Theology Today - Vol 44, No.3 - October1987 - SYMPOSIUM

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Is Philosophy of Religion Enough?
By Diogenes Allen

"The adaptation and extension of the philosophy of religion required for teaching in theological seminaries would not only give it greater value to theological students. It could also lead to significant improvement of contemporary philosophy of religion itself, by showing the value of philosophical reflection on actual religions.

At least three problems must be examined in a discussion of the role of philosophy in the preparation of students for ministry: (1) the teacher's own philosophical background, (2) the nature of the subject of philosophy of religion today, and (3) the attitudes of theological students toward philosophy.

The teacher's own philosophical background is a major factor in the role philosophy has to play in the curriculum of one's own theological school. I myself was trained in the analytic school of philosophy, partly at Oxford University during the heyday of the analytic approach. This deeply affected what I thought the significant questions in philosophy and theology were, what I thought good reasoning to be, and what I thought was acceptable evidence. I believed that analytic philosophy had great relevance for theology. Thus, I taught analytic philosophy as a seminary teacher. I soon learned, however, that even when students gained a working knowledge of analytic philosophy, in itself no small matter, this did not provide nearly enough of the philosophy that students need in order to read a great theologian intelligently. Something was not quite right. Teaching what I had been trained to teach seemed inadequate in the context of preparing students to be ministers rather than philosophers, even though what I taught them was important.

What is true of teachers trained in analytic philosophy is true also of those schooled in phenomenology, existentialism, and process philosophy, three other kinds of contemporary philosophy that have shaped many seminary teachers. None of these, in and of themselves or all together, provide an appropriate content or method for philosophy in

Diogenes Allen is Stuart Professor of Philosophy at Princeton Theological Seminary. Over the years, a frequent contributor to THEOLOGY TODAY, Dr. Allen is the author of Philosophy for Understanding Theology (1986) and, most recently, Love: Christian Romance, Marriage, Friendship (1987).

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theological education. The issue is not a matter of a particular philosophical school or method, but something quite different. Learning how to adapt myself to the seminary situation-one in which being a specialist in one major stream of contemporary philosophy does not equip a teacher to meet the needs of theological students-took many years. This is because the adaptation called for requires something different from simply learning more philosophy. It requires a reexamination of the nature of the subject itself.

We often assume that a philosopher in a theological seminary is a philosopher of religion and that the philosophic subject matter relevant to theological students is philosophy of religion. I accepted that assumption twenty years ago when I joined a theological faculty. This assumption was challenged, however, when it soon became evident that to teach philosophy of religion within the parameters specified by, say, the typical anthology of readings in the philosophy of religion touched, at best, only the periphery of what students were doing in other subjects. Philosophy of religion as presently conceived must be seriously adapted by teachers if it is to be of significance to every theological student and not just to the occasional student who enjoys philosophy itself as a discipline regardless of whether it has any connections to theology. The reasons are both theological and philosophical, and take us directly to the issue of the proper relation between philosophy and theology.

Christians in the Reformation tradition believe in God primarily because of their commitment to Jesus Christ. But it is said by philosophers of religion, should they even notice this stance, that such a commitment presupposes belief in God. Belief in God must therefore be considered before any careful examination of what Christians say about Jesus Christ. To find rational grounds for belief in God (supposedly shared by the three great theistic faiths), one turns to the traditional proofs of God's existence. The proofs we turn to are usually the ontological, cosmological, and teleological arguments found in Anselm, Aquinas, Descartes, Hume, and Kant.

With this simple shift to the grounds for theism, Christ is left out. What he said and did, which is what wins the allegiance of many Christians, is utterly ignored. So too are the content of the revelation through Moses and the prophets in both Judaism and Islam. The nature of faith, which is evoked by the content of an actual religion, is also ignored. So we have the remarkable spectacle of many philosophers of religion telling students that their discipline examines all the rational grounds for belief in a theistic God, when these practitioners do not examine the actual contents of these three faiths. It is a very strange discipline indeed which enables one to be an expert on the grounds of three great religions yet does not require one to consider the actual contents of any of them.

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This is not to say that the examination of the proofs of God's existence as carried out by the typical philosopher of religion is without any value. But most of the examination is seriously flawed, because it utterly ignores the role of faith. First, by examining all the alleged rational grounds for theism, it suggests that faith itself is a mere opinion or a blind leap. Second, it fails to realize that the very reasoning in the traditional proofs themselves is significantly affected by the faith of the people who proposed them initially. Both Karl Barth and Robert Sokolowski have shown the significance of faith in Anselm's reflections on the nature of divine existence in his so-called ontological argument, but this matter is usually left out of consideration by those who consider themselves only to be philosophers. The theological value of the traditional proofs can be appreciated only by those who recognize their place within a commitment of faith.

