What is religious fundamentalism?

The term ‘fundamentalist’ was originally coined, in the United States, to refer to a set of Christians, primarily certain Baptists and Presbyterians, who, reacting against twentieth-century modernism and ‘liberal’ theology, purported to adhere rigorously to the ‘fundamental’ tenets of the Christian faith as set out in a series of volumes, c. 1910–1915, titled The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth (Noll (Reference Noll1992), 1; Evans and Berent (Reference Evans and Berent1990), 1).Footnote ³ The expression was later broadened to include ‘evangelical’ Christianity, which began as a Protestant movement in Great Britain in the 1730s, but later spread to America and around the world (Bebbington (Reference Bebbington2008), 1).Footnote ⁴ However, whereas the original fundamentalists emphasize belief in a set of fundamental Christian tenets, the ‘evangelicals’ (derived from the Greek word evangelion, which means ‘gospel’ or ‘good news’) emphasize the need for personal conversion (being ‘born again’), actively sharing the gospel, high regard for biblical authority, and a belief in the redeeming death of Jesus Christ (Luo (Reference Luo2006) ). Although the two are similar in some respects, evangelical Christians do not necessarily adhere to the specific tenets set out in The Fundamentals (Harris (Reference Harris2008), 2). Thus, fundamentalists are best seen as an ‘extremist’ subset of evangelicalism (ibid.). One might further subdivide both fundamentalist and evangelical Christians into those whose motivations are more specifically religious, and those, primarily the ‘conservative right’, whose motives are more political (Williams (Reference Williams2010) ).Footnote ⁵

The evolution in the meaning of the term was later broadened yet again to apply to various non-Protestant religions. First, there is a similarity between certain protestant fundamentalists and certain Catholic ‘traditionalists’ (Dinges & Hitchcock (Reference Dinges, Hitchcock, Marty and Appelby1991) ). The expression was also broadened to various non-Christian religions, so that one speaks of fundamentalist Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, etc. (Marty & Appelby (Reference Marty and Appelby1993), chs 4–14; see also Marty & Appelby (Reference Marty and Appelby1995), chs 2–5, 7–9, 11–12). That is, although ‘fundamentalism’ was originally understood as a certain specific Protestant Christian movement in early twentieth-century America, the term is currently used to include Protestant, Catholic, and non-Christian religious groups that either adhere to the ‘fundamental’ tenets of their own (sometimes very different) religious creeds or are seen by ‘outsiders’ to do so.

The term has even been applied to certain sorts of belief-systems, such as Confucianism, that are not normally conceived as religions, but are more akin to an ‘ethos’ or ‘way of life’.Footnote ⁶ A ‘Confucian fundamentalist’, is, roughly, a Confucian who rejects modernizing ‘western’ influences on Confucian societies and insists, instead, on rigorously adhering to the ‘fundamentals’ of traditional Confucianism (Marty & Appelby (Reference Marty and Appelby1991), ch. 13).

Finally, the term has been broadened yet again to include views not associated with religion at all. One encounters references to Marxist fundamentalists, capitalist fundamentalists, Freudian fundamentalists, atheist fundamentalists, etc. A Marxist fundamentalist is, roughly, a Marxist who rigorously adheres to classical Marxist teaching despite the prima facie falsifying evidence (Moore (Reference Moore2010) ). A capitalist fundamentalist is, roughly, one who relies rigorously on Adam Smith's ‘invisible hand’ to insure that capitalist economies are self-regulating, as opposed, for example, to capitalists such as Bill Gates, who seek to combine capitalism with ‘social responsibility’ (Sisolda, Wolfe, & Sheth (Reference Sisolda, Wolfe and Sheth2007), passim). A Freudian fundamentalist is someone who adheres to classical Freudian theory despite prima facie evidence to the contrary (Storr (Reference Storr2001), 148). Often, the label ‘fundamentalist’ is used by critics of a certain group to characterize members of that group as narrow-minded dogmatists who refuse to consider reasonable alternative views (Dawkins (Reference Dawkins2007) ). In this disparaging sense, it has been applied in virtually every field, including pop culture, physics, literature, etc. (Parker (2009) ).

Whereas the term ‘fundamentalist’ originally referred to a specific well defined set of Protestant Christian religious believers, it has, over time, been successively broadened again and again until it covers a very diverse set of views, some more religious, some more political or cultural, that, at best, bear only a ‘family resemblance’ to each other (and that is true even if one narrows the field to the core groups of ‘fundamentalists from the ‘Judeo-Christian–Islamic tradition’) (Ruthven (Reference Ruthven2004), ch. 1). What binds all these ‘fundamentalists’ together is a resistance to modify their own traditional belief-set, whatever it is, towards either modern versions of their beliefs or entirely foreign beliefs.

Despite these analogies between the various species of fundamentalists, the present article focuses on a core group of religious fundamentalists from the theistic religious tradition.Footnote ⁷ The ‘exotic’ species of ‘fundamentalists’, Marxist, Capitalist, Freudian, etc., are cited to highlight a key contrast with that core group of theistic fundamentalists. For though Marxist, capitalist, Freudian, and other ‘fundamentalists’ may dogmatically adhere to their own views, they normally do so because they believe that Marx, Smith, or Freud, etc., discovered important new truths, but they would not see their particular hero as divinely infallible. Even the most dogmatic Marxist, capitalist, or Freudian ‘fundamentalist’ must admit that their respective heroes were fallible human beings.

The case is quite different for the core group of theistic religious fundamentalists, who believe their fundamental beliefs were communicated to humanity by a perfect God (hereafter, ‘perfect God’ fundamentalists or fundamentalists_pg).Footnote ⁸ Although fundamentalists_pg may see the human beings who received the original revelation (the people who wrote the Bible, the Qur'an, etc.), as fallible, they insist that these fallible human intermediaries give expression to truths communicated to humanity by an infallible God. Typically, fundamentalists_pg believe in the ‘inerrancy’ of scripture.Footnote ⁹ For this reason, they hold that one must believe these fundamental truths unconditionally. By contrast, even those who dogmatically believe in Marxism, Freudianism, capitalism, etc., do not do so unconditionally. As difficult as it may be to deal with a dogmatist of any stripe, one may ‘negotiate’ with Marxists, Freudians, or capitalists, but one does not negotiate with God.Footnote ¹⁰ It is this theistic guarantee that gives a special quality of intolerance to fundamentalists_pg and separates them from ordinary dogmatists.Footnote ¹¹ It is for this reason that the present article is concerned only with fundamentalism_pg.

The notion of fundamentalism_pg is not, therefore, identical with many ordinary notions of religious fundamentalism. For example, if Jack is an evangelical Christian because he believes it is the mission of Christians to convert non-Christians to Christianity, he is not, on those grounds, a fundamentalist_pg. If, however, he believes this because he believes this directive has been infallibly communicated to him by a perfect God, then he is a fundamentalist_pg. Similarly, if Jim thinks of himself as a religious fundamentalist because he believes the Bible should be interpreted literally, or because he defends his religious beliefs militantly, he is not necessarily a fundamentalist_pg. What is important to being a fundamentalist_pg is not that one believes that a certain text must be interpreted literally or that one must defend it militantly, but that one believes one's religious views must be believed unconditionally because they were communicated to humanity (or to him) by a perfect God. If, asked why he believes what he does, Jim replies that, ‘not being a theologian’, he does not know about divine perfection ‘and all that stuff’, but that he was raised to regard the Bible as a literal truth to guide one's life, then he is not a fundamentalist_pg in the sense important in the present article.

