Philosophy of religion is a very dependent and uncertain enterprise, having to draw on so many other parts of philosophy which are themselves at sixes and sevens. Take for example the philosophy of mind which raises questions of obvious relevance. A book catalogue recently arrived at my university announcing two new works, each by cautious and informed authors with impressive credentials. One of them takes perfectly seriously the idea that sticks and stones are conscious individuals (“involve experiential being”). The other tells me not only that each of my nerve cells is conscious but that they have beliefs too: each of them apparently thinking that it is me. Similar astonishing conclusions abound, as we all know, in other areas of philosophy – in the philosophy of language and in metaphysics for instance, which might also be thought logically prior to the philosophy of religion. Little wonder that the philosophy of religion is in difficulties, and that even philosophers who have religious beliefs often choose not to work in this area. If religious belief had to depend upon understanding drawn from this academic study it would be precarious, or perhaps to be more honest, impossible.Footnote ¹

But there could also be another source of uncertainty. We might have been approaching these issues of religion and irreligion in an inappropriate way or spirit, encumbered with some bad assumptions of a vaguely methodological nature. We all claim to be lovers of truth but we are rather bad at explaining what this love of truth requires of us. We must in the nature of things be getting something right otherwise we would die earlier than we do. Yet when it comes to a more general account of what is required of us it is plain that we do not see very far. “A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence” for example is plainly not going to work. Our philosophical understanding of rationality falters almost as soon as it begins to be needed. Indeed, as we know, it can come to seem knowing and sophisticated to conclude that there is nothing to find or become clear about, to maintain that only a surface rationality is possible, itself resting upon an irresolvable and perhaps unacknowledged partisanship. Philosophers, from this perspective, can be no more than “hard-working public relations experts for contemporary institutions and practices”.Footnote ² When new methodological approaches to contentious issues eventually appear, they will often seem to an outsider to be tailor-made to deliver favoured conclusions. If reason is against a man, a man will simply redefine what counts as reason. In matters of religion in particular we will perhaps be urged to adopt a “reformed epistemology”, put across with a Calvinist slant, rather as feminists will offer feminist epistemologies.Footnote ³

John Cottingham, in his book The Spiritual Dimension, is among those who think philosophers tend to approach religious controversies with an inadequate methodology. Since it seems fairly evident that we are all at sea in these matters, it is of some interest to examine with some thoroughness and care a rescue plan put together by a well-known and learned academic philosopher. It is a sufficiently rare event. And it will also be interesting to enquire what kind of religion one would be likely to end up with once the rescue is effected, a matter about which Professor Cottingham has much to say.

Cottingham notes that his colleagues in philosophy are overwhelmingly secular in their view of the world, sometimes self-consciously so, but sometimes reflecting an academic attitude more or less taken for granted (viii). He deplores the “current … philosophical hostility to the religious outlook” (71). We philosophers, he argues, will not so much as appreciate the claims of religion – and he clearly thinks these to be considerable – if we persist in confining our approach in a certain way – restricting ourselves to the detached and impersonal thinking held up as an ideal in the academy, a one-dimensional ideal which is appropriate only in regard to scientific matters (18–19, also 9, 12, 23, 31, 150). We certainly won't be able to provide the “life raft” for religion which is so evidently needed (71). “Scientism” or “naturalism” – names offered here for the prevailing mind-set – are said to lack “the resources to explore the domain in question” (viii). The scientistic approach is said to call upon only one aspect of “our experience”. It restricts us to only one kind of “discourse”. Properly to understand the claims of religion we must also attend to the personal, emotional side of our natures; otherwise what is really important is likely to elude us (x). We shall end up leading “fragmented lives” (171). Cottingham admits that it might not be easy for buttoned-up philosophers to open themselves to intimations of feeling. They will be nervous about what these unruly intimations might reveal. It will be far safer, they will suppose, to stick to clarity and carefulness where things are under their control! But caution of this kind, though it sounds virtuous, is on a closer examination merely self-protective. It is a “strategy of evasion” (71).

Most of us I suspect will be unhappy with this line of thought, at least in this rough preliminary characterisation, and not because we are inappropriately impressed with the sciences, and not at all for reasons of personal insecurity or because we are unwilling to face the discomforts of religion, impressive though they might be. Our reaction will be quite elementary. It is as if someone were to suggest that we attend not only to the straightening-out but also to the re-tangling and muddling aspects of “our experience”, that we give darkness its due. After all it is perfectly evident that what someone has been through – his experience, whether wonderful or ghastly – can make it more difficult for him to think well about a certain matter. We might also be disconcerted by thoughts of D. H. Lawrence and his sinister confidence in what his blood was telling him. Nevertheless we might be persuaded to consider the claim further if patiently spelled out by a thoughtful writer – as it is here. This broader approach might be just the thing we need; and not only in regard to religion, for there are public controversies which seem irresolvable by sober argument although they can only be called religious by a kind of extension. One thinks for example of disagreements as to the merits of “organic” farming and food. Could our difficulties be once again due to the neglect of the emotional element? To the presupposition that impersonal enquiry is all that is necessary?

The thought on offer is not the perfectly evident one, that emotions, such as anger, can focus the mind and lead us to find out things (84). Professor Cottingham is more radical and novel, and some will undoubtedly find it congenial. He wants to say that the presence of emotion can actually give us a privileged perceptual access to certain information: it acts like a lens (86). Indeed, the process can cascade: the facts revealed may give rise to emotions which will then reveal yet further facts (98). A theist and an atheist, assumed to be beset by differing emotions, will therefore have different information to hand. It is no wonder (we are invited to conclude) that the dispute between them tends to be so unproductive.

The assumption seems to be that it is the theist who will acquire more of the relevant information in this way. But since there cannot be one methodology for the believer and another for the unbeliever, we will consider, by way of illustration, how this new perceptiveness might be of use to an atheist. Let us then suppose that an atheist finds himself disgusted – he is quite overcome with the emotion of disgust – when he sees a grown man praying. Unease of this kind is surely quite common. While in this state, we are to understand, the atheist would be (or might be) in a position to see or appreciate something he would not otherwise have seen. Emotion would reveal to him a bit of information, “a fact”, to which the undisgusted and detached spectator would be blind. This fact might be that prayer is disgusting, or something of the sort. Cottingham suggests, somewhat obscurely, that suitable emotion could even “reconstitute the state of affairs itself” (85). Now acquaintance with this fact, or with this reconstituted state of affairs, could be critical in the assessment of, let us say, the Christian religion; it would have been missed entirely if the emotional dimension of our human experience had been neglected.

