When I get a free moment (less often than previously) I’m trying to read up on Islam, and the roots of the present terrorism. What I am disturbed by is that the more I read up about it, the more hostile to it I am becoming. So much so that my previous notion of calling the terrorists
Certainly we need to start taking the claims of Islam seriously. Good article here which expresses my present views fairly accurately.
Great post on what it means to be poor here (hat tip to Sweet Nothings)
I would add: being poor is looking down the back of the sofas to see if there are enough coppers to add up to enough for a pint of milk (one of the clearer memories from my childhood).
“The spoil of the poor is in your houses”
Thinking much about the question of violence; of how far it is ever legitimate for a Christian to make use of violence; of how far violence is necessary in opposition to the
“If you have no capacity for violence then you are a healthy productive citizen: a sheep. If you have a capacity for violence and no empathy for your fellow citizens, then you have defined an aggressive sociopath–a wolf. But what if you have a capacity for violence, and a deep love for your fellow citizens? Then you are a sheepdog, a warrior, someone who is walking the hero’s path. Someone who can walk into the heart of darkness, into the universal human phobia, and walk out unscathed….
“Understand that there is nothing morally superior about being a sheepdog; it is just what you choose to be. Also understand that a sheepdog is a funny critter: He is always sniffing around out on the perimeter, checking the breeze, barking at things that go bump in the night, and yearning for a righteous battle. That is, the young sheepdogs yearn for a righteous battle. The old sheepdogs are a little older and wiser, but they move to the sound of the guns when needed right along with the young ones.
“Here is how the sheep and the sheepdog think differently. The sheep pretend the wolf will never come, but the sheepdog lives for that day. … While there is nothing morally superior about the sheepdog, the warrior, he does have one real advantage — only one. He is able to survive and thrive in an environment that destroys 98 percent of the population.”
Stanley Hauerwas talks about how he has to be a pacifist because he is such a violent man, which I can relate to.
If I ever reach a determinate conclusion on this, I’ll be sure to let you know.
“There are good people in the world. There are evil people in the world. Evil cannot always be repelled by incantations, by demonstrations, by social analysis or by psychoanalysis. Sometimes, in the last resort, it has to be confronted by force.”
An insight with which I am presently struggling.
Full article here.
hat tip to normblog, an excellent blog if you haven’t yet discovered it.
Something I posted to the MoQ discussion group earlier today.
[Ian Glendinning] challenged me to be more forthcoming about what I believe. My long posts last month in the ‘What it means to believe in the orthodox Christian God’ are part of an answer, but I suspect what you are after is some positive description of how I integrate the MoQ with my Christian understandings. So herewith a ‘Christian interpretation’ of the MoQ; an ‘interpretation’ because the MoQ as it stands is clearly non-Christian, indeed some parts are anti-Christian. However, I am comfortable that those bits can be amended (‘interpreted’) with a result which is still recognisably the MoQ, but which is compatible with Christianity, as I understand it.
So firstly I’ll sketch out how I understand the levels, and where they correspond with traditional Christian language. I’ll also say something about the nature of religious belief, concentrating on Wittgenstein’s notion of ‘grammar’, and I’ll say something about your understanding of theism. I’ll conclude with some very speculative points about the Trinity. I’ll try to be as bold and clear as possible, but with the caveat that this is very much a ‘work in progress’ as my thoughts are still evolving. It should answer what you need, though (I hope).