Finally, one might think that the important issue concerning fundamentalism_pg is not what fundamentalists believe, but what they do on the basis of their beliefs. There is an enormous moral difference between Sue, who holds on fundamentalist_pg grounds that one must spread God's word to the masses, and acts on her beliefs, and Eli, who, on fundamentalist_pg grounds, believes one ought to lop off the heads of unbelievers, and acts on his beliefs – and this is perfectly true. Although Sue's fundamentalism_pg may be regarded as a bit odd by people who do not share it, few would regard it as particularly problematic, whereas most people would regard Eli's deadly fundamentalism_pg as very problematic indeed. However, the core common to Sue's innocuous fundamentalism_pg and Eli's extremist fundamentalism_pg is that both believe what they do, and believe it unconditionally, because they believe their respective views have been communicated to humanity (or to them) by a perfect God. One might profitably discuss the great moral and practical difference between Sue's and Eli's different species of fundamentalism_pg, but that would be a different article. The present article is concerned only with a logical problem present in fundamentalism_pg common to both of these types fundamentalism_pg. However, since this logical problem is common to a great many diverse types of ‘religious fundamentalists', the diagnosis of this logical problem is relevant to the critique of extremist fundamentalist_pg behaviour (such as terrorism in God's name).

Note that the present definition of fundamentalism_pg is not specific to any particular religion. Although, as a matter of historical fact, most of the individuals who satisfy the definition of fundamentalism_pg will be members of Judaism, Christianity, or Islam, none of those three religions is mentioned in the definition. Nor is there anything in the definition that requires that all members of these religions are fundamentalists_pg. Presumably, some members of each of these religions are fundamentalists_pg and some are not. Second, there is nothing in the definition that prevents individuals who do not belong to any of these three major religions from being fundamentalists_pg.Footnote ¹² There may be a new fundamentalist_pg religion currently springing up somewhere whose founder disagrees with all of the major religions, but holds that her new doctrine must be believed unconditionally because it was communicated to her by a perfect Goddess.Footnote ¹³ Finally, there may even be individuals whose views are analogous to fundamentalism_pg but do not belong to any normal religious group per se.Footnote ¹⁴ That is, the present definition of fundamentalism_pg is not simply an empirical generalization from a certain observed set of religions, but is a conceptual definition that attempts to isolate a certain basic religious concept that may or may not be manifested in actual religions in any simple way.

Indirect communication between God and humanity

Fundamentalists_pg, who base their beliefs on God's infallible communications, face an insuperable problem. Though some people may receive communications directly from God, most rely either on the testimony of certain books (the Bible, Qur'an, etc.), which are believed by certain traditions to contain the word of God. Unfortunately, there are many fallible human intermediaries between the ordinary person and God's original communications. The contemporary fundamentalist_pg Christian must first decide which Bible to believe. Most current editions originate from the Latin Vulgate Bible, assembled by Saint Jerome, on the orders of Pope Damasus I at the Council of Rome in ad 382, from earlier Greek and Hebrew texts (Plater & White (Reference Plater and White1926) ), and there were many ancient texts that, for a variety of reasons, were not included in the first official Bible (Barnstone (Reference Barnstone1984), xvii–xxiii).Footnote ¹⁵ The Latin Vulgate Bible was declared to be the only official version of the Bible at the controversial Council of Trent in 1546 (Jedin (Reference Jedin2008) ). Thus, the decisions about which texts to include and which not to include involved a great many ‘political’ considerations involving fallible human beings. In addition, since this first official Bible was produced by translating Greek and Hebrew texts into Latin, additional room for distortion of God's message was introduced with each new translation. Consider the story that God spoke to Moses through the ‘burning bush’ (Exodus 3:1–21). The Hebrew word for ‘bush’ used in the story is ‘seneh’, which refers to brambles (Peake (Reference Peake2001), 211, 324). However, some scholars think that ‘seneh’ may be a mistaken reference to Sinai, a mountain described in the Bible as being on fire (ibid., 284). Such interpretative issues are unknown to the vast majority of Christians (who simply take their religious instruction at face value). Finally, the official Bible of the Catholic Church differs from the various versions of the ‘Protestant Bible’, the King James Version, New International Version, Young's Literal Translation, etc., which, in turn, differ from each other. In brief, there are many layers of human fallibility between contemporary Scripture and God's original infallible revelations. It is for such reasons that Thomas Paine regards the word of God in the Bible as hearsay.Footnote ¹⁶

After one decides which version and translation of the Bible to use, there is the further problem understanding what it means. For example, Jesus taught in parables, which may seem simple to understand, but most scholars agree that their deeper meaning is often hard to fathom (Snodgrass (Reference Snodgrass2008), 3). In Dostoyevsky's ‘The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor’, the Grand Inquisitor reproaches the Christ-figure over the obscurity in Jesus’ teachings,

