I am both happy and honoured to have been asked to give this lecture on mysticism in memory of Leo Robertson, of whom I have many very pleasant memories. It was a delight to be wafted off to the Saville Club after a lecture here, and to discuss mysticism and philosophy on one of its many sofas. I am very sorry that this particular pleasure will not recur. Leo Robertson belonged to an old-fashioned climate of thought in which an interest in mysticism was respectable, and a long stay in the East had confirmed him in these leanings. I myself have always been constitutionally mystical, feeling that certain kinds of rapture, concerned with work, beauty, love and a few other things, are the only things absolutely worth having. I dropped my mysticism for a long period, partly on account of certain disillusioning experiences in my ’twenties, and partly out of deference to the dry methods and doctrine that prevailed in British philosophy. Latterly, however, increasing age has restored many of my illusions and made me generally more tender-minded; also, seeing the completely nugatory accomplishments of purely unmystical analysis, I have found myself reverting increasingly to my original mysticism. It was very refreshing to talk to a philosopher like Leo Robertson who took mysticism with the complete seriousness I think it deserves—as one of the truly fundamental human attitudes—but who also thought of it as supplementing and completing, rather than as undermining and nullifying, what other less rarefied thinkers do. It was also refreshing to hear all his talk about an earlier Cambridge, where he knew Wittgenstein in the full brilliance of his personal beauty as well as of his intelligence, and also knew Moore in the golden period of his dialectic, before he became so very preoccupied with the minutiae of the English language. Leo Robertson was a complete and rounded philosopher rather than a hamstrung one, and knowing him has been a factor in strengthening my resolve to be a complete and rounded thinker too.

The word ‘existentialism’ has become something of a catchword in religious circles today, and one suspects that it is sometimes a substitute rather than a medium for thought. Most theological teachers must from time to time have received from a pupil an essay in which the words ‘existential’, ‘existentially’ and ‘existentialism’ appear to have been sprinkled from a pepper-pot over an exposition whose meaning would remain unchanged if these words were excised altogether. Nevertheless, usum non tollit abusus, and the following rather unsystematic remarks may perhaps be of some help in elucidating and evaluating a mode of thought and expression which has attracted the interest of some of the more profound, as well as of some of the more superficial, theological and philosophical writers of the present day.

It is fair enough to refer, as Father Clarke does, to the God of the Christians and the Jews as ‘the one infinite Creator of all other things’. It is reasonable to take ‘God’ as a term that has certain conditions associated with it. These conditions fix its meaning. The central conditions associated with ‘God’ are: being infinite or unlimited, eternal, self-existent, the creator of everything that exists other than himself, the being upon whom all other beings are dependent but who depends on nothing himself, being personal, good, loving and holy. These conditions determine our concept of God, determine what could count as a referent for the term ‘God’. In short, God, as John Hick remarks, is conceived in Western Religions ‘as the infinite, eternal, uncreated, personal reality, who has created all that exists other than himself, and who has revealed himself to his human creatures as holy and loving’.

It is now some years since Professor D. Daiches Raphael published his interesting book, The Paradox of Tragedy, which represented one of the first serious attempts made by a British philosopher to assess the significance of tragic drama for ethical, and indeed metaphysical theory. Since then we have had a variety of books touching on related topics: for instance, Dr George Steiner's Death of Tragedy and Mr Raymond Williams’ most recent, elusive and interesting essay, Modern Tragedy. To entitle an essay Theology and Tragedy might be thought to invite needless trouble for oneself; to indulge to a dangerous degree the human intellectual obsession (so thoroughly castigated by Wittgenstein) of supposing that ‘the meaning of a word is an object’. After all, if one confines one's regard to the Greeks, one has to recognise that between the treatments of their common theme of Electra, Sophocles and Euripides are in fact doing very different things. There is no gainsaying the significance for Euripides of the postponement of the murder of Clytemnestra till after that of Aegisthus, still less of his introduction into the play of the morally upright peasant, who has had the banished Electra in his keeping, and whose simple integrity contrasts both with the corruption of the court and the obsessive preoccupation with a dreadful, supposed duty of brother and sister. The element of propaganda is unmistakable; while in Sophocles’ Electra it is altogether absent, although Dr Victor Ehrenberg in his very interesting monograph on Sophocles and Pericles has argued strongly for an element of subtle political commentary in the treatment of Oedipus in the Oedipus Tyrannus, and of Pocreon in the Antigone. These remarks may serve to show that the title does not express a blind indifference to the multiple complexity of those works which we class together as tragedies. They are inherently complex, and various in emphasis; at best we can discern a family resemblance between them, and, in an essay like this, the author runs the risk not only of selecting examples tailor-made to his thesis, but also of imposing an appearance of similarity of conception where it is at least equally important to stress differences.

So much has been written in recent years about the philosophy of religion that one might have expected some definite pattern to be emerging from the discussion. In particular, one might have hoped that theists and non-theists would cease to adduce supposedly knock-down arguments against their opposite numbers. But there are still Thomists, commoner in the English-speaking countries than on the Continent of Europe, who seem to think that some purely logical process can settle the matter, and there are still positivists, again more especially in the English-speaking countries, who seem to think that God can be disproved. Professor Kai Nielsen's article does not make that claim in so many words, but he does conclude that the orthodox Christian's use of ‘God’ is the result of a mere confusion of mind and that for the philosopher the question of God should not arise at all or arises only to be dismissed. I hope I have not overstated Nielsen's conclusion (that would be a poor return for his kindness in allowing me a pre-view of his article); his treatment of the vast topic of the ‘human condition’ seems to me so extraordinary that I cannot help wondering whether I have misinterpreted it, most of all as it appears that he is not merely controverting Mr I. M. Crombie but also undertaking to dispose of theism altogether. He seems to think that ‘Flew's challenge’ is the decisive move in this debate, and that Crombie's two attempts to meet it are the only attempts which have to be considered. If this is really the case (as I shall have to suppose in what follows) I find it quite perplexing.

It is not without fear and trembling that a historian of religion approaches the problem of myth. This is not only because of that preliminary embarrassing question: what is intended by myth? It is also because the answers given depend for the most part on the documents selected by the scholar. From Plato and Fontenelle to Schelling and Bultmann, philosophers and theologians have proposed innumerable definitions of myth. But all of these have one thing in common: they are based on the analysis of Greek mythology. Now, for a historian of religions this choice is not a very happy one. It is true that only in Greece did myth inspire and guide epic poetry, tragedy and comedy, as well as the plastic arts; but it is no less true that it is especially in Greek culture that myth was submitted to a long and penetrating analysis, from which it emerged radically ‘de-mythicised’. If in every European language the word ‘myth’ denotes a ‘fiction’, it is because the Greeks proclaimed it to be such twenty-five centuries ago. What is even more serious for an historian of religion: we do not know a single Greek myth within its ritual context. Of course this is not the case with the paleo-Oriental and Asiatic religions; it is especially not the case with the so-called ‘primitive’ religions. As is well known, a living myth is always connected with a cult, inspiring and justifying a religious behaviour. None of this of course means that Greek myth should not figure in an investigation of the mythical phenomenon. But it would seem unwise to begin our kind of inquiry by the study of Greek documents, and even more so to restrict it to such documents. The mythology which informs Homer, Hesiod and the tragic poets represents already a selection and an interpretation of archaic materials, some of which had become almost unintelligible. In short, our best chance of understanding the structure of mythical thought is to study cultures where myth is a ‘living thing’, where it constitutes the very ground of the religious life; in other words, where myth, far from indicating a fiction, is considered to reveal the truth par excellence.

China's regard for nature, as expressed (for example) in Sung landscape painting, is clear and well recognised. What the Chinese believed to exceed the natural world, the realm of ‘the ten-thousand things’, is less clear. The present essay tries to explore this question systematically.

In the past few years philosophers of religion and theologians have devoted much attention to the status of religious statements. There are three main positions: (1) The statements as generally understood are (false) empirical statements. The people who make them have either made honest mistakes (they are unaware of the counter evidence) or they are irrational. This view may be coupled with the claim that religious language can be reconstructed in such a way that we may continue to use it and yet avoid making false assertions. (The position Braithwaite outlines in An Empiricist's View of the Nature of Religious Belief seems to be close to this.) (2) The statements are not empirical and are therefore not significant. (3) The statements are not empirical— common sense and science are irrelevant to the truth and falsity of religious claims—and yet they are significant.

Self-righteousness and censoriousness are strong emotions. They exist in the claims of ‘orthodoxy’ as much as in the protests of ‘heterodoxy’. They lie behind claims of tolerance as often as behind displays of intolerance. These emotions should be disentangled in the motives of the men who make history, of those who write history, and of those who read history. The very designation ‘heterodox’ is both etymologically and conceptually structured in antithesis to ‘orthodox’. It is a word not only of doctrinal description, but also of inherent condemnation. The structure and the intention of words such as Shī‘a, comprising the whole sweep from bid‘a to ghulūww, direct the attention back to an opposite concept which originates, defines and prejudges these words. One corollary of this is that the movements and doctrines defined as ‘heterodox’ are fundamentally related to the ‘orthodox’ and cannot be understood in isolation. Another is that this relationship, by its very definition in terms of vindication and repudiation, is one of tension.

