At the risk of a tremendous over-simplification, I believe it is helpful to categorize views of Christianity which have appeared in the west in the last two hundred years into three major groups. First there are the unbelievers, those for whom Christianity is straightforwardly untrue, unknowable, or unbelievable (or all three). This group would include those who try to salvage some form of essentially humanistic religion as well as those who simply turn away from religious belief altogether, either to put their ultimate hopes in political ideology, or science, or simply to attempt to limit themselves to hopes which are finite and non-ultimate in character.

In debate on faith and reason two opposing positions have dominated the field. The first position asserts that faith and reason are commensurable and the second position denies that assertion. Those holding to the first position differ among themselves as to the extent of the compatibility between faith and reason, most adherents relegating the compatibility to the ‘preambles of faith’ (e.g. the existence of God and his nature) over against the ‘articles of faith’ (e.g. the doctrine of the incarnation). Few have maintained complete harmony between reason and faith, i.e. a religious belief within the realm of reason alone. The second position divides into two sub-positions: (1) that which asserts that faith is opposed to reason (which includes such unlikely bedfellows as Hume and Kierkegaard), placing faith in the area of irrationality; and (2) that which asserts that faith is higher than reason, is transrational. Calvin and Barth assert that a natural theology is inappropriate because it seeks to meet unbelief on its own ground (ordinary human reason). Revelation, however, is ‘self-authenticating’, ‘carrying with it its own evidence’.1 We may call this position the ‘transrationalist’ view of faith. Faith is not so much against reason as above it and beyond its proper domain. Actually, Kierkegaard shows that the two sub-positions are compatible. He holds both that faith is above reason (superior to it) and against reason (because reason has been affected by sin). The irrationalist and transrationalist positions are sometimes hard to separate in the incommensurabilist's arguments. At least, it seems that faith gets such a high value that reason comes off looking not simply inadequate but culpable. To use reason where faith claims the field is not only inappropriate but irreverent or faithless.

Gordon Kaufman is a theologian who wrestles with essential theological issues. In a recent amplification of his position, An Essay on Theological Method,1 he makes an honest attempt to describe the method by which a self-critical theologian might work. This paper sets out a critique of the method Kaufman proposes and from that delineates a path which theologians might choose to follow.

Some theists believe that the moral rightness and wrongness of actions consists in agreement and disagreement, respectively, with God's commands. And even theists who do not hold this meta-ethical view do generally believe that all right action is commanded by God and should be done in obedience to him.1 I wish to respond here to one of the commonest objections to this belief - the objection that it is incompatible with a proper regard for the virtue of autonomy.2

At one time there was a very close contact between British scholars, in the areas of philosophy and religion, and their counterparts in other European countries. Much of this has been lost in our time, and it has long been felt that the time has come to renew and extend these contacts. I therefore very much welcome the opportunity to publish the papers included in this section. At my request, the Chairman of the group, Dr W. Donald Hudson, provided the following note. [Editor]

The thought of God as transcendent is central to theism. Although the expression ‘divine transcendence’ does not appear to have been used by theologians (as distinct from philosophers) before the nineteenth century,1 the idea itself is very deep-rooted. If we ask where it is ultimately grounded, I think the answer may well be: in the idea of the holy.

Someone may ask what the reasons are for putting religious experience and transcendence together. My answer is the following. My general philosophical position is empirical by nature. I am of the opinion that everything that is said about reality must in some way or other, in order to be true or probable, be related to or grounded in reality. If God is thought to be real in some sense of the word and if he is said to have the quality of being transcendent, there must be some sort of empirical reasons for it. Experience is generally - at least in its objective variant - a usual way of motivating propositions about reality. There is therefore reason to ask: Is there anything in religious experience that motivates giving God the predicate of transcendence? And on the other hand: What conditions would there have to be in our world of experience to justify a consideration of a theory of Transcendence?

In his paper Hampus Lyttkens tries to explore the relation between religious experience and the concept of transcendence. Lyttkens limits his enquiry to religious experience in the sense of ‘specific and extraordinary psychic experiences’ (such as visions, numinous experiences, etc.) which are interpreted as experiences of a transcendent God. By ‘transcendence’ Lyttkens means more than ‘objective reference’. The object of religious experiences in the above sense is not only claimed to transcend the experience itself, in the sense in which the external world is claimed to transcend our perception of it. It is also claimed to be transcendent with respect to the spatio-temporal world as such, by existing ‘beyond space and time’ in some sense or other, or in the sense put forward by Karl Heim, as existing in an extra dimension beside the four dimensions of space and time.

In what follows three theses are submitted for discussion.

(I) The coupling up of creation and annihilation in human existence as in nature and the universe give rise to the metaphysical and religious triad: Being, annihilation and power.

I find myself in serious difficulties over Professor Løgstrup's paper. There are many points on which I am far from confident that I have understood him, and on the points where I am confident I have understood him that confidence may well prove to be misplaced. What I shall try to do in these comments is to provide in my own words an account of what I think is the argument of Professor Løgstrup's paper; then I shall try to say why I think that that argument is unconvincing. Finally I shall try to say something about the kind of programme that Professor Løgstrup sets himself, and the sort of programme that is in my view incumbent on a Christian philosopher of religion.

From time to time one comes across pronouncements about the difference between English and German philosophy of religion. Such statements often sound plausible enough, but in my experience they will not stand up to any very close inspection. Let me, anyway, take an example of a general pronouncement regarding the relationship between German and English philosophy, a pronouncement which the author applies particularly to philosophy of religion. In The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James states:

The Continental schools of philosophy have too often overlooked the fact that man's thinking is organically connected with his conduct.