The Grand Inquisitor here alludes to Jesus' remark: ‘The truth will set you free’ (John 8:22), and he is, putting it mildly, not happy about it. He objects that Jesus' teachings do not give a clear guide for moral-religious life. They are, in this respect, contrasted with the ‘rigid ancient law’ of the Jews, which prescribes in painstaking detail what one must do and not do.Footnote ¹⁷ Thus, the Grand Inquisitor reproaches the Christ-figure for presenting teachings that are designed precisely not to provide a set of ‘fundamentals’ on which to base one's life, but, it would seem, the opposite, to force people to rely on their own individual consciences with ‘only Thy image’ as a guide. But what guidance does a mere image of Jesus' life, which happened 2,000 years ago, offer someone in the twenty-first century? Not only do certain problems arise at present that did not arise 2,000 years ago (genetic engineering, certain environmental issues, the possibility of test tube reproduction, nuclear destruction of the entire species, etc.), but even if some issues remain constant (abortion, euthanasia, etc.), the whole context and technological possibilities are so different that it is difficult to know what moral could be drawn from such ancient stories for today's decisions. A Scripture, based on a text so far removed from contemporary concepts and issues, many of which did not even exist at the time of its composition, does not support a ‘fundamentalist_pg’ outlook. The Grand Inquisitor explains his real objection to Christ's teachings, ‘Instead of taking possession of men's freedom, Thou didst increase it, and burdened the spiritual kingdom of mankind with sufferings forever’ (ibid.). The Grand Inquisitor's objection is precisely that Jesus rejects any set of ‘fundamentals’. Rather, Jesus holds that following a set of fundamentals is wrong because it involves surrendering one's personal freedom in order to escape the terrible burden of a free conscience. As the Grand Inquisitor sees it, Jesus, mistakenly, sought to make people free by denying them the illusory comfort of a set of ‘fundamentals’.Footnote ¹⁸

Given the problems deriving from the facts that the production of the Bible involved human politics and fallible human decisions, plus the problems deriving from the fact that the modern Bible is the result of successive translations by fallible human beings, it is rationally impossible to hold that the kind of straightforward messages associated with fundamentalism_pg can be reliably extracted from it. It is, therefore, no surprise, that different people see diametrically opposed views in the Bible: Some see in it a justification for the ‘liberation theology’ of the ‘Left’, while others see in it a recipe for the ‘Christian Conservatism’ of the ‘Right’ (Brown (Reference Brown1993); Shields (Reference Shields2009); Rowland (Reference Rowland2007) ). Since there is no comfort for the religious fundamentalist_pg from God's communications filtered through layers of fallible human institutions and translators, the key question, discussed in the next section, is whether human beings can trust the messages God communicates to them directly.

Can the finite understand the infinite?

One is rightly sceptical of claims about the clarity and authority of God's message when it has been filtered through multiple layers of fallible human intermediaries, but what of the case in which God communicates directly with human beings? That is, Moses and Mohammad need not share Paine's doubts because they (it is claimed) received their communications directly from God or an angel. It would seem that fundamentalism_pg presupposes the possibility of direct God-to-human communication at some time or other.Footnote ¹⁹ Otherwise, one is left with layer after layer of fallible human judgements and decisions. But how is direct communication between God and humanity supposed to work? How can God's infinite thoughts be fitted into a finite human mental state?

