Faith and Philosophical Enquiry by D. Z. Phillips

Abstract

160 BOOK REVIEWS Faith and Philosophical Enquiry. By D. Z. PHILLIPS. New York: Schocken Books, 1971. Pp. £77. ££.50. Half-baked uses of Kierkegaard and Heidegger had much to do with Paul Tillich's "symbolic" and curiously atheistic Systematic Theology. Half-baked uses of Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein have much to do with Dr. Z. Phillips'" linguistic" and dubiously theist, though allegedly Christian, philosophy of religion. Faith and Philosophical Enquiry is a collection of thirteen influential papers, first published between 1968 and 1970, which typify ingenious muddle-headedness, but which are like Tillich's writings in their importance as indicators of major modern trends. Phillips shares Tillich's penchant for speaking for the Judaeo-Christian tradition as a whole, while eclectically avoiding anything that might seem superstitious (or even faintly supernatural) to defend in a scientific age. Phillip's tactics put one in mind of Tillich's responses to "challenges" like: "Now that we know so much more about physics and biology than Moses or Jesus or Aquinas ever could, how can we consistently believe in a Transcendent Creator? ". Tillich's relatively explicit responses throw much light on Phillips's real directions. Tillich would reply that such questions dealt a healthy blow to "superstition" and "fundamentalism." Creation stories, like Fall-of-Man stories, are not literal but symbolic. Traditionalist clergy left them crudely and outdatedly symbolic. Updated symbolic and wise Tillichian theology teaches that anthropomorphic, traditionalist (e. g., Thomist) talk about God as a transcendent, purely spiritual, triunely personal ens realissimum distinct from the physical universe created by him debases God by making him a mere Supreme Being who creates and lovingly relates himself to personal creatures. Traditionalist talk objectifies God as a Being among beings. Such dying, unacceptable symbols must give way to live symbols: God is Being-Itself, not a distinct Transcendent Being. God is Ultimate Concern itself, not a concerned, personal Creator. God is beyond Existence and Essence and presumably beyond ever giving any earthly help to those old-fashioned enough to call upon His name in prayer. (Compare Phillips at pp. 108-105). Phillips does not list any Tillichiana in his bibliography. But it is well worth bearing Tillich in mind when one feels lulled by many widely scattered and moving passages in Faith and Philosophical Enquiry which seem to be pronouncements of an ardent Kierkegaardian theist. For sudden echoes of Tillich and his emulators show that these appearances of Christian fideism are misleading. Phillips uses Kierkegaard's contrast of Eternal God and temporal man not, as first appears, for the Sad Dane's Supernaturalism but rather for the earthier Cultural Relativism of Wittgenstein -a-la-P. G. Winch. " The objector who accuses me of denying the objective reality of God may have in mind a statement which I should support-namely the state- BOOK REVIEWS 161 ment that God is not an object. That is a statement of grammar. Those who deny it, I suggest, speak of God in a way which is a logical extension of ways in which we speak of human beings. If God is a thing He is finite; and a finite God satisfies the needs neither of religion nor of theology." (p. 60) The convenient quasi-ambiguity of the words "object" and " thing " here may put some off the scent. It does indeed seem demeaning to a theist to call God a thing or an object as those words are often used in ordinary language. For the theist takes God to be both personal and supreme. In a similar way, when Phillips typically says that God is not a thing among things or an object among objects, (p. 85) or that God in his heaven is not an extra domain over and above our natural world, the Christian may interpret Phillips as saying something highly theistic. (Cf. Chapter Ill) For the theist agrees to the extent that God is not just one being among many, not just "something else" besides created nature: the Transcendent God is the uniquely perfect being, the only ens a se. But what Phillips really means in philosophical terms is that God is not a Substance, that God is not a Transcendent Being. Look again at the...