For over thirty years C. A. Campbell has made major contributions to both ethics and metaphysics. Since these do not correspond to the prevailing fashions in philosophy and theology they are in danger of being under-estimated, if not ignored. I hope to summarise and comment on them as impartially as possible. Inevitably I must be selective. In writing for this journal I have, naturally, chosen to stress those elements in Campbell's thought which are directly or indirectly relevant to religion. Even so, there are many points which I have no space to develop. I shall be content if I say enough to indicate the importance of Campbell's writings for the study of the philosophically crucial topics to which they are devoted.

‘Doing the will of God’, or seeking to do it, is a notion close to the centre of at any rate Christian, Jewish, and Moslem religion. So too is the notion of ‘accepting’ something as God's will: Fiat voluntas tua. In the former case, the notion of ‘doing the will of God’ is invoked in connection with what would be right to do in a practical situation; in the latter in connection with happenings and circumstances outside our control and as something to be accepted rather than accomplished. I shall be concerned here with the notion of the will of God as something to be accomplished, asking what, if anything, to say that an action is in accordance with the will of God adds to saying that it is right. I shall also look at ways in which we think of relations between our wills and those of other people when we say that one person is doing the will of another person, and ask whether these help us at all in trying to see what might be meant by ‘doing the will of God’.

The life history of certain philosophical and theological terms and concepts constitutes in itself an interesting matter for consideration and reflection. None is more interesting than that of natural law. Many studies have traced the development of natural law philosophy from its early precursors among the Pre-Socratics through Plato and Aristotle, the Stoics, St Thomas, and the early British empiricists; have noted its demise in the nineteenth century, largely as a result of the criticism of Hume; and have observed its renaissance in the twentieth century. Despite this undeniable revival of interest in the theory (if, indeed it can be called a theory, given the wide diversity of philosophers who have identified themselves with it) in the present century, a moral philosopher uses the term only at great risk, for no philosophical theory has been so vigorously attacked and so thoroughly ‘refuted’ as natural law.

May I first say, Mr Chairman, that I regard it as a great honour to have been invited to take part in this Conference? I speak to you as a philosopher who happens to be interested both in religion and in psychical research (like the Neoplatonists long ago). But I am afraid I am going to discuss some questions which it is ‘not done’ to talk about.

Is the existence of God a question of fact? To the majority of theists, both now and in the past, I think it has seemed clear that, if the phrase ‘God exists’ is to be meaningful, then it is a fact, either that God exists or that he does not. This assertion may even seem trivially true; and yet it has evidently been denied, in recent years, by many theologians. The reasons for such a denial are, in part, to be found in the general reaction against metaphysical philosophy, which was characteristic of the early years of this century, and which is, in Britain, epitomised by A. J. Ayer's stipulation that no proposition can be factually significant unless it is verifiable; unless, in principle at least, some series of observations could conceivably show it to be true. By restricting ‘observation’ to the senses of the physical body, and by emphasising the fact that God, as transcendent by definition, was not a possible object of the senses, some philosophically sensitive theologians were startled into denying that ‘God’ was, even in principle, verifiable; and consequently into denying that propositions purporting to assert his existence were factual.

Before attempting to suggest a religious theory of ethics that appears to me to be tenable, I want to say three things by way of introduction.

There is good reason to believe that Paul Tillich would have objected to the title of this paper. Several years ago I heard him begin a lecture on ‘Religious Existentialism’ with the comment, ‘There is no such thing as Religious Existentialism because there is only Religious Existentialism’. Similarly, he might have objected to the present paper's title by suggesting that every search for knowledge is, consciously or unconsciously, a religious search.

Tradition in either of its two senses—the act of handing on (generally verbally), and what is handed on—is a particular instance of a law of human existence that men live in dependence on one another and by the processes of giving and receiving. So a sociologist can write, ‘If we are able to speak of real tradition, we must find the past spontaneously taken into account as the meaning of the present, without any discontinuity of social time, and without any consideration of the past as irrelevant’ (M. Dufrenne, quoted by P. Congar, Tradition and Traditions, p. 264, n. 1). ‘If democracy’, wrote Chesterton, ‘means that I give a man a vote even though he is my chauffeur, tradition means that I give a man a vote even though he is my great-great-grandfather’. What is handed on, however, is not existence of a purely biological kind, to remain always what it has been or to change very slowly over a space of aeons. Except in primitive tribes even tradition is not simply passed on as something static and timeless, and it is received by men who, though themselves in time, are not totally time-bound or restricted by what they receive. They believe themselves to be capable of significant action which is more than the repetition and reproduction of what has gone before. They are able to grasp a span of time and to call it history; they believe themselves to have a history, and they write history.

