1. Проблема религиозного разнообразия: эпистемология и этика

Аргументы от религиозного разнообразия в современной философии ре­лигии являются одними из самых сильных скептических доводов против при­верженности одной религии. В этой критике религии можно выделить два ос­новных аспекта. Первый аспект эпистемологический, в нем выделяются два вопроса. Первый касается рациональности принятия той или иной религии; второй относится к истинности конкретной религиозной традиции в свете имеющегося эпистемического разногласия и контингентного характера любой религиозной традиции. Таким образом, случай с религиозными убеждениями является одним из «кейсов» для эпистемологии разногласия (epistemology of disagreement)1, а суть различных аспектов проблемы религиозного разнообра­зия можно представить следующим образом.

I. Эпистемологический аргумент 1 (de jure).

1) Считать, что система религиозных убеждений является обоснованной, можно только в том случае, когда нет ослабляющих контрдоводов (under­cutting defeaters) против нее.

2) Эпистемическое разногласие по поводу религиозных убеждений явля­ется таким ослабляющим контрдоводом против любой конкретной религиоз­ной традиции.

3) Следовательно, в силу эпистемического разногласия, представленного в виде фактического религиозного разнообразия, любую религиозную тради­цию нельзя считать обоснованной.

II. Эпистемологический аргумент 2 (de facto).

1) Считать, что система религиозных убеждений является истинной, можно только в том случае, когда нет опровергающего контрдовода (rebutting defeater).

2) Сам факт религиозного разнообразия показывает, что ни одна тра­диция не может претендовать на абсолютную истинность (опровергающий контрдовод).

3) Следовательно, ни одна религиозная система убеждений не является истинной2.

Эпистемологический аргумент 1 направлен на то, чтобы разорвать связь между религиозными убеждениями и их обоснованием в силу эмпирического факта религиозного многообразия. То есть факт религиозного разнообразия выступает как часть скептического аргумента: почему я должен придержи­ваться своих религиозных убеждений, если другие люди придерживаются по­рой прямо противоположных? Эпистемологический аргумент 2 жестче: он на­правлен на то, чтобы опровергнуть любые религиозные убеждения фактом

разногласия. Он говорит о том, что раз между адептами разных религий нет согласия по поводу того, какие религиозные убеждения надо считать истинны­ми, все они должны быть признаны ложными.

Какие составляющие религиозных традиций имеют отношение к про­блеме религиозного разнообразия? Главных пунктов разногласия, стоящих в центре полемики, три: (1) о природе высшей реальности, (2) об актуальном положении человека, (3) о преодолении тех затруднений, с которыми связано актуальное положение человека. Так, например, в иудаизме, христианстве и исламе считается, что всемогущий Бог создал мир, но эти религии расхо­дятся по поводу природы Творца. А в нетеистических традициях (например, индуизме, буддизме, джайнизме и синтоизме) существование такого Творца отрицается вовсе. В христианстве и исламе принято почитание Иисуса, но если в христианстве он считается Сыном Божиим, одной из ипостасей Бога, то в исламе – одним из пророков, то есть его божественная природа отрица­ется. Христианство учит о грехопадении человека и невозможности для него обрести жизнь вечную без специальной божественной помощи. А вот в ин­дуизме, буддизме и джайнизме эта проблема обычно осмысляется в том клю­че, что человек не понимает в полной мере, в каком мире он живет и что он есть на самом деле. Подобных примеров, когда между основными религиоз­ными системами имеются явные противоречия, можно подобрать довольно значительное количество. Но и уже приведенных достаточно для вывода: в условиях подобных противоречивых свидетельств по одним и тем же во­просам в разных религиозных традициях все основные утверждения религий нельзя принимать как истинные, какие-то из этих утверждений должны быть, очевидно, ложными. Таким образом, в основе проблемы религиозного разнообразия лежит противоречие между претендующими на истинность ре­лигиозными утверждениями.

Следующий аспект этический. Здесь предпочтение своей религиозной традиции ставится под сомнение по той причине, что верующие, поскольку они являются ее адептами, настаивают на исключительной истинности своей религии, тем самым принижая статус других религий.

III. Этический аргумент.

1) Считать только одну систему религиозных убеждений истинной зна­чит нетолерантно относиться к другим религиозным системам убеждений.

1) Толерантность – ценность современного общества, распространяющая­ся на все сферы взаимодействия людей, в том числе и на религиозные системы убеждений.

3) Следовательно, нельзя считать только одну систему религиозных убеж­дений истинной3.

Надо отметить, что толерантность в данном случае имеет два значения, раскрывающихся в этическом аргументе – еще одном кирпичике в здании

скептицизма. Во-первых, он призывает к сомнению в собственном суждении и к скромному к нему отношению. Однако, во-вторых, этот аргумент не сводит­ся к простой оценке чьих-то убеждений: очевидно, что тогда мы имеем дело с разномнением, которое может касаться и самых обычных, повседневных, си­туаций и явлений. В данном случае под толерантностью имеется в виду и дей­ствие: разрешение представителям иной религии исповедовать ее4.

Таким образом, проблема религиозного разнообразия состоит в том, могут ли быть одни религиозные традиции более истинными, чем другие, или хотя бы могут ли быть верования одной религиозной традиции более обоснованны­ми, чем верования, принятые в других традициях, а также этично ли перед ли­цом разнообразия свидетельств придерживаться того, что только традиция, ко­торой я сам придерживаюсь, является истинной.

2. Эпистемическая ровня

В основе эпистемологического и этического аспектов проблемы лежит, как видно, факт разногласия с эпистемической ровней (peer). Главное условие для эпистемической ровни состоит в том, что она должна быть в эквивалент­ной эпистемической позиции по отношению к убеждению B. Так, считается, что представители разных религий основывают свои верования на типологи­чески схожих основаниях, например, на свидетельских данных, аргументах от авторитета, принятых в их религиозных традициях. Эпистемической ров­ней их также делает знакомство с одними и теми же ослабляющими и опро­вергающими контрдоводами: например, о существовании иных религий и о при­нятых в них способах обоснования верований. Общая проблема, возникающая из этого равенства, сводится к тому, почему мы можем придерживаться своих верований, почему наши убеждения имеют приоритетное значение перед убеждениями эпистемической ровни? Из невозможности дать обоснованный ответ на эти вопросы заключается, что в ситуации разногласия всем участни­кам стоит скептически отнестись к своим верованиям вопреки имеющимся данным, обосновывающим их позиции.

Но действительно ли в ситуации религиозного разнообразия представите­ли разных религий, а также атеисты, агностики и антитеисты являются эпи­стемической ровней? Многие философы сомневаются в этом5. Оба эпистемо­логических аргумента зависят от нижеследующей посылки, которая лежит в основании посылок 2) аргументов I, II:

2*)  моя эпистемическая ровня не согласна со мной по религиозным во­просам. В частности, моя ровня принадлежит иной религиозной традиции, в которой приняты иные авторитеты, свидетельства, стандарты свидетельство­вания, передачи знания и т. д.

Несложно привести примеры, показывающие, что посылка 2*) ложна. В целом, это так потому, что употребляемое понятие эпистемической ровни слишком сильное: оно требует не только образовательного, мировоззренче­ского, этического равенства ровни (чтобы она была в той же степени осве­домленной, образованной, бескорыстной, честной и т. д., что и я), но также, чтобы она вообще занимала ту же самую эпистемическую позицию по отно­шению к религиозному убеждению B, что и я. Однако в религиозных тради­циях убеждения, свидетельства, способы аргументации передаются по спе­циально созданным, отлаженным и поддерживаемым социальным каналам, призванным обеспечить надежность такой передачи. Таким образом, пред­ставители разных религий находятся в разных традициях передачи религиоз­ного знания, а следовательно, они не занимают одинаковые эпистемические позиции, то есть они не являются эпистемической ровней в строгом смысле слова6.

Иными словами, чтобы кто-то мог считаться эпистемической ровней, он должен стать адептом той религиозной традиции, против которой изначально свидетельствовал. То есть в рамках религиозного разногласия невозможно встать на ту же эпистемическую позицию с теми, против кого свидетельству­ешь, лишь в общем виде познакомившись с другой традицией, с принятыми в ней системами убеждения и свидетельствования постольку, поскольку в этом случае не происходит обретения свидетельских данных о другой религии, ведь для этого нужно участвовать в специально созданных практиках обмена, то есть включиться в социальную жизнь этой религиозной традиции.

Уточнение понятия эпистемической ровни никак, однако, не снимает про­блемы религиозного разнообразия. Во-первых, ее этический аспект остается ни­как не затронутым. Во-вторых, эпистемический аспект проблемы можно пере­формулировать, причем именно для опровергающего контрдовода; например, следующим способом. Пусть конкурирующие свидетельства не могут высту­пать как опровергающие контрдоводы, остается очевидным, что существует множество различных традиций формирования религиозных убеждений, свиде­тельствования и аргументации. То есть эпистемологические аргументы больше нельзя рассматривать как опровергающие контрдоводы против религиозной веры, но за ними по-прежнему можно сохранить функцию ослабляющих контр­доводов. Суть нового эпистемологического аргумента можно выразить следу­ющим образом.

IV. Эпистемологический аргумент 3.

1) Если можно показать, что выбранные религиозные традиции равны с эпистемологической точки зрения, то никакой из них нельзя отдавать со­ответствующее предпочтение (то есть считать ее более обоснованной, чем остальные).

2) Невозможность сравнивать религиозные традиции в рамках эпистемо­логии разногласия показывает, что существует множество равнозначных с эпи­стемологической точки зрения религиозных традиций.

3) Следовательно, никакую религиозную традицию нельзя считать более обоснованной, чем остальные.

Сам факт такого разнообразия вкупе с этическим аспектом можно осмыс­лить как кумулятивное требование, конституирующее возможные варианты ответа на проблему. Суть этого требования можно сформулировать, например, так.

Кумулятивное требование: обоснованными с эпистемологической точки зрения ответами на проблему религиозного разнообразия могут считаться только те, которые учитывают и эпистемологический аргумент 3, и этический аргумент.

3. Основные ответы на проблему религиозного разнообразия

В этом разделе разберем основные ответы на проблему мультирелигиоз­ности с точки зрения сформулированного в предыдущей части кумулятивного требования.

Обычно принято выделять шесть основных ответов на обсуждаемую здесь проблему: атеизм, агностицизм, эксклюзивизм, инклюзивизм, плюра­лизм и релятивизм. Оставим в стороне аргументацию атеистов и агностиков. Первые считают, что существование множества религиозных традиций явля­ется de facto возражением и свидетельствует в пользу убеждения о том, что Бога нет, вторые данное обстоятельство рассматривают как возражение de jure и, следовательно, как хороший аргумент в пользу скептицизма: воздержания от суждения о существовании Бога или, шире, божественной реальности. В данном случае меня интересуют «положительные» ответы на вызов мульти­религиозности.

А. Эксклюзивизм: три смысла.

Прежде всего необходимо определиться с базовой позицией, которой, на мой взгляд, является эксклюзивистская, так как в ней отражается есте­ственное религиозное отношение к обозначенной проблеме.

Защита эксклюзивистской позиции может проходить по различным на­правлениям7. Теологический эксклюзивизм подразумевает, что религиозные ис­тины и сотериологические чаяния ограничены одной религией. В этом смысле эксклюзивистской являются и конфессии одной религии.

Формальный эксклюзивизм предполагает, что все формальные подразуме­ваемые как истинные утверждения в данной религии или в данной конфессии исключают все остальные противоположные точки зрения. Если утверждает­ся, что Святой Дух исходит от Отца, то тем самым различные утверждения, подпадающие под схему Неверно, что Святой дух исходит от Отца, должны

считаться формально ложными. То есть, на самом деле, любое мировоззрение, любая система убеждений, в которой имеются содержательные пропозиции, являются эксклюзивистскими по своей природе. Из этого можно сделать два значимых для нас вывода. Во-первых, в смысле формального эксклюзивизма любому адепту религии естественно занимать именно эксклюзивистскую по­зицию. Во-вторых, эксклюзивистская позиция выражает религиозное отноше­ние к проблеме религиозного многообразия. Более того, если все же считать и другие ответы на эту проблему обоснованными, то и их следует считать по своей природе формально эксклюзивистскими [D’Costa, 1996; D’Costa, 2000, p. 90].

Социальный эксклюзивизм касается вопроса межличностных отношений. Так во многих религиях запрещены браки между представителями разных ре­лигий, налагается запрет (или, наоборот, выдается разрешение) на определен­ный вид деятельности. Таким образом, социальный эксклюзивизм выражает, с одной стороны, правила, обычаи, традиции, свойственные данной религиоз­ной группе, с другой – может указывать на обособленный статус этой группы. И тогда, когда достижение этого статуса окажется социально желаемым для разных групп населения, религиозная традиция встает на его охранение.

Из сказанного становятся понятно, что эксклюзивизм плохо согласуется с положениями кумулятивного требования. Во-первых, эксклюзивизм явно предполагает истинность одной религии, приоритетность одной эпистемо­логической позиции. Это обстоятельство возвращает его в изначальную си­туацию I и II. Также эксклюзивист может быть обвинен в невыполнении эпистемического долга, состоящего в том, чтобы всерьез рассматривать контр­свидетельства, значимые для принятия убеждений. А значит, убеждения экс­клюзивиста не являются обоснованными и не должны быть им приняты. Во-вторых, эксклюзивисты не соблюдают этическую сторону кумулятивного требования. Традиционно с этой стороны эксклюзивисты обвиняются в высо­комерии и империалистичности: эксклюзивист смотрит свысока на представи­телей других религий, сам при этом он избегает прямых, открытых и честных столкновений, возводя для этого разные преграды социальной природы [Netland, 2016, p. 256‒258]. Насколько справедливо это обвинение в нетоле­рантности? Это крайне непростой вопрос. Действительно, кажется справедли­вым, что теологический эксклюзивизм обвиняется в нетолерантности по той причине, что в нем утверждения других религий считаются ложными. Однако, как мы видели, вопрос о толерантности помимо вопроса о терпимости вклю­чает в себя и этическо-практическую составляющую. В последнем случае об­винение должно сниматься: эксклюзивизм касается обоснованности не счи­тать чужие убеждения истинными, но он не говорит о том, что с этими убеждениями надо, например, бороться8. Более того, эксклюзивисты, как пра­вило, являются сторонниками перфекционистской этики, то есть выступают

за то, чтобы конкретный индивид развивал присущие человечеству добродете­ли, среди которых мы находим и толерантность.

Если эксклюзивист хочет соответствовать кумулятивному требованию, то ему было бы удобно принять, например, такую версию максимы Клиффорда, в которой эпистемологический принцип интерпретировался бы в качестве эти­ческой максимы. Действительно, таковое принятие позволило бы эксклюзиви­сту отвечать только на эпистемологические обвинения. Ведь тогда, отвечая на обвинения в неэтичном отношении к иноверцам, можно было бы сослаться на исполнение своего эпистемического долга. Более того, постольку, посколь­ку эпистемический долг носит универсальный характер, эксклюзивист имеет право перейти и в контрнаступление, обвинив уже своих критиков в неиспол­нении долга, приводящем к отрицанию эксклюзивизма9.

Б. Инклюзивизм.

Различие между эксклюзивизмом и инклюзивизмом проходит по линии оценки спасительной силы других религий: тогда как эксклюзивист считает, что спасение возможно только в его религии, инклюзивист будет настаивать на том, что каждая религия может содержать в себе спасительный потенциал, хотя, безусловно, наиболее верный путь предоставляет только одна религия10. Но как возможны такое расширительное толкование истинного пути и призна­ние спасительной силы за другими религиозными традициями?

Показательным примером такого пути может служить идея «аноним­ного христианства» Карла Ранера. Ранер утверждает, что не только отдель­ные нехристиане могут быть спасены, но, шире, нехристианские религии могут иметь доступ к спасительной благодати. Разумеется, он сохраняет за христианством статус высшей религии, ведь она основана на уникаль­ном событии – божественном воплощении и откровении во Христе. Но то, что воплощение произошло в определенный момент времени, исключает из сферы спасения тех, кто жил до этого события или кто не сможет узнать об этом событии. В общем, Ранер видит противоречие между универсаль­ным призывом христианства и конкретной его ограниченностью в про­странстве и времени, а потому признает, что и нехристианские религии пере­дают спасительную весть. Таким образом, адепт нехристианской религии является «анонимным христианином». Другие религии, однако, не могут заменить христианство, и в этом смысле за ним сохраняется как бы некий преимущественный статус. Но поскольку ситуация религиозного плюра­лизма – характерная черта человеческого существования, а христианство адресовано всем людям, возможность достичь спасения должна быть при­знана и за другими религиями. Говоря иначе, спасительная благодать долж­на быть доступна за пределами Церкви, а следовательно, другим религиям [Rahner, 2001].

Нельзя сказать, чтобы инклюзивизм в таком виде полностью соответство­вал кумулятивному требованию. Выделение сотериологической (теологиче­ской) значимости одной религиозной традиции влечет за собой и эпистемоло­гическое предпочтение, и, в конечном счете, этическое. Хотя и надо отметить, что в инклюзивизме «права» альтернативных религиозных традиций соблюда­ются в большей мере, нежели в эксклюзивистской. В целом инклюзивизм можно считать, на мой взгляд, «мягкой» или философской версией эксклюзи­визма (то есть нормального религиозного отношения к проблеме разнообразия религий), а следовательно, он сталкивается с теми же проблемами, что и экс­клюзивизм.

В. Плюрализм и релятивизм.

На первый взгляд у плюралистического и релятивистского подходов име­ется общее звено: оба они полностью отвечают этической составляющей куму­лятивного требования, то есть признают ценность всех религиозных традиций просто в силу самого факта существования этих традиций. Но у плюрализма имеется нечто общее и с инклюзивизмом: оба они усматривают в религиозных традициях частичку общей истины.

Релятивизм, очевидно, – продукт современных либеральных демократий. Раз уж устройство общества таково, что представители разных культурных традиций оказались теперь ближайшими соседями, необходимо предложить нечто, что всех могло бы объединить. Поэтому в публичном пространстве утверждается принцип равенства всех культурных и религиозных традиций, а члены общества должны разделять принципы толерантности в отношении к другим культурам и религиям, по крайней мере в общественном пространстве. Религиозный релятивизм как раз и призван обосновать такое отношение [Runzo 1988]. Действительно, если я буду считать, что каждая религиозная традиция истинна, любое религиозное утвер­ждение имеет право на существование, то мне не остается ничего иного, как поз­волить им существовать, а адептам религии отправлять свои религиозные потреб­ности в частном порядке или в специальных «резервациях». Конечно, религия уходит, таким образом, из общественной жизни, но зато в обществе может воца­риться атмосфера религиозного покоя и взаимного уважения. Как можно добить­ся такого результата? Один из возможных путей состоит в релятивизации религи­озных утверждений, то есть в жестком ограничении их эпистемической ценности рамками сообщества верующих и соответствующим вытеснением религии из об­щественного пространства. Таким образом предлагаемый путь удовлетворения эпистемологической составляющей кумулятивного требования состоит в том, чтобы за каждой системой религиозных утверждений признать их право на те обосновательные процедуры, которые в них приняты11. Из принятия эпистемоло­гического релятивизма легко перейти к утверждению толерантного отношения к чужим религиозным традициям.

В общем, релятивизм мог бы стать достойным решением указанной про­блемы за тем исключением, что, во-первых, в нем нет места подлинному религиозному культу, ведь божественное откровенно низводится до уровня

фетиша, которому определенная группа лиц поклоняется в силу каких-то исто­рических обстоятельств и странного личностного выбора, а, во-вторых, реля­тивизм не имеет явной защиты от проблемы самореференции: релятивизация совсем не должна ограничиваться только лишь религиозной сферой – можно спросить, в силу каких эпистемологических причин мы должны вдруг припи­сывать принципу толерантности и эпистемологическую значимость? Может быть, он тоже вполне может быть релятивизирован? Последнее возвращает нас опять же к аргументам I и II.

Плюрализм в этом отношении более защищен: он просто утверждает, что каждая религия ведет к Абсолюту, но ни одна из религий не является привиле­гированной в этом отношении. Правда, некоторые религии могут лучше или полнее выражать истину, но содержание этой истины зависит от того, какой религиозный идеал или какую цель в развитии религий предлагает плюралист. Согласно Джону Хику, самому влиятельному стороннику этого направления, плюрализм является наиболее подходящим ответом на проблему мультирели­гиозности прежде всего по причине особого, философского, осмысления в нем процесса спасения. Хик говорит, что спасение не просто ориентировано на иную реальность, оно не просто дает людям «билет» на вечное существова­ние с Богом, но оно касается и этого мира: в этой жизни начинается «обраще­ние от эгоцентризма к реальности» [Hick, 1984, p. 229]. То есть спасение меня­ет жизнь в том смысле, что оно отвращает людей от улучшения собственного благополучия и показывает им, что они являются ответственными участника­ми более обширной реальности. В этом смысле спасение делает людей лучше. И все свидетельства, которые мы имеем, утверждает Хик, показывают, что многие религии обладают одинаковой силой обращения людей к высшей ре­альности и, следовательно, улучшения себя [Hick, 1989, p. 36‒54, 129‒232]. Другой важный аргумент, в силу которого Хик считал несостоятельными неплюралистические интерпретации спасения, состоит в факте признания за­висимости наших религиозных убеждений от времени и места нашего рожде­ния. Хик говорит, что точка зрения на религию как на трансформирующую че­ловека силу на пути спасения должна учитывать тот факт, что «для простых людей (хотя это не всегда учитывается богословами) очевидно, что в подавля­ющем большинстве случаев – скажем, от 98 до 99 процентов – религия, в ко­торую человек верит и которой он придерживается, зависит от того, где он родился» [Hick, 1980, p. 44]. И учитывая этот факт, что «религиозная привер­женность зависит в подавляющем большинстве случаев от случая при рожде­нии», кажется неправдоподобным утверждать, что «рождение в нашей кон­кретной части мира влечет за собой привилегию знания религиозной истины во всей ее полноте» [Hick, 1997, p. 287].

Плюрализм в целом хорошо удовлетворяет условиям кумулятивного тре­бования. Во-первых, за каждой религиозной системой убеждений признается ценность как особого пути к Абсолюту или Истине; плюралисты обычно не признают привилегированной эпистемической позиции одной из религий. Во-вторых, плюрализм настаивает на толерантном отношении к религиям, видя в них именно культурно обусловленное средство выражения религиоз­ного отношения. Проблема с плюралистическим подходом возникает в том

плане, что именно выбирается в качестве того объекта, на которое проециру­ется религиозное отношение. Это означает, что мы при якобы неангажирован­ном взгляде на карту религий должны прийти к той мысли, что в центре нахо­дится не конкретная религиозная традиция (христианство, например), а какая-то объединяющая если не все, то хотя бы подавляющее большинство религий идея и что все религии строятся вокруг этой идеи Бога (Реального и спа­сения – в случае Хика, блага – в случае агатоцентризма Януша Саламона [Salamon, 2017]).

Список литературы

Греко, 2017 – Греко Дж. Свидетельство и передача религиозного знания (пер. с англ. К.В. Карпова) // Эпистемология и философия науки. 2017. Т. 53. № 3. С. 19‒47.

Плантинга, 2014 – Плантинга А. В защиту религиозного эксклюзивизма / Аналитический теист: антология Алвина Плантинги / Сост. Дж.Ф. Сеннет; пер. с англ. К.В. Карпова; науч. ред. В.К. Шохин / Ин-т философии РАН. М.: Языки славянской культуры, 2014. С. 313‒345.

Baumgartner, 2018 – Baumgartner Ch. Conflations and gaps. A response to Nicholas Wolter­storff’s ‘toleration, justice, and dignity’ / Philosophical perspectives on religious diversity. Bivalent truth, tolerance and personhood / Ed. by D.-M. Grube and W. Van Herck. London; NY: Routledge, 2018. P. 15‒19.

D’Costa, 1996 – D’Costa G. The impossibility of a pluralist view of religions // Religious Studies. 1996. Vol. 32. No. 2. P. 223‒232.

D’Costa, 2000 – D’Costa G. The Meeting of Religions and the Trinity. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2000. 187 p.

Grube, 2018a – Grube D.-M. Justified religious difference: a constructive approach to religious diversity / Philosophical perspectives on religious diversity. Bivalent truth, tolerance and personhood / Ed. by D.-M. Grube and W. Van Herck. London; NY: Routledge, 2018. P. 47‒55.

Grube, 2018b – Grube D.-M. Concluding remarks – Reply to the respondents to ‘Justified re­ligious difference: a constructive approach to religious diversity’ / Philosophical perspectives on religious diversity. Bivalent truth, tolerance and personhood / Ed. by D.-M. Grube and W. Van Herck. London; NY: Routledge, 2018. P. 86‒114.

Hick, 1980 – Hick J. God has many names. London: Macmillan Press, Ltd., 1982. 144 p.

Hick, 1984 – Hick J. The philosophy of world religions // Scottish Journal of Theology. 1984. Vol. 37. No. 2. P. 229‒236.

Hick, 1989 – Hick J. An interpretation of religion: human responses to the transcendent. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989. 412 p.

Hick, 1997 – Hick J. The epistemological challenge of religious pluralism // Faith and Philo­sophy. 1997. Vol. 14. No. 3. P. 277‒286.

King, 2008 – King N. Religious diversity and its challenges to religious belief // Philosophy Compass. 2008. Vol. 3. No. 4. P. 830‒853.

Netland, 2016 – Netland H. A. Inclusivism and exclusivism / Routledge companion to philo­sophy of religion. 2nd ed. / Ed. by C. Meister, P. Copan. London; NY: Routledge, 2016. P. 250‒260.

Pittard, 2015 – Pittard J. Religious Disagreement / Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2015. URL: http://www.iep.utm.edu/rel – disa/ (дата обращения – 27.05.2019).

Plantinga, 2000 – Plantinga A. Warranted Christian belief. NY; Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2000. xx, 508 p.

Rahner, 2001 – Rahner K. Christianity and non-Christian religions / Christianity and other re­ligions: selected readings 2nd ed. / Ed. by J. Hick, B. Hebbletheaite. NY: Oneworld Publications, 2001. P. 19‒38.

Runzo, 1988 – Runzo J. God, commitment, and other faiths: pluralism vs. relativism // Faith and Philosophy. 1988. Vol. 5. No. 4. P. 343‒364.

Salamon, 2015 – Salamon J. Atheism and agatheism in the global ethical discourse: reply to Millican and Thornhill-Miller // European Journal for Philosophy of Religion. 2015. Vol. 7. No. 4. P. 197‒245.

Salamon, 2017 – Salamon J. In defence of agatheism: clarifying a good-centered interpreta­tion of religious pluralism // European Journal for Philosophy of Religion. 2017. Vol. 9. No. 3. P. 115‒138.

Wolterstorff, 2018 – Wolterstorff N. Toleration, justice, and dignity. Lecture on the occasion of the inauguration as professor of Dirk-Martin Grube, Free University of Amsterdam, September 24, 2015 // Philosophical perspectives on religious diversity. Bivalent truth, tolerance and person­hood / Ed. by D.-M. Grube and W. Van Herck. London; NY: Routledge, 2018. P. 5‒14.

Epistemology of disagreement and tolerance
with respect of religious diversity (pluralism)

Kirill V. Karpov

Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Sciences. Goncharnaya str. 12/1, Moscow, 109240, Rus­sian Federation; e-mail: kirill.karpov@gmail.com

In this paper I provide theoretical and comparative treatments of the problem of religious di­versity. The theoretical aspect of the paper includes epistemological and ethical considera­tions. As regards to epistemology I, following A. Plantinga, formulate de jure and de facto arguments against religious belief; as for ethics I am dealing with the notion of tolerance considering it not only as a right a freedom of religion, but also as a virtue. Accepting the widespread position in recent discussions on the topic that there is no true epistemic peers in the context of religious diversity, and following the lines of epistemic and ethic ar­guments presented in the first part of the paper, I establish a new cumulative requirement which might form the following discussions on the problem. According to this requirement one should take into account de jure argument nuanced by peer-disagreement corrections and ethic argument from toleration. Then I consider how the main possible solutions for the problem of religious diversity (i.e. exclusivism, inclusivism, pluralism, relativism) fit this new cumulative requirement. I conclude that relativism most easily agrees with the cu­mulative requirement, however, due to its destructive consequences and self-contradiction, it is most difficult to accept this position. I state that the most natural and reasonable posi­tions is pluralism.

Keywords: epistemology of disagreement, de jure objection, de facto objection, toleration, religious diversity, exclusivism, inclusivism, relativism, pluralism.

Citation: Karpov K.V. “Epistemology of disagreement and tolerance with respect of reli­gious diversity (pluralism)”, Philosophy of Religion: Analytic Researches, 2019, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 5‒17.

References

Baumgartner, Ch. Conflations and gaps. A response to Nicholas Wolterstorff’s ‘toleration, justice, and dignity’, in: Philosophical perspectives on religious diversity. Bivalent truth, tolerance and personhood. London; NY: Routledge, 2018, pp. 15‒19.

D’Costa, G. The impossibility of a pluralist view of religions, Religious Studies, 1996, vol. 32 (2), pp. 223‒232.

D’Costa, G. The Meeting of Religions and the Trinity. Maryknoll; NY: Orbis. 187 p.

Greco, J. Svidetel’stvo i peredacha religioznogo znaniya [Testemony and the transmission of religious knowledge], per. s angl. K.V. Karpova, Epistemologiya i filosofiya nauki, 2017, vol. 53, no. 3, pp. 19‒47. (in Russian)

Grube, D.-M. Concluding remarks – Reply to the respondents to ‘Justified religious difference: a constructive approach to religious diversity’, in: Philosophical perspectives on religious diversity. Bivalent truth, tolerance and personhood. London; NY: Routledge, 2018, pp. 86‒114.

Grube, D.-M. Justified religious difference: a constructive approach to religious diversity, in: Philosophical perspectives on religious diversity. Bivalent truth, tolerance and personhood. Lon­don; NY: Routledge, 2018, pp. 47‒55.

Hick, J. An interpretation of religion: human responses to the transcendent. New Haven: Yale University Press, 412 p.

Hick, J. God has many names. London, Macmillan Press, Ltd., 1982, 144 p.

Hick, J. The epistemological challenge of religious pluralism. Faith and Philosophy, 1997, vol. 14 (3), pp. 277‒286.

Hick, J. The philosophy of world religions, Scottish Journal of Theology, 1984, vol. 37 (2), pp. 229‒236.

King, N. Religious diversity and its challenges to religious belief. Philosophy Compass, 2008, vol. 3 (4), pp. 830‒853.

Netland, H.A. Inclusivism and exclusivism, in: Routledge companion to philosophy of reli­gion, 2nd ed. London; NY: Routledge, 2016. pp. 250‒260.

Pittard, J. Religious Disagreement. In: Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2015. Available at: http://www.iep.utm.edu/rel – disa/ (accessed – 27.05.2019).

Plantinga, A. V zashchitu religioznogo eksklyuzivizma (A defense of religious exclusivism), in: Analiticheskii teist: antologiya Alvina Plantingi, Sos. Dzh. F. Sennet; per. s angl. K.V. Karpova; nauch. red. V.K. Shokhin. Moscow: Yazyki slavyanskoi kul’tury, 2014, pp. 313‒345. (in Russian)

Plantinga, A. Warranted Christian belief. NY; Oxford: Oxford University Press. xx, 508 p.

Rahner, K. Christianity and non-Christian religions, in: Christianity and other religions: se­lected readings, 2nd ed., NY: Oneworld Publications, 2001, pp. 19‒38.

Runzo, J. God, commitment, and other faiths: pluralism vs. relativism. Faith and Philosophy, 5 (4), pp. 343‒364.

Salamon, J. Atheism and agatheism in the global ethical discourse: reply to Millican and Thornhill-Miller, European Journal for Philosophy of Religion. 2015, vol. 7 (4), pp. 197‒245.

Salamon, J. In defence of agatheism: clarifying a good-centered interpretation of religious pluralism. European Journal for Philosophy of Religion. 2017, vol. 9 (3), pp. 115‒138.

Wolterstorff, N. Toleration, justice, and dignity. Lecture on the occasion of the inauguration as professor of Dirk-Martin Grube, Free University of Amsterdam, September 24, 2015, in: Philo­sophical perspectives on religious diversity. Bivalent truth, tolerance and personhood. London; NY: Routledge, 2018, pp. 5‒14.

The Biblical Text

The image of God in the Hebrew Bible is saturated with contradictions, and is confusing with its heterogeneity, with its mixture of abstract speculative attributes and strict anthropomorphic features. Therefore, it is difficult and perhaps impossible to read the text without integrated hermeneutics otherwise the picture is incoherent and perplexing. It is not surprising since “the Bible is not a single book, but a col­lection of volumes composed by different authors living in various countries over a period of more than a millennium. In these circumstances, divergences of empha­sis, outlook, and even of fact, are to be expected” [Encyclopedia Judaica, vol. 7, 2007, p. 652]. Also, the canonization of the Hebrew Bible took about five hundred years, from Ezra the Scribe (around the fifth century BC) till after Rabbi Akiva (Akiva ben Joseph: around the first and second century CE), [Adar, 1984, p. 16; Halbertal, 1997]. Consequently, there is not a single coherent depiction of God in the Hebrew Bible but different images of God. More than that, the biblical think­ing concerning God is based on observations of the world and human life, however these observations are not presented in a systematic way. God is revealed in various ways: through his deeds (the flood, Exodus), he reveals himself directly to chosen people (Moses, Samuel, the prophets), and he is also revealed in contemplation and inner reflection of certain personalities [Adar, 1984, p. 22‒24]. Psalms is saturated with such assertions: “I am ever mindful of the Lord’s presence” (16:8), “I am filled with the vision of You” (17:15 see also: 73:23)1.

