Harriet Johnson 76946
1
‘It is...deeply disturbing to find the defenders of faith by reason offering proofs for God’s existence which
presuppose that the divine nature can be understood on the model of spatiotemporal phenomena, as if
God were a physical entity (however special a kind).’ (Stephen Mulhall, Faith and Reason 21)
What do these defenders of faith miss about the nature of religious belief? Discuss with
reference to two authors we studied in the course
Defenders of faith in the tradition of natural theology attempt to justify belief in God’s
existence via rational argument or the production of evidence. However these proofs seem to lack
relevance to the nature of religious belief as it is actually experienced by the believer. Ones belief is
something one trusts in and depends on beyond just the use of reason. This is not necessarily to say
that the rational faculty is not involved in religious belief but it does not exhaust it. There are also
emotional, imaginal and experiential components, and it is this further dimension that engenders and
nurtures the believer’s relationship with the divine. Further to this, it can be argued that any attempt
to justify and explain the transcendental via concepts and reasoned argument will be frustrated by
our limitations as subjective human beings and the language we are bound by, which prevents us from
conceptualising the non-rational.
Attempts to assess the validity of religious belief, prior to attending to the emotional
experience that characterises it, inevitably miss a vitally important element of the religious life as
lived by the believer. Rudolf Otto begins The Idea of the Holy1 with a discussion of the rational and the
non-rational. Christianity characterises God by employing concepts such as good-will and supreme
power, allowing that they are analogous to the same attributes in human nature but thought of as
absolute and unqualified, thereby admitting the possibility of knowledge of God by way of rational
thought. However these so called rational attributes do not exhaustively describe the essence of deity.
Otto terms them ‘synthetic essential attributes’2, as while they describe the idea of a deity in some
1
R. Otto, The Idea of the Holy: An Enquiry into the Non-rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and its
relation to the Rational, trans. John W. Harvey, (London: Oxford University Press, 1923)
2
Otto, The Idea of the Holy, p. 2.
Harriet Johnson 76946
2
sense, in a deeper sense they are only a finger pointing at the moon3, and the essence of God eludes
them. The rational attributes Otto describes, are concepts which natural theologians apply to God in
an attempt to rationalise faith, but these concepts belong to human understanding and language and
we cannot expect that by magnifying them to perfection or their absolute we will begin to encounter
the essence of the divine. As Stephen Mulhall suggests, they presuppose that God can be understood
on a model of spatio-temporal phenomena. Otto does not deny the place of this rational side of
religion but wishes to avoid an excessively intellectualistic interpretation.
Instead of a reasoned analysis of the nature of God and faith, Otto continues to explore the
different ‘moments’ that characterise religious belief in order to illuminate the uniquely non-rational
essence of religion. His method is to evoke or awaken the numinous, a term he coined to describe the
holy stripped of its associations with mere moral goodness, through the exploration of human feelingresponses rather than rational demonstration or explanation. It is precisely this quality of experience
that defenders of faith via reason fail to grasp.
When one abandons theorising in favour of knowledge through intimate experience by
recollection of deeply-felt religious experience, one encounters what Otto terms ‘creature-feeling’. It is
a feeling similar to one of religious dependence, encountered when one is overwhelmed by their sense
of nothingness in the face of an overpowering absolute might of some kind. This creature-feeling,
different from just an experience of dependence, is not self-referential, rather it is the effect of another
feeling which has immediate primary reference to an object outside of the self. This object is the
‘numinous’. The nature of the numinous is such that it can only be suggested in the way in which it
grips and stirs the human mind. What is felt in the experience of the numinous, Otto terms ‘mysterium
3
A traditional image in Zen Buddhism entreating practitioners not to mistake the means of expression (the
finger) for the actual experience or truth of the matter (the moon).
Harriet Johnson 76946
3
tremendum’ and identifies five elements to this experience which each communicate something about
the numinous.4
In Otto’s assertion that the nature of the numinous can only be suggested by the way in which
it is reflected in the mind; the emotional experience itself points to the nature of an external object.
For example, Otto describes a sense of awe stirring when the mysterious is looming before the mind
in all its uncanniness; a feeling of fear and dread in the face of the numinous wrath of God; a feeling of
religious humility arising out of the aweful majesty and overpoweringness of the numinous. So from
the encounter with ones emotional experience of the divine, we learn of it’s mystery, it’s uncanniness,
it’s numinous wrath. In this way, Otto indicates how the defenders of faith via reason miss what it
feels like to confront the idea of the divine in our own experience. Although the terms Otto uses could
be considered to be quite loaded concepts, layered with meanings, Otto uses them in a very specific
way in an attempt to capture a unique feeling-response, whilst acknowledging the finitude of their
ability to encapsulate the numinous essence.
