Walter Kaufmann's Critique of Religion and Philosophy

Who discovered WalterKaufmann’s Critique of Religion and Philosophy (London: Faber and Faber, 1959), I no longer remember. Probably, it was Richard Bibby, a medical student and avid reader of philosophy. Later, he went on to become a heart surgeon. Whoever it was the book created a sensation among the people I knew in MIFCU.

Walter Kaufmann (1921-1980)

 Kaufmann sets the tone of his book in the "Preface" which, although slightly dated in terms of the examples he uses, ought to be read by all students who aspire to become scholars. He begins with the comment “Philosophers examine their life, ideas and assumptions not only occasionally but full time.”

Then Kaufmann launches into a sustained attack on what he sees as the idolatry of modern scholarship. He begins with the comment that “The critic who attacks idolatry does the most serious thing of which a man is capable.” (Kaufmann, 1958:xiii).

What is particularly exciting about Kaufmann’s work is his outrage at “the temper of the time” that “brooks cavalier dismissals of such men as Plato, Hegel, and Nietzsche, while one treats the living reverentially.” After providing examples of what he sees as the failure of academics to criticize the work of contemporary scholars, who are elevated to celebrity status, Kaufmann notes: “Ancient Judaism and medieval Catholicism may be submitted to sweeping strictures …” But, of living academic idols “none speaks … nothing but well.” 

Now I am not so sure he is right about Nietzsche, but his other comments are spot on. I'll say more about Nietzsche in a later Blog.

In what reads like a prophetic insight he observes “In a syncretistic age, one must fight the comfortable blurring of all contours and the growing inability to say No. One must insist on important differences … It goes without saying that one does not disagree on everything. And any statement, however silly, can be backed up with a quotation form some great man, not to speak of men thought to be great. Such citations have little value.” Clearly he was no forerunner of postmodernism.

In his view the “Discussion of views one rejects is important” to avoid dogmatism. Therefore, argument and polemics are important because they capture “the excitement of the search for truth” (Kaufmann, 1958: xvi-xvii).

What follows in the subsequent chapters is a sustained argument and incisive critique of academic fashions and well established ideas laced with cutting insights. Most of what he argues remains equally valid almost fifty years after the book was first published.

For example his distinction between “great philosophers,” who question the temper of the times, and “followers,” is telling and seems to reflect the career path of many PhD students:

The adherent of a philosopher is often a man who at first did not understand him at all and then staked several years on a tireless attempt to prove to himself that he did not lack the ability to gain an understanding. By the end of that time he sees clearly that his master’s critics simply fail to understand him  (Kaufmann, 1958:44).

All the people I knew well in MIFCU devoured Kaufmann enjoying his wit and keen observations. He also introduced us to the criticism of Biblical criticism, a subject about which I plan to say more in a subsequent Blog. Kaufmann saw Biblical criticism as deficient in philosophical rigor and paradoxically lacking in criticism. He also stressed the importance of carefully studying all of the world’s religions. Most important of all he offers a strong defense and appeal for the use of reason. He observes “if we are made to choose between reason and religion, the choice is between criticism and idolatry. Whatever in religion cannot stand up to criticism is not worth having …” (Kaufmann, 1958:308).

Looking back what is remarkable about Kaufmann’s book is that it appealed to members of MIFCU who were self-confessed evangelical Christians. Unlike so many Christian students today they did not run away from intellectual engagement. Nor did they take refuge from the secular university in “Christian colleges,” or by only reading writers like C.S. Lewis. Rather they read Kaufmann alongside Lewis and discussed them both.

MIFCU

A year after my evangelical conversion all my new friends in the Cheadle Parish Church youth group went “up to university” as they say in England. This meant that they left Cheadle for various other places. Realizing that I had no Christian support at work, where the ethos was decidedly non-Christian, Peter Heyman arranged for one of his friends from the local Grammar, or in American terms elite High School, to take me to the Manchester Inter-Faculty Christian Union (MIFCU) which met in nearby Didsbury at Ivy Cottage Church.

