Religion and Truth: Towards an Alternative Paradigm for the Study of Religion [Reprint 2019 ed.] 9789027931498, 9027931496

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Religion and Truth

(212

Religion and Reason 23 Method and Theory in the Study and Interpretation of Religion GENERAL EDITOR Jacques Waardenburg, University of Utrecht BOARD OF ADVISERS Th. R van Baaren, Groningen R N. Bellah, Berkeley U. Bianchi, Rome H.J.W. Drijvers, Groningen W. Dupré, Nijmegen S. N. Eisenstadt, Jerusalem M Eliade, Chicago C. Geertz, Princeton K. Goldammer,, Marburg R Ricoeur, Paris and Chicago M Rodinson, Paris N. Smart, Lancaster and Santa Barbara, Calif. G. Widengren, Stockholm

MOUTON PUBLISHERS

THE HAGUE

PARIS

NEW YORK

Religion and Truth Towards an Alternative Paradigm for the Study of Religion DONALD WIEBE University of Toronto

MOUTON PUBLISHERS

• THE HAGUE

• PARIS

• NEW YORK

ISBN 90 279 3149 6 © Copyright 1981 by M o u t o n Publishers, T h e Hague. All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. N o part of this book may be reproduced in any form - by photoprint, microfilm, or any other means - nor transmitted n o r translated into a machine language without permission from the publishers. Printing: Krips Repro, Meppel. Binding: Luderitz & Bauer Buchgewerbe G m b H , Berlin. Printed in T h e Netherlands.

For Gloria and Geoff

Preface

The essay presented here is intended primarily as a contribution to 'method in the study of religion'. Although primarily a critical-analytical study of the concept of truth as a valuable and fruitful category in the interpretation and understanding of religion, it is also, insofar as my argument meets with success, a polemic for a 'new' paradigm in the study of religion - an alternative to the present dominant 'descriptivism' in the scholarly study of religion. The arguments to be found in the following pages find their origin in a course of undergraduate lectures delivered at the University of Lancaster in the 1973-1974 academic year. The course, entitled 'Theories of Religion' was methodology oriented, and aimed primarily at equipping the new student with questions with which he might approach the data and, more particularly, with questions he might ask of the theoretical frameworks, disguised or otherwise, within which the 'data' are presented. Throughout the period of my research for and preparation of those lectures I became increasingly convinced of the harm brought to the study of religion through ignorance of methodological issues - by the failure to examine critically and closely the various categories used (or avoided) in the interpretations of religion. There is an old adage that suggests that those who can not carry out the task of a given field of inquiry turn to a discussion of the method of its study as a kind of consolation prize. And there is, I have found, rather vehement opposition to methodology courses at the undergraduate level with the suggestion that such courses encourage students to jump immediately into hypothesizing and theorizing about religion without ever having come to grips

viii

Preface

with the positive historical religions themselves. I strongly suggest, however, that in the case of the study of religion at l e a s t , the adage is absurd and that the opposition to method courses reveals more about the opponents (and their undiscovered assumptions and presuppositions) than about the courses and their e f f e c t s . As one student of the subject has put i t , 'every endeavour to deal just with the "stuff" of religion implies and, in f a c t , fe. a method'. (Bolle 1967: x). The analysis of 'truth' and 'religious truth' offered here will, I think, bear out the truth of the latter suggestion. Being quite convinced, upon completion of the course, that the first step towards understanding religion is that of method, my initial impulse was to write a comprehensive introductory text on method in the study of religion, in which I might examine, systematically, the relationship of description, explanation, models, and theory in the study of religious phenomena and to clarify, especially for the new student, the relationships of the various approaches that a r e , and can be, taken to the data: the scientificempirical, whether it be anthropological, psychological or sociological; the phenomenological; the historicaldescriptive; the philosophical or theological, e t c . More than this, I had intended the text to be a constructive essay and not only an 'analysis'; a constructive essay, not in the sense of elaborating some grand philosophical scheme 'about' religion but rather in the sense of contributing to the formation of a sound, critical approach to the study of religion. Needless to say, the vision far outstripped the resources of the author. Moreover, I found as I worked over the multifarious problems involved that many of them required t r e a t m e n t s of their own rather more comprehensive than any one text could allow. Accordingly, I temporarily abandoned my original proposal and set about the appraisal of some key concepts in the study of religion. In this regard I found the refusal of the 'founding fathers' of this 'new' study to countenance any role for the concept of 'truth' in that study to be of particular interest. Indeed, in the claim that the truth question need not be raised in the study of religion I sensed the uncritical adoption of a methodological dogma, a dogma

Preface

ix

that makes the study a mere descriptive exercise. Such 'descriptivism', as I have referred to it above, could not, I was convinced, fulfill the student's aspirations for a comprehensive understanding of religious phenomena (of religion and the various religious traditions). Consequently, I felt that an examination of that dogma and a close analysis of the concept of truth (and related conceptual matters) would present in embryo the 'framework' for study I had hoped to present in a more systematic fashion. I am now convinced that the study of religion can hope for little progress or exciting discovery until it rids itself of such methodological dogma. Only in moving beyond the methodological assumptions of the 'founding fathers' can the critical study of religion rid itself of a crippling methodological naivete. I first set down my thoughts on religion, religions, and truth in a formal way in a paper read to the Canadian Society for the Study of Religion, which appeared in print, slightly revised, a few years later. The present essay is an expansion and further development of that paper. Since many of the assumptions upon which I proceeded were discussed elsewhere, I have included, in a section on 'preliminary considerations' my papers on 'Is a science of religion possible?' and 'Explanation and the scientific study of religion' here. I have also included a chapter on the question of the nature and definition of religion. Although not in the form I should like it to be, I nevertheless present my discussion of religious truth to a wider community in the hope that it will alert the new student to the importance of philosophical and methodological clarity in the study of religion and that it might stimulate further discussion among established scholars about the nature of the study of religion and the need for further critical analysis of its, too often, hidden assumptions and presuppositions. I do not put it forward as a comprehensive and complete methodological framework for the study of religion. I do mean to suggest, however, that the argument presented here might well contain the seeds for an alternative and more adequate paradigm in terms of which that study might proceed.

x

Preface

Many people have been of assistance in the writing of this book and it is a pleasant duty to acknowledge their help here. I am especially indebted to Professor Ninian Smart for his encouragement in this and other projects and for his attention to and discussion of the arguments set out here. Various chapters were also read and helpfully commented upon by Mr. D. Miranda, Father J . Reinberger, and Dr. T. Day. Discussions of religion and the study of religion with Mr. John Franklin have not only been a great pleasure but have also greatly benefited me. I also owe a debt of gratitude to my students over the years for their patience and kindness in hearing me out on m a t t e r s methodological and for their critical questions and appraisals of the thesis defended here. I, nevertheless, accept full responsibility for the work and must alone be held accountable for its shortcomings. I wish to thank the following journals for permission to use material I have previously published in article form: Religion: Journal of Religion and Religions, for 'Explanation and the scientific study of religion'; Philosophical Studies, for 'Truth and the study of religion'; and Studies in Religion, for 'Is a science of religion possible?' My final thanks must go to Mrs. Darlene Clare who, with a great deal of patience, skill, and energy, typed the manuscript in its many and various forms. Thanks is also expressed to Trinity College for liberally assisting this project both financially and in making time available for the final revision of the manuscript.

Contents

Preface

vii

Introduction:

Part One:

1.

Truth as a Methodological Problem in the Study of Religion Religion and the Study of Religion: Some Preliminary Considerations

The Nature of Religion: The Problem of Definition The Possibility and Necessity of Defining Religion The Nature of Religion: Some General Comments Religion as an Object of Study Is Religion 'Science'?

2.

The Nature of the Study of Religion: Is a Science of Religion Possible? 'Science' and 'Religion' The 'New Science' Methodological Assumptions of the 'New Science' The Problematic Status of the 'New Science' The Critical Study of Religion

1

7

9 9 15 22 33 41 41 44 48 54 58

xii

3.

Contents

The Nature of the Study of Religion: The Role of Explanation Explanation and the Natural Sciences The Inadequacy of Causal Explanation 'Religious Explanation' The Role of Philosophy in the Study of Religion "

Part Two:

4.

Truth and the Study of Religion: Negative Considerations

The Truth Question as Inapplicable to Religion The Noncognitive Character of Religion The Transcendental Character of Religious Knowledge The Mystical Character of Religion

5.

The Truth Question as Irrelevant to the Study of Religion The Naturalistic Basis of the Scientific Study of Religion The Descriptive Aims of the Scientific Study of Religion

6.

61 63 67 72 79

83

85 85 98 105

107 107 110

The Truth Question as Impractical for the Student of Religion

115

The Elusive Nature of Truth The Complexity of Religion Tolerance and the Study of Religion

115 116 119

xiii

Contents

Part Three: Truth and the Study of Religion: A Critical Examination of the Arguments 7.

Cognitivism and Noncognitivism in the Study of Religion The Weaknesses of the Noncognitivist Argument Problems With Transcendent Knowledge Mystery, Religion, and Common Sense

8.

9.

The Theoretical Character of the Critical Study of Religion

123 123 144 152 153

Methodological Atheism and the Study of Religion Explanation, Theory, and The Study of Religion

158

Problems and Boundaries in the Study of Religion

163

The Problem of the Complexity of Religion The Problem of Tolerance

Part Four:

10.

121

The Category of Truth in the Critical Study of Religion

Truth and 'Religious Truth' Towards an Adequate Understanding of 'Truth' A Preliminary Analysis of 'The Truth of Religion'

153

163 168

171 173 175 185

xiv

11.

Contents

'Religious Truth': A Critical Inventory of Alternative Proposals Truth and Being: An Ontological Interpretation of Religious Truth Existential Truth: 'Religious Truth' as the Actualization of One's True Self Myth, Symbol, and Truth: A Pragmatic Interpretation of Religious Truth Religious Truth as Personal Truth Religions, Religion, and Truth Propositional Truth or the 'Truth of Religion'?

12.

193 193 200 206 211 219 221

The Critical Alternative in the Study of Religion

225

Notes

229

References and Bibliography

271

Index of names

291

Introduction Truth as a Methodological Problem in the Study of Religion

It is generally agreed among students of religion that an adequate understanding of religious phenomena can be obtained without ever having to raise the question as to the truth or falsity of the religion or religions under scrutiny. Indeed, the underlying assumption of the scientific study of religion goes even deeper - only by deliberately avoiding the 'truth question', it is maintained, can the scientific study of religion provide us with a genuine understanding of religious phenomena. The truth question, therefore, is a matter of discussion for the philosopher of religion but not for the scientific student of religion, for the 'science of religion', so-called, concerns itself only with the truth about religion, with true (accurate) descriptions of the beliefs, hopes, desires, events, rituals, etc. of religious people and with the mutual interaction of religious and other social institutions. The 'scientific' concern is presumed to be merely a descriptive one. The truth of religion, it is claimed then, is a religious matter; to decide about the truth or falsity of religion, or a particular religion is itself a religious decision for it involves plumping for one or other of the historical traditions. As such it must itself be an object of the academic (scientific) study of religion rather than an aspect of it. The truth question is not a scientific question because it goes beyond, what has been referred to by some as, the 'neutralized methodological framework' within which a purely factual knowledge about religion can be achieved.! This is not to malign the philosophy of religion, however, for, we are assured, asking where the individual person is to place his trust, in which direction he is to commit his life, depends very much on whether religion is true or false

2

Introduction:

Truth as a methodological

problem

and on which of the many religions comes closest to the truth. This assumption has by now become an unquestioned methodological dogma for students of religion. To use an appropriate cliche 'it reigns supreme' in most of our academic institutions.^ But it does so to the detriment of that study and not to its benefit. I do not deny the historical fruitfulness of the slogan 'search not for the truth of religion but rather for the truth about religion' in the days of the emergence of the academic study of religions from more narrowly theological studies and concerns. There is no doubt that the definite break on the part of the early professional students of religion from a narrow theological, often 'sectarian', perspective in the study of religious phenomena was of critical significance, especially in Europe. It provided the student of religion with the much needed distance between himself and his 'subject matter' required by an objective study and it helped thereby to free him from his own cultural horizons (or at least helped him to recognize them for what they were) and hence from bias and prejudice. The 'slogan' no doubt encouraged an intellectual openness and honesty in the treatment of the religious traditions other than of one's own culture, thereby relieving the scholar of the fear of some kind of 'reprisal' for his unorthodoxy (or even worse, heresy).^ in North America, particularly in the United States, with its strict interpretation of the doctrine of the separation of church and state, the distinction between the search for the truth about religion from religion itself (the search for religious truth) was (and perhaps still is in some states) essential to the establishment of departments of religious studies in the universities. To admit this historical fruitfulness, however, is not to concede the philosophical legitimacy of the 'slogan' (distinction). The connection between the distinction and the emergence of autonomous university departments of religious studies is accidental. There is no conceivable reason why one who believes in the truth of religion, or of a particular historical religion could not study, quite objectively, traditions other than his own.4 Consequently, now that the distinction between 'theology' and 'scholarly study of religion' has

Introduction:

Truth as a methodological

problem

3

been solidly established, the slogan can be seen for what it is (and was) and ought now to be abandoned. In suggesting such abandonment, however, I do not mean a complete rejection of the distinction between a subjective and an objective view of religion. I readily admit that in coming to an understanding of religion the epoche of the phenomenologist of religion, for example, has been and can be very helpful - perhaps even a necessity.^ Admitting this necessity, however, involves me neither in contradiction nor paradox for, as I have argued elsewhere (Wiebe 1975, reprinted here in Part One), there is no reason to identify the phenomenology of religion with the critical study of religion as such (i.e., with the so-called, 'science of religion'). The scientific study of religion must go beyond mere description to explanation. And to explain a thing requires a knowledge of its true character - it involves the 'truth question'. The explanation of religion as illusion, for example, is a far different thing than the explanation of religion as insight into the ultimate nature of reality and the destiny of man. The scientific study of religion insofar as it seeks an explanation of the phenomena it scrutinizes, far from resting on the distinction between 'the truth about religion' and 'the truth of religion', precludes it. The counterintuitive character of the distinction is further revealed when one asks of the 'science of religion', understood only as a descriptive science, whether a knowledge of the truth or falsity of the religious belief or beliefs described does not make more complete the description of that religious belief. Is not 'truth', in some sense v at least, an attribute of propositions and, consequently, an important element in the description? Surely to say that someone believes 'p' is not as full a description of the situation under observation as saying that someone believes 'p' and that 'p' is a true (or false) belief. The second description obviously involves a claim about the state of affairs described by 'p' (which can itself be either true or false and hence itself is but a belief), but that does not rule out the fact that it is also a fuller description since it tells us something more about the belief as well. (Further, we do not consider a person's belief that 'p' is in need of any further explanation if we

4

Introduction:

Truth as a methodological

problem

ourselves accept 'p' as true; consequently this more complete description is of critical importance to 'scientific' understanding.) The exhaustive description, it thus appears, loses its 'objectivity' because completeness of description necessarily involves not only a claim about other mental states of affairs - about the number and nature of beliefs held by any particular individual or community - but about reality (i.e., a state of affairs independent of the mind of the believer being described) as well. Unless then the 'scientific study of religion' is to be identified with an approach to religious phenomena that must eschew both explanation and complete description, the unwritten dogma of the separation of 'the scientific study of religion' and 'the philosophy of religion' must be overcome.® A proper understanding of 'the nature of the scientific study of religion', I shall argue here, can only be achieved if the uncritical acceptance of the assumed irrelevancy of the truth question for an understanding of religion is undermined. My concern will not be one of assessing the truth or falsity of religion or of any particular historical religious tradition. My concern is purely methodological. I want only to assess the significance of the truth question (i.e., whether religion or a religion is either true or false) for the 'scientific' or academic study of religion. Given the widespread assumption that the truth or falsity of a religion has no bearing on our understanding of it, the book is bound to take on a polemical air. But for the most part its goal is one of analysis and constructive philosophical argument aimed at clarifying the meaning and nature of religious truth and showing how a critical or scientific study of religion may involve itself with the truth question without losing the much prized 'objectivity' of recent religion scholarship. I have not found it possible at this point to define explicitly the meaning of the concept 'truth question'. Indeed, it is part of the task of this analysis to do precisely that. I shall assume in the reader a vague understanding of what is being referred to by the 'truth question' of religion, which might be summed up by the question of the ultimate significance of the beliefs and

Introduction: Truth as a methodological problem

5

practices of any particular religion in the interpretation of the world as a whole; or of a religious, as opposed to a nonreligious interpretation of the world. I am assuming, of course, a substantive rather than a functionalist definition of religion. Although not an essential element of my main argument I shall, nevertheless, set out, in some detail, reasons for this assumption as an important preliminary consideration to the central thesis of the book. A clear conception of this presumed 'foreknowledge' as to the nature of religion will assist the reader in seeing the natural appropriateness of my concern with the question of the truth/falsity of religion (religions). It may also help to forestall premature objections to the main argument. Two additional essays are included as 'preliminary considerations' each concerned with the character or nature of the study of religion. Throughout the argument in defense of 'truth' as a valuable interpretive category in the scientific study of religion I have assumed, first, that the study, although scientific, is not a distinct, separate, and autonomous discipline and, second, that the scientific (critical) study of religious phenomena is not essentially descriptive. The assumption that the 'truth question' ought not to be raised in the scholarly study of religion is to a large extent dependent upon the belief that there exists a specialized, objective 'science of religion'. Such a 'science of religion', it is claimed, is distinct both from the social sciences concerned with religious phenomena and from the theological disciplines; the former assuming the essential falsehood of 'religion' and* the latter its essential truth. Free of these contrary, if not contradictory, sets of assumptions and presuppositions, it is argued, the 'science of religion' can concern itself with the scientific understanding of religion without reference to abstruse metaphysical issues of truth, particularly since the basic concern of this new science (discipline) is description and not evaluation. Given this wide divergence of assumptions and presuppositions with respect to the nature of the study of religion I think it best that my reasons for the divergence be clearly stated. (The argument here will show, in f a c t ,

6

Introduction:

Truth as a methodological

problem

that a 'science of religion' as a distinct and separate discipline with its own distinct method is not possible.) This will not only make my claims with respect to 'truth and the study of religion' more easily understood but will also support and bolster several sections of critical appraisal of the standard arguments against 'truth' in the study of religion. Furthermore, the 'preliminary considerations' in conjunction with the argument for 'truth' in the study of religion will provide the outline of a new framework or paradigm within which, or in terms of which, a renewed and expanded notion of 'religious studies' may emerge. Having indicated how I propose to deal with the central problem of this essay and the assumptions upon which I intend to approach it, I need only briefly indicate the procedure I shall adopt. My first concern will be to set out and critically evaluate the arguments on why the truth question with respect to religion ought not to be raised. The arguments here fall into two broad categories - the one philosophical, with obvious methodological implications for the academic study of religion and the other more purely methodological (Part Two). I shall then proceed (Part Three) with a critical evaluation of the arguments against the concern with truth in the study of religion and the raising of a counterproposal. In the final section of the essay (Part Four) I shall subject to close analysis the concepts of 'truth' and 'religious truth' and various proposals about the nature of 'religious truth' to be found in the vast philosophical and methodological literature. That analysis will reveal that the truth question is both open to the 'objective' student of religion and of critical importance to his enterprise.

PART ONE

Religion and the Study of Religion: Some Preliminary Considerations

The Nature of Religion: The Problem of Definition

THE POSSIBILITY AND NECESSITY OF DEFINING RELIGION There are numerous definitions of religion. As Yinger points out (1970, chap. 1), given a good library and an hour or two a list of a hundred or more could easily be compiled. I have no intention, however, of providing a survey and critical analysis of such definitions here. I am concerned rather with the methodological significance of the definition of religion. The questions of significance for the student of religion are: 'Why seek a definition of religion?'; and 'Is there really a need for a definition of such a common phenomenon, a phenomenon which according to most ethnologists and social anthropologists is virtually universal?' There has not been a great deal of unanimity in the answers to such questions. Some have argued that such definition is neither needed nor possible. C. C. J. Webb in response to Durkheim's definition of religion in terms of 'the sacred' and 'the profane' (Durkheim 1971: 37) writes: 'We all know what we mean by holding a thing to be sacred (though we may not all regard the same thing as sacred) better than any definition can tell us, as we all know what we mean by calling things beautiful (though we do not all agree in what we think beautiful) better than any definition of beauty can tell us' (Webb 1916: 59-60). It would seem that definition is not possible because religion is something that can only be felt; that religion is of such a character that to describe it in words is to distort its very nature. But this itself, paradoxically, is a kind of definition of religion and a definition, moreover, that makes any academic study of the phenomenon impossible;

10

The study of religion: Preliminary considerations

it opens religion only to the 'true believer'; it fails to see that religion is also a human, cultural phenomenon. Religion may indeed be a matter of inwardness and so is, in part at least, esoteric, but to stress only this is to fail to recognize that religion has an exoteric character as well. It is thus a definition of religion wholly in terms of its esoteric nature. According to Richard Gombrich (1971) the definition of religion holds no importance for the students of religion because the exercise is essentially trivial and even futile. In discussion of the aims and scope of his own book on traditional Buddhism in rural Ceylon he writes: 1 have so far discussed religion in general terms without attempting to define it. This does not really matter because everyone knows what I have been talking about and problems of definition are essentialist problems, essentially trivial' (Gombrich 1971: 8).* And yet Gombrich himself proceeds with his study with a Durkheimian (sociological) 'understanding' of religion as a wholly human phenomenon. He speaks, however, of 'a widely held hypothesis' about religion rather than a definition, but it amounts to the same thing. There is no doubt t h a t , in one sense, everyone knows what is meant by the term religion. Nevertheless, as is obvious from the criticisms I have sketched vis a vis Webb's and Gombrich's suggestions, such a general understanding is not sufficient; it all too often acts as smoke screen to the adoption of conceptions of religion that most people, on the commonsense level of discussion, would not be willing to accept. Indeed, the explicit arguments of both Webb and Gombrich are structurally the same and yet each seems to work with a totally different understanding of the nature of religion, Webb placing the emphasis on the esoteric aspect, the inner personal nature of religion, whereas Gombrich approaches the phenomenon exoterically, placing the emphasis on its social c h a r a c t e r , on its character as a 'human product'. Furthermore, it seems that both Webb and Gombrich fail to distinguish normative or substantive definitions that a t t e m p t to reveal the very essence of religion (or religions) and generally come as the conclusion of research, from operational or functional

The nature of religion: The problem of

definition

11

definitions of religion that come at the beginning of such research as a guide. Those who make such a distinction in definition - and I shall argue later that the distinction is not as clear-cut and free of problems as some suggest argue that a definition of religion is not only possible but absolutely necessary. There is general agreement here that no 'real' (normative) definition of religion (a definition that proposes to reveal what religion actually is) is possible, at least not at the beginning of the study of religious phenomena, for the term 'religion' has, as a matter of f a c t , referred to a wide variety of things, events, acts, beliefs, etc., in which it is impossible to find a common essence.2 it would be difficult, in other words, to know whether such a definition were to deal primarily with a belief system of a people, with the intensely religious person, with the ordinary average member of society who 'indulges' in religious beliefs and practices of one sort or another, or with some combination of these things. Nevertheless, it is argued quite plausibly that unless some preliminary definition of religion, some kind of intuitive understanding of the nature of religion susceptible of verbal formulation, is possible, no study of religion can ever be launched. Without such delimitation of a field of research, anything and everything would be open to inquiry; and if everything is open to inquiry, we have in f a c t , no specific study of religion at all. A definition of religion is thus necessary to 'point out' the phenomena to be investigated. Spiro (1966) makes the point succinctly: 'Unless we already know, by definition, what religion is, how can we know which "concrete reality" we are to "consider"? Only if religion has already been defined, can we perform either this initial operation or the subsequent one disengaging those elements which are shared by all religion' (Spiro 1966: 91). He continues (ibid.): In sum, any comparative study of religion requires as an operation antecedent to inquiry, an ostensive or substantive definition that stipulates unambiguously those phenomenal variables which are designated by the term. This ostensive definition will, at the same time, be a

12

The study of religion: Preliminary considerations

nominal definition in that some of its designate will, to other scholars, appear to be arbitrary. This, then, does not remove 'religion' from the arena of definitional controversey; but it does remove it from the context of fruitless controversy over what religion 'really is' to the context of the formulation of empirically testable hypotheses which, in anthropology, means hypotheses susceptible to crosscultural testing. There are problems connected with such a procedure that cannot be denied and must be discussed before proceeding. How, for example, is this operation to be carried out? Is such an operational definition simply an enumerative or denotative definition such as 'all and only those "things" included in the following list are to be counted as "religious things": Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, . . . etc.?' Such a definition is, or seems to be, totally stipulative and hence totally arbitrary (and irrational?). If such a definition is to escape the indictment of irrationality, some, if not explicit, implicit reason must exist for including what is stipulated as being 'religion' and for excluding what is not so stipulated. And either way, it can be argued, one is involved in providing a 'real' rather than merely an 'operational' definition of religion. Robert Baird (1971) refers to this, critically, as the 'essential-intuitional method' of defining religion, which 'proceeds as though the word "religion" corresponds to something that has univocal status, that the word is unambiguous and that the reality or essence which it names is intuitively identifiable' (Baird 1971: 2). In a sense, Baird's complaint is justified. It seems to m e , however, that there is really no possibility of distinguishing, in an absolute way, real or essential definitions from operational ones. This distinction is useful only if it is remembered that it is a pragmatic one. Surely an operational definition that deviated wholly from all essentialist-type definitions thus far proposed would be arbitrary and hence useless even in delimiting the subject matter for investigation. The point of the distinction, however, is that the operational definition is held open to further revision, whereas, at least as presently

The nature of religion: The problem of

definition

13

understood, the essentialist definition is not. One might then evade Baird's criticism by claiming that a definition of religion is required in order to set the study of religion in motion, but that the definition is not meant to locate once and for all the essence of religion so much as to make certain assumptions about the type of phenomena that are to 'count as' religious. And although assumptions are not the sorts of things one generally sets out to 'prove', there may, nevertheless, be 'criteria' any such assumptions might be required to satisfy. Spiro, for example (1966), suggests two such criteria: 'crosscultural applicability' and 'intracultural intuitivity'. By 'crosscultural applicability' he means, simply, that the assumptions (or the definition) must apply to more than one culture, without, however, necessarily having universal application. The second criterion merely holds that the definition or assumptions not be counterintuitive; that it not outrightly contradict the basic sense in which the term 'religion' has thus far been used. Fredrick Ferré (1967) similarly suggests several such criteria. His reference to the 'responsibility of public intelligibility' of definitions parallels that of 'intracultural intuitivity1 and his 'responsibilities of scope' reiterates the point of Spiro's 'extracultural applicability'. But to these two criteria Ferré adds a third, that of the 'responsibility of cruciality'. According to Ferré, definitions must, if they are to be useful, 'slice the universe at what for our purposes are its natural joints' (Ferré 1967: 39). Thus far they are stipulative and arbitrary. But while doing this it must be borne in mind (ibid.) that there are discoverable uniformities or resemblances in our experiences, with various degrees of pervasiveness, obviousness or importance for shared human interests. These are the uniformities which have been given names by having general terms applied to them, and it is at the major intersections of such uniformities that we are likely to find our most crucial interests delineated. Ferre's point here is that though a definition may be, in

14

The study of religion: Preliminary considerations

part at l e a s t , stipulative, it cannot, without becoming totally useless to us in terms of information about the world, be entirely arbitrary. Consequently, even though in many instances definitions are totally arbitrary, as in logic and mathematics, it is still the case that in other contexts definitions can be actually either true or false. Some are so obviously useless that they can be taken to be false and this occurs, he tells us, 'when the definition has not in f a c t found a "natural point in the cosmos"' (Ferré 1967: 49). This corresponds to what I have called the 'intuitional' element in all definitions outside of logic and mathematics.^ To speak of necessary assumptions then instead of a definition of religion enables one to delimit the subject matter of inquiry and so makes possible a science of religion without arbitrariness, with some prior intuitive awareness of the nature of religion short of a final essentialist description. Kitagawa (1967), for example, seems to follow such a procedure. He admits that no adequate definition of religion has been forthcoming, yet sets out three assumptions that have generally been accepted regarding religion: (1) that religion presupposes religious experience, an experience of the sacred or holy which underlies all religious phenomena; (2) that the central concern of religion is nothing less than soteriology and (3) that religion involves three dimensions, the theoretical, the practical, and the social. Spiro's definition of religion seems to involve similar assumptions. 'For me', he writes, 'any definition of "religion" which does not include as a key variable the belief in superhuman . . . beings who have power to help or hairn man is counter-intuitive' (1966: 91). It certainly runs counter to most Western notions of the nature of religion to say the least. The first two of Kitagawa's elements are contained here, if one is permitted to interpret his first assumption as involving reference (whether rightly or wrongly does not matter here) to some transcendent reality. It seems that Kitagawa's discussion of primitive religion, at l e a s t , implies this for when he comes to discuss 'modern religion' he points out that a radical change has taken place in modern people 'in that they no longer

The nature of religion: The problem of

definition

15

take seriously the existence of another realm of reality' (Kitagawa 1967: 61). They may use terms implying such a reality but they use them only symbolically: 'To the modern man, this phenomenal world is the only real order of existence, and life here and now is the centre of the world of meaning' (ibid.). This, of course, makes it a very moot question as to whether 'modern religion' is really, according to the assumptions made by Kitagawa, religion or rather a surrogate.4 The third assumption comes out in Spiro's more precise definition where he takes religion to be 'an institution consisting of culturally patterned interaction with culturally postulated superhuman beings' (Spiro 1966: 96). THE NATURE OF RELIGION: SOME GENERAL COMMENTS Having attempted to set out the methodological importance of 'defining' religion I shall proceed now to delineate the basic elements of religion; to set out what it takes to make of any phenomenon a religious phenomenon and to defend this view against very persuasive, but less helpful and less fruitful alternatives. My sentiments here lie basically with Spiro. 5 The three elements that jointly 'make' a cultural phenomenon a religious one are transcendence, human limitation, and salavation. All religion makes some reference to a transcendent world and whether the metaphors used to refer to it are those of height or depth does not matter. The essential point is the 'otherness' of that world or of the 'gods'. There must exist a distinct bifurcation between the sacred and the secular, with a superiority of the former. This need not be an explicitly articulated belief, for such notions can be implied in primitive rites and rituals never explicitly analyzed or conceptualized: some religions simply do without explicit 'theologies'. Out of this basic element, there emerges that of human limitedness. All religions, it appears, see man as in need; of himself, inadequate or incomplete whether that inadequacy is seen in terms of sin, suffering, or death. The last element, of course, follows from these two,

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The study of religion: Preliminary considerations

namely that man seeks his salvation, escape from his inherent limitedness, by drawing on the power of this 'other realm'. Here one finds ideas of agency and causation in the universe and the idea of 'prayer', making possible a relationship with the other world which can be 'utilized'. From these three basic ideas the key concepts of what have generally (admittedly, prescientifically) been taken to be the 'world religions' have derived. And they account for the key elements of primitive religion equally well. I find myself in full agreement, therefore,with Spiro when in his conclusion he says: 'I would agree that the belief in superhuman beings and their power to assist or to harm man approaches universal distribution, and this belief - I would insist - is the core variable which ought to be designated by any definition of religion' (1966: 94). Objections, however, are still bound to be raised. Surely, some will complain, the above definition (set of assumptions) excludes from the list of religions Theravada Buddhism (the classic exception to Western theistic definitions of religion), which shows the definition to be parochial to say the least. Baird, for example, complains (1971) that such a definition excludes both Theravada Buddhism and Marxism and claims that it therefore involves plumping for the truth of one system (or set of cultural beliefs) over another, of assuming the validity of a belief system without proving it. These fears are understandable but can be dispelled. First, I see no reason why such a definition need be a plumping for the truth of one system over another unless one already assumes that religion itself is true as opposed to secular philosophies and the like, which is not entailed in the above definition. Second, this definition is cross-culturally applicable even if not universal and is not obviously counterintuitive: it fits quite well the historical usage of the term. Thus even if it did not apply to Theravada Buddhism this would not necessarily 'invalidate' it. Besides, one must distinguish here between the Theravada Buddhism of the Sangha, on the whole a very sophisticated philosophical system, and that of the mass of the people. The belief of most Buddhists is generally pervaded by pre-Buddhistic beliefs so that 'even if Theravada Buddhism were absolutely atheistic, it cannot

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be denied that Theravada Buddhists adhere to another belief system which is theistic to the core' (Spiro 1966: 94). And he concludes (ibid.): And if it were to be argued that atheistic Buddhism by some other criteria - is a religion and that, therefore, the belief in superhuman beings is not a necessary characteristic of 'religion' it would still be the case that the belief in superhuman beings and in their power to aid or harm man is a central feature in the belief systems of all traditional societies. Furthermore, if one accepts the distinction made by Gombrich betwen 'cognitive' and 'affective' religion one can quite legitimately call Theravada Buddhism theistic on the affective level. In discussion of Sinhalese ritual practice regarding the Buddha figure he writes (1971: 139-140): After stating the doctrinal position that the Buddha was a monk who is now dead, I have shown that certain ceremonies performed before his images imply otherwise. Though nearly all the ceremonies can be explained, as they are, as gestures of respect for his memory, certain other events can not, and in turn imply minimally that he was a king, that he was (or is) a monk above monks, that he is alive in the image and that his living presence is potentially maleficent. The heirarchic order of these assumptions could be slightly varied, for instance by claiming that it is implied that he is a living rather than a dead king and that this is further from doctrine than the implication that he is a live super-monk. This is not important if all the implications are granted; the most interesting result, which seems to me incontestably proven by the last two examples (the netra pinkama and manumuru mangalya) quoted is that certain ceremonies only make sense on the assumption that the statue is alive, which I take to amount to calling the statue a god. The adoption of such a definition of religion can, moreover, be justified in terms of the weaknesses of the

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The study of religion: Preliminary considerations

alternatives. I shall limit myself to a thorough analysis of one of the most popular. What is needed, so it is claimed, is not a substantive definition but a purely formal one which requires that one look and see what is and what is not to be included in the list of religions and to do this without prejudging which of these systems, if any, are true or false. Thus Baird suggests a Tillichian kind of d e f i nition of religion as 'that which concerns man ultimately' (1971: 19). Such a definition, he says, concerns itself with man rather than with 'the gods' and so makes no ontological commitments; it says nothing about the essence of religion and is thus entirely openended, excluding nothing as a possible 'religious object' in an a priori fashion. This definition has found a ready hearing among theologians (obviously Tillich),® historians of religions (Bleeker);? philosophers (Ferr£ 1967) and even the social scientists (Yinger 1970). Despite its popularity, however, it is inadequate for the following reasons. F i r s t , one can readily admit that communism, or Nazism, or, less convincingly, the stockmarket or even baseball may serve one (or more) of the many functions (social or personal) generally fulfilled by religion and so have a kind of religious aura about them and yet claim that it is misleading to designate them all by the same term 'religion'. Furthermore, even though one of these institutions might have a dominating influence in one's life at a particular moment this does not indicate that it is ultimate in the required sense. It may hold that dominant role for only - a short period of time and then be replaced by some other factor of life or some other institution. Or it may have that dominating role only intermittently. Second, such a definition seems to be methodologically weak on several grounds. For example, the ultimacy of the ultimate concern is a highly personal, subjective m a t t e r , not open to simple observation. Does 'ultimate concern' r e f e r to the most dominating concern of a particular person's life at a particular moment as expressed in his overt actions? (Would this not be to succumb to a crude behaviorism in the study of religion?) Or is it that concern which is most pervasive throughout the whole of one's life? (And if so, how could one possibly assess what it is

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(was)?) Is it 'ultimate' in the sense that it is concern about that which transcends empirical reality and so is objectively ultimate in itself, independently of man's concern? (And how could this be examined? Is not an ontological commitment involved here?) Until answers to questions such as these are provided it is difficult to see in what sense such a definition is operational. Further, it seems to me that such a definition is methodologically unfruitful in the sense that it does not clearly delimit the field of investigation and leaves the student of religion with little or no procedural direction or advice. To be counseled simply to go out and observe in order to see where religion is to be found is really no advice at all. Third, the substantive definition given above makes no more of an ontological commitment than the Tillichian definition suggested by Baird. To see religion as involving a belief in the transcendent or even the supposition of an experience of the transcendent is not to endorse the truth of such a belief or assumption but only to recognize the 'cultural postulation' of such a being or entity. And to define religion as a purely human phenomenon, as does Baird, is to exclude in a priori fashion even the possibility of religion's knowledge of such a transcendent world and hence involves itself in the ontological commitment of all naturalistic philosophies. This point needs some expansion. Baird attempts to minimize the ontological commitment of his position when he writes: 'when we state that the history of religions is the study of man rather than the study of God we are making a methodological stipulation and not a theological proposal' (1-971: 20). One can readily agree with Baird that the scientific study of religion does not involve the study of God or ultimate reality whether it be Nirvana, or Brahman or Jahweh, e t c . , for that is the task of theology, Buddhology, etc. ( i f , that is, God or the ultimate 'exists'). But the methodological advantage of the Tillichian type of definition then vanishes, for no problem is incurred by defining religion as involving the postulation of superhuman beings. To be sure, those who do the postulating assume the truth and acceptability of their statements about such 'realities' but this does not imply that the student of religion need follow suit. Thus, to

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claim t h a t the postulation of superhuman beings, or of some transcendent r e a l i t y , is an element found in all religions involves a t a c i t admission of the truth of such claims is a patent non sequitur. Some digression on this point is warranted h e r e , for the issue involved is an important one. Ninian Smart (1973a, b) sees one of the prime tasks of the student of religion to be providing an adequate description of religions. This he insists involves the student in what he calls the Expression of the faith by those committed to it. Yet the student must a t t e m p t to do this without himself becoming so c o m m i t t e d , and also without assuming that the content of the Expression is illusion, superstition, or in any sense unreal. One cannot t a k e for grant that religion is either a divine product or a purely human phenomenon. To find out how it is to be approached he turns to a discussion of what he calls the Focus of religious r i t e s , b e l i e f s , e t c . (using the Anglican Eucharist as an illustration). The question of importance that arises in the discussion is I s the Focus . . . part of the phenomenon which the observers witness?' (Smart 1973a: 56). It would s e e m , according to the common understanding of epoche in the phenomenology of religion that the Focus of religion is not part of the religious phenomenon. This would involve the assumption of its e x i s t e n c e , creating unresolvable philosophical problems, since then 'the ontological f i r m a ment becomes heavily populated and r a t h e r inconsistently' (Smart 1973a: 56). But such an interpretation of the meaning of epoche also involves one in a reductionistic understanding (or misunderstanding) of religion. This Smart also is unwilling to accept (1973a: 59):

. . . if phenomenology is to be assimilated into its brother sociology, then it also ought to proceed with a methodological atheism - but already this is to suggest t h a t a certain kind of description has to be given o f , for e x a m p l e , the Eucharist, a description, t h a t is, which comments on the 'true s t a t e of a f f a i r s ' . Such a comment would include r e f e r e n c e , presumably, to the projected c h a r a c t e r of the Focus. At this juncture

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methodological atheism would be effectively indistinguishable from atheism tout court. Smart attempts to avoid both horns of this dilemma by adopting what he calls a 'bracketed realism'. In such a realism the question of the existence of the Focus is not posed rather than being left as an unanswered question, but its reality is taken as obvious. In other words, even if the 'gods' do not exist, they nevertheless fulfill a very important function in the lives of the believers. He claims: 'My argument then is directed to the conclusion that it is wrong to analyze religious objects in terms simply of religious beliefs. A description of a society with its gods will include the gods. But by the principle of the bracket we neither affirm nor deny the existence of the gods' (Smart 1973b: 54). And elsewhere he concludes: 'Now if we have rejected projectionism within phenomenology, we cannot hold that phenomenology simply deals with human events and products, though it certainly does at least this' (1973a: 68). Thus of the eucharist he writes (ibid.): The phenomenological description of the Eucharist . . . brings out the interplay, so to speak, between the Focus and the participants. From the point-of-view of phenomenology, the question of whether the Focus exists does not arise; but if it does exist, then the phenomenological description does actually describe a manifestation of the Focus, or in other words it is not just a description of human events, etc. This discussion of Smart's distinction between the reality of the Focus of a religion and its existence highlights the reductionistic character of the purely formal definition of religion suggested by Baird. Whether or not the distinction really resolves the dilemma of the student of religion, namely that of avoiding both reductionism and 'theologism' in one's attempt to understand the data, is another question and one which I cannot take up here.8 One last criticsm of the purely formal definition proposed by Baird needs to be voiced, namely this, that the definition, if accepted, makes everyone religious whether

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The study of religion: Preliminary considerations

they know it (or like it) or not. This comes out explicitly in Yinger's discussion of the measurement of religious behavior. 'I find it helpful', he writes (1970: 33), 'to think of everyone - or nearly everyone - as being religous just as nearly everyone speaks a language.' Consequently, 'rather than asking _if a person is religious, we ask how he is religious, what concerns him most fundmentally' (ibid.; see also pp. 488-489).9 We have here a completely relativized notion of 'ultimate concern', which in f a c t makes being human synonymous with being religious and this, it seems to me, empties the concept 'religion' of all content; it in f a c t ruins the term for any future use and is, for that reason, counterintuitive and unacceptable. Yinger goes so far as to suggest, in f a c t , that neurosis might even be described as a private form of religion or that a man's job might be his religion. (1970: 190), which seems to me wholly unacceptable particularly in light of the f a c t that he himself wishes to speak about 'secular alternatives to religious action'. I do not claim that there is an absolute break between religion and that which is not religion. There is a shading off of one into the other, but this is not the same as to admit anything and everything as 'religion' if only it occupies a dominant place in the life and mind of a particular individual. A Tillichian definition of religion, I suggest t h e r e f o r e , is far too individualistically oriented to do justice to our present (intuitive) understanding of the nature of religion and far too open-ended to be of much heuristic value. It gains most of its force from the f a c t that the gods (or transcendent reality) and the quest for salvation are chief concerns in the lives of most men (excluding, perhaps, our present Western, technological man, although this is a matter for debate - they are of ultimate concern because of the need to overcome human limitation and because that need can only be fulfilled, so it is supposed, in drawing upon a transcend e n t , u l t i m a t e , power. RELIGION AS AN OBJECT OF STUDY It is time now to set out as explicitly as possible just what this 'thing' religion, for the student of the

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phenomenon, really is; to give a characterization of this phenomenon that will aid the student in approaching the data with a proper mental framework, with appropriate questions in mind and with some hint of what to look for when the mass of data spreads before him. It is important, first of all, to note that religion, in one sense, is not something one can see (I shall discuss this further in the chapter to follow). There are externals attached to religion but which, of themselves, mean nothing; it is the 'inner life' of rites, rituals, practices and institutions that is of importance. This is not to say, however, that religion is some monolithic 'thing' quite separate and distinct from other 'things'. Religion really is not that at all, as should by now be clear. It is, generally speaking, something more 'vague' (for lack of a better word) that pervades and permeates all of life and all of society. It is therefore something very difficult to grasp and to understand. Nevertheless, even though religion is not something one can 'see', it is at the same time, paradoxically, something that can be seen and empirically measured. Religion as an innep dimension of life, that is, finds expression in external rites and ceremonies, in art, music, and architecture and so can, in some sense again, be measured. There is always some form of outward act of behavior connected to the inner intention of the 'believer'. And without this, surely, no scientific study (i.e., in the sense of the empirical sciences such as psychology, sociology, etc.) of religion would be in the offing. It is important then to be aware of this complex inward/outward character of religion, which calls for both a humanistic approach to it as well as a scientific-empirical approach. Either approach without the other is incomplete and is bound to give a grossly distorted picture of religion or of any historical religious tradition. Dittes (1971:80) describes the situation concisely: On the one hand there is religion in relatively explicit form, tending to be public, social, overt, manifest, institutionalized, formalized. This is religion as it is readily and conveniently identified within the culture,

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The study of religion: Preliminary considerations

tending to be segregated into particular behaviour, formal belief, or institutional connection which is identified by the culture as exclusively religious and as distinguished from non-religious activity. Such religion provides a social psychologist with reasonably reliable objective, and familiar indecies. On the other hand there is religion in more subjective form, more a matter of personal attitudes, orientation, mind-set, f r a m e - o f - r e f e r e n c e , a response expectancy, values and loyalties and commitments, fundamental motivations or standards - the spiritual dimension of all life . . . This is religion as it is more commonly regarded by the religious spokesmen. Religion then is, to summarize, complex and multidimensional, approachable neither from the 'inside' alone nor from the 'outside' alone. It must be approached by means of analysis of the individual as with James (1961) and by means of sociological analysis as, say, with Durkheim (1971). It is not a monolithic something that is either easily demarcated or easily analyzed. Study of it is facilitated therefore if one can separate its different aspects or dimensions, both to reveal its complexity and to make possible a kind of piecemeal approach to i t . H Further, such analysis ought to raise significant problems with which the student might approach the data, problems such as the question of the nature of the relationship of the inward intention of the religious person to the outward expression of religious experience; the nature of the relationship of myth and doctrine to each other and of both myth and doctrine to that of religious experience and ritual behavior; etc. Such 'informed' research is surely bound to result in more significant discoveries than simple observation (if this is even possible). Smart (1969, chap. 1) suggests that there are six such dimensions to religion; the first five concern religion as explicit or objective and the last concerns religion as subjective and diffused. They are: the ritual dimension which, he claims, includes oriental techniques of self-training; the mythological dimension;

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the doctrinal dimension; the ethical dimension; the social dimension; and the experiential dimension. It is important here also to distinguish between esoteric and exoteric religion even though it in some senses parallels the distinction of inside/outside made above. Many religions are esoteric in the sense that an understanding of even the basic ideas and concepts of the system depend upon a deepening spirituality on the part of the participant. There is exoteric religion, so it is claimed, only insofar as the esoteric ideas become popular through a literal or poetic interpretation which misses their spiritual intent, the latter becoming known only as one treads the 'path' to maturity. To understand such religions (and some would claim that all the major world religions, in fact, have or had, such esoteric paths) presents peculiar difficulties for the student of religion, which are clearly indicated by Needleman in the conclusion to his study of the 'new religions'. He writes (1970: 228): It is, I think, true to say that the esoteric is 'higher' than the exoteric in the sense that it is religion in its most intensely instrumental form and represents the direct human relationship to cosmic nature. But, as we have suggested, it is the whole of religion - both esoteric and exoteric - that is necessary if civilization is to serve its function as an intersection between levels of reality. What I am trying to say is that there is still an infinite gap between obeying the external precepts of a teaching and inventing or altering the percepts on the basis of subjective likes and dislikes. In all of the great religious traditions, merely external conformance to precepts is condemned; but on the other hand, only a minority are called to the rigors of the path. Setting aside Needleman's own (religious?) bias as is evident here, we can readily see the problem that arises. Mere external conformance to the precepts above must be inadequate to provide us with a real understanding of (that) religion. Yet the esoteric alone is not enough to provide the link between the levels of reality of which religions speak; hence the exoteric has a necessary

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relationship to the esoteric. It should follow, then, that a thorough knowledge of the exoteric ought to provide some significant insight, however slight, into the nature of the esoteric. Another and similar kind of distinction often drawn is that between the essence of a religion (or Religion) and its empirical manifestation, or, one might say, between Religion (or a religion) as ideally conceived and Religion as actually embodied in its devotees. The distinction is of particular importance as Toynbee (1956) points o u t , i n terms of comparison of religions where all too often evaluative comparisons have been (and are being) made between the ideal conception of one religion and the (distorted) empirical embodiment of another. There are yet other distinctions with which the students of religion must be familiar such as the distinction drawn by some theologians between 'Faith' and 'religion' which is more radical than that between the ideal and the empirical just mentioned, and the distinction between Religion (spelled with a capital R) and the religions. There is an obvious sense, with regard to the latter issue, in which Religion does not exist and cannot, therefore, be studied; that it is only particular historical traditions with which one can concern himself. And yet there is also a sense in which the student of the religions wants desperately to say something about religion in general, that is, about the religions in general without saying anything about one of them in particular, which seems an admirable scientific aim. The distinction therefore must be considered closely. Considering the important influence theology and theologians have had in the development of the study of religion and the fact that Christianity is still the religion of a large number of those involved in such study, a close analysis of the faith/religion distinction is in order here. The distinction between faith and religion, or rather, between revealed and natural religion is argued most persuasively and most persistently by Hendrick Kraemer (1938, 1956) and is reiterated throughout his other writings (especially 1962). And it is of some importance to pay attention to Kraemer, for he voices the concern that the so-called scientific study of religion, the aims and

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intentions of which he fully accepts, misunderstands religion because of a faulty and biased methodology. A proper understanding of religion can come, he claims, only when one expressly seeks out the assumptions on which he proceeds, that is ferrets out the hidden commitments that lie behind and prompt one's investigation of the world's faiths. Thus he writes: 'Our endeavour will be to vindicate by a critical evaluation of the attempts of the Science of Religion and of the Philosophy of Religion to understand and explain religion and religions, the scientific and philosophic legitimacy of a Theology of Religion and Religions' (Kraemer 1956: 321). His critique of the religionswissenschaftliche evaluation of religion will not, however, be taken up here. I wish here only to look at and question the distinction between faith (which means the Christian faith) and religion. Kraemer is less hard on religion than is Barth. Barth, he claims, is not dialectical enough in his response to religion. In Barth there is total rejection of religion and the religions, whereas, says Kraemer, what is needed is a notion of radical displacement combined with a regenerating and transforming incorporation. Thus he writes (1956: 271): The conclusion, it seems, is that the human attempts to deal with the ultimate problems of existence have their place and value and ought not to be ignored by that community which lives in the light of God's revelation. It should be noticed that it is not so much the specific realm of ethnic religion which has this seal upon it, as the realm of human thinking and intellectual and moral apprehension. And yet Kraemer, like Barth, speaks of Christ as the 'crisis' of all religion, requiring of those steeped in other ways a 'conversion' and a radical break with the past. Thus whatever the dialectical attitude toward other religion is, it is not an acceptance of other religions as either a way of salvation or a way of providing one with a (positive) knowledge of the transcendent (God) for, according to Kraemer (1956: 360, also p. 312),

