Intelligence and the Circles of Religious Thought

An sketch

Each religious believer occupies a hermeneutical framework through which he interprets his world and for which his religious commitments serve as support.¹ Because of his religious commitments, he understands life and human existence as transpiring within a particular horizon of action, thought, reality—a horizon simultaneously issuing from a particular history, a history the interpretation of which the believer’s community shares and enforces, and for which the the believer’s horizon as believer serves as justification. That is, the religious believer, as believer, is committed to understanding the world, its origins, its end, as well as his place in relation to all of them, within a particular received framework. The framework is, for the believer, the correct framework because of the evidence he musters in support of that framework, which evidence he interprets through the very hermeneutical framework the evidence in question is meant to support. From the standpoint of intelligence, then, as far as justification for this or that religion goes, the believer, insofar as he attempts to defend his religion as believer, will always be reasoning in a circular way, for he will always be out to prove what he has already accepted as true, and the very methods he employs—again, as believer—will assume the truth of his particular religion.

Let me give some examples.

Muslims believe that the prophet Muhammed flew from Mecca to Jerusalem, from where Muhammed is then transported to heaven. If I ask a Muslim why he thinks this is a true story and not simply mythology, he would muster the materials he as a Muslim believe to be divinely revealed or sanctioned (the Qur’an and the Hadiths, say); he will then, in light of approved methods of interpretation or methods of interpretation developed within his religious community out of a prior commitment to the divine or holy origin of their shared religious beliefs, attempt to show me why it makes sense to think Muhammed did in fact ascend to heaven. The Muslim in question may reach for discoveries in the sciences to back up his claim regarding Muhammed’s ascension into heaven, but these would used in a way that already presupposes the truth of the contention they are being used to support. From the standpoint of the light of intelligence, the Muslim would not have moved himself or the inquirer he faces any further than they were before their engagement; they would have moved in a complete circle, neither being moved by intelligence to change hermeneutical frameworks or to find the one they occupy as wanting.

Christians believe that Jesus of Nazareth was crucified, died, and rose from the dead on the third day after he was killed; forty days later, he was miraculously assumed bodily into heaven—to where, exactly, in heaven has never been specified (it must somehow be physical if a body is found within it!) Now, the historical record maintained outside of Christian circles attests to the actual crucifixion and death of this man Jesus, but the Resurrection—his rising from the dead—is something Christians are committed to believing; there is nothing outside of religious texts developed by Christians for Christians attesting to its actuality in any way. For the Christian, everything hinges on the Resurrection actually having happened. As St. Paul writes:

And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ: whom he raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not. For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised: And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable (KJV 1 Corinthians 15: 14-19).

Thus, it makes perfect sense, and is even necessary, to press a Christian on why it is reasonable to believe that Jesus of Nazareth really and truly rose from the dead. To such a challenge, the Christian will muster evidence already interpreted in light of the total Christian hermeneutical framework and that presupposes that framework’s soundness. He will say, perhaps, that the early Christians clearly believed it in their very bones that it happened as evinced by the Biblical texts—discounting, of course, that the early Christians were necessarily humans behaving humanly, and thus they, like other believers in other sects or cults might, could have been so traumatized by suddenly losing the one they had put so much faith in that they needed him to be risen, or because they simply could not accept that he had not so risen but had died along with all their hopes. The Christian might also propose the fact that so many Christians died for what they believed in en masse in those days—taking the tendency of members of other religions, such as Muslims, not to have the same significance for the purported veracity of their own religions. Then, the Christian may point to how human hopes and loves, even the very ordering of human existence at its heart within the horizon in which it unfolds, makes no sense if the Resurrection never occurred; but this would be to assume an understanding of human hopes and loves, even the heart of human existence and the horizon in which it unfolds, already imbued with and growing out of prior Christian beliefs—as handily indicated, for instance, by multitudes of pagans and Jews in the early days of Christianity, and many non-Christians even today, simply not understanding human hopes and loves, or even the heart of human existence and the horizon in which it unfolds, requiring the reality of Jesus of Nazareth’s resurrection for the dead for their intelligibility at all. As the Muslim, so too the Christian—and so too any other religious believer.

