The Little Red Blog

Wednesday with Pascal: The Power of Prolepsis

{Last week, Pascal the existential Russian blue cat with Ukrainian sympathies hissed and clawed at C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity, ending with a rhetorical question borrowed from Walker Percy’s novel Lancelot. Today, we pick up the story from there, sans Mr. Lewis, as Pascal discusses the ‘now you see it, now you don’t’ sleight of hand that is ‘proleptic eschatology’.}

“With the resurrection of Jesus, the future reign of God has already begun in human history. While the culmination still awaits, a piece of the future exists now.” (J. Denny Weaver, The Nonviolent Atonement)

“Jesus’ resurrection underscores the ontological priority of the future.” (R. David Rightmire)

“Does it look like we are redeemed?” demanded Walker Percy’s “Lancelot” of the Catholic priest with whom he was verbally sparring. The obvious answer was, and is, no, it does not look like we are redeemed, Christianity’s claims to the contrary notwithstanding. Unless appearances are radically deceiving—and such a deception would certainly demand an explanation--our present world is neither the garden of Eden nor the kingdom of God.

Faced with that reality, nimble Christian apologists reach into their bag of apologetic tricks, pull out an item labeled “prolepsis,” and wave said item in the faces of skeptics. “Ha!” they cry. “Our redemption is proleptic! Already and not yet! The kingdom of God is now upon us, and it waits for us in the future!” It is hard to argue with that logic (if “logic” is what it is) but let us follow its thread and see where it leads.

“Prolepsis” sounds like—what? A toothpaste or a mouthwash? An anatomical feature (“I think I broke my prolepsis”)? An architectural term ("That church features a stunning prolepsis")? Something you scrape off your shoe (“Damn it, I stepped in a pile of prolepsis”)? In fact, “prolepsis” is a literary device, a kind of foreshadowing; the Oxford Dictionary defines it as “the representation of a thing as existing before it actually does or did so, as in he was a dead man when he entered.” The expression “dead man walking” is proleptic: the condemned prisoner’s future is already known in the present.

Christian theologians have found prolepsis useful; it enables them to claim that Jesus “proleptically” triumphed over sin, death, and evil—even though the world continues to look as unredeemed as ever. Jesus’ resurrection was a proleptic event, a glimpse of the end of history and a taste the kingdom of God—which will get here (in its fullness) when it gets here, but which has proleptically arrived and shown its face in the risen Christ.

A proleptic victory is decisive; though the war continues, the battle has been won and both sides know it, even as the losing side continues to fight bitterly and to win the occasional skirmish. Gregory Boyd explains how this works for the Christian gospel:

A common analogy is the distinction between D-day and V-day in World War II. Historians generally agree that, for all intends and purposes, World War II was decided in the Battle of Normandy (referred to as “D-day”) that began on June 6^th, 1944. At this time the Allied forces dealt a fatal blow to Germany that rendered its defeat inevitable. But it took another year for Germany to surrender (referred to as V-Day). Between D-Day and V-Day, the victory the allied forces had already in principle won was not yet manifested as an actual fact.

This captures the dynamic of the New Testament well. D-Day for the Kingdom took place when Jesus culminated his work by dying on the cross and rising from the dead. At this time the Powers were dealt a fatal blow and were in principle defeated. Yet, Christ’s victory over the Powers will not be fully manifested until V-Day, when Christ returns and fully establishes God’s Kingdom.

The past two millennia (and counting) of human history has been little more than a mop-up operation, slowly picking off the stragglers of Satan’s army and liberating the captives (as Jesus had promised to do). Some skirmishes have resulted in temporarily disheartening defeats for the good guys—Auschwitz comes to mind—but, back at divine headquarters, the champagne has already been popped.

R. David Rightmire enhances our understanding of how winning sometimes looks like losing. ¹ He explains:

"Prolepsis" is a technical term in theology that refers to the anticipatory nature of reality. Ultimate truth is only knowable at the end of the historical process. Along the way, knowledge of the truth is only provisional, to be verified at the end of history. Christian truth presupposes a proleptic view of reality.

Fundamental to understanding the historical significance of Jesus' resurrection is the concept of proleptic eschatology. "With the resurrection of Jesus, what for all other men is still to come has been realized.” Viewing the resurrection as proleptic event underscores the ontological priority of the future. The coming Kingdom is that future reality that interprets the past and present proleptically. The proclamation of the Kingdom and its confirmation in Jesus' resurrection are events of the past that proleptically point to the future. Thus, the resurrection of Jesus from the dead is the paradigmatic proleptic event of the past that serves as a promise of the future.”

Do not be deceived, say the apologists, by the past or present, both of which are sordid, sinful, and misleading. Keep your eyes on the prize of the future, and on the coming Kingdom foreshadowed by Jesus’ resurrection. That one event, which took place two thousand years ago, tells us everything we need to know about what is in store: 

Jesus' resurrection is ultimately decisive, for in this event, the anticipated revelation of God is made manifest within the historical process. The resurrection of Jesus is the interpretive key to the meaning of history. All of reality must be viewed in relation to this one unique occurrence in history. The historical resurrection of Jesus Christ provides the anticipation of the end, in that the end of history has come into the midst of history.

It is, to say the least, a bold claim. The future has been revealed in the past and shines its light on the present. History continues even though it has come to an end. Evil persists even though it has been defeated and rendered powerless. Christians live “in the meantime,” between the “already” and the “not yet”; the tension would seem unmanageable, but, somehow, they manage (mostly by not thinking about it). J. Christiaan Beker puts it this way: “Our life in the world involves an inescapable tension—a tension gravitating between joy and agony. We rejoice in the ‘already’ that is, but we also agonize because of the terrifying ‘not yet’.”

As Rightmire says:

Futurity is fundamental for Jesus' message." The "now" of the Kingdom is informed by the "not yet." Jesus summoned his hearers to turn, heart and soul, toward God's near future, toward his near reign. He made the final salvation of each man depend upon accepting or refusing his eschatological message of God's near reign. The message of Jesus announces the "proleptic reality" of God's future Kingdom, partially realized in the present.   

The earliest Christians believed that the last days were just around the corner, achingly close; “The time is short.” Apologists soon realized—no doubt after the eschaton and Parousia failed to arrive--that "time" had a mind of its own and that "short" was a relative term. Consequently, Christians concluded that redemption had a proleptic dimension; Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection did not immediately usher in the eschaton but merely offered a sneak preview. Having seen the ending—resurrection and immortal life in heaven—believers could conduct their own lives accordingly, assured of the outcome.    

