slow ‘deaths’ throughout his life. A man who does not relish the prospect of his own death may find this changed perspective consoling. Or maybe not, but it is an example of consolation through reflection. (Ibid.: 354) Now, this way of perceiving death is an extremely interesting example. But it has an unintended twist. If death is seen as an analogy with one age of a human being ‘slowly morphing into the next’, then some form of ­continuation beyond death is suggested. This is central to the Christian understanding of death, and comes forward in a famous hymn by John M. C. Crum: Now the green blade rises from the buried grain, Wheat that in the dark earth many years has lain; Love lives again, that with the dead has been: Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green. In the grave they laid Him, Love Whom we had slain, Thinking that He’d never wake to life again, Laid in the earth like grain that sleeps unseen: Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green. Up He sprang at Easter, like the risen grain, He that for three days in the grave had lain; Up from the dead my risen Lord is seen: Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green. When our hearts are saddened, grieving or in pain, By Your touch You call us back to life again; Fields of our hearts that dead and bare have been: Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green. (Originally published in the Oxford Book of Carols 1928) The parable of the grain applied in this way to human life and death could also be described as a consolation through a discovery of a new way of ­thinking about a situation. Needless to say, it would not be a kind of consolation favored by Dawkins, but it is not substantially different from his own example. Be this as it may, the important question is whether it is rationally justified to rely upon such a discovery of a comprehensive pattern in human life. I shall return to this question toward the end of this chapter. Dawkins has a second argument directed against Premise 2 of the reconstructed ‘factory-girl’ argument. He writes that ‘[r]eligion’s power to

A Quantum of Solace and a Heap of Doubt  17 console doesn’t make it true’ (2006: 352). In other words, he claims that the ‘­factory-girl’ argument should not primarily be understood as an effort to present evidence for God or immortality, as an epistemic argument for Christian hope. Rather, it should be read as a pragmatic argument. The difference between the pragmatic and the epistemic argument can be explained in the following way: epistemic reasons for a statement are reasons about causes of the state of affairs that the statement describes. For example, an epistemic reason for the statement that a person has cancer might be certain tests indicating antibodies against cancer in the person’s blood, where those antibodies are caused by cancer. Similarly, an epistemic reason to believe in God refers to phenomena caused by God such as – for example – ­certain religious experiences. The problem is, however, that these experiences might be caused by purely natural factors rather than God. In this case, it is possible that the factory girl – or anyone else for that matter – does not have any epistemic reasons to believe in God or immortality because the epistemic reasons do not point necessarily to God. Despite this, there still might be a pragmatic argument for Christian hope –that it consoles us in the face of evil and suffering. Evidence is only one of the reasons for believing, but there may be others. For example, I have reason to believe in my recovery from a serious illness, if hope and optimism about my recovery make it more likely that I will recover. There might be no clear medical evidence for or against my recovery. I might plunge into despair or be engaged in hope, and one reason to believe and hope for my recovery is that this hope makes my recovery more likely. These reasons could be considered as pragmatic reasons for believing, rather than epistemic ones. With reference to the New Testament Letter to the Hebrews, Jeff Jordan writes that ‘hope is a positive attitude directed to uncertainties in the future, that a particular outcome obtains’ (2006: 186). The Christian faith and several other religious traditions include the hope of immortality. The question, however, is: whether it is possible to hope and be rational at the same time? Newman argues for a positive answer to this question. On closer inspection, the argument contains two major claims. The first claim is that pragmatic reasons are sufficient for the factory girl, and possibly any other person, to be rational in his or her hope of immortality. In this way, it would seem that the pragmatic argument for Christian hope is valid. The second claim is that there are no epistemic reasons for the Christian hope of immortality; this would mean that any epistemic argument for Christian hope fails.

The Arguments of John Stuart Mill John Stuart Mill argues against both the claims offered by Newman in support of the rationality of Christian hope. I shall first address Mill’s argument against the claim that pragmatic arguments are sufficient for rational

18  Carl-Reinhold Bråkenhielm belief in immortality. Secondly, I shall consider Mill’s epistemic arguments concerning the rationality of belief in immortality. First, there is no evidence that Mill had read Newman’s Grammar of Assent (published in 1870), or that he was acquainted with the factory-girl argument. Nevertheless, Mill’s considerations in Three Essays on Religion (1998 [1874]) suggest familiarity with pragmatic arguments for religious consolation. Like Dawkins, Mill argues that references to the consolation of belief in immortality are of no relevance to their rationality, claiming that ‘[a]s causes of belief these various circumstances are most powerful. As rational grounds of it they carry no weight at all’ (1998 [1874]: 204). Mill argues that the consoling nature of an opinion – the pleasure we should have in believing it to be true – is in itself irrational and ‘would sanction half of the mischievous illusions recorded in history or which mislead individual life’ (ibid.: 204). Jeff Jordan, however, has serious misgivings about Mill’s line of thought. Jordan writes: As it stands, Mill’s objection is seriously underdeveloped. It does claim that half of humankind’s mischievous illusions flow from belief-­ formation based on consolation. But it is silent regarding the causation of the other half (might the other half flow from a strict compliance to evidentialism? It is unlikely but we need to know); and it is silent regarding the relative balance between the gain derived from the consoling belief-formation, and the ill derived from it. Does the benefit derived outweigh the loss involved? Without that information, Mill’s objection just strikes an odd note, as a complaint about the production of happiness from one who advocated that production is the overriding duty of humankind. (2006: 192) Let me now leave this line of thought and consider Mill’s views on the ­epistemic weight of belief in immortality. His arguments are most favorably considered in light of his more general remarks on immortality (in part III of his last essay on theism in Three Essays on Religion). At the outset, Mill distinguishes between those indications of immortality ‘which are independent of any theory respecting the Creator and his intentions and those which depend upon antecedent belief on that subject’ (1998 [1874]: 196). First, Mill considers the indications for life after death independent of any theory about a creator and the creator’s intentions. Mill quickly dismisses Plato’s arguments in the Phaedo on the ground that Plato presupposes a certain theory of the soul, namely that human beings have souls which are separate from their bodies, and, as Mill argues, there are no scientific arguments in favor of this theory. Mill writes that we have ‘sufficient evidence that cerebral action is, if not the cause, at least in our present state of existence, a condition sine qua non of mental operations’ (ibid.: 198). This notwithstanding, Mill’s negative argument against Plato affords

A Quantum of Solace and a Heap of Doubt  19 no positive argument against rational belief in immortality; Mill claims that ‘[w]e must beware of giving a priori validity to the conclusions of an a posteriori philosophy…. The relation of thought to a material brain is no metaphysical necessity; but simply a constant co-existence within the limits of observation’ (ibid.: 199). This is because, even if certain mental events are constantly conjoined with certain processes in the brain on this planet, these mental processes might persist under other conditions in other parts of the universe. Mill makes an illuminating comparison between belief in the soul’s existence after death and belief in witchcraft. Witchcraft implies belief in non-material spirits interfering in the events of life and is ­conclusively disproved. But this does imply that there are conclusive proofs against the idea of the soul’s existence after death elsewhere in the universe and not – as is claimed by witchcraft – interfering in the events of life (ibid.: 201). Secondly, Mill considers another argument against rational belief in immortality. He begins with the assumption that, as far as we know, everything in this world perishes. But Mill argues that human beings could be an exception because feelings and thoughts are different from inanimate matter. Moreover, feelings and thoughts are much more real than anything else: ‘[T]hey are the only things which we directly know to be real, all things else being merely the unknown conditions on which these, in our present state of existence or in some other, depend’ (ibid.: 202). From this Mill concludes that no comparison can be made between ­mental events on the one hand and the material world on the other. It’s certainly possible that thoughts and feelings are as perishable as flowers and planets, but we cannot know this for certain: The case is one of those very rare cases in which there is really a total absence of evidence on either side, and in which the absence of evidence for the affirmative does not, as in so many cases it does, create a strong presumption in favor of the negative. (Ibid.: 203) Mill then argues that mental events are the only things we directly know to be real and that everything else is merely assumed to account for our sensations. Echoing Berkeley, Mill claims that physical objects in the material world are nothing but ‘permanent possibilities of sensation’ (see Ayer 1973: 60, 106). But is this really true? Suppose that mental events are not the only things we know directly to be real, but that we also directly know other things, such as material objects. I would argue that this makes no significant difference to Mill’s argument. The radical difference between our feelings and thoughts on the one hand, and the material world on the other, is still there. And this radical difference should make us cautious about the conclusions we derive from the difference between the perishability of material things and mental events.

20  Carl-Reinhold Bråkenhielm Thirdly, Mill argues that there is a certain kind of epistemic reason for Christian hope. In contrast to the former arguments, this argument is dependent upon a modified form of traditional theism. In short, it is modified in the sense that Mill assumes a low probability that a creator exists. But, Mill argues, if a creator does exist, such a creator’s benevolence, intelligence and power might be more limited than traditionally assumed. There is no assurance whatsoever of life after death on these grounds. Even if there is no reason to believe in immortality with a high degree of assurance, there might be a reason to hope. This is explained by Mill in a significant passage from Three Essays on Religion: Appearances point to the existence of a Being who has great power over us—all the power implied in the creation of the Kosmos, or of its organized beings at least—and of whose goodness we have evidence though not of its being his predominant attribute; and as we do not know the limits either of his power or of his goodness, there is room to hope that both the one and the other may extend to granting us this gift provided that it would really be beneficial to us. The same ground which permits this hope warrants us in expecting that if there be a future life it will be at least as good as the present, and will not be wanting in the best feature of the present life, improvability by our own efforts. (1998 [1874]: 210) Mill expands this argument in the concluding part of the essay and defends the principle that, where the evidence and probabilities yield, there hope can properly take possession: ‘The whole domain of the supernatural is thus removed from the region of Belief into that of simple Hope’ (ibid.: 244). Mill’s position is difficult to interpret, but it seems clear that he wants to make a distinction between rational and irrational hope. As I understand him, it is possible to make a departure from the rational principle of regulating our feelings and opinions strictly by evidence. But under what conditions? Jeff Jordan discerns three conditions, in Mill’s analysis, for permissible hope irrespective of evidence (Jordan 2006: 189). According to Jordan, Mill claims that it is permissible to hope if and only if: L1 for all one knows or justifiably believes, the object of one’s hope could obtain; and L2 one’s hope fits with one’s beliefs; and L3 one believes that hoping contributes to one’s own happiness, or to the well-being of others. L1 and L2 are epistemic principles of a weak nature. L1 states that your hope is (weakly) justified if it is consistent with other things that you know

A Quantum of Solace and a Heap of Doubt  21 about the world. L2 goes beyond L1 and states that there is a stronger r­elationship than mere consistency, such that one’s beliefs logically imply one’s hope, or imply that hope with a high degree of probability. The claim is that hope of existence after death fits with belief in a creator, in the sense that it would not be surprising that there is immortality if a creator exists; indeed, it would be surprising if a deity exists and yet there was no such thing as immortality. In short, Mill argues that a hope for immortality has a natural fit with theism. L3 is straightforwardly pragmatic and restricts hope to those who have goals either of personal happiness or of contributing to the well-being of others. As Jordan writes, ‘[b]elieving that hope results in the promotion of happiness or well-being is a necessary condition of a permissible hope’ (Jordan 2006: 189).

The Conditions of Religious Consolation Mill’s argument that it can be rational to entertain hope for a life after death rests upon his general conclusion that there is evidence – but no proof – that the universe is created by an intelligent mind, ‘whose power over the materials was not absolute, whose love for his creatures was not his sole actuating inducement, but who nevertheless desired their good’ (Mill 1998 [1874]: 242–43). This may give us a quantum of solace. However, Mill’s argument only succeeds if we really do live in a world that ‘fits’ the conviction that the creator wills the well-being of its creation, including the well-being of human beings. This brings us to the problem of evil. Among the letters included in the collection Last Letters from Stalingrad (Schneider and Gullans 1974 [1950]), there are two letters relevant in the present context. They are both, presumably, from German soldiers engaged in battle. The first writes about a Christmas Eucharist celebrated in a bunker that protected the worshiping soldiers from anti-aircraft shells. The soldier writes: ‘I read my boys the Christmas story according to the Gospel of Luke, chapter 2, verses 1–17; gave them hard black bread as the holy sacrifice and sacrament of the altar’ (ibid.: letter 16). There is no doubt that this Eucharist was experienced as a consolation in a situation of utter despair. It seems that the soldiers had a very strong non-epistemic reason to engage in such a ritual and the beliefs this ritual presupposes. But is the hope they entertained genuinely rational? Let’s return to Jordan’s three conditions for rational hope. The soldiers in Stalingrad celebrating the Eucharist were indeed justified in their hope in the sense that they indeed believed that their hope would contribute to their happiness and, furthermore, to the well-being of others. So L3 above is clearly fulfilled. But what about L1 and L2? Another German soldier at Stalingrad suggests a negative answer to this question. In a letter to his father, he contrasts the pious feelings of his former worship at home with his feelings about the absence of God at the

22  Carl-Reinhold Bråkenhielm battlefield of Stalingrad. He writes: ‘In Stalingrad, to put the question of God’s existence means to deny it’ (ibid.: letter 17). The soldier concludes with the following words: ‘And if there should be a God, He is only with you in the hymnals and the prayers, in the pious sayings of the priests and pastors, in the ringing of the bells and the fragrance of incense, but not in Stalingrad’ (ibid.: letter 17; see further Jonbäck and Bråkenhielm 2022). It could be argued that the German soldier is referring to the argument from evil, such that the presence of evil in the form of suffering and cruelty at Stalingrad – and throughout human history and beyond – makes it impossible to believe in a loving and almighty God. If the argument from evil is a conclusive argument against belief in God, then the consolation drawn from this belief is illusory, as Dawkins argues in the passages cited above. There is no doubt that the problem of evil is a weighty argument against religious belief and, furthermore, against the consolation that may be drawn from such a belief by soldiers, factory girls, and others. The main issue is whether it is a conclusive argument against such belief. Many philosophers before and after Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz and his famous Essai de Theodicée (1710) have argued that it is not. For example, it might be the case that God is not as mighty and/or as good as is traditionally assumed. This is the position of John Stuart Mill. He argues that ‘there is preponderance of evidence that the creator desired the pleasure of his creatures’ (Mill 1998 [1874]: 191). Mill admits that the creator’s wish for the well-being of human beings is not necessarily known, but indicated by the fact that pleasure is afforded ‘by almost everything, the mere play of the faculties, physical and mental being a never-ending source of pleasure’ (ibid.). Furthermore, pleasure is the result of ‘the normal working of the machinery’, but pain is either due to some external interference with it (in the form of accidents) or the result of defective machinery (ibid.). However, these claims do not necessarily imply the conclusion that the ­single aim and end of creation is the happiness of human beings. The structure of Mill’s argument is that of natural theology, moving from a premise about the world – that is, the ontological primacy of pleasure – to a theological conclusion that pleasure (in contrast to evil) is agreeable to the creator. Needless to say, there are critical questions we could ask of both the premise and the conclusion, but a closer analysis of these questions would take us too far from the main purpose of the argument in question. More significant is another point made by Mill: The author of the machinery is no doubt accountable for having made it susceptible of pain; but this may have been a necessary condition of its susceptibility to pleasure; a supposition which avails nothing on the theory of an Omnipotent Creator but is an extremely probable one in the case of a contriver working under the limitations of inexorable laws and indestructible properties of matter. (Ibid.: 191–92)

A Quantum of Solace and a Heap of Doubt  23 There is, of course, a second possibility, namely that the creator may indeed be omnipotent, but for various reasons limiting its own power over ­creation. A very common but simple explanation for this might be that evil and pain are necessary for moral growth and character. Such an explanation is clearly insufficient when it comes to what Marilyn McCord Adams has called ‘horrendous evils’, such as ‘the participation in which (the doing or suffering of which) constitutes prima facie reason to doubt whether the participant’s life could (given their inclusion in it) be a great good to him/ her on the whole’ (McCord Adams 1999: 26). A more far-reaching reason for an omnipotent creator’s self-limitation of power might be that creating a material universe such as ours, with all its horrendous evils, is a necessary condition for any existence and growth.1 Interestingly, Mill comes close to this idea in the first essay of Three Essays on Religion. Having Leibniz particularly in mind, Mill argues that religious philosophers ‘have always saved … [God’s] goodness at the expense of his power’, and that: ‘They have believed that he could do any one thing, but not any combination of things; that his government, like human government, [was] a system of adjustments and compromises; that the world is inevitably imperfect, contrary to his intention’ (Mill 1998 [1874]: 40). It is an open question if such a theodicy succeeds in convincing the ­nonbeliever. Even if it does, there is another concern that is closely related to the problem of evil, but nevertheless different from it, namely the problem of divine hiddenness or divine silence. This problem is especially puzzling in the face of horrendous evil – as the German soldier in Stalingrad testifies: ‘I have searched for God in every crater, in every destroyed house, on every corner, in every friend, in my foxhole, and in the sky. God did not show Himself, even though my heart cried for Him’ (Schneider and Gullans 1974 [1950]: letter 17). There is an interesting difference between the problem of evil and the problem of divine hiddenness. The problem of evil arises because of the alleged contradiction between (i) God’s goodness, (ii) God’s omnipotence, and (iii) the existence of physical evil. God’s goodness implies that God wants the well-being of God’s creatures (including human beings), God’s omnipotence implies that God can realise this well-being. So, if God wants and can avert physical evil, no physical evil should exist. But it does. This problem might be avoided by assuming that God’s omnipotence does not imply God being able to realise contradictions and that it is logically impossible to create finite persons without at the same time allowing physical – and even horrendous – evil in the world. Such a combination of things might be impossible. Let us allow for the sake of argument that this brings a solution to the problem of evil. Unfortunately, this does not solve the problem of divine silence. This is because the goodness of God implies that God will console devout believers in the face of horrendous evil. But as the testimony of the German soldier shows, this is not always the case. On the contrary, sometimes God is silent. This difficulty is not on the margin of western religion. It concerns the very essence of Christianity. The gospels of the New Testament

24  Carl-Reinhold Bråkenhielm unanimously witness that Jesus died on the cross in an agony similar to that of the German soldier, asking at the moment of His death, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ (Matt. 27:46). But, despite divine hiddenness, it is faith in God and his consolation, rather than despair that is among the chief virtues of Christian life. This Lutheran doctrine is by no means uncontroversial, but it seems to be coherent with the difficulty under discussion. In a certain sense, it would seem impossible for a devout believer confronted with horrendous evil to be consoled by her belief in the benevolence of God – and consequently in God’s granting us eternal life – if God is silent. Such faith would require nothing short of a miracle. An alternative to this line of thought would be an argument which demonstrated that it is (i) rational to affirm the benevolence of God, (ii) live in hope of eternal life even in the face of horrendous evil, and (iii) draw consolation from (i) and (ii). In the last section of this chapter, I advance some considerations in support of such an argument.

The Context-Dependency of Rationality In Dolda principer (Hidden Principles) (2002), the Swedish literary scholar Torsten Pettersson analyses basic issues in the interpretation of literary texts. One issue is of specific relevance in the present context, namely, how it is possible to explain the plurality of scholarly interpretations of literary works. It seems commonplace that a literary work can be interpreted in several ways, and according to the British philosopher of religion, Basil Mitchell, this is because it is impossible per se to ascertain the number of implications a certain sequence of words may have (1973: 47–71). For example, the sentence, ‘This is a heavy suitcase’, can have many implications, such as ‘Can you help me to carry it?’, ‘Look how strong I am that I can carry it!’, or ‘You have been able to fill the suitcase well’ (Pettersson 2002: 54). Furthermore, plurality of interpretations is also connected with what Pettersson calls ‘context-dependency’. When interpreting a literary work, one important question we must ask is which context counts as the relevant and primary context in which to read the work. The answer to this question affects methods of literary scholarship and ‘methods are to a greater or lesser degree related to a worldview’ (ibid.: 54). This worldview is often obvious when it is the question of, for example, openly declared Marxism, post-colonialism, feminism, or psychoanalysis, but in other cases, it is harder to describe in detail (ibid.: 58). In a similar way, the rationality of certain religious beliefs is dependent upon a worldview, in the sense of a comprehensive fundamental pattern (CFP). Many different religious beliefs are dependent upon one particular CFP, namely the claim that ‘If a benevolent God exists, then God is present in human experience’. We can call this a theology of presence. If such a ­theology of presence is presupposed, experiences of divine silence or

A Quantum of Solace and a Heap of Doubt  25 absence present problems for believers in a benevolent God. This is exactly what the German soldier in Stalingrad tells us. He argues, implicitly, that (i) if a benevolent God exists, then God is present in human experience. But (ii) God is absent. Therefore, (iii) God does not exist. There are, of course, numerous ways to circumvent this argument. A range of different hypotheses might take care of the second premise; there might be different reasons for God being silent for this specific German soldier in Stalingrad, for example, the soldier might carry resistance to religious belief, or God might want to put him to a test. But aside from these hypotheses, given Premise 1  and the horrendous evil the German soldier has experienced in Stalingrad, the soldier seems to be quite rational in his denial of the ­existence of a benevolent God. But there is also another option with which to respond to the problem of divine hiddenness, and this would be to deny Premise 1 and the CFP of the theology of presence. In doing so, we would argue that God exists and is benevolent, yet God is not revealed in the world in the way that the theology of presence assumes. A similar move surfaces in the thought of Ludwig Wittgenstein who writes in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: ‘Wie die Welt ist, ist für das Höhere vollkommen gleichgültig. Gott offenbart sich nicht in der Welt’ (1921: 6.432). Here Wittgenstein claims that the only thing that shows itself is the fact that the world is (see ibid.: 6.44), and in doing so he appeals to what we might call a theology of absence. If we accept this, then there seems to be nothing strange about divine hiddenness or silence, rather the strangeness lies with claims that assume the experience and presence of God. These claims of experience and presence would be seen as illusory from Wittgenstein’s perspective, provided they are not interpreted as experiences of that one unspeakable truth that the world is. Of course, there are many positions that we could hold between a theology of presence and a theology of absence. One such position is that a benevolent God exists, but is unpredictably revealed in the world. Hence, divine silence is not unexpected but is also not absolute and necessary. In this interpretation, the adequate (and rational) response is to wait for God to be revealed and prepare oneself for this event. We could describe this as a theology of waiting. In Waiting for Godot (1954), Samuel Beckett suggests that such a waiting is futile and irrational. And indeed it is – provided that there is no benevolent creator in the first place. But the situation is not the same if it is rational to believe that a benevolent creator exists, but is only unpredictably revealed in the world. On this interpretation, it would be premature to conclude from an experience of divine silence that God does not exist. This, however, depends on the rationality of believing that there exists a benevolent God that is unpredictably revealed in the world. There are, in fact, a few reasons to think that such a belief might be rational. For example, consider that the conditions for experiencing God are hard to fulfill and if Christian belief about God is correct, then human beings cannot

26  Carl-Reinhold Bråkenhielm dispose of God as they dispose of material objects. God will be experienced only when God chooses to be revealed. 2 Incidentally, the same unpredictability might characterise inter-­human relationships (and possibly also relationships between many kinds of ­animals). This is illustrated by a much-discussed novel by the Swedish author Lena Andersson, Utan Personligt Ansvar (Without Personal Responsibility) (2014). The main character, Ester, is unmarried but lives in a relationship with a married man, Olof. They meet irregularly, but without Ester getting any clear indications about Olof’s commitments, feelings, and intentions. In the following passage, Ester summarises the situation: One argument she often entertained with herself to preserve the realism in her judgements was now grinding in the back of her mind. It was: has one the right to create expectations for which there were no reasons given? No. Does Olof know that he is creating expectations? Yes. Why is he doing it? ONE: He is enchanted but has not made up his mind. TWO: He is enchanted but cannot refrain even if he has made up his mind. THREE: He amuses himself and helps himself to what was offered; those not able to handle the concept should ask him to refrain (ibid.: 124. Present author’s translation).3 Ester is convinced of the first alternative but is constantly and repeatedly left in the dark about the real facts of Olof’s feelings. Despite this, she does not give up on the relationship, and as long she believes that Olof really loves her but just cannot show it, it seems reasonable for her to go on doing so. Many of her female friends do not believe that Olof loves her, and consequently, they find Ester’s behavior utterly irrational. Is Ester irrational? It depends on which fundamental pattern of interpretation is chosen. The religious believer finds herself in the same situation. Doubt about the reality of a creator’s existence and benevolence could be silenced by a CFP that presupposed a theology of presence and leads to denial and atheism. A theology of absence would leave an answer to the problem wide open, as would the modified approach of a theology of waiting. This means that what is rational or irrational is dependent ultimately upon the CFP that is chosen. So, which CFP should be chosen? Well, it seems that many arguments could play a role in this context. Scientific and logical arguments could be of certain relevance, but also the weaker argument from ‘fitness’ mentioned in the earlier discussion of Mill. But ultimately, the choice of a CFP is beyond the objective canons of science and logic. If this is so, there is ineradicable element of doubt regarding the rationality of religious an ­ consolation.

A Quantum of Solace and a Heap of Doubt  27

Summary and Conclusion In this chapter, I have considered two lines of reasoning regarding the rationality of religious belief in life after death. The first line of reasoning is pragmatic and departs from the presumed consoling power of such a belief (summarised in the ‘factory-girl’ argument). According to Richard Dawkins and John Stuart Mill, this pragmatic line of reasoning is totally irrelevant when it comes to the question of whether belief in immortality is rational. The second line of reasoning concerns epistemic arguments for belief in life after death. Mill has provided us with various arguments for the claim that it is rational to entertain such a belief, one of which is based particularly on his own specific theological beliefs. Mill suggests that hope for life after death is weakly supported by the belief that the universe is created by an intelligent mind, ‘whose power over the materials was not absolute, whose love for his creatures was not his sole actuating inducement, but who nevertheless desired their good’ (Mill 1998 [1874]: 242–43). From this belief in a benevolent God, the belief in immortality and the consolation that this provides would ‘fit’ and so be consistent. However, we can ask whether it is possible to believe that the creator really does desire our good, and is therefore benevolent in the way that Mill’s argument would require. In response to this question, I argued that it is possible to believe in such a benevolent God, even in the face of horrendous evil, providing that a specific type of CFP is chosen. I called this Wittgenstien-inspired pattern a ‘theology of waiting’, as opposed to a ‘theology of presence’. In this way, God is revealed in the world, but only in an unpredictable and ambiguous way. Thus, it can be said that religious belief provides consolation but only conjoined with an ineradicable heap of doubt.4

Notes 1 Brian Hebblethwaite defends a version of this argument in 1976. 2 See Carl-Reinhold Bråkenhielm (1985). 3 Original Swedish text of Andersson: Ett resonemang hon ofta fört med sig själv för att bevara realismen i sina bedömningar malde nu i medvetandets bortre regioner. Det löd: har man rätt att skapa förväntningar som det inte finns fog för? Nej? Vet Olof att han gör det? Ja. Varför gör han det då? Ett: Han är förtjust men har inte bestämt sig. Två: Han är förtjust men kan inte låta bli fast han bestämt sig. Tre: han förströr sig och tar för sig av det som bjuds, den som inte klarar upplägget får be honom låta bli. 4 Let me add that many of my remarks are inspired by Jeffrey Jordan (2006).

References Andersson, L., Utan personligt ansvar (Stockholm: Natur & Kultur Allmänlitteratur, 2014).

28  Carl-Reinhold Bråkenhielm Ayer, A., The Central Questions of Philosophy (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1973). Beckett, S., Waiting for Godot (New York: Grove Press, 1954). Bråkenhielm, C.-R., Problems of Religious Experience (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1985). Crum, J. M. C., ‘Now the Green Blade Rises’ in P. Dearmer, R. Vaughan Williams and M. Shaw (eds.), The Oxford Book of Carols (Oxford: OUP, 1984 [1928]). Dawkins, R., The God Delusion (London: Bantam Press, 2006). Gullans, C. B. and F. Schneider (eds.), Last Letters from Stalingrad (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1974 [1950]). Hebblethwaite, B., Evil, Suffering and Religion (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1976). Jonbäck, F. and C.-R. Bråkenhielm, ‘Problemet med lidande och Guds frånvaro’ in F. Jonbäck, L. Langby and O. Li (eds.), Vidgade perspektiv på lidandets problem (Stockholm: Dialogos, 2022), pp. 219–34. Jordan, J., Pascal’s Wager: Pragmatic Arguments and Belief in God (Oxford: OUP, 2006). McCord Adams, M., Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 1999). Mill, J. S., Three Essays on Religion: Nature, the Utility of Religion and Theism (Amherst, MA and New York: Prometheus Books, 1998 [1874]). Mitchell, B., The Justification of Religious Belief (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1973). Newman, J. H., An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992 [1870]). Pettersson, T., Dolda principer: Kultur-och litteraturteoretiska studier (Lund: Svenska litteratursällskapet, 2002). von Leibniz, G. W., Essays of Theodicy on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil [Essais de Théodicée sur la bonté de Dieu, la liberté de l’homme et l’origine du mal] (Chicago, IL: Open Court, 1998 [1710]). Wittgenstein, L., Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge, 2001 [1921]).

2 Stepping Stone to Atheism? The Instability of Agnosticism Robin Le Poidevin

Introduction In a sparsely populated region of North Yorkshire called Langstrothdale, not far from the Pennine peaks of Great Whernside, Pen-y-ghent and Buckden Pike, two streams, Oughtershaw Beck and Green Field Beck, join to form the River Wharfe. This famous river makes its way past the much-visited walking centres of Kettlewell and Grassington and on towards Burnsall. It widens as minor streams flow into it, but between Burnsall and Bolton Abbey, it suddenly and dramatically narrows to form a deep channel. This is The Strid, so-called because, at barely two yards across, it looks narrow enough for one to cross the river with a single stride (or rather a leap). But to yield to the temptation to do so would almost certainly be fatal. The rocks on either side are treacherous, with sloping and slippery sides. Lose your footing here, and you would plunge into the raging torrent, to be carried beneath the surface by swirling eddies and into underground caverns. Every guidebook warns that numerous people have lost their lives in senseless attempts to jump across the river at this point. A little lower down, as the river curves by the Priory at Bolton Abbey, it widens out once more, and here one can cross much more safely by a series of stepping stones. From a distance, the stones seem like flat slabs in shallow water, a short step apart. But as you make your way over them you notice, half-way across, that there is a gap, and the stone on which you are standing is no flat slab, but a tall, narrow column, mostly submerged in deep, fast-moving water. A vertiginous glance downwards will very nearly make you lose balance. Even stepping stones can have their dangers. There are, I think, intellectual crossing points that mirror these two. Certain extreme and contrasting positions are such that to move directly from one to the other – for example, from theism to atheism – is to do too much violence to one’s sensibilities, threatening even to tear the mind asunder. But there are intermediate positions, forming as it were stepping stones between the polar opposites. These intellectual stepping stones may provide safer crossing points, involving a less sudden and emotionally disturbing transition, but some, at least, cannot comfortably be occupied for long.

DOI: 10.4324/9781315142395-3

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30  Robin Le Poidevin In what follows, we take a look at three such intellectual stepping stones, ones that appear to be compromises between a position no longer thought tenable, and one too revisionary immediately to accept. These three stepping stones are, respectively, epiphenomenalism, the thesis of the mind dependence of time’s passage, and agnosticism. Arguably, each of these intellectual stepping stones is unstable, making it impossible not to move eventually to the extreme position on the other side of the bank from the discarded one. These final resting points are, respectively: physicalism or materialism, the ‘block universe’, and atheism. I want to use the three intellectual stepping stones to illustrate different kinds of instability, to arrive at something like a typology of instability in the realm of worldviews. What sorts of instability are there? Is agnosticism unstable? If so, in what sense? And what should we conclude as to the coherence of agnosticism? Does it, for instance, ultimately lead to atheism? These are the questions I will attempt to answer.

Epiphenomenalism Let us start with epiphenomenalism, which holds that the mental is – as it appears to be – something both real and non-physical, but also that, despite appearances, it has no causal efficacy. It is at the end of a long causal chain consisting largely of physical events, and it is the point at which we get consciousness, but that consciousness does not impinge on the world. The view was apparently first expressed by the French physician Julien de la Mettrie in his 1747 book Machine Man (Thomson 1996), which proposed, as the title intimates, that the human being is a machine. But it is articulated and motivated more explicitly in T. H. Huxley’s ‘On the Hypothesis that Animals are Automata, and its History’, first published in the Fortnightly Review for 1874. Huxley begins by considering the case of non-human animals: If a greyhound chases a hare, he is a free agent, because his action is in entire accordance with his strong desire to catch the hare; while so long as he is held back by the leash he is not free, being prevented by external force from following his inclination. And the ascription of freedom to the greyhound under the former circumstances is by no means inconsistent with the other aspect of the facts of the case – that he is a machine impelled to the chase, and caused, at the same time, to have the desire to catch the game by the impression which the rays of light proceeding from the hare make upon his eyes, and through them his brain. (Huxley 1874: 575–76) He then moves from this to the human case:

Stepping Stone to Atheism?  31 It seems to me that in men, as in brutes, there is no proof that any state of consciousness is the cause of change in the motion of the matter of the organism. If these positions are well based, it follows that our mental conditions are simply the symbols in consciousness of the changes which take place automatically in the organism; and that, to take an extreme illustration, the feeling we call volition is not the cause of a voluntary act, but the symbol of that state of the brain which is the immediate cause of the act. We are conscious automata, endowed with free will in the only intelligible sense of that much-abused term – ­inasmuch as in many respects we are able to do as we like – but nonetheless parts of the great series of causes and effects which, in unbroken continuity, composes that which is, and has been, and shall be – the sum of existence. (Ibid.: 577) Huxley offers us an argument based on extrapolation from (possibly ­disputable) cases. A more rigorous proof of the falsity of Cartesianism is, however, hinted at in the last line. The key assumption is the causal closure of physics: every physical event has a complete causal explanation in physical terms.1 Our actions are simply the local expression of cosmic forces and free only in the sense that they are consistent with our desires, rather than caused by them (though Huxley rather overstates things when he says that this is the only intelligible sense of freedom). But we are, nevertheless, more than the sum of local physical changes: our consciousness itself is not something that can be reduced to the physical. So, we retain part, at least, of our intuitive conception of ourselves. This makes epiphenomenalism the compromise position. Given the causal closure of physics, Cartesianism is no longer tenable. But to leap over the Strid in one bound and say that therefore the mind is nothing, or rather nothing more than an integral part of the physical, is too radical, too revisionary. That would be to plunge into the waters of nihilistic despair. One drop of pure mental essence must survive, that part we call ourselves. 2 But having reached the stepping stone of epiphenomenalism, we cannot remain on it for long, for it starts to break up, impelling us forward. What makes it unstable? We might put the problem like this: it preserves our sense of self only by devaluing it. Part of what it is to be a self is to feel what it is like to be this particular object. This part is preserved by epiphenomenalism. But we also, intuitively, think that to be a self is to be, to a greater or lesser extent, a rational being, to have beliefs and desires that rationalise our actions and, by causing them, bring about the satisfaction of those desires. And that part of what we think it is to be a self, epiphenomenalism takes away. Our precious possession (the mental part of the self) turns to dust in our hands. If we cannot ultimately live with epiphenomenalism, it is because our need to feel we are agents gets the better of us, and we

32  Robin Le Poidevin would rather give up the notion of being different from physical nature, and so in a sense special, than be wholly impotent. If physicalism casts no light ­whatsoever on what it is like to be an individual – how it feels ‘from the inside’ – at least it allows our mental selves to be genuine agents of change. What name do we give this kind of instability? Epiphenomenalism turns out to be self-defeating in a certain sense: it gives us what we thought we wanted, but only by making it not worth preserving. We might call this ‘devaluing the object’: the explanatory role of the mental is eroded in such a way as to undermine the motivation for the position.

The Mind Dependence of Time’s Passage A rather different kind of instability is illustrated by our next case. It is well expressed in the following passage from H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine (1895). Before presenting his dinner companions with a little demonstration, using a miniature time machine he has constructed, the time traveller prepares his audience with a short lecture on the nature of time. Here is part of it: There are really four dimensions, three which we call the three planes of Space, and a fourth, Time. There is, however, a tendency to draw an unreal distinction between the former three dimensions and the latter because it happens that our consciousness moves intermittently in one direction along the latter from the beginning to the end of our lives. ‘That’, said a very young man, making spasmodic efforts to relight his cigar over the lamp; ‘that… is very clear indeed.’ ‘Now, it is very remarkable that this is so extensively over-looked,’ concluded the Time Traveller, with a slight accession of cheerfulness. ‘Really this is what is meant by the Fourth Dimension, though some people who talk about the Fourth Dimension do not know they mean it. It is only another way of looking at Time. There is no difference between Time and any of the three dimensions of Space except that our consciousness moves along it.’ (Wells 1895: 2) So, what is the character of the ‘unreal distinction’ the time traveller thinks we ordinarily draw between time and space? We think that time passes, that what is now present will cease to be present and recede into the ever more distant past. And what time is now present is something that is quite independent of us: were there no sentient beings at all in the world, there would still be a ‘now’. The future, as it has not yet happened, is quite unreal and indeterminate. We also suppose that there is no precise spatial equivalent to all of this. There is no asymmetry in space like the asymmetry between past and future. There is no spatial counterpart to the passage

Stepping Stone to Atheism?  33 of time. And in the absence of sentient creatures with spatial perspectives, ‘here’ has no meaning. The time traveller is inviting us to abandon this intuitive picture, and model time on space. Any time, on this rival view, is just as real as every other, whether earlier or later. There is no ‘now’ except from a particular perspective. And if the time traveller were to get into his machine and travel to a later time, his perspective would be different, in exactly the same way as someone who takes the train comes to occupy a different spatial perspective. But there is a fly in the ointment. Evidently, Wells’ time traveller cannot accept that his experience of time’s passage is completely illusory. This would involve too radical a revision in his thought, and perhaps a profound sense of alienation. And so, he takes his experience, not to intimate the passing of events from present to past, but rather the passing of his mind over those events. The passage of time becomes the passage of mind. That is a compromise. It abandons a position that has become untenable, namely that time passes in reality (though Wells does not tell us why this is untenable), but it doesn’t quite make it to the opposite position, that the passage of time is pure illusion, for that would be too shattering. And so, caught between an untenable position and a disturbing one, he finds a stepping stone. But this stepping stone is unstable. For if our consciousness really is moving along time, then it is subject to the (real) passage of time: our mind was at this time, and is now at that time. There are times it has already reached, and moved on from, and there are times it has not yet reached. In describing the mind’s movement, we inevitably use terms indicative of passage. This kind of instability is straight inconsistency. It says, ‘the world is not subject to temporal passage; only the mind passes’. But the mind is part of the world, and if the mind is subject to passage, then so is the world. Ultimately, then, someone who has abandoned the idea of objective temporal passage will have to go all the way and banish it even from the activity of the mind. Fortunately, there are ways of articulating the mind dependence of time’s passage that do not involve inconsistency, but we needn’t go into those, as the point of the case was simply to illustrate another kind of instability.

Agnosticism And so, we come to agnosticism, at first sight a compromise between theism and atheism. Now, the Victorian agnostic movement, as one might label it, does represent a transition in thought about religious belief. Unshakable conviction in a transcendent and wholly good being, whose nature is infallibly revealed in scripture, was regarded by the agnostics as no longer a possibility, in the light of developments in biology and Biblical criticism. But the radical alternative, the acceptance of a wholly material, Godless and utterly indifferent universe, a world of blind and amoral forces, was too devastating. Those who made the transition in one stride risked mental

34  Robin Le Poidevin destruction, falling into the intellectual and emotional equivalent of the ­turbulent and deadly waters of the Strid. Leslie Stephen, who later was to write ‘An Agnostic’s Apology’ (1893), was, arguably, one such case. As a tutor at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, he suffered a loss of faith which ­apparently drove him to thoughts of suicide. 3 But perhaps we do the Victorian agnostics an injustice if we suggest that it is primarily an emotional failing that prevented them from fully converting to atheism. As Huxley, who is credited with coining the name ‘agnostic’, presented it, it was intellectual humility that was the driving force. Here is his account: When I reached intellectual maturity, and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a materialist or an idealist; a Christian or a freethinker, I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was the answer; until at last I came to the conclusion that I had neither art nor part with any of these denominations, except the last. The one thing in which most of these good people were agreed was the one thing in which I differed from them. They were quite sure that they had attained a certain ‘gnosis’ – had more or less successfully solved the problem of existence; while I was quite sure I had not, and had a pretty strong conviction that the problem was insoluble. And, with Hume and Kant on my side, I could not think myself presumptuous in holding fast by that opinion…. So I took thought, and invented what I conceived to be the appropriate title of ‘agnostic’. It came into my head as suggestively antithetic to the ‘gnostic’ of Church history, who professed to know so much about the very things of which I was ignorant; and I took the earliest opportunity of parading it at our Society [The Metaphysical Society], to show that I, too, had a tail, like the other foxes. (Huxley 1889: 310–11) Let us say, provisionally, that agnosticism is the articulation of uncertainty. Uncertainty about what? ‘The problem of existence’, as Huxley puts it, is rather broad, so let us narrow it down, as people often do, to the specific question of God’s existence. And let us stipulate, for the time being, that it is a thesis, namely the thesis that knowledge of the existence and nature of God is not to be had. (Later, we will consider different characterizations.) Is that thesis a stepping stone between theism and atheism? And is it an unstable one? Let’s compare it with the other stepping-stone positions. Epiphenomenalism is plainly an intermediate thesis: it is logically distinct both from Cartesianism and from physicalism but has elements of both. It  agrees with Cartesianism that the mental is non-physical, but it disagrees about the mental’s causal efficacy. It agrees with physicalism that all

Stepping Stone to Atheism?  35 physical effects have purely physical causes but disagrees about the intrinsic nature of the mental. Epiphenomenalism thus implies the falsity both of Cartesianism and of physicalism. The mind dependence of time’s passage thesis is also intermediate. It agrees with the intuitive view that our sense of passage is not wholly illusory, but it agrees with the ‘block universe’ view that the world without the mind does not exhibit temporal passage. It thus implies (in its inconsistent way) the falsity of both positions. But it would be quite misleading to say that agnosticism implies the falsity both of theism and of atheism, if these latter two positions are no more than the affirmation and denial, respectively, of the existence of God. It is not offering us a third way of looking at the world, as an indeterminate reality in which God neither exists nor fails to exist (a view, incidentally, that is just waiting to be explored).4 And agnosticism does not have elements of both theism and atheism in a way which is analogous to epiphenomenalism’s inclusion of elements from its rival positions. Agnosticism, insofar as it is a thesis at all, isn’t a thesis about God, but rather about our capacities for knowledge, or even justified belief, in this area. It should be contrasted, not with theism and atheism, but with the corresponding knowledge assertions: ‘I know that God exists’ and ‘I know that he doesn’t’. All that is obvious enough. But is the agnostic thesis unstable? Unlike the thesis of the mind dependence of time’s passage, it does not contain an inconsistency. It does not say ‘Nothing one can say that has any religious content is knowable, and it is known that we do not have knowledge of God’. That would be analogous to the incautious relativist’s assertion: ‘It is absolutely true that truth is purely relative’. Since a statement about our knowledge of God plainly has religious content, there is something that has religious content that can be known, viz. our lack of knowledge of God. We may not know whether or not God exists, but we can at least recognise our own limitations when we come up against them. Agnosticism, then, is not inconsistent. A comparison with epiphenomenalism might be more revealing. Epiphenomenalism, we suggested, was self-defeating in this sense: it preserved its object (the mind) only by devaluing it. Yes, the mind is distinct from physical reality, but no, it doesn’t do anything. This modifies our ordinary conception of the mind sufficiently drastically to make us uncertain whether anything about that conception is worth preserving. Agnosticism is not unstable in precisely that sense as it does not modify our conception of God. If that is the object, it is not devalued in any way. But it is hard to deny that the shift from confident theism to agnosticism involves an erosion of faith: if the object has not changed, our attitude towards it has. And that has certain consequences which may ultimately impel us towards atheism. But here we are moving away from purely theoretical sources of instability to the practical: the question is whether agnosticism provides a stable way of life, or whether it becomes the practical equivalent of atheism.

36  Robin Le Poidevin

James on Forced Options Just this question is addressed by William James, in his famous essay ‘The Will to Believe’ (1896). He calls a choice between competing hypotheses an ‘option’, and, among other distinctions he makes between kinds of options, he distinguishes between a forced option and an avoidable one. This is how he expresses it: … if I say to you: ‘Choose between going out with your umbrella or without it’, I do not offer you a genuine option, for it is not forced. You can easily avoid it by not going out at all. Similarly, if I say ‘Either love me or hate me,’ ‘Either call my theory true or call it false’, your option is avoidable. You may remain indifferent, neither loving nor hating, and you may decline to offer any judgement as to my theory. But if I say ‘Either accept this truth or go without it,’ I put on you a forced option, for there is no standing place outside of the alternative. Every dilemma based on a complete logical disjunction, with no possibility of not choosing, is an option of this forced kind. (James 1879a: 3) The choice between Cartesianism and physicalism is not forced, because there is at least one theoretical alternative to both, namely epiphenomenalism. When it comes to choosing between theism and atheism, in contrast, there is no third possibility: if one is false, the other is true. Is it then a forced choice? It depends how we present it. James gives us two subtly but significantly different forms of wording in presenting a choice. Suppose the theist says, ‘Either call theism true or call it false’, then the agnostic can simply decline to do either; the choice is not forced. The agnostic attitude is theoretically stable. But now if, opting for James’ alternative form of wording, the theist says, ‘Either accept theism or go without it’, the agnostic can no longer refuse to play. Agnosticism entails not accepting theism, in the sense of accepting it as true. But then, James will argue, the agnostic is going without theism, precisely by refusing to choose it. Not accepting theism, even if that does not involve denouncing it as false, has the inevitable consequence that theistic faith will not inform one’s life. The agnostic must live, in practical terms, as an atheist. Practically speaking, then, agnosticism is not a viable option. Although James is critical of Pascal, and the latter’s use of a gaming table analogy to press the Wager, he is at one with Pascal on this issue, that the option is a forced one. As Pascal puts it: ‘a bet must be laid. There is no option: you have joined the game’ (Stewart 1950: §343). Since James’ time – and certainly since Pascal’s – we have become familiar with a variety of approaches to religious language and practice that involve a genuine engagement with theism which nevertheless stop short of accepting it as true. Even if theism is a fiction, it is a fiction imaginative engagement

Stepping Stone to Atheism?  37 transformation.  The with which offers a route to moral and spiritual ­ a­ gnostic can surely accept that much, and on that basis, adopt theistic language and participate in religious practice. One may have criticisms to make of such an approach, that it isn’t ‘the real thing’, and so forth, but the fact that we can articulate it shows that agnosticism does not inevitably collapse into practical atheism. But James has another concern about agnosticism, and this touches on a different incarnation of agnosticism, not as a thesis but as a principle.

The Agnostic Principle When, after the 20-odd years in which his word was first banded around, Huxley took to print to explain his own understanding of the position, he distanced himself from the idea that agnosticism is a thesis. It is rather, he explains, a principle, the principle never to accept any proposition as certain unless evidence can be produced which justifies that proposition. Like W. K. Clifford (1877), he puts this forward as an ethical principle. This is agnosticism as an injunction. Injunctions can neither be true nor false, but they can be obeyed or disobeyed. And injunctions can be described as ‘unstable’ if they are self-defeating: the attempt to obey them inevitably leads to failure, not merely because they are too demanding but because of the structure of the injunctions themselves. For example: PLEASE IGNORE THIS NOTICE. How do you respond to this? If you try to ignore it, then you end up doing exactly what it says you shouldn’t be doing, namely following the injunction to ignore it. It is the imperative counterpart to the Liar: ‘this statement is false’. Now when James tackles agnosticism as a principle rather than as a thesis, he points out that the injunction not to be too credulous, but rather to demand conclusive evidence before believing anything, is no more rational than the opposite injunction. What we have, in effect, is two commands, which in certain circumstances compete with each other: one command is ‘Avoid error at all costs!’5 and the other is ‘Believe the truth at all costs!’ One might think that the first is the one recommended by reason. But both are motivated by fear: in one case, it is the fear of falling into error, the desire not to be duped, under any circumstances. In the other case, it is the fear of missing out on a momentous truth. Better be credulous than forgo the greatest prize (which is really, in a nutshell, Pascal’s Wager). The agnostic principle is for James, then, as much the expression of fear of being duped as the deliverance of reason. This doesn’t yet suggest that there is anything self-defeating about it. However, there is this asymmetry between the two injunctions, ‘Avoid error!’ and ‘Believe truth!’: if we are to avoid error, this will apply as much to principles as it does to propositions. We shouldn’t, in other words, be following dodgy principles. So, what if the agnostic principle is a dodgy principle? Then, by its own lights, we shouldn’t be following it. Compare this with the injunction to ‘Believe

38  Robin Le Poidevin truth!’. The injunction to believe truth, even at the risk of sometimes being duped, is more likely to lead to true beliefs than the injunction to avoid errors. So, whereas the agnostic principle would recommend caution, even over accepting the principle itself, the opposite injunction reinforces one’s tendency to follow it. There are grounds, then, for thinking the agnostic principle self-defeating and so, in a sense, unstable. And since the agnostic principle, as articulated by Huxley (and criticised by James), is an entirely general one, the moral extends beyond the context of religious belief. However, the agnostic need not be the rabid evidentialist that James has in his sights, demanding conclusive evidence before forming any opinion. The agnostic may be recommending particular caution in an area where the route to justified belief is extremely obscure, the risk of error significant, and the stakes high. This more limited agnostic principle does not shoot itself in the foot.

