In this collection of twelve essays, some previously published, Howard Wettstein merges the perspective of academic philosophy with that of an observant practitioner of Jewish religion in order to explore the metaphysical and epistemological implications of traditional Jewish law, commentary, and theology. Specifically, his goal is to square his naturalistic outlook in philosophy with a firm commitment to religious doctrine, by deflating the supernatural guise in which the latter often presents itself: ‘I wish to challenge the view, accepted by theists and atheists alike, that the sort of religious life I have described, with God at its heart, involves commitment to the supernatural and thus the denial of naturalism’ (p. 48). Driven by a conviction that the analytic tradition has unrightfully neglected religion as one of the central topics of philosophy (p. 60), Wettstein sets out to provide a naturalistic interpretation of religious theory and practice, yet without pursuing reductive or eliminative goals. He considers his approach broadly in line with the non-reductionist naturalistic projects of Aristotle and Spinoza, and professes a great sympathy for American naturalists about religion such as William James, John Dewey, and George Santayana. ‘Mentor-in-print’ is the honorific title Wettstein bestows upon Abraham Joshua Heschel, whose poetic approach to religious matters he prefers over being ‘too rigidly analytical’ (p. 5). Despite – or perhaps in line with – that inclination, Wettstein also cites Wittgenstein as a core source of inspiration: ‘throughout this book, I am trying to think through religious commitment in a way that reflects what I have learned from him’ (p. 5).
Chapter 2, ‘Man thinks, God laughs’, contains an outline of Wettstein's spiritual and philosophical development of the last decades, thus providing a very personal background for his deliberations in the following chapters. In chapter 3, ‘Awe and the religious life: a naturalistic perspective’, Wettstein criticizes the narrow preoccupation of recent philosophy of religion with questions of religious metaphysics and epistemology on the one hand, and theodicy on the other, while neglecting the question how doctrinal belief and its idioms can be understood naturalistically. He differentiates between the parable-ridden ‘theology’ of early Jewish scriptures such as the Hebrew Bible, Midrash, and, specifically, Aggadah, on the one hand, and the full-blown doctrinal theology of the Middle Ages, most notably Maimonides, on the other. The latter, he argues, places the concept of belief in the centre of attention, whereas the former appeals to more affective concepts accommodating religious attitudes, such as standing in awe of God (yirat Ha'shem), feeling love for God (ahavat Ha'shem), and being grateful. Wettstein holds that, while conceptual analysis as found in medieval Jewish theology has become the paradigm for contemporary philosophy of religion, it is the affective approach of the early scriptures that supports the viability of religious practice in the absence of firm corresponding metaphysical beliefs. He illustrates his point by comparing religious practice and discourse to other areas of practice and discourse, such as mathematics, where the lack of an agreed metaphysics constitutes no obstacle to the success, applicability, and acknowledgement of the respective subject. Without aiming for a classical analysis in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions, he provides some elucidation of several core religious concepts. Amongst them are: awe, ‘a faculty for discerning the holy’ (p. 34) with a dual phenomenology of both humility and elevation; faith, a ‘generalization of awe’ (p. 40); prayer, an ‘audience with God’ (p. 47); and God: ‘If the concept has great utility in our practice, then surely it is doing important work, even if it is difficult to say what that work is’ (p. 46). The chapter ends with a brief indication of what a naturalistic outlook on the biblical renderings could look like: giving a non-fundamentalist reading to passages such as the six days of creation, the story of Noah, the story of the garden of Eden, etc., and considering other passages such as Psalm 104 as entirely poetic. As Wettstein sees it, ‘the lack of belief in the factual adequacy of the depiction poses no threat to the religious power of the passage’ (p. 50). Captured by this intriguing idea, the reader is keen to learn more about the interpretative principles behind this naturalistic approach to the biblical narrative: how do we decide which passages ought to be read literally, which ones ought to be understood as myths, and which ones can be considered poetry? Are these principles subjective or universal? And finally: is the ultimate meaning of the biblical scriptures ineffable? If so, what explains the enormous body of commentary about it? If not, why is it impossible to formulate the meaning of non-factual passages in literal terms? While Wettstein is certainly aware of these questions, he unfortunately decides not to dwell upon them, leaving the reader with a promise to attend to them in future work.
Chapter 4, ‘Terra firma’, explores the relevance of Wittgenstein's thoughts about the use of nouns to the religious naturalism defended by Wettstein. Particular attention is paid to Wittgenstein's treatment of pain ascriptions, and the related question about the metaphysical commitments (not) involved in talk about abstract objects. Wettstein holds that the naturalistic stance he embraces ‘makes it difficult for skepticism to get a foothold’ (p. 59), though it would probably be more accurate to call this plain rejection: ‘My naturalist, failing to have learned the skeptic's lesson, begins in the external world’ (p. 58). Just as Wittgenstein shuns Fregean ‘third-realm’ senses as the vital addition to otherwise lifeless propositions, arguing that it is the way a word is used that provides its meaning, Wettstein repudiates the necessity of metaphysical commitments for the application of, and commitment to, religious scripture.
Chapter 5, ‘Theological impressionism’, engages with the relation between religious belief and religious imagery. Wettstein identifies a tension between thinking about religion philosophically in the tradition as established in Ancient Greece, and perceiving religion through the imagery of the Hebrew Bible. The former approach revolves around conceptual analysis and aims at conceptual coherence; the latter approach invokes sensual imagery and aims at emotional engagement. It is the latter approach, he argues, that stands at the centre of Jewish religiosity, and he puts forth the idea that religious belief ‘lives at the level of imagery’ (p. 88) without having literal propositional content. Unfortunately, this intriguing idea remains undeveloped – one cannot help but wonder how religious imagery manages to convey religious law in a way that seems impossible by means of image-free literal writing. Wettstein correctly states that ‘imagery is what it is; it does not yield to propositional formulation’ (p. 84, n. 14), yet fails to give at least a brief account of why this is so – certainly one of the most interesting questions with regard to theological impressionism. Another fascinating idea he invokes without elaborating on it is a notion of non-theoretical coherence, enabled by an ‘ability to negotiate experience, appealing to one idea or the other when fitting, allowing each to call a halt when we are nearing excessive attention to the other’ (p. 98). It would have been most exciting to learn more about this type of knowledge-how, which he suggests can help overcome inconsistencies in propositional knowledge, but alas, the idea is merely touched on.
Chapter 6, ‘Against theology’, makes a case for a paradigm shift within Jewish thought that took place in early medieval times, ‘when the Jewish religious tradition entered into a long-term flirtation with the philosophical tradition’ (p. 104). Wettstein argues that the adjustment of Jewish thought to philosophical traditions outside Judaism distorted Jewish theology, by placing too much weight on conceptual refinement and by neglecting the Bible's characteristic way of rendering its contents, viz. poetically infused storytelling.
It comes as a bit of a surprise, then, that chapter 7, ‘The significance of religious experience’, mounts an objection against William James's and Richard Swinburne's arguments for the existence of God from religious experience. Wettstein adopts a Wittgensteinian approach to argue that religious experience, rather than serving as the epistemic foundation for religious belief, ought to be understood as experiences ‘as of God’ (p. 143). On this picture, religious experiences reflect individual spiritual progress rather than proving supernatural facts.
Chapters 8 (‘Against theodicy’), 9 (‘God's struggles’), and 10 (‘Coming to terms with exile’) provide a series of what Wettstein calls ‘non-opiate reflections on the problem of evil’ (p. 12). Wettstein criticizes the usual attempts of philosophers of religion somehow to ‘explain away’ the dissonance between, on the one hand, the abundance of atrocities in the world and, on the other, the insistence on portraying God as omniscient, just, benevolent, and omnipotent. Instead of trying to find a way of dissolving this dissonance – for example by arguing that human suffering follows a divine rationale the human mind is incapable of grasping – Wettstein aims at achieving a religious outlook ‘in full awareness of the dark side’ (p. 155). He takes the story of Job and God's speech from the whirlwind as an example of a non-opiate way of explaining evil: God's creation is not only made up of good things, but also of plain horror, and that's the end of explanation. There is no reason to believe that ‘the universe conforms to our sense of justice’ (p. 157). God ought to be considered ‘a life partner to the community and derivatively to the individual’ (p. 160) – both a source and a recipient of nurture and comfort, but also weak at times, unjust, and in need of consolation. And in fact, as Wettstein points out repeatedly, the God of the Hebrew Bible is never depicted as a flawless being, but as a being with various facets, some of them just, caring, benevolent, others cruel, petty, bad-tempered – struggling for the best way to deal with humankind while mourning over the tragedies inflicted upon them.