“The future,” Rightmire reminds us, “remains future,” an observation which prompts both sighs of relief and sighs of disappointment. Whatever Jesus may have accomplished, he did not alter the linear flow of time, nor did he hurry it on its way. We are two thousand years into God’s proleptic triumph, and the promised future remains, as always, only a promise. One could argue that it was cruel for Jesus/God to have revealed an ending that remains interminably far off and that seems to have made little difference in the here and now in which we all, believers and unbelievers alike, must live. The proleptic Jesus seems like a suitor who, having proposed and even given his intended a ring to seal their engagement, casually walks out the door saying, “I’ll be right back; I’m just going to the store for a six-pack,” and is never seen again. Two thousand years later, loyal friends of the missing suitor continue to insist, “Of course he didn’t change his mind—he’s a man of his word! He’ll be back, we promise,” all the while glancing nervously at their watches.  

One could also argue that “proleptic eschatology” is a brilliant but unpersuasive dodge, a strategy pulled out of the apologist’s, um, hat. Proleptically, the apologist insists, Jesus snatched victory (over Satan) from the jaws of apparent defeat on the cross; he then emerged from the tomb as a proleptic demonstration, a “mission accomplished” moment. In proleptic perspective, the continued activity of the demonic Powers and Principalities is a desperate but doomed last stand—even they know they’ve lost. The proleptic good news is right in front of our eyes; the unredeemed world has been given the stamp of redemption and the seal of approval. All that is left for us to do, it would seem, is to collect our Jesus savings-stamps, so to speak, and stash them away in a safe place; they will be redeemable at the eschaton, which has already come but has not come yet.

That, at least, is the promise. You have the right to remain dubious.   

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¹ Rightmire’s essay focused on the theology of Wolfgang Pannenberg, but his comments are germane to proleptic Christianity in general; I have therefore, in the quoted passages, omitted references to Pannenberg.

The Joy of Heresy (Part 2)

{It has been suggested to me that very few people share my interest in early Christian heresies or in the ditheistic system of Marcion of Sinope. I find this difficult to believe. Is this not still a Christian nation? And ought Christians not to be on guard against the revival of ancient heresies such as Gnosticism, Pelagianism, and Marcionism? The roads to Hell are many and varied, filled with seductive roadside attractions and a plethora of unknown unknowns; the more we learn about the landscape of heresy, the better we can avoid it.} ¹

“In holding the idea that the revelation of God in Christ was transitory rather than intrinsic to the godhead itself, Marcion anticipated the modalist-Monarchians such as Praxeas and Sibellius. His Christology inevitably led him in the direction of patripassianism.” (R. Joseph Hoffmann, from Marcion: On the Restitution of Christianity)

Whatever happened to the Modalist Monarchians? They were one of the best of the New Wave/punk pseudo-apostolic bands; Praxeas and Sibellius were the Lennon and McCartney of their era. Perhaps they got lost on their way to Patripassianism; it is, I have heard, a long and winding road, and the signage, in koine Greek and Aramaic, is confusing.  

As we were saying, heresies—by which we mean, divergent views about Jesus and about the implications of his life, death, and resurrection—abounded in the early centuries of Christianity. It was only a matter of time before authorities stepped in to quell the riot of religious and metaphysical speculation. Unfortunately, by the time order was restored, an entire clowder of Gnostic cats had been let out of the bag. We turn again to Rufus Jones (The Church’s Debt to Heretics) for explanation:

It is no exaggeration to say that by the middle of the second century the Church found itself engaged in a life and death struggle with the multitudinous forms of Gnostic religion. With all their variations, they can quite well be grouped under the label, 'the Gnostic complex.'  ‘Complex’ seems a very appropriate word for these movements. The word properly means organized tendencies or sentiments which are in some degree confused, morbid and abnormal. They are usually found in individuals, but here in these movements we are confronted with social waves, or tides, or drifts, of morbid and unbalanced sentiments which were more or less 'contagious.' We have revealed to us in these movements a society which seems neurasthenic and psychopathic—suffering from nervous prostration— in which almost any ‘suggestion’ may powerfully operate and effectively work.

A great many of the Gnostic societies are, of course, not rightly called heretical. They were often wholly outside the sphere and area of the Church. Some of them plainly antedate the birth of the Church, but they tended all the time to influence and color its life and thought, and the movement was the fertile mother of heresies. Christianity has throughout all its history borne the marks of its conflict with this mélange of rival faiths, for while it was ostensibly victorious over them, it was at the same time in some degree 'led captive' by those whom it conquered.

Gnostic writings were given to speculation about the origin of the world and the source of evil, but they were much more akin to magic than to philosophy, and they drew upon mythology and imagination for their constructive material rather than upon rational and verifiable grounds of truth. They are decadent forms of religion, full of confusion, superstition, gullibility, credulity and wild imagination. ²

With all due respect to Rufus Jones: just hold your horses there a minute, buddy. “Mainstream” Christianity was chock-full of so-called "divine revelations," miraculous events, and what might plausibly be called wild imaginings. Paul deliberately eschewed and explicitly denigrated “rational and verifiable grounds of truth” in favor of mystical visions he modestly claimed to have been granted (“whether in the body or out of the body,” he did not know); those visions revealed to him, in his words, "things hidden since the foundation of the world."

As for Gnostics’ belief in magic: I am at a loss as to how anyone can view the transformative effects of pneuma, as described by Paul, as anything other than magic; pneuma was said eventually to transform believers into quasi-divine creatures with authority to judge angels. ³ The Church’s official doctrine of eucharistic “transubstantiation”—bread and wine transmuted into “the body and blood of Christ”—is as magical as the day is long, especially as it is facilitated, according to the Church, by formulaic words being spoken as part of a structured ritual by an authorized priest. You simply cannot get more magical than that.  

Continuing his polemic, Rufus Jones damned Gnostics with the faintest of praise, suggesting they were, at best, industrious scavengers:

Gnostics were very skillful in their use of “the debris of ancient faiths,” out of which they fashioned new and fantastic structures. They “plundered” the older faiths somewhat as the builders of new temples plundered the ancient shrines for their building material. The religions of Babylonia, Persia, Egypt, Asia Minor, the Old Testament and Greece, especially the imaginary world system set forth in Plato’s Timaeus, furnished suggestions, and sometimes even body and filling, for the weird Gnostic “gospel” during the prolific period of the first and second centuries.

Again, with respect: Gnostics were no more guilty of “plundering” than were orthodox Christians, who expropriated in toto the sacred scriptures of ancient Israel, reinterpreting them at will and using them as a cudgel with which to browbeat the Jewish people. Moreover, while the Gnostic gospels were undeniably “weird,” I would hesitate to make that point if I were, like Rufus Jones, an adherent of a religion which worships an incarnate God who was born of a miraculously impregnated virgin and who, after performing all sorts of miracles, allowed himself to be cruelly murdered before rising from the dead like a phoenix from the ashes and then disappearing from the planet for good.