My aim in this essay is to elucidate in a certain way the concept of God. I shall begin with several brief remarks in clarification of this aim and the terminology I shall employ in pursuing it.

The religiously inclined have always rejected materialism. The thesis of this study is that there may have been good reasons for them to do so until comparatively recent times but that the same reasons no longer exist. Our knowledge of matter has not only increased, it has also been altered so completely that there is no more justification for disapproving of materialism on religious grounds.

In an important article in the opening issue of Religious Studies, Professor H. H. Price states that: ‘Epistemologists have not usually had much to say about believing “in”, though ever since Plato's time they have been interested in believing “that”’ (loc. cit., vol. I, no. 1, p. 5). We are all considerably in debt to Professor Price for his extremely lucid analysis which will, I think, go a very long way towards filling the lacuna to which he points. As I find myself in agreement with almost every point which Price has made, my purpose here is not to make a ‘reply’ to his article in the usual sense but to suggest that his analysis of believing is curiously and disappointingly incomplete. I shall offer some reasons of my own in support of this suggestion, not so much in criticism of Price's thesis as in hopes of finding some way out of the difficulties which, I take it, forced Price to stop short just where he did. It will be the burden of my argument to show that a more complete and satisfactory account of believing must include a description of its ‘metaphysical element’ as well as of its epistemological and psychological conditions. For it is at the point of what I shall call the ‘metaphysics of believing’ that Price's analysis and description of belief ‘in’ and belief ‘that’ stops short.1

The purpose of this article is to develop a Christian doctrine of the Incarnation in the light of a process philosophy of the type expounded by A. N. Whitehead and E. S. Brightman. Rather than offer at this time a detailed defence either of the idea of incarnation or of process philosophy, I wish to show that the two can be coherently related in such a way that each receives a greater degree of completion and clarity. Of course risks are unavoidable in any attempt to make Athens and Jerusalem respond to one another. But the risks and losses would be even greater if the way of isolation and of mutually ignoring one another were accepted.

The purpose of this paper is not to offer any solution to the problem of evil, or to declare it insoluble. It is rather the more modest one of deciding on its nature. Many writers assume that the problem of evil is one that poses a logical challenge to the theist, rather than a challenge of a moral or scientific sort. If this assumption is correct, and the challenge cannot be met, Christian theism can be shown to be untenable on grounds of inconsistency. This in turn means that it is refutable by philosophers, even if their task is interpreted in the most narrowly analytical fashion. It has recently been argued that the challenge of the problem of evil can be met on logical grounds, and that if the existence of evil is damaging to theism it is not because the recognition of its existence is inconsistent with some essential part of it. I take two examples of this position. The first is in the paper ‘Hume on Evil’ by Nelson Pike; the second I owe to Professor R. M. Chisholm.

In a recent article, George Schlesinger adds his thoughts to the quite extensive literature on the Problem of Evil and the Problem of Suffering. What is noteworthy about this article is the fact that the author, after briefly discussing a number of familiar arguments for and against the traditional theistic conception of God as both omnipotent and perfectly good, attempts to dissolve the problem itself as a pseudo-problem. In the present paper I wish (1) to try to show that Schlesinger's attempt fails, whether or not he is right in his conclusion that the problem of evil is not a genuine problem; and (2) to raise, in the course of my criticism, certain fundamental questions that must be answered if the controversy between theists and their critics is to become logically capable of resolution. Further, in relation to (1) and (2), I shall (3) offer a very preliminary sketch of some of the fundamental terms or concepts involved in the discussion of the problem of evil and related issues of philosophical theology. I shall begin by saying a few things about Schlesinger's discussion of some of the familiar attempts of theists to resolve the problem, and the equally familiar attacks of the sceptics. I shall then pass to a criticism of Schlesinger's main thesis.

In the present philosophical climate of opinion many are inclined to respond to this question in the spirit of the cynical comment concerning Christian Science, that it is neither Christian nor scientific. So it might be affirmed of Christian philosophy. It is neither Christian nor philosophical. It is customary these days to find both theologians and positivistic philosophers agreeing on this point. Theologians of a certain persuasion wish to keep theology free from any taint of the bacillus metaphysicus. Philosophers of a certain school are equally anxious to keep philosophy free of any entanglement with theological questions which involve problems incapable of linguistic clarification and precise meaning. Nevertheless, there is mounting evidence that this kind of intellectual apartheid is becoming less and less possible in practice and less attractive in principle. Even those who wish to separate rigidly theology and philosophy seem in practice to find it impossible to let each other alone. Each exercises a kind of morbid fascination for the other, and even if real dialogue is refused, the sniping still goes on, in reluctant acknowledgement of the existence of the other. The time would appear to be ripe, therefore, for a fresh and bold re-opening of the question which forms the title of this paper.

