Faith and Philosophical Enquiry

D.Z. Phillips

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781135978723
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

The concern of this book is the nature of religious belief and the ways in which philosophical enquiry is related to it. Six chapters present the positive arguments the author wishes to put forward to discusses religion and rationality, scepticism about religion, language-games, belief and the loss of belief.

The remaining chapters include criticisms of some contemporary philosophers of religion in the light of the earlier discussions, and the implications for more specific topics, such as religious education, are investigated. The book ends with a general attempt to say something about the character of philosophical enquiry, and to show how important it is to realise this character in the philosophy of religion.

V Religious Beliefs and Language-Games

Recently, many philosophers of religion have protested against the philosophical assertion that religious beliefs must be recognized as distinctive language-games. They feel that such an assertion gives the misleading impression that these language-games are cut off from all others. This protest has been made by Ronald Hepburn, John Hick, and Kai Nielsen, to give but three examples. Hepburn says, ‘Within traditional Christian theology … questions about the divine existence cannot be deflected into the question, “Does ‘God’ play an intelligible role in the language-game?”’¹ Hick thinks that there is something wrong in saying that ‘The logical implications of religious statements do not extend across the border of the Sprachspiel into assertions concerning the character of the universe beyond that fragment of it which is the religious speech of human beings.’² Nielsen objects to the excessive compartmentalization of modes of social life involved in saying that religious beliefs are distinctive language-games, and argues that ‘Religious discourse is not something isolated, sufficient unto itself.³ Although “Reality” may be systematically ambiguous … what constitutes evidence, or tests for the truth or reliability of specific claims, is not completely idiosyncratic to the context or activity we are talking about. Activities are not that insulated.’⁴ I do not want to discuss the writings of these philosophers in this chapter. I have already tried to meet some of their objections elsewhere.⁵ Rather, I want to treat their remarks as symptoms of a general misgiving about talking of religious beliefs in the way I have indicated which one comes across with increasing frequency in philosophical writings and in philosophical discussions. I write this chapter as one who has talked of religious beliefs as distinctive language-games, but also as one who has come to feel misgivings in some respects about doing so.

What do these misgivings amount to? Partly, they amount to a feeling that if religious beliefs are isolated, self-sufficient language-games, it becomes difficult to explain why people should cherish religious beliefs in the way they do. On the view suggested, religious beliefs seem more like esoteric games, enjoyed by the initiates but of little significance outside the internal formalities of their activities. Religious beliefs begin to look like hobbies – something with which men occupy themselves at week-ends. From other directions, the misgivings involve the suspicion that religious beliefs are being placed outside the reach of any possible criticism, and that the appeal to the internality of religious criteria of meaningfulness can act as a quasi-justification for what would otherwise be recognized as nonsense.

There is little doubt that talk about religious beliefs as distinctive language-games has occasioned these misgivings. As I shall try to show later, to some extent there is good reason for these misgivings. It is also true, however, that these misgivings must be handled with great care. Some attempts at removing them lead to confusions about the logical grammar of certain religious beliefs. In the first two sections of this chapter I shall consider some of these.

I

In face of the misgiving that talk of religious beliefs as distinctive language-games may make them appear to be self-contained esoteric games, some philosophers of religion have denied that such talk is legitimate. What must be established, they argue, is the importance of religious beliefs. People must be given reasons why they ought to believe in God. In this way, religious beliefs are given a basis; they are shown to be reasonable. My difficulty is that I do not understand what is involved in this enterprise.

In his ‘Lecture on Ethics’, Wittgenstein emphasizes the difference between absolute judgments of value and relative judgments of value. Such words as ‘good’, ‘important’, ‘right’ have a relative and an absolute use. For example, if I say that this is a good chair, I may be referring to its adequacy in fulfilling certain purposes. If I say it is important not to catch a cold, I may be referring to the unpleasant consequences of doing so. If I say that this is the right road, I may be referring to the fact that it would get me to my destination if I follow it.⁶ Now, in these instances, I can reverse my judgment as follows: ‘This is not a good chair, since I no longer want to relax, but to work.’ ‘It is not important that I do not catch a cold, since I don’t care about the consequences. Doing what I want to do will be worth it.’ ‘This is not the right road for me, since I no longer want to get to where it would take me.’ But as well as a relative use of words like ‘good’, ‘important’, ‘right’, or ‘ought’, there is an absolute use of the words. Wittgenstein illustrates the difference where ‘ought’ is concerned in the following example:

