Author: vardycharlotte

“Religious Language is Meaningless!” Discuss [40]

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For religious believers, the importance of arguing that religious language refers to something and is thus meaningful is obvious.  Without meaningful language, religion becomes difficult.  Faith may well be possible without formal, positive doctrine or liturgy – as the silent worship and commitment of members of the Society of Friends demonstrates – but without the ability to describe beliefs in religious doctrines it is difficult to hold a religious community – let alone a religious denomination – together for long.  The multiple splits in the Quaker community and the diversity that still characterizes it is evidence of this.   Plato and Aristotle understood words to be signs, pointing towards meaning beyond themselves.  For Plato, ultimate meaning was metaphysical in the forms, which we recognize through reason as reflections in the world around us.  For Aristotle, the forms exist within human reason itself, but they still exist for words to point towards.  The central problem with religious language is that if religious words are signs, they point towards something that we cannot see, hear, touch, smell or taste… nor even understand in a complete way.  Can a sign which points towards nothing determinate really be understood as a sign at all? If language is seen in this traditional way, then religious language must be meaningless, and yet this is not the only way of seeing language.  

For David Hume, human knowledge is much more limited than it first seems.  Knowledge based on sense-experience is more certain than that which is not, but even the senses can be misleading.  A red ball is not really red, but is just perceived as such by the rods and cones in our eyes, which are stimulated in a way that our brains usually interpret as red by the particular wavelength of light that the ball reflects. Yet Hume agreed with Locke that the only way that the philosopher can progress is to cut away the undergrowth of assumption and conjecture, identifying the few relatively certain propositions and concentrating on those.  This critical approach to philosophy inspired Immanuel Kant, who in the “Critique of Pure Reason” (1781) divided all claims into three categories

  1. synthetic claims which are supported by observation and provide new knowledge, albeit of a quite limited variety (this ball is red, geese honk loudly, crisps are salty)
  2. analytic claims which refer to logical relationships between terms and provide no new knowledge, although they clarify and support understanding (2+2=4, an unmarried man is a bachelor, a triangle has three sides)
  3. meaningless claims which refer neither to observable things nor to logical relationships between terms.

For Kant, it is impossible to speak meaningfully about God.  The arguments for God’s existence all fail because human knowledge is rooted in our phenomenal experience and claims about what lies beyond it in the noumenal realm, including about God, are just speculation.  The most human beings can do, argued Kant in “Religion within the Bounds of Reason Alone” (1794) is to POSTULATE God’s existence as the best explanation of order and the necessary reason to trust in the fairness of the universe and carry on trying to do what it appears we cannot do… be good.

Kant’s critical approach to knowledge was highly influential, but it rests on some very big assumptions and (arguably) needs to stretch the limits of knowledge beyond breaking point by its own definitions in order to work.  Firstly, American logician WV Quine attacked Kant’s “Two Dogma’s of Empiricism” in 1951, pointing out both the difficulties in relying on sense-data (Descartes previously described these in the 17th century) and the fact that Kant and the later logical positivists accept logic as a form of knowledge and as a means of refining and interpreting sense-data without real argument.  What makes unquestioning faith in logic and assumptions about things being the way they appear to some people’s senses better than unquestioning faith and assumptions about other things?  Secondly, Kant’s system needs the postulates of God, freedom and immortality to work… none of which can be known to exist by Kant’s own categorization of knowledge and against how things appear to most people.

  • Human freedom seems to be constrained by everything from social norms to genetics, yet Kant has to suppose that people are free both in order to support the credibility of reason and the demand of the moral law.
  • The evil and chaos in the world speaks against the existence of God and yet Kant has to postulate God to explain the order he needs to believe exists in order that reason and morality retains credibility.
  • Finally, there is no observable or logical evidence for an afterlife, yet Kant has to suppose that one exists or he cannot hang on to order in the universe, on which reason and the credibility of the moral law depends.

In the end, Kant relies very heavily on things that can neither be proven nor even supported through experience in order for his critical system to work.  Although Kant raises serious questions about the possible meaningfulness of religious language, the force of these questions is taken away by the cracks in the foundations of Kant’s critical system.   

Nevertheless, despite the problems with Kant’s critical approach to knowledge and language, through the 19th Century philosophers were heavily influenced by it.  Gotlob Frege drew heavily on Kant in his work on Logic, which went on to inspire the work of Russell and Moore (and Russell’s protege Wittgenstein) in pre-war Cambridge, as well as Viennese philosopher-scientists Otto Neurath and Moritz Schlick and their “Vienna Circle”, which started to meet in 1921.  Seeking advance understanding, Schlick brought Mathematicians, Scientists, Psychologists and Philosophers together to follow on from work done by Russell, Moore and Wittgenstein in establishing the nature and limits of human knowledge. Starting with Kant’s distinction between synthetic, analytic and meaningless claims (and inspired by Ludwig Wittgenstein, who had argued that “of that which we cannot speak, we should be silent” at the end of his first work the “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus” (1921)), Schlick proposed that a “Verification Principle” should be used as a test of meaning – claims that are not in-principle verifiable through the senses (i.e. claims that cannot be physically checked) or which are not related to the logical relationships between terms should be labelled meaningless and excluded from academic discussion.  Because of this, during meetings of the Vienna Circle, discussions were strictly focused on what can be known… an adjudicator was even appointed to prevent discussions straying into speculative metaphysics by making claims about such matters as… God.

Partly because the Logical Positivism of the Vienna Circle were published in a Manifesto in 1929, and were of unusual political interest, Schlick’s ideas were influential.  In Oxford, following a visit to Vienna instigated by his tutor Gilbert Ryle, AJ Ayer developed and refined the Verification Principle in “Language Truth and Logic” (1936), the same year in which Schlick was murdered by a former student who claimed (at his show-trial) that Logical Positivism had “interfered with my moral restraint”.  The book was reprinted after the war and caught the mood of the times.  After the discovery of Hitler’s crimes and the dropping of nuclear bombs on Hiroshima, it was difficult to hang on to any belief in God or moral absolutes!  Logical Positivism dominated Philosophy into the 1950s, with its exclusive focus on what can be known through science and mathematics and its relegation of topics outside these spheres – moral philosophy, aesthetics and religion – to junk-status. Nevertheless, despite the popularity of Verificationism it failed to show that religious language is meaningless. This is because…

  1. Verificationism rules out many areas of academic discussion along with theology and religion.  The consequences of not being able to discuss morality meaningfully were thrown into sharp relief when Schlick’s Nazi student Johann Nelbock shot him on the steps of the university.  Nelbock claimed that Schlick’s teaching had “interfered with his moral restraint” and maybe he had a point.  If Schlick (and Hume and Ayer) was right and morality depends only on sentiment, personal emotion and preferences, then it is difficult to argue that Schlick’s murder was wrong – especially on the eve of the Anschluss when Nazi ideology was incredibly popular in Vienna.
  2. Ayer was forced to accept that many fruitful forms of academic discussion are not even in-principle verifiable.  Historical events cannot be verified except through secondary sources.  Some scientific questions are not open to verification – for example, quantum events cannot be observed accurately because the act of observation affects the event.  In additio, as Thomas Kuhn and Norwood Hanson pointed out, no observation is ever entirely neutral, no matter how “scientific” it might appear.  We interpret what we see through an accepted paradigm… maybe we only actually see what we want to see…  As the great Art Critic John Berger argued in “Ways of Seeing”, seeing is avowedly political rather than scientific and neutral.
  3. As Verificationism cannot itself be verified it is a self-defeating theory that fails to mean its own standard of meaningfulness. 

Verificationism lacks credibility as well as practicality as an approach to defining meaning in language generally, so its attack on meaning in religious language must fail.  

Verificationism was definitely in decline by the 1950s, but it was replaced by the Falsificationism proposed initially by Karl Popper and rooted in scientific method.  Falsificationism suggests that the meaning of a claim depends on being able to define circumstances in which the claim could be falsified.  Scientific claims such as “all swans are white” are meaningful, not because they can be verified – and they cannot be, because even without black swans, the total population of swans through history is never going to be available to check – but rather because we can describe a situation in which the claim would be shown false… such as the discovery of black swans.  Falsificationism presents a more serious challenge to the meaningfulness of religious language than either Kant’s critical approach to knowledge or verificationism because it goes against the nature of faith to describe circumstances in which faith will be falsified.  John Wisdom’s parable of the gardener was used by atheist Anthony Flew to make this point.  Two people look at the same patch of land – one sees the weeds and claims that it is uncultivated land and another sees the shadows of paths and claims that it is a garden whose gardener is on holiday.  Assuming the gardener never shows up there is no way that either person will change their claims about what they see.  Flew claimed that Religious faith is like this – unfalsifiable and therefore meaningless.  A believer looks at the world and sees God’s fingerprints all over it… they will never accept that there is no God, even when they see a film about the Holocaust, when their pet dies in agony or when they themselves have a run of undeserved bad luck.  The believer will always explain away things that go against their belief rather than accept that the belief has been falsified.  In Psychology this would be called confirmation bias – people tend to see things that agree with their world-view and ignore or explain away things that challenge their worldview.  As Kuhn, Hanson and Berger said, no observation is neutral.  Flew definitely has a point.  Religious claims – at least those made by most ordinary believers – are often unfalsifiable.  Attempts by John Hick and Richard Swinburne to argue that religious claims are in principle verifiable and falsifiable with reference to the afterlife are unconvincing. 

Yet despite the fact that religious claims such as “God exists” or “Jesus loves me” are often unfalsifiable, it is possible that other forms of religious language retain meaning of a different sort.  Ludwig Wittgenstein rejected the traditional view of words as signs, pointing towards a meaning beyond themselves, and argued instead that meaning comes from the way in which words are used.  Language is like a game; you can only understand somebody if you understand the rules of the game they are playing.  What it means to score a goal in football and in netball are different – and knowing the rules to one game will not help you to understand a conversation about the other.  Similarly, understanding religious language depends on knowing the “rules” of the religion, denomination, community or even smaller group within which that language is being used.  For Wittgenstein, and later for Anti Realists like DZ Phillips and for some Postmodernists, meaning depends not on what words correspond to, but on what they cohere with.  It is possible for the same religious claim to be true within one form of life and yet false within another.  Jesus rose from the dead is true for Christians and false for Muslims at the same time, regardless of whether the resurrection actually happened or not.  Compare religion with the famous “Schrodinger’s Cat” experiment.  After 5 minutes, nobody knows whether the cat is alive or dead… for Wittgenstein it is as meaningful to say that the cat is alive as that the cat is dead – both are true just as surely as both are false or one is true and one is false.  For anti realists in religious language, words cannot be understood as simple signs, because they point towards a God who is “other, completely other” (St. Augustine), “radically other” (Karl Barth) and “neither something nor nothing (St. Thomas Aquinas).  The meaning of religious language cannot depend only on what it refers to; it also depends on the effects it has on human beings and their spiritual state. 

Maybe, as Paul Tillich suggested, religious language is symbolic rather than built up of simple signs.  Religious claims participate in the meaning they refer to rather than just point towards it.  In a very real sense repeating the words becomes and defines a world of faith rather than creating it.  Religious language is necessary to religion in the way that God is necessary to the universe – not just as a cause in fieri, the words giving rise to a belief that can continue with or without the words – but as a cause in esse, the words sustaining the belief and its object in being.  In a way, this is what Iris Murdoch gestured towards in her version of the Ontological Argument.  She used the analogy of a tooth, venerated for centuries as a relic.  It may have been a dog’s tooth, but in the light of sincere veneration it begins to glow.  As Murdoch and before her Karl Barth recognized, the success or failure of the Ontological Argument does not depend on whether it is valid or sound.  Its true value is as a spiritual exercise, forcing the believer to reflect on the nature of existence itself and in so doing growing closer to a spiritual understanding of God’s necessity if not to an analytical proof of it.  Reflecting on the nature and possible meaning of religious language is a similar exercise.  While it shines a light on the difficulties in taking religious claims at face value, it also exposes wider difficulties in human beings making any claims to knowledge… and so brings people closer to appreciating the necessity of God. 

