Theology after Wittgenstein [Paperback]

Fergus Kerr (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 21, 1997

The philosopher Wittgenstein is considered by many to be the most influential and significant of the 20th century. This book introduces him to students of theology and focuses on his writings dealing with theological issues such as the inner life, immortality of the soul, and the relationship of the believer to church and tradition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Spck; 2nd edition (August 21, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0281050635
• ISBN-13: 978-0281050635
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #989,054 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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34 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An excellent introduction to Wittgenstein, June 10, 2003

By 

Peter Hunter (Edinburgh, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Theology after Wittgenstein (Paperback)

In a way, it is a pity that the title of this book includes the word "theology" as this will put non-theologians off buying it, when it contains one of the best short introductions to Wittgenstein available anywhere. The book is clear and well-written, by someone with an enviable knowledge not only of Wittgenstein but also of theology. The first edition was criticised, with some justification, for being a bit light theologically, but Kerr has added a postscript which addresses this problem, at least to some extent. As theologians, we could all do with being more philosophically adept, and this volume shows one of Scotland's great theologians grappling with an important philosophical tradition. If you have any interest in Wittgenstein at all, or in the relationship of philosophy and theology, you should buy this book.

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Contra Fergus Kerr, Wittgenstein is no Guide to Theology, July 15, 2011

By 

trini "HWS" (Hertfordshire, England) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Theology after Wittgenstein (Paperback)

THEOLOGY AFTER WITTGENSTEIN, BY FERGUS KERR

[[[[ (11th Dec. 2011: Updating note.) Near the end of this review I refer to Anthony Kenny's book Philosophy in the Modern World. I have now had published on amazon UK and USA a review of Kenny's book which gives at some length my views on Wittgenstein and the retreat of 20th century philosophy as a whole into mere linguistic analysis. I sum up the work of very many of the philosophers discussed in Kenny's book by adapting St Augustine's dictum: "Bene cucurristis sed extra viam - you ran (or talked) well and had a lot of fun, but you weren't doing real philosophy at all". ]]]]

I cannot be brief, because Kerr's book really calls for very extensive comment.

Kerr's book fails. Its title implies, and Kerr explicitly claims, that Wittgenstein has inaugurated a new era in the study of theology. I reject this. The very first words of his book (Preface, p.vii) are: "The purpose of this book is to show students of theology that they have much more to gain from reading Wittgenstein's later writings than is commonly supposed, and, secondly, that they are in a good position to understand them." I give a 1-star rating to the book because, although I suppose that Kerr gives an accurate evaluation (is that possible?) of Wittgenstein's thought, Kerr does not see the significance of, or even mention, a crippling lacuna at the heart of Wittgenstein's `theology'. In Kerr's book, we get something on Frazer's Golden Bough, but no index references to or treatment of Jesus Christ and the New Testament. This recalls the appalling section in The God Delusion where Dawkins compares the rise of Christianity to the emergence of the `cargo cults' in Polynesia in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Though Kerr invites us to think especially of Wittgenstein's concern with religion, much of his book deals with strictly philosophical preambles to this question, and in fact reflects the de facto abandonment of much of the traditional subject-matter of philosophy in recent centuries. Previously it was seen as the study of the ultimate realities about the world, and man - his origins and his nature and his destiny, by the light of reason; now, its shrunken remains deal mostly with logic and language. Curiously, again, Kerr's index does not list `language' or `language-games', though these topics come in everywhere.

I must say something about Wittgenstein's religion, the supposed key to the value of his views on the subject.

Kerr says (preface, p. vii): "For a modern philosopher, Wittgenstein wrote a great deal about religion ... In chapter 7, however, I identify some of the overtly theological topics in his later writings. Finally, in chapter 8, I sketch a few theological questions that may look rather different in the light of understanding Wittgenstein".

Kerr says again: "As von Wright says, the TRACTATUS fits into a tradition in European philosophy, running from Russell and Frege back to Leibniz and beyond, while Wittgenstein's later writings have a `spirit ... unlike anything I know in Western thought and in many ways opposed to aims and methods in traditional philosophy'. What he is suggesting, I think, is that, in Wittgenstein's later work, there is a radical questioning of the whole way of thinking about the self, and hence of others, of the world and of the divine, which has captivated Western Christian culture for a long time." I comment on this: Kerr fails here, as elsewhere, to see that for the past two or three centuries `Western Christian culture' has not existed in the field of philosophy and religion: Western culture has been a post- and non- and anti-Christian culture.

Kerr repeatedly discusses the content and the breadth and the depth of Wittgenstein's religious views and his understanding of religion, and specifically of Christianity and Catholicism. But he is forced to say: "It may never be possible to settle what Wittgenstein meant when he spoke of the religious point of view from which he regarded the problems that he discussed so persistently and imaginatively in the later writings. A non-metaphysical understanding of the place of the self in nature and history would certainly encourage resistance to the antipathy to the body which is so characteristic of one ancient and powerful religious tradition; and renouncing a certain nostalgia for spiritual purity might clear the way for another look at the Christian religion" (p. 52).