Chapter 11, ‘Forgiveness and moral reckoning’, provides a critical appraisal of Charles Griswold's Forgiveness. Wettstein discusses secular and religious approaches to forgiveness here, as well as the virtue of forgivingness. Chapter 12, ‘Ritual’, develops the idea of ritualized prayer as an expression of intimacy between God and mankind. Wettstein uses a comparison between ritualized prayer, and ritualized ways of expressing affection and intimacy in long-term human relationships, in order to shed some light on the meaningfulness of religious practice and the guilt that comes with failing to observe the established rules. In ‘Concluding remarks: religion without metaphysics’, Wettstein ends the book with a reformulation of his view that religion and metaphysics have no necessary connection.
This is a book worth reading for undergraduate and graduate students who are interested in the philosophy of religion and also theology, who are dissatisfied with more classical accounts of religious doctrine and practice, and who would like to find some way of getting around their preternatural metaphysical commitments without falling into atheism. What distinguishes Wettstein's work from that of others is the very personal angle from which it is written, which helps the reader understand the development of Wettstein's outlook on religion. His somewhat prosaic style may feel unfamiliar to philosophers raised in the analytic tradition, but it by no means prevents Wettstein from getting his message across. Slightly more problematic is the fact that many of his new and exciting ideas remain undeveloped. Wettstein contents himself with delivering interesting suggestions, rather than looking for ways to flesh them out within the framework of his theoretical system. This is particularly deplorable given that many of the topics he tackles, such as the expressive powers of religious imagery or knowledge-how to ‘balance’ mutually exclusive beliefs, are extremely fascinating and worth exploring.
Another question hovering untouched over Wettstein's book is the relation of his account to classical pragmatist accounts of religion. The way he refers to Dewey and James, two of the founding fathers of the pragmatist movement, leaves no room to doubt his great sympathy for the philosophical theories of the two thinkers. However, he makes no attempt to position himself with regard to the pragmatist movement, even though his religious naturalism seems, to say the least, closely related to it. Consequently, he also doesn't address familiar problems of pragmatism that apply to his account, such as relativism (to name only one). If the value of religious practice is not grounded in the existence of some supernatural being, and ought to be considered a ritualized way of enhancing spirituality and human flourishing, the question immediately arises of the consequences this has for religious truth(s): are all religions somehow ‘right’? If so, why choose one over the other? If not, how can we explain their different alethic values without making reference to underlying metaphysics? Such a discussion would also have been interesting to those readers left with a feeling of uneasiness about Wettstein's metaphysically non-committal way of interpreting religion, readers who may agree with Wettstein that ‘in thinking about God, we are over our heads, we have outrun our conceptual competence’ (p. 211), but who still feel that there is something more to religious doctrine and religious practice, something that does have metaphysical weight.
This is an enthralling book spiked with original ideas. Particularly noteworthy and refreshing is Wettstein's harsh treatment of theodicy, an overhaul of classical apologetic accounts long overdue and appropriate with regard to an abundance of information on all sorts of atrocities available round the clock. His in-passing exposition of Wittgenstein's views on religion is extremely enlightening, while being concise enough not to distort the overall balance of the argument, and the comparisons between religion and mathematics open up exciting and provoking lines of thought for the future. It has been about time that someone started making sense of religion in a way that befits our times. Wettstein's book is a successful beginning.
