Aug102022
Book excerpt

“G. Elizabeth M. Anscombe has summarized the views of her teacher, Wittgenstein, on this question [i.e., of truth in religion] in two theses: ‘1. There is no such thing as being true for a religion. This is perhaps suggested when someone says: “This religious statement is not the same as a statement of natural science.” 2. Religious faith may be compared rather to a person’s being in love than to his being persuaded that something is true or false.’ In accordance with this logic, Wittgenstein noted, in one of his many notebooks, that it would make no difference to the Christian religion whether or not Christ had actually done some of the things recounted concerning him or whether indeed he had existed at all. This corresponds to the thesis of Bultmann that believing in a God who is the Creator of heaven and earth does not mean that we believe that God really created heaven and earth but only that we understand ourselves as being his creatures and thereby live a more meaningful life. Similar concepts have in the meantime become widespread in Catholic theology and may be heard, more or less clearly enunciated, in preaching.

“The faithful sense this and are asking themselves whether they have been being made fools of. Living in beautiful fictions may be something that people who hold theories about religion can do; for the person who is asking himself how he can live and die, and for what, they are not enough. Renouncing the claim to truth, which would be a renunciation of the Christian faith itself, is here being sugared over by allowing faith to go on existing as a kind of being-in-love, with its lovely subjective consolations or as a kind of make-believe world side by side with the real world. Faith is transposed onto the plane of play, of make-believe, whereas hitherto it had mattered on the plane of life itself. Faith that is make-believe is at any rate something fundamentally different from faith that is believed and lived out. It does not show us the way but is merely decorative. It does not help us in living or in dying; at most it provides us with a little change, a little fine appearance — but only the appearance, and that is not enough for living and for dying.”

from Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Truth and Tolerance: Christian Belief and World Religions (Ignatius Press, 2003)