In other words: let whoever is without weird religious ideas of their own cast the first stone at the glass houses of others.

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¹ See Fr. Tim McCauley’s prescient warning: Beware the Neo-Marcionites (crisismagazine.com)

² Pagans like Celsus and Porphyry described Christianity itself in almost identical terms.

³ Pneuma was also said to help build strong bodies 12 ways--I think. 

 

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David Bentley Hart: On Americanized Christianity

{Due to certain nagging computer issues, I am presently deprived of access to some of my current sources and material. I am therefore picking more or less at random from what I can browse on the web, which, come to think of it, is my usual procedure, so—never mind.}

Leave it to David Bentley Hart, Orthodox Christian theologian, polemicist, and enfant terrible, to speak his mind without equivocation. In an interview (I could not ascertain the date) at the website Theoaesthetics (www.theoaesthetics.ru), Hart was asked about the current state of Orthodox Christianity in America. His answer was, um, provocative:

The state of Orthodoxy in America right now is absolutely catastrophic, precisely because it’s been so successful in gaining converts. What’s happened? Let me put it this way: Christianity never succeeded in America.

He said what?

But Hart was just getting started:

Most Americans think of themselves as Christians. But the only religion in America that ever flourished was America. And it twists everything into its own image. And Orthodoxy now is going through the process Catholicism went through in earlier generations: it’s being Americanized. It’s being turned into a version of the American religion, which is about civil order, prosperity, capitalism, a moral code that is not premised on forgiveness so much as upon judgment. And the influx of former Evangelicals has made this something of a disastrous situation, because they bring with them very narrow habits of thought—the way they were taught to think about religion, about faith. And also, like converts everywhere, to everything, the version of the religion to which they converted they cling to more fiercely than people who were born Orthodox. If you are born Orthodox, it’s just a place where you live. For them it’s an ideology they’ve adopted, so it must be pure.¹ And because they’re evangelicals, that also means simplified, inflexible and cruel. ²

My great fear is that American Orthodoxy will do what American Catholicism and American Protestantism have both done, which is successfully migrate into the native lands and thus, in typical American fashion, just through sheer advertising – barbarous, clodhopping, capitalist marketing – will start corrupting the way the Orthodox think.

Is there anyone Hart has not yet offended? If so, rest assured he will get to you in due course.

In this country we have movements of Catholicism that nowhere else in the world can flourish, because they are so insanely fantastic. We have right-wing Catholicism in this country that openly calls for a world empire of the Pope, the new integralism. ³ Where else in the world would you have a fascist Catholicism promoting itself so widely because a group of idiot Americans fell in love with Franco? But they have money, they have influence, and so what starts out as the sort of regular, cartoonish, comical, typically American, blundering reinvention of every religion that enters this land starts spreading abroad, just through the influence of money and publicity.

The brute power of money should never be underestimated, it can corrupt anything. And the love of money, I’ve heard, is the root of many evils. I’m serious about this. Christianity has never succeeded in planting itself in America. Our religion is a kind of Orphic post-Christian mystery religion based on wealth, power and one’s personal relationship with a kind of gnostic Jesus.

The interviewer asks Professor Hart to discuss the longer historical arc of western Christianity. Not surprisingly, Hart has an opinion:

In the modern age, when does the real era of stark dogmatism and of the authoritarian structure of the church start to emerge? In the West it’s after the Reformation and the Council of Trent. And it culminates in Vatican I, in which—because there’s not the same sort of organic life to the faith as in the past, both on the level of culture and on that of theology—suddenly the authority has to be affirmed as a kind of bureaucratic office.

Part of that is the fragmentation of modernity. You don’t need authoritarian structures constantly promoting themselves and imposing themselves if faith is lived organically at every level of culture.

Modernity and its discontents loom large, even for the One True faith. David Bentley Hart finishes ⁴ with a flourish:

It’s the challenge of modernity that turns the ancient churches into modern institutions, trying to fight for their supremacy and their power over the faith. And frankly they should be resisted. They shouldn’t be allowed to modernize themselves in that way. You know, the occasional French Revolution in the church is not a bad idea. The guillotine’s an instrument of grace.  (Of course, I’m not being literal.)

You heard it here first (unless you subscribe to Theoaesthetics): the guillotine is an instrument of grace (just kidding!). It is the kind of shocking assertion that would make Joseph de Maistre proud, and that makes David Bentley Hart an invaluable theological voice. 

______________

https://theoaesthetics.ru/david-bentley-hart-the-theologian-is-a-quiet-rioter.html

Based in Moscow, the Theoaesthetics Foundation has for its motto the phrase, Helping Beauty Save the World.

¹ Hart’s claim that converts are more likely to be ideologues is not original, but it is a valuable observation, nonetheless. It can also be applied to individuals who shift their loyalties to and from various secular ideologies. The phrase “more Catholic than the Pope” comes to mind.

² Any disrespect to “evangelicals” is surely intended by Professor Hart; but remember, he treats Catholics and mainstream Protestants with equal disdain.

³ The “integralism” reference is to Professor Adrian Vermeule, who can be found (along with Patrick Deneen) at The Postliberal Order.

⁴ In fact, the interview continued. When I say that "Hart finishes,” I mean I'm done with the interview--for now.

The Good News

{It has been a while since I have ventured into theological waters, where I am--as I am in almost any body of water--out of my depth.  And yet I  persist: "Sink or swim," as they say!}

Good news? How about great news?

A Christian theologian has divined that, not only is there life after death, there is hope for conversion and repentance beyond the grave, too! “Postmortem opportunity” is what James Beilby calls this newly discovered option, based (I assume) on extensive interviews with God, Jesus, and a random selection of dead people, all of whom confirmed that dying need not keep you from converting to Christianity!

[Not everyone will see this as good news, of course; some will lament that even after death they will get no rest from intrusive evangelism. Is the peace and quiet of the grave now to be disturbed by proselytizers wandering through cemeteries, shouting “Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior?”]

Rhyne Putnam, writing at Christianity Today, explains how (and why) “postmortem opportunity” works:

Beilby asserts that unevangelized persons will have the opportunity to respond to the gospel after death. “Unevangelized persons” may include those geographically beyond the reach of a missionary or an evangelist, those who die in infancy, and those who die without ever having the cognitive ability to understand the gospel. Beilby also believes God will extend the same opportunity to those who were proselytized by false teachers or hypocrites, a category of people he calls the “pseudo-evangelized.”

