No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
Through various applications of the ‘deep structure’ of moral and religious reasoning, I have sought to illustrate the value of a morally informed approach in helping us to understand the complexity of religious thought and practice…religions are primarily moved by rational moral concerns and…ethical theory provides the single most powerful methodology for understanding religious belief. Ronald Green, Religion and Moral Reason
My thanks to John P. Reeder, Jr., Alan Tapper and especially to Dale Wright for their comments. They are not necessarily in agreement with the views expressed in this paper.
1 Green, Ronald, Religion and Moral Reason (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), p., 228Google Scholar. Unless otherwise stated page references in the text refer to this book. Also see his Religious Reason (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978).Google Scholar
2 For an account of these terms see Lindbeck, George, The Nature of Doctrine (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1984)Google Scholar, chapters 1–2. The entire book is relevant to various theoretical concerns in the comparative philosophy of religion. For examples of the cultural/linguistic model see Geertz, Clifford, ‘Religion as a Cultural System’, in The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), pp. 87–125Google Scholar; Berger, Peter, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (New York: Doubleday and Co., 1967)Google Scholar; Freud, , The Future of an Illusion (New York: Norton, 1961)Google Scholar. For examples of the experiential/expressive model see Otto, Rudolph, The Idea of the Holy, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1950)Google Scholar; Schleiermacher, Friedrich, The Christian Faith (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1928)Google Scholar. For a recent account of some of the complexities in explaining religion see Preus, J. Samuel, Explaining Religion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987).Google Scholar
3 Niebuhr, Reinhold, The Nature and Destiny of Man, Vol. 1, Human Nature (New York: Scribners, 1964), pp. 32–3.Google Scholar
4 For a discussion of deep structure Green refers to Chomsky, Noam, Cartesian Linguistics (New York: Harper and Row, 1966), pp. 31–51.Google Scholar
5 Clifford Geertz, ‘Religion as a Cultural System’, pp. 89–90. This analysis of religion has been enormously influential in Religious Studies. See, for example the work of Jacob Neusner, Jonathan Z. Smith and others in the history of religions. I take this analysis, and any similar analyses, to be incompatible with Green's account.
6 Peter Berger, Freud and others who give a naturalistic account of religious belief, correctly claim that the question of the truth of religious belief is independent of the question of the belief's origin. They are aware of the so-called genetic fallacy. Nevertheless, the accounts they give of the origins of religious belief, while logically independent of the truth or falsity of those beliefs, do serve to undermine the justification that one might have for believing religious claims to be literally true. Their accounts serve to undermine the justification for belief that one might have had prior to the naturalistic explanation. William Alston claims that the truth of a Freudian explanation of religious belief need not undermine the rationality of the belief if one has independent rational grounds for the religious belief (Alston, William, ‘Religion, Psychological Explanations of’ in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (New York: Macmillan and Free Press, 1967))Google Scholar. Of course this is true. But in showing what he took to be the real ground of religious belief – that his naturalistic explanation was the most plausible one – Freud also thought he was showing that if he was correct there would be no reason to suppose that religious belief was either justified or true (i.e. that Alston's independent rational grounds just were not available). In other words, it would be remarkable, to say the least, if religious beliefs turned out to be true given that Freud's, Berger's or Geertz's analyses of religion are correct. Berger claims that his analysis of religion in The Sacred Canopy is neutral with regard to the question of the truth or falsity of religious belief. But I doubt this is the case. He says that the argument in The Sacred Canopy ‘never leaves (at least not intentionally) the frame of reference of the empirical discipline of sociology. Consequently, it must rigidly bracket throughout any questions of the ultimate truth or illusion of religious propositions about the world’ (v). Yet if Berger's sociological theory of religion is correct then clearly it has implications for questions concerning the truth of religious beliefs – or rather it has implications for questions concerning the justification of such beliefs. The so-called ‘genetic fallacy’ notwithstanding – the analyses by Geertz, Berger and Freud all do serve to undermine any rational justification for believing in the literal truth of religion. However, what these analyses have also shown us is that the question of the literal truth of religious belief is not the only important question, and certainly not the most important question, in understanding the significance of religion.
7 See ‘Rebellion’, in Nelson, Pike, ed. God and Evil (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1964), p. 15Google Scholar. The selection is reprinted from The Brothers Karamazov.
8 Stout, Jeffrey, The Flight from Autonomy (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), pp. 226ff.Google Scholar
9 Russell, Bertrand, ‘Why I am Not a Christian,’ in Why I am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Topics (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1957).Google Scholar
10 Reeder, John P., Source, Sanction and Salvation (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1988).Google Scholar
11 Of course there are important exceptions. And it is also the case that some Religious Studies departments are less concerned with religious studies proper (i.e. the academic study of religion) than with promoting religion after the model of a Divinity School.
12 While the philosophical expertise in the area of natural theology by scholars such as Richard Swinburne, Alvin Plantinga and William Alson is formidable, they show little concern for the nature of religion as it is understood outside of analytic approaches. For example, see Richard Swinburne's recent trilogy The Coherence of Theism, Faith and Reason, The Existence of God (all published by Oxford University Press). But as some philosophical theologians since the nineteenth century have known – socio-scientific inquiry has, or should have, a profound effect on the way in which some substantive philosophical issues are to be addressed.
13 See, for example, Thomas Morris's christocentric preface and introduction to Thomas, Morris, ed., Philosophy and the Christian Faith (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988)Google Scholar; and his ‘Perfect Being Theology’, Nous XXI (1987), pp. 19–30Google Scholar. Much of so-called ‘Christian’ philosophy of religion is simply natural theology – with ulterior motives.