And here we can usefully distance ourselves from the association with Lawrence. The impetuous Lawrence, as we may remember from his famous letter to Ernest Collings, wanted to respond to the dictates of his blood unmediated as it were by critical reason.Footnote ⁴ Or we might remember his suggestion to Bertand Russell that he should emulate a mole, “a creature which feels its way and doesn't think”. Cottingham, by contrast, shows an entirely proper reserve and caution in regard to the dictates of the blood. He by no means supposes that the impression of being confronted with emotionally exposed facts must always be taken at its face value. Reflection is sometimes needed “as an ally” (15). Various “commitments”, or “sensibilities” may have to be taken into account.

This is certainly some reassurance. We might however doubt whether it takes us very far. The examples of such cautionary reflection given are themselves somewhat touchy-feely in character, not indeed too far from Lawrence in spirit. There is talk of “fitting together” (98) and of “resonating with” (88). “Deep ingrained responses” to this or that symbol might need to be tapped (93). There are “layers” here to be appreciated (88), indeed “interfolded” layers (163). Thus – to return to the sceptic in my example – there is no suggestion that he ought simply to be carried away by his emotions, temptations or prejudices. He should take thought. He should expect his emotion-prompted judgment to fit alongside other convictions he is inclined to think reasonable, a conviction for example that prayer to a truly transcendent being could not plainly and literally produce effects on earth. It would also have to resonate with his other thoughts, ranked on various layers, such as the thought that grown men and women should stand on their own feet and not need crutches, or his perceptual judgment (several times confirmed) that doe-eyed new-age worshippers, hands raised, appear particularly fey, etc. In short, he should expect his insights to be “vividly consistent with his experience” and “connect up with his metaphysical vision” (123). Consistency and connection – that is to say what is here referred to as such – will allegedly preserve something important, something which goes under the impressive name of “integrity” (151). For all this nuance however, our doubts will not wholly be stilled. This interfolding and resonating appears all too reminiscent of the stirrings of the cauldron in Macbeth.

What are we then to make of this story of the impoverished philosopher, confined to the singular dimension? We need at least to consider the possibility of access at second-hand. If there really is such an emotion-enabled access to the truth, the narrow scientistic enquirer need not after all be at much of a disadvantage. For why could he not readily learn indirectly of what he would otherwise miss, just as someone unwilling or unable to travel can learn from the reports of a traveller? To learn from an emotionally-informed witness one does not have to be emotionally-informed oneself. Think of how we can learn from the unsharable experience of a sniffer dog which is able to detect the presence of drugs. Rather generally, the importance of first-hand information has always been exaggerated, and remains so even now in the age of the internet. Alleged capacities of water diviners can be put to the test. If on the other hand learning via testimony and testing is somehow ruled out in the special case under discussion shouldn't we at least suspect that there is nothing to learn?

Further thought will I believe bear out this suspicion. We might indeed make an exception for the special circumstances of self-knowledge: where for example one's outrage on hearing of someone's success might reveal a hatred one had been unprepared to admit.Footnote ⁵ But outside such a special context, the story of emotional enlightenment seems much of a piece with popular appeal to “gut feelings” in ethics. Gut feelings are surely something more for the attention of one's doctor than one's spiritual advisor. There is no alimentary voice. Why indeed would anyone have supposed so? People who claim to be able to extract ethical insight from their innards have perhaps insufficiently appreciated how belief can properly be groundless (or more or less groundless as one might sometimes need to say). Where such people expect a reason but do not find it they naturally imagine an intimating ground within the mind, and feelings seem to provide what is needed. We might remember here the thought, the assumption rather, that the knowledge we have in total darkness of the position of our limbs must depend on some inwardly perceived ground – sensations of position. No doubt people are also wrongly impressed by the way the phrase “I feel that …” is commonly used to introduce an expression of opinion. Such a phrase misleadingly suggests the report of an inner flutter, supposed somehow to be informative. But one might just as well say that the judgment “I fear you are much mistaken” is an expression of fear. “I feel that p” is more or less a variant of “I think that p”, which in most contexts is not the report of a thought but simply the assertion of the embedded proposition. Surely philosophers since Wittgenstein have already done much to disentangle these things?

We are also apt to mistake the role of words like “disgusting” and “awesome”. In regard to disgust, the judgement that something is disgusting or loathsome is not a response to a feeling, an “experience”, it is a judgment upon a feeling. It is a judgment – which need not be very articulate – that certain emotional reactions would be appropriate. Plainly, not all of them are. One can sincerely assert that something is disgusting without feeling any disgust at all. We also say that something is awesome when we judge that certain feelings would be apt, not to report the feelings we have. Similar remarks could be made about the hateful and the admirable. There need be no tremors or glows to report.

Mischief is surely done in this regard by the casual ease with which religion is described as “an area of human experience” (viii, 150), for that seems to make feelings themselves relevant. The phrase “an area of human experience” rapidly becomes so loose and saggy as to be pretty well useless. It would cover everything that human beings are involved in, dancing, daydreaming, robbing banks, washing dishes, even the experience of having lived through periods without experience. Perhaps it is thought worth affirming that religion is “an area of experience” by contrast with the idea that religion is “a set of propositions”, an idea firmly repudiated at the very outset of this book (1). But this last would seem a somewhat confused thought whether it is asserted or denied. It is the content, and not of religion but of a religion, which can be expressed in a set of propositions, a creed perhaps. To be sure, the degree to which a religion “informs someone's outlook” cannot entirely be captured by the ability sincerely to recite the corresponding creed – as Cottingham quite correctly says when, on a later occasion, he is once again engaged in playing down the propositional (80). Nor would such an ability to recite the creed exhaust an account of “what it means to adhere to a religion”, especially if something more than the minimal is called for (150). But these concessions, I would suggest, are not helpfully expressed in terms of “experience”. Ryle might no longer be much read, but on such an issue he would surely have had something useful to say.

Cottingham may have been prompted to call upon dimensions and emotions in this way by his harbouring a somewhat uncritical view of what rationality amounts to in scientific enquiry. The supposition that a good scientific attitude, and more generally a respect for rationality, calls for detachment – except of a pretty superficial kind – is surely based upon a misleading popular stereotype which philosophers will want to question. Indeed belief pretty generally involves a degree of commitment, whether this is sensible or silly, fair or unfair – if only commitment of a somewhat passive kind. This is even true of the partisan beliefs brought to their enquiries by the very secular philosophers whose supposed detachment Cottingham complains of.Footnote ⁶ But we need not confine ourselves to partisanship. When people talk of “strongly held beliefs” they will often have in mind matters of religion. This association is unfortunate. So many of our everyday and “secular” beliefs can be described in this way too, beliefs which are so thoroughly embedded in our thinking that we are hardly ever conscious of them. Similarly “commitment” is apt to suggest something peculiar to morality, which is thereby picked out as something uncanny and non-cognitive. This narrowness is most misleading. It is characteristic of belief to engage the will. That the will is engaged comes out from time to time when we find our judgment questioned. “Who do you take me for?” is often an appropriate response. It is in this spirit that Hume quite rightly declined to examine the evidence for hobgoblins.Footnote ⁷ A closed mind, we might even say, is called for in any enquiry, for universal flexibility is self-defeating. A screwdriver cannot very well be made of butter. This point is easily missed because the necessary exclusion works automatically and is unnoticed; but without a considerable amount of this unnoticed exclusion (sometimes no doubt semi-exclusion) investigations could not proceed. Free-thinking is an attractive phrase, but in truth only tethered thinking is possible.Footnote ⁸

