Vainio, Olli-Pekka. 2024. 'Religious Disagreement in Analytic Theology', St Andrews Encyclopaedia of Theology. Edited by Brendan N. Wolfe et al. https://www.saet.ac.uk/Christianity/ReligiousDisagreementinAnalyticTheologyVainio, Olli-Pekka. "Religious Disagreement in Analytic Theology." In St Andrews Encyclopaedia of Theology, edited by Brendan N. Wolfe et al. University of St Andrews, 2022–. Article published August 30, 2024. https://www.saet.ac.uk/Christianity/ReligiousDisagreementinAnalyticTheology.Vainio, O. (2024) Religious Disagreement in Analytic Theology. In: B. N. Wolfe et al., eds. St Andrews Encyclopaedia of Theology. University of St Andrews. Available at: https://www.saet.ac.uk/Christianity/ReligiousDisagreementinAnalyticTheology [Accessed ].Olli-Pekka Vainio, 'Religious Disagreement in Analytic Theology', in St Andrews Encyclopaedia of Theology, ed. by Brendan N. Wolfe et al. (University of St Andrews, 2024) <https://www.saet.ac.uk/Christianity/ReligiousDisagreementinAnalyticTheology>
1 What is religious disagreement?
Disagreement has always been a part of human life, and civilizations over the years have not shown significant progress in reducing disagreements. It is a painfully obvious fact that humans disagree over all kinds of matters. We can disagree, in different ways, about aesthetics, philosophy, ethics, the viability of scientific theories, politics, religious views – and even about the nature of the disagreement itself.
Disagreement as a word has a negative connotation. It is often seen as something that threatens a person’s wellbeing. In this negative sense, one can think of disagreement as an indication of some kind of failure in the knowledge-acquisition process. From the evolutionary perspective, disagreement seems to be a necessary byproduct of the development of higher cognitive functions. Disagreement is something which only beings with developed minds can bring about, and the ability to disagree seems to be one of the driving forces behind crucial innovations in human history. Disruptive disagreement can often be a source of prodigious creativity and invention but also, if not properly managed, a source of strife and even war (Mercier and Sperber 2017).
One approach to disagreements is to note who the disagreeing parties are and what is their relationship to one another. One may also consider the importance and significance of the subject of the disagreement in varying ways. In the tradition of analytic philosophy, disagreement is typically perceived through a dispute between epistemic peers. Epistemic peers are individuals who hold similar epistemic credentials regarding the disputed matter, i.e. they are both more or less equals in intelligence, they have access to the same body of evidence, and they are both epistemically virtuous or non-biased in assessing this evidence. This is an idealized situation that rarely occurs in real life. Observers are not always in good position to give exact assessments of people’s epistemic credentials, but one may conclude that they are apparent peers in a relevant sense. Especially when it comes to religious disputes, it is hard to assess whether parties have the same evidence, since religious experiences themselves can be considered a form of evidence. Therefore, the evidence is never exactly the same, though it may well be considered to be similar to a relevant degree.
The importance or significance of the subject matter may also be a cause of disagreement. For example, one scholar may consider the issue to be of ultimate importance while their colleague does not. One may think that rogue AI will destroy humanity, while their colleague thinks that they just worry too much. For disagreement to arise, at least one party must consider the issue to be important. Disagreeing about totally irrelevant issues may sometimes be fun, but one does not expect such conversations to reach normative conclusions. A mere difference in opinion about a subjective matter of preference does not qualify as a disagreement in the relevant sense. To disagree, two or more people must hold incompatible views on the truth or plausibility of some position. Relevant disagreements are challenges to our current beliefs, behaviour, and way of existing.
People can disagree about judgements, dispositions, and actions. The difference between judgement and disposition is that judgment does not necessarily have normative force (although it often does). Judgements can be expressed tentatively or hypothetically. Dispositions necessarily contain a positive conative and normative attitude. Actions are the specific steps that one takes and urges others to take towards a desired goal.
In this entry, the general term ‘religion’ is used to refer to any set of beliefs forming a relatively coherent worldview that is held by a particular group of people, affecting their behaviour in some normative way and functioning as a matter of ultimate importance to them. Admittedly, this is very broad definition that can encompass many forms of human behaviour that are not always seen as religious, such as sports, ideologies, and political philosophies. For the purposes of this entry, this vagueness is apt, since one is able to also analyse the behaviour of groups of nonreligious or quasi-religious people using the categories and methods employed typically in religious studies in order to understand the way humans tend to behave (MacCauley 2013). When discussing the formation and praxis of particular religious beliefs, the focus here will be on the Christian religion.
Putting together this broad definition of religion and the aforementioned definition of disagreement might look something like this:
Religious disagreement: A and B disagree religiously when they are apparent epistemic peers who hold incompatible views on the truth, plausibility, or importance of some religiously relevant proposition.
This definition is not without problems, two of which are the most important. First, it presupposes that religious views and beliefs are not merely subjective preferences but that they contain at least some propositions that have a truth-value. Thus, in the case of religious disagreement, A and B each think that the other person is wrong and does not merely have, for example, poor taste. There are versions of Christian theology that adopt a non-cognitive view of religious faith, but here the focus is mostly on cognitive accounts of faith.