Second-Order Agnosticism We have considered agnosticism as a thesis (knowledge of God’s ­existence/ non-existence is unattainable), and as a principle (don’t be credulous, demand proof). But there is a third way of characterizing it, and that is in terms of a state of mind involving degrees of belief. Some beliefs are firmer, more confidently held, than others. We may put this by saying that our degree of (confidence in our) belief in a given proposition is higher or lower than our degree of belief in some other proposition. Theists have a relatively high degree of belief in the proposition that God exists (setting aside for the purposes of this discussion a non-cognitivist construal of ‘belief’ in God, which is nothing to do with belief in the truth of any proposition), atheists a similar degree of belief in the proposition that God does not exist. Agnostics do not have a high degree of belief in either proposition, but nor do they have a very low degree of belief in either, for to have a very low degree of belief in theism is to be an atheist. So, agnostics will, in terms of degrees of belief, be somewhere between theism and atheism. That, perhaps, captures the everyday, non-philosophical kind of agnosticism exhibited by many people. But suppose the agnostic, thus characterised, is reflective about their own epistemic position. What degree of confidence should they have in the proposition ‘knowledge of God’s existence or non-existence is unattainable’? We might expect that it will be a very high one. And this is so if our first characterization of agnosticism, as a thesis, is the appropriate one. But agnostics about God may similarly be agnostic about their own powers to gain knowledge of whether God exists or not. They may be second-­order agnostics: agnostic about their own agnosticism (agnostic, that is, over whether ultimately agnosticism is the right attitude). To represent the full range of possibilities, then, we need to follow Jeanine Diller’s suggestion, in her ‘Mapping Agnosticism’, that we represent

Stepping Stone to Atheism?  39 agnosticism two-dimensionally (Diller 2023). Along one dimension we have degrees of belief in the proposition that God exists. At right angles to this, we have degrees of belief in the proposition that we cannot attain knowledge of God’s existence or non-existence. The position Diller characterises as ‘stable agnosticism’ is at the mid-point of one dimension (concerning God’s existence), but at one of the extreme ends of the other dimension (concerning the attainability of knowledge of God’s existence). The stable agnostic is one who is not at all confident whether God exists or not, but very confident that knowledge on this matter cannot be reached. Her labelling of this position implies, of course, that there is an unstable agnosticism. In what sense unstable? Dimensions in the physical realm tend to be independent of each other: motion in one spatial dimension does not imply motion in another such dimension; variation in pitch does not imply variation in volume. But when we apply the notion of dimensionality, analogically, to the cognitive realm, this independence may be absent. Our attitude towards the possibility of knowledge of God’s existence affects the stability of our attitude towards theism. That, I take it, is precisely Diller’s point. If we are confident that knowledge of God’s existence/non-existence is not attainable, then our first-order agnosticism is unlikely to change. But as our confidence in the impossibility of such knowledge decreases, so does the stability of our first-order agnosticism. The most unstable point, however, is not the midway point in both dimensions. The more confident we are that knowledge of God’s existence or non-existence is attainable, the less likely it is that we will remain first-order agnostics: sooner or later, we will find some consideration for or against God compelling. Exactly that seems to be the position that Richard Dawkins describes as ‘Temporary Agnosticism in Practice’, in contrast to ‘Permanent Agnosticism in Principle’ (Dawkins 2006: 70), the latter of which corresponds to Diller’s stable agnosticism. So now we have yet another kind of instability: the kind induced by second-order beliefs about the inevitability of our current epistemic state. The greatest threat to the stability or first-order agnosticism, however, is not second-order agnosticism, but rather a confidence the typical agnostic is unlikely to feel in our powers to discover the truth, where God’s existence is concerned.

An Existential Crisis? To summarise the discussion so far: we have been identifying different kinds of instability that threaten positions we might come to occupy as compromises between competing and more extreme positions, with a view to determining whether agnosticism is unstable – sufficiently so, indeed, as to tip us into atheism. The first two kinds of instability were varieties of theoretical instability: a problem with the content of a thesis. One is straight inconsistency: one part of the thesis denies what the other part asserts. This was illustrated by the thesis of the mind dependence of time’s

40  Robin Le Poidevin passage (or one way, at any rate, of articulating that notion). The other was what we called ‘devaluing the object’. This was illustrated by epiphenomenalism: we preserve the intuition that the mind is not an integral part of nature, but somehow separate from it, by making it impotent, and therefore of little import. Agnosticism does not seem to suffer from either of these theoretical defects. It does not, or need not, proclaim the blatantly inconsistent ‘We know that no proposition with religious content can be known to be true’. Nor does it devalue the object, if the object in question is God. In calling propositions concerning the existence or nature of God ‘unknowable’ it does not modify the notion of God itself. In addition to theoretically unstable positions, there are ones that are practically so. We may think (as James did) that, in terms of its practical consequences, agnosticism is equivalent to atheism, making it a short step from one to the other. But if we take seriously the possibility of non-realist approaches to religious language and practice, we make room for a way of life that takes agnosticism as its theoretical basis but which imaginatively and practically engages with the theistic perspective. Another kind of practical instability concerns injunctions or principles rather than theses. An injunction is unstable if it is self-defeating: the attempt to follow it is likely to fail. The agnostic principle might be thought self-defeating in this sense if it is wholly unrestricted, equivalent to the injunction to avoid error, whatever the cost. But agnosticism need not involve endorsement of so global and extreme a principle. Then, there is the kind of cognitive instability induced by second-order doubts about the soundness of our current epistemic state. If agnosticism represents a degree of belief in theism that is mid-way between theism and atheism, then shifts in this degree of belief might result from shifts in our confidence in what we earlier characterised as the agnostic thesis: knowledge of God’s existence/non-existence is unattainable. Agnosticism about this thesis – a state of mind we might characterise as ‘second-order agnosticism’ – will make first-order agnosticism a little more unstable, where ‘first-order agnosticism’ is characterised in terms of degrees of belief. Here, we have, perhaps, as Jeanine Diller suggests, found a source of instability in agnosticism. But, first, this is not intrinsic to agnosticism about God, but rather comes from agnosticism about the possibility of knowledge. Second, the greatest threat to the stability of first-order agnosticism is not second-order agnosticism, but an increasing degree of confidence in the possibility of knowing whether or not God exists. We might also note that this kind of instability does not favour atheism over theism: the shift in degrees of belief could go either way. And so, we turn to our last kind of instability. To introduce it, let us once again turn to the peerless prose of William James: A philosophy may be unimpeachable in other respects, but either of two defects will be fatal to its universal acceptance. First, its ultimate

Stepping Stone to Atheism?  41 principle must not be one that essentially baffles and disappoints our dearest desires and our most cherished powers.… But a second and worse  defect in a philosophy than that of contradicting our active propensities is to give them no object whatever to press against. ­ A  ­philosophy whose principle is so incommensurate with our most intimate powers as to deny them all relevancy in universal affairs… will be more unpopular than pessimism. Better face the enemy than the eternal void! (James 1897b: 82–83) Consider the second defect he identifies, that of giving us ‘no object to press against’. We might rephrase this somewhat opaque phrase in these terms: a philosophy that fails to offer a system or worldview from which values, and so guidance for conduct, could in principle be derived, is defective. The example he gives following this passage is that of materialism, the idea being that the materialist eliminates all objective, real value from the world, reducing everything to what is describable in physical vocabulary. Those of our beliefs and desires that are concerned with value (as many of them are) are thus robbed of their object. Materialism thus offers us a system, but one from which no values can be derived, since (as James conceives of it) it actually denies the existence of value. We might wonder whether agnosticism similarly gives us no object to press against, for a different reason: not because it denies value, but because it offers us no worldview at all.6 In his state of uncertainty, the agnostic, instead of contemplating a determinate view of the world (theist or atheist) instead confronts a blank canvass: he is lost in a fog. And that is likely to induce an existential crisis: he doesn’t know upon what ground he is putting his feet. Can that, emotionally, be sustained for long, or must it soon be replaced by some picture of the world, however cautiously held? This kind of instability we might call ‘existential instability’. To say that agnosticism is existentially unstable is to say that the agnostic cannot live his agnosticism for long, just as the Pyrrhonian sceptic, who abjures all belief, cannot live his scepticism. This comparison between Pyrrhonian scepticism and agnosticism may be a little exaggerated. It is plain why the radical sceptic cannot live his scepticism, for intentional action depends on belief; to abstain from belief is therefore to abstain from agency. The agnostic is not quite in this position. But still there is the defect James identifies: the agnostic has, in religious matters, nothing to ‘press against’, that is, nothing to inform our values or practical reasoning. This is not a satisfactory situation. The theism/atheism debate is, in part, over whether the universe is or is not the outcome of a creative act by a being of unimaginable goodness, to be touched by whom is to be transformed into something worthy of eternal life. Who can remain indifferent to that question? The option of choosing or not choosing theism is, in James’s phrase, a momentous one. If the agnostic simply refuses to engage with it, then he does, in thought and imagination, have no

42  Robin Le Poidevin worldview to inform value and action. But agnosticism need not be defined in such terms. Instead of simply replacing the theist and atheist pictures with a blank, he may, instead, oscillate between the two. I don’t mean that he is a theist one day and an atheist the next, but that he will sometimes see the world in one instant from a theist perspective, and in another from an atheist one. In one case, his imagination will be filled with the picture of God; in the other case, he will face the void. This is, undoubtedly, an unstable position: an oscillating object is not a stable one! It is as if one is constantly moving off the stepping stone in one direction and then, in an about-turn, moving off in the opposite direction. A stepping stone need not be intrinsically unstable: the stone itself may be embedded firmly in the ground. We experience it as unstable precisely because we are in motion: the idea of a stepping stone, after all, is to allow passage from one side of the river to the other. This is why agnosticism may be thought unstable: not because it is intrinsically so, but because it may mark a transition from theism to atheism. And that is why it was viewed with such suspicion by nineteenth-century churchmen. (Equally, as they seem not to have recognised, it may mark a point in the transition from atheism to theism.) We have, then, finally identified what might be intrinsically unstable about the state of being agnostic (as opposed to the agnostic thesis or principle): the agnostic who is not merely detached from religious questions, but thoroughly engaged with them, will be oscillating in thought between opposing positions. Should the philosopher condemn this? It cannot be condemned as a theory, since it is a shifting attitude towards theories. Nor can it be condemned as a practice if the result is to keep alive religious challenges – and if it succeeds in doing so, it need not inexorably lead to atheism. It is not, perhaps, an emotionally comfortable position. But we learn to live with uncertainty, and can, perhaps even face the final great uncertainty with equanimity. Michael Ignatieff’s play for television, Dialogue in the Dark (1993) presents an imagined conversation between James Boswell, Johnson’s biographer, and the philosopher David Hume. Boswell is a rather gloomy believer, Hume a (relatively) cheerful agnostic. While Boswell constantly challenges him on the impossibility of living without faith, Hume patiently explains the reasons for his views on the limitations of human knowledge. Towards the end of the play, Hume contemplates his last journey, across another river. Where will the Ferryman take the old agnostic? ‘Into the darkness’, says Boswell, bitterly. ‘Into the darkness’, replies Hume, phlegmatically.7

Notes 1 This is not the same as the assumption of determinism, because all that is asserted by the closure principle is that physical effects have purely physical causes, not that those causes determine, in an un-chancy way, those effects.

Stepping Stone to Atheism?  43 2 That, at any rate, is my conjecture (originally put to me by Murray MacBeath) as to the original thinking behind epiphenomenalism. 3 As reported, second-hand, by a contemporary of Stephen’s, to the latter’s daughter, Virginia Woolf. The evidence is perhaps equivocal, but it is clear that Stephen’s religious doubts did precipitate a profound and shattering crisis. See Annan (1984: 45–46). 4 The ironic tone of this parenthetical remark is fairly mild. The idea that reality itself (as opposed to our representations of that reality) could be indeterminate is not necessarily absurd. And if it finds application in some contexts, it is at least worth asking whether it has a religious significance. 5 Or, in Clifford’s much-quoted words: ‘it is wrong always, everywhere, and for any one, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence’ (Clifford 1877: 295). If Clifford is right, then we have an absolute obligation to avoid believing anything on insufficient evidence, an obligation which is not removed by any other considerations. Why do we have this obligation? Because we are more likely to fall into error if we ignore it. Our fundamental duty, then, is to avoid error, whatever the circumstances. 6 I am grateful to Mark Wynn for this suggestion, and for drawing my attention to the preceding passage from James. 7 Thanks to Mark Wynn, Jeanine Diller, Stephen Clark, and Bill Wood for comments at various stages in the writing of this chapter.

References Annan, N., Leslie Stephen: The Godless Victorian (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1984). Clifford, W. K., ‘The Ethics of Belief’, Contemporary Review 29 (1877): 289–309. Dawkins, R., The God Delusion (London: Black Swan, 2006). Thomson, A. (ed.), Julian de la Mettrie, Machine Man and Other Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). Diller, J., ‘Mapping Agnosticism’, in H. A. Harris and V. S. Harrison (eds.), Atheisms: The Philosophy of Non-Belief (London: Routledge, 2023), pp. 173–76. Huxley, T. H., ‘On the Hypothesis That Animals Are Automata, and Its History’, Fortnightly Review, New Series XVI (1874): 555–80. Huxley, T. H., ‘Agnosticism and Christianity’, The Nineteenth Century (1889). Reprinted in Collected Essays, Volume 5: Science and Christian Belief (London: Macmillan, 1904), pp. 309–65. Ignatieff, M., Dialogue in the Dark (BBC Television, 1993). James, W., ‘The Will to Believe’, in The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1897a), pp. 1–31. James, W., ‘The Sentiment of Rationality’, in W. James (ed.), The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1897b), pp. 63–111. Stewart, H. (trans. and ed.), Pascal’s Pensées (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1950). Stephen, L., ‘An Agnostic’s Apology’, in L. Stephen (ed.), An Agnostic’s Apology and Other Essays (London: Watts & Co., 1893), pp. 1–26. Wells, H. G., The Time Machine: An Invention (London: W. Heinemann, 1895).

3 A New Theist Meets Two Atheists Jeanine Diller

Introduction Atheism is supposed to be the denial of theism, but I have located a curious thing: two philosophers, Edwin Curley and Daniel Dennett, whose atheisms do not deny the theism of a third philosopher, John Bishop. This situation is possible because the trio is equivocating on the words ‘God’ and ‘faith’: there are many notions of ‘God’ and ‘faith’, and the ones that Curley and Dennett deny are distinct from the ones that Bishop affirms. In fact, their equivocation is deep enough that Bishop turns out to be an atheist in Curley’s and Dennett’s sense, and conversely and even more remarkably, Curley and Dennett, though not quite theists in Bishop’s sense, are committed to something close to what Bishop would call ‘God’, even if they almost certainly would not call it ‘God’ themselves. In the first section of this chapter, I offer three recommendations for structuring conversations about the existence of God to keep the parties from equivocating on ‘God’ and ‘faith’, and thus from talking past each other. I use these recommendations in the second section as I bring together Curley’s, Dennett’s, and Bishop’s views for the first time (to my knowledge, they have never engaged each other). In the third section, I substantiate the claims above about the trio’s equivocation and convergences, and in the fourth section, I explore the last convergence in particular, regarding Curley and Dennett being committed to something close to Bishop’s ‘God’ – an exploration which must be done as a thought experiment since Curley and Dennett do not engage Bishop directly. I close in the fifth section by suggesting that our trio’s dialectic is an instance of a wider phenomenon in the field, of a lack of interaction between atheists and a growing cadre of ‘new theists’ such as Bishop. I argue that this disconnect is a loss for both sides and encourage new theists and atheists to be in conversation.

Three Recommendations for Talking about God’s Existence There are two moving parts to a theist’s world stance:1 (1) theism itself, i.e. the proposition that there is a God, and (2) a pro-attitude towards this

44

DOI: 10.4324/9781315142395-4

A New Theist Meets Two Atheists  45 proposition. Theists read (1) and (2) in multiple ways, and since a­ theists deny the theists’ stances, atheists are a fortiori caught up in multiple ­readings too. Regarding (1), the proposition that ‘there is a God’ is ambiguous in two ways. First and foremost, the word ‘God’ is ambiguous, indeed greatly so; someone once said there are as many notions of God as there are people who have thought about God, and this is not far from the truth. Taking a ‘notion’ of God to be a conjunction of properties that someone assumes God would have if there were a God, we can find a plethora of such notions extant in the philosophical and theological literature, including: classical notions which take God to be entirely distinct from the world and necessarily perfect; neo-classical notions which take God to be entirely distinct from the world but lacking one or more of the traditional perfections; panentheistic notions in which God is not entirely distinct from the world, since the world is in God but God is also more than the world; and process notions which take God to be the divine end of a cosmic process of becoming. Moreover, each of these notions is really a family or type of notion with particular instances that differ from each other in some property, properties, or readings of properties. So, for example, Augustine’s, Anselm’s, and Aquinas’ views about God are tokens of the classical type; Klaas Kraay’s, Yujin Nagasawa’s, and Richard Rice’s views are tokens of the neo-classical type. 2 Not only is the content of the notion of God ambiguous in a given stance, so also is the number of notions of God. As I have argued elsewhere (2016), there is a local and global use of ‘God’ in existential statements. The local use of ‘God’ is attributed in statements such as ‘there is no God of a specific kind’, which implies that, for example, there is specifically no classical God, 3 whereas the global use is attributed in statements such as ‘there is no God of any kind’, taken to mean that there is no classical God, and no neo-classical God, and no process God, and no God of any kind worth the name. Atheisms can be coherently local or global since, assuming the ontological argument is not sound, it is consistent to deny that there is a God on one, some, or all notions of God. Earlier (2016) I have argued that all theisms were local, since there is no coherent global theism, by which I meant there is no coherent conjunction of all the theisms since the various notions of God adumbrated above are inconsistent with each other.4 There is indeed no coherent conjunctive global theism, but there is a coherent disjunctive ‘global’ theism, that is, the view that some local theism or other is true, and this view is interesting (for starters, it is more likely to be true than any particular local theism) and in fact held in some form by John Schellenberg (2009). Convinced by Paul Draper that it would be wrong to call the disjunction of local theisms ‘global theism’, I will follow him and call it ‘versatile theism’.5 In sum, there are thus two sites of ambiguity regarding (1): theisms and atheisms can be about different notions of God, and they can be local, versatile, or global.

46  Jeanine Diller Regarding (2), the pro-attitude towards the proposition about God is also ambiguous. The ambiguity in (2) is less pronounced than in (1), since the most common such pro-attitude is belief. A theist generally affirms belief that ‘there is a God’ is true, and a fortiori an atheist generally denies belief that the proposition is true. But there is a growing array of relatively new, non-doxastic (beliefless) propositional attitudes that theists are increasingly using to replace belief at the heart of their world stances. A foundational article in this vein is Pojman (1986), which argues that faith in God is best understood as hope in God, an attitude that requires only belief that God is possible, not probable. Other such accounts have been offered in, for example, Schellenberg (2005), Buchak (2012), Howard-Snyder (2013), and also Bishop, who I will focus on below. This diversity in what counts as a pro-attitude sets up a conversational playground ripe for equivocation. As Dennett writes: For a thousand years, roughly, we’ve entertained a throng of variously deanthropomorphized intellectualized concepts of God, all more or less peacefully coexisting in the minds of ‘believers.’ Since everybody calls his or her own version ‘God’, there is something ‘we can all agree about’ – we believe in God; we’re not atheists! But of course it doesn’t work that well. If Lucy believes that Rock (Hudson) is to die for, and Desi believes that rock (music) is to die for, they really don’t agree about anything, do they? (2006: 209) Similarly, if Curley and Dennett think one kind of God does not exist and Bishop thinks another kind does, they don’t necessarily disagree about anything either. This miscommunication is amplified if Curley and Dennett deny one kind of faith in God and Bishop affirms another. Given these ambiguities about the notion of God and the propositional attitude towards the proposition that God exists, the path for avoiding miscommunication in conversations about the existence of God is straightforward: i Identify the notion or notions of God each party is using, both in content and number. ii Identify which propositional attitude towards the existence of God each party is using. Operationalizing recommendation (ii) is like ordering from a menu: both parties identify which propositional attitude they take to be at work in their stances, for example, they might advocate ‘belief’ or ‘hope’. Operationalizing recommendation (i) requires more explanation, given the subtleties of the ambiguities mentioned above. Conversation partners first need to clarify whether they have a local or global stance about God in mind, and, if local,

A New Theist Meets Two Atheists  47 to then clarify which local notion of God they affirm or deny. To state the clarifications more formally, taking ‘God1’, ‘God 2’, etc. to be notions of God such as ‘an omnipotent, omniscient and perfectly good being’, local theists should identify God1 in: 1 Local theism: there is a God1, and, similarly, local atheists should identify God1 in: 2 Local atheism: there is no God1. If the claim is about the entire range of notions of God, theists should clarify they hold this: 3 Versatile theism: there is either a God1 or a God 2 , etc., and atheists should clarify they hold its denial, namely this: 4 Global atheism:6 there is no God1 and no God 2 , etc. In both (3) and (4), God x ranges over notions genuinely of God, though it is a vexed and under-researched matter to say which notions are genuine.7 These propositions make explicit the notions of God at work in a theism or an atheism – the clarity we need in order to prevent equivocation. They also enable articulation of complicated local stances, such as being an atheist about one notion of God but a theist or an agnostic about another – this fact will be useful when we explicate our trio’s views. I offer a third recommendation that, though not necessary for avoiding miscommunication, in my experience deepens conversations about God in illuminating ways: iii Look for additional commitments beyond those about God that each thinker has, especially about what they take to be metaphysically ­fundamental to the universe, and the greatest value in it, and the ­deepest source of human or universal fulfilment. The positive views of atheists are little discussed when they are in conversation with theists, since the salient aspect of their view on display is often what they deny. But ignoring the atheist’s fuller world stance creates a mono-focus on the theist’s stance in conversations about God – it is the theist’s stance that gets affirmed (A), denied in objections (A), and then defended in counter-replies (A). This focus also brings the atheists only partly into the discussion, arguing primarily against A, rather than, for example, their positive stance B. If instead we pay attention to a fuller picture of both parties’ commitments (A and B), we can compare the two and

48  Jeanine Diller look for harmonies and differences. When possible, I recommend a special focus on what both sides affirm, if anything, about what is ultimate. This ultimacy is construed by Schellenberg (2009) as having three kinds: what is (i) metaphysically fundamental to the universe, or (ii) the greatest value in it, or (iii) the deepest source of human or universal fulfilment.8 Schellenberg’s framing allows for theistic, non-theistic, and atheistic readings of each kind of ultimacy. For example, while a theist might say that God is the referent of each category, i.e. it is God that is the most real, the highest value, and the source of our fulfilment, an atheist might say, for example, that the natural world is what is most real, human goodness is what is of the highest value, and natural beauty is the best source of our fulfilment. Though these recommendations are relatively easy to follow, they produce interesting results, as will become evident next when we apply them to the arguments offered by Curley, Dennett, and Bishop.

Curley, Dennett, and Bishop I was inspired to write this paper by a method Francis Clooney developed called ‘comparative theology’, the aim of which is to create ‘small, useful engagements in diversity’ (2010: 68). In order to follow this method, one first selects two texts that ‘remind you of each other’, as Clooney once said to me in conversation, one from one’s own religious tradition and the other from another. One studies the text from the other tradition first – slowly and carefully, owning and watching the bias of one’s perspective – and then takes what one learns from it back to the text from one’s own tradition, looking for fresh insights about one’s own view from the other view (ibid.: 60). This paper was born at the moment Clooney said to find texts that ‘remind you of each other’. For years, Bishop’s theism had reminded me of atheism. I realised I could use the outline of the comparative theological method to cross an atheistic–theistic divide instead of a strictly religious one – choosing a text from Bishop and from an atheist to aim for a ‘small, useful engagement’ at the boundary between atheism and theism. I chose Curley and Dennett to pair with Bishop because together they each employ popular strands in the atheistic literature: Curley argues against God using the problem of evil, and Dennett does so using naturalism. In addition, Curley is unusually careful to explicate the notions of God he has as a target, a clarity that enables us to discuss his notions without guessing, and Dennett is one of the most notable contemporary atheistic philosophers. If Bishop’s view really were to align in some way with Curley’s and Dennett’s, then at least one theism aligns with important facets of mainline contemporary atheism, and this would be intrinsically interesting. My focus here are Curley’s, Dennett’s, and Bishop’s pieces from two edited volumes that collect varieties of atheisms and theisms, respectively, Antony (2007) on atheisms, and Diller and Kasher (2013) on theisms. Since

A New Theist Meets Two Atheists  49 I am sympathetic to new theism, I will begin in the spirit of comparative theology with an analysis of Curley’s and Dennett’s essays with an eye to the implicit or explicit claims made with regards to their: (i) notions of God, (ii) types of propositional attitudes, and (iii) other commitments. I will then bring insights from these texts into discussion with Bishop’s. Curley’s ‘On Becoming a Heretic’ Curley’s essay is an extended explanation of the reasoning that led him to leave Christianity and is thus partly autobiographical, and partly theological and philosophical. His initial concerns were with doctrines written in the prayer book of the Episcopal Church, the tradition of his youth, including predestination, hell, and justification by faith through God’s grace alone – all of which he takes to be ‘unfair’ and against his ‘sense of justice’ – as well as original sin which, at least when applied to infants, he takes to be ‘absurd’ (Curley 2007: 81–83). He also has moral objections to some Biblical passages, including Jesus’ commands to turn the other cheek (‘sometimes…we must resist evil’ (ibid.: 84)). In light of all these ­theological objections, Curley claims that he entered college as ‘an ­agnostic’ (ibid.: 84). As a result of his study of philosophy in college and after, Curley added to these concerns at least two major philosophical objections.9 First is the problem of evil. Curley thinks that the free will defence fails in light of predestination and natural evils and that the broader genus of greater goods defences ‘can easily lead to a kind of cost-benefit analysis deeply repugnant to our moral sense’ (ibid.: 87). It is not obvious, Curley implies, that freedom is a great enough good to outweigh the suffering that exists. Moreover, even if it were, such a good is distributed unfairly since some have to suffer more than others to create it. Curley is not alone in finding the problem of evil a convincing reason to leave theism: many other of the atheists in Antony’s volume echo his concerns, including Stewart Shapiro: ‘why should we believe this universe was created by a being driven by principles of fairness?’ (2007: 4); Walter Sinnot-Armstrong: ‘isn’t it unfair to use one person’s suffering to teach others?’ (2007: 75); and Antony herself: ‘The free will defense I found not merely unpersuasive but morally disturbing….why should innocent others be allowed to suffer if I practice vice…?’ (2007: 49–50). Second, Curley takes God’s command in Genesis, to sacrifice Isaac, to make ‘morality…unintelligible’, since it demonstrates that our highest loyalty must be to a God who ‘might command anything’, even the breaking of our most deeply held moral norms (ibid.: 87–88). Curley is aware that Robert Adams and others respond to this objection by claiming that God would not issue such commands, but Curley argues that the Biblical case for God’s issuing such commands is so strong that such respondents are forced into a deep scepticism about the accuracy of the Bible. Curley

50  Jeanine Diller decides that his choice is either to give up Christianity or give up morality, and concludes: ‘I choose heresy’ (ibid.: 89). At this point, we can apply the recommendations that I offered above. With regards to recommendation (i) and Curley’s notion of God, carefully speaking, Curley is staying local and denying two different notions of God. In the first half of his essay, he is arguing against the God of his youth – the God of the Anglican prayer book, call it ‘God Anglican’, who predestines, sends people to hell even for original sin, justifies people by faith through grace, and is incarnated in Jesus.10 This notion refers to God by way of what I call a ‘functional role’ for God: God’s identity is fixed in terms of what God does in the world (in terms of the extrinsic relations in which God stands) rather than what God is (in terms of the intrinsic properties such relations may require).11 In the second half of his essay, Curley argues against the classical notion of God as a perfect being generally construed as having omnipotence, omniscience, perfect goodness, and other perfections (‘GodClassical’), which has dominated theological and philosophical thinking about God since at least the time of Philo. Though the two notions of God as Anglican and Classical are run together here and in much of Christian thought, I distinguish them because they are conceptually distinct. There could be a GodClassical that is not God Anglican – a God that is a perfect creator but does not predestine or send people to hell. Conversely, there could be a God Anglican that is not GodClassical – a God that predestines or sends people to hell, but by way of immense but imperfect degrees of goodness or power. Moreover, these notions are argumentatively distinct, meaning that they behave differently in the context of philosophical argumentation. For example, as I have argued elsewhere (Diller 2000), Curley’s argument from the incoherence of the perfections (Curley 2003), if soundly derived, demonstrates the non-existence of a GodClassical with the relevant perfections so construed, but would not touch a God Anglican that lacks the perfections in the first place. Thus, Curley is a local atheist as in (2) at least twice over, i.e.: 5 Curley’s local atheisms: there is no GodClassical and no God Anglican With regards to recommendation (ii) above, concerning the types of propositional attitudes that are put forward in various accounts of theism, Curley’s local atheisms are denials of belief in these two propositions, which is, as we have noted, the standard interpretation of the theist’s pro-attitude towards God’s existence. For instance, Curley opened his discussion of the problem of suffering by stating that: ‘It is common among Christians to believe that God is a personal being who created the universe…’ (2007: 85, emphasis mine). With regarding to recommendation (iii), concerning a theorists’ other commitments, I am truly struck by the drumbeat of moral commitment in every last one of Curley’s objections to God in his essay in Antony’s

A New Theist Meets Two Atheists  51 collection. Curley claims that predestination, faith by grace, and hell are not ‘fair’, that the free will defence is ‘repugnant to our moral sense’, and that the divine voluntarism that seems pushed on us if we stay responsible to the Biblical record makes ‘morality unintelligible’. It is, in the end, a robust morality that precludes Curley from Anglican and classical theism. Dennett’s ‘Thank Goodness’ ‘Thank Goodness’ is a short, earnest yet playful piece that Dennett wrote while recuperating from an emergency nine-hour surgery to repair a life-threatening ‘dissection’ in his aorta (2007: 113). The experience sounds impressive, as one would expect: he describes having had, as a result of it, an ‘epiphany’ – not to recant his atheism as some near-death experiences seem to inspire – but rather to be grateful for the ‘goodness’, the ‘humanmade fabric of excellence’ that is ‘genuinely responsible’ for saving his life (ibid.: 114). Dennett’s main point is that he should literally ‘thank goodness’ instead of ‘thanking God’ for his recovery, since it is human goodness, not God, which saved him, and since, as he says in a parenthetical, ‘we atheists don’t believe there is any God to thank’ in the first place (ibid.: 114). The goodness in question is both a professional excellence (Dennett is grateful to his cardiologist, the inventor of the CT scan, etc.) and simultaneously a moral one: the high standards of moral responsibility… [not just] ‘at the top’ – among the surgeons and doctors [but also]….the standards of conscientiousness endorsed by the lab technicians and meal preparers, too. This tradition [of the secular world of science and medicine] puts its faith in the unlimited application of reason and empirical enquiry, checking and re-checking, and getting in the habit of asking, ‘What if I’m wrong?’. Appeals to faith or membership are never tolerated. (Ibid.: 115, emphasis mine) So the kind of goodness Dennett is affirming is a responsibility to scrutinise rigorously claims to truth (think of evidentialism here), which he regards as not only an epistemic but also a moral virtue, as did W. K. Clifford. With regards to the first recommendation regarding Dennett’s notion of God, it seems that throughout the essay Dennett eventually glosses God as ‘an omniscient, omnipotent Being (the Man who Has Everything)’, which suggests he is staying local and has some species of GodClassical in mind. His remark that ‘our thanking such a God is ludicrous (paltry)’ supports this reading since such human thanks are trifling compared to perfection (ibid.: 117). He also takes God to be supernatural. He makes his own commitment to naturalism explicit in a footnote where he aligns himself with the brights: ‘A bright is a person with a naturalist as opposed to a

52  Jeanine Diller supernaturalist worldview’ (ibid.: 291). He adds immediately: ‘We brights don’t believe in ghosts or elves or the Easter Bunny – or God’ (ibid.). This last sentence implies that a belief in naturalism is inconsistent with a belief in God (and ghosts, etc.), which in turn implies that God is necessarily supernatural. Moreover, Dennett makes a commitment to God’s supernaturalism explicit in Breaking the Spell: God or gods are ‘supernatural agents whose approval is to be sought’ (2006: 9).12 Taking these two commitments together, in the particular essay that we are dealing with for the purposes of this chapter, Dennett assumes that God is a supernatural GodClassical. He adds a second notion of God as target in Breaking the Spell, where interestingly he takes God not to be a supernatural classical being, but to be a supernatural agent, and even argues as I did for Curley, that this notion of God as agent is distinct from a GodClassical, since a GodClassical may or may not be an agent. Like Curley, Dennett offers a functional role for God as agent, with mostly more general functions than God Anglican: to ‘answer prayers, approve and disapprove, receive sacrifices, and mete out punishment or forgiveness’ (ibid.: 10, emphases his). Thus, like Curley, Dennett is a local atheist against at least two notions of God, a supernatural species of GodClassical, and a general functional God: 6 Dennett’s local atheisms: there is no GodSupernaturalClassical and no GodFunctional These notions are not a far from Curley’s: GodSupernaturalClassical is a ­species of Curley’s genus GodClassical, while GodFunctional is a genus of which Curley’s God Anglican is a species.13 With regards to recommendation two regarding the propositional attitude to which Dennett refers, like Curley and many others, Dennett reads the theisms he is denying as about belief that certain kinds of God exist. Although he uses the word ‘faith’ instead of ‘belief’ to describe the theist’s attitude, he implies that this faith amounts to believing beyond the evidence, a traditional reading of faith which is a species of belief sometimes called ‘overbelief’. This is not a non-doxastic kind of faith; indeed, Dennett takes having such faith to be a moral failing precisely because it breaks the norm of checking and rechecking one’s beliefs for error (2007: 115). With regards to recommendation three, which asks us to make clear what other commitments are in play, Dennett has two salient additional ­commitments that are important here. First is his final call that we all ‘set out to create more [goodness], for the benefit of those to come’ (ibid.: 116), echoed in the first half of his piece and in its title. Thus – like Curley and Antony – Dennett displays a strong commitment to morality, though interestingly he uses this commitment to goodness not as a reason for giving up on God, as the others do, but rather as an alternative object of value that  makes more sense than God. Second, he is also committed to naturalism.

A New Theist Meets Two Atheists  53 Bishop’s ‘How a Modest Fideism May Constrain Theistic Commitments’ In an early exploratory piece (Bishop 2008) which differs in important ways from his current stance, Bishop offers what I call an ‘end of being theology’, a view that identifies God as necessarily, and perhaps sufficiently too, the end of being – the final cause of the universe. Like William James, Bishop takes a leap of faith to be admissible only under certain criteria, when the option between two epistemic choices is forced (one cannot opt out), momentous (offers a once-in-a-lifetime good), and essentially and persistently undecidable (the evidence favours neither side). He recognises, though, that these criteria are insufficient for choice because they permit leaping to ‘the Nazi gods’, for instance. So, he introduces two moral criteria to add to James’ epistemic criteria, namely that the passional motivation for belief be morally admirable (as it might be for sincere Nazis, say) and that the content of what is believed be morally acceptable (as it is not for any sincere Nazi). The upshot is that we should indulge faith only when it is morally permissible – only when the God at issue is, in addition to offering us momentous goods and being resistant to justified belief and denial, also worthy of moral commitment. With regards to Bishop’s account of the notion of God, in Part II of his essay, Bishop argues that given his criterion for morally permissible faith, it is wrong, at least on some moral views, to have faith in a classical God because the problem of evil shows that such a God is morally blameworthy. Though he knows that some utilitarian theists are content with the cost– benefit analyses inherent in the greater goods defence against the problem of evil, Bishop is not persuaded that this defence works: when one considers in full detail what God as creator apparently has to do in order to achieve the supreme good – in every episode of torture and abuse, sustaining not only the torturer’s capacity to inflict suffering but the victim’s capacity to endure it – and when one reckons the scale on which God has actively to sustain dreadful suffering, there seems an equally strong intuition that this is just not something which a perfectly morally virtuous agent could bring himself to do, even though the supreme good be at stake. Indeed, it somehow makes it even more sickening to reckon that all the while God sustains terrible suffering within history, he does so recognizing that ultimately he will make everything come right as all the participants in horrendous suffering are reconciled in eternal relationship with him. (Ibid.: 534–35) In other words, even though the supreme good is by definition greater than the suffering in this scenario, a GodClassical is implicated in the morally blameworthy acts of creating the suffering, sustaining it, and sadistically

54  Jeanine Diller planning to absorb it by spiritual union. It is striking how much Bishop’s reasoning here resonates with Curley’s, Shapiro’s and Antony’s claims regarding the ‘morally disturbing’ and ‘deeply repugnant’ implications of belief in a God with Classical characteristics, and how Bishop similarly concludes that it would be morally wrong to have faith in a GodClassical. In Part III of the essay, Bishop casts about for a new notion of God in which he morally can have faith, and specifically one which accommodates the reality of suffering better than the classical notion. The ‘end of being’ theology at which he arrives has three key parts. First, inspired by I John 4:16, Bishop takes God to be literally Love – not a supreme person but rather a supreme relationship, i.e. ‘perfectly loving interpersonal relationship’ – the paradigmatic pure case of which is the relationship between the divine Persons of the Trinity (ibid.: 538). Second, in order to keep God as Love from being responsible for evil, Bishop makes ‘the bold move of detaching the Divine altogether from the role of creator and sustainer ex nihilo’ (ibid.: 539). In fact, for Bishop, God is not only not the efficient cause of the universe, which he takes to be randomly generated; on the contrary, the universe is the efficient cause of God (the universe ‘gives birth to the Divine’, ibid.: 541). Third, Bishop adds that God as Love is, even if not the ultimate cause of the universe, still its ultimate point, and argues that this ensures God’s metaphysical supremacy. This is because being the ultimate final cause may well be ontologically more supreme than being the ultimate efficient cause, especially when there is no other ultimate efficient cause given that the universe is unexplained. So, in the end, for Bishop, God as Love is not alpha but only omega: God comes into existence at some point in the development of the universe (e.g. I take it, whenever the biological prerequisites for it are in place, such as consciousness, intentionality, etc.), and when it does, it ‘gloriously’ gives the whole universe a point, a reason for being. Between the work of Parts II and III of the essay, Bishop thus makes two local claims: 7 Bishop’s local atheism and local theism: there is no GodClassical and there is a GodLove With regards to the propositional attitude that Bishop seems to be ­advocating, crucially he does not believe in GodLove, since he takes God’s existence to be necessarily intellectually undecidable. Rather, as already mentioned, Bishop assumes a propositional attitude of beliefless (non-­doxastic) faith towards the existence of GodLove. In particular, Bishop’s faith is a commitment to the existence of GodLove in his practical reasoning.14 With regards to Bishop’s other commitments, his most salient additional commitment is naturalism. Since on his view the universe births God, not the other way around, this metaphysics posits nothing beyond natural laws and the natural objects and events they govern. Such naturalistic

A New Theist Meets Two Atheists  55 theisms have a long inheritance, with an early non-theistic precursor in some ­interpretations of Hindu monism, and many more modern versions to date.15

The Trio’s Dialectic as It Is Table 3.1 displays the range of commitments we have just identified for our trio. Table 3.1 substantiates the claims about our trio’s connections, as promised at the start of this chapter. The first column makes plain that Curley, Dennett, and Bishop self-identify differently, as ‘atheists’ and a ‘theist’, respectively. But as we expected, the next two columns show that their atheisms and theism are not denials of each other, since the trio is equivocating on ‘God’ and ‘faith’. The equivocation is twice over, in fact, in both parts identified earlier, i.e. (i) the notions of God and (ii) the propositional attitudes towards God’s existence. This is the statement we have been working for: Curley and Dennett deny belief in God conceived as Anglican, classical and functional, while Bishop affirms practical commitment to God conceived as Love. The names ‘atheist’ and ‘theist’ make them appear to disagree about their propositional attitudes to the proposition that God exists, but they are discussing neither the same attitudes nor the same propositions so as to justifiably be said to ‘disagree’. In addition to these equivocations, Table 3.1 displays two important ­ convergences between our trio, as mentioned at the start of this chapter. The table shows that all three authors deny the existence of a GodClassical. In fact, Bishop and Curley deny GodClassical for the same reason: that the greater goods defence to the problem of evil entails that such a God is m ­ orally  blameworthy, at least by appealing to their own value commitments.16 The second convergence is visible in the last column of the table: the trio affirms similar commitments in their ontology and ethics. Regarding ontology, Dennett and Bishop are committed to naturalism, even though Dennett expresses this explicitly and Bishop only implicitly.17 All three authors have also shown a commitment to the ‘good’, termed variously as ‘morality’ and ‘a sense of justice’ for Curley, ‘human goodness’ for Dennett, and ‘moral permissibility’ for Bishop. I concede that these are different kinds of moral goods, but what is striking is that each holds a general commitment to the good strongly enough to place it at the centre of his argument. In Curley’s case, every single objection to Classical and Anglican theisms was driven by moral concerns; for Dennett, human goodness was the focus and title of his piece; and for Bishop, moral concerns were the force behind his proposal both to modify James’ take on fideism, and to construct a notion of God to replace the Classical one. Furthermore, the fact that our trio holds these similar commitments is important because Bishop goes on to call the object of his commitments

Atheist

Bishop, Theist

Atheist Atheist

Atheist

Dennett, Atheist

Curley, Atheist

GodAnglican GodClassical Predestines, hell, Perfect with the grace by faith, omni’s, ims, etc. etc. Voluntaristic re: morality

Author, Local atheisms or theisms self-identification (i) Implicit notion(s) of God

Atheist

GodFunctional Answers prayers, approves or not, punishes, forgives, etc.

Theist

GodLove Perfectly loving relationship. Not efficient but final cause of the universe. Natural

Table 3.1  C  omparison of Curley’s and Dennett’s Atheisms and Bishop’s New Theism18

Faith not as belief but as practical commitment

Faith as overbelief

Belief

(ii) Implicit propositional attitude

Morality, especially justice Evidentialist Human goodness Naturalism Morality Naturalism

(iii) Other commitments, if any

56  Jeanine Diller

A New Theist Meets Two Atheists  57 about ontology and ethics ‘God’. What would Curley and Dennett think of that?

‘New Theism’ and the Trio’s Dialectic as It Might Be Unfortunately, the dialectic stalls here because Curley and Dennett have not responded to or even heard of Bishop’s GodLove, as far as I can tell. So here I will briefly imagine their response to each other. But first a reflection about why the dialectic has stopped. Bishop, Curley, and Dennett are all discussing the notion of GodClassical because it has been the reigning orthodoxy about God in the West since, at least, Philo. Classical theists have been asserting this notion of God, atheists have been objecting to it, and classical theists counter-replying in response to these objections, in a two thousand-year-long tennis match where the ball has been the existence of GodClassical. Curley’s, Dennett’s, and part of Bishop’s essays are one more game in that match. What is unusual about our trio’s game, though, is that the parties on both sides – self-identified atheists and theist alike – have been convinced by some of the atheistic objections, namely the ones about the greater goods defence (Curley and Bishop) and faith as overbelief (Dennett and Bishop). Curley and Dennett are convinced by these objections, drop classical ­theism, and finish their discussion at this point. Bishop is likewise convinced by these objections, drops classical theism, but – oddly, interestingly – then goes on, in a kind of comparative theological move, to take the objections back into his own version of theism, by asking: ‘If belief in a classical God won’t do, what else might theism be?’. Bishop then builds what I call a ‘new theism’: he revises both the pro-­ attitude and the notion of God in ways meant to escape the atheistic objections that trouble him. In other words, to paraphrase Richard Gale: while it is possible to read atheistic arguments merely destructively as attempts to show that a particular kind of God does not exist, it is equally possible to go on to use these destructive conclusions constructively, as indicators of the constraints that a new notion of God would have to meet if it is to be instantiated.19 Bishop is following such a constructive path, using the objections to belief in GodClassical not only to stop his faith in GodClassical but also to build his faith in God Love. It is no accident, then, that Bishop offers similar claims and arguments to those of Dennett and Curley, and as such, we get the convergences as shown by the table above. This happens because Bishop’s new theism is framed in part by the atheistic concerns that all three of these authors share. It is also no surprise that the dialectic stops when Bishop changes the direction of his argument. The difference in how the parties handle atheistic objections means that, unless they engage with each other, Bishop will have moved on to a new notion of God, while Curley and Dennett will still be rehearsing arguments against the old one. I do not blame Curley

58  Jeanine Diller and Dennett for this; in fact, if I were a local atheist denying just one view, I would deny classical theism too given its primacy of place in Western theism. But it is still truly a shame, an opportunity lost, to watch them talking past each other about something of genuine interest to them all and as such, missing points of contact. For now, I will imagine briefly how a conversation between the authors with regards to Bishop’s new theism might run, both for its own sake and as a template for wider debates between atheists and new theists. My aim here is not to bring this conversation to resolution, but to identify introductory topics that could advance the dialectic in the field. There are at least a few kinds of objections someone could run against new theism, such as an attack on a beliefless faith in the existence of God1. One could object to the proposition by stating either that: i There is no such thing as God1. ii God1 does not count as God. Or, one could attack the attitude towards the proposition, if it is different from belief, by stating either that 20: iii Theists do not have some kind of beliefless faith in the existence of God1; they actually do believe it. iv God1 is not worthy of beliefless faith. Using these strategies, Curley and Dennett could frame these four following objections to Bishop’s new theism: i′ There is no such thing as perfect love. ii′ Even if there is such a thing as perfect love, it does not count as God. iii′ Bishop does not just act as if perfect love exists (‘beliefless faith’); he actually believes it. iv′ Perfect love is not worthy of practical commitment. I suspect that Curley and Dennett would not run (i′), (iii′), or (iv′) against Bishop, or, if they did, the replies to these objections would be more quickly forthcoming than for (ii′). Objection (i′) is not germane as stated, since Bishop does not claim perfect love exists, but only that its existence is intellectually undecidable. Though this is fascinating territory (we might ask, for example, whether we can know if genuine love has happened, or if that love is perfect love, even for an instant), I suspect there will be compelling arguments on both sides, and all Bishop needs for the cogency of his ­argument is a draw. Regarding (iii′), Louis Pojman (1986) offers an able defence of non-doxastic accounts of faith in general, and Bishop (2007) does so for his own particular account. Objection (iv′) is directly germane to Bishop’s view but hard to argue: if perfect love is not worth acting on, what is?

A New Theist Meets Two Atheists  59 So the debate, I assume, will probably centre on objection (ii′), whether perfect love counts as God. This is a question not about what there is, but about what to call what there is – not a question of ontology, but rather a question of conceptual definition. Answering it carefully requires having a set of ‘criteria of adequacy’ for being a notion that is genuinely of God, and then seeing if GodLove meets them. Unfortunately, such criteria of adequacy have been little discussed, 21 but Bishop employs two of them in his essay, ‘How a Modest Fideism May Constrain Theistic Commitments’ (2008). There he claims that, in order to be God, something has to be (i) the sole object worthy of worship and (ii) the ground of our hope. He then argues that perfect love is both: (i) it is worthy of worship by being ethically and ontologically supreme (what is ethically better than perfect love, and what is ontologically better than being the point of the universe, especially if nothing else is the universe’s efficient cause?); and (ii) perfect love can ground our hope because it has a fighting chance of being victorious over evil and suffering (‘nothing conceivably exceeds [perfect Love] in its active power to bring good from evil…’, ibid.: 400). Thus, Bishop concludes, perfect love is God. I suspect that Curley and especially Dennett will be unconvinced; Dennett for instance implies that human goodness is not worthy of worship (2007: 114), so he probably would also claim that perfect love is unworthy of it. I agree that a perfectly loving relationship is ethically supreme and can ground our hope, but as the saying goes, love cannot love: a relationship is not itself an agent, and being an agent seems essential to being God. To pick up the functional strand in Curley’s, Dennett’s, and my own thinking about God, we can question whether one can pray to a relationship, praise it, commune with it, worship it. If not, perfect love is not vindicating enough of the central functions theistic traditions take God to do in order to be conceptually defined as ‘God’. Bishop’s best reply to this objection is to concede that Love is not God and to then reframe his claim: even if perfect love fails to meet the criteria to be God, it still meets the criteria for being the ultimate reality in Schellenberg’s sense, outlined at the start of this chapter: perfect love would be what is most metaphysically fundamental to the universe, and the greatest value in it, and the deepest source of our fulfilment. Bishop might go on by stating that perfect love is metaphysically fundamental by being the point of the universe, it is axiologically supreme by being better than anything else we could think of, and, if any of us experienced it, it would be incredibly fulfilling. Moreover, Bishop could remind Curley and Dennett that he does not advocate belief in perfect love already existing, but faith in it – a commitment to act in ways that advance perfect love, and for hope in its active power. Bishop could then press Curley and Dennett to see that his practical commitment to perfect love is, if not identical with, at least close to Dennett’s urgent call to grow human goodness, and to Curley’s persistent belief in justice. Thus, he could argue, they all have similar kinds of commitments to a similar ultimate reality.