We should however distinguish between this role for the will and the alleged informative role of the emotions. Emotion is what the world does to us, the will concerns what we do to the world. This contrast between reaction and action is important if we are to understand Professor Cottingham's diagnosis in its entirety. For what we have so far discussed – the alleged neglect of the emotional dimension – is only a part of this diagnosis, and, I am inclined to think, not the most important part. The philosophical study of religion has so often missed the mark he says for another reason which is surely quite different. Action is required of us – that is to say action beyond the pacing of one's study and the turning of pages. Philosophers need, we are told, to approach religion (should this be religions?) with a willingness to join in. Cottingham calls here for “a certain degree of receptivity and openness” (150).

This latter requirement is certainly more intelligible than the last. Receptivity is needed in regard to many matters, even in the reviewing of a book. One may have to be tolerant of thickets of barely intelligible quotation (as all too often here: see p. 162 for a choice example). In regard to receptivity Cottingham draws a contrast with the situation in science, but the contrast is not well made, for in science too one has receptively to absorb a very great deal before one is in a position to criticise. And science students need to learn by doing, doing things in laboratories. Indeed as Cottingham well says, trust “is how we begin to learn anything as children” (17, italics added). One might go further, and say that initial learning even precedes the capacity to trust.

In connection with religion however, a troubling question must be asked: receptivity to what and in what way? A footnote relays Pascal's advice to those who want to believe: that they should act as if they believed: they might try blessing themselves with holy water for example (8). This presupposes that there is in the particular case such a thing as acting as if. Someone might come to think, perhaps rather tentatively, that the world is governed or at least brought about by “an intelligence” – as did John Stuart Mill and, in recent years, our longstanding professional sceptic Antony Flew – without supposing that this very thought had, as it were, rituals and behaviour attached to it. Only by uninteresting stipulation could one regard such a belief as not really religious: many indeed would count it as the central religious belief. Moreover, disagreement in religion might be among those who perform the same rituals: acting as if would not here help. There have indeed been religious sects which positively abjure ritual, such as the Paulicians. How would one fairly judge their claims?

But let us leave these difficulties aside, and suppose, as is so often the case, that there are attached rituals, and that we are to consider one religion at a time (for ritual demands could be incompatible). Cottingham here talks about a certain precondition of understanding, “a strategy of involvement …required by the nature of the material” (12, see also 18), which he refers to as the primacy of praxis. Translated into English, this seems to involve the claim: that we won't so much as understand a religion unless we take part in its life and practice. If we stand back, it will seem absurd and senseless (13). And participation must not only be external as it were, we must hope to be “transformed” (5). “All scepticism or lingering restraint is to be cast aside”. We are to expect “heightened emotional states”, perhaps “a rush of exaltation” (9). There is talk of “yielding” (13) and of being “initiated” (35). He does not say that we have actually to roll on the floor and babble, but that might surely be required of us. This is a stronger sense of receptivity than we initially had in mind. It would not just be a question of acting a part, as in the theatre. Nor would it simply involve trying to see how ideas appear from within the perspective of those who hold them. Nor is this practical requirement in anyway like our need to do exercises if we are to understand some area of formal logic, where there is a network of precise notions and rules to grasp – nothing could be further from what Cottingham seems to have in mind. Is this requirement, one wonders, something peculiar to the appreciation of religions? Are the claims of environmentalism only to be appreciated by those prepared to hug a few trees?

This stronger requirement of receptivity brings with it, though the inference is not here drawn, a disturbing consequence: that one is not entitled to reject any one of a hundred religions until one has immersed oneself in their absurdities and abominations, at least in the case of those religions which did not go contrary to the plainest of plain facts. For how could one reject what one has not understood? One would have to have participated first. Only a kind of apostasy would be possible.Footnote ⁹

It is here that we will turn from purely methodological issues which we have discussed so far to the question where the new dimension and discourse might be leading us. We are offered, I wish to argue, not only rather dubious methods, but dubious methods in aid of what turn out to be rather disappointing conclusions, a dodgy passport to a promised land that is not worth seeing when we get there.

I talked just now about absurdities and abominations. It might be thought improper these days to talk harshly in this way, but this is not only biblical in spirit – which might still count with some – but rational too. And this is especially the case in regard to abominations (absurdities we can be discreet about). “Savage cruelty”, to confine ourselves to that, is “almost a normal accompaniment of a certain type of religious fervour”.Footnote ¹⁰ People forget such things only because it has become the ecumenical practice to talk sufficiently vaguely and to stress the nice bits (as what religion X “really” teaches). Anything else will be thought an insult to someone's culture or identity and be associated with racism, and this is often enough to close down further thought. It has even come to seem a fault to be judgmental. All one is allowed to condemn is condemnation itself. A profound respect for every religious opinion is to be preached whether respect is earned or not. After relaying a light-hearted anecdote which happens to mention Mormons, Cottingham feels obliged to say in a footnote: “I mean no disrespect to any religious sect or denomination” (167). No one will be surprised; it is the modern way. Such sensitivity however has a cost. Respect is to be spread so indiscriminately as be pretty well emptied of meaning. Where everything counts as something nothing counts as anything.Footnote ¹¹ The way out is to observe a distinction between one's judgment – where naturally enough it is often appropriate to be judgmental – and a certain reserve when it comes to expressing one's judgment. A measure of tact is necessary not only if we are to engage in common tasks but even if we are to keep the peace.

However we may justly talk, without rhetorical exaggeration, about absurdities because religion, unlike science, is what we might call an unfiltered notion. Mistaken science has to meet certain standards in order to count as science at all. But nothing is too absurd to count as a religion. This is of course a conceptual rather than a hostile remark. The absence of a conceptual filter, combined with human waywardness, lands us with an astonishing variety of oddity. A historian of cults and sects might be tempted to conclude that every possible suggestion had been somewhere taken seriously. Of course a religion can be absurd in its central teachings even though it teaches the truth in some respect; getting something right is a most undiscriminating test of any body of doctrine. It should not seduce us to be ecumenical with the truth. Differences can matter so much. As to abominations, every religion probably has its edifying bits. Yet nothing is too hateful in what it enjoins to count as a religion. Science by contrast does not enjoin anything at all, so a filter is not here needed. At one point Cottingham discreetly admits that certain forms of “spirituality” might involve “unjust or abusive power structures” (154), but this unclear concession seems wholly insufficient to characterise the horribleness of what might be out there – and, of what, if man is made of crooked timber, can be wholly expected to be out there.