Is there a way in which one can “step out of” the hermeneutic framework of one’s religion and, for a time, detach oneself from one’s religious commitments intellectually so as to test whether a continued commitment to them is in fact reasonable, is in fact worth it—and not simply a matter of seeking some sort of comfort and solace as one approaches the unfathomable darkness of the grave? Practically speaking, yes, I think there are a few ways to test one’s religious commitments as supposed gold is tested with acid. First, one can ask whether one’s religious commitments leave one healthier and more a live than not, more integrally whole than not: if one’s existence is truly oriented as one’s religion teaches it ought to be, and if that religion is true, then one can expect to grow and flourish as a human being, even if this involves other kinds of pain or deprivation, by following the precepts of his religion—or some form thereof. Second, one can ask whether following one’s religion (as he understands it) leads to him being kinder to others than not, or if the opposite is the case: If the religion one is committed to is true, and if walks the path marked out for him by that religion, then he will better and better orient himself toward his fellow human beings, for his fellow human beings are parts of his world, and walking the path of a religion means orienting oneself fully and properly in relation to all that exists in one’s world and what gives rise to that world as they in fact are. Third, one can ask whether one’s religious commitments do in fact resonate well and harmonize with, even shed further light on, the invariant dynamic structures of cognition and love as one is able to determine them, as well as with the givenness of things as found in experience insofar as one is able to plumb this. But this third approach is difficult to take honestly and well, for it is difficult to determine all of the subtle ways in which one’s religious upbringing and/or commitments have formed and shaped and informed all of the powers one would bring to bear on the work of examining the structures of cognition and love, to say nothing of the givenness of the things of experience.

Really, any effort to test one’s religious commitments and the soundness of the hermeneutical framework in which one resides and through which one thinks—and even feels!—as a religious believer is, perhaps, a treacherous matter—even, perhaps, for many a practically impossible matter. One runs the severe risk of understanding oneself as healthy, fully alive, flourishing as a member of this or that religion because one, almost compulsively, cannot really entertain the possibility of finding that his religion does not leave him healthy, alive, or flourishing but the opposite; one may think that he finds his religion makes him a better person than not because he very deeply needs his religion and religious practices to do so—for abandoning his religion means risking eternal torment (as on a Catholic view); and one may be simply unable to notice how the horizon of existence proposed by one’s religion and built into one’s religious hermeneutical framework does not in fact match up with or do justice by the dynamic structures of cognition, love, and depth and breath of givenness one finds within experience, for one is unable to think a horizon richer or greater than the one his religion and religious formation have provided him—perhaps because he cannot see how rejecting this given horizon would not leave him bereft of all meaning.

The religious believer, then, is left to walk in two circles, one out of which he cannot escape as a believer and one from which he could escape (as the reality of inter-religious conversions and the occurrence of apostasy attest) but which he may find it too difficult to actually escape. The first the is the circle of religious justification: Any attempt to justify or show as reasonable one’s religious beliefs will always assume the soundness of the hermeneutical framework one occupies and thinks through as a believer. The second circle is any attempt to “step outside” one’s religious commitments to test their ultimate reasonableness, which always risks assuming, for a variety of reasons, the very reasonableness of the thing whose reasonableness one is trying to test. One can escape this second circle, and escaping it may even leave him, in all honesty, a more reasonable and convicted believer; but the risk that the honest work it requires may leave one bereft of the entire system, the entire framework, in which he found meaning is a real and live one until the work is completed honestly, authentically, and completely—a risk, it would seem, that is far, far too heavy a burden for most of us to bear.

1. Header image: Albert Bierstadt, Puget Sound on the Pacific Coast (1870)