Related reading and listening

  • Goodness, truth, and conscience — David Crawford examines Karol Wojtyła’s thought on the relationship between conscience and truth. (37 minutes)
  • When language is weaponized —
    FROM VOL. 52
    Jeffrey Meyers explains George Orwell‘s understanding of how language can be used as a weapon in totalitarian movements and regimes. (10 minutes)
  • Multi-leveled language and active spiritual engagement —
    FROM VOL. 95
    Eugene Peterson talks about how Jesus spent most of his time speaking normally and conversationally, and how the Spirit infused this normal speech. (14 minutes)
  • Torrential winds of doctrine — Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger on the “dictatorship of relativism”
  • Why liberalism tends toward absolutism — In this lecture, Michael Hanby examines what causes liberalism to become dictatorial in thought and practice. (49 minutes)
  • No neutral view of the cosmos — Ken Myers argues that Christians need to recover a “whole-earth discipleship” that enables them to think Christianly about all areas of life, including public life. (50 minutes)
  • The unintended consequences of the Reformation —
    FROM VOL. 114
    Historian Brad Gregory discusses the unintended consequences of the Reformation, consequences which continue to trouble us. (26 minutes)
  • Christology and human relationality — Joseph Ratzinger on how the longing for eternity expressed in human love is an analogue of Trinitarian love
  • Justice and truth — Joseph Ratzinger: “Plato’s philosophy is utterly misconceived when he is presented as an individualistic, dualistic thinker who negates what is earthly and advocates a flight into the beyond.”
  • Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 159 — FEATURED GUESTS: Kirk Farney, Andrew Willard Jones, James L. Nolan, Jr., Andrew Kaethler, Peter Ramey, and Kathryn Wehr
  • Sustaining a heritage of wisdom — Louise Cowan (1916–2015) explains how the classics reach the deep core of our imagination and teach us to order our loves according to the wholeness of reality. (16 minutes)
  • Culture in trinitarian perspective — An article by theologian Tracey Rowland titled “Joseph Ratzinger’s Trinitarian Theology of Culture” summarizes the ramifications of Ratzinger’s confidence that a recognition of the Trinity is the foundation of any reliable and faithful account of the relationship between faith and culture. (65 minutes)
  • A remedy for relativism — Geoffrey Wainwright analyzes Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger’s thought on how the crisis of relativism in the West manifests in society and the arts, showing how Ratzinger grounded his response in a deep theology of worship and liturgy. (78 minutes)
  • Sources of wisdom (and of doubt) — Roger Lundin shares what he has appreciated about Mars Hill Audio conversations, and he discusses what makes Christian belief so implausible to non-believers. (32 minutes)
  • Is irrational freedom truly freedom? — Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger argues that freedom must be understood in the context of interplay of reason and the will
  • Liberal arts and the importance of truth — Listen to conversations with two guests from Volume 153, Margarita Mooney and Louis Markos, on the liberal arts and the importance of truth. (26 minutes
  • Unreason destroys freedom — Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger on the relationship between freedom and truth
  • What is really true? Why does beauty matter? — Bishop Robert Barron talks about the necessity of persuading people that theological claims are about things that are objectively true, not just personally meaningful. (14 minutes)
  • The role of hymns in building faith — Darryl Tippens reminds us of Scriptural texts in which a person is moving closer to God when music breaks out (such as Mary’s Magnificat, and he discusses the history of music in the church. (23 minutes)
  • The religion of the Logos — Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger on acknowledging the Source of rationality
  • Justice and gender, round 2 — Margaret Harper McCarthy, one of the authors of a brief on gender submitted to the Supreme Court, discusses the philosophical and practical implications of fashionable notions of the meaning of gender. (33 minutes)
  • On the meaning of gender and the truth of human nature — Margaret Harper McCarthy, one of the authors of a brief on gender submitted to the Supreme Court, discusses the philosophical and practical implications of fashionable notions of the meaning of gender. (29 minutes)
  • Recovering the meaning of “faith” — Andrew Root asserts that a Church co-opted by the ethics of “authenticity” has lost its ability to speak of the transcendent and its understanding of what it means to be in Christ. (18 minutes)
  • The missional mandate of truth — Joseph Ratzinger on the partnership of faith and reason in the coherence of love and truth
  • Skepticism and totalitarian drift — John Paul II on how a loss of confidence in the reality of truth accentuates the will to power
  • Love and truth precede justice — James Matthew Wilson on the relationship between truth and love in Benedict XVI’s Caritas in Veritate
  • No such thing as pure objectivity — Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger on lessons for faith from physics
  • A God with nothing to do — Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger on the loss of belief in the public presence of God
  • Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 125 — FEATURED GUESTS: Brent Hull, David Koyzis, Steve Wilkens, Roger Lundin, Craig Bernthal, and Kerry McCarthy
  • The witness of goodness and beauty to truth — Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger on the apologetic necessity of holiness and great art
  • The reasonableness of love — Terry Eagleton on the myth of the disinterested pursuit of truth
  • Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 102 — FEATURED GUESTS: Daniel M. Bell, Jr., Lew Daly, Adam K. Webb, Stratford Caldecott, James Matthew Wilson, and Thomas Hibbs
  • Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 98 — FEATURED GUESTS: Stanley Hauerwas, Clarke Forsythe, Gilbert Meilaender, Jeanne Murray Walker, Roger Lundin, and David Bentley Hart
  • Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 94 — FEATURED GUESTS: Maggie Jackson, Mark Bauerlein, Tim Clydesdale, Andy Crouch, and Jeremy Begbie
  • The Christian Mind of C. S. Lewis — Interviews about Lewis with Clyde Kilby, Michael Aeschliman, James Como, Bruce L. Edwards, Thomas Howard, and Gilbert Meilaender. Plus a reading by Alan Jacobs. (73 minutes)
  • Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 51 — FEATURED GUESTS: Nigel Cameron, David Blankenhorn, Robert Wuthnow, Mortimer Adler, Roger Lundin, Dana Gioia, Mary Midgely, and Ted Libbey
Tags: