Ewa Zygarowicz 1st year B.A.

Comparative Religion Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan

Critically discuss the view of F. R. Tennant with regard to faith and religious faith
God reveals Himself in many ways (...) and some men enter His Temple by Gate Beautiful [F. R. Tennant]

1. Introduction Frederick Robert Tennant (1866 - 1957) was an English philosophical theologian, a powerful apologist with a wide range of interests who depicted a harmony of science and religion within an empirical approach to theology. Throughout his career as lecturer of theology,Tennant showed himself temperamentally and philosophically unsympathetic to mysticism and argued that justification of the claims of religious experience requires an independently established theism, derived by a laborious ascent from such knowledge about the self and the world as is provided by epistemology, psychology, and the natural sciences. He went far in his attempts of applying all those sciences to explanation of natural theology, and became famous of including evolution within the broader theological argument. While older versions of this argument concentrated on particular examples of apparent design (eg. human eye), newer ones focused on general order of nature. Tennant did not look simply at physical nature. The universe, for which he sought an explanation included the human mind with its capacity for abstract thinking, moral consciousness, and self-consciousness. 2. The Anthropic Principle evolution of universe was designed by God In 1930, F.R. Tennant wrote a magnificent book called Philosophical Theology, in which he developed The Anthropic Principle. It suggested that the cosmos was fashioned for the development of intelligent life. Had there been only a slight alteration in the values of the charge of the electron or the degree of nuclear force in the universe, then intelligent life, or any life at all for that matter, would most likely not have developed. Tennant said it was possible to imagine a frenzied world wherein no rules held. But the actual universe is not chaotic and is evidently regulated in such a way, that the evolutionary process lead to an environment in which intelligent life think Albert

Einstein, Martin Luther King, Florence Nightingale could exist. Such intellect, he thought, suggested evidence of a divine plan. He claimed: belief in God becomes reasonable if the idea of God be found indispensable for the explanation of the totality of our scientific knowledge about individual mind. Of course, Tennants conclusion might well have been mistaken, but he was right to point out that there is nothing incompatible between the theory of evolution and the notion that a deity designed the evolutionary process itself. 3. Correspondence between scientific faith and religious faith according to F. R. Tennant Let us now explain, how F. R. Tennant pointed out the correspondence between science and religion, and the role of faith in both of them. First of all, he identified faith with willing venture that plays a part in all the discoveries. Element of risk, which always corresponds with faith (both of scientific and religious kind) is the element, which is necessary to reach ideally possible, to allow progress of human knowledge. Faith is something else than belief, as it was briefly explained by Tennant in following quote from Philosophical Theology: Belief is more or less constrained by fact or Actuality that already is or will be, independently of any striving of ours, and which convinces us. Faith, on the other hand, reaches beyond the Actual or the given to the ideally possible, which in the first instance it creates, as the mathematician posits his entities, and then by practical activity may realize or bring into Actuality. Every machine of human invention has thus come to be. Again, faith may similarly lead to knowledge of Actuality which it in no sense creates, but which would have continued, in absence of faith-venture, to be unknown: as in the discovery of America by Columbus. Belief, in opposition to faith, does not require our will to reach the arguments, which can convince us to the certain idea. Belief is merely forced by facts, not by continuous striving of our mind to fight for ideally possible. Tennent suggests, that scientists also have faith, and this faith is related to inventions and scientific theories, which are explainable only in the future. Every assumption in its commencement includes the element of risk but the one, which is worth to take. Faith-venture leads to amazingly profitable effects, such as discovery of America. It is comparable with religious faith, because theology in its definition includes statement, that some explanation will be available in the future. Tennant compares religious thelos with scientific purpose, and religious believer with scientist. Science and religion need hypothesis, which must be made real or actual every machine of human invention has come about in this way. Therefore both of them need faithventure, because without it nothing can be discovered.

4. What is the weakness of Tennent's argument? The argument of will, which is used by F. R. Tennant to express similiarities between religion and science can be accepted, but bracketing those two together in the scope of methods used by science creates the strong argument against it. Scientist's will and believer's will is not comparable in the sense, that scientists put their faith to test in continuous struggle for answer, which is visible in reality and verified empirically. They use experiments, which can prove the hypothesis to be true or not, and every experiment needs to be verified, whether to be correct or false. In contrast, religious believer thinks, that religious claims depend on the good, which will happen in the future, and does not need verification in present time. He acts with the motto: I will lead my actions in virtuous way, because God will reward me. Even though we have seen the examples of heroic life, profitable in both moral nad material way, it does not convince us in objective sense. It cannot apply to universal certainty, that this kind of life proves the righteousness of every existence. To illustrate the opposite example, one can recall many situations, when someone inspired by lofty ideas based all life on them, and later on the same ideas were proved to be false. Therefore religious faith is reduced to unverifiable hope, and Tennant's attempt to assimilate religious cognition with scientific cognition becomes undermined. 5. Summary. Some philosophical accounts allow, that faith involves practical commitment venturing beyond evidential support, yet do not require that the venturer actually believes the faith-proposition assumed to be true. This variant may be called the sub-doxastic venture model of faith. F.R.Tennant holds a view of this kind: he takes faith to be the adoption of a line of conduct not warranted by present facts, that involves experimenting with the possible or ideal, venturing into the unknown and taking the risk of disappointment and defeat. Faith is not an attempt to wish something to come into existence, but rather hoping for and unseen things as if they were real and then acting accordingly to this hope.

Bibliography:
C. Taliaferro, Evidence And Faith: Philosophy And Religion Since The Seventeenth Century, New York 2005, D. Brown, S. Morris, A Student's Guide to AS Religious Studies for the AQA Specification, London 2003, Encyclopedia Brittanica, [http://www.britannica.com], F.R. Tennant, Philosophical Theology, New York 1928, F. R. Tennant, The Nature of Belief, London 1943, G. W. Stroup, Before God, Michigan 2004, J. H. Hick, Philosophy of Religion, New Delhi 2003, R. H. Nash, Faith and Reason: Searching for a Rational Faith, Michigan 1988, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, [http://plato.stanford.edu].