Language and experience in the hermeneutics of religious understanding

British Journal of Religious Education

Volumn 18, Issue 3, 1996, Pages 166-180

  Wright, Andrew ^a  

^a KING'S COLLEGE LONDON   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 42949149968     PISSN: 01416200     EISSN: 17407931     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/0141620960180305     Document Type: Article

References (90)

1. Clive and Jane Erricker, 'Metaphorical awareness and the methodology of religious education', British Journal of Religious Education, 16:3 (1994).
2. Positivism and post-modernism offer reductionist accounts of language: the former claims words refer merely to facts in the natural world or to emotional states in the mind, while the latter claims that words can only refer to language itself. Critical realism argues that language is able to point beyond itself, and beyond the natural world and the human mind, to describe reality itself.
3. There is a general acceptance that we live in the twilight of modernism. A sharp distinction may be made between the responses of post-modernism and critical realism to this situation. Post-modernism, represented by philosophers such as Foucault, Derrida and Lyotard, and theologians such as Cupitt and M C Taylor, deny that we can have any knowledge of the ultimate nature of reality. Critical realism, represented by philosophers such as Habermas, Bernstein, Polanyi and Ricoeur, and theologians such as Gunton, Jungel and Pannenberg, claim that we may understand the ultimate nature of reality at the level of a contingent rationality. See M Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge (London: Routledge, 1991);
4. J Derrida, Margins of Philosophy (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1982);
5. J-F Lyotard, The Post-modern Condition (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984);
6. D Cupitt, The Long-legged Fly (London: SCM, 1987);
7. M C Taylor, Erring A Post-modern A/theology (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1984);
8. J Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action (2 volumes) (London: Polity Press, 1987);
9. R J Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1976);
10. M Polanyi, Personal Knowledge (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1958);
11. P Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977);
12. C E Gunton, Enlightenment and Alienation (Basingstoke: Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1985);
13. E Jungel, Theological Essays (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1976)
14. W Pannenberg, Theology and the Philosophy of Science (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1976).
15. The most systematic statement of this tendency is presented in J Wilson, Education in Religion and the Emotions (London: Heinemann Educational, 1971).
16. The contrast between external religious culture and internal religious experience is reflected in the following distinctions: between 'explicit' and 'implicit' religion, Schools Council, Working Paper 36. Religious Education in the Secondary School (London: Evans/Methuen Educational, 1971);
17. between 'understanding religion' and 'religious understanding', E Cox, 'Understanding Religion and Religious Understanding', British Journal of Religious Education, 6:1 (1983);
18. between 'experiential' and 'dimensional' teaching, M Grimmitt, What can I do in RE? (Essex: Mayhew-McCrimmon, 1973);
19. between 'the religious dimension of personal life' and 'religious understanding', R Holley, Religious Education and Religious Understanding (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978).
20. Day has suggested that such distinctions have come to form part of the inherent structure of modern religious education: D Day, 'Religious Education 40 Years On: A Permanent Identity Crisis?', British Journal of Religious Education, 7:2 (1985).
21. J Astley, The Philosophy of Christian Religious Education (Birmingham, Alabama: Religious Education Press, 1994), p.135.
22. See also 'The place of understanding in Christian education and education about Christianity', British Journal of Religious Education, 16:2 (1994).
23. Throughout this paper 'experience' refers to this psychological dimension rather than to a sociological dimension that understands experience in terms of relationship with society and culture.
24. D Hay, 'Suspicion of the Spiritual: Teaching Religion in a World of Secular Experience', British Journal of Religious Education, 7:3 (1985), p.145.
25. This is not to deny the importance of such experience, but rather to suggest that it must be understood as being intimately related to language and never as a separate foundational entity. To affirm the latter introduces a distinction between internal experience and external language which drives a philosophically, morally and educationally untenable wedge between subjective and objective worlds.
26. P Ricoeur, The Conflict of Interpretations (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1974), p.309.
27. G A Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age (London, SPCK, 1984).