One of the most prominent philosophers, whose thinking became an integral part of Judaism is Moses Maimonides. In his view the anthropomorphism in the Bib­le is scandalous, and therefore, he uses an interpretive approach which perceives the biblical language regrading God as figurative. “All attributes, such as ‘the First’, ‘the Last’, occurring in the Scriptures in reference to God, are as metaphorical as the expressions ‘ear’ and ‘eye’. […] In short, all similar expressions are borrowed from the language commonly used among the people” [Maimonides, 1956, p. 81]. For Maimonides the biblical language is metaphoric, and it was used in order to capture the heart and the mind of simple people who are not capable of abstract thinking.

Another attitude would be to treat the inconvenient verses as remnants of mythi­cal approach. Yehezkel Kaufmann, the eminent biblical scholar, explained the anthropomorphist aspect in the Hebrew Bible as remnants of mythology; ancient mythological conceptions of the people of Israel that were preserved due to the un­systematic nature of the biblical thought. The Israeli idea of God was according to him:

Not a product of intellectual speculation, or a mystical meditation, in the Greek or Indian manner. It first appeared as an insight, an original intuition. […] The new religious idea never received an abstract, systematic formulation in Israel. It ex­pressed itself rather in symbols, […] because it never received a dogmatic for­mulation which could serve as a standard for the systematic reformation of the old

religion, it was unable to entirely eradicate all traces of the pagan heritage [Kauf­mann, 2003, p. 60].

In the biblical text there is a tension between two main images of the divine: on the one hand, the supreme entity to whom one cannot apply any physical characte­ristic: “to whom, then, can you liken Me, to whom can I be compared? – says the Holy one” (Isaiah 40:25), and, on the other hand, anthropomorphic images of God are constantly repeated. Anthropomorphic expressions are both physical and psychical personification of God – anthropopathisms.

The biblical God is situated in a certain place, Mount of Sinai or in the Ark of God (II Samuel 6:1‒20), he also has human emotions: he loves and hates, feels joy and sadness, pity and revenge, he is satisfied, angry, afraid of man (Genesis 3:22), and regrets (Genesis 6:6). There are references to God as having physical-human organs like “the hand of the Lord” (Joshou 4:24, Deuteronomy 2:15, Judges 2:15, I Samuel 5:6, Ezekiel 3:22), whenever the anger or wrath of God is mentioned the Hebrew idiom refers to the anger of “God’s nose” (Isaiah 5:25, Jeremiah 30:24, Lamentations 2:22), the heart of God (Genesis 8:21, God’s purpose refers to his Heart’s devices; Jeremiah 23:20, 30:24), the eye of the Lord (Psalms 33:18), the fin­ger of God (Exodus 8:15). God hears (Genesis 15:11, 29:23, Exodus 15:9, Psalms 28:6), the Lord sees (Genesis 29:32, II Kings 14:26). God talks (to Moses to Abra­ham, to the prophets, Exodus 4:21, 7:1, Deuteronomy 2:31, Isaiah 30:30, Jeremiah 1:11) he smells (Genesis 9:21). The Lord sits upon his chair – throne (I Kings 22:19, Psalms 29:10).

God’s localization is different from a mere physical object, he fills the who­le universe, both heaven and earth (Jeremiah 23:24). The most popular image is that he and his throne are in heaven (Psalms 14:2, 53:3, 103:19, 115:16). Zvi Adar claims that God in heaven is an expression of an attitude which combines supremacy and Providence, distance and care, dissimilarity and involvement, being outside the world but also a constant surveillance of it [Adar, 1984, p. 37].

According to Maimonides, in all places where the Hebrew Bible speaks of God in physical terms, as walking, standing, sitting, speaking and anything simi­lar, it is always metaphorical, as the Jewish Sages said, “The Torah speaks in the language of men” (e.g. Babylonian Talmud, “Brachot”, 31:2). In this inter­pretation we can feel the uneasiness of Maimonides and other Jewish thinkers with the Hebrew Bible itself. Maimonides expressed his hermeneutical attitude to the Hebrew Bible asserting that a person cannot read the Bible literally, because then its sense is falsified.

The same is the case with those opinions of man to which he has been accus­tomed from his youth; he likes them, defends them, and shuns the opposite views. […] Such is, e.g., the case with the vulgar notions with respect to the cor­poreality of God, […] It is the result of long familiarity with passages of the Bible, which they are accustomed to respect and to receive as true, and the lit­eral sense of which implies the corporeality of God and other false notions; in truth, however, these words were employed as figures and metaphors [Mai­monides, 1956, p. 41‒42].

Two Approaches to the Devine

God is the main protagonist of the Hebrew Bible and he appears almost in every verse. However, it is important to note that there is neither a definition of God nor any argumentation for proving his existence. Mostly he is revealed by his actions: we can read what he does but not what he is, or as Louis Jacobs suggests, “what he would have men do” [Encyclopedia Judaica, vol. 19, 2007, p. 694]. According to Jacobs Ju­daism is not a philosophy, or even not a theology in its strict sense – an attempt to find what God is – but it is a way of life according faith, and in that case the main question for the Jewish believer is ‘what God wants me to do’. Nevertheless, from the various activities of God described in the Hebrew Bible one can deduce what God is, or at least, what are his characteristics. For instance, he is the creator of all being, but he is transcendent, he cares for creation and is involved in history and influ­ences it. Therefore, the biblical God is not unmoved mover or nature, but he is a per­son. His way with human beings is not blind or mechanical but intentional and delibe­rate. He reacts and responds to the actions of human beings.

In Judaism one can find two main approaches to the divine, in one his perfec­tion is essential and in the other his personhood is underlined. Regarding the later, the classical biblical God is not perfect, as Moshe Idel wrote: “the biblical God can­not create one perfect human being, cannot educate humanity, and therefore he has to annihilate it in the Great Flood. […] This portrayal in the Hebrew Bible could not leave for the rabbinical world a concept of perfect divinity as the Greek one” [Hess & Shturm, 1998, p. 134]. However, from the middle ages and especially with the great influence of Maimonides on Judaism the perfection of God in the Aris­totelian sense became also a Jewish perception2.

Nevertheless, even for Jewish thinkers who perceive God as a person the bibli­cal anthropomorphism is problematical. Therefore, although the Bible refers to

the ear, the nose, or the finger of God, Jews accept the Maimonidean approach, namely that these are metaphors and “that the absolute cannot be human in any real sense” [Muffs, 2005, p. 55]. Moreover, Maimonides’ thirteen principles of faith among them one that claims that “God is not a physical body” have been incorpo­rated into the prayer book and the liturgy of many Jewish communities, who recite them at the beginning of the daily morning’s prayer. Therefore, they are a part of the foundation of the normative Jewish belief [Halbertal, 2009, p. 119‒120]3. To conclude: in the Bible itself there is a tension between two images of God: the supreme entity to whom one cannot apply any physical characteristic, and God as a person, who at times is depicted with anthropomorphic features.

As an illustration to these two approaches I will discuss two modern Jewish thinkers: Abraham Joshua Heschel, a philosopher who emphasized the person­hood of God, and Yeshayahu Leibowitz who is the successor of the Maimonidean approach.

The Intelligible God

In his classical book God in Search of Man Heschel wrote:

It is as if God were unwilling to be alone, and He had chosen man to serve Him. Our seeking Him is not only humans’ but also His concern and must not be con­sidered an exclusively human affair. […] All the human history as described in the Bible may be summarized in one phrase: God is in search of man… When Adam and Eve hid from His presence, the Lord called: Where art thou? (Genesis 3:9) It is a call that goes out again and again [Heschel, 1978, p. 136‒137].

For Heschel the call “Where art thou?” as well as the divine voice heard at mount Sinai when the people of Israel were given the Torah, were not unique and one-time episodes. This voice echoes constantly. The presence of God is in the world is perpetual, and it invites human beings to identify it, and to respond to it [Kofmann, 2010, p. 144‒145, 154]. Heschel’s notion of the pathos of God is es­sential for understanding the relationship between God and human beings. The idea of pathos illuminates very clearly Heschel’s insistence on God’s need of humanity and God’s dependence on it. Reading carefully the books of the prophets Heschel comes to his concept of the pathos of God:

God does not reveal himself in an abstract absoluteness, but in a personal and inti­mate relation to the world. He does not simply command and expect obedience; He is also moved and affected by what happens in the world and reacts accord­ingly. Events and human actions arouse in Him joy or sorrow, pleasure or wrath.

He is not conceived as judging the world in detachment. […] This notion that God can be intimately affected, that He possesses not merely intelligence and will, but also pathos, basically defines the prophetic consciousness of God [Heschel, 1962, p. 288‒289].

The divine pathos is the mutual need of God and humanity, and God’s need to participate in human life and history. We can see that Heschel’s notion of the bibli­cal God is entirely different from the philosophical concept of God, as articulated by Aristotle and Maimonides.

Yet, the idea of God of pathos, which stresses attributes as good, merciful, caring, loving, rewarding etc., is not the only face of the biblical God, who is described as having also dark side. “The Bible ascribes to God actions that, to our way of thinking, lack moral grounds, or even run counter to our moral sense. Indeed, at times they seem to reflect a ruthless, capricious, demonic being” [Kaufmann, 2003, p. 74]. Good examples for that face of God are the binding of Isaac and the story of Job.

The intelligibility of God is also an important attribute in Heschel’s thought. God wants to be understood: “Our understanding of God depends not only on man’s readiness to approach Him but also on God’s willingness to be approached” [Hes­chel, 1978, p. 128], at least by those who are attentive enough to God’s call, by those who are open towards God who pursuits them. Heschel’s God, who is in search of man, cannot be the God who hides himself from man, as in hester panim4. God’s absence means that people are not open to his presence5, to the won­der of existence, and do not respond to his question “where art thou?”. This happens because human beings enjoy freedom, which enables them to ignore God’s call. Nonetheless, not all epochs are identical; sometimes prophecy is subdued, and in other era people are chosen to be prophets [Heschel, 1978, p. 129]. Heschel adds that human beings cannot know anything about the essence of God, but only his will and pathos, as he reveals them to humanity [Heschel, 1962, p. 620‒621]. The God of the prophets is a personal God, in contrast to the God of the philoso­phers; “he is not encountered as universal, general, pure Being, but always in a par­ticular mode of being, as personal God to a personal man” [Ibid., p. 622]. Human beings cannot know anything about God in himself, about God as an object for con­templation and comprehension but only in his relation to people: “The ultimate ele­ment in the object of theological reflection is transcendent divine attention to man” [Ibid., p. 624]. This illustration of God underlines his care and interest in humanity that instantly questions His omnipotence.

In Heavenly Torah, his Hebrew book, Heschel provides a very interesting dis­cussion regarding the question of the existing of evil when God is perceived as both

full of mercy and omnipotence. The question is: if God is unconditionally good and powerful how come evil exists? Heschel looks to two main figures in the Jewish halachic world: Rabbi Ishmael (living in the first half of the second century C.E) and Rabbi Akiva (50‒135 C.E). Both are significant figures when it comes to the way Jewish law and Jewish thought are presented in the Talmud. Heschel por­trays the dilemma of mercy versus omnipotence through the teaching of those two ancient scholars, showing that Akiva is on the side of mercy and Ishmael on the side of omnipotence. Therefore, for Akiva it is better to reduce the power of God than to conceive of him as indifferent. Heschel presents Akiva’s thinking as follows:

Compassion is the key. Better to limit the belief in God’s power than to dampen the faith in God’s mercy. Rabbi Akiva viewed all history through the lens of trust in God’s mercy. God participates in His creatures’ suffering; it is as if God were wounded by the afflictions of Israel, God’s people. If Israel is in exile, the Shekhi­nah is with them. When Israel is redeemed, God is redeemed [Heschel, 2005, p. 210].

God can empathize with his suffering people but cannot redeem them, for when they are saved, he is saved with them. Ishmael is on the side of omnipotence, and Heschel interprets his view as follows: “The whole Akivan notion of God’s partici­pation in human suffering […] was foreign to Rabbi Ishmael’s teaching. In his view, this notion did not befit God’s dignity and could lead to a denial of God’s power. For him, God’s justice and power are key, not God’s compassion” [Ibid., p. 211].

Those two approaches to the relation between God and humanity, or God and the people of Israel, can be summarized by two different images of the two anci­ent sages. For Ishmael, “human beings are in the hands of heaven as a servant in the hands of the master” [Ibid., p. 216], while in Akiva’s eyes, in his interpreta­tion of the Song of Songs, “the congregation of Israel is compared to a bride, and the holy and Blessed One to her lover” [Ibid., p. 197].

Reading Heschel’s works, leaves no doubt that he is on the side of Akiva. “His compassion is greater than His justice. He will accept us in all our frailty and weak­ness” [Heschel, 1978, p. 378]. An omnipotent God has no need whatsoever for any­thing, let alone finite creatures like human beings6. Susannah Heschel defines Hes­chel’s God as the “most moved mover” [Donnelly & Pawlikowski, 2007, p. 12]7. Heschel depicts the dilemma of mercy vs. omnipotence very clearly, asking: Does the image of God’s suffering with his people “diminish our image of the divine and limit our belief in the creator’s omnipotence?” [Heschel, 2005, p. 118]. Heschel continues: “If there is mercy, there surely is no power; and if there is power, there

surely is no mercy” [Heschel, 2005, p. 118]. The quintessence of the notion of di­vine pathos is partnership and sharing the same destiny. God and humanity are both in the same boat, and they suffer together.8 What Akiva emphasized, and I believe that it is Heschel’s point of view as well, is that the pathos of God, i.e., the mutua­lity in the relationship of God and human beings, is a participation of the soul. God relates to humanity with love, participates in its sorrow, and, most importantly, God is saved with humanity. As much as human beings need God to be saved, so God needs humanity for His salvation.

The Unintelligible God

As Heschel has the Bible as the source of his concept of God so has Leibowitz, whose main source is the Ecclesiastic and not the prophetic way of thinking. Ecclesi­astes, on the contrary to the author of Psalms or the prophets, does not talk to God but observes his world, he does not cry to God and protests injustice, but only de­scribes the way things are. He does not wonder about the world only portrays it, and here are some of his observations: “Alongside righteousness there is wickedness” (3:16); there is no God who takes care of the oppressed (4:1); the righteous suffers the wicked enjoys (8:14, 6:2); it is wise to be careful in what you say and do because when needed God not necessary be there for you “For God is in heaven and you are on earth” (5:1). God is not a guarantee for justice, He himself is not always just “Consider God’s doing! Who can straighten what He has twisted?” (7:13). Koheleth continues to describe the way things are without judging them: “In my own brief span of life, I have seen both these things: sometimes a good man perishes in spite of his goodness, and sometimes a wicked one endures in spite of his wickedness” (7:15). Ecclesiastes’ God is the God one has to beware of, “be not overeager to go to the House of God” (4:17). God is a mysterious being beyond the world, and human beings are unable to understand his ways. He is all-powerful but has nothing to do with morality and does not show any will to conduct the world and human beings ac­cording to ethical rules [Adar, 1984, p. 85]. Thus, why to revere God and keep his commands? Because, writes Koheleth, this is the nature, or essence of human kind (12:13).9 It is not surprising, then, that Leibowitz perceived Ecclesiastes as one of the greatest books of faith,10 corresponds to his philosophical approach concern­ing the true faith – faith for its own sack (emunah lishma).11 For Leibowitz, besides

Koheleth’s reflections, the book of Job and the binding of Isaac are two narratives that illustrate in the clearest way what is faith for its own sake. This kind of faith, which for Leibowitz is the purest, is faith that seeks no reward, no answer, no salva­tion, faith that does not expect any awards or compensations, faith which is an abso­lute acceptance of the duty of human beings to worship God and to follow his com­mands, and in the case of Abraham to obey a demand which entirely contradicts previous divine promises [Leibowitz, 1995, p. 17‒42].

Koheleth, according to Leibowitz, cannot find any meaning and value in hu­man existence. “The vain human existence is in front of God. God is present in the book in every verse. And Koheleth does not find any sense in the human exis­tence in front of God – this is his nihilism [Ibid., p. 50]”. In his investigations he looks for what is good for humans and concludes that all is futile: sensual pleasures, material comfort, wisdom or knowledge. The search for knowledge characterizes human beings but it is also sometimes a source of misery. It is so, according Lei­bowitz, because people want to understand the world but cannot. “For in much wis­dom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow” (1:18). Fu­tile is also moral behavior because in the world righteous suffers and wicked has success. Koheleth, who was looking for what is good for human beings could not find an answer. The conclusion of Koheleth search is surprising: “Revere God and observe His commandments” (12:13). According to Leibowitz, Koheleth does not conclude with “revere God and observe his commends because it is good for mankind” (ki ze tov la’adam), but with “because it is the nature/essence/duty of mankind” (ki ze kol ha’adam). Koheleth did not find what is good for mankind, but what is mankind’s nature. The valuable essence of human existence is to revere God, this is the sense of human life and its essence, even if it will not bring any good. Faith is a value for its own sack and not a mean for having benefits, for exam­ple, eternal life. The moral content of the existence of humanity is nothing but the fear of God [Ibid., p. 57].

In the book of Koheleth there is an infinite distance between God and his crea­tures, and he is detached form the world, where human beings cannot understand him, yet, in other books in the Hebrew Bible God is intelligible, he contacts people, talks to them, reveals himself to Moses and the prophets and is active in history. Therefore, Koheleth’s God is closer to the Aristotelian God than to the God of Abra­ham, and it also corresponds with the perception of Leibowitz, to whom there is an unbridgeable gap between the human sphere and the divine. Liebowitz reads the Maimonidean philosophy and theology in a similar way he reads Koheleth. Ac­cording to Leibowitz also Maimonides claims that the whole world, including the human world, human values, human desires and needs are worthless. Only God truly exists, and the worship and fear of God is the only true goal of human beings. God worshiping has no other aim than God worshiping, it has no other purpose to

achieve some benefits, neither peace of mind nor material rewards. Because humans are trapped in their own “human all too human” categories of thinking and lan­guage, and their senses, and since God is beyond the human world, one cannot re­late to God any image, and the only way to relate to God is through via negativa [Leibowitz, 1995, p. 68‒70]. For Leibowitz, every image related to God is false, it is impossible to portray God with qualities and functions which are intelligible to the human perception. Nothing can be said about God, and the only content of faith is the recognition that one has to worship God, not having any knowledge about God. In that context, Leibowitz quotes from the thirteen principals of faith by Mai­monides that God ‘is incorporeal; that He is free from all anthropomorphic proper­ties; and that He has no likeness at all’. Liebowitz interpreters convincingly the He­brew words ve-lo yasiguhu masige haguf as the claim that God cannot be perceived by the categories of the human thinking [Leibowitz, 1999, p. 17, 109].

Nevertheless, there is some positive knowledge about God that Leibowitz as­sumes, namely that God exists, and that he is totally transcendent. He cannot be grasp by nature or history, he is beyond nature, and beyond the world [Leibowitz, 1982, p. 88]. In fact, his divinity has no connection what so ever to the existence of the world, including the human world [Ibid., p. 39]. Naomi Kasher understands this positive Leibowitzian perception of God as the equivalent of the Kantian the thing-in-itself. And although a perception of the thing-in-itself/God is impossi­ble, in the realm of values humanity can stand in front of God, a person can relate to God by revering him [Kasher, 2018, p. 58‒59].

Thus, Liebowitz claims that both Koheleth and Maimonides see the essence of humanity in revering God, a divine who is attached from humanity that cannot re­late to him any trait besides existence. The true worshiping of God then, is a wor­ship for its own sack without any expectations for benefits both material and spiri­tual.

Heschel and Liebowitz based their arguments on the same book and formulated diverse theology. Therefore, it can be concluded that different philosophical and theological approaches can find their origin and support in the biblical text, and all of them are plausible.

Neil Gillman writes about three different paths to the awareness of God’s rea­lity: The first track is the rational approach that holds that God’s existence can be perceived by rational reflections. The essence of God is a pure thought, and he is the one cause for all existence, similar to the Aristotelian concept of the Unmoved Mover. Maimonides is the best representative of that approach, and also Leibowitz in contemporary philosophy. The second is the experimental approach, namely, God’s presence can be experienced or felt in the world – Heschel with his idea of God of pathos who is caring and loving is a good illustration for that approach. God created humanity as free creatures although he knew that they could inflict chaos, disobey his commands and not observe the Torah, but his love overcame his know­ledge and he have chosen to create mankind [Muffs, 2005, p. 172‒173]. In addition, God wears human persona because he knows that only in this disguise human be­ings can reach him.

The third approach is the existentialist, and it is different from Heschel’s and Leibowitz’s, but it is a version of God as a persona. It claims that God can be

encountered in an intense personal relationship. This is the approach of Martin Bu­ber in his concept of “I-Thou”, which relates to God and human relationships, in its mutuality [Gillman, 1990, p. 67‒74]. Mutuality that is absent from Heschel’s ap­proach, who although holds that God is full of pathos and care does not place hu­man beings and God on the same rank as the I-Thou concept. In Buber’s approach God is “the supreme and eternal Thou, the preeminently personal God who enters into relationship with those who seek to encounter Him” [Ibid., p. 79]. Gillman claims that Buber’s approach is a modern formulation of the biblical notion of the personal God. God is encountered and not reflected as an abstract philosophical concept12.

Buber claims that encountering God is possible only when one does not re­nounce the I, as mystics do, because the I is indispensable for any relations that pre­suppose I and You13. In addition, for encountering God one cannot withdraw from the world, one has to carry the world within him because only “when you conse­crate life you encounter the living God” [Buber, 1970, p. 126‒128]. The mutuality of I-Thou relationship is necessary, God needs man as much as man needs God, “But don’t you know also that God needs you – in the fullness of his eternity, you?” [Ibid., p. 130], and with that conclusion Heschel would agree totally.

However, Maimonides would claim that it is senseless assertion, human beings can know nothing positive about God. Leibowitz asserted that, in contrary to many religious people, he does not have a direct access to God’s will, he cannot know God’s intentions, if God has any, “I do not have communication with what is behind the curtains. […] the selective use of ‘the finger of God’ (providence) for what is comfortable or desirable for us is the same as the misuse of the concept of ‘holiness’ for national-political goals” [Leibowitz, 1982, p. 138]. Human beings, Leibowitz claimed, can know only their duty to revere God and to follow his commandments14 without any expectations for any kind of reward, whether in this world or in after life.

All those great thinkers: Maimonides and Leibowitz, Buber and Heschel not only treated the Hebrew Bible as their fundamental text but also were convinced that their way of reading is the right one. These words lead me to the conclusion: God in the Hebrew Bible has as many faces, or images, as the various commenta­tors of him.

References

Adar, Zvi. Ha-elohim ba-tankh, (God in the Bible), Tel Aviv: Gome, 1984.

Buber, M. I and Thou. NY: Simon & Schuster, 1970.

De Lange, N. An Introduction to Judaism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Donnelly, Doris & Pawlikowski, John. “Lovingly Observant: An Interview on Abraham Joshua Heschel.” America, 2007, 196 (21), June 18‒25, 12.

Encyclopedia Judaica, vol. 7 & vol. 19. Jerusalem: Keter, 2007.

Gillman, N. Sacred Fragments: Recovering Theology for the Modern Jew. Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1990.

Halbertal, M. Ha-Rambam (Maimonides). Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 2009.

Halbertal, M. People of the Book: Canon, Meaning and Authority. Cambridge: Harvard Uni­versity Press, 1997.

Heschel, A.J. God in Search of Man. NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1978.

Heschel, A.J. Heavenly Torah: As Reflected through the Generations. Ed. and trans. by Gor­don Tucker. NY: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2005.

Heschel, A.J. The Prophets. NY: Harper Colophon Books, 1962.

Hess, Yizhar and Shturm, El’azar. She’elot al elohim (Questions About God). Or Yehuda: Hed Arzi, 1998.

Kasher, Naomi and Asa. Derech Leibowitz (Leibowitz’ Way). Jerusalem: Keter, 2018.

Kaufmann, Y. The Religion of Israel: From its Beginnings to the Babylonian Exile. Trans. by Moshe Greenberg. Jerusalem: Sefer Ve Sefel Publishing, 2003.

Kofmann, T. “A.J. Heschel and Hassidic Philosophy,” in Akdamot. 2010, 24, pp. 137‒155.

Leibowitz, Y. Emuna, historya va-arachim (Faith, History, and Values). Jerusalem: Akade­mon, 1982.

Leibowitz, Y. Khamisha sifrei emunah (Five Books of Faith). Jerusalem: Keter, 1995.

Leibowitz, Y. Ratsiti lish’ol otcha profesor Leibowitz (I Would Like to Ask You Professor Leibowitz). Jerusalem: Keter, 1999.

Maimonides, M. The Guide for the Perplexed. Trans. by M. Friedlander. Mineola: Dover Publications, 1956.

Muffs, Y. The Personhood of God: Biblical Theology, Human Faith and the Divine Image. Woodstock: Jewish Lights Publishing, 2005.

Rothchild, F. Between God and Man: An Interpretation of Judaism: From the Writing of A.J. Heschel. NY: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1959.

Soloveitchik, J.D. Ish ha-emuna (The Man of Fait). Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1975.

Ханс-Петер Гроссханс

I

Для Мартина Лютера вера в прощение греха Богом относилась к числу ха­рактерных особенностей христианской экзистенции и церкви. Церковь как общность верующих есть нечто особенное в мире и в каждом конкретном ре­лигиозном и секулярном контексте мира. Ее особенность составляет вера в прощение греха, в духовную силу спасения и обновления жизни, а также в создание социального пространства примирения с Богом и друг с другом. Такая вера в творческого, спасающего и освобождающего триединого Бога со­здает свободу христианина и находит себе выражение в жизни, исполненной благодарности, и в жизни, проходящей под знаком любви. Таким образом цер­ковь осуществляет свою святость. В позднем экклесиологическом сочинении «О соборах и церквах» (1539) Лютер подчеркивал публично практикуемое служение прощения грехов (служение ключей) как один из семи признаков церкви [См.: Luther2, S. 488‒652, 632]. Ссылаясь на Мф 18:15‒20, Лютер видит смысл этого служения в следующем:

Что там, где христианин согрешает, таковой должен быть наказан, и, если он не исправляется, он должен быть связан и изгнан, если же он исправляется, с него надлежит снять его вину. Это – ключи.

Это публично практикуемое служение церкви может осуществляться так­же частным образом. Последнее бывает уместно прежде всего там, где отдель­ные христиане не подвергаются публичному порицанию за свой грех, но, тем не менее, испытывают муки совести и требуют личного отпущения грехов. Другие христиане, по наблюдению Лютера, хотя и признают публичную кри­тику своего образа жизни общиной, однако не принимают ее по-настоящему близко к сердцу и потому втайне продолжают осуществлять свою нехристиан­скую практику. В таком случае здесь, согласно взгляду Лютера, также целе­сообразно пастырское осуществление в частном порядке служения ключей.

«И вот, там, где ты видишь, что прощают или наказывают грех у известных лиц, будь то публично или частным порядком, знай, что там есть народ Бо­жий» [Luther2, S. 488‒652, 632]. Лютер вполне последовательно заключает от­сюда, что:

Ибо, где нет народа Божия, там нет ключей, А где нет ключей, там нет народа Божия, Ибо Христос оставил их после себя потому, что должен быть публич­ный знак и святыня, по которому Святой Дух (обретаемый из смерти Христо­вой) вновь освящает падших грешников, и христиане исповедовали тем, что они – святой народ под владычеством Христа в этом мире, и чтобы те, которые не желают обращаться или вновь освящаться, чтобы оные были исторгнуты из такого святого народа, то есть были связаны и исключены ключом [Ibid.].

Возникающее порой впечатление, что лютеранская теология в своем уче­нии об оправдании понимает данную церкви власть ключей только как отпу­щение греха, а постольку лишь как оправдательный вердикт, не может опи­раться, во всяком случае, на экклесиологические рассуждения позднего Лютера. Для Лютера служение ключей заключается в (публичном и частном) связывании и разрешении, в дисциплине или надзоре (Zucht) и в спасении или прощении греха2. При этом, во избежание неверных толкований, необходимо указать на принципиальное понимание Церкви у Лютера, согласно которому служение ключей есть служение, присущее всей общности верующих в целом, т. е. Церкви. Постольку соответствующая власть совершать это служение на­ходится отнюдь не в руках небольшого числа должностных лиц. Соответ­ственно, Лютер формулирует:

Ключи принадлежат не Папе […], но церквам, то есть, народу Христову, на­роду Божию или святому христианскому народу, поскольку то весь мир, или там, где есть христиане […] Равно как и Крещение, Таинство, Слово Божие принадлежат не Папе, но народу Христову, и называются также claves Eccle­siae, а не claves Papae [Ibid., S. 632].

Соответственно, эти ключи, в конечном счете, находятся также не в руках евангелических пасторов или евангелических органов церковного руковод­ства, которым они вверены для исполнения.

В содержательном отношении в рассуждениях Лютера о служении ключей как признаке Церкви в работе «О Соборах и церквах» обращает на себя вни­мание то, что не вполне ясно, придерживается ли Лютер убеждения в совер­шенной безусловности отпущения грехов, или же он связывает предоставле­ние отпущения грехов – в публичном Богослужении или в индивидуальной пастырской практике – с известными условиями. Без соответствующего изме­нения жизни человека, квалифицируемой как греховная жизнь, Церковь –

общность верующих – принуждена по-прежнему рассматривать его как чело­века, связанного грехом, которого, в таком случае, она не может освободить от него даже во имя Иисуса Христа.

Ирритация от подобных экклесиологических размышлений Лютера у со­временного читателя не ослабевает, если он обращает внимание на интерпрета­цию Лютером прошения о прощении грехов в молитве «Отче наш» в контексте его истолкования Нагорной проповеди. «Отче наш» Лютер толковал неодно­кратно, в том числе в своих Катехизисах. Однако он составляет также тему в проповедях о 5‒7-й главах Евангелия от Матфея, произнесенных Лютером в 1530‒1532 гг. в Виттенберге и вскоре после этого опубликованных в 1532 г. на основе конспектов Георга Рёрера [См.: Luther4, WA 32, S. 299‒544]. В даль­нейшем это истолкование Лютером Нагорной проповеди будет находиться в центре нашего внимания.

II

В истолковании молитвы «Отче наш» в 6-й главе от Матфея Лютер лишь очень кратко прокомментировал прошение о прощении грехов в Мф 6:12. Однако он подробно остановился на прибавлении к «Отче наш» в 6:14 и да­лее. В самом истолковании «Отче наш» он рассматривал прошение о проще­нии вины или греха только в общей связи с прошениями от четвертого до седьмого, после того как обстоятельно проинтерпретировал первые три прошения. В частности, он интерпретировал прошение о прощении грехов в связи с четвертым прошением, о хлебе насущном, и содержащимися в этом прошении продуктами питания и благами:

В четырех других прошениях мы переходим к нужде, ежедневно нас ради нас самих постигающей, ради этой бедной слабой временной жизни. По­этому мы просим, во-первых, чтобы Он дал нам наш насущный хлеб, то есть, все, что нужно нам для поддержания этой жизни, питание, здоровое тело, хорошую погоду, дом, двор, жену, ребенка, доброе правление, мир, и охранил нас от всякого рода бедствий, болезней, заразы, дороговизны, войны, мятежа и т. п. Затем, – чтобы он простил нам вместе с этим нашу вину и не смотрел на постыдное злоупотребление и неблагодарность за те блага, которые он всякий день столь изобильно дает нам, и потому не от­казал нам в оных и не лишил их и не наказал нас своей немилостью, как мы того заслуживаем, но милостиво простил бы нас, пусть даже мы, на­зываясь христианами и Его детьми, и не живем так, как жить должны [Ibid., S. 421].

Вина, о прощении которой мы просим Бога и которую Бог может простить, касается злоупотребления тем, что Бог дает, чтобы спасти человека от его по­стоянной телесной, душевной и социальной нужды и поддержать его жизнь. И она касается неблагодарности человека за эти поддерживающие ему жизнь дары. Лютер здесь вовсе не имеет в виду вину человека перед своим собратом, которую ведь и простить может тоже только этот последний. Отчетливо разли­чая, Лютер видит, что люди при своем образе жизни, в котором они злоупотреб­ляют своим окружением (Mitwelt) в своих собственных целях и рассматривают это окружение не как дар, который надлежит с благодарностью принять, но как

средства, находящиеся в их безусловном распоряжении, оказываются виновны не только перед своим окружением, но и – в совершенно особенной мере – пе­ред Богом. О прощении этой вины, согласно взгляду Лютера, мы просим Бога в молитве «Отче наш».

Правда, между виной перед Богом и виной перед своим окружением су­ществует тесная взаимосвязь. В «Большом Катехизисе» Лютер ясно сформу­лировал это.

Поэтому все в христианстве упорядочено для того, чтобы мы всякий день получали прощение грехов словом и знаком, в утешение и воздвижение на­шей совести, пока мы живем здесь. А потому Святой Дух делает так, что, хотя мы и имеем на себе грех, он все-таки не может вредить нам, потому что мы – в христианстве, где есть только прощение греха, как то, что прощает нам Бог, так и то, что мы прощаем, носим друг за друга и помогаем друг дру­гу подняться [Luther1, S. 658].

Неблагодарность за дары Божии для поддержания нашей жизни и злоупо­требление своим окружением – это вина перед Богом, но также и вина перед всеми теми созданиями Божиими, с которыми мы не живем в благодарности и которые мы не уважаем в их самоцельности, а только используем их как средства для наших собственных целей.

Затем Лютер обстоятельно обращается к разбору прибавления к «Отче наш» в Мф 6:14 и далее:

Ибо, если прощаете людям согрешения их, то простит и вас Отец ваш небес­ный, Но где не прощаете людям согрешений их, то и Отец ваш не простит вам согрешений ваших [Luther4, WA 32, S. 422].

Здесь взаимосвязь между прощением людьми согрешений друг другу и прощением их Богом явным образом трактуется как кондициональная связь. К другим прошениям молитвы «Отче наш» аналогичное прибавление отсут­ствует. В самом деле, не говорится: «Хлеб наш насущный дай нам, как и мы даем детям нашим» [Ibid.]. Ввиду единственного в своем роде кондициональ­ного прибавления к прошению о прощении грехов у Лютера возникает впечат­ление, как будто бы «прощение греха следует приобретать и заслуживать на­шим прощением» [Ibid.]. А потому для него возникает вопрос: «Куда же девалось бы наше учение, что прощение приходит только через Христа и вос­приемлется в вере?» [Ibid.].

