Considering Transcendence: Elements of a Philosophical Theology (Indiana Series in the Philosophy of Religion)

Considering Transcendence Elements of a Philosophical Theology Martin J. De Nys Considering Transcendence Indiana Se...

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Considering Transcendence Elements of a Philosophical Theology Martin J. De Nys

Considering Transcendence

Indiana Series in the Philosophy of Religion Merold Westphal, editor

M A RT I N J. DE N YS

Considering Transcendence Elements of a Philosophical Theology indiana university press Bloomington and Indianapolis

This book is a publication of Indiana University Press 601 North Morton Street Bloomington, IN 47404-3797 USA http://iupress.indiana.edu Telephone orders 800-842-6796 Fax orders 812-855-7931 Orders by e-mail [email protected] © 2009 by Martin J. De Nys All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses’ Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984. Manufactured in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data De Nys, Martin J., date Considering transcendence : elements of a philosophical theology / Martin J. De Nys. p. cm. — (Indiana series in the philosophy of religion) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-253-35245-3 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-253-22022-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Religion— Philosophy 2. Transcendence (Philosophy) 3. Philosophical theology. 4. Phenomenology. 5. Religious life. I. Title. BL51.D38 2009 210—dc22 2008022642 1 2 3 4 5 14 13 12 11 10 09

A Maria che mi parla d’amore e con chi io parlo d’amore

Contents Preface ix Introduction 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

1

Sacred Transcendence 14 Religious Discourse 30 Radical Self-Transcendence 47 The Truth about Religion 63 Religious Truth 79 Pluralism and Religious Truth 96 Aspects of the Conception of God 118 The Theory of Religion and Religious Inquiry 138

Notes 151 Bibliography Index 173

167

Preface I began to write this book in connection with a semester study leave from George Mason University in fall 2004. I am grateful to the University for its support of this project. I am also grateful to the many students in undergraduate and graduate courses in philosophy of religion whom I have taught at George Mason. They have worked with me through different versions of many of the ideas and positions that are presented in these pages. Their questions and criticisms have made major contributions to the development of this book. I began to work in philosophy of religion during my years as a graduate student. Frank Catania, Kenneth Thompson, and Dick Westley were among the teachers who tolerated and supported my first bumbling attempts at doing something intelligent in the field and who later became friends. I am grateful for what I learned from them and for what I was able to take from them and bring to the work I have done. Another former teacher (in English rather than philosophy) and close friend during my graduate school years and after was Tom Gorman. I cannot possibly say how much I learned, on so many levels and in so many ways, from my friendship with Tom. Conversations with friends who are also fine philosophers have been an important source of support for my work in philosophy. One of these is Ardis Collins of the Philosophy Department of Loyola University–Chicago. Ardis joined that department as an assistant professor while I was completing my graduate work. We were both, at that time, beginning to involve ourselves seriously with the study of Hegel’s philosophy, a study she has continued with outstanding constancy, diligence, and success. Through conversations with her over the years concerning issues in Hegel’s philosophy as well as a variety of basic issues in philosophy and theology, I have learned a great deal. Those conversations have also been part of a long-standing and deep friendship that has been of great importance to me. I have also benefited greatly from a decades-long dialogue with James L. Marsh, Professor Emeritus, recently retired from the Philosophy Department of Fordham University. This dialogue has centered on philosophical questions and has extended to many issues belonging not only to philosophy but also to art criticism, politics, religion, and theology. The energy and breadth that Jim brings to any topic that concerns him can be overwhelming. I have learned a great deal from him, especially, but not only, regarding possibilities available in contemporary transcendental philosophy and the relationship of that philosophy to the classical philosophical tradition. Jim has also been a close and dear friend for many years, a source of great assistance in matters professional and personal. It would be difficult for me to overstate my gratitude to Jim Marsh as a colleague in philosophy and as a friend.

At one time it was customary for an author to thank his wife for typing the manuscript of the work he had written. Since I wrote this book on a Mac computer, I did not have to request this favor of my spouse, Mary. That notwithstanding, my gratitude to her is overwhelming. Her views about matters related to those that I address in this book are on many points very different from my own. That said, I find hers to be one of the finest and most incisive theological minds that it has ever been my privilege and pleasure to come to know. And that statement, of course, does not begin to comprehend the wealth, warmth, and greatness of spirit that she brings to life and has shared with me in our life together. I could not begin to say, even to myself, how much there is in these pages and in my life that I owe to her. Merold Westphal and two anonymous readers reviewed the manuscript of this book for Indiana University Press. Each of these reviewers made critical observations that led to revisions that have certainly improved the work I present in this book. I am grateful for those observations, as I am grateful to the editorial staff at Indiana University Press, with whom it has been a pleasure to work in preparing the manuscript for publication. Needless to say, any shortcomings that one finds in these pages are attributable entirely to me. In some important respects the project that I develop in this book runs against the grain of much work being done in contemporary philosophy that draws on the resources of what is called continental philosophy. I advocate an approach to phenomenology that is expressly transcendental. I integrate transcendental and hermeneutical phenomenology, but not in a way that allows hermeneutics to undermine the necessary principles of transcendental inquiry, and not in a way that brings hermeneutics itself into an affinity with deconstruction. I support the position that fully realizing the possibilities that belong to transcendental and hermeneutical phenomenology entails acknowledging the legitimacy and the necessity of metaphysics. These views are not widely endorsed on the contemporary scene. I certainly do not deny that views like these are in need of defense. I do not undertake that defense in an explicit way in this book. I do hope, however, that the theory of religion that I develop in this book shows that these are views that can guide philosophical work in a productive way. This would contribute, at least, to an implicit defense of the views in question and suggest that they continue to deserve careful, critical consideration in current philosophy. But of course the most important thing about this book is the theory of religion that I develop in these pages. It is, I believe, a theory that can be helpful in basic ways for inquiry that is ongoing in philosophy of religion; for inquiry in other areas of the academic study of religion, including theology; and for religious self-understanding. These areas of inquiry and concern are interrelated but also different, and different responses to the views I propose herein will predictably be forthcoming. Just as I am grateful for what has really been the lifetime of conversations that have led to the publication of these pages, I look forward to the future conversations that I hope they will provoke.

x

Preface


Introduction The lives and activities of religiously involved men, women, and children comprise the empirical basis of any study of religion. The data that make the study of religion possible become available insofar as these people gather together into families, clans, and communities; participate in groups; identify with institutions and traditions; and find themselves as single individuals. As this remark suggests, these data do not come to us in a random or disorganized manner. As the great historian of religion Wilfred Cantwell Smith points out, religious life comes about through the interactions of spatially and temporally extended “cumulative traditions” and the human beings whose religious lives are formed as they, individually and socially, selectively appropriate aspects of those traditions and add to them.1 Moreover, even though religious life appears in a dizzying variety of different and often inconsistent forms,2 a distinctive identity, I will argue, belongs to a religious orientation toward reality. There are limits within which a religious orientation toward reality can assume many different forms, and beyond which such an orientation ceases to occur. There is an identity that belongs to a religious orientation that allows it to be different from, and allows us to distinguish it from, other ways of being in the world and that allows for connections with other distinguishable ways of being in the world. It is important to be mindful of the critical roles that an understanding of temporally and spatially extended traditions and forms of life, and of the very distinctiveness of a religious orientation to reality, plays in efforts at understanding concrete religious life. The last of these matters, the distinctiveness of a religious orientation toward reality, is one of the particular concerns that a philosophical inquiry into religion can address, especially one that is phenomenological in character. Philosophy of religion is a relatively new sub-discipline in philosophy, even though earlier intellectual history presents very important philosophical inquiries into religious issues by philosophers and theologians.3 In spite of its relative newness, philosophy of religion has given rise to an exciting variety of alternative approaches to the disciplined and critical consideration of religion on the basis of many different philosophical orientations. Happily, the boundaries that separate those different orientations are often, as a cell biologist might say, differentially permeable, so that a person working in one of them can benefit from resources that others make available. Phenomenology is an orientation in contemporary philosophy that offers both specific approaches to philosophical inquiry into religion and specific possibilities for incorporating into that inquiry resources made available by other current philosophical orientations and by the history of philosophy.

Phenomenology shares with all other approaches in philosophy the task of attempting to think radically, that is, down to the very roots of things. Comments that introduce the understanding of this task as it is specific to phenomenology often emphasize the ideas of the intentionality of consciousness and the project of bringing the essence of the phenomenon under consideration to intuitive presence. I believe that it is useful to discuss these ideas in connection with the distinctions between the natural attitude and the phenomenological attitude, and between the empirical ego and the transcendental ego. An “attitude,” in this context, is “a habitual and fixed style that a willing life adopts towards the world, a style that indicates the interests that we seek to satisfy and the ends we seek to achieve” in the conduct of that life.4 The “natural attitude” encompasses indefinitely many more concrete styles of life in which interests and ends are defined. Those interests can be practical, interpersonal, political, aesthetic, theoretical, scientific, or religious. Nor is this list in any way exhaustive. The central characteristic of the natural attitude is that, within this context, one assumes familiarity with the things with which we are involved regarding the manner in which they appear to us. Depending on the style of involvement with the things that concern us, questions of many different types can be asked regarding those things. But one does not find it necessary or even possible to ask questions about the manner in which those things appear to us, about the determinations that belong to them that allow them to appear to us as they do. So, for example, if we are working together in your backyard building a shed, we may ask many questions about what tools we should use and how we should use them, but we will not ask how something presents itself to us so that we know it to be a tool. Or if I am looking at a possibly diseased tree in my backyard, I may ask what kind of tree it is, how I can tell if it is diseased, or whether I should have it removed, but I will not—and, given the context of assumptions that belong to my ends and interests, cannot—ask what the determinations are that belong to this thing insofar as it is something I perceive. A biologist looking at the same tree may ask different sorts of questions, for instance, about how photosynthesis occurs in an item of this sort, but she will not ask about the manner in which the item presents itself as something of which she can ask questions of this kind, or about how she finds herself to be one who can ask questions of this kind. Two people working together on a carpentry project, or two biologists working together on an investigation, may ask many different questions not only of but also about each other, but as long as the natural attitude is in place, neither will ask himself or herself what allows the other to appear to him or her as another self. A logician will ask many sorts of questions about propositions and can readily define a proposition as a statement that one can assert or deny that is therefore true or false, but a logician working within the natural attitude will not ask how a statement presents itself to us as bearing these possibilities, or how a statement presents itself to us in its truth, or how and with what modalities the quality of being truthful presents itself, or how we achieve an awareness of that quality in its possibly diverse modalities. 2


Questions about the determinations that belong to things insofar as they present themselves to us as they do, and about what we must do in order to allow for the possibility of those presentations, become available insofar as the assumption at the basis of the natural attitude is recognized as an assumption and set aside. Then we can ask about a dimension of our experience of things and of ourselves with which we heretofore took ourselves simply to be familiar, a dimension of our experience which we could not access as one into which we might inquire because of that familiarity. One’s approach in philosophy is phenomenological insofar as one undertakes this inquiry in a self-conscious and rigorously methodical way. The position regarding the intentionality of consciousness, that all consciousness is consciousness of an object, is linked to this inquiry. Recognizing the assumption that determines the natural attitude as an assumption and setting it aside discloses things as items that present themselves to consciousness in virtue of determinations that make those presentations possible, and our consciousness as our awareness of those presentations. Since these are brief, introductory comments that belong to a work that is phenomenological in its approach but is not a critical treatise on phenomenology as such, I cannot deal thoroughly with the many important questions raised with regard to this philosophical option. But at least a few brief remarks are in order. In discussing the presence of things themselves to consciousness, presence need not mean immediate presence. Indeed, I will argue below that in many instances something may be able to present itself as such to us only in virtue of mediations and never in an immediate way. Nor must presence mean sheer presence, presence that excludes absence from itself. I shall also argue below that presence necessarily has absence as its correlative in at least two interrelated but importantly different senses. Nor is the outcome of phenomenological inquiry supposed to provide something like “foundations” for the extra-philosophical sciences.5 Those sciences alone can legitimately determine the canons that govern their procedures. It may, however, be the case that phenomenological inquiry contributes to the basis one needs for assessing the possibilities as well as the limits that belong to the methodologies that operate in diverse sorts of inquiry, insofar as they are brought to bear on different sorts of phenomena. In understanding, for example, the determinations that allow artworks and instruments to present themselves as different from each other and thus as they themselves are, or the determinations that let living things in general and those living things that are specifically possessed of human selfhood to present themselves as different from each other and thus as they themselves are, one attains a kind of radical understanding of the identity and being that belong to those things. Certainly, this understanding may contribute to outcomes assessments concerning the different sorts of inquiry we bring to bear on things. It is an understanding of the essential determinations that allow things to stand in contrast with other things and to present themselves in terms of the identity and being that is their own. These understandings, as attained in phenomenology, have to do with possibility rather than directly with facticity. They regard determinaIntroduction 3

tions in virtue of which things can exhibit themselves in their generic and specific differences from other things, and thus can exhibit themselves in terms of the identity and being that is their own. Phenomenological reflection deals, not with the factual realizations of those possibilities as such, but with the possibilities themselves that can be read off of a methodically controlled consideration of those realizations. The dimension of inquiry that phenomenology opens holds implications for an understanding of the self. The self is to be understood as a “subject in the world” and as a “subject to which the world is present.”6 In the latter sense, the self enjoys the presence of things to consciousness in virtue of what it does to bring about those presentations, understands the intelligibilities or meanings ingredient in those presentations, and makes evident the truth of judgments regarding those meanings. The self-identity or ego of the self who does, among other things, these things, and so acts as a subject to which the world presents itself, is the transcendental ego. In much contemporary philosophical work, the transcendental ego has received what can only be called a bad rap. I think that is largely because the idea is so often so badly misunderstood. Once again, these pages are not a place in which those issues can be systematically addressed.7 Most essentially, the transcendental ego is the self-identity of the subject who experiences presentations and acts in ways that bring those presentations about, understands those presentations through available meanings, and verifies judgments through acts that make their truth evident. Although it is sometimes doubted or even denied, the self so understood, of course, possesses bodily existence.8 It acts in an ongoing way that continually brings about its own self-constitution. Just as its existence is bodily situated, its activity and identity are intersubjectively situated, so that the “ego is in the midst of things and others and admits them into its self-constitution.”9 These statements entail a concept of subjectivity for which “I, we, and the world belong together,” and the understanding that “the constitutive process occurs in a threefold structure, subjectivity-intersubjectivity-world.”10 According to Paul Ricoeur, the idea of belonging that is operative in the previous statement signals the central insight of hermeneutical phenomenology that, by understanding the subject as one connected through a relation of belonging to the world of things and others, overcomes the idealism that sets the subject over against the world and that belongs to the transcendental phenomenology on which I have often relied in these introductory comments. Once again, this is not the place to try to carefully adjudicate among phenomenological options. Suffice it to say that I wholly agree with Ricoeur that phenomenology at its best integrates transcendental and hermeneutical possibilities. Certainly, the linguistic traditions that precede, succeed, and encompass us, and that make possible the awareness of a world mediated by meaning that determines human consciousness, stand at the center of any phenomenological analysis of the being and identity of things, the world, and the self. That is very obviously the case when phenomenological analysis deals with an orientation

4


to reality whose occurrence requires specific sorts of linguistic funding. Such a case belongs to the analysis that unfolds in the following pages. These pages will present a philosophical inquiry into religion that is in essential terms phenomenological. That inquiry, of course, does not address the question about how some “thing,” such as a tool, a perceived object, a proposition, or even another person, does and can become present to us. It addresses the question about how a possible orientation toward reality can become present to us by inquiring concerning the determinations that must be at work if we are to come to an awareness of that possible orientation as such, or in some other specific version, in its integrity. Thus with regard to terminology, I will use the word “religion” and the expression “a religious orientation to reality” as synonyms. The Hindu religion is identical with the orientation to reality that people who are Hindu have had and do have. A “religion” is some or other sort of religious orientation to reality. “Religion” is identical with “a religious orientation to reality” insofar as the latter is appropriately determinable. A principal aim of a philosophical inquiry into religion that is phenomenological in character is to examine the structure of a religious orientation toward reality. More precisely, an inquiry of this kind aims at identifying and substantively understanding the necessary determinants that comprise a religious orientation toward reality, where a determinant is “necessary” if (a) its presence is required for the very possibility of the occurrence of religious involvement; (b) its diminishing entails a privation in the character of a religious orientation; and (c) its complete absence indicates that something other than a genuine religious orientation toward reality is occurring. In the following pages I will maintain that a religious orientation to reality comes about (1) as a response to some manifestation, putative or real, of “sacred transcendence,” insofar as that response involves (2) discourse of a kind that allows persons and communities to address and to hear, as well as to speak of sacred reality, and (3) a kind of praxis that I call “radical self-transcendence.” The integrated consideration of these three determinations presents a claim regarding the meaning of religion, just as the specific interpretation of religious discourse presents a position regarding the varieties of meaning that belong to religious utterances. These considerations of meaning, in turn, establish the context needed for reflection on religious truth. My treatment of that issue focuses on conditions whose fulfillment entails the possibility that religious claims about reality are rational and thus may be truthful. A philosophical consideration of the meaning that belongs to the phenomenon of religion and religious utterances, and of the possibility of religious truth, leads to a concern for what one might call “the problem of the one and the many” in relation to religious life. The vast differences that distinguish religious traditions and forms of life from each other have become increasingly evident in recent decades. Diverse religions and movements within religions differ from each other and do this in different ways. A position concerning the meaning of religion must not only accommodate this dizzying variety but also

Introduction 5

present a conceptual framework with the power to make such differentiation intelligible. At the same time, there are good reasons to hold that different religious manifestations are, in their striking diversity, realizations of a single determinable possibility. The discussion of the determinations that belong to that possibility must consider those determinations and the relations among them in an appropriately formal way. My development of a position on the determinations belonging to a religious orientation to reality will occur on a level of formality that enables it to genuinely account for religious diversity, while at the same time indicating limits beyond which a religious orientation toward reality diminishes in quality or ceases to occur. Moreover, the account of religious diversity extends from questions about religious meaning to questions about the possibility of religious truth, embracing the question of religious truth and pluralism. Thus, my inquiry into determinations that belong with necessity to a religious orientation toward reality integrates reflection on questions about meaning and truth in religion with questions about religious diversity in relation to the unity of the possibility that the diversity manifests. In the phenomenological tradition, Husserl and Ricoeur are the principal figures to which my work will refer. As already indicated, classical and more contemporary philosophical resources, in addition to those mentioned in connection with the phenomenological tradition, will be indispensable to this work. The existential analyses of Kierkegaard and the scholastic theology of Aquinas will feature prominently in the development of my argument, as will the contemporary analytic achievements of John Hick and Alvin Plantinga. The speculative philosophy of G. W. F. Hegel will also play an important role. A comment on the role that Hegel will play in the argument that follows will be useful at this point. That role will be two-sided. On the one hand, some central positions that Hegel maintained, or that at least are attributed to him as central positions, will receive at least implicit criticism and correction in the following argument. On the other hand, Hegel is the source for the procedural model that I adopt in the inquiry and argument that follows. This is because of the heuristic power that belongs to that model, which follows from the substantive positions having to do with philosophical inquiry into religion that the model presents. These positions are central to my argument. Hegel insists that a philosophical examination of religion, or of what I have called a religious orientation toward reality, must center its focus on the object of religious involvement. As I use this expression, “religious involvement” is a component of “a religious orientation toward reality.” Religious involvement comprises the variety of processes through which persons and communities respond to that with which they are religiously concerned. Hegel recognizes that religious involvement is intelligible only in the light of an understanding of that with which the believing soul or the believing community takes himself, herself, or itself to be involved. In the absence of such an understanding, the end that orients religious existence remains undetermined, and any discussion of religious existence risks being confined to the marginal and accidental. Hegel states this claim by referring to religion, God, and knowledge of God. He says, 6


“nowadays we merely hear religion talked about but find no investigations into God’s nature or what God might be within himself, how God’s nature must be defined. God as such is not made the object of inquiry himself; God is not before us as an object of cognition, and knowledge does not spread out within this sphere. Only our relation to God, or religion as such, is an object [of inquiry] for us. Our discussion concerns religion as such and does not, or at least not very much, concern God.”11 But if our discussion, to continue with Hegel’s idiom, does not concern God very much, then it does not concern religion very much. Since a good deal of human religious life does not take the form of a theistic orientation, this idiom is in need of expansion. Given that expansion, it is still possible to claim that the discourses and practices of a religion have a meaning that is substantively intelligible only in the light of a characterization of that to which they are finally directed. That said, religious involvement does comprise discourses and practices of many sorts, and these need an examination that takes account of their complex intelligibility and of the manner in which they are directed to that which is of final religious concern. Here again, Hegel models a productive approach to inquiry. He points out that, among the determinants that belong to religious involvement, one finds two essential and also distinguishable moments. One of these Hegel calls faith, which he understands as a kind of affectivity or feeling.12 The other is a discursive moment that Hegel calls the religious representation. One finds in the religious representation or the properly discursive dimension of religious involvement, he points out, an intriguing complexity. Symbolic images are the most primitive elements of religious discourse. That discourse develops through narratives that may well have a historical content but that also preserve a symbolic form that determines their meaning.13 In addition, a conceptual aspect belongs to religious discourse insofar as that discourse provokes reflection on its own sense and truth.14 Religious discourse presents us with symbols, myths, and sacred histories and with theology. But in the final analysis, Hegel maintains, the sense and truth of religious discourse, whatever that “truth” might be, get disclosed only when one thinks through the content of that discourse by making use of autonomously developed philosophical categories. Hegel believes that the philosopher who studies religion must raise the issues of both meaning and truth. Religion presents itself on its own terms as announcing meaning and as offering truth. One does not succeed in examining religion on its own terms unless one considers both aspects of this claim. Exigencies that belong to religious discourse itself call for the “speculative appropriation” that is supposed to exhibit the sense and truth of its content. But one develops the rational categories that philosophical comprehension of the content of religious discourse requires by autonomously drawing on the resources of reason itself, and not by drawing on resources specific to religious discourse itself. Therefore, the sense and truth of religious discourse receives a final and indeed adequate presentation only when the content of that discourse is presented in a philosophical form.15 All careful readers of Hegel recognize a puzzling complexity and subtlety in Introduction 7

his views concerning faith and religious discourse. I believe that my remarks, as far as they go, present an account of Hegel’s views that is accurate and justified by the relevant texts. I will be critical of several key positions that Hegel maintains, insofar as that account represents those positions. I think that Hegel is mistaken in identifying faith with affectivity rather than with the appropriation of a kind of active self-becoming or existential praxis. Kierkegaard is an important resource for making this case. I think that an important revision needs to be introduced into Hegel’s understanding of the relations among the symbolic, narrative, and conceptual moments that belong to religious discourse. Ricoeur is an important resource for defining this revision. Moreover, I think that the positions commonly attributed to Hegel on the nature of the relation between religious discourse and philosophical comprehension and on the outcome, in a theistic context, of that comprehension need to be significantly redefined. Aquinas is helpful especially with the redefinition of the latter. Even given those criticisms, however, Hegel presents an important set of positions about, and a powerful heuristic model for investigating, the aspects of religious involvement now under discussion, namely, religious discourse and practice. I will argue that it is necessary to distinguish a discursive dimension of religious involvement from another aspect that is different in character and to carefully understand the difference between, as well as the relation that connects, these two moments. I will argue that religious discourse does indeed need to be understood in terms of a complexity of the kind that Hegel indicates, even if an understanding of the elements that belong to that complexity needs to be somewhat updated and even if one needs a revised understanding of the relation between those elements. I will maintain, as Hegel does, that a philosophical understanding of religious involvement must raise the issue of truth, just because devotees maintain that the orientation to reality they adopt is one that discloses truth. I believe that one begins to raise this issue most productively by critically examining criteria supposed to be bases for maintaining that religious claims about reality can be true, that is, that such claims are legitimately rational ones. And I will argue that religious discourse does indeed allow for and call for comprehension of its content through autonomously developed philosophical and specifically metaphysical categories. This view has its own implications for questions about the meaning and truth of religious claims. The preceding remarks suggest an approach to understanding the structure of a religious orientation to reality that articulates and interrelates (a) a basic and formal understanding of the object of religious involvement; (b) an analysis of the discourse that is supposed to allow human beings to encounter, address, and speak about that object; (c) an understanding of the existential praxis through which human beings relate themselves to that object; (d) an analysis of criteria whose fulfillment is supposed to allow for the possibility of truth in relation to religious claims; and (e) a discussion of the relation between religious discourse and a metaphysical conceptualization of the differences and connections between the object of religious involvement and the human world, together with a consideration of the contribution this kind of conceptualiza8


tion might make to understanding the intelligibility of a religious orientation to reality and the truth that might belong to religious claims. Each of these endeavors occurs under the rubric that the title of this book presents, Considering Transcendence. The first involves a consideration of what I will call “sacred transcendence.” The second and third call for discussions of the discursive and practical moments required if devotees are to take sacred transcendence into consideration, that is, discussions of religious discourse and of what I will call “radical self-transcendence.” These discussions allow one to go on to identify and critically consider criteria whose fulfillment is supposed to allow that some claims about the world and human beings in connection with sacred transcendence might be true. A discussion of the possibility of truth in relation to such claims is a further way of considering transcendence, as is the reflection on the issue of religious truth and pluralism that the discussion of this possibility requires. That reflection requires, in part but essentially, an account of the way in which religious discourse calls for a metaphysical conceptualization of sacred transcendence, the significance of that conceptualization, and its limits. Finally, in the light of that account, I will discuss a highly productive way of conceptualizing the transcendence of the sacred when the latter is identified in theistic terms. Since my goal is to establish a truthful understanding of the nature of a religious orientation to reality, and to consider, in the light of that understanding, some reasons relevant to claims that such an orientation to reality might present us with truth, my project is in some important ways similar to the task of fundamental theology as defined by David Tracy. Tracy maintains that fundamental theology, undertaken in his case as Christian theology, critically inquires into the meaningfulness and truth of a religious interpretation of common human experience and language, a theistic interpretation of religion, and a christological interpretation of theistic religion.16 I, of course, write as a philosopher and not as a theologian. However, because my inquiry has to do with questions about the fundamental terms through which the intelligibility of a religious orientation might be understood—and with reasons, following from that understanding, for supposing that such an orientation can disclose truth—it responds to questions of meaning and truth in relation to some of the issues that also belong to fundamental theology as understood by David Tracy and others. For that reason I call the work I do in these pages philosophical theology. The work belongs to the part of philosophy that is also ingredient in theology. The outcome of that work, I believe, is a set of clarifications that is philosophically important, productive, and necessary for inquiry in theology as well as useful in the various disciplines that belong to the study of religion. I will make suggestions as to aspects of this usefulness as my argument proceeds. But of course these suggestions must be chastened by the recognition that I do not write as one who has expertise in theology or in the disciplines other than philosophy that belong to the study of religion. Philosophical work aims at universality. But insofar as it examines religion, that work must have a significant hermeneutical dimension. A hermeneutical Introduction 9

consideration of religion walks a fine line, as Paul Ricoeur reminds us, between the particular and the universal. In undertaking this consideration, one recognizes that one must give up attempts at immediately addressing the “religious phenomenon in its indivisible universality, and must be content to begin by tracing the grand hermeneutical lines of a single religion” or religious tradition.17 Universality is still a goal of inquiry, but it is understood as a limit that one approaches “by a procedure of analogizing transfer, conducted gradually, beginning from one’s point of departure.”18 Thus, Ricoeur’s own considerations most centrally address data of the biblical tradition, even though they lead to claims for which a more comprehensive universality is claimed. I will retain that focus in this book. I believe that the sorts of analogical extensions that Ricoeur has in mind can be productively developed, and I will argue that the account of a religious orientation toward reality that I give herein is, in its essential aspects, legitimately universal. But limits necessarily affect that account and any account like it. It is always necessary to be willing to bring any such account into dialogue with its competitors. And in considering a metaphysical conceptualization of sacred transcendence, I will focus on a specifically theistic option. At that point one must expressly admit the limits that belong to the universality of one’s inquiry and ask if a kind of extension of those limits is possible through including a relatively specific option like theism in the broader compass of a more global interreligious dialogue. The following chapters will implement the inquiry that I outline in this introduction. Chapter 1 presents a discussion of sacred transcendence, identifying it as the intentional correlate of a consciousness of something supposed to surpass the limits of finite imperfection and to present itself as the final end of human commitment and striving. The nature of this transcendence requires our recognition of its incomparable character. Sacred transcendence is not simply other but is wholly other in a variety of respects—specifically, in that here transcendence has an intensification of immanence as its correlate. The significance of sacred transcendence varies in relation to the different reference points in human experience with which it is associated. Thus, sacred transcendence may be considered as a unique resource, offering otherwise unavailable responses to cognitive and practical difficulties, as a source of salvation in relation to boundary situations, and as a good that one seeks just on account of its incomparable, limit-surpassing splendor. In all these respects, the concept of sacred transcendence admits specific instantiations on multiple ranges of approximation that approach the limit that the concept in its pure state defines. Chapter 2 proceeds to a discussion of religious discourse, that is, discourse that enables human beings to hear of or from, to speak to, and to speak about sacred reality. Religious discourse, on my analysis, develops meanings made possible by basic symbolic operators, through the functions and interactions of productive literary genres. Those meanings become housed in the discourse traditions of historical communities. These discourse traditions allow different persons and groups variously to experience and understand the meanings they convey in the light of their own situations. The poetic character of the dis10


course integrated in these traditions is specified by the function of naming sacred transcendence or, in specifically theistic circumstances, God. It is always possible to interpret religious discourse as both a representation of the effects of relatively unconscious instincts and needs, and also as discourse that directs human attention toward sacred transcendence. The interpretation of religious discourse in terms of each of these functions is both legitimate and necessary. Insofar as religious discourse performs the latter function, it invites the hearer to undertake a task. While religious involvement requires discourse of the sort I discuss, it is a mistake to interpret a religion or religion as such precisely as a discourse. The task announced by religious discourse needs independent consideration. Chapter 3 introduces an explicit consideration of this task. The task is the project of radical self-transcendence. Radical self-transcendence is an existential praxis. That is, it is a task that one carries out through the way in which one does many discrete actions, rather than being one discrete action. It belongs potentially to the whole conduct of one’s life rather than only to a distinguishable part of it. It is a task that engages all dimensions of the self, and undertaking it is the result of a fundamental option about one’s being-in-theworld. More specifically, it is the response that sacred transcendence invokes insofar as the sacred must be understood, to borrow a term from Kierkegaard, as an absolute telos. Radical self-transcendence is the task of integrating all relative ends into an absolute commitment to an absolute end, withdrawing from an immediate relation even to one’s own self as an end, and finding one’s greatest benefit in a pursuit of the absolute telos for its own sake rather than on account of any benefit it conveys. It is a task in which one finds that the relation to the absolute telos is the source and condition of one’s very relation to oneself. It is a kind of falling unqualifiedly in love. There are essential relations between religious discourse and radical self-transcendence. Religious discourse must present an invitation to the task of radical self-transcendence. The consciousness of one undertaking this task must be informed by a discourse capable of proposing and guiding the task. At the same time, religious discourse and radical self-transcendence need to be understood as relatively independent aspects of human involvement with the sacred. Neither aspect can be understood only in terms of the other, nor does either by itself allow for an adequate understanding of religious involvement. Chapter 4 begins with a summary of the preliminary theory of religion that results from the integration of the concepts of sacred transcendence, religious discourse, and radical self-transcendence. The chapter develops reflections on some of the ways in which such a theory conveys truth about religion. One must have a theory of adequate complexity in order to represent religion in a truthful way. Definitions of religion are best understood as proposals that lead to complex theoretical elaborations, or as summary statements that refer explicitly or implicitly to the central elements of a complex theory. In turn, a theory of religion that is philosophical at least may claim to identify determinations that belong to the very possibility of a religious orientation toward reIntroduction 11

ality. An argument using the strategy of imaginative variation that Husserl provides shows convincingly that the possibility of a religious orientation toward reality requires some sort of involvement with sacred transcendence, and thus also the discourse that involvement requires and the praxis that involvement demands. If so, then the theory that integrates the concepts of sacred transcendence, religious discourse, and radical self-transcendence pertains in a fundamental way to any and all religious manifestations. At the same time, the theory that is supposed to identify determinations without which a religious orientation to reality cannot be itself in no way excludes the remarkable diversity that occurs among different religious forms. In fact, the theory embraces that diversity in that its central concepts are and must be “vague” in the technical sense that Peirce intends, that is, concepts that tolerate conflicting and even contradictory instantiations. Chapter 5 proceeds from the discussion of the way the theory proposed herein conveys truth about religion and considers the possibility of religious truth. My argument that religious claims can be rational and therefore are capable of being true makes use of defenses that John Hick and Alvin Plantinga give for a theistic version of that position and then incorporates fundamental aspects of those defenses into an account that extends to the formal concept of sacred transcendence and relies on the concept of radical self-transcendence. Hick and Plantinga show (a) that the believer’s affirmation of divine reality is not in the first instance a matter of propositional belief or of inferring a conclusion from premises; (b) rather, that affirmation occurs in virtue of the believer’s discovery, made through the interpretation of experienced situations, of a religious significance or of the presence and disclosure of divine reality and activity, supposed really to be ingredient in those situations; (c) with the consequence that it is quite possible and rational for the believer to find in the relevant experienced situations grounds that justify the affirmation of divine reality. One can recast the argument that supports these claims in more formal and existential terms. Then an argument is possible that shows that, for the devotee, sacred transcendence manifests itself just in the discovery of radical self-transcendence as a real possibility for oneself. The fundamental dimension of radical self-transcendence as a real existence-possibility is the discovery of the presence and efficacy of sacred transcendence in a situation that invites one to surpass self-attachment through a relation to the absolute telos. In such a situation, for reasons similar to those that Plantinga and Hick suggest, it is reasonable to affirm the reality of sacred transcendence, and therefore such an affirmation may be true. An account of such a situation that appeals to the concept of radical self-transcendence gives a more plausible interpretation of the discovery of the presence and efficacy of sacred transcendence than is otherwise available. Chapter 6 moves to a consideration of religious truth and pluralism. Since it is possible that the conditions of the rationality and therefore the possible truth of religious claims may be fulfilled in different and apparently conflicting settings, the argument in chapter 5 about religion and truth requires discus12


sion of religious truth and pluralism: Can highly diverse and seemingly conflicting religious claims be truthful? This question calls for considerations of religious truth in relation to originary religious discourse, the project of radical self-transcendence, and specifically metaphysical discourse about the sacred. Pluralism is a consistent possibility for religious truth in relation to each of these dimensions of religious involvement, although with specific limitations in the case of the last. The discussion of metaphysical discourse about sacred transcendence includes an account of the conditions that make such discourse about the sacred legitimate, even though it abstracts from the existential significance which adequate religious discourse can never unqualifiedly leave behind, and also an account of the limits of metaphysical statements about sacred transcendence. Since the question about religious truth and pluralism cannot be settled by philosophical considerations alone but is also a theological matter, I consider a specifically theological argument in relation to that question. Additionally, I consider the question about the possibility of there being any religious truth at all in relation to the discussion of radical self-transcendence. Chapter 7 moves from formal notion of sacred transcendence, and the concepts needed to understand involvement with sacred transcendence, to some considerations of the specific notion of divine transcendence. In this regard, I argue for an understanding of divine self-manifestation in terms a unique construal of the phenomenological couplet of presence and absence, as well as for the consistency and existential significance of the understanding of divine transcendence that belongs to Aquinas’s view about relations between creatures and God. This discussion requires that the fundamental concepts I have presented be taken as heuristic concepts. Chapter 8 continues to insist on the heuristic nature of the basic concepts that are ingredients of the theory of religion proposed herein. The chapter also presents concluding remarks about the relation of those concepts to the wider study of religion, further reflections on the question of God and on the relation of religion and ethics, and an assessment of a religious orientation to reality as a human existence-possibility.

Introduction 13

1

Sacred Transcendence

Religion develops, I maintain, as a human response to some manifestation of sacred transcendence, putative or real. That response entails an involvement with sacred transcendence. The presence of that involvement determines human existence at its core, as does its absence as well. Thus I use the expressions “religious involvement” and “religious existence” interchangeably. A philosophy of religion that is phenomenological in character aims at (1) understanding the necessities that (a) determine human consciousness of the sacred and (b) account for self-manifestations of sacred transcendence that are distinctive and original, that is, that are the origins of all further human involvement with and reflection on the sacred; and also aims at (2) understanding the necessities that belong to religious involvement and that allow religious involvement specifically to differ from and to be related to other dimensions and possibilities of human existence. The integration of these understandings has as its outcome a proposal concerning the intelligibility or “meaning” of religion and concerning the conditions that are relevant to a critical consideration of the truth of religious claims.1 In this chapter I will address questions that have to do with the first of the understandings just mentioned, that is, questions about the necessities that determine a consciousness of the sacred and that permit original and distinctive self-manifestations of sacred transcendence. The understandings that come about through a consideration of these questions provide a basis for further discussion of religious involvement, or religious existence. At the same time, these further discussions enrich the understanding of sacred transcendence itself. The analyses and arguments of this chapter, therefore, are the first moves that need to be made in a larger process of inquiry. The whole process is one that moves all of its parts from a relatively incomplete and abstract condition to a condition that is more fully concrete and determinate.

Religious Consciousness In very basic terms there are two attitudes that must belong to religious consciousness. It is important to discuss the content of these attitudes and what I will call their “status,” and also to make a remark about their source. Religious consciousness, first, has its roots in the attitude or view that reality is not confined to that which is perishable, imperfect, flawed, limited, qualified, conditioned, and in some sense impotent. Certainly, these qualities are attributable to us and to all that we can encounter or imagine or understand in

the context of our direct experience of each other and the world. But that just says that, for religious consciousness, reality is not confined to our direct experience. Religious consciousness is determined, rather, by the attitude that reality includes—but more importantly, exceeds—perishable, flawed, and qualified things and presents us with that which is imperishable, perfect, unlimited, unconditioned, and full of power. There are, of course, many ways in which such a thing can be represented, and in fact it need not be represented as a thing at all. Religious believers speak of God, of the gods, of Brahman, and also of the Tao or of Enlightenment. In addition, the manner in which the unqualified or perfected nature of the object of religious consciousness is represented can be a function of the contrasting imperfections that the object is supposed chiefly to exceed. Thus the fullness of reality may be designated as immortal rather than mortal, as perfect in beauty rather than flawed in composition, as uncreated rather than created, as full of power rather than as subject to the power of things other than itself, or as a condition in which the illusions about the self that desire causes vanish in the face of a thoroughly illumining truth. Whatever may be the case, religious consciousness is informed by the attitude that reality exceeds all of the things and domains of things affected by the sorts of limitations I am referring to here and reaches its summit in a fullness in which those limitations are, in some relevant sense, transcended. Religious consciousness, in the second place, is rooted in the view that I am not the best thing that there is, the center of the universe, and that my own self-realization or the perfection of my own condition cannot legitimately be on its own terms the final end and good to which my strivings are directed. Nor can any other person legitimately stand in the place of this end and good, either for me or for him- or herself; nor can any group or community or any human ideal stand in the place of this end and good for me or for any other person or group or community. George Schlesinger speaks of religious virtue in relation to the “person who has broken out of the narrow confines of his self and whose concerns are other-directed.”2 This is fine as long as the “other” in “other-directed” is properly identified. Religious consciousness opens on an end and good that, at its limit, exceeds all that is of human or natural worth; that is to say, something whose worth exceeds the worth of all things and domains of things that are, once again, perishable, imperfect, flawed, limited, qualified, or conditioned. For religious consciousness, this good is the final end of human striving and commitment; the center and object of human desire, hope, and longing; the only resting place of the otherwise restless heart, to paraphrase Augustine.3 This in no sense implies or suggests that human or natural goods lack worth, or that human desire and striving should turn away from commitments to self-realization or to the perfection of the human condition of others or oneself. It does imply (a) that those goods cannot be rightly or successfully pursued or attained apart from the pursuit and attainment of the good that transcends them, and (b) that those goods are rightly and successfully attained just through the pursuit of the good that transcends them.

Sacred Transcendence 15

In any and all of its modalities, then, religious consciousness is a somewhat complex intentional directedness toward a distinctive sense of transcendence. This statement is of course not, by itself, an adequate account of religion or even of religious consciousness. But it needs to be made at the beginning of such an account and always kept in mind. This is only the first step in a philosophical account of religion, but every other step in that account follows from this one. Any further step that would move back from or away from this step needs correction. Any account of religion that fails to acknowledge this step needs to be integrated in a more comprehensive viewpoint. The status of the attitudes that fund the intentional directedness of religious consciousness needs some discussion because of its complexity. First, these attitudes are neither just reflective nor just pre-reflective, but both. In some specific verbalization, these attitudes come into focus when a religiously involved person asks, What is it that I believe? What am I doing? But they are also operative in the experience, conduct, and consciousness of the religiously involved person or community before such reflective questions are ever asked. They must be, since they are conditions of the possibility of religious consciousness and involvement, and these can and do occur before explicit questions about belief and practice are raised. Second, these attitudes are neither exclusively rational nor exclusively affective, but both. They are present and at work in the thinking of religiously involved persons and communities. They also play very basic formative roles in relation to emotion and desire and are, in principle at least, operative every bit as much on the level of feeling as on the level of thought. Third, these attitudes are neither just theoretical nor just practical, but both. They occur as understandings of the world, the human condition, and reality. They are also action-guiding in a variety of ways. They give basic form to the conscious production of ritual; they operate in the development of norms and the selections of goals that orient the lives of persons and communities; they galvanize volition and direct processes of choice. The attitudes that primitively determine religious consciousness belong to differentiated reflective and pre-reflective, rational and affective, theoretical and practical activities and dimensions of experience. They also belong to the comprehensive context of experience that unifies and, at least in that sense, always precedes those differentiations. I have called them attitudes or views, rather than either beliefs or feelings, in order to acknowledge this important characteristic. Finally, religious consciousness, primitively determined by the integration and operation of the attitudes whose content and status I have discussed so far, has a source. The question of the source—or better, the sources—of religious consciousness is both important and controversial. This is not the point to even begin to consider the complex issues that belong to that question.4 The relevant observation now is that, from the standpoint of religious involvement at least, religious consciousness occurs because it is elicited by the transcendent term toward which it is directed. Religious consciousness is supposed, from this standpoint, to come about on account of some self-manifestation of sacred transcendence to which human beings in some manner have, or gain, or are granted 16


access. It is time to turn to that issue and to a fuller consideration of the notion of sacred transcendence on the basis of what I have presented so far.

Sacred Transcendence The term upon which religious consciousness focuses is not supposed by the religiously involved person or community to be transcendent in a vague, generic, or general way. The transcendence that is supposed to belong to this term is distinctive. It is a transcendence that is supposed, as such or at its limit, to outstrip the limitations that affect the human condition and the condition of natural things and of all things other than itself. It is not simply other than ourselves or than the natural domain that we directly experience or gain knowledge of through warranted empirical accounts. It is a transcendence whose alterity is unique and incomparable. Sacred transcendence is not simply other. The sacred, or God, in the words of Emmanuel Levinas, is “other otherwise.”5 Or it is, in Rudolph Otto’s well-chosen and frequently cited expression, “wholly other.” The sacred is, in words that I will use often in these pages, other than ourselves and other than anything else that is in any other way other than ourselves. Otto associates the wholly other with “that which is quite beyond the sphere of the usual, the intelligible, and the familiar, which therefore falls quite outside of the limits of the ‘canny,’ and is contrasted with it, filling the mind with blank wonder and astonishment.”6 The uncanny, eerie, and mysterious sense that the sacred does or at least can inspire in religious consciousness follows from the contrast that sacred transcendence poses between itself and everything that is other than itself. That contrast follows, first, from the incomparable ultimacy in being and power and in goodness and worth that is supposed to belong to the sacred, to which I have already referred in the opening discussion of religious consciousness. The sacred distinguishes itself from, and transcends, all that is other than itself with respect to reality. By way of contrast, mundane and human matters seem endowed with what Merold Westphal calls an “ontological inadequacy.”7 And, as Westphal asks, what could be more fascinating or more threatening than something that seems “so real that everything else including myself seems somehow unreal?”8 The ultimacy in being that belongs to sacred transcendence, and the power associated with it, account in part for the ambivalence of the human response to the sacred.9 But in addition, ultimacy in this context means ultimacy in worth. A “numinous worth”10 is supposed to belong to the divine or the sacred. Here the maxim ens et bonum convertuntur is both required and radicalized. This intensifies its threatening aspect, insofar as it calls mundane and human worth into question by relativizing them. It also intensifies its fascinating aspect. Then, in the context of this intensification, religiously involved humans move through or endure the threatening aspect of the sacred to pursue a relationship with this supremely fascinating end. The contrast that sacred transcendence poses between itself and everything that is other than itself also has to do with the very notion of “transcendence” Sacred Transcendence 17

itself as employed here. Normally, to say that x “transcends” y is to say that x is beyond y, is not immanent in the condition of y, and/or is not accessible, given that condition. That is to say, some branch of mathematics transcends my abilities. Or some trip that I would like to take transcends my purchasing power; that is, it is beyond my purchasing power; I do not have access to it. It is possible to think that “transcendence” is meant in just this way when speaking of sacred transcendence. Then, to say with Otto that the sacred is “wholly other” would be to say that the sacred is not immanent in the world or the human condition and that we do not have access to it. But of course, from the standpoint of religious existence, this is not the case at all. From the religious standpoint, sacred reality transcends the limitations of human existence and natural things and of everything that is other than itself and is, in virtue of this very fact, deeply accessible, or capable of becoming or making itself deeply accessible, to human beings, deeply immanent in the world. So, for example, the Upanishads speak of Brahman as distinct from all that exists or occurs in the domain of multiple things; Brahman is not this and not that, neti neti.11 But Brahman is also deeply identical with all things and with all selves and with you yourself, and that thou art, tat tvam asi.12 Or the God of traditional Christian theology is said to be self-subsistent in such a thoroughgoing way that God’s being and perfection in no way require the existence of the world that God creates, with the consequence that, in Aquinas’s terms, God is not really related to the world.13 But Aquinas simultaneously maintains that God is present to the world, and intimately so.14 It is not that the sacred is wholly other, thus something that transcends the world and is not immanent thereto or accessible therein. Rather, the transcendence of the sacred is wholly other than any other transcendence, in that it does not exclude but reciprocally includes immanence. The incomparable alterity of the sacred that follows from a transcendent ultimacy in being, power, goodness, and worth has as the reciprocal of that transcendence an immanence that is also incomparable. Religious involvement determines human existence at its core because sacred transcendence in some way becomes accessible at the core of human existence itself. The comments I have made in this section make use of terms and concepts that belong to phenomenology, to traditional philosophy and theology, and to a religious text weighted with speculative content. What is the function of these comments and to what do these comments refer? The terms I have used are fairly standard in a context like this one, but they are of course not terms that religiously involved people use in a spontaneous way in their religious conduct. Religious speech does not ordinarily address “sacred transcendence” or “something ultimate in being and goodness”; it does not ordinarily speak of “a mystery that threatens and fascinates” or “an incomparable transcendence whose reciprocal is an incomparable immanence.” Religious speakers address and speak of the God of our fathers, or the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, or the Buddha of the Pure Land, or the condition in which one overcomes suffering and attains peace. The philosopher of religion is trying 18


to talk about the same object that religious speakers address and speak of, but the philosopher uses different terms because the purposes for which one employs philosophical discourse are different from the aims that animate religious discourse. That statement may seem obvious, but the nature of the purposes of philosophical discourse in this context is not so obvious. In fact, any position about those purposes is at least to some degree controversial. I do not want to enter into that controversy, so I will simply state the purposes of the comments that I have been making. Those comments, first, set aside all assumptions about the legitimacy or illegitimacy of religious claims. At this point, one is simply trying to determine the sense or intelligibility that belongs to the object of religious involvement and the referent of religious speech and religious claims. Even questions about the conditions that might be relevant to an assessment of religious claims are inadmissible at this point. That restriction will be lifted at a later point in this inquiry, but it is in place now. In addition, one doing philosophy of religion is not as such trying to establish an understanding of the object and referent of religious involvement and speech as that exhibits itself in its concrete fullness from the standpoint of one or more particular religious traditions or forms of life. When one is functioning just as a philosopher, one is not trying to grasp in rich and detailed terms the God to whom a congregation prays in a synagogue, or the God who is invoked as the Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ, or the Buddha whose name one repeats three times in an invocation, or the condition toward which one aspires in Zen meditation. Historical and comparative studies of religion do aim at such understandings, and the philosopher who simply abstracts from such studies pays a very high price indeed. But philosophical reflection still has its own aims. The philosopher is trying to understand the conditions under which it is possible for items like the ones just mentioned to be objects and referents of a specific sort: religious objects, religious referents. One is trying to understand the determinations that belong to such items, as they at least putatively manifest themselves to persons and communities, and that allow and require religious involvement as a response to those manifestations. This means that philosophical comments about the object of religious involvement must be formal in nature, even given other qualifications on the universality of philosophical inquiry into religion that I have already mentioned. Furthermore, philosophical comments about the sacred of the kind being made here set aside assumptions about legitimacy and are formal in a particular way because they have to do with those determinations that allow the sacred to manifest itself or appear in a distinctive manner. Three remarks are of chief importance in relation to this statement. 1. The notion of appearance is complex and analogous, not straightforward and univocal. Sugar cubes and apples and saltcellars and fire hydrants appear. So do other people, groups of things, groups of people, cultural objects like symphonies and constitutions, economic and political institutions, numbers, sets, sets of sets, my cognitive processes to me and to you, your cognitive processes to you and to me, and so forth. It is a mistake to suppose that the ways in Sacred Transcendence 19

which all things appear are to be understood on the model of the way in which some things, say sugar cubes and saltcellars, appear. Understanding the determinations that account for the different ways in which things appear to us is a fundamental approach to understanding how those things are different from each other. In the most general terms, anything does or can appear to us if we do or can both speak of it and gain evident insights about it that allow us to assess what we say of it.15 Certainly, religiously involved people speak of the object of their involvement and claim to be able to assess at least some of what gets said about that object in the light of evident insight. Different modes of appearing blend immediacy and mediation, and presence and absence in different ways. The incomparable alterity of sacred transcendence entails a mode of self-manifestation that blends the characteristics just mentioned in a way that gives unmatched priority to mediation over immediacy and to absence over presence.16 2. To speak of the sacred as something that exceeds limits and presents us with mystery, as something whose transcendence of limits follows from ultimacy in being and power, as something that is wholly other in all respects and specifically with respect to a transcendence that has immanence as its counterpart, is to speak of those determinations that account for the unique mode of self-manifestation that sacred transcendence exercises and that allow us to distinguish sacred transcendence from all that is other than itself. The philosophical employment of these terms is an attempt to speak of the object of religious involvement as that object putatively is, “both in itself and in its not being something else.”17 Differently stated, it is to speak of that object in terms that refer to the manner in which it is other than ourselves and other than anything else that is in any other way other than ourselves, and is thus itself. These terms designate sacred transcendence with regard to the manner in which “it is not, and is capable of not being, something other” than itself.18 Rudolph Otto maintains that the terms through which he speaks of the sacred belong to a discourse that tries “to do justice to the non-rational aspect of its subject.”19 I think it is more correct to maintain that the terms through which I speak of sacred transcendence in this section are terms that refer to distinctive features of the sacred insofar as religiously involved persons and communities gain access to that object in and through rational speech and conduct as well as through dimensions of speech, conduct, and life that precede or exceed reason. They are not terms that belong to religious discourse as such: to prayer, exhortation, celebration, instruction, prophetic witness, and the like. They are terms that belong to a discourse one employs in a reflective attempt to understand the object which elicits religious involvement and which that involvement requires. 3. The position that I am proposing in this inquiry, and that I will defend below, is that one speaks of religion correctly insofar as one’s statements acknowledge or at least are consistent with an understanding of religion in relation to some self-manifestation of sacred transcendence, or as an orientation to sacred transcendence, as I have discussed that notion. That is to say, religion is, at its core, an orientation to something that in some manner outstrips limita20


tions of the sort I have already mentioned in virtue of its ultimacy in being and power, goodness and worth, thus presenting itself as a mystery that can both threaten and fascinate because of its character of being wholly other than all that is not itself. This alterity extends to the very sense of transcendence under consideration insofar as transcendence here has immanence as its essential correlate. I use the expression “in some manner” because (a) there are infinitely many particular ways in which the notion of sacred transcendence can be and has been objectified in specific religious traditions and forms of religious life, and (b) those objectifications belong to ranges of possibilities that asymptotically approach but can and also do fall short of the value that defines the limit of that range, analogous to the way in which the value 0 defines the limit of 1/x as x approaches infinity. Not only are objectifications of the notion of sacred transcendence diverse, but they are quite capable of being inconsistent with each other. Yet any and all of these objectifications are defined through predicates that designate determinations of sacred transcendence and reside somewhere within a range of possibilities that, insofar as it is philosophically conceived, has the abstract notion of sacred transcendence as its limit. And religion, once again, whatever else it may be, is of necessity, on my proposal, an orientation to sacred transcendence. This means that anything else that religion might be, and any other understanding of religion, must follow from or at least be consistent with this understanding. So religion may be a symbol system that expresses the most comprehensive and basic concepts and values of a culture, or something that a society uses to enable persons to cope with anomic situations and possibilities, or one’s fundamental mode of valuation;20 but if so, that is because these possibilities follow from or at least are consistent with the occurrence of religion as an orientation to sacred transcendence. Or religion may be an illusion that develops so that people can bear the renunciations that civilization demands, or an expression of slave morality, or the opium of the people;21 but if so, that is because those possibilities follow from or at least are consistent with the occurrence of religion as an orientation to sacred transcendence. Moreover, if a given instance is not in some form an orientation to sacred transcendence, then it is not an instance of religion, properly speaking, no matter how much it resembles religion in other ways. Thus a deep and engaged devotion to the development of the socialist future or to the perfection of the capitalist present can resemble religion in a number of ways. But each of these objectives is a human product and not something that in its alterity and ultimacy outstrips human and mundane limitations. Therefore, neither of these devotions is an instance of religion, properly speaking.22 To say that any occurrence of religion requires an orientation to sacred transcendence is not the same as proposing a definition of religion. As I will indicate below, a proposed definition of religion is best understood as a highly abbreviated statement of the central elements of a theory of religion. The notions of sacred transcendence and of an orientation on the part of human beings to the same belong to any legitimate understanding of religion in a central way Sacred Transcendence 21

and therefore belong at least implicitly to any definition of religion. But it does not seem to me that these notions by themselves, prior to theoretical elaboration, present in an adequate way the central elements that a theory of religion requires or that an abbreviated statement of such a theory requires.