28. H Loukes, Teenage Religion (London: SCM, 1961).
29. R Goldman, Religious Thinking from Childhood to Adolescence (London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1964).
30. R Goldman, Readiness for Religion (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1965);
31. J W D Smith, Religious Education in a Secular Setting (London: SCM, 1969);
32. E J Sharpe, 'The Phenomenology of Religion', Learning for Living, 15:1 (1975).
33. Marvell moved beyond the general experiential categories advocated by implicit models, drawing on Otto in claiming that religious experience constitutes sul generis experience of the numinous. Surin attempted to reconcile the implicit and phenomenological understandings of experience: general experience is a necessary preliminary to specifically religious experience. J Marvell, 'Phenomenology and the Future of Religious Education', Learning for Living, 16:1 (1976)
34. K Surin, 'Can the Experiential and the Phenomenological Approaches be Reconciled?', British Journal of Religious Education, 2:3 (1980).
35. Compare R Otto, The Idea of the Holy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1931).
36. For further discussion of the central importance of the experiential dimension to the phenomenological description of religion see: B Lealman, 'Seven Years with a Phenomenological Syllabus', Learning for Living, 17:4 (1978);
37. J Sealey, 'Another Look at Smart's Six Dimensional Account of Religion', British Journal of Religious Education, 5:1 (1982);
38. D Attfield, 'Implicit Religion', British Journal of Religious Education, 7:1 (1984);
39. R Minney, 'Beginning with Ourselves', British Journal of Religious Education, 8:1 (1985).
40. John Hammond, David Hay et al., New Methods in R.E. Teaching: An Experiential Approach (Harlow: Longman/Oliver and Boyd, 1990), p.6f.
41. J Priestley, 'Religious Story and Literary Imagination', British Journal of Religious Education, 4:1 (1981), p.23.
42. There is, unfortunately, no space available to chart the complex nature of the development of the spiritual model. Key texts which advocate, in a variety of different ways, the central importance of the experiential in spiritual understanding, listed in order of publication, include: B Lealman, 'The Ignorant Eye: Perception and RE', British Journal of Religious Education, 4:2 (1982);
43. J Priestley, 'Towards Finding the Hidden Curriculum: A Consideration of the Spiritual Dimension of Experience in Curriculum Planning', British Journal of Religious Education, 7:3 (1985);
44. U King, 'Spirituality in Secular Society: Recovering a Lost Dimension', British Journal of Religious Education, 7:3 (1985);
45. D Hay, 'Suspicion of the Spiritual: Teaching Religion in a World of Secular Experience', British Journal of Religious Education, 7:3 (1985);
46. D H Webster, 'Commitment, Spirituality and the Classroom', British Journal of Religious Education, 8:1 (1985);
47. B Lealman, 'Grottos, Ghettos and City of Glass: Conversations about Spirituality', British Journal of Religious Education, 8:2 (1986);
48. M Harris, 'Entrance into Inwardness', British Journal of Religious Education, 10:1 (1987);
49. D Webster, 'A Spiritual Dimension for Education' in L Francis and A Thatcher (eds), Christian Perspectives for Education (Leominster: Gracewing, 1990);
50. N Slee, '"Heaven in Ordinarie" - the imagination, spirituality and the arts in religious education' in B Watson (ed.), Priorities in Religious Education (London: Falmer Press, 1992).
51. The logic of the work of David Hay seems to me to point also in this direction, though he is explicit that his model of spiritual education is aimed at complementing rather than replacing phenomenological study of religion. See D Hay and J Hammond, '"When You Pray, Go To Your Private Room" A Reply to Adrian Thatcher', British Journal of Religious Education, 14:3 (1992) pp. 146,149;
52. contrast A Thatcher, 'A Critique of Inwardness in Religious Education', British Journal of Religious Education, 14: 1 (1991).
53. On the instrumental use of religious language see T Cooling, A Christian Vision for State Education (London: SPCK, 1994), p.67.
54. This would appear to be the ultimate outcome of the work of H-G Heimbrock, 'The Development of Symbol as a Key to the Developmental Psychology of Religion', British Journal of Religious Education, 8:3 (1986)
55. and of D Jenkins, '"And She Supposing Him to be the Gardener . . ." Spirituality, the Arts and the Open Secret' in D Starkings (ed.), Religion and the Arts in Education. Dimensions of Spirituality (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1993).
56. For a critique of such anti-realism in spiritual education see A Wright, 'The Child in Relationship: Towards a Communal Model of Spirituality' in R Best (ed.), Education, Spirituality and the Whole Child (London: Cassells, 1996).
57. For this paragraph see M Buckley, The Roots of Modern Atheism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987);
58. H Küng, Does God Exist? (London: Collins, 1980).
59. FDE Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1976)
