Category Archives: philosophy

Christianity is not a rational religion

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A correspondent in the last issue of the Courier asked that I might consider what the strongest arguments against Christianity might be. I’m not going to answer that in this column, but I do want to write about why I think there is a mistaken assumption in the question. For I do not believe that Christianity is ultimately a matter of good arguments against bad arguments, however good I consider the arguments in favour of Christianity to be. I do not believe that it is possible to be reasoned into a Christian belief, nor do I believe it is possible to be reasoned out of it. To think that this might be the case is to place reason into a position that it is incapable of occupying, and I’d like to explore why.

I believe that it is possible to make an intellectually coherent system from any set of initial assumptions. It is possible to be both an intellectually coherent Marxist and an intellectually coherent Nazi (not at the same time of course); it is possible to be an intellectually coherent Buddhist and an intellectually coherent Muslim; it is possible to be an intellectually coherent Christian and an intellectually coherent atheist. In other words, to be intellectually coherent is not the same as being in possession of the full truth, it is merely a question of pointing out a consistency, that the conclusions of what is believed match up with the starting points of what is believed. Not many people actually achieve this of course – those that do tend to be called fundamentalists of one stripe or another. As Wittgenstein once put it, “The difficulty is to realise the groundlessness of our believing.” That is a comment which applies to all forms of believing, not just religious ones.

The pursuit of perfect intellectual coherence is ultimately a delusion, for all our understandings are destined to be incomplete and partial. Mathematically this has been proven (by Gödel), that even the most beautifully fine tuned intellectual system must be incomplete. So, in so far as you believe that mathematics has the capacity to reflect reality then you are equally bound to accept the limits to that.

The key issue, of course, is about the initial assumptions. How do we decide the premises on which we base our thinking? If it is possible to be intellectually coherent across various diverse and contradictory belief systems, how can we choose amongst them? Well, I am rather dubious that we do so ‘choose’. In Wittgenstein’s ‘On Certainty’ he wrote “I did not get my picture of the world by satisfying myself of its correctness; nor do I have it because I am satisfied of its correctness. No: it is the inherited background against which I distinguish between true and false.” In other words, our most basic beliefs are not the product of ratiocination, of some sort of armchair based abstract theorising. Rather, all of our thinking takes place within a world view that is already given to us.

Consider how important to our beliefs is the language in which they are expressed. It is a commonplace to say that some words cannot be translated – how then can we ‘choose’ what we believe if some things simply cannot be stated within the language that we have inherited? No, the language that we speak is something given to us independently of our choice; similarly, the patterns of life into which we are formed, the habits that we depend upon to go about our daily lives, all the moral and ethical expectations that society places on us from before our birth – all these things form our ‘inherited background’. (Which is why, by the way, the baptism of infants makes sense – it is promising to establish that background rather than leaving it to the world to fill the gap – but that is another argument).

Is it possible for such an inherited background to change? Yes, it is, but it is not something that can be done purely by reason, although reason can be an immensely useful and healing tool to assist in a process of change. Rather, to change such an inherited background is more like the process of falling in love in that it is something that involves the whole of us, all of our passions and deepest concerns, and not just simply our capacity to intellectually reflect.

Possibly the most influential atheist in our intellectual tradition was David Hume, who wrote that “Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.” Our beliefs change when our passions change, and our passions only change when something significant happens within our life. For our most fundamental beliefs to change, something similarly fundamental needs to have happened to our lives – a bereavement perhaps, or a personal crisis of another sort. In essence, we need to experience something for which our ‘inherited background’ way of thinking is inadequate; to put it colloquially, we need to have our minds blown by a particular event.

Such events have to involve us as fully human beings, all our passions and desires, loves and hatreds, fears and joys. The closer we come to consideration of such things, the closer we come to being able to change our inherited backgrounds. Which is why it is so essential that the humanities remain central to a civilisation, and why a proper understanding of tragedy is the foundation of all sustainable political resistance. What is most often misunderstood about Christian faith is that it is seen as being in competition with physics or chemistry, that it is offering a scientific description of the way that the world works. That is not where the centre of gravity of faith lies. Rather, the religious point of view is about the ordering of our passions, interrogating our desires in order to find the ‘one thing needful’ that puts everything else into its proper place and enables us to live life abundantly.