The Reference Points of Religious Consciousness The very nature of the contrast between sacred transcendence and human and mundane existence leads religiously involved persons and communities to modes of religious consciousness and practice that refer or relate sacred transcendence to key aspects and dimensions of the human condition. I call these aspects and dimensions of the human condition the “reference points” of religious consciousness. They define ranges of possible significance that sacred transcendence can have for those who are religiously involved. There are three different sets of reference points to which those who are religiously involved can relate an awareness of sacred transcendence. The first is composed of cognitive and practical needs that occur more or less naturally in the ordinary course of events. The second set includes limit or boundary situations. The third has to do with desire insofar as it is directed toward and compels the pursuit of something that presents itself as good in a way that is overwhelming and intrinsic. First, because the sacred is supposed to be transcendent and incomparable in being, power, and goodness, those who are religiously involved can refer the sacred to needs that arise in the predictable compass of life in the hope that, through the agency or assistance of the sacred, it may be possible to deal with those needs in ways not available to human effort alone. Some of those needs are cognitive. Some of the questions that human beings ask have to do with the origin and final end of the whole universe or of the human race, or are questions about the causes of key aspects of the human condition or about the place of a people in the cosmos or in history. When these questions become pressing, people need answers to them. But it is an understatement to say that the effort to find those answers severely strains the resources of human imagination and inquiry. Myths that refer those questions to some understanding of sacred transcendence and that provide answers to these sorts of questions through that reference respond to grand cognitive needs in ways that are satisfying at least for many persons and communities at many moments in human history. In saying this, I am not trying to reduce myth to an etiological function. This would be quite unacceptable in the light of countless studies of the functions of myth in comparative religions, philosophical hermeneutics, and philosophical theology. But it also seems artificial to deny to myth any etiological function at all. In many contexts myths do offer potentially satisfying responses to otherwise irresolvable questions like the ones I have mentioned, even if that is by no means their only or their principal function in the life worlds in which they operate. But human beings do not just need to understand the origin and end of the 22


cosmos or of the human race, or the causes of the sexual division between men and women, or the fact that we must labor for our bread with the sweat of our brow. We also need rain for the crops to grow, and an end to the rain so that we can harvest the crops, and victory in battle over our enemies. These needs have to do with natural or human processes over which we exercise either no control or, all too often, very little control. Once again, however, the incomparable power attributed to the sacred presents a resource that exceeds the capacity of human agency, and the goodness attributed to the sacred disposes us to hope for a benevolent response to our appeals for aid. So religiously involved persons and communities pray for rain, and for an end to rain, and for victory over enemies. Sacrificial rituals evolve to house and reinforce these intercessions. These comments are, of course, in no way exhaustive with regard to the nature and functions of prayer, ritual in general, or sacrifice in particular. But the intercessory function is always a possibility for prayer, ritual, and, more specifically, sacrifice, just because of the incomparable power that is attributed to the sacred and the capacities of agency that follow from that attribution. The distinction between sacred transcendence and human and mundane existence that religious consciousness requires, however, leads those who are religiously involved to refer a consciousness of the sacred to a dimension of the human condition that cuts much deeper than the cognitive and practical needs that I have been discussing. One speaks of this dimension by discussing limit or boundary situations. Karl Jaspers gives an important discussion of boundary situations, as do David Tracy and Merold Westphal. Jaspers comments, “there are situations that in their nature remain, even if the current appearance changes and their overwhelming power veils itself: I must die, I must suffer, I am subject to chance, I unavoidably tangle myself up in guilt. We call these basic situations of our existence boundary situations (Grenzsituationen). That means, there are situations that we cannot get beyond, that we cannot change.”23 Situations such as the inevitability of death, suffering, guilt, chance, and contingency—and I would add ignorance and injustice—are inescapable aspects of the human condition, either because “they exist for me without any action of mine,” or because “in fact I cannot be without bringing them upon myself.”24 They belong to the condition of human existence in a fundamental way. “We cannot modify them; all that we can do is make them lucid, but without explaining them or deducing them from something else. They go with existence itself.”25 Moreover, these situations determine the condition of human existence as being ineluctably limited or finite. They are “limit situations” for that reason. “They are like a wall we run into, a wall on which we founder,”26 both because of their inescapable and impenetrable character and because they stop us, often metaphorically but at some point literally, dead in our tracks. Limit situations are not specific situations like my being in my study writing or in a classroom teaching or in a pool swimming, but conditions that situate human existence. They are not external objects or surroundings that we encounter but aspects of our very selves. And they are aspects of ourselves that Sacred Transcendence 23

threaten us. We cannot survey the limit situations and master an understanding of them, and in one case even actual experience of a limit situation is denied us, in that I can experience my own dying, and I can and will suffer death, but I cannot experience my own death.27 We are always disposed to veil them in our consciousness. But we also can acknowledge and enter into an acknowledgment of them. In doing this, we willingly enter into an authentic acknowledgment of our own condition; “we become ourselves by entering with our eyes open into the boundary situations.”28 Indeed, they are “boundary situations” as well as “limit situations” because, by acknowledging them and making that acknowledgment our own, we cross a boundary and enter a new condition of self-conscious authenticity. But of course, when limit situations become boundary situations in this sense, they in no way lose their limiting and threatening character. The conditions whose acknowledgment leads one across a boundary to a more authentic mode of self-conscious existence continue to be limits that threaten human existence. I have tried to offer an intentionally brief discussion of limit or boundary situations. Jaspers gives a detailed discussion of certain boundary situations, including the condition of being situated as itself a boundary situation that grounds the inescapable historicity of human existence.29 David Tracy offers very helpful analyses of limit situations, or, in his terms, limit experiences and limit questions, as factors that introduce into common human experience a religious dimension.30 He proposes a distinction between experiences or questions that indicate some “limit to” the condition of human existence and situations in which “we may also find the ability to speak, more often to ‘show’ or ‘disclose’ the horizon, ground, or ‘limit of ’ such language and experience.”31 Merold Westphal offers an exceptionally substantive and lucid discussion of guilt and death as limit or boundary situations.32 He proposes that the relation of religious consciousness to guilt and death, and by implication to the other boundary situations, is one in which “religion has to take notice of these issues and deal with them if it is to be religion at all.”33 That is because, according to Westphal, “the believing soul is erotic in the broad Platonic sense. It is impelled towards the sacred by the awareness of its own deficiencies,”34 and those deficiencies come about most essentially because of the limit situations that determine the condition of human existence. These proposals by Tracy and Westphal are especially important for my purposes. Because religious consciousness adopts an intentional focus on sacred transcendence, it is occupied not simply with something whose power is supposed in a finally incomprehensible way to exceed the power of human or natural agency. The sacred is neither only nor primarily supposed to be something that is, in a way that we ultimately cannot understand, uniquely and immensely more powerful than anything natural or human. Sacred transcendence is supposed, more importantly and more radically, to transcend the finite condition that belongs to human existence on account of the limit situations, and to natural things insofar as they are or can be affected by the analogous qualities of imperfection, transience, periodic corruption, contingency, a sometimes 24


impenetrable unintelligibility, and seemingly senseless imbalance. Religious consciousness occurs insofar as one supposes oneself to find at the horizon or limit of human and natural existence, to use David Tracy’s terminology, something that transcends the limits that belong to the condition of human and natural existence and presents itself as “wholly other” for just that reason. Once again, this sense of transcendence is represented in different ways, in ways that can be inconsistent with each other, and in ways that occupy different places on ranges of possibilities that approach a determining value. Because the sacred presents itself as something that transcends the limits that determine the finite condition of human existence, religiously involved persons and communities can and do focus on those limits as reference points in their consciousness of and dealings with the sacred. Then the significance of the sacred lies not only and not primarily in its being an incomparable and incomprehensible power to which we can appeal in order to explain the otherwise unexplainable and in order to get rain, or to bring the rain to an end, or to gain victory over an enemy. Then the significance of the sacred lies in its relation to the situations of guilt, death, suffering, chance, ignorance, and injustice that very basically affect and limit our existence. Merold Westphal states, “the religious life is attractive to the believing soul largely because of the hope that through a proper ‘relation’ to the Sacred guilt and death can be overcome. The religious life presents itself as the promise of this ultimate happiness, which it calls salvation.”35 I agree with the substance of Westphal’s statement and would extend it to the other limit situations I have identified. The difficulty lies in determining in a way that is adequate and also formal what it might mean to “overcome” the limit situations. I believe that an appropriate account of the notion of salvation, understood as the overcoming of limit situations, follows from the thesis, essential to religious consciousness, that the finitude that is the condition of human existence and of all mundane reality on account of the limit situations or qualities analogous to them nonetheless does not finally determine reality as such, because sacred reality is precisely that which transcends the condition that these situations or qualities determine. If limit situations and the finitude they bring about do not determine the condition of sacred reality, then it is possible to think that, in virtue of a relationship with sacred reality or through the perfection of that relationship, those situations are not the final determinants of human existence. Perhaps that is because, through the perfection of the relationship of human beings to sacred transcendence, our existence undergoes some final and ultimate transformation such that the limit situations are removed from us and affect our condition no longer. Notions of immortality and eternal beatitude through union with God fit in nicely with this possibility. Or perhaps it is because, independently of, or prior to, any such ultimate transformation, the development or perfection of the relation of humans with the sacred discloses that, while the limit situations determine our existence in its present condition, something else determines our present existence even more basically: the love of God, the comSacred Transcendence 25

passion and mercy of Allah, the One that is all-encompassing, the true self.36 Or perhaps it is because of some third possibility that in a specific way combines the other two. This seems to be the possibility that is found most frequently in historical religious traditions and forms of life. In any event, the religious notion of salvation entails that something like the following is not the final story to be told about human existence. We all together are walking around in a nearly dark room in which it is very hard for us to see. As we walk around, sometimes we fall and sometimes things fall on us. On occasion, someone else for no reason lashes out at us and hurts us; and on occasion, we do the same needlessly and cruelly to others. Periodically, we get sick, sometimes very sick, and each of us will die. This story gives a hyperbolic image of the condition whose final determinants are ignorance, chance, injustice, suffering, guilt, sickness, and death. This story does give a truthful representation of the human condition in some sense. But in what sense? The question is not, Could this be the whole story about the condition of human existence? There is no occurrence of joy in my story, and most people would admit of authentic joy. The question is, Could this be the story about what determines human existence in the last analysis? An affirmative answer to this question does not deny meaning to human existence. Meaning, in this sense, is a function of affirmation and courage, and those are genuine possibilities in the context under consideration.37 But an affirmative answer to the question at hand does say, to put the point in rather commonplace terms, that whatever the possibilities for meaning and fulfillment might be, the qualities that ultimately determine human existence are the qualities that ultimately do us in. That is the possibility that a religious notion of salvation excludes. The content of that notion is the promise that the final determinant of our existence is something other than the limit situations that still do affect our present condition in such an essential way, namely, a relation to sacred transcendence. Indeed, for the religious devotee, the limit situations are overwhelming threats just insofar as we human beings are, in our connection with sacred transcendence, estranged from that reality. This is an estrangement from the reality that transcends the limit situations and the finitude they impose, and can be the source of our salvation from them as well. From the vantage point of the religious notion of salvation, then, the religious task is that of overcoming estrangement between the sacred and ourselves for the sake of the possibility opened by that overcoming. And the significance of sacred transcendence itself for religious consciousness is understood not only with reference to needs of a more ordinary and external sort but with reference to the problematic and threatening finitude of our very being-in-the-world. John Hick also understands religion—or, more specifically, what he refers to as the “post-axial” religious traditions—in terms of “a soteriological structure which identifies the misery, unreality, triviality and perversity of ordinary human life, affirms an ultimate unity of reality and value in which or in relation to which a limitlessly better quality of existence is possible, and shows the way to realize that radically better possibility.”38 He characterizes the way in which 26


one realizes that possibility as “the transformation of human existence from self-centeredness to Reality centeredness.”39 For my purposes, there is a particular importance to this characterization. Even the pursuit of salvation can seem something that religiously involved persons and communities undertake for their own purposes, a “self-centered” pursuit in that sense. But a more careful examination shows that this understanding lacks the necessary nuance. Religiously involved communities and persons pursue salvation by attempting to overcome estrangement from sacred transcendence. This pursuit focuses on a relationship with something that is inestimably and incomparably beyond limits with regard to being and goodness. Those qualities shift our concerns toward the object in question. In shifting our concerns toward that object, they shift our concerns away from other objects, and that means primarily away from ourselves. In being drawn out of ourselves, we are drawn away from concern with ourselves. Then the task of overcoming estrangement from, and developing the relation with, sacred transcendence is the product of a desire that is no longer simply erotic in the Platonic sense, driven by our sense of our deficiencies. It is elicited by the overwhelming, limit-transcending qualities of sacred reality. It is comparable to the desire that I might have to listen to, or to continue listening to, a Bach cantata, a desire that is elicited by the overwhelming majesty and beauty of the work, a desire that is associated with a “hunger” that is the product of those qualities themselves and not of some quasimetabolic process of mine that uses up and periodically needs new supplies of nutrients. Salvation is still an issue. But the pursuit of salvation occurs in a context that subordinates my concerns with my needs, even those needs that arise from the threatening nature of the limit situations, to a focus on the overwhelming perfection of sacred transcendence itself. Merold Westphal states: “religion can be viewed as something more than a means for dealing with our various needs to the degree that it consists of (1) ‘terminal’ activities, valued for their own sake, and (2) activities in which the self ’s attention is directed away from itself and thus from its own needs. We call such activities Useless Self-Transcendence.”40 I am, of course, speaking of useless self-transcendence in the immediately preceding comments. Westphal offers penetrating discussions of celebration and worship, prayer and sacrifice, in relation to the concept of useless self-transcendence, to which I would add the activities of asceticism, compassion, and the pursuit of justice. In each case, he shows how the activities that he discusses can be instrumental functions of selfconcern and can also be activities through which one surpasses self-concern as one pursues the relation with sacred transcendence, not for one’s own sake, but for its own sake, and thus performs the activities that belong to that relation for their own sake. I would add to this only by repeating the claim that the pursuit of salvation itself, which at first may seem to be undertaken on account of self-concern, holds the possibility that one’s concerns about one’s own self can be subordinated. In the very context of this pursuit, one’s concerns can be directed away from a focus on the condition of one’s own self through a focus on the limit-surpassing splendor of sacred transcendence. Then the desire for salSacred Transcendence 27

vation, which always has to do with the problematic and threateningly finite character of the condition of human existence, becomes a desire whose erotic properties are nonetheless subordinated or even allowed to fade. The nature of religious concern and religious desire is uniquely complex and paradoxical. Religious concern and desire always have a relation to needs that human beings experience not only because of cognitive and practical transactions with the world and others but more essentially because of the effects of the limit conditions on the very condition of human existence. At the same time, the task associated with religious concern and desire, the task of overcoming estrangement from, and perfecting the relation with, sacred transcendence, aims at a condition in which religious concern and desire are formed not through a focus on our own deficiencies but on sacred transcendence in its uncanny splendor. I will have more to say about this at a later point, in the discussion of the concept of radical self-transcendence. At this point, enough has been said at least to show that, for religious consciousness, a third dimension of significance, different from those previously discussed, belongs to sacred transcendence. Religious consciousness involves considerations of the sacred with reference to cognitive and practical needs that come about in our dealings with the world and with reference to the threatened condition that belongs to our own existence on account of the limit situations. For religious consciousness, sacred transcendence is a hopefully benevolent power to which we can appeal for the sake of addressing needs whose resolution lies beyond the reach of human agency and, more essentially, for salvation. But sacred transcendence can also be, for religious consciousness, something with which we concern ourselves just for its own sake, something that we pursue because our desire for it is elicited by its splendid qualities even more than by our sense of its ability to supply our own deficiencies. Unless the first of these significances is subordinated to the second, religion borders on magic. Unless the second is in some way joined with the third, religion on its own criteria tends toward idolatry, because then my tendency is to make something that is finite and that is other than limittranscending sacred reality my ultimate concern—namely, myself. I have tried in this chapter to give a preliminary but also substantive account of religious consciousness. I have discussed the attitudes that determine religious consciousness, the status of those attitudes, and the claim, made from the religious standpoint at least, that religious consciousness has its source in some self-manifestation of sacred transcendence. I have offered a relatively brief and philosophically formal but also informative characterization of the notion of sacred transcendence as well as a discussion of, but not yet an argument for, the claim that religion in the strict and proper sense requires nothing less than some form of an orientation to sacred transcendence. I have also discussed the reference points that determine the different, but of course interrelated, sorts of significance that sacred transcendence has for religious consciousness. The central and most important concept in this chapter is the concept of sacred transcendence itself. Indeed, the central and most important concept in 28


this book and in any discussion of religion is the concept of sacred transcendence. Any critically adequate discussion of religion, whatever else it does or tries to accomplish, needs to capture and articulate the self-understanding essential to the religious standpoint. And from the religious standpoint, sacred transcendence is at the center of everything. So a critically adequate discussion of religion needs to place at its center what is and must be central for religious consciousness and involvement. But even if the concept of sacred transcendence is the central and most important concept in a discussion of religion, it is not the only concept that belongs to that discussion. Indeed, a fuller consideration of sacred transcendence itself requires discussion of the mode of involvement through which humans relate themselves to the sacred— religious involvement—and the mode of existence which that involvement determines—religious existence. It is to those discussions that I now turn. My very basic position is that considerations of religious involvement or religious existence require adequate discussions of both the mode of discourse that funds religious involvement and the existential practice that belongs to religious existence. The discussion of religious discourse is my next topic.

Sacred Transcendence 29

2

Religious Discourse

A condition of the possibility of any consciousness of sacred transcendence and of any transactions between human beings and the sacred is discourse capable of articulating that consciousness and of operating within those transactions. The roles that religious discourse plays require a corresponding complexity in that discourse. Religiously involved persons and communities address the sacred object of their devotion with utterances of awe, love, fear, and hope in order to praise, to thank, to entreat, to express repentance, and to beg forgiveness. Revelations through which sacred reality manifests itself to human beings, in turn, frequently and essentially involve words. Those may be words that one supposes the sacred itself to speak, or they may be words of one who speaks on behalf of the sacred or who has attained a condition that allows his or her own words to manifest sacred reality. And of course, persons speak about that which they suppose to be transcendent and sacred; they speak to themselves, to others within a community of shared religious involvement, and to others outside of that community. Thus, as Kenneth Schmitz observes, “religious speech about the sacred is ultimately not separable from speech to the sacred, nor is either separable from speech by the sacred.”1 An account of religious discourse needs to be able to clarify the conditions of the possibility of these different roles. In order to do this, it needs to be an account of the possibility of a discourse that has to do with something “wholly other,” other than ourselves and than anything else that is in any other way other than ourselves, with the limit situations that determine the finite condition of our very being in the world, with the possibility of salvation, and with a desire that surpasses self-centeredness in its love and longing for that which is limitlessly and unsurpassably good. These are not matters for discourse of an ordinary sort. But they are also not matters for a discourse available only to an elite trained in a disciplined expertise. The matters with which religious discourse deals are profound, but they are also supposed to be universally human: the condition of our existence, the need and promise of salvation, the transformation that allows us to seek that which is thoroughly and finally good for its sake alone, the accessibility of sacred transcendence. Theological discourse needs to be technical, often rigorously so. If religious discourse were necessarily technical in a similar way, then only theologians could be saints and many theologians would be saints, two obviously false consequents that indicate the falsity of the antecedent. The discussion of religious discourse in this chapter falls into two parts. First I will discuss the basic, defining elements of religious discourse. Then I will discuss possibilities for meaning and interpretation that belong to religious dis-

course. My orientation in this chapter is generally hermeneutical. Paul Ricoeur has done work of overriding significance regarding religious discourse, and his work presents the chief, although not the only, resource on which I draw throughout this chapter and especially in the first part. But there are also limitations that belong to the hermeneutical theory of religious discourse. Comments on these in the second part of this chapter will eventually lead beyond a discussion of religious discourse to a discussion of the existential praxis that is also an essential moment of religious involvement.

Elements of Religious Discourse The understanding of religious discourse that Ricoeur represents and develops not only proposes that discourse of a certain sort is an essential element of religious involvement but proposes that “a religious faith may be identified through its language, or, to speak more strongly, as a kind of discourse.”2 This implies that one can identify religion in general terms by referring to discourse of a certain kind. This view requires justification. For Ricoeur, this justification becomes evident through reflecting on alternatives. One could begin one’s investigation of religion by focusing on religion as a response to the Holy, or as a response to an infinitely preceding will, or as a conscious sense of absolute dependence, or as ultimate concern, or as an unconditioned confidence that sustains hope.3 Any such beginning focuses on “religious experience,”4 or “faith,”5 terms that Ricoeur treats as synonyms in the sources on which I am drawing, for reasons discussed below. But “whatever may ultimately be the nature of the so-called religious experience, it comes to language, it is articulated in a language, and the most appropriate place to interpret it on its own terms is to inquire into its linguistic expression.”6 Alternatively, “faith, inasmuch as it is lived experience, is instructed—in the sense of being formed, clarified, educated—within the network of texts that in each instance preaching brings back to living speech.”7 Prior to linguistic articulation, religious experience, or faith, is mute. Therefore, even if faith or religious experience is the source of a religious construal of the world and thus the limit of hermeneutics, it has a determinate intelligibility that becomes accessible only through a consideration of its complex articulations. This is the argument that, for Ricoeur, justifies the understanding of religion that is the context for his inquiry into religious discourse. I will argue below that a critical limitation belongs to that understanding. In spite of that, the argument I have just summarized has a great deal of power, and the inquiry into religious discourse that Ricoeur undertakes is most productive. Continuing to rely significantly on the resources of that inquiry, I support a hermeneutical account of religious discourse that puts forward the seven following claims. 1. The symbol is the basic operating element in religious articulation. Focusing on the symbolism of evil, Ricoeur argues that symbols generally operate in terms of a “double intentionality.” The first, “or literal intentionality, . . . implies the triumph of the conventional sign over the natural sign. . . . But upon Religious Discourse

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this first intentionality is built a second intentionality, which . . . points to a certain situation of man in the sacred.”8 A stain or a burden or a condition of errant wandering discloses a situation in which a person or group stands before God or the sacred as impure, bearing guilt, having sinned. One grasps the sense of symbols through the disclosure that the second intentionality makes possible. This requires interpretation, which may always be more or less implicit or explicit, spontaneous or reflective. In any case, there is an inescapable opacity that belongs to symbolic meaning just because “the first, literal, patent meaning analogically intends a second meaning which is not given otherwise than in the first.”9 Because the symbol gives its latent meaning only through its manifest meaning, one “cannot objectivize the analogical relation that binds the second meaning to the first. . . . Unlike a comparison that we look at from the outside, symbol is the very movement of the primary meaning that makes us share in the latent meaning and thereby assimilates us to the symbolized, without our being able to intellectually dominate the similarity.”10 Manifestations of sacred transcendence always entail an opacity that excludes the possibility of intellectual domination. More specifically, those manifestations cannot be spoken of (a) through direct statements about the world, or (b) through statements that aim at conceptual univocity. These are two reasons for saying that sacred transcendence is signified in the first instance through symbolic operations.11 Paul Tillich gives a helpful understanding of the first of the two reasons just mentioned. Speaking of language about God in terms that also apply to the more general notion of sacred transcendence, he says that “any concrete assertion about God must be symbolic, for a concrete assertion is one which uses a segment of finite experience in order to say something about him.”12 The sorts of statements in question are statements that have to do with sacred transcendence or God insofar as they concern events, situations, persons, locations, times, or dimensions of experience or of the self in which sacred reality is supposed to be present and make itself accessible. Discourse in such a context has to do with some “segment of finite experience” insofar as it is possible to construe something given in experience as a “signal of transcendence,”13 a human or worldly phenomenon that points beyond itself to, or that enshrines the presence of, the reality supposed to be transcendent and sacred. In this context, the task of discourse is that of speaking about some aspect of finite reality in a way that suggests how its immanent features are indicative of something that, to refer to David Tracy once again, surpasses and occurs at the limit of finite reality as its source or ground.14 The doubly intentional nature of symbolic discourse is precisely what is needed for this purpose.15 Kenneth Schmitz gives an additional reason for holding that the symbol is the basic operating element in religious discourse: “The proper (though not exclusive) vehicle of meaning for religion is the symbol and not the concept, precisely because the symbol does not only signify the thing intended but also embodies its presence and calls upon the hearer to enter the world which the symbol reveals.”16 Religious discourse not only denotes sacred transcendence. It must also convey an effective sense of the presence and actuality of sacred 32


transcendence and make it possible for one to move into the world that has that presence and actuality at its center. Even if propositional components belong to or can be inferred from this discourse, meaning is here still necessarily determined by non-propositional elements that allow language to be evocative with regard to the presence of sacred transcendence and to be, as Donald Evans puts it, self-involving language through which speakers express feelings and attitudes and commit themselves to actions.17 Once again, it is symbolic discourse that is suited to this purpose.18 Kenneth Schmitz adds that “religious symbolism transcends the distinction between theory and practice, and proclaims a dimension of reality which is at once a demand for action and a revelation of meaning.”19 This is a claim of great importance to which I will return. Religious discourse is, of course, not simply or primarily discourse that presents individual religious symbols in discrete terms. It is discourse in which narratives and other literary forms incorporate primary religious symbols and are themselves symbolic in character. These more extended discourses are the ones that for the most part designate human and worldly phenomena as “signals of transcendence” and that are operative both in speech that is addressed to the sacred or that is in some way supposed to be the disclosing word of the sacred and in speech about the sacred. In subsequent discussions of the variety of forms that religious discourse assumes, the relation of form and meaning in religious discourse, and of the poetic character of religious discourse, it will be important to be mindful of the symbolic nature of the discourses in question. It is also important to note here that, when certain reflective purposes come into play, discourse about the sacred needs to assume a conceptual status that surpasses symbolism. I have interpreted and appropriated Tillich’s claim that “concrete assertions” about God or sacred transcendence are necessarily symbolic. I do not maintain, however, that any and all such statements must be symbolic and cannot be conceptual.20 Some conceptual statements specifically about God or sacred transcendence are both possible and necessary for certain ends. Their possibility follows from the analogical predications they involve. Analogical predication will receive some further discussion in a subsequent chapter. Suffice it to say for now that analogical predication belongs to statements that are properly conceptual rather than symbolic but that in conceptual terms preserve the limits as well as the possibilities of symbolic reference because of the way they integrate affirmation and negation. Religious discourse, as I am discussing it in this chapter, gives rise to the needs and purposes that analogical predication serves. But it is not precisely the same as the discourse that makes use of analogical predication to meet those needs and serve those purposes. In order to continue the discussion of religious discourse as such, I turn now to the second of the seven claims that belong to the account of religious discourse that I want to present. 2. Language that purports to convey religious meaning and disclose religious truth takes on the form of a discourse and is conveyed through discourse traditions. I have been using the expression “religious discourse” without commenting specifically on the notion of discourse. It is time to remedy that omission and to Religious Discourse

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briefly introduce the idea of a discourse tradition. Discourse, first, is a specialized employment of language: there is the English, or the German, or the Italian language; there is political, or scientific, or religious discourse. Second, discourses originate in utterances and inscriptions that are the products of definite authors and are aimed at particular audiences, but they come to convey meanings that are accessible independently of those circumstances.21 A discourse can convey meaning at a distance from its originating contexts and events, as occurs, for example, in the case of the oral transmission of a discourse through generations. Ricoeur calls this “distanciation.”An elementary form of distanciation, of semantic or textual autonomy, belongs to a discourse, and this characteristic develops as discourses themselves develop in a variety of ways. The concept of distanciation, entailing as it does an understanding of semantic autonomy, is the key defining concept of a discourse. Third, since discourses become independent of their originating events and contexts and are available to groups and individuals in an ongoing manner, they can and do take the form of discourse traditions. Discourse traditions are very much like the “common meanings” that Bernard Lonergan discusses. Common meanings “originate in single minds. They become common only through successful and widespread communication. They are transmitted to successive generations only through training and education. Slowly and gradually they are clarified, expressed, formulated, defined, only to be enriched and deepened and transformed, and no less often to be impoverished, emptied out, and deformed.”22 The importance of common meanings lies in the fact that they are conditions of the possibility of community.23 A community requires a frame of reference for linguistic and practical consensus and conflict. Common meanings or discourse traditions provide that frame of reference, and in doing so, become the traditions of a community. The development of religious meaning leads to discourse traditions that form the identities of communities and become available to others with whom those communities interact. 3. The interaction of content and literary form plays a decisive role in the institution of meaning in religious discourse. The biblical tradition, for example, presents a variety of literary forms, such as narrative, oracle, hymn, proverb, prayer, liturgical formula, and legal prescription. A variety like this allows for the elaboration of primary religious symbols in terms of different formal possibilities. The confessional content “expressed in the biblical documents is inseparable from the forms of discourse” that those documents present, and “the confrontation of these forms of discourse gives rise to tensions and contrasts” that open additional possibilities for conveying meaning.24 It is entirely plausible, in the light of comparative data, to more generally hypothesize that “religious language would then appear as a polyphonic language sustained by the circularity of the forms.”25 Moreover, literary forms cannot be reduced to classificatory concepts, “genres” in that sense. They are essentially generative rules that guide the construction of discourse, “means of production,” or “instruments for producing discourse as a work.”26 A “text,” in the technical sense in

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use here, is any discourse that is a “work” in the sense now under discussion, be it oral or written. Since the composition of a work of discourse follows generative rules and produces a structure whose form plays a determining role with regard to meaning, “a text, whether written or oral, presents a texture and calls for an interpretation of its inner organization.”27 The immanent organization of the themes, images, metaphors, plot lines and characters when those are present, and of the many other elements that belong to a work of discourse comes about in the light of its formal structure. There are, of course, multiple possibilities for understanding the inner organization of these contents. We gain access to these possibilities by beginning with the work of discourse as an independent field of meanings. In other words, there are “specific kinds of distanciation linked to the production of a discourse as a work.” A new sense of distanciation belongs to a discourse insofar as it is a work produced in relation to formal, generative rules. Now the discourse is not only one that can be temporally or spatially distanced from its original context as it conveys meaning. It is also a work whose meaning needs to be construed in relation to the formally interrelated elements that belong to the work rather than, or at least not only, in relation to the intentions that might have prevailed in the original context of its production. Those construals of the work are always subject to elaboration or revision. “For this very reason it is open to an infinite range of interpretations.”28 4. Writing more fully realizes the semantic autonomy that distanciation brings about. As already noted, distanciation belongs to a discourse as such, and it belongs in a fuller way to the “text” or work of discourse even prior to an explicit distinction between oral and written productions. It is also important to be mindful of Paul Griffiths’s claim that writing need not and often has not played a major role in the “composition, storage, and display” of religious discourses and that participation in the process of making available and receiving those discourses “doesn’t require literacy in the narrow sense. It doesn’t require the capacity to make semantically laden marks on a permanent media of storage, nor even the capacity to decode such marks made by others.”29 Nonetheless, as writing develops, says Ricoeur, “inscription becomes synonymous with the semantic autonomy of the text, which results from the disconnection of the mental intention of the author from the verbal meaning of the text, of what the author meant and what the text means.”30 As a result of writing, the audience of a text is universalized: “A written text is addressed to an unknown reader and potentially to whoever knows how to read.”31 Once again the concept of distanciation, the chief defining feature of a discourse, undergoes a development. Writing expands the possibilities for the transmission of a text. This reinforces the process through which a text can be distanced from its author and initial audience and can present itself as something alien in relation to others who do not belong to the community whose discourse tradition engendered the text. This sense of distanciation and accompanying alienation has as its dialectical counterpart appropriation, that is, the process of making something that is

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alien one’s own, leading both to understanding and “the ownness by which all understanding aims at the extension of self-understanding.”32 These remarks must be understood in a way that admits of relative but not unqualified semantic or textual autonomy.33A text is “a link in a communicative chain.”34 Written texts, certainly those belonging to religious traditions, are elements in a larger process in which speaking becomes writing and writing becomes speaking.35 “Cut away from speaking-becoming-writing and writingbecoming-speaking, the text is no more than an artifact of critical method.”36 To suppose that the text is only an artifact of this sort is to fail to recognize that the written text does and can, “by addressing itself to anyone who knows how to read, refer to a world that is not there between the interlocutors, a world that is the world of the text and yet is not in the text.” This world of the text is “the ‘issue of the text.’ The issue of the text is the object of hermeneutics. It is neither behind the text as the presumed author nor in the text as its structure, but unfolded in front of the text.”37 This is a key assumption for the next claim. 5. The primary discourses and texts of religion are, with regard to the genus to which they belong, poetic. That is to say, they do not refer descriptively to the world in the way ordinary reports about things and states of affairs are descriptive, or in the way language and texts belonging to the physical or the historical and social sciences are descriptive. They in fact suspend, or at least subordinate, this descriptive function. But “this suspension is the wholly negative condition for the liberation of a more originary referential function, which may be called second order only because discourse that has a descriptive function has usurped the first rank in daily life, assisted, in this respect, by science. Poetic discourse is about the world, but not about the manipulable objects of our everyday environment. It refers to the many ways of our belonging to the world before we oppose ourselves to things understood as ‘objects’ that stand before a ‘subject.’ ”38 Discourse is poetic insofar as it refers beyond itself by “proposing a world, a world wherein I can project my ownmost possibilities.”39 The referential function that poetic discourse exercises, because of its difference from the descriptive function, “designates the emergence of another concept of truth than truth as adequation, regulated by the criteria of verification and falsification: a concept of truth as manifestation, in the sense of letting be what shows itself.”40 Poetic discourse presents neither factual description nor a celebration of language for its own sake. It unites semantic innovation to the two-sided function of proposing a world and instigating self-understanding.41 The poetic character of religious discourse should be understood in relation to the other features of religious discourse already discussed. Poetic discourse incorporates the doubly intentional meanings that belong to symbols and productively employs those meanings through formal, generative structures. In virtue of distanciation, different persons and communities who receive and respond to those discourses in the contexts of their own situations can, in those contexts, arrive at a plurality of understandings of their immanent meanings. Discourse traditions enable the preservation of these discourses in the ongoing history of communities, just as they enable these discourses to contribute to the 36


identity of communities. Writing expands the transmission of the discourses in question to communities and societies whose cultural identities they have not formed and for which they are initially alien, in which case they become possible objects of appropriation and vehicles for self-understanding. Clearly, poetic discourse is not limited to what we understand as “poetry” in an ordinary sense, although it includes that. Discourse is “poetic,” in the sense being used here, on account of the way it has to do with the world. Poetic discourse is discourse that proposes a manner of construing the world in which I find myself, and poses possibilities that I might project for myself in that world, rather than discourse whose meaning should be understood as a function of direct statements about the world. If religious discourse is poetic, then it is discourse of this sort. Thus, to take familiar examples very briefly, the Creation story in Genesis invites me to construe the form and the very existence of the world and the universe as the product of limitless beneficence and to respond to the created world with joy, hope, and thanksgiving. The story of the Fall, in turn, on one possible reading, which is not the only one possible, invites me to construe my own situation as one in which I sometimes choose to do evil and as one in which I am drawn to those choices by a disposition that seems antecedent to them but seems also to be somehow a consequence of choice. Wallace Stevens, whose central concern is of course not religious discourse, makes a comment that is eminently helpful for a discussion of the poetic nature of religious discourse: “The subject matter of poetry is not that ‘collection of solid, static objects extended in space’ but the life that is lived in the scene that it composes; and so reality is not that external scene but the life that is lived in it.”42 This statement reinforces the observation by Paul Griffiths that, with regard to religious reading, “the basic metaphors are those of discovery, uncovering, retrieval, opening up: religious readers read what is there to be read, and what is there to be read always precedes, exceeds, and in the end supersedes its readers.” Far from aiming at temporal closure, religious reading “is a continuous, everrepeated act.”43 I would suggest that, given the generically poetic character of religious discourse, the ancient monastic practice of lectio divina offers one of the best paradigms for religious reading. 6. The “specificity of religious language” 44 resides in its function of naming God or sacred transcendence. It is not sufficient only to identify the poetic genus to which religious discourse belongs. One must also discuss the difference that allows us to distinguish it from other discourses that are also poetic and to understand it in a more specific way. In the context of a discussion of biblical texts, Ricoeur asserts that it is “the naming of God . . . that specifies the religious at the heart of the poetic.”45 This is not a “naming” that occurs in reflective, philosophical, or theological terms. It makes use of a discourse that is “originary in relation to utterances” of those sorts.46 It supports and is assumed by reflective, philosophical, or theological discourse about God, and in that sense always precedes those discourses. That discourse is also “polyphonic.”47 It allows the products of diverse generative forms to occur together, to integrate with each other, and to clash with and oppose each other for the sake of the naming that speciReligious Discourse

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fies religious discourse. Additionally, religious discourse joins to its disclosive function indications of the necessary incompleteness and inadequacy of that function. It joins “metaphor and limit expression, it furnishes the matrix for theological language insofar as this language conjoins analogy and negation in the way of eminence: ‘God is like . . . , God is not. . . .’ ”48 The presence of God is like a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. But God is infinite. So the presence of God is finally not the same as the presence of a pillar of cloud or of fire. Through various metaphorical deployments, religious discourse aims at disclosing manifestations of the divine in history in connection with founding events that transcend the ordinary course of history. This is a designation of divine transcendence that is radicalized through limit expressions that essentially deny adequacy to even those disclosures.49 Now clearly, religious discourse is often not theistic in nature. But religious discourse necessarily designates, or addresses, or presents itself as the word of, sacred transcendence. One can maintain that, quite generally, metaphors are the vehicles through which one attempts to indicate the presence in historical events, or in primal events, or in the self, of something that surpasses anything that belongs to nature or ordinary history, or to the self in its ordinary condition. The limit expressions point to the inadequacy of those very indications. Together, metaphors and limit expressions secure and intensify a sense of sacred transcendence that is open to theistic and non-theistic understandings. 7. “Religious experience” or “faith,” while necessarily mediated by religious discourse, is not fully analyzable in linguistic terms alone. In my discussion of considerations that lead to a linguistic standpoint in philosophy of religion, I have already indicated that Ricoeur treats “faith” and “religious experience” as synonyms and have mentioned his insistence that “faith never appears as an immediate experience but always as mediated by a certain language that interprets it.”50 A fuller statement of this position links “the concept of faith to that of self-understanding in the face of the text. Faith is the attitude of one who accepts being interpreted at the same time that he or she interprets the world of the text.”51 That is, faith means accepting the understanding of the world and of myself that the text proposes even as I go on to develop understandings of ultimate reality and human existence from the standpoint of my own being-inthe-world. As Ricoeur emphasizes, “this is not to say that faith is not authentically an act that cannot be reduced to linguistic treatment. In this sense, faith is the limit of all hermeneutics and the nonhermeneutical origin of all interpretation. The ceaseless movement of interpretation begins and ends in the risk of a response that is neither engendered nor exhausted by commentary.”52 Faith is something mediated by articulation. It is not the very same thing as the articulation that mediates it. It is a response to the vision of reality and human existence that the discourse and available texts of a religious tradition propose. The response includes, ideally at least, a moment of finding that the vision of things in question appeals to and receives confirmation in one’s experience and understanding of reality. It also includes a willing affirmation of that vision of things, and in 38


that sense, a moment of choice. The willing affirmation involves, among other things, risk. It is not unlike the process of being in love, which involves finding that someone appeals in an overwhelming way to one’s feelings and desires and commitments, and also affirming or choosing those feelings and desires and commitments as one’s own, which certainly also involves risk. In both contexts, the affirmation, of course, not only follows from but also affects experience and understanding insofar as one is willingly affirming a way of experiencing oneself and the world. That is why Ricoeur identifies faith and religious experience. Faith, in this context, is some combination of finding oneself linked to, and also affirming or choosing, a way of experiencing and understanding the world in terms of the intimations of reality in its ultimate and human dimensions that a tradition of religious discourse conveys. That experience and understanding, once again, is both discursively mediated and stands over against that mediation as the dimension of involvement from which discourse emerges.

Religious Discourse, Meaning, and Interpretation According to the account I have offered, religious discourse is poetic discourse that articulates symbolic meaning through a variety of productive literary forms for the sake of naming sacred transcendence or God. It is transmitted in oral and written forms through discourse traditions that preserve religious texts in the historical life of communities and contribute to the cultural identities of those communities. It is susceptible to an open plurality of interpretations by persons and communities who receive and respond to religious texts in the contexts of their particular situations and arrive at understandings of the meaning that those texts deliver to them. Those persons and communities may find that they experience and understand the world and also choose to experience and understand the world in terms of the proposals those texts offer concerning reality in its ultimate and human dimensions. These comments, of course, require that any further discussion of the meaning and interpretation of religious discourse build on the thesis that the basic operators in religious discourse are symbolic meanings formally organized in discourse works that are poetic in a broad but specifiable sense. I want to be clear about the import of this thesis. To maintain this thesis is to be in full agreement with David Tracy when he says, “to state the matter with the bluntness needed, for many of us fundamentalism and supernaturalism of whatever religious tradition are dead and cannot return.”53 That is not to say that thoroughly genuine devotion and religious practice cannot occur together with these attitudes. They can and they do. It is to say that as positions these attitudes are mistaken. The positions fail to acknowledge the necessarily symbolic nature of the discourse that presents us with, and invites us into, a world whose final character is defined by the way in which that discourse names sacred transcendence. They fail to acknowledge that naming sacred transcendence has to do, not with an entity or set of entities in another world other than this one, but with something supposed to surpass our human and worldly finitude and to Religious Discourse

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present itself at the limit of that finitude by calling on us to assume a new mode of being-in-the-world. The following remarks on the meaning and interpretation of religious discourse follow precisely from these acknowledgments. They address two possible and competing ways of interpreting religious discourse, a requirement for understanding the meaning of religious discourse, and the existential dimension that must always be recognized in any interpretation of religious discourse.

