I concur. I think and “believe,” e.g., that Jesus rose from the dead, but that it wouldn’t diminish the Gospel if his biographers in fact have gotten this aspect of his story spectacularly wrong. (Tolstoy omits the Resurrection from his Gospel in Brief.) I think and “believe” that we have “free-will,” but that determinism (not from a materialistic perspective but from a theological perspective) has some logic going for it and might provide a truer way of looking at things. I think and “believe” that, contra Wittgenstein, we can make true ethical statements based on the objectively-discernible nature of man, but that I might be wrong and Wittgenstein might be right. I think and “believe” that the Truth that really matters does not lend itself to such propositional expressions, and at the same time is self-evident.

Here is an interesting passage from towards the end of the Gospel in Brief:

“The Gospel is the revelation of this truth, that the first source of everything is the understanding of life itself. This being so, the Gospel puts in the place of what men call “God” a right understanding of life. Without this understanding there is no life; men only live in so far as they understand life.

Those who do not grasp this, and who deem that the body is the source of life, shut themselves out from true life; but those who comprehend that they live, not through the body, but through the spirit, possess true life. This is that true life which Jesus Christ came to teach to men. Having conceived that man’s life flows from the understanding, he gave to men the teaching and example of a life of the understanding in the body.

Earlier religions were the announcements of law as to what men ought to do, and not to do, for the service of God. The teaching of Jesus, on the other hand, deals only with the understanding of life. No man has ever seen, and no man can see or know, an external God; therefore our life cannot take for its aim the service of such a God. Only by adopting for his supreme principle the inner understanding of life, having for its source the acknowledgment of God, can man surely travel the way of life.”

I’m all for good works, though with the understanding that I get to decide what’s good. (The typical religiously or morally or politically motivated suicide bomber presumably thinks she’s doing good works. I’d disagree. There’s the rub (to quote William rather than Ludwig this time).

And I don’t oppose salvation. I just don’t believe in it.

So what are you saying, Jeff? You’re against good works? Or salvation? Or both?

I mean, I understand that CDL’s are contrarians, but isn’t that taking things a bit too far?

And as far as flies go, I have to wonder what Wittgenstein would have made of that movie with Jeff Goldblum. Talk about showing something that words can’t describe. Plus, what the hell is a “fly-bottle”? I didn’t know they make bottles for flies. Is it like a flea circus?

Please, John. I certainly won’t dislike you for stating your opinion forthrightly.

I disagree that the “institutional church” would be responsible for a propositional conception of faith, if I understand correctly what you mean by that. People have a need to understand and to communicate their understandings, some people more than others. So there’s an effort to reduce thoughts to propositions. But then eventually you’re trying to fathom the unfathomable and there’s no language for that.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with engaging in this kind of discourse, provided wine is involved.

The point being, well, I’m not sure. You start bringing Wittgenstein into it, and the next thing you know it’s hard to say anything. Which is ironic considering that he liked Tolstoy, who was famously wordy.

from a short article I found online a while ago titled “Wittgenstein, Tolstoy, and The Gospel in Brief” (http://www.the-philosopher.co.uk/witty.htm) [I added a link to The Gospel in Brief to my list of Essential Reading in the sidebar at right a while ago]:

Although the Gospel in Brief was not published in Tolstoy’s lifetime, it clearly comes from the period of his religious and moral writings between 1879 and 1902. It is a fusion of the four Gospels, the purpose of which is to seek an answer to the problem of how we should live. It is both philosophical and practical, rather than theological and spiritual, in its intention. Tolstoy believed that the existence of God could neither be proved nor disproved and that the meaning of life lay beyond the limits of our minds. ( And compare this with Wittgenstein’s conception of absolute or ethical value as expressed in his 1929/30 Lecture on Ethics (Philosophical Review, 1965.) Tolstoy further believed that the Church itself, as a body, interfered with one’s ability to live a peaceful, everyday life, free from significant pain and suffering. This too can only have appealed to a restless soul such as Wittgenstein.

The Only Book in the Shop

How Wittgenstein came by his copy of the Gospel in Brief, and the importance he came to attach to it, is almost a parable in itself. At the time in question Wittgenstein was serving with the Austrian army at the start of the First World War. These circumstances were very different from those of Edwardian England let alone the blissful solitude of a Norwegian fjord. Wittgenstein discovered a small bookshop in Tarnow, a town then under Austrian rule but now in southern Poland. It is said that the shop had only one book (Tolstoy’s) and that Wittgenstein bought the book because it was the only one they had. Some have suggested that he saw this as a sign, though we shall leave that supposition there. In any case, he started reading the Gospel in Brief on September 1st 1914 and subsequently carried it with him at all times, memorising passages of it by heart. He became known to his comrades as the man with the gospels, constantly recommending the book to anyone who was troubled. Wittgenstein himself said that the book essentially kept him alive.
. . .
There is then a paradox. While Wittgenstein asserts that nothing can be said about ethics, the Gospel in Brief says a great deal about how life should be lived, and, furthermore, what it says seems to have had a powerful influence on Wittgenstein. The solution to this problem lies in the distinction between saying and showing, as expressed in the Tractatus; because although there are no ethical propositions – the Gospel cannot say anything about how we should live – yet Wittgenstein must have believed that it did show the way to live.

The statement ‘It is wrong to kill’ can be said, in the minimalist sense that it can be spoken, but in ‘Tractarian’ terms it cannot be said in the sense that it expresses a particular moral imperative. People say things like this all the time, and other people understand them. It is, however, possible that someone may disagree with this statement, and there is ultimately no way of resolving the dispute by reference to states of affairs or facts about the world. This is because the statement does not express a fact, and this is what is meant when Wittgenstein asserts that ethics cannot be put into words. If I say it is wrong to kill, do I, thereby, show that it is wrong to kill? In some cases I do and, in some cases I do not. There is no way of proving that it is wrong.

Such remarks as: ‘I am my world’ (Tractatus 5.63), and ‘For what the solipsist means is quite correct, only it cannot be said, but makes itself manifest’ (Tractatus 5.62), provide a key to Wittgenstein’s view. In these he directs us to the actual experience of living. The person whose moral outlook, i.e. their way of living, is changed by a work such as the Gospel in Brief has not been convinced by logical arguments or matters of fact. They have, rather, been shown, the way that they should live.
. . .

Good works as the path to salvation. If there is such a thing.

Here’s the thing: Rick Santorum “knows and understands” that whole categories of really decent, good, honorable people are headed straight for hell because they engage in activity described at one point in his scripture as an “abomination.” I know and understand that he’s a dangerous fanatic who’s also wholly misguided and knows and understands things which aren’t so. I assume that if he knew me or anything about me he would have a similar view of me.

I think a moment of Wittgenstein, from the Philosophical Investigations, is in order:

“What is your aim in philosophy?
“To show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle.”

I wasn’t offended.

Although this may be rather unorthodox, I think the whole concept of “faith” is suspect, and (John Regan probably won’t like me for saying this) I think the institutional Church and its institutional requirements are largely responsible for the advent of this propositional conception of “faith.” The inherent irrationality and internal contradictions of this standard conception of faith is I believe a cause for much of the disrepute such “faith-based” religions are held in, and for much of the wars and inquisitions that have been perpetrated in their names. I think what ultimately matters is what one knows and understands. Any stock we might put in a book written almost 2000 years ago depends entirely on what we immediately and personally know and understand. (It’s probably important to admit in this context that words and rationalizing can be an obstacle to knowing and understanding.) Buddhists are a-okay in my book, and from what I understand they don’t necessarily believe in “God.” What I find inconceivable, i.e., completely contrary to everything I know and understand, or at least think I know and understand, is abject thorough-going materialism. I also believe that what matters even more than what one knows and understands is how one lives, although this is tied up intimately with what one knows and understands. One of my favorite bloggers, a professed atheist, albeit one who linked approvingly to one of my posts on gnosis a while back, has a post today with this title:
Preach the Gospel always and, if necessary, use words

Hey. Jeff. I’m not proselytizing, or even deeply engaging in theology or philosophy with you. I have to be really drunk to do either.

Just musing a little. Thought you might like it.

Nor does it do anything to resolve these things for those who don’t have that faith. Can you convince me of God? No. Is such an entity needed? Not that I can see. Is there such an entity anyway? I can’t see it, don’t believe it, and therefore don’t find myself struggling to account for the implicit and inherent contradictions.