Ivy Cottage Church, Didsbury, Manchester, England

MIFCU was entirely student run and attracted around 300 to 350 people every Saturday evening. The meetings began at 7 and ended at 9. Essentially they consisted of listening to a lecture by an invited speaker that lasted around an hour. Before the lecture there was a short service and after it coffee was provided while everyone socialized.

The speakers were a remarkable collection of people who visited MIFCU once a year on an annual basis. They included professors like the New Testament scholar F.F. Bruce, the archaeologist Donald Wiseman, his brother who was professor of medicine at Manchester University, the physicist Donald McKay, and well known British evangelical Christian leaders like John Stott, Martin Lloyd-Jonesm, and the lawyer Val Grieve. Together, in a well-planned program, that was like a university course, they provided students with a solid intellectual basis for their faith. Once again I have experienced nothing similar in North America.

F. F. Bruce (1910-1990)

 At that time I was the only non-student in attendance, but nobody cared. On my first or second visit I was looking at MIFCU’s excellent book table when a total stranger came up and asked me if I had read J.I. Packer’s Fundamentalism and the Word of God which he thoroughly recommended. As luck would have it I had tried to read the book and found it both difficult and uninteresting. After I ventured my opinion we got in to a long argument and became firm friends.

 This was my introduction to Trevor Watts who became a close friend. At the time he was studying dentistry. But, because he could not afford to do so as a normal student he had joined the British Army as a commissioned officer on a special program. The Army paid his fees and provided him with an excellent salary. In return he had to serve in the Army for five years after graduation. One consequent of his commission was that he could afford to build up an excellent library both of dental and other books. In fact, his theology and philosophy collections were outstanding.

Trevor lived in a decent apartment to which he invited a fairly large group of people after MIFCU meetings to discuss the speakers and their talks. There he provided a variety of drinks and snacks and played excellent classical records while we had intense discussions about the world, the universe, and everything.

Through Trevor I soon acquired a fairly large group of friends most of whom, like him, went on to academic careers in a wide variety of disciplines. Most importantly I eventually got to know a group of North American graduate students most of whom were working on their PhDs with F. F. Bruce. Of these the Canadians Clark and Dorothy Pinnock and the Americans Ward and Laurel Gasque played an important role in my subsequent academic development.

Next time: Walter Kaufmann's Critique of Religion and Philosophy

Clark Pinnock (1937-2010)

Ward Gasque

In praise of the Open House

One of the features of evangelical Christianity in Manchester during the early 1960’s was what was called “the Open House.” These were run by Anglican curates, or committed members of the laity, who opened their homes to young people after the Sunday evening service.

Open houses usually began with general socializing and the eating of snacks. But then, after about half an hour, a free for all discussion developed. Although they were moderated the topics and arguments were left entirely to those present. Thus the range of these discussions was remarkably wide.

Looking back I realize that open house were the religious equivalent of events organized by the Workers Education Association (WEA) on which they were probably modelled. The WEA was a remarkable organization set up by Oxbridge students, graduates, and professors in 1905 to improve the lot of workers by providing education in the broadest sense of the word. For North Americans I should explain that "Oxbridge" refers to the universities of Oxford and Cambridge.

Workers Education Association

Therefore, the WEA included courses on things like art and music appreciation alongside ones more directly related to work issues. In this respect it was very unlike the modern university which is rushing headlong down the path of education for employment rather than Newman’s ideal of education for life. This is why George Orwell and a host of other prominent people worked for it at one time or another including the Buddhist scholar Edward Conze who taught workers courses on Buddhism.

What open houses did was allow young adults to explore a wide range of topics within an open Christian framework. This allowed people studying difficult topics at grammar schools, where the level of education was equivalent to a first year university course in Canada of the USA, or university to voice doubts about Christianity and think through critical issues.