Professor Kai Nielsen is one of the most forceful proponents of the view that theological assertions have no factual reference because they are compatible with any empirical state of affairs; no evidence, it is alleged, is allowed to count as falsification of such assertions, and therefore they spuriously purport to be what they are not. In this he follows the well-known essay by Professor Antony Flew in which the same argument was advanced, and Nielsen's own most recent contribution on the subject in Religious Studies should be read against the background of his earlier controversy with Professors John Hick and George Mavrodes in The Canadian Journal of Theology. In this latest article he broadens the canvas to question the significance of applying language and concepts appropriate to the realm of empirical observation to anything that is held to transcend it; and this is the substance of Part II of his paper, in which he engages in debate with Professor Ian Crombie, treading well-worn ground that has been the subject of innumerable philosophical discussions. The rest of the paper, however, is a restatement of his earlier contention, and it is with this more limited issue that I shall be concerned in what follows. For I believe that Nielsen is wrong in two quite fundamental respects: (1) he is mistaken in supposing that theological assertions are compatible with any empirical state of affairs: (2) he bases his critique of theological assertions on a far too uncritical appraisal of the principles of verification and falsification in the case of ordinary factual statements. If I am right, the larger questions raised in Part II will still remain open, but it is high time that the ‘verification-falsification argument’ should be shown to be unfounded.

A problem which was widely recognised during Schleiermacher's life, and one which I think is not yet satisfactorily solved, concerned the integration of feeling and concepts within human consciousness. Within the domain of philosophy of religion it may be phrased as follows: How does religious feeling relate to rational reflection such that each complements and enriches the other? Schleiermacher was convinced that religion never originates in human understanding or autonomy and that one's understanding of the world is not necessarily dependent on religious faith. But he was equally convinced that reflection and religion ought to enjoy a harmony which reflects the harmony of the universe, and this ideal motivated his continuous attempt to construct a complementary philosophy and theology. His hope was to show that ‘understanding and feeling… remain distinct, but they touch each other and form a galvanic pile.… The innermost life of the spirit consists in the galvanic action thus produced in the feeling of the understanding and the understanding of the feeling, during which, however, the two poles always remain deflected from each other.’

Christology seems to fall fairly clearly into two divisions. The first is concerned with the truth of the two propositions: ‘Christ is God’ and ‘Christ is a man’. The second is concerned with the mutual compatibility of these propositions. The first part of Christology tends to confine itself to what is sometimes called ‘positive theology’: that is to say, it is largely given over to examining the Jons revelationis—let us not prejudge currently burning issues by asking what this is—to see what evidence can be found for the truth of these propositions. Clearly, the methods used will be above all those of New Testament exegesis. The second part of Christology will necessarily consist entirely of that speculative theology which is contrasted with positive theology. Even if the earliest speculation on this topic is to be found in the New Testament itself and thus becomes fair game for the exegetes, any attempt to relate the primary truths, ‘Christ is God’ and ‘Christ is a man’, to eachother is a work of reflection, and in the terminology I am using speculative.

Is the term ‘religion’ otiose or misleading? Is what is commonly understood to be religion the enemy of faith? Can the study of religion be upheld as a discipline of academic respectability? The interrelation of these questions is close, and not without complexity.

There has been a great deal of talk recently among historians of Christian reflection about the problem and the possibility of a ‘plurality of theologies’. Directives from such eminent spokesmen as Karl Rahner have underscored the need for a rationale by which to demonstrate that the presence of different orientations does not necessarily violate the unitary character of a Christian tradition. Other Catholic thinkers have offered arguments for ascribing a relative status to the ‘Thomistic style’ of theology, and cases have been made for the inclusion of additional schematic frameworks. Beyond all of this, there are elegant suggestions in the writings of Bernard Lonergan (and others who have come under his influence) that there is sufficient theoretical, even metaphysical, basis to justify plurality in theology. The claim would seem to be that different theological orientations (e.g. those of Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and maybe even Teilhard de Chardin, etc.) are expressive of distinct fields of vision which are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

In that ‘Cock and Bull’ story, Tristram Shandy, Laurence Sterne satirises philosophic disputation. Since the subject is a nose, the philosophers, divided already along Catholic and Lutheran lines, become Nosarians and Anti-nosarians. The doctors belong to the two universities of Strasburg. On ‘which side of the nose [would] the two universities split’?