Second, it is not simple to analyse in what sense the notion of epistemic peers, as described above, can be applied to religious views. The religious way of life contains a lot of characteristics that are difficult to express using simple propositions. That is to say, much of religious identity consists of non-cognitive attitudes, such as hope, fear, doubt, joy, and longing, etc. Nonetheless, even in these cases one can analyse the attitudes as intentional actions that have cognitive content (Scott 2013). These contents may clash with others, for example, in the case of two people who have different visions for their hope. Here the disagreement would be about what is the (most) reasonable object of hope, while applying the notion of simple truth value might prove trickier in this context. That being said, there is enough cognitive content in most religions to cause disagreements to arise between countering truth-claims.
2 The problem of disagreement in the Christian tradition
In the Christian context, disagreement is typically seen as a problem which requires not only an explanation but also some kind of closure. This is a common way of looking at the issue in the New Testament, where the unity of the faithful is a central theme. According to the Gospel of John, Jesus prayed ‘that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you’ (17:21). Jesus lists peacemaking among the beatitudes: ‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God’ (Matt 5:9). The apostle Paul promotes similar virtues and commands Christians to pursue peace, in Rom 12:17–18: ‘Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone’.
However, the New Testament acknowledges that even Christians disagree with one another, and many of the letters in the New Testament are intended to settle quarrels in the congregations (e.g. Acts 15:2). The letter of James attributes disputes to the spiritual immaturity of the believers:
What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. (James 4:1–3)
The New Testament contains several ecclesial procedures on how internal disagreements should be handled (Matt 18:15–17; Rom 14:1; James 4:11; John 7:24).
During the patristic era, it became vital to distinguish between true and false teachings. The writings of the church fathers often contain norms of true doctrine, which later came to be called the rule of faith (regula fidei) that should be binding for all Christians everywhere (Ferguson 2015). When Christianity became more popular and began to draw the attention of pagan philosophers, several works were written to counter the critiques which came from both outside and inside the church. One of the most famous early pagan critics was Celsus (first century), and one of Origen’s well-known works, Contra Celsum (248), is his rebuttal of Celsus’ claims. These challenges from the outside were met in the works of early Christian apologists such as Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and Tertullian.
While apologetics developed from dealing with outside challenges, internal disagreements among Christians led to more precisely-defined doctrines and the criteria of assessing these doctrines. The doctrinal development during the first Christian centuries was a reaction to internal disputes concerning valid interpretations of particular Christian beliefs and practices. In order to come up with solutions, several councils were called together to the discuss the disputed matters. The most influential of these were the Councils of Nicaea (325), Constantinople (381), and Chalcedon (451), which are known for their accounts of Christology and trinitarian theology. Despite the attempts to forge unity, the Christian church has undergone several splits in its history, when disagreements became so serious that they broke the church’s visible unity – manifested by attendance in the common celebration of the eucharist. The most important of these are the Great Schism (1054) that broke the Christian church into Western (Catholic) and Eastern (Orthodox) factions, and the Reformation that took place in the sixteenth century. This led the Reformed, Lutherans, Anglicans, and Anabaptists to form their own denominations outside the Catholic Church. Since then, Protestantism has continued to fragment even more, to the point that there are currently over 200 major Protestant denominations.
2.1 Why is there disagreement? Answers from within the Christian tradition
Christian theology was born slowly during the first centuries, and, as Christian religion met different cultures with different philosophies, theologians had to address questions such as the following: why do people not embrace our message? Why do Christians disagree among themselves, is it because people are not intelligent enough or are they perhaps corrupted by evil desires? Or do they lack proper means to acquire knowledge? More succinctly, disagreement is first and foremost an epistemological matter, but it is connected to several other issues that are broad in their own right, such as the norms of interpretation and the effects of presuppositions on our thinking (hermeneutics), the role of the will and sin in our belief-formation (hamartiology), and general human limitations that makes knowledge acquisition difficult.
This list of questions already indicates that disagreement can take on many forms, and it is outside the scope of this article to trace all of them in the Christian tradition. The following examples are chosen to illustrate some of these questions.
2.2 Irenaeus and the role of presuppositions in interpretation
During the first Christian centuries there were movements that engaged the same sacred texts as Christians but proceeded to offer differing interpretations of these texts. An example of polemic against these movements is Irenaeus’ (b. 130 CE) Adversus Haereses (Against Heresies), in which he argued that his Valentianian adversaries treat the gospels like pieces of a mosaic, which they scramble in a way that distorts the original picture and supports their narrative.
By transferring passages, and dressing them up anew, and making one thing out of another, they succeed in deluding many through their wicked art in adapting the oracles of the Lord to their opinions. Their manner of acting is just as if one, when a beautiful image of a king has been constructed by some skillful artist out of precious jewels, should then take this likeness of the man all to pieces, should rearrange the gems, and so fit them together as to make them into the form of a dog or of a fox, and even that but poorly executed; and should then maintain and declare that this was the beautiful image of the king which the skillful artist constructed, pointing to the jewels which had been admirably fitted together by the first artist to form the image of the king, but have been with bad effect transferred by the latter one to the shape of a dog, and by thus exhibiting the jewels, should deceive the ignorant who had no conception what a king's form was like, and persuade them that that miserable likeness of the fox was, in fact, the beautiful image of the king. (Adversus Haereses I.8)
Irenaeus accuses the Valentinians of misrepresenting the gospels, and he may or may not think that this was a deliberately malicious act. Yet his polemics manifest a deeper, and perhaps more sincere, choice that the Valentinians had probably made. This reading of the dispute relies on the role of hermeneutics and presumptions. Thus, for Irenaeus, the disagreement with the Valentinians results from their faulty starting points, which they use to create a new construct out of the texts. The attempt to recreate the Christian narratives with the help of another metanarrative leads to two different textual renderings, so that Valentians and Christians are no longer engaging the same material and texts.
