REHGION AND THE CONTEXTUAHZATION OF CRITERIA

J O H N J. S H E P H E R D *

In his controversial opening chapter to The Concept of Prayer D. Z. Phillips takes A. Flew and R. W. Hepburn to task for taking criteria from one context, outside religion, and imposing them on an alien context, religion or perhaps the Christian religion, with the result that they discover religion to be nonsensical and succumb to a confused conception about religion standing in need of justification. Their confusion derives from their failure to consider the contextualisation of criteria, and once the relation of criteria to context is uncovered the sceptical conclusion they reach can be seen to be ill-founded. 1 In this two-part paper I wish to relate Phillips' thesis to a wider body of sociological analysis than that which he adduces in its support, and to spotlight from this angle what I take to be the crucial and indeed irreparable defects of his argument concerning criteria. Other aspects of Phillips' total argument, or other theses of Wittgensteinian fideism, though relevant, cannot be assessed here. It is fruitful to proceed by examining some of P. Winch's views, for Phillips enlists his support repeatedly. In "Understanding a Primitive Society" Winch examines the Azande conception of magic and witchcraft and criticises an important point made by Evans-Pritchard with regard to it. Evans-Pritchard insists that in order to understand the Azande conception of magic we must try to understand it as it appears to the Azande themselves, in terms of their own social structure (or, in Wittgensteinian terminology, "forms of life"). This is non-controversial. H e also argues however that the Azande are labouring under an illusion. There is no magic and there are no witches. We with our scientific culture know this. Our science is in accord with objective reality in a way in which Azande magic is not. It is with this that Winch disagrees. * University of Lancaster, England. 1 Dewi Z. Phillips, The Concept of Prayer (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1965), Chapter 1, esp. pp. 8-9.

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"In the first place", he writes, "we should notice that the check of the independently real is not peculiar to science". We should not allow the fascination science has for us to lead us "to adopt its scientific form as a paradigm against which to measure the intellectual respectability of other modes of discourse". He goes on to mention religion in particular and we are told that what God's reality amounts to "can only be seen from the religious tradition in which the concept of God is u s e d . . . The point is that it is within the religious use of language that the conception of God's reality has its p l a c e . . . , , 2 Elucidating this K. Nielsen writes: "As the concept of what is real or what is unreal vis-a-vis magic is only given within and only intelligible within the Azande form of life in which the Azande magical practices are embedded, so the concept of God's reality is only given within and only intelligible within the religious form of life in which such a conception of God is e m b e d d e d " ? "My second point", continues Winch, "follows from the first, Reality is not what gives language sense. What is real and what is unreal shows itself in the sense that language has . . . If . . . we wish to understand the significance of these concepts [the real and the unreal] we must examine the use they actually do have ~-in the language. Evans-Pritchard, on the contrary, is trying to work with a conception of reality which is not determined by its actual use in language. He wants something against which that use can itself be appraised. But this is not possible . . .-4 Nielsen adds: "There is no completely extra-linguistic or context-independent conception of reality in accordance with which we might judge forms of l i f e " ) Winch argues further that evea rationality itself is culturedependent. "We start from the position that standards of rationality in different societies do not always coincide; from the possibility, therefore, that the standards of rationality current in S are different from our o w n . . , what we are concerned with are differences in criteria of rationality". 6 Moreover, in a passage of his T h e Idea o f a Social Science we read that "criteria of logic are not a direct gift of God, but arise out of, and are only intelligible in the context of, ways of living or modes of social life. It follows that one cannot apply criteria of logic to modes of social life as such. 2 Peter Winch, "Understanding a Primitive Society", in Religion and Understanding, ed. Dewi Z. Phillips (Oxford; Blackwell, 1967) p. 12. 3 Kai Nielsen, "Wittgensteinian Fideism", Philosophy 42 (July 1967): 199. Nielsen's paper concentrates largely on criteria o f intelligibility rather than on criteria of truth and of rationality.
4 Religion and Understanding, p. 13. 5 Philosophy 42 (July 1967): 199. Cf. W. D. Hudson, Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Bearing of his Philosophy upon Religious Belief (London: Lutter-

worth, 1968), pp. 63-67.

