(William Luijpen) Theology As Anthropology

DUQUESNE STUDIES
Theological Series
12
THEOLOGY
AS ANTHROPOLOG Y
Philosophical Reflections on Religion
by
William A.1.Pi.lpen
Distributed by Humanities Press, New York

for
DUQUESNE UNIVERSITY PRESS, PITTSBURGH
Copyright 1973 by Duquesne University Press

All Rights Reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Luijpen, Wilhelmus Antonius Maria, 1922Theology as anthropology.
(Duquesne studies. Theological series, 12)
Translation of De erwtensoep is klaar!
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Religion-Philosophy. I. Title.
II. Series.
BL51.L713
200'.1
72-90638
ISBN 0-391-00311-9
First Printing
Manufactured in the United States of America
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION ................ . ..... . . .. 11

The Rationality of Thoughtlessness, p. 15; the
Fragmentary Character of Our Speaking "About"
God, p. 17.
ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY AND

THE "AFFIRMATION" OF GOD ....... .. .. . .. 19
A Survey and a Question, p. 21; Rudolf Carnap, p. 24;
Ayer, p. 27; Flew, p. 33; Hare, p. 35; Findlay, p. 37;
Interlude: the Principle of Verification and Metaphysics,
p. 40; Language Games; p. 46; the Religious Use of
Language, p.50; Austin and Evans, p. 51; a Question,
p.57.
"DINNER IS READY"-A PHILOSOPHICAL

STUDY OF THE ACT OF FAITH .............. 69
Belief in Statements, p. 73; Truth as a "mirror
Reflexion," p. 76; Truth as "Event," p. 80; To "Do"
THEOLOGY AS ANTHROPOLOGY
Truths of Faith, p. 84; "Doing as If," p. 85 ; "I Don't

Care," p. 86; "Non-objective" or "Non-metaphysical"
Truth?, p. 87 ; the Witnessing, Proclaiming and Orientating
Language Model of Faith, p. 90; Endless "Verification,"
p. 94
THE HIDDEN GOD ... .. . . . .... .. .. . . . ...... 95

Kant, p. 97; Heidegger, p. 102; the Christian Character of
the Western "Affirmation" of God, p. 108; the Name
"God," p. 113; Old and New Ways of Speaking About
God, p. 116 ; Hare Versus Flew, p. 118 ; the Problem of
Theodicy, p. 120; The "Self" of Self-understanding,
p. 121; Ludwig Feuerbach, p. 112; Carl Jung, p. 125; Is
Jung an Agnostic?, p. 129; Speaking "About" God is
Speaking About Man, p. 137; "the Empirical Spirit of Our
Age," p. 139; Conclusion, p. 141.
INDEX OF NAMES AND

SUBJECT MATER . ..... . . . .. . ......... .. . . 143
.1
PREFACE
:.0:.
This work has been translated by the undersigned

from the Dutch text De Erwtensoep is klaar. The author
has used the opportunity to add a few pages and to
make some minor modifications. Indexes have been
added for the convenience of the reader.
Henry
J. Koren
INTRODUCTION
Never before in history has so much been written and

spoken "about" God as in our time. But one may
legitimately ask whether we have learned much from all
this. I wouldn't be able to answer this question, but I
have my doubts.
So many conditions must be fulfilled before speech
"about" God can be fruitful at all. "To speak fruitfully"
means to bring light, open the future, take away the
frustrations of previously given answers, remove inconsistencies. This statement applies to all levels of human
discourse. True is that which is fruitful. I But on all
levels of human discourse it is also true that speaking
can be fruitful only if one's personal speaking starts
from the "previously spoken word," that is to say, if the
things said in the past are led foreward toward a new
future. It is simply impossible for anyone's personal
speaking to attain any level of authenticity if it starts
1. Luijpen, Existential Phenomenology, rev. ed., Pittsburgh, 1969, pp.
158 ff.; Luijpen and Koren, A First Introduction to Existential Phenomenology, Pittsburgh, 1969, pp . 86 ff.
13
14
from "zero," if it begins by isolating itself from social

facticity. 2
One who begins to speak as an isolated subject, cut
loose from the achievements of the past, does not produce much more than idle chatter, regardless of whether
he talks about physical science or theology. And as far
as philosophy is concerned, if only most people would
stop pretending to think "for themselves," then at least
there would be a chance that their thinking would reach
the level of Plato or Marx-a level that can pass muster .
It is for this reason that I doubt that the contemporary flood of words "about" God has taught us much.
All too often today's speaking "about" God turns out
to start from "zero." It can hardly amount to much
more than idle and irritating chatter.
People who indulge in it, however, can find extenuating excuses, for even renowned men of learning easily
make such statements as: for us, modern secularized
men, a metaphysical God is obviously meaningless.
When Harvey Cox3 talks this way, I am willing to
assume that he knows exactly what he is saying. Albeit
it doesn't show anywhere, still I am willing to assume it.
But if the West has spoken metaphysically "about" God
for twenty-five hundred years, it is altogether naive to
assume that our speaking can reach any level of authenticity if it is in no way and in no sense whatsoever
"metaphysical." One who claims that we can do nothing
with metaphysics today, implies that metaphysics was
much ado about nothing. I am quite willing to grant
that philosophy is a strange undertaking, but even in
2. Karl Jaspers, Philosophie, Berlin, 1948, p . 263.
3. Harvey Cox, The Secular City, London, 1967, pp. 73, 77, 80,
247-252.
INTRODUCTION
15
philosophy it is not possible to talk for twenty-five

centuries about nothing. Metaphysics actually has not
been about nothing. Contemporary philosophical thinking, then, must take up the "seeing' incarn3.ted in
metaphysical discourse and lead it forward to a new
future. Only in this way will the philosophy of the
future not dwell below the level of the past.
There is another reason why one shouldn't glibly
claim that "obviously we cannot do anything with this
or that." For who is this "we" and what is so "obvious"
about us? Harvey Cox defines us as people dwelling in
the secular city; we are characterized by pragmatism and
profanity.4 Herbert MarcLlse ag~'ees, 1 think, with Cox's
"definition" of us as secularized city dwellers but thinks
that this "definition" needs to be made much more
profound: the pragmatic and profane man is a consumer
lulled to sleep,s too doped and degenerate to realize
that he is very effectively taken in by a number of
producers. 6 One who agrees with this I<definition" readily holds that such a human being "obviously" cannot
do anything with metaphysics, but then the reaSon or
blame fat it cannot be assigned primarily to metaphysics
itself.
The Rationality of Thoughtlessness

In the preceding paragraphs we have seen two reasons
why contemporary thinkers may be expected to assume
toward their own thinking just as critical an attitude as
4. Cox, QP. cit., p. 62.
5. Herbert M arc~~e , One-dime"siQ;)al Man. London , 1968 , pp . 9-31.
6 . "The: efficiency of tht system blunts the inruvidunIs' recognition
that it contains no f!let.~ whicb do n.ot communicate the repressive power
of the whole." Marc us.::, QP. cit .. p. 26. Cf. n. Hoefnagels. "Marcuse,"
Streven, vol. 23, 1968, pp. 126-135.
16
they display toward the thinking of the past. But I'd

like to go beyond this and plead for a critical attitude
with respect to thinking in general. For sometimes matters are presented as if life and death themselves depend
on thinking. A simple man once told me: "One must
have studied a lot to be stupid." This obviously is an
exaggaration, but his words strikingly expr ss tbe idea
that the order of explicit rati nality ranks second in
comparison to the order of authentic existe.nce. What
ultimately counts is the authenticity of human life.
In the pursuit of physical science no one experiences
any trouble from the fact that the "C is uncertainty
about the definition of physicaJ science in the general
theory of science. imilady, the fact that 1 am unable to
define space and time doesn't prevent me from intelligently moving around in space and time. 1f it is true that
the secularizing trend of history has made it difficult for
us to speat "about" God, the "speakers" should realize
that it is explicit rationality which is handicapped by
this trend. But who would want to exchange "life" for
concepts? Only a man who inverts the order of " importance."
Pursuing this line of thought, I run the risk of eliminating every justification for the writing of this work,
for it belongs to the realm of explicit rationality, in
other words, the second rank. 1 did not say, however,
that the second rank i. devoid of any importance. lt
presupposes, it is true, the implicit rationality of the
authentically human life, but even this authenticity is
not gua-ranteed. Certain ways of being religious may be
fruitful in a particular phase of history, but this doesn't
mean that they can be called fruitful also in all subsequent phases of history. A true religion can become
untrue. If a way of leading a religious life becomes
INTRODUCTION
17
petrified through lack of critique and continues to prolong its existence while history goes forward, it can
become a deed of violence against the authenticity of
life. If history puts up with this, life loses its authentic
character.
Lack of critique, I said, could lead to this, but perhaps it is better now to use the expression "explicit
critique." For implicit rationality itself also is critical
because it implies "nihilation" and "distance" (Sartre).
But the attitude of explicit critique deliberately puts
itself at a distance, so that there is a better chance of
making the "distinctions" at which the critique aims.
Because the authenticity of religious life is not guaranteed and because the explicitly critical attitude is
eminently suitable to "distinguish" the authentic from
the inauthentic, second-ranking explicit rationality also
enjoys a measure of importance. That's why it can be
meaningful to offer the reflections contained in this
work to the reader, but only if they help to improve the
authenticity of life.
The Fragmentary Character of Our Speech "About"

God
Contemporary speaking "about" God, whether positive or negative, turns out to be highly fragmentary as
soon as one realizes to some extent how variegated the
ways are. in which people of all times and all places have
expressed and still express their existence as a religious
existence. Whatever one may think of it, it is an inescapable fact that people of all times and all places have
given a religious interpretation to their existence or have
refused to do this. Within the totality of interpretations
our contemporary attempt to do this, or refusal to do it,
18
turns out to be merely one moment of a history too

great to be seized in a comprehending grasp.
It may be useful to mention this, although everyone
"knows" it already. For there are so many ways of
"knowing" something. The realization that every way of
thinking and speaking is merely one among many implies that I must very explicitly impose a limitation
upon my attempt to discover any pattern in "the"
contemporary discourse "about" God. I can discuss
only one way of speaking "about" God, viz., the one
that is characterized as "Christian" and "Western." But
God has also been spoken "about" outside Christianity
and outside the West. Anyone who is even superficially
acquainted with the many books about this non-Christian and non-Western way of speaking knows that there
is no justification whatsoever for the ponderous importance so often attached to our way of speaking. One
needs only to read a book by an expert like Han
Fortmann 7 to become convinced of this. He had an
opportunity to confront "our" thinking with that of the
Far East; reading his work is enough to cure one, at least
in principle, from the exclusivism that has so often
guided us in the past. For Fortmann everything certainly is not "the same," but what is "different" is not
for him per se inferior.
The three studies constituting this little work have
been written in such a way that each one of them can be
read separately. This made a few repetitions unavoidable, but they have been kept to a minimum.
7. Han Fortmann, Hindoes en Boeddhisten, Utrecht, 1968.
ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY
AND THE
"AFFIRMATION" OF GOD
A Survey and a Question

With most of the older representatives of analytic
philosophy the rejection of metaphysics is, as a matter
of course, accompanied by the "denial" of God. It
would go too far, however, to say that all of them reject
metaphysics in order to find a basis for their "denial" of
God. Most of them do not aim at all at a rejection of
God, but they view speaking "about" God simply as
meaningless because there is no cognitively meaningful
language in which such a discourse can be made. 1 If,
then, God is spoken of anyhow, so they hold, this is
simply a misuse of language because one disregards what
language can and cannot do.
These philosophers do not claim that statements
"about" God are not true. The question whether a
statement is true or not true presupposes that the statement is meaningful. If one says that "the table is teavy,"
1. G. Nuchelmans, Overzicht van de analytische wijsbegeerte, Utrecht,

1969, pp. 134-135.
21
22
that "Caesar is and" or that "Napoleon is a prime

number,"2 he cannot possibly demand of anyone that
he investigate the truth or falsity of such statements.
They do not satisfy the demands of cognitive meaningfulness which is inherent in language; that's why there is
no basis for debating their truth or falsity. But this
question can be asked about the statement, "The moon
is square." It is a cognitively meaningful statement, but
obviously not true.
The rejection of metaphysics by some representatives
of analytic philosophy is the logical and consistent development of David Hume's empiricism. It continues
Hume's empiricism by searching for a criterion of cognitive meaningfulness for language. When and on which
conditions may a certain use of language be said to be
cognitively meaningful? The answer to this question is
given by positing the principle of verification, which
says that the meaning of a statement is determined by
the way the statement can be verified. 3 But what
exactly does this mean?
Generally speaking, when can we be certain that the
meaning of a question is clear? According to Moritz
Schlick, this is the case if-and only if-we can indicate
exactly the conditions in which the question must be
answered with a "yes" or a "no."4 The question, "Does
this bottle leak?", is clear because I know that it has to
be answered with a "yes" if water poured into the
2. R. Carnap, "Ueberwindung der Metaphysik durch logische Analyse

der Sprache," Erkenntnis, vol. 2 (1931), pp. 219-228.
3. "If it cannot be indicated in any way when a sentence is true, then
this sentence has no meaning at all, for the meaning of a sentence is the
method of its verification." F. Waisman, "Logische Analyse des Wahrscheinlichkeitsbegriffs," Erkenntnis, vol. 1(1930- 31), p. 229.
4. Moritz Schlick, Gesammelte Aufsiitze, Hildesheim, 1969, p. 89.
ANALYTICS AND THE "AFFIRMATION" OF GOD
23
bottle seeps out of it. If this doesn't happen, then the

question must be answered with a "no." I know what
the question means because I can indicate these conditions.
From this it follows that a statement is wholly meaningless if it is, in principle, impossible to indicate the
conditions by which a statement can be made true or
false, S for indicating these conditions is the same as
understanding the meaning of the statement. 6 If a statement is to be meaningful, then, its truth or falsity must
imply a difference that can be indicated. A statement
whose truth or falsity leaves the world exactly the same
doesn't say anything and therefore is meaningless. 7 Similarly, a statement never says more than can be verified.
For one who claims that it says more must show what
he means by this "more." Now, this is possible only by
indicating the conditions which decide about the truth
or falsity of the statement he makes about this
"more"-in other words, by indicating what would be
different in the world if one denies this "more."8 He
who manages to do this thereby verifies this "more"
and, at the same time, eliminates it. And one who
doesn't succeed in doing this says nothing.
Among the older analytic philosophers the require5. "If in principle it is not possible for me to verify a sentence, i.e., if I
don't know at all how I should tackle it, what I ought to do to arrive at its
truth or falsity, then I obviously don't know at all what the sentence really
means." Schlick, op. cit., p. 90.
6. "Indicating the conditions on which a sentence is true is the same as
indicating its meaning, and nothing else." Schlick, op. cit., p. 90.
7. Schlick, op. cit., p. 91.
8. "Any statement ... says only that which is verified and nothing
whatsoever over and above this. If someone were to claim that it contains
more, he must be able to say what 'this more' is. This means that he again
must say what in the world would be different if he were wrong." Schlick,
op. cit., p. 93.
24
ment that statements must be cognitively meaningful

amounts, generally speaking, to the claim that language
be used in accordance with the criterion of cognitive
meaningfulness by the analytic judgments of logic and
mathematics, the empirical judgments of the positive
sciences, and the judgments of ordinary language insofar
as they are approximations to empirical-scientific statements. 9
Rudolf Carnap
The implication of all this is a condemnation of
metaphysics. Metaphysical statements are not meaningful statements but a misuse of language. According to
Carnap, metaphysics refuses to view its judgments as
analytic-a view that would make them meaningful.
Metaphysics ascribes to itself the task of discovering and
stating knowledge which lies beyond the domain of the
empirical sciences. 1o But, as we saw, the meaning of a
statement lies in the method of its verification; a statement asserts only as much as can be verified. Since,
then, metaphysics doesn't wish to make analytic judgments and holds that its statements cannot be verified
by the empirical sciences, it follows that its judgments
are nothing but pseudo-judgments. 11
The word "God" also is a pseudo-word. Used in a
metaphysical sense, it refers to something beyond the
empirical; therefore it is meaningless. 12 Even the first
9. Nuchelmans, op. cit., p. 134.
10. "Because metaphysics neither wishes to state analytical sentences
nor get involved in the realm of empirical science .... " Carnap, op. cit., p.
236.
11. Carnap, op. cit., p. 236.
25
demand of logic is disregarded in the use of the term

"God." For the first demand of logic is that one indicate how the word occurs in elementary sentences. An
elementary sentence here would assume the form: "X is
a God." But metaphysics absolutely rejects this form,
without replacing it by any other; or else, it accepts the
form but neglects to indicate the syntactic category for
the variable X. "God" means something like the term
"teavy."13
Carnap emphasizes that his position differs from that
of more ancient anti-metaphysicians. They called metaphysics a fairy-tale. But the statements in a fairy-tale are
not meaningless because they do not violate the laws of
logic; they merely go against experience and therefore
are not true. 14 Metaphysics is not even meaningful.
According to Carnap, it is useless to appeal to the
limitation of man's knowledge in an attempt to save the
meaningfulness of metaphysics. The statements of metaphysics, so it is sometimes said, are not verifiable but
nevertheless they are meaningful as conjectures and surmises of the answers which a perfectly knowing being
would give to our questions. The trouble, however, is
that the questions themselves are meaningless if the
meaning of a word cannot be specified or if a connection of words goes against syntax. Questions like "Is the
table teavy?" and "Are even numbers darker than uneven numbers?" are meaningless, and not even an omniscient being could answer them. Animals could conceivably give us new knowledge, for example, of a hitherto
unknown law of nature. But this is possible only because we can verify such new knowledge. Statements
13. Carnap, op. cit., pp. 226-227.
14. Carnap,op. cit., p. 232.
26
which cannot be verified at all cannot be understood;

thus they can never be considered as the communication
of information. 15 They are simply meaningless chatter. 16
Carnap finally had to ask himself, How is it possible
that for so many centuries so many eminent thinkers
have busied themselves with meaningless juxtaposed
words? Does metaphysics then have no content at all? A
negative answer should be given to this question, thinks
Carnap. Although the pseudo-statements of metaphysics
are not a "representation of a state of affairs,"17 they
express a general and usually emotional attitude of a
person toward life. There is nothing special in this. One
who has artistic talent expresses this attitude in a work
of art. The metaphysician obviously lacks this talent; his
thought is an inadequate way of expressing his fundamental attitude toward life. In principle one can hardly
object to the fact that some people express their attitude toward life in this way and that others do it that
way. However, the way chosen by the metaphysician is
such that it gives rise to the suggestion that metaphysics
is something which it is not at all, viz., a descriptive
theory.
While metaphysics has no theoretical content whatsoever, the form of expression chosen by the metaphysician builds up the fiction that there is an objective
content. The worst of it is that the metaphysician himself believes in this fiction and thinks that truth and
15. Carnap, op. cit., pp. 232-233.
16. "In reality, however, the matter is such that there cannot be any
meaningful metaphysical sentences. This follows from the task metaphysics
assigns to itself: it wishes to find and express a kind of knowledge which is
beyond the reach of empirical science." Carnap, op. cit., p. 236.
27
untruth are at issue in his speaking.18 His illusion does

not arise from the fact that he uses language to express
himself, for lyrical poets also use it and they do not fall
into the trap. They do not adduce arguments or argue
with other poets. In other words, unlike metaphysicians,
they understand their own speech. 19
Music, says Carnap, is perhaps the purest way to
express a fundamental attitude, for it does not at all
refer to objects. The sense of harmony is perfectly
expressed in Mozart's music. Lacking Mozart's talent,
the metaphysician attempts the same thing but he does
it inadequately, in a monistic system of concepts. Metaphysicians are musicians without musical talents. They
have a tendency to form theories but do not put this
tendency to work in the positive sciences; they have a
need for self-expression but do not put it to work in an
artistic endeavor; instead, they confuse the two and
produce an edifice which is meaningless in the order of
knowledge and inadequate as an expression of an attitude of life. 20
Ayer
Similar considerations can be found in the work of A.
J. Ayer. 21 The metaphysicians themselves, says Ayer,

do not wish their statements to be called a priori judgments, which would make them tautologies. But it is
18. "The metaphysician thinks that he moves in a realm in which the
issue is truth or falsity. In reality, however, he has not stated anything but
merely given expression to something, like an artist." Carnap, op. cit., p.
24D.
19. Carnap, op. cit., p. 24D.
20. Carnap, op. cit., pp. 240-241.
21. A. J. Ayer, "Demonstration of the Impossibility of Metaphysics,"
Mind, vol. 43(1934), pp. 335-345.
28
impossible to call metaphysical statements empirical

judgments. For they claim to express a suprasensual
reality. Now, there is no way in which such statements
can be verified; therefore they are nonsensical. 22 All the
trouble and labor devoted to metaphysics is spent in the
"production of nonsense. "23
In this way speaking "about" God is also condemned. 24 First of all, God's existence can never be
demonstrated. For the possibility of such a demonstration presupposes that the premises leading to the affirmation of God's existence are certain. But even if we
assume that such premises are verifiable, they would not
be more than probable because their truth could be
taken away by further verification. The assertion, "God
exists," therefore, is never certain, never demonstrated.
Only a priori statements are certain because they are
tautologies. But from tautologies one can only deduce
another tautology, and not the existence of God. 25
Secondly, the assertion, "God exists," is not even
probable. It could only be probable if it were an empirically verifiable statement, such as one which follows
from the regularity with which certain phenomena occur in nature. But then the assertion that God exists
would merely mean that a certain regularity occurs in
nature. As soon, however, as one reduces the assertion
of God's existence to the affirmation of a certain regularity in nature, the religious man objects and claims
22. "And as tautologies and empirical hypotheses form the entire class
of significant propositions, we are justified in concluding that all'metaphysical assertions are nonsensical." Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic,
London, 9th ed., 1953, p. 41.
23. Ayer, op. cit., p. 34.
24. "This possibility has already been ruled out by our treatment of
metaphysics." Ayer, op. cit., p. 114.
25. Ayer, op. cit., pp. 114-115.
29
that he wishes to affirm a transcendent being, a being

which <;:an be known on the basis of certain empirical
manifestations but which cannot itself be defined in
terms of those manifestations. 26 In that case, says Ayer,
the term "God" is a metaphysical term and therefore
nonsensica1. 27 Accordingly, the assertion, "God exists,"
is neither true nor false, but simply meaningless, just as
also the statement, "God does not exist ," is meaninglesS. 28
For Ayer this means that agnosticism also is untenable. The agnostic claims that he doesn't have any way to
decide which of the two propositions, "There is a transcendent God" and "There is no transcendent God," is
true. He holds that one of these two assertions is true,
but doesn't know which one. He should realize, however, that both are meaningless, that the question, True or
false?, cannot possibly be asked. Only if deities are
identified with objects of nature can meaningful statements be made about them. If, e.g., someone asserts
that the occurrence of thunderstorms is necessary and
sufficient to verify the truth of the statement that
Yahweh is angry, his statement is meaningful because he
doesn't affirm anything else than that there is a thunderstorm. 29 "Sophisticated religions," however, assume
that a "Person" controls the empirical world without
being localized in it. That "Person" is deemed to be
"higher" than the empirical world and is placed outside
26. Ayer, op. cit., p. 115.
27. " But in that case the term 'god' is a m etnphysicnl term. And jf
'god' is a metaphysical term, then it ennno r be even probabl e that god
exists. For to say that 'God exists' is to make a mcmphysical un:cr!l''''e
which cannot be either true or false." Aye .. , op. cit., p. ~i5.
28. Ayer, op. cit., pp. 115-116.
29. Ayer, op. cit., p. 116.
30
this world; he becomes the bearer of supra-empirical

attributes. But in this way the term "God" becomes a
metaphysical and therefore a nonsensical word. 30
The theists themselves, says Ayer, agree with him
when you listen carefully. For they say that God's
nature is a mystery which transcends all human understanding. Now, one who makes such a claim asserts that
what he is talking about is incomprehensible. But he
should then also be willing to accept that his statements
are incomprehensible when he describes the incomprehensible. 31
The mystic, however, will claim that his intuition
reveals to him truth, even though he is unable to explain
this truth to others. If others do not have this intuitive
power, they have no ground on which they can deny
that it is an intuition. Ayer replies to this objection by
saying that he does not at all intend to exclude any
possibilities whatsoever to arrive at true statements. If
with an intuitive power the mystic makes certain discoveries, one cannot deny them by arguing that they have
been made by means of an intuitive power. But we have
to wait, of course, says Ayer, to see what statements the
mystic is going to make in order to see whether these
statements can be verified by empirical observations.
And this doesn't happen. Intuition, therefore, does not
disclose any facts at all to the mystic. And it doesn't
make sense to assert that he has observed facts but is
unable to express them. One who really has obtained
information about facts is able to express them. The
assertion that the mystic cannot express what he knows
30. "It is only when we enquire what God's attributes are that we
discover that 'God', in this usage, is not a genuine name." Ayer, op. cit., p.
116.
31. Ayer, op. cit., p. 118.
31
means that his mystic intuition has no cognitive value.