Seminary students need to see how the intellect is used within the context of faith. They need to see that as the intellect is informed, faith is not discarded or replaced. Faith is primarily our response to the good that God has revealed to us and promised to us through the people of Israel and in Jesus Christ. That good is embraced at the start of the religious life and is never relinquished as one's knowledge of God is increased through obedience and reasoning. Our reasoning about the physical universe and about the nature of divine existence in the cosmological and teleological arguments enable us better to understand the God who is revealed to us in Israel and, above all, in Christ.

The recent "minority report" in philosophy of religion, most frequently associated with the work of Alvin Plantinga, has emphasized that a religious faith does not need to rely on the traditional proofs of Gods existence, nor indeed on any inferential process. What is lacking in this work is an appreciation of the place of reason and reasoning with faith. Plantinga's approach has indeed stymied the previously dominant agnostic conclusions of philosophers of religion, but it does not give a theological student a better understanding of the nature of faith and the role of reasoning within faith.

The limitations of present day philosophy of religion are perhaps more easily seen in its treatment of evil. In philosophy of religion, evil as such, and the amount of evil that exists, are examined from the point of view of their compatibility with a God who is omnipotent, omniscient, and all-good. There is, indeed, considerable value in an examination of the coherence of the concept of evil and the concept of a theistic God. But this is not all that philosophy of religion ought to examine if it is to be about an actual religion. Many religious people tell us that their suffering has either led them to faith in God or has revealed to them God's presence in new and richer ways. Suffering and evil are usually treated by philosphers of religion only as counter-evidence to theism, whereas suffering and evil have the paradoxical quality of being both a barrier to belief in God and also a means by which God reaches us.

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Abundant testimony exists that suffering and evil have been a way in which divine grace has been experienced. But this evidence is ignored by the overwhelming majority of philosophers of religion.

Those of us who teach theological students must not only address the problem of evil and examine the various attempts to show coherence between a theistic God and evil. We must also show the significance of suffering as it is experienced and understood in Christianity. Seeing that the Old Testament is so heavily concerned with the significance of suffering and the New Testament has at its center one who suffers innocently, this matter should be one of the most relevant parts of our subject in theological education for ministry.

The adaptation and extension of the philosophy of religion required for teaching in theological seminaries would not only give it greater value to theological students. It could also lead to significant improvement of contemporary philosophy of religion itself, by showing the value of philosophical reflection on actual religions. This might, in turn, affect the way it is done and taught in the larger philosophical and educational arena.

III

The limits of specialization in the philosophical training of teachers and problems in contemporary philosophy of religion itself are two significant factors in the present problematic situation of philosophy's role in theological education. A third is what the students bring to the study of philosophy. The students I teach are deeply influenced, whether they know it or not, by the attitude toward philosophy in the Protestant church tradition of which I am a part. It is a very negative attitude, one which encourages students to ignore philosophy. It may be summarized by Tertullian's famous rhetorical question, "What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?"

At least three streams have fed this long-standing attitude in most of the churches of the Reformation. One stream may be represented by Karl Barth, who insisted that natural theology was impossible. Our only knowledge of God is by divine revelation, so theology can only be done "from above." Natural theology is considered to be an attempt to scale the heavens. All that can be reached in this way is the top story of the universe, not God the sovereign Lord of all creation. The other two springs are nineteenth and twentieth century biblical studies and work in the history of doctrine, especially that of Adolph Harnack. In both these streams, Hebraic or biblical thought is sharply contrasted to Greek thought, and Christian theology is said to have been corrupted by the latter. Frequently, it is said that a thorough-going purge of Greek philosophy from Christian theology and scriptural interpretation is therefore necessary.

