Religion as mystery: Possibilities within the limits of philosophical understanding

If the goal of philosophy is indeed understanding, then philosophers have to shift their approach to religion. The study of religion must acknowledge that there are limits to understanding religion, that the limit of religious mystery is important information about it, and that within those very limits are real possibilities. The thesis of this dissertation is that religious belief is often distorted by both believers and non-believers, that it is not good philosophy to assume we know what belief is and not to entertain other possibilities, and that religious language needs to be taken as unique in order to be properly understood.;Flannery O'Connor addresses the desire in modernity to get rid of uncertainty when she talks about our discomfort with mystery and our drive to answer all questions. Even those scholars who are religious believers have often make belief into an intellectual exercise rather than a religious one. While religion and God are often thought of as ways to explain away uncertainty and escape from suffering, O'Connor and D.Z. Phillips see them as expressions of uncertainty and suffering.;Phillips distinguishes between explaining and contemplating in philosophy: to explain contingencies is to refer to things outside of the experience; but to contemplate them is to take them as they are. To attempt to explain uncertainty and suffering is to reduce life and God to statements of fact. The difference is that when there are inexplicable events, grace does not make them understandable, grace makes them bearable. This understanding of religion acknowledges the beauty as well as the horror in life, not glossing over one in order to lift up the other, but finding one within the other.;If philosophers see ambivalence as an integral part of religious belief, then it is possible to give a more adequate account of religion. The anthropomorphic and naturalistic view of religion maintains an untenable dualism that distorts the human experience. Only by understanding religious language as unique and religion as a response to mystery can philosophy make sense of the experience of life as both absurd and miraculous.