action theory & the human condition

 

III - SOCOLOGY OF RELIGION -167

 

11 - Belief, Unbelief, and Disbelief - 233

 

Belief, Disbelief, and Unbelief

The Rational and Nonrational Components of Action

Durkheim and the Moral Component of Society  (note esp. society as object)

The Concept of Secularization  (note: religious values institutionalized)

The Institutionalization of Religious Values  (note: there developed the secular priesthood… )

From the Reformation to Ecumenicism

The Enlightenment and Radical Secularism

The New Resurgence of the Nonrational

The New Religion of Secular Love  (note: master symbol has become that of community…)

Moral Absolutism, Eroticism, and Aggression  (as Fixation, diffuse enduring solidarity, and Aggression)

Conclusion

 

As A GENERAL COMMENTATOR on the Symposium on the Culture of Unbelief, there are two aspects of my position which should be made explicit at the outset.  First, I am not a Roman Catholic, but a somewhat backsliding Protestant of Congregationalist background.  Second, I am not a theologian, but a sociologist by profession.  My commentary will not attempt a summary of the discussions - though the Agnelli Foundation has kindly made a copy of the transcript available to me - but rather will be critical in the sense of ranging about some of the principal issues which figured in the papers and discussions in my own terms, hoping in the process to help to define the situation for future stages of discussion and research in this field. 

 

Belief, Disbelief, and Unbelief

 

            The relevant context of the use of the terms "belief" and "unbelief" was of course religious.  It does not seem useful here to attempt discussion of "What is religion?" in general terms.  At certain points aspects of that question will arise and can be dealt with on those occasions.  Since, however, the concept belief is so central, a brief commentary on it does seem to be in order.  First a point of logic.  In Western culture at least there has been a strong tendency to think in terms of dichotomies, often accentuated in their mutual exclusiveness by such expressions as "versus."  Thus we have rational versus irrational, heredity versus environment, Gemeinschaft versus Gesellschaft. 

 

From The Culture of Unbelief, Rocco Caporale and Antonio Grumelli, eds. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), pp. 207-245. Copyright © 1971 by The Regents of the University of California; reprinted by permission of the University of California Press. 

 

234

 

            If members of such dichotomous pairs are to be treated as types, however, they have frequently turned out, not only to admit of intermediate or mixed types, but to be resultants of a plurality of variables, so that study of the possible combinations of the component variables might at the typological level, yield, not a single dichotomous pair, but a larger "family" of possible types, which differ from each other, not on one, but on several dimensions. 

 

            I think - or "I believe" - that this is true of the concept of belief itself, at religious and at other levels. I might suggest that stating the problem in terms of belief-unbelief is already a start in this pluralistic direction in that the alternative to belief need not be simply disbelief but might be some way of avoiding being placed in the category either of believer or of disbeliever.  The logic here is similar to that involved in the history of the concept of rationality and its antonyms.  Namely, it was a major advance when rationality was contrasted not with irrationality but with nonrationality; there could be types which, though nonrational, were not irrational. 

 

            Certainly in the Western tradition, the concept of belief has a cognitive component.  This is to say that however difficult this may be in practice, beliefs are capable of being stated in propositional form and then tested by standards of "truth" or cognitive validity.  It is true that most propositions of religious belief are not subject to what we generally call empirical verification.  But they still must, ideally, be tested by standards of conceptual clarity and precision, and logical (-ly) correctness of inference.¹  The equivalent of the empirical component in science is the authenticity of the nonlogical components of religious belief, for example, revelation, or some kind of religious experience. 

 

            Another aspect of the problem, however, is brought out by the distinction which was discussed early in the conference, namely between what is meant by "belief that …" and "belief in …"  In my view, it would not be appropriate to use the term belief in the latter context if there were no cognitive content involved, that is, if the action referred to were completely nonrational expression of emotions.  The little word "in," however, suggests a noncognitive component which is not included in "that," which may be called commitment.  The "believer in . . ." of course must, explicitly or implicitly, subscribe to cognitively formulable and in some sense testable propositions, but in addition to that, he commits himself to act (including experiencing) in ways which are, to put it in the mildest form, congruent with the cognitive components of his belief. 

 

An important, perhaps the premier, example here is the Protestant doctrine, especially associated with Luther himself, of "salvation by faith alone."  This is faith in the Christian God.  The formula as such contains no reference to the cognitive set of beliefs, but it clearly implies them in the sense that faith is faith in God; with no cognitive conception of God the commitment would be meaningless.  The alternative, for Luther, to salvation by faith, was clearly that by works through the Catholic sacraments.  The definition of these alternatives did not challenge the general strictly theological conceptions of God and his relations to man. 

 

¹ The aphorism of Tertullian, "Credo quia absurdum est," could not prevail in Western religion.

 

235

 

            From the point of view of the Catholic Church of his time, Luther was a heretic.  But his disbelief in the mission of the historical church and in the sacraments, was only one form of unbelief.  Surely in many ways he was not only a believer in some vaguely general sense, but he was a believer in Christ and the Christian God.  This is to say, he accepted much of the cognitive framework of the inherited tradition. 

 

            Professor Bellah has spoken of a strong cognitive bias in Christian religious tradition.  That the emphasis on the cognitive component has been strong does not seem to be seriously open to doubt.  That it has been a bias in the sense that over the long run it has distorted Western religious development is a question on which I prefer to withhold judgment.  Prior to rendering a necessary basis for arriving at such a judgment, it seems to me more urgent to attempt to clarify the nature of the components, both cognitive and noncognitive, rational and nonrational, of religious orientation, and certain aspects of their relations to each other. 

 

            That there must be a major set of noncognitive components is a view which has been accepted in the introductory statements of this commentary and is indeed very widely accepted.  This noncognitive component is, to my mind, what distinguishes religion both from philosophy on the one hand, and science on the other, both of which are intellectual disciplines.  While theology may well he considered to be such a discipline, clearly religion is not.  Durkheim's famous dictum about religion, c'est de la vie séreuse, is one way of stating that difference and seems to be more or less adequately expressed in the term commitment which I have used above. 

 

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