60  Jeanine Diller I wonder if Curley and Dennett would buy this counter-reply just stated on behalf of Bishop. It would be fascinating to hear the trio talk directly about each of their objects of real concern, whether these are conceptualised as ‘God’, or ‘ultimate reality’, or neither. It would also be fascinating to hear a discussion regarding the authors’ personal commitments to such objects of concern, whether these are conceptualised as ‘faith’, or ‘belief’, or neither. If there were a convergence over these fundamental issues – and, obviously, it is far too early to conclude that there is, but if there were – the fact that the authors self-identify differently about God would be far less important than the fact that they would be committed in action, and thought, to advancing the same goal at the heart of their worldviews.

The Significance of the Trio’s Dialectic for the Field The dialectic between Bishop, Curley, and Dennett represents a growing phenomenon in the field. There is a small contingent of new theists like Bishop on the rise, and most atheists, like Dennett and Curley, have not engaged them. 22 As indicated above, a new theist is someone who is revamping either the notion of God or the pro-attitude towards God’s existence, or both, under pressure from atheistic objections. Among the many new theists who are introducing neo- or non-classical notions of God, are the process theists beginning with Whitehead (1978) and Hartshorne (Hartshorne and Reese 1953), Clayton (2000), Diller (2000), Nagasawa (2008), and other accounts as collected in the volumes edited by Hartshorne and Reese (1953), Diller and Kasher (2013) and Buckareff and Nagasawa (2016). Similarly, as i­ndicated earlier in this chapter, among the new theists suggesting non-doxastic notions of faith to replace belief as the pro-attitude at the heart of theism, are Pojman (1986), Schellenberg (2005), Buchak (2012), and Howard-Snyder (2013). I call for both atheists and new theists alike (including me) to be in ­conversation – to read and respond to each other’s work in print or in person, being sure as they go to make explicit their notions of God and faith, as well as any additional commitments about reality, value, and fulfilment. Such exchange would be good for atheism: if the new theisms continue to grow, atheists not engaging them risk fighting a straw man in focusing their arguments only against older notions. Such an exchange would be good for theists: the best work in theism has been under the pressure of atheistic objections which new theists now lack. Finally, the exchange would be good for the field: though it is too early to say what kinds of equivocations and convergences we might find across the atheistic–theistic divide, thinking together about ultimate questions is bound to be better than thinking alone. 23

A New Theist Meets Two Atheists  61

Notes 1 I use ‘world stance’ here in place of ‘worldview’ to cover not only ways of seeing but also ways of being. 2 The idea of divinity is even more ambiguous than these types and tokens represent, since I have been talking only of ‘God’ in the singular, thus limiting my purview to monotheistic notions. Of course, opening our sights to polytheistic notions (e.g. extant in some forms of Hinduism, see Gross (2013)) and communotheistic notions (e.g. extant in some Yoruban and Akan theologies, see Coleman (2013) and Clark (2013)) would further multiply our yield. For in-depth discussion of these notions of God and gods, see Diller and Kasher (2013). See also Hartshorne and Reese (1953) and more recently Buckareff and Nagasawa (2016). 3 Note the local propositions become count terms, as in ‘an atheism’ in the singular or ‘theisms’ in the plural. 4 For example, a global theism that conjoins all the theisms and then affirms them all would have to affirm both Augustine’s view that God is omnipotent and Hartshorne’s view that God is not omnipotent, among a vast number of (perhaps innumerable) other internal inconsistencies. So there is no coherent global theism. 5 Draper has claimed, in conversation, that the adjective ‘global’ should attach to the conjunction versus the disjunction of all the local theisms: ‘It seems linguistically counter-intuitive, for example, that every local theism, no matter how exclusivist, entails the truth of global theism since every disjunct entails the truth of a disjunction’. For Draper’s introduction of the term ‘versatile theism’ see Draper (2022), though he uses it to mean ‘there exists at least one being that is worthy of some form of religious worship’, and I use it to mean the more general ‘there exists something worth calling God’, whether it is so in virtue of its worship-worthiness or something else. 6 Global atheism is the denial of versatile theism. Because versatile theism is disjunctive, given DeMorgan’s Theorems, global atheism is conjunctive. As I argue in Diller (2016), the atheistic global claim is difficult to understand and defend, given the number of various notions of God that an atheist would have to know and against which they would have to be able to argue. Also, as a side note, I think (1) through (4) completes the useful range of existential forms about notions of God, since the other options are not interesting: global conjunctive theism is, as I have said, incoherent and global disjunctive atheism is entailed by (1) through (4) given that the notions of God are inconsistent with each other. 7 See footnote 16, Diller (2016). 8 See Schellenberg (2009). Here, I insert an ‘or’ between the three features of ultimacy instead of his ‘and’, to broaden what can be ultimate, as I explain further in Diller and Kasher (2013). 9 Curley also argues elsewhere for a third philosophical objection – that the classical idea of God as a perfect being is logically impossible and therefore such a God not only does not exist but cannot exist. See his ‘The Mixed Legacy of Christianity’ (2000) and ‘The Incoherence of (Christian) Theism’ (2003). 10 The God of the Anglican Prayer Book might be more generally the God of the Christian Bible if, as Curley points out in conversation, ‘the Anglican prayer book can make good on its claim to require no belief not solidly based on scripture’. I use the more specific term here because the Biblical text has plausible non-Anglican interpretations, e.g. see Wenham (1991) which calls into question the Biblical basis for the Prayer Book’s doctrine of hell. 11 See Chapter IV of Diller (2000).

62  Jeanine Diller 12 Unfortunately, Dennett does not clarify what he means by ‘supernatural’ or ‘natural’ here. As Walter Stepanenko pointed out in conversation, because these terms are highly ambiguous themselves, using them to attempt to clarify ‘God’ amounts to using ambiguous terms to clarify another ambiguous term. 13 The second claim is true for most of the functions they mention, e.g. God Anglican sending people to hell is a particularly harsh species of GodFunctional meting out punishment. 14 For a full account see Bishop (2007), especially chapter 5. 15 In addition, Curley indicated in conversation that Spinoza is a naturalistic theist if he is a theist at all; so is Levinas according to Turner and Turrell (2013); see also Maxwell (2013), Griffin (2001), and Stone (2008). 16 I suspect Dennett would concur, though this has not surfaced in my research; his focus is on the lack of evidence for God instead of the evidence against God. 17 Again, given the popularity of the view in philosophical circles, I suspect that Curley is a naturalist, too, or at least that he would not object to such a commitment. 18 Curley’s and Bishop’s self-identifications were confirmed in conversation only. Dennett’s self-identification is in print in (see 2007: 114 and elsewhere). 19 See Gale (1991). Gale emphasises that atheistic arguments can have for the theist ‘positive value’ (97) and that in the end they can help us ‘command a more adequate conception of God’s nature’ (36). 20 The belief cases are covered by (i) and (ii). 21 Wesley Wildman in conversation recommends Hartshorne and Reese (1953), Clayton (2000), Neville (2001), Neville (2013), and his own Wildman (2017). Bishop himself also authored an article about these constraints, in which he says that what it takes to make a notion a genuine notion of God is to ‘be religiously adequate to the theistic religious tradition, in the sense that it could count at least as one viable expression of that historical tradition’ (1998: 174). 22 The search used ProQuest, JSTOR, Springer, Google Scholar and Microsoft Academic Search. New theists searched for included: Whitehead, Hartshorne, David Ray Griffin, Roland Faber, Donald Wayne Viney, Philip Clayton, David Basinger, William Hasker, Yujin Nagasawa, and John Bishop. Atheists searched for included: J. L. Mackie, Antony Flew, Michael Martin, Thomas Nagel, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens, Louise Antony, Edwin Curley, Thomas Nagel, Michael Tooley, and William Rowe. The two exceptions were Rowe (Rowe 1996) and Tooley (2013) who discuss process theism and Hartshorne, respectively. My thanks to Walter Stepanenko for his contribution to this research. 23 My thanks to Edwin Curley, Paul Draper, Samuel Ruhmkorff, Walter Stepanenko, Rivka Weinberg and those who offered helpful responses to an earlier version of this paper at the biennial meeting of the British Society for Philosophy of Religion in September 2013.

References Antony, L. M., ‘For the Love of Reason’, in L. M. Antony (ed.), Philosophers ­without Gods: Meditations on Atheism and the Secular Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 41–58. Bishop, J. C., ‘How a Modest Fideism May Constrain Theistic Commitments: Exploring an Alternative to Classical Theism’, Philosophia 35 (2008): 387–402. Bishop, J. C., Believing By Faith: An Essay in the Epistemology and Ethics of Religious Belief (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).

A New Theist Meets Two Atheists  63 Bishop, J. C., ‘Can There Be Alternative Concepts of God?’, Noûs 32 (1998): 174–88. Buchak, L., ‘Can It Be Rational to Have Faith?’, in J. Chandler and V. S. Harrison (eds.), Probability in the Philosophy of Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 225–47. Buckareff, A. and Y. Nagasawa (eds.), Alternative Conceptions of God (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). Clark, J. E., ‘The Great Ancestor: An African Conception of God’, in J. Diller and A. Kasher (eds.), Models of God and Alternative Ultimate Realities (Dordrecht: Springer, 2013), pp. 661–67. Clayton, P., The Problem of God in Modern Thought (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2000). Clooney, F. X., Comparative Theology: Deep Learning across Religious Borders (West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010). Coleman, M. A., ‘From Models of God to a Model of God: How Whiteheadian Metaphysics Facilitates Western Language Discussion of Divine Multiplicity’, in J. Diller and A. Kasher (eds.), Models of God and Alternative Ultimate Realities (Dordrecht: Springer, 2013), pp. 343–55. Curley, E., ‘On Becoming a Heretic’, in L. M. Antony (ed.), Philosophers without Gods: Meditations on Atheism and the Secular Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 80–89. Also available at: http://www.sitemaker. umich.edu/emcurley/essays_in_apostasy. Curley, E., ‘The Incoherence of Christian Theism’, The Harvard Review of Philosophy 11 (2003): 74–100. Also available at: http://www.sitemaker.umich. edu/emcurley/essays_in_apostasy. Curley, E., ‘The Mixed Legacy of Christianity’, unpublished paper from a conference held in the Portuguese Catholic University, Lisbon (2000). Available at: http://www.sitemaker.umich.edu/emcurley/essays_in_apostasy. Dennett, D. C., ‘Thank Goodness!’, in L. M. Antony (ed.), Philosophers without Gods: Meditations on Atheism and the Secular Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 113–20. Dennett, D. C., Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (New York: Penguin Books. 2006). Diller, J. M., ‘Local and Global Atheisms’, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 79/1 (2016): 7–18. Also carried as a blog entry in Prosblogion: March 17, 2017. Diller, J. M. and A. Kasher (eds.), Models of God and Alternative Ultimate Realities (Dordrecht: Springer, 2013). Diller, J. M., ‘The Content and Coherence of Theism’, unpublished dissertation available at University of Michigan Department of Philosophy (2000). Draper, P., ‘Atheism and Agnosticism’, in Edward N. Zalta  (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2022 Edition), https://plato.stanford.edu/ archives/sum2022/entries/atheism-agnosticism/. Gale, R., On the Nature and Existence of God (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991). Griffin, D. R., Reenchantment without Supernaturalism: A Process Philosophy of Religion (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001). Gross, R., ‘Toward a New Model of the Hindu Pantheon: A Report on TwentySome  Years of Feminist Reflection’, in J. Diller and A. Kasher (eds.), Models

64  Jeanine Diller of  God  and  Alternative Ultimate Realities (Dordrecht: Springer, 2013), pp. 681–91. Hartshorne, C. and W. L. Reese, Philosophers Speak of God (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1953). Howard-Snyder, D., ‘Schellenberg on Propositional Faith’, Religious Studies 49 (2013): 181–94. Maxwell, N., ‘Taking the Nature of God Seriously’, in J. Diller and A. Kasher (eds.), Models of God and Alternative Ultimate Realities (Dordrecht: Springer, 2013), pp. 587–99. Nagasawa, Y., ‘A New Defence of Anselmian Theism’, The Philosophical Quarterly 58 (2008): 577–96. Neville, R. C., Ultimates (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2013). Neville, R. C. (ed.), Ultimate Realities: A Volume in the Comparative Religious Ideas Project (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2001). Pojman, L., ‘Faith without Belief’, Faith and Philosophy 3 (1986): 157–76. Rowe, W. L., ‘The Evidential Argument from Evil: A Second Look’, in D. HowardSnyder (ed.), The Evidential Argument from Evil (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1996), pp. 262–83. Schellenberg, J. L., The Will to Imagine: A Justification of Skeptical Religion (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009). Schellenberg, J. L., Prolegomena to a Philosophy of Religion (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005). Shapiro, S., ‘Faith and Reason, the Perpetual War: Ruminations of a Fool’, in L.  M. Antony (ed.), Philosophers without Gods: Meditations on Atheism and the Secular Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 3–16. Sinnot-Armstrong, W., ‘Overcoming Christianity’, in L. M. Antony (ed.), Philosophers without Gods: Meditations on Atheism and the Secular Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 69–79. Stone, J. A., Religious Naturalism Today: The Rebirth of a Forgotten Alternative (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2008). Tooley, M., ‘The Problem of Evil’,  in Edward N. Zalta  (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2013 Edition), http://plato.stanford.edu/ archives/sum2013/entries/evil/. Turner, D. L. and F. J. Turrell, ‘Emmanuel Levinas’ Non-existent God’, in J. Diller and A. Kasher (eds.), Models of God and Alternative Ultimate Realities (Dordrecht: Springer, 2013), pp. 727–33. Wenham, J., ‘The Case for Conditional Immortality’, in N. M. d. S. Cameron (ed.), Universalism and the Doctrine of Hell (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1991), pp. 161–91. Whitehead, A. N., Process and Reality, edited by D. R. Griffin and D. W. Sherburne (New York: The Free Press, 1978). Wildman, W., In Our Own Image: Anthropomorphism, Apophaticism, and Ultimacy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).

4 Can an Atheist Display Religiously Significant Attitudes? Max Baker-Hytch

Introduction It is not uncommon nowadays to hear religious faith likened to belief in fairy tales or Santa Claus, or even the Flying Spaghetti Monster. In this vein, Richard Dawkins, in an untitled lecture delivered at the Edinburgh Festival in 1992, claimed that ‘Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence’. Similarly, Stephen Hawking, in an interview printed in The Guardian, suggested that having faith amounts to believing in ‘a fairy story for people afraid of the dark’ (Hawking 2011). It seems that religious faith, on this construal, is essentially a matter of giving assent to propositions concerning the nature of reality which are manifestly silly and unworthy of acceptance for enlightened people in the twenty-first century. This is said to be in contrast with the stance of secular atheism, which is said to involve nothing remotely akin to religious faith: ‘And here is the point, about myself and my co-thinkers…. Our principles are not a faith’, writes Christopher Hitchens (2008: 5). What is striking about the foregoing understanding of faith is how it ignores the non-propositional attitudes that – according to many recent philosophical analyses – are at least as important a part of faith as propositional beliefs. When faith is understood in the jaundiced manner in which the New Atheists construe it, it is easy to set it up in opposition to secular atheism: faith is having propositional beliefs about supernatural agents and atheism is its opposite. Yet, what I shall try to argue in the following essay is that, where an atheist is understood as someone who believes that there exists no personal supernatural creator of the universe, it is ­possible – and indeed likely – that atheists sometimes display the very sorts of non-­propositional attitudes that are in fact a crucial part of religious faith (which I shall call ‘religiously significant attitudes’). My claim is reminiscent of German theologian Paul Tillich’s claim that having faith, in a religiously significant sense, is fundamentally a matter of being ultimately concerned about something. Tillich wrote: Often people say that they are secular, that they live outside the doors of the temple, and consequently that they are without faith! But if

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66  Max Baker-Hytch one asks them whether they are without an ultimate concern, ­without something which they take as unconditionally serious, they would ­ strongly deny this. And in denying that they are without an ultimate concern, they affirm that they are in a state of faith. (1958: 62) In a similar vein, I shall argue that the non-propositional attitudes that partly constitute religious faith are those which involve taking their object to be of ultimate significance for one’s life. This involves viewing that object of faith as promising to give one’s life ultimate meaning and lasting fulfilment.1 I shall proceed as follows. To begin with, I will explore briefly some recent accounts by analytic epistemologists of the nature of faith. These accounts aim to capture the way in which the term ‘faith’ is used in everyday discourse – even in clearly non-religious contexts. Building upon these accounts, I shall try to identify what it is that gives some instances of faith a distinctly religious significance: namely, the having of the aforementioned sorts of non-propositional, emotional attitudes towards the object of faith. I  will then explore these religiously significant attitudes further, asking what is necessary in order for something to be capable of being the object of the attitudes in question. It will be my contention that a person need not think of the object of her faith as being in any way personal or supernatural for her to have these religiously significant attitudes towards that object. Hence, being a genuine atheist is fully compatible with having religiously significant attitudes; lacking propositional beliefs about supernatural agents by no means precludes having the non-propositional attitudes that are characteristic of religious faith.

The Nature of Faith Contemporary philosophical analyses of the concept of faith have been ­virtually unanimous in concluding that having faith necessarily involves having certain non-propositional attitudes towards the object of one’s faith; it isn’t enough that one merely has propositional beliefs about that object (e.g. Alston 1996; Audi 2011; Mawson 2005; Pojman 1986; HowardSnyder 2013). Daniel Howard-Snyder has recently argued that ‘faith… requires a positive conative orientation towards [its object]’ (2013: 364), and Robert Adams concurs, writing that ‘To have faith is always to be for that in which one has faith’ (2002: 384). This point goes for both grammatical constructions involving the term ‘faith’ – both ‘faith that’ and ‘faith in’. In short, the thought is that one cannot have faith that some proposition is the case without being positively emotionally disposed towards the content of that proposition, and nor can one have faith in some object without being positively disposed towards it. 2 Our ordinary-language intuitions

Religiously Significant Attitudes  67 seem to strongly favour this thought. Just consider how thoroughly bizarre it sounds to say that ‘Jane has faith in the goodness of humanity but she couldn’t care less about it’, or that ‘John has faith that there will be justice in the end, though wishes it weren’t so’. Our intuition that the term ‘faith’ is being misused in the foregoing sentences would strongly suggest that it is a conceptual truth that one cannot have faith whilst harbouring indifferent or negative attitudes towards the object of faith. It is very plausible, then, that in addition to propositional beliefs concerning its object, faith also requires certain positive non-propositional attitudes towards its object – attitudes that involve the will and the affections. Something worth noting is that in everyday discourse we quite often use the term ‘faith’ in contexts which are clearly devoid of religious significance. When, for instance, a mother says reassuringly to her son the day before his exam that ‘I have faith in you, Sam, you’ll do well’, she doesn’t in any way seem to be misusing the term ‘faith’. But are there any features that mark out certain instances of faith as having a distinctively religious significance? I want to suggest that there are. Audi points out that having faith in an object is domain specific, by which he means that if one has faith in some object, then one has faith in it as having a certain property, or, put another way, as fulfilling a certain role (2011: 58). Howard-Snyder illustrates the point thus: ‘I have faith in my hiking sticks – as stabilizers, not as bear deterrents. I have faith in my wife – as a friend, wife, and lover, not as a horticulturalist’ (2013: 358). The first dimension along which an instance of having faith in an object might acquire a religious significance, I want to suggest, is the sorts of roles that a person has faith in that object to fulfil. Furthermore, some recent accounts of faith have emphasised the centrality of risk-taking. Lara Buchak (2014) understands faith in terms of a propositional belief (or strictly speaking, having a certain level of confidence in the truth of a proposition) coupled with a willingness to undertake a risky course of action whose success is dependent upon the object of faith. This means that the course of action will have a favourable outcome only if the object of faith does indeed fulfil the roles ascribed to it. The second dimension along which an instance of having faith in an object could acquire a religious significance, I contend, is the kind of risk which a person is willing to take on that object. These two dimensions are, no doubt, connected. The sorts of roles that one has faith in an object to fulfil will (perhaps necessarily) be manifested in the kinds of risks which one is willing to take on that object. If I have faith in my friend as a good keeper of secrets, then I’ll be willing to take actions that will have a good outcome only if my friend really is a good keeper of secrets. Similarly, if Jane has faith in John as a good father to their children, then Jane will be willing to take actions whose outcome is positive for her only if John really is a good father to their children.

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Religiously Significant Attitudes What sorts of roles would one need to have faith in an object as fulfilling if one’s faith in that object is to be of a religious character – that is, if one’s non-propositional attitudes towards that object are to count as ­religiously significant? It is worth emphasizing at this point that the terms ‘religious’ and ‘religiously significant’ may not be univocal. Indeed, it may be that different traditions use these terms in slightly different (though likely overlapping) senses, so that, for instance, adherents of Christianity might call a certain attitude religious or religiously significant that adherents of Buddhism may not. At the same time, I suspect that there is a common thread to various usages of the term, so that it will be sufficient for one’s attitude towards an object to properly be said (on a number of usages) to be religious or religiously significant, if that attitude involves regarding the object in question as the source of one’s salvation or redemption, or as the bearer of ultimate worth and the determiner of the worth of all other things, or as holding out the promise of fulfilling one’s deepest desires. Thus, Tillich’s understanding of religiosity as having to do with ultimate concern doesn’t seem to be idiosyncratic (1951: 11–15). Accordingly, I want to suggest that it is sufficient (but perhaps not necessary) for a person’s non-propositional attitudes towards an object to be of a religiously significant sort if she has faith in that object as the provider of the overall meaning and the eventual fulfilment of her existence as a human being. I should point out here that a person need not have an objectivist view of value, meaning, or of the human telos, in order to have attitudes of this sort. Rather, all that is entailed is that she regards the object of her faith as being that which will make her life meaningful or eventually fulfilling for her. I noted that there is an intimate connection between the roles that one has faith in an object fulfilling, and the risks that one is willing to take on that object. If one has faith in an object as fulfilling a given role, then, as such, one will tend to be willing to engage in activities that will have a positive outcome only if the object really does fulfil the role in question. Accordingly, if one has faith in an object as the provider of the purpose and eventual fulfilment of one’s life, then one will tend to be willing to stake the purpose of one’s life and the fulfilment of one’s most important desires on that object. For the remainder of the essay, then, I shall focus on the following two non-propositional attitudes, asking whether it is possible for an atheist to have such attitudes. Firstly, there is the hope or expectation that an object will provide ultimate fulfilment, which is to say that the object will satisfy wholly and permanently one’s most important desires.3 Secondly, there is the attitude that one’s life would lack any overall meaning and purpose without that object; that one’s life would not be worth living without it. Both attitudes, I take it, consist at least partly of emotions which are directed towards their object.4 As Peter Goldie points out, ‘the object of

Religiously Significant Attitudes  69 an emotion has to be identified in a sufficiently fine-grained way to capture why the person feels that emotion about that object’ (2000: 18). Having an emotion towards some particular object seems to require having at least one propositional belief concerning that object – specifically, concerning the properties of the object, whether real or imagined, in virtue of which it is intelligible to have a given emotion towards that object. Anthony Kenny illustrates this point vividly: ‘[I]t is possible to be envious of one’s own fruit trees; but only if one mistakenly believes that the land on which they stand is part of one’s neighbour’s property’ (quoted in Goldie 2000: 20). An important question now arises: does having a religiously significant attitude towards some object (and thus having faith in that object as fulfilling the roles to which I alluded) entail having the propositional belief that the object in question exists? This is not an altogether easy question. William Alston (1996) and Daniel Howard-Snyder (2013) have argued that it is sufficient for having faith in an object that, in conjunction with certain non-propositional attitudes, one merely accepts that the object exists (where acceptance is a propositional attitude that involves less conviction and is more subject to voluntary control than belief), 5 or even that one just assumes for practical purposes that the object exists. One thing that seems clearer, though, is that having faith in some object is incompatible with believing that the object does not exist (though this needs some qualifying, but more on that later). It would be odd in the extreme, for instance, for someone to say that ‘I have faith in Allah, though I believe there’s no such person’. The utterer of such a sentence would appear not to have a proper grasp of the concept of faith. This brings me directly to my question: can an atheist exhibit what I have called a religiously significant attitude? Of course, as J. J. C. Smart (2011) notes, whilst atheism is naturally defined as the denial of God’s existence, which God’s existence is being denied depends crucially on the dialectical context. After all, even Christians were once characterised as ‘atheists’ for their denial of the Greco-Roman pantheon. In a contemporary western setting, though, it is typical for ‘atheism’ to denote the denial of the existence of the God of Abrahamic monotheism, and this is the sense that presently interests me. An atheist in this sense is a person who believes, or at least accepts, that there exists no supernatural creator of the universe of the sort described by the Abrahamic Scriptures. A naturalist, we might say, is an atheist who goes further than a mere atheist; a naturalist, I take it, is someone who believes, or accepts, that there exist no supernatural persons or forces whatsoever.6 By contrast, a mere atheist could believe that there are ghosts. What I am about to argue, then, is this: whilst it is perhaps true that in paradigm cases, a supernatural person is the object of the two religiously significant attitudes that I have outlined, it is nonetheless possible for these attitudes to be directed towards an object which is conceived of as being neither personal nor supernatural. This means that it is possible for

70  Max Baker-Hytch an atheist as just defined – even a naturalist atheist – to have r­ eligiously ­significant attitudes. But what sort of possibility are we talking about here? Philosophers typically distinguish various species of possibility, including logical possibility, metaphysical possibility, physical (or nomological) possibility, and others.7 Logical possibility is the most permissive species of possibility; all other species of possibility are subsets of it. Something is logically possible just so long as it doesn’t involve or entail a logical contradiction. But we are surely interested in something much stronger than this for our present purposes – after all, it is logically possible for pigs to have flight. I take it that we are interested in whether it is possible for atheists to have religiously significant attitudes given the range of psychological capacities, dispositions, and constraints which are normal for human beings in the actual world. We might call this psychological possibility. To secure the claim that religiously significant attitudes are psychologically possible for a genuine atheist, I’ll now try to sketch out what seems to me to be the conditions that must be met in order for it to be psychologically possible for some object to be the object of the two religiously significant attitudes I have described. Being conceived of as personal or supernatural is not, as far as I can tell, among those conditions.

Conditions for Possibility Let’s begin with the attitude of expecting that some object will provide ­lasting and complete fulfilment of one’s most important desires. It looks like this is an attitude one cannot have towards something which one thinks is already the case. So, when a man claims to expect that his musical career will bring him lasting fulfilment, even though he already has a career in music, what we should take him to mean is that there is some as-yet-­ unrealised state of affairs which centrally involves his career, and which he thinks will deliver him his lasting satisfaction. It appears, then, that a state of affairs is really the target of this attitude. Often, of course, one will be expecting some object other than oneself to bring about that state of affairs. That object, though, as far as I can see, need not be conceived of as a person rather than as an impersonal thing – it simply needs to seem to the subject that the object in question is truly capable of bringing about such a state of affairs. Two conditions, then, are that one thinks that the state of affairs which one expects to supply ultimate fulfilment is not yet actual, and that the object that one expects to bring about the state of affairs in question seems to the subject to be capable of so doing. But meeting these conditions clearly isn’t enough. We can, without violating the two conditions just outlined, speak of someone who expects that completing Sunday’s crossword or drinking a pint of cider will satisfy his most important desires wholly and permanently. But I doubt whether such an expectation is really possible given normal human psychology in

Religiously Significant Attitudes  71 the actual world – not, at least, unless those achievements are sought for what they represent, for instance, having achieved a certain level of l­ iterary aptitude or attaining a certain amount of material affluence. Normal ­ human psychology appears to constrain significantly the range of things which one can expect to meet one’s deepest desires in an ultimate way. We thus need a further condition. This condition is hard to state very much more precisely than that when a person imagines the desired state of affairs coming to pass, it must feel sufficiently momentous; such imagining must involve a certain phenomenology which includes, among other things, a certain sort of longing. Part of the reason that the thought of achieving things such as completing a crossword cannot normally be accompanied by this sort of phenomenology is that they are just too readily obtained. It  seems that the object of an expectation of ultimate fulfilment must be conceived of – to begin with, at least – as beyond one’s power to bring about in the immediate future. Let’s now turn to consider the attitude that one’s life would lack any overall meaning and purpose in the absence of some object; that life wouldn’t be worth living without the object in question. Here, it seems, the object in question must be thought of by the subject as essential to something like what Bernard Williams has called a ‘ground project’: an overarching goal or set of goals which ‘are the condition of my existence, in the sense that unless I am propelled forward by the conatus of desire, project and interest, it is unclear why I should go on at all’ (1981: 12). But being essential to a ground project isn’t sufficient for something to be the object of this attitude. Consider that a stockbroker might commit suicide because of losing all his wealth in one fell swoop, and yet it might not have been his wealth, per se, that gave meaning to his life, but rather, some specific opportunity afforded by that wealth. It seems, then, that the object of this attitude must itself be the goal at which a person’s various strivings are ultimately aiming; it must be what Adams terms ‘the focus of an integrated motivational system’ (2002: 192). But, again, more is needed. Specifically, it looks as though an object cannot serve as the focus and overarching goal of a human motivational system unless the subject conceives of that object as in some sense being of sufficient gravitas. One way to spell this out might be to say that the object of this attitude must be conceived of by the subject as the sort of thing which might realistically one day require considerable sacrifice on her part in order to acquire that object or prevent its loss – sacrifice of a very significant proportion of her resources or perhaps even her life. Stating the condition in this way allows for the fact that whether a given object is liable to require such sacrifice will depend on the circumstances in which a person finds herself. So, for instance, getting one’s children a basic level of education will likely never require such radical action for an affluent Westerner, but on the other hand, might very well do for the mother of a large family in sub-Saharan Africa.

72  Max Baker-Hytch To summarise the foregoing, I have suggested that for it to be psychologically possible for a person to have the attitude of expecting an object to ultimately fulfil her, the object in question needs to be involved in a state of affairs which (i) the person thinks has not yet been realised, (ii) the person thinks is within the power of some object to bring about, and (iii) is such that the thought of its coming to pass feels sufficiently momentous. And I have suggested that for it be psychologically possible for a person to have the attitude that her life would lack any overall meaning in the absence of some object, the object in question must be such that (i) it is capable of serving as the goal and focus of the person’s various motivations and (ii) it seems to the person that the object in question is the sort of thing that could in principle require her to make very significant sacrifices. I contend, then, that the conditions I have outlined for something’s being the object of these two attitudes are in each case jointly sufficient. Being conceived of as a supernatural person is not, as far as I can see, among the conditions for being the object of these two religiously significant attitudes. Indeed, I think that the following sorts of things, or states of affairs involving such things, can all be the object of such attitudes: political ideals; one’s nation or ethnicity; one’s reputation; possession of some prized material object or sum of money; the achievement of some momentous political, intellectual, physical, or artistic feat; and so on. It is thus perfectly possible for a person genuinely to deny the existence of a supernatural personal God, or even to deny the existence of any supernatural persons whatsoever, and simultaneously to exhibit the attitudes I have been considering.

Conclusion Having religious faith involves having both propositional beliefs and non-propositional attitudes. It seems to me that the New Atheists, such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, have been able to set up faith in opposition to atheism by focusing exclusively on the propositional component of faith. My contention has been that once it is recognised that certain non-propositional attitudes are also an essential part of faith, it becomes seriously doubtful that atheists share nothing significant in common with religious believers. Indeed, even if we suppose that the propositional component of faith must involve beliefs about God or other supernatural beings for it to count as religious, what I hope to have shown is that the non-propositional component of religious faith – the attitudes of longing for ultimate fulfilment and purpose – are very much the sorts attitudes that an atheist can display. In closing, I want to suggest another, and rather different, way in which an atheist could have a religiously significant attitude. Earlier I suggested that a person cannot have a religiously significant attitude towards an object whilst believing that that object doesn’t exist. In fact, that’s not quite correct without some qualification. Let’s adapt an example from Gottlob

Religiously Significant Attitudes  73 Frege (2013), in which a person – let’s call him John – has beliefs about Mark Twain and about Samuel Longhorn Clemens, but without realizing that these two names in fact refer to the same person. Suppose John believes both that ‘Mark Twain is a great author’ and that ‘there is no such person as Samuel Longhorn Clemens’. There is no inconsistency in John’s thought here, since he doesn’t realise that Twain and Clemens are identical. In a case like this one, even despite his positive disbelief in the existence of Samuel Longhorn Clemens, John can have emotional attitudes towards the very person denoted by the name ‘Samuel Longhorn Clemens’ in virtue of his beliefs about Mark Twain, in whose existence John does believe. The qualification, then, is that a person cannot have a religiously significant attitude towards an object conceived of as X whilst believing that ‘X doesn’t exist’, but she can nonetheless have such an attitude towards that object conceived of in terms of a different concept, one which has that object as its extension (i.e. one which refers to that object). This means that someone who is an atheist – even a naturalist atheist – could have a religiously significant attitude towards the God of Abrahamic monotheism, though without realizing it, provided the concept by which she identifies the object of her attitude is a concept which unbeknownst to her has God as its extension. Adams has argued that The Good is identical with God, and that someone who loves The Good thereby implicitly loves God (2002: 188–92). Similarly, perhaps an atheist who has a religiously significant attitude towards The Good – whatever that would exactly look like – can thereby have a religiously significant attitude towards God.

Notes 1 There may also be certain affinities between the way I am thinking about the non-propositional aspects of religious faith and Wittgenstein’s understanding of religion. Wittgenstein wrote that religion is a ‘form of life’ and that having religious faith amounts to being guided through life by a picture of reality, one which ‘might play the role of constantly admonishing me, or [is such that] I always think of it’ (2007: 56, 58). 2 I should note that when I speak of faith’s ‘object’ I am using that term in such a way that it can refer to either a person or a non-personal thing or ideal. 3 Importantly, I think, being ultimately fulfilled is not a state in which one ceases to have any desires, which is the state Buddhists seem to strive for. Indeed, desires may continue to grow, but being in a state of ultimate fulfilment entails that satisfaction always grows to meet the desire. Whereas limited fulfilment involves satisfaction that is either partial, or temporary, or insufficient to prevent the emergence of new unmet desires and so is eventually disappointing, ultimate fulfilment is such that the satisfaction of a person’s deepest desires is complete, lasting, and does not give way to yet further desires which fail to be satisfied. 4 I should note here that my use of the term ‘object’ is supposed to be ­ontologically  non-committal: the fact that the object of Abraham’s faith is Yahweh does not, in the way I am using the term ‘object’, entail the existence of Yahweh.

74  Max Baker-Hytch 5 For a careful explication of the belief/acceptance distinction, see Alston (1996: 4–12). 6 This seems to be consistent with Alvin Plantinga’s influential characterization of naturalism: ‘Naturalism is the idea that there is no such person as God or anything like him; immaterial selves would be too much like God, who, after all, is himself an immaterial self’ (2011: 319). 7 For an extremely helpful overview of various species of possibility and their interrelation, see Leftow (2012: Chapter 1).

References Adams, R. M., Finite and Infinite Goods: A Framework for Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). Alston, W. P., ‘Belief, Acceptance, and Religious Faith’ in J. Jordan and D. HowardSnyder (eds.), Faith, Freedom, and Rationality (London: Rowman and Littlefield, 1996), pp. 3–27. Audi, R., Rationality and Religious Commitment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). Buchak, L., ‘Rational Faith and Justified Belief’ in T. O’Connor and L. F. Callahan (eds.), Religious Faith and Intellectual Virtue (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 49–73. Dawkins, R., Untitled Lecture, Edinburgh Festival (1992). Frege, G., ‘On Sense and Reference’ in A. P. Martinich and D. Sosa (eds.), The Philosophy of Language (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 35–47. Goldie, P., The Emotions: A Philosophical Exploration (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). Hawking, S., Interview with Ian Sample, http://www.theguardian.com/science/ 2011/may/15/stephen-hawking-interview-there-is-no-heaven (2011) [accessed 13th May 2018]. Hitchens, C., God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (London: Atlantic Books, 2008). Howard-Snyder, D., ‘Propositional Faith: What It Is and What It Is Not’, American Philosophical Quarterly 50 (2013): 357–72. Leftow, B., God and Necessity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). Mawson, T. J., Belief in God: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). Plantinga, A., Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). Pojman, L., ‘Faith without Belief?’, Faith and Philosophy 3 (1986): 157–76. Smart, J. J. C., ‘Atheism and Agnosticism’, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/­ atheism-agnosticism/ (2011) [accessed 5th September 2013]. Tillich, P., Systematic Theology, vol. 1 (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1951). Tillich, P., Dynamics of Faith (New York: Harper, 1958). Williams, B., Moral Luck: Philosophical Papers, 1973-1980 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). Wittgenstein, L. and C. Barrett, Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology, and Religious Belief (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007).

5 Doxastic and Nondoxastic Atheisms Christopher Jay

Introduction I am an atheist, and yet, my beliefs about the existence of a supernatural God are more or less the same as the beliefs of some thoughtful people who would recoil at the suggestion that they are full-blown atheists. In some cases, this is because they are willing to believe, as I am not, that there is a God, but that this is not a matter of there being something supernatural. But I am interested, here, in some more difficult cases: those in which a person agrees with me that God talk is to be construed supernaturally, and who are as reluctant as I am to doxastically assent to the existence of such a God, but who partake of a sort of religiosity which involves something so far removed from my atheism as to be striking.1 It is an obvious first point to make that what differentiates me from many people who are just as ‘doxastically atheist’ as I am is that they participate in forms of religious practice which I do not partake in, nor have any temptation towards. But the puzzle I am interested in is a little deeper than that, for another way to put it is like this: why is it that if I were to engage in those practices I would be merely going through the motions, whereas for some others, who are just as doxastically atheist as I am, those practices amount to a sort of religiosity deserving of the name? One thing to say here might be that an essential aspect of those practices which characterise the religious aspects of some people’s lives is that they involve religious belief, or some other kind of serious religious commitment. That is why my trying to replicate their practices would achieve, at best, a counterfeit of them. Just as, plausibly, one cannot be engaged in a genuine practice of thanking someone unless one feels gratitude (one might, at best manage to utter the same words as someone doing some thanking, and perhaps manifest the same warm countenance), one plausibly cannot be praying, for example, unless one takes oneself to be addressing one’s words or thoughts to some real object. 2 Thus, my attempts at religious practice would have more in common with the actor on the stage than the flock in the pews.3

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76  Christopher Jay This point about the psychological aspect of proper religious practice echoes a similar point made by Samuel Lebens, in a paper to which I shall return later: ‘Religiosity’ has at least two senses. One sense of the word is purely sociological. You are religious if you belong to a religious community. Such belonging might be contingent upon certain outward signs of compliance with religious doctrine and law, but the notion is, ultimately, sociological. Borrowing from the Yiddish, Jewish people will often call a person who is religious in this sense, ‘frum’. The other sense of ‘religiosity’ has to do with the psychological and spiritual condition of the homo religious. Very often, people who are religious in the first sense fail to be religious in the second sense. (Lebens 2013: 315) The idea of the ‘psychological and spiritual condition of the homo religious’ is just what I am getting at, and I have some sympathy with Lebens’s eventual proposal about how to characterise it, as will emerge below. But in a way, my quarry is slightly different. Lebens is concerned with whether belief is necessary or sufficient for making the difference between the frum and the homo religious. I, on the other hand, want to know what makes the difference between my predicament, in which I could, at most, play at religious practice, and the situation of those for whom something deserving to be called genuine religious practice is available, despite their doxastic atheism which I share. If you doubt that there is anyone like the fellow doxastic atheists I have been alluding to who manage to live a form of religious life, look no further than the writings of two philosophers, both of them Jewish, as it happens, and neither of whom, as it happens, started out as philosophers of religion. Indeed, Peter Lipton did not write much about religion at all, but what he did write raises just the issue I am addressing here. In ‘Science and Religion: The Immersion Solution’ (Lipton 2007), he is concerned with the question of what an intellectually responsible person of faith ought to do about the fact – for he is willing to grant that it is a fact – that many of the literally construed articles of their faith (including those involving the supernatural) are false. He reports that for him the solution is not to do a great deal of non-literal construing of all the problematic claims which his religious practices require him to accept. Of course, some of the writing in the Hebrew Bible is figurative or allegorical, and of course, metaphor plays some role in places, but it will not do to systematically re-construe all of its problematic but important claims as metaphors. The bullet must be bitten. Drawing an analogy with van Fraassen’s (1980) ‘constructive empiricism’ in the philosophy of science, Lipton suggests that it is possible, and desirable for various reasons, to accept but not believe those problematic falsehoods which religiosity seems to demand. Just as the ‘empirical adequacy’ of a

Doxastic and Nondoxastic Atheisms  77 model of scientific unobservables is, according to van Fraassen, ­sufficient to justify our accepting it for the purposes of theorising and making predictions, the role that some theological and moral commitments might play in one’s life is sufficient to justify our accepting them, for the purposes of religious practice and perhaps moral contemplation, whilst keeping in mind that they are not true. It is this acceptance, in which the ‘immersion’ of his solution consists, that makes the psychological difference, perhaps, between Lipton, who would strongly reject the idea that he is no more of a religious Jew than I am, and me; however, many temples I turn up at; however, many prayers and blessings I recite; and however, many rites and special occasions I observe (or seem to be observing). Howard Wettstein has written a great deal about religion since his paper, first published in 1998, ‘Awe and the Religious Life’ (2013), in which he seems to be describing a similar predicament to Lipton’s. In fact, his work since that paper suggests that his concerns are not quite the same as Lipton’s. As I read him, Wettstein is a metaphysical quietist rather than an antirealist, inspired by a reading of Wittgenstein. But for my purposes here, it suffices that there are important affinities between the two writers and that they describe a commitment to the possibility and value of religious practice in the absence of belief in the supernatural, even when a literal construal of some of the doctrines which seem central to the practices in which they see value seems to involve a supernatural interpretation, and even though one is not to refuse that literal interpretation. So, both Lipton and Wettstein are doxastic atheists who would surely recoil, with good reason, from the idea that they are atheists tout court, and that their religious practice is as counterfeit as mine would be, were I to go in for some. My aim in this chapter is to glimpse what their good reasons for that recoiling might be. This will, I hope, involve saying something not uninteresting about the possible nature of faith, as well as what it takes to be a fully fledged atheist in the thoroughgoing sense. For it is obvious, I think that whatever attitude it is which turns out to be sufficient for making the difference between merely doxastic atheists and fully fledged atheists like me, deserves to be called a form of religious faith.

Hope, Trust, and Make-Believe It seems that Lipton and Wettstein share something with me – their ­disbelief – but share something more important with those of full-blown doxastic faith, namely their religiosity. This seems to be an attitudinal commonality, too, for only such a thing would align them with those of faith rather than with me as I merely go through the motions. My hypothesis is that there is some way of having propositional faith which is available to those who believe and those who do not believe – including those who disbelieve in the existence of God – alike and that my lacking that is what makes me a thoroughgoing, and not merely a doxastic, atheist.

78  Christopher Jay To say that it is a form of propositional faith which I am interested in is to say that it is not a form of faith in something or someone. Faith in something or someone might be an important element of all kinds of religious faith, but as will emerge in my discussion of faith as trust, below, such person- or object-directed attitudes will not do (at least all of) the required work. We require an understanding of faith that something is the case in order to fully understand what is common to the merely doxastic atheist and the doxastic believer. Hope According to some philosophers of religion, hoping that p is true is adequate for religious faith even in the absence of belief.4 Perhaps, then, it is my lack of hope that some key doctrines, promises or expectations are true that distinguishes me from those doxastic atheists who nonetheless manage to engage authentically in religious life. There might or might not be a good case to be made for hope as an important ingredient in nondoxastic faith when the analysandum is the nondoxastic faith of someone who does not disbelieve in the supernatural. But it is not hope which explains the way in which some of my fellow doxastic atheists are able to embrace an authentic sort of religiosity. If one is to hope that p, or at least if one is to rationally hope that p, then one must believe that p might be true. If I am unsure whether or not the Light Brigade will ride to my rescue, I may hope that they will. But if I know that they cannot, and hence will not, then I cannot reasonably hope that they will, though I may wish that they could, and that they would. The parallel should already be obvious: it is no good saying, if what we want is an account of their attitudes which renders their religiosity rationally intelligible, that my fellow doxastic atheists who, unlike me, inhabit an authentic form of religious life are able to do so in virtue of their hoping that the claims about a supernatural God they accept as a necessary (but surely not sufficient) part of their religiosity are true, for like me they believe that those claims are not true, and their hoping for them to be true would be irrational if it were possible at all. 5 The most they could reasonably do would be to wish for their claims to be true. But I could – and perhaps do, from time to time – wish that those claims were true. One might wish that there were a loving God, and one might wish that one could live a life of authentic religiosity. But the former wish does not go any way to making the latter come true.6 Trust A more promising idea which has also enjoyed some serious consideration in the literature on nondoxastic faith is that the attitudinal ingredient in nondoxastic faith is trust.7 Like hoping that p, trusting that p is a propositional attitude which does not require believing that p. Both (propositional)

Doxastic and Nondoxastic Atheisms  79 trusting that God has done or said, or will do or say, certain things and (personal) trusting in God to do or have done so, are plausibly aspects of at least some forms of faith. But as with hope, though perhaps less obviously, trust is ill-suited to play the role of that attitude which explains why my engagement with religious practice would be counterfeit, whereas that of some of my fellow doxastic atheists is authentic. We might start by distinguishing trusting and relying on or expecting. One can trust a person to do something (tell the truth) or be something (smartly dressed). One can also rely upon someone doing or being something. And, perhaps differently again, one can expect someone to do or be something.8 But there is a sense of ‘trust’ in which one can only trust a person or agent to do or be something. Though we might speak of trusting a shelf to stay up, we are not speaking of trust there in the same way as we speak of trusting a person.9 We might mean that we expect it to stay up, or we might mean that we are relying on it staying up – we are depending upon it – in that we will suffer the loss of something (perhaps our best tea service) if it fails to stay up (and here we need not expect it to, though our readiness to risk the loss is a little strange unless we expect it to), but we do not mean that we trust it in the same way that I trust my fiancé to keep my secrets. I will feel no betrayal (other than in a figurative sense) if the shelf falls down (unless I trusted someone to put it up properly). With this in mind, what are we to say of trust as an ingredient of nondoxastic faith? The first thing to notice is that if trust is meant in the way which makes it distinctively different from reliance and expectation as just suggested, then it is an essentially relational attitude of which the object is a person or agent. What, then, is required of someone in the way of belief regarding the existence of that person or agent if trust is to be possible or rational? I think it clear that if one is to trust A in this sense, one must believe not just that A might exist, but that A does exist. (The element of uncertainty seemingly required for trust is with respect to whether the trusted party will do or be a particular thing, not whether they exist.) As such, trusting God to do or be what is described or promised in a religious tradition cannot be the rational attitudinal basis for the religious practices of those doxastic atheists who believe that God does not exist in such a way as to do or be those things.10 The more useful sense of trust for our purposes will be ‘trusting that’. This sort of propositional trust is, like the personal sort just considered, ontologically committed with respect to its object. But the object of propositional trust is, I think, a proposition, and not a person or agent. This does not help though, for if I trust that Mary will be polite (as opposed to trusting Mary to be polite), I am trusting that the proposition ‘Mary will be polite’ is true, which commits me to believing in the proposition (how could it be true otherwise?), but also to believing in Mary or at least in the (epistemic) possibility of Mary existing (how could that proposition be true, if Mary didn’t exist?), and the (epistemic) possibility of Mary being polite.

80  Christopher Jay Doxastic atheists might believe in propositions, but they will not be able to trust that propositions are true if the truth of those propositions would require a supernatural God: they don’t believe in such a God, so as far as they are concerned, there is no (epistemic) possibility of those propositions being true. So, that sort of trust could not be what some doxastic atheists have and others, such as me, lack. Indeed, even if the notion of trust is abandoned altogether in favour of expectation, the now familiar issue arises. No doxastic atheist expects that any of the propositions which require a supernatural God will be true, for they believe that they will not be. And as for reliance, it is surely irrational to rely on something one has no expectation at all will be true, and I don’t think doxastic atheists who manage to engage in authentic religious ­practice are necessarily irrational. Make-Believe In a paper I have already quoted from above, Samuel Lebens argues that appeal to what he calls ‘make-believe’ is crucial for understanding the sort of faith which genuine religiosity involves. The sort of make-believe he has in mind is phenomenological – it is experiencing things as a particular way, rather than simply believing them to be that way.11 Lebens is not willing to say that (Orthodox) Jewish religiosity, at least, is possible for the complete doxastic atheist: [O]f course, there are things that a Jew has to believe. If he doesn’t believe them, he can’t be considered to be frum, let alone religious. The most central such belief is the belief in the existence of God. You simply cannot be a frum or religious Jew if you don’t believe in God. But belief is not sufficient: ‘[E]ven where belief is an essential ingredient for the religious life, such as the belief that God exists, it is not a sufficiently absorbing epistemic state. Whenever belief is required so too is make-belief’ (Lebens 2013: 323, 325–26). I think the idea that there is something distinctive in the phenomenology of at least some forms of religious life – in the experiencing as – is extremely plausible, and it is a thought which plays a crucial role in Wettstein’s account of the religious life, too. As Lebens points out, Wettstein is keen to highlight the ways in which awe, as the experience of the world as awe-­inspiring, is at work in much of the liturgical and traditional practice in which a form of religiosity consists.12 I have argued that neither hope nor trust can be what is at work in the nondoxastic faith of those who, like me, disbelieve in the supernatural. But I have no such argument to offer with respect to make-believe in this phenomenological sense: I don’t doubt that in many cases what the merely doxastic atheist shares with the traditional believer is an experience of the world as being some way. Nonetheless, I  doubt

Doxastic and Nondoxastic Atheisms  81 that recognising this amounts to grasping the real heart of the ­matter, for ­reasons of generality: make-believe is not what makes for authentic religiosity in each case in which a person’s religious life is authentic, in the way mine would not be. It might be, of course, that the craving for generality here is entirely ­misplaced, and that faith is just a family of propositional attitudes. For sure, there is something naive in the idea that the religiosity of the doxastic atheist and that of the traditional believer is bound to be of the same sort. In the next section, though, I will outline an account of the nature of faith which does seem both general and plausible, thereby at least alleviating the worry that any very general account must achieve generality at the cost of plausibility. Therefore, I tentatively proceed, now, to press the point that whilst make-believe is surely an element of much doxastic and nondoxastic faith, or at least of the religiosity of both those who believe in the supernatural and those who do not, it is not generally true that what makes authentic religiosity available to a person is the phenomenology of experiencing the world as being a particular way. This comes to light when we reflect upon the plight of those who are in the throes of a crisis of faith. The crisis of faith I have in mind is not a crisis which comes of having lost one’s faith (though that, too, might occasion crises of various sorts). It is rather a crisis in which one has faith, but has lost (some degree of) one’s confidence in that faith. Such crises seem to come in many forms, and I want to mention only one. Sometimes a crisis of faith is occasioned by the perceived or felt absence of God from the world. Philip Quinn re-tells the central story of Shusaku Endo’s novel Silence (1976), in which a missionary priest becomes increasingly distraught as his prayers go unanswered and his expectations unmet, and a Christian community is persecuted and made to renounce their faith or be killed.13 This priest’s prayers during the period of his religious crisis are genuine – how else are we to make sense of his distress at their apparent ineffectualness? – and his religiosity authentic. But his phenomenology is apparently not one in which the world is imbued with holiness; it is one in which God is increasingly conspicuously absent, and in which the only awe-inspiring things are the awful acts of men. Such crises show, I think, that one can retain one’s faith – even if only in a problematic way – without managing to make-believe that the world is any different from the way in which the person without faith experiences it as being. Thus, make-believe is not necessary for faith, and it cannot be that of which the lack makes authentic religiosity unavailable to me.