He merely supplies us with indirect information about
his own mental condition. 32
These considerations are also decisive with respect to
religious experience in general. There are philosophers
who say that there is no reason whatsoever not to
believe someone who claims to see God and to believe
someone who asserts that he sees a yellow spot. Ayer
answers that he is quite willing to believe someone who
claims to see God as long as he means by this something
like the assertion that he sees a yellow spot. However,
those who claim to have a religious experience are not
satisfied with such an assertion; they assert that they
experience a transcendent being. But this assertion cannot be empirically verified, and that's why their statements are nonsensical. 33 The appeal to religious experience to demonstrate God's existence is simply fallacious. 34 The fact that there are people who have religious experiences is psychologically interesting, but philosophers who appeal to it merely gather materials for
the psychoanalyst. 35
We have now seen the general attitude of the older
representatives of analytical philosophy with respect to
metaphysics. A few details may be added here by discussing also the views of Flew, Hare and Findlay.
Indicating the conditions in which a statement is true
or false is the same as understanding the sense of this
statement; that's why Moritz Schlick emphasized that it
must make a demonstrable difference whether a state32.
33.
34.
35.
Ayer, op.
Ayer, op.
Ayer, op.
Ayer,op.
cit.,
cit.,
cit.,
cit.,
pp. 118-119.
p. 119.
p. 119.
p. 120.
32
ment is true or false. A statement which leaves the

world exactly the same whether it is true or false,
doesn't say anything and is therefore meaningless. 36
This has led some thinkers to the conclusion that it is
then perhaps better to replace the principle of verification by the principle of falsification. Karl Popper has
made this claim,37 but not as a criterion for the meaningfulness of statements in general, but as a means to
distinguish statements of empirical sciences from statements of non-empirical sciences, such as mathematics
and logic, and from statements of "metaphysical" systems. Popper, then, was looking for a "criterion of
demarcation"38 and thought that he could find this in
the falsifiability of an empirical-scientific system. 39 It is
not possible, Popper says, to verify a statement of
empirical science in a decisive and definitive way, for a
universal law always says more than can be justified on
the basis of actually observed instances. It is possible,
however, to falsify a statement of empirical science in a
decisive and definitive fashion. A single well-established
fact contradicting the statement suffices for this purpose. And if an empirical-scientific system cannot be
made untrue by any observable fact, it does not have
any empirical scientific meaning at al1. 40
Anthony Flew went further by separating the falsifiSchlick. Gesammelte Aufsatze, p. 89.
Karl Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, New York, 1959.
Popper,op. cit., pp. 34,40.
"These considerations suggest that not the verifiability but the
falsifiability of a system is to be taken as a criterion of demarcation. In
other words, I shall not require of a scientific system that it shall be
capable of being singled out, once and for all, in a positive sense; but we
shall require that its logical form shall be such that it can be singled out, by
means of empirical tests, in a negative sense." Popper, op. cit., pp. 40 f.
40. "It must be possible for an empirical scientific system to be refuted
by experience." Popper. op. cit., p. 41.
36.
37.
38.
39.
33
cation principle from Popper's original intention and

applying it to man's speaking "about" God.
Flew
Let us begin with 'a parable, says Flew and he paraphrazes a story borrowed from John Wisdom. Once
upon a time there were two explorers, who deep in the
jungle suddenly came face to face with a beautiful
garden. The first explorer then says: "A gardener must
have been at work here," but his companion denies this.
To settle the issue, they put electrically charged barbed
wire around the garden and patrol it with blood hounds.
But no gardener shows himself, no cry betrays a gardener who got entangled in the barbed wire, the
electric current is useless, and the blood hounds do not
react. The "believing" explorer, however, fails to be
convinced. He simply claims that the gardener is invisible because he has no body; that's why the charged wire
and the barbs are to no avail. And being odorless, there
is nothing by which the blood hounds can smell him.
Driven to despair, his sceptical companion exclaims:
"But what remains in all this of your original claim?
What's the difference between your invisible, incorporeal and odorless gardener and my 'no gardener'?"41
According to Flew, theological speaking is always like
the speaking of the above-mentioned "believing" explorer. Statements such as "God intends," "God created
the world" and "God loves us as a father loves his
children" seem to be conceived by theologians as assertions.42 Now, one who asserts that this or that is so
41. Anthony Flew, "Theology and Falsification," New Essays in Philosophical Theology, ed. by A. Flew and A. MacIntyre, London, 1958, p. 96.
42. Flew, op. cit., p. 97.
34
must also deny that this or that is not so. Thus one who
doubts whether this or that is so will look for instances
which could contradict his assertion. But in the preceding parable, as in theological discourse, it turns out to be
impossible to conceive anything at all that could falsify
the above-mentioned assertions. When no gardener
shows himself, he is called "invisible." When God's love
doesn't take action when a beloved and innocent child is
dying, his love is said to be "beyond human measurement" or "unfathomable." Statements, however, which
simply cannot be falsified do not affirm anything and
are not really assertions at al1. 43 They die from the
"thousand qualifications" added to them because with
all these qualifications they ultimately no longer assert
anything. 44 If any state of affairs can be harmonized
with a certain affirmation, then this affirmation no
longer says anything and is no longer a real affirmation.
Flew later recognized that he had not done justice to
the theologian's discourse. He had presented matters as
if the theologian did not conceive suffering as a fact
arguing against the truth of the statement, "God loves
man." But B. Mitchell pointed out to Flew that he was
wrong on this score. The irreconcilability of suffering
with God's love "generates the most intractable of theological problems. "45
Flew now grants that he had disregarded the theologian's attempt to find an explanation of suffering which
does not contradict the affirmation of God's love. But,
he adds, the attributes which the theologian ascribes to
43. "And if there is nothing which a putative assertion denies then
there is nothing which it asserts either: and so it is not really an assertion."
Flew, op. cit., p. 98.
44. Flew, op. cit., p. 97.
45. B. Mitchell in New Essays in Philosophical Theology, p. 103.
35
God are of such a nature that every explanation becomes impossible. One cannot say that God would like
to help the sufferer but is unable to do this, for "God is
allmighty"; or that he would help if only he knew, for
"God knows everything"; or that God is not responsible
for the evil of the others, for "God has created the
others." The divine attributes make every explanation
impossible; that's why the theologian is forced to take
refuge in the "thousand qualifications" which totally
wreck his original assertion. 46
Hare
Richard M. Hare has replied to Flew by telling a
parable of his own. A certain lunatic student, he relates,
is convinced that all of the dons intend to murder him.
His friends introduce him to the most amiable and
respectable dons in an effort to cure him from his
illusion. They point out to him that so much friendliness surely indicates that he must be mistaken about
their intentions in thinking that they want to murder
him. But to no avail; he cannot be convinced. All that
friendliness, he says, simply is a part of their diabolical
cunning. 47
We say, argues Hare, that such a student is mentally
deluded. But deluded with respect to what? The truth
or falsity of an affirmation? According to Flew's view,
applied to the student's assertion, his affirmation
46. "So though I entirely. concede that Mitchell was absolutely right to
insist against me that the theologian's first move is to look for an explana
tion, I still think that in the end, if relentlessly pursued, he will have to
resort to the avoiding action of qualification. And there lies the danger of
that death by a thousand qualifications." Flew, op. cit., p. 107.
47. Richard Hare in New Essays . .. , pp. 99-100.
36
doesn't mean anything, it is not even an affirmation

because it cannot be falsified. But from this it does not
follow that there is no difference between what a mentally disturbed person thinks about the dons and what
we think of them. Otherwise there would be no reason
to call ourselves "healthy" and the student "sick," there
would be no difference between "normal" and "abnormal."48
Hare calls the difference between "normal" and "abnormal" a difference in "blik," the way of looking at
reality.49 A normal "blik" also is a "blik," it is not "no
blik." All Flew has done, says Hare, is show that a
"blik" is not an affirmation or a system of affirmations.
But even if a "blik" is not an affirmation, it remains
extremely important to have the right "blik."
Flew's mistake, according to Hare, is that he conceives theological discourse as a kind of descriptive and
explanatory way of speaking, in the sense scientists
attach to these words. 50 However, this is not what
theological discourse is. The speaking of the religious
man and the theologian gives expression to a "blik,"
even as the presupposition that scientific explanations
are possible is the expression of a "blik." Let us assume
that someone asserts that everything that happens happens by pure chance. According to Flew, his claim
would not be an assertion, since it could never be
falsified and can be harmonized with whatever happens
or does not happen. Such a claim is the expression of a
"blik." Yet its consequences are enormous. It makes a
great difference whether one holds this "blik" or
48. Hare, op. cit., p. 100.
49. "Let us call that in which we differ from this lunatic, our respective bliks." Hare, op. cit., p. 100.
50. Hare, op. cit., p. 101.
37
another one. For one who claims that everything happens by pure chance can never explain or predict anything. This is the kind of difference that exists, says
Hare, between people who believe in God and those
who don't. 51
Flew could only reply weakly to Hare's criticism. He
claims that Hare should not call himself a genuine Christian if he does not admit that theological statements
really intend to be assertions and views them merely as
expressions of a "blik."52 According to Flew, theological statements do intend to affirm that this or that is
really the case. But since such affirmations can never be
falsified, they have no meaning.
In the preceding pages we have seen examples in
which all speaking "about" God is rejected on the
ground that such speaking cannot be verified or falsified. Among the older representatives of analytic philosophy, however, there are also some who think that this
philosophy can decisively and definitively prove that
God does not exist. J.N. Findlay offers us an example. 53
Findlay
.'
Findlay begins by pointing out that all arguments

hitherto used to prove God's existence turn out to be
indecisive. Religious people have resigned themselves to
this situation j some even like the idea that something
which greatly transcends thinking in clear and distinct
51. Hare, op. cit., p. 102.
52. "If Hare's religion really is a hlik, involving no cosmological assertions about the nature and activities of a supposed personal creator, then
surely he is not a Christian at all." Flew, op. cit., 108.
53. J.N. Findlay, "Can God's Existence Be Disproved?", N ew Essays in
Philosophical Theology, pp. 47-56.
38
concepts also transcends the possibility of proving its

existence. And non-religious people soften their rejection of God with a dose of agnosticism. But according
to Findlay, both are wrong and he promises to prove
that God cannot exist. 54
Who is the God whose non-existence Findlay wishes
to prove? He is the "adequate object of religious attitudes. "55 Among these religious attitudes we find bending down and subjecting oneself, fully devoting oneself
without asking any questions and kneeling down in
adoration. But such attitudes are normal only if they are
an answer to an object which deserves these attitudes.
What, then, ought such an object to be?
First of all, this object must show an evident superiority. It must transcend us human beings in greatness,
power, wisdom or other qualities,56 for otherwise it
does not deserve our adoration. Secondly, its superiority
must be an infinite superiority. For otherwise another
object, an infinitely superior object could conceivably
demand our adoration, so that our attitude of adoration
with respect to the first object would not be justified. 57
Thirdly, all other objects must be dependent on this
infinitely superior object, and none of them may have
any perfection which it could ascribe to itself without
having derived it from the infinitely superior object.
Finally, we must assume that the object of our religious
attitude deserves our worship only if it does not merely
happen to exist and the other objects do not merely
54.
55.
Findlay, op. cit.. pp. 47-48.

Findlay,op. cit., p. 48.
56. "To feel religiously is therefore to presume surpassing greatness in
some object." Findlay, op. cit., p. 51.
57. Findlay, op. cit., p. 51.
39
happen to depend on that infinitely superior object. The

.object of our adoration must exist of necessity and the
other object must necessarily depend on it. Accordingly,
it is necessary that no alternative is conceivable for the
existence of a truly "divine" object. Essence and existence must coincide in it,58 and all qualities ascribed to
it must belong to it in a necessary manner. 59
We now have enough, says Findlay, to see that the
non-existence of God can be proved. The adequate
object of our religious attitudes must be a Necessary
Being; likewise, the statement, "God exists," must be a
necessary proposition. Propositions, however, are necessary only if they are tautological. But, as such, they say
nothing about reality. The statement, "Celibates are
unmarried," is necessary, but its necessity merely reflects our usage of words, the conventions of our language. 60 Only synthetic judgments could say something
about the reality of God. But synthetic judgments can
never be necessary, they can always be falsified by
future experience; hence "reality" and "necessity" can
never go together.
Accordingly, the affirmations that can be made in
synthetic judgments about reality are insufficient for
the "religious attitude," they are never about a "Necessary Existence," a "Necessary Goodness," a "Necessary
Wisdom"; consequently, they are never affirmations of
God. From this it follows also that it doesn't make sense
to balance precariously in an agnostic attitude. 61 On
the day when Anselm formulated his proof for God's
58.
59.
60.
61.
Findlay,op.
Findlay,op.
Findlay, op.
Findlay, op.
cit.,
cit.,
cit.,
cit.,
p.
p.
p.
p.
52.
53.
54.
55.
40
existence, what he actually formulated was the proof

for the non-existence of God. 62
Interlude: The Principle of Verification and Metaphysics
Anyone who is somewhat familiar with the thought
of analytical philosophers must have been struck by the
fact that in their philosophy nothing at all remains of
the inspiration living in rationalism. One can see this
readily in the ease with which the verification principle
is used and which, as a matter of fact, implies an a priori
option in favor of empiricism. The only kind of statements judged to be verifiable are such propositions as
"this stain is green," "a cat sits on the mat" and "there
are craters on the backside of the moon." And only
these statements are called verifiable because the analysts have opted for the absolutism of sense experience.
The rationalist, too, would demand that statements be
"verified," but for him this would mean that it must be
possible to think them in a coherent way. Things which
can merely be verified by sense experience cannot be,
for him, truths of any importance.
Nevertheless, it would be wrong to present matters as
if there had been no struggle at all about the principle of
verification among the analysts. The fact that their
struggle remained within the fundamental option for
empiricism has in no way diminished its spectacular
character. 63
The issue was to formulate the verification principle
in such a way that it could really function as a criterion
62. "Or 'non-significance', if this alternative is preferred." Findlay, op.
cit., p. 55 note.
63. Carl G. Hempel, "Problems and Changes in the Empiricist Criterion
of Meaning," Revue internationale de pbilosopbie, vol. 4(1950), pp. 41-63.
41
to distinguish the cognitively meaningless use of language from its cognitively meaningful use. The question
arising here was where to find the criterion by which
one could establish the criterion separating meaningful
and meaningless uses of language. For it turned out that
in the attempts to answer this question one always made
a choice. Let us give an example.
Ayer makes a distinction between the "strong" and
the "weak" sense of verifiability. A statement is verifiable in the strong sense if-and only if-the truth of this
statement can be decisively and conclusively established
in experience. 64 The opposite of this conclusive verifiability is verifiability in the weak sense, for which it
suffices that it is possible for experience to render it
probable. 65 Ayer rejects the demand of conclusive verifiability because of the consequences flowing from such
a demand. For it would imply that general scientific
statements such as "arsenic is poisonous" and statements about the remote past must be called meaningless. Since the series of observations by which these
statements must be verified is unavoidably finite, their
truth can never be decisively and conclusively established. 66
It is rather obvious that an option is involved here.
General scientific statements and statements about the
remote past apparently must not be allowed to be
meaningless. But why not? And why is a criterion for
the meaningfulness of statements not rejected if it eliminates metaphysical statements? Metaphysical propositions apparently must not be allowed to be meaning64. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic, p. 37.
65. Ayer, op. cit., p. 37.
66. Ayer, op. cit., pp. 37-38.
42
fu1. 67 In other words, the search for a criterion for the

meaningfulness of propositions is already guided by a
criterion which actually decides beforehand about the
criterion one is supposedly still looking for. But how
can anyone justify such a procedure? One pretends to
"conclude" that metaphysical propositions are meaningless, but there is no question at all of really concluding
anything. What actually happens is that one gives expression to one's presuppositions and a priori decrees.
Thus it is no surprise that many analysts can so readily
dispose of metaphysics. "It can quickly be shown" to be
meaningless. 68 No wonder; the whole matter had already been decided beforehand.
I'd like to "define" metaphysics as the attempt to
render explicit the implicit "saying"-of-is which human existence itself is. 69 Such a metaphysics, then
would bear a phenomenological character. It was Edmund Husserl who gave the impetus to such a metaphysics when he launched phenomenology as an attempt to find the ground for any statement whatsoever.
For statements do not have a ground without any further ado; one doesn't know without any further ado
what they are about. It is only as explicitation of the
subject's immediate presence to an appearing reality
that a statement can be called "grounded." Thus a
statement must be "verifiable," and it is verified by
bringing it back to "what presents itself ... in its bodily
67. Obviously it is not our intention to claim without any further ado
that metaphysical utterances are meaningful.
68. Ayer, "Demonstration of the Impossibility of Metaphysics," Mind,
vol. 43 (1934), p. 339.
69. Luijpen, Existential Phenomenology, rev. ed., Pittsburgh, 1969, pp.
178-185.
43
reality,"70 by indicating "that which shows itself, ...

the manifest."71
One can readily see here that there is a clear resemblance between the search for a foundation of statements as made by phenomenology and, on the other
hand, the search of analytical philosophy for a criterion
of cognitively meaningful use of language. This similarity can be illustrated by comparing one of Husserl's
most important texts with a decisive passage from
Moritz Schlick. Husserl says:
No theory can mislead us in regard to the principle of all
principles: that every primordial dator intuition is a source
of authority for knowledge, that whatever presents itself in
"intuition" in primordial form (as it were in its bodily
reality), is simply to be accepted as it gives itself out to be,
though only within the limits in which it then presents
itself. 72
And speaking about the "first step of all philosophizing," Schlick says:
The first step of all philosophizing and the foundation of
all reflection is to realize that it is utterly impossible to
indicate the meaning of any assertion whatsoever in any
other way than by describing the state of affairs that must
exist if the assertion should be true. If this state does not
exist, then the assertion is false. For the meaning of an
assertion obviously lies only in this that it expresses a
certain state of affairs. One must precisely indicate this
state of affairs to indicate the meaning of the assertion.
True, one can say that the proposition itself already indicates this state of affairs, but this is so only for one who
70. Edmund Husserl, Ideas, Collier ed., 1962, p. 83.
71. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, New York, p. 51.
72. Husserl, Ideas, p. 83.
44
understands the proposition. When, however, do I understand a proposition? When I know the meaning of the
words occurring in it? This meaning can be clarified by
definitions. But in these definitions new words occur and I
must again know their meaning. One cannot go on to
infinity in defining; sooner or later we arrive at words the
meaning of which cannot be again described by a proposition. This meaning has to be immediately indicated, the
sense of the word must ultimately be shown, it must be
given. This is done by an act of pointing, of showing, and
what is shown must be given, for otherwise it cannot be
pointed out to me. 73
The similarity between phenomenology and analytical philosophy with respect to "the first step of all
philosophizing" is indeed striking. But let us add one
other text of Husserl. In his Logical Investigations he
says:
Evidence is ... nothing but the "experience" (Erlebnis)
of the truth .... The evident judgment ... is a consciousness of originary givenness .... Evidence is called a seeing,
perceiving, grasping of the self-given ("true") state of affairs. 74
The endeavor to find a ground for any statement

whatsoever has been developed in different directions
by phenomenology and by analytical philosophy.
Husserl ultimately founds all our statements in the experience of the life-world, that is to say, in the implicit
"affirmation" which existence itself is.75 And in my
opinion the restless search of analytical philosophy for a
73. Schlick, Gesammelte Aufsiitze, pp. 89-90.
74. Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, 4th ed., Halle, 1928, vol. 1, p.
190.
75. Husserl, Die Krisis der europiiischen Wissenschaften, The Hague,
1954, p. 465.
45
criterion of the cognitive meaningfulness of language is

animated by the same intention and concern as is phenomenology when the latter tries to make explicit the
implicit "saying"-of-is which human existence is. The
"thousand qualifications" which the verification principle has received bear witness to this (W. de Pater). True,
the analysts study only explicit statements, but the
failure of the attempt to formulate a simple criterion to
distinguish between meaningful and meaningless sentences shows that the implicit "saying"-of-is is too
rich and too powerful in the eyes of the analysts themselves to be caught in a simple catch-all formula.
The verification principle, however, has not merely
died from its "thousand qualifications." The main cause
of its demise was contained in its own inner constitution; it turned out that it could not live up to the
demands imposed by itself. At present, this view is
accepted rather generally, but a remark made by Ludwig
Wittgenstein in his Tractatus had laid the groundwork
for it. Wittgenstein defends there the idea that language
expressions are meaningful only if they are directly or
indirectly a picture of the reality spoken of. But everything Wittgenstein says to make the relation of picture
to reality acceptable is not itself a picture of reality.
And so he does not hesitate to say that his sentences are
meaningless. 76
Wittgenstein's remark dates from the time when he
himself still adhered to logical atomism, but its result
was that the requirements for the meaningful use of
language, as posited by the verification principle of
logical positivism, also became demands which had to be
satisfied by the language in which this principle itself is
.I
76. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-philosophicus, 6.54.
46
formulated. And then it turned out that this language

itself could not be called meaningful. 77 For if cognitively meaningful use of language is restricted to the
analytical judgments of logic and mathematics and the
statements of the empirical sciences, then the language
in which the verification principle is formulated itself is
not cognitively meaningful since it doesn't satisfy its
own requirements. The statement in which this principle
is formulated is a "metaphysical proposition."78
Language Games
The preceding considerations were almost exclusively

