Atheism and Theism JJ Haldane - Common Sense Atheism

184 J.J. Haldane
by shadow but its reality is disclosed by the word of God which is itself truth.
Fourth, each writer invokes interpretations that link the empirical and the
transcendental: what the ‘eye’ of faith sees is not just a function of light
hitting the retina, but equally what is believed originates in various ways and
remains answerable to experience.
Some religious believers take pride and comfort in the idea that their faith
owes nothing to reason, historical testimony or doctrinal authority. It is, for
them, just a matter of a personal relationship with God. Perhaps they feel
that in this way they incur no unpayable debts. Such an attitude is certainly
unphilosophical; but it is also alien to the central traditions of Western and
Eastern Christianity (and indeed to those of Judaism and Islam). Moreover,
it invites the sort of naturalistic, socio-psychological explanation of religious
claims proposed by Smart in his discussion of religious experience and the
testimony of scripture.
The three monotheistic faiths are all religions ‘of the book’ – the Hebrew
bible, supplemented by later sacred writings. But no value (or sense) can be
attached to the idea of discerning and trusting the word of scripture unless
one is able to specify which writings and interpretations are to be accepted
and which rejected. Every faith of the book presupposes some sort of canon
of authentic and authoritative scripture; and one need only ask the question
of how such a canon came to be determined, ratified and transmitted and
how it would be defended against rivals, to realize the ineliminable role of
reason and general understanding. In one of his fine essays G.K. Chesterton
says of philosophy that it is ‘merely thought that has been thought out’ and
adds that ‘man has no alternative, except between being influenced by thought
that has been thought out and being influenced by thought that has not been
thought out’. 11 Holy Scripture and the Creeds it inspired is religious experience
that has been thought out; nothing less would be worth transmitting
across the centuries.
This leads me to comment briefly on Smart’s discussion of the evidential
worth of the New Testament. His central point is a reapplication of epistemological
holism, i.e. of the idea that what one makes of some piece of
purported evidence depends on how one understands and evaluates other
claims. On this we agree. Also, I accept the value of New Testament criticism
and have no wish to insulate scripture from it. 12 On the contrary, Christianity
is a historical religion; by itself philosophy tells us little about the nature of
the Creator and his purpose in creation; and most of what I and others
believe about God rests heavily on the Creeds and on the New Testament –
both of which have their origins in events that are reported as having occurred
in first-century Palestine.
Our disagreement is not whether the scholarly study of scripture is appropriate
but whether it supports or undermines the claims of Christianity. Smart