How I understand the levels:
– basic ‘engineering’ of how the levels work, I’m not aware of having any differences, as set out in my eudaimonic paper. So acceptance of patterns of value, ‘machine language interface’, “natural selection” (with quibbles about the word ‘natural’) etc etc
– level one, inorganic, no difference to standard MoQ (Christian language might call it ‘dust’);
– level two, biological, no difference to standard MoQ (Christian language might call it ‘the flesh’);
– level three, social, probably some distinct differences. I see the social realm as being a) the realm of language, in the Wittgensteinian sense, and b) the realm of group desires (in a Girardian sense, which I haven’t talked much about here). I think it is what Christian language refers to as ‘the world’; it’s also the realm of the ‘ego’, the ego being the agglomeration of social patterns which respond to the social pressures (eg flattery produces pride which encourages social cohesion). It is the realm of ‘other people’s desires’;
– level four, what I have called eudaimonic, major differences from the standard understanding of the MoQ, which you’re familiar with. Christian language would call this the level of the ‘soul’. I see this as the arena of ‘autonomous judgement’, by which I mean it is not conditioned by the social patterns. I see the ego (social patterns) as the ‘machine language interface’ between levels 3 and 4. I see the extent to which that ego becomes transparent to Quality as a) the expression/ salvation of ‘soul’, and b) the development of ‘freedom’ (I accept Pirsig’s account of free will, which I think is essentially a restatement of Augustine). This is not a discrete level, in that the ‘top’ is open to Quality in a way the others are not (pragmatically, not theoretically). I think the language of Christian mysticism maps comfortably onto this understanding, ie the soul needs to be stripped bare of all the level 2 and level 3 influences, at which point it becomes ‘transparent’ to God (quality), achieves union with God, expresses the nature of God etc.
Now, a bit more about religious language. What I often ‘rail’ about, concerning the misunderstandings of Christianity, is that the grammar of religious faith is misunderstood. That is, religious language does not function in the way that scientific language functions, and to construe religious language as making scientific claims is to necessarily misinterpret it.
Scientific language grew out of Christian language (the shrub before the tree) but has incorporated certain mistakes _within_Christian_theology_ . In other words, the mistake about the grammar of religious language happened first within Christianity itself, and has been contained within the development of science on what might be called a ‘genetic’ basis.
I would characterise the difference like this: the ‘grammar’ of scientific discourse is abstract; the ‘grammar’ of religious discourse is ‘thick’ or ‘concrete’. By which I mean that the claims which science makes (*claims*) are for independence from social context. Whereas I see religious language as necessarily bound up with social context, they can’t be understood apart from the social context, and, to a very great extent, they are concerned with the structuring and maintenance of the social order. Religious language gains its meaning from its use in the various local language games that make up the practice of religious faith. It is less concerned with correct external reference than with the orientation of behaviour, and therefore life. However, pursuing that latter necessarily involves some external reference, but it’s not the primary source or motivation for religious language (as it is for scientific language). This religious language can be oriented in three ways: suppression of level 2 patterns, maintenance of level 3 patterns, and enabling of level 4 patterns. I think different religions can be evaluated on the basis of how well they do these three things.
Moreover, religious language is necessarily mythological, ie narrative based. As you know I don’t accept the scientific claims for being independent of social context; what I think has happened is that one mythology (rich and religious) has been replaced by another mythology (thin and ‘scientific’) – which is actually responsible for the ills which Pirsig diagnoses. Any language which overcomes those ills is necessarily religious and mythological.
So religious language is necessarily, limited, local and partial. Yet I would also insist that it is possible to discriminate between religious languages and determine which are better and which worse. Which is what I think gave rise to level 4 in the first place, as discussed in my eudaimonia paper. I think that the different religious languages can be assessed by their contribution to human flourishing, or, more generally, by their Quality.
Level 4 I see as necessarily wordless. This is a corollary of the private language argument that I mentioned, from Wittgenstein, which demonstrates that language is necessarily shareable, ie it is a social level phenomenon. This doesn’t mean that it can’t be used for higher purposes, what it does mean, I think, is that it cannot escape being level 3. In the same way that agriculture can be a biological phenomenon organised by the social level, I think that many languages (eg science and mathematics) are level 3 phenomena organised by level 4 understandings. Language cannot encapsulate level 4, for this reason. Hence, ‘the finger pointing at the moon’.
I see level 4 as being fundamentally oriented from the virtues; the virtues being those static patterns which enable resistance to social pressures (honesty and integrity etc – what the Sophists were teaching, originally). I see the various intellectual patterns like SOM, mathematics, Aristotelean logic – but also theatre, art, film, poetry (especially poetry) – as being the fruits of those virtues. Those virtues I think are the sinews of the soul; the soul being simply a level 4 pattern, more or less open to Quality (= salvation?).
The God question. I see Quality as one of the names of God, as final and accurate as calling God Father or Rock (no more, no less). I think it has advantages in terms of healing the breach between science and faith, I think it has consequent disadvantages in terms of actually living out the consequences of pursuing Quality. So in general terms I see no conflict between MoQ and belief in God, on this score.