60. and On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers (New York: Harper & Row, 1958).
61. W Cantwell-Smith, The Meaning and End of Religion (London: SPCK, 1978);
62. J Hick, An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent (London: Macmillan, 1989).
63. Husserl's phenomenological reduction and eidetic vision were intended as moves within transcendental philosophy. Religious education's confusion of empathy with eidetic vision imposes Schleiermacher's experiential hermeneutics onto the phenomenological method in a way that entangles phenomenology in precisely that psychologism Husserl set out to avoid. Contrast FDE Schleiermacher, Hermeneutics: the Handwritten Manuscripts (Missoula, M T: Scholars Press, 1977)
64. and E Husserl, Cartesian Meditations (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1967).
65. The 'theological' version of experiential-expressivism entered into the sphere of religious education in the 1960s via the so-called 'new theology' associated with Bultmann, Tillich and Bonhoeffer and popularised by the 'Honest to God' debate. See D Jenkins, 'Where is God?', Learning for Living, 3:1 (1963).
66. The secular 'religious studies' version was linked to the development of that particular discipline in higher education in the late 1960s and early 1970s. See N Smart, 'A New Look at Religious Studies: The Lancaster Idea', Learning for Living, 7:1 (1967).
67. C Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).
68. For the epistemological implications of this concept of selfhood, see R Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980).
69. C T Yu, Being and Relation: A Theological Critique of Western Dualism and Individualism (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1987).
70. see also Freud and Philosophy (Haven: Yale University Press, 1970).
71. P Ricoeur, The Conflict of Interpretations (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1974), p.148. The preceeding sentence reads: 'The "destruction" of hidden worlds is a positive task and this includes the destruction of religion insofar as it is, as Nietzsche says, "a Platonism for the people".'
72. L Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974) represents, in its picture theory of language, a classic statement of a philosophy grounded in ostensive definition. It has clear affinities with logical positivism, though of course ultimately the two are poles apart.
73. L Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1968), pp.3ff. offers what is now recognised as a key text in the repudiation of ostensive definition.
74. See also J M Soskice, Metaphor and Religious Language (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987).
75. For Wittgenstein as a critical realist see D Bolton, An Approach to Wittgenstein's Philosophy (London: Macmillan, 1979);
76. P M S Hacker, Insight and Illusion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972).
77. See, for example, Wittgenstein's rejection of 'Private Language' in L Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1968), pp.88ff.
78. Contrast N F Gier, Wittgenstein and Phenomenology (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1977);
79. N Malcolm, 'Anselm's Ontological Argument', The Philosophical Review, 69 (1960).
80. Compare P Winch, 'Understanding a Primitive Society', American Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 1 (1964).
81. Within Protestant theology the tradition of critical realism has, since Barth, consistently understood itself in opposition to religious liberalism. Where modern religious education has been happy to enter into dialogue with the liberal Protestant tradition of Tillich, Bultmann, Cupitt et al., the work of Barth, Moltmann, Pannenberg, Jungel, Torrance and many others warrants barely a footnote, if that.
82. Contrast here J Hick and P F Knitter (eds), The Myth of Christian Uniqueness (London: SCM, 1987)
83. and D Lochhead, The Dialogical Imperative (London: SCM, 1988).
84. For the implications of this dialectic of religious truth and religious ambiguity for religious education see A Wright, Religious Education in the Secondary School. Prospects for Religious Literacy (London: David Fulton, 1993).
85. T Kerry, 'The demands made by RE on Pupils' Thinking', British Journal of Religious Education, 3:2 (1980).
86. Note the following attempts to develop the use of language beyond the limitations of phenomenological description, attempts ultimately eclipsed by the turn to the experiential categories of spiritual models of religious education: A G McGrady, 'Teaching the Bible: Research from a Piagetian Perspective', British Journal of Religious Education, 5:3 (1983)
87. and 'A Metaphor and Model Paradigm of Religious Thinking', British Journal of Religious Education, 9:2 (1987);
88. N Slee, 'Parable Teaching: Exploring New Worlds', British Journal of Religious Education, 5:3 (1983)
89. F Schweitzer, 'Progress, Continuity and Change: Three Approaches to the Language Problem in Religious Education', British Journal of Religious Education, 9:2 (1987).
90. I owe this point to Mr Andrew Angel, Trinity School, Croydon.