Critically discuss the view that Utilitarianism is the best approach to making 21st Century decisions. (40)

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The term “Utilitarianism” was first coined by John Stuart Mill when he was editing Jeremy Bentham’s papers.  It describes a consequentialist ethical system which seeks to “produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people”.  Bentham’s utilitarianism was avowedly secular and egalitarian – Bentham supposedly said that “all things being equal, poetry is as good as pushpin” and made another comment suggesting he would prefer to be a pig satisfied than Socrates dissatisfied.  He attempted to calculate the right course of action scientifically, applying his famous “felicific calculus” where pleasure and pain were measured in relation to seven separate criteria and compared in different courses of action.  As a lawyer and radical reformer, Bentham wanted a rational basis for law and values to replace the archaic collection of illogical, counter-intuitive custom and taboo that he saw characterised the British legal system, so that everybody could have a fair chance of knowing what right and wrong are and thus receiving a fair trial. Mill’s Utilitarianism was different, allowing for “higher pleasures” to be counted as more than “lower pleasures” in a utilitarian calculation and stressing the importance of mental satisfaction over physical pleasure in all things.  Singer’s Utilitarianism is different again, acknowledging the difficulty of knowing what will cause somebody else pleasure or pain and preferring to maximise the conditions for exercising one’s preferences rather than happiness per se.  Clearly, in addressing this question it will be important to recognise that “utilitarianism” is an umbrella term.  While Singer’s utilitarianism might be the “best” approach to 21st century decisions, it does not mean that Bentham’s utilitarianism is even useful in this context.  Further, the definition of “best” that is adopted will be significant – best could variously mean happiness-producing, practical, conforming to generally held ideals… and Utilitarianism could not be adjudged in the same way for all of these.  For the purposes of this essay, “best” will be held to mean “most practical” and the focus of the discussion will be on Bentham’s Utilitarianism.  In that case, Utilitarianism is not the best approach to making 21st Century decisions. 

Jeremy Bentham was a radical, reforming lawyer.  He was also an atheist.  He wanted to sweep away irrational values and start again in building a rational approach to decision-making.  This seems a laudable aim, however in sweeping away the Christian ideal and replacing it with the most basic vision of humanity rooted in Greek philosophy, Bentham provided cover for decision making which is a denial of what human beings are capable of and should aspire to.  Bentham reminded people that “Nature has placed mankind under two sovereign masters; the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain” and then reasoned that the ethical imperative was to seek pleasure and avoid pain for the greatest number possible through our decision-making.  Yet things that are pleasurable are not always in the long-term interests of the majority.  Take infrastructure – football stadia make a lot of people happy very quickly, whereas libraries and schools produce more limited immediate pleasure.  Nevertheless, the greater value of education over entertainment is almost universally accepted.  Bentham’s felicific calculus, even when the seven criteria are applied, fails to give adequate weight to long-term, uncertain “higher pleasures” like education and threatens to justify short-term immediate pleasures, providing that they are popular, even when they are morally dubious by any other standard.  For example, it would make a lot of people happy to bring back the death-penalty for paedophiles – Bentham does not give as an adequate reason not to. Assisted dying would be popular and Bentham does not give adequate weight to the arguments that it might lead to appalling abuses of vulnerable people.  As formulated by Bentham, Utilitarianism is far from being the best or most practical approach to the complex decisions we face in the 21st century when, as Alastair Macintyre remarked, it might even seem to justify the Holocaust!

Utilitarianism as a whole continues to struggle when it comes to predicting the outcomes of actions.  Bentham’s formulation of the system fails to address this, despite the complexities of his “felicific calculus”.  Take war as an example – we might think that bombing a terrorist-suspect with a drone passes the utilitarian maxim comfortably.  Few people will miss the terrorist – few people might ever know that they were killed in this way – while the pain avoided by eliminating this part of a terrorist network could be enormous.  Nevertheless, the drone might be poorly targeted and innocent civilians might be killed instead, causing immense damage to the reputation of coalition forces and the war-against-terror as a whole.  We can never be certain when it comes to predicting outcomes, which is the biggest problem with consequentialist systems of ethics.  Further, even when we are accurate, our assessment of the relative pleasures and pains caused is highly subjective.  From the perspective of a drone-pilot in Nevada, the pain caused by a drone-strike might seem minimal.  Death would be almost instantaneous.  He is playing what seems like a computer-game. However, he might well ignore the suffering caused to whole population who spend their whole lives waiting for a bang or the damage done to his own mental health in the long-term.  How we assess pleasure and pain is inevitably shaped by our own perspective, past experiences, attitudes, preferences and education.  Peter Singer is realistic about these problems, but argues that so long as we make the assessment in good faith, having done proper research, we are justified in making predictions and assessments.  Nevertheless, the practicality of expecting each individual to research the outcomes of their actions in a war-zone is questionable, therefore Utilitarianism is far from being the best or most practical approach to the complex decisions we face in the 21st century.

Peter Singer argues that Utilitarianism is the best system to deal with 21st Century moral decision making.  As he sees it, Utilitarianism has the ability to consider the effects of actions on non-human beings and resources if the calculus is extended from Bentham’s original model.  Further, there is the potential to change the definition of pleasure to read “ability to exercise preferences” and so to get around the difficulty with me knowing what will make you happy, or sad.  Singer is also open to Rule Utilitarianism, formulating a series of rules for use in most situations to make the system more practical, while remaining open to re-evaluating our decisions when the rules don’t seem to fit.   In practice, Singer’s suggestions are not a long way from Bentham’s original system.   While Bentham was no environmentalist, it is quite easy to include sentient animals in the numbers input into the felicific calculus.  Bentham was the first to admit that people should be at liberty to do what makes them happy and not be bound by others’ ideas… he wrote an essay arguing for the decriminalisation of homosexual sex for example.  Bentham was also open to rules.  While he is often, mistakenly, represented as an “Act Utilitarian”, in fact this term is anachronistic when applied to Bentham (or Mill) and both saw the need for laws grounded on Utilitarian principles as well as for individuals to be guided by the maxim and calculus.  Bentham’s Utilitarianism, therefore, is a good system for dealing with 21st Century decisions, however it is not the best (most practical) system because of the undeniable element of individuals applying the maxim and calculus for themselves.  In the heat of the moment, individuals are not in a position to calculate pleasure and pain objectively and often they don’t have access to enough information to do so in good faith.  A deontological system such as Natural Law is more practical than Utilitarianism, because it makes things simple for individuals, who just have to follow rules which have been devised by experts.  In cases like assisted dying, the advantages and protections that this offers to individuals and society as a whole are particularly obvious. 

In conclusion, Utilitarianism is NOT the best approach to making 21st Century decisions.   Bentham’s utilitarianism in particular gives too little weight to long-term, distant, uncertain pleasures such as education.  It is particularly unsuited to decision-making about environmental issues for this reason.  Peter Singer has argued persuasively about the need to widen the circle of ethical concern and treat far-off effects the same as nearby effects in Utilitarian calculations – but this only emphasises the fact that Bentham’s system does neither of these things.  Further, Bentham’s Utilitarianism is subject to the insurmountable problems of prediction and measuring pleasure and is less practical than rule-based systems such as Natural Law, which offer necessary protection to decision-makers and society in increasingly complex 21st century moral decisions.  While Singer’s reformulation of Utilitarianism has real strengths, in reality it has become almost as much about rules as the systems many Utilitarians have criticised for their inflexibility and injustice.  It is better, in the end, to look to deontological systems for guidance in making 21st century moral decisions. 

 

Critically evaluate St Augustine’s theodicy.

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St Augustine is often blamed for bringing the problems of evil and suffering to the forefront in Christianity.  Certainly, responding to the problems was a major theme in his writings – as well they might be given his own experiences of persecution.  Yet in fact the tension between the Christian concept of God and the existence of evil and suffering in the world He created was apparent well before St Augustine was born.  The Nicene Creed (325AD) affirmed the omnipotence of “the Father Almighty” and the full divinity of Jesus Christ.  The doctrine of the Trinity, developed in response to Christological controversies such as Arianism, made the logical problems of Evil & suffering inescapable for Christians. St Augustine is best understood as the first very substantial, systematic attempt to resolve these problems on behalf of the orthodox Church.   Of course, the logical problem of evil was well-known to Greek Philosophy.  Epicurus wrote “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.  Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”  Later, David Hume claimed that Christian belief rests upon an “inconsistent triad” of beliefs and JL Mackie went further, claiming that the co-beliefs God exists and is omnipotent and omniscient, God exists and is omnibenevolent and Evil exists are “positively irrational.”  St Augustine attempted to defend God in several different ways.  In the 1990s American Philosopher Robert Adams listed four separate ways to approach theodicy and it is fair to say that Augustine tried all of them.  Given the constraints of time, this critical evaluation will focus on the three best-known of Augustine’s approaches, namely his definition of evil as “privatio boni”, his free-will defence and his doctrine of original sin.  In relation to these, it seems that St Augustine’s theodicy was rationally successful (at least when taken as a whole) it ultimately yielded a pastorally unsatisfying God.

St Augustine sought an answer to the problems of evil and suffering for a long time.  Unconvinced by the efforts of Christian leaders he engaged with Manichaeism and then the writings of the Platonists before eventually returning to Christianity.  It is fitting, therefore, that St Augustine’s most important theodicy is rooted in Greek Philosophy, which defined goodness in terms of actuality and fulfilment of purpose and evil in terms of potentiality and falling short of purpose. For St Augustine, evil is privatio boni and has no existence in itself.  Evil is parasitical and can only affect things that in themselves are good.  The extent to which something fulfils its nature and God’s purpose is good and the extent to which it falls short and retains potential it is evil.  All created things move, change and are contingent on other things therefore all are affected by evil to some extent.  God is the only wholly good being, unaffected by evil because, being outside time and space, fully actual and necessary, God cannot fall short and has no potential.  In this world-view, the problem of evil shifts from being about why God created evil things to why God created anything when its existence would necessarily entail being affected by evil to some extent.  This, Augustine answers by arguing that God cannot be held responsible for creating something which has no existence in itself and by arguing that the goodness in creation greatly outweighs the evil within it.  Of course, the first point is semantics and the second is a subjective judgement.  For Christians affected by horrendous evils – whether natural or moral – neither explanation is likely to be pastorally satisfying.  People do not pray to a wholly simple, necessary being… and it is difficult to square the Bible with such a being either.  Put bluntly, the parent of a terminally ill child is not going to be comforted by St Augustine’s “privatio boni” theodicy, however philosophically brilliant it might be.  This shows that St Augustine’s theodicy, although rationally successful, yielded a pastorally unsatisfying God.