You describe God as “a purposeful, willful, intentional, transcendent “intelligent” causal entity”. Firstly, God is not an entity. Hang on to the point I made before about God never being a member of a class. We know what an entity is – God is not one. Here we come up against ‘the limits of language’, in that no language can capture what the word ‘God’ refers to (which might suggest that construing the word ‘God’ on the model of reference is likely to mislead..) Now I’m not clear on where the modifiers, once you’ve let go of ‘entity’, are different between Quality and God, if at all. I’ll think further about this point and come back to it.
Finally some more specific things about intepreting Christianity using the language of the MoQ.
Jesus I see as someone who was wholly open to Quality, in such a way that everything he did expressed that Quality. He did this without breaking any of the social level patterns which had formed him (Pirsig’s point that you don’t need to destroy to transcend). This is what Christians mean when they talk about him being ‘without sin’.
The crucifixion is the conflict between level 3 and level 4 (and absolutely essential for understanding the claims of Christianity).
The resurrection a demonstration that the destruction of level 2 by level 3 makes no impact on level 4.
The Eucharist is the level 3 rite which reaffirms the establishment of level 4 (through crucifixion and resurrection), and provides the most important virtues for the growth of level 4 in a person (food for the soul).
I think there are some ways to correlate the language of the Trinity with the MoQ ‘Trinity’ of Quality – SQ – DQ, ie that ‘Quality’ is God the Father, SQ is God the Son (the visible form, fully expressing all four levels); DQ is the Spirit. We are to be so caught up in DQ that we become wholly open to Quality and thereby come to resemble Jesus in expressing SQ on all the levels. And they are all the same, ie our eventual end is to become identical with Quality, indistinguishable from it.
The mystical path I see as the cultivation of level 4. That’s what I see Christianity as all about.
I see the language of ‘immediate experience’ as the importation of a level 3 mythology (the social respectability of ’empiricism’, and all the fruits following from it) to function as a ‘pseudo-level 4’, that is, the pursuit of a ‘mystical experience’ is delusional (anti-mystical) and tied up with the ‘thin’ social practices associated with scientific influence. I think it is precisely a social pattern. I think the ‘orthodox’ account of level 4 as intellectual is a perpetuation of Platonic mythology, resulting in a form of gnosticism (a correct understanding provides salvation) – this is where the MoQ as presently constituted tries to replace religion, and is what lies behind my ‘cult’ allegation. (Tho’ let’s be clear, I only think there are a handful of people who actually DO let the MoQ function as a religion. They’re the most Platonist interpreters).
I see the mystical as the cultivation of wisdom. Hence the emphasis on honesty etc as the foundation for what comes later.
I think there are lots of other things that could be said, but that’s probably enough for now. I hope that gives you a much clearer idea of ‘where I’m coming from’.
Regards
Sam
“I don’t want them to believe me, I just want them to think.” – Marshall McLuhan
Dawkins draws a remarkable conclusion from this approach. His conclusion is that science can replace religion; that religion has been superseded by science; that science can answer the questions which were once answered by religion. Consider these comments:
‘[now that we have the theory of evolution we] no longer have to resort to superstition when faced with the deep problems: Is there a meaning to life? What are we for? What is man?’ (from ‘The Selfish Gene’ )
‘…our own existence once presented the greatest of all mysteries, but… it is a mystery no longer because it is solved.’ (from ‘The Blind Watchmaker’ )
‘I want to persuade the reader, not just that the Darwinian world-view happens to be true, but that it is the only known theory that could, in principle, solve the mystery of our existence’ (from ‘The Blind Watchmaker’ , his emphasis).
Dawkins is here asserting that the theory of evolution is able to provide the only answers that are viable in our present age; that, in the words of a fellow zoologist whom he quotes with approval: “The point I want to make now is that all attempts to answer that question [What is Man?] before 1859 are worthless and that we will be better off if we ignore them completely” .
In making this argument, Dawkins’ writings are congruous with much ‘popular science’ writing. Paul Davies, for example, claims that ‘In my opinion science offers a surer path to God than religion’ . Stephen Hawking’s famous conclusion to ‘A Brief History of Time’ ends with the dramatic claim that if we found a complete physical theory of the universe, “…it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we would know the mind of God”. According to ‘The Independent’ newspaper: ‘The real priests of the future are scientists, as they have been since the Industrial Revolution’ .
