He will cause the rain. An enquiry into a farmer's belief in providence.

Abstract

Taking the example of a farmer who thanks God for pouring rain upon his crop, this thesis in-vestigates different views on the relationship to lay belief and theology. Two authors are compared: John Polkinghorne, who suggests that theology should both deepen and correct these kinds of lay beliefs by relating scientific knowledge to those beliefs; and Maurice Wiles who claims that theol-ogy should reinterpret lay beliefs as *attitudes* thereby emptying these beliefs of their scientific implications. Both Polkinghorne and Wiles seem to interpret religious utterances mainly as statements about the world. The thanksgiving of the farmer is thereby reduced to a flat pseudoscientific claim about the world in terms of acts and causes (God is an actor and the rain his cause), which is from a scien-tific point of view either wrong (says Wiles) or naive (says Polkinghorne). This thesis seeks to do more justice to the farmer’s faith by proposing another view on the rela-tionship between theology and faith, which provides an adequate answer to the theories of Wiles and Polkinghorne.