If religion is an unfiltered notion in the way explained, we ought to draw a consequence: that the right attitude to religions generally, as opposed (possibly) to this or that religion, is an attitude that serious Muslims and enthusiastic atheists (Dawkins etc.) have in common. We might call it: a contempt for falsehood (or more cumberously, a contempt for avoidable falsehood in regard to the framework by which we live). I do not assert in either case that this contempt is well directed, and in any case much of what counts as religion is far too anodyne to deserve contempt; but religions broadly speaking, whether great or small, must have been the great purveyors of significant falsity to the world, beyond, that is to say, what one can hardly avoid. It is mindless to be in favour of “faiths” – or indeed “faith based schools” – without asking which “faith” is under consideration, just as it is foolish to have a tender regard for those who “follow their consciences” to do no matter what.Footnote ¹²

It is surely the first step in any serious study of religion then to notice that there are very many religions and that we should expect to find remarkable differences between them. Most of this book (and indeed much of my exposition of it to this point) proceeds as if we can usefully talk of religion as such. One only has to consider the continued use of the suspect definite article: “the religious outlook” (2, 153), “the domain of religion” (3), “the place of religion in human life” (5), “the religious enterprise” (5), “the religious quest” (5, 76), “the religious person” (39), “the religious vision of our human destiny” (44), “the religious impulse” (74), “the discourse of religion”(79, 101), “the religious worldview”(87, 109, though doubts are expressed at 153), “the religious mode of receptivity” (88), “the message of faith”(172), italics in each case added.Footnote ¹³ This singularity goes unnoticed, because hardly any of the book is about the motley of religions taken generally. It is about a decent and suitably minimal religion, “our” religion, “religion at its rare best” (172).

A severe restriction of scope is more or less taken for granted, after the manner of Parson Thwackum. The religion we are offered here is a cut down thing of no surprises. It is not explained however why attention to our emotions and engagement in rituals will lead us to something so thin and particular. Perhaps it will be claimed that the less that is said the less the risk of error. But “saying less” is not a safe procedure. Where blame is appropriate in matters of belief, where it is appropriate to talk of culpable failure, we are blamed not just for our errors but for truths we miss. Minimal does not always mean more credible, for beliefs are logically interconnected. A concession might make a case seem “more reasonable” to an audience but weaken it intellectually. And apart from that, sufficient qualification threatens contentlessness, an ever present danger in these matters.

Nor need a modern, healthy, balanced and minimal religion be regarded as safely beyond the ranks of the abominable. People will suppose that a truly disgusting religion would have to be something “primitive”, perhaps going in for human sacrifice or ritual rape. This is an absurdly cosy view of things. “Our” religion, if there were such a thing, would probably countenance the possession of nuclear weapons, considering it legitimate for us to be training soldiers to be prepared to fire these weapons of indiscriminate destruction on largely civilian populations. These soldiers would be expected to kill the innocent in enormous numbers if so ordered. Again, if the critics of abortion, simple or sophisticated, are right in the way they characteristically describe it, then something which purports to be a version of Christianity, Buddhism, etc. which countenances the practice is a pretty vile sort of thing, however polite, inclusive and convivial it might be. To be sure, what teachings are to be counted as falling within a certain religion is often a pretty indeterminate matter. And needless to say “our” religion, like so many others, can be expected to make edifying demands, perhaps of a rather vague and extravagant kind, which make us overlook endorsements of evil.

Religion, in this book, turns out to be a kind of, or remnant of, Christianity, domesticated or bowdlerised to suit the average amiable modern reader. It is something of a sunny-side-up enterprise, Christianity without the craggy bits one might say. This is a consequence of the methodology which I have not so far brought out. The whole question is shifted from “Is it believable?”, perhaps uncomfortably believable, to “Does the whole thing appeal to me?” (80). In considering what sort of a God there might be, a reference to our inclinations is considered relevant – provided of course that they are deep (“a sensitive and reflective response to our deepest inclinations,” 52). Guided by these inclinations, what will we find? What in particular will be “the characterisations of God that are vital from a religious perspective”? Needless to say, they will be “his love, his mercy, his providence” (22) rather than, let us say, his anger. To understand all, it would seem, is to forgive all, and God (we may presume) understands all. Indeed there may not be all that much to forgive as far as “we” are concerned. God's benevolence is on hand to “underwrite our aspirations to moral goodness” (53). My own deep and sensitive inclinations, if I were permitted to consult them, would have to give all this the thumbs down. It must be allowed however that the Cottingham version seems accurately to reflect the Christianity on offer up and down the land, a hurricane safely downgraded to a passing squall.

There is not a hint that the true light of the world might offend more men than it attracts. From this perspective the miseries of William Cowper or the terrors preached by Jonathan Edwards would be scarcely intelligible. The description “God fearing”, once so often heard, could only sound quaint. The word gospel might mean good news – but the question would always have remained: good news to whom? And at what time? – for something might once have been good news to this or that individual, but be now nothing but the perpetual reminder of a lost opportunity. The blessing might have been conditional and we might easily have failed to satisfy the condition. Many might have been called but few chosen. We might also remember here the disturbing claim in the Synoptics that outsiders are only to hear in parables, parables which are designed to mislead (Mark iv. 10–12, Matt. xiii. 10–17, Luke viii. 9–10).Footnote ¹⁴

In Cottingham's world, by contrast, we seem safely to have been counted among those very “men of good will” about whom the angels sang at the nativity of Christ.Footnote ¹⁵ There is hardly a mention here of original sin, save by way of distancing ourselves from the very notion (141). All we have to accept in this regard is that we are not as good as we aspire to be (74). No one is gloomily to suppose that, along with the human race, we have become pretty well corrupted. Corruption is simply something we run the danger of (55), it is part of our vulnerability (36). Far from being weighed down, mankind is on the up. Over the centuries we have experienced “progressive moral growth” (45). Immersion in the transformative practices of religion is expected, no doubt after various trials and setbacks (36), to lead to “inner peace” and “contentment” (8). Certainly not to panic or anything of the kind.

Only one thing seems able to disturb the peace of Cottingham Man, namely “the frightening symbolic world of the unconscious” (71), connected no doubt with “buried fears and anxieties stemming from early experience” (145). Psychoanalysis from this perspective has a place akin to exorcism. Man, come of age and psychoanalysed, is eventually enabled to take a grip on his convictions. His religion will no longer be something which confronts him, which sets him standards; it will be something which meets the standards he has set. It will sit comfortably with what he will call his values, the values of people like himself and the reader, “our” values. We might think in particular here of our new-found sensitivity in regard to the alleged rights of animals. It is an evil thing to sacrifice a ram, we are now given to understand – even though Abraham performed this very thing at God's direction, a God who was originally demanding an even greater evil (46).

