How Can I Believe?: A Little Book Of Guidance

By John Cottingham

Why do we exist? Is there a God? What’s the point of it all? These are some of the questions that all thinking people ask at some point in their lives.

John Cottingham explores the whys and wherefores that lead people to become believers.

Contents

1.The starting point
2.Why want to believe in the first place?
3.The human quest
4.Reaching for the unknown
5.The still small voice
6.Intimations of the sacred
7.Evil and waste
8. Belief and observance

• Language: English
• Publisher: SPCK
• Release date: Apr 19, 2018
• ISBN: 9780281076925

John Cottingham

John Cottingham is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, University of Reading, Professorial Research Fellow at Heythrop College, University of London, and an Honorary Fellow of St John’s College, Oxford. He has held visiting appointments in the United States (Fulbright Scholar) and New Zealand (Erskine Fellowship) and has served as Chairman of the British Society for the History of Philosophy, as President of the Mind Association, and as President of the Aristotelian Society. From 1993-2012 he was Editor of Ratio, the international journal of analytic philosophy. From 2007-9 he was President of the British Society for the Philosophy of Religion and is a life member of the Council of the Society.

Book preview

John Cottingham is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Reading, Professor of Philosophy of Religion at the University of Roehampton and Honorary Fellow of St John’s College, Oxford. His many books include The Spiritual Dimension, Philosophy of Religion: Towards a More Humane Approach, Why Believe? and How to Believe.

Little Books of Guidance

Finding answers to life’s big questions!

Also in the series:

Does Science Undermine Faith? by Roger Trigg

How Do I Pray? by John Pritchard

What Do We Mean by ‘God’? by Keith Ward

What Is Christianity? by Rowan Williams

Where on Earth Is Heaven? by Paula Gooder

Who Was Jesus? by James D. G. Dunn

Why Are We Here? by Alister McGrath

Why Be Good? by Robin Gill

Why Believe in Jesus’ Resurrection? by James D. G. Dunn

Why Did Jesus Have to Die? by Jane Williams

Why Does God Allow Suffering? by Robin Gill

Why Go to Church? by John Pritchard

Why Read the Bible? by Tom Wright

First published in Great Britain in 2018

Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge

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London SW1P 4ST

www.spck.org.uk

Copyright © John Cottingham 2018

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

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The author and publisher have made every effort to ensure that the external website and email addresses included in this book are correct and up to date at the time of going to press. The author and publisher are not responsible for the content, quality or continuing accessibility of the sites.

Scripture quotations are in some cases taken from the av or the niv and in other cases use the author’s own phrasing.

Extracts from the Authorized Version of the Bible (The King James Bible), the rights in which are vested in the Crown, are reproduced by permission of the Crown’s Patentee, Cambridge University Press.

Scripture quotations taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version (Anglicized edition). Copyright © 1979, 1984, 2011 by Biblica (formerly International Bible Society). Used by permission of Hodder & Stoughton Publishers, an Hachette UK company. All rights reserved.

‘NIV’ is a registered trademark of Biblica (formerly International Bible Society).

UK trademark number 1448790.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978–0–281–07691–8

eBook ISBN 978–0–281–07692–5

Typeset by Manila Typesetting Company

First printed in Great Britain by Ashford Colour Press

Subsequently digitally reprinted in Great Britain

eBook by Manila Typesetting Company

Produced on paper from sustainable forests

Contents

1 The starting point

2 Why want to believe in the first place?

3 The human quest

4 Reaching for the unknown

5 The still small voice

6 Intimations of the sacred

7 Evil and waste

8 Belief and observance

Notes

1

The starting point

But my dear Sebastian, you can’t seriously believe it all.

(Evelyn Waugh¹)

The challenge that the sceptical Charles Ryder puts to his friend Sebastian in Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited sums up an attitude that has become steadily more ­dominant in our contemporary culture. Over the last few generations we seem to have seen a steady shift from a world in which religious belief of some kind was the ‘default’ position for the majority, to one where it is an option only for a diminishing minority.²

This applies, of course, to