Barth was saying something very important in his criticisms of natural theology. God does not fall under the genus of being, so we cannot arrive, from a study of creatures, at a being who is God. This is

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not a novel insight in theology, however. Thomas Aquinas made it perfectly clear in his theology that God is not a species in the genus of being. Few have ever made this mistake. One wonders, then, just which great theologians actually fall under the description of natural theology Barth has given. However that may be, it is a mistake to regard Barth's attack on natural theology as equivalent to a rejection of philosophy. In an important contribution to a Festschrift in honor of his brother, the philosopher Heindrich Barth, entitled Philosophie und Theologie, Karl Barth himself recognized the essential role of philosophy. He emphasizes that there is one kind of philosophy which should be rejected, because it is really crypto-theology. It proceeds from the cosmos or aspects of the cosmos to its top-story and posits that the top-story is God or ultimate reality. But there is another, genuine way of doing philosophy. Recognizing its own limitations, it can yield true wisdom, albeit a wisdom of this world. Such philosophy is theologically valuable because at times it corrects theology, which is also a human enterprise, just as theology rebukes philosophy when it starts to do crypto-theology. Barth concludes his essay with characteristic charm by quoting Psalm 133:1 ("Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity!"), an allusion to philosophers and theologians as well as to Heindrich and himself.

Unfortunately, a confusion has reigned in the minds of many teachers and students. They have identified Barth's rejection of natural theology as a rejection of philosophy as such. For Barth, natural theology is not equivalent to philosophy, even though he has frequently been heard that way by mainline Protestants and used inappropriately as an excuse to avoid the study of philosoophy. Barth's own knowledge of philosophy and use of philosophical categories and distinctions, all carefully guided and shaped by his understanding of the Christian revelation, is rarely noticed as an implicit endorsement of the value of philosophy for doing theology.

Now a word about the anti-philosophical attitude which goes under the guise of favoring a Hebraic rather than a Greek mentality. Christian theology is inherently Hellenic. I use the word "Hellenic" instead of "Greek" to refer to the spread of Greek culture and ways of thinking to non-Greek peoples, an influence which received powerful impetus from the conquests of Alexander the Great and Rome. Christian theology is inherently Hellenic because theology could not exist as a discipline without the kind of intellectual curiosity which was unique to ancient Greece.

The ancient Egyptians said that the Greeks were like children because they were always asking "Why?" It is not that other ancient peoples, including the Israetities, did not ask for the whys and wherefores of many things. It is rather that in ancient Greece the practice became a matter of principle. The Greeks did not think of every significant question that has ever been raised, but they asked questions persistently and systematically as a deliberate program until they developed the very

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idea of disciplines-areas of theoretical knowledge defined by principles and investigated by appropriate methods of inquiry. A practical question, such as the need to determine the boundaries of a piece of property, may start an investigation. But the various rules of thumb concerning the relation of lines to angles were not allowed to remain just rules of thumb, even though they were perfectly satisfactory for all practical purposes. The Greeks pushed until they created the theoretical science of geometry, a discipline that continues to yield new knowledge today. This particular attitude led to the very notion of a "discipline." In carrying out their inquiries, the ancient Greeks became the founders of many of our traditional disciplines, including theology itself.

The systematic search for reasons, or for the logos for anything and everything, is something we today take for granted. It is part of our mental make-up. We do it automatically. We share with the ancient Greeks a desire to push back the domain of the unknown and to unveil all mysteries. We also share with them the concept of disciplines which have their distinctive principles and methods of inquiry. Likewise, this was part of the mental make-up of the early Church Fathers who fashioned Christian doctrines in a decisive way in the first centuries.

The early Church Fathers sought to retain a proper sense of mystery. They recognized that however much we may want to achieve complete comprehension, God's ontological status is such that it exceeds our comprehension. Thus, God, even in self-revelation, remains hidden in that very revelation. Nonetheless, they were persistent in asking of the revealed truth, "How is that so"? Their minds were Hellenic to that extent, to the extent that they created the discipline of theology. Thus, the Hellenic influence on Christianity is much more than the use of particular Greek philosophical concepts, which may or may not have outlived their usefulness. An essential part is an attitude of mind that prizes coherence, that presses as a matter of principle the questions "Why and how is that so?", that searches for principles to organize diverse things, and that seeks to discover the basis or ground for every claim that is made. There would have been no such discipline as Christian theology without the Bible and without a believing community. But likewise we would not have the discipline of theology without the Hellenic attitude in Christians that leads them to press questions about the Bible and the relation of the Bible to other knowledge. When people call for the purging of Greek philosophy from Christian theology, then, unless they are referring only to specific ideas or concepts, they are really calling for an end to the discipline of theology itself.