That latter point seems eminently fair. How can a proselyte, who by definition is ignorant of Christian truth, be expected to distinguish between genuine teachers and false teachers or hypocrites? If the blind lead the blind astray, then the blind are truly in a bind.

Putnam adds that “Beilby’s argument for this unconventional approach proves to be relatively simple: God desires every individual to be saved, and because a person can only be saved by placing conscious faith in Christ, God will make an opportunity in this life or the next for that person to respond in faith.”

Let not your heart be troubled! The shepherd desires all sheep be returned to the fold, and nothing—neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears or our worries, not even the powers of hell or the powers in the sky or in the earth below—will be allowed to get in the way. ¹

Putnam’s article vividly illustrates why non-Christians and non-theists find Christian theology so hard to take seriously. Consider this excerpt:

What I found most intriguing about Beilby’s discussion here is his theological method. He rightly admits that the Bible nowhere overtly teaches the possibility of postmortem conversion, but he also correctly states that theology rooted in Scripture doesn’t always depend on such explicit statements. Inferences from Scripture can refine our understanding of certain doctrines, so long as this process stays within the guardrails of what Scripture does teach. As Beilby writes, “Specific theological beliefs cannot contradict what Scripture clearly teaches and should be based on reasonable inferences from what Scripture does teach.” ² The way Beilby builds his case for postmortem evangelism closely resembles how evangelicals like myself have made the case for an “age of accountability” when children become responsible before God for their sins, another doctrine not explicitly taught in Scripture.

An ungenerous critic might accuse Putnam and Beilby of simply making up doctrine as they go along. Putnam admits that such critics exist:

Many in Reformed circles will push back on certain claims Beilby makes here, like the notion that God desires to save every individual. Reformed theologians usually approach texts like John 3:16 or 1 Timothy 2:4 rather differently than their Arminian counterparts, whose understanding of salvation places greater emphasis on human free will. (They argue, for instance, that the “world” in John 3:16 speaks only of the elect, or that “all people” in 1 Timothy 2:4 refers to “all kinds of people” instead of “every person.”) Others, like John Piper, appeal to the “two wills of God” to differentiate God’s desire to save all and his will to save only some.

Notice the theological ingenuity and the textual hairsplitting on display in the above examples, not to mention John Piper’s insight into the unfathomable nature of the unknowable but self-revealing God. Why should God have “two wills”? Did he neglect to have the first one notarized?

Putnam goes on to explain that such seemingly esoteric disputes stem from a fundamental disagreement:   

The most significant difference between Beilby’s position and the Reformed tradition comes down to a theological debate between monergists and synergists. These two camps disagree about whether human beings play any active role in works of salvation. Taking a synergistic approach, Beilby presumes that “human beings participate in God’s salvific efforts by responding to the gospel and declaring allegiance to Christ.” Reformed Christians, by contrast, tend to take the monergist perspective, believing that any movement toward faith in Christ has been willed and orchestrated by the Holy Spirit. If human beings are wholly and unilaterally saved by divine fiat, as monergists affirm, then the question of when a person hears the gospel (premortem or postmortem) is somewhat moot. But if salvation is in some way contingent on a human response to the gospel, as synergists suggest, then we can at least speculate about the possibility of this response occurring after death. ³

We have had not quite two thousand years of Christian theologizing, doctrinal scuffling, and dogmatic quibbling, which may explain why the Parousia, Jesus’ “second coming,” has not taken place: Jesus may be waiting for his followers to stop arguing and to start doing the one and only thing he ever commanded them to do, i.e., “Love one another as I have loved you.” How anyone can get from that straightforward injunction to debates over monergism and synergism, much less to speculation about postmortem salvation, is beyond me. Speaking only for myself, Christianity would be a lot more palatable if it was a way of life rather than a set of beliefs.

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 Will My Lost Neighbor Have Another Chance to Rece... | Christianity Today

¹ Some restrictions may apply. This offer void where prohibited. Eligibility determined on a case-by-case basis; no appeals allowed regarding either eligibility or final judgment. Postmortem salvation in no way implies approval of any pre-mortem behaviors.   

² “Reasonable inference” is the theological equivalent of the Supreme Court’s famous invocation of a First Amendment “penumbra” which allowed the Court to proclaim a “right to privacy” nowhere mentioned in the Constitution.

³ As an atheist, I have no god dog in the fight between monergists and synergists, nor am I trained in exegesis. To the best of my knowledge, though, Jesus never said, “Your works availeth nothing. Your destination has been predetermined. It is all in God’s hands. Sit back and enjoy the ride. Please keep your seatbelts buckled until the seatbelt sign goes off. Thank you again for choosing ‘Sola Fides’ Airlines.” Perhaps that saying is in the Apocrypha?

I am not sure how relevant the above image is, but to me it suggests the surprising complexities involved in living according to "Love one another as I have loved you." Perhaps Jesus should have accompanied the Sermon on the Mount with a PowerPoint presentation, or at least a Venn diagram. 

This and That

Does God exist, and, if so, what's His deal? Steven Nemes (at Arc Digital) provides answers, with an explanation involving cats:

The real existence of a cat is not a part of that total complex of individuated properties which make up the particular cat which we experience. The unexperienceable real existence of the experienceable cat must therefore be something that is somehow “outside” of the cat, and yet “pointed at it” in such a way that the cat exists. How can this be?

Not since Erwin Schrodinger has a cat taken on such metaphysical significance!

This is easy to understand if we say that the existence of the cat consists in its standing on the receiving end of an existence-endowing relation to “something else.” And this “something else” must ultimately be such that it is not an individual thing with a certain nature and various determinate properties. Why is that? Because it is not as if existence is external only to cats. No individual thing that has a certain nature and various determinate properties, whether it is a cat or a dog or whatever, is going to have existence as an “internal” part of it. Rather, any such thing will only exist insofar as it is related to a “something else” that is not itself an individual thing with properties but rather pure existence itself. And this “pure existence itself,” according to classical theists, is God.

If you are not persuaded by Nemes’ argumentum ad cattum, he also invokes the guitar deity Pat Metheny:

Pat Metheny playing on the guitar not only starts the performance of a song but also keeps it going and guides it to its finale for as long as he continues playing. If he were to stop playing, the song would cease. So also with God: He not only begins the existence of things but also maintains it through time. This means that the continued existence of the world through time is a result of God’s constant “preoccupation” with sustaining his act of creation.

This is theology as it should be done, with air-tight reasoning and homespun analogies that us common folk can understand. Dog-lovers and fans of Eric Clapton are welcome to weigh in on the subject. 