Kierkegaard also challenged the systematic thought of philosophers in the tradition of natural
theology, who attempted to reinforce the idea that Christianity is a rational religion whose truth could
be objectively demonstrated. He appealed to the subjectivity of experience, especially with regard to
the personal nature of relationship with the divine, to subvert the rationalistic tendencies of Christian
philosophy and reveal a more authentic form of faith. Hegel wanted to construct a self-grounding allencompassing philosophical system, but Kierkegaard opposed his methods and asserted that a human
being has an inner life, which he termed inwardness, that can’t be assimilated into a system in this
manner. This inwardness cannot be rationalised in such a way, and perhaps cannot even be
articulated, so for Kierkegaard it is this inward sphere that Hegel’s philosophy doesn’t do justice to.
4
Otto, The Idea of the Holy pp.8-42
Harriet Johnson 76946
4
For Kierkegaard, “Truth is Subjectivity”. This is not a complete rejection of objective truth, but
an insistence on placing the human being at the centre of the enquiry. Objective truth is about what is
known; subjective truth is about how one appropriates that truth and lives by it. Kierkegaard rejects
the whole idea of scientific objectivity as a guide to how we should believe and act in all matters that
concern our personal lives. In objectivity, one tends to lose the infinite personal interestedness in
passion, which is the condition of faith. For Kierkegaard, those who attempt to justify belief in God by
rational means are not authentic, and not inspired. When the question is treated in an objective
manner it becomes impossible for the subject to face the decision with passion, and it lessens ones
engagement with their relationship to the enquiry. The uncertainty that comes with a lack of
objectivity increases the tension of that infinite passion which constitutes his inwardness. Inwardness
becomes intensified by embracing this objective uncertainty with the passion of the infinite.
Kierkegaard gave the counter-example of a mathematical proposition, in which the objectivity is
given, but for this very reason it is an indifferent truth, as it is not experiential or lived.5
Kierkegaard has been accused of irrationalism because of his definition of truth as “an
objective uncertainty, held fast through appropriation with the most passionate inwardness”6, but this
is a misinterpretation. Like Otto, he wants to unsettle the comfortable, uncommitted, cultural mode of
Christianity; It is not a rejection of the rational faculty, but for these two thinkers, faith and religion
are much more of an existential task to be participated in; according to Kierkegaard one must be
continually engaged in and committed to faith. Kierkegaard rejects reason conceived of as a superior
faculty, he instead emphasises the reasoning capacity of historically embedded human beings, whilst
appreciating the limits of human reason. This emphasis is connected with Otto’s view of our
‘creatureliness’, in that we are not entitled to occupy a god-like, birds-eye position. We each of us are
living temporal beings, engaging in philosophy from the perspective of the existing individual. There
5
S. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. D. F. Swenson and W. Lowrie, (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1974) p.182
6
S. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, p.182
Harriet Johnson 76946
5
are elements to our existence from this perspective that we cannot know or understand. If
Kierkegaard were committed to irrationalism, he would not be able to discriminate between objects
of faith; but he definitely commends the Christian faith above all others, precisely because he views it
as a rational religion, grounded in its objective, empirical reality; the reality that God revealed himself
in a human form in Christ.7
So Kierkegaard is not committed to irrationalism, rather he appears to be an anti-rationalist, in
that he does not deny the value of reason in his project but maintains that there is a tendency to
excessively emphasise abstract impersonal forms of thought thereby losing contact with equally
important alternative sources of wisdom. There is a continuum extending from different formulations
of rationalism, including evidentialist and cosmological arguments, to irrationalism, or fideism, the
view that religious belief by its very nature is opposed to reason and should be adopted on the basis of
faith alone. As we have seen, Otto and Kierkegaard argue for a position in between these two. Otto
believes that his account can begin to offer us a better understanding of religious belief than proposed
by natural theology because it accounts for both experience and practice. The kind of understanding
that Otto describes does not necessarily fall within the traditional epistemic boundaries however he is
contacting the experiential component of religious belief by plunging into the depths of its nonrational element; depths which are inaccessible to those who attempt to provide proofs and
arguments for God’s existence. For Kierkegaard too, a certain kind of thinking remains closed to us
until we are ourselves thrown back into inwardness.