Accepting and Privileging The account of faith I find most promising as a general explanation of what makes the difference between full-blown atheists, on the one hand, and traditional believers and doxastic atheists who are nonetheless authentically religious, on the other hand, is closest to the accounts of faith proffered by

82  Christopher Jay William Alston and Peter Lipton. Eschewing phenomenology for the reason lately explained, I think that the essence of that faith which is available to believers and non-believers alike is a sort of privileging of some religious claims. Alston (1996) has suggested that we might usefully distinguish between belief and acceptance in a way inspired by L. Jonathan Cohen (1989, 1992). According to Alston, propositional belief is dispositional and not under direct voluntary control, whilst acceptance is a mental act, the act of ‘taking on board’ and is under our voluntary control (1996: 9). I want to suggest a more schematic view of acceptance: in accepting that p, I accord the thought that p a privileged status in my cognitive economy. This means, at least, that I treat the proposition p more favourably than I treat the propositions ‘not-p’ and ‘neither p nor not-p’. What this ‘treating more favourably’ amounts to, will, on any plausible working out of the idea, vary from context to context. Not only does what counts as privileging the thought that p in a relevant way depend upon context, but also dependent on context is whether one privileges the thought that p. That is to say, it is not the case that privileging the thought that p in the context of, for example, practical deliberation about what to do, entails or rationally demands privileging that thought in the context of theoretical enquiry into what the world is like. Indeed, privileging the thought that p in the context of deliberating about a particular type of practical problem need not entail or rationally demand privileging that thought in the context of thinking about what to do when faced with other types of practical problems. Privileging is local in this sense, in a way which, I think, belief is not: when one believes that p, one is at least rationally required to believe p in any context (or at least in any context in which whether p is salient). I can privilege the thought that p by, for example, focusing on it and refusing to take contrary ideas seriously in my practical deliberation. I want to get fit, and I tell myself, especially every morning as I contemplate whether or not to do them, that I must do at least fifty sit-ups every morning if I am to achieve my desired level of fitness (Joyce 2005). As it happens this is not true (a day off here and there will not materially affect the level of fitness I end up with), but because I am too ready to slack off, I had better privilege the thought that I need to do it every morning, in the sense of not giving any real deliberative weight to the alternatives when weighing up whether to hit the floor or not on each particular morning, because on any particular morning when I give real deliberative weight to the thought that a day off wouldn’t necessarily hurt, I will take the day off (regardless of how many other days I’ve taken off recently). That would be alright once in a while, but generally, I had better avoid it. I could achieve the same result with regard to my sit-ups by getting myself to believe that I need to do fifty every morning (because believing that p is a type of privileging), but since it is not true that I need to do fifty, and especially since I know that it’s not true, it

Doxastic and Nondoxastic Atheisms  83 would be better, presumably, to privilege the thought that I need to locally, just in the context of thinking each morning about whether I  should do some sit-ups as part of my morning routine (and perhaps, where relevant, when thinking about long term strategies such as setting my regular alarm early enough to leave time for doing them each morning). When asked, in the context of a casual conversation about the structure of the abdominal muscles, whether one needs to do fifty sit-ups every morning to significantly strengthen them, I need not privilege the thought that one does (much less than I do) at all, and indeed I had better assert the contrary, which I know to be true. In a similar way, one privileges the thought that Sherlock Holmes lived on Baker Street in so far as one takes that as presupposed in the context of discussing the plot of a Sherlock Holmes story. In such a context, one is not indifferent, so far as one’s presuppositions are concerned, between that thought and the thought that Holmes lived on Euston Road. The former thought enjoys a privilege in the context which the latter decidedly does not.14 Now, when Lipton speaks of his immersion in the religious life and in particular his attitudes to some of the claims of the religious tradition and texts which shape that life, I think he is recognisably describing another sort of nondoxastic privileging. Lipton says that according to van Fraassen’s (1980) constructive empiricism, ‘[a]cceptance is not just partial belief; it is also a kind of commitment to use the resources of the [scientific] theory’, and similarly that what he (Lipton) has in mind is that ‘in accepting a religious text we not only believe parts of it but also commit ourselves to using the text as a tool for thought, as a way of thinking about our world’ (Lipton 2007: 45). Whatever is involved in using a set of religious claims as a tool for thinking about our world, it must in part be a matter of privileging some claims over their contraries. A model for this is afforded by Hartry Field’s (1980, 1989) work on mathematical fictionalism. Field argues that mathematical claims about numbers are all false, because there are no numbers (nor sets, nor functions). Nonetheless, we can legitimately employ mathematical reasoning – in the course of which we are required to take it that, for example, twice two is four, and not five or six or seven, etc. – because the mathematical conclusions we reach in (good cases of) such reasoning tell us something about what the world is like, not mathematically but physically: calculations about physical magnitudes and so forth which would be enormously long-winded and difficult if carried out in the language of Field’s ‘nominalised physics’ (purged of reference to or quantification over numbers) can be modelled in mathematical calculations which are provably ‘conservative’ with respect to the physical facts, meaning that from the conclusions of one’s mathematical reasoning can be read off the facts about the physical world. Mathematical claims, then, can and pragmatically ought to be accepted in some contexts as tools for calculation, though they ought not to be believed.15 For Field and the other mathematical fictionalists,

84  Christopher Jay mathematics is a way of thinking about our world but one need not believe the claims through which one is thinking. Lipton, I take it, is suggesting a structurally similar idea: we might think through moral problems and other things about our world by employing a structured system of claims which are useful for bringing certain facts or values to light, even though they are claims which, in other contexts, we have every reason to reject. And employing such a system of claims involves privileging some claims – it involves, perhaps, thinking of the world as one in which a providential God exists rather than as one in which such a God does not exist (in the relevant deliberative context, at least). Again, whilst awe-inspiring experiences, or experiences in which the world strikes one as being imbued with a particular religious significance, might be the essence of what makes certain sorts of religiosity authentically available (in the way Wettstein and Lebens describe), it seems clear that the role of such experiences in making those sorts of religiosity available has much to do with making certain religious claims (about the presence of God in the world, for example) salient in a distinctive way. It would be no good for a person to experience the world as imbued with religious significance and to try to enter authentically into the religious life, if they did not privilege the relevant religious claims in some way. The role that make-believe, or phenomenology in general, plays in making authentic religiosity available, is to give a person a reason to privilege the religious claims which authentic engagement in a particular form of religious life requires ­privileging – or to give them the psychological impetus to do so. In order to answer my question though, about precisely what sort of faith I lack but which some of my fellow doxastic atheists manifest, I need to say more. I must explain why privileging the thought that God exists simply for the sake of intellectual curiosity (simply to see what follows from it, for example) doesn’t amount to the relevant sort of faith, for I can certainly do that, and perhaps I often do. Space is short, so I will not be able to spell out as much here as I would like. But the view I want to propose is this: what makes the difference, amongst doxastic atheists, between those who are capable of an authentic form of religiosity and those (such as me) who are not, is that those who are privilege certain religious claims or doctrines, in a way, by necessity. But what sort of necessity? Clearly, they are not compelled to do so, or if they happen to be (if this is possible), it is not in virtue of the fact that they have the relevant sort of faith. Rather, the necessity in question is this: it is necessary for that person’s (coherent) self-conception that they privilege that religious claim or doctrine over its rivals (i.e. over its negation and over-treating all claims or doctrines about the subject matter equally or indifferently). The idea here is that for some people, given the way they have come – for whatever reason – to think of themselves, it would make no sense to treat the proposition that God exists as on a par with the proposition that God does not exist, or on a par with treating those propositions

Doxastic and Nondoxastic Atheisms  85 indifferently, in at least some contexts. This, I think, is what happens when a person who has become a doxastic atheist retains a special place in their thinking for the idea that God exists because that idea is crucial for their relating to the religious community in which they were raised. That community might not be just a community in which they were raised; it might also be in them, in the sense that their identification with it is part of what they recognise as their identity.16 Merely privileging a proposition for the sake of intellectual curiosity, in the way one does when one assumes something for the sake of argument, is not like that. It involves no necessity. The closest it might come is in the case of someone whose self-conception is inter alia of a person who is intellectually curious, a self-conception which gives one a reason to investigate what follows from various claims and therefore to privilege them for the sake of argument. But a crucial difference is that such a reason is a reason to privilege any proposition (or at least any proposition which one expects might have interesting implications), whereas in the case of someone who manifests the sort of nondoxastic faith I have in mind, it is crucial that it is a particular proposition which is privileged – seeing that particular claim or doctrine as (part of) a way of thinking through, or seeing something, in a way one cares about. This kind of faith need not involve what Howard-Snyder (2013: §3) calls a ‘positive conative orientation’ towards the truth of the privileged ­proposition(s). A person can presumably feel that they could not authentically be themselves were they not to privilege some proposition over others in the course of their practical deliberation and in other ways, yet not wish that proposition to be true – nor, if they are a doxastic atheist, wish that the proposition were true. A doxastic atheist who immerses themselves in a religious practice quite authentically, and would not recognise themselves were they not to privilege the propositions required for that immersion, might very well be immensely relieved that hell or judgement or even God doesn’t exist. It is more plausible that the kind of faith I am describing involves some kind of pro-attitude towards the favouring itself, rather than towards the truth of the proposition favoured.17 But I am not even sure that a doxastic atheist who enjoys the sort of faith I am describing needs to think well of their faith itself, or of the privileging of particular propositions which it involves – in any sense of ‘think well of’, however broad. I have referred to a kind of necessity in the privileging I am talking about, and part of that necessity might be the fact that whether a person likes it or not, they are required to privilege some propositions over others to maintain their identity. But the necessity might be still deeper: some people might lack the imagination or experience to properly so much as conceive of other options in respect of the identities they might adopt, and for them, the necessity of privileging some propositions is barely conditional at all – it is required of them if they are to maintain their (current) identity, but not maintaining their (current) identity is not a live option for them. If there are such people,

86  Christopher Jay who are that strongly bound to faith as the only option for them which they can adequately conceive of, then it seems reasonable to assume that they could be unhappy about their faith, even in the absence of a thought alternative, and might see nothing particularly good about the privileging of some propositions which their faith requires, seeing it as a more or less brute necessity rather than something choice-worthy for its benefits. Of course, not all faith has this rather depressing character, and perhaps none, or almost none, does. But it seems premature to rule out its very possibility. Full-blown atheists like me miss out on authentic religiosity not because we believe that God does not exist, but because there is nothing in our self-conception or system of values which makes it necessary for us to privilege particular religious claims in the course of thinking through moral issues or participating in certain practices. We might choose to think or act under the influence of certain religious doctrines, but if we do so, we are putting on someone else’s clothes. For the authentically religious doxastic atheist, the doctrinal clothes are their own, in so far as they would not feel properly dressed in different ones.18

Notes 1 Throughout this chapter, I take claims about (the existence of) God to be the paradigm of supernatural religious claims. But similar things could be said with respect to the supernatural claims of non-theistic religions and their practices, too. Throughout, I use ‘supernatural’ in a non-pejorative way: It denotes that which would not be countenanced by naturalists, and could be replaced by ‘non-natural’ if preferred. 2 Here and in what I go on to say in the next section, I am sure I am influenced by an unpublished paper by Gabriel Citron, ‘“God” as a Dummy Noun: An Illuminating Model’, and by discussion of that paper with him, though I suspect (from my imperfect memory of that paper) that I am saying the opposite of what he would want to say. 3 Perhaps it is worth reflecting in this connection, on what the smallest difference between doing and pretending to do could be. See, for example, Austin’s paper on pretending and his lovely example of ‘pretending’ to play golf (1970: 261). 4 See, e.g., Pojman (1986). 5 There is, I now think, room for serious doubt about this argument, although it relies on a conception of hope which many find compelling. Perhaps it is too quick to assume that it would be unintelligible to hope for something which one believes will not happen: what if I doubt the quality of my evidence for the belief that it will not happen, or otherwise retain that belief whilst not being very confident in it? Might it not then make sense to hope that my belief is false? Seemingly so. But if I hope that my belief that the Light Brigade will ride to my assistance is false, might it not then make sense to hope that they will ride to my assistance (a hope which is made intelligible by my also hoping that my belief that they won’t is false)? It seems intelligible that I might hope that the Light Brigade will ride to my assistance because I hope that I’m wrong about their not doing so, or not being able to do so. If this is right – and I now suspect it is – then the argument I present in the text is too quick. But it also shows that a popular assumption – perhaps even an orthodoxy – in philosophy is mistaken,

Doxastic and Nondoxastic Atheisms  87 to wit the thesis that hoping for something requires that one does not believe it to be impossible. Even if the argument presented in the text against hope as the nondoxastic attitudinal component of faith for doxastic atheists is too quick, though, there are other reasons to look elsewhere for an answer to our question. Firstly, even if hope does not require the absence of disbelief, it surely does require some positive evaluation of what is hoped for, and a person might well have a sort of faith which does not involve any such positive evaluation (as I argue below). And secondly, there seems to be no evidence that every doxastic atheist who practices a form of genuine religiosity hopes that their beliefs about the nonexistence of the supernatural are false, or that they are sufficiently unsure in those beliefs to make such a hope intelligible. 6 Robert Audi denies that hope is the essence of nondoxastic faith for a related but different reason. His concern is that hope is rationally compatible with too much doubt about whether p: Hope that p may indeed be so desperate as to coexist with as much doubt as is possible consistently with not unqualifiedly believing that not-p. Faith may alternate with such doubt, but cannot coexist with any doubt sufficient to undermine a kind of trusting that the desired state of affairs obtains. (Audi 2011: 73–74) I will have something to say about trusting below, but note that Audi’s ­conception of nondoxastic (‘fiduciary’) faith is one according to which faith is incompatible with disbelief, so it is not the sort of attitude which could explain what I am interested in explaining here. For my purposes, hope is not consistent with enough doubt to be of explanatory use; it is not that it admits of compatibility with too much doubt. Similarly, Howard-Snyder’s (2013) account of assuming (which he does not distinguish clearly from hoping) won’t do for our purposes, since on that account assuming is not compatible with disbelief. 7 Indeed, at least one former Archbishop of Canterbury puts trusting at the core of their treatment of creedal belief: see Williams (2007). 8 For a distinction between trusting a person and relying on them, see Baier (1986) and Holton (1994). 9 See Hawley (2012). See also Simpson (2012) for a genealogy of the concept which might shed light on this. 10 There is, I think, another issue which stands in the way of at least some uses of personal trusting to explicate the attitudes of the authentically religious with respect to God’s existing, for there it is hard to see how one could be trusting God. The very notion of trusting someone to exist is quite bizarre. If someone exists, then they exist, and if they don’t, they don’t. So, in every case where there is really someone to be trusted, there is no question but that they do what they are ‘trusted’ to do, and it seems very odd to speak of trusting someone to do something which one knows they cannot possibly not do if they exist at all to be trusted. 11 Lebens has a nice example: [W]e all believe that the world is hurtling around the sun at speeds of roughly 100,000 km/h, and yet, we very rarely experience the world as if this were true. To make-believe that the world is orbiting the sun at that speed is a game you can play even though it happens to be true; to make-believe in its truth is to try to experience yourself as standing on a planet that isn’t still, as the earth beneath our feet generally feels to be to us, but on a planet that is moving very quickly. (2013: 325)

88  Christopher Jay 12 Lebens and Wettstein are both reflecting on their own experience of the Jewish faith, but it seems clear that the point about the phenomenology of awe or something like it is not peculiar to Jewish religious life. The Catholic mystic Simone Weil, for example, exemplifies something not dissimilar. Speaking of her practice of reciting the Lord’s Prayer, in Greek, each morning ‘with absolute attention’, Weil says that ‘The effect of this practice is extraordinary and surprises me every time, for, although I experience it each day, it exceeds my expectation at each repetition.’ And she describes the phenomenology, surely with poetic licence, thus: At times the very first words tear my thoughts from my body and transport it to a place outside space where there is neither perspective nor point of view. The infinity of the ordinary expanses of perception is replaced by an infinity to the second or sometimes the third degree. At the same time, filling every part of this infinity of infinity, there is silence, a silence which is not an absence of sound but which is the object of a positive sensation, more positive than that of sound. Noises, if there are any, only reach me after crossing this silence. Indeed, she goes on, ‘Sometimes, also during this recitation or at other moments, Christ is present with me in person, but his presence is infinitely more real, more moving, more clear than on that first occasion when he took possession of me’ (1959: 38). 13 Quinn (1989) interprets the crisis in the story in terms of a dilemma, but if conflicting moral and religious demands – rather than loss of confidence – are indeed the source of the priest’s torment, then so much the better for my point: a dilemma which involves no loss of confidence in one’s faith, leaving that faith as robust as ever in every way, will serve even better to show that phenomenological make-believe is not necessary for faith. 14 For a similar link between ‘acceptance’ and presupposition, see Stalnaker (1984: Chapter 5). 15 Other mathematical fictionalists, such as Yablo (2005) and Leng (2010) ­emphasise that mathematics might be useful or indispensible for representing some facts, not just calculating them, whether or not any of the relevant mathematical claims are literally true. 16 As John Schellenberg has pointed out to me, this point about necessity in relation to self-conception might well be an instance of something more general, such as the importance of deep general (i.e. not necessarily self-directed) personal values which might similarly seem to call for the privileging of certain propositions. I cannot explore this idea here, but I think it plausible that if the fact that a value seems to call for the privileging of some proposition suffices to get an individual to privilege that proposition, it is because that value is endorsed in the sense of being a value which weighs with someone of the sort that the individual wants to be. That is, values play a role in getting individuals to privilege propositions as part of – and not instead of – those individuals’ self-conceptions (where self-conceptions include aspirations for oneself). But that requires further elaboration and might turn out not to be right. 17 See Schellenberg (2005: esp. 133) for some discussion of this important ­distinction – at least that is how I take his talk of a contrast between a ‘pro-­ attitude’ and a ‘positive evaluation’. 18 Thanks to Jeanine Diller, Amber Griffioen and Sebastian Sanhueza Rodriguez for discussion of the ideas in this paper, and to John Schellenberg for comments on a draft. Since this paper was accepted for publication, I have come to think that at least one of the arguments I present is dubious (see note 5, above).

Doxastic and Nondoxastic Atheisms  89

References Alston, W. P., ‘Belief, Acceptance, and Religious Faith’ in J. Jordan and D. HowardSnyder (eds.), Faith, Freedom, and Rationality: Philosophy of Religion Today (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996), pp. 3–28. Audi, R., Rationality and Religious Commitment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). Austin, J. L., ‘Pretending’, reprinted in J. O. Urmson and G. J. Warnock (eds.), Philosophical Papers, 2nd edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), pp. 253–71. Baier, A., ‘Trust and Antitrust’, Ethics 96 (1986): 231–60. Cohen, L. J., ‘Belief and Acceptance’, Mind 98/391 (1989): 367–89. Cohen, L. J., An Essay on Belief and Acceptance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992). Endo, S., Silence (New York: Taplinger Publishing Co., 1976). Field, H., Science without Numbers: A Defense of Nominalism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980). Field, H., Realism, Mathematics & Modality (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989). Hawley, K., ‘Trust, Distrust and Commitment’, Nous 48/1 (2012): 1–20. Holton, R., ‘Deciding to Trust, Coming to Believe’, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 72/1 (1994): 63–76. Howard-Snyder, D., ‘Propositional Faith: What It Is and What It Is Not’, American Philosophical Quarterly 50/4 (2013): 357–72. Joyce, R., ‘Moral Fictionalism’ in M. E. Kalderon (ed.), Fictionalism in Metaphysics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 287–313. Lebens, S, ‘The Epistemology of Religiosity: An Orthodox Jewish Perspective’, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 74/3 (2013): 315–32. Leng, M., Mathematics and Reality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). Lipton, P., ‘Science and Religion: The Immersion Solution’ in A. Moore and M. Scott (eds.), Realism and Religion: Philosophical and Theological Perspectives (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 31–46. Pojman, L., ‘Faith without Belief?’, Faith and Philosophy 3/2 (1986): 157–76. Quinn, P. L., ‘Tragic Dilemmas, Suffering Love, and Christian Life’, Journal of Religious Ethics 17/1 (1989): 151–83. Schellenberg, J. L., Prolegomena to a Philosophy of Religion (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005). Simpson, T. W., ‘What Is Trust?’, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 93 (2012): 550–69. Stalnaker, R., Inquiry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). van Fraassen, B., The Scientific Image (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980). Wettstein, H., ‘Awe and the Religious Life: A Naturalistic Perspective’, reprinted in H. Wettstein, The Significance of Religious Experience (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 26–55. Weil, S., ‘Spiritual Autobiography’, in S. Weil, Waiting on God, translated by E. Craufurd (Glasgow: Fontana Books, 1959), pp. 28–48. Williams, R., Tokens of Trust: An Introduction to Christian Belief (Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2007). Yablo, S., 2005. ‘The Myth of the Seven’ in E. Kalderon (ed.), Fictionalism in Metaphysics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 88–115.

6 Atheists and Idolaters The Case of John Wren-Lewis (1923–2006) Stephen R. L. Clark

Robinson, Wren-Lewis and What Matters Most A little over 50 years ago a conservative biblical scholar and Bishop, John Robinson, published a short work, Honest to God (Robinson, 1963), drawing attention to the difficulty some would-be believers had with the notion of a ‘God Out There’ and to the writings of some Christian theologians well-known to scholars but mostly not to the laity: Tillich, Bonhoeffer, Bultmann, Vidler and a scientist and lay theologian called John Wren-Lewis (1923–2006).1 Robinson had not intended it for more than a discussion paper, but it was instead a best seller, seeming to show that Robinson was right to suppose that many people were seeking a way of discarding ‘religion’ – the miracles, the absolute moral prohibitions, church hierarchies, the sense of Someone Watching – while retaining what might be thought the core of the Christian Gospel. All that really mattered was to take the recorded life and sayings of Jesus as a guide: to live for others, with a love owing nothing to their beauty or their merit. Robinson himself was careful to insist that the older imagery was important to many older believers and that it was not wrong, nor even – always – misleading. It was simply unbelievable to many more ‘modern’ people. John Wren-Lewis, recalling his own upbringing in the respectable working class in Kent, was less constrained. It is not merely that the Old Man in the Sky is only a mythological symbol for the Infinite Mind behind the scenes, nor yet that this Being is benevolent rather than fearful: the truth is that this whole way of thinking is wrong, and if such a Being did exist, he would be the very devil. (Cited by Robinson 1963: 42–43, from Wren-Lewis 1959a: 169) It was a theme that Wren-Lewis often returned to. ‘It is not enough to describe my mother’s kind of view of God as primitive, childish, or inadequate. The only word for it is “evil”’ (Wren-Lewis 1967b: 11). Robinson was merely struggling to find a way of speaking to those who could no

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DOI: 10.4324/9781315142395-7

Atheists and Idolaters  91 longer inhabit what they took to be the older Christian world – full of angels, saints and little miracles – and encouraging them still to believe in ‘Love’. Wren-Lewis on the other hand was positively glad that the non-­ human world had been evacuated of all meaning, in the collapse of what he called ‘magical feeling’, because this made the natural world available for human, humane, purposes (Wren-Lewis 1960a; cf. Davy 1978: 94–103). This ‘magical feeling’ included three factors: a belief in an occult reality ‘behind’ or ‘apart from’ human experience, a necessary hierarchical order of nature and society, and the sense that we are parts of a larger unseen organism (Wren-Lewis 1964a). All three factors, he supposed, are ones that we should be glad to have abandoned, even if this seemed to leave us bereft. Wren-Lewis responded to Bertrand Russell’s lament, his warning that ‘Omnipotent Matter’ would inevitably obliterate whatever mattered to us (Russell 1918: 56), by observing that science was founded rather on a belief in ‘Potent Man’. Real science knows nothing of Omnipotent Matter, for it is a continual process of changing both our concepts and our experience of matter. The only constant factor in real science – the science of the experimental method – is Potent Man, man who constantly strives to use matter to express the creativity of his own inner life. Omnipotent Matter is as much a paranoid fantasy as the traditional concept of Omnipotent God, and serves the same neurotic purpose of providing grounds for not taking the inner life of human beings really seriously in its own right. Where traditional religion insists upon the subordination of man’s inner life to the supposed Divine Plan behind the scenes, materialism overrides the inner life by dismissing it in the name of a ‘toughminded’ assertion of man’s utter insignificance in face of the inflexible laws of an indifferent universe. (Wren-Lewis 1971: 70) Other Christian thinkers have made similar remarks: so, for example, Benedict XVI: It is not the laws of matter and of evolution that have the final say, but reason, will, love – a Person. And if we know this Person and he knows us, then truly the inexorable power of material elements no longer has the last word; we are not slaves of the universe and of its laws, we are free. (Benedict 2007, section 5, cited by Caldecott 2013: 21) Benedict perhaps had a stronger sense of the metaphysical backing for the claim. Non-humanists like myself might respond – but this is in passing – that we should instead (or at least also) respect the undirected versatility of Potent Life, which has – as a matter of record – produced in the eusocial

92  Stephen R. L. Clark insects, for example, a far more successful form than ours may prove to be. And of course Wren-Lewis’s constant reference to ‘Man’ was a semantic trap that has taken some time to recognise, as he himself had come close to noticing (Wren-Lewis 1968: 106). Robinson insisted that ‘the Christian affirmation is not simply that love ought to be the last word about life, but that despite appearances it is’ (Robinson 1963: 128). Unfortunately, he seemed to offer no clear or coherent argument for either the moral or the metaphysical assertion. Why ought it to be? And why should we suppose it is, especially with the dreadful record of Church-sponsored atrocities in mind? What, indeed, should we suppose is meant by ‘love’? Does its value truly depend on there being, at the End of Time, a universal, mutually supportive company that has fully transformed the universe (see Dyson 1996)? And why should we require the specifically Christian myth to help us in our troubles? Consider, for example, the words of ‘Comic Book Girl 19’, offering a psychological account of the comic book hero Flex Mentallo: You have to have constant vigilance over yourself. To maintain a higher perspective. And make sure, whatever you’re doing, question yourself along the way. And the hero, Flex Mentallo, he himself is just an allegory for strength. The strength to choose love over fear. And as long as your decisions are based in love and not fear, then you are doing the right thing. (Kasher 2013; see Morrison 2012: 267–72) Or else, perhaps, you aren’t. Are we so confident that merely because we think we have a higher perspective and are acting out of ‘love’, that we are not self-deceived? Does it make no difference what exactly it is that we love, or how? Are we so confident that even the purest ‘love’ is so certainly veridical? And will we be able to manage merely with the help of an imagined ideal and helper? Wren-Lewis perhaps had an easier version to defend, dispensing with any prior proofs that ‘love’ or rational humanity was certain to prevail. Consider the Christian gospel as an experiment, like other technological innovations, to be vindicated or refuted in immediate practice rather than proved in theory or at the end of time (Wren-Lewis 1964a: 32), though in later life he rejected any suggestion that there were techniques for achieving enlightenment. He was also clearer than Robinson in suggesting that the primary sense of ‘God’ or ‘gods’ or ‘the divine’ was not – as far too many militant atheists nowadays imagine – ‘whatever brute and blackguard made the world’ (Housman 1922: 24). What was meant by ‘God’ was something to be encountered in experience, not postulated as a putative cause of all things. If the word ‘God’ had ever been given its primary meaning in terms of the idea of a creator and controller of the world-system, the widely prevalent dualistic notion that God did not create the material world

Atheists and Idolaters  93 could simply never have arisen. If, on the other hand, the basic religious impulse is the perception of a supreme goodness in personal life … then Tennyson’s question ‘Are God and Nature then at strife?’ arises immediately, and dualistic religion provides the most primitive answer – ‘Yes’, while the more ‘classical’ type of religion represents a further extension of the escapist process, based on the wish to believe that the natural order has significance in spite of its sordid appearance. (Wren-Lewis 1963b: 301–02) God – so both Robinson and Wren-Lewis proposed – was to be encountered in our personal relationships. To say that God is personal is to say that “reality at its very deepest level is personal”, that personality is of ultimate significance in the constitution of the universe, that in personal relationships we touch the final meaning of existence as nowhere else. (Robinson 1963: 48) As Robinson especially acknowledged, this requires a ‘well-nigh incredible trust’, which can only be sustained by a continuing awareness that – as an older and pre-Christian philosopher insisted – ‘truth lies in the depths’ (Democritus 68B117DK; see also 68B9DK ‘Humankind is separated from reality’). The world that we experience must point beyond itself, even if we cannot any longer manage the traditional imagery of a country ‘afar beyond the stars’ (Vaughan 2008: 70). Wren-Lewis, on the other hand, was constantly at war with exactly this conviction – that there is a hidden truth – to the point that Robinson with some justice observed that he seemed only to be saying that ‘love is God’ (that is, that the commitment to having such commitments is worth making), and to have abandoned any doctrine beyond the naturalistic (Robinson 1963: 54, referring especially to Wren-Lewis 1955a). But it remains unclear whether even Robinson allows for anything more than this: he wonders whether the ‘depths of revelation, intimations of eternity, judgements of the holy and the sacred’ and so on are reality or illusion, but does not tell us how we are to decide, nor which of the many ideals and idols that humankind has made are really or happily or morally to be followed. What Robinson missed in mildly criticising Wren-Lewis for giving too much away to a merely naturalistic viewpoint was that Wren-Lewis also rejected the existence or significance of any merely natural or material world. In his dedication to experimental science, indeed, he repeatedly insisted that scientific theories were only formulae, devices, for dealing with and eventually transforming human experience. They should not be taken as an excuse for building up another oppressive vision. The pictures we make of [the natural world] as a great system over against ourselves are only abstractions, and to identify them with reality

94  Stephen R. L. Clark is to lapse into illusion, whether the picture is a purely ­mechanical one or one involving the workings of supposedly spiritual powers. (Wren-Lewis 1960d: 206) The whole notion of a material world separate from human activity is not a scientific idea at all, but a delusion which itself generates the error of supposing that there is another occult ‘spiritual’ world ‘behind the scenes’ (Wren-Lewis 1959d: 175). He responded acidly in The Observer to Sir Julian Huxley’s paean in praise of evolution and the human spirit (which Robinson had rather accepted as a glimpse of true religion: Robinson 1963: 31–32): Many people call Sir Julian an atheist: he probably calls himself one. His article in last week’s Observer, however, makes it clear that he is nothing of the kind, and many Christians like myself will wish profoundly that he would be an honest-to-God atheist! In fact, as his regular readers will have known for many years, he is a profoundly religious writer, whose God is evolution. He says that evolution should be the controlling idea in all our thinking, both scientific and ethical. He describes the universe as an ‘all-embracing evolutionary process’, and the whole tone of his language shows that he gives mankind a religious significance because evolution has at this point ‘strangely and wonderfully’ acquired the power of conscious self-direction. This, Sir, is exactly the sort of thing William Blake was referring to when he said that if men had not the religion of Jesus, they would have the religion of Satan. When the prophets of the Bible raved about idolatry, they meant just this sort of mystical subordination of man to the great system of nature. Against this, those who have the religion of Jesus want to assert that people do not acquire significance by performing any sort of function, however lofty, in any larger system, however universal. They can have absolute significance as individuals, by the simple process of giving it to each other in ordinary personal relationships. The Christian believes this because he holds that the Absolute God, whose name is love, is present in personal relationships, but he might welcome a real atheist who held the same personalist values, in the name of what [H.J.] Blackham [1923-2009] calls ‘the self-sufficiency of perishable things’, as an ally against all attempts to resurrect the Great God Pan. As I see it, the achievement of Darwin was that he drove the last shreds of mystical value out of nature by exposing its apparently creative processes as purely relative and random. Let us on no account go back on this, whether at the behest of scientists like Sir Julian or supposedly Christian writers like Teilhard de Chardin. 2 He might even have agreed with one strange letter that Robinson apparently received, recorded in a survey of the relevant correspondence:

Atheists and Idolaters  95 To acknowledge the existence of any entity outside ourselves, any God who would go on existing if the whole of mankind were wiped out tomorrow, is to detract from the potential stature of man. (Towler 1984: 27) Apparently we ought not even to imagine that there was a world before and far beyond us and will be one after us! ‘The real world is the world of persons in communication with one another’ (Wren-Lewis 1967b: 82). 3 Wren-Lewis was not merely rejecting – or radically reinterpreting – the supernaturalist implications of the Christian Gospel, but the naturalist interpretation of scientific and technological practice, and especially any suggestion that we should ‘harmonize ourselves with the evolutionary process’. He fiercely rejected his hero H. G. Wells’s doctrine that ‘if the universe is non-ethical by our present standards, we must reconsider those standards and reconstruct our ethics’ (Wells 1924: 248), and so – implicitly – the Eugenicism that corrupted twentieth century science.4 He was therefore, perhaps, immune to the epistemological challenge, Darwin’s Doubt, posed by a global naturalism. With me [so Darwin wrote] the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which have been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or are at all trustworthy. Would anyone trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind? (Darwin 1887, vol. 1: 315–16; see further Plantinga 1993) It may be that our convictions and our techniques of reasoning are likely to have been good enough to keep our ancestors alive for long enough to breed: why should or could they be expected to be conformable to a cosmos vaster, older and more devious than – on any usual supposition – we can even begin to imagine? David Hume’s query has a wider force than he admitted: What peculiar privilege has this little agitation of the brain which we call thought, that we must thus make it the model of the whole universe? (Hume 1976: 168) Naturalistic critics have usually sought to evade the challenge, either by a blank refusal to notice that there is a problem, or by accepting, inconsistently, that the universe is indeed much ‘queerer than we can imagine’ (Haldane 1927: 286) while continuing to mock non-naturalists for the quaintness of their imaginings. Even or especially such critics are more likely to be swayed by the ethical challenge: why should we expect that a mixture of parental care, filial devotion, sexual attraction and social ­feeling, whether of the primate or the wider mammalian sort, is in any

96  Stephen R. L. Clark clear sense the point or final accomplishment of the cosmic process? What other ethical or spiritual norms might be found in other lines and other worlds than ours? We have room in our hearts and minds for a vision of the universe (so Philo of Alexandria said) because our spirit is a fragment of the divine (Philo Quod Deterius Potiori iudicari soleat: 1929–1962, Book 7. 90, cited by Pearson 1975: 54). In Pope Benedict’s words, the objective structure of the universe and the intellectual structure of the human being coincide; the subjective reason and the objectified reason in nature are identical. In the end it is “one” reason that links both and invites us to look to a unique creative Intelligence. (Benedict 2009) Conversely, the idea that we can insist that something in us human beings alone is uniquely worthy of worship and can be conceived as certainly victorious over ‘Non-Omnipotent Matter’, falls under Plotinus’s rebuke to the Gnostics of his day: ‘if God is not in Nature, He is not in you’ (Ennead II.9 [33].16). Wren-Lewis came close to agreeing with the thought that we could indeed discover the real key to all things in our encounter with loving relationships, but not because there was a real world outside the frame of human relationships which we might discover. ‘The real root of the apologist’s convictions is an experience which he cannot seriously bring himself to deny … in my own view, the fact of new life in the relationships of the Christian community’ (Wren-Lewis 1958: 43). What he rejected was any notion that the human enterprise was limited by commonsense imaginings, that its value depended on the agreement of any occult powers, or that we need be worried by ‘the disenchantment of nature’: The progress of science is often described by materialists as a continuous process of disillusionment, but the truth is that the main illusion it has shattered is the notion that human beings are limited to the horizons of the ordinary everyday world as normally experienced by average people in most ages of history. By following up the odd extraordinary event that fails to fit into the framework of everyday thought, science has again and again shown that human beings can have far wider horizons and far more dimensions of experience than are dreamed of in the down-to-earth philosophies of people who pride themselves on their common sense. (Wren-Lewis 1974b: 42)5 His principal point – that God and the gods are encountered first within our personal human experience rather than posited arbitrarily as explanations for cosmic reality – seems clearly sound. As Aristotle taught us long ago, the life that we can experience only intermittently, the life of pure enjoyment of

Atheists and Idolaters  97 eternal truth, is God (Aristotle Metaphysics 12.1072b13f), and this idea, in turn, is not as lifeless an ideal as many have supposed. Nor is this only true for the philosophers’ God. Augustine, in a sermon in 404 AD, gave voice to a learned defender of pagan worship: ‘When I worship Mercury’, we are to suppose his saying, ‘I worship talent. Talent cannot be seen; it is something invisible’ (Augustine Sermon 26.24, cited by Ando 2008: 41). Augustine allowed the gloss, contenting himself with inquiring what it was that the ‘talent’ in question did: ‘perhaps they err greatly who think that talent is to be worshipped using an image of Mercury’. Chesterton put the point well: Bacchanals did not say, ‘Let us discover whether there is a god of wine’. They enjoyed wine so much that they cried out naturally to the god of it. Christians did not say, ‘A few experiments will show us whether there is a god of goodness’. They loved good so much that they knew that it was a god. Moreover, all the great religions always loved passionately and poetically the symbols and machinery by which they worked – the temple, the coloured robes, the altar, the symbolic flowers, or the sacrificial fire. It made these things beautiful: it laid itself open to the charge of idolatry. (Chesterton 1906) Maybe even Flex Mentallo is not entirely safe. But can we seriously insist that reality is to be determined only with and by humanity? Those divinities did not only affect the human mind and landscape: who could suppose that sex, anger, trickiness and the rest were confined within our species, or that the Sky did not oversee all earthly things – even if ‘the Sky’ is strictly an illusion? Only someone blind to the real existence of other living creatures could suppose that their lives were, to them, unmeaning! Only very strange idealists really believe that there is no real world beyond and beneath the human! Whether those powers were eternally real, or at least preceded mortal sentient existence, was another matter: the world, the cosmos, itself, according to the one really Bronze Age myth, discoverable in Mesopotamian, Egyptian and Hellenic records, emerged, for no particular reason, from Nothing, and only gradually blossomed into concrete individual beings with stories and definite life spans. The Egyptian version in particular is remarkably like current scientific speculation: out of Nothing, which precedes, contains and will eventually consume all things, the primeval mound, Atum, emerged. And from that Atum came eight paired forces which in turn bore or begot or built the many million things.6 Personal beings, even of the most resilient, even immortal, sort, are late comers and mostly serve to keep the human cosmos turning. God and the gods were not generally conceived as Creators, but as moods, recurrent fantasies, ideals. To that extent it is even possible to claim that God – in the sense that theists usually intend – is ‘the sum of our values, representing to us their ideal unity, their claims upon us and their creative

98  Stephen R. L. Clark power’ (Cupitt 1980: 269).7 The ancients, perhaps, were rather more realistic. What reason have we from our own experience to suppose that our values are even possibly united, whether what we individually approve or what is approved in our society, our species or the world? The gods, so the ancients thought, are frequently at odds – constrained perhaps by the overarching power they symbolised as the Sky, as Zeus, the god of hospitality, of oaths, of sovereign power. The idea that there is some One Thing, even some One Way of Being, in which all ideals and desires are reconciled, is not one that the present state of things does very much to support, nor is it one that does much for our personal or collective happiness. Better believe that nobody can have everything! Better remember that there are always costs, even to success. Better, perhaps, remember that not everything that anyone desires or values can easily be reconciled. Sex, anger, trickiness are gods (and at the same time demons). So also might be the demands of hospitality and fairness, and the familiar comforts of home and remembered landscape. When Plato’s Athenian Stranger, in The Laws, lays down the law for a new colony he insists that his colonists must tend the earth ‘more carefully than children do their mother. For she is a goddess and their queen, and they are her mortal subjects. Such also are the feelings which they ought to entertain to the Gods and demi-gods of the country’ (Plato Laws 5.740). Feeling ourselves part of city, country, lineage and species may help to sustain us through many troubles – and also to mount righteous assaults on other cities, countries, lineages and so on. Feeling ourselves in the right may excuse many evils. ‘When religion is in the hands of the mere natural man, he is always the worse for it; it adds a bad heat to his own dark fire and helps to inflame his four elements of selfishness, envy, pride and wrath’ (Law 1755, para. 37, cited by Williams 1963: 178; see also Wren-Lewis 1964a: 34). And the same is true for those who imagine that they are ‘irreligious’, when actually indulging very much the same demons! ‘The plain fact is’, Wren-Lewis said ‘that the clearest evidence of strong emotion nowadays comes from those who have antireligious feelings’ (1974b: 43). ‘Scientism’ is recognisably ‘a religion’, and one of the most doctrinaire and ignorant kinds (see Clark 2015). The merely naturalistic escape from such demonic influence may be to recognise what drives have been embedded in us by our evolutionary and human past, and slowly learn to think apart and aside from them. ‘Reason’ may compel us to conceive that we are no different in kind from other people, or even other animals: let us treat others as we would ourselves wish to be treated; let us remember that we occupy only a little space and time; let us, perhaps, even begin to wonder whether time really passes, or spatial distance is real. In effect another way of feeling and thinking – one not entirely commonsensical – is to take precedence over the many impulses, exactly, of sex, anger, patronage and patriotic feeling. All these impulses, no doubt, will still remain, and neither can they be altogether ignored, without huge cost. But Being a Reasonable Person is to take precedence,

Atheists and Idolaters  99 and in more romantic times would have its own abiding, evocative image: would be ­recognisably, in fact, a god – that is, one valuable or inescapable way of seeing things amongst very many. Maybe this is possible, even though history may suggest otherwise! The Doctrine of Original Sin, WrenLewis suggested, was ‘an expression of optimism because it states, in effect, that we ought not to judge potentialities of human nature from the empirical record of violence, stupidity and greed that has characterised most of human history’ (Guardian 24 February 1966).8 The story of humanity for most of its history is the story of Adam and Eve. It is the story of people cowering under visions of wrathful divinity, alienated from sex and oppressed by nature. It is the story of people mentally dissociated from bodily life so that instinct seems like a threat … It is the story of people bringing up children whose anxieties can lead to murder. (Wren-Lewis 1968: 104–05. Though note that the original biblical story carries no hint of ‘sexual alienation’) But in that case the ‘humanist’ conviction that we might be better than our personal and collective history suggests, might even – as Richard Dawkins strangely imagined in The Selfish Gene (Dawkins 1976: 200–01) – ­somehow defy our makers, is a gesture of faith in an unknown future and may need ‘supernatural’ aid! At the least, we need to be clearer about the style and content of ‘Divine Reason’, and our relation to it: are we to be slaves or friends? If the kingdom of God is ‘among us’, it is not as a distant ideal or idol.