Deism, Classical Theism, and Existential Inertia | by Steven Nemes | Nov, 2020 | Arc Digital

We can all rest easy: an anonymous law officer “working in the Baltimore/Washington suburbs” has assured us all (via The Federalist) that neither he nor his colleagues plan to arrest us for exceeding the recommended guest limit for Thanksgiving, even if our busybody neighbors tip them off:

Many police officers I know are using their discretion to refrain from strictly enforcing sanctimonious and unconstitutional edicts amid a moral panic. In a world where the police in the United States are routinely compared to Nazis, these officers look the other way. They choose to not use the power of the executive to enforce new rules that didn’t make much sense.

It is reassuring to know that police decide for themselves which laws are to be enforced, against whom, and when. In fact, I fail to see why we pass laws in the first place—should we not simply trust police to use their sound instincts and common sense as to what behaviors to proscribe?

Although “Anonymous” agrees that elected officials (“Governors, mayors, and executives”) issue mandates and decrees, it is still the unelected “rank and file police officer who is tasked with enforcing them.” “Anonymous” follows in the footsteps of President Andrew Jackson, who, defying the unelected judges of the Supreme Court, said “John Marshall has made his decision. Now let him enforce it.”  

“Anonymous” talks turkey to power when he concludes:

If the police are called on your Thanksgiving get-together, you’ll most likely not know it or get a polite knock on your door. The officer will probably enjoy the smell of a home-cooked meal and be glad others are enjoying Thanksgiving after a year like 2020. If you aren’t scared, invite the officer in for some turkey and stuffing. Tip: I like dark meat.

I Won’t Arrest You For Celebrating Thanksgiving, And No Good Cop Would (thefederalist.com)

Lastly, the once respected Jonathan Turley explains, as best he can, the legal strategy being employed by President Trump and his “elite strike force” of attorneys. Turley suspects that Trump has in mind a high-risk “Death Star” maneuver:

In “Star Wars,” a struggling rebellion was in full retreat on every front against an overwhelming force in the Empire. The rebels were left with just one strategy and literally one shot. Luke Skywalker had to skim the surface of the Death Star along a trench and fire a round into a small thermal exhaust port to travel down an air shaft and cause an explosion in the core reactor. Then poof! No more Death Star.

As Turley explains it, in this case the “trench” is comprised of the various state election systems, the “exhaust port” is the Electoral College, Trump’s attorneys are “X-wing fighters,” the state legislatures and Congress are the “air shaft,” and the Electoral Count Act [ECA] of 1887 is the “core reactor”.  He also mentions Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel Tilden, who are perhaps the R2D2 and C3PO of this adventure.

It all sounds very entertaining and could well be a holiday box-office blockbuster.

It strikes me as odd, however, that Turley seems unconcerned that the “Death Star” which Trump is attempting to destroy is American democracy. He concludes his article by declaring, All one can say, to paraphrase Han Solo’s parting words before heading out for Death Star, is “Hey, Rudy [Giuliani]. May the Force — and the ECA — be with you.”

Apparently, in Jonathan Turley’s troubled mind, Rudy Giuliani is Luke Skywalker. To quote (out of context) Turley’s own words, “It is enough to make an Ewok weep.”

The Death Star Strategy: Is Trump Contemplating The Ultimate Constitutional Trick Shot?

"The Invisible Bartender"

I am of a mind to wax philosophical. ¹

The philosopher John Wisdom is credited with having created a charming “parable” which (he believed) illustrated the foolishness of believing in God. The parable, somewhat embellished by Antony Flew (back when he was an atheist), is called “The Invisible Gardener,” and it goes as follows:

Once upon a time two explorers came upon a clearing in the jungle. In the clearing were growing many flowers and many weeds. One explorer (the Believer) says, "Some gardener must tend this plot. How else would things be growing here?" The other (the Skeptic) disagrees. "I see no evidence of a gardener,” he protests. “Show me this gardener!"

They pitch their tents and they commence to watch, but no gardener is ever seen. "Perhaps he is an invisible gardener," suggests the Believer. They set up a barbed-wire fence, electrify it, and patrol the perimeter with bloodhounds. (For they remember how H. G. Well's “Invisible Man” could be both smelt and touched though he could not be seen.) But no shrieks ever suggest that some intruder has received a shock, no movements of the wire ever betray an invisible climber, and the bloodhounds never give cry. Yet flowers and weeds continue to thrive, even absent any sign of being tended.

The Believer insists, "All this proves is that the gardener is invisible, intangible, insensible to electric shocks, has no scent and makes no sound, and comes secretly to look after the garden which he very clearly loves."

The Skeptic despairs, "How does what you call an invisible, intangible, eternally elusive gardener differ from an imaginary gardener or even from no gardener at all?”

The two explorers go their separate ways. The flowers and weeds in the clearing remain.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Not to be outdone, the theist John Frame tweaked “The Invisible Gardener” in support of God’s existence. His version is:

Once upon a time two explorers came upon a clearing in the jungle. A man was there, pulling weeds, applying fertilizer, trimming branches. The man turned to the explorers and introduced himself as the royal gardener. One explorer (the Believer) shook his hand and exchanged pleasantries.

The other explorer (the Skeptic) ignored the gardener and turned away: “What would a gardener be doing out here in the middle of the jungle, and why would he bother attending to some random clearing? This must be a hoax or a delusion of some kind,” he concluded.

They pitched camp. Every day, like clockwork, the gardener arrived and tended the plot. Soon the plot was bursting with perfectly cultivated and artfully arranged blooms.

The Skeptic scoffed. “Whoever he is, he’s obviously putting on a show for our benefit, to fool us into thinking this is a royal garden.”

The gardener then took the two explorers to a palace and introduced them to a score of officials, all of whom verified the gardener’s status. “Yes,” they agreed, “he is the royal gardener. In fact, he made the clearing himself and, through a great deal of work and loving care, he transformed it over the years into the wondrous garden you have seen.”

The Believer nodded in approval, but the Skeptic would not budge: “I don’t believe a bit of this! Our senses are deceiving us; we have been drugged or we are victims of a master illusionist--there is no gardener, no blooms, no palace, no officials! It is all a mirage!”

The believer despairs: “Why do you persist in denying the evidence of your senses? How does this mirage, as you call it, differ from a real garden being tended by a real gardener?”

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

As a public service, and hoping to reconcile these different perspectives, I offer my own re-telling of “The Invisible Gardener”. Mine is called “The Invisible Bartender”:

Two Corinthians, a Believer and a Skeptic, walk into a bar after spending many, many years exploring--or perhaps just wandering--in the jungle. The Believer asks the bartender for a glass of his finest sacramental wine; the Skeptic just grunts, “Gimme a beer.”  The bartender serves their drinks and asks, “What’s with you guys?”

“The Lord has directed us to your establishment,” says the Believer. “Praise God, it is a miracle that we did arriveth here, for we had neither compass nor map, nor the sense that God did giveth to the geese!”