~~~
Dawkins refers to ‘deep problems’ or ‘mysteries’. These problems are the ones where, historically, Christianity has offered the answers that our culture has accepted. Other cultures have had more or less different answers, bound up in each case with religions that are more or less different from Christianity. Yet in each case the character of the answers provided are religious – they engage with us at the most profound level possible, and the answers given then shape the wider culture. Let us agree to call these questions of meaning, purpose and self-understanding “serious questions”, for they are concerned with the seriousness of life. Dawkins’ claim, then, is that science gives the best answer yet to our ‘serious questions’.
I believe that this is profoundly mistaken. I believe that no scientific answer could possibly be an answer to our serious questions. In my view, the process by which an answer becomes a ‘scientific’ answer (in the sense that Dawkins requires) necessarily stops that answer applying to our serious questions.
Clearly, I have a significant task of explanation on my hands.
~~~
So what is this conception in which Dawkins places such trust? In brief, it is an explanation of biological complexity, which relies upon only a few simple axioms to account for the diversity of life as we presently experience it.
The central idea is that of natural selection. If we consider the history of animal breeding – for example, with horses or dogs – then it is clear that humans have changed the characteristics of various breeds, in line with their own preferences. In these instances there is a human being (or a succession of human beings) acting as a selector of different traits within a breed which causes the breeds to change over time. Darwin employed this as the ground for a metaphor – that, over time, nature acted in the same fashion as these human selectors – and that there is therefore something called natural selection.
Where human selection was driven by human preferences, natural selection is driven by one single ‘preference’ or constraint – the ability to reproduce, to have offspring. The idea is that in any given context there are limited resources available and that different species – and different individuals of the same species – will compete to gain those resources. Those individuals and species which succeed in gaining those scarce resources will be able to have more offspring, and, over time, will dominate and drive their competitors to extinction.
For Darwin, the ‘unit of selection’ was unknown. That means simply that Darwin didn’t know how the ability to compete was passed on from parent to offspring. This is crucial to the theory, for if it could be shown that the ability to compete is not passed on from parent to child, then the theory breaks down – for there is nothing for natural selection to act upon. However, following twentieth century developments in molecular biology, we have a much better understanding of what this unit of selection might be – we call it the gene. Although there is still much that is unknown about the ways in which the gene affects the overt characteristics of individuals and species, it seems fairly clear that the genetic inheritance is responsible for a great deal of the success or failure of individuals and species within a particular environment. This is the ‘neo-Darwinian synthesis’ – a synthesis which combines the Darwinian ideas of natural selection and inherited characteristics, with the science of DNA. It is this synthesis which Dawkins articulated and popularized so successfully in ‘The Selfish Gene’.
~~~
There is a great deal of evidence which supports this synthesis, which recommends it to us as a good account of how different species have come to be as they are. To begin with, there is the question of timescale. We know from research in geology and astrophysics that the earth has existed for a very long time – some four and a half billion years or so. This provides evolutionary theory with a sufficiently broad canvas, within which natural selection can operate.
Secondly, there is the evidence from palaeontology – the study of fossils. We can tell from examination of rock strata that certain layers of rock were laid down at certain periods of time (the Pleiocene, the Cambrian and so on), and in those strata there are fossils of all sorts of different life-forms. The most popular of those life-forms are, of course, the dinosaurs, who existed until some 65 million years ago, and whose demise – probably as the result of an asteroid impact with the earth, although that is disputed – allowed mammals to become the dominant species on our planet. So we have both a sufficient timescale within which evolution can take place, and we also have evidence of a wide variety of life existing during those different periods.
In addition to this, through the study of DNA we now have a very clear idea of how characteristics can be inherited from parent to child, and through mathematical studies, we can model the distribution of particular characteristics in a population. There is a wealth of detailed evidence to support this understanding.
For Dawkins, then, all of life can be explained by the story of evolution, the slow step by step climbing of ‘mount improbable’ by the genetic line of inheritance. Natural selection – and only natural selection – is both a necessary and sufficient explanation for the existence and nature of life as we know it.
