Tinkling symbols

Virgil C. Aldrich

pp. 38-60

in: John Hick (ed), Faith and the philosophers, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1964

Abstract

May I say first that from my impression of Mr. Price's essay I confidently judge its author to be a man of rare religious sensitivity. His attitude is so right on this count that it makes me want to learn from him, all the more because in my youth I was made to practise religion much in the way that he describes and prescribes, though the affair was not taught to me as being as inward a thing as Mr. Price pictures. I devoutly hope that my reflections will not dislodge anyone from the genuine inner life which Mr. Price takes to be of the essence. I am quite sure that there is such inner experience, for occasionally my own life becomes both desperate and radiant with it. Such experience must be inward in some sense, because the people around me do not know when I am having it — unless I show it — and my trying to make sense of it to them is indeed an agonizing business. Then I tell them that right practices must precede right beliefs and the understanding of them. To suppose that such a principle is true only the other way around — that right beliefs must precede right practices — is a mistake.