Reading of AN Wilson's recent conversion back to Christianity, this thought strikes me: Christianity is a better place to doubt from than atheism.
Wilson described how little by little he began to doubt the certainties of atheism: could they really be so convinced that they were as right as they pretended? Is materialism - which keeps proclaiming its own superior intelligence with the volume turned up to 11 - really as intelligent as it thinks it is? Can it really provide a credible basis for believing in the dignity of human beings AND also being sceptical of their inherent disposition to goodness? Does it really provide the complete explanation of things, as it promises? Isn't there a problem of evil for the atheist too - that there is no reason to use the term 'evil' at all?
Orthodox Christian belief doesn't pretend to offer comprehensive knowledge - of the world or of God. It asks us to believe in things we haven't seen, and to hope against hope that suffering and evil do not have the final word. Its biggest claim is that we now 'see in part'. The Bible itself is frustratingly reticent on questions of freedom and destiny, evil and suffering - though not silent. Not all the tangles are straightened, not all the discords resolved. It offers us witness, but not proof in the final, scientific sense.
And its great characters are doubters. Abraham, whose belief in the promises of God was the merest thread at times; Moses, who argued and pleaded with God; David, who sank in his own sins, and who as the Psalmist wrestled with God's apparent absence; Peter, who sank beneath the waves and betrayed the Lord. Even Jesus in Gethesemane does not appear as a superman of faith- but rather as a man in the grip of real existential terror. The cry of dereliction - though not his only word from the cross - is a cry of 'believing doubt', or 'doubting belief'. Believing doubt: I am thinking too of the words of the man in Mark 9:24: 'Lord I believe! Help my unbelief!'
We misrepresent Christianity if we present it an answer to all questions, or a solution to all problems. I have said this before, of course. Fundamentalism tries to make of Christianity an alternative to materialist atheism: an answer for everything. But it has to read the Bible as badly as the atheists do to get there. Liberalism, for its part, pretends to a kind of believing unbelief, but is really just a failure of nerve. It sits somewhere in the middle, neither believing, or sufficiently doubting.
Rather, biblical and orthodox Christianity keeps nagging away at us, challenging our human pride and upsetting our self-made securities. It turns us always to the twin wonders of a crucified messiah and an empty tomb... It gives us confidence, just enough, to live in the turbulence of the world.
Showing posts with label faith and reason. Show all posts
Showing posts with label faith and reason. Show all posts
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Philosophy and Theology
I have to say Paul Ricoeur's Gifford lectures published as Oneself as Another ranks among the most difficult books I have ever tried to read.
But I was interested to read in the first chapter to the book how Ricoeur sees his largely philosophical work in relation to theology. He had, he said, written a couple of more explicitly theological chapters, but does not include them in this book.
He is adamant that he doesn't want his philosophy of the self to be seen as a crypto-theology. It is certainly the case that he discovers all these conceptual difficulties and problems that seem to be suggestive of a theological resolution. Does not the philosophy of the self point us inevitably to the need for some kind of divinity? This is the move he wants to resist
And, what's more, he doesn't want to see it the other way around: theology as taking the place of philosophy. Theology doesn't give the 'ultimate foundation' (rationally speaking) that philosophy strives for but can never attain. That would be stretching theology to do work it isn't designed to do:
If I defend my philosophical writings against the accusation of crypto-theology, I also refrain, with equal vigilance, from assigning to biblical faith a cryptophilosophical function which would most certainly be the case if one were to expect from it some definitive solution to aporias that philosophy produces in abundance... (p. 24)
No: theology does not answer the questions that philosophy has raised. The irretractable problems that a philosopher discovers are not susceptible to a theological answer. The problems remain, and remain to be addressed by philosophy. What he has instead from theology is assurance, which is to be taken by faith. This is how he puts it:
The dependence of the slef on a word that stripsit of its glory, all the while comforting its courage to be, delivers biblical faith from the temptation, which I am here calling cryptophilosophical, of taking over the henceforth vacnt role of ultimate foundation. In turn, a fiath that knows itself to be without guarantee...can help philosophical hermeneutics to protect itself from the hubris that would set it up as the heir to the philosophies of the cogito (ie Descartes) and as continuing their self-foundational claim. (p. 25)
But I was interested to read in the first chapter to the book how Ricoeur sees his largely philosophical work in relation to theology. He had, he said, written a couple of more explicitly theological chapters, but does not include them in this book.
He is adamant that he doesn't want his philosophy of the self to be seen as a crypto-theology. It is certainly the case that he discovers all these conceptual difficulties and problems that seem to be suggestive of a theological resolution. Does not the philosophy of the self point us inevitably to the need for some kind of divinity? This is the move he wants to resist
And, what's more, he doesn't want to see it the other way around: theology as taking the place of philosophy. Theology doesn't give the 'ultimate foundation' (rationally speaking) that philosophy strives for but can never attain. That would be stretching theology to do work it isn't designed to do:
If I defend my philosophical writings against the accusation of crypto-theology, I also refrain, with equal vigilance, from assigning to biblical faith a cryptophilosophical function which would most certainly be the case if one were to expect from it some definitive solution to aporias that philosophy produces in abundance... (p. 24)
No: theology does not answer the questions that philosophy has raised. The irretractable problems that a philosopher discovers are not susceptible to a theological answer. The problems remain, and remain to be addressed by philosophy. What he has instead from theology is assurance, which is to be taken by faith. This is how he puts it:
The dependence of the slef on a word that stripsit of its glory, all the while comforting its courage to be, delivers biblical faith from the temptation, which I am here calling cryptophilosophical, of taking over the henceforth vacnt role of ultimate foundation. In turn, a fiath that knows itself to be without guarantee...can help philosophical hermeneutics to protect itself from the hubris that would set it up as the heir to the philosophies of the cogito (ie Descartes) and as continuing their self-foundational claim. (p. 25)
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