Supposing that I could play tennis and one of you saw me playing and said, ‘Well, you play pretty badly,’ and suppose I answered, ‘I know I’m playing badly, but I don’t want to play any better,’ all the other man could say would be: ‘Ah, then that’s all right.’ But suppose I had told one of you a preposterous lie and he came up to me and said, ‘You’re behaving like a beast,’ and then I were to say, ‘I know I behave badly, but then I don’t want to behave any better,’ could he then say, ‘Ah, then that’s all right’? Certainly not; he would say, ‘Well, you ought to want to behave better.’ Here you have an absolute judgment of value, whereas the first instance was one of a relative judgment.⁷

Many religious apologists feel that if religious beliefs are not to appear as esoteric games they must be shown to be important. This is true as far as it goes. What remains problematic is the way in which the apologists think the importance of religion can be established. When they say it is important to believe in God, how are they using the word ‘important’? Are they making a relative or an absolute judgment of value? Sometimes it seems as if relative judgments of value are being made. We are told to believe in God because he is the most powerful being. We are told to believe in God because only those who believe flourish in the end. We are told to believe in God because history is in His hand, and that, despite appearances, the final victory is His. All these advocacies are founded on relative judgments of value. As in the other cases we mentioned, the judgments are reversible. If the Devil happened to be more powerful than God, he would have to be worshipped. If believers are not to flourish in the end, belief becomes pointless. Belief in God is pointless if historical development goes in one direction rather than another.

But need religious beliefs be thought of in this way? Belief in God is represented as a means to a further end. The end is all-important, the means relatively unimportant. Belief in God has a point only if certain consequences follow. This seems to falsify the absolute character which belief in God has for many believers. They would say that God’s divinity cannot be justified by external considerations. If we can see nothing in it, there is nothing apart from it which will somehow establish its point. Rush Rhees made a similar observation when he compared an absolute judgment of value in morality with a relative judgment of value:

‘You ought to make sure that the strip is firmly clamped before you start drilling.’ ‘What if I don’t?’ When I tell you what will happen if you don’t, you see what I mean.

But ‘You ought to want to behave better.’ ‘What if I don’t?’ What more could I tell you?⁸

We cannot give a man reasons why he should be good. Similarly, if a man urges someone to come to God, and he asks, ‘What if I don’t?’, what more is there to say? Certainly, one could not get him to believe by telling him that terrible things will happen to him if he does not believe. Even if it were true that these things are going to happen, and even if a person believed because of them, he would not be believing in God. He would be believing in the best thing for himself. He would have a policy, not a faith. Furthermore, if religious beliefs have only a relative value, one can no longer give an account of the distinction between other-worldliness and worldliness, a distinction which is important in most religions. The distinction cannot be accounted for if one assumes that the value of religious beliefs can be assessed by applying them to a wider common measure. Consider the following arguments: (i) We should believe in God. He is the most powerful of all beings. We are all to be judged by Him in the end. He is to determine our fate. In this argument there is only one concept of power: worldly power. As it happens, God is more powerful than we are, but it is the same kind of power, (ii) Many battles are fought. At times it looks as if the good is defeated and evil triumphs. But there is no reason to fear: the ultimate victory is God’s. Here a common measure is applied to God and the powers of evil, as if God’s victory is demonstrable, something recognized by good and evil alike. The man who says God is not victorious would be contradicting the man who says He is victorious.

These apologetic manoeuvres remind one of Polus in Plato’s Gorgias. Polus did not understand Socrates when the latter said that goodness is to a man’s advantage. He pointed to Archelaus the Tyrant of Macedonia. Surely, here was a wicked man who flourished. Is it not easy for even a child to show that Socrates is mistaken? But the fallacy in Polus’s argument is his supposition that he and Socrates can only mean one thing when they speak of advantage – namely, what he, Polus, means by it. For Socrates, however, it is not the world’s view of advantage which is to determine what is good, but what is good which is to determine what is to count as advantage. In what way are some apologists similar to Polus? In this way: when someone shows them how much power the forces ranged against religion have, they reply, ‘But our God is more powerful!’ But they use the same concept of power. Their idea of power is not qualitatively different from that of their opponents. On the contrary, on their view the world and God share the same kind of power, only God has more of it. But, like Polus, they need to realize that for many believers it is not the outcome, the course of events, which is to determine whether God is victorious, but faith in God which determines what is regarded as victory. If this were not so, there would be no tension between the world’s ways of regarding matters and religious reactions to them. The same tension exists in ethics. There are those for whom justice, to be worth pursuing, must be acceptable to a thousand tough characters. Others, like Socrates, recognizing that in Athens or any other city anything may happen to one, can say without contradiction that all will be well. In the eyes of the world, all cannot be well if anything will happen to one. Things must go in one way rather than another. Since, for many believers, love of God determines what is to count as important, there will be situations where what the believer calls ‘success’ will be failure in the eyes of the world, what he calls ‘joy’ will seem like grief, what he calls ‘victory’ will seem like certain defeat. So it was, Christians believe, at the Cross of Christ.⁹ In drawing attention to this tension between two points of view, my aim is not to advocate either, but to show that any account of religious beliefs which seems to deny that such a tension exists falsifies the nature of the beliefs in question.