Hermeneutics of Suspicion and Recovery In naming sacred transcendence, religious discourse names something whose significance has to do in very important ways with the limit situations that determine the finite condition of human existence. Because of those situations, the condition of human existence is in most basic ways problematic and threatened. The significance of the sacred in relation to limit situations is defined by the possibility and promise of salvation that sacred transcendence offers. That possibility and that promise respond to a need. The need in question is not just one among many others. It occurs at the very center of the condition of human existence. It gives rise to fears and anxieties that are most basic and at the same time most difficult to comprehend or even to identify. Because the need, the fears, and the anxieties associated with the limit situations are central as well as obscure, they affect all aspects of human existence, even though their functioning is as much unconscious as conscious and their effects are often discernible only in indirect ways. It is inevitable that these effects would be discernible in the sense of the discourse that names sacred transcendence and in the significance disclosed in that naming. This makes possible an interpretation of religious discourse that construes the meaning of that discourse in terms of the effects of largely unconscious fears, anxieties, and other factors that are noticeable within it. This contrasts with another interpretation of religious discourse that understands the meaning of that discourse in terms of its functions of disclosing and directing human consciousness to sacred transcendence. Paul Ricoeur discusses these two possible and competing interpretations of religious discourse that have come to be called “the hermeneutics of recovery or renewal” and “the hermeneutics of suspicion.”54 The first interpretive approach understands religious symbolism and religious discourse as a symbolism and a discourse that are supposed at least to point beyond themselves to something whose nature they disclose in a truthful way, the something in question being sacred reality.55 The second interpretive approach understands the meaning of religious symbolism and religious discourse in terms of the functions that they exercise in relation to the harsh demands that culture or civilizations make on the individual—functions that are exercised through the presentation of an illusion and that needs to be understood through an analysis of the human and largely unconscious origins of religious symbolism.56 The first approach, while not in and of itself endorsing truth claims about the actuality and nature of sa40


cred transcendence, interprets religious symbolism in terms of its intentional directedness toward this object. The second approach, while not in and of itself denying truth claims about the actuality and nature of sacred transcendence, interprets religious symbolism in terms of ideas that represent the fulfillment of wishes that follow from the threats that nature poses to life and from the pain that instinctual renunciation brings about.57 These very different interpretations of religious symbolism can very easily appear to be competing, with the obvious implication that a win for one approach is a loss for the other. At the same time, the polysignitive nature of symbolic and therefore of religious discourse, its capacity to bear and convey multiple meanings of very different sorts, is itself the formal condition of the possibility of these two very different interpretive approaches to religious discourse. To the extent that religious discourse itself conveys meanings that indicate the appropriateness of a hermeneutics of suspicion as well as a hermeneutics of recovery, the material condition of the possibility of these different interpretive approaches is fulfilled as well. Since the grounds of the possibility of interpreting religious discourse in these different ways reside in that discourse itself, one should question the view that the legitimacy of one of them excludes the other. Ricoeur, in fact, wants to hold that each approach “is legitimate within its own context,” and that they perform “complementary functions.”58 One needs to understand consciousness, he maintains, in terms of developmental stages defined by attempts at linguistic and practical self-expression. That expression is determined by efforts at bringing an experience of reality to language and also by the effects of unconscious operators on our experience. Religious discourse, because of its connection with limit situations, is in a unique position to receive those effects. Therefore it is legitimately interpretable in terms of those effects as well as in terms of the effort to articulate an experience of reality. I think Ricoeur offers a philosophically sound and productive position. I would add that this position is of religious significance as well. Let us assume for a moment that it is possible that some religious claims about reality are true. If so, then surely it is in the interest of religiously involved persons and communities to determine that they are true, however one would go about doing that, and to determine the sense in which they are true. If the sense of religious discourse can be determined in part by the effects of unconscious operators, and if for this reason religious discourse can be in part discourse whose meanings represent the fulfillment of wishes, then it is important to consider this in the process of assessing the sense in which religious discourse is supposed to present claims about reality that are or might be true. This is the case if those wishes follow from things like the condition of the individual because of the harsh requirements of nature and civilization, or from things like the burdens imposed on individuals and groups by social-systemic factors whose alteration seems unimaginable. Marx, along with Freud and Nietzsche, is a master of the hermeneutics of suspicion. In any of these situations, the hermeneutics of suspicion Religious Discourse

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brings about a critical consideration that serves an essential interest of those who are religiously involved. In fact, it is arguable that the hermeneutics of suspicion serves essential interests of those who are religiously involved more closely than essential interests of those who are religiously skeptical. Skeptics certainly have an interest in critical reflection on discourse that presents claims that their view of things excludes. But believers have an even greater interest in discovering the sense in which religious discourse presents claims about reality that are true—assuming, again, at least the possibility of this for the moment—and in any critical reflection requisite for this task. The position about the complementary nature of the hermeneutics of suspicion and of renewal is not only a position one can successfully defend but one that is productive philosophically and in religious and theological terms as well.

Religious Discourse and Self-Involvement Through religious discourse, persons and communities speak to and about, and in some way hear the word of, something supposed to surpass limits that circumscribe the condition of all that is other than itself, and something that humans seek and desire because of the promise of salvation and because of the intrinsic splendor that belongs to sacred transcendence in its limit-surpassing being and goodness. An intrinsic part of speaking to or about such a thing, or of hearing the word of such a thing, is having or adopting attitudes or feelings toward it, or having intentions or making and maintaining commitments in relation to it. Religious discourse is, according to Donald Evans, “self-involving.” It makes no sense to speak meaningfully about something that is supposed to be of limit-surpassing splendor and to promise salvation if I have none of the appropriate attitudes or feelings or intentions about such a thing, just as it makes no sense for me to affirm that “ice cream is tasty” if I never have any desire for it. An important thesis about understanding and interpreting the meaning of religious discourse follows from these remarks. Understanding the meaning of religious discourse requires that one participate in at least some of the attitudes or feelings or intentions that such discourse expresses. Evans discusses this claim with reference to a specific example. Consider the difference between saying, “Jones built the house,” and “God is the creator of the world.” Building houses is quite beyond my capacities but well within the reach of human capacities. It is at least possible that when I say, “Jones built the house,” I am only reporting on a state of affairs and not expressing any attitude, feeling, or intention. But if I say, “God is the creator of the world,” I am saying that God brings about the existence of all that is other than Godself, the entire universe and every being in it, including myself and everything and everyone that I love and cherish. This is quite unimaginably beyond the reach of human capacities, and its consequences for things in general and for my-

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self in particular are overwhelming. It really is not possible for me or anyone else to say this meaningfully without something like a sense of wonder, awe, or thanksgiving. That means that “what is meant by ‘God the Creator’ cannot be abstracted from human attitudes.”59 Moreover, the attitudes appropriate to the statement in question inform not only momentary responses but also a pattern of life. Thus, in the case of this statement, “one comes to understand it as one lives according to it”60 and develops the pattern of life that the appropriate attitudes govern. The argument that Evans suggests in relation to statements about God and creation can be extended to religious discourse in general. But this is not an unproblematic position. It may seem to entail that one can understand the meaning of religious discourse only if one maintains that some religious claims are true. After all, something like wonder, awe, or thanksgiving accompanies discourse about God and creation because one thinks it is the case that God creates everything other than Godself. Predictably, someone who does not think this, perhaps because the person in question does not think that God exists, would not share in such responses upon hearing discourse concerning God and creation. But this hearer need not agree that the lack of response indicates a failure to understand what the discourse means. On the contrary, the ability to deny a claim requires an understanding of its meaning. If something else were the case with religious discourse, that would seem to entail the highly dubious view that any denial of religious claims is associated with a failure to understand their meaning and the meaning of the discourse within which they occur. Even the example I offer above suggests this. Perhaps I cannot affirm that “ice cream is tasty” if I have never had a desire for it, but surely I can understand what the statement means. Something important belongs to this objection, but it is too hasty. If I do not believe that God exists, then the sentence “God is the creator of the world” will not inspire the same responses in me as occur in the believer. But I can still understand that the meaning of this sentence cannot be disassociated from some responses such as awe or thanksgiving, responses that I have certainly had to other objects, although not to the God whose existence I deny. I can recognize that if I or anyone else were to affirm this statement, some feelings, attitudes, or intentions would be necessarily ingredient in that affirmation. The skeptic will not associate these responses with the very meaning of the sentence in question in precisely the same way as the believer does. But one can still recognize from a skeptical standpoint that the very meaning of the sentence about God the Creator requires that its affirmation entails not only agreement that some state of affairs is the case rather than not, but self-involving responses as well. This is the point of key importance. The meaning of religious discourse and of religious claims can never be adequately or rightly understood if it is disassociated from the self-involving responses, or the existential significance, entailed by one’s participating in that discourse or affirming those claims. Nor

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is existential significance an ancillary or accidental property attached to the meaning of religious discourse. It is inherent in that very meaning itself. This does not mean that it is never legitimate to consider the propositional content of religious claims in a way that abstracts temporarily from their existential significance, while recognizing that this consideration falls short of an adequate understanding of their meaning. That may well be the price one has to pay for the purposes served by this consideration. But it does mean that the aims, conditions, and limits of such a consideration need to be carefully stated and assessed. This is not the occasion for a discussion of these matters. They will receive careful treatment below.

Religious Discourse and Existence At this point, the nature of the existential significance that religious discourse conveys requires still more careful consideration. In naming sacred transcendence, religious discourse names something that presents itself as the source of the promise of salvation and as the limit-surpassing object of human desire and striving. Salvation has to do with the essentially threatened condition that belongs to human existence on account of the limit situations. But as previously noted, for those who are religiously involved, the limit situations are uniquely threatening just because of an estrangement of human beings from sacred transcendence. Because the connection between humans and the sacred has been diminished or lost, or because humans have broken or violated or wandered away from that connection, humans are separated from the source that can heal or liberate them, even given the unalterable nature of the limit situations for human existence in its present condition. This means that as religious discourse names sacred transcendence with reference to the significance that it has as the source of the possibility and promise of salvation, that discourse also depicts a condition of estrangement between humans and the sacred that needs to be overcome. This condition of estrangement is also the setting in which religiously involved humans can come to discover sacred transcendence as the limitlessly perfect object of a desire that is therefore legitimately without limit. When religious discourse names the sacred in terms of this significance, it again depicts a condition in which estrangement between humans and the sacred needs to be overcome, now for the sake of pursuing a limit-surpassing and intrinsic good and, possibly, for the sake of fulfilling one’s desire for that good. In relation to the two essential dimensions of significance that belong to sacred transcendence, then, religious discourse portrays a situation in which something needs to be done. That is, in naming sacred transcendence and depicting the condition of human existence in its connection with sacred transcendence, religious discourse is not only portraying that situation but also issuing an invitation or an injunction. It is telling us to do something. It is proposing a task. Insofar as religious discourse represents the word of the sacred or utterances spoken to human beings, it assumes not only the indicative but also 44


and even more significantly the imperative mode. It is in its imperative moments, in the task or praxis that it proposes, that the existential significance of religious discourse is most deeply to be found. This is a matter of great importance. The task or praxis that religious discourse proposes and that is an essential moment of religious involvement calls for separate and sustained discussion. I will devote the following chapter to that discussion. For now, I want to conclude by commenting clearly on the virtues and the limitations of the hermeneutical theory of religion that Paul Ricoeur represents. It is the case, I maintain, that religious discourse is poetic in nature, given the sense of “poetic” I have discussed, and is specified by the function of naming God or sacred transcendence through the use of metaphor and limit expressions. In each of these aspects the most basic semantic operators are symbols. Religious discourse deploys symbolic meaning through a variety of literary forms in ways characterized by progressive senses of distanciation. For these reasons, religious discourse takes the form of discourse works or texts, presented as independent fields of meaning to more comprehensive audiences, who discover an open plurality of meanings in those texts as they receive them in their own historical situations. Understood in these terms, religious discourse supports and is assumed by or “precedes” theological, philosophical, and other sorts of reflection on the issues and claims it presents. It is also the case that religious discourse mediates, or at least typically mediates,61 an experienced sense of reality that persons themselves enjoy and also willingly affirm, and that cannot be analyzed in discursive terms alone, even though we have concrete access to this experiential limit of religious discourse only through articulation or some kind of expression. But it is not precisely the case, I maintain, that a religion, or religion in general terms, can be “identified . . . as a kind of discourse.”62 Certainly, the discourse traditions that belong to particular historical religions are essential to them, just as discourse of the sort I have commented on herein is an essential moment of religion as such. But to say that is not to say that a religion, or religion in general, can be identified as a set of discourse traditions or as discourse of a certain kind. The latter claim is unacceptable. That is because, once again, religious discourse is discourse that proposes a task to those who receive it. The task that the discourse proposes is different from the discourse that proposes it. And that task is an equally essential moment in the identity of religion as such and, in its particular modalities, to specific historical religions. Ricoeur himself is not unaware of the distinction between discourse and task and of the importance of the religious task. In his discussion of religious symbolism, he refers to the “primitive connection between our activity of existence and the signs which we manifest in our works,”63 suggesting that there is a distinction as well between a task of the sort to which I am referring and symbolic or other sorts of articulation. And in his discussion of the poetic nature of religious discourse, he states that through discourse of that sort, “new possibilities of being-in-the-world are opened up within everyday reality,”64 suggesting Religious Discourse

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again the task through which one realizes those possibilities. But he does not offer a full and rich account of that task, nor does he discuss the ways in which it is different from the discourse that proposes it. In fact, this account and discussion are beyond the limits of a hermeneutical theory of religion. That is because such a theory considers all extra-linguistic religious phenomena from the standpoint of the articulation that they receive through religious discourse. A theory of this sort is not equipped to give an account of such phenomena on their own terms and to present a discussion of the relative independence that they might have in relation to the discourse to which they are, of course, also related. But there are good reasons for thinking that the task that belongs to religious existence does have a relative independence from the discourse that proposes it, and good reasons to attempt an account of that task on its own terms. It is now my task to turn to those matters.

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3

Radical Self-Transcendence

Religious discourse has the determinations that it does because those determinations must belong to speech that is to, of, and about the sacred, and that informs and supports the involvements of persons and communities with sacred transcendence. In a similar way, the task or praxis that belongs to religious existence has the determinations that it does because religious existence comes about through the involvements that persons and communities have with sacred transcendence. The sacred and transcendent object of religious involvement elicits human responses of certain kinds, and those responses must be in place if religious involvement is to be adequate in relation to its object. This means that a discussion of the religious task is also a discussion that contributes to an understanding of sacred transcendence. We reach an important understanding of sacred transcendence by discussing the determinations that allow religious consciousness to distinguish the sacred from everything else and to appreciate different aspects of the significance of the sacred in the light of the connection of the sacred with different points of reference in human experience. We also learn something important about sacred transcendence through knowing that the discourses through which humans address the sacred, speak of it, and receive its word need to be discourses whose basic operators are symbols, that are generically poetic, and that make use of metaphors and limit expressions in the naming function that specifies those discourses. In turn, we continue to learn something important about sacred transcendence through discussing the nature of the task that it elicits from humans who would involve themselves with the sacred. That task is an existential praxis whose specific traits I designate with the expression “radical self-transcendence.”1 In this chapter I will first consider some of the characteristics that belong in a general way to an existential praxis. This will provide a context for a more specific discussion of radical self-transcendence. Then I will pursue that discussion by presenting three interrelated but different considerations of radical self-transcendence and by integrating the results of those considerations. Finally, I will comment on the connection that we must acknowledge and the distinction we must recognize between religious discourse and radical self-transcendence, and the understanding of religion and religious existence that results from integrating the discussions of religious discourse and radical self-transcendence.

Radical Self-Transcendence as an Existential Praxis To say that radical self-transcendence is an existential praxis is analogous to saying that religious discourse is poetic in character. In each case, one is

referring to the nature of the praxis or discourse in question in generic or general terms. A discussion of the generic nature of a particular sort of discourse or praxis provides the necessary context for a consideration of that discourse or praxis that examines the functions or characteristics that belong to it in a more specific way. I will discuss some of the characteristics that belong to an existential praxis in order to establish the context needed for a more substantial consideration of the specific praxis that I designate as radical self-transcendence. This discussion will be brief, and I make no claim that it is either complete or carefully systematic. However, I believe it is sufficient for the purpose it must serve. First, an existential praxis is not a discrete activity that one does along with many others. Rather, it is a task that one does or tries to accomplish in and through the many discrete activities one performs and the ways in which one performs them. To use an analogy that refers to speech acts, an existential praxis is something like telling the truth. Telling the truth does not comprise one set of acts separate from and on a par with others like telling people things about my colleagues, my finances, my summer in Germany, or my children. Rather, I accomplish the activity of telling the truth through the things I say about topics like the ones I have mentioned and through the way I say those things. Analogously, I accomplish an existential praxis through the various activities that I perform in the conduct of my life and through the way I perform them. Religious traditions themselves can require many “tasks” of their adherents and present obligations that range from matters of dress and diet to ethical concerns and meditative practices. These can be specific ways in which the existential praxis that a religious tradition proposes becomes operational. Second, an existential praxis is not an activity that belongs to a discrete part of one’s life. Its tendency is to prevail in one’s life as a whole and to extend into all the dimensions or aspects of one’s life. So teaching is something I do in the academic part of my life, cooking is something I do at home with my family, and going to movies is one of the things I do in the part of my life in which I take recreation. But an existential praxis cannot be restricted to a part of one’s life, such as the part associated with one’s profession or with one’s domestic situation or with recreation. The cultivation of an existential praxis involves, in part but essentially, the project of developing that praxis throughout the distinguishable aspects of life and extending it to one’s conduct in a comprehensive way. Third, an existential praxis engages not some but all dimensions of the self. It is what Tillich calls a “centered act.”2 It draws upon the resources of body and mind, feeling, thought and volition, the self as a single individual, and the self situated in relations of many different kinds. It also affects the self in all of these dimensions. Fourth, an existential praxis results from and realizes the fundamental option a person adopts regarding the manner in which one will become the person that one is and is capable of becoming in the world. As Bernard Lonergan put it, “by his own acts the human subject makes himself what he is to be, and he does 48


so freely and responsibly; indeed, he does so precisely because his acts are free and responsible expressions of himself.”3 The option itself comes about in the context of a consciousness that, as one determines choices and actions, “their determination is in each case the work of a free and responsible subject producing the first and only edition of himself ” or herself.4 The option has to do with the most basic values, goods, and possibilities to which one commits oneself; the most basic relations in which one situates oneself and the place one accords oneself in those relations; the sense and degree to which one defines one’s own self-becoming as the outcome of one’s autonomy and the object of one’s responsibility; the sense and degree to which one will appropriate diverse dimensions of self hood into the process of one’s own self-becoming and aim at bringing potentially conflicting dimensions of the self into a condition of integration. An existential praxis is the ongoing task of making some such option one’s own and realizing it through one’s choices and actions. Kierkegaard’s discussions of esthetic, ethical, and religious existence give an account of different possible forms that an existential praxis can assume. Such an account also belongs to Bernard Lonergan’s discussions of intellectual selfappropriation and of intellectual, moral, and religious conversion.5 I neither want nor need to subscribe to any particular account of the number of, differences between, or relations among, the different forms that an existential praxis can take. I need only to claim that what I call radical self-transcendence is one of those forms, characterized by the features I have already discussed and by one more that I mention in the final observation that belongs to this discussion. That is the observation that, fifth, one’s adoption of an existential praxis must be in some manner voluntary, or follow in some manner from a resolve or a choice. M. Jamie Ferreira, in her excellent study of imagination and will in Kierkegaard’s thought, contributes most helpfully to an understanding of choice in this situation. In relation to an existential praxis, choice or resolve is both a free act and a response.6 It is not necessitated or compelled and also not arbitrary or accidental.7 The resolve in question is not like assenting to the conclusion of a mathematical theorem that I recognize to be sound or like handing over my money at gunpoint. It is also not like colliding with the car in my blind spot when all I wanted to do was change lanes, or moving into a free parking place when the one behind it would do just as well. Adopting an existential praxis involves a response to an image of the self that is “ideal” because it is supposed to represent the deepest truth about one’s nature and identity and is held in imagination in contrast and connection with an appraisal of one’s empirical condition. Such an images presents one with a demand.8 To resolve upon an existential praxis is to affirm the “imaginative revisioning” of the self that the ideal image presents9 and to choose a way of conducting one’s life that is guided by and that supports the revisioning. Very clearly, one’s adoption of an existential praxis is always, to some extent at least, a work in progress. The affirmation of the revisioning that is supposed to capture the deepest truth about the self, and the choice to conduct one’s Radical Self-Transcendence

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life as that revisioning directs, always need reasserting and renewal. The joker in this pack, however, appears with the realization that, while the adoption of any existential praxis must be a responsive and free act, no one is free to adopt no existential praxis at all. That is because in this instance it is truly the case that not to decide is to decide. One may shy away from the revisioning of the self that an existential praxis entails because the demand that it presents seems troublesome, or one may recoil because the demand seems burdensome. But then one is voluntarily allowing oneself to conduct one’s life by pursuing possibilities in a way that “distracts and dissipates the self ”10 because the pursuit is not directed by an integrating telos. This itself is a fundamental option with regard to self-becoming.

Understandings of Radical Self-Transcendence In chapter 1, I argued that religious involvement presents persons and communities with the task of pursuing a relationship with sacred transcendence and, more specifically, of overcoming estrangement from—a real or illusory separation from, or lack of unity with, or lack of identity with—the sacred. Religious involvement must involve this task because the sacred presents itself as the promise and hope of salvation, and in terms of an intrinsic, limitsurpassing splendor in being and goodness. In chapter 2, I argued that a constant and essential existential significance belongs to discourse having to do with sacred transcendence just because that discourse proposes the task just mentioned to those who adopt that discourse for the sake of articulating to themselves and others their own situation in the world. That is to say, a discussion of the task belonging to religious involvement always occurs in the context of an understanding of the significances attributed, in religious consciousness, to sacred transcendence and of the discourse that informs religious consciousness. Still, a discussion of that task can be developed in a number of different ways and by drawing on a variety of different resources. It is important to consider several possibilities that can belong to this discussion.

Radical Self-Transcendence as a Commitment to an Absolute End I find it helpful to begin by drawing on resources provided by one of Kierkegaard’s most intriguing and important pseudonyms, Johannes Climacus. Climacus clearly understands that religious existence entails the pursuit of an end, a telos. He is also clear that this end is in no sense comparable to any other. It has a status that sets it apart from all other ends, actual and possible. It is the absolute telos. A person can have at most one absolute telos. If something does stand for a person as an absolute telos, then all other ends to which that person is committed stand in contrast with that end. They are relative rather than absolute. And this situation makes a demand on the person with regard to his or her relation to ends. It calls upon the person to cultivate an absolute commitment to the absolute telos and a relative relation to relative ends.11 50


Climacus calls the appropriate attitude toward the absolute telos and relative ends “resignation.”12 This attitude is distinguished from any understanding of the relation between the absolute telos and relative ends that involves “mediation.” In this context, mediation involves two essential possibilities. First, mediation belongs to one’s view of the relation between an absolute telos and relative ends if one treats the absolute telos as if it were “an element among the other elements,” or an end among other ends.13 One way of treating the absolute telos as an end among others is to suppose that in order to identify an end as absolute one need only compare it to all others and find it better or greater than all others. It makes sense to compare different relative ends to each other and to decide that one is more important than another. As a consequence, one may also decide, therefore, to put much more effort into realizing one rather than the other. But it is still legitimate to reserve some effort for an independent pursuit of the other. If I decide that the wellbeing of my children is much more important than my academic writing, I may also decide that I will expend more effort on realizing the former than the latter end. But I may still dedicate some effort to my academic writing that is independent of whatever I am directly doing for the sake of the well-being of my children. I am, in fact, doing that as I write these words. By implication, if I distinguish some specific end from all others just by supposing that it is better or greater, and therefore more important than, all the others, then I may—and in fact, should—decide to expend more energy and effort in realizing that end than in realizing all others. But I may still dedicate some efforts to the pursuit of other ends that are independent of whatever I am doing in the pursuit of the one I suppose to be greatest and best. But this is not a possibly legitimate orientation toward the absolute telos. One grasps the superiority of such a telos by recognizing that it is, to use a familiar idiom, not only better or greater than all other ends but also an end than which none better or greater can be conceived. Such an end is indeed superior to all others. It is, in addition, an end and good that can have no equal, and an end or good greater than we can conceive.14 Its excellence or perfection is incomparable and limitless. With respect to any scale that can be used to compare and assess the respective significance of other ends, it is off the scale. An absolute telos requires a commitment that is unqualified. Such a commitment relativizes the worth of all other ends. In this context, that means that it is never legitimately possible to pursue any other end in a way that is independent of one’s orientation to the absolute telos. Not only may I never subordinate the absolute telos to any other end, but I may never separate the pursuit of any other end from my commitment to the absolute telos, even if I at the same time hold that the absolute telos is “more important” than that end. Consequently, I may be called upon to renounce the pursuit of any end that conflicts with or even resists integration with the commitment to the absolute telos. I may even be called upon to act as if I hated my father and my mother, as perhaps Siddartha Gautama acted when he left not only his wife and child but the palace of his father to find a solution to the problem of suffering.15 At the same Radical Self-Transcendence

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time, the pursuit of any legitimate end can become a dimension of one’s commitment to the absolute telos, assuming the possibility of its integration with that commitment. One should not, however, suppose the immediately preceding statement to imply that one attains, or realizes one’s commitment to, the absolute telos by realizing some plurality or some unified set of relative ends. One can, and in fact must, define one’s relations to relative ends as dimensions of a commitment to the absolute telos by integrating the former with the latter. Still, Climacus insists, “it is not true, either, that the absolute telos becomes concrete in the relative ends,” or that the individual can be related to relative ends “in such a way that the absolute telos is exhausted in them.”16 This supposition would introduce into the view about the relation between the absolute telos and relative ends the second sense of “mediation” to which Climacus objects. Just as one cannot gauge the worth of the absolute telos by measuring it against a standard relevant to different finite ends, one must acknowledge that absolute telos stands beyond or transcends all finite ends and any conceivable set of finite ends, no matter what the content of that set. Even if I approach the absolute telos through the pursuit of relative ends, the absolute telos is concrete in its difference from them and not attained just by pursuing and attaining them. I may seek God through being faithful in my marriage and feeding the hungry, but seeking God is not the same thing as being faithful in my marriage and feeding the hungry. I may attain enlightenment through washing my bowl, but attaining enlightenment is not the same thing as washing my bowl.17 Even though the absolute telos concretely differs from and transcends all relative ends and demands an absolute commitment, it is neither possible nor desirable ever to attempt simply to withdraw from one’s relations to relative ends. Rather, the religious task is the attempt “simultaneously to relate oneself absolutely to the absolute telos [end, goal] and relatively to relative ends.”18 This attempt results in “religious suffering, which is dying to immediacy.”19 In abstraction from an absolute commitment, as that is understood in these pages, it is perfectly natural and right that one’s relation to at least some finite ends be direct or immediate, that is, relations that do not define the ends in question as subordinate to some other end and relations whose legitimacy does not depend on their being integrated into the pursuit of some other end. Given an absolute commitment, this is no longer right, but it is still perfectly natural, and for that reason difficult to surpass. Some ends, such as the proposal to take a walk in a park on an afternoon, seem so unimportant and innocent that the thought of worrying about their relation to an absolute commitment seems almost embarrassing.20 Some ends, such as the well-being and even the lives of my children, seem so immediately pressing that the very idea of integrating them with, not to mention subordinating them to, any other commitment at all seems barely thinkable. Nonetheless, an absolute commitment requires that one withdraw from an immediate relation from ends of this sort and from all others in order to reorient one’s relations to all finite ends in the context of an orientation to the absolute telos. 52


This reorientation is a difficult process that allows for different stages of realization but perhaps never for final completion.21 And it entails a transformation of the self that one must strive for with great effort but that ultimately comes about, not as a direct consequence of one’s choices and actions, but as the outcome of a development that one undergoes.22 Thus one can understand Climacus’s notion of religious suffering as a kind of difficult undergoing. One takes full measure of the difficulty and of the transformation in question only by realizing that the process to which they belong requires a withdrawal from whatever immediacy might belong to one’s own attachment to one’s own self. Withdrawing from immediacy with regard to a dedication to any end is an instance of detachment. This instance of withdrawal from immediacy is an exercise in detachment from self. It is arguable that this detachment from self is the final necessity that “dying to immediacy” in all its forms requires. Thomas Merton writes, “we do not detach ourselves from things in order to attach ourselves to God, but rather we become detached from ourselves in order to see and use all things in and for God.”23 An absolute commitment requires that one’s final assessment and ranking of finite ends refer to the way those ends can be integrated with one’s orientation to the absolute telos and therefore not to the way those ends can promote one’s own interest, which itself can range from vulgar to noble. This is possible insofar as one displaces one’s care for one’s own self from the center of one’s concerns so that one can center those same concerns on one’s orientation to the absolute telos. In addition, if one displaces care for oneself from the center of one’s own concerns in favor of an orientation to the absolute telos, then one is supposing that the best thing that one can do is to pursue one’s commitment to the absolute telos on account of its incomparable excellence and for no other reason, not even because of the benefits that the absolute telos delivers to the self. But of course, to do the best thing that one can do is to do the best thing that one can do for oneself. This is the supreme possibility of self-realization. If so, then from the standpoint of an absolute commitment, the supreme benefit that the absolute telos confers upon humans who pursue it is its own absolute self, when the same is sought most centrally for its own sake rather than for the sake of the benefits it delivers.24 I learn, as it were, that the best thing that I can do for myself is to cultivate the self-forgetfulness that allows me to seek the limit-surpassing excellence of the absolute telos not for my sake but for its own sake. Climacus is fond of pointing out that it is relatively easy to produce sentences like the ones I have just written and then to suppose that the task that they indicate is finished because the sentences are finished.25 But nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, by its very nature, the task of maintaining an absolute orientation to the absolute telos and a relative relation to relative ends is one that one can never complete, if only because there is always more to be done as long as one’s life is open to the future. And indeed, if this is a task that one begins, one has for that very reason begun the task too late. Climacus believes that the self-consciousness of one who undertakes the religious task includes these realizations, and he calls that self-consciousness “guilt.”26 My only Radical Self-Transcendence

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interest in Climacus’s treatment of this category has to do with the light that it sheds on the nature of an absolute commitment. Just as an absolute commitment tends to prevail over and makes a claim on all of the parts of one’s life, it makes a claim on the whole of the time of one’s life. I have made no attempt at an exhaustive analysis of or commentary on the characteristics of resignation, suffering, and guilt, which Climacus associates with religious existence or the religious task. I have wanted to discuss only some selected and salient features that belong to the treatment of those categories. But given that, what does this discussion say about the nature of the religious task? (1) The religious task is the task of cultivating and maintaining an absolute commitment to an absolute telos and a relative relation to relative ends. The object of an absolute commitment is an end that is not only better or greater than all others but one than which a better or greater cannot be conceived. Therefore, the absolute telos has no equal and is excellent in a way that surpasses our capacities to conceive. (2) All the finite ends that one pursues and all of the ways in which one pursues them must be capable of integration with, and at least in that sense subordinated to, the pursuit of this limitless telos. For this reason no finite end is pursued in a way that is independent of this limitless telos. For the same reason, one can and does pursue one’s commitment to the absolute telos through one’s relation to finite ends. (3) Even though one pursues the absolute telos through one’s relation to finite ends, the pursuit of the absolute telos is not the same as the pursuit of any finite ends, because the absolute telos has a concrete identity that transcends any and all finite ends, whether these are taken distributively or collectively. (4) The pursuit of the absolute telos requires a withdrawal from immediacy in one’s relations or attachments to relative ends. In particular, it requires a withdrawal from immediacy in one’s attachment to one’s self. As a consequence of self-detachment, one defines one’s own benefit as an outcome of the pursuit of the absolute telos when one pursues that end for its own sake rather than on account of the benefit that it delivers, in a consciousness that this pursuit makes a claim on all the parts and all the times of one’s life. Taken together, these statements give one account of the task that I call radical self-transcendence.

Radical Self-Transcendence as a Relation to the Sacred and the Self Critical use of resources that Johannes Climacus provides in the discussion of the essential moments that belong in general to religious existence27 yields an important and substantive understanding of the project or task that I call radical self-transcendence. One can develop that understanding and discuss radical self-transcendence in some different terms by making critical use of another of Kierkegaard’s pseudonyms, Anti-Climacus. In Practice in Christianity, Anti-Climacus says that in the relation of God to the human self, God draws one to Godself. He then says, “when that which is to be drawn is itself a self, then truly to draw to itself means first to help it truly to become itself in order to draw it to itself, or it means in and through draw54


ing it to itself to help it become itself.”28 I believe that it is appropriate, from the standpoint of religious self-understanding, to endorse each of these descriptions of what it means for the absolute telos to draw something that is a self to itself and to rank the second above the first. On that basis, one could say that (a) God establishes the self in its being and worth, and then draws the self to Godself for the sake of perfecting the self. But it would be even more accurate, Kierkegaard suggests, to say that (b) God draws the self to Godself for the sake of overcoming privation in the self, and in that way establishes the worth and very being of the self. Each of these statements indicates that one’s seeking for the absolute telos occurs in a context in which one is also and even more fundamentally drawn out of oneself by and toward the absolute telos. The priority of the second statement over the first indicates that it is the relation to the ultimate or absolute telos that determines self hood in its genuine worth and its very being. Furthermore, in his considerations of the connections between relation-toanother and self-relation, Anti-Climacus suggests a most productive possibility for expressing the claim just made. As is well known, Anti-Climacus maintains in The Sickness Unto Death that “a human being is a synthesis of the infinite and the finite, of the temporal and the eternal, of freedom and necessity, in short, a synthesis.”29 This synthesis or relation30 is, however, not on its own terms a self. That is because “the self is not the relation but the relation’s relating itself to itself.”31 Moreover, the finite human self, understood as “a relation that relates itself to itself,” does not establish itself but is “established by another.”32 Because the human self “is such a derived, established relation,” it is “a relation that relates itself to itself and in relating itself to itself relates itself to another.”33 The self-relation that is constitutive of the finite human self entails a relation to the source that establishes that self. These comments present, for Anti-Climacus, an understanding of what one might call the ontological or relational context in which the absolute telos, or God, draws the human self to itself. Given this context, one could say that (c) God establishes the self in relation to itself and then draws the self to Godself for the sake of perfecting the condition of self hood or finite self-relation. But it would be even more accurate to say that (d) God draws the self to Godself for the sake of perfecting and even more basically for the sake of establishing the genuine actuality of finite self-relation.34 Statement (b) as it appears two paragraphs above, and statement (d) in this paragraph attribute the possibility of a task to the human self. This is the task of pursuing a relation to the ultimacy that draws the self to itself for the sake not only of perfecting but even more basically of instituting, in a genuine rather than privative way, the self-relatedness that comprises the very being of the finite self. From the religious standpoint, the self can only actually be the self that it is through its relation to the absolute telos, or God. One pursues a self-transcending relation to the absolute telos, and in so doing, one not only perfects human self hood but actually establishes finite self-relation in its genuine actuality. These statements give a second description of the task of radical self-transcendence. Radical Self-Transcendence

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Radical Self-Transcendence as Falling in Love I develop a third discussion of radical self-transcendence on the basis of the work of Bernard Lonergan. He presents a transcendental analysis of human subjectivity that shows that the self necessarily “is stretching forth towards the intelligible, the unconditioned, the good of value,” in a way such that the reach of intending, although not of attainment, is unconditioned.35 This is an aim at understanding what is intelligible on its own terms, affirming as true what is on its own terms real, and esteeming and committing oneself to what on its own terms has worth. For this reason, one “achieves authenticity in self-transcendence.”36 But while the capacity for self-transcendence develops through questioning, reflection, and deliberation, it “becomes an actuality when one falls in love. Then one’s being becomes being-in-love.”37 Once love in this sense “has blossomed forth and for as long as it lasts, it takes over. It is the first principle. From it flow one’s desires and fears, one’s joys and sorrows, one’s discernment of values, one’s decisions and deeds.”38 Note that in this situation the standpoint from which one forms understandings, affirmations, and judgments of worth is not simply that of one’s own individuality but of one’s relation to the beloved. It is the beloved in that relation that galvanizes feeling, intelligence, and will. The activities of the self and the identity of the self develop in the relation to the beloved that contextualizes them. Love, in the sense under consideration, is, of course, of many kinds. It extends from the intimacy between parents and children, friends, and partners to one’s commitment to the members of a community, quite possibly of the human community. However, Lonergan maintains, “being in love with God, as experienced, is being in love in an unrestricted fashion. All love is self-surrender, but being in love with God is being in love without limits of qualifications or conditions or reservations.”39 Rather obviously, this is a condition that for the most part the devotee approaches rather than fully realizes. But to the extent that one participates in this condition, one participates in “the experienced fulfillment of our unrestricted thrust to self-transcendence, in our actuated orientation towards the mystery of love and awe.”40 And while requiring the cooperation of one’s intelligence and will, “that fulfillment is not the product of our knowledge and choice. On the contrary, it dismantles and abolishes the horizon in which our knowing and choosing went on and it sets up a new horizon in which the love of God will transvalue our values and the eyes of that love will transform our knowing.”41 The capacities for knowing and valuing that belong to the very being of the self,42 integrated in love of what is final and unconditioned, undergo transformation in that setting. Moreover, since the capacities for knowing and valuing ground the unrestricted dynamism toward self-transcendence, and since without this dynamism the being of the self is “mutilated or abolished,”43 the pursuit of the relationship that fulfills that dynamism is the pursuit of the relationship that not only fulfills the self but also endows the self with the fullness of authenticity in its very being. Lonergan’s

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discussion of being in love with God obviously needs basic adjustments if it is to be extended by analogy to other than theistic forms of religious life. But on its own, it presents another description of radical self-transcendence.

The Concept of Radical Self-Transcendence I have discussed the idea of radical self-transcendence in three ways. I have derived an understanding of radical self-transcendence from a consideration of the way divine or sacred transcendence, because ultimate in being and worth, is the ultimate end or absolute telos of human existence, using Johannes Climacus as a resource. I have developed the idea of radical self-transcendence from a discussion of the idea of the God or sacred ultimacy as something that draws the human self to itself, using another of Kierkegaard’s pseudonyms, Anti-Climacus, as a resource. And I have developed the idea of radical selftranscendence from a discussion of the transcendental analysis of subjectivity that identifies self-transcendence as the dynamism that determines human selfhood understood in relation to its essential capacities, using Bernard Lonergan as a resource. Each of these discussions brings something specific to the consideration of radical self-transcendence. The first identifies sacred transcendence as an absolute telos, gives an account of the distinction between an absolute commitment to the absolute telos and a relative relation to relative ends, establishes that a concrete and incomparable transcendence belongs to the absolute telos even though one pursues the absolute telos through one’s relation to relative ends, and shows that the religious task finds completion in the condition in which one finds one’s greatest benefit in a commitment to the absolute telos for its own sake rather than for the sake of the benefit it delivers. The second lets one understand religious existence as a kind of seeking and a kind of being-drawn and lets one understand the human self as one who attains fully authentic selfrelation through a relation to that which is incomparably other. The third discussion understands radical self-transcendence with reference to a dynamism whose ground is the essential capacities that determine the self and as a radical intensification of that dynamism. This shows why it is possible to comment on radical self-transcendence independently of a sustained hermeneutic of religious discourse, although not, of course, without reference to that which religious discourse, in its specificity, names. This discussion of “falling in love” also presents a context that restates the idea of a specifically religious desire that I discussed in the first chapter. It connects radical self-transcendence to the idea of useless self-transcendence and to the attraction to the sacred that follows from the limit-surpassing excellence that sacred reality presents. Each of these discussions adds substance to the notion of radical self-transcendence. A substantial notion of radical self-transcendence is needed if one is to go on to consider its connection with religious discourse and its role in an understanding of religious existence. That consideration is my next task.

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Religious Discourse and Radical Self-Transcendence Religious discourse is discourse that is rooted in symbolic operators, that interrelates and exploits the possibilities of a multiplicity of productive genres; it is discourse whose poetic character is specified by the function of naming sacred transcendence or, in its theistic forms, God. The principal kinds of significance that religious discourse assigns to sacred transcendence endow the sacred with the status of an absolute telos that presents human beings with the task of seeking and of overcoming estrangement from itself. That task is the project of radical self-transcendence, whose features I have just discussed. Any orientation toward or involvement with sacred transcendence requires a discourse that is capable of naming the sacred and of setting forth the terms of that involvement. That involvement approaches its adequate form, in turn, to the extent that it realizes the possibilities of radical self-transcendence. If religion in its indefinitely diverse manifestations must always be some sort of determinate orientation toward or involvement with sacred transcendence, then that involvement must always have a discursive and a practical aspect. The important claim that follows from this understanding is that one falls short of an adequate conception of religious involvement if one gives an account only of its discursive or only of its practical aspect. An adequate conception of religious involvement requires a proper account of both and of the relation between them. I have tried to present at least a brief discussion of some of the most basic elements that belong to religious discourse and religious praxis. I want now to consider the relation between them. The position I defend concerning that relationship is, perhaps not surprisingly, two-sided. First, a consideration of each of these aspects of religious involvement shows that the full realization of the possibilities of each requires a link to the other. For this reason they are internally rather than contingently or accidentally related. Second, there is nonetheless a real difference and a relative independence of each of these aspects of religious involvement from the other. Consequently, it is empirically possible for either to occur in relative separation from the other. But if either religious discourse or religious praxis occurs in relative separation from the other, its condition is, to the extent of that separation, truncated and privative. As each approaches the limit of the possibility of its separation from the other, its condition becomes perverse.

The Reciprocity of Religious Discourse and Radical Self-Transcendence It is relatively easy to show that the connection between religious discourse and religious praxis is such that each requires a link to the other for the full or even adequate realization of its own possibilities. To begin with religious discourse, it is clear that any discourse whose specificity follows from naming God or sacred transcendence must refer to the same as an absolute telos. Since the only appropriate response to the absolute telos is radical self-transcendence, 58


religious discourse calls for, and thus points beyond itself to, that praxis. As noted previously, religious discourse necessarily “transcends the distinction between theory and practice” and presents “a demand for action “44 as well as a disclosure of meaning. If so, then any actual employment of that discourse— that is, discursive conduct in which one actually uses religious discourse rather than merely mentioning components of it for whatever reasons—is abstract and empty to the extent that it is removed from the praxis whose possibility and necessity religious discourse indicates. It would be like my talking about the various places where I might vacation this summer and their relative advantages and disadvantages, given the circumstance that I am not going anywhere for vacation this summer. The talk projects possible actions, but none of them will happen. An essential possibility that belongs to this talk, the possibility of being action-guiding, is truncated to the extent that the action it might guide is not occurring and is not going to occur. At the same time, appropriating the task of radical self-transcendence involves doing it, knowing that one is doing it, and having at least some adequate understanding of what one is doing. This requires some articulation of the telos that calls for this task as well as some articulation of the nature of the task itself and of some of the concretely possible ways in which it might be undertaken. For these reasons, radical self-transcendence calls for, and thus points beyond itself to, religious discourse. It may be possible to undertake an existential praxis that at least approaches radical self-transcendence without the actionguiding articulations that religious discourse provides. Lonergan’s claim that falling in love in an unqualified way is possible in part because of the transcendental structures of human subjectivity as such is an indication of this possibility. But then the situation of one who undertakes this possibility is like the situation of a person in a very dimly lit room. This situation is not one of utter darkness, but it really does lack the illumination one needs in order to determine where one wants to go or how one might get there. There may be nothing one can do about this situation, but its possibilities are still quite constrained. So religious discourse without radical self-transcendence is empty, and radical self-transcendence without religious discourse is blind. Previously I argued that if religion requires involvement with sacred transcendence, and if sacred transcendence necessarily has the significance of an absolute telos, then religious involvement needs to be understood both with respect to the discourse that names sacred transcendence and the praxis that responds to the same. An adequate account of religious involvement requires both a discursive and a practical moment. Now I am arguing that an internal relation obtains between religious discourse and religious praxis, by which I mean that the full or even adequate realization of the possibilities that belong to each requires its connection with the other. This is an additional and a very strong reason for maintaining that an adequate account of religious involvement needs to deal with both of these moments rather than considering one in a way that neglects the other or that occludes the significance of the other. It is true that a complexity belongs to religious discourse on its own terms Radical Self-Transcendence

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that may motivate the assumption that one can adequately account for religion or religious involvement by prioritizing its discursive moment. As noted earlier, religious discourse assumes the background of an originating and limiting experience. Ricoeur argues that one both enjoys and chooses this experience and that this experience does not receive adequate analysis in linguistic terms alone. So one might think that an adequate account of religious involvement follows from an analysis of religious discourse and of the experiential context it assumes without needing a discussion of religious praxis of the sort that I have presented. I do not think that this will do. It is true that adopting a variety of religious discourse often signals that one does and wills to experience the world in a certain way. But it is also the case that the experience associated with the discourse can fade to the point of vanishing while persistence in the task that the discourse indicates remains. Spiritual biographies that describe what one tradition calls “dark nights of the senses and of the soul” forcefully attest to this. The occurrence of religious involvement requires not the constancy of the experience commonly associated with the task, but of the task itself. It is this that makes religious life something serious. It is also this that prohibits understandings of religion that conceive it as nothing more than an attempt to evade the harshest necessities of life by adopting an experiential perspective that shifts attention away from them or compensates for them. The religious devotee is not only or even primarily adopting an experiential perspective. The devotee is doing something, and the task that the devotee performs is one that involves, with some combination of confidence and anxiety, quite literally a venturing of his or her life. Religious involvement requires the association of religious discourse not only with a limiting and originating experience but also and more essentially with an existential project. Religious involvement falls short of its genuine possibilities not when the experience diminishes, but when the project diminishes.

The Relative Independence of Religious Discourse and Radical Self-Transcendence This leads to the second part of my argument. Even given their intimate and essential interconnection, religious discourse and radical self-transcendence need to be conceived as two really different dimensions of religious involvement that are relatively independent of each other. This means that each is describable through the relevant properties that intrinsically determine it, and that neither exclusively determines the other. Consequently, it is empirically possible for each to occur in some lesser or greater degree of separation from the other. In that circumstance, of course, the condition of either term is diminished to the extent of its separation from the other. My argument for the claim now being considered chiefly addresses the separability of religious discourse from radical self-transcendence. It is true that religious discourse conveys an invitation and an injunction regarding the task of 60


radical self-transcendence. But adopting a mode of discourse, even one that calls on the self to undertake an existential project, does not and cannot of itself bring about the actual undertaking of that project. That is because the discourse is precisely a proposal of the project. There is necessarily a difference between identifying with a discursive tradition or a context that proposes a task, and actually undertaking that task. If someone enrolls in a university as a student, the institutional context that one has made one’s own proposes that the student should study. But obviously and unfortunately, the student may or may not do that. If someone “enrolls” in a form of religious life by adopting a tradition of religious discourse, one becomes someone to whom a proposal concerning an existential project is concretely addressed by a discourse tradition that one has made one’s own. But that is not and cannot be the same thing as actually resolving upon and undertaking the project. That resolution requires a conceptually distinct act. To state the point rather bluntly, it is one thing to talk the talk, and another thing to walk the walk. I can talk the talk without walking the walk, and that may serve numerous functions for me. I can try to walk the walk without talking the talk, even though I will most likely stumble or become lost without the illumination and guidance that a discourse tradition provides. If this reasoning is correct, then religious discourse and the praxis of radical self-transcendence are internally related but nonetheless different and separable components of religious involvement. Each is adopted through a distinct act. One adopts a mode of religious discourse insofar as one finds that one experiences and understands the world, and insofar as one chooses to experience and understand the world, in terms of the intimations about proximate and ultimate reality and about the condition of human existence projected by that discourse. One adopts the praxis of radical self-transcendence by resolving to accomplish in the conduct of one’s life the task that religious discourse proposes, that the encounter with an absolute telos demands, and that has the determining structure of human subjectivity as a condition of its possibility. Even if these acts occur together in time, they are still different from each other, just as my finding that I am, and am choosing to be, in love with someone, and my resolve to live in fidelity to that love, are different acts even if they occur together in time. And in each case, the simultaneous occurrence of these acts, should that happen, does not by itself prevent the subsequent separation of one from the other. That separation is possible on account of the relative independence of religious discourse and religious praxis. But the consequence of that separation is always damaging to the quality of religious involvement. When carried to its limit, as I have already suggested, the consequence is, or at least can be, disastrous. At the limit of the possibility of its separation from the task of radical self-transcendence, the use of religious discourse becomes hypocrisy. In this situation one is presenting oneself as one whose experience and understanding of reality and of one’s own existence is represented by a discourse that projects a demand regarding the way in which one conducts one’s life, and is not conducting one’s life in that way. At the limit of the possibility of its separation Radical Self-Transcendence

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from religious discourse, an attempt at radical self-transcendence at least can become idolatry. It is possible, in separation from a discourse that might inform choice and action in an adequate way, to suppose that something presents itself as a worthy object of absolute commitment, that the best thing that one can do is to commit oneself to this object because of its intrinsic worth and not because of the benefits it delivers, that one has entered into a relation from which the very being of oneself follows, that one has found something with which one might fall unqualifiedly in love. And then it is possible to resolve upon the pursuit of a self-transcending connection with that object. But the very circumstances of that resolve, given the supposition now in play, indicate the possibility of an absolute commitment to a good that is finite and incapable of productively sustaining that commitment. The results of such a commitment are always destructive to the self, and almost without exception to others. One seems forced to conclude that there are situations in which it would be far better to abandon religious involvement altogether than to undertake it in a way that is empty or blind. But are there situations in which it would be better, or at least a good thing, to undertake or to maintain religious involvement—that is, to adopt some mode of religious discourse for the sake of articulating one’s experience and understanding of reality and of one’s own existence in the world, and to resolve to conduct one’s life in the way projected by that discourse as a possibility and a demand? I believe there are many legitimate reasons for an affirmative answer to this question. But I submit that, in the last analysis, the legitimacy of all those reasons depends on its being the case that what one might call the claims of religion are true, or at least on one’s being able credibly to maintain that they are true. This is certainly so, given the standpoint of religious existence itself. The claim from that standpoint is that the possibility and necessity of religious involvement follows from nothing other or less than the occurrence in reality of the ultimacy that religious discourse discloses and that presents itself as the worthy object of radical self-transcendence. So much is this the case that an inquiry into religious existence falls short of adequacy if it does not critically consider this claim. For this reason I must now in a specific way lift the abstraction that has governed the course of this inquiry. Up to this point, I have been concerned with questions about the intelligibility or meaning of religious involvement and religion as such and have put aside concern for the truth of religious claims. That is no longer possible. My approach to the question of the possible truth of religious claims, as well as the position that I take on that issue, will follow closely from the understanding of religion that I have developed up to this point. Therefore a number of comments on that understanding are in order. The next chapter presents those comments and in this way adds to the context needed for the sake of discussing the possible truth of religious claims.

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4

The Truth about Religion

The central claim that I will advance in the discussion of religious truth, stated abstractly, is that legitimate criteria relevant to a consideration of the truth of religious claims are operative and discoverable within religious involvement. The reasoning that I will develop to support this claim will focus on the understandings of religion and religious involvement that I have given up to this point. It is therefore necessary to consider the way those understandings present the truth about religion. This will facilitate using those understandings as a starting point for a discussion of the question of religious truth. The complexity that in many ways belongs to the phenomenon of religion requires that attempts at understanding religion be made from many different standpoints, employing the resources and methodologies of many different disciplines. It is very clear that philosophical inquiry cannot tell all of the truth about religion that needs to be told. For just this reason, it is important for one who claims truth for philosophical assertions about religion to be explicit about the way specifically philosophical assertions can express understandings of religion that are true. My discussion of this issue will address the relation between developing a theory of religion and proposing a definition of religion, the claim that the theory of religion that I have developed so far discloses necessities that belong to the phenomenon of religion, and the claim that the same theory avoids the univocity that would improperly limit variation or incompatibility in the range of items we can consider under the rubric “religion.”