The Empire Never Ended9 What is it about the Christian – or more broadly the Abrahamic – g­ ospel that could change or challenge the ‘neurosis of religion’? What is the ‘love’ that Robinson and Wren-Lewis variously invoke as their guide to a new life? It is in this context worth noting Nicholas T. Wright’s barbed comment about Robinson’s appeal to Dietrich Bonhoeffer: ‘Robinson was arguing that one should go with the flow; Bonhoeffer, that one should stand out against it’ (Wright 2005: 184). So also Wren-Lewis: Without some denial of the ‘life’ of organic nature there can be no affirmation of personal life: nature has no time for personal values at all. It knows nothing of justice, still less of mercy; if it often has great beauty, it even more often has great ugliness – of waste and decay, of pain and cruelty, of sheer monstrosity, and its sex knows nothing of love, being merely a means to indiscriminate propagation. (Guardian 25th November 1965)

100  Stephen R. L. Clark Of his own early – unvoiced – persuasion in reaction against his parents’ folk-religion Wren-Lewis later said: it was somewhat like that of the movie Star Wars a generation later; I saw myself joining a crusade of human intelligence against a whole universe of oppressive law that had no regard for the sensitive beings it had somehow spawned. In my mind’s eye, I was John Skywalker battling for the creative human spirit against a tyrannical cosmic empire. (Wren-Lewis 1995b: 113–14) He was not entirely wrong – and the more placid ‘religion of the reasonable man’ that I described a moment ago is not without its errors. Consider what was at stake in the early centuries of the Church. According to the historian Eusebius, As [Licinius] was about to begin the war [with his fellow and rival emperor Constantine], he called together the select members of his bodyguard and valued friends to one of the places which they consider sacred. It was a grove, well-watered and thickly growing, and all sorts of images of those he thought were gods were erected in it carved in stone. He lit candles to them, and made the usual sacrifices, and is said to have delivered such a speech as this: ‘Friends and comrades, these are our ancestral gods, which we honour because we have received them for worship from our earliest forefathers. The commander of those arrayed against us has broken faith with the ancestral code and adopted godless belief, mistakenly acknowledging some foreign god from somewhere or other, and he even shames his own army with this god’s disgraceful emblem’. (Eusebius 1999: 97 (2.5)) What was so difficult for pagans like Licinius to assimilate? Mediterranean religion, even Roman religion, was mostly syncretic and inclusive. Even such rites as struck most ordinary Romans as indecent might still have their respect: the rites of Cybele, for example, which sometimes included ecstatic self-castration, were nonetheless parts of Roman official religion, as linking them to their purported Trojan ancestors (Beard 1996). Conversely, child-sacrifice was an evil mostly because it was practised by the Carthaginians! Homeland and ancestry, in short, were crucial. Better maintain the religions handed down to us, even or especially if we have no proof that Nature is really providential, or really ‘on our side’ (Minucius, 1931: 327 (ch. 6)). Jews, though they refused to accept the equation between Zeus and the God of Abraham which mainstream Hellenes would have preferred, nor yet the still odder but illuminating equation of Yahweh and Dionysus (Plutarch Quaestiones conviviales 4.6.1–2; Tacitus Histories 5.5; see also Amzallag 2011), could still have some respect, as holding to their

Atheists and Idolaters  101 ancestral creed, and incidentally – on some interpretations – guiding all their lives by attention to a universal ethic, being (as it were) a ‘nation of philosophers’. Some Hellenes – including Celsus – were less forgiving: the Hebrews, they suggested, were a gaggle of former slaves, in revolt against their original masters.10 As Maccoby has also remarked, the march from Egypt was as if Spartacus had managed to hold his fellow slaves together long enough to get out of Italy and found their own new commonwealth (Maccoby 2002: 57). And slave-owning societies are always terrified that their slaves might make common cause and become a people owing nothing to their masters’ gods and laws. Christians acted out that nightmare, even if they claimed not to intend armed violence against their masters and the State. Even if they were not literally slaves (being, more commonly, ordinary labourers, artisans and shop keepers), they perceived themselves to have been freed of any obedience to the demons who, literally or poetically, had enslaved the Mediterranean and the wider world. So Jews as well as Christians could be considered atheists, as denying the mere existence or the power or the authority of the usual gods, whereas most pagans were quite willing, at least in principle, to acknowledge any god – any form of life that anyone might admire, seek out or worship – as real and as worth placating, as long as those forms were long established and embedded in the customs of a submissive people. How were they ever to trust people who themselves insisted that they were different, and no longer afraid of the law? Matters were not helped, of course, by the customary blood libels about secret conspiracies. Third-century emperors, mostly very short-lived and wholly dependent on their armies’ full approval, had been searching for some moral or religious bond to save the Empire from disaffection and from civil war, and their own brief dynasties from being displaced. Perhaps the West and East could be united in the worship of the Sun? Or perhaps they could appeal to the dual figures (matching the common practice of appointing Senior and Junior Emperors) of Jupiter and his son Hercules. The imperial theology of the greatest of the persecutors [for example, Diocletian (244–311 AD)] had important features in common with the religion which they persecuted. Jupiter is the supreme god. His son, Hercules, acts as his executive representative, and is a benefactor of man. The resemblance to Christian theology is obvious. (Liebeschuetz 1979: 242–43) There are indeed clear parallels and significant differences. Consider first the obvious congruence between the stories about that pagan hero and the Christian (see Clark 2013: 161–64): both Heracles (aka Hercules) and Jesus were reputed Sons of God, born of a mortal mother, required to labour in the service of humanity although – or because – they were each the rightful king. They were both tempted and resisted the temptation, to

102  Stephen R. L. Clark take the easier, pleasanter path. They perished through the treachery or folly of a trusted friend, but were raised up to Heaven and thereafter served as an ideal, an inspiration, even a supernatural aid. Heracles was identified with a Mesopotamian god, Nergal, as well as with the Tyrian Melqart (Kingsley 1995: 274–75). His name was also given in Orphic circles to the First Born of creation.11 Cornutus, a first century allegorist, identified him as ‘the Logos in all things, in accordance with which Nature is strong and powerful, since it is immovable and endlessly generative’.12 The Cynics especially took him as their patron, as one who had chosen the path of Virtue (Xenophon Memorabilia 2.1.21–34) and showed it was possible to live entirely by one’s wits and courage, even in the face of celestial – that is, Hera’s – malice.13 This last option is perhaps not altogether alien to WrenLewis’s own vision, but the bulk of Imperial Theology rather emphasised the controlling power reflected in the imperial war-machine. It is relatively easy to imagine alternate histories in which either it was Zeus and Heracles who were seen as the eternal ‘parents and originals’ of mortal emperors, or else God and Christ together were remodelled on the very same pattern. And perhaps that heretical alternative is closer to what has been the background to a good deal of European folk-religion: WrenLewis’s experience was that ‘most ordinary working-class people’s religion is protective magic, and the Christ from whom the religion is supposed to derive is a magical divine figure’ (Wren-Lewis 1959a: 165): I came from a home where religion meant the kind of dark superstition which made my mother believe quite literally in God striking a local workman blind for using the oath “Gorblimey!”.14 He spoke, in one of his autobiographical essays, of his parents’ attitude: There was hardly any fantasy of ‘pie in the sky by and by when you die’ in the religious outlook of either of my parents. There was simply a sense of utter powerlessness in a social and material cosmos which at best flung down occasional scraps of happiness to those who behaved themselves, but more often meted out disease and disaster, presumably as punishment for the transgression of some rule we hadn’t been told about. (Wren-Lewis 1995b: 111) The Empire never died. As the Cambridge Platonist Ralph Cudworth remarked in a sermon before the House of Commons in 1647: ‘Surely this will make us either secretly to think, that there is no God at all in the World, if he must needs be such, or else to wish heartily, there were none’ (Patrides 1969: 107). Only through a meeting with a rather better educated Anglican priest – Joseph

Atheists and Idolaters  103 McCulloch – did Wren-Lewis realise that this was not the Gospel and that there had been a subtle betrayal of Christian belief … according to which the word ‘God’ ceases to refer to the Being Jesus called ‘Father’, the creative Being of Love whose presence and demands are directly known in our relations with one another, and comes instead to refer abstractly to a hypothetical ‘Master Mind behind the scenes of the Universe’. When religion is perverted in this way, it becomes in effect a means of g­ iving absolute moral sanction to the existing natural order, of which the existing social hierarchy is usually seen as an extension. (Wren-Lewis 1960e: 4; see also Wren-Lewis 1955–1956) Human suffering and unhappiness is thence conceived as the ‘just’ punishment for wickedness, whereas the Christian Gospel is that we are forgiven, and that what happens to us is not punishment, but opportunity. As he went on his way Jesus saw a man blind from his birth. His ­ isciples put the question, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his ­parent? d Why was he born blind?’ ‘It is not that this man or his parents sinned,’ Jesus answered; ‘he was born blind so that God’s power might be ­displayed in curing him’. (John 9.1–3) The Christian faith was ‘eschatological’ indeed – and that, in Thomas Altizer’s words, is ‘a form of faith that calls the believer out of his old life in history and into a new Reality of grace’ (Altizer and Hamilton 1966: 101), rather than confirming his immediate natural and social status, and requiring him to bow down before the Boss, whether that Boss was a Supernatural Demon or ‘the Evolutionary Process’ reified. The best that the Cynics could manage was to endure, and mock the Powers: Christians expected that they would one day ‘judge angels’ (Paul, I Corinthians 6.3) and that the world would – somehow – be made new (Revelation 21.5). So Altizer and Wren-Lewis were correct to represent the original Gospel as an uprising, even if – explicitly – a non-violent one. Christians interpreted the Hebrew Scriptures typologically: their own escape from civic and imperial authority, from slavery not just to ‘sin’ but to the spiritual powers of wickedness, the rulers of this world who claimed (as it were) ‘the moral high ground’ (Paul, Ephesians 6.12), echoed the Hebrews’ escape from Egypt, and also – from a still earlier date – the flight from Ur of the Chaldees. These departures were, symbolically, an escape from stellar determinism, from the control of destiny written in the skies. Nowadays we may hope instead to be freed from genetic determinism, from the destiny written in our cells – as Heracles, according to Plotinus’s allegorising

104  Stephen R. L. Clark interpretation of the Greek story, broke the chains on Prometheus (Ennead IV.3 [27].14, 14–18). A more exactly Plotinian development of Hellenic myth might perhaps have grown still closer to the Christian: Plotinus had after all been a pupil of Ammonius Saccas, reputedly himself a Christian. But the weight of Hellenic story emphasised not liberation but obedience. Consider the great image – which does not survive except in prose and poetry – devised by Pheidias at Olympia in an earlier century, which demonstrated to generations what Zeus would look like if he took human form (Plotinus, Ennead V.8 [31].1; Cicero, Orator II.8–9; Plutarch, Life of Aemilius Paulus ch. 28). The god sits on a throne, and he is made of gold and ivory. On his head lies a garland which is a copy of olive shoots. In his right hand he carries a Victory, which, like the statue, is of ivory and gold; she wears a ribbon and – on her head – a garland. In the left hand of the god is a sceptre, ornamented with every kind of metal, and the bird sitting on the sceptre is the eagle. (Pausanias 1926: 437 (5.11.1)) The throne was further surrounded by Victories, Graces and Seasons, together with images of athletic contests, war, murder and assault. According to Dio Chrysostom (or at least according to an account he chose to offer – and subsequently deconstruct a little), Even the irrational brute creation would be so struck with awe if they could catch merely a glimpse of yonder statue, not only the bulls which are being continually led to the altar, so that they would willingly submit themselves to the priests who perform the rites of sacrifice, if so they would be giving some pleasure to the god, but eagles too, and horses and lions, so that they would subdue their untamed and savage spirits and preserve perfect quiet, delighted by the vision; and of men, whoever is sore distressed in soul, having in the course of his life drained the cup of many misfortunes and griefs, nor ever winning sweet sleep — even this man, methinks, if he stood before this image, would forget all the terrors and hardships that fall to our human lot. (Dio Chrysostom 1939: 57 (12.51), at Olympia in 97 A.D.) The ‘first conception of God’ as Chrysostom represented it amounts to the elevation of human mind and judgement over the ‘brute beasts’ of passion and disorder – an elevation that has often been employed also to defend imperial control of recalcitrant human populations. Parcere subiectis et debellare superbos: to spare the conquered and beat down the proud (Virgil, Aeneid 6.853). This image of divinity clearly had an influence on later Christian centuries: by contemplating God’s glory, as represented in

Atheists and Idolaters  105 art, we could be reconciled to our own troubles, we could be seduced by splendour, and expect our enemies to be defeated. The difference is that Christ Pantokrator was still, indelibly and doctrinally, the Crucified: the cross his ‘disgraceful symbol’ because it marked him as a criminal condemned by imperial power to a naked, humiliating, excruciating (exactly) death. It isn’t nomos, but one who was nailed to the cross by nomos who is the imperator! This is incredible, and compared to this all the little revolutionaries are nothing. (Taubes 2004: 24, cited by Baker 2012: 376) Admittedly, Heracles had himself been enslaved, humiliated, made to labour without reward and finally been betrayed into a painful death before being raised to God’s right hand on high (or at least his immortal aspect had been). But it was not the Establishment that killed him (rather it was the revenge of a dead centaur, and the foolishness of a woman), and his mortality, precisely, was abandoned. Neither he nor Zeus made any promise of a cosmic recovery or reworking; neither accepted any rebuke or condemnation. Things as they are, are also as they should be, and even if the universe will be renewed after the Great Conflagration (as some supposed) it will only be to repeat the whole sad history (which somehow we should pretend to like). Individual heroes and philosophers, perhaps, might make it past the guardians of fate, might expect to clamber through the crystal spheres to heaven (or simply learn to detach themselves from all immediate troubles), but the earth itself will never be remade, nor will we common people ever be released from our obedience to the terrestrial powers. The best that we can manage is endurance – whereas Christians hoped that the world could be remade.15 Christians, in brief, were very close to the Manichaean thought (see also Wink 1993) – the one that Wren-Lewis used to show that ‘God’ does not just mean ‘the Creator’ – that this world here is in the hands of Ignorant Evil, that we are living (as it were) in territory occupied by thieves and rebels, apostates, and have not merely been given our own passports out, but a promise that there has already been an invasion, that the apostate has already been overthrown, though it may take centuries for the news to spread, and the effects of past apostasy to be reversed. Babylon’s walls are breached.16 Our God is a god of futurity, and not the past.17 The opening statement [of the Book of Genesis] that in the beginning God created the world … was not meant as a speculation about the origin of the natural order in past history at all, but rather as a poem about the world which could be created by God-in-man if man lived up to his full human stature; nature appears in the story as the

106  Stephen R. L. Clark No-thing out of which the world is to be made, the chance realm which fundamentally ‘without form and void’, although it throws up, is ­ purely by chance, ­patterns which can be starting-points for creating a world. (Wren-Lewis 1966b: 236) In accepting condemnation at the hands of religious and civic rulers Christ – like Socrates – condemned all such authority, revealed them all as idols.18 The Word of God, powerful in all things, and not defective with regard to His own justice, did righteously turn against that apostasy, and redeem from it His own property. He did this not by violent means, as the apostasy had done when it obtained dominion over us at the beginning, when it insatiably snatched away what was not its own. Rather, he did this by means of persuasion, as became a God of counsel, who does not use violent means to obtain what He desires. This was so that neither should justice be infringed upon, nor the ancient handiwork of God go to destruction. (After Irenaeus of Lyons, Adversus Haereses, 5, 1, 1) Others had hoped to be inspired by God, or hoped at least that there were prophets, philosophers and poets who were thus inspired. The Christians said that they could be taken up into God’s fellowship while still alive in this world, and without any special talent of their own; that they were in Christ’s body, no longer merely elements of any earthly city, but new-born gods. They were forgiven and therefore could themselves forgive. ‘Mutual Forgiveness of each vice … oped the Gates of Paradise’ (Blake 1966: 758–59, cited in Wren-Lewis 1968: 114). This is not unconnected with Augustine’s battles with the Donatists, who supposed that the Church could only be a company of morally perfect people, and with the Pelagians, who thought we only needed to brace up to be thus perfect. Augustine knew we were not, and couldn’t. Wren-Lewis, in his later writings in the Manchester Guardian through the 1960s, constantly insists on the need for us to transcend what seems the given nature of things if we are to continue the true scientific programme, or the Christian. If “supernatural” means “creative” – capable of changing the ordinary order of nature – modern science and technology actually realize the supernatural, whereas by contrast traditional religion, by identifying the supernatural with something hidden behind the scenes of experience, actually had the effect of making people think of life as a matter of conforming to the laws of the great overall system. (Guardian 3rd September 1964)19

Atheists and Idolaters  107 And again: ‘it is surely no mere coincidence that the scientific revolution occurred in Christendom, in the wake of the great proclamation that mankind had been set free from the dominion of the world-rulers’ (Guardian 1st October 1964; see Hooykaas 1972; Jaki 1974). And love itself, in the sense that he intended, he will ‘call “supernatural”, not because [he] believe[d] it comes from some other-worldly source, but because it involves rising above the ordinary level of sub-human nature in which the individual is subordinated to the species’ (Guardian 10 November 1966). 20 For riseth up against realm and rod, A thing forgotten, a thing downtrod, The last, lost giant, even God, Is risen against the world. (Chesterton 1950: 268) What is being imagined? The dictum in Altizer & Hamilton is ambiguous: ‘The Kingdom of God and kosmos are antithetical categories. The very dawning of the Kingdom of God places in question the reality of the world; when the Kingdom is fully consummated, the world must disappear’ (Altizer and Hamilton 1966: 102). Did they mean this positively (not quite literally), or is this also only an imagining, a way of expressing their disengagement from the values of ‘this world’, the Empire and the Natural World alike? If it is the latter, then can there be any ‘realistic’ hope of any eventual success? Maybe we must hope anyway, as there can be no hope unless we do: ‘the one thing which is absolutely certain to ensure … world catastrophe is precisely this pessimistic sense of the inevitability of catastrophe’ (WrenLewis 1970a: 258). And after all, ‘the horse might learn to sing’. Maybe it is enough to be disengaged from ordinary hopes and fears: our death at the hands of the Empire, even our absolute destruction ‘as if we had never been’, is of no great matter. But this is hardly more than many pagan philosophers, whether of Stoic or Epicurean school and temper, would have said: only those who have realised the insignificance of their own death or bodily wellbeing – and that of their favoured others – are immune to bribery and threat. It is on them that our freedoms, such as they are, will always depend, in that our tyrants can never be entirely free of fear. Slaves who no longer fear the cross and rack, nor need the little comforts of sensual ease and social reputation, can both inspire and assist their unenlightened and un-liberated brethren. But by the same logic – precisely because these things didn’t matter – pagan philosophers did not think it their duty to liberate any slaves from cross and rack. Serious pagans could reasonably think that Christians were betraying the traditions of their ancestors, and forming a new people owing no allegiance or respect to civic or imperial powers. They were also ready to expect gross transformations of the natural world of a sort associated with magicians’ fables, that themselves disrespected natural powers and

108  Stephen R. L. Clark kinds. Even those theurgists and philosophers who had some hope of climbing past the ­planetary archons, shedding their material characters as they went, could not be expected to respect people who declared that the archons had already been defeated, that we were living in a new heaven and new earth where all things might be asked for and achieved. Christian Atheism, as it was then perceived, was a threat to social order, and either a ­ angerous challenge to the world of nature. Everything grave ­delusion or a d could be r­ emodelled. No nature was essential or eternal. Christians mostly agreed: In former times every place was full of the fraud of oracles, and the utterances of those at Delphi and Dodona and in Boeotia and Lycia and Libya and Egypt and those of the Kabiri and the Pythoness were considered marvellous by the minds of men. But now since Christ has been proclaimed everywhere, their madness too has ceased, and there is no one left among them to give oracles at all. Then, too, demons used to deceive men’s minds by taking up their abode in springs or rivers or trees or stones and imposing upon simple people by their frauds. But now, since the Divine appearing of the Word, all this fantasy has ceased, for by the sign of the cross, if a man will but use it, he drives out their deceits. (Athanasius 1944, ch. 8, para. 47) This very passage – to confirm Wren-Lewis’s analysis – was echoed many centuries later in Thomas Sprat’s History of the Royal Society: The poets of old to make all things look more venerable than they were devised a thousand false Chimaeras; on every Field, River, Grove and Cave they bestowed a Fantasm of their own making: With these they amazed the world. … And in the modern Ages these Fantastical Forms were reviv’d and possessed Christendom. … All which abuses if those acute Philosophers did not promote, yet they were never able to overcome; nay, not even so much as King Oberon and his invisible Army. But from the time in which the Real Philosophy has appear’d there is scarce any whisper remaining of such horrors. … The cours of things goes quietly along, in its own true channel of Natural Causes and Effects. For this we are beholden to Experiments; which though they have not yet completed the discovery of the true world, yet they have already vanquished those wild inhabitants of the false world, that us’d to astonish the minds of men. (Sprat 2005: 340) The Christian Gospel in this interpretation determined that the spirits of groves and streams were phantoms, to be dispersed by the ‘divine appearing of the Word’. Whether this has really had the bad environmental effects

Atheists and Idolaters  109 that are sometimes attributed to both Genesis and the Gospel is unclear: ­ othing in Athanasius’s claim suggests that we should not love and respect n the bodily creatures with whom we share the world. Those who believe in spirits of wood and stream do not necessarily treat them well: just as in ­simply personal relationships, thinking that one’s beloved is perfect, invulnerable and without real needs is likely to have bad effects! The point of humane love is that our beloveds are not perfect, nor immune to disaster (any more than we are ourselves): God’s strength ‘is made perfect in weakness’ (Paul, 2 Corinthians 12.9), in affection and forgiveness rather than moral sadism (on which see Wren-Lewis 1968: 95–104), and idolatrous exultation. God is to be found in the little things, and the Reason that is to be praised and followed is no grand insight, confined to the elite, into hidden principles and essential natures, but a gradual accumulation and correction of useful practices. Christian Atheism is the exaltation of what we can all of us find here now, in mutual forgiveness and companionship.

The Dazzling Dark But there is a further twist to the story. I have been citing, criticising and partly praising John Wren-Lewis’s early work as homage to a writer who – I suspect – had rather more influence on my own thought than, at the time, I expected. In my brash undergraduate days, indeed, I remember writing to him to suggest that the human loves of which he spoke could not really be relied on, if they were all only and entirely what the worlds of nature and human history had thrown up. I was brashly critical of what I saw as his romanticism (see Wren-Lewis 1974a), and his reliance – as I saw it – on the merely natural potentialities of human nature. I don’t think that, at that stage of my career, I thought also to protest against his overt anthropocentrism, as I might have done later on, and as at least one Catholic critic already had. 21 He responded courteously, and with the assurance that he really was committed to the Christian life of forgiveness, though he saw no hope, nor need, of any metaphysical story about a reality outside our possible experience, nor any hope of a personal life ‘beyond the grave’. Death would be defeated in the end, if we could only learn to live as Jesus lived, without fear or self-satisfaction: the opium dream of religion (he did not quite say) would be realised through human enterprise (and not, as Cupitt and some pagan philosophers proposed, simply by redescribing death and disability22). And maybe someone wholly dedicated to the life of love might indeed be raised, by the sheer force of loving, from the dead? In earlier years, he had been willing to consider that Love had indeed found a direct way and rendered ‘matter’ itself more pliable to ‘the needs of personality-­ in-relationship’ (see Wren-Lewis 1967b: 59–60), but his main public praise was for medical and other technological advances. Wren-Lewis’s early writings deserve to be remembered. But there is another reason to remember them, and him. Wren-Lewis’s last contribution

110  Stephen R. L. Clark to the Guardian, ‘Looking for your Guru?’, was published on 13 August 1969. His contributions to television drama were also confined, as I recall, to the 1960s (whether the BBC retained them, I don’t know: most likely not). His only lengthy monograph What Shall We Tell the Children? was published in 1971. In it, he records with painful and deeply impressive honesty that on the occasion of ‘the break-up of a particularly cherished personal relationship’ he concluded that his beliefs about Universal Divine Love were based, not on any objective philosophical considerations about the nature of the universe, but on a desire to have “love” without the necessity of taking any real notice of other people or of their actual needs. (Wren-Lewis 1971: 59; see also 1967b: 13) Even in his earlier work he had repeatedly rejected any notion of a ‘Universal Love … working away behind the scenes’, but plainly he now thought that he had still been in the grip of that idea. Conversely, it could be argued that his insistence on such a universal love, 23 without grasping the metaphysical and epistemological implications of this belief, was too easily subverted by a change of circumstance and emotion: it was not, after all, the love that does not alter when it alteration finds. We all need the virtue of fidelity – even faith in a dogma – to hang on to decisions, promises and conclusions we originally reached for good reason, and that virtue, that grace, is not always ours to command. He wrote still later as follows: Then came my midlife crisis, spread over several years, during which I had to acknowledge that even my Christian identity had been a kind of sham, albeit a sham embraced in an adolescent search for some way to express a real transcendental intuition. That intuition continued to nag me even in disillusion, but I was forced in honesty to admit that my belief in ‘true’ Christianity as a significant agency for human liberation had been pure wishful thinking. (Wren-Lewis 1995b: 119) His marriage, his Anglican identity and his career in science collapsed because he could not believe that they were founded in anything more reliable than the wishful thinking he had blamed for other people’s belief in a hidden, humane order. The glory went away. He was saved from penury, as he says, ‘by the fact that [his] writings apparently contained sufficient insights of inspirational or scholarly value to cause people in various parts of the world to want [his] occasional services as a teacher’ (Wren-Lewis 1995b: 119). He began to travel in the company of his second wife, Ann Faraday, herself the author of work on Dream Therapy (Faraday 1974), and by 1983 was unhappily convinced that there was no chance of finding any transcendental or even apparently transcendental element in human

Atheists and Idolaters  111 experience. It was then, on a bus in Thailand during a joint investigation of shamanic practices amongst the Senoi, that he was poisoned almost to death, and had a Near-Death-Experience which transformed his life. I came round with a radically ‘altered state of consciousness’ wherein the mundane shell of so-called ordinary human life was completely gone. Subjectively the state was utterly different from anything I’d experienced with psychedelics (or for that matter in experiments with trance or meditation), but more significantly, it has remained with me ever since, an effect not found with any drug yet known. In fact this consciousness feels so utterly natural that terms like ‘drugged’ or ‘tranced’ seem more appropriate for my earlier life, and I now know firsthand, from more than ten years’ continuing daily (and nightly) experience, why at the mystical core of most religious traditions there is found the notion of ‘awakening’ from an age-long collective human nightmare. I also know from firsthand experience why those who’ve actually experienced mystical wakening so often resort to paradox or negation when trying to say anything about it, and frequently resort to terms like ‘ineffable’. Almost all human speech derives from that old collective nightmare of separate individuals struggling in an alien space-time world for survival, satisfaction and meaning, whereas I now experience myself and everyone else – indeed every thing else – as more like the continuous dance-like activity of a universal, truly infinite Consciousness/Aliveness whose very nature is satisfaction and ‘meaning’ in an eternal Presentness, from which Separation (space) and activity (time) are continuously created. This must surely be what terms like God-consciousness originally meant, yet from the ordinary human perspective such theological expressions inevitably suggest a separate human ‘me’ being conscious of God. My experience, however, is God - Infinite Aliveness – cognizing me (and everyone and everything else) into existence instant by instant, and this consciousness finds everything ‘very good’. And this must surely also be what Hinduism and Buddhism mean by Nirvana extinguishing the illusion of separate selfhood, though from the ordinary human standpoint such expressions have a punitive sound. My sense, by contrast, is of selfhood as the continuing product of infinite lovingness, which to my never-ceasing astonishment takes the sting of suffering out of even the most humanly ‘unpleasant’ situations, including the prospect of personal extinction. And so it is that mystical awakening, which came to me by a complete act of grace (through something remarkably like a literal process of death and resurrection), has enabled me late in life to find meaning I never suspected in a great many of humanity’s religious attempts to express transcendence. Yet because it is a meaning so utterly at odds with all conventional understanding of such expressions, I can now see very clearly why, at each phase of my earlier life, heart-opening

112  Stephen R. L. Clark always came more through breaking away from religious forms than from conforming to them. I now look back with gratitude on all those earlier struggles with religion as my personal twentieth century version of what mystical traditions have called the Way of Negation. (Wren-Lewis, ND; see also Wren-Lewis, 1995b: 121–23) In other and still more detailed attempts to talk around the unsayable – reminiscent indeed of Plotinus’s humorous efforts to do the same – WrenLewis described his experience, using a phrase of Henry Vaughan, as of a ‘dazzling darkness’ (Vaughan, 2008: 300. The same phrase is used by Alexander (2010: 48) to describe his own somewhat different near-death experience). It was as if I’d emerged freshly made (complete with all the memories that constitute my personal identity) from a vast blackness that was somehow radiant, a kind of infinitely concentrated aliveness or pure consciousness that had no separation within it, and therefore no space or time. (Wren-Lewis ND; see also Wren-Lewis 1988a) He reports that this experience did not convince him of any post-mortem personal existence, but rather of the irrelevance of that idea: it was as if his personal consciousness had been, was continually being, recreated from an infinite and eternal joy. It feels quintessentially natural that personal consciousness should be aware of its own Ground, while my first fifty-nine years of so-called ‘normal’ consciousness, in ignorance of that Ground, now seem like a kind of waking dream. It was as if I’d been entranced from birth into a collective nightmare of separate individuals struggling in an alien universe for survival, satisfaction and significance. (Wren-Lewis 1955j ND)24 A longer work, written with Ann Faraday, on his experience and its aftermath, The 9.15 to Nirvana, is still unpublished, though early drafts and fragments (as above) circulate on the World Wide Web. As far as can be seen Wren-Lewis could reasonably say that he remained ‘an atheist’ or at any rate a ‘non-theist’, a non-believer in Nobodaddy, or the Pheidian Zeus. The idols he rejected to the end were those practices offered as techniques of enlightenment by favoured sages – including the practices of materialistic science and liberal consensus-building. The Reality he affirmed, the incomprehensible Unity from which all seemingly lesser things emerge, the One that becomes a Million – and the Nothing that precedes and contains it25 – is an older myth than he admitted. If each of us is a particular narrowing down of a universal consciousness, and every thing is enlivened by

Atheists and Idolaters  113 its presence, we do not need, indeed we must not expect, to find some one Supreme Being Outside Over There. 26 God is not far from any one of us, being that in which we live and move and have our being (Acts 17.28: Paul, after Epimenides of Crete). On the other hand, Wren-Lewis seems to have admitted that he had been wrong to reject the notion of an ‘occult’ reality and wrong to emphasise individual selfhood so strongly in his assault on traditional ‘magical feeling’. Reality lies on the far side of being and ­intellect – as Plato and his followers declared. We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. 27 The discovery comes by grace, and not by any technique or sermon or even change-of-life. We must only hope that some god (as it were) will seize and turn us round (Plotinus, Ennead VI.5 [23].7, 11–17 after Iliad 1.199–200) – and then permit us to return to life for the edification and comfort of our fellows. The God that Christians – and also other Abrahamists – all reject is of the form of Satan, Nobodaddy, Yaldobaoth, a singular conceited being that imagines itself in charge only because it was the first of the immortals to slip away from the company of the holy ones. 28 The God that haunts them is the eternal Presence, the Dazzling Darkness, the Place – to employ a Rabbinic term for God: ‘why is God called “the Place” (hamaqom)? Because the universe is located in Him, not He in the universe’ ([Midrash] Genesis R.68: Maccoby 2002: 24). To become aware of It we must, so the story goes, be stripped of all our illusions, all our idols – including the contemporary idols that we hardly notice, the easy assumption that real beings are intrinsically separate, that human beings are of their own nature elevated far beyond the beasts, that time is passing and that space is stretched out far beyond us, that we can manage science and love and sanity by our own powers, and that we ourselves – being modern – are always in the right. ‘Growth and evolution have become the great modern idols’ (WrenLewis 1996c: 26). Being shown that we were wrong, as Plato taught us, is the greatest favour: Refutation is the greatest and chiefest of purifications, and he who has not been refuted, though he be the Great King himself, is in an awful state of impurity; he is uninstructed and deformed in those things in which he who would be truly blessed ought to be fairest and purest. (Plato, Sophist 227c, 228a–d, 230d; see Boyle 2002: 41–62) Purification aside, refutation itself both proves that there is a Truth that far surpasses us and that we may, foolish and ill-disciplined as we are, sometimes be graced with its discovery. 29,30

114  Stephen R. L. Clark

Notes 1 It is odd that later volumes commemorating Robinson’s book rarely mention Wren-Lewis: see Stephenson (1984: 185–87) (thanks to Jonathan Clatworthy for this reference). 2 Observer Letter Page 10th September 1961; see also Wren-Lewis (1958: 38): amongst biologists themselves, the Christians are more often than not found on the side of mechanistic explanation, vigorously opposing the idea of “­creative evolution” or “purposive design”: for they recognize what Kant saw long ago, that those ideas, if accepted, imply the existence not of an Almighty God but of a blind life-force or limited demi-urge. 3 See also Wren-Lewis (1955f: 7): ‘Belief in God the Creator does not refer in the first place to the physical world as such at all, because there is no physical world as such’. I have addressed the risks in this global constructivism on other occasions: for example, Clark (1992). Cf. Orwell (1954: 200): ‘reality is not external. Reality exists in the mind of the Party, which is ­collective  and  immortal’ (O’Brien speaks). But of course Wren-Lewis is insisting on the primacy of love, of intimate personal encounter, rather than domination. 4 See Black (2003) for a detailed account of the ‘scientific experts’, who imprisoned, sterilised and castrated people they deemed ‘unfit’, in defiance of law, the American Constitution and ordinary decency. 5 See also Wren-Lewis (1966b: 232): We may say that man is an insignificant animal crawling on the surface of a speck of cosmic dust, who should eschew all large-sounding pretensions, but we act in practice as if we believed that given enough hard work the natural order can be tamed and the world “made a better place” in our efforts to realize the human values that are summed up in the word “love”, and this is precisely what the Christian vision would amount to if expressed in modern terms – the vision that man can have dominion over nature because love is more real than nature. 6 This is not to say that the older story is just as good, for our manipulative ­purposes, as the modern. Wren-Lewis was right to emphasise that mainstream scientific practice is vindicated in the ‘minute particulars’, in its ability to provide detailed predictions and exact recipes: see Wren-Lewis (1959e). Nor does the modern parallel exhaust the felt significance of the story for its first believers (or for us). 7 See also Lake (1934: 85f, cited by Stephenson, 1984: 127 from H. H. Henson’s diary): ‘when I use the word “God”, I mean the totality of values, not a person or a “personal being”, who created values, which are eternal and neither created nor derived’ – except that Lake was at least a moral objectivist. 8 cf. Wren-Lewis (1993b): To paraphrase a famous declaration of St Paul, the human mind dreams of harmonies more wonderful – more gentle and loving – than the rough but powerful balances of the animal kingdom, yet in practice human intelligence again and again finds itself side-tracked into the service of greed, aggression, and even cruelty, such as would shame any animal. 9 A phrase and notion drawn from Dick (2001, 2008). 10 See Origen (1953: 206–07 (IV.31)); for the more favourable judgement see ibid.: 283 (V.25). The charge could of course be reversed: Minucius (1931, ch. 25: 389) says of the Romans

Atheists and Idolaters  115 were they not in origin a collection of criminals? Did they not grow by the iron terror of their own savagery? The plebs first congregated in a city of ­refuge; thither had flocked ruffians, criminals, profligates, assassins and traitors. … All that the Romans hold, occupy and possess is the spoil of outrage. 11 According to Orphic testimony, the third principle after water and earth was ‘Unaging Time (Chronos), and also Heracles’, conjoined with Ananke or Adrasteia (which is Necessity): Damascius (Princ.123 bis (i.317 R: Orpheus fr.54), cited by West (1983: 178, 180)). West (1983: 192–94) further suggests that ‘Heracles’ labours represent everything that happens in cosmic time’, and that this allegory was probably invented by the Stoic Cleanthes. 12 Cornutus (SVF 1.514) in Lang (1881: 62, cited by Grant, 1986: 119). Cornutus elsewhere identified Hermes as ‘the Logos’ that makes human beings, alone of mortal beings, ‘rational’: (Lang 1881, 16: 20): Grant ibid.: 66. 13 Diodorus (1933), 1.2.4: It is generally agreed that during the whole time which Heracles spent among men he submitted to great and continuous labours and perils willingly, in order that he might confer benefits upon the race of men and thereby gain immortality. 14 See also Wren-Lewis (1986: 49). This memory is mentioned repeatedly: WrenLewis’s mother died in his early teens, and might perhaps have had some better thoughts than he recalled. 15 Chesterton conceived the contrast as one between Islam and the Gospel, imagining ‘Mahound’ declaring: We have set the seal of Solomon on all things under sun,/Of knowledge and of sorrow and endurance of things done,/ But a noise is in the mountains, in the mountains, and I know/ The voice that shook our palaces – four hundred years ago:/ It is he that saith not ‘Kismet’; it is he that knows not Fate;/ It is Richard, it is Raymond, it is Godfrey in the gate!/ It is he whose loss is laughter when he counts the wager worth,/ Put down your feet upon him, that our peace be on the earth. (Chesterton 1950: 117, ‘Lepanto’) 16 Cf. Herodotus (Histories 1.191): Owing to the vast size of the place, the inhabitants of the central parts (as the residents at Babylon declare) long after the outer portions of the town were taken, knew nothing of what had chanced, but as they were engaged in a festival, continued dancing and revelling until they learnt the capture but too certainly. 17 Cf. Bloch (1986: 1235f): EI means grammatically and metaphysically the same, namely Thou art, in the sense of the timelessly unchangeable existence of God. Eh’je asher eh’je, on the other hand, places even at the threshold of the Yahweh phenomenon a god of the end of days, with futurum as an attribute of Being. 18 Cf. Elliott (1997: 180–81): ‘Paul interprets Jesus’ death as the beginning of God’s final “war of liberation” against all the Powers that hold creation in thrall through the instruments of earthly oppression’. 19 See also Wren-Lewis (1972a: 180–81) ‘the most supernatural thing in the world is the experimental spirit, the essence of which is creative interference with the ordinary course of events’.

116  Stephen R. L. Clark 20 See also Wren-Lewis (1954): to see life religiously means to see it in the context of the mysterium tremendum of persons and the relations between persons, and it is this sense of personality as a mystery of infinite depth which has been lost … by modern man. 21 Davy (1978: 102): Mr. Wren-Lewis wants to make the world free for science, unimpeded by “magical feeling”, to improve; but I think he does not appreciate what is likely to happen if the only religious check on scientific aims and values is to come from the experience of personal relationships, and if no kind of ­religious awareness is to be had from experience of the perceived outer world. 22 ‘I don’t accept the view…that there are a lot of pre-cultural and purely objective, but very unpleasant, facts about the human condition, which are non-­ narrative and just the same for every human being. On the contrary, sickness, old age, suffering, death, transience and futility are construed in very different ways in different religions and philosophies…. We can make old age venerable or pitiful. We can make death either the crown of life and the achievement of the highest social status, or we can make it an outrage. The choice is ours’ (Cupitt 1990: 183). 23 Guardian 10 June 1965: True love is in all three of its aspects infinite (i.e. unstinted), “uncreate” (i.e. spontaneous, unforced), eternal (“love is not love that alters when it alteration finds”). Understood in these terms, the doctrine of the Trinity is no abstract theologians’ puzzle but a very practical design for living. See also Wren-Lewis (1955a: 219): the logical form of the doctrine of the Trinity is perfectly appropriate, for it is precisely a social or relational form. “That Love could love and be loved, that was a great discovery - say a revelation”, said Charles Williams, and the doctrine of the Trinity is an expression and an elaboration of that discovery. 24 See Wren-Lewis (2003: 2–5): Because that One End is always present, I don’t have to wait until I die to meet up with the songline called Darryl Reanney in some other-world, nor wait until all individual human songlines come together in some Omega Point. Darryl who used to be separate, has now joined us all in the Great Space at the back of all our heads, and we can acknowledge him there by reading even criticising his books! This discovery was not altogether a new thing for him: even in his earliest writings he had insisted that in our spiritual life we encounter a Reality, a Being, a Life-process, which seems to contain time and change within itself. This is what is meant by eternal life, life beyond time. … Eternal life is man’s natural state of being. (Wren-Lewis 1955: 9) 25 See Chesterton (1996: 74): The mystic who passes through the moment when there is nothing but God does in some sense behold the beginningless beginnings in which there was really nothing else. He not only appreciates everything but the nothing of

Atheists and Idolaters  117 which everything was made. In a fashion he endures and answers even the earthquake irony of the Book of Job; in some sense he is there when the foundations of the earth are laid, with the morning stars singing together and the sons of God shouting for joy. (cited by Wren-Lewis 1986: 61) 26 Cf. Morrison (2012: 273), recounting his own – rather less traumatic  – illumination: I saw from my own reflection that I was a mercurial hypersprite too and remembered that I always had been… I was fine with that. I understood that we were all holographic sections of something invisible to me in its entirety. 27 T. S. Eliot Four Quartets: Little Gidding, discussed by Wren-Lewis (1996a). Wren-Lewis was especially concerned to say that ‘Home’ was not some distant place, but here. Or as Plotinus said, ‘it is not a journey for the feet’ (Ennead I.6 [1].8, 16–28). 28 See Secret Book of John in Meyer (2007: 117); cf. a passing remark by Plotinus on Zeus’ escape from Kronos (Ennead V.8 [31].12). On Plotinus’s account it is good indeed that there should be a beautiful image of the eternal, but the realities that stay within eternity are still more beautiful. On the ‘Gnostic’ account the material world is simply a mistake, and ‘Ialdobaoth’ is grossly ignorant of the true situation. 29 ‘I had promised to show you, if you recall, that there is something higher than our mind and reason. There you have it – truth itself! Embrace it if you can and enjoy it’ (Augustine, De Libero Arbitrio 2.13.35 (1968: 144)). 30 Earlier versions of the paper were presented at the British Society for Philosophy of Religion conference, and to the London Society for the Study of Religion, both in 2013. My thanks especially to Alan Mann, Jonathan Clatworthy, and Chris Turner (of the Church of England Newspaper) for their assistance in locating John Wren-Lewis’s early papers.

References Alexander, E., Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the afterLife (London: Little Brown, 2010). Altizer, T. J. J. and W. Hamilton, Radical Theology and the Death of God (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1966). Amzallag, N., ‘Was Yahweh Worshiped in the Aegean?’, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 35 (2011), 387–415. Ando, C., The Matter of the Gods: Religion and the Roman Empire (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008). Athanasius of Alexandria, On the Incarnation, translated by P. Lawson (London: Bles, 1944). Augustine of Hippo, The Teacher, The Free Choice of the Will & Grace and Free Will, translated by R. P. Russell (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1968). Baker, G., ‘“Now We Have Been Delivered from the Law”: Thoughts towards a Genealogy of Anarchism’, Griffith Law Review 21 (2012), 369–391. Beard, M., ‘The Roman and the Foreign: The Cult of the “Great Mother” in Imperial Rome’ in N. Thomas and C. Humphrey (eds.), Shamanism, History and the State (Ann Arbor: Michigan University Press, 1996), 164–190.

118  Stephen R. L. Clark Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi (30 November 2007). http://w2.vatican.va/content/­ benedict-xvi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20071130_spe-salvi. html [accessed 14th May 2017]. Benedict XVI, Message to Archbishop Rino Fisichella, on the occasion of the international congress ‘From Galileo’s Telescope to Evolutionary Cosmology’ (30 November–2 December 2009). http://www.vatican.va/ holy_ fat her/ b ened ic t _ x v i /me ssage s /pont-me ssage s / 20 09/do c u ment s / hf_ben-xvi_mes_20091126_fisichella-telescopio_en.html. Black, E., War against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2003). Blake, W., Collected Works, edited by G. Keynes (London: Oxford University Press, 1966). Bloch, E., The Principle of Hope, translated by N. Plaice, S. Plaice and P. Knight (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986). Boyle, M. O. R., ‘Pure of Heart: From Ancient Rites to Renaissance Plato’, Journal of the History of Ideas 63 (2002), 41–62. Caldecott, S., All Things Made New: The Mysteries of the World in Christ (San Rafael, CA: Angelico Press, 2013). Chesterton, G. K., ‘Skepticism and Spiritualism’, Illustrated London News (14 April 1906). http://www.gkc.org.uk/gkc/books/skeptic.html Chesterton, G. K., St Francis of Assisi (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1996). Chesterton, G. K., Collected Poems (London: Methuen, 1950). Clark, S. R. L., ‘Orwell and the Anti-Realists’, Philosophy 67 (1992), 141–154. Clark, S. R. L., Ancient Mediterranean Philosophy (London: Bloomsbury, 2013). Clark, S. R. L., ‘Atheism Considered as a Christian Sect’, Philosophy 90 (2015), 277–303. Cupitt, D., Taking Leave of God (London: SCM Press, 1980). Cupitt, D., Creation Out of Nothing (London: SCM Press, 1990). Darwin, F. (ed.), The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin (London: Murray, 1887). Davy, C., Towards a Third Culture (Edinburgh: Floris Books, 1978). Dawkins, R., The Selfish Gene (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976). Dick, P. K., Valis (London: Gollancz, 2001). Dick, P. K., Radio Free Albemuth. (New York: Harper Voyager, 2008). Dio Chrysostom, Discourses, vol. 2, translated by J. H. Cohoon (London: Loeb Classical Library, Heinemann, 1939). Diodorus Siculus, Library of History, vol. 1, translated by C. H. Oldfather (Boston: Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, 1933). Dyson, F. J., ‘Time without End: Physics and Biology in an Open Universe’ in F. J. Dyson (ed.), Selected Papers of Freeman Dyson: With Commentary (Providence, RI: American Mathematical Society, 1996), 529–542. Elliott, N., ‘The Anti-Imperial Message of the Cross’ in R. A. Horsley (ed.), Paul and Empire: Religion and Power in Roman Imperial Society (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 1997), 167–183. Eusebius, Life of Constantine, edited by A. Cameron and S. G. Hall (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999). Faraday, A., The Dream Game (New York: Harper & Row, 1974). Grant, R., Gods and the One God: Christian Theology in the Graeco-Roman World (London: SPCK, 1986). Haldane, J. B. S., Possible Worlds and Other Essays (London: Heinemann, 1927).

Atheists and Idolaters  119 Hooykaas, R., Religion and the Rise of Modern Science (London: Scottish Academic Press, 1972). Housman, A. E., Last Poems (New York: Henry Holt, 1922). Hume, D., Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, edited by A. W. Colver and J. V. Price (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976). Jaki, S., Science and Creation (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1974). Kasher, D., ‘Hello Giggles’, Comic Books as Modern Mythology: An Interview with Comic Book Girl 19 (23 July 2013). http://hellogiggles.com/ comic-books-as-modern-mythology-an-interview-with-comic-book-girl-19/. Kingsley, P., Ancient Philosophy, Mystery and Magic: Empedocles and the Pythagorean Tradition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995). Lake, K., Paul: His Heritage and Legacy (London: Christophers, 1934). Lang, C. (ed.), Theologiae Graecae Compendium (Leipzig: Teubner, 1881). Law, W., Christian Regeneration (London: W. Innys, 1955/1755). Liebeschuetz, J. W. W. G., Continuity and Change in Roman Religion (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979). Maccoby, H., The Philosophy of the Talmud (London: Routledge, 2002). Meyer, M. (ed.), Nag Hammadi Scriptures (New York: Harper Collins, 2007). Minucius, F., Octavius, translated by G. H. Rendall (London: Loeb Classical Library, Heinemann, 1931). Morrison, G., Supergods: Our World in the Age of the Superhero (London: Cape, 2012). Origen, Contra Celsum, translated by H. Chadwick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953). Orwell, G., Nineteen Eighty-Four (Harmondsworth: Permanent Penguins in association with Martin Secker & Warburg, 1954). Patrides, C. A. (ed.), The Cambridge Platonists (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969). Pausanias, Description of Greece, vol. 2, translated by W. H. S. Jones and H. A. Ormerod (London: Loeb Classical Library, Heinemann, 1926). Pearson, B. A., ‘Hellenistic-Jewish Wisdom Speculation and Paul’ in R. L. Wilken (ed.), Aspects of Wisdom in Judaism and Early Christianity (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975), 43–66. Philo of Alexandria, Works, translated by C. D. Yonge (London: Loeb Classical Library, Heinemann, 1929). Plantinga, A., Warrant and Proper Function (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). Robinson, J. A. T., Honest to God (London: SCM Press, 1963). Russell, B., Mysticism and Logic (London: Longmans, Green & Co, 1918). Sprat, T., The History of the Royal Society of London for the Improving of Natural Knowledge (New York: Elibron, 2005/1722). Stephenson, A. M. G., The Rise and Decline of English Modernism (London: SPCK, 1984). Taubes, J., The Political Theology of Paul (Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004). Towler, R., The Need for Certainty: A Sociological Study of Conventional Religion (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984). Vaughan, H., Silex Scintillans, Etc.: Sacred Poems and Pious Ejaculations (Charleston: Bibliobazaar, 2008 [1655]).

120  Stephen R. L. Clark Wells, H. G., Anticipations and Other Works (London: Fisher Unwin, 1924). West, M. L., The Orphic Poems (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983). Williams, C., The Descent of the Dove: A Short History of the Holy Spirit in the Church (London: The Fontana Library, 1963 [1939]). Wink, W., Cracking the Gnostic Code: The Powers in Gnosticism (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1993). Wright, N. T., ‘Doubts about Doubt: Honest to God Forty Years On’, Journal of Anglican Studies 3 (2005), 181–196.

Bibliography: John Wren-Lewis Wren-Lewis, J., ‘The Evangelistic Situation in England To-day’, Hibbert Journal 53 (1954), 25–33. ——— ‘Modern Philosophy and the Doctrine of the Trinity’, Philosophical Quarterly 5 (1955a), 214–24. ——— Return to the Roots: A Study in the Meaning of the Word ‘God’ (London: Modern Churchmen’s Union, 1955b). ——— ‘Space-Ships and Providence’, Church of England Newspaper (4th March 1955c), 1. ——— ‘A Return to the Roots 1: Do We Really Understand Christianity?’, Church of England Newspaper (18th March 1955d), 9. ——— ‘A Return to the Roots 2: True and False Notions of ‘Creation’’, Church of England Newspaper (5th March 1955e), 11. ——— ‘A Return to the Roots 3: Superstition – Religion’s Deadliest Enemy’, Church of England Newspaper (1st April 1955f), 7. ——— ‘A Return to the Roots 4: The Meaning of the Gospel’, Church of England Newspaper (7th April 1955g), 7–10. ——— ‘God Is One and God Is Three: The Doctrine of the Trinity in Terms of Loving and Living’, Church of England Newspaper (3rd June 1955h), 7. ——— ‘Evangelism – The Need for a New Approach: We Must Recover the Sense of the Supernatural’, Church of England Newspaper (5th August 1955i), 7. ——— ‘Rediscovering the True Faith 1: Soul, Spirit, Time and Eternity’, Church of England Newspaper (2nd December 1955j), 9. ——— ‘Rediscovering the True Faith 2: Life after the Flesh’, Church of England Newspaper (9th December 1955k), 11–14. ——— ‘Rediscovering the True Faith 3: The Death and Resurrection of the Body’, Church of England Newspaper (16th December 195l), 9–4. ——— ‘Rediscovering the True Faith 4: For of Such Is the Kingdom of Heaven’, Church of England Newspaper (23rd December 1955m), 7. ——— ‘The Continuous Fall: A Study in the Necessity of Taking Transcendence Seriously’, Hibbert Journal 54 (1955–1956), 358–68. ——— ‘The Real Significance of Demythologisation’, Modern Churchman 1.1 (1957), 39–50. ——— ‘Integrity in Apologetics, Or, the Dangers of Resorting to Bluff in Theology’ in D. M. Paton (ed.), Essays in Anglican Self-Criticism (London: SCM Press, 1958), 32–44. ——— ‘Personal Statement’ in D. Morgan (ed.), They Became Anglicans: The Story of Sixteen Converts and Why They Chose the Anglican Communion (London: Mowbrays, 1959a), 160–77.

Atheists and Idolaters  121 ——— ‘Science and the Doctrine of Creation’, Expository Times 71 (1959b), 80–82. ——— ‘A Vindication of Romance’, The Listener 1592 (1st October 1959c), 523. ——— ‘Science, the World and God – A Personal Statement’, The Christian Scholar 42 (1959d), 169–84, reprinted in 1967b, 65–94. http://www.jstor.org/ stable/41167473. ——— ‘The Lure of Pseudo-Science’ in B. Wall (ed.), The Twentieth Century 165/984 (1959e), 107–17. ——— ‘Does Science Show Us a Meaningless Universe?’ in B. Wall (ed.), The Twentieth Century 166/991 (1959f), 142–52. ——— ‘The Decline of Magic in Art and Politics’, The Critical Quarterly 2 (1960a), 7–23. ——— ‘Review of Donald MacKinnon’s Study in Ethical Theory’, Modern Churchman 3/2 (1960b), 145. ——— ‘Stuff and Science’, The Listener 1646 (1960c), 623. ——— ‘Christian Morality and the Idea of a Cosmic Fall’, Expository Times 71 (1960d), 204–06. ——— ‘When Did the Fall Occur?’, Expository Times 72 (1960e), 4–7. ——— ‘What Was the Original Sin?’, Expository Times 72 (1961a), 177–80. ——— ‘The Doctrine of the Trinity’, The Listener 1676 (1961b), 837. ——— ‘The Occult Underground’, The Listener 1703 (1961c), 809. ——— ‘God and Illusion in Human Experience’, Prism: Anglican Monthly (Manningtree: Prism Publications, 1961d), reprinted in 1967b, 97–113. ——— ‘Physics, Metaphysics and Theology in the Twentieth Century’, Bulletin of the Institute of Physics and the Physical Society 13 (1962a), 313–18. ——— ‘On Not Going to Church’, Prism: Anglican Monthly (Manningtree: Prism Publications, 1962b), 25–29. ——— ‘Repression Or Resurrection? A Reconsideration of a Challenging Book’, The Christian Scholar 46 (1963a), 267–71. ——— ‘The Passing of Puritanism’, Critical Quarterly 5 (1963b), 295–306. ——— ‘Does Science Destroy Belief?’ in C. F. D. Moule, J. Wren-Lewis, D. A. Pond and P. R. Baelz (eds.), Faith, Fact and Fantasy (London: Collins, 1964a), 9–44 [Cambridge Divinity Faculty Open Lectures, 1963]. ——— ‘The Passing of Puritanism’, The Listener 1818 (1964b), 175. ——— ‘What Are Clergy for?’, The Listener 1824 (1964c), 418. ——— ‘Science, Religion, and the Unity of Mankind’, London Quarterly & Holborn Review 189 (1964d), 319–25. ——— ‘Good English in the Service of Science’, Critical Survey 2 (1965), 137–40. ——— ‘Life in the Old Gods Yet’, The Listener 1960 (1966a), 565. ——— ‘What I Believe’ in G. Unwin (ed.), What I Believe (London: Allen & Unwin, 1966b), 221–36. ——— ‘The Cosmic Enemy’, The Listener 1990 (1967a), 649. ——— God in a Technological Age (Cincinnati, OH: Forward Movement Publications, 1967b). ——— ‘Love’s Coming-of-Age’ in C. Rycroft (ed.), Psychoanalysis Observed (Baltimore, MD: Penguin, 1968), 83–115. ——— ‘Faith in the Technological Future’, Futures 2 (1970a), 258–62 (reprinted in Toffler, 1972: see below).