2.3 Augustine and Aquinas on the role of the intellect, will, and love in knowing
Augustine of Hippo (354–430 AD) is perhaps the most prominent church father in the Western tradition. He went through a series of conversions in his life which led him to question his previous convictions and assess why he was drawn to varying philosophical and religious positions. Many of his works deal with the nature of reasoning, doubt, and the challenges of finding certainty. In his Enchiridion (17), he acknowledges the dire state of the human race: oftentimes we err because we claim to know things we do not in fact know. Thus, in such cases, being ignorant would be better. It is likewise vicious ‘to hold what is certain as uncertain, and what is uncertain as certain’. In this life, humans have to accept that ‘here men deceive and are deceived’ (Augustine, Enchiridion, 17). Augustine describes two sources for disagreement. First, we are not instructed properly, and we simply lack the required knowledge. Second, humans are corrupted so that they do not want to see truth but rather avoid it (Griffiths 2005).
With regard to religious matters, a part of the problem of disagreement is the subject matter, which is not immediately apparent to us. In On the Catechising of the Uninstructed (3), Augustine mentions a teacher who is unable to make people excited about the things he explains. This is because he needs to use external words to describe an internal reality, which cannot be contained in these words. The words merely point towards a higher reality, and their use does not necessarily provide access to the deeper meaning. In order to really grasp the meaning of a Christian sermon, one needs spiritual illumination. Language is not a perfect medium, and humans are, as receivers, complex creatures. We may resist, fail to understand, and distort what we hear, but we may also be moved by it in surprising ways.
Augustine thinks that the route from this world to the transcendent is made difficult on purpose by God. It is part of the fall into sin that we are imprisoned in the world of signs which require interpretation. Even the divine revelation is not free from this ambiguity, as ‘even the divinely given signs contained in the holy scriptures have been communicated to us by the human beings who wrote them’ (De Doctrina christiana [Doctr. chr. ] 2.5). However, it should be noted that Augustine is not a proto-postmodernist who thinks that we are somehow imprisoned by language. The real meaning of the words can be grasped reliably, even though this requires both effort and humility.
The narrative of the Tower of Babel functions as a warning against human pride as ‘wicked men justly received incompatible languages to match their incompatible minds’ (Doctr. chr. 2.3). Overcoming this confusion is a spiritual exercise that stifles the vicious impulses of the human nature:
Casual readers are misled by problems and ambiguities of many kinds, mistaking one thing for another. In some passages they find no meaning at all that they can grasp at, even falsely, so thick is the fog created by some obscure phrases. I have no doubt that this is all divinely predetermined, so that pride may be subdued by hard work and intellects which tend to despise things that are easily discovered may be rescued from boredom and reinvigorated. (Doctr. chr. 2.10)
Especially in ancient Stoic philosophy, deficiencies in human conduct were explained through the weakness of our will (akrasia; Saarinen 1994). Augustine acknowledges this, but he thinks that our will is not merely weak but corrupted. Augustine emphasizes the role of love and desire in our knowledge-acquisition and the way we behave. Fundamentally, our thoughts and actions are guided by our loves, which can be properly ordered or not. Here Augustine parts ways with the ancient philosophies, such as the Aristotelian traditions, which had taught that agreement can be reached among wise persons if given enough time to be pondered thoroughly. Augustine is more pessimistic. If wise men do not have the proper order of love, they will never reach agreement.
Of the medieval theologians of the West, Thomas Aquinas became the leading authority in the Roman Catholic Church, especially through the Council of Trent, which adopted the Aristotelian style of Aquinas as the mainstream of Catholic theology for centuries to come. Aquinas’ way of dealing with disagreement resembles in many ways that of Augustine.
For Aquinas, reasoning about values is based on first principles, which are propositions, such as ‘good must be done and evil avoided’ (Summa Theologiae [ST] I-II.2.94.2). These principles are immediately obvious to us. They are also necessarily true, and one can disagree about these principles only if one does not understand what the words mean. This sort of disagreement is, however, relatively easy to solve.
Things get more complicated when we need to apply the principles that require knowledge of the highest good in relation to which we must rank all other goods. When we make choices, our will asks our intellect for guidance regarding whether the perceived good is in fact a good that should be pursued at this moment and in these particular ways. The intellect then assesses the situation based on things it knows at the moment. At this point, our ignorance can lead us astray by giving us false information about the situation. The intellect then proceeds by giving our will a recommendation for action (ST I.82.2; 85.6; Stump 2003: 233).
In Aquinas’ theory, everything depends on how the intellect works. We may lack the knowledge of how some things are related to good and evil, and often we are ignorant of the true nature of our actions. Also, we may use our intellect in improper ways so that we are unable to relate our thoughts and actions to the highest good, that is, God (ST II-II.167.Resp.; Hütter 2005: 180–182). In fact, Aquinas states that ‘human reason is very deficient in things concerning God. A sign of this is that philosophers in their researches, by natural investigation, into human affairs, have fallen into many errors, and have disagreed among themselves’ (ST II-IIae.2.4).
Like Augustine, Aquinas claims that if God is not recognized as the highest good, we judge individual goods in ways that corrupt their nature. Effectively, we then perceive reality in a truncated way. Thus, disagreements may result from ignorance or corrupted desires. On a higher level, this can also be called a lack of wisdom, which is the highest virtue that controls our actions (MacIntyre 2006).
2.4 Dealing with disagreement: the case of Nicholas Autrecourt
Medieval scholastic theology is itself an example of pervasive disagreement. One of the goals of the scholastic method was to demonstrate the truth and coherence of Christian doctrine, but scholastic theology was riddled with disputes that sometimes led to condemnations. Disagreements were common, but they were not a desired state of affairs (Pasnau 2013: 428–458).
