Rational Religion
A Faith for Moderns.
by Robert Gordis.
Bloch. 316 pp. $5.00.
One of the Merits of the existentialist emphasis in current theological discussions is its avoidance of apologetics. For the religious existentialist the word “modern” holds no special charm nor does it present any special threat. He sees clearly that science and modernity—whatever these terms mean—are not the real obstacles to religious faith. Contemporary man is kept from religious commitment by many internal forces, both personal and intellectual. But he is not, by and large, in need of evidence that one can be both “modern” and “religious.” Theology, happily, has moved far beyond this stage.
In the context of current religious thought, then, this book by Dr. Robert Gordis—who has achieved a highly-deserved reputation as an eminent Bible scholar—seems almost anachronistic. In his “warning” to readers he takes up the question of who might be his audience: the orthodox believers have no intellectual problems—a strange conception of orthodoxy—and thus have no need of his help; the existentialists, on the other hand, have presumably rejected reason and its claims, and are, as a result, beyond help. The book is rather for those who share the author’s conviction “that reason and faith are not antagonists, but partners in comprehending the world.” These are the people who “are unwilling to withdraw from the world or resign from the 20th century,” people who “are in search for a rational basis” for religion. To these seekers Dr. Gordis offers “a religious view of life that will be tenable for modern men and women, whatever their formal religious affiliation, or even if they have none.” One wonders who and where these men and women are. For if they are intelligent and serious enough to attempt this fairly demanding book, they are likely to have discovered that no serious religious thinker rejects completely the proper demands of reason, nor “withdraws” from his own age.
Now, religious apologetics always faces a strategic and tactical dilemma. If the apologist closes his eyes to the strengths of the opposing position, he loses the trust of his readers. But if he states his opponent’s position in its strongest terms, he risks making it more persuasive than his own. Gordis has been keenly sensitive to this danger. Unhappily, however, he has only succeeded in weakening the claims of religion. In most of the main issues with which he deals, religion emerges a poor second, a situation which is not helped by the author’s shifts to strong rhetoric or inspirational sermonics.
Some examples are in order. Science, we are told, teaches us the “true nature of man and his world.” This one admission by itself makes philosophy and theology superfluous. If we know from science the nature of man and the world, theological and philosophical inquiry into these subjects becomes unnecessary and futile. It is astonishing to find a teacher of religion so zealous in his conception of the scope of science; very few contemporary scientists would go as far as Dr. Gordis in advancing its claims.
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His position leads to some curious, but inevitable, results. Since the views of science on almost all questions are supposed to be granted absolute validity, we can either struggle to fit religious doctrine to these views or else abandon religion; Dr. Gordis chooses the former way and pays a heavy price for it. With respect to human nature he affirms the correctness of the biologists’ claim “that all life is a unit and man is only the highest known element on the evolutionary ladder.” In his scientific enthusiasm Dr. Gordis assures us that “the impersonal conclusion of modern biological science that man is simply a higher level in evolution was anticipated by traditional religion.” As evidence he cites the verse: “Have we not all one Father, hath not one God created us!” (Certainly a Bible scholar of Dr. Gordis’s stature and distinction owes us some explanation of his unprecedented reading of this passage.)
But no one speaking in behalf of traditional religion can really hold such a conception of human nature: from the very beginning the Bible lays the strongest emphasis on man’s absolute uniqueness. To satisfy the demand of religious thought, therefore, Dr. Gordis shifts his position, with no apparent embarrassment, and reminds us that “God created man in His image.” He speaks of “the intimate bond which links God and man”—a bond which he does not suppose to link God and the earthworm—and he affirms his belief in “the sanctity of the individual, the dignity and significance of man, of every man, not merely in the mass, but also in the particular.” The most ingenious dialectical skill can neither extract these theological doctrines from the view—nor make them consistent with the view—that science teaches us the true nature of man and that man is merely one more link in the chain of evolution.
