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Book Review: Falsification and Belief

Protestantism was left with a natural world devoid of any clear means of being the revelation of the sacred" (p. 263). This fine book argues that religious symbolism and faith are the expression of experience in which man encounters God simultaneously with his grasp of the world and of particulars within it. The encounter is essentially intersubjective. It therefore tends to disappear when the subjective is either objectified in mechanical models of thought or undercut by philosophical reason. "The God of encounter and the absolute of philosophy are not the same. Invariably one is destroyed by the other" (p. 260). I used to think, with Tillich, that the genius of Christianity was to behold these two as one—a view I no longer share. Although F. does not remark upon it, today's counterculture is also an "encounter culture." The (ontological?) primacy of "meeting" over "reflection" is today being asserted in many popular ways. Theology should take note, and avoid the temptation to align itself, out of habit, with those who trust speculation more than the data of immediate presence. F., who teaches at Chester, England, and was previously unknown to me, deserves to have his book read by every student of theology.