Grube on justified religious difference

Abstract

This paper is a response to Dirk-Martin Grube’s article elsewhere in this issue. After discussing the points on which I agree with Grube, I explain why his notion of bivalence has not yet received the accuracy it needs.

Keywords:

• justified religious difference
• Dirk-Martin Grube
• inter-religious dialogue
• religious toleration

Dirk-Martin Grube’s article published elsewhere in this issue is clearly argued and thought provoking. I am especially pleased with his attempt to provide theological reasons for inter-religious tolerance and against the ‘paternalistic’ attitude with which many religious believers look down on other religious traditions than their own. This attitude is not only found among religious believers, but also with atheists like Richard Dawkins who characterises atheists as the ‘brights’ and all religious believers as intellectually inferior and misguided.

Tolerance (like intolerance) is an anti-attitude in the sense that I can only be tolerant towards views with which I disagree. I do not tolerate views with which I agree – I affirm them. Thus, Grube correctly emphasises that inter-religious tolerance entails acknowledgement and respect for the otherness of other religious traditions. Such tolerance also entails an open attitude in which we try not only to understand the other’s beliefs in their otherness but also, as Grube puts it, to ‘mirror’ our own beliefs in those of others in the sense that we can try to learn from them. We cannot learn from beliefs which are identical with our own but only from those that differ from ours.

Grube admits that there are limits to such inter-religious tolerance. Sometimes adherents to other religious traditions (and also to our own Christian tradition!) adhere to beliefs and practices which we consider dangerous and unjustifiable. We are unwilling to respect or tolerate such beliefs and practices. Grube points out that at this point we require criteria for distinguishing between justified and unjustified beliefs and practices, between those that we are willing to respect and tolerate and those that we consider intolerable. Although Grube does not deal with this issue in his lecture, he notes that this is on his agenda for the future. I look forward to see what criteria he will recommend as relevant in this regard.

I can also agree with Grube’s critique of the way in which religious pluralists like Paul Knitter and John Hick try to defend mutual respect and tolerance between adherents of different religions. As Grube puts it, ‘their guiding intention is to minimise or neutralise the differences between different religions. To that end, they postulate some kind of unity between the different religions’ (420). This kind of pluralism fails on two points. First of all, in trying ‘to minimise and neutralise the differences’ it fails to do justice to the other tradition in its otherness. As I stated above, I agree with Grube that respect for the otherness of the other is not only a logically necessary condition for the possibility of toleration as such but also essential for taking the views of the other seriously and for the possibility to ‘mirror’ one’s own beliefs in those of the other. Second, it is not enough to merely postulate in an a priori fashion that there is ‘some kind of unity between different religions.’ Whether or not different religious traditions overlap is a matter for empirical investigation. It can only be the outcome of a careful comparison between the beliefs and practices of different religious traditions. This applies especially to the claim that all religions share a common core. This may or may not be the case, but we cannot merely assume that it is. It could of course be argued that all religions try to provide answers to the same fundamental questions about life and the world. This is the reason for calling them all ‘religions.’ However, we cannot merely assume that their answers will overlap or share a common core. They may share the questions, but in the end they differ in the answers they provide.

Although I can wholeheartedly agree with much of Grube’s argument in his lecture, there is one point about which I have some doubts, namely his rejection of what he calls the principle of ‘bivalence.’ He defines this as ‘a logical principle which implies that statements have exactly one and not more than one truth value. They are either true or false. A logic satisfying this principle is called a two-valued or bivalent logic. For today’s purposes I subsume the negative formulation of bivalence, the law of excluded middle, under bivalence. Bivalence understood in this sense … implies that, if position A is true and position B differs from A, B must be false. … I summarise this point by suggesting that bivalence implies an equation between difference and falsehood’ (421; emphasis in original).