We can see more clearly the source of Dr. Gordis’s difficulty if we consider his assertion that “An enlightened religious approach will . . . find it a challenge and an opportunity to reconsider its fundamentals and to bring them into harmony with what is true and life-giving in the new advance of science.” But precisely how do we determine what is true in the sciences? By the scientific method? Then everything that has survived the rigor of this method is true, and this means the entire body of established scientific knowledge. Yet Dr. Gordis, like every student of the philosophy of science, knows the serious problems that have to be faced in establishing a solid ground for the methods and the results of scientific inquiry. To speak of what is “true” in the sciences without further definition is to speak so loosely that one might include everything or nothing that goes under the name of scientific knowledge. Even moderately sophisticated scientists are usually careful to avoid such language; they prefer to present their conclusions as tentative, and are sensitive to the need to avoid problems which they are incapable of handling qua scientists. As to the question of what is “life-giving”—how can one hope to bring religion into harmony with concepts that are vague almost to the point of being meaningless? The real question, of course, is why religion should accept the prior and superior claim of this vague notion of scientific knowledge altogether?
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Dr. Gordis’s extreme commitment to scientific rigor cools somewhat when he turns to the evidence for the existence of God. He bases his case largely on the argument from design: from the apparent fact of order in the world, he concludes that there is an intelligent and purposeful Orderer. His version of this classical argument is a direct violation of his own conception of scientific doctrine. As he explicitly acknowledges: “We have no experience of origins, only of operations. We know nothing and therefore can hazard little more than guesses regarding the origins of the universe as a whole.” This is sound scientific doctrine. Yet Dr. Gordis violates his own canons when he affirms that in the order of the universe we find evidence for God’s existence. He argues that, “It is surely a reasonable assumption that what has an origin has an Originator.” Now, since this proposition deals with origins it cannot be empirical. So much was granted earlier. If it is taken to be self-evident, then it is merely a linguistic tautology. If it is not tautological, then no argument can be made for the view that “origin” implies “originator,” and certainly none can be made for the claim that “origin” implies “Originator” with a capital “O.”
When he tries to strengthen the argument from design by apparently scientific means, Dr. Gordis’s reasoning and use of statistics are misleading. He sets forth statistical data meant to prove that the very existence of the earth and of life on earth are incomprehensible unless there is an intelligent being who designed and created the universe. He points out, for example, that if the earth were much smaller or much larger it would be subject to temperatures and atmospheric pressures that would make life impossible, and decides that it is miraculous that the earth is just the right size. Actually all he succeeds in demonstrating is that the earth, like everything else, is as it is. In principle it is no more surprising that the earth can sustain life than that other planets cannot.
Then in a further effort to marshall empirical evidence for God, Dr. Gordis points out that the odds against the occurrence of all the conditions under which life arises are 10160 to 1, and concludes that, “To try to explain it all through the mechanism of chance seems preposterous.” He forgets that these processes are taking place in an infinite time with an infinite number of chances. It is no more preposterous to suppose that the particular events leading to the development of life occurred by chance than it is miraculous that any particular event takes place. If one were to have calculated a thousand years ago the antecedent probability that a man named John F. Kennedy would be standing where he was at noon on January 20, 1961, saying particular words, dressed in a particular morning coat, etc., the odds against this would probably be as great as the odds that life arose by chance.
The position of the believer who denies that science can enlighten us about our ultimate origins, and therefore makes no attempt to claim scientific support, is both more honest and more tenable. Its holder acknowledges that his belief is an act of faith, beyond all empirical evidence—an act of faith on which he stakes his life. Every contemporary religion must indeed take account of and come to terms with established scientific knowledge, or else it degenerates into obscurantism. However, no Western religion, certainly not Judaism or Christianity, can commit itself in advance to science as its basic framework without being caught in an impossible snare. And what is perplexing about Dr. Gordis’s commitment is that neither intelligence, nor modernity, nor science itself demands it.
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