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WORLD VIEWS AND PERCEIVING World Views and

Joseph Runzo Professor of Philosophy and of Chapman University, California

!50th YEAR M St. Martin's Press ©Joseph Runzo 1993 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1993

All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P 9HE. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

First published in Great Britain 1993 by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world

This book is published in Macmillan's Library of Philosaphy and Religion General Editor: John Hick

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-1-349-23108-9 ISBN 978-1-349-23106-5 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-23106-5

First published in the United States of America 1993 by Scholarly and Reference Division, ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010

ISBN 978-0-312-10379-8

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Runzo, Joseph, 1948- World views and perceiving God I Joseph Runzo. p. em. Articles originally published 1977-1993. Includes index. ISBN 978-0-312-10379-8 1. Religion-Philosophy. 2. Religious pluralism. 3. . I. Title. II. Title: World views and perceiving God. BL5l.R676 1993 200--dc20 93-26988 CIP To two remarkable women Jean, and Janet, and to my mother Ruth conamore Contents

Acknowledgements viii Introduction xi

PART I AN OF 1 1 The Propositional Structure of Perception 3 2 The Radical Conceptualization of Perceptual Experience 23

PART II WORLD-VIEWS AND RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 45 3 Visions, Pictures and Rules 47 4 Conceptual Relativism and Religious Experience 67

PART III WORLD-VIEWS AND RELIGIOUS 95 5 Kant on Reason and Justified Belief in God 97 6 World-Views and the Epistemic Foundations of 115

PART IV FAITH AND RELIGIOUS REALISM VS NON- REALISM 143 7 Realism, Non-Realism and : Why Believe in an Objectively Real God? 145 8 Ethics and the Challenge of Theological Non-Realism 171

PART V FAITH AND RELIGIOUS PLURALISM 191 9 God, Commitment, and Other : Pluralism vs. Relativism 193 10 Perceiving God, World-Views and Faith: Meeting the Problem of Religious Pluralism 219 Index 241 Acknowledgements

The essays in this volume were originally published in a broad range of journals and books in philosophy and religion. They appear here as originally published except for minor changes (primarily to achieve a consistent gender-neutral language in the earliest essays). Because the essays were initially meant to stand independently, and since they develop interconnected ideas, this leaves an occasional overlap among the ideas expressed in the chapters. But it preserves the exact correspondence between the original independent articles and the book chapters. As noted in Chapters 2 and 4, the notion of a 'conceptual schema' which was exclusively used in these earlier essays is equivalent to that of a 'world-view', used throughout the book. I am grateful to the editors or publishers of the following journals and books for their permission to reprint papers originally published under their auspices. Chapters 1 and 2 are reprinted from the American Philosophical Quarterly, July 1977, pp. 211-20 and July 1982, pp. 205--17, respectively. Chapters 3 and 6 are reprinted from Religious Studies, September 1977, pp. 303-18 and March 1989, pp. 31-51, respectively. Chapter 4 is reprinted from Religious Experience and Religious Belief: Essays in the Epistemology of Religion, eds Joseph Runzo and Craig K. Thara (University Press of America, 1986), pp. 117-41. Chapter 5 is reprinted from Kant's Reconsidered, eds Philip Rossi and Michael Wreen (Indiana University Press, 1991), pp. 22-39. Chapter 7 is reprinted from Is God Real?, ed. Joseph Runzo (Macmillan, 1993), pp. 151-75. Chapter 8 is reprinted from Ethics, Religion, and the Good Society: New Directions in a Pluralistic World, ed. Joseph Runzo (Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992), pp. 72-91; portions of Chapter 8 also appeared in Chapter 3 of Reason, Relativism and God, by Joseph Runzo (Macmillan, 1986). Chapter 9 is reprinted from Faith and Philosophy, October 1988, pp.343-64. The National Endowment for the Humanities has been most generous in supporting my work during the time the essays in this collection were written. In 1981 and again in 1990 I was the recipient of the year-long NEH Fellowship for College Teachers. In 1979 I received an NEH Summer Seminar Fellowship for the

