The Spiritual Dimension: Religion, Philosophy and Human Value

by John Cottingham

The concept of spirituality is an interesting one, in so far as it does not seem to provoke, straight off, the kind of immediately polarised reaction one finds in the case of religion.

general, the label ‘spiritual’ seems to be used to refer to activities which aim to fill the creative and meditative space left over when science and technology have satisfied our material needs.

we have to acknowledge what might be called the primacy of praxis, the vital importance that is placed on the individual’s embarking on a path of practical selftransformation, rather than (say) simply engaging in intellectual debate or philosophical analysis.

Yet if truth-claims are involved, it may be objected, then the emphasis on praxis is highly suspect.

there are certain kinds of truth such that to try to grasp them purely intellectually is to avoid them.

open themselves to a process of transformation, which will allow the operation of divine grace, whose eventual goal is faith.

Just as the proper understanding of a certain sort of text involves a process of yielding, of porousness to the power of the literature;

we remain in charge of the conditions under which it operates.

transcendent mysteries such as the mystery of the Incarnation.

They turn out, to use a useful Cartesian distinction, to be the kinds of truth which are apprehended not via the natural light, but via the supernatural light.

embark on the religious quest is not to put one’s deliberative faculties into general and permanent paralysis, nor suddenly to suspend one’s other values and commitments – one’s knowledge of human nature, one’s moral sensibilities.

In short, any old system of spiritual praxis will not do, only one whose insights are in harmony with our considered moral reflection.

And we can use our intuitions to assess the moral credentials of the systems of praxis on offer (and indeed the moral credibility of those who offer them), as well as the moral fruits of those systems.

The unavoidable nature of our human predicament is that we can only learn through a certain degree of receptivity, by to some extent letting go, by reaching out in trust.

I have argued that the adoption of a detached critical stance can often function as an evasion, a way of resisting the vulnerability and receptivity on which true insight depends.

One of the procedures of science is what is sometimes called abduction – inference to the best explanation.

Can you infer from the dormitory as you find it that the management, first, knows exactly what conditions are like, second, cares intensely for your welfare, and third, possesses unlimited resources for fixing things? The inference is crazy.

it is by no means clear that the claims of religion are typically advanced as the most plausible inference to be drawn from the empirical facts;

To object that they must have been rather inept in applying the rules of inference to the best explanation is surely to miss the point.

religious claims, while not purporting to be inferentially justified as the best conclusion to be drawn from pre-existing evidence, at least must have some kind of consistency relation with that evidence.

The religious worldview does not seem to ‘stick its neck out’ in the way described by Popper: there is no systematic attempt to make it answer to the bar of experiment and observation with a view to abandoning it if found wanting.

merely to offer to the jury an account which is consistent with those facts.

The religious believer, having committed her allegiance to God (rather, perhaps, as the defence council is committed to doing her best for the defendant) is not required to conduct an impartial assessment of the evidence and show that the hypothesis of God’s existence is the most plausible inference to be drawn from the balance of suffering in the world

20 But neither of these defences seems enough to explain the pervasiveness and the quantity of suffering to be found:

material nature

for by the principle of the identity of indiscernibles (that if X and Y are exactly identical in all respects they are one and the same thing), a being that was wholly and completely perfect would just be identical with God.

creation necessarily operates, as a long tradition going back to Augustine has it, by what we may think of as a diminution, or subtraction from the perfect divine essence.

(‘Why would an infinite creative being not just stop?’), an obvious answer suggests itself: infinite creativity is inexhaustible...

series of unimaginably fleeting energyinterchanges, with each rapidly decaying particle or sub-particle scarcely qualifying as an enduring thing at all.

Matter by its nature

precarious, depending on a delicate balance of fluctuating forces, subject to change and decay, potential prey to instability and collapse. And therein, of course, lies the key to what we are all aware of anyway: that the human condition is inherently vulnerable, always subject to the possibility of suffering.

it may immediately be asked why an omnipotent and wholly benevolent being could not do something to rem...

So despite how things may superficially appear from the armchair, ‘better dust’, better material dust, may not after all be a possible option.

But if the Darwinian view is correct, then, like the lady who when she dramatically declared ‘I accept the Universe!’ was curtly told ‘Madam, you had better!’, 31 so we had better accept our humanity as a natural phenomenon – part and parcel of the created universe.

We perceive these features in such starkness, because we can somehow see beyond them, to a possible world where there is no change and decay, but eternal bliss.

what he could not do, if the above argument is right, is put us in this world, the world of matter, and also simultaneously make our existence on this Earth eternal and blissful.

but will not do much to vindicate an omnipotent creator, who (1) can shape it as he chooses, and who (2) presumably has the power to intervene at any time to prevent the ...

envisaged creation as a withdrawal by God, a kind of shrinking whereby God, instead of filling all the available space with his supreme and perfect existence, gives way, in order to allow for something other, something imperfect, to unfold.

The impulse not to let go, not to withdraw but to hurry back in, is of course one that every parent knows, but it is also clear that any parent who wishes to allow a child independence, self-development, growth, and fulfilment, must vacate the space.

The inherent instability that produces disease, accidents, earthquakes, is something he can only modify by –per impossibile– radically altering the essential nature of things;

this would not be a material world at all, as we know it, but what Richard Swinburne has ap...

On the view advanced here, omnipotence is construed in a way which involves the power to create certain parts of reality that are outside the sphere of direct managerial control; benevolence is construed as implying a kind of letting be. And the resulting world is a world full of fear and pain, as well as power and wonder.

But for all that, we still want it to exist.

Having made the space, God does not refill it; but on the Christian picture this does not leave us with the other horn of the dilemma, the remote uncaring God, since the Christian God is believed, on faith, to redeem and rescue his creation by entering it, not as a superior being, or as a f...

The believer, through initiation into a community of praxis, has reached a position of faith which is seen as giving meaning to life, and which, in its conception of how we should live, resonates powerfully with some very deep and enduring human intuitions.

All that is reasonably required now is an account of the suffering world in which we live that is consistent with that faith.

And if such an account can be reached – and I have merely outlined one possible avenue here – then the task of theodicy will...

We all want our lives to have significance and to be of value, but one might think that these are properties which have to be earned, as it were, by our own efforts, rather than being in the gift of an external power, even a divine one.

Are significance and goodness the kinds of property that can be bestowed on something, just like that?

Even granting that God somehow functions as an external source of meaning and value, one may ask whether it is consistent with our human dignity and autonomy that we should submit ourselves to his will in the manner envisaged by Augustine and Dante.