Does this mean that the neo-Darwinian synthesis is incontestable as an account of human nature? Not so fast.
Hello my friend.
You and I have had many conversations in this last decade, for we share significant interests – not least an enjoyment of ‘popular science’. Yet I have so far been unable to explain how and why it is that I see no conflict between science and my Christian faith; or, to make that point more strongly, why it is that I consider my Christian faith to include and perfect science – to be a more sophisticated and complete understanding than science could ever offer.
For you, things are different. You find it impossible to believe the sorts of things that (you think) Christians are required to believe, even though you are not hostile to religions in general. You enjoy debating religious questions, many of your best friends are Christians, and yet you cannot see a way to accept Christianity without at the same time surrendering your intellectual integrity. For surely Christianity is historically discredited – a threadbare stitching together of superstition and supernatural nonsense, compromised by papal arrogance and protestant bigotry, implicated in wholesale slaughter and the denial of our deepest human values. Centrally, Christianity and so many Christians seem transparently unreasonable, both in belief and behaviour. You do not consider it an accident that Galileo was condemned, and deep down, I suspect you think that those Christians whom you respect are worthy of respect in so far as they are less whole-hearted in their faith; they are ‘liberal’ and accommodating to the modern world.
I do not deny that, as a Christian reflecting on Christian history, there is much cause for shame and repentance. Yet I would like to explain why I do not abandon my faith – to retell the story of Christian history in such a way that the causes of such evil are laid bare, leaving, in consequence, a clearer understanding of what Christianity actually is – and, moreover, a clearer understanding of science, that pattern of thinking with which Christianity has been struggling like Cain with Abel.
I can summarise our differences quite easily: you consider Christianity to be, at root, built around certain supernatural beliefs. I deny this – strongly – for I consider Christianity to be, at root, built around certain mystical practices, which bear fruit in a holy life. My hope that I can explain Christianity to you is founded on the belief that we would both recognise such a holy life when we saw it.
To justify these comments is the endeavour of the book that you hold in your hand. I have come to realise that I need this large canvas on which to paint my portrait of Christian faith. As a portrait it reflects my own understandings and emphases; it is a sketch, not an exhaustive analysis. I have deliberately tried to use broad and bold brushstrokes and not to become distracted by academic detail, for both practical and principled reasons. As will become clear, I do not believe that the academic method is appropriate in all forms of inquiry, indeed, it can be radically counter-productive. Nor is this book meant to be a ‘final answer’ to our questions – on the contrary, it is an invitation to conversation, a conversation at a deeper level than many of our favourite ‘popular science’ writers have shown themselves able to achieve. Perhaps one day I will have the opportunity to develop a more rigorous ‘summa’, but that is not in my hands – if it is God’s will, then he will ‘make it so’. In the meantime, I offer this brief essay to you, with my love and prayers.
The first two chapters of my book can be downloaded here
I’m going to write it on-line, in small chunks. Feeback welcome :o)
Titus one nine pointed me to this paper from Walter Brueggemann (the great bible teacher, if you didn’t know him already). Great stuff:
“The loss, now among us, that touches everything public and personal for everyone, conservative and liberal alike, includes:
• the failure of the old social fabric, now deeply in jeopardy;
• the failure of the old consensus of intellectual certitudes;
• the failure of old patterns of privilege and domination that we count on;
• the failure of economic viability–except for the privileged few–so that
“down-sizing” of claims and possibilities goes on everywhere.
So now we–together–must engage in what ancient Jews did in Babylon, and what ancient Christians did in Jerusalem and in Galilee: embrace the loss that is more than can be imagined. We are the people who know loss best because it is definitional in both our traditions. We are the people who know best what it is like to give up what is over. We are the ones who are entrusted with resources to help our communities and our society move beyond the loss.
Now, as then, there are some who engage in denial and nostalgia, imagining that not much is happening, that the loss is not deep, not permanent. . . except that
Jerusalem really was gone;
Jesus really was dead;
old patterns really are over: no denial; no nostalgia.
Now, as then, there are some who engage in fantasy and in irresponsible private actions, out of touch with social reality. But then–get this!–some, in the loss of Jerusalem, and some, in the death of Jesus, engaged in massively buoyant acts of recommitment to the future. It is that massive, buoyant act of commitment to the future that is our proper agenda and our proper topic. And here I reflect with you on that agenda.”