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. . . to construe (the religions) as independent, autonomous territories of men's own ability to arrange their relation to God is evidence of a deep misunderstanding of the Bible and of the meaning of Christ. By doing so, one justifies and sanctifies what the Bible considers one of the root-sins and fundamental blindnesses of man, i.e. that man is able to arrange his relation with God. At best religion gives us knowledge that man is haunted by God but does not give us knowledge of God; especially not a saving knowledge of him. There is, then, a difficult riddle here. First, even if Kraemer's dialectic were a real dialectic, it would be difficult to know how it is possible both to accept and reject religion in the face of faith. Further, would such acceptance and rejection be the same in the case of empirical Christianity as in other religions? Is such acceptance and rejection applied to ideal and empirical religion? That is, is ideal religion accepted and only empirical distortions of it rejected? For Kraemer it appears that it is ideal religion itself that is both accepted and rejected, except in the case of the Christian religion for there the true faith is the ideal that is involved in the empirical and material expression. Thus the 'Christian religion', like Christian faith, stands a step above the other religions because of its peculiar relationship to the revelation of God. As he puts it (1956: 141), There is only one great difference between empirical Christianity and the other faiths. Empirical Christianity has stood and stands under continuous and direct influence and judgment of the revelation in Christ and is in virtue thereof in a different position from the other religions. But this would seem to exempt the Christian religion from the dialectic. There are other problems, as well, connected with the dialectic as Kraemer uses it. He nowhere provides a reasoned argument as to why or in what respect religion ought to be accepted and in what respects it ought to be

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rejected. Unless this is done it is difficult to conceive how the dialectic of which he speaks differs from sheer contradiction. In f a c t , he himself declares it logically outrageous and claims that, somehow, it ought to appear as reasonable because of its logical outrageousness: 'Such a paradox, which is an unbearable scandal to logical, rational thinking - a philosopher from his standpoint is quite right in judging it so - is only bearable and even lucid in the realm of personal relationship' (1956: 308). This is mere bluff, however, and raises more problems than it provides solutions. One cannot help but agree with Neill's assessment, at this point, that Religion and the Christian Faith is a disappointing book. As Neill points out, Kraemer merely states the dialectical principle and in using it involves himself in inconsistency and self-contradiction. He merely sets the 'Yea and the Nay over against one another as it were on parallel lines, without bringing them into the creative Tension with one another which is the mark of genuinely dialectical thinking and which alone opens the way out of apparently irreconcilable contradiction' (Neill 1959: 2 0 ) . M a r t i n Marty's assessment is even stronger. 'To the scientific student of religion', he writes (1971: 62), 'It may look as if a main group in Christian theology has blown holes in a ship, thrown out the pumps and then gone up on the bridge to command it while it sinks.' Such assessments are entirely understandable and I shall call attention to still other criticisms of this distinction between faith and religion. But before doing so it is important to see the twin motivations lying behind i t , namely the concern for truth and the fear of relativism. First, if religion demands allegiance and total commitment it must be, in some sense, the truth. If all religions are judged true when in f a c t , at least prima facie so, they conflict, the truth claim of each is in jeopardy and the commitment involved in each, consequently, undermined. Either one is right and the others wrong, or all are partially right and partially wrong, or all are wrong. TO understand the nature of the relationship of one religion to another then, it is important to consider the question of truth and Kraemer's emphasis upon revelation and faith is important in that it does precisely this. The second motive

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force, of course, follows from this, namely the fear of relativism. This not only breeds apathy and indifferentism, according to Kraemer, but is itself a 'theological' position vis a vis religion which claims either that religion is false (that is, that it does not provide knowledge of God or a way of salvation), or that the claims of religion cannot be assessed. Either way a proper understanding of religion is forfeited. The distinction between faith and religion blocks this sort of 'move' and for that reason is of some importance. However, the dinstinction between faith (by which Kraemer means 'revelation in Christ') and religion is ultimately unacceptable. It is unacceptable basically because it is based on an inadequate conception of revelation. For Kraemer revelation is totally sui generis and is open only to 'the eye of faith': 'Revelation is an act of God, an act, of divine grace for forlorn man and a forlorn world by which He condescends to reveal His will and His Heart, and which, just because it is revelation, remains hidden except to the eye of faith. . . . This is the Biblical and the only valid idea of revelation' (Kraemer 1938: 118). Such a revelation is, then, totally immune to criticism or question from without. To understand it, it must first be accepted and believed. That is, 'the Christian faith is indifferent to rational coherence in this philosophical sense, not because it is incoherent or necessarily irrational, but because as the divine order of life revealed in Jesus Christ, it has a coherence and rationality of a quite different order and is therefore, when formulated in terms of a definite philosophy, only partly expressed and for a part strangled or distorted' (Kraemer 1938: 64). The 'Christian Faith' then seems to be, in terms used above, esoteric and not open to scientific study. Indeed, later in the same work he writes (p. 138, my emphasis): . . . the scientific method, properly speaking, is a great distortion and disregard of living and actual reality. It is however, indispensable to get an intellectual command of the material and is therefore, at least to a certain extent, necessary as are instruments. As a guide for the adequate apprehension

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of religion as a living and thriving reality it is less than useless. If all religions make the same claim then religion is not open to study at all but only to 'decision'. Thus no comparison or evaluation of religions can take place either. And yet, despite the fact that Kraemer recognizes this he, paradoxically, keeps on making the evaluative claim that the Christian faith is superior to other religions (which, in one sense is 'obvious' since every primordial decision is ultimate and makes all alternatives inferior 'rivals'). The paradox is quite evident in the following paragraph (1956: 85-86): In previous chapters we have already shown that it is impossible to demonstrate the superiority or truth of any religion by religio-philosophical reasoning. There is no objective, i.e. rationally cogent and universally valid and acceptable norm to decide this. This insight leads us, if we persist on the way of ratiocination, into sheer subjectivism and the denial of any norm of judgment; which ends in absurdity. There is only one escape out of this epistemological dilemma; namely to recognize the fact to which we have often alluded already, that the ultimate, inexplicable fact in human consciousness with which we are confronted is that, prior to all fundamental ideas and attitudes which shape our religion or philosophy or Weltanschauung, there is a primordial decision and act or faith which determines our religion and philosophy or Weltanschauung. The Buddhist, the Hindu the Muslim, etc., each make such a primordial decision and each is ultimate, and in the eyes of the committed, superior to all alternatives. It is hard, therefore, to understand how Kraemer sees himself as having escaped that subjectivism he fears, unless he is willing to let even that primordial decision remain open to scrutiny and even possible rejection in the future. If not, his commitment is an irrational one.16 Surely Kraemer is no more justified in such a primordial decision than the

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Buddhist, or Hindu and yet he judges them in the light of his 'decision' alone. Furthermore, as Bleeker has pointed out (1966: 100, 103), Kraemer's identification of the faith with 'Revelation in Christ' will not work for that revelation does not and cannot exist in a vacuum. The phrase 'revelation in Christ' needs qualification and filling out and that filling out then must draw on the New Testament and consequently involves all the ambiguities and uncertainties of New Testament research. Charles Davis similarly points out that the concepts of faith and revelation as used by Kraemer cannot possibly be understood except in terms of 'empirical Christianity' - that is, of the historical tradition. To quote Davis himself (1970: 56): . . . the placing of all religion on the negative side of the dialectic as corrupt and Christian Revelation on the other creates the tendency to envisage the Christian revelation as separable from every religious and cultural embodiment and capable of being formulated in its pure essence. Thus all religions, including empirical Christianity, are judged against the standard of what is designated as 'the biblical message' or some such name. But that approach would seem to be false both philosophically and sociologically. There is no possibility of disengaging the Christian revelation and faith from all language and symbolic expression. Consequently, we can meet that revelation and faith only in a cultural embodiment. This does not exclude a translation from one culture to another, but it does exclude the e x t r a c tion of a pure essence supposedly free from all cultural accretions. Unless, then, we are prepared to say that Christian revelation as it exists in the concrete is always corrupt in its very formulation and expression we must allow that there are religious and cultural elements not on the negative side of the dialectic. Sociologically, also, the opposition between the Christian revelation and every form of the Christian religion is untenable. If the Christian revelation is to be granted any presence or influence at all in the

The nature of religion: The problem of

definition

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social life of men, then it must be seen as incarnated in the Christian religion in its various historical phases. According to Davis, then, the faith/religion distinction (based on Kraemer's view of revelation) if taken to mean more than merely the ideal/empirical distinction discussed above is, in the final analysis, unacceptable. Robert Baird has raised a more directly methodological concern with Kraemer's approach to religion, suggesting that the normative procedure is unscientific because reductionists and so can never bring us to an understanding of other religions: I t might be defensible to argue', writes Baird (1971: 114), that in the final analysis all men must raise the normative question, the question of truth. The validity of such a position could then be discussed on the normative level and that is quite a different matter. What he has done is to reduce all attempts at accurate description , personal accounts, or functional analyses to theologies based on 'axiomatically accepted presuppositions'. And this Baird implies is philosophically unsound. But I am not so sure that Kraemer can be so easily dealt with on this score. It is important to point out here, however, that there are normative - theological - approaches to the study of religion that are not at all reductionistic in the bad sense that Baird considers Kraemer's to be. I refer here, for example, to the theological discussions of religion to be found in Farmer (1954); Bouquet (1958); Schlette (1966); Bleeker (1966); and Davis (1970). This is not the place, however, to carry on an analysis of such a theology. IS RELIGION 'SCIENCE'? Although in discussing the complex nature of religion beliefs have been listed as one of its elements, it is still necessary to take up the question whether religion is, in

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considerations

the broad sense of the term, 'science'; whether it can provide us with a knowledge of our world and ourselves in the world. This is important for at least two reasons: first, to see just exactly how important the dimension of belief is in the multiplex nature of religion!** and, second, to aid us in our assessment of the role of religion in man's life, for without understanding that role our explanations of religion are bound to be inadequate. It is obvious, for example, that if belief were a dominating factor in religion then the truth or falsity of religion would hinge, to a large extent anyway, on the truth or falsity of its beliefs. And an explanation of such a religion - both as to why people accept it and still hold on to it in the light of modern science, providing they are acquainted with its method, technique and results - would differ greatly depending upon whether such beliefs are true or false. Indeed, depending on how the scientific investigator views such beliefs, his approach to the phenomena will vary widely; the very problem he tries to settle will differ totally. For, one who sees Christianity, for example, as dominated by the belief aspect but sees the way of coming to that 'knowledge' as in radical conflict with the sciences, taken as the paradigm of all rational procedure, at least in cognitive or epistemological matters, is bound to try to solve the problem of how apparently modern men, with seemingly full control of their minds, can in this day and age still believe in such superstitions as transcendent gods, eternal souls, miracles, etc. What is needed, it is claimed, is a theory that accounts for the holding of such unwarranted, unjustifiable beliefs in the wake of conflicting scientific knowledge. If such beliefs are not a dominant dimension, however, but are taken rather to be a kind of degeneration of religion or a particular religious tradition, then the question with which the investigator will approach the religious data will vary accordingly. His explanation, then, will be an explanation of the real nature of religion and how and why such a degeneration occurs. Whether or not a religion is characterized by beliefs and whether or not such beliefs stand in direct opposition to our general (Western) way of gaining knowledge about the world are, therefore, important and controversial

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35

questions on which the student of religion needs to take a definite stand. To do this he will have to rely heavily on the philosophy of religion and involve himself in specific evaluations which some students of religion (for example, phenomenologists such as W. Kristensen) would claim to be illegitimate. As Smart at one point puts it, 'the descriptive and explanatory aspects of the study of religion themselves raise conceptual issues and therefore imply the necessity of the philosophy of religion' (1958: 6 and 1968: 8). Whether or not religion (religions) involves belief is not a difficult issue to settle.19 it is quite obvious that religions like Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism all involve a system of beliefs: a cognitive map, of a sort, of both this and the transcendent realm. The difficult issue to settle is rather whether or not such belief is of the 'essence' of any particular faith or not or whether it is, perhaps, a degeneration of the faith. It is plain, for example, that doctrine is a late development in all religions; it is always preceded by vague myths, stories, and symbols connected with rituals and ceremonies of one sort or another practiced in the group or community. It might be claimed then, and with some plausibility, that the original concern of the group was with the cohesiveness of the community itself provided by such ceremonies (see, for example, Durkheim), rather than with the provision of some metaphysical schema of the universe. Such a schema with its other world populated by the gods, etc., came later as a secondary act of reflection and represents not knowledge but rather a projection of the 'constraints' of society on to a transcendent world. This later doctrinal development, it is claimed, is a distortion of the 'essence' of religion and must not be taken seriously if religion is to be properly understood. However, it is equally plausibly claimed, at least with respect to the major religious traditions mentioned above, that such doctrinal development is really an attempt to set out clearly, comprehensively, and systematically what is contained in the mythological and symbolic language of the community (the religious group) and of what is implied in its ritual. This is certainly true for Christianity, for

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The study of religion: Preliminary considerations

example, for here what we might refer to as the 'reality interest' is of prime importance. As Dorothy Emmet has put i t , 'religious thinking may well have other concerns besides the epistemological question of the relation of our ideas to reality beyond ourselves . . . [but it] loses its nerve when it ceases to believe that it expresses in some way truth about our relation to a reality beyond ourselves which ultimately concerns us' (Emmet 1966: 7). And as Smart points out, there are a good number of religions that 'owe some of their living power to their success in presenting a total picture of reality, through a coherent system of doctrine' (1969: 19). Whether or not such a system of belief is rational or not, however, is another matter and, again, one which it is important to come to a decision on if an explanation of religion (or a particular historical tradition) is to be provided. For an explanation of the irrational is bound, quite obviously, to be different than that of the rational. A number of difficult questions are raised here. Is there a criterion of rationality in matters epistemological that can be legitimately applied to religious systems of belief? Does 'scientific knowledge', for example, stand in open contrast to all 'religious belief'? Is there an obvious distinction in these two realms between knowledge and belief, with respectability accruing only to the former? That is, are religious beliefs of all or of some traditions, really nothing but superstition? Or are these, perhaps, archaic modes of knowing and insight wholly unlike that to be found in Western scientific procedure and which t h e r e fore cannot be compared with such scientific procedure? If such alternative modes of knowing do exist, such a s , for example, revelation, intuition, e t c . , is the knowledge they provide the same kind of knowledge provided by the sciences or is it a different order of knowledge? Are the truth conditions of such a different order of knowledge also d i f f e r e n t , or are they the same conditions of truth as are to be found elsewhere? To a t t e m p t to answer all of these questions is obviously beyond the scope of the present inquiry, but that all of these issues are of considerable importance to the student of religion there can

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37

be no doubt. I permit myself, however, one extended comment here. There is no doubt in anyone's mind that there are different ways of 'coming to significant insights' or, phrased more contentiously, of 'coming to know'. What some learn from 'intuition' others learn in a less esoteric, more mundane, empirical way. What some claim to know by ratiocination others claim to have received by revelation. Yet however such 'insights' (beliefs) are gained each refers to what is obtained as 'knowledge'. What is a problem, however, is that after admitting that people have indeed come to hold various sets of belief, one must assess whether they are rational in doing so. Is there, that is, a paradigm of rationality that applies to all cognitive claims whereby the acceptable claims require some sort of checking procedure, whatever the source of the claim (intuition, conjecture, revelation, inductive generalization or whatever)? Even Needleman, who, in his defense of the religious innovation found in California, castigates reason and rational procedures of cognitive assessment such as I have suggested here, nevertheless shys away from rejecting it altogether. In defense of the apparent irrationality of such 'new' religion he writes (1970: 3-4): It is, in any case, not reality which Californians have left behind; it is Europe. It was not until several years had passed that this came home to me. I began to see that my idea of intelligence was a modern European idea: the mind unfettered by emotion, disembodied, aristocratically articulate, gathering all before it in the sweep of its categories. Descartes, Newton, Kant; the ideal of explicitness and the publicness of all communication. In defense of the search for a rational criterion of choice, he, however, claims (ibid., pp. 230-231): We are obviously going to need all the help we can get if we wish to come to a balanced sense of our place in the universe. It will not be done simply by adopting new and intriguing theories; we have been doing that

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for centuries. Nor can it be demanded of us that we plunge into something against all the admonitions of our intellect and experience, meagre though they be. The one merely keeps us at the mercy of the isolated intellect, while the other leads us to that particular sort of violence known as enthusiasm. Without arguing that there is a method for gaining absolute and certain knowledge as over against the irrational espousal of belief, I shall assume that the appeal to scientific attitudes as providing the model of good thinking in such matters is quite acceptable. Science has drastically transformed the world in which we live, not only in our own society but in virtually every society in the world. Moreover, in its capacity to manipulate the world it also reveals an understanding of the world, an understanding that has received common acceptance. To ignore this understanding and the near universal convergence of opinion it has achieved as trivial is, I think, absurd. And it is because of its critical rigor in its own area and the convergence of opinion it has won that it is justifiably accepted as a paradigm for all epistemology. I must again emphasize that I do not mean that there is but one source of knowledge, for there are many, but rather that all claims to knowledge that purport to give us a cognitive map of this or any other universe must submit to the same critical procedures that keep us from arbitrariness and error in the sciences. This is not to deny that myths, symbols, and the like are of critical significance to religion and to religious knowledge in suggesting and intimating something about that which lies beyond our present probings of that which is mystery. It is only to distinguish such intimations from our other beliefs that are explicitly subject to some 'machinery' of rational assessment. But obviously the relationship between such myth and symbol on the one hand and doctrine and dogma on the other is peculiarly close. My point here is simply this, if religion is science (i.e., knowledge) it is subject to the same critical procedures as are the other sciences. I not only agree, therefore, with Berger's claim (in a different context, however, and with reference only to Christianity)

The nature of religion: The problem of definition

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that . . Protestant theologians have been increasingly engaged in playing a game whose rules have been dictated by their cognitive antagonists' (1963: 23), but that in f a c t it ought to be so. Caution is needed, h o w e v e r , over the interpretation of that paradigm of rationality in epistemological matters. What constitutes rationality or reasonableness in science and what constitutes arbitrariness of decision in science is not at all as clear as it has been supposed, by s o m e , to be.

2

The Nature of the Study of Religion: Is a Science of Religion Possible?

To discuss the possibility of a science of religion at a time when the study of religious phenomena is being vigorously carried out and at a time when departments of religious studies are emerging and growing rapidly in most of our universities might appear somewhat puzzling. Indeed, with the establishment of the study of religion as an 'autonomous discipline' (department?) within numerous universities since the last quarter of the nineteenth century it might even appear absurd. But the mere fact of religious phenomena having become the subject of academic and scholarly investigation hardly implies the existence of a 'science of religion' - unless by that phrase one means simply the growth of a body of knowledge, the accumulation of factual data, about particular religious traditions.! Moreover, despite the apparently healthy state of the 'discipline', and its now venerable age, there is surprisingly little, if any, agreement in detail as to the nature and structure of the 'new science'. And I shall argue in this chapter that the reasons for this profound and pervasive methodological confusion lie in the fact that such a science does not and cannot exist. •SCIENCE' AND 'RELIGION' The claim that a 'science of religion' is impossible is not new. It has often been pointed out by scholars in the field that the use of the concepts 'science' and 'religion' seem to involve sets of assumptions inimical to one another. According to some, for example, it is questionable whether religion is a phenomenon at all - or at least faith

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- and yet it is, supposedly, the object of scientific (empirical) scrutiny. Real religion (faith), as opposed to the external tradition, it is argued, is a 'matter of the heart', a question of inner experience and decision which involves persons in a relationship to that which is ultimate. Consequently it is not the sort of thing that can be the object of detached scrutiny as can other aspects of the physical world. The arguments of Wilfred Cantwell Smith (1962a) in this regard are well known. Smith refuses to countenance the categorial schemes of the academic study of religion as of any value in understanding faith (real religion), although he admits its value in the scrutiny of 'external tradition'. To study religion (faith) one would have himself to be, in some sense at least, religious, for there is a uniqueness in the religious experience that is impossible to capture in rational, scientific concepts. Thus Smith insists that 'one of the things needed in a comparative study of religion is an ability to see the divine which I call faith' (W.C. Smith 1962b: 46). And Otto (1958) opens his great psychological study of religion (faith) with the following advice (p. 8): The reader is invited to direct his mind to a moment of deeply-felt religious experience, as little as possible qualified by other forms of consciousness. Whoever cannot do this, whoever knows no such moments in his experience, is requested to read no further; for it is not easy to discuss questions of religious psychology with one who can recollect the emotions of his adolesc e n c e , the discomforts of indigestion, or say, social feelings, but cannot recall any intrinsically religious feelings. We do not blame such an one, when he tries for himself to advance as far as he can with the help of such principles of explanation as he knows, interpreting 'Aesthetics' in terms of sensuous pleasure, and 'Religion' as a function of the gregarious instinct and social standards or as something more primitive still. But the artist who for his part has an intimate personal knowledge of the distinctive element in the aesthetic experience, will decline his theories with

Is a science of religion

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thanks, and the religious man will reject them even more uncompromisingly. The unique religious experience, it is admitted, finds expression in a variety of forms that comprise the 'traditions' of particular societies, but, it is warned, one must not mistake a study of that external expression with a knowledge or understanding of the inner reality. That, Otto insists, reveals a bias to rationalization that precludes a sound understanding of religion (ibid., p. 4): It is always in terms of concepts and ideas that the subject is pursued, 'natural' ones, moreover, such as have a place in the general sphere of man's ideational life, and are not specifically 'religious'. And then with a resolution and cunning which one can hardly help admiring, men shut their eyes to that which is quite unique in the religious experience even in its most primitive manifestations. There are then, Otto insists (1932-1933), at least two radically distinct approaches to the study of religion (p. 413): . . . on the one hand the purely phenomenalist view, in which religion is treated as a 'phenomenon' and as such is examined, as it were, from without, and is dealt with under categories which are themselves not religious. This we will call the phenomenalist method. On the other, is the method of approach from within, that is, from the standpoint of religion itself, which is practised by the religious thinker who uses categories that have arisen from the nature of religion. This we will call the theological. A scientific understanding of religion, it appears then, is radically inadequate. Such detached, objective, and empirical study it enjoins can be applied only to the elements of expression of religion (faith), and even there only partially since they emerge from faith and, as Smith puts it, 'a preliminary insistence [in the study of religion]

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The study of religion: Preliminary considerations

must be that when any of these things is an expression of religious f a i t h , then it cannot be fully understood except as an expression of religious faith' (W.C. Smith 1962a: 171). An honest study of religion, it appears then, is open only to the company of the (religiously) committed and in this conclusion Smith wholly supports Otto's proposal for a 'theological' study of religion: 'The practitioner of religion, then I am suggesting, may become no longer an observer vis a vis the history of the diverse religions of distinct or even close communities, but rather a participant in the multiform religious history of the only community there is, humanity. Comparative religion may become the disciplined self-consciousness of man's variegated and developing religious life' (Smith 1959: 55). 2 Such argumentation about the substance of religion, however, has not laid to rest talk of a 'science of religion'. THE 'NEW SCIENCE' The phrase 'science of religion' in early and recent methodological discussions is, usually, quite clearly distinguished from the phrases 'the sciences of religion' and 'the scientific study of religion'. The l a t t e r two phrases are generally taken to refer to the application of the methodologies and techniques of the various social sciences (e.g., psychology, anthropology, sociology, e t c . ) , with their attendant assumptions and presuppositions, to religious phenomena. The phrase 'science of religion', on the other hand, is meant to indicate another discipline altogether which is methodologically distinct from the other social sciences and hence quite autonomous even though making use of the 'results' obtained by the other sciences. The distinction is suggested, although somewhat obliquely, by Waardenburg (1973a) in his introduction, when in the section entitled 'The study of religion established as an autonomous discipline' he explicitly distinguishes the work of the founders of this 'new science' (Max Miiller, Cornelius Tiele and Chantepie de la Saussaye) from the work of anthropologists and sociologists doing research on

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religion as a specific subject. Philip Ashby in an historical review of the academic study of religion in America accepts a similar distinction as central to an understanding of the meaning of 'science of religion'. The development and growth of the 'history of religions', he suggests, is a sign of the rise of a discipline concerned peculiarly with the description and interpretation of religious data of the past and present. He includes as predecessors of this discipline theology, philosophy, classics, and history and claims that the contributions of scholars in these fields 'combined to create a basis upon which, with growing distinction between areas of humanistic study, it was thought a new discipline could be erected' (Ashby 1965: 6). He goes on to say (pp. 6-7): Theologians and, more frequently, philologists, archaeologists, students of foreign cultures, etc., began to conceive of a new discipline that they considered necessary for the adequate study of religion and that would be both the sum of their separate work and, yet, distinct in its own right because of the wider range of its inquiry and the necessary development of a methodology peculiar to its own total needs . . . . As a result, the middle and the latter decades of the nineteenth century witnessed the rise of a discipline that was thought to be equipped to record, interpret and evaluate the religious history of mankind. This was the minimal expectation shared by the proponents of what in this essay we are terming the history of religions. For then it was to take varying turns and to be known by different names. It continues today to seek to achieve the minimal expectations of its earliest modern exponents; and despite its own confusions and the tenuous status it still occupies in some scholarly circles, it is compelled to strive to be a unified science, the 'science of religion'. And this new science cannot be identified with any one of the other social sciences - 'archaeology, history, sociology, etc.' - nor with a combination of them for then the "new science" '. . . as a distinct pursuit would not have

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attained the needed scholarly approach to the complexities and varieties of religion, nor would it be capable of achieving the total insight and knowledge without which religion continues to be more unknown than known' (Ashby 1965: 41). Ashby admits however that the nineteenthcentury hope for this unified science has not yet fully materialized and speaks of i t , t h e r e f o r e , as a 'not yet fully conceived science' (ibid., p. 3). More recently, and from a philosophical rather than an historical perspective, Smart has also written of a 'science of religion' with an 'inner logic' of its own (1968, 1973a, b). Although his terminology is somewhat loose in that he uses the phrases 'science of religion', 'the study of religion' and 'the scientific study of religion' virtually synonymously, he nevertheless emphasizes the distinction between 'the scientific study of religion' and 'the social-scientific st,udies of religion'. After distinguishing 'science of religion' from theology (the latter concerned with the truth of religion and the former with the truth about religion) he proceeds to distinguish it also from the other social sciences concerned with religious phenomena (1973c: 4): . . . the sociology of religion flourishes from the peaks of theory to the plains and marshes of empirical research. Jews in Detroit, Mormons in Salt Lake City, Spiritualists in Wolverhampton, Buddhist peasants in the highlands of Sri Lanka, Nuer prophets and Dinka in the Sudan - the range of sociological and anthropological studies is immense. The psychology of religion is not what it was, but has yet its moments, and earnest inquiry seeks to correlate or contrast the empirical experiences of Teresa and Tauler with the deliverances of drugs. Meanwhile historians of religions probe Zoroastrian origins and medieval Shaivism, early Christianity and the Gnostic religions. There is, in short, no dearth of scientific-seeming inquiries into religion. Nevertheless an overall strategy of a science of religion is desirable, and has not yet been fully worked out. Ashby's claim

that

this new science is not yet a fully

Is a science of religion possible?

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conceived science and Smart's comment that the strategy of the science of religion has not yet been fully worked out are understatements, to say the least. It is a well known fact that this area of study displays little or no methodological cohesiveness despite almost a century of discussion and debate. The methodological uncertainty in this area, as Pummer (1972, 1974) points out, is obvious even in the great variety of names used to refer to the so-called discipline. Among others he lists Religionswissenschaft, sciences(s) of religion(s), comparative (study of) religion(s), history of religions, religion, religious studies, and religiology. And that terminological problem is only compounded by the debate as to the divisions - historical, systematic, etc. - within the 'discipline' itself, seemingly making the 'science of religion' a discipline of disciplines, or as Smart (1968) would have it, a polymethodic discipline. But is such a polymethodic discipline not merely a combination of the methods of the other social studies and specialized area studies without anything left over that is peculiar - in a methodological sense - to the 'science of religion'? Is 'polymethodism' itself really a method? Such a method, if that it be, appears merely a contemporaneous use, by the same investigator, of the various social disciplines, as research tools so that a student of the new science is, in Kitagawa's phrase (1957), a 'comprehensive scientist of religions'. The methodological peculiarity of the new science would be wholly in the general comprehensiveness of the study, which is to say that it lacks a specific methodology peculiar to itself. Talk of a science of religion then would simply be a category mistake. Furthermore, as Kitagawa (1957) wisely indicates in the light of the development of the social sciences involved, it seems exceedingly unlikely that a student of religion could claim to be such a 'comprehensive scientist'. Consequently the methodology of the 'new science' would be such that it would effectively undermine the practical possibility of the very 'discipline' it supposedly characterizes. In the light of such problems it is little wonder that, as Pummer informs us, 'at the 12th International Congress of the International Association for the History of Religions in Stokholm, in 1970, it was decided to hold a study conference on the

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methodology of the history of religions in Turku, Finland, in 1973' (Pummer 1974: 156). The results of the conf e r e n c e , however, were meager: 'Those who came to Turku with the expectation that presently confused methodological issues will [sic ] be clarified certainly did not see their expectations fulfilled (ibid., p. 157). Pummer himself concludes (p. 158) from those proceedings that since '. . . there is no agreement with regard to terminology, methodology, e t c . , there is no agreement either in the answer to the question: What is the science of religion or history of religion or Religionswissenschaft?' It is possible, one must admit, to infer from this century and more of methodological uncertainty, as does Smart for example, not that the new science does not or cannot exist, but that it is, and perhaps will always remain, rather 'soft' and 'chaotic' (Smart 1973: 141). But it must also be admitted that one might equally well and perhaps even with more justification - query the very existence of such a science, for surely there is something amiss in labeling what must of necessity and perpetually remain rather soft and chaotic, 'science' or 'scientific'. Perhaps, t h e r e f o r e , the question 'Is there a science of religion?' - avoiding the existential assumption (and fallacy of complex questions?) of the question 'what is the science of religion?' - might prove more fruitful in resolving the methodological debates and disputes of the last hundred years. But this may be to move too quickly to a critique of the debate for although there is confusion as to the detail of the structure of the 'discipline' there are also, nevertheless, some broad areas of agreement as to its general n a t u r e , as the discussion of this section of the paper itself illustrates, which it is important to examine more closely.

METHODOLOGICAL ASSUMPTIONS OF THE 'NEW SCIENCE' Most discussions on the science of religion and historical surveys of the methodological debate reveal a g r e e m e n t , it

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seems to me, on only three points: first, that the science of religion is not itself a religious enterprise or undertaking and is, consequently, radically distinct from theology; second, that the science of religion is an autonomous discipline alongside the other social sciences; and, third, (and implied by the second), that the other social sciences as applied specifically to religious phenomena form an essential 'aspect' of the 'science of religion'. All three claims are essential to a characterization of the new science; whether they are compatible, however, is another matter entirely and one to which little attention has been paid to date. It is extremely important to note, first of all, that almost all reference to the 'science of religion' is primarily a way of referring to a definite (and absolute?) break on the part of the early academic (professional) students of religion from a narrowly (sectarian) theological perspective in the study of religious phenomena. Ashby points this out very clearly (1965: 39-40): The growing use by Europan scholars of the phrase the science of religion indicated their realization that it was only through the use of a variety of disciplines, and the development of the 'new' studies of their time, that the varied data which constitute the totality of the phenomenon religion could be described and understood adequately. By the use of the term science they sought to divorce their studies from the theological elements and concerns that had marked the Western study of religions. They were convinced that it is possible for the scholar to arrive at conclusions about religion that are objective in both fact and interpretation. The break from the theological perspective was (and still is) seen to be a move towards an intellectual openness and honesty in the treatment of religious traditions other than one's own; an attempt to be fair, impartial and objective and hence to be 'scientific'. Werblowsky, for example, refers to this new discipline (under the title 'Comparative Study of Religions') as emerging 'from dubious and shady beginnings' (1956-1957: 278) and, elsewhere (1960) claims

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adamantly that the failure to make the distinction between 'approach to religion' (theology) and 'approach to the study of religion' (science of religion) constitutes a genuine crisis for the new study. The threat today, he suggests, is the general Eastern complaint that the modern Western approach to religion, is too analytical, detached, and scientific and consequently irreligious. The complaint would a t t e m p t to reintroduce the theological concerns that marked the early Western study of religion, and to take it the seriously, he suggests, would be to set back academic study of religion a hundred years or more. Thus, speaking of the IAHR as an organization established as a forum for those interested in the scientific, as opposed to theological, study of religion, he writes (1960: 217): Usually a relatively great number of the papers presented at our congresses, though valuable and interesting in themselves, would be perfectly legitimate contributions to theological conferences but are clearly out of place in our organization. This applies both to papers dealing with the special theological problems of particular religions, and to lectures on the true and ultimate significance of religion and the like. Very frequently papers are presented that testify to the good will and moral endeavour of certain religions and/or certain scholars, but they can hardly be said to be relevant to the work which the I.A.H.R. was meant to do. Their rightful place would be at conferences convened for the purpose of promoting international and interreligious peace and understanding. Thus, contrary to the Otto/Smith type of thesis described above, Werblowsky maintains that the comparative study of religion is an anthropological discipline and not a theological one at all. 3 Similarly Pummer, a f t e r laboriously documenting the methodological confusion in the area of religious studies accepts the nontheological nature of the discipline as central and certain (1972: 121-122):

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Religionswissenschaft or Religiology? The answer can only be this: If religiology is taken to mean that kind of religious studies that wants to be at the same time historical and theological, theoretical and applied, a clear borderline has to be drawn between it and Religionswissenschaft. The two are not at all to be identified. They are distinct from each other because the historical-philological study of religion on an empirical basis is not the same as theology or philosophy of religion, or pastoral and ecumenical concerns. Those who prefer the latter kind of studies are, of course, always free to pursue them, but then they should not claim to be students of Religionswissenschaft. And the distinction between theology and 'science of religion' is very much the concern as well of Smart (1973a, b) where he suggests, in fact, that theology and, therefore, the 'theological' study of religion, is itself a datum for the science of religion and not an alternative to it. The 'science of religion' is thus a label intended primarily to designate that attitude on the part of certain scholars to treat religion, insofar as that is possible, without (theological) bias or prejudice (prae + judicium; a judgment that has been passed before the issue has been subject to test or trial). It suggests then that the foundations of the study of religion must be intellectual rather than practical or, as Smart (1973b: 4, 8) puts it, to be concerned with the truth about religion and not the truth of religion.4 The claim that the science of religion is autonomous and independent of the other social sciences is the second broad area of agreement as to the nature of the new science and has already been discussed at some length above. Some further comments, however, are required here. It is self-evident that any talk of a science of religion involves a distinction of that science from the other social sciences - otherwise one might simply contrast the social scientific studies of religious phenomena (whether from a psychological, anthropological or sociological perspective), with the theological interpretation of the phenomena. The reasons

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for this distinction and the unwillingness of the students of religion to be content with talking simply of the sciences of religion or the scientific study of religion a r e , however, not at all clear. Waardenburg (1973a, see also 1973b), in an examination of the methodological debate, traces that unwillingness to the difference perceived by the religion scholar, between the search for understanding and the search for explanation. I quote him at length on this point (1973a: 53-54): Those historians of religion who wanted to apply this 'understanding' [i.e. the verstehen and einfiihlung of Dilthey, Weber and others ] in their field, felt that the rationalistic approaches of their time were not only explaining religion, but were explaining it away, reducing it to something of a non-religious nature. They wanted, instead, to push forward to where the rationalists stopped; to seize the essence of religion instead of its surface and periphery; to have access to the irrational life and inspiration that had given birth to the religious phenomena; and to break through the philosophical schemes that interposed themselves between the student of religion and the reality of religion itself. In general these scholars sought to avoid the extremes of an objectivistic study of religion whereby all r e search is directed towards the objective side of religion and of a subjectivistic study of religion whereby all research is directed towards the religious subject and his psychological make-up: the 'understanding' referred itself to something beyond the opposition of subject and object, i.e. the 'meaning' . . . . In the study of religion . . . the aim of 'understanding' was applied specifically to the 'religious element' in the religious phenomena, i.e. that which constitutes these phenomena as being indeed 'religious' and which constitutes the unity of all that is religious. As he puts it later on in the essay (p. 77), the science of religion goes 'beyond' the explanations of the social scientists of religion. Kristensen, for example, interpreted such

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'understanding' to mean that 'if the historian tries to understand the religious data from a different viewpoint than that of the believers he negates the religious reality' he is trying to understand (Kristensen 1960: 7). Understanding requires 'an imaginative re-experiencing of the religious situation itself' if the 'absolute character of faith' is to be obtained. There is needed, then, a peculiar emotional condition as a personal 'tool' in the study of religion the importance of which is also underscored by Ashby: 'If the student of religion is motivated by idle curiosity or by a recognition of historical importance alone and lacks the necessary emotional condition that would enable him to achieve empathy with the matter under investigation, his "understanding" does not attain the depth demanded by his subject' (1965:45). Such reliance upon verstehensmethode, einfiihlung, participant observation and the like, however, also characterize the other social sciences. As I shall point out in the chapter to follow the social sciences, as much as the 'science of religion', find the D-N model of explanation as used in the natural sciences far too restrictive. However, whether the study of religion requires a model of explanation distinct not only from the deductive-nomological explanations in the physical sciences but also distinct from the general form of social-scientific explanation is another matter. To leave open this possibility, however, is not so much a methodological distinctive as it is a philosophic one as is clearly pointed out by Smart (1968). Smart sees the 'need' for a science of religion not only to free the study of religion from theological bias and distortion but also to 'free' it from the naturalistic (atheistic) assumptions (bias) of the other social sciences that also must, inevitably, distort our understanding of religion. He writes (1973b: 22-23): . . . it happens that the dominant theories in sociology have allowed at most a partial autonomy to religion itself; and this may be a justifiable conclusion. However, it is not at all clear that the whole question of autonomy has been dealt with in a proper manner, and this is of the essence of my present inquiry. It has not

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been easy for the human sciences outside religion to rid themselves of an explicitly theological position. According to S m a r t , the social sciences of religion can no more be considered 'science of religion' than can theology, for they too a r e , in their being antitheological (i.e., in t h e i r ^ a t u r a l i s t i c assumptions), in f a c t 'theological' and hence not objective in the required 'sense'. Smart states his aim in the discussion of the 'science of religion' then as follows: 'The aim of the book, is to investigate the nature of the science of religion and to show that such a scientific study does not reduce religion away . . . . This discussion will attempt to bring out the way in which it is legitimate to hold that the study of religion is not merely about human beings and their beliefs' (1973b: 3 23). The autonomy of the new discipline is tied to the (intuitive?) knowledge (?) of (the possibility of?) the autonomy of its subject m a t t e r . It either assumes the 'truth/value' of religion (religions) or at least allows for the possiblity of its (their) 'truth/value'. The third area of agreement is that the science of religion, although not reducible to any one of the social sciences of religion, nor to any combination of t h e m , nevertheless includes them as an essential aspect of its own makeup. Exactly what this agreement means, however, is unclear. It does not, and cannot, mean, for example, that all the conclusions and interpretations of religious phenomena proffered by the social sciences must be accepted by the science of religion. Neither can it mean merely that the combined methods of the various sciences constitute the science of religion. What seems to be implied, minimally at least, is that the methods, procedures, results, and conclusions of these sciences cannot be uncritically ignored by the 'new science'. THE PROBLEMATIC STATUS OF THE 'NEW SCIENCE' The assumptions involved in the talk of a science of religion as I have outlined them above do not seem to be entirely consistent. Assumptions one and two in particular,

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seem to require contradictory mental stances on the part of the would-be 'scientist of religion'. In distinguishing the science of religion from theology there is the hope of making the study of religious phenomena more objective and more scientific in the sense of being free from prejudice. Yet in attempting to distinguish the new science methodologically from the other social sciences particularly when unable to specify the nature of that methodological difference - something other than 'strict scientific objectivity' seems to be enjoined. This sentiment is clearly supported in the desire of the new discipline to go beyond the understanding provided by the social sciences. The distinction in fact suggests that the social sciences are merely the study of the outward, empirical expressions of faith (religion) whereas the 'science of religion' is concerned with the unique quality of religiousness that makes such expressions religious phenomena; it suggests that the patterns of meaning within the historical and psychosocial data are not self-explanatory and require a peculiar, and nonempirical (hence, nonscientific?) methodology to retrieve their true meaning. And this, it seems to me, is to assume a peculiar quality of things religious that makes them other than ordinary cultural data. The science of religion is open to the possibility that the selfinterpretation of the data from within the religious context may be acceptable and even preferable to external explanations of the data. In the final analysis, the second assumption underlying talk of a science of religion undermines the intention of the»- first, namely to show its affinity to the already established social sciences, for it is obvious that the explanations that emerge from the new science could well conflict with those arising from the other social sciences. In this respect the 'methodological assumptions' of the new science seem to take on very much the color of the positions advanced by scholars like Otto and Smith, for this new study is, as Kitagawa put it some time ago (and as a methodological dilemma in the study of religion in America) 'caught between theology and the social sciences' (Kitagawa 1957: 39). In a later essay Kitagawa soft-pedals the dilemma character of the new study claiming simply 'that the discipline of

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Religionswissenschaft lies between the normative disciplines on the one hand and the descriptive disciplines on the other' (1959: 19). This 'description', however, contributes little, if anything, to a clarification of the nature of the 'science' or resolution of the methodological problem, for it seems to say that the science of religion is both descriptive and normative and hence detached, objective and scientific and theologically (broadly conceived) oriented in that its detachment and objectivity is other than that found in the other social sciences. Indeed, because of the new science, claims Kitagawa, we must now speak of 'two kinds of sociology of religion, one derived from sociology and the other from Religionswissenschaft' (1959: 20). The former he refers to as working from a scientific perspective and the latter from a 'religio-scientific' perspective. He then asserts (ibid., p. 21): The sociologist, in his study of the sociology of religion, despite Wach's admonition not to view religion as a function of natural and social groupings and as one form of cultural expression, has to start from the fundamental assumption that 'the conduct of the person - his ways of thinking and ways of acting - and the nature of the social order - its structure, function and values - are to be understood as a product of group life.' Thus although both kinds of sociology of religion deal with the same data and may even utilize similar methods, one sociology of religion inevitably views the data 'sociologically' whereas the other views the same data 'religio-scientifically'. Similar observations can be made regarding the relation of Religionswissenschaft to other disciplines. But surely such a claim, or such an interpretation of the nature of the science of religion throws into doubt the scientific character of the whole enterprise as Oxtoby rightly points out: '. . . it is this question of the extent to which the variegated hues of Religionswissenschaft can be assorted into primary colors - detached, hortatory, derogatory, antiquarian - which has left the status of the discipline as a 'science' open to debate in spoken and written symposia

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in the decade since the formulation of his definition' (1968: 595). In Kitagawa's interpretation of the 'assumptions' of a science of religion, they are, simply, self-contradictory - the one requiring a kind of detachment and objectivity that the other undermines or denies. Indeed, the very assumption that a science or study of religion is required over and above the social sciences applied to the phenomena seems to involve 'theological' assumptions. The difference between the so-called new science and the social sciences is not so much methodological or one of research technique as it is one of philosophical stance or attitude. It, unlike the social sciences, leaves room for the possibility of the truth - self-interpretation of the religious phenomena and does not, in a priori fashion, assume the intellectual superiority of the scientists' world.5 That difference in the set of assumptions is clearly expressed in the way Smart (1973a) characterizes the difference between his own 'methodological agnosticism' and Peter Berger's 'methodological atheism' (Berger 1967; see also M. Smith 1968). The difference between the two, stated rather crudely, comes to leaving open in one's study of religions the possibility of their 'transcendent significance' and hence the possibility of a religious critique of the scientific minds set to scrutinize them. It seems to me, therefore, that Heiler's perceptive comment to the effect than 'any study of religion is, in the last analysis, theology, to the extent that it does not concern itself with psychological and historical phenomena only, but also with the experience of traqscendental realities' (1973: 474) is well borne out in this analysis and that one is forced to conclude, that a science of religion, conceived as I have described it above, is, in fact, impossible. This is not to say, however, that there has not been, and does not now exist, a peculiar kind of approach to or study of religion that is neither 'sectarian', or, biased in a narrowly theological way, nor reductionistically scientific; but it seems to me that it is, as Smart has suggested, rather malleable and chaotic and so best tagged with a label other than 'science of religion'. This might at least prevent more futile years of labor in search of a methodological clarification of a science that does not exist.

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Holbrook's suggestion that we speak, then, of a 'field of studies' rather than a 'discipline' seems to me preferable and much more fruitful. I find myself in full agreement with his claim that '. . . the difference between religion and other fields lies first of all not in methodologies which are many, but in the nature of the material to be studied, which in turn naturally demands as a minimal condition an interest in and abiding sense of the significance of the field itself' (Holbrook 1963: 38). A similar conclusion to the methodological debate is suggested by King (1965) in his claim that the study of religion is more an 'interpretative art' than it is a science (p. 7): For history of religions [ 'science of religion' ] does not have a primary technique of investigation comparable to those of the social sciences and must depend upon them and the other sciences for its raw data. Indeed some historians of religions are themselves primarily trained in one of these sciences. But, again, it is the viewpoint which makes the difference. For here religion is taken as something sui generis, an entity to be dealt with in its own terms and context. It is to be seen as religion, not as grist for the sociological or psychological mill . . . when objects, events, activities and institutions are given a specifically religious i n t e r p r e t a tion by the people of the environing culture, then a special variety of cultural force and configuration comes into play that must be analyzed in terms of its own peculiar nature if it is to be correctly understood. To define religious studies so as to exclude all theological elements, t h e r e f o r e , is no more justifiable than the positivist a t t e m p t to define philosophy so as to exclude metaphysics. Just as the latter itself implies a metaphysic so the former involves, although perhaps only implicitly so, a religious (or religiously significant) Weltanschauung." THE CRITICAL STUDY OF RELIGION That the study of religion is properly characterized a s , in the broad sense of the t e r m , 'theological', does n o t ,

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however, imply that it is uncritical. I have shown elsewhere (Wiebe 1973) that the 'detached objectivity', or better, intersubjectivity, that characterizes the other sciences, does not involve an abandonment of all commitment but rather only a rejection of 'ultimate commitment' in the sense of a position adopted uncritically and never again opened up to further evaluation or assessment. Scientific objectivity is quite compatible with, and even dependent upon, prior commitment. In the light of this, the assumption of the sui generis nature of religion, as it seems to chartacterize the 'field' of religious studies, is not at all in conflict with the dema,nd for intellectual honesty in the study of religion so long as that 'understanding' (view, theory, commitment) is held open to future reassessment and alteration (and even, perhaps, abandonment) in the light of the accumulation of new evidence about the nature and function of religion. King's (1965) talk, therefore, of the study of religion as one that proceeds from 'the detached within' (i.e., from a point of view within the circle of faith (religion generally) but not of any one particular religious tradition) is entirely acceptable. If the 'critical stance' is peculiarly scientific, as some have suggested, then it seems to me entirely acceptable to suggest that the study of religion, even if not a 'science' in and of itself, is, nevertheless, 'scientific' in attitude. But by the same token it follows that theology and philosophy are also, or at least can be, critical and hence 'scientific'. (I have argued this at length in Wiebe 1974a; see also Wiebe 1973, and Davis 1975.) Furthermore, it is quite feasible that what I have referred to above as the sciences or social sciences of religion might well be characterized as unscientific if the framework of naturalistic assumptions and presuppositions within which they operate were to be held forever closed to further assessment and evaluation, for they would then be held uncritically (irrationally?). My point is simply this: the study of religion, if it is to be characterized as 'scientific', must proceed without the assumption of the intellectual, or perhaps better, cognitive, superiority of the world view of either the 'outsider social scientist' or of the 'uncritical inner

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participant'. Whereas the former excludes any possibility of the truth of the 'supernatural explanations' of religion (i.e., religion's interpretation of itself by means of reference to transempirical realities), the latter rejects all possibility of the correctness or truth of the 'reductionistic explanations' of the social sciences. Critical study here rather sees the possibility of the truth of either reductionistic accounts or of 'supernatural' accounts of religion and religious experience. Such a position is adopted by the 'critical inner participant', which constitutes, as much as does the participant observation of the outsider, the proper study of religious phenomena. Study in this field must then proceed in a 'counterinductive' way and must involve, rather than an attempt at theory neutrality or 'bias neutrality', which is in any case impossible, theory, or 'bias proliferation' as a means of coming ultimately to the truth. (Following here suggestions found in Feyerabend 1970a, b). And because of the nature of the theories involved evaluation, obviously, cannot be limited to empirical 'arguments' but must resort to philosophical assessment. I think it possible, therefore, to close this discussion with the following words of E. O. James (1954: 105) from his reconsideration of the nature of the study of religion: 'The study of religion, be it for academic purpose, as a way of life or in the interest of inter-religious understanding and international peace, demands both a historical and scientific approach and a theological and philosophical evaluation, if it is to be understood in its essential nature and ever-developing content . . .