When I first began to attend one run by Peter Downing, of Cheadle Parish Church, the topic of discussion, which went on for several weeks, was Boris Pasternak’s novel Doctor Zhivago Pasternak (1957). This was because it was the set text for that year’s British “A Level,” the exam that admitted people to university. I had never heard about the book before and found it fascinating

  What was impressive about these discussions was the flexibility of the people involved and their willingness to consider anything. For example, in discussing Pasternak’s work no one raised the type of question about sexual morality which are typical of North American Christian debates about this kind of novel. Instead, they concentrated on the literary value of the text, political issues and the meaning of life.

Perhaps the high level of discussion is not surprising since most of the people running them were Oxbridge graduates who were transporting the seminar from the ivy tower to the local parish. It has always seemed to me that the involvement of well-educated clergy and laity from the equivalent of Oxbridge is almost entirely missing in North American Christianity. Perhaps it helps explain the anti-intellectualism that pervades so many churches and Christian groups.

My academic education begins

When I began work with the North Western Gas Board my first six months as an apprentice were spent in a newly opened training school. In the mornings we received lectures on gas technology and various other aspects of the industry. The afternoons were spent in the workshop learning to bend copper, iron, and lead pipes, to wield and solder then together.

On the first day of class Arthur Barton, the head of the school, began his lecture entering the class clutching a large book. He proceeded to ask us if we knew the meaning of “scintillate, scintillate, constellation galaxy”? When none of us ventured an answer he replied “twinkle, twinkle, little star, you f***** stupid gutter snipes.” He went on "and I suppose you don't know what 'copulate' means do you? It means f******." Then he waved the book at us declaring “This is dictionary. Go out and buy one. Then read it and learn what words mean and how to pronounce them.”

At the time Barton’s admonition had little effect on me. Only after I joined Peter Downing's mid-week Bible Study did they begin to make sense. When I began to attend they were studying the Epistles of John at the end of the New Testament. At the first session I had little to say and was somewhat embarrassed by being asked to read a passage aloud. So I asked Val Grieve what the book was about and lent me a copy of William Barclay’s (1907-1978) New Testament commentary on the letters of St. John.

Barkley was a great writer and the book was a real help. The only problem was that it talked about a group of people known as Gnostics. So at the next Bible Study I contributed by making a comment on the “G-no-sticks.”

No one laughed, and my remark was taken seriously, but clearly there was some confusion about what I was saying. Afterwards, when everyone was drinking coffee and eating cookies, Peter Downing gently pointed out that my pronunciation was quite confusing and that I when I encountered a new word I really ought to use a dictionary to discover its meaning. Now Arthur Barton’s vivid lesson began to make sense and I developed an interest in words.

When I mentioned the fact that I had made a fool of myself to the gas fitter I served most of my apprenticeship with, Bass Mutch, he came up with a great solution. In his cellar he had a large collection of the Reader’s Digest which he was about to dump. So he gave them to me and suggested that I read the section “It pays to increase  your word power.” This was great advice and for the next six months I carried a copy of the Reader’s Digest with me which I read as I walked from job to job. They worked wonders and I took my first step towards becoming an academic.

The reality of class

St Mary's Parish Church n Cheadle, Cheshire, is a beautiful, old English Church which is listed as a historic building of note by English Heritage. It was built in the early 16th. century although a church existed on the site from at least the 12th. century.

The parish church was run by a minister, known as a Rector, assisted by a junior minister, or curate. It had  two daughter churches both run by curates. These were the nineteenth century St. Cuthbert's and the newer St. Phillips which was built after the war on a 1930's housing estate.

Cheadle Parish Church of St. Mary

When we moved to Cheadle in 1958 we lived on the housing estate close to St. Phillips. Most of the people living around us were either upper working class or at the lower end of the lower middle class and owned their own homes. Overall the area itself was one or two notches up the social scale from places like Salford’s Coronation Street of television fame.