Contrary to Grube, I hold that the law of excluded middle states an essential requirement for the possibility of making any statement at all, or more generally, for the success of any legitimate speech act. However, the law of excluded middle is not what Grube calls bivalence. Grube’s principle of bivalence ‘implies that if position A is true and position B differs from A, B must be false.’ This is not what the law of excluded middle states, nor is it true. If my statement ‘that the object is green’ is true, your statement ‘that the object is large’ is different from mine, but is not thereby necessarily false. Your statement would only be false if it contradicts my statement and not merely when it is different from mine. To use Grube’s formulation, the law of excluded middle does not imply ‘an equation between difference and falsity’ but ‘an equation between logical contradiction and falsity.’

Grube explains his rejection of the principle of ‘bivalence’ by means of the following example. ‘Say, person A explains the aggressive attitude Germany took right before the First World War in purely materialistic terms. Maybe she suggests that it wished to expand its overseas colonies. Person B, however, may explain this attitude in non-materialistic terms, say, by suggesting that Germans and especially their emperor suffered from minority complexes since Germany was not recognised as a pear among the then-leading nations in Europe’ (423). According to Grube, both these explanations can be justified although the beliefs implied in them differ. ‘Persons A and B can both be justified to hold different beliefs on the same issue. Thus, a plurality of different beliefs can be legitimate’ (423). The point is that these two explanations can both be true because, although they are different, they do not contradict each other. This is similar to saying that the object is both green and large, because these two assertions do not contradict each other, even though they are different.

But what is the nature of the difference between Grube’s persons A and B? I think that we should distinguish here between two senses in which we use the term ‘cause.’ Sometimes we mean the ‘complete cause’ and other times we mean ‘the cause’ or ‘the most important or significant cause.’ The complete cause includes all the necessary conditions which jointly are sufficient to bring about an event or state of affairs. Since each of these conditions presupposes further necessary condition, etc., the complete cause includes an infinite number of conditions. Usually, however, we consider one of more of these conditions as the cause of the event in the sense of the most important, or significant cause, or the one that we hold responsible or to which we ascribe praise or blame. Like Grube’s persons A and B, we can differ about which of the conditions we consider to be the cause. This point can be explained with a nice example that I derive from John R. Lucas (Freedom and Grace, 1976): The coroner will say the cause of death was drowning, the unsuccessful rescuer will think the cause was his failure to dive well enough, the teenage chum will know that it was his folly in having dared his friend to swim to the wreck, the mother that it was having let him go out to swim on such a nasty cold day, the father that it was having failed to instil more sense and more moral courage into his head. All these explanations may be true because, although different, they do not contradict each other and can all be truly part of the complete cause. The considerations upon which we decide which of the necessary conditions is to count as the cause of an event, are complex and in different circumstances different considerations will be relevant. It is not possible to discuss these considerations in detail here. However, the important point here is that the difference between Grube’s persons A and B is not one of truth but of importance or significance. It is not an epistemic difference but one of judgement.

I can agree that the differences between religious traditions include such differences in judgement. However, religious traditions differ in many other ways as well, including differences in the epistemic claims they make. In many respects, they are not merely different but they also contradict each other. In such cases, the law of excluded middle decrees that they cannot all be equally true or equally justified.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Vincent Brümmer

Vincent Brümmer (b. 1932) is a philosophical theologian, born in South Africa. He worked for most of his career in the Netherlands. From 1967 to 1997 he was professor of Philosophy of Religion at the University of Utrecht. He holds degrees from Stellenbosch, Harvard and Utrecht universities. His books in English include Theology and Philosophical Inquiry (Macmillan, 1981), What Are We Doing When We Pray? (SCM Press 1984, revised and expanded Ashgate, 2008), Speaking of a Personal God (Cambridge University Press, 1991), The Model of Love (Cambridge University Press 1993), Atonement, Christology and the Trinity. Making Sense of Christian Doctrine (Ashgate 2005), Contemporary Thinkers on Religion. Brümmer on Meaning and the Christian Faith. Collected Writings of Vincent Brümmer (Ashgate, 2006).