Definitions and Theories of Religion The understanding of religion that I have proposed requires that religion be conceived as some sort of human involvement with sacred transcendence. The principal components of that understanding are the concepts of sacred transcendence and of the determinants that inform human involvement with sacred transcendence, namely, religious discourse as previously characterized, and radical self-transcendence. An adequate discussion of those concepts requires that each be characterized in a number of different ways and that the relations of each to the others be properly established. A summary of those characterizations and relations, as developed so far, presents an outline of the theory of religion I have proposed. Thus, sacred transcendence is, first, the intentional correlate of a consciousness of that which is supposed to surpass the limits of finite imperfection and to present itself as the final end of human commitment and striving. The nature of this transcendence requires our recognition of its incomparable char-

acter. The sacred, as was said earlier, distinguishes itself from and transcends all that is other than itself insofar as it is supposed to be final and ultimate in being and power, goodness, and worth. Sacred transcendence is not simply other but is wholly other in a variety of respects—and specifically, here, with respect to the idea that an intensification of transcendence has an intensification of immanence as its reciprocal. As a consequence, sacred transcendence presents itself as a numinous mystery with the potential both to fascinate and to threaten. The significance of sacred transcendence, still further, varies in relation to the different reference points in human experience with which it is associated. Thus sacred transcendence may be considered as a unique resource offering otherwise unavailable responses to cognitive and practical difficulties, as a source of salvation, and as a good that one seeks on account of nothing other than its incomparable, limit-surpassing splendor. In all these respects, the concept of sacred transcendence is one that admits specific instantiations on multiple ranges of approximation that approach the limit that the concept in its pure state defines. Religious discourse is the discourse through which humans speak to, speak about, and in some sense find themselves addressed by the sacred. This is discourse that, first, develops meanings made possible by basic symbolic operators through the functions and interactions of productive literary genres. Those meanings become housed in discourse traditions that help to form the identity of historical communities. These discourse traditions allow different persons and groups who encounter them to variously experience and understand the meanings they convey in the light of their own situations. They develop a semantic autonomy specifically secured in writing. The poetic character of the discourse integrated in these traditions is specified by the function of naming sacred transcendence or, in specifically theistic circumstances, God. It articulates a manner of experiencing and understanding the world that one ideally both finds oneself entertaining and willingly adopts. This characterization of religious discourse in terms of its basic elements needs to be supplemented by characterizing the possibilities it allows for interpretations of the meaning it conveys. It is always possible to interpret religious discourse as a representation of the effects of relatively unconscious instincts and needs and also as discourse that intends and directs human attention toward sacred transcendence. But still further, insofar as religious discourse intends and directs human intention toward sacred transcendence, it is discourse that is self-involving. This means that understanding this discourse always requires some kind of participation in the attitudes, feelings, or intentions that the discourse expresses. It means, in addition, that understanding this discourse involves recognizing that it conveys an existential significance from which religious discourse can never be unqualifiedly abstracted. That significance has the more specific form of a task to which religious discourse invites its auditor and which that discourse enjoins upon the addressee. That task is an existential praxis and, more specifically, the project of radical

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self-transcendence. An existential praxis is the possible object of a fundamental choice that one can make regarding the way one will become who it is that one is and can become in the world. Radical self-transcendence is, more specifically, the task of integrating all relations to relative ends into the context of an absolute commitment to an absolute end, acknowledging the concrete transcendence that belongs to the absolute end by way of contrast with all relative ends, withdrawing from an immediate relation to all relative ends, and finding one’s greatest benefit in a pursuit of the absolute telos for its own sake rather than on account of any benefit it conveys. It is a task one undertakes not only on one’s own initiative but also because one is drawn to it by the absolute telos; it is as well a task in which one finds that one’s relation to the absolute telos is the source and condition of one’s very relation to oneself. Insofar as the absolute telos draws the human self to itself, this task can be animated by the specifically religious desire that I have already discussed, a desire that is evoked by the limit-surpassing excellence or splendor that sacred reality presents. It is a task in which one finds fulfillment of the fundamental possibilities that belong to human self hood through falling unqualifiedly in love. These characterizations of sacred transcendence, religious discourse, and religious praxis both call for and lead to a determination of the relations among themselves. Thus, a consciousness of sacred transcendence comes about insofar as human beings find themselves open to an involvement with the sacred that determines the very condition of their existence. That involvement requires both a discursive and a practical aspect. The numinously mysterious alterity of the sacred, along with the principal sorts of significance that belong to sacred transcendence, requires a discourse that employs symbolic operators and conveys meaning in a poetic manner, and that refers to and permits address to and by its ultimate referent through metaphors and limit expressions. The limitsurpassing being, power, and splendor of the sacred, which grounds its mysterious alterity and significance, also requires that humans who involve themselves with sacred transcendence identify it as an absolute telos and undertake in some way the project of radical self-transcendence. Religious discourse and radical self-transcendence are internally related aspects of religious existence but also different moments, relatively independent, even though the possibilities of each cannot reach even adequate realization in separation from the other; and that separation can always lead to the perversion of religious existence itself. I have tried in the last five paragraphs to give a summary of the preceding three chapters. I do this, in part, because the remainder of this chapter—indeed, the remainder of this book—depends on a proper integration of the discussions of sacred transcendence, religious discourse, and radical self-transcendence. My hope is that a summary at this point might help with that integration. But there is a more immediate reason for attempting a summary of the preceding discussions. That summary, of course, presents only the chief claims made in those discussions, not the explanations of those claims that have been given or the

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arguments for those claims that have been offered. But even that presentation shows that the understanding of religion that has been developed offers a complex set of claims or propositions that are supposed to give an account of religion by characterizing the sense of basic terms in an ordered manner and by specifying the relations that obtain among those terms. In other words, the understanding of religion developed to this point has the status of a theory. This is appropriate; it is a theory that one needs in order to tell the truth about religion. More specifically, it is, in the last analysis, a theory that one needs, in contrast to a definition. T. W. Adorno makes a similar observation in an essay about the theory of society. Because society is not only highly complex but also the domain and outcome of historical processes, it is not in strict terms susceptible to formal definition. The internal differentiation that belongs to theory is needed to grasp the complex, historical character of society. “Only a thoroughgoing theory of society can tell us what society really is.”1 In a similar way, one needs an internally differentiated theory in order to comprehend the complex and historically varying phenomenon of religion. That does not mean that the task of proposing definitions of religion should be abandoned. Here as elsewhere, definitions have many uses. However, a useful definition of religion is, I believe, linked to some theory of religion and interpretable in relation to that theory. The link can take at least two forms. A definition can determine the starting point of a series of reflections whose outcome is a theory. I think something like this happens when Paul Tillich defines not religion but faith as ultimate concern and then proceeds to a series of reflections on the terms stated or entailed by that definition as well as on issues such as the language of faith, types of faith, the truth of faith, and so forth, until a theory has developed to which one in fact must appeal in order to understand the definition that was initially proposed.2 One can also propose a definition of religion as a shorthand expression of a theory that has already been to some extent developed. Thus, in the light of previous discussion, I would propose defining religion through the terms I have used to analyze religious involvement: Religion is the discursively mediated task of radical self-transcendence. This definition does not explicitly mention the idea of sacred transcendence. But the definition directly entails that idea in that radical self-transcendence, as that has been discussed, is possible only if an absolute telos is given; and an absolute telos, as that has been discussed, can be given only if some or other form of sacred transcendence is given. The definition also indirectly entails the idea of sacred transcendence in that the discourse to which the definition refers is religious discourse, whose specificity follows from the function of naming sacred transcendence. The definition certainly needs to be understood in relation to the theory with which it is linked. At the same time, it can be a useful abbreviation of the content of the theory. That it is and must be such an abbreviation reminds us, once again, that one cannot tell the truth about religion through a definition alone. It takes a theory.

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Truth and Necessities The theory that I have in part developed for the sake of telling (some of ) the truth about religion is a philosophical theory. In what way does a philosophical theory present the truth about religion? An essential part of the answer to this question is that a philosophical theory, as understood in these pages, displays the necessities inherent in religion. In a remark about acts through which we grasp necessities, Edmund Husserl says that such an act attains “not merely certainty of the affairs or affaircomplexes (state-of-affairs) evident in it; rather it discloses itself, to critical reflection, as having the signal peculiarity of being at the same time the absolute unimaginableness (inconceivability) of their non-being, and thus excluding in advance every doubt as ‘objectless,’ empty.”3 When, in a judgment, I register or report4 a necessity, I attain certitude not in a general but in a specific sense, in coming to know that something not only is the case but also cannot be otherwise. A necessity, in turn, is an attribute or a determination that something does have and cannot fail to have as long as it continues to be itself. So for example, I am certain that in July 2001 my younger daughter passed the New York Bar and that at present I am typing these words on an iMac. I also know that each of these circumstances could have been or could be otherwise. I am further certain that something like a cube can be perceived only through profiles and that I cannot experience your experience of the world as my own. In these cases all available evidence informs me that these are circumstances that could not be otherwise and does so in a way that would cause me to be irrational if I were to suppose that they could be. The sense of certitude that I enjoy in the second two examples differs from the sense that I enjoy in the first two. The certitude that belongs to my knowledge about the cube and about your experience of the world occurs because that knowledge grasps necessities, that is, determinations that the matters about which I have certain knowledge cannot lose without ceasing to be the kinds of things that they are. Philosophical or phenomenological judgments that affirm necessities do not follow from empirical inquiry alone. They make use of empirical considerations, but they are possible in virtue of the process of imaginative variation.5 Beginning from a single example, say my seeing a red apple or my hearing you report about some bit of your experience, I attempt in my imagination to remove features that belong to the thing in question or to fantasized variations on it. So I can, for instance, imagine that the apple is not red, but green or yellow. But if I try to remove color from the apple altogether, I find that I cannot do this, not precisely because the item is an apple, but because apples are visible objects. I can see something only if it presents itself to my visual perception through some color. Something with no color at all is not visible at all. Or I can embellish my image of the experience you have reported while also removing various features from it. But suppose I try to imagine that your experience of the world is not just your own, something that you alone can have. Suppose


I try to imagine that I can experience your experience of the world—not what you experience, but your experience of it. Then I am forced to recognize that I am not talking about your experience any longer. The necessary role that imaginative variation plays in the process of reaching philosophical judgments about necessities, that is, apodictic judgments, should not be taken to imply that those judgments follow only from imagination. As Husserl says in the statement I cited above, those judgments also require an affirmation, following from critical reflection, that the work of the imagination has brought forward evidence that sustains a claim regarding some necessity. In addition, reaching judgments about necessities does not come about through a straightforward attaining of positive insights. Rather, as Robert Sokolowski observes, “we see the necessity by a rebound from the negative insight: we see the impossibility of the thing’s being without the feature, so we know the feature is essential; we could not imagine the thing being deprived of it. The negative impossibility brings the positive necessity to light.”6 Furthermore, the process that leads to judgments about necessities is not exclusively monological. I must engage that process myself if I am pursuing philosophical inquiry in this way. But others engage that process as well and also inquire into the matters with which I am concerned. Our collective work is an ongoing and necessary check on the processes that each of us engages as an individual.7 And claims about necessities, apodictic claims, do not proclaim that our knowledge concerning those judgments is infallible or that those judgments are in all ways not revisable. An apodictic judgment is possible insofar as our cognitive practice makes it evident that the condition of something cannot, in some particular respect, be otherwise. If we set aside the domains of pure formal logic and mathematics, then it is universally the case that the practice of making the condition of something evident is an ongoing process, and evidence is something that one has and also something that one has to acquire.8 If so, then even in the case of a judgment whose evident apodicticity has up to some point been unchallenged, some revision is always possible.9 Moreover, even an apodictic evidence can become disclosed as apparent rather than genuine and thus as a deception, in which case it presupposes a corresponding evidence by which it is “shattered.”10 Since this possibility pertains at least in an abstract way to any judgment for which apodicticity is claimed, a claim to apodicticity does not entail an assertion of infallibility.11 The previous remarks are of significant philosophical importance. For the purposes of the present inquiry, however, their chief importance lies in the help they offer in understanding the claim that certain determinations belong as necessities to religion. I have claimed that we must understand religion as an orientation toward or involvement with sacred transcendence and that religious involvement, which affects human existence at its roots, is possible in an adequate way only if informed by some sort of religious discourse and some form of the project of radical self-transcendence. I believe that arguments in the preceding chapters are sufficient to show that some sort of religious discourse and some form of religious praxis are necessary determinations of any adequate oc68


currence of religious involvement and also sufficient for establishing the relations between those determinations. But perhaps the question of the necessary connection between religion and sacred transcendence itself still remains. Must one hold that religion requires the involvement of humans with sacred transcendence, such that the absence of involvement with sacred transcendence means, in some possible sense, the absence of religion? Or more briefly, must the absence of sacred transcendence mean the absence of religion? It is important to be firmly aware that this question does not require any specific sense of sacred transcendence. I am not asking whether the absence of involvement with God, or with the gods, or with the all-encompassing One means the absence of religion. I hope it became clear in the first chapter that the idea of sacred transcendence opens out on an unlimited number of particular senses that can instantiate it, that those many senses are varied and sometimes competing, and that they occur at different points on ranges of possibilities that approach a limit. But I hope it also became clear that the idea of sacred transcendence is not an empty idea or one that can mean anything that anybody wants it to mean. Some minimal defining characteristics belong to this idea. I discuss them in some detail in the first chapter and more briefly in the first paragraph of the summary given toward the beginning of this chapter. Rather than burdening the reader with yet a third iteration of that discussion, I simply refer at this point to those earlier discussions as ones that offer a statement of the formal and minimal requirements belonging to the idea of sacred transcendence. The idea is open to a complex variety of possible senses, but it also excludes many others. One must also bear this firmly in mind for the sake of the question now at hand. Recall as well the earlier remark about the negative approach to judgments about necessities. If the absence of sacred transcendence or of involvement with sacred transcendence yields the absence of religion, then involvement with sacred transcendence belongs to religion as a necessity. With that in mind, consider some situations that one might want to include under the rubric “religion,” even given the stipulation that, for the sake of this inquiry right now, these are situations from which any sense of sacred transcendence is altogether absent. Perhaps one might want to say, using earlier examples, that someone’s commitment to realizing the socialist future, or to perfecting the capitalist present, is a form of religion because of the noble ideals of human well-being at which these commitments aim and the fervor with which one selflessly pursues them. Or perhaps one might want to say that one’s commitment to making or enjoying art in some form is a form of religion because of the transporting or illumining or purifying possibilities that art conveys. Or perhaps one might call someone’s pursuit of sex, drugs, rock and roll, or two or all three of these in some combination their religion because of the ecstatic moments that occur in that pursuit and because of their consuming need for and dedication to them. These are possibilities. Each of the situations just mentioned, arguably at least, has religious qualities. But it is one thing to say that and another to say that any of them is an instance or form of religion, just as it is one thing to say The Truth about Religion 69

that a piece of writing has philosophical qualities and another to say that it is a piece of philosophy, or it is one thing to say that two people act like a longmarried couple and another thing to say that they are married. In each of the situations mentioned above, a person or community is involved with something that stands in stark contrast to one’s present condition, that is emphatically other. In each of those situations, the alterity in question, given the way those situations are conceived for the sake of this inquiry, draws one to itself and carries one out of oneself as one strives to form one’s very identity through one’s identification with that alterity. In each of those situations, one’s commitment to the telos in question can at least approach the condition of being absolute and can certainly be experienced as all-consuming. Moreover, each of the objects of commitment mentioned in the preceding paragraph can hold within itself intimations of a transcendence that is genuinely sacred. Exalted ideals of justice, fulfilled human self hood, and genuine community can seem to indicate that the roots of the possibility of these conditions lie in the very ground of all being.12 The radiance of the artwork can seem to point beyond itself to the transcendence and splendor of something sacred.13 The ecstasies of sex, drugs, and wild music can and do belong to diverse forms of worship just because they seem to open human experience to the possibility of a fulfillment that stands outside of and beyond anything available to us in our typical condition. But for the sake of this inquiry, these possibilities are excluded. This inquiry requires that we together try to envision situations that indeed are endowed with religious qualities but from which all traces of sacred transcendence are nonetheless excluded. Nothing like God, or the gods, or the all-encompassing One, or the condition in which the final emergence of knowledge of the true self liberates one from delusion, suffering, and a bond to the wheel of existence— nothing like that is available here. Even if the situations under consideration do not in reality have to exclude all moments of sacred transcendence, they must by stipulation be subject to that exclusion for the sake of these considerations. If so, then with what do these situations present us? And with what do they not present us? They do present us with objects of commitment that stand in stark and emphatic contrast to the reality of the human condition as it is ordinarily experienced and that offer us possibilities that at least seem to be and perhaps really are otherwise unavailable. They do not present us with something that surpasses the limits and imperfections of human and mundane finitude. The excellence of the social circumstances that go as far as possible to fulfill the possibilities of human individuality and community, the purifying illumination of art at its best, the wildly transporting aspects of some music, and the seemingly sublime ecstasies of sex and inebriation—all these and all items like them are still possibilities that we ourselves realize from within the parameters of the condition that belongs at present to our existence. They do not and cannot surpass the determinations that render that condition imperfect and limited. We must acknowledge, therefore, that the idea of sacred transcendence is an 70


idea of something different in kind from the other possible objects of commitment presently under consideration and from all other objects like them. One can easily show, on the basis of that recognition, that the mode of involvement that is or would be appropriate as a response to sacred transcendence is different in kind from the modes of involvement that are appropriate in relation to the other sorts of objects. In the first place, involvement with objects different from sacred transcendence need not and cannot legitimately be informed by any hope for salvation, at least given the concept of salvation established earlier in these pages. A relation to any of these objects cannot deliver a condition in which a sense of moral deficiency, death, and the other limit situations, which are in any circumstances very basic determinations of human existence, are nonetheless not the final determinations of human existence beyond which nothing else is possible and there is nothing more to be said. Remember, the concept of salvation, defined in these terms, is susceptible not to just one but to a variety of interpretations. Remember as well that any idea of salvation will present some interpretation of just this concept only if the meaning of that idea is determined by a connection with some notion of sacred transcendence. Salvation in this sense cannot come about in virtue of a relation with any of the objects other than sacred transcendence that I have recently mentioned, or through a relation with anything like them. All such objects are outcomes of finite human action. They all essentially participate in the limit characteristics that at least apparently stand as the final determinants of human existence, in a condition in which human existence is estranged from sacred transcendence. They cannot possibly ground a hope that in some manner that condition can be surpassed. In the second place, it cannot be legitimate to maintain that the worth of any of the sorts of objects in question is such that one might rightly find that one’s greatest benefit lies in a pursuit of this object without regard for the benefit it delivers. It certainly cannot be legitimate to demand of oneself or of others that the pursuit of all other ends be not only subordinated to but also integrated with a commitment to this telos, such that the pursuit of any end independently of that commitment is a situation to be surpassed. That demand can be legitimate only if one’s commitment is to a limit-surpassing, limitless good. That is because only a limitless good is an end whose attainment can satisfy all needs and desires, and only a commitment to a limitless good is a commitment into which the pursuit of all other ends can be integrated. In turn, only a limitless good can authentically present itself as one that human beings might seek entirely for its sake alone. I think it is rather clear that a pursuit of any of the sorts of objects now under consideration entirely for its own sake, putting aside all questions about the benefit it might deliver and demanding that the pursuit of all other ends be integrated with one’s commitment to that object, would be a destructive form of fanaticism rather than a legitimate human striving. In the third place, most, or at least many, of the modes of involvement with sacred transcendence that have evolved in human history include the element of worship. It makes perfect sense to laud and ardently desire a social world in The Truth about Religion 71

which human life can thrive, or illuming art, or ecstatic pleasure. But given the limited and finally imperfect nature of these nonetheless highly laudable and desirable objects, it is not legitimate to adore them, and certainly not appropriate to fall on one’s knees before representations of them. The preceding remarks, taken together, say that in the absence of sacred transcendence one no longer has involvement with a limit-surpassing object and final end that is wholly other because it manifests in an incomparable way ultimacy in being, power, worth, and goodness: something that can offer a promise of salvation; and something one can genuinely seek entirely for its own sake, one’s greatest benefit lying in attaining this good without concern for the benefit it offers. And in the absence of sacred transcendence, one’s involvements with whatever the objects of one’s commitments might be cannot legitimately be informed by a hope for salvation, by an attitude that strives to surpass selfinterest and to integrate the pursuit of all other ends with a single, absolute commitment, or by the inner and outer activities of worship. All these qualities are possible only if sacred transcendence is, in some form, the object of human involvement. Once again, these considerations, taken together, say that involvement with sacred transcendence is different in kind from, or offers essentially different possibilities than, involvement with any other end, even if the latter involvement possesses religious qualities. Do these considerations make it sufficiently evident that an orientation to sacred transcendence belongs to religion as a necessity? Do they make it evident that the word and concept “religion” should be reserved for an orientation toward and involvement with sacred transcendence, or better, with some particular construal of the same? I maintain that they do, for at least three reasons. First, failure to do this allows “religion” to apply to modes of involvement that offer essentially different sorts of possibilities. The outcome of this failure is at best problematic ambiguity, and quite possibly hopeless confusion. That is because the failure is a very basic mistake in thinking, namely, the failure to distinguish and acknowledge a difference in kind when such a difference actually obtains. I hope my previous remarks are sufficient to show that in the cases before us such a difference does actually obtain. There really is no way to bring about and preserve in one’s thinking an explicit recognition of this difference between these two sorts of involvement if one allows “religion” to apply to both. Second, the position I am recommending both confirms and corrects some of our more common understandings of religion. The terms through which we understand necessities attributed to religion must permit reference to the dizzying variety that belongs to religious historical developments and at the same time refer to the particular modes of religious life that we experience. The position that I recommend allows us to say that we do, in our encounters with particular modes of historical religious life, come to recognize in those encounters necessities that belong to religion. At the same time, this position shows that we must speak of those necessities in technically formal terms if our discourse is

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critical discourse about religion as such. Thus religion must be an orientation toward sacred transcendence, but it need not be understood in a theistic manner. Religion does not require this or that specific practice—for example, ritual sacrifice—but it does require some form of radical self-transcendence. Religious discourse is open to many possibilities, but it must be discourse that can address, disclose, and refer to the sacred. Third, distinguishing religion as involvement with sacred transcendence allows one to determine the features that belong to nonreligious as well as to religious modes of involvement with reality. This is important. There are some necessities that belong to nonreligious orientations to reality. In order to get at these, I submit, one really does have to recognize that the nonreligious option, whatever particular form it might take, has to do with something other than sacred transcendence. Otherwise, one might end up attributing a covert or unrecognized religious orientation to people who want nothing at all to do with such a thing. It may be the case that transcendental structure of human subjectivity, or the condition of human existence, is such that religious involvement is available to human beings as an essential possibility. I believe parts of the account I have already offered contain the elements needed to show that this is true. It is also possible that the claims of religion, or of some religion or some number of religions, are true. I have not at all addressed that issue up to this point and will do so subsequently only in a rather precisely guarded sense. The point now is that, if this were so, then human beings would be, to say the least, immensely better off, all other things being equal,14 if they were to realize the possibility of religious involvement. But many human beings do not want to do this. There should be enough clarity in our discourse about religion so that these people can express clearly what it is that they are and are not doing. This is greatly facilitated by distinguishing religion as involvement with sacred transcendence. Two caveats are in order. On the one hand, even if distinguishing religion as an orientation toward sacred transcendence is strongly supported by the considerations I have given, and even if the distinction has the virtues I have attributed to it and others as well, there will always be ambiguous cases. Consider, as just one example, the case of the person who can affirm nothing regarding sacred transcendence, and who finds it necessary to endorse some beliefs that seem to exclude any affirmations regarding sacred transcendence, but who still finds it necessary to seek out and participate in the life of a religious community because this person deeply reveres values associated with religious involvement and deeply wants to belong to a context whose focus is on sacred transcendence, even if he or she cannot in any way affirm the object of that focus. Is this person, even given the absence of the relevant affirmations, a genuine religious seeker? Is this person’s situation an instance of genuine religious involvement? Even the individual in question might not know. I hardly think that the distinctions and concepts I recommend will provide a ready answer. Individual cases are precisely the loci of complexities that challenge the applicability of


even our most finely wrought distinctions. But in this instance, we receive no help if we stop distinguishing religion as an orientation toward sacred transcendence, and in addition we create many other problems. On the other hand, even if we require that one understand religion as an orientation toward sacred transcendence, this in no way excludes the possibility that critical philosophical comprehension shows that religious discourse about sacred transcendence conveys a truth very different than what most devotees suppose, or even a truth that is ultimately nonreligious in nature. The first version of this possibility might be associated with Averroes.15 In this case, philosophical comprehension leads one to ascribe to sacred transcendence, or more specifically to God, attributes contrary to the ones mentioned in the sentences of the ordinary believer or even of the theologian. Some interpretations of Hegel find the second version of this possibility in his writings.16 According to these interpretations, Hegelian philosophical comprehension reconceives the transcendence that the religious standpoint requires in terms of the immanent realizations of human intersubjectivity and history. I am not endorsing any version of either of these claims. My only point is that, even if philosophical comprehension were able to show the necessity of essentially redefining or effectively annulling the religious notion of sacred transcendence, and even if one could show that necessity is the outcome of a warranted interpretation of religious discourse itself, it would still be necessary to acknowledge that religion on its own terms occurs as an orientation to sacred transcendence and that religious discourse, in its pre-philosophical aspects, discloses sacred transcendence in a way that informs and guides religious consciousness and praxis.

Necessity, Actuality, and Diversity I want to make a strong claim about the way the theory of religion that I have developed tells the truth about religion. Insofar as it displays necessities belonging to the phenomenon of religion, the theory presents us with the actuality of religion as such. At the same time, this theory allows one fully to acknowledge the striking multiplicity that belongs to historical religious life. The reasons given for this will also support the claim, discussed in a later chapter, that the theory is a heuristic structure17 that directs inquiry toward an understanding of the genuine actuality of any particular religious tradition or form of religious life. In Formal and Transcendental Logic, Husserl makes a distinction between two senses of truth that is important for the claim I am asserting. There is, first, the critical concept of truth. Here truth is the correctness of a statement, and correctness is determined by the adequation of the statement to the object or state of affairs with which it has to do. Then there is the related but nonetheless different concept of “actuality, as the second concept of truth. The true is now the actually existent or the truly existent, as the correlate of the evidence that gives the actuality itself.”18 Truth is now not only the correctness of a judgment about something but also, and even more basically, the thing itself in the 74


self-manifestation of the thing that the knower brings about through forming a judgment that concerns it and that is truthful.19 The difference between these two senses of truth is like the difference between knowing (or supposing oneself to know) that one has a judgment about love that is correct, and knowing (or supposing oneself to know) that the very thing itself that love is shows itself in and through the judgment one is making about it. Husserl says that in the second case our knowing involves a kind of “original having of a true or actual being itself,” and not only the “consciousness of correctness which arises in the event of actual adequation.”20 One has not only correct knowledge about something but also a disclosure of the thing itself in and to our knowing.21 Many correct statements can be and are made about religion. I, of course, believe that the statements that belong to the theory of religion that I have developed are correct. But it is not only the case, I maintain, that the theory consists of several correctly interrelated sets of statements whose component statements are themselves correctly asserted and interrelated. It also displays, as I have tried to show, some of the necessities that belong to religion, determinations inherent in religion such that without them religion cannot be itself, cannot fail to become something other than itself. If so, then to the extent that the theory heads toward completion rather than reversal, an understanding and affirmation of its content coincides with a disclosure of what religion itself in any and all of its manifestations actually is.22 But what about the manifestations themselves? Is it even right to use that word? As noted much earlier, discourse about “religion” is really a particular way of talking about the religions, that is, the multiplicity of historical religious traditions and forms of life that structure and undergo modification on account of the religious involvements of persons and communities. Can the theory whose understanding and affirmation is supposed to yield something of a disclosure of what religion actually is take this multiplicity, along with all of the diversity and opposition that belongs to it, into account? Does it really make sense to say that all the exceedingly diverse and sometimes opposed forms of religious life that occur in history are “manifestations” of some single “actuality”? Doesn’t this emphasis on the one lose the many? This is a serious concern. I believe one can address it through two remarks about the nature of the concepts through which one understands the necessities inherent in religion. First, those concepts are, in their own way, formal. As an approach to understanding the significance of this, think about a function, f(x)=y.23 Take as substitution instances for this statement of the function f(1)=3, f(2)=5, f(3)=7, f(4)=9, and so forth. The applicable rule that accounts for the substitution instances is, of course 2x+1=y. The invariant rule is what allows the substitution instances to be variants that belong together and are variations on the same thing. The instances are not just repetitions of each other. They really do differ from each other. Still, the rule—that is, the generalized statement of terms and relations at work in them—can be none other than the stated rule. I might press this example into service for the present discussion by saying The Truth about Religion 75

that [f(x)=y] is like the term or concept “religion”; that (2x+1=y) is like the theory of religion, the set of terms and relations that gives a generalized account of “religion” and of the factors that must be at work in any instance of the same; and that the substitution instances are like particular religious traditions and forms of life. There are, of course, notable limitations to this analogy. Concepts of determinations that belong to religion are not themselves determinable in a way that is exact and that overcomes all problematic indeterminacy in the way mathematical concepts are. Nor is it easy to give a generalized account of religion through a theory, whereas it is at least relatively easy to give a generalized account of [f(x)=y] through a rule. Nor do the differences between the substitution instances in any adequate way resemble the differences that one finds in the diverse and opposed multiplicity of religious traditions and forms of religious life. But the analogy is still useful. It allows one to recognize (a) that the invariant rule is an abstract statement of terms and relations that occur and operate in the substitution instances, not in an abstract way, but in diverse and particular ways; (b) that the terms and relations that the rule abstractly represents must operate in some particular way in each of the substitution instances if each is to belong together with all the others; and (c) that an understanding of the rule leads to an abstract but very basic understanding of the structure of each of the substitution instances. Something like this is the case in the relation between the theory of religion and diverse historical religious traditions and forms of religious life. Terms and relations are conceptualized in the theory in an abstract manner. In historical traditions and forms of life, one finds diverse particular versions of those terms and relations and never abstract forms. Still, the particular terms and relations must in some way occur according to the abstract specifications of the theory if the traditions and forms of life are to belong together. And through the theory, one comes to an abstract but very basic understanding of the dynamic structure that belongs to historical traditions and forms of religious life. Nonetheless, the sort of diversity that one finds among forms of religious life is not really comparable to the differences between variants of a mathematical function. A second remark about the nature of the concepts through which one comprehends religious necessities is required to show more fully how the theory of religion can take this diversity into account. These concepts are both formal and, in a quite technical sense, vague. Robert Neville, drawing on the semiotics of Charles Sanders Peirce, comments on the property of vagueness. It “does not mean fuzziness, but the logical property of tolerating instantiations that are contradictory of each other on their own level.”24 Thus a “government” can be a democracy or a dictatorship, but these are in fact opposed political arrangements that exclude each other, even if some have on occasion used the name of one for the other. A concept that is “vague” in the sense now intended is a higher-level concept that can bring together other concepts even if those concepts exclude each other on their own level. The higher-level concept does this by conceptualizing determinations that belong to the relevant lower-level ob76


jects, even given the differences that obtain between those objects. But it is very important to note that if those differences extend to contradiction and mutual exclusion, then the “same” determinations that belong to the different objects will belong to those objects in different ways or with different identities. For example, a democratic government is an institution authorized to exercise power over the behavior of persons, groups, and other institutions in society, and so is a dictatorship. But in theory at least, in a democratic government the people exercise self-governing power over themselves for their own interest, whereas in a dictatorship one figure, the dictator, exercises power over others, the people, for the dictator’s interest and not for the interest of the people. Each of these political arrangements is defined in terms of an authorized exercise of power, but the meaning of that in each of these arrangements essentially differs. Speaking of concepts in systematic theology, Neville says that while “a systematic concept might be defined precisely in terms of other concepts, it is necessarily vague with respect of how it is made specific in application to experience.”25 This is certainly the case as well for the concepts that belong to the philosophical theory of religion that I have developed. The most important example in this regard is the concept of sacred transcendence itself. Sacred transcendence (a) surpasses the limits of human and mundane finitude and (b) presents itself as the final end of human striving; it (c) possesses each of these characteristics in a way that is “wholly other” than is possible for anything else, linking immanence to a transcendence that (d) follows from incomparable ultimacy in being and worth, (e) because of which the sacred presents itself as a numinous mystery with the potential to inspire us with both fascination and dread, and (f ) because of which the sacred can have significance with reference to ordinary cognitive and practical needs as well as with reference to the need for salvation and a desire for that something that is intrinsically and unqualifiedly good. The concept of sacred transcendence is a conceptualization of interrelated determinations belonging in some manner to anything that can be rightly identified as the object of genuine religious involvement. At least I have argued for this position. The point now is that this abstract, formal concept is also necessarily a vague concept. It does and must tolerate instantiations that at least can oppose and exclude each other. After all, in historical terms sacred transcendence comes to us in just these ways, given diverse religious perspectives. It is in one context insistently one and in another context a multiplicity. It is here personal and there impersonal. It is an all-encompassing unity with which our identities can merge and a transcendence with which we can be united in love but which always stands over against us. It is of course the case that the terms that I have just opposed to each other can also blend, and spiritual practice can adopt them in their blended form rather than as terms that must exclude each other. But on one level at least, different historical representations of the object of religious involvement do present themselves as being exclusive of each other on account of these sorts of oppositions. Because vagueness is one of its logical properties, the concept of sacred transcendence allows us to take those differences into account. It thereThe Truth about Religion 77

fore allows us to take account of the blendings as well, since they result from the coming together of differences that we first learn to appreciate in terms of their abstract opposition. The central and governing concept that belongs to the theory of religion that I have proposed is, then, wide open to difference. I would propose that this is also the case for the theory as a whole. Just as the theory gives an account of widely varying and even opposed understandings of the object of religious involvement, it gives an account of widely varying and even opposed sorts of religious involvement, that is, of religious discourse and religious praxis. The claims about the way the theory tells the truth about religion do not entail sacrificing multiplicity for unity, the many for the one. But it is also important not to get lost in multiplicity and to become so overwhelmed by the endless differences among varying religious traditions and forms of life that one loses a grasp of the unity that interrelates them. Since the formal and abstract concepts that belong to a philosophical theory of religion interrelate other concepts that on their own level are diverse and capable even of opposition, the theory allows us to keep a hold on multiplicity while at the same time grasping the unity that threads its way through the multiplicity. My efforts in this chapter have been directed to talking about why philosophical reflection about religion must draw on the resources of a theory, how one who pursues that reflection makes claims about necessities that belong to the phenomenon of religion, and why a philosophical theory that one supposes to present true claims about what religion is in its actuality is thoroughly consistent with genuinely acknowledging all the multiplicity and diversity that belongs to historical religious life. These efforts all have to do with a consideration of the way the work done in the first three chapters of this book is supposed to, in its own way, tell the truth about religion. That consideration is necessary, I believe, if one is to draw on that work in further reflection on the issue of religious truth.

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5

Religious Truth

When religious devotees celebrate, intercede with, or give thanks and praise to the object of their devotion, or when they hear words spoken about or words supposed to be spoken by that very object, they think that those words address, have to do with, or emanate from a distinctive reality. When religious devotees give alms, do various works of compassion and mercy, or practice self-denial in the name of the object of their devotion, or when they integrate their commitments to raising their children, being truthful, or being fair in their dealings with others into their pursuit of that object, they think that in all these ways they are relating themselves to an immeasurably excellent reality. These remarks, even if obvious, need to be made. They indicate that, in both the discursive and the practical moments of religious involvement, the devotee operates with the conviction that the object of that involvement occurs as a reality, albeit in a distinctive and incomparable way. More strongly, the devotee operates with the conviction that it is in some way possible not just to wish or opine or hope, but to legitimately affirm that our words and deeds address, speak of, and bring one into relation with that distinctive and incomparable reality. This is because, for the devotee, the object of religious commitment is or can be in some way evident in its reality. For these reasons, the issue of truth intrinsically belongs to an inquiry into the intelligibility and distinguishing necessities characteristic of religion. The basic operations of religious discourse are not ones in which persons are, in the first instance, asserting statements and presenting truth claims. The celebrant who proclaims “God is great” is not presenting the statement to a lecture audience, indicating that she affirms it and suggesting that others do the same. She is offering honor and praise. But in the context of the basic operations of religious discourse, some utterances do, in the midst of other functions, also express statements and the affirmation of statements. The celebrant who shouts, “Yes!” upon hearing “God is great” is in the first instance affirming his God, rather than making a statement about God. But he is also affirming the statement the words express. He would certainly reject its denial. Other utterances belonging to the basic operations of religious discourse have statements and affirmations as their assumptions. If I say, “I take refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha,” I am in the first instance incorporating myself in a certain tradition in a certain way. But I am also implying that I affirm that these offer the refuge I am claiming for myself and that the goal one begins to seek by claiming that refuge really is available. Religious discourse informs the praxis of radical self-transcendence, and that praxis in its own way expresses statements and affirmations or points to them as assumptions. Nor is it difficult for

the devotee to consider those statements and affirmations for their own sake. This certainly happens when the affirmations are challenged and also when one is giving or receiving instruction or reflecting on one’s own questions or those of others. If the discursive and practical components of religious involvement were not associated with truth claims in the way just mentioned, religious involvement could not possibly have the meaning that it does have for the devotee. This is another reason why inquiry into the intelligibility or meaning of religion and religious involvement leads on its own terms to the issue of religious truth. The most basic dimension of this issue appears in the question, What are the criteria or conditions, if there are any at all, whose fulfillment would make it rationally legitimate for the devotee to affirm the claims that religious discourse, in some of its specific forms, requires concerning the reality of sacred transcendence? Please note, this question does not ask after the criteria whose fulfillment would show that those claims are true. The meaning that religious involvement has for the devotee requires that the devotee affirm those claims and that the devotee be able to maintain that it is legitimate to make this affirmation. It does not depend on the further condition that the claims are, in fact, true. This factor circumscribes the sense of the question now at hand, but the question is still a very serious one. Ultimately, the question asks, Are there conditions whose fulfillment legitimately allows religious involvement to have for the devotee the meaning that it does? Because if there are no conditions that would make it rationally legitimate to at least claim truth for the affirmations in question, then, assuming that the devotee knows this, it is no longer possible for the person to find that religious involvement continues to mean what it otherwise has meant for him or for her. The philosopher insists that the question about conditions or criteria whose fulfillment is associated with religious affirmations be normative and not only psychological. But at least one of the roots of that insistence lies as deeply as possible within the standpoint of religious involvement. An interesting question arises about the attitude of the devotee and the nonbeliever toward the conditions I have just mentioned. The devotee thinks that (a) there are conditions whose fulfillment renders essential religious affirmations rationally legitimate; (b) those conditions are (at least sometimes) fulfilled; and (c) the affirmations are true. I hope that one consequence of the argument of this chapter is a strong case for (a) that should be generally convincing. If so, and if one can make plausible claims in favor of (b), then it is of course still possible to deny (c). One might suppose that (d) the relevant conditions receive some but insufficient fulfillment; (e) skeptical considerations such as those presented by Freud or Marx undercut those considerations; or (f ) even given the fulfillment of the relevant conditions, some other independent considerations, such as the success of a materialistic metaphysics, show essential religious affirmations in all or at least most of their forms to be false. But I hope that a tangential consequence of my argument is support for the view that devotee and nonbeliever alike should at least agree regarding (a). Important work on the question of the legitimacy of very basic religious af80


firmations appears in contemporary Anglo-American philosophy. Much of this work addresses the more specific questions of the way the theistic believer affirms the reality of God and the rationality of believing in or affirming the reality of God. The work of John Hick and Alvin Plantinga on these questions offers principles of key importance for the argument that I will develop in this chapter. These principles are important for a phenomenological inquiry because they contribute to an analysis that deals precisely with the issue of the possibility of religious truth and because they indicate important characteristics that belong to the intentionality of specifically religious consciousness. In order to discuss these principles that Hick and Plantinga present, I will for a time allow the question about the rationality of affirming the reality of God to be a placeholder for the question about the legitimacy of essential affirmations about the reality of sacred transcendence in some form, even if that form is not theistic. Once the discussion of the relevant principles is established, I will develop an argument that incorporates them and that makes extensive use of the earlier considerations of the discursive and practical dimensions of religious involvement. This argument will not be confined to the issue of affirming the reality of God. That represents in one way a gain. It also leads to problems of its own that require serious consideration.

The Manner and Rationality of Affirming God In drawing at this point on resources that both John Hick and Alvin Plantinga offer, I do not mean to suggest that these philosophers agree with each other on a wide range of issues belonging to the philosophy of religion. This is not the case. But I do believe that their positions on the issues of the way the devotee affirms the reality of God and the rationality of that affirmation are essentially consistent with each other. In the first place, Hick maintains that the devotee’s affirmation of the reality of God is more like an affirmation that responds to an encounter, or to a situation in which something presents itself to me, than an affirmation of a proposition. He distinguishes “cognition in presence” or “acquaintance” from “cognition in absence” or “holding beliefs about” something.1 Scripture and other primary religious writings make it clear that knowing or affirming God involves in the first instance cognition of the former kind, even though theology mostly deals with the latter sort of cognition.2 Plantinga adds that the devotee or the believer does not affirm the reality of God by inferring “God exists” as the conclusion of an argument. Drawing on several Calvinist or Reformed theologians whom he sometimes calls “Reformed epistemologists,” he offers a number of reasons for this claim. Arguments do not lead to the confidence that the believer has and needs to have in God. The biblical believer at least starts from belief in God rather than from any premises that lead to “God exists” as a conclusion. For the believer, affirming God’s reality is like affirming the reality of the self, the external world, other minds, or the past—affirmations that neither have nor need support from arguments. In affirming God’s reality, the beReligious Truth 81

liever seems at least to be drawing on a tendency or inclination that belongs to the human condition as such rather than to be affirming a belief that comes about as a consequence of inquiry and inference. This is a tendency to which one yields as one finds the reality of God in the heavens, the mountains, or the beauty of a single flower and not by critically determining premises and logical relations.3 Just as Hick maintains that the believer does not in the first instance affirm the reality of God as a matter of propositional belief, Plantinga maintains that the believer does not in the first instance affirm the reality of God on account of an argument. It is true that the cognition that Hick calls “cognition in presence” or by acquaintance is commonly associated with perception and that we do not, in the most literal sense of the word, “perceive” God. Nonetheless, Hick maintains, one must say of a religious affirmation of God that “as a form of cognition by acquaintance it is more like sense perception than like propositional belief.”4 The support that Hick offers for this claim proceeds “from the proposition that all conscious experiencing involves recognitions that go beyond what is given to the senses and is thus a matter of experiencing-as.”5 This is the case with regard to recognizing both objects and events.6 It is also the case in relation to the levels of awareness that allow one to recognize in situations different dimensions of significance.7 Thus, I may understand a situation by recognizing in it a natural or physical significance, which I express by describing or giving an account of the objects and processes that belong to the situation. I may additionally understand a situation by recognizing in it a moral significance. I may recognize that, in a given situation, one person is striking a second person and knocking him down. I may recognize, in the same situation, a demand that I intervene in order to prevent one person from harming another. Moral significance, in this circumstance, supervenes upon and is mediated by natural significance.8 One appreciates the natural and the moral significance of a situation by construing the situation in a way that allows one to discover levels of significance that seem at least to be ingredient in the situation itself. One may also speak of the religious significance of a situation. Given the theistic perspective that Hick adopts, one recognizes this significance insofar as one finds that a situation discloses the presence of God. Religious significance can supervene upon and be mediated by the natural significance of a situation and also by the integrated natural and moral significance of a situation. One grasps religious significance through the operation of “the interpretive element within our cognitive religious experience.”9 As with moral significance, one comes to recognize the religious significance of a situation through construing the situation in an appropriate manner. At the same time, that recognition is supposed to disclose a dimension of reality, in this case the reality of divine presence given in and made available by the situation itself. For this reason, the recognition in question is more like “seeing” something than it is like assenting to a proposition or to the conclusion of an inference. The importance of the distinction between knowledge by acquaintance and propositional belief does not imply that acquaintance or experience simply ex82


cludes propositional content. Rather, “there is a conceptual and thus implicitly or incipiently propositional content within experience itself.”10 This statement accords nicely with my earlier observation that truth claims belong operatively or implicitly to the basic functions of religious discourse and practice. The statement also names a condition that is necessary if interpretation is to lead to recognition of the significance of dimensions actually inherent in the situations we experience. Interpretations that purport to disclose the religious significance of situations typically make use of religious traditions that operate as “filters” in the interpretive process.11 Religious interpretations themselves are “uncompelled” exercises of cognitive freedom12 but are still supposed at least to read meaning out of, and not simply into, the situations they address. These considerations lead directly to positions having to do with the rationality of believing in or affirming the reality of God. For Hick, the rationality of affirming God follows from what one may, with caution, call “the veridical character of our experience.”13 The way we commonly and persistently experience things is a good ground for our beliefs about them. Skepticism is called for if I think something is causing me to be deluded or if a particular experience is discontinuous with the larger course of experience or contradicts beliefs I take to be reliable.14 That said, it is still safe to adopt “the general principle that in the absence of adequate grounds for doubt it is rational to trust our putative experience of an external world that is apparently impinging upon us.”15 Indeed, in the absence of a good reason that persuades us to do otherwise, it would be madness not to allow our beliefs about things to be formed in the light of our persistent experience of them. Let us imagine, then, a person for whom God is “an experienced living reality,” and who finds this to be the case in an insistent and comprehensive way.16 With all the qualifications that the preceding comments require, we can, according to Hick, “only say that for such a person, ‘experiencing the presence of God’ in this way, it was entirely rational to believe that God is real; and indeed that it would have been irrational on his part not to.”17 The difficulty is that the person to whom Hick is referring as he makes this claim is Jesus of Nazareth. Most ordinary believers do not experience God in the vivid and persistent manner characteristic of Jesus or other great religious figures. But it does seem right to suppose that, most often, the more ordinary believer “does at least have some remote echo or analogue within his or her own experience of the much more momentous experience of the great religious figures,”18 perhaps because of participation in a community funded by the experience of such figures. Thus it seems right to say that if “a person experiences life religiously, or participates in a community whose life is based on this mode of experience, he or she is rationally entitled to trust that experience and to proceed to believe and to live on the basis of it.”19 Since believing on the basis of this experience involves affirming the reality of God, that affirmation is in turn rational. But are matters this easily resolved? After all, the question about the rationality of affirming the reality of God seems not to be an idle question, but one that needs to be raised. That suggests, in turn, that in connection with belief in Religious Truth 83

God, it is appropriate to look for justification. Is not the case that I have just outlined on the basis of Hick’s analyses rather an attempt to avoid the issue of justification in connection with affirming the reality of God? Alvin Plantinga allows one to answer that question by saying that it depends on what you mean by justification. Correctly distinguishing different senses of justification, in turn, requires a careful analysis of the difference between nonbasic and basic beliefs. A nonbasic belief is one that I hold on account of or on the basis of some other belief that I also hold. A basic belief is a belief that I hold and that I do not hold on the basis of some other belief.20 For example, I believe that the tree outside my study window is a southern pine because my wife told me that it is, and I believe that she would be correct in making and truthful in reporting this identification. I believe that there is a tree outside my study window because I just looked out and saw it and not because of some other belief that I hold. Plantinga uses the word “evidence” to mean beliefs that provide a basis for other beliefs that I hold.21 In terms of this usage, I believe that the tree outside my window is a southern pine because of some evidence, some beliefs or propositions that provide evidence for my identification of the kind of tree I think it is. I do not believe that there is a tree outside my window on account of evidence of that sort. But that does not mean that the belief is without a ground. Basic beliefs, at least ones that are properly so, are not held on account of evidence but do have grounds. I believe that “I see a tree,” in that, “upon having experience of a certain sort, I believe that I am perceiving a tree.”22 I believe that I had breakfast this morning because I remember having done so. I see someone doubled over and screaming, and I believe he is in pain.23 In each of these cases I hold a belief because of some “characteristic sort of experience,” and such experiences are “justifying circumstances” in relation to the beliefs they ground.24 Still, basic beliefs are not ones that I hold on account of the evidence that other beliefs provide. To return to the earlier example, I believe that the tree outside my window is a southern pine because, for me, my beliefs about my wife’s knowledge and truthfulness count as evidence for that belief. I believe that there is a tree outside my window, not because of any other beliefs that, for me, serve as evidence for the one in question, but because I see the tree when I lean back in my chair and look to the left. Although Plantinga does not put the point in just this way, it seems that what is “characteristic” about the “sort of experience” that grounds basic beliefs is that it is experience in which something becomes in some or other way present to me, allowing me to find in that presence a ground for beliefs about the thing. These considerations directly pertain to the question of justification in relation to belief in the reality of God. In the case of nonbasic beliefs, justification follows from the other beliefs that support them by providing evidence for them. If belief in the reality of God requires justification of this sort, then the source of that justification must be a belief or a number of beliefs that are logically independent of belief in the reality of God and that provide evidence in

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favor of affirming God’s reality. An argument concerning the existence of God is an attempt to provide such evidence in a formal and self-critical way. But belief in the reality of God requires this sort of justification only if it must be a nonbasic belief. The view that it must be such a belief seems chiefly to follow from the different versions of foundationalism prevalent in the history of philosophy. One of the chief tenets of foundationalism restricts the sorts of beliefs that can count as rightly or properly basic. Modern foundationalism, as typified by Descartes, restricts properly basic beliefs to beliefs that are, for a person, logically self-evident or incorrigible. Classical foundationalism, as typified by Aquinas, allows that a belief is properly basic for a person if it is evident to the senses.25 It seems relatively easy to show that belief in the reality of God differs in kind from any of the ones just mentioned. Therefore, if belief in the reality of God is to receive justification, it must receive it from the evidence that other logically independent beliefs provide. But foundationalism itself, in its classical and modern version, Plantinga holds, is deeply flawed with regard to its restriction on the sorts of belief that can legitimately count as properly basic. That restriction, again, requires that a belief, call it A, “is properly basic for me only if A is self-evident or incorrigible or evident to the senses for me.”26 But what is the justification of this principle? Obviously it is not, on its own terms, a properly basic belief. Nor do proponents of classical or modern foundationalism seem ever to have presented a convincing argument for this principle. They have employed the principle, but that is quite a different matter. In addition, almost everyone accepts as properly basic at least some beliefs not covered by this principle, such as beliefs about other persons or about the past.27 In fact, Plantinga maintains, “criteria for proper basicality must be reached from below rather than above; they should not be presented ex cathedra but argued to and tested by a relevant set of examples.”28 The inquiry into these criteria begins from the recognition that properly basic beliefs have their ground in some experience that allows something to in some way become present to me such that “my being appeared to in this way (together with other circumstances) is what confers on me the right to hold the belief in question; this is what justifies me in accepting it.”29 This means that a belief is properly basic, not under any and all conditions, but only under certain conditions. It also means that, given those conditions, the belief in question emerges from a ground that is the source of its justification. Plantinga holds that beliefs such as “God is speaking to me,” “God has created all this,” “God disapproves of what I have done,” “God forgives me,” and “God is to be thanked and praised” can be properly basic.30 That is to say, these are beliefs that can have their grounds in circumstances in which divine activity and reality in some way become present to the believer on account of the believer’s experience of those circumstances. They are not, in that case, based on other beliefs supposed to offer evidential support for them. Strictly speaking, it may be beliefs like the ones just mentioned, rather than a belief in the reality

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of God, that can be properly basic. But it is quite appropriate to refer to belief in God’s reality as properly basic as well, since the other beliefs just mentioned directly and self-evidently entail that one. If so, then the believer’s affirmation of God’s reality occurs in circumstances that, for the believer, in some way exhibit or reveal divine activity and reality, and that are themselves the ground and justification of that belief. In that situation, a justification supposed to follow from propositions supposed to provide the affirmation with an evidentiary basis would be at least unnecessary and possibly undesirable. Taken together, then, Hick and Plantinga claim to show (a) that the believer’s affirmation of divine reality is not in the first instance a matter of propositional belief or of inferring a conclusion from premises; but rather, (b) that affirmation occurs in virtue of the believer’s discovery, made through the interpretation of experienced situations, of a religious significance or of the presence and disclosure of divine reality and activity supposed to be really inherent in those situations; and (c) given the requisite circumstances, it is quite possible and quite legitimate for the believer to find in the relevant experienced situations grounds that justify the affirmation of divine reality. Each of these claims will be significant for the discussion of the manner and the rationality of affirming sacred transcendence that I now want to develop on the basis of the consideration of religious involvement already presented.