The Nature of the Study of Religion: The Role of Explanation

I shall argue in this chapter that a scientific study of religion must concern itself with more than the description of religious phenomena, that it must move beyond mere description and classification to explanation and theory if it is to provide us with an understanding of the phenomenon of religion.1 Collection and description of data, that is, no more constitute a science when concerned with 'religious data' than when concerned with natural or social phenomena. Thus Penner and Yonan (1972: 131), in assessing the possibility of a science of religion, rightly point out that what is needed is a serious concern for explicit theories of religion that can be tested. We should not fear the possible reduction of such theories, for it is precisely the construction of theories which continues to improve a science and its explanatory status. To remain theory-shy is to give up the very idea of Religionswissenschaft.^ The intention of this chapter is to set out as clearly as possible the nature and role of explanation (and theory)3 in the 'science of religion' and the implications it has for our understanding of religion. Perhaps part of the reason for the recent neglect of explanation in the study of religion lies in the feeling on the part of many that to explain religion is to 'explain it away' - a reaction not totally unjustifiable in the light of the host of simplistic reductionistic theories of religion that made it 'nothing but' the projections of man and the 'discovery' of the ulterior motives that lay behind much of

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the early 'scientific' study of religion.4 In any event, the explanation of religion seemed to imply a denial both of the autonomy of the subject matter - the gods, to put it crudely - and of any specific discipline appropriate to its study. Yet without explanation there is no understanding and without understanding one has no science. The question of explanation in the study of religion, therefore, cannot be evaded.5 In one reading of what it means to go beyond description in the study of religion it seems that religion is reduced to something not itself. Religions, that is, are clearly anthropomorphic and so are legitimately subject to a 'reductionist' analysis for, as Evans-Pritchard rightly points out, a science of religion must concern itself with a relational analysis at any point where religion is in a functional relation to any other social fact - moral, economic, juridical, aesthetic, scientific, etc. 'All this amounts to saying', he writes (1965: 112), 'that we have to account for religious facts in terms of the totality of the culture and society in which they are found, to try to understand them in terms of what the Gestalt psychologists called the Kulturganze.'® However, in another reading of what it means to go beyond description one seems to be left with mutually exclusive yet apparently exhaustive understandings of religion. Religions may indeed be anthropomorphic but they also have, according to some, what one might refer to as a sui generis character."^ Religion is for both the believer and unbeliever a part of social l i f e , but for the believer it is also something more, making the believer's understanding of religion different from that of the unbeliever. Once again Evans-Pritchard (1965: 121):

As far as a study of religion as a factor in social life is concerned, it may make little difference whether the anthropologist is a theist or an atheist, since in either case he can only take into account what he can observe. But if either attempts to go further than this each must pursue a different path. The non-believer seeks for some theory - biological, psychological, or sociological - which will explain the illusion; the

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believer seeks rather to understand the manner in which conceive of a reality and their relations to Whether these two understandings could ever be complementary, or which of the two is to be preferred if they are not is another matter - indeed, the heart of the matter - on which, it is hoped, an analysis of explanation will shed some light. I shall proceed therefore, with a critical examination of the concept of explanation and in particular of how that concept has been understood by those concerned with the methodology of 'religious studies'. EXPLANATION AND THE NATURAL SCIENCES The first question that needs to be raised is, quite simply, 'What is to count as an explanation?' The debate which that question has sparked off vis a vis the natural sciences alone is a long and complicated a f f a i r , and not one that can be looked into at any great length here. Nevertheless, a proper understanding of the concept of explanation in the natural and social sciences is essential to an understanding of its use in the science of religion, especially if such use is to avoid the danger of becoming completely arbitrary.^ The aim of a philosophical discussion of explanation, and particularly of explanation in science, is to establish what one might refer to as an 'operational' understanding of the concept. By this I mean that the concept be so defined or delineated as to permit one to distinguish between good and weak explanations in a nonsubjectivistic way - that is, by means of logical or at least quasilogical criteria rather than merely personal and psychological ones. I f , for example, an explanation is explanatory only if it removes the obscurity of the matter under analysis for some particular person then the notion of explanation becomes psychologically relativized. The result of the research for a structure of explanation among many philosophers of science is the adoption of a strictly logical understanding of explanation, taking their

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lead from the analysis presented in C. G. Hempel's discussion of the deductive-nomological (D-N) model of explanation.I" According to Hempel, explanations must display the form of a subsumptive argument. That is, the explanandum sentence must be entailed by the explanans sentences. Thus some thing or some event has been explained only when it has been subsumed under, accounted for by, a law - when it can be shown to have occurred according to some general regularity. The implications of such a model of explanation for the study of religion are obvious. There a r e , it is quite evident, no such laws formulable in the study of religion that would permit the student to deduce the explanandum, just as there are no such laws by which the historian or the sociologist can explain events in history or aspects of social behavior. Consequently, if the D-N model provides an acceptable understanding of the nature of explanation, the so-called science of religion is either pseudoscience, or at best, protoscience. However, as anyone who knows the literature on this subject is a w a r e , the subsumptive model presented by Hempel and others is far from being accepted across the board - particularly by scholars in the human disciplines. One of the most cogent and persuasive replies to it has come from historians and philosophers of history. Dray, quite rightly points out the very restricted notion of explanation implied in the adoption of the D-N model (Dray 1957: 77-78): It seems to me that what covering law theorists have done is to seize on (and . . . to misinterpret) a necessary condition of (some kinds of) explanation which is so closely connected to the purpose of science control - that it has been mistaken for a sufficient condition. 'Explanation', as covering law theorists use i t , is a technical term; and as such terms so often do, it abstracts from a term in ordinary use the aspect which is of most interest in the kind of inquiry for which it is redesigned. Provided we realize what we are doing, there is no harm in such redefinition of terms. But if scientists, for their own legitimate purposes, r e define 'explain' so that it means roughly what covering

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law theorists say it does, then we are quite justified in advertising our awareness of what has been done by saying that, in fact, scientists do not seem to be much interested in explanation; they care only for 'explanation' (as technically defined). If the purpose of science is indeed the elaboration of predictive mechanisms rather than (as is still sometimes believed) an attempt to 'understand the world', then the technical term 'explain' will be very useful; it will allow us to indicate in a convenient way phenomena the form of which has been captured by some scientific law or theory. What the philosopher of history must resist is any attempt to force the new concept into currency in situations where the job is to explain rather than merely 'explain'. And this we may with some justification suspect covering law theorists of having done. The point brought out here by Dray is of particular importance. There is no question of the legitimacy, as I have already intimated above, of the philosopher's attempt to provide some explicit criteria of explanation so that what counts as an explanation is not wholly dependent upon the state of mind of the person for whom the explanation is provided. But to admit that such nonpsychological criteria do exist is not to imply that a proper understanding of explanation will or can provide strictly logical criteria which alone will enable one to make the choice between or among alternative explanations in a somewhat mechanical fashion. Dray's emphasis upon 'understanding' therefore is of critical significance, for it recognizes the triadic structure of the verb 'to explain' that is, of someone explaining something to someone. 'Understanding' he insists is not merely a heuristic device but a necessary element in a logical analysis of historical explanation.il Thus in response to Hempel's criticism of the Verstehens Methode in history Dray writes (ibid., p. 121):

. . . in recognizing the mixture of psychological and methodological elements in many statements of the idealist position (i.e. of the Verstehen approach to

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history), and in denying that these amount to an analysis of logical structure, these theorists fail to notice what it is about explanations of human actions in history which make the idealist want to say what they do albeit in a quasi-psychological and quasimethodological way. And what is left out, I wish to maintain, should properly be taken into account in a logical analysis of explanation as it is given in history. And to do this, he insists, is not to assume that the historian's explanation somehow goes beyond the limits of empirical inquiry and thereby becomes unverifiable or unfalsifiable in principle. Dray develops, that is, a model of 'rational explanation' that is scientific in the broad sense of being reasonable, but which is not of the character of the D-N model. As he puts it (ibid., pp. 129-130): As I have pointed out already, it [i.e. 'rational explanation'] has an inductive, empirical side, for we build up to explanatory equilibrium from the evidence. To get inside Disraeli's shoes the historian does not simply ask himself: 'What would I have done?'; he reads Disraeli's dispatches, his letters, his speeches, etc. - and not with the purpose of discovering antecedent conditions falling under some empirically validated law, but rather in the hope of appreciating the problem as Disraeli saw it. The attempts to provide rational explanation is thus - if you like the term, 'scientific' explanation in a broad sense; there is no question of the investigator letting his imagination run riot. Indeed, many 'empathy' theorists have expressly guarded against such a misinterpretation of their views. To Butterfield, for instance, historical understanding is not a deliberate commission of the sin of anachronism; it is a 'process of emptying oneself in order to catch the outlook and feelings of men not likeminded with oneself'. Explanation in history then is not completely psychologically relativized; and yet neither does it have the character of the subsumptive model of the Hempelians. Understanding here means more than simple entailment by

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lawlike statements and yet is not simply equivalent to whatever frees the individual from puzzlement. Nevertheless whether or not an explanation does resolve someone's puzzlement over some state of affairs or other is of critical significance to the notion of explanation. Furthermore, this is so not only for the historical sciences, but for the natural sciences as well. The subsumptive model does not even apply to the physical sciences themselves, at least not in any strict sense. What is meant by 'explanation' even here, according to Scriven, is a gain in 'understanding'.^ As he puts it (1970: 97), the mistake of the Hempelians lies in the supposition that by subsumption under a generalization one has automatically explained something, and that queries about this 'explanation' represent a request for further and different explanation. Sometimes these queries merely echo the original puzzlement, and it is wholly illicit to argue that the original matter has been explained. Space does not permit analysis of Scriven's arguments here. The essential point has nevertheless beer* established. Explanations, that is, are 'reasoned accounts' of intially puzzling aspects of the world. They are arguments to the effect that the event in question, given all the information available connected with the event, is precisely what one ought to expect without, however, being strictly deductive arguments. THE INADEQUACY OF CAUSAL EXPLANATION The point of the abstract discussion above might be brought home with more force by raising the question as to how the social sciences are to proceed in explaining human behavior - in particular, one's own behavior. Is a causal account really on the books? The point at issue here is simply this. If the D-N model of explanation is applicable to all scientific inquiries then the observer of my behavior will be required, if his study is to be

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scientific, to search into the casual antecedents of my behavior. He would not, or at least should not, be interested in decisions I make as objects of evaluation, that is, as proposals he ought perhaps himself to ponder. All such decisions and proposals are there only as effects of certain kinds of causes. But if this is really the case the social researcher finds himself in a curiously difficult position in that he will no longer be able to distinguish between the explanation of ordinary behavior and extraordinary or abnormal behavior - a distinction both common and of great significance to our 'prescientific' understanding of man. On it rests, quite obviously, a host of moral and legal issues in society. But for the observer no such distinction is possible, for all behavior, normal and abnormal, must equally be accounted for in terms of causes. However, unlike causal explanations of natural events and processes, causal explanations of human activities and behavior have rivals. Human agents, that is, often explain' their own behavior in noncausal terms. Indeed as Dixon points out (1973: 66), . . plausible or acceptable explanations of human behaviour are not generally cast in "law-like" form nor do they employ the notion of "cause" in an uncontaminated sense. All explanations of human behaviour involve reference either directly or parasitically to the concept of what it is deemed "rational" for men to engage in'. Individuals account for their own behavior in terms of reasons and motives, in conformity with their beliefs, etc. And such explanations are preferable to causal accounts in all cases - except where the behavior is irrational in the sense of 'incongruent with accepted beliefs' or where behavior is in accordance with beliefs that are themselves irrational. How the latter issue is to be settled is a difficult problem which I shall not comment on for the moment. The point here, and it is one of critical importance, is that observer explanations are not always preferable to agent explanations. Even Ryan (1970) admits the point despite his attempt to press the D-N model into service in the social sciences. He quite readily admits (1970: 118) that if the observer

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always regards my decisions as events to be causally explained, and never as proposals to be rationally evaluated, it must either be the case that he regards them all as pathological symptoms to be treated causally, or else that for some other reason he has decided that he and I should not enter into normal human relationships. Normally the agent's view of himself and the observer's view of him are integrated in the sense that we adopt the same perspective on decisions, choices or whatever; and where we do not, it is usually because the process of 'stepping-back' and asking causal questions reflects our belief that there is something quite amiss with the agent's behaviour. In terms of our understanding of 'other cultures' or subcultures such as religious communities and the like, we have here a good analogy - an acceptable model - for a similar distinction between internal and external understanding. Observer explanations (accounts) of a particular community in terms of a causal analysis are no more readily acceptable than are participant explanations (accounts) in this case than in the case of accounts of individual behavior of m^ behavior. In terms of Dixon's analysis, either we see that the culture or subculture under investigation holds to irrational beliefs or aims at irrational goals or else we consider seriously the explanations they themselves proffer to account for their beliefs, practices, behavior, etc. And that such primitive cultures are irrational I shall maintain, contrary to Dixon, is not always self-evidently the case. What is required is a good dial of philosophical argument which can only be provided after a thorough understanding of the culture in question is achieved. I can agree with Dixon therefore that the investigator assumes, a priori, the superiority of his own intellectual world but would deny that 'such an a priori commitment . . . is compatible with any degree of intellectual humility and willingness to attend to participant explanations' (Dixon 1973: 85). The arrogance of Dixon's stance is obvious enough to those who know the relevance of anthropic or ideological factors in the formation of one's own intellectual world. The debate over the sociology of knowledge and the validity of its

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claims is not one that can be entered into h e r e . B u t causal accounts or explanations of 'other cultures' can only be accepted where they are obviously irrational. And that is hardly ever the case when a real understanding of the culture under study is achieved - when it is understood as the participant understands it. Thus participant explanations must always be seen, in the first instance, as legitimate rivals to observer or causal explanations. To make this claim is, to be sure, to rest on the strengths (or weaknesses) of the old Verstehen approach to the study of culture, but that approach has been revitalized and fortified by a renewed understanding of the role of the participant observer in social studies. The point of the participant observer is, according to many sociologists, crucially significant both for the collection of data and for its interpretation. The collection of relevant data is obviously facilitated by having an inside track. Indeed in many situations no access to the needed information is available unless one gains the favor and trust of certain influential people within the community, and this is greatly facilitated by becoming a member of the community, even if only on its periphery. The question of chief importance arises, however, over the point of the interpretation of the data. Does a participant observer really come closer to an adequate understanding of the data than the wholly external observer? In one sense he does: he obtains more information; the more pieces he has to the puzzle the easier it becomes to 'fill in' what is missing. But the question to ask is whether such interpretation in not aided by the fact that the investigator also has a clearer understanding of the categories of thought used by the members of the community under investigation. This would be a benefit over and above that gained by access to a wider range of data - a benefit deriving from an 'insider's understanding' of the data. According to Vidich and Bensman (1968) there is some doubt about the value of such an 'inside view' since the participant observer is not really a committed participant: 'If the participant observer seeks genuine experience, unqualifiedly immersing himself and committing himself in

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the group he is studying, it may become impossible for him to objectify his own experience for research purposes; in committing his loyalties [sic ] he develops vested interest which will inevitably enter into his observations' (1968: 354). Thus for professional reasons, the participant observer has only a marginal position in the group under study: . . conscious conformity . . at best, is "artificial", for the participant observer does not commit himself to the point of genuine partisan action. In the interests of objectivity this is necessarily the case. In failing to make genuine commitments, he reveals his socially marginal position and the outside standards upon which he acts' (ibid., pp. 355-356). The tension in Vidich and Bensman is obvious. They wish to suggest, it seems, that there is some positive value to be gained, vis a vis the interpretations of other cultures by becoming 'professionaly' assimilated. And in this there is- some hint of a return to the Verstehens Methode as discussed in Dray above. Yet it is only a hesitant move in that direction, for in abstracting from full participation the participant observer reveals his, paradoxically, nonparticipation. One has here, then, the same uncritical assumption of the a priori superiority of the investigator's frame of reference and judgment found in Dixon above. There is a total failure to see that the observer's frame of reference constitutes but one possible set of commitments to which the observer might commit himself.16 S. T. Bruyn (1967) corrects this uncritical assumption. The participant observer, jie insists, searches for the essential relations that exist in the symbolic data he studies. This can only be attained in a kind of insight born of empathy - an insight that goes beyond reason and sensory observation alone, even though it still rests on them both. Here a knowledge is gained beyond that achieved in a mere increase of data alone. Participation spawns an insight (1967: 320-321): produced unintentionally through the researcher's unconscious encounter with the symbolic nuances of data . . . . The researcher discovers new meanings in his data as he knowingly participates in the process of social

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communication which r e f l e c t s the symbolic l i f e of the people he studies. If he perceives this symbolic life a c c u r a t e l y in his role as a participant observer he is rewarded by finding new perspectives cast on his d a t a . Verstehen t h e n , is n o t , as considered h e r e , an operation or an instrument that can be employed like other tools but is r a t h e r , as Wax pointed o u t , a precondition for gaining knowledge. Wax perceptively links the concept with t h a t of secondary socialization or resocialization: 'In such investigations, the sociological researchers have undergone - as participating or semi-participating observers - some degree of resocialization and been rewarded by a corresponding degree of Verstehen' (Wax 1967: 328). Participation t h e r e f o r e is an important hermeneutical tool - an import a n t aspect of the search for explanations and theories t h a t is too easily overlooked by much contemporary anthropological/sociological research. And where societies under investigation are critically aware of the possibility of a l t e r n a t i v e interpretations and explanations of their p r a c t i c e and behavior, the significance of the participant explanation is greatly increased and cannot be dismissed lightly. This is very o f t e n the kind of situation to be found in the explanation of religion and religious behavior. 'RELIGIOUS EXPLANATION' The preceding discussion has made abundantly clear that the D-N model of explanation is f a r too r e s t r i c t i v e to be of value to researchers in the field of religion. The study of religion is obviously, like the other social sciences, in need of a concept of explanation that will do justice to the phenomena under investigation. And the critique of the D-N model t h a t accompanies the above discussion legitim a t e s a search for such an enlarged understanding of explanation. The problem t h a t arises now concerns the question whether the study of religion need seek for or a c c e p t a kind of explanation that not only d i f f e r s from the D-N model but which is also distinct from the kinds of explanations provided by the other social sciences. It is

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this very difficult and complex question to which I turn now. The easiest way of tackling this problem is a close analysis of recent proposals offered by Ninian Smart. Smart (1973a) invokes two basic kinds of explanation to be used in coming to an understanding of religion which he dubs 'intra-' and 'extra-religious' explanations. He defines them as follows (1973a: 43-44): An internal explanation typically involves trying to show the explanatory connection of an item or items in one dimension of religion with an item or items in another dimension of religion . External explanations . . . try to show how religious items are shaped by structures not in themselves falling wholly within the territory marked out by the definition of religion. This basic typology, however, becomes somewhat complicated in specifying the object of explanation. The nature and plausibility of the explanation appear to change depending upon whether the object or event explained is an aspect of a particular historical religious tradition, or a particular tradition as a whole, or religion as such. Where the object of explanation is a particular aspect of a religious tradition the emergence and/or development of some particular doctrine or dogma within that tradition little problem emerges. It seems that certain developments in religious thought can only be accounted for in terms of other aspects within the religious tradition itself. Smart points this out clearly, for example, in an analysis of the Trikaya (three-body) doctrine of Mahayana Buddhism. He shows how the emergence and development of this doctrine is very largely a result of the valuation the Mahayana tradition places upon the contemplative experience as over against the bhakti (devotional) experience. Thus he writes (1973a: 126): I have appealed to the respective internal structures of the two kinds of experience and attitude, namely to the undifferentiated quality of the contemplative

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experience and the polarity of the numinous and of devotion. The subject-object character of bhakti means that the Buddhas as gods are 'over there' or 'up there', but there is no such quasi-spatial contrast in the experience of the Void. I have, however, suggested that the very idea of non-duality implies the idea of something to be identified or united with. This means that, in describing the highest experience as advaya, the Mahayana builds in some interpretation. Hence I have used phenomenological structures as the basis for explaining some features of doctrines. On the other hand, there seem also to be certain doctrinal developments that cannot be accounted for simply in terms of other features of the tradition. This point is well made by Kung's analysis of the doctrine of infallibility in the Roman Church (1971: 73): We shall never understand the definition of papal infallibility merely by analysing the text of the Council's Constitution in Denzinger's Enchiridion, or even by studying the Council documents in Mansi's great collection. The issue was largely decided before the Council met. Would papal infallibility ever have been defined in 1870 if the majority of the Council of Fathers had not grown up in the period of political restoration and the anti-Enlightment and the anti-rationalist romanticism of the first half of the century? In the age that followed the chaos and excesses of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic period, Europeans longed for peace and order, for the good old days, and looked back longingly to the 'Christian Middle Ages'. Who better than the Pope could offer a religious basis for the maintenance or restoration of the political and religious status quo? It is obvious, moreover, that these two types of explanation might well be complementary, both intra- and extrareligious. explanations being required in order to account adequately for a particular doctrine. This seems to be the case, for example, in the emergence and maintenance of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity in orthodox

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Christian thought. In a paper delivered to the British Society for the Study of Theology G. C. Stead (1974: 1) points out that The problem of Trinitarian origins is rather like the problem of Gnostic origins. In each case we have a pattern of thought which emerges pari passu with Christian thought, but which has close affinities with pre-Christian or non-Christian thought, while the evidence of first-century Christian documents is scanty and enigmatic, so that we can hardly be certain that the doctrine is exclusively, or even predominantly, a product of Christian inspiration. Stead is not ruling out the role of early Christian experience of awe both in respect of the life of Jesus and the experience of Pentecost in the emergence of this doctrine but simply claims that this alone can hardly account for the adoption of a trinitarian formulation, say, over a binitarian one. As he puts it, 'it leaves one still wondering whether the facts of early Christian experience would have suggested a confession of just three divine Persons and no more unless there had been some tendency to think in Trinitarian terms' (Stead 1974: 3). Consequently, he seeks for explanatory factors in possible innate tendencies to favor a triadic over a diadic theology in Old Testament and other Jewish trinitarian patterns of thought and whether such trinitarian patterns of thought can be found in influential Greek sources, etc. This kind of explanation in the study of religion is hardly problematic. Indeed, as the foregoing discussion clearly indicates, the explanations are straightforwardly historical explanations (except where intrareligious explanations do not seek for further explanations of the deeper structures of religious experience, making them barely distinguishable from 'theological explanation') without which, surely, no adequate (exhaustive) account of a religious tradition and its dynamic character can ever be provided. This makes it very difficult to see why, then, Smart refers to them as 'religious explanations' (1973a: 110). He distinguishes 'religious explanation' from 'theological

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explanation' in suggesting that the l a t t e r , unlike the f o r m e r , involves some reference to the transcendent, as if the transcendent actually existed. He r e f e r s , for example, to such explanation as 'supernatural explanation': '. . . t h e ology may a t t e m p t to incorporate some sort of explanation of events; for example, the success of the early church in establishing itself and carrying on the works of Christ was due to God's power working in men' (1973a: 129). Such theological explanations can, however, be reduced to what Smart refers to as a 'phenomenological explanation': an explanation in which the controversial question of the existence of the transcendent reference is 'bracketed out' of the discussion. He brings out the nature of this 'reduction' by means of the example of Paul's conversion. The scientist can, he insists, remain agnostic about 'God's' part in it and yet recognize the power of Paul's conversion. Thus he writes (1973a: 136-137): To this extent the Religionist's (or historian's) account is compatible with the Theological Explanation of f a i t h , namely that it was through the power of God that early Christianity was established. Though compatible however, it differs from the Theologian's description. The historian is not uttering any kind of faith s t a t e ment: he is not, qua historian, speaking as a Christian. Rather he is accepting a phenomenological description of the Focus of Paul's experience, and recognizing that Paul's actions were highly influenced by what he (Paul) took to be the object of his experience. This historian is also recognising that such an experience has its own validity as power, as a force (to put it crudely) in the determination of the affairs of mankind. Although Smart suggests that the theological and the phenomenological explanations are not in tension, I have referred to the l a t t e r as strictly nonreligious and reduct i o n i s t s since it explains the same data in terms of human belief whereas the former claims the data inexplicable without reference to some transcendent entity.*" 'Phenomenological explanations' therefore must be classed as 'extrareligious' in the final analysis.

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'Religious explanation', Smart then goes on to say, is somehow bound up with the notion of the autonomy of religion as it is to be found, for example, in Joachim Wach. Yet this, it appears to me, comes close to a theological explanation, since for Wach 'the religious' is irreducible to other social d a t a . B u t that this is not what Smart in fact intends is clear from his definition of 'religious explanation': '. . . in speaking of religious explanations, I refer rather to the way in which particular or general features of religion explain either features both of religion itself and/or of something contained, within another aspect of human existence.' (1973a: 111). The definition however differs very little from the combined meanings of the definitions with which I opened this section of the chapter - leaving one still with the puzzlement therefore as to how such explanations really differ from other straightforwardly historical, or sociological, or psychological types of explanation. I shall return to this problem later. The question that arises now with respect to the historical explanations discussed thus far is whether any combination of them can provide us with an explanation (account) of a particular religious tradition or of religion - that is, whether such historical explanations can clear up our puzzlement as to why religion exists and persists in just the fashion that it does. Is the science of religion interested primarily in the exhaustive summary of intraand extrareligious explanations of all the various facets of a particular religious tradition? Would such a summary provide us with an understanding of religion (or a particular religious tradition)? If one rules out any possibility of reading intrareligious explanations as theological explanation, as does Smart, this might seem highly plausible. The question that arises however is whether intrareligious explanation then really differs, in the last analysis, from extrareligious explanation. That it does not becomes clear in a closer reading of Smart's discussion of the Trikaya doctrine in Buddhism. Although he explains the development of the doctrine in terms of another feature of the religious tradition - namely contemplative experience - he nevertheless goes on to explain this aspect of religion

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in terms of other extrareligious factors. He writes (1973b: 127): . . . why does Buddhism take the contemplative life to be the commanding height of the tradition? The answer is doubtless in a rather brute way historical, namely that Buddhism rose out of a milieu which stressed yoga and contemplative techniques. One can supplement this by pointing to the tension existing between Brahmanism and the various mendicant groups which served as a background to the rise of early Buddhism. One can also remember that the religion in which Buddhism rose and flourished was experiencing something of a social and economic revolution in a context where the culture was but imperfectly Sanskritized. Also of some importance historically was a modified opposition to the system of classes (varnas). To present such an account as exhaustive would be to provide a reductionistic account of religion - an observeroriented and hence causal kind of explanation that rules out participant explanation in terms of the realities and influence of 'religious objects' on the assumption, presumably, that such beliefs are obviously absurd or at least implausible and are themselves in need of causal explanation. But to rule out participant explanation here is no less implausible than it is in the case of one's explanation of his own behavior in terms of reasons and motives - particularly where the religious group concerned has, as is often the case, developed an elaborate 'compatibility system', i.e., the attempt to explain one's religious beliefs and behavior in terms of reasons and motives in the face of alternative causal models of explanation. The point I am trying to make then is that unless theological explanations - explanations in terms of concepts internal to the group are admitted as genuine explanations one has adopted, uncritically, a philosophical reductionism.20 The alternative assumption is made then that adequate explanations can be arrived at only by resorting to concepts that are external to the group. Durkheim makes the assumption explicit then he writes (1971: 430):

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That which science refuses to grant to religion is not its right to exist, but its right to dogmatize about the nature of things and the special competence which it claims for itself for knowing man and the world. As a matter of f a c t , it does not know itself. It does not even know what it is made of, nor to what need it answers. It is itself a subject of science! And from another point of view, since there is no proper subject for religious speculation outside that reality to which scientific reflection is applied, it is evident that this former cannot play the same role in the future that it has in the past. But this, as I have already intimated above, appears to write off religion from the start - without resort to philosophical argument of any sort to show that in fact there really is 'no proper subject for religious speculation'. The same holds for the 'methodological atheism' of Peter Berger which, as Smart (1973a: 59) points out (I think correctly), is indistinguishable from atheism tout court. Ian Hamnett makes the same point when he writes: 'Both "believing" and "unbelieving" sociologists . . . are given to building into the sociology of religion that set of antireligious presuppositions which flows from the "sociology of error" approach' (1973: 3). Theological supernatural explanations, therefore, appear to be no more elements of expression (faith, commitment), as Smart puts it, than are the atheological explanations of the radical externalists - it is merely a matter of their emergence from a different centre of commitment, from a different Weltanschauung. THE ROLE OF PHILOSPHY IN THE STUDY OF RELIGION The question with which one is left now is quite simply 'How is the science of religion to proceed?' If we are in fact to have a science of religion it is obvious, from what I have already said, that its students must move beyond description to explanation. But it is precisely in that move that the 'how' of the procedure seems to elude us, for to

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be scientific the study must be critical as over against theological (i.e., working simply from the theological precepts, norms, etc.) and y e t , if it is to do justice to its subject m a t t e r , it cannot adopt a priori, a reductionistic framework. As Fenton (1970) points out, even if religion is in some sense sui generis, it is still, nevertheless, also anthropomorphic and so explicable in terms of other aspects of human culture - hence explicable, a t least in p a r t , reductionistically. (He is also right, in the light of this anthropic c h a r a c t e r , in claiming that an explanation of religion that concerns itself only with the sui generis aspect of it is equally 'reductionistic' although it must be noted that the meaning of the term 'reduction' here is changed substantially.) The possibilities open to the 'scientific' study of religion then seem to be a search for some combination of 'supernatural' explanation^! combined with 'natural' explanation or a (fully) reductionistic account of religion that relies on 'natural explanations' alone (e.g., Durkheim). Contrary to the position adopted by S m a r t , only if 'supernatural' explanations are invoked can one speak of a 'religious explanation', as over against a nonreligious or reductionistic one. 'Religious explanations' are provided only when there is a real alternative to the reductionism of a mere sociological, psychological, e t c . , approach to religion. Whether or not the 'religious explanation' provided is acceptable (plausibile, justifiable) can never be settled in an a priori fashion - each explanation must be considered on its own merits. Theology, Buddhology, e t c . , must therefore be taken seriously. The assumptions that such 'religious explanations' are always to be preferred or always to be rejected (i.e., being themselves in need of explanation) are both to be a v o i d e d . 2 2 The implications of this for the study of religion are obvious. Although a phenomenological description of religion - of various religious traditions - may require a bracketing of valuation, judgment, issues of truth and falsity and the like, these issues cannot in the final analysis be left out of the picture. An explanation of religion as illusion will be vastly different from the explanation of religion as a true picture of reality. To provide an explanation of it then one must judge first whether it (religion)

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is, to put it bluntly, right or wrong, true or false, a vision of reality or a mere projection of the human mind. Until issues of this kind are sorted out final explanations are certainly ruled out of the question. Only if philosophical argument can be provided that will undermine or weaken the theistic or atheistic (the sui generis stance) can such final explanations that will reveal the truth about religion and so provide us with an understanding of religion be arrived a t . i n this sense, philosophy remains a key factor in the scientific study of religion.

PART TWO

Truth and the Study of Religion: Negative Considerations

The Truth Question as Inapplicable to Religion

THE NONCOGNITIVE CHARACTER OF RELIGION Many students of religion, both sympathetic and hostile, argue not only that the truth question cannot be raised with reference to religious phenomena but that it is, in fact, logically impossible to do so. Religion, it is claimed, is not a cognitive enterprise; it is not a system or set of beliefs, consequently, since truth is basically a cognitive concept, it is inapplicable to religion. Such a view is widely current at present, especially among philosophers although not exclusively so. It has emerged, particularly in respect of the Christian tradition, largely as a response to pressures of science understood as the paradigm of knowledge-gaining procedures (where, of course, it has been assumed that 'religious truth' is propositional truth). The reasons for its emergence are obvious: if religion were noncognitive such pressures would immediately dissolve; conflict between science and religion would no longer be possible and constant retrenchment of the religious believer in the face of an ever-advancing scientific system would cease. It causes little wonder, therefore, to hear the suggestions of various philosophers that religious language, especially with respect to the Christian tradition, is neither descriptive nor explanatory but rather 'convictional' (Zuurdeeg 1959); or 'the language of self-involvement' (Evans 1963); or 'the language of self-instruction' (McKinnon 1970); or 'the language of qualified silence' (Miles 1959), etc. The task of the present chapter will be to examine some representative arguments for such a noncognitivist interpretation of religion. Since the arguments of the

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philosophers do not diverge significantly the choice of representative points of view requires little justification. A recent concerted attack upon the cognitivist interpretation of religion is to be found in D.Z. Phillips (1976). According to Phillips this general misunderstanding of the nature of religion is a legacy of Hume's influence on modern thought; his concern with religious beliefs as mistaken hypotheses. According to Phillips, . . explanations [of religious beliefs ], like the proofs of God , show an inadequate grasp of the nature of religious belief. We have suggested that where religious belief is concerned, to speak of proof and explanation is to betray a misunderstanding of what is being investigated' (1976: 43, see also pp. 120, 137, 142-144, and passim). The point Phillips argues here is central to most of his philosophical writing as a perusal of his earlier book (1970) makes clear. He seems to argue that understanding religion requires a 'religious understanding' rather than criteria of truth and falsity applicable to religious beliefs. The case is stated clearly and unequivocally in his essay on 'Faith, scepticism, and religious understanding': 'The man who construes religious belief as a theoretical affair distorts it. Kierkegaard emphasizes that there is no understanding of religion without passion. And when the philosopher understands that, his understanding religion is incompatible with scepticism' (1970: 33). Phillips's understanding of the 'meaning' of religion is thus instrumentalist rather than cognitivist. This does not mean that 'truth' is not an aspect of religion but that the truth that characterizes religion is essentially a 'personal' or 'nonobjective' kind of truth. Understanding religion is not, therefore, a matter of correct knowledge but rather of a correct attitude of love for God (Phillips 1970: 26). This point is reiterated in his essay on 'Subjectivity and religious truth in Kierkegaard' (in the same volume). Although I have made extended reference to Phillips's work I shall not dwell at any length upon the arguments he marshals for his position since they are often vague and confused. I shall, however, examine in some detail the explicit espousal of the notion of 'truth as subjectivity' to be found in the work of Soren Kierkegaard because of its

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obvious influence on Phillips* and its clear and straightforward statement (1941). An understanding of Kierkegaard's concern, therefore, will also provide us with a sensitivity for Phillips's position. Furthermore, the influence of Kierkegaard in this matter has been much more powerful and pervasive than that of Phillips.2 I shall then focus attention on a less 'religious', more 'philosophical' statement of a similar position as it is to be found in Miles (1959). Soren Kierkegaard: (Religious) Truth is Subjectivity Religion, as Kierkegaard repeatedly points out, is concerned with the eternal happiness of the existing individual. Its primary concern is salvation rather than knowledge. And salvation requires an inner transformation of the individual whereas knowledge does not. Truth that is merely epistemic emerges from disinterest whereas 'religious truth' emerges in a context of infinite, passionate interest. The lofty equanimity of the speculative philosopher as to the outcome of his inquiry is entirely lacking in religion. The epistemic or propositional truth is universal and impersonal and so objectivity cannot supply 'a truth which is true for me, . . . the idea for which I can live and die'. (Kierkegaard 1938: 15) According to Kierkegaard, the two realms of truth are incommensurable for they require radically different mental stances; radically different attitudes to life between which the inquirer must choose, for to adopt the one is to reject the other (1941: 23): The inquiring subject must be in one or the other of the two situations. Either he is in faith convicted of the truth of Christianity, and in faith assured of his own relationship to it; in which case he cannot be infinitely interested in all the rest since faith itself is the infinite interest in Christianity, and since every other interest may readily come to constitute a temptation. Or the inquirer is, on the other hand, not in an attitude of faith, but objectively in an attitude of

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contemplation, and hence not infinitely the determination of the question.

interested

in

Kierkegaard does not deny that there exist propositional, or as he called them, world-historical, truths (objective truths). He only denies that they have any essential bearing upon 'religious truth'. 'Has anyone who previously did not have faith', he asks (1941: 30), 'been brought a single step nearer to its acquisition? N o , not a single step. Faith does not result from a scientific inquiry; it does not come directly at all. On the contrary, in this objectivity one tends to lose that infinite personal interestedness in passion which is the condition of faith. . . .' Indeed, the desire for such objective truth in religion can only be detrimental, either leading the inquirer to despair, since eternal truths can never be 'proved' by a process of worldhistorical approximation, or undermining the individual's passionate interest by requiring of him an indefinite postponement of his concern with his own eternal happiness - by indefinitely postponing decision. For Kierkegaard there are thus levels of truth. The faith of which he speaks in the passage just quoted is synonymous with 'religious truth' and is a 'higher truth' than that of propositions. It is not a higher truth, however, in the sense of the acquisition of a more rarefied (esoteric?) kind of knowledge (either metaphysical or ontological) by means o f , for example, revelation, intuition, or something of that sort. This is the doctrine of the 'faith philosophy' of the romantics, such as Johart George Hamann, which eventually led to Hegel's dialectic and which Kierkegaard rejected vehemently. 'Faith' for such romantics was a source of knowledge. According to this view, the aesthetic imagination and the creative spontaneity of intuition are the source of knowledge of the world rather than reason. Faith was seen, that is, as an inner experience of reality that is self-validating - a 'living comprehension' of reality with an inner conviction of its truth and validity. And for Hamann such 'faith' revealed reality as a tension of opposites - a stark contrast to reason's picture of the world measured against 'the absence of contradiction' as the criterion of truth. In essentials, however, the truth obtained

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by such intuition is still of the same kind as that gained by reason, for it is still of the external world and is propositional in character. And Kierkegaard rejects it, therefore, for the same reason that he rejects rational or empirical truths gained more conventionally, for it has nothing to do with the 'existing individual'. For Kierkegaard, therefore, the objective/subjective distinction is much more radical, calling for a distinction between truth as reference to an external reality and what is said, and truth as reference to an inward passion and how a thing is said. As he puts it, 'the objective accent falls on WHAT is said, the subjective accent on HOW it is said' (1941: 181). And it is this kind of subjectivity - subjectivity as inwardness or personal appropriation rather than subjectivity as intuition - that Kierkegaard defines as 'religious truth', for only such truth can be of any concern to the existing individual (1941: 181): At its maximum this inward 'how' is the passion of the infinite and the passion of the infinite is the truth. But the passion of the infinite is precisely subjectivity, and thus subjectivity becomes the truth. Objectively there is no infinite decisiveness, and hence it is objectively in order to annul the difference between good and evil, together with the principle of contradiction, and therewith also the infinite difference between the true and the false. Only in subjectivity is there decisiveness, to seek objectivity is to be in error. It is the passion of the infinite that is the decisive factor and not its content , for its content v is precisely itself. In this manner subjectivity and the subjective 'how' constitute the truth. Indeed, such truth is subjectivity (ibid., p. 182): . An objective uncertainty held fast in an appropriation-process of the most passionate inwardness is the truth, the highest truth attainable for an existing individual. At the point where the way swings off (and where this cannot be specified objectively, since it is a matter of subjectivity), there objective

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knowledge is placed in abeyance. Thus the subject merely has, objectively, the uncertainty; but it is this which precisely increases the tension of that infinite passion which constitutes his inwardness. The truth is precisely the venture which chooses an objective uncertainty with the passion of the infinite. I contemplate the order of nature in the hope of wisdom but I also see much else that disturbs my mind and excites my anxiety. The sum of all this is an objective uncertainty. It is the infinite passion - a personal state of mind or heart - that is the 'religious truth 1 and not some logical, empirical, or metaphysical claim. It has to do with a relationship of the individual beyond himself rather than with an objective claim; the truth hangs on the mode of the relationship and not on a correspondence of a claim to some external, empirical reality. Consequently, 'religious truth' even when focused upon an objective falsehood can still be true - for it is true to the existing individual. Thus according to Kierkegaard there is more religious truth in the one who prays with infinite passion to an idol than in one who prays in a false spirit to the true God: 'The one prays in truth to God though he worships an idol; the other prays falsely to the true God, and hence worships in f a c t an idol' (1941: 180). 'Only such a subjective truth is one for which the individual can live and die and objectivity cannot provide it because it presents truth sub specie aeternitatis and so ignores the concrete and the temporal in the existential process of the individual life' (ibid., p. 267). Thus 'religious truth' must be a 'personal truth' in the sense of the adoption of a style of life in which one emerges as the individual he was intended to be but knows he is not - for it brings meaning to existence, it seems, by an 'experiment'; by the subjective appropriation of the passional existence. As one commentator puts it with respect to philosophic and moral truth in general (Price 1963: 120): For Kierkegaard realistic self-involvement is the only e f f e c t i v e way of testing a philosophy. To choose it vigorously, to think in terms of i t , to buy, to sell,

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make love and suffer in the light of it . . . this is the sort of living experimentation which alone can reveal the truth or falsehood of a philosophy. This is also the method, used by 'the actual-existing subjective thinker' (John Doe - the-man-in-the-street), for whom the truth is not an academic gimmick but a personal necessity, and who, because he is infinitely interested in existing . . . is. compelled to appropriate or reject from his experience what meets or fails to meet the concrete need. Existence itself is the start and ruthless judge of all the systems and theories constructed to interpret existence. Another expresses the same point in writing of the truth of Christianity, in particular, in Kierkegaard (Holmer 1955: 141):

The question now seems to be what is Christian religiousness. Can it be propositionally described? Kierkegaard has distinguished himself for insisting upon the fact that Christian truth is subjectivity. He in no wise negates objectivity in order to say this. He rather wishes to insist that being a Christian is not to possess sentences, nor is it to know their truth and to acknowledge it heartily. The objective fact, Christianly considered, is Jesus Christ, a historical person. But what makes this objective person a religious object? Kierkegaard insists that it is not the cognitive relation to Jesus, as necessary as this is in order that I even know of his existence. It is instead this noncognitive relation which I can have to him which makes him a religious object. Such a noncognitive relation is direct; it is passional, emerging from all that makes one despair of one's present subjectivity and wish to appropriate another's (e.g., Jesus's) passional life. Such a noncognitive relation then is, in a sense at least, an 'experiment with truth', and essentially characterizes what Christianity (and religion generally) is all about. The act of belief in historical narrative or metaphysical description, although somehow

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related to Christian t r u t h , is n o t , in any sense, t h a t truth: . . if only the mode of this relationship is in the t r u t h , the individual is in the truth even if he should happen to be thus related to what is not true' (Kierkegaard 1941: 178). This extremely personal, experiential and hence subjective c h a r a c t e r of 'religious t r u t h ' , it s e e m s , must make a 'scientific assessment' of the ' t r u t h , of religion' impossible. That kind of truth m u s t , of necessity it a p p e a r s , elude objective scrutiny and analysis since it presupposes an 'inner transformation' or 'actualization of inwardness' which, according to Kierkegaard, makes it possible for only two kinds of people to know anything about i t , 'those who with an infinite passionate interest in e t e r n a l happiness base their happiness upon their believing relationship to Christianity, and those with an opposite passion, but in passion r e j e c t it . . . .' (Kierkegaard 1941: 57). 'If Christianity is essentially something objective', he continues, 'it is necessary for the observer to be objective. But if Christianity is essentially subjective, it is a mistake for the observer to be objective. In every case where the object of knowledge is the very inwardness of the subjectivity of the individual, it is necessary for the knower to be in a corresponding condition' (ibid., p. 51). The objective study of religion, it would a p p e a r , t h e r e f o r e , must give up any and all intention of assessing the truth value of religion, for to do otherwise is to 'experiment' with the truth and to do that is to be religious - not to study religion. T. R. Miles: Religion as 'Qualified Silence' T. R. Miles (1959) is basically concerned with the problems raised by the holding of religious beliefs in an age dominated by science. There a r e , he is convinced, certain sorts of beliefs in religion t h a t a r e , although commonly held, incompatible with modern scientific knowledge even such common beliefs as t h a t of the existence of God and of the soul and its immortality. And yet he claims t h a t the challenge of science to religion when properly formulated cannot deprive religion of its essential insights

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(and he even refers to them as 'truths') and function. The challenge to which Miles directs his attention, however, is not to be found in the conclusions reached or knowledge gained by science but rather in its method - the philosophy underlying the scientific enterprise. That philosophy, still valid in its essentials according to Miles, is logical positivism, however much qualified and much modified since its infancy with the Vienna Circle and the early Ayer. That positivism, he claims, raised a legitimate protest against loose and vague talk that could not be given a 'cash-value'. And that protest laid the axe to the root of all metaphysical talk as having cognitive significance, including much theological talk. The essence of the positivist challenge - which has not changed through its period of modification - is to be found, according to Miles, in its claim that whatever is factually significant must be empirically verifiable or falsifiable. To deny this is to commit what he calls the 'absolute existence mistake'; it is to assume that one can talk in a straightforward way about what exists or what does not exist in the universe - it is to assume that 'exist' can be used in an 'absolute' sense as well as in a 'contextual' sense. Miles challenges the assumption, although he admits that he has no knockdown arguments against it. There are two reasons, however, why it ought to appear rather odd to assume that it is legitimate to ask what there is in the universe in the same way that one can ask what there is in one's room. First, to ask after the constituent elements of the universe is to ask for a grouping of all those items which have in common the attribute of existence; but it is widely agreed that existence cannot be a predicate: 'Things that exist do not form a class distinguishable by special characteristics from things that do not exist' (Miles 1959: 39). Second, assertions about ultimate constituents are without a context and hence without meaning - they are unlocatable. Miles, therefore, refers to them as 'metaphysical existence-questions'. Questions like 'Do dodos still exist?' or 'Do there exist any prime numbers between fifteen and twenty-five?', he refers to as 'contextual existence-questions'. The former, unlike the latter, are second order philosophical questions, not 'real'

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existence questions. For example, rather than ask whether minds exist, Miles suggests that the question be reformulated so as to ask 'is "mind" a "thing-word"?' Thus he concludes that 'to say that the only factually significant sentences are empirical ones may be regarded as a justifiable protest against the notion of "absoluteexistence"' (Miles 1959: 44). It is obvious from- this account that such classical science/religion debates as are involved in the questions of materialism, behaviorism, determinism, e t c . were and are really pseudo-problems. No question of the truth or falsity of religion can ever be raised here. Each of these debates rests upon the absolute-existence mistake and is, consequently, meaningless. For example, to those who ask whether behaviorism is not in opposition to (in contradiction with) religious belief in and religious talk of the soul and its salvation, Miles replies (1959: 84): In the first place we need to remove the discussion from the crude level in which the question at issue is whether the universe does or does not contain such things as souls. According to this crude view religion teaches us that it does, behaviourism that it does not. Here, certainly, there is conflict, but it is a conflict which need not concern us, since both parties are b e a t ing the air over a meaningless question. 'Has man a "soul"' does not admit of verification or falsification by observational means and cannot therefore be the f a c tually significant question it purports to be. However, as I have already indicated above, Miles does not mean in any sense to deny all significance to religious language - only factual significance. 'Even if an assertion cannot be verified or falsified empirically', he writes (p. 137), 'it can quite well have a legitimate function.' That function according to Miles is an oblique one, a qualification of what he r e f e r s to as 'religious silence'. 'God', for example, cannot be talked about since 'He' is not an item to be included in a list of what there is in the universe (for what list would He be appended to?) and consequently men can but remain silent. But this silence can be

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qualified in a parabolic fashion. Thus in the issue of the 'soul', he writes (1959: 86): Those who say 'man has a soul1 are not saying anything comparable to 'cows have horns', despite the grammatical similarity between the two sentences. 'Man has a soul' requires rather to be assimilated to 'men are children of God.' Such language is what I call . . . 'the language of parable' . . . which does not purport to be a literal factual assertion. The concept 'soul' functions here as a safeguard to the sanctity of human personality. With respect • to death and the issue of immortality, if asked what happens after death one can, says Miles, only be silent and qualify that silence by a parable. Thus he writes (ibid., p. 206): This silence is then qualified by the parable of the resurrection. We know exactly what it is like for a body to rise out of a grave and to become assimilated to another body. The parable is of God enabling man to rise from the grave and become one with the risen Christ. To use these terms from human experience (which are agreed to be inadequate and misleading) is the only alternative to complete silence. Miles assures us, however, that this parabolic language still insures that the central truths of Christianity are valid. How this is so, still remains to be seen. Such an analysis of religious discourse, claims Miles, in no way constitutes a challenge to Christian belief in God, as it might at first appear, for 'God' is not a word that can be classed with any other. To ask about the existence of God is to use 'exist' in an absolute sense and hence to use it unintelligibly, or else in an empirical sense, in which case 'God exists' is treated like any other empirical assertion. The former way of speaking Miles dubs 'qualified literal theism'; the latter, 'simple literal theism'. He proposes 'the language of parables' as a more reasonable alternative to both. Parable talk differs from the above forms of theistic talk in that no question of truth or

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falsity is involved as there is in empirical considerations. Yet the parable does contain empirical assertions, f o r , as Miles puts i t , 'we know perfectly well what states of a f f a i r s would constitute the 'cash-value' of these assertions (1959: 217). For example, in the parable of the creation of the world, the 'cash-value' of the concept of creation is to be found in the ordinary activity of a person creating something. But 'the "objective validity" of such a parable is either a meaningless phrase or constitutes something totally unknown which in either case requires religious belief . . . to be tempered with a high degree of agnosticism* (Miles 1959: 217). But the parable does convey a message - it is not merely a record of events, fictional or otherwise; it rather gives a new slant or perspective on the meaning of l i f e , a new orientation which e f f e c t s the whole of one's life. Of the reorientation found in the creation story he writes (ibid., p. 169): The doctrine of creation by an all-loving God I shall refer to as the 'theistic-parable'. We have already seen how talk of the 'existence' of God is misleading, in that it suggests that God is in some way an extra entry in addition to familiar ones. I suggest t h a t , in place of the question 'Do you believe in the existence of God?' we should substitute, 'Do you accept the theistic parable?' What this question means is simply, do you accept 'that every event is part of God's purpose?' (Miles 1959: 168); (although I do not see how this l a t t e r phrase really constitutes a translation of the question since one does not know what 'God' r e f e r s t o , if anything. The phrase implies, I think, that 'God' r e f e r s to some intelligent being capable of having a purpose. But if this is so, Miles seems himself to be involved in the absolute-existence mistake, but more of this anon.) Miles concludes his analysis of religious language (of the nature of religion) by reiterating the claim that science and religion cannot be in conflict because religion makes no cognitive claims. Religious language is parabolic

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language, making any collision with the fact-stating language of science (or common sense) impossible. Thus (1959: 218-219), 'In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth' can never be in contradiction with any assertion that any scientist would ever make; and the same holds in the case of all other Christian parables. To insist that such language is parable and not literal truth is to ascribe a recognizable and legitimate function to a group of basic religious assertions namely the function of adopting a particular way of life, and the result is to supply a permanent guarantee that these assertions cannot be refuted by the findings of science. His last word on the issue is best summed up in the following paragraph (ibid., p. 217): On the general question of a conflict between science and religion, there is a central part of the problem which we can safely claim to have settled once and for all. This claim is not the presumptuous one that it sounds, for the matter is one of logical necessity, and it would be muddled thinking to claim anything less. Religious language is of many different kinds; there is the language of parable, the language of moral exhortation, the language of worship, and so on. Only if what is offered in the name of religion is factual assertion can there be any possibility of head-on conflict. Summary The general assumption underlying all such instrumentalist views of religion (religious discourse) is that truth is a cognitive or epistemologi cai concept, or at least primarily so. 'Religious truth', then, as is intimated in the discussion of Phillips, Kierkegaard and Miles above, is a 'derived' concept and is concerned with action rather than with knowledge - it is a moral rather than an epistemological term. Thus, in very much the same vein (although, as I

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shall have occassion to point out, somewhat ambiguously so), Wilfred Cantwell Smith, claims that 'religious truth is utterly crucial; it is the paramount and inescapable issue, before which all other religious m a t t e r s , however mighty, must bow. It is final' (W. C. Smith 1967: 67). This truth is 'personal truth' rather than 'propositional truth' and implies a radical distinction between the 'external tradition' of religions (i.e., their explicit theologies, second-order, reflective religious discourse) with their 'inner faith' (i.e., the inner experience, sometimes involving primary - unsyst e m a t i c and unreflective - religious utterances). The 'truth of religion' concerns only the 'inner f a i t h ' , its authenticity making the truth of religion a matter of existence, a m a t t e r of a living situation rather than one of intellectual assent. As Mensching (1971) puts i t , 'rational correctness' of thoughts ('outer truth') has l i t t l e , if anything to do with one's commitment to authentic living ('inner truth'). If 'religious truth' is believed to be a cognitive concept one might legitimately hold suspect the claim that truth questions can never be raised in the study of religion. If truth is utterly crucial to religion it would seem also to be of utter importance to the study of religion. This, however, is not the case, for 'religious truth', it is argued, is of such a personal nature that it cannot be 'observed' or properly assessed by an 'external observer'. 'Religious truth', that is, is a characteristic not so much of religion as of the religious believer and is of such an inward character that it is not really open to objective analysis and assessment. THE TRANSCENDENTAL CHARACTER OF RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE There are some who would argue that the concept of truth is inapplicable to religion not because religion has nothing to do with cognition but rather because religion provides a kind of supercognition. The truth question as ordinarily understood, t h e r e f o r e , is inapplicable because 'religious truth' is truth of a higher order and, consequently, cannot be assessed or adjudicated from a lower level of judgment.