Leave out the craggy bits and what is left? I am inclined to reply: a purely human creation, which is of course exactly what Cottingham's naturalistic opponents will say it is. Karl Barth wished to distance himself from “religions” altogether, and not so much in disgust but as an irrelevance. He refers to religion quite generally as “unbelief” or “idolatry”.Footnote ¹⁶ It begins to seem less paradoxical that a theologian could take this line. What appears in Cottingham's book as “authentic” Christianity is a Christianity remarkably different, for better or worse, from the letter and the spirit of the New Testament. He writes: “Anyone who subscribes to the authentic moral principles inherent in Christianity can hardly suppose that a benevolent and loving creator could attach his favour to adherents purely in virtue of their doctrinal choices” (166).Footnote ¹⁷ Well, such a view of the creator would have the vote of the modern ethical many, that is evident. But I imagine it has not been the view of the overwhelming majority of Christians in history, saints and sinners alike. The central story of so much of the Bible is the story of a favoured people, the favour being bestowed – the point is emphasised – not in response to merits. The very word grace suggests gratuitousness. Furthermore, we are plainly given to understand that some “doctrinal” choices on our part might make a big difference to what eventually happens to us. This is not surprising. We are familiar with the reproach “you ought to have known better.” In Mark xvi.16, Christ is instructing his apostles to go into all the world and preach the gospel. He adds, rather plainly I would have thought: “He that believeth and is baptised shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned”. This was more or less the last thing Christ said to the apostles – it was the very archetype of a mission-statement – so perhaps they remembered it pretty well. And it is moreover quite in character with what else we may read in the New Testament. Whatever we are to make of it, it seems in spirit so foreign to what Professor Cottingham has in mind. It might be replied that such a favouring God could not be a good God. Don't we think of justice as fairness? Isn't discrimination of all kinds the moral fault most evident to us?

Cottingham's “theist” talks rather conventionally about a God who is “omniscient, supremely benevolent, and omnipotent” (20). Naturally the search for evidence of a being thus described has always run into difficulties, the every-day appearances seeming to run against. In this book, theists are rather invited to question the relevance of the search, it being inappropriately “scientific” to talk of evidence (21–3). But why can't a theist take a different line? He might simply question the description of God on the ticket. In regard to “omnipotence” he could well be impressed by the way a (fairly traditional) Christian philosopher like Peter Geach can cut this idea down to size.Footnote ¹⁸ In regard to “benevolence”, the theist might well suppose that God is just as benevolent as the biblical tradition shows him to be, from the Flood to the Crucifixion, no less certainly, but no more either. It is after all the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob with whom we are now concerned, not the God of the philosophers (6). We should never forget how usual it has been for Christians repeatedly to pray “Lord, have mercy! Christ have mercy!”. And they are taught to pray for forgiveness. “Forgive us our trespasses…”. This suggests something quite disturbing: that mercy and forgiveness just cannot be taken for granted.

The finding of defects in the biblical God – an agreeable and easy fireside pastime – is only too likely to reflect defects in our understanding of the concept of defect.Footnote ¹⁹ How much more difficult the problem of evil has become in recent years, it might be said, since it has come to seem so evident to us that “equal consideration for the interests of all sentient beings” is to be the norm! There has never been any evidence of an equal-considering God. To be sure, the doctrine of equal consideration need not be quite as inflexible as it might seem: it can modestly allow us to favour our friends or to look after our own children or dogs (141–2). But this, it will be insisted, is only for a reason: that a permissive teaching in this regard will better further interests impartially considered, the contingencies of life and our nature being such as they are. God could not possibly earn such a concession. Cottingham's amusing (and Spinozistic?) answer to the problem of evil denies to God a perfection we ourselves have: God simply lacks the freedom to stop making things, including things we might judge bad or inconvenient, his “infinite creativity” bubbling over like a milk pan (27–8). Admittedly, Cottingham goes on to provide further defences, but one wonders why they are necessary. And of course, he needs then to express himself uncomfortable with the thought that he has actually offered a defence at all (35–6), everything being so profound and inscrutable, and how-can-one-talk-about-evil-if-one-has-not-suffered-it, etc.

Cottingham is troubled by the thought that God might demand “blind obedience” (38), or even a measure of “self-abasement”(38) or “self-effacement” (39). There might even be “arbitrary” commands (46–7).Footnote ²⁰ All this talk of God as king, lord and master not only seems offensively male (39–40); it smacks of authority, of bowing the head and bending the knee. It rather suggests that the relationship is not going to be respectfully non-directive. The parties will not be facing one another as “equal to equal” (40). How, he asks, can this be consistent with our dignity? But there is, he suggests, a way out. We need only remember the way we have all emerged from childhood. As we grow to maturity our earthly parents allow us our independence (41). We become their equals in the relevant sense. Analogously we might say, God the father will turn into God the facilitator. In this way, even when “confronted with Christ”, we can remain “free, independent, lonely, powerful, rational, responsible, brave” etc (42).Footnote ²¹

Perhaps we have to take such a brave stand, God the facilitator having left us no alternative. Cottingham makes a rather striking claim in this regard. The fact that an authoritative sounding pronouncement is found in Scripture, he says, “is never a good reason for following a course of action” (45). Admittedly it is not too clear what this bold remark amounts to. For naturally, it would all depend upon what one took a scripture to be. It would not just be words on pages. A Muslim believes that the Koran was dictated by an angel. Against this background one might think he would have at least some reason to follow what this Scripture appears to require of him. A Christian believes that Christ is God. If Christ is said to have said “… let no man put asunder …” let us say, the Christian would surely have some reason to believe that Christ actually said it. And if Christ actually said it, even the strong and lonely believer would perhaps want to take this into account. It would probably make it onto his agenda. (But he would certainly take his time, and not be bullied by any thought of law or sanctions.)

What are we to make of all this tremulousness about blind obedience? Perhaps we will do best to suppress the distracting Kantian anxiety and investigate instead something more interesting: how blind obedience can in other contexts be necessary and rational. It is obvious that this is the case in regard to children. Dad says “Bring me my slippers”, “Fill the coal bucket” etc. Neither action was already enjoined or forbidden beforehand. They are “obligatory” now. And the answer to “Why?” is “Because I say so”. That is what this kind of authority means. As to authority in matters of belief, are we so sure that adults, even philosophers, are in a different position across the board from that of a child? We cannot even raise questions unless we can rely on teachings we do not question. We adopt opinions, but only after other opinions have already adopted us. People are taught from all sides that X-ing is bad, and they then say that they know “intuitively” that this is so. They then follow this teaching without much of a rationale. If they try to produce a rationale, there are philosophers on hand who are quite able to undermine it and, rather generally, to blind them with unscience. Cottingham's own example, his filling out for the “X”, is (quite predictably) cruelty, and his discussion (54–7) rather bears out what I have said. I am not of course saying that there can be no rationale, only that, so often, the more we search for it the harder it is to find it.