Religious Involvement and Affirming Sacred Transcendence Religious involvement, on my account, comes about as persons and communities participate in some religious discourse tradition and in some way undertake religious praxis. A religious discourse names something transcendent and sacred that does and can offer a promise of salvation on account of its limit-surpassing being and goodness. This object, therefore, presents itself as an absolute telos. The appropriate response to an absolute telos is the practice of radical self-transcendence. A fundamental and ineluctable existential significance belongs to religious discourse because that discourse proposes the task of radical self-transcendence to human beings who are supposed to stand in relation to the absolute telos. Johannes Climacus, who once again offers resources on which I will draw for the argument I am now developing, would agree with the last statement. He insists that a genuine religious possibility needs to be understood not as a doctrine but as an “existence communication.”31 That does not mean that a genuine religious possibility, or a tradition of religious discourse, must omit doctrines. Many in fact include them.32 It does mean that the doctrines presented in a religious tradition serve the purpose of presenting the existence communication, that is, the communication of a possible way of being-in-the-world, or of an “existence-possibility,” that the tradition conveys. In this case, if the doctrines conveyed by a religious discourse tradition are abstracted from that ex-

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istence communication, they become, in the last analysis, bereft of their actual meaning. The existence-possibility that an instance of religious discourse conveys needs, using Climacus’s terms, to be considered through subjective rather than objective reflection and to be affirmed, if it is affirmed, through appropriation. Appropriation, in turn, is the outcome of some sort of choice or resolve. These claims are the resources from Climacus that I will use in developing my own argument about the affirmation of sacred transcendence that religious involvement makes possible. I will begin to develop that argument by briefly discussing each of these claims. When Climacus distinguishes objective and subjective reflection, he says, “to objective reflection, truth becomes something objective, an object, and the point is to disregard the subject. To subjective reflection, truth becomes appropriation, inwardness, subjectivity, and the point is to immerse oneself, existing, in subjectivity.”33 In objective reflection, one focuses on the external item with which one is concerned, be it a thing, an event or series of events in history, or an abstract concept, and tries to arrive at the best possible understanding of it. Truth is the correspondence of one’s understanding to the object of reflection. One attains this understanding by, among other things, putting out of consideration whatever relations one might actually or possibly have toward the object, since those could detract from seeing the object just on its own terms. Subjective reflection has to do, not with the subject matters with which objective reflection is properly concerned, but with what Climacus calls “essential knowing.” This is knowledge that “pertains to existence,” and, more specifically, ethical and religious knowledge, since “all ethical and religious knowing is essentially a relating to the existence of the knower.”34 Subjective reflection focuses on the possibilities for existence that ethical and religious knowledge, or ethical and religious discourse, presents. One’s concern is precisely with the relations one does or does not have, might or might not have, to those possibilities. Affirming an existence-possibility that is presented by a body of ethical or religious discourse takes the form of appropriation.35 To appropriate something is to make it one’s own. One makes an existence-possibility one’s own by striving to conduct one’s life according to the demands of that possibility. I cannot without performative self-contradiction say that I affirm that the beliefs that belong to the statement of an existence-possibility are true unless I endeavor to make that possibility my own. For this reason, appropriation comes about through subjective rather than objective reflection. Climacus insists that appropriation cannot have objective reflection as either its sufficient or its necessary condition. That is, appropriation cannot be the consequence of a conceptually correct understanding of an existence-possibility. Correctly and thoroughly understanding the history and teaching of Christianity does not make me a Christian. Nor can appropriation require a conceptually correct understanding of an existence-possibility. It is quite possible for a person to have a meager un-

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derstanding of the history and teachings of Christianity that is on some points incorrect and yet be deeply and genuinely Christian.36 Given that, I do not think that Kierkegaard/Climacus wants to in all ways exclude objective reflection from an important role in connection with appropriation. I think Climacus recognizes that a conceptually incorrect understanding of an existence-possibility can at least damage one’s appropriation of it and that someone committed to or disposed toward commitment to an existence-possibility has every reason to strive for whatever success can be had in objective reflection on that possibility.37 To develop and defend the views just mentioned, however, would go beyond the purposes of discussing elements of the Kierkegaard/Climacus text that are resources for the argument I am developing. Appropriation has choice or resolve as its own first moment and is never simply a one-time thing but always something that in some way remains to be accomplished. I do not fall into an existence-possibility in the way in which I might fall into a pit. An existence-possibility is something that I must take on in a way that is voluntary. Nor is one’s appropriation of an existence-possibility ever completed. To suppose the complete realization of an existence-possibility is to posit the identity of the being of a human subject with the full and complete concept or thought of that existence-possibility. But, says Johannes Climacus, we must not forget, “even for a single moment, that the subject is existing, and that existing is becoming, and that truth as the identity of thought and being is therefore a chimera of abstraction and truly only a longing for creation, not because truth is not an identity, but because the knower is an existing person, and thus truth cannot be an identity for him as long as he exists.”38 Self-becoming is a task that I have accomplished and am accomplishing, a task that stands before me as one that is yet to be accomplished as long as I exist. If my self-becoming is determined by the appropriation of an existence-possibility, then that possibility is one that I have realized and am realizing and one that stands before me as a possibility yet to be realized as long as I exist. An existence-possibility is always something that stands before me and summons me to fuller realizations of its potentials as well as something whose potentials I have, perhaps to some extent, realized. And then the task of making an existence-possibility my own, appropriation, is always a task that I have yet to undertake as well as a task that I have already undertaken. Supposing that I am a Christian, being a Christian is something that I am always becoming. In an analogous way, one would have to say the same thing about even heroic figures in Christianity such as Francis of Assisi. At this moment it is important to recall some comments, mentioned earlier in the discussion of the concept of an existential praxis, that M. Jamie Ferreira makes about existence-possibilities and the act of choosing or resolving upon an existence-possibility. An existence-possibility, as was said earlier of an existential praxis, presents an ideal image that is supposed to exhibit the deepest truth about one’s nature and identity, held by the imagination in tension with a sense of one’s factual condition. The existence-possibility presents a demand having to do with a transformation of the self whose goal is the actualization 88


of its deepest truth. Resolve comes about as an affirmation of the revisioning of the self that the existence-possibility conveys and as the choice of a way of life informed by that revisioning. Once again, to say this is to say that resolve, and therefore appropriation as such, is both a response elicited by something that stands over against my facticity and invites my participation, and a free act of mine. The existence-possibility that religious discourse proposes is in most general terms, of course, radical self-transcendence. Under what circumstances is it possible for me to consider that existence-possibility in the terms that subjective reflection requires? In the first place, it is possible for me to consider an existence-possibility in the way required by subjective reflection if that possibility is what I am going to call a real possibility for me rather than only an abstract possibility. As I am now using these terms, an abstract possibility is a possibility that I could conceive of or imagine and also choose to realize because it is in some ways attractive and consistent with the general circumstances of my life, and because nothing in particular prevents me from realizing it. For example, as I write these words I am free for a brief period of time from obligations to my university. I can conceive of flying to Germany for a short vacation. I can imagine what I would do for five days in Berlin and for a few more days in some other part of the country. I like to go to Germany. I’m reasonably sure I could find an affordable airfare. And there are no specific obligations that I would fail to meet were I to enact this plan. But in fact, imagining a short German vacation right now is really an act of fantasy. Yes, it would be nice or interesting, but I know I’m not going to do it. Nothing in my circumstances urges me to seriously consider doing it. Certainly, nothing in my circumstances urges me to choose whether or not I am going to do it. In fact, I have constructed this idea for the sake of having an example of what I am calling an abstract as distinguished from a real possibility. But suppose someone were to say to me, “If you want to go, here are the tickets. The flight leaves in three days.” I could leave in three days and be back in plenty of time to begin the spring semester. Now something presents itself that leads me to seriously consider this possibility. In fact, my circumstances make a choice on my part rather urgent. I could just keep on not deciding until three days had gone by and the opportunity was lost, but that behavior would fall very short of the claims that my circumstances make on me. Now the trip is a real possibility and no longer an abstract one. To consider an existence-possibility in the way required by subjective reflection is to seriously consider one’s relation to that existence possibility. For this to occur, the possibility must present itself as a real possibility and not just as a fantasy that is for some reason interesting, appealing, and possible in an abstract sense. That means, more specifically, that one finds in the existencepossibility an image that revisions the self in a way that contrasts with one’s factual condition and that one at least could suppose to present the deep truth about oneself. Religious Truth 89

But the question raised above needs to be rephrased and pressed further. Under what conditions can radical self-transcendence present itself to me as a real possibility? Or under what conditions can I find it urgent to seriously consider my relation to this possibility as proposed by some mode of religious discourse? I can conceive or imagine myself adopting some form of radical selftranscendence if I see someone else engaged in a version of this practice that I admire, or if I arrive at a sense of some version of this practice by reading the scriptures of some religious tradition, or if I arrive at an understanding of this existence-possibility through studying Kierkegaard. But if I find that radical self-transcendence is a real possibility for me, something further must be the case. To appropriate any existence-possibility is to undertake in a certain way the task of self-becoming. This existence-possibility defines self-becoming in terms of the connection of the self with the absolute telos. It is a praxis that involves integrating one’s pursuit of all relative ends with a commitment to the absolute telos, while simultaneously acknowledging that the absolute telos in a concrete and incomparable way transcends all relative ends, and detaching oneself from an immediate relation to all relative ends—and especially from one’s own selfattachment—by determining that one’s greatest benefit lies in a pursuit of the absolute telos on account of its own goodness rather than for the sake of any benefit it affords. It is a praxis in which one finds that one’s relation to the absolute telos is not really a possible consequence of, but rather the ground of, one’s relation to oneself. It is a praxis in which one is carried out of oneself and toward the absolute telos by an act that is, at its limit, unqualified love. The image that purports to represent the deepest truth about the self, in the context of this existence-possibility, is not simply an image of the self in its ideal condition, but an image of the condition of the self insofar as it possesses, or perhaps one should say insofar as it is possessed by, the absolute telos. For the existence-possibility that incorporates this image to be a real possibility for someone, the absolute telos itself must be for that person something more than an item of which the person has a concept, or an item to which the person refers propositional beliefs. The German vacation becomes a real possibility for me, not when I think about it or imagine it, but when the tickets become available. Radical self-transcendence becomes a real possibility for someone insofar as one finds oneself responding, in however hesitant and equivocal a manner, to the claims that an absolute telos makes on one’s existence. This requires that one find oneself responding to an absolute telos that manifests itself and that is somehow evident in its nature and reality just in virtue of those manifestations. Those manifestations, in turn, occur as correlates or dimensions of one’s finding that radical self-transcendence is, for oneself, a real possibility, a genuinely possible object or initial or ongoing appropriation. The claim, then, is that the devotee finds that sacred transcendence manifests itself in connection with one’s discovery of radical self-transcendence as a genuinely possible object of appropriation. A dimension, really the fundamental dimension, of one’s discovery of radical self-transcendence as a real existence90


possibility is the discovery of “being appeared to in a certain fashion,”39 to use Plantinga’s language—the discovery of the presence and efficacy of sacred transcendence in the real possibility of surpassing self-attachment through a relation to the absolute telos. Needless to say, in historically specific terms believers do not talk like this. They say things like, “She finds herself drawn beyond herself to God,” or, “He wants enlightenment more than a drowning man wants to breathe.” But the point is, God “appears” or presents Godself to her just in her finding that she is drawn beyond herself to Godself. It is just in his ardent pursuit of liberation that he finds that it is a genuine possibility. The abstract and formal statements are efforts at speaking about universal and fundamental possibilities whose historical variants actual believers speak of in much more specific ways. The key element that defines the position I am proposing is the claim that sacred transcendence manifests itself just in the context of one’s discovery of radical self-transcendence as a real possibility for oneself, rather than appearing in a way that is antecedent to or apart from that context. I discover the possibility of surpassing self-attachment in a relation to the absolute telos; the manifestation of the absolute telos occurs in and as the ground of my discovery of the possibility. She finds that she is drawn beyond herself to God; God shows up in her discovery of herself as being drawn, as the one doing the drawing. It is appropriate, at least in the light of many religious discourse traditions, to say that the absolute telos invites human beings to radical self-transcendence, or calls human beings to that praxis, or demands that praxis of human beings, and then to say that the occurrence of the invitation, or the call, or the demand is just what self-manifestation is. Of course, to speak of inviting, or calling, or demanding in this context is to employ metaphor. That would not surprise Kierkegaard. He says in one place, “all human language about the spiritual, yes, even the divine language of scripture, is essentially transferred or metaphorical language.”40 Certainly, language concerning the intrusion or self-manifestation of sacred transcendence into human experience needs to be metaphorical and symbolic. What else might one expect of language having to do with the selfmanifestation in human circumstances of something limit-surpassing and incomparable in being and goodness; of the self-manifestation of something that is, as I am fond of saying, other than ourselves and other than everything else that is in any other way other than ourselves? What else could be the case for language about something whose self-manifestation is not available to neutral observation but is a correlate of at least the real possibility of human selfinvolvement? How else could one speak in an originary way about a kind of self-manifestation in which absence mediates presence in a unique way? I hope it is clear that the way I speak of self-manifestations of sacred transcendence does not entail the supposition that the devotee experiences these in some splendid or grandiose way or that they are commonly of great, even magnificent proportions. One plays out the task of religious existence, for the most part, in an endless diversity of quotidian ways rather than in ways connected with achievements that call for great public note or in moments of great insight Religious Truth 91

that yield dramatic modifications of consciousness. Most frequently, it is in the ordinary circumstances of life and of one’s dealings with others that the believer finds him- or herself called to surpass self-concern and self-attachment and also finds that it is possible and in some sense necessary to name the horizon from which that call emanates with the words that are available for naming sacred transcendence and the absolute telos. The last remark leads back to what John Hick calls “the interpretive element in our cognitive religious experience.” On my account, the believer does and can find self-manifestations of the presence and activity of sacred transcendence in those concrete circumstances in which one is drawn away from an immediate attachment to relative ends and to one’s own self, and toward a relation to an absolute telos that incorporates the pursuit of all relative ends into itself and is the source and definition of one’s own self-relation. Once again, in the circumstances in which one is drawn, one finds the absolute telos as that which draws. But “finding” this is not like finding a wallet on the pavement as I am walking down the street. The absolute telos is not something “out there,” something that I can happen upon if I am going in the right direction and looking at the right place. Part of finding the absolute telos is naming it. A religious discourse tradition, among other things, provides words with which we can name something that has the attributes that an absolute telos requires: something that is limit-surpassing in being and goodness; something whose incomparable and concrete transcendence is matched by a deep and uncanny immanence; something that saves us insofar as our estrangement from it is overcome; and something that attracts us on account of its intrinsic splendor. To “find” selfmanifestations of the absolute telos is to find that one can name that which draws one from an immediate relation to all other ends and to self and toward an absolute relation to itself with available words that allow one to name sacred transcendence, and to find that no other words will do. I use quotation marks in the previous sentence to indicate that I am speaking of finding in a special sense, but in no way to suggest that this is anything other than finding in a genuine sense. That would be the case only if I could only find things that are “already out there now,”41 things that I can locate if I come to be where they are when they are there. I find the glasses that I lost in that way. I do not find the truth in that way. As Jerome Miller puts it, “truth cannot be reached by trying to get as close as possible to what is present-at-hand to us before we start to think. Rather, truth can be reached only if we yield to the beckoning of the unknown, as it draws us beyond the immediate to the world of meaning and beyond the world of meaning to being itself.”42 An essential moment of attaining truth about being, or that which is, insofar as being is mediated by meaning, is the act of naming. My account of the devotee’s affirmation of the reality of sacred transcendence, then, incorporates Hick’s position that awareness of sacred transcendence—he would say of God—does and indeed must include an interpretive element and also can legitimately claim to attain a significance genuinely inherent in the situations upon which interpretation operates. This account also incorporates 92


and accords a significant importance to Ferreira’s observation that the choice or resolve at work in the appropriation of the religious existence-possibility has the character of a response as well as of a free act. The devotee, I maintain, responds to the presence and action of sacred transcendence that he or she finds in the concrete circumstances in which he or she is drawn away from immediate self-attachment and toward the task of integrating the pursuit of all other ends with an absolute commitment to the absolute telos. The occurrence of response in these circumstances is a key aspect or ground from which the devotee’s affirmation of the reality of sacred transcendence emerges. My account of the devotee’s affirmation of the reality of sacred transcendence also incorporates the positions that Hick and Plantinga, in different ways, support regarding the legitimacy of that affirmation or, as they would say, regarding belief in God. Hick maintains that it is wholly reasonable for the religious person to trust his or her own experience “and the larger stream of religious experience of which it is a part” and to allow belief in God to emerge from an ongoing “experience of existing in the presence of God,” even given the religiously ambiguous nature of the world that we experience.43 Plantinga makes a strong case for the position that belief in God can have its grounds in circumstances in which the believer finds that God “appears” in a certain way or makes Godself manifest to the believer, and that those grounds, as contrasted with other beliefs that provide supporting evidence, offer justification for affirming God’s reality. My account extends the considerations that Hick and Plantinga develop from belief in God to affirming the reality of sacred transcendence, which of course can take different theistic as well as nontheistic forms. More importantly, my account understands the “experience of existing in the presence of God,” or the believer’s discovery that in a certain way God (or sacred transcendence) makes Godself (itself ) manifest to the believer, in connection with appropriating the existence-possibility that is radical self-transcendence. One can seriously consider one’s existence according to this possibility only if it is a real possibility for oneself. This possibility can be a real possibility for oneself only if one finds, in considering one’s relation to it, that an absolute telos draws one to itself, no matter how equivocal and ambiguous one’s sense of that might be. To find this is to have the ground that justifies affirming the reality of sacred transcendence. There are at least two advantages to this account. First, it gives a plausible discussion of the manner in which the believer might find that divine or sacred transcendence manifests itself in a way that grounds an affirmation of its reality. Hick and others may well be correct in saying that the believer’s awareness of God, or sacred transcendence, is more like perception and propositional belief. But it is still the case that the divine or sacred does not show up in experience, at least on most accounts, like things that I see or sounds that I hear, or in just the same way as other people do, or as the past does to my memory. Nonetheless, it is intelligible to talk about something that makes a claim—and not only a claim but an ultimate claim—on my existence. And it is intelligible to speak of such a thing, not as an object of propositional beliefs or as someReligious Truth 93

thing about which I infer conclusions from premises, but as something given. It seems plausible to link the believer’s awareness or sense of the givenness of the divine or sacred with a sense of there being something that does make an ultimate claim on human existence, can rightly make this claim, and is supposed to do so because it can be named with no other words than those available for naming sacred transcendence. A second advantage to the account that I have offered regarding affirming the reality of sacred transcendence follows from the proposition that it is not only possible but also necessary to identify sacred transcendence with an absolute telos. I have already made the case for that view. Something is an absolute telos just because it has the characteristics that belong to sacred transcendence. If something is not found to be an absolute telos, then it is not found to have the characteristics that sacred transcendence requires. Thus, for example, if someone supposed to be a theist is talking about God and excluding from this talk the possibility of considering God as an absolute telos, then the person is not really speaking, at least not religiously speaking, about God at all. Thus, to detect some manifestation of the sacred is to find something that presents itself as an absolute telos, presenting the real possibility of radical self-transcendence. My account is nicely in accord with this necessity. I have spoken, then, of the conditions whose fulfillment makes legitimate an affirmation of the reality of sacred transcendence. I believe one can say the following: If one finds the existence-possibility that I call radical selftranscendence to be a real possibility for oneself, that is, if one finds that in concrete circumstances and in concrete ways something manifests itself as an absolute telos that draws one toward an absolute commitment to itself, that calls for a withdrawal from an immediate attachment to all other ends and from immediate self-attachment, for the integration of one’s pursuit of all other ends with the commitment to the absolute telos, and acknowledges one’s relation to the absolute telos as the source of one’s own self-relation and the pursuit of the absolute telos on account of nothing other than its intrinsic goodness as one’s greatest benefit, and if one finds that one can only name this telos with words available for naming sacred transcendence, then one has grounds that justify affirming the reality of sacred transcendence. I believe that is the longest sentence I have written in this book, and I ask the reader’s indulgence. I thought it important to condense the discussion of the conditions relevant to a consideration of religious truth claims and the consequent supposed to follow from them into a single, although very complex, statement. One should note that the task of conducting one’s life according to the canons of radical self-transcendence, like the task of appropriating any existence possibility, is always a work in progress and thus always ongoing. That means that as long as the devotee continues in this task, he or she is in the situation that allows one to treat this talk as a possibility, to find that it is a real possibility for oneself, and to find the ground that justifies affirming the reality of sacred transcendence. But at this point there are at least two obvious difficulties. First, if there are conditions whose fulfillment justifies affirming the reality of sacred transcen94


dence, then the absence of the fulfillment of those conditions presents a ground for not affirming, and thus potentially for denying, the reality of sacred transcendence. Second, if anything is clear, it is that sacred transcendence is named, not just with one set of words that belong to one discourse tradition, but with indefinitely many sets of words that belong to a vast plurality of religious traditions and forms of life. On the surface at least, some of these ways of naming the sacred seem to conflict with each other, and a bit of probing beneath the surface may well seem to reinforce that impression. If that is so, then there may be grounds that justify not only conflicting attitudes about affirming the reality of the sacred but also affirmations of the reality of sacred transcendence that conflict with each other. I want most especially to go on to address the second of these problems.

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6

Pluralism and Religious Truth

If there are conditions whose fulfillment makes affirmations of sacred transcendence rationally legitimate, then it is possible that some affirmative claims about sacred transcendence are true. This possibility extends to many such claims and sets of claims. As noted at the end of the previous chapter, many of those claims are highly diverse and may seem in particular cases to conflict. This means that the account that I have given of the rationality of affirmations regarding sacred transcendence gives rise to at least a question regarding the possible truth of diverse and possibly conflicting religious truth claims. That account, in other words, calls for consideration of the issue of pluralism in relation to religious truth. One cannot deal with the issue of pluralism and religious truth through philosophical considerations alone. One’s position on the possibility of assigning truth to conflicting religious claims, and even on the criteria for identifying conflicts among religious claims, can easily follow from theological as well as philosophical considerations. Even though I make use of the work of current theologians in this chapter as well as in others, I do that for essentially philosophical purposes. I am certainly not claiming to cover the theological as well as the philosophical terrain that one must examine for a full discussion of pluralism and religious truth. At one point in this chapter I will propose an argument that is expressly theological. I am happy to submit this argument to readers with theological competence for assessment. My only claim in this regard will be that to the extent that this or some argument like it is plausible, it exhibits the compatibility of the philosophical position regarding pluralism and religious truth that I maintain with a position in Christian theology that is, I believe, rather traditional, perhaps even conservative from some points of view. Is it possible that highly diverse and even apparently conflicting articulations of religious understanding can be truthful? I will begin my discussion in this chapter with certain preliminary matters having to do with religious truth as such that need consideration if progress is to be made in a discussion of religious truth and pluralism. This will identify some specific issues regarding religious truth that need treatment in dealing with the question of pluralism and will refine the understanding of pluralism in relation to religious truth. In turning to the more specific issues, I will examine the question of pluralism and religious truth in relation to the symbolic nature of religious discourse and the existential praxis that religious involvement requires. Next I will consider the sorts of propositions or beliefs with which the question of religious truth is very commonly associated. Finally, I will ask if there is any sense in the idea of

the truth of religion as such. It seems to me that there is, and that an account of this is helpful in relation to the issue of religious truth and pluralism.

Preliminary Considerations It is entirely natural that one might first associate the issue of religious truth with an assessment of propositions or statements concerning sacred transcendence and the relationship of humankind and the world to sacred transcendence. Thus, to use Christianity as an example, one might say that the truth of that religion depends on the truth of the very essential proposition that it presents regarding God, Christ, human beings, and creation. One might more specifically identify those propositions with assertions found in the Nicene Creed, or the Augsburg or Westminster Confessions, or in whatever catechism one might identify. Associations like these are of inescapable importance; on their own terms they raise questions that require careful treatment. But simply dealing with questions pertinent to assessing the truth of statements is not sufficient in relation to the question of religious truth. Propositions like those brought together in creeds and catechisms are important vehicles through which persons convey the truth supposed to belong to a religious tradition. But persons also suppose that the discourses formed according to various literary genres that are animated by, and that elaborate, basic religious symbols, and that are themselves symbolic, also convey religious truth. Moreover, those symbolic discourses have a kind of privileged position. They are the discourses that, as it were, originally inform religious intentionality, that very basically articulate and also make possible consciousness of sacred transcendence and of human existence and the world in relation to sacred transcendence. Just as religious consciousness cannot occur without articulation, that articulation cannot in the first instance be propositional. Religious consciousness needs to be informed by a discourse that is able to signify mundane reality in a way that suggests the discoverability therein of the immanent presence of something that, in its limit-surpassing excellence, is transcendent and other than mundane. It needs a discourse able to signify sacred reality as something that, in connection with the very absence that transcendent otherness requires, makes itself in an uncanny way present by inviting a response from the human recipient of that presence. And religious consciousness needs a discourse that does not just present statements about these matters, which is what my discourse should be and is doing right now, but that contributes to the process in which these matters become effective. These are capacities that belong to symbolic discourse. In the absence of symbolic discourse, propositional speech about the sacred does not have a context or a basis. This is in no way to demote the importance of propositional speech about sacred matters or the conceptual reflection to which that speech belongs. It is to say that the idea of religious truth cannot be associated only with statements made from a more or less re-

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flective standpoint about sacred matters but must also be associated with the discourse that is operative in putative transactions between sacred reality and human beings. If so, then one must take the functions of symbolic discourse into account in a consideration of religious truth and pluralism. The idea of religious truth must also be associated with the existential praxis that belongs as a necessity to religious involvement. I have already argued that the meaning that belongs to religious discourse is existential in a way that requires one to associate an understanding of that meaning with an understanding of the self-involving responses that the meaning evokes. The significance of religious discourse, I have also argued, more specifically entails the proposal of a task, an existential praxis, to the person or community that encounters the claims of that discourse. It is also the case that affirming the truth of religious claims in part but essentially requires appropriating the relevant existential praxis—in other words, endeavoring to determine the conduct of one’s life in the light of the existence-possibility that those claims present. Kierkegaard, of course, is the one who speaks most masterfully of appropriation in relation to affirming religious understandings.1 One need not endorse all aspects of his discussion of this matter to recognize that affirming religious claims cannot occur independently of, and therefore must have as a part of itself, appropriating the existence-possibility that those claims offer. If the very sense of religious claims and of the discourse that conveys them is inseparable from some such existence-possibility, then an affirmation of a religious understanding made independently of any thought of appropriating the existence-possibility to which that understanding invites us would be empty and meaningless. This means, in turn, that there is an indissoluble association between the possibility of religious truth and the project of radical self-transcendence. That association is, then, another matter that must be taken into account in a consideration of religious truth and pluralism. The need to associate the possibility of religious truth with the symbolic dimensions of religious discourse and with the project of radical self-transcendence does not, as I have already noted, absolve one from considering that same possibility in association with propositions asserted or proposed about sacred matters in the context of critical and conceptual reflection. It does require that one give an account of the conditions of the legitimacy of asserting such propositions. Propositions of the sort that I have in mind are statements that, because of their conceptual nature, stand in contrast with symbolism and with the resources that belong to symbolic discourse. They are proposed from a critically reflective standpoint defined by an interest in understanding matters such as the contrast between sacred transcendence and mundane reality, predications that can be made regarding sacred transcendence, the conditions of the possibility of understanding that contrast and making those predications, and the status of the assertions through which one formulates that understanding and those predications.2 Because inquiry into matters like these is in the service of understanding for its own sake, statements proposed in the course of that inquiry are not in an easily recognizable way linked to something like the proj98


ect of radical self-transcendence. To take just one set of examples from a theistic context, if I say that (1) by contrast with the world taken as a domain of contingent beings, God is a necessary being that possesses its necessity of itself; that (2) the being of God is in no way composite, but must be said to be entirely “simple”; that (3) it is possible to propose these understandings on account of inferences that proceed from effect to cause; and that (4) all predications concerning God are analogous rather than univocal or equivocal, the existential import of my statements and their connection with symbolic meaning are not immediately obvious. I have argued, however, that religious discourse needs to draw on the resources that symbolism offers and that the meaning of religious discourse concerning sacred transcendence cannot be separated from its existential significance. On what basis, then, are statements having to do with sacred transcendence like the ones just mentioned legitimate and therefore statements that need to be considered in association with the possibility of religious truth? Assertions about the contrast and connection between sacred transcendence and the world as well as about the nature of sacred transcendence itself arise naturally and necessarily in the development of a religious community or tradition. This occurs as inevitably as people working together say things to each other about the properties of the materials with which they are working and of the item they are producing, as they ask each other questions and give each other instructions about their work. In each case, an interest in truth emerges as an integral component of an ongoing praxis. As a religious tradition develops, views that have been expressed about the connection and contrast between the world and sacred transcendence and about the nature of sacred transcendence can become the specific objects of questions and of thought. This can happen in the context of conflicts in the religious community or in virtue of the development of concerns and methods that promote systematic inquiry. In especially the latter case, the interest in truth becomes a focus that one can adopt for its own sake. Questions become more precise, and the terminology for framing both questions and answers becomes more technical. Logical and methodological considerations develop in relation to the need for warrants to secure acceptable positions. Understandings proposed as relevant to pursuing the interest in truth for its own sake are integrated and systematized. Objections to this process need to meet the opponent on its own ground and therefore often become as arcane as the theories they criticize. These comments may seem to outline a process far removed from those primary religious concerns that find articulation in a discourse whose very basic operators are symbols and whose intelligibility is inseparable from its existential significance. But the interest in truth about sacred matters need not be and should not be thought of as fundamentally separate from those more primary concerns and that more originary discourse. The need to understand the difference of sacred transcendence from the world, the relation of the world to sacred transcendence, and the nature of the sacred itself occurs in the primary context of religious engagement. The shift from raising questions and making Pluralism and Religious Truth 99

assertions about these matters in the context of ongoing religious praxis to inquiry that pursues an interest in the truth about these matters for its own sake serves that need. This inquiry isolates the matters with which it is concerned from the larger discursive context in which discourse operates in a very basic way, although not exclusively, with metaphors and symbols for the sake of disclosing and conveying a sense of sacred presence and of proposing existential possibilities. That isolation is necessary in order to formulate and affirm understandings that respond to the questions from which the inquiry proceeds, and thus to satisfy the need and desire to know that is the essential source of those questions. I have argued that existential significance is not an accidental feature of, but necessarily inherent in, the very meaning of discourse that names sacred transcendence, and that the functions of religious discourse require basic symbolic operators. An implication is that one falls sort of an adequate understanding or expression of the meaning of statements regarding sacred transcendence if the existential significance of those statements is left behind. But it is still legitimate, for limited purposes, to suspend consideration of that significance if the inquiry that serves those purposes requires that suspension. As a consequence of that suspension, the statements and integrated sets of statements regarding sacred transcendence that come about in the relevant inquiry will fall short of a requirement that discourse about the sacred must meet if it is to be adequately meaningful. But that is entirely permissible as long as one recognizes that adequately meaningful discourse about sacred transcendence requires, not just statements like the ones now in question, but always and more essentially a larger discursive context to which such statements can be related or with which they can be integrated. Suppose, for example, that, as I have maintained, one adequately expresses or understands the meaning of the sentence “God is the creator of the world” only in association with the self-involving responses and existential significance that the sentence conveys. It is still legitimate to ask questions like: (a) Can I know that the world has a creator? (b) How is the contrast between the creator and the world, and consequently the nature of the creator itself, properly understood? Now suppose I proposed to respond to these questions by a sound argument that establishes, among other things, that (c) “If everything can not-be, there would be nothing” is true, and that (d) the ultimate principle of the created world must be something that, just because of itself alone, cannot not-be.3 These ways of talking about the ground of the dependence of the created world on God for its very being and about what must be affirmed of God insofar as God is known as creator arguably do not at first glance elicit self-involving responses on account of an existential significance that belongs to them. But they do express just the sorts of understandings that can be relevant to the questions that have been asked. That is to say, they express understandings about the world and about sacred transcendence that respond to questions that do and can most legitimately arise in the course of concrete religious engagement, even though their formulation and affirmation involves suspending a condition that 100


religious engagement requires and that religious discourse requires if it is to be fully adequate in relation to the criteria that govern its meaning. So statements like the sample statements are not sufficient in relation to the requirements that adequately meaningful discourse that regards sacred transcendence must meet. But if the questions to which such statements are pertinent arise, then those statements can become necessary in relation to adequately meaningful religious discourse in that they respond to a need for understanding that emerges in the context of the concrete religious engagement that religious discourse informs. By themselves, such statements do not satisfy the needs of speech that is supposed to be to and of, as well as about, the sacred. But they can become critical components of such speech insofar as they are integrated into a highly complex and differentiated religious discourse tradition. That integration will bring conceptual and critically reflective understanding into connection with the resources of metaphor and symbolism that religious discourse requires if it is to support transactions between human beings and sacred transcendence, and with the existential praxis that religious discourse proposes and that is a necessary component of religious involvement. This means that conceptual and critically reflective understandings and the statements that convey them can, at least, become essential in relation to considerations of sacred transcendence. In that event there is an essential association of such statements with the issue of religious truth. The history of religions bears ample witness that bodies of statements like the ones now in question have been integrated into different religious discourse traditions as essential components and that there seems to be a great deal of diversity and many points of apparent conflict among such statements. That diversity and apparent conflict, therefore, must also be addressed in considering the question of religious truth and pluralism. In addition to identifying various matters that are associated with the issue of religious truth and that therefore must be addressed in considering the question of religious truth and pluralism, one should also examine some different ways of understanding the concept of pluralism in relation to religious truth. Schubert Ogden proposes some concepts and distinctions that are very helpful in this regard. In the first place, Ogden points out that the question about religious truth and pluralism most appropriately asks whether there can be, rather than whether there are, many religions that are true.4 This observation, which Ogden makes in the context of his work in theology, is certainly important for one doing philosophy in a setting like the one I have adopted in these pages. That setting defines the concern with religious truth with respect to the conditions whose fulfillment makes legitimate the affirmation of religious truth claims. That concern has therefore to do with the possibility of affirming the claims in question and the possibility of religious truth as such. It does not as such extend to a position on whether or not the conditions just mentioned are, in fact, fulfilled. This focus on possibility needs to be retained in addressing the question of religious truth and pluralism. Pluralism and Religious Truth 101

Second, Ogden proposes an understanding of religion that indicates that inquiry into the question of religious truth and pluralism needs to be many-sided and to take account of the issues I have already identified. Religion, he maintains, is the means through which “we acquire the ability to ask the existential question of how we are to understand ourselves and others in relation to the whole if ours is to be an authentic human existence.”5 It is a “primary form of culture,” as contrasted with secondary forms of culture like theology and philosophy, which presuppose religion as data for reflection.6 Religious claims follow from the assumption “that ultimate reality is such as to authorize some understanding of ourselves as authentic and that, conversely, some understanding of our existence is authentic because it is authorized by ultimate reality.”7 And “religion involves not only an understanding of our existence, but also, and just as essentially, the particular concepts and symbols through which the question of our existence can alone be asked and answered in an explicit way.”8 This understanding indicates that the question of religious truth and pluralism addresses matters belonging to the primary and to the secondary form of culture, and thus, as I have maintained, inquires into the symbolic dimensions of religious discourse and the existential praxis that belongs to religious involvement as well as into conceptual and reflectively determined statements about religious matters with which religious truth is associated. Third, if one allows for the possibility of religious truth in the first place and then for pluralism as an additional possibility, the latter can be understood in at least two different ways. The relevant distinction is between substantial and formal truth as defined by a specific perspective in Christian ecclesiology. According to that perspective, a true church is one in which the gospel is rightly preached and the sacraments duly administered. This, in turn, “is always to be determined by comparing the church’s doctrine and sacramental practice with those of the apostolic church as attested by the formally normative witness of scripture. Thus a church may be said to be substantially true provided that its doctrine and practice agree with those of the apostles, whose church alone may be said to be formally true.”9 Analogously, a religion “may be said to be formally true provided that its representation of the meaning of human existence is that with which all others must agree in order themselves to be true religions. On the other hand, it may be said to be substantially true provided that it exhibits just such agreement with whatever religion is correctly said to be formally true religion.”10 Pluralism, once admitted as a possibility, may or may not extend to formal truth. That is, it may be the case that only one religion can be true in a formal way, but others may be substantially true; or perhaps many religions can present formal religious truth, legitimate norms in relation to which the claims of other religions can be assessed. Ogden, in fact, favors the latter option. I mention these options, in part, because if one defines a philosophical concern with religious truth in terms of the concept of possibility, as I am doing, then a consideration of pluralism must address both the possibility of pluralism and possibilities within pluralism. But one cannot decide between these options on an exclusively philosophical basis. One can make, I believe, a philo102


sophical case for the possibility of pluralism in relation to religious truth. In doing that, it behooves a philosopher to acknowledge the different possibilities that pluralism itself embraces. But theological considerations are required to adjudicate those differences, and therefore that task surpasses what philosophical inquiry can attain. In fact, when I propose an argument for the sake of suggesting the theological plausibility of the philosophical position regarding religious truth and pluralism that I will offer, that argument will entail a different position regarding pluralism than the one that Ogden endorses, one that acknowledges pluralism with regard to substantial but not to formal truth, and that Ogden would rightly view as more restricted than his own with reference to one set of religious expressions.11 Regarding this, I can only say that I am happy to submit these different understandings, as well as the arguments that are the sources of these differences, to theologically competent readers for assessment and adjudication. I should perhaps add that I am not in my remarks relying on the process metaphysics with which Ogden is associated. I am relying on his definition of the question concerning religious truth and pluralism, the understanding of religion that distinguishes between primary and secondary forms of culture, and the distinction between formal and substantive truth that he presents. Of course, the preceding remarks do assume that one is allowing for religious truth in the first place. One bypasses the whole question of religious truth and pluralism if one maintains that there can be no religious truth, or no religion that is true. What might be the basis for holding that? Given my account of religion, that question is, in one way, not difficult. There can be no religious truth if there is no actuality, or occurrence, or condition to which one can in truth attribute the features that sacred transcendence requires. If that is so, one or more religions could still convey truths, but they would be not religious truths but something like ethical or humane truths, ones detected by nonreligious interpretations of religious forms of life or traditions. These, in turn, would not be true as religions but in some other sense. This is indeed an answer to the question I have asked. But it is not the only answer. There is another that is perhaps more telling. I will discuss that at the conclusion of this chapter.

Religious Truth, Pluralism, and Symbolic Discourse The interest in pluralism and religious truth in relation to symbolic discourse, or the discourse required for religious functions on what Ogden calls the primary form of culture, comes about as intercultural communication promotes awareness of the vast multiplicity and diversity of forms of religious expression that belong to human history, together with acknowledgment of the right of diverse cultures to autonomous religious development. That interest becomes more substantive and more disciplined through the development of historical and comparative studies of religions. In addition to being necessarily opaque and susceptible to interpretations that can always be contested, religious symbolism is, as Paul Ricoeur notes, a Pluralism and Religious Truth 103

product of a “diversity of languages and cultures and, for this reason, remains contingent: why these symbols rather than any others?”12 As a first approximation, one might say that within a given religious form of life or tradition an array of symbols comes about, is elaborated over time through the discourse or discourses that belong to the tradition, and in the process brings about and articulates a consciousness of sacred transcendence and of the situation of human beings and the world in relation to sacred transcendence. But this does not mean that matters cannot, at different places and times, be otherwise. The symbols and discourses in question are contingent upon the determinants of the cultural contexts within which they function. Unless culture is “conceived not empirically but normatively,” in a way that implies that some culture is, in normative terms, “the one culture of mankind,”13 one must admit that such contexts and the signifiers that come about within them both are and legitimately can be highly diverse. It is highly plausible to suppose that diverse cultural contexts give rise to diverse arrays of symbols and symbolic discourses that make possible, for persons in those specific contexts, an involved consciousness of the sacred that is intelligible and productive. But if an array of symbols and a body of discourses perform that function in that manner, this counts as being truthful. So it is possible that highly diverse bodies of religious symbols and discourse are places where different persons and communities can find truth. Further considerations reinforce the position just mentioned. In the text to which I have recently referred, Ricoeur does not say that the symbol is a product of, but that it is “a prisoner of the diversity of languages and cultures” upon which it is contingent.14 A prisoner is, of course, confined by limits. The possibilities for conveying meaning that belong to religious symbols, Ricoeur suggests, are confined by the limits that belong to them due to the linguistic and cultural contexts within which they develop. Then different symbols that develop in very different contexts, along with the discourses that take them up and elaborate them, may supplement some given religious discourse tradition just because the limits that belong to them are different. Of course, one may suppose that this relation is reciprocal in a thoroughgoing way. But even if one supposes that the discourse traditions that belong to a particular religion are for some reason privileged with respect of truth, to say that other arrays of symbols and discourses can supplement them with regard to meaning is to imply that the others convey truth as well. Current experience reinforces the significance of these considerations. It is becoming increasingly clear to many that “inter-religious understanding is a form of intra-religious understanding.”15 Religious self-understanding in important respects comes about through the dialogue, or colloquy, that occurs among participants in diverse religious traditions.16 This is the case for religious development as it occurs as a primary and as a secondary cultural form. At this moment the first is at issue. Wilfred Cantwell Smith comments on this matter by saying that “once one has understood what a symbol signifies to another person, or community, then to some degree it now signifies that to one-

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self. Not immediately, as it does to them, and perhaps not actively, engagingly, yet at second remove. In some sense the meaning of the symbol to them has become the meaning of the symbol to you. . . . You may become a changed person in consequence.”17 Aelred Graham, Bede Griffiths, Thomas Merton, D. T. Suzuki, and Tich Nat Han are only five of many prominent persons who can be mentioned who, indeed in a very active and engaged way, incorporate symbolic elements of other religious traditions into their own spiritual practices for the sake of the change this brings about.18 The number of other-than-prominent individuals and groups who act in a similar way is very large. They are persons who find that the symbols of other religious traditions modify and enhance the self-understanding that makes possible their own religious practice as well as their understandings of what they take to be religious truth. That religiously involved persons, committed to the truth of their own traditions, find that the symbols of other and often very different traditions convey truth is a very concrete reason to maintain that it is possible that highly diverse bodies of symbols and discourse belonging to very different religious traditions can be truthful. I have spoken of religious symbols and the discourses that elaborate them as resources in which persons and communities can find truth, as being able to convey truth or to be truthful. I speak in this way in order to signal that “truth” in this context is neither in the first place nor primarily a matter of correctness. These symbols and discourses present truth insofar as they enable access to, or the self-disclosure of, sacred transcendence, not only by signifying the same but also by conveying a sense of the reality and presence of sacred transcendence along with an awareness of the response to that reality and presence that is demanded. The truth of the exodus story, should there be any,19 lies not in its being a correct description of the march of Israel from Egypt to Canaan, but in its capacity to bring about in a people, or in people, a consciousness of a God whose power flows from love and who has delivered liberation, and of the response that such a God requires from persons who live in a world where liberation is still needed. Should there be any such thing as religious truth, and should any set of religious symbols and discourses be truthful, then that is the case because they have the capacity to function in the lives of persons and communities in a way that is formally analogous to the one just mentioned. This also indicates what it is for religious symbols and the discourses that take them up to fail with regard to truth. The limit of this possibility is reached when religious discourse in fact functions for the sake of legitimizing and reinforcing an essentially self-oriented mundanity that asserts itself in the discourse of self-transcendence. Many other, if less extreme, versions of this possibility arise to the extent that the proper functions of religious symbols and discourse become blended with other functions that conflict with them. Because of these possibilities, any religious tradition can, at some times and places, fall away, perhaps very far away, from the truth it can otherwise convey. Reform or renewal may at any time be required. Moreover, it is at least conceptually possible that some process that has been called a religion has never really been that


because it has never really functioned to bring about a consciousness of sacred transcendence or of the response that the sacred requires in the lives of persons and communities. Such a thing would be, given the assumption that any religious truth at all is possible, a false religion. Furthermore, it is possible that religious symbols and discourses that have functioned in an intelligible, effective, and truthful way can cease to do that and also cease to be able to do that. Paul Tillich recognizes this possibility when he says that religious symbols can die.20

Religious Truth, Pluralism, and Radical Self-Transcendence I have already argued that affirming the truth that a religious discourse presents, supposing that some religious discourse does present truth, involves in part but essentially appropriating the existential praxis, the particular form of radical self-transcendence, to which the discourse in question invites those who hear it. Now one must observe that for the symbols and primary discourses of religion to be true is for those symbols and discourses to present to their hearers the possibility of radical self-transcendence. The truth of the symbolic discourses of a religion is associated with the capacity that those discourses have to bring about in the consciousness of persons and communities a sense of sacred transcendence and of the response to which the sacred calls human beings. This statement is correct, in part, because for a discourse to do the first of these things is for it to do the second as well. As already argued, a discourse can adequately convey a sense of the sacred only if it also can convey some adequate understanding of the praxis through which humans respond to the sacred in an adequate manner. In turn, if a discourse does convey to its hearers some adequate understanding of radical self-transcendence as a real possibility for them, then that discourse does genuinely communicate a sense of the reality and presence of sacred transcendence. This is because attaining a consciousness of radical self-transcendence as a real possibility is indissolubly connected with a genuine awareness of sacred transcendence. I have already presented the arguments for these claims. What follows from them at this point is that, if in some measure a body of religious discourse can present to persons and communities some adequate understanding of radical self-transcendence as a real possibility for them, then in that same measure the discourse in question conveys religious truth. More simply stated, the truth of a religious tradition or form of life is, in part but essentially, a function of its ability to communicate to its participants a consciousness of the real possibility of radical self-transcendence. There are strong reasons to maintain that highly diverse religious forms are able to convey to persons and communities just such a possibility. Those reasons are both conceptual and empirical. The conceptual basis for this claim is the necessary connection, just discussed and by now familiar, between the capacity of a religious discourse operating as a primary cultural form to genuinely convey a sense of the reality and presence of sacred transcendence and the

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ability of the same discourse to communicate the real possibility of radical selftranscendence. I have already offered reasons for saying that the first of these abilities is one that a plurality of highly diverse religious forms can possess. Those reasons support a similar claim regarding the second of these abilities. In addition, even a hasty survey of different religious traditions suggests that the ability to communicate a genuine sense of the real possibility of radical self-transcendence does, or at least can, belong to many highly diverse religious forms. The Christian injunction to love God with one’s whole heart, mind, and strength, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself, certainly proposes a sort of radical self-transcendence, especially if one interprets this to suggest that one’s love of one’s neighbor is a standard for one’s love of oneself. But of course this is not originally a Christian injunction. Its source is the Hebrew scriptures, and the notion it expresses finds many articulations in Judaism. The insistence in the Quran on love of God and submission to God’s will, along with the overriding demand for justice and charity, seems to be another expression of the notion of radical self-transcendence. For an outsider, the centrality of this notion in Islam is perhaps especially evident in the Sufi tradition. The Hindu quest for nirvana, the Buddhist search for enlightenment, and the strongly ascetic spirituality of the Jain movement all convey a substantial and nuanced understanding of the possibility of radical self-transcendence. And as Merold Westphal points out, in many polytheistic as well as monotheistic traditions, the act of sacrifice, which on one level is an endeavor to institute a contractual relation with the gods or with God that will serve human self-interest, becomes on another level a giving over of the human self.21 There are therefore strong conceptual and empirical reasons for saying that it at least can be the case that a plurality of highly diverse religious traditions and forms of life communicate the genuine possibility of radical self-transcendence. If so, then with regard to the possibility of radical self-transcendence, the members of that plurality can each convey religious truth. This does not mean that the different traditions in question all convey, with regard to radical self-transcendence, the very same truth. The concept of “radical self-transcendence,” like all concepts used to interpret an involved orientation toward sacred transcendence, does and must tolerate an immense variety of diverse instantiations. There have been and will continue to be a plurality of forms of radical self-transcendence that differ among themselves. The Christian effort at sanctification is not exactly the same as the Muslim struggle to develop, throughout the whole of one’s life, complete submission to God, and neither is exactly the same as the quest of a Zen Buddhist for enlightenment. These differences in no sense prevent a practitioner of one approach from appropriating essential elements of another, as earlier remarks would suggest. But the differences remain. Wilfred Cantwell Smith maintains that even at the level of mysticism, religious achievement comes about “through participation in those forms and patterns, channeled through that poetry and those institutions, that constitute on earth the historical process” of a particular religious


tradition.22 Thus, even at the level of mysticism, achievements differ from setting to setting. I would extend this claim to the more general practice of radical self-transcendence. If I have succeeded in my comments up to this point, then I have offered convincing reasons, appropriate to the limits and possibilities of a philosophical inquiry, for understanding and for affirming that, with regard to religious symbols and the discourses they inform and in connection with the praxis of radical self-transcendence, it is possible that highly diverse religious traditions and forms of life convey religious truth. The meaning of this position and the grounds for affirming it become further nuanced when one turns to consider the issue of religious truth and pluralism in connection with propositions.