I am very grateful to Professor R. W. Sleeper for his critical comments on my article, as also for the kind way in which he has expressed them. I should now like to make a few comments on his comments.

(1) May I first say that I have no objection to being metaphysical? I do not like the word ‘metaphysics’ very much, and wish that we could find a less provocative one. But still, I do think that the difference between the reducible and the irreducible belief-in is a difference which there really is (‘metaphysically really’, if you like). Moreover, I fully admit that when we believe in God we are making a factual claim. It is, of course, a factual claim of rather a special kind. If it is a fact that there is a supreme Being, ‘The Lord of All’, this is not just one fact among others. It is not quite like the fact that there is a stormy north-westerly wind this morning. One could not just give a list of facts and add at the end, ‘There is also another fact which I had forgotten to mention: there is a God’. All the same, this factual claim, like others, does need to be justified; and how is it to be justified? I am afraid that the brief hint which I offered elsewhere on this subject is indeed ‘not good enough’ as it stands (Sleeper p. 79). To be even half good enough, it needs much more elaboration, and I agree that there is much force in Mr Gunderson's criticisms.

One of the most annoying things to many a student of St Anselm's Proslogion is the way in which many philosophers assume that they can make Anselm's argument disappear simply by uttering the incantation, ‘Existence is not a predicate’. Some recent studies of the argument1 have tried to rescue it from Kant's dictum by showing that this criticism does not apply to Anselm's so-called ‘second’ ontological argument. This argument appears in chapter III of Proslogion and depends on a distinction between ‘necessary existence’ and ‘contingent existence’. Both Malcolm and Hartshorne are content, however, to let the better known ‘first’ argument (Proslogion, chapter II) rest in the oblivion to which Kant assigned it.

In two recent essays,1 H. H. Price has offered an interesting approach to the ‘reducibility theory’ which yields several important distinctions that should be drawn between various meanings of ‘belief-in’ and ‘belief-that’ These distinctions go far towards illuminating the uniqueness or—depending upon your point of view—oddness of religious faith.2 It may be useful to examine Price's ‘reducibility theory’ and the basic distinctions he has drawn in order to point the way toward a related analysis of usage which he neither undertakes nor considers explicitly—that of the distinctly different function (i.e. meaning and use) of a similar if not equally commonplace expression: ‘in-faith’. This latter analysis is called for, it seems to me, for several reasons. In the first place, Price himself vaguely suggestsmdaash;but does not discuss— the possibility that talking about being ‘in the faith attitude’ is not necessarily the same as talking about believing or having faith-in ‘Someone’. Secondly, it may be argued that the use of the expression ‘in-faith’ conveys, in certain instances, much more of the uniqueness of the theist's position than do the expressions ‘belief-in’or ‘faith-in’. Thirdly, the claim—sometimes made—that the faith ‘situation’ (‘experience’, ‘encounter’, ‘meeting’, ‘confrontation’, or whatever it may be) transcends the grasp of reason is perhaps more readily pointed to by using the expression ‘in-faith’.

The philosophical problem of the relation of symbol to truth is far from solved, but there have been significant advances toward its solution. It is the common Christian understanding that God is Truth (among other things), and that all truths must ultimately find union in him. This is to say that all genuine truths must be compatible. The true conclusions of genuine science must be compatible with the true conclusions of genuine theology. Or, to bring this general statement to a more particular level, the true conclusions of Biblical scholarship must be compatible with the true conclusions of the natural sciences. When this compatibility is lacking, and it so often is, we must assume that the conclusions of one field of truth-seeking or the other do not partake of the Truth which is God. And there is no guarantee that theology as a field of truth-seeking cannot err. Another characteristic of genuine truth is that it is not dependent upon any particular environment or milieu—either social, cultural, philosophical, or even theological. Unless we are to make the common but dangerous division of sacred and secular, of holy and profane, claim that these areas of human experience have nothing to do the one with the other, compartmentalise our thought, and ask, ‘What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?’, it must be concluded that there is no one specifically Christian milieu. Genuine truths must be true at all times, in all places, and for all men. But since we are not gods, we must hold these truths in what St Paul called earthen vessels (II Cor. 4:7), vessels shaped and moulded by our particular milieu.