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'Religious truth', it is agreed then, is a cognitive concept but, it is maintained, it is so only in a peculiar, extraordinary way. It is assumed or argued that there is available to a small minority of persons a kind of knowledge wholly different from our knowledge of states of affairs in the every day world - it is knowledge of a supernatural order and hence must be 'logically' different. Insofar as the 'objects' of that knowledge are peculiar, the criteria for the verification of that knowledge will differ from the criteria applied to our common sense and scientific knowledge. Such knowledge, because of its transcendental character, is open only to the spiritual elite: the few with extraordinary capacities and gifts, the few chosen to be the recipients of revelation. Consequently only the few can judge as to the truth value of this knowledge; it is not open to the ordinary mortal to judge for he can judge only on the basis of a truth concerned with the penultimate rather than with ultimate issues. There is a value to propositional truth claims, it is admitted, but only a limited, or relative one; a value largely restricted to questions of practical every day affairs in the 'work-a-day' world. When it comes to ultimate issues, a further knowledge is called for which cannot be restricted to the criteria of assessment of truth in the every day world, else it would not be a further, or a different kind of knowledge. In consequence, since the 'scientific' study of religion concerns itself with a quite ordinary kind of knowledge about particular cultural institutions, the truth question cannot be a subject of inquiry for it. Such a thesis is clearly adopted by Schuon (1975) in his argument for the transcendent unity of religions. It will be of some value to outline his argument here. F. Schuon: Religious Truth As Transcendental Knowledge Schuon sets out the claim of the two levels theory of truth in all its arrogance and power (1975: 38n): What can one say of all those treatises that attempt to make the religious doctrines a subject of profane study,

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as if there were no knowledge that was not accessible to anyone and everybody, as if it were sufficient to have been to school to be able to understand the most venerable wisdom better than the sages understood it themselves? For it is assumed by 'specialists' and 'critics' that there is nothing that is beyond their powers; such an attitude resembles that of children who, having found books intended for adults, judge them according to their ignorance, caprice, and laziness. What might therefore appear as a falsehood from the 'lower level' of t r u t h , so to speak, may in f a c t be a deeply significant religious truth. Schuon suggests, for example, that the absolute truth with respect to the David/Bathsheba affair goes beyond the common moral understanding; beyond what might be commonly held to be the moral truth and, hence, that it is not subject to adjudication and censure by those standing on the lower level of truth - the truth of theology rather than that of intuition. Consequently he speaks of the helplessness of the human mind when left to its own resources in issues of this kind. He points out (1975: 36), for example, that Exoterism cannot . . . admit either the unreality of the world or the exclusive reality of the Divine Principle, or above all, the transcendence of Non-being relative to Being or God. In other words, the exoteric point of view cannot comprehend the transcendence of the supreme Divine Impersonality of which God is the personal Affirmation; such truths are of too high an order, and therefore too subtle and complex from the point of view of simple rational understanding, to be accessible to the majority or formulated in a dogmatic manner. According to Schuon, then, there is an uncreated intellect in created beings, present in a greater degree in some than in others, that is both the source of and the validation of this supernatural knowledge. Such knowledge is inward and esoteric, having an intrinsic truth. Such a truth may indeed find embodiment in doctrine but is so

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embodied only as 'an accessory spiritual means' for the common man. This he calls exoteric religion - true (ultimate) religion's providential disposition under the present conditions of terrestrial humanity that excludes the majority of people from the esoteric truth, to paraphrase him. The exoteric truth - which can be classed as a kind of propositional truth of the ordinary kind - then is 'legitimate' (true) but only if it is cognizant of its own limitations (of its relative character); only if it recognizes its subordinate status with respect to the esoteric truth of religion: '. . . pure and absolute Truth can only be found beyond all its possible expressions; these expressions, as such, cannot claim the attributes of this Truth; their relative remoteness from it is expressed by their differentiation and multiplicity, by which they are strictly limited' (Schuon 1975: 19). The study of religion, therefore, which can assess only the relative expressions of this absolute esoteric truth can never really assess the truth of religion in its integral and absolute state. That can only be achieved by 'faith' - a kind of religious intuition (Schuon 1975: 130): Faith is in fact nothing else than the 'bhaktic' mode of knowledge and of intellectual certainty, which means that Faith is a passive act of the intelligence, its immediate object being not the truth as such, but a symbol of the truth. This symbol will yield up its secrets in proportion to the greatness of the Faith, which in its turn will be determined by an attitude of confidence or of emotional certainty, that is to say, by an element of bhakti or love. Insofar as Faith is a contemplative attitude, its subject is the intelligence; it can therefore be said to constitute a virtual knowledge; but since its mode is passive, it must compensate this passivity by a complementary active attitude, that is to say, by an attitude of the will the substance of which is precisely confidence and fervor, by virtue of which the intelligence will receive spiritual certainties. Faith is a priori a natural disposition of the soul to admit the supernatural; it is therefore essentially an intuition of the supernatural, brought about by Grace,

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which is actualized by means of the attitude of fervent confidence. The truth question in religion, considered in its ultimate sense, is not then, according to Schuon, an object of scientific or even of philosophic consideration. It is a matter of faith, open only to those who experience such religious intuition and in such experience is itself validated as the truth. Restricted to the assessment of dogma alone - to exoteric religion - the academic student is still left in the dark, for even though he may have access to the external dogmatic forms apart from the esoteric truth it supposedly expresses, it is, unless understood religiously in the spirit of the larger or higher esoteric truth - but a falsehood for 'the fact is that the presence of this transcendent dimension at the centre of the religious form provides its exoteric side with a life-giving sap. . . .' (1975: 10).

The Doctrine of Two Truths in Buddhism and Vedanta The doctrine of two truths, as is well known, is particularly characteristic of Oriental thought. The argument there is similar in structure to that outlined above. Vedantists and Buddhists, for example, readily admit that common sense and the sciences provide us with true knowledge of ourselves, in some respects at least, and of the world around us. And such truths are fully public, open to the scrutiny and assessment of all men. But there is, according to the explicit teachings of these traditions, another truth that is not public - or at best, only partially public. In its present form, however, it is ineffable. Such truths are not open to just anyone, but rather 'belong' only to the person possessing superior, or even supernormal, powers. As one interpreter of Buddhism puts it . . these factors put such truths far beyond the scientific realm into a super-scientific area where scientific canons no longer apply. . . . Here is, then, a barrier beyond which "scientific method" cannot pass and beyond

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which truths are "super-scientifically", i.e. nonscientifically, perceived and proven' (King 1964: 144). The division of truth into higher and lower levels requires of us an understanding of two further concepts, 'revelation' and 'esoterism'. It is obvious that if there exists a breed of men with supernormal powers who are able to attain to truths beyond the avenues of ordinary reason (and so truths not subject to the criteria for validity in ordinary matters) then the ordinary man without such powers must accept the pronouncements of such men as a revelation. In Buddhism, for example, the Dhamma is a full-fledged revelation since without the knowledge of the Dhamma no sentient being, so it is claimed, can ever come to knowledge or attainment of Nirvana. All the features of a revelation are present here (King 1964: 172): . . . (1) the proclamation of the Dhamma was a full voluntary gift of the Buddha's grace; (2) men cannot arrive at the truth of the Dhamma by their unaided reason, but it must have been given to him at some time by a Buddha; (3) the Truth of Nibbana is above reason, not only in the means of its attainment, but in its intrinsic nature. Its quality is not anti-rational but definitely super-rational; no words or concepts can grasp Nibbana - it must be directly experienced or realized - and even its existence can be revealed only by a Buddha who has himself tasted of its peace. Satprakashananda's analysis Hinduism (particularly in schema (1965: 215):

of the ways of knowing in Vedanta) presents a similar

The two sources of knowledge, the Vedic and empirical (perception, inference, etc.) - refer to two distinct orders of f a c t s , suprasensible and sensible. They are authoritative in their respective spheres. The Vedas do not contradict other means of knowledge, nor can it be contradicted by them. Just as the fundamental Reality is out of the scope of the empirical sciences so the order of phenomena is out of the scope of the Vedas.

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The vedic knowledge comes via sabda or the testimony of the seers. There is the further suggestion in both Buddhism and Hinduism, that this revelatory knowledge, even though superior to that which can be gained by perception and reason alone, is not the supreme knowledge. The realization of Nirvana, or the realization of the atman/Brahman identity, although it rests on the truths of revelation, goes beyond those truths - even to the point of relegating such revelatory truths to the lower level of truth. The revelatory truths are but a means to the end of 'realization' of the truth. This is only hinted at by King in his discussion of Buddhism but comes out clearly in Satprakashananda's analysis of Sabda pramana in Hinduism. He writes (1965: 302-303): The authority of Vedas ends when Brahman is realized. A knower of Brahman has no use of them. He has nothing more to know, nothing more to gain. . . . When Brahman becomes manifest, then 'the Vedas are no Vedas'. All such distinctions as the means of knowledge, the object of knowledge, hold good in the sphere of ajnana (ignorance.) There are then, it appears, really three levels of truth: ordinary propositional truth," a kind of propositional truth about sacred realities (i.e., as contained in the testimony of those who have experienced such realities); and 'pure religious truth' which transcends not only the scientific truths about the world but also the religious truths contained in the testimony of the seers. The 'pure religious truth' is obviously beyond the scope of the objective student of religion for it would require of him an experience of the ultimate. (There is a kind of vicious circularity involved here as well, it seems, for to experience that ultimate is to submit to it as ultimate and hence to assume its truth. Not to experience its t r u t h , so to speak, would imply that an experience of the ultimate had not occured.) To know the truth of religion would mean having to experience its truth arid so precludes the need for

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objective analysis. Indeed to understand religion would imply that one is religious. The 'truth of revelation' is not, then accessible to the objective student. First, it can be claimed that the truth of the testimony rests entirely upon the experience of the saint or seer and cannot be fully and properly understood unless one shares, in at least some slight way, the experience of the saint. Further, once the pure religious truth is attained, the revelatory truth is seen for what it really is, a subclass of the lower-level truths; and as such is, in the ultimate analysis, false. That it is less false than other lower-level truths has made it instrumental in 'realizing' the truth but it is nevertheless false and hence it is not likely that an analysis and understanding of its content will reveal much about the (real) truth of religion (pure religious truth) to the objective observer and critic.3 THE MYSTICAL CHARACTER OF RELIGION Some have claimed that the truth question is inapplicable in the study of religion because religion, in its deepest and most characteristic moment, is a mystery. The claim about religion here is closely related to the two levels of truth theory I have just outlined above, but is more extreme. Religion, it is argued, is entirely a matter of communion between God and the inner man communion that cannot be described or assessed. It is a mysterious bond between man and the ultimate. 'Truth' is applied to the ultimate in religious utterances in a wholly noncognitive sense. Such truth has nothing at all to do with religious assertions and propositions but applies rather as an evaluative term to the divine itself; it is an attribute of diyine being itself and so cannot be appraised, so to speak, by an objective observer standing outside the experience of God. The truth of revelation then is not a system of beliefs, it is not a propositional revelation, but a revealing of God himself. 'Truth', then, is a value term and means simply that one places God or his 'experience of God' at the apex of his value system, without being able to explain why except, perhaps, by pointing to his

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experience. What the truth is or 'means', is a deep mystery insofar as one who experiences it 'knows' its value but can say nothing about it.

5

The Truth Question as Irrelevant to the Study of Religion

Not all arguments raised against the concept of truth in the scientific study of religion are of a substantive/ philosophical kind. There are some who refuse to enter the debate, itself somewhat metaphysical it would seem, as to whether or not the concept of truth is applicable to religion. They oppose its use, however, for more purely methodological reasons claiming that the truth question is irrelevant to the scientific study of religion whether or not it is philosophically applicable. I shall here examine two such arguments; one based upon the claim that a truly scientific study of religion implies a 'methodological atheism' and the other based upon the claim of the essentially descriptive character of the scientific study of religion. THE NATURALISTIC BASIS OF THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION The claim that questions of truth and falsity are irrelevant to the study of religion is often made not because they are strictly irrelevant but rather because the determination of those questions is already known. It is often assumed, that is, that science has revealed the superstitious character of all religious belief (and in particular, primitive religious belief). Belief in supernatural powers and beings and in transcendent sources of salvation, personal or otherwise, are, in the scientific scheme of things, simply absurd. The scientific student of religion, it is argued then, must assume a priori the superiority of his own intellectual world and an understanding of religion can only be arrived at, it is assumed, if one can provide an

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explanation of the phenomena in question in terms of concepts within the scientific framework and hence external to the group under study. Accordingly, religion, it is urged, must be approached as a human institution - a product of the spirit of man and not of the gods - emerging and persisting only because it meets human needs, personal and social. The position is stated explicitly and concisely by Yinger: 'Science inevitably takes a naturalistic view of religion. This is a necessary assumption not a demonstrated t r u t h , from which all science proceeds. Religion is in man; it is to be understood by the analysis of his needs, tendencies, and potentialities' (1970: 531). Religion is a 'cultural system' and t h e r e f o r e , an entirely human phenomenon. Consequently it is understood only when the functions it fills for the individual and society are discovered. And one of the needs it does not fill, because it cannot, is that of providing man with a knowledge of the world around him. That is the task of science. Durkheim makes the point clear when he writes (1971: 430): That which science refuses to grant to religion is not its right to exist, but its right to dogmatize upon the nature of things and the special competence which it claims for itself for knowing man and the world. As a m a t t e r of f a c t it does not know itself. It does not even know what it is made of nor to what need it answers. Peter Berger in his 'sociology of religion' has modified the explicit atheism of the above positions and has suggested that religion be studied, r a t h e r , from the perspective of atheism - the assumption of atheism being a methodological one only. The 'methodological atheism' flows naturally from his assumptions about the nature of human knowledge. For Berger, the social world is a human construction projected on to the (external?) world out of biological need. Man, unlike the rest of the animal kingdom is biologically denied the ordinary mechanisms (instincts, etc.) with which other animals are endowed and consequently is forced to impose his own order upon experience. As he puts it 'men are congenitally compelled

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to impose a meaningful order upon reality as a shield against terror' (1967: 22-23). There is a craving for meaning which protects man from the terror of anomie (which the world without 'construction' presents). The process by which such meaning is supplied Berger calls 'nomization'. And when this 'nomization' finally comes to be taken for granted, and it always does sooner or later, ideology (in the broad sense of that term) is born, for it involves the unconscious projection of human meanings - which in themselves are unstable - onto the structure of the universe itself. And it is in this capacity that Berger, as sociologist, sees the value of religion and consequently explains the 'origins' (nonhistorical origins, that is) and maintenance of religion: 'Religion is the human enterprise by which a sacred cosmos is established. Put differently, religion is cosmization in a sacred mode' (Berger 1967: 26). Religion, therefore, is not at all knowledge, as the devout have always supposed (and here Berger is in complete agreement, it seems, with Durkheim), but rather simply a projection of man's inner meanings onto reality (which in itself is different) as a guard against anomie and terror. It follows moreover that religion is not only not truth but rather a distortion of it for as the consciousness of the human character of that projected meaning is lost, it gradually obtains an illicit 'objective' reality which Berger refers to as 'alienated consciousness' (1967: 89). Religious explanation therefore is a falsification of reality and can only be described as a 'mystification' of reality (ibid., p. 90, see also Berger 1961: 125). The interesting aspect of Berger's analysis, however, is that he, even within 'the scared canopy' itself, denies that his analysis of religion has any ultimate ontological, metaphysical or religious implications since 'methodological atheism' investigates religion only sub specie temporis rather than sub specie aeternitatis. He writes (1967: 180181): This sociological theory must by its own logic view religion as a human projection and by the same logic can have nothing to say about the possibility that this

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projection may refer to something other than the being of its projection. In other words, to say that religion is a human projection does not logically preclude the possibility that the projected meanings may have an ultimate status independent of man. Indeed, if a religious view of the world is posited, the anthropological ground of those projections may itself be the reflection of a reality that includes both world and man, so that man's ejaculations of meaning into the universe ultimately point to an all-embracing meaning in which he himself is grounded. Just how this is possible is difficult to see. It would appear, from such a claim, that the sociological explanation of 'religion' is really only a partial explanation and hence, since parading as the explanation (e.g.- in Durkheim, Yinger, and others) is a distortion of the real (ultimate?) nature of religion. Berger's assumption of the distinction between religion sub specie temporis and religion sub specie aeternitatis is impossible given his methodological assumption of atheism. To assume the former distinction is to deny the full import of the latter one, quite obviously. In any event, the truth question is out of the question in the study of religion either because religion is false or because it must be assumed that religion is a 'projection' and hence a distortion (a falsifying?) of reality. THE DESCRIPTIVE AIMS OF THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION There are a number of scholars involved in the study of religion who in effect adopt a position very much like the one proposed by Berger. However, unlike Berger they do not assume an atheistic stance nor require of the 'science' of religion an explanation of religion. Their concern in the study of religion is for description and that description of religion can best be achieved, they argue, when no commitment, methodological or otherwise, is made about the existence or nonexistence of religious beings, entities, etc.

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Students of religion, they urge, ought to be unconcerned as to whether or not religion itself describes and explains the world or whether it is mere pseudoexplanation, for the aim of such study is really directed to finding out what it is the religious believer does and believes. Baird, for example, sets out a position of this sort (1971: 19): The historian is certainly interested in Sankara's or Gaudapada's view of non-dual Reality, Tillich's Ground of Being, the view of the Buddha in the Lankavatara Sutra. But, historically speaking, these are all men's views of Ultimate Reality. While it is undoubtedly true that all views of Ultimate Reality are human in the sense that it is men who hold them, to ask 'what is the nature of Ultimate Reality?' is a different-level question from 'What is Sankara's view of Ultimate Reality?' 1 Baird, unlike the 'methodological atheists' does not seem to assume that science proves religion wrong; he does not seem to accept, that is, the 'conventional wisdom' as to the superiority of the scientific world view. He writes: 'When we state that the history of religions is the study of man rather than the study of God we are making a methodological stipulation and not a theological proposal' (1971: 20). This position has generally been referred to, I think, as the 'phenomenological approach' to religious phenomena and has predominated European studies of religion in the recent past. The position is clearly set out by Van der Leeuw (1938: 23): That which those sciences concerned with Religion regard as the Object of Religion is, for Religion itself, the active and primary agent in the situation, or, in this sense of the term, the Subject. In other words, the religious man perceives that with which his religion deals as primal, as originative or causal and only to reflective thought does this become the object of the experience that is contemplated. For Religion, then, God is the active Agent in relation to man, while the sciences in question can concern themselves only with

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the activity of man in his relation to God; of the acts of God Himself they can give no account whatever. The 'phenomenological approach' then is a refined empirical study of religion aimed at providing a descriptive knowledge of particular religious traditions. Ninian Smart has, more recently, developed a variant form of such an empirical approach under the rubric of 'methodological agnosticism' (1973a, b). In the former work Smart raises the crucial question thus (p. 56): 'Is the Focus [i.e. the object of the believer's attention and devotion ] . . . part of the phenomenon which the observers [scientists] witness?' Smart suggests that it is and must be if an understanding of religion is sought for and for this reason considers Berger's methodological atheism as atheism simpliciter. He writes (1973a: 59): . . . one needs to ask what it is in the way of explanations that is excluded by methodological atheism. And f u r t h e r , is it merely a device for operating within 'scientific sociology'. If this be so then it is assumed that a total account or explanation of religion can be given from a sociological point-of-view. . . . if phenomenology is to be assimilated into its brother sociology, then it also ought to proceed with a methodological atheism - but already this is to suggest that a certain kind of description has to be given o f , for example, the Eucharist, a description, that is, which comments on the 'true state of affairs'. Such a comment would include r e f e r e n c e , presumably, to the projected character of the Focus, a t this juncture methodological atheism would be effectively indistinguishable from atheism tout court. The reality of the focus of religion, then, is important to the study of religion and to exclude concern for it a priori is reductionistic in the bad sense of the term (i.e. atheological): '. . . if we have rejected projectionism within phenomenology we cannot hold that phenomenology simply deals with human events and products, though it certainly does at least this' (Smart 1973a: 68).

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It must be pointed out, however, that for Smart the assumption of the reality of the focus is not to assume its existence for then 'the ontological firmament becomes heavily populated and rather inconsistently' (ibid., p. 60). 'Methodological agnosticism' therefore, implies not a theological approach to the data (i.e., one assuming the existence of religious beings, and so on) but rather a 'bracketed realism'. The distinction between the reality and existence of the focus is emphasized and the existence question is 'bracketed out' of the discussion and inquiry (1973b: 54): My argument then is directed to the conclusion that it is wrong to analyze religious objects in terms simply of religious beliefs. A description of a society with its gods will include the gods. But by the principle of the bracket we neither affirm nor deny the existence of the gods. In order to get over the cumbrous inelegancies that we are likely to run into trying to maintain this methodological picture, I shall distinguish between objects which are real and objects which exist. In this usage God is real for Christians whether or not he exists. The methodological agnosticism here being used is, then, agnosticism about the existence or otherwise of the main focus of the belief system in question. What Smart seems to achieve here, then, is a very refined empirical description of religious traditions that need not, according to him, raise issues of truth or falsity at all since they concern the existence of the foci of religious activity and not the reality of the foci.2

6

The Truth Question as Impractical for the Student of Religion

The argument against the use of the concept of truth in the study of religion is sometimes raised on practical considerations regardless of the outcome of the theoretical debates already referred to above. Such argument usually makes reference to problems such as the elusive nature of truth, the extremely complex character of religion or to problems of hostility and intolerance that discussions of truth and falsehood might engender. THE ELUSIVE NATURE OF TRUTH There are several problems of a more practical character that seem to require of the student of religion a bracketing of the truth question in his analysis and explanation of religious phenomena. The first and most obvious is the question as to the nature of truth itself. The concept of truth is in constant use and yet to set out a coherent theory as to its nature is, it seems at times, next to impossible. There is no dearth of literature promoting one or other of the many theories - correspondence, coherence, pragmatic, etc. - and yet neither is there, at present, any real convergence of opinion on the meaning and use of the concept: ' There is no agreement 1 , writes one philosopher, 'about how the concept of truth is to be construed' (Armour 1969: 1). Past debates about truth, he claims, were never settled largely because the rival theories of truth seemed so different from each other that it seemed they could not all be directed to the same problem. Further, a school of philosophy emerged which implied that no separate problem of truth existed and

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hence that no 'theory of truth' was required. And according to Armour it can fairly be said that 'not only has no theory actually satisfied any substantial body of philosphers for any prolonged period of time but also that every theory so far proposed has seemed to give rise to such a host of subsidiary problems that no one would claim to have investigated all the ramifications of even one theory' (Armour 1969: 11). It would seem that St. Augustine's complaint (1960) about the difficulties surrounding an exposition of the concept of time is quite appropriately echoed here: 'Who can comprehend this even in thought, so as to express it in a word . . . . If no one asks me, I know; if I want to explain it to someone who does ask m e , I do not know' (1960: 287). And Kant's warning to all those who are about to take up the question of truth that it is one that easily betrays the incautious to absurd proposals 'thus presenting . . . the ludicrous spectacle of one man milking a he-goat and the other holding a sieve underneath', might well be made to suggest an abandoment of the question altogether (Kant 1929: B83). Certainly if such problems plague the truth question in such relatively simply matters as our knowledge of the external (empirical) world the question of religious t r u t h , it might plausibly be argued, is entirely beyond our grasp, to expect the scientific student of religion to deal with such questions, t h e r e f o r e , is to expect the impossible and would prevent, from the very outset, any possibility of an objective and scientific study of religious phenomena. THE COMPLEXITY OF RELIGION Even providing the philosophical problems arising from the various theories of truth proposed can be adequately resolved, it is maintained that applying the question to the historical religious traditions is impossible and that for several reasons. Assuming, for the sake of the argument, that religion, is in f a c t properly characterized as (involving) a system of beliefs, two major difficulties blocking any determination of the truth or falsity of religion emerge. As Wilfred Cantwell Smith (1967) points out, no

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one could ever become well-enough informed on the history of religions so as to be able to say whether they are true or false. The 'religious history' of mankind is just too complex for any one person to comprehend. It is multifaceted and involves much more besides specific belief claims which must, surely, be taken into consideration in a pronouncement as to its truth or falsity. And it would take several lifetimes to do that throughly for even one or or two of the world's major living traditions. Further, such description and interpretation of the traditions would itself have to be supplemented with psychological, or sociological, and philosophical analyses of the various traditions, requiring of the student facility in several academic disciplines before being able to make a pronouncement as to the truth or falsity of any particular tradition.1 A second major practical problem in considering the question of the truth or falsity of religious traditions is the fact that the traditions are in perpetual flux and development which seems to preclude any judgment of the final truth of the past or present state of any tradition. There is, as Smart has put it (1974), a kind of 'elasticity of faith', which suggests a qualification of all judgments of truth or falsity since certain concepts and practices undergo 'stretching'. If a particular tradition at one point in history is judged true, for example, then that tradition cannot be judged true at a later time after having undergone change and development unless it is presumed that all development that diverges from the initial 'faith position' is heresy and hence no longer a part of the tradition. The problem involved here is clearly delineated by Wilken (1971). According to him, our understanding of the history of the Christian church is dominated by a Eusebian view of history in which '. . . the past assumes the role of an imperative for present and future. Whatever was a genuine mark of Christianty in the past should also mark the church of the present. What should be is derived from what was' (1971: 190). And this, he insists, is to have history without history for it distinguishes an 'external moment' of Christianity which is placed over against all real temporal development. All change from the essential (original) Christianity, therefore, is deviation from the

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truth. The past becomes normative then to the exclusion of real development and this Wilken charges (1971: 199-200), is simply a refusal to see Christianty as an historical phenomenon: The past is not the judge of the future. This is simply another way of saying that the meaning of the past constantly changes as new historical experience unfolds before us. . . . We can never define what it is that is uniquely christian for all times, because what Christianity is continues to change. The past may suggest what might be, but it can never become an imperative for future action. It is impossible then to understand Christianity simply by understanding its past. What will yet be must also be taken into consideration if one really wants to find out the truth about Christianity - i.e., whether Christianity is true or false. Wilken admits that what something will be cannot be divorced from what it was but goes on to point out that 'the future constantly offers new promise and possibilities that are frequently inexplicable on the basis of what was in the past or is in the present' (1971: 191). Our knowledge of the evolutionary development of organic life here on earth ought surely to convince one of this. He points out therefore that 'we cannot fully understand a historical phenomenon by uncovering its origin; we must look at what became of i t , what twists and turns it took in the course of its history, and what came from it. . . . What it j s can never be derived from what has been; for what something j s continually changes as the present and the future unfold before it' (ibid.). The Christian phenomenon it would s e e m , therefore, can only be grasped by looking at all its periods of existence - from its emergence to its demise (?, consummation?); from its beginning, to the present and on into the future. The problem is to assess the truth value of particular Christian affirmations when the concepts change: if they are true at one point in history it must mean that they are f a l s e , after change, at another point in history, unless one is willing to give up the notion of Christianity as an

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historical phenomenon. Further, if Christianity is really historical, it would seem that its truth or falsity cannot really be assessed since what Christianity really is, is yet to be decided in the future - by its further change and development: 'Historically, it is absurd to take the first stage of Christian tradition as definitive for the whole history. Not only can we not locate precisely what the first stage was, but even if we could, we would find it so unformed and embryonic that it could hardly do justice to the reality of Christianity as we know it from later history' (Wilken 1971: 170). TOLERANCE AND THE STUDY OF RELIGION Some students of religion might suggest a practical reason for not raising the truth question in the study of religious phenomena. It ought not to be raised, it is often suggested, because it can only lead to division and conflict in the religious community. A basic motive to intolerance, it is claimed, is rooted in the quest for truth for the claim to truth seems to involve a claim to 'uniqueness' and 'absoluteness' which spawns intolerance.

PART THREE

Truth and the Study of Religion: A Critical Examination of the Arguments

7

Cognitivism and Noncognitivism in the Study of Religion

The positions outlined in the preceding chapters constitute the arguments most often raised against the proposal that the study of religion take into consideration the question of religion's truth or falsity. To make a case, therefore, for raising the truth question as a significant one for the scientific student of religion requires showing that the question of truth is applicable, relevant, and practical and then how it is so. The first task can be accomplished largely by way of a negative procedure, namely, by showing up the weaknesses and inadequacies of the arguments discussed above, which I shall undertake to do in the present section. The second task will require more constructive work involving a delineation of the nature of truth, and in particular 'religious truth' and the locus of truth in religion. The task will be taken up in the concluding section of the book and especially so in chapter ten. My concern in this section, therefore, is to delineate as clearly as possible just why the truth question ought to be raised by the scientific student of religion. THE WEAKNESSES OF THE NONCOGNITIVIST ARGUMENT It can be shown, I think, that religion is, in a very significant sense, a 'cognitively significant enterprise'. I mean by this quite simply that religion can be appropriately characterized, even if not primarily so, as a 'system of beliefs' and that, consequently, it requires evaluation as to its validity; as to its truth or falsity. Before proceeding to such argument, however, it is necessary to respond to the criticisms raised in the preceding section.

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It is impossible here, of course, to provide a critique of every proponent of a noncognitivist understanding of religion, even though the exercise would be a very f r u i t f u l one. But then neither is there need for such a multiple analysis, for arguments of a logical, empirical, and philosophical kind can be raised, in a general way, against all noncognitivist proposals. I shall restrict my critical comments, t h e r e f o r e , to my discussions of Kierkegaard and Miles in chapter four. I shall deal with Miles first. The Paradoxical Character of Religion as 'Qualified Silence' Miles, it will be recalled, argues that religion concerns i t self not with gaining a superscientific knowledge of the universe but rather with a way of life. If it were concerned with knowledge claims, he insists, it would be easily falsified and shown to be of little or no consequence to anyone's existence. Miles assures the reader that his analysis does not mean that the central Christian 'truths' are invalid (1959: 138). Christianity is significant, but what those 'truths' now are is difficult to ascertain, for the adjectives 'true' and 'false' are no longer applicable to faith s t a t e m e n t s , since faith statements are nonfactual statements. It is difficult to know therefore what it is that the believer can still 'believe'. In the dialogue between Theologian and Philosopher Miles puts the following words on the lips of Theologian (in response to Philosopher's question what religious belief is now belief in): If you say you believe in God, what sort of God? You cannot, on your own showing, say that God exists in some 'absolute' sense, nor that he exists in the sense of being an entity that can be known empirically. What then do you take to be the difference between the believer and the unbeliever?' (Miles 1959: 161) Miles's answer to Theologian is weak, if it can be classed as an answer at all. He claims that the difference between the believer and the unbeliever lies in the f a c t that the believer espouses the theistic parable. But humanists, or other non-Christian religionists also adopt parables. How

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then does the Christian differ from the humanist? It would seem that the difference would have to lie in the nature of the parable espoused. Consequently the difference of parable is of critical significance. But how does one choose between or from among a variety of possible parables? Is this a rational or an irrational choice? If rational, is it a cognitively significant choice as well? Miles simply overlooks questions of this sort. A further problem with respect to Miles's understanding of the nature of Christian belief is his admission (1959: 165) that his own view is similar to that of Braithwaite (1955). He thinks that Braithwaite's account of religious belief in terms of the category of 'story' rather than 'parables', however, is too harsh and leaves too many Christians unsatisfied. Why it does so Miles leaves unasked. But it seems to me that it is too harsh because it eliminates what has traditionally been regarded as the essence of religion - namely belief in its cognitive nature. As H. H. Farmer points out, the 'reality interest' among Christian believers at least has been paramount so that if you 'once persuade the religious man that the reality with which he supposes himself to be dealing is not "there" in the sense in which he supposes it to be "there" and his religion vanishes away' (Farmer 1942: 187). A 'Braithwaitean' approach, therefore, seems to me to be little more than a confidence trick to get people to believe what they would otherwise claim to be manifestly absurd and Miles seems only to refine the trick. Furthermore, difficulties arise in connection with Miles's understanding of religious language as parabolic language. Miles himself compares the use of parabolic talk, as he conceives it, with the via negative of Denis the Areopagite: '. . . though in all strictness nothing can be said of God, we may none the less break our silence by telling appropriate parables, and that "silence qualified by parables" represents a view not very different from that of the via negativa ' (Miles 1959: 146). Several problems emerge here. First, Miles does not give one any reasons why the silence that must be kept when talking of God is a 'religious silence', or whether 'religious silence' is other than mere (ignorant?) silence - unless the word 'God'

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itself imparts something positive to the situation. It seems that the 'religious silence' Miles encourages is not in f a c t silence at all. The same paradoxical situation is seen in the f a c t that that of which silence must be held must also be known when Miles claims that the silence can be qualified by parables. Surely, to know that one kind of parable 'appropriately', as Miles puts i t , qualifies the silence, whereas another does not, is already to have knowledge of that of which the silence is enjoined. Unless such knowledge is present, one cannot know whether the parable spoken really qualifies the silence, or whether every or any parable qualifies it and so, in e f f e c t , none really qualifies it. Consequently one cannot really mean anything in uttering a parable; one can only express one's own f e e l ings in relating i t . l Second, Miles fails to tell one what status parabolic assertions have. He says, negatively, that they are neither factual nor moral assertions. Positively he says nothing and, consequently, leaves more important questions unasked and unanswered. For example, of what are parables spoken? What are the parables about? Do they explain anything? If they do not explain, why have them? And which ones are we to have and why? If they do describe or explain something how do they differ from other cognitive assertions such as those found in science and common sense? Miles seems at times to be aware of such issues as these and even suggests, in answer, that the parables have an interpretive function - that they provide perspectives from which reality (whatever that is, and we are not told what it is) can be seen. Thus he writes of the parable of the incarnation: 'There need be no factual disagreement between those who accept the parable of the incarnation and those who do not; but those who accept it are claiming among other things, that the agreed historical f a c t s require to be understood in a special way' (1959: 199). But why? Special in what sense? Does the parable enable one to see something more 'beneath' or 'behind' the phenomena; to see what is really there? If this is indeed what Miles means to say, there is serious doubt as to the propriety of his claim that religion is a noncognitive activity. John

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Hick (1957), for example, clearly shows the cognitive character of such a 'perspectivist' view of reality. At least one other ambiguity in Miles's discussion of parables needs to be pointed out: his account of how and why parables are adopted is extremely vague, so that, interpreted one way, they become irrational life stances which, interpreted in another way however, become very much like other knowledge claims. For example, speaking of the parable of prayer he seems to suggest that the freedom that parables have from facts is precisely what makes them parables: '. . . it is, in e f f e c t , to turn the original assertion into a parable, to express willingness to accept the theistic parable whatever the empirical facts' (1959: 175). But then the adoption of any parable, it seems, becomes a wholly irrational affair. Yet Miles is not willing to go quite that far. He writes (ibid., p. 171): Whether a particular parable is a good one is a matter in the last resort for personal conviction rather than rational argument. In this respect choice of parable is entirely comparable to moral choice. It is misleading in both cases, to say that no reasons at all can be given in support of or against a particular view; but in neither case can argument settle the matter conclusively. Our choice of parable can be influenced by considerations of empirical fact. No assertion or group of assertions made by the astronomer or geologist can be taken as equivalent to the assertion, 'In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth', but empirical findings can make a parable appear either relevant and plausible or inappropriate. . . . But this carries Miles further than he thinks it does. It shows that parables are in fact open to verification and falsification, which he had denied in the main thesis of the book; unless, of course, he means by verification and falsification, 'strong verification' and 'strong falsification', which, however, would undermine the qualifications he himself sees as necessary to the positivist program (1959: 34-35).

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of the arguments

One word more about Miles's absolute existence mistake is necessary here. Just as it is impossible to develop knockdown arguments against the absolute existence assumption, so is it equally impossible to make them against the claim that the absolute existence assumption is a mistaken one. Nevertheless, objections can be raised. First Miles's claim about the absolute existence assumption involves him in a self-contradiction. It is impossible to verify that both the materialist and dualist claims about the ultimate nature of reality, for example, are mistaken, for such a proof or verification would require knowledge that neither physical entities nor paraphysical entities exist and this is to utter an absolute existence statement even if only in a negative mode. It is to make at least a negative statement - a denial - about the ultimate constituents of the world. It is then impossible to deny the validity of either claim (or any other absolute existence claim) without implying that neither physical nor paraphysical entities exist. Second, it seems to me that a denial of the absolute existence assumption is counterintuitive. Not only is it an ancient and common assumption, modern scientific theory makes use of it as well. In biology, for example, it is assumed, even if not metaphysically then at least methodologically, that there are at least two kinds of reality, namely, matter and life inanimate matter and sentient, animate reality. To deny all metaphysical overtones to the methodological assumption, moreover, involves one in an instrumentalist view of modern science which is hardly acceptable since it makes of science - the paradigm of knowledge for Miles a noncognitive enterprise.2 If the kind of 'rational correctness' propositional truth implies is not characteristic of religion and 'religious truth' is something other than a question of knowledge or belief, it is a moot question whether or not the 'outsider' student of religion can ever gain an understanding of it without himself becoming religious in that very act of knowing. Even though Miles's claim about the noncognitive nature of religion is seen to be inadequate, this is still the state of affairs facing the student of religion according to Kierkegaard's view of truth as subjectivity. In a Kierkegaardian

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view, the truth question is of critical significance to religion and is thus inescapable without, however, being open to objective analysis and assessment. But I want to suggest here, quite to the contrary, that the view of religious truth as subjectivity is, at best, problematic and cannot substantiate the claim that the truth of religion is utterly and entirely beyond or closed to the objective mind. A full and systematic critique of Kierkegaard is hardly necessary for the task. A simple delineation of the ambiguities and inconsistencies of his account of truth as subjectivity, will suffice. The Problematic Character of 'Truth as Subjectivity' Kierkegaard's proposal that we understand truth no longer as a quality of propositions but rather as a matter of 'subjective appropriation', a state of passion, seems to be neither coherent nor helpful. The incoherence comes from his acknowledgment of objective truth together with the proposal that truth be seen as 'subjectivity'. In the former truth is established, so to speak, by means of intersubjective criticism; in the latter truth is entirely subjective for, as it appears, the subjective appropriation of the passional existence of another, regardless of the 'quality' of that existence, makes the truth entirely relative to the individual. This subjectivistic character of truth is revealed particularly clearly in Kierkegaard's claim that an individual can be 'in the truth' even when he happens to be related to what is objectively (really, or ontologically) not true. According to Kierkegaard, to be related to the (really) true God in an inappropriate spirit, (and the objective spirit is inappropriate since it does not involve infinite passion but rather detachment) is less true than the one who relates appropriately (i.e., nonobjectively) to a (really) false god (i.e., an idol): 'The one prays in truth to God though he worships an idol; the other prays falsely to the true God, and hence worships in fact an idol' (Kierkegaard 1941: 180). Accepting both conceptions of truth makes Kierkegaard's conception of 'religious truth' extremely

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ambigious; perhaps even internally inconsistent. It is obvious that he does not deny that objective truth exists since he finds it possible to talk of God and idols. One is tempted to ask, therefore, whether one who prays in truth to God and in fact worships God and not an idol is more 'in the truth' than he who prays in truth to God when in fact worshipping an idol. It would seem that he is, and y e t , at the same time, given that infinite passion is itself the truth, neither is more in the truth than the other. There is a further ambiguity in the relationship of the subjective and objective truth. Even the fact that there is a relationship between them is odd, but I pass over that issue for the moment. 3 in one sense, even though Kierkegaard claims subjectivity to be the truth, he defines that 'subjectivity-truth' only in terms of something objective: truth, that is, is an objective uncertainity held in the mode of passionate inwardness. Religious truth as subjective and inward, therefore, is so only in connection with external belief - in this case, the 'absurd' belief that the infinite God became finite man in Jesus of Nazareth. The objective uncertainty must be so great as to constitute an absurdity for only then, he insists, is the required passion - infinite passion - brought into play. One can only let Kierkegaard speak for himself here (1941: 23, 33): The inquiring, speculating and knowing subject . . . raises a question of truth. But he does not raise the question of a subjective truth, the truth of appropriation and assimilation. The inquiring subject is indeed interested; but he is not infinitely and personally and passionately interested on behalf of his own eternal happiness for his relationship to this truth. Far be it from the objective subject to display such presumption, such vanity of spirit. A contemplative spirit, and this is what the objective subject f is, feels nowhere any infinite need of a decision, and sees no decision anywhere. This is the falsum that is inherent in all objectivity. . . . But

Kierkegaard's

filling

that

need

for

an

objective

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absurdity with a Christian story is really not necessary. It would seem, that any objective absurdity (provided only that it is not petty, but rather, infinite), must accomplish the same results. Indeed, given the domination of an objective view of Christianity in his society it would seem that this proposal of the absurdity of the Christ event was futile. Rather than preach the absurdity of the Christ event to a society convinced of its historical or objective probability one would have thought that Kierkegaard would have chosen some other more obvious absurdity that could more easily awaken the needed infinite passion. Kierkegaard's reason for not doing so reveals an assumption on his part of the 'objective' truth of the Christian gospel and the importance of it as the focus of the infinite passion. From whence that truth (or certainty of that truth) comes is not easy to discern, but it seems to come from the psychological certainty afforded the believer in the act of decision for Christ; i.e., it flows from the infinite passion. Paradoxically, or perhaps even with selfcontradiction, the objective truth of the absurdity is unconsciously assumed, and then confirmed by the subjective appropriation. Given such problems it is hardly possible that Kierkegaard's conception of truth as subjectivity is a great discovery about the real nature of religious truth. Kierkegaard's so-called discovery is really little more than a misleading redefinition of a familiar and useful word. I do not mean to suggest that no enlightenment is to be gained from Kierkegaard's 'analysis' but only to show why his arguments can hardly substantiate the claim that the truth of religion is not a proper subject of 'detached' analysis. ^ Having examined specific noncognitivist positions and found them wanting will not, however, suffice. I shall therefore look at three kinds of arguments that might well be raised in favor of a cognitivist interpretation of ¡•eligion. A Logical Argument Wilfred

Cantwell

Smith's

contrasting

the

cumulative

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external tradition with the inner faith of the individual believer suggests a kind of quasi-logical argument against a cognitive understanding of religion since the distinction implies that concepts like 'religion', 'Christianity', 'Hinduism;, e t c . , are all systematically inappropriate and misleading. There is, according to Smith, 'no systematic religious entity, conceptually identifiable and c h a r a c t e r i z ing a distinct community' (1962a: 119). Yet cognitive systems, are entities that are conceptually identifiable. It would seem, t h e r e f o r e , that the view that religions are cognitive systems, even if only in p a r t , is false because of the logical inappropriateness of the category of 'religion'. According to Smith the category of 'religion' is inadequate and misleading because it fails to take seriously the distinction between an 'external cumulative tradition' and the 'inner faith' of the believer, which is by far the most important aspect of 'religious phenomena'. The concept of 'religion' is very much an 'outsider category': 'The observer's concept of a religion is by definition constituted of what can be observed. Yet the whole path and substance of religious life lies in its relationship to what cannot be observed.' (1962a: 136). Smith does not deny altogether the meaningfulness of the concept since there is an observable, external aspect to 'religion'. He claims merely to show up its inadequacy and to show how questionable the study of the observable part of man's religious history really is. 'Religion', Smith tells us, originally meant something in the order of 'piety' or 'personal religious vision', e t c . For Augustine, for example, religion was not a system of beliefs and practices but personal confrontation with God an inner attitude and transcendental orientation. With the gradual loss of such experience attention was focused rather on the 'products' of such 'religion', thus inaugurating what he calls 'the process of reification', which made of religion an objective systematic entity. He admits that in Islam the concept of religion as a system is, in p a r t , written into the vision, but denies that Islam is, on t h a t account, a counter example to his thesis, for even here

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the prereifying interpretation of islam meant not 'system' but personal experience (W. C. Smith 1962a: 110): If we look carefully at the Qur'an, we find, first of all, that the term islam there is relatively much less used than are other related but more dynamic and personal terms; and, secondly, that when it is used it can be, and on many grounds almost must be, interpreted not as the name of a religious system, but as the designation of a decisive personal act. Religious truth, therefore, cannot be a matter of the objective assessment of beliefs aW knowledge claims for 'fundamentally one has to do not with religions, but with religious persons' (ibid., p. 153). Smith's quasi-logical proposal is entirely inadequate, even though his emphasis on the personal character of religion is much needed. It is obvious that the general categorial classifications with which Smith wishes to do away do in fact provide a schema, however inadequate, within which the student of religion can begin to grasp the significance of the multitude of facts thrown at him. No study of religion can even get off the ground - for lack of delimiting its subject matter - unless the possibility of distinguishing religious from nonreligious data is possible. Smith himself in fact admits that such religious phenomena undoubtedly exist. Of the category of 'Hinduism' he writes (1962a: 65-66), for exampje: My objection to the term 'Hinduism', of course, is not on the grounds that nothing exists. Obviously an enormous quantity of phenomena is to be found that this term covers. My point, and I think that is the first step that one must take towards understanding something of the vision of Hindus, is that the mass of religious phenomena that we shelter under the umbrella of that term, is not a unit, and does not aspire to be. It is not an entity in any theoretical sense, let alone any practical one.