Needless to say, we are encouraged in this book to have a respect for reason, for “reason and science”, this being a precious part of our heritage (122). We are warned not to go “too far towards irrationalism” (23). “Conceptual precision” is by no means to be despised (vii). Indeed, like many philosophers Cottingham is in the habit of asking questions of the form “What exactly…” and “What precisely…” (e.g. 49) even in matters where precision is not to be expected. Ironically however, the fine words about rationality can be ill judged. Thus there is a good word here for “the free and unfettered use of our powers of critical reason” (45). That sounds well. But no one would advocate the free and unfettered use of our muscles or our motor cars, and our powers of critical reason are every bit as dangerous.Footnote ²²

Praise of unfettered reason is supposed to liberate, but praise of reason is very properly supposed to constrain. And in regard to constraint, it is important to see just how minimal are Cottingham's constraints. I can detect just two of them. Firstly, religious claims should not be completely unintelligible (they “should not fall wholly outside the limits of intelligible human discourse” 152). That says nothing at all, since what is completely unintelligible does not count as a claim. Secondly, what is believed must not be incompatible with “known observable facts” (24). Here we simply need to ask: what could this test exclude? Is it a known observable fact that water cannot be changed into wine at someone's say so? Or that someone cannot be raised from the dead? Is it a known observable fact that a consecrated host is a wafer of bread and not anyone's body? (The idea of transubstantiation is sympathetically if evasively discussed here, 97.) Any story about items or events difficult to detect – as is likely to be the case in regard to religious claims, sensible or insane – is likely to pass muster. Indeed if we take a thin enough view of what counts as an observable fact anything whatsoever will pass muster. As Quine famously remarked, any statement can be held true come what may if we are prepared to make drastic enough adjustments elsewhere within the web of belief.Footnote ²³

Adjustments will be made according to mind-set. It is quite odd to suppose that philosophers need the further assistance of various “dimensions of experience” and of ritual practices when one sees what extraordinary conclusions they can already reach without them. Think of those peculiar conclusions about consciousness we mentioned at the outset. They will be treated with a certain tolerance, provided that there is no mention of “a soul”, a notion which – despite its Aristotelian roots – has dog-collar associations. The philosopher's disdain for religion is certainly not a disdain for the outrageous. It is a turning away from the claims of an unattractive constituency.

For all this praise of reason, this book comes across with a certain animus against careful thinking. This no doubt is why it has been so admired. We should not be misled in this regard by its wealth of references and its scholarly apparatus. Apparently we have all been overly concerned with “the intellectual business of evaluating propositions” (5), “maintaining an astringently dry style modelled on legalistic or scientific prose” (3). There is even a hint that this dry evaluating will involve the application of “mechanical techniques” (139). Cottingham expresses a certain disdain for C. S. Lewis on the ground apparently that he was trying to get a particular point settled, settled in a “quasi-scientific” manner, by laying things before us in an orderly way (21). This is significant, for it is the stated aim of The Spiritual Dimension to move the discussion of religion in a literary or “humane” direction (ix). The despised Lewis, as it happens, probably knew more about literature than any other well-known writer on Christianity of the last hundred years, and was himself a novelist. And he drew upon his humane learning and sensitivity in the defence of the religious outlook he came to adopt.Footnote ²⁴ Why then does Cottingham disapprove? His offence, it would seem, is to have expressed himself plainly.

But if Lewis is to be thought clear but crass (and I make no judgment about that) the answer is something clear but uncrass – not fogs, darkness, and dancing under the moon. “Scientism” might be the name of something bad, but the charge of being “quasi-scientific” is simply guilt by association. Cottingham claims, as we saw, that our academic insistence on carefulness is a defence mechanism, is a way of ensuring that what we might find will not unpleasantly surprise us. The reverse is the case. Only care can uncover the unwelcome – an auditors truth, one might say, This reaction against “the dry” goes further than might at first appear. Even the references to Wittgenstein in this book tend to be weighted in favour of the “Culture and Value” aphorism rather than the considered work of the Investigations and On Certainty, which no one could call legalistic or mechanical.

Our philosophy may have many defects, but a certain astringent care and clarity has been its glory. So how can a writer in the field so seek to undermine even this achievement? It is not quite enough to reply that it seems unable to provide the life-raft for religion (if that is what is supposed). In this case there is a special explanation. As we have seen, Professor Cottingham thinks we can usefully talk – with a “the” – of “the place of religion in human life” (5), and he proposes to tell us what this is. Its place is to promote this thing called “moral growth” – we can find this thought in many places. Ideally we should see “the full flowering of the moral self” (145). Much is made of the analogy with the alleged power of psychoanalysis (not necessarily Freudian, 69) to transform us all. We seem to be in search of “enrichment” (viii, ix) or “nourishment” (148) or “nurturing” (172) – for which we need to attend to this spiritual dimension. Cottingham is impressed by the fact that writers like Ignatius Loyola have composed “spiritual exercises” (4), presumably for this purpose. Now a religion which gave its adherents, after duly exercising, at least the impression of moral growth, flowering and enrichment would not have to talk truth or even sense. There would be little for “the intellectual business of evaluating propositions” to concern itself with, even though of course there would be teachings, “possible candidates for truth” (152), in which one might take a certain interest. An impression of truth in regard to this or that might remain a precondition of enrichment, and spiritual therapists would then need to be concerned to maintain it – a fairly easy task given the perennial appetite for the outré. People, it might be said, need a life-lie. Dr Relling in The Wild Duck is the very model of a spiritual therapist.Footnote ²⁵

This account of the place of religion in human life seems to me very misleading, and indeed culture and century bound.Footnote ²⁶ Religions (most religions?) offer an interpretive framework of belief, rather than some sort of spiritual wholeness therapy, to be put alongside the improving yogas, aromas and organic foods on offer in a society grown rich enough to afford them. Often, perhaps usually, the religious elements will not be distinguished from other parts of the framework, from what is taught or otherwise transmitted quite generally to children as they grow up: that the people around them all have parents, that everyone is going to die, that fire burns, and so on. Faith, sacred and secular alike, will come by hearing. Careful or sensitive judgment will not for the most part have been involved, and certainly nothing which an autonomy-obsessed ethicist would call “taking responsibility for one's opinions”. Religious beliefs for most peoples will have been something quite matter-of-fact from childhood up, and our somewhat exotic category of “the spiritual” might find no natural place in many languages. Insofar as these religious beliefs have also been truly astonishing, as is sometimes the case, this would have had to be something brought to light, by meditation let us say, or further instruction. Cottingham talks of “our natural wonder being blunted by familiarity” (160). But the familiarity often comes first. We are misled by the very word supernatural and its Hollywood associations.Footnote ²⁷