Его ответ на этот вопрос связывает прощение согрешений с любовью хри­стиан между собою. «Он особо хотел поставить так это прошение и связать прощение греха с нашим прощением, чтобы этим ему связать между собою христиан, дабы они любили друг друга» [Ibid.]. Любовь должна характеризо­вать все отношение христианина к другому человеку, так чтобы невозможен был совершенно никакой другой способ обращения к своему ближнему. «Что­бы мы не чинили друг другу обид и страданий, но думали, что мы всегда про­щаем, хотя бы нам и причинили страдание (как то часто должно случаться в этой жизни)» [Ibid., S. 422 и след.]. В противном случае молящемуся так­же не будет дано прощения. Для Лютера гнев и злоба на ближнего портит всю

молитву, не только прошение о прощении нашей собственной вины. Ибо из-за них становится невозможной совместная молитва.

Смотри, вот что значит создать прочную и крепкую связь, которая держит нас вместе, чтобы не разделиться нам между собою и не учинить раскола, сборищ и сект там, где мы хотим предстать пред Богом, молиться и что-то получить, но чтобы ужиться нам друг с другом в любви и быть во всех делах заодно [Luther4, WA 32, S. 423].

Произносить молитву «Отче наш» возможно и осмысленно, только если это можно делать вместе со всеми христианами. Это предполагает, что все христиане связаны друг с другом любовью, а соответственно – что их жизнен­ные отношения не отмечены иными установками и эмоциями, которые ставят под сомнение общность христиан. Поэтому для единства христиан между со­бою и для единства их совместной молитвы необходимо, чтобы они прощали другим людям их прегрешения. «Если это происходит, то христианин бывает совершенен, поскольку тогда он право верует и любит обоих» [Ibid., S. 433]. Для внутрипротестантской экумены здесь следует ясно констатировать, что, согласно взгляду Лютера, совершенство христианина, совершенная христиан­ская жизнь, не только возможна и не только достойна наших стремлений, но необходима и обязательна. Лютер вообще не отказывается от идеала совер­шенной, достигшей полноты христианской экзистенции человека и не реляти­визирует этого идеала ввиду слабости и конечности человеческой природы. Этот результат нашего исследования подкрепляется обращением к истолкова­нию у Лютера других фрагментов Нагорной проповеди, в которых идет речь об отношении христиан к случающимся в их жизни несправедливости, стра­данию и злу.

III

Совершенство христиан было отдельной темой в Нагорной проповеди уже в Мф 5:48 в требовании Христом совершенства в заключение антитез и в свя­зи с заповедью любви к врагам: «Поэтому будьте совершенны, как совершен Отец ваш на небесах». Сформулированный здесь Иисусом идеал совершен­ства христианской жизни охотно игнорируют в современном протестантизме. В особенности в лютеранской теологии распространен взгляд, согласно кото­рому требования и заповеди Нагорной проповеди служили, в смысле usus elenchiticus legis, только для познания своей собственной греховности и своих собственных границ. При этом их понимают в известной мере как идеалы, ре­ализовать которые невозможно, смысл которых состоит якобы именно в том, чтобы снова и снова рождать в нас понимание того, что люди не в состоянии реализовать их, и постольку со смирением осознают свой неизбежный грех. Впрочем, Мартин Лютер нисколько не разделял этого воззрения. Для него тре­бования Нагорной проповеди были этическими наставлениями для совершен­ной христианской жизни, которую человек должен осуществлять. Это стано­вится вполне ясно именно в тех жизненных контекстах людей, которые тематизирует обещание молитвы «как и мы прощаем должникам нашим».

Альтернативой прощению вины других людей является гнев и злоба, но также досаждение, оскорбление и причинение ущерба ближнему. Согласно Мф 5:38‒42 Иисус советовал воздерживаться от мщения. В молитве «Отче наш» и в Мф 6:14 и далее это требование не мстить в известном смысле еще усили­вается, поскольку от молящегося христианина теперь требуется также и про­щение вины преступника. Кажется, будто бы требование совершенства, выска­занное в антитезе, еще более потенцируется в контексте молитвы.

Для Лютера это усиление необходимо, поскольку в молитве речь идет о единстве молящихся, а стало быть – всех людей, призывающих Бога как сво­его Отца. А при этом они не могут просить о прощении вины, если не проща­ется вина также и другому человеку, произносящему ту же самую молитву. Согласно взгляду Лютера, прощение человеческой вины Богом состоит в весь­ма тесной связи с прощением вины людьми друг другу. Ведь поразительно, как это подчеркивает Лютер, что в прошении о хлебе Господь не связывает его подобным же образом с нашей ответственностью за снабжение других людей, а потому прошение о хлебе насущном не дополняется заявлением готовности разделить свой хлеб с другими нуждающимися.

Для углубления понимания Лютером взаимосвязи между божественным прощением и прощением людьми друг друга и его взгляда на возможность со­вершенства христианской экзистенции полезно бросить взгляд на его рассужде­ния об отказе от взаимной мести в Мф 5:38‒42. Ибо там становится особенно ясна глубина осознания Лютером проблемы, но также и его настойчивый ак­цент на стремлении христианской жизни к совершенству. Так же точно, как Лю­тер видит, что кондициональная взаимосвязь между прощением вины Богом и прощением вины людьми друг другу ставит под сомнение его собственные теологические убеждения, так же, аналогичным образом, моральные амбиции Нагорной проповеди снова и снова вступали в конфликт с лютеранским акцен­том на оправдании только верой. Правда, истолкование Лютером Нагорной про­поведи в его проповедях 1530‒1532 гг. не оставляют никаких сомнений в том, что Лютер был убежден, что христиане должны жить в соответствии с Нагор­ной проповедью. После 1525 г. у Лютера уже почти не встречается ни одной ал­легорической интерпретации библейских текстов3. В частности, в истолкова­нии Мф 5 мы можем наблюдать, что Лютер противостоял всем попыткам пойти по более легкому пути духовной интерпретации и рекомендовать осо­бые духовные формы жизни, в которых бы можно было реализовать идеал со­вершенной христианской жизни. С другой стороны, рекомендации Иисуса в Мф 5 Лютер также не интерпретировал как «закон», который вовсе не рас­считан на реализацию, но только должен уличить человека как грешника. Лю­тер понимал учение Иисусово в Мф 5 как евангелие, заключавшее в себе реко­мендации Иисуса своим ученикам и всем верующим для совершенной христианской жизни, и постольку значимое для повседневной жизни каждого христианина. Контуры совершенной христианской жизни, представленные в Мф 5, согласно взгляду Лютера, должны осуществляться в мирской жизни

каждого христианина, а не в особенных духовных формах жизни некото­рых особенных христиан. В своем предисловии к воскресным проповедям о Мф 5‒7 Лютер с самого же начала указывает на оспариваемый им взгляд, со­гласно которому «Христос никогда не желал, чтобы его христиане заповедова­ли или содержали все то, чему он учит в пятой главе, но многое только совето­вал тем, кто хочет быть совершенным» [Luther4, WA 32, 299f]. Поэтому из этих учений было сформулировано двенадцать «евангельских советов» для тех, кто желает вести более совершенную христианскую жизнь, чем средний христиа­нин. Подобно Лютеру, 16-й артикул «Аугсбургского исповедания» также под­верг критике взгляд, будто бы совершенная христианская жизнь может быть реализована только в монашеской жизни. Специальными евангельскими сове­тами для монашеской жизни были воздержность, бедность и послушание, со­гласно Мф 19:1 и след., Мф 19:16 и след. и Мф 20:26. Двенадцать евангель­ских советов из Мф 5 служат в известной мере дополнением к ним:

А это – не воздавать злом за зло, не мстить, подставлять другую щеку, не противиться злу, отдавать верхнюю одежду к рубашке, идти два поприща за одно, давать каждому, кто просит, давать взаймы желающему занять, про­сить за гонителей, любить врагов, благотворить ненавистникам, как учит здесь Христос [Ibid., S. 300].

Теология Реформации дала новые определения классическим евангель­ским советам, подлежащим осуществлению в монашеской жизни. Постольку также и в данной связи она не отказалась от идеи совершенства христианской жизни, однако по-новому определила ее содержание. Воздержность была за­менена браком и семьей; нищета была заменена профессиональной рабо­той, усердием и собственностью; послушание было заменено утверждением публичных законов, основывающихся на свободе и справедливости. Однако по отношению к евангельским советам, содержащимся в Мф 5, в подобном новом содержательном определении не было необходимости. Лютер прямым текстом оспаривал воззрение, согласно которому «христианское учение будет слишком тяжело, если оно будет нагружено этими советами» [Ibid.]. Ибо именно этим воззрением обосновывалось то, что евангельские советы в На­горной проповеди обращаются вовсе не к обычному христианину, а только к тем немногим, кто наряду с оправданием в вере стремится также к совер­шенству христианской жизни в монашеской форме жизни. Утверждение двух форм христианской жизни Лютер считал особенно коварной уловкой дьявола для разрушения христианской веры. Ибо для него «очень важно, чтобы тем он мог совершенно вытеснить добрые дела […] или учинить ложные добрые дела и надуманную святость» [Ibid., S. 301]. Согласно взгляду Лютера, именно Мф 5 неоднократно использовали для обоснования особенной христианской (монашеской) формы жизни: «когда принимали совершенное перед другими христианами состояние, которое они обосновывали на этой главе» [Ibid.]. Для Лютера, однако, существует только одна этика и одна форма жизни для всех христиан. Сформулированный в Мф 5 идеал совершенства христианской жизни имеет силу для всех христиан. Однако Лютер при этом ясно оговари­вает, что из этой универсализации этики Нагорной проповеди, распространя­ющей ее на всех христиан, не вытекает никаких политических требований,

ни в отношении воплощения Нагорной проповеди в общем политическом по­рядке, ни в отношении воздержания христиан от сотрудничества в политиче­ском общежитии и в социуме. Лютер не может разделить воззрения, будто бы из Нагорной проповеди следует, «что мы не должны иметь ничего своего, при­носить клятв, иметь ни начальств, ни судов, не должны защищать и оборонять, и бежать должны от жен и детей» [Luther4, WA 32, S. 301]. Как у римских тео­логов, так и в подобном исполненном энтузиазма воззрении Лютер видел про­блему в том, что его сторонники «не знают различия между мирским и Бо­жиим царством, и еще того менее – что подобает различно учить и делать в каждом из этих царств» [Ibid.].

Таким образом, Лютер оспаривал распространенный не только в его время взгляд, согласно которому евангельские советы обращены вовсе не к каждому христианину вообще, но должны рассматриваться как опциональные рекомен­дации только для таких христиан, которые хотят достичь не только вечной жизни на небе (для чего достаточно крещения и веры), но которые в то же вре­мя хотят стремиться к совершенству своей христианской жизни, а именно в монашеской форме жизни, отличающейся от гражданского образа жизни. И все же, согласно взгляду Лютера, требование совершенства христианской жизни ведет нас отнюдь не в некую особенную отличающуюся духовностью субкультуру, но непосредственно вводит нас в мирскую общественную жизнь, в которой мы должны реализовать совершенную христианскую жизнь.

На примере запрета отмщения Лютер рассматривает этот взгляд, обсуждая различные констелляции повседневной жизни, в которых могло бы возник­нуть желание отмщения. Для Лютера, – поскольку в герменевтическом смысле к началу 1530-х гг. он уже всецело был сторонником буквального смысла биб­лейских текстов, – призыв Иисуса, получив удар по лицу, подставить также и другую щеку, означает в точности то, что сказано в тексте. Иисус заменил – чрезвычайно приемлемый с юридической точки зрения – принцип талиона запретом на возмездие для всех своих последователей. Для Лютера отказ от возмездия и даже готовность потерпеть вследствие того также и другой ущерб, относились к числу характерных признаков христианской жизни. Лю­тер понимал это не в качестве условия для признания человека и оправдания его Богом, но как выражение жизни с Богом и подлинной серьезности веры в свое оправдание милостивым Богом.

Лютер вполне отдавал себе отчет в том, как трудно может быть даже ис­креннему христианину отказаться от возмездия перед лицом злобы других лю­дей и многосложности его конкретной жизни. Поэтому в своем истолковании Нагорной проповеди Лютер детально обсуждал, как христианин должен реа­гировать, если ему причиняют несправедливость. Непосредственный реванш, немедленный ответный удар, для христианина совершенно исключен.

И если теперь спросят, должен ли христианин также судиться и защищаться, то ответь просто и скажи «Нет», Ибо христианин – это такое лицо или чело­век, который не имеет ничего общего с подобным мирским строем и правом, И он состоит в таком царстве или правлении, где не должно ничто идти ина­че, как в нашем прошении «Прости нам долги наши, как и мы прощаем должникам нашим», Там должны быть только взаимные любовь и служение,

также и к тем, кто не любит нас, но враждует, чинит насилие и несправедли­вость. Поэтому он говорит таковым, что они не должны противиться злому и даже не должны искать мести, что они должны подставить бьющему их также и другую щеку [Luther4, WA 32, S. 390].

Если, однако, христианин неспособен и не желает мириться с причинен­ной ему несправедливостью, тогда, согласно взгляду Лютера, он должен обра­титься в суд, правда, только для того, чтобы с чистым сердцем добиться спра­ведливости, а не для того, чтобы отомстить. Однако, по лютеровской оценке судебной системы его времени (которая в слишком многих местах на земле предстает в таком же виде и теперь), христианину следовало бы отдавать себе вполне ясный отчет в том, что в суде все может оказаться для него еще и на­много хуже:

Не то чтобы право чинило тебе страдание или насилие […], но что в суде си­дят и при должностях состоят шельмы и мошенники, которые должны тво­рить суд по праву, и однако, где не могут добраться до тебя насилием, гнут это право и кривят и ради своего озорства им злоупотребляют [Ibid., S. 394].

При этом, по мнению Лютера, может также случиться, что лицо, обраща­ющееся в суд с иском на причиненную ему несправедливость, в конце концов само будет уличено как виновное. Тем не менее путь обращения в суд, соглас­но взгляду Лютера, остается для христианина единственной возможностью действия против причиненной ему несправедливости. То, что этот путь возмо­жен также и для человека, слушающего Нагорную проповедь и стремящегося к совершенной христианской жизни, следует для Лютера также и из того, что каждый христианин существует в то же время также в межчеловеческих и со­циальных отношениях. В них он исполняет различные роли и задачи, каждая из которых связана с особого рода ответственностью перед другими людьми. Как таковое «мирское лицо» он должен «противостоять всякому злу, в пре­делах своего служения» [Ibid., S. 393]. В таком случае это относится также и к его собственной защите в социуме. И так, согласно взгляду Лютера,

христианин не должен ни с кем судиться, но оставить и рубашку, и верхнюю одежду, если у него забирают их. Но мирское лицо должно защищаться и обороняться правом против насилий и преступлений, где оно может. Summa: в Христовом царстве подобает все терпеть, прощать и воздавать доб­ром за зло. В свою очередь, в правлении кесаря мы не должны терпеть ника­кой несправедливости, но противиться злу, и наказывать, и помогать защи­щать и поддерживать право, насколько того требует служение или состояние каждого [Ibid., S. 394].

Таким образом, взгляд Лютера состоит не только в том, что христианин должен мужественно терпеть причиняемую ему несправедливость, в то время, как несправедливость, причиняемую его ближнему, он должен предотвращать всеми своими силами, например, пресекая удар бьющего его человека. Он по­лагает также, что христианам следует активно развивать и защищать право­вую систему и вообще институты и порядки общества. Критика Лютером пра­вовой системы и политики своего времени, бывшая по временам весьма резкой, показывает, что эта положительная установка в отношении к правовой

системе и к политическим и социальным институтам имеет принципиальный смысл и отнюдь не включает в себя любого произвольно взятого воплощения правовой системы и общественного порядка. Таково было ошибочное умо­заключение лютеранства более позднего времени. Именно по истолкованию Лютером Нагорной проповеди мы можем видеть, сколь критически относился Лютер к конкретной правовой системе и к неспособности политически ответ­ственных фигур своего времени. Тем не менее, с точки зрения Лютера, для про­тивостояния несправедливости не существовало другой альтернативы, кроме борьбы с ней при помощи правовой системы и общественных институтов.

Отстаиваемую Лютером модель отношения к претерпеваемой несправед­ливости, а значит, и к вине, которую приняли на себя другие люди, можно ре­зюмировать в следующем виде. С одной стороны, христианин состоит в отно­шении к самому себе. Как такое «Я», он ответствен перед Иисусом Христом за всю свою жизнь. В своем отношении к самому себе он пытается реализо­вать требования совершенства из Нагорной проповеди. И все же христианин существует не только в отношении к самому себе (что артикулируется в лич­ном местоимении «я»), но состоит также в отношении к другим людям, с кото­рыми соотносится при помощи личных местоимений второго и третьего лица единственного и множественного лица. Эти отношения он должен строить иначе, чем отношения к самому себе. В отношении с другими людьми христи­анин несет долю ответственности за их благосостояние, право и мир. В отно­шении к самому себе христианин не несет такой же ответственности. Здесь человек живет как христианин, если он всецело доверяет тому, что Иисус Хри­стос всецело отвечает за его судьбу, а постольку он отказывается от отстаива­ния своего права и от правомерного возмездия. Этот отказ приобретает потен­цированную форму в активной готовности человека простить вину тем, кто причинил ему несправедливость и постольку стал виновен перед ним.

Христиане же – не только множество «я», но в то же время и некое «мы». Поскольку все они принадлежат Христу, христиане могут говорить о самих себе в первом лице множественного числа. В качестве «мы» они делят друг с другом все те признаки, которые характеризуют индивидуальную христиан­скую экзистенцию. Постольку все христиане страдают, если страдает один из «мы». В то же время все они разделяют одно и то же представление о со­вершенной христианской жизни. Постольку также и общность верующих – Церковь – характеризуется тем, что она отказывается от мести и возмездия за несправедливость, страдания и преследование. Для этого необязательно требуется, чтобы каждый христианин терпел несправедливость, страдание и преследование и должен был бороться с эмоциями гнева, возмездия и мести. Скорее, таков характерный признак Церкви в целом, ибо в «мы» общности ве­рующих все христиане ощущают несправедливость, претерпеваемую одним из них. Все страдают, если страдает один! Все терпят гонение, если преследу­ют одного! И точно так же каждому христианину приходится бороться с гне­вом и потребностью возмездия и противостоять им.

Для Лютера одним из признаков истинной Церкви было то, что она не оставляет места гневу и возмездию, даже в случаях несправедливого стра­дания и нечестного преследования. В работе «О соборах и церквах» Лютер

упомянул претерпевание Креста как последний из семи признаков истинной Церкви.

В-седьмых, святой Христианский народ узнают наружно по святыне святого Креста, что он должен терпеть всякое несчастие и преследование, всякие ис­кушения и беды (как говорит молитва Отче наш) от дьявола, мира и плоти, внутреннюю печаль, тупость, страхи, во внешнем же – нищету, болезнь, сла­бость, дабы уподобиться Главе своему Христу, И причина тому должна быть также единственно в том, что он твердо держится Христа и Слова Божия, а следовательно, страдает Христа ради, Мф 5: «Блаженны терпящие гонения за волю Мою». Они должны быть благочестивы, тихи, послушны, готовы служить телом и имением начальству и каждому, и никому не творить стра­дания. Но никакой народ на земле не должен терпеть такой горькой ненави­сти, они должны быть хуже, чем евреи, язычники, турки. Summa: они долж­ны называться еретиками, мошенниками, дьяволами, проклятыми и самыми вредными людьми на свете, так что служат Богу также и те, кто вешает, то­пит, убивает, мучает, изгоняет, терзает их, и никто не смилуется над ними, но еще напоит миррой и желчью, если они будут жаждать, однако же не потому, чтобы они были прелюбодеями, убийцами, ворами или плутами, но потому, что они желают иметь одного Христа и не желают никакого иного бога. И где ты видишь или слышишь подобное, знай, что там есть святая Христианская Церковь, как Он говорит в Мф 5: «Блаженны вы, когда будут поносить вас», и отвергнут имя ваше как вредное и злое, и это «за волю Мою» [Luther2, WA 50, 641f].

Двумя цитатами из евангельских блаженств в Мф 5 Лютер желает по­казать, что претерпеваемые христианами преследования – это признак Церк­ви. На основании своего личного опыта Лютер видел себя самого и церкви, произошедшие из Реформации, в их совокупности стоящими в традиции церк­ви первых веков, которой приходилось страдать от сильных гонений. Однако истинная Церковь узнается не только по преследованиям и дискриминации христиан и церквей, но и по их реакции на эти преследования, с отказом от мести и возмездия и принятием своих страданий ради Христа.

В своем гораздо более полемическом по духу сочинении 1541 г. «Против Гансвурста» Лютер продолжил эту же линию и рассматривал реформи­рованные церкви, вследствие испытанных ими преследований и страданий, в традиции церкви первых веков, тогда как пользующаяся всеми средствами мирской власти римско-католическая церковь порвала с этой традицией. Лю­тер и здесь подчеркивает, что возникшие в Реформации церкви не стали пла­тить за перенесенную ими несправедливость той же монетой, а именно тво­рить возмездие. Напротив, на Богослужениях евангелических общин всегда молились за всю Церковь. Таким образом, в «Против Гансвурста» Лютер пря­мо рассматривал отказ от возмездия как признак истинной Церкви. Согласно его взгляду, никто не может

…отрицать, что мы, со своей стороны, не проливаем крови, не убиваем, не вешаем и не мстим за себя, как мы нередко могли бы делать и все еще мо­жем, Но, как делали Христос, Апостолы и древняя Церковь, мы терпим, уве­щеваем и просим за них, также и публично в церквах, в литаниях и пропове­дях, обо всем, как делал и учил Христос, ГОСПОДЬ наш, и так же точно

древняя Церковь, что все мы также и в этом держимся древнего существа древней Церкви [Luther3, S. 485].

Говоря о причиненной за веру несправедливости и испытанном преследо­вании, Лютер имел в виду не только постоянную угрозу его собственной жиз­ни начиная с 1517 г., но также, например, судьбу Хендрика Фёса и Йохана ван Эшена, двух молодых монахов-августинцев из Антверпена, которые 1 июля 1523 г. были преданы публичной казни через сожжение на рыночной площади в Брюсселе, потому что они – как и весь их антверпенский монастырь – сим­патизировали теологии Лютера4. Лютер сделал эту казнь темой своей первой песни («Новая песнь»)5. В подобном опыте страдания и гонения – за справед­ливое дело – для Лютера было наглядно ясно то, что, согласно Евангелию от Матфея, Иисус имел в виду в своих блаженствах (Мф 5:10‒12) и в других ча­стях Нагорной проповеди.

В своих толкованиях Нагорной проповеди Лютер осмыслил опыт христи­ан и свой собственный опыт пережитой несправедливости самого разного рода, будь то за веру или в экономических и гражданских контекстах. Отказ от возмездия и постольку готовность терпеть причиняемую несправедливость были для него одним из признаков как индивидуальной экзистенции христиа­нина, так и Церкви в целом.

IV

Вернемся теперь к истолкованию Лютером прибавления к молитве «Отче наш» в Мф 6:14, а тем самым и к потенцированному отказу от возмездия через прощение прегрешений других людей, или к прощению тех, кто виноват перед нами, причинив нам несправедливость и преследуя нас. При этом речь идет в то же время о взаимосвязи между прощением Богом и прощением людьми друг друга, представленной в Мф 6:14 как кондициональная взаимосвязь.

Согласно взгляду Лютера, прощение греха совершается двумя способами:

Во-первых, через Евангелие и Слово Божие, принимаемое внутренне пред Бо­гом через веру, Во-вторых, наружно, через дела, об этом говорит Петр в Посла­нии (2 Петр 1), где он учит о добрых делах: Любезные братья, старайтесь сде­лать твердым ваше призвание и избрание и т. д. Здесь он желает, чтобы мы сделали для себя достоверным, что имеем веру и прощение греха […] Итак внешнее прощение, которое я являю делом, есть здесь также верный знак, что я имею прощение греха у Бога, В свою очередь, там, где подобного не явлено к ближнему, там есть у меня верный знак, что я не имею также и прощения греха у бога, но все еще пребываю в неверии» [Luther4, WA 32, 423].

Кондициональную взаимосвязь между прощением Богом и прощением людь­ми друг друга Лютер понимает, в известном смысле, как эпистемологическую,

а не как взаимосвязь в существе дела. В этом последнем отношении сначала идет прощение Богом, имеющее свое основание в Иисусе Христе, а затем – прощение человеком вины перед ним другого человека. Однако, согласно эпи­стемологической взаимосвязи, именно прощение человеком вины перед ним другого человека позволяет заключать о реальности прощения Богом в вере.

Кто не имеет внутренней справедливости, тот не творит никакого внешнего дела, В свою очередь, где нет внешнего знака и доказательства, там я не могу быть уверен в первой, но и та, и другая обманывают меня и других [Luther4, WA 32, S. 423f].

Прощение людьми друг друга есть выражение достоверности и знак про­щения Богом. Без стремящейся к совершенству практики христианской экзи­стенции для Лютера не может быть уверенности в своем собственном оправ­дании и в прощении грехов Богом.

А Писание учит нас, что нам надлежит смотреть не на себя, но на Слово и обетование Божие, и держаться за него верою, что, Если ты сотворишь одно дело из Слова и обетования, то имеешь верный признак, что Бог мило­стив к тебе, А значит, что собственное твое дело, которое Бог ныне принял к себе, должно быть для тебя верным знаком прощения [Ibid., S. 424].

Только соответствующая практика, – в данном конкретном случае – про­щение согрешений других людей – показывает, живет ли человек в реальности божественного прощения грехов, и даже – живет ли он вообще с Богом. Таким образом, прощение согрешений других людей находится в совокупном ду­ховном контексте христианской экзистенции. Лютер поясняет это следующим образом:

Ибо тот, кто крещен, должен также принимать Таинство, А кто принимает Таинство, должен также молиться, а тот, кто молится, должен также про­щать, и т. д. Но если ты не прощаешь, то имеешь здесь ужасный приговор, что твои грехи также не будут прощены тебе, пусть даже ты и находишься среди христиан и вместе с ними пользуешься Таинством и другими благами, но лишь станут для тебя причиной тем большего вреда и проклятия [Ibid., S. 425].

Лютер вполне осознавал, как тяжело дается прощение в конкретном случае причиненной несправедливости. И он понимал чувства гнева также и со сторо­ны христиан по адресу тех, кто причинил им несправедливость. Поэтому для него весьма значительно то, что в Мф 6:14 речь идет о согрешениях – а, напри­мер, не о злобе, или озорстве, или кощунстве. Особенность этой формы речи он видит в том, что она подчеркивает более слабость или неведение преступника, нежели его злобу. А потому эту форму речи Евангелия от Матфея он интерпре­тирует так, что христиане должны рассматривать причиненную им несправед­ливость и согрешения, в известном смысле, в более снисходительном тоне, чем сам Бог, который, конечно, согласно взгляду Лютера, видит несправедливость и злобу с полной отчетливостью. При этом христиане должны принять во вни­мание, что творящий несправедливость человек сам одолеваем и ослеплен дья­волом, а потому, несмотря на свою злобу и на исходящую от него несправедли­вость, заслуживает милосердия и прощения.

И все же даже и в этом более снисходительном освещении остается в силе вопрос, значима ли готовность к прощению, выражаемая при произнесении молитвы «Отче наш», при любых обстоятельствах, а постольку – без каких-либо условий. Лютер рассматривал прощение вины людьми друг другу как параллель отпущения грехов, которое в его понимании состоит в связывании и разрешении, в дисциплинировании и в прощении греха. В параллель к этому в состав прощения вины людьми друг другу заведомо входило по крайней мере признание и исповедание своей вины тем, кому мы должны простить. Логика прощения требует, чтобы прощение предполагало исповедание своей вины тем, кому прощают. Только лишь на основании нашего собственного пе­реживания страданий и несправедливости и проявляющейся в них вины дру­гих людей в прощении нет надобности, и для него нет возможности. Тем бо­лее вина и согрешения не могут быть прощены, если их субъекты оспаривают их или оправдывают соответствующие действия и считают их полностью оправданными.

И вот, как случается в служении ключей, так бывает и со всяким христиани­ном в отношении к ближнему, который, хотя он и должен быть готов про­стить каждому, кто причиняет ему страдание, и все же, там, где он не желает ни сознать греха, ни отстать от него, но намерен еще к тому же продолжать грешить, то ты не можешь простить его, не ради тебя, но ради его самого, ибо он не желает иметь прощения. Но как только он признает себя виновным и возжелает прощения, то все должно быть ему даровано и absolutio должно сразу же последовать за тем, Ибо, так как он наказывает себя самого и остав­ляет грех, который уже не остается у него более грехом, то я тем более обя­зан оставить его, Но там, где он сам держит его и не желает оставить, то я не могу взять его у него, но должен оставить его пребывать в нем, поскольку он делает самому себе простительный грех непростительным. Summa: где он не желает познать себя, мы должны всего более отяготить его совесть и не оказывать милости, поскольку он желает из озорства отдать себя дьяво­лу, В свою очередь, там, где он исповедает грех и попросит прощения, а ты не простишь ему, то ты взвалил этот грех на себя, так что грех этот и прокли­нает тебя [Luther4, WA 32, S. 426].

Для Лютера прощение вины людьми друг другу подчинено ограничитель­ному условию предварительного признания конкретной (относящейся к кон­кретному случаю) вины. Постольку прощение вины может оказаться умест­ным в меньшем числе жизненных ситуаций, чем отказ от возмездия, хотя прощение вины простирается далее, чем отказ от возмездия. Ибо прощение вины – это, в возможности, чрезвычайно напряженная интеракция с другим человеком, причинившим нам прежде страдание и несправедливость. При от­казе же от возмездия не требуется никакой другой интеракции с виновником, поскольку мы можем просто держаться от него в стороне6.

Тот же, кто прощает своему собрату его вину, также и сам получит от Бога прощение за имеющуюся у него вину перед Богом.

И вот, если ты так настроен в отношении ближнего, то и Бог тоже явит себя в отношении к тебе с таким сладким, любезным сердцем, и твой великий тяж­кий грех, который ты совершил перед ним и все еще совершаешь, также ума­лит, назвав его только прегрешением, там, где ты сознаешь его и просишь о прощении. Ибо здесь есть у тебя верное обетование, что все твои грехи, сколь бы многи и велики они ни были, будут пред Ним столь же малы, как по­вседневные человеческие погрешности, которых он не желает ни засчитывать, ни помнить, если только имеешь ты веру во Христа [Luther4, WA 32, S. 427].

V

В истолковании Лютером Нагорной проповеди даруемое Богом прощение грехов находится в весьма тесной взаимосвязи с прощением вины людьми друг другу, в особенности – между христианами. Для Лютера это есть способ переживания и сохранения единства Церкви.

И так ты видишь, почему Христос сделал это прибавление к молитве, чтобы тем Ему прочно связать нас между собою и сохранить Свое христианство в единстве духа, то и другое – в вере и любви, чтобы мы не допускали разде­лять себя ни из-за какого греха или согрешения [Ibid.].

Любовь между христианами, – этот связующий материал в здании Церк­ви – не должна быть нарушена; если она нарушается, тогда есть нужда в про­щении. Итак, для Лютера истинно,

…что у Христиан все же должно быть и жить одно лишь прощение, Как и у Бога мы непрестанно должны просить прощения, И должны всегда дер­жаться молитвы «Прости нам, как мы прощаем» [Ibid.].

Такое прощение вины возможно практиковать также и между церквами, и в этом случае оно может также послужить вкладом в укрепление единства Церкви в многообразии церквей.

Перевод с немецкого А.К. Судакова

Guilt and Forgiveness in Martin Luther’s Interpretation
of the Sermon on the Mount

Hans-Peter Grosshans

The Faculty of Protestant Theology at the University of Münster. Germany, 48143, Münster, Universitätsstraße 13‒17; e-mail: grosshans@uni-muenster.de

With reference to current ecumenical discussions on how to deal with the guilt that churches have incurred in relation to other churches, this article looks back from an evangelical per­spective at Martin Luther’s interpretation of forgiveness of sin and guilt. Luther’s interpreta­tion of the request for forgiveness in the Lord’s Prayer in the Gospel of Matthew 6:12 in the Sermon on the Mount is at the centre of this discussion. The article reconstructs Luther’s view in connection with his interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount as a whole, which focuses on the question of the perfection of Christians and their Christian

lives. Here the basic features of Luther’s ethics and ecclesiology also become clear. With the forgiveness of guilt and the misconduct of fellow human beings, Luther is also concerned with whether a Christian really lives in the reality of divine forgiveness of sins, and to that extent with God. It becomes clear in the reconstruction of Luther’s interpretation of the Ser­mon on the Mount that for Luther interpersonal forgiveness is an expression of certainty about God’s forgiveness and that in Luther’s understanding Christian faith is always very close connected with a respective practical life.

Keywords: Guilt, Forgiveness, Christian Ethics, Martin Luther, Sermon on the Mount, Per­fection

Citation: Grosshans H.-P. “Guilt and Forgiveness in Martin Luther's Interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount”, Philosophy of Religion: Analytic Researches, 2019, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 30‒49.

References

Ebeling G. Evangelische Evangelienauslegung. Eine Untersuchung zu Luthers Hermeneutik, Tuebingen,1991.

Erinnerung heilen – Jesus Christus bezeugen. Ein gemeinsames Wort zum Jahr 2017, hg. von der Evangelischen Kirchе in Deutschland und vom Sekretariat der Deutschen Bischofskonferenz (Gemeinsame Texte 24), Hannover, Bonn, 2016.