A post from the MD discussions that I take part in:
~~~
DMB,
Sam is totally identified with his religion. It’s his tightly held persona. He’s a Christian priest and it suits his needs. Strip Sam of his persona and you have dust and bones. But Sam has Value, I’m sure like Bono he performs good deeds.
I know you like Sam. I do too.
Marsha
~~~
I’ve definitely pushed the boat out in the MD discussions recently. I’ve always previously kept my most deeply held beliefs under a tight(ish) rein – because it’s a secular forum, so I have never felt it that appropriate to come right out and say ‘hey, I’m a Christian, I really do believe this stuff’. But after one comment from a newbie, which – I thought – portrayed me as a hypocrite, I felt the need to lay my cards down on the table. This is what I said:
I would place my understanding of God within the Christian tradition, specifically, in the context of classical Christian mysticism. So to explain some of the core sense of that, I’ll need to use two words ‘cataphatic’ and ‘apophatic’. (I’ve written about this to DMB before, but probably nobody else noticed).
Can God be spoken about or not? The cataphatic answers the question positively, saying that there are things which can truly be said about God – so the language used in the Bible to talk about God is meaningful language. And it is also possible to say true things about what God is not. So God is NOT X, Y or Z. In contrast, the apophatic tradition answers this question negatively, so apophatic mysticism is the ‘negative’ tradition, which says ‘not this, not that’ etc. Specifically, it says that all language about God is meaningless so we should shut up and not ‘yelp about God’.
The important thing to know is that these two answers to the question are siamese twins, rather like yin and yang, and they cannot exist without the other. The mainstream mystics in the western tradition (Denys, Eckhart, Julian of Norwich etc) have their different emphases and ‘flavours’ but in each case the language of their writings is predicated on the truth of both answers. So first there is the cataphatic response to the question, and there is an overflowing abundance of language referring to God, eg saying ‘God is light’ and then, in dialectical movement, there is the negation of this, eg saying God is darkness (this is STILL the cataphatic, NB), and then – *and this is the key ‘apophatic’ moment* – this distinction of positive and negative is itself negated by saying ‘God is dazzling darkness’.
So, just to ensure this is understood, the cataphatic is *both* statements (God is light, God is darkness) and the apophatic is the paradox *beyond* the statements, that state of understanding or enlightenment when the soul has absorbed or developed the truth about God. In other words, the mystical writers in the Western tradition are using the natural language of theology, for “Good theology… leads to that silence which is only found on the other side of a general linguistic embarrassment” (Denys Turner). It is the difference between knowing nothing (the state of innocence) and knowing that you know nothing (the state of wisdom) – and the mystical tradition is a way of enabling the journey from the one to the other, _through_ the dialectic of cataphatic and apophatic.
(This mystical tradition, just to head off a possible criticism, isn’t exclusively Christian. It has two parents – Moses going up the Mountain, and Plato’s allegory of the cave – and it’s the latter which brings out its relevance to Pirsig, for he is a neo-Platonist.)
So when I say ‘God does not exist’ I’m using the _first_ bit of cataphatic language (ie I’m denying ‘God exists’). And Paul is quite right to say that I’m committed to saying ‘God does not not-exist’. That is the apophatic response, and this is the paradox and failure of language to capture the reality of God.
Much more interesting than that technical stuff, however, is the spiritual journey within which that language makes sense. That is, the soul aspires to union with God, but is prevented from enjoying that union as a result of sin. Putting that in MoQ terms, our fourth level patterns seek to be fully open to Quality, yet are restricted by the social patterns which are harmfully static. The process of mysticism (as I understand it) is the discipline of renouncing all the static patterns so as to enable mystical union.
“In the Pauline and Johannine writings of the New Testament, life in Christ consists in a dynamic union with God. Depending on the emphasis, this union is presented as being with Christ as with God’s divine self-expression, or with God (the Father) in and through Christ. God’s spirit seals the union and initiates an ever-growing participation in the intimacy of the divine life. The presence of the Holy Spirit endows the Christian with a ‘sense’ of the divine that if properly developed enables the believer to ‘taste’ (_sapere_) God and all that relates to him.” (Louis Dupre, ‘Unio Mystica’)
In other words, what motivates the quest for God is love; as Augustine put it, our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Him. I understand the mystical tradition to be a process of breaking the back of the intellectual ego, so as to allow the soul to grow in wisdom, and grow into God.
