The Irony of Theology and the Nature of Religious Thought

L.M. Read was a Philosophy of Religion and Economics professor at
Carleton University.

On the penultimate page, Wiebe states his thesis succinctly: “I have
in the process of this argument established amongst other things, (1)
that the history of the development of the human mind reveals the
existence of at least two mutually exclusive modes of thought in the
process, one mythopoeic and the other scientific in character; (2) that
the scientific or modern mind emerges from within a preexisting
mythopoeic matrix and that, once free from it, it stands in tension with
it—is, in fact, incompatible with it; (3) that religious thought (at
least in the Greek, Hebrew, and Christian traditions) is essentially
mythopoeic and theology essentially scientific; and finally (4) that
theology therefore stands in the same relation to religion as
philosophic/scientific thinking in general stands to the mythopoeic
mind.”

In general, this thesis is well stated. However, a question immediately
arises: Given this highly unsatisfactory situation, what does Wiebe
intend to do about it? His apparent answer is “nothing.” He seems to
be locked into a Wittgensteinian stance: here we have two diverse
languages, and no communication between them.

Let us hope that Wiebe will someday explore an alternative thesis: that
the apparent incompatibility of the two languages arises from the
failure to recognize that all reality is constituted by symbolanda
(things symbolized). For example, the only “hard data” we have to
substantiate the reality of perceptual objects is our sensations.
However, we would not suggest that perceptual objects are sensations;
rather, the sensations (as symbols) symbolize the perceptual objects (as
symbolanda). The problem is that both mythopoeic and scientific thinkers
sometimes confuse the mythopoeic thinkers’ symbolanda with their
symbols.