Let me put it like this. If you really want to understand the Christian faith, you’re better off pondering the state sponsored execution of an innocent man, and all the issues about a meaningful life that are raised by that, rather than the logical consistency of omnipotence and omniscience. Christianity is not in competition with physics. It is in competition with Sophocles and Shakespeare, or, these days (given the utter impoverishment of our culture) it is in competition with EastEnders and The X Factor. In other words, it is telling a different story about what it means to live well within the world. The great tragedians tell one story; modern soaps and reality television tell another; Christianity tells a third. We need to decide which one we actually believe in, and then live life accordingly.
MelGibsonPassionMovie_NailHand

A category mistake that atheists make

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Imagine that you have nine grey mice lined up in a row, and at the end of the row there is an elephant. The elephant is coloured in exactly the same shade of grey as the mice. Now if the question is then, ‘how many grey creatures are there?’ then the answer is ten. However, if the question is ‘how many mice are there?’ then the answer is nine. If someone answers the latter question with the answer ‘ten’ then they are including the elephant in the category ‘mice’ – and that is a mistake. It is a type of mistake that philosophers call a ‘category mistake’ for it rests upon placing an item into the wrong category.

I want to explain a category mistake that atheists often make when they are making polemical arguments against religious believers (mostly, but not always, Christian believers). The particular argument that I’m thinking of is the ‘one more god’ point, which can be summarised in the following way: all human beings doubt the existence of almost all the gods that have ever been believed in; atheists simply doubt the existence of one more god than the religious believers.

Normally resting behind this sort of argument is the assumption that the movement from believing in various gods to not believing in them represents a sort of progress. It is part of a more general story that claims that western culture is moving steadily away from the superstitious darkness of religious faith into the wonderfully enlightened realm of secular thought. This story took root in the latter half of the nineteenth century and was conventional wisdom by the middle of the twentieth. It has, however, largely become discredited and it is now extremely rare to find someone with academic expertise in this area who still has faith in that story. Obviously it takes time for the wider culture, especially the media, to catch up with academic developments, but it is happening.

This story of progress, however, does have roots in our own religious tradition. The very language of an ‘Old Testament’ and a ‘New Testament’ indicates as much. Even within the Old Testament, however, it is possible to trace the development of the Hebrew understanding of God (that is, Yahweh), and explaining this will help to understand the category mistake that I argue that atheists commonly make. In 586 BC the Babylonians conquered Jerusalem:

“On the tenth day of the fifth month, in the nineteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, Nebuzaradan commander of the imperial guard, who served the king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem. He set fire to the temple of the LORD, the royal palace and all the houses of Jerusalem. Every important building he burned down.” (Jeremiah 52:12-13)

The King of Judah was brought to the steps of the Temple, whereupon his family were slaughtered in front of him and then he was blinded and bound, taken into captivity to Babylon itself. There he joined all of the upper classes in Judah’s society, who had been taken into Exile by the Babylonians: ‘by the rivers of Babylon we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion’ (Psalm 137).

Imagine that you are part of this society which sees Yahweh as present in the temple and knows, therefore, that Jerusalem is inviolate and invincible – and then utter disaster comes upon you. This is where a great shift in Hebrew thinking about Yahweh happens. Up to this point the Ancient Hebrew people had thought of Yahweh as a tribal deity: “our god is bigger than your god”, where Yahweh is simply one god amongst other gods, maybe the most powerful in the pantheon but certainly one amongst others. When you are faced with this sort of calamity, however, you have two choices: you can either say, “Our god isn’t as strong as the other gods, therefore he is dead” and the worship of Yahweh dies off (which happened many times in ancient history); or – and here the genius of the Hebrew people is demonstrated – the people respond by escalating the attributes of Yahweh and say, “Yahweh is faithful; if this has happened to us, Yahweh must also be in charge of the Babylonian armies, therefore Yahweh is the only god, Yahweh is the creator of everything”.