Kevin (the newbie) said:
> I ask
> myself, what meaningful purpose would the leader of a
> Christian community have
> for engaging…no that’s not quite right…for
> championing a stumbling block.
(the stumbling block being my – orthodox – assertion that God ‘does not exist’)
Which as you might imagine is quite a challenge.
Firstly, for the record, might I state (if anyone had any doubt) that I believe in God, I pray to God, I worship God, etc etc. It’s the defining feature of my life. My relationship with God runs deeper in me than any thoughts or perceptions or considerations that might otherwise emerge. I am absolutely certain of the reality of God. Indeed, if that certainty were to fail, I would check myself in to a psychiatric unit, as I would have no other conclusion to reach than that my mind had failed. The reality of God is more firmly rooted in me than any sense of self, so if there is a conflict, its the sense of self which is suspect.
So why might I be saying ‘God does not exist’? Part of the answer I’ve already provided; part is, as you rightly point out, that I am being provocative. But is it a needless provocation, or is there something more substantial? I think the latter.
A bit of personal history might help explain things. I was raised in a fairly standard Anglican home. Religion was there in the background, but it was never dominant. I became an atheist when I was 12, following a conversation with a conservative evangelical, when I was told that Gandhi was going to Hell because he didn’t confess Jesus Christ as his personal lord and saviour. That seemed unjust to me; God cannot be unjust; therefore if he claims that then he doesn’t exist. I remained an atheist throughout my teenage years, lapping up people like Richard Dawkins and all the other secular opposition to Christianity. I tucked into lots of ‘alternative’ understandings, both the occult and more mainstream mythological stuff like Campbell. Christianity was simply a busted flush. Nobody with any intellectual self-respect could possibly take it seriously.
I then went to university to study Philosophy and Theology (and read ZMM). My conscious purpose was to get lots of good arguments to bash Christians around the head with (I was very influenced by ‘The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail’ – source for ‘The Da Vinci Code’). However, once I was dealing with the subjects at a serious academic level I discovered that most of what I understood about Christianity was wrong. What I had been rejecting wasn’t Christianity- it was a degraded, watered down hybrid of Modern Philosophy and Protestant Fundamentalism. Once I realised how mistaken I had been, the scene was set for me to enjoy a moment of enlightenment, which is what has given me, ever since, the certainty that I refer to above.
But a fundamental driver in my personality now (which sometimes leads me astray) is to uproot and destroy the misconceptions that prevented someone like me from understanding, and therefore taking seriously, the claims which are made by the Christian faith. And those misconceptions abound, especially on this forum. Take the claim that a person believes that God exists. That might be considered (eg from a fundamentalist viewpoint) as sufficient for faith. To my mind, that is profoundly mistaken. Belief that God exists is next to useless in the context of Christian faith. (Even the demons believe – and they tremble). For the key thing about Christian faith is to be transformed by the love of God into a creature capable of sharing that love of God in the world. This is less about a belief that God exists than about developing the relationship with God, so that one gets caught up within the love of the Trinity, what the medieval mystics called the _unio_mystica_.
So when I challenge people by saying ‘God does not exist’ I am wanting to unsettle the belief – held by both believers and atheists – that they know what ‘God’ is, as explained to Paul. I think people have far too much confidence about the nature of ‘God’ (I wouldn’t exclude myself either). So often belief or disbelief in God seems to be about the existence or non-existence of a particular entity with definable attributes. As if the difference between a believer and a non-believer were that in the universe of the believer, everything was just the same as for the non-believer, except for the addition of an extra item, the causal source of it all, called ‘God’. I think such debates are totally unconnected with the living reality of what Christian faith is about. To believe in God is to see the world – ALL of the world – completely differently. To see the world in a certain way – and live out the consequences – that is what it means to believe in God, whether God is named as such or not. Yet one can claim a belief that ‘God exists’ and still completely miss what that means. And in precisely the same way, one can claim that ‘God does not exist’ – and therefore reject Christian faith – and yet have completely misunderstood what is being claimed and rejected. What I am trying to do (probably failing, but I’ll always try) is to _remove_ a stumbling block. I am saddened that I appear to have created a different one.