Religious Truth, Pluralism, and Propositions I have already adequately characterized the sorts of propositions I now have in mind and have also shown that such propositions can be legitimate and necessary components of religious involvement. For the sake of this discussion, I will focus my comments chiefly on propositions that belong to religious traditions at a rather high level of generality rather than ones that have more to do with specific teachings of those religious traditions, even though the latter are certainly crucial for many devotees. Thus the central focus of my comments will not be on propositions having to do with matters like different statements about the identity of Jesus Christ that are disputed by different groups of Christians or by some who are Christian and others with another identification, or on propositions about the status of the Talmud, or about the status of deities within different branches of Buddhism, and so forth. I am more centrally concerned with very basic propositions about matters like the existence and nature of God, the relation of God to that which is the other of Godself, the connection between unity and multiplicity in the whole of reality, what, if anything, should or can be said about the goal one pursues by committing oneself to the four noble truths and the eightfold path, and so forth. Propositions such as these come about in the course of explicitly conceptual and metaphysical reflection. This reflection allows for an ongoing rational unity that stands in contrast with a plurality of diverse truth claims and makes comparison and critique possible. My concern, however, is not with the integration of diverse truth claims that might be the result of this rational process. Rather, my focus is on our ability to determine relations of consistency and inconsistency among propositions that come about in the course of conceptual reflection more evidently and exactly than is possible for religious symbols, or the discourses that elaborate them, or forms of radical self-transcendence. It can be, or at least can seem to be, quite clear that affirming one proposition requires the affirmation or denial of another. This introduces new complexities into the discussion of religious truth and pluralism. In moving this discussion forward, one needs to recognize that determining the meaning of very basic propositions about sacred transcendence and its con108


nection with human beings and the world, and thus determining the logical relations between such propositions when they differ, is very often not a simple matter. First, propositions about sacred matters are different from but not isolated from religious symbols, the discourses they inform, and modes of religious practice. Determining the meaning of propositions about sacred matters requires, in part, a consideration of their connection with these sources. This calls for an ongoing process of interpretation that goes beyond taking propositions at what may seem to be their face value. Second, as Bernard Lonergan points out, propositions about sacred matters are not only connected with primary forms of religious discourse and praxis but are also more generally dependent on the idiomatic and conceptual resources of the culture within which they emerge. For example, citing the work of Jean Daniélou, he notes that orthodox Judaic Christianity, “in its apprehension of the Christian mysteries, employed the thought-forms and stylistic genera of Spätjudentum. To conceive the Son and the Spirit as distinct persons, Judaic Christianity identified them with angels.”23 This was the available possibility, given the resources at hand. The example indicates that interpreting the meaning of propositions about sacred matters may involve not only determining what they say, but also what they are struggling to say, in the light of the larger religious tradition to which they belong. This, in turn, applies both to propositions articulated through the resources of a culture temporally or spatially removed and to propositions articulated through the resources of a culture that is more familiar or that is one’s own. Third, most if not all of those who reflect on religious claims from a religious standpoint admit, indeed insist, that human linguistic and conceptual resources always do and must fall short of adequacy with regard to sacred matters. Thus, persons claim that we cannot speak of what God is but only of what God is not, or that all predications concerning God are analogous rather than univocal, or that the one who speaks about enlightenment does not know what it is, and the one who knows what it is does not speak about it. Views such as these should, at the very least, lead one to be very deliberate rather than hasty in insisting that because of logical relations between them certain propositions about sacred matters must exclude each other. It may be the case that one is often called upon to suspend such a judgment in favor of dialogue with others whose propositional claims seem quite alien from one’s own and that such dialogue is essential for one’s own critical self-understanding. David Tracy, speaking specifically as a Christian theologian, seems to take this view. “No longer can Christian theology confine itself to Christianity alone,” he maintains. More specifically, Christian theology “cannot afford the traditional luxury of first interpreting Christianity and then quickly noticing and even more rapidly interpreting, via principles of Christian self-understanding, the ‘other religions.’ ”24 If self-understanding comes about through dialogue, then theological self-understanding requires genuine dialogue with “other religions,” one that attempts to come to grips with their genuine identities and claims. Then Christian theology, which maintains an interest in the question of the Pluralism and Religious Truth 109

truth of Christianity, needs to genuinely recognize and consider the propositional claims to truth that diverse religious traditions put forward. This, of course, extends the possibility of pluralism in religious truth to the domain of very basic propositions about sacred matters, that is, to religion now identified in terms of its manifestations on the secondary level of culture. The principle from which this extension follows can be applied to the theologies of diverse religious traditions. But at the end of the day there is still the law of the excluded middle. Some propositions about sacred matters, even when many other considerations have been made, do finally seem to exclude others. Either there are many gods or there is one God. Either something other than God stands over against God as a wholly independent reality, or God is wholly the creator of all that is other than Godself. Either sacred transcendence is to be conceived in a way for which personal terms are always basic, or sacred transcendence is to be conceived in a way that finally and fully surpasses personal terms. In cases like these, pluralism may not extend to the propositional claims with which religious truth is associated, at least not in the same way in which it extends to religious truth when that is associated with discourses informed by symbols or modes of radical selftranscendence. But even if pluralism in religious truth does not extend to any number of sets of propositional claims about sacred matters, that in no way requires that one deny the same extension to primary forms of discourse and of religious practice that belong to the religious traditions in which those claims operate. Of course, symbolically informed discourses, modes of religious praxis, and propositional claims, when all three occur, are not isolated from each other in any form of religious life. Still, the considerations that lead to the position that each of these can convey truth are independent of each other. There are many and strong reasons to affirm that the symbols and practices of a religious tradition or form of life can be truthful, even if one does not affirm the same of some or many of the propositional claims associated with them. At this point, at least two comments on the discussion of pluralism and religious truth that I have developed are in order. First, a clear implication of my comments is that the discovery of the truth conveyed by diverse religious possibilities, should there be such, needs to be the product of serious interreligious dialogue, or colloquy, in which participants aim at both understanding the “other” and self-understanding. Similar dialogue is needed for assessing a discussion of pluralism and religious truth like the one I have offered. My comments are not exactly the product of a monologue. At the same time, I am aware that the understanding of pluralism in relation to religious truth with which I work is not the only understanding available and that a larger array of distinctions than those I draw in the discussion of this issue is always possible.25 I believe that the discussion I present is well grounded. At the same time, I would think that a necessary test for any set of proposals regarding pluralism and religious truth is the implementation and consideration of those proposals in the

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course of actual interreligious dialogue. I happily acknowledge that my proposals call for assessment in that context. Second, there is a claim that can trump any and all affirmations of pluralism in religious truth. It is the theological claim that there is and thus can be only one true religion. That is because, to state the argument very baldly, one and only one religion is the outcome of divine revelation. Salvation, considered in this context to be the goal of religious praxis, is the outcome of affirming that revelation. No religious affirmation other than this is admissible or effective. If one admits this view, then all philosophical arguments in favor of pluralism in religious truth are irrelevant. Certainly, my arguments would be irrelevant. Even if one can argue that in principle highly diverse religious discourses and practices can convey truth, this claim requires that in fact only one religion is and can be true. Christian theology is at least one source for the claim just mentioned. Of course, many Christian theologians and philosophers make very strong efforts at presenting a very strong case for pluralism in religious truth. But it can at least seem that those lines of thinking do and must depart from some central elements that belong to the tradition of Christian belief, especially ones associated with Christology. I have tried to argue for an affirmative answer to the question about religious truth and pluralism in a way that has been philosophical throughout. But one is obliged to consider objections from all quarters. And simply to say that the source of a particular objection is obscurantist is itself an obscurantist move. So it is relevant that I ask if there can be an argument that acknowledges matters that seem essential to the doctrines about revelation and salvation that arguably belong to Christianity and that is also compatible with the positions I am presenting. I will present only the barest outline of what I take one such argument to be. I do this, not as a way of claiming expertise regarding strictly theological issues, but in order to present a possibility that, if it is deemed acceptable, is consistent with and offers support of a kind to other views I have presented. At the center of the argument that I will sketch are some elements of the Christology that Aquinas develops in the Summa Theologica. At the very beginning of this development, Aquinas maintains that since “the very nature of God is goodness,” and “it belongs to the essence of Goodness to communicate itself to others,” it therefore “belongs to the essence of the highest good to communicate itself in the highest manner to the creature, and this is brought about chiefly by His so joining created nature to himself that one Person is made up of these three—the Word, a soul, and flesh, as Augustine says (De Trin. xiii). Hence it was manifest that it was fitting that God should become incarnate.”26 Christ, in turn, was possessed of grace, indeed, the fullness of grace,27 “on account of the union of His soul with the Word of God. For the nearer any recipient is to an inflowing cause, the more does it partake of its influence.”28 That Christ possessed the fullness of grace is necessary for the reason just given, and on account


of the relation of Christ to the human race. “For Christ, as man, is the Mediator of God and men . . . and hence it behooved him to have grace which would overflow upon others.”29 The function of a mediator “is to join together and unite those between whom he mediates. . . . Christ alone is the perfect mediator of God and men, inasmuch as, by his death, he reconciled the human race to God.”30 More precisely, Christ as man is the mediator and the perfect mediator between God and humans. A mediator is a “mean,” something “distant from each extreme” between which it mediates and also one who “unites by communicating to one what belongs to the other.”31 It is Christ as man who possesses both these qualities. “He is distant both from God, by nature, and from man by dignity both of grace and glory. Again it belongs to Him, as man to unite men to God by communicating to men both precepts and gifts, and by offering satisfaction and prayers to God for men.”32 Aquinas requires that these statements be said of Christ exclusively. It is insufficient, from this point of view, to say that Christ represents the divine love that is the source of salvation.33 The incarnation, from this standpoint, is not only a representation of, but also and more essentially the supreme enactment of, the divine love and goodness that make possible salvation. Christ is the supreme and exclusive source, given this view, of the grace that brings about salvation. Certainly, this view can provide a basis for a theological claim that excludes the possibility of pluralism in religious truth. But that is far from the only possibility. Consider the following line of reasoning. If Christ is the supreme mediating source of the grace through which salvation is available to human beings, it is still the case that such grace needs to be made available in concrete terms to persons and communities. It might seem rather banal to suggest that this might occur through the resources of a religion. But why only one religion? Why only Christianity? After all, many factors limit the religious possibilities that are genuinely available to persons and communities. Christianity is, or may not be, a genuinely available religious possibility (1) to those who existed before Christ; (2) to those who have existed after Christ but have heard nothing or little about him; (3) to those whose given religious identification would make an identification with Christianity unimaginable; (4) to those to whom Christianity has been presented in an unintelligible, unintelligent, offputting, or repugnant form (a situation that, I fear, is far from rare); or (5) to those to whom any identification with Christianity would seem repugnant because of depredations that they have experienced or known to have been committed upon themselves or others by Christians (a situation that, I also fear, is far from rare). These are only some of many reasons why identification with Christianity might not be possible for certain persons and communities. If identification with Christianity is required for salvation, then many are excluded. It seems difficult to reconcile this with claims like those about the infinite goodness of God made by Aquinas at the very beginning of his discussion of the incarnation, and evidently before and after him in Christian literature.

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It would seem far more plausible to suppose that, given the infinite love and goodness of God enacted in the incarnation, the grace mediated to human beings by Christ in his humanity is available through the channels of any and all religions whose symbols and discourses make possible a consciousness of and an orientation toward sacred transcendence and whose practices offer the real possibility of radical self-transcendence. Nor do I intend to suggest that we are talking in such cases about disguised versions of Christianity, or that persons in such situations are affirming Christianity “really.” Aquinas says that “grace is a certain partaking of the Godhead by the rational creature.”34 The position I am mentioning says that such a partaking can be a possibility on the basis of the discursively informed practices of any religion with the characteristics just mentioned. Surely, this is a basis for holding that any such religion can convey truth. This turns the tables on the theological claim that began these considerations. According to that claim, the affirmation of a truth delivered through a specific revelation is necessary for salvation. According to the position I am mentioning, the incorporation of what in a Christian idiom one might call salvific grace, no matter what the idiom used to speak of this might be and no matter what the channels might be through which one gains access to it, is sufficient for the affirmation of religious truth. To refer to a distinction drawn earlier, this affirms that highly diverse and conflicting religions can at the very least be substantially true given that very diversity. So the position that I have mentioned as one that might be taken within Christian theology affirms the primacy of Christ, denies exclusivism to Christianity,35 and affirms pluralism in connection with religious truth. Is this position theologically acceptable? I am tempted to answer in part by saying, “it depends on which theologian you ask.” But I really am trying to support a philosophical rather than a theological claim. The philosophical claim is the complex claim about pluralism and religious truth that I have tried to put forward and defend in this chapter. The support, in this instance, comes from maintaining that a theological position that incorporates elements that seem to argue against pluralism can be framed so as to be consistent with, and in a way to buttress, the claim about pluralism that I have made. Is that position itself acceptable? I am happy to acknowledge that one cannot adjudicate this question in the light of philosophical criteria alone and to forward the question to any and all familiar with the criteria needed for that adjudication. One should note that, in my reference to groups of persons for whom identification with Christianity is not genuinely possible, I failed to mention persons for whom identification with any religious possibility is excluded by the view that there is no such thing as religious truth at all. Mentioning that would have involved moving beyond the limits of the discussion that was in play. But at this point it is a reminder that the whole discussion of religious truth and pluralism up to this point has required that one allow for the possibility that there can be religious truth in some form. I need now to turn to that assumption and to make at least some remarks about it.


The Very Possibility of Religious Truth To affirm the possibility of religious truth as such is to maintain that some religion is or can be true. In earlier comments, I noted that one way of bypassing the whole question of religious truth and pluralism is to deny this claim. I then asked what would support or entail that denial. The answer I suggested was that there is no religious truth if the concept of sacred transcendence has no application at all. At least, given my account of religion, this is the case. This of course does not mean that the application of the concept must meet our current expectations or be an application that we can recognize easily and without scrutiny. It may be the case that “sacred transcendence” applies to something very different than that which someone’s theistic (or non-theistic) expectations anticipate and that a great deal of scrutiny would be needed to determine that this application is genuine. The possibility of religious truth as such does not require this or that particular application of the concept of sacred transcendence. But it does require that something exist, or occur, or be accessible, to which the concept “sacred transcendence” can be applied. If there is nothing at all of which this can be said, then there is and can be no religious truth. While this is, on my account of matters, correct, it may, for many, be less than helpful. All well and good, one might respond, but how can we know whether there exists or occurs something that the concept of sacred transcendence in some way characterizes? I am far from believing that it is not possible to deal with this question and have tried to suggest an approach to a similar question in discussing conditions whose fulfillment legitimizes affirmations regarding sacred transcendence. But the question is difficult and will in all likelihood never cease to be an object of inquiry and dispute. It might be helpful to look further into the issue of religious truth as such and to ask if a consideration of something to which we, in some sense, have more direct access is relevant to assessing its possibility. In fact, there is an available candidate. A necessary and sufficient condition for the possibility of religious truth is the possibility of success in the task of radical self-transcendence, insofar as success includes legitimately being able to assign to that task the worth that it is supposed, from the religious standpoint, to have. Success in radical selftranscendence is possible insofar as one can productively integrate the pursuit of all relative ends, including the benefit of one’s own self, into one’s commitment to an absolute telos that stands apart from them, or insofar as one can define the relation to the absolute telos as the essential source of one’s own selfrelation. The nature of the telos that is the object of the absolute commitment is such that the very best thing one can do for oneself is to undertake radical selftranscendence by surpassing self-attachment in the pursuit of this incomparable end without regard to the benefit it conveys. If the project whose description and assessment I have just briefly presented is in fact really possible and worthy of that assessment, then there occurs something that genuinely counts as an absolute telos. But then there is something to which the concept “sacred 114


transcendence” applies, because, as I have already argued, only such a thing can legitimately present itself as an absolute telos. This shows, in an abstract way, that the possibility of success in the task of radical self-transcendence is a necessary and sufficient condition for the possibility of religious truth, that is, for a situation in which some religion can be true. More concrete considerations, however, are both needed and available. It may well seem that data relevant to considering whether or not something counts as sacred transcendence are difficult to attain. Data relevant to considering the possibility of real success in radical self-transcendence are somewhat more available. This praxis, after all, presents itself to us as an existence-possibility that we ourselves might appropriate. It is, arguably, an existence-possibility for us on account of the very structure of human subjectivity. And it is an existence-possibility that has been the object of appropriation by many. These are, among others, men and women, arguably with many different religious identifications,36 who have led recognizably holy lives. We can consider radical self-transcendence insofar as it presents itself to us as an existence-possibility, and in relation to its sources in our own human reality, and in relation to those whose lives exhibit the appropriation of this existence-possibility. In the context of these considerations, we can raise the question about the possibility of genuine success in this praxis and find data pertinent to reflection on that question. It is important at this point to be mindful that “radical self-transcendence” is being used just with reference to the understandings previously given in the discussion of that concept. The question at hand is not about the possibility of genuine success in some or other form of human self-transcendence, or even in some very far-reaching and intense form of human self-transcendence. It is precisely radical self-transcendence that is at stake. In addition, the question at hand must be distinguished from others, such as, Do some or many people desire to undertake some form of, or something that seems very much like a form of, radical self-transcendence? Are the conditions of that desire deeply rooted in the makeup of human self hood? Do some or many people believe that there can be genuine success for one who undertakes this existential praxis? It is quite possible to give an affirmative answer to all of these questions and still arrive at a negative judgment regarding the real possibility of success in radical selftranscendence. Nor does this negative judgment require one to suppose that the actions and lives of those who undertake radical self-transcendence are without worth because the task itself, strictly understood, is supposed to be one in which real success is not possible. One can quite legitimately think that the persons in question cannot succeed at what they intend to do or believe they are doing and still judge that those persons accomplish worthy or highly worthy purposes through the very actions that they undertake for an end now supposed to be unrealizable. Given a negative judgment about the possibility of real success in radical self-transcendence, however, one of course cannot think that those who pursue this possibility correctly understand what they are doing, or that their acPluralism and Religious Truth 115

tions and lives have worth for the reasons that they themselves take to be relevant to an assessment of the same. If the conditions of the possibility of real success in radical self-transcendence are not in place, then one who undertakes that practice misunderstands what he or she is doing to the extent that his or her self-understanding includes beliefs about those conditions being in place. And the actions and life of the person in question cannot have the worth that he or she supposes, because that person supposes that worth to follow from conformity to the conditions of the possibility of real success in radical selftranscendence. It is possible, for example, to suggest that the actions and life of Francis of Assisi subsequent to his conversion were of exemplary worth because they exhibited the values of simplicity, freedom, union with nature in its manifold and beautiful variety, and union with all human beings. Francis himself would have recoiled at this suggestion. He thought that he was trying, through obedience and poverty, to overcome self-attachment and thus to attain the freedom that comes about through attachment to God and to all of creation. This is what he understood himself to be doing. His own assessment of this way of life and the actions belonging to it followed from and required this understanding. It is of course possible that Francis did not understand what he was doing with his life and why it was of worth. But the suggestion should give us pause. There is at least another possibility. Perhaps Francis was in a position to understand quite well what he was doing with his life and to assess its worth. Perhaps Francis pursued his way of life with his own unique ardor because he had gained some access to what is fundamental about reality and the human self and/or because the very pursuit of that way of life brought about and enhanced that access. It may be that his experience of what I call radical selftranscendence as a real possibility, or his appropriation and enactment of that possibility, was a context that offered legitimate confirmation of his beliefs that the appropriation of this possibility is open to real success because the conditions of the possibility of that success are in place. And it may be that we, in appreciating his life or in some other way, find in ourselves some echo of the desire for or the possibility of radical self-transcendence, and some confirmation of the sense that the practice of radical self-transcendence puts us in touch with what is most fundamental about reality and most essential about ourselves. If this is so, and certainly if this persists, then this is a good reason to consider the possibility of religious truth and perhaps even to affirm that possibility. And then, if one additionally affirms the possibility of pluralism in religious truth, one might go on not only to institute or cultivate identification with a particular religious tradition but also to explore the dialogue that can exhibit religious truth in its diverse manifestations. Exploring that dialogue is connected with one’s assessment of the very possibility of religious truth as such. The point of my comments is that one way of examining that possibility is to consider it in connection with the task of radical self-transcendence. My claim is that the task whose successful pursuit can occur only if there is some religious truth also provides data whose consideration is of 116


inestimable importance in assessing the possibility of religious truth as such. If one finds that some form of the task of radical self-transcendence is productive, that is a good reason for affirming the possibility of religious truth. Of course in considering radical self-transcendence, one is not abandoning a focus on sacred transcendence. On the contrary, radical self-transcendence can be rightly understood only in connection with the absolute telos that sacred transcendence alone can and must be. As I have frequently emphasized, the concept of sacred transcendence is highly formal and general. That concept, along with the others with which it is associated, provides a conceptual horizon against the background of which one can productively consider other more specific religious concepts. A highly significant instance of this appears in a discussion of the way the key concepts I have already discussed provide a theoretical horizon for a productive philosophical consideration of the conception of God. I will now turn to that discussion.


7

Aspects of the Conception of God

Sacred transcendence, religious discourse, and radical self-transcendence, in the complexity of each and in their interrelationships, are in important respects heuristic concepts. They serve as guides for productive inquiry into religious phenomena. An important part of this service is the direction they give for inquiry into variations on the idea of sacred transcendence that one finds in different religious traditions and families of religious traditions. My discussion in this chapter will make use of these concepts for a discussion of one important specification of the concept of sacred transcendence, namely, the conception of God. This discussion will adhere to strict limits. First, I will deal only with the conception of God, rather than with grounds for affirming divine actuality. Søren Kierkegaard held that philosophy, insofar as it belongs to objective reflection, must so limit itself. In connection with this view, he also held that arguments concerning the existence of God, apart from the function of “elucidating the God-concept,”1 have no utility. I do not agree fully with Kierkegaard on this point, even though elucidating the concept of God is certainly one of the important functions of such arguments. But I am going to limit my comments to the issue he identifies. For this reason I will not give a critical discussion of arguments concerning the existence of God at all, although I will use concepts that operate in some of those arguments. A discussion of the possibilities and limits of arguments about God’s existence, and a critical consideration of some specific arguments, has great importance. I intend to undertake that discussion, but not in these pages. Second, I will deal with only two aspects of the conception of God. The first is that aspect of the conception of God that is related to the issue of divine selfmanifestation. The second has to do with the issue of relations between creatures and God and with the implications of a traditional position on that issue. These discussions belong together because each elaborates in a specific way on the idea of divine transcendence, even though each of the discussions differs in kind from the other.

Divine Self-Manifestation All theistic standpoints present the supposition that God manifests Godself to human beings. Because divine self-manifestation must be unique, it calls for reflective consideration. This, in turn, requires that one address three more specific issues. Thus I shall first turn to a further consideration of religious discourse as having, in its theistic form, the specific function of naming

God. Then I will comment on the way presence and absence imply each other in the occurrence of self-manifestation or presentation. Finally, I will comment, in the light of the discussion of presence and absence, on self-manifestation in relation to that which religious and theistic discourse names.

Discourse That Names God As already noted, religious discourse is rightly and fruitfully understood to be poetic discourse specified by the function of naming sacred transcendence or, in its theistic forms, by naming God. This discourse institutes the possibilities of addressing the one whom one names as God, encountering speech by or commissioned by the one so named, and of speaking about the God whom one addresses and whose addresses one hears. It may seem unnecessary to point out, as Ricoeur does, that the discourse that institutes these possibilities is “originary in relation to utterances of a speculative, theological, or philosophical type, such as: ‘God exists,’ ‘God is immutable and omnipotent . . . ,’ ‘God is the first cause,’ and so on.”2 In fact, the point is important and needs to be made. It follows from the recognition that philosophical reflection on the conception of God “starts from the fullness of language and of meaning already there. . . . Its first problem is not how to get started, but, from the midst of speech to recollect itself.”3 Hegel is right in saying that philosophy does not and cannot “presuppose its ob-jects as given immediately by representation,”4 that is, by various sorts of pre-philosophical thought or discourse. But it is also the case that philosophy does not fabricate or invent its subject matter all by itself. One’s philosophical considerations of the conception of God, in general and specifically with regard to the issue of divine self-manifestation, need to acknowledge the context in which speech about God first develops and to establish a properly philosophical understanding of that context. As is the case with regard to religious discourse in general, speech in which meanings associated with God “originally” come about is speech whose basic (but not exclusive) operators are symbols, which are in turn taken up and elaborated in discourses that are produced according to different formal possibilities and that interact in a variety of ways with each other. Its symbolic dimensions allow religious discourse to convey to those who participate in its processes a sense of the reality and presence of the sacred—or more specifically, the divine—and to open those participants to possible experiences and actions that respond to sacred presence. In addition, its symbolic dimensions allow religious discourse to designate a sacred reality whose immanent presence is always a correlate of its limit-surpassing transcendence. The last point is of particular importance at this moment in the discussion of discourse that names God. The God whom this discourse names is not an object among other objects, or a context that situates objects, or even a context that situates all other such contexts. God is supposed to be, to borrow again from Rudolph Otto the expression I use in connection with sacred transcendence, wholly other. God is supposed to be other than ourselves and other than anyAspects of the Conception of God 119

thing else that is in any other way other than ourselves. This means that divine transcendence is wholly other than any other form of transcendence in that it is a radicalization of any and all possibilities regarding transcendence that does or at least can have the most intense immanence as its correlate. In turn, God’s immanence and God’s self-manifestation, should divine self-manifestation be possible and should this occur, have God’s transcendence as their correlate. Immanence and presence must always be spoken of and understood in association with this correlate. These observations have an important implication for a more specific consideration of divine presence. They allow for the hypothesis that, if God can and ever does manifest Godself to us, the way in which God is present to us is different from (1) the way in which a datum or range of data is present to us, and (2) the way in which a sign that, reliably and in a generally recognizable way, signifies something other than itself is present to us. It is best to consider these claims in connection with some examples that illustrate them. I will do this by commenting on divine presence as this is supposed to be given in hierophanies and in the sorts of experiences to which Hick and Plantinga refer when they claim that some beliefs about God can be rationally legitimate or properly basic. A hierophany is simply an “act of manifestation of the sacred”; to speak of something as a hierophany is to say that it is something in which “something sacred shows itself to us.”5 That in which the sacred shows itself to us can be virtually anything at all: an object, a regular occurrence in the cycle of nature, a particular occurrence in history, a person or group of persons, or all of the structures of the cosmos when the latter is experienced as creation. Mircea Eliade emphasizes the paradoxical nature of a hierophany: “By manifesting the sacred any object becomes something else, yet it continues to remain itself, for it continues to participate in its surrounding cosmic milieu. A sacred stone remains a stone; apparently (or, more precisely, from the profane point of view), nothing distinguishes it from all other stones.”6 Most importantly, the stone remains a stone for those for whom it is a hierophany even though, for them, the thing exhibits a sacred as well as a mundane reality. Religions prominently associated with theism give the notion of hierophany or theophany a distinct twist. Eliade is one of many who note that Judaism and Christianity bring about “the transfiguration of the historical event into hierophany.”7 In this context, the historical event as such “is a total hierophany; what it presents is like an audacious effort to save the historical event in itself, by endowing it with the maximum of being.”8 To speak of saving “the historical event” as such is to suggest that the revelation that the event is supposed to convey is one that the event discloses, not by including elements that are not attributable to it on account of its historical nature, but just in virtue of the elements that belong to it because of its historical nature. It is supposed to be in and through those elements that God manifests Godself to us. The discourses that mediate the relation of persons and communities to events or persons in history that are supposed to be hierophanies have the func120


tion of displaying the disclosive or revelatory identity of those events or persons. These discourses do and must depict events or persons in a way that serves that function. Thus we hear or read of inexplicable plagues and catastrophes, pillars of cloud and fire, waters parting; of seemingly impossible healings, exorcisms, and remarkable transfigurations. The position I am presenting entails an interpretation of such matters as symbols and metaphors employed for the purpose of displaying the events and persons to which they refer as hierophanies or, more specifically, as theophanies—events or persons in and through which God manifests Godself to us. In other words, such an interpretation does not require one to suppose, in the historical unfolding of the event or the life of the person, some occurrences that, because they are unattributable to the event or person in historical terms, are either themselves appearances of God or sure signs of the presence of God in the event or person. Such an interpretation maintains that the discourses in question invite one to find that, in and through the historical actuality and integrity of the historical unfolding of the event or the life of the person, God has manifested and does manifest Godself to us. The proposal I am making for interpreting the religious discourses that are supposed to display the revelatory identity of those events and persons presented as theophanies is similar to the interpretive program that Rudolph Bultmann outlines and names “demythologizing.”9 I think that Bultmann’s position falls short in three basic respects: he fails to acknowledge the ineliminable necessity of symbolic discourse for the sake of conveying the existential meaning that he takes to be of primary religious significance; he fails, as far as I can discern, to adequately acknowledge, in events and persons supposed to be theophanies, the integrity of a dimension of revelatory significance that is the ground of the possibility of the discovery of existential significance and in that sense different from the existential significance that is discovered; and his negative position on the possibility of a metaphysical conceptualization of that of which religious discourse speaks is, I think, incorrect and ill-advised. These are not small criticisms. Nonetheless, in my estimation, my own views are in many respects very friendly to those that Bultmann presents, and it is a kind of demythologizing that I am proposing. The events that theistic traditions identify as theophanies are supposed, from the standpoints of those traditions, to be decisive occasions of divine selfmanifestation. But they are not, or at least need not be, the sole occasions of divine self-manifestation available to those who participate in those traditions. Such persons and communities can and do find that God becomes accessible and thus manifests Godself in ways that are less dramatic and not of universal significance but are still of great importance for their particular circumstances. Hick is talking about such attitudes when he speaks of an awareness of God that involves cognition in presence or by acquaintance; that is more like sense perception than propositional belief; that involves a persistent, experiential consciousness of God that is the product of an interpretive awareness of the religious as well as of the moral and natural dimensions of situations. Plantinga is talking about such an attitude when he speaks of an awareness of God that Aspects of the Conception of God 121

is non-inferential and not attained on the basis of the evidence that beliefs provide, and that comes about through being appeared to in the context of circumstances that allow my experience to ground beliefs about what is appearing to me. Consider some examples. Viewing the western horizon from my deck in the evening, I marvel at its beauty, come upon a sense of it as creation, and experience a sense of its creator. Walking up Connecticut Avenue in Washington, D.C., I come upon a homeless woman who is holding an infant and begging. My felt sense of this situation is that it is morally deplorable and that God must demand that the circumstances that allow for this poverty be essentially changed. Or, to expand on some of the possibilities that Plantinga mentions, I find that God is telling me to help bring that change about, or that God disapproves of my typical indifference, or that God nonetheless extends a forgiveness to me that makes repentance and conversion possible, or that God is to be thanked for the occasions in our lives that make change possible. These are examples of situations in which one might find oneself experiencing a sense of divine presence. But of course God is not present as an empirical element or datum along with other elements or data in these situations. Nor is there in these situations any element or datum that is a sign that anyone can see that shows that God is doing something, or calling someone to do something, or even present. There is nothing like smoke that is a recognizable and reliable sign of fire, or a stop sign that is a recognizable and reliable indicator that some action is necessary, or the gesture that indicates in a recognizable and reliable way that a baseball umpire is doing something right now, like calling a strike. Someone whose appraisal of these situations is in no way associated with God is not failing to “see” or identify some empirical element that I notice. We differ in our appraisals of the significance of these situations, but not at all necessarily in our identifications of their elements. My claim is that there is a strong analogy between the determining factors of the situations just mentioned and hierophanies as previously discussed. In the situations just mentioned someone (1) supposes him- or herself to find a sense of God’s presence or to find that God manifests Godself; (2) speaks of the situation by using discourse that names God; and (3) does not claim that any empirical element of the situation is naturally inexplicable and is either itself God appearing or a reliable sign of divine presence that is recognizably and generally available. Hierophanies or theophanies, as I have previously discussed these, are (1) historical situations in which God is supposed to decisively manifest Godself to us; (2) situations of which one speaks with language highly charged with a symbolic and metaphorical dimension; and (3) situations in which language does not require us to suppose the occurrence in these situations of some element that is identifiable as the appearance of God or a sure sign of God’s presence because it cannot be attributed to the situation in the virtue of its natural and historical identity. If all this is so, a further account of divine self-manifestation or divine presence is strongly required. There is, of course, an obvious objection to the case I have presented. Why 122


isn’t it possible that, sometimes at least, discourse about theophanies should be interpreted as saying that some of the elements that occur along with others in these situations are inexplicable unless we construe them as God appearing or as sure signs of God’s supernatural intervention? And for that matter, why isn’t it possible that some people speak of far more ordinary situations by using discourse that names God because, at least sometimes, God introduces into the data belonging to those situations elements that are themselves either God appearing to us or reliable and recognizable signs of God’s presence and action, at least for those for whom the signs are intended or for those in the know? The answer is, it is possible. I do not know how to argue that the suggestions just mentioned could in no way be possible. After all, the question under discussion is in important respects about the interpretation of religious discourse, and interpretations can on some grounds always be contested. My claim is that suggestions like these, along with the supernaturalism and notions of divine intervention from which they follow, are wildly implausible. That is because of the way they clash with conceptions of the world funded by modern and contemporary science, the common experience of the world enjoyed by many persons who live in settings enlightened by those conceptions, and the understanding of divine immanence that seems appropriate when one considers that idea as a correlate of the strongest possible notion of transcendence and in association with the conceptions and experience just mentioned. This states the case most briefly, but I think it is sufficient. If a way of interpreting religious discourse and of understanding the situations to which it refers is wildly implausible, that is more than a good reason to abandon it and to consider alternatives, especially if one can present strong reasons for accepting those alternatives on their own terms. I have presented such reasons in earlier arguments, so I will turn, now, to further discussion of the notion of divine presence associated with my position about situations in which God is supposed to manifest Godself and the discourse pertinent to those situations.

Interrelations among Presence and Absence The discussion of divine presence requires some careful consideration of, and the development of a specific understanding of the notion of, presence itself. In terms of the orientation I am adopting, which has Husserl’s work in phenomenology as one of its essential sources, presence has absence as its correlate, and absence and presence are in turn objective correlates of empty and filled intentions.10 I am looking for the glasses I have lost in my study; I find them on my writing desk. I plan to go with a friend to a baseball game on Sunday; I actually go to and enjoy the game, and on Monday I recall the game I saw. I say the words that state the conclusion of the Pythagorean theorem; I remember the proof that allows for insight into the meaning and truth of that statement. I look at a swimming pool and think about how pleasantly cool it would be to jump in on this hot day; I jump into the pool. In a filled intention, an object is present to me. An empty intention is one in which I intend the same obAspects of the Conception of God 123

ject when it is absent from rather than present to me. In empty and filled intentions directed toward a particular object, I am intending the same identity. The identity of an object, that is to say, is given “across the difference of presence and absence. The identity is not given only in the presence. When the object is absent, we intend the object itself, we intend it in its absence. When it is present, we intend the identity again, this time in its present mode and precisely as not absent.”11 Moreover, absence, in this context, is a complex concept that admits of important variations. “Some things are absent because they are future, others because they are contemporary but far away, others because they are forgotten, others because they are concealed or secret, and still others because they are beyond our comprehension and yet given to us as such; we know that this is something we do not understand.”12 Throughout these and other variations, presence and absence are understood in terms of the difference between them already specified. In the sense and to the extent that something is present, it is not absent; in the sense and to the extent that something is absent, it is not present. The sense and extent of presence and absence in all cases need to be determined by contrasting each with the other. The importance of the comments about presence and absence already made is great. Still, there is another set of comments about presence and absence that also needs to be made. It is not only the case that presence and absence stand in contrast to each other as differences across which an identity is accessible. In addition, each of these can be a determination of the other that the other, in specific versions of itself, requires in order to be itself. More specifically for my purposes, absence can be a determination of the presence of certain identities that is necessary if those identities are to be present. Numerous phenomenological analyses make evident this aspect of the association of presence and absence. I will mention three illustrative cases. First, it has become a phenomenological commonplace to note that, in visual perception, the perceived thing presents itself to us through sides and profiles or adumbrations, such that perceptual experience anticipates “multiplicities which, merging continuously into one another, join together to make up the unity of one perception in which the continuously enduring physical thing is always showing some new ‘sides’ (or else an old ‘side’ as returning) in a new series of adumbrations.”13 That is, visual perception of something always and must come about through our perceiving sides of a thing that are given in conjunction with other sides that are not given, that we do not perceive. Husserl insists that this does not mean that we perceive something other than a thingitself. It is emphatically not the case that, for perception, “the transcendence belonging to the spatial physical thing is the transcendence of something depicted or represented by a sign.”14 Perceived things present themselves integrally through sides that we perceive and that are given in conjunction with sides that form the inner horizon of our perception and that we do not perceive, that are not here and now given. Nor is this accidental or avoidable. It is a necessary feature of the presence of perceived things. In this way, that presence blends or integrates presence and absence within itself and as such stands in contrast with 124


whatever variations there may be on the ways in which the thing itself can be absent from us. One finds a second example of a kind of presence that blends absence into itself as a dimension of itself, and then also stands in contrast to absence in another sense, in considering what Husserl calls irreal objects, especially cultural objectivities. For instance, where can I go and when can I go there if I want to find the Constitution of the United States of America? One of the obvious ways in which one gains access to the Constitution is by reading it. Then one is dealing with a text, a copy of the Constitution. The copy is not the same as the thing itself. The very same Constitution is accessible through many copies. Any number of copies of the Constitution could cease to be without the Constitution ceasing to be. Still, the Constitution cannot be present to us independently of copies of it that we can read, or through such things as the institutions of the government that abide by its principles or judicial decisions that interpret it. These are all bound by the restrictions of natural time.15 The Constitution is not bound by the restrictions of natural time in the way that these things are. Thus its presence to us is always embodied in things from which it is different, even as its occurrence is a “bound ideality” that depends on such things.16 In this way the presence of the Constitution to us is always an embodied presence in things that are not the same as the Constitution itself, things from which it is different and from which it is absent. But the absence that is a necessary ingredient in the way the Constitution is present to us is not the same as the absence of the Constitution itself from us. What forms might that absence take? At least one possibility is that the Constitution would no longer be effectively occurrent in the world and present as such if the U.S. government ceased finally and irrevocably to abide by its principles. Then the copies would give us access to a political reality that we could remember but that would not be around in our world anymore. A third example that lets one determine in an evident way that absence is a requisite dimension of presence is available in the phenomenological account of one’s consciousness of some other self. If I experience you as another self, then I experience you as someone whose particular experience of the world is something that I cannot experience. That is to say, I experience you as having your own experience of the world, which experience, just because it is your own, cannot be my own. All of this is and must be inherent in my experience of you as another self. It is not that I experience you in some respect—for instance, with regard to your body—and suppose or judge that your body is a sign that you have your experience of the world just as I have mine, or that similarities between your bodily behavior and my bodily behavior suggest that you have your experience of the world just as I have mine. As Husserl puts it, “What I actually see is not a sign or a mere analogue, a depiction in any natural sense of the word; on the contrary, it is someone else. . . . in perceiving someone else, what is grasped originaliter is the body of a psyche essentially inaccessible to me, and the two are comprised in the unity of one psychophysical reality.”17 I experience you as another self by experiencing you with reference to your own Aspects of the Conception of God 125

experience as something that is inaccessible to me. This unique sense of the presence of another self to the self uniquely blends absence into presence. In turn, the absence that is an essential dimension of the presence of another self to me is quite different from the many various ways in which someone can be absent from me. There are many philosophical reasons that make it important to consider presence and absence, to privilege absence as well as presence in one’s analyses, to understand variations that can belong to these correlates insofar as they stand in contrast to one another, and to understand the ways in which specific modes of presence can blend absence into themselves as dimensions of themselves. I have paid special attention to the last of these issues because it is of particular importance for considering the issue of divine presence.

Divine Presence For the sake of the present analysis, consider two examples adapted from previous ones mentioned as being of particular and concrete rather than of more universal significance. I look at the western horizon from my deck on a particular evening, marvel at its beauty, come upon a sense of it as creation and as manifesting the creator, and give thanks. Walking up Connecticut Avenue, I see a poor, homeless woman holding an infant and begging, and I find myself thinking that no one less than God is demanding that I assist these people. I take it that in each of these situations I am gaining access to God’s presence and action, or that God is manifesting Godself to me. Once again, given the stipulations of this discussion, no empirical datum in either of these situations is one that I suppose to be an appearance of God. Nor do I suppose in either case that the whole of the situation, the context that is identical with the organization and interrelatedness of its data, is itself an appearance of God. Nor do I suppose in either case that some datum, or the situation as a whole, is like the smoke, or the stop sign, or the umpire’s gesture, a generally recognizable and reliable sign of God’s action and presence, notable as such in this case because of its otherwise inexplicable nature. So however divine presence is to be thought of in this context, it is not to be thought of as something that is encountered in the way an empirical datum is encountered, or in the way a situational context is encountered, or as the referent of signs like the ones just mentioned. At the same time I do not, or whoever one might imagine does not, think that a sense of divine presence is something one arrives at through an inference from statements whose truth an experience of the situation and undoubtedly other considerations suggest, or on account of the evidence of other beliefs one brings to or acquires in the situations. The supposition is that divine action and presence is found in the situation, given in it, and that coming upon a sense of divine presence and action in these cases needs to be understood on the analogy of, and as a kind of, finding in a situation something that is given there. An account of that supposition needs, I submit, to recognize that, in cases 126


like the examples mentioned, (1) I speak of the situation by using terms that name God; (2) the situation has an impact on me and demands something of me, for example, that I give assistance, or give thanks; and (3) I find that I can speak adequately of the source of the impact made on me and the demand made of me by and in this situation only if I speak of this situation by naming God. Nothing less will do and everything else is something less. My position is that if these conditions obtain for a person in a situation, then they make intelligible that person’s supposition that the situation gives him or her access to God’s presence and action, and that the person is well entitled to that supposition in the light of these conditions. If a situation makes an impact on and a demand of me, if I take it that the source of that impact and demand is present in the situation itself, if I can speak of the situation by referring to the source with terms that name God, and if I must speak of the situation and the source of its impact and its demand with terms that name God, then those are intelligible and quite acceptable grounds for my supposing that I find God to be present and acting in this situation. The account of theophanies that I suggest is formally analogous to the account just offered of more personal and ordinary situations that are supposed to disclose divine action and presence. A theophany is an event or person (1) of which a community speaks using discourse that is highly charged with symbolism and that names God; (2) that the community experiences as something or someone that can be spoken of, and can only be spoken of, with discourse of that sort; and (3) that the community finds to disclose the action, presence, and identity of God in a defining and decisive way. I should point out that I have been using first-person language in some of the previous remarks for a reason, and that it is emphatically not because I want to comment on the particulars of my own experience. It is rather because the issue now being discussed must be addressed and considered from a first-person and not from a third-person standpoint. One can only try to account for the intelligibility and reliability of a supposition about the presence of something to someone if one’s account proceeds from the standpoint of the “someone” who entertains the supposition. To leave this standpoint behind by confining oneself to third-person discourse is to abandon all hope of adequately addressing the issue. Having said that, there is an objection to my account of events supposed to disclose divine presence that I must discuss. The objection deals with the notion of presence that I develop and use in that account. In essence, the objection says, that notion is not a legitimate notion of presence at all. The stipulation that God’s presence is not a datum, not the context brought about by interrelated data, and not the referent of a reliable and generally recognizable sign in fact denies any divine presence in those situations. Any understanding of presence associated with those denials is unintelligible and so unlike any other notion of presence that it is unrecognizable. But then an attempt is made to affirm the possibility of divine presence in the situations in question by associating that affirmation with discourse that names God. It is, however, implausible at best to Aspects of the Conception of God 127

associate the experience of presence with uses of discourse as is done here or to link finding and naming in this way. Several comments need to be made in response to this objection. First, it should be expected that any notion of divine presence would be dramatically unlike any other notion of presence. After all, God is supposed to be wholly other. If God is supposed to be other than ourselves and other than anything else that is in any other way other than ourselves, then surely divine presence would be other than the presence of anything else to us. That does not mean that a legitimate notion of divine presence must be utterly unrecognizable in association with other notions of presence. But if it is very hard to recognize as a notion of presence, that is not necessarily a defect in the notion itself. Second, the distinctive feature of the notion of divine presence that I have presented is that it radicalizes the possibilities for absence insofar as absence blends with and becomes an intrinsic dimension of presence. This is necessary because divine presence is a possibility that belongs to immanence, and divine immanence must be understood as a correlate of divine transcendence. God’s immanence in things preserves the transcendence of God from things, and consequently the otherness of those things from God. By implication, God manifests Godself, or makes Godself accessible, in things that God is not and does so in a way that simultaneously preserves God’s transcendence from those things and the integrity of those things in their otherness from God. Thus, God’s presence to us in things, assuming that there is any such presence, is a kind of hidden presence, a self-concealing or a self-absenting presence. One as familiar with these matters as John of the Cross says that God is “a dark night to man in this life” and that any “knowledge or feeling of God” will in the last analysis “amount to very little.”18 We gain access to God through things that are not God: nature, moral demands, other human beings, a human being, our inner selves, or human words.19 God presents Godself to us and allows us to come to a sense of that presence, should this ever occur, in and through things that are not God. One speaks of presence at all here by employing more ordinary and familiar understandings of the term in an analogical manner for the sake of speaking of a “presence” that is sui generis and different from all other forms of presence. But it is hardly surprising that discourse about God that is no longer symbolic and metaphorical becomes analogical. In turn, divine presence, determined by the way it blends self-concealment or absence into itself, differs from divine absence when absence stands in contrast with presence. This absence, of course, takes different forms. It occurs when one has lost all sense of God, or if one has never had a conscious sense of God. It also occurs as a dark night of the soul, but this is a special case in that such a night is a possibility intrinsic to faith. Third, it is true that there is an essential link between “finding” divine presence and action in a situation, and speaking of that situation with terms that name God. This may seem implausible because one assumes that if I “find” something, then it must be “there” to be found, which means that I don’t have to “do” anything to find it. But that is not so. Even if I find my glasses when I 128


didn’t know I didn’t have them, that is not because they just step up in front of me. I have to do something to find them, such as walk into the room where they are or turn my eyes toward them. Moreover, there is often an intelligible association between finding and articulation or naming. I “find” that someone could be a brilliant teacher but always lets his defenses get in the way when I become able to say that and then do say that. I find that I am in love with someone in saying that to myself. It is saying that lets me move from vague feelings of dissatisfaction and frustration, or of attraction mixed with anxiety, into the clearer focus of discovery. The link between speaking of a situation with terms that name God and finding divine presence in that situation is uniquely strong. But that is not surprising, given the unique character of the presence one purports to find. Finally, coming upon a sense of divine presence and action in a situation of which one speaks through terms that name God is usually not an isolated occurrence. It is more typically an occurrence within some ongoing practice of radical self-transcendence. The practice makes the occurrence intelligible for those who experience it and should be a frame of reference for those who reflect on the occurrence. And of course radical self-transcendence, as already discussed, is itself a more enduring way of finding divine presence and action in the situation of one’s own existence.