The Skeptic shakes his head. “We’ve been wandering in circles. We were as lost as Kelsey’s nuts.  Tell you the truth, pal, I got no idea how we wound up here. As for miracles, all I know is”—he pauses, mid-thought—“how about another beer?”

The Believer objects. “You think that sheer random chance somehow delivered us from the jungle thickets and all the dangers therein, to the safety and comfort of this tavern? Why, that would be as if a tornado devastated a trailer park and then a second tornado came along and restored everything to its original condition! Please,” he asks the bartender, “may I have more sacramental wine?”

The bartender is curious. “You two seem to have real different ways of looking at things, but here you are, hanging out together and getting along okay. It’s almost like your different perspectives don’t really matter; I mean, however you got here, here you are…”

“That’s right!” the Skeptic exclaims in triumph. “Here we are!” He takes a long swallow of his beer and repeats himself. "Just like Alfred North Whitehead explained, here we are!"

The Believer reverently sips his wine. “Yes,” he cautiously admits, “we are here. But I do not believe that, in itself, explains anything. Moreover, I believe this is not our true destination; we are pilgrims here and we are bound for better things. No offense,” he hastily adds, looking at the bartender.

The bartender shakes his head. “No skin off my nose,” he says; “I mean, it neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg, you know? Anyway, gents,” he says, “it’s closing time. Like it says in the Good Book of Bartending, you don’t have to go home but you sure as hell can’t stay here.”

The Two Corinthians exit the bar and resume their search/aimless wandering. The Believer remarks to his companion, “That bartender was a fine fellow, was he not? A decent chap, I would say.”

The Skeptic glares at him. “What bartender?” he demands.

“The bartender who only just now served us our beverages,” says the Believer.

“I didn’t see any bartender.” The Skeptic becomes agitated. “Show me this bartender!” he shouts. “Prove to me the bartender exists!”

The jungle closes in around them and merciful night falls over them like a blanket, muffling their interminable dialogue so the rest of us won’t have to hear it.

___________________________________________________

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Invisible_Gardener

http://gr8concepts21.blogspot.com/2014/08/parable-of-invisible-gardener.html

¹ Philosopher's Wax not included with this blog. If you care to join me in this endeavor, you will need to "BYOW"--Bring Your Own Wax.

Sunday Sermon

Transfiguration: On Becoming All Flame

According to Eastern Orthodox theology, theosis is the process of deification undergone by believers in Christ, a process begun at baptism, abetted by the sacrament of the Eucharist and by proper Christian living, and completed only at Jesus’ still-awaited return (Parousia). One element of theosis is what is called “the transfiguration of the believer,” linked to the gospel story of Jesus’ transfiguration:

“After six days Jesus took with him Peter, James and John the brother of James, and led them up a high mountain by themselves.  There he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light.” {Matthew 17}

Rev. Nichifor Tanase has elaborated on the Orthodox tradition and belief:

The first to connect the Transfiguration specifically with theosis is St. Andrew of Crete. For him, the Transfiguration is the revelation of the deified humanity of Christ…St. Gregory Palamas defend the reality of the encounter with God of those monks who reported seeing a vision of light at the culmination of intense period of prayer. For the light is nothing less than the uncreated radiance of God – a divine energy accessible to the senses.

The Orthodox Church makes great use of visual representations of its ideas. Rev. Tanase cites one example of “transfiguration”:

Within a blue mandorla of the St Catherine monastery, eight rays emanate from Jesus. Following the interpretation of A. Andreopoulos, the so-called “hesychastic” mandorla have three suggestions: triadologic (the circle, the square and the rhombus), eschatologic (an octagon in the geometric shapes), and cosmologic (sacred map of the universe). ¹

Rev. Tanase continues:

For all four Gospels, the manifestation of Christ’s glory (shekinah, doxa) has a central place.

Importantly, the transfiguration was not a one-time historical event, nor was Jesus the only human to be transfigured:

This manifestation of Christ is not something external to ourselves: “It is only by having Christ radiant within us that we can enter into the truth which even in the Gospels is veiled from ordinary eyes”. The Transfiguration becomes an interior experience: “The presence of the three apostles points to the ecclesial dimension of theosis. We cannot attain our full human stature as isolated individuals.”

For those who are neither Christians nor theists, there are still lessons here regarding the importance—the sacral nature, even—of “interior experience” and the necessity of relationship and community. The philosophy of Personalism, as espoused by the likes of Emmanuel Mounier and Nicholas Berdyaev, features the same dual emphasis; the Russian concept of sobornost carries echoes of it as well. ²  

Time after time, in this book or that book, part of this philosophy or that theology, encapsulated in this tradition or another, I find the same bedrock truth: “We cannot attain our full human stature as isolated individuals.” It turns out that Descartes’ cogito (“I think, therefore, I am”) could not have been more mistaken; the correct conclusion is “Amamus ergo sumus,” “We love, therefore, we are.”

I am not the first to arrive at this conclusion. The anonymous author of a sermon at Gosforth Parish Church (in Gosforth, England) beat me to it, and in the process explained:

We understand “person” to equate with individual - isolated, separate, alone. Maybe that imagery is at the heart of much current western malaise: loneliness, prejudice, racism, homophobia, selfishness, greed, lust. True personhood is not the same as isolated individualism. True personhood exists in relationship, in mutual, co-affirming love. True personhood is outgoing, joyful, creative, dynamic, salvific—the heart of all things: community, mutual love, outpouring praise. ³

As for transfiguration, the Gosforth preacher offered this tale from one of the desert Fathers:

Abba Lot went to Abba Joseph and said: “Abba, as far as I can, I keep a moderate rule, with a little fasting, and prayer, and meditation, and quiet: and as far as I can I try to cleanse my heart of evil thoughts. What else should I do?” Then the old man rose, and spread out his hands to heaven, and his fingers shone like ten candles: and he said: “If you will, you can become all flame.”

Sparks of light, separated as it were at birth: we can become all flame, but we can only do it together.

___________________________________________________

Quotes from Rev. Nichifor Tanase are from his review of Norman Russell’s Fellow Workers with God; the interior quotes are from Russell.

¹ See reproduced illustration above.

² According to Berdyaev, “Personalism and the spirit of community are alike native to the Russian.”

³ http://www.gosforthparishchurch.org.uk/content/pages/documents/1425483506.pdf

The Rising

“Come on up for the rising / come on up, lay your hands on mine” (Bruce Springsteen, “The Rising”)

“If the dead are not raised, then not even Christ has been raised.” (Paul, 1 Corinthians)

Many modern Christians, while treasuring Easter, reject the idea that Jesus literally rose from the dead; they understand “resurrection” as metaphor, as shared memory, as spiritual energy that survived Jesus’ physical death. Against such rationalist skepticism, the words of Flannery O’Connor, speaking about the Eucharist, may be applied: “If it’s just a symbol, to hell with it.”

