One of the striking features of the last few years has been a re-awakening of interest in spirituality. Many new books on prayer have appeared, old classics of the spiritual life have been re-published, prayer groups have sprung up and the Charismatic Movement has become an important factor in many Christian communities. If the 1960s was the decade of secularism and ‘God is dead’, the 1970s may well go down in history as the decade of renascent spirituality. But this interest in spirituality has not, in general, gone hand in hand with a renewed interest in theology: indeed, in many cases I detect a positive hostility towards professional theologians (perhaps this is simply the latest exemplification of that separation of ascetical and mystical theology from dogmatics which has existed in Western Christianity since the Middle Ages). Still less has there been any link between this concern with spirituality and philosophy. And yet there are many important philosophical problems here: given that in a spiritual way of life men have certain experiences and are changed in various ways, what does this show?

This paper was originally given to a meeting of the Institute of Religion and Theology in London. It was in response to a specific request to consider how far it is desirable, or even necessary, for a student or a teacher of a religious tradition to know at least the main language(s) of the tradition in question. To what extent, to put it slightly differently, is it possible to gain knowledge of, and insight into, religion and religions through translations; and without being able to avail oneself of aids which require linguistic knowledge–such things as dictionaries and concordances. I have made no attempt to change the form or the content of the paper as it was given. It depends, obviously, on the more general issues involved in translation and interpretation; if these are unfamiliar, there is an excellent and brief introduction in S. Basnett-McGuire's Translation Studies (London: Methuen, 1980).

If one were to investigate the underpinnings of religious studies, or, in other words, to undertake a sort of meta-religious studies (a study which would be twice removed from the actual subject matter of the discipline) one would find that the main contemporary criticisms, by both lay students of religion and the academic community at large, have been primarily twofold. The first stock objection, possibly somewhat more popular twenty years ago, was that ‘religious studies’ was simply not to be considered an autonomous academic discipline worthy of recognition as an independent ‘department’ in a university curriculum. In short, the pejorative implications were clear in the behind-the-back finger-pointing which was conjoined with whispers of ‘interdisciplinary’. The second major criticism of the ‘discipline’ of religious studies has been a polymorphous diversity of twists on the old theme – ‘Oh my God, they are practising what they preach’. The impetus of this criticism is in large measure, the fear, by various sectors for various reasons, that the student of religion is somehow ‘doing’ (as opposed to simply studying) religion and, what's more, doing it inside the hallowed halls of the university.

Faced with the problem of evil, theistic philosophers, in their endeavour to show that religious belief is coherent and tenable, usually produce an argument running along the following lines: The presence of evil in the world is justified by the fact that some evils are positively required for the achievement of a certain good (or, perhaps, certain goods) which God wants to achieve; and this good is of such great value as to make the evils which we encounter well worth enduring. Since, then (so the argument goes), the evils of this world are necessary conditions for the attainment of much greater good, God is justifed in permitting their occurrence.

To rise from the dead and live in the age to come is the appointed destiny of the children of God. In that continuing personal life they are like angels and can no longer die, for as children of the resurrection they are children of God. He is the God, not of the dead, but of the living, for in him all are alive. That was the message of Jesus handed down to us through the Evangelists as an essential part of the Gospel. Jesus did not speak of an ‘immortality’ which depends on the natural force of the soul to resist the corruption of death, but spoke instead of a life-relation with God which cannot terminate for it is anchored beyond our mortal existence in the ever-living God himself. He preferred to speak of this as ‘eternal life’ which is freely given by the heavenly Father to his children on earth and which, far from ending with death, results in a resurrection to a fullness of imperishable life in God.

Much contemporary philosophy of religion is preoccupied with highly general problems about the nature of religious belief and of religious language, rather than with how to interpret, in detail, specific religious beliefs or forms of religious discourse. Among the matters of dispute there seem to be two of overriding importance. The first concerns the relation between religious beliefs and experience and centres on the question, what sorts of experience are relevant to the acceptance or rejection of religious beliefs. The second concerns whether or not religious beliefs have an explanatory function. Discussion of both these themes in relation to theistic belief is still largely dominated by conceptions of God and of his relation to the world which have been developed by natural theologians, particularly, though not exclusively, those who have worked within traditions significantly influenced by Thomas Aquinas. Thus the idea that religious beliefs have an explanatory function is commonly associated with the view that they present answers to questions raised by those alleged traits or features of the world which have been the concern of natural theologians and which have been described by means of concepts of ‘contingency’, ‘purposiveness’, ‘order’, and ‘design’. Consequently, the sort of experience often held to be relevant to the acceptance or rejection of theistic belief is that which is relevant to the application of these problematic concepts.

The background and purpose of this paper require some explanation. It is not the product of a New Testament scholar, able to weigh and balance theories as to date, origin and doctrinal background of the text attributed to St John, nor to assess the identification of its author with the beloved Disciple elsewhere mentioned or with the author of the Apocalypse, nor to consider his relationship to Gnostics or Stoics or Essenes or other influences in the contemporary Jewish or Christian ambience. It is only the effort of one who recognizes in St John's Gospel, if read with an appropriate hermeneutic, a supreme mystico-religious document which can provide guidance at every turn of the spiritual life, but which, if read in another manner, becomes only the expression of a hard-line particularism, which is not less unacceptable in that it acclaims a particular standing in a special relation to another particular on which we all depend for our existence and for all our properties. Conceive of God, or the supreme object of worship, as a particular among particulars, and as much other than ourselves as other things and persons are other, and religious reverence becomes a repugnant form of heteronomous idolatry, wrought up, moreover, with the blind acceptance of a large number of historic and cosmic myths. But conceive of God as being something beyond category-differences, and which as much transcends particularity as it transcends any form of abstract universality, and which incorporates in strict identity all those values of Truth, Love, Beauty, Justice, etc. which are all simply universality in action, and which, moreover, as much transcends personality and personal relationships as it also may have in them its supreme expression, and religion and worship at once acquire a perfect sense and reference.

One of the most peculiar features of the belief in God is the accompanying claim that God is an indescribable mystery, an object of faith but never an object of knowledge. In certain contexts – in worship, for example – this claim undoubtedly serves a useful purpose; and so I do not want to dismiss the idea altogether. But when pious remarks about the ineffable nature of God are taken out of context and turned into philosophy, the result is usually an epistemological muddle. The trouble, of course, is that those who insist on God's mysteriousness still manage to say all sorts of things about him; he is an incorporeal spirit, he created the world, he loves his creatures, and so on. To assert these things is to presume some understanding of God, but no understanding is possible if God is completely incomprehensible. So if that is how it is, if the object of religious belief is utterly incomprehensible, then it makes no sense to say – or believe – anything about God.

The idea of grading religions and placing them in an order of merit is to some repugnant, as involving a pretence to a divine perspective, whilst to others it seems entirely natural and proper, at least to the extent of their confidently assessing their own religion more highly than all others. We shall have to consider precisely what it is that might be graded, and in what respects and by what criteria. But if we think for a moment of the entire range of religious phenomena, no one is going to maintain that they are all on the same level of value or validity. Indeed the most significant religious figures, the founders and reformers of great traditions, have invariably been deeply critical of some of the religious ideas and practices around them. Thus Gautama rejected the idea of the eternal atman or soul, which was integral to the religious thought of India in his time; the great Hebrew prophets criticised mere outward observances and sacrifices, proclaiming that what the Lord requires is to ‘let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream’ (Amos 5: 24); Jesus, in the same tradition, attacked the formalism and insincerity of some of the religious leaders of his own time who ‘tithe mint and rue and every herb, and neglect justice and the love of God’ (Luke 11: 42); Muhammad rejected the polytheism of his contemporary Arabian society; Guru Nanak in India and Martin Luther in Europe attacked much in the accumulated traditions into which they were born; and so on. Thus some kind of assessing of religious phenomena seems to be a corollary of deep religious seriousness and openness to the divine.

Nearly three decades have passed since Antony Flew first issued his now famous falsification challenge: ‘What would have to occur or to have occurred to constitute for you a disproof of the love of, or of the existence of, God?’ The purpose of the question is to challenge the sophisticated believer to describe a state of affairs in which a basic putative theistic assertion like ‘God exists’ would be false. If the believer admits that he cannot provide such a description then, Flew would argue, he is admitting that at least his putative theistic assertion is compatible with every state of affairs; consequently it is factually meaningless. The reason for this is that every factually significant assertion must deny that some describable state of affairs obtains. To illustrate, just as when we draw a circle we simultaneously draw in and draw out two particular areas, so when we state a fact we simultaneously deny a fact(s). Here is the difficulty, Flew would say, in which the sophisticated believer puts himself when he uses putative theistic assertions: factually he denies nothing, hence factually he asserts nothing.

The Oxford English Dictionary says that a rite is ‘a formal procedure or act in a religious or other solemn observance’. The word comes into English through the French rite from the Latin ritus. Its original meaning escapes etymologists; and this is a mixed blessing, for we neither can nor must attempt a retrieval of its hidden roots. We are told by respectable etymologists (if such there be) that the word is associated from earliest times with Latin religious usage, but that even in the early Latin it was already extended to ‘custom, usage, manner or way’ of a non-religious sort. [Lewis and Short, A Latin Dictionary.] So, too, in modern languages the terms ‘rite’ and ‘ritual’ have specifically religious meaning, but they are also used in social and cultural settings that we would not call religious. What first strikes us about the terms ’ and ‘ritual’ is an emphasis upon a certain formality, upon a regular and stable way in which an action or set of actions is to be performed. A ritual is more than a formalism, however, since there are formalisms that are not rites, such as the logical rules for making a valid argument. Moreover, the term is frequently associated with the terms ‘myth’, ‘symbol’ and ‘faith’. These, too, are primarily religious, but are also extended to non-religious contexts. Indeed, there seems to be a network of such terms whose usage touches upon some extraordinary quality in things. Like them, the term ‘ritual’ shares both a wide variety of meanings and a certain hint of impropriety. The variety of ritual forms is notorious, ranging from the most sacred religious liturgies to the absurdities of a fraternity initiation; and the impropriety of the term breaks out whenever we brand a certain action ‘ritualistic’, just as we sometimes refer slightingly to an assertion, saying it is ‘mythical’, ‘merely symbolic’ or ‘credulous’.

Despite years of philosophical preoccupation with language, figurative discourse remains a sadly neglected topic. Biblical scholars and theologians still make use of a rag–bag of terms such as myth, metaphor, image, allegory, and analogy according to their own lights, with little or no help from philosophers in distinguishing or relating the categories involved. Too often these terms are used as equivalents.

In the introduction to his account of the debate concerning religion between Cleanthes, Philo and Demea, Pamphilus remarks that ‘reasonable men may be allowed to differ where no one can reasonably be positive’. Pamphilus goes on to suggest that natural theology is an area that abounds with issues about which ‘no one can reasonably be positive’. Assuming that the beliefs of reasonable men are themselves reasonable, Pamphilus can be interpreted as holding that

(P) If no one is reasonably positive that the proposition p is true or that it is false, a man might reasonably believe that p or might reasonably believe that not p.

What good is divinity if it can come only in dreams and shadows…? (Wallace Stevens)

It is a well-known and rarely challenged assumption that one of the chief merits of Whitehead's cosmology is that it enables religious thinkers to come at the problem of God in relation to the presence of evil in an entirely new way. Among the virtues most commonly appealed to in praise of the Whiteheadian theodicy are its emphasis on God's persuasive, rather than controlling power; its defence of the moral goodness of the God whose nature is reconceived in the light of the problem of evil; and its provision for a realistic hope in the redemptive processes operative in divine and human history. However, none of these aspects of process theodicy is without serious problems. In what follows I will present certain reasons why I do not believe process theism has made good its claim to have solved, with the help of Whitehead's philosophy, the problem of evil. Rather, I will suggest that like the story of what happened to the donkey laden with salt, who took to the water, process theology's ‘solution’ to the problem of evil dissolves in the dialectic river of life, until nothing is left but the verbal sack in which it is contained. Much of the force of this critique will hinge on recognizing the systematic implications of the role of ambiguity in a processive-relational universe, a position I will summarize in conclusion.

Twenty years ago the theology of Rudolf Bultmann was one of the central points in theological discussion. Today the attention of theologians has moved elsewhere. Yet an attempt to assess Bultmann provisionally today may not be out of place, and the following essay is offered as a contribution to that assessment, in the hope that either alone, or together with other reappraisals and criticisms it may be useful. It is the result of a continuing personal engagement of long standing, in which Bultmann's thought has been of value to me, not least in the fields where he has stimulated me to fascinated disagreement.

While many philosophical theists have maintained (correctly or not) that there are data accessible to sense-perception – e.g., the ‘orderly processes of nature’, loving and benevolent human actions – which constitute evidence for the existence of God, it seems unproblematic that there could not conceivably occur sense-perceptions of God. Rather, the properties being God and being sense-perceivable are incompatible, i.e., are such that it is inconceivable for there to exist something which coexemplifies them. This being so, it is nothing short of a necessary truth that if God exists, he is unobservable. In what follows, I shall often express this point in the language of necessity de re by noting that being unobservable is a property that God has essentially; for those at home with ‘possible-world’ semantics, this amounts to the claim that being unobservable is a property that God exemplifies at every possible-world at which he exists. One might reasonably account for this, of course, in terms of God's incorporeality; for it seems unproblemetic that being incorporeal is also a property that God has essentially, and that the function ‘X is incorporeal’ entails the function ‘X is unobservable’. Hence, since ‘If God exists, he is incorporeal’ expresses a necessary truth, it should be intuitively clear that the proposition expressed by ‘If God exists, he is unobservable’ is also a necessary truth.

Among Western scholars there has been a growing interest in Buddhist philosophy, especially in the philosophical teachings of the Mādhyamika. Mādhyamika philosophy is considered to be ‘the most important outcome of Buddha's teaching’ and to represent ‘philosophical Buddhism par excellence’. The main message of Mādhyamika Buddhism is the doctrine of emptiness. Yet scholars, as well as students of Buddhism, have often been puzzled about this teaching and have misinterpreted it. The chief purpose of this paper is to expound the Mādhyamika philosophy of emptiness as presented in Chinese San–lun sources and to clarify misconceptions about this important philosophy of Buddhism.

I believe in…the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. (The Apostles' Creed)

The ancient Christian affirmation of a bodily resurrection still echoes today, and admittedly makes this paper's title sound odd. Resurrected persons are supposedly people with bodies, at least within Christian eschatology. How then can they be disembodied?

The counter-question is whether the notion of bodily-resurrected persons can satisfy certain problems raised by that same Christian eschatology, and this paper is an exploration of these issues. The first part draws attention to the importance of resurrection in contemporary philosophical discussion, in particular for John Hick's notion of eschatological verification. Part II examines critically the adequacy of this view of resurrection. In Part III we turn to a thesis about St Paul's concept of the resurrection body which avoids some of the problems raised in Part n. But the thesis raises its own difficulties, and the paper concludes with a sketch of further complexities in the logic of Christian eschatology.

There is an undercurrent to be detected in Anselm's record of the meditative experience that issued in the Ontological Argument and, although it points to a profound and perennial problem in the interpretation of religion, this undercurrent has been largely ignored. The Argument, as is well known, moves entirely within the medium of reflective meaning focused on the idea of God and, unlike the cosmological arguments of later theologians, it makes no appeal whatever to a principle of causality or to the discovery of a sufficient reason for finite existence. Anselm seems to have had his own sense of what one may call the unadulterated rationalism of the Argument when, in his own words, he wondered, ‘if perhaps it might be possible to find one single argument that for its proof required no other save itself, and that by itself would suffice to prove that God really exists’. Here we are entirely within that inner chamber of the mind so dear to the Augustinian tradition, a mind from which one is to exclude all thought save that of God. The task of the one who reflects is to penetrate the inner meaning of this thought in order to discover what it implies beyond what is evident on the surface. With such an eminently rational or logical aim occupying the centre of attention, it is quite understandable that the presence of another, and quite opposed, concern should have been overlooked - Anselm's concern, namely, to transcend, as it were, the medium of thought itself, and enter into the presence of God. The reason that this concern introduces a tension in the search for a proof is that the realization of presence would seem to render proof superfluous, while the inference in an argument - especially one moving towards existence – inevitably suggests, in some sense and to some degree, the absence of what is sought for.