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When Christians become Naturalists

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

J. Wesley Robbins
J. Wesley Robbins
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Indiana University, South Bend, Indiana 46634
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Extract

The classical pragmatists were as concerned as any of their modern philosophical predecessors that the moral and religious aspects of human life not be swamped by the successes of the physical sciences. It was John Dewey, after all, who said that

The problem of restoring integration and cooperation between man's beliefs about the world in which he lives and his beliefs about the values and purposes that should direct his conduct is the deepest problem of modern life. It is the problem of any philosophy that is not isolated from that life.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 28 , Issue 2 , June 1992 , pp. 195 - 206
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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References

1 Dewey, John, The Quest for Certainty (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1960), p. 255.Google Scholar

2 James, William, Pragmatism and the Meaning of Truth (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978), p. 33.Google Scholar

3 Ibid.

4 Ibid. p. 35.

5 Dewey, John, A Common Faith (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962), p. 42.Google Scholar

6 Ibid. p. 43.

7 Ibid. p. 51.

8 Ibid. p. 46.

9 Ibid. p. 53.

10 Rorty, Richard, Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth: Philosophical Papers, Volume 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 17.Google Scholar

11 Ibid. p. 13.

12 Dewey, Ibid. p. 49.

13 Rorty, Ibid. p. 17.

14 Rorty, Richard, ‘Heidegger, Contingency, and Pragmatism’, in Essays on Heidegger and Others: Philosophical Papers, Volume 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15 Rorty, , ‘Pragmatism Without Method’, in Objectivity, p. 74.Google Scholar

16 Ibid. p. 76.

17 Ibid. p. 70.

18 Quine, Willard van Orman, ‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism’, in From a Logical Point of View (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1961), pp. 42–3.Google Scholar

19 Rorty, Ibid. p. 66.

20 Hebblethwaite, Brian, The Ocean of Truth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 142.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21 Runzo, Joseph, ‘Ethics and the Challenge of Theological Nonrealism’, forthcoming in Ethics, Religion and the Good Society (Westminster: John Knox Press), p. 8.Google Scholar

22 As, for instance, in Cupitt, Don, Taking Leave of God (New York: Crossroad, 1981).Google Scholar

23 Runzo cites these three features of Cupitt's position, Ibid. pp. 7–8.

24 Ibid. p. 23. Hebblethwaite and Runzo are by no means the only proponents of theological realism. There are, for example, numerous advocates of extending realism from the sciences to theology. Cf. Clayton, Philip, Explanation from Physics to Theology (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989);Google ScholarMurphy, Nancey, Theology in the Age of Scientific Reasoning (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990);Google Scholarvan Huyssteen, Wentzel, Theology and the Justification of Faith (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1989); as well as my critical review of Clayton and van Huyssteen, forthcoming in zygon. I pick on Hebblethwaite and Runzo in this essay because of their explicit exclusion of Don Cupitt and, by extension, Deweyan religious naturalists like myself from the community of Christians, all in the name of theological realism.Google Scholar

25 Hebblethwaite, Ibid. pp. 152–3.

26 Dewey, Ibid. p. 52.

27 Hebblethwaite, Ibid. p. 153.

28 Runzo, Joseph, ‘World-Views and the Epistemic Foundations of Theism’, Religious Studies, xxv (1989), 31–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29 Ibid. p. 37, fn. 4.

30 Ibid. p. 46.

31 Ibid. p. 47.

32 Ibid.

33 James, Ibid. p. 37.