Graf F. W. Reise nach Jerusalem. Was die EKD beim Reformationsjubilaeum falsch macht, Zeitzeichen, 17, 2016, H. 10, 8‒11).

Luther1 M. Der grosse Katechismus (in: Die Bekenntnisschriften der evangelisch-lutherischen Kirche, hg. im Gedenkjahr der Augsburgischen Konfession, 1930, Goettingen121998 [=BSLK], 543‒733).

Luther2 M. Von den Konziliis und Kirchen. 1539 (in: Ders., D. Martin Luthers Werke. Kriti­sche Gesamtausgabe [=WA], Bd. 50, Weimar, 1914).

Luther3 M. Wider Hans Worst. 1541 (WA 51, 469‒572).

Luther4 M. Wochenpredigten ueber Matth. 5‒7. 1530/1532.

Jon Stewart

I. Traditional Criticisms of Hegel as an Intolerant Thinker
Opposed to Religious Pluralism

Initially the goal of my article might seem to be a task destined to failure at the outset, first, since Hegel has frequently been criticized as a straightforward re­actionary apologist for Christianity and specifically Protestantism. These criticisms are understandable when one sees that Hegel himself states rather clearly at the out­set of the work that his goal is to vindicate the truth of Christianity by restoring its key doctrines, which, he believes, in his time have been largely abandoned, even by those who claim to be defenders of the faith [Hegel, 1984‒1987, vol. 1, p. 121‒128; Hegel, 1993‒1995, vol. 1, p. 38‒44].

Second, Hegel’s teleology or evolutionary theory seems to undermine a gen­uinely pluralistic approach. As is well known, in his account in the Lectures on the Philosophy of History, Hegel argues that one historical people replaces the next in the development of history. What he calls “spirit” (Geist) moves succes­sively from China to India, Persia, Egypt, Greece and Rome and then culminates in what he refers to as the Germanic world, that is, roughly, Prussia, the German

states and Northern Europe. In the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, he follows this same general scheme and attempts to apply it to his understanding of the his­tory of the religions of the world2. Thus, the various religions represent the different peoples of the world and succeed one another in a similar way. Hegel arranges the religions of the world in a more or less rigid ascending teleological order that culminates in Christianity3. He carefully traces the changes in the different concep­tions of the divine as they appear in the different world religions. This would seem to imply that the other religions of the world are simply flawed or inadequate and for this reason are passé or, to use his language, aufgehoben. The approach would seem to take a dismissive stance towards all of the different world religions with the exception of Christianity and thus would seem to undermine religious tolerance and an appreciation for religious pluralism.

Even more damaging than this is the fact that the reader does not have to look too hard to find certain racist or ethnocentric elements in Hegel’s accounts of the non-European religions. Judged by our modern standards and sensibilities, his lan­guage is offensive when he describes, for example, Hindus or followers of the an­cient Chinese state religion who venerate the divinity Tian. This has recently evoked a wealth of secondary literature, which rightly condemns this element in Hegel’s thought [Tibebu, 2011; Bernasconi, 1998, 2000, 2007; Camara, 2005; Hoffheimer, 2001, 2005]. Racial prejudices of this kind would also clearly appear to undermine a sober and objective assessment of the world religions. Thus once again Hegel does not seem to be a good candidate for a spokesman of modern religious pluralism.

II. Evidence for a More Tolerant, Pluralistic Hegel

I readily acknowledge these criticisms and think that they should indeed be taken very seriously. There is, however, other evidence that suggests that Hegel is more open to religious pluralism than we might initially think. It is to this evidence that I now turn.

First, it will be noted that Hegel’s account of the so-called “determinate reli­gions”, that is, the religions of the world prior to Christianity, is a profoundly rich part of his lectures [see: Labuschagne and Slootweg, 2012; Stewart, 2018]. Contem­porary observers noted how seriously Hegel took the non-European religions and how he was at great pains to read everything he could about the new research being

done in the different fields of what we would today call Asian Studies. His first bio­grapher Karl Rosenkranz writes that Hegel developed “an interest for the study of the Orient”, and he “cast himself into the study of oriental cultures with genuine en­thusiasm and his usual persistence” [Rosenkranz, 1844, p. 378]. Moreover, Hegel seemed to have had a particular interest in ancient China. Eduard Gans, the first editor of Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of History, states that Hegel spent an excessive amount of time with this material. Gans uses this as a justification for cutting out a large portion of this in his edition of the work4. For whatever the editorial issues in­volved were, this is clear testimony that Hegel was at pains to learn as much as he could about ancient Chinese history and religion and was not merely doing so in a pro forma manner so that he could hasten on to his account of Christianity.

Second, when we compare Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion with then contemporary works in the field, we can see a striking difference. The philoso­phies of religion of Kant and Fichte are dedicated more or less exclusively to an un­derstanding of Christianity. No historical account of the world religions is given. Neither Kant nor Fichte feels any particular need to make a study of another reli­gion, and certainly not a non-European one. It is only with Hegel that the enormous amount of then new material about Asian culture and religion is first introduced into the field at all. In this sense, Hegel, for better or worse, has clearly played a central role in the introduction of the very idea of world religions.5 This would seem to im­ply that he is in fact keenly aware of the importance of pluralism in his own day. This makes sense given that this was a time when Europe was beginning to discover a number of new cultures in Africa and Asia. One can then say in this regard that he recognized the need to take seriously other religions and to try to understand their history and belief systems.

Third, this more tolerant and pluralistic Hegel seems to be confirmed by what he actually says to his students at the outset of the lectures themselves. He is atten­tive to the fact that some of the material that he will be presenting will strike them as odd or even offensive. So he cautions his auditors as follows: “A survey of these religions reveals what supremely marvelous and bizarre flights of fancy the nations have hit upon in their representations of the divine essence… To cast aside these re­ligious representations and usages as superstition, error, and fraud is to take a super­ficial view of the matter…” [Hegel, 1984‒1987, vol. 1, p. 198; 1993‒1995, vol. 1,

p. 107]6. He continues by telling them, “It is easy to say that such a religion is just senseless and irrational. What is not easy is to recognize the necessity and truth of such religious forms, their connection with reason; and seeing that is a more difficult task than declaring something to be senseless” [Hegel 1984‒1987, vol. 2, p. 570; 1993‒1995, vol. 2, p. 467]7. From this it is clear that he sees something true in the dif­ferent world religions, and he encourages his students to set aside their prejudices, so that they can see it as well. This reveals a perhaps surprising side of Hegel since he appears to advocate the serious study of non-European religions and to confront polemically dismissive views that ridicule them as superstition.

In the so-called “Tübingen Essay”, written long before his Berlin lectures, he also criticizes religious intolerance along the same lines:

…whoever finds that other people’s modes of representation – heathens, as they are called – contain so much absurdity that they cause him to delight in his own higher insights, his understanding, which convinces him that he sees further than the greatest of men saw, does not comprehend the essence of religion. Someone who calls Jehovah Jupiter or Brahma and is truly pious offers his gratitude or his sacrifice in just as childlike a manner as does the true Christian [Hegel, 1984, p. 38; 1907, p. 10].

This passage is particularly striking with its comparison to Christianity. It is not so surprising that he refers to the Roman god Jupiter, but that he also defends the Hindu Brahma bespeaks an openness to non-Western cultures. Here he strikes a considerably more modern and pluralistic tone than one might think. He seems to suggest that there is a general instinct or disposition that unites all religious people across sectarian boundaries, and that this instinct should be the object of respect.

III. The Question of Truth at Earlier Stages of Religious Development

The key question that Hegel’s economy of the world religions raises is what precisely the status is of the different religions that lead up to Christianity. As noted, according to one interpretation, his teleology and hierarchy would seem immedi­ately to undercut a respectful evaluation of these other religions. If Christianity alone is true, then all other religions must be ipso facto false. However, I want to ask if this is necessarily true.

As is well known, Hegel often uses images of plants and organic life as analo­gies in order to illustrate the development of conceptual thinking8. The seed,

the root, the stem, the leaf, the bud and the flower all belong to the same plant, al­though they are each very different from one another. Each of them plays its own crucial role in the development of the plant, which could not exist without all of them. The plant as a complex organic entity consists of several elements which must all be realized in the correct temporal sequence. It would be wrong to say that the truth, so to speak, is found only in one of these since all of them have an equal claim to be a necessary part of the plant as a whole.

If we take seriously analogies of this kind, this would seem to imply that Hegel’s teleology is not so dismissive towards the non-Christian religions as one might at first glance assume. On this view, each of the different religions prior to Christianity has a legitimate and important role to play. Each of them captures a specific truth representative of its time and culture. This is not a far-fetched inter­pretation. Indeed, the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset understood Hegel in precisely this way in the context of the philosophy of history. He writes,

Hegel’s historical philosophy has the ambition of justifying each epoch, each hu­man stage, and avoiding the error of vulgar progressivism that considers all that is past as essential barbarity… Hegel wants to demonstrate… that what is histori­cal is an emanation of reason; that the past has good sense; or… that universal his­tory is not a string of foolish acts. Rather Hegel wants to demonstrate that in the gigantic sequence of history something serious has happened, something that has reality, structure and reason. And to this end he tries to show that all periods have had reason, precisely because they were different and even contradictory [Buchanan and Hoffheimer, 1995, p. 71].

This interpretation is clearly correct. For Hegel, reason appears not just at the end of the development but at every step along the way as well, the trick is to learn how to recognize it.

Hegel himself states straightforwardly that each stage of religious development possesses some truth. In the Lectures on the Philosophy of History, we read the fol­lowing: “However erroneous a religion may be, it possesses truth, although in a mu­tilated phase. In every religion there is a divine presence, a divine relation; and a philosophy of history has to seek out the spiritual element even in the most imper­fect forms” [Hegel, 1944, p. 195f.; Hegel, 1928‒1941, vol. 11, p. 261].

This then raises the question about what exactly is this truth that is found in earlier stages of religious development and how is it different from the “absolute” truth of Christianity. The idea seems to be that the human mind is fundamentally ra­tional, and thus its products, in the multitude of forms found in human culture, also contain an element of this rationality. Although the different myths and stories of the gods and goddesses of the different religions might strike us as confusing and bizarre, there is buried in them some element of human reason that can be discerned if we can find it. These stories are a reflection of the mind of the people who created them.

Greek mythology, for example, is a product of the human mind, but this doesn’t mean that it’s fictitious or not true. Hegel explains,

[The gods] are discovered by the human spirit, not as they are in their implicitly and explicitly rational content, but in such a way that they are gods. They are made or poetically created, but they are not fictitious. To be sure, they emerge from human fantasy in contrast with what is already at hand, but they emerge as essential shapes, and the product is at the same time known as what is essential [Hegel, 1984‒1987, vol. 2, p. 658n; 1993‒1995, vol. 2, p. 549n].

The point is that while the stories about the gods are literally true in their details, nonetheless they represent something about the conceptions of the people at the time. They are a reflection of necessary ways of thinking at that specific pe­riod of history and human development.

We can find an echo of this idea at the beginning of Durkheim’s The Elemen­tary Forms of Religious Life. There he acknowledges, “Religions are thought to dif­fer in value and rank; it is generally said that some are truer than others. The highest forms of religious thought cannot, it seems, be compared to the lowest without de­grading the former to the level of the latter” [Durkheim, 2001, p. 3f]. He explains his approach as follows: “It is a basic postulate of sociology that a human institution cannot rest on error and falsehood or it could not endure. If it were not based on the nature of things, it would have met with resistance from those very things and could not have prevailed. When we approach the study of primitive religions, then, it is with the certainty that they are rooted in reality and are an expression of it” [Durkheim, 2001, p. 4]. In conclusion to this methodological discussion, he writes, “In reality, then, there are no false religions. All are true in their fashion: all respond, if in different ways, to the given conditions of human existence” [Ibid.]. In a sense this seems to be a restatement of Hegel’s basic view. While Durkheim is more focused on the empirical aspect than Hegel, who is concerned with the con­cept of the divine, they share the idea that religion should be regarded as something essential in a specific community and that religious belief contains some essential truth that is not immediately evident.

IV. Hegel and Comparative Theology

A part of our modern struggle with religious pluralism lies in the perceived ten­sion between one’s own religious beliefs and the presence of other religious beliefs and traditions. If I am a religious person, then of course I hold dearly the key doc­trines and beliefs of my religion. I take them to be absolute or foundationally true and even try to organize my life in accordance with them. This would seem to imply that I take all other beliefs to be false, especially those that contradict the teachings of my own religion. So there is a natural limit to the idea of religious tolerance, which can be found in one’s own religious beliefs. I can, of course, say that other people have the right to exercise religious freedom: they are at their liberty to be­lieve what they want and to practice their religion as they wish. But I cannot say that their beliefs are true in the same way that mine are since this would seem to un­dermine the absolute claim that every religion places on its believers. This dilemma

is present in Hegel’s philosophy of religion in the way that we have just discussed: namely, there is a tension between Christianity’s claim to being the absolute truth, in contrast to the claim that the other religions are merely relative truths along the way leading up to it. So if we take away for the moment the question of Hegel’s teleology, the issue is fundamentally the same.

Here by way of conclusion, I would like to suggest that this tension is based on a misperception, namely, the idea that religious beliefs are necessarily mutually ex­clusive and to believe the one necessarily means that one must be intolerant towards others. I take as my model the approach which Frank Clooney and others have des­ignated “Comparative Theology” [Clooney, 2010]. This is a movement that seeks interreligious understanding by taking seriously the claims of all religious traditions and learning from the other while not dismissing the faith that one begins with. The guiding premise of Comparative Theology is that religion is a fundamental as­pect of the human experience, which arises from a common human need. Therefore, it makes sense to try to find points of overlap in the beliefs and practices of different faiths. Whatever the premise, common sense seems to dictate that one try to learn from the other in any case. According to this view, there is something universal in religion as such, and thus religious truth can be found in different traditions and indeed wherever humans think, act, feel and love. (It will be noted that this is very much in line with Hegel’s approach.) So this means that one can find, for example, Christian truths in Hindu or Buddhist texts and vice versa. I submit that the idea of Comparative Theology is a more satisfying way to treat religious pluralism than Hegel’s teleology, but it is not necessarily incompatible with it. In fact, in the two approaches one can find both of the key elements that we mentioned above: a sense of one truth found in one’s own religious tradition and that of other truths found in others.

Hegel’s historical approach starts to look not so implausible if we consider that in many cases religions seem de facto to have overlapped and borrowed ideas from one another. It has long been suggested, for example, that Judaism had its origin in the ancient Egyptian religion in the monotheistic cult introduced by Pharaoh Akhenaten. Scholars have also noted the relations between Hinduism and Zoroastri­anism. The historical connections between Judaism, Christianity and Islam are well documented. What do these historical connections tell us? Religious ideas rarely die out. They get appropriated and co-opted in different contexts, where they are further developed in different ways. These kinds of connections might, however, offer a possibility of religious dialogue and respect.

When we examine two different things, this always takes place under the aegis of the categories of identity and difference. The two things are similar to one an­other in certain respects, and they are different from one another in other respects. In the history of religion, it is the differences which are often underscored, and this had led to a long history of religious wars, persecutions and violence. However, the historical connections between the different world religions also provide a basis for a positive comparison of points of similarity.

I believe that Hegel’s approach is in many ways consistent with the view of Comparative Theology, and indeed that this can afford us a fresh look at his philo­sophy of religion. Both Hegel and Comparative Theology teach us that interest

in and respect for the history of religion or other religions does not need to under­mine or compromise one’s personal belief in one’s own religion. Thus the perceived tension between the absolute claims of one’s own religion and that of other religions is not as problematic as it might seem.

The tension that we noted with regard to religious tolerance and pluralism is just one aspect of a much more fundamental phenomenon that concerns our basic relation to the world. Every person has certain beliefs – some held more dearly than others. In our interaction with the world, we are constantly comparing our beliefs with the feedback or pushback that the world gives us. We constantly have experi­ences that contradict our beliefs and cause us to rethink them and modify them in different ways. This is what it means to live in the world as a sentient and think­ing being. Religious beliefs are just one example of this. They form a part of our broader belief system that is constantly under evaluation. It does not make sense to reproach someone of intolerance simply because they believe something different from someone else and wish to insist on their own convictions. Indeed, this is the case all the time. The idea of religious intolerance must be something different and much stronger than this. Thus, there is nothing intolerant in believing in a spe­cific religion. This does not in itself undermine respect for other religions or belief systems. Thus, I submit, that the perceived tension between holding a fundamental or absolute belief and the pluralism of religions is not a real tension. It is a pseudo­problem.

References

Bernasconi, R. “Hegel at the Court of the Ashanti,” in: Hegel after Derrida. Ed. by S. Barnett. NY: Routledge, 1998, pp. 41‒63.

Bernasconi, R. “With What Must the Philosophy of World History Begin? On the Racial Ba­sis of Eurocentrism,” Nineteenth-Century Contexts. 2000, vol. 22, pp. 171‒201.

Bernasconi, R. “The Return of Africa: Hegel and the Question of the Racial Identity of the Egyptians,” in: Identity and Difference: Studies in Hegel’s Logic, Philosophy of Spirit and Poli­tics. Ed. by Ph. Grier. Albany, State University of New York Press, 2007, pp. 201‒216.

Buchanan, Luanne and Michael H. Hoffheimer. “Hegel and America by José Ortega y Gas­set,” Clio. 1995, vol. 25, no. 1, pp. 63‒81.

Camara, B. “The Falsity of Hegel’s Theses on Africa,” Journal of Black Studies. 2005, vol. 36, no. 1, pp. 82‒96.

Clooney, Francis X. Comparative Theology: Deep Learning Across Religious Borders. Malden, Massachusetts; Oxford; Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2010.

Durkheim, É. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, trans. by Carol Cosman. Oxford: Ox­ford University Press, 2001.

Hegel, G.W.F. Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Religion, I–II. Ed. by Ph. Marheineke (vols. 11‒12, in: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s Werke. Vollständige Ausgabe, vols. 1‒18, ed. by L. Boumann, F. Förster, E. Gans, K. Hegel, L. von Henning, H.G. Hotho, Ph. Marheineke, K.L. Michelet, K. Rosenkranz, J. Schulze. Berlin: Verlag von Duncker und Humblot 1832‒45), 1832.

Hegel, G.W.F. Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte. Ed. by Eduard Gans (vol. 9, in: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s Werke), 1837.

Hegel, G.W.F. Hegels theologische Jugendschriften. Ed. by H. Nohl. Tübingen: Verlag von J.C.B. Mohr, 1907.

Hegel, G.W.F. Die orientalische Welt. Ed. by G. Lasson, Leipzig: Felix Meiner (vol. 2 in: Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Weltgeschichte, vols. 1‒4, ed. by G. Lasson. Leipzig: Felix Meiner 1920‒23), 1923.

Hegel, G.W.F. Sämtliche Werke. Jubiläumsausgabe. Ed. by H. Glockner. 1928‒41, vols. 1‒20. Stuttgart: Friedrich Frommann Verlag.

Hegel, G.W.F. The Philosophy of History, trans. by J. Sibree. NY: Willey Book Co, 1944.

Hegel, G.W.F. Hegel’s Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, trans. by T.M. Knox, vols. 1‒2, Ox­ford: Clarendon Press, 1975.

Hegel, G.W.F. Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. by A.V. Miller. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977.

Hegel, G.W.F. Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Religion. Parts 1‒3, ed. by Walter Jaeschke. Hamburg: Felix Meiner. (This corresponds to vols. 3‒5 in the edition, Hegel, Vorlesun­gen. Ausgewählte Nachschriften und Manuskripte, vols. 1‒17. Hamburg: Meiner 1983‒2008. Part 1, Einleitung. Der Begriff der Religion = vol. 3. Part 2, Die Bestimmte Religion. a: Text = vol. 4a. Part 2, Die Bestimmte Religion. b: Anhang = vol. 4b. Part 3, Die vollendete Religion = vol. 5), 1983‒1985.

Hegel, G.W.F. Three Essays, 1793‒1795. Ed. and trans. by P. Fuss and John Dobbins. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984.

Hegel, G.W.F. Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, vols. 1‒3. Ed. by P.C. Hodgson, trans. by Robert F. Brown, P.C. Hodgson and J.M. Stewart with the assistance of H.S. Harris. Berkeley et al.: University of California Press, 1984‒1987.

Hoffheimer, M.H. Eduard Gans and the Hegelian Philosophy of Law. Dordrecht et al.: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1995.

Hoffheimer, M.H. “Hegel, Race, Genocide,” Southern Journal of Philosophy. 2001, vol. 39 (supplement), pp. 35‒62.

Hoffheimer, M.H. “Race and Law in Hegel’s Philosophy of Religion,” in: Race and Racism in Modern Philosophy. Ed. by A. Valls. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2005, pp. 194‒216.

Kangas, D.J. “Which Hegel? Reconsidering Hegel and Kierkegaard,” in Papers of the Nine­teenth Century Theology Group: Papers Presented in the Nineteenth Century Theology Group at the 2004 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion Conference. Ed. by A.J. Burgess, D.D. Schultenover, Daniel W. Hardy and Theodore Vial. Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock Publish­ers (Papers of the Nineteenth Century Theology Group, vol. 35), 2004, pp. 15‒34.

Labuschagne, Bart, and Timo Slootweg, (eds.). Hegel’s Philosophy of the Historical Reli­gions. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2012.

Lewis, Th.A. “Hegel’s Determinate Religion Today: Foreign yet Not So Far Away,” in Reli­gion und Religionen im Deutschen Idealismus. Schleiermacher – Hegel – Schelling. Ed. by F. Her­manni, B. Nonnenmacher and F. Schick. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015, pp. 211‒231.

Rosenkranz, Karl. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s Leben. Berlin: Duncker und Humblot, 1844.

Stewart, J. Hegel’s Interpretation of the Religions of the World: The Logic of the Gods. Ox­ford: Oxford University Press, 2018.

Tibebu, T. Hegel and the Third World: The Making of Eurocentrism in World History. Syra­cuse: Syracuse University Press, 2011.

What does philosophy do and what is the philosophy of religion?

The following thoughts strive to outline the elements of philosophy that have consequences for the search for a specifically philosophical solution to the situation of disagreement, including disagreement over matters of religion. Some philosophy of religion is an application of some method of philosophy to questions concerning different religions. Therefore, to understand the philosophy of religion we need to understand the method of philosophy first.

What is philosophy?

Philosophy understood as a human activity with its results is not one ‘sub­stance’ or even one thing. There is no such thing as the nature of philosophy in ge­neral. There are different methods or ways of philosophizing. It is correct to say that there is more than one kind of philosophical activity, corresponding to some metaphilosophy, or orderly selection of a formal object, purpose, tasks, and means to achieve them. Individual philosophers are advocates of one of the many practices and concepts of philosophizing that can be combined into some larger groups due to minor differences. Among others, there is also a kind of careful philosophical prac­tice, understood as metaphysical, epistemological and ethical research, directed to­wards the nature of objective reality – for example being, knowledge or right moral action. This type of philosophy was practiced in the Antiquity, the Middle Ages and modernity. It is also popular in many currents of modern philosophy and is not li­mited to a specific school of philosophizing, but finds its followers in many of them, like Platonism, Aristotelianism, Thomism, some parts of the phenomenologi­cal movement and analytical philosophy. Below, a partial description of the philoso­phy understood in such a way, and its consequences for the problem of religious disagreement will be presented.

The purpose of this kind of philosophizing is theoretical and practical knowledge and truth. Moreover, the practice of such philosophizing and its results should meet a number of certain characteristics. Among them are anti-dogmatism, criticism,

intersubjectivity of philosophizing and its effects, proper justification of philosophical beliefs, application of the analysis method, rigorous language, and reasoning. The fun­damental value in the theoretical aspect of such practice is a truth, and the main aim is philosophical knowledge of some part of reality [Pep­liński, 2018, p. 41‒48].

Some central philosophical attitudes
and rules of thus understood philosophy

A1 The pursuit of knowledge (and thus the truth – because propositional know­ledge entails the truth of a given proposition) is one of the two main goals of philo­sophy. The second goal of philosophizing is a practical goal, which is happiness un­derstood as a good life. Philosophy is not only about getting to know what such a good life is about, which requires knowing the place of man in the Universe. In addition to providing knowledge of the means to achieve the discovered purpose of human existence, the philosophical way of life is an integral part of achieving this goal [Hadot, 1995]. We accept as a theoretical principle, the propositions that

T0. We are not born with knowledge about the most critical existential issues, nor with wisdom whose truths would coincide with the worldviews of religions. Get­ting to know these matters is most often like opinions gained through participation in societies (and cultures) sharing knowledge/cognition, including religious com­munities – like family and other kinds.

T1. Each of us is fallible3.

From this, it follows that both a philosopher herself and other philosophers or just other people who have a different opinion regarding the solution of a specific philosophical problem may be wrong. Therefore, as the next principle, we accept that in the light of the possibility of error,

A2 We should strive, as far as we can, to critically investigate the value of our pos­ition as well as opposing or contradictory views.

A3 The realization of A2 is carried out through the application of the analysis method, the use of precise language and logically valid reasoning.

As well as

A4 We should take an attitude of open-mindedness and impartiality – we should accept the results of such a critical study regardless of whether they are in line with our expectations, the preferred vision of the world or not and always consider the real epistemic status of elements of a set of competitive solutions.

A4a If we find a deductive argument, we should accept the truth of the position in question.

A4b If the results of the investigation do not resolve unequivocally which one of the competing positions is correct, we should accept the partial confirmation of the competitive beliefs and the justification they have.

A5 Both issues resolved and especially those that remain unsettled should become the subject of further critical inquiries, in which the confrontation of the results obtained by a given philosopher with the assessment made by other philosophers and the results obtained by them plays a significant role.

What is common for the quoted principles is the theoretical position that

T2 The philosopher's acknowledgement of the value of truth or falseness of a given metaphysical, ethical or epistemological position is determined by the arguments and evidence that testify to its truthfulness or its falsehood.

In other words, the primary tool for changing a philosophical position is sound and valid reasoning. If a philosopher uses any kind of experience, then it performs evidential functions through specific mediating reasoning from evidence to a knowledge of something. However, the use of T2 is difficult because philosophy does not consider only the number or strength of arguments and evidence, but also the importance that the philosopher assigns to them in the light of her current, rela­tivized to a given time, understanding of reality.

T3 results from T2:

T3. The sociological or academic authority of the opponent, her actual rationality or being epistemically equal is not enough to accept her position, because none of them remain in the proper relation to the truth of her stance.

It is the case because even a reliable person may be subject to prejudice and make mistakes in reasoning. Concerning knowledge having an intersubjective char­acter, we are all equal.

The philosophy of religion
and the possible solution to the problem of religious disagreement

The philosophy of religion is the application of some general philosophical principles to the complex phenomenon of various religions. It seeks to gain know­ledge and understanding of different aspects of religious phenomena. What is dis­agreement within such practice of philosophy of examining a specific religious doc­trine or religious belief? It consists in stopping the discussion at a given moment of the study because at this time, the two sides of the discussion do not have convin­cing arguments for the truth of their approach. Both sides know their argument; they know the weaknesses and strengths of their position. Neither of them is convincing for all, however, and each of the alternative shots carries some costs.

For example, we may point at the disagreement over the properly basic status of belief in God and ask if we should construe the problem in terms of internalism and justification or externalism and warrant. At the beginning of this century, nei­ther reformed epistemology nor evidentialist epistemology has resolved the matter indisputably. So, the question needs further argumentation, and some philosophers try to develop it4.

Recently, in the last dozen or so years, the issue of the rationality of religious beliefs has often been undertaken in the aspect of religious diversity and the prob­lem of religious disagreement. However, the problem of disagreement is put diffe­rently. The discussion is concerned with:

the epistemic challenge raised by religious disagreement: does awareness of the na­ture and extent of religious disagreement make it unreasonable to hold confident re­ligious […] views? [Pittard, 2018].

The discussions in the epistemology of religion are the application of the re­sults of similar discussions in general epistemology. Among the recently undertaken epistemological issues, issues concerning the situation of disagreement between equal philosophers or researchers play a significant role. One should not underesti­mate the significance of the various solutions proposed during the numerous and so­phisticated discussions held by epistemologists regarding the importance of discord as a possible testimony that can influence our beliefs5. However, the position pre­sented here prefers the search for solutions to disagreement on the way of inquiries of a subject, stressing the importance of a “material”, not “formal” approach, so to speak, to the extent that is available to us in the area of religion. Presenting this po­sition, we could use Jennifer Lackey’s terminology and classification of the possible ways of solving the situation of epistemic contention. As she puts it, there are two basic attitudes towards the fact of disagreement:

The nonconformists, who maintain that one can continue to rationally believe that p despite the fact that one’s epistemic peer explicitly believes that not-p”. The second view is that “of the conformists, who hold that, unless one has a reason that is independent of the disagreement itself to prefer one’s own belief, one cannot continue to rationally believe that p when one is faced with an epi­stemic peer who explicitly believes that not-p” [Lackey, 2014, p. 300‒301].

Like nonconformists, we argue that there can be reasonable disagreement among epistemic peers in philosophy as well as in religious context. It is because of the mainly non-deductive characteristic of justification of philosophical views. There are many different philosophical interpretations of some aspects of reality, with a par­tial justification of their correctness. The same is correct with a religious interpreta­tion of reality and of Man’s place within it. Religious beliefs, or even more so reli­gious faith, do not fulfill only or mainly a descriptive function to the world, especially when this function of religious utterances or religious beliefs is attempted to be under­stood in the way statements, opinions or scientific know­ledge are, including philo­sophical ones. However, when the problem consists in explaining why a devotee ac­cepts certain beliefs, doctrines or religious judgments, answering this question and defending its legitimacy almost always refers to the descriptive function and cognitive meaning of religious beliefs and their truth claims [Kraft, p. 97‒108].

Like the correct reasoning view states, we believe that someone is justified in giving her belief extra weight in the face of peer disagreement if the belief in question is, in fact, the product of correct reasoning. An equally important factor is the coherence of the result of reasoning with the knowledge and the experience of

a philosopher. However, we hold against them that it is false that the mere fact that two persons disagree does not rationally require any doxastic revision on every part, even if they cannot point to any significant epistemic asymmetry between them. So, we agree with the conformists that the fact of disagreement between those who re­gard one another as epistemic peers requires some action, though not necessarily al­ways significant doxastic revision in the face of peer disagreement.

Instead of a ‘rational action’ of a weakening of belief, we propose a solution consisting in maintaining one’s position combined with an intense search for a solu­tion to the situation of disagreement through developing a new one and examining the old argumentation. The conciliationism and lowering confidence in own’s belief by both sides is not the correct answer. It is because the sole fact of disagreement does not point to correct move of dispute. Moreover, it does not do so because we still do not know which position is correct and which is false.

In the case of disputes in the field of religion, this depends, among other things, on capturing and understanding the current epistemic and non-epistemic, factual basis for the acceptance of a given perspective, view, and doctrine. Be­sides, it should include both possible support for the position adopted by the rest of the available religious knowledge belonging to a given religious tradition, as well as philosophical and scientific knowledge, if the latter can take place. An­other element is the attempt to deepen understanding of a given practice or reli­gious response as a particular case of a more general trans-religious or inter-reli­gious problem. Of course, the key here is to consider the possibility that we are not dealing with one problem but, in fact, with various problems and different so­lutions to different problems. An example of such a question may be the so-called problem of salvation in the world religions and various ways to solve the problem of evil. It is not evident that these problems are understood in the same sense in various religions, for example, in Buddhism and Christianity, though both reli­gions address the issue of suffering.

Ultimately speaking, there are many disputes between religions interpreted as a whole, sophisticated type of religious life, as a set of practices subordinated to the realization of a religious goal or a collection of goals. What is needed in the case of religious disagreement is intra-religious and trans-religious hermeneutics of the meaning of certain doctrines, practices and the whole religion in the light of a broadly understood in-depth reflection on religions as a means of achieving a par­ticular life goal or their set.

Does this stance recognize someone’s point of view as epistemologically privi­leged? It is not the case, because it does not assume dogmatically that any particular point of view is “the” correct one. We do accept the possibility of rejection of our position, and our belief in the light of the results of further investigation. In the falli­bilist spirit, the position that “we are right” in a case is possible to reconcile with the recognition that we can be wrong. The more important the issues are, the more importance we should attribute to their critical consideration in the situation of dis­agreement. Such a position does not entail either a lack of religious conviction or the need for believers to doubt their beliefs. Neither agnostic nor skeptic solutions are necessary as a reaction to the complexity of issues, the multitude of positions, the fact of discord, and the possibility of an error made by each of us. Instead of

this, our posit requires striving for a better understanding of one’s religious tradi­tion, its practical and theoretical meaning, and its epistemic justification, and the re­lations of these two dimensions – theoretical and practical – to each other. It re­quires more, namely a better understanding of the meanings of the existence of different religious traditions as different and sometimes competitive ways of ulti­mately governing human existence.

Does diversity among religions always carry a religious disagreement
that is an epistemic challenge?

We are aware of religious diversity. Religious diversification occurs not only among religions but also within a given religion. Let us take into consideration dif­ferent ways of living conducted by laypeople and monks of different religions, or for example different rules governing the behaviour of the latter, different confes­sion in Christianity or different school of Buddhism. However, do all matters of a religious dispute and diversification have an epistemological dimension? It seems not to be the case. It should, therefore, be indicated in which aspects religious diver­sity has and in which it does not have a significant epistemic dimension. To this end, one should realize the complexity of the phenomenon of religion and its inter­nal differentiation into practical and theoretical elements.

What is included in religion and what kinds of diversity can appear?

In order to realize the task of distinguishing the theoretical and practical ele­ments in a given religion, we will use the characterization of religion made by William Alston. Alston, in his article “Religion” (2006), distinguishes several con­stituent elements of religions, which will be divided into two groups; the first con­tains items that can serve theoretical functions and can be evaluated regarding their truthfulness or falsity, while the other consists of three parts, including practical ele­ments [Alston, 2006, p. 366‒383].