6 Religion and Understanding, p. 28.

RELIGION AND THE CONTEXTUALIZATIONOF CRITERIA F o r instance, science is one such m o d e and religion is another; and each has criteria of intelligibility peculiar to itself. So within science or religion actions can be logical or i l l o g i c a l . . , in religion it would be illogical to suppose that one could pit one's strength against God's . . . But we cannot sensibly say tfiat either the practice of science itself or that of religion is either illogical or logical; both are non-logical". 7 C o m m e n t i n g on this Phillips writes: "Philosophy can no m o r e justify religion as such than it can justify science as such; what it does is to provide one with some kind of understanding of what religious believers are saying", s The relevance of all this to Phillips should indeed n o w be clear. His point is that religious terms, or certain key religious terms, must be meaningful and must correspond to reality (even though this cannot be checked by independent access to reality) because they belong to a certain form of life and there can be no question of a form of life itself standing in need of justification. As he says elsewhere, "the main point I wish to stress is that it does not make sense to ask for a proof of the validity of religious beliefs, whatever that might m e a n " 2 Just as A z a n d e magic and Western science are both forms of life and so cannot be judged individually by any criteria other than criteria arising within the respective forms of life themselves, so too with religion. H e p b u r n and Flew fail to realise this however and insist on using secular criteria rooted in a non-religious form of life in their assessment of religion. They fail to realise that forms of life are largely selfsufficient and that in the end one has to say with Wittgenstein quite simply: "this language-game is played". 1~ It m a y be added that this account throws the requisite light on a later passage in The Concept of Prayer. Instead of concerning ourselves with the questions "Is G o d real?" or "Does G o d exist?" which are parallel to the questions "Is this physical object real?" or "Does this physical object exist?" we should, says Phillips, concern ourselves with the question " W h a t kind of reality is 7" Peter Winch, The Idea of a Social Science (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1958), pp. 100-10l. '~ The Concept of Prayer, p. 24. Cf. Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962), pp. 281-282: "Theology 9 . . can be said to be true or false, but only as regards its adequacy in formulating and purifying a pre-existing religious faith . . . Theological attempts to prove the existence of God are as absurd as philosophical attempts to prove the premises of mathematics or the prihciples of empirical inference . . ." .~ D. Z. Phillips, "Religious Beliefs and Language-Games', in Faith and Philosophical Enquiry, ed. Dewi Z. Phillips (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970), pp. 107-108. Cf. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe and R. Rhees (Oxford: Blackwell, 1953), II, xi, p. 226: "What has to be accepted, the given, is - - so one could say - - forms of life". 10 Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, I, paragraph 654.

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divine reality?" which is parallel to the question "What kind of reality is the reality of physical objects?" He writes: "The latter question does not concern the results of any possible empirical investigation. It is not a question which can be answered experimentally, since the kind of reality it wishes to investigate is presupposed by any experimentation. It is a question regarding the possibility of the distinction between truth and falsity in the empirical world; a question logically prior to that of deciding the truth or falsity of the alleged existence of a physical object". And just as "to ask a question . . . about the reality of the physical world is not to ask whether the physical world exists (what would that mean?) but to ask for an elucidation of the concept of reality in question", so too "the question of the reality of God which is of interest to the philosopher", far from being a question as to whether God exists, is "a question about a kind of reality; a question about the possibility of giving an account of the distinction between truth and falsity, sense and nonsense, in religion". 11 Considered in relation to the whole approach of which it is a part this passage seems much less of an exercise in the begging of basic questions than is otherwise the case. Such then is the basic Winchian-Wittgensteinian thesis which Phillips endorses. What is to be said by way of response? With at least some of the contentions one must agree. It would be ludicrous for example to assess the truth of scientific truth-claims by applying criteria normally reserved for assessing moral truth, Moreover there is a perfectly legitimate sense in which there are context-dependent criteria of religious truth. In his Nuer Religion for example Evans-Pritchard writes: "It seems odd, if not absurd, to a European when he is told that a twin is a bird as though it were an obvious fact, for Nuer are not saying that a twin is like a laird but that he is a bird". 12 Yet as Evans-Pritchard proceeds to show, in terms of criteria rooted in that particular religious form of life "a twin is a bird" is a statement which it is sensible to count as true. This much may therefore be granted. Yet it by no means follows that Phillips' thesis is wholly or even essentially sound. It is clear first from the foregoing account that the issue of the contextualization of criteria consists in fact of a cluster of three issues, concerning respectively criteria of meaning, criteria of rationality, and criteria of truth. 11 The Concept of Prayer, pp. 21:23. Original italics for "kind of reality" only. 17 E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Nuer Religion (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956). p. 131, as quoted in Alasdair MacIntyre, "Is Understanding Religion Compatible with Believing?" in Faith and the Philosophers, ed. John Hick (London: Macmillan, 1964), pp. 118-I19.

RELIGION

AND

THE

CONTEXTUALIZATION

OF

CRITERIA

The first of these will not be considered here partly for reasons of space, partly because the essential points have already been made by Nielsen, and partly because my remarks elsewhere on "Referring to God" constitute in effect a practical rebuttal of Phillips' contention that religious truth-claims proceeding from within a religious form of life are in principle insusceptible of assessment from outside that form of life even with regard to their intelligibility. 1~ Turning then from the problem of meaning to that of rationality, here too I wish to insist that what counts as rationality in one form of life cannot differ completely from what counts as rationality in another form of life (or if it could we could never know). Now Winch indeed does not in fact contend that it can, despite the impression left perhaps by some of his remarks quoted above and the implications of some of Phillips' claims. He refers for example to "certain formal requirements centreing round the demand for consistency", and he argues too that "we should not lose sight of the fact that men's ideas and beliefs must be checkable by reference to something i n d e p e n d e n t - some reality". 14 That these two elements are indeed vital in connection with rationality has been affirmed by other sociologists and k is necessary to consider both rather more closely. It will thereby become possible to counter the stronger kind of thesis about rationality that seems to lie behind some of Phillips' remarks. With regard to the first of the two elements, in reply to an equivocal remark by Winch to the effect that "logical relations between propositions themselves depend on social relations between men", S. Lukes writes: "Does this imply that the concept of negation and the laws of identity and non-contradiction need not operate in S's [a society's] language? If so, then it must be mistaken, for if the members of S do not possess even these, how could we ever understand their thought, their inferences and arguments? Could they even be credited with the possibility of inferring, arguing or even thinking? If, f o r example, they were unable to see that the truth of 'p' excludes the truth of its denial, how could they ever communicate truths to one another and reason from them to other truths? ''15 Lukes' point is that logic is the formulation of criteria of rationality which are universal. They are not the criteria of rationality just for this society or that 1:~ See K. Nielsen, op. cit., passim, and John J. Shepherd, "Referring to God", Religious Studies, forthcoming.
1~ Religion and Understanding, pp. 31, 12.

15 S. Lukes, "Some Problems about Rationality", in Rationality ed. Bryan R. Wilson (Oxford: Blackwell, 1970), pp. 209-210. Cf. Alasdair MacIntyre, A~ainst the Self-Images of the Age (London: Duckworth, 1971), pp. 249-250. For Winch's remarks see The Idea of a Social
Science, p. 126.

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form of life but rather they are quite simply (some of) the criteria. Moreover, in a refinement of Lukes' thesis M. Hollis has argued powerfully that they are not even just universal criteria but are indeed necessary - - the distinction being that non-necessary criteria which "just happened to apply in all societies would be universal without ceasing to be context-dependent". 16 With regard to the second element, checking one's beliefs by reference to reality, the issue is rather more complex. Lukes argues that "if S has a language, it must . . . possess criteria of truth (as correspondence to reality) . . . which we share with it and which simply are criteria of rationality", lr Yet as will be brought o u t shortly it is necessary to distinguish truth and rationality: and even if Lukes can be interpreted here in such a way that his claim is not actually false it is certainly misleading. It seems better therefore to follow Hollis who insists (and this is what lies behind Lukes' conclusion also) that if the anthropologist is to gain any understanding at all of native utterances in a society being studied for the first time there must be an overlap in concepts and percepts between the investigator and the investigated - - "the only alternative to finding an overlap . . . is to find nothing at all . . . The sine qua non [of successful translation - - Hollis is analysing the condition of the possibility of anthropology] is a bridgehead of true assertions about a shared reality") 8 Now this is in accordance with the second of Winch's remarks above. Yet it is necessary to go beyond this, for while it is satisfactory when talk is about trees and birds and other everyday empirical objects it is inadequate in connection with supernatural entities and agencies. The anthropologist has to identify beliefs in the supernatural but clearly cannot do so simply by checking against reality because even if he allows that there may be such a reality it does not lend itself to any straight-forward checking procedures. Some other test of success in identifying such beliefs is necessary. Hollis argues cogently against the adequacy of testing for coherence or testing for deductive or inductive relations between beliefs in the supernatural and other established beliefs. He concludes that the anthropologist is driven to test alleged natwe" beliefs" for "rational" "mterconnect~on" ". In order to justify an identification of a belief in the supernatural "we must show that a native who believed what we already know he believes would have good reason to believe what we now claim he believes". Yet there then arises the further difficulty, and it is this that Winch has underlined, that what is taken to count as a good reasori for a belief varies from culture to culture thus apparently generating a vicious circle since, in Hollis' words, "we should have to know
16 Martin Hollis, "The Limits of Irrationality", in Rationality, p. 218. 17 Rationality, p. 210. l s Ibid., p. 216.

