Phillips and Eternal Life: A Response to Haldane Mikel Burley, University of Leeds In a recent article, John Haldane has argued that, although “there is much to learn from [D. Z. Phillips’] sensitive hermeneutical explora- tions” of religious belief, these explorations are best viewed, contrary to Phillips’ own assessment of what he is doing, not as “alternatives to realist interpretations”, but “as partial analyses of claims that also purport to be about the way things are independently of our concep- tions and interests”. 1 In order to highlight what he sees as an inad- equacy in Phillips’ treatment of religious beliefs, Haldane contrasts this treatment with that of Geach. 2 While both Geach and Phillips follow Wittgenstein in finding that the sense of religious propositions is derived from the actual contexts of scripture and practice, only Geach retains a clear distinction between the sense and reference of such propositions.This distinction enables Geach to maintain that confes- sions of religious belief, though semantically embedded in practical discourse,can be about (or directed towards) a referent that transcends such discursive contexts. Phillips, meanwhile, dissolves this distinction, thereby precluding the possibility of religious propositions’ making reference to anything outside of the particular context of language-use itself. While acknowledging his appreciation of the point, frequently emphasised by Phillips, that we must not dislocate the propositional content of religious beliefs from their proper contexts, Haldane argues that sensitivity to linguistic context when examining religious pro- positions does not yield interpretive results that conform to Phillips’ non-metaphysical reading; on the contrary, it reveals the irreducibly metaphysical commitments inherent within the beliefs being expressed. In particular, Haldane wants to argue that the Christian belief in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, which informs the belief in 1. Haldane (2007, 251). 2. Haldane specifically cites Geach (1969). Philosophical Investigations 31:3 July 2008 ISSN 0190-0536 © 2008The Author. Journal compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.