In the 19^th century, while Christian theologians in the West were busy rationalizing and demystifying Christianity, and debunking the gospel miracles, including the resurrection, Russian Orthodox theologians were taking a different tack: they doubled down, as it were, on miracle and mystery, calling on Christians to take the gospel seriously and to believe its claims: “incarnation” meant actual incarnation, “resurrection” meant actual resurrection, and “new creation” meant exactly that. The leading Russian theologians did not blink at the implications of the gospel; Tertullian’s “Credo quia absurdum”—"I believe it because it is absurd”—could have served as their motto.

In one of her lectures on “The Person, Love and Utopia in 19^th-century Russian Thought,” Sarah Young discussed the “God-manhood” theology of Vladimir Solov’ev, one of the most influential of 19^th-century Russian philosophers. Solov’ev’s thinking began with acceptance of the divinity and humanity of the risen Lord:

Christ is not simply a miracle-worker or prophet, or indeed an ordinary being of any kind; he is God made flesh, and the fact of his appearance on earth as a human being leads to a profound qualitative change in humanity and the natural order. In relation to the natural order, in the person of Christ, the historical process is fused with the cosmic one; as Christ enters the world and the historical process, he gives divine purpose to both. This suggests that history may have been entirely random before that moment – indeed it is tempting to say that according to this conception, history cannot really exist before the arrival of Christ on Earth.

Like St. Paul, Solov’ev stressed that Christ, in his post-Easter existence, initiated a literal, ontological transformation of the “old Adam” (i.e. humanity before Christ):

Christ’s appearance changes humanity, because His transfiguration, according to Solov’ev, anticipates and makes possible the transfiguration of all beings; it actually changes the nature of human life and the human body. Prior to Christ, corporal nature is purely physical, and therefore impenetrable (by this he means that the body has a sort of physical solidity that cannot incorporate anything else or occupy the same space as anything else – it is an object of resistance against other objects and is closed off from all outside forces). The person is therefore also alienated (a term Solov’ev associates with evil) by the body’s earthly condition.

Enter the God-man:

“The Incarnation of the God-man, Jesus Christ, among men, can alone counteract the effects of this alienation, [and] is the eminent means of salvation from creaturely existence.” (Jonathan Sutton) This is because after Christ, the human body contains an element of God’s transcendence, i.e., it is composed not only of physical matter, but also of spiritual matter, and these two cannot be separated.

To be "in Christ" is to be fundamentally changed, at the molecular level; it is to acquire a new and higher type of DNA. When Paul wrote that “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God,” he was referring to “ordinary” flesh and blood in its fallen state inherited from Adam. However, Christ and his pneuma spiritualize the physical body, which becomes a hybrid entity, something new under the sun. The pneumatic, the baptized believer “in Christ,” receives a transformed nature: the Christian is both spiritual and physical, God-like and human, an adopted child of God and a rightful inheritor of the kingdom. As Dr. Young explains,

This combination of physical and spiritual matter…has a couple of very important implications. The first is that it overcomes the idea – common to the Gnostic tradition of early Christianity thought and some other branches of the church – of the flesh (or the material world) as evil. Instead the flesh becomes spiritualized, so to speak, which is, “a universal process whereby eventually all material nature is “redeemed”; a spiritual aspect inheres in all forms of material being, and through divine action and the cooperative agency of conscious man, this spiritual aspect of matter will become fully manifest.” (Sutton)

Rather than renouncing the flesh, Christianity baptizes, blesses, and exalts it:

Thus Solov’ev arrives at the idea of sacred corporality… It is this sacred aspect of the flesh that gives human beings the potential to be perfected, ultimately leading to the Kingdom of God on earth, moved by the collective spirit of Christian love (agape), which frees humankind from the natural (or animal) level of existence. The essence of sacred corporality is that the human being is now capable of penetration: the body loses its closed and resistant nature and instead becomes receptive to outside (i.e. spiritual) forces.

No longer mere “flesh and blood,” newly enhanced and transfigured by pneuma, the believer “in Christ” is now capable of conquering death--which, as Paul emphasized, is the entire point of the Incarnation and the Crucifixion:

This different quality of the transformed flesh is fundamental to the idea of resurrection, which is not a metaphor, but involves the raising of the physical body from the dead. This is what happened to Christ, so ultimately, human beings transformed by Christ must also gain this capacity. This question of the penetrability and potentially resurrectable nature of sacred flesh is central to the work of Nikolai Fedorov...

Fedorov’s ideas centered around what Young called the “utopia of the resurrected”; he was, as we will see, either a genius, a visionary, or a crackpot for the ages—which again reminds one of St. Paul, and which makes Fedorov well worth a closer look.

http://sarahjyoung.com/site/2013/02/18/russian-thought-lecture-8-vladimir-solovev-godmanhood

Books Report

{Immersed as I am in the study of Paul and his myriad interpreters, I have little time to read anything else. Despite that, here are three non-Pauline books I’m hoping to get to.} 

 

PUTTING LIBERALISM IN ITS PLACE is by Paul W. Kahn (who has also written a meditation on Adam and Eve (OUT OF EDEN) that I will also get to—someday). This extended essay on cultural and political liberalism advocates for nothing less than a politics of love and sacrifice. In the words of the book’s publisher:

 

Paul W. Kahn argues that political order is founded not on contract but on sacrifice. Because liberalism is blind to sacrifice, it is unable to explain how the modern state has brought us to both the rule of law and the edge of nuclear annihilation. We can understand this modern condition only by recognizing that any political community, even a liberal one, is bound together by faith, love, and identity.

 

And in Kahn’s own words, from the book’s Introduction:

 

This is not a work for the faint-hearted liberal who lacks the ability to push him or herself beyond the polite boundaries of rational discourse, on the one hand, and the individualism of interest on the other. My aim is to bring us face to face with an idea of the politics of the will that presents an ultimate value and demands of us that we be willing to sacrifice. I want to bring liberalism back into touch with our forgotten ultimates, and in the process offer a thicker description of our own ethical and political practices. A liberal conception of interest must be set within a richer understanding of love, just as the liberal conception of politics as contract must be set within an understanding of politics as sacrifice. Love and sacrifice are the terms within which we conduct a meaningful life. Politics hardly exhausts the domain of love and sacrifice, but it does compete with other understandings of the self within love’s domain.