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Smith fails, however, to see the implications of his admission here. Surely, even though the concepts of 'Christianity', 'Buddhism', 'Hinduism 1 , e t c . are amorphous and unsystematic, they nevertheless point to the f a c t that what 'constitutes' Christianity will be different from what 'constitutes' Buddhism - the categories pick out the 'logic' (that particular kind of 'doctrinal ramification' involved) that distinguishes one peculiar set of phenomena (beliefs as well as rites and practices) from other sets of similar phemomena. Consequently there is every possibility of assessing the belief components of such 'entities'. According to Smart (1958), for example, there is not only every possibility of delineating certain dominant strands in the various 'religions' - numinous, mystical, or incarnational that distinguish the various religious groups and justify tagging each with a different label, but also every possibility of assessing them objectively as to their truth or falsity. Emphasis on the personal or subjective aspect of religior is, as I have suggested in the discussion of Kierkegaard above, much needed, but to make out a case that 'true religion' concerns only the subjective aspect or even dominantly so, cannot, I think, be made with any persuasiveness. And Smith's proposal in this regard runs into serious problems. Only on a superficial reading of the distinction between 'tradition' and 'faith', the distinction with which Smith supplants the objectivist notion of 'religion', can religious truth remain nonobjective. If all that is observed by the student of religion is 'tradition' - and by definition that is all that the scholar can get a t with his academic tools - then a scientific analysis of 'religion' must always fall short of an assessment of religious truth. Not only t h a t , it would also appear that the scientific student cannot even assess the truth or falsity of 'tradition', for 'faith' is the 'origin of' or 'cause of' such tradition and, as Smith puts i t , 'a preliminary insistence must be that when any of these things is an expression of religious f a i t h , then it cannot be fully understood except as an expression of religious faith' (1962a: 171). No study of religion then is at all possible. Yet the tradition is open to objective scrutiny. Consequently, one must be able to 'get

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at' the faith through the tradition. And even though such a claim stands in contrast to the radical 'tradition/faith' distinction, Smith nevertheless accepts it, claiming that, since the tradition is an expression of faith, what goes on 'in the mind and heart of another' can be known through an understanding of the tradition (ibid., p. 189). A radical distinction between subjective and objective religion therefore seems impossible and the claim that objectivity can never assess the truth of religion unfounded.5 An Empirical Argument It is important here to ask just what the descriptive sciences reveal or have revealed about the nature of 'religious activity' and 'religious belief'. Does the religious believer himself accept, as part of his religious commitment, either explicitly or implicitly, a world view or cosmology in the broadest sense of that term? According to Smart (1969) all religions seem to reveal a complex structure involving at least six different factors, two of which are mythology and doctrine. And all religious practices and rites, it seems, are intimately associated with stories or myths and 'doctrines are an attempt to give system, clarity, and intellectual power to what is revealed through the mythological and symbolic language' (Smart 1969: 19). Indeed, Smart goes on to claim that the distinction between myth and doctrine is of critical significance for the student of religion 'because the world religions owe some of their living power to their success in presenting a total picture of reality, through a coherent system of doctrines' (ibid., p. 19). It would seem, therefore, that the question of the truth or falsity of such doctrine woud be of critical significance to religion - to those religious traditions from which they emerge. Wieman I think captures this element of religion perfectly in the title of his philosophical study of religion: 'the wrestle of religion with truth'. He, rightly I think, claims (1929: 230): When we come to religion . . . the demand for the truth becomes even more passionate and imperative

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than in the sciences . Ideals are cherished in religion, and pleasant fancies and implicative systems, just as they are in every other branch of human interest. But more than ideal and more than pleasant fancy and more than implicative system, the religious person wants to know the correct conceptual statement of what may be that character of the world event which can be called God. This is so, claims Wieman, because religion is man's endeavor to adapt himself to the facts of existence and differs from other such adaptive endeavors only in 'that it seeks adaptation of the whole of life to ultimate facts' (1929: 3). Consequently, 'Religion craves truth and lives by means of t r u t h , even more than science' (ibid., p. 46). And that truth is not something wholly internal but rather concerns the world to which man must relate: 'Truth . . . consists of concepts put into the form of beliefs that can be verified by way of experimental operations. The experimental verification does not make them true. They may be true before they have been verified. But it is only with respect to experimental operations that they are true' (ibid., p. 22). That this concern with objective truth is self-conscious and not only a problem for the external observer of religion is evidenced by. the proliferation of what Smart (1973b) has called 'compatibility systems' - a t t e m p t s to harmonize, so to speak, one's religious beliefs or world view with science or the 'scientific world view'. And in light of this the noncognitivist interpretation of religion seems a too easy capitulation to positivism in the philosophy of science and hence, as one philosopher put i t , reveals a lack of nerve: 'religious thinking may well have other concerns besides the epistemological question of the relation of our ideas to reality beyond ourselves . . . but it loses its nerve when it ceases to believe that it expresses in some way truth about our relation to a reality beyond ourselves which ultimately concerns us' (Emmet 1966: 7). Wieman similarly suggests that the claim that religion has nothing to. do with descriptive (objective) truth is a feeble response to the dominance of the

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scientific attitude over the modern mentality. He writes (1929: 247): It is the claim that religious people should be fed on ideals and myths; that the true nature and function of religion is to prize and cultivate not the concepts of which men strive to apprehend and state the truth about the character of events, but the concepts which portray the lyric constructions of art and lovely fancy. Religion is concerned only with ideals, not with facts, they say. In other words, because truth is so meager and difficult of attainment, and so mixed with error in religion, many have sought to escape the toil and sacrifice of that great quest and the great demand by claiming that religion has no need of truth. This is a very easy way out. It is what is called a 'defense mechanism'. Religious truth becomes identified with the traditional sour grapes. To take such a position as this toward religion is to betray the great historic striving of the race. It is to cut the vital nerve of religion. To extend such 'help' to religion is to give it the kiss of death. It is interesting to note that for Randall this cognitive emphasis in religion is a late development and one peculiar to the West, due to the strong intellectual interests of the Greeks (1958: 15). Whereas Paul's theology makes explicit his own experiences, the development of the doctrines of the trinity and incarnation are the development of a more sophisticated form of knowledge under Greek influence: 'In contrast to the theology of Paul, which was an effort to understand a personal living experience, they are the attempt to come to terms with a well worked out and established philosophical system, the Neo-platonic philosophy' (Randall 1958: 36). These are beliefs that are basically speculative, 'they are not fundamental religious beliefs - beliefs which function in the practice of the religious arts, like communion or prayer or worship' (ibid., p. 36). Randall seems to want to suggest, therefore, that because it is a late development it is an illegitimate one

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since religion (at least Christianity) is not concerned with cognitive matters but rather with personal ones. Greek intellectual interests alone, however, hardly seem to account for the emergence of doctrinal or cognitive interests among the religious. Furthermore, there seems to be good reason to suggest that the intellectual or cognitive interest of religion (and Christianity in particular) is neither a late nor a foreign interest. The anthropologist Robin Horton (1970), for example, suggests that the explanatory and theoretical nature of Christian belief is very old - indeed, that it never was without intellectual and speculative interest. In an article comparing African traditional thought and Western science he writes against those who deny that traditional religious thinking is, in a serious sense, theoretical thinking (1970: 152): In treating traditional African religious systems as theoretical models akin to those of the sciences, I have really done little more than take them at their face value. Although this approach may seem naive and platitudenous compared to the sophisticated 'things-arenever-what-they-seem' attitudes more characteristic of the social anthropologist, it has certainly produced some surprising results. Above all it has cast doubt on most of the well-worn dichotomies used to conceptualize the difference between scientific and traditional religious thought. Intellectual versus emotional; rational versus mystical; reality-oriented versus fantasy-oriented; causally oriented versus supernaturally oriented; empirical versus non-empirical; abstract versus concrete; analytical versus non-analytical. All of these are shown to be more or less inappropriate. If the reader is disturbed by this casting away of established distinctions, he will I hope, accept it when he sees how far it can pave the way towards making sense of so much that previously appeared senseless. Against Skorupski (1973), who suggests that Horton ought to have compared traditional religious thought in Africa with Christian thought rather than scientific thought

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because the former unlike the latter is riddled with paradox and (apparent?) contradiction, Horton argues that because the link between theoretical explanation and paradox is inevitable (an argument that cannot be outlined here) the comparison of African thought to scientific thought is sound. Moreover, he goes on to suggest that because of this, African traditional thought is a better model for Christian thought than the models proposed by the noncognitivists. Thus, in direct opposition to the Randall type of suggestion he writes (1973: 299): . . . as soon as we take a more historical view of Christianity, it becomes apparent that this lack of concern with explanation, prediction and control is the outcome of an abdication of these functions to the sciences which started only some four hundred years ago. If we go back to the earlier days of the faith, we find concern with explanation, prediction and control quite central. And it is so even today, although in muted form: . . the very factor which ensured that Christianity would survive its renunciation of explanatory competence has also ensured that there will always be at least a residual dissatisfaction with the retreat into an all-enveloping doctrine of mystery, and at least residual yearning for the reinstatement of explanatory competence' (ibid., p. 302).® A Philosophical Argument The argument here continues and reinforces the empirical argument above. There is no intention of denying the point the noncognitivists are trying to make, namely that religion is not simply interested in cognition. Religion is indeed a call to a particular way of life; it is convictional; it involves moral commitment, and so on. But this acceptance of the practical nature of religious commitment does not preclude cognitivity. Quite to the contrary it can be plausibly argued that the adoption of a particular lifestyle, if it is not entirely arbitrary and irrational,

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involves, if even only implicitly, the acceptance of a specific view of the nature and meaning of the universe. Boyce Gibson quite rightly points out that 'religion has an intellectual as well as a moral component [and t h a t ] it is not a way of life imposed upon a s t a t e of a f f a i r s . . . [but r a t h e r ] a way of life with a conviction about a s t a t e of a f f a i r s built into it' (A. B. Gibson 1970: 12). Doctrine then must be present and must b e , logically speaking, primary in the propagation of a 'way of life'; it is, t h e r e f o r e , both logically and empirically an aspect of religion. F e r r e , in a philosophical analysis of the nature of religion writes (1967: 86): Even if the ideational element of religion turns out to be historically derivative from other aspects of the total religious phenomenon, still philosophy properly continues to t r e a t this element as logically primary. Ideas, and ideas alone, permit the actions of our rituals and the agitations of our breasts to be significant actions and feelings. To cut off the area of concepts and images from religion would be to eliminate the distinctively human dimension that gives any actions meaning, and therefore gives ritual action religious meaning, whatever it may be. Indeed, if religion is a kind of valuing, and if valuing is a conscious activity, then the ideational side of human life where alone appears what we have generally called 'doctrine' is of the essence of religion. More specifically (ibid., p. 89):

against

the

noncognitivist

he

asserts

Explicit doctrine may be denounced then, in the name of religion, just as surely as in other traditions it may be cultivated. Does this mean that philosophical criticism, which operates primarily on the level of belief-claims is limited to the forms of religion t h a t allow such claims to be made through explicit doctrine? Some of the supporters of 'nonpropositional' religion hint that at least a part of their polemic against doctrine is a defensive t a c t i c designed to achieve immunity from

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just this sort of examination. But the tactic, if such it is, fails. Religion as a practice - even when divorced from any explicit doctrinal belief-claims - is just as open to reasonable evaluation as are any other practices in which men engage. When the belief-claims remain unstated, however, the philosopher is required to add an extra step to his critical procedure: he must extract unformulated propositions from practices and make clear the implied belief-claims on which the reasonableness of religion depends. To the claim that the 'meaning of the universe' involved in religious commitment is wholly subjective, one can reply that it is neither more nor less a construction of the human psyche than is knowledge. It can be readily agreed that sociology has shown us that such meaning is not absolute, a divine gift, but rather subject to cultural and social variation but no more so than is our 'knowledge' of the universe.? Such meaning, in fact, in part constitutes what we mean by our knowledge of the universe. To suggest that our knowledge is wholly arbitrary and entirely subjective is just not acceptable. As I shall argue against Berger below: man's knowing is always an attempt to know that which is beyond himself, that is, the external world. Consequently, as Polanyi has pointed out, all our belief claims or knowledge claims display a 'universal intent', which overflow themselves in 'persuasive passion' (Polanyi 1958). The same holds for meaning, as is pointed out by Huston Smith: 'The meaning man senses his life to possess is neither forced upon him by facts nor subjectively contrived. It exceeds the facts while taking account of them. It is neither exclusively subjective nor exclusively objective but something of each' (H. Smith 1965: 62). Just as knowledge is, in part, a correspondence to what is out there and hence either true or false, so meaning tells us something about 'the out-there' and can also be either true or false (ibid., pp. 60-61, my emphasis): We are coming to see more clearly every day the extent to which science is a human construct; the extent to which it gives us, in place of the objective

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God's-eye view of nature we earlier supposed, a view so edited by human purposes, methods, and equipment as to resemble a painting (not very representational at that) more than a literal photograph. To change the image, science has come to seem more a composition played on nature's console than like a tape recording of the music of the spheres. Nevertheless 'conventionalism' - the view that science merely 'prescribes' 'principles of procedure' and 'regulative maxims' for working with nature without describing nature at all - never quite makes its case. For how could we succeed so well with a nature about whose nature we know nothing? Most scientists persist in believing that their theories tell us something about properties which nature possesses in its own right, and hence that it remains more accurate to speak of discovering truth than of inventing it. Paralleling the meaning that awaits artists' perception and embodiment are truths that await scientists' discovery. Doctrine attempts to express that meaning propositionally. This logical priority of doctrine seems even to intrude i t s e l f , paradoxically, in the thought of noncognitivists such as Randall, for he admits that religion viewed as involving beliefs and hence concerned with truth and falsity is not all wrong. As he puts i t , he feels ill at ease with a complete denial of cognitive values to religious beliefs (Randall 1958: 122) and goes on to affirm that there is a sense of 'disclosure' in such beliefs (ibid., p. 125). Consequently there is a sense of truth that is pertinent to them. He writes (ibid., p. 116): Religious symbols are commonly said to 'reveal' some 'truth' about experience. If we ask what it is that such symbols do reveal or disclose about the world, it is clear that it is not what we should call in the ordinary sense, 'knowledge', in the sense already defined. This revelation can be styled 'knowledge' or 'truth' only in a sense that is 'equivocal' or metaphorical. It is more like direct acquaintance than descriptive knowledge; it resembles what we call 'insight' or 'vision'. Such symbols do not 'tell' us anything that is verifiably so; they

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rather make us 'see' something about our and our experienced world.

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experience

This comes close to asserting the objectivity (or at least partial objectivity) of meaning of which Huston Smith speaks - a meaning that discloses something to us about the nature of the universe around us. This 'seeing' something about our experience and the experienced world may not be verifiable in any strict fashion but it must certainly find some support in that experience - it cannot be wholly fanciful or subjective. And scientific knowledge is in many respects just as fanciful and no more strictly verified.8 As one of Randall's critics has aptly put it 'to deny that the arts and religion are cognitive while asserting that the sciences are so seems both to underestimate the powers of the arts and religions, and perhaps to overestimate the 'understanding' and the 'certainty' that are possible through the sciences' (Arnett 1967: 240). A similar ambiguity is to be found in the noncognitivist position of Gustav Mensching, as well, who suggests that the 'inner truth' of a religion transcends 'rational correctness' or 'outer truth'. The contrast is clearly set out when he writes (1971: 142): The confession springs from an act of confessing that is based upon the experience of being overwhelmed by a religious reality or truth. It is of reality, or truth, that the confession or creed speaks. A decisive shift takes place when this credal world is no longer regarded as a relative form of expression testifying to a living encounter with divine reality, but is rather considered to be a rational, doctrinal statement about objective facts and events. The correctness of the statement is then taken to be 'truth'. . . man's relationship to the holy is completely disregarded in such a concept of religious truth. Despite this apparently noncognitive stance, he also asserts that (ibid., p. 143):

however,

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What we have said does not imply that the term truth cannot be used legitimately in religion in the sense of correctness. The mythical or conceptual assertions that bear witness to an enounter with numinous reality always also involve a certain 'perception' and in this sense we do have correctness here. Wherever there is perception, it is true or f a l s e , correct or incorrect. In this, then, Mensching seems to be in full agreement with William Christian (1964), who opposes the noncognitivists and proposes that the 'rational correctness' concept of truth be taken seriously by students of religion. According to Christian (1964: 136, 141), We can disagree with these non-cognitivist theories without denying the great importance of injunctions and confessions in religious discourse to which they have rightly called attention. But I believe they failed to see the full significance of religious injunctions and religious confessions. A religious injunction depends on a basic religious proposal for its significance. So if 'God is love' is a religious utterance by virtue of some policy it enjoins, the policy is connected with something to which some basic religious predicate is implicitly applied. The conclusion to me seems obvious. To talk of religion is to talk of ideas, interpretations, doctrines, e t c . , and, as John E. Smith puts i t , 'where there are ideas and doctrines . . . the question of their validity, their adequacy o r , to use the holy but currently forbidden word, their 'truth', is bound to arise' ( J . Smith 1967: 258). PROBLEMS WITH TRANSCENDENT KNOWLEDGE The claim that 'religious truth' wholly transcends questions of 'ordinary' truth and falsity involves such severe d i f f i culties that it can hardly be taken seriously as support of the claim that questions of the truth of religion cannot

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legitimately be raised by the scientific (and possibly nonreligious) student of religion. The initial claim of the two-level theory of truth seems both coherent and, rationally speaking, innocuous. The claim seems to suggest that religious truth is a venture beyond ordinary truth, not a rejection of it. It is a higher level in the sense that it is concerned with the 'meaning of life' rather than merely with knowledge of some aspect of the universe. Some, then, put it in terms of means and ends - the higher truth being concerned, obviously, with the ends. It would seem, therefore, that the two levels of truth are compatible and complementary. The appearance is, however, almost of necessity deceptive. The claim for the superior level of truth may stand in direct contradiction to the lower level truth as is seen, for example, in Salmon's (1975) explication of the concept. Religious knowledge comes in two stages - the first in outward form, the second an inner truth for a small elite - and progression to the latter 'suspends' the truth of the former. (In this one sees affinities, of course, with Kierkegaard's 'teleological suspension of the ethical'). In the Oriental version the superiority of the higher level of truth is so vast that it, in the final analysis, reveals the lower level of truth to be wholly insignificant; it is but a ladder to be discarded after use. In both cases, a claim is made for the sui generis nature of the higher level of truth - making it self-justifying for him who possesses (experiences) it and beyond the pale of comprehension or criticism of him who does not. And this, it seems to me, involves an abrogation of the 'reason' that establishes the lower-level truths and hence stands in contrast to them rather than complementing them. This relationship of tension can be seen clearly in many Western conceptions of 'theological truth'. Heinrich Vogel, for example, in advice to young theological students, seemingly admits that there are many questions of truth that are of critical significance to the Truth (namely the person of Jesus Christ) and then proceeds to deny that significance by saying that they are wholly nonreligious and have no religious import at all. Furthermore, he goes on to suggest that where two truths seem to conflict or

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where the religious truth is in need of the support of historical truth which historically is unavailable, the Truth overrules the conflict and confirms the objectively inadequate truth. As to the relationship of 'the Truth' to the many (historical, philosophical, etc.) truths he writes (1962: 43): The many questions are qualitatively different from the one: by their very nature they are essentially 'neuter' in kind and are not personally determined. But since the personal Truth of which we are speaking, God in Christ, really encounters us within the space and time of our historical existence, the questions thrown up in and by this encounter are to be taken seriously just because the encounter with Truth is awaiting us behind and indeed within them. To avoid the question raised for us by the real historicity of the Truth that encounters us, would be to deny that historicity which would involve denying that Truth. Therefore, precisely because we are confronted by the Lord who questions us, it is right that we should ask ourselves those other questions: and they have to be taken seriously in relation to His question. He immediately proceeds to withdraw this claim, however, by claiming that the 'other questions' have no religious value. 'This does not mean', he writes, 'that any of the truths with which they [the other questions] are concerned - as, for example, objectively historical or psychological truths - are, as such, the actual living Truth of God' (1962: 43). That Truth is not capable of rational demonstration he seems to suggest implies that the trueness of statements has nothing whatever to say about the Truth of Christianity. If these are statements of historical probability, therefore, that are connected with the Truth, the Truth provides them with a certainty beyond that permitted by rational thought. Thus admitting that we cannot abstract the Truth from the objectively historical he yet claims that 'both with regard to God's divinity and with regard to our salvation, the action of God has to be acknowledged, accepted and confessed with absolute

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certitude' (ibid., p., 65). Thus he insists that 'he is crucified for us' is probable only, in historical form, but that it is, and must be, absolutely true for the believer: '. . . the knowledge imparted by the Holy Spirit gives faith absolute certainty and makes it hear that little word "is" in such a way that all doubt is dispelled and, for that matter, is forbidden as unfaith' (ibid., p. 67). This certainty where, for rational thought, only probability exists, is a miracle of the Holy Spirit: '. . . the operation of the Holy Spirit ensures that we are not left stranded with the doubtfulness of objective historical truth, lost, betrayed, helpless and hopeless' (ibid., p. 69).9 A similar understanding of the truth of Christianity seems to be espoused by John Baillie (1927), although in a more sophisticated form. He is highly critical of the speculative approach to religious phenomena, claiming that its view of religion as a body of doctrine distorts its true nature as 'a kind of insight into reality' (1927: 98). There is a certainty that attaches to this insight beyond all intellectual certainty so that a view of religion that makes the truth depend upon learned and scientific inquiry cannot possibly be accepted. Thus, he writes, 'what we are now criticizing is the whole idea that the question of the truth of religion is to be settled by showing that a number of its most representative beliefs may be arrived at by independent scientific and metaphysical investigations' (ibid., p. 94). Baillie does not deny that Christianity involves propositional truth but seems to want to claim only that it is more than merely propositional truth. As he puts it in his Gifford Lectures (published posthumously in 1962), our reason attempts to bring to full consciousness the truth of the reality we have experienced and to add to this immediate knowledge, which has the certainty of the immediacy of experience (Baillie 1962: 52), further knowledge. That further knowledge is, however, never certain and may have to be given up. But it is here that the ambiguity in Baillie arises, for how much of it can be given up before it constitutes a rejection of the original experience which it was meant to express? The truth of reality so distinguished from the secondary truth of the propositions expressed about that reality really makes the propositional

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truths dispensable, and hence, not really truth at all for a religious truth that is ultimately insignificant appears somewhat odd, to say the least. 10 Similar problems exist for the Oriental theories of two truths. What is called 'lower-level knowledge' or 'lowerlevel truth', is really only an instrument for the 'engineering' of an experience on another level. If it is, in the final analysis, false, it is difficult to see in what sense it is the 'source' of eternal truth for, it seems, any falsehood could equally well give rise to the external truth. The revelatory higher truth then is not knowledge not a pramana at all; it is not something that can be true or false. Analysis of the two-truth doctrine that has been so widely espoused, both East and West, reveals a three-fold hierarchy of truth: two basic and radically different kinds of truth mediated by a third kind which is really not another kind at all, but rather a truth that can be assimilated into either or both of the other 'kinds'. The lower level of truth one might well label 'scientific truth', or perhaps, 'objective truth'. It is truth about the 'secular' world, so to speak. The higher-level truth is the unspeakable yet certain truth of immediate experience of ultimate reality. The intermediate truth transcends the truths of this world in so far as it is concerned not with .a particular aspect of this world but rather with 'the world' as such and with the significance of human existence in it. Such truth is concerned, then, with the sacred; it points to the scared. From the standpoint of 'pure religious truth', however, it is a lower truth because it is other than the Truth; other than the Reality to which it points. It is, therefore, but another lower-level truth, although of broader significance than other lower-level truths. Such a conception of truth and religious truth, I suggest, implies a radical distinction in religion between the 'inner experience' of the individual and the 'outer expression' of the nature and significance or meaning of that experience. It involves an esoteric/exoteric distinction in all religions that is, at least, internally inconsistent. There is quite obviously no denying the inner dimension of religion. But all such esoteric religion finds expression in

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external rites and ceremonies; in art, music and architecture; in beliefs and philosophical systems of thought; etc. If it did not, no discussion of religion could ever take place. Consequently religion is something external as well, and this exoteric aspect of religion has a necessary and important connection with that which is esoteric or subjective. There is always some form of outward expression connected to the inner intention of the religious believer through which the nature and meaning of that inner intention is discovered and understood. Consequently the lower-level truth contained in exoteric religion, if shown to be consistently and systematically misleading or false, must have negative implications of some kind for the inner intention it 'expresses'. The lower-level truth, therefore, cannot be wholly transcended by the higher-level truth, for what higher-level truth is, is, at least partially, expressed in the lower-level claims. And yet this is precisely what is denied by the 'two-truth' doctrine. Furthermore, as Wach" (1962) points out, the twolevels theory of truth is characterized by a vicious circularity. (1962: 14): The experience of that which Otto has finely characterized as the 'mysterium tremendum et fascinosum' will ultimately defy any attempt to describe, analyze and comprehend its meaning scientifically. Religious creative energy is inexhaustible, ever aiming at new and fuller realization. Religious experience does not readily yield to overt and unambiguous expression; yet, on the other hand, only through the forms which this experience gives itself will it be possible adequately to trace and understand its character. All who have attempted to analyze subjective religion were confronted by this 'vicious circle' where understanding of inner experience comes only through interpreting its objective expression; but an adequate interpretation itself is dependent upon a prior insight into the inner experience. And the vicious circularity problem is compounded with that of inconsistency. The religious believer adopting a

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two-levels theory of truth seems to want to accept rationality and reason's capability of providing one with knowledge and truth and yet denies it this role in all the most significant areas of life. In religion it appears as the desire to accept tradition while fostering only the unique quest and experience of the individual. As one scholar has recently put it vis a vis Jasper's thought: '. . . in an era when the distinction of facts and values, public truth and private whim is the reigning and very powerful commonplace an approach which makes a radical distinction between the factual truth of knowledge and the existential truth of faith and focuses upon the individual and momentary character of that existential truth can only have a corrosive e f f e c t upon the traditions it seeks to appropriate anew' (Kane 1974-1975: 163). That tension is exhibited in particularly acute form in the thought of Richard Kroner, especially in his talk on 'The truth of faith'. For Kroner, 'the truth of faith in a guarantor of absolute meaning is essentially religious or spiritual, it is not rational, logical or theoretical' (1966: 86). The two-levels idea is expressed clearly as he further explicates (ibid., p. 87): The truth of faith corresponds to the moral and spiritual e f f e c t s it has in the believer. This truth does not solve all the riddles of existence in a theoretical or speculative manner . . . . Spiritual faith in the guarantor of ultimate meaning is without any speculative truth. But it does grant something which is of greater import for our inner life. It gives a peace which passes all understanding. But this peace that surpasses all understanding seems nevertheless to depend on the intellect and understanding, for it involves a theoretical or cognitive component, namely belief in an absolute being, a god, in his existence and in his concern for mankind. And these are very much intellectual matters. And, strangely, their importance is admitted by Kroner: 'Unless a primary and imperishable, an absolute and super-temporal power exists which underlies the temporary scene of our l i f e , all our hopes, our

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faith, our trust are limited and in the last analysis not valid. If there is no guarantor of an absolute meaning everything loses its meaning.' (ibid., p. 78) This passage is a kind of (Kantian) argument for the existence of a guarantor and if it is to be taken seriously its truth value is of great significance to the religious believer, for according to Kroner, the 'guarantor' must be more than a mere 'wonderful idea of our imagination'. The reality interest of religious belief is recognized by Kroner, but its truth value is not confirmed by the ordinary procedures thus putting 'religious truth' in tension with 'general truth' (ibid., p. 84): Faith in a guarantor of meaning . . . transcends the prerogative of reason; it is not rational but essentially superrational, so that reason cannot ever postulate it. It is superrational, because reason is by its very nature abstract and contradistinguished from desire and impulse, from the irrational beast as from the immoral world of human society and history. Such faith passes not only all theoretical understanding, but also the comprehension of moral reason. If it can claim any validity, then it exceeds all faith we can reach; it has to be revealed by Him who enables us to reach Him. . . . This faith in the ultimate guarantor can be granted and its truth can be guaranteed only by God himself. Faith by its very nature transcends the limits of humanity. 'Faith', it appears, becomes a warrant to set aside the usual warrants appealed to by those staking claims to truth. Faith used in this way, therefore, shatters our everyday warrants and makes assessment of religious truth impossible and hence makes holding religious beliefs irrational. If religious belief is considered rational and is subjected to such ordinary warrants as we apply to our other claims, then such belief is really no longer religious, for it, like our other 'ordinary' claims, falls short of the real truth. This ambiguity and paradox involved in the two-levels theory of truth I suggest, then, throws grave doubt upon both its value and its validity. From the 'lower

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level' of truth it appears that the 'two truth' doctrine is not acceptable in the form in which it has been exhibited above. MYSTERY, RELIGION, AND COMMON SENSE Little need be said here since as I pointed out in my description of the nature of this objection, the view that claims that religion is essentially concerned with a mystery closed to ordinary mortals has affinities with that involved in the two-truth doctrine and so is subject to the same criticism. Whatever the explication of this doctrine, it seems quite plausible to argue that even though religion is concerned with what is ultimately a mystery (i.e., with something that is, again ultimately, beyond man's comprehension), religion also concerns itself with the contact between man and that ultimate reality - a contact which cannot, if it is salvific in any sense whatsovever, be beyond reason, or totally incomprehensible. It is the mystery as it relates to man and not as it is in itself, that is open to understanding and hence, open to evaluation. There is no doubt then that in this respect the truth question can and must be raised.

The Theoretical Character of the Critical Study of Religion

METHODOLOGICAL ATHEISM AND THE STUDY OF RELIGION The assumption of methodological atheism is, I think, premature and unwarranted. One can readily agree with the verdict of the social sciences that religion is a human phenomenon; indeed, it would be folly to deny it. However, it is far from obvious that it is also folly to deny that it is simply a human institution; that it has no transcendent, and hence numinous, origin or cause (or meaning, reference). Yinger, at one point, seems to agree with this claim despite his general 'atheistic' or 'atheological' stance (pointed out above), when he writes (1970: 93-94) that . . . social theory has often been inadequate to interpret religion because it has asked the wrong, or relatively less important, questions. Viewing religion primarily from a cognitive standpoint it has asked, 'Do religious ideas represent reality?' This leads to questions concerning the nature * of reality and the reasons for any errors that religious beliefs may be said to contain. There is value in this approach but there is also a great weakness for it tends to reduce religion to a system of beliefs or statements of purported facts. Whether religious ideas are true or not hinges on one's definition of the truth, and hence becomes a metaphysical rather than a scientific problem. He admits here, then, that questions of truth in religion are of at least metaphysical significance. His claim that the virtue of the functionalist view is that it avoids the

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metaphysical issue and concentrates attention on the f a c t that religious beliefs have consequences for human behaviour is salutary. But he nowhere argues with any seriousness the question 'What if functional explanations conflict with the metaphysical truth of religion's understanding of itself? He, like Durkheim, takes for granted that science 'disproves' religion: 'For those who identify religion with supernatural views of the world, it must appear that scientific analysis must weaken religion' (1970: 531). Religion's understanding of itself as a source of knowledge and insight is, then, simply written off as so much superstition. The antireligious bias of such functionalism is clearly brought out by W. R. Garrett (1974: 178-179, my emphasis): . . . functionalism tends to carry along certain methodological assumptions which preclude sympathetic t r e a t m e n t to religious transcendence. For this reason much of contemporary sociology of religion has developed into an organizational analysis of religion - what might be termed: sociological analysis of institutions which just happen to be religious - or into debunking exposes which vitiate transcendent reality in the name of scientific enlightenment. Curiously, both types of operations are carried on by sociologists who are often in their private lives men of genuine religious f a i t h , but who feel compelled in their professional activity to enjoin a quite foreign attitude. This problem, however, is more complex than a mere instance of theoretical naivete or vestigial backlash from those by-gone days when some sociologists endeavoured to produce a 'Christian Sociology'. At the very root of this problem lies a genuine concern to disenchant the world further than that which science has already achieved. Hence the latest yet inexorable thrust of this orientation presses in the direction of transforming religion into a social phenomenon, and then explaining it according to the sociological categories which are applicable to all other social p h e n o m e n a l The sociology of religion,

therefore,

as Hamnett

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out (1973) is in effect a 'sociology of error' since it precludes, in a priori fashion, any serious consideration of religion's understanding of itself. There is here, on the part of the investigator, an a priori assumption as to the superiority of his own intellectual world.2 in this, contemporary students of religion are in company with the greats of sociology such as Durkheim and Weber, as Bellah points out: 'More of them were believers in the ordinary sense of that word. All of them believed themselves to be in possession of a truth superior to that of religion' (Bellah 1970b: 250). And this, Bellah claims is itself to take up a religious position (Bellah 1970a: 4), a religious position which he quite emphatically rejects (1970b: 256): As a sociologist I am by no means prepared to abandon the work of the great consequential and symbolic reductionists. They have pointed out valid implications of religious life that were not previously understood. But I am prepared to reject their assumption that they spoke from a higher level of truth than the religious systems they studied. I would point out instead their own implicit religious positions. Most of all I am not prepared to accept the implications that the religious issue is dead and that religious symbols have nothing directly to say to us. Bellah goes on then to sketch out his own position of 'symbolic realism', which is, however, a noncognitivist interpretation of religion wherein symbols are used to evoke the 'felt-whole' of reality - the totality of subject/ object. Insofar as his view rejects religion's understanding of itself as cognitive Bellah's position is no less reductioni s t s than that of the hard-line positivist sociologists. I do not here, however want to carry on with a critique of his proposals. It would be more helpful instead if a closer examination of Berger's reductionism were undertaken here. Berger's claim that just because religion is a projection of man does not logically preclude the possibility that it may yet have an ultimate status independent of man seems to suggest the same weakness of 'methodological atheism' that I have been at pains to describe in the present

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section of this chapter. According to Berger this possibility exists because it just might be the case that man projects these 'ultimate' meanings onto the world because (his word, Berger 1967: 188) that reality really is meaningful in that way. The nature of that 'because' is l e f t totally ambiguous by Berger, although he suggests that it is not a m a t t e r of inductive inference or scientific procedure. Berger finds it possible then to suggest quite seriously a 'reconstruction of anthropology in the theological mode' (ibid., p. 181) which seems to be in outrageous conflict with his methodological suppositions. Further, Berger himself begins to develop such an anthropology (1969), which seems to undermine the credibility and value of his sociological explanations. He seems to suggest that the major problem of theology is its failure to challenge the 'methodological atheism' he himself has proposed; namely in its failure to challenge that secularized consciousness that seems to present itself as an absolute system over against religion as ideology. Theology can r e c t i f y the situation, he claims, not by rejecting the relativity of theology implied in the sociological explanations of religion but rather by relativizing the relativizers themselves: '. . . it may be conceded that there is in the modern world a certain type of consciousness that has difficulties with the supernatural. The statements remain, however, on the level of sociohistorical diagnoses. The diagnosed condition is not therefore elevated to the status of an absolute criterion; the contemporary situation is not immune to relativising analysis.' (Berger 1969: 58) Thus not only is there not an epistemologically safe platform - an 'archimedian point' as he puts it - from which cognitively valid statements about religious matters can be made; there is no such platform from which any cognitively valid statements of any sort can be made. Yet in spite of this rather extreme form of relativism Berger denies that all thought is automatically paralyzed. He insists that a f t e r all such relativizing is over the question of truth can still reassert itself (1969: 57): Once we know that all human affirmations are subject to scientifically graspable socio-historical processes, which affirmations are true and which false? We cannot

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avoid the question any more than we can return to the innocence of its pre-relativizing asking. This loss of innocence, however, makes for the difference between asking the question before and after we have passed through the fiery brook.3 Berger then himself proceeds to locate several 'indicators' of transcendence 'in, with and under the immense array of human projections' (ibid., p. 65). What these are need not concern us here, but at least this must be noted; the data upon which Berger draws are as much empirical or natural data as are the data that any of the other cosmological or teleological proofs for the existence of God rely upon. In this case, however, they are anthropological rather than physical or psychical. Berger therefore, I suggest, provides us with yet another 'natural theology' - his procedure here might well be described as 'methodological theism' and delivers different results than his 'methodological atheism'. I have now set out enough evidence to warrant the possibility of a cognitivist interpretation of religion. And although the development of such an interpretation cannot be undertaken here I wish nevertheless to outline briefly the kinds of arguments that can be raised in the support of such a view of religion. There are arguments that strongly suggest 'the truth of religion'. None of the arguments in itself 'proves' the truth of religion or of particular religious beliefs but taken together they can form what Basil Mitchell (1973) has called a 'cumulative argument' in support of the truth of religion. Such a 'cumulative argument', obviously, will be both of a negative and a positive character. The negative side of the argument will involve, for example, close analysis of the critiques of religion and of particular religious beliefs to see if there are hidden any unwarranted assumptions or inadequacies of reasoning, especially in the proposals of 'disproof' of God's existence or in the so-called disclosures of the 'meaninglessness' (nonsense) of religious discourse. Most important on the negative side, however, is a critique of the dominant 'mechanical' view of science and that theory of rationality that derives from it, for it is the claim, made by the philosophers of science, that

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science can verify or justify its conclusions while religion cannot that has lent force to the sociologist's assumption of superiority regarding his intellectual world as against that of his religious subject. Today there is a good deal of literature to show that this 'mechancial' view of science is utterly wrongheaded - t h a t , in f a c t , there is no great logical difference between religious-metaphysical claims or assertions and scientific-theoretical ones. Important in this respect is the work of Michael Polanyi (1958); Thomas Kuhn (1962); Paul Feyerabend (1970a, b); Errol Harris (1970); Ronald Nash (1963), and others. Science, as these men point out, is no less a matter of imagination and 'cumulative evidence' than is metaphysics and theology. I have dealt at length with these matters elsewhere, however, and shall not proceed with further elucidation here.4 The positive side of the 'cumulative argument' of which Mitchell speaks concerns such elements as the traditional 'proofs' for the existence of God, which, though not proofs in the strict sense, provide a measure of evidence in support of the theistic - hence religious - position. They provide what N. Smart (1962, 1970) calls a 'soft' natural theology. Furthermore there is the support of 'religious experience', 'revelation', e t c . , for which philosophical argument can provide some support. Such a cumulative argument that could show the assumption of the falsity of religion to be unacceptable cannot, obviously, be developed here. A number of such arguments - what I have earlier referred to as 'compatibility systems' - have been offered. Among others one might r e f e r to Tennant (1932); Coulson (1955); Schilling (1963); Ramsey (1964); Barbour (1966). If the assumption of the superiority of science or of the intellectual world of the scientists is to have any plausibility whatsoever, it must take serious issue with the arguments presented in these and other similar works. This, however, is seldom, if ever, done. EXPLANATION, THEORY, AND THE STUDY OF RELIGION The assumption that questions of truth are irrelevant

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the scientific study of religion since the latter is descriptive in intent rather than explanatory is open to serious question. It is obvious, as I have already pointed out in chapter three above, that explanation is the primary concern of the sciences. I have argued, therefore, that intellectual curiosity with respect to religious phenomena can be satisfied only when explanation complements description. Consequently, even though certain branches of study, such as the phenomenology of religion with its 'epoche' and 'eidetic vision', may restrict themselves to mere description, the critical study of religion, if it is to fulfill its promise, must move on to explanation and theory. As Penner and Yonan have put it (1972: 131), . . what is needed is a serious concern for explicit theories of religion that can be tested. . . . It is precisely the construction of theories which continues to improve a science and its explanatory status. To remain theory-shy is to give up the very idea of a Religionswissenschaft.' But such explanation or theorizing can hardly be seriously proposed without some assumption or argument as to the truth or falsity of religion or the particular religious doctrines under discussion. Religion as projection or illusion will elicit a very different kind of explanation than religion as a partially justified 'vision' (explanation?, theory?) of reality (or of the meaning of the universe, etc.) One need only compare here the theories of Freud and Durkheim, for example, with those of say, Christian fundamentalists, or in a vastly different tradition, with an Eliade, to see the point. To explain religion, then, one assumes (either explicitly and with some supportive argumentation, or implicitly and naively) that religion is either (a) a set of unfounded and superstitious beliefs and hence false and so in need of explanation as to how and why they persist, etc.; or (b) a set of propositions that are true, or at least worthy of rational acceptance in that they themselves explain, make sense of, states of affairs around us and of elements of life's experience, etc. It would seem, therefore, that the critical study of religion is concerned, and primarily so, with the question of the truth or falsity of religion.5

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Smart's suggestion (1973a) that to distinguish between the reality and the existence of the focus of religion precludes the truth issue needs some comment. Smart attempts to hold a position that avoids a reductionist understanding of religion implied by a 'methodological atheism' without however involving itself in questions as to the truth or falsity of religion. But to admit the reality of the focus of religion is simply to admit that for the person who believes in religion, the focus is real, which is hardly a move beyond the assumptions of the other social sciences in their approach to religious phenomena. This is readily seen in an analysis of his use of the 'pen-friend' analogy: a war prisoner receives letters from home that purport to be from the sister or friend to the fiance of a fellow prisoner. The girl does not really exist but the prisoner's friend puts his own girl up to the 'fraud' so the spirits of his fellow prisoner will not flag. The girl then is real for the prisoner even though she does not exist. God, therefore, like the pen friend may be real even if he does not exist. Consequently Smart talks of his approach to the study of religion as one of 'methodological agnosticism' for the student of religion, he insists, must concern himself only with the reality of the focus of religion and not its existence. This, however, seems to me to take religion simply as a human phenomenon, and hence to adopt in effect a 'methodological atheism'. Surely the reality of God is there for the believer only because the believer believes Him to exist. Yet this is precisely what he wishes to avoid: 'My argument. . . is directed to the conclusion that it is wrong to analyze religious objects in terms simply of religious beliefs' (Smart 1974: 54). To take God as real in the phenomenological description of Christianty, it would seem, requires also in the description the fact of the existence belief of the believer and this surely opens one to the question as to whether the believer's existence belief has any justification or is 'superstitious', for surely an explanation of the 'faith' will differ widely depending upon the response. A study of religion then that adopts as its goal a phenomenological description that merely describes the reality of the focus without an analysis of the believer's

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espousal of the existence claim is, I think, a purely naturalistic and hence reductionistic account of religion.6

9

Problems and Boundaries in the Study of Religion

There is no denying the immense difficulties that emerge in any study of religious phenomena let alone one that proposes to take into serious consideration questions as to the truth or falsehood of religions. There are, of course, immense difficulties involved in all such 'exercises' in cultural hermeneutics. I shall suggest here, however, that the problems involved in a study of religion sensitive to the truth question are not wholly insurmountable even though no quick and easy solutions are likely to be forthcoming. THE PROBLEM OF THE COMPLEXITY OF RELIGION The more straightforward practical difficulties in ascertaining the truth of religion(s) as raised by W. Cantwell Smith and others are thorny, but not beyond resolution. Concerning the problem of the complexity of the world religions and the vast variety of religions, a number of points can be made. First, Smith may be right when he claims that it is extremely unlikely that »anyone can wholly master any tradition so that he could say it is true or false; or whether it is an adequate 'understanding' ('picture', 'theory', 'model',?) of reality or not. Yet the student of religion can, surely, see whether the assertions and claims of various traditions conflict with one another and so present either conflicting (or perhaps, on other lines of interpretation, complementary) 'understandings' (systems) of reality. William Christian (1964, 1972) provides a good deal of insight into this problem from exactly this direction - insights which I shall develop further in chapters eleven and twelve. Questions of coherence and adequacy

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can surely be raised. Even though religious s y s t e m s and their doctrinal r a m i f i c a t i o n s are almost endless one can still ask whether these s y s t e m s , as f a r as we know t h e m , a r e c o h e r e n t , f r e e f r o m s e l f - c o n t r a d i c t i o n , a d e q u a t e to i n t e r p r e t or make significant the g r e a t e r bulk of our experience and t h a t of mankind g e n e r a l l y , able to fulfill c e r t a i n psychological, social, i n t e l l e c t u a l , and moral needs of m a n , e t c . Much work along these lines has been done by S m a r t , for example (especially 1958 and 1970). F u r t h e r m o r e , one might well ask whether t h e r e are s p e c i f i c points of 'opposition' between science and religion and whether or not the 'compatibility systems' developed by various world religions are plausible and meaningful. John Hick in direct response to Smith rightly points out t h a t 'religions as complex historical phenomena . . . a r e not t r u e or false; but nevertheless particular religious ideas, affirmations, teachings, beliefs, doctrines, dogmas, theories are presumably still t r u e or false - if not a b s o l u t e l y , then a t least comparatively' (Hick 1974: 143). Hick is too ambiguous in his response, h o w e v e r , for he also claims t h a t since religions a r e , besides systems of b e l i e f s , cultural expressions of the diversities of human types and t e m p e r a m e n t s - as s t r e a m s of human life - and as such t h a t it is inappropriate to call them t r u e or f a l s e . 'Instead then of asking whether a religion, as s u c h , is t r u e in some absolute sense', he w r i t e s , 'we are f r e e to r e c o g n i z e religious t r u t h , wherever it is e v i d e n t , within all man's cultures and civilization' (ibid, p. 142; see also Hick 1973b). Without denying the t r u t h of Hick's claim h e r e , it still seems to me appropriate to ask whether - if a m a j o r ity of the assertions and s t a t e m e n t s of a religious system upon which one's 'style of life' is p r e d i c a t e d , especially t h e tradition's basic belief proposals, a r e found to be f a l s e or a t least highly questionable - such a religious system might not be properly t e r m e d 'false'. F u r t h e r m o r e , if t h e major part of the understanding of one religious system is in opposition with t h a t of another - t h a t is, in the l a n guage of William Christian (1964), if the major basic s t a t e m e n t s of one system c o n t r a d i c t those of a n o t h e r , is it not appropriate to say t h a t if one is t r u e then the o t h e r is false? For Hick to avoid this dilemma it would seem

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that he would have to abandon the truth question altogether and adopt a noncognitivist position, which he certainly does not do (1966). The fact that religions change also constitutes a genuine problem for those concerned with truth in religion. Smart points out, for example, that in one (orthodox) reading of Christianity and Buddhism they are in opposition, but not so if they are each read existentially: . . there seems to be a conflict of Weltanschauung between theistic Christianity and non-theistic Buddhism; but the incompatibility is less obvious the more existentialist Christian theology becomes. So new syntheses may await us over the horizon; and they cannot be ruled out a priori' (1974: 49). As Smart puts it, faith is elastic; it permits a wide variety of interpretation and development such that the judgment of truth or falsity might well change - or, at least, the judgment as to its opposition to or compatibility with other 'systems'. Nevertheless Smart does also point out that there is concern about such elasticity, 'whether certain kinds of stretching the concepts and practices result in a snap' (ibid., p. 49). He seems to be suggesting that there are some very vague a priori limits to the possible syntheses that await us over the horizon. His work (1958) in distinguishing the various strands of religions suggests the same. A critical look at Wilken's thesis (1971) leads one to a similar conclusion. There is no denying that, as Wilken points out, every tradition within Christianity remembers the Christian past in its own unique way; that each tradition has placed the study of the Christian past at the service of theological controversy and apologetics. But this fact does not prove, as Wilken seems to suggest, that 'there never was an "original Christian faith" or a "native Christian language".' It is difficult to see that 'the further back one searches, the more informed the tradition becomes so much so that there is no moment or man or age or idea to which we can return and say: that is the Christian thing' (Wilken 1971: 170). It is impossible really to say that the Christian phenomenon can only be grasped by looking at it as a whole for its end has not yet come; yet surely we know whereof we speak when we talk of

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'Christianity'. Wilken may be right to insist that the first stage of the Christian tradition is not definitive for the whole history of its development - but neither can we say that no matter what developments occur in the future, the end result still constitutes Christianity. It is difficult to s e e , for example, a Christianity that denied the existence or importance of Jesus, a 'docetic' Christianity, and Wilken himself seems to recognize this when in the Epilogue he writes: 'What we remember, and how we remember it, will change, but the Christian memory will always trace its origins to the tiny band of Jews who walked with Jesus, lived through his death, witnessed his Resurrection, and proclaimed his glory to all the world' (1971: 204). This 'recognition' seems to stand, then, in conflict with his claim throughout the book that 'historically, it is absurd to take the first stage of Christian tradition as definitive for the whole history' (ibid., p. 170). There is no doubt that not all change is mere development of something already present in embryo at the beginning, or that not all such radical change is always deviation, but if everything were to change surely one would be confronted by a different situation. On Wilken's account Christianity could not be a distinct religion for it is simply (?) a further development - admittedly a radical one - of Judaism. Yet we, and Wilken, do see enough change in this once Jewish s e c t , to warrant calling it a 'new' religion and tagging it with a different label; it is not still just a sect of Judaism, not even were Judaism itself to disappear from the face of the earth. It is possible therefore for a 'new' religion to emerge from what we presently call Christianity, and perhaps even at the expense of the demise of what we presently know as Christianity, for which we would be obliged to seek a new label. Wilken may be right to claim that what is (or what will be) can never be derived from what has been but it must also be recognized that not all that which is (or will be) is what once was; historical metamorphosis is a very real possibility. What Christianity is may indeed continue to change, but this does not imply that there can be no abiding marks of the faith. My own feeling here is that one can in fact