guided by the ideas of those representatives of analytical
philosophy who adhere to the logical positivism of the
Vienna Circle. Wittgenstein's logical atomism was
touched only in passing, and Bertrand Russell wasn't
even mentioned. In connection with the latest developments in the realm of analytical philosophy Wittgenstein
must now be explicitly considered, but as the later
Wittgenstein, the author of the Philosophical Investigations. 79
Like Russell, Wittgenstein in his Tractatus had started
from the assumption that the meaningful use of language admits only one form, viz., the cognitive-descriptive use. Moreover, he had assumed that this one meaningful form of language contained the accurate picture
of reality (the so-called "picture theory"). To investigate what a word means thus meant, to search for one
77. C.B. Daly, "Metaphysics and the Limits of Language," Prospects
JorMetapbysics, ed. by Ian Ramsey, London, 1961, p. 179.
78. "The fact is, the verification principle is a metaphysical proposition-a 'smashing' one if I may be permitted the expression." John
Wisdom, Pbilosopby and Psycbo-analysis, Oxford, 1953, pp. 245-246.
79. Wittgenstein, Pbilosopbical Investigations, 19.
47
available object coupled as meaning to one word. 80 It

was the extremely abstract form of the question, What
is the meaning of a word?, that gave rise to the illusion
that this question could always be answered by referring
to one entity-just as the question, What is the capital of
France?, is answered by referring to one entity in reality. As soon, however, as such a conception about the
meaning of a word is accepted, there is no reason not to
extend it to include also the meaning of sentences.
Wittgenstein assumed that one complex entity corresponded to one sentence. 81
Although Wittgenstein thought that only the cognitive-descriptive form of language use could be admitted
as meaningful, he was not blind to what he called "the
problems of life."82 But how could one speak about
them? There simply is no language in which it can be
done, and it is, as a matter of principle, impossible that
a statement about them could be true. Yet there are
"things that cannot be put into words"; they are what is
"mystical. "83 But "what we cannot speak about we
must pass over in silence."84
In his later works Wittgenstein himself rejected the
presuppositions of his Tractatus. A closer examination
of "actual language" led him to the conclusion that the
"crystalline purity of logic" had not resulted from investigation but had simply been imposed on language as a
demand. He had not investigated how language is actually used but prescribed how it ought to be used. 84a
80. Nuchelmans, Overzicbt van de analytiscbe wijsbegeerte, p. 176.
81. Nuchelmans, op. cit., pp. 174-176.
82. Wittgenstein, Tractatus, 6.52.
83. Wittgenstein, op. cit., 4.11; 6.522.
84. Wittgenstein, op. cit., 7.
84a. Wittgenstein, Pbi[osopbicallnvestigations, 107.
48
Gradually Wittgenstein began to realize that the

meaning of a word is only understood when its use in a
specific context, in all kinds of particular circumstances,
is indicated. 85 There is not just one given object which
is coupled to one word as its meaning, but one and the
same word acts differently in different contexts. This
means that there exists not merely the one language
game of describing the states of affairs, but many language games must be distinguished, such as giving
orders, reporting, making a joke, proposing riddles, asking, thanking, cursing, greeting, praying, etc. 86 There is
the language of science, the novel and poetry, of commerce, politics and love, of education, penal law and
probation, of prophetism, anarchism and religion. 87
Sentences may be grammatically similar, but this
doesn't mean per se that the way language is used in
them is always the same. For example, the statement,
"Christ rose from the grave," is grammatically similar to
the statement, "Chris rose from the deck-chair," and
"We have laid Mother in the grave" doesn't grammatically differ from "We have laid the goat in the ditch";
yet the use of language is different. What is meaningless
in one language game can still be meaningful in another.
In arithmetic the statement, "3 is red," is meaningless,
but this same statement is meaningful for one who
wishes to classify paints by means of numbers.88
Under the influence of the later Wittgenstein analytical philosophy has greatly changed. The fundamental
87. C. Schoonbrood, "Theologish taalgebruik in het licht van de wijsgerige betekenisanalyse," Jaarboek 1965-66, Werkgenootschap van katholieke theologen in Nederland, p. 107.
88. H. Hubbeling, "De betekenis van de analytische filosofie voor de
wijsgerige theologie," Tijdschrift voor Filosofie, vol. 29 (1967), p. 748.
49
principles of both logical atomism and logical positivism

could not be maintained.
First of all, the picture theory of logical atomism was
rejected. 89 It could perhaps still be used as a model to
clarify the cognitive or descriptive use of language, but
as soon as one admits that other uses of language can
also be meaningful, the theory turns out to be faulty.
One need only to think here of a sentence like, "Scram
or I'll get you!"
Secondly, the monopoly of the verification principle
advocated by logical positivism was broken. 90 The task
of logical positivism was to indicate the experiential
situation within which it is, at least in principle, possible
to establish whether a statement is true or false; and
only then can an assertion be meaningful. But the situation becomes entirely different when the use principle
decides whether a statement is meaningful. 91 One then
no longer inquires only about the conditions in which it
is possible to determine whether a statement is true, but
looks for the specific logic contained in the actual use of
language. Every language game "has its own kind of
logic,"92 and only in the cognitive or descriptive use of
language one can ask whether a statement is true or
false.
Thirdly, as soon as the verification principle is re89. W. de Pater, "Analytische wijsbegeerte," Catholica, vol. 1, p. 117.
90. W. de Pater, op. cit., p. 117.
91. "So the verificational principle of meaning in the hands of empiricist philosophers in the 1930's became modified either by a glossing of the
term 'verification' or by a change of the verification principle into the use
principle: the meaning of any statement is given by the way in which it is
used." RB. Braithwaithe, "An Empiricist's View of the Nature of Religious Belief," The Existence of God, ed. by John Hick, New York, 1964,
p.235.
92. C.B. Daly, "Metaphysics and the Limits of Language," Prospects
for Metaphysics, ed. by Ian Ramsey, pp. 179-180.
50
placed by the use principle, it becomes clear that, in

principle, one cannot object to the ethical and religious
use of language. The language of ethics and of religion
also has a specific kind of logic, and this logic can be
disclosed by analysis. It is enough that a language game
is actually being played to make it the possible object of
investigation. No actually used language may be rejected
as an object of inquiry.
The Religious Use of Language
The introduction of the use principle in the analysis
of the logic of a language did not merely allow analytical philosophy to investigate also the religious use of
language j it also led to results which drew the attention
of those philosophers who at first had rejected all analytical philosophy on the ground that it did not appear
to be authentic philosophy. Perhaps Wittgenstein himself had been responsible for that rejection because in
his Tractatus he had explicitly said that philosophy is
nothing but "logical clarification," and that it does not
result in "philosophical propositions" but in "clear
propositions.' '93
It is undeniable, however, that the requirements imposed to guarantee the intended clarity presuppose a
philosophy. One who on the basis of clarity defends the
demand that only the statements of the physical sciences are clear and therefore meaningful, makes use of a
philosophical theory of knowledge which is in principle
"complete," even if he himself doesn't realize this. Thus
it could happen that the opponents of analytical philosophy often refused to view it as an authentic philosophy
93. Wittgenstein, Tractatus, 4.112.
51
and at most as that "philosophy" which one needs to

reject philosophy.
The application of the use principle in the analysis of
the religious use of language has made a profound impression on those philosophers whom, for brevity'S sake,
we may call "metaphysicians," that is to say, thinkers
outside analytical philosophy who considered it possible
to speak "about" God. The investigations of the analysts made these metaphysicians realize that in their
speaking "about" God they used exclusively a cognitive-descriptive language, and now the question arose
whether such an exclusivism was tenable. Doubts in this
matter were raised mainly through the works of
Austin 94 and Evans. 95
Austin and Evans

John L. Austin began by asking himself whether it is
really true that philosophers simply assume that a statement always is intended to describe a particular state of
affairs or establish a fact in such a way that the statement is either true or false. 96 Grammarians, Austin
adds, knew, of course, that there are also questions and
exclamations, as well as statements which express an
order, a wish or a concession. In recent times, how.ever,
both grammarians and philosophers have devoted more
careful attention to the investigation of what used to be
called rather thoughtlessly "statements." The first result
of this attention was the conviction that a statement
must be verifiable; and many statements then turned
94. J.L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words, Cambridge, Mass.,
1962.
95. Donald D. Evans, The Logic of Self-involvement, London, 1963.
96. Austin, op. cit., p. 1.
52
out to have been merely pseudo-statements. The philosophers were willing to admit that they had produced
quite a bit of nonsense. Yet this willingness had its
limits; one could also go too far in reducing statements
to pseudo-statements. 97 Thus they began to ask themselves whether those statements so lightheartedly reduced to pseudo-statements were really intended to be
statements in the sense of "straightforward information
about facts."98 Is this really the case, for instance, in
ethical propositions?
These reflections led Austin to make a distinction
between "constative" and "performative" sentences. 99
Performative utterances look like constative sentences
or descriptions of states of affairs, but this is not at all
what they are. Austin gives several examples of performative utterances: "I do take this woman to be my
lawful wedded wife," "I name this ship the Queen
Elizabeth," "I give and bequeath my watch to my
brother," "I bet you sixpence it will rain tomorrow." 100 In such sentences I do not describe what I am
doing, but I do what I am saying in it. 101 If I say, "I
promise it to you," I do not give an external description
of an internal act, but my act of speaking itself is the
promise. 102
A certain manner of speaking, then, is itself doing
something, and the term "performative language" aptly
expresses this. That's why performative language is not,
like constative language, either true or false. This cannot
~9. Austin, op. cit., pp. 2-7.
1Ol. Austin, op. cit., p. 6.
102. Austin,op. cit., pp. 9-11, 13.
53
be proved-just as it cannot be proved that the expression "Damn!" is true or false. 103
Nevertheless, all kinds of things can be wrong with
performative language. 104 A performative utterance
such as "I appoint you Secretary of Defense," is invalid
if I make it. It is an abuse to say, "I promise you that
I'll do it," if I have no intention of doing it. It is
"inconsistent" to tell someone, "I transfer my power to
you," if next I treat him as a usurper of my power. Such
language utterances are not untrue but "unhappy," they
suffer from "infelicities." lOS
At first it may seem that the distinction between
constative and performative acts of speech is watertight
and convincing. But Austin himself later criticized it.
Initially he had thought it possible to call certain acts of
speech exclusively constative and others exclusively performative. This would have meant that the former
would then have been exclusively either true or false
and the latter exclusively either happy and felicitous or
unhappy and infelicitous. Austin, however, discovered
that the infelicities, which at first he had viewed as
characteristic of performative speech, can also be found
in the constative use of language. 106 Constative utterances also can be infected with invalidity, 107 abuse 108
and inconsistency. 109 To limit ourselves to an example
104. Nuchelmans, op. cit., pp. 218-226.
107. Austin,op. cit., pp. 136-137.
108. Austin, op. cit., pp.135-136.
109. "If I have stated something, then that commits me to other
statements: other statements made by me will be in order or out of order.
Also some statements or remarks made by you will be henceforward
contradicting me or not contradicting me, rebutting me or not rebutting
me, and so forth." Austin, op. cit., p. 138.
54
of invalidity in both the performative and the constative

use of language, one who says, "I donate my books to
you," while he has just sold the same books to someone
else, makes an utterance that is not valid. But this is also
the case when someone says, "The present king of
France is bald." His utterance is not merely false but
null and void. 110
At the same time, the idea that only constative utterances are either true or false also turned out to be
untenable. The language of advice or a verdict obviously
has a specific logic; nevertheless, advice or a verdict calls
for a kind of checking, which resembles the checking of
facts and the speaking of truth or untruth in constative
utterances. 111
This briefly indicates why Austin dropped his original
distinction between constative and performative acts of
speaking. He replaced it by distinguishing in "every
genuine speech act" the "locutionary act" and the
"illocutionary act." 112 The locutionary act is the aspect of referring to facts or states of affairs that can be
called true or false; the illocutionary act is the aspect of
doing by speaking. Considered in themselves, both aspects of the speech act are abstractions. 113
Donald Evans's work lies in line with that of Austin
and continues it by the analysis of self-involving speech,
110. Cf. Nuchelmans, op. cit., pp. 220-226.
111. "Can we be sure that stating truly is a different class of assessment from arguing soundly, advising well, judging fairly, and blaming
justifiably? Do not these have something to do in complicated ways with
facts? The same is true also of exercitives such as naming, appointing,
bequeathing, and betting. Facts come in as well as our knowledge or
opinion about facts." Austin, op. cit., p. 141.
113. Austin,op. cit., p. 146.
5S
applied to biblical language and, in particular, biblical

speaking abaut creatian . Evans begins with a classificatian of performative utterances, but he daesn't conceive
the term "perfarmative" in Austin's ariginal sense in
appasitian to canstative statements. He calls any "speechact-with-its-illacutianary-farce" perfarmative. 114 Canstative statements fall under this heading as "a class af
performatives." lIS Where Austin speaks of the "illacutionary farce" af utterances, Evans speaks af their "perfarmative force." 116
The scape af Evan's investigatian can be indicated in
the farm af a question: Does the statement, "The Creator made the world;' mean samething like the statement, "Janes built the hause"? Or daes the farmer
statement, in appasitian to. the latter, imply a kind af a
cammitment, and is it nat the expressian af a personal
feeling and a personal attitude? Accarding to Bultmann,
an assertian about Gad as creatar can never be a neutral
statement but always is an act of thanksgiving and
surrender; one who. fails to. realize this misunderstands
the biblical and existential character af the affirmation
af creatian. Such a way af speaking is then no. langer
the "language af faith." While agreeing with this, Evans
adds that there exists no. adequate study af haw a
language can "involve" the speaking subject if mare is
understood by this than the subjective assent to a fact
expressed in that language.
The tapic af Evans's study is precisely the self-involving character which accurs in certain forms of language
use . In a perfarmative speech act such as, "I submit to.
114. Evans, The L ogic of Self-involvement, p. 39 note.
115. Evans,op. cit., p. 39 note; p. 38, note 1.
116. Evans,op. cit. , p. 11.
56
your authority," I commit myself to certain actions in

the future; and in a performative speech act such as,
"Thank you for your kindness," I imply a subjective act
of gratitude. Viewed from the side of the speaking
subject, this is more than mere assent to a fact. Such
statements imply a "commissive" and "behabitative" on
the part of the subject. 117
Alongside self-involving utterances which are performative uses of language Evans places self-involving expressions of feelings. 118 An utterance like "Terrific!"
contains the expression of a subject's feelings; and "I
look on life as a play" implies the expression of a
subject's attitude . 119 Evans calls utterances "self-involving" if they imply a "behabitative" and "commissive."
In his opinion, biblical theology badly needs a logic
of self-involving language. For this biblical theology
itself emphasizes the importance of non-propositional
speech with respect to both God's revelation-God's
"word" to man-and man's religious language-man's
"word" to God. In both cases language or the "word" is
not or not purely propositional but primarily a "self-involving activity." 120 God does not merely supply supernatural information about himself, expressed in flat
affirmations of facts, but he "addresses" man in an
"event" or "deed" by which he commits himself to man
and in which he expresses his inner "self." Similarly,
man does not merely assert certain facts "about" God,
but he addresses God in worship, committing himself to
117. "Thus no flat Constative entails a Behabitative or Commissive;
that is, no flat Constative entails a self-involving utterance." Evans, op. cit.,
p. 57.
118. Evans, op. cit., p. 79.
119. Evans,op. cit., pp. 115-141.
120. Evans, op. cit., p. 14.
57
God and expressing his attitude to God. Because and to

the extent that God's self-revelation and man's religious
speaking are a "self-involving verbal activity," biblical
theology cannot do without an understanding of the
various ways in which language is self-involving and an
activity. 121
Evans views his endeavor as perfectly justified, both
from the standpoint of theology and from that of analytical philosophy. Theologians intend to give verbal
expression to Christian faith, and analytical philosophers devote themselves to ordinary language. Now,
the "ordinary language" to be investigated by those who
wish to discuss Christian faith is the language of the
Bible itself. 122 For the "ordinary language" which is
the object of analytical investigation, is the language
that is actually used in its natural environment; 123 and
this "natural habitat" of the actually used Christian
language is the Bible. 124 Biblical language, then, is what
analytical philosophers call "ordinary language." 125
A Question
The presuppositions of logical atomism and the ways

in which logical positivism used the verification principle reduced all religious utterances to pseudo-state121. Evans, op. cit., pp. 14-15.
122. "Analytic philosophers insist on an appeal to ordinary language;
and if a philosopher who studies christian beliefs wants to use the same
method that he employs elsewhere ... the ordinary language to which he
should appeal is biblical language... Evans, op. cit., p. 15.
123. Evans,op. cit., p. 16.
124. Evans, op. cit., pp. 16-18.
125. "My main point is, in any case, that 'ordinary' language to which
an analytic philosopher should appeal when he considers christian conceptions is biblical language ... Evans, op. cit., p. 17.
58'
ments. This situation changed when Wittgenstein introduced his theory of the language games. The mere fact
that a language game is actually played thereby sufficed
to make this game an object of possible investigation,
for the meanings of words and sentences are determined
by their use in a specific context and in all kinds of
particular circumstances. When this principle is accepted, the religious use of language can no longer be
rejected.
Here, however, a crucial question arises, a question
which could shake the importance of the entire analytical philosophy as philosophy down to its very foundation. It is obvious that on the basis of the use principle
of analytical philosophy religious language can no longer
be rejected. But the question is whether such a rejection
is now altogether impossible by the simple fact that it
cannot be based on the use principle of analytical philosophy. If a certain language game is de facto played,
the logic of such a language use can be analyzed. But if I
play the religious language game, does this de facto use
per se imply that it is impossible for anyone to tell me:
"Don't indulge in such nonsense!" to indicate that my
speaking "is about nothing"? The objector knows that
I've read Austin and Evans, that I don't intend to give
"flat descriptions" of God; he knows that I interpret my
speaking as performative, self-involving and expressive,
that I conceive it as adoration, blessing and thanking,
and that I wish to give expression to an attitude and
way of acting by which I intend to commit myself to
God. He knows all this. Nevertheless, does this make it
logically impossible to say: "Don't indulge in this nonsense, for your language speaks about nothing"?
There are analysts who say that this is indeed impossible. No one, they hold, can meaningfully say that there
59
is no God because "God," in the Judeo-Christian language use, means "necessarily existing being." 126 Evans
relates that he has "occasionally encountered" this view
and explicitly ascribes it to Norman Malcolm. 127 Any
attempt to justify or reject a language game in its
totality from a standpoint outside that game would thus
be a logical error. 128 For if people de facto speak in a
particular way, their words have a "use and hence a
meaning"; thus there is no further question as to whether anything real or existing is referred to in the language
game as a whole. 129
Evans rejects this view, which he puts on a par with
Karl Barth's conception of God's word. According to
Barth, God's word is decisive for man's knowledge of
God, because the latter is based on God's word. That's
why this knowledge of God cannot possibly put itself
into question or allow that it be put into question from
any standpoint outside God's word. 130 There simply is
no standpoint from which someone or something can
compete with God's word as the foundation of man's
knowledge of God. 131 There is indeed a striking similarity between Malcolm and Barth in this matter. 132
In our opinion analytical philosophy has reached a
point in its development where its limitations as a philosophy can no longer remain hidden. Logical atomism and
126. EVans, op. cit., p. 23 note 4.
127 . "The only effect (Anselm's ontological argument) could have on
the fool of the Psalm would be that he stopped saying in his heart 'There is
no God', because he would now realize that this is something he cannot
meaningfully say or think." Norman Malcolm, "Anselm's Ontological Ar
guments," The Philosophical Review, vol. 69(1960), p. 61.
128. Evans, op. cit., p. 22.
129. Evans,op. cit., p. 22.
130. Karl .'3arth, Die kirchliche Dogmatik, Zurich, 1948, vol. 111, p. 2.
131. Barth, op. cit., p. 2.
132. Evans, op. cit., pp. 2223.
60
logical positivism still were ways of metaphysical thinking because, at least implicitly, they contained a certain
conception about "reality" and "truth" as such. But
through the works of the later Wittgenstein the analysis
of "ordinary language" became the focus of attention,
every de facto used language game was accepted as an
object of logical analysis, but the question whether a
particular language game was worth playing fell into the
background. The crucial issue, however, is whether this
question can really stay in the background. Is it really
impossible to say to someone who plays the religious
language game : "Stop that nonsense!"? Certainly not.
But in defense against such an order one cannot be
satisfied by saying that one's speaking is performative,
self-involving and expressive and therefore has a logic of
its own. He will have to justify the use of his language
by showing that it is "about something," and this brings
back the question about "reality" and "truth." 133
Now, the attempt to answer this question is entirely
different from analyzing the logic of the religious language game; it is metaphysics.
The question of "reality" and "truth," we may add,
doesn't adse only in connection with the justification of
the religious language game. If in a particular situation
or in encountering someone I get angry and shout
"Damn!" no one can say that my utterance is untrue.
But it is possible for someone to show that my choice of
language game is not justified-for example, by indicating that I was totally mistaken in my appreciation of the
situation, that the meaning of certain words in that
133. "But the fact that a word has a meaning does not guarantee that
it refers to anything; and the fact that a word has a use does not justify the
use." Evans, op. cit., p. 24.
61
encounter escaped me or was wholly misunderstood by

me. Showing me the "reality" and the "truth" of the
situation or the encounter in the form of a cognitivedescriptive language game then makes me realize that
my language game was not justified. My cursing "was
about nothing," for on closer inspection it turned out
that I stood in the unreality and the untruth of the
situation or the encounter which gave rise to my curses.
I then apologize for my language game on the basis of
the investigation of the "reality" and the "truth." Such
an investigation is entirely different from an analysis of
the logic of cursing.
Evans is very much aware of the above-mentioned
distinction with respect to the use of religious language. 134 Questions about the "reality" and the
"truth" of religious language cannot be replaced by
questions about its own brand of logic. 13S Evans makes
the logical questions the topic of his book because their
study appears most necessary to him, and he carefully
avoids apologetic issues. 136 But he realizes that these
issues still remain to be considered.
Ian T. Ramsey, on the other hand, so it appears to us,
makes an attempt to raise both types of issues. He isn't
satisfied with the observation that religious language has
a logic of its own and with an analysis of this logic, but
tries to find the "empirical anchorage" of that language
and asks himself "to what kind of situation" religious
language appeals. 137 In other words, he wishes to show
134. '" reject the theological view that the existence of God and the
possibility of knowing God are questions which need not and must not be
raised once we have noted that the biblical 'language-game' is in fact
played." Evans, op. cit., pp. 23-24.
135. Evans, op. cit., p. 24.
136. Evans, op. cit., p. 24.
137. Ian T. Ramsey, Religious Language, London, 1957, p. 14.
62
that the specific religious use of language, with its own

peculiar logic, "is about something."
Ramsey calls these specific situations "disclosure situations." Disclosure situations are not per se religious.
Generally speaking, they are situations whose observable
reality can, in the first instance, be seized in "flat"
descriptions accessible to anyone; for example, the "situation" of a court in session or of a first-aid station.
They have no "depth." But it can happen that the judge
suddenly realizes that the delinquent he is condemning
is a former school friend or that the surgeon who
performs an emergency operation on the victim of a
traffic accident recognizes his own wife in the victim. 138 In such a case the situation "discloses" a
"depth" whose reality can no longer be grasped in
"flat" descriptions accessible to all. The situation now
comprises "observables and more than observables,"139
"Describing" a disclosure situation can only be done
with the aid of a language which is "object language and
more," and which "exhibits logical impropriety" of its
own, different from the logic of "flat" descriptions. 140
"Flat" descriptions cannot evoke the specific "discernment" contained in a disclosure situation.
According to Ramsey, religious language also is such a
more-than-descriptive language. It is rooted in that "odd
kind of situation" in which the religious man discerns an
"odd depth." Thus this language can only be understood when this depth is evoked. 141 If this doesn't
138. Cf. W. de Pater, "Zin en zinloosheid in het spreken over God,"
Bijdragen, vol. 28(1967), pp. 33-61; R. Veldhuis, "Ian T. Ramsey's analyse
van de religieuze taal, " Kerk en tbeologie, vol. 18(1967), pp. 135-151.
139. Ramsey, Freedom and Immortality, London, 1960, p. 152.
140. Ramsey, Religious Lang1lage, p. 38.
141. Ramsey, op. cit., p. 47.
63
happen or doesn't succeed, then the religious language is

misunderstood.
A disclosure can be evoked only through the use of
appropriate models. A model "is a situation with which
we are familiar and which can be used for reaching
another situation with which we are not familiar." 142
For example, if the religious man wishes to indicate
what he means by the statement, "God is all-powerful,"
he uses "powerful" as a model because it places him in a
familiar situation, even in many familiar situations. The
model "powerful" makes us think of the "power" of
the army. But an able pen is more "powerful" than the
sword. And the able pen of one who lives by his conviction is "more powerful" again than that of one whose
deeds undermine his words. Doing one's duty is "powerful" because of the good example it gives; yet love is
more "powerful" again than merely doing one's duty.
Which love? The story should continue, go on and on
until it "begins to dawn" and a disclosure situation is
reached in which the statement, "God is all-powerful,"
becomes meaningful. 143
While "powerful" functions as model, "all" acts as
qualifier. It is a directive which prescribes a special way
of developing the model. 144 The development must
continue until the situation comes alive and assumes
depth, until "it rings abell," "the ice breaks," "the
penny drops." 145 The qualifier also warns us not to
forget the odd logic of religious language once the
disclosure situation has been reached. 146 It reminds us
143. W. de Pater, op. cit., pp: 42-43.
145. Ramsey, op. cit., pp. 19, 49, 90.
146. "We must expect religious language to be appropriately odd and
to have a distinctive logical behaviour." Ramsey, op. cit., p. 49.
64
that the language is no longer a "flat" description. The

religious use of language is never "flat"-descriptive. The
statement, "God is ~p there," does not mean something
like, "Peter is up there" (at the 88th floor). And the
statement, "God is infinite," should not be understood
in the same way as the statement, "The leaf is
green." 147
"God is my rock and my refuge" has an entirely
different meaning than "Gibraltar is my rock and my
refuge." Religious statements imply a minimum of "descriptive" meaning; thus they "say" little. A statement
such as, "The cat is on the mat," says a lot. 148 That's
why, as a "flat" description, it has no religious meaning.
The "odd" logic of religious language also prohibits
us from asking questions based on the assumption that
religious language is "flat" descriptive language. One
cannot ask, "How does God influence history?" if this
question is understood on a par with the question,
"How does the sea act on the dike?" Speaking "about"
God is possible only when one uses a descriptive form of
speech-no matter what kind it is-in such a way that it
evokes a disclosure and thus tells more than the descriptive story. 149 Similarly, the conclusions of the "proofs"
for God's existence must not be conceived as "flat"
descriptions of God's essence; 150 they are merely
"techniques to evoke disclosures." 151
147. Ramsey, Christian Discourse, London, 1965, pp. 79-80.
149. Ramsey, "On the Possibility and Purpose of a Metaphysical Theology," Prospects for Metaphysics, ed. by I. Ramsey, London, 1961, p.
173.
150. "All I need to remark now is that talk about God is certainly
never apt, if it is in terms of plain descriptions alone." Ramsey, op. cit., p.
1
z.3.
65
ANALYTICS AND THE "AFFIRMATION" OF GOO
Ramsey, we think, has done more than what the