viii Acknowledgements ix philosophy of religion at the University of Illinois, Champaign, with William Alston, and in 1987 I was supported through an NEH Summer Stipend. I also benefited greatly during this period from attending the Symposium on at in the Summer of 1985 and the Summer Institute in Philosophy of Religion at Western Washington University in 1986, both directed by William Alston. I had the opportunity to lecture in Britain on three separate occasions in 1985, 1987 and 1990. The various papers I presented at Cambridge University, the University of London, Lancaster and Edinburgh Universities and the University of Wales, Lampeter are represented in part, and in some cases in whole, in the essays in this volume. I am grateful to the faculties of those universities for their helpful comments and suggestions.The later essays in this volume were written during the time I was first a Visiting Professor at Claremont Graduate School while John Hick was on leave in 1989 and then a Visiting Scholar at Cambridge University, St Edmund's College, in 1990. My graduate students at Claremont and colleagues at Claremont and Cambridge helped me clarify my thinking about a number of issues I address in the latter part of the book. I also wish to thank two of my students at Chapman University, Hieu Tran Phan and Leslie Stone, who helped me as research assistants with the manuscript. I am indebted to many friends, both philosophers and theo­ logians, who have encouraged me and enriched the ideas presented here - though not always by agreement! Among my teachers, I would like to acknowledge Robert Adams and Marilyn Adams, William Alston, William Frankena, Gordon Kaufman, George Mavrodes, Jack Meiland and Nelson Pike. Others I would especially like to mention are Paul Badham, Don Cupitt, Steve Davis, Brian Hebblethwaite, Jim Kellenberger, Julius Lipner, Mike W. Martin, Rich Mouw, Phil Quinn, Stewart Sutherland, Virginia Warren, Bill Wainwright and Keith Ward. At Phil Rossi's kind invitation, I first presented 'Kant on Reason and Justified Belief in God' at the 1987 Marquette University International Conference on 'Kant's Philosophy of Religion Reconsidered'. I owe the greatest debt of gratitude to two individuals, Bill Alston and John Hick. They have graciously supported my career in countless ways and provided the incisive criticism tempered with generous encouragement that one is most fortunate to find in friends and mentors. Those who know Professor Alston's and X World Views and Perceiving God Professor Hick's own work well, will recognize the strong influence of their work on my own. Finally, throughout the period when I was writing these essays, the arc-boutant which made it all possible is my wife, Jean. Without her love and support I doubt these essays would have been written. Joseph Runzo California Introduction

This collection of essays presents a systematic analysis of some of the foremost issues in the philosophy of religion. The focus is on the epistemology of religion, the most significant area of recent interest in the field. In addition, though, after developing a religious epi­ stemology in the first half of the book, that epistemology is not only further expanded, but explicitly applied to two salient issues in the contemporary discussion: the debate over theological realism vs non-realism, and the problem of religious pluralism. The central philosophic thread running throughout the essays is the question of how our world-views affect our perception, particularly our perception of God. The first essays set out a general epistemology of perception. The next two sets of essays build directly upon this epistemology: the first assesses the cognitive value of religious experience, while the second analyzes the proper epistemic foundations for belief in God, and whether religious beliefs are properly basic beliefs. Then, in view of the role of faith developed in those essays, the fourth and fifth sets of essays go on to address the dual challenges to traditional theism of theological non-realism and religious pluralism. The essays in this collection were written over the last fifteen years. While they do not constitute a system per se in philosophy of religion, the reader may find that they are more systematic than typical collections of essays, exhibiting a clear development of ideas, with each essay building upon theses from the others. Further, I expressly assume that philosophic ideas have both a history and a context, so the reader will find that these essays also address and integrate the prominent work of others: e.g. and D. M. Armstrong, and William Alston, Don Cupitt and D. Z. Phillips, Gordon Kaufman and John Hick. There are three distinctive features in the approach of these essays to the epistemology of religion. First, the essays are set in the context of both philosophy and . So there is more serious consideration of theology than is typical of much of religion. Second, the essays generally have the following scheme: while taking full account of prominent views, a modified, alternative account is offered. So even though a con-