One can, like Alston, distinguish three cognitive areas of the theoretical dimen­sion of a given religion. Of course, not every religion contains an attitude of faith and its correlative – objective faith. However, every religion as a practice is consti­tuted by theoretical and practical beliefs, sometimes only implicitly assumed. Al­ston points to three critical items. First is a. a belief in supernatural beings (gods). The second is b. distinction between sacred and profane objects specific for the reli­gion, and the third is c. a worldview, or a general picture of the world as a whole and the place of the individual therein.

Claiming that religion has a theoretical dimension does not imply, for example, that religion should be treated as providing some quasi-scientific explanation of the world. It is only about the elementary function of describing the world which belongs to propositional structures. The most important aspects of the cognitive/the­oretical dimension of religion are: like every element of human culture, human ac­tivity that forms a religion is guided by cognition, connected with the language ex­pressing, objectifying, consolidating and communicating this cognition; every

religion is created by a specific ‘creed’ or creed [Bocheński, 1965, p. 10]. So, for each religion, one can strive to determine the d. conditions of meaningful involve­ment in it. It means that it presents itself as a rational/reasonable activity, under cer­tain conditions. These conditions do not have to (though they can) be acknowledged directly in the creed, and believers do not have to be aware of them. Whether our world meets these conditions is essential for the rationality of a given religion and of the involvement of people in its practices.

On the other hand, the practical elements of religions include morality and a way of life, religious worship and prayers, as well as the social organization of be­lievers into various groups and institutions. The first two elements are e. a moral code believed to be sanctioned by the gods and f. a more or less total organization of one’s life based on the worldview. The part related to prayer and worship in­cludes g. ritual acts focused on sacred objects; h. characteristically religious feelings which tend to be aroused in the presence of sacred objects and during the practice of ritual, and which are connected in idea with the gods; i. prayer and other forms of communication with gods. In the case of the social element, Alston only describes it as j. a social group bound together by the above.

Alston’s nine-element definition of religion can be improved. Regarding the theo­retical dimension, apart from d. the set mentioned above of proposition correlative to the conditions of the meaningfulness of a given religious practice, one can distin­guish k. experiences that characterize a given religion and religious attitude of a given believer and l. a more or less developed theological or philosophical reflec­tion over the content of religious beliefs. The moral element also includes m. the es­sential practical attitudes for a given religion, such as the attitude of faith or the atti­tude of daily mindfulness, an ascetic attitude or the one based on a heroic pursuit of a morally good life, ethical discipline or exercises aimed at getting enlightenment. As far as the social dimension is concerned, it is necessary to emphasize the internal structure of religion, the division of social roles of believers, the relationship be­tween the individual and the religious community as well as relations of a given re­ligion or religious community with non-religious communities.

What is essential, Alston also points out that three different types of religiosity can be distinguished due to a location of the divine and response to it and, corre­spondingly, the importance attributed to the social dimension of moral practices, as­cetics, worship, and religious experience. Accordingly, he distinguishes a prophetic religion, a sacramental religion, and a mystical religion.

It may seem that thanks to the distinction of theoretical and practical elements in religion, it is relatively easy to explain the kinds of religious diversity result in the existence of a theoretical religious disagreement. Namely, it would occur in a situation where the contradiction or differentiation of the religious beliefs and religious interpretations of them and also in the case of a difference of opinion spec­ifying the proper realization of practical-religious points of e-m would occur. Such an explanation is, however, insufficient. It is because religions are complex sets of practices that can fulfill more than one function in the life of their followers. At the same time, it should be emphasized that some functions or one of the func­tions may have distinguished value and be referred to as the primary or only func­tion of a given religion. The primary function in two different religions can be so

different that it only seems like we are dealing with a dispute about how to reach a supposedly common goal for two religions. In the meantime, we are dealing with either misunderstanding or an implicit dispute that is worth pursuing. At the same time, due to the complexity of religious practices, practical means used to achieve different goals, such as meditation techniques or ways of gaining control over the emotional sphere, despite being differently understood elements of different re­ligions, actually lead to the same goal of development or positive personal change.

In order to deepen the understanding of the nature of discord among religions, it is necessary to pay attention to the primary and subordinate functions that a given religion performs. What is missing in Alston's article is the importance of the differ­ent role or function of religion for a believer. Religions, or more specifically, the re­ligious life of a particular believer, are differentiated because of the function she prefers or many functions that religion performs in her life. Due to place con­straints, we will only outline the division of the functions of religion by means of some examples, essential for our argument.

Functions of religion

F.1. Religious-specific functions.

Sometimes philosophers express themselves in a way that suggests that they treat religions as practices aimed at the same goal or at least for the same type or type of purpose. This goal is called salvific or soteriological. It is about realizing such goals of human action, which, according to a given religion are available to those who practice a given religion. Such a goal may be to be reaching the state of buddha, Nirvana, getting to know God, the forgiveness of sins, living in a special relationship with God. Chad Meister, for example, describes the goal of Hinduism as “moksha, release from the cycle of death and rebirth (samsara), and absorption into Brahman”, of Buddhism as “nirvana, liberation from the wheel of samsara and extinction of all desires, cravings, and suffering”, of Judaism as “blessedness with God – here and perhaps in the hereafter”, of Christianity as “spiritual transformation and spending eternity with God in the kingdom of heaven”. For Islam “the soterio­logical goal is blessedness in paradise through submission to the laws of Allah and by His mercy”. Let us ignore the question that the above definitions of religious purposes are short and simplify given religious traditions6. The use of the term “sal­vation” has the character of mental abbreviation and simplification. It is not sug­gested here that all religions are soteriological, and only one wants to underline the explicitly religious character of this group of functions.

F.2. Non-specifically religious purposes of religion.

These goals can be achieved by practicing a different religion or through other non-religious practices. We will mention only some of these goals:

F.2.1. Providing the worldview ‘skeleton’.

Through the worldview, one understands the essential claims regarding what exists, the types and hierarchies of goods worth pursuing, describing, interpreting the world's place of the individual in the world, and regulating conduct. Part of the worldview is the answer to the questions about what the meaning of life is and with what activity one can lead such a meaningful life.

F.2.1.1. Describing a meaningful life and being a part of it.

Different, incompatible religions can fulfill these functions. They can at least partly be accomplished also by philosophical thinking and practice, as well as by other types of activity. They can, at least in part, be carried out even with the falsity of some claims of a given religion, as it may occur in the sense of the meaning of life due to belonging to a particular community of people sharing specific values, goals or by finding their place in a particular social hierarchy.

F.2.1.2 Providing and helping in the practice of a set of moral principles that guide the life of a given individual.

F.2.2 Organizing the “psyche” of a given person, his emotional-volitional, men­tal and spiritual life and satisfying his needs and inclinations to know the truth, reach the good and enjoy the beauty and in particular, achieving internal peace and the right attitude towards other living beings, especially other people.

F.2.3 Various other functions related to socialization or satisfying the needs of a given person; the functions identified by the sociology of religion.

About the function consisting in describing the world, we should note that a particular (religious) worldview has two connected but different goals – first it de­scribes and explains the world and gives us some rules governing our lives. This is the function with epistemic dimension: such a worldview is true and correct or not. The second goal of a worldview is to be a foundation of rational (in the light of a particular worldview) everyday activity and making crucial decisions. The second goal may be achieved even if the worldview is false in some of its parts.

Now we can return to our questions: namely, which types of religious diversity and dissent have a direct or indirect epistemic dimension and whether diversity among religions always carries religious disagreement that is an epistemic chal­lenge. So far, we have found that a theoretical religious disagreement would occur in a situation where the contradiction or differentiation of the religious beliefs and religious interpretations of them would occur. It would also occur in the case of a difference of opinion specifying the proper realization of practical-religious points of e-m.

Now it can be seen that the primary and fundamental issue and the place of possible disagreement is the nature of the goal of religion worth pursuing. Stating this more strongly, the realization of which is the duty of people, for example, due to the right attitude towards God/Ultimate Reality or appropriate, most accurate or adequate orientation in reality. It is therefore, about choosing the right aim from the F1 set.

The achieving of the proper purpose is usually defined as available only by means determined by a religious system of concepts and beliefs, which specify

the right moral, spiritual and social practice of the devotee, corresponding to points F.2.1.2, F.2.2 and F.2.3. It may also be that some ethical practices are not treated as a means to achieve the soteriological purpose of religion, but these are matters re­lated to each other in a different but necessary way.

However, the theoretical dispute regarding the manner of achieving the goal from the collection of F.1 through properly conducted life is not so much a problem of disagreement between the religions but merely a problem of the religious organi­zation of human life. Therefore, in this context, the opposition between the dispute within the religious tradition and the dispute between religious traditions seems to lose some of its clarity. For this reason, there is a chance that the alleged and actual diversification of religion turns out to contain elements belonging to F.2.1‒2.3 that either exist in different religions or are not mutually exclusive. The chances for this are higher if we treat these elements of religious life as valuable elements, irrespec­tive of their relationship with the explicitly religious purpose of religious practice. On the other hand, it is in the areas of moral, spiritual, and social life that are inter­related that theoretical and practical disputes may arise. An example of this may be the discord between Hinduism and Christianity regarding the function and signifi­cance of suffering in the life of the individual and the right attitude towards the suf­fering, arising due to the different eschatological understanding of suffering.

Of course, within one religion, there may be different ways of religious life or different ways of achieving the goal of the final religion or goals specific to a given way of life. Analogously, the diversity between religious practices or aspects of these practices that are aimed at different goals does not necessarily result from the essence of theoretical dissent and conflict. Conflict or dispute may arise if the realization of one practice excludes the realization of the other, e.g., when the aims of different religions are contradictory, or the realization of one is an obstacle in the realization of the other. Another type of disagreement arises when the reli­gious practice engages the believer’s life enough that there is no room for another purpose. We would have a conflict when the soteriological goals of religion are mu­tually exclusive. On the other hand, there would be no conflict if the intermediate goals do not differ, or are achieved through different paths, and when the ultimate goals of religion are not mutually exclusive.

It should also be remembered that the pursuing of different aims of different re­ligions may require maximum commitment, including the demanding endowment of the whole life, both symbolically and literally. In addition, as is for example in the case of Christianity, participation in practices or techniques of other religious traditions can be understood as inconsistent with unconditional devotion to God in the attitudes of faith, love and hope and with the appreciation of Jesus as a suffi­cient and the perfect source of religious knowledge and The Way.

So, it is not always possible to dismiss the problem of religious diversity in the way described earlier, because sometimes it can take the form of serious dis­agreement. This may happen in many cases; we will omit here the situations related to the cohabitation of different religious groups in one society, focusing on the theo­retical disagreement. The severe type of religious diversification is the theoretical and practical disagreement about what is worth or should be done or about objects of religious worship. Religions, although they may agree that an essential part of

life is worshiping the Sacrum, can vary significantly regarding the location of Sacrum. An example of this kind of disagreement is the disagreement among reli­gions about which God/gods need to be worshiped. This kind of discord is a particular case of theoretical/worldview disagreement about what exists, and about the duties that govern human life, and about Man’s place in the universe. It must, therefore, be recognized that there are cases of epistemic severe religious disagreement.

Therefore, the epistemological dimension of religious disagreement takes place in the case of religious faith, which, although not reduced to its propositional as­pect, nevertheless has a propositional dimension. Also, in the case of religions that do not use the concept of revelation and authentic, orthodox, correct faith, we are dealing with religious convictions that are treated realistically as having the logical value of the truth. Even if they are not treated as revealed by God, they are treated as correctly describing the reality of the world and man in the world and success­fully regulating his actions due to his chosen goals, worth pursuing in life and be­cause of being recognized as a binding ‘real’ relationship that connects goals with the means to achieve them. We do not propose to treat religion as a theoretical prac­tice like philosophy or science. However, even when religion plays its role of deliv­ery of a worldview and making life meaningful, some parts of it have an epistemic dimension which could be an object of disagreement and which could be examined in an aspect of its epistemic status.

Even if we do not deal directly with the theoretical disagreement on the propo­sitional level of religion, we can deal with it indirectly. An example is the striving for a friendship of a believer with the Trinity and striving to get rid of ignoring the non-existence of a permanent good in the world. So, there are conflicts where there is a direct or indirect contradiction between the religious/philosophical beliefs that are merely part of the creed of a given religion or where there is a contradiction implicit between the assumed statements, whose truth is a condition of the meaning­fulness of a given religious practice.

It seems that even if most of the religious differences are not epistemic dis­agreements between equals or if we do not know that such a conflict between the actual equals occurs, the very fact of contradictions in the critical issues should encourage us, who recognize a reasonable belief, to make an effort to determine which party is right. It may be that a person who does not agree with us is wrong, but it may also be that we are wrong. Thus, now we can address the question: in the area of religious disagreement, can the follower of a particular religion use methods and share attitudes characteristic of a philosopher?

What is the difference and what is the similarity of the attitude
of the philosopher of religion and the believer of a particular religion?

What, then, can be the similarity between a philosopher and a follower? The philosopher is guided by the pursuit of knowledge, stemming from the love of the truth about reality. A similar love of truth can be found among some believers of religion. This is especially true of those who have a distance to their understanding of reality, or who creates a religiously inspired philosophy about the object of worship or the place of man in reality. However, also when it is not the case that

religion openly puts truth high in the hierarchy of values, if the believer values ob­jectivity of her religion, then she should, like a philosopher, strive to achieve cogni­tion, which will provide an answer to the question of whether her beliefs are true or false. This is true, especially when she does not want her worldview, life efforts, the way of dealing with evil and misfortune to be based on falsehood.

The difference between a philosopher and a follower is complicated. We will take into account only such a situation that the philosopher cultivates philosophy as a non-believer, and due to the extent of the analysis required to, omit a more com­plicated situation, where the philosopher is also a believer of a particular religion. Let us turn our attention to two aspects. The philosopher, in a way, professionally strives for knowledge and tries to maximize knowledge and understanding of a given point of reality, in this case, religious diversity. Philosophy demands an im­partial and meta-objective position, examining the meaning of given religious be­liefs, their internal and external coherence with other religious assertions and nonre­ligious knowledge as well as the possibility of their connection with scientific and philosophical knowledge, e.g., their justification or rational falsification, or partial verification. That she does not achieve security of belief, certainty and non-con­clusive resolution in a given case, at a given time, is not a problem for her. She re­turns to the survey regularly hoping to achieve an appropriate, certain knowledge in an undefined time, and perhaps – never.

In turn, a follower of a given religion does not face such a comfortable situa­tion, because, in a way, she has staked her life on a given religion. Thus, the case in which she bet on the wrong horse is difficult for her to accept. She cannot, however, suspend her belief without resolving it until at the end of an undeter­mined future when she can settle the dispute once and for all. If therefore, the par­ties involved in the debate do not obtain a decisive deductive argument, she has the right to her belief for as long as in her view the validation of her disputed po­sition is equally strong or stronger than the opposite. The mere fact that there are cases of people who disagree with her in this matter and seeming to be equal to or even more spiritually perfect in connection with the fact that she does not have a conclusive argument is evidence functioning as a defeater of a possible certainty of her view. Therefore, if she wants to combine a rational attitude of respect to­wards the truth with the confidence of belief, she should, like a philosopher, un­dertake critical inquiries aimed at examining the values of both positions, as far as it is possible for her.

Consequently, she should conduct activities that are guided by A4–A5 attitudes. Maintaining a legitimate belief, in the light of the lack of a stronger justification of the opposite position combined with the search for the final resolution, is a rational cognitive attitude in a situation of religious disagreement. Deepening the under­standing of the real disagreement through the analysis of religious beliefs doctrines, the hermeneutics of the meaning of a particular religious practice and the justifica­tion of her beliefs through arguments does not exhaust the criteria for assessing a given aspect of religion. Other criteria for evaluating religious beliefs and prac­tices also include logical consistency, the coherence of an overall set of religious understanding and consistency with scientific, humanistic and philosophical under­standing and knowledge as well as existential plausibility and giving a reasonable

answer to fundamental human questions, especially those arousing within an indi­vidual’s life experience, and within the understanding of the meaning of her individ­ual life and fate achieved [Meister, p. 38‒41].

However, it is necessary to emphasize three crucial differences between a philosopher of religion and a believer of a given faith. A philosopher of religion can study the value of a given religion as a whole and a particular proposition that comes into play, and it will not be a problem for her when she concludes that a given fragment of religion is devoid of cognitive value. It is different in the case of a devotee. This is because beliefs that fulfill worldview functions are passed down as the specific whole and undermining a fragment of a given religion some­how casts suspicion on the entire religious tradition. Different religions will “react” differently in such situations, and religions which seem to be more rational will be able to be modified in the light of philosophical inquiries or the results of scientific research [Pepliński, 2013, p. 65‒69].

The second difference arises from a fact related to the previous one, namely when the believer evaluates given religion, also regarding its theoretical dimension, she considers the whole religion. She does not examine only a particular fragment of religion, for example, the belief in the factuality of the occurrence of a specific miracle, such as the transformation of water into wine or the value of view that ev­erything, every being and good is contingent and related to suffering. Therefore, even if she encounters some theoretical difficulties related to a particular aspect of her religion, in her evaluation, she takes into account its total ‘explanatory/interpre­tative’ power. The comparison of this aspect of competing worldviews requires much life experience, knowledge of different religions, and time. It is very difficult to properly assess the rationality of accepting such a given set of religious beliefs at a given moment. Instead, a more significant role should be attributed to the rational­ity of actions aimed at changing the state of knowledge and increasing the spiritual understanding of man in the light of various competing philosophies and religions.

The third difference between an ordinary interpreter of a given religion and a follower lies in the fact that the acceptance/rejection of a given religious statement (or its interpretation) does not depend solely on its epistemic function, but also on the practical tasks that it performs in the religion of a given believer. In other words, the rationality of her position may be limited due to the interference of non-epis­temic functions.

If a devotee of a religion wishes to react to the conscious fact of religious dis­agreement rationally, she should proceed just as it was suggested. She should search for new argumentation, undermining and strengthening the current one, both for and against her position. This requires deepening the understanding of one’s own reli­gious tradition and deepening the understanding of competing ones. One can ratio­nally stick to one’s views, as long as one is still inquiring about the truth of one’s own and different positions. It can be complicated, and probably reaching an abso­lute epistemological certainty and security is not available to us. However, the ratio­nality of an attitude that accepts a particular religion does not require absolute cer­tainty, but only occupying a critical attitude of open-mindedness, and seeking a new, fuller, better-justified understanding, including understanding different reli­gious perspectives.

We should strive to change our uncertain epistemic situation by following the principle that reasons and evidence should determine what we believe. However, we should not restrict the set of possible reasons and evidence to only philosophical or scientific kind. There is a place for personal experience as well as theological knowledge, too. An issue that requires in-depth discussion is the weight that should be attributed to the various types of evidence used to solve this kind of discord7.

References

Alston, W. Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993.

Alston, W. Religion, in Borchert, D. (ed.) Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2nd ed. Thomson Gale, Macmillan Reference, 2006, vol. 8, pp. 366‒383.

Bocheński J.M. The Logic of Religion. NY: New York University Press, 1965.

Bronk, A. Podstawy nauk o religii [The Foundations of Sciences of Religion]. Lublin: To­warzystwo Naukowe Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego, 2003. (In Polish)

Dormandy, K. Resolving Religious Disagreements: Evidence and Bias, Faith and Philoso­phy, 2018, vol. 35, no. 1, pp. 56‒83.

Gellman, J. Religious Diversity and the Epistemic Justification of Religious Belief, Faith and Philosophy, 1993, vol. 10, no. 3, pp. 345‒364.

Hadot, P. Philosophy as a Way of Life. Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault, edited with an Introduction by Arnold I. Davidson, translated by Michael Chase, Oxford/Cambridge, Massachusetts, Basil Blackwell, 1995.

King, N.L. Religious Diversity and Its Challenges to Religious Belief. Philosophy Compass, 2008, vol. 3, no. 4, pp. 830‒853.

Kraft, J. The Epistemology of Religious Disagreement: A Better Understanding, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.

Lackey, J. Taking Religious Disagreement Seriously, in Laura Frances Callahan and Timothy O’Connor (eds.), Religious Faith and Intellectual Virtue (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014): 299‒316.

Meister Ch.V. Introducing Philosophy of Religion, NY: Routledge, 2009.

Pepliński, M. Ani racjonalizacja swiatopoglądu, ani rezygnacja z mądrości. Czy metafilo­zofia Kazimierza Twardowskiego może być wyznacznikiem rzetelnie uprawianej filozofii klasy­cznej? [Neither the rationalization of the worldview nor the resignation from wisdom. Can Ka­zimierz Twardowski’s meta-philosophy be the determinant of reliably practiced classical philoso­phy?] Filo-Sofija, 2018, vol. 18.40, pp. 41‒78. (In Polish)

Pepliński, M. Wartości epistemiczne wiary w świetle Logiki religii Józefa Marii Bocheń­skiego. Filo-Sofija, 2013, vol. 13, 2, pp. 53‒70. (In Polish)

Pittard, J. Religious Disagreement. Available at: https://www.iep.utm.edu/rel-disa/ (accessed – 17.11.2018)

Plantinga, A. Warranted Christian Belief, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Swinburne, R. Faith and Reason. NY: Oxford University Press, 1984.

Waardenburg, J. Religionen und Religion. Systematische Einfṻhrung in die Religionswis­senschaft. Berlin, 1986.

Jacek Wojtysiak

The problem

In this essay1, I examine the situation of a person who believes that, in the language of J.L. Schellenberg, ‘there is a reality ultimate in three ways: in the nature of things (metaphysically), in inherent value (axiologically), and its importance for our life (soteriologically)’ [Schellenberg, 2015, p. 18]. The awareness of the existence of such a reality – let us call it the Ultimate Reality – entails the need (if not obliga­tion) to relate to it intentionally or (if it has a personal character) to come into con­tact with it on both sides. Such a relationship or contact is called religion. The per­son in question is therefore a religious person. However, a religious person faces the fact that there are many religions. This fact gives rise to a problem in the way of how religion should be understood and practiced. This problem can be solved in one of the following ways:

(1) either one particular religion is seriously accepted, practiced, and recog­nized as at least having some relevant ‘superiority’ over other religions;

(2) either you accept the main message common to many religions, practicing selectively different religions (within a religious ‘mix’), or practicing one of them, but in a neutral manner without being convinced of its essential superiority;

(3) or a new religion is (individually or collectively) constructed and practiced.

If a religious person is rational, then

– in the case of (1) he or she should have clear and well-founded criteria for the choice of religion;

– in the case of (3) he or she should have such criteria in relation to the con­struction of a new religion;

– in the case of (2) he or she should justify its belief with respect to the relative value of the existing (and taken into account) religions, which also requires the exi­stence of appropriate criteria for their evaluation; moreover, even if such a person is a religious pluralist, he has to consider which religion is the best way to the Ulti­mate Reality given the contemporary conditions of his or her life.

Criteria

As you can see, in all cases, a person who is both rational and religious should have criteria for selection, assessment (evaluation), or construction of his religion. Let us generally call these criteria standards of religious rationality. I believe that the following criteria should be included in this set:

(i) internal and external coherence: a good religion (or, strictly speaking, its doctrinal content) cannot imply contradictions and should be coherent with our most comprehensive knowledge of the world;

(ii) empirical confirmation: a good religion should be confirmed by data of reli­gious experiences;

(iii) credible justification or testimony: a good religion should be supported by some evidence or reliable epistemic authorities;

(iv) existential usefulness: a good religion should provide some crucial benefits for individual and social human life, e.g. motivation for moral and creative action, help in suffering, etc;

(v) universality: a good religion should be accessible and acceptable for all people or, if it is a part of history, should continue or anticipate other religions.

All these criteria have their origins in our ordinary, especially scientific, cognit­ive practices. For I believe that religious rationality is a special case of rationality in general. Therefore:

(i’) since we require our beliefs (on various matters) to be internally and ex­ternally coherent, we should also require coherence in relation to religious beliefs;

(ii’) since we expect our beliefs to be consistent with experience, and since ex­perimentation is an important factor in choosing between competitive scientific theo­ries, we should confront religious beliefs with the data of their specific experience, which is religious experience;

(iii’) since we treat the lack of credible justification as an epistemic flaw, we should also justify religious beliefs, remembering, of course, about the specificity of their justification: as religious beliefs are very often testimonial in nature, their jus­tification will have to refer to reliable epistemic authorities;

(iv’) since pragmatic factors (especially when other factors are not decisive) are also taken into account in the evaluation of beliefs and theories, we should take into account their specific existential usefulness in the evaluation of religions;

(v’) since we consider intersubjectivity or universality as (at least) a necessary condition or component of rationality, it should be the same with religion: a religion whose message cannot be (neither directly nor indirectly) accessible to all people cannot be a good religion.

Applications

Let us now try to apply the above criteria to the assessment of religions we know. For the sake of simplicity, let us limit ourselves to the great historical reli­gions, which are still seriously believed by large groups of people (Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam), and ignore their internal diversity. Let us also consider the religious proposal (2) and (3). In a sense, they constitute the two sides of one phenomenon: for today it is difficult to construct a new type of religion (3) without reference to the existing religions; in turn, a pluralistic religion of type (2) cannot function otherwise than as a creative reconstruction or reinterpretation of historical religions. I will continue to call the proposal (2)–(3) Meta-religion, essen­tially without entering into the consideration of its actual or possible concretiza­tions.

As for the first criterion – the criterion of coherence – the doctrine of each great historical religion can be interpreted in such a way as to avoid internal contradic­tion. Similarly, assuming the complementarity of science and faith and accepting the epistemic limitations of the first and possible modifications of the second, each of these doctrines can be made coherent in relation to the scientific image of

the world. The situation is worse regarding the coherence between religion and metaphysical knowledge. The multitude of competing views or metaphysical sys­tems means that particular religions can only be in agreement with some of them. The discrepancy between religions, therefore, interplays with discrepancies between metaphysicists or ontologists.

This fact can be the basis for an argument in favour of Meta-religion: since there is a widespread metaphysical-religious disagreement, it is best to opt for a Meta-religion that would reduce the set of competing statements. However, seri­ous doubts can be raised as to whether a religion free of metaphysical statements or assumptions is possible2. Moreover, since the disagreement between beliefs does not automatically imply the falsity of any of them, limiting oneself to a neutral Meta-religious view carries the risk of overlooking a religion which contains a wealth of true content.

As for the second criterion – the criterion of empirical confirmation – it must be stressed that all great historical religions fulfil it to a high degree. Each religion has a developed mystical tradition, created by people who somehow experience re­ligious phenomena, both common (for many religions) and specific (for a given re­ligion). Mystical experiences, which, in some way, confirm certain religious doc­trines, have not only been ‘documented’, but also examined by epistemological analyses showing their epistemic reliability [see, for example: Alston, 1991].

It should be remembered, however, that the main weakness of religious experi­ence is its containment of a strong interpretive factor – a stronger one than in the case of the theoretical factor in the empirical data of science. As a con­sequence, the results of this experience, carried out in the context of different reli­gious traditions, differ significantly from each other. In such a situation, the empi­rical criterion – although it indicates a certain cognitive value of religion – is not distinctive when it comes to the comparative assessment of religions. This fact may, as before, speak in favour of Meta-religion, which could focus on a common layer between the content of religious experiences of different traditions. Again, however, it is questionable whether it is possible to experience or isolate only this common layer. One may also ask whether such a procedure will not lead to the omission of some important specific content present in the religious experience of a particular tradition.

The third criterion – the criterion of credible justification or testimony – ap­pears to be more distinctive. Religious beliefs can be justified by reference to meta­physics; however, as I pointed out, this path has become entangled in the problem of disagreement between metaphysical positions. In this case, it is better to base the justification for religious beliefs on the credibility of the relevant religious autho­rities. A credible religious authority is an authority such that we have serious reason to believe it to be particularly connected with the Ultimate Reality. Again, reasons referring to the knowledge or wisdom of authority require its assessment from the point of view of the adopted (but debatable) metaphysical assumptions. It is different with reasons such as the uniqueness of authority in terms of power and

goodness. Indeed, all historical religions attribute such uniqueness to their founders or key figures. However, as R. Swinburne says, ‘none of the great religions can make any serious claim on the basis of particular historical evidence for the truth of their purported revelations, apart from the Christian religion’ [Swinburne, 2010, p. 112]. Let us add that this is because the source Christian writings, attesting to the uniqueness of its Founder, have six features that no other holy book of historical religions has in common:

– firstly, these writings include information about the sanctity, Divine self-awareness, numerous miracles, and resurrection of the Founder;

– secondly, they refer to a substantial number of witnesses of these founding events or states;

– thirdly, they are the work of many authors who had known these witnesses;

– fourthly, they were written several dozen years after the earthly life of the Founder (and in this case, the distance, as for ancient texts, is very small);

– fifthly, they concern events and people whose historical context (due to the relative proximity to our times and the number of historical sources) is available to us or quite well known;

– sixthly, the content of these writings had been spreading for a longer time without the use of violence or even against the risk of repression.

Of course, it is possible to discuss, and it has been discussed (from the point of view of contemporary standards of credibility), to what extent Christian writings are credible and whether this degree is sufficient. The fact is, nonetheless, that credibil­ity is higher than in the case of other religions’ writings, and the followers of Meta-religion do not attribute to their authorities such a position as historical religions do to their founders. Christianity, therefore, has an advantage both over historical reli­gions and Meta-religion in the aspect of credibility.

Some may say that at least some of the abovementioned features can be ex­plained by accidental historical circumstances. One could argue, for example, that Jesus of Nazareth was born in a historical-cultural context which enabled more reli­able information about him to reach us. This fact weakens the importance of the reasons invoked here, although it does not call them into question. After all, ran­domness of evidence does not mean that it is missing.

To sum up the analysis of the application of third criterion, we can say that Christianity meets the criterion of credibility more adequately than other religions. This does not mean, however, that other religions are completely incredible. Their doctrines are simply dominated by statements which (due to their nature) are not subject to historical verification or which (due to their distance in time) are very dif­ficult to verify.

Let us come to the fourth criterion – the criterion of existential usefulness. It is not easy to apply it to religions for at least two reasons. First of all, the diversity of human personalities and cultures created by people suggests that, for different people, different factors may appear as valuable and helpful in life. Secondly, theo­logies of great historical religions include or can be characterized by plasticity, which allows for the interpretation of official doctrines in appropriation to the con­temporary needs of people. In such a situation, any historical religion and Meta-reli­gion can be considered potentially existentially useful. The advantage of the latter is

its almost unlimited malleability. This advantage, however, from another point of view, appears to be a disadvantage: a religion that offers everything according to our preferences does not really offer anything immutable. Moreover, a religion in which we invent the way of salvation cannot be ‘good news’ for us insofar as being a way that is really given to us. It is from religion that we expect we will not solely rely on ourselves. We seek a serious impulse that comes not from us, but from the Ultimate Reality. In this respect, Meta-religion certainly gives way in favour of historical religions.

As far as the last criterion is concerned – the criterion of universality – every religion faces an obstacle with literal fulfilment. For every religion (even Hinduism, which is probably the oldest of the aforementioned religions) is (due to its historical and geographical limitations) inaccessible to some groups of people. This also con­cerns Meta-religion, which is only formally a religion for everyone. In fact, Meta-religion is the religion of an elite group of people who are able to distance them­selves from the historical religions of their milieu.

The situation is different if we interpret the criterion of universality more libe­rally. In this case, we can say that certain crucial contents of a given religion are an­ticipated or repeated in other religions. This interpretation is made possible by the historical-content links between Hinduism and Buddhism and between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, as well as between various forms of Meta-religion and his­torical religions. Due to these links, almost every religion can be treated as univer­sal. The only question at issue is which religion should be taken as a point of refe­rence for the others.

Results

It is hard to expect that the application of the criteria discussed here will lead to unambiguous results. Certainly, however, this application allows us to draw some conclusions helpful for further searches. Here are some of them:

1. In light of the criteria of coherence, empirical confirmation, and existential usefulness, all religions appear to be (more or less) equally legitimate. Only by adding appropriate metaphysical and/or existential-axiological (and perhaps also epistemological) assumptions can we compare religions and find more helpful in­dicators for the rational choice of a religion3.

2. In a restrictive interpretation, the criterion of universality cannot be fulfilled by any religion, while, in a liberal interpretation, it is fulfilled by all historical religions and Meta-religion. As we can see, the criterion of universality also does not allow for an evaluative comparison of religions. However, it provides an important clue for the choice of religion: a good religion should retain some links with other religions.

3. The criterion of credible justification or testimony – or simply, the criterion of credibility – allows a higher epistemic value to be attributed to Christianity. However, this superiority is weakened by the hypothesis that our fairly good know­ledge of the origins of Christianity is the result of a historical coincidence or that such knowledge is not sufficient to accepting the (revelatory and salvific) claims of Christianity.

The above conclusions entitle searches in the two opposite directions prevalent in contemporary philosophy of religion. The first is related to the approach repre­sented by the pluralistic-sceptical Meta-religion, according to which each historical religion is more or less an equally good – though culturally limited and relative – response to the Ultimate Reality. On the other hand, the second approach attributes a distinguished position to Christianity. Such a choice is justified by the fact that Christianity (as opposed to other religions) best meets the criterion of credibility, and also best fits the image outlined by the (recognized as true) metaphysics of per­sonal theism and the axiology of sacrificial love4.

The above analyses have also shown that Meta-religion does not have any signi­ficant advantage over historical religions. What is more, it turns out that there are doubts as to the possibility of a reliable realisation of its project5. In particular, this impossibility is most evident when Meta-religion is confronted with the criterion of existential usefulness: a constructed religion does not contain the notion of reciproca­tion from the Ultimate Reality. Yes, every religion can be treated as a relative and subjective response to this Reality. But can the reality actually be ultimate in the axi­ological and soteriological sense if it does not reveal itself to us and if it does not do anything for us? If the Ultimate Reality is, in Schellenberg’s language, ‘the deepest possible value’ and a guarantee of‘the ultimate or deepest human good’ [Schellenberg, 2015, p. 19‒20], it must communicate with us coherently and clearly. It cannot, there­fore, remain silent or communicate in an unclear or vague way. According to the plur­alist-sceptical Meta-religion or its consequences, however, the Ultimate Reality com­municates only in such a way. In fact, adherents of Meta-religion implicitly admit, simply, that God is silent. But ‘if God were silent, we would be left to our own re­sources […] there would be little hope of salvation’ [Davis, 2009, p. 31‒32].

As you can see, the pluralist-sceptical Meta-religion has its drawbacks, and is fed mainly on the fact of disagreement between religions. However, this fact is not enough to undermine the revelatory claims of a given religion. After all, ‘it is not disagreement alone that leads us to think that you are unreliable’ [Murray, Rea, 2008, p. 118] or that your religion is incredible. In other words, ‘deeply rooted dis­agreement by itself does not entail that there is no single perspective more likely to be true than others, or that all religious perspectives have roughly the same epistemic support’ [Netland, 2007, p. 235]. What, then, is the essential

factor undermining the approach called particularism – an approach according to which a particular religion (let us say: Christianity) includes privileged revelation of the Ultimate Reality?

Schellenberg-Hick’s Pliers

In a loose reference to J. Schellenberg’s hiddenness argument and J. Hick’s pluralistic hypothesis, I would call the factor in question Schellenberg-Hick’s Pliers (or dilemma). I propose its presentation as follows:

(1) ‘If [the Christian] God exists, then for any capable finite person S and time t, [the Christian] God is at t open to being in a personal [i.e. positively meaningful and conscious] relationship with S at t’ [Schellenberg’s Principle [Schellenberg, 2015, p. 130]].

(2) There is at least one person S and (much more than one) time t such that, due to the lack of real access to the Christian revelation, S in t is not in a personal relationship with the Christian God. [Empirical data]

(3) The Christian God does not exist. [1, 2 by Modus Tollens]

But if you do not agree with (3), you must say:

(4) The Ultimate Reality is in itself ‘ineffable, transcategorial – beyond the range of our human categories of thought’, though in relation to us can be experienced in different ways [Hick’s Principle [Hick, 2007, p. 220]].

(5) ‘In relation to us the [Ultimate] Real is experienced in our human terms as [among others] the good and loving persona of the Real […]’ [Empirical data [Hick, 2007, p. 220]].

(6) The Christian God exists as one of the possible (and culturally relative) modes of experiencing the Ultimate Reality for us, though he does not exist in itself [4, 5 by Instantiation].

In sum, a Christian particularist, when he wants to avoid Schelleneberg’s objec­tion of the inaccessibility of the Christian God for some people, must become (Christianly coloured, at most) a pluralist in Hick’s sense. However, if he wants to avoid this consequence, he again falls into Schellenberg’s objection. This, in turn, allows him to be, at most, a sceptical or pluralistic ultimist. As a result, a Christian particularist falls into the pliers.

Can a Christian particularist defend himself against Schellenberg-Hick’s pliers? The following lines of defence can be found in literature:

(M) Molinism: ‘God in his providence has so arranged the world that those who would respond to the gospel [i.e. the Christian revelation] if they heard it, do hear it. […] Those who […] never hear the gospel would not respond to it if they did hear it. Hence, no one is lost because of historical and geographical accident. Any­one who wants or even would want to be saved will be saved’ [Moreland, Craig, 2003, p. 624].

(SS) Special solution: The Christian God reveals or will reveal himself to those who do not know Christian revelation in a special way: for example, through ex­traordinary individual visions, at the moment of death or shortly after it.

(A) Agnosticism or sceptical theism applied to the problem of inaccessibility: we do not know how a Christian God can be open to a personal relationship with those who cannot know the Christian revelation or recognize its epistemic and salvific value; nor do we know whether people who are beyond the reach of this revelation enter or will enter into this relationship; but we know that an omnipo­tent and merciful God can do good things, regarding which we do not know whether or how he does them [Cf. Okholm, Phillips, 1995, p. 20‒23; otherwise Salamon, 2017, p. 122‒123].

(I) Inclusivism: The Christian God, through the ‘seeds of truth’ present in different religions and cultures, reveals himself to every human being, inviting him or her to a personal relationship; however, the fact is that the fullness of revelation and the ultimate source of salvation lies in Christianity.

Note that the solution (M), though sophisticated, engages in rather risky or ex­travagant metaphysics. The solution (SS) is an ad hoc option. The solution (A), on the other hand, carries all the difficulties of sceptical theism, and, in fact, admits that there is no solution from a human perspective. On the other hand, the solu­tion (I), although the most intuitive, still suggests an advantage for Christians (or people living within the real reach of Christian revelation) in terms of the pos­sibility of access to God.

Conclusion: Christian pluralism?

In this situation, I would propose a fifth solution that goes one step beyond the typical inclusivism. It would consist of the reinterpretation of data (2) and (5). According to it, all people can experience a personal relationship with the Christian God within the framework of their religions. In fact, all religions (including non-Christian religions) probably contain Christian themes or motifs (e.g. the motif of sacrificial love or the motif of Divine solidarity with people) to such an extent that it is possible for non-Christians to enter into such a relationship. These motifs make present – through various forms of anticipation or repetition – the founding Chris­tian events for everyone. In this way, all people have equal access to them. The dis­tinguished position is achieved, at most, by Christian theologians, who have the best point of reference in building the theory of relations between God and people. As a result of inter-religious exchange of opinions, however, this point could appear to be distinguished only historically, but not in terms of content6.

My solution could be a working hypothesis in comparative studies of religions. It could also contribute to inter-religious dialogue, in which each side would appre­ciate the multiplicity of religions while maintaining its own specificity. It could also be an intermediate path between pluralist Meta-religion and exclusivist Christian particularism. Since it goes further than typical Christian inclusivism, I would call it radical Christian inclusivism or even Christian pluralism. Pluralism here does not mean the relativization of the Christian revelation (as a special revelation), but

its multiple expressions and reliable availability in various religions. Just as the Eucharistic signs make available the salvific sacrifice of Christ and the love of God the Father, so – in some analogous (though not the same) way – their mystery (i.e. Christian mystery) could also be universally made available by the signs of other (non-Christian) religions. They only need to be interpreted accordingly, in a (implicitly or explicitly) Christian way.

Someone may object that a theologian of any religion could apply the method of radical inclusivism or qualified pluralism to his own religion. This, in turn, could lead (again) to incoherent pluralism, although at a higher level – to the ‘pluralism of pluralisms’: Christian, Buddhist, Islamic, and so on. Let us note, however, that such a situation would mean an important progress in inter-religious dialogue: all sides of this dialogue would understand that they are not religious rivals but relatives. Moreover, each side could be interpreted positively by the other in the language of its own tradition. Perhaps this dialogue could lead to the common belief that all great religions basically speak of the same, and such the same is something more than (Hick’s) ‘the ultimate transcategorial Real’. In such an approach, the dispute over whether to call this something more Christian, Buddhist, Islamic etc. loses greater significance, without diminishing the importance of the Christian message7.

The proposed solution is only a tentative project of further research or more concrete action rather than a closed position. It remains an open question whether this project – too particularistic for some and too pluralistic for others – has a theo­retical and practical chance of success.

References

Alston, W.P. Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience. Ithaca – London: Cornell University Press, 1991.

Davis, S.T. “Revelation and Inspiration”, in: The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Theo­logy. Eds. by Th.P. Flint and M.C. Rea. Oxford; NY: Oxford University Press. 2009, pp. 30‒53.

Geivett, R.D., and Phillips, W.G. “A Particularist View: an Evidentialist Approach”, in: Four Views on Salvation in a Pluralistic World. Eds. by D.L. Okholm and T.R. Phillips. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House. 1995, pp. 211‒245.

Hick, J. “Religious Pluralism”, in: The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Religion. Eds. by C. Meister and P. Copan. London; NY: Routledge. 2007, pp. 216‒225.

Judycki, S. How Do We Recognize God? The Most Important Epistemological Question of Christian Philosophy, European Journal for Philosophy of Religion. 2018, vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 117‒128.

McNabb, T.D. Religious Epistemology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019.

Moreland, J.P., and Craig, W.L. Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview. Down­ers Grove: IVP Academic, 2003.

Murray, M.J., and Rea, M.C. An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

Netland, H.A. “Inclusivism and Exclusivism”, in: The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Religion. Eds. by C. Meister and P. Copan. London; NY: Routledge, 2007, pp. 226‒236.

Okholm, D.L., and Phillips T.R. “Introduction”, in: Four Views on Salvation in a Pluralistic World. Eds. by D.L. Okholm and T.R. Phillips. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1995, pp. 7‒26.

Salamon, J. In Defence of Agatheism: Clarifying a Good-Centred Interpretation of Religious Pluralism, European Journal for Philosophy of Religion. 2017, vol. 9, no. 3, pp. 115‒138.

Schellenberg, J.L. The Hiddenness Argument: Philosophy’s New Challenge to Belief in God. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2015.

Swinburne, R. Is There a God? Oxford: Oxford University Press (revised edition). 2010.

Swinburne, R. Was Jesus God? Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.

Wojtysiak, J. “Do We Have the Epistemic Right to Believe in Jesus? An Epistemological Analysis of Some Arguments for Credibility of Christianity”, in: The Right to Believe: Perspec­tives in Religious Epistemology. Eds. by D. Łukasiewicz and R. Pouivet. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag. 2012, pp. 103‒113.

Roger Pouivet

Introduction

Some philosophers claim to show that religious diversity should lead rational beings to find some conciliation between them. They say that diversity should mean that no one could pretend to hold the truth. We must therefore renounce alethic exclusivism, the claim that a certain religion possesses by itself the truth. This en­courages religious scepticism, because when well-informed and reasonable people disagree about their religious or anti-religious beliefs, their confidence in the justifi­cation of their beliefs must be reduced or diminished – even if that belief were true – to the point that these people are intellectually reconciled. Let us call this claim the Principle of Intellectual Conciliation.

According to this Principle, conciliation between believers of the various reli­gions would thus be a requirement of intellectual ethics. To follow this principle makes us intellectually honest. We do not preserve beliefs (including religious ones) against our right to have them. The contrary is the culpable intellectual arrogance of those who claim to be right against people who disagree with them, but are as well informed and reasonable as they are. To follow the Principle of Intellectual Conci­liation would also be an assurance of civil peace in our multicultural societies. It helps to ensure harmonious coexistence between believers and unbelievers, and between believers of different religions. If there is conciliation, there is peace! Thus, the two ideals of an honest intellectual life and of social peace would imply a drastic reduction of confidence in the justification of our religious beliefs or of our anti-religious beliefs.

Yet my intention is to challenge the Principle of Intellectual Conciliation1. I will first claim that it is not a sound principle of intellectual ethics. For that, I will first show that if this Principle claims to sceptically conclude to the plurality of reli­gions, it is, in reality, a reasoning from a sceptical dogma, and not only a reasoning that leads to scepticism. I mean that it is a hidden atheistic argument disguised as an honest neutral reasoning. As it calls for an ethical requirement of rationality, without being then so transparent that it seems, it is important to show that this Principle borders on deception. I am secondly going to show that, even if one ac­cepts the argument as it is, the Principle has serious flaws, especially with regard to the philosophical psychology of religious faith.

The principle of conciliation
as a reformulation of Agrippa’s first mode

To explain what is (perhaps secretly) the Principle of Intellectual Conciliation, consider the following reasoning:

1. X believes that p.

2. Y believes that q.

3. p and q are apparently incompatible2.

4. If X was in Y's situation, it is very likely that X would believe q, and that he would think p is wrong3.

5. If Y was in X's situation, it is very likely that Y would believe that p, and that he would think q is false.

6. It is intellectually compulsory to doubt p and q.

Such an argument asserts that if p and q are incompatible religious beliefs (or that p is a religious belief and q an anti-religious belief), then one is necessarily led to doubt about p and q. In this argument, (4) and (5) correspond to the Principle of Intellectual Conciliation. It is an argument from religious disagreement to reli­gious scepticism for equally intelligent people, of good faith and intellectually hon­est. (Exactly the kind of people we are, of course).

Consequently, it is hardly surprising that the previous argument has a sceptical conclusion, since it is an application to religious belief of one of the five modes of Agrippa, as described by Sextus Empiricus in the Outlines of Pyrrhonism [Sextus Empiricus, 2000, p. 40‒41]. Yet, these modes of Agrippa are indeed much formula­tions of scepticism than arguments in favour of scepticism.

The first mode of Agrippa, and the main one, is precisely the disagreement of opinions. It has this structure:

(A) S1 believes that p.

(B) S2 believes that not p.

(C) At most, one of them is right.

(D) The disagreement between S1 and S2 cannot be resolved.

(E) We must suspend judgment on p.

It is the disagreement itself that is supposed to induce the suspension of judg­ment. Assume that (D) is disputed, that is, that the disagreement cannot be resolved. Then, to justify p or not p, it would be necessary to give in favour of one or the other a reason r1. But it can in turn be challenged, according to the same argument as the previous one. Then another reason r2 is needed. But the argument applied to r1 applies also to r2, and another reason r3 is needed. Hence, there is an infinite regres­sion (second mode of Agrippa). The reason proposed will ultimately remain relative to the one who gives it (third mode); or it is hardly a hypothesis (fourth mode); or else it supposes other reasons which are, taken together, circular (fifth mode), because one of them, the first, serves to found others of which one is used to found the first – which takes us around and around in circles. Therefore, the disagreement, that is to say (D), subsists. Finally we should then suspend the judgment (E).

Whoever uses the logical form of Agrippa’s first mode to reason about the di­versity of religions knows very well what will happen: he will conclude sceptically. It is with any disagreement we come to this conclusion: it is not at all peculiar to re­ligious disagreements, but to disagreements in general. And it makes no doubt that the initial argument about religious disagreements at the beginning of this paper is simply a reformulation of Agrippa’s first mode with religious premises simply added. (4) specifies (D): it gives a reason why some disagreement about religious beliefs cannot be resolved. This reason is presented as the epistemic substitutability of the opponents. If X, a Christian, was in the intellectual position of Y, a Muslim, it is very likely that X would not believe that God is one and triune, and that X would even think that it is false. (A person’s intellectual situation refers to the con­text of his belief). The argument is not deterministic: it does not signify that the so­cial context of belief directly determines belief. The argument claims simply the complete epistemic substitutability of X, a Christian, and Y, a Muslim. This substi­tutability leads to the relativity of beliefs and it encourages the suspension of such beliefs. And this argument has an ethical meaning: the one who understands the ar­gument cannot maintain a right to believe against other’s beliefs.

It seems to me that using such a reasoning to conclude sceptically about reli­gious beliefs is like to ask a fox to take care of the hens: if you formulate this way the problem of religious disagreement, you already know what will result. You don’t conclude in favour of religious scepticism from apparently non-sceptical premises, because this way to reason makes you already a latent sceptic. How con­vincing is it to use a typically sceptical argument to defend a sceptical religious con­clusion? And then, how to believe that religious scepticism has been promoted in such an argument otherwise than by presupposing it in the choice of such an ar­gument form? If the disagreements were about the good taste of a Bordeaux wine, or about the choice of Prague as a vacation destination, with the same kind of scep­tical argument, the conclusion would also be sceptical!

My intention now is to show that, in the case of religious beliefs4, resort to this sceptical argument is simply a way of disguising a sophism that is contained in the premises (4) and (5). This sophism is located in the Principle of Intellectual Concili­ation itself.

The true nature of religious belief

In a disagreement about the truth of a proposition p, it is said by the conciliationists, if there is an epistemic symmetry between the protagonists, they are irrational in main­taining their belief that p or their belief that not p; or, at least, they are irrational if they do not loose their trust in the truth of p or not p; or even if they do not suspend their be­liefs that p or not p. The epistemic symmetry supposes that each of the protagonists pos­sesses the same data (evidences), and the same capacities; none of them is intellectu­ally limited, of bad faith, debauched, malicious, dishonest, and so on. There is this way

an intellectual parity between them. What must be recognized in (4) is this parity: nei­ther is better placed than the other to know if p is right or if q (not p) is right.

Thus, conciliationists say that it would be irrational not to be conciliatory in a reli­gious disagreement between peers. That is to say, it would be irrational not to suspend one’s belief, for example, the belief in the Trinity or, on the contrary, the belief in unitari­anism. Disagreement testifies finally to the irrationality of the protagonists, and agree­ment in scepticism is the only way to recover rationality. Irrationality in religious dis­agreement manifests itself in intellectual arrogance: S is intellectually arrogant if he considers that his belief should have to be considered as true even by those who have no way of knowing that it is true. And the diagnosis of arrogance introduces the moral, and in fact immoral, character of the non-concilationist attitude. If you don’t suspend your belief, not only you are irrational, but you also incur intellectual blame.

According to the Principle of Intellectual Conciliation, the protagonists of a religious disagreement all have the same data (evidences), the same capacities, and as already said, none of them is intellectually limited, malicious or dishonest. When a person suspends his belief – following the moral and social requirement of the Principle of Intellectual Con­ciliation – he looks at this belief according to what he shares (data, abilities) with those who do not believe the same as him, or those who, on the same basis, believe something else. This self-examination is a control of his right to believe and it ends with suspension. That means that these data and abilities are absolutely independent of any beliefs. And it means also that such beliefs would not themselves be involved in these data and abilities. To believe is to assent; but assent is not included in data and abilities themselves. Assent is added to them, but in an illegitimate way as soon as an epistemic pair challenges the belief (on the same bases, that is, data and abilities).

But is it true that to believe is to assent on the basis of data (what is the belief about) and certain dispositions whose belief results? The question arises in general. But here I only want to ask it for the case of religious beliefs such, for example, as belief in the Trinity.

Can we describe things this way?

1. Epistemic peers share data and abilities, and they recognize one another as possessing them.

2. A person believes in the Trinity.

3. He meets an epistemic peer who does not believe in the Trinity.

4. He gives up his belief.

I strongly doubt this scenario, which seems to be much prepared for the philo­sophical classroom. (I have much more doubt about this scenario than about the Tri­nity!) I doubt also this scenario because to believe in the Trinity is to believe that with­out the Trinity one would not believe in it. Then, if I meet an epistemic peer who disagrees with me (and I know a lot of them, some of them are even good friends and persons I consider to be more clever than me5), I consider that it is he, my supposed epistemic peer, who has a problem, not me who must put me to doubt.

I do not deny that we can find ourselves in a situation where epistemic parity (and the epistemic substitutability that follows) justifies the respect of the Principle

of Intellectual Conciliation. An example that is often found in the literature on this Principle is as follows. Two friends often go out to dinner together at the restaurant. They must calculate the tip of 20% (we obviously are in the United States!) before sharing the bill. The two friends have been doing this for years and most of the time they have agreed on how much each one has to pay. But, this time, one of them an­nounces $ 45 and the other says $ 43. In this case, of course, it seems reasonable that the two suspend their beliefs about what to pay. However, why would it be the same when it comes to the belief in the Trinity? To believe that the addition is $ 45, is to have confidence, even if it is not a complete one, in his own mental calculation from data common with the one who believes that the addition is $ 43. But it is not at all the same in the case of belief in the Trinity!

Perhaps the conciliationist reasoning works also well for the belief that there is milk in the refrigerator: I might be led to give it up when I realize that my wife – to give an example of someone I am tempted to recognize as an incontestable epis­temic peer – believe there is no milk in the refrigerator, contrary to what I thought. But belief in the Trinity does not place us in a similar scenario, simply in another domain. The triviality of the examples given in the books and articles of analytic epistemology is here an obstacle and not an aid to understand what happens in cer­tain cases. When it comes to the Trinity, is it the way things are, and the way they must epistemologically to happen, in order for the belief in the Trinity to be episte­mologically legitimate and a person have the right to believe in the Trinity? My the­sis is that there are in such a situation no neutral data, common to epistemic peers, from which the belief in the Trinity derives. The reason is that no one has a belief in the Trinity as a result of certain observations and dispositions allowing him to judge whether it is appropriate or not to believe in Trinity.

Those who believe in Trinity believe in a revealed Mystery, from which they owe their being, from which they live, and toward which they strive, and not in something that they discover from data and abilities because they reason rightly and are quite clever! They think that the Trinity is the source of their belief in a one and triune God, and not that they arrived themselves to such a belief. No one be­lieves in the Trinity apart from the Trinity itself.

Having faith

My argument, therefore, is that the Principle of Intellectual Conciliation, in a reli­gious context, stands in solidarity with a complete misrepresentation of religious beliefs such as belief in the Trinity. In this misrepresentation, legitimate religious beliefs are conclusions of data and capacities that would be shared by epistemic peers, conclusions to be suspended when they disagree. One of them would per­ceive, while listening to the other, that he does not have the right to believe, for ex­ample in the Trinity, since the other does not believe in it, and that therefore he must stop to believe or suspend one’s belief.

The Principle of Intellectual Conciliation is based on the generalization of a cer­tain epistemic attitude presented as ideal: religious epistemic pairs debate at a sympo­sium of analytical philosophy and examine data and abilities, and if they disagree

they suspend their beliefs (before, finally, everyone is going to dinner)!6 I mean that the Principle of Intellectual Conciliation seems to me to be related to a very narrow and idiosyncratic representation of doxastic life, especially in religious contexts. (I suppose it would be the same in political contexts, or in aesthetic contexts).

Why should we then reason this way? I believe in the Trinity, not him, yet we have the same data and the same abilities. So, I have to suspend my belief. Why should I not think that we have neither the same data nor the same capabilities; that we are not ex­actly substitutable for each other; that we are definitively not epistemic peers? We are not peers because I believe in the Trinity and not he. All I can conclude is that he is a Muslim, a Unitarian, or an unbeliever, and that, for my part, I am not. But in most cases, I knew it from the start. It is reasonable to conclude that the difference between us is not a secondary difference. To be Christian, Muslim, or unbeliever makes a radi­cal epistemic difference – a difference that cannot be suspended at will, only in order not to create disagreement! For to be a Christian or to be a Muslim is not to have a be­lief to which it would be possible to give up, or possible to suspend, simply because of this disagreement between purported epistemic peers. And it is simply not possible either to renounce or suspend it while remaining Christian or remaining Muslim.

What I am saying means that having faith is not about drawing a consequence or conclusion from certain data or abilities. Faith is not an epistemic attitude – a mental state, a mode of consciousness – with multiple contents according to dif­ferent religions. But faith has only one content. That is why it is exclusive. The one who does not have my faith does not have another, with another content, and on the basis of the same data and abilities than mine. The one who does not have my faith has in reality none. When we come to look at faith as a term common to different options, a Jewish faith, a Muslim faith, a Christian faith, etc., according to a pluralistic account of faith, we are actually talking about something other than faith. The one who has faith continues to believe in the Trinity, even if he meets someone who does not share his faith. He did not meet someone who has another faith, but someone who does not have faith – which is not an option, as if having faith was a possibility of the same kind as to like oysters or to prefer holidays by the sea. If the unbeliever is rational, well informed, epistemologically scrupulous, etc., nothing is changed. It is not that the believer psychologically immunizes him­self against the criticism of his beliefs. It is just that having faith is not an epistemic option taken from data common with the unbeliever.

In this sense, we are quite close – as Peter van Inwagen [Inwagen, 2005, espe­cially p. 147] suggests – to what happens when you meet a philosopher who claims that the outside world does not exist. He is competent; he can be very intelligent and have impressive arguments; he can be a quite smart philosopher, writing in the best journals. But you do not think that not believing in the existence of the outside world is an option, except in the philosophical classroom. You do not suspend your belief and you do not decide to give it up! It is not the least irrational not to do it and it is even intellectually perfectly reasonable. It is related to the nature of belief, as it is related to the nature of faith.

Is a doctrinal exclusivist intellectually arrogant and socially intolerant?

This criticism of the Principle of Intellectual Conciliation may be considered intellectually arrogant and also socially disturbing. What can I answer, from my non-pluralistic and even exclusivist account, on these two points?

Arrogance is a moral defect. We are indeed always tempted to use this term in order to qualify an intellectual attitude that displeases us. But the question is how it is defined. For example, the conciliationist will be tempted to define it this way. S is intellectually arrogant if he supposes that his own belief should be held true by anyone, even by those who have no way of knowing that this belief is true. But de­fined this way, arrogance simply follows from the rejection, on the basis of the Prin­ciple of intellectual Conciliation, of religious exclusivism. However, what appears for the conciliationist to be arrogance becomes on the contrary intellectual courage (or strength), and so virtuous, for the religious exclusivist. Such courage is a virtue that opposes two vices. On the one hand, intellectual cowardice, when one is always afraid of one’s own beliefs, to the point of pretending to give up or suspend them as soon as they are disputed. On the other hand, intellectual recklessness, when one is indifferent to any questioning of one’s beliefs. The exclusivist shows confidence in one’s beliefs and the courage to do so, even when he listens to the person who contradicts him.

For one who believes that God is one and triune, and that this belief is one of the most important we can have, whoever thinks the opposite is simply wrong, and this opponent should believe it. Whoever does not have the religious beliefs I have is not necessarily irrational. Often, we understand very well why someone, perfectly rational and clever, does not have the beliefs he should have. For example, that he is living in a context where it is difficult to acquire or to receive these beliefs is a rea­son I can understand quite easily. (Even if it gives not any right to be wrong7.) But understanding that someone does not believe what you believe does not lead to sus­pend or give up your religious beliefs. And if I cannot find a reason, in this case it is for me non understandable why someone does not believe what he should have to believe.

Criticism of the Principle of Intellectual Conciliation appears to imply the “scandal of peculiarity”. It would be morally scandalous to consider that a particular church possesses the true religion, to the exclusion of others. Now, what gets in the way of this scandalous peculiarity is religious pluralism, which then becomes the only acceptable thesis, or religious scepticism, favoured by the conciliationist. It is the only solution to avoid the scandal of peculiarity.

However, this alleged scandal of the peculiarity is paradoxical. On the one hand, pluralism does not escape exclusivism: “‘Religious pluralism’ is not the con­tradiction of religious exclusivism, but one more case of it” [Inwagen, 1997, p. 300] says Peter van Inwagen. Pluralism also defends the idea that a group has the truth, those who defend pluralism! On the other hand, if we talk about scandal, it is be­cause we see in exclusivism something immoral. But exclusivism cannot be re­jected for its immorality to the extent that, if what I said is correct, exclusivism is

logically inherent in certain beliefs, especially in certain religious beliefs. Of course, some would say that all religious beliefs are immoral, by principle. But concilia­tionism, here disputated, is not an argument for this claim.

Generally, to believe something is to believe it is true; and therefore to think that those who believe something else or the opposite are wrong. We cannot believe that p and believe that p is not true8. One can certainly believe that p and think that it might not be true. But as long as it is believed, it is believed as true; and when one doubts a lot or thinks it is false, one does not believe it anymore. To believe in what is doubtful or doubtful or as false is not to believe, but to accept (which is close to simulate belief), or simply to play with ideas. So, if exclusivism was morally scan­dalous, it is every belief, or at least every religious, and also political, philosophical and even scientific belief, that would be morally scandalous (and of course religious pluralism would also be).

To consider intellectually immoral any non suspended belief – especially in the field of religious beliefs – is a confusion between, on the one hand, doctrinal exclu­sivism and, on the other hand, religious exclusivism and soteriological exclusivism. The first means that only one religion is true, and even more precisely that one church tells the truth; the second is the thesis that only one religion is socially ac­ceptable, and that all others must be eliminated in a social community; the third af­firms that salvation depends on the acceptance of only one religious doctrine. The rejection of the Principle of Intellectual Conciliation certainly encourages doc­trinal exclusivism, but such rejection does not imply religious exclusivism and sote­riological exclusivism. Now, the moral and social anxiety about exclusivism is more really about religious exclusivism and soteriological exclusivism. In fact, doctrinal exclusivism has no social consequences. You can think that only your religion is the true one, you hurt nobody! It does not follow from the fact that you are right that believers of other confessions or unbelievers must be hunted and of force converted, and you have not at all to think that they all will go to hell. (You can even have in­dependent reasons to think that they do not risk hell more than you do!)

Conclusion

My conclusion is that it is wrong that we should suspend any religious belief that an alleged epistemic peer does not share as soon as we become aware that he does not share it. It is not true that it is rational in any case to respect the Principle of Intellec­tual Conciliation, and that another attitude would always be irrational and morally disgusting. This principle is sceptical in its premises and not simply in its conclusion; to apply it to religious beliefs is simply to think that such beliefs are irrational or at least quite doubtful. The Principle does not show at all that it is rational or epistemo­logically cautious to suspend religious beliefs but it presupposes it. In addition, the reasoning in the defence of this Principle presupposes also a very inadequate philo­sophical psychology of religious beliefs and faith. It even misrepresents what faith is.

Let’s go back finally to the “political” problem. How can religions coexist in the same society if each of them is doctrinally exclusivist? The question arises, but that is an entirely different question than the one of intellectual ethics, whether we have the intellectual right to be exclusivist in matters of religious faith. It is a question of legal (not epistemic) law, and also, I agree, it is a moral question. How do people who do not share some fundamental beliefs, and even disagree strongly about them, can live together in a single political society? Like everyone else, I re­alize that often cohabitation between those who do not have the same religion is not easy at all – and historically it has never been easy. And this, even if nothing in doc­trinal exclusivism implies religious exclusivism, nor coercive measures against mi­nority religions. I have no solution to propose, but I don’t see why the claim that doctrinal exclusivism is irrational would help to resolve the problem that religious exclusivism create for a common social life between believers of different religions. To pretend to solve this problem by saying that believers are wrong to believe what they believe, simply because they do not agree with each other, and should there­fore give it up, seems absurd to me. The true question is rather to know how people who disagree, and have no epistemological reason and no moral obligation to stop to disagree, can live together. But, my intention was more limited than to resolve this question: I wanted only to show that it is desperate to claim that the solution to the difficult problem of a common life between people who disagree lies in the Principle of Intellectual Conciliation, in the suspension of belief or the renunciation by believers to their beliefs, if it is anyway possible.

References

Inwagen, P. van. “Is God an Unnecessary Hypothesis?”, in: God and the Ethics of Belief. Ed. by A. Dole & A. Chignell. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2005.

Inwagen, P. van. A Reply to Professor Hick, Faith and Philosophy. 1997, vol. 14, no. 3.

Pouivet, R. Épistemologie des croyances religieuses. Paris: Éditions du Cerf. 2013.

Sextus Empiricus. Outlines of Scepticism. Ed. by J. Annas & J. Barnes. Cambridge: Cam­bridge University Press. 2000.

Janusz Salamon

I. Introduction: The problem of doxastic pluralism

The current paper concerns a problem of doxastic pluralism understood here as the diversity of beliefs – paradigmatically axiological beliefs – that of their very na­ture cannot be considered species of knowledge (what Plato would call episteme) and therefore might better be considered species of opinion or conviction (doxa) that may be deeply held, but which in principle cannot be verified or justified in a manner analogical to propositions about the natural world that are tested, veri­fied or justified using scientific methods.

The problem of doxastic pluralism underlies the question of the epistemic sta­tus of claims made in every political, ethical, aesthetic and – as I will argue – reli­gious debate. The diversity of ethical, political, aesthetic and religious beliefs ap­pears to be of altogether different kind than pluralism of scientific hypotheses and theories, because even though plurality and diversity of competing hypotheses and theories in science seems not to go away with the progress of science, there are no agreed standards of settling the disputes in ethics, politics, aesthetics and religion comparable with the standards employed in science. However, ethical, political, aesthetic and religious beliefs are not trivial matter – at least the impact of such be­liefs on the well-being and the survival of humanity on this Planet is arguably no lesser to the claims put forward and defended by scientists. So the challenge to make sense of the doxastic pluralism and to conceptualise in some non-confrona­tional manner the plurality of ethical, political, aesthethic and religious beliefs is of no minor importance. Pointing to one such possible conceptualisation which might be considered plausible is the goal of this paper.

Keeping in mind the inconclusive character of the mainstream epistemological theories of knowledge about facts of the matter about the natural world (what is the case), I suggest that knowledge in any strong sense of the term is in principle not available in the realm of beliefs about values (what ought to be the case, be­cause it is good or right or beautiful or otherwise desirable) to the degree to which such beliefs depend on the irreducibly subjective (first person) recognition of ‘the good’ (to agathon in Greek) that is referred to or pointed to explicitly or impli­citly in the relevant beliefs. For this reason I call all such beliefs – that is ethical, political, aesthetic and also religious beliefs – agathological beliefs and I argue that they are irreducibly plural, which gives rise to the problem of doxastic pluralism (and the underlying ‘agathological pluralism’) which has to be addressed to make any debate between holders of the opposing or just diverse beliefs in these areas ra­tional, reasonable or just meaningful (not devoid of meaning). I also suggest that the typically intersubjective (that is social, rather than solipsistic) nature of such ‘aga­thological beliefs’ (what is believed in virtue of strong conviction by various indi­viduals belonging to certain doxastic communities) does not turn them into objec­tive ‘third person beliefs’ (what is known to a community of practitioners of science using methods that yield public confirmation of claims made about facts of the mat­ter about the natural world).

In what follows I will contrast two possible ways of approaching the challenge of doxastic pluralism on the example of religious beliefs, but hoping to bring out implications for other types of agathological beliefs, including ethical, political and

aesthetic beliefs. There are two reasons why exploring the challenge of doxastic pluralism on the example of religious beliefs seems to me sensible. The first reason is that it so happens that for variety of reasons the problem of doxastic pluralism has been widely discussed by philosophers of religion (and none of them was more in­fluential than John Hick whom I take to the task in this paper). The second reason is that in the case of religious beliefs it is more immediately obvious that agathologi­cal beliefs tend to be related to what I would call ‘metaphysical beliefs’, that is be­liefs about the ultimate nature of reality that are also in principle beyond the grasp of the methodology employed by modern science, therefore cannot be verified of falsified in a way required for knowledge in any strong sense of the term. It is my contention that all agathological beliefs – including ethical, political and aesthetic beliefs – are also always explicitly and implicitly related to the relevant metaphysi­cal beliefs (beliefs about the ultimate human good in the case ethics, fundamental beliefs about the human nature in the case of politics, beliefs about the nature ‘the beautiful’ in the case of aesthetics), however, in the case of religious beliefs the interrelation between the axiological/agathological dimension of the belief structure (beliefs about ‘what ought to be the case’) and the metaphysical dimension of the belief structure (beliefs about ‘what is the ultimate nature of the reality in question’) is most apparent.

It is perhaps the most controversial claim I wish to put forward in this paper, that all metaphysical beliefs of this kind (so perhaps not necessarily all claims made by contemporary philosophers working in the field of metaphysics and discussing questions such as the nature of causality) are ultimately reducible to agathological beliefs. In other words, I suggest that the relation between the axiological/agatho­logical beliefs and the related metaphysical beliefs is not what it appears: it is not the case that the ‘ought’ beliefs are based on the ‘is’ beliefs, but on the contrary, the metaphysical beliefs have agathological justification. And the easiest way to ex­plain this hypothesis I put forward is by attending to religious beliefs. To put it briefly, I suggest that the beliefs about the nature of God, the Absolute or the ulti­mate reality are motivated and explicitly or implicitly justified on the agathological ground: it is believed that God is x (e.g., perfectly good and perfectly knowledge­able), because it is believed that God ought to be x (and this is believed on the agathological grounds: because it is better to be x, than non-x). And what grounds these agathological beliefs themselves? I suggest agathological beliefs have no metaphysical grounding. Agathological beliefs are products of ‘agathological imagination’ and of the reflection on the deliverences of agathological imagination. So what is ‘agathological imagination’? It is this dimension of the faculty of practi­cal reason which is intentionally directed – of no choice of ours – towards the ulti­mate human good and guides our mental activity leading to value judgments by imagining and comparing agathological alternatives as more or less optimal, rela­tive to our sense of the good. Since our directedness towards the good appears to be the fundamental phenomenologically given ‘fact’ about our axiological conscious­ness, it requires postulation of a telos without which the irreducibly teleological character of our axiological consciousness would be unexplainable making impossi­ble analysis of human agency by reference to agents’ reasons. The ultimate good is thus postulated as a transcendental condition of our axiological consciousness. Thus

the belief in the reality of the ultimate good and the beliefs about the specific nature of the ultimate good (to the extent it is at all clearly specified in a particular belief system) is agathologicaly motivated and agathologically justified or agathologically true (so that I will talk about ‘agathological justification’ and ‘agathological verifi­cation’: a belief is considered ‘true’, because of the goodness of the state of affairs the belief implies). Perhaps the most overarching epistemic concept that would cap­ture the distinctiveness of the doxastic practices in the realm of ethics, politics, aes­thetic and religion would ‘agathological rationality’ that will be distinct from and ir­reducible to scientific rationality that guides human reason in the enterprise of discovering the facts of the matter about the natural world.

II. Agatheistic conceptualisation of doxastic pluralism1

In what follows, I will outline briefly my preferred ‘solution’ to the problem of doxastic pluralism on the example of religious doxastic pluralism (with implications for all other types of agathological beliefs), but my more concerted effort will be di­rected at pointing to deficiencies of John Hick’s conceptualisation of doxastic plu­ralism, worked out in detail in his classic An Interpretation of Religion: Human Re­sponses to the Transcendent, as arguably one of the most plausible alternatives to my own proposal.

As already hinted above, my own ‘interpretation of religion’ is an agathological interpretation of religion and I call religion so interpreted: agatheism. Agatheism identifies God, the Absolute or the ultimate reality (theós or to theion in Greek) with the ultimate good (to agathon in Greek) as the ultimate end of all human pursuits and posits that maximal realisation of human potentialities for good (agatheia – conceptualised as an agathological equivalent of the Aristotelian eudaimonia) is possible only in proper alignment with the ultimate reality so conceived (Agatheos).

Agatheism posits that religious worldviews result from the fundamental choice of an option to make sense of our axiological consciousness by conceiving the ulti­mate human good in religious rather than in naturalistic terms. Since it is agatholo­gical imagination that plays the decisive role in choosing among the fundamental agathological options and agathological imagination is a dimension of practical rea­son, it will not be possible to establish by way of theoretical argument which option is rationally superior, yet taking a stance may be a psychological necessity, as well as a condition of living an ‘examined life’, therefore opting for a religious concep­tualisation of the ultimate human good that identifies the ultimate good towards which our axiological consciousness is directed with the ultimate reality religiously conceived, may be as good a choice as any.

An important implication of such axiological construal of the grounds of reli­gious belief is that the domain of religious thinking and religious practice is no longer seen as sui generis, but (pace Kierkegaard) is an extension of agathological thinking in the ethical realm (and perhaps also in the realm of aesthetics kalokagato‐

logically conceived). Therefore religious believers do not engage in an activity that is entirely foreign to the non-believers, but rather are devoted in a different way to the same central human task of exploration into the realm of the human good that takes places in connection with every human activity aimed at conceptualisation and realisation of some human (or non-human) good.

Like the Hickian interpretation of religion, agatheism is centrally a pluralistic interpretation of religion, since it theorises that the fundamental agatheistic belief is presupposed by all or nearly all post-axial religious traditions and explains the fact of religious diversity (i.e., plurality of internally diverse and constantly evolving re­ligious traditions) by reference to unavoidably plural, diverse and revisable deliver­ances of agathological imagination as its source. When exercised in the realm of re­ligion, agathological imagination guided by the fundamental agatheistic belief identifying the Absolute with the ultimate good, searches for the optimal conceptu­alisation of the nature of the Absolute and its relation to the human world, attempt­ing to approximate the human view of the matter to the ‘God’s eye view’. While in­dividual believers exercise agathological imagination when assenting to particular religious truth-claims and aligning themselves in an existential manner to the Abso­lute as the ultimate good, typically religious beliefs systems are produced of the ex­ercise of agathological imagination over long periods of time in the context of reli­gious traditions as traditions of interpretation by many individuals, especially prominent representatives of the tradition. Thus diverse religious belief systems may be conceived as a range of ‘agathological landscapes’ – conceived throughout human history by geniuses of agathological imagination, such as founders of new religious traditions, saints, mystics and great religious thinkers – which agathologi­cal imagination of ‘ordinary’ believers takes as a reliable source of inspiration and the point of departure in their own religious search and spiritual journey.

Agatheistic account of religion takes seriously the practical orientation that reli­gious believers typically exhibit and it sees religious belief systems as never di­vorced from religious practice understood as living out the proper alignment with the ultimate reality as the ultimate good. While various religious belief systems do contain visions of what their adherents consider to be the optimal ways of conceiv­ing the Absolute as the ultimate good simpliciter, the beliefs about the Absolute and their eventual veridicality are important for religious believers not for purely cogni­tive reasons, but because they entail optimal ways of conceiving human potentiali­ties for good vis-à-vis the ultimate reality as the ultimate good for us towards which their existence is directed. So whatever the religious rhetoric may be, it is more plausible to think that human beings hold religious belief and follow religious prac­tices not because – to put it in theistic terms – God needs them to worship him, but because they sense they need God to achieve their own fulfillment by realising their own creaturely potentialities for good. For this reason religious believers (with the exception of theologians and perhaps also religious leaders who may see religious doctrines as defining the borders of their communities and thus the limits of their power) tend to concern themselves with religious orthopraxis more than with reli­gious orthodoxy and associate being an exemplary believer not so much with just ‘believing in something’ (holding certain beliefs), but with ‘doing something’, ‘adopting certain attitude towards God’ (‘believing God’ vs. ‘believing in God’),

also ‘undergoing something’ (undergoing spiritual transformation or moral conver­sion) and ‘hoping for something’. To be able to do all that believers have to hold some particular religious beliefs, including believes about the nature of the Absolute and its relation to the human world, but it is the more practical dimensions of the re­ligious attitude that tend to occupy the attention of adherents of religious traditions, because it is they – rather than solely an intellectual assent to some set of religious doctrines – that appear to be relevant to the achievement of the religious telos, which is not different from the human telos, namely realisation of the ultimate hu­man good human. Among such ‘practical’ aspects of religious belief – all express­ing the proper alignment with the Absolute as the ultimate good – are (a) its soterio­logical/eschatological perspective presupposing some formulation of the nature of the human predicament and of “what can I hope”, to use Kant’s phrase; (b) its meta­noetic/transformational function presupposing some paradigm of spirituality; and (c) its relational/inter-subjective character associated with religious attitude of devo­tion and love, usually manifested also in solidaristic attitudes towards other mem­bers of one’s religious community.

Perhaps the most central of them all is spiritual development or metanoetic transformation. The Greek noun ‘metanoia’ – signifying a change of mind – in the biblical vocabulary acquires more specific meaning of ‘conversion’ as turning towards God, so in the context of agatheism metanoetic transformation is synony­mous with agathological transformation as adoption of the fundamental orientation towards the good. John Hick identified it as the one aspect of religious belief that is universal across all religious traditions and defined it as ‘transformation from self-centredness to other-centredness’. The universality of the metanoetic dimension of religious belief is crucial for the possibility of a pluralistic interpretation of religion and at this junction agatheism does not depart from the age-old intuitions expressed poetically by the Sufi mystic Rumi in the saying that “the lamps are many, but the Light is one”, which also John Hick turned into the central insight of his religious pluralism. To the extent a rational hope may be entertained that a given religious tradition constitutes a reliable path to the achievement of human fulfillment in ac­cordance with the vision of the ultimate human good conceived in that tradition, it is rational to be committed to the belief system and religious practice of that tradi­tion despite the fact that there are many such paths defined by different religious be­lief systems, which gives rise to a legitimate suspicion that it is unlikely that only one of them – and therefore unlikely than any of them – express fully and infallibly the truth of the nature of the Absolute. There is no good reason to think that cogni­tively and morally limited creatures as human beings are could not reach the ulti­mate destination of their journey while having only limited and therefore fallible and revisable insight into the nature of the ultimate good as the end of the journey. One piece of equipment on such journey appears to be absolutely necessary: the agatheistic belief, or better the agatheistic faith that our human unquenchable thirst for the good which manifests itself in the good-directedness of our axiological consciousness that shapes our entire attitude towards reality does not misleads us, but rather leads us towards the fulfillment of the promise it carries.

With such a turn of mind an agatheist – whether a Christian or Jewish or Hindu agatheist – will not be troubled by religious diversity, since his agathological imagi‐

nation, serving as a kind of agathological conscience, will assure him – in a manner reminiscent of Socrates’ daimon – that one cannot go wrong going in the direction of the good, following the path that leads towards the horizon of the ultimate good. An agatheist will treat the stories about the nature of the ultimate good told by the fellow pilgrims as necessarily only verisimilitudinous, but capable of serving as reliable directions on the path towards the ultimate goal, if they pass the test of aga­thological verification. Since in the realm of values the nature of the subject matter confines us to the first-person perspective and admits no possibility of an objec­tively verifiable and therefore conclusive evidence being available, an agatheist will be satisfied a kind of moral certainty, or – better to say – agathological certainty. Agathological certainty as a state of mind has a certain phenomenal quality which is a source of subjective reassurance, and can be captured by the adjective ‘agatonic’, created by conjunction of ‘agathon’ and ‘the tonic’ – a musical term referring to the central tone of a scale that is perceived subjectively by a listener as the point of ‘departure’ and ‘arrival’ of a musical narrative, and thus as a kind of telos and the point of psychological rest. Thus the word ‘agatonic’, metaphorising the musical ‘tonic’, takes on a meaning of ‘rest of the mind in the good’, or ‘rest of the mind in the confidence of reaching the good, realising the good, or being directed towards the good’. This agatonic sense of ‘the rest of the mind in the good’ that accompa­nies our mental states of certainty in the sphere of moral and agathological beliefs is analogical to the sense of ‘rest of the mind in truth’, which accompanies our states of certainty in the realm of beliefs about existentially irrelevant facts of the matter, but unlike in the case of certainty about factual beliefs, certainty about moral and agathological beliefs carries with it a sense of fulfilled obligation and hence a pecu­liar kind of satisfaction that we associate with the state of happiness.

Since it is obvious that that such state of subjective certainty accompanies reli­gious attitude of the adherents of diverse religious traditions, his agathological con­science will warn an agatheist against his inclination to see himself in a cognitively and soteriologically privileged position vis-à-vis adherents of other religious tradi­tions and will present to him as agathologically unacceptable exclusivist theories of religious diversity as postulating serious limitation of the chances of actualisation of the potentialities for good of the majority of human beings, while a more generous interpretation of the facts about religious diversity – envisaging the possibility of re­alisation of much greater human good than if religious exclusivism would be true – is available.

As I argued elsewhere [Salamon, 2013; 2017a], a theist – who usually more of­ten than a non-theist finds religious pluralism disturbing – can accept a pluralistic interpretation of religious diversity consistent with agatheism without loosing epis­temic confidence in the foundations of his theistic worldview, spiritual practice or moral commitments by adopting a strategy akin to the strategy of ‘sceptical theism’. According to such ‘sceptical pluralism’ we should be sceptical of our ability to dis­cern the full truth about the possibilities ways God leads various individuals to the ultimate fulfilment of their creaturely potential. In particular, a sceptical pluralist of the kind I envisage will argue that we should be sceptical that our epistemic confi­dence in our understanding of God’s purposes with respect to us individually and our co-religionists somehow limits God in achieving the purpose of leading other

people – especially religious aliens – to the maximal fulfilment of their human (God-given) potential in ways that are beyond our intellectual grasp. Moreover, a sceptical pluralist will propose that we should grant that our inability to think of a good reason for allowing religious diversity to persist and indeed to flourish is in­dicative of whether or not God might have a good reason for allowing it. If there is a God, he knows much more than we do about the relevant facts regarding the di­versity of religious beliefs and practices and regarding their soteriological, spiritual or moral efficacy in allowing various individuals to fulfil their human potential, and thus it would not be surprising at all if God has reasons for allowing religious diver­sity to persist and flourish that we cannot fathom.

III. Hickian conceptualisation of doxastic pluralism2

Traditionally theistic thinkers faced with the fact of religious plurality have as­sumed that the central truth-claims only one – namely their own – religion can be true and hence the truth-claims of other religions can be refuted by way of argu­ment. This position is described in our times as ‘exclusivist’. John Hick’s name has become synonymous with a radically different approach to the whole issue. Hick ar­gues that all religious traditions make contact with the same Ultimate Reality (‘the Real’), each encountering it through a variety of culturally shaped forms of thought and experience, but all offering equally effective paths to ‘salvation/libera­tion’. Hick’s pluralistic hypothesis, although very popular in some quarters, appears to many Christian and non-Christian thinkers as highly controversial.

John Hick did not begin his Christian life as a pluralist but as an Evangelical fundamentalist firmly committed to the truth-claims of traditional Christian belief3. In God Has Many Names Hick, an ordained minister of the United Reformed Church, writes: I have from almost as early as I can remember had a rather strong sense of the reality of God as the personal and loving Lord of the universe [Hick, 1980, p. 2]. Paradoxically it was this traditional Christian conviction which prompted subsequent change of his theological views. At a certain point Hick found Christian exclusivism (which he calls ‘absolutism’), as expressed in the patristic phrase extra ecclesiam nulla salus, contradicting the most fundamental Christian beliefs about the infinite goodness of God and about God’s plan of universal salva­tion. For Hick, the logical consequence of Christian absolutism was that most of the world is condemned, and that he found morally unacceptable. The weight of this moral contradiction has driven him to explore other ways of understanding the hu­man religious situation and to develop his pluralistic hypothesis.

Hick’s first step towards the formulation of his hypothesis was his accep­tance of the principle of the cultural relativity of religious truth-claims which maintains that one’s religious presuppositions are primarily set according to the cultural context of one’s birth. Attending services in synagogues, mosques and Hindu temples Hick came to the conclusion that essentially the same kind of

thing is taking place in them as in a Christian church – namely, human beings opening their minds to a higher divine Reality, known as personal and good and as demanding righteousness and love between man and man [Hick, 1980, p. 5]. Hick presumes that if one was brought up in a Christian environment one is likely to grow up with the conviction that any salvation is found in Jesus Christ. If one was born in South India one will probably understand salvation in terms of being released from moksha. Again if one was born in Buddhist Tibet one will grow up with the religious desire to obtain bodhi. For Hick, to assume that one has the privilege of knowing the full religious truth only by virtue of being born into Christian family is both immoral and irrational [Hick, 1993b, p. 77ff]. Instead he thinks that the only viable option for a rational individual is to accept that the great post-axial faiths constitute different ways of experiencing, con­ceiving and living in relation to an ultimate divine Reality which transcends all our varied visions of it [Hick, 1989, p. 235‒236].

At the heart of Hick’s pluralistic hypothesis lies his assertion that the Ultimate Reality constitutes the ground for all religious experience and religious language. He rejects naturalism which asserts that nature is all that exists and therefore all re­ligious beliefs are delusive. Moreover, he explicitly refutes a close cousin of natu­ralism, religious non-realism, i.e. a claim that although religious beliefs may be sub­jectively important, useful, and in certain sense ‘true’, they do not denote objects which exist independently of believer’s perception [Hick, 1993a]. In An Interpreta­tion of Religion Hick makes it clear that he believes that the objects of religious be­lief, with a number of qualifications, do exist independently of one’s perception [Hick, 1989, p. 190‒209]. It is important to bear this in mind because in the second section of this paper I will attempt to show that it is difficult for Hick to hold this realist position while maintaining his pluralistic hypothesis.

One of the ideas which underlies Hick’s theory is a shift from orthodoxy to or­thopraxis. Denying the crucial importance of orthodoxy Hick challenges the very basis of Christian exclusivism that is the need for a response to a specific message in order to be saved. He is convinced that salvation is always achieved as far as one is in proper soteriological alignment with the Real, and every religion is a true reli­gion insofar as it enables a person to establish such an alignment [Ibid., p. 374]. Thus religions could be seen as culturally determined sets of values for soul-making and points of contact with the Real. There is no need to assume, Hick would say, that only one religion is an effective mean of salvation, and therefore no need to aim at converting those who do not share our religious conviction. This is not to say that there is no place or need for an interaction between different religious tradition. On the contrary, Hick thinks that having the same ultimate goal (i.e. salvation/liber­ation) adherents of different religious traditions can enrich each other by sharing their experience which comes from their own orthopraxis.

Thus beginning with the assumptions which are undeniably Christian (the God of love wants none to perish but all to be saved) Hick arrives at a point where he re­futes traditional understanding of Christianity revolving around Christ as the only Saviour. Instead he embraces a view that every religion, including Christianity, re­volves around God, while the yardstick of authenticity and effectiveness of any reli­gion is its soteriological alignment with the Real.

These basic ideas had constituted a foundation of Hick’s religious pluralism for more than a quarter of a century. However, comparing God and the Universe of Faiths (1973) with An Interpretation of Religion (1989) one can observe an import­ant development in the author’s understanding of the essence of religion. While in the previous book Hick sees different religions as culturally determined means of establishing the right relationship with the Ultimate Reality, in the latter he speaks about different religions as culturally determined responses to the Real. In other words, the author explains somewhat differently the source and nature of religious diversity. This shift is very important as in the final analysis it appears to be a shift towards theological anti-realism, and makes Hick’s hypothesis more vulnerable, as I will attempt to show in the second section of this paper.

In An Interpretation of Religion where the fullest development of Hick’s views can be found, the author gives an epistemological foundation to his version of reli­gious pluralism by borrowing and revising Kant’s concepts of noumenal and phe­nomenal, as well as Wittgenstein’s category of ‘seeing-as’. In this book Hick presents a comprehensive theory that attempts to explain all religious phenomena in such a way as to give a convincing account of religious diversity. Accepting Kant’s claim that one can have no pure experience of the noumenal (i.e. the world in itself), and therefore our experience of the world is always to some degree a cre­ation of our mind, Hick draws a conclusion that all experience, including religious experience, is ‘experiencing-as’ (a category which Hick owes partly to Wittgenstein but employs in different context). This allows Hick to say that as each person’s reli­gious experience being an ultimate source of religion is specific to himself, then one’s religion is specific to oneself as regards the truth-claims inherent within it.

Acceptance of Kantianism as the epistemological basis for his pluralistic hypo­thesis allows Hick to alleviate some dilemmas which its initial formulation was prompting. For example, now he can explain how one and the same Real can be ex­perienced as a personal deity in a theistic context (e.g. Yahweh or Allah), and as a non-personal reality in some other traditions (e.g. Brahman), and yet be the same Reality which a believer encounters in soteriological relationship. In the light of Kant’s distinction Hick distinguishes between the Real an sich (i.e. in itself; as it ac­tually exists) and the Real as variously experienced-and-thought by different human communities [Ibid., p. 236]. Thus the Real-as-experienced becomes a neutral identi­fier which allows very different definitions depending on one’s perception of the Real an sich. For Hick, the main reason why different religious traditions have dif­ferent or even conflicting conceptions of the Real is that none has direct access to it. Rather, all perception of the Real is mediated through a religious tradition which acts as a conceptual lens. This conceptual lens shapes perception of the Real, and it can be said that each concrete historical divine personality – Jahweh, the heavenly Father, the Qur’anic Allah – is a joint product of the universal divine presence and a particular historically formed mode of constructive religious imagination [Hick, 1993b, p. 159]. In short, Hick holds that religious beliefs are partially formed by ex­perience of the Real and partially by the believer’s imagination.

Taking these theoretical innovations into account one can sum up Hick’s plura­listic hypothesis as claiming the following: (1) There is one divine reality, the Real, which is the ultimate source of all religious experience. (2) The Real transcends all

descriptions – both negative and positive. (3) No religious tradition has direct percep­tion of the Real. (4) Each religious tradition represents an authentic way in which the Real is conceived and experienced. Different religions constitute different concep­tions and perceptions of, and responses to, the Real from within the different cultural ways of being human [Hick, 1989, p. 375‒376]. More importantly, within each of them the transformation of human existence from self-centredness to Reality-centred­ness can take place. This ‘transformation’ is synonymous with ‘salvation/liberation’ which for Hick constitutes the ultimate goal of every religion (an assumption which is highly disputable, as I will show in the second section of this paper).

In the light of this new formulation of Hick’s pluralistic hypothesis it is still the cultural context which is the ultimate source of religious diversity, as the differ­ent ways of experiencing the Real (e.g. as personal or non-personal) depend on ‘variant ways of being human’. Hick thinks that Muslims, Christians or Jews experience the Real as a personal One because they were brought up in the‘mode of I-Thou encounter’, while Buddhists experience the Real as non-personal because of their ‘non-personal awareness’. What ultimately Hick wants to assert here is that different expressions of religious awareness do not contradict each other. This is Hick’s bottom line and he seems to be prepared to change some of his earlier views only to show that any such contradictions are apparent or superficial. Also accep­tance of Kantianism as an epistemological basis of the pluralistic hypothesis ap­pears to be useful in this respect. It allows Hick to assert that ultimately there can be no conflict between religions as far as their truth-claims about the nature of the Real an sich are concerned, because there is no possibility for an absolute truth-claim, as the Real is ineffable and unable to be understood or expressed [Hick, 1985, p. 88‒95]. Hick does not deny that there is some correspondence between the Real an sich and the Real-as-experienced but it is hard to see what sort of correspondence it is. Moreover, one could ask on what ground Hick asserts that there exists any corre­spondence between a believer’s experience and the Real an sich.

In the final analysis what we are left with is the claim that religions are not there to teach us ‘truths’ about the Real but to evoke in us a proper soteriological re­sponse to the Real. They do it using mythical language. (Hick defines a myth as a story or statement which is not literally true but which tends to evoke an appro­priate dispositional attitude to its subject-matter. Thus the truth of a myth is a prac­tical truthfulness: a true myth is one which rightly guides us to a reality about which we cannot speak in non-mythological terms [Hick, 1989, p. 248]). The only ‘truthfulness’ of each religion is shown by its soteriological effectiveness, and there is no reason to suppose that many and very different religions can be ‘true’.

One senses that there are at least two tacit assumptions here. Firstly, that there is a consensus about the meaning of ‘salvation/liberation’. Secondly, that salvation, as conceived by Hick, is really what each world religion is all about. Hick thinks that the best way of finding out the concept of salvation assumed in each religion is an empirical one. He proposes to look at the spiritual fruits every major religion produces and arrives at a conclusion that different conceptions of salvation are spe­cifications of what, in a generic formula, is the transformation of human existence from self-centredness to non-egocentrism. In other words, religion is effective (and ‘true’) if it is productive of love/compassion. As there is no empirical evidence

showing that any of the world religions has shown itself to be more productive in this respect, Hick concludes that each of the world religions is equally ‘true’ [Hick, 1989, p. 172].

IV. The shortcomings of Hickian conceptualisation of doxastic pluralism

There is no doubt that Hick’s hypothesis has strong intuitive appeal. He pre­sented his pluralistic hypothesis as something required if we are to hold in tension the idea of a God of love and the need for salvation. It can be said that Hick put into philosophical language what many people seem to believe, namely that all major re­ligions lead to the same destination. However, the question we are facing in this pa­per is not whether this popular intuition is true or false, but whether Hick’s for­mulation of religious pluralism is plausible. Possible weaknesses of alternative hypotheses which provide a framework by which one can claim that any religion which positively transforms lives of its adherents is valid, does not constitute an ar­gument for holding Hick’s position if it can be demonstrated that it is implausible4. In addition, not everybody will be ready to accept as easily as Hick does that exclu­sivism is rationally unacceptable5. There are a number of points of criticism I would like to make. I will begin with the more important ones.

The central claim Hick is making is that beliefs of adherents of religions as dif­ferent as Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, or Hinduism are not contradictory, and therefore all religions can be considered as authentic manifestations of the same Ul­timate Reality. Yet, it seems obvious for most believers and non-believers that dif­ferent religious traditions hold irreconcilable beliefs on many important points. Does Hick adequately address the problem of conflicting truth-claims?

Hick does not deny that various religious traditions disagree about fundamental issues. Moreover, he is aware that this situation pose an obvious problem for the pluralistic hypothesis [Hick, 1989, p. 362]. Yet he thinks he is able to show that conflicting truth-claims do not falsify his theory because as far as essential religious beliefs are concerned he can not see contradiction between them. Among such es­sential beliefs Hick finds first of all ‘trans-historical truth claims’, and ‘differing conceptions of the Real’ [Ibid., p. 23ff]. Trans-historical truth claims have to do with questions to which there is in principle a true answer, but (according to Hick) one which cannot be established by historical or other empirical evidence. Conflict­ing truth-claims about the nature of the universe (eternal or temporal?, created or not?) and the fate of humans at death (one life or many?) belong to this category. In the second category there is the even more fundamental religious question of the nature of the Real (a personal God or a non-personal Reality?).

As far as the nature of the universe is concerned, Hick reasons that as current scientific cosmologies are compatible with either perspective, therefore belief that the universe is eternal (associated more often with non-theistic religions) and tradi­tionally theistic belief that it is created by God (and therefore temporal) are not con­tradictory. When faced with the fact that Eastern traditions emphasize numerous reincarnations or rebirths following death while adherents of Western theistic reli­gions tend to believe that each person lives one life followed by a judgement to de­termine an eternal fate, Hick gives two answers which are supposed to show that this does not falsify his pluralistic hypothesis. On the one hand, he proposes that both these beliefs may better be understood mythologically (i.e. not literally true but evoking the proper soteriological response to the Real), and then both claims may be ‘true’ at the same time. On the other hand, Hick notices that it is conceivable that some people are reincarnated while others are not. That would mean that both reli­gions are partly right and partly wrong but there is no contradiction between them which would endanger Hick’s position. On top of these arguments Hick’s makes the more important and highly problematic statement that the resolution of the dispute about such issues as the nature of the universe and the fate of humans at death is unimportant in the final analysis as it cannot significantly help or hinder the trans­formation of human existence from self-centredness to Reality-centredness [Ibid., p. 26‒27]. One is tempted to think that Hick tries to suggest that because the diffe­ring trans-historical truth-claims are not soteriologically vital therefore even if there were contradictions between them it would not be a serious blow for his hypothesis as it operates, as it were, on the deeper level. In addition he seems to be ready to re­sort to a mythological interpretation of all trans-historical truth-claims which will challenge his pluralistic hypothesis.

He applies a similar procedure when it comes to explaining how it is possible that adherents of Eastern and Western traditions have such different views about the nature of the Real (a personal God versus a non-personal Reality) and yet, as Hick’s hypothesis says, they all refer to authentic manifestations of the Real [Ibid., p. 14]. Answering the critical question about the relationship between the Real in it­self and the varying conceptions of the Real held by the followers of various tradi­tions Hick writes: This relationship between the ultimate noumenon and its multiple phenomenal appearances, or between the limitless transcendent reality and our many partial human images of it, makes possible mythological speech about the Real. […] a true myth is one which rightly guides us to a reality about which we cannot speak in non-mythological terms [Ibid., p. 16]. It appears then that for Hick speech about the Real is always mythological in nature. If so then again he will be inclined to argue that even if beliefs about the Real vary to such extent that sometimes they appear to be contradictory, they may well all be true because they evoke the appropriate soteriological response to the Real.

It seems that every step of Hick’s argumentation is open to criticism and that ultimately he fails to resolve the problem of conflicting truth-claims which he him­self recognizes as a serious challenge to his pluralistic hypothesis. First of all, Hick seems to assume that because such disputes as that about the nature of the universe, or the fate of humans at death, or the nature of the Real can not be settled histori­cally or empirically, therefore conflicting beliefs about those issues do not pose

a problem for his pluralistic hypothesis [Hick, 1989, p. 365]. This approach is to­tally unconvincing, as the fact that one can not fully determine which belief is cor­rect does not soften the contradiction [Adler, 1990, p. 19‒20]. How can religious beliefs of a polytheist be reconciled with beliefs of a theist? It is theoretically possi­ble that they both are wrong (if there aren’t any gods or God), but how can they both be correct? It may be true (though it is not obvious) that the opposing truth-claims in question cannot be adjudicated, but this does not allow one to conclude that all those claims are true.

However, it has to be noted that the problem of conflicting truth-claims be­comes less of a challenge for a religious pluralist if he understands religious beliefs in the anti-realist way. There can be no doubt that the overwhelming majority of ad­herents of the world religions making religious truth-claims think in terms of a cor­respondence theory of truth, i.e. in terms of the agreement of thought with reality. In saying that God is a loving Creator or denying that the Real is a person, or claim­ing that there are many gods, believers intend to make propositions, factual state­ments which describe reality independent of their thoughts and as such are subject to contradiction. In addition, they implicitly assume that the truth or falsity of enter­tained propositions is absolute and immutable, and is totally independent of their being right or wrong in entertaining these propositions. One who believes in rein­carnation will not normally say that this belief may be true for him but false for someone else. He will rather assume that he can be right or wrong but the belief it­self either is or is not true. This epistemological position is often described as real­ism, and is opposed to anti-realism. Anti-realists like Don Cupitt or D.Z. Philips as­sume that when Muslims or Christians pray to God, they are not praying to a supernatural being who exists independently of their perception because God is for them a mere psychological projection. For an anti-realist a religious proposition is always true for somebody, and they are true when they are ‘useful’, e.g. when they provide the ground or framework for someone’s ethical convictions. For Don Cupitt religious beliefs about Jesus Christ are true in that sense, but he does not re­ally believe, as most ordinary Christians do when they pray to Jesus, that he is alive, he is omnipresent and omnipotent God, and therefore he listens to their prayers. Cu­pitt does not think religious language refers to independently existing objective rea­lity [Cupitt, 1993, p. 48ff]. For an anti-realist there can be no real conflict between religious truth-claims which appear to be conflicting when interpreted in a realist way. Perhaps Hick is an anti-realist? This question is crucial for the appraisal of Hick’s hypothesis, and yet the answer to it is not obvious.

Hick’s recent critique of the non-realist approach clearly shows that he would like to be seen as a realist [Hick, 1989, p. 190‒209]. In the 1970s he even more firmly argued that it is vitally important to maintain the genuinely factual character of the central affirmations of the Christian faith, because Christianity could not re­tain its identity in any meaningful way unless the factual character of its basic asser­tions was insisted upon. He rejected the utilitarian view that what really mattered was a religion’s usefulness, and therefore religious truth-claims were irrelevant [Badham, 1990, p. 17‒21]. In An Interpretation of Religion Hick distinguishes be­tween what he calls ‘literal’ and ‘mythological’ truth. The first involves correspon­dence to reality, while the latter evokes ‘proper dispositional response to X’. One

could expect that by making such distinction Hick intends to assert that among reli­gious propositions one can find also factual assertions. However, it appears that it is impossible to point out any such assertions which Hick would recognize as such. After all he proposes to understand mythologically all particular beliefs about the nature of the Real, and not as literally true descriptions of the Real. In the final anal­ysis Hick is inclined to hold that any religious belief that would conflict with an­other religious belief (and thus challenge his pluralistic hypothesis) must be under­stood mythologically [Hick, 1989, p. 371].

This brings us to the main critical point of this paper. It seems that Hick has only two choices. Either he is a realist or a non-realist. If the first is true, then his ar­guments which aim at resolving the problem of the conflicting truth-claims of dif­ferent religions do not work, thus making his hypothesis implausible. If Hick is in fact a non-realist (though he suggests he is not) and assumes that religions don’t make any truth-claims whatsoever, then his position becomes indistinguishable from that of anti-realist thinkers and will be unacceptable for the vast majority of the adherents of the world religions which Hick wants to reconcile.

More importantly, Hick’s apparent shift towards anti-realism makes his posi­tion totally inconsistent. On the one hand he wants to assert that the Real exists in­dependently of the perception of believers. In other words, he wants to be a realist about the Real. On the other hand, in order to resolve the problem of conflicting-truth claims (and thus to save his hypothesis) Hick allows virtually all religious be­liefs to be interpreted mythologically. At the same time he would like to maintain that various conceptions of the Real are ‘authentic faces’ of the Real, and not mere hallucinations. But how can he know that this is the case? If all particular beliefs about the Real are only mythologically ‘true’, how can Hick know what is their ac­tual relationship to the Real? How can he be sure that believers who think about the Real in realist terms are not completely wrong because in fact the Real does not exist independently of their perception? And what are his arguments to support his view that all conceptions of the Real are ‘authentic’? Why not to assume that some of them may be authentic (e.g. monotheism) while some other may be wrong (e.g. polytheism)? Or perhaps some of them are much closer to the truth about the nature of the Real than others? Why think that all of them are equally good?