"philosophers of ordinary language" were accustomed
to do. He has gone beyond the investigation of the logic
implied in the de facto used religious language game. He
has tried to anchor this language game in empirical
situations and to show that this language game is worth
playing because "it is about something."
Let us dwell a little on this expression: "It is about
something." Ramsey realizes, of course, that there is no
guarantee for the success of the attempt to evoke disclosure situations and thereby showing that religious
language "is about something." This matter is quite
obvious to him. One who thinks that he can guarantee
the success of such an attempt must assume that he has
power over God and that the initiative of the disclosure
or revelation lies with him and not with God. Such a
one is guilty of "semantic magic." 152
On the other hand, Ramsey emphasizes that the discernment arising from a disclosure situation is not something purely subjective. While it may be true that the
coming about of disclosures and the birth of the discernment rooted in them can never be guaranteed, nevertheless, Ramsey is convinced that, once this discernment
has arisen, it implies an "objective reference" and that
disclosure situations are "subject-object in structure." 153 Expressed in phenomenological terms, the
birth of discernment in religious situations means for
Ramsey a certain "event," viz., the "coming about" of
existence 154 in an entirely new dimension, which- tan
/
152. Ramsey, Religious Language, p. 79.

153. Ramsey, op. cit., p. 28; cf. Ramsey, "Talking About God : Models, Ancient and Modern," Myth and Symbol, London, 1966, pp. 86-92.
154. "When situations 'come alive' or the 'ice breaks', there is an
66
no longer be seized in terms of a "flat" descriptive

language game. Ramsey comes here very close to Bultmann, for whom thinking about man is not exhausted
by the "objectifying" approach of the sciences of nature
and of history. There is also another kind of thinking,
mythical thinking, which intends "to speak of the
proper reality of man," his "understanding of existence." ISS Myths speak about man as existence 156 and
are misunderstood if they are conceived as "flat" descriptions.
Thus the evolutions within analytical philosophy turn
out to be very striking. This form of philosophy has
turned away from Russell, the early Wittgenstein, Moritz Schlick, Carnap and Ayer-to limit ourselves to a few
representatives of logical atomism and logical positivism.
Ramsey turns out to be very close to the existence
theology of Bultmann. For both "speaking 'about'
God" is "speaking about man." 157 For both also this
does not imply subjectivism. 158
Nevertheless, there remains an urgent question. Let us
grant that myths do not speak in an "objectifying" way
but give expression to man as existence; let us grant that
the religious use of language is evocative and intended to
call forth the specific "depth" of a religious disclosure; 159 and let us grant also that the term "objective
objective 'depth' in these situations along with and alongside any subjective
changes." Ramsey, op. cit., p. 28.
155. R. Bultmann, Kerygma und Mythos, VI-I, pp. 24-25.
156. "The myth doesn't want to be interpreted cosomologically but
anthropologically-or better, existentially." Bultmann, Kerygma und
Mythos, I, p. 22.
157. Ramsey,op. cit., in footnote 149, pp. 147-177; Bultmann, Glauben und Verstehen, vol. 2, Ti.ibingen, 3rd ed., 1961, p. 86.
158. Ramsey, Religious Language, p. 27; Buitmann, op. cit., pp.
233-234.
159. Ramsey, op. cit., in footnote 149, p . 174.
67
reference" is applicable to such an existential situation.

Even then it remains true that myths can become "crazy" and that the evocative use of language can be
deceptive. There is no guarantee that the mythical and
evocative use of language will not cause illusions and
hallucinations. 160 The mythical and evocative use of
language can suggest a "depth" that doesn't exist, it can
recommend a path that leads nowhere, it can point to a
future that is not really accessible. This means that the
question about the "reality" and "truth" of the religious use of language returns here again, and this brings
up the issue of a "critical resort." Is this "critical resort"
by any chance that which traditionally has been called
"metaphysics"? The traditional "proofs" for God's existence are then perhaps more than "techniques to evoke
disclosures. "
160. F. Ferre, Language, Logic and God, New York, 1961, pp.
139-143.
"DINNER IS READY"
- A PHILOSOPHICAL STUDY
OF THE
ACT OF FAITH
Most of the time when others tell me what I believe I

feel very unhappy. And since it happens rather frequently that others speak "on my behalf" in this way, I am all
too often unhappy. For example, in the section Religion
of the New York weekly Time, one can often read :
"The Catholic believes that . . .. " Usually I cannot simply reject such a description in its totality but, at the
same time, I cannot give an unequivocal affirmative
answer to the question whether I really believe "this" or
"that." What is the reason for this?
In one of his books Willem H. van de Pol also devotes
a section to a description of what he calls "conventional
Christianity." 1 (He calls this description "phenomenological," but his use of this term is confusing.) This
description annoys me just as much as do the journalistic attempts I find in Time . This doesn't mean that van
de Pol's description is not right or that Time's remarks
are not right: The remainder of van de Pol's book
1. W.H. van de Pol, The End of Conventional Christianity, Westminster, Md., 1968, pp. ff.
71
72
endeavors to show that the reality underlying his description has collapsed-a point in which some people
will disagree with him. But if I personally were to think
that van de Pol is wrong when he claims that the
conventional Christian reality has collapsed, would I
then not feel unhappy with his description? This I doubt
very much. For the question whether the kind of descriptions given by van de Pol is possible appears to me
to be much more important than the question whether
or not this author is right.
Assuming that the descriptions offered by van de Pol
are not right, would it be possible to find other descriptions which would not make me unhappy? I have already indicated that even the more casual descriptions
offered by Time are not the reason for my unhappiness,
for I am unable simply to reject them; Perhaps, then, my
unhappiness arises from the attempt to offer any description at all, from describing as such. Let us list a few
"points" which occur in the above-mentioned type of
statements about the faith. The Catholic, it is said,
believes that:
God has made heaven and earth;
God is one Nature in three Persons;
Man fell into sin and this sin is still with us;
In Christ there are two natures and one Person;
Christ has redeemed mankind;
The Christian marriage is a sacrament;
Christ will return at the end of time;
Prayer is necessary for salvation;
Saint Joseph never had any sexual relationship with
Mary;
God will punish the sinners, even though they don't
believe it.
"DINNER IS READY"
73
Do I really believe all this?

And if I don't believe it, what would it matter?
Some people answer that I must believe all this because these truths have been revealed by God; they are
guaranteed by Him. Thus they cannot be unimportant.
Without denying this, I must ask what it means. The
simplest way perhaps is first to make an attempt to say
what it does not mean. This may put us on the track of
the reason why I often feel unhappy when other people
tell me what I believe. For what they "present" as my
belief could easily contain all kinds of presuppositions
and "hidden options," and the question is whether these
presuppositions and options are tenable.
Belief in Statements
Do I really believe all this? I asked myself. The
question was concerned with the judgments, the statements listed above. It is rather obvious, I think, that the
faith must also be talked about if it is to stay alive in the
believing community. The same is true for anything
human. We talk about the fabulous achievements of
football stars and baseball stars and by this very fact
keep their future open for them. If people were to plot
against a particular famous player and abstain from
mentioning him, he would very soon be relegated to the
ranks of mediocre players. By talking about him, on the
other hand, we keep him provisionally on the level of
outstanding players and it is partly because of this that
he is an excellent player.
The fact that being talked about keeps things human
alive manifests itself also on levels of existence which are
"more serious" than that of sports. One who acquires
skills in technology inserts himself in a "course of af-
74
fairs" planned and established by others. 2 By doing this

he reaches a level of authenticity in the domain of
technological work which he would never have reached
if he had not inherited the tradition of technology. But
the tradition of technc;)logical work is accompanied and
kept alive by the tradition of a certain language, the
language of the physical sciences. One who acquires
technological know-how is also the heir of the scientific
way of speaking.3
To revert to faith, it is beyond dispute, I think, that a
tradition of faith consists primarily in passing on a
certain way of living. This passing on of a way of living,
however, never occurs without a language proper to this
way of living. The faith expresses itself in language and
this helps to keep it alive and have a future. The result
of this speaking is something that can be "found." As
far as the West and the Near East are concerned, one can
find this result in the Bible, dogmatic formulas, papal
pronouncements, theological opinions and, in our"'time,
also in newspaper and magazine articles. Time, we saw,
often says: "The Catholic believes that .... " It stands to
reason that there are differences and degrees in the
authority ascribed to these various statements of faith. 4
A point that deserves our attention here is that we
almost spontaneously speak of the authority of statements. Doesn't this indicate that there has been a quiet
shift of accent, a shift from emphasis on a "way of life"
to emphasis on "statements"? What is primarily authoritative is, of course, a certain way of living. "Authority"
2. Remy C. Kwant, Sociale filosofie, Utrecht, 1963, pp. 115-166.
3. Karl Jaspers, Philosophie, 1948, p. 858.
4. P. Fransen, "Enkele opmerkingen over de theologische kwalificaties," Tijdschrift voor The%gie, vol. 8(1968), pp. 328-347.
"DINNER IS READY"
75
then means "something" which makes others follow a

bearer of authority.5 Thus the heroes of Christian life
have authority because they have lived this life before
the others in such a way that these others were inspired
by it and followed them. But why do we speak of the
authority of statements? It would not do to deny statements all authority. For a way of life cannot exist and
continue to exist unless it is talked about, and this talk
results in statements. On the other hand, the existence
of a statement also endangers the life which it wishes to
express. If, for example, a famous football player begins
to live solely in our statements about him and doesn't
realize that playing football is the important thing, he
quickly drops back into the ranks of mediocre players.
In a similar way the life of faith can be exchanged for
statements about this faith. There are theologians who
have given up Christian life because they saw that they
could no longer stand their own statements. If they had
seen a chance of living in other statements, then they
would have stayed.
Our suspicion that a quiet shift of emphasis has occurred is more than a mere suspicion. In the past the
realization that human life is not real and has no future
without being expressed in language underwent a degeneration and became a kind of absolutism. This degeneration resulted in a conception of faith as a "yes" to
statements. Thus the "faith" was located outside life.
The life of faith was stripped of everything that made it
worthwhile "to have the faith." Things went so far that
5. I realize that this says almost nothing; at the same time, however, it
says something, for it expresses the idea that a "bearer of authority" has
no authority when no one follows him. The near future will probably show
this clearly.
76
the question was even asked whether it would be possible to pursue theology without faith. The fact that this
question could be raised eloquently illustrates how impoverished the idea of faith had become. If faith is
nothing but a "yes" to statements, there is no reason to
claim that one cannot act as if he affirms these statements and then draw "theological conclusions" from
them. Theology thus degenerates into a kind of logic,
and faith is no longer a matter of believing in God. 6
Truth as a "Mirror Reflexion "

Faith, we said, becomes wholly estranged from life if
it is conceived as saying "yes" to statements. Attempts
have been made to escape ~rom this conclusion by
emphasizing that these statements are guaranteed by
God to be true 7 and that, therefore, ~hey must be
important for life.
What is noteworthy in this view is that it has recourse
to the theory that the judgment or statement is the
"place" where truth exists. Truth is conceived as the
agreement of the judgment with reality.8 But under the
influence of Greek philosophy the term "reality" was
taken to refer to reality-divorced-from-man, reality6. S. Ogden, "The Christian Proclamation of God to Men of the
So-called' Atheistic Age,' " Conciiium, vol. 16, 1966, pp. 89 ff.
7. "Hanc vero fidem, quae humanae salutis initium est, Ecc1esia catho
!ica profitetur, virtutem esse supetnaturaleln, qua., Dei aspira.nte ct adjuvante gratia, ab eo revela.lll VC1'a esse credimu5, nOD propter intrinsc am
rerum veritatem naturali radonis luminc perspectllm, sed propter ;tuctoritatem ipsius Dei revelanris, q ui nee fulli nee fallere pOtest," DenzigcrSchonmetzer, Enchiridio1l SyfllVO/III'I/1N, 32nd cd. , Frcibllrg i.Br., 1963,
no. 3008.
8. Martin Heidegger, Vom Wesen dey Wahrbeit, Frankfurt a.M., 3rd cd.,
1954, pp. 69.
"DINNER IS READY"
77
without-man, reality-in-itself, and the intellect was assumed to be in possession of a faithful copy of this
reality.
We will not dwell here on the theories devised to
explain how such "copies of reality" were supposed to
come about but only investigate what the consequences
of the above-mentioned theory of truth are for faith. To
see what these consequences are one need only take
note of what "reality in itself" means: it signifies "reality with which man has, as a matter of principle, nothing
to do." In reference to faith, then, this means that
statements of faith express a reality with which man, as
a matter of principle, has nothing to do. And even if it
were granted that God through his revelation guarantees
the truth of statements of faith, this would not imply
that their truth is important for man, for this truth was
conceived as a mirroring of "reality with which man has
nothing to do." How could God reveal that I have
something to do with things with which I have nothing
to do?
These considerations also show that the Greek idea of
being or reality favored the conception that faith is
primarily a "yes" to statements. For the Greek idea
represented being as being-"divorced"-from-man, as non"affirmed"-being. Thus God also was represented as
God-"divorced"-from-the-affirmation-of-faith, in other
words, as God-in-himself. But how would faith be able
to affirm this God? Such a God could only supply us
with "information" about his essence. And the believer
could then do no more than affirm this "information."
In this way faith must then be conceived as holding
certain judgments or statements to be true because God
guarantees that they are in agreement with the reality-initself of God.
78
The way Thomas Aquinas himself evaluated his thinking about the existence of God unintentionally fostered
the view that faith is a "yes" to statements. Thomas was
always profoundly conscious of the unknowability of
God because the God of Christianity is a Transcendent
God. "We are unable to say what God is," he wrote. 9
Any attempt to say something about God is, in his eyes,
an attempt to say what God is not rather than what he
is.IO The question which inevitably arises then is whether it is possible to say that God is. Thomas replies to this
question by pointing out that the term "is" can be used
in two ways: as affirmation of being or reality and as a
verbal copula. As a verbal copula, "is" connects the
subject and the predicate of a judgment or statement.
Now, according to Thomas, "is" cannot be used with
respect to God in the first-named sense, for such a use
would disregard God's transcendence; "is" can be used
only in the second sense. For one who says that God is
intends to affirm that the statement expressing that God
is, is true. 11
Thomas's intentions are clear: he is concerned with
God's transcendence. But the way he safeguards it in his
thinking is so dangerous that only a small step is needed
to arrive at the view that faith is a "yes" to statements
supposedly mirroring God-in-himself. According to Leslie Dewart, Thomas himself took this fatal step.12 Dewart's exegesis of Thomas does not impress me as very
9. "Ergo dicendum quod, licet de Deo non possimus scire quid
est .... " Summa Theologica, p.I, q. 1, a. 7, ad 1.
10. Summa contra Gentiles, bk.I, art. 14.
11. "Scimus enim, quod haec propositio quam formamus de Deo cum
dicimus Deus est, vera est." Summa Theol., p. I, q. 3, a.4, ad 2.
12. Leslie Dewart, The Future of Belief, London, 1967, p. 167.
"DINNER IS READY"
79
benevolent nor is it convincing. 13 But it is undeniable

that others took this fatal step. 14
The expert reader easily recognizes in the abovementioned view the "hidden options"15 of what Husserl
calls the "natural attitude. "16 He uses this term to refer
to the conviction which has become "second nature" in
the West but which cannot be justified that knowledge
consists in the mirroring-in-the-subject of a reality"divorced"-from-the-subject, a mirroring supposedly accomplished by means of a faithful "copy" of this reality. The realization that such a conviction was not
tenable induced Husserl to launch phenomenology as an
attempt to find a foundation on which any and all
statements could be based. For it is evident that, as long
as truth is located only in the judgment and as long as a
statement is called "true" because the speaker is assumed to be in possession of a "faithful copy" of
reality-in-itself, no real foundation for the truth of the
statement can be found. The reason is that it is impossible to justify the assumption that this "copy" is truthfully a "copy" unless the knowing subject is immediately present to the reality expressed in his judgment. 17 To
justify the "copy" character of a "copy," one must be
able to compare the "copy" with the original, and this
13. "Actus aut em credentis non terminatur ad enuntiabile, sed ad
rem." Summa Theol., p. II-II, q. I, a. I, ad 2.
14. "Verbum Credo significat: firmiter assentior, propter auctoritatem
Dei revel antis, veritatibus quae in Symbolo continentur." P. Gasparri,
Catechismus Catholicus, Vatican City, 10th ed., 1933, p. 95.
15. A de Waelhens, "Signification de la phenomenologie," Diogene,
vol. 5(1954), p. 64.
16. W. Luijpen, Phenomenology and Metaphysics, Pittsburgh, Pa.,
1965, pp. 56 ff.
17. E. Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phiinomenologie und phiinomenologischen Philosophie, vol. I, The Hague, 1950, p. 52.
80
presupposes that the subject is immediately present to

the appearing reality. Now, the recognition of the subject's immediate presence to an appearing reality eliminates the possibility of conceiving reality as reality-initself. 18
From these considerations it follows that statements
of faith also do not have a foundation or ground if their
truth is conceived as their agreement with God-inhimself. Not even a divine guarantee can provide such a
foundation, because such a guarantee itself would also
be an "object" of faith. But if faith is conceived as a
"yes" to statements whose truth is taken to lie in their
agreement with God-in-himself, then this same rule applies also to the belief in a divine guarantee: this belief
also would be a "yes" to a statement taken to be in
agreement with God-in-himself. And so on ad infinitum.
Truth as "Event"
"Do I really believe this?"-that was the question I
asked myself when above we spoke of the fact that
other people put before me a series of statements expressing what I believe. And I indicated that I cannot
dismiss the matter with a simple denial. On the other
hand, I feel very unhappy when the others then assume
that I will answer the question with a simple affirmation.
The reason should be evident from the foregoing:
neither the "yes" nor the "no" have any meaning. It
makes no difference whether I reply in the affirmative
or the negative because both the "yes" and the "no" do
18. A de Waelhens, La philosophie et les experiences naturelles, The
Hague, 1961, pp. 48-58.
"DINNER IS READY"
81
not say anything without a "foundation," i.e., without

an interpretation. One who asks me, "Do you believe
this or not?" necessarily presupposes, we have suggested, an interpretation of the meaning of such a saying
of "yes" or "no," of our "saying"-of-is;19 and, as we
have indicated, if the "hidden options" of the "natural
attitude" are presupposed, neither the "yes" nor the
"no" have any meaning whatsoever. To believe is not to
affirm statements of faith, and the truth of statements is
not their agreement with a reality-in-itself. 20
Many discussions about the faith, however, continue
to be based on the unspoken assumption that belief is
such a "yes" and truth such an agreement. That's why
such discussions are often so tiresome and fruitless. As
long as one does not return to the original and real
"affirmations" on which the explicit affirmations in
judgments and statements are based, one does not really
affirm and really speak.21 Statements in which an explicit
"is" is spoken presuppose the implicit "saying"-of-is
which the human subject as "functioning intentionality"
himself is. 22 When there is no implicit "saying"-of-is,
then the explicit statement doesn't really say anything.
It sometimes happens to me that a student in an examination "returns" statements which I have made, but in
such a way that I'd prefer not to accept them. Often a
"long history" preceded before I could make a certain
statement my own-the history of the "functioning in-
19. "Aber indem das 'ist' der Copula iiber alles formale Verbinden
hinaus eben 'ist wirklich so', 'ist wahrhaft so' sagt, enthalt es die Grundauffassung des Menschen iiber Sein als Wirklichkeit und Wahrheit." Max
Miiller, Sein und Geist, Tiibingen, 1940, p. 41.
20. Heidegger, Vom Wesen der Wahrheit, pp. 5-13.
21. Heidegger, Being and Time, New York, 1962, pp. 257-262.
22. Cf. Luijpen, Phenomenology and Metaphysics, p. 100.
82
tentionality" of my subjectivity. It is this history which

gives meaning to a statement, and without it, statements
are not more than words.
What all this means for the understanding of faith
may be clarified with an example taken from outside the
realm of faith. The point is to unfold thereby the
meaning of the "saying"-of-is which the subject as
"functioning intentionality" himself is.
After making a trip through the mountains, I can
objectively describe how smooth or rough the trail was.
Such a description contains a series of statements expressing through predicates the passable or impassable
character of the trail. The judgments expressed in statements are modes of explicit saying-of-is: I explicitly
ascribe certain predicates to the subject of a judgment
by using the verbal copula "is. ,,23 But if I present these
statements to someone who doesn't know at all what a
mountain is and who would be unable to acquire any
realization of what a mountain involves, then my statements about the passable or impassable character of the
trail would not be about anything for him.
For me, these statements have meaning because my
feet, my hands, my eyes, and my entire body have
previously "affirmed" the passable or impassable character of the trail. My walking, crawling and climbing, my
tiredness, my moments of weakness, my scratches and
my firm resolve to go on are themselves the "affirmation" of the trail. This "affirmation" presupposes an
original "event," the "event" of the "emergence" of the
"saying"-of-is which subjectivity itself is. In a stone
23. "In einem jeden Satz gebrauchen wir das Wort chen 'ist' als Verbindung zwischen Subjekt und Pr":idikat, zwischen Aussagegegenstand und
Ausgesagten, und wollen damit jeweils sagen: Es ist wahrhaft und in
Wirklichkeit so und nicht anders." Mi.iller, op. cit., p. 40.
"DINNER IS READY"
83
rolling over the trail no subjectivity "comes about."

