Abstract
The Evangelical Fideist is not a Skeptic, but sees the Skeptic as providing an important service for faith by making it clear that it cannot depend on reasoning. In faith, rightly understood, we turn aside from attempts to allay human anxieties through intellectual reflection and dogmatic speculation. The Skeptic helps us to do this by exposing the intellectual baselessness of our fundamental secular beliefs as well as that of the commitments which faith embodies. I have examined some aspects of the thought of the two great Evangelical Fideists, and have assessed their positions under three main heads.
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Notes
The essay is to be found in Contemporary Philosophy of Religion, ed. by Steven M. Cahn and David Shatz, Oxford University Press, New York, 1982. Earlier versions of its arguments are in papers in Rationality and Religious Belief, ed. by C. F. Delaney, Notre Dame University Press, 1978, and in Nous, Vol. 15, 1981.
The essay is in Norman Malcolm, Thought and Knowledge, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1977.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty, ed. by G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright, trans. by D. Paul and G. E. M. Anscombe, Blackwell, Oxford, 1969.
‘The Groundlessness of Belief’, pp. 203–204.
That there are striking similarities between Hume and Wittgenstein on this matter is not, to my knowledge, recognized so far in studies of Wittgenstein, even though it has more than a slight bearing on the relation of Wittgenstein to skepticism. It has, however, been noted in Hume scholarship. See Peter Jones, ‘Strains in Hume and Wittgenstein’, in Hume: a Re-evaluation, ed. by D. Livingston and J. King, Fordham University Press, New York, 1976.
‘The Groundlessness of Belief’, p. 212.
‘Rationality and Religious Belief’, p. 270.
See the latest statement of it in his The Nature of Necessity, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1974, Chapter IX.
See, for example, Section XI (‘Of a Particular Providence and of a Future State’) of the first Enquiry.
For a fuller characterization of the stand-off I describe here, see my essay ‘Is a Religious Epistemology Possible?’ in Knowledge and Necessity, Royal Institute of Philosophy Lectures, Volume Three 1968–69, ed. by G. N. A. Vesey, Macmillan, London, 1970; pp. 263–280.
See, most famously, Flew’s contributions to New Essays in Philosophical Theology, ed. by A. G. N. Flew and Alasdair MacIntyre, SCM Press, London, 1955, and such works as his God and Philosophy, Hutchinson, London, 1966. Kai Nielsen’s views can be found most conveniently in his books Contemporary Critiques of Religion, Macmillan, London, 1971, and Scepticism, Macmillan, London, 1973; both contain extensive bibliographies of the controversies to which he contributes. I have offered views on these controversies myself in Religion and Rationality, Random House, New York, 1971, and Problems of Religious Knowledge, Macmillan, London, 1971.
In addition to the works of D. Z. Phillips listed below, see T. R. Miles, Religion and the Scientific Outlook, Allen and Unwin, London, 1959
S. C. Brown, Do Religious Claims Make Sense? SCM Press, London, 1969
D. Z. Phillips (ed.) Religion and Understanding, Blackwell, Oxford, 1967.
Don Cupitt, Taking Leave of God, SCM Press, London, 1980.
D. Z. Phillips, The Concept of Prayer, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1965
D. Z. Phillips, Death and Immortality, Macmillan, London, 1970
D. Z. Phillips, Faith and Philosophical Enquiry, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1970; see also his essays, ‘Faith, Scepticism and Religious Understanding’ in Religion and Understanding, and ‘Religious Belief and Language-Games’ in Basil Mitchell, (ed.) Philosophy of Religion, Oxford University Press, 1971. For criticisms of Phillips, see Kai Nielsen, ‘Wittgensteinian Fideism’, in Contemporary Philosophy of Religion, ed. by Steven M. Cahn and David Shatz, Oxford University Press, 1982, and John Hick, ‘Religion as Fact-asserting’ in his God and the Universe of Faiths, Macmillan, London, 1973. Two books I have found of great value here are Carlos G. Prado, Illusions of Faith: A Critique of Non-Credal Religion, Kendall-Hunt, Dubuque, Iowa, 1980, and Alan Keightley, Wittgenstein, Grammar, and God, Epworth, London, 1976. I have leaned on the latter particularly in what follows.
See his ‘An Empiricist’s View of the Nature of Religious Belief’, the Eddington Memorial Lecture for 1955, published by the Cambridge University Press and reprinted in Ian T. Ramsey (ed.), Christian Ethics and Contemporary Philosophy, SCM Press, London, 1966.
R. M. Hare, ‘The Simple Believer’, in Gene Outka and John P. Reeder, (eds.), Religion and Morality, Doubleday, New York, 1973, pp. 393–427.
Taking Leave of God, p. 126.
See Taking Leave of God, p. 82.
Death and Immortality, p. 54.
Death and Immortality, p. 54–55.
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© 1983 D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland
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Penelhum, T. (1983). Fideism and Some Recent Arguments. In: God and Skepticism. Philosophical Studies Series in Philosophy, vol 28. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-7083-0_7
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