A notable exception to this rule was Nicholas of Autrecourt’s Tractatus, in which he attempted to offer a procedure of how to deal beneficially with disagreement. Autrecourt tried to find criteria for when it is advantageous to divert from the majority opinion and suggest a new idea. First, one must have at least as good a knowledge of the matter as the majority, and good grounds for thinking that one grasps the issue at hand better than the majority. Only then is one allowed to have sufficient certitude to adopt beliefs that are against the majority position.
For example, Autrecourt thinks that while the masses prefer to enjoy carnal pleasures, one is entitled to disregard such pursuits if one knows that the meditation of virtues is better. In philosophy and theology, one may speculate with non-majoritarian ideas if one does it diligently with other specialists. If, after a long time, one perceives these ideas as correct, one should be allowed to propose them as theories for consideration but not as truth-claims. Autrecourt did not claim to have any unorthodox convictions himself. Nonetheless, his proposal on how to deal with new ideas did not win great approval at the time, and he was asked to burn his writings (Pasnau 2013: 447–448).
2.5 The Reformation and the question of legitimate authority
The Protestant Reformation was born as a reaction to the abuses of ecclesial power by the Catholic Church. Martin Luther’s first criticisms were directed against theologically-illegitimate re-interpretations of the doctrine of indulgences by the local authorities. The dispute that was intended for an academic audience soon gained interest among lay people, who had felt for some time that the church was not living according to its own principles. Together, the unsettled academic theological disputations and popular disgruntlement led to the separation between the Catholic Church and various Protestant denominations.
From the point of view of this article, the disagreement between the aforementioned entities was about who held proper authority in the church. In one sense, this was a question of hermeneutics, as in the case of the early Christian encounters with the Gnostics, but in the Reformation the problem became even deeper.
At first, Luther believed that merely pointing out the errors to his opponents would result in the renewal of church practices, but he soon discovered that this would not be enough. Even though both Catholics and Reformers relied on the same worldview (unlike in the case of Gnostic polemics), there were different rules of biblical interpretation at play. Most importantly of all, the role of tradition was seen differently. For Catholics, the Bible was something that the church had produced, and this point of view gave a kind of hermeneutic primacy to the church. The Protestant principle of sola scriptura (scripture alone) reversed these sources of authority. This resulted in an impasse. Even if both parties relied on the Bible for their interpretation, they balanced its contents differently (Lohrmann 2017).
With regard to ecclesial power, the role of the pope had already caused tension during the Great Schism between the Western and Eastern churches. The issue came up again in the Reformation. For Catholics, the apostolic succession is one of the marks of the true church; the ecclesial structure as it exists now must be traced back to the See of St Peter. Any ecclesial bodies that exist outside of this structure may portray many essential features of true Christian faith, but without this connection they are defective as Christian communities (Cathechism of the Catholic Church 811–822).
In sum, disagreements in the Christian tradition can be viewed as resulting from faulty or differing presuppositions that are used as grounds for biblical interpretation. Sometimes the disagreements result from the natural human condition and its limited access to knowledge. In some cases, our corrupted wills and loves affect our knowledge acquisition process so that we wilfully believe and strive after the wrong things, or for good things in the wrong order. Disagreements that result from a lack of knowledge can be overcome by adopting better methods. Disagreements based on a corrupted will and love require spiritual conversion.
3 Religious disagreement and conflicts
Some forms of disagreement can be helpful and beneficial, and these need to be valued and cultivated if we see in them a possibility of attaining a better understanding of things. Nonetheless, it is obvious that disagreements can manifest in harmful ways when they are not kept in check by intellectual and moral virtues. Religious disagreements may lead people or groups to shun or isolate one another. More serious cases of this may take the form of mental violence, shaming, silencing, and threats, and the most egregious cases can result in physical violence ranging from imprisonment to acts of terrorism and war.
After the terrorist strikes on 11 September 2001, the potentially-harmful features of religions became a popular topic of discussion. The so-called New Atheists made strong claims regarding the volatility of certain religious convictions and their deep incompatibility with liberal values (Dawkins 2006). In Northern Ireland, recent decades saw intense hostilities between Protestant and Catholic populations. Although the conflict was inherently political, resulting from the British presence in Ireland which many viewed as a form of occupation, the lines between the conflicting parties happened to coincide with religious identities. The same applies to a smaller extent to the Bosnian War (1992–1995), in which a significant number of Bosnians were Muslims, whereas the Serbs identified as Orthodox.
Although the case of 9/11 and other minor acts of religious terrorism involved secular politics, and although they are not reducible to religion alone, they have typically been treated as instances of religious fundamentalism. Although this term is often used pejoratively, its more technical definition refers to a religious identity that is not responsive to evidence and public reasoning and that sees itself as the sole possessor of the ultimate truth (Berger 2009). In these cases, the belligerent group is portrayed as being against the whole world; they are depicted as the only ones in the right, and everyone else in the wrong. While there clearly is some reason for concern, as some acts of terrorism seem to have a religious connection, general claims linking religion, intolerance, and violence need to be assessed critically (Thurow 2013).
First, the concept of ‘religion’ is itself hard to define for several reasons. In the history of the study of religions it was once popular to operate under a single generic concept of religion. Religion was seen as a part of a perennialist tradition to treat all religions as manifestations of the same phenomena. Later, this approach was replaced with particularism, which sees every religion as unique even when one can recognize similar behavioural patterns across multiple religions (Pals 1996). To complicate matters even further, the boundary between the religious and the non-religious is fuzzy. Many popular phenomena in the modern world can be analysed from a religious perspective, even if people do not necessarily treat them as religious.