xi xii World Views and Perceiving God ceptualist theory of perception underlies every issue addressed, the degenerate form of this view, Subjectivism, is rejected; while these essays exhibit strong Kantian themes, Kant's own particular epi­ stemology of religion is rejected; while the foundationalist view of Plantinga and Alston that religious beliefs can be properly basic beliefs is accepted, it is modified by a greater emphasis on the role of faith and commitment to a world-view; and while there are strong similarities with John Hick's Religious Pluralism, ultimately Hick's own position is argued against in favour of Religious Relativism. Further, the historicist orientation of modem theology is accepted, but the ways in which that very account undermines certain more radical conclusions of theology itself are pointed out. The potent attractions of theological non-realism are acknowledged, but I argue for the ultimate success of realism. The problem of religious pluralism is addressed head-on, but I argue that this is not so much a 'problem' as an opportunity to understand religion, and Christianity, in a new light. Hopefully then, a third feature of this book is that it offers an interconnected answer to some of the central puzzles in the epistemology of religion, while recognizing the value of opposing views.

PART I: AN EPISTEMOLOGY OF PERCEPTION

In 'The Propositional Structure of Perception' and 'The Radical Conceptualization of Perceptual Experience', I argue for a con­ ceptualist theory of perception- viz. that the possession of (the relevant) conceptual resources is a necessary condition of every perceptual experience. The issue between the conceptualist and the non-conceptualist is this: on a conceptualist view, all experience is inextricably structured by the conceptual schema (or world-view) of the perceiver. This means that not just how one perceives but what one perceives is inherently determined, in part, by the cultural background and perceptual history of the individual. The non­ conceptualist position - sometimes referred to as a 'non­ propositional' or 'non-epistemic' account- denies that what one , understands, expects and so on will importantly deter­ mine what one will perceive. On the non-conceptualist account, perception involves 'pure presentations', unstructured (or un­ adulterated) by the mind. Introduction xiii 'The Propositional Structure of Perception' sets the stage for the conceptualist position by arguing that the structure of the content of every perceptual act is propositional. More specifically, to perceive something, X, is to perceive X as something, since per­ ceptual acts, even of unreflective consciousness, are simply episodically occurrent awarenesses of about states of affairs of the percipient's body and environment. So rather than there being pure presentations and then the 'facts' conveyed in perception by that presentation, the facts are the presentation. The advantage of this view is that it helps account for the variant ways in which things appear to different perceivers possessing different world-views. This will figure importantly in the epistemology of religion which is developed in the ensuing essays. 'The Radical Conceptualization of Perceptual Experience' builds on this foundation, beginning with an analysis of Fred Dretske's notion of non-epistemic perception. In Seeing and Knowing and later work, Dretske makes a strong case that quite apart from whatever the mind does contribute to perceptual experience, every similarly-situated normal percipient would perceive exactly the same thing. Against this I argue that Dretske and other non­ conceptualists confuse purely physical states like looking at with actual perceptual states like seeing - a point which arises again in the last essay vis-a-vis William Alston's non-conceptualist religious epistemology. Importantly, perceptual locutions govern opaque and not transparent contexts. That is to say, you and I cannot see the same thing even if we look in the same direction, unless we both possess the conceptual resources necessary for perceiving that sort of thing. I also reply to the potential objection that perceptual experiences have a certain 'bruteness' and that this is an unconceptualized element of experience - another key issue regarding religious experience in several of the essays below. I distinguish between the 'given', as that which remains unaltered in experience no matter how we think, and the brute facticity of experience, as that which seems unalterable in each of our individual experiences. I conclude that while the 'given' is one element of experience, neither it nor the brute element is available to us as concept-neutral perceptual information. For while the given is concept-neutral, it is inherently indeterminable, and while brute facticity is determinable, it is inextricably conceptualized. I reach the general conclusion that we are only able to share a common world with others because we share xiv World Views and Perceiving God large portions of our world-views. That is, we perceive alike only because, more fundamentally, we conceive alike.

