understand “grace” or “love” (“agape”) or “spiritual” or “glory” as they are used in
Christian discourse one must be sufficiently involved in the Christian form of life, in
prayer and worship and in viewing the world and one's life in certain ways. I have put a
consideration of this idea into a separate section to emphasize that it need not be
associated with the “different criteria of acceptability” and “different concepts of truth' andexistence' ” that Phillips accepts. The possibility of this independence rests on two
considerations. First, the “meaning depends on practice” position need not hold that this
is the only source of meaning, or the entire source of meaning, for religious terms. As I
just formulated it,
end p.226
the claim is only that to fully understand these terms, involvement in Christian practice is
needed. That leaves room for a partial understanding by outsiders and hence
susceptibility to evaluation by epistemic criteria that hold both inside and outside.
Second, terms that depend on the form of life for part of their meaning by no means
exhaust the religious lexicon. It is rife with terms used exactly as they are in other
contexts. Consider the Nicene Creed. It contains such phrases as “he was crucified under
Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried” and such words and shorter phrases as
“man,” “apostolic church,” “all that is,” and “for us.” In petitionary prayer we ask for
healing of sick bodies, strength, courage, and acceptance of what we cannot change. It
strains credulity to suppose that such terms and phrases are used in special religious
senses that differ from the senses in which they are used elsewhere. For both of these
reasons, the acceptance of a partial dependence of some constituents of religious
discourse on religious practice for their meaning is compatible with a denial of Phillips's
contentions discussed in the previous section.
So what are we to say about the “dependence on practice” thesis? I find it very plausible.
It is dubious that talk of divine grace, or divine glory, or agape will be as fully as possible
understood by those who have not experienced such things in their lives, who have not
gained some sense of what it is like to have been a recipient of grace or agape, to have
found themselves bestowing agape on others, to have experienced the glory of God in
nature, contemplation, or worship. These terms can be given theological definitions: thus,
“grace” can be defined as “a freely bestowed gift by God that goes beyond the creation
and preservation of the recipient.” But if that's the whole story, they will lack the
dimensions of meaning that enable them and the realities they denote to play a significant
role in the life of the believer. But both because other aspects of their meaning can be
common to believer and unbeliever, and because of the other terms of religious discourse
that can be wholly shared across the divide, this point about the derivation of meaning
from active involvement in the form of life does not support the radical form of
autonomy for religious discourse espoused by the likes of Phillips.