Second, there are issues regarding how to interpret the meaning of causation in this context. Religion can be said to cause undesirable things in various ways. (Vainio 2017: 106–109). Consider the following possibilities:
- Religion a in context y enables evil actions.
- Religion a in context y enhances evil actions that would have happened anyway.
- Religion a in context y motivates someone to perform evil actions.
- Religion a in context y makes someone passive and unwilling to prevent evil actions.
- Religion a in context y makes it harder for disputing parties to reach a compromise or seek a resolution to the conflict.
Third, events in this world always have multiple causes. Hitting a snooker ball has several causes, such as the movement of the stick, the right alignment of the balls, the contractions of the player’s muscles, and their will to play the game. Political events, including wars, are even more complex. Therefore, a simplistic claim that religion A caused event Z is very hard to defend because the same religion may appear in very different forms in different circumstances. The reason why Catholicism had a problematic role in Northern Ireland cannot be attributed solely to Catholicism. One could speculate that replacing Catholicism in Northern Ireland with any other religion or ideology would still get the same results. It is thus an exaggeration to locate this crisis in religious disagreement alone, because a proper understanding requires a more varied analysis.
Conflicts seem to be able to piggyback religions so that religions escalate them, especially when something that is sacred for one group is defiled (Clarke 2014). Religiosity or quasi-religious behaviour appears to have a certain societal function that may strengthen in-group and out-group distinctions and disagreements. In comparison to secular communities, religious communities have a greater probability of enduring over time, and their members tend to be more effectively committed to them (Sosis and Kiper 2014). However, even in the most well-known cases, the causes of conflicts are multitudinous. For example, even the so-called ‘Wars of Religion’ that were fought in the seventeenth century were not primarily about disagreements over doctrine, since religious issues were intimately connected to the parallel movement towards European nation states that were shedding their ties with medieval kingdoms (Cavanaugh 2009).
In the whole known history of the human race, only seven percent of human wars have had significant religious factors (Phillips and Axelrod 2004). According to another source, religion has played some kind of role in forty percent of 3,500 conflicts, while it has hardly ever been the major cause of a war (Austin, Kranock and Oommen 2003). Since the end of the Second World War, religion has played some kind of role in various civil wars, of which eighty percent have taken place between Islamic groups or have involved an Islamic group as one side of the conflict (Toft 2011).
4 Epistemic issues in religious disagreement
What should one do when disagreeing with someone about religious matters? In recent philosophy, there is an ongoing debate about the epistemology of disagreement, and the results of this debate have also been put to use in religious settings (Christensen and Lackey 2013; Thune 2010; King 2008).
The diversity of religions and the disagreements between worldviews have a strong negative intuitive force against exclusivist religious convictions: if there are so many people who hold mutually exclusive beliefs, how can I ever be sure that I have the right beliefs? In keeping with this, many regard exclusivism as a distasteful position to hold; if one considers oneself superior to others, this surely is a sign of close-mindedness or even bigotry. King (2008: 839) calls this the ‘moral objection’ to religious exclusivism. In effect, diversity and disagreement between religious traditions is usually regarded as one of the most powerful anti-theistic arguments (Ruse 2010: 443; Zagzebski 2008: 27). However, there is no single argument against exclusivism from religious diversity and disagreement. Religious sceptics think that religious diversity is good evidence for thinking that no religion is true. A more moderate version of this was proposed by John Hick, who thinks that some form of religious pluralism is true (Hick 1997).
Disagreement can be a challenge to religious beliefs in two ways, which epistemologists call the first-order and higher-order challenges (Pittard 2020). The first-order challenge is directed to the truth of a religious proposition in the light of the ability of a given system to relate itself to the fact of disagreement. If religious disagreement is to be expected based on religion A, whereas this would not be expected from religion B, then religious disagreement is a more difficult challenge for religion B. As already discussed, the New Testament evidence anticipates serious disagreements, so these should not come as a surprise. However, it is possible to turn the fact of disagreement against the coherence of one’s view of God. A related and much-discussed case in Christian theology that constitutes a first-order challenge is the question of divine hiddenness: if God is good and wants to establish a relationship with humans, why does God seem to hide himself? Why is God’s existence not more apparent and obvious (Schellenberg 2017)? If a particular sort of propositional faith is required for a relationship with God, why does God allow so much disagreement when it comes to views concerning ultimate reality? This question is closely linked to the questions about religious luck and religious exclusivism. At first glance, it would appear unfair for God to stipulate a particular set of cognitive beliefs as a requirement for salvation, if only relatively few people throughout the history of the world have had access to these beliefs (Axtell 2019). However, the Judeo-Christian tradition has always been aware of this problem and it has provided various answers, the most common of which are some sort of inclusivist solution in the doctrine of soteriology (Baker-Hytch 2014).
The higher-order challenge concerns how to assess the evidence for and against a given religion: if we follow the constraints of general epistemology, what should we do with regard to disagreement? When one disagrees with a religious epistemic peer, the first option is called conciliationism. This calls for a postponement of our commitments and a reassessment of the evidence, and if neither side is able to provide good and mutually acknowledged justifications then both parties should lower their credences, that is, their level of trust in the given propositions. The other option is called steadfastness, in which case nothing happens and both parties retain their initial credences.
Conciliationism constitutes a higher-order challenge, as it requires one to lower their credence in the truth of their religion in the case of disagreement, or to adopt an agnostic stance (Pittard 2019). For example, if Akilah, who is a Muslim, encounters Carl, who is a Christian, and they recognize that they are more or less experts in their own religions and also, as far as they know, apparent epistemic peers, should both Akilah and Carl become agnostic? Even if some people have doubts when they encounter members of other religions who appear to be as virtuous and sincere as they are, this higher-order challenge does not seem to have much power over their beliefs.
Applying conciliationism to religious or even philosophical views can have surprising results: if the Christian Carl met Angela, who is an unfaltering atheist, should both Carl and Angela become agnostic and mutually recognize that there is something right about both theism and atheism? Strong conciliationism clearly leads to counter-intuitive results.
An example of one mediating view is offered by Robert McKim, who in several of his works has argued for the ‘Critical Stance’ (CT; McKim 2001: 140–141; 2011: 131–170). The CT is constituted by the two following principles:
E-principle: Disagreement about an issue or area of inquiry provides reason to think that each side has an obligation to examine beliefs about the issue.
T-principle: Disagreement about an issue or area of inquiry provides reason for whatever beliefs are held about that issue or area of inquiry to be tentative.
According to McKim, tentativeness means – among others things – exposing oneself to other perspectives, trying to get a sense of their appeal and the concerns of those who advocate them, exploring strategies that attempt to solve the conflict, recognizing that one may be wrong, remaining open to revise one’s beliefs, and, last, being willing to abandon those beliefs if it becomes important or reasonable to do so. McKim’s argument for the E- and T-principles is as follows:
- Disagreement about an issue or area of inquiry provides reason to think that that issue or area is an ambiguous one.
- If an issue or area is ambiguous, it is more likely than it otherwise would be that our views on it are mistaken.
- The more likely it is that our views on an issue are mistaken, the more likely it is that we have an obligation to examine our own beliefs and the beliefs of the other groups with whom there is disagreement about that issue.
- If an issue or area of inquiry is ambiguous, it is more likely than it otherwise would be that we have an obligation to examine our own beliefs and the beliefs of other groups about that issue.
- Disagreement about an issue or area of inquiry provides reason to think that each side has an obligation to examine beliefs about that issue. (McKim 2001: 182–183)
It must be noted that Kim’s discussion predates more recent debates on conciliationism, and his E- and T-principles do not explicitly require confidence reduction. It remains somewhat unclear whether tentativeness should be understood in terms of changes in confidence levels, as it seems to refer more to particular actions, like examining beliefs and their grounds more thoroughly. Kim’s view is best seen as a mediating position. Tentativeness may allow for retaining the existing credences, which reflects the way worldviews are held. Confidence reduction tends to make acting on one’s basic principles difficult, and effectively means abandoning or putting one’s worldview on hold. However, it all depends on what we take tentativeness to require from us.
4.1 Uniqueness of deep convictions
Religious beliefs are not like convictions that are based on simple perceptions. They are ‘deep’, in the sense that they are networked so that they are, first, connected to many other beliefs that one may have, and, second, they ground other beliefs. This pertains to all worldviews, whether they are religious or non-religious. For this reason, it is highly unlikely that one argument can change how a person sees the world (Blanchard and Paul 2021; Lougheed 2018; cf. Turnbull 2021). In order for this to happen, several beliefs need to change, and this typically takes time.
The depth of religious convictions also makes it harder to assess when disagreeing with peers. It is easier to recognize peers in, say, mathematics, since one can easily list the features of a good mathematician. Regarding religions, it is customary that religious traditions may offer varying requirements for religious expertise. For example, it is possible to emphasize experience over knowledge and vice versa.
Religious believers sometimes refer to religious experiences as a basis for their belief. Yet it is known that members of different religions can all have experiences that support their own religion. Even atheists can be said to have ‘atheistic’ experiences when they have a feeling that there is no God. These experiences often have a strong first-person force, but it is very hard to explain such experiences to others. This is why experiences do not easily nullify the higher-order challenge.
However, religious belief is not just about believing certain propositions. The life of faith contains several affective elements (Scott 2013; Pittard 2020: 182–228). Consider the following analogous non-religious examples: Jack is an ethics professor who knows all about the pros and cons of vegetarianism. He knows that for many people, giving up meat would be a good thing, but so far he has not committed himself to changing his diet. He then visits a meat production factory and is shocked to see how animals are treated. This changes Jack’s perception, and he decides to give up eating meat. Jill is a medical student who learns all the arguments for and against abortion, and she adopts a pro-choice stance. One day she must perform an abortion herself, and this experience makes her a pro-lifer. In the cases of Jack and Jill, nothing changes in their knowledge about the arguments. Instead, they gain affective insight which makes them value certain things more than they did before.
In a religious context, experiences may offer such insights. Here ‘experience’ is used in a very broad sense, since it quite often refers not to extraordinary mystical experiences, like heavenly voices and visions, but merely to deep but often incommunicable convictions that one way of looking at the world is better than others. From a purely descriptive point of view, these insights have a powerful influence over our knowledge acquisition. Often the person who has this kind of insight has no other option but to follow it (van Inwagen 2010). While it is descriptively true that religious experiences can have a deep impact on individuals, it is unclear how much one can normatively rely on them in cases of disagreement. At this point, the discussion concerning disagreement becomes linked to the question regarding the extent to which we are free to choose our beliefs.
4.2 Etiology of disagreement and arbitrariness of religious convictions
As mentioned briefly above, one of the salient factors behind religious disagreement is that there seems to be a certain amount of arbitrariness in how disagreements are adopted. J. S. Mill formulated his famous criticism based on the contingent nature of religious beliefs as follows:
[…] in proportion to a man’s want of confidence in his own solitary judgement, does he usually repose, with implicit trust, on the infallibility of ‘the world’ in general. And the world, to each individual, means the part of it with which he comes in contact; his party, his sect, his church […] Nor is his faith in this collective authority at all shaken by his being aware that other ages, countries, sects, churches […] have thought, and even now think, the exact reverse. He devolves upon his own world the responsibility of being in the right against the dissentient worlds of other people; and it never troubles him that mere accident has decided which of these numerous worlds is the object of his reliance, and that the same causes which make him a Churchman in London, would have made him a Buddhist or a Confucian in Pekin. (Mill 1991: 229–230)
In Mill’s view, the ‘same causes’ of belief-formation function everywhere in human life, and acknowledging this should make us less certain of our beliefs. They are, in the end, formed by a method that produces contrary results in different settings. More recently, Stephen Maitzen has argued that the uneven distribution of theistic beliefs forms a defeater for theism. According to Maitzen, if one observes the demographics of religions, it is easy to see that the form of religiosity is to a great extent defined by one’s country and culture (Maitzen 2006). If you are born in Saudi Arabia, you will very likely end up being a Muslim, whereas if you are born in Thailand, you will become a Buddhist. In order to become a Christian, you would be lucky to be born in Italy, where it is very likely that you will encounter the Christian message in one form or another.
In other words, the claim that religiosity is ‘natural’ merely means that we easily adopt religious or quasi-religious beliefs when we are exposed to them. The cultural context can thus fill the space with stuff that is purely contingent and arbitrary. This way, the existence of religious diversity and disagreement could be explained. In other words, religious convictions are contingent, non-truth tracking beliefs which serve, or have served in the past, some pragmatic function in our societies. There is no reason to deny that there is a certain contingent element in what religious systems we come in contact with (Kvandal 2022). The arguments or observations that make this point, however, typically have a further goal. It could be argued that the contingent nature of our beliefs proves that enculturation as the method of belief-formation in question is unreliable because the beliefs generally follow the environment, making us believe what is believed wherever we happen to dwell instead of tracking the truth. Most Christians would probably agree with the fundamental idea behind this point: adopting beliefs through the enculturation process alone cannot be considered virtuous or optimal, even though it is one of the widely available methods. Even in cases of culturally adopted beliefs, one should develop a personal relation to the beliefs through one’s own thinking and deliberation, when one is capable of doing so.
Arguments from the mere fact that we can in some cases detect causal or cultural factors behind the beliefs that are held by some groups of people often border on committing a genetic fallacy. Observing the mechanism of cognition and belief formation does not as such have any normative force regarding the truths of the beliefs and perceptions. Avoiding genetic fallacy on the one hand and, on the other, being able to distinguish between the cases when we have knowledge and when we do not, is notoriously tricky business. This is typically discussed within the cognitive science of religion and its contributions to the so-called debunking arguments (Griffiths and Wilkins 2013; Visala and Jong 2014).
4.3 Non-doxastic beliefs and disagreement
Naturally, in order for religious propositions to be incompatible, they need to be taken in a realist sense. In other words, religious language sometimes makes truth-apt statements about the world which are in principle falsifiable. From this it follows that different religious convictions can sometimes be mutually exclusive. The use of the word ‘sometimes’ underlines the obvious mutuality of many religious outlooks. That is, they are not totally mutually exclusive, as many religions contain common elements despite their disagreements. What is at stake here is that the core convictions of different religions are sometimes in conflict. Even if two religions can agree on many core propositions, they can disagree on many others.
One way to avoid the problem of religious disagreement is to claim that religious faith is not essentially about believing things. This may sound surprising, but several philosophers of religion have argued for the possibility of non-cognitive or non-doxastic belief (Cupitt 2010; Phillips 2002). This would remove the significant disagreement between religions because their members do not actually believe in the things they appear to believe. This strategy, however, merely moves the challenge of disagreement to a higher level: on what grounds should one believe that this pragmatic or non-cognitivist account of the religious form of life is true?
Even if it is likely true that believers in different traditions adopt their respective beliefs on prudential and pragmatic grounds, it is not ultimately possible to divorce epistemic and pragmatic reasons from each other. The latter may include the hope that adopting a given religion will help the person flourish in life, or that it will manifest other kinds of goods such as purpose, wisdom, virtuous behaviour, or self-control (Le Poidevin 2019). A person might adopt a belief of whose truth they are not sure but which seems beneficial at that moment. However, if they learn that this belief is in fact not supported by evidence, it becomes irrational to continue believing it. Moreover, pragmatic strategies themselves are subject to wide debate. Thus, disagreement is simply moved to a higher level and is focused on when it is permissible to believe something without evidence, and one must give good reasons for adopting such strategies. For example, it could be argued that it is never permissible to believe something that one knows to be false. It is also possible to argue that the net gain of religion in the world is negative, even if there are several benefits that some individuals may gain from holding religious convictions (Antony 2010).
4.4 An argument from religious agreement?
There are several religions and worldviews that are mutually exclusive in their core tenets, but one could still claim that there are several points on which they agree. This agreement forms the basis of the consensus gentium argument, which uses the universality of the belief in God as a basis for the existence of God. The argument is not currently considered to be particularly strong because it is always possible that the masses are in error. Nonetheless, it is worth taking a look at the history of the argument and some recent developments that have tried to revitalize it.
John Calvin argues in his Institutes that ‘there is no nation so barbarous, no people so savage, that they have not a deep-seated conviction that there is a God’ (I.3.1; Calvin 1960). He takes this as evidence that the belief in God is innate, i.e. that one does not need to be taught to believe in God since we naturally have this belief in some incipient form or another. However, after the Western world came into contact with other cultures, it became harder to argue for the universality of theism because some Eastern philosophies and religions seemed to diverge from this trend. In the light of new evidence, the area of consensus seemed to be much smaller than Calvin had thought. As the above discussion about arbitrariness shows, it is not clear what the etiology of religious beliefs in fact is, and whether this belief-formation method is in fact truth-tracking.
More recently, Linda Zagzebski (2011) has defended a form of the consensus gentium argument on the following grounds: all our knowledge is based on self-trust that pertains to ourselves as knowledge seekers. If I think that I am conscientious in my belief formation, I should have a reason to think that others are like that too. If a high number of people hold similar beliefs, this is evidence that their given beliefs might be correct. As noted, this is not a particularly strong argument since we cannot know a priori how conscientious people in fact are and what factors are involved in their belief-formation processes. A stronger case could be made if it could be argued that the existence of God is the best explanation for the widespread belief in God. Yet here we are faced with the problem of tracking the causes for religious belief and assessing them against each other.
5 Managing religious disagreement in the Christian tradition
In the twentieth century, the ecumenical movement tried to heal the historical breaches in Christian unity, with some success. Ecumenical discussions between churches and denominations typically aim for a common declaration that different parties can subscribe to. For example, the member communities of the World Council of Churches have signed the Lima Document, also known as Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry (1982), as a result of which some churches have unified their liturgical practices and, in some cases, recognized each other’s ministers and sacraments as valid.
The Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (JDDJ) was signed by the Lutheran World Federation and Catholic Church’s Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity in 1999. So far, JDDJ has been affirmed, in addition to the original Lutheran and Catholic parties, by three other Christian bodies: the Methodist (2006), Anglican, and Reformed churches (both 2017). While the document acknowledges that it was not able to solve all the issues that separate the churches, it succeeded in solving a great deal of misconceptions and one-sided interpretations regarding the central issues that drove the churches apart during the Reformation. Only in a few cases have the ecumenical documents been able to restore eucharistic communion. An example of this is the Porvoo Common Statement (1993), which enabled the unity between the North European Lutheran and Anglican communities.
In addition to this official level of dialogue, ecumenical attitudes are displayed on the grassroot level in many ways. Especially the pietistic or more pragmatic forms of Christianity have favoured ‘the ecumenism of the heart’, which seeks to recognize the common commitment and sentiment towards the core tenets of the Christian faith without the need to engage in official dialogues. Many modern Christians likely view the extent of antagonisms during and after the Reformation with bewilderment, and general attitudes among Christians have become more open and welcoming on the whole. At the same time, however, many groups believe that neglecting boundaries and doctrinal disagreements as pernicious is detrimental to group identity. While celebrating the deepening ties between Christian communities, the Catholic Church reminds the faithful in a recent statement titled The Bishop and Christian Unity. An Ecumenical Vademecum (2020) that this rapprochement cannot be made at the expense of truth:
We affirm once again that the theological dialogue does not seek a theological lowest common denominator on which to reach a compromise, but is rather about deepening one’s grasp of the whole truth that Christ has given to his Church, a truth that we never cease to understand better as we follow the Holy Spirit’s promptings. (2020: 28)
While the ecumenical movement and related practices deal with intra-Christian disagreements, within academic theology the theology of religions discusses commonalities and difference between different religions. An example of doing Christian theology in a multireligious and global context is Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen’s five-volume series A Constructive Christian Theology for the Pluralistic World (2013). Typically, different Christian traditions have their own programs and centres for conflict resolution that try to ease tensions between religious and ethnic groups around the world. For example, the Angelicum University in Rome hosts the John Paul II Center for Inter-Religious Dialogue, and Harvard University runs the Pluralism Project.
A visitor to modern day Oxford, for example, can visit the memorials of both Catholic and Protestant martyrs. Martyrdom is the ultimate sacrifice that one can make for his or her conviction. As noted, from a contemporary perspective, one may perceive these deaths as unnecessary and perplexing. In their own time, they resulted from disagreements that people were unable to solve. As an act, martyrdom takes place when all means of persuasion are depleted and one denies any other means of advancing one’s cause. Instead of resorting to force and violence, martyrs ideally give their lives as an act of non-violent resistance. During the first centuries, this was sometimes seen as a desired fate, and the church fathers had to admonish believers not to seek to make themselves martyrs. The early Christian example shows that not all cases of martyrdom are properly motivated. Nonetheless, many Christians still give their lives because of their faith as a sign of witness.
Even if disagreement can cause distress, disagreement is not inherently evil, or, to use theological language, it is not necessarily a feature of the fallen world as such. From a theological point of view, disagreement is sometimes a neutral feature of human cognition, which can have both negative and positive outcomes. Sometimes it is even interpreted as something intended by God. If disagreements are met in an environment that manifests proper humility and intellectual honesty, they can be a source of empowerment, liberation, innovation, and progress. For example, Katherine Dormandy has argued that religious disagreement could
promote the improvement of religious belief systems by delivering outside criticism, additional evidence, epistemic alternatives, and counterinstances to one’s biases […and] safeguard it against inaccuracy and promote new insights. (Dormandy 2019; see 2021)
This applies not only to Christian but to all kinds of communities, be they religious or secular.