Professor Cottingham too wants to talk about a framework. He calls it however an “emotional” framework (86). But why this slant? Children will be told, conceivably in a totally unemotional way, that God made them, that they have such and such possibilities, such and such a destiny, that they are not to kill or steal, etc. Cottingham goes along with the common thought (why is it considered so attractive?) that God always allows us a space in matters of belief – a space to “see the world as divinely infused or to see it as no such thing” (86). I would expect any thinking Christian to find this doctrine implausible, if only because children, taught as a matter of course by everyone around them that there is a God or that there is none, sometimes die so young. Are we to suppose that a dying ten-year-old, unspeculative in disposition, would inevitably have been allowed this choice of seeing-as?Footnote ²⁸ We are inclined in any case to forget how universal, in Europe etc., has been the belief in a creative God.Footnote ²⁹ Spirit, the breath of life, will simply have been drawn into the body alongside oxygen. Hume once told Baron d'Holbach that he had never seen an atheist and did not believe there were any. Durkheim went so far as to describe religious belief as “obligatory”; it is, that is to say, picked up willy-nilly from everyday teaching.Footnote ³⁰ Now most adherents of such a matter-of-fact religion would have no particular thoughts about “moral growth”. Indeed, a religion would not naturally be considered as having a function at all – except of course by outsiders, sociologists intrigued by the persistence of childish fantasy into their enlightened age. Adherents would merely live in hope, and order their thoughts in a certain way – and to a certain extent, their behaviour. Clearly, the suggestion that what is taught – the framework claims – might not be true would threaten to undermine everything. As indeed would the suggestion that they were only in-a-manner-of-speaking true, as this status would be expounded by a reverent man-come-of-age academic. Clearly, a great gulf lies before us. On the one side, St Paul: “If Christ has not risen your faith is in vain”. On the other, our cheerful improver: “Not at all my dear fellow, you should see what growth we have already got out of it”.

There is another reason why Cottingham evidently wants to play down the evaluating of propositions. The question of truth is apt to be divisive. It is inclined to bring not peace but the sword. It might even set a man at variance against his father and a daughter against her mother. When seen in this light, division and antagonism turns out to be just what Christianity envisages. It is the price to be paid. To be sure, the New Testament also offers peace; but it is peace on its own terms. I have with some misgiving referred to the religion of this book as a kind of Christianity. “Ecumenity” might have been a better word. For when eventually in the last chapter Cottingham turns to the thought that there are after all many religions, he exhibits a distinct fear or distaste of something he calls “exclusivism” (166). There is clearly a difficulty with this as the author realises. To assert anything whatsoever is to exclude anything obviously incompatible with it. Thus the belief that there is just one God excludes an infinity of other enumerations. Christianity, as is wholly unsurprising, seems to make a point of excludingness. “But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you … let him be accursed” (Galatians I. 8.)Footnote ³¹ Rightly directed, écrasez l'infâme is very much a Christian demand, despite its unChristian provenance.

Of course a particular religion is a many-propositioned affair and some matters will be central and others peripheral. Catholics and Orthodox Christians for example more or less belong to “one church”, despite their differences. In matters of controversy generally, and not just religious controversy, Newman's image of the night battle is often apt. A Christian might in fact have more in common with his Muslim neighbour than with certain others who regard themselves as Christians. And this not because Islam is “one of the great faiths” – what would be the interest of that? – but because of what it teaches. Charles de Foucauld was inspired to live as a good Christian by the example of the Muslims among whom he went to live in the wilds of Algeria. Furthermore, if any religion is worth having it will as a matter of course be “multicultural”. That is to say, it will be perfectly compatible with and occasionally even enriched byFootnote ³² diverse languages and traditions, and with a range of customs, tastes, and rituals, even rituals adopted from other religions. It will here set an example of tolerance and combat xenophobia. All this allowed for, however, Cottingham would seem to have a difficulty.

Cottingham discusses a way of circumventing this exclusivist awkwardness – a way of rescuing “pluralism” (160), of getting round “the impasse” (159) – by making out that the claims of any religion must be seen as sufficiently indefinite, suitable to the mystery of matters ultimate. Indefiniteness will perhaps allow us to say that claims apparently inconsistent with one another are all of them true. Since we would not quite know what we mean by saying that there is just one God we would not know whether that assertion was compatible with their actually being 23. The trick here is to stop just this side of saying nothing at all. Cottingham is clearly worried how this is to be done (161). Well, the price of inclusion, if it is not emptiness, is tedium. We have no reason to expect every religion to be interesting, inspiring, instructive or disturbing. But to make such a dull thing out of Christianity is quite a feat. It could hardly matter whether the life raft ever arrived.Footnote ³³

A touchstone here is the treatment of prayer, the activity which so offended our putative atheist. Let us return to Cottingham's central thought: that if we are to understand the claims of a religion we need to get involved in its transforming practices. Now the sort of religion which Cottingham seems to have in mind goes in for prayer, manifestly and continually, and much of it is petitionary. Asking is something that little children do, and it rather seems that this is one of the ways in which Christians are expected “to become as little children”. One might therefore be rather struck by the attitude shown to prayer in this book. The index is not helpful in this regard; nevertheless there is quite a bit about it. Prayer from this perspective can be described in a nutshell: as possibly transformative though never answered. The author offers an imaginative meditation on “Give us this day our daily bread” - on the multifarious associations such language might bring (94–5). But the last thing on his mind is that bread, or more generally food, or more generally still what is wanted, might actually be forthcoming in response. Such “literalism” in his view only invites the derision of the sceptic.Footnote ³⁴ Nor analogously is it supposed that the receiving of a sacrament might actually do the recipient good, except of course by analogy with a placebo (66–7). The thought that divine grace might here make a difference is treated as if it involved a recourse to magic, as “not genuinely religious” (67). Prayer in this book is regarded as one more bit of religious ritual, or “praxis”, engagement in which might make us morally grow (163). All prayer is (really or ultimately?) aimed at “purity of heart” (76, following Thomas Merton). For such a purpose of course one might as well be praying to the moon. Efficacy here would depend upon the way the moon was thought of in one's culture, and on the impressiveness of the lunar hymns and literature.

