583 - Religious Experience and Truth, A Symposum

Religious Experience and Truth, A Symposum
Edited by Sidney Hook
333 pp. New York, New York University Press, 1961. $5.00.

Three major topics focus these essays and discussions by thirty-five rather well-known theologians and philosophers. Brought together by Professor Sidney Hook, whose energies and interests know almost no bounds, the symposiasts are, with but a very few exceptions, appropriate to the several major headings. Part I is entitled "The Meaning and Justification of Religious Symbols." The point of departure here seems to have been Paul Tillich's two essays (also included) on symbols and religion. The second part, roughly the second hundred pages, is called "The Nature of Religious Faith." Professor H. Richard Niebuhr's remarks "On the Nature of Faith" stimulate another dozen essays. Part III, entitled "Meaning and Truth in Theology," does not concern quite what one might expect. Professor Paul Ziff's article "About God" turns the majority of the writers to the issue of God's existence and only tangentially to meaning or truth.

Professor Hook's preface makes the point that "one of the most impressive features of the intellectual scene in mid-century America is the revival of interest in theology among philosophers and the concern of theologians with modern trends in philosophical analysis." He attributes this in part to the issues raised by existentialists, to the "continuing crisis of modern civilization," to "theories of meaning and confirmation," etc. But overarching all of these, he says, is the work of the later Wittgenstein, whose "new doctrine of meaning was experienced as a liberating force." From such remarks, by which Professor Hook explains the

584 - Religious Experience and Truth, A Symposum

selection of his theme for the Fourth Annual Meeting of the New York University Institute of Philosophy, one might assume a mighty upsurge of interest among professional philosophers in theology, and on the other side, a hearty regard for philosophy, at least linguistic philosophy, among the theologians. But, if this volume is a token of the new mutuality, then affairs are about the same. In fact, anyone who has read through, for example, the numerous volumes published in England and America between the two great wars, which also brought theologians together with philosophers, with scientists and others, might well wonder what all this new fuss is about.

One of the proposals made by linguistic analysts was that the examination of the very language we used probably created some of our most sticky difficulties. Our "problems," those big issues that one had to be very smart to entertain and which would happen to one only when one had learned an awful lot, might well be confusions growing out of mixing categories, misusing concepts, and mistaking the creation of nouns for the naming of objects (perhaps invisible and ideal). Certainly much of linguistic analysis was initially practiced by men who were extremely skeptical of learning more about the world, about being and value, or even about eternal verities, in order to resolve their kind of difficulties. They proposed, instead, a modest journeyman's task of looking at the supposed problem, its language, its concepts, its genesis, etc., in the hope that such scrutiny might show either the solution or a way out of the problem.

Professor Tillich's paper, "The Meaning and Justification of Religious Symbols," is a case in point. With philosophers of the nineteenth century, he separates symbols and groups of symbols which he calls myths from meaning. Jesus, the story of Israel, and even Jehovah are themselves symbols. Like so many theologians of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Tillich makes "meaning" the aim of the inquiry. For better or for worse, "meaning" has been and is the stuff he is after. If one possesses the "meaning," one understands the symbol.

Professor Alston, a philosopher, attacks the several uses of "symbol" in Tillich's writings, and I believe his case is decisive enough to warrant his judgment respecting ". . . the unsoundness of Tillich's conceptual foundations . . ." (p. 22). Likewise Professor Blanshard's remarks under "Symbolism," in which he wonders at length about the modern theologian's interests in Urban, Whitehead, and Cassirer, all of whom wrote on symbols, seem to me to be apt and to the point. Both of these authors seem to me to write to the issues in a very workmanlike and responsible way. Professor Aldrich's extraordinary parable is also aimed at conceptual confusion; whether it is apt or not, each reader will have to

585 - Religious Experience and Truth, A Symposum

ascertain for himself. The remaining seven essays in this section do a wide variety of things, and they must be evaluated separately; for they tend more slightly in the direction of the original paper, and they illustrate the typical gamut of philosophic interests and schools.

Professor H. Richard Niebuhr's remarks "On the Nature of Faith" draws again a wide variety of comments, many of them not particularly appropriate. Professor Richard Taylor's remarks about faith, drawn in part from David Hume, are brief and certainly question the adequacy of the description given by Professor Niebuhr. Besides that, they have the virtue of being very simple, making the reader ask whether there is not another place to begin. Professor Abelson's "The Logic of Faith and Belief" cites all kinds of moderns, Urmson, Ryle, J. L. Austin, and others, but his essay treats them as more philosophical learning rather than ways to handle what we already have. Most of the remaining essays in Part II are examples again of doing a whole variety of things in the name of philosophy, very much in the manner to which we are long accustomed.

Part III, "The Meaning and Truth in Theology," is the section where almost everything is relevant. I must confess that much of it I simply did not understand, and it is, therefore, very difficult for me to review. God and His existence keep bobbing up for discussion, but I must admit that just why escapes me. Suffice it to say that a wide range of talent and argumentative skill is put to work here. And when the issues are so attractive to talented writers like John Hick, Charles Hartshorne, Paul Ziff, Markus Barth, William Kennick, Kai Nielsen and Cyril Richardson, who are the rest of us not to admit to the same problems? Have we resolved them? Or, are we obtuse in our refusal to admit their existence?

Perhaps I am overly sanguine, but I must dare an opinion at least. It seems to me that many of these issues would not arise if either or both of two conditions were met: (a) if a scrupulous attention were paid to ways in which the words "God" and "exist" arose in our discourse and were properly used therein; (b) if the proper religious and albeit Christian discipline were applied to our use of the name of God (Jesus, Holy Spirit, Trinity, etc.). I suspect that what goes before a man speaks such big words and what happens afterwards in his daily life is the test of what and whether he means them. Wittgenstein noted that much of our intellectual confusion arose because our language was idling. I submit that both theologians and philosophers have the job of making our words really count.

Paul L. Holmer
Yale University
New Haven, Connecticut