God the Creator; Relations of Creatures to God The idea of divine transcendence is, I would argue, the condition that ultimately makes the understanding of divine presence that I have sketched both possible and intelligible. In turn, that idea itself calls for reflection and conceptualization. I want to suggest one possible approach to that conceptualization. It involves a more specific understanding of God as creator, and a position on the implications of the understanding for the issue of relations between creatures and God. Discourse about God as creator belongs universally and centrally to all monotheistic religious traditions. The idea of an ultimate principle of the existence of all that is other than itself is an abstract conceptualization of the understanding of God that this discourse suggests. Aquinas will be my resource throughout this discussion of God as creator.20 His work, of course, antedates phenomenology. But I will try to show in the course of this discussion that phenomenological analysis discloses an understanding of sacred transcendence that is open to metaphysical conceptualization and that on its own terms calls for this. If so, then this analysis on its own terms indicates the possibility of a phenomenological appropriation of the sort of metaphysical thinking that Aquinas represents. Aquinas maintains that one can show through a demonstration that the ultimate principle of the existence of things that can not-be, contingent or “possible” beings, must be something that, just on account of itself alone, cannot not-be, something that is of itself a necessary being.21 While the question about Aspects of the Conception of God 129

possibility of such a demonstration is beyond the limits of the present discussion, Aquinas’s claim at least presents an extension and refinement of the conceptualization of the understanding of God as creator just mentioned. Further refinements follow. Since the ultimate principle of everything “possible” or contingent must be something that in and of itself is and cannot notbe, nothing other than itself can be a principle of its being. It must be, one might say, wholly self-determining with respect to its actuality. Two consequences follow from this. First, the connection, as it were, between God and the divine nature is different from the connection between Socrates and the human nature that determines him as an individual human being, or Fido and the specific animal nature that determines him as a dog. Each of these individuals is determined by a nature with which it is not completely identical. Being Socrates is not the very same thing as being human, otherwise Xantippe could not also be human. Being Fido is not the very same thing as being a dog, otherwise Spot could not also be a dog. But the ultimate principle of all possible beings cannot be determined by anything that is at all other than itself. So God is completely identical with the divine nature. Or, as Aquinas puts it, “God is his essence.”22 Second, the nature or essence of God is identical with God’s very being. Aquinas offers a number of arguments for this claim in the Summa Contra Gentiles and the Summa Theologiae.23 One of the arguments in the latter is particularly striking. There he says, “anything on fire is either itself fire or has caught fire. Similarly, anything that exists either is itself existence [est esse] or partakes of it. Now God, as we have seen, exists. If then he is not himself existence and not by nature his existence [non sit suum esse], he will only be a partaker of existence. And so he will not be the primary existent. God therefore is not only his own essence but also his own existence.”24 Or, one might say, “to be” names the very essence or nature of God.25 Thus, God is the ultimate principle of the existence of all contingent or possible beings insofar as God is wholly identical with God’s own nature and it is the very nature of God to be. Insofar as one can consider these claims to be separable from each other, an interesting implication follows from each. Because God is wholly identical with God’s nature, divine nature is not, as it were, communicable to more than one individual. Socrates is not wholly identical with human nature, and therefore human nature is communicable to Xantippe as well as to Socrates. There are and can be many human beings, dogs, and so forth. But there can be only one God.26 This means that there can be only one ultimate principle of the existence of everything that requires such a principle, and that everything other than God does require such a principle. So God is the ultimate principle of the existence of all that is other than Godself. Moreover, the preceding remarks entail, as Aquinas notes, that “God, therefore, who is his being . . . has being according to the whole power of being itself. Hence, He cannot lack any excellence that belongs to any given thing.”27 This is because “a thing is said to be more or less excellent according as its being is limited to a greater or lesser mode of excellence.”28 God’s being is not received in any nature that is other than itself and that limits it. Since God is God’s “own subsistent 130


being,” God is in and of God’s own self “infinite and perfect.”29 Thus, God cannot lack any excellence. Every possible excellence must actually be attributed to God just because God “has being according to the whole power of being itself.” Put otherwise, every possible excellence must be attributed to God just on account of God’s own self and not on account of anything else. The preceding comments already contribute significantly to a conceptualization of divine transcendence. God stands in contrast with and beyond all else insofar as God alone is a necessary being that has its necessity of itself, is the sole, ultimate principle of the being of all that is other than Godself, and is the one to whom all possible excellences must be attributed on account of nothing other than Godself alone. The understanding of divine transcendence that these statements promote is extended by the position these statements require concerning the issue of relations between creatures and God. Aquinas addresses this issue in his discussion of the meaning and legitimacy of statements that predicate terms of God that designate relations between God and creatures. There are, he maintains, a number of reasons on account of which it is legitimate to predicate of God relative terms, that is, terms that name or entail the idea of a relation between God and creatures.30 It is necessary, however, to carefully determine the significance of those predications. An important part of this determination, in turn, is the assertion that the predications in question cannot signify real relations between God and creatures. This is because, “as Aristotle says in the Categories, relative terms are those ‘which in their very being refer to something else’; so that God’s substance would then have to be referred to something else [oporteret quod Dei substantia, hoc ipsum quod ad aliud diceretur]. But that which is essentially referred to another depends on it in a certain way, since it can neither be nor be understood without it.”31 As Aquinas understands these matters, if a real relation obtains between X and Y in some respect, then X can be in that respect, and be understood in that respect, only with reference to, or in connection with, Y. There is a real relation between a father and his children. I can be a father, and be understood as a father, only if one can refer to those who are my children. Should it not be at all possible to refer to any individuals who are my children because I don’t have any, then it is not possible for me to be a father or to be understood as one. But it is not possible for God to require a connection with anything other than Godself in order to be God or to be understood as God. God possesses limitless actuality and perfection, the infinite fullness of being and perfection, just on account of Godself alone. God is unqualifiedly and entirely self-determining in that there is nothing that God requires other than Godself in order to have any determination that God has. If so, then there cannot be anything apart from God without which God can neither be nor be understood. But then there are no real relations between God and creatures. It sometimes seems that one needs only to hear or read the words that express the position just presented in order to find it objectionable. And of course many objections to this position are not at all hasty, but measured and deeply thoughtful. I submit, however, that it really is necessary to examine this posiAspects of the Conception of God 131

tion with great care in order to see what it in fact denies, what it in fact affirms, and the contribution it makes to a conception of divine transcendence. The most basic condition of the possibility of predicating of God terms that name relations between God and creatures, on the account that Aquinas develops, are the real relations that do obtain between creatures and God.32 For example, because of the real relation of subjection that obtains between God and creatures, it is right to call God “Lord.”33 The nature of the real relation between creatures and God, however, requires a special analysis, and that, in turn, has implications regarding what is to be said concerning God and creatures. Ordinarily, real relations do and can obtain between individuals only if those individuals are also independent of one another in identity and being. For example, Mary is Jessica’s mother, and Jessica is Mary’s daughter. Each enjoys a real relation with the other, and I do not mean that in a psychological sense. Mary can be a mother and can be understood to be a mother only with reference to Jessica (or to Rachel, who is her only other child). Jessica can be and be understood to be a daughter only with reference to Mary, the only biological mother she has. But of course each of these individuals subsists and has an identity independently of the other. They could not be really related to one another as individuals if this were not the case. In the present context, a situation of a real relation between two terms, X and Y, one of which, Y, is in its identity and being wholly included in its relation to X, would not be a real relation between individuals. It would be more like a relation between an accident and a substance than a relation between two individuals. But something else must be said of the relation between any creature and God. God is the ultimate principle of the being of all that is other than Godself, and as such, the principle or cause of “all that belongs to their being at all in any way.”34 Moreover, creation, the name used for divine action insofar as we consider God as the ultimate principle of the being of all that is other than Godself, is not the same as causing a change in something, and not even the same as causing something to come into being. In virtue of creation, God is responsible for the entire being of anything other than God that there is.35 Furthermore, in that which is created, creation itself is “a certain relation to the Creator as the principle of its being”;36 the being that any created thing enjoys and exercises is enjoyed and exercised by that thing in the context of its relation to God. No part, or aspect, or dimension of the being of anything other than God is possible or intelligible outside of the context of the relation of that thing to God. So one must understand real relations between creatures and God very differently than real relations between different finite individuals. In the latter case, the individuals in question must possess their identity and being independently of the relations that obtain between them. In the former case, it is not possible that creatures possess any being or identity at all outside of the relations that they have as creatures to God. Nor does this deny genuine individuality and subsistence to creatures. Because God exercises and is the whole power of being and can be for that reason the first principle of nothing less that the being of whatever is other than God, God can bring about things other than 132


Godself out of nothing at all and can bring about things that exercise individual subsistence in the only way that is possible for them, namely, in a situation wholly encompassed by their relation to this first principle. These comments about the nature of real relations between creatures and God need to be joined with additional comments about God and creatures. One writer who is sympathetic to Aquinas’s views remarks that God is the source of being “in so exclusive a sense that the communication of finite actuality demands his immediate presence; a non-mediated presence, it might be noted, not merely of his power but of his very self.”37 In his own idiom, Aquinas concurs. He observes that “an agent must be joined to that wherein it acts immediately.”38 Because God’s very nature is “to be,” God is the agent cause of created things most properly with respect to the being of those things. This is the case for as long as those things remain in being.39 “But being is innermost in each thing and most fundamentally inherent in all things. . . . Hence it must be that God is in all things, and innermostly.”40 Aquinas summarizes his view by saying that “God is in all things by His power, inasmuch as all things are subject to his power; He is by his presence in all things, as all things are bare and open to His eyes; He is in all things by His essence, inasmuch as he is present to all as the cause of their being.”41 These statements are not important just because Aquinas presents them. They are important because of their coherent place in the whole position to which they belong. For my purposes, it is most important to note that the reason that requires the most intimate presence of God in and to creatures is the very same reason that requires a denial of real relations of God to creatures. It may seem that I am claiming coherence for a position that I have just indicated as being manifestly incoherent, but that is not the case. One understands that by determining just what this denial of real relations signifies in the context of the larger position to which it belongs. The very substance of the Godhead is most intimately present in creatures inasmuch as God is the first principle and cause of their very being. At the same time, it cannot be the case that God requires any connection with creatures in order to be or to be understood. Both of these propositions follow from the assertion that divine existence exhausts and exercises the whole power of being and is identical with the very nature of God. Because God exists in a way that exercises and exhausts the whole power of being, divine existence and perfection are necessarily intelligible with reference to Godself alone. God exists and is all that God is on account of Godself alone, and thus not in a way that requires a connection to anything else. God may be said to be, once again, wholly self-determining with reference to divine existence and excellence. At the same time, since it is God’s very nature to be, God has the being of creatures as God’s most proper effect.42 This, in turn, accounts for the most intimate presence of God in and to creatures. The position I have been discussing asks us to understand that both of these positions follow from that same assertion and therefore asks us to think of them together in what one might call a dialectical unity. That means, of course, that the denial of real relations of God to creatures does not in any sense suggest that God is Aspects of the Conception of God 133

uninvolved with, remote from, or removed from creatures or from the world. It means that God is utterly and unqualifiedly self-determining in the context of the most intimate presence of God in and to creatures.43 We really do need terms that ordinarily signify real relations in order to talk about all of this, even though those significations in the last analysis fall short. Thus at least some who talk about God say things like “God is our Lord,” or “God is our Father.” Of course, these terms refer in the first place to people in the world who have servants, or who are male and have children. The relations among all of these people are real relations, given the meaning of that expression in this context. These relations also are, or at least can be, compelling and intimate for those who enjoy them. Creatures are related to God such that God is present in and to them in a way that is compelling and intimate. Terms that signify real relations in their more ordinary uses are the best terms that we have to suggest both those relations and that presence. In using such terms to speak of God, one just has to make the adjustments that are necessary in order to avoid the supposition that God in any way requires a connection with creatures in order to be or to be understood, the supposition that God is anything other than unqualifiedly self-determining. But as long as one makes that adjustment while using the terms in question, they are just the ones that point understanding in the right direction. They allow for the kind of analogical predications that are fruitful and necessary for discourse that has to do with God.44 This whole set of considerations began with the observation that the idea of divine transcendence stands in need of critical reflection and conceptualization. I now submit that the position about relations between creatures and God, in the context of the larger account to which it belongs, offers a productive and very powerful conceptualization of divine transcendence. It certainly offers a conception of divine transcendence that has immanence as its correlate and a very powerful notion of imminence as well. God, in God’s substance or essence, is most intimately present in creatures as the first principle of their very being. At the same time, in the context of that presence, God also stands beyond that presence inasmuch as God is unqualifiedly self-determining and requires connection with nothing other than Godself in order to be and to be all that God infinitely is. This seems to me at least to be a very strong notion of immanence, a very strong notion of transcendence, and a very strong conjunction of the two. One aspect of the significance of the position on relations of God to creatures that Aquinas suggests and that I have taken up and sketched appears in the role it plays in this very powerful contrast and conjunction of the notions of divine immanence and transcendence. There is also, however, an existential significance belonging to that position that deserves comment. I have already argued that it is legitimate and necessary for reflective and conceptual inquiry into questions that arise about sacred transcendence, or more specifically about God, to set aside concern for the existential significance that must belong to fully adequate discourse that has to do with the sacred or with God. The concerns motivating the most recent discus-

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sion have required an expressly metaphysical conceptuality. One does not deal with those issues by, in the first place, addressing their existential import. This is very obvious if one is dealing with a question like, Should one affirm or deny real relations between God and creatures? To deal with this question, one needs to determine what the affirmation or the denial would signify, what principles are relevant to a consideration of that affirmation or denial, what those principles require, the larger context of interrelated positions to which the affirmation or denial would belong, and so forth. Raising questions about existential import would not help in attempts to deal with these sorts of matters. But that does not mean that metaphysical considerations like the ones recently discussed must fail to have existential import or that one must forever set that import aside. In the present context it would be foolish to do that. It would also be an intellectual failure. Religious discourse associated with God of course has existential significance. If metaphysical reflection leads to a conception of God that is empty of existential significance or that has a significance that opposes the existential significance that more originary religious discourse conveys, that is more than a good reason to raise critical questions about that conception. One often finds these criticisms directed at the position that denies that there are real relations in God to creatures. But I want now to suggest that those criticisms are misguided. The account that includes in itself the position denying real relations in God to creatures, and thus the position itself, presents an existential understanding that is on its own terms impressive and that is most productively related to the significance belonging to religious discourse in more originary terms. It is an understanding that reinterprets and maximizes the concept of radical self-transcendence. Consider once again what has already been said about the relations that obtain between creatures and God. The subsistence of created things is encompassed wholly and entirely within the relationship that those things have to God; it is inconceivable, on these terms, that any being at all might belong to a created thing inasmuch as that thing were supposed to stand in any way at all outside of its relation to God. But now suppose that we are discussing, not creatures in general, but human creatures. Human beings, let us say, are capable of free self-becoming. As is the case with all creatures, the ontological self-relation of a human being, a human being’s existence, wholly occurs within the context of, and in that sense genuinely follows from, one’s relation to God. It is of course impossible, given the present context of understandings, for any human being to as it were step outside of this relationship. But it is possible, given human freedom, for one to turn away from or against that relationship from within. In that sense one is turning away from or against an unsurpassable ultimacy and relationship that is the ground and context of one’s very self-related existence. To do this is to introduce a condition of privation into the being of the self by turning the being of the self away from the context and ground that it nonetheless always requires and can never escape. One is improperly and privatively related to one’s own being insofar as one is turned against or away from

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the ground and context that one’s own being inescapably requires. This is a very basic way of talking about the estrangement of human beings from the divine as well as the consequence of estrangement. That estrangement, again given the present context, needs to be overcome. This must involve turning back to, or allowing oneself to be turned back to,45 an authentic orientation toward the principle that grounds, and the relationship that wholly contextualizes, one’s own existence. To do this is to acknowledge the primacy of one’s relation to that principle when that relation is considered in connection to one’s own relation to one’s very own being. It is to acknowledge that one’s relation to another is in the most profound and fundamental way the source of one’s relation to oneself. The other in question is something one seeks. It is a telos. Since it is alone the ground of one’s very existence, and since no aspect of one’s existence is conceivable were one supposed to in any way really stand outside of one’s connection to this sole, ultimate ground, it is the absolute telos. All of one’s other pursuits need to be integrated into the pursuit of this telos because the being of the self is impossible outside of the relation to this telos and therefore any aspect of the life of the self that is not integrated into the relation to this telos is reduced to a condition of privation. At the same time, this telos stands in contrast with and relativizes all other ends. It stands apart from all that is other than itself, and its pursuit stands apart from all other pursuits, just because this telos, God, possesses and exercises the whole power and perfection of being just on account of itself alone and not in virtue of its connection with anything other than itself. This is the case even as this telos is most intimately present to oneself, in that it is from and in the context of one’s relation to this telos that one’s very being derives and occurs. To pursue this telos is to pursue the best thing that there is and can be, something uniquely possessed of a goodness greater than any that can be conceived by us. Thus the proper response to this telos is unqualified love. The fruit of this love is its capacity to overcome and heal the privation that comes about most deeply in the being of the self insofar as one turns oneself away from or against the relationship to God. These remarks show, I hope, how it is possible to restate the concept of radical self-transcendence in the context of the conception of divine transcendence that comes about insofar as the position that denies real relations in God to creatures is inherent in the larger account of relations that obtain between creatures and God. But it is not only a restatement of the concept of radical self-transcendence that this account makes possible. The restatement is in fact, if I may speak in this way, a radicalization of the concept of radical self-transcendence. That is because the restatement offers what one might call a metaphysical hermeneutic of that concept, an interpretation of that concept through terms that express basic determinations of being.46 One does not show the validity of metaphysical concepts and affirmations by exhibiting them as ingredients of an interpretation of this sort. The process of showing the validity of those concepts and claims needs to be done in an independent way. But if one allows that this has been done or can be done, then using them in an inter136


pretation of this sort allows one to present dimensions of meaning that belong to them that would otherwise go unrecognized. In turn, employing terms and claims like these in a consideration of something like radical self-transcendence lets one probe the meaning of concepts in ways otherwise unavailable. In the present case, it allows one to discuss radical self-transcendence as the pursuit of an absolute telos whose transcendence from and presence to the self is precisely conceived. And it allows one to discuss with an incisiveness otherwise not available the claim that radical self-transcendence involves pursuing a relation to another as something prior to one’s own self-relation and as that from which self-relation derives. It gives otherwise unavailable conceptual significance to the claim that, in the praxis of radical self-transcendence, one pursues selfactualization just insofar as this comes about through actualizing or perfecting a relationship to something incomparably other than oneself. This chapter has presented two different but interrelated discussions of the conception of God, examined in relation to the idea of divine transcendence. In the first discussion I considered the issue of divine presence or selfmanifestation insofar as an understanding of divine self-manifestation requires an insistence on divine transcendence. In the second discussion I treated the idea of divine transcendence as standing in need of reflection and conceptualization. Using resources that Aquinas provides, I tried to present a conception of divine transcendence that is, I maintain, productive and highly plausible, even though it is often criticized and even though one of its central claims is commonly misunderstood. The concepts that I developed in earlier chapters and that belong to the more general theory of religion have been operating throughout the discussions in this chapter. The discussion of divine presence or self-manifestation in relation to God’s transcendence makes constant use of earlier concepts and claims associated with the notion of sacred transcendence and with the account of religious discourse already presented. The discussion of the express conception of divine transcendence concludes, of course, by returning to the concept of radical self-transcendence. These discussions present a metaphysical conceptualization of understandings already disclosed through phenomenological analysis. They therefore indicate the openness of phenomenological analysis to a metaphysical conceptualization of understandings that phenomenology discloses and the possibility that such conceptualization attains purposes that are warranted, necessary, and otherwise unattained. In doing this, these discussions show some possible ways in which inquiry might proceed in the light of the basic concepts that I have presented and the theory in which those concepts are inherent. My concluding remarks will involve additional discussion of lines of inquiry that might proceed in the light of those concepts and of an issue suggested by the theory of religion that I have presented.

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8

The Theory of Religion and Religious Inquiry

The essential thesis that I have been presenting and supporting throughout this book is that religion is best understood as an involvement with sacred transcendence, an involvement that in turn takes the form of a discursively mediated praxis of radical self-transcendence. Earlier chapters elaborate on and interrelate these basic concepts, discuss the ways in which they are supposed to convey truth about religion, examine the issue of religious truth, and use these concepts as guides in examining aspects of the conception of God. The theory to which these concepts belong is a response to a question: How should one understand religion with respect to its distinctiveness and with respect to the necessities that belong to it? That is, what is it about religion that allows this human enterprise to differentiate itself from other human enterprises and also to relate itself to those enterprises in the particular ways in which it does and can? What are the determinations of the very possibility of a religious orientation to reality, such that, to the extent that those determinations are diminished, the quality of religion is diminished, with the implication that their complete absence coincides with the complete absence of religion itself ? These, of course, are not the only questions that we human beings need to ask as we press ahead in the study of religion. Philosophical questions are not the only sorts of questions that we need to ask, and these are not the only philosophical questions that we need to ask about religion. Other questions will bring about other responses. Other responses, supposing their legitimacy, will allow for conceptual integrations that yield rich and productive understandings. Pluralism needs to be acknowledged and roundly endorsed in the study of religion just as, if my arguments are correct, it needs to be acknowledged and endorsed in relation to religious truth. Still, the questions to which I have been responding are some of the philosophical questions about religion that regularly need to be asked, and they address concerns that are very basic. One would therefore expect that responses to those questions, the concepts that are formulated in those responses, and the theory that interrelates those concepts would play continuing and central roles in, or in relation to, further conceptual integrations that come about as the study of religion develops. In the light of that expectation, my concluding remarks will address some of the roles that the concepts I have proposed might play in the larger compass of the study of religion. I will comment on the generally heuristic nature of these concepts, say something more about their relation to inquiry concerning the conception of God, and discuss their relation to

reflection on religion that is specifically ethical. Finally, I will discuss the question of religion as a possibility for human existence in the light of the theory to which those concepts belong.

The Heuristic Nature of the Theoretical Concepts As previously indicated, heuristic concepts are concepts that guide inquiry. They operate in questions as anticipations of the sorts of answers that will satisfy the inquiry that follows from those questions.1 To take a simple example, in the equation 2x+8=20, “x” is a heuristic term in that through it I know that the solution to the equation, whatever it is, will be some number. The questions I have been asking in this book can be reduced to a simplified form by asking, “What is the nature of religion?” In this simplification, “nature” is a heuristic concept. It anticipates an answer that will deliver an understanding of religion in its distinctiveness and with respect to necessities, given the meanings for those terms specified above. The study of religion deals in important respects with particular religious traditions and forms of life. Students of religion aim at understanding matters like Protestant Christianity, Korean Buddhism, or the religious life of indigenous peoples in the Southwestern United States or the Kalahari Desert. It is very clear that any inquiry in the study of religion is open to a great many subdivisions and can be undertaken for a wide variety of purposes. Still, it seems fair to say that a proper, central, and enduring aim of the study of religion is an understanding of whatever religious tradition or form of life into which one is inquiring in terms of its distinctiveness as a religion. If that is one’s aim, then it would seem that such an inquiry should address the sense of sacred transcendence that belongs to the religious tradition or form of life that one is examining, the symbolically informed discourses and other modes of expression that are in various ways associated with that sense of sacred transcendence, and the various ways in which participants practice something like radical selftranscendence. That is to say, the basic concepts in the theory of religion that I have presented serve as heuristic concepts for inquiry in the study of religion when that inquiry has the aim now under consideration.2 At this moment two points are of chief importance. First, the aim just mentioned need not be and often is not the aim of some particular inquiry in the study of religion. It is perfectly legitimate, for example, for an inquiry to centrally aim at understanding the role that a cluster of religious institutions play in the socialization of some particular group at some particular time and place. Again, it is perfectly legitimate for an inquiry to centrally aim at understanding the changes that occurred in the structures and interrelations of those institutions over a specified period of time. More generally, there are good reasons “to link the study of religions with an appreciation of their intrinsic connection to configurations of power.”3 In any of these cases, the concerns that guide one’s inquiry and the theory that is the source of those concerns will lead to different questions and different heuristic anticipations than those having to do with deThe Theory of Religion and Religious Inquiry 139

terminate senses of sacred transcendence and forms of religious discourse and religious practice. Attention cannot turn entirely away from these matters. That cannot happen as long as inquiry has in any sense to do with religion at all. But inquiry will not have as its defining purpose securing understandings that have directly to do with these matters. Second, however, it is not the case that the concepts of sacred transcendence, religious discourse, and religious practice are just some of the many concepts that can play a heuristic role in the study of religion. Among those concepts, these three hold a special place. They direct inquiry toward understandings through which one appreciates a religious tradition or form of life in its distinctiveness as a religion. This is not the only aim one might have in the study of religion or the only important aim. But it is important to distinguish the aim of understanding religion in this way from other aims, no matter how laudable those others might be, just as it is important to distinguish between knowing a person and knowing a person’s anatomy. No one should doubt that the study of anatomy is important. In certain contexts—surgical ones, for instance—it is more important for some people to know a person’s anatomy than it is for them to know the person. But we still do and should acknowledge the difference between the two sorts of knowledge and the significance of the difference. In a similar way, just as there are good and pressing reasons to inquire about persons in ways that aim at something other than understanding them in their distinctiveness as persons, there are good reasons to inquire about religions in ways that aim at something other than understanding them in their distinctiveness as religions. But it is still important to distinguish among these different sorts of understandings and not to confuse their outcomes. In the case of persons, we make the distinction readily on the basis of common experience. In the case of religions, given their dizzying variety and dissimilarity, matters are more difficult. My proposal, of course, is that one understands the religious distinctiveness of a religious tradition or form of life through the understandings of the sense of sacred transcendence and the forms of religious discourse and practice that critical inquiry into those traditions or forms of life can attain. If so, then the concepts of these matters play a heuristic role of particular importance in the study of religion and illumine a distinction between different ways in which religious matters can be understood that is of special significance. I do not mean my previous examples to suggest that the study of religions in connection with social, or cultural, or political functions delivers important understandings but does not address those religions in the distinctiveness as religions, with the consequence that one understands religious distinctiveness in connection with private processes rather than public functions. In fact, I want to strongly deny this consequence. The senses of sacred transcendence that belong to religious communities have a typical public dimension. The discourse traditions of different religious communities commonly address social and political questions. Radical self-transcendence can and does take the form of social and political engagement.4 Religious involvement in its integrity re140


sists being reduced to the domain of private and intimate experience.5 One needs to understand distinctive modes of religious involvement in relation to their public demands and manifestations and in relation to the dimensions of inwardness whose cultivation they promote. I also want to mention one particular reason for saying that an understanding of religious traditions and forms of life in their distinctiveness as religions has a privileged importance. It is not just that this gives us unique access to the self-understandings of participants in those traditions and forms of life, although this is the case. It is also that this understanding allows us to appreciate particular realizations of a possibility whose conditions belong to human existence as such and therefore something that is a possibility for us. The specific realizations may seem mysteriously alien and remote. The possibility as such, religious involvement in any form at all, may seem something that we would never want to pursue. Still, the possibility of religious involvement resides at the roots of the condition of human existence. I will discuss the way in which this claim should be understood and the implications that it has in the conclusion of this chapter.

The Theoretical Concepts and Reflection about God For religious traditions that are theistic, reflective self-understanding follows most centrally from a critical articulation of the conception of God that belongs to those traditions. Religious discourse, in these contexts, has its specificity precisely through its function of naming God. The discourse traditions that belong to these contexts serve the purpose of preserving and transmitting, in geographical and historical terms, speech that is supposed to be addressed to, spoken by, and spoken about God, and of allowing for the development of that speech. Any and all forms of religious praxis in these contexts aim at a self-surpassing relationship with God and with divine creation. The self-understanding of persons and groups with a theistic context most basically requires a consideration of the understanding of God, and thus of the relation of the world and of human beings to God, that belongs to that context. For inquiry that approaches such a context from an external standpoint or an academic standpoint and that aims at understanding that context in its religious distinctiveness, the requirement is the same. Four methodological proposals regarding critical articulations of the conception of God follow from the theory of religion that I have presented. They apply equally to religious considerations that aim at reflective self-understanding and to academic and other sorts of inquiry whose object is, in the first instance at least, that of understanding the sense of a theistic tradition on its own terms. First, to state in other words a position already attributed to Paul Ricoeur, it is overwhelmingly evident that understandings of God do not make their original appearance in discourses that are expressly theoretical. Those understandings originally develop in the setting of what are supposed to be transactions between human beings and God. Their first articulation, therefore, ocThe Theory of Religion and Religious Inquiry 141

curs in the discourses that operate in those transactions. Those discourses are the only discourses that, if I may borrow and adapt terminology from Heidegger, clear a space in which it is in the first place possible for God to come into view, that is to say, for words having to do with God to be uttered. It is therefore necessary that reflection dealing with the conception of God turn to those discourses in theistic traditions in which understandings of God find their original articulation. This, in turn, requires that one carefully determine the formal characteristics that belong in general to religious discourse that concerns God as well as the literary genres that operate, combine, clash, and compromise as theistic discourse traditions develop. Doing this can be particularly challenging for one engaged in philosophical inquiry. Philosophical reflection and discourse must be expressly and critically conceptual. The requirement that conceptual meaning play the governing role in philosophy can itself be a barrier to philosophical receptivity in relation to domains of meaning that are symbolic, poetic, and metaphoric as contrasted with conceptual. Kenneth Schmitz maintains that a philosophical inquiry that adequately comes to terms with religion “will have transformed its expectancy for meaning.”6 One will have found within conceptual reflection and discourse the basis for acknowledging the intelligibility and authenticity of domains of meaning that precede or exceed the conceptual domain. To put the point very differently, a philosopher need not be, and as philosopher must not be, a poet or a prophet. But if one does not have the resources to understand in philosophical terms what poets and prophets are doing, then the possibility of success in philosophy of religion is foreclosed.7 Second, critical consideration of the conception of God needs to pay attention not only to the religious discourses in which understandings of God originate but also to the religious practices in which those discourses operate and through which believers respond to the invitations and demands that, as they suppose, God presents to them. As I have already argued, religious discourse and religious practice are both intimately and necessarily linked with one another and also different from each other. Just as religious discourse, in a theistic context, has its specificity in the function of naming God, religious practice in the same context has its specificity in being directed toward God as its ultimate telos. Critical reflection on the conception of God needs to take account of the practice that most originally has God as its telos, just as it needs to take account of the discourse that most originally names God. Flannery O’Connor once described a person who, in a letter to a friend, “asked him how he could possibly learn to believe, expecting, I suppose, a metaphysical answer. [His friend] only said, ‘Give alms.’ ”8 O’Connor realizes that a sense of the contrast between the human world and God, and in that setting of the nature and reality of the divine, “is first brought forward in life and activity,”9 and thus as well in the discourse that informs and guides that activity. It is no longer unusual to suggest that critical consideration of the conception of God needs to begin in, and never wholly detach itself from, a hermeneutic of the discourse that belongs in an original way to religious involvement. It is less usual to suggest that 142


such a consideration needs also to begin in an attempt to understand the praxis that belongs in an original way to religious involvement. But the process of reflecting on the idea of God is truncated and incomplete if one takes account of the discourse that originally names God and at the same time fails to take account of the praxis that originally discloses God as the absolute telos. Third, I have already discussed the conditions due to which strictly conceptual and metaphysical or speculative questions and considerations concerning God and sacred transcendence arise. I have presented reasons for holding that those considerations are legitimate and necessary even though they set to one side the dimensions of symbolic meaning and existential significance that belong to properly religious discourse. Even though strictly conceptual reflection must depart from those dimensions of religious discourse, the questions about the world and God that lead in a theistic context to that reflection arise on account of what religious discourse in a more originary sense does convey. This makes it possible for a body of concepts to stand as a “metaphysical hermeneutic” of originary religious discourse. This is a metaphysical understanding that responds to questions about the world and God that have their source in the primary context of religious involvement and that can therefore claim to present a conceptual understanding or interpretation of the world of which the discourse that informs that context speaks and of the God whom that discourse names.10 The important matter to note at this moment is that the metaphysical positions and concepts that belong to such an “interpretation” must receive their justification from independent philosophical reasoning. It is never legitimate to suppose that a metaphysical understanding of the world and God, and thus the positions and concepts that belong to that understanding, are acceptable because the understanding seems to “fit” discourse that in a more primary way funds religious involvement. Nor is it legitimate to suppose that such an understanding is unacceptable because it does not seem to have that fit. If one supposes that some set of positions and concepts in metaphysics are legitimate, this must be for strictly philosophical reasons. One may then go on, if necessary, to show that a metaphysical understanding of the world and God that incorporates these positions and concepts only seems to, and does not actually conflict with a concrete religious standpoint. I tried to do a bit of this in the last chapter. My argument, if correct, shows that the classical position about relations between the world and God that Aquinas presents only seems to conflict with biblical discourse about God as present and active in the world, and in fact presents the strongest possible understanding of God’s active presence in the world. But an argument like this is not a defense of some metaphysical understanding. It is a correction of a misunderstanding of the significance of that metaphysical conceptualization. Conversely, one who wishes to criticize a metaphysical understanding of the world and God must do that on the basis of independent philosophical reasons rather than by appealing to a religious discourse tradition with which that understanding seems to conflict.11 Fourth, a critical articulation of the conception of God will aim at inteThe Theory of Religion and Religious Inquiry 143

grating the results of the hermeneutics of religious discourse and practice and the metaphysical considerations concerning the world and God just discussed. Two conditions make this integration possible and necessary. On the one hand, even though metaphysical reflection must occur in terms that are conceptual and leave symbolic meaning aside, and must address strictly theoretical rather than existential concerns, the questions that motivate that reflection, when it is about the world and God, have their source in a context determined by existential concerns and symbolic meaning. Those questions call for an integration of the response that is made to them with the source from which they originate. On the other hand, strictly metaphysical discourse concerning the world and God is, even though necessary because of the questions that call for it, also insufficient. Adequate discourse about God requires not only propositions about the world and God but vehicles that can embody divine presence and call for a practical response to that presence. Reflective and conceptual discourse about God points beyond itself to the practical and semantic resources of symbolism.

Religion and Ethical Reflection The very fact that radical self-transcendence is, in some form, a necessary component of religious involvement requires that religious involvement, in any and all forms, have an essential ethical dimension. A religious ethic will be, of course, specific to some religious tradition or form of life. It will develop and modify along with the development of that tradition. The possibilities and constraints on modification, and the norms to be consulted in determining those possibilities and constraints, will be matters for dispute among participants in the tradition to which the ethic belongs. Questions that arise in those disputes become more numerous and more telling as groups that are parties to them feel the effects of increasing secularization and of a heightened consciousness of religious pluralism. Dispute within a religious tradition then becomes, in part but very significantly, a contest between those who would hold fast to the essentials of its ethical perspective in the face of demands for change and those who hold that what is essential and best in an ethical perspective is realized if change is embraced. In these pages, I do not want to address specific matters to which one might attend in the light of the observations just made. I want only to refer to the abstract concept of a religious ethic and to make three proposals about principles that such an ethic involves on the basis of the concept of radical selftranscendence and the other concepts to which it is related in the theory of religion that I have presented. First, a religious ethic, that is to say the ethic of any religious tradition or form of life, will present ideals and norms pertinent to the self-becoming of the individual and the way the individual is engaged with others. C. Stephen Evans, in a commentary on Kierkegaard, refers to this distinction by speaking of the difference between a “soul-making” ethics and a “society-transforming” 144


or “society-molding” ethics.12 Evans is concerned to show that these do not exclude each other. Surely, “a society-molding ethic does not have to deny the significance of individual transformation.”13 And even if someone is committed to a soul-making ethic in such a way that “her concern over her own moral character is absolute, that concern is a concern over how she relates to others.”14 I endorse Evans’s position and add that from the standpoint of religious involvement, these differences both need not and may not exclude each other. Rather, they must embrace each other. Radical self-transcendence defines the pursuit and cultivation of one’s relation to an absolute, transcendent telos as the fundamental determination of the process of self-becoming. At the same time, this project requires that all of one’s pursuits of relative ends, and thus all of one’s engagements with others, be integrated under the rubric of self-transcendence as well. Every religion presents or develops in the direction of presenting some version of the maxim “Love your neighbor as yourself ” and defines that as indispensable to the process that carries one toward personal salvation or sanctification. Second, a religious ethic tends toward the integration of ethical and political concerns. That is because any such ethics, along with the tradition to which it belongs, is based on some understanding of human beings as gathered together into a single community. We all suffer from the estrangement symbolized by the Fall. We all do, or at least can, fail to submit. We are all bound to the wheel of suffering. We are all subject to the illusion of separateness. The conception of human beings as united together in a community, in turn, leads to a consciousness of ways in which those who are vulnerable suffer on account of actions by others within the community and on account of systemic relations within the community itself. It leads to a consciousness of corporate responsibility for those who are poor, sick, without means of defense, dependent, or degraded. This leads, in turn, to calls for change in the way persons in the community act toward each other and structure their relations with each other. Ethical concern takes on an essentially political form. Third, there is always the possibility of a critical tension between a religious ethic and the prevailing social morality. Very often, of course, this possibility is not realized, and religious ethics are woven into the prevailing social morality for the sake of legitimizing the status quo. Nor must this situation always be problematic. But it can be. And the possibility of a critical relation between religious ethics and social morality is always present to the extent that socially prevailing norms and mores within a community permit or legitimize actions and systemic relations that impose suffering. My brief discussion of a religious ethic has given emphasis to principles to which such an ethics conforms when it is at its best. Most of the time the manifestations of religious ethics that we find in the world around us are not at their best. Such is the case with all things human, religion included. But surely the norms of religious involvement call those who are engaged to strive for the greatest possible perfection in cultivating the project and thus in cultivating its ethical component. If my comments are not accurate in empirical terms, they The Theory of Religion and Religious Inquiry 145

are perhaps better as a representation of characteristics that religious involvement normatively requires of its ethical dimension. I also maintain that these principles belong to religious ethics across ideological boundaries and across the boundaries of different religious traditions. What religious devotee—conservative, libertarian, liberal, progressive, or radical— is not obliged, in his ethical commitments, to integrate personal self-becoming and engagement with others, to challenge actions and structures within society that impose suffering, and to be willing to challenge prevailing social norms if necessary? What religious devotee—Jew, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, or Buddhist—is not obliged in her ethical commitments to do the same? One enacts these principles in different ways depending on ideological persuasion and specific religious identification. But as principles that normatively govern a religious ethic, they follow, not from any such persuasion or identification, but from necessities that determine religious involvement as such. For this reason, interreligious dialogue dealing with ethical matters can be greatly facilitated by a mindfulness of principles like these. If persons who are greatly separated from others by ideological or specifically religious differences and who disagree very basically on key ethical issues can nonetheless acknowledge that principles such as these govern the standpoints that they and their opponents occupy, then the possibility of communication and the combination of self-confidence and humility that communication requires is greatly enhanced. The ensuing dialogue can be a productive context for discussing a topic of great importance that I do not treat in these pages, namely, the problem of evil, including the evil done in the name of religions themselves.

Being Religious and Being Human The account of religion that I have presented locates the human conditions of religious involvement15 in the dynamics of human existence itself. Against the background of the experience of the many-sided limitations that belong to mundane things and processes, a consciousness emerges of a distinctively limit-surpassing transcendence. This transcendence is supposed, on account of its limit-surpassing being and excellence, to be other than ourselves and other than anything else that is in any other way other than ourselves. Boundary situations, whose occurrence determines our specifically human finitude, are reference points for experiencing and understanding the relation of sacred transcendence to human beings. Then, because human existence is supposed most fundamentally to be determined by its relation to something that surpasses boundary situations, salvation in some or other sense is supposed to be possible. At the same time, the focus on sacred transcendence, construed in terms of its incomparable and unqualified goodness, galvanizes the human desire for the good. Self-concern is subsumed and transformed in love and desire for the limit-surpassing and unrivaled excellence of the sacred, now found to be a good that one pursues for its own sake. The symbolic resources of human language make possible discourse through which human beings speak to 146


the sacred, hear the speech of the sacred, and speak about sacred transcendence. The attention to sacred transcendence radicalizes the human capacity for selftranscendence. It calls on one to define one’s relation to one’s own self in terms of a relation to an absolute telos and to integrate the pursuit of all other ends, including the end of one’s own self-realization or benefit, into the commitment to the absolute telos. The appropriation of this existence-possibility begins a process of turning the center of one’s concerns away from anxious selfcaring toward a focus on the goodness that the absolute telos exhibits and that belongs in relative terms to all of the ends whose pursuit one integrates into a commitment to that telos. The center of one’s existence comes to be not oneself but the reality with which one is engaged. And this turning, this conversion, if you will,16 is supposed, paradoxically to some, to be the best thing that one can do for oneself. I hope I have adequately acknowledged that many different kinds of accounts of religion are both possible and necessary and that any one of them, including the one I have presented, is insufficient apart from its connection with the others. But I also maintain that the most basic features of religion fail to appear in any account, of whatever kind, that does not in its own way acknowledge that the human conditions of the possibility of involvement with sacred transcendence, as well as the reference points of that involvement, coincide with fundamental dynamics that belong to the condition of human existence. Just as an account of religion in its distinctiveness requires the concept of sacred transcendence, although of course not the term itself, it also requires a discussion that exhibits the possibility of involvement with sacred transcendence in relation to the character of human existence itself. This claim does not of itself dictate any specific assessment regarding that involvement. It does say that religious involvement is possible because of essential dimensions of the condition of being human. Moreover, religious involvement is the response that the devotee does make, and that anyone in principle can make, to nothing short of a problematic as well as a desire that determine the situation of being human. This is the case even though the devotee is concerned, in the first instance, not with his or her own existence, but with sacred transcendence. But there is still the question of assessing that response. Even if the conditions of religious involvement coincide with fundamental dimensions belonging to human existence, and even if involvement with sacred transcendence is one response that a human being can make to nothing short of the very situation of being human, it is still the case that one can appraise that possibility in very different ways. After all, moral excellence is possible because of fundamental dimensions that belong to human existence, and it responds to a problematic and a desire that occur at the very roots of the situation of being human. But the same things must be said of emotional illness. Regarding an assessment of religious involvement, opinions differ widely. At this point I have only two comments. First, at least one way of dealing with this question returns in part to a claim made earlier in connection with the question about the possibility of The Theory of Religion and Religious Inquiry 147

any religious truth. An assessment of the possibility that religious involvement is for human beings coincides with an assessment of the task of radical selftranscendence. Religious involvement is involvement with sacred transcendence. Involvement with sacred transcendence is one’s appropriation of the existence-possibility that radical self-transcendence is, in the light of some suitable discursive funding. Thus, an assessment of religious involvement is legitimately a function of an assessment of the task of radical self-transcendence. If one supposes that this task represents a lovely but ultimately unattainable ideal, then one supposes the same about religious involvement. If one supposes that this is a task that one undertakes in response to a projection of human neediness or as a defense against a consciousness of the realities of human existence, then the same assessment of religious involvement follows. If one thinks that this project is ultimately delusional, then one thinks that involvement with sacred transcendence is ultimately delusional. If one thinks that radical selftranscendence ultimately serves human weakness rather than human strength, then one’s judgment concerning religious involvement is the same. If one just isn’t sure about the first, then one just isn’t sure about the second. If the question about assessing radical self-transcendence is unimportant, then an assessment of religious involvement is unimportant. If one thinks that there is some truth in the claims about radical self-transcendence but that it needs to be restated in terms that modify the radicality, then one thinks that there is some truth to religion but that it needs to be stated in nonreligious terms. If one thinks that undertaking the task of radical self-transcendence is the finest thing a human being can do, then one also assesses religious involvement in that way. If one supposes that appropriating this existence-possibility brings a human being most fully into contact with the truth about reality and human existence, then one supposes that involvement with sacred transcendence does that. If one supposes that the discourse tradition of some particular religion to some extent informs a successful appropriation of the task of radical self-transcendence, then one supposes that, to the same extent, that particular religion conveys truth. If one supposes that the discourse tradition of some particular religion most fully informs the successful appropriation of the project of radical self-transcendence, then one supposes that that particular religion most fully conveys truth. Second, an assessment of the project of radical self-transcendence is a matter of philosophical concern, but in the last analysis it cannot be an outcome of exclusively philosophical reflection. Certainly, one doing philosophy of religion needs to present an adequate discussion of radical transcendence and of its relation to religious discourse in the larger context of religious involvement. It is also appropriate and valuable in philosophy to examine the concept of radical self-transcendence in connection with claims about the essentially self-transcending character of human subjectivity, to identify considerations relevant to an assessment of this existence-possibility, and to argue that, in light of relevant considerations, a particular assessment follows. And it is valuable for anyone to take these and other philosophical reflections into account in

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one’s own considerations of radical self-transcendence, assuming that one can do that and is interested in so doing. But in the last analysis, one’s questions about an assessment of the task of radical self-transcendence, and thus about religion as such, cannot fully belong to or be decided in the course of philosophical reflection. That reflection, as I understand it, is the disinterested pursuit of understanding and truth about understanding and truth. In considering the possibility of radical selftranscendence, one is certainly pursuing understanding and truth. But here one is pursuing understanding and truth, not just about understanding and truth, but about human existence. And one’s consideration cannot be disinterested, because ultimately my question has to do, not precisely with human existence in general, but with my own existence. My question is about an existencepossibility insofar as it may or may not be an object of my own appropriation. I would very much hope, and indeed do maintain, that philosophical reflection might assist these considerations. But it is not sufficient to determine them. And if philosophical reflection can assist these considerations, it is also the case that the course of one’s philosophical reflection, if it happens that one does philosophy, is also a consequence of their outcome.

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Notes Introduction 1. Wilfred Cantwell Smith, The Meaning and End of Religion (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1978), esp. 119–92. 2. Robert Neville, Behind the Masks of God (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), 47–48. Speaking of systematic theological concepts, Neville notes that, for C. S. Peirce, “vagueness” is a technical term attributed to concepts and is used “not to mean fuzzyness but the logical property of tolerating instantiations that are contradictory of each other on their own level. . . . Although a systematic concept might be defined precisely in terms of other concepts, it is necessarily vague with respect to how it is made explicit in application to experience.” The concept “religion” is “vague” in this technical sense. 3. The best study of its origin and development is James Collins, The Emergence of Philosophy of Religion (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1967). 4. John J. Drummond, “Husserl’s Reformation of Philosophy,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 66 (Spring 1992): 136. 5. On this point, see John Drummond, Husserlian Intentionality and Non-foundational Realism: Noema and Object (Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1990), 235–72. 6. Drummond, “Husserl’s Reformation of Philosophy,” 143. 7. Very important work toward addressing the idea of the transcendental ego and working through misunderstandings concerning that idea is done in Robert Sokolowski, Introduction to Phenomenology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 112–29, and John Brough, “Husserl’s Ego: Another Thrashing of a Dead Horse?” Philosophy Today 49, no. 5 (2005): 222–31. 8. See Sokolowski, Introduction to Phenomenology, 124–27. 9. Brough, “Husserl’s Ego,” 229. 10. Dan Zahavi, Husserl’s Phenomenology (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2003), 76. 11. G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, Vol. 1, Introduction and the Concept of Religion, ed. Peter C. Hodgson, trans. R. F. Brown, P. C. Hodgson, and J. M. Stewart (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 163. 12. Ibid., 385–96. 13. Ibid., 396–400. 14. Ibid., 400–403. 15. Ibid., 403–41. 16. David Tracy, Blessed Rage for Order (New York: Seabury, 1975), 91. 17. Paul Ricoeur, “Phenomenologie de la Religion,” in Lectures 3, Aux frontières de la philosophie (Paris: Seuil, 1994), 267. My translation. 18. Ibid. 1. Sacred Transcendence 1. I find the discussion by Merold Westphal, God, Guilt, and Death: An Existential Phenomenology of Religion (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), 1–23, of the

aims and procedures of a philosophy of religion that is phenomenological, highly illuminating. I disagree with him, however, to the extent that he maintains that such a philosophy shifts away from the question of truth in order to address the question of meaning. I believe that such a philosophy must address both questions. Westphal himself recognizes the possibility of serious problems in his position, and defends it in a substantive way. My own position, however, continues to differ from his, as I discuss below. 2. George Schlesinger, “Truth, Humility, and Philosophers,” in God and the Philosophers: The Reconciliation of Faith and Reason, ed. Thomas V. Morris (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 252–53. 3. See Augustine, Confessions, trans. R. S. Pine-Coffin (Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1970), 21. 4. I should say at this point, however, that it is impossible to overestimate the contribution that Paul Ricoeur has made to a consideration of those complexities, especially in his development of the distinction between a hermeneutic of suspicion and a hermeneutic of recovery in relation to religious discourse. See Paul Ricoeur, The Conflict of Interpretations, ed. Don Ihde (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1974), 287–334. One also finds an admirable contribution to this consideration in Merold Westphal, Suspicion and Faith: The Religious Uses of Modern Atheism (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1993). 5. Emmanuel Levinas, “God and Philosophy,” in Of God Who Comes to Mind, trans. Bettina Bergo (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1998), 69. 6. Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy, trans. John W. Harvey (Oxford: The University Press, 1958), 26. 7. Westphal, God, Guilt and Death, 28. 8. Ibid. 9. See ibid., 24–68, for a thorough discussion of this ambivalence. 10. Ibid., 41. 11. “Brihadaranyaka Upanishad,” in The Upanishads: Breath of the Eternal: The Principal Texts, selected and translated by Swami Prabhavananda and Frederick Manchester (New York: New American Library, 1957), 111. 12. “Chandogya Upanishad,” Upanishads: The Principal Texts, 64–78. 13. See Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, Book Two, Creation, trans. James F. Anderson (New York: Image Books, 1955), 43. 14. See Aquinas, Summa Theologica, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1948), Pars Prima, Question 8, Article 1, p. 34. 15. This understanding of appearance follows from Husserl’s discussions of “Object and Consciousness” and of “Originally Presentative Seeing” in Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy: First Book, trans. F. Kersten (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982), 322–23, 326–27. 16. John Hick, An Interpretation of Religion (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1989), imposes at least a partial qualification on this statement. He claims that in the case of mystical consciousness, the “impact” of sacred transcendence, “instead of being mediated through the outer world of nature and history, is directly apprehended at some deep level of the mystic’s psyche and then expressed by forms supplied by his or her mind” (166). Hick is addressing an important issue, and his claim is significant. This issue is not one that I will consider in these pages. 17. Robert Sokolowski, “The Method of Philosophy: Making Distinctions,” Review of Metaphysics 51 (March 1998): 528.

