struggling with the world 125
thus by reducing the radical commitment that faith may inform and
inspire. It is a species of self- deception, animated by a sentimental de-
sire to believe that is bereft of the experience of a living faith. It hedges
the bet about committing existence in a par tic u lar direction rather
than doubling the bet, and limits the risk only by forgoing the prize.
What begins as self- deception ends as confusion or cowardice.
A second objection to the halfway house between belief and disbelief
is that it can invariably be found to stand in the ser vice of the conven-
tional moral and po liti cal pieties of the day. Th e same self- deception
and cowardice informing the “demythologizing” of religion help ac-
count for unwillingness to defy those pieties. Th eir ruling principle is
the accommodation of the message to the established structure of so-
ciety and of life. Th us, the religious faith, diminished in the halfway
house, and the conventional secular humanism stand in the ser vice of
the same moral conventions. Reduced to an allegorical restatement of
such commonplaces, religious faith becomes an idle ornament.
Aft er we have rejected all attempts to split the diff erence between be-
lief and disbelief in the narrative of divine revelation and redemption,
there nevertheless remains common ground between the sacred and
the profane versions of the struggle with the world. It is to this com-
mon ground that I now turn.
Metaphysical vision
Th e struggle with the world develops against the background of a vi-
sion of reality and of our place in it. Th is vision oft en remains implicit
in ideas about the path of our ascent, through transformation and self-
transformation, to triumph over death and to a greater share in the at-
tributes of divinity. In this sense, it is presupposed by this spiritual
orientation. A denial of any part of these assumptions robs the teaching
about our rise of part of its meaning and authority.
Th e vision does not amount to a metaphysical system. It is compat-
ible with a broad range of philosophical ideas about the self and the
world. Th ere is nevertheless much that it excludes. Th e historical limi-
tation of available philosophical vocabularies and traditions creates a
permanent temptation to state these presuppositions too narrowly.