PART II: WORLD-VIEWS AND RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

The chapters in this section (a) apply this conceptualist view of perception directly to religious experience, but do this within the wider context of (b) how our world-views affect our perception of God. This serves to establish these foundational epistemological tenets for the essays as a whole. In 'Visions, Pictures, and Rules', I take up an unusual but important set of religious experiences, the visions of the great mystics. Here I address two puzzles. First, how could mystics have any reasonable certitude of correctly identifying entities like God or saints in their visions? And second, why do mystics tend to perceive entities which accord with their expectations: e.g. while Muslims perceive Muslim saints, Catholic mystics commonly perceive the Virgin Mary? To answer these questions, I draw a parallel between 'seeing' the entities in a vision and 'seeing' entities depicted in a painting. Knowledgeable viewers are able to identify objects in paintings because they participate in a 'game' of rules of depiction. I suggest that similar 'vision-rules' are operative in certain visions, such that perceiving literal properties of the vision count as perceiving divine entities, and so on. If we understand a world-view as all of the cognitive elements which the mind brings to experience, these rules would be part of the mystic's religious world-view. Then, assuming a conceptualist analysis of experience, the very structuring of the experience by the world-view of the mystic explains both how identifications are made of visionary objects, and why those with different world-views, e.g. Muslims and Christians, will tend to perceive different visionary entities. 'Conceptual Relativism and Religious Experience' tackles another problem for religious experience by employing this same sort of conceptualist analysis. Suppose conceptual relativism is accepted, as it has been in much of contemporary theology. Does this allow for any possibility of circumventing our merely enculturated, relativistic conceptions and so achieving an absolute understanding into the nature and acts of God via religious experience? I first argue against Schleiermacher's notion that the 'feeling of absolute Introduction XV dependence' and 's notion that the Eternal 'I-Thou' relation could provide just such an unrelativized experience of the divine. Next, building on the analysis developed in 'Visions, Pictures and Rules', I address mystical visions and then, more generally, mystical experience. I conclude against e.g. Walter Stace, Rudolph Otto, and Eliot Deutsch, that even mystical experience cannot provide an unconceptualized perception of the divine. In short, the notion of a comprehensible but unconceptualized religious experience is specious. So we must look beyond religious experience simpliciter in order to ground religious belief and avoid the challenge of conceptual relativism.