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speak quite legitimately of an 'essence' of Christianity (or of Buddhism, Hinduism, etc.) - at least, to put it in an adverbial form, to speak of what is essentially Christian (or essentially Buddhist, etc.). That 'essence' may not be easily definable; it may be somewhat fuzzy at the edges, and yet there are some developments that one would want to call 'heretical' - a deviation. Without such a distinction between 'essence' and 'development' no such concept of heresy is even conceivable - all proposals are acceptable proposals whether or not they mutually exclude one another. It is difficult therefore for me to see the force of Wilken's argument against Newman. To reject his theory of development as a form of 'Eusebianism', is merely name-calling. In support of the suggestion as to 'essences' I must be satisfied with two references to Bambrough (1963: 100, 101):

It is clear how unsatisfactory it is to speak of accepting or rejecting Christianity as a whole. There are too many separate elements in Christian doctrine, each of which raises too many separate questions, each of which is capable of too many distinguishable interpretations, for a man to be able to reveal very much of the nature of his beliefs and allegiances by saying a simple yes or a simple no to the superficially simple, single question 'Is Christianity true, or is it false?' To see all this is to cease to seek clear-cut criteria for distinguishing Christians from non-Christians. There are no religious acid-tests. The class of sincere Christians like the class of games or instances of knowledge, has a complex internal structure and indefinite boundaries. Its members may vary widely and in many dimensions and yet all remain within those boundaries. 'In my Father's house are many mansions'. But an indefinite boundary is still a boundary, and a boundary that may be crossed. There are limits to religious liberalism , and on the far side of them there is ample liberty but no religion. A man may travel step by slow step and yet travel so far from the central affirmations

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of what he claims to be his religion that his claim can no longer be accepted. The s a m e , I suggest, can happen with entire communities. THE PROBLEM OF TOLERANCE It is transparently obvious that intolerance is not necessarily connected with concern for questions of truth and falsity in religion. It may historically be true that the claim to truth by a religious tradition has often led to intolerance and conflict via the claim to uniqueness, but the claim to truth is not logically related to intolerance. Klostermaier quite to the contrary, for example, in a paper on 'A Hindu-Christian dialogue on truth' sees the possibility of f r u i t f u l interaction between representatives of traditions with (apparently) differing absolute truth claims (Klostermaier 1975: 171): The enounter of two absolute Truth claims, as we have it in Hindu-Christian dialogue, does not end with an abandoning of the absolute Truth claim on either side or on both sides nor does it result in quarrels in order to establish one truth-claim against the o t h e r , nor in just politely keeping silent in order not to offend the other partner, knowing well that he or she must be wrong. A basic principle in 'dialogue' is that the tension existing between the different religions need not, should not, and cannot be resolved: it is a real dialectic arising out of the f a c t that life itself has contradictory aspects and dimensions, which are reflected by the major traditions. Dialogue does not aim a t monologue but at keeping the dialogue going, maintaining the identity of both partners, and also presupposing sufficient common ground to explore f u r t h e r . Hindu-Christian dialogue goes on and brings both partners to realize the limits and the value of their own 'truths' in their traditions and it constantly kindles the spark of the pneuma; it renews the eros, gives greater impetus to the mumuksutvam; it makes

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the partner more open for Truth - and that is how we come nearer to the Truth.1

PART FOUR

The Category of Truth in the Critical Study of Religion

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Truth and "Religious Truth"

There is sufficient warrant in the arguments sketched in the preceding section to allow one to conclude that talk of truth and falsity in religion is not at all improper or misguided talk and that, furthermore, unless the issue of truth is taken into the considerations of the student of religion no adequate understanding of the phenomena before him can be achieved. There was a point in the history of the study of religion in which, it must be admitted, the avoidance of the truth question was very beneficial. Insofar as the early study of religion was dominated by a theological perspective that assumed the truth of the Christian religion and the falsity of all nonChristian religions the ban on questions of truth and falisty allowed for a closer, more thorough examination and description of the various religious traditions. In making the goal of their study description, the scholars were relieved of the necessity of passing judgment and so permitted them an objectivity and openness about their subject matter never before possible. In this respect, then, the phenomenology of religion is to be applauded.! gut there are limitations in the phenomenological perspective. It is imperative to see, for example, that the break from the (Christian) theological perspective was not simply a move towards an intellectual openness and honesty. It has become, in effect, an ideology that assumes, in the final analysis, the falsity of religion. To avoid any and all theological prejudice (i.e., to preclude plumping for or against religion or for one religious tradition as over against another), it has been argued, the study of religion must be seen as an anthropological discipline pure and simple which means, of course, that all religions are looked upon

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as purely human 'creations' - all elements of supernaturalism being rejected a priori.2 As I have argued elsewhere (section one above) this too is a 'theologically' biased position and hence not really an objective understanding of religion. Such a 'reinforced' phenomenology, however, moves beyond the limited objectives of the earlier or older phenomenological approach to religion. The older phenomenology was concerned only with description and the new phenomenology seeks an explanation for religion. The move beyond description is essential to a 'science' of religion and so the new anthropology is headed in the right direction, but it assumed too much from the start. As I have argued above, to explain religion involves an assessment of the truth or falsity of religion, but the newer phenomenology in ruling out all supernaturalism a priori assumes its falsity. And this failure to be critical makes of the 'new phenomenology an 'atheological' enterprise and hence an unscientific one. Only if the truth question is raised on an explicit level can the study of religion be scientific both in the sense of moving beyond description to explanation and doing so critically. To have shown up the weaknesses in the arguments undermining the importance of the truth question in matters religious is insufficient to my purposes here. The critiques I have provided of such arguments, I am well aware, are not conclusive. What is required, therefore, is further analysis of the nature of truth and particularly analysis of what is meant by the talk of truth in religion and the provision of a more specific delineation of the 'locus' of religious truth. What is needed at the outset of this constructive phase of the argument is some preliminary analysis of the concepts of 'truth' and 'religious truth' for the proliferation of terminology is bewildering and confusing. One finds in the literature on the topic, for example, talk of literal, scientific, and historical truth as opposed to philosophical, metaphysical, and ontological truth. There is talk of poetic truth and the truth of art; of symbolic truth, mythological truth, and even the 'truth of visions', which one author refers to as 'diagrammatic truth' (Watt, n.d.). One often reads of the 'truth of life'

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as opposed to or complementary to objective truths of reason. In the realm of religious discourse further contrasts are to be found - historical truths opposed to eternal truths; peripheral truth to essential truth; extrinsic to intrinsic truth; relative to absolute truth (or talk here of lower and higher truths, or penultimate and ultimate truths). Often one reads of subtle distinctions between religious truth and theological truth or of the distinction between the 'truth itself' and the mere 'appearance' of the truth. Then too there is talk of truth only as personal truth or lived truth; of truth as 'realization' and not as 'information'. The concept of truth, moreover, is often found in close connection with other concepts such as knowledge and belief, certainty, wisdom, understanding, meaning, reality, etc., and invariably with little suggestion as to how the concepts are related. The problem of satisfactorily developing a theory of truth is extremely difficult, and is not a task to be undertaken here. It is a task, surely, that will require a series of analyses before all the difficulties are explored and resolved. Yet it is necessary to bring some kind of order to this bewildering confusion of terminology if the problem about religious truth undertaken here is to be resolved. I shall proceed, therefore, with a brief discussion of some common theories of truth and attempt from there to sketch an adequate understanding of 'truth'. TOWARDS AN ADEQUATE UNDERSTANDING OF 'TRUTH' The question we are faced with now is simply 'What is truth'? Although grammatically simple the question is subtle. Austin advises not to approach the question too directly, for, as he puts it, truth 'is an abstract noun, a camel that is, of a logical construction which cannot get past the eye even of a grammarian', let alone that of a philosopher (Austin 1970: 117). On first appearance the question appears an ontological one - a question, as Heidegger argues, for example, of being; that is, truth (alëtheia) belongs to the very essence of being. For many philosophers, however, such a reading of the question is to

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uproot it from its presently more natural domain of logic and epistemology. By 'truth', then, one means that something is in reality as one perceives it to be and to say otherwise is to play games with words. Being is real rather than true and it is our knowledge of being that is either true or untrue. The concept of truth, consequently, amounts to a matter of the truth or falsity of propositions purporting to tell us something about the world around us. Hence Austin's further advice that philosophers 'take something more nearly their size to strain at namely the use, or certain uses of the word true' (1970: 117). It is obvious therefore that a clear view of what it means to say that a statement is true or false goes hand in hand with a clear conception of what constitutes knowledge. Various attempts have been made to define such truth, although no 'theory' has as yet really brought about a convergence of opinion as to its nature. And it is obvious that to undertake a detailed examination of those theories here is out of the question and yet some general, rough description of my own understanding of the nature of truth must be set out here. Perhaps the most widespread theory of truth is the socalled 'correspondence' theory. According to the proponents of this view truth consists in the correspondence of our descriptions of reality with reality itself. Our statements about reality are true or false and so constitute knowledge only if they refer adequately to a reality that exists in itself - independently of our thinking it. Two very different yet strong rival theories have been proposed: the coherence and the pragmatic theories of truth. The former distinguishes true from false statements or propositions by reference to its agreement or disagreement with the already accepted body of our knowledge. The truth or falsity of a belief is determined by its consistency with the system of ideas already accepted. Only those beliefs are accepted as true that cohere with the bulk of our present experience and knowledge and so supplement that knowledge. The pragmatic theories of truth assess the acceptability of a claim by reference to its 'usefulness'. Ideas are true if they work, if and only if they help us in bringing

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harmony to the whole bulk of our experience - in the sense, however, of a practical harmony, what is expedient or successful. None of these theories has really been successful. None has really brought about a convergence of opinion among the philosophers as to the real character of truth. The correspondence theory has its obvious difficulties. The theory assumes the possibility of our transcending both reality and our claims about reality in order to make the comparison of proposition to reality, which comparison itself would have to be expressed by a proposition that is itself an aspect of the world and a claim about it and so itself requires an assessment of its own truth claim. Furthermore, if one knows already the reality of which the claim is made, there is no need to make the comparison between the claim and the reality. If that reality is not known, then of course the comparison cannot take place at all. How such truth claims correspond with the facts, moreover, has never been satisfactorily set out, especially how negative belief claims correspond to reality. These and other difficulties with the correspondence theory, therefore, were in some measure responsible for the emergence of alternative theories. The coherence and pragmatic theories also suffer shortcomings, to say the least. It is difficult to see, for example, how even the complete coherence of a claim with a set of other claims could be a sufficient guarantee of its truth since the question of what guarantees the truth of any or all of the other claims within the system itself needs to be raised. It is possible for the system of beliefs to be wholly coherent and yet for each of the claims within the system to be false. Within the scientific framework the coherence theory takes on more plausibility, to be sure, but everyday truth claims seem somehow to beg for some reference beyond the pale of the system of beliefs. And the pragmatic theories suffer a similar counterintuitiveness. That a set of problems might well be solved because of the acceptance of a false set of beliefs does not seem at all to be self-contradictory. If certain psychologists and sociologists are right religion or religious beliefs might well have an important function in

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civilization, even though they constitute a set of false beliefs. Given this general malaise one might well be tempted to throw up one's hands in despair of ever coming to know what truth is. I shall nevertheless set out a brief exposition of truth that is aware of the shortcomings of the various theories outlined above. It is possible to do this because the basic idea of the correspondence theory, even if it cannot be consistently set out as y e t , is central to any and all theories of truth. I do not mean that such a theory precludes all thought of coherence or pragmatic value. Nicholas Rescher points out, for example, that the correspondence and coherence theories of truth are very much complementary. He maintains that one can and must distinguish definitional theories of truth from criterial ones and that seen from the perspective of such a distinction the two theories are not at all in conflict. He writes (1973: 23-24): . . . the aim of the coherence theory is - or should be - to afford a test or criterion of truth. As A. C. Ewing rightly insists 'correspondence might well constitute the nature of truth without constituting its criterion'. Thus construed the two doctrines are fitted to very different work. The matter of 'correspondence to facts' tells us a great deal about what truth is, but can fail badly as a guide to what is truth. On the other hand, the factor of 'coherence - with other (suitably determined) propositions' does not really provide a definition of truth, but is more helpful as a tool in the process of deciding whether given propositions qualify as truths.3 Pragmatic theories, s i m i l a r l y i t seems, complement the correspondence theory of truth. If an 'idea' works, that is, it must in some sense 'agree' or 'correspond' to reality. As William James puts it (quoted in Canfield and Donnell 1964: 300), 'Pragmatists and intellectualists both accept . . . the correspondence definition as a matter of course. They begin to quarrel only after the question is raised as to what may precisely be meant by the term "agreement",

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and what by the term "reality", when reality is taken as something for our ideas to agree with.' The claim to truth, however, involves not merely the statement and its relation to reality but also the person making the claim to truth. Consequently, as Ferre points out (1967: 146), there are three factors involved in the use of the word 'true': Three factors are present in every 'signification situation' (as we shall call the situation wherein language purports to signify a fact of some kind, a state of affairs, or 'something that is the case'): first, there is the factor of language itself, the presence of marks or sounds which serve to signify; second, there is the factor of the language-using agent, or interpreter, for whom the language signifies something; and third, there is the factor of 'something' referred to, the content signified. All three aspects must be present in any genuine signification situation. Leslie Armour similarly indicates that the problem of truth really arises only when we are faced with the three ingredients of the assertion, the world and the person who 'purports' something about the world in making the statement (Armour 1969: 209, 233). Statements about states of affairs in the world, therefore, are not wholly objective but are rather, in a sense, 'creations' of meaning by and for persons. As Michael Polanyi puts it, truth, although a matter of correspondence between statement and state of affairs, must be spoken of in terms of the asseveration of a sentence (or statement expressed by the sentence) because of what he calls 'the personal mode of meaning' (1958: 215f). I find Polanyi's understanding of truth to do justice to all the elements of the question and shall confine myself in the rest of this section, therefore, to a brief explication of his conception of the nature of truth. Truth, according to Polanyi, must be spoken of in terms of the asseveration of a sentence because of 'the personal mode of meaning' in all human discourse. The use of language is not a 'mechanical' type of procedure but rather a personal one, and hence not subject to the

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precision of explicit rules. Even denotation, claims Polanyi, is an art - that is, 'whatever we say about things assumes our endorsement of our skill in practising this art' (1958: 81). The reason is evident: 'Precision and imprecision is a property of a designation when it is tested by matching it against something which is not a designation, but is the situation on which the designation bears' (ibid., p. 251). This test cannot itself be tested in the same manner, however because the test of a designation is, at least partially, a tacit performance and so lacks the duality needed to make 'the confrontation and matching of two things the designation and the designate' a logical possibility (ibid.). Thus the declaration of a descriptive term as 'precise' rests on the result of a test which cannot itself be said to be precise in the same sense. Polanyi acknowledges that 'the application of the term "precise" might once more be said to be precise, or imprecise, when we confront it with the test from which it was derived'; but then goes on to claim that 'this second confrontation would have to rely once more on a personal appraisal which cannot be said to be precise in the same sense in which the description can be so that the precision of a word will ultimately always rely, therefore, on a test which is not precise in the same sense as the word is said to be' (ibid.). To avoid the inevitable infinite regress this would involve one in, Polanyi denies to the word 'precise' any descriptive character. He maintains rather that the word designates approval 'of an act of our own which we have found satisfying while carrying it out' (1958: 252). He therefore concludes (ibid.) that . . . only a speaker or a listener can mean something by a word . . . a word in itself can mean nothing. When the act of meaning is thus brought home to a person exercising his understanding of things by the use of words which describe them, the possibility of performing the act of meaning according to strict criteria appears logically meaningless. For any strictly formal operation would be impersonal and could not therefore convey the speaker's personal commitment.

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We must therefore learn to accept the risks of semantic indeterminacy. We see, that is, that only words of indeterminate meaning can have any bearing upon reality, and that we must, consequently, credit ourselves with the ability to perceive that bearing. 'This prospect may sound deplorable', he admits (ibid., p. 253), But a program that accepts it may at least claim to be self-consistent, while any philosophy that sets up strictness of meaning as its ideal is self-contradictory. For if the active participation of the philosopher in meaning what he says is regarded by it as a defect which precludes the achievement of objective validity, it must reject itself by these standards. This fiduciary mode of assertion has an important bearing upon the problem of truth, for implied in such an analysis is the idea that 'an articulate assertion is composed of two parts: a sentence conveying the content of what is asserted and a tacit act by which the sentence is asserted' (1958: 254). The sentence, the first element, always remains the same regardless of whether it is asserted or denied. That is, every statement or assertion can be made either in good faith or as a lie - 'a truthful statement commits the speaker to a belief in what is asserted . . . an untruthful statement withholds this belief' - without however withholding explicit or overt affirmation of the statement (ibid.). This belief in what is asserted does not, however, of itself guarantee that which is being asserted. Thus an adequate theory of truth must account for both parts of the articulated assertion: the sentence conveying the content and the tacit act by which the sentence is asserted. The articulate assertion can be tested, claims Polanyi, by separating it from its tacit component and confronting that unasserted sentence with experience. Then, 'if as a result of this test we decide to renew the act of assertion , the two parts are reunited and the sentence is reasserted. This reassertion may be made explicit by saying that the originally asserted sentence is true' (ibid.). But to put this assertion or reassertion of the sentence in the

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form of the expression 'p is true', says Polanyi, is misleading, for it disguises what is really an act of commitment as a sentence which states a fact about another sentence. And this involves us in logical paradoxes, for if the sentence 'pT must be followed by the sentence 'p is "true"; and if 'p is true' is itself a sentence, then this sentence, namely 'p is true', must be followed by '"p is "true" is true'; and so on, ad infinitum. All this can be avoided by avoiding the misleading expression of the tacit component of an articulate assertion, in the form of a descriptive sentence. The phrase 'is true' reveals a tacit act of comprehension. Thus Polanyi comes to redefine truth as follows (1958: 255): We have re-defined the word 'true' as expressing the asseveration of the sentence to which it refers. This is closely akin to Tarski's definition of 'true' which implies, for example: '"snow is white" is true if and only if snow is white.' But Tarski's definition now appears to equate a sentence with an action. This anomaly can be eliminated by revising the definition as follows: 1 shall say that "snow is white" is true if and only if I believe that snow is white.' Or perhaps more reasonably: If I believe snow is white I shall say that "snow is white" is true.' This transposition of what at first appears to be the impersonal assertion of fact into a fiduciary mode, according to Polanyi, reflects the actual situation correctly, in that such an assertion must always be attributed to a definite person at a particular time and place whose standards or criteria of truth and falsity are ultimately upheld by his own confidence in them. This must not be considered, however, as an espousal of a subjectivist conception of truth (e.g., Kierkegaardian). Polanyi is well aware that what one believes, even if with infinite passion, might well be wrong and that what one does not believe might be right. But his point is that assent to the claim is not a wholly critical affair (ibid., p. 312):

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. . . to accept the framework of commitment as the only situation in which sincere affirmations can be made, is to accredit in advance (if anything is ever to be affirmed) affirmations against which objections can be raised that cannot be refuted. It allows us to commit ourselves on evidence which, but for the weight of our own personal judgment, would admit of other conclusions. We may firmly believe what we might conceivably doubt. And may hold to be true what might conceivably be false. There is then in Polanyi a subjectivist stance that takes seriously a person's involvement in 'knowing the truth'. There is a decided existentialist ring to his conception of t r u t h , but without rejection of the idea of correspondence and the objective nature of truth. There is some similarity here, therefore, with the existentialist theory of truth, for existentialism, as Luijpen, for example, remarks (1963: 143), does not deny the classical definition of truth but rather takes far more seriously the reality of 'intentionality.' What existentialism denies then is the objectivist conception of truth as talk (description) of 'brute reality', the 'thing-in-itself' without me. As Luijpen puts i t , 'brute reality cannot be affirmed by me, for the affirmation itself signifies the very relation which I would have to negate to be able to speak of brute reality' (1963: 142). Thus for the existentialist (1963: 144): The 'place' of truth is not primarily in the judgment, the statement (Aussage), the sentence (Satz), but in man's existence insofar as being man is to exist consciously. The agreement of the judgment with reality presupposes that reality has already been taken out of concealedness. This requires a certain 'light' the light of conscious existence. . . . It is, therefore, necessary to see that the truth of the judgment presupposes both truth as the unconcealedness of things and the truth of human existence as the unveiling of things. The truth of the judgment presupposes the being-in-truth of man.^ Polanyi is well aware that the process of justifying one's belief may appear but a futile authorization of one's

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own authority but claims nevertheless that this is precisely the situation we find ourselves in. As I have already suggested, such a position may sound deplorable, but at least it is consistent. Moreover, Polanyi claims for his view not only consistency but also significance - it does not fall into a radical subjectivity in its reaction against a pseudoobjectivity. The apparent subjectivity implied by such a conception of truth is overcome, claims Polanyi, when we understand that within the framework of the commitment involved in obtaining knowledge, the personal and the universal mutually require each other. As Polanyi phrases i t , 'here the personal comes into existence by asserting universal intent and the universal is constituted by being accepted as the impersonal term of this personal commitment' (1958: 308). It is true that one may believe what one likes and yet all arbitrariness is, nevertheless, still avoided because of a craving for the universal (ibid.): The enquiring scientist's intimations of a hidden reality are personal. They are his own beliefs, which - owing to his originality - as yet he alone holds. Yet they are not a subjective state of mind, but convictions held with universal intent, and heavy with arduous projects. It was he who decided what to believe, and yet there is no arbitrariness in his decision. For he arrived at his conclusions by the utmost exercise of responsibility. He has reached responsible beliefs, born of necessity, and not changeable at will. In a heuristic commitment a f f i r mation, surrender and legislation are fused into a single thought, bearing on a hidden reality. Thus, against the existentialists, like Nietzsche for example, who emphasize the role of pure will in the c r e a tion of t r u t h , Polanyi claims that that act of will stands under the judgment of a hidden reality he seeks to discover (ibid., p. 34): His vision of the problem, his obsession with it and his final leap to discovery are all filled from beginning to end with an obligation to our external objective . . .

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even in the shaping of his own anticipations the knower is controlled by impersonal requirements. His acts are personal judgments exercised responsibly with a view to a reality with which he is seeking to establish contact. This holds for all seeking and finding of external truth. (Polanyi, 1966: 77) . . . . Our claim to speak of reality serves thus as the external anchoring of our commitment in making a factual statement. And against the strict objectivists he writes: '. . . to accept commitment as the only relation in which we can believe something to be true; is to abandon all efforts to find strict criteria of truth and strict procedures for arriving at the truth. . . which can mean nothing to anybody'(ibid.). 5 To summarize, truth is to be understood as the sincere asseveration of statements about the world around us, involving the belief that the statements accepted describe, correspond to, that reality. It is always understood that the asseveration of such statements always involves a personal coefficient - it can never be the result of a 'mechanical' type of application of strict rules.*' A PRELIMINARY ANALYSIS OF 'THE TRUTH OF RELIGION' Given the understanding of truth outlined above it would seem that talk of truth in» religion must concern itself primarily with belief (doctrine). There is no doubt that religion is a complex phenomenon involving experience (numinous or mystical), feeling and emotion, ritual action, moral practice etc., but it is not at all clear how 'truth' could possibly reside in feelings or practices since truth is a property of propositions and statements. The phrase 'the truth of religion', therefore is best understood as referring to 'religious beliefs'. Taken as a subjective genitive the phrase is best translated 'the truth (truths) flowing from religion (religious traditions)'. The truth of religion then refers to knowledge of the transcendent gained through religious experience or by revelation. The

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experience is distinct from its expression in terms of belief statements. Such inner religious experience is not open to assessment of any kind, except to reveal itself in terms of beliefs and actions. The truth or falsity of an experience, t h e r e f o r e , if such talk is permitted at all, can only be assessed indirectly through an analysis of its various expressions - particularly in its cognitive (doctrinal) expression. Taken as a descriptive genitive the phrase 'the truth of religion' also seems to refer to a special kind of 'being'. 'Religious truth' seems to refer to an 'ultimate' or 'divine truth' as over against an ordinary truth in the sense that here we have 'truth about an extraordinary being or state of affairs'. Religious truth is information that has ultimate significance for one's own meaningful existence. Even taken as an objective genitive and translated as 'the truth about religion', the phrase has about it the suggestion of the truth of knowledge claims of a peculiar sort. To try to come to an accurate description about religion or any particular religious tradition - of what is believed, how life is lived within the religious framework, e t c . - involves asking whether what is believed is true or false. To know whether the beliefs held are true or false is surely to know more about a particular religion than not to know their truth or falsity. Only on the basis of such knowledge, f u r t h e r m o r e , can one ever begin to explain the phenomenon of religion which is further knowledge about religion. That the truth of religion is to be found primarily in doctrines and beliefs has been clearly argued by John Wilson in his (1958, 1961). According to Wilson, truth is a property of statements and 'religious statements', in other words about statements referring to religious entities, beings, events, e t c . Wilson is quite aware of the variety of religious utterances and assertions; empirical, moral, poetic, historical, analytic, metaphysical, e t c . But of particular significance in religion, he insists, is that it o f f e r s special information about special or supernatural powers of ultimate concern to man. It is true that religion may also involve historical and/or scientific claims but it does so secondarily. 'The statements which play a key part in religious doctrine', writes Wilson (1958: 35), 'are the

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metaphysical statements: and the truth value of any religion must in the long run stand or fall by the truth of those statements.' Religious doctrine, therefore, stands as the touchstone in any consideration of the truth of religion and the structure of religious doctrine consists essentially of metaphysical statements. Thus he advises, in the search after the truth of religion, that we 'concern ourselves not with whole religions, whose logical structure is difficult to determine authoritatively, but with a few basic metaphysical statements' (1958: 115)J If truth in other branches of knowledge and other disciplines calls for critical assessment involving the laborious process of collecting, sifting and analyzing the evidence then it must require the same in religious matters. To believe something to be true is to have good grounds - to have good reason and evidence - for believing it to be true. No such cognitively informative statement can be self-evidently true. And the question here is whether or not the metaphysical statements of religion are capable of verification, for it is obvious that their verification, whatever that may be, is not as easily attained as it is with historical or scientific statements. 'The difficulty with religious assertions', he makes clear (1961: 61) 'is that they do not seem to refer us to any experiences in the outside world which might be taken to support them: they do not seem, as it were, to have any lines of communication with external reality.' And yet he also points out that such metaphysical statements might well be verified in terms of experience of the external world if 'experience' is not restricted to 'empirical' or 'sense experience'. The view that all knowledge and every kind of experience depends ultimately on sense experience is not, he insists, unassailable.** 'Religious experience' therefore might well be a source of knowledge not obtainable through ordinary sense experience. Consequently '. . . it remains true that the central beliefs of religion are metaphysical beliefs, which can therefore only be verified by that type of experience which is relevant to them' (1958: 87). And such experience is supported by argument (natural theology?): 'We can only talk about "meeting God" or "experiencing the

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supernatural" if we have good reason to believe that God and the supernatural are real' (1961: 71).9 The possibility of the verification of metaphysical statements could be made much stronger, it seems to me, if one recognizes the possibility of indirect empirical statements. That metaphysical and nonmetaphysical s t a t e ments are intricately interconnected, the basis for any indirect verification, is recognized by Wilson: 'We may confidently assert t h e r e f o r e , that the structure of religious doctrine consists essentially of metaphysical s t a t e m e n t s , supported and assisted by historical and scientific s t a t e ments, and statements about the use of words' (1958: 38). He does not however see the significance of that connection. R. S. Heimbeck, (1969) for example, recounts that transempirical s t a t e m e n t s , such as 'God sentences', can be made checkable or falsifiable in an indirect way. This can be done, by distinguishing between 'criteria' for a truth statement and 'evidence' for the same. It is a different matter for something to be the case than for one to know or have reasons to believe that it is the case. 'Criteria' concern the conditions determining the meaning of a cognitive sentence; and 'evidence' concerns the conditions under which the truth or falsity of the statement is ascertained. It is possible thus to state what the truth conditions of a sentence a r e , independently of the availability of evidence. Such criteria can be derived from entailment or incompatibility relationships such transempirical sentences have with more directly empirical statements (Heimbeck 1969: 53): An entailment-rule, t h e r e f o r e , of the form 'p entails q' can function as a rule for the meaning of the sentence employed in making 'p' a rule in which 'q' exhibits a t least part of the meaning of the sentence 'p'. and incompatibility-rules also can function to demarcate the meaning of 'p', but they do so negatively by laying down what meanings are rejected by 'p'.lO Christian elaborates the importance of the propositional element in 'religious truth' in a more sophisticated way than Heimbeck (W. Christian 1964; In addition see also his 1969; 1972 and 1975). Christian does not deny that

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religious utterances function in expressive, evocative and injunctive ways, but claims only that they also function propositionally or referentially - that they attempt to say something about external reality. Christian claims that we can distinguish, for example, 'doctrinal questions' from 'basic questions' and both of these from 'basic suppositions'. 'Basic suppositions' are those in which an ultimate ground of existing reality is taken for granted much as a moral law or physical reality is assumed by the person of moral or scientific interest respectively. It is from such a 'basic supposition' that basic questions derive - 'What is it that is the ground of being?' Answers to this question are called 'basic proposals', and they form the chief interests in Christian's analysis. •Basic religious proposals', Christian admits, are often carried in symbols, myths, and images and so are not, in the first instance at least, clearly propositional. He admits some validity, therefore, to the resentment of explicating such 'religious suggestions', as he calls them, propositionally but does not see the objections adequate to support a nonpropositional or noncognitivist interpretation of religion. He writes (1964: 106-107): Granting that concrete experience (imaginative, intuitive, paradoxical, personal) is primary in religion, still, when we inquire, this is not enough. We cannot be content with images and figures and symbols, though we cannot do without them. We cannot be content with them because we have to understand what we experience, - for this purpose 'reason' in the sense meant by Newman is essential. . . . No doubt the 'heart' is not reached by reason; but we need to understand - and be able to say - what is in our hearts. He goes on then to summarize the notion of a basic religious proposal as follows: 'A basic religious proposal, then is an epitomization of the truth-claim made by a doctrinal scheme as a whole. It condenses the scheme's answer to a basic question. And, since the scheme explicates some paradigmatic suggestion, we may say that a basic proposal

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states the meaning of the suggestion summarily' (1964: 109). The marks of a 'basic proposal' then a r e , f i r s t , that its subject term expresses or refers to the central reality of some scheme and, second, that its predicate expresses the basic concept of some inquiry. For any such proposal four conditions must be fulfilled before it can be considered to be making a truth claim: (a) the proposal must be capable of self-consistent formulation; (b) it must be liable to significant disagreement; (c) it must permit reference to its logical subject; and (d) it must permit some support of the assignment of its predicate to its subject. (Christian recognizes at least nine types of basic proposals.) 'Religious arguments' arise where there are differing subjects proposed as answers to the basic religious questions: e.g., to the basic question 'What is the ground of all reality, including our own existence?' can come the reply 'God'; 'Dharma'; 'Nature'; 'Brahman'; e t c . Of such arguments he says (1964: 164, 165): It does not seem possible that any religious argument could be absolutely decisive in the sense that it would establish beyond any conceivable doubt that some basic religious proposal is true and all others are untrue though it is conceivable that an argument might e s t a blish its conclusion beyond reasonable doubt. . . . while the least we should hope for is to show that a proposal is as consistent and well grounded as its main alternatives, the most we could hope for is to show it is more consistent and better grounded than its main a l t e r natives. We cannot achieve strict proofs in religious arguments. An easy decision between or among various religious proposals or doctrinal schemes is therefore not a possibility, as discussion of W. C. Smith above has already indicated, but to claim that no such assessment can be made seems unacceptable. S m a r t , for example, notes (1970: 117-118) that even given that 'religious discourse' has a logic of its own, it nevertheless exhibits a concern for truth and hence reveals a conflict of doctrines:

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If religious thinking is, so to speak, autonomous or independent, then we may find within it some guides as to how religious truth is to be arrived at. Of course it is clear that we shall not find any absolutely knockdown arguments which would persuade any perceptive and pious person of the truth of one set of beliefs rather than others. For since perceptive and pious persons can be found in different religions and denominations, such arguments would have to have the effect of converting them. But we see from experience that it is comparatively rare for people to change their faith. But this need not destroy the validity of the point we are making. For certainly we can discover tests of truth of religion which would at least be recognized as relevant by adherents of other faiths. The fact that men argue about religion indicates this. And though we are not in a position to produce knock-down arguments, the arguments and considerations themselves have a long-term effect, may weigh as time goes on in a social rather than a personal dialogue. He has, elsewhere (1958), called attention to some of the elements of the justification of religious doctrines such as (a) the bases upon which doctrinal proposals rest; (b) formal considerations of comprehensiveness, simplicity, etc.; (c) organic considerations of consistency and coherence in the system composed of the various possible strands of religion (mystical, numinous or incarnational); and (d) priority decisions or preferential justification involving option for one strand as opposed to another. Choices, therefore, as to correct religious doctrine or true doctrine can be made. Not only are there internal criteria of assessment of religious truth, for they can only help decide which of the many doctrines are true if something like the truth is to be found in religion at all, there is also the possiblity of rationally and 'empirically' assessing the truth of religion in general: '. . . though there is irony in the fact that opposite philosophical conclusions are sometimes hailed as allies of faith, the enterprise of philosophizing about the faith cannot be escaped. Christians believe in Christian doctrines because they believe that

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they are true. This indeed should be a tautology. But truth demands evidence. We cannot decide that something is true the way we can decide to play patience 1 (Smart 1969: 20). It must be pointed out here that neither Christian nor Smart claim that 'propositional truth', as it has been described here, is an exhaustive interpretation of 'religious truth'. This comes out particularly clearly when Christian speaks (1964: 239-240) of the subjective importance of 'religious suggestions': A suggestion may lead to more authentic existence; it may enable us to be more true to ourselves. We can connect this also with 'Christ is the truth' and with the 'Four Noble Truths' of Buddhism, and more generally with the notion of 'saving truth' which is the primary force of 'truth' in religious literature. Truth is a way of being, not just a way of thinking. 'The moment, of truth' in the full ring has affinities with these uses. In all these cases truth is a quality of things or s t a t e s , not a quality of propositions. He admits that one option, in the light of this, is to proclaim this aspect of truth the only aspect of 'religious truth'. He asserts, however, that even 'religious suggestions' yield propositions that can be true or false: '. . . a suggestion might be "true" in the sense that it gives good promise of yielding propositions which will turn out to be true. We adopt it because we think it will guide us to an explicit answer to our question' (Christian 1964: 240) This twofold character of 'religious truth', involving personal commitment and involvement as well as an element of 'correspondence of statement to the external world' is in keeping with the conception of truth as discussed in connection with Polanyi's thought above.

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"Religious Truth": A Critical Inventory of Alternative Proposals

For many, talk of the truth or falsity of propositions is by no means adequate when discussing 'religious truth'. It is imperative therefore to look, at least briefly, at alternative proposals and suggestions as to the nature and locus of religious truth - some of which have already been adverted to in the preceding discussion. Although I agree in part with many of the alternative proposals that insist that 'religious truth' is more than 'propositional truth', I cannot, as must by now be evident, accept as adequate any proposal that wholly eliminates this propositional element. I shall attempt to show, furthermore, that the alternative proposals seem, tacitly at least, to involve a 'correspondence' (and hence propositional) notion or understanding of religious truth. TRUTH AND BEING: AN ONTOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION OF RELIGIOUS TRUTH W. T. Stace (1952, 1960) argues forcefully that 'religious truth' is not and cannot be propositional truth. Only claims about the natural world - only scientific claims - have a propositional character and can be true in the sense of 'corresponding' with the reality which the statement purports to describe. 'Religious truth', therefore, must be nonpropositional. There are, however, as Stace admits, 'religious propositions' but they are not true or false in a literal (correspondence) sense but only symbolically; for truth in religion, claims Stace, applies primarily to God and God is not a proposition. Propositions about God, then, appear to be true or false only in the sense that

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some propositions about Him provide more of a 'sense' or 'feeling' of His presence - more of a sense of revelation or encounter with God. Religious propositions, t h e r e f o r e , do not have a descriptive function so much as an 'engineering' function; they are of value that is in helping to bring about a religious experience which is itself 'the truth' (religious truth). As Stace puts it '. . . most men will always require myths and images to evoke in them the divine vision' (1960: 277). And it is this vision - God that is the Truth, for when the soul is convicted in such religious experience it is not, claims Stace, convinced of a proposition: 'There is nothing of which the soul is convinced except the conviction itself' (1952: 121). Knowledge of God (again, religious t r u t h ) , is possessed in that experience of conviction which surpasses all conceptualizing. Religious t r u t h , t h e r e f o r e , is gained by intuition: 'the name given to the apprehension of the divine in mystical experience' (1952: 41). According to Stace (1952: 116), The sense in which God is the Truth must not be confused with the wholly different sense in which propositions whether scientific or religious, are true. Scientific propositions a r e , or are intended to be literally true. Religious propositions are symbolically true. They may be said to possess more t r u t h , or less, insofar as their symbolism is more adequate or less. But when God is called the Truth it is not anything of this sort that is meant. For t r u t h , in the sense in which even a religious creed is t r u e , is an attribute of propositions. But God is not a proposition, and cannot be true in any such sense. Nor does the Truth of God mean merely that religious propositions about God are symbolically true. Truth is evidently an attribute of God Himself. 'I am the Truth', does not mean 'some propositions about me are true.' What follows from this understanding of religious truth is that we are forced to distinguish very sharply between theology (religion expressed propositionally) and religion. And he insists somewhat paradoxically that theology misses the mystic knowledge (religious truth) gained in intuition

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because it is concerned with logic and system, whereas the intuition of God, which is the 'core of religion', is immune to and transcends such 'logicizing' (1952: 153). Thus: 'A man may know theology without knowing God. And he may know God without knowing theology. And there could not be any theology unless there were first the mystic inner sense. Theology is but the attempt to interpret that experience to the intellect' (1952: 46). The road to God, to religious truth, therefore, is not open to the conceptual intellect because it is not of a conceptual nature - it is rather, experiential. We have in Stace, it seems, a multilevel theory of truth. Propositional truth concerns the natural world; 'religious truth' proper concerns the divine realm that transcends the natural realm and is contained in, or more precisely, is equivalent to the experience of or encounter with that realm; and lastly 'religious truth' as symbolic statements that express and hence 'point to' and/or induce the experience of 'the Truth'. I shall refer to these various levels of truth as propositional truth, religious truth, and symbolic truth, respectively. The latter two are not always kept distinct in Stace's discussion and it is difficult to assess whether the claim to the transcendence of religious truth over propositional truth also applies to symbolic truth. Since the religious truth proper, namely God, is wholly different than propositional truth it is difficult to know how Stace can lay claim to its transcendent character. Such a claim, it seems, is not a claim within the naturalistic framework and so cannot be considered a description of the true state of affairs vis a vis the natural and religious realms. It must be, then, a symbolic statement and hence a 'religious proposition' intent upon engineering a kind of religious experience. Consequently Stace's talk of various levels of truth requiring various distinct modes of perception (intellection?) is ambiguous in the extreme. Passages such as the following (1952: 123, 130) bristle with difficulties: From the point of view of the natural order the divine is an illusion. This is the doctrine of atheistic naturalism. The doctrine is not false. It is true. It is indeed

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the sole natural t r u t h , the sole truth insofar as the realm of facts is concerned. From the point of view of the divine order, the natural world is an illusion. This is the doctrine of acosmism, which, within its own r e a l m , is likewise the sole truth. And these two doctrines do not contradict one another, because they concern two different orders of being. Acosmism is to atheistic naturalism merely the reverse side of the coin. Naturalistic explanations a r e , as we have seen true in their own kind. And therefore we shall not hesitate to accept whatever a well-founded psychology may tell us regarding the origin and cause of the mystic doctrine. But there is a deeper explanation of which the naturalist , as such knows nothing, because it is rooted in the divine moment. If in f a c t the naturalistic explanations of religion and religious experience are t r u e , then religion is an illusion; God is an illusion. But this is not so from the vantage point of the mystic experience. It would appear therefore that the student of religion is forced to choose between the two if he is to come to any interpretive conclusions about his study of the phenomena. Yet Stace denies that such a choice is necessary: . . from the statement that God is not objective it does not follow that he is subj e c t i v e , or merely an illusory thought, or idea, or psychological state in somebody's mind. For what the mystic experience teaches is that He is neither objective nor subjective' (1960: 273). But this hardly resolves the problem for that which is neither subjective nor objective is still not objective and hence still illusory to the naturalist mind, notwithstanding Stace's further claim 'that God should be neither the one nor the other may seem incomprehensible, but this should not surprise us since the incomprehensibility of God is asserted, in one form or another, in all the great religions' (ibid., p. 273). To say t h a t both the naturalistic view and the religious view are true is to deny the problem not to solve i t , for it would make as much sense to say that both of them are false. Indeed in the eyes of each, the other is false - and since,

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according to Stace, each is true, then each must also be false. This absurd conclusion follows, however, only if 'true' is used in the same sense in each context. And yet his talk of higher and lower levels of truth seems to require just this for he tells us that religious propositions - the myths and symbols that do not have the character of propositional truths - 'hint at a deeper myth'. 'But if so', he continues (1960: 271), 'there must be [i.e. objectively, out there over against us] a deeper truth to be hinted at.' Other difficulties also plague Stace's understanding of 'religious truth'. Stace talks as if the symbolic truth of religious propositions is a mediation of the wholly nonpropositional truth that God is and the truth of ordinary propositions within the naturalistic framework of thought. Theology, that is, is somehow intermediate between religion (i.e., religious experience) and the ordinary understanding of the world (i.e., the conceptual understanding). But the nature of that link is left extremely ambiguous. Stace's suggestion, as seen in the quotations above, is that it is not a necessary connection since one may know God without knowing theology and theology without knowing God. But if it is not necessary it seems that the exoteric aspect of religion is really of little significance in respect to the esoteric aspect of religion - of the inner, private, religious experience of the individual. Theology's attempt to interpret that experience to the intellect will have validity, if at all, only for the one who has had the religious experience, for the truth of the moment of divine revelation (intuition) is seen only externally, and hence in a distorting way, by the naturalistically oriented man. No criticism therefore can ever be lodged against 'inner religion' from the standpoint of a critique of theology for theology is a lower-level truth that becomes 'no-truth' upon the 'liberation' of the religious experience. The religious experience and (symbolic) religious 'claims' (propositions) are forever free from criticism for, '. . . all religious reasoning must, if it is truly understood, be circular. And this means that nothing in the divine order is ever either implied or contradicted by anything in the natural order; and that religious truth in general can never

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be either proved or disproved' (1952: 141). The circularity, however, is a vicious one and places religion beyond scientific analysis as all two-level theories of t r u t h , as I have pointed out above in my discussion of Kierkegaard, are bound to do. It is strange, in the light of Stace's argument as I have outlined it here, that he can nevertheless claim that some of the symbolic religious 'propositions' may possess more truth or less; that their symbolism can be more adequate or less. One gets the feeling here that the notion of truth as correspondence of claim to reality is still somehow lurking in the wings. And in his work (1960) Stace quite readily agrees f u r t h e r m o r e , that religion is, or implies, some complex of propositions about the universe which, presumably, can be true or false. But these propositions, he insists, cannot conflict with statements or claims in the naturalistic framework for '. . . the solution of the religious problem cannot be a compromise . . . scientific naturalism must be one hundred per cent true and religion one hundred per cent true. Naturalism is the sole truth about the natural order, and religion is the sole truth about the eternal order. Neither order interferes with the other' (1960: 274). Yet the two orders intersect and one transcends the other for the religious myths hint at a 'deeper' truth. The essential ambiguity comes out clearly in the following passage (ibid., p. 254, 255): It is correct t h a t , as viewed from a certain level, there are plenty of pleasures and enjoyments available in the common way of l i f e , and that many of them are perfectly innocent. The saint is not denying this. He is not denying that you can have a good t i m e , and that having a good time is very enjoyable. But the level a t which these things are said is superficial. At a deeper level we find that all this is hollowness, vacancy, and futility. Underneath the glitter of the tinsel there is darkness. At the core there is misery. That is why we are continually absorbing ourselves in ephemeral pursuits. To be absorbed is to forget what we ourselves, in the depths, actually are. We want to forget it. . . . The essential truth of religion, of every religion, is

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that from this darkness of life there is a way out, a way into the light. Beliefs about the world it seems are an important aspect of religion after all. Religion may be primarily concerned with experience and belief claims may rest upon such experience, but they are, nevertheless, a genuine expression of that experience. Consequently, claims about the nature of those beliefs are also, in some sense, claims about the nature of the inner religious experience. Indeed, as I have argued above, if this were not the case, it is obvious that the student of religion could never know anything of true religion since all that the student has access to is the expression of that experience in emotion, action, and thought. Gustav Mensching (1971) similarly distinguishes a twofold meaning of truth as (a) 'rational correctness,' that is, the quality of a statement about an objective reality and (b) 'a numinous reality', 'in which man must participate in order to be saved from the woe of wordly existence' (1971: 136). He admits that truth as 'rational correctness' is important but claims that it is of secondary importance only: 'Truth in the sense of right teaching has to be transcended and overcome by the high Truth' (bid., p. 136). His 'overcome' and 'transcend' here almost seem to suggest an 'ignoring' or 'abrogation' of this lower level of truth, of right teaching. And yet as I have pointed out above, Mensching simultaneously insists upon the necessity of 'right teaching'. Nevertheless, he does not explicate the nature of the relationship between the two levels of truth except in terms of 'transcendence' involving an abrogation of the lower-level truth: 'We cannot pass judgment on the 'truth' and on the correctness of this truth in religion on academic grounds, because the numinous in itself is no object of scientific study being only accessible to faith, through religious experience' (1971: 167). In the final analysis Mensching's understanding of religious truth does not concern the truth or falsity of propositions at all; it is rather a highly personal and hence nonpropositional truth. But in making the truth of religion inaccessible to the objective student of religion he has also made religion

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itself inaccessible. To study the 'externals 1 of religion the expressions of religious experience - brings one no closer to an understanding of religion than study of weather conditions in northern Canada, which is hardly an acceptable conclusion. This distinction between propositional and ontological truth has, as is to be expected, a strong appeal to theologians since that ultimate reality of which the theologian wishes to speak is the all-encompassing horizon to every concept and thought and hence the ground of all and every truth. And as horizon it cannot itself be the object of explicit investigation, making it impossible to talk about true or false propositional knowledge about the ultimate. Religious truth therefore is not the correctness of propositions but rather the self-authenticating ground of our existence. Thus Karl Rahner, for example, writes (1971: 234): It must be reiterated that those who define truth as 'the adequation of a statement to the objective s t a t e of affairs' are viewing it only as it appears to b e , and only in a quite superficial connection, and so as a property which applies with equal validity to every correct proposition. In f a c t t r u t h , like Being, is first and last a property inherent in reality itself (considered as the ' a b l e - t o - b e - m a d e - m a n i f e s t ' as actually revealed) and simultaneously interest in knowledge too (considered as openness to the self-manifestation of being). As such it is an analagous entity, and an analagous concept. For this reason it is precisely not applicable in any primary or basic sense in contexts dealing with the practical usefulness of a formula for the technical manipulation of material objects or for predicting the outcome of processes in the natural order.1 EXISTENTIAL TRUTH: 'RELIGIOUS TRUTH' AS THE ACTUALIZATION OF ONE'S TRUE SELF There are many similarities between the 'existentialist' understanding of religious truth and that understanding that

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identifies religious truth with God's being. A detailed account of such an understanding of religious truth is to be found in the personal idealism of Rudolf Eucken (particularly as expounded in Eucken 1911). That truth, he insists, is not a propositional truth but rather, essentially, a personal ideal. Religion is the struggle for a spiritual existence - for an alternative life to that of the surrounding world and that can come not by mere ratiocination. And the test of religion (religious truth) must therefore be closely concerned with spiritual fruitfulness, i.e., the emergence of a full, wholesome existence (Eucken 1911: 193): The problem of the truth of religion receives . . . its existence from out of the fact that an absolute life, superior to the world, is recognized as effective in our sphere. Through such a recognition the conception of the Godhead receives the meaning of an Absolute Spiritual Life; out of this all the remainder of life is to be moulded. This yields a decisive break with the old method of proof - methods that sought before all else to prove an existence on the other side of the human circle, and to set oneself in relationship with such an existence. Through this the intellect gained inevitably a leading position, for by what other means could we perceive an external existing reality? On the contrary, the revelation and the appropriation of a turn towards the life-process call upon the whole man and desire a forward act of the whole -soul . . . . Truth, therefore, is not something found distinct and separate from the living, experiencing individual. Truth cannot be understood simply in terms of such abstract criteria as correspondence of propositions with reality, or coherence, etc., but must always be related to the 'lebensprozess' i.e., in light of the needs of the inner life. Life precedes philosophy and so philosophy - especially in its relation to truth - must be subservient to life. The test of truth, therefore, lies in the power exhibited in the unification of life in its overcoming of the oppositions it faces. In this, of course, religious truth stands opposed, it

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seems, to the truth developed in the sphere of the sciences where truth refers only to the correspondence of our thinking with a reality external to ourselves. The two truths, it would appear therefore, are opposed to each other, science treating as an open question what religion takes as personal conviction. The clash is seen most clearly in the relation of history to religious truth (ibid., p. 131): The conflict into which the historical and religious convictions enter becomes specially bitter in connection with the problem of truth. Religion understands truth as simply external and unchangeable; although the Divine revelation discloses itself within time, it is in no manner a product of time, and it does not follow the current of time; and it views all change as degradation. The historical development, on the contrary, with the incessant shifting of its situation and its restless progress, transforms truth into a child of the times (veritas temporis filia); the tendencies as well as the convictions have to correspond to the exigencies of the situation of things. On account of this, all spiritual values become fluid, all truth becomes relative, all unfolding into absolute validity of the intrinsic content of thought and belief is energetically fought against. If, however, religion can never renounce an absolute and eternal truth, all decision in favour of history will be a decision against religion. Eucken concludes, therefore, that religious truth cannot be obtained by the naive intellectualist mode of thought, as in the past. Religious truth is not gained, as a possession, through sense impressions and ratiocination but is, rather, 'created' by the inward activity of the whole man, sustained through spontaneous decision for the ideal life. Thus he writes (ibid., p. 518): Religion has to prove its rights not only against certain propositions but against a deep-rooted mode of thinking. By this we mean, first of all, that naive fixed mode of thinking with its intellectual outlook on the world -

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a mode of thinking which conceives that the truth can be determined independently of life, and that can afterwards be led to it. Such happens only in connection with the relationship to a world existing outside ourselves; but if it is necessary to conceive of the whole of reality only as something external to ourselves, then religion stands condemned. Religious truth therefore is not primarily dogma; it is a transformative power that involves a transformation of the self through an integration and assertion of the self. Thus it is not a set of new truths about transcendent realities so much as a new depth perspective of (an otherwise) ordinary reality (as conceived by the 'objective' mind) and our place within it, which 'compels our present world to sink to a secondary level' (Eucken 1911: 249). The truth of religion, consequently, is not a description of superrealities beyond our ordinary world, but is rather a transformation of our ordinary world itself (1911: 518519): Religion is not a communication of over-world secrets, but the inauguration of an over-world life; and it is with the acknowledgement and assimilation of such a life that faith has to do; it has to do with an appropriation which carries a synthesis and an ascent of man's own nature as well as an advancement and a lofty elevation within itself. The new life brings forth with itself a new conception of reality, but faith all along proceeds to such a reality through life alone; and it is only in the obscuring of this connection and finally in its dissolution that faith becomes a mere assertion concerning things on the other side of this world, and consequently succumbs inevitably to the criticism of knowledge, whilst faith as a power of life precedes knowledge, and it is only out of faith that knowledge becomes possible. To criticize the particular religious tradition without attempting to enter into its totality and its inwardness, claims Eucken, is misdirected. He does not deny that the religious truth of which he speaks '. . . enters into ideas

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but only claims that and has to be set in doctrine . . . they must still . . relate themselves and be adjusted to the life-process, for they cannot proceed as rigid dogmas which would govern the very powers themselves' (ibid., p. 193). To isolate the dogmas in that way would be to lose sight of their intentionality and hence their meaning. Thus, the various historical religions are not, in their beliefs, rituals, e t c . , the truth itself but rather only appearances of the truth and hence pathways to religious truth, i.e., to our 'elevation beyond the ordinary surface-tendency of life.': 'That a religion confesses itself to be an historical religion does not mean that it is to be considered as the final and completed truth, but that it is accepted as a standpoint where there exists the closest possible contact with truth, and where we are able to take possession of it' (Eucken 1911s 535). Insofar as Eucken's understanding of religious truth involes a two-level theory of truth the criticisms lodged against Schuon, Stace, Mensching, and others apply equally here. For Eucken, as for Mensching for example, the religious truth so far outstrips propositional truth that it makes the latter pale to insignificance. Propositional truth may have rational grounds of justification but since it is hardly related to the life process its 'truth' is not really truth for the living person - its irrelevance to our needs makes it an untruth. Such life truths (with which religion is intimately connected) can be known even though they cannot be justified rationally. We can have a vital certainty about them; reason, concerned with propositional truth is unable to deal with these fundamental realities and so is unable to handle the real truth. Reason therefore is unable to pass judgment upon the truth: only he who 'knows' (experiences) it can adjudicate it. On these grounds, however, not only is the truth of religion inaccessible to the objective student, but so also, is religion itself. Erich Frank (1945) presents a more recent expression of the same view of religious truth - with more of an existentialist than idealist character about i t , however. Man wants his life to be meaningful and in that sense wishes to posses 'true existence' (p. 116):

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Man's whole life is a struggle to gain true existence, an effort to achieve substantiality so that he may not have lived in vain and vanish like a shadow. . . . This idea of existential truth is the driving force of all his thought and action . . . . What man really wants is existential truth, the actualization of his true identity. This is not a matter of the 'discovery' of a system of knowledge, but the creativity and imagination which 'produces' truths that are deeper than those expressed in abstract science or philosophy (ibid., p. 95): Art and poetry, to modern man, seem the revelation of a superior truth; the genius now enjoys a position not unlike that of the prophet or saint of earlier generations. But how can his merely imaginary figures have such truth? Obviously they can be true only insofar as they are an adequate expression of the human soul in its relation to the world. Through our senses we perceive physical objects. Imagination, on the other hand, being able to picture things that may not exist, is a source of delusion. But, in this faculty of delusion itself, the soul becomes aware of its own peculiar subjective character which distinguishes it from its objects . . . . Granted that imagination is a cause of our errors, its visions and dreams are uniquely ours and in this its truth consists. Religious truth is thus nonpropositional, noncognitive, nonspeculative, etc. It is complementary to scientific truth not in extending it along its own lines but in providing an extra and different dimension to life. But truth here has changed its meaning drastically. The idea of correspondence seems to be entirely left out, leaving the concept unanchored. Frank fails to see that the search for meaning is, of necessity, a search for more than the subjective; for the uniquely personal vision or dream. One can, and must, agree that all norms or criteria of truth have about them an element of human creativity; that is, that they are in some sense the 'creations' of men projected beyond themselves and to which men then, in turn, submit

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themselves. But their intent is to reveal to us the true nature of our experience. There is , as Polanyi has pointed out (1958), a 'reality interest' even in our 'visions', which is seen in the aura of 'universal intent' they have about them. The concept of truth seems to entail the idea of universality. MYTH, SYMBOL, AND TRUTH: A PRAGMATIC INTERPRETATION OF RELIGIOUS TRUTH The claim that religious truth is beyond mere correctness of propositions is often couched in pragmatic terms; it is a matter of life and not of mere words. The truth of words is a secondhand truth and very o f t e n , in complete opposition to the religious l i f e , is used to evade responsibility. Religious t r u t h , to the contrary, is the truth of action and is only found in action. Edith Hamilton (1948), for example, speaks of religious truth as a realm of truth standing wholly beyond arguments and words - a truth that can only be tested in the experience of life. Christ, she claims, 'put before men no forms whatsoever and only one dogma, love, proved not by telling about i t , but by living it' (1948: 147). 'The truths that are the most important to us', she writes (ibid., p. 5) 'are proved to be true not by reasoning about them or explaining t h e m , but by acting upon them.' The truth of religions, t h e r e f o r e , can only be determined by an examination of their fruits. To seek their truth is to take upon oneself a commitment to 'enact' the faith. Speaking of the possibility of Christianity becoming the religion of the world community of the f u t u r e , Watt writes: 'If it does so, it will not be because of intellectual arguments about its superiority but because it shows superior "fruits" in the lives of Christians, both as individuals and as a community. . . .' (Watt, n.d.: 166). And even more boldly he claims (ibid., p. 164): . . . There can be no objective basis from which the merits of the various religions can be discussed. Each religion is entrenched in its own defensive ideation. . . . Each gives arguments for holding that his religion

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is true and superior, but neither convinces the other, because the arguments of each are only convincing within the set of valuations he holds, that is, are only convincing to those who hold these valuations. Now there is no objective intellectual criterion for sets of valuations any more than there is one for religions. Watt's basic assumption in his approach to the problem of religious truth is that science and religion do not stand in conflict with each other and he talks, in the preface, of coming to the defense of religion against reductionistic accounts of it. Although denying the truth of views that suggest all religious ideas to be false and illusory, he does not simply retreat to a naive acceptance of the cognitive interpretation of religious belief. The truth of religion lies not so much in the abstract notion of its correspondence to an objective reality to which its 'claims' supposedly point, but rather in the fact that religion has a vital function in the lives of men and societies.2 The truth of religion, therefore, can be shown far more clearly sociologically (and hence scientifically) than philosophically or logically. According to Watt (ibid., p. 3), 'Sociology which is a scientific discipline which properly concerns itself with religion, tries to define the function of religion in society. If it can show that religion has an important positive function in society, then the conclusion would appear to be necessary that religious ideas have some truth.' Watt does not explicitly deny that the truth of religious ideation lies in correspondence to an external reality, for he asserts that it is true ideas of the world (in the sense of correspondence?) that enable one to act satisfactorily. That is, religious ideas 'give men a picture of reality by means of which they adjust themselves to reality' (ibid., p. 9; see also p. 35). That is, 'a successful religion is one in which there has been a measure of success in men's adjustment of their life to reality . . . which presupposes a degree of adequacy in the picture of reality, or in other words some truth in the religious ideas' (ibid., p. 9). Nevertheless, in his emphasis upon the primacy of activity in society over thinking and the concomitant functionalism in his explaining religion he seems, in e f f e c t , to repudiate

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all epistemic criteria of truth. He seems, in f a c t , to adopt a Durkheimian position that denies all cognitive value to religious belief while still claiming 'truth' for religion (see Durkheim 1971: 430). Thus Watt speaks not of propositional or theoretic truth but rather of 'diagrammatic truth' - i.e., the truth of a 'picture' (not photograph) or 'map' of the world that helps our living in it, the emphasis being placed, however, on the aid the map gives for 'existing'. The truth lies not in the picture as picturing an external reality but rather in the aid that it gives to man in his existing - the picture or diagram itself being merely a 'carrier' of the truth and hence not the subject of the truth question. The story might, speaking literally, be false and yet could be true in the sense that it carries a vital message: 'The Biblical story of creation may be regarded as a development of the Babylonian one to explain a rather different experience of life; but it is still essentially at the mythological level and as such it has the truth of a diagram' (Watt, n.d.: 133-134). Ideation therefore is never a purely intellectual process and can only be understood in relation to the success of the life of the community. To the question as to whether the synthesis of dynamic ideas in a particular religion is true he responds: 'Are you prepared to live your life on the basis of this synthesis, in association with the community based on this synthesis? If you are, then you are bound to hold the synthesis is true, and indeed to cling to the belief. In such commitment lies your hope of achieving significance in your life' (ibid., p. 148). The truth is obtained not by means of intellect but rather by commitment. Indeed, the ideation is really more a defensive reaction than anything else. Consequently there can be no objective intellectual basis from which the truth of religion can be assessed, (ibid., pp. 63, 164, 166, and passim). Whether religion is cognitively true or not seems to be beside the point in much the same sense as it is in Durkheim: it is impossible for such an important human institution to be founded on error. To quote him (1971: 430): I t is said that science denies religion in principle. But religion exists; it is a system of given facts; in a word, it is a reality. How could science deny this reality?'

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Durkheim admits that for the religious, religion is taken to fulfill a speculative function but claims that only its social function is real. Athough Watt does not, like Durkheim, explicitly argue against the speculative function of religion he nevertheless emphasizes the 'social truth' to the exclusion of the consideration of the cognitive value of religious beliefs. According to Watt, for example, the 'truth of prayer' does not involve questions of communication between man and God as the naive believer supposes. Rather, writes Watt (n.d.: 155): . . . by expressing his wants verbally the man is making himself explicitly aware of them. At the same time he is bringing them into relationship with the ideational synthesis which ex hypothesi is central in his own life. . . . Through this linking of the wants with his dynamic ideas, the man becomes more integrated. All this, however, could be regarded as being 'merely psychological', except that in this process something has been happening. In expressing his wants to the deity the man has been strengthening and reviving his dynamic idea of the deity, and theology reactivating the corresponding dynamism in his psyche. Every society must have an ideational basis but the truth of it lies not in its correspondence to an independent, external reality, but rather in the significance it brings to life (Watt n.d.: 34): The resultant picture of the place of ideation in a society is somewhat as follows. All notable societies have an ideational basis. This may sometimes be expressed in concrete forms. . . rather than in terms of abstract conceptions; but to be effective in stabilizing and inspiring the society it must be fairly explicit. Sometimes this ideation may be in part distorted - for example, by being kept on a f t e r it has become irrelevant in some respects. This is particularly the case in old societies. In new societies also it is often not completely relevant, because it is not yet fully adjusted to the realities of the situation. Again, this

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ideational basis of a society usually has a religious core. One of the deep demands of the individual is that his life should be significant; and it becomes so when it makes a real contribution to the life of his society, and when the total life of this society is itself significant. Now religion has to do with significance in this sense, since religion attaches dynamic ideas to appropriate objects, and through these dynamic ideas significance is apprehended. 'Ideation', t h e r e f o r e , is not true in an epistemological sense. It has more the character of 'the truth of myth' as Pettazoni speaks of it in a discussion of Wichita mythology. He claims, for example: 'Myth is true history because it is sacred history, not only by reason of its content but also because of the concrete sacral forces which it sets going. The recital of myths of beginnings is incorporated in cult because it is cult itself and contributes to the ends for which cult is celebrated, these being the preservation and increase of life' (Pettazoni 1967: 15). Such stories do not have their origin either in reason or logic, or in history, but r a t h e r , says Pettazoni, they derive from the magical order since it is a truth of l i f e , i.e., a truth supporting life: 'The myth is true and cannot but be t r u e , because it is the character of the tribe's l i f e , the foundation of a world which cannot continue without that myth' (ibid., p. 20). Yet the myth can become false when it is no longer relevant to the (psychic) existence of the community; it then becomes a fable. To talk of the truth of religion in these t e r m s , however, seems to me confused and confusing. To loosen the application of the concept 'true' to cover such meanings as 'value', 'relevance', e t c . , is entirely unnecessary. We have concepts that quite adequately express the point Watt is trying to make. To redefine truth as Watt suggests is, in the first instance, useless and, second, it invites unnecessary perplexity. What is more, Watt himself is aware that his proposed usage of 'true' is secondary and rests on an understanding of truth as correspondence, as his talk of 'an adequate picture of reality' quoted above suggests.

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Man's directive ideas (i.e., his ideals, values, etc., as opposed to technical, practical ideas) are quasi-descriptions of the world: . . behind the set of directive ideas which is the central core of a religion there is a "vision" of reality, that is, a way of seeing what the world is in which men have to live and work' (Watt, n.d.: 14). Even though this 'vision' is, as Watt claims, fuller and richer than the dogmatic statements by which men try to express it, nevertheles, if all the statements men use to express it are cognitively unacceptable, then surely the 'vision' is suspect as a way of seeing what the world is. This is clearly accepted by Watt, in fact, in his discussion of 'ideas in the internal tensions of a society' wherein he points out that sharing in the life of a wider society implies an acceptance of the sciences, knowledge on which the everyday life of the world-community is based. To abandon the effort to achieve integration of this kind is to renounce all claim to be a world-wide religion' (ibid., pp. 70-71). But only if 'religious truth' were in fact a matter of epistemic truth - i.e., a matter of the correctness of propositions - could there possibly be a conflict between 'religious knowledge' and 'scientific knowledge'. Watt's understanding of, or redefinition of 'religious truth', therefore, is really no more than a tacking-on of the concept of 'relevance' to that of correspondence. Religious truth even for Watt is knowledge (i.e., correct propositions) about 'the world' which has an important bearing on the meaningfulness of one's existence. RELIGIOUS TRUTH AS PERSONAL TRUTH Some comment has been made above with respect to Wilfred Cantwell Smith's understanding of the nature of religious truth but a fuller account of that understanding is required here. As I have already pointed out, for Smith there is no possibility even of talking about religion, or Christianity, or Buddhism, etc. and, consequently, none of the truth of religion or Christianity, etc. Yet Smith does not himself reject all talk of religious truth but claims rather that the locus of such truth is to be found in

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persons, not, per impossible, in religious systems or religious propositions. In one work he writes: 'I personally advocate our dropping the term "Christianity"; but if it is used, then I would argue with vigor that it is dangerous and impious to suppose that Christianity is true as an abstract system, something "out there" impersonally subsisting, with which we can take some comfort therefore in being linked - its effortless truth justifying us and giving us status,' (1967: 67). Smith's nonpropositional position is proposed quite consciously and explicitly in his distinction between faith and belief and in this he comes very close to an existentialist conception of religious truth, somewhat after the fashion of Kierkegaard. And yet ambiguity arises immediately, for Smith, in the same chapter just quoted from, talks of faith without talking of belief - an ambiguity which I think is inescapable in all such talk. In a more recent paper on the problem, Smith still wants to assert that the locus of truth is persons rather than systems but goes on to say: 'Truth and falsity are often felt in modern times to be properties or functions of s t a t e ments or propositions; whereas the present proposal is that much is to be gained by seeing them rather, or anyway by seeing them also, and primarily, as properties or functions of persons' (1974a: 20j my emphasis). The qualification becomes more explicit for he admits outright that we must talk of the truth of propositions although he wishes to go beyond that level of truth (p. 34): The criteria by which this propositional truth is to be judged, the meaning that it shall have are questions that we need not settle; we all simply agree that this area of truth is at stake. My suggestion is that there are other additional areas, involving additional criteria and meanings of a quite different sort that might profitably be brought into play. But if there is agreement that the question of truth as 'rational correctness' is at stake can we allow these questions to go unanswered without detriment to the 'personal truth' we .seek to uncover? Can we really come to an understanding of the meaning of religion without reference

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to its rational correctness? If so, is this not to suggest the ultimate insignificance of such questions? But such a claim needs argument and cannot simply be taken as an obvious truth. Further, if 'religious truth' has wholly different criteria than truth as 'rational correctness' then why still call it 'truth?' Can both these 'aspects' of religion, which are judged by vastly different criteria, be legitimately tagged with the same label? At one point Smith seems to suggest that, in fact, 'religious truth' does not ultimately differ from truth as 'rational correctness' - that it does not have totally different criteria of assessment but claims rather that religious truth concerns both 'rational correctness' and 'personal response' (in the existentialist sense of 'authenticity') as a joint criterion. According to him, 'there is no room here in religion for that kind of truth that leaves unaffected the moral character and private behaviour of those who know it' (W. C. Smith 1974a: 37). He continues: '. . . to see the locus of truth and falsity as persons is not to contend that honesty or internal integrity is its sole criterion. When truth is seen as personal, and man's statement must not only cohere with his (and if it be about other men, then also their) inner life, but must also relate to objective facts in that same exacting fashion' (ibid., p. 38). Smith, however, does not really explain how the 'personal response functions as a 'criterion' of truth, he seems to be confusing the question of truth with that of 'response' to the truth (i.e., with truthfulness) or with the existentialist concern with 'authentic existence', of not 'living a lie'. Hick's criticism, although too generous in some respects, makes the point clearly (1974: 144): Now Cantwell Smith makes it entirely clear that he is not for a moment denying either the propriety or the importance of the notion of propositional truth, but rather emphasizing the immense importance of the more neglected idea of personalistic truth - though I am inclined to prefer a descriptive (and metaphysical) phrase for it, such as 'the moral truthfulness of a person's life'. And so his emphasis at this point is not very different, if at all different, from that of those

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in all traditions who have insisted that we are to be doers and not merely hearers of the word; that it is the faith expressed in our actions that matters; that truth - particularly moral and religious truth - must become existential so that as well as thinking it we feel it and respond to it and live by it. Religions can become true in Smith's sense, in a personalistic sense, only if they are already that in a more objective sense and this seems to run contrary to Smith's hopes of talking about faith without belief. Smith's response to Hick's criticism is intriguing, t h e r e f o r e , for it seems an a t t e m p t to revert to his earlier 'faith without belief' stance: 1 take the problem of religious diversity with the utmost earnestness and I like to f e e l , with deliberate realism. My contention is that the problem can be perceived in more than one way; and that to perceive it in terms of truth-claims that conflict is not necessary and not necessarily helpful' (1974b: 157). It appears that Smith's 'personal truth' is still transcendent and beyond propositional truth in the same sense as is, for example, Mensching's 'religious truth as numinous being'. The overtures made to 'rational correctness' of doctrinal teaching, is mere lip service to the concept of truth as correspondence to reality. A very similar suggestion to Smith's is noted by Kane (1974-1975). He considers the concept of truth as correspondence as entirely misleading in religion. Instead of talking of 'religious truth' as going 'beyond' or 'transcending' mundane truth Kane suggests an alternative metaphor: 'embracing' or 'participating' (1974-1975: 163-164): The rationale behind this shift in perspective is not provided simply by a critique of the former approaches, positivist and existentialist but more fundamentally by an understanding of religious truth as attained by concrete and 'partial' engagement and not by an abstracted and 'impartial' judgment. In contrast, for instance, to the type of judgment involved in the various forms of scientific knowing, enquiry and judgment in religion are achieved only in the deeply personal struggle to realize

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the truth in one's life or to have one's life informed by that truth, and thus by engagement with a particular form of life and belief. In this respect religion is analogous to human love. For while it is possible to state general truths about love, knowledge and affirmation of such truth is never attainable in general or via a movement of abstraction from the particular, but only in engagement with the particular. I can agree with Kane that an 'understanding' of other traditions and other religions, or even of religion in general, cannot be gained by mere detached observation; that purely external explanations of other religious communities, etc., are in principle unacceptable. Such purely external explanations in an a priori way frustrate the very intention of scriptures, rituals, etc., which are directed towards the transformation of the reader/participant. The method of interpretation is imcommensurate with the intention of the text (ritual, etc.) This point is well made by Walter Wink (1973) and it requires some discussion here, for Wink, although emphasizing this personal, transformative aspect of religious truth, realizes that propositional truth is a critical facet of 'religious truth'. According to Wink, the critical study of the scriptures (and Wink relates himself to the Christian scriptures primarily) is incommensurate with the intention of the texts in that its detachment makes any vital relatedness to the text impossible; the critical approach insulates itself against the concerns of the scripture and, consequently, is incapable of revealing this kind of 'meaning' in the scriptures. Wink writes (1973: 2): Such detached neutrality in matters of faith is not neutrality at all but already a decision against responding. At the outset, questions of truth and meaning have been excluded, since they can only be answered participatively, in terms of a lived response. Insofar as they are retained at all, 'truth' is reduced to facticity, and the text's 'meaning' is rendered by a paraphrase.

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Wink r e f e r s to this brand of intellectualism as an ideology nurtured in an historical context that has now changed. It is a form of objectivism that excludes all evaluations; it is a form of technologism that ignores the concrete problem of life and society and concerns itself only with the questions to which its methodology can be applied. What is needed, argues Wink, is a 'paradigm shift', one, however, that does not deny the gains of this 'critical period' of biblical studies. Wink suggests that such a shift will involve a second naivete, which will not a priori exclude all evaluations but will, r a t h e r , through critical awareness, make proper use of them. Such a s h i f t , he assures us however, is not a surrendering of objectivity and criticism but only a rejection of objectivism; it is a shift 'in which faith performs an iconoclastic function in respect to criticism' (Wink 1973: 13). The new paradigm for biblical studies Wink calls 'dialectical hermeneutics'. One begins, he says, in 'fusion', simply accepting the tradition in which one lives, then, by means of genuine objectivity, distance is gained, which, however, must then again be overcome in a 'second naivete'. There is no study without detachment and so a break with the naive acceptance of one's tradition is crucial. The objectivity involved here is a mastery of techniques for handling the texts f r e e from bias and prejudicial evaluations. But interpretation, Wink insists (following Gadamer), is more than analysis of the text; it is much more an attempt to hear again the questions that occasioned the answers JIOW found in the texts. The questions are not merely academic but rather of vital concern questions about the nature of our social being. To gain mastery over the texts by means of critical techniques and yet lose sight of the questions that occasioned the texts is to have replaced 'understanding' with 'technical mastery' (1973: 41): The a t t e m p t at mastery of objects leads to the loss of the master. In evacuating his selfhood in order to disappear from view as the objective observer the viewing subject forgets the magic words that can restore his materiality. Like the ancient dybbhuk separated from

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its body and consigned to wander the world, modern man senses his detachment from life as the peculiar curse of his modernity, the price paid to Satan in return for distance. The 'second naivete' therefore is at the heart of the new method which searches for the truth of the religious text that lies 'in, with and under' the more exoteric propositional truth of the text. By being open to the perennial questions of existence when reading the text one is open not simply to its surface meaning but also to its symbolic function, which 'requires that the thinking subject be "humiliated", that he abdicate his superior vantage point, given in the very semantics of the subject-object dichotomy' (ibid., p. 48). Wink goes on to say (pp. 62, 64): It should be clear from the example that exegesis has been transposed into a holistic context in which questions of technique have been subordinated to the overarching purpose of enabling transformation. It should be equally clear, however, that such selfexploratory analysis is not subjectivism or intra-psychic reductionism, for the understanding of ourselves which the text evokes makes possible a far more profound understanding of what the text actually says. The insights we seek byv means of the text are thus neither general religious or theological truths, nor simply the author's original insights, but the truth of our own social being as it is laid bare by dialectical interpretation of the text. Corporate Socratic dialogue enables the participants to uncover the ways in which they have mutilated and distorted both the written text and the text of their own experience, and to liberate the depth symbols of existence from a mode of expression deformed as a private language (as neurosis and religion) into the mode of expression of public communion (as community and faith).

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Despite this emphasis on what one might call 'vital truth' or 'personal truth' Wink insists that it cannot be obtained without detachment and criticism.3 He posits early in the study, for example, that the move to a 'second naivete' is not a surrendering of objectivity but only of an outdated objectivism (ibid., p. 24).4 By moving to the symbolic function of the text and to taking up its concerns with the perennial questions of l i f e , one moves out of a sterile objectivism and back to 'a post-critical equivalent of precritical fusion' but only 'on the basis of distance, on the basis of criticism' (ibid., p. 48). The 'truth of religion', therefore, even though it is very much a 'personal truth' is not a subjective truth entirely closed to assessment and evaluation. The point that such a 'vital' or 'personal' truth is not wholly subjective and arbitrary is made in the realm of philosophical discussion by Jose Ortega Y Gasset (1960) and supports Wink's suggestion here. Ortega rejects the positivist conception of truth that would restrict all knowledge claims to 'physical knowledge claims'. He denies, for example, that man must come to an understanding of himself only in terms of the nature of the physical universe. But does not deny the validity of these truth claims. Rather, he takes a pluralist approach to the problem of truth and talks of various levels of truth. He does so, however, without espousing the mystical type of two-level theory of truth so frequently adopted by religious apologists. There can be no domain of truth that supersedes all principles of judgment. Thus he rejects the positivist notion of truth that made physical knowledge the paradigm of all knowledge. He recognizes scientific truth as truth but only a penultimate one since it renounces the search for first principles. That is where philosophic (vital, personal, etc.) truth emerges (1960: 72): Here we see two types of truth clearly counter-poised; the scientific and the philosophic. The former is exact but insufficient, the latter is sufficient but inexact. The result is that the latter, that which is inexact, is a more basic truth than the former; therefore it is a truth of higher rank not only because its theme is

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broader, but even as a type of knowledge; in short, the inexact philosophic truth is a truer truth. Although such philosophic truth is 'above* scientific truth it is not altogether transcendent and unfathomable; it is not beyond intersubjectively acceptable principles of judgment. It is not, therefore, equivalent to the mystical truth of the two-level theories of truth discussed above. Indeed, he explicitly objects to any such suggestion in a critique of mysticism with its talk of ineffability and private knowledge (1960: 109): They [i.e., the mystics] pretend to arrive at a knowledge which is superior to reality. If the spoils in the form of wisdom which the trance yields them were actually worth more than theoretic knowledge we would not for a moment hesitate to abandon the latter and make mystics of ourselves. But what they tell us is trivial and insuperably monotonous. . . . The mystics' knowledge is untransferable, and in essence, silent. And again: '. . . I doubt very much that an enrichment of our ideas about the divine will come by the underground paths of the mystics rather than by the luminous ways of discursive thought. Theology is my choice and not ecstasy' (ibid., p. 112) Consequently, even though the philosophic truth Ortega seeks is that of our 'lived existence' - a vital, personal truth - it is not beyond discussion and evaluation. It may be inexact and difficult to interpret but it is not wholly subjective and free of objective and critical inquiry. The rejection of a completely subjectivistic truth, therefore, is not a denial that the truth of religion means more than the truth or falsity of a specific number of belief claims in the tradition. RELIGIONS, RELIGION, AND TRUTH Thus far I have concerned myself primarily with questions of the truth or falsity of propositions and have left

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questions of Truth (with a capital T) aside, particularly the question of the Truth of Religion (with a capital R). Even if my argument above is correct, namely that talk of the truth of religion is intimately related to the truth or falsity of belief claims made by the tradition, one can still raise the question as to whether there is not, in f a c t , a Truth of Religion (i.e., of a particular tradition) that somehow goes beyond the truth of its propositions and theories. Further, one can ask whether that Truth is to be located primarily in particular religious traditions in their uniqueness or r a t h e r , whether it is to be located in particular religions only insofar as they embody Religion (i.e., embody the 'religious principle'). Wach suggests the l a t t e r , for example, when he writes (1968: 148-149): One of the most important characteristics of truth is its universality. We have learned to become suspicious of local, ethnic or parochial limitations of truth. As over against such provincialism, in whatever guise it may appear, it is necessary to emphasize the universal availability of true religious insight. . . . The basic question that confronts us is not Hinduism or Christianity, but the universal truth particularized for this country or t h a t , this continent or t h a t , or this individual or that. Wach's point is essentially the same as that made by Kant (especially 1960). There he draws a distinction between 'pure faith' (i.e., true religious faith) and 'ecclesiastical faith', the l a t t e r being 'the vehicle o f , and at its best an imperfect vehicle o f , pure religious faith' (1969: 97). Although ecclesiastical faith is necessary for the founding of a moral community (ibid., p. 145) it is n o t , says Kant, necessary as an element of service which is well pleasing to God (ibid., p. 158). Consequently, a combination of the two types of faith can only be accomplished if pure religious faith is held to be primary and hence the interpreter of ecclesiastical faith. Ecclesiastical f a i t h , t h e r e f o r e , can be 'false' and yet still be the vehicle of religious truth. Indeed, if this were not so, the truth of the faith would be open to falsification and could be

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recognized only by a minority of men: . . the small body of textual scholars (the clerics) . . . would drag along behind itself the long train of the unlearned (the laity) who, of themselves are ignorant of the scripture . . . (ibid., p. 152). And this is obviously a rejection of 'the most important mark of truth, namely a rightful claim to universality. . .' (ibid., p. 100), for it bases itself on historical literature. The suggestion put forward here is, however, unacceptable. It seems that in the final analysis pure religious faith is simply another 'religious faith proposal' set over against the already existing religions; and it is a very truncated religion at that. By deducing what is common to or essential to all religions it simply arrives at a 'natural religion' which, in this case, involves beliefs in the postulates of God, freedom, and immortality that stand, or could stand, in opposition to proposals in other faith traditions. PROPOSITTONAL TRUTH OR THE 'TRUTH OF RELIGION'? It has been necessary to discuss the various proposals about the nature of religious truth, that have been suggested at one time or another, in order to grasp the complexity of the problems involved. For those who wish to speak of 'religious truth' at all, as is now clear, the meanings of the phrase vary widely: religious truth is personal truth in the sense of inner integrity; religious truth is mythic truth creating meaning for life; religious truth is supernatural truth in the sense of cognition supernaturally guaranteed, and so forth. The locus of truth lies in transempirical (but nonobservable, nonverifiable) reality, persons, social structures or culture, revelation, etc., but not at all, it would seem, in the systems of propositions connected with the positive historical religious traditions. Yet it is precisely these utterances and expressions, with which the study of religions concerns itself. It would seem, therefore, if these positions were sound, that the critical, academic study of religion could say nothing about one of the most important aspects of religion (at least most important in religion's estimate of itself).

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Furthermore, it would make it impossible for the critical study of religion to provide us with any explanation of religious phenomena - not a very happy conclusion. The conclusion, however, is not inescapable for the nonpropositional proposals discussed in the present chapter all reveal a tension with respect to propositional truth and, in the final analysis, express a qualified acceptance of propositional truth as a constituent element of religious truth; they all seem to require, even more than they themselves recognize, a propositional understanding of religious truth. Life-styles imply cosmologies; confessions of faith imply 'basic belief proposals' or beliefs. Let me illustrate this once again, this time by reference to Emil Brunner's conception of truth as 'encounter' as a concept of truth entirely unknown, according to Brunner (1964: 7), to philosophy and science, a truth above the truth of science because it is concrete and not a b s t r a c t , a truth that cannot be held or possessed (ibid., pp. 28, 31). The truth of religion is entirely different from every other conception of truth and has nothing to do with propositions or correspondence. He defines it as follows (ibid., p.24): Truth as encounter is not truth about something, not even truth about something mental, about ideas. Rather is it that truth which breaks in pieces the impersonal concept of truth and mind, truth that can be adequately expressed only in the I-Thou form. All use of impersonal terms to describe i t , the divine, the transcendent, the absolute, is indeed the inadequate way invented by the thinking of the solitary self to speak of it - or, more correctly, of Him. Despite these 'absolute' negative characteristics Brunner ascribes to religious t r u t h , he goes on to talk of a positive relation between the I-Thou encounter and doctrine (propositional truth) (1964: 130ff). He proceeds to deny the complete and absolute difference between what he calls the 'biblical' and the 'general' concept of truth. Indeed, he speaks of the relation as a 'necessary' one: 'Between the Word of God and obedience-in-truth on the one hand and doctrine and belief in doctrine on the other

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there must thus obtain necessarily and not only accidentally a positive relation in addition to the negative one' (ibid., p. 131). (On the same page, however, he still, quite paradoxically, claims that we can continue to maintain that an abyss between the two concepts of truth obtains.) Thus, God, in 'meeting' us, also says 'something' to us: 'God, to be sure, does not deliver to us a course of lectures in dogmatic theology or submit a confession of faith to us, but he instructs us authentically about Himself.' (ibid., p. 133, my emphasis). Consequently: 'Faith . . . is in the final analysis not faith in something - something true, a doctrine; it is not 'thinking something', but personal encounter, trust, obedience and love; but this personal happening is indissolubly linked with conceptual content with truth in the general sense of the word, truth as doctrine, knowledge as perception of facts' (ibid., p. 134, my emphasis). There is, to be sure, more to religious truth than the truth of beliefs and doctrines but this 'more than' rests on such 'rational correctness'. It is quite possible, therefore, as I have argued above, for the critical study of religion to say something about the truth or falsity of religious propositions and hence, in a limited and partial way, about the truth and falsity of religion and particular religions.

12

The Critical Alternative in the Study of Religion

I have attempted to show that questions of truth and f a l sity are of prime concern not only for the religious, which would be admitted by most students of religion, but also that the question as to whether or not the religious beliefs are true is of utmost importance to the scholarly or scientific study of religion. I have shown that the general philosophical "and methodological arguments raised against the asking of this question in the scientific context are weak and unacceptable. Such questions are both applicable to religion and relevant to it. The methodological positions that assume the irrelevance of the truth question assume, a priori, the truth of a naturalistic (and hence 'theological') understanding of the universe that, of necessity, requires a reductionistic interpretation of religion. That asking the question of religion ( s ) is difficult has been readily admitted. Religions, as has been repeatedly pointed out, are complex social institutions that involve myth, ritual, liturgy, action, etc., in addition to beliefs. And where it is quite possible to talk of the truth or falsity of specific beliefs consciously held by a person (or group) it is not quite so easy to talk of the truth or falsity of one's 'life stance'. Indeed, it is possible to speak coherently of the beliefs held by a person (or group of persons) as being in tension with his (their) 'mode(s) of existence' (hence John Baillie's talk of Bertrand Russell as an atheist at the top of his mind, yet a Christian in the depths of his heart (Baillie 1939: 4 7 f ) ) . Consequently, even where one's conscious beliefs ( i . e . , as mental states) may be f a l s e , one's dispositional beliefs may reveal an unconscious understanding of the basic structure and meaning of the universe. The truth or falsity of one's religion, therefore, cannot be

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simply read off the catalogue of accepted beliefs. Furthermore, the truth or falsity of a particular religious tradition could not be easily discerned even if the only concern in settling that issue lay in the realm of doctrine. The doctrinal systems of most religious traditions are extensive and extremely complex, having grown and developed over many generations and centuries and are even now in the same process of change and transformation. Since beliefs have changed in the past and will change in the future, a simple verdict of true or false is not possible in a naive method of 'weighing up' the true and the false beliefs. All such systems of doctrine are bound to contain a good number of propositions or belief claims that are recognizably false and many others that have only weak and inconclusive evidence in their support. Whether or not such false belief claims imply the falsity of the religious tradition as a whole depends upon a host of other factors such as the centrality of explicit belief claims within the tradition and the importance of the particular claims considered false to the doctrinal system as a whole, and these issues themselves are often very difficult to discern. Thus even though the doctrinal system of a particular historical religious tradition contains false belief claims the doctrinal system as a whole may still, nevertheless, be claimed to be true. Such a claim, however, ciould hardly be made given the falsity of either the major, central belief claims or of a majority of the belief claims of the tradition. The truth of religion (s) therefore can hardly be established or disavowed without reference to the propositional truth claims made in systems of religious doctrine. The final answer may be slow in coming but surely it is a project that admits of a resolution. (The same problem of complexity also faces the philosopher of science when he is asked 'Is science true?' or more specifically, Is evolutionary biology true?'; 'Are quantum physics and quantum mechanics true?; etc. Whether or not science is true, or physics is true is far more difficult to say since 'science' contains, both in the past and in the present, false as well as true claims. Furthermore, as to what exactly constitutes truth in science there is a good deal more debate today than in times past - yet that it is

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a question of importance to scientists is held in doubt by few philosophers.)! I have attempted to show through the foregoing analysis, that 'truth' is primarily a cognitive concept. And I have suggested that the truth in religion and/or 'religious truth' refers in a very basic sense to the truth or falsehood of religious propositions or belief claims. This is a very modest and sound conclusion, which is not to deny that the concept of 'religious truth' is also very much an 'existentialist' category, but rather simply to point out that although religious truth involves a truthfulness on the part of the believer (an existential integrity in the face of truth; a willingness to allow perceived truth to transform one's life) and so is more than 'rational correctness' it is at least 'rational correctness'. To speak then about the truth of religion is, in a very fundamental sense, to speak of the truth and/or falsity of particular kinds of beliefs, doctrines, weltanschauungen etc. (either as explicit, consciously held beliefs or unconscious, dispositional 'beliefs'). And issues of this sort are settled by reference to evidence and argument - in religion just as much as any other area of human concern. The old dualism, held in many quarters, that a thing might be accepted as true in religion even though not true 'scientifically' is simply impossible. It is true that not every false doctrine of a religious belief system necessarily implies the falsity of that religious tradition, but surely if the major belief claims of the tradition, or the majority of the belief claims were shown to be false 'scientifically' a dark shadow of doubt would be tfast upon the 'truth' (personal, vital, existential, etc.) of that tradition 'as a whole'. Consequently even though in one sense 'religious truth' is beyond mere rational correctness it is nevertheless still open to examination by the external observer or student of religion since it is intimately connected with 'rational correctness'. It has become obvious from the discussion that talk of religious truth as wholly other than 'ordinary' or propositional truth has become untenable. Any and all domains of truth, must exhibit at least some principles of judgment appropriate to the member claims within that domain.

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There may be different domains of truth with different principles of judgment but there cannot be a domain of truth beyond all such principles. If 'religious truth' were really beyond all such principles the critics discussed above would in fact be right in claiming that the truth question has no methodological significance for the so-called objective student of religion. One might therefore speak of the poverty of such subjectivism in the study of religion. However a descriptivism that sees the raising of the truth question in the study of religion as inevitably leading to a biased interpretation of religion, I have argued here, betrays a similar poverty. There is no doubt that disciplines such as the history of religions and the phenomenology of religion have had a measure of success in uncovering the nature of religion. The 'scientific' or 'critical' study of religon, however, is out for more than simple description: its goal is 'explanation'. And this, I have shown, cannot be achieved unless the truth question is taken seriously into account. To summarize then, I think it fair to say, first, that the descriptivist approach to the study of religious phenomena that would attempt to evade the truth question is bound to achieve a meager result. And, second, one can on the basis of the argument provided here draw the modest conclusion that even though 'religious truth' is something more than mere propositional truth and so, in a limited sense beyond the observation and critical analysis of the 'objective' observer, it is nevertheless intimately (necessarily) connected with propositional truth thereby making it subject to objective discussion, analysis, and criticism.

Notes

Notes

1.

2.

The phrase is Michael Pye's (1972; see also his 1973a). Pye equates the science of religion with the work done in such a neutralized framework. The science of religion he insists, must eschew the search for final explanations (and hence truth) and be content with description and partial or intermediate explanation only. As he puts it, . . total, definitive explanations should be held at arms length while the study of religion proceeds' (1972: 18). See, for example, Werblowsky's 'Marburg-Platform' 1960). I find myself in agreement with Oxtoby's description of such an approach to the study of religion as 'sterile isolationism and externalism' (Oxtoby 1968: 605). Werblowsky's suggestions for the IAHR are a far cry from those of earlier leaders of the association as is to be seen in the following excerpt from E. O. James's inaugural lecture at Leeds and published in the first issue of Numen, the official organ of the, then, IASHR (1954: 253-254): . . . religion, being essentially a way of life, demands a wider approach than historical investigation , if it is to be understood in its true significance. Thus as regards the New Testament, its religious value centres in the person and work of Christ interpreted and understood in terms of spiritual experience based upon certain historical facts and factors. Therefore, the two approaches, historical and philosophical, are needed in an adequate study of a religion like Christianity. For the anthropologist, the archaeologist, and the

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Notes

historian, religion is a universal attribute of human society and is studied as such. But there comes a point where the historic-scientific evidence breaks off and sooner or later the reflective mind is confronted with the fundamental question: What is the significance of the phenomenon? What is its t r u t h , and what does it mean for human life? 3. 4. 5.

See, for example, Ashby (1965) and Holbrook (1963). See Carl-Martin Edsman's 'Theology or religious studies?' (1974). This becomes quite apparent in the plea by Combs and Bowlby (1974-1975) for an unrestricted subjectivism in the study of religion. According to them 'the intrinsic principles of the study of religion are a means of understanding the religions from within, but they serve also as a critique of all critiques of religion which claim to know a religion better than it knows itself by virture of standing outside that religion' (p. 327). For t h e m , it seems, the only honest study of religion is that carried out by the believer within the tradition (p. 329): In saying that the recipient of tradition must yield himself over to the tradition we intend the full implication to follow: philosophic detachment or 'freedom' from a tradition is academically incompatible with a respectful study of the tradition. The claim to 'objectivity' has validity only when one has lived subjectively under and within a tradition. Detachment is an unnatural and therefore academically dishonest relation to a tradition. Fidelity is primary.

6.

Similar suggestions are made by W. Nicholls (1975) and S. O. Yarian (1974). The suggestion that the various disciplines appropriate to the study of religious phenomena can be so easily distinguished and separated without a distortion of the facts seems to me philosophically naive. As Smart points out (1968': 8),

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the descriptive and explanatory aspects of the study of religion themselves raise conceptual issues, and therefore imply the necessity of the philosophy of religion. In turn, the philosophy of religion has to take account of the changing interpretations of religious traditions and in general needs to be realistic. By the principles of imaginative participation and so engagement with the object, philosophy of religion is bound to take seriously the expressive-critical side. To put this in another way, theological and other expressions of contemporary tradition together with external criticisms of these expressions have a necessary function in the study of religion Ingram (1976) similarly, points out the critical significance of philosophy both for methodological discussion and for the study of religions (pp. 385386): The solution to these methodological issues does not lie in the development of procedural rules and techniques suitable for doing religious studies. What is at issue is the philosophical perspective from which we encounter and interpret what we study. That is, we must have some notion about the nature of reality, the 'way things are 1 , and about the nature of religious experience before we can study and interpret the meaning of various expressions of religious faith. At the very least, we must have a tacit notion of what we are talking about before we can talk about it explicitly. This is why, in my opinion, the issue is philosophical, for whatever else religion is, it is a 'vision' of the 'way things are' in terms of 'value'. It involves a perception of the nature of reality that is prior to its acting out by means of the various types of religious expressions. We cannot, of course, do our work without a prior notion of what it is we are seeking to understand.

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The problem is not one of getting rid of our interpretive framework, but one of reflectively and creatively using our interpretive framework as a point of departure so that we can say something about religious experience that relates to concrete people. At the same time, we must keep in mind the fact that our interpretive framework will change as we do our work. The point is that we will always have an interpretive framework that implies an over-all philosophical world-view and epistemology. NOTES TO CHAPTER ONE 1.

2.

Gombrich here follows Popper's rejection of questions of definition as essentialist (see Popper 1958, 1962, 1967). Neither, however, distinguishes between substantive and functional definitions; no distinction is made between definition as a disclosure of essence, and definition as a tool. An attempt to find such an essence is set out succinctly by Anders Nygren (1961). Rather than choosing a 'paradigm' religion, which he concedes would be an arbitrary move, he suggests tracing religion back to its place in the life of the spirit. One would need then to examine the spiritual life of man and see what is distinctive of religion within that matrix. That life of the spirit, he claims, involves the questions of truth, ethics, aesthetics, and of the eternal (religion). And according to Nygren, the first three questions necessarily involve reference to the last, i.e., the eternal is necessary to the other aspects of the spiritual life of man. As he puts it, 'religion as an independent experience possesses just what the rest of the life of the spirit requires for its foundation' (p. 31). For Nygren, then, the eternal, involves several constant elements in all religions: an awareness of the gulf between the human and the divine; a bridging of this gulf; and man's fellowship and union with the divine.

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As I shall suggest later, Nygren's 'definition' here is not far off that which I shall myself accept in this essay. The only distinction, I think, is the openness with which the two definitions are accepted. I shall also point out that this search for essence is not as ridiculous as it has often been made out to be. The whole point of a discussion of the study of religion is, it seems to me, precisely to come to such an understanding of religion. Nevertheless the criticism raised by Bolgiani (1972), in response to U. Bianchi's (1972) discussion of definition, is . appropriately directed against Nygren. He writes: 'I believe that the historian of religions should not base his work and his interpretations on the previous assumption of an "autonomous" value of religion, intended as a general and a constitutive category of the spirit, i.e. as a philosophical, gnoseological and ontological 'a priori', at least not at the beginning of his research work' (1972: 30). He correctly goes on to say, however: 'Nor should he apply to opposite assumptions i.e. reductive (psychological or sociological) criteria of interpretation' (ibid.). The latter as much as the former is a search for essences. Bolgiani goes too f a r , however, when he suggests: 'The only thing he should do is to study the facts with a positiveinductive method' (ibid.), as I shall be at pains to point out. 3. 4.

5. 6.

This, it seems to me, is what Webb is trying to refer t o , for example. Kitágawa seems to involve himself in inconsistency here. The point however is debatable, for it might well be argued that what we have in this shift from primitive to modern religion is not a rejection of religion but a radical change in religious identity. See, for example, Yinger (1970) Luckman (1969). See also, however, the topic 'Religion', in Cook (1912). Tillich's understanding of 'Ultimate Concern' has more content however than the 'ultimate concern' of Baird. It seems to me, that is, that Tillich refers to some

236

7.

8.

9.

Notes

transcendent reality (although he uses images of depth rather than height) which because of its 'otherness' and its power is worthy of such concern. He defines religion as follows: 'Religion is the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern, a concern which qualifies all other concerns as preliminary and which itself contains the answer to the question of the meaning of our life. Therefore this concern is unconditionally serious and shows a willingness to sacrifice any finite concern which is in conflict with it' (1963: 4-5). It is interesting that Bleeker is included here (since he approvingly quotes (1966: 71) Tillich's definition quoted in the preceding note) for Baird claims him as an 'essentialist-intuitionist' in this m a t t e r . My own feeling is that Bleeker's interpretation of Tillich comes closer to the truth but space does not dllow discussion of this issue of interpretation here. I suggest, however, that the existence/reality distinction is really no more than the distinction, commonly made, between the 'social reality' of the focus (i.e., it 'exists' and functions in a society) and its 'ontological reality' (it exists not only 'for' a society) but exists for it because it exists 'beyond' it.) This position is also persuasively argued by Luckman (1969). There he rejects the identification of 'church' and religion for he sees that in modern industrial society the values institutionalized in church religion are no longer of any relevance for the integration and legitimation of everyday life in that society. The 'secularization' involved in such societies he suggests, contributes to the development of another socially objectivated cosmos of meaning that may well be a new religion in the making and not the emergence of a society characterized by the absence of religion. This can be seen, he insists, only if narrow substantive definitions of religion are rejected. He himself seeks a definition in terms of the anthropological conditions of religion and virtually equates religion with man's transcendence of his biological nature, thus making religion universal. Such transcendence

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237

comes first in face to face relations and is established, so to speak, in an 'official' world view. Thus he writes (p. 53): 'We may conclude, therefore, that the world view, as an "objective" and historical social reality, performs an essentially religious function and define it as an elementary social form of religion. This social form is universal in human society. . . . ' ' . . . the world view as a whole, as a unitary matrix of meaning, . . . provides the historical context within which human organisms form identities, thereby transcending biological nature' (p. 61). Luckman refers to this world view then as a universal but nonspecific social form of religion but admits that (reluctantly it seems) there are no societies (at least that we know of thus far) that have religion only in this nonspecific form (p. 78). He also admits that within this world view there is a domain of meaning that can be called religious in a peculiar sense. He writes: 'Although we just said that the world view as a whole performs a religious function and that no single element of the world view is to be designated as religious, we must presently qualify this statement. Within the world view a domain of meaning can become articulated that deserves to be called religious' (p. 56). He insists, however, that it is only because this domain stands for the religious function of the world view as a whole that justifies one in calling it religious but this seems, in the light of the fact that no society yet studied reveals a 'world view only', somewhat odd. Nevertheless it is in terms of this model that he later suggests that 'the "inner secularization" of Christianity in the West is really the replacement of institutional specialization of religion by a new social form of religion' (pp. 90-91). He argues then that the 'end' of the institutional specialization of religion is not the end of religion simpliciter. As I have already intimated there is a great deal of persuasive force in Luckman's argument and it cannot be rejected lightly. However, it is difficult to see how one would proceed in the 'science of religion'

238

10. 11.