'Tis above reason, cried the doctors on one side.

'Tis below reason, cried the others.

'Tis faith, we cried.

'Tis a fiddle-stick, said the other.

'Tis possible, cried the one.

'Tis impossible, said the other.

God's power is infinite, cried the Nosarians, he can do anything.

He can do nothing, cried the Antinosarians, which implies contradictions.

He can make matter think, said the Nosarians.

As certainly as you can make a velvet cap out of a sow's ear, replied the Antinosarians.

Professor Roland Puccetti sets himself a double aim in his article ‘The Loving God—Some Observations on John Hick's Evil and the Love of God’ (Religious Studies, April 1967). His more modest aim is to demolish the Irenaean type of Christian theodicy presented in the book which he discusses. His more ambitious aim is to show that no theodicy of any kind is possible because ‘theodicy in general is a subject without a proper object’ (p. 255). His intention is thus ‘not only to carry the battle but also the campaign’ (p. 255); and at the end he is evidently satisfied that he has done this. But I think it can be shown that his satisfaction is at least premature. He has not achieved even his more limited aim, still less his more comprehensive one. For in his critique he altogether omits from consideration an essential part of the argument which he is attacking. Whereas in the first ten sections of his articlehe gives accurate summaries of the relevant aspects of the view which he is criticising, in section eleven on the ‘appeal to mystery’ his summary is misleadingly inadequate. He simply ignores a crucial aspect of the theodicy he is trying to demolish; and the purpose of the present article is to repair that omission.

One of the most interesting works on Christology to appear in recent years is Wolfhart Pannenberg's Grundzüge der Christologie. The reviewer in the Scottish Journal of Theology could speak of it as ‘a theological thriller’ and ‘very satisfying on account of its erudition, constant confrontation with Roman and Protestant, German and non-German theologians of the past and present’. Certainly we have here a Christology based on a striking knowledge of Scripture, the Councils, the Fathers and a large range of theologians and philosophers, both ancient and modern. Its originality consists perhaps most of all in the way it understands Christ's role as Revealer.

Some people do not find much sense in talk about meaning in life. Some people think that such talk cannot have or express any sense, that those who find sense in it must be under an illusion. Some others think that if one is inclined to think that such talk cannot have any sense that is because one misconstrues its logic. So they set off to show us how it is to be construed if what is said here is to make sense. However, there may not really be anything wrong with what they thus set themselves the task of putting right. Their idea that the logic of discourse on meaning in life has been misconstrued may itself come from limitations in their view of logic and its relation to language, from ‘misunderstandings about the logic of our language’. Therefore, as Professor Hepburn rightly points out, such philosophers, in their attempt to ‘prune and rationalise and redefine the vocabulary’ in question, will merely succeed in misleading themselves in their appreciation of its logic and, worse still, in their understanding of life. In his article (‘Questions about the Meaning of Life’, Religious Studies, vol. I, 1965–66) Hepburn opposes such simplifications and distortions of logic which may confine our understanding of life. I am in sympathy with his programme, with his desire to fight superficiality, his caution in rejecting brashness. What I want to do is to remark on some of its limitations and to open up some new questions—though it is not my intention here to pursue any of them.

In the last ten years or so there has been some lively discussion of the questions of immortality and resurrection. Within the Christian tradition there has been debate at theological and exegetical level over the relative merits of belief in the immortality of the soul, and belief in the resurrection of the dead as an account of life after death. Further to this, however, there has been the suggestion that there may be good philosophical reasons for preferring the latter to the former. It is just this contention which I propose to discuss.

Religion has in the past, it may be truefully admitted, done more than its share of fostering the spirit of ‘we’ over against ‘they’. Economic and political factors have unfortunately, throughout history, clogged the channels of communication between men of one faith and those of another. The most unhappy aspect of the relation between religion and society has been the way in which the former has fostered the distinction between the insider and the outsider. Typical of this is the fact that most religious communities have a word which describes the religious outsider and the word is never a flattering one. That there should be religious diversity in the first place should occasion no surprise. Diversification is the order of things in the biological realm and we would not expect to find a sudden departure from this, that is, a move towards convergence, in the sphere of religion. But unless diversification is matched with understanding and with communication we face the future at our peril. It is for this reason that the question of inter-religious communication, the ground of its possibility, can be regarded not only as the most pressing of problems for the student of comparative religion (for unless there is prior understanding and communication where indeed are the data to be compared?) but as a matter of pressing urgency for all.