In other words, what happens at the time of the exile in Babylon is that there is a shift from Yahweh as a tribal god of the Israelites, to Yahweh as the creator of all things. In other words a shift from thinking about Yahweh as a god (lower case g) to thinking about Yahweh as God (upper case G). This is the real genius of the Hebrews: to be faithful no matter what. They are “a stiff-necked people”, but this steadfastness is why they are the chosen people. God touched them and gave them a way of growing into a greater understanding of the truth.

In other words, to return to my original image, at the time of the exile the Ancient Hebrews stopped thinking of God as being one mouse alongside other mice, but realised that God was in fact an elephant – that he was radically unlike what they had previously believed. From this point onwards, in the Judaic, Christian and Islamic tradition, it is a mistake to think of the standard religious language about God as describing the equivalent of one god amongst other gods – to think of the elephant as a mouse. They are simply not the same sort of thing. To assume otherwise is a category mistake.

Of course, this does not end all the arguments. I would emphasise also that this is not an argument to establish that there actually is an elephant in the room. It remains possible to say that the religious believers are mistaken and that what they believe to be an elephant is in fact simply another mouse, and that the religious believers are deluded in thinking otherwise. Yet to pursue that line of argument necessitates engaging with what is actually claimed about God by the religious traditions, most especially what are seen as the attributes of God such as omniscience and omnipotence and so on. This is something that the most prominent atheists signally fail to do. After all, the finest human minds for thousands of years have pondered the details of this question. It would be something of a surprise if someone like Richard Dawkins, who has never received an education in this subject, was able to overthrow the tradition with his ‘one more god’ jibe.

Those like Dawkins will undoubtedly continue to insist that mice and elephants are the same, but there comes a point when all the powers of logic and reasoning fail and it is simply a matter of saying ‘look and see’ – but then, some blindness is wilful. Wittgenstein once wrote “… it is not that before you can understand it you need to be specially trained in abstruse matters, but the contrast between understanding the subject and what most people want to see. Because of this the very things which are most obvious may become the hardest of all to understand. What has to be overcome is a difficulty having to do with the will, rather than with the intellect.”

The argument from authority and CAGW

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Here is a classic quotation from John Gummer, for whom I used to work (as a civil servant): “No reasonable person would ignore expert opinion and wager his children’s future on the contrarian views of people who are not peer reviewed.”

This is an appeal to authority – to ‘expert opinion’ which has been ‘peer reviewed’. Now, in straightforward philosophical terms, this argument is an error, it is the epitome of a text-book mistake. Appealing to authority is only as effective as the authority itself which is being cited and conveys no additional weight. In the absence of other consideration it can have some use, certainly it makes for a much more efficient life if the vast majority of our understandings can be developed by those who do things professionally. However, where those authorities themselves are in dispute, where their findings are contentious, then a proper response is not to retreat to ‘authority’ but to engage in the substantial issues.

So, with respect to Global Warming, the emphasis upon ‘consensus’, ‘expert opinion’, ‘peer review’ and all the rest of it makes sense in so far as those things themselves stand up to scrutiny. Where they do not – where, for example, the IPCC is shown to be systematically unscientific and corrupt, where the process of peer review is so problematic, where the predictions made are so at variance with observation – then the argument from authority is not simply mistaken, it is pernicious.

This is not the only field where appeal to authority causes problems, it is simply a very salient issue at the moment given our weather. Having authorities does not absolve us from the responsibility to think for ourselves. Most of all, having authorities does not absolve the church of the responsibility to think for itself on the major issues of the day. I am more and more persuaded that most of the problems with the Church relate to it having given up on the intellect – as if it feels it has lost the battle for intellectual credibility and now tries to justify itself to the world through its acceptance of social progressivism and works of peace and justice. See, we’re nice people, now you don’t need to be so horrible to us by pointing out our intellectual nakedness!

We need to be much more robust. We need to once more believe that theology is the queen of the sciences, and therefore all other knowledge is subordinate to the knowledge of the living God. Doubtless many will instantly cringe at such a cry – that is the depth to which we have fallen. If we concede this, we concede all.

TBLA: reading list on sexuality and related issues

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I’m planning to get back to my TBLA sequence as time permits – hopefully once a week on Fridays, as that is now my day off again! This post will be regularly updated – and where I identify gaps, I’d be grateful for pointers from the better-informed in the comments. Some of these are in my ‘to be read’ pile. Please note that I am trying to be comprehensive in my reading and studying on this, and do not assume that I agree with all that is described or linked to. In the nature of things, some of these are distinctly non-Christian. You have been warned.

Questions relating to homosexuality specifically
A question of Truth, Gareth Moore
Strangers and Friends, Michael Vasey
All of James Alison’s writings

Feminist writings
The Female Eunuch, Germaine Greer
Sexual Politics, Kate Millett

Alternative sexuality
Spiritual Polyamory, Mystic Life

‘Manosphere’ writings
Married Man Sex Life, Athol Kay

An evangelical perspective
Evangelical Feminism and Biblical Truth, Wayne Grudem

Secular philosophical aspects
The Sex Code, Francis Bennion
The Puzzle of Sex, Peter Vardy

Traditional philosophical/theological
The Bible
Aquinas

Anthropological
Sex at Dawn, Christopher Ryan and Cecilda Jetha
Sex at Dusk, Lynn Saxon
The Myth of Monogamy, David Barash and Judith Lipton
Strange Bedfellows, Barash and Lipton
The Sex Myth, Brooke Magnanti

Historical
Marriage: a history, Stephanie Coontz
Uncommon Arrangements, Katie Roiphe

Church of England
Some Issues in Human Sexuality
The Way Forward, ed: Bradshaw
An Acceptable Sacrifice?, ed: Dormor and Morris

Other theology
Touching the Face of God, Donna Mahoney
Sex God, Rob Bell
The Education of Desire, Tim Gorringe

Selected novels, films and other culture
Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein
Fifty Shades of Grey, EL James
Diary of a London Call Girl, Belle de Jour
Shame, Steve McQueen

Interesting blogs
Dalrock
Sunshine Mary
The Free Northerner
Donal Graeme
Chateau Heartiste
Married Man Sex Life
The Rational Male
Women for Men

A new synthesis on gender

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Latest Courier article – bit philosophical.

Our former Archbishop Rowan, for whom I retain a great deal of admiration and affection, was often criticised for being unclear. In part this may well simply have been the natural consequence of someone with a world-class intellect trying to explain something complicated, but I don’t see this as the whole reason. After all, when he needed to – as with some of his marvellous shorter books – Rowan could be incredibly compelling and lucid. I believe that part of his perceived ‘lack of clarity’ was actually rooted in a particular intellectual stance that he held and believed in strongly, and it is something that has its roots in the thinking of the German philosopher Hegel.

I would summarise one of Hegel’s key notions like this: there is a ‘thesis’ – a particular way of thinking or living, possibly expressible in some sort of philosophical maxim or aphorism, such as ‘men should be head of the household’. Over time, this thesis will collide with reality and human nature in such a way that it will develop tensions and contradictions, out of which will come an ‘antithesis’, which is again expressible – say ‘women deserve equal rights and responsibilities’. The thesis and the antithesis will inevitably conflict, and in human culture this will take time, and often have very visible form, such as when a suffragette chains herself to railings. Hegel labelled this conflict ‘dialectic’, taking over that term from its original use in Greek philosophy. Furthermore, as this dialectic continued, it would eventually settle in a new understanding and cultural form which took elements from both the original thesis, and the antagonistic antithesis, and combined them into a new synthesis. This synthesis would then itself become a ‘thesis’ of its own, and the cycle would continue. These repeated cycles of thesis – antithesis – synthesis formed, according to Hegel, the way in which a culture moved forward and progressed. Hegel’s thought was very influential, especially on Marx – Marxism can be seen as a type of ‘applied Hegelianism’ – and it underlies a very great deal of contemporary political thought, especially what is considered to be ‘progressive’ – that very term revealing the link.

Rowan is undoubtedly a Hegelian, and was always very conscious of the way in which any particular argument called forward an antagonistic response. Where many in the church wanted Rowan to give a strong, clear and principled lead – in other words, to nail his colours to the mast of one particular ‘thesis’ – Rowan wished, instead, to preserve the ongoing dialectic between thesis and antithesis, in pursuit of a new synthesis. Most crucially, in church terms, Rowan refused to place any of the various contenders for thesis or antithesis outside of the boundaries of the church. He insisted that every member of the group mattered, and he did not wish to see any group scapegoated (whether he succeeded in that desire is, in my view, something of an open question). In other words, the reason why Rowan was often criticised as being ‘unclear’ was because he went out of his way to include references to, and respect for, positions that contradicted each other. He did this not because he was himself intellectually confused but because he was himself seeking a new synthesis, and not wanting to be tied down to a thesis or antithesis which was politically convenient for whichever political group was pressuring him at the time. I do believe that history will be much kinder in its assessment of his leadership than his contemporaries have been.

Rowan’s time was marked – scarred! – by disagreements about sexuality and gender, specifically the questions around women’s ministry and homosexual clergy and marriage. This is a good example of the Hegelian process. The original theses, still most clearly expressed in official Roman Catholic teaching, had the following elements: sexuality is solely for the purpose of procreation; any form of sexuality which is not open to procreation is inherently sinful (and homosexuality falls into that category, along with other forms of sexuality, eg the use of contraception). In addition, human gender relations are ordered ‘by nature’ in such a way that men and women have distinct and different roles. This is best expressed and visualised in terms of a marriage which is open to procreation and the raising of children, within which a man will be the provider (which is about authority and direction as much as giving resources) and the woman will be the principal nurturer and carer.

At present in our society that thesis has been largely rejected and, as a dominant cultural form, effectively been abandoned. The antithesis, in so far as it can be articulated, would assert that: sexuality is not just (or even primarily) about procreation, but is most fundamentally about self-expression within the context of human relating, that is, it is one of the principal ways in which we as human beings bond with one another. Hence, any form of sexuality which accords with that aim is good. Marriage is the celebration of that bond and exhaustively defined by it. Where the bond of love breaks down, the marriage itself comes to an end (in other words, the marriage is no longer any form of contract). Children will fit in and cope with these arrangements as determined by the extended families.

At the moment we are in a position with regard to gender and sexuality of waiting for a new synthesis to be formed and adopted. I suspect this will only come when both sides, thesis and antithesis, are exhausted. Both sides to the argument have some merit, both have significant flaws and it was one of Rowan’s great strengths that he held on to that tension in the hope that a new resolution would eventually come forward, which would allow the best preservation of the good things whilst eliminating or reducing all the bad. From my point of view I believe that this synthesis has to begin with placing our created human nature first, rather than thinking in terms of ‘men’ and ‘women’. If we ask what will enable one particular human being to flourish, I believe that we will get further than if we start by wondering what will enable these particular ‘members of class X’ to flourish – whatever category X might be, of gender, race, orientation or otherwise.

Some of my favourite thinkers…

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There are a good number of writers and thinkers who have had an identifiable impact upon the way that I think. Here are three:

Martha Nussbaum, specifically her ‘Fragility of Goodness’, and even more specifically her arguments about Aristotle and contemplation;

Mary Midgley, especially her ‘Science as Salvation;

Janet Radcliffe Richards, her book ‘The Sceptical Feminist’ which, amongst other things, cured me of any naive use of ‘natural’ as a justification for anything.

I think Susan Haack might yet be added to their number, but I haven’t got to grips with her ‘Passionate Moderate’ stuff yet.

Why am I writing all this? Because I read this article. Which is incredibly sad in all sorts of different ways.

TBLA(4): The question of truth

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One of the corollaries of my last post is: given that the church has the authority to decide what is right and what is not right (the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven) – how are we to do make such a determination?

This is simply ‘the question of truth’ – that is, the truth shall set us free, nothing that is true is foreign to Jesus, so the pursuit of truth is something that necessarily leads us into the light. This does not mean that ‘truth’ as a construct can be placed in an antagonistic relationship to the gospel, in order that one must be defeated. It is more a question of humility and willingness to be challenged.