Although there were a number of people of my age in the immediate neighborhood they all went to the local grammar school where they studied for the English General Certificate of Education (GCE) examinations. These exams prepared the way for a white collar career or, if they went on to the advanced level GCE, and university. Those who took the ordinary level exams left school at sixteen the others at eighteen.

In our neighborhood I was the only one to attend what was known as a Secondary Modern School. To put this in perspective 5% of the entire teenage population of England went to grammar, or the even more elite public schools. Of these about half, or 2.5%, went on to university. The rest of us went to Secondary Mods. Anyone interested in more information about this ridged and highly elitist educational system should read Anthony Sampson’s excellent Anatomy of Britain (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1962).

 

Since I had failed my eleven-plus examination when I was twelve I was expected to leave school at 15 which I did a few months after arriving in Cheadle. At that time I began my apprenticeship and settled down to a working class existence.

Then as explained in an earlier blog, when I was eighteen, I got converted and began attending church. Only one other person I knew at the Gas Board in Stockport, a Roman Catholic, admitted to going to church. All the others thought religion was dying out.

Because I was converted through the efforts of St. Mary’s youth group, which regularly ran an open air evangelistic services usually led by a young lawyer, Val Grieve, I began attending Cheadle Parish Church. The congregation was definitely upper middle class in its social composition. At the same time because I lived on the estate near St. Philips I was encouraged to go there

St. Mary's congregation today

So I ended up attending both churches by going to St. Philips on Sunday mornings and some evenings and attending a mid-week Bible study organized by Peter Downing the curate at St. Mary’s. I also went to St. Mary’s excellent youth group of Saturday evenings and to the occasional evening service at the parish church.

To their credit most of the people of my age who attended St. Mary's welcomed me even though I was a worker and didn't go to grammar school. In particular Peter Hayman and his girlfriend Judy were especially encouraging. Only occasionally did I meet someone who make it clear that I belonged to the “lower classes” because I did not speak correct, or BBC, English. Such people thought that I ought not to attend the Parish Church and occasionally said so.

 Christmas in Cheadle Parish Church

Back home to Animal Farm

Returning home to Manchester in the middle of September my life slowly began to change once more. Since the building of the Berlin Wall tensions between East and West ran high and everyone looked to Berlin as a potential flash point. Yet very few people, and certainly no one in Cheadle’s churches had visited the now divided city.
 

As a result I found myself quizzed about my trip to Berlin. Then a local Anglican curate, Peter Wilkinson, discovered that I had taken a lot of slides of the Berlin Wall and other places. So he invited me to show them to the church’s youth group.

Looking into East Berlin from the West

 This was my first public speaking engagement and could easily have been a disaster. But, because I was used to performing  stage magic I spoke with confidence and it went over very well. Consequently, I received several other invitations to speak to local Christian groups.

Although I treated my Berlin talk rather like a theatrical act there was a big difference. For the first time I had an audience that talked back and asked difficult questions. The people who put the questions to me were my age, but they read books with strange names like 1984 and Animal Farm and I was expected to compare these books to East Germany. Even worse I was asked about Boris somebody or other who had written a book they were all reading about the Russian Revolution.

To be honest I didn’t have a clue what they were talking about or how to answer most of the questions. Talking about what I saw and heard in Berlin was one thing. Answering questions about weird books was another.

Very quickly I became aware of the huge gap that existed between my own background and that of the folk I met through the church. While I was an apprentice who left school at 15 they were all the products of the elite English grammar school system. Thus while I expected to earn my living as a gas fitter they all planned to attend teacher training colleges or universities and become professionals.

Slowly it dawned on me that these people, who seemed so like myself in church and at the Billy Graham Crusade, actually belonged to a very different world where I was an outsider. In other words, although I did not realize it at the time, class differences were beginning to make themselves felt.