The anti-philosophical attitude does not have its origins in Karl Barth or in relatively recent biblical studies and history of doctrine. But these have profoundly influenced the outlook and practices of the majority of seminary teachers who belong to mainline churches, and their outlook has been and still is communicated to students. There is so much to study that few teachers are actively looking for more things to know outside their own field, and the average student is not exactly brimming with

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zeal to plunge into the abstractions of philosophy. Thoughtful judgments of biblical scholars about Hebraic and Hellenistic modes of thought, serious historians of doctrine such as Harnack, and brilliant theologians such as Barth frequently have been used as a convenient excuse by overburdened teachers and students to ignore philosophy.

There are serious problems for the teaching of philosophy in seminary, especially those that have a main-line Protestant outlook. It takes teachers time and experience to move beyond the philosophical specialization in which they are usually trained. The subject of the philosophy of religion needs to be adapted for theological students, and this requires new ways of thinking about the relations between philosophy and theology. Perhaps, if those of us who teach philosophy in seminaries were able to make these adjustments and become more effective in showing the relevance of philosophy for theological understanding and work, the third problem, the negative attitude toward philosophy that pervades theological education, at least in the tradition I represent, could be ameliorated.

But we are not out of the woods yet. Even should one successfully adapt oneself and the philosophy of religion, students need more philosophy than can be provided in this way. Every student needs a general understanding of elementary epistemology, ontology, and ethics in order to understand the major doctrines of Christianity and to read a great theologian intelligently. But bow is a student to learn the philosophy needed to understand theology?

The usual college or seminary course in philosophy and the usual books that survey the history of philosophy do not give nearly enough help. The material is selected on the basis of what is important for philosophy, not what is important for theology. Some of the material selected on that basis is indeed relevant for theological understanding, but it usually takes several courses and a number of books on philosophy before a person is exposed to enough philosophical material that is directly relevant and essential for theology. Even then, its theological relevance is often not made explicit, so that it remains buried in and unrecognized amongst material of little direct significance for theology.

Some seminaries recognize that their students need to know some philosophy. But, in their efforts to meet the need, they run up against the hard fact that the discipline of philosophy today, especially in the English-speaking world, is so remote from theology that it takes prolonged study of philosophy before one's theological understanding is enhanced to a significant degree. In most seminaries, the many demands on faculty and financial resources simply preclude provision for an extensive study of philosophy in its normal format by very many, if any, of their students. Few seminary students take more than one course of philosophy in seminary or in their college days, and most take none.

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Thus, it is not surprising that students so often are frustrated when they begin their study of theology. They lack one of the essential prerequisites. Many of them, when they begin to realize that they need some philosophy, turn to the only available resource: a course on philosophy or a book on the history of philosophy which has not been designed to meet their needs. Frequently, they are disillusioned about the ability of philosophy to enable a person to appreciate more deeply the meanings of major doctrinal formulations and major theologians. They feel they have tried philosophy and found it of little help; so they go their way, forfeiting the opportunity for a more fruitful engagement with theology. Some of these students later become teachers of the Bible, church history, history of doctrine, and even systematic theology without ever having seen the significance of philosophical material for theological reflection.

This disillusionment results in severe problems for theological thinking and education as a whole. It is not accidental that many students, pastors, and even teachers are baffled by the notion of divine action in history, and either become skeptical or hide behind phrases such as "in the eyes of faith." Faith is then treated as a blank check onto which we may enter anything. The result is faith's own devaluation, its content acceptable only to the credulous. Another result is that we become vulnerable to theological fads. Lacking sufficient philosophical understanding to appreciate critical appraisals of such schemes, we buy into the most preposterous of theological positions.

Given the fact that very little time, if any, is normally provided for philosophy in the curriculum, a very economical way to give theological students enough philosophy to enable them to read and understand doctrines and theologians critically must be found. This can be done if the selection of what is taught is made on the basis of what is important for understanding theology, rather than on the basis of what is important for the development of the subject of philosophy and what philosophers find important and interesting. In theological schools, we must make our selection by first looking at the works of theologians, determining from their works what philosophical concepts and terms they used and what philosophy influenced them, It is what theologians do and have done that determines what we are to present.

If we do this, we can omit much of what the usual histories of philosophy include and make explicit the theological relevance of the philosophical material selected for study. Of course, this will not give a person the depth and mastery which can come from prolonged study of primary and secondary sources in philosophy. But given the very serious constraints on today's curriculum and staffing, it can give every student a sound foundation on which to build. It can also significantly reduce the frustration now felt so widely by those who begin their study of theology without the prerequisite understanding. The aim is not to make people philosophers, but to enhance their ability to understand theology. This adaption of philosophy to theological educational purposes can give students a large return for the time and effort expended.