In all this Professor Cottingham seems to ally himself with the naturalism he set out to oppose (viii). He throws out the bath-water having made quite sure that the baby is still in it. I shall end by further illustrating this ironic turn-around. His religion is as much a this-world-only sort of thing as naturalism could desire. I said above that it was a religion determined by our hopes, but I must now qualify this remark. “Death”, “salvation” and “heaven” do not so much as rate an index entry. Nevertheless salvation is touched on, however briefly. But what does it amount to? In Cottingham's Christianity – Christianity “properly understood” – it is said to involve “a moral transformation” (7). This is contrasted with what crude and simple people hope for, characterised here, I'm sorry to report, as “pie in the sky” (8). Evidently, we are not so much to be saved as improved or validated. Though there are constant references to a heavenly reward in the New Testament – one only has to read the Sermon on the Mount – the very idea is treated here with some contempt as “a bribe”, something which once again threatens to undermine our “autonomy” and our “dignity” (7).Footnote ³⁵ There seems nothing to look forward to, except (of course) the possible fulfilment of those “aspirations to moral goodness” (53) – what could be a more dreary prospect? “Giving a reason for the hope that is in you”, if not quite impossible, will be something quite other than St Peter (or the author of the epistle named after him) had in mind. The attitude of Sister Wendy Beckett, who expressed regret at having missed out on the possibility of dying young, would have to be totally puzzling.

These remarks about hope might seem to represent something of an exaggeration. But we may find the substance of what I have said strikingly confirmed in an article published a year after the book under discussion. When Cardinal Basil Hume told the then abbot of Ampleforth that he had only months to live, it is said that the abbot responded by offering him his congratulations. This appears to have embarrassed Professor Cottingham. It seems, he says, “a ghastly parody of the proper Christian response to illness and death”. Later in the same article Cottingham writes as if by way of explanation: “There is not, or need not be, any major disagreement between the theist and the atheist about the principle features of the human predicament”.Footnote ³⁶ Cottingham's reaction to the abbot's remark is of a piece with the scandalised response of the theologian on hearing the behaviour of the three-year old child which suddenly prostrated itself before its mother who had just received communion - in Elizabeth Anscombe's anecdote.Footnote ³⁷ It is striking that Richard Dawkins can refer to what the abbot of Ampleforth had to say as an example of something appropriate from a Christian perspective.Footnote ³⁸ Dawkins, hoping to make trouble for Christianity, here sees more clearly than Cottingham who is seeking to defend it.

The account of prayer in this book seems to be based on a startling thesis lurking in the text which is rather left to the reader to bring to view. The transcendent God may be omnipotent and benevolent, but, we may gather, he is quite unable to do us any good. He is unable for example to make it rain when we need rain. Nor – a comfort point which will surely appeal – would such a God be able to punish us with plagues of frogs or pestilence. The reason is austerely metaphysical. The making of rain or the sending of plagues involves causality. However a transcendent being cannot literally have causal effects on plain, untranscendent clouds or frogs. Being benevolent, God would if he could, but he can't. He is eternally confined to well-wishing. This might indeed be thought the purest possible form of benevolence.Footnote ³⁹ In truth, Cottingham's God is so utterly other as to be pretty well absent altogether. God might have been our hope in ages past, but the modern religious philosopher has shown all that to be an illusion. We have already gone too far in talking of a facilitator. At best it would be the idea of God, the earthly everyday thing, which could help us. A God could not literally, causally, leave traces of his presence in the world. The thought, or would-be thought, would not be “coherent” (136) – a philosophical claim which always betokens a certain finality. There is nothing else for it: the theist “has to take care to insist” that talk of traces must be non-literal (137). However, this step once taken brings instant relief. “Once literality is abandoned” all sorts of possibilities open up. We can continue to say, now in an oblique non-literal fashion, that God leaves traces, answers prayers, etc. Without literality, it can all seem rather attractive, poetic and appropriate. The Christian, no less than the insurance company, can continue to talk of “acts of God”. “God has sent the gentle rain, falling to the earth again.”

Yet surely there are limits to the abandoning of literality. Suppose a preacher were to tell his flock: “In a manner of speaking, someone died long ago in order to save you. He died to as-it-were save you from an as-it-were fate which was as-it-were impending. To be sure I have already been a little too definite. But perhaps you noticed that I had my fingers crossed… ” More than the poetry would be missing. Nor could we put things to rights by setting it all to music. It is impossible to exaggerate what is being given up. If God is never a cause it is all up with Christianity. If God cannot even make it rain your faith is in vain.

This startling thesis, as I have called it, presupposes a knowledge of God or a knowledge of causality which in neither case we have. We cannot progress by defining that unsatisfactory word “transcendent” to mean “causally isolated”. For the question would simply arise how we are to know that God, if he existed, would have to be transcendent in that sense, against the opinion of (pretty well) everyone, simple or learned, who has believed in him. Cottingham talks of “domains” which are “wholly distinct” (131), but the sense of such language is quite indeterminate. Is chalk “wholly distinct” from cheese? As to causality, we cannot simple-mindedly say that causation requires physical contact between agent and patient, adding that God can only be said to touch things (perhaps our hearts, in the way he is sometimes said to harden them) metaphorically. Or that action by an agent always changes the agent in a way in which God cannot be said to change. How would we know that? Causality is a difficult topic in philosophy, but we know enough not to wave these dogmas like flags. Could there even be an agent which only caused things to happen in a metaphorical sense? The sentimental lover says to his girl “you have made the sun shine”. Perhaps we can understand what he says only because we suppose her to have literally made other things happen, to have made him laugh for example – or at least that the lover believes such things. We might have to say: as-it-were making goes via actual making.

It is ironical that there have been philosophers – the occasionalists - who have argued that only God could be a cause. It would not seem absurd for a theist, more modestly, to argue that the primary sense of making, of which our own makings are only and by analogy quasi-makings, is the sense in which God is said to have made us and the world. It might be thought that this would be incompatible with the way we learn our language. Yet a child might come by the notion of making by watching or being told about what would naturally be thought of as quasi-making. It sees its mother perhaps “making” a pie, “making” marmalade, etc, by using prepared pastry or a convenient tin of half-way-there marmalade-to-be. The child might then learn that its mother is “making” its dinner while carefully watching her put its ready-made meal into the microwave. When it is a little older it will learn that men and women, aided perhaps by laboratory technicians, “make babies” – clearly a case of only by-courtesy making, as Locke rather amusingly pointed out (First Treatise of Government, Sec 52–4). The paradigm cases by which we learn might in this way be off-cases.Footnote ⁴⁰

Curiously, we also find in Cottingham's book the somewhat familiar thought: that “the great truths of religion” are “beyond the direct comprehension of the human mind” (12). That rather suggests after all that the naturalistic or scientistic philosophers, so taken to task, have done well to leave well alone. Whereof one cannot speak … But this is not all: the familiar thought in question seems in conflict with the claim that God cannot literally cause things to happen. For comprehension of things divine would be required in order to be in a position to assert such a claim.

In any case, the familiar thought only invites us to ask: what then is within this “direct comprehension”? What is within it, when Frege, for example, was able to show that the simplest questions about 2 + 2 = 4 were able to fox his most illustrious contemporaries? As Russell was much later to say, using this very example, we are often more certain as to the truth of what we say than as to its meaning.Footnote ⁴¹ We must be able to understand in some partial way if we are to have belief at all. Belief goes in search not so much of understanding, but rather of further understanding.