old confusion: if one finds out what is meant by “the mind of God” and gives heed to it,
that is what one is heeding, not the practice!
Fourth, God's consciousness is often associated with the notion of a divine plan which is
supposed to explain all things, but no actual explanation is advanced. If I say that
something has happened in accordance with a plan, I can check to see whether what
happened deviates from the plan. But if whatever happens is said to be in accordance
with a plan, reference to a plan becomes superfluous, an idle wheel (Phillips 1993a).
end p.457
These four logical objections cannot be evaded by saying that God is beyond human
categories. The word “God” is in our midst and awaits analysis like any other word. What
the objections show is that the metaphysical realm in which God is said to dwell is an
intellectual aberration.
Certitudes
According to the philosophical schools of thought we have considered, from Descartes to
Reformed epistemology, we are said to stand in various epistemological relations to “our
being in the world.” We are said to be knowers, believers, trusters, or interpreters of that
fact. In Wittgenstein's last work, On Certainty (1969), he shows that the search for such
an epistemological relation is confused. He considers the roles of certain empirical
certitudes in our thinking: that the earth has existed for a long time, that we were born,
that this door in my house leads to a familiar corridor, and so on. These are matters we do
not question.
Why not? Is it because we know these things are true? If we say this, we will be asked
how we know, but any answer given will be less certain than the certainties they are
meant to justify. As Peter Winch says, “Much of Wittgenstein's discussion seems to take
the form of trying to substitute some other word for know' in these contexts, such as believe,' assume,'presuppose,' `take for granted.' The outcome of these attempts is that
none of these suggestions is satisfactory. But the conclusion is not meant to be that we
must look harder till we have found the right word, but that we are looking in the wrong
direction altogether” (1998, 192). Mounce, on the other hand, thinks that we have found
the right word in the natural beliefs of epistemological naturalism. He argues that when
William Hamilton says “Belief is the primary condition of reason and not reason the
ultimate ground of belief,” this “might have served as a motto for Wittgenstein's On
Certainty” (Mounce 1999, 139, n. 2). So far from searching for “belief,” or something
else, as a substitute to describe our epistemological relation to the world, Wittgenstein
regards all the substitutes offered as eggshells of older material still sticking to the new
things he wants to say (Winch 1998).
What are these new things? Wittgenstein is saying that we misunderstand our being in the
world if we search for an external, epistemological relation in which we are alleged to
stand to it. Wittgenstein is not asking whether reason or trust, knowledge or belief, are the
primary relations. His concern is with what goes deep in our thinking, with issues of
logic, not of epistemology. So far from downgrading reason, Wittgenstein is bringing out
that what counts as reasonable or unreason
end p.458