PART Ill: WORLD-VIEWS AND RELIGIOUS BELIEF

An obvious alternative to the view that religious experience alone grounds religious belief is the possibility that reason alone justifies religious belief. A classic proponent of this latter view is Kant. In 'Kant on Reason and Justified Belief in God', I address Kant's rejection of revealed theology (or revelation) in defence of an appeal solely to transcendental and natural theology (or reason). Kant's motive is admirable: namely, that genuine religion is not the privilege of the few, as it would be for those who have access to the 'correct' revelation, but rather the right of all, as it would be if God is accessible through basic human reason alone. However, on Kant's view, one is religious as long as one is aware of one's moral duties, where it is part of that awareness that if God exists, God commands those moral duties. But this comes close to reducing the religious life to the moral life. Moreover, Kant is both mistaken in holding that it is possible for reason to provide sufficient epistemic justification for theistic -claims, and misleading in suggesting that revealed religion cannot provide sufficient epistemic justification. As I argue in detail in the next essay, religious beliefs can be properly basic beliefs - that is, beliefs which are held immediately and not based on other beliefs as reasons, without violating any fundamental epistemic principles. But then, contrary to Kant's view, reasons are not needed to justify these properly basic religious beliefs, beliefs which would be grounded in the ex­ perience, i.e. revelation, of the divine. (Though as we shall soon see, this is not to revert to the view that religious experience alone is sufficient to justify religious belief.) Furthermore, Kant assumes xvi World Views and Perceiving God that there is a universally valid basic conception of God, available to all rational persons. But this seems highly unlikely given the relativity of human thought and the problem of conceptual relativism addressed above. Against Kant, I suggest that there are three elements in the epistemic justification of religious belief: reason, revelation, and faith. Reason alone is insufficient; revelation should be understood as the self-manifestation of God (and not the mere deliverance of propositions about God); and faith is the ultimate commitment that one has indeed confronted God. On this view, faith that God has revealed Godself within our world-view­ relative conceptions and experiences, can take us beyond the limits of reason alone. In 'World-Views and the Epistemic Foundations of Theism', I address the question, 'What could constitute proper grounds for theistic belief?', within the context of the more fundamental epistemic issue of what justifies commitment to any world-view. The two extreme positions on this issue are represented by fideists like Pascal and Kierkegaard, on the one hand, and evidentialists such as Kant and Clifford, on the other. I assess Alvin Plantinga's and William Alston's rejection of the extreme of evidentialism. While rejecting the classical foundationalist views typical of evi­ dentialists, they suggest a modest foundationalist view that some beliefs are held immediately and not based on other beliefs as reasons, and that a belief is properly basic if one can hold it as basic without violating any fundamental epistemic principles. Plantinga compares certain experiential religious beliefs to immediate perceptual beliefs, memory beliefs, and beliefs ascribing mental states to others. For each of these common types of belief, the beliefs can be properly basic when grounded in the appropriate circumstances. Plantinga and Alston then argue that religious beliefs such as 'God has created all this', or 'God disapproves of what I have done' (what Alston calls 'M-beliefs', i.e. manifestation beliefs) have a similar epistemic status as properly basic beliefs. However, the crux of the matter is that a belief is only properly basic relative to some particular world-view. Specifically addressing Alston's work, it is this relativity of proper basicality which explains the lack of universality of religious experiences and the absence of standard checks for accuracy which, Alston notes, makes it appear that religious beliefs are less epistemically warranted than, for instance, perceptual beliefs. Further, once we see the central role of world-views for religious beliefs as basic beliefs, then Introduction xvii the question of faith arises. For to have faith is to be committed to a particular world-view, and it is on the basis of faith that we decide which of two world-views to adopt. But then the reason evi­ dentialism is misguided, and the reason theistic beliefs can be basic beliefs, is that the believer does not need evidence for these beliefs because there cannot be rationally convicting external evidence for theistic beliefs. This points to two essential epistemic foundations for theism: faith and reason (and as we saw above, religious ex­ perience is the third element). The order of justification for theism is this: a reasoned con­ sideration of alternative world-views makes a leap of theistic faith rational. Once one makes the commitment of faith, then it is possible to have religious experiences which both serve as the grounds for basic theistic beliefs and yield (internal) evidence for additional theistic beliefs which further justify one's faith com­ mitment. However, the commitment of faith, though rational, is not merely rationalistic. Ultimately we hold our world-views, have the commitment of faith, on the basis of values. Thus the sort of considerations which are appropriate for choosing theism would be whether one thinks that the presence of beauty in the universe, or morality, or the very meaning of life is best explained in terms of the .