One of the most ignored instructions from the infamous Lambeth Conference of 1998 was surely the injunction to listen to the homosexual Christian community about their understandings and experience. It is not possible to listen in the relevant sense if there is an irrevocable commitment to “you are a sinner”. However, if listening is genuinely entered into, then so does the Holy Spirit – and together, the truth of a situation becomes discernible.

One of the best books that I have read on this subject is Gareth Moore’s “A Question of Truth”. He makes the argument there that it is not good enough to appeal to authority. If we believe – as Christians have always maintained that they do believe – in a God of order and reason, then that reason and order is open to an appreciation by the community. This is what drives the theological question. In his book, Moore slowly takes apart the standard Roman Catholic dogma and simply points out that ‘this is not true’.

So for my purposes, this is another foundational plank in the overall argument. If we are to come to a proper understanding of the nature of Christian marriage, appeals to authority are insufficient, however important the authority may be (and it is not an accident that I began this sequence with Jesus’ own teaching). We must be able to demonstrate the truth of our position.

To that end, I will in due course be drawing on contemporary scientific research about sexuality. If anyone wants a hint as to what sort of thing I’ll be using, have a look at this book.

John Locke and the meta-narrative of rational primacy

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So let me tell you the story of John Locke and the meta-narrative of rational primacy1.
John Locke was born on the 29thAugust 1632, and grew up in the Somerset countryside some ten miles from Bristol. His parents were staunch Protestants, and his father fought in the Civil War on Cromwell’s side – indeed, Locke himself was reputed to have said to Cromwell, when Locke was 21, ‘You sir from Heav’n a finish’d hero fell’.
At the age of 14 Locke attended Westminster School – which he did not enjoy, due to the flogging – and then went on to Christ Church, Oxford, where he stayed until 1665. After leaving the university, partly in order to avoid having to take holy orders, he took up a post as physician and adviser to Lord Ashley, the man who – better known as the Earl of Shaftesbury – became the most prominent Whig politician of the period.
Due to the controversies in English political life, principally the tension arising from the potential accession of the Catholic James II to the throne, Locke spent two significant periods of his life abroad. His first ‘exile’ was from 1675 to 1679 and spent in France; the second, and more significant, was from 1683 to 1689, and was spent in Holland. He returned on the same ship that bore Queen Mary to England. Locke was the pre-eminent spokesman for the Whig ideology2, most especially in the sphere of religious toleration and a limited monarchy. He published (anonymously) his Letter on Toleration, then his Two Treatises on Government, and finally his masterpiece, the Essay on Human Understanding, all in 1689.
Locke was a man of nervous constitution – what we today might call ‘highly strung’ and it is clear that his views on religious questions evolved throughout his life. Having lived through the English Civil War as a teenager, his mature life was marked by the faction fighting and religious conflict endemic in the Royal Court. Locke’s perspective was conditioned by a rejection of religious enthusiasm, which he saw as responsible for the reckless slaughter and political strife experienced in England and Europe in his lifetime. This made a profound impact on his mature philosophy.
~~~
Locke’s principal innovation was his argument that, in order to resolve the destructive disagreements between different religious views, we should resort to the light of Reason. He wrote:
‘since traditions vary so much the world over and men’s opinions are so obviously opposed to one another and mutually destructive, and that not only among different nations but in one and the same state – for each single opinion we learn from others becomes a tradition – and finally since everybody contends so fiercely for his own opinion and demands that he be believed, it would plainly be impossible – supposing tradition alone lays down the ground of our duty – to find out what that tradition is, or to pick out truth from among such a variety, because no ground can be assigned why one man of the old generation, rather than another maintaining quite the opposite, should be credited with the authority of tradition or be more worthy of trust; except it be that reason discovers a difference in the things themselves that are transmitted, and embraces one opinion while rejecting another, just because it detects more evidence recognizable by the light of nature for the one than for the other. Such a procedure, surely, is not the same as to believe in tradition, but is an attempt to form a considered opinion about things themselves; and this brings all the authority of tradition to naught’3
Crucially, what Locke rejected was the idea that we should have recourse to a tradition at all, as he saw traditions as the source of all vice and pernicious beliefs (the ‘best are riddled with error’). In this he was very much a Protestant thinker, for the central issue in the trial of Galileo was the very same: the authority of the tradition. In Locke’s new account, appeal was made to something outside of any given tradition: reason, understood as the discriminatory judgement of probable beliefs.