I reject this judgment of Kerr's, that Wittgenstein has opened the way to `another look at the Christian religion'.

On p. 33, Kerr quotes Wittgenstein: "I am not a religious man, but I cannot help seeing every problem from a religious point of view" (Drury recollection of statement by Wittgenstein). Kerr comments: "(To judge by the memoirs that have appeared, Wittgenstein was not a man whom one could easily ask to explain his more gnomic utterances.) In some sense, then, every problem traversed in the course of his writing was envisaged from a religious point of view - WHATEVER WE ARE TO MAKE OF THAT ASTONISHING CLAIM" [my emphasis].

On p. 32: "Norman Malcolm ... felt confident enough about the matter [of Wittgenstein's religion] to deny that Wittgenstein was a religious man. Georg von Wright spoke somewhat more cautiously: `I do not know whether he can be said to have been `religious' in any but a trivial sense of the word. Certainly he did not have a Christian faith. But neither was his view of life un-Christian, pagan, as was Goethe's. G.E.M. Anscombe, more bluntly, once declared that nobody understood W's views on religion."

On p. 36: "While one cannot dispute Georg von Wright's judgment that he did not have a Christian faith, many passages in CULTURE AND VALUE disclose a sympathetic and penetrating understanding of the matter that few Christians, never mind professed non-believers, could match." This may be true, but it does not change the fact that Wittgenstein's own view of religion/Catholicism is gravely deficient and provides no basis for a re-evaluation of religion. Kerr is simply wrong here. My next paragraph largely repeats Kerr's lack of decisiveness on this issue.

On p. 192 Kerr says: "One wonders, too, about his [Wittgenstein's] knowledge of theology". The next page mentions that Von Wright says that Wittgenstein `certainly did not have a Christian faith', but Wittgenstein's sister later disagreed with this verdict. Kerr comments: "At all events, it is one thing to have the Christian faith in some degree, it is another to be familiar with the kind of thing that Christians believe."

On p. 194 Kerr points out that there was a strong `modernist' tendency in Wittgenstein. "Again, when he remarked that he `could well imagine a religion in which there are no doctrinal propositions', he could be understood as envisaging something remarkably like the non-dogmatic Christianity which the Modernists wanted." This Modernist attitude is not the key to a `new look' at Christianity. It is the destruction of Christianity. See, below, my quotation from chapter 28 of St Matthew's Gospel[Jesus has ALL authority, ALL his teaching, ALL nations, ALL days].

On p. 153, Wittgenstein (1930, to Drury): "It is a dogma of the Roman Church that the existence of God can be proved by natural reason. Now this dogma would make it impossible for me to be a Roman Catholic. If I thought of God as another being like myself, outside myself, only infinitely more powerful, then I would regard it as my duty to defy him." Kerr immediately comments: "Leaving aside whether this dogma (of the First Vatican council, 1869-70) ever meant that the deity's existence could be proved by simply anyone, irrespective of circumstances, moral considerations, etc., it is also contestable that it is `another being like myself' whose existence is at issue - though that is how people generally view the matter, whether or not they think they can do the trick." Kerr himself refers here to a journal article by Lubor Velecky, `Flew on Aquinas.' May I refer to the (2009) book by Antony Flew himself, `There is a God - How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind', especially pp. 74-79, and my `amazon' review of it dated 1 March 2009.

Anthony Kenny also seems to trace the beginnings of the loss of his faith in Catholicism to his inability to swear, as required of a Roman Catholic priest, to an anti-Modernist oath, decreed by Pope St Pius X in 1910, containing this just-above-mentioned dogma of Vatican I (`What I Believe', p. 5).

I would like to raise the question here, as to whether an acceptance of the historical authenticity of the New Testament records, and the compelling witness to the authenticity of the claims made by and for Jesus of Nazareth in the New Testament, as Saviour and God-made-man, sealed by his resurrection, provide a `proof from reason' for Jesus' teaching that God exists. Kerr has nothing at all on the New Testament. Yet there is currently a huge discussion of this among biblical scholars and historians generally.

Why should we bother with Wittgenstein? He is very frequently not clear, either to himself or to his commentators. His later work ridicules his earlier work which was supposed to have been the definitive last word on all matters philosophical. Kerr says (pp. 47,8): "The texts known as the BLUE BOOK and the BROWN BOOK, dictated in English in 1933-35, display the later style [of Wittgenstein's doing philosophy] for the first time. Wittgenstein thinks aloud, argues with himself, changes the subject apparently at random, suppresses connections, and so on. He had only to cut up these texts, mix the fragments even more disconcertingly, interject more jokes, question marks and exclamations, and finally rearrange everything as cunningly as possible to slow the... Read more ›