PART IV: FAITH AND RELIGIOUS REALISM vs NON-REALISM

This conceptualist religious epistemology, emphasizing the central role of our world-views in our perception and conception of reality, can now be applied to one of the most crucial challenges to contemporary theism, the challenge of religious non-realism. The theological realist holds that God exists, at least in part, independently of the human mind. The theological non-realist denies this. In 'Realism, Non-Realism and Atheism: Why Believe in an Objectively Real God?', I defend theological realism by offering a 'modified realist' account of theism which conjointly accounts for the most trenchant grounds for holding a non-realist view of God, and responds to the traditional challenge of atheism. Theological non-realism has been defended by arguing, on the grounds of historicism, that no historical evidence could provide sufficient warrant for belief in a mind-independent God, and by arguing that language cannot in fact meaningfully refer to this xviii World Views and Perceiving God purportedly transcendent entity. I accept an historicist perspective, but suggest that it does not undermine a realist perspective, and I turn to the Kantian distinction between noumena and phenomena to argue that while it is true that we cannot know that our language refers to the noumenal God, it also follows that we cannot know that our language must fail to do so. A third argument for theological non-realism is more powerful. This is the view that a realist conception of God actually undermines or distorts the religious life. Two major proponents of this position are D. Z. Phillips and Don Cupitt. A principal argument of Phillips's is that different language-games (world-views) are incommensurate and thus it is incoherent to attempt talking about God using 'physical object' language. Against this I argue that different world-views, while incompatible, are not utterly incommensurate, and that the con­ ceptual resources of incompatible world-views must overlap, providing the possibility for dialogue across world-views. Cupitt especially emphasizes the moral or spiritual aspects of religion, and supports a theological non-realism on the basis of the loss of autonomy which he thinks results from a dependence on a sup­ posed transcendent God. Against this I basically argue that through faith it would be possible to have a relationship with a transcendent God which enhances the spirituality that Cupitt emphasizes, enabling us to transcend our natural selves. However, I think it is important to understand the theological realist/non-realist debate in the wider context of the question of what world-view(s) can help us achieve meaningful lives. This means that the atheist is part of the debate, or conversely, as has put it, the theist must address the putative 'presumption of atheism'. So in the final analysis the issue is, which view - that of the theological realist or the non-realist - offers the best response to the question, 'Why talk about God at all?' This raises the question of how we choose world-views. On the basis of the meta-criteria of coherence and comprehensiveness, I propose three advantages which theological realism has over non­ realism: the realist can point to an external reality, God, which provides the ultimate check on the justification for theistic faith; realism better emphasizes the cognitivity of religion; and realism prevents a long-standing problem, going back at least as far as Kant in the modern era, with attempting to avoid talk about a trans­ cendent God - viz. theological realism prevents the collapse of the religious life into the merely moral life. Introduction xix In conclusion, I suggest a modified realist position which, first, acknowledges that theological language is foremost and most directly about God qua phenomenal; Second, emphasizes the reality of God qua phenomenal; and third, by acknowledging our historicity, brings an appropriate humility to our religious truth­ claims. This brings us back again to faith. For while talk about God is first talk about God qua phenomenal, ultimately it is talk about God qua noumenal. Hence, although we cannot know this with certainty, it is a matter of underlying faith that one's theological conceptions and religious experiences provide the basis for properly referring to, and so speaking about, God in Godself. For in contrast to the non-realist view, here faith involves the ultimate commitment that one has indeed confronted God in Godself, a divine reality independent of our human minds. I sharpen this response to non-realism in 'Ethics and the Challenge of Theological Non-Realism' where I specifically argue that theological realism, as opposed to non-realism, better accounts for the basis of normative ethical judgements and for taking the moral point of view. If I am right, this undercuts a major impetus for theological non-realism. Mter explicating the non-realist elements of Gordon Kaufman's view, and then the even more thoroughly revisionist and reduc­ tionist non-realism of Don Cupitt, I suggest five ways in which theological non-realism is self-defeating, especially a thorough­ going non-realist view such as Cupitt's. (i) Theological non-realism (unintentionally) promotes self-deception, by continuing to use talk about 'God' purely for its moral force; yet this language derives its force from historically realist underpinnings. (ii) Theological non­ realism, as developed for instance by Cupitt, provides little check against moral anarchy by obviating any objective moral standards. The strong moral stance in non-realism is precisely what commands our attention and respect, yet some things are paradigmatically wrong; for example, to take the moral point of view surely entails at least believing that cruelty is wrong. (iii) Theological non-realism would seem no more effective in encouraging a morally transformed self than completely secular, non-religious moral imprecations. (iv) It is simply erroneous that obedience to God would necessarily entail loss of autonomy, a standard thesis of theological non-realism. (v) In what is perhaps the most telling deficiency, non-realism fails to explain adequately why we should take the moral point of view. XX World Views and Perceiving God In contrast, theological realism offers a (non-prudential) reason to take the moral point of view. On theological realism, there are objective standards for morality, since morality is ultimately grounded in God. So the existence of a loving God provides a reason to take the moral point of view: one takes the moral point of view both because one is autonomously committed to this stance towards others, and because one loves the things that God loves. For theological realism offers a relational understanding between humans and God, thus enjoining us to be better persons by res­ ponding to a transcendent Thou. Now, it is not that I think one can prove that theological realism provides the best account and support for the moral life. Rather, if one considers the three alternatives of secular , theo­ logical realism, and a non-realist 'religious morality', it is best to be either a theological realist or a secular humanist. For the third alternative is self-defeating and a poor choice even against .