It is noteworthy that many reports of direct divine communication involve dreams, visions, impressions, and signs (meaningful unlikely coincidences) (Wiebe (Reference Wiebe1998) ). But the meanings of such phenomena are notoriously elusive and ambiguous. All such phenomena stand in need of interpretation and all admit of alternative explanations. When Frank dreams or has a vision or impression or sign that a certain plane will crash today, and then it does crash, he may have a strong temptation to believe that God had granted him a glimpse of the future, but he forgets all the times he dreamed or had a vision or impression or sign that something would happen and it did not. Frank may read divine intervention into an unlikely coincidence, but it is highly probable that, out of the many thousands of events in a given person's life, numerous unlikely coincidences will occur. Further, one is, in such cases, given no criterion whereby to distinguish a normal unlikely coincidence from a genuine case of divine intervention. If Ron gets an incurable disease, and, after praying to God, a cure is suddenly discovered, he may believe that ‘God was watching over me’.Footnote ²⁰ He forgets all the times that, despite prayers, bad things happen to him without God's intervention. If Ron gets a recurrence of the disease two years later, and this time it is not curable, does that mean that God is no longer watching over him – or does it mean that God is still watching over him, but that now it is ‘his time’? One is given no criterion to distinguish a genuine case of divine intervention from mere coincidence. Similarly, suppose Jan believes that she has had a dream, vision, sign, or impression sent by God that instructs her that she must henceforth be celibate. Once again, one is given no criterion which determines whether this is really God's command or Jan's own subconscious wishes (or fears). The notion of a divine message in such dreams, visions, or impressions is empty of empirical content. The interpretation of dreams, impressions, signs, etc., is, therefore, inevitably left to human whim.

The present author takes it as obvious that it is impossible to justify a fundamentalist_pg outlook on such elusive phenomena as dreams, impressions, signs, and the like. Fundamentalism_pg generally involves fairly precise beliefs, that one must believe in the virgin birth, that one must establish an Islamic Caliphate, that one must vanquish the infidels, etc. It requires, therefore, not just a feeling or intimation or sign or dream of God's directives, which might be common to fundamentalist_pg and non-fundamentalist_pg alike, but some fairly precise propositional communications (Harris (Reference Harris2008), 234). How are precise propositional messages to be communicated from an infinite God to a finite human mind?

The cases in which God literally speaks directly to someone are more promising. These communications can be public (the proverbial voice from the clouds to the assembled masses) or private (‘interior locutions’).Footnote ²¹ As Kate, a fundamentalist_pg, tells it, she learned of her mission when she heard the voice of God (let it be either public or private) tell her that she must, within the next year, add 1,000 new believers to the existing 10,000 members of her new religious sect. Leaving aside the difficult epistemological question of how she can know that it is God's voice, and not, for example, that of her own unconscious mind, or that of some evil spirit (McDonald (Reference McDonald2005), sec. 2b), one is still left with the question: how is she supposed to understand the message? It appears to be a simple sentence in the English language. But can finite beings be so certain they understand their own language – let alone the language chosen by God to speak to them?Footnote ²²

To make the question more precise, suppose that God's message comes to Kate fresh upon her finishing Kripke's Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language. She accepts Kripke's point that although he thought he understood the word ‘plus’, there is no fact about his earlier life that determines that the correct answer to ‘What is 68 plus 57?’ is ‘125′ (Kripke, (Reference Kripke1984), 58). Thus, it is consistent with his previous use of the word ‘plus’ that that he actually meant the ‘quus’-function (where ‘x quus y’ = x + y if x, y < 57, 5 otherwise). The same doubt, she realizes with some distress, applies to her situation.

It is useful, in order to clarify Kate's quandary, to define a new function, the suus-function (where ‘x suus y’ = x + y if x, y < 998, 110,000 otherwise). Since Kate's previous behaviour when ‘adding’ is consistent with her having been suoadding, rather than adding proper, she is unsure whether by ‘adding’ she has, up to that point, meant addition or suoaddition. The question had, frankly, never even occurred to her before reading Kripke. If she must add 1,000 members to the existing 10,000, she must raise the total to 11,000. That is right at the limit of what she thinks she can do in a single year. If, however, she must suoadd 1,000 to 10,000 within a single year, she must bring the total membership to 110,000 – a near impossible task! Kate wants to fulfil her mission, but how can she know what language she is speaking when she ‘adds’ two numbers, let alone what language God is speaking when he says those words to her? Kripke's argument, it seems, has ‘theological’ implications.