Hick faced with such challenging questions is likely to respond by stating that in the final analysis all those rather theoretical problems are not soteriologically vi­tal, because the only thing which really matters in religion is salvation/liberation, which Hick defines as the transformation of human existence from self-centredness to Reality-centredness. He makes it clear in the following passage: But if we ask: Is belief, or disbelief, in reincarnation essential for salvation/liberation? the an­swer must surely be No [Hick, 1989, p. 368]. Here we arrive at a point where the weakness of Hick’s formulation of religious pluralism becomes again apparent. One can ask on what ground Hick assumes that his definition of salvation is identi­cal with the one which hundreds of millions of Muslims, Christians or Buddhists implicitly assume? What justifies Hick’s strong conviction that transformation from self-centredness to Reality-centredness is what religion is all about? And why does Hick take for granted that all religions have the same concept of salvation or aim at the same ultimate goal? Is the Buddhist concept of liberation by achieving Nirvana

not utterly different from the Christian concept of salvation involving our existence in heaven in the presence of a Triune God? It is hard to find in Hick’s works any satisfactory answers to these questions which clearly challenge his pluralist hypo­thesis.

He argues that because all religions are bringing salvation despite their conflict­ing truth-claims, therefore conflicting truth-claims are not a problem for his plural­istic hypothesis. Here we have yet another example of question-begging. On what ground does Hick assume that salvation/liberation is happening in all religious tra­ditions? Hick points to empirical evidence. But such an argument can work only if salvation is limited to some degree of moral transformation in this life. However, such very temporal understanding of salvation will be wholly unacceptable for the vast majority of believers of any major religion. Both the Christian and Muslim concept of salvation clearly refers to a life beyond the grave.

There is yet another proposition which Hick takes for granted, namely that what one believes about the nature of the Real and the after-life does not affect in any way one’s experience of salvation. How does he know that? Adherents of al­most every religion seem to believe something contrary to Hick’s conviction [Aslan, 1998, p. 111‒113]. Many New Testament authors seem to maintain that be­lief in the messianic identity of Jesus is a necessary condition for salvation (cf. e.g. John 1:12‒14; 3:16‒18; Romans 3:23‒38; 10:9). Contrary to Hick, Luther and many Protestant Christians would hold that belief in the divinity of Christ is much more important for salvation, than is moral transformation.

This brings me to one fundamental conclusion concerning the way Hick ‘inter­prets’ religion in order to defend his formulation of religious pluralism. In the final analysis Hick appears to be a typical revisionist theologian who does not take reli­gious beliefs as they are understood and held by millions of believers, but ends with telling people what and how they should believe, so that his theory can work. This approach is typical of anti-realist authors and supports a hypothesis I would like to conclude with, that the only way in which Hick can defend his position while avoid­ing inconsistencies is by embracing the anti-realist view of religious language. Then he will have to accept all the consequences of that choice, including agnosticism about the existence of the Real, and complete ‘secularization’ of the concept of sal­vation understood as the ultimate goal of religion. Acceptance of anti-realism will allow Hick to maintain on utilitarian grounds that all religions are equally ‘true’ be­cause each of them can constitute an effective means of salvation understood as the moral transformation of human existence from self-centredness to Reality-centred­ness. However, he will not be able to assert that each religious tradition is an au­thentic manifestation of the Real because anti-realism can not provide him with any arguments to support such a claim.

V. Conclusion: Advantages of agatheism over Hickian pluralism

When contrasted with the agatheistic conceptualisation of doxastic pluralism, Hickian pluralistic hypothesis exhibits a number of distinctive features. Firstly, Hick understands doxastic pluralism in the context of religion as diversity of ‘hu­man responses to the Transcedent’. I suggest that there are only two ways to make

sense of such ‘interpretation of religion’: either ‘the Transcendent’ is not really ‘Real’, but is rather understood in some anti-realist way, or Hick makes in the point of departure a strong metaphysical commitment and holds that with­out the Transcendent really existing (in the noumenal sense) the very existence of religions (as religious phenomena) is unexplainable. It is my contention that such metaphysical commitment is groundless, indeed it is much weaker than Kant’s commitment to the existence of the noumenal reality, because the phenomena that Kant is talking about do not exhibit the pluralistic nature encountered in the case of religious phenomena, therefore Kant does not face a challenge faced by Hick who has to explain not just the existence of religious phenomena (or simply reli­gious beliefs), but also their striking diversity. Since ultimately Hick is unable to assert anything substantive about the Transcedent (such as that the Transcendent constitutes the ultimate human good), Hick ends effectively with an‘anything goes’ epistemic framework for his religious pluralism, since it is difficult to see any standard of justification of his claim that diverse religions are all authentic re­ponses to the Real, that they all possess mythological resources to convey to the believers the appropriate alignment with the Real, that they all provide ap­propriate context for transformation from self-centredness to Reality-centredness, etc. Ultimately the Hickian hypothesis does not explain how various religious be­liefs are motivated, generated and justified. Despite achieving relatively little, Hick’s interpretation of religion comes at a high cost of the mythological interpre­tation of the central religious doctrines (such as the doctrine of Incarnation in Christianity or the doctrine of reincarnation in Hinduism and Buddhism) which makes Hick’s approach highly revisionist and therefore hard to stomach for bil­lions of adherents of the historical world religions.

Agatheism also entails some challenging ideas, since it portrays all agathologi­cal beliefs, including religious beliefs, as a bottom-up, rather than top-down affair, namely as ultimately always human constructs, formulated in human concepts and expressed in human language, stemming from the phenomenologically identifiable agathological impulse of good-directedness (desiring good, indeed desiring ever greater good) and leading to formulation over time (in human history, but some­times within the lifespan of individual human beings, especially in the case the ge­niuses of moral imagination, such as great religious, moral or philosophical figures) conceptions of the human good that transcend earlier such conceptions and point to the transcendent horizon of the Ultimate Good that does not have to be, but usually is conceived of in religious terms. However, agatheism does not understand reli­gions as ‘responses to the Transcendent’ (and therefore does not have to presuppose metaphysical commitments that Hick has to make without being able to justify them), but rather as a product of human search for the Ultimate Good, that results in diverse conceptualisations of the good that is aimed at and this axiological/agath­ological commitment gives rise to and justifies metaphysical commitments made by religious people (such as a belief in the reality of God as identical with the Ultimate Good). In this way agatheism explains in an uncontroversial way the diversity of re­ligious doxastic beliefs, while at the same time does not leave the concept of the Transcendent empty of content, because the agathological imagination (and the reflection on the deliverances of agathological imagination) that generates

agathological beliefs provides substantive content to the metaphysical beliefs that constitute the central doctrines of various religious traditions.

Most importantly, agatheistic conceptualisation of religious doxastic pluralism (and by analogy agathological conceptualisation of pluralism of other types of doxastic beliefs) opens a horizon of non-confrontational relation between adherents to diverse doxastic belief systems, since the agathological phenomenon of good-ori­entedness and desire for ever greater good is a pheomenologically identifiable universal human experience and aware of the irreducible subjective nature of agath­ological doxastic beliefs, human beings can open themselves to agathological dia­logue which – presupposing good will and epistemic humility – may in time lead to crossfertalisation, enrichment and complementarity of diverse doxastic belief sys­tems and metaphysical commitments, rather than to confrontation and conflict that more often than not is destructive of human good.

References

Adler, M.J. Truth in Religion: The Plurality of Religions and the Unity of Truth. NY: Macmi­llan, 1990.

Aslan, A. Religious Pluralism in Christian and Islamic Philosophy: The Thought of John Hick and Seyyed Hossein Nasr. Richmond: Curzon, 1998.

Badham, P. (ed.), A John Hick Reader. Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1990.

Cupitt, D. “Anti-Realist Faith”, in: Is God Real? Ed. by J. Runzo. London: Macmillan, 1993, pp. 48‒50.

D’Costa, G. John Hick’s Theology of Religions. NY: University Press of America, 1987.

Hewitt, H. (ed.) Problems in the Philosophy of Religion: Critical Studies of the Work of John Hick. London: Macmillan, 1991.

Hick, J. “Religious Realism and Non-Realism: Defining the Issue”, in: Is God Real? Ed. by J. Runzo. NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1993a, pp. 3‒18.

Hick, J. An Interpretation of Religion. New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press, 1989.

Hick, J. Disputed Questions in Theology and the Philosophy of Religion. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1993b.

Hick, J. God Has Many Names. London: Macmillan, 1980.

Pannenberg, W. “Religious Pluralism and Conflicting Truth-Claims”, in: Christian Unique­ness Reconsidered: The Myth of a Pluralistic Theology of Religions. Ed. by G. D’Costa. NY: Orbis Books, 1990, pp. 96‒106.

Plantinga, A. “A Defence of Religious Exclusivism”, in: The Rationality of Belief and the Plurality of Faith. Ed. by T.D. Senor. Ithaca, NY: Cornel University Press, 1995, pp. 201‒205.

Rahner, K. “Religious Inclusivism”, in: Philosophy of Religion. Ed. by M. Peterson et al. Ox­ford University Press, 1996, pp. 503‒513.

Salamon, J. “Theodicy of Justice as Fairness and Sceptical Pluralism”, in: Knowledge, Ac­tion, Pluralism: Contemporary Perspectives in Philosophy of Religion. Ed. by S.T. Kolodziejczyk and J. Salamon. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang Press, 2013, pp. 249‒278.

Salamon, J. Agatheology and Naturalisation of the Discourse on Evil, International Journal of Philosophy and Theology. 2017a, 78:4‒5, pp. 469‒484.

Salamon, J. Atheism and Agatheism in the Global Ethical Discourse, European Journal for Philosophy of Religion. 2015, vol. 7, no. 4, pp. 197‒245.

Salamon, J. In Defence of Agatheism: Clarifying a Good-Centred Interpretation of Religious Pluralism, European Journal for Philosophy of Religion. 2017b, vol. 9, no. 3, pp. 115‒138.

Salamon, J. John Hick’s Philosophy of Religious Pluralism: A Critical Examination, Forum Philosophicum. 2003, vol. 8, pp. 67‒80.

Sinkinson, C. The Universe of Faiths: A Critical Study of John Hick’s Religious Pluralism. Carlisle, and Waynesboro, GA: Paternoster Press, 2001.

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Herder’s “Spirit of Hebrew Poetry”
and the Fate of European Orientalism

Ilya S. Vevyurko

Lomonosov Moscow State University, GSP-1, Leninskie Gory, Moscow, 119991, Russian Federation; Department of Philosophy of Religion and Religious Aspects of Culture, St. Tikhon’s Orthodox Uni­versity for the Humanities. 23B Novokuznetskaia Str., Moscow, 115184, Russian Federation; e-mail: vevurka@mail.ru

Johann Gottfried Herder’s work “Vom Geist der Ebräischen Poesie” (1782‒1783) became one of the first attempts in Europe to comprehend the grammatical system and style of bib­lical speech. This book is of undeniable significance for the history of religious studies and theology, both in a perspective of some biblical questions, and in a perspective of the history of western thought on the Old Testament, ancient Hebrews, the Near East and archaic po­etry. The article precedes a publication of the first dialogue from more than 800-page Her­der’s book. There is shown in the article that Herder can be considered as early criticist of the orientalism – to understand this term in the sense of europocentrical constructing of the ‘East’ as an ‘Other’ for normative and at the same time extraordinary european culture – without taking away from this thinker of his special sensitive attention to the differences between peoples, expressing in the peculiarity of their languages. A strategy of criticize ori­entalism as a kind of prejudice, in which herder acts as a successor of Vico’s cultural anthro­pology, allows him to protect a dignity of the Old Testament against aesthetics of classicism, at the same time criticizing some points of the Enlightenment’s mentalities, – though in the whole all of that is included in the enlighteners’ and humanistic program of Herder himself. Being faithful to this program, Herder is naive enough to regard the biblical speech as an expression of a naive (emotional, spontaneous) consciousness, not perceiving its poly­semantic complexity and intertextuality. In that way Herder’s specific philosophy of religion manifests itself, which, unlike Vico's theory of providence, tries to put providence quite in the framework of natural processes, leaving no room for unique and individual events (miracles), that guide the course of history in the traditional providentialism.

Keywords: Herder, orientalism, Bible, Hebrew, poetry, Enlightenment, classicism, romantism

Citation: Vevyurko I.S. “Herder’s “Spirit of Hebrew Poetry” and the Fate of European Ori­entalism”, Philosophy of Religion: Analytic Researches, 2019, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 116‒128.

References

Berkovitch, S. The Puritan Origins of the American Self. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975, 250 p.

Berlin, I. Vico and Herder: Two Studies in the History of Ideas. London: Chatto & Windus, 1980, 216 p.

Betz, J.R. After Enlightenment: The Post-Secular Vision of J.G. Hamann. Oxford: Blackwell, 2012.

Bryanchaninov, Ignatiy, svt. Tvoreniya: Asketicheskie opyty. Slovo o cheloveke [Ascetical Ex­periences]. M.: Lepta, 2001, 824 p. (in Russian)

Fedotova, E.Ya. Semanticheskiy plan zvukovykh i graficheskikh sootvetstviy v tekste Byt 49 [The Semantic level of sound and graphic conformities in Gen 49], Nauchnyye trudy po iudaike. T. 1, Akademicheskaya seriya, vyp. 34. M.: Sefer, 2011, pp. 24‒47. (in Russian)

Förster, E. Herder and Spinoza, in: Spinoza and German Idealism. Ed. by E. Förster, Y. Melamed. Cambridge: University Press, 2012, pp. 59‒84.

Gadamer, H.-G. Istina i metod: osnovy filosofskoy germenevtiki [Truth and Method: Funda­mentals of Philosophical Hermeneutics] M.: Progress, 1988. 704 p.

Hegel, G.V.F. Filosofiya religii v dvukh tomakh [Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion]. T. 1. M.: Mysl’, 1976, 530 p. (in Russian)

Herder, I.G., von. Vom Geist der Ebräischen Poesie: Eine Anleitung für die Liebhaber dersel­ben und der ältesten Geschichte des menschlichen Geistes. Dritte rechtmäßige, fortfältig durchge­sehene und mit mehreren Zusätzen vermehrte Ausgabe. T. 1. Leipzig: Barth, 1825, 350 S.

Kalmar, I. Jews, Cousins of Arabs: Orientalism, Race, Nation, and Pan-Nation in the Long Nineteenth Century, in: Is There a Judeo-Christian Tradition? A European Perspective. Ed. by E. Nathan, A. Topolski. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2016, pp. 53‒74.

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Иоганн Готфрид фон Гердер

[Диалог I]1

Алкифрон

Опять я застаю Вас за этим несчастным варварским языком! Вот ведь что делают впечатления юности, и как безнадежно мы с раннего детства жалеем старый хлам времени, что в жизни от него не отделаемся!

Евтифрон

Вы говорите прямо как один из новых просветителей, которые хотят осво­бодить людей от всех предрассудков младенчества и, насколько возможно, от самого младенчества. Вы знаете этот несчастный варварский язык? и поче­му, стало быть, он Вам таким кажется?

Алкифрон

К сожалению, знаю его довольно, мучился с ним в детстве, да и до сих пор мучаюсь, когда в теологии, философии, истории – где угодно еще слышу отзвук его высокой бессмыслицы. Звон старых тимпанов и литавр, вкратце сказать, вся янычарская музыка дикого народа, которую полюбили называть восточным параллелизмом, звучит при этом в моем ухе, и я все снова вижу Давида, танцующего перед ковчегом Завета, или пророка, зовущего музыкан­та, чтобы тот его вдохновил2.

Евтифрон

Кажется, Вы познакомились с языком, но не по любви.

Алкифрон

Последнее мне не под силу. Достаточно, что строго по методу, со всеми танцевальными правилами. Я мог в совершенстве цитировать правила, хотя и не знал их содержания.

Евтифрон

Тем более жаль! Я теперь понимаю, почему Вы к нему так недоброже­лательны. Но, мой друг, разве ненавидят науку из-за дурного метода, в форме

которого мы имели несчастье впервые с нею познакомиться? Оцениваете ли Вы человека только по его одежде, тем более когда на него была надета чужая одежда?

Алкифрон

Не оцениваю! и я буду рад оставить все предрассудки, как только Вы по­кажете их как таковые. Мне, однако, кажется, что это будет непросто, посколь­ку я достаточно испробовал оба: язык и его содержание.

Евтифрон

Мы попробуем, и один из нас должен будет научить другого. Плохо обсто­яло бы дело с истиной, если бы люди не могли в ней соединиться; и я проклял бы все впечатления своей юности, если бы они со временем оказались для меня не более чем рабскими оковами. Но, Вы знаете, у меня не найдется юно­шеских впечатлений, которые я удержал бы из поэтического духа этого языка. Я учил его так же, как Вы; это длилось долго, пока я наконец не приобрел вкус к нему, пока не проникся постепенно этим духом, в котором он для меня те­перь священный язык, матерь наших благороднейших знаний и того раннего образования человека, что распространилось лишь на узкой полоске земли, и без нашей заслуги перешло также к нам3.

Алкифрон

Это сильно походит на обожествление.

Евтифрон

Никакого обожествления. Мы будем рассматривать его как человеческий язык, а его содержание только с человеческой точки зрения; да – чтобы Вы были уверены в том, что я Вас не опутываю, мы будем говорить о нем лишь как об орудии древней поэзии. Нравится Вам такая материя? она совершенно недвусмысленна.

Алкифрон

Не просто нравится – она мне в высшей степени отрадна. Я охотно гово­рю о древних языках, если о них говорится только с человеческой точки зре­ния. Они – форма, в которой человеческие мысли, хорошо или плохо, но были образованы: они представляют разнообразнейшие движения характера и воз­зрений отдельных народов, которые всегда познаются из сравнения с другими. Начнем же говорить о языке этих ближневосточных гуронов4; по крайней мере, их бедность обогатит нас и подведет к нашим собственным понятиям.

Евтифрон

Что вы сочтете необходимейшим для поэтического языка, принадлежит ли он гуронам или таитянам, – не действие ли, представление, страсть, напев и ритм?

Алкифрон

Разумеется.

Евтифрон

И тот язык, что сформирован преимущественно этими вещами, является преимущественно поэтическим языком. Вы знаете, мой друг, что языки доста­точно необразованных народов могут быть поэтическими в высокой степени, что они даже опережают в этом некоторые языки народов образованных. Мне нет нужды напоминать Вам, среди какого народа пел Оссиан и какому времени принадлежит сам греческий Гомер.

Алкифрон

Отсюда еще не следует, что каждая варварская нация имеет своих Гомера и Оссиана.

Евтифрон

Может быть, иная имеет и больше; пусть только для себя, а не для других языков. Чтобы судить о народе, следует вникнуть в его время, землю, круг мышления и восприятия, видеть, как он живет, как воспитывается, на какие предметы смотрит, какие вещи страстно любит, каков его воздух, его небо, его телосложение, его танец, его музыка. Все это нужно исследовать не с точки зрения чужака или неприятеля, но с точки зрения брата и сородича; и тогда спрашивать, имеется ли у него Гомер или Оссиан своего рода, на свою потре­бу? Вы видите, как мало на земле народов, к которым мы подошли с таким ис­следованием или даже только можем подойти теперь. К евреям – безусловно можем: их поэзия перед нами.

Алкифрон

Но что за поэзия! и на каком языке! Как он несовершенен! как беден на собственные имена и определенные отношения вещей друг ко другу! Как непостоянны и неустойчивы времена его глаголов – поистине никогда нельзя быть уверенным, идет ли речь о сегодня, завтра или о том, что было тысячу лет назад или вперед. Прилагательные, которые дробятся так сильно, что их почти нет, и нужно довольствоваться сложением нескольких ничтожеств. Как сомни­тельно и притянуто значение его корневых слов и как неестественны производ­ные от них! Отсюда же жуткие катахрезы5, вымученные образы, чудовищные сочетания отдаленнейших понятий. Параллелизм их монотонен; это беско­нечная тавтология, к тому же без соразмерности слов и слогов, которая бы хоть сколько-нибудь удовлетворяла слуху. Aures perpetuis tavtologiis laedunt, сказал один великий знаток их, Orienti iucundis, Europae invisis, prudentioribus

stomachaturis, dormitaturis reliquis6, и это правда! Это вы видите во всех песнях и изречениях, которые дышат духом этого языка. Наконец, в нем совершенно нет гласных, так как они являются новейшим изобретением: он стоит как мертвый иероглиф, очень часто совсем без ключа и достоверности своего зна­чения, по крайней мере без точного произношения и знания его древнего рит­ма. Что там говорить о Гомере и Оссиане? Это как если бы Вы хотели отыс­кать их в Мексике или на покрытых надписями камнях Аравии.

Евтифрон

Я Вам благодарен за прекрасную нить, которую Вы придали нашему раз­говору. Вы изложили такой богатый материал, поистине столь продуманный и хорошо упорядоченный, как можно было бы ожидать от знатока нескольких языков. Позвольте же сначала повести речь о строении языка. Не правда ли, Вы говорите, что действие и воображение есть сущность поэзии; какая же часть речи рисует действие, или, скорее, сама представляет его – имя или глагол?

Алкифрон

Глагол.

Евтифрон

Стало быть, речь, в которой много выразительных, красочных глаголов, есть поэтическая речь, и чем больше глаголов она может сделать из имен, тем она будет поэтичней. Одно имя представляет собой всегда только мертвую вещь: глагол приводит его в действие, он волнует чувство, потому что сам оду­шевлен духом. Вспомните, что Лессинг7 показал относительно Гомера, – что у него все есть шаг, движение, действие и что именно в этом состоит его жизнь, его действенность и сущность всей поэзии. Так вот: у евреев почти все глагол, то есть все живет и движется. Имена происходят от глаголов и сами словно все еще глаголы: они как живые существа, которые происходят и фор­мируются непосредственно из действия своих корневых истоков. Заметьте, в новых языках, чтó значит для силы поэзии, что глаголы и имена еще не разо­шлись далеко, то есть когда те могут становиться этими. Вспомните англий­ский, немецкий; язык, о котором мы говорим, как бы бездна глаголов, море из волн, где действие рокочет в действии.

Алкифрон

Однако, мне кажется, это изобилие должно было бы все же оставаться в отношениях с другими частями речи: ведь когда все становится действием, то нет, в конце концов, того, что действует. Субъект, предикат, связка – так на­зывается это в логике.

Евтифрон

Для логики такой порядок хорош, и для ее шедевра, силлогизма, необхо­дим; для поэзии не так, и стихотворение из силлогизмов никто не смог бы чи­тать. В нем связь есть главное, а другие части выполняют работу только слуг или помощников. Итак, если я соглашусь, что для некоего отвлеченного мыс­лителя еврейский язык был бы не самым лучшим, то тем более подходит его деятельный строй для поэта. Все в нем взывает: «Я живу, двигаюсь, вершу. Меня создают чувства и страсти, не отвлеченные мыслители и философы: я предназначен для поэта, я сам весь – поэзия».

Алкифрон

Ну а что если вам нужны имена, например, имена прилагательные?

Евтифрон

Тогда они есть у вас: ибо каждый язык имеет то, в чем нуждается; только не о каждом следует судить по нашим нуждам. Сотен имен вещей нет в этом языке, поскольку этот народ не имел и не знал самих этих вещей; так же как в нем есть сотни других, которых нет у нас. Абстракциями он беден, но богат чувственными образами, и потому именно имеет такое множество синонимов для одной и той же вещи, что она называется и как бы рисуется всякий раз во всех ее связях со всеми сопутствующими чувственными обстоятельствами. Лев, меч, змея, верблюд обладают в ближневосточных языках, особенно самом развитом из них, арабском8, столь многими именами вследствие того, что каж­дое имя изображало вещь сначала в особенном виде, а после эти ручьи сли­лись воедино. В еврейском тоже очень заметно это изобилие чувственных обо­значений, хотя нам и осталось от него так мало. Более 250 ботанических названий имеется в одной маленькой книге, каковы наши остатки от еврей­ских Писаний; притом Писаний со столь однородными сюжетами, в основном историческими или относящимися к храмовой поэзии; подумайте, как богат был бы этот язык, если бы мы имели его в поэтических произведениях, посвя­щенных обычной жизни и всем сценам ее, хотя бы только в том объеме языко­вых средств, который есть в сохранившихся текстах. Может быть, здесь то же, что почти у всех древних народов: из потопа времен спаслось лишь столько, сколько Ной смог спасти в ковчеге.

Алкифрон

Мне кажется, спаслось достаточно много, так как в этих немногочислен­ных книгах само однообразие успевает неоднократно проявить себя. Но мы ушли от нашего разговора. Я вполне допускаю, что язык, о котором мы гово­рим, мог бы стать богаче в руках другого народа: так, как развит арабский, или как финикийцы смогли обзавестись достаточным количеством выражений для товаров и чисел. Но этот бедный народ пастухов и бродяг – в каком направле­нии он мог развивать свой язык?

Евтифрон

В направлении, куда звал их дух и куда обращались их нужды. Было бы неправильно требовать от них финикийских списков товаров или арабской спекулятивности, так как они не торговали и не занимались умозрениями; но в самом языке должно было возникнуть это богатство, поскольку финикий­ский, арабский, халдейский9, еврейский – это в основе лишь один язык. На этом языке говорили с финикийцами, исмаильтянами10, египтянами, вави­лонянами, в общем, образованнейшими народами Древнего мира, и, будучи как бы в средоточии всей культуры того времени, он воспринял, таким обра­зом, от всех окружающих достаточно. Просуществуй он дольше, в нем все могло бы быть достигнуто, что достигнуто в арабском, который по праву мо­жет хвалиться как один из самых богатых и образованнейших языков, суще­ствующих в мире.

Алкифрон

В нем, однако, все, что могло быть достигнуто, было достигнуто раввинами.

Евтифрон

Да, не жемчужины, и, к сожалению, не в согласии с гением их древнейше­го образования. Бедный народ был рассеян по миру: так большинство состав­ляло себе способы выражения по гению тех языков, между которыми они жили, и это превратилось в жалкую смесь, о которой нам здесь не хотелось бы думать. Мы говорим о еврейском как о живом языке Ханаанской земли, при­чем лишь лучших и чистейших времен, до того, как он смешался с халдей­ским, греческим и прочими. Позвольте же расценить его по крайней мере как бедную, но красивую и чистую деревенскую девушку, как земледельческий и пастушеский язык: наряд, который она надевает за соседками, я бы охотно ей простил.

Алкифрон

Можно было бы расценить его именно так. Отдельные черты его просто­ты, в особенности что касается сцен природы, я в детстве чувствовал с радо­стью. Однако, мой друг, мне кажется, что этих черт все же так немного, все так однообразно повторяется: ничто не имеет очертаний; изображать в закон­ченном виде, тонко вырисовывать их поэты совсем не могут.

Евтифрон

А мне кажется, что они изображают как немногие наши поэты – не тонко или утонченно, но сильно, цельно, живо. Мы говорили об их глаголах: они всецело действие и движение; сами по себе корни суть образ и восприятие. Имена, еще наполовину глаголы, часто суть действующие существа, и являют­ся в некоем непрестанном олицетворении. Их местоимения бросаются в глаза, как во всяком языке страстей. Нехватку прилагательных они замещают сопря­жением других слов, так что получившееся снова становится самой вещью,

как бы особенным деятельным существом. По-моему, все это делает язык та­ким поэтичным, как едва ли какой другой на земле.

Алкифрон

Будет лучше говорить об этом на отдельных примерах: начните с корней, глаголов.

Евтифрон

Корни его глаголов, как я сказал, суть образ и чувство, и я не знаю языка, где простое и легкое сочетание одновременно было бы так чувственно и заме­чательно. Но я поправлю себя: не для того уха чувственно и замечательно, ко­торое привыкло только к звукам северных языков. Однако Вам, мой друг, зна­ющему образование греческих имен, едва ли будет трудно сделать еще один шаг и прочувствовать, разумеется, более сильное, но тем самым еще не более грубое, словотворчество Востока. Я снова повторяю: в их выразительнейших словах есть образ и чувство; этот язык образован полной грудью, с еще нерас­траченными сильными голосами, но под чистым и легким небом, с острым взглядом, всегда как бы схватывающим саму вещь, и почти никогда не лишен­ным следа страсти.

Алкифрон

Образ и ощущение? Покой и страсть? Сильные и, однако, легкие звуки? Само их соединение странно.

Евтифрон

Что ж, тогда разделим их. Все северные языки подражают звукам приро­ды, но грубо, как бы только извне. Они трещат, шумят, шипят, хрустят как сами предметы; мудрые поэты используют это с большой бережливостью; плохие злоупотребляют. Причина этого лежит очевидно в климате и в голосе, в том, где и кем язык первоначально формируется. Чем южнее, тем чище ста­новится подражание. Самые звонкие стихи Гомера не трещат и не шипят: они звучат. Эти слова уже прошли через некоего тончайшего посредника, ощуще­ние, и образуются как бы в области сердца. Они, таким образом, дают не гру­бые изображения звуков, но изображения, на которых чувство оставило свою нежнейшую печать, преобразуя его в самой его внутренности. В этом соедине­нии внутреннего чувства и наружного изображения – в звуке, в корне гла­голов, как я сказал, южные языки суть образец.

Алкифрон

Ради Бога, это варварское хриплое горло и гортанные звуки! И Вы смеете сравнивать его с греческим серебристым звучанием?

Евтифрон

Я не сравниваю: любой язык страдает при таком сравнении. Ничего нет более национального и индивидуального, чем это удовольствие для ушей, так же как эти характерные изгибы органов речи. Мы, в конце концов, полагаем утонченность в том, чтобы образовывать звуки в пространстве между языком и губами и поменьше, – как бы боясь наглотаться дыма и тумана, – открывать

рот: климат, нравы и привычки формируют это, сам язык мало-помалу образо­ван этим. Итальянец, а тем более грек, так не думает: язык одного полон круг­лых гласных, другого – дифтонгов, оба говорят ore rotundo и не стискивая губ. Восток извлекает звук глубже из груди, из сердца, он говорит как бы так, как восклицал Елиуй:

Я полон речами,

и дух во мне теснит меня.

Вот, утроба моя, как вино неоткрытое:

она готова прорваться, подобно новым мехам.

Поговорю, и будет легче мне;

открою уста мои и отвечу11.

Когда эти уста открывались, это был, конечно, живой звук, образ вещи в дыхании чувства; и в этом, я думаю, дух еврейского языка. Он исполнен ды­хания души: он звучит не как греческий, но он дышит, он живет. Таков он для нас, не полностью знающих его произношение и оставляющих без артикуля­ции его самые низкие горловые буквы; в древние, дикие времена какой полно­той души, каким дыханием живого слова должен был он вдохновляться. Это было, как они это называли:

Духом Божьим, что говорил в них,

Дыханием Вседержителя, что оживляло их12.

Алкифрон

Опять нам лишь немногого не хватает до обожествления; впрочем, пусть будет так, как Вы говорите, с восклицанием, которое, выражая ощущение, само собой преобразовывалось в созерцание и чувство вещи. Но что сказать о производных от этих корневых слов? Не суть ли они разросшийся терновый кустарник, как бы на некоем острове, которого не касалась нога человека?

Евтифрон

В плохих словарях – конечно, причем некоторые из ученейших голланд­ских филологов13, с топором и секирой в руке14, усложнили нам путь; но при­дет время, когда этот заросший кустарник станет желанной пальмовой рощей.

Алкифрон

Вы употребили метафору во вполне ближневосточном вкусе.

Евтифрон

Таков сам предмет. Корень слова-матери будет находиться в центре, и во­круг нее молодняк ее отпрысков. В словарях придут через вкус, усердие, здра­вый смысл и сопоставление разных диалектов к тому, что, различая основное и случайное в значениях, отыскивая плавные переходы, и также опознавая в происхождении этих слов, в употреблении метафор подлинную находчи­вость человеческого духа, проникнут в логику иносказания прежних времен. Я радуюсь тому времени и тому первому словарю, в котором это будет сдела­но в превосходной степени; сейчас я изучаю лучшее, что мы имеем: Кастеллу­са, Симона, Кокцеюса, а также их многочисленных пособников: Шультенса, Шредера, Шторра, Шайда15 и тех, кто по отдельности или вместе с другими содействует этому.

Алкифрон

Значит, вероятно, еще требуется время, прежде чем можно будет прогу­ляться по Вашей пальмовой роще восточного словаря. Не хотите ли Вы пока дать пример такого словопроизводства?

Евтифрон

Вы найдете его всюду, где есть эти словари. Отыщите первый корень и смотрите, как плавно видоизменяется корневое слово «нисшел»16. Ряд выра­жений потерь, утрат, смерти, несбывшихся намерений, пустого усилия и труда плавно выходит из него; и когда они во время странствия, отбытия проходят через все положения пастушеской жизни, то даже в отдаленнейшем значении еще звучит что-то от первобытного звука слова, образа первого чувства. Это делает язык столь чувственным, поэтическое выражение столь современным и трогательным! Таких корней полон этот язык, и наши комментаторы, кото­рым легче ступать слишком жестко, чем слишком мягко, показывают их доста­точно. Они не могут удержаться, они должны, где возможно, обнажить все корни и жилы каждого дерева, даже там, где хочется видеть только его цветы и плоды.

Алкифрон

Это, стало быть, негры Вашей пальмовой плантации.

Евтифрон

Очень необходимые и полезные люди! Давайте их поддержим, потому что, даже если они делают слишком много, они делают это с лучшими намере­ниями. Имеете ли Вы еще что-либо против еврейских глаголов?

Алкифрон

Весьма многое. Что это за действие, которое вовсе не различает времени? Так как в сущности оба времени еврейского языка – это аористы, т. е. неопре‐