122  Stephen R. L. Clark ——— ‘EVR: The Moving Picture Book’ in H. Spencer (ed.), Penrose Annual 63 (London: Lund Humphries, 1970b), 201–08. ——— What Shall We Tell the Children? (London: Constable, 1971). ——— ‘Don’t Let’s Be Neurotic about the Supernatural’, Futures 4 (1972a), 179–82. ——— (1972b) ‘Faith in the Technological Future’ in A. Toffler (ed.), The Futurists (New York: Random House, 1972), 290–97. ——— ‘The Romantic Mr Eliot’ in T. Beaumont (ed.), A New Christian Reader (London: SCM Press, 1974a), 74–79. ——— ‘Resistance to the Study of the Paranormal’, Journal of Humanistic Psychology 14 (1974b), 41–48. ——— ‘The Selling of the Senoi’ (with Ann Faraday), Lucidity Letter 3/1 (1984), 79–80. ——— ‘Dream Lucidity and Near-Death Experience’, Lucidity Letter 4/2 (1985), 4–11 (also in 10th Anniversary Edition 1991: http://spiritwatch.ca/lucidity03. html). ——— ‘Joy without a Cause: An Anticipation of Modern “Near-Death Experience” Research in G. K. Chesterton’s Novel The Ball and the Cross’, Chesterton Review 12 (1986), 49–61. ——— ‘The Darkness of God: A Personal Report on Consciousness Transformation through an Encounter with Death’, Journal of Humanistic Psychology 28 (1988a), 105–22. ——— ‘Lotus Feet of Clay: A Reluctant Mystic Looks at Spiritual Movements’ in D. C. Lane (ed.), Understanding Cults and Spiritual Movements, Final Issue (1988b), 1–6. http://webspace.webring.com/people/de/eckcult/lane_live/lotus_ feet.html. ——— ‘Surprised by Vision: C.S. Lewis’s Discovery of a Headless Sage (Review of D.E. Harding Hierarchy of Heaven and Earth)’, Chesterton Review 17 (1991a), 485–92: available also at http://headless.org/hierarchy/hierarchy-reviews-3. ——— ‘A Reluctant Mystic: God-Consciousness Not Guru Worship’, Self and Society: The European Journal of Humanistic Psychology 19/2 (1991b), 4–11. ——— ‘Avoiding the Columbus Confusion: An Ockhamish View of Near-Death Experiences’, Journal of Near-Death Studies 2 (1991c), 75–81. ——— ‘Review of Matthew Fox’s The Coming of the Cosmic Christ’, Modern Churchman 34/1 (1992), 47–50. ——— ‘Chesterton as a Sage of Aquarius’, Chesterton Review 19 (1993a), 33–37. ——— ‘Adam, Eve and Agatha Christie: Detective Stories as Post-Darwinian Myths of Original Sin’, Chesterton Review 19 (1993b), 193–99. ——— ‘Aftereffects of Near-Death Experiences: A Survival Mechanism Hypothesis’, Journal of Transpersonal Psychology 26 1994a), 107–15. ——— ‘Death Knell of the Guru System?: Perfectionism versus Enlightenment’, Journal of Humanistic Psychology 34 (1994b), 46–61. ——— ‘Near-Death Experiences: Life after Death - Or Eternity Now?’, Modern Churchman 35/2 (1994c), 3–10. ——— ‘Gnosis: Goal Or Ground?’, Gnosis Magazine 34 (1995a), 58–86. ——— ‘A Mystical Awakening’ in Monica Furlong (ed.), Our Childhood’s Pattern: Memories of Growing Up Christian (London: Mowbrays 1995b), 107–23. ——— ‘Communication Tongued with Fire: Personal Reflections on the EternityVision of T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets’, Chesterton Review 22 (1996a), 499–508.

Atheists and Idolaters  123 ——— ‘On Babies and Bathwater: A Non-Ideological Alternative to the Mahner/ Bunge Proposals for Relating Science and Religion in Education’, Science & Education 5 (1996b), 185–88. ——— ‘Flesh-and-Blood Buddha Or Stained-Glass Saint? A Response to Gopal’, Journal of Humanistic Psychology 36 (1996c), 21–27. ——— ‘South Africa and the Political Imagination’, Chesterton Review 24 (1998), 217–29. ——— ‘Near-Death Experiences: A Significant New Interreligious Phenomenon’ in C. M. Cusack and P. Oldmeadow (eds.), This Immense Panorama: Essays Presented to Eric Sharpe (Sydney: University of Sydney Press, 1999), 302–11. ——— ‘A Terrible Beauty: Reflections on Love and the Near-Death Experience’, IONS Review 54 (2000–2001), 16–19. http://tatfoundation.org/forum2004-04. htm#5. ——— ‘Scepticism and Love – The Essential Mystical Counterpoint: Comments on Books by Susan Blackmore & Darryl Reanney’, Nowletter 88 (2003), 2–5. www.capacitie.org/wren/Scepticism & Love.pdf. ——— ‘The Implications of Near-Death Experiences for Post-Traumatic Growth’, Psychological Inquiry 15 (2004), 90–93. ——— ‘The Dazzling Dark: A Near-Death Experience Opens the Door to a Permanent Transformation’ (ND). http://www.nonduality.com/dazdark.htm and http://www.angelfire.com/electronic/awakening101/dazzledark.html.

Articles in The Guardian (Archived at Guardian Newspapers) Sense of the Supernatural 3rd September 1964. Angels 1st October 1964. Concept of Souls 5th November 1964. Last Things First 26th November 1964. The Churches 21st January 1965. The Divine Madness 18th February 1965. Is Science a Bore? 23rd February 1965. Idea of Sacrifice 18th March 1965. The Science of Easter 15th April 1965. The Mystery of the Trinity 10th June 1965. Misplaced Loyalty 8th July 1965. Rebel against a Cause 5th August 1965. Knowledge as Creation 2nd September 1965. Defending Counsel 30th September 1965. Punishment 28th October 1965. Pity the Poor Puritan 25th November 1965. Three Inches Off the Ground 23rd December 1965. Demons on the Stair: 27th January 1966. How Original Is Sin? 24th February 1966. Passion and Its Slave 24th March 1966. Equality and the Elephant 21st April 1966. Mortification of Mr Muggeridge 19th May 1966. Down with Dad! 16th June 1966. Loving Murder 14th July 1966. Jesus-Figures and the Beatle Charisma 11th August 1966.

124  Stephen R. L. Clark The Agnostic Prophet 8th September 1966. Pop Go the Rules 6th October 1966. The Forgotten Centenary 8th November 1966. Pro Patria 10th November 1966. Who Is the Minority? 8th December 1966. Breakthrough Wanted 1st November 1968. Looking for Your Guru? 13th August 1969.

Talks and Sermons Passion and Compassion: broadcast in ‘Lift up your hearts’, 20th–25th March 1961 (Broadcast Talks 62, Independent Press: London 1961). Religion in the scientific age: 11th Vaughan Memorial lecture, given in Doncaster Grammar School on 18th June 1963 (Doncaster 1964). The Challenge of the New Theology: Methodist Kingsway Hall, London 1966 (Wren-Lewis, 1967b: 117–26). The Credibility Gap: God’s world – or scientific atheism? 10th November 1968, at Great Saint Mary’s, Cambridge. Can science study nature from the inside? (MIT Press: Cambridge, MA 1972). There are further archived essays at http://www.capacitie.org/wren/ (a valuable site maintained by Alan Mann) including: A Near-Death Experience Opens the Door to a permanent transformation: www. capacitie.org/wren/Dazzling%20Dark.PDF. Unblocking a Malfunction: www.capacitie.org/wren/UnblockingAMalfunction. pdf (a conflation of ‘Aftereffects of Near-Death Experience’ and ‘Gnosis: Goal Or Ground?’ above). By Computer and Spacecraft to God and Eternity: Review of Frank Tipler The Physics of Immortality: www.capacitie.org/wren/ByComputerandSpacecraft. pdf. The Little Book of Life and Death (review of D. E. Harding): www.capacitie.org/ wren/Little Book of Life & Death.pdf.

TV Dramas I recollect at least two TV dramas in the 60s: one considering Ulysses’ speech on hierarchy from Troilus and Cressida, another set in a spaceship on a long voyage to Mars (?) urging that the irritable inmates practice breathing and meditation exercises. The BBC archives at https://www.bbcmotiongallery.com identify two programmes (neither seem to be the ones I remember). 26/07/64 Meeting Point: Lord of the Flies: ‘Malcolm Muggeridge chairs programme on discussion of film version of William Golding novel “Lord of the Flies”. … Dr Donald Sope & John Wren-Lewis discuss with Muggeridge the evidence that evil exists in society’. 26/11/68 towards Tomorrow: Time to Kill: ‘Report on the inevitable problems that the approaching age of leisure will present, and some of the steps that are being taken to overcome them. … John Wren-Lewis talks about the probable increase

Atheists and Idolaters  125 in the need for people gifted with simple humanitarian attributes as opposed to scientific and technical knowledge’. Other excursions included: ABC January 1966 Programme about T. S. Eliot (see ‘The Romantic Mr Eliot’, above). ATV about Religion (ATV); ‘This awfully dull title hid a wide ranging religious programme that began in 1956 in the God Slot at 7 pm on Sundays. The programme shared the slot with ABC’s Living Your Life, and this latter programme made spasmodic appearances over the years, giving the About Religion team a break. The programme ran for ten years until 1966’: Can’t Buy me Love (12th July 1964). John Wren-Lewis on social workers. Australian BC interview: Search for Meaning.

7 How to Not Think about God Michael McGhee

The Buddhist traditions are known for their practical, anti-speculative spirit, for being non-theistic or atheological rather than strictly atheist, expressing scepticism about, rather than outright rejection of god talk, though also offering satirical pictures of the delusions of Brahma who thinks he created the world, or offering the thought that even if one is born into a deva-realm, the gods also stand in need of bodhi or awakening, and that even their bliss is impermanent and a form of dukkha. Part of the point of such scepticism towards the gods was that the whole thrust of seeking union with Brahma was a diversion from the practical task of enlightenment – and it is uncertain that what one is calling companionship or union with Brahman is properly so-called, or, more radically, that there is a Self which is to be identified with Brahman. Contemporary appropriations of the Buddhist traditions do not directly engage with the dialectical context of these debates with Brahmanism, in which scepticism often takes the form of doubts about how one can know Brahman, but they reflect their scepticism about the gods and as such offer a middle way between nihilism and eternalism. What I want to reflect on here is the appropriation of Buddhism in the contemporary dialectic between ‘religion’ and ‘secularism’. Some have thought that the Buddhist traditions are ‘philosophical’ rather than ­‘religious’ – philosophical in the ancient sense of philosophy as a way of life, as constituted by a set of spiritual exercises or practices. Disaffected former believers have embraced this understanding, because it seemed to offer a middle way which could repair an authentic spirituality damaged in the wreckage of belief and the sterile absence of subjectivity in the more pallid forms of a secular humanist polemic. Various contemporary Buddhist movements in the West announce with some emphasis that they are not ‘religious’, a claim which seems to amount to a denial that what they offer depends upon or leads to ‘religious belief’, theistic or otherwise metaphysical. My personal turn towards Buddhism in the Seventies was partly motivated by such considerations – it seemed as though meditational practices that had a strong impact had no particular implications for belief commitment. However, this emphatic announcement

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DOI: 10.4324/9781315142395-8

How to Not Think about God  127 that Buddhism is not ‘religious’ needs to be treated with some caution, partly because, as I have just said, it seems to conflate ‘being religious’ with ‘being a religious believer’. We are, as Ludwig Wittgenstein once said, ceremonial animals and part of the nostalgia that former believers experience derives from a lost participation in ritual and liturgy and that sense of belonging to a community which movements like the Humanist Society seek to address – and which was, in fact, an essential aspect of ancient philosophy. Some contemporary Buddhist movements seek to liberate themselves from the traditional worldviews within which Buddhist practice was embedded, including of course karma and rebirth over many lifetimes. Now this is an entirely familiar strategy to those who have watched the whole process of the announcement of the ‘Death of God’ and various forms of post-­ Christianity in which the project was to find some clarity about what it was proper to reject, and what was properly to be retained and preserved. However, Western interest in Buddhism makes possible a correction of attitude, the terms of which I will try to frame in this chapter. Philosophy of religion, particularly perhaps analytic philosophy of religion, has until very recently been dominated by a set of preoccupations that are largely Christian or, by extension, Abrahamic. The Indian philosopher Daya Krishna has remarked of this confinement to Christianity, that it was ‘as if one were to reflect on aesthetic experience and confine one’s discussion to Greek art or the Renaissance masters only’ (1989: 114).

2 In the mid-eighties, I had some conversations in Pune with K. J. Shah, who had been a pupil of Wittgenstein in Cambridge. In one of these conversations, he mentioned Ramana Maharshi (1879–1950) and commented rather strikingly that it was the presence in India of men of such great spirituality, even in the twentieth Century, that made the difference between Western and Indian attitudes to religion: the presence of such spirituality was something that Indians were confronted with and had to take some account of. Well, we need to be wary of claims like this, and ‘spirituality’ is a fraught term, and we need to be clear about what its use is taken to imply. However, it is this idea of a phenomenon that we are confronted by that is interesting. I take it that his point had to do with the contemporary situation, a widespread dismissal of religion in the West, whereas the Indians were much more aware than we had become of the presence among them of such people as Ramana Maharshi. I am not, I hope, trading here on the old and too easy mythology of a spiritual India over against a materialist West. But the difference of saliency is worth dwelling on. Whereas in the West when we

128  Michael McGhee think of the idea of being ‘religious’, we are popularly inclined to think in terms of belief and conviction, though the terms are no doubt often degenerate. Shah’s implied suggestion was that what was salient in India was something like presence, demeanour and practice. Now this is hardly to say that these are of no account in the West, though such notions may be occluded by certain triumphalist forms of secularism (if we are thinking in intellectual terms), or by a general spirit of consumerism no longer in a position to marshal spiritual reminders, as it were. Nor is it to say that there is no such thing as ‘belief’ in the East; on the contrary. But it is no accident that the rise of secularism was certainly reinforced by the sustained critique of a system of belief. It may be true that Indians had to confront the reality of such figures as Ramana Maharshi, but maybe the same sustained critique of traditional systems of belief had not yet had an impact on the public mind. In any event, if the term ‘spirituality’ is a fraught one, ‘belief’ is no less so, and much of our reflection on what we call religious belief has been conducted in largely Christian terms. It is, for instance, a commonplace now to emphasise a distinction between a sense of belief that is attitudinal (‘faith’) and one that is propositional, the emphasis partly a reaction against a conflation of the two, in which ‘faith’ has degenerated into a kind of required assent to particular orthodox propositions, whose veracity is supposedly secured by reference to trust in increasingly attenuated forms of authority, a trust the criterion of whose strength is alleged to be the conviction with which a person assents to the propositions, or pronounces the shibboleths that shows them orthodox. By contrast, I want to say that the strength of a person’s attitudinal faith was shown in their courage and commitment to a course of action, a venture of the spirit. This conflation is a peculiar and distinctive aspect of the Abrahamic traditions, particularly of Christianity in those tumultuous credal controversies that accompanied the formation of the tense idea of orthodoxy and the corresponding idea of heresy. Meanwhile, Daya Krishna had remarked that ‘the capacity for inner freedom, abiding joy, and relevant response to external situations is so pre-­eminent and abundant in spiritual persons that compared to them, ordinary, normal persons appear as deficient human beings’ (1989: 120). Dayaji’s comment is scarcely alien to our Western religious traditions: They enshrine the criteria or provide the measure by which we make exactly that kind of judgement. Shah and Dayaji both speak of ‘spirituality’ and ‘spiritual persons’ and the usual question arises when talk is of spirituality – how vague and nebulous is it? Dayaji’s use of the term anchors it securely in the responsiveness of such persons as well as to their inner freedom and abiding joy. His talk of inner freedom may recall Eliot’s line about ‘the inner freedom from the practical desire’. Such self-concern becomes of interest, however, only to the extent that it is conceived as the means by which we overcome the interior obstacles to this moral responsiveness. What Dayaji

How to Not Think about God  129 seems to have in mind bears comparison with the Pauline notion of the pneumatikoi, ‘the spirituals’, as Thomas More uses the term, inveighing intemperately, alas, against the heroic William Tyndale: ‘he sayeth himself that y’ spirituals do search the bottom of gods commaundmentes and fufyl them gladly’ (1973: 58). Tyndale and More’s shared talk of ‘the spirituals’ is no longer quite current, but it reflects something that Paul thought vital to the way we should distinguish between our interior dispositions, our conduct and demeanour in terms of the Law and the Spirit. The spirituals may search the bottom of God’s commandments and fulfil them gladly, but this implies a capacity for discernment that acknowledges the point of at least some of the commandments, and a glad readiness to fulfil them, but not now in obedience to them as commandments. It is the unregenerate forces of ‘the flesh’ (not confined to bodily appetites) that require us to think in terms of the Law, though even that requires some discernment, and these surly and eager forces are resentful of and even hostile to this unsettling discernment and its promptings. This is a point of contact with the Buddhist tradition which Daya Krishna is also drawing on, a point of contact with the refrain that the Buddha’s teaching is constituted by whatever is conducive to overcoming the unwholesome destructive passions that undermine the possibility of awakening, bodhi and karuna.

3 One of my preoccupations in the philosophy of religion has been to explore and try to articulate the possibility of an alternative to the belief and rationality paradigm, to one that favours and highlights interior disposition, subjectivity, metanoia. One fairly obvious response is to deny that we are dealing with alternatives here, that philosophical reflection on religious belief, its nature, rationality and justification is entirely compatible with a philosophical interest in the concepts of spirituality and metanoia. And, of course this is true, even though as a matter of fact the analytic tradition has notoriously allowed the latter kind of discussion to be eclipsed by the former. But the real issue is the nature of the relationship between religious belief and spirituality. As for the eclipsing of one kind of topic by the other, I think this is partly a matter of aptitude and inclination – and self-selection – and the standard reaction until very recently to philosophical approaches to the whole area of subjectivity has been an amused or irritated scepticism about the profound unclarity of the project. Transformation and spirituality were presumed to look after themselves as topics of no great philosophical interest, except to those of a phenomenological bent: the hard argument is to be found in discussions of belief and rationality. There was a kind of concession to interiority as a topic, but one which conceived it in the light of the main analytic preoccupation. It was reduced to the practices of prayer and

130  Michael McGhee worship, practices whose rationality then had to wait upon the outcome of discussion about the rationality of the religious belief upon which they were claimed to depend. Thus, other forms of subjectivity, care of the self, the discernment and capacity for action that I have just mentioned, slipped from view – or, if they were adverted to, it was on the grounds that the values upon which they were thought to depend required a transcendental sanction or grounding. This brought us safely back to questions about Reason and Faith. There is a complicated discussion to be had about the relationship between ‘faith’ and ‘reason’, and it is worth drawing attention to one aspect of this discussion here. Some of those who protest at the Enlightenment valorizing of Reason want to insist that it cannot operate alone but needs to be informed by Faith as it formerly had been. The thought seemed to be that faith had provided the environment within which reason operated, and if reason lost that anchor it could only drift in hubris onto rocky shores. This view tends to determine how the loss of faith is conceived, as precisely a loss of moral bearings, as though once disconnected from faith it was on its own. I shall return to this in a moment. Now it is true that there are forms of spirituality, of disposition and of practice, including that vexed notion of ‘holiness’, whose possibility is conceptually dependent upon religious belief – let us stay with that opaque expression for a little longer – and whose rationality or otherwise might be thought to be secured by the vindication or undermining of that religious belief. But these phenomena do not exhaust the range of spiritual practice and disposition. It is not obvious that the idea of the pneumatikoi, ‘the spirituals’, and the forms of their interior disposition, demeanour and conduct, are thus dependent, nor that the practices intended to overcome the hindrances in the Buddhist tradition are thus dependent.

4 The project of replacing the one paradigm with the other, displacing issues about belief from the centre of the philosophy of religion in favour of transformative practice needs further elaboration. What I want to examine is the extent to which spirituality is both independent of belief and capable of informing it. However, before we can pursue this question we need to interrogate the notion of religious belief, particularly given the wider cultural context I have tried to set up here. In order to do this, I want to make a distinction between the religious notion of ‘faith’ and the epistemological notion of ‘certitude’, in a way that brings home the nature of the cultural fissure concealed by the usual polemical exchanges between secularists and defenders of religion. The notion of religious belief has seemed to me to be vitiated by a conflation of ideas that I think is the special vulnerability of the Abrahamic religions, where the loss of belief became seen as an act of infidelity to the

How to Not Think about God  131 high values associated with God’s covenant with his people. That notion of a people is crucial here because it gives additional leverage to the notion of betrayal and infidelity, a rejection of solidarity and membership of a community. The idea of losing one’s faith was seen to imply a failure or loss both of trust in God and fidelity to his commandments, a fidelity whose possibility depends upon trusting that God will deliver us through his grace from our own worst nature. Sir Francis Bacon expresses it with admirable clarity in his essay On Atheism: ‘as atheism is in all respects hateful, so in this, that it depriveth human nature of the means to exalt itself above human frailty’ (1996: 371–73). This conception of atheism as a betrayal and a form of infidelity remains widespread and is a dangerous ideological tool in the levels of its animosity and bitterness. One interesting connection here is between Bacon’s sense of the need to be exalted above human frailty and Daya Krishna’s comments about human deficiency. In both cases, we stand in need of a measure by reference to which frailty is indeed conceived as frailty and deficiency as deficiency. Philosophers of religion in the analytic tradition have routinely conflated religion with religious belief, in the sense that they have conflated religion with belief in God and have reduced that to belief in the existence of God. This might seem convenient because it looks as though we thus get down to the brass tacks of whether there is a God, upon which, surely everything else depends. In fact, the tacks are spread around the floor and we are walking across it in stockinged feet. There is an aspect of this notion of belief as a dyadic relation of trust and fidelity under a covenant that has brought about another conceptual distortion. Fidelity is a matter of commitment, of committing yourself to a way of life as an expression of trust in God’s promises, as set out in a Heilsgeschichte, thought of, disastrously, in terms of real messianic political expectation and entitlement, or allegorically and metaphorically under the notion not of the private individual but of the human community. But this notion of commitment that belongs within a discourse of trust and fidelity has been transferred across and below to the form of religious belief that is its condition. In other words, one response to the idea that the existence of God is not susceptible to proof has been the assertion that we commit ourselves to believing, that it is not a matter of reason but of faith. Now there is a sense in which it is true that someone can commit themselves to belief in God, in the sense that they can commit themselves to a way of life in which the need to trust and the need to be faithful are kept before the mind. It is a commitment to an attitudinal and ethical project. This is a grounded commitment, from which one can turn away, as exemplified in the deeply symbolic space of the desert, and to which the Prophets constantly recall the people, back to the paths of righteousness and justice. But commitment to the religious belief upon which this possible orientation of the spirit depends is ungrounded and worryingly voluntaristic.

132  Michael McGhee Now the assimilation of religious belief to belief in God and the latter to belief in the existence of God is difficult to sustain when we consider the non-theistic traditions. Because it is ready to hand, it is tempting to say that what we are calling religious belief in the latter case is also a matter of ‘faith’, and the relationship in which we stand to it is also one of commitment. This temptation is, however, tradition-specific and one that derives from an attempt at a solution to a problem thrown up by that tradition. A  similar strategy is adopted in relation to secularism when the claim is made by irritated anti-secularists that the proper relation to the basic propositions of the secularist is also a matter of faith or commitment. In this context, we should not be talking about faith but about certitude, the uneven progress and dismantling of the certitude we have in relation to the inherited background of a world picture or system of propositions. In particular, this certitude is reflected in the narrative within which ‘faith’ as a possible activity is located, a picture whose contours are shown in what holds fast, or has the greatest assurance for us, a certitude which by definition offers us no choice but is what we rely on when we do make choices. However, we are in serious existential difficulties, standing in need of Keats’s famous Negative Capability, when we start to lose that certitude in relation to a world picture upon which the whole orientation of life had seemed to depend. This was of course the great crisis of faith in the nineteenth century, which forced numerous re-evaluations and attempts to reconcile ‘belief’ with science, scholarship and philosophy, Darwin, Biblical scholarship, Kant and Hume, particularly re-evaluations of how we are to understand Genesis and Creation in the face of the often deeply troubled assumption that this loss of certitude in the world picture within which ‘faith’ was embedded entailed its rejection, or at least its radical re-assessment. Belief in God is one of the theological virtues and it is represented in the literature as waxing and waning in just the way we would expect of a conative relationship. It is precisely faith in the sense of trust and keeping faith in a covenant. Being a believer in this sense is a role, just as being a disciple or a pupil or seeker or practitioner are roles. All these roles are available within the Abrahamic traditions, but the role of believer is particularly salient, and thinkers within these traditions – whether religious or secular-tend to think of members of any religious tradition as believers in this sense. So, what I might once have thought of as losing the faith is something I would now think of as a loss of the certitude with which I once invested a world picture, and which was as it seemed the condition for the availability of certain inherited spiritual practices and dispositions, though not others. It might be said with some justice that this is a rejection of fundamentalism or at least naïve realism, which is generally taken to be the real and unselfconscious target of much secularist polemic, and that classical theism is unaffected by misreading of mythopoeic thinking. It is a further question, though, whether it ought to survive the critique of theology and metaphysics. In my own case, the theological house of cards came ­tumbling down

How to Not Think about God  133 pretty comprehensively. I am more aware than I then was that cards are not the best kind of building material and that much hangs on the ­adequacy of the doctrine of God under critical scrutiny. But even though I listen with care to Christian friends, I stopped thinking theologically a long time ago, and although Buddhist practice refreshed my sense of Christianity and supplied what had seemed to be missing, I have felt no pull back to theism or to theological language, no sense that this too was something missing. But maybe I am labouring under an inadequate doctrine of God. I have suggested the need to distinguish between the loss of certitude in a particular world picture, and the loss of faith, emphasizing that the role of believer can be undermined by the loss of certitude in what seems to be its condition. I have also said enough to indicate that ‘spirituality’ is not exhausted by the role of believer in the specific Abrahamic sense. There are other traditions where there is no such role. But we should also distinguish between the certitude that attaches to a framework and the conviction that someone might have in the truth or falsity of a particular proposition or doctrine, even when the latter derives from the former, since the temptation is to treat the conviction in sometimes bizarre isolation. We are familiar with the popular caricature of the ‘devout religious believer’ who we describe as having strongly held convictions. Some secularist critics have emphasised conviction in the truth of a particular proposition at the expense of its anchoring in the certitude that attaches to the world picture within which it is embedded, so that they are able to represent the belief in the existential proposition that ‘there is a God’, as blind, because it is held without the evidence base it allegedly requires for its rationality. Here, I am merely criticizing the strategy: the way one deals with a system of beliefs is different from the way one might deal with an errant belief. The criticism relies on assimilating it to the conceptual demands of empirical discourse, as a failure of procedural rationality within the terms of that method of inquiry. It fails to acknowledge how it functions within the terms of theological discourse. It is a popular distraction from the issues that surround the significance of the loss of a traditional world picture, fails to address the nature of the accommodations made by contemporary theology and ignores attempts to correct its implicit theology. As I just said, it is often remarked that the real target of this kind of criticism is a certain kind of so-called literalist fundamentalism. I say ‘so-called’ on the grounds that it is not obvious how the ancient narratives are literally to be taken, since, if they are construed as mythological narratives, then that is what they literally are. But the criticism that we are dealing with a blind conviction misses the point, even against the fundamentalists.

5 Dewi Phillips has talked about ‘finding God’ rather than of ‘finding out whether there is a God’, as a shorthand way of insisting on the distinction between two quite different forms of inquiry, as a shorthand way also of

134  Michael McGhee expressing scepticism about the formation and sense of the question whether there is a God. The grammar determines the nature and method of what we are calling ‘inquiry’. The triumphalist tenor of some secularist polemic fails to take on board the sometimes heartfelt nature of the question, ‘is there a God?’ – or indeed the heartfelt nature of the declaration that there cannot be. It neglects, in other words, the subjective, existential conditions of the inquiry. The post-Holocaust declaration that there is no God reflects a loss of confidence, not in God, but in the whole discourse; the anguished question seeks to address the possibility of the discourse. I am not saying that the secularist is tactless and insensitive, but that their approach misses something vital. However, I wonder whether Phillips also neglects these conditions. Someone who under certain conditions asks themselves whether there is a God is not necessarily at the mercy of the wrong method, even if their inquiry is misdirected and disappointed for the wrong reasons. What is at stake here is the viability of a particular form of religious discourse within which ‘finding God’ has a place. It is the loss of confidence in the very idea of anything answering to the expression ‘finding God’. This is compatible with someone under this kind of stress coming to declare that indeed they have found God, and we have to look closely at the nature of the stress and its resolution before we form any judgement about what has happened in such a case. Often enough this interior movement represents the recovery of a dormant or neglected practice, or a re-conversion to what had been rejected. As to this re-conversion, what one needs to know is what its subjective conditions are, recalling, however, that there is a theological language in such cases ready to hand to make sense of the inner transformation or metanoia. ‘Finding God’ makes sense in terms of a narrative which describes how someone has lost their direction, lost their vital connection with the interiority of a discourse to which they return, after realizing the futility of serving false gods, and so on. Access to the interior conditions of the discourse can also bring a person back to practices they had formerly and consciously rejected. However, although a person’s trust and fidelity can be tested and sustained through adversity, and be a support through suffering, when we think of it reaching breaking point we don’t conclude that this person no longer considers God trustworthy; they tend to abandon the whole practice as unviable. Phillips’ insistence on the idea of finding God rather than ‘finding out’ reminds us that the unconscious assimilation of religious to empirical discourse is misdirected, partly because it fails to give due weight to the subjective conditions under which the question, whether there is a God, is asked. The subjectivity of the inquirer is entirely disregarded. Stephen Clark (2009) and Nicholas Lash (2009) have independently criticised the so-called Loch Ness Monster model, as a similar form of polemical misdirection. Lash, in particular, draws attention to the religious tradition which tells us that it is not so much that we seek God, as that God

How to Not Think about God  135 discloses himself. However, again, this is a remark that belongs within a form of ­discourse and practice about which doubt has arisen. But let us come back to the thought that the secularist critic has entirely disregarded the subjectivity of the inquirer, and see whether giving it its due will alter the situation. This Kierkegaardian thought suggests an important possibility: an attention to, or openness towards, what the form of discourse might disclose or reveal under the right subjective conditions. Following von Balthasar, Lash has written tellingly – and poignantly – about how theology is properly conducted on one’s knees, by which I take him to mean that it should be conducted prayerfully. This is clearly not a merely pious gesture, and we need to give full weight to the notion of prayer that he here invokes. I want to raise the question, whether there is an analogous disposition when the traditional language of faith has become unavailable. In the first place, it seems proper to approach the discourse in terms of the conditions of its formation. In the second place, it seems to me that the proper disposition, analogous to Lash’s prayerfulness, is that of silence, more specifically, a silence constituted by the quietening of the violent and destructive passions, of what the Buddhist traditions refer to as the klesas. This is not a neutral condition, since this quietening which those familiar with Buddhism will recognise as the aim of samatha meditation, includes the quietening of those passions from which issues that impulse to power and domination, expressed in Genesis as the ambition to be as gods. What is required, in other words, is an interior disposition by which we are able to see and acknowledge the destructive consequences of that temptation, a disposition which, however, resonates with and finds its echo in the interiority of the discourse to which we are thus attending. But this silence provides an interlude of withdrawal from these impulses and makes it possible to see how they have become the unconscious determinants of what is usually available to perception, and, perhaps more importantly, allows at least glimpses of what was therefore obscured or occluded, a perspective which transcends the egocentric self-enclosure to which we have become habituated, and from which the religious traditions have sometimes offered freedom, and for which, sometimes, in a deadly masquerade, provided cover and concealment.

6 Anthony Kenny (2009) has remarked that most of us are atheist when it comes to the Homeric gods and that he himself is atheist when it comes to the world-making God of Genesis. He is, however, agnostic about the idea of an intelligent designer since the arguments for and against such a being appear to him to be equally weighted. However, to be atheist about the Homeric gods is to treat imaginary beings in a realistic spirit. It may be that once we did and then came to realise again, the true nature of the discourse.

136  Michael McGhee You realise you were playing the wrong game when after your fruitless search in the Public Records Office a friend takes you aside and explains that Sherlock Holmes belongs to fiction. I think we should be non-realist, rather than atheist, about the Homeric gods. What about Yahweh? The rise of secularism brought about a state of affairs in which thinkers variously treated the God of Genesis, on the one hand, in a realist and, on the other hand, in a non-realist spirit, in the latter case abandoning a realism which encompassed both theists and atheists. It also became fashionable to distinguish between naïve realists and critical realists, the naïve allegedly treating the Genesis story of creation as a revealed and accurate account of what happened, the critical realists treating it as a pictorial representation of a sophisticated philosophical doctrine about the uncaused cause, whose nature is beyond any possibility of human comprehension. I’m not sure about this critical realism. At any rate, it seems a mistake to think of it as a form of realism about the God of Genesis. It is, rather, realism about a doctrine that Genesis is claimed to represent mythopoeically. This seems to be a form of conceptual retrojection that derives from a ‘faith position’, that the God who we officially know to exist but whose nature we cannot comprehend, has revealed himself to humanity in terms of our mental capacities and understanding. The modus significandi is the mythopoeic representation, and its res significata is the uncaused cause. This might look plausible because there is a doctrine in place that tells us that any way we have of representing God must fail, but that this does not entail a failure of reference, and in terms of this doctrine Genesis simply looks like an exemplary case. But even if my story reflects an obscure sense of a possibility, it does not follow that my story is about what is obscurely intimated. However, realism about the uncaused cause is not compromised by a non-realist reading of the characters in Genesis, including Yahweh. Kenny takes the natural theology of the Judeo-Christian tradition to be a representation of the God of Genesis, and the grounds for his atheism are the alleged mutual incompatibility of the divine attributes. But this kind of problem of consistency is just what one would expect of an imaginary Being whose exploits belong to a complicated and evolving narrative which does not bear too close scrutiny. Perhaps the point I am trying to make could be expressed in this way, that we need to wait upon just what the narratives about the God of Genesis reveal, and this raises the question whether what is revealed requires god talk at all, even if god talk is the inherited form of discourse. When I have reflected upon the remnants of my Christianity, what I’ve found to remain unaffected did indeed seem to be a metaphorical representation of a ‘method of inquiry’, the form of an interior process. There was a kind of admonition in the remark ‘that by their fruits ye shall know them’, and this was connected with the image of the grain of wheat which must fall into the earth and die … if it is to bear fruit. I connected this in my

How to Not Think about God  137 imagination with the Johannine remark that the presence or absence of love was the criterion of whether someone ‘knew God’. The grave ­existential import of these sayings was summarised in the image of the crucified and risen Christ, a revelation in the midst of ruthless human brutality and double-­mindedness, of the real contours of love. I no longer thought of this figure in terms of divinity, nor over against an unregenerate essence of unruly selfhood, but as a transformative projection under pressure of a possible trajectory towards a perspective on a humanity that needed to be rescued from itself – and as a measure of conduct which gave content to Daya Krishna’s talk of human deficiency, Bacon’s of human frailty. I was also impressed by one of those gnomic remarks of Simone Weil (2002), about not putting God in the dative case but acting in Christ or in God, rather than for them. It seemed to me that part of the point of such a distinction was the thought that putting God or Christ in the dative remained neutral about motivation, whereas the other expression named a form of motivation, indicating, as it seemed to me, an indefinitely expanding space of possibilities which transcended egocentric self-enclosure. These ingrained notions were reactivated when I came upon the various archetypal Bodhisattva figures, one of which, the female figure of Tara, is represented as regarding humanity with tears of compassion. Now, the interest of such images, that of the Christ or the Bodhisattva, absolutely depends upon the representation of humanity under which it is regarded as an object of compassion – an attitude distinct from solidarity and sympathy both of which can share, for instance, forms of apocalyptic and messianic hope in which the notion of justice is corrupted by the desire for vengeance. This reminds us of the prior moral attitudes that determine the nature and direction of sympathy. Compassion becomes an attitude towards the whole scene, the terrible duality within human beings, our capacity for creative flourishing, our capacity for destructive violence. Matthew Arnold said of Epictetus that he saw life steadily and saw it whole. To return to Genesis with these notions in mind, thinking of its authors polemically embedded over many generations in the culture and politics of the region within which these texts were composed and edited, we can give full and familiar value to the mise-en-scène of slavery and exile, defeat and victory and so forth. We can think in terms of Nietzsche’s (1999) reflections on Slave and Master morality, and Freud’s (1973) talk of motivated belief or illusion. We can also reflect on the unrelenting patriarchal imperatives that turn Yahweh into a sometimes resentful celibate and solitary male deprived of his spouse, Asherah. But it also worth recalling Mary Midgley’s bon mot that Genesis is more nourishing than Dawkins.1 In Dawkins, you get an excellent sense of the excitement of science, but little sense of the human drama. This collective shared exposure to bleak narratives of creation, gods indifferent to our comfort, pessimism about the cycles of good and evil, is an oppression that puts pressure on the imagination to find expression for what becomes apocalyptic hope and vindication.

138  Michael McGhee

7 The two opening chapters of Genesis contain two creation accounts – ­scholars tell us that Genesis 1 derives from a later text or tradition than Genesis 2. I want to make a conceptual point about one aspect of these stories, viz. that certain verses draw on the notion of aesthetic judgement and the imagery of artistic production. ‘And God saw everything that he had made and, behold, it was very good’. This is an aesthetic judgement grounded in pleasure and satisfaction in the work. But it is not just that God is pleased with his handiwork – he sees that it is very good, an excellent, successful handiwork that fulfils the role he intends it to fulfil, like a good pot or a beautiful garden – so the aesthetic judgement estimates what excellently serves its function. As such, we then need a story that explains how this creation is vulnerable to our profound propensity to destructive violence, which is indeed provided, sometimes taking the full measure of that propensity and sometimes suborned by it. Meanwhile we are to continue and share God’s creative work, a work by which our natures are fulfilled. This aesthetic judgement has practical, moral implications. Nicholas Lash has remarked that Genesis 1 was written explicitly in refutation of the darkly dualistic cosmologies of the surrounding cultures. In other words, the story is told in rejection of a story of the world as an endless struggle of dark and light, good and evil. However dark and ghastly, black and white, everything around us seems, it comes, primarily, as good. 2 This illuminating remark does not tell against the idea that the judgement we are concerned with is an aesthetic one, since what is reassuring to a people reflecting on its experience of oppression and exile, and who have been exposed to a darkly dualistic picture of the world, is the idea that their God is pleased with his handiwork – he naturally, and as an expression of his pleasure in, and love for what he has made, extends towards it his protective care and providence. What is primal in the picture is this care and love, and this is how it differs from a picture of endless cycles of darkness and light. In other words, God’s creation is not ‘good’ as opposed to ‘evil’, but ‘good’ as opposed to ‘flawed’. I am not concerned here to discuss the view that actually the work isn’t so great after all. The point here is that the story is one which carries a perspective of love and care for creation and humanity continuous with what I earlier associated with the Christ and the Bodhisattva figure, a perspective that stands over against one of exploitation and domination, but which recognises that these impulses are more deeply rooted. This perspective is elusive and fugitive – and action in its light precarious – but its forms of expression are embedded in our cultures. The story expresses wonder and admiration, but also pity and horror as it confronts what is already therefore perceived as our flawed nature.

How to Not Think about God  139 These are the terms of a continuity of embattled moral reflection on the human condition. In this case, it is expressed in a theological language that is both ready to hand and available for both moral and intellectual refinement and revision – God’s seeing that it was very good is already an intervention in a conversation – the latter through the kind of critical analysis about what it is possible to say about the Creator that yields classical theism. It seems to me that only lack of imagination will prevent us from s­ eeing how a certain mood of contemplation leads us towards the image of a maker of the world, even if we cannot inhabit this ancient idea. It is a natural movement of the mind caught by wonder and admiration, and it seems to me that one way that mood expresses itself is through a sense of what comes closest to the kind of gratitude that we feel in the presence of a gift, something fashioned and offered. It belongs to a mood in which we have a heightened sense of the beauty of the earth and the heavens, a mood in which other and darker realities recede from view, waiting to be integrated, more or less successfully, into a more complex narrative when the mood shifts. We instinctively think of origins and causes, anthropomorphically of making, bringing into and sustaining in existence, but the salient point is that here is a vision of the human world as a whole, and from a point of view which we are already projecting into the gaze of the maker on his handiwork, a point of view which we now acknowledge as a human possibility and source of action, where the impulse and thrust of the narrative are towards rescue. The imagery belongs to a responsiveness to the beauty of the world which precipitates reflection on the human condition – that such a world exists rather than simply, and much more abstractly, that there is a world at all. There is something striking if not yet compelling in that famous question, whether there is anything at all, rather than nothing. I suspect that it is more compelling to those who already think theologically and for whom an answer is already in place. The question why things are thus, rather than so, generally precedes and precipitates a line of investigation in pursuit of a possible discovery that has then to be discovered as it were, a forward rather than a backward movement. The point here is what would count as a genuine discovery, what emerges from this attentive silence when we contemplate the idea that there is anything at all under the guidance of that very general question of why things are thus rather than so. I am inclined to think that the question has drifted beyond its context of application, but that pushing it to that limit brings home to us the general form of its application, brings home to us, in other words, the general schema of conditioned co-production, that things arise in dependence on conditions. That unquantified Buddhist principle becomes specifically Buddhist when it is applied to the human scene, to the conditions upon which depend both human misery and human flourishing within the larger landscape of interdependence.

140  Michael McGhee Philosophers have invoked the notion of mystery to indicate that the divine nature must be beyond the scope of any created language or understanding and, a fortiori, beyond explanation. I am not sure how theologians proceed from here. The invocation of a mystery beyond our understanding and upon which we entirely depend already draws on a worked-out idea of what we can properly say or not say about the divine nature. It does not seem to me that we come to that idea through contemplating the very existence of things, and in its absence, I am not persuaded that we can in any way talk about the mystery of things, or of life or existence, except as a way of indicating ‘wow’. But when our sensibility and understanding are overwhelmed by the immensity of the starry heavens and so forth, this experience of sublimity brings us with heightened emotion to a vision of the whole, a vision which has the capacity to awaken in us what we may come to describe as a perspective of love and compassion. One may already subscribe to the idea of the fugitive lived reality of this perspective of love on our wayward human condition, and its practical manifestation as loving-kindness. Some of my friends will say that ‘ubi caritas et amor deus ibi est’, and I admire such a doctrine of God which is, however, only one way of opening up the idea, as Herbert McCabe (1964) puts it, of an indefinite progression into the reality of love. But the emphasis is on ‘caritas et amor’. One may subscribe to a vision that compels action and requires the spiritual work of self-purification without being theological about it.

Notes 1 In a television interview. 2 In a conversation with the author.

References Bacon, F., ‘On Atheism’, in Brian Vickers (ed.), Francis Bacon: A Critical Edition of the Major Works (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 371–73. Clark, S., ‘What Has Plotinus’ One to Do with God?’, in John Cornwell and Michael McGhee (eds.), Philosophers and God: At the Frontiers of Faith and Reason (London: Continuum, 2009), pp. 21–38. Freud, S., The Future of an Illusion, translated by W. D. Robson-Scott (London: Hogarth Press, 1973). Kenny, A., ‘Agnosticism and Atheism’, in John Cornwell and Michael McGhee (eds.), Philosophers and God: At the Frontiers of Faith and Reason (London: Continuum, 2009), pp. 117–24. Krishna, D., The Art of the Conceptual: Explorations in a Conceptual Maze over Three Decades (Delhi: ICPR, 1989). Lash, N., ‘Thinking, Attending, Praying’, in John Cornwell and Michael McGhee (eds.), Philosophers and God: At the Frontiers of Faith and Reason (London: Continuum, 2009), pp. 39–50.

How to Not Think about God  141 McCabe, H. (ed.), St Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae, Volume 3 (Oxford: Blackfriars, 1964). Nietzsche, F., On the Genealogy of Morals, translated by Douglas Smith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). Schuster, L. A., R. C. Marius, and J. P. Lusardi (eds.), The Complete Works of St Thomas More (Princeton, NJ: Yale University Press, 1973). Weil, S., Gravity and Grace (London: Routledge, 2002).

8 Atheist Aesthetics A Critical Response Daniel Gustafsson

Introduction This chapter proposes that a form of atheism is to be found in a pervasive attitude to Christian art and aesthetics. This atheist aesthetics, so-called, has two aspects which this chapter identifies and critically addresses. Firstly, there is the denial that artworks can be Christian artworks in the significant sense that the experience these works invite and engender should be Christian too. Secondly, there is also the rejection of the Christian conception of beauty, where beauty, understood as the gift and self-revelation of God, is that towards which our higher desires and dispositions should be oriented. I will primarily engage with the rejection of Christian art, but will also address the rejection of beauty, which, to my mind, amplifies the former. In my understanding, beauty is a necessary aim of Christian art – in its ambition to manifest the glory and goodness of God1 – and so the denial or misapprehension of beauty serves to further alienate the atheist from a proper experience of Christian art. I understand atheism as (at least in part) the rejection of a false idea of God. In other words, what the atheist rejects is seldom what the theologian or believer professes. This is a model that can be illuminating in the case of atheist aesthetics. Thus, beauty is dismissed because it is misconceived as a form of pleasure instead of the manifestation of a sacred reality. The idea of Christian art, meanwhile, is rejected because its detractors wrongly identify the Christian aspect of the artwork with a didactic aim, with something extraneous to the essential artistic qualities of the work. In this way, it is not seen that the Christian artwork only comes into existence as what it is, under a holistically Christian engagement. In particular, the atheist rejection of Christian art – and the atheist misconception of this art – entails the refusal, and failure, to engage with its ontological ambitions and conditions and, moreover, the failure and refusal to enter into a second-person relation with the Christian artwork as an object of love. The misapprehension of beauty serves to aggravate both of these failures. I argue on the assumption that Christian art does not seek to give us knowledge about God, but rather to grant an experience of God. Indeed,

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DOI: 10.4324/9781315142395-9

Atheist Aesthetics  143 the artwork should be taken to invite the apprehension of divine presence, under the particular forms and the beauty of the icon, the sonnet, or the musical piece. Thus, inviting an experience that is indissolubly aesthetic and religious, all Christian art addresses us, in some mode and measure, in a variation on these words of T. S. Eliot’s from ‘Little Gidding’: You are not here to verify, Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity Or carry report. You are here to kneel Where prayer has been valid. (1944: 36) This is an experience that the atheist refuses to undergo. He does not accept to be addressed by the work on these terms. He rejects the demands made of him by the work and rejects also the validity of the beliefs in light of which these demands are made. In short, the atheist does not kneel; he stands apart, and this marks not only his detachment from a full experience of the artwork but also his misconception of what kind of thing that artwork is. The rejection of Christian art is exemplified and defended by Alex Neill and Aaron Ridley’s paper, ‘Religious Music for Godless Ears’ (2010); a piece which, I believe, fails to engage with Christian art on its own terms, and thereby provides a method for experiencing art which, if adhered to, has the effect of alienating us from works of inestimable value and from the vision of God enshrined therein. The rejection of beauty, meanwhile, is prevalent in contemporary art practice and aesthetic discourse. While Roger Scruton has identified the rejection of beauty with the rejection of the sacred, in broadly philosophical terms, the implications of beauty’s devaluation are more devastating on properly theistic conceptions of beauty, such as those of Christos Yannaras and David Bentley Hart, where beauty is a gift and self-revelation of God. I hold that love is a prerequisite for the production and reception of Christian art, in line with an understanding of faith as the loving second-­ person relation to, and knowledge of, God. Beauty, understood as the beauty of God, should be apprehended as an object of love. Hence, the rejection of both Christian art and beauty, I believe, ultimately amounts to a repudiation of an invitation to a loving communion with the divine.

