Abstract
With Religion in the University, Wolterstorff has written a significant book, which argues that it is academically permissible for a person’s religious beliefs to affect their scholarship. Chapter One, ‘The Traditional Understanding of Religion in the University’, starts by examining and unpacking the common objection, expressed by the thought of Max Weber, who held that whenever a scholar brings into their academic work ‘personal value judgment, a full understanding of the facts ceases’ (p. 19). In Chapter Two, called ‘Rethinking Scholarship and the University’, Wolterstorff particularly draws attention to the work of Thomas Kuhn and Hans-Georg Gadamer. In line with Kuhn, Wolterstorff argues that ‘evidence alone does not determine theory’, but that scientists are guided by ‘simplicity, elegance, explanatory power, conservatism, and the like’ alongside the evidence (p. 37). In addition, Gadamer argued regarding interpreting texts that ‘possessing and employing [a shared human] nature is not sufficient for ordinary interpretation. We also need beliefs of a certain sort—prejudgments’ (p. 55). The clearest effect of such thought on scholarship in recent decades is demonstrated by the particularity of areas of research such as ‘feminist epistemology, black sociology, liberation theology, gay literary criticism, Muslim hermeneutics’ (p. 48).
Chapter Three, ‘Rethinking Religion’, is the longest of the four chapters. This reflects Wolterstorff’s conviction that whilst most in universities know how scholarship has developed over the past 50 years, and have heard of the new atheists, most are not aware of the ‘vastly more sophisticated discussions by philosophers about the rationality of religious belief’ (p. 70). Wolterstorff’s focus is to address the objection that religious belief is not rational. This, he argues, can be countered by looking at the work of good religious philosophers, noting Richard Swinburne and Alvin Plantinga. However, his main approach is to challenge the criterion for rationality itself. He argues that we have to believe some things without evidence to make a start, such beliefs being properly basic (p. 85). He examines John Locke’s position that because religion was of ‘maximal concernment’, arguments are necessary (p. 92). However, Wolterstorff notes that we cannot prove our everyday perceptual belief in an external world, and yet a nurse needs to believe in such a world in order to supply the right medicines, and so Locke’s general epistemology cannot be correct (pp. 93–94).
Wolterstorff points out that perceptual beliefs are not just there, but should be seen as being based on experiential, rather than propositional, evidence. Being rational means being open to reasons that a belief of ours might be false, but our beliefs generally should be considered as ‘innocent until proven guilty, not guilty until proven innocent’ (p. 102). Another objection he faces is that there is something about the content of religious beliefs that makes them deficient rationally. However, he first observes that some religious language is perceptual rather than explanatory, and secondly that some very good religious explanations can be given for phenomena (pp. 109–111).
In the final chapter, ‘Religion in the University’, Wolterstorff does not argue, as some do, that we therefore do not gain ‘cognitive access to the facts’ but rather draws attention to scholarship as being ‘an interpretive enterprise’ (pp. 122–123); religious beliefs are not ‘add-ons’ to the beliefs that everyone shares (p. 132). He opposes ‘neutrality’, asking what such a position of the American Civil War would look like (pp. 143–144), and claims that the scholar’s ethic is about ‘honor and fairness’ rather than ‘objectivity’ (p. 131). He advocates dialogic pluralism (p. 127), but makes clear that this pluralism is not about talking to like-minded people in subgroups, but is about sharing what we have learned, even if others fail to share our experiences (pp. 144–147). His challenge at the end is that whilst he holds that it would be a real loss for religious perspectives on scholarship to be excluded from ‘secular’ universities, how many people who are not religious believers see the benefit of such a scholarly perspective?
This book is very well written and easy to read, aided by typically only having 23 lines per page. It employs the fruit of Wolterstorff’s scholarship without requiring the technical philosophical details. I would recommend it to Christians working in secular universities in general as an encouragement and defence of their role, and certainly not just those working in epistemology. However, I would hope that it would also be read by some who work in university departments who do not have a religious belief, as the message needs to be communicated that religious beliefs affect the whole of life and are not just transcendental reflections.