RELIGION AND THE CONTEXTUALIZATION OF CRITERIA

what the natives believed, in order to find out what was a good leason for what; and we should have to know what the native criteria for rational belief were, before we could find out what they believed". But he continues: "We can avoid the circle, however, if we distinguish between the definition of a concept and examples of its application. It would be fatal to allow that anthropologist and natives might have different concepts of what is meant by saying that one belief gives good reason for holding another. But if we add to the list of necessary conditions for the possibility of anthropology a shared concept of rational belief, then we are free to admit that some societies find rational beliefs which others find irrational". And a final quotation: "If anthropology is to be possible the natives must sh~'e our concepts of truth, coherence, and rational interdependence of beliefs. Otherwise we are confronted as theorists with vicious circles. In other words Western rational thought is not just one species of rational thought nor rational thought just one species of thought". 19
9 . .

With regard to Winch's second element then it would appear that the notion of a "rational" belief is more accurately said to involve the notion of "good reasons" than of being "checkable by reference to something independent - - some reality". For the latter is insufficiently comprehensive to cover supernatural beliefs whereas the former can be understood in a way such that it covers empirical beliefs. This point, as also the earlier point about consistency, coherence and logic, may be seen enshrined in A. Maclntyre's contention: "To say that a belief is rational is to talk about how it stands in relation to other beliefs, given a background of yet further beliefs as to what counts as a good reason for holding beliefs on a particular type of subject matter in a given culture". 2~ The additional advantage of this formulation is that by omitting reference to truth it indicates, albeit obliquely, that there is a distinction between truth and rationality - - even though, as has been seen. a bridgehead of true assertions is a condition of ascriptions of rationality. It is not the case then that rationality and criteria of rationality are completely culturally idiosyncratic. With regard to Phillips, this conclusion about rationality is of course highly pertinent to his thesis about Christian belief, certainly in the very strong form in which it finds expression in such remarks as "it does not make sense to ask for a proof of the validity of religious beliefs", or that such a request is "simply misunderstanding mas1,~ Ibid., p. 218. It should perhaps be mentioned that the references to correspondence here do not pre-suppose acceptance of a correspondence theory of truth, only common sense views about truth, cf. for example, A. D. Woozley, Theory of Knowledge: An Introduction (London: Hutchinson, 1949), pp. 129-130. 2o Against the Serf-Images of the Age, p. 250.

SOPHIA

querading as rationality". 21 Since the identification of native supernatural beliefs in "primitive" societies presupposes that such beliefs do not operate in rationally segregated "supernatural forms of life" such that no reasons may be given in support of them, and since the Christian religion has its roots in "primitive" religion, it is quite unrealistic to suggest that the Christian religion properly understood operates in a rationally segregated community of believers such that no reasons may be given in support of its belief that God exists. Moreover not only is it unrealistic but it is inconsistent for it makes of Christianity an exception without reason. Phillips' thesis is of course that far from being an exception Christianity is in this respect on a par with other forms of life, but we now see, and in connection with the kind of anthropological case to which he himself appeals in support of his view, that this is quite mistaken. Thus the trans-cultural notion of rationality investigated by sociologists and necessary to (and moreover vindicated by the success of) anthropologists upholds firmly the commonsense view of believers and non-believers alike that religion shares fundamental criteria of rationality with other kinds of belief and that if there were no reasons whatsoever for believing in God such belief would be irrational. The Wittgensteinian fideist pleads in vain if he pleads to the contrary or if he pleads that there can be no question of an outsider assessing the rationality of theistic belief. It should be noted incidentally that the account of rationality given above discloses the root of the implausibility of Phillips' injunction to philosophers to concern themselves with the question "What kind of reality is divine reality?" which is parallel to the question "What kind of reality is the reality of physical objects?" rather than with the question "Does God exist?" which is parallel to the question "Does this physical object exist?" In establishing his bridgehead the anthropologist necessarily distinguishes between common beliefs about everyday empirical objects and supernatural beliefs, thereby attributing to the latter a logical or epistemological status different from that of the former. And of course this is in line with plain commonsense. Belief in the existence of the physical world is inescapable in a way that belief in God is not (and this holds even if the word is said to be some kind of illusion). Yet Phillips' analogy mistakenly presupposes the contrary and by doing so is rendered quite as question-begging as it seems. This objection is obvious and of course not new. Yet it cannot be said that Phillios has faced up to it properly. Responding to a paper by J. Hick, Phillips writes: "He says that whereas we are all agreed about the reality of the physical world, we are not all agreed, about the reality of God. But when d i d we agree about
21 Religion and Understanding, p. 6.

RELIGION AND THE CONTEXTUALIZATIONOF CRITERIA the reality of physical objects? What would it be like to disagree? I know what it means to agree that it is a tree and not a lamppost that we see in the fog. But when I am facing the tree in normal conditions do I agree that it is a tree? What if everyone else said that it was not a tree? Would I say that I was mistaken? No. I should say I was mad! ''22 As a rebuttal of Hick's point this is wholly unconvincing. In the first place, although it may be granted that we cannot say what it would be like to disagree about the reality of physical objects (in the sense of disagreeing about there being a world at all with such and such salient features) this in no way helps Phillips but on the contrary counts in favour of his opponents. It underlines the fact that belief in the existence of the physical world is inescapable--and suggests a further way of underlining the fact that belief in the existence of God is not, for we can indeed say what it would be, or is, like to disagree about the reality of God. This leads however to the question of whether the theist and the nontheist are disagreeing over a matter of fact, and this cannot be considered here. Nevertheless quite apart from that Phillips presumably agrees that between theists and non-theists there is genuine disagreement and that is the essential reason for objecting to the parallel which he draws. Secondly if everyone else did say that it was not a tree that Phillips was facing, whether or not he were mad he would certainly have to be deemed mistaken. That he should suppose otherwise is simply because trees are things about which, as he points out, in normal conditions there is no question of disagreement. In this they differ from God. Thus in effect Phillips' reply to the objection that he is drawing an analogy which for such and such a reason is false ignores the reason and relies on reiterating the analogy. He continues: "We are familiar with situations where we say, 'This is a tree', 'Here is a torn page', 'Here is an ink-bottle' and so on. Our confidence in saying so is not based on evidence. No, such situations are examples of the kind of thing we m e a n by talking about physical objects". This is all very well, but only up to a point - - the point namely where controversy begins. Do witches exist or do they not? Or what about abominable snowmen? Our confidence in our beliefs about such entities is indeed, if the beliefs are rational, based on evidence. And so it must be with theistic belief, given the widespread disagreement about its validity. It is tfiis kind of analogy which needs to be drawn, even though God if he exists is not just another object in the world and -~ D. Z. Phillips, "Religious Belief and Philosophical Enquiry", Theology 71 (March 1968): 119, and Faith and Philosophical Enquiry, p. 70; John Hick, "The Justification of Religious Belief", Theology 71 (March 1968): 103.

SOPHIA though theistic belief must consequently be differentiated from empirical or scientific hypotheses. At least, Phillips has so far failed to show that this is the kind of analogy that should not be drawn. Returning now to the alleged irrationality of what may be called "comprehensively non-justificatory theism" - - acceptance of theistic belief in the total absence of supporting reasons (other than the reason that the theistic language-game is played) - - the Wittgensteinian might concede this and argue that essentially his thesis is less radical." He does not in fact entirely deny that there are reasons which support his belief in God. But as Winch emphasises, what counts as a good reason for a belief varies from culture to culture or from one form of life to another - - indeed even what counts as consistency varies in this way. Thus although he can see that his reasons for believing are good, those outside the form of life are not in a position to judge properly and are bound to remain unconvinced. There is therefore still no question of justifying religious belief after the fashion of natural theology. Before dealing with this line of defence it must be pointed out that at this juncture there is a transition from debate about criteria of rationality to debate about criteria of truth; for agreement here about what count as good reasons involves agreement about criteria of truth. Yet earlier it was observed that the question of rationality must be distinguished from the question of truth. This must now be elucidated.
To be concluded

10