What we have seen in the first section of the chapter is how, if philosophers are not careful, misgivings about treating religious beliefs as esoteric games can lead to an attempt to show why religious beliefs are important which distorts the nature of the values involved in such beliefs.

II

Misgivings about the philosophical characterization of religious beliefs as distinctive language-games not only lead to attempts to give an external justification of religious values, but also to attempts both by philosophers who are sympathetic and by philosophers who are unsympathetic to religion to show that their conclusions are reached by criteria of rationality which their opponents do or ought to accept. Unless believers and non-believers can be shown to be using common criteria of rationality, it is said, then the misgivings about religious beliefs being esoteric games cannot be avoided.

Wittgenstein raised the question whether, in relation to religion, the non-believer contradicts the believer when he says that he does not believe what the believer believes.¹⁰ If one man contradicts another, they can be said to share a common understanding, to be playing the same game. Consider the following examples: The man who says that the sun is 90 million miles away from the earth contradicts the man who says that the sun is only 20 million miles away from the earth. The man who says that the profit from a business venture is £100,000 is contradicted by the man who says that the profit is £50,000. The man who says that there are unicorns contradicts the man who says that there are no unicorns. In these examples the disputants participate in a common understanding. The disputants about the distance of the sun from the earth share a common understanding – namely, methods of calculation in astronomy. The disputants about the business profit share a common understanding – namely, business methods of calculating gain and loss. The disputants about the unicorns share a common understanding – namely, methods of verifying the existence of various kinds of animals. The disputants differ about the facts, but they are one in logic – that is, they appeal to the same criteria to settle the disagreement. But what if one man says that handling the ball is a foul and another says that handling the ball is not a foul? Are they contradicting each other? Surely they are only doing so if they are playing the same game, referring to the same rules.

In the light of these examples, what are we to say about the man who believes in God and the man who does not? Are they contradicting each other? Are two people, one of whom says there is a God and the other of whom says he does not believe in God, like two people who disagree about the existence of unicorns? Wittgenstein shows that they are not.¹¹ The main reason for the difference is that God’s reality is not one of a kind; He is not a being among beings. The word ‘God’ is not the name of a thing. Thus, the reality of God cannot be assessed by a common measure which also applies to things other than God. But these are conclusions for which reasons must be given.

If I say that something exists, it makes sense to think of that something ceasing to exist. But religious believers do not want to say that God might cease to exist. This is not because, as a matter of fact, they think God will exist for ever, but because it is meaningless to speak of God’s ceasing to exist. Again, we cannot ask of God the kinds of questions we can ask of things which come to be and pass away: ‘What brought Him into existence?’ ‘When will He cease to exist?’ ‘He was existing yesterday. How about today?’ Again, we find religious believers saying that it is a terrible thing not to believe in God. But if believing in God is to believe in the existence of a thing, an object, one might wonder why it is so terrible to say that the thing in question does not exist.¹² Or one might be puzzled as to why there is such a fuss about these matters, anyway, since religious believers only believe them to be true. We might say, as we would normally in such cases, ‘You only believe –Oh, well …’¹¹ But is this the way in which the word ‘belief’ is used in religion? Is it not queer to say of worshippers, ‘They only believe there is a God’?

What is the reaction of philosophers to these differences? They are not unaware of them. On the contrary, we have quarterly reminders of their multiplicity. But most philosophers who write on the subject see these differences as an indication that serious blunders have been committed in the name of religion for s...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Dedication
• Preface
• I. Philosophy, Theology and the Reality of God
• II. Faith, Scepticism, and Religious Understanding
• III. From World to God?
• IV. Religious Belief and Philosophical Enquiry
• V. Religious Beliefs and Language-Games
• VI. Belief and Loss of Belief
• VII. Religion and Epistemology: some Contemporary Confusions
• VIII. Philosophy and Religious Education
• IX. Wisdom’s Gods
• X. Subjectivity and Religious Truth in Kierkegaard
• XI. God and Ought
• XII. On The Christian Concept of Love
• XIII. Faith and Philosophy
• Bibliography