Locke fleshed out a practical programme for how our beliefs should be guided, with three key elements: firstly, he argued that we have a moral responsibility for what we believe; secondly, that we should apportion our beliefs according to the evidence available to us, and finally, that in all things we should let reason be our guide. Put positively, the beliefs that we can hold should be those which can be rationally demonstrated, either by appeal to self-evident first principles, or to empirical evidence. Beliefs must, in either case, be shown to have a rational foundation.Where a rational foundation is lacking then we are subject to unreason – to the excesses of enthusiasm that had led to the cultural crisis of the 17thCentury.
Locke’s programme had at its centre that assertion that, to be morally justified in believing something, you must be able to demonstrate its rationality:
“Faith is nothing but a firm assent of the mind: which if it be regulated, as is our duty, cannot be afforded to anything, but upon good reason; and so cannot be opposite to it. He that believes, without having any reason for believing, may be in love with his own fancies; but neither seeks truth as he ought, nor pays the obedience due to his maker, who would have him sue those discerning faculties he has given him, to keep him out of mistake and error. He that does not this to the best of his power, however he sometimes lights on truth, is in the right but by chance; and I know not whether the luckiness of this accident will excuse the irregularity of his proceeding. This at least is certain, that he must be accountable for whatever mistakes he runs into: whereas he that makes use of the light and faculties God has given him, and seeks sincerely to discover truth, by those helps and abilities he has, may have this satisfaction in doing his duty as a rational creature, that though he should miss truth, he will not miss the reward of it. For he governs his assent right, and places it as he should, who in any case or matter whatsoever, believes or disbelieves, according as reason directs him. He that does otherwise, transgresses against his own light, and misuses those faculties, which were given him to no other end, but to search and follow the clearer evidence, and greater probability.”4
What was the rationality that Locke had in mind? It should be noted that Locke was not claiming that Reason is the source of our beliefs, only that Reason should be the judge of our beliefs (that reason should assess how probable our belief is, and we are then under a moral obligation only to give an assent to a belief in proportion to the relevant evidence.
“Reason must be our last judge and guide in everything. I do not mean, that we must consult reason, and examine whether a proposition revealed from God can be made out by natural principles, and if it cannot, that then we may reject it: but consult it we must, and by it examine, whether it be a revelation from God or not.”5
~~~
It is important to emphasise that, for Locke, there was no contradiction between a commitment to judging beliefs by the light of reason, and a clear faith in Christianity. Although revelation could not be accepted contrary to reason, there was – at the time Locke was writing – no general sense that Christianity was incredible. Consequently, as part of his philosophical program, Locke published ‘The Reasonableness of Christianity’ in 1695, arguing that it was clear to reason that Jesus was the Messiah, and that the essence of faith was the ‘school of virtue’ formed by taking Jesus as the moral guide for life.
This sense that Christianity could be upheld by rational inquiry was rapidly and widely accepted – thanks in part to two prominent supporters. The first was Isaac Newton, whose Principia was published in 1687, and whose stature and scientific authority lent credibility to the project. Newton had a lifelong interest in alchemy and theology, and his last writings were attempts to reconcile the biblical chronology (which he took to have been falsified by wayward Roman Catholicism) with the insights of modern science, especially astronomy6.
More significant, the Church of England itself embraced the Lockean program, and it acquired the name ‘Latitudinarianism’ – meaning simply a respect for individual judgement, an acceptance of Reason as an authority (in the Lockean sense7) and a more critical engagement with tradition. This view gained many prominent defenders in the Church, including John Tillotson, appointed Archbishop of Canterbury in 1689, but the most important was Samuel Clarke. Clarke not only embraced the Lockean philosophy, he united it with Newton’s cosmology, in arguments showing the Providence of God – that God was a type of constitutional monarch, just as had been granted to England in the Glorious Revolution, who oversaw a realm that was governed by a stable framework of law.
These three figures, Locke, Newton and Clarke forged a particular religious settlement – a settlement that was welcomed as not only enabling an end to religious strife but as providing a theological support for the new political framework – a framework which, in essentials, has continued through to the present day. That framework remains the dominant paradigm through which discussion about religion is conducted, especially in the English speaking world8. The basic foundation comes from Locke, in that we are obliged to justify our beliefs through an appeal to reason. Supplemental to that basic foundation is the claim – held by all three men – that Christianity9could be justified by reason.
The history of English Christianity since the Glorious Revolution could be described as the progressive rejection of that supplemental claim.