St Augustine’s Free Will Defence is probably the best known of his theodicies.  The work of Alvin Plantinga has re-awakened scholarly interest in it in recent decades.  Free-will is intuitively appealing and fits beautifully with the Biblical narrative, which seeks to blame human beings for the horrors visited on them by the creation God supposedly controls and to use this as a reason to worship Him.  Nevertheless, this theodicy remains philosophically unconvincing. As JL Mackie pointed out in his famous essay “Evil and Omnipotence”, the God of the Free Will defence is limited and far from being the omnipotent being that the Creeds claim He must be.  It seems that God either CANNOT or WILL NOT create a world in which significantly free beings always choose to do right and is subservient to the laws of logic. St. Augustine (and later Plantinga) assumes incompatibilism without arguing for it.   If as St Luke and St Matthew affirm “anything is possible with God”, why can’t he create free beings AND determine (or at least limit) the outcomes?  Christian Philosophers of Religion have tried to extricate St Augustine from this mess.  St Thomas Aquinas and later Descartes both tried to argue that God is limited by logic only within this-world and that (for all we know) our omnipotent God could have created a different world in which free beings are compatible with determined outcomes.  We can only infer from the existence of this world that it must at least be part of what Richard Swinburne called the best-possible-world type – because an omnipotent God would only create such – and be satisfied on this basis that the best possible world must contain evil & suffering, that it must be better than it would be without it…  This line of argument is philosophically inadequate because it is circular.  This world suggests that God cannot be omnipotent but because God is omnipotent we must accept that this world is the best possible.  Not very convincing, at least when the Free-Will Defence is taken in isolation. 

In addition, St Augustine extended His free-will defence argument to a broader critique of Human Nature which sought to show that human beings deserve whatever natural – or moral – punishment they receive in this world.  For Augustine, the story of the Fall in Genesis 2-3 suggests that human beings fell from grace not individually but collectively and that we all inherit sin from Adam because we were all “seminally present” in him when He betrayed God in Eden.  St Augustine did not invent the idea of original sin, but he used it as a major part of his theodicy and as his main way of explaining apparently innocent suffering such as infant mortality.  For St Augustine there is no such thing as innocent suffering.  God is just and justly punishes the guilty – including infants who bear the stain of original sin.  Christ’s atoning sacrifice and the sacrament of baptism offers evidence that God is good and offers those who believe a chance to be redeemed and saved to eternal life.  For St. Augustine, God’s justice and God’s mercy is amply defended through his Doctrine of Original Sin.  Nevertheless, St Augustine’s approach is pastorally unsatisfying.  Why would a good God punish an unbaptised baby with all the horrors of cancer or starvation to satisfy His vengeance for the sin of Adam… in eating an apple?  Can St Augustine – who generally approached Biblical interpretation with such humility – really have taken the ancient and troubling story of the fall so very literally?  It is not surprising that atheists find this argument distasteful and even ridiculous.  Muslims and Jews reject Augustine’s approach and uphold the innocence of infants, despite Augustine’s claims to have seen evidence of their corruption in twins fighting over their mother’s milk.  Again St Augustine’s theodicy, although arguably rationally successful as a whole, yields a pastorally unsatisfying God.

Clearly, St Augustine’s theodicies are more convincing when taken together than when examined in isolation.  The philosophical strength of seeing evil as privatio boni does something to offset the shortcomings of the free-will defence and the pastoral strength of free-will tempers the doctrine of original sin, yet the fact that St Augustine had to have so many attempts at defending God against charges of creating or allowing evil suggests that he himself remained unconvinced.  In the Enchiridion, written towards the end of St Augustine’s life c.420AD, Augustine confronted the reality of the situation, writing “Nothing, therefore, happens unless the Omnipotent wills it to happen. He either allows it to happen or he actually causes it to happen.”  It seems that St Augustine was not unaware of the shortcomings of his own theodicies and he had to fall back on faith and prayer in the end.

In conclusion, although St Augustine’s theodicy was rationally successful (at least when taken as a whole) it ultimately yielded a pastorally unsatisfying God.  Christians have struggled with this ever since.  There is no way to acquit God of all charges when it comes to having created or at least allowed evil and suffering, and the only possible response is to pray for understanding and continued faith.  This is the message at the heart of the book of Job.  As Holocaust-survivor Elie Weisel remarked,

“I was there when they put God on trial… at the end they used the word “chayev” rather than guilty.  It means “he owes us something”.  Then we went to pray.”

The Via Negativa is the best way to approach religious language. Discuss [40]

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Whether this claim is valid or not very much depends on the concept of God in question.  If God is inside time, everlasting but personal – as the God of Abraham and Isaac in the Bible seems to be – then using religious language in a positive and univocal way seems reasonable.  On the other hand, if God is eternal outside time – as the God of the Philosophers, the Prime Mover, “that than which nothing greater can be conceived of” seems to be – then using words coined to describe things within time seems more problematic.  Maimonides, the most famous proponent of the Via Negativa, was heavily influenced by the Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle and so saw God as eternal outside time.  Given this, his claim in the “Guide for the Perplexed” that… “To give a full explanation of the mystic passages of the Bible is contrary to the law and to reason… God cannot be compared to anything…” and his proposal that the most that can be said about God is what God is not i.e. God is not limited, evil, something physical etc… seems persuasive.  Nevertheless, Maimonides’ Via Negativa, his apophatic way of approaching God leaves religion in a difficult position.  Religions make positive claims about God; the Holy Books and doctrines of all religions are full of them!  Maimonides’ approach makes religion die the death of a thousand qualifications.  Believers need to have something positive to fix their faith on, not silence, the empty space left by negations and a lot of small print saying that Holy Texts can’t be understood to mean what they say.  The Via Negativa – for all its logical appeal and for all its possibilities in terms of framing that language of spirituality and personal faith – is far from being the best approach to religious language. 

In a sense, Christianity is defined by the Nicene Creed:

“We believe in one God,
the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all that is, seen and unseen. 

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God…”

Approaching the Creed from the Via Negativa is problematic.  Admittedly, it doesn’t start too badly.  One God.  Oneness is a quality being positively ascribed to God.  Is oneness a concept bound by time and space?  Arguably.  Maimonides might replace this line with “We believe in a God who is not many…” but the sense is very much the same.  Nevertheless, things quickly go downhill.  We believe in God “the Father”… clearly “Father” is a word rooted in time and space.  Maimonides – along with Christian proponents of the Via Negativa such as Tertullian, St Cyril of Jerusalem and Pseudo-Dionysus – might have to admit that the word has no positive meaning when applied to God and worse, that it is likely to be positively misleading about His nature.  While St Cyril’s point that believers should “candidly confess that we have not exact knowledge concerning Him…” (Catechetical Homilies), this approach is unlikely to have found favour at the Council of Nicaea or in Churches today.  The central Christian mission would be a lot more difficult if believers openly confessed that they have little idea what it is they believe in!  As Maimonides wrote “However great the exertion of our mind may be to comprehend the Divine Being or any of the ideals, we find a screen and partition between God and us.” (Guide for the Perplexed)  This doesn’t offer people much incentive to be baptized, attend Church or read the Gospel; it pushes people towards deism or non-denominational “spirituality”.  In this way, the Via Negativa is not the best approach to religious language as it makes religion dysfunctional.  

Further, there is a better alternative to the Via Negativa in the form of Aquinas’ doctrine of Analogy.  Aquinas read Maimonides and was persuaded both by his concept of God and by his skepticism concerning the positive meaning of terms applied to God.  He strongly disagreed with the univocalism employed by scholars like St Anselm and absolutely rejected the idea that people can know and describe the nature of God sufficiently to analyze it and find necessary existence within it a priori, as proponents of the ontological arguments do.  In Summa Theologica 1:2:2 Aquinas wrote “because we do not know the essence of God, the proposition “God exists” is not self-evident to us; but needs to be demonstrated by things that are known to us…”  In Summa Theologica 1:2:3 he responded to the question “Is God a body” by making quite clear that the meaning of words applied to God can only be understood in a strictly limited and analogical sense.   Aquinas argues that words applied to God have meaning as analogies of being (1) and sometimes discusses two separate senses in which meaning should be understood; analogies of attribution (2) and analogies of proportion (3).

  1. Most importantly, God’s being is not the same as our being – he is Wholly Simple and timeless and as such has no potential.  The meaning of words applied to God have to be consistent with the mysterious, timeless nature that we know that he must have as a result of reasoning from movement, causation and contingency.  For Aquinas, when believers say that God is good they cannot understand that God is morally good, because that implies freedom and choice which are concepts which only make sense in time.  God is timeless and eternal, so His goodness can only be timeless and eternal – goodness in the sense of perfection and the fulfilment of nature only.  Hence, there is a positive sense in which attributes positively ascribed to God can have meaning; that in which they are compatible with His being or nature.
  2. In addition, the meaning of terms applied to God and to earthly things has an overlap in the way that I might say that I am healthy and my yoghurt is healthy.  Healthy is a property primarily of living creatures like me and only secondarily of foods or activities which contribute to my health.  According to John Milbank, Aquinas suggests that the primary sense of attributes such as “good” relate to God and the meaning of the word in an earthly sense is only secondary.  There IS a positive connection between the meaning of attributes applied to God and earthly things; the connection is not large but it is rationally defined.
  3. In addition, God’s unchangingly perfect and actual nature dictates that he must be 100% everything that can be ascribed to Him.  God cannot fall short, because to do so implies potential which is not compatible with God’s timeless nature.  Given this, God is the scale against which we make judgements about things in this world.  If I say “Jamie Vardy is a great footballer” I have to have an idea of what greatness means.  Vardy can only fulfil a proportion of what that idea is, because he is only one man in one time playing for one team – and he is not a rugby player, rower, artist or opera singer, all of which might be described as reflecting greatness in a different way.  The meaning of attributes ascribed to earthly things has a proportional relationship with the meaning of divine attributes.  Again, the shared meaning (analogy) is not a large one, but it can be rationally described.

Aquinas’ analogical approach to religious language is a much better approach to religious language than the Via Negativa because it enables believers to use and defend the meaning of positive claims about God, while not supporting naïve univocalism or a philosophically unsatisfying and ultimately limited concept of God.  Aquinas’ model of God is deeply appealing in that it is supported by real experience, but it also retains the “otherness” and unlimited idea of God that is so important to believers.  Aquinas’ theory of religious language completes his model of God because it shows how believers are worshipping in an ultimately meaningful way, even though God is beyond ordinary understanding.  The Via Negativa is not the best approach to religious language because Analogy is a much better approach. 

Scholars who employ cataphatic theology and approach religious language through the Via Positiva reject the Via Negativa on the grounds that it ignores the important connection between God – the creator – and the world – the creation.  In the same way that Philosophers reason from movement, causation, contingency, grades of perfection in things, order and purpose to the existence of a necessary being who explains these qualities we experience in the universe, people should be able to apply words based on qualities we experience in the universe to the God who created them.  Anselm and John Duns Scotus both defended the univocal use of religious language on these grounds, arguing that words refer to concepts which depend on God to define them through His creation.  Anselm’s ontological argument depends on this argument, because it analyses the definition of God and finds necessary existence within it.  This could not work if the word “greater” meant anything different when applied to God than it does when applied to things in this world.  The problem with the univocal approach to religious language is that the type of connection between creator and creation does not support a literal approach to the meaning of language.  When a person creates something, their creation does not have to be like them.  The potter is not made of clay and a skilled potter is capable of making a bad pot. We have no reason to believe that words apply to God in exactly or even much the same way as they apply to things in this world.  Aquinas strict limitations on the sense in which meaning should be understood when words are applied to God seems much more realistic in relation to a God whose relationship with the world is understood to be the creator, Prime Mover, uncaused cause, necessary being, supreme perfection and intelligent designer.   Because of this, the Via Negativa is a better way to approach religious language than the Via Positiva, but it is still less good than Analogy.

Certainly, the Via Negativa has its uses, but these are more apparent when it comes to Philosophy or the practice of personal spirituality than they are in the practice of religion.  The word “religion” refers to what binds us as people together; the ties that bind need to be clearly defined and understood if they are to function and endure. In terms of Philosophy, approaching the nature of God through negation is an important check in naïve literalism.  As Maimonides wrote “it is of great advantage that man should know his station, and not imagine that the whole universe exists only for him.”  For philosophers, it is all too easy to move from saying that there are absolute limits to human knowledge to ignoring what lies beyond those limits to denying that there is anything beyond those limits to denying that there are limits.  As philosophers and as individuals, reflecting on the nature of God as “wholly other” forces us to confront the falsity of the prevalent assumption that “man is the measure of all things” and deepen their spiritual understanding, which includes confronting limitation and embracing humility.  As Tertullian said “our very incapacity of fully grasping Him affords us the idea of what He really is…”  and as St Cyril said “in what concerns God to confess our ignorance is the best knowledge…”  Certainly, the Via Negativa is a useful brake on naive literalism and a spiritual tool for individuals, but it cannot be described as the best approach to religious language in general.

In conclusion, the Via Negativa is far from being the best approach to religious language, although it is still useful in some ways. The best approach seems to be Aquinas’ doctrine of Analogy, which treads the line between acknowledging the otherness of God and retaining the ability to say some meaningful things about God successfully.  Ian Ramsey’s suggestion that words being used in an analogical sense should be signposted or qualified in some way seems a sensible way of improving Aquinas’ analogy further, avoiding the probability that believers could miss the careful sense in which words are being applied to God and confuse religious language with ordinary language.  Thomist scholars such as Gerry Hughes SJ use the word “timelessly” as such a qualifier, showing that words such as “good” should not be taken to mean more than can be defended in relation to the being and attributes of God and as proportional to His qualities.

 

No true Christian could embrace Marxism! Discuss [40]

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Clearly, the question is a controversial one and any response to it will depend on the definition of “true Christian” adopted and, to a lesser extent, on the working definition of Marxism, because the ideas of Marx and those of writers and politicians described as “Marxist” do not always coincide.  By way of illustration, for a Roman Catholic, obedience to the teachings of the magisterium is of primary importance in defining a “true Christian”, whereas for a Quaker individual conscience and relationship with the Spirit would be the defining factor.  For the purposes of this essay a “true Christian” will be understood to mean any member of a Church which accepts the Nicene Creed and the discussion will be limited to the compatibility between Christianity so-defined and the ideas of Marx himself.

The question of whether Christians can and should embrace Marxism is an extremely important one at the present time.  Although there have been debates about the potential compatibility of Christianity and Marxism since the 19th Century, the development of Liberation Theology – and in particular its confrontations with the Roman Catholic Church in 1984 and 1986 – brought has brought the question particular currency.  Furthermore, since 2014 Pope Francis has been giving clear signals that he would like to bring Liberation Theology back within the framework of the mainstream Church.  He has even been labelled a Marxist by some critics because of this and other related actions.  This has caused Christians to reflect on how Christianity should relate to Capitalism and to Marxism in the 21st Century world.  Should Christians be on the side of the free-market and accept the pursuit of profit as the main aim of human life?  Alternatively, should Christians be willing to engage with Marxism – for all its atheism – because its social analysis seems in tune with the New Testament and its message for the poor, alienated and exploited is one with some similarities to that promoted by the Church?  In the end the evidence points towards it being appropriate for “true Christians” to engage with Marxism, although they would have to stop short of becoming Marxist because to do so would necessitate atheism and a rejection of objective Truth, both of which would make “true” Christian faith redundant.

The New Testament contains many references which demonstrate similarities between both Jesus’ teaching and the practice of the Early Church and Marxism.  Firstly, through the Sermon on the Mount Jesus preaches a revolution.  The Beatitudes in Matthew 5 predict that all those groups who have been alienated and exploited by 1st Century Jewish society – the meek, the humble, the bereaved and the poor in spirit – would go on to inherit the earth in a new age.  Marx also preached a revolution, predicting that Capitalism would collapse and that the poor proletariat – alienated and oppressed by Capitalism – would rise up and seize control.   Secondly, through his encounter with the Rich Young Man in Mark 10, Jesus taught that the rich should share their wealth with the poor, seeing private property and privilege not as a right but as an opportunity to improve society as a whole and the lives of the poor in particular.  Jesus’ parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus in Luke 16 makes a similar point; the situations of the two men will one day be reversed and rich people will pay the price if they failed to share when they could.  Marx’s mantra “from each according to their ability, to each according to their need” seems to fit in with Jesus’ teaching perfectly… the rich (and talented) have the ability to contribute more than the poor and the poor have more need than the rich.  Thirdly, the Book of Acts Chapter 4-5 tells how the Early Church tried to put Jesus’ teaching into practice by implementing what Engels recognized as an early form of Communism.  Ananias and Sapphira were struck down by God for holding property back from the common pool, for not giving all they could have and for taking more than they strictly needed.  While Marx would have seen the idea of divine punishment as superstitious, he would have supported the moral of the story, that people who cheat and deceive for personal advantage should be subject to justice even to the point of forfeiting their lives. In short, Jesus’ ethical teaching seems to foreshadow much of Marx’s thinking and in this way it would appear that “true Christians” should be able to embrace at least the ethical element of Marxism.  

Further, many Christians – practicing members of mainstream Churches which use the Nicene Creed – have engaged with Marxism.  Thomas Hagerty was a Catholic Priest who was inspired to champion workers’ rights in 1890’s America because of his reading of Marx as well as the New Testament.  Martin Luther King was inspired by his reading of Marx and agreed with much of Marx’s analysis of Capitalism and society, although he stopped short of embracing Marxism because of its opposition to religion and its rejection of the idea of objective Truth.  More recently, Liberation Theology has brought together many Christians who have engaged with Marxism and some who are fully Marxists. In the 1980s and 1990s Jose Porfirio Miranda expressed the similarities between Jesus’ teaching and Marx’s analysis of Capitalism and society in books such as “Marx and the Bible” (1971).  Leonardo and Clovis Boff have been positive about Marxism, emphasizing the practical usefulness of Marxist analysis and revolutionary techniques and the common end of improving the conditions of the poor in “Introducing Liberation Theology” (1987).   The fact that many Christians, including ordained Catholic Priests, have embraced Marxism to some extent does lend support to the thesis, that true Christians can engage with Marxism.

Nevertheless, just because some true Christians have embraced Marxism does not mean that they should.  As one example, Gustavo Guttierez has been increasingly cautious.  While in 1974 he wrote “contemporary theology does in fact find itself in direct and fruitful confrontation with Marxism”  (A Theology of Liberation, page 53) in 1990 (after the 1984 condemnation of Liberation Theology issued by the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith) he stated that “at  no time either explicitly or implicitly have I suggested a dialogue with Marxism with a view to possible “synthesis” or to accepting one aspect while leaving others aside” (The Truth Shall Make you Free, page 63) “True Christians” have been less and less willing to speak about their approval of Marxism since the Roman Catholic Church voiced its opposition to Liberation Theology in the 1980s and it is probably fair to say that engaging with Marxism is unlikely to be a positive career move in some Churches.

Nevertheless, there is a difference between saying that “no member of the Roman Catholic Church can embrace Marxism!” and saying that “no true Christian can embrace Marxism!”  The fact that there were political reasons behind John Paul II’s denunciation of Marxism is obvious; 1984 and 1986 were at the height of the Cold War, during the Reagan administration.  The Church was under considerable political pressure to support US foreign policy and there was a real need to put distance between the Church and Communist regimes which were murdering Priests and outlawing Church attendance because they embraced Marx’s call for “the abolition of religion” (Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbucher) on the grounds that it is a tool of oppression which he famously likened to opium. As so often happens, “my enemy’s enemy” became a friend; the Cold War made developed the unlikely association between Christianity and Free-Market Capitalism.  While proponents of Prosperity Theology such as Creflo Dollar might argue that Christianity is perfectly compatible with deregulated markets and right-wing libertarian government, in fact this approach is not supported by a faithful reading of the New Testament. While the Old Testament certainly teaches (in places) that wealth is a blessing from God and a sign of His favour, Jesus explicitly rejected these teachings through both his words and his actions on numerous occasions.  Jesus willingly touched lepers (making himself spiritually impure – not something anybody, let alone anybody wealthy would do) and washed the feet of his disciples (the work of a slave).  Jesus said that “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” (Matthew 19) and said that people need to be like little children, as unconcerned about possessions as the birds of the air or the lilies of the field, to have a hope of entering heaven.  Whether or not Liberation Theologians are right to embrace Marxism in developing their “hermeneutic of suspicion”, they are right that rich people get short shrift in the New Testament and are generally cast as sinners.  It seems that engagement between “true Christians” and Marxism is unwise for reasons that are more political than ideological and that there is potential for fruitful discussions between Theologians and Marxists in the future, now that the political landscape has changed somewhat. 

Certainly, Pope Francis has suggested – both in words and deeds – that there is a future for engagement with Marxism.  In 2014 the Pope welcomed Gustavo Guttierez to the Vatican for meetings and Leonardo Boff has been a vocal supporter of Pope Francis, his encyclicals and actions.  Pope Francis has renewed the commitment of the Church to social justice and has been outspoken in his criticisms of Capitalism, speaking of how it alienates people and how it exploits the poor.  It is quite obvious that Pope Francis was affected by his experience working as a Bishop and previously a Jesuit in South America, the heartland of Liberation Theology.  This point has not been lost on Pope Francis’ critics.  John Finnis and Germain Grisez, leading conservative scholars of Natural Law, wrote an open letter to Pope Francis in 2016 criticizing steps he had taken to make the Church more forgiving and inclusive.  More recently, several Cardinals and Bishops have co-signed a letter calling for Pope Francis to stop trying to reform the Church, to stop shifting its emphasis towards providing the “preferential option for the poor” that was the basis for Catholic Social Teaching through the 1960s and 70s, but which had been lost somewhat in the 1980s and 90s. Pope Francis’ encyclical Evangelii Gaudiam affirmed that “Without the preferential option for the poor, ‘the proclamation of the Gospel … risks being misunderstood or submerged’.”  He sees improving the lot of the poor in this life as central to doing Christ’s work – and this would suggest that True Christians should at least engage with Marxism to this end – but other Christians disagree most strongly. 

Not least among these critics, who have a different vision of “true Christianity” would be Protestant Evangelical Churches.  Inspired by the teachings of Luther and Calvin, many Evangelicals believe that people are justified by faith alone and that the most important part of Christianity is spreading Jesus’ message of salvation and baptizing people so as to give them the prospect of a better life after death.  Protestants might think that there is less need to improve the conditions of the poor in this life, because this life is only a temporary preparation for an eternal reward (or punishment).  Without Purgatory, for which there is little scriptural foundation, Protestants focus on the saving power of faith and the need for God’s grace; people don’t save people, God does. It is interesting that Evangelical Churches are growing quickly in South America, in part because of support they are receiving from Churches and sometimes government agencies in the USA.  In 2006 in the National Catholic Reporter, John Allen recorded that “Latin American Protestants shot up from 50,000 in 1900 to 64 million in 2000… with Pentecostal and charismatic churches making up three-quarters of this number.”  It is probably fair to say that the shift towards Protestantism in the heartlands of Liberation Theology will, in time, affect the numbers of Christians who would agree that “no true Christian could embrace Marxism!”

In conclusion, it is appropriate for “true Christians” to engage with Marxism, although they would have to stop short of becoming Marxist because to do so would necessitate atheism and a rejection of objective Truth, both of which would make “true” Christian faith redundant.  The evidence from the New Testament, history and the teaching of Pope Francis all support this conclusion, although it would be roundly rejected by some Protestants, who have a very different vision for what “true Christianity” is about.   Perhaps the most important reason for engaging with Marxism is that it caused Christians to re-examine and consider Jesus’ teaching on wealth and poverty and to think again about what He meant by the Kingdom of God.  In the 21st Century it is easy and convenient to focus on the epistles with their occasional references to a purely spiritual afterlife and ignore the overwhelming number of references to a renewal of this world in the Gospels.  Perhaps we choose to ignore the Gospels because they are demanding of us, collectively as well as individually.  Jesus undoubtedly called for practical action (orthopraxy) as well as the right words (orthodoxy), for believers to give materially as well as spiritually and to build a better this-world in preparation for the second-coming.  He asked a lot of us and most of us fall well short.  It is easier and more convenient to ignore demands we feel that we can’t meet, but that doesn’t make it right to do so. Perhaps, in the end, “true Christians” should go further than engaging with Marxism and start engaging with Jesus’ words and example. That might start a real revolution!

“Augustine’s theory of Original Sin has no place in the 21st Century world” Discuss (40)

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Original sin is increasingly unpalatable in the 21st century world.  The idea that human nature is sinful to the extent that even new babies are in need of salvation and liable to go to hell if unbaptized is difficult to accept in a western, secular society which idealizes childhood, its purity and its innocence. In addition, the number of unbaptized infants who die seems to be increasing with the development of IVF, the rising world-wide use of abortofascient contraceptives and abortions as well as with fewer parents choosing to baptize their children.  Those educated in liberal societies are less and less willing to accept that a God who exacts justice through the fires of hell could be considered good.  Arguably, original sin is even more difficult to accept in parts of the world where infant mortality of a more traditional sort remains stubbornly high.  What Priest would relish informing a bereaved mother that the eternal fate of her unbaptized child is in question?  Muslims have no concept of original sin, so it is easy to see why Christians in Africa would be as likely to want to agree with the title statement as Christians in the UK would be.  The Roman Catholic Church acknowledged the difficulties with original sin in 2007, the International Theological Commission issuing THE HOPE OF SALVATION FOR INFANTS WHO DIE WITHOUT BEING BAPTISED which was widely interpreted as the Church stepping back from original sin so are as it was able to without undermining previous doctrine and the idea of infallibility. Clearly, St. Augustine has an important place in the 21st Century world.  New books about his life and work are published every year, university courses are devoted to his ideas and his work continues to be enshrined in the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church.  Augustine is one of the four original Latin Doctors of the Church – the Doctor of Grace.  Further, Augustine’s theology is enshrined within the doctrines of Protestant Churches following Luther and Calvin, who were inspired by his teaching on grace and justification through faith alone.  Given that St Augustine has an undeniably important place in the 21st Century world, the statement must be understood to refer to the place original sin has within the thinking of St Augustine.  Is it possible to argue that Augustine’s theology could work without original sin?  Unfortunately, it is not possible and original sin continues to be important, however distasteful some of its implications might be in the 21st century world.

St. Augustine argued that human nature is sinful. In his Confessions, he described how even babies have sinful natures, which show themselves when they have to share their milk. “I myself have seen and known an infant to be jealous though it could not speak. It became pale, and cast bitter looks on its foster-brother… may this be taken for innocence, that when the fountain of milk is flowing fresh and abundant, one who has need should not be allowed to share it, though needing that nourishment to sustain life? Yet we look leniently on these things, not because they are not faults, nor because the faults are small, but because they will vanish as age increases. For although you may allow these things now, you could not bear them with equanimity if found in an older person.” Confessions 1/7:11  This might suggest that sin is part of our god-given natures, but Augustine cannot allow that sin is God’s fault or a necessary part of His creation.  To do so would be to suggest that God is either limited in goodness or limited in power, neither of which would be compatible with Christian faith.  Instead of limiting God, Augustine argued that sin is our human fault; we choose to misuse our free-will and put self-love (cupiditas) ahead of generous love (caritas), falling into sin and earning just punishment from God. For Augustine, we do this both individually and as a human race.  Without original sin, free-will offers an inadequate defence of God’s omnipotence and goodness, given that children suffer as a result of natural evil just as much (or even more) than do adults and don’t seem to deserve punishment on account of their own choices.  Adam chose to betray God, stupidly putting his self-love ahead of the generous love he should have had for mankind and for God.  All people were “seminally present” in Adam, so humanity collectively turned away from God at the Fall.  Following from this, even the tiniest infant deserves all the suffering it might experience because it inherits sin from Adam and cannot deserve grace without salvation through Christ’s atoning sacrifice. Original sin enables Augustine to side-step the problem of innocent suffering by arguing that there is no such thing as innocent suffering.  Without original sin, Augustine would have to fall back on the idea that innocent suffering can be justified, whether through the learning opportunities and growth it might afford (Irenaeus, Hick) or by being offset by the beauty and goodness it enables (Aquinas).  Any attempt to justify innocent suffering by appealing to the ends it serves is distasteful however.  As Kant pointed out, reason demands that we treat humanity “always as an end in itself and never as a means to an end“.  Can we hold God to a lower standard?  Could a God who allows appealing child-cancer as a means to an end, however great that end might be, be a good God?  Still less could that God be good when we consider that He is also all-powerful and so might reasonably be able to create a world in which the innocent suffering is unnecessary even as a means to the end. Without original sin, there would be no way to defend an omnipotent omnibenevolent God against charges of allowing natural evil and the suffering it causes to children.

In addition, Christ’s sacrifice and the salvation it offered would be unnecessary without original sin.  If human beings are only accountable for sins they choose individually, children and any adults who managed to live a sin-free life could go to heaven without grace and without the service of the Church and its sacraments.  Augustine argued against Pelagius and his suggestion that human beings possess the power to attain their own salvation, not least because Pelagianism opens the gates of heaven to good non-Christian and makes Jesus, who clearly said “I am the way, the truth and the life.  No-one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6) a liar.  For Augustine as for St Paul and as for most Christians around the world today, partaking in Jesus’ atoning sacrifice is necessary for salvation.  Without original sin it is difficult to see how this could be true, as some people would be free from sin and worthy of salvation without Jesus, faith or God’s grace.  Such a position could not be compatible either with Roman Catholic Christianity, which requires faith in the sacraments of the Church and their power to cleanse people of original sin… “Born with a fallen human nature and tainted by original sin, children also have need of the new birth in Baptism to be freed from the power of darkness and brought into the realm of the freedom of the children of God, to which all men are called. The sheer gratuitousness of the grace of salvation is particularly manifest in infant Baptism. The Church and the parents would deny a child the priceless grace of becoming a child of God were they not to confer Baptism shortly after birth.”  Catechism 1250 Such a position could not be compatible with Protestant faith either, with its emphasis on justification through faith and the necessity of God’s grace.  As Luther wrote… “Man…does not do evil against his will… but he does it spontaneously and voluntarily. And this willingness or volition is something which he cannot in his own strength eliminate, restrain or alter.” (Luther, The Bondage of the Will, p. 102) Further, as Luther wrote in his Preface to the New Testament… “the gospel demands faith in Christ: that He has overcome for us sin, death, and hell, and thus gives us righteousness, life, and salvation not through our works, but through His own works, death, and suffering, in order that we may avail ourselves of His death and victory as though we has done it ourselves.” (Luther, Preface to the New Testament) In this respect Protestant Christian faith and Roman Catholic Christian faith concur; original sin is an undeniable part of human nature.

It is sometimes claimed that Orthodox Christians sustain a faith that is not dependent on original sin. If this was true, Orthodoxy might offer a way to agree with the title-statement and dispense with the theory of original sin.  However, while it is true that St Augustine has less prominence within the Eastern tradition of Christianity and while original sin has no place in Orthodox doctrine, it is wrong to suggest that Orthodox Christians have no concept of inherited sin or that they disagree with other Christians over either the sinfulness of human nature or the necessity of grace and salvation through the Church.  Orthodox Catechisms affirm that Orthodox Christians believe that human beings inherit sin from Adam and need God’s Grace and Christ’s salvation much as other Christians do:  “all have come of Adam since his infection by sin, and all sin themselves. As from an infected source there naturally flows an infected stream, so from a father infected with sin, and consequently mortal, there naturally proceeds a posterity infected like him with sin, and like him mortal.” Catechism of St. Philaret (Drozdov) of Moscow, 168  Orthodox Churches look to the teachings of Church Fathers such as John Cassian who taught that humans have a depraved nature and suffer from inherited sin.  Orthodox Churches also accept the writings of St Paul, on whose ideas about Adam and Christ as the new Adam in 1 Corinthians 15 Augustine based his theory of original sin.  Orthodox Christianity does not, in the end, offer a way of accepting the title statement and agreeing that original sin has no place in the 21st century world, although Orthodox Christians might not place such emphasis on Augustine as the originator of the theory of original sin.

In conclusion, St Augustine’s theory of original sin has an undeniably important place in the 21st Century world.  Although many Christians might wish is was otherwise, in practice it is not possible to sustain belief in a perfect God or the necessity of His grace and Salvation through Christ and the Church without original sin.  To put it quite clearly, if original sin has no place in the 21st Century world, then neither does Christianity.  The Roman Catholic Church has gone as far as is reasonably possible in retreating from teaching that Limbo is the certain destination of unbaptized infants and leaving their fate to the mercy of God, with whom “all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26) and whose ways human beings can scarcely understand after all (Isaiah 55:8-9).

“Religious faith requires belief in a separate soul” Discuss (40)

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Assuming that the statement refers to Christian faith, through the history of Christianity there have been Christians who have believed in a separate soul (e.g. Descartes) and others who have not (e.g. St. Matthew) but the crux of the issue is whether such a belief is required.  This begs the question “by who or what standard?”  Obviously, belief in a separate soul is not required by the Creeds; the Apostles’ Creed affirms “I believe in the resurrection of the body and life everlasting” which suggests that Christian faith requires not a dualist but an avowedly monist position.  Further, the Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church 1059 affirms that “The holy Roman Church firmly believes and confesses that on the Day of Judgment all men will appear in their own bodies before Christ’s tribunal to render an account of their own deeds”.  It is clear that no belief in a separate soul can be required by orthodox Christian faith, although I will argue that belief in a separable soul might make it easier to sustain faith in the face of life’s challenges and apparent inequities.

Christian faith promises salvation; union with God and restitution for the injustices apparent in this life.  Nevertheless, the New Testament is unclear about how this salvation will come about and whether the afterlife will entail bodily existence or be purely spiritual.  The Synoptic Gospels suggest an immanent eschatology; descriptions of heaven and hell are earth-like and seem to suggest that people will have resurrected bodies to experience reward or punishment much as we experience these in the coming Kingdom of God.  Matthew 25 (the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats) suggests that the evangelists expected that Jesus will soon return to judge the living and the dead and supports a physical understanding of hell ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:41)  Luke 16:23-24 also supports this view “So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’ Other references to the final judgement are similar “And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” (Revelation 21:3-4) and this vision of the end-times seems consistent with Old Testament references, such as those in Ezekiel and Isaiah.  Christian faith supported by references in the synoptic gospels would require no belief in either a separate or a separable soul, only a belief in physical resurrection. Nevertheless, belief in physical resurrection is difficult to sustain in the modern world.  There is a complete lack of supporting evidence and it is difficult to see how it could deliver the promised reward (or punishment) in a fair and just manner.  Surely, those who died hundreds or thousands of years before the final judgement would be at greater risk of their bodes having disintegrated.  Surely, those who died as infants, after losing limbs, in extreme old-age or whose bodies were destroyed utterly would seem less likely to get their just deserts.  While “all things are possible with God” (Matthew 19:26) and Christian faith requires a belief in God’s omnipotence, it is clear that this cannot extend to God doing the logically impossible, or else most theodicies would collapse and God could not also be all-good. While God resurrecting people out of nothing by reassembling them from dispersed dust into their ideal form may not be logically impossible, it comes close to being so in some cases.