That's why the stone's rolling down the trail is entirely
different from my rolling down the trail. I am the
"affirmation" of the mountain trail. My subjectivity,
immersed in my body, is itself the "saying"-of-is which I
render explicit by expressing it in statements. These
statements are preceded by the coming-to-be-ofmeaning-for-the-subject. The "coming to pass"24 of the
trail's truth-as-unconcealedness is attached to my passing
over the trail. 25 I can express this truth in judgments,
but none of them has any meaning if it is detached from
the "affirmation" which my existence is. 26 Divorced
from existence, a judgment is neither true nor false; it
simply doesn't say anything at all.
The preceding example has been offered merely to
show that the truth of the judgment cannot consist in
the judgment's agreement with a reality "divorced"
from human existence. Even such a simple truth as that
of a mountain trail presupposes a very complex "event,"
the "coming about" of my subjectivity and of the unconcealedness of the trail.
The example should make us realize that an even
more complex "event" underlies the truth of statements
of faith. "Do you or don't you believe in eternal life
after death?" people sometimes ask. The question has
no meaning whatsoever if it is to be answered as a "yes"
or "no" to a statement the truth of which is conceived
as agreement with eternal-life-"in itself." Belief in eternal life lies contained in a specific "event," even as the
affirmation of the passable or impassable nature of the
24. Heidegger, ldentitiit und Differenz, pfullingen, 1957, p. 24.
25. Heidegger, Being and Time, pp. 261 f.
26. Heidegger, op. cit., p. 262.
84
mountain trail lies contained in a specific "event," viz.,

hiking through the mountains. If, then, I try to express
what belief in eternal life implies, I must also refer to a
specific "event," a way of living in which the believing
subject as "functioning intentionality" makes a much
more original "affirmation" of eternal life than is made
in explicit statements about eternal life. My referring to
that specific "event" has theologically the same significance as the phenomenological reduction has for philosophy; it restores the original unity of reciprocal implication of noesis and noema. As far as the above-mentioned
example of eternal life is concerned, we realize that such
a restoration can perhaps be made in several ways. What
will be said here, then, is not meant to exclude other
approaches. The reader is asked to pay attention only to
the end to be achieved. When in the preceding pages we
attempted to give a foundation to the statements about
the passable or impassable nature of the mountain trail,
the hike in the mountains could also have been described in another way than mine.
To "Do" Truths of Faith

Belief in eternal life means that I take upon myself a
task in the world in "obedience" to the demands inherent in this task itself; it means to be sensitive to the
appeal others direct to me to execute this task in such a
way that as many people as possible can find their own
task in the world; it means to recognize that I have not
myself imposed my "obedience" on myself as a duty; it
means that my "obedience" makes my essence "come
about" as "reaching beyond the world"; it means that in
Christ I recognize my essence as "reaching beyond the
world"; it means that in Christ the Father comes near to
"DINNER IS READY"
85
me in love. And when I have said all this-no, when I

have done all this-when I am the "coming about" of all
this, then, at the moment when my task in the world
slips from my hands and I must say farewell to all my
fellowmen dear to me, then I do not need to exclaim:
"The farce is over!" but may confess that the merciful
love of the Father reaches beyond death and will make
me share in his promises.
"Doing as If"
When matters are put this way, it should be obvious

that a ten year old child cannot yet believe in eternal life
after death. The child does not yet fulfill a task in the
world; it has not yet begun to devote itself to the service
of other people; its being has not yet "come about" as
"reaching beyond the world"; Christ does not yet mean
for the child a reference to the Father; the Father is not
yet so near that his love and mercy as reaching over and
beyond death can be confessed. Obviously, this should
not be taken to mean that it isn't very important for the
child to "act as if." On the contrary. All authenticity of
life always originates in "acting as if." But as long as the
child merely "acts as if," authenticity has not yet been
born.
A child has been mentioned here, but it would be
better for me to ask myself whether I have the right to
claim that I believe in eternal life. The answer to this
question can be determined only by looking at my own
life. And then the need to pray for more faith becomes
readily apparent. But this doesn't mean that I should
pray for the strength to say "yes" to statements or
propositions whose content, on the basis of faith, is
assumed to be in "agreement" with a reality-in-itself.
86
For otherwise my believing would always remain a "doing as if." My need to pray is a need to pray for
conversion.
"I Don't Care"
"Christ is God," claims the one.

"Christ is not God," claims the other.
"What do you think?" inquires a third.
Following the line of the preceding explanations, I'd
have to answer: "I don't care." As long as the discussions about the divinity of Christ are not concerned with
the value and meaning of a specific way of living, the
affirmation or negation of Christ's divinity can only
refer to an isolated statement containing a judgment.
Expressed in technical terms, theology also presupposes
a "transcendental theory of method" (Kant) or a "fundamental analysis of existence" (Heidegger).
If this idea meets approval, a critical attitude may
become necessary with respect to the eagerness with
which some pastoral theologians look at the results of
certain sociological investigations in order to find there a
starting point for their pastoral-theological considerations. Does it make sense to compare the doctrine of the
Church with the belief of its members by means of a
scientific opinion poll? Such a poll selects certain questions to be submitted to the respondents in order to
"gage the content of their belief. "27 The risks involved
in such a procedure have been pointed out by Professor
F. Haarsma. If, for example, the questions are derived
from an old-fashioned handbook of theology, the very
questions themselves at once frustrate the entire poll.
27. F. Haarsma, De Leer van de Kerk en bet Geloof van baar Leden,
Utrecht, 1968, p. 7.
"DINNER IS READY"
87
However, let us assume that the "right" questions are

asked, whatever this may mean. Even then, "judgments
in the form of questions" are submitted to the respondents, and the answer will have to be a positive or
negative judgment. These judgments can then be compared with the judgments proposed by the doctrinal
authority, and then the agreement or disagreement can
be expressed in percentages. The crucial question is, of
course, whether such an inquiry gives the theologian
really any information about the belief of the respondents. He can answer in the affirmative only if he, too,
assumes that belief is saying "yes" to judgments or
propositions.
All this is not meant to imply that sociology cannot
have any value for pastoral theology. But if sociology is
to offer a scientific starting point for the pastoral theologian, it must not "poll opinions" but investigate "ways
of life." For faith is primarily a way of living. When
newspaper headlines claim, on the basis of opinion polls,
that the percentage of people believing in hell has gone
down again, then, theologically speaking, this means
exactly the same as the claim that the percentage has
risen-nothing at all.
"Non-objective" or "Non-metaphysical" Truth?

Faith does not speak about a divine reality that may
be conceived as reality-in-itself, as "brute" reality, "divorced" from man. The realization that this is so has led
many thinkers to claim that the thinking and speaking
of the believer is not "objectifying" or not "objective. "28 What they mean to say is rather obvious, yet
28. Leslie Dewart, The Future of Belief, pp. 184-185.
88
for people who still live in the "natural attitude" such

claims are extremely misleading. Their inevitable complaint is that such thinkers are subjectivists. In selfdefense, these thinkers then emphasize that they do not
proceed arbitrarily because they know that their thinking and speaking must respect the "objective." It would
be much better if they said that they speak objectively
but refuse to interpret "objective" in an objectivistic
sense. 29
Other people wish to express exactly the same but use
a different terminology. They replace the term "objective" by "supra-naturalistic" 30 or "metaphysical." 31
Like those who use exclusively the terms "objective" or
"objectifying," they intend to reject the "hidden options" of objectivism which have infiltrated theological
language when they reject "supra-naturalistic" or "metaphysical" ways of speaking. Later we will return to the
terms "objectifying" and "objective," for their rejection
is significant in another and more profound way.
Language as Description
The deceptions implied in the misunderstanding of

the importance to be attached to the various language
29. "Subjectivistic-objectivistic thinking is the thinking of metaphysics
and science, which in the essential sense precisely does not 'think.' 'Overcoming metaphysics' in the area of theology does not take place by
defining all thinking as basically objectifying in nature, and then distinguishing from this thinking the contingent act of believing existence itself.
Rather, it takes place by understanding thinking otherwise than as subjectivistic and objectifying thinking in the sense of metaphysics and science,
namely, as experiential thinkirg." Heinrich Ott, "What is Systematic Theology?" The Later Heidegger and Theology, New York, 1963, p. 109.
30. Carl Michalson, "Is de Amerikaanse theologie bezig volwassen te
worden?" Wending, vol. 21(1966), p. 95.
31. H.J.H., "Christusgeloof zonder God? Een dogmatische verkenning," Wending, vol. 20(1965), p. 801.
"DINNER IS READY"
89
games are the third reason why I am inclined to reject

the things which others put before me as the expression
of my faith. Someone might-wrongly-think that the
language of faith is a purely descriptive language. The
believer professes: "Christ rose from his grave" Grammatically this sentence looks like the sentence: "Chris
rose from his deck-chair," but the meanings of these two
sentences are simply beyond comparison. 32
The second sentence speaks of a fact that can be
observed and described, and the language used in it is
the language of a report, objective, descriptive language.
The language of faith, however, is entirely different. 33
The sentence: "Christ rose from his grave" does not
primarily intend to report a fact that anyone can observe, but should rather be understood as a call to live in
a certain way. It implies a promise of future, a professing of hope for all those who try to follow Christ's
example. Thus the language model used in the sentence
is not primarily descriptive but professing, proclaiming
and orientating. 34 One who uses the language of profession, proclamation and orientation doesn't recognize
himself when others return this language to him as
purely descriptive.
.I
32. W.A. de Pater, "Zin en zinloosheid in het spreken over God,"

Bijdragen, vol. 28(1967), p. 38.
B. "But it is perhaps worth recalling that Religious Language was
written at a time when, to meet attacks on the Christian faith, it was
necessary to show (a) that religious language should not be read as if it
were flat and altogether descriptive like 'Blue copper sulphate turns white
on heating' and (b) that .... " Ian Ramsey, "The Intellectual Crisis of
British Christianity," Theology, a Monthly Review, vol. 68 (1965), p. 109.
34. C.A. van Peursen, "De betekenis van het woordje 'God,' .. Wending, vol. 22(1968), pp. 821-822.
90
The Professing, Proclaiming and Orientating Language

Model of Faith
Some writers express this idea by saying that the
language of faith is not "objectifying" or not "objective. "35 When we encountered these expressions in the
preceding pages, they turned out to mean that the
objectivity of Divine Reality must not be interpreted in
an objectivistic way, as "brute" reality. One who avoids
this mistake has still another reason for saying that the
language of faith does not "objectify" as soon as he
realizes that the speaking of a believer is the language of
one who professes. "Not objectifying" then means not
interpreting the language of faith as describing the Divine Reality in a pre scientific, scientific or philosophical
fashion. This should not be understood as if the language of faith says less than do descriptive modes of
speaking. On the contrary; descriptive ways of speaking
do not say enough. One who uses, for example, the
historical sciences to put into words what the believer
calls the event of salvation, per se says too little because
for the believer the event of salvation is wholly unlike
any other event is for a pursuer of the historical sciences. 36
The difference between the professing, proclaiming
and orientating way of speaking on the one hand, and
descriptive speech on the other, is sometimes formulated
as the difference between "speaking about" and "speaking to." As soon as these two ways of speaking are
confused, the original and unique character of religious
speech, so it is said, is corrupted so that reality-for-the35. B. van Iersel, "Ontmythologiserende schriftuitleg?" Geloof bij kenterend getij, Roermond, n.d., p. 150.
36. R. Bultmann, "Zum Problem der Entmythologisierung," Kerygma
und Mythos, VI-I, pp. 20-27.
"DINNER IS READY"
!
I
91
believer can no longer "appear" to him as it appears in

professing speech. The language of faith is the language
of love, of hope and trust; it is prayer, song, shouting for
joy, lament and sorrow; it is the language of those who
"lift up their hearts to God" and participate in the
liturgy. For such God "is" really the God-for-thebeliever.
There are some theologians who say that theology
also must be a "speaking to"; it must not "objectify,"
and if it does so anyhow, then theology itself is a kind
of unbelief. Heinrich Ott makes mention of this view,
but doesn't agree with it.37 The reason why he rejects it
is derived from Heidegger's interpretation of the meaning of "foundational thinking." Ott views this as nothing
but the overcoming of the "natural attitude," i.e., the
denial of objectivism. Thus he is merely concerned with
the meaning of the term "to objectify" insofar as this
term is used to indicate ways of thinking infiltrated by
the "hidden options" of objectivism. 38 In other words,
Ott doesn't answer the question which he himself has
raised. For the question is not whether objectivism is
permissible in theology, but whether theological speaking must be a professing, proclaiming and orientating
way of speaking.
With Paul Van Buren, I think that theology neither
must nor may be such a way of speaking. The believer
says:
"you are the Christ."
"I know that my Redeemer lives."
37. "According to this view faith and theology's thinking and speaking
are to be basically distinguished, that is, one cannot at all speak of a
believing thinking, since in this view all theological talking and thinking
always takes place from an objectifying distance." H. Ott, op. cit., p. 93.
38. Ott,op. cit., pp. 106-111.
92
"Lord, go away from me, for I am a sinful man."

By adding more such examples, one can show that the
language of faith is indeed the language of love, of hope
and trust, that to believe is to pray, sing, rejoice, lament
and sorrow. The language of faith is a "speaking tor, and
in this sense "not objectifying."39 Theology, however,
cannot be satisfied with this. While theology presupposes the faith, it explicitly introduces a critical dimension. 40 What this means can perhaps best be illustrated
with an example.
Driving through a backwoods region of the country, I
see a primitive restaurant with a crudely lettered sign
proclaiming: Dinner is served. I know that this sign
doesn't simply establish and describe a fact but means
that I am invited to enter and order a meal if I wish. At
home also dinner is often ready, but no one puts out a
sign to announce the fact to the world at large. If one of
the children would put up such a sign, Mother would be
angry because the child plays a language game which she
doesn't wish to play. For the language of the sign is
"calling," "inviting" and "orientating," it is not an objective report of an observable fact.
If, however, I enter that restaurant and dinner turns
out not to be ready, the owner cannot excuse himself by
saying that the sign's language is "merely" calling and
orientating and not intended to be the description of an
observable fact. I could rightly counter such an excuse
by requesting that he be more prudent and reserved in
issuing "calls." Thus it is certainly not meaningless if my
friends tell me to enter the restaurant and to subject
what the sign says in the language of a call and an
39. Paul Van Buren, Theologisch onderzoek, Utrecht, 1968, pp. 61-62.
40. Van Buren, op. cit., p. 74.
"DINNER IS READY"
93
invitation to "verification." If it then turns out that the

dinner is indeed ready, I communicate the result of my
"verification" to my friends in a descriptive language
game. If need be, I could even enumerate the observed
or expected qualities of the dinner and I then evidently
speak "about" the dinner. Is such a procedure meaningless? Obviously not.
This story may serve to illustrate what is meant by
the "critical dimension" which theology introduces into
faith. The theologian doesn't speak "to" his Beloved but
speaks "about" his Beloved. 41 The theologian starts
with the believing profession of faith, but he "describes"
and "verifies" the reality of the faith that is professed.
We should now proceed to indicate what the terms
"describing" and "verifying" mean in the context of
theology, for the same terms are also used when a
scientist classifies insects. 42 This, however, would lead
us too far afield and into a topic which occupies a
central position in theological hermeneutics. Meanwhile
it should be obvious that no one may accuse the theologian of falsifying the faith when he "speaks about,"
"verifies" and "describes," as if such an activity per se
implies an approach to the reality of faith similar to the
wayan entomologist approaches insects. 43 When the
theologian "verifies" and "describes," he introduces a
"critical dimension" into faith, in order to prevent
people from "rushing in to dinner" even when "no
dinner is ready." Innumerable "calls," "invitations" and
"proclamations" reach man from all sides; the untrustwortbiness of many would manifest itself immediately if
41. Van Buren, op. cit., p. 62.
42. Ian Ramsey, "Het empirisme en de theoiogie," Wending, vol.
20(1965), pp. 349-364.
43. C.A. van Peursen, op. cit., in footnote 34.
94
the truth, which such "calls" must presuppose, were to

be "verified." The theologian speaks "objectifyingly,"
therefore, critically "about" the reality to which faith
professes.
Endless "Verification"
To conclude this study, let us finish the "dinner
story" mentioned in the preceding pages. It could be
useful to some people, the "modern people" who like to
"verify" everything. For some of them "verification"
has become a passionate pursuit, they cannot stop doing
it even if it becomes ridiculous.
What can the waiter of the little restaurant which I
entered to verify whether dinner was indeed ready expect when I return to my friends with an "affirmative
description"? That we will come in, of course, to dine.
If we are satisfied with verifying the call and invitation
and do not come in to eat, we cut a sorry figure before
the waiter.
Yet, it seems that today there are many people who
cut such a sorry figure. They keep whipping in and out
of restaurants to verify whether dinner is ready, without
ever sitting down to enjoy a meal. They offer a kind of
apology: they are "modern people." They make use of
"electricity and radio,"44 things which the sciences have
made possible. Therefore, they must devise scientific
models and techniques to verify whether dinner is ready.
While they are busily engaged in animated discussions
about the nature of these models and techniques, they
totally fail to notice that other people are already sitting
down and enjoying the meal.
44. Peter L. Berger, "Een sociologische kijk op de secularisatie van de
thcologie," Wending, vol. 22(1967), p. 441.
THE
HIDDEN GOD
"Lord, I am not trying to invade and pry into Your Majesty, for I do not liken my knowledge to It in the least. But I
long for a glimpse of the truth that is believed and loved by
my heart. " St. Anselm
There is a very facile way to describe the difference

between theists and atheists. Some people take this road
by claiming that the theist says, "God exists," and the
atheist holds, "God does not exist." Such a way of
putting the matter is extremely deceptive. It presents
the issue as if one knows at once what is said when the
assertions are made that "God exists" or that "God does
not exist." But this is not at all the case.
Kant
Immanuel Kant is the man who has made this clear.

Kant thought that he should investigate the possibility
of metaphysical statements because, unlike mathematics
and physics, metaphysics still had not yet discovered the
road to being a science. l The saying-of-is by mathemat1. I. Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Cassirer ed. of Kant's Werke,
Berlin, 1913, vol. 3, p.17.
97
98
ics and physics is, according to Kant, necessary and

universal and, therefore, truly scientific. But what must
we say about the saying-of-is by metaphysics? The answer is not at once evident. 2 Thus it makes sense to
investigate the general conditions on which the sayingof-is is possible. For the fact that mathematics and
physics exist as sciences, but not so metaphysics shows
that in some cases these conditions have been satisfied
while in others (metaphysics) they perhaps have not.
The investigation of the conditions on which the sayingof-is in general is possible may offer an answer to the
question whether metaphysical statements are possible
or impossible.
Kant calls this investigation "transcendental theory of
method."3 This theory is not concerned with "that
which is," but with the human possibility of saying-is,
not with objects, but with the conditions which must be
fulfilled if the objects are to be able to appear to man's
knowledge as they appear.
Kant concluded from his investigation that objects
can only appear as they appear, and that the saying-of-is
as it actually occurs is only possible if concepts which
themselves cannot arise from sense experience are impressed on the data of the senses. Without the data of
sense experience the concepts are "empty," i.e., they
are not concerned with anything, but without concepts
the sense data are "blind," i.e., they have no intelligible
content. 4 Thus man's saying-of-is only has objective
value if the sense data can be conceptualized; in other
2. "Was aber Metaphysik betrifft, so muss ihr bisheriger schlechter
Vorgang ... einen jeden mit Grunde an ihrer Moglichkeit zweiflen lassen."
Kant, op.cit., p. 46.
3. Kant, op.cit., p. 49.
99
THE HIDDEN GOD
words, if cDncepts can be applied to. what is given by the

senses. 5
This, accDrding to. Kant, suffices to. ShDW that neither
the Dne who. says, "GDd exists," nDr the Dne who.
claims, "GDd dDes no.t exist," knDws what he is saying if
his assertiDn intends to. affirm or deny an appearing
Dbject. BDth fail to. realize that their statements transgress human pDssibilities of Dbjectively saying-is, fDr
such a saying-Df-is presuppDses an Dbject that is given in
sense experience. FDr Kant, then, theDretical knDwledge
Df GDd is impDssible.
In Kantian terminDIDgy knDwledge is "theDretical" if
it expresses "what is," and "practical" if it states "what
Dught to be. "6 TheDretical knDwledge can be either
natural Dr speculative. It is natural if it speaks abDut
Dbjects given in sense experience, and speculative if it
makes affirmatiDns gDing beYDnd the Dbjects given in
sense experience. 7 In this terminDIDgy the traditiDnal
theDretical knDwledge Df GDd is purely speculative. The
speculative use Df reaSDn, hDwever, is entirely fruitless
with respect to' natural theDIDgy and doesn't lead anywhere. 8 This assertiDn should be DbviDUS nDW. For if
the law Df causality led to' a PrimDrdial Being, this Being
. wDuld have its place in the series Df Dbjects Df sense
experience; cDnsequently, it wDuld no. mDre be the
PrimDrdial Being than any Dther Dbject in the series. If,
Dn the Dther hand, Dne places the PrimDrdial Being
abDve the series Df sense Dbjects, Dne uses the law Df
5. Kant, op.cit., p. 79 .
6. Kant, op.cit., p. 435 .
8 . "I ell b ehnuprc nun, dass aile Versuche eines bloss spekulativen
Gebrnuchs der Vernu rlft in Ansehung der Theologie ganzlich fruchtlos und
ihrer inn crcm Resch affcnhcit nach null and nichtig sind." Kant, op.cit., pp.
436-437 .
"\ c..
LJUl'UY.
100
causality in a realm where it doesn't have any objective

