Consider the following argument (I shall call it ‘the atheist's argument’) for the non-existence of God:

(1) Some men are morally reprehensible for failing to perform certain actions, e.g. actions of abolishing suffering which is destructive of character.

(2) Concentrate, for simplicity, just on actions of this latter sort. If there is an omnipotent and omniscient being, then he, too, fails to perform actions of this sort, and, hence, he is also morally reprehensible unless some such difference obtains between him and the men mentioned in (1) (call them ‘M’) as his being unable to abolish this suffering, while M is able to abolish it, or his not knowing that this suffering is in fact destructive of character, while M does know this.

(3) But being omnipotent and omniscient is incompatible with any such difference obtaining. (For example, being omnipotent is incompatible with being unable to abolish the suffering under discussion and being omniscient is incompatible with failing to know that a given instance of suffering which is destructive of character does in fact have that property.)

The writing of yet another paper on miracles probably stands in need of justification. The justification I wish to claim has two aspects. Firstly, I think that the concepts of the miraculous usually defended and, in turn, criticized, are unacceptable and that a better one is available. Secondly, and more importantly, I think that these unacceptable concepts produce in virtue of their inherent weaknesses a situation in which only the less important questions get asked about miracles. These questions are those which relate to the ontological status of miracles. I think it can be shown that is is the epistemological questions about miracles which are more interesting and important and, furthermore, that the standard accounts are so hemmed in by the difficulties raised for them that a preoccupation with ontological questions characterizes most discussion.

‘The formulas of advanced English politicians are as stiff and arrogant as the formulas of theology. Truth itself becomes distasteful to me when it comes in the shape of a proposition. Half the life of it is struck out of it in the process.’

The Christian faith, according to Alfred North Whitehead's familiar premise, ‘has always been a religion seeking a metaphysic’. Although it is debatable whether one should accept this thesis in a constructive sense, it does not appear that Christian belief from either an offensive or defensive position has the option of escaping from its philosophical implications. If, for example, a meeting with Christ occurs—either in an initial New Testament sense or through secondary channels in a contemporary moment—which functionally produces an existential consciousness of liberation that one may even dare to call ‘forgiveness of sins’, what confidence may he have that the experience is real and not only apparent, enduring and not just exuberance of mood, an encounter with life that touches the whole of his concern and not merely one atomistic fragment? These are surely questions which admit varying degrees of solution; yet they are genuine experiential issues which call for a recognition of ontological depth if they are to retain their functional effectiveness. This necessity which theology has of fulfilling its task within the comprehensive context of ontology is portrayed convincingly by Gerhard Ebeling in his essay entitled ‘Theology and Reality’ when he affirms:

‘Theology has to do with reality as a totality—not with the sum of all the realms of reality and all the ways in which reality encounters us…. However much theology is based upon the testimony of Christian faith, it has yet to make good faith's claim by bringing to expression what unconditionally concerns every man in his totality.’

During World War I, Bertrand Russell's outspoken pacifism resulted in his being committed to jail. When he entered the prison, he was met by the warden who showed himself to be quite ecumenical in his religious beliefs, as indicated by this anecdote:

‘I was much cheered on my arrival by the warder at the gate, who had to take particluars about me. He asked my religion and I replied “agnostic”. He asked how to spell it, and remarked with a sigh: “Well, there are many religions, but I suppose they all worship the same God”. This remark kept me cheerful about a week.’

The purpose of this essay is to present a brief description and evaluation of Mircea Eliade's interpretation of religious symbols with an eye to certain methodological difficulties. Professor Eliade characterises the procedure of the historian of religions as being uniquely preoccupied with religious symbols, that is, with those symbols which are involved in both the experience of homo religiosus and in his conception of the cosmos. As an historian of religions Eliade's own approach has consistently been to study religious symbols from a position that is not reductionist. Although admitting the influence of cultural and environmental factors upon the formulation of religious symbols, he has been primarily concerned to discern the typical structures or types of religious experience and expression by a consideration of religious phenomena. In his own words, he has attempted to study ‘the conceptions of being and reality that can be read from the behaviour of man of the premodern societies’.

Donald Evans, for one, thinks not. J. L. Austin, it could be argued, would have disagreed with him. But regardless of what Austin might have said on the question (someone is bound to suggest that he would have taken it back after he said it) I think that Evans is wrong.