PUZZLEMENT AND BELIEF

Not so long ago I enjoyed a good discussion with the Oxford University Secular Society on "what the hell should we do about religion?" (or something along those lines). They are an interesting and open bunch, not affiliated to any one non-religious faction, and welcoming of people from different life- and belief-stances. It quite cheered me up about the possibility of thoughtful and non-rancorous conversation about "belief" and "non-belief", given much of the over opinionated non sense one finds in the papers and on the net these days, which is little more than cheap point scoring - without even being aware of that, half of the time. Anyway, Peter Hughes, a thoroughly good jurisprudence guy who plays a lead role in the OUSS, has written a response on his blog to my post yesterday on Kim Fabricius's sermon. Peter expresses (understandable) puzzlement at what looks to him like Christianity cutting its own feet from under it, and then wonders what sense one can make of classical claims about God anyway, and of motivations for apparently stepping outside accepted canons of 'proof'. It's an irenic and interesting contribution.

I think Kim's main point, with which I wholly agree, is that most of what are popularly thought of as the 'benefits' of Christian religion (neither my post nor his exempts Christianity from the criticisms we raise, incidentally) are in fact de-benefits, and have little to do with what is meant at a deeper level by elements of the tradition which are oft-quoted but little understood. Prayer, for example - which is not asking for cosmic favours, but learning to be 're-tuned' away from one's propensity to self-interest by engaging with a love which, being divine, is unconditioned and not bound up with self-perpetuation, because it arises from beyond the arena of competitive difference in which we are unavoidably embroiled. To be a follower of Christ is, from my experience and conviction, to discover possibilities of ‘life in a new register’ by simultaneously beginning to abandon (through the effect of what I can only call grace) the many efforts one may humanly make to 'grab' at it, along with attempts simply to avoid death. To do the reverse of what many critics of 'religion' think it is about, in other words.

As Nicholas Lash, a rather good theologian, points out - such ideas as these are entirely orthodox Christian ones, and the fact that they may not be understood by many inside and outside the churches is a symptom of just how deep the ignorance of reflective (and reflexive) Christian thought and behaviour has become in our culture. This is something for which I think the churches hold the greatest responsibility, on account of the way they (we) have allowed the Gospel vocation to be corrupted by the kind of interests of which Nietzsche and Foucault speak (albeit without hope of redemption, which is where I differ from them).

The rest of Peter's piece, Reasons for Believing, raises standard questions about the nature of belief in God, its status and its epistemic form, which, again, it seems to me, are widely philosophically misconstrued by both believers and non-believers. Some of the issues involved are tackled or alluded to in my essay 'What difference does God make today?', especially the second section. But I will try to give more succinct and focused responses when I have a bit more time. Disagreement on questions of belief are not going to go away, but it is helpful to distinguish between useful and non-useful lines of distinction, which is the spirit of Peter's approach too.