Related to these emotional and experiential components of religious belief, is the way human
beings approach and encounter God by setting up symbolic meaning in their lives through ritual,
stories, the arts, and engagement with scripture. This is the imaginal component referred to in the
7
Carr, K. L., and Ivanhoe, P. J., Antirationalism in Zhuangzi and Kierkegaard, in Readings in Philosophy of
Religion: East Meets West, ed. by A. Eshleman (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2008) p.134
Harriet Johnson 76946
6
introduction. Coleridge speaks of the primary and secondary imagination as the fundamental creative
power of the mind, and the expression of this power in the phenomenal world.
The primary imagination I hold to be the living Power and prime Agent of all human Perception, and as a
repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I Am.8
So for Coleridge, the power of the primary imagination is embodied by human beings, as we
participate and re-enact God’s creativity; it is a power that provides a connection between the human
being and the divine being. The operation of the imagination creates new meaning, ultimately
searching for union with the divine; in this way it is a religious act, whether through creation
expressed through ritual and the arts, or perception of the eternal revealed in the world. 9 Ritual can
have profound meaning for a human being, communicating through symbol and archetypes to the
subconscious depths of the mind. This emotional-imaginal faculty is uniquely able to connect with the
elements of religious belief which are inaccessible to the conscious rational faculty. The believer’s
relationship with God is the focus of religion and faith and one of the ways in which it is developed
and nurtured is through engagement in ritual and imaginative connection with scripture, developing
and enriching ones personal understanding of the nature of God and one’s own belief.
Defenders of faith by ratiocination assume that reasoning is objective only when unaffected by
personal interest and desire. Claims that God can be understood by excluding our passional nature
from the process of reasoning reject the epistemically beneficial effects of exploration of the
subjective experience which have been communicated by Otto, Kierkegaard and Coleridge in this
essay. The complexity of religious belief as experienced by the believer, with its many emotional,
experiential and imaginal dimensions is missed when approaching religious belief only via reason.
Reasoning capitalises on the necessary conceptual distinctions drawn by the use of language and any
attempt to conceptualise the nature of religious belief is an attempt to delimit it and put it in some
8
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, chapter XIII, Project Gutenberg, 2004,
<http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/6081/pg6081.html>
9
Sandra M. Levy, Imagination and the Journey of Faith, (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2008)
Harriet Johnson 76946
7
sort of a framework. Attempts to defend religious belief in this way fail to account for the fact that the
nature of the divine is wholly other and will not be compromised in order to fit into some pre-defined
structure of knowledge. Instead we must respect the limits of our human capacity for reasoning and
make use of what is accessible to us; our own individual experience of the divine, expressed by Otto as
a feeling of mysterium tremendum, and Kierkegaard as our subjective relationship with God.
Bibliography
Carr, K. L., and Ivanhoe, P. J., Antirationalism in Zhuangzi and Kierkegaard, in Readings in Philosophy of
Religion: East Meets West, ed. by A. Eshleman (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2008)
Coleridge, S. T., Biographia Literaria, chapter XIII, Project Gutenberg, 2004,
<http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/6081/pg6081.html>
Eshleman, A., The Rationality of Religious Belief in the Absence of Evidence, in Readings in Philosophy of
Religion: East Meets West, ed. by A. Eshleman (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2008)
James, W., The Reality of the Unseen from The Varieties of Religious Experience, in God (Second Edition),
ed. by T. A. Robinson (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2002)
James, W., The Will to Believe, in Readings in Philosophy of Religion: East Meets West, ed. by A.
Eshleman (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2008)
Kierkegaard, S., Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. D. F. Swenson and W. Lowrie, (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1974)
Kierkegaard, S., Truth is Subjectivity, in Readings in Philosophy of Religion: East Meets West, ed. by A.
Eshleman (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2008)
Macquarrie, J., Twentieth Century Religious Thought, (London: SCM Press, 2001)
Mulhall, S., Faith and Reason, (London: Duckworth, 1994)
Otto, R., The Idea of the Holy: An Enquiry into the Non-rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and its
relation to the Rational, trans. John W. Harvey, (London: Oxford University Press, 1923)
Wainwright, W. J., Reason and the Heart, (New York: Cornell University Press, 1995)
Harriet Johnson 76946
Word Count : 2284
8