It is obvious why many 21st Century Christians prefer to believe in an eternal life, reward or punishment which begins soon after each person’s death.  A belief in immediate reward and punishment would work either with dualism, belief in a separate soul, or with a belief in re-creation into a parallel dimension.

Immediate reward or punishment through dualism, in a purely spiritual sense, is superficially easier to reconcile with science and reason.  There have been many reports of Near Death Experiences which, if credible, would to support belief in disembodied existence immediately after death.  Pam Reynolds’ experience during standstill surgery in 1991 is often seen as one of the best documented cases. More recent research conducted by Dr Sam Parnia at the University of Southampton might suggest that the soul could continue after death without a body.  In addition, a spiritual interpretation of the afterlife would be more rationally defensible than physical resurrection.  It is easier to see how a soul could survive eternally; a risen body would still be physical and so subject to aging, sickness, disability and other associated limitations.  It is easier to see how a soul could come “face to face” with God, who is not normally seen to have a physical existence as human beings do. Further, parts of John’s gospel, the Johannine letters and Paul’s letters seem to support a more spiritual interpretation of eternal life. Verses such as “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” (2 Corinthians 4:18) and “So then, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; what is old has passed away – look, what is new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17) and “Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.” (Galatians 6:8) seem obviously Platonic in their influence and are closest to dualism. However, although faith with a purely spiritual eschatology seems easier to reconcile with science and reason, it comes with significant problems and has been relatively rare through the history of Christianity. Belief in a separate soul – dualism – is difficult to defend in philosophical or scientific terms and suggests other beliefs and practices which are incompatible with Christian theology. Descartes argued for a Christian dualism, but struggled to provide a coherent account of why the soul would be enfleshed, how soul and body interact and how a disembodied soul could experience reward or punishment in the way that would be necessary for Christian promises of eternal life to be meaningful.  The Catholic Church never accepted the idea that eternal life could be purely spiritual and disembodied because this might seem to dilute the punishment of hell – annihilation or distance from God would scarcely seem a disincentive to people who have decided to commit mortal sins after all.  Further, by the Middle Ages the Church realized that dualism supports an utter contempt for the physical body, which can lead people towards extreme and unhealthy asceticism or towards a disregard for the sins of the body and the belief that its sins – sexual sins included – are less significant.

Belief that the body can be re-created in a parallel dimension after death to receive reward or punishment is far preferable.  Seeking a middle-way between the difficulties of basing faith on a future physical resurrection and basing it on dualism and a purely spiritual eternal life, St Thomas Aquinas developed his Theology on the basis of Aristotle’s Philosophy.  Rejecting the dualism proposed by his teacher Plato, in his Metaphysics, Aristotle had set out how all beings have four different types of cause; material causes (physical ingredients), efficient causes (agents), formal cause (what makes something what it is, its definition) and a final cause (the purpose or end to which its existence pertains). Aristotle understood that the soul is the formal cause of the human being, what makes it what it is and defines its existence.  Unlike Plato however, Aristotle did not see the form of a being having any separate metaphysical existence.  The form depends on the materials it specifies, and the end towards which it works.  The soul is, in effect, the function of the body – what Gilbert Ryle later described as “the ghost in the machine” – it gives the impression of being a separate entity but in fact it depends entirely on the physical body for its existence. This is where Aquinas departed from Aristotle; he argued that on death the body is re-created in a parallel heavenly dimension and that the new unity of soul and heavenly body is subject to punishment and reward.  Arguably, this idea of re-creation has a basis in scripture; references such as “They are buried as natural human bodies, but they will be raised as spiritual bodies.” (1 Corinthians 15:42-44) can be interpreted as Biblical support for Aquinas’ “modified dualism”.  Further, John Hick developed a defense of re-creation into a parallel dimension through the “replica theory” which he developed in Death and Eternal Life (1976).  As Hick argued, provided that the replica retains the memories of the original, difficulties with spatio-temporal continuity can be overcome.  When Captain Kirk said “beam me up Scotty!” there was no doubt that Kirk remained Kirk although there was a break in his spatio-temporal existence. Aquinas’ theory of re-creation supports Christian faith far better than either monism and physical resurrection or dualism and purely spiritual reward/punishment.  It avoids both the challenges presented by science and reason to belief in physical resurrection and the theological pitfalls of dualism, while straining credulity to a lesser extent because it requires only that the soul could be briefly separable, not that it must be sustained in a separate state.  For this reason, Aquinas’ theory was adopted into the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church at the Council of Trent in the 16th Century.

In conclusion, it is clear that orthodox Christian faith does not require belief in a separate soul.  Christian faith can be sustained through a belief in physical resurrection, either in the future starting with the final judgement as the Synoptic Gospels, Creeds and Catechism suggest, or through re-creation into a new body in a parallel dimension as St Thomas Aquinas suggested.  Re-creation does not require belief in a separate soul, but does suppose that the soul is separable.

RE & the KNOWLEDGE problem…

/ vardycharlotte / Leave a comment

I started teaching in 1999.  Since then I have lost a lot of sleep over the direction my subject is heading in.  To summarize…

  1. First we had Curriculum 2000 forcing the most linear and synoptic subject – Religious Studies – into a modular structure and imposing meaningless AS.  This was when the effects of making boards commercially competitive really started to be felt – with boards competing to make their spec most likely to yield top grades.
  2. Then, to reduce the predictably ridiculous and counter-productive exam-burden, revised specs left most of the content on the cutting-room floor and drove us towards superficial, over-focused courses that were dominated by (popular and so commercially attractive) Philosophy. Exam-boards pumped “endorsed” textbooks and examiner-led training into the mix, making success less about ability and more about money.
  3. Then we had the “helpful” suggestion that RS see this threat to standards and as an opportunity and offer early exams and/or reduced time courses.  Our subject-association peddled “do RS in an hour a week” courses and talked up “shoving all year 9 into short-course”, normalizing professional suicide. This at the same time as teacher-training was opened up to people with irrelevant degrees, who understandably shaped the feather-light content to suit their own Sociology, Philosophy or Psychology backgrounds.  Almost no subject-knowledge CPD was available, especially for 14-19. Popular yes – sustainable no.
  4. Then we had the widespread – and justified – perception that RS was the softest of “soft subjects” to deal with alongside mounting criticism that RS wasn’t RE by any measure, and wasn’t philosophy or relevant to university either, and that teaching was often substandard…  we responded by attempting to re-brand our own departments and write our own courses to re-introduce rigour and coherence, either in relation to RE or Philosophy.  This led to balkanisation and reduced the already-low levels of professional communication and collaboration, exacerbating the problems and making it hard to respond when the English Baccalaureate, #REConsult and then real-terms education cuts came along…
  5. Then a few influential people and groups – each with their own agendas and ambitions – claimed to represent us all and proposed a radical revision of the aims, identity and future of the subject under the guise of a long-overdue stiffening of the exam specs.  The “consultation” on dense, nearly-complete documents was launched quietly in November and closed on New Year’s Day to minimize responses.  Anybody who drew attention to the obvious issues was subject to personal and professional attack and their input largely ignored.
  6. The opportunity to come together and devise a sustainable future for the subject missed, when the new specs came out the same influential people battered down critical comments – mostly on social media – and made teachers feel unable to express their difficulties and concerns.  The exam boards, publishers, associations, consultants, textbook-authors and trainers chose to ignore the cliff we are all heading towards in the pursuit of £££, influence, honours and perhaps a way out of RE for themselves.  Those in faith-schools contributed to the discussions safe in the knowledge that they would carry on doing what they had always done regardless of the outcome.
  7. Predictably, the Commission on RE has focused its evidence-taking on the same influential people as dominated #REConsult and seems to be as divided within itself over the aims and identity of the subject as the rest of us.  Its interim report evidences what we knew already about the desperate state of the subject, but offers little hope of progress.  If the best that we can do is re-opening the re-branding discussions and pinning our hopes on a minority government prioritizing, let alone passing or resourcing, deeply controversial legislation at a time of political and economic chaos… then we might as well re-train as Maths or Computing teachers now.

So, where are we now?

It seems to me that my subject – RE, RS, RMPS or CRaP, whatever you choose to call it – is close to being wrecked.  We have been blown against the cliffs by political and economic winds beyond out control (and beyond many peoples’ understanding), but it is important to  be aware of the specific rocks we are being broken against.

  1. As teachers we lack any meaningful opportunity to discuss and contribute as a professional body.
    • Our subject association is far from being neutral or effective.
    • Most people no money to attend day-long meetings in London, not least because most academies insist training is all “in-chain”.
    • Most people haven’t the time to pussy-foot around the issues… those of use who actually teach are having to resource entirely new courses in at least five out of seven year groups this year.
    • Social media is dominated by people sharing fatuous memes, taking out their frustrations and asking other people to do their jobs for them.
  2. Understandably, RE teachers lack skill and awareness in political maneuvering.  Many are intensely naive and unrealistic.
  3. Related to that, people actually think that developing and publishing a new dense National Curriculum, Entitlement, Core Content or Framework document will change things.  It won’t!  This ship is a juggernaut that won’t turn quickly, easily… or at all when the same document is unlikely to be backed with significant training, time and resources for implementation.
  4. Our subject is deeply controversial and many people who have little idea of what actually happens in classrooms have passionate concerns and ideas about how it should move forward.
  5. Even experienced teachers seem to have little understanding of the difficulties inherent in curriculum design, let alone National Curriculum design.

A National Curriculum would be a disaster!

I would like to ask teachers younger than 35 (i.e. too young to have any memory at all of the debates surrounding the introduction of the National Curriculum in other subjects in 1988) to think more deeply about the challenge… perhaps by trying an activity that I do with my Year 7 classes as part of their “Welcome to RE” module.

Activity

Imagine you are the Head of Subject at XYZ School.  You have to decide what children will study, when and how, across the seven year groups at our school. 

There are a few rules, which mean that most of the creative input you will have is in Years 7, 8 and 9… where all students have an hour per week of RE, which works out at 39 hours per year (including exams & assessments):

  1. You have to spend significant time studying Christianity, because this is a Christian school (you could delete that) and because Britain is a Christian country.
  2. You have to give children the opportunity to study other religions, especially Judaism, Islam and Hinduism but also Sikhism and Buddhism. 
  3. Many children and parents want the opportunity to study non-religious world-views like Humanism, as well as contemporary issues like Capital Punishment and “big questions” about the existence of God or suffering.
  4. The Government ask us to cover topics in British Values and PSHCE, including bullying, internet safety and the importance of consent.
  5. The GCSE course in Years 10-11 is set by the exam-boards and must include Christianity, one other religion (any one) and four ethical themes.  The A Level course in Years 12-13 is set by the exam-boards and is all Christianity, Philosophy and Ethics.

It might also be useful to know that – as well as our Chaplain – the department has one teacher experts in teaching Islam, one who is very interested in Hinduism and one who was trained in Philosophy.  We also have a lot of exciting resources for Hinduism because we used to teach it for GCSE – and none for Buddhism or Sikhism.  We can run one optional local trip or visit per year in Years 7, 8 and 9.