PART V: FAITH AND RELIGIOUS PLURALISM

In the final section, I address the pressing contemporary issue of religious pluralism in light of the conceptualist religious epistemology developed throughout the book. In particular, given the mutually conflicting systems of truth-claims of the world's , how could one both remain fully committed to theism and at the same time take account of religious pluralism? In the penultimate essay, 'God, Commitment and Other Faiths', I set out six possible responses to the conflicting truth-claims of the vital core beliefs which are definitive of the world religions. (1) Atheism is set aside to address the question of an appropriate religious response to the problem of religious pluralism. This leads to (2) Religious . I reject this view on the grounds that historically it is largely a geographical accident whether one is a Hindu, Christian, Buddhist, and so on; that theologically Exclusivism condemns a large majority of humanity, which is contrary to the notion of a loving God; that ethically this view is unacceptable in so far as it countenances a religious elite (the concern of Kant's I addressed above); that sociologically Exclusivism just serves primarily as a rationale for enforcing discipline and internal cohesion; and that epistemologically one Introduction xxi could not know with certainty that there is only one correct path to salvation. A related view is (3) Religious . This view also suffers, though less directly, from the defects of Exclusivism, particularly the latter, epistemological problem. The last views to consider address these problems by acknow­ ledging some form of relativism about religion. The first view is (4) Religious Subjectivism, which simply fails on the grounds that concepts, including religious concepts, are social constructs and so truth cannot be idiosyncratically individualistic. That leaves (5) Religious Pluralism and (6) Religious Relativism which share two underlying Kantian theses: the metaphysical distinction between noumena and phenomena and the epistemic notion, developed in detail throughout the papers in this volume, that all religious experience is structured by the (socio-historically conditioned) world-view of the believer. I first consider the Religious Pluralism of Wilfred Cantwell Smith, but reject it as less successful than the comprehensive Religious Pluralism of John Hick. Turning to the latter, on Hick's Religious Pluralism, ultimately all world religions are correct in the sense that each offers a different salvific path and a partially correct perspective on the one Ultimate Reality. This contrasts with Religious Relativism which holds that at least one, though probably more than one, world religion is correct, and the correctness of a religion is relative to the world-view(s) of its adherents. I argue for Religious Relativism as more adequate than Hick's Religious Pluralism on three grounds. First, Religious Relativism best preserves the central role o1 cognition in the religious life. Since one's world-view, as a guide for attitudes and actions, is inseparable from the path to salvation, religious doctrines must be more centrally emphasized and so retained than they are on Hick's view. Second, Religious Relativism treats the adherents of each religious tradition with the greatesl dignity by taking most seriously the truth-claims of each as possibly literally true. And third, on a Religious Relativist view, the immediate object of theistic religious experience and belief is a reai God, God qua phenomenal. I conclude in the of the Leibnizian notion that it is not jusl the quantity of good but the variety of good things which makes a good world. Thus, the fact of religious pluralism is not so much a problem to be solved but a condition to be accepted as a profound indication of God's manifest delight in the diverse world of God's xxii World Views and Perceiving God creatures. Consequently, I appeal for a move toward a Christian Relativism which would sustain Christian commitment and support Christian claims to truth, without claiming to be the only truth. In the last essay, the problem of religious pluralism is brought into an even sharper focus by explicitly considering the epistemic status of the putative experience of God. In 'Perceiving God, World-Views and Faith', I address William Alston's seminal religious epistemology in his cumulative Perceiving God, where he argues that the perceptual practice of 'Christian ' is both rational and