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On God and Virtue
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
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Philosophy of religion in the twentieth century has been deeply influenced, one might say dominated, by contemporary empiricism. God is the subject of religion, but the word ‘God’ does not name a person or an object in the ordinary way. The word ‘God’ is a symbol for the ultimately mysterious, unknowable and transcedent ground of all being. The insight or conviction, God is, cannot however, be reached within the context of empricism, no matter how broad in intention it may be. The inadequacy of empiricism in this respect is fundamentally connected with its epistemological presuppositions. Religion — at a serious level — is not concerned with beliefs that soothe and console; it is concerned with a vision of God as the ground of all being. Creation points beyond the finite world to God as its transcendent source. Consent to or belief in God is for nothing. It arises out of a sense of wonder, a sense of mystery at creation or being and refletion on it.
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page 489 note 1 Plato and Aristotle suggest that philosophy begins with wonder. ‘This sense of wonder is the mark of the philosopher. Philosophy indeed has no other origin… (Theaetetus, 155d); and Aristotle: ‘For it is owing to their wonder that men both now begin and first began to philosophize; they wondered originally at the obvious difficulties, then advanced little by little and stated difficulties about the greater matters, e.g., about the phenomena of the moon and those of the sun and of the stars, and about the genesis of the universe. And a man who is puzzled and wonders thinks himself ignorant (whence even the lover of myth is in a sense a lover of Wisdom, for the myth is composed of wonders); therefore since they philosophized in order to escape from ignorance, evidently they were pursuing science in order to know, and not for any utilitarian end…. For all men begin, as we said, by wondering that things are as they are… (Metaphysics, book 1, 982b, 983a).
page 491 note 1 ‘Immanence.’
page 491 note 2 The Brothers Karamazov, pp. 385–6 (Bantam).Google Scholar
page 491 note 3 Matthew 5:45.
page 491 note 4 A more detailed discussion of this point is provided in my article ‘On Art, Morals and Religion: Some Reflections on the Work of Iris Murdoch’ in Religious Studies XIV (December 1978), pp. 515–24.Google Scholar
page 492 note 1 The Brothers Karamazov, book v.
page 492 note 2 Luke 4: 2–13.
page 493 note 1 I am pleased to acknowledge my indebtedness to my former teacher and friend the late Professor Margaret Brackenbury Crook for her very careful textual analysis of the Book of Job in her book The Cruel God: Job's Search for the Meaning of Suffering.
page 494 note 1 Ezekiel 14: 14.
page 494 note 2 1: 21.
page 494 note 3 4: 7–11.
page 495 note 1 6: 2–4.
page 495 note 2 6: 24–30.
page 495 note 3 Compare by way of contrast Psalm 8.
page 496 note 1 7: 17–20.
page 496 note 2 9: 24.
page 496 note 3 10: 1–7.
page 497 note 1 Compare by way of contrast the parable of the rich fool (Luke: 12: 16–21), whose self-centred preoccupation transformed what he saw into what he could use. Or, alternatively, one might say that he could not see the world but only use it. His self-centredness prevented him from becoming ‘rich toward God’. While it is more or less clear from the context of the parable what not being rich toward God means, what the phrase does mean remains somewhat opaque, inviting further reflection.
page 498 note 1 Deut. 6: 4–5, Mark 12: 29–30.
page 500 note 1 Republic, 514 ff.
page 502 note 1 The Fire and the Sun, pp. 36–8.Google Scholar