12.

Notes

in terms of i t , since the 'science of religion' is interested precisely in the 'institutional specializations of religion'. Furthermore the definition here is too broad to be of any procedural value to the student of religion. Lastly, and most importantly, the definition seems to involve 'bias', what Peter Berger calls 'assasination through definition,' for this kind of d e f inition 'serves to provide quasiscientific legitimations of a secularized world view' (Berger 1974: 128). It is quite obvious that such a definition fails to take into consideration the intentions of those whom it considers. Thus a secularized world view is assumed without question by means o f , as Berger puts i t , a simple cognitive procedure: 'The specificity of the religious phenomenon is "flattened out'" (1974: 129). Such a legitimation of the avoidance of transcendence, he rightly claims, 'is in accord with a secularized Zeitgeist, but it threatens to lose sight of the very phenomenon of religion' (ibid., p. 125). (It must be mentioned here that Berger (ibid., p. 133) does not suggest approaching the scientific study of religion with philosophical affirmation either.) See among others, Gilkey (1969) and Greely (1974). This is a pragmatic procedure of tackling at one time only that which can be adequately handled. This is not to deny that a 'holistic' approach is also needed if an understanding of religion is to be achieved, or a 'totalitarian' approach as Kraemer (1938) refers to it. I agree with him, then, when he claims: 'Scientifically speaking, the most fruitful way to acquire true insight into a religion is the "totalitarian" approach, namely, to take a religion as one whole body of religious life and expression, of which all the component parts are inseparably interrelated to each other and animated by the same apprehension of the totality of existence peculiar to it' (p. 146). The point is made clearly in Castaneda's accounts of his attempt to understand Don Juan. In Tales of Power (1974b) the point is brought to a pinnacle in a conversation with Don Juan:

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239

'No, your flaw is to seek convenient explanations, explanations that fit you and your world. What I object to is your reasonableness. A sorcerer explains things in his world too, but he's not as stiff as you.' 'How can I arrive at the sorcerer's explanation?' 'By accumulating personal power. Personal power will make you slide with great ease into the Sorcerer's explanation. This explanation is not what you would call an explanation; nevertheless, it makes the world and its mysteries, if not clear, at least less awesome. That should be the essence of an explanation, but this is not what you seek. You're a f t e r the reflection of your ideas' (pp. 1415) The same thing can apply even to the more traditional occidental religions as is pointed out by Slater (1963) in his analysis of the concept of 'depth religion', which involves, he suggests, a caveat against intellectualism. What is suggested by the reference to depth religion is a correction of explicit dogma from the depths of the involved persons. Thus he writes (p. 190): 'Depth religion' might then be taken to mean some full engagement of the total man in the quest for reality rather than any clear-cut separation of what may be known intuitively from what may be known intellectually. . . . Much that is written about the 'depths' betokens an interest in the ways and methods presented by the oriental religions. . . This is the suggestion that they have retained a communication with 'the world invisible' which Western man has lost. He points out, however, that there may be good reason to see this as a flight to the irrational; an abdication from reason (p. 188).

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13.

Notes

Bellah (1970) in his 'Between religion and social science' seems to adopt precisely such a depth religion in criticism of more institutional and rationalized religion. Bellah proposes the adoption of 'symbolic realism' (as opposed to a reductionistic stance whether consequential, symbolic, or m e t a physical), which he defines as a 'restless quest for the "dimension of depth" in all human social and cultural forms' (p. 255). 'Symbolic realism', that is, sees the symbol not merely as decoration but as the only way of 'apprehending the real' (p. 255). His position, however, at least so it seems to me, involves him in a kind of irrationalism, for he seems to deny any cognitive value to religion whatsoever. (Such a cognitivist stance he argues in his 'Religion and belief: The historical background of non-belief' (in Bellah 1970) is a confusion of belief and religion which he labels 'the objectivist fallacy' (p. 220).) One can agree with Bellah, in his reference to Polanyi, that too much emphasis has been placed on 'explicit' rather than on 'tacit' knowledge, but it must be recognized that both kinds of knowledge exist within the domain of science, which, consequently, reveals science to have very much of the same structure as religion. If the former is cognitive, then so also must be the l a t t e r . 'In the life of all higher religions, the task of winnowing is a perennial one because their historic harvest is not pure grain. In the heritage of each of the higher religions we are aware of the presence of two kinds of ingredients. There are essential counsels and truths, and there are non-essential practices and propositions' (Toynbee 1956: 262). His concern is to disengage the two. Elsewhere (Toynbee 1957, expecially chap. 1, 'What are the criteria for comparisons between religions?') the distinction he makes is less the philosophical one of essence and manifestation than it is one of the practical concern to distinguish a religion in its ideal conception of itself and in its actual historical development.

Notes to chapter one

14.

15.

16.

17.

241

Similar criticisms can also be found in H. Schlette (1966 especially chap. 2: 'Current theological statements on the non-Christian Religions', p. 125). Schlette recognizes Kraemer's attempt to try to get beyond Barth, however. Schlette himself calls for a move both beyond the 'dialectical approach' of most Protestants and the 'theology of fulfillment approach' of most Catholic theologians (p. 31f). See also A. C. Bouquet (1958): If Kraemer and perhaps Barth and those who follow them concede that in approaching the (non-christian religions) there should be a great Yea as well as a great Nay, it does seem to many of us as though the great Nay completely drowns the great Yea' (p. 96). As Bleeker (1966) puts it, if Kraemer is really serious about the dialectic and admits that there is some evidence of God's revelatory activity in non-Christian religions he 'might as well take the step of acknowledging that all religions are founded on legitimate knowledge of God' (p. 105). Peter Moore (1973) sets out eleven theories of truth in religion that, he suggests, cover all logical possibilities. I shall simply list them here: (1) there is no solution possible because all religions (so far at least), or religion itself, is a mystery and so beyond questions of truth and falsity; (2) 'radical scepticism'; (3) 'radical exclusivism'; (4) 'qualified exclusivism'; (5) 'inclusivism'; (6) 'syncretistic relativism'; (7) 'agnostic relativism'; (8) 'absolute instrumentalism'; (9) 'reductive universalism'; (10) 'positional universalism'; (11) 'transcendent universalism' ('relative absolutism'). See here the distinction I draw between 'ultimate commitment' in the sense of 'not open to any further assessment or criticism' and 'ultimate commitment' in the sense that 'it predominates and guides all subsequent decisions made by him who holds it while yet remaining open, in principle, to criticism and rejection' (Wiebe 1973). In response to Hogg's query as to whether or not one ought to make the distinction between 'non-Christian faith' and 'non-Christian religion', Kraemer admits

242

18. 19.

20.

Notes

that the distincton can be made, but denies that it is the same when applied to Christianity (Kraemer 1956: 227). His reasoning here, however, depends upon the acceptance of his understanding of the revelation in Christ being sui generis. I have dealt with this matter more extensively in a recent discussion of W. C. Smith's methodological proposals for religious studies (Wiebe 1979). 'We may observe that every religion tends toward rationalization: dogmas are rational statements meant to fix the content of beliefs' (de Vries 1967: 142). This claim may seem overly bold and it has, in a general way, been subjected to severe criticism by the Oxford anthropologist Rodney Needham. See, however, my review of Needham (Wiebe 1974b). I have subjected this issue to extended analysis in my doctoral dissertation (Wiebe 1974a).

NOTES TO CHAPTER TWO 1.

Pye (1972, 1973a), for example, seems to suggest that unless such a 'neutralized methodological f r a m e work' within which facts about the religions can be achieved a science of religion does not exist. Indeed, he seems to equate the science of religion with the work done in such a neutralized framework. The science of religion he insists must eschew the search for final explanations and be content with description and partial or intermediate explanations only. As he puts i t , '. . . t o t a l , definitive explanations should be held at arms length while the study of religion proceeds' (1972: 18). Pye fails to realize, however, that all description is also, in part at l e a s t , explanation and secondly, that partial explanations like final ones can be either empirical or theological (or 'supernatural' as defined below), and that the kinds of partial explanations permitted in this 'neutralized framework' will seriously curtail the kinds of final explanations possible when what he calls the 'further questions which the data themselves raise' are finally taken up.

Notes to chapter two

2.

243

Furthermore, even if the study of religion is to be limited to description and partial explanations as Pye suggests, it is difficult to see in what way this kind of study can be distinguished from other social sciences. I shall argue in the chapter to follow, that explanations, both intermediate and final, are essential to the study of religion. I will also show, later in this work, that the descriptive issue of the truth about religion, with which Pye is basically concerned, cannot be completed unless the issue of the truth of religion - one of Pye's 'further questions' is also taken up. A similar position is proposed by Novak (1971). In response to Crouter's attack (1972) on the academic respectability of his proposal he writes (Novak 1972: 75-76): Ascent argues that all such professional academic things i.e., the research techniques, etc., suggested , by Crouter, as essential to the study of religion are instrumental to the personal voyage of each participant. Religious studies are unifiedly one ratio formalis sub qua and one alone: the voyage of persons in their development in the context of the communal voyage of cultures. No matter how recondite and obscure the technical discussion within any speciality, the legitimate methodology central to religious studies properly posits the question: what does that have to do with who we are? What does it tell us to perceive, notice, do? If such questions are not raised, a crucial part of the subject matter for inquiry is overlooked. Worse, the part overlooked is the very one that functions as the lens through which everything else is perceived. In religious studies there is no neutral place on which the referee may stand; every human being without exception is a player on the field.

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Notes

3.

Werblowsky (quoted by Schimmel 1960: 236-237 and Oxtoby 1968: 604) describes the science of religion or comparative religion(s) then, as follows: It is an anthropological discipline, studying the religious phenomena as a creation, f e a t u r e , and aspect of human culture. The common ground on which students of religion qua students of religion meet is the realization that the awareness of the numinous or the experience of transcendence (where these happen to exist in religions) are whatever else they may be - undoubtedly empirical f a c t s of human existence and history, to be studied like all human f a c t s , by the appropriate methods. . . . On the other hand the discussion of the absolute value of religion is excluded by definition, although it may have its legitimate place in other, completely independent disciplines such as e.g. theology and philosophy of religion. It appears to me, however, that insofar as religious phenomena are human and a r e , t h e r e f o r e , to be studied like all other human phenomena, by the 'appropriate methods', it seems a category mistake to talk of a new or different science of comparative religion. I t , like the 'neutralized framework' of Pye (1972) and the strictly empirical method of thé 'new Groningen School' (see van Baaren and Drijvers 1973, with the exception of the paper by Waardenburg) is simply the application of the existing social sciences to cultural phenomena of a specifically limited sort. Furthermore, I find it difficult to see how Werblowsky can admit that the questions of truth and value in this area can find a place in other legitimate disciplines and yet deny the significance of the 'results' or 'conclusions' of those disciplines for comparative religion (see here especially the argument in my 1977a). As I have already noted, I find myself in agreement with Oxtoby (1968) in his description of Werblowsky's 'Marburg Platform' as 'sterile isolationism and externalism' (p. 605). E. O. James (1934,

Notes to chapter two

245

also 1954) presented a much sounder 'platform'. (See notes 2 and 6 to the Introduction) 4.

I have repeatedly questioned the possibility of determining the issue of the truth about religion without involving oneself in issues of the truth of religion. A further, and related assumption, namely that the study of religion must proceed from purely intellectual grounds is, I think, similarly unfounded. The claim, (as for example in Werblowsky 1959) that the study of religion is or can be carried out in a purely objective way is not wholly convincing. Without denying the academic or scholarly quest for truth one ought still ask why the search for the truth about religion. Why spend one's life at this subject rather than another? Surely the quest for truth (or Truth) and knowledge could be sought more easily, with fewer frustrations elsewhere - perhaps in the natural sciences. Why not seek truth there? What further (hidden?) motivation impels the inquirer to choose this particular field? No full analysis of the problems involved in this question can be undertaken here, but a few comments are in order. If the reply to such questions as these is simply that it is a matter of personal preference one obviously reaches a dead end. But the 'irrationality' involved in such a reply is hardly acceptable. It seems to me, rather, that there is an intrinsic, prescientific interest that draws 'scientific attention' in the direction of establishing a 'science of religion'. Some comments on the general prescientific interest in the objects of scientific study are made by Polanyi (1958). The scientific temper, he suggests, so enamored with that which can be quantified and mathematically manipulated, is attracted to the 'inexact' sciences by an intrinsic interest in the subject matter itself. And such interest often provides a kind of tacit heuristic vision of reality that orders, even if only in a rough and ready way, the data of our experience. According to Polanyi there are three important parameters that have a bearing on the data

246

Notes

fit for scientific research: (1) certainty or accuracy; (2) systematic relevance; and (3) intrinsic interest. They apply jointly in such a fashion that deficiency in one is made up for by 'excellence' in the others. Thus neither accuracy of observation nor systematic relevance (found in abundance in the physical sciences) by i t s e l f , or jointly, contribute a value to science. He writes (1958: 139, my emphasis): The subjects which are most interesting in themselves do not lend themselves best to accurate observation and systematic study. But the two kinds of gradings can compensate for each other over a wide range of disciplines, in which they combine in variable proportions, and thus uphold throughout a steady level of scientific value. The supreme exactitude and scientific coherence of physics compensate for the comparative dullness of its inanimate subject matter, while the scientific value of biology is maintained at the same level as that of physics by the greater intrinsic interest of the living things studied, though the treatment is much less exact and coherent. . . . In relying for its own interest on the antecedent interest of its subject matter, science must accept to an important extent the pre-scientific conception of these subject matters. One might plausibly suggest, therefore, that the 'science of religion' is religiously motivated in the same sense Oxtoby finds the phenomenology of religion to be so motivated (1968: 598-599). To argue, for example, that we set up departments of religion simply because of the influence religion has had and still has on our, and other, culture(s), is not, it s e e m s , to say enough. On this basis it might also be argued that our universities ought to set up departments of magic and/or astrology. That this is not done might be indicative, then, of hidden assumptions about the nature and value of religion - that it is in some sense true and/or valuable whereas magic and astrology are not ( s e e , for example, Benson

Notes to chapter two

247

1960: 18, 22, and passim). The kind of science of religion sought, then, is a kind of unconscious quest itself. Holbrook (1963) in assessing the growth of religious instruction in the university brings this out clearly (p. 69): So long as men are curious about the ends of living and continue to ask the perennial questions which religions raise and attempt to answer, the religious dimension will continue to demand informed consideration. Thus the vital pull of the questions themselves seems to have drawn sensitive educators to accept religion into the university not simply as an extra-curricular option, or as a moral booster, but as a necessary and substantive contribution to liberal education itself. As Huston Smith has aptly put it: 'The strongest force returning religion into the curriculum has been the pull of the vacuum created by its removal.' I do not mean to imply in these comments that an objective or scientific and therefore relatively unbiased study of religious phenomena cannot be distinguished from an outrightly biased and sectarian study of the data. One can, I think, distinguish presuppositions as overt, consciously held dogmas that cannot under any circumstances be given up (not even in the 'epoche' of phenomenology) and presuppositions as all-pervading 'background knowledge' that shapes and integrates one's life or the culture within which one exists. And the task of any particular study is (or ought to be) concerned with bringing these hidden presuppositions to consciousness. (That similar assumptions lie behind the 'vocation' of the other social sciences is brought out clearly by Friedrichs (1974: 124f.) Of particular interest here is, what R. Robertson (1974) calls, the religious interest, among scientists, in religion: see, for example, Bellah 1970a, b; Goodenough 1959; Burhoe 1974).

248

Notes

5.

This assumption has recently come under serious attack by social scientists themselves. Bellah, for example, admits that his own sociological approach to religion too glibly assumed a higher ontological status for its scientific concepts than for the concepts and categories indigenous to the religious group subjected to scrutiny. Thus he writes (1970b: 256): As a sociologist I am by no means prepared to abandon the work of the great consequential and symbolic reductionists. They have pointed out valid implications of religious life that were not previously understood. But I am prepared to reject their assumption that they spoke from a higher level of truth than the religious system they studied. I would point out instead their own implicit religious positions. Most of all I am not prepared to accept the implications that the religious issue is dead and that religious symbols have nothing directly to say to us. Bellah denies validity to the generally held distinction between theologically oriented study of religion as biased and scientifically oriented study of religion as objective, neutral, detached, etc. In his 'Confessions of a former establishment fundamentalist' (1970a: 4) he claims: In trying to extricate myself from what I now see as an untenable situation [namely the assumption of the intellectual superiority of the scientist ] I have not 'attempted to avoid taking a religious position. On the contrary, I have come to see that whatever fundamental stance one takes in teaching about religion is itself a religious position. Essentially the same point is made, as Friedrichs (1974) points out, in Berger's attempt to avoid (1969) the antitheological implications of his 'methodological atheism' (1967). Friedrichs, pointing out the 'transcendent' elements in science itself, insists that

Notes to chapter two

249

there must be dialogue between theology and the social sciences for '. . . to ignore the necessarily dialogical nature of the two callings in the scientific study of religion would reduce the ultimate product of the latter to an inverted parody of its fundamental referent' (1974: 126). In a similar vein see Stark (1970); Burhoe (1974); Ladner (1972); Streng (1970); and the work of Novak, and others, cited above. This problem, sometimes labeled as the problem of 'Western academic imperialism' is brought to focus in a different way in the work of Carlos Casteneda - in the difference in Castaneda's attempt to learn 'the Yaqui way of Knowledge' and Don Juan's attempt to teach him the 'way'. The following passage concerned with the use of the will to prevent oneself being harmed by the guardian sets up the problem (Castañeda 1970: 132 my emphasis): 'Your will can stop it [ the guardian ] from harming you.' 'How can I accomplish that?' 'You already know how. all you need is practice.' I told him that we were having a misunderstanding that stemmed from our differences in perceiving the world. I said that for me to know something meant that I had to be fully aware of what I was doing and that I could repeat what I know at will, but in this case I was neither aware of what I had done under the influence of the smoke [hallucenogenic drugs] nor could I repeat it if my life depended on it. Don Juan looked at me inquisitively. He seemed to be amused by what I was saying. He took off his hat and scratched his temples as he does when he wants to pretend bewilderment. 'You really know how to talk and say nothing, don't you?' he said, laughing. 'I have told you, you have to have an unbending intent in order to become a man of knowledge. But you seem to have an unbending intent to confuse yourself with

250

Notes

riddles. You insist on explaining everything as if the whole world were composed of things that can be explained. Now you are confronted with the guardian and with the problem of moving by using your will. Has it ever occurred to you that only a few things in this world can be explained your way? Don Juan, and his friend Don Genaro, also 'a man of knowledge', are puzzled beyond belief then, in Castaneda's attempt to learn how to see (i.e., learn the 'Yaqui way of knowledge') 'by writing down notes'. The work of Castañeda has an important function, I suggest therefore, in counteracting such 'Western academic imperialism' along two lines: first by showing the paradoxical nature of the imperialistic claim and second, by clarifying the odd nature of 'scientific observation' vis a vis a study of human phenomena. The paradoxical nature of the imperialistic claim emerges from its concomitant relativism. If in fact all 'knowledge' of the world is interpretation from a point of view, then the view (Weltanschauung) of the Western scientist (i.e., as naturalistic and implying a 'methodological atheism') is, like all other 'views', but one interpretation among others and its epistemology and implied academic procedures and techniques for gaining knowledge (which are but one aspect of that 'view') are simply one of many possible ways of coming to an understanding of ourselves and the world around us and not the final arbiter of validity and truth. (See in this connection Holbrook's discussion (1963) of the 'indoctrination paradox' (pp. 90-93). And Deren, appropriately, asks in her study of the Voodoo Gods of Haiti, 'is it not worth cpnsidering that reverence for detachment whether scientific or scholarly - might be primarily a projection of the dualism between spirit and matter, or the brain and the body, the belief that physical, sensory - hence, sensual! - experience is at least a lower form, if not a profane one, of human activity

Notes to chapter two

6.

251

and the moral judgment that the highest, most reliable truths can be achieved only by means of a rigid asceticism?' (Deren 1970: 9). Second, Castañeda points out clearly that to 'observe' what Don Juan observed was not a simple matter of looking; it involved a strenuous procedure of learning to see - a period of ten years apprenticeship in the case of Casteneda himself. Whether such 'participant observation' is not really 'going native' is a matter of serious debate (see especially Castañeda 1974a, b). Indeed, whether or not participant observation is really a possible academic stance is, in my opinion, a matter of debate, which it is not possible, however, to pursue further here. Combs and Bowlby in a recent article (1975), as I have already indicated above, seem to go too far in the theological direction. They claim (p. 327, my emphasis), for example, that The department of religion as a whole may therefore take on a highly charged meaning as referring to the one place in the university where religions are studied through respect for their fundamental integrity and conviction that religions themselves contain their own interpretive principles. In this context religions are not merely the object of study, according to as many different methodologies as may be feasibly brought to bear upon as many religions as may be feasibly brought in. Rather religions are the subject which, understood by reverence, determines what shall be studied and how. Understanding religion as the determing subject rather than the scrutinized object may be called 'religiology'. For such a basis of coherence the [religion ] department must rest content with commonsensical historically conditioned understandings of what 'religion' means and which 'religions' are to be brought within its purview. The questions, 'What is religion?' and 'Is there a genus, religion?' enter the study only insofar as they emerge as necessary to the intrinsic interpretive

252

Notes

principles. The intrinsic principles are a means of understanding the religions from within, but they serve also as a critique of all critiques of religion which claim to know a religion b e t t e r than it knows itself by virtue of standing outside that religion. Their claim that they do not want to press what seems to follow, namely that the study of religion will have to turn against the science of religion that proves antithetical to religion is shortlived for they go on to claim (p. 329): In saying that the recipient of tradition must yield himself over to the tradition we intend the full implication to follow: philosophic detachment or 'freedom' from a tradition is academically incompatible with a respectful study of the tradition. The claim to 'objectivty' has validity only when one has lived subjectively under and within a tradition. Detachment is an unnatural and therefore academically dishonest relation to a tradition. Fidelity is primary. (For a similar position see Nicholls 1975, Yarian 1974.) One cannot help but find himself in sympathy with R. Michaelson when he writes (1972: 422): 'One wonders if the cultured despisers of religion have merely been replaced by the religious despisers of culture. Must we move from being "religious minds without religion" to the opposite extreme?' Michaelson seems to me to suggest a solution similar to the one I have proposed here when he urges teachers of religion to take a stance between the 'professorial problem' and the 'guru problem' (see also McLelland, 1972). From the point of view of the other social sciences s e e , for example, chapter three of Peter Abell (1971). The problem here is, of course, that of the question of 'understanding', 'interpretation', e t c . mentioned in the note above. I cannot even list

Notes to chapter two

7.

253

here the extensive literature on the subject. This must be left for a future discussion. Further recent discussions on the relation of theology to religious studies that seem to point to conclusions similar to my proposal here are Davis (1974-1975) and Edsman (1974). The former paper suggests that the radical theology/science of religion distinction is less theoretical than practical and institutional and the latter shows, historically, that the methodological problems of the field reveal themseves irrespective of which faculty the study of religion is located in and 'that placement in a faculty of theology has not as a rule been detrimental to the subject' (p. 70; see also Galloway 1975 and Ingram 1976). Finally, see the description of the new 'scholarly' Journal of Dharma which 'proposes a search for dharma, spiritual truth . . . a serious scholarly effort at clarifying man's realization of the activity of the SPIRIT within the various religions of humankind. . . .' (Bulletin/CSR 6, 1975: 14). Intrestingly enough, R. J. Z. Werblowsky is counted amongst its editors and contributors. Sharpe, in a recent historical survey of methodological problems in the study of religion (1971) arrives at a similar argument and conclusion (p. 12): Perhaps in the last analysis what the comparative study of religion needs in these days is not a rigid methodological 'either-or', though there will certainly be those who will continue to cultivate one method rather than another; far more will be achieved if scholarship refuses to stagger from one methodological extreme to another, and resists the temptation to anathematize currently or locally unfashionable approaches. The study of religion must remain the meeting-ground of complementary (not competing) methods - historical, sociological, phenomenological, philosophical, psychological, etc. Great harm has been done to the study in the past by those who have insisted that their approach excludes every conceivable alternative. . . . Only

254

Notes

as methods and approaches meet can we hope to understand and appreciate religion in all its complexity. . . . NOTES TO CHAPTER THREE 1.

2.

3.

4.

According to Hempel and Oppenheim (1953: 319): 'To explain the phenomena in the world of our experience, to answer the question "Why?", is one of the foremost objectives of all rational inquiry; and especially, scientific research in its various branches strives to go beyond a mere description of its subject matter by providing an explanation of the phenomena it investgates.' Space does not permit further delineation of the distinction between description and explanation here. One might, however, profitably consult on this matter Harr€ (1960, chap. 1, 3, and 5). I a d m i t , however, that I still fear the reductionism involved in their understanding of this move to theory for reasons that will soon become obvious (see also notes 9 and 11; and Penner 1971 for a similar plea). Others also call for such a move beyond description and phenomenology: Goodenough (1959); Pummer (1972); Kishimoto (1967: 85-86); Drijvers (1973, esp. pp. 62ff.); and the introduction of Bolle to de Vries (1967, esp. pp. vii-xiii.). I shall be speaking in this chapter primarily of explanation although, quite obviously, the issues raised here concern theory as well. To delineate the precise relation of explanation to theory is a task that goes beyond the scope of this discussion. However, on this point, see, among others, Hempel and Oppenheim (1953), Nagel (1961) and Braithwaite (1960, chap. 2). It must be kept in mind however that as the understanding of explanation espoused by these men changes under criticism, so also will their understanding of theory change. Evans-Pritchard, in discussion of early nineteenthcentury theories of primitive religion, wisely points

Notes to chapter three

5.

6.

255

out that 'we should . . . realize what was the intention of many of these scholars if we are to understand their theoretical constructions. They sought, and found, in primitive religions a weapon which could, they thought, be used with deadly effect against Christianity. If primitive religion could be explained away as an intellectual aberration, as a mirage induced by emotional stress, or by its social function, it was implied that the higher religions could be discredited and disposed of in the same way' (1965: 15); see also Evans-Pritchard 1962). Smart (1973a: 37) recognizes the danger that religion might in fact be 'explained away' in the move beyond description but does not take it seriously enough. (In the light of this one might well suggest that one ought to seek for a theory about those who propounded, and still propound, theories about religion.) This conclusion, however, is still not universally accepted. Some scholars in the field of religion have thrown out all possibility of moving beyond description to explanation and theory. This is clearly implied, for example, in W. Cantwell Smith's rejection of the very category of religion (1962). The same is implied in his discussion of the truth of religion when he claims that religions are not the sort of things one can become well enough informed about to make such a judgment. The same, it seems, would hold for those who attempt to formulate theories about it (W. C. Smith 1967, 1974). Smith's objections, however, seem to be of a pragmatic rather than a theoretical nature and are not, consequently, insuperable. For a similar position carried even further see C. Geertz (1966; 42): 'The anthropological study of religion is . . . a two-stage operation; first, an analysis of the system of meanings embodied in the symbols which make up the religion proper, and second, the relating of these systems to social-structural and psychological processes'; and van Baaren and Drijvers (1973: 36-37).

256

Notes

7.

See, for example, Fenton (1970) and Streng (1970). The classic locus of such a doctrine is to be found, however, in Otto (1958 [1926]). His point here is simply that even a full sociological explanation cannot of itself provide the understanding of religion which is sought for by the science of religion for such an account explains religion only insofar as it is a factor in social life - only in one of its anthropomorphic aspects. Whether religion is something more than this is another matter entirely. This is especially important in light of Penner's and Yonan's uncritical application of the understanding of explanation in the natural sciences to the science of religion (1972). The argument here may at times become complicated but it is essential that the student of religion is clearly aware of how the notion of explanation is understood both in the natural and social sciences and the reasons for the differences and similarities of that understanding in these various disciplines before he proceeds to its use in his own discipline. If in fact the science of religion is to be a science, explanation within it will have to bear some resemblance to its counterpart in the other sciences. But what 'proper explanation' is in these disciplines is seldom clearly stated. My intention throughout the first two sections of this chapter, therefore, is to delineate as precisely as possible an understanding of explanation that is applicable to both the physical and the social sciences. Hempel (1966; also 1965). The criticism against Verstehen as of mere heuristic value has been around for some time; see for example, T. Abel (1948). Abel's criticisms are ably countered by M. L. Wax (1967) as is admitted in Abel's 'A Reply to Professor Wax' (1967).It is strange in the light of this altercation that Penner and Yonan (1972: 125) can invoke Abel's 1948 article in support of their almost identical criticism of the verstehens Methode. Scriven, that is, refuses to equate or identify explanation with prediction whereas the D-N model seems

8.

9.

10. 11.

12.

Notes to chapter three

13. 14.

15. 16.

257

to imply it; see for example Braithwaite (1966: 335337). The symmetry thesis is undermined, I think, by the analyses offered by Toulmin (1961: 38f., 60f.) and Hanson (1959: 353-354) as well as bv Scriven (1970: 97). All these issues are recognized by A. Ryan (1970), but are not, as I shall soon show, adequately resolved. I use these terms here, with only slight modification, as they are to be found in Peter Abell's discussion of sociological explanation (1971: 30-37). As will soon become plain in the discussion to follow, particularly as it relates to reductionism and explanation, I am not arguing for what Abell calls a 'radical internalism' but only that explanations in terms of concepts immanent to the group under investigation are not to be rejected without argument. That this has been, and probably still is the case with too many observers of religion is clearly evident in Robert N. Bellah's 'confessions' (1970a: 3). The literature on the problem of ideology and the sociology of knowledge is not in short supply and a cursory reading will make my point here. There is a nest of problems here which it is impossible to treat within the confines of this discusssion, but which must, nevertheless be noted. This can be seen most clearly in Michael Novak's attack (1971, for example, pp. 73, 113-114, and passim) upon the commitments of the professional academic in the study of religion. In response to the charge that he too has left the academic community for the religious community and personal commitment (see Crouter 1972), he responds with a tu quoque argument (see above, chapter 2, note 2). He goes on to say (1972: 77): 'The sole road to understanding religion is not external, objective, academic. On the contrary, professionals need to know the limits - and how to enter vicariously (both critically and sympathetically) into the voyages of others who differ from them in person and in culture. There is a way of

Notes

becoming an "insider" without becoming a "communicant".' What Novak is attempting to say is that just as the a priori assumptions of the academic are a challenge to the communicant so the a priori assumptions of the communicant present a challenge to the observer-scientists. In a sense, Novak again raises the problems in the understanding of other cultures that have 'raged' since Winch (1958). Yet Novak bases his approach to religion on some profound work in methodology done by Fr. B. Lonergan, as David Burrell explains (1972). Similar criticims of an 'objectivist methodology' are to be found in Michael Polanyi (see esp. 1958) which I have discussed, in another but similar context (Wiebe 1973). An easy acceptance of Dixon's assumptions as to the superiority of the observer's frame of reference therefore is, I suggest, nowhere in sight (see also, on this issue, Wach 1958, chap. 1; Eliade 1969; and more recently, Bellah 1970; and McLelland 1972; the point is made repeatedly, of course, by W. C. Smith 1962). This discussion is not meant to imply that Novak's proposals are any easier to accept. This is wittily underlined by Robert Michaelson (1972: 422, quoted above). Along the same lines see: Pummer (1972: 121-122); Smart (1973b, chap. 1); and the collection of articles in van Baaren and Drijvers (1973). A possible alternative to this apparent stalemate might be found in Goodenough's suggestions: 'The hope of reviving study of the science of religion lies, I believe, not in courting the traditionalists and theologians, but in coming to recognize that science itself is a religious exercise, a new religion, and that science and religion have fallen apart largely because traditionalists have done what they have always done, failed to recognize a new approach to religion as it has formed itself in their midst, challenging thereby old conceptions and comfortably formulated adjustments' (1959: 85). If Langdon Gilkey's analysis (1970) is anywhere near the mark

Notes to chapter three

17.

18.

19.

259

then there may indeed be something in this suggestion. There are however nagging doubts. Gilkey's analysis rests largely on insight gleaned from scholars like Lonergan and Polanyi, which suggests a close similarily of his thought to that of Novak. Smart is not consistent with his terminology however. In his later work (1973b) he uses 'extra-religious explanation' to designate an entirely different function. He writes: 'We also need to think of the possibility of extra-religious explanations, ones where there is a religious explanation of something not prima facie a religious state of affairs' (p. iii) Yet in providing an extrareligious explanation of the three-body doctrine in MahSySha Buddhism he reverts to the earlier usage (p. 127). I concern myself with the first usage of the concept. See here, for example, Ducasse's implied reductionism in the comment that '. . . in order to be capable of performing the social or the personal functions distinctive of religious beliefs, beliefs having contents suitable for those functions need not be objectively true nor even clear; they need only be fervently held. If so held, they will work, no matter how vague, crude, or even absurd they may happen to be' (1953: 178). Here again (see note 17) Smart appears somewhat ambiguous for there is a sense in which he is far from reductionistic as I point out in note 20 below. Similar comments about a 'theological' framework in Smart's approach to religion can be found in Yandell (1971: 132-145), and more recently in Gowan (1973). Both discussions rest largely on an analysis of Smart (1958) and are plausible interpretations of that work. That they are so reveals, I suggest, a deep tension between Smart's earlier philosophical work vis a vis religion and his later methodological ones. It may be a tension that reveals a good deal about the nature of the study of religion but, unfortunately, cannot be taken up here. See for example Wach (1967: 2, 4, and passim, and 1958, chap. 2).

260

Notes

20.

I find it strange in this regard that Penner and Yonan (1972: 130) find it so easy to dismiss the issue of reductionism as of little significance to the science of religion claiming that reduction has to do with theories and not with phenomena. Surely Durkheim (1971: 69, also p. 2), for example, is right in rejecting Tylor's animism as redUctionistic in a psychologistic direction in such a fashion that it denies the reality of religion. And a similar indictm e n t , it has been suggested by Aron (1967, II: 56), might be made against Durkheim. (It is for this reason that Berger, then, speaks of a 'methodological atheism' and that Smart sees as atheism tout court.) There is, to be sure, a sense in which every explanation is reductionistic as Fenton points out (1970: 63) but the reductionism there is not absolute. Penner and Yonan refer to Fenton's paper but fail to note his warning about a reduction of the phenomena. As Fenton puts it: 'There is . . . nothing wrong with reductionism in the study of religion, unless the investigator does not self-consciously realize that he is reductionistic, unless the reductionistic scholar thinks that his discipline alone allows him to isolate the essence of religious phenomena from their accidents, unless he over-extends his method beyond its legitimate scope' (p. 64). According to Fenton, that is, one must 'recognize' the religious life to have a qualitatively different character to other aspects of culture. (This of course is to come very close to adopting the 'holy' or the 'scared' as a priori religious categories and hence adopting a 'theological' or a t least quasi-theological approach to religion & la Otto (1958) or Eliade (1969). This point has been taken up recently by F. G. Streng (1970) where he concludes: 'What is crucial for the investigator, then, is to assume the reality of the numinous which makes itself known in all truly religious forms from the "daemonic dread" in primitive religious experiences to the Christian view of atonement' (p. 211). This would certainly cut across

Notes to chapter three

21.

22.

261

the reductionism of which Penner and Yonan write but it also, seemingly, puts Streng into the 'theological' camp. Whether Streng is here making a truth claim on behalf of religion is difficult to discern for he may in fact have in mind a distinction between the existence of the focus of a religious belief or rite and its reality as is proposed by Smart (1973a, chap. 2). Whether such a 'bracketed realism', as Smart calls it, can really resolve the tension between a theological and a reductionistic stance, however, is somewhat doubtful since it, admittedly, doesn't even raise the question central to the search for an explanation of religion (see 1973a: 62). That is, insofar as Smart leaves open (in an a priori fashion) even the possibility of the existence of the focus he is in the same boat with Streng; for in doing this he rules out, a priori, any possibility of adopting a hard-line reductionist understanding of a religious tradition or of religion in general. Smart's phenomenology appears then to be as congenial to the religiously committed as that described by Oxtoby (1969: 598-599). There is, I think, still a great deal of value in Smart's analysis, but discussion of his proposals in this regard must be postponed. Such 'supernatural' explanations might well be divided into two classes. There are for example, explanations about 'the world' in terms of religious hypothetical that either rival or complement nonreligious or scientific explanations. See in this regard, among others Woods (1958); Slote (1970) Berthold Jr. (1969). The other order of 'supernatural explanation' and the one with which I am concerned here is that invoked by religious believers to account for their beliefs and life-style, etc. Pummer seems to me far too optimistic in this regard -when he claims that 'history of religions is one way of studying religions, theology another, psychology of religion a third way, and so on - all these different kinds of religious studies complement each other and contribute to a fuller kowledge of

262

23.

Notes

what religion means to man' (Pummer 1972: 116). A similar optimism is to be found in McDermott (1968: 25). Kishimoto, however, (1967) seems to rule out any possibility of such 'complementarity' too quickly. Questions about religion, religions and truth are extremely complex as the body of the argument presented here has made plain. I simply point out here that when I speak of philosophical argument and the truth of religion I do not have in mind any idea of its demonstration or proof (or the opposite). What is required, r a t h e r , is the sort of 'cumulative argument' of which Basil Mitchell speaks (1973, and elsewhere).

NOTES TO CHAPTER FOUR 1. 2.

3.

A further influence in Phillips's thought is, of course, Wittgenstein. It is often argued that the thesis set forward in Kierkegaard (1941) is not his position. I do not wish to enter that particular debate here. It is quite obvious that the thesis concerning 'truth as subjectivity' as set out in the Postscript has been adopted by many whether or not Kierkegaard himself espoused it. It is for this reason, t h e r e f o r e , that I choose to discuss it at some length in the present work. A perusal of Malcom Diamond (1974) will show that a similar doctrine is to be found in many Christian theologians.

NOTES TO CHAPTER FIVE 1.

The distinction does not really hold if one is concerned with why Shankara held the view of ultimate reality that he purportedly did hold. In that case, as I have already pointed out in chapter one, one will himself have an interpretive framework that implies an overall world view.

263

Notes to chapter five

2.

Other statements of the phenomenological position can be found in Bleeker (1959, 1969); and Hultkrantz (1970).

NOTE TO CHAPTER SIX 1.

Note here the very cautious Christian (1972).

approach

of

William

NOTES TO CHAPTER SEVEN 1.

2.

3. 4.

5.

Perhaps Miles wishes us to think of the parable in terms of the zen Koan, although this does not appear likely. The Koan does not make sense on the level of reason but does, for those properly prepared, bring eventual enlightenment. But if the similarity is there it also means that the adoption of one parable in preference to another cannot really be a rational choice. I do not wish to develop or argue this point here. On the questions in biology one might refer to, among others, Dobzhansky (1964) and Hein (1969) and on the realist/instrumentalist issue in the interpretation of science one might look at the arguments of Popper (1958, 1962, 1972). Lev Shestov (1966, 1969, 1970) is much more consistent in this respect than is Kierkegaard but hardly less open to criticism* of the sort raised here. Similar analyses of Kierkegaard are to be found in Edwards (1971) and Blanshard (1974). For sympathetic discussions of Kierkegaard in this respect see Holmer (1955) and Phillips (1970). A similar case can be made against the theological distinction between faith and religion raised by Barth (1969) and so persuasively argued by H. Kraemer (1938, 1956, 1962, 1969). In this respect see, for example the arguments of Bleeker (1966); Bouquet (1958); and Neill (1959). I have discussed this issue at some length in chapter one above.

264

Notes

6.

For a similar position vis a vis primitive religious beliefs s e e , among others, Spiro (1964) and Jarvie (1969). Not all anthropologists agree with this understanding, however, but that is not a debate that can be taken up here. The 'opposition' is well represented by Beattie (1964). I think the anthropocentric character of knowledge inevitable. To say the world is or what it is requires concepts and categories that are not themselves 'dictated unequivocally by the facts'. Knowledge therefore is as much a construction of the mind as it is the reflection of an external reality. There is neither time nor space, however, to defend this position here. There is no lack of discussion of such 'anthropocentrism', however, among sociologists of knowledge. See, for example, Berger and Luckmann (1971). This claim is only a slight exaggeration. See here, for example, Polanyi (1958), Kuhn (1962) and Feyerabend (1970a, b). This kind of theological analysis of the 'truth' is the focal~point of Van A. Harvey's critique of Christian thought (1966: 113, and passim). Malcolm Diamond (1974) shows quite clearly that this two-level theory of truth is quite widespread among Christian theologians. I shall discuss in some detail a few such proposals in chapter eleven below.

7.

8. 9. 10.

NOTES TO CHAPTER EIGHT 1. 2. 3.

4.

See also Morris (1964: 72). See, for example, Dixon (1973: 85). I am in agreement with Berger on this point, as should by now be obvious. The anthropocentric character of our knowledge does not imply that rational inquiry and discussion are useless and that truth cannot be found. I have dealt with these themes a t length in my doctoral dissertation (1974); and in summary form in an article (1973).

Notes to chapter eight

5.

6.

265

On the possibility of assumptions about the supernatural in scientific theories, see Hodges (1974). On the role of explanation in the scholarly study of religion see chapter three above. This may not be the case with respect to the early phenomenological school particularly in Holland; there appears to be quasi-theological overtones, for example, in the phenomenology of scholars such as van der Leeuw, Christensen, and Bleeker (see the comments by Baird (1971) for example; also the debates over and discussions of phenomenology in van Baaren and Drijvers 1973).

NOTE TO CHAPTER NINE 1.

See also the comments of Eric Sharpe (1973, 1974) on truth and dialogue in the world religions.

NOTES TO CHAPTER TEN 1. 2. 3.

4. 5.

See, among others, Ashby (1965); Bleeker (1952; 1959; 1971); Holbrook (1963); and Welch (1971). See van Baaren and Drijvers (1973); Yinger (1970), Baird (1971), Pummer (1972); and Geertz (1966). The issue of significance in this chapter, of course, is definitional and not criterial. It is important, however, to note that the criterial theories of truth do not (and do not nee"d to) provide criteria that guarantee truth. As Rescher suggests, we must distinguish 'guaranteeing criteria' form 'authorizing criteria' - we can, that is, have generally effective tests for 'truth' without necessarily having to claim certainty for all our 'truth claims'. See also Luijpen (1973). In this Polanyi opposes not only the outright positivist philosophers and their 'justificationism' but also the objectivism of Popper and his 'non-justificationary' theory of knowledge. Polanyi agrees with Popper (and his disciples) and argues against the positivists that

266

6.

Notes

no strict criteria of truth are available that can easily distinguish the truth from falsehood. Polanyi disagrees, however, in his (their) further claim t h a t , because of this impossibility, no claim to truth can be made. Polanyi therefore argues the necessity of commitment (a 'justificationary' theory of knowledge) if truth is to be obtained - although it is always a critical commitment. Further discussion of this m a t ter can be found in Wiebe (1973). Patrick Burke's call for a discipline of 'comparative religious thought,' t h e r e f o r e , seems wholly appropriate; I quote him at some length because the point he makes is particularly pertinent: Some religious traditions, especially those commonly called 'major' or 'higher', have developed, in addition to rituals, myths and forms of organization, distinctive systems of thought: they have grappled with the problem of man's predicament and salvation not only by means of action and imagination, but have made prominent use of more or less abstract conceptions, assertions of factual truth and falsity, and the support of reasoning. In consequence departments of religion construct courses on Christian Thought, Jewish Thought and Islamic Thought, on Buddhist and Hindu Thought, on Taoist and Confucion Thought. . . . When these diverse bodies of thought are brought together within the walls of one department the additional question soon imposes itself, how they r e l a t e to one another. . . . This question is not only a historical or descriptive one. It has implications for the truth or falsity of these bodies of thought, and for the value of their perspectives. . . . The question, how different systems of religious thought compare and contrast with one another, is eventually a question about the structure of religious thought itself. Different perspectives on l i f e , or anything else for that m a t t e r , can be judged to be similar or different only in virtue of some common f r a m e of reference. The question, how d i f f e r e n t

Notes to chapter ten

267

systems of religious thought relate to one another is also at the same time at least implicitly a question about this common frame of reference, this underlying unity of structure; that is, it is a question about the structure of religious thought as such. I believe that these are the tasks, the aims and scope of a field as yet only faintly in existence, though surely useful, Comparative Religious Thought.

7.

8. 9. 10.

See also comments by Ashby (1958); Christian (1972); and Meynell (1973). I have argued for the cognitive aspect of religion above. I am well aware of the rather divergent views as to the nature of religion in anthropological circles and among the professional students of religion. That disagreement is reflected especially in the numerous papers and debates over 'the definition of religion' (see chapter one above). Baillie (1962) argues a similar point most persuasively. Smart has offered a similar analysis (1970). That metaphysical claims are 'checkable' or 'testable' is not obviously false as Piaget (1971), among others, would argue. Time does not permit me to flesh out the claim here that metaphysical (and hence theological) claims are in part testable and so possible 'carriers' of truth. I have made a few attempts to argue this (Wiebe 1975, 1977b).

NOTES TO CHAPTER ELEVEN 1. 2.

The popularity of such a view among theologians generally becomes evident on reading Diamond (1974). There is some overlap here with the concept of religious truth as personal truth (as discussed in the next section). The pragmatic character of 'religious truth' is expressed in terms of its value to or

268

3.

4.

Notes

function in the life both of the individual (and, consequently, there is talk of 'personal truth') and of society. Dunne, for example, talks of experimenting with the truth in this fashion: 'Enforcing the meaning of scriptures like these in one's life amounts to turning poetry into t r u t h , making the poetry of the religious come true in one's life' (1972: 4). Dunne uses Gandhi as example: see Gandhi (1957) and Erikson (1969). Truth is 'universal' in the sense that what is true for one person must be so for another. What one does with the truth is another matter entirely. Unless it is 'appropriated' or put to use one can hardly talk of its value - it has merely the potentiality to value. To apply that truth is to make it 'personal' and it is in this sense only that one can talk of 'personal' truth. To say that the assertion or claim that 'p' is true only for a particular individual is entirely absurd (see note 2 above). See also the very interesting comments by Bollnow (1974) on truth in the humanities and social sciences and Casey's (1972) discussion of man's relation to the truth. Wink's analysis (1973) here reflects a good deal of Polanyi's conception of truth in shying away from positivism and objectivism without however, surrendering to an outright subjectivism. Polanyi's concept of 'personal knowledge' is not subjectivistic, for that knowledge, he insists, overflows itself in 'universal intent' and 'persuasive passion'; the desire to bring others to the same belief. Similarly 'personal truth' means simply that truth cannot be obtained in wholly objective, nonpersonal procedures, but rather involves personal judgment. It does not mean that the truth discovered 'belongs' only to the individual who discovers it and 'uses' it. What one considers t r u e , one considers true for all. Much can also be learned from Leslie Dewart's understanding of truth (1970) even though he seems to reject the correspondence theory of truth en toto. That theory, he suggests, is tied to an inadequate semantic epistemology (pp. 30 and 52) which

Notes to chapter

eleven

269

uncritically accepts the metaphysics 'in which the necessary character of reality is consciously assessed' (p. 52) According to Dewart language is not so much a reflection of our mental relationship as it is a construction or creation of that relationship (p. 75). 'What language and thought achieve is the creation, the viability, the facilitation and the continuation of the emergence of human selfhood in relation to the world' (p. 79). This does not however, mean that one can change the way the world is by thinking (p. 83). But, there is in this admission, I think, a qualified acceptance of the correspondence theory as it is developed by Polanyi. This is evident, I think, in the following ambiguous statement: 'To say that the epistemic value of statements is not given by their conformity to reality does not mean that I can, with truth, say whatever I wish, regardless of what reality may be. I repeat: the situation in which I am conscious, and in which I must consciously determine myself, and in which I must think, is given, and it is antecedent to my consciousness of it. Hence, it is perfectly true, though this truth is the object of much misinterpretation, that true statements do, in point of fact, more or less approximately conform to reality' (p. 98). What Dewart wishes to emphasize however, is that the truth value of language hinges more on its effectiveness in the* formation of consciousness, something I do not wish to deny at all in the present analysis. See also Roger Poole (1972). NOTE TO CHAPTER TWELVE 1.

Of particular significance here, of course, are the questions raised by Kuhn (1965); see also Johnson (1946). The question of truth in science has also been raised recently by Prof. Mary Hesse (1975). Although one can agree with her that no absolute objective criteria of truth exist (p. 389) and that nonscientific judgments of value and meaning are

270

Notes

involved in all discussions of truth (p. 395) it seems too much to conclude that it is merely a m a t t e r of ideology (p. 398). Nevertheless, the issues she raises must be given serious consideration (see also the pertinent comments of George Steiner on the 'future of truth', 1974: 51f.).

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