152 Notes to pages 15–20

18. Ibid., 529. 19. Otto, Idea of the Holy, 3. 20. See Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 87–125; Peter L. Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (New York: Doubleday, 1969), 42–45; Frederick Ferre, Basic Modern Philosophy of Religion (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1967), 69. 21. See Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion, trans. W. D. Robson-Scott, rev. and ed. James Strachey (New York: Anchor Books, 1964), 59–53; Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1969), 24–56; Karl Marx, “Towards a Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction,” in Karl Marx: Selected Writings, ed. David McLellan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 64. 22. Paul Griffiths, Religious Reading: The Place of Reading in the Practice of Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), maintains that “to say of people that they are religious, or have a religion, is just to say that they give an account that seems to them to have these three properties—to be comprehensive, unsurpassable, and central.” He notes that in the light of this understanding, “it might be that a thoroughgoing (if somewhat old-fashioned) Marxist would turn out to be religious; or that an unusually obsessive follower of the Chicago White Sox might” (6). This is because the sort of understanding he proposes allows him “to avoid controverted questions about the substantive and nonphenomenal properties of religious accounts” (4). Griffiths makes it clear that the understanding of religion he proposes goes hand in hand with an interest in examining “the modes of teaching and learning that most effectively foster the ability to come to give, to maintain, and to nurture a religious account. This is a formal question that can be answered largely without reference to the substance of what is read when one reads religiously, a question that is in most respects better answered without such reference” (4) and therefore a question that is well considered in the light of the sort of understanding of religion that Griffiths provides. I find both the examination of religious reading that Griffiths develops and the understanding of religion that he proposes highly productive. I do believe, however, that for larger philosophical purposes a substantive understanding of religion is necessary. That understanding should, as Griffiths suggests, be formal in nature, as is the case if one understands religion as an orientation to sacred transcendence as I have discussed that notion. 23. Karl Jaspers, Einführung in die Philosophie (München: R. Piper Verlag, 1971), 18; my translation. 24. Karl Jaspers, Philosophy, vol. 2, trans. E. B. Ashton (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 204. 25. Ibid., 178. 26. Ibid. 27. Ibid., 195. 28. Ibid., 179. 29. See ibid., 178–222. 30. Tracy, Blessed Rage for Order, 91–118. 31. Ibid., 93. 32. Westphal, God, Guilt, and Death, 69–106. 33. Ibid., 114. 34. Ibid., 122. 35. Ibid., 160. 36. Schubert Ogden, The Reality of God and Other Essays (Dallas, Tex.: Southern

Notes to pages 20–26 153

Methodist University Press, 1992), 206–30, presents a version of this possibility and explicitly states that his position does not entail a notion of “subjective immortality” (230). I am not endorsing Ogden’s view, but I cite it simply to indicate that it is possible to develop a notion of salvation in a theistic context, given the way in which I have defined that notion, independently of a belief in immortality. 37. Thus Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1952), says, “it is true today as it was in later antiquity that the Stoic attitude, even if appearing in a collectivist form, is the only serious alternative to Christianity. The difference between the genuine Stoic and the neocollectivist is that the latter is bound in the first place to the collective and in the second place to the universe, while the Stoic was in the first place related to the universal Logos and secondly to possible human groups. But in both cases the anxiety of fate and death is taken into the courage to be as a part” (101). Tillich speaks of Christianity because of the theological content of his writing, whereas I speak more generally of a religious notion of salvation. 38. Hick, An Interpretation of Religion, 36. 39. Ibid. 40. Westphal, God, Guilt, and Death, 138–39. 2. Religious Discourse 1. Kenneth L. Schmitz, “Restitution of Meaning in Religious Speech,” in The Challenge of Religion, ed. Frederick Ferré, Joseph Kockelmans, and John E. Smith (New York: Seabury, 1984), 234. 2. Paul Ricoeur, “Philosophy and Religious Language,” in Figuring the Sacred: Religion, Narrative, and Imagination, ed. Mark I. Wallace, trans. David Pellauer (Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 1995), 35. 3. See Paul Ricoeur, “Naming God,” in Figuring the Sacred, 218. 4. Ricoeur, “Philosophy and Religious Language,” 35. 5. Ricoeur, “Naming God,” 218. 6. Ricoeur, “Philosophy and Religious Language,” 35. 7. Ricoeur, “Naming God,” 218. 8. Ibid. 9. Ibid., 290. 10. Ibid. 11. See Paul Ricoeur, “The Hermeneutics of Symbols and Philosophical Reflection: I,” trans. Denis Savage, in The Conflict of Interpretations, ed. Don Ihde (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1974), 289. 12. Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951), 1:239. Tillich gives a concise and substantive account of symbolism and religious symbols in Dynamics of Faith (New York: Harper and Row, 1957), 41–54. 13. Peter Berger, A Rumor of Angels (New York: Anchor Books, 1990), 61. 14. Tillich, Systematic Theology, 1:239: “The segment of finite reality which becomes the vehicle of a concrete assertion about God is affirmed and denied at the same time. It becomes a symbol, for a symbolic expression is one whose proper meaning is negated by that to which it points. And yet it is also affirmed by it, and this affirmation gives the symbolic expression an adequate basis for pointing beyond itself.” 15. Tracy, Blessed Rage for Order, agrees, saying, “Explicitly religious language (e.g., the language of scriptures or of the Christian mystics) is intrinsically symbolic and metaphorical limit language” (108).


16. Kenneth Schmitz, “Philosophy of Religion and the Redefinition of Philosophy,” in Challenge of Religion, 7–8. 17. Donald Evans, The Logic of Self-involvement (London: SCM Press, 1963), 12, 14. 18. Evans speaks of “parabolic language” in terms that conceptually support this claim about religious discourse as symbolic (ibid., 218–52). 19. Schmitz, “Philosophy of Religion and the Redefinition of Philosophy,” 8. 20. Tillich, Systematic Theology, 1:238–39. Tillich makes an exception for the statement “God is being itself,” but it is the only exception he will allow. 21. See Paul Ricoeur, Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning (Fort Worth, Tex.: Texas Christian University Press, 1976), 11–12, 19–22. 22. Bernard Lonergan, Method in Theology (New York: Herder and Herder, 1972), 78–79. 23. Ibid., 79. 24. Ricoeur, “Philosophy and Religious Language,” 39. All italics are in the original sources. 25. Ibid., 41. 26. Ibid., 38. 27. Ibid. 28. Ibid. 29. Griffiths, Religious Reading, 22, 40. 30. Ricoeur, Interpretation Theory, 29–30. 31. Ibid., 31. 32. Ibid., 43. 33. For example, Griffiths, Religious Reading, 22, wants to “de-emphasize the idea of textual autonomy, which is fundamentally an irreligious idea.” I actually agree with Griffiths and believe that I am proposing a relativized understanding of textual autonomy that would meet his criteria. 34. Ricoeur, “Naming God,” 219. 35. See ibid., 219–20. 36. Ibid., 220. 37. Ibid., 221. 38. Ibid., 222. 39. Ibid., 223. 40. Ibid. 41. See ibid., 232. 42. Wallace Stevens, The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the Imagination (New York: Vintage, 1951), 25. 43. Griffiths, Religious Reading, 41. 44. Ibid., 233. 45. Ibid., 223. 46. Ibid. 47. Ibid., 224. 48. Ibid., 230. 49. See ibid., 223–30. 50. Ricoeur, “Philosophy and Religious Language,” 46. 51. Ibid. 52. Ibid. 53. Tracy, Blessed Rage for Order, 135. 54. See Ricoeur, “The Hermeneutics of Symbols II,” in The Conflict of Interpretations,


ed. Don Ihde (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1974), 315–34, for a discussion of the bases of this terminology. 55. See ibid., 318–19. 56. See ibid., 320–22. 57. Freud, The Future of an Illusion, 47. 58. Ricoeur, “Hermeneutics of Symbols: II,” 323. 59. Evans, Logic of Self-Involvement, 251. 60. Ibid., 229. 61. I will discuss the reason for this qualification in the following chapter. 62. Ricoeur, “Philosophy and Religious Language,” 35. 63. Ricoeur, “ Hermeneutics of Symbols: II,” 330. 64. Ricoeur, “Philosophy and Religious Language,” 43. 3. Radical Self-Transcendence 1. See John Hick, An Interpretation of Religion, 36–55. His discussion of “the transformation of human existence” (36) that belongs to the religious task, which he calls a kind of “self-transcendence” (43), has many points in common with my discussion of radical self-transcendence. 2. Tillich, Dynamics of Faith, 4. 3. Bernard Lonergan, “The Subject,” in A Second Collection, ed. William F. J. Ryan, S.J., and Bernard Tyrrell, S.J. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974), 79. 4. Ibid., 83. 5. The most important discussion of intellectual self-appropriation by Lonergan appears in Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, ed. Frederick E. Crowe and Robert M. Doran (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988), 343–71. Lonergan gives a concise discussion of intellectual, moral, and religious conversion in Method in Theology (New York: Herder and Herder, 1972), 237–44. Robert M. Doran develops an important complement to Lonergan’s views regarding self-appropriation and conversion in this discussion of what he calls “psychic conversion” in Theology and the Dialectics of History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990), 42–63. 6. M. Jamie Ferreira, Transforming Vision: Imagination and Will in Kierkegaardian Faith (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 33. 7. Ibid., 38–39. 8. Ibid., 62–63. 9. Ibid., 97, 127. 10. Ibid., 2. 11. See Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, ed. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992), 387. 12. Ibid., 394. 13. Ibid., 400. 14. I am of course borrowing this pattern of reasoning from St. Anselm. Anselm argues, both in the Monologion and in the Proslogion, that if any nature cannot have a conceivable superior then it must be one rather than many, and that something than which none greater can be conceived must be uncircumscribed and must outstrip our abilities for conception. See St. Anselm: Basic Writings, trans. S. N. Deane (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1962), 43–44, 19, and 22. Whatever criticisms may or may not apply to Anselm’s


reasoning do not apply to my adaptation. I am not arguing about the existence of anything but only trying to sort out what must be said about an absolute telos. 15. The biblical reference is to Luke 14:36. It is important to note the way a key text from Christian scripture can be understood through a defining piece of Buddhist lore. 16. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 400. 17. G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, Vol. 3, The Consummate Religion, ed. Peter C. Hodgson, trans. R. F. Brown, P. C. Hodgson, and J. M. Stewart (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 342. Hegel seems at times to endorse this second sense of mediation that Climacus criticizes. In the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, for example, he says, “it is in the ethical realm that the reconciliation of religion with worldliness and actuality comes about and is accomplished.” Given what Hegel means by the ethical realm or ethical life, this could easily be understood to mean that the opposition between religion and worldly life is resolved insofar as one realizes that the otherwise abstract ideal that religion presents becomes concrete insofar as one pursues the possibilities and duties that present themselves in and through one’s domestic situation, one’s location in economic society, and one’s life as a citizen. If so, then the appropriate realization of the ideal object of religious commitment is a system of historical institutions whose achievement “is freedom that has become concrete and will that is rational.” But this view does not offer a possible interpretation of the idea of an absolute telos and a commitment to the same. It is rather the unraveling of that idea. 18. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 431. 19. Ibid., 498. 20. Ibid., 487. “But the more important something is, the more difficult it is to join the God-conception with it. And yet it is right here that the relationship with God will be known.” 21. See ibid., 431. 22. See ibid., 483, 486. 23. Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation (New York: New Directions, 1961), 21. Merold Westphal also cites this passage from Merton in “Religious Experience as Self-Transcendence and Self-Deception,” Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology of Contemporary Views, ed. Melville Y. Stewart (Sudbury, Mass.: Jones and Bartlett, 1996), 264. I have found this article by Westphal significant in a number of respects for the development of my own notion of radical self-transcendence. 24. Thus the author of The Cloud of Unknowing, trans. Clifton Wolters (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1961), 53, enjoins the reader: “Lift up your heart to God with humble love: and I mean God himself, not what you can get out of him.” 25. See, e.g., Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 488. 26. See ibid., 525–55. 27. That is, moments that belong to what Climacus calls Religiousness A, as contrasted with Religiousness B. In each case, Climacus is commenting on Christianity. But in the first case his comments abstract from what belongs to Christianity in its distinctiveness, while in the second case the discussion lifts that distinction. Thus the understanding of Religiousness A has to do with religious existence in general, and not with Christianity in its specificity. 28. Søren Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, ed. and trans. Howard Hong and Edna Hong (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991), 159.


29. Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death, ed. and trans. Howard Hong and Edna Hong (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1980), 13. 30. Ibid. Anti-Climacus expressly identifies synthesis and relation, saying, “a synthesis is a relation between two.” 31. Ibid. 32. Ibid. 33. Ibid., 13–14. 34. Ibid., 13. This follows from the claim by Anti-Climacus that is “a relation and relates itself to that which established the entire relation” (my italics). 35. Bernard Lonergan, Method in Theology (New York: Herder and Herder, 1972), 103. 36. Ibid., 104. 37. Ibid., 105. 38. Ibid. 39. Ibid., 105–106. 40. Ibid., 115. 41. Ibid., 106. 42. One should note that in truth, and certainly for Lonergan, these capacities do not leave feeling behind. They require feeling, and they take up feeling and integrate it into the self ’s determining humanity. 43. Ibid., 103. 44. Ibid., 8. 4. The Truth about Religion 1. T. W. Adorno, “Society,” in Critical Theory: The Essential Readings, ed. David Ingram and Julia Simon Ingram (New York: Paragon, 1992), 62. 2. See Tillich, Dynamics of Faith. 3. Edmund Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, trans. Dorian Cairns (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1960), 15–16. 4. The source of this distinction is Robert Sokolowski, Husserlian Meditations (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1974), 49–52. 5. Robert Sokolowski, Introduction to Phenomenology, 178–81, gives a very helpful discussion of imaginative variation of which I make use in the following remarks. 6. Ibid., 184. 7. Dan Zahavi, Husserl’s Phenomenology, 32, makes this point with regard to the concept of evidence in Husserl’s phenomenology. “Husserl’s concept of evidence is thus no attempt to absolutize or immunize the private opinions of the subject. There is nothing particularly private about evidence. Rather, Husserl’s concept of evidence entails a claim about intersubjective validity . . . , and is for that very reason open to criticism.” 8. On this point, see Husserl, Formal and Transcendental Logic, trans. Dorian Cairns (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1978), 213, for a discussion of the distinction between a priori forms that are analytic from those “with a material content” and the “corresponding differences of evidence and truth” that follow from this distinction. See also Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology, 166–67, for a discussion of the distinction between exact and morphological essences. 9. John Drummond, “Husserl’s Reformation of Philosophy,” 151, notes that revision in this case will “take the form of further elaboration or refinement rather than negation.” 10. Husserl, Formal and Transcendental Logic, 156.


11. James Marsh, Post-Cartesian Meditations (New York: Fordham University Press, 1988), 38, distinguishes a weak sense of apodicticity that occurs “where I run up against necessity in my imaginative variation” from a strong sense of apodicticity “where the possibility of error is excluded” and which would be the equivalent of infallibility. He endorses the former but not the latter sense of apodicticity. My remarks, in general terms at least, are consistent with this distinction and endorsement. 12. See Paul Tillich, Love, Power, and Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1954). 13. See William Desmond, Art and the Absolute: A Study of Hegel’s Aesthetics (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986), esp. 35–37, 130–41. 14. Which they are not. I make this observation only in a muted way, but it leads to a very important set of considerations. 15. One finds a helpful discussion of Averroes in Armand A. Maurer, Medieval Philosophy (New York: Random House, 1968), 100–104. 16. See Merold Westphal, History and Truth in Hegel’s Phenomenology (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1978), 187–218; William Desmond, Hegel’s God (Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate, 2003). 17. I adopt the understanding of a heuristic structure that Bernard Lonergan states in Insight, 417. 18. Husserl, Formal and Transcendental Logic, 127. 19. The complexities of this sentence are needed in order to get at an understanding of the second term that belongs to Husserl’s distinction between two senses of truth as well as the related distinction between two senses of evidence. For helpful commentary, see Sokolowski, Introduction to Phenomenology, 158–62, and Elisabeth Ströker, “Husserls Evidenzprinzip,” in Phänomenologische Studien (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1987), 1–34. 20. Husserl, Formal and Transcendental Logic, 128. 21. Sokolowski, Introduction to Phenomenology, 158, expresses the distinction between these different senses of truth by speaking of the “truth of correctness” and the “truth of disclosure.” 22. In Formal and Transcendental Logic, 127, Husserl says that the concept of actuality he has in mind when he distinguishes the two senses of truth is the “broadest, analytico-formal, concept of actuality.” This means that it is at least likely that my use of the concept of actuality extends the meaning of the concept beyond the sense that Husserl attributes to it. I think it is still the case, however, that my use of the concept is entirely consistent with Husserl’s and builds on the use he makes of it. The extension leads to an understanding of actuality as the realization of the essential possibilities that belong to a thing. Thus, if the essential possibilities of religion have to do with an orientation toward and involvement with sacred transcendence determined by religious discourse and praxis as I have understood these, then the actuality of religion comes about through the realization of these possibilities. An important source for this understanding of actuality is the analysis of the categories of possibility, actuality, and necessity that Hegel gives in the Science of Logic, trans. A. V. Miller (London and New York: George Allen and Unwin, Ltd., and Humanities Press, 1969), 541–53. 23. I am borrowing and adapting this example from Robert Sokolowski, Husserlian Meditations, 76–77. Sokolowski uses this example in discussing what one attains in eidetic intuition. My purpose is very much the same. 24. Neville, Behind the Masks Of God, 47. 25. Ibid., 47–48.


5. Religious Truth 1. John Hick, “Religious Faith as Experiencing-As,” in Classical and Contemporary Readings in the Philosophy of Religion, ed. John Hick (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1990), 406. 2. Ibid. Hick calls the sort of knowing to which I refer “faith.” He says, “the peculiar sense or use of the word ‘faith’ that I am seeming to understand is that which occurs when the religious man, and more specifically the Christian believer, speaks of ‘knowing God’ and goes on to explain that this is a knowledge of God by faith.” I take it that “knowing” God in this context means affirming the reality of God, as contrasted with entertaining a hope or a wish regarding that reality or even asserting the probability of that reality. 3. Alvin Plantinga, “Reason and Belief in God,” in The Analytic Theist, an Alvin Plantinga Reader, ed. James F. Sennett (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1998), 139–43. In this discussion, Plantinga refers to three Reformed theologians: Herman Bavink, John Calvin, and Karl Barth. I have mentioned only some of the matters to which Plantinga refers in drawing on Bavink and Calvin, because these seem more closely related to the question now under discussion of the manner in which the believer affirms the reality of God. 4. Hick, “Religious Faith as Experiencing-As,” 407. William P. Alston, Perceiving God, the Epistemology of Religious Experience (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991), makes a stronger claim. He maintains, “for S to perceive X is just for X to be the entity that is appearing to S as so-and-so; and on externalist theories, to perceive X, in undergoing experience, E, is for X to figure in a certain way in the causal chain leading up to E, and/or for E to lead to beliefs, or tendencies to beliefs, about X” (58). He adds, “I am inclined to think that what we know about sense perception provides a strong empirical argument against the possibility of God’s appearing directly to sensory experience. But I can’t see that any empirical considerations count against the supposition that God presents himself to our experience in a non-sensory fashion” (59, n. 49). I would prefer to speak of “cognition by acquaintance” of God in terms of the interplay of experience, understanding, and affirmation, and of the distinction between cognition by acquaintance and propositional belief in terms of the difference between filled and empty intentions. I am not going to discuss this issue on its own terms, but I will use the approach I prefer subsequently in this chapter. 5. Ibid., 410. 6. See ibid., 411. 7. See ibid., 412–14. 8. See ibid., 413. 9. Ibid., 416. 10. John Hick, An Interpretation of Religion, 160. 11. Ibid., 163. 12. Ibid., 160. 13. Ibid., 214. 14. See ibid., 214–51. 15. Ibid., 215. 16. Ibid., 216. 17. Ibid. 18. Ibid., 222. 19. Ibid., 228.


20. Plantinga, “Reason and Belief in God,” 129–30. 21. See ibid., 131. 22. Ibid., 152. 23. See ibid., 152–53. 24. Ibid., 152, 153. 25. Ibid., 135. 26. Ibid., 136. 27. See ibid., 136–38. 28. Ibid., 151. 29. Ibid., 152. 30. Ibid., 154. 31. See Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 379–80. Climacus makes this statement about Christianity. But it is clear that he is discussing Christianity as Religiousness A, that is, in terms of what it shares in common with other religious forms, rather than as Religiousness B, which refers to Christianity in its distinctiveness. 32. David J. Gouwens, Kierkegaard as Religious Thinker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 53. Concentrating especially on the specifically Christian content of his thought, Gouwens notes that Kierkegaard “believes that religion and Christianity are deeply conceptual. For example, while Christianity is not a doctrine but an ‘existence communication,’ it still possesses doctrinal and conceptual content, such as revelation, Incarnation, consciousness of sin, and the possibility of offence.” 33. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 192. 34. Ibid., 197, 198. 35. See ibid., 203. Climacus’s well-known definition of truth, given the proposal that “subjectivity is truth,” states that “an objective uncertainty, held fast through appropriation with the most passionate inwardness, is the truth, the highest truth there is for an existing person.” To “hold fast” to a belief is to affirm it. 36. See ibid., 199–203, for a discussion of these claims. The way Kierkegaard discusses them differs from mine, as do some of the examples that he uses. 37. See Martin J. De Nys, “Faith, Self-transcendence, and Reflection,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 51 (2002): 125–28, where I try briefly to argue for these views. 38. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 196. 39. Alvin Plantinga, “Reason and Belief in God,” 153. 40. Søren Kierkegaard, Works of Love, trans. Howard Hong and Edna Hong (New York: Harper and Row, 1992), 199. 41. I borrow this expression from Bernard Lonergan and intend to use it in the sense that he defines. See Lonergan, Insight, 413. 42. Jerome A. Miller, In the Throe of Wonder: Intimations of the Sacred in a PostModern World (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992), 70–71. 43. John Hick, An Interpretation of Religion, 228. 6. Pluralism and Religious Truth 1. See especially Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 199–204. 2. Writing in an explicitly Christian context, Robert Sokolowski, The God of Faith and Reason (Notre Dame, Ind., and London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1982), maintains that the first of these issues is the most basic. Thus, the most basic difference to be noted between the conceptions of the gods or of divinity in classical mythology or


philosophy, on the one hand, and the Christian conception of God, on the other hand, is that “the being of the pagan gods is to be a part, though the most important part, of what is; no matter how independent they are, they must be with things that are not divine” (12); whereas “in Christian belief we understand the world as that which might not have been, and correlatively we understand God as capable of existing in undiminished goodness and greatness, even if the world had not been” (19). That is, the most essential contrast between these different conceptions of divinity is the different contrast between the divine and the mundane that each requires. 3. This is what Aquinas claims to establish in the “third way.” I have given an interpretation and defense of that argument in “If Everything Can Not-Be There Would Be Nothing: Another Look at the Third Way,” Review of Metaphysics 56 (September 2002): 99–122. 4. See Schubert Ogden, Is There Only One True Religion or Are There Many? (Dallas, Tex.: Southern Methodist University Press, 1992), 23, 83. 5. Ibid., 6. 6. Ibid., 8. 7. Ibid., 7. 8. Ibid., 10. 9. Ibid., 12. I hope it is clear that I am making no assessment of any kind at all of the ecclesiology that Ogden mentions in these remarks, but only mentioning it, as he does, to provide an analogy for the distinction between substantial and formal truth in relation to the question of religious truth and pluralism. 10. Ibid., 12–13. 11. The argument that I will propose entails a position regarding pluralism and religious truth that differs from Ogden’s because it presents, as far as I can see, understandings of the doctrines of the incarnation and of salvation that differ from the ones he maintains. It is obviously not possible to discuss these differences in exclusively philosophical terms. 12. Ricoeur, “Hermeneutics of Symbols: II,” 317. 13. Lonergan, Method in Theology, 301, 302. 14. Ricoeur, “Hermeneutics of Symbols: II,” 317. 15. Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Towards a World Theology (New York: Orbis Books, 1981), 81. 16. Ibid., 193. “Colloquy” is the term Cantwell Smith prefers: “As a term I prefer ‘colloquy’; partly for its multilateral connotations but chiefly to suggest a side-by-side confronting of the world’s problems (intellectual and other) rather than a face-to-face confronting of each other.” 17. Ibid., 89. 18. See Aelred Graham, Zen Catholicism (New York: Crossroads, 1994); Bede Griffiths, Christ in India: Towards a Hindu-Christian Dialogue (New York: Scribner’s, 1967); Thomas Merton, Zen and the Birds of Appetite (New York: New Directions, 1968); D. T. Suzuki, Mysticism: Christian and Buddhist (London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1970); Tich Nhat Han, Living Buddha, Living Christ (New York: Riverhead Books, 1995). 19. This caveat is important. It indicates that no assumption is being made about the occurrence of religious truth as such, or about the status of any particular religion with regard to the question of truth. 20. See Tillich, Dynamics of Faith, 43. 21. Westphal, God, Guilt, and Death, 146–59. 22. Smith, Towards a World Theology, 33.


23. Lonergan, Method in Theology, 300. 24. David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination, Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism (New York: Crossroad, 1981), 449. 25. Ogden, Is There Only One True Religion? 22–27, gives a brief and very helpful survey of several options for understanding religious truth in relation to the issue of pluralism. 26. Sancti Thomae de Aquino, Summa Theologiae (Torino: Edizioni San Paolo, 1998), Tetria Pars, Quaestito I, Articulus 1. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1948), 4:2020. Hereafter ST, with citation of the Part, Question, Article, and page number of the English translation. 27. See ST III, 7, 9, p. 2065. 28. ST III, 7, 1, p. 2060. 29. Ibid. 30. ST III, 26, 1, p. 2153. 31. ST III, 26, 2, p. 2154. 32. Ibid. 33. See Ogden, Is There Only One True Religion? 84–99. This is the view that Ogden puts forward and defends. My purpose is not to present an argument against this view, which would involve doing theology as contrasted with philosophy, but to present an alternative view that is arguably more traditional and more familiar to some and then to discuss its compatibility with the position I have discussed about religious truth and pluralism. 34. ST III, 7, 1, p. 2059. 35. Again, this is the case if exclusivism means that only one religion is and can be true. The whole of this discussion is and must be a consideration of possibilities. 36. Or with perhaps no explicit religious identification. The issue is a controversial one, and I do not want to take it up here. But I would urge that this possibility receive very serious and careful consideration. 7. Aspects of the Conception of God 1. Søren Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985), 43. 2. Ricoeur, Figuring the Sacred, 223. 3. Ricoeur, Conflict of Interpretations, 287–88. 4. G. W. F. Hegel, The Encyclopedia Logic, trans. T. F. Geraets, W. A. Suchting, and H. S. Harris (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1991), #1, 24. Hegel, Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften I, herausg. Mouldenhauer u. Michel (Frankfurt: Shurkamp, 1986), 41. 5. Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1961), 11. 6. Ibid., 12. 7. Mircea Eliade, Images and Symbols, trans. Philip Mairet (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1969), 169. 8. Ibid., 170. Italics in the original. 9. One finds a good introduction to this interpretive program in Rudolph Bultmann, The New Testament and Mythology and Other Basic Writings, ed. Schubert Ogden (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984). 10. See Sokolowski, Introduction to Phenomenology, 33–40.


11. Ibid., 37–38. 12. Ibid., 37. 13. Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology, 94. See Sokolowski, Introduction to Phenomenology, 19–20, 25, for a discussion of sides and profiles or adumbrations. 14. Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology, 92. 15. See Husserl, Experience and Judgment, ed. Ludwig Landgrebe, trans. James Churchill and Karl Ameriks (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1973), 254–55. 16. See Ibid., 267. 17. Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, 124. 18. St. John of the Cross, Ascent to Mount Carmel, in The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, trans. Kiernan Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1973), 75, 113. 19. See Hick, An Interpretation of Religion, 153–54, 252–75, 292–95. Hick distinguishes between religious experience that is mediated and religious experience in which “information is received by a direct influence” (254) and which might be called immediate for that reason. But he then goes on to suggest that all theistic experience, and arguably all religious experience, is at least affected by, I would say mediated by, the images and understandings of a culture. I would add that, insofar as one is speaking of an experiential awareness of God, this is always at least mediated by one’s experience of oneself. 20. My chief references will be Summa Theologiae (ST), along with its English translation; and Summa contra gentiles (SCG), Apud Sedem Commisionis Leonoiae (Roma e Torino: Casa Editrice Mariette, 1934), Summa Contra Gentiles, Book One, God, trans. Anton C. Pegis, and Book Two, Creation, trans. James F. Anderson (New York: Image Books, 1955–57). Notes for SCG and ST will reference the Latin text followed by the page number of the translation. 21. See Thomas Aquinas, On Being and Essence, trans. Armand Maurer (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1968), 56–57; SCG, I, 15/pp. 98–99; ST, Ia, 2, 3, pp. 12–14, and in particular the third of the well-known “five ways.” 22. SCG, I, 21/p. 117. 23. SCG, I, 22/pp. 118–21; ST, Ia, 3, 4, p. 17. 24. ST, Ia, 3, 4. This translation is from Summa Theologiae, Latin text and English translation (Cambridge and New York: Blackfriars and McGraw Hill, 1964–), Vol. 2. 25. John Wippel, Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1984), 139–49, discusses several arguments that lead to this position. 26. Se ST, Ia, 11, 3, pp. 47–48. 27. SCG, I, 28/p. 135. Translation modified. 28. Ibid. 29. ST, Ia, 7, 1, p. 31. 30. See SCG, II, 11/p. 42; ST, Ia, 13, 7, pp. 65–67. 31. SCG, II, 12/p. 43. Aquinas’s argument presents the additional claim that real relations between God and creatures cannot occur as accidents in God because God cannot be the subject of accidents. I am not going to discuss his reasons for that claim in this context. See SCG, I, 23/pp. 121–23; ST Ia, 3, 6. 32. See ST, Ia, 13, 7, pp. 65–67. 33. See ST, Ia, 13, 7, Reply Obj. 5, p. 67. 34. ST Ia, 44, 2, p. 230.


35. See ST, Ia, 45, 1, pp. 232–33. 36. ST, Ia, 45, 3, p. 234. 37. William Hill, Knowing the Unknown God (New York: Philosophical Library, 1971), 176–77. 38. ST, Ia, 8, 1. 39. See ibid. 40. Ibid. 41. ST, Ia, 8, 3, p. 36. 42. See ST, Ia, 8, 1, pp. 34–35. 43. Tracy, Blessed Rage For Order, 181, suggests that one improves upon classical theism by holding that God is “eminently relative” and, as such, “alone related to all reality through immediate participation in a manner analogous to the self ’s relation to its own body.” But I fail to see how one could conceive of God as being “eminently relative” in a more thoroughgoing way than is done by the position that Aquinas maintains and that I have suggested. Whether the position that Tracy prefers retains an adequate sense of divine transcendence is another question. The analogy he uses raises doubts on that matter. 44. See ST Ia, 13, 5, pp. 63–64, for a brief discussion of analogical predication. 45. This distinction represents recognition of the issue of the difference and relation between nature and grace, and of the importance of that issue. This is of course not an issue that it is possible for me to consider in these pages. 46. Robert Neville, God the Creator (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1962), xix, speaks of such an interpretation as a “metaphysical hermeneutic.” I present a brief discussion of the nature of a metaphysical hermeneutic in “Aquinas and Kierkegaard on the Relation between God and Creatures,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 75 (2001): 398. 8. The Theory of Religion and Religious Inquiry 1. Bernard Lonergan, Insight, 417, gives a brief and very helpful discussion of heuristic concepts. 2. These comments are in accord with Lonergan’s belief that the outcome of a philosophy of religion plays a heuristic role in relation to the larger compass of religious studies. For discussion of the claim, see Jim Kanaris, Bernard Lonergan’s Philosophy of Religion (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002), 101–46. 3. Kevin Schilbrack, “Religion, Models of, and Reality: Are We Through with Geertz?” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 2 (June 2005): 435. Schilbrack mentions this possibility in connection with his comments on Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993). 4. The dialogues in Thich Nhat Hanh and Daniel Berrigan, The Raft Is Not the Shore (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2001), give a striking illustration of these possibilities. 5. Nonetheless, Richard Rorty and Gianni Vattimo recommend this reduction in The Future of Religion, ed. Santiago Zabala (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), 29–54. 6. Schmitz, “Philosophy of Religion and the Redefinition of Philosophy,” in Challenge of Religion, 25. 7. Bernard Lonergan very clearly understands this. See Method in Theology, chapter 3, “Meaning.”


8. Flannery O’Connor, The Habit of Being, letters edited and with an introduction by Sally Fitzgerald (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1979), 164. 9. Sokolowski, God of Faith and Reason, 115. 10. I borrow the expression “metaphysical hermeneutic” from Robert Neville, God the Creator (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992), xix. I very briefly develop the concept of such a hermeneutic in “Aquinas and Kierkegaard on the Relationship between God and Creatures,” 389–407. 11. James Marsh, Process, Praxis, and Transcendence (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999), 60–76, offers a fine example of the sort of legitimate critique to which I refer. He maintains, as I do not, that the classical understanding of relations between the world and God that Aquinas presents is incompatible with biblical discourse concerning God. But his critique of that understanding does not require appealing to this belief. It is strictly philosophical. I do not believe his critical arguments succeed, but they are certainly legitimate kinds of arguments to present in this context. 12. C. Stephen Evans, Kierkegaard’s Fragments and Postscripts (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1983), 75–76. 13. Ibid., 76. 14. Ibid., 77–78. 15. This qualification is important because there may be other than human conditions that religious involvement requires as well. Some theological standpoints suggest the necessity of a divine condition. An account of religion needs at least to acknowledge the occurrence of this view. 16. Bernard Lonergan, “Theology in its New Context,” in A Second Collection, 79, says that “reflection on the ongoing process of conversion may bring to light the real foundation of a renewed theology.” I hope I have shown that something similar is the case for reflection on conversion in relation to the philosophy of religion.


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Westphal, Merold. History and Truth in Hegel’s Phenomenology. Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1978. 1. God, Guilt, and Death: An Existential Phenomenology of Religion. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987. 1. Suspicion and Faith: The Religious Uses of Modern Atheism. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1993. Wippel, John. Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1984. Zahavi, Dan. Husserl’s Phenomenology. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2003.

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Index absence, 3, 123–26 analogical predication, 33, 131–32 Anselm, on conceivable superior, 156n14 appearance, notion of, 19–20 appropriation: and distanciation, 34–36; and existence-possibility, 87–91, 93, 149; and religious understanding, 98 Aquinas: Christology of, 111–13; and foundationalism, 85; on God, 13, 18, 129–34, 143, 164n31, 166n11; scholastic theory of, 6 Aristotle, on relative terms, 131 being, 132–33 belief: and awareness of God, 93–95; basic and non-basic, 84–86; propositional, 90; and statements about God, 42–43 boundaries/limits, 10, 22–28, 40 Brahman, 18 Buddhist tradition, 107 Bultmann, Rudolph, on demythologizing, 121 choice, and appropriation, 88–89, 93 Christianity: and appropriation, 87–88; ecclesiology in, 102; God in, 161n2; Judaic, 109; and “other religions,” 109–13; propositions of, 97 Christology, 111–13 claims, religious: assessment of, 19–20; propositional, 110; as rational, 12; and reality, 102; theological, 111–13 Climacus, Johannes. See Kierkegaard, Søren concept: God as, 117–37, 143–44; heuristic, 138–41; in philosophy, 142; proposition and, 108–13; statement and, 33; “vague,” 12, 77 consciousness: and discourse, 97; of guilt and death, 24; intentionality of, 2, 24; of an object, 3; presence of things to, 4; and sacred transcendence, 14–17, 24 Constitution of the United States, 125 Creation Story in Genesis, 37 cultural contexts, 104–109 demythologizing, 121 Descartes, and foundationalism, 85 desire, 22, 27–28, 65 discourse: distanciation in, 34–36; polyphonic,

37–38; and the sacred, 4–5, 30; symbolic, 97–106, 121 discourse, poetic: elements of, 36–37; and presence, 128; in religious traditions, 10–11; symbol in, 39–41, 45 discourse, religious: elements of, 30–39; and existence, 44–46; and existence-possibility, 89; Hegel on, 7–8; literary forms in, 33–35; meaning in, 10–11, 30–32; vs. philosophical, 18–21; and practice, 142; polysignative nature of, 41; and self-involvement, 42–44; specificity of, 37–38; traditions in, 33–34; on the “wholly other,” 119–20 divine, the, 12–13, 122, 126–27, 131–32, 134–37 ego, transcendental, 4 Eliade, Mircea, on hierophany, 120–21 ends, relative, 92, 114 estrangement from the sacred, 27, 44, 135–36, 145 ethical reflection on religion, 138–39, 144–46 Evans, C. Stephen, on religious ethic, 144–45 Evans, Donald, on religious discourse, 42–43 excluded middle, law of, 110 existence-possibility: and absolute telos, 90–95; Kierkegaard on, 86–90; radical selftranscendence as, 115; and religious understanding, 98 experience: knowledge pertaining to, 87; of limits, 24; of other self, 125–26; propositional content in, 83; religious, 38–39, 164n19; sacred transcendence in, 91–92 faith, 31, 38–39, 160n2 foundationalism, 85 Francis of Assisi, 116 Freud, and hermeneutics of suspicion, 41–42 God: Aquinas on, 13, 18, 129–34, 143, 164n31, 166n11; awareness of, 93–95, 121–22; being drawn to, 91; Christ and, 112; as concept, 117–37, 143–44; as creator, 100; creatures and, 118, 129–37; and the divine, 130; vs. gods, 110; knowledge of, 6–7; love of, 25–26, 107; naming of, 37–38, 119–23, 127–29, 141; as necessary being, 99; perceiving, 82–83;

presence of, 18, 122–23, 126–29; propositions about, 108–13; reality of, 83–86; reflection about, 141–44; representations of, 15; selfmanifestation of, 118–29; statements about, 33, 42–45, 131; as wholly other, 128 Godhead, 133 Godself, 92–93, 128, 131–33 Griffiths, Paul: on the religious, 153n22, 155n33; on writing, 35 guilt and death, 24, 32 Hebrew scripture, 107 Hegel, G. W. F.: on ethical realm, 157n17; on religious discourse, 7–8; as source for inquiry into religion, 6 hermeneutics: and consideration of religion, 9–10; limits of, 31; and religious involvement, 142–44; of suspicion and recovery, 40–42; and the transcendental, 4 heuristic concepts: Hegel and, 8; in theory of religion, 13, 138–41 Hick, John: on awareness of God, 92–94, 121–22, 164n19; on cognition in presence, 82–83, 160n4; on faith, 160n2; on reality of radical self-transcendence, 12, 152n16; on religious experience, 92; as source for inquiry into religion, 6; on transformation, 26–27 hierophany, 120–23 Hindu tradition, 107 historical event, transfiguration of, 120–21 human existence: and boundary situations, 24–26; limitations of, 18; reflection on, 149; and religious discourse, 44–46; and religious involvement, 14; and sacred transcendence, 22–23, 146–49; and salvation, 26–27 Husserl, Edmund: on actuality, 159n19; on grasping necessities, 67; on imaginative variation, 12; on presence, 123–26; in tradition of phenomenology, 6; on truth, 159n19 identity, 1, 4 image, ideal, 88–89 immortality, 25 inadequacy, ontological, 17 inquiry, religious, 138–49 intentionality: of consciousness, 2, 24; and directedness, 16; double, 31–32 interpretation, 39–42, 91–93 involvement, religious: aspects of, 8; ethical, 145–46; hermeneutics of, 142–44, 166n15; and human existence, 14; object of, 6–9; and religious discourse, 8

174

Index

Jain tradition, 107 Jaspers, Karl, on boundary situations, 23–24 Jesus of Nazareth, 83 John of the Cross, 128 Judaic tradition, 107, 109, 120 justification, 84–85 Kierkegaard, Søren: as Climacus, 86–90, 157nn17,27, 161n31; on existencepossibility, 86–90; existential analyses of, 6; on God, 118; on religious understanding, 98 knowledge: by acquaintance, 81–83; of God, 6–7; pertaining to existence, 87 logic, and natural attitude, 2–3 love: and absolute telos, 136; of God, 25–26, 107 Marx, and hermeneutics of suspicion, 41–42 meaning: conceptual, 142; and literary forms, 34–35; in religious discourse, 10–11, 30–35, 42–44; of statements, 131–32; symbolic, 39–41, 45; and truth, 92 metaphysical conceptions, 10, 108, 129, 135, 137, 143–44 Muslim tradition, 107 mysticism, 107–108 myth, etiological function of, 22–23 natural attitude, 2–3 Nietzsche, and hermeneutics of suspicion, 41–42 object: consciousness of, 3; representation of, 119 O’Connor, Flannery, 142 Ogden, Schubert, on religious truth, 101–103, 162nn9,11, 163n33 ontological self-relation, 135–36 orientation, religious: and reality, 5; and sacred transcendence, 28; structures of, 8 Otto, Rudolph, on “wholly other,” 17 Peirce, Charles, on “vague” concepts, 12 phenomenology: Aquinas and, 129–30; hermeneutics and the transcendental in, 4–5; inquiry into religion through, 1–2, 5; metaphysical conceptualization in, 137; methodologies in, 3–4; presence in, 123–26; tradition of, 6 philosophy: conceptions of God in, 119–37; history of, 1; reflection in, 148–49; of religion, 1–2, 6–10; vs. religious discourse, 18–21; and theology, 96

Plantinga, Alvin: on awareness of God, 121–22; on foundationalism, 85–86; on reality of radical self-transcendence, 12, 93; as source for inquiry into religion, 6 pluralism of religions: Christianity and, 109– 13; and interpretation, 39–42; possibility of, 102–103; and propositions, 108–13; and radical self-transcendence, 104–108; and symbolic discourse, 103–106; theory on, 12; and truth, 5–6, 12–13, 96–113, 148–49; vs. universality, 10 power, configurations of, 139 praxis, existential: and existence-possibility, 90; and object of religious involvement, 6–9 presence: and absence, 3, 123–26; cognition in, 82; and the divine, 126–29; of God, 18, 122–23, 126–29; and religious truth, 98; of sacred transcendence, 32–33 propositions: and belief, 90; and pluralism, 108–13; about the sacred, 97–98 Quran, the, 107 radical self-transcendence: consideration of, 9; and existence-possibility, 90–91, 115; and God, 136; and human existence, 146–49; and pluralism, 106–108; reality of, 12; reflection on, 148–49; and religious truth, 13, 114–17; and sacred transcendence, 5; and social engagement, 140–41; task of, 11 reality: and boundary situations, 25–26; divine, 12; as exceeding limits, 15, 18, 20, 25–26; religious orientation to, 5, 9 reflection: conceptual and metaphysical, 108– 109; critical, 134–35; about God, 141–44; philosophical, 148–49; subjective and objective, 87 religion: claims and, 110–13; comparative studies of, 19; definitions of, 11, 21, 66, 153n22; diversity vs. universality in, 10; ethical reflection on, 144–46; and human existence, 146–49; as orientation to reality, 5; as orientation to sacred transcendence, 28; social and political function of, 140–41; theory of, 11–13, 66, 138–49; and the “wholly other,” 21 Ricoeur, Paul: on faith, 38–39; on hermeneutics of suspicion and recovery, 40–42, 152n4; and religious discourse, 31–32, 119; on subjectivity-intersubjectivity-world structure, 4; on symbolism, 103–104; in tradition of phenomenology, 6; on understanding of God, 141–42 ritual, sacrificial, 23

sacred, the: affirmation of, 86–95; claims about, 110; consciousness of, 14–17; discourse and, 4–5, 30; as exceeding all limits, 18, 20, 24–25; manifestation of, 120; naming of, 94–95 sacred transcendence: alterity of, 17–18, 21; and boundaries/limits, 10, 22–28; as central concept, 28–29; and consciousness, 14–17; and desire, 22, 27–28; discourse about, 13, 39–40, 91–95; estrangement from, 44; and human existence, 22–23, 146–49; metaphysical conception of, 10; naming of, 94– 95, 100; and radical self-transcendence, 5; reality of, 93; and religious discourse, 5, 20, 44–46; and religious truth, 98–99, 114–17; self-manifestation of, 20–22, 91–92; statements regarding, 100–101; truth claims about, 40–44 salvation, 25–27, 40, 111–13, 146 Schlesinger, George, on religious virtue, 15 Schmitz, Kenneth, on religious discourse, 30, 32–33 self-involvement, 42–44 self-transcendence, useless, 27 sign, representation by, 124–26 significance, existential, 134–35 skepticism, 42, 43 Smith, Wilfred Cantwell, on symbols, 104–105 social and political context, 140–41, 145–46 statements: conceptual, 33; about God, 42–45, 131; and religious truth, 97–101; as speaking about possibilities, 91 subjectivity-intersubjectivity-world structure, 4 Summa Contra Gentiles (Aquinas), 130 Summa Theologica (Aquinas), 111–13, 130 supernaturalism, 123 symbol: double-intentionality of, 31–32; poetic, 39–41, 45; and proposition, 97–98; and religious truth, 103–106; and theophany, 127 telos, absolute: and existence-possibility, 90– 95; and human existence, 146–49; love as response to, 136; naming of, 92, 95; and religious truth, 114–17; and sacred transcendence, 94 texts, 34–36 theism: and hierophany, 120–23; and religious discourse, 38 theology: discourse in, 30; fundamental, 9; and “other religions,” 109–10; for philosophical purposes, 9, 13, 96 theophany, 120–23, 127 theory of religion: concepts in, 11–13; defini-

Index

175

tion in, 21–22; methodology in, 141–44; and religious inquiry, 138–49 things, in relation to God, 129–37 Tillich, Paul, on statements about God, 32, 33, 154n37 Tracy, David: on boundary situations, 23–28; on Christianity and “other religions,” 109– 13; on fundamental theology, 9; on God, 165n43; on supernaturalism, 39 traditions, diversity of: and existencepossibility, 86–87; as naming absolute telos, 92; poetic discourse in, 10–11; and radical self-transcendence, 104–108; and study of religion, 139; as true, 101–102, 148–49 transcendence: and consciousness, 14–16; consideration of, 9; divine, 13, 131–32, 134–37; and hermeneutics, 4–5 truth: claims of, 110; vs. correctness, 105; and

176

Index

existence-possibility, 89–90; and meaning, 92; possibility of, 9; substantial vs. formal, 102 truth, religious: claims of, 110–13; and pluralism of religions, 6, 12–13, 96–113, 148–49; possibility of, 114–17; and religious understanding, 96; and statements, 97–101 Upanishads, the, 18 “vague” concepts, 12, 77 virtue, religious, 15 visual perception, 124–25 Westphal, Merold: on boundary situations, 23–25; on ontological inadequacy, 17; and philosophy of religion, 151n1 “wholly other, the,” 17, 21, 119–20, 128 writing and reading, 35–37

MARTIN J. DE NYS is Associate Professor of Philosophy at George Mason University.

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