validity. Thus there is no escape from the conclusion
that our knowledge of God is purely speculative, i.e.,
does not have any objective validity. 9
Kant challenges everyone who has more confidence in
the traditional proofs than in his critique to show him
the grounds on which one could consider himself justified in transcending sense experience by using pure
ideas. And he doesn't want to be presented with new
proofs for the existence of God or with improvements
on the traditional proofs, for such proofs will inevitably
try to use pure ideas in order to transcend sense experience while the question is precisely how such a transcendence is possible. 10
Nevertheless, the Highest Being remains for the use of
speculative reason an ideal which is the apex and crown
of man's entire knowledge but whose objective existence cannot be proved. On the other hand, the very
reasons why the objective reality of the Highest Being
cannot be affirmed also compel us to say that this
reality cannot be deniedY Like the affirmation, so also
the negation would go beyond the possibilities of reason.
This is not all, however. It has not been ruled out that
the affirmation of the existence of the Highest Being is
demanded on other grounds than theoretical reason.
Kant alludes here to morality, the possibility of which
postulates the real existence of God. In this way the
10. Kant, op.cit., p. 438.
11. "Das hochtste Wesen bleibt also fur den bloss spekulativen Gebrauch der Vernunft ein blosses, aber doch fehlerfreies Ideal, ein Begriff,
welcher die ganze menschliche Erkenntnis schliesst und kronet, dessen
objektive Realitat auf diesem Wege zwar nicht bewiesen, aber auch nicht
wiederiegt werden kann." Kant, op.cit., p. 440.
THE HIDDEN GOD
101
traditional doctrine of God could be of importance for

determining the concept of the Highest Being, postulated by morality. Only theoretical reason is able to
keep away the errors of atheism, deism and anthropomorphism by showing that the affirmations of these
systems go beyond the possibilities of theoretical reason. 12 Only theoretical reason can prevent itself from
being deceived by the tricks of the senses through the
exercise of continuous censorship.13 If, then, practical
reason postulates the real existence of the Highest Being, only the theoretical reason can further determine
the concept of this Being as necessary, infinite, one,
transcendent, omnipotent, etc. 14
We have not mentioned Kant's views here to express
agreement or disagreement with the way he develops his
transcendental theory of method, for this would require
more space than we are able to allot it here. IS We have
briefly referred to his doctrine because Kant is the first
thinker in the history of philosophy who, before discussing the existence of God, devoted attention to what
is possible or not possible for man's saying-of-is. He
thereby opened the road to an understanding of an even
more fundamental "saying"-of-is. For what Kant had
primarily in mind was the explicit saying-of-is occurring
in a judgment. But this saying-of-is is preceded by the
implicit "saying"-of-is which is the existent subject-ascogito or "functioning intentionality" itself. 16 As intentional, the human subject is not separated from the
12. Kant, op.cit., p. 439.
13. Kant, op.cit., p. 440.
14. Kant, op.cit., p. 440.
15. William A. Luijpen, Phenomenology and Atheism, 2nd imp., Pittsburgh, Pa., 1967, pp. 11-48.
16. Luijpen, Phenomenology and Metaphysics, Pittsburgh, Pa., 1965,
pp.99-101.
102
meaning of things but immediately present to it. The

subject is a "being-in," in the sense of a "being familiar
with," a "dwelling in," a "being present to" the meaning as the undeniably "present" of which is "said," "It
is." This "saying" is the subject himself, but not in the
form of an explicit judgment. The "saying" in question
is the ever-"functioning," ever "working" "saying" -of-is
by the "light" which the subject himself is and which is
always presupposed by every explicit saying-of-is in the
form of a judgment. The real significance of the explicit
saying-of-is is decided on the level of the implicit "saying"-of-is.
Accordingly, the difference between theists and atheists cannot be equated with the difference between
people who explicitly assert, "God exists" and "God
does not exist," for explicit judgments are meaningless
unless one returns to the original "saying"-of-is by the
functioning intentionality and investigates what is possible and what is not possible as an original "saying"-ofis.17
Heidegger
The above-mentioned ideas derive their inspiration
from Heidegger's thought. For Heidegger developed
Kant's transcendental doctrine of method to greater
depth and made it into what he himself calls the "fundamental analysis of Dasein. "18 Heidegger did not aim,
however, at the question about God but at that about
the meaning of Being (Sein).
Anyone thinks that he knows what Being is, but he
17. Max Miiller, Sein und Geist, Tiibingen, 1940, p. 41.
18. Heidegger, Being and Time, New York, 1962, p. 67 .
103
THE HIDDEN GOD
thinks so without having really raised the question

about the meaning of Being. 19 Thus it could happen
that all kinds of prejudices and assumptions crept into
our concept of Being, with the result that we do not
really know what Being is. The question about Being,
therefore, must be raised afresh, but for Heidegger this
means that "we must first work out an adequate way of
formulating it. "20
The road to any understanding of Being must be
found in the questioning of a be-ing (Seiendes) that can
serve as an exemplar. Being is that which determines
be-ing as be-ing and is not itself a be-ing.21 Which
be-ing, then, should be questioned? Is there any be-ing
which occupies a privileged rank with respect to the
question about Being? According to Heidegger, there is
such a be-ing, for asking about Being is a mode of being
of a particular be-ing, viz., the be-ing which the questioning man himself is. 22 The question about the meaning of Being presupposes the clarification of the being of
man as asking about Being. (Heidegger calls the being of
man Dasein.)23 Asking about the being of man is possible because man is the only be-ing which, in its being, is
concerned with its being.24 Man is the be-ing which can
reflect on its own being, and the question about Being
in general is a mode of man's own being. 25
In his later work Heidegger points in a different way
to the necessity of a "fundamental ontology of Dasein,"
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
Heidegger,
Heidegger.
Heidegger.
Heidegger.
Heidegger.
Heidegger.
Heidegger.
op.cit.
op.cit.
op.cit.
op.cit..
op.cit.
op.cit.
op.cit..
p.
p.
p.
p.
p.
p.
p.
21.
24.
26.
27.
27.
32.
36.
104
THEOLOGY AN ANTHROPOLOGY
namely, as the necessity to return from "pro-posing,"26

"calculative, "27
and explanatory28
thinking to
"foundational, "29 "re-collective"30 and "authentic" 31
thinking. In Heidegger's opinion, traditional metaphysics is "forgetful of Being" because it is satisfied
with the "pro-posing" of be-ings and has "forgotten"
Being. 32 Metaphysics has always been a metaphysics of
be-ing in object-ness and it has always "pro-posed" this
be-ing. 33 That's why this metaphysics has never penetrated into the meaning of Being as truth and arrived at
the concept of truth as unconcealedness. 34 From Anaximander till Nietzsche the truth of Being has remained
hidden from metaphysics. 35 Thus Being and be-ing were
constantly interchanged, giving rise to endless confusions. 36 All this is not a simple mistake or carelessness
of thinking,37 but an "event" which affects the entire
history of the West. The man of the West lives in
nihilism, and this nihilism is "forgetfulness of Being. "38
It is the disregard of the "ontological difference," i.e.,
the distinction between be-ing and Being.
Because metaphysics did not inquire into Being and
thus has no foundation,39 metaphysics must be tran26. Heidegger, Was ist Metaphysik?, Frankfurt a.M., 7th imp., 1955, p .
11-
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
Heidegger,
Heidegger,
Heidegger,
Heidegger,
Heidegger,
Heidegger,
Heidegger,
Heidegger,
Heidegger,
Heidegger,
Heidegger,
Heidegger,
Heidegger,
Gelassenheit, Pfullingen, 1959, p.15.

Vortrage und Aufsatze, Pfullingen, 1954, p. 180.
Was ist Metaphysik?, p. 49.
Was heisst Denken?, Tiibingen, 1954, p. 158.
Vortrage und Aufsatze, p. 143.
op.cit. in footnote 31, p. 75.
Zur Seinsfrage, Frankfurt a.M., 1956, pp. 34-35.
ibid., p. 41.
THE HIDDEN GOD
105
scended. A "step back" is required. The realization that

"Being has been forgotten" must lead to a "more thinking" way of thinking.40
What does this mean? Thinking does not become
"more thinking" if it becomes the object of greater
efforts and dedication but if the "pro-posing of be-ing"
is replaced by a thinking in which the truth of being is
seen in relation to the "essence" (Wesen) of man 41 and
in which truth itself, as unconcealedness, is thought of
in its "essence" (Wesen).42 The term Wesen, essence, has
for Heidegger the sense of a verb, it means a kind of
"coming about," "coming to pass," "coming to prevail," and this verbal meaning is still retained in expressions such as the "essence of man" and the "essence of
truth. "43
In order to transcend metaphysics, Heidegger demands that the "pro-posing" of be-ing be replaced by a
thinking in which the truth of being is seen in relation
to the coming to pass of man and truth itself be thought
of as the coming about of unconcealedness. What he
wants to say is that in the past metaphysics failed to do
precisely this. Truth was not seen in relation to the
"event," the "coming about" of Dasein; similarly, truth
itself was not conceived as an "event." The "event"
which Dasein is in reference to truth is the breaking
through the density of the "thing-in-Dasein,"44 by virtue of which Dasein is a "light" unto itself and, as such,
40. Heidegger, ibid., pp. 12-13.
41. Heidegger, ibid., p. 13.
44. Heidegger, ibid., p. 35. "Tout processus de fondement de soi est
rupture de I'etre-identique de I'en-soi, recul de I'are par rapport
luimeme et apparition de la presence Ii soi ou conscience." Jean-Paul Sartre,
L 'Etre et Ie Neant, Paris, 1943, p. 714.
106
equiprimordially also the "letting be" of the other-thanitself. 45 The "event" which truth itself is, is the appearing, the disclosing itself, the unveiling itself of the unconcealed. 46
All this was "forgotten" by traditional metaphysics.
The latter "pro-posed" be-ing, it took be-ing for granted
and acted as if be-ing was true "divorced" from Dasein,
"in itself"; in other words, traditional metaphysics acted
as if nothing had to "happen" for the truth of be-ing
either on the part of the subject or on the part of be-ing.
Thus, according to Heidegger, traditional metaphysics
lived in "forgetfulness of Being" because it stood in the
"natural attitude." This is also the reason why Heidegger demands that, in order to overcome the "forgetfulness of Being," thinking must make the transition from
"pro-posing" thinking to "re-collective" thinking.47 He
also calls "re-collective" thinking "foundational" thinking; unlike "pro-posing" thinking, this is not characterized by the "natural attitude" which claims that the "in
itself" is mirrored in thought. In other words, Heidegger's demand that the "pro-posing of be-ing" be replaced by the "re-collection of being" means that he
wants us to give up the "natural attitude" and to perform the phenomenological reduction.
Heidegger's attention is fully occupied with laying
anew the authentic foundation of thinking. "F oundational thinking" must again think the subject and worldly meaning as the unity of reciprocal implication, with
all the wealth contained therein. One who realizes the
45.
46.
47.
48.
Heidegger,
Heidegger,
Heidegger,
Heidegger,
Vom Wesen der Wahrheit, pp . 14-17.

Being and Time, p. 264.
Identitiit und Differenz, Pfullingen, 1957, p. 51.
THE HIDDEN GOD
107
necessity of the "step back" and performs the phenomenological reduction in his thinking prefers not to speak
at once about God. 48 What has to be clarified first is
Dasein, existence. But calling the being of man a "beingin-the-world" implies no decision, whether negative or
positive, with respect to man's possible "being toward
God." What the explicitation of being-in-the-world does
is open up the possibility of positing the question about
God in a meaningful way.49 For reflection on the
meaning of Dasein opens the road to reflection on the
"truth of Being." "The truth of Being allows us to think
the "coming to pass" of the holy; the "coming to pass"
of the holy allows us to think the "coming to pass" of
Godhead; and in the light of the "coming to pass" of
Godhead, the meaning of the word "God" can be
thought of and expressed. 50
Reflection on the meaning of Being and the holy, as
preparation for speaking about God, is not for Heidegger at once a form of theistic thinking; it is neither
theistic nor atheistic. This should not be taken to mean
that Heidegger is indifferent toward the theistic or atheistic character of his thinking;51 all it means is that God
cannot be at once spoken about in Heidegger's attempts
to restore "foundational thinking." "We must often
remain silent, for lack of holy names" (Holderin). It is
the poets who are called to voice again the holy and to
prepare for the coming of God. In his poetical naming,
the poet lets the High One himself appear.52 The appearing of God comes about in a dis-closure which
49. Heidegger, Vom Wesen des Grundes, Frankfurt a.M., p. 39, n.56.
50. Heidegger, Ueber den Humanismus, pp. 36-37.
52. Heidegger, Erlauterungen zu Holderlins Dichtung, Frankfurt a.M.,
3rd imp., 1963, p. 26.
108
reveals that which is hidden. But this dis-closure does

not show the concealed by tearing it from its concealment but by tending it in its self-concealment. 53 The
unknown God appears as the Unknown. 54
"Everyone thinks that he knows what Being is," says
Heidegger, but he shows that this putative knowledge is
entirely unfounded if it is not preceded by an analysis
of Dasein. In line with this we may say: "Everyone
thinks that he knows what he is saying when he asserts,
'God exists' or 'God does not exist,' but is this really
true if these assertions are not preceded by an investigation into man's possibilities of "saying"-is and "saying"is-not? Realizing what one says in a judgment presupposes a "step back," a return to the original, implicit
"affirmation" which Dasein, existence, itself is.
The Christian Character of the Western "Affirmation"
of God
From all this it should be evident at once that it is
rather meaningless to say that the God of Christianity is
a transcendent God. For such an affirmation is a judgment; therefore, it does not really "say" anything without a return to the original, implicit "affirmation"
which existence itself is. Negatively expressed, Christianity means by that judgment that the God professed
by the Christians may never under any conditions whatsoever be put on a par with anything that is not-God.
But the understanding of this statement itself presupposes a certain insight into the possibility of saying this;
in other words, a return to the original, implicit "affir53. Heidegger, Vortriige und Aufsiitze, p. 197.
54. Hcidcgger, ibid., p. 197.
THE HIDDEN GOD
109
mation" which existence itself is. In the sentence, however, we find the expression "anything which is notGod." Perhaps we have now reached the stage where we
can return to the original, implicit "affirmation" of that
which is meant by the expression "anything which is
not-God." Let us examine the example given in the
preceding essay, abbreviated somewhat to prevent too
much repetition.
After a hike in the mountains, I can give a series of
statements in which the passable or impassable character
of the trail is objectively described. I explicitly say "is"
by ascribing certain predicates to the subject of a sentence in order to indicate that what I am saying "truly"
and "really" is SO.55 For one who has no notion whatsoever of what mountains are, however, my statements
do not refer to anything. For me, they have meaning
because in my hiking, my tired feet and my bruised
body themselves are the "affirmation" of the trail. But
this "affirmation" presupposes the original "event" of
the "emergence" of the "saying"-of-is which subjectivity itself is. My statements make this implicit "saying"of-is explicit, but they are preceded by the coming to be
of meaning for the subject. The "coming about"56 of
the truth-as-unconcealedness of the trail is tied to my
hiking over the mountain trail. 57 Divorced from the
"affirmation" which my existence is, my statements
have no meaning at all. 58 A statement, divorced from
55. "In einem jeden Satz gebrauchen wir das Wortchen 'ist' als Verbindung zwischen Subjekt und Pradikat, zwischen Aussagegegenstand und
Ausgesagtem, und wollen dam it jeweils sagen: Es ist wahrhaft und in
Wirklichkeit so und nicht anders." Max Muller, Sein und Geist, p. 40.
56. Heidegger, Identitiit und Differenz, p. 24.
57. Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 262.
110
existence, is neither true nor false but simply without

any meaning whatsoever.
Matters become even more complicated when we
realize that not all beings can be affirmed in the way a
mountain trail can be affirmed. Let us list a few statements and then explicitate the difference in "being"
that can be affirmed.
This rose is beautiful.
You are well-disposed toward me.
This board of examiners is unpleasant.
We are citizens of the United States of America.
Peter is dead.
John has been murdered.
Natural rights and duties are objective.
For some people mountains and valleys are attractive
vacation resorts.
The verb "to be" occurs eight times in these statements. If I merely pay attention to the sentences, it may
seem that I affirm every time the same "to be," but this
is not at all the case. Natural rights and duties certainly
do not appear just as mountains and valleys appear. The
"coming about" which the appearing of any reality
whatsoever is presupposes a particular way of the "coming about" which the subject's immediate presence to an
appearing reality is; every mode of reality's appearing
presupposes the presence of the subject-with-a-particular-attitude to that appearing reality. It is this subject
with this attitude that is the original "saying"-of-is.
Because the "coming about" of the original "saying"-of-is had been forgotten and because, in consequence of this, man made judgments-without-a-founda-
THE HIDDEN GOD
111
tion, Husserllaunched his phenomenology as an attempt

to restore the foundation. The motto of this attempt
was, "Back to the things themselves,"59 that is to say,
we must return to the original "saying"-of-is, the original "experience," the immediate presence to appearing
reality. Because my "saying" -of-is "reaches" the affirmed be-ing and because the affirmed be-ing appears to
my "saying" -of-is, the saying-of-is in a judgment has a
ground and I know what I am saying.
The implicit "saying"-of-is by "functioning intentionality" and the explicit saying-of-is by the judgment
"come about" in many ways and on many levels. If this
is true, then it should be obvious that the question
about the essence of the "saying" -of-is transcends all
levels of "saying"-is and that what is involved in the
"saying"-of-is is no longer this or that be-ing but be-ing
as such, the true and the real. That's why the abovelisted series of judgments-which one can make as long
as he likes-can be comprehended in the statement:
be-ing is.
N ow it may be possible to express at least to some
extent what Christianity means when it says that the
God of Christianity should not on any condition be put
on a par with what is not-God. For "what is not-God" is
called be-ing, and of be-ing it is affirmed that it is. If,
then, God may not be put on a par with "what is
not-God," God is not a be-ing and it cannot be affirmed
that God is. This has important consequences. If the
God of Christianity is not a be-ing, the name "God"
cannot function as the subject of a "descriptive," "con59. Edmund Husser!, "Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft," Logos,
vol. 1 (1910-11), p. 340.
112
stative" or "judgmental" proposition. For in such a

proposition the verbal copula "is" is used, and the
be-ing to which the subject refers is explicitated in it by
the predicate of the proposition. Now, the God of
Christianity in not a be-ing.
This idea can be applied in a simple way to an actual
topic. "God is dead," say some people. If this statement
is conceived as a "descriptive," "constative" and "judgmental" proposition, then God must be understood as a
be-ing. The proposition does not then have a meaning
that is fundamentally different from the statement,
"John is dead." The statement that John is dead means
that once John was alive, but now he is no longer. The
statement that God is dead means, according to Hamilton and Altizer, "that there once was a God ... but that
now there is no God. "60 Thus Hamilton and Altizer
represent God as "a John" of whom one can express in
predicates what he is. In other words, God is represented as a be-ing, but these two authors do not realize
that they are doing this. The same is true of Christians
who object to Hamilton and Altizer and conceive the
statement, "God is alive" as a "constative," "descriptive" and "judgmental" proposition. For then, too, God
is represented as a be-ing, just as when one says, "My
mother-in-law is alive" (W. de Pater).
Now, however, the question arises: if all this is so,
then what does the name "God" mean? Does it still
make sense to call this name? If God is not, does his
name stand for nothing? What did the religious man
mean and what does he still mean today when he calls
the name "God"?
60. Thomas J.J. Altizer and William Hamilton, Radical Theology and
the Death of God, New York, 1966.
THE HIDDEN GOD
113
The Name "God"

Let us begin by establishing that the religious man
does indeed intend to call God's name. He does not
intend to "state" and "describe" that "God is" and that
"God is this or that."61 His using of God's name is a
calling, a shouting, a whispering of his name; it is praying and singing, rejoicing and lamenting, sorrowing and
cursing: God! Thank God! Praise be to God! God Allmighty! Goddamn! The religious man does not "state"
and "describe" anything "about" God when he names
God's name, but he gives expression to his own existence.
He discerns a mystery, a "depth" in his existence,62 the
message of which cannot be expressed in the objectifying terms of embodied-togetherness-with-others-in-theworld. A child is born and the religious man exclaims,
"God!" He is healthy or sick and calls out, "God!" He
sexually unites with a fellow-man and in his ecstasy
shouts, "God!" He is dying and whispers, "God!" At
the rising and the setting of the sun, at the roaring of
the sea, the gentle undulating of the wheat field, in the
soft light of the moon and the stars, at the threatening
of a thunderstorm or disastrous flood, when a spring
wells up or the seed germinates, he calls, "God!" When
he conquers in battle or suffers defeat, when he live.s in
want or enjoys prosperity, when he suffers injustice and
when his rights are vindicated, the religious man calls
out, "God!" He calls, he shouts, he whispers, "God!"
He prays, sings, exults, laments, sorrows and curses,
"God! "
61. Ian T. Ramsey, "The Intellectual Crisis of British Christianity,"
Theology vol. 68, 1965, p. 109; C.A. van Peursen, Hij is er weer!
Beschouwingen over het woordje 'God,' Kampen, n.d., pp. 32-37.
62. John A.T. Robinson, Honest to God, London, 9th imp., 1963, p.
54.
114
As soon as man began to reflect explicitly upon

himself, he also tried to speak about the mystery, the
"depth" in his existence to which he gave expression by
naming the name "God." Sometimes he managed to do
so in a truly ingenious way; there are geniuses not only
in physical science and ethics but also in religion. The
religious genius makes it possible for other people to
"see" the mystery in their own existence, and it is this
"seeing" of the mystery that makes man call out,
"God! "
Once again, full emphasis is to be placed on the term
"calling," for the mystery in human existence is not
recognized when this "calling" is replaced by a "constative describing" in which the name "God" becomes the
subject of a judgment. The calling of the name "God"
cannot be replaced by such statements as:
God gives us a child.
God restores my health.
God sends me an illness.
God has attached intense pleasure to sexual intercourse.
God makes the sun 'rise and set and he has put the
stars in the firmament.
God makes the sea roar, the wheat undulate, the
storm burst, the spring well up and the seed germinate.
God gives us victory in battle.
God inflicts a defeat on us.
God sends me poverty and want.
God gives me prosperity.
God permits that I suffer injustice.
God vindicates my rights.
God intervenes in history.
THE HIDDEN GOD
115
God rewards me.