The doubt, once raised, soon spreads to other words and concepts. Although Kripke raises the issue with regard to mathematical concepts, similar doubts can be raised for virtually all concepts. Referring to Goodman (Reference Goodman1974), Kripke points out that a similar problem applies to colour words: ‘Perhaps by “green” in the past, I meant “grue”’, where ‘past objects were grue if and only if they were (then) green while present objects are grue if and only if they are (now) blue’ (Kripke (Reference Kripke1984), 20 and n 14). In brief, there is no fact about Kripke's (and Kate's) previous use of the word ‘green’ that determines which objects he (and she) should, henceforth, call ‘green’, and which ‘grue’, and so on for virtually all concepts ((ibid., 20).

None of this makes Kate doubt God's knowledge. Kripke does not raise any doubts about God's ability to grasp the ‘ + ’ function unambiguously. The problem is not with God, who can hold the whole infinite series of possible additions and quadditions, and the entire extensions of ‘green’ and ‘grue’, before His perfect infinite mind. Kripke's argument has only made Kate doubt the ability of her own finite mind to determine whether her use of the ‘plus’ function refers to the perfect mathematical ‘ + ’ function or some other function. That is, every communication involves two beings, in the present case God and herself, and Kripke raises doubts only about the finite side of the communication. The problem is this: how can God transmit His perfect infinite message into her finite mind when there is no fact about her finite human mind that can determine the infinite applications of the words God puts before her mind? The problem is not with God, but with her, and her human limitations.

Perhaps one thinks that an omnipotent God can ensure that Kate understands His message correctly. But how is God to implant an infinite thought into a finite mind? Although Descartes believed that God can do anything (including the logically impossible) (Descartes (Reference Descartes, Urban and Walton1992), 37–40), most philosophers hold that an omnipotent God can only do what is logically possible.Footnote ²³ So how, specifically, can God's omnipotence manage to fit the infinite into the finite? Kripke admits to being tempted by the idea that ‘there is something in my mind – the meaning I attach to the “plus” sign – that instructs me what I ought to do in all such future cases' (Kripke (Reference Kripke1984), 22). Can an omnipotent God implant a psychological state into Kate's finite mind that ‘instructs’ her, unambiguously, how to go on in an infinite number of cases? But even if an omnipotent God implanted an infinite state in Kate's finite mind, that does not mean she can understand it.Footnote ²⁴ As Aquinas (Reference Aquinas1997, Q2 Art. 1. Reply to Obj. 1) puts an it: ‘[S]ince He is infinite, He cannot be included in any finite being’. Indeed, why should not the sudden appearance of an infinite divine thought in a finite mind be the occasion for terror and confusion rather than blissful enlightenment?Footnote ²⁵ In summary, even if an omnipotent God somehow manages to fit an infinite thought into a finite mind, that does not explain how the finite mind understands it.

Hegel exposes the flaw in such views. Referring to the efforts of ‘empirical consciousness’ to understand God's revelations, Hegel (Reference Hegel1968, 328) writes: ‘[T]hus, we have two things, consciousness and absolute Essence. These two are, at first, in a state of mutual exclusion, standing in a finite relation to each other.’ The fact that an omnipotent God is involved in the communication does not mean that God and Kate are put into an ‘infinite’ relation to each other. It is still finite Kate trying to understand infinite God. Kate's side of the relation remains limited by her finitude. In brief, Kate had somehow, in her uncritical fundamentalist_pg outlook, managed to confuse her (finite) relation to God and God's (infinite) relation to her.

Pailin, referring to a similar issue, remarks that the only remaining option is to regard God's communication to man ‘as a miraculous activity in which God replaces the human intellect’ (Pailin (Reference Pailin2009), 5). But that too fails to achieve the desired result. If an omnipotent God somehow replaces Kate's finite mind by an infinite one, that would no longer be Kate's mind, and it is Kate, not some divine ‘replacement’, that needs to understand God's instructions. Kate is not, presumably, to be an automaton mechanically carrying out God's directive. Unless one is Descartes, an omnipotent God can no more enable Kate's finite mind to understand infinite thoughts than it can divide 4 by 2 and get 9.Footnote ²⁶ The appeal to God's omnipotence gets one no further. It is a sleight of hand that only obfuscates the problem of the relation of finite minds to an infinite God.

