264 religious revolution nowprospect of creating the religion of the future within an established
religion such as Christianity. A radical reconstruction of the existing
religion would be required: so radical that no one could know before-
hand whether the result would continue to be seen as the same religion
or as another one. Th e question remains, however, whether we can
imagine taking the established religion as the point of departure for such
a revolution in our spiritual life. Any affi rmative answer to this question
has to reckon with the scandals of reason.
Th e scandals of reason shadowing the salvation religion are, I ear-
lier suggested, three: the scandal of supernaturalism, the scandal of
particularity (a universal message attributed to a par tic u lar plot: the
narrative of divine intervention and revelation in par tic u lar times
and places), and the scandal of the incoherence or unintelligibility of the
idea of God— at least of any version of that idea that can do the work
required of it by one of the salvation religions. Consider these scandals
of reason from the perspective of the argument against the halfway
house between belief and disbelief and in Christian context. Th e
point is to determine on what terms, or in what sense, someone who
confronts these scandals can give them their due, without the equivoca-
tions of the halfway house, and nevertheless begin the required reli-
gious revolution within the confi nes of the established religion.
In the end, a gulf remains between the sacred and the profane
paths to that revolution: a contrast of visions that is pregnant with
consequence for the conduct of life. Th e per sis tence of such a chasm
is the only sure way to know that we have not succumbed to the self-
deceptive seductions of the halfway house and that we are not using
an eviscerated faith to disguise a diff erent faith or, more probably, a
lack of faith.
Th e scandal of supernaturalism is the role that is played in the narra-
tives of Christianity, as in those of the other salvation religions, by ini-
tiatives and events that defy the regular workings of nature: the causal
connections and the laws that ordinary perception observes or that
science discovers. Having created the world, God periodically inter-
venes in it. His interventions may suspend all regular causal connec-
tions as well as work through them. Th e power to interrupt or to change
the normal workings of nature may occasionally be invested in par tic-