 

One could argue that our current politics features a distinctly perverse version of “love and sacrifice”. Trump supporters are nothing if not passionate in their devotion to the President and in their hatred of his foes; characterized by eros rather than agape, they “get off” on Trump’s attacks against the despised “elites”. And while Paul Kahn no doubt intends “sacrifice” in the sense of “self-sacrifice,” the Trump cult inclines instead to sacrificing the rights, the lives, and the humanity of Others--scapegoating, in other words--on behalf of its own sacral order.

 

That “crack in everything” to which Leonard Cohen referred—“that’s how the light gets in”—is also, alas, an opening for darkness; pace Paul Kahn, “love and sacrifice” are easily convertible to the currency of fascism. We should be careful what we wish for.

 

[PUTTING LIBERALISM IN ITS PLACE, along with all sorts of interesting reads, is available online (for free) at www.epdf.pub.]

 

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

 

Jon D. Levenson’s CREATION AND THE PERSISTENCE OF EVIL is, according to its publisher, “a thought-provoking return to the original Hebrew conception of God, which questions accepted conceptions of divine omnipotence…Jon Levenson defines God's authorship of the world as a consequence of his victory in his struggle with evil. Classic doctrines of God's creation of the universe from the void do not do justice to the complexity of that hard-fought battle, which is uncertain in its outcome. Levenson traces this more flexible conception of God to the earliest Hebrew sources. He argues that Genesis 1 does not describe the banishment of evil but the attempt to contain the menace of evil in the world, a struggle that continues today.

 

Reviewer Ben Tameling elaborates on Levenson’s thesis:

God is clearly omnipotent [but] his omnipotence is not a “static attribute,” as is in classical theology, but rather a “dramatic enactment.” This type of creation theology is expressed throughout the Hebrew Bible as the Israelites attempt to “goad God into reactivating his primal omnipotence, which is never relinquished but often agonizingly, catastrophically dormant…Levenson delves into Genesis 1-2 and argues that, while God’s victory in the past and in the future is guaranteed, [we experience in the present] his sometimes frightening absence in the face of evil and chaos…”

Levenson flirts, it seems, with "process theology"; while creation itself, in his view, is both ongoing and undetermined, Levenson's God is not so much "in process" as inexplicably missing in action for long stretches of history. Such a God sounds more like a flawed Marvel superhero, or perhaps like Achilles sulking in his tent, than the unquestioned Master of the Universe. 

https://teachfastly.com/book-reviews/creation-and-the-persistence-of-evil/

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Finally, Sylvia Nasar (best known for A BEAUTIFUL MIND) has written a history of modern economics, GRAND PURSUIT: The Story of Economic Genius. Rather than beginning with Adam Smith and Thomas Malthus, Ms. Nasar introduces us first to Marx and Engels and thence to the likes of Alfred Marshall, Sidney Webb, Beatrice Potter, Irving Fisher, Joseph Schumpeter, John Maynard Keynes, etc. Ms. Nasar’s thesis is that “[modern] economics rescued mankind from squalor and deprivation by placing its material fate in its own hands rather than in Fate.”  

Not to sound a negative note before even reading the book, I would point out that modern economics places our fate not in our own hands but in the Invisible Hand of the Market, complete with its various “laws” and axioms (e.g. Supply & Demand, Rational Economic Actors, Private Vice Leads to Public Virtue, etc.); I would also note that, Western affluence aside, large swaths of mankind continue to live in conditions of squalor and desperation. Still, GRAND PURSUIT seems like a good companion volume to Robert Heilbroner’s classic THE WORLDLY PHILOSOPHERS.

Sunday Sermon

Gordon Kaufman (from GOD THE PROBLEM):

The word “God” has significance as a cultural symbol and a tool of self-understanding whether we are believers or not…it carries overtones of value and meaning and significance for ignorant and cultured, secular and believing alike, whether it is thought to designate that reality most surely to be believed in, or that superstition most certainly to be repudiated. “God” is a word that all Westerners know and understand, one of the most momentous and weighty in our language; it is a word that has helped move men to the vilest of crimes as well as the most inspired acts of devotion and self-giving…

The word “God” refers us to the ultimate or fundamental reality with which we have to do, not some relatively superficial level of experience or parochial aspect of the world. Whether one “believes” in God or not has nothing to do with the fact that this is what the word designates; nor does it in any way affect the seriousness of the question about the ultimately real. This question we must in some way face, whether we are Christians or atheists, positivists or metaphysicians, secular or religious men. For it is about the basis for distinguishing the important from the unimportant in life, the superficial from the significant, a distinction we must make in some way every time we make a decision, and which becomes of crucial importance whenever we seek to formulate policies and plans for the future…I do not mean to say that every time we make a decision or formulate a policy we do so, or should do so, with “God” in mind; I do insist that on every such occasion we discriminate between the more and the less important, and such discriminations are always made in terms of some (perhaps often unconscious) scales of value or reality.

The question about God is the question about the ultimately real, that which is the source and basis of all else. It is, therefore, about what constitutes the real as real…to be concerned about God, as Paul Tillich has long insisted, is to be concerned about what it is that is ultimately worth being concerned about—and that is a question well worth raising, whatever the answer we might finally decide to give…it is of prime significance for the conduct of our lives here and now in this world. It is a question, therefore, of genuinely secular importance.

[For secular humanists], man is a more or less accidental product of a long and painful evolutionary process; he should make the most of his brief existence on earth and build as good a life for himself and his fellows as he can. In contrast with such a view…the concept of God poses the question whether there is not an ultimate unity behind our being, a unity in which both value and existence are rooted. If this is the case, human life is not simply ours to make what we will; to find fulfillment and meaning we must conform ourselves to an order from beyond the human sphere. Our intimations of value and truth are not themselves the ultimate court of appeal, but must themselves be judged and evaluated by reference to the source and ground of the worthful and true. The anthropocentric orientation of much that we are and much that we do is called into question.

Is human fulfillment something that is created ex nihilo by man out of his own freedom, or is it discovered as man orients himself in accord with an order of worth and meaning from beyond? I am not attempting here to prejudice the answer to that question in any way. I am simply concerned to emphasize that, whether we are believers or unbelievers, this issue is posed most sharply and clearly in serious contemplation of what is mediated by the idea of God.    

The world “God” requires us to reexamine critically our intuitions of value and meaning and to push on to see whether there is not some ultimate Good beyond them, by reference to which they should all be judged. In thus suggesting that the source of value and goodness is not in us but beyond us, “God” demands and makes possible a kind of self-criticism and self-transcendence that we otherwise simply could not attain. Its secular importance—its importance for self-understanding and self-criticism in this life—is therefore hard to overestimate. No other word in the language can put this kind of radical question mark beside our every deepest insight and highest ideal.