Work together to decide what we should teach when and how, using the A3 curriculum overview grid on your table.  When you have decided, develop a 3 minute presentation explaining what you have decided and explaining your reasons.  We will hear the presentations next lesson.  

Of course, they all come up with different plans (as we would) and justify them for different reasons.  Most of the plans are reasonable, many of the justifications are sensible.  The point of the activity is to help them understand what we, as a department, offer and show that the subject is complex and diverse.  Further, it introduces them to having discussions with people who have different views, considering and evaluating the reasons behind those views.

It is clear – to me at least – that unlike Maths or Science, there is no “right” way to teach our subject.  There are no topics or concepts that are “easy” or “challenging” in themselves. The Book of Ruth can be taught in KS1 or can be the subject of a PhD dissertation…  Hinduism is “accessible” through Ramayana puppet-shows at KS2 and incredibly challenging when exploring the nature of truth in myth at A Level.

I tried a discussion with Peter on this point… “what would you specify for KS1, KS2 and KS3 in relation to Christianity” I asked.  “Which concepts and content should children know at 7, 11 and 14?”  It took us precisely 30 seconds to be arguing over the creation stories.  With so much to cover, it seems a luxury to specify them for study at KS1,2,3,4 and 5… but that is what we wanted to do.  You can’t reduce “content” like that to the “knowledge organizer” treatment.  Learning isn’t all about ticking boxes next to topics that have been “covered” or spelling key-terms correctly.

I have concluded that there is nothing to be gained by opening up the can of worms that will be trying to relegate some topics to KS2 and keeping others for late KS3 on a national level.  It is hard enough for individuals to justify decisions to themselves!

Perhaps we are more like History in that respect – studying the Crusades can happen at age 9 or age 39 with equal validity. Yet perhaps it follows that, like History, the decision over which topics to teach when becomes a loaded one.  Do we, like History, submit to teaching an implicit narrative i.e. “Our Island Story”… or do we follow Geography in being led by skills and themes – such as “migration” or “erosion” and leaving the specific case-studies largely up to schools or teachers?

How can we move forward/survive?

Having thought long and hard, I have come to think that adopting the Geography model and developing a non-statutory framework driven by big ideas” rather than inflexible and specific lists of content is by far the best for RE.

This model is not perfect, but it is better than trying to design an RE curriculum as if it were French or Latin (centered on memorizing and using a vocabulary-list) and better than the extreme thematic approach that seems inspired by Art (creative stimulus > discussion > reflection > creative response).

It is certainly true that Geography’s “themes” and “skills” become lenses which have the potential to distort how a case-study is presented, so care must be taken to offer students the invitation to extend their knowledge and understanding around the particular question that is the focus of the course.

Nevertheless, with subject matter as dense and diverse as ours, “Big Ideas” are a necessary way into the material which offer a more coherent and engaging approach than alternatives.

Recommendations for the Commission

If the Commission on RE wants to make recommendations which would yield positive change I would suggest…

  1. Stay out of the GCSE and A Level controversy and out of the Faith Schools and Withdrawal debates as much as you can… these will consume time & energy and will get nowhere.
  2. Focus on determining the aims for the subject and keep them modest and achievable. No sense in aiming to do something that nobody can do given time and budget restraints.
  3. Slim down the entitlement statement for the same reasons – but press for the slimmed down statement to become law to replace existing laws.  Recommend that Ofsted / ISI assess whether schools are outstanding, good, satisfactory or requires improvement in relation to meeting the RE entitlement at each inspection carried out from 2020, which should include a questionnaire question, policy on website, watching RE lessons and meeting with RE teachers & students.
  4. Eliminate all mention of re-naming the subject from the final report.  It will be the only think anybody takes notice of and it will get us nowhere.
  5. Recommend a new national framework for RE, non-statutory in the first instance, which would remove the need for standing SACREs, fulfill the national entitlement and show best-practice.  Avoid getting into details of content; focus on what ideas at what level & give examples of what this might look like rather than being prescriptive.  Give teachers a meaningful opportunity to discuss, consider and have input into the “Big Ideas” that will be specified.
  6. Encourage publishers, associations, diocese etc. to develop their own courses and resources which follow the framework as a structure.  Many schools will choose to follow these, but it allows for diversity within parameters.
  7. Recommend the funding of a properly independent subject association (with aims that are the same as the subject’s aims).  It cannot be funded by a faith-group or commercial organisation and its activities should be mostly online and free to facilitate access.  Perhaps SACRE money could be re-purposed for this.

 

 

Religious Education: What do students need to KNOW?

/ vardycharlotte / Leave a comment

2+ different: concepts of God, truth, faith & reason inc suffering & science, religious experience & miracles, approaches prayer & worship, interpreting texts & language, ideas about life after death, judgement & salvation inc. free will, ethics & issues, history & politics today

— Charlotte Vardy (@VardyCharlotte) November 14, 2017

Following on from discussions on social media, this is just to offer my solution to the perennial question in RE… what do students actually need to KNOW.

I don’t pretend that this solution is perfect or non-controversial, but I hope that by setting it out in more than the 280 characters Twitter now allows will provoke some constructive criticism and alternative suggestions.

My own view is that specified content should steer well clear of the GCSE annex approach of listing in bullet points somebody’s (peculiar?) idea of the “facts” about being a member of each religion.  Clearly, the soul of every religion is its diversity and complexity, so no homogenized summary of founders’ lives & stories, holy books, worship habits or festivals and significance is ever going to represent… or even be recognizable to… all members of a tradition.

I would embrace difference and go for a simple, clear thematic approach focused on topics which are both engaging and important for achieving the central aims of both RE and RS.

Through Key Stage 3 (assuming 3 years of 1 hour per week) I would suggest that all schools offer students the opportunity to study AT LEAST three different religious traditions as well as non-religious approaches to…

  1. The concept of God – e.g. Monotheism / Polytheism / Atheism, Omnipotence vs. a more limited personal God, God’s love / God’s justice, representing God / the Divine in Art, Language, Poetic writing, Music etc.  In any case challenge the idea that religious people believe in an old man with a white beard sitting on a cloud!  Personal reflection on the existence & nature of God – discussing personal beliefs with other people – hearing from people who hold different beliefs – listening and engaging with those who hold other beliefs.
  2. Approaches to prayer & worship – (how) do religious people communicate with God?  What form does worship take? What are the similarities and differences between different traditions in prayer and worship?  Explore at least 2 of: Meditation & Spirituality.  Pilgrimage.  Festivals.  Sacred Places, Places of Worship & Religious Architecture. Relics. Monasticism & Asceticism.  Compare & contrast approaches to these themes from the three religions studied, acknowledging diversity with each tradition and considering the reasons for the similarities and differences as well.
  3. Faith & reason inc suffering & science – Why do people believe in God? Is belief in God rational?  Is it morally wrong to believe something without evidence?  What counts as evidence where God is concerned?  Does suffering and/or science defeat belief in God, strengthen or change it?  Personal reflections on the existence of suffering and personal beliefs about the origin of the universe & humanity.  Expressing personal views through a creative medium.  Articulating a reasoned, personal perspective on paper which shows awareness and understanding of another view.
  4. Religious experience & miracles – what do religious people mean by Religious experiences and/or miracles?  Various examples of both, ancient & modern, credible and not credible.  The importance & significance of religious experience and/or miracles for faith and religion.  Religious responses to scientific critiques of religious experiences and/or miracles including those from Psychology & Sociology.  Developing a well-informed, reasoned, balanced written argument.
  5. Interpreting texts & language – what Holy texts do Religious traditions venerate?  How did they come to be written?  What do they contain?  What different approaches are there to reading or interpreting Holy Texts within each tradition?  How do Holy Texts influence Religious attitudes and behaviour today?  Responses to critiques of textual authority from, for example, Biblical Criticism. Developing a well-informed, reasoned, balanced spoken argument / participating in a debate.

At KS4, whether through GCSE or another non-examined course, I would suggest that students should explore two Religious as well as non-Religious perspectives on…

  1. Ethics & issues – different religious approaches to ethical decision making and their application to at least 3 contrasting contemporary moral issues chosen by the school. Comparison with non-religious decision making on the same issues e.g. utilitarianism. Recap on the use of Holy texts in decision-making and different approaches to reading / interpreting texts for this purpose.
  2. Ideas about life after death, judgement & salvation inc. free will – What do people believe about judgement, Life after death and salvation?  Where do these ideas come from?  What evidence supports these beliefs?  Are the beliefs consistent within the tradition or do they vary?  How do beliefs about judgement, life after death and salvation influence the life of the believer today and their decision-making?  Responses to critiques from e.g. Feuerbach, Freud and Marx. Recap on Faith & Reason and the relationship between them in Religion & the ethics of belief.
  3. History – A survey of the history of at least 2 different religious traditions, including consideration of the reasons for splits and schisms and differences between European manifestations of the tradition and non-European manifestations. Consideration of how these 2 traditions came to the UK and how they are manifest in the UK today e.g. demographic information, different groups represented locally etc. Make connections with different approaches to Prayer and Worship & Holy Texts where possible.
  4. Politics today – Explorations of 2/3 current political disputes with a religious dimension.  Consideration of the role of religion in these disputes and the relationship between religion, politics and culture.  By way of examples – Ireland & the troubles, Israel / Palestine and  the Syrian Civil War.  Relate back to Holy Texts where possible.
  5. The nature of truth – e.g. Consideration of whether truth is an absolute or more relative, is truth only what is verifiable or falsifiable, or broader?  Is truth accessible to human beings or ultimately obscure?  Relate back to concept of God, Faith & Reason, Prayer & Worship, Holy Books / Language & Life after Death.

Clearly, these topics could be specified together, so that students study the specified features of Religion A and then Religion B and then Religion C.  Alternatively, the topics could be specified thematically, so students explored one theme from 3 different religious perspectives… or a combination of the two different approaches.

Obviously, the GCSE in RS (whether short-course or full-course) would add to this list considerably (although there is considerable overlap)… but I think that this list would insure against the GCSE RS becoming too divorced from RE, without placing in impossible burden on departments trying to deliver BOTH GCSE and an “entitlement”.

Anyway… that is my suggestion on the table.  (Constructively) criticize away… preferably by responding with your own positive suggestion(s).

“Religion will have no place in 22nd Century Britain!” Discuss (40)

/ vardycharlotte / Leave a comment

Religion is in decline in 21st Century Britain. This does not seem to be due to an increase in peoples’ understanding of science and acceptance of it as a complete explanation for life.  As Richard Dawkins has observed, even non-religious people remain wedded to unscientific beliefs and the battle for science and reason is a long way from being won, even in Britain which is one of the most secular countries in the world. In a “post-truth” era, people are increasingly willing to question scientific method and accept “alternative facts” on the strength of little more than popular opinion or convenience. Further, there is no clear correlation between supernatural beliefs and religiosity in Britain.  For examples, a YouGov poll in 2017 suggests that only 19% of British Christians have any difficulty accepting the Theory of Evolution through Natural Selection as a full explanation for human life and a YouGov poll in 2015 suggested that only 55% of self-identifying Christians actually believe in God!  Clearly, some people claim religious affiliation and even attend a place of worship, while not subscribing to the most basic doctrines of that religion.  Further, it is probably fair to say that a lot of people who do not attend a place of worship maintain religious beliefs.  Nevertheless, NatCen’s Social Attitudes Survey of September 2017 made headlines when it reported that 53% – a majority – of the British public now describe themselves as having “no religion”, up from 48% in 2015 and 31% in 1983.  From a straightforward statistical perspective, it would probably be fair to say that Religion will have a much smaller place in 22nd Century Britain than it does in 21st Century Britain. 