a source of prima facie justification for theistic belief. The most fundamental difficulty facing Alston's important position is the problem of religious pluralism. And the solution centres around two points which have been raised in the previous essays: the central role of diverse world-views, and the central role of faith, in religious belief. Alston offers a modified in which Christian beliefs about God are not defended in themselves but rather justified within an established doxastic practice, that he calls 'Christian mystical practice'. However, as Alston points out, the outputs of this practice can be overridden, and therefore the justification of the practice itself needs significant self-support. In short, it needs to be able to 'stand the test of competition' in an age of religious pluralism. Alston makes this task more difficult than it might otherwise be by being both a realist and an anti-conceptualist about perception. As a consequence of these theses he must hold that while all religions share a common search for Ultimate Reality, only one could in fact be successful at this endeavour, given the conflict among the world religions. Thus as a realist, Alston rejects the possibility that reality is relative to world-views, that the conflicting truth-claims of the world religions could be a consequence of this relativity, and that more than one religion could be correct. Again, since he holds an anti-conceptualist Theory of Appearing vis-a-vis perception, only one religion can be correct, since only one can be correctly reporting the 'appearing' of Ultimate Reality. Against this I defend an alternative, conceptualist account. Now, Alston holds that every normal perceiver in similar perceptual circumstances will be perceiving the same thing, making massive differences among the perceptual outputs of the world religions problematic. But ifhow one perceives as well as what one perceives is inherently conceptualized, we would expect precisely the dif- Introduction xxili ferences of perception which we find within the differently en­ culturated world religions. Also, Alston assumes that there is a single world-wide 'overrider system' for ordinary sense perception but as many overrider systems as there are perceptual systems for the different world religions. But if, as a conceptualist position would hold, ordinary sense-perceptual practices are as variant as mystical practices, it will be far easier to resolve the problem of religious pluralism. For then in both cases there are many different overrider systems, and the same problem simply faces any kind of cross-cultural perceptual difference. I then consider a central claim of Alston's account, that the 'significant self-support' which the doxastic practice of Christian mysticism requires can be found in the 'fruits of the spirit'. While I agree that the fruits of the spirit support Christian belief, I do not think that they support Christian belief in the way Alston contends. Neither religious non-realists, nor realists in the other world religions, would accept this claim of support for Christian realism. The best case for this evidential support of the 'fruits of the spirit' could be made if these fruits were unique to the Christian life. And in fact, Alston has argued that both agape and the transcendence of our self-centredness are uniquely Christian. But this seems doubtful. Indeed, these are precisely the two features of all the world religions which John Hick suggests are central to all and unique to none in his seminal An Interpretation of Religion. In sum, I agree with Alston that the only real choice we have is to follow the doxastic practices which we currently successfully use unless we acquire good reasons to think they are unreliable. But it is an evidentialist trap to expect too much of the fruits of the spirit as demonstrating internal support for Christian belief and practice. Here we must once again tum to faith. For faith provides its own 'overrider' against the 'undercutter' of acknowledging religious pluralism. The fruits of the spirit are evidence, but only evidence for the person offaith, of divine/human interaction. So, returning to the theme of earlier essays, I conclude there must be a balance between three epistemic foundations of religious belief: reason, religious experience, and faith. For especially with the challenge of religious non-realism in mind, it is the ultimate idolatry of humanism to deny the need for faith in a transcendent .