Cultural and Ontological Contexts Any artwork is a relational and contextually embedded object that asks to be discerned and experienced in line with certain appropriate conditions and conceptions. It is therefore true for Christian artworks as for any other art that, as Peter Lamarque writes, ‘There have to be appropriate beliefs, attitudes, modes of appreciation, and expectations for works to come into, and be sustained in, existence’ (2010: 54). We may grant, I think,

144  Daniel Gustafsson that a modern viewer faced with the cave paintings in Lascaux may lack a ­requisite familiarity with the aesthetic and ontological assumptions of the period in question to fully grasp the meaning of the paintings. We may even say the same about a modern reader of classical tragedies, cut off from the fated and pantheistic world of Ancient Greece. In this way, perhaps more controversially, there are significant cultural and theological frameworks within which, and only within which, the Christian artwork becomes fully intelligible and meaningful. Indeed, Pavel Florensky (1996) goes so far as to suggest that an icon, if removed from the context of the church, ceases to be an icon. To my mind, the crucial context when apprehending a Christian artwork is not simply the artworld, but rather the ontological narrative of Christianity; that narrative of creation and the fall, redemption and deification, within which all Christian practices find their purposes. This is an ontological context, which not only asks that we are sensitive to the artwork’s artistic and aesthetic qualities, but which may indeed require Christian belief for us to be able to enter and inhabit it. The Christian artistic project is deeply implicated in a regenerative vision of human life, with the ambition of rendering God present under the forms of our making (our ‘making other’, as David Jones (1952) calls it), of creating works manifesting the divine beauty, and of restoring the world to some of its intended glory. It is this (admittedly audacious) ambition that prompts William Blake to issue his spirited summons: ‘Let every Christian as much as in him lies engage himself openly & publicly before all the World in some Mental pursuit for the Building up of Jerusalem’ (2000: 374). I must emphasise, therefore, that the Christian nature of the work is to be located, from the very first, in the realm of ontology, and not, as is so often assumed, in content, in pedagogy, and in the evocation of religious emotional or psychological states. In my understanding, it is precisely the ontological commitments of the Christian artwork that rescues it from any need to be didactic or devotional in any platitudinous or pragmatic sense. The artwork does not have to tell of regeneration and redemption in order to be Christian – though many great Christian artworks do – for it is itself a regenerative work, a redeemed part of creation. It is not the artwork’s capacity to provide comforting narratives that ensures its Christian status, but its place in a lived narrative of deification, and its manifestation of a divine order. To read R. S. Thomas is to wait with him on God; to read Gerard Manley Hopkins is to see, as he sees, the windhover’s form and beauty as Christ. Thus, the Christian artwork, and its ontological context, may be described as sacramental and theophanic. This context and this potential quality of the artwork are, of course, both summarily denied by the atheist. While Neill and Ridley seem happy to acknowledge the need for a real awareness of the Christian cultural context when engaging with a work

Atheist Aesthetics  145 such as Bach’s Mass in B minor, they deny that it requires a Christian response; that is, that a Christian perception and experience of the work is necessary in order to appropriately experience it. It is possible, they think, to fully appreciate the work without being a Christian believer, ‘because of, and not just despite, what it is’ (Neill and Ridley 2010: 1020). Indeed, they propose a model in which the atheist may get most out of the Christian artwork by actively rejecting its Christian premises or what the work stands for. The Mass, they argue, is ‘a triumph not merely of human ingenuity, brilliance, or even mastery, but of the human spirit itself’ (ibid.: 1019); and this spirit, they hold, is more powerful than any creeds or opinions it may be associated with or used to express. For Neill and Ridley, in other words, there is something inherent in the sheer artistic qualities of great artworks that utterly resists any assimilation to a body of ideas, of whatever kind, so that a Christian artwork – entirely irrespective of its contextual ­embeddedness – becomes something impossible. There is no kind of artwork, on this conception, that so relies on a Christian perspective as to fail to come into existence in the absence of it. This is an account of pure aesthetic properties, and of brute artistic force, clashing with religious or other conceptions. It does not address the way in which the artwork is an ontologically altered object, a new object in the world. It fails to address what such newness means – what it means to the Christian – and, indeed, what kind of world the artwork enters and alters. Christianity, of course, has something to say about the kind of world we inhabit, and the kind of transformations it may accommodate or undergo. Indeed, the Christian artwork makes its mark within ‘a universe’, in the words of Rowan Williams, ‘that is inextricably both material and significative, where things matter intensely, but matter in ways that breach boundaries and carry significance beyond what they tangibly are’ (2010: 75). Ultimately, on the Christian understanding, the kind of transformation the work is capable of is only intelligible – indeed, is only possible – in a world in which God may become man and wine may become blood. Adding to Lamarque’s thesis, therefore, what needs to be taken into account in the case of Christian art is precisely what Christian beliefs say about the world into which the artwork is introduced. If such a worldview is counted as an insidious illusion or a sinisterly harmful delusion – as on the perspective of Neill and Ridley’s so-called militant atheist – the work of Christian art must be unintelligible, and so remain invisible as what it is or aspires to be. The atheist, unable to adopt the Christian view of the world, will subject the Christian artwork to categorical and conceptual imprisonment. He may find ways to appropriate the work into his own world, and ways to justify this appropriation (Neill and Ridley’s paper being a case in point), but until the atheist is able rather to approach the world of the work, to appreciate the work on its own terms, he will remain in a world apart, and the ontological status – indeed, the very existence – of the work, not simply its values, will elude him.

146  Daniel Gustafsson A key assumption at work in Neill and Ridley’s paper is that Christian religious beliefs only pertain to what lies outside the work, to what is referenced or professed by the work, but not to anything as integral to the very existence of the work as to render the work itself inaccessible or unintelligible to a non-believer. The crucial point I want to make – and what Neill and Ridley do not sufficiently address – is this; that the beliefs to be found in the work are to a great extent beliefs about the work, about what kind of thing this work is. We should not be so preoccupied with what the artwork may have to say about theology, but rather what the theological picture says about the artwork – and thus in what manner it may be appropriate to engage with it. The problem is that the atheist does not acknowledge the Christian artwork’s ontological aspirations. He understands the work as something which may be used to project or profess certain beliefs, much like a sermon or a treatise does – but he does not think that there is anything about the work which demands a radically different kind of engagement. He certainly does not think that the work is capable of revealing the Christian God. This, however, happens to be the ambition of the work; and it has been justified theologically (in a variety of ways) since John Damascene’s defence of icons in the ninth century. Only if we are able to perceive the artwork in line with this assumption, can we be said to perceive the artwork as what it is. In short, since the Christian work is embedded, not just in another worldly practice, but in another conception of the world, any attempt to explain or access the work’s existence without acknowledging that ontological narrative will not satisfy either the Christian artist or the Christian audience. By the same reasoning, some art may seem to require an atheist response or else leave the viewer cold, if not uncomprehending. Many modern novels and films, as well as visual and conceptual artworks, not only bracket or bypass any preoccupation with religion but also characterise the world in line with more or less explicit ethical and ontological commitments to a godless universe. Scruton, similarly, accuses much modern art, deliberately defying or negating the beautiful, of trying to remake the world as if love has no place in it. Unlike Christian artworks, such works do not need a belief in God to yield all they have to offer; belief in God will not add anything to the experience of the work. On the contrary, such a belief may make a viewer less receptive to the particular meaning of the work and may also make the work seem shallow, flawed, or offensive. While the Christian, it may be supposed, should have no trouble grasping what kind of thing the atheist artwork is, he may yet be unable to fully grasp what the artwork offers; unwilling as he is to inhabit the kind of universe the artwork presupposes. David Jones, in his ‘Preface’ to The Anathemata, voices his apprehensions about the religious meanings of his work being unintelligible to a readership weaned off the traditions which he invokes; with the further

Atheist Aesthetics  147 implication that – if the requisite cultural contexts, and the requisite ­ iscernment, are missing – the work may fail to come into existence. Jones d writes: ‘It may be that the kind of thing I have been trying to make is no longer makeable in the kind of way in which I have tried to make it’ (1952: 15). He fears a condition in which the specifically Christian nature and meaning of his work will not be recognised. While these apprehensions rest on a clear understanding of the Christian artwork as culturally embedded, the Christian artist also works under a conception of the artwork as in a very real sense a sacramental work and object. Therefore, in failing – or indeed refusing – to engage with such a work in the requisite manner, we are not simply ­alienated from a cultural discourse and tradition but are indeed robbed of an opportunity to experience the presence and transformative power of God. Jones saw all human making of signs and significant forms as culminating in the Eucharist and the Mass: while for the icon-painters, every icon is an instantiation of spiritualised and redeemed matter, one part of a transfigured cosmos. This is the relevant context in which the Christian artwork begs to be apprehended, in which it yields its full significance, and in which our experience of it may truly be an invaluable one. And this is the context that the atheist does not acknowledge. He may acknowledge that there is a cultural context of Christianity, without having to commit to any beliefs, but he cannot acknowledge as true the ontological narrative that the Christian professes – and hence the atheist fails to gain access to the Christian artwork, fails to experience it as what it is. The experience of Christian art entails seeing the artwork as a whole in the light of a Christian ontological conception of the world and its objects; just as it involves seeing the beauty of the object as indeed partaking of the beauty of God. We should thus understand atheism in this case, not as a refusal to hold certain propositional statements as true, but rather as an unwillingness to undergo such an experience in which the demands made by the artwork entail a wholesale reorientation of desire and imagination, will, and vision. Ultimately, what is rejected by the atheist is not a certain point the Christian artwork is trying to make, as a kind of artistic complement to doctrinal formulation, but rather an invitation to enter into a Christian universe: where to see at all is to see in the light of God’s revelation, where to exist at all is to be in relation to God.

The Art of Metanoia ‘You must change your life’, wrote Rainer Maria Rilke (2011: 81). This call is given a yet more urgent and all-encompassing emphasis by Christian art. David Efird and I have argued elsewhere that coming to experience Christian art aright, as does coming to have Christian faith, involves an ‘epistemic transformation’. 2 I wish to say here that Christian art invites not only a refinement or reorientation of vision but also a renewed mode of

148  Daniel Gustafsson being. Indeed, these words of the Psalmist’s, the epitome of repentance and the hope of divine regeneration, may stand as the motto for all Christian art, as for all Christian experience: Create a clean heart in me, O God, And renew a right spirit within me. (Psalm 51:10) On the contrary, the attitude we may ascribe to a kind of atheist reader or observer (which more or less fits Neill and Ridley’s characterization), would say that nothing more is asked of me in engaging with Christian art than when I deal with art in general; that there is nothing about the work itself which asks of me that I revise my view of the world. In this refusal to change, the atheist becomes alienated from both the challenges and rewards of Christian art; of an art that offers experiences of divine transfiguration, on the condition that we too allow ourselves to be made new. For Christian art does not only aspire to reveal divine realities but also crucially invites an engagement in which reading (or viewing, or listening) is inseparable from repentance, metanoia, a change of heart, and apprehension understood as our endeavour to reform our lives in the light and likeness of God. What Pavel Florensky (1996) has called reverse perspective, characterizing the aesthetics and experience of the traditional icon, may thus be said to bear on the whole Christian artistic experience. William Blake’s use of mirrored writing makes for a pithy illustration of this. In these cases, we must alter the ways in which we physically handle the book and bodily apprehend the writing. A fine example is the 41st plate of Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion; here, both the meaning of the words and the mode of their appearance invite a change of perspective and life: Each Man is in his Spectre’s power Until the arrival of that hour. When his Humanity awake And cast his Spectre in the lake. (Blake 2000: 338) In the context of Blake’s work, these lines call for cleansing and renewal, the casting off of false perceptions and modes of being, and they accompany the process of conversion and restoration undergone by Albion. This is a process that we, as readers, are asked to emulate and participate in. This call to participation – rejected by the atheist – reverberates through the body of Christian art. Thus, Malcolm Guite (2012) identifies a vital and emblematic moment of the reversal of perspective in Seamus Heaney’s ‘The Rain-stick’. Here, like the so-called rain-stick itself, our position in the world, no less than our perceptions, is to be up-ended. Initially, as Guite observes, we the readers ‘are outside the instrument, holding and upending

Atheist Aesthetics  149 the dry stalk, listening for its music’, but ‘then suddenly it is we who are the pipe; we are being played’ (2012: 19). The moment of reversal is this: You stand there like a pipe Being played by water. (Heaney 2014: 61) This brings to mind, of course, T. S. Eliot’s famous moment of musical immersion in ‘The Dry Salvages’: ‘you are the music / While the music lasts’ (1944: 30). These words may be taken not only to evoke a state of deep psychological identification but also to articulate an altered mode of being. It is in such terms that C. A. Tsakiridou (2013) describes the role and reality of the chanter of the Cherubic Hymn during the Eastern Orthodox Liturgy; where the chanter becomes a living icon of what the hymn invokes. Here, writes Tsakiridou, ‘the chanter’s being a picture of the cherubim is inseparable from the chanting act itself. It is that act and what it (the act) makes present. As long as the chanting lasts, chanter, chant and cherubim are indistinguishable’ (2013: 71). Bach’s Mass, as a Christian work, is no more available to the atheist than is this sacred hymn. The atheist is unwilling, not only to undergo the kind of transformative experience here suggested but also to acknowledge its very possibility. Even as Neill and Ridley, as genuine lovers of music, are immersed in the music of Bach, they will deny – and so will shy away from – the most profound implications and possibilities of that experience. For the Christian, artwork demands our whole-hearted participation in the sacred and the sacramental; indeed, it invites us to become renewed as works of art and grace ourselves, as also in William Butler Yeats’ dream of becoming a golden bird in ‘Sailing to Byzantium’. The same, I hold, goes for the experience of beauty. Roger Scruton (2012) argues that beauty addresses and makes a claim upon us, and so engages our moral responsibilities no less than our aesthetic responses; we are called upon to treat the beautiful thing as an end in itself, not a mere means for our gratification. ‘What is revealed to me in the experience of beauty’, Scruton writes, ‘is a fundamental truth about being – the truth that being is a gift, and receiving it is a task’ (2012: 151–52). Crucially, for Scruton, beauty grants us apprehensions of the sacred and aids us in coming to a second-­personal relation with the world. It also grants us the opportunity to grow as persons and as stewards of being. Hence the grave implications of a dismissal of beauty’s disclosure. This can be supported and amplified by the Christian experience. The beautiful object, on a theological conception, asks that we alter and conform our own lives in response to its revelations: that we reorient our dispositions so as to grow beautiful in the beauty and likeness of God. ‘Thus’, writes David Bentley Hart, ‘to come to see the world as beauty is the moral education of desire, the redemption of vision’ (2003: 256).

150  Daniel Gustafsson It is all too easy to reject beauty, both on aesthetic and moralistic or r­ eligious grounds, if it is conceived as a largely subjective sensation of pleasure. Such a misconception lies at the heart of two classic essays on the nature of art, Clive Bell’s Art (1914) and Leo Tolstoy’s What Is Art? (1995). While the former rejects beauty for the sake of aesthetic purity, the latter does so with pretensions to religious purity. In their shared identification of beauty as, broadly construed, a lesser form of pleasure, these two works anticipate much of the contemporary disregard for beauty – whether for the sake of artistic autonomy or moral seriousness. It is all well and good to wish art away from the merely decorative, the picturesque, or the conventionally pleasing. But this is not beauty. For also beauty must be understood ontologically, as a manifestation of a transcendent and divine reality. ‘The Christian use of the word “beauty”’, writes Hart, ‘refers most properly to a relationship of donation and transfiguration, a handing over and return of the riches of being’ (2003: 18). The atheist rejects this understanding of beauty. Indeed, he rejects this very handing over of the riches of being; he does not act as its steward, and does not return it – as does the Christian artist and believer – in gratitude and creativity. 3 Atheism here, then, entails the refusal to undergo a certain kind of experience, to see the world in a certain way, and to be answerable to the claims of such a world. For the Christian, the experience of beauty is always the experience of the beauty of God: it is an experience for which the believer gives thanks, and in which he or she feels called upon to respond in such a way that befits a being called to grow in the divine likeness. This experience is completely different from that of the non-believer, precisely because of the underlying ontological assumptions. If it may seem that Christian art may only be fully experienced by those already confirmed as believers, it is crucial to stress that the experience of Christian art also can be – and partly has the ambition to be – a ‘way in’ for persons previously outside the community of believers. Christian art, that is, possesses great potential to inspire and engender conversions. Such a process of metanoia, arguably, entails the commencement of a second-­person relation to God. We may find ourselves, in the course of our experience of Christian art, moving from an observer’s third-person vantage point to a recognition of being addressed directly, and invited to respond in kind; as may happen when, for example, reading the Bible – and suddenly feeling Christ’s words directed, with startling precision, to me (and no longer to an historical or hypothetical reader).4 Something similar occurs in the recognition that beauty is not simply there to dazzle or please, but indeed makes a claim upon me, the observer, in ways that engages me – and makes me answerable – as a moral and spiritual agent; indeed, I discover that beauty asks to be apprehended in a posture of love. The experience of Christian art, and the experience of beauty (in the Christian artwork or elsewhere), may thus act as a kind of initiation into the faith: it may give first-hand,

Atheist Aesthetics  151 second-personal knowledge of what faith is and is like. Christian artworks both inspire and reward belief, by inviting a loving second-person response that relies on seeing the artwork as a sacramental object and an occasion for a transformative communion with God. A believer before a beautiful Christian artwork accepts a reciprocity between himself and the work. Not only when coming face to face with an icon but also when reading the poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins or partaking of Bach’s Mass, the Christian accepts that he stands before the eyes of God. Atheism, on the contrary, can be seen to consist precisely in the rejection of a second-person relation with God. And one who does not acknowledge the work’s invitation to a mutually enriching and transformative dialogue – one who does not feel answerable to the work, or to God, and who is not willing to change his life in responsiveness to the work’s meanings – does not really experience the work at all as what it is.

The Rejection of Love The Christian artwork offers a religious experience. It is crucial that the artwork is taken to manifest God, not just to serve as a series of propositional statements or arguments. As David Efird and I have argued, the essential indexical for Christian art is ‘you’. This is something we see explicitly in religious poetry, from Ephrem the Syrian, through Symeon the New Theologian and John of the Cross, to R. S. Thomas. The second-­ personal and dialogic is also essential to our encounter with icons; and it is in some manner, I believe, the mode of engagement with all Christian art, from the music of Bach to the novels of Dostoevsky. It is also essential to theology, understood as the second-person knowledge of God (and not as knowledge about God), that truth is unattainable without love. As Ephrem the Syrian writes, Truth and love are wings that cannot be separated, for Truth without Love is unable to fly, so too Love without Truth is unable to soar up: their yoke is one of harmony. (Brock 1992: 45) A crucial way of understanding the second-person relation is to stress that this relation entails not just seeing, but also being seen by another; not just addressing, but also being addressed by another. This pertains to both Christian theology and art. Thus, Christos Yannaras argues that, [our] knowledge of God does not refer to the realm of our objective enquiries. It refers to our inward, personal discovery and certainty that God’s erotic ecstasy (the gift of life) is directed exclusively towards us,

152  Daniel Gustafsson that we are known and loved by God and consequently all we have to do is to respond positively to this erotic invitation, with the aim of ‘knowing’ the Person of our Bridegroom and Lover. (2007: 67–68) It is this ‘erotic invitation’ of God’s that Christian artworks aim to reveal and re-issue in new ways. Indeed, insofar as the Christian artwork has theological ambitions, to disclose things real and true of God, it needs to offer itself as an object of love; it needs to invite, occasion and engender the cultivation of love for God, and to offer – through its forms, its beauty, and its sacramental nature – an experience of God’s love. On the Christian model, beauty is divine; as Yannaras writes, it ‘shows beings to be the products and principles of the divine creative presence’ (ibid.: 82). Crucially, beauty also quickens our erotic energies, our self-transcending drive and longing for communion with others, with other objective goods, and ultimately with God. The tragedy, as Yannaras observes, is that all too often the self-centred individual ‘receives the call of beauty as an invitation to seek its own pleasure [instead of] a fulfilling c­ ommunion and relation with the world’s personal principle or logos’ (ibid.: 83). The real tragedy is that beauty’s invitation is all too often left unanswered. The atheist, certainly, cannot but reject the suggestion that beauty comes from and leads us to God. Recalling David Jones’ apprehensions about the intelligibility of his art, I believe it justified in our contemporary conditions to feel similarly about beauty; for, to the delight of its detractors, it has come to mean something far less than it can, and the commonplace association of beauty with sugary pleasure and physical attractiveness bars us from its real importance. Indeed, labouring under such a veil of misconceptions, many (like the atheist) do not see beauty at all as what it really is. Hence, not only the cultivation of desire but also a conceptual revision and linguistic re-education are necessary for a right responsiveness to beauty’s call and bestowal. Much is at stake here, not least for Christian art. For, as Yannaras argues, similarly to Scruton, it is though our proper reception of beauty that ‘the world, from being an object of the senses, an objective “phenomenon” and subjective impression, is transformed into the second term of a personal relationship’ (ibid.: 86). Thus suffused, as it were, with the personality of God, we may see why the beautiful Christian artwork should ultimately be engaged with as an object of love. St Ephrem’s work is, again, illuminating here. God gives and reveals himself to him who approaches in the openness and readiness of love. Thus, Ephrem writes, Your fountain, Lord, is hidden from the person who does not thirst for You; Your treasury seems empty to the person who rejects You. Love is the treasurer of Your heavenly treasure store.
 (Brock 1992: 44)

Atheist Aesthetics  153 What is granted to the Christian believer is a new mode of vision; a mode of vision like what William Blake means by Imagination: A seeing in the light of Christ, which allows us to see the divine image in all things, and all things in relation to God. The restoration of right vision, therefore, is also the restoration of a right relationship. This follows also from the fact that what we are enjoined to see, and to love, is personal. Blake is adamant that as we exercise our imagination, we are not just seeing Christ but indeed seeing with and in Christ, thus by a labour of perception becoming members of his Body. Indeed, ‘the Imagination’, for Blake, is nothing less than ‘the Divine Body of the Lord Jesus’ (2000: 302). For Blake, then, as for all Christians, the aim is union with God; a consummate second-­person experience in which ‘I am in you and you in me, mutual in love divine’ (ibid.: 301). The Christian artwork needs this kind of seeing to fully come into existence as what it is; a right apprehension of the Christian artwork is dependent, at least, upon our effort at such a relation. Blake’s Jerusalem finds its consummation not only in Albion’s reunion with Jerusalem but also in his encounter with Jesus Christ. The work culminates, thus, with a loving communion between man and the personal God, in which Jesus directly affirms the reality of mutual, self-forsaking love at the heart of the divine life and of God’s dealings with men. Blake’s work at this point is a triumph, not only of Christian art but also of Christian theology; it envisions our inspired and enraptured communion in eternity as an infinite creative life of imagination and mutual delight. It is the aim of Christian art of offering intimations and manifestations of such a state. The invitation to us, as readers or viewers, is to follow Albion’s example. It is an invitation that the atheist is unwilling to respond to, a communion he is unwilling to realise. The God that Christian artists and believers profess is the God who, in Blake’s work, addresses us thus: ‘I am not a God afar off, I am a brother and friend; / Within your bosoms I reside, and you reside in me’ (ibid.: 301). This is not, however, how the atheist chooses to conceive of the deity he rejects; indeed, he will rather direct his ire and incredulity at a straw-man mishmash of some Old Testament despot and the distant god of the ­philosophers – part impersonal absolute, part calculating Utilitarian. Emblematic is Ivan Karamazov’s rejection of such a deity; not so much a matter of disbelief in God as of a defiant refusal to comply with his terms. It is such a god that R. S. Thomas evokes in his harrowing poem ‘The Island’, an audacious exercise in negative theology: And God said, I will build a church here And cause this people to worship me, And afflict them with poverty and sickness In return for centuries of hard work And patience. (1993: 223)

154  Daniel Gustafsson What Thomas shows here, as elsewhere in his poetry, is that God cannot be contained in either our defences or our denials. Just as our professions may but inadequately evoke the nature and glory of God, so our rejections – not rarely leavened by bitterness or indignation – are bound to be wide off the mark. The atheist, that is, is likely to be labouring under a severely limited conception of what and who God is. Christian art may aid him in revising his notion of God, but for this to be possible he must be open precisely to those transformative experiences that he most vehemently denies. He must be open to love.

Conclusion It is not that the atheist does not see what the Christian artwork depicts. Nor is it only that he cannot fully understand what the work means. It is rather that – in no small part because he differently conceives what kind of world the world is, and what kind of creature he himself is – that he misconceives the kind of thing the artwork is. The icon, paradigmatically, not only represents a transfigured human being but also addresses itself to a human being created in the divine image and called to attain the likeness of God. Someone who does not answer to that description, who does not recognise that call and invitation, will not only fail to fully grasp what the icon is trying to tell him but will also fail to properly apprehend what kind of thing the icon is. We may say that the rejection of Christian art and beauty is really more devastating than the atheist can hope for. For what is refuted is not just a cultural or doctrinal object, where the believer may learn about and confirm the contents of his faith, but the source and occasion for a real religious experience; a sacramental object where God may be encountered. What we are deprived of when beauty is dismissed is not simply an occasion for pleasure or even contemplation, but a manifestation of God’s glory, and so a unique occasion for reverence and love. Without a loving second-personal approach the Christian artwork will elude us. The most serious charge I would level at the atheist aesthetic, therefore, is that it fails to see the Christian artwork and the beautiful object as objects of love. This is not simply an aesthetic, but an ontological failing; for in failing to observe what I take to be the first and final ambition of Christian art, the atheist fails to apprehend the Christian artwork as what it is. If we listen to Bach, or stand face to face with the frescos of Fra Angelico, and forego the occasion to love and to learn to love deeper, we do not only fail those works but also – on the Christian conception – fail ourselves, as beings called to transformative communion with God. Therefore, if the atheist wanted to really deliver a blow to theistic conceptions and religious practice, Christian art is as good a target as any. For any destruction of a Christian artwork strikes at the heart of the Christian imagination and truly constitutes a wound to Christianity at large. At the

Atheist Aesthetics  155 same time, if Christians are looking for occasions to encounter God, for ways of transfiguring the world, and for ways of manifesting their faith in the face of an increasingly pervasive secularism, the practice and appreciation of Christian art is as fruitful a pursuit as any. Through art and beauty, the Christian may shape and inhabit the world in ways that elude the atheist; he or she may also, at rare but priceless moments, aid the atheist in undergoing a change of heart and perception, allowing godless ears to apprehend the music of the sacred, allowing previously godless persons to respond to a divine invitation.

Notes 1 Though much contemporary art practice, aesthetics, and critical theory tell us that art does not have to be beautiful, the Christian artist will rather affirm Nikolai Berdyaev’s claim that ‘[t]here can be no art without an impulse to beauty’ (2009: 238). 2 In our paper, ‘Experiencing Christian Art’ (2015), David Efird and I engage with Frank Jackson and Eleonore Stump to emphasise the importance of both first-hand and second-person knowledge in Christian art and religious experience. The example of Blake, a personal favourite, is invoked for similar ­purposes in that paper as in this one. 3 For a fuller treatment of the issue, see Daniel Gustafsson, ‘The Beauty of Christian Art’ (2012). While far from constituting my final thoughts on the matter, this paper contains arguments fundamental to my aesthetic and ­theological conception of beauty. 4 Malcolm Guite makes a similar observation in his recent study of Coleridge’s ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’, noting the multi-layered implications – for reader and wedding guest alike – of the listener’s question to the mariner at the inception of his tale: ‘wherefore stopp’st thou me?’ (Guite 2017: 143). Crucially, Guite also reads Coleridge’s poem as one of metanoia; and, in line with my arguments, he suggests that the mariner’s tale may (perhaps even should) lead also the reader ‘to a place of redemption and renewal’ (ibid.: 217).

References Bell, C., Art (London: Chatto and Windus, 1914). Berdyaev, N., The Meaning of the Creative Act, translated by Donald A. Lowrie (San Rafael: Semantron Press, 2009). Blake, W., The Complete Illuminated Books (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2000). Brock, S., The Luminous Eye: The Spiritual World Vision of Saint Ephrem the Syrian (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1992). Efird, D., and D. Gustafsson, ‘Experiencing Christian Art’, Religious Studies 51/3 (2015): 431–39. Eliot, T. S., Four Quartets (London: Faber and Faber, 1944). Florensky, P., Iconostasis (New York: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1996). Guite, M., Faith, Hope and Poetry (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012). Guite, M., Mariner (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2017). Gustafsson, D., ‘The Beauty of Christian Art’, Forum Philosophicum 17/2 (2012): 175–96.

156  Daniel Gustafsson Hart, D. B., The Beauty of the Infinite (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003). Heaney, S., New Selected Poems 1988-2013 (London: Faber & Faber, 2014). Jones, D., The Anathemata (London: Faber & Faber, 1952). Lamarque, P., Work & Object (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). Neill, A and A. Ridley, ‘Religious Music for Godless Ears’, Mind 119/476 (2010), 999–1023. Rilke, R. M., Selected Poems, translated by Susan Ralson and Marielle Sutherland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). Scruton, R., The Face of God (London: Continuum, 2012). Thomas, R. S. Collected Poems (London: Phoenix, 1993). Tolstoy, L., What Is Art?, translated by Richard Pevear (London: Penguin Classics, 1995). Tsakiridou, C. A., Icons in Time, Persons in Eternity (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013). Williams, R., Grace and Necessity (London: Continuum, 2010). Yannaras, C., Person and Eros, translated by Norman Russell (Brookline: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2007).

9 Belief, Unbelief and Mystery Karen Kilby

This chapter operates on two levels – as an exploration of a question, and as the recommendation of attention to a figure. The question is this: against the backdrop of its own diminishment, how should the church understand the difference between belief and unbelief and so understand itself and its difference from the surrounding culture? The thinker to be commended is Karl Rahner (1904–1984): I want to propose that we can usefully – and freshly – think about such issues through an engagement with Rahner. Nearly every component of the previous paragraph may raise doubts. Should one really speak of a diminishment of the church? In many parts of the world Christianity is thriving, and in some of its expressions even in this part of the world it is flourishing. Secondly, even if one accepts that some expressions of the church in our time are diminishing, it is not clear whether this has any significance for a theologian. What relevance can the s­ ociological fact of getting smaller have to a theological reflection on anything ­whatsoever, including the relation of belief to unbelief? Theology is not, surely, a matter of statistics. And thirdly, Rahner. Hasn’t he been digested, dated and dismissed? Everyone knows, surely, what is wrong with his theory of anonymous Christianity. Indeed, a task many theologians ­routinely give their undergraduate students is to sniff out the patronizing  arrogance lying behind the apparent liberality of this ‘­inclusivist’ position. I will return to the notion of diminishment below, but I want to begin with a few comments about the reception of Rahner. The identification of Rahner’s theology with the theory of anonymous Christianity is a mistake, in my view, as is the identification of this theory with ‘inclusivism’. That these are mistakes will be argued in Section II of this essay. But there is another question, as to how the mistakes came to be made, or rather how these particular mistakes became so pervasive. Part of the answer, I want to propose, lies in the dynamics of ecumenical engagement – Anglican and Protestant engagement, in particular – with twentieth-century Roman Catholic theology. Ecumenical engagement, it is widely agreed, is to be admired: the young scholar makes a choice to invest time and effort in developing a

DOI: 10.4324/9781315142395-10

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158  Karen Kilby sympathetic understanding of the thought of another tradition. The hope is to be enriched from the other, and to do one’s bit for the cause of ecclesial ­rapprochement. It is, fundamentally, a generous impulse: we know this, and so we see ecumenical engagement as valuable and praiseworthy. What is easier to miss, however, are some of the possible political consequences – consequences for the other’s tradition, the tradition one is studying – of such an exercise in generosity. If I determine I want to learn from another tradition, I have to decide to which voice or voices within it I will listen, which voices represent the other tradition most fully or authentically. For I will not have time to grapple with the whole range of what is available – after all, it is not my tradition. What then shapes the decision to engage with one portion rather than another of the target tradition? Most obviously, a young scholar will be likely to opt for someone they have heard about, someone that the important people in their own world are already talking about. So, first of all, there is likely to be a clustering effect. Beyond this, there may be an inclination to choose that which seems most exotic, most different from what I am used to, but which also, perhaps, conforms to a pre-existing sense I might have of the ‘otherness’ of the other. In this case, furthermore, ecumenical generosity will mean that in the vicinity of anything I associate with the ‘otherness’ of the other, I should be slow to criticise. In the context of Protestant and Anglican engagements with ­twentiethcentury Roman Catholic thought, more concretely, there has tended, after some initially broader reconnaissance missions, to be a clustering around Henri de Lubac and especially Hans Urs von Balthasar, and a move away from any real engagement with Rahner. And I think there has been a sense that if one approaches a Catholic figure in a spirit of ecumenical generosity, there are dimensions of their thought about which one deliberately refrains from critique, or at least to which one significantly softens one’s critical response – dimensions around, for instance, gender, sexuality and authority. What is the point of trying to be ecumenically engaged if one is just going to make a fuss about what everyone already knew in advance was different about Catholics? So, figures associated with the journal Communio, and particularly Balthasar, have been embraced with some enthusiasm by ecumenically generous Protestants and Anglicans in spite of attitudes towards authority and gender; and this has happened during roughly the same period that such figures have been embraced and promoted by ecclesially conservative elements within Catholicism at least in part because of their attitudes towards authority and gender. The combined effect of these two forces – that of ecclesially conservative Catholics and ecumenically generous non-Catholics – has been to give the impression in many circles that the exciting, deep and distinctive thing available in the Catholic theology of the last century or so is to be found in Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Communio theologians and that Rahner turns out to have been a passing fad.

Belief, Unbelief and Mystery  159 It is because of this sense of something out of balance – this sense that a misleading theological stereotype has held too many in its grip for too long – that I am hoping to reopen the question of Rahner. The argument that follows falls into three parts. I will, first of all, take Rahner’s The Shape of the Church to Come (1974a) as a jumping off point for thinking about the context of ecclesial diminishment, and the appropriate response to it on the part of believers. This first section is not then directly about the relation of belief to unbelief, but about the context within which we think about this relation. In a second section, I will consider the notorious concept of the anonymous Christian. It has been read through a distorting lens and has also itself become a distorting lens through which to read Rahner’s theology, but it does nevertheless represent one element in Rahner’s thinking around belief and unbelief, one proposal in this area that, I will suggest, is at least partly helpful. In the final section, I will turn to an essay which is much closer to the heart of Rahner’s theology, ‘The Concept of Mystery in Catholic Theology’ (Rahner 1974b: 36–73).1 This is an essay which exhibits the profoundly apophatic cast of Rahner’s thought together with his instinct to seek the unity and simplicity of the faith. The question I want to begin to explore is what these things mean – the apophaticism, the search for simplicity – about the difference between belief and unbelief. If we focus on the very heart of the Christian faith, and at this heart, we find mystery, what must we conclude about the relation between belief and unbelief? Has the difference been collapsed? Must we therefore turn away from such an apophatic theological approach?

1 The Shape of the Church to Come (1974a) was first published in 1972, and written in the context of, and for the sake of, a Synod of the German church which ran from 1971 to 1975. 2 This is by no means Rahner’s most serious work of theology: it is composed of a series of short, sketchy chapters and tosses off analyses, proposals and criticisms at great speed. 3 Its goal is to propose something like a unifying vision to this particular Synod, a vision both of where the Catholic Church in Germany currently is, and of where it should try to go.4 The German Synod took place, of course, in the wake of the Second Vatican Council, the final session of which had come to a close just six years earlier. Rahner’s stance towards Vatican II is interesting. In our own times, the Council, whether as event, or as set of documents, or both, has taken on the status of the central item to be interpreted and fought over in Catholic circles; it is that to which one goes back and claims in one way or another for one’s own or for one’s party. There is no sign of this, however, in Rahner in the early 70s. He grants that the Council was an important thing, which ‘ought not to be depreciated either from the Right or from the Left’ (1974a: 13), but it was just too general to be of much use – or at least, of much use as

160  Karen Kilby the German Church considered its concrete future. Furthermore, much of Vatican II, Rahner wrote in 1972, was already dated.5 While he is keen that the Church should avoid ‘a very dubious conservatism, which is becoming virulent as the euphoria of Vatican II is fading’ (1974a: 27), his proposed alternative is not that it wrap itself up in the mantle of the Council, but instead that it try to take a serious look at the reality in which it finds itself and make genuine decisions about how to respond.6 What is that reality? The Church in Germany, Rahner suggests, is at the start of a period of transition, the transition from a ‘Volkskirche’, a church ‘sustained by a homogeneously Christian society and almost identical with it’ (1974a: 24) to something much smaller, a Church formed of individuals who have taken an explicit decision of faith against the grain of the wider culture. During the period of transition, both kinds of church will exist alongside one another – the church will be a church of ‘non-simultaneity’. The leadership of the Church has a choice, then, either to see the change that is coming about, and really grapple with it, or to continue tending to the ‘remnants’ of Volkskirche, ‘resisting decisions in favour of the future until they are extorted from it, running groaning behind developments instead of leading’ (1974a: 50). I will not attempt, within the confines of this essay, to give a full summary of Rahner’s description of the state of the church, and of his proposals for a vision of its future. There are passages within the text which allow glimpses into the particular political dynamics at the moment of writing,7 and others which, from the perspective of more than half a century on, can seem striking in their predictive power. An example of the latter is Rahner’s account of the coming diminishment of the German Catholic Church, a diminishment both in the number of practicing Catholics and in the number of those who are nominal church members. Of the latter group he writes, for instance: However unpleasant it may be, we must allow for the fact that social conditions in the long or short run may be so transformed (whatever the cause of this may be) that civic respectability and normality will no longer require a person to be a baptised Christian, to pay churchtax, or send his children to denominational religious instruction, to add a religious touch to marriages and funerals, that it will soon be no longer socially out of place or damaging to withdraw officially from the Church. (Rahner 1974a: 30–31) The change he thinks is coming need not be driven by anything dramatic, by any ‘striking political upheavals’, for in our modern society there are plenty of causes leading slowly and unobtrusively to such a situation, so that only a single occasion—perhaps

Belief, Unbelief and Mystery  161 insignificant in itself—is necessary to let loose a rapid and numerically very great falling away from the Church. (Rahner 1974a: 31) Rahner is not here precisely forecasting the sex abuse crisis, but he does seem to anticipate that an unpredictable event would play something very like the role in the Church’s on-going loss of power, prestige and respectability that it has played.8 In any case, what I find the most striking in Rahner is not the accuracy of his prediction of a diminishment to come, but the calmness with which he makes the prediction. There is no sense of handwringing. There is no anxiety to apportion blame – on failures in church strategy, or the evils of modernity, or anywhere else. Even more striking, there is no proposal of a strategy to ward off the coming diminishment – no suggesting that if only we get our theology right, or our liturgy, or our approach to mission, we’ll be in a position to stop and reverse the slippage. There is an acceptance that things happen for reasons which at least in part are much larger than anything the Church can control. There are things he thinks the Church should do differently because of the situation, ways it can aim to fulfil its mission more fully within it, but the recommendations are not predicated on supposing the situation itself can be prevented or reversed. It follows from what Rahner lays out – even if this is not something he himself develops as much as he might – that one entirely appropriate, entirely reasonable, response to the situation he describes in Germany – and by extension, we might say, in much of Europe – is sadness. Something is in decline; something is being lost. Not everywhere in the world, of course. And even in Europe, it may not be in all its forms that Christianity has been in diminishment. Indeed, even where churches are numerically in diminishment, even in the Roman Catholicism and the older Protestant traditions of the West, there are also signs of vitality, of new life. Nevertheless, in a fairly short period of time there has been – and continues to be – a very major decline. This means that there will be many in this generation and in generations to come, for whom Christianity will not be a live option, while it would have been, had they been born a generation or two earlier. There will be things the churches as a result cannot do, contributions they cannot make, positive influence they cannot have and creative possibilities they will not fulfil. That a proper response to church decline – or even one dimension of a proper response – might be sadness and a sense of loss is not often articulated by theologians. Attention is usually focused in one of two other directions. One possibility is to offer a diagnosis of what has gone wrong, and a cure: the problem lies in the wrong path taken at the time of Kant or Schleiermacher or Duns Scotus or some other figure, or maybe the problem lies in the fact that Church and theology have not kept up with changes in the culture around us; the cure will be a retrieval of a way of thought that

162  Karen Kilby preceded Scotus or Kant or Schleiermacher or someone else, or else it lies in being a bit smarter in keeping up with shifts in the world. The other familiar theological response is to embrace the decline as fundamentally, actually, a good thing. It is not loss at all, but gain. The Church is finally escaping its long captivity to Constantinianism, finally becoming free to be itself more fully and truly. We should not be seeking power, influence and prestige anyways; losing it is a blessing, which frees us to offer a more faithful witness. Some narratives of decline are interesting, and the work of retrieval is valuable. But to suppose that if only we get our theology right, all shall be well and historic ecclesial declines will be reversed, seems to put ourselves, as theologians, too decisively at the centre of the story. And again, however, significant the critique of Constantinianism, this is not enough to make church decline into a story of pure gain. Some of what we had may not have been so good as we thought it was; the Churches may have been compromised and corrupted by their alignment with establishment and political power; but from this, I don’t think we are entitled to conclude that what has been and is being lost is only the corruption and collusion, that which needed to be purged. But is it not a tenet of Christian faith that the Holy Spirit is at work in the Church, that the Spirit will not abandon the Church? And what about the role of Providence? And what about hope? None of these commitments, I’d like to suggest – to the role of the Spirit in the Church, to the role of providence, to hope – rule out the possibility of losses which are genuine loss, and over which it is possible to mourn. When a person dies, it may be that it is their fault – they smoked and ate too much and exercised too little; and it may be that they have accomplished all they could in life, fulfilled their potential and given all they had to give. But neither of these things is necessarily the case: a person may die through no fault of their own, and a person may die while still in their prime, vocation unfulfilled. By analogy, I think, we should be able to say that something in the Church – some version of church, some dynamism, some institutional presence – can come to an end, or be severely diminished, through no fault of its own (or not only through its own fault), but at least in part because of larger forces beyond its control; and this may happen even if there was something good and valuable and necessary in this expression of the church. The fact that it can diminish and die shouldn’t be taken as proof that it never was worthwhile, or that it is no longer needed. It may be proof of nothing more than that there are broader social causes ‘leading slowly and unobtrusively’ in a certain direction. Mourning, sadness and loss: none of these can be the last word in Christian theology. But without acknowledging that a loss really is a loss, that diminishment is not, in itself, a good, we may distort our capacity to think well. Without some recognition that these words capture something of the church’s situation now, even if we don’t believe they capture

Belief, Unbelief and Mystery  163 its very deepest truth or its final meaning – without this, there is a danger that an anxious nostalgia or a pugnacious self-assertion shapes our thought in ­general, and especially our thought about the relationship of belief to unbelief.

2 Rahner’s famous theory of ‘the anonymous Christian’ has an obvious ­bearing on the question of the relation of belief to unbelief, and it is also related to the side-lining and dismissal of Rahner as a theologian from whom our own generation can learn. For both these reasons it is worth considering, at least briefly, here.9 It is important to be clear that the theory of the anonymous Christian is not the telos of Rahner’s oeuvre, that towards which the theology more broadly is directed. It is a phrase mentioned here and there in his writings, and to which a couple of relatively slender articles are devoted. There are links, of course, between the theory and some of the broader, central themes in his theology, but the ‘anonymous Christian’ notion is neither the lynchpin nor the culmination of his thought. Stephen Bullivant has done illuminating work tracing the history of the usage of this particular term in mid-twentieth-century Catholic circles (Bullivant 2012). Rahner first began to use the phrase, incidentally and in passing, in 1960 and 1961. What solidified it for him, turning it into a topic for consideration in its own right, was a book by Anita Röper entitled The Anonymous Christian (1963). His own most famous (9-page) article on the theme, then, in Theological Investigations 6 (Rahner 1974d), was a revised version of his radio review of her book (Bullivant 2012: 86). Meanwhile, both the phrase itself and a set of very similar ideas were swirling around among a range of Catholic thinkers of the time. Bullivant makes this point elegantly: it is true that the critics of the idea of anonymous Christianity are ‘a “Who’s Who” of Catholic theology’ – Yves Congar, Henri de Lubac, Edward Schillebeeckx, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Hans Küng, Joseph Ratzinger – but it is also the case that every one of these critics had, ‘at one time or another, affirmed the existence of an “implicit,” “anonymous,” “unconscious,” “secret,” or “hidden” faith as the means by which conscious non-Christians can be saved’ (Bullivant 2010: 339, 341).10 Schillebeeckx in fact, Bullivant argues, arrived at the precise phrase ‘­anonymous Christians’ independently of Rahner and may well have been the first to coin it. What caused the idea to become associated with Rahner in particular and repudiated by all the others? It was, Bullivant argues, Hans Urs von Balthasar’s, Cordula oder der Ernstfall (1966), a work which is a potent – and manifestly successful – mix of theology, polemic and satire.11 Balthasar both singled out the theory of anonymous Christianity for particular scorn

164  Karen Kilby and attached it firmly to Rahner. Before then, it had been an idea that was in the air, widely subscribed to in one form or another, attributed to Rahner and Schillebeeckx equally, if attributed to anyone in particular. After Cordula, it belonged to Rahner alone and was repudiated by all the others, Schillebeeckx included. If Balthasar was a key agent, on the scene of European Catholicism, in pinning the idea of anonymous Christianity onto Rahner, Alan Race was a key agent, in the context of Anglophone theology, in identifying Rahner with anonymous Christianity (Race 1983). Rahner is presented as a paradigmatic ‘inclusivist’ within the exclusivism/inclusivism/ pluralism typology introduced by Race. This typology has been highly successful. Indeed, it is such an extraordinarily enticing framework that even those who think it has been debunked tend to continue to use it in teaching. There are two reasons why ‘inclusivism’ is not a good category within which to place Rahner. One is that, as Gavin D’Costa’s work makes clear, inclusivism is not a good category for anyone. Rahner is actually an exclusivist, according to D’Costa, as is everyone from the Dalai Lama to John Hick (D’Costa 2000: 91). The other, and perhaps more important, reason ‘inclusivism’ is a misleading category is that it creates the impression that Rahner’s purpose in doing theology is to make a contribution to the theology of religions, and so frames his work in a highly misleading way. Rahner had central concerns in the theology of grace, in theological anthropology, in Christology, in ecclesiology, in the doctrine of the Trinity and so on, but he was not any sort of specialist in the theology of religions, nor did he take his starting point from its questions. It is true that where he ends up in the theory of the anonymous Christian has implications for what can be said and thought by Christians about adherents of non-Christian religions, but this is, once again, closer to a side effect of his theology than its focus or goal.12 It is no more true of Rahner’s theology, then, to read it primarily through the category of inclusivism than it would be true to Karl Barth’s to read it primarily through the category of exclusivism. Or, to change the point of comparison, just as Thomas Aquinas, for those who encounter him through the study of philosophy of religion, becomes over-identified with the Five Ways, so Rahner, for those who encounter him through the study of the theology of religions, becomes over-identified with the theory of the anonymous Christian. Nevertheless, for the purposes of this essay – for the purpose of addressing the relation of belief to unbelief – it does make sense to think at least a little with and about this theory. I mentioned above Rahner’s capacity calmly to accept the fact of the Church’s diminishment. Is this belied by the theory of the anonymous Christian? Does the latter amount to an attempt to wish away the church’s numerical losses, to do away with them, in fact, at the stroke of a pen? The Church is not shrinking at all, it turns out, if Rahner is right – we

Belief, Unbelief and Mystery  165 suddenly have grounds to announce that it is, to the contrary, bigger than ever before  – or at least, than ever before supposed. Is there a kind of ­triumphalism, then, to the notion of anonymous Christianity? I think the theory can indeed be read as a response to the church’s diminishment, but not in a triumphalist manner. It is not a matter of finding a clever and duplicitous way to claim strength for one’s position in the opinion polls, to persuade oneself and one’s opponents that one is really, after all, winning. It is however an attempt to articulate how Christians themselves can live in a context where they find themselves increasingly in a minority, how they can live in this context without panic or despair, without a sense of embattlement, without developing a sectarian outlook – how they can remain confident in God’s grace and its power even as they see the society around them drift away from Christian commitment. Though my neighbours, my friends and my children profess a different view of things, I do not have to suppose a huge gulf has opened up between me and them, that at the deepest level, where it matters most, we stand in a drastically different relationship to the love of God. The theory of anonymous Christianity is one way, then, of affirming a solidarity, in spite of apparent dramatic difference, between believer and unbeliever – of affirming that unbelief need not be as far from belief as it can seem.13 As a theological proposal, I do not want to suggest that this is derived from the context of ecclesial diminishment, but the context does have some role in prompting attention to the underlying issue. And as a theological proposal, I do not want to suggest that it is without fault – if nothing else, the use of the term ‘anonymous’ seems clearly unfortunate – but it needs to be seen as expressing one element in Rahner’s theological reflection on the relation of belief to unbelief, rather than the very core of his intellectual project.