Of course, statistics do not provide a complete picture; they need to be contextualized and interpreted, as well as to be tested for validity.

Firstly, it is wrong to infer that because the number of people with a particular characteristic in a society is small that that characteristic “has no place” in society.  Consider; the percentage of people who identify as transgender or even homosexual in Britain is small.  Estimates suggest that around 1% of people are gender nonconforming to some extent and the 2013 ‘Integrated Household Survey’ undertaken by the Office for National Statistics found that just 1.1% said they were ‘gay’ or ‘lesbian’ and 0.4% said they were bisexual on a sample of 178,197 British adults. This suggests that there are about 545,000 homosexual and 220,000 bisexual adults in the UK but relatively few people would accept that this is evidence for gays, lesbians and bisexuals, their issues or culture, having “no place in” our society.

Secondly, the headlines of the data conceal the fact that both the religious landscape and the intensity of religiosity in Britain are changing as a result of evangelism and immigration.  The numbers of evangelical Christians, of Muslims is rising and is projected to rise further in the coming decades according to Pew Research in 2015.  Reasonable estimates suggest that the proportion of Muslims in Britain will increase towards 10% by 2050.  Further, Pew Research in 2015 suggested that Religion is very important to more Evangelical Christians and Muslims in the US than it is to members of more traditional Churches.  If the same is true in the UK, then the shift from traditional Churches towards Evangelical Churches and the increase in numbers of Muslims could signal an increase in how important religious people think religion is in their lives.  While the raw number of religious people might be much lower in the 22nd Century Britain than it is in the 21st Century Britain, these people might well see religion as more important than many religious people do today.  Possibly, the influence of religion will not decline as as sharply as the raw percentages might suggest it should.  On this basis, Religion might still have a place in 22nd Century Britain.

Thirdly, the sample size used by NatCen to gather religious affiliation and attendance data is small and its conclusions are contested.  NatCen’s surveys typically draw on fewer than 2000 responses, so the margin for error on projections of proportion across the sample would be just less than 3%, with a substantially higher margin for error on projections for age-cohorts, which are sometimes dependent on excessively small samples such as the 20 responses available for the before 1920 cohort in 2008.  Further, UK Census data suggests that the NatCen figures for religious affiliation may be significantly lower than the actual figures. For example, in 2001 NatCen suggested that 54% of the British population was Christian whereas the Census suggested 72%.  In 2011 NatCen suggested that 47% of the British population was Christian whereas the Census in the same year suggested that the figure was 59.3%.  Further, by the same comparison, NatCen seems to inflate the numbers of people who are not religious even more dramatically.  For example, in 2001 NatCen suggested that 41% of British people were not religious whereas the Census in that year suggested that the figure was just 15%.  In 2011 NatCen suggested that 46% of the British population was not religious while the Census suggested a figure of 25.1%.

Despite significant issues with the statistical evidence, it is clear that both NatCen and the Census data support the principle that religious affiliation is declining steeply and that the number of people with no religion is increasing rapidly.  Projecting forward it might be inferred that religion will have died out in Britain by the 22nd Century.  Indeed, NatCen’s figures suggest that the percentage of religious people has been falling by approximately 1% per year and that 71% of 18-24 year olds claiming to have “no religion” in 2016, compared with only 27% of those aged 75+.  Although the margin for error in these statistics is quite sizable, on this basis it might seem reasonable to argue that the % of religious people will be negligible by the mid 21st Century and that Religion will indeed have no statistical place in 22nd Century Britain.

Such a conclusion might seem to ignore the effect of age on religiosity.  It is clear that as people age they tend to become more religious.  Argue, Johnson and White documented this in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion back in 1999.  They stated that… “The results show a significant, non-linear increase in religiosity with age, with the greatest increase occurring between ages 18 and 30...” (Abstract)  This would make sense given analyses of Religious belief put forward by scholars from Feuerbach through Durkheim to Freud.  As Feuerbach and later Durkheim noted, Religion fulfills societal needs and seems to be projected and shaped by societies for their own purposes, such as to promote conformity or a collective moral conscience.  As Freud noted, a similar pattern applies to individuals, with religious beliefs and practices fulfilling psychological needs and desires for most people and so, arguably, being projected by the subconscious mind to quell anxiety.  If religion is a man-made phenomenon, a natural response to personal and social needs, then it would make sense for religiosity to be more apparent in older people who are more likely to have experienced the need for community, conformity and comfort.  If, as Freud suggested, God acts as a father-figure for those without a father it would make sense that belief in God would be more apparent among those who have lost their parents and are generally more lonely and isolated.  If, as Durkheim suggested, religion comes into being and is legitimated through moments of what he calls “collective effervescence” then it would make sense for older people – who are more likely to have had experience of such “moments” – to believe and belong. British Social Attitudes Graphs_001

British Social Attitudes Graphs_002However, once adjusted for aging, the statistics still suggest a real and significant decline in Religious affiliation and attendance. D. Voas and A. Crockett, ‘Religion in Britain: Neither Believing nor Belonging’, Sociology (2005), vol. 39, pp. 11-27 analyse British Social Attitudes by age-cohort, noting that affiliation and attendance declined markedly from cohort to cohort, but remained relatively steady in both measures across a 23 year period from 1984 to 2007 for each cohort born before 1970.  In addition, for the 1970s cohort however, affiliation declined from an average 46% in 1990 (when most of the cohort would have been teenagers) to an average 28.1% in 1997 (when most of the cohort would have been starting their careers).  Why the 1970s cohort were particularly susceptible to secularization during the 1990s is an interesting area for research, as is what the effects of this on the children of those in the 1970s cohort will be.  However, as it stands this research suggests that both on the basis of the lower rates of religious affiliation and attendance seen in successive age-cohorts through the 20th Century and into the 21st Century and on the basis of a further decline in religious affiliation and attendance seen during the 1990s within the 1970s cohort, it is reasonable to project that in the absence of other factors, religious affiliation will decline towards zero over the next century.  

Yet what might these “other factors” be and how might they still affect the place of religion in 22nd Century Britain?

One factor might be apparent in NatCen’s figures for the 1980s cohort rates of affiliation, which rose from 32.6% in 1997 (when the cohort were mostly teenagers) to a high of 39.2% in 2001, before returning to 32.3% by 2007 (when most of the cohort would have been in their 20s).  The short-lived spike in religious affiliation within the 1980s cohort around 2001 is mirrored within the 1950s and before 1920 cohorts, but was not evident in the attendance figures… apart from for the before 1920 cohort, who seem to have attended places of worship in 2001 and again in 2005 in significantly higher numbers.  It is tempting to interpret the correlation between higher church attendance among elderly people and big terrorist attacks as having some sort of causative explanation.  Going back to Feuerbach and Freud, perhaps the shock of 9/11 and 7/7 caused people to seek solace in religion?  Going back to Durkheim and thinking about Marx, perhaps the trauma of the attacks and the “war on terror” can explain the need for a collective religious response, both practically and politically.  If religion is the “opium of the masses” it would be reasonable to see more of it being used – rightly or wrongly – when the masses are in real pain!  Nevertheless, if the breakdown of the statistics is anything to go by, the statistical spike was not demographically uniform and nor did changes in affiliation rates translate into attendance.  Only the oldest people actually attended a place of worship more often in 2001 and in 2004-5; there is no apparent change in NatCen’s attendance figures for younger people and the attendance of the 1960s cohort actually dropped in that year and in 2005.  Perhaps the statistical spike in affiliation in 2001 and around 2005 is more to do with expressing solidarity, cultural and moral identity and to do with asserting hope in a seemingly hopeless situation, than it is to do with any actual change in what people believe or do in terms of religion.  In part, this seems to confirm Max Weber’s suggestion that religion emerges out of peoples’ need to respond to the injustice of evil and suffering and out of their need to believe in salvation and that something they can do could lead to a righting of this injustice.  What might the principle that people might be willing to state religious affiliation in greater numbers at times of social stress suggest about the place of religion in 22nd Century Britain?  Just that religion will probably continue to have a place in 22nd Century Britain and that then, as now, that place will be more apparent at times of national crisis and when people feel the need to assert control over their fates. 

Further, the population is aging.  This trend might be interrupted or even reversed by the reduction in antibiotic efficacy, the increase in cancers, the growing likelihood of pandemics as well as by decades of under investment in health and social care etc, but if it continues even at a slower rate, the proportion of very elderly people in the 22nd Century Britain might well be larger than it is today.  Sadly, a higher proportion of very elderly people is likely to result in a higher proportion of people suffering from poverty, loneliness, isolation and depression, all of which are indicators for higher rates of religiosity.  In “Religion and depression: a review of the literature” (1999) McCullough and Larson found that… “some forms of religious involvement might exert a protective effect against the incidence and persistence of depressive symptoms or disorders.”  Surveying more than 440 pieces of research, in “Religious and Spiritual Factors in Depression: Review and Integration of the Research” (2012) Raphael Bonelli et al found that  “Religious beliefs and practices may help people to cope better with stressful life circumstances, give meaning and hope, and surround depressed persons with a supportive community.”  According to a 2008 study, people who are lonely are more likely to become religious while rates of loneliness in the UK among older people are high and arguably rising, perhaps as a result of families dispersing and the long hours worked by British people.  These studies seem to support Freud’s suggestion that Religion can often help people to cope with voids in their lives and Jung’s suggestion that religion is about much more than a world-view or a set of rituals and is better understood as a process of working out our relationship with reality.

In addition, Gallup research in 2009 found that Religion is typically far more important to the population in poorer countries than it is in richer countries and that there is a direct correlation between economic prosperity and religiosity. If rates of religiosity in Britain have a relationship with the economy, then the place that religion has in 22nd Century Britain may depend on the long term economic future of the country.  Of course, the relationship between religion and economics was charted more than 100 years ago by Karl Marx and then by Max Weber, who both understood how religion can function as a tool of capitalism which keeps ordinary people motivated and engaged with the market and the political system which puts it first when it singularly fails to benefit them. Of course with Brexit on the immediate horizon, continuing problems with managing the deficit and the housing market, the national debt and the longer term effects of world population growth, climate change and resources depletion, it is difficult to forecast what the economy will be doing in five years time, let alone into the 22nd Century.  It could be that Capitalism will collapse before that time; Marx predicted that it will.  Suffice it to say that there is a real possibility that Britain will be poorer in the future, and that with the decline in its finances the country could see an increase in the number of people expressing religious affiliation… and even attendance (assuming that places of worship continue to function for long enough to benefit from an upturn in numbers that is).

In conclusion, the claim that religion will have no place in 22nd Century Britain is exaggerated.  While religious affiliation will probably continue to decline, part of this effect may be offset by an increase in religious intensity among those believers who are left, by temporary increases in religiosity at times of national crisis and by the probable effect of a potentially aging and in any case stressed, sick and impoverished population.  Further, even with a small proportion of religious people, there will continue to be a place for religion in British society as there are places for other minority ways of life. Clearly, the decline in religion will raise questions about the established status of the Church of England, the representation of religions in the House of Lords and about the protected status enjoyed by religions in relation to tax and education for examples.  How these questions are handled will have some effect on the place religion will have in 22nd Century Britain.

 

Charlotte Vardy will be proposing the motion “This house believes that religion should have no place in 22nd Century Britain” as part of Candle Conferences’ “Outstanding A Level Religious Studies” events across England during November 2017.