God punishes me.
God leads us out of Egypt.
The calling of the name "God," we said, cannot be
replaced by a constative description in which the name
"God" becomes the subject of a judgment. The preceding series of sentences all are judgments. Everyone,
however, knows that the religious man, no matter in
what phase of history he lived or lives, does use such
sentences. The religious man does express himself in the
way we have said that it cannot be done.
This is not all. The religious man, in addition, is
wholly insensitive to anything that can be brought to
bear against his statements. He is like one of the two
explorers spoken of in Anthony Flew's parable, the one
who, on seeing a beautiful flowerbed in the midst of a
virginal forest, says: "A gardener must have been at
work here." His companion doubts it but is willing to
verify his statement, for the presence of a gardener
should somehow be subject to observation. But even
when the flowerbed is surrounded with an electric fence
and guarded by dogs, there is no sign of a gardener. The
"religious" explorer is not at all disconcerted by this. He
simply claims that the gardener is invisible and cannot
be perceived, that he carries no odor and therefore
cannot be smelled by the dogs, and that he has no body
so that the electric fence cannot touch him.63
The religious man is indeed like that explorer. F or he
seems unimpressed by what scientists tell him about the
63. Anthony Flew "Theology and Falsification," New Essays in Philosophical Theology, ed. by A. Flew and A. Macintyre, London, 2nd imp.,
1958, pp. 96-97.
116
reproduction of children, health, illness and death, fertility and intense pleasure. He knows that astrophysics
speaks about the sun, the moon and the stars, and that
the meteorologist forecasts the roaring of the sea, bad
weather and sunshine. He is not ignorant of the fact that
strategists explain military victories and defeats, and
that economists can predict poverty and prosperity. The
religious man does not deny what the men of science
tell him, but it does not seem to make any impression
on his religiousness. What does this mean?
It means that he goes beyond the constative, descriptive and explanatory statements in which the sciences
speak about man's embodied-being-in-the-world-together-with-fellowmen because, implicitly or explicitly, he
knows that his own "statements about God" do not
have a constative, descriptive or explanatory sense-no
more than the statement of a young man that his girl
is a peach can be conceived as a botanical statement.
Statements about God, which externally look as if they
are constative, explanatory and descriptive, intend to
express the "depth" of human existence; they intend to
give voice to man's being as orientated to ... ; they
intend to touch the mystery contained in the subjectivity immersed in the body and involved in the world.
Implicitly or explicitly, the religious man "knows" that
this mystery cannot be seen by the sciences because
they do not speak about man as existence but as an
"ingredient" of the sciences. "Ingredients" of the sciences are not religious.
"Old" and "New" Ways of Speaking "About" God

The realization that statements about God which
externally look like constative, descriptive and explana-
THE HIDDEN GOD
117
tory statements do not have a constative, explanatory

and descriptive sense is of enormous importance for the
contemporary attempts to speak about God "better
than it used to be done in the past." For such an
attempt is in principle doomed to fail if one does not
realize that the "new" way of speaking itself cannot
have a constative, descriptive and explanatory sense. Let
us list here a few statements which, according to certain
authors, should no longer be used today:
God
God
God
God
God
supplements my lack of power in the world. 64

is my shepherd and father. 65
is the one who does something for me. 66
is a person. 67
is "above US."68
According to those authors, such statements may no

longer be used because we "modern men" have changed
so much that statements about God dating from different times, different sociological situations and different
human conditions are no longer able to tell us anything.
Yet, these writers wish to speak "about" God. Let us
place what they propose that we should say in the same
sequence as above:
God is the future of man. 69
God is man's partner. 70
64. E. Schillebeeckx, "Het nieuwe Godsbeeld," Tijdschrift voor Theo
logie, vol. 8, 1968, p. 5l.
65. Harvey Cox, The Secular City, p. 262.
66. Dorothee Solie, Stellvertretung. Ein Kapitel Theologie nach dem
'Tode Gottes,' Stuttgart, 1965, p. 205.
67. J.A.T. Robinson, Honest to God, pp. 3944.
68. J .B. Metz, "De kerk en de wereld," Het woord in de geschiedenis,
ed. by T. Patrick Burke, Bilthoven, 1969, p. 83.
69. Schillebeeckx, op.cit. in footnote 64, p. 60.
70. H. Cox, op.cit. in footnote 65, pp. 264265.
118
God is the one for whom I should do something. 71

God is, by definition, the ultimate reality. 72
God is "before US."73
But these statements, too, must not be conceived as
constative, descriptive and explanatory statements. If it
is done anyhow, then they are not better than those of
the first series. If, on the other hand, the statements of
the first series are not conceived as constative, descriptive or explanatory, one may legitimately ask whether
they are as bad as the above-mentioned authors seem to
imply. When a young man is boasting about his girl and
says that she is a real peach, are we entitled to interrupt
him by pointing out that such a statement has become
unintelligible today because the development of botany
"in our time" makes us understand the structure and
growth of peaches much better than people did in the
past? Such an objector utterly fails to understand what
that young man wished to say and does not exactly
enhance the reputation of us "modern men."
Hare Versus Flew

Richard Hare's rebuttal of Anthony Flew points out
that Flew is mistaken about the language game of the
religious man. The explorer in the parable simply disregards whatever objections his companion brings to bear
against his statement that a gardener must have been at
work here. The religious man, likewise, remains unaffected by what the sciences say against his statements
about God. Such an attitude would be intolerable if the
71. D. Solie, op.cit. in footnote 66, p. 205.
72. J .A.T. Robinson, op.cit. in footnote 67, p. 29 .
73. J. Metz, op.cit. in footnote 68, p. 83.
THE HIDDEN GOD
119
religious man really intended to offer constative, descriptive and explanatory statements just as the sciences
do this. But Hare points out to Flew that this is not the
casej74 what the religious man says is not a series of
assertions or explanations. Flew argues that Hare has no
longer the right to call himself a Christian if he takes
such a position. 7s According to Flew, then, a statement
such as "God intervenes in history," must be understood in the same way as "The police intervened in the
riot." Moreover, says Flew, in the context of religious
practice, the two statements are understood in the same
way.
It would be wrong to deny that people sometimes
understand the two statements in the same way, but this
is a misunderstanding of what a religious statement
means. But Flew makes this misunderstanding the condition of Hare's orthodoxy. This is similar to defining
man's appendix as an infection, the heart as an infarct,
marriage as a fight, and the psyche as a disturbance.
One may also doubt whether Flew's appeal to religious practice is as justified as Flew insinuates. When he
sees the religious man practising the prayer of supplication, Flew interprets this as an attempt to make God a
factor in a series of worldly causal influences, with the
hope that in this way this series of worldly causal
factors will operate differently. Thus the statement,
"God hears me," has for Flew the sense of an assertion
and God functions as an explanation.
But this way of representing things is not sufficiently
differentiated. For when the authentically religious man
74. R.M. Hare, "Theology and Falsification," op.cit. in footnote 63, p.
101.
75. A. Flew, "Theology and Falsification," op.cit. in footnote 63, p.
108.
122
man,79 it frequently leads to the conclusion that God

therefore is "really nothing," i.e., "nothing in objective
reality," but at most "something subjective. "80
Those who take this standpoint start from the presupposition that "something" only is "something" if it is
either "something objective" or something subjective."
When this presupposition is made, their di.alogue with
people who claim that speaking abou God is speaking
about man is doomed to failure because the latter refuse
w start precisely from this presupposition. They do not
use the model of the divorce between the subjective and
the objective, but the model of "the unity of their
reciprocal implication." [ the first model is used a
discussion between Feuerbach and lung, on the one
hand, and scholastic philosophy, on the other, is possible but also wholly fruitless. In the second model, the
discussion is superfluous because its presupposition is
removed. Let us examine this matter a little more in
detail.
Ludwig Feuerbach
For Feuerbach, speaking about God is speaking about

man. The essence of man consists in knowing, willing
and loving. Man knows in order to know, wills in order
to will, and loves in order to love. Now, what is for its
19. "By this we mean 110t that t heology mllY !JOt speak directly about
'God and his Q,ctivity', but simply chill whenever it docs $'0 speak ill>
statements must ae least be implicitly about man and h is possibilities of
sclf-underlitilnding if they nTe not to be incredible: and irrelevant, In Ibis
sense. 'Statements abo ut God and his activitics' are 'StlLccmc.nts :Lbout
h U!l1lI.ll existencc', und ViL'C verSa . " Schuberr M , Ogden, Cf.n-;st Wi/boul
MytiJ. London, 1.962, p. 160.
80. Paul Van Buren, The Secular Meaning of tbc Gospel, London, 2nd
imp., 1965, pp. 66-68.
THE HIDDEN GOD
123
own sake is essentially divine. 81 The unity of reason,

will and love is the divine Trinity in man, 82 and man
cannot be conscious of the Trinity without experiencing
infinite joy over it. 83
According to Feuerbach, man doesn't realize at once
that his consciousness of God is his own self-consciousness. That's why it is better to say that religious
consciousness is the first consciousness of man. For man
projects his own essence outside himself before he finds
it in himself. He begins by making his own essence an
object which he views as a different being. 84 Thus the
religious consciousness is man's childish consciousness,
for , in the eyes of a child, the man who the child itself
is, is like another man. 8S That's why the history of
religions consists in this that things which in an earlier
religion were held to be objective are viewed as something subjective in a later religion. What was first adored
as God is later recognized as something human. In this
way every forward step of religion is a forward step in
man's self-knowledge. But every religion which views its
elder sisters as idolatrous makes an exception for itself
with respect to the common essence of religion. Having
a different object, a different content, one loftier than
that of the earlier religions, it lives in the illusion that its
content is something superhuman. The philosopher,
however, studies the essence of religion which is hidden
from religion itself; for him, religion itself is the object,
which it never is for religion itself.86
81. Feuerbach, Das Wesen des Christentums, vol. 17 of Samtliche
Werke ed. by Wilhelm Bolin and Friedrich Jodi, Stuttgart, 1903, pp. 3-4.
82. Feuerbach, op.cit., p. 3.
83. Feuerbach, ibid., p . 7.
84. Feuerbach, ibid., p. 16.
85. Feuerbach, ibid., pp. 16-17.
86 . Feuerbach, ibid., p . 17.
124
There is no sense whatsoever, says Feuerbach, in

distinguishing between God-in-himself and God-forme. 87 The distinction between an object-in-itself and an
object-for-me can only be made if the object really can
appear to me different from the way it does appear, but
not if an object appears to me as it has to appear to me.
Now, God has to appear to me as a human being or as a
being resembling man. Every religion views the gods of
other religions as mere representations of God but values its own representation as representing God himself
as he is in himself. It is evident, however, says Feuerbach, that what for man is the highest being is for him
the divine being. How, then, could he with respect to
such an object still ask what it is in itself? If God were
the object of a bird, he would be for the bird a winged
being, for a bird knows nothing loftier and more blessed
than being-winged. It would be ridiculous for the bird to
say: "To me God appears as a bird, but I don't know
what he is in himself."88 It is ridiculous because God
cannot possibly appear otherwise to a bird than as a
bird. Man believes in love as a divine quality because he
himself has love; he calls God wise and good because he
knows nothing better than wisdom and goodness-just
as the bird knows nothing better than being-winged.
Accordingly, religious consciousness is nothing but
man's consciousness of the best of himself. 89
Feuerbach's critics have answered him by pointing
out that according to his view God is "really nothing,"
i.e., nothing "objective," but at most something "subjective." This was indeed what Feuerbach had wanted to
say and this is why his opponents called him an atheist.
87. Feuerbach, ibid., pp. 19-20.
THE HIDDEN GOD
125
Carl lung
With respect to lung, matters are fundamentally the
same, although the accent is somewhat different. lung
also holds that speaking "about" "God" is speaking
about man. 90 It is a speaking about the human psyche,
the collective unconscious, archetypes, that which is
psychically most powerfu1. 91 lung emphasizes the
"relativity of God," by which he means that God never
exists "absolutely" and "divorced" from human subjectivity and human conditions. In a certain sense God is
dependent on the human subject. There exists a mutual
relationship between man and God, so that, on the one
hand, man can be conceived as a function of God and,
on the other, God as a psychical function of man. 92
The idea of God is the symbolic expression of a psychical condition or function which is characterized by the
fact that in this condition conscious willing is totally
overpowered, and this leads to deeds and accomplishments beyond the power of conscious efforts. 93 This
overpowering impulse or inspiration originates in an
accumulation of energy in the unconscious. It gives rise
to symbols which the collective unconscious contains as
hidden possibilities.
In the orthodox view God is "absolute," i.e., "exist90. "Die Entdeckung und ausfiihrliche Formulierung der Relativitat
Gottes zum Menschen und seiner Seele scheint mir einer der wichtigsten
Schritte auf dem Wege zu einer psychologischen Erfassung des religiosen
Phanomens zu sein." Carl G. lung, Psychologsiche Typen, Ziirich, 1921, p.
340.
91. Jung, ibid., pp. 337-362; "Psych logic und Religion," Zur Psychologie westlicher und ostlicher Religion, GesammelLe We,ke, vol. 11, Ziirich,
1963, p. 64; Psychologie und A lclufmit;, Zurich, 2nd imp., 1952, pp. 13-62;
Symbolik des Geistes, Ziirich, 1953, p. 394; Das Geheimnis der goldener
BlUte, Ziirich, 1948, p. 58.
92. lung, Psychologische Typen, p. 340.
93. lung, "Psychologie und Religion," op.cit. in footnote 91, p. 88.
126
ing for himself. "94 This view expresses a total separation between God and the unconscious. Psychologically
speaking, this means that one is unconscious of the fact
that the divine power originates in one's own self. 95
Those who lack this consciousness project God outside
themselves.
According to Jung, primitive religions 96 and Catholic
Christianity as a matter of fact do make such a projection. 97 They exteriorize that which is really an interior
process. Such an exteriorization, however, must not be
rejected without any further ado. The experience of the
numinous, which arises overpoweringly from the unconscious, is the experience of the "awe-inspiring" (tremendum) and "fascinating" (jascinosum) , and this can be
too much for the individual psyche. 98 The individual
psyche will then endeavor to defend and shield itself
against individual religious experience. It can effectively
do this by adhering to a religion in general and Catholic
Christianity in particular. Religious experience is dogmatically and ritually channeled there, and this gives a
feeling of certainty, security and tranquillity. The dogma is like a dream which mirrors the spontaneous and
autonomous activities of the objective psyche, the unconscious. As objectified expressions of the unconscious, dogma and ritual offer a certain protection
against the "awe-inspiring" and "fascinating" of the
individual religious experience. The dogmatic expression
is, moreover, much more effective than a scientific theory.99 The scientific theory neglects the affective aspect
94.
95.
96.
97.
98.
99.
lung.
lung.
lung.
lung.
lung.
lung.
Psychologische Typen. p. 340.

ibid. pp . 340-341.
Seelenprobleme der Gegenwart. Ziirich, 1946, p. 316.
ibid . p. 172.
"Psychologie und Religion," op. cit. in footnote 91. p. 46.
ibid. p. 49.
THE HIDDEN GOD
127
of experience, while this aspect precisely finds expression in the dogma. Thus scientific theories become
much more quickly antiquated than dogmas. The idea
of the suffering God-man may well be five thousand
years old, and that of the Trinity is probably even
older. 100
Although Jung shows appreciation for "confessions"- primitive religions and Catholic Christianity-he
thinks that religious experience occurs in them only in a
very impoverished form. For the "confessions" give
religious experience the form of a proj ection. They
transfer the content of the religious experi.ence from
"within" to "without." God, the Trinity, Christ, Mary,
angels, devils, sin, redemption and salvation are put
down as "metaphysical entities," divorced and isolated
from man. In this way the authentic religious experience
is reduced to "faith," i.e., to a certain holding to be
true. This faith blocks the road to self-consciousness,
self-understanding and autonomy demanded by the
modern mind. Modern consciousness abhors faith, 101 it
wants to know, i.e., to experience. 102
According to Jung, it is especialJy in Christianity- and
particularly in Catholicism- that the original religious
experience of the archetypes has shrivelled tip through
the overpowering influence of dogma and ritual. This
impoverishment is a kind of stagnation and reglession
of the archetypical unconscious. 103 Because the Christian located his God wholly "outside" himself, his interiority remained untouched and undeveloped. It could
even happen that he would in the unconscious revert to
100.
101.
102.
103.
lung,
lung,
Jung,
lung,
ibid., pp. 49-50.

Seelenprobleme der Gegenwart, p. 417.
ibid., p. 417.
Psychologie und Alchemie, p. 22.
128
earlier phases of development, so that he would be

"officially" a Christian but psychically a pagan. 104
Official Christianity, J ung thinks, is really a failure. It
hasn't succeeded in Christianizing the soul in such a way
that Christian ethics have exercised a real influence on
"Christian" Europe. Christian missionaries preach the
gospel to poor naked heathens, but the "inner" Christians populating Europe have not yet understood anything at all of Christianity. Christianity would have to
start all over again. As long as religiousness is nothing
but "faith" and ritual and does not become the soul's
own experience, nothing has really happened as yet.
One who doesn't understand this may be a very learned
theologian, but he lacks the most elementary notions of
authentic religiousness and education. 105
Only psychology, Jung holds, can offer a way out of
the impasse. Psychology can reactivate the archetypical
unconscious, the original religious function of the soul.
It can make modern man "see." Theologians devote all
their intelligence to the endeavor of proving the existence of the "light," but they ought to realize that there
are "blind" men who don't know that their eyes can
" see" something. 106 To "see" means to realize that the
outwardly projected images are symbols of the soul's
unconscious life. Psychology can restore to dogma and
ritual their original meaning. What dogmas express and
what rituals celebrate is the archetypical unconscious of
the human soul. 107
104.
105.
106.
107.
lung,
lung,
lung,
lung,
ibid.,
ibid.,
ibid.,
ibid.,
p. 24.
p . 25 .
p . 26.
p . 32.
THE HIDDEN GOD
129
Is Jung Agnostic?
From the preceding it should be clear that J ung
conceives religious experience exclusively as the experience of the "interior God." He doesn't wish anyone to
make the mistake of interpreting his psychological "considerations as a kind of proof for God's existence. All
they prove is that there exists an archetypical image of
the divinity." 108 The experience of this image has a
numinous character; that's why it is a religious experience.
Critics have reproached J ung that for him too God,
then, is "really nothing," i.e., nothing "objective,"
but at most something "subjective." Jung's answer was
that no one should be surprised by this since he wished
to speak about "God" solely as a psychologist. Such a
standpoint implies methodological limitations; any pursuer of any empirical science whatsoever has to accept
such limitations and he need not apologize for them. 109
The psychologist of religion speaks exclusively about
psychical facts and regularities, which he describes just
as the mineralogist and the botanist describe their own
objects. 110 In other words, the psychologist of religion
does not intend to enter the realm of the theologian.
Even if the language used by the psychologist and the
theologian seems the same, what they speak about is
different. When the theologian speaks about God, he
refers to "the metaphysical Absolute Being," III but
108. lung, "Psychologie und Religion," op. cit. in footnote 91, p. 64.
109. lung, "Vorwort zu V. White: Gott und das Unbewusste," Gesammelte Werke, vol. 11, p. 332.
110. lung, ibid., p. 331.
111. lung, ibid., p. 331.
130
when the psychologist uses the same term, he is concerned with the archetypical unconscious.
J ung complains bitterly that his critics appear unable
to make the necessary methodological distinctions.
When he speaks about God as archetypical image-Cland
this is all we can say about God from a psychological
standpoint" 112 -when he calls gods personifications of
unconscious psychical contents, 113 his critics imagine
that he is trying to replace theology by psychology or
reduce it to this. 114 J ung objects to philosophers and
theologians who view his empirical-psychological concepts, hypotheses and models as attempts to make metaphysical statements. He reminds philosophers and theologians that he is not at all ignorant of the fact that,
philosophically speaking, his empirical concepts are logical monstrosities. "As a philosopher I would be a sorry
picture." 115 But he doesn't wish to be a philosopher.
Neither does he wish to be called a heretic, for heretics
make theological statements. If anyone is to be called a
heretic, says J ung, it will have to be my patients.
Accordingly, Jung intends to speak only about the
psyche and objects if his opponents conclude from this
that God is for him "merely something psychical." This
merely is too much. Although the psychologist cannot
make metaphysical statements without going beyond
the boundaries of his competence, 116 this doesn't give
anyone the right, he holds, to add a qualifying "merely"
to what the psychologist can talk about. 117 One who
112.
113.
114.
115.
116.
117.
Jung,
lung,
lung,
lung,
lung,
Jung,
"Psychologie und Religion," op.cit. in footnote 91, p. 64.

Symbolik des Geistes, p. 394.
ibid., p. 394, note 16.
op. cit., in footnote 109, p. 334.
Psycbologie und Alcbemie, p. 28.
ibid., p. 21.
THE HIDDEN GOD
131
does this anyhow shows that he underrates the psychical

or the soul. This is a typical Western deviation. 118 The
soul should be spoken about with reverence, because of
its intrinsic dignity. But the soul has been "emptied,"
with the result that "every God is outside." 119 Everything the Christian believes in stands outside him in
image and word, in the Church and the Bible, "but it
doesn't stand within him." 120 Theologians, says lung,
should really be grateful to him because he shows that
the soul is naturally religious; yet this is precisely why
they accuse him of psychologism. 121 lung argues that
psychology would not at all interest him if he were not
convinced that the supreme values lie in the soul in a
way that can be experienced. But when he says this, he
is accused of deifying the soul. His rebuttal: "Not I but
God himself has deified the soul." 122 lung himself
merely points to the facts which prove that the soul is
"naturally religious." He is convinced that he does not
thereby do an injustice to dogmas or destroy anything;
on the contrary, he shows that the dogmas are meaningful and provides new dwellers for an empty home. 123
Is lung's complaint about being misunderstood exclusively to be attributed to his critics' inability to make a
simple methodological distinction? It doesn't seem to be
the case. For lung did not merely say that he wished to
speak about God exclusively as a psychologist, but he
also asserted that psychological speaking was the only
way to speak about God. He claimed that, since the
118.
119.
120.
121.
122.
123.
lung,
lung,
lung,
lung,
lung,
lung,
Das Geheimnis der goldenen Blute, p. 58.