1 I am drawing on a number of sources here (see the bibliography), but the most important is Nicholas Wolterstorff, John Locke and the Ethics of Belief, Cambridge University Press, 1996.
2 Roy Porter calls Locke ‘the presiding spirit of the English Enlightenment’. His influence was huge – see the discussion in Porter, Enlightenment, Penguin, 2000, especially pp 66-71.
3 John Locke, Essays on the Law of Nature, taken from Wolterstorff, p3.
4 John Locke, An Essay concerning Human Understanding, ed. Nidditch, Oxford University Press, 1990, IV, xvii, 24
5 Locke, Essay, IV, xix, 14.
6 This particular line of research culminated in the work of Archbishop Ussher, who calculated – on the basis of a rigorous and empirical assessment of the available evidence – that the earth had been created in 4004 BC. Such a task had not – and indeed, probably could not have – been undertaken in the previous history of Christianity.
7 There is much scholarly debate concerning the influence of Anglican theology on Locke, and whether the Lockean notion of Reason had been accepted earlier, in particular by Hooker. For a recent discussion, denying that this is the case, see Newey, The Form of Reason, Modern Theology, January 2002. My own view is that Locke was substantively original.
8 One might even call it a ‘Whig interpretation of religion’ that still awaits its Herbert Butterfield.
9 We now know, from the study of private correspondence, that the Christianity of Newton, and probably of Locke, was Arian, and therefore unorthodox, as it denied the full divinity of Jesus. That was not made clear at the time.

Rocks and beer

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This was chosen by a family at a funeral I took recently. Hadn’t come across it before, but I thought it was worth sharing…

A philosophy professor stood before his class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, wordlessly he picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with rocks, rocks about 2″ in diameter.

He then asked the students if the jar was full? They agreed that it was.
So the professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles, of course, rolled into the open areas between the rocks.

He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was.
The professor picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else.

He then asked once more if the jar was full. This time the students were sure and they responded with a unanimous “YES!”

The professor then produced two cans of beer from under the table and proceeded to pour their entire contents into the jar — effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed.

“Now,” said the professor, as the laughter subsided, “I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The rocks are the important things – your family, your partner, your health, your children, things that, if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full. The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house, your car”.

The sand is everything else. The small stuff. “If you put the sand into the jar first,” he continued “there is no room for the pebbles or the rocks. The same goes for your life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff, you will never have room for the things that are important to you”.

Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play with your children. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your partner out dancing. Do something for the community. There will always be time to go to work, clean the house, give a dinner party and fix the disposal.

“Take care of the rocks first – the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand.”

One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the beer represented. The professor smiled. “I’m glad you asked. It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there’s always room for a couple of beers.”

The moral character of beauty

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A question asked by RevSimmy in the comments: “the equation of the aesthetic and the moral – i.e. beautiful art/music has a moral effect. Do we agree? Why (/not)?”

I would say: yes, I have no doubt that beauty has an effect on character, partly from watching this programme recently (and I’ve purchased the book, but haven’t read it yet).

Of course, this is a complicated proposal. I happen to think that the Weeping Woman of Picasso is also tremendously beneficial to character – but I’m not sure I would count it as beautiful, even though I could (and have) spent ages contemplating it.

I feel on stronger ground when thinking about architecture – I think the living environment affects how we live, both directly and indirectly.

And of course music….

What do people think?

Scruton’s programme is available on Youtube, part 1 here: