WILLIAM E. CONNOLLYtreating, for instance, biblical statements that appear to contravene that story as
allegorical.
Faith is sustained by a mixture of cultural devices, including induction at a young
age, common rituals, shared stories, epiphanic experiences, scientific research, and public
arguments, all mixing into each other. Occasionally, an argument, unexpected event, ex-
pression of mockery, or startling piece of evidence hits a person of this or that faith in
just the right way at a susceptible moment, prompting eventual conversion from one faith
to another. Surely Spinoza’s traumatic excommunication as a youth by Jewish Elders in
Amsterdam played a role in the later evolution of his thought, for instance. Argument
alone seldom, if ever, suffices to lodge or dislodge faith. It is even hard to say what
‘‘argument alone’’ would look like in such a context.
I also embrace a variant of the Straussian contention that the ’’antagonism between
Spinoza and Judaism, between belief and unbelief, is ultimately not theoretical, but
moral.’’ To bring out the points of contact and difference, let me expand the formulation
a little. The difference (which does not always have to take the form of an ‘‘antagonism’’)
is not exactly between ‘‘belief and unbelief,’’ with the implication that one side is filled
with belief and the other has a vacancy where belief might have been. It is better articu-
lated as the difference between a positive belief intranscendence over the worldand a
positive belief in theimmanence of the world.Those inspired, say, by Moses, Paul, August-
ine, or Mohammed hold that the world is created, that (in some cases) eternal life is
possible, that the human obligation to morality is founded on a divine command in the
last instance, and that divine revelation is fundamental to cultivation of religious truth.
Those inspired by the likes of Buddha (in some readings), Epicurus, Lucretius, Spinoza,
Hume, Nietzsche, and Havelock, by contrast, confess faith that the world is eternal rather
than created, that it is a world of becoming without an intrinsic purpose, and that good-
ness and nobility are anchored, in the first instance, in a nonjuridical source such as
human love of the complexity of world or the abundance of life over induction into a
specific identity. The debate between these two faiths has not to date been resolved, de-
spite what some parties on both sides say. The adversaries are inspired in part by contrast-
ing moral judgments, with one set asserting that the world would fall apart unless most
people profess belief in transcendence and the other contending that overcoming resent-
ment of contingency is what is needed and that violent struggles between different visions
of transcendence have brought a load of otherwise unnecessary agony into the world.
Strauss himself may believe in a created world, or that the masses require such a belief
even if he does not, or that Platonic reason is sufficient unto itself.^13 I will not try to
decide that question.
My view is that the most noble response to this persisting conflict is to seek to trans-
mute it into debates salted with agonistic respect between the partisans, with each faith-
constituency acknowledging that its deepest and most entrenched faith is legitimately
contestable by others. It may be, as ‘‘pessimists’’ eagerly retort, that many believers will
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