Epistemologists have not usually had much to say about believing ‘in’, though ever since Plato's time they have been interested in believing ‘that’. Students of religion, on the other hand, have been greatly concerned with belief ‘in’, and many of them, I think, would maintain that it is something quite different from belief ‘that’. Surely belief ‘in’ is an attitude to a person, whether human or divine, while belief ‘that’ is just an attitude to a proposition? Could any difference be more obvious than this? And if we over-look it, shall we not be led into a quite mistaken analysis of religious belief, at any rate if it is religious belief of the theistic sort? On this view belief ‘in’ is not a propositional attitude at all.

I do not think that the existence of God can be proved or even that the main justification for the belief can be found in argument in the ordinary sense of that term, but I think two of the three which have, since Kant at least, been classified as the traditional arguments of natural theology have some force and are worthy of serious consideration. This consideration I shall now proceed to give. I cannot say this of the remaining one of the arguments, the ‘ontological proof’, which I shall therefore not discuss here.

I am not so insular and I hope not so presumptuous as to suppose that there is no contemporary philosophy apart from that empiricism which dominates very much of Great Britain, North America and Scandinavia. So let us notice that contemporary philosophy embraces broadly three points of view, though it will be part of my argument that they largely combine in the lessons they have to teach us, and in many of their implications for theology.

The popular belief that religion is the same everywhere or that all religions are ‘at bottom’ identical in essentials is a widespread falsehood that is saved from being completely worthless by the fact that religion does exhibit a universal or common structure wherever it appears. This structure is intimately related to the structure of human life in the world. The enduring pattern that enables us to understand religions widely separated in both time and space depends largely on the fact that man and the process of human life in the world have their own structures which remain, despite the undeniable variety introduced by vast differences of culture, ethnic features, geographical location, climate etc. Structure means pattern or form; it is reality significantly organised. It can be grasped as that which endures above and beyond changing historical details. Because human life has a structure, we are able to understand the wrath of Achilles or sympathise with the love of Abélard for Héloïse although we are separated from both by centuries of time.

Professor R. C. Zaehner's distinction between panenhenic, monistic and theistic mysticism will be examined. It will be argued that there is no necessary reason to suppose that the latter two types involve different sorts of experience: the difference lies rather in the way the experience is interpreted. Likewise it will be argued that the Theravādin experience of nirvana, which is interpreted neither in a monistic nor in a theistic sense, may well be identical substantially with the foregoing two types. All this raises important methodological problems, in relation to the contrast between experience and interpretation. The fact that mysticism is substantially the same in different cultures and religions does not, however, entail that there is a ‘perennial philosophy’ common to mystics. Their doctrines are determined partly by factors other than mystical experience itself.

The one clear insight which can be gleaned from the discussions of religious language by both theologians and philosophers is that its reference is to the transcendent. This is almost axiomatic in Philosophy of Religion nowadays, and we feel that the remarks of Milton's archangel to the first man are most appropriate when he insists that all the conceptions we have of God or of the spiritual world are but inadequate symbols. Though this view has a long history, it does not seem to have been at all general in antiquity. It may be said to have begun with Plato and then to have continued through later generations in Neo-Platonism till it mingled with the Christian tradition. We can see how easily such traditions were fused when we look at the fusion of Platonism and Judaism in Philo of Alexandria. This is how he expounds the Exodus passage where Moses is allowed to see the back, but not the face, of God:

Everything which is subsequent to God the virtuous man may apprehend: God alone is inapprehensible. That is to say, God is not apprehensible by direct frontal approach—for such approach would imply God's being disclosed such as He is: but He is apprehensible through the Powers which are consequent upon His being; for those Powers do not present His being, nature, essence but only His existence from the resultant effects.

In a discussion-note in Mind (July 1958), Father P. M. Farrell, O.P., gave an account, in what he admitted to be an embarrassingly brief compass, of the Thomist doctrine concerning evil. There is one sentence in this discussion which at first glance appears paradoxical. Father Farrell has been arguing that a universe containing ‘corruptible good’ as well as incorruptible is better than one containing ‘incorruptible good’ only. He continues: ‘If, however, they are to manifest this corruptible good, they must be corruptible and they must sometimes corrupt.’ The final words, despite Father Farrell's italics, strike one as expressing, not a self-evident truth, but a non sequitur. The fact that I am capable of committing murder does not entail that I will at some time commit it. It is not immediately obvious that a similar entailment holds in the case of corruption and corruptibility.

The appearance of several important books on Indian religion and philosophy provides an opportunity for consideration of the attractions and obstacles to understanding that important world of thought. At the end of the British Raj it seemed as if there might be a slackening of interest in India, but nothing will stop Indians writing and many books arestill coming from European and American writers. But how reliable are they? ‘Indian philosophy is much bound up with theology’, remarks Ninian Smart, and ‘suspicions of Indian philosophy are not mitigated by the current Western enthusiasm for Oriental spirituality: travelling monks and yogis (though often innocent of pompous intentions) tend to speak of their “philosophy” rather than of religion, partly because the latter term is loaded in a special way in its Western use. Thus they give the impression that spiritual uplift, rather than analytic exactness, is the chief characteristic of Indian philosophy.’ On the other hand, ‘there is the prevalent suspicion, among English-speaking philosophers, that the theological bent of much Indian metaphysics means that Indian argumentation is neither rigorous nor realistic’. And in any case it may be held that ‘philosophy is either an international activity where national roots are irrelevant or it is mere history of ideas’, and so the complex Indian schools are only of incidental interest.