3 So far, in the course of attempting to recommend Rahner as someone with whom to think, I have introduced one book which is sketchy, impressionistic and popular and one theme from which, I have suggested, Rahner needs a degree of rescuing.14 It seems appropriate to conclude, then, with something a little more intellectually and theologically weighty – even if, in this short essay, my own treatment of it will be sketchy. ‘The Concept of Mystery in Catholic Theology’ (Rahner 1974b: 36–73) is one of the richest, and by turns most dense and most beautiful, of Rahner’s essays. It is something of a tour de force, weaving together, in the space of 40 pages, a critical account of the rationalism of the dominant neo-­scholasticism of the period, a presentation of Rahner’s own theological anthropology, including his understanding of the circumincession of love and knowledge, an invocation of the tradition of mystical theology, an understanding of grace, Incarnation, beatific vision and the Trinity – offering a

166  Karen Kilby vision in fact of the ordering of the whole of theology, and its relationship to philosophy. There is a certain irony to the essay as well, though, because the dense and sophisticated presentation turns out to be all in aid of showing (as Rahner already indicates that he wants to do in a pastorally focused introduction) that, in the end, the Christian faith is something very simple. And it is in relation to this simple thing, with which the essay concludes, that we may want to ask, what might be the implications for the relation of belief to unbelief? Rahner begins this essay with an account of the average, standard Catholic understanding of mystery at the time of writing, ‘the notion of mystery understood in the schools’ (1974b: 38). He highlights three features of this understanding: first, that mystery is understood as a property of a statement, a proposition; secondly, that mystery is plural – there are a number of mysterious truths; and thirdly, that mystery is provisional. Feeding into all these is the presupposition that mystery is understood by contrast to ratio, and in particular by contrast to a conception of reason derived ‘from the ideal of modern science’ (1974b: 40). Mysteries, on this understanding, are truths which ‘cannot for the moment be raised to the level of perspicuous insight which is proper to the ratio’, but it seems to be presumed, these truths ‘will be clarified later on and so finally be adequate to the demands made by human reason for insight and perspicuousness’ (1974b: 40). Rahner proposes by contrast the possibility of a more positive, a more unified and a less rationalistic conception of mystery. In particular, he reverses the relationship of ratio to mystery: mystery is not a deficiency in the rational perspicacity of something, a provisional imperfection in its knowability – instead, it is the ‘preoccupation with the seemingly known and perspicuous [which] proves to be the provisional’ (1974b: 41).15 He invites us to consider the possibility that ‘we must take mystery not as the provisional but as the primordial and permanent’. Readers will accept, he presumes, that God remains mysterious in the beatific vision,16 and they should think about what this means: God remains incomprehensible, and the object of vision is precisely this incomprehensibility, which we may not therefore think of as a sort of regrettably permanent limitation of our blessed comprehension of God. It must rather be thought of as the very substance of our vision and the very object of our blissful love. In other words, if God is directly seen as the infinite and incomprehensible, and if the visio beatifica must then be the permanent presence of the inexpressible…vision must mean grasping and being grasped by the mystery, and the supreme act of knowledge is not the abolition or diminution of the mystery but its final assertion, its eternal and total immediacy. (Rahner 1974b: 41)

Belief, Unbelief and Mystery  167 ‘The Concept of Mystery in Catholic Theology’ is divided into three lectures, of which the second is an unfolding of the central themes of Rahner’s theological anthropology in relation to the concept of mystery. We are by our nature so constituted, Rahner believes, that a condition of the possibility of all our knowing and willing is a transcendence towards absolute being and God; the finite can only be known and willed against the backdrop of an infinite horizon. But this horizon, the infinity towards which we are always oriented in our relation to the finite, cannot be pinned down and described: The horizon cannot be comprised within the horizon…. The ultimate measure cannot be measured; the boundary which limits all things cannot itself be bounded by a still more distant limit. The infinite and immense which comprises and can comprise all things, because it exists only as infinite distance behind which there is nothing, and in relation to which it is indeed meaningless to talk of ‘nothingness’: such an all-embracing immensity cannot itself be encompassed. So this nameless and indefinable being, distinguishing itself only by itself from all else, and thus holding all else at a distance, the norm of all complying with no norm distinct from itself, this Whither of transcendence is seen as absolutely beyond determination. (Rahner 1974b: 51) The horizon, the ‘Whither’ of our transcendence, is God; and God, necessarily beyond determination, is rightly described as mystery, or indeed, Holy Mystery. When grace (and, by implication, for Rahner, revelation) are brought into the picture, everything does not suddenly become a lot clearer: ‘Grace does not imply the promise and the beginning of the elimination of the mystery, but the radical possibility of the absolute proximity of the mystery’ (Rahner 1974b: 55, emphasis added). And all this, however, difficult to articulate, Rahner thinks, is – on another level – not difficult to understand at all: Nothing is more familiar and obvious to the alerted spirit than the silent question which hovers over all that it has attained and mastered…In his heart of hearts, there is nothing man [sic] knows better than that his knowledge, ordinarily so-called, is only a tiny island in the immense ocean of the unexplored. He knows better than anything else that the existential question facing him in knowledge is whether he loves the little island of his so-called knowledge better than the ocean of the infinite mystery; whether or not he will concede that the mystery alone is self-evident; whether he thinks that the little light with which he illuminates this little island—we call it science—should be the eternal light which shines on him forever (which would be hell). (Rahner 1974b: 57)

168  Karen Kilby ­ uestion In the third part of the essay, Rahner’s pace becomes dizzying. The q is, how are the two strands which have been discussed (the mysteries in the plural, and the one Holy Mystery) related to one another? Rahner gives us a rapid survey of those things that are or might be spoken of as mysteries in the Catholic theology of the time: the Trinity, the hypostatic union, grace, the beatific vision, the Eucharistic transubstantiation and real presence of Christ, more generally sacraments and ‘all positive institutions and decrees of God with regard to Church offices’, original sin, redemption. Some of these, he argues, should be seen as rooted in others: for instance, transubstantiation is grounded in the hypostatic union and original sin is ‘comparatively easy to reduce to…the supernatural sanctification of man by grace prior to his personal decision’; an understanding of redemption follows, with the addition of some non-mysterious presuppositions, from acceptance of the mystery of the Incarnation. Other candidates for the title of mystery turn out not to count as mysteries at all (the positive institutions and decrees). In the end, everything which might be spoken of as mystery turns out to be rooted in three mysteria stricte dicta: Trinity, Incarnation and ‘the divinization of man in grace and glory’. Having brought the contenders for mysteries of the faith down to these three, Rahner next gives us several very intense pages of theology around grace and glory, Incarnation and Trinity – pages which are entirely consistent with what he develops in other places, it should be said, but too dense to be summarised here – all of which lead to the conclusion that these mysteries are ultimately no different from the one Holy Mystery discussed in the second part: the three mysteries signify the articulation of the one single mystery of God, being the radical form of his one comprehensive mysteriousness, since it has been revealed in Jesus Christ that this absolute and abiding mystery can exist not only in the guise of distant aloofness, but also as absolute proximity to us, through the divine self-communication. (Rahner 1974b: 72) Or, in a slightly simpler formulation, the three mysteria stricte dicta have been shown to be ‘really intrinsically connected, in their character of communication of the absolute proximity of the primordial mystery’ (1974b: 72). The project of this essay may seem somewhat parochial, insofar as it is set over against a way of thinking about ‘the mysteries’ of the faith which predominated in the Catholicism of a particular period. But it can also be seen through a broader lens: Rahner is wrestling with the relationship between the complexity of a dogmatic system, the complexity of theology itself and the sense that there must be an ultimate coherence, simplicity and unity of faith: ‘Is Christian doctrine’, he asks at the beginning, ‘really a highly complicated system of orderly statements? Or is it rather a mysteriously simple

Belief, Unbelief and Mystery  169 thing of infinite fullness?’ He is undertaking, especially in the third part of the essay, the intellectual work of bringing out the interconnectedness of doctrine, so that it can all be understood to point to the ‘mysteriously simple thing’. An obvious question, of course, is whether Rahner has brought the ­complexity down in the end to something too simple. Is such a search for coherence and unity ultimately reductive? Does everything that is distinctive about Christian belief really come down to nothing but an affirmation, or an experience, of ‘the absolute proximity of the primordial mystery’? Should we say that Rahner would have done better to escape the over-­ complex propositionalism of neo-scholasticism in a different way, by moving to a focus on the centrality of narrative, or of drama? Perhaps Balthasar had the right of it here, insofar as this would be a way of countering the alienation of an overly complicated propositionalism which allows the ­ distinctiveness of Christianity – its texture, and particular contours – to remain. In fact, I think, on this kind of question at least, the either/or between Rahner and Balthasar needs to be avoided. There is no reason why we have to choose between narrative or dramatic theological approaches (or more generally, theological styles which keep theology closer to the text and texture of Scripture) and the more speculative or even mystical attempts to see all things in connection with a centre, to distil the whole of the Christian life and message to an absolute core. Were a Rahner-scholasticism to set in, as was perhaps a danger in the 1970s in certain parts of the Catholic world, this could certainly be an impoverishment to the Church. Rahner’s reductio ad mysterium cannot be the only approach. But were his kind of theological instinct, the instinct to distil, to get to the heart of things, to articulate the absolute centre of belief, to name what is essential and distinctive to belief in the simplest possible terms – were such a theological instinct to be proscribed, that too would entail an impoverishment of both life and thought in the Church. We need both thinkers who will call to mind the immensely textured richness and complexity of Scripture, tradition and Christian practice – its peculiarity, its particularity, its utter distinctiveness from other thought- and life-patterns – and thinkers who urge us towards a grasp of an utterly coherent simplicity of Christian belief. How different is belief from unbelief? If we need both styles of theology, then perhaps we need to find a way to combine two quite different answers to this question. On one level the difference is enormous and manifold: the believer’s vision of the world and way of life is shaped by liturgy, text and story, and they understand themselves to be immersed in a drama – a play within the play of the Trinity, on Balthasar’s account, for instance – which is different to anything imagined by the unbeliever. On another level, however, the difference is subtle and elusive. The believer doesn’t in the end think that they know anything more than the unbeliever. Their faith isn’t really about supposing they have access to extra bits of information: it is

170  Karen Kilby ultimately a disposition towards, an orientation towards, the mystery in which they live and by which they find themselves encountered.17

Notes 1 I find it helpful to think of Rahner’s theology, not quite as a circle with this essay at its centre, but as an ellipse with this essay and one other, ‘The Theology of the Symbol’ (in 1974b: 221–52), as its twin foci. From a pedagogical point of view, rather than introducing Rahner to students through the essays on anonymous Christianity and the Foundations of the Christian Faith (1978), it is b ­ etter I believe to begin with Rahner’s literary-theological prayers in Encounters with Silence (1999), and then, for those who want a more sustained engagement, offer the challenge of these two focal essays. 2 The English translation’s title is catchier, if less indicative of the actual aim of the book, than the original: Strukturwandl der Kirche als Aufgabe und Chance (2019). 3 Rahner had just retired from his teaching role in Münster, and it might be tempting to see the loose, relaxed quality of this book as a consequence of the new freedom brought by retirement. On the other hand, throughout his career Rahner wrote in quite a variety of styles and for a variety of purposes. 4 Rahner describes what he is offering in more modest language – he is trying to present ‘preliminary considerations on a basic concept for the synod’ (1974a: 15). 5 ‘…in the positive decisions of the Council, if we look at them quite coolly, there is much that is already obsolete’. Rahner goes on to say that the Synod can’t rely too heavily for concrete guidance on Vatican II since ‘[m]any of the council’s statements simply express the Christian faith and that, often enough, in the light of presuppositions and horizons of understanding which cannot simply be regarded as those of today or tomorrow’ (1974a: 13). 6 It is probably not unreasonable to see some Ignatian influence in The Shape of the Church to Come (1974a). The German Church needs to make concrete decisions, it needs to undergo a process of discernment of God’s will and the decision to go forward, a discernment which cannot just proceed from general theological principles, general truths of the faith. This is one reason why simply looking back to Council documents is not very helpful. (Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556) was the founder of the Society of Jesus, the Jesuit order, to which Rahner belonged. The spiritual tradition which is derived from his writings has a focus on the discernment of God’s will and the making of concrete decisions.) 7 Rahner is clearly worried, for instance, about the behaviour of the bishops, who have been announcing their own unified view at the openings of discussions. But the bishops – we hope – will deny that they want to form a solid group at the synod. And it is to be hoped that this assurance will become clearer in the course of the synod than it has been hitherto. For it would indeed be odd if all the bishops were of one opinion in all individual questions, even those of slight importance. For if their opinion were a priori correct, the synod could be dissolved at once and all decisions could be left to the bishops. But if we assume that this uniform opinion is not necessarily right in regard to the matter under consideration, then it is surprising it turns out to be so uniform. (1974a: 13)

Belief, Unbelief and Mystery  171 8 Similarly striking are some of Rahner’s suggestions for the way authority ought to be exercised in the Church to come. These might be read as an advance portrait of the style of Pope Francis: In the future questions or doubts about office will no longer be effectively dismissed by appealing to the formal authority of office, but only by furnishing proof of a genuinely Christian spirit on the part of the office-holder himself. He will gain recognition for his office by being genuinely human and a Spirit-filled Christian, one whom the Spirit has freed for unselfish service in the exercise of his social function in the Church….All the ceremony which distinguishes the office-holder even in the most ordinary circumstances from the mass of the people and other Christians and which has nothing to do with exercise of his office and stresses his dignity where it is out of place, might well disappear…. No damage is done to office or office-holders if the latter honestly admit uncertainties, doubts, the need to experiment and further reflection, without knowing the outcome, and don’t behave as if they had a direct hot line to heaven to obtain an answer to each and every question in the Church. (Rahner 1974a: 58–59) The encouragement to the bishops of the German synod not to always necessarily agree with each other, mentioned in footnote 7, also foreshadows Francis’ attempts to change bishops’ behaviour at recent synods in Rome. 9 I will not present an exposition of the theory here, or any outline of the ways in which it has been criticised. This is both because I presume this to be one bit of Rahner to which many people with a theological education do already have some (even if skewed) introduction, and because I want to avoid repeating myself. For discussions of anonymous Christianity and evaluations of some of the common criticisms (cf. Kilby 2007: 30–37; Kilby 2004: 115–26). Many others have written on this: One of the most thorough treatments can be found in Conway (1993). See also the historical work done by Stephen Bullivant (2010), discussed below. 10 Bullivant (2010) also extends the list beyond those who actually criticised Rahner on this score, to include Maritain, Danielou and Adam. 11 The English title is The Moment of Christian Witness (Balthasar 1994). 12 One way to see that the theology of religions is not a driving force in Rahner’s thought is to consider his essay ‘The Christian among Unbelieving Relations’ (Rahner 1974c: 355–72), which is the best candidate for precursor to the ‘Anonymous Christian’ article in Volume 6 of the Theological Investigations (Rahner 1974d). This is an essay motivated explicitly by concern for the pastoral care of Catholics whose family members ‘lapse’ – on what grounds might they be reassured that they need not suppose their children or spouses automatically damned? 13 Strictly speaking, the gap between belief and unbelief may not be diminished on this view, but placed differently. Both professed believers and professed unbelievers may be anonymous atheists – since it is possible to refuse the offer of grace which is anonymously present in experience. 14 Perhaps it would be fairer to say that it is some of Rahner’s readers who need rescuing from excessive attention to the theme. 15 I am oversimplifying a little here, because Rahner is doing a little more than simply flipping the ratio/mysterium relationship. Part of his project is to rescue the concept of reason itself – of ratio – from the narrow distortion into which nineteenth-century conceptions of science had forced it.

172  Karen Kilby 16 He refers to this as a ‘doctrine obvious in itself and dogmatically assured’ (Rahner 1974c: 41). 17 This essay was originally written as a paper for the 2018 conference of the UK Society for the Study of Theology (SST). The theme of the conference was ‘Theology, Culture and Unbelief’.

References Balthasar, Hans Urs von, Cordula oder der Ernstfall (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1966). Balthasar, Hans Urs von, The Moment of Christian Witness (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1994). Bullivant, Stephen, ‘The Myth of Rahnerian Exceptionalism: Edward Schillebeeckx’s “Anonymous Christians”’, Philosophy and Theology 22 (2010): 339–51. Bullivant, Stephen, The Salvation of Atheists and Catholic Dogmatic Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). Conway, E., Anonymous Christian: A relativized Christianity? (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1993). D’Costa, Gavin, The Meeting of Religions and the Trinity (New York: Orbis, 2000). Kilby, Karen, Karl Rahner: Theology and Philosophy (London: Routledge, 2004). Kilby, Karen, A Brief Introduction to Karl Rahner (New York: Crossroad, 2007). Race, Alan, Christians and Religious Pluralism: Patterns in the Christian Theology of Religions (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1983). Rahner, Karl, The Shape of the Church to Come (London: SPCK, 1974a). Rahner, Karl, Theological Investigations 4 (New York: Seabury Press, 1974b). Rahner, Karl, Theological Investigations 5 (New York: Seabury Press, 1974c). Rahner, Karl, Theological Investigations 6 (New York: Seabury Press, 1974d). Rahner, Karl, Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity (New York: Seabury Press, 1978). Rahner, Karl, Encounters with Silence (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 1999). Rahner, Karl, Strukturwandl der Kirche als Aufgabe und Chance (Freiburg im Briesgau: Herder, 2019). Röper, Anita, Die anonymen Christen (Mainz: Matthias Grunewald, 1963).

Appendix Mapping Agnosticism: Comment Inspired by Robin Le Poidevin’s ‘Stepping Stone to Atheism? The Instability of Agnosticism’ Jeanine Diller I used to think that theism was 100% confidence in the proposition that there is a God, that atheism was 0% confidence in this proposition, and that agnosticism was half-way in between, being equally confident that there is a God and not, with some room for play in the exact percentages so they covered the range.1 So I had thought to map the three positions as in Figure A.1, where the line represents the range of degrees of confidence in the proposition (i.e. state of affairs) that there is a God, recognizing that they could be displayed equivalently in the converse, as degrees of confidence in the proposition that there is not a God (Figure A.1). Atheism

Agnosticism

Theism

0% in there is a God

50% in there is a God

100% in there is a God

50% in there is not a God

0% in there is not a God

Or equivalently: 100% in there is not a God

Figure A.1 Mapping Agnosticism Before Reading Le Poidevin (% = degree of confidence)

However, after reflecting on Robin Le Poidevin’s paper ‘Stepping Stone to Atheism? The Instability of Agnosticism’ (2023), it seems clearer to distinguish the two propositions at work in the dialectic between theists, atheists, and agnostics: There is a God and, what Le Poidevin calls (to paraphrase), there is a void – an importantly substantive picture of reality without God and generally with an alternative robust ontology (e.g. atheistic naturalism). 2 This realization prompted me to recast the map of the distinction as in Figure A.2, where agnosticism is the state of not being certain at all about either God or the void (Figure A.2). Figure A.2 is better than Figure A.1 because it: 1 Displays the two substantive positions at work in the debate, allowing atheism to be grasped as not just a negation of theism but an independent view in its own right, where it is one (see note 2). 

173

174  Jeanine Diller

Atheism

100% in the impossibility of knowing re: God or void │ │ ↑growing confidence we cannot know

Theism

100% in there is a void

│ re God or void 100% in there is a God │ │________←growing confidence in void___ 0 % ______growing confidence in God→_________│ Agnosticism │ │↓growing confidence that we can know │ re: God or void │ 100% in the possibility of knowing re: God or void

Figure A.2 Mapping Agnosticism After Reading Le Poidevin (% = degree of confidence)

2 Makes explicit what is only entailed above, that in the purest forms of the three positions, atheists are as confident in their view as theists are in theirs (100% for each in Figure A.2 vs. 0% and 100% in Figure A.1 and agnostics lack such confidence altogether (0% in Figure A.2 vs. 50% in Figure A.1). 3 Pictures the growing confidence one gathers in either direction upon leaving pure agnosticism. The vertical line is a bell and whistle we could add if we want to capture the interesting metaclaim that a thorough-going agnostic is uncertain not only about whether there is a God or there is a void (the horizontal line) but also about whether we can be certain about whether there is a God or there is a void (the vertical line).3 Like the horizontal line, I take it there are propositions on the ends of the vertical line too, this time about our epistemic prospects, i.e. that it is impossible for us to gain knowledge and that it is possible for us to gain knowledge about God or the void. So, the middle point of the diagram represents someone who lacks confidence on both issues, i.e. the God vs. void issue and the issue of the possibility vs. impossibility of knowing about God or the void. At least prima facie, it is simpler not to read Figure A.2 as depicting a coordinate plane where someone’s position is plotted as a point in one of the quadrants, but rather as two separate lines where someone’s view is plotted as a point on each line, one about ontology and one about epistemology.4 Obviously, the two lines are related by the fact that they both have pure agnosticism as their central point. But they are quite certainly related in other ways, too. For instance, a 100% confidence on the vertical axis that it is beyond human understanding to know whether there is a God or there is a void entails a 0% on the horizontal one – and a stable 0, a stable agnosticism at that, in two senses. First, if one is certain that one cannot know about God or the void (the 100 on the top of the vertical line), one takes one’s first-order agnosticism (the 0 on the horizontal line) to be

Mapping Agnosticism  175 permanent, not temporary or shifting in some way (“I know that I will never know about God or the void”). Second, precisely in virtue of taking it to be permanent, one might come to accept one’s first-order agnosticism as one’s fate and rest in it.5 As Le Poidevin’s closing image of Hume suggests, such acceptance dries up some of the existential pain that accompanies first-order agnosticism, since accepting any sort of suffering assuages it. To speak in Le Poidevin’s terms, it is not that the agnostic who accepts his or her position as such stops oscillating between theism and atheism, but that he or she takes such oscillation as an inevitable part of the human condition and is no longer in a state of existential crisis but rather in a state of existential rest about it. Rest is a stable existential state.6

Notes 1 So, for example, someone who is 90% confident that there is a God would count as a theist, etc. My reading of agnosticism in Figure 10.1 sounds close to Alan Hájek’s: ‘x is agnostic about A iff x gives a probability assignment to A that is not close to a sharp 0 or 1 – the standards for “closeness” being determined by context’ (1998: 205). One difference is that Hájek, like Bradley Monton (1998), uses ‘probability assignment’ in place of ‘confidence’ in his analyses of agnosticism. I use ‘confidence’ to mean the internal propositional attitude that extreme theists or atheists have fully and that extreme agnostics lack altogether which makes them assign a 100% or 50% probability, respectively, to a proposition in the first place. The two terms result in different values, e.g. agnostics assign a probability in Hájek’s and Monton’s sense of ca. 0.5 to God or the void but agnostics have confidence in my sense of ca. 0 in God or the void. I am still struggling to see if there is more than a semantic difference between the terms, but ‘confidence’ in my sense and its 0 result just noted seems to capture common language about agnosticism (‘no knowledge, no certainty’) more faithfully. Also, note that both analyses, and indeed this entire reflection, attempt to deliver the distinction only between doxastic forms of theism, atheism, and agnosticism, not their non-doxastic variants. 2 I add ‘generally’ here since some atheists may not have an accompanying explicit robust ontology. In this case, atheism is strictly the negation of theism, call it ‘thin atheism’. I take Figure A.2 to cover both thin atheisms without such an explicit additional ontology and ‘thick’ atheisms with one. Note that the same additional ontologies that make atheisms thick can also make theisms thick, e.g. naturalism can comprise atheistic naturalism as well as theistic naturalism. 3 Monton draws a similar distinction between ‘weak’ and ‘robust’ agnosticism: My analysis of agnosticism is as follows. To suspend belief is to refrain from making a commitment to belief or disbelief. To be agnostic in the weak sense is simply to suspend belief. To be agnostic in the robust sense is to suspend belief and also to believe that the evidence to decide the matter will not be forthcoming. (1998: 209) If I read him correctly, being a weak agnostic in Monton’s sense is displayed at the ‘0’ on my horizontal line; being a robust agnostic in his sense is captured by the positions at the top of my vertical line (‘the evidence will not be forthcoming’) and the ‘0’ on my horizontal one (‘suspend belief’).

176  Jeanine Diller 4 Ultima facie, when we grasp the relationships between the lines more fully, we could read this as a plane, but one where certain positions are not possible. Thanks to Samuel Ruhmkorff for this insight. 5 Of course, one might also rail against it. Then, no rest is forthcoming. 6 I am grateful to Robin Le Poidevin and Samuel Ruhmkorff for helpful conversations about this piece.

References Hájek, A., ‘Agnosticism Meets Bayesianism’, Analysis (1998) 58/3: 199–206. Le Poidevin, R., ‘Stepping Stone to Atheism? The Instability of Agnosticism’, in H. A. Harris and V. S. Harrison (eds.), Atheisms: The Philosophy of Non-Belief (London: Routledge, 2023), pp. 29–43. Monton, B., ‘Bayesian Agnosticism and Constructive Empiricism’, Analysis (1998) 58/3: 207–12.

Index

Note: Bold page numbers refer to tables; italic page numbers refer to figures and page numbers followed by “n” denote endnotes. Abrahamic Scriptures 69 Abrahamic traditions 128, 132 acceptance 81–6 Adams, Marilyn McCord 5, 23 Adams, R. M. 71 aesthetic judgement 138 aesthetics 9–12, 127, 142–5, 148–50, 154 agnosticism 6, 33–5, 37, 42, 174–5, 175n1; distinction between weak and robust 175n3; first-order 40; mapping after reading Le Poidevin 173, 174; mapping before reading Le Poidevin 173, 173; Pyrrhonian scepticism vs. 41; second-order 38–9 agnostic principle 37–8 ‘An Agnostic’s Apology’ (Stephen) 34 Alexander, E. 112 Alston, William 69, 82 Altizer, T. J. J. 103, 107 The Anathemata (Jones) 146–7 Anatomy Services 1 Andersson, L. 27n3; Utan Personligt Ansvar 26 Anglican theism 50, 51, 55 Anglophone theology 164 The Anonymous Christian (Röper) 162 anonymous Christianity 11 Antony, L. M. 48, 54 Aquinas, Thomas 164 Art (Bell) 150 Athanasius 109 atheism 44, 150, 151, 173; as betrayal 131; Buddhist-influenced 4; forms of 2; intermediary belief between theism and 6, 8; Mindfulness-influenced 4;

vs. new theism 55, 56; as rejection of false idea of God 142 atheist aesthetics 142–3, 154–5; art of metanoia 147–51; cultural and ontological contexts 143–7; rejection of love 151–4 atheists 55; Christian 1; doxastic 75–7, 80–1, 85, 87n5; exchange between ‘new theists’ and 6; ‘fully fledged’ 7; genuine 7, 66, 70; and immanentist theists 8; new 1, 4–6, 8, 65, 72 attitudes: non-doxastic 46, 54; nonpropositional, emotional 65–8, 72, 73 Audi, Robert 87n6 Augustine 97 authentic religiosity 78, 81, 84, 86 ‘Awe and the Religious Life’ (Wettstein) 77 Bach, Johann Sebastian 154; Mass in B minor 145, 149, 151 Bacon, Sir Francis 137; ‘On Atheism’ 131 Baker-Hytch, Max 6–8 Balthasar, Hans Urs von 135, 158, 169; Cordula oder der Ernstfall 162 Barth, Karl 164 Beatty, Paul: Tuff 7 beauty: Christian conception of 142; experience of 149, 150; of God 143, 147; misapprehension of 142; rejection of 142, 143, 152, 154; shared identification of 150 Beckett, Samuel: Waiting for Godot 25 Beck, Martha: Leaving the Saints: How I Lost the Mormons and Found My Faith 3; The Way of Integrity 3

178 Index beliefs 52, 157; and acceptance 82; and conviction 128; development of 9; as dyadic relation of trust and fidelity 131; errant 9, 133; gap between unbelief and 171n13; in God 9, 22, 38, 52, 55, 57, 131, 132, 146; intermediary 6; passional motivation for 53; in ‘Potent Man’ 91; proattitude 46; propositional 65–7, 72; and rationality 129, 130; religious (see religious belief) Bell, Clive: Art 150 benevolent God: belief in 27; existence of 25 Berdyaev, Nikolai 155n1 ‘be the change’ 2 Bishop, John 6, 44, 46, 48–9, 57, 58, 60; comparison of atheisms and new theism 55, 56; ‘How a Modest Fideism May Constrain Theistic Commitments’ 53–5, 59; selfidentifications 62n18 Blake, William 144, 148, 153, 155n2 bodhi 126, 129 Bodhisattva figures 137, 138 Boswell, James 42 Brahma 126 Bråkenhielm, Carl-Reinhold 5, 8 British Society for Philosophy of Religion 4, 117n30 Buchak, Lara 46, 60, 67 Buckareff, Andrei 60 Buddhism 126–7; samatha meditation in 9; Western interest in 127 Buddhist traditions 126, 135; hindrances in 130 Bullivant, Stephen 162, 171n10 Cartesianism 31, 34, 35; choice between physicalism and 36 Cartesian minds 5 Catholicism 158, 168 Catholic theology 158, 168 causal efficacy 5, 30, 34 certitude 130, 132, 133 Chesterton, G. K. 97, 115n15 child-sacrifice 100 ‘The Christian among Unbelieving Relations’ (Rahner) 171n12 Christian artwork 142–4, 154; apprehension of 153; belief in God 146; to categorical and conceptual imprisonment 145; challenges and rewards of 148; destruction of

154–5; ‘erotic invitation’ of God 152; experience of 147, 150; motto for 148; rejection of 143, 154; understanding of 147 Christian Atheism 108, 109 Christian belief 25, 144, 145, 169 Christian community 81, 96 Christian cultural context 144–5 Christian faith 103, 147, 159, 162, 166 Christian Gospel 90, 92, 95, 103, 108 Christian hope 17; epistemic reason for 20 Christianity 4, 9–10, 23–4, 157, 161; adherents of religiously significant attitude 68; anonymous 11; confinement to 127; cultural context of 147; ontological narrative of 144; in tumultuous credal controversies 128 Christian myth 92 Christian religious beliefs 146 Christians: betraying traditions 107; experience of beauty 150; Manichaean thought 105; pragmatic argument for 17 Christian theology 151, 153, 162 Christmas Eucharist 21 Christ Pantokrator 105 church, Roman Catholic 10 Citron, Gabriel 86n2 Clark, Stephen R. L. 8–10, 12, 43n7, 134 classical theism 4–6, 8, 50, 51, 54, 55, 57, 58, 132 Clatworthy, Jonathan 117n30 Clayton, P. 60, 62n21 Clemens, Samuel Longhorn 73 Clifford, W. K. 37, 43n5, 51 Clooney, Francis 6, 48 coaching 11; burgeoning realm of 2; and futures culture 3; traditional religious belief and reconnects 4 cognitive instability 40 Cohen, L. Jonathan 82 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor: ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ 155n4 commitment 128, 131–2 Communio 158 comparative theology 6, 48 comprehensive fundamental pattern (CFP) 24–7 ‘The Concept of Mystery in Catholic Theology’ (Rahner) 11, 159, 165–70 condemnation 105, 106

Index  179 Congar, Yves 162 conjunctive global theism 45 Constantinianism 10, 162 constructive empiricism 76, 83 contemporary Buddhist movements 126, 127 Cordula oder der Ernstfall (Balthasar) 162 Cornutus 102, 115n12 corporate coaches 3 critical realism 136 Crum, John M. C. 16 Cudworth, Ralph 102 cultural contexts, atheist aesthetics 143–7 Cupitt, Don 1 Curley, Edwin 6, 44, 46, 48–9, 52, 54, 57–60, 61n9, 62n15, 62n17, 62n23; comparison of atheisms and new theism 55, 56; ‘On Becoming a Heretic’ 49–51; self-identifications 62n18 Cybele, rites of 100 Cynics 102, 103 Dalai Lama 164 Damascene, John 146 Dante, Alighieri 3 Darwin, Charles 95 Davy, Charles 116n21 Dawkins, Richard 5, 18, 22, 27, 39, 65, 72, 137; The God Delusion 15–17; The Selfish Gene 98 The Dazzling Dark (Wren-Lewis) 109–13 dazzling darkness 112, 113 D’Costa, Gavin 164 death: belief before 15; Christian understanding of 16; life after 15, 18–21, 27 degrees of confidence 173 Dennett, Daniel 6, 44, 46, 48–9, 57–60, 62n12, 62n16; comparison of atheisms and new theism 55, 56; self-identifications 62n18; ‘Thank Goodness’ 51–2 ‘devaluing the object’ 32, 40 Dialogue in the Dark (Ignatieff) 42 Diller, Jeanine 6, 8, 40, 43n7, 48, 60, 61n6, 88n18; ‘Mapping Agnosticism’ 38–9 Dio Chrysostom 104 Diodorus Siculus 115n13 discernment 129, 130

disjunctive global theism 45 divine hiddenness/silence 23–5 divinity 61n2, 104, 137 The Doctrine of Original Sin 98 Dolda principer (Pettersson) 24 Dostoevsky, Fyodor 151 doxastic atheists 75–7, 80–1, 85, 87n5 doxastic faith 77, 81 Draper, Paul 45, 61n5, 62n23 Dream Therapy 110 ecumenical engagement 157–8 ecumenical generosity 158 Edinburgh Festival 65 Efird, David 147, 151; ‘Experiencing Christian Art’ 155n2 Eliot, T. S. 149; Four Quartets: Little Gidding 117n27; ‘Little Gidding’ 143 empirical adequacy 76–7 Endo, Shusaku: Silence 81 Ephrem the Syrian 151, 152 epiphenomenalism 5, 30–2, 34–6, 40 ‘epistemic transformation’ 147 epistemologists, analytic 66 equivocation 44, 46, 47, 55, 60 Essai de Theodicée (von Leibniz) 22 eternal truth 96–7 European Catholicism 164 Eusebius 100 evil, problem of 23 exclusivism 164 existential crisis 39–42 ‘Experiencing Christian Art’ (Efird) 155n2 ‘factory-girl’ argument 14–17 faith 6, 7, 85–6, 128, 132; community of 10; crisis of 81; foregoing understanding of 65; God and 44; Jewish 7, 88n12; nature of 66–7; nondoxastic 78–81, 85, 87n6; nonreligious 66; object of Abraham 73n4; relationship between reason and 130; religious belief as 4, 130 Faraday, Ann 112 feelings: about absence of God 21–2; radical difference between thoughts and 19; and thinking 97 fictionalism 7, 11, 83 fidelity 131, 134 Field, Hartry 7, 83 ‘finding God’ 133–4 first-order agnosticism 40, 174–5 Florensky, Pavel 144, 148

180 Index Four Quartets: Little Gidding (Eliot) 117n27 Fraassen, B. van 76, 77, 83 Frege, Gottlob 72–3 Freud, Sigmund 137 full-blown atheists 75, 81, 86 Gale, Richard 57 Genesis 135–8 genuine religiosity 80, 87n5 German Catholic Church 160 gift 1, 139, 142, 143, 149 global atheism 47, 61n6 global theism 45, 61n4 glory 10, 104, 110, 142, 144, 154, 168 God: absence of 21–2, 81; belief in 9, 22, 38, 52, 55, 57, 131, 132, 146; eagerness to account logically for 11; encountered in personal relationships 93; epistemic reason to believe 17; ‘erotic invitation’ of 152; existence of 132; experience and presence of 25; and faith 44; functional role for 50; of Genesis 135, 136; gift and self-revelation of 142, 143; hope in 46; knowledge about 35, 39, 40, 174; knowledge of existence 6; noncognitivist construal of belief in 38; notions of 45–7, 50; presence of 25, 84, 168; process view of 6; power over materials 5; primary sense of 92; recommendations for talking about existence 44–8; rejection of second-person relation with 151; self-sufficient 8; trust in 78–9, 131; ultimate subject 12 The God Delusion (Dawkins) 15–17 Goldie, Peter 68–9 grace 11, 49–51, 110, 111, 113, 131, 149, 164, 165, 167, 168, 171n13 Grammar of Assent (Newman) 14, 18 Great Conflagration 105 Greco-Roman pantheon 69 Griffioen, Amber 88n18 ground project 71 Guite, Malcolm 148, 155n4 Gustafsson, Daniel 4, 6, 9, 10, 12 Hájek, Alan 175n1 Hamilton, W. 107 Hart, David Bentley 143, 149, 150 Hartshorne, Charles 60, 62n21 Hawking, Stephen 65

Heaney, Seamus: ‘The Rain-stick’ 148 Hebblethwaite, Brian 27n1 Hebrew Bible 76, 103 Hellenes 100, 101 Hellenic myth 104 Heracles 101–5, 115n11 Hick, John 164 History of the Royal Society (Sprat) 108 Hitchens, Christopher 65, 72 holiness 81, 130 Holloway, Richard 1 Homeric gods 135–6 Honest to God (Robinson) 8, 90 hope 77–8, 86n5, 87n6, 158; in God 46 Hopkins, Gerard Manley 144, 151 horizon 167, 170n5 horrendous evils 23 ‘How a Modest Fideism May Constrain Theistic Commitments’ (Bishop) 53–5, 59 Howard-Snyder, Daniel 46, 60, 66, 67, 69, 85 humanity, representation of 137 human suffering 103 Hume, David 42, 95, 132 Huxley, Sir Julian 8, 94 Huxley, T. H. 34, 37, 38; ‘On the Hypothesis that Animals are Automata, and its History’ 30–1 idolatry 94, 97 Ignatieff, Michael: Dialogue in the Dark 42 immanentist theisms 4, 8 immanentist theists 8, 12 immersion 77, 83, 85, 149 immortality, rational belief in 18–20 Incarnation 165, 168 inclusivism 157, 164 instability, kinds of 39–40 intellectual stepping stones 29–30 ‘The Island’ (Thomas) 153–4 Jackson, Frank 155n2 James, William 40, 41, 53, 55; ‘The Will to Believe’ 36–7 Jay, Christopher 4, 7, 8 Jewish faith 88n12 Jews 100–1 John of the Cross 151 Jones, David 152; The Anathemata 146–7 Jordan, Jeffrey 17, 18, 20, 21, 27n4

Index  181 Judaism 4, 7 Judeo-Christian tradition 136 justice, notion of 137 Kant, Immanuel 10, 132, 161, 162 Karamazov, Ivan 153 karma 127 karuna 129 Kasher, Asa 48, 60 Keats, John 132 Kenny, Anthony 135, 136 Kilby, Karen 4, 10–12 klesas 9, 135 Krishna, Daya 127, 128, 130, 131, 137 Küng, Hans 162 Lamarque, Peter 143, 145 Lash, Nicholas 134, 135, 138 Last Letters from Stalingrad (Schneider and Gullans) 21–5 The Last Shaman (Whitecloud) 3 The Laws (Plato) 97 Leaving the Saints: How I Lost the Mormons and Found My Faith (Beck) 3 Lebens, Samuel 76, 80, 87n11, 88n12 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm von 5, 23; Essai de Theodicée 22 Leng, M. 88n15 Le Poidevin, Robin 4–6, 175, 176n6; mapping agnosticism after reading 173, 174; mapping agnosticism before reading 173, 173; ‘Stepping Stone to Atheism? The Instability of Agnosticism’ 173 life coaches 3 Lipton, Peter 7, 77, 82, 84; ‘Science and Religion: The Immersion Solution’ 76 literalist fundamentalism 133 ‘Little Gidding’ (Eliot) 143 local atheism 47, 50, 52, 54 local theism 45, 47, 54, 61n5 Loch Ness Monster model 134 logical possibility 70 London Society for the Study of Religion 117n30 Lorrance, Arleen 2 love 142; object of 142, 143, 152; openness and readiness of 152; rejection of 151–4 ‘The Love Project’ 2 Lubac, Henri de 158, 162 Lutheran doctrine 24

Maccoby, H. 101 Machine Man (Mettrie) 30 ‘magical feeling’ 91 The Magician’s Way (Whitecloud) 3 Mahatma Gandhi 2 make-believe 77–8, 80–1 Mann, Alan 117n30 ‘Mapping Agnosticism’ (Diller) 38–9 materialism 30, 41, 91 material world 93–4 mathematical fictionalism 83–4 McCabe, Herbert 140 McCulloch, Joseph 102–3 McGhee, Michael 4, 9, 10, 12 meaning 7, 33, 50, 66, 68, 71, 72, 83, 91, 111, 144, 146–8, 151 metanoia 129, 134, 155n4; art of 147–51 metaphysical possibility 70 ‘metaphysical quietist’ 7 method of inquiry 133, 136 Mettrie, Julien de la: Machine Man 30 Midgley, Mary 137 militant atheist 145 Mill, John Stuart 5, 22, 23, 26, 27; arguments of 17–21; Three Essays on Religion 18, 20, 23 mind 5, 6, 21, 27, 31–3, 35, 38–40, 51, 79, 80, 83, 97, 104, 128, 129, 137, 139, 144 Mindfulness 3, 4 Mindfulness-influenced atheism 4 Mindfulness-practice 4 Mitchell, Basil 24 Montaigne, Michel de 14 Monton, Bradley 175n1, 175n3 Monty Python 14 More, Thomas 129 Mountford, Brian 1 mystery 140, 159; acceptance of Incarnation 168; elimination of 167; rationalistic conception of 166 Nagasawa, Yujin 60 naturalism 48, 51–2, 54, 55, 74n6, 175n2 naturalist 51–2, 69, 95, 98 naturalist atheist 70, 73 negative theology 153 Neill, Alex 144–6, 149; ‘Religious Music for Godless Ears’ 143 neo-Scholasticism 11 Neville, R. C. 62n21

182 Index new atheists 1, 6, 8, 65, 72 Newman, J. H. 5, 15, 17; Grammar of Assent 14, 18 new theism: atheisms vs. 55, 56; and trio’s dialectic 57–60 new theists 6, 44, 58, 60 Nietzsche, F. 137 nondoxastic faith 78–81, 85, 87n6 Non-Omnipotent Matter 96 non-propositional attitudes 65–8, 72 occult reality 8, 91, 113 Omnipotent Matter 91 ‘On Atheism’ (Bacon) 131 ‘On Becoming a Heretic’ (Curley) 49–51 ‘On the Hypothesis that Animals are Automata, and its History’ (Huxley) 30–1 ontological contexts, atheist aesthetics 143–7 ontology 10, 12; classical theist 10 Orphic testimony 102, 115n11 paintings 144 panentheism 8 Pascal, B. 36 person 67–73, 76, 79, 81, 84, 85, 134, 162 personal beings 50, 97 person-/object-directed attitudes 78 Pettersson, Torsten: Dolda principer 24 Phillips, D. Z. 133, 134 philosophy of religion 127, 129, 130 physicalism 30, 32, 34–6 physicalist reductionism 5 physical possibility 70 Plantinga, Alvin 74n6 Plato 113; The Laws 97; negative argument against 18–19 Plotinus 96, 103–4, 112 pneumatikoi 129, 130 Pojman, Louis 46, 58, 60 Pope Benedict XVI 91, 96 Pope Francis 171n8 ‘positive conative orientation’ 85 possibility, conditions for 70–2 post-Holocaust declaration 134 power, self-limitation of 23 practical instability 40 prayer 1–3, 9, 22, 52, 77, 81, 129, 135 prima facie 23, 174 privileging 81–6

pro-attitude 46, 50, 57, 60, 85 ‘probability assignment’ 175n1 propositional beliefs 65–7, 72, 82 propositional trust 79 Protestants 157, 158, 161 providence 10, 11, 138, 162 psychological possibility 70 Pyrrhonian scepticism 41 quieting 9 quietist, metaphysical 7, 77 Quinn, Philip 81, 88n13 Rahner, Karl 10, 157, 158, 160, 161, 170n2, 171n9; ‘The Christian among Unbelieving Relations’ 171n12; ‘The Concept of Mystery in Catholic Theology’ 11, 159, 165–70; offering in modest language 170n3; ratio/ mysterium relationship 171n15; The Shape of the Church to Come 159; Theological Investigations 6 162; ‘The Theology of the Symbol’ 170n1; theory of anonymous Christian 162–5 ‘The Rain-stick’ (Heaney) 148 Ramana Maharshi 127, 128 rationality: beliefs and 129, 130; context-dependency of 24–6; of religious belief 27 Ratzinger, Joseph 162 realism 132, 136 reason: to believe God 17; relationship between faith and 130 Reese, W. L. 60, 62n21 religiosity 68, 75–8, 80, 81, 84; authentic 78, 81, 84, 86; genuine 80, 87n5 religious belief 33, 126; assimilation of 132; notion of 130–1; rationality of 27; relationship between spirituality and 129 religious community 76, 85 religious consolation, conditions of 21–4 religious faith 73n1, 77, 78 religiously significant attitudes 66, 68–70, 72 ‘Religious Music for Godless Ears’ (Neill and Ridley) 143 responsiveness 128–9 Ridley, Aaron 144–6, 149; ‘Religious Music for Godless Ears’ 143

Index  183 Rilke, Rainer Maria 147 ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ (Coleridge) 155n4 Robinson, John 90–9, 114n1; Honest to God 8, 90 Rodriguez, Sebastian Sanhueza 88n18 Roman Catholic 157, 158 Roman Catholicism 161 Röper, Anita: The Anonymous Christian 162 Ruhmkorff, Samuel 62n23, 176n4, 176n6 Russell, Bertrand 91 ‘Sailing to Byzantium’ (Yeats) 149 samatha 9, 135 scepticism 41, 49, 126, 129, 134 Schellenberg, John L. 45, 46, 48, 59, 60, 88n16, 88n18 Schillebeeckx, Edward 162, 163 Schleiermacher, F. D. E. 10, 161, 162 ‘Science and Religion: The Immersion Solution’ (Lipton) 76 scientism 97 Scotus, Duns 10, 161, 162 Scruton, Roger 143, 146, 149, 152 second-order agnosticism 38–9 second-person relation 10, 142, 143, 150, 151 Secrets of Natural Success (Whitecloud) 3 secularism 128, 136 Secular Society 1, 4, 5 self-conception 84–6, 88n16 The Selfish Gene (Dawkins) 98 self-revelation 142, 143 Shah, K. J. 12, 127 The Shape of the Church to Come (Rahner) 159 Shapiro, Stewart 49, 54 Silence (Endo) 81 Sinnot-Armstrong, Walter 49 slave-owning societies 101 Smart, J. J. C. 69 Socrates 106 Spinoza, Baruch 62n15 spiritual exercises/practices 3, 9, 126, 130, 132 spirituality 127; and metanoia 129; relationship between religious belief and 129; transformation and 129 spiritual powers 94, 103 ‘the spirituals’ 129

Sprat, Thomas: History of the Royal Society 108 stable agnosticism 39, 174 Stalingrad 21–3, 25 state-encultured atheists 1 state of affairs 17, 70–2, 136 Stepanenko, Walter 62n12, 62n23 Stephen, L. 43n3; ‘An Agnostic’s Apology’ 34 ‘Stepping Stone to Atheism? The Instability of Agnosticism’ (Le Poidevin) 173 Stump, Eleonore 155n2 supernatural agents 52, 65, 66 supernatural God 52, 75, 78, 80 Symeon the New Theologian 151 synod 159, 170n4, 170n5, 170n7, 171n8 ‘Thank Goodness’ (Dennett) 51–2 theism 173; classical 4, 6, 8, 51, 57, 58, 132, 139; immanentist 4, 8; negation of 175n2; Western 5, 58 theists, world stance of 44–5 theological anthropology 164, 165, 167 Theological Investigations 6 (Rahner) 162 theology of absence 25, 26 theology of presence 24–7 theology, process 8 theology of religions 164, 171n12 ‘The Theology of the Symbol’ (Rahner) 170n1 theology of waiting 25–7 theoretical instability 39–40 theory of anonymous Christianity 157, 162–5 Theory U 3 Thomas, R. S. 144, 151; ‘The Island’ 153–4 Three Essays on Religion (Mill) 18, 20, 23 Throckmorton, Spenser 7 Tillich, Paul 7, 65–6 time 5–6, 32–3, 157, 168 The Time Machine (Wells) 32 time’s passage, mind dependence of 32–3 time traveller 32, 33 toleration 3, 4 Tolstoy, Leo: What Is Art? 150 Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: ‘Wie die Weltist, ist für das Höhere vollkommen gleichgültig. Gott

184 Index offenbart sich nicht in der Welt’ (Wittgenstein) 25 traditional Western theism 5 Trinity 164, 165, 168 trio’s dialectic 55, 56, 57; new theism and 57–60; significance for field 60 trust 11–12, 77–80, 87n10, 128; in God and fidelity 131 Tsakiridou, C. A. 149 Tuff (Beatty) 7 Turner, Chris 117n30 Twain, Mark 73 Tyndale, William 129 ultimacy 48 Ultima facie 176n4 ultimate fulfilment 73n2 unbelief 7, 157–72 uncertainty 34 unhappiness 103 Utan Personligt Ansvar (Andersson) 26 Vatican II 159, 160, 170n5 Vaughan, Henry 112 versatile theism 45, 61n5, 61n6 Victorian agnostic movement 33, 34 Waiting for Godot (Beckett) 25 The Way of Integrity (Beck) 3 Weil, Simone 88n12, 137 Weinberg, Rivka 62n23 Wells, H. G. 5, 95; The Time Machine 32

Western religious traditions 128 Wettstein, Howard 7, 88n12; ‘Awe and the Religious Life’ 77 What Is Art? (Tolstoy) 150 Whitecloud, William: The Last Shaman 3; The Magician’s Way 3; Secrets of Natural Success 3 Whitehead, A. N. 60 Wildman, Wesley 62n21 Williams, Bernard 71 Williams, Rowan 145 ‘The Will to Believe’ (James) 36–7 Wittgenstein, L. 73n1, 127; Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: ‘Wie die Weltist, ist für das Höhere vollkommen gleichgültig. Gott offenbart sich nicht in der Welt’ 25 Wood, Bill 43n7 Woolf, Virginia 43n3 Wren-Lewis, John 8–10, 12, 114n1, 114n6, 117n27, 117n30; case of 90–9; The Dazzling Dark 109–13; empire never ended 99–109 Wright, N. T. 99 Wynn, Mark 43n6, 43n7 Yablo, Stephen 88n15 Yannaras, Christos 143, 151, 152 Yeats, William Butler: ‘Sailing to Byzantium’ 149 Zeus 98, 100, 102, 104, 105