Abstract

The author is a historian of religion, one accustomed to trying to understand the meaning of sentences in religions which appear in cultures different from our own. From this perspective he attacks linguistic philosophy, arguing that it does not take adequate account of the systems within which sentences in religion are used, that it fails to understand the personal dimension of religious utterances, and that the tendency to treat religious utterances as propositions to be believed is the result of a narrowness of vision resulting from a development in western culture in which we have come to look to the sciences for our models of understanding and speaking. Faith, not belief, Smith argues in these Richard Lectures delivered at the University of Virginia, is the central religious category and statements which arise from faith are personal statements, statements about man and his relations to the world and God. That the modern era talks so much about religious belief rather than faith is said to be the result of a turn which has taken place in our uses of "faith" and "belief" and this turn, which is indicative of a change in the world view of western culture, is held to have been aided and abetted by theologians.