Since it is now clear to Kate that God's infinite thoughts cannot be transplanted into finite human psychological states, she sees that what she earlier believed to be God's communications were really of human origin, from herself, her pastor, certain books, etc. Somehow she had managed, in a massive failure of self-knowledge (of her own limitations), to substitute human beliefs (or desires) for God's messages. Genuine religiosity is not, she now realizes, to be acquired with a book of ‘fundamentals’ that can be followed mechanically. Genuine religiosity simply cannot be that easy. Kripke's ‘meaning-scepticism’ has, so to speak, put ‘the fear of God in her’, but she now understands this phrase differently. Whereas she had formerly believed that ‘fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom’ (Psalm 111:10), she now sees that fear of oneself, i.e. of ‘exalting’ oneself before the Lord (Matthew 23:12), is the beginning of human wisdom.Footnote ²⁷ With a new appreciation of Socratic humility,Footnote ²⁸ her former fundamentalist_pg paradigm of religious certitude now looks to her like the very essence of irreligiousness.

Kate has not, however, abandoned her religious faith. Since Kripke's sceptical doubts pose no challenge to God's knowledge, but only to the human penchant to forget one's finitude, Kate envisages a new kind of religiosity founded on the awareness of human limitations. Kripke's point, as she understands it, does not undermine human religious belief per se, or human beliefs in general. On the contrary, in parallel with Kripke's ‘sceptical solution’ to his sceptical problem (based on his understanding of Wittgenstein),Footnote ²⁹ she sees a viable and important practical role for religious belief (and religious assertions) in human life.Footnote ³⁰ What she has come to reject is only the prideful belief that human religious belief somehow possesses the same certitude and authority that is appropriate only to its source (God), the kind of prideful belief that may lead one, not merely to refrain from fish on Friday, but, perhaps, to lop off the heads of the infidels.

Genuine religiosity is not, Kate now holds, to be acquired with a book of ‘fundamentals’ that can be followed mechanically. Since authentic religious faith must grow out of human finitude, it must be an entirely more humble, more searching, and self-critical kind of faith. For finite beings, salvation can always be only a work in progress: ‘Continue to work out [one's] salvation with fear and trembling’ (Philippians 2:12).Footnote ³¹

‘The beginning of wisdom’

In the real (as opposed to the academic) world, it is unlikely that anyone would be moved by Kripke's conceptual argument to abandon fundamentalism_pg, e.g. no-one is, or should be, moved by Kripke's argument to abandon arithmetic.Footnote ³²

However, in addition to Kripke's question how finite beings understand their own language, there is the additional question how a finite human being knows how to understand God's message (if they do). This issue is raised by the biblical story (Genesis 22:1–2), according to which Abraham is instructed by God to take his only son, Isaac, to Mount Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering to God (Kierkegaard (Reference Kierkegaard1983a), 9ff.).Footnote ³³ Being a person of great faith, Abraham sets off with Isaac for Moriah. On the way, Isaac asks where is the animal that is to be sacrificed and Abraham replies that God will provide one. Just as Abraham is about to sacrifice Isaac, he is prevented from doing so by an angel and a ram appears. Abraham sacrifices the ram and takes his son home. As a reward for his unconditional faith, his aged wife, Sarah, is granted another child by God.

On the surface, the story appears to praise Abraham's unconditional faith in God (Pailin (Reference Pailin2009), 130–131). However, a less obvious moral is that God's apparent commands are not always what they seem to be. It seemed to Abraham that God had commanded him to sacrifice Isaac, but, in fact, God was only testing him.Footnote ³⁴ Even if a ‘locution’ that comes from God seems like a command, that does not mean that it is a command (or that, if it is a command, it should not be resisted).Footnote ³⁵ Furthermore, the human understanding of the ‘locution’ is affected by the ‘open-texture’ of language and the ever changing interpretative capacities of those who hear it (Sorenson (Reference Sorenson2012), sec. 7). To take such a ‘locution’ from God as a command that must be obeyed unconditionally, can, therefore, be a mistake.Footnote ³⁶ Abraham's faith may have passed the test, but he was wrong in believing God had wanted Isaac to be sacrificed. It had only seemed that God wanted Isaac sacrificed. When, therefore, fundamentalists_pg believe themselves to have been instructed by God to believe in the virgin birth, or to chop off the heads of unbelievers, it may be not so much a serious command as it is a test (the point of which is to see how the person reacts to the test, and where passing the test is not necessarily to follow the ‘command’ unconditionally).Footnote ³⁷ Indeed, when Jane's religious teachers present her with a set of ‘fundamentals’ that, she has been told, must be believed unconditionally, it may be that God is testing her, to see how she reacts, and where passing the test does not involve following those fundamentals slavishly (Kierkegaard (Reference Kierkegaard1983a), 13, 20).Footnote ³⁸ Indeed, it may even be that God put fundamentalism_pg into the world, not as a doctrine to be followed unconditionally, but as an ordeal – a temptation.Footnote ³⁹

