I would like to analyze the concept of "revealed religion"; specifically, is there a split between revealed religions and non-revealed? I think that these two categories do make some practical sense. However, first I'll deconstruct them myself, to show their limits.
Any religion is in a way revealed, simply because I myself had to go to some other source and read about it. It comes from outside my own knowledge, and so must have been revealed to me. Even if I were to just sit down and think about matters, all of my concepts, all of my language would come from my community, as would the type of inferences I would make.
Ok, with that out of the way, I would say that we could look at revealed religions, as those which contain a revelation which must always exceed my knowledge. There is no way even in principle whereby I could know on my own that Muhammad is the prophet of Allah, or that I should perform a particular Soma ritual, or that Jesus is God Incarnate. These are all outside of my possible reasoning capabilities. Why? It would seem to me to be because either (a) they are contingent facts about the world, or (b) because my mind is not structured in such a way so as to reach truths of such a sort about the world ( some sort of Kantian turn perhaps, or maybe simply synthetic truths about reality lying at the intelligible core of the world).
A non-revealed religion, by contrast, may (would) have texts. These texts would express truths which would exceed my understanding, and the tradition itself may very well admit that I would not be able to understand the truths within them on my own without much, much practice. But, eventually, I could understand every single truth; they are all rational, in the strong sense that I can reason my way to them.
Does a non-revealed religion really make sense? Buddhism would seem to be one, on its own claims; however, I may have to wait several uncountable eons before I can advance far enough to attain enlightenment and see the truth for myself. However, it seems to me that one can talk about ideal claims and pragmatic claims in this context.
- (Ideal) If I had perfect human understanding, attainable by continuous progression from my current state, then I could understand religion x.
- (Pragmatic) My reasoning about religion x can be brought closer to the ideal, and so whether my reasoning matches up more and more closely with the teachings of x is a sign of its truth.
The pragmatic claim, if true, seems to be what really differentiates non-revealed from revealed religions. If Buddhism were true, then I should be able to reason my way more and more closely to its total truth on my own, though I may need a guide at first. If my reason were to come apart more and more from Buddhist teachings, then I would have grounds for holding Buddhism to be false.
If Christianity were true, then my own reasoning may or may not have anything to do with reality. I don't mean my strict, logical demonstrations, but rather reasoning taken in a more general way. I can't rationally explain the Trinity, the Incarnation, or the Atonement (among other things), and my reasoning will never get me closer to an understanding of them or to their truth no matter how hard I try. Sure, I can tell you that the Trinity is 3 persons in 1 substance; but what the heck does that mean, even if I wax eloquent on subsistent relations or processions? I don't even know whether my claim makes sense, and I am doubtful that most lay confessions of the Trinity and the Incarnation are anything but nonsensical or heretical. So, if my reasoning comes apart from Christian teaching (except in the case of valid statements of illogicity), then a legitimate answer someone could always give to me would be that I simply need to obey, not to understand.
I guess that makes sense, based on the standpoint of revelation. But if that can always be an answer, then could there be any sufficient proof of revelation? If it is contingent, then who knows why it is the case? And if it exceeds our capabilities to understand, then how is this different? In short, revealed religion must always run into Lessing's ditch between truths of reason and truths of history. Because of this, I would also always have the suspicion that the truths are in place as part of power claim by certain groups of people, rather than as statements about reality. There would not be proof of this, of course, but the sort of situation has lent itself to abuse.
Now, a further problem arises. Even with "non-revealed" religions, am I really bringing my reason more and more in line with the religion in question? Or am I simply being inculturated? Pascal argues that one should start attending Masses and taking holy water, and one will start to have reasons for belief. Al-Ghazali holds that one can have a direct "taste" of God which is above all reason, and he was a pretty astute (anti-)philosopher himself who thought quite highly of reasoning. D. T. Suzuki claims that if one puts aside one's questioning about philosophical problems, then one will attain to their true answers after reaching satori. In different religions, in other words, people claim that one is justified in a way that will satisfy even the rational person, if one just follows that religion. Nice; but everyone claims it, and everyone disagrees, so any individual claim is suspect. Is the "rational" assent to Buddhism, or (perhaps) Advaita Vedanta, etc. any different? Next, I'll bring up some points about a book I've been reading which I think brings out some of these points more clearly: Persuasions of the Witch's Craft by T. M. Luhrmann, about how a anthropologist joined some British magical communities for a couple years in order to study their culture and how they came to believe in something so contrary to the expectations of the society arond them.
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So I'm not normally a huge fan of C.S. Lewis, but I was curious as to your thoughts on a particular idea of his I had remembered from the little bit of his work I read years ago that now seems apropos to the question at hand. The logic is something as follows:
1. If there's a true religion, we should expect it to relate to both our mental ("Clear") and physical ("Thick") experiences (since presumably the world as we know it reflects some sense of whatever lies behind said true religion, whether we mean God, nirvana, whatever, or otherwise it's not worth even investigating).
2. Hinduism and Christianity in particular seem to have necessary components of both (e.g., virtually every Christian affirms the Trinity, at least at some level, and is baptized in some way).
3. Christianity encourages (in principle) Christians to be both "Thick" and "Clear" - Harold Netland takes communion, even though he probably can't really rationalize it to a satisfactory depth, while even the simplest country church usually has some expected affirmations.
Now I realize this is far from an airtight argument (and I've even cleaned it up a little; you can see the original at http://books.google.com/books?id=ohizprOJ62MC&pg=PA116&lpg=PA116&dq=c.s.+lewis+thick+religion&source=bl&ots=EYhzq5pE5p&sig=Qvz7KzBHeZ1wvXhJgIIfVQ40G9s&hl=en&ei=2CzmSZ3ZOtrunQfR3aiqCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1#PPA116,M1), and my purpose isn't to communicate a rigorous apologetic. What I do think is a useful thought, however, is the notion that there could be more to a true religion than a strict dichotomy between what you can rationally affirm and what you fideistically(sp?) obey; rather, it could be said that there's a hermeneutical circle, or even spiral, by which it neither reason alone, nor blind faithfulness, but ever-more-discerning reason in the context of faithful practice brings you closer to the truth. We certainly don't reason in a vacuum, as you indicate; even a hermit totally isolated from society since birth would at the very least be influenced by what he observed in nature - that is, our reasoning is shaped by our experience. So I suggest, then, that we should expect reason to more accurately reflect truth when we are exposed (viz., by our own practice) to more truthful practice. Thoughts?
P.S. What's sour, yellow, and equivalent to the axiom of choice? Zorn's lemon!
Oh dear, math puns....
I like the terminology which you bring up, although I'd like to use your analogy of the hermeneutical spiral to clear up the point I was making. In revealed religions, there is something "thick" (not necessarily physical, so I'll have to bend the term, but never rationally acquired and so not really "clear") which must remain thick without ever becoming clear. It's not simply that we haven't progressed far enough yet; the thickness can't even in principle be converted into clearness, and the hermeneutical spiral breaks down.
In non-revealed religions, I start off with the "thick" and the "clear", and the thick can eventually be converted into the clear (even if only as an ideal), thereby grounding the spiral; there is something to spiral up toward.
At this point, Lewis would probably want to say that he believes Christianity not just from the evidences for it, but also because of what he sees through it; if this works, it would renew a spiral in the case of revealed religions. The thick would never become clear, but would always challenge the clear in a way that the clearness could increase.
However, and this is where I want to go in the next post, I don't think this works. Everyone wants to claim that their own esoteric views gain plausibility if you'll only start by accepting them, so I'm highly sketchy of any evidence that any gives.
I can see where you'd be skeptical of a claim that something thick becomes clear by practicing the thick. But is it just possible that the thick never becomes clear precisely because it's never supposed to? I think that's what Lewis was getting at in categorizing Hinduism and Christianity as the two most viable candidates for true religion. I know idealism holds a certain appeal to you, but you live at least as a psyche, not just a nous, so we would expect the true religion to exist as truth only to be understood, but as truth to be lived. It doesn't mean that you'll ever be any clearer mentally on the mysteries of religion, but that your actions will be as faithful to the truth as your words.
Helpful here, I think, is Vanhoozer's concept of doctrine as a play. Of course he means Christian doctrine, but just substitute Doctrine X to mean the sum of all knowable truth about religion. The concept, then, is that just as a play script requires a dramatic interpretive rendering, so Doctrine X requires an interpretive living. You can technically deliver the play as stated and be faithful to its locutions, but if you deliver a serious line that's supposed to be the turning point of the play in a sarcastic tone (assuming it's not a sarcastic line), you haven't been true to the illocutions of the play at all, even though you did exactly what the script called for. Our position, then, is something like a bit player who features in only one scene, and doesn't get to see the vast majority of lines in the play (nor any of the rest of the Script, if we don't believe in any revelation): we have no option but to faithfully perform what we do know of Doctrine X, even though the script doesn't always make sense to us.
Of course, the problem is determining exactly what Doctrine X is. For those persuaded of a canon, it's (relatively) easy, but for those outside such bounds, I think it comes back to the broader question of, why search for truth at all? I agree with Vanhoozer that truth is there to be lived, not just affirmed. So, while I'm far from an existentialist, I'd suggest that truth has to be as true existentially as it is mentally. But that's not too developed, so keep the feedback coming - or, if your next post will address that, then just post that instead.
I'm certainly for living out the religion, and not just thinking about it. The thing is, I don't see why that must take me into the realm of things I could never understand, even in principle. There's no reason why a doctrine can't fully explain why I should act in a given way, or why an interpretive context cannot be made more and more clear until (as an ideal) it is transparent. I'm not taking the "thick" as the realm of action, but as the realm of the unknown; the "clear" I'm not just taking as the thinkable, but what is understood.
So, is there a dichotomy between thought and life, between understanding and context? The revealed religion on your account does demand such a dichotomy. The non-revealed religion on my account
does not collapse the dichotomy, but sees all of these things as ultimately unified. Thinking and action are not in the end two different things, nor is the understanding and the way something is understood.
I'll also agree that, on the Christian picture, it makes sense to say that we have a small role in the play and don't have the entire context. Revealed religion makes logical sense, I'm not criticizing that. My concern is that it must always pull the authority card at some point, without ever properly legitimating that authority. Christianity may tell me that the context into which I fit in a play is x, but have gotten the play itself wrong for all I know and so mess up my acting worse that if I had simply tried to improvise. It could possibly be entirely correct too; but competing voices tell me competing ways to act, and obeying the wrong one could be disastrous.
Since there is the plethora of choices, each one wants to make the same claims, and each one wants to command absolute obedience without being able to establish itself to the exclusion of the others, I therefore have reason to believe that at least some directives are at least in part power-grabs. But since I have no real reason to distinguish the directives, then I have reason to think that they are all power-grabs until they show otherwise. So, while there is no logical problem with the concept of revelation, the number of competing revelations creates a moral issue which non-revealed religion would sidestep, if it were to exist.
Okay, that makes a lot of sense, but I want to focus in on the "authority card" statement: at some level, doesn't every system play the authority card - including a system of purportedly pure, ideal, rational thought? Do we have any a priori reason for believing that, say, the ZFC axioms are actually universal, or do they just make really good sense to middle-class white kids from Michigan? (Note: I'm not actually disputing the axioms, just noting that at some point, we have to take something on some sort of "faith" to be axiomatic.)
Well, every system does actually play the authority card. But for some, this must always be authority; Christian truths will never be perfectly amenable to rational analysis in this life, even in principle. Buddhism, by contrast, at least claims that I will one day be able to see all of the claims clearly for myself, and that the authority of people like Siddartha Gautama is just to point the way and ease the path.
Concerning mathematical axiomata, I'm not sure whether they are really true. I choose certain ones based on my projects, and I would consider the ones I choose to have been chosen poorly if they lead to a contradiction. But there's nothing false about any non-contradictory axiom; there's simply the question of suitability.
Now, maybe the truth claim you want to make is that the ZFC axioms truly describe set theory, where set theory is something that can also be described in some other way. But as soon as this composition is added, I think you have a quasi-empirical claim, and that's a different story.
Okay, good point about ZFC and the possibility of describing set theory otherwise.
But I still do want to work on this authority card topic: why should we believe that something that appears subject to independent rational analysis is any less of a power play than something that plainly isn't open to rational analysis (at least past some fixed point)? What if our concept of what comprises rational analysis is the result of a rather immense power play?
And here's a related, but different, question: why should being free of someone else's power play be considered an intrinsically better thing than the alternative? I would consider that there's Someone who knows what's good for me far better than I know it for myself, and I'm far better off being under His power than my own. I'm not even saying you have to agree with me on this point, but do you see my question? And just out of curiosity, what do you think of my point?
I would consider reason to be something which, by its very nature, avoids power plays. For a start, let's say that reason (a) is that by which I hold something autonomously (i.e. as a result of that which is internal to my own will), (b) is that by which I hold everything that leads up to something autonomously, and (c) can hold up no matter how many other worldviews I sympathetically understand. The last is key; if I really rationally hold something, I can't just stay isolated (since then anything could be held rationally by some provincial group). So, "reason" can only be a power play insofar as it rejects (c).
If there were a God who does truly know everything about my own good, then it would make perfect sense to follow the authority of such a God. However, I have two problems with this scenario. (1) In most cases, such a God does not have the good of most creatures in mind (e.g. Hell), and so I have little reason to suppose that my good really matters. (2) God's authority is never given directly; it is always mediated through fallible human authority, which I often have good reason to suspect of making power plays (whether consciously or unconsciously) and which never justifies itself to the extent required for reason.
Okay, that's quite helpful in terms of a definition of reason. This is where my lack of philosophical training is showing. My question, though, is concerning the plausibility of achieving criterion (c) for reason. So yes, in a broad sense, there's perhaps an abstract construction that is unfettered reason - but do we have any reason (no pun intended*) to believe that we can even in principle (much less in practice) reach it?
Now, you know that I'm no Derrida, and even he probably wouldn't have gone quite as far as to take the above to its logical extreme. But neither do I buy the notion that an individual could ever really extricate himself from the milieu human (and, from my perspective, demonic) power plays, nor would I suppose that to do so would necessarily be a good thing. Perhaps I'm supposed to be under not only Divine authority, but Divine authority as mediated by humans! Indeed, I would actually hold this to be the case. Further, I would contend that, in view of my belief in the eternality of the person, a little temporal subjection to unjust authority may be just the prescription for the soul (cf. Heb. 5:8) - I have no doubt that given the proper response on their part, persons who suffered in Soviet gulags will be far more rewarded and better off than myself in the long run. So it's not that my good doesn't matter to God - just that my response counts, too. Anyway, this is mostly super-loose in my thinking, so let me know where I'm falling short!
*Unlike the following: What's brown, furry, runs to the sea, and is equivalent to the axiom of choice? Zorn's lemming!
And just for a bonus: Why don't mathematicians go to the beach? Because all you need to get a tan is sine and cosine!
Whether or not (c) is realizable, is up for grabs. It doesn't have to be realized, though, to make rational sense. It's not that we have to escape all human activities, but that we have go beyond them, to sublate them. I have to take into account what others find plausible, even if I do not accept their answers because I find severe chinks in their systems. At any rate, it offers good pragmatic advice; I should never think that I have escaped being provincial (systems such as Hegel or the Buddhist master's standpoint encapsulate a healthy dynamism within themselves to deal with this).
Also, if the more I (sympathetically!) study other worldviews (and critically study my own), the more I can still stand by what I have learned, then the more pragmatic evidence I have for my own view. Not that I have an excuse to stop and ossify.
As a note of clarification, I'm not sure if anyone share's my view of reason. It is a staple in the Western philosophical tradition that reason is more than instrumental; we aren't merely "clever" beings by being rational, but being rational gives us our freedom. I've merely outlined that in a particular way.
Concerning being under unjust human rulership: I would think that on your view, those Soviet Christians are in heaven precisely because they did not accept certain human authority in matters of belief. I don't mean human governance, which is inescapable, but human idealogies (which may or may not be inescapable). And I see little reason to believe that God would entrust such a frightfully important task to such fallible beings; even pastors willing to understand other viewpoints, like yourself, will undoubtedly damn people to Hell at some point in their careers, let alone all of those who merely made it through seminary so that they could be certified in their opinions with no need to care about anyone else or the importance of learning. It could logically be possible that this is the case, but it looks to me to have severe difficulties.
Okay, so just for my own clarification, what we're thinking of here is sort of an asymptote of ideal reason that we approach (but never reach) by means of applying dialectic to the intersection of new data and our presently-held beliefs, right? I appreciate your note of clarification, too; I obviously don't have that background of philosophy, and hadn't realized that important point about rationality, which certainly strikes me as useful.
On the question of, shall we say, "Comrades in Christ," you bring up a good point, namely, that the rejection of human ideological power plays is a necessary ingredient in the final determination of their eternities. I also appreciate your delineation of my confusion between ideological and socio-political power plays. Still, I would suggest that the rejection of certain human ideologies is, on my account, a necessary condition for salvation, but not a sufficient one. There's still a metanarrative to be appropriated and lived out, and it's a metanarrative that some real class-A jerks purport to believe. But I'm going to suggest that even on this view of asymptotically approaching ideal reason, we'll always be encumbered by some metanarrative or another (and almost certainly one that some real class-A jerks purport to believe, no matter what it is), and while we can sublate it in part into new concepts, the best we can shoot for is an ever-evolving second naivete. I realize that sounds like a contradiction, but I think I mean something like what you meant when you mentioned pragmatically having more evidence for your own view, while never ossifying. Should my worldview - in my case, Christianity, at in the meager form of it I practice - be always changing, sometimes by fits and starts, and other times by imperceptible inch-a-year tectonic shifts? Yep. Should it even be in principle open to falsification? Sure.
But I've got to take something as a de facto set of axia while I continue digging, right? And that's where I consider that Christianity - even given what I'll opine you accurately assess as a weak body of apologetic material in general - an exceedingly rational choice to my mind, and an experientially satisfying one to my conscience.
Will I be - am I already - guilty of actions that, in a "closed" system wherein God put some spiritual laws in motion alongside natural ones, would lead others to hell? Tragically, yes. But that's the whole key, in my mind, to my ministry (and to avoiding the negative implications of James 3:1): my job is not to impose "my" metanarrative on someone else. It's to offer some good news, and sit back and watch the Holy Spirit do Its work. I have no business forming a metanarrative at all, but I can't control whether there actually is a metanarrative against to which we'll all be conformed one day. Thoughts?
By the way, you assess my humility far too generously. I've learned much from you, not only about philosophy, but about intellectual humility and life.
Sorry that I haven't got back to you yet; I got caught up in the end of the semester and then never quite got around to answering you.
Mainly two points are in order. First, I am advocating a certain asymptotic view of truth. At least practically, it is a limit point. The difference seems to be that in non-revealed religions, I would (in theory) have a sequence which appears to converge to the correct limit (or thereabouts), while a revealed religion would tell me what the limit point is without giving me a converging sequence; maybe it's even one of those alternating sequences which could be any value you want depending on how it is arranged.
Second, I may need some kind of minimal ground in the process of questioning. But I'm not sure that this entails much about this ground, or that it even needs to stay stable from one question to the next. I at least am interested in ironing out the entire web of beliefs, and while I cannot replace it wholesale, there is no section that cannot be shifted and straightened on one occasion or another. Although I would put down things like "I ought to seek truth" and "I am currently at least appearing to live an embodied, finite existence" as more or less unalterable.
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