Psychologie und Alchemie, p. 21.
ibid., p. 24.
ibid., pp. 25-26.
ibid., p. 26.
ibid., p. 29.
132
development of consciousness demands the withdrawal

of all projections, a doctrine about God which defends
the non-psychical existence of God is impossible, 124
and that only psychology still allows us to approach
religious matters. 125 He asserted that anyone who intends to speak about a God "outside" man is naive
because he fails to recognize that his idea of God has the
character of a projection. From the time of his earliest
works he assumed the standpoint of Kant and held that
a God-in-himself can be neither affirmed nor denied. 126
He ridiculed those "metaphysicians" who "think that
they have knowledge of unknowable matters of the
world to come." 127 He explicitly stated that he mercilessly intended to do away with the metaphysical claims
of all "mystery doctrines." 128 He proclaimed that in
metaphysics nothing can be understood, but that what
metaphysics talks about can be psychologically understood. 129 He called the aspirations of metaphysics arrogant, pretentious and ridiculous 130 because metaphysics is ignorant of our not-knowing. He defended the
need for a new worldview and defined its newness as the
victory over the superstition that this worldview has
objective validity. 131 For all these reasons lung's critics
address to him the reproach that he merely says that he
only wishes to pursue psychology while, as a matter of
124. lung, "Psychologie und Religion," op.cit. in footnote 91, p. 93.
125. Jung, ibid., p. 97.
126. lung, Wandlungen. und Symbole der Libido, Leipzig, 1912, pp.
224-225, note 3; Das Geheimnis der goldenen Blute, p. 64.
127. lung, "Antwort an Martin Buber," Gesammelte Werke, vol. II, p.
658.
128. lung, Das Geheimnis der goldener Blute, p. 56.
129. lung, ibid., p. 57.
130. lung, ibid., pp. 58, 64.
131. lung, Seelenprobleme der Gegenwart, pp. 331-332.
133
THE HIDDEN GOD
fact, he goes far beyond its limits.

called an agnostic. 133
132
This is why he is
Unavoidable Misunderstandings About Jung's Position 134

According to R. Hostie, Jung abandoned his agnosticism after 1940. 135 As a psychologist, Jung continued
to hold fast to his empirical-scientific attitude and to
accept its methodological limitations, says Hostie, but
he no longer defended the idea that this attitude was the
only one in which one could speak "about" God. He
had come to realize and accept the specific meaning and
truth of metaphysical and theological speech and of the
convictions of religion and faith.
It must be admitted that there are texts in Jung
which seem to support Hostie's interpretation. When
Jung speaks about the work of art, he emphasizes that
psychology is unable to answer the question about the
essence of the work of art. Psychology can speak about
the inner and external causes accounting for the form of
a certain work of art, but this doesn't say anything
about its essence. Similarly, psychology can speak about
the phenomenon of religion, but it does not even touch
the question concerning the essence of religion. 136 A
132. Martin Buber, "Religion und modernes Denken," Merkur, vol. 6,
1952, pp. 110-111.
133. J. Goldbrunner, Individuation, Krailling vor Munchen, 1949, pp.
167-168.
134. In tracing this question through Jung's voluminous writings we
have been greatly aided by Han M. Fortmann, Ais ziende de onzienlijke,
Hilversum, 1964, vol. 1, pp. 240-266 and vol. 3, pp. 51-64; J. Goldbrunner's above-cited work, Individuation; and R. Hostie, Analytiscbe
psycbologie en godsdienst, Utrecht, 1954.
135. Hostie, op.cit., pp. 148-169.
136. Jung, Seelenprobleme der Gegenwart, pp. 40-41.
134
psychologist who thinks that he can speak about its

essence digs his own grave as a psychologist. For one
who makes the philosophy of religion a part of psychology becomes defenseless when others make psychology
a part of physiology. Such a procedure disregards the
specific character of psychology.
All this indicates that for Jung there are, in principle,
other questions than those of psychology. But if this is
so, why does Jung so often abandon this principle, so
that others can accuse him of psychologism and agnosticism?
In our opinion, Jung's critics demand too much of
him. They want him to concede that, unlike psychologists, metaphysicians and theologians are able to speak
about God-in-himself. Thus the misunderstanding between Jung and his critics became inevitable. No one
among his critics ever made it clear to him that the
dilemma, God is either "something subjective" or
"something objective" was false because these critics
themselves also tacitly accepted this dilemma. Both parties assumed that something is "something" if it is either
'''something subjective" or "something objective," both
took for granted the divorce between the "objective"
and the "subjective." Thus the "objective" meant the
"in itself," that which is not experienced, not known, of
which there is no consciousness, that which is what it is,
divorced and isolated from the subject. What Jung rejects so passionately is the objective understood in the
objectivistic sense. "For the image which we have of
God is never 'divorced' from man," he says.137 Jung
asks Martin Buber "where God has made his own image,
137. lung, "Antwort an Martin Buber," Gesammelte Werke, vol. 11, p.
661.
THE HIDDEN GOD
135
divorced from man" and how he, Buber, would be able

to say anything about such an image. 138 J ung wonders
how he would manage to establish that "our conception
is identical with the nature of things in themselves." 139
He wonders how he would be able to distinguish between our human experience of God and God himself
since, to do this, "one would have to know God in and
for himself, which seems impossible to me." 140
In the light of these remarks, what possible meaning
can be attached to the overcoming of agnosticism which
Hostie claims to find in Jung's later work? Jung was
accused of obliterating all objectivity, of reducing to
subjectivity everything which religion calls objective,
and of calling it ridiculous, pretentious and arrogant
that metaphysicians claimed to be able to speak about
the' objective. Does the "overcoming of agnosticism,"
spoken of by Hostie, mean that Jung later conceded
that there is no arrogance in wanting to speak about the
"in itself" as that which is not spoken of, that it is
possible for metaphysicians to have experience of the
non-experienced, to know about what is not known, to
be conscious of what one is not conscious of? Hardly.
For if the "objective" must per se be interpreted in the
objectivistic sense, then "agnosticism" is the most intelligent attitude.
Hostie's approval of Jung's victory over agnosticism
itself is suspect. It is true, indeed, that according to Jung
anyone is free to "accept metaphysical explanations for
the origin of" those archetypical "images." 141 In his
later years he no longer objected to people who claimed
138.
139.
140.
141.
lung,
lung,
lung,
lung,
ibid., p. 661.
ibid. p. 658.
"Bruder Klaus," Gesammelte Werke, vol. 11, p. 350.
Psychologie und Alchemie, pp. 28-29.
136
that religious concepts, thanks to the inspiration of the

Holy Spirit, are concrete representations of "metaphysical objects." 142 But lung always added: "This conviction is possible only for one who possesses the charism
of faith. Unfortunately, I myself cannot boast to have
such a charism." 143 One who sees this as lung's turning
away from agnosticism can approve this turn only if he
himself starts from the presupposition that faith must
be conceived as "accepting as true," i.e., as an act by
which man assumes that God-in-himself corresponds to
the idea "God" and therefore really exists. He must
starts from the presupposition that faith is the act by
which man accepts that the judgment, "God exists," is
true, and this then means that this judgment is in
harmony with the reality-in-itself of God. But if this is
what faith is supposed to be, then the agnostic attitude
is much more intelligent.
The debate between lung and his critics was doomed
to failure because both parties were victims of something that remained "unspoken," the "tacit option,"
which escaped discussion. This tacit option was the
separation between the "subjective" and the "objective." One who start from this faces an inevitable choice
between these two. lung opted for the "subjective" 144
because he knew no other interpretation of the "objective" than the objectivistic sense of the term. His opponents opted for the "objective" because they failed to
see that their choice contained this objectivism. Thus
the debate remained fruitless.
142. Jung, op.cit. in footnote 137, p. 659.

143. Jung, ibid., p. 659.
144. lung, Wirklichkeit der Seele, Zurich, 1939, p. 24.
THE HIDDEN GOD
137
Speaking "About" God is Speaking About Man

After this digression, let us now return to the self of
self-understanding. If this self is conceived as an isolated
self, the accusation of subjectivism could indeed be
made against anyone who accepts the statement,
"Speaking 'about' God is speaking about man." But
those who, following Bultmann (and therefore
Heidegger), make this statement do not at all conceive
the self or subjectivity as an isolated self. Self-understanding is the understanding of an existent subject, that
is to say, a subject which is itself only in unity with
what is not the subject, viz., the body, the world, the
other. If, then, the physicist speaks about the world of
physical science, he is, at the same time, also speaking
about himself, for the "speaker" himself is the unity of
reciprocal implication of subject "and" world. 145 Thus
the statement that speaking about the world is speaking
about man should not be interpreted as implying that
speaking about the world says "really nothing" about
the world but only about subjective contents, for subject "and" world constitute a unity of reciprocal implication. This model is wholly unknown to Paul Van
Buren, which is why he cannot understand what Bultmann and Schubert Ogden are talking about.
We do not intend to claim that the statement,
"Speaking 'about' God is speaking about man," is now
clear. All we have shown is that the conclusion, "God,
then, is 'really nothing,' " i.e., "nothing objective," does
not follow. But if we were to claim that God is indeed
"something objective," we would not be speaking
145. Wemer Heisenberg, Das Naturbild der heutigen Physik, Hamburg,
1958, p. 18.
138
"about" the God of Christianity. Fertility and intense

pleasure, health and sickness, the sun, the moon and the
stars, thunderstorms and springs, victories and defeats,
poverty and wealth, justice and injustice are "something
objective." There are religions which worships such beings as God, but the Christian God is not a be-ing; God
is not.
What we are saying here again is that the Christian
God cannot be put on a par with what is not-God. The
religious man calls the name "God," and thereby expresses the "depth" of his existence, a "depth" which
cannot be expressed in obj ectifying terms borrowed from
being-bodily-in-the-world-together-with-others. Yet, the
religious man does it anyhow. He uses statements
which, according to their external form, are constative,
descriptive and explanatory. He makes God the
subject of such statements and ascribes to him predicates derived from man's own bodily co-existence in the
world with fellowmen. But even in these statements his
intention is to express the "depth" of his self-understanding as bodily co-existing in the world with fellowmen. That's why Bultmann and Ogden can say that
speaking "about" God is speaking about man. But one
who speaks "about" God in Christianity and makes God
the subject of a judgment does not intend to say that
God is. That's why he will also deny the "thousand
qualifications" which he has spoken with respect to
God. What would have to happen, Flew asked his opponent, before you are ready to admit that God does not
love us? The answer should have been: "Nothing at all;
as soon as I say, 'God loves us,' I feel obliged to add at
once, 'God does not love us.' "
Let us now return briefly to the objection that God is
"really nothing," i.e., "nothing in objective reality" but
THE HIDDEN GOD
139
at most "something subjective." And let us also use for

a moment the terminology of this objection although
we consider it unacceptable. We would then say that all
attempts to show that God "is" (sic) "something in
objectivity" should be understood as attempts to disclose the "depth" in man's existence. This attempt is
what is usually called the "proof" of God's existence.
The religious man's implicit rationality does not need
this proof. In his eyes, the integral man is the unity of
reciprocal implication of subjectivity "and" God. Explicit rationality, however, will endeavor to give expression to this implication and, in particular, draw attention to the singular meaning of the particle "and." For
this same particle is also used when we speak of the
"reciprocal implication of subjectivity 'and' world." The
particle is put between quotation marks here because it
does not mean "plus," as when we say two and two
equals four." But when this particle is used to speak
about the reciprocal implication of subjectivity "and"
God, the quotation marks should really be doubled
(" "and" "), for the world is while God is not.
"The Empirical Spirit of Our Age"

For Paul Van Buren the very attempt to express the
"depth" in human existence is, as a matter of principle,
meaningless. The principle leading him to this conception is very simple: it is "the empirical spirit of our
age." Whatever the left-wing theologians of existence 146 -left with respect to Bultmann-propose, Van
Buren counters with the question: Do you really think
that this says anything to the empirical-minded man of
146. Paul Van Buren, op.cit., p. 68.
140
our age? 147 He asks those left-wing theologians where

they find their "modern man," for this modern man
does DOt appear to be the victim of scientism whom Van
Buren has all the time in mind. Van Buren finds the
attitude of those theologians intolerable and he does
this a priori. 148 For Bultmann and Ogden integral
speaking about man is equiprimordially speaking about
God because speaking about man cannot be encompassed by speaking about man as an "ingredient" of the
sciences. 149 When Bultmann endeavors to speak about
"the proper reality of man," Van Buren thinks of man
as an "ingredient" of the sciences and asks himself what
the name "God" could possibly mean in this context. 150 This question is, of course, entirely legitimate
when one grants Van Buren his presupposition, but the
crucial question is whether his presupposition is justified.
In our opinion this is not the case. The sciences do
not speak about the essence of man as existence; yet it
is precisely as existence that man is either religious or
non-religious. "Ingredients" of the sciences do not call
the name "God."
That's why we would like to be more prudent than
Ogden who claims that the demand of demythologization, which arises of necessity from the situation of
147. Van Buren, op.cit., pp. 68, 71, 74, 83.
148. "We set out upon this study with certain acknowledged commitments [0 what we called 'secular thought', and we said that secularism, as
we were using the term, is grounded in empirical attitudes in some way."
Van Buren, op. cit., p. 83 .
149. R. Bultmann, " Zum Problem der Entmythologisierung, " Kerygma
und Mythos, vol. VI-l, pp. 24-25 .
1 SO. "The empiricist in us finds the heart of the difficulty not in what
is said about God, but in the very talking about God at ali. We do not
know 'what' God is, and we cannot understand how the word 'God' is
being used." Van Buren, op.cit., p. 84.
THE HIDDEN GOD
141
modern man, must be unconditionally accepted. 151

The qualifier "unconditionally" makes us pause. For if
the situation of modern man implies the absolutism of
the scientific and technological attitude, then one who
is conscious of the narrow-mindedness of this absolutism cannot "without qualification" 152 make modern
man's situation the norm of what is relevant or irrelevant for man. 153 In our eyes it is relevant that a young
man calls his girl a "peach." If modern man no longer
understand this and demands that this young man speak
only in terms of the psycho-diagnostic models put at his
disposal when he and his girl became "ingredients" of
science, then "modern man" is lost and the youthful
lover can no longer say what he intends to say.
Conclusion
In spite of their external form, statements "about"
God, we said, do not have a constative, descriptive and
explanatory meaning. This gives rise to the question
whether perhaps the best language to be used by the
religious man is mythical language. Even if one answers
this question in the negative, Bultmann's program of
demythologization may not be absolutized as if it demanded that all myths be eliminated from our speaking
"about" God. Bultmann himself had no such intentions. 154 He merely objects to false interpretations of
151. "Thl;! first principle ... is that the demand for demythologization
that arises with necessity from the situation of modern man must
accepted without condition." S.M. Ogden, Christ without Myth, p. 148.
152. Van Buren, op.cit., p. 102.
153. Gabriel Vahanian, No Other God, New York, 1966.
154. "This does not mean that mythological language as such can no
longer be used in theology and preaching. The absurd notion that demythologization entails the expurgation of all mythological concepts completely misrepresents Bultmann's intention." Ogden, op.cit., p. 149.
be
142
the myths and, m particular, to interpretations which

conceive myths as if they were scientific or historical
explanations.
Gusdorf explicitly and extensively discusses the possibility of reintroducing mythical language in our speaking "about" God. 1SS It would require the renunciation
of rationalism' and scientism. For absolutized reason all
situations in which man names "God" have meaning
only as logical operations. But if logic is given primacy
over existence, then all depth is removed from existence. 1S6 The same also applies to scientism. As soon as
man is reduced to an "ingredient" of the sciences, all
"depth" disappears from his existence. The use of
mythical stories to speak "about" God presupposes that
we bring about first the restoration of what Husserl calls
the "life-world." 1S7 In this life-world the "depth" of
human existence in which man calls the name "God"
becomes visible.
Myths, however, can also go awry. They can drag man
along on a road which leads nowhere or ends in destruction. They can suggest a "depth" that doesn't exist and
demand a surrender which cannot be justified. That's
why mythical consciousness also must be put under the
control of a critical resort. This critical resort is called
"metaphysics." 158
155.
286.
156.
157.
158.
Gusdorf,
Georges Gusdorf, Mytbe et mtftapbysique, Paris, 1953, pp. 181

.
Gusdorf, ibid., pp. 172-179.
Gusdorf, ibid" pp. 204-220.
"Le role de la raison critique sera donc un role de purification ."
ibid., p. 284.
INDEXES
INDEX OF NAMES
Altizer, T., 112
Anaximander, 104
Anselm, St., 39, 59
Aquinas, Thomas, 78' f.
Ayer, A. J., 27 ff., 41 f., 66
Barth, K., 59
Berger, P., 94
Bolin, W., 123
Braithwaithe, R., 49
Buber, M., 132 ff.
Buitrnann, R., 66, 90, 121,137 ff.
Burke, T., 117
Carnap, R., 22, 24 ff., 66
Cox, H., 14, 15, 17
Daly, C., 46, 49
De Pater, W., 45, 49, 62, 63, 89,
112
De Waelhens, A., 79,80
Dewart, L., 78,87
Evans, D., 51 ff., 58 ff.
Ferre, F., 67
Feuerbach, L., 122 ff.
Findlay, J., 31, 37 ff.
Flew, A., 31, 32, 33 ff., 115, 118
ff., 138
Fortmann, H., 18, 133
Fransen, P., 74
Gasparri, P., 79
Goldbrunner, G., 133

Gusdorf, G., 142
Haarsma, F., 86
Hamilton, W., 112
Hare, R., 31, 35 ff., 118 ff.
Heidegger, M., 43, 76, 81, 83, 86,
91, 102 ff., 109, 137
Heisenberg, W., 137
Hempel, C., 40
Hick, J., 49
Hoefnagels, H., 15
Holderlin, 107
Hostie, R., 133, 135
Hubbeling, H., 48
Hume, D., 22
Husser!, E., 42 ff., 79, 111
Jaspers, K., 14, 74
Jodi, F., 123
Jung, C., 122, 125 ff.
Kant, I., 86, 97 ff., 102, 132
Koren, H., 13
Kwant, R., 74
Leibniz, 120
Luijpen, W., 13,42, 79, 81, 101
Maclntyre, A., 33,115
Malcolm, N., 59
Marcuse, H., 15
Marx, K., 14
145
146
Metz, J., 117 f.

Michalson, C., 88
Mitchell, B., 34
Mozart, 27
Muller, M., 81, 82, 102, 109
Sartre, J., 17, 105

Schillebeeckx, E., 11 7
Schlick, M., 22 ff., 31 f., 43 f., 66
Schoonbrood, C., 48
Solle, D., 117 f.
Nietzsche, F., 104

Nuchelmans, G., 21, 24,47, 54
Vahanian, G., 141

Van Buren, P., 91 ff., 122, 137,
139 ff.
Van de Pol, W., 71 f.
Van Iersel, B., 90
Van Peursen, C., 89, 113
Veldhuis, R., 62
Ogden, S., 76, 122, 137 ff.

Ott, H., 88, 91
Plato, 14
Popper, K., 32 f.
Ramsey, I., 46, 49, 61 ff., 89, 93,
113
Robinson, J., 113, 117 f.
Russell,-B., 46, 66
Waisrnan, F., 22
Wisdom, J., 33,46
Wittgenstein, L., 45 ff., 50, 60, 66
INDEX OF SUBJECT MATTER

Agnosticism, 29, 129 ff.
Analytic Philosophy, "affirmation"
of God and, 19 ff.; rejection of
metaphysics, 21 ff., 40 ff.; evolution of, 46 ff.; limitation of, 58
ff.
Assertions, theology as, 37
Atheists and Theists, 97, 124
Atomism, logical, 45 f., 49, 57, 58,
66
Authenticity, not guaranteed, 16 f.
Belief in Statements, 73 ff. See also
Faith.
Criterion, of meaningfulness, 40 ff.;
of truth, 13
Dasein, 102 ff.

Disclosure Situations, 62 ff.
Emotion, metaphysics and, 26
Empirical Spirit of the Age, 139 f.
Empiricism, 22, 40
Faith, philosophical study of, 69
ff.; in statements, 73 ff.; "doing"
truths of, 84 ff.; language of, 33
ff., 50 ff., 90 ff.; endless verification of, 94; as way of life, 74 ff.;
shift in emphasis, 74 ff.
Falsification, principle of, 32 f.
God, speaking "about," 17 f., 116

ff.; analytic philosophy and the
"affirmation" of, 19 ff.; a pseudo
word, 24 ff.; meaningless word,
27 ff.; proved not to exist, 37 ff.;
proofs of existence, 67,78,99 f.;
in-himself, 78 f., 87 f., 122 ff.;
and self-understanding, 113 ff.,
121 f.; as projection, 126; the
hidden, 95 ff.; Western "affirmation" of, 168 ff.; is dead, 112; the
name, 113 ff.
"Is," metaphysics as explicitation
of, 42; meaning of, 78, 81 ff.,
109 ff.
Language, metaphysical misuse of,
24 ff.; of theology, 33 ff.; games,
46 ff.; religious use of, 50 ff.;
model of faith, 90 ff.; logic and
religious, 46 f., 64; performative
and constative, 52 f., 55 f.; selfinvolving, 55 ff.; and truth, 60 ff.;
religious language not flatly descriptive, 64, 71 ff., 88 f.; invitational, 92; locutionary and illocutionary, 54 f.; constative, descriptive, and explanatory, 112
ff., 141; subjective-objective character of religious, 65 f., 90 ff.,
147
148
113 ff., 122 ff., 125 ff., 13 3 ff.,

137 ff.
Meaning, verification and, 22 ff., 40
ff., 49 f.; use principle and, 49 f.
Metaphysics, as explicitation of
"is," 42; principle of verification
and, 40 ff.; not about nothing, 14
f.; rejection by analytic philosophers, 21 ff.; and by lung, 132;
need for, 66 f.; possibility of, 97
ff.; transcending traditional, 104
ff.; criticao role of, 142
Mysticism, 30
Myths, 66 f., 141 f.
Speaking, authentic, 13 f.; "about"

God as fragmentary, 17 f.; meaningless, 21 ff.; old and new ways
of, 116 ff.; "about" God is about
man, 137 ff.
Statements, meaningful and meaningless, 21 ff.; of faith, 71 ff.
Subject, man as, 101 f.; statements
and, 109 f.
Natural Attitude, 79,88,91

Phenomenology, 43 ff., 79 f.
Positivism, logical, 46, 49, 57, 59,
66
Rationalism, 40
Rationality of Thoughtlessness, 15
ff.
Reality-in-itself, 76 ff.
Religious Experience, 113 ff., 127 f.
Self-involvement, logic of, 55 ff.
Self-understanding, 121 ff., 137
Sentences, constative and performative, 52 f.
Sociology, 87
Theodicy, problem of, 120 f.

Theology, language of, 33 ff., 55
ff.; presuppositions of, 86 f.; critical function of, 92 ff.; as anthropology, 122 ff., 125 ff., 137 ff.;
psychology and, 129 ff.
Thoughtlessness, rationality of, 15
f.
Truth, as fruitful, 13; language

game and, 60 ff.; as "mirror reflexion," 76 ff.; as "event," 80
ff.; doing the, 84 f.; "non-objective" or "non-metaphysical," 87
ff.
Use Principle, 49 f., 58
Verifiability, strong and weak, 41 f.
verification, principle of, 22 ff.;
and falsification, 32 f.; metaphysics and, 24 ff., 40 ff., 57.

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DUQUESNE STUDIES

Distributed by Humanities Press, New York

Copyright 1973 by Duquesne University Press

INTRODUCTION ................ . ..... . . .. 11

ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY AND

"DINNER IS READY"-A PHILOSOPHICAL

Truths of Faith, p. 84; "Doing as If," p. 85 ; "I Don't

THE HIDDEN GOD ... .. . . . .... .. .. . . . ...... 95

INDEX OF NAMES AND

This work has been translated by the undersigned

Never before in history has so much been written and

from "zero," if it begins by isolating itself from social

philosophy it is not possible to talk for twenty-five

The Rationality of Thoughtlessness

they display toward the thinking of the past. But I'd

The Fragmentary Character of Our Speech "About"

turns out to be merely one moment of a history too

7. Han Fortmann, Hindoes en Boeddhisten, Utrecht, 1968.

A Survey and a Question

1. G. Nuchelmans, Overzicht van de analytische wijsbegeerte, Utrecht,

that "Caesar is and" or that "Napoleon is a prime

2. R. Carnap, "Ueberwindung der Metaphysik durch logische Analyse

ANALYTICS AND THE "AFFIRMATION" OF GOD

bottle seeps out of it. If this doesn't happen, then the

ment that statements must be cognitively meaningful

ANALYTICS AND THE "AFFIRMATION" OF GOD

demand of logic is disregarded in the use of the term

which cannot be verified at all cannot be understood;

ANALYTICS AND THE "AFFIRMATION" OF GOD

untruth are at issue in his speaking.18 His illusion does

J. Ayer. 21 The metaphysicians themselves, says Ayer,

impossible to call metaphysical statements empirical

ANALYTICS AND THE "AFFIRMATION" OF GOD

that he wishes to affirm a transcendent being, a being

this world; he becomes the bearer of supra-empirical

ANALYTICS AND THE "AFFIRMATION" OF GOD

means that his mystic intuition has no cognitive value.

ment is true or false. A statement which leaves the

ANALYTICS AND THE "AFFIRMATION" OF GOD

cation principle from Popper's original intention and

ANALYTICS AND THE "AFFIRMATION" OF GOD

doesn't mean anything, it is not even an affirmation

ANALYTICS AND THE "AFFIRMATION" OF GOD

Findlay begins by pointing out that all arguments

concepts also transcends the possibility of proving its

Findlay, op. cit.. pp. 47-48.

ANALYTICS AND THE "AFFIRMATION" OF GOD

happen to depend on that infinitely superior object. The

existence, what he actually formulated was the proof

ANALYTICS AND THE "AFFIRMATION" OF GOD

fu1. 67 In other words, the search for a criterion for the

ANALYTICS AND THE "AFFIRMATION" OF GOD

reality,"70 by indicating "that which shows itself, ...

The endeavor to find a ground for any statement

ANALYTICS AND THE "AFFIRMATION" OF GOD

criterion of the cognitive meaningfulness of language is

76. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-philosophicus, 6.54.

formulated. And then it turned out that this language

The preceding considerations were almost exclusively

ANALYTICS AND THE "AFFIRMATION" OF GOD

available object coupled as meaning to one word. 80 It

Gradually Wittgenstein began to realize that the

ANALYTICS AND THE "AFFIRMATION" OF GOD