By being (i) explicitly Christian, and (ii) saying that ‘God does not exist’, I am not being a woolly liberal post-modern trendy vicar. I am consciously trying to unsettle the certainty with which people say they don’t believe in God. I think a lot of people (not all) are in the position I was in when I was a teenager – they reject a deformed part of Christianity, and believe that they are rejecting the whole. As I said to Ian recently, if he explained the nature of the God he didn’t believe in, he would probably find that I don’t believe in him either. Hence my regular quotation from Denys Turner: “in the sense in which atheists. say God ‘does not exist’, the atheist has merely arrived at the theological starting point. Theologians of the classical traditions, an Augustine, a Thomas Aquinas or a Meister Eckhart, simply agree about the disposing of idolatries, and then proceed with the proper business of doing theology”.
But I DO believe in the orthodox Christian God, so help me God.
“I believe that one of the things Christianity says is that sound doctrines are all useless, that you have to change your life (or the direction of your life)…the point is that a sound doctrine need not take hold of you, you can follow it as you would a doctor’s prescription. But here you need something to move you and turn you in a new direction.”
(Wittgenstein)
On the question of homosexual clergy, same-sex blessings etc, my mind is not fully made up. I tend to be influenced by the most recent thing I have read, but slowly some things are tending to solidify. So I thought I’d set out some propositions, which represent my present thoughts – all of which are more or less subject to modification as time goes on.
1. The Anglican tradition does not accept sola scriptura. Scripture is the supreme authority, but mediated by the tradition of the church and our own reason. The church has the authority to amend the teaching of Scripture. The prototype for this is Acts 11, but modern examples would be the abolition of slavery and the acceptance of women’s ministry. Therefore it seems to me that the church has the capacity to change the inherited tradition on this question.
2. Whilst there is room for a little ambiguity with particular passages, the uniform voice of the tradition taken as a whole is that a) sexual behaviour should be restricted to the context of marriage between a man and a woman; b) that rectal intercourse is a sin.
3. Covenants between members of the same sex have a Scriptural basis (1 Sam 20 16+17) and have been frequently practiced in the Christian tradition, eg in medieval monasteries. I think it is a live question whether it is permissible for such covenants to be sexual.
4. I think that much discussion of this issue is bedevilled by an equation of, firstly, a person with the label ‘homosexual’, and secondly an identification of ‘homosexual’ with ‘one who practices rectal intercourse’. The first of those I see as anti-Christian, the second I think is a simple mistake. I think it coherent to maintain 2b) above, yet not see that as a knock-down objection to widening 2a) to include the ‘faithful, committed, long-term, covenant partnerships between members of the same sex’. I am assured by medical colleagues that in fact 2b) is more common in heterosexual relationships than homosexual. I also wonder, at the end of the day, just how important a sin is it? On a par with smoking?
5. ECUSA have moved forward in accordance with their statutes etc, as accepted by the Windsor report. What they have not done is respect the wishes of the wider communion. There is therefore a legitimate question of authority, which we are presently working through. Yet those who seem most vocal in attacking ECUSA’s stance seem also to reject 1. above. Despite their disregard for their fellowship in the communion, therefore, ECUSA seem more recognisably Anglican than the more extreme voices ranged against them.
6. I expect the Communion to split. I expect there to be a new conservative evangelical (Anglican-derived) communion centred with +Akinola. I expect the CofE as a whole to remain in communion with ECUSA.
7. I’d rather be in a church which welcomed gay people than one that didn’t. I have worked alongside many gay people, clerical and lay, and enjoyed working with them. I don’t see this as an issue on which communion should be broken.
8. I may well be wrong on all of this. Fortunately I believe in a God of Grace, so I don’t have to earn my way to heaven.
The best books I have read on the topic are:
A Question of Truth, Gareth Moore OP
Strangers and Friends, Michael Vasey
and
Faith Beyond Resentment, James Alison
– in other words, the testimonies of three gay priests. I think, most of all, the church must take seriously the command to listen, and their voices would be a good place to start.