One might think that Kierkegaard's story of Abraham's ordeal is not the best choice to illustrate a conceptual problem with fundamentalism_pg. For, does not Kierkegaard employ that story to champion Abraham's unconditional obedience to God (ibid., 22), and does not that mean that he satisfies the definition of fundamentalism_pg?

Kierkegaard's Abraham-story is, however, employed here primarily to illustrate that even if a ‘locution’ does come from an infallible God, this does not mean that finite human beings are infallible in their interpretation of it. For finite beings, wanting to obey God unconditionally is one thing. Being in a position to do it is something else entirely because the finite side of the communication introduces a disturbing uncertainty into the communication. It is interesting that Kierkegaard takes such pains to make this point despite his apparent praise of unconditional obedience to God (McDonald (Reference McDonald2009), sec. 5), and this signifies an instructive difference between Kierkegaard and the fundamentalists_pg.

Despite his eulogy to Abraham's unconditional faith, Kierkegaard does not regard Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac as a good thing in any simple sense. He remarks that Abraham ‘could not comprehend that it was a sin that he had been willing to sacrifice [Isaac]’ and that Abraham ‘believed the preposterous’ (see Kierkegaard (Reference Kierkegaard1983b), 15). In order to understand Kierkegaard's evaluation of the Abraham story, one must take account of his view that faith is absurd (or paradoxical), and that the religious value of faith consists precisely in the fact that it is absurd. It is because, for Kierkegaard, religious belief is ‘absurd’ that it is necessarily accompanied by ‘fear and trembling’. When Kierkegaard (ibid., 143) states that human beings are a synthesis of finite and infinite, he does not mean that human beings somehow participate in God's infinite knowledge.Footnote ⁴⁰ Kierkegaard's faith is that of a finite being who knows that human beings depend on an infinite being whose ways are quite beyond their understanding – at least as much beyond their understanding as it is beyond Kate's understanding which function she means by ‘plus’.Footnote ⁴¹ Thus, Kierkegaard holds that the appropriate response to an awareness of one's finite dependence on the infinite is ‘fear and trembling’ – and that is precisely what is lacking in fundamentalism_pg.Footnote ⁴² Whereas the fundamentalist_pg sees the meaning of God's communications as clear and straightforward, Kierkegaard sees nothing straightforward in religious belief, which is why he displays nothing of the rigid dogmatism of the fundamentalist_pg. Quite the contrary, his Abraham-story illustrates why unconditional faith does not automatically translate into fundamentalist_pg certitude. Abraham had the former, not the latter. Thus, although there are analogies between Kierkegaard and the fundamentalists_pg, there are also enormous disanalogies.Footnote ⁴³

The link between Kripke and Kierkegaard in this respect is that, in very different ways, both are profoundly impressed by man's finitude. Kripke, inspired by Wittgenstein's apparent ‘finitism’ in the philosophy of mathematics (Mathieu (Reference Mathieu2008), argues that there is no way in which a finite psychological state can determine how words ought to be applied in an infinite number of cases. Kierkegaard holds that the gulf between human finitude and the infinite God is so great that human beings can have no certainty in matters of religious faith (Collins (Reference Collins1967), 258–263). Although Kierkegaard and Kripke start from very different philosophical issues, and employ very different methods, each holds a view of human finitude that undermines the proud certitude of the fundamentalist_pg. Fundamentalism_pg is a caricature of an authentic (humble and searching) religious life.